#i liked this passage so much i spent a bunch of time trying to figure out how to use an online transliterator for that one word

[hitlikehammers]

Rockstar!Eddie Leaves What He Had With Steve Behind in Hawkins 💔 to Chase His Dreams 🎸

(so why is it that he’s back in Steve’s bed Hawkins every couple months for ‘very pressing reasons’ that are straining Steve’s heart honestly anything but? 🫤❤️‍🩹🥺)

NOTE: this was originally a fill from @eddiemunsonbingo AGES ago, and I’m only bringing it over here NOW because something for the @steddielovemonth is going to be posted soon that is a standalone in its universe, but also very much a sequel to it ♥️

Steve really does try not to think about it in terms of…time.

Maybe that’s foolish. It’s mostly denial. Lots of it isn’t reliable anyway: the score his body keeps isn’t accurate, war-time left over from too many near-misses with a fucking alternate dimension but the popping in his joints and the ringing in his ears and the white hair he pulled out of his scalp and stared blankly at in the sink for a good twenty minutes: those are real things, but they don’t chart the passage of days, of hours, months and fucking years with any real meaning.

It’s been four years. Roughly. Depending on what the start point is. Whether it’s that Spring Break. Whether it’s the first winter. Or the spring after, when Robin begged him to go with her—there’s still time. She still begs, because they still talk given the thread inside them stays tied unbreakable to one another, oblivious to miles between. Maybe it’s measuring from the graduations, the kids—only Erica’s left at Hawkins High, now, though Steve gets calls from the whole bunch of them, Eleven the most, which was maybe surprising, then it’s a good split between Dustin and Will, another surprise. Max calls enough but her calls are calls, with a weight most of the others lack. Lucas’s calls aren’t super frequent but always long, mostly because he talks around the point forever, whatever the point happens to be. Even Mike usually ends up on the other end of the line once a month. It’s…that could be where the time starts from.

Or it could be the summer, that first summer. The one that taught Steve what it was to have a heart just to fucking break it.

Could be that. Impossible to say.

(It’s been 3 years, 7 months, and 14 days. Steve had only counted in retrospect, in the wreckage left behind, because while he’d known there was a deadline in it, to it all, he’d thought he could be enough. That he could change a mind. He’d thought…

Foolish things. Bullshit. Didn’t matter. Could be any fucking date.)

But since the point's come up, and it’s front of Steve’s mind, his least favorite (most favorite) place to find it: he hadn’t expected it. Robin liked to say she saw the signs but. Steve hadn’t watched it happen in slow motion because there wasn’t a single goddamn slow thing about it. Which was…for whatever it was worth, Steve knew falling fast and hard and with everything he was had maybe failed him every time, thus far, but at least he knows that for him?

That means it’s real. He’s all in. He might not be met equal on the other side of the equation—hadn’t been yet, maybe wouldn’t be ever, but he wasn’t having any luck trying to fucking change that fact so, learning to work with what he had was the best he could do. And he had love. He’d never been able to name it to himself so far: not before, and certainly never since. But.

Figuring out the sexuality thing had been a not-bathroom-but-definitely-floor talk on the shitty Family Video carpet sometime around November of ‘85. Slow days, idle comments, and Robin’s suspiciously-but-reliably-gentle-when-the-need-was-dire hand to his shoulder to say no, no: actually wanting to kiss people of any gender wasn’t really…the default Steve had always expected it had to be. How could anyone look at, say, Harrison Ford and not think, oh yeah, I would at least suck his face?

Turned out probably at least half the people on the planet. As in the straight guys and the lesbians. Steve had spent the majority of three days on that disgusting fucking carpet, open to close, popping up to ask Robin if she was sure because what about—

She was sure. And eventually, through a couple of needs for deep breathing and a handful of assurances that it was okay to cry—he appreciated that, but he kept the crying to his room after these long-ass shifts and if Robin stayed for some of those times, that was because she was half his head, half his heart, and she knew what he was going to do sometimes before he did.

They did end up on the floor of his bathroom, a clean one for once, at one point. Maybe because they both held to tradition. Maybe because Steve had largely come to terms with the mindfuck of yet another piece of his world, his self unravelling and rewriting itself, and thought the vodka in his dad’s liquor cabinet was a good way to celebrate. The label was entirely in Russian and Robin had been practicing on hers, said she was pretty sure it was the good shit.

Sometimes you can drink enough of the best shit on an empty stomach, though, and still spew the whole of it up.

Steve sometimes does think he drinks his dad’s best liquor that way on purpose, though. Delightful going down and yeah, it sucks to chuck it up but. The idea that it’s ultimately wasted feels…right.

Anyway: Steve had settled with it all by New Year's, and while he’d hosted the rugrats who could only blabber about their latest campaign with their epic DM, and he’d kissed Robin when the clock turned, well. It felt like a new start, a fresh page.

Something that had the chance at being a good thing.

And nothing much happened in the two-and-a-half-months that followed save for finally catching a glimpse of the D&D god who ran their little club while he was idling in his car to pick up the shitheads, this legendary DM who did not make Steve jealous one tiny bit and who was cool and was edgy and was so fuckin’ cool, Steve, did we tell you got cool he is?! and Steve had said language as monotone as he could before he squinted as out came all the metal and the ink and he’d said your club president dude is Eddie goddamn Munson and he should have kept his mouth shut because the amount of talking that ensued left him with a headache the size of Montana; but.

That was really all that happened until about…mid-March.

Then Spring Break happened.

It could be argued Eddie and Steve grew close enough to pass the acquaintances benchmark, ended up as at least tentative friends on top of necessary battle mates as early as the Upside Down. Whatever reason Eddie gave, he jumped in after Steve. Whatever speech Steve landed on, he didn’t want Dustin orEddie hurt.

It could be argued Steve wasn’t paying attention and didn’t stop in time and landed in the land of Tentative Friends You Wouldn’t Mind Added Benefits With after the…at least after the way Eddie leaned in close and his lips we so red and he called Steve big boy and…

Yeah.

When Steve carries what may or may not be Eddie’s still fucking corpse out of the Upside Down—he can’t tell, every time he tries to check again his own heart's too loud, his own breaths too shaky—but by then, they’re family. Bound in blood. Steve would die for him, like the others. He won’t let him die, if he can fucking help it.

Between him and Max, Steve almost crashes, breaks. Steve’s there when Max’s fingers twitch and he laughs with tears in his eyes and hands over hands and tells her he loves her and he’s sorry and he’s there, tries to talk around the letter he opened and resealed without evidence because Steve knows some tricks too, okay, and her words had broken him but now he could live up to what she thought she was leaving behind, could make sure she had every goddamn thing she thought she was giving up in spades, to roll around in in abundance. He was going to take care of her, whatever she needed. Whatever it took.

Her lips had quirked and the doctors called coincidence, don’t get your hopes up but; Steve knew Max. That was all her.

And there were more tears, he let her fucking feel them; he fucking hoped she’d notice, and remember, and give him so much shit.

Eddie takes longer, pulls out of the woods enough to exhale a few days later, and the way Steve slips out to find the hospital chapel, the only goddamn place he won’t be found by anyone he knows, and bawls his goddamn eyes out?

It’s family, and it’s love because it’s family but…it’s been so quick. It’s been intense, and that probably speeds it along but…

Shit. Shit.

That’s when Steve knows he sets a new goddamn record for himself and falls hard and heavy and stupidin, like, a week and change. Jesus Christ.

It’s in the recovery that they build something though. Something that’s not trauma or terror or the threat of imminent death. Steve spends most of his hours between two hospital rooms listening to progress reports and taking notes and the kids gravitate toward Max—Dustin would have been the outlier but Steve knows he’s not ready, and so he gives his own updates just to his brother when he drives him home after visiting hours—but that means Steve’s Eddie’s most common conversation partner. They talk about bullshit. Steve defends a-ha to the last breath he has. Eddie’s rendered speechless for a second and then frantic when challenged to pick his favorite band. Again when it’s his favorite song, from his favorite band. And again when it’s his favorite song of any song, ever at all. Steve's heart swells in the watching. He’s foolish enough to bask in the glittering of Eddie’s eyes when Steve indulges in talking, scene by scene as guided by the master in the bed beside him, about what his opinions on Star Wars really were. And then guided by no one, just invited to share what his opinions are on the last movie he saw and loved: which was Weird Science, the last movie he watched in a theatre because he and Robin had gone to face their fear or some shit after Starcourt and it was easier than he’d expected. Eddie listens, and nods, and asks if they can rent it when he’s out, before making sure to add  but you should really have a new choice like, eight months later, man, you work at a video store.

Steve was mostly just focused on Eddie more than implying, of his own volition, that he wanted to have a movie night.

Eddie’s released before Max, largely for mobility reasons, so they both go to visit her now. Robin’s put on the night shift when they schedule their movie night and Steve immediately moves to reschedule but she says no, she’s seen it, make Eddie suffer this time. So it’s just them.

They sit closer than they have to, on the couch.

And it’s little things that build from there. Max’s physical therapy is a government secret, like some fancy space-age protocol that has real hopes to put her on her feet again so she needs a ride, and while they could take turns, Steve and Eddie just take turns as to which vehicle they hop into to drive her. They stay when she needs them—not when she asks because she’s Max and she never asks—but it ends up three days a week back and forth and during: together.

And a lot of nights, for a movie or a smoke or a nightmare or a pulled stitch before they’re all taken out: together.

And shifts where Steve doesn’t even bother to bring his own lunch because Eddie Munson, unpredictable and wholly forgetful super-super senior—who Nancy and Hopper and most of all Joyce convinced the School would be finishing his final senior year at home save for tests, and only that once he was cleared by his doctors—that Eddie Munson brought Steve something every single time he worked. A burger, a chili dog, chicken fucking nuggets. A PB&J clearly homemade and cut diagonal.

So yeah. It starts out how it does when Steve’s in trouble. But it builds like…Steve’s never known before.

They kiss in May. Maybe so that it’s not their first, and a total cliche, when Steve kisses him for graduation behind the bleachers.

The sleep together after graduation, high on the thrill of it, and that’s maybe a cliche but Steve could not give a shit less.

And then they're EddieandSteve, only to find out they have been for a while; and this is just something a little deeper, a little bit more.

In ways that mean everything.

Looking back, Steve knows Eddie never minced words about his plan to leave Hawkins in the fall. With a mixtape and a prayer if I have to, Stevie-boy, he’d said once even, and Steve had laughed.

He’d fucking laughed.

So he’d known.

But July bleeds into August and Steve…Steve’s in love, okay, for real in a way that he’s never felt before. Right in a way he’s never felt before. He kinda just…overlooks it. Because Eddie seems to be at least on the same wavelength. Touches him first, reaches for him first: wants him. Looks at him with not just desire or attraction but…something no one’s ever looked at Steve with before.

And so he hopes. More than hopes.

But when Eddie starts packing, Steve can’t breathe.

He buys a set of luggage and goes home to start the same, has half of his not-excessive possessions shoved in when he realizes:

He’s not invited. Eddie’s never asked him to come.

Looking back, he’s afraid he wasted too much of those last weeks. Scared of giving too much away, the hurt from so many sides and the heartache that’s already taking root, but also: the way he clings, but tries not to make it obvious.

Fuck; but of course it was gonna be obvious, and how much energy did he waste, how many opportunities slipped by, because Steve was trying not to give away that Eddie leaving—to get away from a town that hated him, to try and make a real go with his music, to be anywhere without Steve so he could live out the dreams that predated Steve, that Steve had no place in—to try not to give away that all of it; it’d fucking destroy him.

Steve doesn’t know, to this day, how he stood and let Eddie kiss him breathless out the driver-side window, how he waved until Eddie was out of sight. He doesn’t know.

Kind of like he doesn’t know how he fucking keeps doing it.

Eddie throws tapes to every radio station with Van Halen or other top-played bands written on the insert in sharpie like that gives nothing away, and sneaks a demo in every underpaid delivery boy’s hands to record executives as he drives to the West Coast, sends Steve postcards what seems like has to be every goddamn day, filled up with his rambling until there’s no space left, has to draw lines around Steve’s address to make it clear where the damn thing’s going lest it get confused. Like they’re SteveandEddie still. Like only…only the things that changed after graduation are gone.

Steve sobs after about a month of it all, grateful and resentful, hateful and still so goddamn full of love it’s sickening. Literally, it makes him feel nauseous. He…

He keeps every postcard.

When one of them comes to say some idiot in San Francisco accidentally played Corroded Coffin on what’s apparently an important station, and Eddie got a letter in response from one of the labels, he says he’s coming back for the boys, they need to be ready. Steve knows he’s not one of the boys, but.

Eddie wouldn’t have told Steve he was coming if it wouldn’t matter to Steve. And maybe Eddie wasn’t in love with him anymore, maybe never was in love with him.

But he’d be lying if he said he thought Eddie didn’t love him. In a different way. A…you-don’t-get-to-come-with-me-but-I’d-still-want-to-see-you-when-I-stop-back kind of way.

And Steve…Steve’s not a fucking monk or anything. But even Robin doesn’t try to push him when he finally just tells her what he feels, lovesick and pathetic as it is:

I gave everything I had to someone else, and it’d be different if I wanted to back, to give again, but…I don’t.

I don’t want it back, not from him. Not if any part of him, wants to keep any part of it.

And because she’s Robin, she knows he means something else when he says ‘it’. And because she’s Robin? She’d push if she thought it was worth it.

She just holds him, and that’s really the best thing he could ask for.

But it becomes a thing. The boys go with Eddie, and they record new shit to impress...whoever. And they do. They come back for Halloween, because Eddie loves it. The label’s dragging its feet, but they’re not deterred, they’re energized. They come back for Thanksgiving because Wayne loves it—except he doesn’t, Steve knows that, Wayne actually hates trying to make a bird and Eddie had lamented more than once that they ended up with lunchmeat cut into cubes one year when Wayne was particularly frustrated with the process. They go out East, and try a few studios in New York. They come back for Christmas.

Eddie spends most of his time with Steve. Steve doesn’t fucking fight that; wants it…like…

There’s nothing to compare how he wants it to. Nothing exists that fits.

Eddie spends most of the time that he spends with Steve, though?

In Steve’s bed.

And here’s the thing: Steve had a decent amount of experience to compare to, but once they’d fallen into a rhythm, got past the awkward bits, the learning curve? Sex with Eddie had been a goddamn revelation. Not just because he was a man—after he’d left, Steve had forced himself to try, and dispelled that possibility quick as hell��and now?

Now, it’s like they never stopped. Every fucking time, it’s like they never stopped.

Steve’s not surprised in the slightest that he remembers every give and tell of Eddie’s body—of course he goddamn does—but that Eddie doesn’t miss a beat in touching, sucking, licking, worshippingSteve’s? That’s insane. That’s…

Unexpected. Every time it’s unexpected and every time Steve’s shown he wasn’t forgotten when he probably should have been. Eddie’s building a life that doesn’t include him.

He’ll only get in the way.

But Steve is selfish and stubborn and maybe it’s often, like almost strangely so, but it’s only a week or two at a go so he tells himself he’s allowed. He tells himself that it felt like making love in the beginning because Steve was in love, and that it still feels exactly the same because Steve…Steve never stopped.

Steve is still just as goddamn in love.

So yeah. Steve sleeps with Eddie and it’s like…it’s like rationed air. He gets a regular taste and he gets to keep breathing.

And it’s okay. Probably more then. Because he gets Eddie—even a little bit. Even just in scraps. When he has Eddie?

He has him, even for moments that were never made to last.

It’s Easter, this time. The band put out their first record in January. It’s doing really well. Eddie’s over the moon. Someone called about a magazine cover for a publication in Cleveland that’s apparently kind of a big deal, Alt..something. Steve will buy every copy in a fucking 100-mile radius. 200 miles. 500—

It’s Easter. Eddie didn’t lament not celebrating it after Spring Break in ‘86 but he’s back every year now. And if it’s just…come to mean something, or maybe did then and circumstances won out against it? Steve will be here. Steve will be comfort and a reprieve or a hot as hell romp with a familiar body, Steve will…

Yeah. Steve will do whatever’s needed. Wanted. Anything.

Pathetic.

But so much better than nothing.

Case in point: they’re both naked, sweat mostly dried, sharing a joint and it’s comfortable. It’s quiet and gentle and put up against sitting alone on a weeknight, not with Eddie?

It’s heaven.

“So when’s the dream happening?”

Steve looks cross-eyed toward his lips; he hasn’t smoked this thing long enough to have heard wrong. He squints up at Eddie, whose chest he’s laid out on, confused. Offers him the smoke but he waves it away.

“The dream?” Steve asks finally, when Eddie doesn’t seem to want to answer on his own.

Eddie looks at him weird. Not weird for its own sake but like: like he’s staring into him, and then like he’s disbelieving, but then also like he’s seeing him for the first time.

That kind of weird.

“Getting the fuck out of here,” Eddie answers like it’s obvious. “White picket fence. Little nuggets.” He spreads his hands as wide as possible without tossing Steve from where he lies. “See the sights.”

And Steve’s response is immediate. Doesn’t even require a thought.

He laughs. Like, ugly-laughs.

“Man,” he shakes his head as he catches his breath, and passes the joint off this time with purpose, not an offer or a choice as he snorts a little; “that’s not the dream.”

When Eddie doesn’t grab the smoke, Steve finally looks up. Eddie…

Eddie looks like what Steve’s always struggled to understand the word ‘poleaxed’ to mean. He thinks it might be this.

He looks…like something stuck him through the gut. Slapped him silly across the face.

“What d’ya mean?” And it’s just three words, one that’s a cheat, and he says it slow enough to take an age.

Steve breathes out, and then, if he’s gonna be honest, and if he has to keep holding the damn thing anyway, decides to take another drag before speaking:

“Figured out what the dream was, inside the dream,” Steve says, wondering if he’ll get away with the vagary; knowing he won’t.

“All we see or seem?” Eddie jokes a little, but it falls flat, his tone eerily kinda…strained but hollow.

“I like poetry.” Steve smiles up at him, soft, and offers the joint again straight to Eddie’s lips. He takes it this time.

“It was about family. It was about stability, not,” Steve shakes his head, stops talking half-assed around the lungful he’s holding, and lets it out slow; “not in a place, fuck, not in a house, but,” a person he doesn’t say, but he hears it in his head; “it was about sharing it.”

And that's it. That’s the simplest, most straightforward truth. Steve doesn’t think there’s anything complicated, or offensive in it. Hard to swallow. Even if he’s come to terms with it. Is mostly at peace with it.

Which is why it’s weird, that Eddie feels suddenly rigid beneath him.

So Steve turns, and braces his hand on Eddie's chest for balance, and frowns when he doesn’t even have to push down to feel the way his heart’s a fucking riot.

“What?” Steve asks, gentle; Eddie’s face is a portrait of conflict, of distress and Steve can’t fucking figure out why, they just came like four times between them and are sharing some very nice Cali weed—they’re nestled close, they’re together, it’s…

Eddie’s quiet, his breath disconcertingly steady for how his pulse pounds, and then he breathes out slow before covering his face:

“I don’t think I can fuck this up any worse than I already have, so,” he mutters, dejected for reasons Steve can’t even guess, then he laughs, humorless, shakes his head:

“Let me try, I guess.”

Steve frowns, uncomprehending, until:

“I’ve been in love with you forever.”

Steve thinks the world stops. His heart does, at least. Suspended. Silent so he doesn’t miss a syllable.

“And I told myself,” Eddie bites at his lip, worries at the bottom swell; “end of that summer, from the very first, I said: don’t ask him to come with you, even if it breaks your heart,” and oh god, oh god after all this time: Steve doesn’t think he’s projecting to hear the genuinely broken heart in those words for just remembering.

“Don’t ask him to settle, you’re not even in the same universe of what he wants,” fuck, what lies Eddie’s saying; did he believe them? Has he always—“what he needs.”

But Eddie is everything he needs, always was, will always be—

“You’ll never have the picket fence. You can’t give him his nuggets. You should never be trusted to park a Winnebago.”

They could have had a shitty studio apartment. They could have had the kids in college. They could have run the BMW until it died, or sold it to put toward a better van for equipment. They could have—

“You’re selfish, Munson, you’re a rat fucking bastard but,” Eddie’s still going, heart still hammering under Steve’s touch even as Eddie swallows hard and fails to smile, looks ill with the attempt like it hurts to try: “you love him too much for that.”

Oh. Oh god.

“It didn’t break my heart, though,” Eddie clears his throat and glances away, to the ceiling, eyes too bright: oh fuck; “broke my goddamn soul,” and a tear falls, and Steve can’t help but wipe it away, and kiss the track. Even just once.

So he does.

“When I saw you again that first time back,” Eddie starts again, voice rougher and shakier as he reaches a hand for Steve’s. “I could have asked the boys to fly out, the execs offered, but,” and this time, the attempt to grin is more successful, like a weight’s lifted from it: “and you smiled at me, it felt like,” and when he shakes his head this time it’s for disbelief, but the kind that comes with awe; “and when we slotted back together like we’d never been apart, it was…”

Eddie’s voice trails, but it cracks at the end—Steve doesn’t know which does more to stop his words.

He’s grateful, relieved, when they come back. He’s powerless but to give when Eddie touches his cheek so gentle and breathes:

“And I had to tell myself again, and again,” he murmurs, stroking Steve’s skin like he’s precious: “you love him too much to take his dream away from him.”

“What did it matter?” Steve can’t help but ask, no malice in it, just the need to understand. “You had your dream, you have—“

They have a contract. They have an album climbing the charts. They’re not just on their way—they’re there. The only next step is to get bigger, and bigger, and—

“Dreams within dreams, wasn’t it?” Eddie murmurs close to Steve’s cheek, where maybe he’s pressing to be close, or maybe he’s hiding a little, so Steve strokes his hair because he can either way and relishes how Eddie leans, melts into it like always. “Inside the dream?”

Steve nods, more to encourage more words. More Eddie.

“Break my dream open and there’s you with me, every step,” Eddie whispers, his lips warm on Steve’s skin. “Break my heart open, same damn thing,” and that causes Steve to shudder, and his heart to pick up now, too. “Both just kinda crumble if you take out the center.”

Steve can’t quite believe what he’s hearing. Wants to. Doesn’t think they’re lies. It’s just, he…

“Those,” Steve tries to speak but his voice cracks; he clears his throat and kicks his lips while he tucks Eddie into his neck, under his chin: “those would be good lyrics.”

“No,” Eddie shakes his head and nuzzles Steve’s throat with the motion and this can’t be happening.

This can’t be happening, can it?

“No, those words were only ever meant just for you.”

And Eddie kisses the pulse point close to his mouth and holds there, like a sentry and a miser, and holy shit.

Holy shit.

“And I don’t know,” Eddie’s saying more, but it’s pitchy, thready, like he’s barely holding the words together at all; “I don’t know if it’s nostalgia, or convenience, or routine,” his voice breaks again and the sob’s in the word when it comes even if it’s not streaming down on his cheeks: “pity,” and no, no, not fucking ever, how—

“I was never your dream then, and I don’t even know if I can be your inside-dream now, and,” Eddie’s rambling, and he does that when he’s desperate, when he’s overwhelmed and overfull with feeling—and Steve knows that. Steve knows that about him.

Steve knows. Better than he knows himself, Steve still knows him.

“I just want the world for you,” Eddie whispers, stroking up and down Steve’s jaw; “my sweetheart. My sunshine,” he smiles so real and soft and Steve melts, like the heart in his chest starts spilling through his ribs, warm and liquid: “you deserve more than the world, more than fuckin’ me and I,” Eddie shakes his head again, more this time like he’s stopping himself, like it’s a defense mechanism and Steve reaches for his cheeks, broad palms on either side to hold him still because…he doesn’t want Eddie to stop.

Ever.

“Did I ruin it?” Eddie breathes, and barely at that, eyes so wide and swimming and oh, god; “did I—"

And Steve can’t help it. He can’t help but kiss him with all he’s got, even if it couldn’t be all Eddie’s worth in all the world. Steve can’t contain all that Eddie’s worth.

But he can give everything, because this is the man who already has it.

“What the hell was I supposed to be to a rockstar?” Steve tries to talk through his own tight throat, his own growing smile, his own threat of tears bubbling close to the surface. “How the fuck was I ever going to measure up, ever do anything but hold you back when you could have—“

“I come back to you, for you,” Eddie answers immediate; it’s not what Steve’s asking but he won’t lie and say he didn’t want to know, at least a little. “The handful of times I’ve tried,” Eddie shakes his head once now, definitive; “I have always left my everything with you.”

The idea that Steve’s spent all this time feeling empty, and hollow, and missing the best of himself where it lived in the man he loved—the idea he was wrong, that they both were so fucking wrong is…insanity.

“I had a bag half packed.”

Steve doesn’t need to explain further. The noise Eddie makes is pure pain.

“Baby,” he nearly croons, falls into Steve somehow closer, wraps him up tighter; “I wanted to kidnap you in the night.”

“I sobbed in my bed after you were out of sight.”

“I pulled over before the town sign, because I couldn’t see the goddamn road.”

And Steve…Steve doesn’t really have a decision to make about what he says next. What dream he wants; always has.

“I never got rid of the luggage.”

And Eddie hears everything he says in those words, because after everything, Eddie Munson knows him, and…yeah.

Steve’s been kissed in a lot of ways before. By this man in particular, even.

But this: if leaving broke Eddie’s soul, if somehow the lack of Steve somehow did that?

This is…this is the body meeting another body, heart to heart and tasting the way a soul slides back in place. It's Eddie’s hands in his hair like hell never let go and he’s happy about the idea; blissful for it, even. It’s—beyond anything Steve’s ever known. So: yeah.

It’s not a decision. It’s just a fucking given.

♥️

🎸also on ao3

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[coquelicoq]

I sat on a doorstep across the street from Quaglino's and tried to read The Solid State, but the light was too bad. So I started reciting Iliad 1. I am planning to learn the whole thing in case I am thrown in jail some day. People went in and out of Quaglino's. I finished Iliad 1; it was still only 12:30. A couple of people stopped and asked if I was all right. I said I was. I started going through weak Arabic verbs. My favourites are the double and triple weak verbs because they practically shut down in the imperative, but I made myself start with initial hamza and work through. [...] An hour went by; I thought he must have gone somewhere else. I might as well go home. But I'd reached my favourite verb in the whole language & I thought I would go through that first and give it just a little longer. The strange thing about يَيَى is this: here is a triliteral verb in which all three letters are ya; a verb which only occurs in Form II, with the middle ya reduplicated (unfortunately this means the final ya is then written alif, but you can't have everything); a verb which means 'to write the letter ya' (Wright) or 'to write a beautiful ya' (Haywood and Nahmad)! This has got to be the best verb in the language—and Wehr doesn't even bother to put it in the dictionary! Wright, believe it or not, only mentions it to say he isn't going to discuss it because it's rare! Blachère doesn't even mention it! Haywood/Nahmad is the only one to give it decent coverage, and even they don't give the imperative. They do give the jussive, which apparently is yuyayyi; I think this means the imperative would be yayyi. So I sat across from Quaglino's saying yayya yayyat yayyayta yayyayti yayyaytu quietly to myself, and I thought that if he didn't come out by the end I'd go through Form IX (which Blachère calls nettement absurde) just for the fun of it & maybe Form XI which is the intensified form of IX & presumably so absurd it's off the charts.

-Ludo, Aged 11, The Last Samurai by Helen DeWitt, pt v, ch 4, pp 445-446

[charlie-pippin-faraday]

My danganronpa v3 chapter 6 running commentary:

"MY NAME IS MAKOTO??????"

excuse me you black-haired bitch you're not makoto naegi

bro what the HELL was going on in that cutscene i'm so confused

"if my actions result in your deaths so be it" nah there's something wrong here, that doesn't sound like that keebo i know

keebo's protecting us he's stalling keebo i love you i love you so much

guys i gotta level up my FRIENDSHIP POINTS to move ROCKS

ah shit fam we finally found kokichi's lab. it looks like a door from fallout in a literal tunnel underground lol

kokichi wants to be a batman villain so bad

is kokichi actually the ultimate improv comedian or something what is this

what is the "inconsistency" in the hope's peak academy book that shuichi pointed out but won't tell me? come on now don't leave me hanging. is it that makoto established the academy for normies actually? or is it something to do with the secret DR2 killing game?

i'm not wrong about either of those facts, am i? am i misremembering? didn't makoto say in i think the anime that he wanted to establish the new hope's peak for everyone and not just ultimates? and weren't the events of jabberwock island kept a secret from the general public? the fact that he was trying to rehab the remnants of despair in the neo world program was supposed to be a secret, right? to protect them?? am i wrong about that??

that flashback light only had me more confused

woah you can go outside and watch an action sequence of keebo fighting an exisal that's fucking sick

kokichi has the wax figure of rantaro?? just strung up by his bed?? what the????

oh THAT'S where the caged child document went!

so he really WAS the leader of the ultimate improv comedy group

i bet they do flash mobs

i think a more accurate title for him would be "ultimate little shit"

obsessed with the whiteboard in his room with all our pictures on it. he wrote who murdered whom, then wrote "suspicious" by maki, "weird" by keebo, "trustworthy?" by me, and "annoying" by the monokubs lol

REAL makoto naegi??? in the flashback flesh???

hell yeah we're FINALLY going to rantaro's lab!

...now that i'm in here i instantly regret it i don't like it in here

how did kokichi know about the vaults in rantaro's lab early enough to leave those notes? did HE even leave those notes? and WHY do the vaults have a monokuma USB in them?

is it gonna have that message from rantaro that we saw in a cutscene earlier?

ha i knew it

ultimate survivor? maybe himiko wasn't joking when she said maybe he went on a bunch of game shows lol. get this man to CBS

"i never imagined rantaro the first victim would come up again like this" i mean, *i* could! at least i was hoping. there were way too many unanswered questions about him

the voice of one of these unnamed classmates in this flashback sounds SUSPICIOUSLY like bryce papenbrook. i've learned never to take his presence lightly in these games

cold sleep room?!

aw hey the whole gang back together in the flashback! man it's been awhile since i've seen some of these people

i'm sorry, kaede has a TWIN??????

bro this game actually game overed me because i spent too much time clicking on people to talk to. I WAS TRYING TO BE THOROUGH IN MY INVESTIGATION!!!!!!! i didn't think it would do that to me, i just thought the time limit would be done once i'd completed everything. ffs

...motherkuma?

oh the mastermind just be making flashback lights to include whatever memories they choose? so yeah they all have to be COMPLETE crap

if himiko suddenly reappeared and is once again being super unhelpful about how she escaped the sealed hidden room, i'm guessing that means there's another door to that room

oh shit fam a hidden passage in the girl's bathroom? hm

hey they repaired keebo's ahoge! which was the key to his inner voice clearly

ha i knew those "small bugs" were actually cameras of a sort

"i'll hit them with my 'all your relationships will end up being love triangles' curse!" damn himiko that's cold. i feel like a remnant of despair would enjoy that tho

you know, if you'd asked me to predict who my final group would be, i NEVER would have guessed himiko and tsumugi. maki absolutely, keebo maybe, but never those two. this is such an odd grouping to be the final one

wait how the fuck do you know about jabberwock island, shuichi? or was that less secret than i thought?

i need to know more about this "previous game" rantaro survived

god how i fucking WISH rantaro was the ultimate game show host that would be so funny

your honor my girlfriend kaede was innocent!!!!!!!

are you telling me that the throwaway joke the game grumps made about the shot put ball landing right next to rantaro and not actually hitting him is what ACTUALLY happened???

i knew everyone kind of brushing off that tsumugi went to the bathroom back in chapter 1 was odd

we're doing a closing argument now? we haven't even hit intermission. i assume part 2 of this trial is just gonna be off the rails then

they're literally all begging tsumugi to tell them she's not the mastermind but she can't do it

dude if kokichi were here he would be tearing her apart verbally

junko the 53rd?! new ultimate despair?

is tsumugi just doing a REALLY effective cosplay rn?

they all keep trying to tell me that kokichi was a remnant of despair but i don't believe he was

don't tell me that makoto went back on his promise to have hope's peak be for normies

i like to believe that toko wrote this book

yeah i knew all those memories were fake as shit. we're in like a hunger games arena i'm calling it now

lol they weren't even hope's peak students? i'm willing to be they're not even ultimates at all, and not a single one of their backstories is real

i like to imagine everyone who's died so far is watching this from another room like everyone eliminated from a season of the bachelor or survivor watching the finale episode

the ONLY piece of evidence leading me to believe anything told to us might've been even remotely real is kaito's strange illness. other than that, i'm fairly certain every single thing told to us about the backstory and the outside world is fake. i bet there is no gofer project, there were no meteorites, there is no disease

what the- HAJIME?????

mahiru? okay this is starting to get a little batshit. felt some whiplash when she turned into hiro and then soda

hey don't you DARE turn into makoto naegi that feels disrespectful

bro does this take place in a different universe from the other two games???

this is getting way too meta

i have no idea where this goes from here if this isn't in the same universe as the other games

wait are we actually in a time loop of sorts, like i'd predicted awhile back?

oh dude i just noticed there are little "V"s and "3"s in the eyes when tsumugi is cosplaying

is this girl really blaming her actions on ~society~?

bro this is getting WAY too meta. like, past the point of being fun

shuichi just shouting at them to shut up is my mood rn

is this a roundabout way of saying they're all quote-unquote actors?

damn even that illness was fake huh

bro not her actually becoming soda to make the tenko comparison 😂

guys i'm not really sure what to make of this. idk where to go from here

like i genuinely feel like a bucket of cold water was just poured on me. like. what the fuck is this

guys i'm gonna be real: this fucking sucks. i've never been a fan of "it was a dream this whole time and none of it mattered or was real" storylines. it's lazy writing. and i really feel it here

bro i got the BAD END??

...or maybe not?

oh my god is keebo gonna be my actual savior??

i knew keebo was the only bitch around here i could trust

hang on am i playing as keebo now?? it's my dream. he had an ahoge for a reason! the TRUE true protagonist! this game is starting to redeem itself

lol of course that was an antenna. and he was basically the first person camera for the audience? interesting

you know this means in the final chapter the audience wasn't watching the rest of us running around finding clues for the situation, they were watching keebo fight exisals lol

ULTIMATE HOPE ROBOT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

there's always an ultimate hope at the end of these. and it's very interesting that unlike the other games, they didn't have it be the character i was controlling for a majority of the game. and tbh i think that was the correct choice. shuichi you're great and your heart's in the right place but you're not the ultimate hope lol

oh this is now a battle to save keebo's life???????? oh i am putting my ALL into this

the fuck kind of rules are these? even if we win we gotta sacrifice two of us? huh?

speaking of, what happened to the 11 other people in this game? are they actually dead? or not? that feels very unclear now

i gotta fight shuichi in verbal sword battle? i gotta fight essentially myself?

i was never good at the sword minigames i could never figure out the best way to control it

oh man that poor boy is just so clinically depressed

and the fact that we had that sword fight to clair de lune...oh man

shuichi i am unsure about this logic of yours

oh am i shuichi again now?

yes shuichi we stan a weak king

tsumugi don't you dare talk as makoto you're making a mockery of everything he stood for

wait now i get to be himiko too? i better get a turn as maki by the end of this

oh thank god i do

thank goodness i didn't enable the "more time" skill

did they fry keebo?????????? unforgiveable unforgiveable UNFORGIVEABLE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

oh my god they took him over i hate this. let me go back to playing as keebo again

THEY ERASED HIS PERSONALITY??????? i'm never forgiving this game. this last chapter is like the finale of how i met your mother

at least he came back to say goodbye 😭

I CAN'T BELIEVE I GOT THIS FAR AND THEY FUCKING TOOK KEEBO FROM ME NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

can't believe i had to fight keebo and not tsumugi in the final battle

"we're friends, aren't we?" oh shut the fuck UP, tsumugi

no votes? thanks keebs

keebo fucking razing the place to the ground and executing everyone else in the process was NOT how i expected this game to end

oh shit they pulled a fast one on me with this epilogue - shuichi and maki and himiko lived?!? damn

they've made it unclear whether or not this is ACTUALLY in the same world as makoto and friends ughhh

i hate that they ripped keebo from me at the last second. they erased his personality and made him self-destruct. he was the hero but at what cost. this is a personal betrayal

could they rebuild him? maybe? all i want is a reunion with keebo and the survivors (VERY small survivor pool this time btw)

i'm going to be thinking about keebo nonstop for days fyi

guys, i gotta be real with you. this was the most unsatisfying horseshit. it felt like nothing mattered, and honestly it felt like they were making a mockery of us for enjoying the previous games and content. i didn't like it. and honestly it felt...lazy? like i had been speculating so much about how this would connect with the rest of the danganronpa plot and how this would build upon the already established story and characters. like you should've seen the theories i had in my head (one of my best ones: tsumugi was a rogue hope's peak student who idolized junko and wanted to do a killing game in her honor. keebo was a plant from makoto and the future foundation/academy to guide the others and eventually help lead to their rescue - that would've been a great plotline tbh). but no, none of that happened, it didn't build on the story, it didn't add to it, it wasn't part of the same story. it was just............nothing. it didn't lead anywhere, it didn't build up to anything. it just went nowhere and did nothing, it wasn't connected. it felt like all the investigating i did to find out the truth was a waste of time, and all the plot twists and turns that happened and all the choices the characters made had no fucking payoff. it was so frustrating. there are so many creative choices they could've made to build on the story in the danganronpa world but...that meta bullshit was not it.

in other news, i have already started writing a fanfiction: an alternate version of v3 that actually takes place in-universe, therefore making all the games connected! and i think what i've thought up is pretty good, ngl. it might be related to that theory i mentioned above. if you're interested in reading, lmk and i'll work to write it faster!

and thus officially concludes my v3 gameplay commentary! i might post here and there about my experiences in the bonus modes as i do them

[spartanguard]

an important date

it's Friday and it's Colin's birthday....I had to do something!! Just a bit of a post-canon Captain Charming scene, inspired by this prompt: "We both meet at the bar at a birthday party but we don’t even know who’s birthday it is. I think it’s yours, you think it’s mine." 1.1k, rated T | AO3

The Rabbit Hole was…well, the Rabbit Hole—its usual divy self. It wasn’t where Killian would typically expect to find David, least of all on the prince’s birthday.

At least—he thought that’s what Emma had said? She’d all but shoved him out of the station that evening, with the direction to meet her father here for a “birthday drink”. Of the birth dates he’d memorized (and would never forget—Emma’s, Henry’s, Hope’s), he realized he was severely lacking when it came to his in-laws.

But perhaps David’s would be easier to remember, given its proximity to his own. Or, rather, when he thought his own was; the actual date was long since lost to time, realm travel, and changing calendars, and it had been centuries since he’d actually done anything to mark the date, but he remembered it being in spring. 

Really the only fond memory he had of the day was picking fresh wildflowers with his mother, the light scent filling their small house, and the sweet taste of the modest cake she’d baked. When the hyacinth began to bloom in Storybrooke, he was always taken back to that day, and generally used that milestone to mark the passing of his years—but he’d lived enough of them that he needed no extra celebration or recognition.

As it was, the first shoots of spring had only just begun to emerge, so by his math, that put David’s birthday—or whatever today was—a few weeks ahead of his own. Good to know.

He scanned the bar for his mate—squinting a bit harder than he’d like to admit in the dim light (further evidence of the passage of time, he presumed)—almost missing him at the far end of the counter, until David waved at him.

“Evening, mate,” he greeted as he slid onto the barstool next to his father-in-law. “Not your typical scene, eh?” he added, nodding towards the rest of the bar, where all manner of seedy goings-on (well, as much as ever happened in Storybrooke) were happening—things the deputy sheriff should probably be concerned with, but he was off the clock (and had no room to talk).

David shrugged. “I’ve been known to pass the occasional night here—cursed and not cursed. Having royalty around seems to keep things calm.”

“Aye, but you’ve never been here with a pirate,” he winked back, even if it had been ages since he’d anything resembling a rowdy night. The most exciting his had been lately were the times that they managed to get a teething Hope down early enough to squeeze in some intimacy, but he wasn’t going to admit that to Emma’s father.

“No,” David agreed. “But I figured I could manage for one night. To mark the occasion and all.”

“Aye; it does warrant that. My apologies for not knowing the date sooner—happy birthday, Dave.”

But instead of the customary thanks, David just tilted his head at him, brow furrowed in confusion. “Huh?”

Bloody hell—had he misheard Emma? “We’re here to celebrate your day of birth, are we not?”

“No; my birthday is in July—so now I kind of am offended,” David replied, though his tone was light. “Wait—did Emma not tell you?”

“She told me to meet you here for a birthday drink—I assumed that meant it was yours.”

“No, man—it’s yours.”

“Come again?” He’d never so much as commented to anyone, including Emma, the whereabouts of birth date; so how would either of them, least of all David, have known?

David explained, “Remember near the end of her pregnancy, when her magic was kind of overpowered and she was trying to release it?” How could Killian forget? He spent a whole week with blue hair, and trying to keep Pop-Tarts from flying around the house. “Apparently during that, she was trying out a bunch of easy, informational spells; there was one about revealing birthdates. Turned out mine was off by a couple of days. But yeah, she did yours, too; she never mentioned it?”

Killian was momentarily speechless. Not out of betrayal or anything—things were rather chaotic leading up to Hope’s birth, so he didn’t blame Emma for letting it slip her mind—but moreso that it had been able to be determined.

And, despite the last several years being filled with things such as True Love, marriages, and more family than he’d ever imagined having, he was still touched by the idea that anyone cared enough about him to know the date he’d entered this world (or whichever world it was)—and even more that they wanted to acknowledge it. 

“Uh, no,” he said, his voice suddenly thick with emotion. “I seem to recall her pregnancy brain was pretty bad then,” he quipped, hoping to lighten the moment. “So—really? Today?”

“Today,” David confirmed. Killian thought back to the wildflowers—then recalled that he grew up in a far warmer climate than Maine’s, perhaps the reason for his miscalculation.

(Also: he now understood why Emma had woken him with morning sex that day. That was never something he’d question, though—and also something he wouldn’t dare mention in present company.)

The barkeep then set two glasses of amber liquid in front of David. He slid one across the worn wood to Killian, then raised his own. “Happy birthday, Killian. To the best son-in-law—best friend—a man could ask for.”

Killian clinked his glass against David’s and quickly took a sip, hoping it might wash down the lump that had formed in his throat. Alas, it didn’t—but at least it was there with good reason. “Thank you, mate; and, uh, the feeling is mutual.” It wasn’t often words escaped him, so hopefully his father-in-law picked up on the weight of the emotion in his voice; he tried to find David’s eyes, but was overcome with an odd bashfulness he hadn’t felt since youth.

David just gave a gentle chuckle and a solid, brotherly thump on the shoulder, before attempting to down his own shot of rum—which brought on laughter of a different kind, but it broke the bit of tension. 

They shared another drink after (whiskey; far more palatable to the prince), before leaving to their respective princesses—and sharing perhaps a stronger embrace than Killian had originally intended, but it was certainly called for. 

As sweet as his memories from childhood were, it was nice to add this one to the collection of birthday remembrances—the first in so long. (And, as he eventually found, not the last—not by a long shot—in the many years to come.)

(However, he still refused, in all those celebrations, to tell David the way Emma preferred to mark the occasion.)

-----------------------------💙💙-------------------------------

[thanks for reading, and happy Captain Charming Friday! tags below cut]

@optomisticgirl @xpumpkindumplingx @cocohook388 @kmomof4 @kat2609 @shipsxahoy @mryddinwilt @annytecture @phiralovesloki @shireness-says @ohmightydevviepuu @wistfulcynic @pirateherokillian @colinoeyebrows @wingedlioness @word-bug @thisonesatellite @wellhellotragic @welllpthisishappening @killianmesmalls @thejollyroger-writer @ineffablecolors @ive-always-been-a-pirate @nfbagelperson @stubblesandwich​ @athenascarlet @ilovemesomekillianjones @whimsicallyenchantedrose @snowbellewells @idristardis @scientificapricot @searchingwardrobes @donteattheappleshook @jrob64 @the-darkdragonfly @stahlop @klynn-stormz @resident-of-storybrooke [let me know if you do/don't want tags!]

[wings-of-ink]

Teeny Tiny Update, but mostly Fixes

An update has been made to correct a few bugs, a bunch of typos and spelling errors, and pronoun errors. Additionally, there is a tiny bit of new content with Oswin if you’d like to zip through it at the end of chapter 3. The remaining segments for this chapter are still in progress and this one is, so far, unedited and untested. I didn’t want to take it out since it just an extra little hoorah for your MC to enjoy.

Thank you so much to my Google Form Champions. At least two of you are my superstars that went above and beyond the call of duty. Your patience and diligence are greatly appreciated. I got several responses helping me find all those pesky typos. Kudos to the person who probably caught on that the first chapter was originally written in first person! I spent DAYS trying to correct the tense and thought I caught everything – clearly not! Weirdly, going through those forms was kinda fun for me – I was the weird kid in your high school who really liked doing worksheets...

Another shout-out to those that managed to find the bug in chapter 3 that put a full stop to progress! Honestly, getting your choices to work out that perfectly was impressive. You had to get a very specific “score” from your choices to do that (your lucky number is 19, just so you are aware). I believe, unless I am horribly mistaken, the issue was a matter of a mere “ = ” missing from the code! I have added that and actually changed some of the numerical values around for balance. My apologies for the frustration that caused.

There was one bug I could not quite work out. One concerning the use of links in the menu and not being able to return to the game. I wasn’t able to re-create this, though I feel it’s probably there because I have also experienced this in other IFs. If this happens, the back arrows in the top of the menu might let you go back to the page you were on if you click back far enough; that has worked for me before. I am putting a note about it inside the menu pages just in case until I can figure this one out.

I think I got most of the pronoun errors found. Naturally, most are those were hidden in chunks of text I had reused lines from for a few passages, so that just perpetuated the issue.

Anyway, that is all for now. The last segments of chapter 3 should be done fairly soon, perhaps next week if I have time over the weekend!

Take care and enjoy, my friends. ^_^

~ Lunan  

[atheautistic]

Hey everybody!

So, i think an introduction's in order here. My name is Jonathan and i am a fairly new atheist. I am a slightly Queer Nurse, married, and have a number of kids (about 8 at last count) that are all adults now. Maybe i should just tell the story of my religious journey and how i came to atheism.

Without going into too much detail, i became a Christian at 18 years old. To be honest, it was mostly the influence of my high school best friend. At that time, i did believe that there was something out there, but i wasn't sure what it would be. I did some occult stuff/magic at that time and was fully convinced that the spirit world at least existed. It was probably that stuff that prompted my friend to lead me to the faith. Cause i don't remember him bringing up Christianity until i mentioned that i was living in a haunted house. (Still not totally sure it wasn't, lol)

My friend suggested that i read the bible. He thought i might find what i was looking for there regarding my interest in the spirit world. So, my ADHD brain kicked in and i read the thing from front to back in a matter of days. I devoured it alongside other books on paarapsychology and ghosts. Now, i DO remember having issues with the bible even then, but my bestie was pretty good at apologetics and i put aside my concerns for later consideration. I mean, i could die at any moment right? Better get right quick!

So, i "got saved," started going to youth group, church, and even started going to church with my parents. Speaking of my parents, i should probably mention that my mom and step father are the pastors of a pentecostal church. The church my friend was taking me to was a non-denominational Protestant church of some sort. So i got a decent range of protestant church experiences.

Anyway, i went along being a Christian for about the next 23+ years or so. I picked up a wife and a bunch of kids along the way, and we trained them up in the way a child should go. That is to say according to the faith. Towards the last two years of that time, my late wife was diagnosed with cancer. I know what you're thinking if you are a Christian! I got mad at God because my wife got sick. Not the case at all.

The truth of it was that i had already begun to seriously question many things that the church and bible had to say. So i started studying apologetics and the scriptures more fervently, trying to reconcile many, many troublesome passages, policies and views that i had been taught by the church. I was seriously troubled by the fact that i was unable to rationalize them. I could explain them away using standard Christian rhetoric, but it seemed too much like avoidance and dishonesty. It was at that time that i decided that maybe the bible isn't really the infallible text christians claim it to be. Worse, i was finding it more and more difficult to rationalize certain beliefs the church holds when challenged on them. Stuff like homosexuality, abortion, etc for example.

Now, as a good Christian, i KNEW i was having a crisis of faith, so I prayed about it. A LOT. For years. Like probably at least once a day, and whenever i ran into another troublesome passage or question. I think everyone can guess what i heard from the Lord... Not a thing.

One day, during a particularly unpleasant day of chemo for my late wife, i remember needing comfort in a really bad way. The grief was monstrous because my analytic mind had already figured out how this illness was going to play out. I couldn't confide in her about it, because she had so much hope and i couldn't and wouldn't disabuse her of that. So, during that visit, i told her that i was going to get a massage like she suggested (i probably looked super stressed). Instead, i went to the chapel to seek Him and ask Him for his Comforter to descend upon me. I spent nearly an hour in there on my arthritic knees. Nothing happened. I felt nothing but pain. No comforting presence walking me through the shadow of death. No random stranger with kind and wise words. No feeling of His presence. Nothing. Not that i was expecting a release from pain, but any kind of comfort would have been nice.

It was that moment i realized that nothing happened and i felt nothing because there IS nothing to comfort me. It kind of crashed in on me all at once. Every inconsistency, every awful passage about God sanctioned mass murder and slavery. Every argument that more clear headed skeptics had thrown my way. The vast loneliness of the universe. All that ran through my head like a freight train. I thought i would be crushed by the grief and pain when i realized that not only was my wife going to die, i would NEVER see her again. I felt like i was going to die right then. Sobbing, i got up, walked down the aisle and in a fit of rage, threw the crucifix onto the floor. I thought briefly of destroying it utterly, but decided against it. Even though in that moment i became an infant atheist i wasn't ready to go whole hog just yet. And i wasn't willing to attack the faith in a way that would interfere with others finding the succor i so desperately sought. Instead, i just stared at the crucifix for a while, angry about all the time and money i had wasted on the Farce of Faith. I was furious about all the terrible ideas i had espoused to my children. Ashamed that i had believed in something that was now so clearly fantasy. Then i pulled myself together as best i could and left the chapel.

Very shortly after that i had the first and worst of many panic attacks. We thought it was a heart attack (I remember thinking how ironic Christians would think it was for me to die right after becoming an apostate. It actually amused me a little) but it wasn't. It turns out that existential crisis can bring on a little fear with it! And since I'm an anxious person anyway, it certainly didn't help. So many things had changed for me that i couldn't share with anyone. In the midst of my spouse's illness i had to keep playing church. Do you have any idea how galling it is to be surrounded by Christians when you are a closet atheist? It's kind of torture. But you can't tell your dying spouse that there is no heaven right? Seems like cruelty.

I didn't share my revelation with anyone until i posted it on facebook a couple weeks ago. I couldn't. I still try to walk softly around Christians and their faith because existential crises are unpleasant at best and deadly at the worst. Mine was incredibly unpleasant and i wouldn't want to do it to anyone. That's why i started this blog to be honest. So that I'm not posting this on facebook where it will cause more drama than I'm interested in experiencing. I guess I'm just hoping people who are questioning will find it. I know humanity needs to eventually do away with religion as a whole. But it is definitely not something that can happen overnight. Any activism on the part of atheism should be gentle, in my opinion.

By way of confession, not even my new wife knew about how i really felt until pretty recently as well. Much to my shame, i taught my new wife things about Christianity from my wealth of theological knowledge and years of service in the church. To woo her of course. She was a Catholic (although she would say not a great one, ha ha!) at the time and I wanted her to like me. Gonna have to apologize for that manipulation later i think. (Update: She took it very lovingly. She suggests that it's possible that she was just following along with the crowd, and forgave me instantly. Damn, she's a good woman.)

Anyways, i eventually realized that being a closet atheist was almost worse than just being an atheist. Because at least this way, I'm being honest. And isn't honesty the best policy anyway? Totally. So, now I'm honest about it. I talk to wifey about it now, but i try not to exhort too much.

So, that's where i stand now. I hesitate to give an idea of what this blog will focus on, because i know i may lose interest, but it will probably mostly be about my journey of religious deconstruction and philosophical studies. Or maybe i'll just pick an interesting topic and wrote an article. I dunno.. If that sounds like something you're interested in, welcome! If you wanna help me see the light, welcome! I will try to answer all comments!

[rrazor]

hq boys as non-sexual things that feel sensual

tags: mildly suggestive content (mostly pining)

bokuto: certain phrases are very sexually charged; “make me,” or “what are you gonna do about it” lunch time!! bokuto comes back from the cafeteria with his pork-cutlet sandwich to see you engaged in a card game with three other people. He sees that everyone’s bet something and you bet a strawberry danish you bought this morning and bokuto’s eyes go 🤩 he forces himself in LMFAO and makes sure to sit next to you 🥰❤️ in the end, it’s only you and him left (konoha and komi come over from their classes to see what all the fuss is about and they’re like …..how is bokuto doing so well 😶)

but you win and steal his sandwich on the desk 😈 he tries to defame you for cheating lol but all you do is look at him coyly like “and what are you gonna do about it, bokuto-kun? 😇” and suddenly his tongue feels heavy and his cheeks flush and he’s all 🥺👉👈 he asks you for the bread back because its his only lunch 😭💀 but he ends up winning sm more because you offer to share your bento with him and his heart goes 🥰💖💞

akaashi: sitting next to someone and your shoulders/thighs touch it’s the sports festival!! and it’s lunch break. he spots you sitting on a bench and he starts sweating at the idea of sitting next to you but he wants to be near you somewhat because then MAYBE you’ll talk to him??!? hopefully 🥺💔

he swallows his nerves and sits on the bench too but on the other side with a huge gap between you and your friend. he pulls out his phone to look “busy” LMFAO then, more of your friends come over and suddenly, you’re snug against him, your BARE THIGH touching his because you’re both in shorts and akaashi thinks he gonna pass out with the bashful apology you give him 😵 he thanks every deity he can think of that your friends came over and STAY because your leg is still touching his and he’s holding a conversation with you 😭🥺🥳💕💖❤️😍

konoha: having someone use your keyboard standing up while you’re sitting in front of it you’re in one of the school’s computer labs working on a research essay. akinori sits next to your station, having worked up the courage earlier to ask you if you could help him with his. he sneaks glances at you at the printers as you refill the trays with more paper 👀 he blushes even though you aren’t even doing anything to him 😭😔💔

before he can stop himself, he calls your name lmfao 🗣 but manages to save himself from utter embarrassment by asking you to look over one of his passages. coming over, you lean over him, hands on his keyboard as he leans back. his eyes are wide and cheeks ruddy as he tries so hard to keep cool because you’re so close 😍🥺💕 and god does he hope what he wrote was coherent because he thinks he’d d-word if you said it made no sense 😓😵

kuroo: when you’re sitting next to someone and they lean over and reach across you to grab something another day, another group project. kuroo gets added to a group with you and another guy because he was absent for volleyball. the two of you push your desks next to him and he’s fist pumping internally because you’re sitting next to HIM and not the other guy and he gets to act as the barrier AHAHAH 😇🥳😛

you’re working together when you ask one of your friends to pass over the notes she took from you. she’s sitting in front of kuroo, but diagonally to the right so she leans back and you lean forward to grab the papers. your arm accidentally brushes his chest and kuroo short circuits 😶 you’re SO CLOSE and your body is nearly laid over his entire desk and if he moves his hands up he could probably touch your chest HJAKHSDLKASD 👁👄👁 the guy next to him looks at him all 😐 as kuroo goes INSANE 🤯

kita: hugging from behind he’s home alone, studying in the living room for his university exams. you’re in the kitchen with his grandma helping her with tonight’s dinner. he smiles softly to himself hearing the two of you laugh 😊🥰💞

he’s halfway through a derivatives question when you hug him from behind, arms coming around him as you rest your head on his shoulder blades 🥺💘 when you softly tell him dinner is almost ready, his chest warms and a soft smile appears on his face ❤️💖

atsumu: the guys strapping you in on a roller coaster. are we gonna kiss? why are you giving me that eye contact? inarizaki’s vbc get together to go to the local amusement park!! they get in and the first thing the twins want to do is ride all of the roller coasters so after a ridiculously long line up, atsumu’s sitting next to osamu, waiting for an attendant to come buckle them in, when you suddenly come up in your cute uniform and hair tied up and atsumu’s like SHIT ITS YOU 😳 also damn y didn’t you tell him you worked here he could have gotten discounted tickets smh 🥴😒

anyways you come up to them to buckle them up with him first and he doesn’t really notice anything but you buckle the first strap really tight and he’s like “does it need to be so tight 😘” and you tell him, making eye contact, using your best customer service voice (vocal bottoming but at least you get paid) and with a pretty smile on your face that doesn’t reach your eyes, “yes, unless you want to die. and if you do, don’t do it on this ride because my shift ends in ten minutes and i don’t want to stay here to write a report about a dumbass who ko’d on a roller coaster 🥰” and he BLUSHES oop— 👁👅👁

osamu: having your back scratched you sit next to each other in class and it’s self study time and you’re helping him with the english homework that was assigned when his back starts feeling itchy. he rolls and moves his shoulders to try to alleviate it, but it just isn’t working so he brings a hand back to scratch at it, but he’s not flexible enough to reach it 😔 you ask him what’s wrong and he puts his arm down like he got burned because he doesn’t want to be seen doing something weird in front of you or making a weird face so he just says nothing but you raise a brow and go “are you itchy?” and he nods JAJCKKAD

you bring your arm up to where he was just scratching, “here?” a shake of his head, “no, a little to the right.” AND YOU SCRATCH RIGHT AT IT!!!!! he can feel his shoulders slump as he closes his eyes and groans a little WHOOP he’s SUPER EMBARRASSED but you just laugh it off and scratch him some more before going back to work and he looks at you like 🥺💖 why’d you stop?? even though you’re not even looking at him LOL 😞 touches his back that night in the shower like your hands were so small 😯😍😳 and maybe he should be itchy more often but it also quickly turns to she better not be touchy feely with anyone else 😒

suna: someone writing on your arm he’s forced to take this one evening class this semester because it’s not offered the next one and he needs to take it because it’s a prereq for almost every other course ugh but at least the cute girl who sits next to him lets him copy her notes LMFAO 😭💀 he left all his belongings in the gym’s lockers because he was going to go back anyways for practice so when the professor gives out a code for a free trial of the software they have to use for the homework assignment due in a week, he’s like shit; he left his phone in his bag 🤡💔

you offer to write it down on his arm, grabbing a pen from your pencil case. he nods like sure why not so you take his arm and push the sleeve of his hoodie up and start writing and he just stares at you 👀 your writing is cute and he kinda likes the feel of your hands on him 🤧 class ends and you part ways with a wave. It’s not until he’s reached the gym that he realized you could have just messaged the code to him on facebook 🤨 so he pushes his sleeve up and sees your phone number on his arm under the code 😘 aren’t you smooth!!! 😌

iwaizumi: when someone is putting the car in reverse and they put their hand on the back of your seat iwaizumi been interested in you for a while, and ever since he came to the revelation he finds it really hard to talk to you because he’s afraid of coming off too aggressive or you figuring it out 😔💔 good thing kindaichi reveals that you’re his older cousin and that you’ll be driving some of them to their next practice match because the volleyball team’s bus is out for a checkup!! 😍😘 oikawa, matsukawa and hanamaki all force him to sit shotgun as you drive (even kunimi and yahaba get in on it). iwaizumi grumbles about it and all but he’s secretly super happy he gets to be right next to you omg 👀😭 he takes a bunch of glances around the interior of your (parents’) car and sits a little straighter than he usually would.

he can feel the stares on the back of his head from the other third years egging him on to make a move and just when he works up the nerve to say something to you, you put the car in reverse to back out the parking spot and put your hand on the back of his seat 😳😤 iwaizumi thinks you look so cool AND HOT he clams up and just stares at you with his jaw slightly open 👁👄👁 💕pls save him 🤧

matsukawa: when a girl puts her hand up to yours and remarks on how yours is so much bigger you got randomly paired up with each other to do a presentation for your world history class and so you’re sitting next to each other on a saturday afternoon at the public library doing research together. matsukawa spent more time than he would like thinking about what to wear because he doesn’t want you to think that his fashion sense was as grotesque as the school’s khaki pants 😷🤢 (when you complimented him nonchalantly about how he looks a million times better in casual clothes compared to the school uniform and joking said that he should start a petition to get rid of the school’s ugly khaki plaid pants and skirts and use a photo of what he was wearing today as the main piece of evidence, he almost doubles over 💀)

you’re sitting next to each other and he’s still kinda reeling from the previous interaction ahjdalhd but he does his best to pull his weight. he’s taking notes in a notebook and you look over and comment out of the blue that his hands are really big as you look at yours 🤧👀 he blinks and looks at you like “yeah?” and you nod, putting your hand up and he does it too because he thinks he’s having a fever dream at this point, but not even in his wildest dream did he’’d ever think you’d push your palm against his and say “your hand is so big! 😳” he has to excuse himself to go to the washroom to scream 😘🥰❤️

hanamaki: when you’re sitting next to someone on public transport and the centrifugal force from the vehicle firmly mooshes the two of you together hanamaki pines for you silently and you can’t really tell he likes you because he’s pretty decent at keeping his emotions hidden. or maybe you’re just so busy with your senior year you don’t notice anything that isn’t the impending doom of university applications and keeping your grades up 😤😇 anyways the two of you get on and off at the same stop each day (which he secretly thanks god for 😭) and you’re sitting next to each other and hanamaki thinks he’s gonna combust because you’ve never been this close!! 🥺🥰

he can feel his hands getting sweaty already. hanamaki sneaks glances at you and tries to see what you’re doing on your phone LMFAO suddenly, the train lurches a bit and you slide from the inertia right into his side and then he can feel the warmth coming from your thighs, side and your shoulder are touching holy sh— 😭❤️😵👀💖 you look up to apologize as he takes a breath and you’re a little shy in your apology but he takes that chance to ask you about something mundane and he makes you laugh!!!! he thinks about the interaction for the next two weeks because he finally got to talk to you dhaskld ☺️🥺💕

kyoutani: when anyone raises their arms to stretch and their shirt gets lifted up slightly gym class—you’re doing timed runs today!! kyoutani is already finished with his so he’s just sitting off the side of the track, staring not-so-subtly at you but you don’t notice because it’s your turn next!! you’ve got the typical school mandated shorts and plain t-shirt on but kyou is all 👀 at your tastefully exposed skin. he thinks you look pretty with the sun hitting your face as you give a smile to your friend, squinting at the sun light 🥰

he’s just mindlessly staring at this point but then you raise your arms to stretch your triceps and the hem of your shirt rises up a little to expose the tiniest sliver of skin before it’s covered again 👁👁 his cheeks pink a little and you catch him looking LMFAO but you don’t think anything of it and just smile and wave as kyoutani burns bright red, heart battering against his ribs and looks away 😡🤡🥰💕 he saves it for future reference HURDURDUR 😇😛

ushijima: when a woman does that thing where she tucks her hair behind her ear while making direct eye contact ushijima is INTERESTED in you, likes you, is intrigued, would like to hold your hand and rub the back of your hand and feel the soft skin with his thumb—same thing 🥰 you’re talking to him about something for the cultural festival and he’s nodding along to what you’re saying because you’re so brilliant and responsible for working on the school festival committee wOW 🤩

time seems to move in slow motion as you look up him whilst tucking a piece of hair behind your ear. he zones in on the shy smile on your face, your cute cheeks, glossy lips and pretty eyes 🥺🥰 “ushijima-san?” “yes?” “what do you think?” “that’s a great idea, I will ask my team members for their input as well.” you nod exuberantly even though he has no idea what you’re talking about but your cute smile makes him all mushy on the inside 💖💕

semi: making eye contact with another customer at the grocery store around the same age it’s 2:11pm on a tuesday and semi’s at the grocery store because it’s summer and his mom was all “go to the store and buy these shimeji mushrooms for me, eita, they’re on sale!!! but only until 3pm so get skedaddling!” 😩 so he’s here and he swears housewives are the most powerful people on the planet because he thought he was gonna d-word just tryna get his discount mushrooms. he spots you in the condiments aisle looking at sesame oil and he gives you the up, down and lingers a little too long on your exposed legs 💀

he thinks you look really cute in your t-shirt and jean shorts though 🥰 when you look up and make eye contact with him and give him a little smile and wave he BLUSHES 🥺 and is right about to take the chance to talk to you but a granny hip checks him trying to get to the soybean paste and he almost trips and lands on his face 😔💔 so much for looking cool in front of you 😢🥺

tendou: having someone else play with your hair satori sees you on cleaning duty carrying the recycling to the bins as he finishes his runs around the school, about to make a turn to the gyms. he makes a beeline for you, calling your name with a bright smile on his face and waving his arms in the air. 🥰💞🥺

he bounds up to you and offers to help even though the bin is really light, cheeks warming at your smile 😊 when he takes the bin out of your hands , you wave your hand to get him to bend down. he complies, eyes widening when he feels your hand in his hair. he straightens up to see you holding onto a couple pieces of cherry blossom petals 🌸 he laughs bashfully; it feels like time has slowed and you’re the only two people in the world 💖💕

sakusa: if you’re on a pc/laptop, somebody leaning over your shoulder to look at the screen with you. the close proximity of your faces can feel awkwardly sexual you’re in the same kinesiology class and sakusa first noticed how GOOD your presentations are wtf and he’s even more impressed when he hears that you winged the whole thing because “i conveniently forgot about this until one in the morning when I decided it was a good time to reorganize your entire dorm room” ALSO you offered him hand cream the one time you caught him staring and against all reason he said yes and ever since he’s been dying to ask you where you got it from because HOLY was it nice 😍

you get paired up for the final pair presentation and he’s only become more interested in you! you’re easy to talk to and don’t pry too much and he finds himself oversharing at times 💀 the professor gives the class part of the lecture time to work on the projects so you’re sitting next to each other working when he asks you a question about the academic article he just found and you lean over his shoulder to look at his screen 👁👁 for anyone else, the close proximity of your faces would have grossed him out but he can’t stop thinking about how good you smell and how cute your ears look 👀🥰 when you tell him he’s found a really good source with an excited smile on your face, he BLUSHES and promptly wants to pass away because he has no mask on to cover him 🤡😭😵

sachiro: when you have a melting popsicle, there often comes a time where you must choose between eating it too quickly, or sucking it off so it doesn’t drip on you sachiro hums happily, holding your hand as the two of you walk home after your date and stopping at the convenience store where he buys the two of you popsicle sticks 😋

you’re talking about something funny you saw hoshiumi do in the class the other day when your popsicle drips onto you. you kitten lick at your hand and take the whole thing in your mouth to get rid of the more liquidy parts of your ice cream and sachiro is all 👁👄👁 he swallows thickly, cheeks warming and heart beating a little faster; why’s he suddenly so thirsty? 🥵💦🙈

gao: getting a strong whiff of somebody’s perfume when they pass you gao really wants to talk to you, like really really wants to talk to you 😖😭🙏 but you’re talking to your friends about something and the cute way you laughs and joke with them has him all 🥺🥰🤩

he’s about to walk up and join the conversation because let’s face it, gao isn’t afraid of much 🤧💀 too bad the teacher calls you back into the classroom about something. when you pass him, he gets a good whiff of your shampoo and his stomach flutters 😍😊🥺💕💖 follows you with sparkly eyes and wishes he made the choice to talk to you sooner 💔

futakuchi: bending over to pick up something you dropped kenji is watching (glaring) as you talk to one of the baseball team’s starting players 🤐 he’s so ticked but he doesn’t admit it like where does this guy get off making you laugh and smile like that wtf 😒🙄 luckily for kenji, the guy gets pulled away by the class rep for something so kenji calls your name to get you to look at him instead 😤

you come over and just as he’s about to stand up from his desk, he knocks over his eraser. you crouch down to pick it up and he finds himself really liking it 👁👁 he doesn’t get it either 🤡 like you aren’t bending and snapping—just folding your knees to get his eraser for him, but the way you tucked your hair behind your ear before you bent down so prettily has him ☺️😉🥵

terushima: when you’re eating and chatting with someone and they lick their lips yuuji pulled you away from your friends when it was time for lunch, wanting to spend more time with you one on one. he was so busy with volleyball and school lately 😞 and when he managed to get you to tell him how lonely you felt without him, he made it his mission to spend more time with you!!! 🥰😘💕

you’re eating together, sharing food and talking about everything and anything when he notices you lick your lips; he zones in on your little pink tongue as it swipes across your bottom lip 👁👁 “yuuji, you okay?” a hand on your cheek and suddenly, he’s kissing you. he tastes like the leftovers your mom packed you for lunch 🥰😋

[struggling-with-time]

The Man That Is Wilbur Soot [Wilbur Soot x reader]

Paring: c!Wilbur Soot x Gender neutral!reader

Summary: Inspired by the Song Honey Honey by ABBA aka I took the line "I'd heard about you before I wanted to know some more"

Warnings: Fluff?

Words: 3.4K

Masterlist: Wilbur’s Masterlist - Event Masterlist - Full Masterlist

A/N: This was made for my ABBA event. Check it out here! (Also requests are still open! Click here!) btw, this was supposed to be like 1k

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-

You had heard about Wilbur Soot before. Everyone had heard about Wilbur Soot the President of L’Manberg. The guy who stood up to the Tyrant Dream of the SMP. And came out victorious, unlike the others whose life has been lost to the Tyrant, and their names to the passage of time.

You can’t say, he didn’t intrigue you enough, for you to set out on the dangerous journey that is crossing the SMP. Because he did. His country did. The ideals that you’ve heard about did. Everything intrigued you enough to leave your village behind and track into the world.

So that’s what you did, backpack on your shoulders, map in hand. You set into the big world, on the tracks to the dangerous country that the SMP is. You barely get out of the village before you are able to hitch a ride.

It’s a merchant that is headed for one of the villages closer to the border. It’s a bigger village than your own. The name rings a bell, maybe a traveller has mentioned it when passing by. So you hitch the ride, he tells you about his trades. He’s a merchant of fabrics, listing many places you haven’t even heard of. But there is one that catches your attention.

“You’ve been to L’Manberg?”

“Before it became independent yes.”

“Tell me about it!”

And the merchant does, for the entirety of the ride. He talks about the few people that resided there when he passed through the back then settlement. You beg him to tell each detail he can remember. And he happily provides. You take note of every you hear in your notebook. Your travel journal. Your… well diary.

He’s a good man, you note to yourself when he pulls into the bigger villages. The sun on the horizon.

You’re much further than you thought you would be on your first day.

This is going to be a good trip.

---

This is going to be a horrible trip.

You’ve been wandering for days, the closer to the border of the SMP, the fewer carts had come by, and even fewer willing to take a traveller with them.

You sigh as you watch the sun starting to set, and you are forced to make camp once more. It has been days since you last slept in a bed. To be exact 16 days. You had only managed to stay in an inn for the first night, realising your small amount of money wouldn’t get you far if you spent it all on beds.

You are reminded of the people whom you met that first night, a girl who talked about how President Soot had come by the town in his own travels to the SMP, and she had met him. No not just met him. She had spent the night with him.

And you just couldn’t help yourself, you had to quill your curiosity somehow, so you had once again asked for details, and she had provided.

The fire you get going is better than the last one. Not that the last one had ever turned into a fire. It had rained in the morning, and most of the wood you could find yesterday was still wet by the time you wanted to settle down.

But today, you had been lucky, it had been sunny all day, leading to being able to find dry sticks and a couple of pieces of logs. That you could make into a fire.

A clear stary night over your head as you turn in for the night. Hoping to get at least a couple of hours out of the fire to keep you warm. And to keep the mobs away. Knowing you still have a couple of days of wandering left before you will reach the borders of the SMP. You sigh as you jolt down the few interesting pieces of the day in your notebook.

Not that anything of importance actually happened. But maybe out there someone would read your notebook and find the fact that you saw a parrot in a birch forest be found interesting.

---

You have under half a day of walking left when a cart is willing to pick you up. Turning the hours of walking into a mere hour in the cart. You can feel yourself squirm in your seat as the silence falls upon you and the woman who picked you up.

“…So… Why are you heading to the border?”

She lets you sit in silence.

Rude much?

But… You can’t really call her rude, she was nice enough to pick you up and take you to the border. Where she very unceremoniously dropped you off, and headed off east, seemingly following the border never crossing it. She was… weird.

You instead tighten your back, and head over to the guarded tollbooth. A man looking bored out of his mind and close to sleep sits there. Not even having registered the cart that was there moments ago.

How often do people come through here?

The thought crosses your mind. You know it isn’t one of the main border entrances. You know of one that lies further west. But still, a good 2 to 3 days travel away. Besides you’re pretty sure someone told you the toll at the busy entrances is higher than the ones people rarely use.

But now that you are here and can read the price yourself. It seems the person had either lied to you, or the price at the main entrances are a lot higher than you could ever think about paying.

An idea strikes you, maybe… Just maybe… The guard will fall asleep. Just maybe. You linger on the side of the road. Seemingly interested in the plants nearby. You start jotting down stuff in your notebook. Taking note of the size of the leaves, the colour. You mumble the information to yourself.

Your eyes keep glancing over, as his head slumps down further and further.

It barely takes you a few more minutes of stalling before the guard is full-on snoring. You barely catch yourself nearly letting out a sound in victory.

Silent. Right. No noise.

You can do this. You can sneak past him. You can be silent.

You suck in a breath, as you start moving as slowly as you’ve ever done in your life. Hoping to the sky gods the slowness helps you with being silent. And it does, to some extent. But your backpack still rustles around, and the loose stones on the pathway still skirt across the dirt.

But he keeps sleeping, and before you know it, you’ve managed to sneak past him. Sneak into a country. You did it!

You decide your celebration is best celebrated far from here, and you make your way on the now stone path.

---

It takes you a couple of days before you hit your first village. You’re surprised by this. Normally there is a city around half a days’ time from most border crossings. But this is the SMP. The fact that its citizens aren’t exactly allowed to leave. Is more than public knowledge in other countries. They are under the rule of a Tyrant after all.

You figure it’s time to sleep in a real bed, you deserve it.

You head straight into the in, it’s barely past lunch, but there is a plentiful of people in there already. You stumble a bit at the sight, you had expected a couple of patrons, not a room full of people. But nonetheless, you make your way to the bar.

Conversations bustling around you, a waiter running around, and either the innkeeper themselves behind the bar, or just a barkeeper. You aren’t exactly sure. But you wave them down anyway. Maybe she can help you find the innkeeper and ask for a room.

“Well, hello there, you look exhausted.” Your shoulders sink further down at the comment. Did you really look that bad?

“I was wondering if you had a room I could rent?” you ignore the rude comment and stick to politeness.

“I figured.”

“… So um… Do you have a room free?” You try once again.

“Sorry hun, but if you hadn’t noticed we are full right now.” You completely deflate at the answer. In return, she takes pity on you. “But if you ask around over at the stables, someone might let you on as a passenger and take you to the next city. It’s half a day by cart, so you might just catch one if you’re fast.”

You beam up that answer, profusely thanking her, before running back into the street. Before realising you have no clue where the stables are.

It takes you two people, and three wrong turns to find the stables. And nobody is preparing any carts when you get there. Just a guy saddling his own horse.

Ah well, it never hurts to ask.

You approach the guy.

“Hi!”

He looks a bit confused when you stand across from him, on the other side of the horse.

“Um… good evening?”

You smile at him.

“Can I help you?” He speaks slowly.

“Ah yes! Sorry! I’m a bit out of it. I’m trying to get to the next town over.” You happily tell him.

“And you’re telling me this because…” He trails off. Leaving time for you to answer, instead, you leave him hanging. Until he coughs.

“Because…” He repeats.

“Because I was thinking, maybe you were heading that way.”

He raises an eyebrow.

“I can pay…” You try.

“Well then, why didn’t you start with that.” He looks you and your baggage up and down twice before clicking his tongue. “We can make this work. Do you know how to hold on?”

You nod, and he settles onto his horse, waiting for you to do the same. You manage to hoist yourself up and onto the horse. It doesn’t even flinch at the added weight. You’re thankful to the sky gods for that.

He rides the two of you out of town and onto the road for the next town.

“What’s someone like you this far out in the country?”

“I’m a traveller.” You tell him.

“To the border? So you could look at it and head home?” He snorts.

“No no, I’m not from the SMP, I’m just travelling through. I’m headed to L’Manberg.” He snorts once more.

“L’Manberg? That bunch of spoiled brats.”

“Spoiled brats?”

He laughs this time.

“Don’t you know?”

“Know what?”

“You truly aren’t from these parts.” He comments, and let the conversation fade out after that.

You don’t question the man, instead just pays him as the sun starts to set, and you are once again in an unfamiliar village. At this point, you barely remember the route you used to take in your home from your house to the baker.

Okay, that’s a lie, that is a route that is embedded into your mind, that you could sleepwalk it. For the sole reason that the route had you pass the library. Which was a place you spent a lot of time. Especially after finding out about the interesting man of Wilbur Soot.

Some books portrayed him as a traitor of the SMP, others the hero of the folk. But every single depiction had one thing in common. That he was an interesting enough man for people to want to write about him.

And that made you interested in him. He had started a revolution in a country that wasn’t his. You weren’t sure where he was from. None of the books in your village had mentioned that.

You head into the inn, this time, it’s bustling from evening patrons, but nowhere as lively as the one in the previous town. The reception this time has a separate table. Which you welcome happily. This means you don’t have to cross another sea of half-drunken people you don’t know.

However once again, the inn is full.

What’s going on here?

This one is even larger than the other one and seemingly has fewer patrons. But you take the rejection with a head held high. Thank them for their time, as you head into the now dark streets.

You sit now on a couple of steps, you’re tired, exhausted, and just want to sleep in a bed.

The door opens.

You nearly leave your skin in shock. You had expected the owner to be asleep. Instead, an elderly lady stands there.

“Would you look at that? It seems I have a guest.” She speaks.

“No no, I’m just passing through, I’m sorry I just needed to rest for a moment. I’m sorry. I’ll be on my way!” You ramble on as you scramble from the stone step.

“Nonsense.” She tsks at you. “Come in you poor child.”

She steps back into the house, leaving the door open.

“You coming? Close the door after you, it gets so terrible cold at night.”

You find yourself following her. Closing the door after yourself. You carefully put down your backpack as she ushers you into a seat in the kitchen. Setting a plate of hot steaming soup in front of you. You nearly drool at the sight. You can’t remember the last time you had warm food. Especially not warm homemade food.

You are quick to dig in, and she laughs warmly at you. You feel comfortable here.

“Why were you out in the street this late? That’s no safe place to be.”

You stop the spoon still in your mouth. She laughs once again, but the kind air around her never leaves. You swallow and pull out the spoon.

“I’m making my way to L’Manberg.” You tell her.

“Ah, L’Manberg. I’ve heard about that place. President Soot right?”

“Yes, yes.” You nod at her. “Wilbur Soot.”

“Ah, the Antarctic prince.”

You stop once again.

“The what?”

“The Antarctic Prince?”

You hum.

“Ah my dear, President Soot is the second born of King Philza from the Antarctic Empire.”

You stare at her; this was new information. She laughs once more. You are quick to grab your notebook and write down the new information. How had something this important not been mentioned before? This explains so much to you. And it eagers you even more to continue the trip.

The man of Wilbur Soot only seems to keep getting more and more interesting as each day passes.

The kind lady offers you a bed and a bath.

You are more than happy to receive both. Although you would never admit that to anyone that you could barely recognise yourself in the mirror. And for the second realisation that night. You understood why the innkeepers didn’t want you around.

You’ve never slept as good as you did that night during your travels.

---

You stretch as you can feel the scorching heat of the sun above you. It has been three weeks since you left the kind lady. She had asked for her son to help you move deeper into the country, so you were closer to the border you are desperately trying to reach.

You had travelled with her son for about a week, when he had to start heading more west than south, you had thanked him as much as his mother. But he had brushed you off that having a travelling partner was nice, and that you if came back through he would love to hear stories of the famous L’Manberg and its citizens.

The map you had brought seems to not be well mapped in the SMP. It wasn’t something you were unprepared for, but it did surprise you how little it truly resembled the mapping of the roads.

But a map is a map, and a destination is a destination. So you head onwards.

And onwards…

And onwards…

And onwards…

Sometimes meeting other travellers now that you are deeper in the countries. The nights where you aren’t alone passes faster than the ones where you are.

You hear stories of L’Manberg you have never heard before, and retellings of events but in other perspectives.

It seems a lot of people have a lot of opinions on the small country. But you understand, you too would have a lot of opinions if a city suddenly started wanting independence from its country.

It takes you weeks before you start coming across people who have been near L’Manberg regularly. It gives you a sign of hope. You’re getting closer, your journey is reaching its destination.

---

It’s storming the day you spot the country on the horizon. It’s still storming by the time you reach the country. The SMP toll guard is seemingly nowhere nearby and you pass the border with ease this time. Luckily for you. Or else you would have to explain why a traveller like you didn’t have travel papers.

You had expected to be met with one of the cities of the small country immediately. But it seems they are further from the border. And by further, it takes you an hour at foot-travel to meet the capital of the small country.

The streets are bustling.

That’s when it hits you.

You’ve made it.

You’ve actually made it.

You might look mad, but you let out a laugh right then and there. A laugh of relief. A laugh of victory. A laugh of … being alive.

“Having fun there?”

You turn around, to be met with the eyes of a stranger. A tall brown-haired stranger, nonetheless.

“Yeah, I just… Yeah.” You trail off. You eye him up and down, he’s cute. You put your hand out to present yourself, your name, the country you came from, and the name of the village you used to live in.

“Wilbur Soot, President of L’Manberg.” He returns with a smile. You barely listen to his words. Too captured by his smile. When…

Oh.

Oh, sky gods.

This is the man.

This beautiful human being of a man is the man.

“You alright there?” He asks as he watches you falter for a moment.

“Yes, yes, everything is fine. More than fine actually.” You tell him.

“Are you sure?”

“Absolutely.” You smile at him, and he smiles back.

“So, what are you doing here? You are an awful long way from home.”

He starts walking, and you fall in step with him.

“I’m here to see the country. I’ve heard a lot about it.” Leaving out the unsaid, I’ve heard a lot about you. He didn’t need to know yet, just how intriguing you found him.

You follow him down the street as he points a couple of things out, a couple of buildings, a couple of people. You listen and stop to note something down a couple of times, and he waits, patiently. Until he leads you to the local inn.

He holds the door open.

“A drink?”

“Yes please.”

He finds the two of you a booth, and you easily fall into conversation.

He asks you about your hometown, you about his.

He asks about your journey, you ask about the revolution.

You continue this game of ping pong. And the further down your drinks you get, the more personal the conversation gets. The less you note down. Yet, the man himself never falters from being the most interesting thing you’ve ever encountered.

And the night moves along, your conversation following.

You don’t really know when his hand landed on your thigh. Or when your lips met his. But suddenly you’re stumbling into a room together.

His touch setting you on fire, and your touch egging him on.

Your head is spinning as your back hits the bed.

Your notebook is lying tucked away safely in your backpack, staying there all the way into midday when you finally wake up. Disorientated, confused, and hungover.

Sitting there in that bed, you can’t help but remember the words of the girl you met the first night. And you can’t help but agree with her. Wilbur Soot surely is a love machine.

You hear rustling beside you, and you turn your head.

He’s awake.

He’s watching.

He’s watching you.

You lazily smile at him.

And at that moment, there is nowhere else you would rather be.

You had heard about him before, and you wanted to know some more.

People later down the line found your meeting story anywhere from boring to fate. But one thing was sure, you entered L’Manberg with one goal in mind. And never left again.

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-

[saphirered]

First times reader x Caleb widogast?

Here you go I hope you like these ☺️

The first time you met Caleb you were making some coin on the side as a temporary barkeep at the Lavish Chateau gathering funds to book passage on a ship when they entered. You paid little mind to this curious bunch but couldn’t help keep staring at the redheaded man in fine clothes. There was something… different about him. He caught you staring and you hoped the earth would swallow you whole then and there to spare you the embarrassment. Carlos, your boss didn’t help and even made you serve them. The redheaded man kept his eyes on you probably put off by the weirdo that couldn’t keep their eyes off him. You’d never hear the end of this. And though you were soon to see through his illusions it did not change your opinion. Little did you know meeting this intriguing man, Caleb Widogast would bring trouble to your life to the point you were on the run from the law. Should you be upset? Angry? Maybe but perhaps you should have worded it more carefully when you said you needed passage on a ship… 

The first time you spend time alone together the Mighty Nein dragged you in pirate trouble a plenty finding yourselves on a true pirate ship as a guests… More like prisoners and you knew better than to not be on guard. You slept with one eye open and a dagger under your pillow. Caleb seemed to feel the same, well save for the dagger part which left you both awake at the same time more often than not. You had some heart to hearts or at least as much as you both could muster. Speaking the truth without revealing anything of worth seemed to be a talent you both possessed but over time you grew more comfortable around each other. There was an undeniable chemistry between the two of you. Kindred souls destined for each other as Jester called it gushing over how you two would be perfect for each other but neither of you were ready for something beyond friendship. It was that first open and unfiltered conversation that kicked all of this off.

You tagged along with the Nein after their return to the mainland having grown accustomed to their company. You wouldn’t call yourself part of their group but you liked their company so you’ll stay until they grow sick of you or until your path takes you a in a different direction. On the road it was time to take watch. You were usually on duty with either Yasha when she was present or Caduceus but that night the Firbolg really deserved a full night of uninterrupted sleep so you and Caleb took watch together. It was cold and you were freezing. Even Caleb had trouble keeping warm so you suggested what you were taught; sticking close together wrapped up in your blankets and sleeping bag with a Frumpkin spread out over both your laps. You had to admit that this arrangement worked quite favourable for all parties involved so it became a more frequent occurrence. 

The first time you danced together came as a surprise to you. You were celebrating in a tavern after successfully completing a job for the Bright Queen and Caleb may have had a little bit too much of that Xhorhassian ale. A band was playing an upbeat tone and before you knew it Caleb had pulled you off your seat and began spinning you around. You were caught off guard but apparently a drunk Caleb was a more open Caleb and you were all having fun so what’s the harm? He was quite a good dance partner even when intoxicated. You could only imagine what waltzes he could dance when sober. 

The first time you shared a bed together came as the aftermath of the drunken dances. With the Nein save for Jester, Caduceus and yourself were quite a few bottles in resulting in you three having to practically carry them to their beds and Caleb had already been sticking to your side like glue so you were hardly going to hand him over to the others. Besides, you were able to convince him that last glass was enough and maybe it would be best for him to switch to water instead so maybe you could convince him to sleep too. You helped him up the stairs his arm over your shoulder to support him as he kept humming the tune of the band whispering sweet nothings in your ear making comments about your eyes, your personality, your skills in battle but you took it as the words of a drunken man and just happily agreed with him. You didn’t mind after all. Eventually you got him to his room but getting him in his bed proved more difficult than expected to the point where he lost his balance and you fell with him and before you knew it you were stuck in his embrace with him leaning on you like you were his pillow. Telling him he’d probably sleep more comfortable on his own was met with disagreements. You apparently were much more comfortable than any pillow and blanket and he wanted you to stay. So you stayed making yourself more comfortable. 

The hangover morning got Caleb all flustered. Hundreds of apologies, him scrambling up awkwardly but eventually he did catch on you didn’t mind and he couldn’t deny he probably hadn’t slept so comfortable in a long time even if he did wake up with a killer headache. The rest of the day was spent in with a breakfast in bed and a hangover cure brew from your Firbolg Cleric friend. Though that didn’t take it away in its entirety so the two of you spent the rest of the morning and afternoon cuddled up together.

Cuddles are comfy and even though Caleb might be somewhat touch repulsed he loved your hugs and spending time in your embrace whenever he felt down, conflicted, was simply yearning for physical touch or no reason at all. You were happy to provide these cuddles whenever he needed them and he happily provided you whenever you needed them. 

Over time Caleb grew more comfortable with your touch and you with his resulting in the two of you sitting closer together and holding hands when no one noticed. You’d grown quite fond of each other and eventually had a conversation to figure out what this thing you have going exactly is and where you would place boundaries. Together you adjusted these boundaries many times to better fit your dynamic as it kept evolving but it took some comments from Beau about how the two of you were acting like ‘that couple’ and to ‘bone each other already’ that made you realise you were very much behaving like you were in a relationship so you thought why not? You were both comfortable with this so why couldn't you be? You had nothing to lose.

Your first kiss wasn’t the most romantic by Jester’s standards that is at least. No fireworks overhead or grand confessions of love. You were sitting together at the Xhorhaus looking over the city from the ostentatious tree on top of the house arms wrapped around each other in a comfortable embrace. You were the one to ask him not wanting to cross any boundaries as you both decided moving things slow was the way to go but he said yes. Your first kiss with Caleb was soft and sweet and everything you had hoped to be. It wasn’t grand and soppy like the kisses described in Tusk Love but romantic in your own way as neither of you were for the over the top expressions of love and affection. 

You’d been helping Caleb figure out a particularly difficult spell. Your eye for detail being exactly what he needed after weeks of trying and just not getting it right but you managed to crack the code, find the mistake and help him fix it. He lifted you and spun you around giving you a deep kiss. “I love you.” The sentence seemed to have slipped out but was genuine nonetheless so you kissed him back with an ‘I love you too’. From then on you both grew more accustomed to saying the words out loud and eventually even in the company of others which for the first couple times was met with gagging noises from Beau. 

The first time you finally addressed the elephant in the room about the two of you officially being in a relationship left Jester gushing over the two of you already halfway through writing an epic romance about the two of you. ‘The Barkeep and the Scholar’. ‘Drinks and Disasters’. She kept sputtering ridiculous names. Caduceus was happy the two of you finally opened up about your relationship as there was no hiding from him. Fjord and Yasha were happy for the both of you. Beau of course congratulated Caleb and bluntly told you she wouldn’t be afraid to make you disappear should you ever hurt Caleb but it was Veth who’s promised you bodily harm and worse if you ever hurt her boy because not even the gods could stop her if that happened. You had to assure her, vow upon your life that that day would never come and you loved Caleb too much to ever hurt him let alone to the point were you’d provoke Veth’s wrath. 

[omniscientoranges]

Advanced Reader Copy

Dean gives Cas a book to read. Or, well, a passage from a book.

(basically, Cas reads a part of Lost and Found)

1.5k

read on ao3

"Hey, Cas, can I talk to you?" 

Cas stops in place at Dean's voice, a few feet in front him. They're standing in the middle of the library, where Cas had just been trying to stealthy avoid Dean noticing him walking by. 

It's been a little over a week since Dean (with some help from their friends) had pulled Cas out of the Empty. Since then, they've been not-so-obviously/obviously avoiding each other. 

The reason being that, basically, they haven't talked about what Cas said. Yet. Maybe they wouldn't ever talk about it. Honestly, Cas would be absolutely fine with that, if it meant he got to keep Dean as a friend. That would be absolutely fine and not at all painfully heartbreaking in any way. Not at all. 

Cas nods. "Of course, Dean. What is it?" 

Dean shifts on his feet. "It's, well, it's kinda important." 

"Okay," Cas says, smiling slightly even though his heart has started to beat erratically in his chest. 

"Look, I- shit. This is-" Dean stops himself, and shakes his head as his eyes dart back and forth across the concrete floor. Then he pauses, eyes fallen on one of the shelves, and looks back up at Cas. 

"Just gimme a minute, I'll be right back." 

Cas squints, "Alright, I'll just-" he starts to say, but Dean's already ran off to some far-flung corner of the bunker — taking whatever he wanted to say and whatever idea he's suddenly had with him. 

Cas stares after him, but stays rooted to the spot. 

Time passes. It is — possibly — the longest string of minutes Castiel, former Angel of the Lord and current Angel of Absolutely No One (Except, Maybe, the Winchesters), has ever experienced. 

After an eternity passes in 10 minutes, Dean walks back into the library. He's carrying a beat-up cardboard box, with a single book resting on top of where the box has been folded closed. 

Dean drops the box onto a nearby table, and the old wood creaks under the new weight. Before Cas can see it, Dean quickly grabs the single book off the top and holds it tight to his chest. It's angled in a way that Cas can only make out that it is, in fact, a book; but not anything else about it. 

"What are these?" Cas asks, moving the cardboard flaps out of the way to peer into the box. 

"Books." Dean answers. 

Cas rolls his eyes, "I know they're books, Dean, I mean what-" and Cas finally catches sight of one of the covers. 

Carver Edlund.

"Oh," Cas says. "They're, um. Our books, I suppose." 

Dean rubs a hand over the back of his neck. "Yeah. I guess, uh, I guess Chuck kept writing. Sammy found them when he went to check out Chuck's old place a few weeks back. Looks like the rest of his books never made it into circulation though. I think he just mojo-ed up some printed copies for himself when he finished with 'em, pompous bastard." 

Dean's mouth forms a thin line at the thought of Chuck, but wipes it away as quickly as it came. "But anyways, here," Dean holds out the book he was carrying between them. "Take it." 

Cas reaches out apprehensively, and pulls the book from Dean's grasp. 

"I promise it'll all make sense," Dean insists. "Just, um, flip to the page I have marked." 

Cas takes a moment to look over the book before opening it. The paperback is a stark black, contrasted by a stylized funeral pyre adorning the front, which is set at a distance so the majority is taken up but a long trail of smoke curling up until it disappears beyond the edge of the cover. 3 figures are silhouetted by the flames, and they stand apart from each other. Separate. The title reads Lost and Found by Carver Edlund.

Cas opens to where Dean has dog-eared the book only a handful of pages before the end, and reads. 

Dean held the lighter close to his chest, almost like he was holding a candle at a vigil. In a way, he was. 

Dean had been to a lot of funerals, built a lot of funeral pyres, but something about this one had broken him in a way he wasn't expecting. It broke him in a way he had spent years — decades, really — fighting against. 

You see, Dean wasn't the kind of guy. He was a red-blooded, beer-drinking, pool-hustling, bacon-cheeseburger-eating, classic-car-driving, skin-mag-reading American male. Guys like that don't have game-changing feelings for other guys. They just don't. 

At least, that's what Dean always told himself. 

But standing in front of that pyre, watching the smoke rise, he told himself something different for once. Dean told himself it was all a bunch of bullshit, because he was still all those things he was before, and he wouldn't ever stop being those things no matter what. He was just something else extra, too. 

Because Dean would have traded anything in that moment to get Cass back. Would have traded all the cheeseburgers and beer in the world. Would have traded his life. Hell, he would have traded his car if it meant he'd get another chance at this. Another chance with Cass. Just one chance to finally tell him what he'd been too scared all these years to say. Because Cass had always been around, even when he didn't need to be — he was there. But now he wasn't. And Dean wanted more than anything else in the world for him to be there so he could finally say— 

"Dean," Cas says, voice wavering. The paragraph cuts off mid-sentence; if he wants to read the rest of it, he'll have to flip to the next page to see. "What is this?" 

"Your funeral, after Lucifer killed you." 

Cas shakes his head, not quite believing Dean's words, or Chuck's for that matter. Surely this couldn't be, he couldn't really mean—

Dean interrupts Cas' swirling thoughts. "It's Chuck's words, but it's- it's all me. He writes it more flowery than it really was, ya know, up here," Dean taps two fingers to the side of his head, "but it's the truth." He laughs to break the tension, but there's an edge of nerves there. Cas can almost hear his heartbeat across the room. "Don't tell Baby this, but I really would've given her up if it meant getting you back." 

Cas shakes his head harder, tears springing loose and dropping onto the page, smudging the ink. 

"Dean-" 

"Turn the page." 

"What's on the next page, Dean?" 

"You know what." 

"I-" 

"Cas, just turn the page." 

Cas turns the page with an unsteady hand. It's blank, likely formatted that way for dramatic effect, save for 3 words in the top left corner. 

I love you.

Cas makes a choked sound and breathes out in disbelief, in sheer amazement. He runs his fingertips over the letters, traces the shape of them, feels their weight and knows it's heavier in his hands than any cheap paperback ever could be. It feels too much all of a sudden. Like something so remarkable shouldn't be confined to print — like 3 typeset and faded little words shouldn't be enough to shift the core of him so intensely that it makes his whole body ache. 

Then, the feeling of hands brushing over his pulls him out of his own head, and he looks up to see Dean (Dean, of course it's Dean, who else would it be? Who else could it ever be but Dean). Dean shifts one hand over Cas' around the spine of the book, and uses the other to push Cas' fingers away from where they rest on the page. He gently pulls the book out of his grip, and sets it on the table next to them. They both stare at it for a long moment, and then Dean is moving his hands back onto Cas, bringing both of them up to cup his face. 

Dean looks at him, eyes shining. "I meant it, I mean it. I know I'm not the best at showing it all the time, and I know I should've told you a million times before this, but I really do mean it." 

"I know you do." Cas wraps one hand loosely around Dean's wrist, and lets the other dig into his hip; anchoring both of them in place. "I- I mean it too." 

"Yeah?" 

"Of course." 

They smile at each other and rest their foreheads together, just standing there breathing the same air like it's the first time they've let themselves breathe for months. 

When they kiss, it's not a storybook. It's not bargain bin horror fiction. It's not a bestseller. It's not scripted, or planned out, or lighted particularly well. It's a kiss. It's a little awkward, a little unpracticed, a little gross through the tears. 

What it is, is the promise of another. And another after, and after that, and after and after and after. As many as they want for as long as they want. 

Their life isn't a story anymore, not in the way that they're used to. And it's no longer getting written down to be conveniently handed to each other to read whenever they have a hard time expressing their feelings. But, for a time, it was a story. It was their story. 

And it was a hell of a story, all things considered.

[flying-elliska]

one of the most impactful things I have read lately are two of French author Edouard Louis' books, Pour en finir avec Eddy Bellegueule and Qui a tué mon père (translated into English as The End of Eddy and Who Killed my Father). It's been two months and I'm still thinking about it.

The first book is an 'autobiographical novel' about the author's childhood growing up as an obviously gay boy in one of the poorest areas of France, until he leaves and reinvents himself as a writer. It's fraught with bigotry, abuse, bullying, violence, deprivation and social despair, and it's one of the most harrowing things I have ever read. It reads as many things as once : a recognition of trauma, an angry exorcism, a cry for society at large to pay attention, and to be honest, as a horror story.

It was criticized by some in France as portraying the working class in a manner that was too negative, which tells me they missed the point entirely...ironic for a book by someone who actually grew up poor - one of my least favorite things ever is progressives telling a marginalized person they can't talk about their own experiences because they don't fit the desired mold. (The French love to romanticize the working class and I'm pretty sure it's often an avoidance mechanism.)

The point of the book is so obviously not about 'look at how terrible and bigoted those poor people are'. Little Eddy spends a big part of the narrative trying to escape - himself at first, then his family/circumstances and the persistent homophobia everywhere. In the end of the book, he finally manages to get accepted into a fancy high school in the city on a scholarship and tries really hard to fit in. The last scene of the book is a bunch of his - educated, upper/middle class - classmates throwing homophobic taunts at him, starting the cycle anew. I can't think of a clearer way to say 'this is not a story about a sad gay boy escaping the evil bigoted countryside for the city and then everything was wonderful!!!! this is a story about a systemic, pervasive problem.'

One of the key arguments of the book, to me, is how homophobia, sexism and bigotry in general are both a product and a reproduction mechanism of social and economic exclusion. For instance, he describes how the norms around what it means to be a man in his village (being tough, disobeying authority, quitting school early to go work at the factory, drinking alcohol, neglecting your own health, fighting over women, repressing your feelings, etc) perpetuates the cycle of poverty ; but again this isn't 'oh these people are so stupid' and more 'these people are trapped'. Because he makes it evident how degrading and dehumanizing poverty can be, this masculinity reads as a desperate attempt to cling to a certain amount of dignity - it's an extremely dysfunctional coping mechanism. At the same time, anyone falling outside of the mold is violently ostracized (like Eddy, who tries and fails to fit in). So the system keeps reproducing itself.

In Who Killed my Father, the author makes his political argument clearer. This is more of an essay, centering on his father, arguably the most complex figure in the first novel. The man is an angry, bigoted alcoholic who makes his family miserable ; at the same time he is the son of an abusive father who makes a point of honor to never hit his kids or wife even though it's very normalized in this context. In this essay the author keeps talking about the moments of almost tenderness with his father that haunt him, the picture he has of him doing drag in his youth, the fact that the father tried to leave the village when he was young to find a better life for himself with a close friend but failed and had to come back - the moments of what-ifs, of trying to struggle free from the cycle, when the system appears almost fragile and not so unbreakable after all, that the son kept holding close like a sort of talisman.

The narrative is structured around the fact that his father injured his back working in a factory and that he had to keep doing physical labor afterwards for money, instead of resting to recover, until it completely destroyed his body. Now he finds himself bed-bound at 53. Louis inquires into who is responsible for this premature 'death'. After considering individual choices, he turns towards political decisions - the successive governments, left and right, who have been destroying the French welfare system for decades and accelerating inequality. The point is to step out of the neoliberal obsession with personal responsibility and who is guilty and who is a bad or good person, and look at systems.

An element that isn't focused on but hovers over the story constantly is that this village is one where the majority of the population consistently votes for the extreme right National Front party in most elections. The book is too angry and nuanced to be some stupid "it's not their fault that they're racist because they're poor!" argument. It doesn't make any excuses for how awful this is but instead illustrates how dehumanization replicates itself, how people being denied basic dignity leads to them wanting to deny it to others. If you want to really understand the rise of the far right you have to look at where the inequality comes from in the first place, and how easy it is for people in power to wash their hands of it by blaming the bigoted masses. (Just like you can blame societal ills on minorities ! Two for one strategy.)

Towards the end of the essay, the author talks about how proud his father is of his son's literary success - for a book who clearly depicts him as a horrible person ! And this is a man who has spent his life openly despising anything cultural, because it never showed him a life like his own. But maybe now he feels seen, now he knows people want to read about these things. Maybe there is a reclamation of dignity through looking at the horror head on. Maybe his son somehow slipping through the cracks of the cycle gives him more room. The man stops making racist comments, and instead asks his son about his boyfriend. Most importantly, he asks his son about the leftist politics he's engaged in. They talk about the need for a revolution.

I think what strikes me the most is this attitude of "wounded compassion" that permeates the book. What do you do when your parents are abusive but even after you grow up, you can't help but still love them, and you know they've been shaped by the system that surrounds them ? Recognizing, speaking the harm is essential. You need to find your own freedom, sense of worth, and safety. You need to dissect the mechanisms at hand so they lose at least some of their power over you. You need to find people who love and believe you. But then what? Do you dismiss your persistent feelings of affection and care for those who hurt you as a sign you're just fucked up in the head ? You could just decide to never speak to them again, and it would be justified, but is that really what is going to heal you the most? It's important to realize you have the choice. But there are no easy conclusions.

This makes me think of a passage I have just read in Aversive Democracy by Aletta Norval. The essential ethos of radical democracy, she says, is about taking responsibility for your society, even the bad parts, instead of seeing them as a foreign element you have to cleanse yourself of. It's too fucking easy for queer progressives, especially the middle class urban kind, to talk about dumb evil hicks, to turn pride into a simple morality tale, and forget that any politics that don't center the basic dignity and needs of people are just shit. The injury is to you and by you and you have a duty of care just as much as a duty of criticism. (And this is obviously not only applicable to class matters.) You can't just walk away and save your sense of moral purity. (This is not an argument that the oppressed are responsible for educating the oppressors ; it's about how privilege is not an easy simple ranking and it is too damn easy to only focus on the ways in which you are oppressed and forget the ways in which you may have more leeway.)

There is no absolute equivalence between political and family dynamics but the parallel feel very relevant somehow. Several truths can coexist at once : you needed help and it was not given. You were let down. It's important to recognize that people are responsible of how they treat each other. You need to call out what isn't ok and stand up for yourself. At the same time, there is a reason why things are like this. Making people into villains is often bad strategy (within reason!), and in the end, easy dichotomies are often an instrument of power. The horrors you have been through might have given you a very specific wisdom and grace you do not have to be afraid of ; you are not tainted by your compassion (it is very much the opposite of forced forgiveness ; it has walked through the fire of truth.)

To me these books fit into what French literature does best, sociological storytelling a la Zola or Victor Hugo - the arguments aren't new and they can come across as heavy handed, even melodramatic. But I'll argue that the viscerality is the point, how the raw experience of misery punches through any clever arguments about how exploitation persists for the greater good of society. Really worth reading if you can do so with nuance.

[themadlostgirl]

When It’s Cold (5)

*I had different, spicier, plans for this chapter and then the characters took off with the plot and had fluff instead.*

~~~

Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck! Fuck! Fuck! FUCK!

I had been way louder than I meant to. My body was pleased with the after effects of masturbating but my mind was paying the price. I had been peacefully asleep until another naughty dream of Felix entered my subconscious. It was late so I figured he was asleep and I could get away with being a little loud if I got a tad overwhelmed but I had thrown caution to the wind right at the end when I screamed his name.

Hopefully he hadn’t heard but it did nothing to assuage my worries. I need to get a handle on these hormones. Maybe I would feel more in control if I got something. The store sold condoms. At the very least if it turns out that he does want to have sex one day I can be prepared. I set out early that morning before Felix woke up and grabbed a box of condoms as well as some feminine products. I had forgotten I even got a period until I came to Storybrooke and time started its toll on my body which meant my bloody, crampy, moody friend was back to wreak hell upon me.

Maybe that’s why I had been so horny lately. PMS can be a hell of a hormone tornado.

I got back to the house and was happily walking back to my room to drop off my purchase when I heard music coming from the kitchen. Damn. I didn’t think Felix would be awake yet. I tried to sneak past but he caught me halfway through.

“There you are,” Felix said, “I thought you were still in bed asleep. Where’d you go?”

“Quick run to the store,” I waved the plastic bag in my hand.

“I’m making eggs, do you want any?”

“Oh sure, I’m gonna go drop this stuff off in my room first.”

“Okay.” He shrugged, “Oh wait,” he gestured for me to come back.

“Yes?”

He pulled me in for a quick kiss. “Just wanted to do that.”

“Sap.” I tweaked his nose.

I raced up the stairs and dropped the condoms in the drawer of my bedside table and stuffed my feminine products under the bathroom sink. There. Now come period or play time I was ready!

I went back downstairs and sat down with Felix for breakfast. The snow outside had really piled up. On my trip into town I saw a lot of kids out in their lawns making snowmen. Felix and I have stayed cooped up inside this entire time. Maybe we should go have fun outside too. Our entire lives used to be spent outdoors before we came here after all.

I mentioned as much to Felix and he shrugged saying it sounded like fun. We got dressed in our winter attire and I raced out into the snow. “Felix, help me roll!”

“Roll what?” he asked.

“I’m trying to make a snowman. I’ll get started on the lower section, you get started on the middle.”

“Alright then,” Felix stooped down and started rolling a ball.

I got a pretty big base done and Felix came over with his slightly smaller ball to stack on top of it. Felix started rolling the head while I gathered some rocks and sticks to decorate it with. “Arm here, and here, rocks for eyes and a nice rocky smile and ta-da! Snowman! Isn’t he a handsome devil?”

“He’s a pile of snow and rocks, darling.”

“Well how about this,” I dug my finger into the face of the snowman and dragged it down. “There, now he looks like you.”

“You’re hilarious.” Felix rolled his eyes, “He’s a little too short to be me though.”

“Nope. He’s a perfect copy.”

“Well you know what this means.” Felix started backing up, “If there are two of me that means one of us has got to go.”

“Felix! Don’t you dare!” I yelled, “Don’t kill Felix Junior!

“There can only be one!” Felix ran and tackled the snowman breaking all our hard work in half. “I reign victorious!”

“You are a terror!” I grabbed a handful of snow and threw it at him. “I will avenge you Felix Junior!” The snowball hit him right in the head. He stood up and gawked at me.

“You really wanna have this fight, little girl?” He asked as he picked up the discarded head of Snowman Felix. “We’re gonna have this fight!”

“No!” I started running away as Felix raced after me. The severed head of our snowman held high above his own head. I felt the force of it hit me in the back and I went tumbling to the ground.

“Gotcha!” Felix was already forming another snowball.

“Oh no you don’t!” I quickly made another ball and hurled it nailing him in the face. “For Felix Junior!” I started making more snowballs as I got up and started pelting him.

I was laughing my head off as Felix and I dodged around one another throwing snowballs. I got too close once and he grabbed me shoving a clump of snow to my exposed neck! “No! No! Cold! Cold! Cold!”

I dropped to the ground and Felix fell with me. He was hovering over me, that wide smile that only I ever got to see, bright on his cold stung face. I wrapped my arms around his neck and pulled him down for a kiss. Our battle lay forgotten as we sunk into it. His face was cold but his mouth was hot as he kissed me back.

“Truce?” He asked.

“For now.” I shivered, the cold and wet of the snow starting to get to me.

“Cold?” Felix smirked.

“A tad.”

“Can’t have that, can we?” He stood up and helped pull me to my feet. “Let’s get back to the house where I can keep you warm.”

“I like the sound of that.” I held close to his arm as we made our way back to the mansion. I changed into my comfiest and warmest clothes and heated up some hot chocolate for Felix and I. We sat down in the living room where Felix already had a fire going. A bunch of cushions and blankets littered the ground.

I sat down and cuddled up next to Felix. We sipped our hot chocolate while the fire crackled and music from the record player played softly in the background. Outside the snow fell in delicate flakes. It was a moment of pure bliss.

“Did you ever think we’d be like this?” I asked.

“Like what?”

“Cuddled together like we’re old lovers.” I smiled, “I certainly didn’t when I first met you.”

“A lot has changed since then though, hasn’t it?” He matched my smile and planted a kiss to the crown of my head.

“Yes, a lot has changed.” I sighed, “It almost makes me not want to go back to Neverland. I’m just so happy being here...with you.”

“You don’t want to return to Neverland?” Felix really looked at me now. “But it’s our home.”

“I’m not saying that I never want to go back to Neverland I’m just saying that I am really enjoying this time where it’s just the two of us. No other loud boys getting in the way. No hunting for food or sleeping on the hard ground. No bathing in a pond. It’s comfy here. Safe.”

“The privacy is nice,” He traced his thumb along my cheek, “I like having you all to myself.”

“Home can be anywhere we make it. Why not make it here?”

“Is that what you’d want?” Felix said, “To stay here and grow up? We’d become boring adults. The one thing we hate more than anything.”

“I don’t think either of us could be considered boring, adult or not.” I chuckled. “I don’t like the idea of growing old and dying but if you’re there along with me getting wrinkles and grey hairs then I fear it a little less.”

“That’s a big change. A big commitment. Are you sure you’re ready for that?”

“I don’t know if I’ll ever be ready. I don’t think anyone is ever ready to grow up. It just sorta happens. It’s the passage of time.”

“Does this mean you’re done looking for a way back to Neverland?”

“We’ve been searching for weeks. We’re going on two months and we have made no progress. Absolutely none. I think it has to do with the fact that we’re happy here. We’re not looking as hard as we should because we have a good thing going already. Tell me, Felix, if we found a way back to Neverland tomorrow, would you want to take it?”

“Would you be coming with me?”

“That’s not fair. You’re asking that cause you know I would come with you regardless. I am asking if you would stay here regardless of if I was here or not.”

“Wherever you go I go. I know that’s not the question but that’s my answer. You want to go back to Neverland we go back to Neverland. You want to stay here and grow up then I’ll be right by your side for that too. We’re in this together now.”

“Felix, I--” my brain tried desperately to catch up to my heart. What was I feeling? Was this love? I don’t remember the last time I felt love. I can’t even be sure that what I’m feeling right now counts but it is the closest to love I know I have ever felt. That didn’t mean I was ready to say it out loud though. “I am so glad that I have you.”

“I’m glad I have you too.” He kissed me slowly.

The rest of our day passed in a warm haze of dreamy sighs and feather soft kisses. We barely moved from our spot in front of the fireplace. Felix got up to heat up some leftovers for dinner and came to sit back down. The night was growing late and I felt myself nodding off. I didn’t want to return to my lonely bed though. I wanted to remain right here.

I rested my head on Felix’s shoulder and shut my eyes.

~~~

Felix hadn’t meant to fall asleep in the living room. But he didn’t have much choice after you fell asleep on him. He hadn’t the heart to wake you up. Not that he would have dared move from that spot in the first place. It was such a stark contrast to the hormonal hours of makeouts you and he had engaged in over the past several days. Today was all soft touches and meaningful words.

He was surprised when you said you wanted to stay in Storybrooke but what was more surprising was that he wanted to stay here with you too. Wherever you went he would follow. If that meant staying here and growing old then he was proud to do it.

He played with your hair as you slept. You had cuddled up right next to him and next thing he knew you were fast asleep. He gently reclined so he was laying down as well. You curled into him even more. Your head resting over his heart like a pillow.

What he wouldn’t give to go to sleep like this every night. Maybe he could. From the way you talked and how easily you fell asleep next to him maybe you wouldn’t mind sharing his bed. He didn’t even think about how else that could be misconstrued. Sex was an afterthought to the peace that was having you next to him. Your face relaxed and soft snores escaped past your lips.

“I adore you.” he whispered to you as you slept. He pressed a soft kiss to the top of your head and fell into a dreamless sleep with you in his arms.

---

(Previous) (Next)

[solastia]

Love And Lies | 2

Pairing: Kim Seokjin x F!Reader

Summary: You are a simple maid. When your lady and dearest friend need help escaping an arranged marriage with King Seokjin so they might be together, you do the only thing you can - take her place. 

A/N: Obviously their manner of speaking is somewhat modernized for easier reading. I don’t think you guys want a bunch of thys, thous, and such in your fanfics lmao. 

You and Eleanor had your heads poking out from the carriage window, ungracefully observing the landscape after a guard knocked to let you know your destination was near.

The castle that loomed before you was not just a castle. No, this was a palace. The sheer magnitude of presence this massive pile of stone gave off was intimidating. You could quite easily fit twenty of The Dukedom of Never’s keep across the land this spanned across, and Never’s was vast.

The land that surrounded it was magnificent on its own. Behind the castle was one of the grand seas, with a harbor large enough to contain the Royal Navy - a massive force that was rumored to be over a hundred ships and growing. In another direction was a large forest, one that according to Jungkook was teeming with wildlife and supposedly an evil witch. The fields surrounding the village seemed lush and plentiful and the people they passed appeared healthy and content. You were impressed by the obvious care that was put into the lands by the King.

Jungkook was riding alongside the carriage on his massive black charger, staring at the palace with as much awe as you.

“Do you think it takes him an entire hour to find a garderobe? Or did he just give up after a while and uses a chamber pot every time?” He asks thoughtfully, grinning down at you from atop his horse.

“Why is that your first thought?” You ask with a roll of your eyes.

“It’s a serious concern, sis! Say you just ate some pickled eel that doesn’t agree with your stomach. And the only room they have for such things is in the tallest tower on the other side of the palace…”

You snort, shaking your head at him. “I’m certain in a castle this vast there will be more than one garderobe, Sir Jungkook. I dare say there are perhaps several for every floor and wing. And no doubt the king has one all to himself near his chambers.”

He cocks his head thoughtfully, nodding after a few seconds. “True.”

A trio of guards stops your carriage right at the entrance to the long stone bridge leading to the palace grounds. Jungkook presents them with their scrolls of passage and the guard nods after looking over the seals.

“All clear, Sir. I’ll send word to His Majesty that you’ve arrived.”

Jungkook nods briskly at the guard and turns to the both of you with a wink. It was time to begin your charade.

The two of you bring your heads back inside the carriage in preparation for a more refined entrance once the carriage starts up again, the wheels clicking loudly across the stone leading to the inner bailey. It wouldn’t do to have the servant’s first impression of you to be gawking in wonder like the poor maid you actually were.

And that’s who you knew you would have the most difficulty trying to fool. The nobility had their head too far up their own arse most of the time and you weren’t as worried about trying to pass off your ruse on them. But the servants saw and knew all. Even with you dripping in jewels and rich fabrics you were worried one of them could tell at a glance you were no better than them.

You slide your hand across your gown nervously, picking at the costly fabric. You and Eleanor had spent most of your journey here adjusting each other’s gowns to fit. She was now clad in the finest one that you owned, a simple woolen dress in a blue that nearly matched her eyes, with a brown apron and cape. You were amused by how lovely she looked in such a simple garment as she sat across from you bouncing with excitement like a carefree dairymaid.

You were in a gown that no doubt cost more than you’d ever see in a lifetime. Dark crimson brocade embroidered with gold silk billowed around you like a stiff cloud. The sleeves were nothing more than a flowing golden lace, which also trimmed the scandalously low décolletage. Eleanor had even gone so far as to pile her best jewels on you and you were now glittering in gold and rubies that matched the gown. Broaches, rings, bracelets, even tiny pins placed strategically throughout the massive piles of curls on top of your head. The centerpiece of it all seemed to be the gold-chained necklace from which hung a ruby nearly the size of an egg that settled on the very top of your overly-exposed chest.

She’d even dabbed some of her cosmetics on your face. Your lips and cheeks were pinkened with rose paste and a touch of kohl was rimmed on your eyes. You’d absolutely refused to put the horrid white paste on your face that was becoming popular in some circles of noblewomen.

So, you certainly looked the part of a pampered daughter of a Duke. Your insides were still a mess of jumbled nerves and fear.

Eleanor’s hand lands on your shaking knee, her eyes soft with compassion.

“Are you that nervous?”

“Are you not?”

She sighs quietly, squeezing your knee before bringing her hand back to her lap.

“I am, of course. But I have you and Jungkook watching out for us, so I’m not frightened as I should be, perhaps. I’m more worried about you. So many things could happen and I can’t do anything if I’m supposed to be a servant. What if some nobleman drags you into a dark alcove, or someone tries to poison your meal to eliminate a rival in the bid for being Queen, or...heavens, what if the King falls in love with you?”

You guffaw at that, shaking your head. “There is little chance of that happening, My Lady.”

She huffs, waving her hand dramatically. “I’m not ‘My Lady’, remember. I’m just Ellie. You can’t mess that up. And anyway, you haven’t seen yourself from my seat. You are absolutely stunning. You look like you’re a Queen already and that man is going to take one look at you and beg you to be his.”

“There’s going to be other ladies here, you said?” You ask quickly, changing the subject with your cheeks blazing with embarrassment. As if a King would find you worth a look. No doubt His Majesty had a veritable army of mistresses at his disposal.

She nods distractedly, head turned to people-watch as they entered the busy courtyard. “Even though I was mad at him, I listened when Papa told me what to expect at court. The King’s council declared it was time for him to find a wife. They summoned five ladies in total - three Duke’s daughters, an Earl’s Daughter, and supposedly a Princess from some far off exotic land. Naturally, the Princess is the one the council is trying to push at his Majesty the most, but so far he’s shown no preference for anyone in particular. Papa was only able to suggest putting me in the running because he and His Majesty’s father were good friends. The only reason he didn’t come along with us is because he’s busy with...something about irrigation. I lost interest after that.”

You hum as you digest what she’s telling you. What it sounds like to you is that the King will have to try to stretch his no doubt incredibly busy schedule to accommodate entertaining five different women, most of whom were probably spoiled and not used to having to share anyone’s affections. It shouldn’t be too hard to simply fade into the background and let the other four battle over the King’s attention. With any luck, he’d eventually forget you were even there and you’d be able to escape without issue once Jungkook received the deed to his keep.

The carriage rattles to a stop and your breath hitches nervously. You gulp, the contents in your stomach from breaking your fast that morn lurching dangerously. Eleanor clasps your hand and squeezes.

“Remember that we have Jungkook on our side. He won’t let anything happen to us.”

You nod shakily and exhale deeply. A hand turns the carriage door handle and you stiffen, trying to recall all the lessons in deportment that you’d been forced to attend with Eleanor over the years. Be mindful of your posture, don’t breathe loudly, don’t fidget, keep your head high, and your eyes low. You could do this.

Eleanor leaves first with the help of Jungkook, as he grasps her hand to help her down the carriage steps. Once she is safely lowered and waiting patiently off to the side, he reaches in for you.

“You look magnificent and I have no doubt that you will do well. I’ll be right at your side,” he whispers as he gently holds your fingers to help you gracefully exit the carriage.

You nod and send him a grateful smile before letting your face fall into a façade of polite interest as you look upon the gathered party for the first time.

The appearance of a few councilmembers and a handful of servants to assist with luggage and escort you through the palace was expected. The tall figure standing in the middle, resplendent in crimson and gold attire that mirrored your own was not.

The King himself had come down to greet your arrival.

You eyed him in pleasant surprise as Jungkook escorted you towards him. You knew that he was a fairly young King, but this man was at the very peak of health and good looks. His hair was a dark ebony, although the sun shining on him seemed to bring out flecks of brown. It was surprisingly shorn short, but it seemed to flatter him. And his face...you weren’t the poetic sort, but he seemed to have a face that would belong to an angel. Thick lips and big soulful brown eyes all set in a face of flawless skin. He looked to be nearly as tall as Jungkook, with broad shoulders and a tapered waist atop incredibly long legs.

He was dressed in what you guessed was his courtwear - a crimson tunic over dyed leather breeches, and tall leather boots. Gold accents glittered from his shoulders and waist, with gold embroidery coloring the edges of his tunic and emblazoned over his chest in the form a wolf. His crown was surprisingly simple, as you’d always imagined some huge thing the size of a melon with a mismatched decoration of every jewel they could grab. The one atop his head was a simple golden band inlaid with rubies and diamonds. Perhaps he saved the other one for more important affairs.

His warm brown eyes appeared to widen as you came forth, his mouth dropping open slightly as he seemed to stare at your face.

Was he that horrified by what he saw?

You release Jungkook’s hand after one last comforting squeeze and drop low into a formal curtsy, keeping your eyes on the ground.

“Thank you for inviting me, your Majesty. I am Lady Eleanor Rose D’Aily, the daughter of the Duke Of Nevers,” you say softly, realizing as the words leave your mouth that you’ve just sealed whatever becomes of your fate.

A hand quickly reaches down and grasps yours to help you up, and you glance up to meet the King’s gaze. He still appears a little surprised - about what you didn’t know - but his lips turn in a welcoming smile. You’re surprised to notice the little lines outside his lips and eyes, like he smiles quite often. He also hasn’t released your hand yet, and you note that it’s soft and a little damp, like yours get when you’re nervous. But whoever heard of a nervous King?

“It’s a pleasure to have you, My Lady. We are so glad you’ve made the journey safely. We have made arrangements to have you placed in the apartments in the west wing, nearest my own. When your parents used to frequent court here, that’s where they always stayed. We thought it would be nice to continue the tradition.”

“I thank you, Your Majesty,” you respond quietly, distracted by the way the sun hit his eyes. At first glance they appeared brown, but the way that the sun reflected on them made them appear almost amber. How beautiful.

“Yes, I...err,” he began, and you noticed the way his eyes roamed all over your face, quickly down to your lace-trimmed décolletage, and back up with a blossom of color on his cheeks. “I have some meetings to attend now, but I have some time before supper so we might become better acquainted. Perhaps in the library? My Chancellor, Namjoon, will come for you when I’m free. In the meantime, please make yourself comfortable and ask for anything you might need. My Kingdom is at your disposal,” he says earnestly, with a charming grin.

You are overwhelmed by just how genuinely kind and anxious to please he seems to be. You’d thought for certain the most you would receive was a single servant and perhaps a note to tell you when you were required to show yourself. Instead, he stood before you with his hand still gripping yours, seeming to be genuinely apologetic that he couldn’t speak with you sooner.

And he smelled wonderful, like cedar and clove…

The man next to him cleared his throat meaningfully, causing King Seokjin to jump slightly. He released your hand and bowed shallowly.

“Until later, My Lady.”

You curtsied in return, watching as he turned and strode up the stone steps, whispering furiously with the man next to him.

Behind you Jungkook and Eleanor share a look, nervously observing as you follow the King’s retreat with your eyes and release a heartfelt sigh that both of them were intimately familiar with.

“Oh dear,” Eleanor gasps quietly.

[slytherinbarnes]

Sub Rosa [66]

viii. how we get to peace

Pairing: Bellamy Blake x reader

Word Count: 4.8k

Warnings: creepy parasitic worms, death, angst, violence.

Summary: You, Bellamy, and Clarke all realize how far you’re willing to go to stop the war in the valley, but you’re quick to learn your decisions have consequences.

a/n: the taglist for this series is open! I hope you enjoy, please let me know what you think!!!

previous chapter // season masterlist // series masterlist

All of you are still looking at Clarke in shock, except for Bellamy who is still turned away, when Diyoza chimes in again, noticing the prolonged silence. “I don't care how you make it happen, Clarke. Bring her to me in chains and I'll do it for you, or she can surrender herself. But your Red Queen doesn't seem like the type.”

Clarke responds, “Let us worry about that.”

“We have an understanding then.”

“We do.”

“Good. Call me back when it's done and we can work out the details of your crossing. Over and out.”

As soon as the radio falls silent again, Bellamy spins to face your twin, voice hard. “No way.”

She tries to argue, but he cuts her off immediately, glaring at her now. “We are not killing my sister, Clarke. I don't care how crazy she is.”

You turn to Clarke, wanting to take her side because you’re worried about Madi too, but you don't want to do that at Octavia’s expense. “Clarke, I want to keep Madi safe just as much as you do, but Bellamy’s right, we can't kill Octavia. Not when there could be another way.”

Bellamy steps over to Clarke and snatches the radio from her hands, before turning and passing it to Monty. “There is another way. Run the loop. The rover's charged, we're getting our friends.”

And then he turns his anger back to Clarke. “That was reckless. We had a plan, you agreed.”

“That was before Octavia made Madi her second.” The words sober everyone in the room, now more aware of the danger that Madi faces by Octavia’s side. “That army marches to war as soon as they find out the eye is down. I can't let that happen.”

Bellamy retorts, “And what if it was your twin? What if she was the one that needed to be killed to save Madi and get us into the valley, would you do it? Because I don't think you would.”

You look at Clarke, curious on her answer, and she shakes her head and stutters, “I-I don’t know. But it’s not my sister, it’s yours. Your sister who turned into a dictator in the last six years, your sister who kills her people when they try to defect, your sister who has become too power hungry to see that there are other ways to get to the valley that don't involve a war.”

You look around at everyone, your gaze staying on Bellamy as you can see Clarke’s words start to sink in. You muse, “So, we don't tell anyone?”

Monty counters, “They'll know as soon as we drive away.”

“Who cares? We grab Madi, and we go.”

Clarke cuts him a look, exasperated that he still doesn't understand. “Bellamy, she's by her side.”

“She's my sister, Clarke.”

“I know.” And you can hear the resignation in her voice. You know that she doesn't actually want to kill Octavia, but if killing Octavia keeps Madi alive, then you know she will choose Madi over the Wonkru leader any day. “Tell me what else to do!”

“We stop the war.”

Harper looks at her boyfriend, confused about his sudden statement. “How?”

Monty reaches into his pack and pulls out a glass jar full of green liquid, and you look at it in curiosity realizing what it is as he says, “Algae.”

Bellamy, however, does not seem curious about the algae, because he lets out an exasperated sigh and scrubs a hand over his face in frustration. “Monty-”

“Cooper already gave me permission to show what it can do! She's meeting me this afternoon so I can take her to the-”

“That's enough.”

Harper backs Bellamy up and adds, “The first batch put Murphy in a coma for almost a week. By the time it's ready to eat-”

He cuts her off, shaking his head. “We're not gonna eat it this time, we're gonna feed it to the plants. If I can make the farm viable again, then we'll still have a chance.”

Your brows lift, impressed, and you start to ask him a question about how confident he is in the algae when the door swings open. You all turn to it in shock, freezing like a bunch of kids that have been caught doing something they aren’t supposed to when you see Octavia standing there, her eyes locked on the screen behind Monty. “The spy did her job?”

Cooper and Miller step in alongside their queen, and Bellamy walks over to his sister, working on damage control, aware of how bad it looks that no one came to warn her. “Uh, we were just about to send for you. I told you Echo would get it done.”

You feel a flash of anger at the mention of her name, despite the fact that her and Bellamy are broken up, and you shake your head, trying to control yourself. Octavia turns to look at Monty, wanting more information. “Can the enemy still see us?”

“For now, yes. It's technical, but-”

Cooper cuts him off, and as terrible as she appears to be, she seems to understand perfectly. “He has to run a loop to mask our troop movements. When the time comes, we need to clear the surface to reduce the risk of anyone noticing the same people moving in the same direction again and again.”

“Well done, Monty.” Octavia turns to look at Cooper and then Miller, giving her commands, “Load the worms into the rover and mobilize the army. War is here.”

And then she turns to leave all of you behind, staring at each other in shock. Any plan you had to get out fast and save your friends before the worms arrived is now foiled by Octavia knowing the eye is down. You sigh, already aware that this is going to complicate things further, likely putting Bellamy and Clarke at odds even more so than they were minutes ago. You know you're about to be caught in the middle of them, so you rack your brain, trying to figure out how you can fix this. And then you remember Indra, shocked by Octavia and who she has become, seemingly willing to stop this war if given the choice. You turn and look between your twin and your former lover, offering up your solution. “We need to meet with Indra. If anyone can stop this before it happens, she can.”

They both nod in agreement, and Bellamy looks at Harper. “We need you to pass the message to Indra, we can't be seen looking for her. Tell her to meet us in the building that Octavia used as a war room before we marched the first time. She’ll know where that is.”

Harper nods, and hurries out the door, and you watch her go before you mutter, “We’ll need to get there without being seen.”

Clarke nods, “I know just the way. When Jaha and I took the bunker for Skaikru, we spent a lot of time staring at the schematics for this place. There are a lot of passageways that can get you from one end to the other without seeing a single soul.”

“Then let’s go.”

Clarke leads you from the room and into a closed off hallway, taking you through the bunker and up to the exit without coming across anyone, as promised. Once on the surface, the three of you split off, taking different paths at different times to reach the building, so that no one sees all three of you heading to the same place together. All of the sneaking around reminds you of when you spied on Pike for Kane, and a pang cuts through you, somehow nostalgic for that time. You don't know why, maybe it’s because everything felt simpler then, even when you were on the brink of war with the Grounders. Maybe it’s because things were better with you and Bellamy. Even though he was closed off and working with the enemy, the two of you were together. Now, you feel like a stranger to him. Though, the more you think about it, you kind of feel like a stranger to everyone. You saw your mother and Kane for a few minutes before they were taken away to the valley, and now you haven’t seen them since. There’s still so much they don’t know about the time you and Clarke spent on the ground without them, and there’s clearly so much you and Clarke don’t know about the years everyone spent in the bunker. 

Bellamy and the others from the ring are clearly very close. You’ve heard them all refer to each other as a family a few times since getting to the ground, but you have no idea what their time in space was like. You have no idea how they passed the time, or kept themselves sane, or when Bellamy moved on from you and fell in love with Echo. And now everything just feels so awkward. Everything is so different from the last time everyone was together six years ago. Everyone has changed so much, and there’s been so little time to get reintroduced to the new versions of each other. With a war hanging over everyone’s heads, the awkwardness persists, everyone still working to get comfortable around each other again in the few quiet moments you have been given.

You pull yourself from your thoughts when you see the building up ahead, and you step inside, seeing that you’re the last to arrive before Indra does. As you wait for your guest, the three of you all occupy the room with anxious energy. Clarke stands near the window, peeking out every few seconds. Bellamy paces back and forth across the room, and you rack your brain trying to remember if that's a habit he’s always had, or one he picked up on the ring. You never figure it out, because Indra steps into the room, already questioning all of you before she even gets the door closed. “We're readying for war. Do you know the risk I'm taking meeting you here?”

“Yes, thank you for coming.”

She warily eyes Bellamy, not sure she trusts the thanks before demanding, “What do you want?”

You step forward, feeling like right now, you might be the calmest person in this group. At the very least, you’re the middle man, stuck between two opposing sides, making you the most qualified to update Indra. “Clarke talked to Colonel Diyoza. She's offering all of Wonkru safe passage to the valley, all Octavia has to do is surrender.”

“By now, you've realized she would never do that, so I'll ask you again. What do you want from me?”

“Peace without war is still possible. Now, you're her advisor, she'll listen to you.”

“Why would I advise her to surrender in a war she's likely to win? Thanks to you, we can march freely on the enemy while the worms ravage them. By the time we get to the valley, the only thing left to do will be to clean up the mess.”

Clarke counters, “And if the worms ravage the valley?”

“A risk she's willing to take.”

You think about the conflict, about the mess all of you will have to clean up, or another war you’ll have to fight, despite not wanting to. An easy victory, sure, but a messy one. A messy one, that relies on the worms. You turn to Indra, trying to hide your excitement at the thought. “What if the outcome of the war wasn't certain, if she didn't have the worms? Would she still fight?”

“If she didn't have the worms, both sides would take heavy losses.”

Bellamy seems to understand what you’re saying and adds, “Exactly. If all it took to save her people from that and deliver them to the promised land was surrender, would she do it?”

“I would hope so. Of course, you would never see the promised land because she would know it was you and, brother or not, throw you in the pits.”

You start to wonder if she’d really do that, throw Bellamy in the pits. And then you start to worry if she’d do that to you. To Clarke. To Madi. And the more you think about it, the more sure you are that she would. If any of you stand in her way, you’re sure she won’t hesitate to take you out. You fight against your growing anxiety as Clarke starts to formulate a plan based on your initial suggestion. “Not if she thought it was Cooper. There's a failsafe in the processing room, I saw it when we were there. A way to kill the worms if they ever-”

Indra cuts her off, scoffing, “Folly! Cooper would never push that button, and since she's the only one that handles the worms-”

Clarke now cuts her off, “Cooper would be dead. We'll make it look like an accident. You would be the first responder, hit the failsafe button. No more worms.”

“No more war.” It only takes a second for her to decide before she looks between each of you, giving you her answer. “Do it. I don't want to know how it’s done, just send for me when I’m needed. The army is preparing in the atrium. I’ll hit the button, and play the part.”

She watches you all nod in agreement before she turns and slips out the door, leaving the three of you to plan a murder you had no idea you’d be committing when you woke up this morning. 

-

The plan falls into place quickly when you remind Bellamy and Clarke about the meeting Monty mentioned he was going to have with Cooper in a few hours. From there, you all decide to take her from the meeting, into the biolab, stage the accident with a torn glove, kill her, and then notify Indra. You convince yourself not to think about the fact that you’re about to kill someone, so unused to killing people in the last 6 years. Wanlida came out of you easily when you, Clarke, and Madi were threatened by the prisoners, aware that it was you vs them. Now, you try to convince yourself that killing Cooper is the same thing. She’s just as bad as Octavia, she’s the one that put the worms in someone still living, she’s Octavia's right hand man. With her out of the picture, everything will fall into place. It has to.

Which is why you now stand crouched behind a row of plants, tuning out Monty’s words to Cooper, waiting for Bellamy’s signal. He stands nearby, a rag in his hand doused with chloroform, watching Cooper inch closer and closer. You keep your eyes on him, and suddenly he turns to you and nods his head, signaling for you to stand and take a few steps, making noise as you go. The trick does what it’s supposed to, and Cooper turns towards you, calling out, “Is someone there?”

As soon as she’s turned away from him, Bellamy jumps out of the shadows and holds the rag over Cooper’s mouth, and you see her struggle and fight as Monty calls out to Bellamy, trying to get him to stop. As soon as you hear Cooper fall silent, you step from the shadows, motioning for Clarke to join you, and Bellamy throws Cooper over his shoulder and carries her over to where you stand waiting, near the door to the biolab. You look over at Monty, knowing he's your only way into that room. “Monty, we need you to open the processing room. Please.”

“What the hell are you doing?”

Bellamy counters, “Explain later.”

“Actually, if you want me to open that door, you'll explain now!”

Bellamy looks over at him, expression growing softer. “I know it doesn't look like it, but this is how we stop the war.” 

“I was stopping the war!”

Clarke, who has stayed quiet through the entire exchange, snaps, “Keep your voice down! If anyone hears us-”

He cuts her off, deadpanning, “You're killing her, aren't you?”

The three of you exchange a look, knowing that Monty seems clearly disturbed by the plan, but you also know he deserves to know the truth since you’re asking him to be involved. So you look his way, and nod once. “Yes.”

You grab the broken magnet he used last time and hold it out to him, eyes pleading. You know it’s a lot to ask of him, the engineer never fond of killing, but there’s no other way for the three of you to get in that door. Monty sighs and then shakes his head, clearly upset that he’s making whatever decision he’s decided on. He takes the magnet from your hand and mutters, “And, of course, I help because what's one more, right? We're already murderers.”

As Monty works to open the door, Bellamy counters, “That's not fair. We're talking about taking one life to save hundreds.”

“Really?” He turns to look at Bellamy, stalling his movements. “Then let's kill Octavia.”

Bellamy drops his gaze, and you and Clarke avoid Monty’s eyes, aware that discussion has already been had, and didn't play out the way anyone wanted it to. Monty shakes his head again and turns back to the lock. “Didn't think so.”

You hear the lock click and Monty pushes the door open a crack before he turns and walks away, not looking at any of you. He drops the magnet on the way out, and Bellamy calls out to him, voice pleading, but Monty never turns around, never acknowledges any of you. He just shoulders his burden and walks out the door, leaving the three of you to your dirty work. You look over at Bellamy, noting his torn expression, and you’re sure you must look the same because Clarke whispers, “We're doing the right thing.”

Bellamy glances at her before heading towards the open door. “If you say it enough, maybe I'll believe you.”

You follow him into the room, and Clarke walks in last, closing the door behind her. You jog ahead of Bellamy and unzip the biolab, pushing the flaps open so he can step inside and set her on the ground. Clarke hands you one of the radiation suits near the door, the one Cooper uses to protect herself when handling the worms, and you and Bellamy dress her in it as Clarke searches for worms to use. She finds something as you pull out your knife and cut a hole in between the fingers on Cooper’s glove, and Clarke drags over a large locked box labeled: “Adults. 2 days old.”

She swings open the glass cage that once held a live body and she sets the box on the edge, unlocking it and holding it in place. As soon as she sees you and Bellamy are finished, she says, “You two go stand outside. I’ll knock the box over and run over to you, and you close the lab up behind me.”

“Clarke, are you sure?”

“Yes, now go.”

You and Bellamy stand outside and hold the flaps closed, and Clarke makes sure you’re in position before she counts, “3...2...1...go!”

As the words leave her mouth she lets go of the box, leaving it to teeter precariously on the edge. She takes off running towards you and Bellamy and you pull open the flaps so she can run outside before you and Bellamy quickly bring them back together and zip them closed. As the zipper reaches the floor, the movement of the worms becomes too much and the box shifts to the right, into the open air, falling off the ledge and tumbling to the ground. You shiver as you watch them scramble out of the box, seeking the warmth of a human body, and it isn't long before they find Cooper and get into her suit. You see her body jerk as they burrow into her skin, but still she doesn't wake.

It takes a few minutes of waiting and watching before Cooper wakes with a start, slowly trying to piece together what happened to her. But as she turns, she sees the open box of worms and watches as a few scurry past, and she pulls herself to her feet as fast as she can, catching a glimpse of her torn glove in the process. She turns, clearly ready to head for the door, but her eyes fall on the three of you instead. She’s clearly fighting back tears as she yells, “You'll all die for this.”

Seconds after she says it, she lurches forward, falling onto her knees, groaning out in pain. She tugs off her helmet and struggles to get the suit unzipped, crying out in pain as she does. You watch in horror, aware of exactly what’s happening as she tugs up her shirt to reveal her bare torso. You see multiple worms slither beneath her skin and you shiver as she cries out in pain and screams, “Please make it stop!”

You turn away, no longer able to look, subconsciously ducking your head towards Bellamy’s chest, using him to shield your eyes. It takes a second for you to realize what you’ve done, and you start to pull away, feeling awkward, but he surprises you by wrapping his arm around your waist and pulling you closer. Clarke turns to look at the two of you, and though you can't see it, she fights to hide the smile that threatens to break onto her face. Instead, reminded of Cooper’s presence by another scream of pain, she mutters, “Let's go, it'll work. Octavia will have to surrender.”

She turns and leaves, and Bellamy hesitates for a moment before he turns you both, putting his hand on your lower back to guide you forward. The three of you head out into the farm, pulling the door closed, making sure it locks behind you. Clarke grabs Monty’s discarded magnet on her way out and turns to you. “You signal Indra, we’ll meet in our tent. Bellamy and I will take different routes and meet you there.”

You nod and the three of you split off, and you start on the path that will take you through the atrium. The sound of war preparations grows louder as you get closer, punctuated by shouts, the clang of weapons, and the thud of last minute sparring. As you step into the atrium and follow the ramp up to the exit, you casually seek out Indra, careful to not draw attention to yourself. When you finally find her, you see that her eyes are already on you, and you nod your head, so small that no one can tell. She gives you the smallest of nods back before she turns her gaze back to her troops and begins to give commands, leaving you to slip out of the bunker and into the cool night air.

You look up at the stars as you follow the streets to your tent, in no rush to have the post mission discussion which will likely include a recap of the murder you just comitted with your twin and Bellamy. You trace a few constellations as you scan the sky, disappointment rising in you when you reach the tent faster than you expected. Bellamy and Clarke are already inside when you arrive, Clarke sitting on the bed and anxiously wringing her hands as she waits for you, while Bellamy paces in the space, his new normal. They look at you expectantly as you come in, and you nod, letting them know it's done, before you plop down onto the bed beside Clarke.

The three of you remain in silence for a long time, no one eager to discuss what you just did, and you’re grateful for that. You’re relieved that Bellamy and Clarke seem just as distressed as you do at what you’ve done, though you know the three of you had no other choice. Clarke is finally the first one to break the silence, and she lifts her gaze to Bellamy, looking remorseful. “You're a good brother, Bellamy. I'm sorry that I thought I could-”

He finishes for her, “Kill my sister? The truth is, if she was anybody else, I would've beat you to it.”

You smile at them, glad the two most important people to you are now burying the hatchet, and you shake your head at Bellamy’s words. “I don't think that’s true. Maybe the old Bellamy would have, but I saw your face in there, and I know this version of you wouldn’t.”

Suddenly, Octavia bursts into the tent, and you have a split second to wonder how much she’s heard before she points at Clarke and demands, “Take her.”

People file into the tent, one guard pointing a gun at Clarke, and the two of you scramble to your feet in shock. Bellamy instinctively steps closer, as Miller walks into the room and sets his glare onto your sister. “You're under arrest for the murder of Kara Cooper.”

You look at him, and then Octavia in complete shock, as Bellamy exclaims, “What? This is insane!

“Is it?” Octavia cocks her head to the side as she appraises the three of you, “We weren't taking the worms. The eggs are already loaded in the rover, so what was Cooper doing there?”

The three of you exchange a shocked look, as Miller grabs Clarke’s arms and pulls them behind her back to cuff her. Octavia keeps her eyes solely on Bellamy. “Careful, big brother, or I'll think you helped her, and we don't have enough prisoners to settle this in the arena.”

You look at Clarke, growing worried and she shakes her head, warning you to stay silent. You start to comply until you hear Octavia muse, “Oh, well. I guess we'll have to settle for an execution.”

She turns and heads out of the tent, and your eyes go wide as you look at your twin, not sure you’re even processing the words. Miller grabs Clarke and starts to pull her away, and you look at him, begging, “Miller, let her go! This is crazy, she didn't do anything!”

But Miller keeps pulling her away as Clarke fights back, dragging her feet. You lunge at them, trying to reach them and pull your twin back to you, only to be held back by Bellamy. You fight against him as you yell out to his sister, “Octavia, get back here! Octavia!”

Clarke calls your name through your yelling, locking eyes with you. “Keep Madi safe, promise me!”

You feel tears well up in your eyes, but you nod. “I promise!”

She relents, allowing Miller to take her away, relieved that even if she dies, Madi will be safe. You, however, do not relent, continuing to kick and scream and call out to Octavia, Miller, and Clarke long after they’ve gone. Bellamy holds you the entire time, letting you tire yourself out until you’re a mess of tears, sobbing over the loss of your twin. Once you switch to crying, he lowers himself onto the bed, holding you in his arms as you cry until you have nothing left. No tears, no energy, just an empty feeling. 

You fall silent, staring at the wall, too upset to do anything, and Bellamy starts to quietly hum Clair de lune, tears spilling from your eyes again as he comforts you. You don't know how long the two of you stay like that, but it feels like forever, and through your heartbreak you’re comforted by the fact that at least right now, he’s here for you. He may not love you anymore, but he’s not running to abandon you, and maybe that’s enough. 

Eventually, he lays you out in the bed, tugging off your boots and getting you comfortable, pulling the blanket up to your chin. And then he stands, turning to walk away and leave you alone. Panicked, you reach out for him, grabbing his wrist and stopping him, and through your raspy throat you ask, “Where are you going?”

He doesn’t look at you, his gaze firmly fixed on the wall, and you start to worry that you scared him away. He mutters, “To make things right.”

Before you can ask what that means, he pulls your fingers from his arm and turns away from you, disappearing from the tent and leaving you alone. You feel tears threaten to fall again, despite feeling cried out, now  completely abandoned. Your twin is gone, and your former lover is gone now too. You close your eyes, trying to clear your mind, praying to the Universe that sleep takes you quickly. 

And for once, the Universe feels pity on you and grants your request, sending you into a deep sleep before you can even finish your prayer. 

-

next chapter

[kanene-yaaay-o-retorno]

The Color of my Soul(mates) [2]

[First oneshot]

[AO3 link]

Kanene’s Notes:

Nope, I do not regret the pun. New oneshot yaaaay!! Just a quick reminder that both Virgil and Patton’s mindsets are bad. They can work, of course, but only for a certain expense. Worry not. They will both start to go to a therapist and take care of themselves, even though this will not be heavily shown in the oneshots.

Warnings, fun facts, random things and stuff:

* That fanfic has Moxiety and Past Moceit and Past Virgil/Remus (no idea how it’s called dfghjdfghj) in a platonic relationship (yet), but it can be viewed as romantic, if you wish.

* Swearing, depreciative thoughts, losing someone (not death, just stopping to be soulmate), anger issues, anxious thoughts and nightmares. It’s hurt/comfort.

* [~*~]  Means passage of time

* [...] Means change in the focus of the narrative 

* This characters do not belongs to me. They all belongs to the amazing Thomas Sanders in his series of Sanders Sides.

* Something around 5.300 words. -w-)b.

* Sorry for any spelling, pontuation and grammar mistakes! Any advice is very very welcome!

* Tô com preguiça de postar a versão em português brasileiro aaaa! Thankys for reading, my lollipops! Say to someone important how much you love them, be safe, talk with the one that you love, drink water and sleep well! Byeioo!~

                          [~*~]

Loneliness is an island with missing boats.

Missing is when the moment tries to run away from the memories to happen again and can’t do it.

Memories are when, even without authorization your thinking re-presents a chapter.

-       Adriana Falcão - Meanings

[~*~]

Hey, Dee! It’s been some time, huh? Nothing really happened around here, so I have no interesting news to share today. Buut, I learned a new knock knock joke! I would finally get you to laugh with this one! It’s like that:

Me: Knock, knock.  

U: Who’s there?  

Me: Ice cream.  

U: Ice cream who?  

Me: Ice cream if you don’t let me in!

Funny, right?!

… It feels silly to continue to talk with you through those letters. I can’t-

I don’t even know where to send them! That is stup- not great.

I just… I just miss you, Dee. A lot. My uncle says that I should get your old representation out of the bed and hide it so I can start moving on, but… It feels empty, you know? Everything.

I really miss you.

Love, Heart.

[…]

“No.” 

His words echoed in his mind, the strap of his backpack slipping from his grip, his body throwing itself forward, heart jumping in the back of his throat as his steps inevitably brought him even closer to the faded green, almost white, shark plushie in front of him. 

“No.” 

He repeated, as if this was a spell able to make the scene before him change. His hands trembled and failed in touching the so loved object, a silent scream slipping from his slightly parted lips. Yet, he still tried to think of something. Anything that would erase his choices. He knew it.

He should have known. He read about it before, the butterfly effect. Any choice, any movement, any little thing you did could change drastically your future. It could make events – people – which would happen in your life just…

Disappear. 

[The stuffed animal remained quiet on his hands, it’s blank face staring superficially, not really seeing him. Not like before.]

He knew it. 

“Rat?” He knew it. He knew it. He knew, knew, knewknewknew it! “Ree?” His soul searched desperate for an answer. But he got none. No thoughts, no feelings, no small touches, no acknowledging sparks, nothing. 

That word seemed to ring unbearably in his ears. There was nothing there. Nothing except for the silence and the void which filled itself with despair at every that went by.

“This better not be a prank or this time I will throw you in the washing machine for real!” Virgil’s eyes were stinging. He should have done better, should have thought in another way or another anything. He shouldn’t have done that, he shouldn’t! 

“Ree, stop. That is not funny.” Ree actually preferred when Virgil called him Rat, and as his chest was scratched by an agonizing, crescent fear, deep down the young boy wished his soulmate would jump – his thoughts always felt like that, excited, uncontrollable jumpy frogs just playing around – from somewhere and demands Virgil called him by it. “Answer me!!”

His fingers squished the soft fabric, a short, unexpected wave of anger pleading for at least a shout of pain before Virgil realized what he was doing, immediately lighting his touch, tears shining in a sad gloom in the corner of his eyes. His breathing started to hurt.

He needed to do something.

“MOM!!”

Virgil opened his door with a strong slam, running through the wooded floor of the corridor, stumbling his way to the stairs, coming down at the highest speed he could muster. The adult figure was already standing in the living room, the Tv blasting a show in the background, probably the activity his mother was concentrating on before his cry. A frown painted her face and her dark eyes stared at the boy when he stood in front of her, holding his stuffed shark in her direction.

“Fix him!” 

[‘it’ a quiet whisper from his brain corrected his sentence.]

Her analytical eyes danced around the toy in front of her, looking for any teared fabric, any stain or hint of what happened to it, the confusion in her actions becoming more and more prominent as no visible result was found.

[And, as her analysis occurred, the quiet whisper in the back of his mind wondered if this was the original color of the shark before it became a representation of his soulmate. They were together for so long Virgil didn’t even remember what it used to look like.]

No! The boy with heterochromatic eyes firmly gritted his teeth, head shaking. This was NOT the shark’s real color. Its real color was a dark, deep, enthusiastic green full of chaotic ideas and dumb jokes and sparks and grins.

He refused to let everything end in this way.

Realization fell in her face, a soft gasp coming from her open mouth. “Oh, Virgil…”

“No, no, no! You- You need to fix him!” But her eyes… “Mom, please,” the way her arms opened to involve his small, trembling form… 

“Please, he is my best friend.”

[‘Was’]

She hugged him, cradling her fingers in his hair and lightly rocking Virgil and his sobs, her sweet words muffled by his cry. Then the younger one wiggled out of her touch, getting the plushie and running back to his room, the door slamming one more time.

He refused.

“No! No!!” He kicked his backpack, its content spreading across his carpeted floor. The shark was placed in his desk seconds before the Virgil focused his anger on his bed, throwing everything on the floor. His pillows hit the walls and the toys on his shelves. The cacophony of sounds made his head hurt, but he ignored this in order to kick and throw more things. 

Seconds, minutes, countless pieces of time passed before he stopped, panting and with stinging eyes in the middle of the room, his only possessions left untouched was his guitar and Ra- His shark stuffed animal.

Because he loves playing guitar. Because he loves Ree.

His fingers pet its soft fur, wandering in every detail, trying to burn in his soul how alive and colored it used to be before today.

Virgil felt like crying, felt like hugging his old-representation with all his might and just spent the rest of the day like this, pleading that Ree would come back and Virgil would do better and everything could be back to normal again.

But he refused.

He refused to cry like a baby. He refused to let this happen to him. He refused to be made a fool by the Soulmate System or whatever sadistic creature that observed him right now. He refused to go through all of this again. 

Ever again.

Virgil opened his closet and got up on his chair, hiding the shark on the highest shelf under a bunch of old comforts he never got to use.

They wanted him to be a Colorless? Very well, then.

[~*~]

Anger is when the dog who lives in you shows its teeth.

Sadness is a gigantic hand that squeezes your heart.

-       Adriana Falcão - Meanings

[~*~]

Hiya, Dee.

Some days are better, some are worse. 

It hurts.

But, hm, good things, right? Today was sunny and refreshing, I love when this happens. A ladybug landed in my hand yesterday, it was so small�� I also found another beautiful feather when I went to the park last weekend, very fluffy and a baby on the bus smiled at me after I made some funny faces.

I hope you’re also receiving and giving some beautiful smiles there. Aunt just called me for the movie night so… See you later!

I miss-

Love, Heart.

[…]

Virgil woke up sweating. A tight feeling clutching the back of his mind. However, he managed to catch himself before his eyes opened, the back of his hand pressing them, as if to make sure they wouldn’t open against his will.

Urg… Not this again…

Virgil pressed harder the pillow curling around his head, the pressure easing the irritation as he groaned in protest, wondering how much more time it would take before he finally grew used to this routine. An annoying sensation banged rhythmically on his chest, hammering together with his heart and flying along with the butterflies on his stomach over and over again until a slightly nausea almost leaded the one in pajamas to give up and just find the nearest stuffed animal so his soulmate’s bond could finally be initiated, his representation showed up and then the exhausted teen could finally get some freaking rest  and then proceed to turn a blind eye to his soulmate for the rest of their lives.

Who would say that ignoring the Soulmate System would be so hard?

But, damn, even if this shit always came back at the right moment when the first ray of sunshine hit his face, usually Virgil had at least the freedom of the night to sleep!

His hand wandered clumsily, hitting the bean bag next to his bed and looking for the small device he always left there for the night. He sighs when his fingers make contact with the cold of his phone, quickly bringing it up to his face and making sure nothing else could get in his eye field. On the third try he succeeded to put the right password, ignoring the video shining on it and quickly lowering the brightness of his screen until it was almost nonexistent. 

Four in the morning. What the heck was his not-for-much-longer-soulmate doing up at this hour??

Ok. It didn’t matter, Virgil murmured to himself, his words slurring, completely engulfed by the fog of sleepiness which continued to involve him. It didn’t matter because Virgil was sure he would manage to win that battle, just like he did on every other occasion since Ree. Of course, he never had a perfect receipt for this, only a group of superficial orientations as focusing on something else, tossing around the mattress until the exhaustion took over his body or doing anything that guaranteed his suborn nature to fight until the bond faded away with some hours, maybe one or two days. 

However, this one was about to complete a whole week and his resolution was beginning to weaken, escaping between his fingers regardless of how much he fought to hold it with tooth and nails. The mild headache growing on him was the proof of this.

He flipped his pillow, letting its cold surface rest on his face, adjusting himself to lay starfished onto the bed. 

He needed distractions. 

Songs. He liked to listen to music a lot, something he would be very much inclined to do now if it wasn’t so late and his earphones were so far away. But, stopping to think about it, it was crazy how sounds work, like, even if they’re far away they manage to be heard. Pretty much like that weird sound captured by that boat who was only minding its business… The Bloop. Heh. The Bloop. Such a stupid name… He wondered if it was a Jurassic animal doing that and when humanity would be finally able to answer his question. If it is really an animal will they call him Bloop? That is a horrible name to give to something probably gigantic and scary… Bloop… Bloopers… blooo...

His muscles from his toes to the tip of his fingers began to relax, his breathing becoming more erratic as the trail of nonsense thoughts led him away from reality and straight to the cloak of Morpheus. Bit by bit he started to be unaware of his room. First the faint sound of his spider quietly scraping the sand on her terrarium, second the sensation of the pillow on his face, then the cold of his phone as it slipped away from his hand…

And, unsupervised by the teenager's eyes, his index finger hit the ‘play’ button on the video, and the blasting of Aquiles Priester’s drums filled the room in a hot shot, followed in the same second by Virgil’s hoarse scream. The confusion and sound making the one with heterochromatic eyes stumble to a sit position, blankets and pillows falling from him as his astonished movements tried to be coordinated enough to turn off his phone before his mother woke up and decided to know why and what her son was doing up at four-darn-morning. 

The button was hit and the silence was faster in cover the room all over again, being only broken by Virgil’s shaken gasps, his trembling fingers laying on his adulterated heartbeats, taking large, wobbly deep breaths in order to normalize it, his attention entirely focused on hearing any hint of muffled step outside his room.

In. Hold. Out.

In. Hold. Out.

He was fine. Everything was fine. 

This was only a scare.

In. Hold. Out.

In. Hold. Out.

Okay. No sound. Virgil allowed himself to fall on his bed, stretching and humming in attempts to ground him to reality, not taking too long to let the sleepiness begin to slowly crawl to his mind again, his body feeling surprisingly much lighter than it had been in days. A yawn escaped from his lips. What the hell he was doing with his cell phone anyway?

For the second time in the night his body fled to a sitting position, the sudden calm and coziness which hit his senses now having a slightly sour taste on his mouth as the teenager realized what it meant.

His soulmate bond was complete.

His gaze flew to the small pile of fabric on the floor, a glint of a sky-blue color shining amidst it. He pushed his blankets away and his breath hitched when the full form of his soulmate’s representation was shown.

Oh no. Nononono. That was- 

That wasn’t normal. Nor supposed to happen. Oh shit. Shitshitshitshit. What could he do?

Virgil dropped – carefully, even if the cold on the bottom of his stomach screamed for him to run! – the object on his bed, getting across the room and right in front of his closet in a blink of an eye. The door flung open, his gaze scrambling through all his possessions in search of that specific teddy bear his mother gave him a year ago, telling it was going to help him to heal, grabbing it firmly and plopping it next to the blue fabric calmly laying on his mattress. He bit his nails while his eyes ran from an object to another, waiting for the color to somewhat jump on the plushie, where it was supposed to go in the first place.

Virgil stared inquisitively at his pillow- no, his soulmate’s representation, as if he could scare the reality into changing itself. His fingers ran through his hair, feet pacing on the floor.

 Ok. His soulmate was a pillow. A literal pillow. That was not good.

Before he could fall on his parasitizing thoughts or hide the pillow and pretend nothing had happened, a badly muffled sound reached him, making his body freeze as his brain immediately recognized what it was:

Crying.

[...]

Before is a caterpillar who didn’t become a butterfly, yet.

Indecision is when you know very well what you want, but you think you should want another thing.

-       Adriana Falcão - Meanings

[...]

Hey, dear! Heart here again! It’s been a time, huh? I discovered a new Pet Shop nearby and a very nice old lady let me play with the puppies after school. You really should see the hamsters there! They’re the cutest, most precious soft things!!

They don’t have any snakes, sadly.

I… I hid your teddy bear and I’m getting used to not stare at the right corner of the mattress, looking for you. 

I still miss your smooth thoughts, your warmth, your advice and receipts and… you.

I think I’m getting better. The sensation is starting to feel… normal.

Remember we-

I used to-

I know you won’t really read this, but I’m trying to keep taking care of myself. 

Hooray?

Love, Heart.

[…]

Patton loved stuffed animals and this was a fact that anyone who got into his room for barely two seconds would realize. Small plushies of multicolored frogs rested on his shelves. A big polite giraffe sat on his desk, proudly showing off her new necktie and his older ones were in the closet, guarding his favorites clothes. His soulmates, of course, had a special treatment, receiving a seat on his bed, closer to him and within his research at any occasion, emergency or not.

And that was an emergency. Well…technically. 

Maybe…

Perhaps not. 

The teenager changed to a sitting position, his fingers trapping the mattress in a deadly grip, tears falling from his eyes, which was firmly focused on the moon shaped night light across his room, trying to kick out the too cold, too hot feeling the nightmare left on his skin. 

His brain felt fuzzy and his thoughts were all mushed together, way too messy to properly fight against the memories of his dream replaying on his head. The sensation of pure despair still running on his veins as the monster – tall, fast, its shadow hovering over his small form – chased him and his friends. Patton still felt his throat dry after running for what seemed hours, and for when he realized they would never manage to actually escape from it. He could feel the betrayed eyes of his loved ones as he made each one of them trip, the small period when the monster got them giving him enough time to escape, the screams ringing on his ears.

He muffled his sobs, slapping his hand on his mouth and getting up, going to his closet and grabbing his panda. It was one of the fluffiest stuffed animals he had and he could use a bit of softness right now. His steps were tired and he hid his face on the plushie even before laying on his bed again, curling around the bear as if it was the core of safeness, as if it would make all the bad thoughts and feelings go away.

As if it could erase all the nightmare and convince the part of his mind which said that if it was real life, that would be exactly what he would do, that it was wrong.

It was! It was completely wrong! Patton would never, ever, betray his friends, or hurt them, or go away when they needed most! He wouldn’t. He would fight, if it was needed. He would do his best every single time to help them! To be there. He wouldn’t just run away. He couldn’t. He couldn’t be alone. He didn’t even bear that thought.

[A part of his soul struggled, firm on its position. It kept holding into a bond that directed to another soul who kept pushing him away, both refusing to change their mind.]

Bear. Patton let go of a weak, barely audible, forced giggle, squeezing the panda on his touch tighter. Panda was a bear. Heh. His tears began to calm themselves, falling slower from the corner of his eyes, a strange and sudden wave of strange, but welcomed calmness hitting him.

A sudden warm touch laid on his forehead.

“Hey, are you okay?”

Patton gasped, his wide eyes flying open to stare at the now purple plushie on his grip.

Purple. Pandas weren’t purple. He was sure this one was always white with black dots and tiny glasses on it. Definitely not purple. Not unless it was-

Oh. 

Ohhh.

Oh no.

For a moment his breath was taken, adrenaline exploded across his body and his mind went blank, his face stumbling forward to press his lips on the panda’s forehead, a completely lack of words, especially when a flow of sentences began to appear running over themselves and leading to his very tired brain to struggle in order to try to grasp their meaning before another phrase came and took its place.

[His body seemed to relax, letting go of a ball of tension Patton didn’t even realize he had in the first place.]

“Fuck, sorry, that was pretty dumb. Of course you’re not fine, why else would you be crying? What I was trying to say is: Can you get better? No, wait! That sounded harsh and it’s definitely not what I meant- wanted to say. Ehh, shit. Okay. Uhh. Breath, okay? Breathing is a good thing. You have to breathe to stay alive so I think it’s already a good start. Keep breathing, please do not die. Oh god, wait, that is not a dangerous situation, is it? Are you in danger? Are you dying? Oh, fuck I can’t hear-”

A startled giggle made a run from Patton’s lips, making his new soulmate to be quiet.

“Urg, sorry.”

“No, no. I was not laughing at you!” He adjusted his grip so the only part touching the purple bear would be him holding one of his paws, realizing he forgot to stop hugging him earlier. “I am okay. I just… didn’t want to cry on you, sorry.”

“It’s okay. I don’t, huh, care.”

“Crazy how bonds happen nowadays.” Patton attempted a joke, feeling suddenly a bit vulnerable, internally wishing the other wouldn’t ask about the reason for his tears. “It-It’s hot today, don’t you think?”

“Yeah, with the Sun and everything.”

“Yeepp.” Patton sniffed, cleaning the tear track left on his cheeks before resting his back on the bed’s headboard, a beginning of a headache after that waterfall of emotions shining in the horizon.

“...Do you want to listen to a song? It helps me to calm down when I’m, ya know.”

“Oh, don’t worry, I’m already a bit better.”

“Ok, sorry.”

“Don’t be.” Maybe it was sleepiness or the excitement of having a new soulmate, but before he could think much more about it the hidden truth was slipping from his mouth, “I’m grounded. No phone for the week.”

“That sucks.” The teenager just shrugged, hoping his soulmate would understand the action by his movement. 

Silence impregnated the room, spreading and filling his system, his eyelashes closing bit by bit.

“I know how to play guitar. I can… play a song for you. Onlyifyouwantofcourse.” The thought was quick, quiet and disappeared as soon as it arrived, leading Patton to almost believe he imagined it.

A good feeling bloomed in his chest, a smile flourishing on his face as he held his soulmate’s free hand, carefully squeezing them in what he hoped it showed his gratitude.

“I would love to.”

“’Kay. Uh, cool. Give me a second.”

And then a few minutes later his form was engulfed by warmth. Patton let go a sigh of relief, basically melting in the so caring touch, don't having the heart - that word gave a hurtful tug in his chest - to remember his new soulmate he couldn't really hear the accords, only the shy, calming humming rumbling on his chest and lullabying them to a peaceful sleep.

[~*~]

Feeling is the language the heart uses when it needs to send a message.

-       Adriana Falcão - Meanings.

[~*~]

"How can I call you?" 

Patton stopped his voice before that old nickname got out, scratching his throat. He should try to move on, right? 

Baby steps. 

"Pat." 

"Pat?" 

"Pat-Pat!" 

Virgil rolled his eyes, denying the small smile which appeared on the corner of his mouth.

“You can call me V.”

[…]

“So, you’re a pillow.”

Patton blinked, a surprised snort filling the room. “V, I know I often say I’m soft but if you wanted to rest on me all you needed to do was ask!” He added some shadowing on some feathers, giving the drawing of the Bem-te-Vi more profundity. He was really happy he found that site about the birds of America. 

“No, I mean literally. Like… your representation is not a stuffed animal, it’s a pillow.”

“Oooh…” He blinked a few times. “I didn’t know that still happens.”

“What do you mean with ‘still happens’? This happened to you before?”

“Not with me, but I saw a video about this! Before the plushies became famous due their shape being easier to be seen as human-like, the bond would form in anything that could be quickly dyed, just like clothes, pieces of fabric, pillows… I think if they showed it to a doctor, he would describe their condition as ‘comfortable!’” Patton shook lightly the panda’s shoulder, smiling. “Uh? Got it? Comfortable? Because they’re soft?”

“Pat, that was horrible.”

“Awww, come oon.” Patton rested his chin on V’s head, forgetting his drawing for a while. “Puns are harder than knock knock jokes! You have to wait for the perfect timing to make them.” Virgil huffed. “Not even an itsy bitsy giggle?”

“Nope.”

Silence.

“Pat?”

“No. I am pouting.”

He felt a couple of pats (ha-) on his head, the touching going away in a few seconds. “You will get there some day.” The other answered his soulmate with a raspberry, giggling a bit of his own silliness before going back to his hobby. He really was planning to finish this bird today.

“The thing is… Since you’re, ya know, a pillow. I was thinking… okay, I know that this will sound weird but… I was thinking of putting some clothes on your representation so I can… try to see you better.” 

“Ah.”

“Only if you’re comfortable, sure!”

“No, no. I am! It’s just…” Patton bit his lips, lightly squeezing the shell of his ear with the hand that wasn’t holding the pencil, adjusting his body to a better sitting position. “What clothes do you have in mind? Not that I think your taste is bad or you don’t know how to choose good clothes or something like that!”

“No, it’s cool!” The thought came in the moment Patton forced himself to stop his nervous talking. “I wanted to ask you because of that, I, uh, have black t-shirts, jeans, an old grey hoodie, PJs, clothes when I was a kid, onesies, maybe I can get a dress?”

“Gasp. Do you have onesies?? Aww, I want!”

“Everyone has a onesie.” Virgil mumbled in defense, feeling his cheeks getting hot. “I have a skeleton one, a raccoon and the Toothless from How to Tra-”

“OHMYGOSH YOU HAVE TOOTHLESS!” Virgil had absolutely no idea how Pat managed to make a thought so high pitched and excited to the point the words themselves were barely understandable. “HE IS THE MOST PRECIOUS, CUTE LIL DRAGON…” and then a bunch of squeaks and mumbling took over his brain just as he has hugged and then lightly bounced before suddenly everything disappeared.

He decided it was safer to let the silence prolong itself a bit longer.

…

“Pat?”

“You might need to give me a few more minutes, kiddo.”

“You need to chill, dude.” Virgil remarked, a ray of fondness shining in his words. He gathered his onesie. It was his favorite one when he was fourteen, now it didn’t even fit on him anymore and it clearly wasn’t made to be used by a pillow, as well, but it would suffice until he thought of a better solution. “Ok. Got it, you might want to use your Blocker now.”

“Okayy, it’s somewhereeeeee...” Patton rummaged the content of his backpack, looking for the earphone-shaped object. He hadn’t the chance to buy the wireless prototype, so he struggled a few seconds to untangle the cables. “Here! So, see you in fifteen minutes?”

“Ok. If you hear or feel something just touch my arm and I will immediately stop.” 

“Right!! Bye!” Patton waved, more a habit than anything else, plugging the Blocker on his ears and the cluing its ventosa behind his head, right where his cerebellum was. A few pieces of time went by before his head became partially empty, only his thoughts filling it. He put the panda away. 

It was a strange feeling, to use this outside his school, nor parallel conversation of his classmates or a teacher’s voice filling the air to distract his attention for the fact that he couldn’t hear or feel his soulmates anymore. He hummed, wondering how Lo was and writing a self note on the corner of his paper that he should check on him later, ask for him to finish that story with the smart detective he was telling him on Sunday before Patton fell asleep due the other’s habit to keep petting his hair, probably a revenge for Patton’s constant need to hugging, holding or actively interacting with his serious soulmate’s representation, more often than not receiving fond-exasperate pokes in return.

He looked through the window, mind wandering as the wind hit the tree in his neighbor’s yard, messing with its leaves. It was a bit lonely to have your thoughts all to yourself…

But not entirely bad.

[…]

“Sooo, howz does it looks like?” The naturally excited voice asked. Virgil just pressed his hand firmer on his lips, his other arm hugging his middle. His gaze fell for what it felt the umpteen time in the blue dyed pillow before him, the sleeves of  his onesie folded inwards in a poor attempt to cut half of its original length, the ‘legs’ were criss crossed and all of this ignoring, of course, the unnatural rectangular shape of the whole thing.   

‘Like shit.’ It was his first thought, but he decided to not send it to Pat.

“Weird.”

“I am looking at my pillows right now and-” giggles, “but come ooon, it’s Toothless! There is no way it isn’t at least a bit cute!”

‘You have no neck.’ He internally panicked, looking at the few, sporadic tiny blue hearts appearing amidst the black onesie, showing the representation was getting used to the new fabric attached to it. ‘A probably-head, shoulders but no neck. It’s like a reverse freaking giraffe!’

However, Virgil decided against sharing this particular vision with the other. 

“I guess. Are you… breathing well or whatever?” His tune was a mix of nonchalant and nervous, the choice of words making him wince.

“I am. Why?”

“No. Nothing. No reason.”

“Oookay.” The teenage signed at the confusion on his soulmate’s tune, why did he had to talk in the first place or be so weird making a such big deal of something stupid like that? Urg. He stared at the blue object one more time. Damn Soulmate System. Damn destiny. Damn lack of socialization skills.

…………

But, dude, really, the guy has literally no neck here, there is NO WAY he isn’t feeling nothing because of that. Pat is probably lying because he pities him after a so horrible, futile attempt of fixing what he caused. No. Wait. He can’t just assume his soulmate is lying because of his overthinking, the other part of his brain retorted. Was he overthinking? He probably was. He always did it. Or perhaps this was a correct inkling of Pat. Soulmates were supposed to do that sort of thing after some time, right? One week was enough time? What he-

“Hey!” Pat’s thought cut his own. “Sooo, now that you can ‘see’ me a bit better… hug? You can say no if you want, sure!”

Virgil blinked one, two, three times.

“Ok. But you let go when I let go, got it?”

“Sure thing, V!” Warmth bloomed in his chest when he heard his nickname, Virgil wasn’t sure why.

He embraced the representation, feeling a bit silly, the same feeling that was fast to go away as Pat hugged him as well, firm but careful. The sensation overwhelmed his senses, but in a good way, leading the one who loved guitars and got a strange hyper fixation on drums to let go a sigh, body relaxing.

He patted Pat’s back two times before finishing the touch. “There you go.”

“Thanks! Sooo, see you later.”

“Sure thing.” He agreed, wanting nothing more than a good hot bath after so many feelings in such a small period of time. 

“uwu”

“How the fu-” 

“NO SWEARING!”

“-did you do that?”

Virgil snorted, the warmth still spreading on his chest and maybe - only maybe, - having a new soulmate wasn’t an entire bad thing.

[bigskydreaming]

Have you seen Linkara's review of The Dark Knight Returns? He goes into why the view of Robin as a soldier, popularized but by no means invented by Miller, is so dangerous.

I have not, but I need to refresh my memory before I go check it out because I’ll either agree with it or be infuriated by it and I can’t remember which just at the moment but would like to before I restart that argument ten years later.

LOL, so like, I knew Linkara yeeears and years ago. We were both regular posters on Gail Simone’s messageboard on CBR like fifteen years ago, maybe longer. Pretty sure we even met in person a couple times at Gail’s annual SDCC breakfast meetups, but not sure. I do know for sure though that he and I were both involved in a three way argument about this very topic with another guy.....I just can not remember if he was the one who agreed with me or the one we were both fighting with about it, LOL. I THINK we were in agreement as while I wasn’t like.....as pro-DC as most YABSers were given that it was Gail’s board and I mostly hung out at the X-boards and just swung by YABS once a week or so BECAUSE I couldn’t stand all the ass-kissing that went on at that board so that DC writers and artists would hang out and post regularly, LOL, like I’m pretty sure I remember Link as being one of the less....vehement of the pro-DC camp.

(Tbh, one of the biggest ways in which I disagreed with Gail on stuff is I UNDERSTOOD her feeling a need to be civil with other DC pros even if she didn’t like them personally, I just....couldn’t manage the same and didn’t feel any desire to try. Like for example, not sure how many people know who Ethan van Sciver is, but he’s a long time high profile DC artist, best known for his GL stuff.....but he used to hang around YABS pretty regularly. EvS is ALSO a haaaaaardcore conservative, Trumpian, and all around terrible person. And he always was.

Like he’d play it civil back then but his opinions were downright hateful on a variety of topics, particularly towards marginalized groups, but he was good at picking just the right moments to half-assedly walk something back the second he took something ‘too far’ - so like, the end result was he said it and everyone saw and remembered, but before anyone could react he’d drop the mea culpa card and be like oh I’m sorry I know that was out of line, I was just caught up in the moment and it’s all good cuz this is all friendly debate anyway right? We’re just talking here.

And he’d pull this crap all the time but because he was a DC pro, people would let him get away with it and warn people off coming down on him so he didn’t feel unwelcome at the board. Now the painfully ironic twist here is that shockingly, totally unexpectedly.....fast forward to about five or six years ago where good old Ethan burns a shit ton of bridges and decides well why not make things a dumpster fire for everyone in my vicinity....and he became the driving force behind a bunch of alt right comic book fans starting their own weak ass version of Gamergate, only called Comicsgate. It never was nearly as....big...as Gamergate was, but it was still ugly. And the thing is, Ethan sicced his sycophants on other industry pros he’d worked with over the years but always disagreed with on politics.....like really let the ugly fly....and most of these pros included Gail as well as a bunch of the other DC professionals from back in the YABS days.

Because thing was....that was literally WHY he’d hung out at YABS so much back then, despite being so far in disagreement with most of the progressive leaning board. He was always just interested in stirring shit up, he never actually had the slightest interest in debate or seeing the other side of anything....he just knew how to play the right cards to get the right people to come to his defense and cool things off rather than run him off, in the name of keeping things civil and such...all so he could start it all up again a couple weeks later.

And this is literally why that kind of thing doesn’t work for me at all. Because he wasn’t really that subtle even then, most people knew all along exactly what he was doing, and letting him get away with shit that would have gotten anyone else banned purely because he was a industry pro just meant that his opportunities to subject anyone in his vicinity to just vile, hateful shit ended up more protected than all the marginalized posters on that board who didn’t come to it to see his shit but had to constantly listen to it anyway because people were more interested in making excuses for him than making it comfortable for everyone else.

And in the end, he ended up turning on the very people who’d protected him from everyone else ripping into his hateful viewpoints with the directness they merited. Which just. Sigh. To me just smacks of a whole lot of unnecessary years spent putting up with his barely veiled bullshit until he didn’t bother even veiling it anymore....even though the reality is NOBODY was ever buying into his veil of it in the first place and we all knew what was right behind it all along. Anyway. Not that it matters LOL, but good old Eth, was one of the primary reasons I decided not to go into comics when I had a couple of opportunities come up, as I decided to focus my efforts on Hollywood at the time instead. Lmao, I figured if I was going to have to keep my mouth shut about coworkers whose opinions I vehemently disagreed with in the name of professionalism, I might as well focus on the profession that would pay me more money to keep that to myself. Look, at least capitalism is useful when ADHD and trying to pretend to be decisive about life choices.)

Long ramble nobody asked for aside, like I said, I can’t remember Link’s take on this particular topic but it’s likely the one I agreed with for the most part. My own take has always been that Miller sucks and if he said it chances are I said he was wrong because he is about everything and my religion is people saying so and by people I mean me. My religion’s also big on self-actualization. Not sure what else, I did just make it up and I think I’ll probably just stop there so I don’t accidentally make it a cult.

But yeah. I mean, maybe it’ll surprise people given how critical I am of the abusive elements of canon, but I’ve never applied the child endangerment/child soldier argument to sidekicks. It’s obviously not that they don’t get hurt in these stories and even traumatized, it’s not that they’re NOT in danger as kids....it’s just why I put such an emphasis on it being their choice to fight crime and be heroes and NOT something that Bruce or any other mentor or parent pushed them into.

Because this is one of the reasons why death of the author more often than not just doesn’t work for me. Authorial intent matters. Readers are always free to interpret a text however they want, regardless of authorial intent....but IF a writer has a specific intent behind a narrative choice, chances are most interpretations that refuse to align themselves with that viewpoint aren’t really all that RELEVANT to the story the writer was trying to tell in the first place.

Don’t get me wrong. Those other interpretations can still exist. They’re allowed to exist. People can abide by them all they want. But if someone’s takeaway from a story is a deliberate choice to read it entirely different from the story the writer intended it to be.....like, their interpretation is all well and good, but it’s not actually at all a RELEVANT commentary on or review of the story the writer was actually writing. They’re not actually saying the writer did a poor job of telling the story or was wrong in how they did it....because they’re not actually talking about the story the writer was actually telling.

Thus their commentary on it exists. But it’s just not that relevant. Because nothing in it even CAN offer an opinion on how else the writer could or should have written that story....because the story they ARE talking about isn’t the story the writer was even interested in writing.

Now, there are some times when authorial intent DOESNT matter. And when criticism of it is entirely fair and earned even if it’s of something the writer didn’t consciously or deliberately write into their story at all. But these things are almost ALWAYS unconscious. Unlike what I was just talking about, where the writer was very consciously writing the story a certain way for a reason, and thus people who aren’t interested in reading the story the way it was written to be read just can’t offer up a commentary that says anything useful or meaningful about the story that was actually written...the flip side of this is when the writer puts things they don’t intend into the text, but still are very much there all the same.

And this sort of thing applies to things like micro aggressions or racism, homophobia, sexism....things where a writer didn’t sit down intending to be offensive or alienate their readers but still put in things that they don’t think to view as offensive due to their own privilege and lack of experience EXPERIENCING the microaggressions that marginalized readers might be all TOO familiar with and thus can’t avoid reading into a passage where the writer might not have INTENDED harm or offense, but delivered it all the same. Because they didn’t think to put it into their story, they weren’t TRYING to....but they didn’t think to avoid putting it in there either, even if it’s because they didn’t know to until it’s pointed out to them that it’s there.

And this also applies to when the writer puts into their story, via whatever viewpoint they’re writing from, things that herald from their own viewpoints, how they view the world, even in terms of unconscious biases or expectations....but things that readers can still interpret as something they vehemently disagree with, even if the narrative seems to condone it. Because a lot of these viewpoints are things where the way they’re written....even just not coming out as clearly not condoning or agreeing it can effectively be read as tacitly condoning it.

So to apply all this to the idea of child sidekicks and child soldiers:

They’re not one and the same, and thus treating them as one and the same or interchangeable is IMO an inherently flawed perspective that doesn’t ever have anything USEFUL or RELEVANT to the stories that most people are trying to tell with child heroes and sidekicks.

With the notable exceptions of Miller, Ennis and certain other writers who by their own admission usually aren’t even trying to write about superheroes but rather deconstructions of the genre as a whole.....the vast majority of comic book writers, even the ones I dislike LOL, aren’t writing about child soldiers when they write characters like the Robins. Because CONSCIOUSLY, with INTENT, they’re already trying to write something completely different:

Child heroes and sidekicks are almost universally written to be child (although to be really fair, for the most part they’re largely teen) empowerment allegories. They’re youth power fantasies.

They’re stories about kids, about teens, getting to be the ones to save the world. About kids who don’t need adults to save them because they save themselves or their friends. Kids saving other people, other kids, grown adults. Stories about child HEROES are written as metaphors of hope for the future and the promise of the younger generations, or power fantasies where kids who feel helpless and powerless in their own lives can read these stories and vicariously imagine through the characters the idea of one day having the power to save themselves or other people, what that would be like, what they’d do with that.

But here’s the important part, and why people interpreting these teen and kid heroes as child soldiers doesn’t really offer relevant commentary to stories that are written to be allegorical youth power fantasies, regardless of authorial intent or death of the author....

And that’s because the key ingredient here, the thing that’s not really up for debate or open to interpretation....is that these stories can ONLY ever be allegorical.

Because like I said before, child heroes and child soldiers are not the same thing. There simply IS NO REAL WORLD EQUIVALENT for child and teen heroes as comic books style them.

And that’s why the fact that with most every child hero in comics, no adult makes them be a hero. They choose that for themselves, it’s almost universally characterized as a self-determination or empowerment moment rather than one of coercion like Miller likes to characterize it. His choice to characterize Bruce essentially drafting Dick as Robin to fight alongside him does nothing to provide commentary on any other superhero story, no matter what he’s told himself or his fans, because his story is the only one where Robin was drafted!

You can’t condemn narrative choices that nobody but you has actually written and then act like you’re saying something about any narrative other than your own fsjsjfshfzgzfhgs.

And you also can’t claim that you’re just seeing in the text something that’s inherently there and the other writers didn’t just see to avoid like I was talking about being a valid critique....because what’s being commented on there isn’t anything that was written unknowingly. Other writers consciously wrote the same things as Miller in terms of a child engaged in all that violence....but they deliberately wrote those moments to be metaphors of a kid that gets to save themselves and other people and CHOSE that, which is inherently opposed to the interpretation of a kid who is ONLY in harm’s way because he was forcibly drafted by a more powerful figure or force who cares neither what he wants or if he gets hurt.

These two ideas are mutually exclusive. They can not coexist in the same narrative because a character can not be powerless and self-empowering about the exact same specific choice. And thus anything that’s said about one of these narratives is inherently unable to say anything that’s relevant about the other....because the other is not written by its writer TO BE the kind of narrative that particular commentary is dissecting. It’s not TRYING to be that narrative, so no review of it can possibly say how flawed it’s execution is of an idea it’s not actually trying to execute.

And the differences between child heroes and child soldiers are not just limited to choosing that or being drafted and these other differences are equally key.

The biggest being that child heroes can not be seen as ‘basically’ the same thing as child soldiers.....UNLESS you are also perceiving adult heroes as basically the same thing as adult soldiers. And not even law enforcement or police or temporarily deputized or whatever else you want to spin it as....SOLDIERS, specifically. You don’t get to bring up something as charged as child soldiers and then get vague with your terminology when the close scrutiny that brings to your analogy stops working in your favor.

If sidekicks are child soldiers then you must in conjunction view adult superheroes as soldiers. And not in the abstract one man war on crime way Miller likes to consider Batman in his attempted deconstruction of superheroes. ACTUAL soldiers. If there’s no room in your comparison for child heroes to differentiate from real world child soldiers, there’s no wiggle room for the adults either.

And again, except for Miller, Ennis and specific others who by their own admissions are not TRYING to view superheroes the same way most other comic writers are, but fail to see that genre conventions are largely interpretive and thus seeing room for different interpretations of superheroes isn’t actually a commentary on how other people see and write those same heroes....like except for these select few, most writers are not writing superhero soldiers unless they’re Captain America or Captain Atom. Yes I know there are other superhero soldiers but let me be pithy. Even those aren’t really the same as their real world equivalents.

See, real soldiers don’t make distinctions about whether or not they’re willing to use guns. Their personal views on killing are not prioritized over whether they’ve been told to use lethal force to accomplish their objective. They have a chain of command. No matter the rationalization, they pledge their loyalty to singular nations and the aims and objectives of those specific nations over the abstract of acting in defense of the whole world.

Now again, maybe that applies to Captain Atom, but for the most part can you say the majority of comic book writers are TRYING to write Superman, Batman, Green Arrow, Wonder Woman etc through that lens? No. So while Miller really thinks he said something when he wrote his Batman with guns, fighting in the Middle East, killing people left and right, none of that actually ‘showed’ people that at the end of the day, Batman is no conceptually different from a real world soldier like. No all he actually did was write his own take on Batman, and said look, he’s a gun toting murderous asshole, huzzah I have deconstructed the modern superhero!

Like. Shut up Miller. Honestly.

But seriously. Superheroes do not have a real world equivalent and neither do child heroes. Even when it comes to nonpowered ones like the Batfam, they’re still deliberately written in a larger than life, four color perspective that requires a suspension of disbelief at the front door. We ALL know and understand that they aren’t a blue print for how to go out and be a real world vigilante. Even real world vigilantes exist. But they don’t look anything like the Batfam and it’s disingenuous to pretend they do for the sake of teh discourse. Nobody honestly believes that there is even the OPTION of going out one day and deciding to become a comic book style vigilante like one of the Batfam. It’s why even they’re termed superheroes despite the lack of superpowers. On a CONCEPTUAL level it’s understood that the stories being told about them require an extrahuman medium. You can not simultaneously write characters according to a mythic scale but then attempt to interpret that very writing on a real world one. It doesn’t work.

Which brings me to my final piece of this pie. Or puzzle. Idk I’ve been doing this response for awhile I forget what this is.

And that is again, the difference between interpreting a story in a way the author probably didn’t intend and understanding when a story isn’t meant to be interpreted in the way you’re trying to.

And this difference is how I can understand and reconcile the idea that it’s not inherently abusive for Bruce to allow his kids to fight crime at all, even though that would inherently be child endangerment in the real world, but at the same time, I can view him as abusive in other ways that don’t make allowances for the differences between real life and comics.

Basically it boils down to: CAN this specific element of a story be duplicated in real life or mirror a real life action or idea? Is there a direct parallel to a real world equivalent at all?

I can view Bruce fighting crime or saving the world alongside a child Robin without viewing that as child endangerment or inherently abusive, even when Robin gets hurt in the process....because there is no real world equivalent to those parts of a story. NO ONE, child or adult, is going out there and doing those things Batman and Robin style. Even the people who dress up in their own real life vigilante personas basically just do niche neighborhood things like walk people home from the bar. And even people doing real life vigilantism in terms of taking out criminals, like, that’s usually more of a personal revenge thing and not one where they’re trying to attract attention via a costumed persona. When you think real world Batman and Robin, nothing comes to mind for a reason.

And thus this says nothing inherently abusive about their dynamic, even according to real life parallels of child endangerment, because it’s not a real scenario. And thus it’s not TRYING to say anything about real life. It’s innately allegorical. It’s power fantasy emphasis on the fantasy.

In contrast, when you have something like Bruce hitting one of his kids.....no matter who the characters are, that specific interaction and the dynamic it presents DOES have a real world equivalent. That’s just parent/child abuse. And thus even if the writer didn’t intend for it to be interpreted that way, it’s still a valid interpretation. If it looks like a parent hitting their child, you can call it a parent hitting a child.

Batman and Robin fighting killer mind controlled plants together? Can’t happen. I’m not going to call it child endangerment when it’s not a realistic scenario and not meant to be, and I’ve already been presented with a valid alternative interpretation of this being a child empowered to help save people alongside his superhero father. There’s no point in condemning a dynamic that CANT be translated to a non allegory in real life.

But Bruce hitting his son? A father no matter how good hearted normally, being affected by extreme stress or grief or something else that makes his behavior take a turn for the worse and reach a point where he physically lashes out even if he never would have in the past? Nothing remotely allegorical about that. That story has too many real world equivalents to dismiss as having nothing to say about abuse in real life. Even if the writer didn’t intend for this to read as abusive because they were thinking of how much worse Dick has been hurt fighting alongside Bruce and never held that against him even though technically it was Bruce letting him get hurt....doesn’t matter. That interpretation still requires viewing through a lens that can’t exist in reality. No kid can ever excuse a parent hitting them by thinking of how much worse they got hurt taking down their local mob together and if he didn’t blame his dad for that cuz he wanted to do it to help people then how can he blame his dad for hurting him in a moment of anger? Umm. Doesn’t track see? They’re not the same thing at all.

Or another one that really bugs....I’ve heard people defend shipping a Robin while underage with an adult by saying if they’re old enough to make the choice to risk their life and have that choice respected, they’re old enough to choose who they want to be with. Umm. No. That’s not just apples and oranges that’s genetically modified grapes and seventeenth century cannonballs.

That logic doesn’t apply because neither of those things is the underage character choosing ANYTHING. They’re fictional. Everything they choose is just what their writer wrote them choosing. But again, one of those choices is one that an underage reader CANT choose in real life and have respected by every adult in their life, and thus will never have a bearing on their life as anything BUT an allegory they have to interpret and translate into something actionable they can apply to their life and choices. The other choice is them being written as presented with an option that’s actually a textbook real life grooming technique and something abusers use to justify the relationship they’re trying to cultivate with a minor by saying aren’t you mature for your age, aren’t you old enough to know what you want or to do this or that in which case you should be old enough to make this choice?

See the difference? Putting on a cape and going out to fight robots? Not directly applicable. Saying yes to the grown man saying he wants to have sex with you and thinks you’re old enough given this other choice you’ve made that highlights your maturity? That’s a choice that can be presented both to a Robin or a real life minor, but a writer justifying that choice for that Robin by saying well he’s already previously made this other choice that has no real life equivalent.....that creates a pretty misleading interpretation to people reading that story and not stopping to think through the distinctions between what KINDS of choices the writer is presenting these characters with and then justifying via their narrative.

And while I haven’t watched the video you’re referencing, anon, I would definitely agree that this is an example of how viewing child heroes as child soldiers is....not great. Aside from being cynical, misusing the idea of death of the author and helping to validate Miller’s choices and thus ego which is NEVER a good look LOL....it also intentionally or not paves the way for putting fictional types and MEANS of harm on an even playing field with real life ones and acting like it’s all one and the same with no distinctions to be drawn. And this doesn’t actually offer anything substantive or constructive about holding characters accountable for reasonable expectations of harm, when the sources of harm have no reasonable equivalent and thus only exist in the medium of being a youth power fantasy in which the child involved is fictional and can’t truly be harmed, with the harm done the second the scene ends and where the character can be back in fighting form the very next scene. Thus the only lingering element there IS the power fantasy.

Nope, all it actually does is muddy the waters in the REVERSE, and make it so it’s actually easier to justify or rationalize types and means of harm that DO have a real world equivalent, but by pointing to examples from a fictional medium and emphasizing the fictional character’s lack of being harmed while de-emphasizing the fact that the writer has full control over depicting this in a solely positive light that doesn’t ALLOW the fictional character any angle from which to voice that this CAN result in harm when not written for fictional characters according to a writer’s specific intent.

And that’s that about that. My opinion: you have it.