#i literally went to find an among us emoji oh my god

[lilgynt]

you will kiss me on the lips. you will kiss me on the lips so hard and fondly.

[arcanadreams]

That time you and your demon boyfriend went viral

hi yes hello obey me fandom!! my name is Gabbi and i have never played a single second of the actual game but i have read enough fanon content for the past year to have this idea swimming around in my head and now i am finally letting this accursed thing out of my brain and putting it in yours

also i’m only doing the brothers because any more than that and i’d have an aneurysm probably. oh and shoutout to @obeythebutler and @beels-burger-babe for inspiring me with their works to feel brave enough to write for this fandom

Lucifer:

You and Lucifer go viral on Asmo’s Devilgram story!

You’re in the kitchen helping Asmo with dinner duty and singing along to one of your playlists of human realm music that you like to show him.

Asmo starts filming your cute little dance while you stir the pot on the stove because you are just adorable!

About ten seconds into him filming, Lucifer appears in the doorway with quite the stern look on his face. You know, the one that comes right before a “MAMMOOOOOON” and strikes fear into the heart of all those with functioning eardrums. That one.

He opens his mouth, presumably to tell y’all to shut the fuck up, but then there’s a lull in the music and the eldest can hear your voice ever so slightly above the song’s vocalist and he freezes.

Man stops in his tracks like someone just smacked him in the face with a midair volleyball.

Asmo can be heard stifling a laugh behind his phone.

Lucifer’s face gets so soft and he almost, almost, loosens his metal-rod-through-the-ass posture before you notice him and give a little wave and ask if you and Asmo were being too loud like the considerate darling you are.

Lucifer clears and his throat and says something like, “No, you aren’t. I was just coming to check on how dinner is coming along,” and leaves, after which Asmo immediately presses the post button.

Screenshots of Lucifer’s heart eyes for you go absolutely viral because every demon on Devilgram goes absolutely feral for seeing the eldest demon brother lose his dignified composure. It becomes a meme template. “Get you someone who looks at you like Lucifer looks at MC” and “me at the delivery demon when he shows up with my spicy bat wings” posts become commonplace. (Asmo thinks the memes are totally worth getting strung up with Mammon for laughing at them.)

Mammon:

Much like Lucifer, you and Mammon end up going viral off Asmo’s Devilgram. (Noticing a pattern here?) 

He pulls a silly prank on your asses and honestly I don’t know how you fell for it. But hey, they say “idiots in love” for a reason, so...

You and Asmo are sitting in the common room of the House of Lamentation just chillin. Well, he’s chillin, you’re on the floor studying for an upcoming exam.

The video starts in the middle of a conversation you and the avatar of lust were having.

“No, Asmo,” you say. “Mammon and I don’t use pet names for each other.” Now that’s just a darn lie, and every demon and crow within ten miles of Mammon and you together knows it.

“Really? I find that very hard to believe, MC.~” 

You sigh in response to Asmo’s teasing. “Okay, he has a lot for me but I’m just not much of a pet name person, y’know?” The rest of the exchange goes like this:

“Oh, I totally get it.” *pause* “Hey MC, what do human world bees make again?”

“Honey.”

Cue a sheepish Mammon sticking his head in the doorway at the bluntness of your tone when you answered Asmo.

“Yeah, babe?” he looks like a puppy left on the side of a highway oh my god hUG HIM-

Asmo turns the camera back to his smug ass face and in the background you can be heard tripping on the damn carpet trying to get up and hug your mans. (”MAMMON GET OVER HERE SO I CAN HUG YOU” “W-WHAT? I THOUGHT YA WERE MAD AT ME?!?!?!?!”)

Leviathan:

Streamer Levi? Streamer Levi.

You guys go viral the first time you make an appearance on one of Levi’s weekly (insert cool Devildom streaming service name here) streams. 

It’s completely unintentional. You had been asking him for weeks to play with him on there, but he’s the avatar of envy after all. He doesn’t like sharing his partner, even if it’s with random strangers who have no real access to you.

However, he has his stream on a Thursday instead of a Friday one week, and you come into his room carrying dinner because 1) You didn’t realize he was streaming and 2) No matter what he was doing, the boy needed to eat. It wasn’t unusual for you to bring him dinner, so you had no idea why he was blushing and stammering even more than usual this time in particular. Boy was speaking in beached whale trying to tell you what was wrong.

Then you notice his screen. Oh! “Hi chat!” You wave, setting Levi’s food down on his desk in front of his keyboard. “M-MC!” He full-on whines, slamming a hand over his mouth afterwards when he remembers his viewers could hear that.

Honestly, they’d meme the fuck out of him if it weren’t for the fact that they are FINALLY SEEING HIS HENRY!!! THE MYSTERIOUS MC!!!

Chat is bombarding you with questions while you make Levi eat dinner. And by make him eat dinner, I mean literally feeding this man forkfuls/spoonfuls while he games because you love how flustered he gets when you do that. 

Does it impact his score? Absolutely. Does he care? Not really when you’re pampering him like that.

You start answering chat’s questions about you while he’s chewing so he can’t tell you to stop LMAO-

You’re a natural on stream. The VOD becomes the most popular on Levi’s account in a matter of hours and soon cute highlights compilations of you and him on that stream start making the rounds on Devildom Twitter.

Satan:

There was buildup to Satan going viral, similar to Levi in a way. 

Satan does have a Devilgram, but it’s basically a white woman’s Instagram with added book reviews for variety. Unless you’re a reader his account is pretty boring: candles, books, fireplaces, and cats.

However, after you two started reading together fairly often he began posting pictures of your legs draped over his while you sat together. They’d always be captioned with vague ass pretentious literary criticism. 

This goes on for months, and he gains a lot of (horny) followers after the leg pics start up. He doesn’t really get why but you both joke that it’s because you have some damn nice legs and I mean neither of you are complaining about the new following.

You two go viral when he finally shows your face, entirely by accident.

The post is a video, which is already strange for him and grabs attention. In it, you’re scoffing and reading an excerpt of a book, mocking its understanding of female anatomy.

“I’m quoting here, Satan: ‘her breasts bouncing around like giant pacmen.’ I’M SORRY?? THAT ISN’T HOW BOOBS WORK SIR. WHY ARE MEN ALLOWED TO WRITE?” 

(fun fact that is a very real quote from a very real book I really read last month pls save me)

Originally the camera is focused on your body, with your head out of frame to protect your privacy, but your righteous anger made Satan laugh. Like, a real laugh. The one that makes you and everyone in earshot wonder if he truly was never an angel cause he sure as hell laughs like one but anyway-

When he threw his head back, his DDD angled up just a tad without him noticing, and your face was in view for like .2 seconds. Screenshots of it are making the rounds on Devilgram almost immediately: FINALLY THE LEGS’ OWNER HAS BEEN FOUND.

Satan apologizes profusely but you honestly find it funny and you two opt to just start taking selfies while reading with both of your faces in them from now on. 

Asmodeus:

I’m gonna be real with you: you and Asmo go viral all the time. Pretty much everything Asmo posts can be considered viral because of his social media following and his status as one of the seven avatars of sin.

However, there are some fairly cute highlights to be pointed out among the times you were both featured in a post that blew up.

Your favorite is probably that time Asmo livestreamed on of you guys’ ‘Nail Nites,’ as you call them.

You’re both on the floor, doing your nails and kicking your feet back and forth while talking to chat. A lot of the questions are about your relationship, and there’s a lot of flirting back and forth between the two of you.

A particular clip of the stream does blow the fuck up on Devilgram, though, when someone screen records it and posts it with a bunch of heart emojis edited over it.

“’What colors do you think best describe each other?’ Ooo, that’s a good one, chat!” Asmo claps his hands together excitedly, making sure to be  careful of his nails.

Pretty much everyone expected you to say pink, but you surprised both your boyfriend and your viewers when, after a pensive few moments, you replied with “Hmm...probably yellow or orange.”

“Can I ask why, darling?” Asmo tilts his head in confusion. I mean, yeah, those colors look good on him, but he doesn’t wear them often so he’s wondering about your thought process. 

“Well, in the human world those colors often represent happiness, optimism, and positivity. You’re always the cheerful presence I need in my life when things get hard, so you have the vibe of those colors.”

Asmo proceeds to burst into tears and hug you, messing up both of your nails and prolonging the stream since you both have to start over. But neither of you particularly care. 

Fun fact: Asmo has the clip that demon made of that portion of the stream saved on his DDD and watches it whenever he feels sad.

Beelzebub:

Beel and you probably go the most viral out of everybody. Like this moment is an entire phenomenon across the Devildom internet. 

It’s a video, or well, multiple videos, taken at the end of a Fangol game that Beel’s team had just won. Everyone is cheering and going crazy, yourself included, and you just really wanted to congratulate your boyfriend.

So, like the rational person you are, you elect to climb up onto the railing of the bleachers and wave to get his attention. 

You were absolutely fine up there, and sat all comfortably motioning Beel over to you. He notices, of course, and jogs over, standing right beneath you and looking up. (Back where you were sitting, Mammon is screeching like a hyena in heat and Belphie, who is laying down, has one eye open to glare at him. The youngest knows Beel would never let you hurt yourself; you’re fine.)

A bunch of assorted demons at the game has started filming while you were sat atop the railing since you were rather noticeable. Therefore, there’s a shit ton of different angles of the adorable events that follow:

You slide off the railing, landing right in Beel’s waiting arms bridal style. You’ve got this brilliant smile on your face as you pull his helmet off. None of the DDDs filming can hear it over the crowd noise, but Beel asks you why you just went through all that trouble and you tell him it’s because you wanted to tell him how proud you are.

Soft boy’s chest puffs up and he smiles this big cheesy smile at you reach up to run a hand through his hair. You feel him practically purr at the contact, and with a laugh you pull him in and plant a big ole smooch on him.

The crowd, at least those of them that can see, scream. Everyone is running high on adrenaline and happy emotions; something that cute causes a ruckus!! When you pull away Beel proceeds to put you on his shoulders and you celebrate with him and the rest of his team.

The videos of you two being adorable go completely viral and there are some threads dedicated to stockpiling every single angle taken of the event. Beel is completely oblivious to the attention but you have a lot of them saved on your DDD.

Belphegor:

If you think Belphegor has any sort of social media presence whatsoever then you are sorely mistaken. (Well okay he actually does run some anonymous troll accounts to meme on Lucifer’s posts but that’s neither here nor there-)

Therefore, naturally, you two go viral off of Asmo’s Devilgram. 

Okay so someone in the obey me tag the other say headcanoned that Belphie will go out of his way to nap in ridiculous places and my brain really took that and RAN WITH IT.

So what happens is that Belphie will fall asleep in the fucking weirdest places. I’m talking on top of the fridge, underneath the dinner table, on top of bookshelves...you name it, he has slept there, no matter the effort it takes to get there in the first place. 

And, ever since you two started dating, you would join him. Sometimes it involved putting yourself at risk of great bodily harm, but the little smile he gave when you he saw you fucking scaling the countertop to reach him made it worth it.

So anyway, since Beel adores the both of you to no end, he takes pictures whenever he sees you two napping together, whether or not it is in a crazy place. He sends these to the family group chat because he thinks they’re adorable.

Over a span of weeks to months, Asmo has built up a stock of images of you and Belphie cuddles up in seemingly impossible places. Once he has about ten or so, he posts a compilation of them to his Devilgram with some cheesy ass caption like “The things we do for love <3″.

They become a meme SO QUICKLY. Like UNBELIEVABLY quickly. 

The picture of you and Belphie sleeping on top of a bookshelf, in particular, is a big hit. Memes abound.

“If my girl doesn’t climb up a bookshelf to cuddle my ass, she don’t love me.” “Get yourself a partner who scales bookshelves just to be with your ass.” Etc etc...Belphie doesn’t give a shit but you laugh at a lot of them so he sees that as a good outcome.

[delicrieux]

☆ﾐ 𝚖𝚊𝚔𝚎 𝚢𝚘𝚞 𝚜𝚊𝚢 “𝚘𝚑”

PART 10: BIG DICK IS BACK IN TOWN

y/n is back in brooklyn for the holidays. thinking that a stream will make her feel less homesick for cali, she starts working on her famously titled hentai.free.srv. what was supposed to be a relaxing stream turns into a special delivery about two hours in.

─── corpse husband x reader ─── soc. media + written fiction! ─── word count: 2.2k ─── ❥ req: Here's one... You know those apps for delivery like Domino's or whatnot... What if reader is streaming Among Us with Corpse, and reader mentions they're hungry and Corpse offers to order them food, and readers like no no it's fine... Then there's delivery at the door (Corpse ordered beforehand) 

author’s note: fucky format is also back in town baby!!! also if you find any mistakes - no u didnt <3 thank u everyone for enjoying this story sm i literally cant believe how feral yall going strawberry cow was a nuclear explosion im still recovering tbh. got an ask a while ago and decided to incorporate it into myso. happy holidays everyone! myso will continue on monday!

ultimate masterlist.  ҉  myso masterlist   ҉   previous.  ҉   next.

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Indeed, being soft on any social media platform was the biggest disgrace and needed to be eliminated post haste. Moreover, it was a slippery slope - once you start flooding your timeline with cute imagery and heart emojis, what will stop you from posting inspirational Facebook quotes? Disgusting. If Rae were here, she would chide you (not you thinking about her as if she’s dead or something). For once in your life, you feel like you deserve it. 

Alas, you hope this little chaos you’ve caused is enough to throw everyone off. The stans, especially. You know the hashtags, you’ve seen ARMY scourging for info online with the same fervor and ruthlessness 1 Direction fans hacked airport security cameras just to spy on the boys. If you had any dirty secrets online, they are out to the public now - thankfully, besides the Harry Styles stan account (with edits and all), you have nothing. Though, now that you think about it, exposed nudes would have been better than your Punk!Harry edit receiving almost a million views. God, your life’s a fucking mess.

Your fans aren’t the only ones out for info - you, too, are trying to decipher Rae’s message. Code: Barbecue Sauce. The two of you had come up with it roughly two years ago, around the same time when you promised that if you didn’t find significant others by the time you’re 40, you’ll just marry each other. It was one of the many rules found in your friendship codex. Barbecue Sauce signifies information - an exchange of information. And depending on how it ends or begins (”So I’m sitting there” alludes to Rae, “On my titties” alludes to you), secret data on that person is given away, usually free of charge. 

But why? And to whom did Rae give away what? You had pestered her mercilessly and even sent some voice messages where you were crying. You were only crying because of a video of a grandpa smiling you saw on TikTok, but you are a snake, and so you put those tears to good use. If streaming doesn’t work out, you’ll just become an actress. Hollywood would love you. Your PR firm sure as fuck wouldn’t, though.

Rae was having none of it. She said you’ll figure it out eventually. Told you to channel your superior puzzle skills. You were quick to remind her that you can barely count to ten without having an aneurysm. Oddly serious, she admitted that she worries for you sometimes. Why only sometimes?! you demanded. She merely sighed. uttering under her breath something that sounded closely to “Boke.”

You leave her for barely a week and she’s already neck deep in the gay volleyball anime, hoodie and cardboard cutout and everything. Your life is falling apart.

But Brooklyn is nice. It had snowed when you stepped off of the plane. Thousands of snowflakes sprinkling into your hair, dotting your cheeks and nose. You missed this sight back in Cali. You missed your parents, too. 

Home cooked meals, old sweaters, your old room and about 40GB worth of old high school pictures on your computer. You went through them all one night. Some were stomach churning, cringe inducing nightmares. You were especially fond of those. Texted some of your friends that were still in Brooklyn, met up, decided to bake. Bad idea, Rae was the resident chef back in Cali. Besides laughing till your stomach hurt, and almost burning down your kitchen, nothing all that significant happened. Somewhere down the line, at about 3 am, half-way through a cheesy rom-com you had the overwhelming urge to text Corpse.

That’s where the problems really started. God, you missed California, missed being in the same timezone with a guy you hadn’t even met yet, how embarrassing is that?! You missed skating around and taking pictures of the beach in the setting sun, sending it to him, silently wishing he was with you to admire the view. 

You really want to call him. And to hang out with him. But for some reason, the thought of that springs up immediate anxiety and you shy away from asking. Him sending you cute good morning texts doesn’t help, either. Maybe it’s better he doesn’t know that you’re a blushing, stuttering mess each time you read “baby”. 

Late evening. Your stream is already set up, people are slowly trickling in and you greet them with a grin and a soft “Hello! Hi hi!”. You did your best to make your room a perfectly chaotic backdrop - led lights, an embarrassing amount of anime merch and plushies. You always try to balance out your weeb side by dressing hot as fuck for your streams - today’s inspiration just so happens to be egirls. Mostly because you watched one too many egirl make-up tutorials on TikTok, and also because you’ve been listening to Corpse’s song all day.

Yeah, no, who are you kidding, you dressed up this way because you were hoping Corpse was watching your stream. You didn’t forget your cat headphones, either. You know he likes them. You want to make him suffer. Perhaps then, finally, he will ask you out, so you wouldn’t have to.

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“I feel like,” You start when you put away your phone, staring idly at the chat, “I feel like I need a new name for you guys. Calling you guys after two years of streaming is just... weird, no? I also don’t respect men so I don’t want to call you guys. Like, so many creator’s have, like, a name for their fans. Uhm, Cody Ko has the chodesters, Kurtis Conner has, uh, folks? Kurtis Town? Citizens! Markiplier has mommy issues--” You can’t help snorting, “So, I’ve been, like, thinking - I know, shocking! - so I was thinking I’m gonna name you cockroaches. Because you’re grimy little shits impossible to kill. And also then I can use the legendary Minaj meme ROACHES!”

Your stream enthusiastically echoes ROACHES, making the chat swim. Yes, if anyone would enjoy such a name, it would be your audience. You’re as equally proud as you are disturbed.

“Well, anyway.” Leaning back into your chair, you throw your arms out with a bright grin, “Big dick is back in town, baby! If you noticed the backdrops different, it’s cuz I’m in Brooklyn now. Don’t ask me when I will return to Always Sunny, I don’t plan that far ahead.”

While Minecraft boots up, you decide to answer a few questions.

r u dating sykkuno?

You want to smack your head into the keyboard, but as it is, you can’t exactly afford a new one, so you refrain, “No, Sykkuno and I are not dating, we are just good friends. Uhm, I’m not sure how much I’ll have to repeat this, but, we really aren’t, so if the roaches could chill - Oh my God, that sounds so stupid, I love it - uh, yeah, if the roaches could chill that’d be great.”

the roaches lmao sounds like we’re a sports team

“Oh shit, yeah it does, uh-- maybe I can make like, jerseys or something. That’d be cool, I think.”

how disappointed are your parents with the way your life turned out?

“My parents are actually not disappointed at all!” You say with a cute little smile, “Uhm, they’re both really proud, actually. They’re glad I found something I love doing and made a job outta it. Dad finds my Youtube videos endearing. Yes, they watch pretty much all of my videos, unless I explicitly tell them not to. And yeah, with all the fucks and thirsting for anime characters. Uhm, it was very embarrassing at first, but I mean, after a while, shame just...doesn’t exist anymore, I guess? Funny thing about my parents, actually, when they watch my videos-” You eye catches a comment, “Oh! No, they only watch my Youtube videos. They don’t know how to use Twitter, thank God. Uhm, anyway-- when they hear a name they don’t know, like, I dunno, Dabi, or something, they google--” You’re grinning by now, eyes crinkling, giggling softly, “--who that is, and buy me like, merch and stuff. It’s really cute. 

can i be adopted by ur parents plz

will you and corpse ever collab?!

You were about to answer, though the man of the hour himself decides to do it for you.

Corpse_Husband: yes.

Okay, not to say your heart skipped a beat, but it totally did. With a pleased smile, you nod, like one of those bobble head toys sold at the dollar store. The motion is oddly reminiscent of Sykkuno’s own nod. Perhaps you had picked it up from him. The chat seems to notice.

pack it up, sykkuno

More questions pile about this mysterious collab you and Corpse are planning. Yeah, you’d like to hear more about it, too, since he single highhandedly decided one was happening right now. Corpse remains silent. Fine, keep your secrets. 

“Okay, guys, oh, I mean, roaches, Oh my God--” You’re covering your mouth, giggling, “-calling all roaches, calling all roaches, calm down. Everyone grab a snack and a blanket I’m turning up the music volume so we can all chill. Entering chill zone. Entering chill zone. Roaches, prepare.”

we are prepared

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An hour or so passes and you grow hungry. It shows with the amount of cakes you had baked in your server. Currently, you find yourself throwing eggs at the wall of one of the renovated houses, your face scrunched in concentration and slight frustration. 24 of the 50 eggs have been wasted. “What’s a girl gotta do to get some chicks around here?” you had uttered under your breath, until, finally, a screech - the egg finally spawns a mob. Your mouth falls open, “Aww, look!” You approach it, so small, walking in zigzags beside you, “It’s a baby chicken! Die, bitch.” The baby chicken is no more as you swing your bedazzled (you have mods) diamond sword. You’re cackling by the time the dust settles.

y/n is a child murderer

“Roaches,” You address your fan-base, spurring another fit of laughter - you can’t get over the name, “I think I’m like, forgetting that eating in Minecraft won’t actually make less hungry in real life.”

take a break and go eat queen <3

“Fuck no, we starve and die like men. Now I actually really need another chicken.”

Another twenty minutes trickle by and you’re trying to lure back a panda from the jungle when there’s a knock on your bedroom’s door. Whipping your head to the side, you slide down your headphones. At the same time, your mom pokes her head through the ajar door, “MOM!” You scream, “Get OUT of my room I’m playing Minecraft!” But your yell has no actual bite to it, as you don’t manage to hide your smile. Your mom laughs, doing some sort of sign language and motioning for you to follow her with her head. That or it’s some sort of performative dance. 

“I’m live right now,” You tell her, pointing at your screen. She knows this already, though, “do you want to say hi?” 

The roaches spam the chat with friendly hellos. You mom, quite impatient now, waves you over. 

“Sorry, roaches, mom needs something. Be back in a bit!”

Stopping the stream, you rush out of your seat and pleased she slinks into the hallway. “What’s this about?”

“Your pizza came.”

“My what now?” You echo, confused.

“Domino’s. You ordered pizza?”

“What? No? I was busy with the stream, I never--”

Thankfully, you had managed to grab your phone from your room before you exited. You almost choke on spit once you read the messages.

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You decide that it’ll be impossible to stream after experiencing what you had just experienced. You tweet out a quick apology to the roaches (God, that fucking name) and say that you had a breakdown but you’re okay. That is as a close to the truth as you managed to muster. It’s a sad sight, chewing and crying; your mom winced when she saw your state - disheveled hair and rundown eyeliner and everything. “D’aww,” She had muttered, caressing the top of your head, “don’t cry my little raccoon.”

If anyone was ever to ask you where did your chaotic nature come from, you’d answer with my mom. To make yourself feel better, you took a selfie - duck face and peace sign and the horrible 2000′s angle. Sent it to Rae. 

looking hot, her message read. 

thanks, was all you replied with.

You couldn’t just leave things as they were. Once you calmed down, you wanted to text Corpse, but how would you follow up the ungodly caps lock and screeching? Impossible. An idea sprung to mind, one that was brave. Taking the first step.

Instead of sending a text, you sent a voice memo.

“Thank you for the pizza, it was delicious.”

You voice still sounded a bit raspy. His reply was instant. Your heart skipped a beat. He sent a voice memo back.

“Glad you liked it, baby.”

He was going to be the death of you.

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tags (in italics is those i couldn’t tag! make sure all’s ok w your settings!) : @littlebabysandboxburritos - @fairywriter-oracle - @tsukishimawh0re - @ofstarsanddreams - @bbecc-a - @annshit - @leahh19 - @letsloveimagines - @bellomi-clarke - @wineandionysus - @guiltydols - @onephootinfrontoftheother - @liamakorn - @thirstyfangirl - @lilysdaydreams - @pan-ini - @mxqicshxp - @tanchosanke - @yoshinorecommends - @flightsandfantasy - @liljennyx3 - @slashersdream - @unknown-and-invisible - @sinister-sleep - @fivedicksinatrenchcoat - @mercury–moon - @peterparkerspjsuit - @unstableye - @simonsbluee - @shinyshimaagain - @ppopty - @siriuslystupid - @crapimahuman - @ofthedewthesunlight - @mythicalamphitrite - @artsyally - @corpsesimpp - @corpsewhitetee - @corpse-husbandsimp - @hyp-oh-critical - @roses-and-grasses - @rhyrhy462 - @sparklylandflaplawyer - @charbkgo - @airwaveee - @creativedogs - @kaitlyn2907 - @loxbbg - @afuckingunicornn - @fleurmoon - @yeolliedokai - @truly-dionysus - @multi-fandom-central707

more tags are in the comments bcs tumblr only allows me to tag 50 people max 💙

[1ddotdhq]

🎹Mon 14 Dec ‘20🎤

Zayn is back! Possibly for real this time! Yolanda Hadid posted a picture of him and Gigi from a year ago at their gender reveal party (spoiler: it’s a girl!!!), and following that Zayn uploaded a picture of himself in a studio with some lovely R&B synth style music floating around. This came on the two year anniversary of the Icarus Falls release, and it set twitter ablaze, immediately trending “Z3isComing” and “Zayn is Coming”. Alex Oriet (of #pizza and Saltwives fame) posted a snippet of Zayn’s new song and said, “What kind of Christmas Present do you want to get?”. Uh, if you’re taking recommendations, I would like to see THE NEW ALBUM - preferably before the end of the year! Anyways, here’s hoping this comeback sticks because OH MY GOD I need that album! 

Louis has spent the day raking in the compliments (as he should!), including an piece in the Independent! He's quoted from a pre show press release, saying, “performing for a live crowd is the most important thing to me, this live stream is a step back into that world and is something I can’t wait to film,” and “I want to put on a real show for the fans, with scale and production, creating something special to end 2020 on a positive, upbeat note and raise money for charities that are especially close to my heart. I also want to give my touring crew work, and raise some vital money for them, as without my crew the show literally couldn’t go on”. ThePulpConversation, CelebMix, and IHeart had similar praises, including calling Walls his “chart topping debut album” (*cough*) and calling  ‘Copy’ “one of the highlights”of the show, saying, “If this signals the way [he’s] moving forward musically for his second album then we think he’s gonna make one heck of an impact”. THANK YOU!! THIS IS WHAT WE’VE BEEN SAYING!! Notably silent about the whole affair: Arista, who we last heard from in October when Walls jumped all those charts, raising the question of whether he's still with them. As they were his label for the US only due to him being tied to Syco in the UK, and with Syco out of the picture, it is plausible that he is choosing to move forward with a single deal rather than one fragmented by region. That’s fine though, the rest of us are celebrating enough as it is, and whoever gets him for that deal (or already did) sure will be too! Charlie Lightening, Krystal, and Helene all put up BTS pictures, as did the camera team, who were the same ones who shot Niall's RAH show, and Helene added a heartfelt congratulations, saying, “The voice needs time to build strength, flexibility, and all things magical..Great Singers start way in advance before hitting the mic...I am happy to say we managed on Zoom...to prepare a big ass show vocally.. Where there’s a will, there’s a way and that… *mic emoji* *heart emoji*”.  Welsh production company Krupa welcomed their new followers and also confirmed the MASSIVE amount of money that Louis had raised! Charlie Lightning's pictures are, well, lightning in a bottle and I look forward to seeing them in moodboards here for years to come, and Krystal (Louis’ makeup artist) gave us a fun close up of Louis laughing backstage while she tries to fix his (recently trimmed?) hair. God, he’s beautiful. Alex Oriet is EVERYWHERE these days, because he took a break from hanging with Zayn to ask us all what we thought of ‘Copy’ - uh, AMAZING! 

Liam is back(ish)! He did a few promos for Naughty List and went on Roman Kemp’s show to talk about his upcoming Capital Up Close show, joking that he might be dressing up as the Grinch. Roman, of course, took that as his cue to do the voice (“eight o’clock, wallow in self pity, can’t cancel that again”), to which Liam burst out laughing and said, “I’ve been on the phone with about 12 people, I just can’t handle it”. ‘Tis the season, huh?  And their advent alarm today included...more terrible jokes! “What do you get when you eat Christmas decorations? Tinselitis!”.Also Maya posted a pic taken at Liam's place showing the framed pic of Liam and Louis from gogglebox in the background, still in its place of pride on the mantle. Quite right, I would do the same with a pic of me and Louis! For some belated Fine Line celebrations, Mitch Rowland posted some behind the scenes content, (and WHERE’S THE REST OF IT?), and Fine Line has officially been on Billboards Top 200 for A FULL YEAR NOW, AND it’s been in the top 25 THE WHOLE TIME! Iconic!  Harry had a late night on Instagram, which could totally be due to the fact that he was celebrating yesterday, but he followed another artist that’s signed to FullStop (Roddy Rich) and liked King Princess’ new music video announcement, who’s caption read (among other things), “working with your partner on a video is like having a best friend on set who you KNOW WILL MAKE U LOOK GOOD lmao”. #relatable. Not to me, but probably to him! Meanwhile, Niall promoted an Irish livestream taking place at the Guinness Storehouse. Find me a more Irish event, I DARE you. 

[deniigi]

bro, work made me depressed that I literally left my seat to regain any resemblance of joy or something equivalent before breaking down again. Do you think you can provide a ficlet I involving Peter and Sam to cheer me up?

FUCK CAPITALISM

TAKE THIS

Title: Calibrating

Summary: Sam and Peter talk themselves towards a meaningful discussion.

---------

Peter did this thing—this infuriating thing where he texted shit like ‘come over’ and then Sam had to bend over backwards to be flirty and coy.

It was imperative that he came across as flirty and coy.

Im-fucking-perative, regardless of what Leilani said or Matt’s annoyance at what he called the ‘jungle of depravity’ that overtook the group chat pretty much daily.

Sam didn’t care.

If Peter texted the group or sent any message that might be construed upside-down as something romantic or sexual, Sam not only had to catch it, but he had to volley it back.

This, he told Leilani, sealed their No-Homo contract.

She stared at him.

He decided to demonstrate.

“See, here, look, I’ll show you,” he said, dragging out his phone. “Exhibit A. There he is, see? Asking about the strength of PVC pipe in pounds per meter like a fuckin’ tease. Now I can’t just let him think that I saw that and didn’t think of it as a metaphor, alright? So I say—”

“Sam, why does he need to know the strength of PVC pipe?” Leilani interrupted.

It didn’t matter. That wasn’t the point of this discussion.

“I’m sending a winky-face,” Sam informed her as he did that very thing.

Leilani stared harder than before.

But look, skepticism was unrewarded. Peter texted a kiss right back and said ‘oh boo, you always know just want to say.’

How could she not see the No-Homo? Sam could do this all day. He could and there would be absolutely no problems and he wouldn’t want to suffocate himself in his pillow at the end of it all.

It was fine.

“Samuel,” Leilani said, “I’m going to tell you something and I want you to hear it with an open heart. Will you open your heart for me?”

Sam spun around in his chair and arranged his arms and legs so that they were as open as they could feasibly be without being obscene.

“I am more open than a boiled clam,” he informed her.

Leilani blinked slowly, then shook her head and checked over her shoulders. She waved him in closer. Then closer. And then close enough that he could smell her perfume on her neck.

“You’re the tease,” she said.

Then she left the backroom. And Sam could only stare after her, frozen in horror as his wide-open heart wrinkled in on itself, picking up mass and gravity until it was naught but a black hole.

“I’m the tease?” he whispered to himself in shock.

Oh no.

OH NO.

 --

  “SENSEI.”

Matt dropped his collection of folders and swore, clutching at his chest.

“We have discussed volume, Sam,” he said, bending down to collect his paper children.

Sam took the opportunity to throw both arms around his neck from behind as a threat.

“Don’t lie,” he warned. “Swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, amen.”

Matt stood up and Sam felt his toes leave the floor. He hadn’t planned this far ahead.

“Or what?” Matt asked, 110% unfazed.

Sam wished that his feet weren’t kicking around in air here. It really put a dent in his intimidation factor.

“Am I a tease?” he asked.

Matt faced front with heavy eyebrows. Sam couldn’t see his face from this angle, but he knew that aura of irritation.

“If you have to ask the question, then you already know the answer,” Matt said. “Does that help?”

“No, I hate you now, actually,” Sam told him.

Matt dropped him right on his ass.

 --

 There had to be a way to attain proof. To determine once and for all that it was Sam who was in the wrong here, misinterpreting things like the genius that he was.

Thankfully, Sam’s experience of growing up as a non-only child for the last two decades had prepared him exactly for this type of conversation.

 SC: HANNAH AM I A TEASE???

HC: yes

HC: next question

SC: FUCK.

SC: WHAT IF ITS NOT NO-HOMO?

HC: my dear brother, the only options if something is not no-homo is for it to be no-no or homo-homo.

SC: Murder me

HC: gladly

SC: I’m in possible homo-homo with spiderman

HC: are you sure it’s not no-no?

SC: MURDER ME

HC: okay but like if it’s no-no then this is not a problem, right?

SC: If it’s no-no then I’ve read every sign wrong and I deserve to become a partially eaten tadpole awash in an indifferent boiling sea

HC: okay so we’re leaning INTO the drama today I gotcha. Alright but like, just for the sake of arguing, what if it was homo-homo?

SC: then I need you to bury my body somewhere no one will ever find it because my heart can’t stand requited love you know this about me.

HC: give me your login

SC: thank you I love you you’re the only person who matters

 --

 BT: Spiderman.

SM: Blindspot. DMing? You okay?

BT: this is Hannah.

SM: OH

SM: hi Hannah are you okay? Did you need something?

BT: My brother never got tested for reading comprehension but would have failed anyways. Can you arbitrate an arbitrary argument for us?

SM: I’m positive that there is a link between those two ideas that I am missing, but sure?

BT: okay are you ready?

SM: my loins have been girded.

BT: gross. you two are made for each other. Okay: what are your opinions on 24yo Chinese dudes with bad vision who are 5’7” tall, with terrible hair and brains as big and gaseous as Jupiter?

SM: positive

BT: you’re so romantic spidey.

SM: I know

BT: I’m going to tell him now

SM: WAIT DON’T TELL HIM

BT: byeeeeeee

 --

 Sam was going to have a heart attack. He couldn’t look at his phone. He was just going to lay here until he wasted away into a fossil.

Mm, yes, what a wonderful way to escape any and all feelings. That was—

His phone chirped and he nearly fell out of his chair in a hurry to answer it.

 HC: [image] [image]

HC: you owe me your bones

SC: AFASDFADFAS:FJaf’asdfjahsdlfihasdl’fas

SC: TAKE THEM

HC: if you fuck spiderman you have to get pregnant and demand alimony for your beautiful mixed babies Samuel

SC: Darling sister, we’ve talked about this. it isn’t going to happen I still have yet to steal a womb

HC: try harder

HC: ttyl

--

 Okay, this was fine.

Everything was fine.

Spidey liked Sam back, it was no big deal. Spidey liked everyone back. Even the teases.

Even.

The.

Teases.

Fuck, Sam had to move.

 --

 Foggy caught him biting his nails to pieces over the copy machine and asked him if he was okay. He was not. Foggy could read this off him. He didn’t ask again, but he did say that if Sam was feeling particularly anxious about something he was welcome to go have his breakdown upstairs in Kirsten’s kitchen instead of downstairs among the files.

Sam appreciated his offer. He hiked up the stairs, and halfway up, his phone chirped.

His heart stopped.

It chirped again, and then again. By the time he got to the top of the stairs, it was chirping every couple of seconds with messages being typed and sent at mach speed.

He kicked off his shoes and went to go stand over Kirsten’s sink to open the first one.

  PP: Sam it’s peter hey listen your sister messaged me

PP: and was asking some pretty invasive questions and I replied to her. I don’t know if you saw them but I just wanted to say that if that makes you uncomfortable in any way know that I absolutely don’t mind and I’ll stop

PP: you can tell me to fuck off if that crossed your boundaries. I shouldn’t have even messaged her back without asking you

PP: and obviously in future I won’t talk to her until I’ve cleared it with you I just wasn’t thinking I’m never thinking it’s a little hard to think sometimes

PP: especially when you message me back and I get caught up in the games and the emojis and stuff and like I’m sure that sometimes I overstep but I don’t mean to and you can tell me at any point if you want me to stop

PP: I guess I just really like to talk to you sometimes and it’s fun to have someone to banter with who actually banters back like not in a mean way but in a really nice and funny way. you’re an easy guy to talk to is what I’m saying

PP: which I’m sure you get a lot. I don’t mean that I want to like tell you all my problems I swear it’s not that it’s just more of a AHHHHH I don’t even know what I’m saying I think it’s sorry???

PP: I’m sorry??? I don’t mean to imply anything that isn’t there and I don’t want to make you feel like you have to either. Ar e you mad? Please don’t be mad okay wait no I’ve sent like seven fucking messages I’m being a creep oh my god IM SORRY ILL SHUT UP NOW OKAY SORRY BYE

  Oh nooooo.

The panic-induced infodump was not only familiar but horrendously endearing.

Sam had to explode now.

Man. Bummer.

  SC: it’s okay Peter

PP: OH THANK GOD

PP: is it tho??? Are you sure?

SC: I have positive feelings towards people like you too

  Sam’s heart pounded. He almost locked his phone and threw it in the sink, but another text came in just as that thought finished crossing his mind.

  PP: you do?

SC: yes of course I do

PP: oh nice

SC: yeah

  Annnnnnnd cue mutual nerd awkwardness. Great. Well done, Sam, you’ve done it again.

He sighed and turned away from the sink and sunk down onto the floor with his back against it.

Such a loser, Chung. So painfully awkward. Would it kill you to, just for once, slow down and chill for a minute?

God.

  PP: hey sam?

  No, Sam just wanted to sit on this floor and wallow.

  PP: hello? Are you still there?

 --

Sam let his head fall back against the sink. He closed his eyes.

His phone rang in his hand and he nearly had a heart attack. His fingers scrabbled over its face and the caller ID read ‘Peter Parker.’

Oh god.

Oh no.

Be cool. Be cool. Be cool.

“Hello?” he answered to the scratchy phone silence on the other side of the line.

He frowned.

“Hello?” he tried again, a smidge less desperate.

“Hi.”

There he was.

“Hey,” Sam said. “Sorry, just got awkward.”

Peter laughed through the line.

“Me too,” he said. “That was awkward.”

Yeah.

“Yeah.”

A long pause.

“I’m doing it again,” Sam moaned into his hand.

“No, no. Hey, you’re good,” Peter said. “I was just uh. Calling because.” He trailed off.

Sam waited.

“Sam? You still there?”

He startled and cleared his throat.

“Yeah, I’m here,” he said. “Sorry, zoning out a little bit. You know, busy day.”

“Yeah,” Peter said.  “Yeah, I know.”

Sam breathed as quietly as he could. He could almost hear Peter doing the same on his end.

“Sorry, I’ve gotta g—” Sam started.

“Hey, do you like me?”

HNG.

“No?” Sam answered and then punched himself in the leg. “Sorry. Uh. I didn’t—I mean, uh. Yes. Of course I like you. You’re a really good person. I admire you a lot.”

Hannah, oh Hannah, where is thine shovel? Sam needed it to dig this grave deeper, please.

“Oh. Okay, I just—I guess I uh, have a hard time reading the tone of your texts sometimes,” Peter said.

“It’s okay, I get that a lot,” Sam said. “I’ll try harder to be more direct.”

“No,” Peter said. “No, no, you don’t have to change anything.”

“Oh? Okay, well. Maybe I still will, though,” Sam said.

If Peter wouldn’t have heard him, he would have started to try to fit his whole fist in his mouth.

Five minutes of conversation and they were still saying nothing.

“Sam?”

He swallowed.

“Yeah?” he asked.

“Next time you’re in the city, would you, uh, maybe want to go out somewhere? With me?”

Out? What like, to a movie or something?

“Yeah, just like that,” Peter said. “’Cause I uh. Would like to. Do that, I mean. With you.”

“With me?” Sam asked. “Oh right, and your other friends, uh, names—sorry, I’m bad with names. N-ned?”

“No,” Peter said oddly abruptly. “Well, I mean—I don’t mean it like that. I just—just with you. For now. That’s what I mean.”

“Oh. Uh. Kinda like a date?” Sam asked through the forcefield of self-hatred that felt like it spanned the entire continental US.

There was a pause. Sam held his breath.

“Yeah,” Peter said. “Exactly like a date. If you don’t mind—you know, doing that with me.”

AHAHAHAHAHAHA.

“Are you trying to lure me to a secondary location, Mr. Parker?” Sam asked seriously.

The laugh that met him made all the muscles in his shoulders relax.

“Maybe if the bit at the first location goes well,” Peter said. Then added hurriedly, “If you’re down for that.”

Sam was down for it right now.

Actually, maybe not in Kirsten’s kitchen. But like, right now in a different location.

“If it’s a movie date, we can do it through Netflix Party,” he pointed out faux-lightly. “It wouldn’t be the same, but we could do it this weekend, even. Saturday—I’m off Saturday.”

Peter said nothing for a long time.

“Okay. Saturday,” he finally agreed, “I can do Saturday. Kinda hard to hold your hand through a screen, but I can give it my best shot?”

FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFfffffff.

“Oh, I bet you will,” Sam nearly choked.

“You’re really cute, Sam.”

NO. SHUT UP. YOU ARE.

“Thanks.”

“I wanted to kiss you last time you were here, but I was too, uh. Shy. Embarrassed. One of them.”

Sam was going to puke, but in like, the happiest kind of way.

“I like you a lot too, Peter,” he whispered.

“Are you crying?”

“What? No.”

“Awwwwwwwwwwwwwwww.”

“Shut up, I’m not. I—the old man’s downstairs, his ears aren’t as good through ceilings, but I just want to make sure—”

“Uh-huh,” Peter said. “I’m sure that’s what it is. So I’ll see you Saturday? Maybe Facetime or something?”

“Yeah, Saturday,” Sam said. “I’ll send you a time when I know. I’ve gotta go. Meltdown-alloted-breaktime is over.”

Peter laughed.

“Alright, man, I’ll talk to you later. Bye now.”

“Bye,” Sam said lamely.

He hung up the phone. He did not scream. But he did fist pump and then fall onto his side.

 ---------

Here’s to hoping things get easier for you anon!!

[buckleyirondad]

No. 14. Is Something Burning? “Fire”

When a night out goes drastically wrong, Pepper realizes that she and Michelle lead a similar life.

AO3 Link

Pepper adored Peter.

She had since the day she met him.

She constantly thanked him, silently, and sometimes, to his face, for being a part of their lives.

Even when he was gone, for those five years, his impact, lived on.

They wouldn’t have Morgan, if Peter hadn’t taught Tony, at the right moment, that he could step out of Howard’s shadow and be a good dad.

Having Peter back, made everything fall together, perfectly, for the first time.

Hand-in-hand, with Peter, came Michelle.

Peter’s everything, his partner in crime, and somebody for him, to effortlessly tease Tony with.

Pepper loved her too, and the influence she had on Peter, she seemed to be helping him overcome hurdles that no one else could.

A double date sounded far fetch, at first, but Michelle proposed it, and Pepper finalized it.

They made quite a team.

An old theater was showing a highlight of Charlie Chaplin’s movies.

All four of them liked old movies, which made for the perfect night out, where superheroing duties took a backbench.

Pepper skipped through the foyer, leaving Tony at the desk, to check in their coats “Hey.” She laid her hands on Peter and Michelle’s shoulders, “If I were you two, I would have asked to sit far far away from us.”

Michelle snorted a laugh, “Why?”

Peter frowned, tilting his head, to his shoulder, “Is this about the Charlie Chaplin look-alike competition?”

Michelle grinned, ear-to-ear, “The what now?”

Pepper waved her hand dismissively, “My husband claims that he won a Charlie Chaplin lookalike competition.”

Tony appeared beside her, “I didn’t claim anything,” He chipped in, “It’s true.”

“Oh, my God,” Peter inclined his head, pressing his hands together, gesturing them towards Tony, “You literally wouldn’t shut up about it last night, it’s why I volunteered to carry Morgan to bed.”

Tony’s jaw dropped, he made an act of raising his hand, to his chest, “I’m offended, kid.”

Peter narrowed his eyes, “Also, I looked it up last night, and there were zero results.”

“Nobody knew it was me,” Tony raised his shoulder in half-shrug, “I used a pseudonym.”

Pepper pulled on his arm, “Oh, look, we can sit down now.”

They all started walking into the theater, in an orderly fashion.

Tony leaned forward, “I’m gonna find the photos later.”

Peter turned, keeping his arm linked with Michelle’s, “So, Friday—"

“Friday has nothing,” Tony sang, “Like, I said, nobody knew it was me.”

Pepper shook her head, with a laugh, “We get it.”

“Should we get—” Michelle and Peter spoke in unison, “—Popcorn?”

They acted normal because it happened all the time.

They were the definition of cute, Pepper was sure.

Tony leaned in, whispering in her ear, “How adorable.”

She gently nudged his foot, with hers, “Leave them alone.”

Tony clapped his hands together, “I’ll pick us up some popcorn, you lot can go and find our seats.” He shuffled away, quick on his feet.

Pepper took a seat, on their aisle, leaving the space between her and Peter free, for Tony. She buried her hand in her pocket, to check if May had messaged her with any questions about Morgan.

All she'd been sent was a selfie of the pair watching Finding Nemo.

She sent back a couple of heart emojis.

Peter and Michelle’s gentle chuckles caught Pepper’s attention. The duo were holding hands, muttering among themselves, desperately trying to conceal their laughter; Peter was red in the face, and whatever they were discussing, had brought tears to Michelle’s eyes.

Pepper smiled, they were truly infectious, and she couldn’t get enough of them.

Michelle had become a vital part of their everyday lives, rather fast, but Pepper would have it no other way.

She saw the way they looked at one another, the longing stares, and the soft smiles.

They’d fallen hard.

Something, Pepper once did, twice a day, with Tony.

It took them a while, to make it work, but it did.

Pepper saw herself, in Michelle, which was good, on some days, but heart-breaking on others.

Peter and Tony’s lives weren’t exactly normal or easy. 

Pepper kept Michelle as close as possible because she understood the hardship of being hopelessly in love, with someone who laid down their lives, for the greater good, every other month.

They were on the same page.

Tony tiptoed over, holding two buckets of popcorn, “Here we go.”

Peter and Michelle sang, through a laugh, “Thank you.”

When the movies started playing, the audience went silent, but Pepper still caught the pair sharing little anecdotes, trying not to burst into hysterics.

An hour in, Michelle sat up, looking around.

Tony spoke, in a hushed tone, “What’s up?”

She turned, “I’m trying to work out where the toilets are.”

Tony pointed, “By the entrance, on your left.”

“Thanks, Stark,” She kissed Peter’s cheek and hopped up, “I’ll be back.”

Tony leaned over, whispering something in Peter’s ear, the kid’s cheeks turned a new shade of red.

He jokingly slapped Tony’s arm away, “Shut up.”

Pepper rolled her eyes, “Stop messing with him.”

Tony held out his hands, with a shrug, “May said I can.”

Pepper looked past him, to Peter, “Don’t worry, honey. He’s got no leg to stand on.” She chuckled, “I’ve got plenty of embarrassing date night stories.”

Tony sighed, head in his hands, “Pep…”

She winked, “I’ll tell you later.”

Peter laughed quietly, hanging his head.

A few minutes passed, and Pepper allowed herself to be drawn back into the movie.

She didn’t notice something was up until Tony’s tone switched.

“Kiddo, you okay?”

She spun her head, fast.

Peter was sat up straight, his eyes wide, and his leg mindlessly bouncing.

She raised her voice, “Sweetheart?”

Before Peter could answer, the piercing sound of a fire alarm filled the room, and the movie was stopped.

The lights came on, and an usher shouted, “Everybody make your way to the fire exits, as fast as you possibly can. Thank you.”

Everybody shot to their feet.

Tony tapped his watch, “Friday, report?”

“A fire has started, in the attic, and is spreading quickly.”

The usher yelled again, this time, more panicked, “Quickly, please.”

“MJ—” Peter shot up, looking around, “Can you see her?”

“The toilets are right next to the exit, buddy,” Tony reassured him, “She’s probably already outside.”

“I’m not sure—"

Somebody screamed, “Get out now!”

“That escalated—" Tony reached back, grabbing Pepper’s hand while gripping tight onto Peter’s shoulder, he pushed, making sure Peter didn’t freeze.

Pepper knew, for a fact, that Tony made contrasting promises.

It was an issue, with him.

He made one, to Peter, that basically meant that if it ever came down to it, Tony would have to save May, Ned, or Michelle, before Peter.

The other was one he made to Michelle, promising that he’d pull Peter, out of a fight he couldn’t win, even if Michelle’s life was on the line.

Tony could never win.

Peter kept shouting, over the chaos, “MJ!”

A crowd swarmed, at the exit.

Somehow, they were pushed to the front of it.

Peter held up his arms, screaming, at the top of his lungs, “Stop!” He waved his hands, signaling nearby people, “Stop moving!”

The urgency, in his voice, seemed to resonate with everyone.

A support beam, from the ceiling above them, collapsed, crashing to the floor.

Tony pulled on Peter’s shoulder, “Holy shit.”

The crowd moved again, leaping over it, as smoke started to envelop them.

A lady, in her forties, tripped, landing among the stampede.

“Hey,” Peter helped her onto her feet, “You okay?”

“Yes, thank you.” She rushed, into the bustle, that was moving outside.

Pepper lost sight of everything while moving from the building to the street. 

The sounds of sirens were already echoing, in the distance.

She shouted, squeezing Tony’s hand, “Tony, you got Peter?”

“Yeah,” Tony breathed, “I’ve got him.”

The crowd began to separate, giving Pepper room to see.

Peter was leaning up, to look across the herd, “MJ?!” He yelled, “MJ?”

Nothing.

Peter turned, eyes filled with tears, “She’s not here.”

Tony’s face fell, “Pete-“

Peter rested a hand on his chest, “I know she’s not..." 

“Kid—"

“I gotta—” He pulled his hand free, and before any more words were spoken, he sprinted back, into the burning building.

Tony shrieked, “Peter!” He spun to meet Pepper’s gaze, “What do—”

There was a deafening creak from inside.

Pepper’s lower lip trembled, “Oh, God—"

“Hey!”

Tony snapped his head back, a momentary look of relief, on his face, “Jones—”

Michelle charged, out from the side alley, “Hey, I’m—”

“MJ!” Pepper wrapped an arm around her, “We were so—” It dawned on her, she shot a look to Tony, “If you’re here, then Peter—”

Tony titled his head to his shoulder, a silent apology, as he let go of her hand and charged inside.

Michelle yelped, “Oh—”

Pepper held her tight, muttering under her breath, “Come on, come on—”

Another spine-chilling thud, came from inside, as the building fell apart.

“I—” Michelle cried, “He—”

Pepper whispered, “It’s okay…”

A figure emerged through the entrance.

It was Tony.

His face was covered, in patches of soot, and his hair, full of ash.

Dangled over his shoulder, was Peter.

Pepper’s stomach leaped into her throat, as she tightened her hand around Michelle’s hand.

She breathed a sigh of relief, when Tony smiled, with a nod.

Michelle pulled free, rushing over, “Peter!”

Tony lowered Peter onto his knees, rubbing circles against the teen’s back, “There you go.”

Peter coughed, “I need to find—MJ is—”

Michelle knelt, pressing a hand, to his cheek, “Right here, loser.”

He wheezed a laugh, “MJ—"

She leaned up, kissing his curls, “You’re an idiot.”

No, he’s your idiot.

He smiled, “You’d do it for me.”

“Yeah,” She tugged him into a hug, nestling her head, on his shoulder.

Tony moved over, locking an arm around Pepper, “Hey.”

She pulled him close, “Hey.”

Pepper knew it wasn’t normal, to be so accepting of these situations, but after fighting aliens, it was a walk in the park.

Michelle helped Peter to his feet.

Peter rubbed a hand, over his cheek, “That was fun.”

Michelle barked a laugh, pressing her head against his bicep, “Same time next week?”

Tony inhaled a cackle, “I’m thinking takeaway?”

Pepper nodded, “Sounds like a plan.”

Tony motioned aside, “We should get going.” He took out his phone, “Everybody is probably freaking out already.”

Pepper looked up.

Peter was whispering in Michelle’s ear again, and they were giggling to themselves like nothing had changed.

Say what you want about young love, Pepper knew that Peter and Michelle were the real deal.

[elizabethrobertajones]

14x05 watching notes

filed under: episodes that demand a written apology from the writer

Morning, I opened the episode to check it worked and the first thing on screen was dead Maggie, so I guess skip the preamble, let's get rid of that D:

Meredith is going to look after Maggie. Who so far this season has just been the human representation of the :o emoji

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Er, she's not going to look after us, after the THEN card we abruptly drop into Dean having his beach retirement chat with Sam

A lingering reminder of how Jack would help - if he had his powers - but Sam asks "then what would we do" and cut to Dean being Michaeled. At this point I can't tell if we need to remember 13x23 for Reasons or if they just don't trust us to remember the recent history of the show at all and are catching up people who might have dropped by to see how their favourite guest star, Maggie, is doing.

-

I mean I love her but she isn't the headliner normally :P

-

OH GOODNESS SHE'S THE COLD OPEN GIRL. Maggieee no. She looks so scared. Why are they sending her hunting on her own??? She is a smol scared bean who was not prepared for the apocalypse and surely must be able to find other off-the-radar jobs for a person from another universe in this world that don't involve throwing herself at monsters!

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She's wearing pink trousers for a stealth mission at night. She makes Sam's orange jacket look like camo

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Also she's recording herself... Maggie... What are you doing........ hon......................

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I have adopted her, but it turns out I have another stupid child among my many, many stupid children and just once I wish they didn't turn out like this :P

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So she's like, attached a go pro to herself to record her hunt for... training purposes? reporting back to Chief? because she's become an adrenaline junkie after all the time she was nearly eaten by supervampires?

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MAGGIE

Gad dangit

He was slow moving and you heard him behind you. Swing first, ask questions later, when it's a growling noise in a dark crypt.

-

Has anyone been counting the apocalypse world peeps because I'm pretty sure they're relying on us not to recognise them because they're a crowd. At this point we almost certainly have like 50+ distinct individuals instead of the 25 they purportedly rescued.

I say this because I feel like some of the white guys from the original batch appear to have metamorphosed into a more diverse group

-

Sammy setting homework.

Sorry, not Sammy. The Boss.

Dean comes in to observe class.

Sam immediately sheds all his confidence and goes back to being Sammy. He does seem to have a slight layer of scruff more, or maybe it was just that he was looking particularly clean-shaven last episode out of shock

Dean offers to get him a camp counsellor whistle, and Sam gets even more awkward about hunter check ins. I can see this feeding itself here, with Sam blustering and getting weird about his position of authority in front of Dean, and Dean who is both latching on in a brotherly way, and lashing out in a recently emotionally maimed Dean way, but can't yell at the apocalypse peeps they rescued and graciously allowed to stay because, you know, Michael destroyed their world, so taking it all out on Sam... Unfortunately, Dean being the wounded, irrational party, it's down to him to realise he's being a lil too harsh on Sam OR Sam to stop rising to the bait.

In this case, I would say the ball is firmly in Sam's court, not because he's at any particular fault for instinctively reacting like the needled little brother when big bro wanders in snarking at his attempts to do his job, but because he is the one behaving like the adult already in this scenario when he's facing the AU peeps and being The Chief in a natural way where he's thriving in the environment, and crumpling immediately in the face of this one random element is a clear part of his growth and maturity arc. As it is he's feeding Dean's reaction a LOT by getting embarrassed and changing his behaviour and not standing his ground and continuing to act like a mature adult, and giving Dean the little brother teasing opening he feeds off in the dynamic.

In other scenarios this could flip with Sam doing his best and Dean being a dick who's seeking an opening and trying to get Sam to crack and in that case it would be all on him to correct his behaviour, but in this case, I'm leaning Sam being the problem despite the appearance, because he crumpled just to hear Dean coming up the steps, never mind how it went from there. He's acting ashamed of being the leader, because he knows it's emotionally infringing on Dean territory, as he sees Dean as a natural and more rightful leader, and doesn't recognise his own strengths and skills being applied in spades here; his self-confidence immediately is put under the microscope when he knows Dean is there, and it topples his precarious house of cards of self confidence.

He has also put himself in a position of managing Dean, coming in last episode all, alright champ how's it going? and had a success by a country mile with getting Dean to leave his room, open up, and have some fun, and that's not even comparing it to the same time last season when in 13x05 he completely failed at the same task. He has been working gently on Dean to help him, but he can't when it comes to getting Dean used to having the AU peeps around and accepting Sam's new job there, if Sam acts like it's something to be ashamed of and is too horrified by usurping Dean to focus on letting his instincts talk and continuing to blatantly be a wonderful leader.

-

These AU peeps are also seeing their venerated war hero general just crumple into an insecure mess as soon as his brother walks into the room >.>

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Sam gets coffee, turns into coffee!Sam (Lizbob's on the record favourite character in the entire show), finally snaps back at Dean about how many hunters he's keeping track of right now when Dean stops needling in a funny way and asks about Sam's health - of course, now it's all built up into Dean bothering Sam so instead of being a nice request, Sam snaps.

It's possible that while Sam now runs the hunters, delegating to Mary and AUBobby and even Dean if he'll accept it, to help keep track etc, will really benefit in the long run.

-

Slick way to work where Cas and Jack are into the same breath as where Mary and Bobby are - rugarou, which is code for off screen case - and throw it all out there as plot and ongoing character work AND the requisite where is Cas comment to keep fandom happy.

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God, I haven't even gotten around to what I meant to say immediately that Sam dropped down into his codependency seat at the table and Dean is unintentionally mirroring 9x13's final scene of all the many times they've been around this block - off the top of my head but as someone who has been keeping a very close eye for a very long time, I can't think of another significant instance where Sam was sitting and Dean was standing while it got heated.

Of course 9x13 was working very hard to show their divisions, while of course here Sam is just sitting in his Dean Is Upsetting Me chair and Dean's not sitting at the table which just means not engaging with Sam on his level in a very literal as well as metaphorical way - in character, that's a body language dissonance as well as making Sam look up at him. In staging terms, it carries the weight of years of directorial and acting decisions about how to portray the brothers in crisis that I've been noting in case of a pattern.

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"Yeah, but a war isn't hunting" good grief Sam is making their entire lives sound even worse than ever given they grew up in this and now he's listing off all the stuff they need from the perspective of being the Bobby. I mean, when they say they were raised like soldiers, they're adding in the fact they do zillions of almost completely unsupported 2 man raids into hostile territory with limited gear or recon. The recap at the start, showing them going in to fight the werewolves with an angel and a nephilim on their side, was an easy hunt for a reason and not just because there were 4 of them :P Without that, no matter how many hunters they accumulate, it's always looked like a losing battle because many of these things you'd want to call the national guard on if civilians could be alerted to the danger.

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See, Dean is acting needle-y but as soon as Sam gets an unnerving alert on his phone he's concerned and asks who it is - remember last episode where he was like don't know don't care about the guy Sam was Bobbying from the car? - and when he says "maggie" ... well, they're all clearly protective of her in particular D:

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Oh good, the body cams thing was a Sam innovation and therefore a good idea and we can pat his head for it

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Bobby never had that and I bet he'd have LOVED to keep track of his peeps that way.

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The other hunters meet up on the last thursday of the month to watch the highlight reel from Garth Cam, BYOB, popcorn provided

-

Nyooom

This shot should win awards for the fuckin horrifying perspective that I, as a non-mountain-dweller, can barely comprehend that it looks like the sky but then you keep on looking up and there's trees in there. Is this something people in big countries are used to? I mean I've seen my share of mountains in Scotland and they're way too cramped to fake you out like that.

You have to understand that in my town, wedged between two cliffy cliffs, the entire old town is like 500ft wide at best before more cliff. There's only 2 directions - up and towards the sea :P  You don't need fancy camera tricks to contain everything... I'm getting agoraphobia just looking at this. I mean I don't think it's intended to cause existential horror but mission accomplished.

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Dean getting morbid talking about how having a private cemetery would be nice. I mean, they practically need one behind the Bunker after all this time, wherever the final resting place is of at least Kevin and Charlie's bodies as well as anyone else who died in and around there who wasn't dumped in the sewer like Ketch was :')

During day this place isn't half bad, with its whimsical overgrown look, the slanting fence of the bridge to cross to get there, the jungle closing in around the little plot...

But remember, Dean. Beach holiday. Eyes on the prize, man. You and the rest don't get to hang out behind the Bunker for eternity at least until you're all old and earned it.

-

Dean defends knowing what a walker from the Walking Dean is... in 12x15 he was playing with a Negan bat which I assume he still has somewhere, washed off and placed in the armoury :P Sam is at least being a bit more authoritative here in the sense of reeling off info as the Chief in charge of Maggie's fate and knowing her mission etc...

Honestly this makes me feel like the dynamic of Dean drives, Sam rides shotgun can mature too, in the sense that Dean is no longer taking control from Sam - back in season 10 that was very heavily used as part of their toxic dynamic and there's definitely shades of season 10 dynamics on the chopping block around these parts - because Sam needs all the extra time to manage his army from the road, with his hands free to check the phone and read up on everything, while Dean is free to drive and be Dean.

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Sam being all I FAILED SHE IS DEAD at every turn and Dean being all "hey check it out, drag marks! :D" "but no blood!!! :D :D :D"

-

As a student of analaysisisign things I have no idea what was just implied by Sam and Dean being called back to the surface followed by the sound effect of spooky cold breath, a wonky focus on a statue of a bearded dude and smol cherub, and then being interrupted by a 1900s gardener.

Apron plus hat seems like Michael coding but god knows what it means.

I bet they're actually talking to a ghost but he's so busy just defending the ancestral land that he's passing as a real alive person and it's one of those completely harmless cases where the ghost just lurks around protecting the land, doesn't go vengeful, and wards off people who hang out there... Not that he had much luck with the drunk teens.

-

1900s gardener stands outside, unable to go into the house, surveying it with a weary eye.

The garden is completely and utterly overgrown, almost like no one has gardened it for 100 years, even though there appears to be a gardener on the property.

*rubs chin*

-

1900s gardener gives them one last suspicious look before wandering back to work, significantly enough that we see it with a whole separate shot

what is his deal

why is he dressed like that

-

Does Meredith feel guilty for MURDERING JOSHUA and side note, can we really trust that it was him who got murdered. Maybe he's in retirement dressed in an olde timey shirt and waving antique gardening implements at Sam and Dean for kicks.

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Considering they improv'd the line about the HPS it's very lucky that Mobby came up with that line - I guess showing how they think alike and all

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"Just wish you'd checked in with the main office," Sam bobs his head, like, "ME", "before you came out here..."

Yeah, here's the Sam and AUBobby leadership conflict I was hoping for :P

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Mary asks for a mo and shepherds Sam out in particular, leaving AUBobby and Dean to handle the architect digest subscriber. She's all momsy with her handling of him, and Dean and AUBobby are left to do the awkward small talk - we know AUBobby really doesn't have it as his strong suite, even though it was Bobby's, like in 6x21 where he was the only one to ever say sorry about your mom to the guy. It also means they have to do the blathering while trying to work out any supernatural history on the property in character, while Mary and Sam are designating themselves the ones who can get to the heart of the problem and handle it like the profession adults. I like the implicit trust/respect bond that gives here.

I mean she has it with Dean too I would think but she's spent more time with Sam lately and it's important now to show she's grown such a bond with Sam, as it's been 2 whole years of her being back before they could begin to properly bond due to various issues.

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"It was her first solo hunt and she was nervous" listen Sam and Dean are like 1000 pounds of muscle and "fuck you apocalypse" experience and they hunt together. Maggie was smol and wore pink trousers.

-

Is. Is smol.

God. I'm turning into Sam.

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Lol conspicuous blood transfusion bags. Nice gig, to drain peeps and get a nurse to apply the blood directly to you. Is he a vampire with an olde timey set up?

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Maggiieeee

stealing her boots is just mean.

Does she have pink plaid as well as pink trousers?

My god how did they let her out of the house? She's too cute and innocent for this world.

Or her previous world.

Can we shunt her along one more world to one which doesn't have this much monster trouble even, as she's clearly still not found the AU which suits her best.

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Heee Dean knocking the mantelpiece and saying the house has "good bones" like he's an expert on houses

The question is, has he watched a lot of junk reality TV about house refurbishment, or is he just faking on the fly

I have not watched enough aforementioned junk TV to call this one

-

Oh, nope, the daughter validates it by saying her grandpa used to say it. Dean has watched enough TV to pass

-

Ooooh AUBobby having a go at Sam for his shoddy leadership of letting Maggie come here when she had no idea what was up.

I'm guessing the help over text messaging may have been a bit more backseat hunting from AUBobby, but he didn't try to STOP Maggie, or tell her to wait while he and Mary dashed up here.

In any case, here's the conflict of leadership I've been waiting for since before the season began :') Unfortunately, Sam shaved off his beard before going toe to toe with AUBobby, so he takes the first round by default of bristliness, as Sam ceded some portion of control back to Dean on Dean's return and this has made him weird and jumpy about acting like the chief in front of his peeps, and now AUBobby's taking the opening.

-

He has such a power stance that Bobby never had

Shoulders back, beard out

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Dean defends Sam like when is anyone ready to hunt, because from their perspective of course they were as smol-seeming as Maggie and CONSIDERABLY younger when they were plunged into hunting. She's a grown adult! She can handle it! (she may or may not be a mirror to Jack, who is consumptive, and therefore betraying some sort of inherent unreadiness to hunt and a requirement that the smols among you be protected rather than forced to grow up too young and go hunting as a rite of passage, just as Sam and Dean were given their first beers barely in single digits by gnarly hunters)

"A real leader would have seen that a mile away" Yeah AUBobby is too used to leading his peeps - perhaps he liked a semi retirement where Sam was the leader and the world seemed safer and they could hunt like the old days...

-

Mary mediates, splitting up the team in the only way that makes sense, hoping that Dean can defend Sam in absentia (and thus be forced to confront that Sam IS a good and thoughtful leader and to stop mocking him and start defending him) and she can comfort Sam and build him back up as the Chief.

-

Dean goes on such a face journey about this whole thing, from feeling weird about AUBobby to bad about what's going on with Sam to just worried about Maggie and very much taking on that blame for sending a smol out into the field, especially as he has recused himself from responsibility to these people - while fairly taking a mental health break from the frontline as well as competing with how Sam already got there... Anyway that was like 18 distinct facial expressions each with a story and it's too early in the morning... I JUST got my cup of tea and it's still too hot to drink so Jensen's defeated me this round

-

Sam gets comforted by another trenchcoated figure

"Don't listen to Bobby" "maybe he's right" shush.

"THIS IS WHAT HE WAS BORN TO DO"

ILY Mary. She's coming in fresh on adult!Sam, she doesn't even have the feelings about him as she does to smol scared 4 year old boy Dean, especially if we account for postpartum depression making it hard for her to bond with him as per the entire metaphorical structure of the show from episode one to present. Now she's getting to spend time with him - and especially as her only significant time with him BEFORE this was 12x14 aka Bobo's ode to Sam's leadership round 1... Yeah, she sees Sam as this giant gangly admirable leader guy she happens to have birthed.

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"Bobby can't see that... not the only thing he's been missing lately."

Good grief, Mary in the trenchcoat has been making the eyes at AUBobby all Michael-hatted up and being ignored and rebuffed from her sparkling heart eyes. I wonder what this is a metaphor for, Ms Meredith Mixtape "know who you love" Glynn.

-

Also, Mary feeling comfortable to innuendo her crush on AUBobby to Sam - it really is an adult relationship and respect and emotional trust that I feel never in a million years could just pop up between her and Dean.

Oh boy, this scene is still going.

*Hides behind the secondhand embarrassment cushion* Sam goes there, like, not going to mention it but you - he sounds less bumbling than he has at other points... Sam's awkwardness factor can shoot through the roof to the point where in 3x04 where he attacks those guys and then is like "have a nice day" when they're not demons? I kinda want to reach through the screen and strangle him with my bare hands before he does it just to spare myself seeing it. Also the gifset of that has been on my dash all week, and it predisposes me to loathe Sam's awkwardness. Please god let us get through this in one piece.

Mary is too busy being wistful to realise her son is an awkward bumbling moose who is all misplaced stammering words and wonky legs spinning for traction when he's out of his depth.

-

Aww now Mary is getting to talk about her deal... She thought she had something good going with AUBobby but since they've been back he's been "hunting all the time and won't take a break not even for a second" - the ole bury yourself in hunting to avoid facing trauma or feelings thing. Of course AUBobby may be struggling with the weight of the world he left behind, the people who he couldn't save there and not knowing what has happened to them. There's a lot to unpack with him that hasn't been explored on screen and a lot of it is casting him as behaving in a Dean-like way, while Mary is the "I'll just wait here then" to his coping mechanisms.

-

"There's something on his mind, and he doesn't want to talk about it"

Aforementioned trauma, OR a pun about him being possessed by Michael

yeah I'm harping on it as a half-joke half-kinda want to have it on the record in case I'm right :P

-

"Bobby's not open like your dad"

Mary, you do realise how that sounds to literally everyone else, right? We KNOW you're practically from a 3rd AU aka the past where John was practically the mirror AU to his future self

Unfortunately, Mary is the only person in the room who ever has that particular story, which sucks for her

-

Anyway Meredith has reached some sort of characterising level with these people that I am just in pure awe of

-

"Not like your dad when I knew him"

"Bobby's got walls. Big ones"

I do think it's funny that Mary has essentially ended up crushing on a man who is a John-like parallel to the anti-John mirror that Bobby was, who of course had his own Karen who he was a different person with, who was a Mary mirror, and .... yeah

it's an interdimensional timetravelling wife swap

-

It makes Destiel look straightforward

-

Part of Meredith's skill here is not just accounting for every angle, but also juggling this nonsense

-

Anyway Mary doubting she can get through AUBobby's walls and be the person who has to do the emotional labour to get the guy she wants - if she's ready to put herself out there again

this is NOT a conversation to have with Dean in a million years. Even Sam takes a mo

"I shouldn't be talking to you about this!" she giggles and she and Sam smile and set off again, all touchy feely.

Sweet.

-

Anyway there's another dynamic in these woods.

"You think I was too hard on your brother back there." "He's doing his best. He's doing better than his best." Funny way to phrase it but yeah, Dean can see Sam's levelled up and his new best is this new levels of responsibility and good leadership overall.

-

LOL at how terse that conversation was. Dean points out that Sam could do with a hand running things, makes fun of the beard, no offence, and cut back to Sam and Mary

-

Sam explains Karen to Mary, to give her an idea of what might be AUBobby's backstory too.

"he never had any children?" "no"

Scuse me, that's the line that makes me BAWL every time I watch it. HE DID SO, YOU FOOL. IT WAS YOU AND YOUR UNGRATEFUL BROTHER

I am writing a letter of complaint to the management

-

"Whatever your Bobby" - oh dear, AUBobby is now "your" Bobby, like, they found him first but he's now Mary's :p

Sam is now full on giving Mary relationship advice about how it's worth it to move past those walls and give him a go if she really cares about him.

-

Has he ever had this chat with Cas, or is this just practice

-

"Cas, wait, I really appreciate you came to me with this but I am getting killer deja vu for a second here..."

-

Mary finds a disturbing firepit, Dean finds a creepy hunting cabin. This is about to be a barrel of fun

-

AUBobby... Don't just run off. Poke Dean and POINT AT THE THING YOU'RE FOLLOWING

... Dean, also, have some awareness in your peripheral that AUBobby just legged it

-

Again, way more athletic than our Bobby was

-

That's a human hand

-

Are those real IDs or hunter IDs

-

Oh it all came from one wallet, with the same pic on them all, so yes.

-

"Not one of ours" but part of the wider network/family nonetheless. His bearded look recalls Asa Fox, and there's the unspoken discussion again about sharing resources, if ALL hunters shouldn't be pulled into their network and the word spread that the Bunker is at least a resource, that Sam is there to be the hub even if they aren't all part of the centralised AU hunter squad, and Sam starts Bobbying in earnest for this world as a whole.

Of course they'd never have sent Maggie somewhere that a seasoned hunter had already disappeared.

-

Dean finally realises AUBobby is gone, and immediately gets jumped, with rather less warning than Maggie had.

I like how the man has had time to dress up in a suit from his sick bed, if indeed that is the case

monsters in suits

-

Well that's new

-

Well in 13x14 Meredith wrote Gog n Magog who were a fake out full of sand... Now this monster is a fake out full of ash?

-

Cut to: Old man still in his hospital bed, definitely not attacking people in the flesh

-

Oh dear, his daughter hearing something in the house while earnestly getting on with dealing with his estate makes me pretty sure she's not in on anything and she shouted them out of the house in genuine grief-stress, which I already wasn't particularly doubting.

-

The ole dragging chains upstairs ghost trick, which I honestly wish I could say I have never heard for myself but the ghost next door is not my problem, Victorian walls keep them contained, and honestly if you've been following the saga on random incidental comments on my blog I'm really only inclined to believe in ghosts for the humorous fake hysteria of a moment's entertainment but the odd noises next door late at night really have been going on long enough and yesterday some folk moved in so, you know, first act of a horror movie setting up mere feet away from me, the disinterested neighbour scowling at all the evil poured into the walls of that house by careless landlords and human suffering I witnessed firsthand caused by it >.> Anyway. Unlike this woman I stayed right in this spot instead of wandering around trying to work out where that noise was coming from, because I'm in the house with the wacky backstory where weed dealers sawed through the support beam in the roof and the front of my room collapsed shortly after we moved in :P

-

I'm sorry, but if a ghost opens a door for you ahead of you in the hall, my advice is not to immediately go up to the door and go in

-

SUPERVAMP IN THE ATTIC

-

She does an admirable duck and cover maneouver, only to realise he hasn't chased her. Huh.

Michael's super vamps are super weird.

-

"You're not crazy" Neil the nurse immediately straightens up and eyeballs Sam a lil harder.

HMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM.

PS where is the ghostly gardener in all this because he wasn't the supervamp so

-

this is like a murder mystery puzzle but all the bits are so utterly wild... Dead hunter, Maggie being drained for the "stroke" victim who is also attacking people in a suit while made of ash... supervamp in the attic who won't follow her out of the room she found him in

I mean in all this has no one gone back up to the attic where a supervamp is apparently just LIVING?

He's currently just chilling there while they have this conversation

he's just, like... waiting for them????

-

Dean walks in mid-crisis "You hunt monsters?!" "oh good you told them" He does like when things are all quick and easy and right to the point.

Last episode he cheerfully told Dirk that hatchetman Jordan was coming for them, while Sam blustered over telling Sam even when the EMF was SCREAMING that there was a ghost right in the room with them and the display cases were freezing over.

With Mary's influence at least, Sam is happy to get into telling the full story

-

"Wait time out, there's a dead body on our property?"

THERE IS A SUPERVAMPIRE IN YOUR ATTIC

BIGGER PROBLEMS

-

Dean is entirely brushed down... Like... He must have been brushing ghost ash off of himself all the way back to the house.

-

Sam invokes 8x08 right after I was talking about Fred. Dangit, Glynn.

I feel like Sam is sort of making a jump here, but on the other hand the house isn't under ghostly or vampiric shutdown. The father is here, unconscious, so perhaps projecting and I guess if Sam is wondering how he could be doing it, then astral projections may make sense to some degree... Working out how it all ties together is going to be another huge step though. I know the sell for this episode was partially nightmares and dreams, and we have Maggie in a djinn-like trap and the old man both a sleeping Bobby from 3x10 and also a possible Fred Jones projecting it... The supervamps are something that Dean would have brought here, and "walkers" from the Walking Dead is something the boys could have brought. Which means the other hunter could have been murdered by his own trauma... idk. Why am I trying to piece it together now?

watch the episode, lizzy

-

LOL the daughter just reeling off her dad's "workaholic with textbook narcissistic tendencies" while also herself clearly being the offspring of such a person (is the manifestation of her dad her own trauma?) and hey no doubt that description of the father might come to bear on some of the father/power figures in the episode. Definitely not what Sam is though he's among the mix - perhaps a dark warning of a guy who works himself to death like this and becomes entirely self-absorbed in the process, but Sam just took a minute to advise his mom's love life so he's hanging in there with his sense of self for now. In the sense that a dark arc doesn't seem to be looming for him in such a way as red flags literally followed pre-Mark Dean around.

-

Okay took a LOT of me yelling at the screen but they FINALLY realised there's an unresolved vampire in the attic situation and Sam's going up to check

-

Meanwhile Mary has been separated out in this cursed property to have her own side-adventure with AUBobby

-

Lol the daughter downs some anti-anxiety medication with whisky while Dean sits behind her tuning his knife in a rather grim melody. What a scene.

-

He also has his foot on an armchair like the total troll he was raised as

-

She goes off on one and Dean immediately likes her

"Thanks dad" "no love lost between you two, huh?"

T stands for terrible father

-

"I get it" "not here for a heart to heart" *pause* *launches into a John Winchester Metaphor Of The Hour rant

"But my MOM" *Dean looks up, eyes all vulnerable* "Depression runs in our family" oh booooy

So she found her mom and Dean saw his mom consumed by fire in a way that is still scarring him TO THIS DAY (re: 13x01 nightmare) and this is our first Mary parallel of even a dead mom but one with a personality, and her own problems... Not the temporary insanity of drowning her children like Constance Welch in 1x01, but a woman who had depression and a husband who wasn't there for her... In 14x01 Mary and Sam's discussion revealed how much she was doggy paddling on the surface of all the awful that's happened to her, but this is our real notable parallel to discuss a family history of depression running through Mary's side of the family, which goes not just for Dean (who, like, really has anxiety himself) but also all of Mary's issues, including in 12x21, begging Ketch to kill her at a lowest point before they got her to entirely retreat into herself.

-

Glynn still out for Dean's blood: "the most ridiculous thing is... I worshipped him when I was a kid" Dean is feeling like she took that machete and shoved it in his stomach, as she sits there swigging whiskey and telling him how he feels. "Didn't know any better. He's the only family I have left."

-

"Can I give you a little advice?......... let it go." Oh Dean :')

Emerging from his cocoon, still mostly trapped in there but I think that's a bit of a wing poking through.

"The past is -" *forcefully stops himself from saying "in the past"*

He talks about it as baggage and how every single day he tries to let it go and leave the baggage behind. God he's strong and amazing and working so hard to be the best version of himself.

-

Oh my god who builds the hall up to the attic as part of the crawlspace? This is horrifying on an unnecessary level and I'm writing into that architecture magazine to complain

-

This is the creepiest attic. Who KEEPS these horrifying mementos. Give them to a thrift shop for a hipster to buff up and turn into a conversation piece in their living room.

-

Okay, blood bags and a girl in chains (explains the clinking) are a bit weirder than average.

-

"Sam... it's here" "What?" "It's heeeere" Sam how long have you BEEN in this business?

File this under your panicky first aid to Stuart last episode

-

Sam got ashed just like Dean did. Hm.

It also looked like one of the crazed hunger vamps from apocalypse world more than one of michael's supervamps maybe? It's really hard to keep track of all these :P

-

Oh my god AUBobby has a son, who was murdered by angels. This is terrible D:

Something about the immediate moment of him wandering in... When Bobby went off earlier I was thinking of 7x11 where he saw his younger self. This approach seems almost more like 6x04 and Crowley seeing Gavin for the first time.

Anyway this is of course another way to twist AUBobby around on himself - he managed to get a son, maybe Karen wasn't murdered by a demon, maybe he had a different wife. Whatever it is, it gives us a version of Bobby totally different from ours and also in how he will relate to Sam and Dean - not as the sons he never had, but if he's thinking of young men in the fight...

-

Oh no AUBobby just got stabbed... Er... is this a nightmare or is he just dead?

-

Is AUBobby really going to -

OW

That's more impressive than breaking a crypt scene mental wall to save your loved one. Then again, original flavour Bobby once stabbed himself in the gut to save Dean so I guess he takes a lot of pain for his loved ones, and honestly gathering the strength to pull a knife out... Maaaybe nicer than putting it in???

The fact this is all going down with angel blades as well.

-

I swear to god... Meredith, don't make me watch AUBobby stab a vision of his own son to complete the loop with our Bobby stabbing Karen.

-

"I'm sorry"

*WhOMph grey ash everywhere*

Kinda takes the pure angst out of it at least :P

-

Dean gets a better look. "You're giving him a transfusion?"

Yeah, there's some fuckery at work here, sir. The nurse seems a lot less flustered answering this one which is almost as suspicious as someone who has been non-flustered suddenly getting flustered

-

Dean regrets saying "make me a sandwich before he is done asking. Which is the only reason I forgive that request :P Remember in 1x06 where he was bossing Sam's friend around to get them a beer and a sandwich so they could talk in peace about shifters? God. She KNOWS about monsters it's just that he wants to ask a sensitive question here.

Or punch the nurse in the face over the comatose form of her father.

A nod to her that it's a ruse gets her in on it, though. Female!Dean who is a different mirror than Dirk (though still messed up by a father) gets on his wavelength.

-

AAH He remembered the djinn thing!!! Dean's memory is so good and I love him and he's the best and also Meredith is riffing off 2x20 which is actually illegal, I literally have that written down here in the rules and regulations. Although it does give me my opportunity to remind us all of Dean's long speech about why does he have to be the one to save all these people to John's grave when he was thinking he had to go unwish stuff.

-

Sadly he didn't show up with a knife tipped in lamb's blood so let's see how this goes.

-

Oh my god the djinn's literally thought Dean was Michael the whole time. I have to rewatch now >.>

Well, not now, but.

-

He thought Michael was testing him, and would be back to give him an upgrade, and now he's waxing poetic about the untapped potential of djinn. We're back at season 6, with the hunter compound vs a monster army, except this time the monsters aren't a reaction to the nonsense of angels, they're the direct work of the angel stepping into the place of Eve as the experimenter, his grace vs her black goo. I suppose the weirdness out here is the djinn flexing its muscles with projecting hallucinations.

And I guess that means it hasn't affected Dean except the generic ghost of Mr Comatose over there (apologies to Cas) which I'd assume is part of the generic set up for killing hunters as it was what got Maggie too.

-

The question is, is that Maggie in the attic, or a nightmare for Sam. Wouldn't she be djinned too?

-

"Because of him - because of YOU - I can bring those nightmares into the world" well that's a weighted line >.> Dean's guilt for saying yes,  for these things done with his face. Literally bringing nightmares into the world.

Which does at least confirm that the nightmares so far have been external and we're not IN a dream which has been worrying me.

On the other hand that means AUBobby really did get stabbed that badly.

-

"I highly doubt you have a knife dipped in lamb's blood" I TOLD him.

-

you can't just kneecap the djinn

-

"I am curious, what are YOUR nightmares"

Literally pausing it because Meredith is absolutely horrible and I hate her and she keeps being mean to my boy Dean and I can't handle this and I don't want to know

(I am curious. What ARE his nightmares?)

-

Er excuse me did he just prod his way into finding Michael still in there

Because the other option is that Dean's mind is so utterly scared and scary with all he's been through he literally just out-nightmared a nightmare machine by force of personality.

-

"You don't know my family"

Keep the one liners coming

I'm easily placated by them

-

Cut to: the next morning. He offers his double a chance to get her apology from her father, and books it.

-

Nyoooom back along a CONSIDERABLY less horrifying shot of the same sort of landscape

-

Maggie's back! Everyone loves Maggie. She is the adorable mascot of these people.

Keep the cute pink bunny back at home maybe

Dean gives Sam some affirmation about being the leader of his people.

Now Sam needs to not fold immediately the next time he sees Dean seeing him do something leadery. Deal?

-

Mobby H/C

You know he's vulnerable not because he has his shirt off, but because he has his hat off.

-

These "angel wars" in the AU sound pretty formal.

You know, it would probably be PRETTY HARD to get the average American to fight a war against angels until it's way way waaay too late.

I mean, case in point: we call where they come from, "apocalypse world"

-

"Hunting" "it ends the same." "No." Mary F Winchester puts her foot down. No it ends bloody speeches on her watch! All she has is her optimism but damned if she won't use it!

"I don't know any other way to live" "Then we'll find one"

You are doing a good job and you can save all these dumb guys from themselves.

-

DEAN TALKED TO MAGGIE. HE'S HELPING. HE WENT AND LEADERED HER FOR SAM.

Now have a beer, bro

"She learned from the best, huh? :)"

":)"

-

Awww Mary comes up with AUBobby and they're taking a vacation. Let AUBobby go fishing or something. Good lil Cas parallel Mary fixing her broken warrior with a Donna cabin adventure.

...

Do you not worry a lil about what is out there? Donna comes prepared with a flamethrower.

""relaxing"" """vacation"""

-

Anyway best reason ever given on the entire show for a set of characters not to be in the next couple of episodes, second to "Cas is taking his son out to teach him to hunt some more"

-

Bobby has a clean new formal black mourning cap to deal with fresh memories of Daniel

-

Sam getting the leadership baton from a representative of Bobby who he may see more as Bobby than perhaps he ought. AUBobby says he's not sure he ever had it in him to be a leader, while our Bobby was the undisputed best at what he did and as much as he may have complained, his competency is what Sam is now emulating.

-

Mary being "allowed" to go by Dean. "if you need anything... ANYTHING..." *grabs his shoulder and shakes him* You're starting to turn into the mom in a movie who leaves the kids behind and without supervision they throw a wild party to rebel against you stifling them. SO not the dynamic, but that's the licking a thumb and pressing down a stray bit of hair type momming she's doing all of a sudden.

"Go. Be happy." :')

HUGS FOR THE BOY. That's 2 whole onscreen dean hugs this season.

-

Aww Dean talking to Garth :')

Sam and Dean in synchronicity, talking to ALL their hunter network, not just Jody plus the AU peeps

-

Though. Sam has implemented a buddy system.

Dorky camp counsellor that he is.

-

Dean should get him a ceremonial whistle for Christmas.

-

"Move on from what I - from what we - from what he did"... Dean. Buddy.

Go lie down.

That's some of the most intense blurring of self ever, between Dean's guilt, whatever made the djinn scream in horror to delve his head, and his symbolic blending with Michael as the Michaelsword...

-

"Starting to feel like myself again... almost..." shakes his head and starts heading out to go watch more movies, sad that halloween is passed so no more slashers on every channel

-

"We'll work harder" "how, you sleep 3 hours at night" "then I'll sleep 2" *Dean gives him the NO look*

Well there's a great representation of how their issues mess themselves up and they carve away their sense of self and their health for each other.

-

Seriously. What did the djinn SEE. What nightmares are in my boy's head? Oh god I'm stressed.

-

What happened to the 1900s groundskeeper, Don?

[artificialqueens]

Twist Of Fate - Ch05 - (Trixya) - katyahzamo

A/N: Fake instagrams for Trixie and Katya were made because I am that extra: click here for Trixie and here for Katya.

A reminder: Trixie is a hairdresser and Katya is a struggling photographer slash yoga instructor. Lesbian AU. Read the chapters on AO3 and/or come hang out on my tumblr katyahzamo. Comments are welcome and encouraged!

“I didn’t see you like this in a long time. Are you sure that last cup of coffee wasn’t too much for your skinny ass?”

Violet is sitting on Katya’s old couch, legs tucked under her elbow propped on the back, watching Katya come out with the fourth outfit that evening. It’s almost time to leave for the event and she has nothing to wear.

“Oh shut up. How long did it take you to look like that before you came over?”

Katya’s best friend is sitting there looking like a goddess, as always. Even in long, loose black pants her legs look amazing, and the emerald corset clings perfectly to her thin torso. With her hair pulled back in a ponytail, she looks effortlessly beautiful, and Katya doesn’t know whether she wants to bang her or envy her. Maybe a little bit of both.

“I literally just put on the first thing I found. But no, I’m serious bitch, since when are you obsessing over the color of your dress?” There’s a gasp then, making Katya turn away from staring herself in the mirror and back at Violet.

“Wait– do you have a date? Did Katya Zamo finally meet someone? You never go to these things. Is a girl making you go?”

Typical Violetta. She’s been set on finding Katya a girlfriend ever since they stopped dating each other in college, and at the same time discovering no one Katya dated was good enough for her. Violet was four years younger and they met in one of Katya’s art classes, hitting it off immediately. Their relationship was short, mostly sexual, and it ended up evolving into a friendship based on mutual understanding and never-ending support.

Violet believed in Katya when she went to rehab for her alcohol addiction post-college, believed in her when she had one dead-end, low-paying job after another, supported her when she finally bought her first professional camera and insisted Katya take all of her pro shots, despite photographers lining up to work with her. She was the first one who told her Sharon was a piece of shit who did not treat Katya right, and the first one who came running in the middle of the night when Katya called her after Sharon packed her bags and left.

Despite being hot-headed, arrogant and a bit of a narcissist, all qualities many people find off-putting, Katya loves her very much and knows her big ass heart is in the right place. Even though she’s not in town five months out of the year, she’s been Katya’s rock throughout the last year of her and Sharon’s relationship, and after it ended, too, even more so than Ginger.

“Fuck off, I don’t have a date. I just—I don’t know. I miss being around people and loud music. I miss going out with you, bitch, even though you always leave me for a threesome whenever we do.”

Katya wishes she had a date with her hot hairdresser, but wouldn’t say that out loud, for fear of having Violet on her case about it for the rest of the night. She’s already had issues not blushing when she told her that Trixie’s back and is the main reason her hair and bangs are short again.

Violet’s face falls in disappointment at the answer but takes a sip of her mojito and shrugs, not looking sorry at all.

“Girl’s gotta do what she’s gotta do. There’s going to be a lot of agency girls you know tonight, Fame, Shea, Naomi. They’re all coming to see Pearl’s set. She’s like this, huge DJ from the West Coast. I heard she even toured around Europe and Australia. The lesbians go insane wherever she goes.”

Katya laughs, discards another black dress and fixes her hair instead. She’s been walking around the apartment in her underwear for an hour and a half now, ever since she got out of the shower and blow dried her bob straight.

“You know lesbians love hot DJs, Vi. Didn’t you date one last year?”

“Yeah, I still have fond memories of her ass when I get lonely.”

Katya wheezes and smacks Violet’s knee as she passes by her and disappears into the bedroom again.

“Wait, I know!”

She hears Violet yell after her and hears her shuffling as she gets off of the couch and walks into the bedroom, pushing Katya a little bit to the side to take a look at her messy closet.

“Oh god.” Katya laughs, but lets Violet dig through her clothes and sits on the bed instead, watching her. It doesn’t take long for her to find what she was looking for, and soon enough she’s holding a lace bralette Katya hasn’t worn in years and a pair of black shorts to match – she is fairly sure Violet was the one who bought this for her birthday ages ago.

“Here, put that on. Do you still have those red shoes? You should get them and— this.” She pulls out a black lace see-through button up and puts it on the bed gingerly, grinning.

“You’re going to look smoking hot in that. Now hurry up, we’re going to be late for Pearl.”

.

.

.

The line outside of the club is huge – it stretches out for an entire block and Katya thinks that lesbians (and gay men, and everyone in between) are going insane over this Pearl girl. She’s curious to see her now and to hear her set, and at the same time nervous because Trixie is going to be there. When Violet went to the bathroom to touch up her makeup while still in her apartment, Katya spent five minutes staring at her own abs from all angles, exposed through the see-through shirt. She thanked yoga for keeping her in shape, and was actually a little impressed at how long her legs looked in the outfit Violet chose.

Once they parked the car and headed for the entrance, Violet saying they would let her in once they recognized her, Katya’s phone buzzed and she dug it up from the little purse Violet made her carry with her.

Unknown: Hey Katya, it’s Trixie :D

Unknown: We’re already inside, table reserved close to the bar

Unknown: Bob put you and Violet on the list so just tell the bouncers

Unknown: See you soon!

The message is followed by a string of flower emojis and Katya showed the message to Violet, who grinned.

“Bob coming through as usual, I love that guy.”

Katya is too excited to tell her that it was probably Trixie who insisted they were put on the guest list, and says nothing until after they are let through.

“Violet! Katya! Finally!”

Pairs of hands grab each of them by the wrist in the dimly lit room, purple lights flashing to the rhythm of the music Katya has never heard before, and it takes her eyes a moment or two to adjust. She really should have just gone with glasses instead of her contacts, but Violet insisted. Katya is sure that her friend wants her to get laid tonight.

Two pairs of hands that stopped them belonged to Shea and Courtney, both from Violet’s modeling agency, both tall and gorgeous, and Katya is suddenly glad she dressed the way she did. They take turns in hugging both of them; complimenting Katya’s hair, Violet’s outfit and telling them they arrived just in time for the party.

“We were late because Katya took forever to decide on an outfit, so I ended up doing it for her.”

“Girl, you did an amazing job. Katya, you look stunning!”

She doesn’t remember Courtney having an Australian accent, mostly because they met only once, briefly, when Katya did a job with Violet and Fame several weeks before. She remembers Shea better, because Shea insisted on Katya joining them for lunch, saying she reminded her of her Russian girlfriend, Sasha, who was on a world tour traveling with her theatre troupe. Shea is the one complimenting her now, leaning back a little to take a good look at her outfit.

“Court’s right, you’re definitely giving me a Black Widow spy realness here. You should be in the photos with us next time.”

Katya’s laughing and waving her hands in protest.

“Hell no, I’m the one making art happen and I’d like it to stay that way, thank you very much.”

“I’m not sure about that, I bet you’d be a great model.”

“In Russia, maybe.”

“Well you know, you gotta start somewhere.”

They’re all laughing and for a moment Kaya forgets that she’s supposed to be nervous about Trixie. It doesn’t take them long to reach the bar and order drinks, cocktails for the three of them and a soda for Katya.

“Vi? I’m going to find Trixie and her friends, thank her for letting us know about the list. You coming?”

“I’ll come by later. Pearl’s set is starting soon and I really want to see her up close. If you know what I mean.”

Katya wheeze laughs, and Shea and Courtney join her too. Violet is known among her friends for having a thing for DJs and musicians in general, so having her at least flirt with Pearl sometime during the night would hardly come as a surprise to anyone.

“You can try, girl, but I hear she has a girlfriend she met on the road this year. Apparently they’ve been together since January.”

“Shea, since when has that stopped her from getting laid?”

Katya can hear them bantering about Violet’s sexscapades even after she walks away, making her way through the crowd, looking for one particular blonde head, her drink gripped firmly in her hand. She sees her before Trixie even looks her way, and reluctantly has to acknowledge the butterflies acting up in her gut again. Sweat is already forming on the back of her neck and she’s blowing the bangs from her eyes, praying that she still looks semi-decent, despite the stuffy air and nerves.

“Katya!” Their eyes meet just when the host walks on stage to announce Pearl, and Katya knows she has a very small window for conversation before the place erupts. “You made it!”

“Yeah, I tried! How are you?”

“I’m great, yeah. Katya, these are my friends, Shangela and you know Adore, right?”

Adore, yes, that’s the name of the girl who took the photo of her haircut back at the salon the week before.

“Hey girl, looking fine!” Adore yells over the host’s voice when she pulls Katya into a hug, which surprises her a little but she hugs back all the same. She looks young, younger than Trixie, and gives off a grunge vibe that Katya approves of immediately. Her voice is slightly drawn out; just as she remembers from the first time she met her.

“You too!” Katya says, aware that Trixie’s eyes are on her.

“Oh you’re the Atomic Bland girl they put up on Facebook, right?” Shangela hugs her next and Katya reciprocates. She is a tiny, compact woman with a blindingly beautiful smile and hair that reaches past her waist. Even in heels, she is smaller than Katya, but her energy definitely makes up for her height.

“Is everyone calling me that now?” Katya asks, eyes wide and grin wider, glancing over at Trixie.

“Hey, you came up with that yourself. I’m giving your brand the recognition it deserves.” Trixie shoots back, and Katya isn’t nervous anymore. This feels right, and easy, and she has not been this relaxed in a public setting in a painfully long time.

Any other attempt at communication is drowned by the crowd once Pearl walks on stage, and the club explodes with girls (and boys) everywhere shouting her name and whistling, making Katya wonder how on earth she never heard about her before. Not that she was necessarily immersed into the pop culture that much, not even the LGBTQ+ one, sticking to the 70s, 80s and early 90s obscure music, but every single person in this place seemed to know exactly who Pearl Liaison was, making Katya, once again, feel like a grandmother. As soon as the music starts playing, everyone rushes to the dancefloor, and judging by the genre, it’s easier to pinpoint why she didn’t know about her in the first place.

She left her tolerance for electronic music go when she graduated college and stopped drinking, but even she has to admit that Pearl is good. She commands the room so easily, and the way she holds herself reminds of days when Violet preformed burlesque, full of confidence and full of love for her audience. It helps that she is hot as hell, too, platinum blonde hair tied up into two buns on top of her head and makeup so good even under the harsh clubbing lights. It’s no wonder whatsoever why she’s so loved by every single girl in this place.

“Holy shit she’s good!” Katya yells over the music, leaning over to Trixie and Trixie nods, sipping on her vodka soda (or so Katya assumes), her hips swaying to the music a little bit.

“Girl, I wanna dance!” Adore yells from the other side of the table and Shangela agrees, taking her hand and pulling her into the crowd that’s somehow even bigger than it was five minutes ago. Katya wants to ask Trixie to dance too, but she is somehow still unsure how Trixie will react if she suggests it.

“Do you want to dance?” Trixie seems to be reading her mind again, and a slight shiver goes down her spine when she feels those pink lips so close to her ear, and Katya’s nodding without a second thought. They leave all of their things with the bartender that Trixie seems to know (who does Trixie not know, Katya wonders) and head to find either Adore and Shangela or Violet and the rest of her gang, Katya’s goosebumps permanent  when Trixie takes her hand and tugs her along.

They don’t find any of their friends and after a while they stop looking. This close to the stage Katya can barely hear herself think, which might be a good thing after all, seeing Trixie’s cleavage up close like this, pale, soft flesh glistening with sweat as she dances right across Katya with her eyes closed, feeling the music with her entire body.

Katya dances too, but her eyes don’t leave Trixie’s face looking angelic under the strobe lights that pulse with the music and the bodies moving all around them. She can feel the beat in her ears, her throat and deep behind her ribs, thinking briefly about how good dancing to this music must feel to people who took things stronger than alcohol tonight. It makes her sober ass exhilarated now; though Katya’s sure it’s not just the music making her feel this way.

Trixie’s long, blonde hair is suddenly in her face as she turns her back to her, hips swaying and slightly grinding against Katya’s front, and she has the urge to howl. There’s no reluctance in her fingers that move to grip Trixie’s hips, letting them guide her own steadily, and just when she thinks she might die and ascend to heaven, there’s a voice in her ear, yelling.

“Hey bitches, having fun?”

Trixie pulls away from her immediately, her face beet red from what Katya assumes is the heat, and Violet is grinning that teasing, shit-eating grin Katya recognizes very well.

“Where the hell have you been?” Katya yells back as loud as she can while Violet hugs Trixie, trying to appear fine and not turned on at all, but the look on Violet’s face tells her that she’ll have to go to the washroom and fix her face as soon as possible.

“Up front!” Violet yells back, her glare drilling inside Katya’s head, as if mutely asking what it is she interrupted just now. Katya blinks at her innocently, so she rolls her eyes and continues. “Fame and Naomi were asking for you, do you want to join us?”

Katya is tempted to say no but she doesn’t want to prompt Violet to ask more questions than she undoubtedly will the moment she catches her alone, so she looks at Trixie instead. Trixie is looking at Pearl who just switched the songs and smiled at the crowd, dancing to the beat of her own music, and then looks back at Violet.

“Sure! I have no idea where Adore and Shangela are, I’ll have to find them later!”

“Adore, the blue-haired chick? Yeah, they’re with us, she did Shea’s hair for the photoshoot this week!”

They make their way to the larger group, with a little bit of trouble, when the beat changes to something softer and easier to dance to. Naomi and Fame pull Katya into a hug and are introduced to Trixie. Soon after they are all dancing together, making Katya think how much she missed being surrounded by a lot of girls. A lot of friends, too, just having fun and not thinking about anything past that night. Trixie doesn’t come as close to her for the rest of the set.

At one point during the night and towards the end of Pearl’s set that has lasted more than two hours, half of the group breaks apart to get more drinks and retrieve Trixie’s, Katya’s, Shangela’s and Adore’s things from the bartender and move them to the models’ booth, half remains to hang around on the dancefloor, and Katya goes to pee and fix the makeup that is undoubtedly melting off of her face at this point.

She is aware that everything will hurt from all the dancing in the morning, but her mood has been at the all-time high for hours. She happily recalls a moment when Naomi wrapped her arms around her neck and danced closer to her than even Trixie did, and the way Trixie’s eyes followed their every single move, and the way she quickly looked away when she noticed Katya looking back.

Katya feels like she’s deaf once the ladies’ bathroom door closes behind her, and can feel her own pulse in every inch of her skin. Once in the stall, she hears the door open again and finds herself wishing it’s Trixie.

It’s Violet.

“So when were you gonna tell me you’re in love with Trixie Mattel?”

Here we go.

Violet’s perfectly shaped eyebrow is quirked, arms crossed on her chest as she leans on the bathroom counter, watching Katya wash her hands.

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“Oh bitch, you’re telling me that dry humping and eye fucking the entire night was nothing?”

Her words are slurred and Katya realizes that for those two hours she has forgotten that other people drink. Not needing to drink to have fun seemed like a possibility for the first time tonight after years of dreading of going back to places where she’s the only sober one. Trixie has been drinking the entire night too, even stumbled over Katya’s foot as she headed back to the bar.

“We’re just friends, Vi, it’s not that serious.”

“When was the last time you danced like that with me, your best friend?  I call bull. shit.”

Katya laughs at the whining tone and shakes her head, turning to face the other.

“Oh that’s what this is about. You’re jealous.”

She should know better than try to deflect. Violet probably knows her better than Katya knows herself, and is currently having none of it.

“Whatever makes you sleep at night, honey. But I’d say you should definitely go for it. Now give me a hug.”

Katya holds the embrace for couple of moments longer and Violet squeezes her back before heading for one of the stalls.

“Are you okay by yourself in there?” Katya calls when she hears Violet fumbling with her pants on the other side of the door.

“I’m fine! I’ll go backstage to look for Pearl, she’s almost done. You go be with your girlfriend!”

Katya wants to protest but that’s a futile battle with a tipsy, determined Violet, so she just pushes the door and goes to find the rest of the group.

Almost everyone is sitting at the private booth, some of them on their phones, others talking to each other, and Fame is on some boy’s lap, laughing at whatever he’s saying in her ear. It takes her one look to notice that Trixie is not here, or Adore for that matter, so she sits next to Shangela who pushes a new bottle of Coca Cola her way.

“You okay, girl?” Shangela looks up from her phone and at her and Katya nods.

“You?”

“Oh yeah. I’m texting Adore’s girlfriend, Bianca, she’s on her way here to surprise Adore.”

Katya looks around to see that the majority of the crowd has gone back to their seats, only a handful most persistent ones still on the dance floor. DJ Pearl’s spot on the stage is empty now, the music coming from the speakers probably a part of a club’s regular playlist.

“Isn’t she a little late for the party? Where’s Adore anyway?”

She actually wants to ask where Trixie is, but if Violet saw right through her immediately, she doesn’t want one of Trixie’s friends to clock her too.

“Bianca’s a stand-up comedian, traveling around the country a lot this time of year, and Adore had no idea she’s back, she just flew in this evening.  That’s why it took her forever to come here. Adore’s probably outside, smoking. She’s found her weed friends so…”

Shangela motions dragging a smoke from the blunt and Katya laughs, thinking how she could use a cigarette too. She decides to stay to see where Trixie is and get her to go outside with her so they can talk properly.

Trixie doesn’t come back for a while, and Katya uses the time to talk to Shea who comes to sit next to her when Shangela goes to the bar to wait for Bianca. Shea talks to her about her portfolio, Shea’s girlfriend Sasha and her theatre troupe, yoga and everything in between. She has no idea how much time has passed when she sees Violet running in her high heels across the dance floor and hears a group of girls’ delighted screams when they spot Pearl coming from backstage right after Violet.

“That bitch.” Shea shakes her head, looking at Violet’s face when she struggles to pass through a group of Pearl’s fans, her eyes landing on Katya and she darts her way.

“Did you bang her backstage you fucking sl—“ Shea starts but Violet cuts her off with her hand raised as she squeezes into the booth besides Katya, sandwiching her with Shea on the other side.

“You’re never going to believe who Pearl is dating.” She says, but Katya isn’t listening or looking at her.

Katya is looking at Trixie who’s on the dance floor now too, phone in her hand, taking a photo of Pearl and two girls, all three of them raising two of their fingers in a ‘peace’ sign. The girls take the phone from Trixie’s hand and giggle, then walk away, and suddenly Pearl’s in Trixie’s personal space.

Katya doesn’t want to register what Violet is saying as she sees Trixie’s arms wrap around Pearl’s neck, she doesn’t want to acknowledge Trixie’s lop-sided smile or the way Pearl’s arms hug her small waist and pull her close. She feels heart (or is it bile?) rise up her throat when their lips meet and a round of ‘awwwwww’s erupts from the onlookers. She only barely registers Fame who came back and took a spot next to Shea and Katya looks away only when she hears her speak.

“Am I the only one seeing Pearl Liaison kissing Trixie Mattel right now?”

.

.

.

Katya is outside only moments later, and she hears a startled yell from her right, only to realize she’s probably banged the back door open. Outside, away from the music, it must have been loud.

“Katya, you scared the living hell out of me!”

Adore’s bambi eyes are big, and blood shot, but she’s smiling at her anyway and comes over to hug her tightly. Katya hugs her back hesitantly at first, but relaxes a little bit when Adore continues hugging her drunkenly, and for a full minute Katya thinks Adore might have fallen asleep on her shoulder.

“Are you okay?” Katya rasps, surprised she didn’t throw up instead, rubbing Adore’s back gently and trying to blink away the image of Trixie kissing the most beautiful DJ in the world.

“Oh yeah, ‘m fiiiiiiine. A lil’ drunk.” Adore draws out and finally pulls back, the lack of her body heat leaving Katya shudder, and not entirely because of the chilly night air.

“You sure?”

“Mhmm. Just had a smoke with some people and had to stay, fresh air, all that. What about you? You look like you just saw a ghost.”

“I’m okay, I just needed a smoke.”

Her hands are shaking as she lights up the cigarette after Adore refused one for herself, and her breath is shaky as she exhales the smoke, trying to remember any of the breathing exercises her past therapists taught her.

“Is Pearl done?” Adore asks, and Katya feels her stomach drop to her ass at hearing the name.

“Yep, just saw her with Trixie and the fans.”

Adore nods and blinks once, twice, and then her eyes widen in a delayed reaction. If Katya wasn't as pissed, or as miserable, she would have laughed.

“Ohhhhhh, right. You sure you’re okay?”

Several things happen in Katya’s head then. Adore is Trixie’s friend, she realizes, so she probably knew all this time that Trixie had a famous DJ for a girlfriend. It’s probably the reason all of them are here, because she knows Trixie doesn’t listen to electro, and Adore definitely doesn’t look like she listens to anything but Nirvana. They’ve all come here to support Trixie’s girlfriend, and Katya has made an ass out of herself, flirting with Trixie, and holding her hand and dancing close to her to the music Trixie’s girlfriend was playing.

The way Adore looks at her now makes her think that she has somehow clocked her feelings, because if Violet has done it, everyone else must have too, and now Adore feels sorry for her and Katya can’t stand it.

“Yeah, I’m good.” It comes out a bit sharp, and she feels bad about it immediately.

Her hand reaches out to squeeze Adore’s wrist gently, knowing the younger girl will forget all about Katya’s trouble as soon as she sees her girlfriend who’s somewhere inside, waiting to surprise her.

“You know what, Shangela was looking for you by the bar, she says she has something urgent to tell you. I think you should go back inside.”

“Really?”

“Yep. It’s good, I promise.”

Katya manages a grin and even a laugh as Adore hugs her one more time and practically runs inside. She’s a good person, Katya thinks, and good people deserve good things happen to them. What was that bad that she, Katya, put out into the universe for it to treat her this way, she has no idea.

Katya: I’m going home, I’m tired.

Katya: Can you pick up my stuff and bring it over tomorrow?

Violetta: heu btch, f cuorse

Violetta: r u k?

Katya: yeah, just tired. You ok with taking an Uber?

Violetta: ys

Violetta: gna go with Fame n Shea

Violetta: I’m sry

Violetta: fr Trxiie

Katya: Good. Talk to you tomorrow. Text me when you get home

Violetta: u to bitch

Violetta: love yuo

Katya feels like she will definitely throw up once she gets home. She fights to hold it back the entire drive back but once she gets back to her small, shitty apartment, all she can do is take off her boots and put her almost-dead phone to charge. She texts Violet only when she’s in bed, an hour later, having smoked half a packet of cigarettes and still fully clothed, staring at the ceiling and assuming she will never sleep again.

Katya: Got home safely. I love you too.

[whirlybirbs]

studying.

pairing: college!peter x reader rating: all audiences welcome to this fluff what to listen to: roll up by fitz & the tantrums a/n: for the anons who gave me some ideas, here is the start of a potential series? or, as i would say, peter crushes on his TA.

After months of applications and tours and accepted student days, Peter had finally settled on MIT.

(It had helped that Tony had written his recommendation letter. A lot.)

September brings a new leaf.

Peter trades in the hustle and bustle for NYC for that of Boston. It is less shiny, less new. He likes it though; likes the cobblestone, the spirit, the history and the rhythmic rattle of the T under the Kendell stop. The late summer breeze is crisp as Peter shrugs his hoodie on, bagel dangling from his mouth as he chews and launches himself up the steps towards the quad.

His sense are in a haywire; it is the new environment. His sunglasses are maybe a little darker than they should be.

A week ago, his phone had been buzzing with kissy emoji from Aunt May, a good luck text from Tony and of course Ned -- his friend had settled in only a few T stops away at Harvard. The first day of classes had come and gone, bringing it with it an overwhelming sense of belonging. For once, Peter didn’t feel like an outlier.

The only text Peter is paying attention to this morning is yours, though.

pls help me study for my bio quiz later, peter, i am begging u

It makes him laugh. Peter grins, dimples digging in a little bit as he settles into a quick pace. Strawberry converse beat against the jagged cobblestone.

I mean, he wasn’t going to lie to himself -- you were, like, gorgeous. And funny. And you thought it was cool that he’d binged the entirety of Jason Todd and the Outlaws in one night. The fact that you’d excitedly added him on Facebook last Friday after class was enough; he’d messaged you, asking if avoiding the chicken at McCormick was a smart move.

You were a sophomore. You knew the ropes. Peter is totally using it as an excuse.

it’s literally the second week??? who is giving quizzes already??? who’s THAT evil???

You’re laughing, crossing the quad on the opposite side of campus when you get his texts.

It was only happenstance you two started to become friends. His first class, an 8:30am entry-level history course run by Professor Frankfurt (which was really just one big Captain America fanboy session) happened to be the class you’d decided to TA for -- and in turn, the class you’d first met Peter in. Forced to sit front row after arriving late -- he’d had trouble finding the Tang Auditorium -- he ended up being the one to sit next to you.

He was wearing a Saint Motel t-shirt. You’d stopped him after class, nervously chirping your admiration of that particular album. He’d stuttered in surprise. You were a little mortified, mostly since you had realize how pretty he was. He had big brown eyes and dimples. Dimples.

From that point forward, it was like you couldn’t escape him. He joined the Broadcasting club -- and you’d laughed out loud when he walked through the door wearing a different Saint Motel t-shirt. Comic Roundtable wasn’t safe either, as Peter Parker had suddenly become the fresh face among the small club of eight. It truly culminated when you realized Peter had taken up residency on Danny’s floor -- the R.A. was a fellow Anthropology major, and one of your closest friends.

So, yeah, texting him and asking for help on a Gen Ed Bio course quiz was kind of pushing it. You wanted to hate Peter, honestly -- as a freshman he’d already met a handful of prerequisites through his famed Stark Internship, working his way through a good half of the first year Computer Science and Molecular Biology course load. The air at MIT was competitive, but for some reason Peter didn’t feed into it. You felt okay admitting a fault.

It wasn’t like you were going to go to Academic Computing. They’d definitely roast you for not understanding cell structure and osmosis and all that other shit. You were an Anthropology and American History double major for god’s sake. You didn’t need that stuff in your brain. You needed room for other things.

So, you text Peter back.

it’s prof steck. don’t play urself. stay away from her. but is that a yes??? bc if it is i’ll swipe for u at baker!!!

Peter’s slipping through the auditorium doors when he texts you back.

Your phone buzzes on your desk, and you laugh a little when you read the message.

only if u buy me mozzerella stix!!!!

He shoulders you as he sits down. The touch is enough to light up Peter’s nervous system; he ignores the happy tingle that creeps up his back.

The stack of graded papers is jostled a bit by the movement -- Frankfurt had done an assessment on Wednesday, intending to get a gage for what he was working with in the class. So much for syllabus week. You, of course, had been tasked with grading. Not that you minded, though, it had distracted you from asking Peter to come out with you on Saturday night.

“You know,” you chirp, “Baker has make your own stir fry tonight...”

“No way!” Peter’s voice clips a bit, high and excited, “Then forget the fried cheese sticks, buy me stir fry.”

“Only if you don’t make fun of me,” you hum, rolling your eyes a little, “This quiz on is the simple stuff and I don’t know why, I just don’t get it.”

“Well,” Peter chides, settling back in his seat. His fingers dance across the trackpad of his laptop, waking it up, “Mitochondria is the powerhouse of the cell.”

You deadpan.

Peter grins. It’s toothy.

“Is that what the Stark Internship taught you?”

His laugh is boyish. Those dimples are back. Your chest caves a bit, face hot with a gooey expression. What the hell is wrong with you? Going gaga over a freshman?

“Naw, memes taught me that one.”

“Oh,” you wave your hands as Professor Frankfurt throws himself into the auditorium in a huff, “Even better.”

You’re both silenced into a hush as the rest of the first year class follows suit. Professor Frankfurt calls roll. Your name is called after Peter’s. You hand out the exams, and then sit beside Peter for the rest of the class, basking in the warm glow of his semi-permanent smile.

“You know it’s not a date, right?”

Your roommate has her fists halfway into a family sized bag of doritos. Netflix glows from the top bunk. You’re fixing your hair in the mirror hanging on the door.

“I know, but,” you sigh, “He’s cute.”

“He’s a freshman,” she waves as The Office drones on, “He’s fresh meat -- dead in the water. That’s social suicide, you know. At least wait until after Rush Week.”

“Peter doesn’t seem like the fraternity type.”

“Yikes.”

“That’s not a bad thing!” you huff, tugging your hair up and away, “Seriously, there’s a reason why you keep getting your heart broken by dumb boys.”

“Is it because I have an affinity for beefy rich assholes named Brad?”

“That’ll do it, honestly.”

“Fair enough,” she tosses a grin your way, “Good luck on your dinner date with Peter.”

“It’s not a date!”

--

It’s not a date.

Totally not?

Why is he so nervous?

Oh god, his hands are sweating.

“I’ll have the sweet and tangy sauce, please.”

The box of stir fry is handed to him -- you’re already digging in with a goofy grin on your face. You much on the lo mein noodles happily. You’re covering your own nervousness well. Thank god for deodorant because Peter has you sweating -- literally. It had climbed into the high 70s by late afternoon, leaving Parker in a t-shirt that seemed too tight to be legal and a pair of shorts. He was tan. And he had freckles. Everywhere.

Your hair is swept into hazy curls by the late summer heat. Peter watches the curls along the back of your neck as you both work your way through the check out in the dining hall.

You both make your way to the Hayden Library, strides slow. The sky looks gold, and the clouds glow in the deep blue of the September evening. Traffic drums on, but you both are locked into conversation. Nothing is breaking it -- not even the wave of friends across the street.

“So, New York, huh?”

“Yeah,” he laughs, taking a bite from his takeout container, “My Aunt told me that if I ever went to a Red Sox game, she’d murder me in cold blood.”

“Yikes,” you chatter, “You’re missing out -- I mean, no Big Papi anymore, but Hanley Ramirez is a big deal. Be a shame if you never saw him play in Boston.”

“Are you trying to convince me to go to a Red Sox game?” Peter’s voice hitches, “Because that’s not happening.”

“C’mon, the Yankees suck,” your smile is challenging and Peter laugh as you take a few steps ahead, turning around to watch him as you skip backwards, “Turn to the dark side, Peter! It’s more fun! We have a green monster.”

“I think I’d rather take the Hulk, honestly.”

“Me too,” you wink, “Bruce Banner is an absolute babe.”

Peter laughs at that -- loud and rowdy in the late summer heat. It’s intoxicating.

Your takeaway boxes have been abandoned, licked clean, in favor of a biology textbook and notepads. Though, it wasn’t a welcome abandonment. You wanted to pull your hair out. It showed.

Your lips are pulled into a pout. Peter watches your brows screw together. The study room is filled with the chatter of a Bio101 Youtube video he’d pulled up, hoping to explain osmosis and semipermeable membranes and the importance of saline.

“See?” Peter’s pen taps the screen, “From high to low!”

“Always?”

“Always.”

“Sounds fake,” you hum, mushing your cheeks together as you lean on the wooden table, “But okay.”

“It’s not fake! It’s science.”

“So,” you lean back, waving your fingers, “... magic?”

“Basically,” Peter shrugs, “My formal title after grad school will be Wizard.”

“I want to be a wizard.”

“Then --”

“And make this whole quiz disappear.”

Peter drops his head into his hands, laughing softly as he rubs his brows together. You were getting it, albeit slowly. He couldn’t say he really minded losing his Monday night to you -- in fact, he found himself enjoying this a little bit too much. Your knee brushes his under the table as you shift, eyes drawn back to the video.

His skin tingles. Hot and prickly.

“How about one more hour of studying?”

“Thank god,” you whisper, “I can do that.”

“Power hour?”

“Power hour.”

He walks you back to your dorm.

Even though it’s in the opposite direction of his.

“I hope I helped,” he sighs, “Even if it’s a little bit?”

“You helped a lot -- seriously, I think I’m a wizard now.”

You blossom with pride as he giggles, eyes screwing shut as his head falls backwards. His converse scuff against the pavement as he shoves his fingers into his pockets. Peter glows under pinks and yellows of the streetlights. It’s cute. You wind your own fingers together, toeing the ground.

There’s a weighted pause between you both. Brown eyes burrow into your own.

It’s broken by the door to your dorm swinging open and a group of guys bustling by. It prompts you both to laugh again.

“I’ll see you on Wednesday, then?”

“Yeah! And, uh, I’ll let you know how I do on my quiz!”

“Make me proud!”

He waves, you wave, and you swear it’s the warmest you’ve ever felt.

[eunych-born-eunych]

tell us more about witchcraft tumblr

oh boy. follow @alkaloidwitch​ for my unironic witchcraft opinions. I’m a witch! and a materialist with a background in empiricism/scientism, also a materialist in the marxist dialectical sense! you can be all of those things at the cost of your popularity among idealist witches, non-witch materialists, and most of all:

Normies.

my materialism and my witchcraft both grow out of madness; human beings are computers complex enough to perceive things that are not real. For things I know to be real, there is materialism; for things I know to be chimerical, there is witchcraft. as the chaos magicians, wankers that they are, put it: belief is a tool. believing something now may serve a purpose, even if you do not intend to continue believing it later. Playing make-believe with my literal demons now will help me try to make sense of the material world better later.

And it is imaginative play, much as it is deadly serious; much of what we do in life is imaginative play of some kind. let’s pretend there’s a thing called money and let’s pretend it belongs to this specific kind of paper, these specific bits of metal. let’s pretend a corporation is a person. let’s pretend sex is simple; no, let’s pretend sex and gender are different; no, let’s pretend to stop believing in gender and start pretending to believe in ungendered sex.

materialism, again, is the resolution. imaginative play doesn’t have to be bad, but things that are only imaginary play by certain rules; we learn them as children. so when your imaginative play, witchcraft, seeps into your view of the world (as it must), other people calling themselves witches are sometimes going to believe or imagine mutually-contradicting things; the politest way to resolve an imaginary conflict is to come up with some imaginary solution, the more minimal the possible, and stop talking about that because it’s gonna harsh yr witchcraft to get snippy.

entirely different things happen when people come, materially, into conflict. and witch tumblr frustrates me a lot because my tacit acknowledgement that

“none of this is real like rocks are real, so when your imaginary collides with the material world, the material world is always going to trump. if it is materially bad, I don’t care that your imaginary justifies it, and if it is entirely immaterial there’s no point arguing about it”

…is not super popular with tumblr witches. there’s lots of, like, arguments and discourse and positivity posts about the wildest shit.

a three-screens-of-scroll witch tumblr textpost: positivity post for lazy witches! uwu // • positivity for lazy witches who [emoji-capped bullet points all the way down]me: it’s so inspiring that lazy witches can be positive despite the incredible scrutiny and terrible hardships the morning people witches subject them to, ⭐⭐⭐⭐🌟

so, like, I don’t have the same reaction to the idea of demon apologia that OP did. thinking highly of demons just isn’t that uncommon in my circles. to me, that post’s fucking ridiculous because why would you ever bother making it? if you wanna work with demons, do it, but like… other people don’t like demons, and make their own witchblr posts from that perspective, and you can resolve that conflict by just ignoring the imaginary content that is not meant for you.

a clarifying example is in order.

‘don’t use sigils you find on the internet, anyone can upload a curse and say it’s a different spell!!’

my guy. that is so far from being anybody’s real, substantive problem. you would never know unless they told you. their imaginary isn’t accessible to you and you can ignore it. if someone tells you they made a sigil you used to be a curse, and you feel like you have indeed been cursed, that’s still an event internal to you. and after all, someone could lie and tell you their beneficial sigil was actually a curse after you’ve already used it, just to fuck with you.

I can’t get this level of panicked about that level of made-up problem! if the idea of curses hidden in graphics created by random Internet denizens appealed to me, I’d engage with it on my own and not waste time trying to convince other people they should care about my niche paranoia.

the thing is, cultural appropriation is way less imaginary than witchcraft. there’s a real, economic impact to the mass-production in the West of symbols indigenous to ‘exotic’ colonies. there is a real dehumanization involved in treating someone’s proudest and most mundane garments, alike, as being a gaudy costume purchasable cheaply from any two-bit metaphysical store.

(privilege claim for the next bit: I’m a white, American settler-colonialist. that’s a me. I’m a that.)

and on the subject of metaphysical stores…

… run by white settler-colonialists who claim to have spirit animals and have no sense that there might be something inappropriate about shopping for toys in the cultures and religious practices of living indigenous populations whose homeland we are still occupying by force, whose access to their own cultural history we are still actively sabotaging, to sell bastardized sweatshop lookalikes whose significance is less than half-remembered and wholly stripped of context to other white settler-colonialists

there’s endless newb questions in this form:

Q: “can I use this color candle to mean this thing?”A: “I don’t care?”[a reblog insisting that actually they CAN’T use that color candle to mean this thing is the version that went viral]

, which indicates extreme hesitancy to break the rules of the imaginary.

on the other hand, witch tumblr is actively resistant to any demonstrable criticism. these same people fretting about candle colors also throw bizarre tantrums mocking the concept that they should stop cleansing with smoke from white sage, a critically endangered sacred herb that isn’t farmed, and how dare you say they shouldn’t call their white ass waving burning herbs in the air on occupied land ‘smudging’.

no-one cares if you think about the candle differently; stop asking for our input on that shit, because you don’t need it and we have better things to do. on the other hand, people very much do care if you engage in the alt religious scene’s rampant bigotry, but you don’t wanna listen to us on that. those priorities are fucked.

also witch communities have long, long memories, and some things happen again and again. a sampling:

the annoying

‘fluffy bunnies’ who read one barely-researched pop-Wicca text and are here to tell non-Wiccan witches what they’re doing wrong.

relatedly, ‘curse-shaming’, a practice in which even ‘respectable’ Wiccans participate, is genuinely aggravating if you’re at all into, like, historical witchcraft, because for a very long time (Wicca under that name had no public presence before 1954) there’s been not much more traditional for a witch than a curse.

arguments about “male witches” (that no-one acknowledges arose out of transmisogynistic practices in Dianic Wicca, and not really in reaction to men).

‘the Burning Times’ (not real, any historical events embarrassingly misrepresented).

“Easter is a pagan holiday;” relatedly, “Easter is Eostre is Ishtar”.

“Christmas is a pagan holiday.”

the ugly

an entire alt-history of Europe and European magical practice in which Jewish people play no perceptible part.

neo-Nazi physiognomies being passed around as “correspondence charts”.

every reputable resource on Norse mythology, Heathenry, or Asatru has an explicit public disavowal of Nazis, for very good reasons.

anti-Black propaganda, dated to the sixteenth century, about Afro-Carribbean syncretist esoteric/religious practices being repeated with all explicit reference to race left out on Tumbler Dot Com in 2017.

gentiles doing Kabbalah.

an all-white vision of the Hellenistic Mediterranean.

that one girl who stole black people’s bones from burst/eroded graves in a Louisiana graveyard and posted about it on Tumblr (one of witchblr’s few big mainstream crossover posts), leading to her arrest.

the (mostly) harmlessly bizarre

god-marriage

god-phones

what is a familiar really? (& relatedly: sex with spirits. EXTREMELY traditional, by the way),

etsy shops where you can buy custom spirits (NOT as in alcohol),

chemically-treated quartz named as if it was a real mineral,

“correspondence charts” broken alphabetically into individual readmore posts listing the magical properties of various objects (with a reblog later on in the chain complaining that people need to be more obsessed with pointless minutiae)

minors-only witchcraft discord server drama that you’re actively, unsuccessfully trying to avoid learning about

looking for witchcraft podcasts that aren’t run entirely by dudes

“my dog is horrifyingly sick, what spell should I cast?”//”GO TO THE VET”

a wealth of incredibly shitty and boring and unreadable esoteric PDFs by snake-oil salesmen

skyclad discourse

my tarot cards just read me for filth

thirty-year-old woman who should know better by now: christian witch is an oxymoron

christian witchblr: the Law of Attraction is just the prosperity gospel for Democrats

someone’s angry about the existence of secular witchcraft again

[54kg]

Jongin - Come Home (M)

Jongin x (Y/N) scenario

Rating: Mature

Warnings: Oral sex, vanilla sex

Word count: 4552

Saturday mornings always bring tired eyes and lazy Netflix binges tangled in a blanket on the sofa. At least, they have for the past month. I don't have anything better to do anyway. My roommate won't be back from her home-stay for another 6 months. I've nearly forgotten the scent of her floral perfume wafting through the apartment as she scurries around getting ready for work. She hates her job, but keeps a smile on her face regardless. Despite frequently working overtime and off-duty business calls, not to mention lowkey harassment from a coworker (something she doesn't trust will be properly dealt with if she notifies her lackadaisical boss), she remains optimistic. She's like a ticking bomb. Though she doesn't like to admit it, I know that she has a limit. It's only so long until she explodes, and I'm not ready to see such a mess sprawled out before me.

 But honestly, as I sit flipping through an endless scroll of B-movies I can't be bothered to waste brain cells sitting through, all I can think about is one person, and it certainly isn't my optimistic roommate. Letting the remote go limp in my hand for a moment, I grab at my phone lazily perched on my hip. No new messages. Damn. How long has it been anyway? 3 days? He could at least drop a text to say "Good morning" or "Sweet dreams" or "I love you~". Even a "Thinking of you" would do. But he's been completely silent for far too long (3 days can seem like a long time when you're completely and utterly in love with someone who isn't near you). It's not like we promised to talk everyday, but considering that he's 92093842347 miles away from where I am, I would be willing to hear even just a small peep from him at least once a day. He must be busy, I tell myself, setting my phone aside again as I begin to harass the remote buttons. "God damn it, there has to be something to watch on here!" And yet there isn't. Either I've watched everything already or there's nothing interesting left. So I pull up YouTube instead. Perhaps a few random tutorials and Story Times down the road, I'll actually find something to binge on. As soon as I open the screen, however, one thumbnail catches my eye and I feel a pang in my chest. '170425 EXO’rDIUM in NY - Acoustic Medley'. I try to hide my frown, if not only to trick my spirits into staying light. My fingers move on their own, and I'm sucked into the melodic harmony of all the members singing Call My Baby and Love, Love, Love, and other songs he's sung to me while I fall asleep nestled in his warm embrace. He looks so content, sitting there among his near brothers, lifting the mic to his lips when it's his turn to sing, gazing out at all the fans who adore him so passionately. And it's almost the same look he gives me when he comes home sometimes after work and holds me in his arms, something we aren't able to do as much as we'd like. I know that I'm the only one who gets that extra special look, that look of "this is the most beautiful person I've ever met in my life". I give him the same one.

 Kim Jongin is warm-hearted to a fault. Literally anyone who meets him could tell you that he's always a gentleman, and he's always polite, but he also knows how to joke around. He's the epitome of the perfect sweetheart. It's no wonder he has young girls worshiping him around the world. But, of course, what they see on the screen, even what they are sometimes lucky enough to see in person, is only a part of the man we know as Kim Jongin. Behind closed doors he's so much more. He shows me aspects of his personality that he'd never show anyone else. There's so much to know about Jongin. There's so much to understand, and adore, and protect. Although he's undoubtedly tough, he also has a certain fragility about him, which only makes me care for him more deeply.

 I just want him to come home. A month is a long time to be deprived of seeing the one person you love above all else. He's been really good about replying to my texts of encouragement and also the ones that say things like "Oh my god, when the fuck are you getting home, I'm about to die!!!" Although I know he's busy and probably isn't supposed to be on his phone. I get his messages and have to remind myself that it's not, in fact, 4am where he is when he sends them. I can only imagine how the time difference affects him. Poor baby works too hard anyway. We'd tried calling each other once only to have to keep it short because he was getting ready to go to rehearsal at 8am while it was 9pm in Korea. Before we'd even had a chance to talk heart-to-heart, his manager called him away. He promised he'd call another time or maybe even Facetime, but his schedule got more detailed as the days went by. Even before the tour, they were so preoccupied with preparations that he decided it was best to just stay at the company for the time being until after their return. Hence why we haven't seen each other for a month. EXO's schedules get especially rigorous during comebacks and tours. I feverishly worry for him, for all of them.

 The video ends and I scold myself when I realize a tear has trickled from my eye. "Come home..." I murmur, my voice cracking. My phone buzzes and my hand has never flown so fast to pick it up. A big smile graces my lips when I look at the screen.

 'Sorry, we got really busy. It's times like these when I really, really miss you... xoxo, Nini <3'

 -

 The tour comes to an end. EXO is finally coming home. I've spent the entire day preparing dinner, creating a nice romantic atmosphere. The dining room has been expertly transformed into a more fancy setting with a table for two all dressed up with a brand new tablecloth and candle, and a little vase of lavender. I'm thoroughly impressed with myself, though I don't like to brag. I collapse onto the couch when everything is ready, dinner only needing to be put into the oven. Holding my phone above my face, I open my texts, reading over the last message Jongin sent me. 'Omg omg omg can you believe I'm coming home to you today?!' which was a more giddy response than usual. This is the longest we've gone without seeing each other in at least a year. We've grown accustomed to being able to be together at least twice a week. Sometimes we get lucky and EXO's manager will secretly let me come to practice on the condition that Jongin won't get too distracted.

 'When does your plane land?' I type, looking at the time to see that it reads 1:23pm (I got too excited and prepared everything way too early in advance, but oh well). I would go to the airport, but I've been warned that because somehow no one has figured out about mine and Jongin's relationship yet during the two years we've been together, it's risky to show up and have people suspect anything. We aren't ready to reveal anything just yet, partly because I'm not famous or anything, so both of us want to protect my privacy for as long as we can. There's no way I want to touch the surface of sasaeng territory.

 My phone buzzes almost immediately. '6 more hours... >.<' I giggle at the cute little emoji. Even when he's not with me, he still manages to make my heart flutter just as much. I send back a crying emoji and tell him to get some sleep (if the boys will let him). And then I go to take a shower. Dinner and ambiance aren't the only surprises I've conjured up. A cute little pink parcel with a silk bow tied around the handles sits waiting at the end of my bed. I'll slip that new gem on later tonight after dinner when he least expects it...

 6 hours pass by agonizingly slow. Even Netflix isn't helping to make time fly quicker. Every now and then I'll get a cute little text from Jongin saying he wants to call, but the guys won't shut up so hearing each other would be difficult. I tell him it's fine. We talked on the phone just yesterday anyway, and we got a good hour in. He says he wants to hear my voice. I reply that he will soon~

 We text for a little while and then he says he'll get some shut eye so he'll have energy when he gets home to me. His manager has generously arranged for him to be allowed to see me first thing when they arrive. The clock ticks mockingly above the mantel piece. It's only 4 now... 3 hours to go. It's never felt so long. If time keeps acting like this, I'm never going to let Jongin go on tour again... But that would be selfish and how would I even be able to pull off something like that? Still, Jongin has me missing him like there's no tomorrow.

 Finally, the clock reads 8pm. 'We're landing!' he texts and sends an excited gif to go along with it. I chuckle to myself and jump up from the couch where I've been wasting time on nothing in particular.

 I push the braised chicken into the oven and turn on the timer. After quickly checking to make sure that everything is in place, I go to the bedroom to make sure everything looks neat and the lingerie I bought is out of sight in case he happens to go into the bedroom for some reason. It's a strapless black and red lace piece with garters and stockings and everything. There are even tiny pink bows down the bodice. Best of all, it fits me perfectly in all the right places~ I've only ever gotten one set of lingerie in the past, but after using it twice, I figured it was time for something fresh that Jongin has never seen me in before. This certainly was a contrast to the rather plain white one I had before. I was much shier then and I'd never worn anything so scandalous in my entire life. Jongin had told me then that he didn't care if it was the plainest one in the whole world. "You look stunning in anything~" I blush remembering those words, just imagining our night steadily approaching.

 I slip into a cute little dress and finished up dinner just as I get a text from him. 'On my way over~ ;)' My stomach does flips in anticipation. Seeing his face in person for the first time in what seems like forever, hearing that voice that sounds like melted caramel, feeling his arms tightly wrapped around my figure as if our bodies are perfectly molded together, breathing in his familiar scent, kissing him with all the passion I've saved up while he's been gone, these are the things that have me practically sprinting around the apartment in excitement. He's minutes away and yet those minutes feel like 6 hours all over again.

 Suddenly, a soft knock comes at my door. Without even meaning to, I hold my breath. Taking one last look in the mirror to make sure I appeared just right, I speed over to the door and collect myself before turning the knob and opening it to see him standing there, smiling bright with a bouquet of lilies in his hand. I stare at him, starry-eyed. He stares right back, his smile never faltering as we both drink in each other's presence. He hands me the bouquet, a bashful look on his face, and my heart skips as I breath in their sweet aroma. Where did he find the time...? Breathlessly, I speak first. "Jongin...you're home..." And then he suddenly rushes forward and scoops me into his arms, twirling me around in the air as I hold on, giggling with pure joy. He kicks the door shut and immediately attaches his lips to mine. I wrap my arms around his neck as he massages my waist with his thumbs.

 "God, I missed you so fucking much..." he says in almost a whisper, his forehead pressed against mine. I smiled blissfully and caress his cheek with my hand.

 "Honey, you can't even imagine know how much I missed you." He smirks, pecking my nose.

 "I think I can guess~"

 He practically gapes at the setup I've prepared. "Woah, you actually cooked for once?" I playfully shove him and tell him to "just sit and enjoy it because now might be the only time you get something like this from me." He laughs and we sit, and over dinner, he tells me all about the tour and how the boys drove him nuts, but it was okay because being with them was always worth it. He tells me the story about how Sehun, Junmyeon and Jongdae got lost on their first day in New York and they had to pretend that they totally meant to be in some shoe store when really it was the only familiar thing to them in the vicinity. And he tells me about how after one show, he a few others got drinks in their rooms and he had a little too much. "The guys told me the next morning that I had been crying and acting like a total baby, rambling on about how I didn't deserve you and how you were probably going to find somebody else way better than me and then what was I going to do because you're my world and..." He trails off, seeing the look on my face. "Babe, what's wrong?" I reach across the table for his hand and give it a tight squeeze. I want to hold him when I hear him say those things. What you say when you're drunk is often what you're actually thinking in the back of your mind, even if you don't realize it.

 "You deserve me more than anyone, love. I'm not going to find anybody else. Why would I need to find anybody else? I love you, Jongin. I can't imagine loving another person quite like how I'm in love with you..." I gaze into those gorgeous chocolate pools, a serious yet soft expression on my face. He gets all shy then and grins like a little boy. I love the small moments like these. They're never awkward, although when we do stuff like this in front of the members, most of their reactions go something like "gEt a rOom!" and "jUNMYEON JONGIN AND (Y/N) ARE DOING THAT MUSHY THING AGAIN-" or "help! the cheesiness in slowly killing me!" (of course Junmyeon and Yixing are in the corner, cooing at us like doting parents).

 After I've put the dishes away, I tell Jongin to wait in the living room while I change into something a little more comfortable. Unlike the last time, I feel not a tinge of embarrassment while putting on my lingerie because I know Jongin genuinely loves this kind of surprise and would never want me to be ashamed of showing him my body. And the hungry look he gets in his eyes when we do these things is honestly the hottest look in the universe, way more so than what he displays on the stage. Once everything is in place, I sneak back out into the living room. He sits on the sofa with his back towards me. 'The perfect opportunity' I think, tiptoeing over to him. I lean down and cover his eyes with my hands, getting close to his ear and murmuring in a husky tone, "Guess who~" I can feel his entire body tense. I remove my hands and make my way around the sofa to stand in front of him, letting my hair fall loosely around my shoulders. His jaw hangs as he looks me over.

 "Is that new?" he asks, and I can hear a tinge of excitement in his voice. I nod, swiveling my hips a little. He smiles. "Do a little turn so I can see it better." I do this, and when I'm facing him again and I can see that he's swallowing hard, starting to imagine things.

 "Do you like it?" He stands up and stalks over to me, pressing his body against mine with his hands squeezing my hips.

 "Do I like it?..." His lips come dangerously close to my ear as his breath tickles the sensitive skin around it. "I love it..." I lean into him as his hand travels a little farther and grabs my ass, pulling me closer. Our lips collide and his tongue soon slithers out to fight with mine. This. This is what I had desperately waited for during those 2 months. After not having it for so long, I never knew it could already feel this good.

 Suddenly, he hoists me up and I wrap my legs around his waist, our lips never parting for more than a second so that he can adjust my position to be more comfortable. He then makes his way towards the bedroom. My heart pounds with excitement. I can barely contain myself and I know he can tell. My fingers become tangled in his hair as he pushes the door shut with his foot and sets me on the bed, immediately crawling over me. I let my hands wander up his shirt to feel his toned stomach as he attacks my jaw and neck and collar bones with his kisses, leaving a few marks in their wake. He's already got me sighing, wanting as much as I can get. As he moves to my shoulders, he pulls one of my legs to his hip with the hand that isn't propping him up. His fingers tease down my thigh over and over and my entire body begins to tingle. Jongin pulls away for a moment to that I can assist in discarding his shirt. "Thank you, that was really in the way," I breathe, my fingers returning to his exposed skin right away. He places a hand over mine and guides it against his stomach. His eyes bear into mine all the while, as if daring me to go further. Not just yet...

 With my other hand, I reach up to grab his shoulder, pulling him down and rolling on top of him. I straddle his hips, carefully dragging my lips from his chest to his neck where I leave my own marks. They'll fade before he needs to be seen in public again. The boys will have a couple of days off anyway. A small groan leaves Jongin's throat and I chuckle. "Already?" As I scatter his collarbones with small but noticeable love bites, he writhes underneath my touch as my hands inch closer and closer to his growing erection hidden behind the fabric of his skinny jeans. I pull myself up to admire my work and that's when he turns the tables and again I'm beneath him. His eyes are full of beastly hunger. I can see it dripping through his skin almost and it immediately ignites something within me. He scours my laced intimate and cocks his head, rolling his tongue against the inside of his cheek in thought. He traces his thumb over a bit of the delicate material just above my breast. "As much as I could drunk on seeing you in this," he says in a deep voice that's already getting me heated. "I'm afraid it's going to have to come off right this minute." My tongue darts out over my lips as I reach up and gently drag my finger across his jaw.

 "Well, what are you waiting for?" I say, my voice laced with honey. "Take it off of me~"

 He wastes no time in doing so. He promptly rips the lingerie from me and absorbs my body in all it's naked glory. "Fuck, you're so gorgeous~" he coos, kissing my breasts, and then my stomach, and then my hips. "How is that a person can be this beautiful no matter what?" I gently grab a fistful of his hair as he props up my legs and teases my inner thighs with his butterfly kisses. "I'm the one who gets all of this," he murmurs, getting dangerously near to my gradually aching womanhood. "Tell me how you want me to make you feel good, baby~" His lips press against my thigh again. "Here?"

 "Yes..." I breathe. He kisses a little closer to my core.

 "Here?" The heat within me only grows. I nod.

 "Yes~" His lips inch closer.

 "How about here?" A soft whimper emerges from my mouth. I need him already! He finally kisses my womanhood, which is becoming wetter by the moment. "And what about this spot...right here?" His tongue flicks out and I slightly arch my back, squeezing the fistful of his hair a little tighter.

 "Yes, Jongin!" I moan. He laughs breathlessly.

 "So that's the spot, hmm?" His tongue teases it again. My lips purse. "Should I keep doing it like this for a bit?" He gives a long lick right up to the tip of my folds. I nod enthusiastically. I hear him do that smug grin he always does when he's about to do something really "good". All of a sudden, his tongue begins to swirl around my core, pumping in and out, swirling, in and out, more spirals. I'm a writhing mess, but his hands on my waist keep me grounded. I can tell he enjoys seeing me so vulnerable under his touch. As I'm approaching my high, he incorporates his fingers and I whine a bit at the sudden contact. One finger, then two, then three. I'm almost there. I can feel a knot twisting in my stomach, slowly growing more intense. My back arches off the mattress and that's when he ceases his actions. I give a little noise of discomfort at the suddenly cold air hitting my womanhood. "Don't worry, baby, you won't be upset for long." He crawls up over top of me again and takes me hand in his, leading it to the button on his pants. He gives a small smile, a mischievous one. My whole body is throbbing with want. I quickly unbutton his pants and he kicks them off of the bed. He's getting impatient, too, just like I am. Now he's just in his boxers. I eye them for a moment and then look back up at him, my hand moving to the bulge pressed against the fabric. As I start to palm him, his brows furrow with pleasure and his eyes shut momentarily.

 "Look at me, Jongin," I command sweetly, going a bit fast. He kisses me roughly and then he can't stand it anymore. I grabs my hand and pins it above my head, tearing his boxers off and letting his member spring free. My mouth opens silently as I anticipate what's going to happen next. "Don't go easy on me, hmm?" I say, letting my free hand slowly travel up his tones bicep.

 "Oh, I won't, so get ready." He positions his cock at my entrance. Before I can even prepare myself, he's pushing into me. I squeeze my eyes shut. It's been a little while since we've done this, but luckily I'm wet enough so that it's not all that painful. "Are you okay?" he asks, his tone suddenly laced with concern. I tighten my grip on his arm and nod.

 "I'm fine, keep going..." He slows his pace when inserting and finally I've taken all of him. He pauses to let me adjust. "Okay," I signal. Jongin starts thrusting at a leisurely pace, making sure I'm not uncomfortable. He's such a sweetheart, no matter what. I look at him with an arched eyebrow. "I thought you weren't going to go easy,"

 "Yeah, but if you-"

 "Jongin..." He knows what that means. I nod as one final reassurance that I can handle him. He inhales and all of a sudden his pace picks up. I hold back my moans for a bit, but soon he's pounding into me and I can't help out. I let out a loud whine and the smug grin returns as he starts to pant. My hand wanders over every inch of his body that I can reach, but he teases and places it with my other hand so that I'm completely pinned underneath him. My torso twists with pleasure as he abuses my womanhood in only the best of ways. Low grunts and groans simmer in his throat. A few moans of "(y/n)" lathered in sex emerge from his lips. The noises coming from me become more frequent, too, more needy. His name slips out every so often in the form of a cry whenever he hits a particular spot.

 The room is filled with the sounds of skin slapping against skin and feverish breathing and whines and pleasureful moans of ecstasy. In that moment, I'm so thankful that the walls have been somewhat soundproofed so the people in the apartment next door won't be able to hear as much. Jongin buries his face in the crook of my neck, his steamy breath trickling over my skin. I'm getting close and so is he. "Cum on my stomach, baby," I tell him, hardly any strength left to speak. He groans in response, picking up the speed a bit. My back arches to meet his chest as his thrusts become uncontrollable and lose their rhythm. My orgasm explodes within me and I swear I've never felt anything so beautiful in my life. White strings of release flow out onto him as Jongin rides out my high. His breathing get more staggered. He inhales sharply and pulls out quickly before his release quirts out onto my exposed stomach. He lets out a loud groan as he strokes himself off, leaning his head back in pure paradise as he calls out my name. Once he's finished, he collapses on his side next to me, both of us completely out of winded.

 "I should have come home sooner," he pants, turning my head to face him. He plants a passionate kiss on my lips, taking my bottom lip between his teeth.

 "That's what I'm saying."

 Once we've composed ourselves, he sits up and goes into the bathroom. I hear the bathtub running and a smile comes to my face. He appears again with a towel in his hand and gently helps me to wipe away the excess on my stomach. I give him a look and confirms my thoughts with the same one. 'We've never done it in the bath before,' I think to myself. Oh well, there's a first time for everything~

[unfolded73]

Another New York City Serenade (1/7)

Summary: With the visitors from Arendelle gone and Gold banished, Emma and Killian’s relationship continues to deepen, especially when an excuse for a road trip away from Storybrooke falls into their laps. (A S4 hiatus story).

Otherwise known as: unfolded73′s 2016-2017 winter hiatus project, otherwise known as  "Seven Chapters of Fucking with a Smattering of Plot", otherwise known as  "We're Saying We Need to Research a Magical Item, But Really We Just Wanna Fuck Loudly and Away From All the People That Know Us and Might Feel the Need to Comment on Our Loud Fucking" (that last one is TM @j-philly-b, beta extraordinaire who lets me facetime her on New Year’s Eve when I’m drunk)

Rating: Explicit (does it need saying?)

Word Count: 4072 this chapter

CHAPTER 1

It had been a weird day.

She wasn’t even sure if holding her boyfriend’s literal heart in her hand was the weirdest thing, but… no, that was probably the weirdest thing. Followed closely by sending their friends from Arendelle through a magical door, watching Belle command her husband with the Dark One’s dagger (and thank God she had), and doing a shot with Regina.

Now here she was, leaving what was apparently the Author’s house with Regina and Henry, their son flush with his success at finding the room full of empty storybooks.

“Henry’s at your place for a couple of days, right?”

Regina frowned. “That is our agreed upon schedule, Emma, if you expect to change—”

“No, no change, just checking that you were still on board with the schedule, that’s all.” She held up a placating hand. Every discussion of their shared custody of Henry was a potential minefield, and Regina was still sensitive after the period of time when Henry hadn’t remembered her. Not to mention, she had had a really shitty day.

Regina looked briefly remorseful for jumping to conclusions. “Do you want a ride back to the loft before I take Henry home?” They’d taken Regina’s car from Granny’s to the Author’s house after Henry had interrupted their plans for binge drinking. Now it seemed the moment had passed.

Emma’s mind went immediately to Killian. After she’d restored his heart to his chest (and after he’d kissed her hard enough to weaken her knees), he’d excused himself to take a long shower and wash the stink of the Dark One away, he’d said. Which is why she’d been at loose ends and ended up drinking with Regina in the first place.

“Could you drop me at Granny’s, actually?”

Regina arched an eyebrow at her, and Emma glanced at Henry in the backseat, but he was flipping through the storybook and wasn’t paying them any attention.

“I just want to make sure Hook’s okay, what with the whole heart… thing,” she said, gesturing violently at her chest to mime jamming a heart back in place.

“Of course you do,” Regina said, her skepticism at Emma’s motives clear, but she made no other comment about it. Emma waved goodbye to them both, and then went around the building to the entrance for the inn, not wanting to be waylaid by anyone still at the diner.

As she climbed the stairs, her heart hammered in her chest. He might be exhausted; had Gold let him sleep? Maybe she shouldn’t bother him. Or maybe she should just check quickly that there hadn’t been any side-effects from her amateur heart restoration, and then let him sleep. Maybe this was the worst possible time to be pondering whether she’d regret not packing an overnight bag. If only Henry hadn’t interrupted her and Regina, because just a couple more shots of liquid courage would have been helpful.

Her knock on his door was tentative; the last thing she wanted to do was wake him. But she heard him moving across the room, and when the door opened, there was no evidence that he’d been sleeping. Only his lack of shoes or a jacket indicated that he might be in for the night.

“Swan.” His face broke into a smile. “I wondered where you’d gotten off to. I was just debating whether I should call your phone with mine.”

With a smile at his slightly awkward phrasing, Emma stepped into the room at his gestured invitation. “Sorry about that, Henry needed me for something. And then I wasn’t sure if you’d be asleep…” His hair was damp from his shower, but he’d put clothes back on, perhaps to look for her downstairs.

“I am not, as you can see.”

They stood awkwardly staring at each other for a few seconds, and Emma wished she could just zap them back to the moment after she’d returned his heart, when they had fused themselves together instantaneously without over-thinking it, as she was definitely doing now.

Maybe the best approach was just to lay it all out on the table. She shrugged out of her jacket and set it aside.

“I feel like things between us got a little bit derailed,” she said finally. “We had a couple of dates, and things were going great, but then my magic went haywire and Gold took your heart, and I just—”

“I’m sorry, Emma.”

“You don’t need to apologize for anything.”

Killian looked pained. “I do. The Dark One never would have stolen my heart if I hadn’t tried to blackmail him into restoring my hand. I went about everything the wrong way, and it put you in danger to him, more danger than you know even now. And it was all my fault.”

Emma reached out and took hold of his hook. “And would you have done that if you hadn’t thought that you needed to be something more in order to be with me?” She raised the hook to her mouth and kissed it, noticing the way the action made his eyes widen, his breath catch. “Maybe if I had made it clear that you’re enough just as you are, then—”

“In no way is any of this your fault, Swan, so don’t even suggest such a thing.” Reaching out with his hand, he caressed her cheek.

“Well, then don’t you suggest that you are responsible for Gold ripping your heart out of your chest and turning you into his puppet, okay?”

A quick, awkward smile flashed on his lips but didn’t reach his eyes. “As you say.”

“Look, I didn’t bring this up so that you could beat yourself up over whatever happened between you and Gold.” She stepped closer, her knees touching his. “I brought it up because I wanted to tell you that before everything went crazy, I had decided that it was definitely time for us to spend the night together, and I’d like to pick things up there, if you don’t mind.” She could feel her heart pounding in her chest as she bravely met his gaze.

Without a word Killian swept in for a kiss, his mouth warm and eager, opening readily to taste her. Emma thought again that she should have known what was wrong, the way he had kissed her while Gold was controlling him. The cold precision of it was so unlike him that she chided herself for not deducing that his heart had been taken, which was surely nonsense, but she felt guilty anyway.

Killian pressed in close, hand clutching her waist, anchoring her in place as he continued to explore her mouth. When he pulled away, she chased his lips.

“Are you certain?” he whispered, and she couldn’t help but smile, giddy with relief. She’d come close to losing him today, had been helpless as she watched Gold get within a hair’s breadth of crushing his heart, and the fact that he was still with her, warm and solid and smelling so good, was making her light-headed.

“Yeah. That is, if you want to.”

He laughed, a deep chuckle that did things to her insides. “Are you honestly asking if I want to share my bed with you, Swan? As if the answer to that could be anything but an enthusiastic shout of ‘yes’ from the top of the clock tower?” He kissed her again, a sweet, innocent touch of his lips to hers that somehow promised more.

“Well, let’s not shout anything from the clock tower about our sex life, okay?” She sat down on the bed, reaching down to take her boots off. “The whole town is probably going to know our business soon enough as it is.”

Sitting beside her, Killian looked pleased and a bit shocked, as if he hadn’t considered that the evening might turn out like this. It was so adorable that she had to kiss him again, and it didn’t take much pressure before he tipped backwards and they were lying down, her body half on top of his, her hair hanging down around their faces in blonde waves. His hand skimmed over her head and then down to her ass before moving up under her thin sweater against the skin of her back.

A thought occurred to Emma and she broke the kiss with a groan. She rolled over beside him, pulling her phone out of her pocket and looking at it. “Speaking of people knowing our business, I should probably tell my parents something, just so they won’t expect me home tonight.”

Killian winced. “Try to phrase it in such a way that your father doesn’t see fit to murder me.”

“I’m a thirty-year-old woman with a child; he needs to chill.” Nonetheless, she clicked on ‘Mary Margaret’ from her list of contacts. don’t wait up for me tonite, she texted.

“It is true that the sexual mores of this realm are quite different from the Enchanted Forest,” Killian said.

“Oh, yeah? Everyone dutifully waited until they were married there, huh?”

Oh? Big plans? popped up on her phone screen from her mother.

Emma made a face at the phone. Yeah, I plan to ride my boyfriend into next week, she thought before texting back simply, spending the night with hook. No point in being coy about it, she thought. They’d put two and two together anyway.

“No, I certainly wouldn’t say that, even among those who were more upstanding citizens than my good self. But still, people in this realm seem very... free with their willingness to share a bedchamber with whomever they choose.”

“I guess.” She watched the three dots blinking on her phone as her mother composed another text. Finally, Use protection!! appeared, followed by an emoji of an umbrella and an eggplant. “Oh my god,” Emma muttered, clicking the screen off and putting her phone aside.

“Everything all right?” Killian asked, his hand stroking up and down her hip.

“Yeah, sorry.” She smiled. “I don’t know how much you’ve learned about modern birth control in this realm; I assume it’s different from the Enchanted Forest.”

“I did a bit of research, as it happens,” he said, spots of color appearing on his cheeks, “because we often relied on potions, which I assumed weren't an option here. Unless Regina has a side business I'm not aware of.”

“Can you imagine?” She snorted with laughter. “So here's the thing,” she said, barreling ahead with the talk that was never fun, no matter who she had it with, but she’d learned her lesson after Neal. “I have something called an IUD which keeps me from getting pregnant. One unplanned pregnancy in my life was enough, believe me. But there's also… were sexually transmitted diseases a thing you had to deal with? Because here people use condoms for that.”

“Aye, such ailments existed, although I never suffered from any myself.”

“That you know of,” she countered. “I'd just be more comfortable if we could use condoms for now.” She glanced over at her jacket, where she had jammed her wallet in the pocket that morning. “I brought a couple, so—”

“Swan, I assure you,” he said, nuzzling his nose against hers, “I will joyfully do anything, with a song in my heart, in service of sharing our bodies in pleasure.”

“Oh.” She bridged the space between their mouths and kissed him, her lips sliding wetly against his. “That's very sweet. And hot.” Her fingers went to work unbuttoning his shirt, parting it to gradually reveal the way his familiar chest hair led an enticing trail down his abdomen, disappearing below his belt. As soon as she had his shirt open, Killian sat up, clicking his hook out and setting it aside. He then moved to unbutton his left sleeve cuff so that he could work his shirt off over the brace he wore underneath. While he did that, Emma shimmied out of her jeans and pulled her sweater off over her head, throwing both on the floor.

Killian's fingers had fallen to his belt when he registered her, lying there on the bed in her underwear. He froze, his eyes drinking her in. She hadn't worn any kind of spectacular matching lingerie, just a black bra and a nice pair of cotton panties with blue stripes, but he looked at her like she was some kind of goddess come to earth.

“You are the loveliest creature I’ve ever seen.” He moved over her, and Emma wrapped her arms around him, enjoying the way the muscles of his back moved under her hands, the slightly scratchy press of his chest against hers. Deep open-mouthed kisses that she felt all the way down to her knees led to his mouth on her neck, her shoulder, his fingers pulling her bra strap down her arm, his lips and tongue following in its wake. Her legs fell open as he rolled her underneath him, and she rutted against the roughness of his erection inside his jeans, his belt buckle digging into the soft skin of her abdomen.

As they kissed, her hand skated over one of the leather straps that held his brace in place. “You can take this off. But you don't have to if it makes you uncomfortable,” she added off the nervous expression on his face.

He paused, pressing his forehead against hers. “I fear it would cool your desire if you were to see me without it,” he finally said, hesitant.

Stroking the scar on his cheek, her heart broke for him a little. “I guarantee that it won’t.”

He breathed with her for a few moments before nodding. Killian sat back on his heels, and Emma watched him, breathless, as he unbuckled the straps and dropped his brace to the floor. His eyes held a mixture of worry and awe, and all she wanted to do was soothe that worry away forever. Taking hold of his left wrist, she sat up, her legs still bracketing his. Pressing the end of his stunted arm against her chest, she stretched forward and kissed him gently. “I’m a fan of every part of you,” she said against his mouth, echoing his own words back at him.

She felt the moment that her acceptance struck him; it was like magic the way she could sense the flare of passion roll through him as he captured her mouth again. “Emma,” he gasped, his hand spanning her cheek, and the desperation in his voice made desire spark inside her.

Fumbling for his belt buckle, Emma’s hands shook. She suddenly needed to get his pants off right fucking now, but was thwarted as Killian pulled the cup of her bra down, his lips closing around her nipple. What had been a slow burn between them, slowed further by the unsexy practicality of contraceptives and Killian’s hesitancy over his missing hand, flared into an uncontrollable blaze. She persevered with his jeans, getting the zipper open and working her hand down inside to close her fingers around his erection. His hot breath exhaled over her breast. She stroked his cock, hard and smooth skin in her fist making her crave him all the more, and grinned in triumph as he moaned brokenly.

“Get these off,” she demanded, and stopped fondling him so that she could push at the waistband of his jeans. His face was all smirky confidence now, any shame about his uncovered wrist forgotten.

“As my lady commands,” he said, voice low and gravelly with desire.

Rolling her eyes, Emma stood and went over to the chair where she had dropped her jacket and struggled to pull her wallet out of the small pocket. As she unzipped it and took out the condoms, her eyes were drawn to Killian kicking his jeans away. He crawled up the bed, completely naked now, and turned the covers down, arranging himself under them like some kind of fucking calendar model and beckoning to her. He was completely unfair and it occurred to her, not for the first time, how totally and utterly doomed she was when it came to this man.

With a deep breath, she reached behind her back to unclasp her bra, then slid her underwear off, shimmying a little to drop them to the floor. The way Killian was watching her as she walked over to join him in bed, she supposed the feeling was mutual.

Their bodies met in a tangle of legs and crush of lips, his thigh pressed precisely against her, and she tried not to moan, tried not to blatantly grind down on him, but she was helpless. She wanted him, all of him, now. One of the condoms was still clutched in her hand, and she brought it to her lips, intending to rip open the package.

“Not so fast,” he murmured, taking the foil packet from her and setting it on the pillow above her head. “There’s no hurry.” She laughed, not liking the slightly hysterical edge she heard in her voice. Self-consciousness flushed her cheeks. He seemed to read her feelings and shook his head, smiling softly. “Don’t mistake me, Emma. I’m not sure I’ve ever wanted anything more than I want to be inside you.” Her stomach swooped and she watched, mesmerized, as his ringed fingers stroked gently across her abdomen, up to her breast, and then down over the flare of her hipbone. “But I’ll never have another first time seeing you naked, and I very much want to appreciate it.”

God. He was unreal. She could feel his tamped-down desire in the slight tremble of his hand, in the wet press of the tip of his cock against her thigh. He bent and took her nipple in his mouth again, the fringe of his hair tickling her chest. He pressed on her hip until she rolled onto her back, and then he reached down and lifted her thigh, encouraging her to bend her knee and open for him. “I’ll never have another first time touching you here.” Then it was gentle strokes between her legs, not inside her yet, not focusing anywhere in particular, just touching and learning her body. Emma closed her eyes, trying to relax into the pleasure of it, but her hips had a mind of their own, lifting against his hand, chasing more and more and more.

“Tell me what you like, Emma.”

She didn’t open her eyes. “This. This is good.”

His nose pressed against her cheek as he muttered urgently to her. “Tell me, love.” His middle finger found her clit, and she gasped. “There. I know you like that. Do you like a light touch,” he asked, his finger making tiny circles, “or do you like it harder, rougher?” He shifted, pressing down with the heel of his hand, kneading her flesh, stimulating some deep and primal part of her. Emma moaned, a moan that was probably too loud for an inn run by wolves, but she couldn’t begin to care.

“What about inside you?” Killian continued, one finger trailing down and sliding in. He rutted against her side, his cock dragging along her hip, and it was the first sign of a break in his control since they’d gotten naked. “Do you like it like that?”

“More,” she gasped.

One finger became two, sliding in and out of her slowly. “Gods, you’re so wet, it’s driving me mad with wanting you,” he groaned.

“You’re the one…” she tried to say, trailing off in another breathy moan, “who wanted to go slow.”

“Aye, that I did.” He continued to fuck her with his fingers. “More?” She nodded quickly, and he added a third finger. “You like to be stretched open, Swan? So wanton and ready for me to fuck you. Is that what you need?”

God, yes. “Yes.”

He pulled his hand away, leaving her empty and needy. As she reached over her head and grabbed the condom, he clutched her hip, wet fingers digging into her flesh. “I want…” his eyes flicked up to hers, almost bashful, which was ridiculous given the things he’d been saying. “I want to make sure I please you, Swan. If you need me to touch you while I’m inside you, tell me.”

Had any man ever asked her that? Actually asked what she needed to get off? She didn’t think so. Ripping open the condom wrapper with her teeth, she spit out the bit of foil and concentrated on rolling it down his cock. If he was unfamiliar with the process, he gave no indication of it, his eyelashes fluttering as she touched him. Figuring his request deserved an honest answer in return, Emma took a deep breath. “Sometimes I do need a little extra stimulation,” she admitted, “but not always. I can come from just the fucking, sometimes.”

He moved on top of her, settling between her legs. “Duly noted,” he said, kissing her. She tried to kiss him back but she was smiling too much, because he was just so earnest about learning what she liked in bed, and it was probably the last thing she would have expected when he first swaggered into her life. Then he thrust his hips, his cock sliding across her clit, and she forgot to think at all.

“Fuck, now, Killian.” She reached down and took him in her hand, guiding him to her entrance. He pushed, sliding in slowly, braced above her on his forearms. Harsh pants filled the space between them as they adjusted to each other.

“You all right?” he asked, his eyes opening and meeting hers. He was unmoving, and she could see the strain of it on his face.

“Yeah.” She raised one of her legs, curling it around him and settling her foot on the back of his calf. Her hands grasped at his ass, trying to pull him even deeper as her hips moved restlessly under him.

With an unintelligible groan, Killian started a slow rhythm, pulling halfway out before snapping his hips forward and burying himself deep once again. His pelvis hit her perfectly on every stroke, and it was so good. He was so fucking good, and it wasn’t until she saw his grin that she realized she had said some of that out loud. But she just smiled back, because they were finally having sex, after so many weeks of longing. She was having sex with Captain Hook, and she couldn’t be happier.

He kept up that perfect rhythm, that perfect thrusting that made her feel so full and so good. “Oh God, Killian, I’m … I’m gonna …” She couldn’t believe how quickly she was going to orgasm, it was almost too fast, but she was greedy for it, greedy for how amazing he was making her feel. When it hit her, she moaned shamelessly, eyes rolling back and fingernails digging into the muscles of his biceps.

Neither of them lasted long. He slowed at first, drawing out her pleasure, but as she started to come back to herself his thrusts sped up, lost their finesse, and it was no time before he was groaning his way through it, his teeth pressing into her shoulder, breath coming sharply through his nostrils.

She drifted in a haze of pleasure and happiness as he carefully pulled out, getting up and stumbling over the wastebasket to dispose of the condom. When he turned off the lamp and got back under the covers, Emma indulged in snuggling up close to him, her face pressed against his chest. She felt Killian’s deep sigh of contentment, his hand lazily stroking her back. It had been years since she’d done this, been this open after sex, allowing herself to just enjoy being close to a person that she had been intimate with. She wondered how soon he’d be ready for round two, and she grinned secretly to herself.

“That was…” he said, finally at a loss for words. Memories of Neverland, and the way his loneliness and longing had echoed her own, made her pull him closer.

“Yeah. It was.” She closed her eyes. Before she knew it, it would be morning, and she would have to figure out the best way to incorporate this deepening relationship with Killian into her life in Storybrooke. Threading her fingers into the hair at the nape of his neck, she wished she could stay inside this quiet bubble with him forever.

CHAPTER 2

[technologicalgambler]

  ((Well, that whole December/January shtick went so well.  Hope ya caught my sarcasm, because I’m mad at myself.  The inability to complete plot threads was mostly due to end of year depression/anxiety, school being a bitch, and the fact that neither of us (Technomun who is simultaneously Grimmun, and Cathartimun) can get our shit together. 

  ((This post is just playing catch up with all of the shit that happened out of tumblr over the course of the last two months.  So a lot of stuff has happened, that’ll be under the cut.))

  ((Alright, let’s get this started.

-The Birthday Weekend

  That went.  Fairly alright, all things considered since it involved several parties that hate each other.  Eridan was an ass the entire time (no big surprise here), and harassed the shit out of Vriska.  Terezi was an obnoxious brat through and through, Karkat cried a lot, Vriska got drunk to avoid her feelings...so nothing new among the trolls.  Well, other than the fact the Destiny Islands crew and the Radiant Garden crew got to meet up again.  Eridan, an ass as usual, tormented Vriska whilst invisible until he got caught.  This is why she drinks.

  Dave had to be mostly tipsy through the whole thing, and practically leashed to Karkat to avoid him killing Dirk, and later got REALLY drunk...Dirk got horribly drunk on only a few drinks, and kept going between sober and smashed through the weekend.  Those two still aren’t on good terms, but on...better?  Dave can at least (slightly) stand being in the same room with him.  Roxy’s tired.  Grim got drunk...Terezi was hitting on everybody (except the trolls).  Jade was one of the two people who remained totally sober (the other being Eridan), and declared the couch the Sane Zone, for anyone who was sober or could handle being drunk (translates to her, Eridan, Roxy, and Grim).  Anyone who succumbed to intoxication was promptly, and literally kicked off of the couch and onto their ass.  This happened to Karkat at some point.  This allowed her to be on...eh, better terms with Eridan.  They got to talk shit over, and now they’re not at each others throats most of the time and can agree on a few things.  Not great friends, but not openly shit talking each other.

  It was the last day of the weekend - Roxy and Grim’s birthday - that they actually distributed presents.  Here’s the list that we made to keep shit straight because there’s so fucking much.

To Dave

Sword from Jade

MIDI fighter from Roxy

Crow from Karkat (Dave named it Fido)

A knife named The Ace from Karkat’s boss (story about that later on)

A suit from Dirk

Ice troll skull from Vriska (as in Skyrim)

“Oh my god, it’s R2-D2! I loved him in Star Trek!” (Dalek) shirt from Grim

Red and white Scalemate with shades sewn onto it from Terezi (Red with a white belly)

To Jade

CD case/shelf from Dave

RHCP album from Karkat

New bass from Vriska

Soldering kit from Dirk

Danger Days Union jacket from Roxy

Badlands/Halsey sweater from Grim

Black and green Scalemate from Terezi (Black with a green belly)

To Roxy

MCRX Black Parade jacket from Jade

Pokemon Sun from Dirk

Pokemon Moon from Eridan

Super Mystery Dungeon from Terezi (and her 3DS)

MCRX flag and album from Grim

A poster that Dave drew of one of Roxy’s favorite scenes from the Complacency of the Learned – the scene where Calmasis cruelly curses Frigglish

Pink and violet Scalemate from Terezi (pink with a violet belly)

To Dirk

Last minute gift from Jade of Genji’s sword

Entire series of the Free! sub from Roxy

Iwatobi jacket from Eridan

Orange and black Scalemate with shades sewn onto it from Terezi (orange with a black belly)

“I’m BATMAN” shirt with the words in the logo, and a nice Batman cape from Grim

To Grim

Galaxy aesthetic assault rifle from Jade

Black and pink Scalemate with white eyes from Terezi (black with a pink belly)

Authentic Atom Cats jacket from Dave

Exorcism book from Vriska

Tickets to Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them from Dirk and Roxy

Harry Potter movie collection from Karkat

Glowing pink nautilus necklace from Eridan

  This is why we needed a list.

  Suffice to say, the birthday weekend was...eventful, hectic, and fun.

-Christmas Weekend

  This time, they spent Christmas weekend at the Radiant Garden castle.  Which was an adventure, since they not only had to leave Jackie behind (like they were bringing a Deathclaw to a place like that), but also had to deal with Eridan’s dogs, Pronauma and Terancor (note: they’re massive, not adults yet, and will be about the size of Polar Bear Dogs from ATLOK), and the looming threat of being thrown into the dungeon with Dragon Mom.  

  More drinking, more antics...Dirk had to be dragged out of his room more often than not.  Nothing MAJOR happened (other than Jade embarrassingly mentioning something about her and Karkat, causing Roxy and Grim to scream), but it was certainly something.

  The loot pile this time is as follows (WARNING: LONG)

To Roxy

VR set up from Dirk

Ugly Christmas sweater from Grim

A cat plushy from Vriska

A plasma rifle from Jade

A robotic cat tail from Dave

Super Mario Maker for the 3DS from Terezi (along with Roxy’s copy of Fire Emblem: Conquest)

Pink cat cloak made of fleece from Terezi

A blue LED constellation scarf from Eridan

To Dirk

A Cintiq from Roxy

Ugly Christmas sweater from Grim

A Kamina body pillow from Jade

A Genji butt mousepad packaged in a condom box from Dave

Fleece Batman hooded cape (similar to the dragon cape) from Terezi

A tank top like this from Eridan

To Dave

Final Fantasy XV + Season Pass from Roxy

Bleach: the Diamond Dust Rebellion from Dirk

Ugly Christmas sweater from Grim

A new DSLR camera from Karkat

A Princess Peach 3DS carrying case from Vriska

A new skateboard with a crow deck from Jade

A black, fleece cloak based around a crow from Terezi

To Jade

Seasons 1-3 of Sherlock from Roxy

A Fionna hat (Adventure Time) from Dirk

Ugly Christmas sweater from Grim

A GIANT husky plushie from Karkat

Glow-in-the-dark space-themed guitar/bass picks that come with stickers from Vriska

A Tunnel Snake’s jacket from Dave

A white wolf cloak made of fleece from Terezi

A set of camo bandana collars for Becca from Eridan

To Grim

Black and gray leopard print weighted blanket from Roxy

Resident Evil VII from Dirk

Ugly Christmas sweater from Terezi

A devilishly sultry Alternian romance novel from Karkat

The Bible from Vriska

A pink beanie with cat ears attached to it from Jade

A Lucid Plasma Caster that has a slag element from Dave (picked it up from a job in Pandora)

Black cat cloak made of fleece from Terezi

This tank top from Eridan

To Terezi

Super Smash Bros for 3DS from Roxy

Professor Layton vs Phoenix Wright; Ace Attorney from Dirk

Ugly Christmas sweater from Grim

Super long red dragon plushie from Karkat

Replica of Falchion from Fire Emblem: Awakening from Jade

Red dragon shoulder puppet from Dave

A D&D starter kit from Eridan

To Eridan

A book heavily detailing battles from WWII from Roxy

A coffee mug with skull and crossbones on it from Dirk

Ugly Christmas sweater from Grim

An Alternian wartime romance/tragedy movie that the two would always watch back on Alternia from Karkat

Some more of that Death’s Brew coffee from Jade

A violet sea horse cloak made of fleece from Terezi

To Karkat

Ugly Christmas sweater from Grim

Condoms from Vriska (JOKE PRESENT)

Yurio’s leopard print hoodie from Vriska

A red sickle that looks a lot like this from Jade (custom made! <3)

A Krabby plushy from Dave

A silver fleece dragon cloak trimmed with red from Terezi

A copy of the sketch of the Signless and his group from inside of Dualscar’s journal, copied meticulously by hand by Eridan, and framed (gift from Eridan)

To Vriska

Ugly Christmas sweater from Grim

Hardcover collection of the Spider-Gwen comics from Karkat

A red, electric guitar (Charvel Desolation DS-3) from Jade

A Spider-Gwen sweater from Dave

A tiny poop emoji phone charm from Terezi

  Too many people.  Eridan got his girlfriend, Aradia, a new necklace he made, but he gave that to her later on to avoid Vriska’s prying eye.

-New Years

  I can skip a lot of shit with this one because we wrapped that up recently.  New Years was just a few people getting drunk, Jade and Dirk getting into it and resolving shit, and then setting out on a quest to find her siblings, Jake and Jane.

  What’s more interesting is the month that followed, as they proceeded to search worlds she had coordinates to to see if his soul string ability reacted, via her workshop door.  They nearly got killed a few times by some of the worlds’ fauna, nearly lost Dirk to some of the worlds, and Jade managed to scoop Dirk’s fake eyes out from his skull, and replace them with better prosthetics.  Roxy caught them because Dirk’s medical bot, HAL, showed up to the workshop when he felt Dirk go under, and have some nerves severed.  Roxy knows about the eyes now (and got a ton of new prosthetic arms, and a better anchor for them), but doesn’t know about their project.

  Like I said, a lot of shit went down.  This is just a summary of all we talked about when I was dealing with finals, and we were both dealing with the weird funk of the holidays, and coming of the end (of the year).  Finally able to write again, so here ya go.

  Let’s see if they can actually get shit moving again.))