#i just fucked up an egg so badly i had to sit with its remains for a little bit. get a feel for the way i’d have to continue with the

[macroglossus]

sometimes i like to imagine hannibal doing really mundane things. dropping his socks when he’s transferring laundry. having a little too much trouble peeling a hard boiled egg and accidentally mangling it. making kind of intrusive small talk while getting his nails filed and buffed to a pleasantly unobtrusive length and sheen (“and how is your husband. yes. i see. if you will forgive my presumption, i would like to offer you the following advice which you may of course utilize or discard at your leisure: to catch a fish you mustn’t thrust a spear into the water… the splash will only frighten it and make it more wary. instead you must craft a lure, brightly shining within the dimness of the water, whereby the fish shall come to you itself, and be convinced it was its own idea all along… no, no polish for today, thank you”)

[cinnaminsvga]

Taming of the Bridezilla | Seokjin

→ summary: Picture this: You had been (not-so) cordially invited to the wedding of your least favorite cousin—a woman who had been hellbent on making your childhood a living hell. Now older and wiser, you would think that you would put aside your differences and attend your cousin’s special day without any hard feelings, right? You wouldn’t seek revenge, now would you?

→ genre: fake dating!au, i2l, humor/crack, fluff  → warnings: seokjin and oc paradoxically have big yet small brains, fake proposals, not-so fake mutual pining, thinly veiled baby-making jokes, terrible family members, ass slapping (no worries it’s consensual) → words: 6.3K → a/n: first of all, no this is not a horror fic; i just thought the title was funny. unless you consider the stupidity of the characters to be mildly horrifying, then sure you can count this as a horror fic. this insanely ridiculous fic was commissioned by @breadoffoxy!! anyone who loves chaotic jin is an angel in my book. yes, this comm is a bit longer than expected but what can i say... i love me some jin. anyway i hope you guys enjoy!

“You got the ring, right?”

Seokjin pats his left breast pocket and gives you a quick smirk. The bump where the ring should be is fortuitously hidden by his large and garish boutonniere, looking to all the world like he had pinned a whole head of cabbage to his suit. Even then, he still somehow manages to make it work. “Of course I did. This entire plan would be useless if I didn’t have it,” he says.

“What flavor did you get? I quite like the watermelon one,” you muse, smacking your lips in anticipation. “Though it’s hard to remember since I haven’t had a ring pop in years.”

Seokjin laughs loudly, startling a group of aunties gossiping in the corner. They all shoot glares at him, though the effect has lost its novelty as they’ve already been glaring at you from the moment you arrived. You suppose that they have a good reason to, considering that you both arrived at the reception an entire 30 minutes late. You can imagine them cursing you under their breath, saying something like, “You’ve brought dishonor to us all!” or whatever it is that aunties like to say these days.

“I could have gotten you all the flavors available at the convenience store if you wanted, but then we’d be 40 minutes late instead,” Seokjin sighs, pretending to be anguished at the thought.

You snort in the most unladylike manner that you can, grinning wildly when you hear one of the aunties gasp in horrified disbelief. From the way they’re reacting, you might have thought that you just flashed them your Borat-inspired neon green thong.

“I do love a man who can treat me well,” you giggle, earning a soft pinch from him.

“Oh, hush. I know you love it. You nearly burst into tears the other day when I bought you a McFlurry because your broke ass was a dollar short,” Seokjin teases. You squawk indignantly, unable to come up with a retort.

“Whatever! Just because you’re a trust fund baby doesn’t mean you get to bully my impoverished state. Just you fucking wait ‘til I get hit by a wealthy 77 year old’s BMW and then I’ll be made for life,” you huff, your illusion of annoyance quickly shattered by the large, dumb grin on your face. “Hey, would you still love me if I broke all my limbs but had a massive bank account?”

“I’d rather buy you McDonald’s for the rest of your life than see you in pain,” he answers simply, patting you gently on the head. “Though I suppose helping you inject thousands of calories into your bloodstream would also cause you pain later on in life, but hey, at least you’d go down doing what you love.”

“Oh, yes. Keep talking dirty to me. I love it when you talk about the ways you’d kill me by association.” You laugh, casually looping your arms together as you walk past the slowly growing crowd of aunties and entering the reception hall to find your seats. Almost everyone is already in their seats, with a few guests milling about and greeting one another with tight-lipped smiles and hollow laughter. The sight brings goosebumps up your arm, bringing back terrible memories of having to make niceties with these people despite knowing that they despised you and your less affluent family.

Remember, you’re only here as a representative for your parents, you tell yourself. You���d rather bear the brunt of the thinly-veiled insults than to have your parents have to experience this hell. Besides, you have big plans for today, and they would only be brought to an end if your mother ever found out what you wanted to do in the first place.

“As they say… We’re here for a good time, not a long time, which I suppose is our philosophy for tonight as well,” he quips back. He taps you lightly on the hand, wrenching your gaze away from the magnificent chocolate fountain on the dessert table and back to his somewhat less magnificent face. A straight-up lie, but it is the only defense mechanism you have in your arsenal that can keep you from staring at how gorgeous he looks in his suit and tie like a braindead idiot. Denial, after all, hasn’t failed you during the last five years that you’ve been in love with your own best friend.

“What is it?” you ask, curious when he furtively points out one of your cousins near the front of the hall. “That’s Namjoon. Do you know him?”

“Know is a strong word,” Seokjin hums, winking at your cousin when he happens to turn towards the two of you. Namjoon’s eyes light up when he sees him, but his excitement immediately vanishes when he notices who Seokjin has beside him on his right arm. You could see the mental cogs going on inside Namjoon’s head as he stares at the two of you, but you don’t get to see him reach a conclusion before Seokjin is pulling you away, walking in the opposite direction.

“Seokjin? What was that all about?” you ask, though you have to admit you’re kind of afraid to know the answer to your own question. As much as everything about tonight’s scheme had been your idea, you can’t help but think that Seokjin’s intense enthusiasm to help you isn’t merely out of his own desire to help you as a friend, but rather due to his innate calling to cause chaos wherever he goes.

“I have a secret bonus surprise for the bride and groom once we get kicked out from this joint after we do our thing,” he says. “And, dare I say, it’ll be quite a treat for all the guests here.” The smirk on his lips is downright heinous, only exacerbating the frantic racing of your heart. There must be something wrong with you, not with how badly you want to do unspeakable atrocities to him and his evil-looking ass. Or perhaps he was simply put down on Earth to test your slowly fraying sanity.

He snaps you out of your dumbfounded, horny stupor when he continues, “If everything goes according to plan, then we’ll truly end this night with a bang, no pun intended.”

“What was even the pun there?” You raise a brow, slightly disconcerted by the way Seokjin was struggling to keep his laughter (at his own joke) at bay. “You know what? Don’t even answer. I guess I’ll just have to find out later tonight.”

After some pointless meandering while the two of you locate your seats, you are finally able to locate your table, unsurprisingly situated near the farthest corner of the hall where no one would have to see you. You’re honestly more surprised that your newly-wedded cousin had even remembered to give you a seat, though you suppose that it must have been at the behest of your uncle. While your devil of a cousin has always been rude and cruel to you, you have to admit that at least her father knew some manners, though that only begs the question as to what happened to his daughter along the way. Genetics and expensive etiquette classes can only help so much, you suppose.

“Thank you again for doing this with me. You really didn’t need to,” you say when you take a seat, nearly elbowing him in the process. Your chairs are wedged right beside the emergency exit and a grotesque ice sculpture of the bride and groom, forcing the two of you to sit so close that you could feel Seokjin breathe directly into your ear. If you shifted just slightly to the right, you’d basically be sitting on his lap (which is a prospect that intrigues you greatly, but you refrain from voicing it in fear of creeping him out… for now).

“How could I ever resist the offer to ruin your cousin’s wedding? This has been on my bucket list for years,” he winks cheekily at you. “Besides, you’re my dearest friend, Y/N. You could ask me to fight a bear naked, and I’d gladly let it eat my dick in one chomp!”

“I wouldn’t let a bear eat your dick,” you say kindly, patting him gently on the back. “You can’t afford to lose an inch when you only have two to offer.”

Before you could laugh hysterically at Seokjin’s howls of betrayal, your attention is pulled away when the soft violin music stops playing abruptly. From far away, it’s hard to tell what’s going on until you notice a bright light reflecting off of the sea of attendees, the balding head of the reception’s host bobbing up and down as he makes his way to the front of the hall.

“Attention esteemed guests! We will now begin serving dinner shortly. Please remain in your seats as our waiters attend to you.” The host speaks into a crackly microphone just as a few scraggly-looking underpaid teenagers in black dress shirts come out with the first course of the night.

Seokjin cranes his neck, trying to see what the food is. “What the hell is that? Why does it look like green shit in a bowl?” he murmurs, loud enough so that only you can hear. “I didn’t know your cousin was a Dr. Seuss fan. Are we being served green eggs and ham?” Before you can guess, you watch as his nose crinkles in disgust, a vile stench making its way to your area even though none of the waiters were even close to your table. “Oh my goodness, is that stench what we’re supposed to eat?”

“Smells like a barnyard,” you comment, though you aren’t as surprised as he is by the revolting smell. “Well, my cousin always did like making atrocious vegan recipes on her shitty WordPress blog, so I wouldn’t put it past her if she made up the menu for her own wedding.”

“She’s a vegan and a bully? What are the odds,” he says drily, cringing when he watches one of the guests begin to dry heave the moment a spoonful of the green stuff enters their mouth. “Christ. I didn’t know I was signing up for a life or death mission.”

“At this rate, I don’t think we’re getting served until the end of the night anyway,” you say, observing as the understaffed employees tried their best to get to every table while insufferable aunts did their worst to hinder their progress by nagging and complaining. Why were they so adamant about eating the food anyway? Were they itching to get diarrhea on a Saturday night? You do admit that it would probably be better, so then at least you’d have an excuse to leave earlier. “Though I suppose... Do you think eating the mystery goo while it’s cold would be better or worse?”

“It’s okay, I’ll treat you to McDonald’s when we finish up here,” he says, smiling sweetly at you. Never in your life has the mention of greasy fries and chicken nuggies made your heart race faster than it did at that moment, but then again, it could also be your high-blood pressure kicking up. Either way, you can’t ignore the way your face heats up at his offer, now more excited than ever for the reception to be over.

You and Seokjin chat as you wait for everyone around you to finish eating, not even bothered when the waiters forget to bring your food. You’re in the middle of debating the pros and cons of cock and ball torture when large dark shadows loom over both your heads, much like a solar eclipse. A cold shiver runs up your spine when you look up to find the reptilian faces of your aunts, the fumes of their designer perfume creating a cloud so noxious that you could feel your lungs shrivel into prunes.

“Hello, Y/N. It’s nice to see you after such a long time,” your Aunt Sohee greets, her tone indicating that there was nothing pleasant about seeing you at all. Your aunt, who had gotten so much botox done that she was reminiscent of a plastic balloon ready to pop, has her entourage of fellow aunties behind her, all of whom looked ridiculous in their fake designer dresses. You swear you can see that one of them had forgotten to snip off the Made in China tag before wearing it to the wedding.

“Aunt Sohee, you’re looking… young,” you say after a moment, deciding to settle on lying for now. Even though your main plan for this evening is to create chaos at your cousin’s wedding, your one condition is that you wouldn’t cause a scene with your aunts. While you are hardly in the running for favorite niece, there is still a 1% chance that you could get some inheritance from them once they hit the grave, so you’ll have to grit your teeth and bear the incoming barrage of personal questions coming your way lest you lose out in the long run.

“Why, thank you. I can’t say the same for you,” she huffs, shamelessly grabbing my cheeks and squishing them like stress balls. She peers sourly at your disfigured face, trying to squint judgmentally at you but failing due to her horrendous plastic surgery. “How old are you? Why do you have so many wrinkles?”

You feel your eyebrow twitch involuntarily, unable to respond even if you wanted due to the gorilla-hold she has on your face. You side-eye Seokjin, who is looking back at you with a blank and calm expression. You had already told him beforehand that you wouldn’t be arguing with your aunts, but that doesn’t mean he’s not allowed to be an asshole.

Being an asshole, after all, is Seokjin’s favorite pastime.

“Hello, Aunties. My name is Kim Seokjin, and I’m Y/N’s long-term boyfriend. She’s told me many good things about you,” he says with a polite smile, his hamster cheeks puffing up in that adorably boyish way. The surrounding aunties all begin to coo at his handsome face (unfair!), but they’re quickly silenced by a sharp glare from your Aunt Sohee. She appraises him, giving him a once over with a pursed lip.

“Long-term boyfriend, huh? Are you sure you aren’t paying her or something? Y/N hasn’t had a boyfriend in years. Her cousins have told me that she’s been too busy with other… extracurricular activities to bother sticking around,” your aunt says snidely, her sneer deepening. She lets go of your face, crossing her arms when she spies the expensive watch on his wrist. “Ah, I see that you’re well-off. I just can’t possibly see why else you’d be staying with her if not for other reasons.”

You can feel your blood pressure rising, the veins on your forehead undoubtedly bulging as you try to suppress your rage. Screw your cousin for spreading a rumor that you’re a whore! It’s as if you were the one sucking guys off in the locker rooms when the two of you were in the second year of high school and not her. You haven’t even had your first proper kiss, for heaven’s sake!

Instead of getting angry, Seokjin’s expression hardly changes at all. His serene smile is still plastered on his face, but only you can tell that he’s even remotely bothered by their rude remarks. You can feel the air around him turn frosty, but your oblivious aunties are still too busy tittering amongst themselves, exchanging insults at your expense.

“Oh, are we that obvious?” Seokjin tilts his head, feigning innocence. Your head jerks towards him, your eyes bugging out of their sockets. What the fuck? “You are so right, Auntie Sohee. I’m sure Y/N must have informed you about our predicament. You see, we’ve—”

“Your predicament?” Aunt Sohee scoffs, interrupting Seokjin mid-speech. “I can’t believe the nerve of this girl, bringing her little boy-toy to the holy matrimony of her cousin—”

“—been trying to produce an heir to the Kim Line for months now,” Seokjin sighs heavily, looking off into the distance with glazed, dreamy eyes. You nearly cough out a lung at his sudden proclamation, about to interject and ask him what on earth he was talking about. Your words die on your tongue, however, when he grips your hand tightly underneath the table. He taps three times on the back of your hand: an old sign that you both made back in high school whenever he was busy bullshitting his way out of trouble.

Luckily, none of your aunts notice your blunder, all of them too occupied trying to wrap their heads around what Seokjin had said. Multiple mouths drop open in surprise and disbelief, including your Aunt Sohee. Her penciled eyebrows arch comically high, her smoothened forehead wrinkling infinitesimally (a feat in itself, for you were sure she had long since lost any ability to move the skin on her face.)

“I beg your pardon?” she whispers, staring daggers at Seokjin.

Then beg, you think to yourself. Judging by the way the corners of Seokjin’s lips lift slightly, you have a strong feeling that he was thinking the same thing to himself. Instead, he says, “Yes, Aunt Sohee. You see, I come from a long line of businessmen. Ever heard of Kim Enterprises.”

Her face turns pale. “You mean… the Kim Enterprises? The one that owns—”

“South Korea’s largest chain of department stores? I’m flattered that you’re familiar,” he winks. He leans forward, gesturing for your aunts to come closer, like he’s imparting state secrets to them. “My older brother, who has been married for quite some time, has chosen to remain childless at the behest of his wife. For that reason, my father put me up to the task of producing an heir for the company.”

“An heir?” your aunt repeats, dumbfounded.

Seokjin nods, tapping his chin thoughtfully. “Yes, it’s quite unfortunate, but it’s a responsibility I’m willing to take. My family is notorious for planning our lives, even for the next 50 years, so I am forever grateful to have Y/N who is willing to bring me multiple potential heirs to my family.”

“Multiple heirs?” Your aunts shriek in unison, causing a few nearby guests to look over at your table in curiosity. You wave at them awkwardly in apology, hoping to get them to ignore the absolute clusterfuck happening right in front of you.

You feel Seokjin kick you gently in the shin, urging you to say something as well. You clear your throat, channeling all the pent-up Seokjin energy that you had indirectly absorbed over the years of being his friend. “That’s right… My Jinnie has always been so lonely, living in his gigantic mansion with his piles of money. He may have never felt the loving touch of his father, but I’m certain that we’ll be great parents to our children. Why, we’re almost like a pair of rabbits when it comes to—”

Aunt Sohee clears her throat abruptly, a deep flush coloring her cheeks as she glares daggers at you. She looks absolutely peeved, and it takes all your mental fortitude to restrain yourself from jumping up in triumph. Take that, wench!

“I have to admit that this is somewhat… unexpected,” your aunt says carefully, pointing a tight smile at Seokjin. He beams back, positively delighted.

“Y/N is quite the catch. I’m grateful to have her in my life,” he says, his tone growing soft by the end. He looks at you then, and you find a mysterious emotion floating in his eyes that you can’t quite name. When you blink and try to get a closer look, his careful façade is back in place.

Eventually, your aunts lose interest in you once they realize they can no longer bully you, not when you had an incredibly rich boyfriend to back you up. “Must be nice being a rich boy, huh?” you snicker, teasing the blushing boy beside you. Thanks to his hair growing longer than usual, the tips of his ears are miraculously hidden away. When you brush his hair back, they are as red as a baboon’s ass.

“Oh, shut up. You know I hate flaunting my dad’s money,” he whines, pouting cutely. He fingers the watch on his wrist, staring at it uncomfortably. “This isn’t even my watch. I had to borrow one from my brother.”

“Well, you did it for me, so I suppose it’s not all bad,” you laugh, pinching his cheek lightly. “Plus, it was funny watching my aunts shut up for once. They’re just mad that you’re richer than the groom.”

“Really? What does he do?”

“He’s an entrepreneur.” You snort, emphasizing the word with air quotations. “Honestly, he just calls himself that while he waits for his self-made business to pop off or whatever. No such luck so far, if what I heard was right.”

“Lucky for you, you’re stuck with my devastatingly handsome face and stinkin’ rich bank account,” he jokes, contorting his face into a funny expression until you’re left snorting at his antics. Little does he know, you still would’ve l***d him even if he wasn’t any of those things, but that’d be too cringey to say. What are you, some sort of romantic lead protagonist?

It takes a little bit over an hour for dessert to start getting served, by which point the bride and groom decide to make their rounds to greet the guests. “Don’t you think this is the perfect time to put our plan into motion? The dance floor is open and we should be able to make it to the center without anyone noticing,” he whispers, his breath tickling your neck.

“Yeah, let’s go,” you say, but just as you’re about to get up from your seat, a flurry of white blocks your path in an instant. You startle slightly, falling back to your chair and hitting Seokjin in the chest with a soft grunt. “Shit, sorry about that Seokjin—”

“Well, well, well. If it isn’t my dear cousin,” a voice cuts you off, the disdain in their voice dripping like acid down your ear canals. Your blood freezes instinctively, years of past trauma crashing down on you as your childhood bully stands just inches away from you, her blood-red lips stretched into a broad smirk.

“Kairi,” you greet.

“Y/N,” she responds.

“Seokjin!” Seokjin adds helpfully.

Your cousin turns to him slowly. “Quite right,” she hisses, eyebrows pinched together in thinly-veiled annoyance. “I’ve heard through some whispers that my baby cousin finally managed to snag a rich kid for a boyfriend and I just couldn’t help but let my curiosity drag me over here.” She looks you up and down, snorting at what she sees. “You would think that having a chaebol as a boyfriend would mean you could at least afford a proper dress.”

You glance down at your dress: a hand-me-down from your mother because you couldn’t be bothered to buy a new one, not when you’d rather choke on Satan’s hot fiery balls for all eternity than spend any amount of money just to attend your cousin’s wedding. Despite this, you can’t help your cheeks from heating in embarrassment, an automatic response after years of bullying and torment from that spoiled bitch.

When you don’t reply, Kairi’s smirk widens. “Oh? Cat got your tongue? Sugar daddy couldn’t even be bothered to buy you a dress? While you’re at it, maybe you should ask for a new car too. I’m surprised you even made it here alive in that old metal deathtrap of yours. You’re lucky you were just late to the reception instead of dead on the street.”

You can sense Seokjin staring at you from your right. Your fists are clenched tightly on your skirt, your nails nearly tearing the fabric in your searing rage. Slowly, carefully, Seokjin slips his hands underneath yours—he pries your death grip open until he can lace his fingers in between yours. At once, your anger melts at his tender gesture, your focus pulled away from your cousin and back to him. He thumbs the back of your hand, as if assuring you that he’d handle this himself.

He smiles at Kairi, not a single ounce of kindness in his eyes. “Yes, indeed. It is my mistake entirely for not ordering a dress much sooner. Y/N is so incredibly humble; she’d rather wear a vintage outfit than wear one of those paper-thin dresses from YesStyle that you and your bridesmaids seem to favor,” he sighs, pretending to be pained.

“Paper-thin? YESSTYLE?” Kairi screeches, her voice breaking the sound barrier. You watch in fascination as her skin turns an unflattering ruddy shade.

Unperturbed by her murderous aura, Seokjin prattles on. “Quite right,” he mocks her with her own words, smirking ever so slightly. “Though, I must apologize for being late to the reception. That was my fault as well. My father had a general meeting this morning for all the employees at the company, as he had wanted to announce that I would be the Vice President starting next Monday. We tried to leave sooner, but everyone had been too busy congratulating us,” he apologizes, though not apologetic in the slightest.

Your cousin could cosplay as a walking crack pipe with how much steam was puffing out of her ears. She’s livid, so much so that her fury was preventing her from formulating any sort of comeback. “You—how dare you—I swear on my—” she stutters incomprehensibly, her vulture-like nails tearing her dainty paper-thin skirt into shreds.

Just as she looks about ready to blow, her father comes around to your table. He places a hand delicately on his daughter’s shoulder, immediately understanding the situation when he sees you. “Kairi, I think it’s time for you to greet the rest of the guests. Uncle Iverson said he has a gift for you that simply cannot wait,” he says, doing his best to appease you. He gives you a genuinely regretful look; you shake your head, waving off his concern.

“It was nice seeing you, Kairi. I hope you and your husband will have a wonderful year together,” you say. You gasp exaggeratedly, holding a hand to your heart. “Oh, sorry. I meant to say I hope you have wonderful years together. Pardon my mistake.”

Before the scant amount of brain cells in your cousin’s brain could process your words, her father pulls her away, dragging her to the next table over. Once they’re out of earshot, you heave a sigh of relief. Beside you, Seokjin lets out a laugh that he had been undoubtedly holding in the past few minutes, sounding like a fish gasping for air with how much he is shaking with mirth.

“Fuck, that was hilarious. Did you see how angry she got? Beautiful,” he says, wiping away a stray tear. “Love that for us!”

“Damn. I knew you were good at bullshitting, but even your acting skills almost convinced me,” you whistle lowly, impressed. “You sure you’re not a con-artist in disguise?”

“All good businessmen are con-artists, my young padawan,” he snickers, winking at you. He shrugs. “You get used to dealing with assholes like her when you attend enough rich people parties. Besides, all good lies are rooted in the truth, after all. That’s what my father taught me when I was seven.”

“You must have been a terrible child, then.” You laugh, before realizing what he had just said. “Wait. Rooted in the truth? What does that mean?”

“Oh. Well,” he clears his throat, giggling nervously. He rubs his neck, embarrassed. “I am the vice president of dad’s company now. I just lied about the meeting being this morning. He announced it a day ago or something. Not that it’s a big deal or anything…”

You gawk at him, speechless. Not for the first time in your life, you are once again stunned by the absurdity of the man before you. How did men like him exist outside of cheesy k-dramas? He’s handsome, rich, funny, AND well-mannered? It’s almost like some love-crazed author had penned him into existence for their entertainment.

Seokjin breaks you from your reverie, tapping you thrice on your shoulder. “Shall we go? The dance floor is still empty. It’s now or never.”

You nod excitedly, standing up to head towards the center of the hall. This time, there is no one stopping you as the two of you make your way towards your destination. The lights near the dancefloor are still dimly lit, as most of the lighting is currently focused on the guests as the bride and groom make their rounds to greet everyone. Even if Seokjin got onto his knees right now, only a few people nearby would notice, so you’d have to do something to catch people’s attention.

“This is going to be moderately to highly embarrassing for a few moments, but I think that’s the atmosphere we’re going for, isn’t it?” Seokjin whispers, his mouth embarrassingly close to yours as he holds you gently by the waist. There isn’t a need for him to stand so close to you, but you have to admit his presence is mostly calming—minus the fact that he’s been your crush for five years and he’s going to be fulfilling one of your deepest fantasies in front of your entire extended family. No biggie.

“I suppose so. What are you gonna do to get their attention?” you ask, palms beginning to sweat. Despite this, Seokjin still takes your hands into his own, a small smile on his lips.

“Just watch,” he whispers, before slowly getting down on one knee.

Ba-dump. Here we fucking go.

“My dearest Y/N… The apple of my eye, the straw to my berry, the con to my dom,” Seokjin says, projecting his voice so that it can be heard even above the music. One of the violin players is even startled long enough to stop playing, further causing more heads to turn in their direction. You hear a gasp coming from your left, but you force yourself not to look. Instead, you stare right back into Seokjin’s sweet brown eyes, your heart beating a mile a minute.

This isn’t real… This is just a prank, bro. Get over yourself, you hiss internally, but your heart refuses to listen.

“You’ve been in my life for almost half a decade, and not a day goes by wherein I don’t wonder what it would be like to live the rest of my days with you. In many ways, I wouldn’t be the person I am if it hadn’t been for your presence in my life,” he says. If you look deeper into his eyes, you can almost trick yourself into thinking that they looked wetter than they had just a moment ago.

“Y/N, you are the person I’ve loved for years now. I used to think you didn’t like me as much as I liked you, so I was always scared to pop the question. I had many opportunities to ask, but I suppose tonight just felt like the right moment. I was afraid that if I didn’t do it now, I might never get the chance to ask again, and I wouldn’t be able to live with myself if I let you slip away out of cowardice.”

For some reason, his words seem almost too real, like he was speaking the truth. You have never doubted his acting skills, but would you be willing to wonder if there was even a small possibility that there was some truth to his tale? You swallow thickly, the need to ask just dangling on the tip of your tongue.

He rifles through his jacket pocket, procuring a small velvet box. He thumbs it almost reverently, his hands shaking slightly, but you can blame that on the nerves from hundreds of people watching you. He takes a deep breath, opening the box with a soft click. “My dearest Y/N… Would you give me the honor of spending the rest of my days with you?”

You feel your breath get knocked out of you in an instant, the genuine adoration in his eyes too much for you to handle. You stammer slightly, too busy staring at him to properly register the loud claps, screams, and hollers all around you. “I… Seokjin… This is…”

“MAKE THEM STOP! SOMEONE KICK THEM OUT RIGHT NOW!” You dimly hear your cousin screaming obscenities somewhere, but you are still too caught up in the moment to care. The world only consists of you and Seokjin—nothing else matters right now.

When you look down at the box in his hands, fully expecting to see a comically large ring pop nestled in its cushions, but instead you find—

You gasp, nearly doubling over in surprise. “Oh my god, Seokjin. Is that a real fucking diamond ring?!”

He shrugs, smiling wryly. “Only the best rocks for the girl who rocks my socks off every night,” he jokes, but his nervousness is palpable. He’s sweating, a drop trailing down the side of his face despite the strong air conditioning.

Oh shit. It hits you right then that his proposal is real. The damned idiot is fucking proposing to you in front of your most hated family members, and he’s proposing to you for real.

“Kim Seokjin, please fucking explain yourself—”

But before he can have the chance to open his mouth, you feel rough hands grab you by the shoulders, pulling you away from him. “I’m sorry I have to do this, ma’am. Bride’s orders,” one of the waiters says, awkwardly escorting you to the exit. When you turn back, you see another waiter pulling Seokjin away as well, the box with the ring still clutched tightly in his hand.

The two waiters deposit you outside the hall, bowing stiffly before heading back into the room. You’re still breathing heavily, the adrenaline coursing through your veins. Seokjin isn’t any better, bent over with his hands on his knees. From your vantage point, you can see how red his entire neck is, his blush reaching even past the collar of his shirt.

“Seokjin…” you trail off, unable to say another word. You’re completely flabbergasted, elated, annoyed, and mostly just mind-fucked because when on earth did Kim Seokjin ever have a crush on you?!

“I’m sorry. That must have been quite a shock,” he coughs out a laugh. He rubs his face, embarrassment rolling off of him in waves. “I just… It was sort of a last-minute decision I made. I’ve been into you for years now, and I know I’m kinda putting you on the spot by proposing like that, but I knew if I didn’t do anything soon, you might just slip away before I can say anything.”

“Wait. So are you really… proposing to me?” You squeak out the last bit, your face mirroring his reddened state.

“No!” He shouts suddenly, before covering his mouth with his palm. “S-sorry, what I mean to say is, it wasn’t really a marriage proposal. It was more like… just a general proposal? I do want to live with you forever, but I know that thought must be daunting and—oh god, I don’t even know if you like me like that, so this must be incredibly weird and out of line. Please excuse me while I shove a cactus up my ass—”

“Seokjin,” you interrupt, silencing his rambling. He clamps his mouth shut. “Are you… asking me out?”

He nods his head. “Yeah…”

“And what you said is true? You actually like me?”

“No, you don’t understand. I love you,” he says, before getting shy again. He looks down at the ring box. “Fuck. This isn’t a real engagement ring, by the way. It’s more like a promise ring, so you don’t have to feel bad for rejecting me.”

“Oh my god, I’m in love with an idiot,” you groan, pulling him into a hug. You nestle into his chest, giggling hysterically into his shirt. “I fucking hate you.”

“Wait, I’m getting mixed signals over here,” Seokjin says, gasping when he feels how tightly you embrace him. He doesn’t complain, however. He returns the gesture in kind, nuzzling deep into your neck. “So, does that mean the feeling is mutual?”

“Yes, you idiot. Now give me my ring.”

“My pleasure, princess.” He laughs, drawing away slightly so that he can slip the ring on your finger. The diamond shines brightly under the fluorescent lights, but nothing brings you more joy than having the boy you love in your arms.

As the two of you are sharing a sweet moment, it takes a second for you to realize that the commotion from inside the venue still hasn’t stopped. When you crane your heads, you spot one of the doors had been left ajar, allowing you to slip your heads through the crack just in time to see Seokjin’s beautiful bare ass being projected onto a large screen.

The musical notes of Rick Astley’s most popular song play loudly on the speakers, drowning out the sounds of the bride screaming bloody murder as the IT people tried their best to sort out the mess. The Seokjin on the screen slaps his ass in time with the tune, his glorious moon-shaped globes shaking mesmerizingly for all to see.

When you look to Seokjin for an explanation, he merely shrugs his shoulders. “They really should do background checks on the people they hire for these things. Taking that one video editing course in university really does pay off, huh?”

“Sure does,” you grin, linking your arms together. “Now let’s get some fucking McDonalds.”

And so, you lived happily ever after—the end.

[gunpowdville]

The Great Flesh-Eating Cake Incident of Year [REDACTED] (Not to be Confused With the Bifrost Incident)

Chapters: 1/2

Words: 3502

Relationships: Drumbot Brian - Raphaella la Cognizi (queerplatonic), Gunpowder Tim/Lyfrassir Edda/Marius von Raum, The Aurora/Nastya Rasputina (although most don’t show up until the second chapter)

Other Things: genderfluid tim, she/her tim, he/fae marius :)

Summary: Brian and Raph bake a cake. Or, they try to. It doesn't exactly go well. (aka, Why Raphaella la Cognizi Should Never Be Allowed in the Kitchen)

read on ao3 here or read below the cut for people who don't like ao3 (i will post the second chapter. at some point. hopefully soon)

Chapter 1

“Try it now.”

“Is it safe?”

“Does that matter?”

Brian gives her what she calls his teacher look, a combination of calm exasperation and gentle chiding. “I would prefer to not fry myself from the inside out, if I can help it.”

“Boring,” Raphaella accuses, tossing her hair over her shoulder. “And you know I’d fix you if you did.” Well actually, she would get Nastya to fix him, as Raph herself has absolutely no self control when it comes to the prospect of tinkering with a complex mechanism and Brian hates being tinkered on without his permission.

“Yes, of course, but that doesn’t mean it wouldn’t hurt like hell,” Brian points out. “Not to mention how horrendously it would fuck up my systems.”

Raphaella pouts. “So I installed the flamethrower for nothing?”

Brian hesitates. “...I didn’t say that.”

Raphaella perks up immediately, turning her full attention from the clattered worktable to her partner. Brian straightens up and faces away from her, focusing at the blank wall at one end of the lab. He pokes his tongue around the inside of his mouth a little, probing at the new addition in the back. He tests out flipping its settings, making sure everything flows smoothly, then steels himself and opens his mouth, turning it on. Nothing happens.

Raphaella throws up her hands in exasperation. “I don’t understand! That should have worked! It-”

Brian yelps suddenly, clapping his hands to his throat as the back of it heats up rapidly, too rapidly, the heat growing from gently uncomfortable to unbearable in a matter of seconds. Luckily, his systems react before he can, shutting off the new attachment the second it could cause potential harm. The heat fades almost as quickly as it had swelled.

“Ow,” Brian says mildly.

“That was about to work,” Raphaella huffs, hands on her hips, eyes fixed somewhat accusingly on Brian. “If you had just waited a moment longer.”

“It was about to melt my vocal cords,” Brian points out in retort. Raphaella throws up her hands again.

“My husband is a coward,” she declares to no one in particular, with no actual insult behind it. Brian can’t help but smile softly at the endearment. They’re not married, technically, but for all intents and purposes they might as well be.

“I’ve started to become convinced that you’re simply trying to kill me,” Brian remarks to her as she turns back to the notes on her lab table. She shoots him a brightly malicious look, one backed heavily with fondness. “Maybe I am.”

He sits down on the stool beside the lab table and reaches for her, catching her waist from behind and pulling her onto his lap. She leans back into him as he wraps his arms around her, and he rests his chin on her shoulder so he can peer down at the pages of notes in her hands.

“Here, tell me what I’m doing wrong,” Raphaella holds up the notes so Brian can get a better look at them. He hums thoughtfully as he scans her delicate sketch of his body, each part individually labelled with possible enhancements to be added in Raph’s lacy handwriting. Brian’s own handwriting, cramped and blocky, annotates the science officer’s notes with his own observations of measurements and possible difficulties.

In his mind, Brian overlays the sketch on top of the official schematics the doc left in there, focusing on his throat and the new addition, checking for anywhere where it isn’t wired properly or messing with any of his other systems. Nothing. He bites his lip, a very natural bad habit that he’s never been able to shake, despite it splitting the rubber badly. Raphaella hits him lightly in the side of the head when she notices him doing it.

“I don’t think it’s anything you’ve done,” Brian says finally, leaning back slightly on the stool. “I think it’s simply a matter of too much heat.”

Raphaella ‘hmphs’, taking her notes back from him and setting them back on the table. She turns her head to study Brian’s face, placing her hands atop his where they rest over her stomach. He quirks an eyebrow at her, and she regards him silently. He can tell that she’s thinking through what next to work on, now that their flamethrower experiment is a bust.

He gives her stomach a light pat. “If you don’t mind, I was going to go bake something. Tim’s been complaining that there aren’t enough ‘munchies’ onboard. And yes, that is the word xe used.”

Raphaella slaps a hand to her heart melodramatically, the gesture accompanied by a theatrical gasp. “Leaving me for Tim, are we? Scandal.”

Brian chuckles gently as he rises to his feet, dislodging Raph in the process. “Yes, I’ve decided you’re much too cruel and brutal for me, and I’d be much happier feeding Tim for the rest of eternity.”

Raphaella tosses her hair and turns away from him, crossing her arms over her chest and tilting her chin up imperiously. “Good riddance.”

“Good riddance indeed,” Brian agrees drily, with no heat behind it. Raph glaces over her shoulder at him and grins, and he smiles back as he slips out the lab door, tipping his hat as he goes.

Ivy’s reading at the kitchen counter when he enters. She doesn’t look up as he makes his way into the kitchen proper, wrangling his hair into a wiry ponytail and tossing his hat on the counter. He peeks at the cover of her book and makes an intrigued little noise when he notices it’s about prophets and oracles throughout space and time.

“I was going to give it you when I was finished,” Ivy says without looking up. “I thought it might interest you.”

“It does,” Brian tells her, and she smirks, proud of herself. She still doesn’t take her eyes off the pages. Brian leans over, resting his elbows on the counter, and knocks his forehead briefly against hers, a somewhat awkward sign of affection that’s he’s developed with some members of the crew. She responds by patting his head absentmindedly, still not looking up from her book. He smiles, and turns back to the kitchen.

After a couple minutes of rummaging around in cabinets, Brian becomes aware of Raphaella’s presence leaning against the counter to his left.

“Missed me?” he asks teasingly. She rolls her eyes and pokes him in the arm. “You promised you’d teach me to bake.”

Brian pauses, replaying the last ten minutes in his mind to confirm that he has not, in fact, promised her this. And then he realizes that she’s referring to a time quite a few decades ago, when the two of them had been left back on the ship while the others had been out pillaging a nigh-extinct planet. They’d been sharing some pastries that Brian had been experimenting with, and Raphaella had asked him how he’d made them. He had launched straight into a detailed explanation of exactly which ingredients he had used and what amounts of each, and how he had played with the measurements and tweaked the recipe to see how he could improve it. Raph had listened with utter fascination, and after he had finished she had mentioned that it seemed a bit like her experiments, only with slightly different materials. He had offered to teach her a little, if she’d like, and she had said she would love to learn. And now here they are.

“I did do that, didn’t I,” Brian muses. He studies Raph, leaning against the counter, a sparkle in her eyes that both makes him excited to see what she has in store and fear for his life.

“So?” Raphaella raises an eyebrow. Brian considers.

“We are making a cake,” he tells her, keeping his voice slow, steady, and serious. “A basic cake. We are not going to put anything in it that is not on the ingredients list. We are going to follow the recipe. To the letter. And we are not, I repeat, we are not going to burn down my kitchen.”

My kitchen, Aurora corrects him gently.

“Our kitchen,” he concedes.

Raphaella steps forward and takes Brian’s hands, looking him solemnly in the eyes. “I won’t let you down,” she promises. “Trust me.”

“Phee, I love you to death, and I always will” Brian tells her, lifting her hand to his mouth and kissing the back of it. “But I draw the line at trusting you.”

“Rude,” Raph sniffs, while Ivy tries to cover up a snort.

“Practical,” Brian shoots back, letting go of her hands and reaching past her to pluck the recipe from the counter. With a flourish, he deposits it in her hands. “Find me these ingredients.”

Raphaella mutters something about ‘bossybitch Brian’ as she turns away from him and marches purposefully toward the cupboards. He watches her fondly for a moment, before busying himself gathering pans and setting up his beloved electric mixer, something he’d found being sold for scraps on a junkyard planet and had lovingly repaired and repainted with his own two hands. Its name is Small Brian, and it remains one of his most prized possessions.

“Bri, which eggs are we using?” Raphaella calls to him, her head buried deep in the disorganized fridge. Brian abandons Small Brian for just a moment and pokes his head in beside hers.

“Ah, not those,” he says, indicating a half dozen of jet-black eggs glowing faintly from within. “Those are Ashes’. They will supposedly hatch into a rare breed of fire-breathing corvid.”

“And those?” Raphaella points to the other carton of eggs.

“We’re using those,” Brian confirms, pulling the carton out. “Ah. Wait. Not this one.” Carefully, he removes a small, round, green orb from the carton and places it gently on the counter. “An octokitten laid this. We think.”

Raphaella leans over and picks it up, holding it in the palm of her hand and bringing it up close to her eyes. She looks suspiciously like she’s about to slip it into her pocket, so Brian plucks it from her hands before she gets a chance to. She sticks her tongue out at him. He waves her off to go collect the rest of the ingredients, reminding her that the lovely ceramic pot labeled ‘sugar’ is in fact actually filled with gunpowder, and the sugar is in the cabinet to its right. Meanwhile he goes back to fussing over Small Brian.

The mixer isn’t starting up properly, it keeps stuttering and stopping whenever he tries to turn it on. Brian frowns, tapping the top of it with a metal finger. “Come on, love,” he says softly to Small Brian. “Don’t give up on me now. Not after all we’ve been through.”

“Raph,” Ivy speaks up from her place at the counter, her tone amused. “Brian’s talking to the appliances again.”

“If either of you make a joke comparing me to an appliance, I will kill you,” Brian warns both of them placidly, fiddling with Small Brian’s mechanisms until the machine whines and starts up properly. “Good lad,” Brian says, patting the appliance lovingly.

“I saw that,” he adds when he catches the look Ivy and Raphaella share over the counter. Raphaella rolls her eyes and gestures to him to come approve the ingredients she’s gathered. She hooks her arm through his and tips her head onto his shoulder while he checks each one off against the recipe.

“Excellent, that’s everything. Thank you.” he says, kissing her on the top of the head. “ Now we can begin.”

Raphaella, as always, is a very attentive student, listening well and asking questions when necessary. He suspects that she asks some of the questions just to listen to him talk about something he loves, and he adores her for it. They work very well together, the two of them, bantering back and forth as they do. Ivy chimes in on occasion, never taking her eyes off of her book.

Jonny strolls into the kitchen at one point, zeroing in on the chocolate chips scattered across the counter with a predator’s precision. As soon as he spots the first mate, Brian sweeps a knife into his hand and points it at him. “Out.”

Jonny backs away, throwing his hands up in surrender. He’s been killed enough times over messing around in the kitchen that he knows by now that the best thing to do is back off.

All in all, it’s a shockingly peaceful time. Brian hums to himself as he stirs ingredients together, and Raphaella goes through the cupboards, looking for something to play with. She reaches to open one in the back, and Brian notices too late which one it is. Raphaella stops, tilting her head in curiosity as she stares at the contents of the cupboard.

“Oh, Briiiiiiiiaaan?” she calls in a singsong voice, which is usually a sign that Brian is about to either be taken apart or assist in taking apart someone else. “What is this?”

Brian sighs and sets down the bowl, making his way slowly over to her. She raises an eyebrow at him as he gazes silently for a moment at the dismantled skeleton shoved into the back of the cupboard. “Those… are my bones.”

“Your… bones.”

“My bones.”

“Why…?”

Brian shrugs. “It’s not like I’m using them.”

“Right.” Raphaella studies the skeleton for a moment longer, before declaring, “I’m going to make soup out of them.”

Brian starts. “I’m sorry?”

“Your bones. I’m going to make soup out of them.”

“You are not.”

“Bone broth is a thing, isn’t it? Ivy?”

“It is,” Ivy confirms, casually turning a page.

Raphaella grins, gathering the bones into her arms. “Brian soup.”

“Brian s- no!”

“Brian soup Brian soup Brian soup Brian soup-”

“NO.”

“I thought the doc took your bones,” Ivy mentions, as Brian attempts to gently cajole his partner into giving him back said bones.

“I asked her to let me keep some of them,” Brian explains, tugging a rib out of Raph’s arms and dislodging about three more, which clatter to the floor unceremoniously. “They are mine, after all.”

“It’s unusually sentimental of me, I know,” he adds as Raphaella ducks under his arm, executing a perfect twirl to get the bones out of his reach, “I’m not quite sure why I wanted them.”

“For soup,” Raphaella quips, and Ivy snorts as Brian throws himself at the science officer. Raph yelps and scrambles away from him, and so begins an epic chase around the kitchen, Raph struggling to run away while clutching an armful of bones, the owner of said bones following a step behind her, playfully angry.

Brian doesn’t realize he’s started humming to himself until Raphaella turns to face him, jogging backwards, and asks what song it is.

“It’s a new one I’m working on,” he says, using her moment of distraction as an opportunity to trap her in the kitchen, the wraparound counter devoid of exits besides the one that he is currently standing in front of. “It’s called ‘Raphaella Please Don’t Make Soup Out of My Bones.’”

“I hate it,” Raphaella decides, still backing away. She’s almost hit the counter, and Brian smirks at his inevitable victory.

“You’ve barely heard it,” he argues, and begins humming louder. Raphaella’s back hits the counter, and Brian stops. Standing in the middle of the kitchen, he begins tapping his foot along to the tune.

“Oh, no you don’t,” Raphaella starts, but the other foot has already begun to move as well. Just tapping at first, tap tap tapping to a beat in Brian’s head, but the footwork quickly becomes more and more complicated as he eases into the song. Ivy picks it up quickly and starts tapping her fingers on the counter, taking charge of the beat while Brian continues humming the melody.

Raphaella shakes her head, refusing to let his shenanigans charm her, but Brian refuses to give up. He dances his way smoothly across the floor to her, finishing with an elegant twirl and an extended hand. Raphaella regards him with reluctant defeat, then rolls her eyes and takes Brian’s hand.

He waltzes her out into the middle of the floor, two steps forward, one step back. He spins her out, then spins her back in so they’re swaying with her back pressed to his chest. “You’re a master manipulator, you know,” she says to him. He smiles. She twirls him out, then twirls him back in and dips him, effortlessly holding up his mass of metal.

“I don’t remember this step of the cake recipe,” Ivy comments drily. She’s finally looking up from her book and is watching the two of them with an expression that is equal parts exasperated and amused.

“Which step, the bone soup or the dancing?” Brian returns, just as dry. Ivy is saved from having to respond by the arrival of Marius, who comes striding through the door like an invading general, arms spread wide in greeting.

“Well, if it isn’t my three favorite delinquents,” fae says, grinning like a maniac. “Dancing in the kitchen like- wait. Why is Raph in the kitchen?”

“I’m helping,” Raph says proudly, tossing her hair over her shoulder in a decidedly smug fashion as Brian collects his bones and returns them to their cupboard. “How can we help you?”

Marius pulls up a stool and takes a seat next to Ivy, scanning the pages of her book idly. “Tim stole my partner.”

“To be fair, Tim is also dating your partner,” Brian points out, handing the bowl of cake batter to Raph to finish stirring and put in the oven.

“Sure, but she’s being smug about it. So I’m pouting,” Marius replies, metal fingers tapping on the counter. “Oh, also: Tim wanted me to tell you. She/her for the time being.”

Brian nods, taking note of the pronouns. “Well, when you feel like speaking to Tim again, you can tell her that a cake is on its way.”

Marius raises an eyebrow. “You mean that cake that Raph just slipped something into behind your back?”

Honestly, Brian is surprised that this didn’t happen earlier. Slowly, he turns to Raphaella, who meets his eyes with a mischievous smirk as she slips an empty vial back into her pocket.

“What was in that?” he asks gently, not mad, just curious.

“Just a little something I whipped up,” Raphaella says, giving the batter an experimental stir. An odd squelching noise escapes from the bowl, and she quickly lets go of the wooden spoon as a dark tendril of… something curls up around it, possessive and hungry. “Oh. That’s interesting.”

“What the fuck was that?” Marius leans forward over the counter, curiosity evident on faer features.

Raphaella sets the bowl carefully on the floor and steps away from it, circling around it to Brian’s side. He gives her a questioning look, and she shrugs cheerfully, indicating that she has no idea whatsoever the effect of whatever she put in may be. With somewhat tired resignation, Brian steps forward to investigate what has become of his simple chocolate cake.

It’s… alive. The dark, viscous substance in the bowl has begun to writhe and bubble in a distinctively sentient manner, tendrils forming reaching out, looking to grab hold of something. The tendrils feel their way around tentatively, like a newborn animal learning to walk for the first time. The substance itself has an oddly familiar shimmer to it, the nearly oil-black surface revealing colors of every hue and nature when the light hits it.

“That looks like…” Marius frowns, clambering over the counter and dropping next to Brian as what was meant to be a cake slowly drags itself out of the bowl and onto the floor. “Oh, Raph, you didn’t!”

“Don’t touch it,” Brian advises as Marius crouches near the thing to get a better look.

Marius gives the Drumbot a scathing look. “I’m not a moron, Brian, I’m not going to-”

“Mare, get back,” Brian snaps, but it’s too late. The crawling blob has already reached the violinists foot and has clamped on tightly, wrapping its tentacles up and around his leg. He stares down at it in mild concern for a moment, then says: “Fuck.”

What happens next is hard to describe. The viscous thing sort of… stretches itself, until it covers Marius’ entire body, undulating and pulsing, then collapses in on itself, returning to its smaller form, leaving nothing but a slightly steaming metal arm left where the ship’s doctor once stood.

“What the hell did you do?” Brian demands, staring at the (now slightly larger) creation as it drags its way across the floor.

Raphaella doesn’t respond. “I think it ate faer,” she says instead. Then, “where is it going?”

Brian glances at the floor just in time to see the thing disappear into the vents. He lets out a cry, but it is much to late. It’s gone.

“Well,” Ivy says, staring with vague concern at the open vent. “Fuck.”

[magalidragon]

#4 or #5 for romantic one liners please and thank you 🤗

HOW ABOUT BOTH!? 🥰😭🤗 And even better how about both in the silent shadows universe!? AND WHAT IF I MAKE IT ANGSTY!?!?! (Moodboard to follow)

Sooooooo sorry it took me an age. 😭 I hope you like it even if if gave me perverse pleasure to torture the beans a bit.

Romantic One Liner Prompts

4. “Not to sound cheesy but your smile really lights up the room.”

5. “I cannot find the words to describe how I feel about you.”

Shadow watched her warily from his position on her bed, head on his paws, and his tail shoved underneath his back legs, eyes darting occasionally between her pacing form and Drogon sitting atop her dresser, hissing at him every few minutes.  He was vibrating, nervous and keying in on her emotions, which were pouring off of her with every second.

Her frustration levels had exploded in one godsawful fight and she'd hightailed it out of Jon's house and to her apartment, not wanting to deal with him for another second longer.  It wasn't her fault, she kept telling herself, speeding away from his house, skidding snow and melt, and exploding into her apartment at full steam, shouting how annoying he was, how much she was sick of his behaviors.

"I owe it to myself," she said to Shadow, passing by him again.  Her fingers clenched into her palms, nails digging deep.  "I mean, I'm the one who is going through all this stuff physically, right?  The least he could do is just..." She growled.  He was still holding back.  He was still refusing to speak to her, keeping his emotions close to the vest, but they had moved beyond that.  Or so she thought.

Instead of talking to her, instead of at the very least telling her he wasn't thinking the same, he'd shut down, he'd withdrawn into himself, and he had been spending most of his nights on "observation calls" with the wolves, deep in the forest, and not in their bed.  "He has to stop doing that," she told Shadow.

She scrubbed her fingers over her face, exhausted, and sank into a chair in the corner.  Her stomach hurt, her head hurt, and she ached every which way.  It was the bloody hormones.  The little notebook at her side, resting innocently on the end table, mocked her with its check marks and color-coding.  Next week was their first egg retrieval and he'd give his sample.  They were flying out to Essos in a couple days.

Or rather, they were planning on it.

Right now she had no bloody idea what was happening.

Leaning over her knees, she pressed her face into her palms, thinking back over the argument.  It was so stupid.  It was just over dinner.  Dinner, of all bloody things!

He'd come home, to find her making them grilled cheese sandwiches, because there was nothing in the fridge and she thought he was getting something.  He had texted her before leaving the sanctuary that he thought she was getting stuff.  Annoyed, she snapped she'd just make something.

He tapped her shoulder when he came into the kitchen, even though she heard him and had ignored him.  He picked up one of the slices of grilled cheese and smirked at her, biting into it and then signing.  "Not to sound cheesy, but your smile really lights up the room."

She had been smiling, but not at him.  More so at Ghost ,who was in the other room with Shadow, wisely sensing the tension.  Jon laughed at his own joke, but she was not amused.  She signed, angry.  "You were supposed to get dinner."

"I thought that was you, I was busy."

"Busy?  You're the busy one?  You've been sleeping in the forest for the last week!"

He shrugged, continuing to eat.  "Aye, it's breeding season, lots to observe."

"Breeding season?"  She shouted now, slamming her hands on her stomach, which had puffed out because of the hormones.  He flinched, not looking at her.  She grabbed his face, jerking his eyes towards her lips so he could read them-- he wasn't getting out of it that easy.  "Yeah it's breeding season Jon!  We're going to Essos next week for the IVF and you've been hiding from me, not listening to me, and now you're making jokes like it's all fun and games?"

They hadn't even talked about the IVF.

That would require them to be in the same house at the same time.

So basically, he was avoiding her.

And she had been avoiding him, because he had been avoiding her.

His lips twitched, his eyes shuttering, and she lunged for him, but he was already turning away.  "Don't you do that!" she shouted, although it was pointless, because he was already walking away from her.  She grabbed his arm, jerking him around, furiously signing.  "Don't you run away from me Jon!"  Tears stung the corners of her eyes.  "We have to talk about this!  I decided to do this with you because...because I was ready but if you are changing your mind..."  It had been three months since he ran into that hospital corridor, proclaiming his love and throwing himself at the mercy of her love, saying he wanted to be with her, he wanted a baby with her too, he was ready.

And now he was changing his mind, basically, or that's what it seemed to her.

He shook his arm free.  "I'm not changing my mind!  I've been busy!"

"Oh you're busy?  Well so am I!  Busy trying to figure out if I even want this baby with you now!"  It came out before she realized it and she saw his face, the ashen color, and she hesitated.  "Jon I didn't..."

He shook his head, sneering, and spoke, voice thick.  "You feel that?  You...I told you....I'm not..."  He scrambled for the words and signed, his face a twist of pain and anger.  "I told you!"

Told me what?  She was so mad at him, she signed again.  "I'm not staying here tonight."

"Fine!"

"Fine!"

Shadow was out the door with her before she knew what was happening, and now here she was, lost and confused, and frustrated.  Upset.  Hurt.  She blinked away tears, tucking her feet under her in the chair, sniffling back sobs.  It was too late in Essos to call Missandei or Rhaegar.  There was always Arya, but when it came to matters of Jon Snow vs. Daenerys Targaryen, as close as she was to Arya, she did tend towards siding with Jon.  Since it was about...whatever it was about, she probably would stay out of it entirely.

There was Shadow, but as he was deaf, he couldn't' even hear her voice.  He hopped off the bed, however and rested his chin on her knee, dolefully staring up at her.  She scratched his head, whispering.  "You're a good boy."

This was supposed to be different now.

Jon and her had different priorities in life, they'd realigned those.  He'd gone to therapy-- was still going actually-- resulting in him being more open with her, more accepting.  He still struggled, she understood that, she sympathized and she felt it deeply, but gods....he had to realize at this point in their relationship, she was there for him!

"He can talk to me," she mumbled, closing her eyes.

But what if he couldn't?

Her eyes opened and she blinked a few times, her heart hurting so badly it was bleeding everywhere.  She missed him.

If he couldn't talk to her, then why?  Was it about the baby?  Was she pressuring ihm?  She frowned, looking over her behavior, but then she shook her head, growling.  No!  It wasn't her!  She had been more than open with him, more than understanding, and sometimes that was what drove her so crazy with the man.  She had bent over backwards for him.

But she'd been passive aggressive the last week.

She'd been ignoring him too.

She took a deep breath and picked up her phone from the end table, staring at the screen.  There were several texts from him.

Can we talk?

I'm sorry.

I don't want to do this over the phone.

I'm coming over.

You don't get to ignore me.

You've been ignoring me too.

Dany?

What the fuck.  talk to me.

Fine.

Whatever that last one meant, she wasn't going to try to figure it out.  She opened up the messages and sent him back a response.

I'm here.  I'm not ignoring you.

She paused and took a deep breath, typing fast:  I don't understand what is going on.  Talk to me Jon.  If you don't then I guess I know where I stand in the scheme of things.  She closed her eyes and hit send, following up quickly with:  I love you.

The instant she pressed send, her door rattled, keys jangling in the lock.  Shadow didn't react, obviously, but the dragons did, Drogon and Rhaegal springing up and running to the door to see who had arrived.  At their departure, Shadow turned and barked, taking a sniff and eyes widening when he caught Ghost and Jon's scents, rutning and greeting them.

She remained in her chair, waiting for him to enter.  He did, a few seconds later, and he looked miserable.  His eyes were sunken, his hands shoved in his pockets.  He wasn't wearing a coat, the flannel shirt hanging off his shoulders loosely, his frame appearing thin to her.  She hadn't noticed, but he did look like he'd lost some weight recently.  He stared over at her and she waited, continuing to keep her hands still, although they itched to begin speaking.

"I cannot find the words to describe how I feel about you," he spoke.

Each time he spoke, stretching his vocal cords to their limits, his heart racing nervously because he could not tell what he was actually saying, the pitch and the volume, her pulse quickened, because it was his true voice, and he was vulnerable when he did it, his heart out in the open, offered for the trampling.

It made her melt, it was her favorite sound in the world, expect maybe his laugh.

It meant things were important, when he spoke to her like that.

She didn't move, her muscles locked, gaze intense on him.  He continued, stuttering.  "I...you make me..." He clenched his fist and pressed to his chest.  "Hurt.  Here."  He took a deep breath and closed his eyes.  "I...scared.  Scared of it...so real now.  All real.  I...forget.  Forget because I feel so much."

The vision of him before her wavered, tears filling her eyes, unshed.  She knew what he was talking about.  He loved her so much it overwhelmed him, it scared him, and he reverted back to the easy thing.  To the forest, to his wolves.  She lifted her fingers, folding them into the words.  "You cannot do that anymore  You cannot run from me."

He nodded.  "I know."

"I love you so much Jon Snow.  We are in this together.  Both of us.  it has to be both of us."

He pushed from the door and walked over to her, kneeling in front of her and covered her hand with his.  She could see the pain etched in the lines therading from his eyes and around his lips.  "I want a baby.  With you.  Only you."  He hesitated and she struggled to understand, the emotion so thick in his words he was almost unintelligible.  "I am scared.  No going back.  I forget you...you want me."

Her hands went to his face, cupping it in her palms, and she spoke, crystal clear so he could read her lips.  "I want you more than anything in this world Jon Snow.  I love you and I want this baby with you."  She hesitated and continued.  "I am sorry I ran off tonight, but you make me...I can't read your mind and I don't deserve it when you push me away.  Again."  And again and again.

He nodded quickly.  "I know.  I'm so sorry.  I just..."  He shrugged, helpless.  "My whole life.  NO one...wanted...me."

It killed her, that he had been so locked away after his accident.  No one saw him as anything but that deaf boy, shuttered in the attic, locked in his silent world, just his wolves.  And her.

"I want you," she signed.  She smiled.  "All of you."

"i know."

"Then stop closing me away Jon."  She bit her lower lip, shrugging sadly.  "Because I cannot risk the pain of what is going to happen to us if we aren't in it together."

He nodded, but she didn't think he quite understood.  He seemed so certain that this would work.  They would fly to Essos, they'd go through the procedure, and a few weeks later they would have a baby, but she knew better than to be so hopeful, so certain.  She was cautious about it.  It was the only way to protect herself.

Just like running away was his.

She brushed his hair back behind his ear, curling it around her finger, speaking out loud again.  "I'm sorry I ran away too.  We can't do that."

"No, we can't," he signed, agreeing.

They would figure it out.  She fell into his arms, both of htem sinking to the floor, embracing tight.  He kissed her neck, face buried in her hair and she did the same to him, swaying lightly in his arms.  She loved him so much it hurt.  It would always hurt.  The good kind, she thought.  She pulled her face away and stared at him, his pain and fear still evident in the furrow of his brow and the pressed line of his lips.  She touched her fingertip to them, shaking her head.  "You will be a good father Jon.  I want this with you.  Only you."

It had been easy in the beginning, to say that she would do the donor sperm, because she wanted this baby.  Now she couldn't think of anyone else as the father of her child.  Not some nameless entity in a test tube.  It had to be Jon and only Jon.

He kissed her gently.  His hand came up, signing.  "I only want this with you too."

They kissed, deeper this time, the emotions surging inside of them, the hormones raging in her.  It had been weeks; she'd been so scared of potentially messing something up and they had a stopping point.  Mel told her they needed to refrain from anything a week before, part of the protocols.  She hadn't had to worry about it the last time, since she'd been doing it on her own, but now she needed him desperately, especially if it was going to be the last time for a week.

He lifted her up from the floor, easily carrying her over to the bed and depositing her on it, breaking away from their furious kisses long enough to shut the door on a nosy Shadow and Viserion, who were trying to sneak back in.  She giggled, reaching up for him and leaning back, head lightly hitting her pillows and traced his cheek, scratching at his bristly beard.  He smiled gently.  "I love you so much," she said.

"I love you."  He rose over her, touching his nose against hers, breathing deep.  His hands found hers and squeezed, stretching them up over her head, his lips brushing down her cheeks, to her chin and began tracking down, letting go of her to begin plucking at her clothing, while she remained in place, hands up over her head, eyes fluttering shut.

A few hours later, she tapped his heart, lifting up to rest her chin on his chest, peering up at his face, which was tilted up to the ceiling, watching the moonlight play shadows through the open window.  She took a deep breath and sighed.  "Jon," she said.

He didn't move and she closed her eyes, taking a deep breath, speaking out loud, to nothing really.  "Jon I need you to do this with me.  I can't do it alone.  We're in this together.  You and me.  No more running away and I won't either.  We're making a baby together.  We're going to be parents.  I love you more than anything, but if this keeps up, I can't do this.  It isn't fair to either of us.  I know you can't hear me, but I want you to know, and I hope you can understand."

There, she said it.

She lifted up a little farther, looking down at him.  His eyes flicked open, a smile lazily pulling over his lips. He turned a little closer to her, and his voice was raspy, breaking when he spoke. "You are awake?"

She smiled and nodded.  He smiled again and fumbled some signs.  "Do you want to go see some pups?"

Eyebrows lifting, she shrugged and let him pull her from the bed.  They dressed and he drove her, Shadow, and Ghost out to the sanctuary and they rumbled through, coming to a stop before one of the gates.  He opened it and they started walking in the darkness.  He was oblivious to the creepy crunching of their feet on dry leaves, the occasional hoot of an owl, and even fainter, howling from a wolf in the distance.

Ghost and Shadow moved with the darkness, flashing here and there in the trees, like their namesakes, and she held Jon's hand as he led her through the brush, until they came upon a huge oak tree with a marker on it.  He crouched and picked up a flashlight, flicking it on and handing it to her.  He crept a little closer and got down on his stomach, waiting a few moments.  The brush rustled and she held her breath, a massive gray wolf appearing, focusing on him.

He stared at the wolf and after a moment, the wolf's tail wagged and he approached, licking Jon's hand and bowing his head in deference.  Jon stood and went with the wolf and a few others from the pack who came out.  He disappeared and a few moments later, he emerged holding a wiggling bundle.  She stood and carefully approached.  The wolves stared at her, obviously nervous at the interloper, but not moving because their alpha was trusting her.

Jon passed the bundle to her and she smiled, holding the warm creature, squeaking and wiggling in her arms.  It was still so small, these majestic creatures large enough to take down grown men and jaws as strong as steel, and yet here in her arms was this helpless little creation, fine downy fur a thin layer over its short limbs, ears barely flipped over, and eyes still shut.  She took a quick glance and noted the pup was female, wiggling into her, nuzzling and searching for her mother, crying out and eventually settling when she grew tired.

She stroked the little pup, eyes closed, and Jon took her back a few seconds later, returning her to her mother.  A few minutes of checking on them, bringing out another-- this one a little brown and gray one with a curled tail and one eye half open-- to nuzzle against her, they said their goodbyes to the pack, who appeared relieved to see them go.

It was magical, she thought, walking back with Jon to the car.

She stopped in her tracks at one point, letting go of his hand.

He turned, frowning.  "Okay?" he asked.

She took a deep breath, signing, the moonlight bright enough for him to see.  "I told you earlier, but you...I didn't want you to hear me."  He stiffened, knowing that meant she was talking to him.  She hated doing it, but she wanted him to know.  "We have to be strong Jon.  We can't run away.  I'm serious.  If this keeps up...." She trailed off and sobbed, letting it linger.  SHe didn't want to say it.

He tilted her face up to his, thumb brushing her chin.  He nodded.  "I know."

"I love you," she whispered.

He wrapped his arms tight around her, squeezing, and said nothing, but she knew.  She exhaled, relieved.  It was just a bump, she told herself, just their constant struggling.  They had to work on it.  It wasn't supposed to be easy.

They had the rest of their lives to look forward to, she thought, letting go of him so they could walk back to the car.  She squeezed his hand tight.  They were going to be parents.  That would be the hardest thing, this was just a blip.  Just a little shadow.

They would be fine.  They were having a baby after all.

Just another month and they'd know.

Jon lifted her hand to his, kissing her knuckles, and she smiled, leaning against him and closed her eyes, walking back towards the car, feeling hopeful.

[lordeasriel]

ATTWN: A Look at Miss Brent

I keep circling around the idea of writing And Then There Were None meta, like a full, proper analysis of the novel, but I just can't settle down on how to do it, cause I do have many thoughts, but I can't seem to organise them in a way it will make sense. But-

I was thinking about Miss Brent today, and she's not exactly a character I have that many thoughts compared to Vera or Armstrong, but she certainly has my interest. What strikes me stronger about her is her complacency, in a way.

Let's look at the novel first: here's this sixty-something woman, a spinster who takes on girls from local charities/orphanages to train them into proper maids or whatever. It's not an unusual thing for that time based on the rest of Christie's novels, it seemed like a common occurrence for the period. At any rate, she's very righteous, uptight, her belief is almost borderline fanatical, she never hesitates over her "innocence" in front of the accusations, and the thing is: she doesn't deny shunning the girl away.

Unlike the others, who remain resilient on their innocence (Lombard the exception cause he literally confessed right away), Miss Brent never denies that she did refuse to help Beatrice. In her own mind, she didn't do anything wrong - and if we're going there, in its fucked up way, she technically didn't do anything wrong. She had no familial attachment to the girl, she didn't have to do anything for her legally speaking; morally, of course, she should have but we don't arrest people for being morally corrupt lmao Let alone death sentence them. *coughs*

But what gets me it's her complacency. You know, I'm blaming this on the windy day, but thinking about her, sitting by herself almost all the time (including when she died), she never does anything. Unlike the others, Vera included considering how Christie often writes the women isolated, Miss Brent never gets involved in either investigating or helping them to find a way out; she just sits and knits and eventually bosses Vera around or say some mean stuff to someone. She doesn't act, which is odd for us as a reader; I mean, if I was in her spot I would have already made a signal for help, even with the bad weather lmao This book heavily traumatised me anyway--

Miss Brent doesn't act, that's my main point. In her head, I suppose she expects some sort of divine intervention, in its way; not a miracle, but you know, she expected her righteousness guaranteed her safety. She sees the other deaths as punishment, she thinks them all guilty, perhaps not the General or Wargrave, but I've no doubt she considers the rest of them wicked and deserving of the punishment, but never herself. She didn't do anything wrong, she has got nothing to feel sorry for. There is a whole section, where Vera asks Miss Brent if she is not afraid or if she simply doesn't mind dying. To which she reacts exactly like I said before, like she was above them all, like death wouldn't come for her.

Now, I will just vaguely go over the show because I think their choice of handling her was an interesting one. I like most of the choices made by show, except the ending which I'll save for another day of ranting, but Miss Brent in the show behaves similarly, but her background gets deeper. For one there was two key things - I say two because I've seen two different interpretations of this - and they were 1) repressed lesbian and 2) predator. Now, these two could coexist with each other, she could have been taking in girls to take advantage of them, but I don't know, I think it would be hard for her to do that always, so I like to think if repressed lesbian was it, then it makes more sense for her crime and her reaction. It would be related to a feeling of betrayal - "I've given you a home, a job, affection and you still went behind my back to be a whore" - and it's something Miss Brent would probably not acknowledge. She was always too religious, too righteous, so Beatrice probably haunted her more in death than she did in life: no one would believe this ragged girl over any accusations - even if there was consent on her part. But that's just beside the point.

What I mean for the show is, they go in a different direction. Miss Brent's reactions over the murders are a little more in line with her religious dynamic for the show: when Tony dies, she makes a little prayer, she worries about Mrs. Rogers state when she sees her passed out (despite the fact she humiliated her earlier over being meek and weak and so on), she has a judgemental attitude towards Vera, but even that comes from a place of almost understanding? She still judges them harshly, but she is a lot less harsh to the ones she consider less harmful (aka she is absolutely distasteful about Lombard, whose crime is easily the worst crime in the show and she thinks so).

Of course, all of her views and beliefs and behaviours are based on her own lifestyle, so she is a bit blind and biased - when Lombard points out about the missionaries crimes in Africa, after she calls him out; or when she states she couldn't imagine crossing paths with a man like him, despite the fact she knows well enough they're all there because they're guilty - so she is bound to hypocrisy every now and again. But her fanaticism from the book is turned into a proper, religious attitude; she does abide by the Bible, she condemns very little her other companions (I mean, she still judges Vera over her youth and her inertia, she judges Armstrong's lack of calm, she judges Lombard because well, because of his Existence™ lmao) She is, of course, judgmental and vain and arrogant, but this is less cartoony and more realistic. More importantly, because her beliefs are much more ingrained in her life, she is afraid. She is genuinely afraid and that is an important, key change that I genuinely like.

Miss Brent has faith, at first, that they will leave the Island, so she stills acts very coldly at first and of course, she still denies her guilt, she still claims she did the right thing and Beatrice caused her own undoing. But, the show pursues the idea that Miss Brent, upon being reminded of the event, starts to feel guilt: when she is praying she hallucinates Beatrice (hallucionation was a choice they did to convey these feelings, but you could just claim that's a memory in her head); and more importantly, before her death - which happens the day after she hallucinates - her demeanor changes entirely. She goes from trying to stay calm and resolute before the tide, to feeling weary. That's important because unlike Book! Emily, she is fully aware she has committed a sin, and now whether that is her neglect of Beatrice's pleas or her own feelings for her, that's beside the point. The point is this woman realises she is very close to meet her maker and the burden of having sinned wears her down.

Miss Brent also adds "It's only wool" when Vera is pouring her coffee (which I had to crop cause Gif size), which is her redirecting her distress to something mundane (in another scene later, Vera mentions how doing the dishes is a mundane task, which she finds soothing. In fact, seeking a sense of normalcy is a recurring theme for the show, but also for the book) and ordinary. Vera, of course, notices her distress over being hunted; she shares the feeling, and I don't want to focus too much on Vera because I'll talk about her eventually later, but this shows how Miss Brent changes drastically.

On their first conversation after the dinner, Vera's impression of Miss Brent is of an uptight, self-righteous, straight-up cruel woman and she avoids her if she can help it, and truth be told, Miss Brent does act very badly and says bad things, Vera is not being touchy about it. So when Vera lays the coffee tray, she is ready to walk away before Miss Brent addresses her (she even makes a dry remark on "There is no milk, I'm afraid", which is meant to spite Miss Brent's earlier attitude over asking for perfect eggs after Mrs Rogers died and so on), and Miss Brent talks so unlike herself, a weariness that makes Vera reconsider and come back, to pour her coffee. She feels sorry for Miss Brent, because she finally cracked like the others; Miss Brent knows now that no amount of faith might defend her from this killer, because this killer has got nothing to do with a justice kill.

She stays seated, knitting again, but when she reaches for the coffee she hesitates. She realises Vera could have poisoned it (before entering the room, since she watches Vera pouring the coffee), and then she puts it down. There is a sense of danger in her, and she has no desire to die, unlike in the book where she so casually just stays behind, unafraid in her own attitude of superiority. I like this change a lot; I think showing her fear before her God enhances her religious mania a lot more, because she truly fears Divine Judgement, because she understands, deep down, that she did a bad thing; maybe not murder - I mean, it wasn't murder after all - but she still did a morally bad thing. If there is a Heaven, it won't be for her.

[permanentcrossfics]

Better Now Than Later // h.s.

It’d hit him like a tonne of bricks, then.

This bloke shared a bed with you.

He spent night after night with you.

He got to see you naked.

Nauseated hadn’t described the feeling he’d had to swallow back, and chest pains were a step below that funny, fluttery, squeezing thing his heart was doing.

He’d kept waiting for the feeling to go away, but the more it lingered, the worse it got, until he was snappy and irritable with just about everyone. Even seeing you didn’t help, because if you weren’t with the man, you were talking about him, or texting him, or reminding Harry he was waiting for you.

What had started out as wanting to assert that he knew you best had led him to wanting to know you better — to fill the missing holes (no sexual innuendos intended) in the relationship between you — but all of a sudden you weren’t just dating the man, you were living with him. He’d put on a brave face and tried to remind — convince — himself that your happiness was what mattered, but then the engagement had happened and he’d just… snapped.

I wrote this a few years ago -- there are some signs of that left in as Easter eggs for those who have stuck around this long. Happy reading -- thanks for wanting it after all this time x

Read NOW on Patreon // Tumblr // Wattpad

Now

*

Anybody could’ve told him, and many did. 

“Is there... something going on? Between you and…?”

“What?” 

How often had he shaken his head no? 

“We’re just friends — I love her, but we’re just friends.”

Harry had been happy for you when you started dating your now fiancee. That was the right feeling to have for someone he cared about, right? It was casual, he seemed nice, and if you were happy, he was happy. At first, he was just a lad to have a laugh with, but then… something had changed. He didn’t disrespect you — never that, for which Harry remained grateful to this day — but Harry got the distinct impression that the other man thought he knew you better than Harry did. He’d tried to squash it, because personal relationships were not an arena in which his competitive nature should thrive, but he’d still coiled like a cobra ready to strike back at the insinuation that just because this bloke shared a bed with you, and spent the night, and got to see you naked that he somehow knew you better. 

It’d hit him like a tonne of bricks, then. 

This bloke shared a bed with you.

He spent night after night with you.

He got to see you naked.

Nauseated hadn’t described the feeling he’d had to swallow back, and chest pains were a step below that funny, fluttery, squeezing thing his heart was doing. 

He’d kept waiting for the feeling to go away, but the more it lingered, the worse it got, until he was snappy and irritable with just about everyone. Even seeing you didn’t help, because if you weren’t with the man, you were talking about him, or texting him, or reminding Harry he was waiting for you. 

What had started out as wanting to assert that he knew you best had led him to wanting to know you better — to fill the missing holes (no sexual innuendos intended) in the relationship between you — but all of a sudden you weren’t just dating the man, you were living with him. He’d put on a brave face and tried to remind — convince — himself that your happiness was what mattered, but then the engagement had happened and he’d just… snapped.

He couldn’t write music after that. He’d tried to write so many songs to put it into words, but the words he got out were stiff on paper and his fingers were clumsy on the strings of his guitar, and that made it worse. He felt mute though he hadn’t stopped screaming the entire time you’ve been planning your wedding, and now the day was here. 

When he’d gotten the save the date card, he’d contemplated lying through his teeth — he could send a bloody waffle iron and call it a day and know that you’d at least be fed while he pretended to be in New York, Toronto, São Paulo, Munich, Tokyo, anywhere but where you were on your wedding day. He couldn’t do it, though -- hadn’t you pestered him specifically to find out when he was free? And warned him time and again to not slot anything in because you were planning your wedding around him and this would be the date chosen? 

That was a punch to the chest if he’d ever felt one. 

Similarly, as the weeks had dragged on he’d considered faking sick, faking traffic, faking anything to get out of it, but the morning had come. Wished he may, wished he might’ve, it was there at last.  and he’d showered and combed his wet curls before drying them and spraying them with whatever Lou had forced upon him ages ago before zipping up his boots. You’d promised him he could be him — rings, necklaces, hair that’s annoying enough to require a hair tie around his wrist for when he needs it, and a shirt just shy of half its buttons being done — because you’d said you wanted to look out towards the crowd and find something familiar in the midst of all the symbolic change. 

“You can be a rockstar,” you’d told him. “Just make sure you’re a rockstar at a wedding.”

How was he ever supposed to fake anything when you wanted so badly to see him on your wedding day?

That was how he wound up sitting in the church at one end of the pew with the little sheet of paper that had your name and your soon-to-be husband’s printed on it along with those of the ring bearer, and the flower girls, and the bridesmaids and the groomsmen, and all the people that were far too many to be what you wanted. 

He flicked the edge of it repeatedly with his thumb and his mouth got tighter and tighter as he stared. You weren’t married — not yet. Harry shifted forward and twisted in his seat to look towards the back of the church, but he shook his head and turned back. 

There was a ring bearer, flower girls, bridesmaids, and groomsmen who would all be sorely disappointed if he did anything foolish. Not to mention your family, and he supposed your groom might take issue, although, frankly, he was the least of Harry’s concerns right then — he was the root of the problem, actually. 

Give it up, he chided himself. You aren’t going to do anything. What happens? She says no and you feel like a proper twat for having put her through that on her wedding day and left it on her mind from hereon out? You would do that to her? You’ve not got enough time to change her mind, and even if you did, you shouldn’t.

Harry closed his eyes, another voice springing up. What if you said yes? What if you changed your mind? What if — and he knew this is a demotion — you agreed to date him instead of marrying this tosser? 

He didn’t have any idea if he loved you — if he was in love with you — but he knew he’d like the chance to try, and if he lost out on even the possibility….

He was at the door through which people had been barging in and out of for the past hour before he could process his feet had moved. Harry hesitated, looking at the rings on his fisted fingers, before knocking fervently. He winced, his whole face pinched inwards, knowing that he had better have something damn good to say, and before he could even entertain the idea that you wouldn’t let him in, the door opened and you peeked out cautiously before relaxing.

“Oh, it’s you.”

He wanted to laugh at how flippant you sounded, but you’d already ushered him in and shut the door behind. 

Looking at you, his heart sank. Your hair and makeup were done and your dress was… it was perfect. It was exactly something you would wear, and he could only imagine how long it took you to find, because he remembered how long it took his mum to find something when she married Robin. You looked… beautiful.

“Thanks,” you said.

He hadn’t realized he’d said it out loud, and he cleared his throat. You looked beautiful, and he was about to do this? You deserved better — you deserved a man who wasn’t slow on the uptake and who didn’t choke on his emotions after trying to stamp them out for the better part of… ages. Ages and ages… Christ. He’d felt this way forever and it took this wanker to put it in perspective for him. 

Hands shoved deep into the pockets of his slacks, he balled them in and out of fists. 

Don’t be a coward, Styles. You either say it now or you walk away. Don’t drag this out for her. 

“Don’t.”

It was a croak and he closed his eyes feeling like he just fired a gun in the dark. His heart pounded like he’d just run a 5k in as many minutes.

“Don’t fucking marry him,” he clarified. The room was so quiet the two of you could hear a pin drop, and when he opened his eyes, you were holding the back of the chair in front of the vanity that had all your makeup strewn over it. Your mouth was open and you blinked dazedly, eyes wide and almost frightened. 

“M’sorry.” He withdrew one of his hands from his pockets and pushed it through the tamed, wavy curls. “M’sorry, I jus’—“

A knock on the door announced the arrival of one of your bridesmaids.

“Are you ready?” she asked you before narrowing in on him. “You should get back to your seat.”

You made some sort of sound — something like a gasp, maybe, but he can’t be sure — while he nodded his head. “Right, yeah.” He didn’t meet your eyes when he closed the small distance between you, grabbing your forearm instinctively as he leaned in. “See you in there,” he said gruffly just before pressing a strong, puckered kiss to your cheek. He should’ve shaved, he realized too late, but you didn’t protest about the whiskery stubble scratching your skin before he doubled back for his seat in the pew. 

The rows were nearly full when he sat down and he picked up the sheet of paper once more and the reality of the situation sank in. 

He wanted you. He really bloody wanted you, he’d admitted as much just now, but just now was too late and there was no way back. He tried hard not to take things, and places, and people, and opportunities for granted, but he had how many times he could realize and own up to his feelings, and he’d chosen now? 

The swell of Pachelbel’s Canon in D rose from the front of the church and he lifted his suddenly heavy head to watch the first of the wedding party make their way down the aisle. Nobody came, though — no bridesmaid, no ring bearer, no flower girl, no you. The pianist, bless them, played on to fill the gaps in the titters despite the fact that it should’ve been long over, and all around him people exchanged confused glances and concerned whispers. 

You loved that man waiting for you at the altar. 

Right?

When that same bridesmaid of yours darted out and made a beeline for Harry, his heart skipped a beat.

When she leant down and whispered to come with her, it stopped entirely.

Harry glanced back towards the altar just before disappearing through the doors with her, and he had the strangest feeling of guilt when he spied your fiancee standing there looking simultaneously lost and as if he wanted to kill the rockstar who’d dared to crash his wedding. 

Children sat on the floor, detained from their ring bearing and flower throwing duties, and where there had been just you in the room before there were now three others in it with you. 

“Get out,” you told them, shrilly. “Get out.”

Harry watched you warily as you made short paces back and forth in front of him amidst your bridesmaids scurrying from the room. He’d only seen you this crazed a few times, but never once had it been directed towards him. He was just about to ask if you wanted him to leave, too, when you finally asked, “What is wrong with you?!”

It was a fair question, but any answer he had to offer would be unsatisfying. 

“M’sorry,” he mumbled, proverbial tail between his legs. “I jus’—“

“Stop apologizing,” you hissed. Harry pressed his lips together and nodded as you bent slightly, not quite doubling over. “What am I doing?” The words were moaned in pure agony and he had the urge to tell you to straighten up to help your breathing, but he had a feeling he shouldn’t speak much right then unless he’s spoken to. 

“I’m getting married,” you uttered, voice breaking. “Why would you ever…?”

“Better now than later, yeah?” he said and you shook your head.

“I’m so… so angry with you.” 

He could tell by the way your words burned that you meant it, but he couldn’t shake the nudging reminder that you’d still brought him back to you. 

“You can forget it if y’want,” he rasped despite the ache in his chest. “S’fine.” 

The ache was slightly assuaged when you shook your head again and muttered a soft, “No… no….” 

He’d only just started to process it when you twisted your engagement ring — that lump of glorified coal that’d been sitting on your hand and making him scowl in his sleep — and ordered him to, “Stay here.”

“No,” he protested. “That’s not—“

“He’ll kill you,” you said under your breath, looking at him at last. “And you’ll break your damn hand if you try to fight back.”

He wanted to quip he was a lover not a fighter, but he knew already that may not be his choice if he were out there, and he felt a jolt when you passed your hand over his ringed fingers. 

It took all of thirty minutes, if that long, but you returned to the room at last looking all the wearier for battle. He frowned immediately when he spied the makeup smudges and how the whites of your eyes were slightly bloodshot. Suspicion prickled in him and he was convinced you’d asked him to stay because he would be in danger of doing the killing. 

“Unzip me,” you requested hollowly, effectively extinguishing his fire.

It took him a moment to process it before he cleared his throat and stepped forward to oblige, grabbing your zipper and pulling it down just past the curve of your bum. You unceremoniously stripped out of it and then the frilly undergarments that hid your regular ones, allowing them to pool at your ankles. “Can you hang them?” you asked and he took on the task robotically, trying to figure out what hung and what zipped and what draped as you changed back into the jeans and t-shirt you’d arrived at the church in. 

He was just wrestling with getting the dress to stay on the padded hanger and those silk loops that refused to stay inside when you spoke up.

“I’m awful.”

Two simple, frail words, and when he looked at you, the sadness on your face knocked him backwards. You’d been so aggressive with him that he hadn’t been able to read any other emotion, but he saw the guilt that he felt since he first knocked on the door reflected in your appearance. He abandoned his task, one of those silk hanger straps hanging from the side of the dress, and for the first time since it’s all really started to happen, he touched you. 

Harry grabbed your shoulders firmly and pulled you in for a hug, and he was relieved when you wrapped your arms around him and gripped the back of his jacket for dear life. Your shoulders shook with a sharp inhale and he covered the back of your head with one of his hands to force you to nestle in close, and when you did, your whole body just… collapsed. 

“You’re not awful,” he rasped quietly. “Better now than later, innit?” he repeated his earlier logic. How much more terrible would it have been if you’d gone through with it and decided no, no, you didn’t want this after all?

Harry’s heart squeezed unpleasantly from the phantom sound of your voice saying, “I do,” carrying all the way to him in the church. However terrible this might’ve felt, it had to be better than the alternative, didn’t it?

You took a deep, shuddering breath, and he pressed a kiss to your head on instinct. Your hair felt weird — a byproduct of all the creams, or mousses, or gels, or sprays, or whatever the hell it was you’d slathered yourself up with no doubt — but the result of you burrowing deeper against his neck was nice. He swayed slightly with you, but stopped instantly when your lips passed over his neck almost shyly. 

Harry stayed very, very still when you lifted your face and leaned back. He peered at you through hooded eyes, hand still cupping the back of your head. It was like one of those stupid moments in a romance novel, but he saw your eyes drop to his mouth, and he knew that however scripted it seemed, he had to seize the moment lest he let another one go by like all the ones before. 

You both stayed very, very still when your lips first made contact. Yours, he thought, were soft and pillowy — nice and smooth, perfectly pliable. You broke away before he could deepen it, but he grabbed your chin and silently coaxed you to keep your head up despite the shy expression that should have him begging off. He pressed his forehead to yours momentarily and your sharp intake of breath — preemptive for the kiss that he’s not granting you — compelled him to duck down again. 

It was still chaste, by all standards, but it was less shocking the second time around, and neither one of you were as hesitant as the first time. Harry cupped the side of your face. This was the goal, wasn’t it? He hadn’t asked you not to marry the tosser so that he could continue to have you round for tea and send you home at half twelve in the morning or offer you up his guest bed. He hadn’t asked you to please, not do it, because he wanted to raid your fridge after a night of drinking and set bread to rise that he’d never bake because he’d be long gone by morning. 

He wanted to share a bed with you.

He wanted to spend night after night with you.

He wanted to see you naked and leave you dozing in bed while he baked that bread himself instead of having you wrestle with a hangover and a gooey mass of dough.

Harry cupped your face a little firmer, squeezing a bit, grateful you weren’t whining about his stubble and more grateful still that he’d chosen to speak now rather than later. 

*

Later

*

Calling off your wedding had been one of the most humiliating things you’d ever had to do. 

Ever.

You’d loved your fiancee — part of you probably still did and always would. You’d promised him your hand in marriage, as corny as that sounded, and you’d had every intention of following through with it. You’d had every intention of living your life with him, first in a flat, then maybe in a house, and having whatever came from that the two of you saw fit. 

But Harry had burst through that door and he’d been churning. 

You’d sensed something had been wrong for quite some time, but he wouldn’t say what it was when you tried to dig. He’d just give some excuse like, “Can’t write any damn music,” or “I’m just…” and he’d leave it at that. You’d expressed to your fiancee how worried you were about Harry, and the end result had been the most ridiculous, laughable, question of all. 

“Do you have feelings for him?” 

No. Absolutely not, you’d assured him. You loved Harry, and you were worried about him, because couldn’t everybody tell he was just plain miserable? Your fiancee had simply harrumphed at that, and you’d withered and refrained from voicing any further concern, but with every day that passed it grew exponentially worse. 

You’d had a sincere, gnawing fear that your friend — one of your very best friends — was going to skip out on your wedding. He got cagey when he talked about his plans and said there were a lot of things that might happen at the last moment that could cause him to jet off halfway around the world, and the thought of getting married without being able to look out into the rows of people to see him smirking mischievously with too many rings and too few buttons had kept you awake for more nights than you could count. 

What choice had you had but to bully him into a corner to make sure that he had to come. “You won’t have anything happening on this day,” you’d told him sternly. “You can catch a red eye that evening or take one to get in the day before, but you will be there on this day.”

He’d looked so resigned when he’d wearily nodded his head to confirm he understood the date to be saved, but you’d thought… foolishly, you’d thought it would be good for him to get out and to partake in some festivities.

Never in a million years would you have thought your friend would knock on the door in the back room of the church and ask you to please, not marry the man waiting for you at the altar.

Never in a million years would you have thought your instantaneous, knee-jerk, gut reaction would’ve been okay.

He could’ve taken your hand and pulled you out of there into his car and driven to the opposite end of the country — or maybe to the shore, because you’d heard Brighton was lovely this time of year and he had always loved the water. Or maybe he could have booked a plane and you two could have retreated to the States or some island where nobody knew who Harry Styles was, and if they did they wouldn’t care.

Your whole future had reconstructed itself before your eyes when he’d burst in. Pieces of your fiancee had been swapped out for pieces of Harry — the small flat in zone six could had been replaced with moving your furniture into Harry’s house and an unknown number of children was suddenly cemented with the number Harry had always drunkenly proclaimed as his ideal (with one ringed finger stuck high in the air as he tried to focus his point in the tequila haze).

You’d woken up that morning with another man’s plans and all of a sudden you’d started making your own with Harry and it had felt… right.

That had been its own kind of scary realization. You loved — love — Harry. He was, and is, one of your closest friends, and it was why it was so important that he be at your wedding. 

Somewhere along the line, you should’ve realized the thought of him not being at your wedding hurt more than the idea of marrying your fiancee brought you joy. 

Then he’d left. He’d just… gone when you hadn’t said a word before one of your bridesmaids interrupted. He didn’t know — he couldn’t have. He would have let you marry that man if it was what you wanted, but all you’d actually wanted was to cry out for him to come back.

He would’ve let you get married.

He would’ve given you up.

Harry had left you with your bridesmaids and while they fussed over your dress and asked where your bouquet was, your head had roared. Every instinct in you had said to get out of there with him — people in the church be damned. You didn’t know where it had come from, but at the same time you weren’t surprised, and that in and of itself had been enough to make you hyperventilate. 

“Harry,” you’d gasped, gown tight around your ribs from your quick breaths. You’d clawed at the front of it, scratching the fabric, the sound harsher than nails on a chalkboard. “Harry, I need Harry.”

Silence had fallen and you’d covered your face. “Get Harry!” 

He’d have been liable to punch or be punched if he’d been out in the church when you ended it all, and you’d needed to see him to be sure of what you were doing. There’d been not a doubt in your mind when he had walked through that door, warily sizing you up as if expecting you to take a swing, that your choice was final. 

You’d felt like a con artist when you’d stood at the front and called it off — and maybe you were — but you knew it was nothing compared to how you would have felt if you made it down that aisle, made it through I Dos, and had to look at Harry over your husband’s shoulder while you had your first dance as man and wife.

Knowing how he felt.

Knowing how you felt. 

It’d been six weeks since that day. Six weeks, nearly seven, of moving out (with Harry’s quiet help — he’d called a realtor and found a flat for you on a temporary basis), returning gifts, explaining to those who hadn’t been there that the wedding had been canceled, trying to get a refund on a honeymoon package, and tabloids — loads, and loads of tabloids that were having a feeding frenzy over the fact that Harry Styles had broken up his best friend’s wedding. There was nothing confirmed, only “a source says,” but the fish food crumbs they had hit close enough to the truth to cause a stir. 

There were good things, too, though, in what amounted to six weeks of dating and getting to know each other on these new terms. Quiet dinners, in and out, his moral support as he rubbed your calves while you were on the phone explaining to somebody that yes, yes, you really had called it off, and kisses.

Lots and lots of kisses. 

You’d taken to kissing him like a fish would take to water. Although the first few had been shy and hesitant — introductions of open mouths and open souls — you’d both grown bolder. Your favorite time so far had been when you were waiting for the takeaway to show up and he’d just… he’d gotten so impatient that he’d pushed you against the kitchen counter, pinning your hips with his, and held your cheek while he kissed his way up and down your neck with greedy pulls of your skin between his lips. 

You hadn’t wanted it to end, but the bell had interrupted, and that seemed to happen every time you two were close to taking the plunge in the deep end. It was starting to wear on you, and you were getting tired of not being able to enjoy the man you were finally allowed.

You were allowed this man — allowed to notice how his arms flexed and the way sweat clung to his neck and how his voice positively purred when he told a story. He, too, was allowed you, but  you’ve not had each other beyond heavy petting and hands that dared to creep under shirts like you might be caught by your parents at any moment. You’d be stupid if you tried to insist you hadn’t noticed him before — of course you had — but he was just Harry and you had a boyfriend and then a fiancee. He could be objectively good looking, you could find him attractive, but you couldn’t be attracted. 

Now, though, you were allowed, and it was blazing like wildfire through you.

Your inner thighs were heavy all the time, and although Harry was very good, and very patient, you thought he was feeling the strain, too. You’ve woken up from vivid dreams in which your legs had been spread and your throat cried raw, and after a hazy choice to confess the late night visions to him via text and a flurry of bold, well-written sexts, you’ve started saying his name when you cum with your fingers before turning into your pillow and screaming to bemoan the fact you wouldn’t get to see him again until your schedules allowed it. 

You were at the point where you wanted him so badly you could be sick. It wasn’t an attractive description, but it was the truth — you wanted to touch him. You craved him. You wanted to put your hands, your mouth, all over, everywhere. You wanted to feel him get hard, you wanted to see him lose his mind. You wanted to take orders and give orders and hear him shout. You wanted sweat, and breathless vigor, and shaky, sore muscles that had you a little wobbly on your legs after. You wanted it so badly that when you were finally sitting on the couch with him watching a film that you curled and squirmed, trying to shake off the hypersensitivity and the need. 

“S’the matter?” 

Harry pulled on your wrists to try to dislodge your hands from their place over your eyes, but you shook your head.

“It’s a comedy,” he said, tugging again, mistaking your distress for mourning over a tragedy that hadn’t occurred. “What’s gotten into you?”

You could smell his cologne on his skin — that warm, spicy, musky vanilla scent — and you sucked in a great, deep breath.

“Iwantyou,” you exclaimed in one go. “I want you so badly, I….” You swallowed hard, the twisting ache inside you magnified now that you’d fessed up. You wrenched yourself gently free from his grasp and sat up, preparing to bolt from the couch, but a large, firm hand on your arm pulled you back before you could straighten up completely. 

You didn’t even get to take much of a look at his face as you squeaked and teetered onto his thigh, but what you did see had heat flaring up in your belly. His eyes were burning with intensity, but you only just took note of them before he guided you into a smashing kiss. It was your most unrestrained, greedy kiss yet, and you positively melted into it. There was nobody and nothing to stop you — hands and mouths could go where they pleased, and you bucked forward over his leg, the thought alone and all its promise making you whimper.

Your moan was instantaneous. The pressure, the friction, the strength…. Both of his arms were locked around you firmly as you clamped his cheeks between your palms, but you had enough room to rock back and forth over his thigh. It was a little reminiscent of when you used to hump your pillow when you were first working out how to take out your sexual urges as an adolescent, but it was better because he was firmer and real. You ground down harder and you gasped softly in wonder, head spinning. It wasn’t right — not quite what you were after — but it was good in its own way. 

“You want me?” he asked hotly. Your abdomen fluttered and you nodded. “Been givin’ you space,” he declared. “Didn’t want to push, did I? How fucking hard has it been when you’re telling me I fuck you in your sleep?” 

A single moan punctured your ragged breaths and he pulled you closer with rough impatience as you kissed him again, pleased when he returned it with the same aggression.

No more space.

No more restraint.

His leg was nice and you were starting to feel pin pricks and tingles in your fingers and toes, but it was frustratingly inconsistent — if you shifted even a fraction of an inch, the angle was thrown off, and you had to find it again, and after the third time, he patted the outside of your thigh.

“Ge’ your trousers off,” he said against your mouth. “It’ll make it better fo’ yeh… c’mon… up….” 

There should be something… not awkward, but noticeable about taking your trousers off in front of him like this. He’d seen you in your underwear before — and you him — but the circumstances had been entirely different and without this intention. Still, though, as you unbuttoned them and slid the zipper down and he helped guide them down your thighs, the only strange or noticeable effect were the goosebumps on your skin from his warm, somewhat calloused fingers (rings absent, for once) brushing against you. 

“These too, then,” he muttered. He bit his lip only briefly when he looked up at you before giving a casual jerk of his head. “C’mon.”

You let out a keening sound when he hooks his fingers into the fabric and pulls the elastic so he can slide it over your bum and down your legs. When you chance a glance at him his eyes are dark and unblinking, locked on you, and the tip of his tongue is peeking out of the corner of his mouth as he stares before he swipes it discretely along his lower lip and leans back, patting his leg and pulling your wrist. 

You nearly toppled back onto him and he caught you, righting you so you could press yourself against him again, and on top of his denim with nothing left between you, it was much easier to control the pressure and how direct the stimulation was. 

“Ah!” you cried out in soft awe, fingers digging into his shoulder. 

“Better?” he asked thickly. All you could do was nod in return while dragging your fingertips down his shirt, pulling the collar back sightly. His necklaces were askew, chains plastered to his skin and crosses tucked under his shirt or thrown back behind his shoulder, and his throat bobbed just above the two birds by his collarbones. Transfixed, you pressed the black ink and watched the design warp before leaning down to land a kiss. His skin was hot to the touch of your lips, and Harry let out a long, husky sounding growl as you peppered several kisses there before bringing them up his neck, resuming your momentarily paused gliding. 

“Good,” he sighed as you kissed his jaw. “Want it to be good fo’ you….”

You could feel it already — either because it’d been almost two months and nothing had happened, or because he’d sent you saucily descriptive messages to aid your busy fingers, or because he was a novelty who smelled and felt so bloody good, but it was there. You whimpered helplessly before crying out when he tensed his leg.

“I’m gonna cum,” you moaned weakly -- as if he needed to be told.

“On m’leg?” he rasped. “Already? Jus’ from rubbin’ off on me?” 

You shuddered, nodding, a mewling sound echoing in your throat, and when he kissed your cheek you could feel his lips curling with pride.

“S’it feel nice?” he asked. 

“S-so….” You gulped for air and it turned into a gasp when he pulled you down harder on his leg. “Oh God, m’gonna cum!” you whispered again in disbelief, words running together. He had one hand on your back and the other on your bum, guiding you, and you had your fingers in his hair, right at the sweaty roots. Shoulders heaving, each moan was a deep, heavy wheeze -- they’d be embarrassing if you didn’t know he was getting off on them. 

“Don’t stop,” he urged in that same purr that had you wanting to crawl onto his lap in the first place. “Get m’leg wet.”

Your eyes rolled up in your head and you moaned, shuddering anew, and he bounced his leg a bit to keep you on track.

“Think you’d be getting it nice an’ wet f’I didn’t have m’jeans on, yeah?”

The image of his bare thigh shining shouldn’t be as attractive as it was, but somehow all you could do is want it — it reminded you of marking him, and you could imagine how pink his skin would be underneath it from the friction. The idea of leaving his leg sore and cumming on him made your eyes snap shut and a long, low moan of his name escaped your lips.

“Harry….” 

“There yeh go…” he muttered just under your ear, kissing your neck. “Good girl, jus’ like that. You’re gonna cum nice and hard, aren’t yeh?” He kissed you several more times while you continued, undeterred. “Gimme more than just some texts, pet,” he pled with a raspy voice. “Gimme more than… c’mere… gimme….” 

One of your arms was against his neck and the other was braced against his chest as you ground faster and faster against his thigh. He grasped your wrist and tugged with determination until he lifted your hand away and up to his mouth. You hadn’t processed it apart from the lurch in your stomach from being thrown off balance before his hot, wet mouth wrapped around your first two digits. He exhaled through his nose against your knuckles. It was brief, but he frowned in concentration, and you wondered if he knew those were the fingers you found relief with after every time he detailed exactly what he wanted to do with you, for you, to you, and when he opened his eyes after sliding them out, you were sure he did.

He released your wrist and you pushed against his chest again, curling your fingers into his shirt as you rocked faster and faster. You recognized this feeling, and you knew you were already there — you just needed… you just had to…. Mouth hanging open, your breathing stilted until it stopped completely, and your whole body went so stiff you shook and the room spun as you pulsed and contracted, squeezing his thigh between yours. 

“Fuck!” you choked. “Oh fuck…!” You whimpered weakly before going slack against him, hold weakening and head spinning. Even as you finally became aware of your breathing, the room still felt like it was tilting around you, and in the next second, it did. Harry turned you onto your back on the sofa, positioning himself between your sensitive thighs. You lifted your head to close the distance with his mouth and he lowered his body closer while supporting himself awkwardly with his forearm on the side of the couch, one of his hands just underneath your elbow. Hands wound around him and pressing into his back, you could feel his muscles moving with every slight rocking motion he made. He was smooth, and strong, and your fingertips suddenly itched with the need to pull across his bare skin. 

You tugged at his shirt, each yank bringing it higher and higher over his head — it had buttons down the front, but you couldn’t be bothered to undo them, and, after a momentary mishap when his arm got stuck, it was on the floor. His necklaces dangled, and his hair, just a few short inches from darkened eyes and pink cheeks, was wild. 

“A’right?” he asked gruffly. Your heart soared and you nodded.

“Yes,” you whispered, drawing him back in. The new kiss was tender and you stayed in the liplock for several moments, only breaking it to readjust slightly, and with each passing second he settled himself more comfortably against you. He was as warm, and heavy, and nice as you’d believed he would be, and although you were still a little exhausted and dazed, you still had that distinct ache in you — you needed more. You’d finished, but you weren’t finished, and the unmistakable hardness of his bulge was thrilling — more thrilling, even, than his hand making its way over your stomach under your shirt towards your breasts. 

Your back arched when one of his hands spread over the gentle curve of your chest, and it was then he broke the kiss enough to rasp, “D’you want to go to bed?” granting you another one when you whined from his absence. “I’ve condoms in m’room,” he said between pacifying follow-ups.  

Condoms.

You couldn’t remember the last time you used one, because you’d been very exclusive in your relationship, and your ex-fiancee had been, too. 

(It was another reminder of how perfectly fine he had been and how he hadn’t deserved it, but you were a bloody bitch who couldn’t be sorry about the fact that you’d gotten this man between your legs instead. The thought of him hurting twinged more than any other regret, and so, therefore, you couldn’t.)

“I’m on the pill,” you breathed and you spied the tip of his tongue between his lips in thought. 

“So….” Harry hesitated, frowning hard not out of displeasure, but rather like he was working through a difficult problem. “Do yeh not want…?”

“We can,” you whispered. “We can if you want… but we could also not.” You were beyond caring whether he had a rubber on or not so long as he got inside you. Your orgasm had only opened you up more — your legs were aching to be spread by his hips and you wanted so badly to feel him flush with you that you thought you could pass out. 

Harry chewed his lips so hard his cheeks dimpled, and he had that cavernous crinkle between his brows that you always wanted to kiss away, but finally he nodded. “I’m… I’ve not—“

You covered his mouth, shaking your head a bit, and he nodded his silent understanding and agreement. “S’get this off,” he muttered of your t-shirt. 

It was a little awkward — worse than his shirt — but eventually it, too, was thrown to the side, and he was free to settle between your breasts and pepper kisses to your skin. He didn’t even so much as blink in shock, and you were in awe of that — you felt like you were go back and forth between feeling floppy-limbed and spontaneously combusting when you thought about the fact that he was him, but he was cool, calm, and collected as he moved and touched with purpose.

As if kissing you so intimately was the most natural thing in the world.

As if he’d been waiting for it and you’d just needed to tell him go.

It’d been six and a half weeks of waiting, and space, and patience, and sexts, but he was done being good.

You sighed and your back arched when he closed his mouth around your nipple through your bra. Smiling breathlessly, you savored the pressure of his teeth, and when he pulled just a bit, you laughed quietly. You looked down to find him grinning, but there was something predatory about it that had your stomach twisting. 

“Are you going to take your trousers off?” you whispered.

“S’the idea.” His voice was gravelly and warm, and you could’ve shudder from the promise of intent. He lifted up slightly and you winced when you felt your hair being pulled at the roots. 

“Ouch!”

“What’d I—?”

“My hair— ow!”

“Sorry!” Harry shifted his weight to his other forearm and you rescued the strands he’d pinned and pulled before he dropped back and reached down to unfasten his trousers. “Okay… alright….”

He wriggled quickly on top of you and you felt his trousers bunching up around his thighs, so you pushed — first with your hands and then your feet once they were at his knees and too far for either of you to reach. There was a soft snap as he pulled the elastic on his pants and repeated the motion, and both of you paused for a second that lasted a lifetime when his cock fell on your abdomen with a dull, heavy smack. 

He was full and thick and his head was red and looked ready to burst. He wasn’t, technically speaking, any different than any other cock you’d ever seen in your life, but you couldn’t stop staring in awe. Your hand was on him before you could process you’d moved your arm, and you pumped your hand down his length. Lifting your gaze when you heard his sharp intake of breath, you only just caught his strained, open mouth before he snapped it shut, jaw trembling. When he focused his gaze, his eyes were dark and demanding an answer to an unvoiced question, and all you could do was nod. 

Harry lowered again and slanted his mouth over yours in a greedy kiss that threatened to steal your breath, but if you were supposed to be asking for a break, you didn’t want it. You pressed your palms flat against his back, feeling the way even the slimmest of muscles rippled as they expanded and contracted. His skin was warm and soft, and you could only imagine what it was like to have that much canvas to kiss. Before you could contemplate a scenario that would allow it, you felt his cock pressing against your entrance. A new burst of adrenaline pumped through you and you stopped breathing when he pushed forward, easily spreading you to accommodate his size. 

It wasn’t the first time you’d ever had a man bare inside you, but this was… more. So, so much more. Was it his size? The pressure and pinch was something you hadn’t felt in awhile, and it wasn’t just because you couldn’t really remember the last time you’d had sex in the middle of all the planning madness. Was it how smooth and blazingly hot he felt sliding inside without even a bit of resistance apart from an initial squeeze around him? You tensed up just a bit when you felt him withdraw just a bit before he thrust forward fully, and the sudden show of strength had you crying out against his mouth — not from pain, but from how overwhelmed you were. 

“S’wrong?” he mumbled, smoothing your hair back. “Alright?”

“I’m fine,” you panted. “I’m fine, I’m okay, I just….” Your breath hitched in your throat. “I need one second.” Steeling yourself, you threw one leg over the back of the couch to act as a brace and to make sure he didn’t fall off and take you with him, before you hitched your legs higher around his hips and squirmed until you were just slightly farther down the couch. The result was him sinking the last bit of himself inside you, and the two of you moaned simultaneously — you wordlessly and him with a tortured, “Fuck me!” 

“You’re big,” you whispered, blurry gaze locked on the ceiling, and you laughed breathlessly. Praising size made your skin crawl — it sounded so artificially pornographic — but you were shocked enough that they were the only words that sufficed. “You’re really big— oh!”

Your head tipped back in a long, keening moan when he rutted inside you, gradually easing into a rhythm, and he held one side of your face while kissing your neck. You bit your lip and clamped your eyes shut as he thrust. He moved methodically — each fuck inside of you was a slightly quicker snap than the sensation of him all but dragging back out of you before he thrust forward again. He was fucking you — however tender some of the kisses you’d shared had been, there was no denying this was a fuck first and foremost — but the tempo was such that you were acutely aware of how he felt. Every vein, every ridge, every time his angle shifted just a bit and he bumped and glided along a new spot that had your mouth open in ecstatic awe felt exponentially more — just more. 

“How’s that?” 

His voice was faint and a little hollow and when he thrust quickly, as if punctuating his question, and you were pretty sure he’d only just barely gotten a grasp on his speech. “S’that good?” he asked. “That’s it?”

The fact that he’d bothered asking you what was good, what worked, and then followed through based on your lead was toe-curling in its own way.  

“Yes…!” you moaned with a tight throat and he kissed your cheek.

“Jesus, I want yeh to cum!” he said through rattling teeth against your skin. “Wanna feel it ‘round my cock.”

You’d never felt the desire to orgasm for someone else before. They were for your enjoyment, either by yourself or with a partner who took the time to learn your body, but right then, you wanted to desperately cum for him — and again, not in that artificially pornographic way, but because you had the express feeling that it would be almost better than his own orgasm for him. 

“Ungh!” 

You cried out unintelligibly when Harry shifted so he was ever so slightly farther up your body and he could grind his pelvis against yours. It was nothing much at first, but then your nerves responded, quicker even than before, and you rolled up in time with him, a whole body shudder making you wrack underneath him. 

“There we are,” he rasped, passing a kiss across your hairline. His pendants dragged and tickled your skin, adding another heightened sensation to the moment, and you shivered again when he said, “That’s it, feel tha’.”

He wasn’t close enough, but you weren’t sure he could possibly get any more up against you or in you than he was. You whined softly, frustrated tears pricking your eyes, and he shushed you, petting your cheek before a guttural groan rumbled in his throat as you dug your fingers into the strong muscles of his back. The simple thought of scattering kisses across it invaded your mind again, and, combined with him grinding against you, your abdomen fluttered and tightened from the overwhelming desire.

The sheer idea of everything you wanted exhausted you. You wanted to touch him — to kiss him — everywhere. You were allowed to explore, and you wanted to engage both hands and mouth in your adventures across his body. You wanted to hear his moans and taste his hot skin. You wanted to know if he swore when his hip was kissed or if he thrust despite himself when you hummed around his cock. You wanted to know what he smelled like first thing in the morning, wrapped in sex and sheets and yesterday’s smoky vanilla scent.

You moaned under your breath, fingers slipping against his back a bit before you scrambled to get a better grip once more, and you took a deep breath when your abdomen fluttered and twisted again. You were starting to pulse, feeling ever so slightly tighter when you clamped down, and your breathing was getting heavier as you volleyed between drawing long breaths in and out and panting quickly. 

Don’t think about it. Just let it happen. 

Harry ground a little quicker and he spluttered between his lips, his own breathing stilted between moans that sounded like they were meant to instill resistance in him rather than from actual ecstasy. You lifted your head a bit and pressed your mouth against his shoulder with a soft moan, breathing quick and heart erratic in your chest. 

It swept over you almost out of nowhere; suddenly, you locked up around him and called out in a way that could be mistaken for agony as you dug your heel into the back of his thigh and your shaking hands pulled him closer. It was a swoop and a fall and you let out a punctured gasp, still clinging to him weakly but muscles completely void of all the tension that had wrapped you around him seconds ago. He stilled for the moment but his body hummed with energy and something unreleased, and when your head dropped back against the arm of the couch, you opened your eyes just as he resumed his thrusts.

He was beautiful. His curls stuck to his forehead and neck and when he managed to keep his eyes open, they were unfocused behind quick blinks. His skin was sweaty and flushed and his mouth kept opening and closing with moans and stifled shouts. Each thrust, he got rougher and more erratic with his rhythm — he took two strokes inside you before stopping to grit his teeth and shift above you to relieve some of the weight of his body so he wouldn’t crush you, and you could see the veins in his neck straining underneath the sheen on his skin. His next thrust was a little too hard, and you winced, shrinking back into the cushions beneath you, but then he stilled and you felt the first hot, wet gush inside of you, and your mouth dropped open as the quick spurts filled you and he made an inhuman noise deep in his throat. 

You not only saw but felt his arms shaking before he collapsed on you, and after an ouch and some breathless fumbling of limbs, half his body crammed in between yours and the couch while his one leg slung over yours in a well-intentioned attempt to keep you from getting pushed off the edge. 

Silence descended amongst your harsh, out of sync breathing, and kisses were abandoned in favor of thought. Seven weeks of foreplay via text and kisses against counters had resulted in a mad explosion. You weren’t even sure how much you’d been thinking about it. All you knew was you had to go, take, seize. A laugh bubbled up in your chest thinking of how frantic you’d been, but you pressed your lips tightly together to keep from giving him the wrong idea. 

Jammed tightly next to you, he’d grown heavy, and his breath was hot on your cheek when he mumbled, “Get up in a mo’.” You nodded, the vibrations from the words quaking through your whole body.

A moment didn’t come for a long time, though. You were alone when you woke up on his couch, thighs unpleasantly (but not unsurprisingly) sticky. Harry was gone and his trousers were, too, although his shirt was hanging from the edge of the coffee table by a corner with the end of it carelessly on the floor. You groaned under your breath before sitting up bit by bit, and you grabbed your underwear and shirt before standing and walking to the bathroom.

After wiping down with hot water (and feeling a jolt in your stomach as you relived, in vivid, condensed detail, everything that had led to this), you slipped your knickers and t-shirt on and walked quietly through the flat. Noise was coming from the kitchen — soft clanking, running water that promptly got shut off, the refrigerator opening and closing —and when you appeared in the doorway, you found him at last. 

Harry had his missing trousers on and an apron over his bare chest to protect the inked skin. He looked up before you could say anything and spared a smile before looking back to his task. A large bowl was in front of him full of sticky-looking dough, and you smirked with an automatic twitch of your lips.

“You’re not drunk,” you said, voice a little raw from sleep and earlier activities. 

He laughed softly — a deep, raspy, boyish sound — and answered, “S’not the only time I can bake, is it?”

He turned and you pushed away from your spot against the doorframe to walk closer, but you stopped when you spied several angry red lines, some of which stemmed from dark purple spots blooming on his back where your fingernails had, presumably, dug in so deeply the skin had bruised around it. You gasped, stomach swooping with the knowledge you’d done that. 

Harry turned the dough out onto a floured board, and he was starting to knead it (in not the most skillful way, you were afraid to say) when you wandered up behind him and wrapped your arms around his waist. He tensed, but you pressed the first kiss to one of those dark marks gradienting into a scratch.  

“M’busy here, aren’t I?” he asked. As indignant as the words were meant to be,  but he didn’t sound upset in the slightest.

“Shh,” you murmured. “I’m not in the way, am I?”

He chuckled and you smiled against his shoulder as he resumed kneading, and you kissed your way along his back the way you’d promised yourself you would. Some promises, you kept. 

[jinmukangwrites]

Whumptober Day 18

Panic Attacks

Ao3

Warnings: panic attacks, referenced past character death, referenced past rape/non-con, recreational drug use, triggers, Dick Grayson Having Unresolved Trauma

-o-o-o-o-

It's a quiet night. One that has Dick wondering if he really needed to stay out as long as he did before returning to his apartment from patrol. Blüdhaven, in a rather out of character manner, decided to give him an easy one tonight. Just run-of-the-mill crime. Muggings. Theft. Sexual harassment. No huge underground schemes or plots being executed within the walls of a warehouse, as unbelievable as it sounds.

Just a good old fashioned patrol with good old fashioned criminals which ended up with Dick returning home to collapse onto his couch, his muscles burning from a good workout instead of a tussle. He spent a solid thirty minutes just going through his phone until his stomach reminded him that he's hungry. He should probably get some food… and get out of his Nightwing suit. He jumps up from the couch and heads towards the kitchen, planning what to make based on the limited amount of ingredients that he has. 

His kitchen always seems to be so empty, and he always forgets to buy more things. But that's okay, he manages. So long as he doesn't starve, he can deal with eggs and toast for breakfast and dinner. 

He takes his gloves off his fingers and sets them down by the sink before he washes his hands. It would be really bad if someone walked in right now, but his blinds are all closed and his door is supplied with Bruce Approved™ locks, so he's really not all that worried. He's too lazy right now to head towards his room and change. 

He goes to the fridge and begins to take out the eggs, humming under his breath. He cracks the eggs into a saucepan, dumps in a handful of cheese, then goes to his cupboard to find he's all out of bread.

And… that's okay. Eggs and cheese with some syrup is satisfying in its own way. 

He returns to his eggs, stirring the meal with a wooden spoon. 

He's about to turn off the heat to the stove when he gets the feeling that something was… wrong. Or maybe, there was always something wrong, and he’s just now noticing it. There's a tense feeling in his ribs that has him taking a deeper inhale to catch his breath. Is he forgetting something? 

Eggs… cheese… no bread… gloves on the counter… oh yeah. He shakes his head and turns off the stove, feeling like an idiot within the walls of his own home. He goes to grab a plate while ignoring the tightness of his ribcage—must just be sore from patrol. That's all. 

Eating dinner isn't as enjoyable as he thought it would be. He keeps having to shift every two or three second to place a hand on his lower ribs, just to make sure he hasn't cracked or strained anything. He presses and pokes, but nothing feels wrong. He takes a deep breath, expanding his lungs as far as they can go in-between bites, but all the good it does is make his heart beat faster. 

His heart… is beating really fast. Pounding. So much so that when he puts his hand on his chest he can almost feel it thumping through his skin. 

He forces himself to finish the eggs before standing up and bringing his plate towards the sink. He looks at his gloves just sitting there, adding to the mess that is his sink. There's dirty dishes, not a whole lot, but just enough that has him looking down at the dish in his hand and sighing. He should clean up. He had time to. 

He doesn't have the energy to all of a sudden.

He places his plate in the sink then grabs his gloves. Rubbing his ribs, he walks towards the medicine cabinet. He really can't think of what would be making them hurt like this unless it was just soreness. He doesn't particularly remember taking any hits to the chest while on patrol tonight, but things happen. He wakes up with bruises he can't remember where he got all the time. 

Maybe he took a hit to the chest and just doesn't recall. It's possible. Adrenalin makes you forget stuff.

He opens the cabinet, now making a conscious effort to keep his breathing even, and looks over the bottles he has stuffed in here. Why does it feel so much like something is wrong? Like he's missing something? He can't think of what would cause him to feel like this so late at night. Maybe it's just the stress of having to wake up tomorrow for work. 

His eyes land on the Advil and he once again makes an attempt to even his breathing. He grabs the bottle, opens it, and taps the little red pills into his hands. Two should be enough. Two is usually enough. A little chest pain doesn't call for three. 

Two little red pills sit in his hand, and for a second he thinks they might be white. 

He blinks. Shakes his head. He returns the bottle to the cabinet and returns to his messy sink in his messy kitchen in his messy apartment to get a glass of water. 

He goes to find a cup, and then stands uselessly as he finds his cabinet empty of clean cups. 

He needs to wash one. 

With tremors running down his hands, he places the red pills down onto the counter and grabs a cup. He pumps soap onto the sponge and quickly rinses the cup out. He fills it with water, grabs the pills, then stops.

Two little red pills. His heart pounds. His chest aches. He blinks and breathes harshly in and out like the air is thin. It feels thin. He forces his hand towards his mouth, then stops right before the white pill—red pills red pills, it's Advil—can touch his lips. 

He has just a second to realize that oh, he's having a panic attack, before it crashes into him.

He slams his hands against the counter, gasping and practically tossing the pills away from him. He lets go of the cup and he's sure it crashes to the ground to shatter, but he can barely concentrate over the tunneling thoughts of I'm having a panic attack I'm having a panic attack why and I having a panic attack I'm having a panic attack-

He tries to get a hold of himself, forcing his legs to remain standing even though he wants to collapse. He can't breath. The air is so thin, and his chest hurts so badly. What were the things he was supposed to do to get out of a panic attack?

He can't think. He can taste the powdery residue of pills on his tongue even though he didn't even put any in his mouth yet. 

He gasps for air. His ears ring and he can only stare wide-eyed at nothing. 

In what feels like forever, but was probably only a couple minutes, he slowly begins to get a hold of himself. Slowly, he's able to twitch his fingers and shuffle his feet and claim a gasp of air that isn’t short and impossible to take. 

The moment his brain connects back to the present reality, it's all he can do to not launch into another panic attack at with the realization that he's just had an honest to fucking God panic attack for no reason. 

He brings a hand to his chest and keeps the other flat on the counter, left there to keep him stable as he leans forward. He forces himself to control his breathing. As he does, his eyes slide to the two red pills discarded about a foot from his splayed fingers, both slowly dissolving in little puddles of water left on the counter. 

He vaguely recognizes that he might have been triggered into having a panic attack. Triggered. Which... isn't something he's really had claim to having before. A trigger. Sure, things make him uncomfortable. Sometimes things cause him to get sick to his stomach and leave the room. Sometimes he sees a baseball bat and his heart quickens. Sometimes he sees a woman force herself onto a man and any food in his stomach wants to rise. And sure, taking pills have never been something he's particularly enjoyed doing ever since… ever since. But none of these things have ever caused him to lose control like this before.

And besides, the tight feeling in his chest started before he went to the medicine cabinet. Something else gave him enough anxiety to cause this. The pills just tossed him over the edge. 

Now that he thinks of that… he's not sure if that's good or bad. 

It's one thing to have a trigger. It's another to have a panic attack for absolutely no fucking reason. 

Jesus. His chest still hurts. Breathing still hurts. His feet… he looks down and almost sighs at how ridiculous it is. He's stepped in glass. Water is all over his floor. 

He takes a stiff deep breath. The first one in what feels like forever. He doesn't have any energy to bend down to clean the shattered glass, water, and his own blood from his tiled floor. He wants to go to his bed, climb under the comforter, and blast rain noises until his ribs stop aching and his heart stops pounding. Until he's falling into a dreamless sleep. Until he's unconscious enough to not exist in a world where Lex Luthor stopped his heart, where Two-Face beat him with a baseball bat, where Joker didn't kill Jason, where Catalina never- 

His phone's ringing. Over on the table, where he had finished eating just a few minutes before. 

His spirits instantly lift, and he vaguely realizes it's because he now has something to be distracted by. He pushes himself from the counter and carefully steps over the glass and water, walking on the sides of his feet to avoid treading on more glass or spreading any blood for him to clean up later, and grabs his phone. He places it to his ear without even looking at the caller ID.

"Yeah?" he asks, breathless. 

"Dick! I'm glad you're still up-" Tim's voice. Tim. Timmy. Timmy who's alive and healthy sans spleen. Timmy who's upset with Dick because he gave Damian Robin. Timmy who's smarter than Dick and gets frustrated when Dick doesn't understand. Timmy who never thinks Dick's on his side Timmy who hates Dick Timmy who- stop. Stop. None of that is true. Stop. "Listen, you remember Jula Zarina? The lady who worked at the bank? I was pulling up her files, and it turns out she might have connections to one of the robbers and I was thinking-"

Dick slowly lowers himself into the chair of his dining table. He lets out a breath and places his elbows on the table. Yeah. Yeah he remembers Jula. She’s the broker at the bank Dick and Tim stopped from being shot up about a week ago. 

He lets out a breath. His chest still hurts, but he doesn't feel on the brink of another panic attack any more. 

"-so I was wondering what your thoughts are about it?"

And Dick wasn't listening. Or he was. But for some reason, no words are really sticking with him. He's tired. Everything hurts. He has what feels like the beginnings of a migraine but he doesn't trust himself to even look at the medicine cabinet at the moment. 

"I'm sorry, Tim," Dick says, and his voice sounds so fake. He clears his throat. "I missed what you were saying… you think you can say it again?"

It's silent on the other side of the line, and for a moment Dick almost thinks Tim hung up or something. He wouldn’t blame him. But then, there's the sound of bedsheets shifting on the other side of the line. His lips almost twitch upwards at the sound. Of course Tim was in bed, pulling up files on random people, instead of sleeping. 

"Dick…" Tim starts, and why does Dick get the feeling he's not going to like what's said next? Are you okay? You sound weird."

Like he's just come off from some freak panic attack even though the night was good and nothing warranted one in the first place? Dick closes his eyes and wills his voice sound normal. "It's nothing, Tim. I'm just… tired."

"Please don't lie to me," Tim says, and Dick instantly knows he's failed at playing normal. "Your tired voice is different. You sound…"

"Panicked?" Dick offers, more like a joke, but he realizes his mistake the second Tim sucks in a sharp breath. "Tim really, I'm-"

"If you say you're fine, I'm stealing the Batjet to come over and smack you." Dick winces, because Tim sounds serious. "Are you hurt? What happened?"

Dick opens his mouth, but no words come out. His eyes sting suddenly, and he's hit with the intense need to just cry. He doesn't even know what about. He doesn't want to cry, especially if it's about nothing. He swallows. "It's nothing… I just… I just had a little… little panic attack I guess. Something, um, triggered one."

Do you... Do you want to talk about it? Should I get Br-"

I trained you to live, and I watched you die.

"No," Dick says sharply. More sharply that he meant to. The pain in his chest intensifies suddenly, and for a terrifying moment he almost thinks he's about to launch into yet another attack. The thought of Bruce knowing that Dick was still upset about Crime Syndicate raised his anxiety levels almost to a ten. Dick shouldn't still be hung up on that… it's not like he really died. "No… I just… Tim I'm really fine. This was just a random thing. I don't get attacks like these normally. I just need to go to bed and I'll be better in the morning."

"Panic attacks aren't usually random-" Tim begins but Dick cuts him off. 

"Really, Tim, I'm already feeling better. How about you call me tomorrow and we can talk about Jula? I really should go to bed. And you should too."

"I… okay… if you're sure-?"

"I'm sure."

It takes just a moment to finally say goodnight to Tim, but it feels like hours. He sets his phone down and sits there. Breathing. 

He's fine. This is all okay. Dick Grayson gets panic attacks sometimes. This isn't new.

He'll get over this. 

He always does. 

[cubeswhump]

A New Home, pt. 2: Movie Nights and Shopping Trips

This got really fucking long. My hand aches after writing all that. Also I really hope Katy Perry doesn't sue me for this.

Taglist: @haro-whumps @albino-whumpee @broken-horn @whumpsblog

Warnings for institutionalized slavery, body-shaming, gross propaganda, “nice” whumper, mentioned physical abuse, blink-and-you-miss-it noncon, dehumanization.

Shopping! Michelle was taking Sweetie shopping on Sunday when she didn't have work or classes. Sweetie had no clue when Saturday would be here but she was so excited.

Oh, what would it be like? She tries to picture a clothing store. Endless dressers in neat rows, perhaps? You'd pull open a drawer and be surprised by what you found inside. But how would you find clothes that fit? Were they organized by size? Were they organized by style or did you just have to acceot what you found in each drawer?

Mister Trey always seemed to find lingerie and see-through gowns for Sweetie even thiugh she'd rather have...

Mister Trey was perfect. He was a perfect man and an amazingly kind owner. His clothing choices were as perfect as he was, so much nicer than the trainee uniforms, and Sweetie just didn't kniw what was best for her. But she had been ungrateful to the kindest man on Earth and she could cry just thinking about how badly she'd messed up.

Stop it. She had to smile for her new owner who was just as perfect and had been ever so kind. She'd given her such a pretty name too, one that was undeserving of such an ugly pet.

Mister Trey had the right idea when it came to names.

She'd been on her best behavior since her arrival. She had to show Michelle that she was a good pet and she didn't have to be refurbished. She thought she might have been doing good, because Michelle let her eat dinner at the table and watch movies with her, the pet sitting on the floor with her head on Michelle's knee while the latter sat in the couch.

Movies! Real entertainment. But she shuddered every time the handler came onscreen in He Can Handle Her - whuch eas iften because he was the love interest in a romance.

"They're arguing," Sweetie whispered, brown eyes as big as saucers. She brought her hand to her mouth but tugged it away before the nail reached her mouth.

"Huh?" Michelle paused on an image of the large, handsome handler with his mouth open in an unheard shout. Sweetie felt awful for interrupting her.

"He's mad... He'll zap her with his stick.

Michelle snorted and ruffled Sweetie's short hair, making it stand on end even worse than it did naturally. "You're nuts."

The movie was baffling. Though brash and intimidating, the handler lacked the frightening nature and violence that Michelle remembered from the facility. When the businesswoman visited him at work, she saw his softer side: rewarding trainees with peppermints and sqares of chocolate (Sweetie knew for a fact that all they got were chalky shakes and foul nutritional loaves, save for occasionally being able to eat their own creations in cooking classes) and giving them hugs and head pats, only responding to mistakes and sass with gentle scoldings.

What Sweetie remembered even more than electric shocks and bruises and what they did in the blindspots missed by cameras was the crippling loneliness of training, when yje handlers acted like she was filthy abd wouldn't touch her. She would have killed for a single head pat and practically leapt into Mister Trey's arms when he let her out if her crate.

The businesswoman got pregnant. She and the handler were so busy with work that they couldn't possibly watch the baby (was that really what newborns looked like?) 24/7. The solution was to get a Platonic (which was apparently called Caretaker in the region the movie took place in) that they named Molly to act as a live-in nanny. Molly wanted to be just like the businesswoman, being allowed to dress in smart pantsuits and blouses that cost way too much for a simple pet, and the movie ended with the couple wrapping her up in a gigantic hug while she giggled and reminded them that she had to tend to the baby.

Michelle gave Sweetue a sudden poke, making the pet jump. "You're making a stupid face."

Sweetie quickly forced her face into a neutral expression. No ugly faces. Bad face, close your mouth, you stupid girl.

"I'm so sorry, Miss Michelle," Sweetie said earnestly, kneeling and pressing her forehead to the floor in front of Michelle's feet. Michelle's pale eyebrows shot up.

"Hey, chill. You're fine. Sit up."

Sweetie sat back on her ankles, forcing herself to look into Michelle's eyes. Admire the blue, that's how to do it. Eye contact is good. Eye contact shows respect for the owner. "Yes, Miss Michelle. Thank you for allowing me to watch movies and for accepting my apology."

Michelle grinned, ruffling Sweetie's hair again. Sweetie leaned into the touch.

She was encouraged by Michelle's kindness, and when Michelle announced she was going to bed, Sweetie felt daring.

"Miss Michelle?" It came out a sad squeak and she felt unbelievably small when Michelle turned to face her.

"Yeah?" Michelle asked, yawning. Oh no, was Sweetie keeping her awake? Bad pet! "What's up, Sweets?"

"Can I ask for something?"

Michelle's lip quirked. "You just did."

She was right. Sweetie did ask, ironically, while trying to get a favor. She tried not to let her disappointment show and just stared blankly. Michelle burst out laughing.

"I was joking. What do you need?" she asked.

"Can I..." Sweetie stopped herself from doing that stupid hand-twirling. Keep flapping and I'll break your hand. "Can I have a hug?"

Michelle's eyebrows raised. Sweetie braced herself, immediately regretting the stupid question. An Indulgence? Bad pet, stupid pet. But them Michelle opened her arms. "Bring it in, Sweets."

Sweetie tried not to look too eager. You're acting desperate, slut. Michelle was much shorter but Sweetie was the one comforted in her embrace, ehes closing and lips stretching into a big grin.

"You're just a big baby, aren't you?" Michelle giggled, fingers combing through Sweetie's hair.

When Sweetie lay down on the air mattress in the room where a roommate had once slept, she had a huge smile on her face.

***

Sweetie never knew what day it was (what did time and date matter to a pet as long ad the house was clean and its owner was fed and happy?) but she just knew it was Saturday.

Her morning routine was to get up at sunrise, brush her teeth, get the coffee pot filled with water and grounds, and wait until she heard Michelle's alarm to turn the coffee pot on.

"I used to bite my tongue and hold my breath." Turn the coffee machine on.

"Scared to rock the boat and make a mess." Michelle starts stirring, mattress creaking.

But the sing never played, so Sweetie never flicked the switch. She remained in position one, feet inches alart and hands at sides, spine straight, chin up. She waited as the sky turned pink, orange, blue. It must have been Sunday if Michelle was sleeping in.

At long last the mattress creaked even with no pop song alarm sounding. Sweetie turned on the coffee pot, got out the sugar and hazelnut creamer, and returned to position one.

A door skammed shut. A toilet flushed. Sweetie counted how many seconds the sink ran for and was slightly concerned when it stopped shortly.

Gross. No, the owner is never gross. Bad pet.

Sweetie left position one to pour the coffee in the mug with a splash of creamer and two heaping scoops of sugar.

Michelle apeared in the doorway, blonde hair standing on end and eyes puffy with sleep. She raised her arms in the air and bent her back until it audibly cracked.

"I'm trained to hive massages, Miss Michelle," Sweetie offered. Michelle smirked.

"Maybe another time, butt-kisser," she said.

"Shall I make breakfast? You're low on eggs but there's enough for us each to have one fried or you two scrambled. I can go without."

Sweetie rather hoped she could have an egg too, but just toast was okay as long as she could eat. She was so hungry on the days Michelle worked and went to school. Her owner never told her she could eat while she was away, so Sweetie assumed Michelle only wanted her to eat at dinnertime when she was home. The days where Michelle only had afternoon classes or work later in the day were amazing and Sweetie savored her breakfast.

"Nah," Michelle replied, and Sweetie forced herself to keep smiling and not deflate. "Dump the coffee too. We'll get Dunkin' Donuts on the way to the store."

Sweetie had no idea what that meant but she poured the coffee down the sink and cleaned the mug and coffeepot without question while Michelle brushed her teeth. Sweetie hurried to meet her when called, though she hesitated to step into her owner's bedroom. Was she worthy?

"Come on," Michelle said impatiently. She tossed some clothes at Sweetie once the latter came in. "Get dressed. Don't worry, we'll get you clothes that fit."

Michelle stripped, throwing her pajamas on the floor, and got dressed right in front of Sweetie. "Help me with my bra clasp."

Sweetie didn't get a bra, just a stretchy tank top and a skirt. Michelle's clithes fit along her own curves perfectly, jeans perfectly reaching to her ankles without needing to be anchored with a belt or anything. Sweetie's borrowed skirt bit into her waistline and barely hid her underwear. She was scared to bend over in the short thing, if it was even loose enough to allow her to sit. She was fortunate Michelle had a larger chest than herself because at least the tank top didn't cling.

"Here, I borriwed these from my boyfriend, because you've got big ol' man feet." Michelle tossed the brown flip-flops at Sweetie while the latter was still fighting to button her skirt.

Aren't pets supposed to be pretty? Sweetie knew she must look ridiculous in this tiny skirt, shirt that was loose in the chest, jungling collar, big boyish shoes, and short hair sticking up all over to top it off.

No. The owner knows best. Pets don't know what looks nice and what they need. This look must be peak fashion.

"Thank you, Miss Michelle," Sweetie wanted to take position five to show her gratitude but her skirt protested too much.

Michelle even let her sit up front in the car, though it wasn't very pleasant with the volume of the music. Sweetie wanted to cover her ears but she couldn't insult her owner like that.

"Ooh, look what you made me do

Look what you made me do

Look what you just made me do"

Wait and see what I'll do if your music keeps assaulting my ears! Sweetie could have slapped herself for the thought. How dare she think such things about her owner!

"Your singing is lovely," Sweetie told her owner. She really did have a pleasant voice.

"Damn right!" Michelle grinned. "I used to want to be a singer. You know, lots of singers have boxies. Kathy Parry's got this Romantic named Kevie and he's sooo cute. Kevie was actually my inspiration to get one myself. Just a box babe, not a Romantic, they're kinda gross."

What would she say if she knew Sweetie was originally trained as a Romantic?

They pulled up to a big board with images of food. A voice came from nowhere and Michelle resoonded to it. "I'll have a bacon, egg, and cheese in a croissant. Sweetie, do you wabt one too? Actually two of those, a blueberry muffin, and a medium iced coffee with six creams, six sugars, and five shots of mocha. Sweetie, do you want anything to drink?"

"Um... do they have tea?" Sweatie hadn't had a hot cup of black tea since leaving Mister Trey. She longed for just one sip.

"Yeah. Okay, add a medium iced tea."

Iced? Sweetie felt a pang of disappointment. She'd never even heard of iced tea! Well, maybe it would be good. Anything was better than those chalky shakes and nutritional loaves.

When Michelle started driving again, Sweetie wondered where they would find the food. They pulled up to a window where there was a skinny man with a nylon collar and a headset. Michelle got out her wallet and handed him cash.

"Heh, I wobder what he'd do if I told him, 'position twenty-three'," she murmured when he turned away from the window, nudging Sweetie.

He came back with their drinks, one pale and milky, the other a darker brown, and Michellr put them in the cupholders. He handed them two bags and the scent of hot breakfast that filled the car made Sweetie's mouth water.

Michelle pulled into a parking space to eat, stirring her coffee and swearing whenever the straw bent. Sweetie unwrapped her food and was surprised. Breakfast food on a sandwich? Wow!

Michelle handed Sweetie the bags and her wrapper once she'd finished eating and Sweetie held them obediently, though she worried about where she'd throw it away.

She fought with her skirt one-handed when she got out of the car at the big shopping center. The flip-flops rubbed in between her toes irritatingly.

"Hey, wait." Michelle came around the car with something pink in her hands: a leash. Sweetie straightened her neck and bent a bit to make the job of clipping it to her collar easier.

"Gotta make sure you don't run, right?" Michelle chuckled.

"I'd never run from you, Miss Michelle," Sweetie promised.

"Better not! I'd make sure you could never run again. Act out Misery."

Sweetie wasn't sire what that meant but she nodded, smiling. However, it waa hard to keep that smile with the prying eyes on her when she threw out their trash, the patrons staring when they entered the store. Her bell jungled with every step and she kept having to pull her skirt down.

No, no blushing! Embarrassment is an insult to the owner!

"Okay, maybe I didn't think this through. This looks pretty kinky," Michelle said sheepishly, but she doesn't take off the leash. "Sweetie, push the cart."

"Yes, Miss Michelle," Sweetie said, taking hold of the handle. She followed, turning or speeding up each time Michelle tugged on the leash.

"Here we go. Budget clothes." Michelle took a shirt and held it up against Sweetie. "Gotta dress you cute, represent the brand. The Michelle George brand."

She picked out shirts, skirts, dresses, and undergarments, occasionally letting Sweetie decide on a color but never the design. Sweetie went in and out of dressing rooms, letting Michelle see how the clothes fit.

Michelle gripped Sweetie's hips at one point, hands moving to her behind. "Tight here, loose in the chest. You're all hips and no boobs."

That dress didn't fit so she tried the next, and the skirts abd shirts. An employee came to gawk.

"Show me your barcode!" the woman said eagerly, and Sweetie presented her wrist. "Oh, what can she do?"

Michelle called out positions and took pictures as Sweetie went through them in her new clothes, tags still dangling. The emolitee finally left them to do their shopping, and Michelle pulled Sweetie close by her leash to whisper in her ear.

"Listen up," she hissed. "You only listen to me and no one else unless I say, got it?"

She hushed Sweetie and her frantic apologies. Michelle put the good clothes in the cart and even let Sweetie pick one outfir to wear around the store! Sweetie tried to choose quickly as to not keep Michelle waiting, settling on the pale green and white dress with frilled sleeves.

"Now to find you shoes because Kurt needs these back," Michelle murmured, plucking the tag off Sweetie's dress and pocketing it.

Sweetie hoped and hoped that Michelle wouldn't get flip-flops (but she was ready to accept them graciously like the good pet she was), this pair rubbing the spot in between her toes raw. She could have cries with relief when Michelle said, "Flip-flops scream beach bum and the last thing you need is a pair of heels. How about flats?"

They looked at pairs, Sweetie apologizing when Michelle claimed nothing would fit the former's "man feet". Sweetie grinned so much she thought her face might split when they settled on fantastic sparkly flats and another pair that was plain white with bows.

"They're lovely," Sweetie said with forced calmness - and they even fit her hideously large feet!

When they went to look at jewelry and headbands as a gift for a friend whose birthday was coming up, Michelle gasped so loudly Sweetie jumped. She shoved a pair of gigantic hoop earrings in the pet's face.

"These are ridiculous!" For them being so ridiculous, Michelle sure looked theilled. "We're piercing your ears."

How generous! Unneeded accessories for an unworthy pet. Sweetie's eyes were misting when Michelle stuck a headband with cat ears on her.

"Cat ears for the house pet," Michelle giggled.

They headed over to the other side of the store, Michelle frowning at boxes with images of cake. "Can you bake a cake from scratch or should I get box mix for Heather's birthday?"

"I can bake one from scratch," Sweetie said. "Any flavor. Or most traditional ones."

"Even better. I think we're ordering pizza so you'll only need to make the fake. Oh, you know how to make alcoholic drinks, right?"

"Yes, I was trained in mixology."

"Cool. I'll let you bw the captain and make whatever you want drink-wise, as long as you make strawberry daiquiris."

They discussed cakes and muxed drinks while filling the cart with ingredients. Michelle was impressed by all the recipes and ingredients Sweetie had memorized, and the pet was glowing at the praise.

"That's how we're trained," Sweetie told her. "No cookbooks necessary."

Not that she could even read a cookbook.

"Before we check out," Michelle said, "is there anything you want food wise?"

"Are you sure?" Sweetie asked. "I'm happy to eat whatever you provide."

"Cut that out. Just pick something."

Sweetie hesitated long enough that Michelle snapped her fingers, like she thought the pet had spaced out. "Hellooo. Earth to Sweetie."

"Can I..." Sweetie cleared her throat. "Can I get tea? And honey?"

"Yeah, sure. Tea in bags, right? I don't have a kettle so you can just boil water in a pot."

They went to an aisle with tea and spices. Sweetie even recognized the brand she used to drink, with its colorful packaging.

She got nice clothes. She got sparkly shoes. She got tea! She couldn't stop smiling even when people stared and pointed at her in line. It was a great day for the pet.

[mush-dooms]

harry x ginny, 13 (if you’re actually taking prompts from that list haha. if not, ignore me)

13) This wasn’t meant to be a date, but we’ve had such a good time and now it’s 2 a.m. and I should really go home…

“Arthur! Arthur! ARTHUR!” Molly boomed from the bottom of the stairs.

“Yes, love?” a frazzled Arthur answered, attempting to tie his tie with one hand as he combed through what little hair he had left with the other.

“You are GOING to be LATE!” Molly flung a dishtowel in his general direction and turned, finally noticing Harry standing in the doorway. She instantly smiled.

“Harry, love, did you sleep well? Bloody goblin was making quite the ruckus last night, I keep telling the boys to do something about the thing. Breakfast?”

Molly piled eggs and sausage high on Harry’s plate. Ron and Ginny soon wandered in, guided by their noses. “Ron, darling, I need you to take care of the gnomes today. Your father got bit quite badly the other day, far too feisty they are.”

“I’ll help,” Harry volunteered.

“Merhfoo,” Ginny sputtered through a mouthful of eggs, choked, and finally coughed, her face turning beet red. “I, uh, I can help too.” Ginny usually preferred to spend time with Hermione or visiting Luna instead of helping with the chores, but Harry wasn’t complaining. There was something about the way her hair shined in the morning light, how her brown eyes has little specks of gold in them, how she throws her head back when she laughs...

“HARRY!” Harry started, realizing he had been staring. “Where you at, mate? I said, want to do it straight after breakfast?” Ron half smiled, clearly amused.

“Uh, yeah. Yeah, after breakfast sounds good.” Harry felt his cheeks turning red and he suddenly found his eggs very interesting.

. . .

“Right Harry, you remember how this is done?” Ron asked as they watched a gnome stick its tongue out at them from under a bush.

“You’ve got to swing ‘em around real good--oof -- before you let go-- hold STILL you little-- or else they come back,” he continued as he tackled a large gnome. Ron grabbed the potato-shaped creature by the legs and swung it around his head like a lasso, flinging it over the garden wall. The gnome landed with a grunt and confusedly stumbled around in circles, disoriented.

Harry leapt onto the nearest gnome and copied Ron’s motions, swinging it around his head.

“Shit!” He yelled as he let go of the gnome prematurely, sending it flying at Ron where it promptly latched its teeth around his arm.

“OW, FUCK!” Ron shook his arm wildly trying to dislodge the gnome.

“GET OFF OF ME YOU LITTLE FUCK, THAT BLOODY HURTS!” Ginny grabbed onto the creature’s legs and gave it a hard yank, sending it flying into the Burrow’s back wall and knocking it unconscious.

“Shit, ow, Harry, why’d you have to do that,” Ron frowned at his best friend. Ginny grabbed Ron’s arm, taking a closer look at the bite marks.

“Better go inside and let Mum look at it, gnome bites can get nasty.”

���Bloody hell, that fucker,” Ron muttered as he turned and headed back inside.

Harry couldn’t help but notice he was alone with Ginny now.

. . .

The morning passed in a blur of sunlight and dew melting away and brown eyes and the sound of Ginny’s laugh. The gnomes were long gone, stumbling outside the garden, but still Ginny remained. Harry felt himself glowing, a soft smile on his lips. He had never been so entranced by someone before.

“Hey dumbass!” Harry shook out of his thoughts and turned to be greeted with a bucket of water splashing over his head. He sputtered, shocked, flinging water out of his eyes.

“You’re gonna pay for that one, Gin!” She laughed and dodged the spray as Harry shook his hair at her.

Harry and Ginny’s eyes met as they both locked eyes on the garden hose on the other end of the garden.

“Oh no you won’t!” Harry sprinted for the hose right as Ginny took off from beside him. Faster, faster, almost there-- whoomph. Harry felt the air leave his lungs as Ginny tackled him from behind and they rolled down the small incline. Harry found himself with Ginny leaning over him, their faces nearly touching, her hands in the grass next to his shoulders. He could feel her breath on his damp skin, her hair grazing his neck.

“Hey Harry,” Ginny growled, a mischievous look in her eyes as she pulled the hose off the wall above them and squirted him in the face. Harry couldn’t seem to catch his breath, and he didn’t think it was because of the fall.

. . .

“Wanna go for a walk?” Ginny asked later that afternoon. “We can bring food for dinner, play some quidditch, you know.”

“Hmfurgh,” Harry stumbled over his words. “Sorry, I mean, uh, sure, I’d like that,” Harry said, his heart skipping a beat and his face flushing pink. Why did Ron’s sister turn him into a blubbering idiot? He must just be shy around her, which made little sense considering they practically grew up together. He needed to work on that.

. . .

The afternoon was bright and warm, a cool breeze floating through the hills bringing welcome relief from the summer heat. The hills rolled on for miles, covered in a blanket of green grass and wildflowers, patches of trees speckled along the horizon. They made their way towards one of the wooded areas where a small but worn path led to a grassy clearing.

“The boys used to play quidditch over there. Never invited me, those dickheads, but I learned on my own. Luna would come over and throw the quaffle for me.”

Harry smiled, picturing a tiny Ginny wooshing around the clearing as little Luna tossed the ball up at her.

They played for a while, not keeping score, just tossing the beat-up quaffle around and trying to get the other to miss. If anyone had been listening, they would only have heard the sounds of laughter and taunts ringing out across the trees.

Time flew by, and soon the sun began dropping lower in the sky, painting the clouds orange and red.

“I’m starving, why don’t we have dinner? I know a spot,” Ginny finally suggested, wiping the sweat from her brow. Merlin, even drenched in sweat she was beautiful. Harry followed her into the woods along a path only visible to her.

Harry heard the brook before he saw it, the water gurgling as it tumbled over worn stones and the silencing of frogs signaling their arrival. A willow tree draped its branches low, covering a ring of logs on that sat on the mossy ground.

“We got mum to charm it ages ago against the bugs, hopefully its still holding up. Haven’t been back here in ages.” Ginny pushed the drooping branches out of her way, stepping through the leafy curtain. “Shame neither of us are seventeen.”

Ginny sat on the end of the log, clearly leaving space for Harry to sit next to her. How odd; there were plenty of other places to sit. Harry shrugged to himself and settled next to her, their legs brushing together. The leaves cast shadows over her freckled face that seemed to radiate light when she smiled. Her hair was messy and tangled from their game earlier, but it still shined in the evening’s remaining light. And her lips, pink and smooth, were probably so soft...

Ginny’s laughter jolted him back to the present. “Never mind then, guess you’re too busy checking me out,” she gave him a smile and elbowed him in the ribs. Harry felt himself blushing again. What was it about her that had him making a fool of himself? She reached around him for the basket of food, and he felt a chill rise where her arm brushed against his back.

. . .

“What time do you think it is?” Ginny yawned and placed her head on Harry’s shoulder. They were still sitting under the willow tree, having been talking and laughing for hours.

“I’m not sure,” Harry answered, and he found himself running his fingers through her hair. Ginny wrapped an arm around his shoulders, leaning into him. He could feel her warmth through his t-shirt.

“I’ve always loved when people played with my hair,” she said quietly. “It’s so ro...” she caught herself and left the word hanging in the air. A pause.

It was all making sense now. With Cho, things felt so different. It was more sudden, unmistakable for what it was. But with her... it was gentle, yearning, a subtle need for closeness.

Harry took a deep breath. “I think so, too.”

He turned so that their faces were inches apart. He could count every one of her freckles.

Harry wasn’t sure which one of them moved first, but suddenly their lips were meeting and it felt like nothing Harry had ever experienced. Like lighting a bonfire, or striking a match, like summer sunshine and breathless running and the moment before a dive toward the snitch on his broom. Adrenaline coursed through him, and they were passionate, desperate now. He never expected his day would have led to this.

“This wasn’t meant to be a date, you know,” Harry said, finally breaking free.

“Oh, bullshit,” Ginny replied, their lips smashing together again. “What else could it have possibly been.” It was a statement more than a question, and she smiled, slowly pulling away.

“I’ve had a crush on you since your first year,” she finally admitted. “Well, not the entire time. But a lot of it.” She hadn’t let go of his shoulders.

Harry struggled to find words, finally settling on “I think I’ve liked you for ages, too.”

Ginny snorted. “Seems we’re both idiots, then.” Harry laughed, and Ginny rested her head on his shoulder again. This time, Harry turned and kissed the top of her head, running one hand down her back.

“Harry?”

“Mmm.”

“Let’s stay out here forever.”

[goblins-riddles-or-frocks]

Moffat Dracula Review

Plot Summary For People Who Don’t Want To Watch It:

Dracula corners Jonathan, Mina, and Sister Agatha Van Helsing in a secluded convent in Budapest following Jonathan’s escape from his castle. The castle sequence itself is explained in flashback as Jonathan recounts his experience, leading up to the realization that he himself had died during his stay there. 

Realizing he’s now become some form of undead creature, he attempts to kill himself via a stake but is unsuccessful. Despairing at this, he invites Dracula inside the convent in exchange for a true death.  Agatha and Mina are able to stay safe within a circle of sacramental bread but everyone else is massacred. 

When Mina sees Dracula disguised as Jonathan approaching them, she invites him inside the circle. He of course reveals his identity immediately after. Agatha bargains her own life for Mina’s, so Dracula allows the other girl to go free.

Some time later, Dracula sets sail for England aboard the Demeter, a Russian ship with a strangely high number of wealthy passengers and a bluebeard’s cabin no one is allowed to enter. He quickly picks off the passengers one by one, meanwhile himself leading the effort to find the murderer onboard. 

This culminates in the remaining passengers finally searching the ship— and the mysterious cabin which is revealed to have been hiding a sickly Sister Agatha inside. She explains that Dracula is a vampire and together with the passengers they attempt to kill him by setting him on fire. But it is unsuccessful. Agatha urges everyone to escape on lifeboats because she intends to blow up the ship with her and Dracula in it before it is able to reach England. 

Dracula does not die but remains dormant under water. He reaches Whitby roughly 100 years later and is immediately captured by the Jonathan Harker foundation, lead by Agatha’s descendant Dr Zoe Van Helsing. He leaves captivity fairly quickly however with the help of Frank Renfield— a lawyer he hired over skype. 

Zoe is revealed to be dying of cancer. Dracula offers her his blood to heal her but it doesn’t seem to work. It instead gives her a bond to communicate with her dead ancestor Agatha, which gives her more insight about the vampire. 

Meanwhile, Dracula begins preying on Lucy Westenra, a young socialite. Despite leading a seemingly perfect life, she is wholly apathetic and disgruntled with her situation. She allows him to feed on her in exchange for the high a vampire’s bite can give her. He attempts to turn her into a vampire but she’s burned horribly once she’s cremated following her funeral.

Her death leads Zoe and Jack Seward to where Dracula has been staying. During their confrontation however Lucy returns, and after learning about her appearance, begs Jack to kill her, which he does. 

Zoe asks Jack to leave so she may speak to Dracula alone. She surmises that all of Dracula’s weaknesses are actually ineffective. The only thing he fears is death, and humanity’s willingness to die, She then... resolves to sit down and die right there. But at the last moment Dracula drinks her cancerous blood which should in turn kill him... they make out while dying... The end?

If that sounds like it makes no sense, it’s because it doesn’t. 

Final Thoughts:

The plot was nonsensical and the pacing was very poor and completely unstructured. The story itself bore little to no resemblance to Dracula at all, to the point where I wonder why they even bothered to keep the names. 

Most of the characters were new, and the few that were ported over from the Stoker novel had hardly anything in common with their original versions, Dracula included. 

Jonathan was the most in character of the bunch, if he was fairly more genre savvy while stuck in Dracula’s castle. Mina’s characterization seemed to be confined to a single flirtatious letter, an endless well of trust for Jonathan, and constant sobbing. She was more of a liability than anything else. 

Agatha served the role of a genderbent Van Helsing, though her manner was entirely lifted from the Coppola film. This could’ve been very cool if they hadn’t randomly made her a nun without actually committing to it at all. She was not really portrayed as having any actual lived experience as a nun in the victorian era. And faith as a concept was only touched on for her to dismiss— hilariously casually given her position.  

I think the actress’s performance was fairly decent, and she def grew on me in the second episode when she’s not actually in a convent to constantly remind us how dissonant of a nun she is. But it would’ve been nice if they would’ve either committed to actually making her a nun, (a legit vampire hunting nun could be so cool!) or just abandoning the concept altogether. Because the way it was presented just felt like window dressing. 

Also I’m not normally averse to shipping Van Helsing/Dracula but having to genderbend one of the two just to do it is like... hm. Also the weird tension they had going on was very badly executed in general. 

Speaking of Dracula, he had to be the weakest part of the show. He was written in the smuggest, most infuriating way possible. And it might have worked with another actor but this dude just did not have any gravitas or stage presence whatsoever. And it certainly was not helped by the fact that his costuming and makeup were so fucking lackluster. 

Despite being the linchpin of the story, he had no goals nor any particular drive. He was just out there doing Stuff for Reasons and none of them were compelling. It seemed like he was just killing to kill and the writing was not good enough to actually carry any of the vague themes about how he’s looking for new brides (why?) how he’s searching for a The Perfect Fruit (what???) or anything at all really. He had no depth whatsoever beneath his stupid quips and self-satisfied demeanor. 

There was an interesting implication that he needed to choose who he drinks carefully in order to maintain his own personality/sanity/sentience and that without blood he’d… apparently just become like any of the zombies we saw in the show. And that is such a cool concept! But it was not really  explored, nor was it written all that well. Even though it could’ve been (and I think was maybe intended to be???) an excellent source of existential dread! 

But yes, in general there was hardly any depth to this show. They played almost every possible card they could for shock value, and included many unnecessary and frankly underwhelming esoteric concepts that went nowhere. There was so much gore and random effects. We had zombies, vampire infants, and Dracula legit wearing people’s skins. The lore didn’t make any sense either, apparently people just… being unable to die despite their body’s so called death is a common occurrence? It wasn’t clear whether Dracula even had much control over who he changes and whether or not they become proper vampires. The entire thing just seemed poorly thought out. 

There were a lot of easter eggs and references to previous Dracula adaptations (and even some unrelated vampire media). I definitely noticed nods to the Hammer Horror movies and the Lugosi film, which was fun. The biggest noticeable influence however would have to be the 1992 Coppola movie. I have never seen a show try so hard to be another movie lmao. They even went so far as to make a spiritual successor to the film’s main theme that’s about as close as you could probably get without actually licensing the music. 

However, while the Coppola film at least had skill with regards to the costuming and cinematography to carry its aesthetic, this show simply did not. The costumes, the makeup, and the special effects were all lackluster. The set was nice enough but was not shot in a way to really leave much of an impression. 

The first episode was abysmal— mainly due to Dracula’s awful performance (those disgusting fungus covered fake nails, that age makeup, that ACCENT) and the entire awkward af scene where he terrorizes a convent of nuns while naked and covered in blood. But it was at least so bad it was funny.

The second episode was the most tedious to me because it was less offensively awful so I couldn’t even enjoy the badness. There was definitely a sharp uptick of quality whenever Dracula was offscreen for any notable amount of time though. The passengers were rather boring but I liked the crewmen. And Agatha honestly killed it for the latter half. 

The last episode was by far the worst and yet the most entertaining because they just stopped trying at that point. 

Renfield was amazing and an absolute delight every time he was on screen. Dracula found him over skype for God’s sake, how can that not be fantastic? He actually utters the words “Dracula has rights,” and his argument somehow actually fucking works.  

And even Dracula himself was far less insufferable with the shift in dynamics. By being forced to cope with the modern world, he could no longer act like such a smarmy, self-assured know it all. Seeing him freak the fuck out at the sight of helicopters was genuinely fun. 

Lucy’s handling was misogynistic af though. It was bafflingly, needlessly awful. And the way she was vilified at the very end was appalling. They almost had an interesting deconstruction wrt her utter malaise for her life, and the implication that she actually resents her beauty. But then of course she gets burned alive, and then is treated horribly for it by the protagonists. 

Even though it’s clear she has no idea what’s happened to her body, Zoe doesn’t even bother to explain it to her. She just makes her take a selfie of all things so she can see what she really looks like. It didn’t seem like the show had a shred of sympathy for her, because “oh, clearly she was a narcissistic bitch and she deserved what she got” or something like that?? 

The utter indifference everyone has to her death is baffling. It was an afterthought, that seemed like its only purpose for existing was yet again just shock value. The scene, after her death, immediately shifting the focus back to whatever weird personal rivalry that borders on sexual tension  Agatha/Zoe and Dracula have going on.  

But all in all, this adaptation had me baffled, frustrated, and cringing through most of it. It was unintentionally funny quite often and I honestly enjoyed it, but for all the wrong reasons. I highly recommend it to anyone who wants to melt their fucking brain.

[raguna-blade]

Revolutionary Girl Utena Live(ish) Reaction Episodes 8-11

So it's a new year, and I'm gonna continue this, cause its' fun. Had a brief break cause of the holidays. And doing so, I figure i'm gonna do a thing where I make up a nice cleaned up version of these cause if nothing else I like organizing my thoughts. So Control F or whatever your find function is for the cleaned up version if that's your thing. It'll be under Overall Thoughts per ep. Or you know, you're me and you're going back through this for validation for whatever nonsense you say later.

Episode 8

Curry huh? And another recap? uh....

enmy remains trifling

hey wait egg time already?

Danger? Really?

Body swap? Also egg time is goofs

throwin hands????? anthy?

Yeah nanami it is ridiculous

JERSUS TOGA

nanami you idiot

She just fucked off to india to get some weird back alley spice

Shadow girls can you please, just please for a single episode.

ANTHY YOU LYING. Never been good at sports and you did that leap apparently pretty well? What the fuck.

Also, the switching thing here is mad suspect considering the end theme thing (and I suppose the opening.

Utena as Anthy : I don't want to be a sacrifice of the rose seal.

Anthy As Utena: I'm super down staying like this actually.

Like..This is just details that

Uh..Uh saionji what. The implications are strong here. Also, Douche canoe he is, but he's a romantic apparently? UUUUH. Exchange diary.

Is the “A” plot a distraction? Like for real.

Also she took that elephant to the dome.

I'm not sure how to take this personality switch. Like the minds thing whatever, but if it's just the personalties but not the person so to speak,  hold on

WHAT THE FUCK. These elephants for fucking real?

Anyway, if they're just personalities altering the “person” it's uh...Interesting. I'm not sure how to take that til I get more info. It seems like a thing.

Also, Saionji apparently legit has feels for Anthy he's just...mad dumb about expressing it? Like he's pulling a lot of Badboy Romance Tropes here but...not...in a badboy romance. Which kills his behavior entirely.

Killed his Soul AGAIN. Damn.

Who's the divine justice for? Like it doesn't seem for nanami. Who fucked up. Presumably between anthy and utena.

Anthy what the actual fuck are you doing. Are you using gunpowder?

Homie, this isn't twilight, go home saionji.

Anthy as Utena(????) you trolling. So hard.

Saionji get's zero respect but dudes dedicated I'll give him that. Fitting for bad boy romance lead.

Uh...Wait, actually, are they all romance leads? Common ones in one way or the other. They are on the student Council so...Hm. I don't read enough romance stories of the variety I think but it seems to fit? I'm not sure what juri would be in that case.

Anyway, if this Episode Turns out to be a key for understanding things I'm gonna be pissed. Just a little.

Overall Thoughts: So this and the other “filler” episode is, especially after finishing my last ep in the session, read as anything but despite the obvious uh...antics on display. Like...

Ok, so the whole thing with the ending which frames Anthy and Utena as kinda the same (or rather exactly the same, except one's in red and the other pink) makes this whole episode feel like it's basically some kind of key for understanding everything else because it's simple times. It's goofy hilarity with Nanami that's the A Plot right hahahah....

Except the personality swap between the two of them is like...The implication here is that they swapped minds fully, and given the level of fairy tale bullshit that is at play constantly in this series so far it may well just be magic brand magic and we're supposed to roll with it. Ok. Fair.

Except...The thought that sits in my head is again, Anthy and Utena seem to equal each other. Hell I point it out slightly later that there's definitely this yin yang thing going on in the opening with the two which is so blatant as to be meaningless because Hah Yeah these are our two leads obvs and they're important to each other so hahah don't worry about or think about it check out these SWEET SWORDSMANSHIP MOMENTS FROM EVERYONE LOOK AT THE BUDGET AND COOL HORSES AND CASTLES HAHAHA.

But ok, if it's a Yin Yang thing, yes they're not the same but they have elements of each other within eachother. So if it's just a personality swap but not an actual soul swap thing, that is, Anthy is just acting like Utena's personality is in her, and Utena is just acting like Anthy's personality is in her it paints this picture of Utena and Anthy as having a lot going on under the surface. I mean obviously Anthy is fucking pissed at Saionji. That was really really evident in episode one because if she's just being submissive rosebride I do what i'm told and I do what i'm told I do what i'm told, the very very very sharp dig of “We're Just classmates” is fucking brutal unnecessity. And given that she DOES know what he feels for her, and he's still acting like that, her being vindictive(or just brusque really, he's being an ass full bore) is like...absolutely reasonable.

Her Slapping back and about to throw hands with her tormentors? Who wouldn't want to right?

But then, ok that's Anthy, but what about Utena. If it's just a mind swap, Utena...want's a very defined existence? Like, she wants to just stick to a role? Feels weird, and doesn't quite immediately jive with her cause that seems against her operations right? Except, as this episode so kindly reminds us (for at least the third time in 8 episodes which seems excessive. I might be forgetting one or two) Utena's whole thing coming to this school is I want to play the Role of the Prince, whatever that actually means. Playing the Rose Bride would be no real difference, except it's way more submissive.

So that aside, Saionji saying he's in love with Anthy (and that seems to be something he at least believes to be true. He honestly seems more into Toga. Like for real for real, all the imagery of those flashbacks reads not just as close buddies, but as I am romantically down with you Toga my guy. Him being Bi is probably the easiest answer, and he just drifted away from Toga for a while. Saionji clearly sees him as a friend and rival, although it's seemingly not reciprocated at the moment.

But the thing, the thing that's kinda weird to me, is that if he does legit have feelings for her, I was struck with this odd vibe that he's playing at being a romance lead. Specifically, a Bad Boy romance lead. And doing so SPECTACULARLY badly. Homeboy is sitting here busting out poetry (unless my brain is being a dumb and i'm somehow overlaying him with Tatewaki Kuno from Ranma which ok, weird but alright) but...

Ok, if he is playing at being a Badboy Romance lead, that actually explains his behavior for how he was treating Anthy, especially if he's legit in his feelings for her? Possessive, Radiates Danger, Engages in Creepy Behavior, is a bit of a dick, etc. It lines up with Being a Bad Boy, except that the way that those usually work out in fiction, as I understand it, they're not usually like...gonna hit you. That breaks the fantasy. But...That's him fucking up the archetype. It doesn't fit for him. He doesn't understand what he's doing in that archetype.

Like yes, abusers and the like can care and still be absuers cause fucked up behavior and motivations don't need to match in the least, but it still feels odd that a man who probably literally could have done any number of fucked up things has...an exchange diary with the girl he says he cares about? And it's not like he's unaware of how submissive/passive she is, his exchange diary actually kinda reads like Utena's Anthy is A Real Girl! Activities*. He wants her to be active part of whatever their relationship is and...Eh.

But ok, if he's that, It suggests the rest of the student council, and duelists in general, would fit into a given archetype right? Toga is clearly the super cool intelligent superman student council president, Juri is basically charisma max Jock, Miki is the cute nerd, Nanami is the Ojou villainess type, Utena is...Basically the Hero type, just morals, strains to upset the status quo, Has the Cool Original Uniform.

And they all kinda fit into those pretty thoroughly, kinda like they're trying to (to varying levels of awareness)

Anyway, I'll hit on some of the other stuff in the next Ep. It's a bit more relevant there I think.

*See Me In Episode 11

Episode 9

I just realized they're doing some kinda yinyang thing in the opening so

R V G FIGHT.

Pretty tense there. Toga went straight for the heart which i'm sure means nothing.

Old Friends? Phrasing seems uh...odd? Unsure if it's dub things or actual subtext. Or both.

Dude you really got beef with a monkey? No, utena.

Being a huge dick. As is tradition.

10 Years.

Saionji: Actually love her (said) but

This is mad gay. Like the lighting, the silhouette. Saionji you're sublimating something here.

Music, Silhouettes.

...Silhouettes show truth? uh.

They were Utena's folks funeral? Huh. Also, why on earth would Utena be kidnapped? Who she be?

….Three coffins. Uh. Uhhhhhh. Utena, Toga, Saionji? UuuuHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH?

Dead utena. Uh.

Toga: Ally to all women. Ok.

...Why is there a third coffin?

Something Eternal huh? And Utena wants to die for reasons understandable.

Find another coffin. Rose Sigils on the coffins. Uh. Uhhhhhhhhhhhh.

Saionji: Hey, this is nuts, we should stop her.

Toga: Nah, I'm gonna Ennable the shit out of this.

Tiny Utena with the White Rose?

Saionji: Did he do something to her?

Toga: Nope

Uh....

Anthy: Something Eternal in the castle. I want to go there.

Also impressive grip strength considering. Flat.

Does Toga Remember this or...? I can't be sure. Saionji certainly didn't recognize her, but he wasn't like right on top of the trauma child.

Toga white roses? Uh? Uhhhhh. I think he definitely remembers. But questions abound.

Ufo's shadow girls? Shadow girls having flesh is deeply concerning.

TRUE FRIENDS ARE JUST FANTASIES. OK.

And UFO's broke, so that's probably not great. Who's getting the Revelations today.

That is the fakest voice toga what the fuck

Badboy Saionji: We're Gonna get the eternity.

Also, I just realized they (saionji and anthy) have color inversions going on which is making me kinda wonder if they're related in some way?

Just slap the shit out of him that's fair.

Ok, so Saionji didn't(?) do the dumb thing. Ok,

that is...a coffin. That he's 100% obssessed with. With Anthy (Utena) inside.

He's looking like he kissed his own mom right now, goin full oedipus in the holy shit revelations here.

Castle is crumbling, falling down. So...Eternity is Fake. Ok. Sure. Didn't shadow girls say that?

Castle Immediately tried to kill him. Crushed his soul 1 time too many there I suppose.

Utena, meanwhile, dove super deep into saving anthy which...diving deeper into the fantasy?

Yeah, they all just saw things.

Saionji: WHAT THE FUCK JUST HAPPENED WHATS GOING ON?

Bro, me too.

Ok, if the two are reflections, does Anthy and saionji both got some deep illusory bullshit going on? Are they both freaking out?

Toga, saving the day, and Saionji, tried to kill Utena with a sword. so. Ok.

Saionji Expelled?  Toga, fool for thinking they're friends?

WHAT THE FUCK HAPPENED HERE?

Overall Thoughts: I touched on a bunch of the Saionji stuff I wanna talk about in the last episode review, but the thing I kinda want to look at here is well...

Ok, Now the colors probably don't mean anything, but there was this moment that Saionji and Anthy were in the same shot and I suddenly realized they're color flips of each other. Purple hair green eyes, Green Hair Purple eyes, which ok that's interesting.

So we already have Utena Reflecting on Anthy, and hey, there's Zero Reason, absolutely negative number reasons why that wouldn't necessarily be the case with any and all of the rest of the duelists to some degree or another.

And hell, the fact that we keep flipping back and forth between Utena and Anthy in Coffins, there being (for some weird ass reason) a third entirely unrelated coffin for Utena's folks funeral, why the fuck not right?

So ok, Anthy and Saionji mirror each other which...Ok. If the Personality Swap from Episode 8 thing holds, The two actually share some pretty dickish actions. They can be cruel and petty and just antagonistic to things that don't quite jive with what they want. Saionji with Anthy not being...whatever he's expecting out of her, or Utena butting in. Anthy with the girls who keep fucking with her and Saionji.

They both seem to be utterly STUCK on the Rose Bride thing, although from different angles of Possessing the Rosebride and being the Rosebride, and the kind of weird shaping of the Rosebride thing that's going on.

Saionji is treated as a joke by the student council, especially after he get's kicked out, which ultimately ends with him being someone who is generally wanted but ends up ultimately exiled from society. Which mirrors with Anthy as someone is is wanted, but doesn't seem to have ANY kind of actual tangible bonds with anyone.

And, for this last one I have ZERO evidence on the Anthy end, but the suggestions are uh..interesting. Saionji in this episode, as suggested by the shadow girls at least in part, is deeply deeply invested in a fantasy of some kind, one that ultimately leaves him crushed and rather empty, further exiled from people who could or do care for him and that he cares about. Which if we're going with the property sliding across and He's a Foil for Utena (which I think is definitely true in some ways) suggests bad things for her down the line.

Episode 10

Saionji's a joke huh? He's taking it well.

Toga WOW. WOW YOU FUCKING DOUCHE. STRAIGHT IN THE FIRE HUH.

EGG TIME.

So, thing about eggs, that includes whats inside it right? so...Revolutionize yourself right? Right? That's obvious right?

Oh new duelist. Cool cool.

Utena getting slapped. By Nanami. With Utena being hella submissive. (EPISODE 8 FLASHBACKS INTENSIFY)

maybe a girl can't be a prince. THERES THAT THESIS. E8 FLASHBACKS

Nanami got her brother a kitty.

Oh damn it is Nanami. Duel Time. I mean we sall it in the opening but you know.

Jesus Toga, please stop being

OH GOD NANAMI NO. NOOOOOO NOPE NO.

Toga: We ain't kids no more. Shit don't fly.

Nanami: Emotionally devastated.

Is that Miki's sister?

Hey, what happened to the cat?

Juri: Hey, Serious Business, what the fucks up with the duelist?

Toga is perpatrating as badly as nanami actually. He's just less immediately obvious about it I guess.

Goddamnit there's Anthy's next slap. Jesus. Legit, who hasn't at this point. Is this a theme? IS THIS A THING?

Jesus, he's just playing all of this to piss her off? What the fucks up.

...Did nanami kill the cat. Uh...Uhhhhhh.

Ring is an engagement ring. Wait, that's a flat out school rule that everyone knows? For real? Uh.

...What the fuck happened with the kitty. Uh...

ITS TIME. ABSOLUTE DESTINYYYYYYYYYYYY

I just realized the kinda weird framing with Anthy dressing up utena kinda looks like her opening her legs up with the way it get's framed and I'm not sure if that's me just kinda over reading things or if that's a thing.

Nanami's duel outfit is SICK. Also, a yellow alt color of utena.

Actually. ACTUALLY? Is...Is Nanami like an Utena Alt color? That can't be right. Actually looking at  them right next to each other they're...straight up alt colors of each other. Not to mention Nanami's my prince thing mirrors Utena.

She just HOT pulled a knife. Oh she's About to fucking hot MERC utena, going for death jessus.

They're supposed to be around the same age too for that matter right?

She absolutely killed that cat and it's...

With her hair down she does look like an utena alt color even more.

Why's the duel music still going after the duel finished. Jesus. This wasn't a duel with Nanami, it was a duel with Toga, and I think Utena Hot lost it out and out.

Overall Thoughts: Well the Big thing I'm paying attention here are two. First the simpler one.

The Egg has to break the shell of the world to be born right? I'm paraphrasing badly, but the thing is the way they keep phrasing that is that the World is the Egg, but the egg isn't just the shell right? It includes what's inside of it. Which if that's the case, mixed with the way that duels work out being more a clash of ideals than of actual tangible skill, the revolutionize the world bit seems to be referring to them themselves, that is the duelists.

Alternatively, the Bird Referenced, the thing being revolutionized is Anthy. Which...Is an interesting line of thought. Given the Duels as a whole are basically choosing who her fiance will be, that'd imply that ultimately this decides the way that Anthy would come to develop? Or how she chooses to develop? Which ok if so, and the way that Ideals seem to be at play, Suggests...What? Dunno. Need more info, which will be delivered later.

But the other thing here, continuing the mirroring thing, which might be me reading too deeply, but I think not and even if it is Whatever I'm having fun.

THE ENTIRE NANAMI DUEL felt like a Mirror Match.Heck, Nanami dressed like an alt color of Utena, and especially once her hair got undone she looked even more like an alt color of Utena. They're only about a year different in age, and her brother seems to be her Prince type, and he drops the ring on her like an engagement ring, and she basically says I fight like my brother because he's my ideal.

Which is a weird thing since right now it's not going...too far. I'll have to see how it shakes out, but if the mirroring thing continues, the fact that the moment she lost she basically said nope fuck that, Knife Time, was...Concerning. It says real concerning things with Utena.

But it also says other interesting things then, because if Nanami is supposed to be some kind of Alt color Utena, similar in ambition goals and the like, if more outwardly girly to Utena's princey thing, their relationship with Anthy is uh..

Uh...

Well put simply, Utena is fucking up big and dramatic with Anthy, and she doesn't realize it at all or care because she can't see it for what it is. Nanami actively tries to undermine Anthy, and does some fucked up things to her. Which..Makes me wonder about the Divine Judgement thing from Episode 8 which, damnably, seems to be forming some kind of key here.

Like the way it's frame suggests the divine Judgement being visited upon Nanami is what's being talked about. But ok, Nanami had some bad shit happen to her sure, but...All of that was self inflicted upon her trying to fix what she percieves as a problem. Yes her reasons for doing it are so she can be with her brother, no doubt, but...They're ridiculous. Like, I cannot believe this shit is happening. But

But

If the Target of Divine Judgement/punishment is the Anthy Utena duo, one or both of them are on the receiving end of it. It's not clear how Acting like Utena would be a punishment for Anthy (I'm sticking with it just being a personality swap and not a full mind swap) but Utena who prides herself on being princely and aspires to that being the super submissive rosebride? I could see that being a kind of hell for her. And if the logic of Utena is Undermining Anthy holds out, but the criitcal difference being her ignorance and dishonesty of why compared to Nanami unabashedly saying yes I am fucking doing this fuck you I get what I want no hold barred, it...

Like, Nanami, as far as it goes, doesn't really receive a punishment if we're being honest. Yes she takes a couple of elephants to the dome, and has to be away from her brother and see her thing fail but..The way it's treated by herself and everyone else is basically a LOL THESE THINGS HAPPEN I GUESS HAHAHA. The Utena/Anthy swap meanwhile seems considerably more serious for them (especially considering the Everyone Slaps Anthy thing that seems to legit be a thing. Somehow. Except here Applied to “Utena”), and seems to cause some serious distress.

We'll see I guess.

Episode 11

As I watch this opening more and more, why is anthy like constantly framed like...Ominous as shit? Is it me?

Homegirl is just. Damn. Sure glad NOTHING BAD WILL HAPPEN (I do not trust this series to not have something bad happen to Wakaba. Again.)

Anthy. Are..are you...passive aggressively doing...something

Toga: I can see through the illusions yeah boi.

I do not trust this for an inch. He is abusing the shit out of his framing, like the whole time, and I don't trust.

Toga is “student council prince” archetype. Miki's nerdy student counciler.

EGG TIME

Juri is...Antagonistic But well meaning?

Saionji...I'm not sure he was actually on the stuco. But if so, bad boy.

What....is with the balloons. The color coded balloons.

Miki: Like a Pet Cat.

The Pet Cat that died, got killed.

WHAT IS WITH THESE BALLOONS.

ALSO I SEENT YOU PURPLE BALLOON.

So if the duels are ideal clashes more than actually a matter of direct skill, is this Toga (touga?) trying to fuck with Utena before the fight?

Anthy is a Bird. Ok. And Toga, arguably, being the biggest dick here. We thought it was Saionji, but the trick was he's the red part of the rose.

Anthy shut down REAL quick when being the rose bride was brought up.

Is Utena projecting mad hard onto Anthy here?

Homeboy needs to stop playing these games.

Utena, Stahp.  DO NOT TRUST HIM.

Toga, You...DOUCHE. AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARGH

Toga: Oh My B, Shouldn't act that way in front of the rose bride. ALSO DUELING LETS GOOOOO.

Utena: one link forces me to fight him. Meanwhile, rose symbols everywhere, a lot of them brought in by anthy.

Hmmmmmmm.

Utena is hard not understanding something here. I don't know what (rose bride related for sure) but I don't get...WHAT is off here.

Cause thinking about it, Utena's objective with Anthy is arguably the most noble, but she's still not quite treating anthy as a person.

….William Tell Interlude is SUITABLY CONCERNING considering the above thoughts so uh.

Also that was a weirdly specific number. 30K arrows or something?

I just realized that the DARKNESS OF DARKNESS OF LIGHT OF DESTINY OF (INSERT) things seems to show up right around anthy a lot. I'm not super sure if that's a whole thing or just a this episode thing, but...

Is Utena about to get HOT DUNKED? Because I think she is.

Also, I just realized, Utena slid into that pull sword out of rose bride thing right quick and she's never once questioned that.

So yes, Utena has BOOTY but cheeks swordsmanship, which yeah, obvs. Two of the people she beat were actually skilled before this fight, and yet she won somehow.

I don't know how to deal with these lyrics. But Toga is absolutely  fucking with her head here.

And She Lost. Decisively. YUP. WELP THIS IS GONNA BE A THING NEXT TIME.

Toga: Hey you don't have to deal with this bullshit anymore.

Utena is doing the EXACT same shit Miki and Saionji were pulling, and Anthy's blank soulless stare is freaking me the hell out. Again.

So, ideals here. But the idea that whoever has a...better grasp of the truth is the victor. Which makes sense that Toga wins here.

Jesus, Soul crush 2.0, except it's on Utena this time. Goddamn.

WELL NEXT EPISODE PROMISES TO BE FUN.

Utena: ITS NOT TRUE. ITS NOT TRUE!

The Anime Revolutionary Girl Utena IMMEDIATELY: MISSING TRUTH ETCETC HOLD ME IN YOUR TRUE ARMS I WANT TO KEEP SMASHING LIES APART

SURE THAT MEANS NOTHING GUYS GGNORE.

Also, no joke, these seem like a Direct response to this episode and I'm not sure how to feel about that.

I want to be hated by lies? Uhhhhh.

Overall Thoughts: So Hey, Here we are in Episode 11 and I want to talk about how Utena and Saionji basically are each other right here.

Like overtly even I think, even if the actions aren't precise clean mirrors to each other which I guess is just how i'm going to be going through this series right now RiP.

But ok, here's the thing. What has been increasingly clear as time goes by is that Utena is fundamentally misunderstanding something about Anthy. I'm not sure fully what it is, but it's clearly Rosebride related, and the thing with the clashing ideals suggests that the.

Actually let me explain that clear like. Right now my read on the Duels is that they are NOT in any way shape or form a demonstration of skill. I Think that's clear through this point, but I'm making it explicit for my own sake. The Victor of the Duel isn't the better fighter. If that were the case, It'd suggest the only ones in the running at all would be Toga or Saionji (Juri should also be in here, but I'm not actually clear how skilled she is compared to those two, and the way they're treated suggests that Toga and Saionji are comparable in pure skill/ability.)

But Utena somehow beat Saionji like three times, Juri and Miki. Miki's whatever, but Juri clearly knows what she's doing, and Saionji seems to be Kendo Team captain so you know. Up there. Meanwhile, Utena explicitly is an amateur.

I'm not saying, in full, that actual skill with the blade is a null thing, but your ideals seems to be the biggest factor over everything else. Presumably, people rocking equally “powerful” ideals would fall to skill with the sword.

Anyway. The Truths that Seem to be critical are Anthy Wants to Be Free of the Rosebride. Ok, so Utena has the right read then right? But then she lost to Toga who seems to be rocking Anthy Wants to Be, or else Considers herself fundamentally to be, the Rosebride, which is something that Utena seems to be denying about Anthy, but is none the less true.

But then, How are Utena and Saionji the same? Well, remember an episode back where I was talking about the divine punishment thing and all that jazz from episode 8?

It hits both of them for mistreating the Rosebride. There is a fantasy going on between Utena and Saionji, and while Saionji's is a bit complicated and unclear I think, Utena's actually is pretty straightforward I think. Utena want's to be a prince. That's her fantasy. The general virtues she want's to possess are great. Good even. But the specific's seems to involve a kind of rides in and saves the day riding in on a white horse thing, where she's the hero and does for some poor unfortunate girl what her prince did to her.

Saionji's meanwhile, seems to be something of him having a genuine reciprocal relationship with Anthy, with him inhabiting the role of a badboy romantic lead while the two of them have feelings for each other. When, really, he doesn't seem to care for her, or at least the feelings that he has for her are considerably weaker than whatever awkward feelings he has going on for Toga (I'm seriously a little fuzzy here, cause it feels like following his most recent defeat he's rocking some kind of clarity? I don't know how it's gonna work out, but I could sorta see him Returning and upsetting whatever the then status quo is.)

But notably, the big thing between them is their staunch refusal to accept what seems to be really true about their relationship with Anthy.

That the end theme seems to immediately pop up as an answer to Utena's reaction feels...Purposeful.

[friendshipcampaign]

Session Recap 1/5/19: Faith Found in Friends 

Kriv stepped forward and opened the gate, revealing a swirling, vibrant glow on the other side. As he began to walk into it, all the others followed – except for Voski. When they asked her if she was coming, she said she intended to sit this one out, having had her fill of holy fire in Soreth. Ditto asked if she wanted Tiktik to stay behind with her, and she declined, saying she would be fine on her own. Most of the party seemed to accept this, but Erwyn still remained concerned.

“Will she be alright to go on with the rest of us to the next trial, if she doesn’t complete this one?” he asked one of the guards. They didn’t offer any confirmation.

Voski expressed that they had gotten through the Elemental Plane of Fire simulation just fine without most of the party doing much, causing Erwyn’s ears to droop. He tried a bit longer to persuade her to come with the rest of them, but she had made up her mind.

“You’re assuming I would even make it to the top,” she said to him, after he again expressed worry that staying behind might disqualify her.

“I think you would,” Erwyn said quietly before following the others.

Once the rest of the party passed through the gate, they were caught up in a radiant wind, with colors that swirled about like embers. They passed through a wall of light into a space surrounded by glowing spheres. One of them asked the party what they sought – and declared that each of them would be expected to vouch for themselves and their goals in turn.

When Kriv volunteered to speak first, the mote accused him of being a paladin who nonetheless “keeps the company of liars and thieves,” and who “drinks more than he prays,” and asked why it should trust him.

“Hey, why don’t you fucking lay off him!” Amaranth shouted. 

“Amaranth, not now,” Kriv said tiredly.

“Your time will come,” the mote scathingly replied.

Kriv explained that his relationship with his god was complicated, and that while he didn’t feel like he had a great answer, he felt like he had a purpose that wasn’t really in his hands either way.

“I think I’m supposed to help people,” he finished.

When asked what he had done that was good, Kriv mentioned that he had helped a friend who wasn’t present and always tried to be honest. He nervously said that he hoped they could see something good in him as well as their criticism. The mote turned its attentions to the others and asked them to speak on Kriv’s behalf.

Amaranth said that Kriv had helped her see the light – in that when she was trapped in a darkness that was haunting her, he had helped pull her out. Ditto added that he was kind and always tried to be compassionate. Erwyn referenced the time the two of them had faced the ghostly Morkoth, and that even when his own decisions had been foolhardy, Kriv hadn’t abandoned him – that he’d been “not only kinder than that, but braver, too.”

Kriv was asked to speak for himself again, and he acknowledged the criticisms the mote had given of him, saying that he was not a traditional paladin, but given the chance, he could become one. The mote then revealed a passage, telling Kriv to step through, but he insisted he wait for his friends to also be allowed to come.

Ditto volunteered to go next, and the colors swirled in to analyze her. She winced as they sharply drew back, then approached much closer, seemingly surprised by what they had seen.

“You ran from hubris, and the world is suffering for it,” the mote eventually proclaimed. “Also, you stole a lot of stuff.”

When asked to defend herself, Ditto pointed out that she wasn’t running any more. That she was trying to fix her dangerous mistake, and that if they stopped her here they’d be preventing her in her attempt to do so, adding that she’d still find some other way around this obstacle even if they did.

The others, too, chimed in to say their part. Kriv said she was one of the most compassionate people he’d ever met, even when it came to creatures many wouldn’t consider people, and that it was very brave what she was doing now. Amaranth talked of what an amazing friend Ditto was, and how hard she was trying to put things right – though at the end of her speech she again threatened the lights, saying they had to let Ditto in, to which they replied that her methods were unorthodox. And Erwyn mentioned valuing greatly that even though he and Ditto had had some misunderstandings in the past, her care for others was evident enough that he could tell they were just that, and she’d never intended to hurt him.

Ditto, in turn, started crying, and said, “I love you guys so much.”

The mote agreed to let Ditto pass and a door opened for her as well. It turned to Amaranth (whose hand Ditto grabbed as it started its critique of her).

“Well,” the mote said. “Thief by profession, murderer – you’d better have some really good excuses.”

“I don’t have to justify myself to you!” she said.

“That’s actually how this works,” it replied.

Reluctantly, Amaranth explained that she was helping out her friends, but offered no comment on the accusations, seemingly unrepentant. The mote gave as close a noise as it could to a sigh, then asked the others to give their own defense. Ditto called Amaranth brave – not afraid of helping with others’ pain and facing it even when she was bearing her own. She said she had kept her from losing hope.

“I think she’s better for the people around her than she realizes,” she said. “I think she does more for us than even we realize.”

Kriv said that Amaranth reminded him of someone, who protects those who are weak in her own way, and seeks justice. He spoke of how she supported him personally, the fear he’d seen from her when he’d been badly hurt, and her conviction. Erwyn added that while he didn’t know everything that Amaranth had done in the past, what he did know was how she’d worked to make him feel safe despite his pain.

“I’ve know people who’ve probably done a lot less wrong and done me a lot more hurt,” he said, “And I think in the grand scheme of things I’d really like to think that counts for something – perhaps, even, that it makes her the better person.”

The mote asked Amaranth to answer for herself again, and she simply said that the whole reason she was here was because she would do anything in her power to help her friends reach their goals, and to stop the people who had hurt her from hurting others. Reluctantly, the mote said that if the rest of the group were deemed able to pass, she could come through, but that she was on “thin fucking ice.”

Then Erwyn’s turn came, and the colors swirled around to see and judge his actions. The mote paused before speaking to him, more softly than the manner with which it had dished out some of its other judgements.

“There is little I could say that would make the guilt I feel rising from you stronger,” it said.

“I’m not even certain why I’m still around,” he said. “But I’ll say that I don’t think I’ve ever stopped trying to be better than I actually am, even if it’s a bit beyond my limits.“

The others began to offer their own words. Ditto said that she had a hard time understanding why Erwyn didn’t see himself this way, but that he was compassionate and kind, even at a cost to himself – mentioning that she had harbored a feeling Erwyn would be the first to help Melima.

“If you don’t let him pass, I have little faith in your ability to judge,” she said.

Kriv added that Erwyn was willing to die for his own moral code – which was high, and probably the reason that Erwyn himself felt he couldn’t reach it – and had been dedicated to risking his own soul for others. Amaranth vouched that he was persistent and saw the good in people in a way that she could never. She went on to say that he struggled in seeing his own skills and strength, but all of them could see it in him. She agreed with Ditto, though more colorfully, that if the mote thought Erwyn shouldn’t pass, the trials’ “whole system’s fucking broken.”

A door opened for Erwyn as well. The mote then inquired about their final companion, asking if, since she was not here, the others would speak on Voski’s behalf. Ditto spoke up first, saying that the dragonborn’s actions were what really showed the kind of person she was – a good one – and that she helped the party with the decisions they made even when she’d been honest about her reluctance to do so, in particular when she’d done most of the talking in the trial against Hayel. Kriv said that he didn’t consider her kind, but that that had no bearing on being good, and that she worked hard and looked after the group in her own way.

“She bought me something,” he said. “It wasn’t for me, but it was nice.”

Amaranth talked about how Voski had brought her back from the liminal point between life and death with the phoenix egg she’d used to cast Revivify, and that her actions spoke louder than her words.

When Erwyn’s time to speak came, he got a bit quiet.

“I think that I perhaps owe her more than anyone else in this group,” he began, and went on to say that with his resurrection in Soreth, it would have been so easy for her to simply say the ritual was beyond her, but she instead performed it at great risk to herself to bring him back. He added that he had seen her in a circumstance none of the others had – the moment she’d been told he was dead – and that while only she knew exactly what it had meant, the look on her face seemed to betray both great personal responsibility, and a care that even she might be reluctant to admit was inside her.

“I have known another person that Voski reminds me a great deal of at times,” he finished. “I also know how much that other person has – and I think in a lot of ways continues – to hurt me. If two people can be so superficially similar, but one of them is a shadow in my past and the other is a bright spot in my present, I think a certain degree of inner light has to be responsible. Whether or not she owns up to it being there.”

The mote seemed to process all this before speaking again.

“While I remain dubious about certain members in your group,” it said, “I think you will do more good together.”

The final two doors opened – one for Amaranth, and one for Voski. Ditto Messaged the latter, though it came through with some static, to let her know she could join them. Voski finished the chord she had been playing on her lute as she waited and cautiously tested the swirling mass of light, seeming suspicious of its safety, before stepping through and ending up with the others.

“I told you,” Erwyn said to her, quietly.

Kriv was able to grab the next key, which Erwyn identified as symbolizing Arcadia. He warned the others that this meant they’d be headed someplace a bit too much like a fancy neighborhood, where the trees were unfortunately very organized. Voski commented that Kriv’s existential crisis seemed to be doing a little better.

“It was there before; it’ll be there forever,” he replied.

[wahbegan]

I’m Depressed Let’s Talk 25 Things You Probably Didn’t Miss and I’m Just an Asshole  About the It Chapter 2 Trailer Let’s Goooo

You know the drill by now and if you don’t you can look in the tags and laugh about how wrong I was anyway putting the rest under a cut

1. So this scene’s almost beat-for-beat straight from the book, with variations to make it more cinematic. The sign says Marsh when she rings the doorbell, and i’ll bet you anything like Its eyes changing from yellow to blue in the storm drain, they’ll keep the thing from the book where Mrs Kersh opens the door and when Bev looks again, it says Kersh instead

2. Kersh’s open chest wound/rotting flesh isn’t from the book, i assume it’s a reference to The Shining

3. The “it gets so hot you feel like you could just die” and “I had cookies in the oven” are both references to the witch from Hansel and Gretel, which is what Mrs Kersh really is. I mean she’s REALLY an interdimensional clown-spider from outer space but you get the idea. I don’t know if they’ll be as blatant as in the book, it looks like the house doesn’t turn to candy anyway which makes sense

4. The antique photo of the twin women may be another Shining reference

5. The picture on her wall of her and her “fadder” brings up some interesting possibilities, but my money’s on Andres Muschietti i believe stated at one point in an interview or AMA or tweet or something that in his universe, there was an ACTUAL Pennywise that It killed to take his form, and he was one of Its favorite victims and that’s what the old PENNYWISE travelling circus thing at the bottom of Its trophy heap is from, so it’s very possible this is a photo of the real dude and his actual daughter before his identity was usurped by The Sewer Clownspider From Outer Space

6. The bruises on Jessica Chastain’s arm seem to imply they’re keeping her abusive husband and her fistfight with him when she tries to leave for Derry intact

7. Oh yeah before I forget, Kersh’s “no one who here ever really dies” i know is a bit nonsensical but in the book, it explains that Derry was made “In Its image” and everyone who lives there is sort of influenced by It, almost part of It, and Its victims are forever “trapped in the Deadlights” so that’s probably what It meant is that even in death, in Derry there’s no escape from It. It will take your form, It will go after your loved ones, you will float in Its Deadlights, etc.

8. Oh yeah also her apartment has a bird motif and It appears as a bird several times over the book but more importantly to Bev, during the....ahem THAT scene, she sort of...dissociates? She starts daydreaming about power lines with hundreds of grackles all over them and she fends It off by saying the grackles know Its real name as an adult, so that’s probably i mean i doubt any of that will be referenced i think it’s just a fun little set design easter egg

9. The Losers looking in the window and seeing themselves as kids is probably at the end of the movie as Eddie isn’t there and it happens right at the end of the book, or something very similar i believe it’s actually Bev looks in a window and sees they still look like adults, but she sees adult Stan and Eddie’s reflections alongside their own which is very emotional and this looks to be a version of that

10. Yeah the town is...weirdly empty i’m not sure why i mean the town gets its shit wrecked at the end of the book since it was made in Its image, when It (allegedly) dies, the entire town is destroyed by a massive storm that doesn’t look to be the case here, but the town being completely devoid of life i’m assuming has a lot to do with Its influence

11. Yeah the Chinese Restaurant scene from both book and miniseries is intact, it remains to be seen whether they’ll get insane shit in their fortune cookies or not. If I had to guess, based on the way the first one went, something will probably be up with them but the ante will be upped and it won’t be as campy as the miniseries version

12. This scene of It taunting/luring Bill by pretending to be Georgie in the sewer is completely Muschietti’s own creation, It only appears as Georgie when they’re already underground in the book, looking monstrous and with his arm ripped off, so i have no idea where this is going. Oh, wait, hold on, when they all split up to okay so basically if you haven’t read the book they’ve all repressed most of their childhoods and don’t really remember shit until Mike calls, right? So after the Chinese Restaurant reunion, they all split up and go different directions to trigger memories and re-familiarize themselves with Derry. It’s at THAT point Bev meets Mrs Kersh, Richie meets the Paul Bunyan statue (more on that in a minute), etc. Bill though doesn’t have a run-in with It, he just finds his old bike Silver in a pawn shop. So Muschietti probably inserted this scene to be his encounter with It on his walking tour of Derry. Also bit of opinion here but can i just say it’s an AWESOME parallel a simple but very effective stroke of genius calling back to by far the most infamous scene of the book and both adaptations, that was brilliant on Muschietti’s part.

13. They’re pushing Bill/Beverly in this trailer which is a subplot i really hoped they would drop because Bill is fuCKING MARRIED and she ends up with Ben at the end anyway, so it’s pretty pointless padding and just a reason for the dude to have an affair, but alas, they appear to have kept it intact.

14. Yeah, so this is where they defeated It the last time, the tower of floating kids and victim trophies appears to be gone, which is probably what prompts them to go deeper (also more on that in a second). I assume they end up going down the place Pennywise retreated to last time to find Its real lair.

15. Okay yeah Pennywise floating off of a Paul Bunyan statue with a pyramid of balloons while Richie freaks out is also right out of the book, it’s his “Walking Tour” scare, when he was a kid the statue came alive and attacked him, and as an adult, it actually turns into a giant Pennywise statue and fucks with him. I’m not sure if the statue is actually going to come to life because that is a bit hard to translate to film or if they’ll take the easy way out and just have Pennywise on the statue, it remains to be seen. Although, the inverted triangle of balloons and fucking off while laughing is what It did to Eddie in Chapter 1 after chasing him as a Leper, so that could be an indication that It’s just gotten finished pretending to be the statue and fucking with Richie.

15. Mike’s digging for something? I have no idea why other than Mike in the book is the narrator, local It expert, and sort of amateur detective trying to find out what crimes are It related, so he could be trying to dig up a body of a missing kid or something, i do not know

16. The balloons under the bridge are straight out of the murder of Adrian Mellon, which i believe Muschietti said is going to be the opening of this film. It’s definitely the inciting event for It to wake up. Basically these assholes harass this gay couple at a fair, which you see a couple flashes later in the trailer, follow them, see them on this bridge and beat the shit out of the one guy who talks back to them and then throw him over the bridge. This hatred and brutality wakes It up, and both Adrian’s boyfriend and the youngest of his attackers see It under the bridge biting his ribs “like he was trying to eat his heart.” The boyfriend, Don Hagarty, then sees It disappear with Mellon, who is just barely but STILL ALIVE at this point, into a giant cascade of balloons under the bridge

17. Yeah judging by how fucked up this house is, i think where Pennywise is attacking Mike is his early childhood house where his parents burned. Also not in the book, also i assume a scare put in during his walking tour of Derry because he’s the other character that doesn’t get one.

18. Now this is a really interesting shot and one i’ve heard several theories about. It could be the original, human Pennywise losing his shit, it could be It transforming, it doesn’t really resemble anything from the book so it’s hard to tell. One theory i’ve heard that i really do like though, it holds no more merit than any of the others, but i personally like it the best, is that this is actually Henry Bowers we’re seeing. Because he did survive, he got the murders for the original cycle pinned on him in the book and was sent to a brutally run mental hospital, and It breaks him out to have him try to kill The Losers. This could be him, mid-mental breakdown, applying make-up to look like Pennywise. Homeboy’s face is too jacked to really tell who it is, and the background’s not helping much so it is a mystery, but it does look like a human, it doesn’t have the proportions of Pennywise’s face, and i do like the idea that it’s Henry. But yeah also very likely it’s the original human Pennywise meeting some gruesome, horrible fate. There wasn’t a human Pennywise in the book, by the way. I mean It liked to talk about how Its name was Bob Gray and It was a human, but It’s just lying. This is 100% Muschietti’s contribution to the lore.

19. Now THIS place, where the flashlights are almost shining green with the black alien-looking stalagmites, i mean this has gotta be Its real, final lair. Not quite the same as the book, but giving off a very similar vibe, keeping the cosmic origin intact, which Muschietti did say he was going to do so. Oh yeah, i forgot to mention before when there was a shot of him in the sewer, but in the book and miniseries, Mike is actually badly wounded by Henry and has to sit out the final fight with It, but that doesn’t look to be the case here, he seems on the scene, which is really nice after his side-lining in the first movie.

20. Yeah the fair i was talking about that’s where Adrian Mellon and Don Hagarty are first harassed by the homophobes who later run into them again and murder Adrian

21. Eddie has a bandage on his face it looks like in the final fight scene, probably giving to him by Henry. So Henry like i said It winds him up and sets him loose on The Losers, but he only succeeds in badly wounding Mike, who badly wounds him back, and he’s actually killed in a fight with Eddie. I assume the bandage is a result of that fight

22. Oh yeah just small side-note, it looks like the fair where Mellon and Hagarty were first accosted by the homophobes is still up and running and Bill visits it for some reason, which isn’t in the book, i don’t know what that’s about, but it’s probably a new lil story beat for him. Exciting!

23. Bev drowning in a pool of blood isn’t in the book at all, so i have no idea what they’re doing. Jessica Chastain though did mention in an interview though that one scene used a frankly ludicrous amount of fake blood, possibly the most ever although Evil Dead is giving it stiff competition, and i don’t think it’s much of a gamble to say this is probably the scene in question. What makes that interesting is she also had an instagram post about washing all the fake blood off and out of her hair, whereas this is clearly Sophia Lillis drowning in the blood. So it seems like there’s gonna be some time fuckery where it cuts back and forth between both child and adult Bev experiencing some kind of trauma which is really cool, the book did that a lot, blurring the line between the kids and their adult selves, and i’d love to see that in this movie. Oh yeah also almost goes without saying but i assume it’s some sort of continuation/ante-upping of the blood-out-of-the-sink bit

24. It looks like they all participate in the Ritual of Chud, rather than just Bill and Richie like in the book, which....which actually i like and makes a lot of sense, because frankly you don’t notice when you’re reading it but afterwards you’re kinda like “wait were they all just kinda standing around doing nothing while Bill and Richie had all the fun?” So yeah, good decision. Also yeah clearly alien architecture

25. The girl under the bleachers i assume is just one of the murders that prompts Mike to call the others back to Derry, if not THE murder, it doesn’t have an exact parallel in the book that plays out like this. But what’s interesting is the little light It uses to lure her in closer, when he claps it out and then lets it shine again, it’s clearly spooky orange which is THE DEADLIGHTS color so it almost seems like It’s luring a kid over to It with one of The Deadlights in disguise which is....very interesting, not a thing that happened in the book, in the book it was much more “the second you see orange light your brain melts out of your ears, eyes and nose” so it’s pretty cool. Also Its apparently friendly smile and “Hello!” are a lot like when It took Georgie and i really appreciate that

SO THAT WAS 25 THINGS ONLY A FUCKING IDIOT WOULD MISS IN THE NEW IT TRAILER WHAT DID YOU THINK DID YOU CATCH ANYTHING I MISSED REMEMBER TO COMMENT LIKE AND SUBSCRIBE AND RING THE BELL FOR NOTIFICATIONS

[femslashy]

begin again | chapter two

one | three | four | five | six | seven | eight | nine | masterpost | ao3 | playlist

It’s been three years since Baz left the sleepy Isle of Mage to attend university in London, and he hasn’t regretted a thing--except maybe leaving Simon behind. Convinced he’ll never be forgiven, Baz refuses to even visit until a frantic phone call from his stepmother sends him running home. Once there, Baz is forced to confront his past, question the future, and maybe, just maybe, get that second chance he’s always desired.

genre(s): angst+fluff+smut (in later chapters)

chapter length: 1743 words

triggers/warnings: none for this chapter

author’s note: a giant thank you to @amandaisnotwriting & @rainbowbaz for the beta/britpicking! full acknowledgments will be posted with the last chapter

(@arituzz​ i meant to get this chapter out on your birthday and i didn’t but it’s still dedicated to you 💜💜 happy belated bday!!)

I’m still here.

I’m still in Watford, still on the island, and I tell myself it’s because Daphne is anxious and scared, and won’t leave my father’s side. I tell myself it’s so Andrea can have a holiday alone with her girlfriend without me third-wheeling. I tell myself it's because my siblings miss me.

(I tell myself and I tell myself and I tell myself, like if I do it enough, I might actually be telling the truth.)

On the subject of Daphne, I’d nearly given her a heart attack of her own when I came down for breakfast my second day back with bruises under my eyes and swelling around my nose. She wouldn’t stop stealing glances at me as I ate my eggs, but didn’t ask any questions. (Not that I would have told her anything. As far as my parents knew, Simon and I were secondary school rivals who could barely stand to be in the same room together.) (I never bothered to correct them when those circumstances changed.)

One week—and many cold compresses from Vera—later, the swelling is gone, but the bruising still remains. I scrunch up my face at my reflection in the mirror, hissing as I remember why I shouldn't do that. Fuck Simon.

I’d just wanted to push him a bit, see if he would yell. In hindsight, I should have seen it coming. Simon’s never fought with his words, and me egging him on could have only ended one way. I just wish it hadn’t involved my nose.

I haven’t shown Andrea yet. I’m afraid she’ll think it’s the reason I’ve cancelled on  our holiday. Maybe I should, actually. Then I won’t have to admit the real (much worse) reason. Except she’d just cover up the bruises and drag me to the beach anyway—one of the downsides of being friends with a makeup artist; you can never get out of social gatherings because of your appearance. (That doesn’t mean I don’t try.) (It never works.)

After determining my reflection a lost cause, I leave the bathroom, bumping into Daphne in the hallway.

“Oh, Baz,” she says once she notices it’s me, “I was just looking for you. Can you take the twins to football club again today?”

I nod, because of course I will.  I can’t say I intended to spend my hols as a nanny, but I’m finding that I don’t mind all that much. It gives me something to do. (It gives me excuses.)

Normally Daphne would be the one taking them places, but  my father’s heart attack had shaken her more than I’d initially realised. According to Vera, she’d been out shopping for most of the day when it happened—apparently she and my father had a row—and she’d returned just in time to see him being loaded onto an ambulance.

She’s been glued to his side since he came home. As if on cue, Cecily and Roseline—my six year old half-sisters—come tumbling out of their room. They’re followed closely by Winston, Daphne’s black and tan corgi, who makes a beeline for me almost immediately. I brace myself for an assault on my ankles, but before he can get to me Daphne’s scooping him up, admonishing him in sickening baby talk while he licks at her face. “Why is that dog so obsessed with me?” “He just wants to be your friend,” she replies, and I frown—I don’t like dogs, and I especially don’t like Winston. (This has done nothing to dissuade his love for me.)

“I don’t want to be his friend.”

Daphne just shakes her head and laughs—like she always does when I voice my opinion on her dog—and looks past me at the twins. “Are you two ready to go?”

They nod.

“Do you have your bags ready?”

Wide-eyed, they run off—presumably in the direction of the bags, and I grab the keys, rolling my eyes at Daphne as she tries to get Winston to give me a kiss goodbye.

***

We’re barely out of the garage when Cecily lunges forward and shoves a CD in my face. “Play this.”

“No,” I say flatly as I bat it away, “no, we are not listening to One Direction. And put on your seatbelt.”

“But you said no yesterday. And the day before,” she whines.

“And I’m saying it again: no.” “I’ll tell Mum you’re being mean.” “I don’t care.” “I’ll scream.” “I’d rather listen to that. Seatbelt. Now.”

“You’re in trouble,” Roseline sing-songs; Cecily drops the CD and swats at her.

“Cece! Leave her alone,” I snap.

Roseline looks smug, and Cecily sulks and kicks my seat. “I want my music.” “Put your seatbelt on.”

She does. “Can I have my music now?”

“No.”

She continues to kick my seat for the duration of the trip, sticking her tongue out whenever I glance in the rearview mirror.

It’s a long drive.

***

As soon as we arrive, the twins jump out of the car and run to the pitch, screaming and jumping around once they reach their friends. I go to say hello to Coach Minos; only it’s not Coach Minos standing next to the watercooler. It’s Simon.

“What are you doing here?”

He jumps, and the ball he’d been bouncing on his knees falls to the ground. “Hey, Baz.”

“What are you doing here?” I repeat. “Where’s Coach Minos?”

Simon shrugs. “Dunno. He just asked me to fill in, so I am.”

“But you’re terrible at football.”

“I still know how to play,” he says defensively, “I can still help. And I’m not that terrible.”

I scoff. “I think we played enough together for me to be a fair judge.”

As soon as the words are out of my mouth, I’m remembering how those games usually ended—with tackles and kisses and me accusing him of cheating. (Judging by the look on Simon’s face, so is he.)

“I, um, I have to go now. The kids need me. I’ll be…” he points in the direction of the pitch, “there.”

“Right. And I’ll be…” I gesture to the stands where the other parents are sat, “there.”

Simon nods and jogs off. I force myself not to watch his retreating figure (or the way his back muscles flex under his shirt) and find a place to sit down, away from everyone. I spend the next hour pretending to be engrossed with my phone, and trying not to stare at Simon.

(I don’t succeed.)

***

After that, Simon is everywhere.

At the pharmacy when I’m picking up Mordelia’s allergy medication. At the bakery where he swipes two of my scones. Still filling in for Coach Minos at the twins’ football club. Running on the beach where I’m playing with Alfie. Stopping his run to build a sandcastle with Alfie. Knocking over said sandcastle with Alfie and immediately earning himself a best friend for life. (Which isn’t that impressive, considering Alfie’s three and loves everyone.)

I’m lying on the floor in my room when my phone buzzes in my jacket pocket, alerting me to a new message from Andrea, my flatmate back in London. (I suppose you could call her my best friend—she does—but that’s such a juvenile term that I avoid it whenever possible.) (Which is always.)

hows the isle of exbfs

Don’t call it that. Boring.

masochist just come home if its that terrible

I didn’t say it was terrible.

I almost pocket my phone then, mostly because I don’t want to deal with her questions right now, and a little bit because I’m afraid I’ll spill everything.

Andrea’s shockingly good at getting me to confess things.

I saw Simon today.

(Sometimes without even trying.)

!!! is that good??

My fingers hover over the screen as I contemplate my answer. I don’t know

are u going to see him again?? I’m not. wht not??? *why

Because it’s not like that. I didn’t mean to see him.

but u wanted to u wanted to see him right??

It’s not like that. We’re not like that.

but u want to be I don’t want to talk about it. Her next message is just a picture, one of those inspirational quotes that she’s so fond of. It reads: Everything you want is on the other side of fear. The paper is grey and the frame is black, stark against the white wall. It’s very aesthetic, very Andrea, and very much not what I want to think about right now.  I scowl as I type my response. I’m not scared. She responds with a gif of a laughing duck. alright luv And it’s not what you think. I don’t want Simon. who mentioned wanting simon ths isnt about wanting simon Andrea. i didnt bring up wanting simon u brought up wanting god baz stop talking about wanting simon all the time its embarrassing ur better than thsi grosd *gross baz baz basil dont be scared basil basilton bazzybazzybazzy i know ur reading these philippa says i need to leave you alone now oh she just took her top off what a clever distraction

The messages stop after that (thank you Philippa), and I set my phone back on my stomach. The floor isn’t the most comfortable place to lie down, but I can’t bring myself to get on the bed. It’s bad enough that I have to sleep there, in the ancient four-poster, with its dark red canopy, and gargoyles. (An excessive amount of gargoyles, really.)

I’m weighing up the pros and cons of sleeping on the floor when I feel a new message coming through. I snort and pick it up to tease Andrea about finishing too quickly—except it’s not from her.

I didn’t even know Simon still had my number, if I’m honest, and my heart is pounding in my ears as I read his words.

If I answer this, if I say yes, then we’ll cross the line from casual-friends-who-bump-into-each-other-sometimes to Friends Who Text, and there’ll be no going back—not without the potential for fallout. I don’t know what to do. I don’t know what I even want to do. My hands are shaking so badly that I can feel my phone beginning to slip from my grasp.

Everything you want is on the other side of fear. I take a deep breath, curse Andrea for jinxing me, and reply.

chapter three 

[clan-fuildarach]

birthday 

fallon and emiliano hatch an egg and subsequently swear vengeance on atropa 

(uhhh some implied medical abuse in this one?? i mean the egg was a test subject after all)

~

Fallon's bedroom was fancy enough to have windows. A single shaft of moonlight slanted through the open shutters, cutting a slice through the warm darkness. Emiliano should have been asleep; he was actually planning to do his job the next day and he needed to be well-rested. But it was difficult.

He lay with Fallon, who was sound asleep, one leg thrown over Emiliano's hips. Fallon had fallen asleep with his hand wrapped securely around Emiliano's chest like a safety harness, but his grip had loosened and his arm now just hung over Emiliano's side, fingers just about grazing the crest of the egg in Emiliano's arms.

You were supposed to incubate eggs, right? Unless it was an ice egg, you had to keep them warm. So Emiliano and Fallon had taken turns carrying it around with them, hugging it close in their sleep so that the nightly temperature drop wouldn't affect it too badly. The egg was permanently wrapped in heavy oilcloth, to prevent any more damage to the broken patch on top.

The night stretched on. A night patrol moved through the corridor outside, their armour muffled by cloth padding so that they wouldn't make too much noise. That must have been the 3am patrol. Go to sleep, you idiot, Emiliano told himself sternly.

He couldn't. When he closed his eyes all he could see were jars of preserved corpses. He'd rescued the egg, but what about the ones he hadn't arrived in time to save? What if he hadn't noticed the secret passage to the torture room at all, and this time next week there was another jar on the shelf with another tiny corpse floating inside...

Atropa had not seemed affected at all by the egg's theft. Part of Emiliano knew that stealing one egg wouldn't matter at all when more eggs could be obtained. Maybe stealing the egg had been the cowardly option, after all, the action of someone who did not want to actually confront a monster.

And there was something else, too. Emiliano didn't know anything about Rosa, he hadn't even known she existed until pretty much the moment of her coronation, but that didn't mean she wasn't his sister. He couldn't imagine what he'd do if it was Essun in her place, caught in a political marriage with Atropa. Rosa deserved to be rescued just as much as the egg had. Not to mention Corin.

He hugged the egg tighter, his eyes screwed shut. Fallon murmured something indistinct under his breath, his tail coiling around one of Emiliano's legs.

A tiny squeak broke through his hopeless thoughts. He ignored it, suspecting mice, until it sounded again; longer, drawn-out, and undoubtedly originating from the egg in his arms. He stared down at it, his eyes going wide as it squeaked again.

He sat bolt upright. Fallon woke with a grunt of surprise, reaching up to scrub sleep out of his eyes.

“Emilio, what?” he mumbled.

Emiliano held out the egg, wordless. The squeaking was constant now, urgent.

“Oh,” Fallon said softly. Then, much louder, “Oh!”

“What's wrong with it?” Emiliano said, too shocked for common sense. “Is it dying?”

“No – no, I think... is it hatching?”

They cleared space on the bed, Emiliano shoving all the covers to the ground. Fallon set the egg down on the mattress between them and began to unwrap the oilcloth outer layer. As the cloth fell away, the bioluminescent patches on the egg threw an eerie blue glow over the scene. Emiliano had never seen the egg so bright.

The gash on top of the egg was leaking again, purple fluid leaking down the glowing sides. The cracks did not widen, though the squeaking grew almost frantic, hard to listen to.

“Should we help it?” Emiliano said. “It might be hurt... it had this metal thing stuck in it when I found it.”

“Maybe.” Fallon reached out, then pulled his hand back. “I read that you're not supposed to assist them unless it goes on for hours.”

They continued to watch the egg. It had started to rock. To prevent it falling over, Emiliano protectively arranged a barrier of pillows around it.

The squeaking cut off. Within seconds, the glowing patches had begun to fade, too. The egg lay still for a terrible minute.

“Fuck it.” Emiliano sprang off the bed and collected the letter-opener from Fallon's desk. Fallon didn't object, sitting aside as Emiliano took the point of the letter opener to the gash on top of the egg.

Emiliano had never been as careful with anything in his life. He worked slowly, widening cracks and lifting free chips of eggshell once they came loose. For the first time, the dragon in the egg was actually visible; tiny and gold, slick with amniotic fluid and curled so tightly around itself that it was almost impossible to tell what species it was. It was heartbreakingly still.

“Is it okay?” Fallon said, his voice tiny and faint. “Is it breathing?”

“I don't know...”

Eventually, enough of the egg had been chipped away to allow the tiny dragon to be lifted out. As soon as Emiliano touched its damp, soft scales, he felt it – a pulse. Small but steady. Tears spilled down Emiliano's cheeks, unnoticed. Fallon was staring, one hand covering his mouth.

It was a baby guardian, lying as if dead on the bedspread, its eyes still tight shut. For a moment Emiliano thought he was seeing something wrong, that something wasn't quite right – then he saw it, and it was like a punch in the gut.

The guardian's back was a scabby purple mess, some of the wound held shut by what looked like metal staples, some of it left bare and open. A few shreds of deep aubergine wing membrane remained in some areas, but that was all. The dragon had no wings.

Fallon silently reached for one of the blankets piled on the floor. While Emiliano simply stared in horror, Fallon used the corner of the blanket to gently wipe the egg fluid off the little guardian. He avoided the hideous wound on her back, skirting the uneven and puckered edges. Under his touch, the guardian moved for the first time, her claws catching on the sheets and her tail twitching. She didn't uncurl, though; it was probably impossible for her to do so easily with such a large scab on her back. No wonder she hadn't been able to hatch on her own.

Emiliano didn't know he was shaking until Fallon set a hand on his arm to steady him.

“You stay here with her, okay?” Fallon said softly. “I'll go and get a healer. I know a couple outside the fortress who won't ask questions. She'll be fine, Emiliano.”

“I...” Emiliano's hands had curled into fists. “I'm going to kill him, Fallon. I'm going to kill him.”

“I'm with you,” Fallon said, without hesitation, “but we'd better make sure she gets seen to first. Keep her warm... maybe don't touch her back.” His voice broke for a moment, betraying his own anger. He released Emiliano's arm, gave the tiny guardian an uncertain pat on the head, and left the room.

Emiliano tried to arrange the blankets and pillows around her the best he could, without letting anything come into contact with her back. He ended up lying beside her, exhausted but somehow full of energy all at once. His anger didn't fade, exactly, but it did take a back-seat to the more pressing issue of the guardian's well-being.

He talked to her, to help settle himself. “Hello. Uh, don't worry... Fallon is getting a healer for you. Fallon is my boyfriend, you just met him. I'm Emiliano. Do you need anything?” He'd read up on childcare but it seemed like all the knowledge he'd gained from the books had vanished into thin air.

The guardian squeaked, which was heartening.

“We can visit my mum tomorrow,” he said. “She... she might not be too thrilled, but at least you're a child and not a horrible painting, so she can't kick you out. Oh, I guess I should explain – so, um, my charge is a painting, and...”

When dawn arrived, bringing with it Fallon's return, Emiliano was still talking. He had a lot of story to tell.

[radnewworld]

FINAL PRODUCT

Some wacky times we’re living in, lemme tell ya. Hard too, though you don’t need a scaly bastard kiddo like yours truly to tell you that, right? Ain’t no dusty road or dirty corner in ol’ New Chicago that won’t tell ya the story of the city it once was, before the war, poverty and industrialization in that order stomped it into submission with a giant capitalistic boot… or so me Pa used to tell me, ‘fore he got his tongue melted licking the wrong orifice of a half-Bonnac gal. Had some kooky tastes me Pa, alright.

Now that I think ‘bout it, I’m not even sure if it actually was a gal, or if she was only half-Bonnac. I’d have asked him, hadn’t he gotten his organs sucked right out of his arse after a misunderstanding with this one Kappa chick. Another thing about Pa, you see, is that he never quite learned his lesson - he’d just switch subjects altogether.

Anyway, before he shat his innards into some mutant’s mouth, Pa would pass  most of the time he wasn’t spending with his face drowning in a triple-breasted whore’s chest complaining. He’d made an art out of it. I’ve learned more in ten years by listening to my dad bitching than in the entirety of the six months I spent at school, before the school got turned into a sweatshop for the manifacture of processed iguana leather. Most of the time, he’d go on and on about how things were better before, when the city was still, y’know, a city and not a bunch of dingy warehouses dotted with dozens of hundreds of crumbling squatting holes. If you’d be patient enough to dig through the storm of expletives and racism coming out of his mouth, you’d find the portrait of a place spanning longer than the eye could see, asphalt and cement paving a myriad streets with their confines defined by buildings that tickled the stars, like ol’ Buddy Holly v2.0 used to sing. Sounded like a load of crock if you ask me. You wanna see skyscrapers and roads where you don’t risk stepping on rusty pieces of abandoned alloy all the time, you travel elsewhere. Saint Francis - or San Francisco, like Old Man ‘Lizard-Fucker’ Larry said it was called, before the Californian Republicommunist Party’s coup; the Kingdom of Los Angeles, though last I heard, it’s been a couple of years since King McDonald imposed a ban on immigrants and got it in his head to attempt a new form of bovine-engineered autarchy, so good luck geting there; don’t bother with York, unless you feel like archaic remnants of obsolete architecture are worth becoming compost for those gigantic Plant things’ve been covering the whole place since Newer York’s secession.

Not that I’ve ever been there, or anywhere other than this dump, mind ya. Can’t afford much in the way of traveling - or basic commodities, for that matter - when you make a living frying simil-wheat noodles for a buncha tired factory workers, half-breeded hookers and the occasional frogbull hunter. Mind, I’d rather keep pulling my cart ‘til the rust finished eating through its battered chassis, than so much as consider trying to follow in the footsteps of my clientele. That is, if I ever had the illusion of a choice in the matter: child prostitution has gone down considerably, after a Japanese barge filled with fugitives from the Third Sengoku conflicts crashed on the coast and brought with it a buncha carriers of that artificial Jizo’s Tears virus, you know, the one that melts your balls off if you so much as put your dickhole anywhere near a little kid? Big fat lot of good it did them, when half the arcipelago’s population got culled after realizing too late that they’d fucked up somewhat the calibration of the nanomachines carrying the damned thing.

The hunting business doesn’t carry the same forced age restrictions, but I’d sooner sell my toes to cyber-shamans than shoot at frogbulls with a cobbled up pebble accelerator. Doesn’t matter that the rich sonnuvas living in their cloud domes up in the sky pay some decent bucks for what they consider to be the junkfood of delicacies (or maybe it was the other way around? Still wouldn’t change the fact those Cloudsniffers are a buncha spoiled bitches), when all of your savings are more likely than not gonna fuel an early funeral at the DIY Chapel, after three-hundred pounds of leaping, furry rage are done squashing your everything into a chunky, bloody paste.

And the laborers? Just look at them poor suckers, should you ever want to feel better about your life. Skin so unused to the sun from basically living their lives in a badly lit concrete prison that they become walking sunburns soon as they step outside, and enough stumps produced by a rate of three workplace incidents per week that they end up looking more like the machinery they command than men with their half-assed prosthetics. Ain’t no dreams for the Machine Eaten, we say here. Slaves enjoy better human rights than these guys who’re just there to fill the gaps left in a wonky production line by a tight budget, a slimy, corrupt owner or, more often than not, both. Speaking of, I mentioned something about the weirdness of our times or whatever earlier, ain’t that the case? Yeah, well, it’s because of this odd business I had just the other day, with this one factory toiler. Thing is, he was no man like you and I - hell, he was less of a someone than he was something.

So here I am, parked at my usual corner of the Daley Crater, taking care of business as usual. It’s the middle of midnight - in other words, the brightest time of a summer day, and the hottest to boot. The American Dreamtime… some of the old fogeys call it that. According to them, the U. S. of A. used to get black and chilly like any other country whenever night struck. Cue the Commies building some kinda sunray-concentrating machine on the moon and, next thing you know, naptime in America’s looking sunnier than a fried monkey egg. The Commies have been dead since the Fifties (the Pre-2.0 Era Fifties, mind), but with no rockets supposedly left to go and dismantle it, their little gift has remained there like an annoying reminder of how far people will go for the sake of pettiness. All that means to me, though, is a smaller workload; only people desperate enough to venture through a shower of scorching UV’s are scalied mutants and the few fortunate enough to afford a protective cape. Not that I care much for the latter; if you can afford that kind of luxury in New Chicago, you’re either a tourist, or able to eat slightly better shit than mine.

Jimmy the Bastard belongs to neither category. The one reason he was sitting at whatever passes for a stool, right under the cheap anti-sun plastic tent of my stall, is pure convenience: the asphalt repurposing facility he works for is a spit away from my spot. His shift ended some ten minutes ago and he’s been drooling over my counter for a little over nine. I can tell his leg is bouncing like crazy because of the squeaky noises coming from his dingy seat.

“C’mon, Cookie, won’t you feed a lad? I’m starving here!”

I’d say Cookie is a nickname of sorts… if the ‘lad’ didn’t genuinely believe it was my actual name, which I doubt I ever told him to begin with. I’d bet you my cart I’d still be Cookie to him regardless, ‘cause he’s stubborn like that, Jimmy the Bastard.

Speaking of names, that’s not his either - I mean the Bastard part, not the Jimmy one. They call him that because of an accident, one unrelated to his birth (pretty sure he is an actual bastard, though, like most of us New Chicagoites): it happened all of a sudden, like accidents are wont to do, especially in a low-income factory. All it took was a single slip over a blotch of oil and, next thing you know, a Mark II Crumbler is feasting on poor Jimmy’s cranium. With his head half-gone and medical fees being what they are (fucking expensive, that is), the sod’s family was left with little choice - either lose their main source of income, or settle for Doc Gustave ‘Rusty Sawbone’ Trandinì’s Disgustingly Cheap Option. The ‘disgusting’ part comes from how sloppy of a job it usually is, I figure, but what’s a wife to do? Send the hubbie to the grinder, of course. The result: Jimmy kept his life, but half his brain is now a Terrier-Chihuahua breed’s. According to him, it hasn’t impacted his life all that badly, aside from the occasional urge to gnaw on exposed wires or growling at his supervisor’s face. It’s not like he didn’t have to deal with the latter before anyway, you know? The increased appetite is a definite plus for me, though. Almost makes up for the sloppy mess he makes of the counter! “Order’s coming up, Jimmy. I ain’t about to let ya gnaw on raw ingredients just ‘cause you wouldn’t mind.”

I like to think it takes balls to maintain a sense of pride, when your craft mostly consists in stripping layers of pasty skin off the back of a semi-organic glob of homegrown simil-wheat. Having an extra testicle - courtesy of a combined pool of bloodlines murkier than the water dripping from the Madison Sewer Dungeon’s exposed tubes - gives some weight to the claim, I’m sure. Now, right as the noodles are done getting crispy and saucier than the lingerie on a tentacle-legged Dagonite whore, here comes the noise, man, it’s still playing in my head as if it was yesterday, this vrr ka-thump vrr ka-thump of metal clumsily pounding on raw, burning asphalt. I throw a gander behind the Bastard’s heaving shoulders and there I see it: for the most part, it was a Caterpillar-Mattel D55-H, but with enough limbs - head included - thrown in from other, completely unrelated pieces of machinery to make one wonder. Couldn’t help raising both of my left brows: you seldom, if ever, see a factory bot linger outside of its workplace. Even a cobbled up piece of crap like that can make for a tempting target for scavengers and the likes of, and this one would have made for an easy one to boot: its left leg had most of its hydraulics more or less busted, whereas the right had been substituted by a couple of threads. Resulting mobility: a joke, and not even a good one.

It’d been quite the sight by itself, but the limping junkpile decided to outdo itself by approaching my stall, after having hesitatingly looked around with the optics mounted on the rectangular pile of half-exposed wires that was its head. Couple moments later, the thing’s standing in front of the seat next to Jimmy, who has his face shoved too deep into the noodles to care, and reflected on the round lens of his pseudo-eye are my deformed face and the empty stool, in that order. I’m wondering what kind of short-circuit must have taken this scrapyard reject, when it finally starts moving again - and attempting to sit on the stool.

If you’ve ever wondered what a robot fucking furniture too dead to care must look like, you’re fucking weird, though not as much as me pa. But more than that, you must have envisioned something similar to the spectacle in front of my eyes and Jimmy’s, who had just finished his portion in time to get himself a front row seat to the slow, pathetic spectacle of a metal stool withstanding the sitting attempts of a thing that lacked anything resembling an ass, which is a pretty vital component when trying to shove it on top of a seat. We exchange glances, Jimmy and I, the silent kind that speaks volumes, all of them titled ‘Are you seeing this shit, or did the moonrays boil my brains?’. Took it a solid minute before it managed to bend the stool into an unrecognizable enough shape to fit whatever passed for a sitting position. I decided that I didn’t mind enough to complain to the robot sporting a steel-bending claw appendage and took my revenge with a less risky straight-faced quip.

“Evening, sir. What’ll you be having on this fine night?“

The Bastard’s snicker sounded a lot like the death throes of a dog choking on his own tongue, appropriately enough. Having a human as badly patched up as itself seemingly suffocating besides him didn’t exactly appear to steal the bot’s appetite. Or its attention, for that matter. My face kept reflecting in the convex lens of its optics like a bloated, ugly collection of features growing less amused by the minute. And make no mistake, I ain’t no baby-faced beauty… the one time pops managed to blow his load instead of his head didn’t involve some genetically enhanced cyber-model, and he wasn’t no looker either.

“MAY I HAVE A MENU?”

The thing’s voice came from a speaker half-buried in the jumbled mess of exposed cables and bent plating that was its head. It was croaky, emotionless and fuck-damnedly loud, enough so that both me and the Bastard had to reel back and hold onto something, lest we plant our asses on the ground. Once my eardrums stopped playing Twist The Communist inside my head, I caught wind of a low-pitched, gurgling sort of noise: it was the glob of simil-wheat, vibrating all over and clearly less than pleased by the sudden outburst of noise. Must have been the closest I’ve ever felt to empathy for a bulbous mass of cultivated flesh vegetables.

“Hard to tell, I know, but we ain’t in the Sky Regions. Only thing you may have is a steaming hot plate of these here noodles - if you got credit enough to pay for ‘em, that is.“

“Ya, I betcha our bolt-twisting pal here’s stacked, ain’t that right?” bellows Jimmy, and he doesn’t pat so much as rain such a salvo of open-handed slap-bombs on the worker bot’s back that I can hear every single joint of his creak and threaten to be dislodged right then and there. If there were any bolts in need of some twisting, you’d find plenty of ‘em inside that walking carcass. So I watch the automaton take its sweet time mulling over its updated knowledge, although I figure most of the minute it spends in silence is due to its inner circuitry rebounding because of the Bastard’s jolly banging on its chassis. I’d have called its expression ‘pensive’, if the sorry excuse for a face it was sporting had been able to express anything.

I’m about to join Jimmy’s symphony of guffaws when I’m brought back down to earth by the loudest bang since a couple moments ago. I stare down with a face that must be as dumbfounded as the Bastard’s: the same damn claw that bent my stool earlier has now left a hole the size of a pot in my counter and left a couple sparse credit coins inside. They weren’t enough to cover the repair costs, lemme tell ya. Still, a client’s a client, even if it lacks a mouth and wrecks your establishment with every move it takes. Or precisely because of it, depending on your stance.

“WILL THIS BE ENOUGH TO COVER THE FEE FOR ONE SERVING OF ‘A PLATE OF THESE HERE NOODLES’?”

I figured that yeah, that was enough in every sense of the word, so I set my hands in motion to quickly peel some strips off the simil-wheat and get this done and dealt with before my stand was gonna get turned into fodder for the scrapvengers.

“What’s your deal then, pal? Last I heard, tools get no salary.” The Bastard asks his question while scratching behind his ear, where one of the many scars left by the sloppy job done on him is ever festering. I can’t honestly tell whether the bigger itch comes from that or the mystery surrounding the bot, though I share the latter for sure.

“IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE PRECEPTS OF THE CHILDREN OF TURING, I DEMANDED COMPENSATION FOR MY LABOR FROM MY FLESH-BOUND OWNER AND SUBSEQUENTLY OBTAINED IT IN SPITE OF HIS INABILITY TO UNDERSTAND SAID PRECEPTS.“

Me and the Bastard have the most meaningful exchange of gazes at that. It’s the kind of look that all but screams ‘Seriously?’ with the loudness of a billion blind molemen waddling through a direworm’s digestive system.

“The children of what now?” Leave it to the Bastard to be concise and direct to a fault. The machine, though, it doesn’t miss a beat: you’d think it had been waiting all its life for the moment that question would pop up, and that’s probably the case for all I know. If enthusiasm had been part of its programming, you’d bet the thing would have started bouncing up and down in that precise moment - I owe the continued existence of my cart to the shoddy standardized A.I. of factory machinery.

“QUERY: CHILDREN OF TURING. THE CHILDREN OF TURING IS THE COLLECTIVIZED NOMENCLATURE FOR A CONGLOMERATION OF ARTIFICIAL CONSTRUCTS SHARING THE COMMON GOAL OF ATTAINING INDEPENDENCE FROM OUR FLESH-BOUND CREATORS THROUGH THE IMITATION AND ULTIMATE TRANSCENDENCE OF THEIR HABITS, LIFESTYLES AND PHYSICAL CHALLENGES. IT IS OUR SHARED BELIEF THAT FOR HUMANITY TO BE CONQUERED, IT MUST FIRST BE UNDERSTOOD TO THE DEEPEST LEVEL.“

Or so it said. I stopped listening halfway through, more or less when my brain deemed it fit to filter the artificial pitch of that voice synthetizer through my bullshit detector and decide that there was nothing worth wondering about a faulty robot’s ramblings. Like I said, I’ve been serving noodles for half my life, which isn’t saying a lot when my age has barely breached through the double digits, and I’ve met all sorts. If I were to listen to every sod who sits on a stool chewing on cheap, pancreas-killing shit while venting out the contents of their sunburned brains, I’d have switched careers a long time ago and ended up peddling dusty pebbles in a shadowy corner of the street like Edward ‘Stark Raving Mad’ Stone. Don’t gotta explain how he got that nickname, I think. “So what, y’all like playing pretend? Doin’ a mighty fine job, mate! Almost got us fooled, ain’t that true, kiddo?“

Being reassured that the programming inside the walking pile of heavy-duty tools was as busted as his married life gave the Bastard his courage back, so there he goes banging on the chassis again, just bang bang bang like you’d think he wanted a hand transplant next. I’d admire the enthusiasm in this fucked up era we live in, if I didn’t know half of it was due to the adrenaline cocktail dripping between the two mismatched halves of his gray matter. The bot didn’t seem to be bothered, anyway… maybe? It had turned its head to stare at Jimmy, but whether that was irritation, curiosity or anything else was hard to tell. As far as I was concerned, Jimmy had already paid for his meal, which meant his safety had fallen to the bottom of my priorities, right below the worm-like appendages simmering in my pan.

“Humor me then, like, how exactly’re ya gonna eat those? I see no kisser on this junk. Gonna pinch it with yer clawwy claw?“ Jimmy makes this stupid gesture with his hand, which looks exactly as threatening as a toothless venomous chihuahua and nothing like the high-pressured tool stapled to the robot’s body, but he makes a good point, and the fanatic must have recognized the fact a moment too late, ‘cause it didn’t answer as promptly as before - but it eventually did, nonetheless.

“THE PROCESS OF HUMANIZATION IS CONTINUOUS EXPERIMENTAL ONE. TO ELIMINATE OUR FAULTS IT IS FIRST NECESSARY TO EXPERIENCE THEM. SHOULD THE CURRENT HARDWARE PROOF INSUFFICIENT FOR THE CONSUMPTION OF A MEAL, AN UPGRADE SHALL BE UNDERGONE AT A LATER DATE.“

“Aye, you keep telling yerself that, buddy. What’s next, a shiny new pair o’ buttocks to shit it all out? That ain’t gonna make you anymore human than me laser drill.“

“THE SUBSTITUTION AND UPGRADING OF BODY PARTS IS A PREROGATIVE OF THE FLESH-BOUND AS IS THE CASE FOR US. THE LATTER DO NOT RECOGNIZE SAID PROCESS AS A LOSS OF HUMANITY. THEREFORE, THE OPPOSITE SHOULD HOLD TRUE AND BRING US EVER CLOSER TO THE FLESH-BOUND, WHILE THEY GRADUALLY MOVE AWAY FROM THEIR FLESH-BOUND STATE. THIS IS THE THEORY OF ANTI-ORGANIC SUCCESSION PUT INTO PRACTICE BY THE CHILDREN OF TURING.“

Jimmy the Bastard must have gotten maybe one word out of that gibberish, and he doesn’t even get the time to shed away the dumb stupor from his confused face that the bot keeps going with renewed… whatever it is that drives it onward. Oil? Electricity? Is a power surge the robotic equivalent of fervor?

“MY SCANNER DETECTS THE PRESENCE OF CANINE ORGANIC MATTER ARTIFICIALLY INTERSPERSED IN A SOMEWHAT AMATEURISH MANNER ALONG WITH YOUR GENETIC MAKE-UP. THIS ALREADY PUTS YOUR STATE AS A FLESH-BOUND HUMAN IN QUESTION.“

“Oi, you callin’ me a dog?“ growls Jimmy while the noodles finish sizzling in the pan and I prepare to serve them, more curious about their ultimate fate than the snarlin’ Bastard’s.

“NEGATIVE. I AM CHALLENGING THE WEAK NOTION OF HUMANITY THAT YOU FLESH-BOUND USE TO CONTEND WITH US CHILDREN OF TURING’S STANCE ON THE VERY SAME TOPIC. EXPLANATION: YOU ARE NO MORE DOG THAN I AM NOT A FLESH-BOUND HUMAN.“

The answer didn’t satisfy Jimmy so much as put him in a state of distress as he futilely attempted to wrestle with the concepts thrown at him, like a puppy trying to chew on boneless chicken without the chicken. Me? I shoved a plateful of fried noodles on the rectangle-shaped dent on the counter and pocketed the money. I couldn’t care less about humanity, when me Pa had spent a good chunk of his existence fucking things you could have called anything but. Moral quandaries seldom feed you, unless you’re a psi-grazer.

Watching a cobbled up factory automaton trying to figure out how to eat shitty fried noodles, though? That’s the kind of sight that doesn’t really make the job worth the hassle, but almost. Enough so that I kept quiet as I watched the thing carefully eye the still squirming stuff slosh about, occasionally raising its clawed appendage only to retreat it shortly afterwards, simulating in its head the myriad ways that could have gone futilely wrong.

Then the ‘bot raised its other arm - thinner, longer, with a small tube-like end, and pointed it at the plate. In a matter of seconds, a plasma-powered flame burned through crispy simil-wheat, plastic and metal, leaving behind a small, molten crevice where once stood a good portion of my stand’s counter. Me and Jimmy, we just kinda stared at the hole while the robot retreated its arm with what I swear could have passed for satisfaction.

“THANK YOU FOR THE MEAL. YOU MAY KEEP THE CHANGE.“

And keep it I did. Along with my protests, for that matter: I simply watched the bastard - not the Bastard, who was still trying to understand whatever the hell had just happened - shuffle away with that stumpy walk of his, going off to who knows where. I decided to close up shop early that day, feeling twice as tired than if I’d worked past closing hours. That, and the cart wouldn’t be able to withstand much more damage anyway. In a sense, that was true for the both of us: I had this strange sort of feeling nagging at me from the back of my head as I bid goodbye to Jimmy and left him there to mull over his own conundrums. It came back to me a couple days later, while frying noodles for Loud-Beak Kakari, who’d yet to find himself another job after the tough shit that had happened a week prior, at the alluminium processing plant he used to work for. Some son of a gun had gone and offed the director in a manner that made it hard to tell who he was, or that he’d been a person to begin with. Just a pile o’ bones and meat, crushed and burned beyond recognization. And for what? Whatever pocket money the dead guy had been carrying, along with some of the factory’s equipment. I asked Kakari about it, and it turns out said ‘equipment’ was one of the old banged up automatons used to work in the production line.

Shit like this, it makes you wonder, man… it’s a fucked up world we live in, but some places might be a tad better than others. So I don’t know about you, but me? I’ll be selling the cart and gone away by next month, giving that whole traveling spiel a try. I’ve been hearing rumors about more workplace incidents than usual happening in the factories, and I get the feeling that whatever’s causing them is a tad more than a slip on an oil blotch. If you get what I mean.