#i think it's great that new horizons brought in so many new players to the series

[bluefuecoco]

it definitely wasnt helped by new horizons being such a botched release. I want to imagine all these people clamoring for new animal crossing content are just new horizons players exclusively, but I imagine some veterans of the series are also causing this problem.

Like, this new video game environment of sending out half-finished games and then "adding more content!" with updates and dlc is a real problem for Animal Crossing, and the fact that New Horizons drew in so many new players with that model is just...awful. New Leaf was released in 2012 and that was it. For YEARS that was the game you got to play. It wasnt until like...a couple years before NH was revealed that we got Welcome Amiibo, which like...a) was a free update and b) didn't "complete" the game, just added to it.

And at the time, everyone knew New Horizons release was rushed. Nintendo crunch time is a real epidemic, and the fact that half the content in the game that we have now wasn't available for MONTHS after the initial release? Like, idk, I don't want to hear about any Animal Crossing news for a few more years. Maybe spin-off games, but the next mainline game I want them to *really* work on.

[goldensunset]

it’s breath of the wild’s 7th anniversary can i get sappy and vulnerable on main real quick cuz it completely changed my life

so it was christmas 2017 when my brother received a nintendo switch and breath of the wild. i remembered watching him play a bit the day he got it and funny enough my first thought back then upon seeing the opening cutscene was ‘wow this animation is janky’ because i thought we were watching an animated movie. the moment i realized it was a video game i was shook. bc for a game WOW how beautiful. anyway i watched him mess around and die horribly and it was funny but i didn’t think much about it

flash forward a few months later. in april of 2018- a nice spring day, must’ve been a weekend or some other time i had time off bc my friend was over- my brother came home from college and brought his nintendo switch and this game over. he had me make a file and i didn’t know what i was doing at all because i was not only unfamiliar with the game and console, but largely unfamiliar with the concept of this type of video game at all

see, i was not a gamer at all. i had played mario kart/party and some random stuff on the ds but nothing resembling an action adventure game aside from super mario 64 ds. and i never got past like the first level or so on that game bc i was bad at it as a kid and also like.. scared? of games? like a game in which you had to fight enemies and could take damage and die. even something really simple like a goomba was actively stressful to me somehow. (to this day i still kind of have the hyper-empathy mindset where letting the video game player die feels like letting a real person die i have to treat a fun work of fiction like a real life-or-death situation so i just prefer not to get into danger when i can avoid it. all that’s changed is i have the skill to face danger and accumulate ways to protect myself now lol)

soooo i don’t know what manner of madness convinced me to even try a game like breath of the wild, which is immensely more complicated and difficult than super mario 64 ds. but maybe it’s bc i was older then or bc my friend was over to help me and we were like trading the console? but you get what i’m saying. as one might expect, i was pressing the wrong buttons, getting overwhelmed by basic enemies, falling off cliffs bc i lacked precision skills in my motion, etc.

and as one might expect, i eventually got frustrated and bored. i remembered my brother asking me what my long-term strategy or plan was for playing the game, and that question sort of overwhelmed me because i was thinking ‘do i really intend to keep playing at all?’. when i put the game aside that day (after having only reached/fallen off the great plateau tower, i mean) i wasn’t really interested in continuing, and i figured i could probably never be good at it anyway.

but for some reason, and i wish i remembered why, i picked it back up again not long after. me, who had never been willing to commit to a game. maybe it was my desire to correct my failures and figure out what i was at last doing. i felt ready for a good challenge and i got the sense this was the sort of game that was more skill than luck. maybe it was the beautiful scenery and ambience. maybe it was that sense of peaceful melancholy. maybe it was because i could see so much on the horizon, so many mysteries around me, that i just had to be able to reach someday. in such a massive open world in which the plot wasn’t spoonfed to me but i had to discover it, my interest had been piqued.

or maybe it was because i was bored and depressed. i was close to the end of freshman year in high school, which had been pure misery. difficult to understate just how awful life was for me during that point in time (but it was just the terrifying cocoon stage of becoming a butterfly). so yeah, why not pick up a new piece of media? why not dive into this world? i think we all know just how powerful it is to develop a new interest when going through a rough patch- it can turn absolutely everything around. (even if it ends up distracting you from the work you need to do lol. but in my case i consider that a necessary tradeoff for giving me the serotonin my brain doesn't naturally produce enough of)

and i think there's something to be said about the medium of a video game, which was basically new to me at the time- i think it's something about the ability to have control over what's happening. in tv shows things just happen. in real life i felt like i had no control over anything. so i was suddenly able to express myself in a way that i had never gotten to before, and it was powerful. especially in an open-world game with so much to do and discover. (something something the adhd-er's wild fantasy of being able to complete tasks and make progress).

i quickly became addicted- i could play for hours on end and barely put a dent in the smallest section of the map. i couldn't believe how genuinely massive the world was and i just wanted to explore more and more, but without skipping anything i came across. i still remember in my mind exactly where i was in my house when reaching many of those early-game checkpoint places, curled up in a chair in the corner, listening to my mom make dinner in the other room... etc. the definition of nostalgia. (which is something i only have so much of given how most of my interests i didn't get into until significantly later in life. i was 15 when this was happening whereas most people's childhood nostalgia type stories are from when they were like 5 to 8. but this was such a foundational time in my life y'know?)

i remember hours of getting lost in the wilderness (i truly had the worst habit of either not getting the maps or not heeding them) and never going on the clearly marked roads bc i was convinced i could take a shortcut by just taking a straight line to my destination. which often involved attempting to scale a ridiculously steep and tall mountain with like one and a half wheels of stamina. live and learn, right?

i remember the way it took absolutely forever to reach zora's domain (the fact that i didn't get the tower map beforehand probably significantly contributed to that) so the absolute joy and relief i felt when i got there and was safe at last. i adore all the champions so much but mipha is for sure the one that messes up my heart the most to this day, as both the first one i got and the one with objectively the most emotional story. something about water levels has always unsettled me- no matter what, to me they're always associated with being cold, wet, and uncomfortable, even if it's supposed to be beautiful (and vah ruta sure wasn't meant to be for obvious reasons). especially if the player has to swim- whether there's limited breath or not, i can't help but imagine how stressful it would be to dive deep and be under pressure like that. but on the flip side, once you're finally done with those levels and back on dry land, it feels comforting. warm, dry and stable again- sort of like how you feel after you're finished crying. you had to endure the drowning and the suffering and now you're safe. that's how the vah ruta quest feels to me.

each new ruin, or quiet little settlement, really just lodged its way into my heart, but i think the location that makes me the most emotional is the flight range- its beautiful broken melody, the howling wind and snow, its position in the middle of the wilderness like a little safe haven in the mountains, the faint memory of revali... i used to just go there and sit for hours. it's just gorgeous and it hits so hard. once again, it's all about that quiet, solemn peace after a tragedy has occurred- the sadness lingers, but you learn to live again. botw just excels at this in pretty much every aspect, enough said

which comes to the central conflict of the premise- our titular heroine, zelda, and her struggles to complete her duty, her guilt complex, the pressure and loneliness she felt, etc. i have identified so closely with her for the entire time i've known her. (done a fair amount of projecting too but listen. listen) the way she felt weak and powerless and just wanted to find a way to make people happy, especially her overbearing father who didn't care enough for her happiness... that hit so hard as an emotionally volatile teenager with similar issues. to this day my dad only talks to me to nag me about something important i need to do but he's never cared about my personal interests. he acts more like my manager than my parent. throughout high school especially i just kept falling back to zelda's story every time my dad was being awful and i needed to escape him, listening to him call me lazy, behind the ball, etc when i was clearly going through severe depression that would have never even occurred to him. and while unlike zelda i still have my mom she's always been incredibly emotionally distant so there was no looking to her either. i blamed myself for everything that went wrong even though i never could've done anything without the kind of help i needed, similar to zelda

for me personally the theme of failing to succeed in the role other people were pressuring her into resonated with me and my undiagnosed... whatever it is. i am positive i am not neurotypical. i've always more or less self-identified as adhd (my parents would laugh if i suggested that) and i've never received support or treatment or anything. that plus the undiagnosed and untreated depression. the way zelda just couldn't do something that she had no idea how to even begin trying to do, the way going through the rituals that worked for other people did nothing for her... that hit hard as someone just barely trying to stay alive in high school, who always felt alienated from others and never could understand exactly why, who was bad at a lot of things... but my dad only cared about results

and in turn. the emotional catharsis of her finally unlocking the latent power she'd been struggling to reach inside her. it's never been established exactly what it was that was wrong with her that prevented her from unlocking it but i think we all know it had something to do with her heart not being free until the moment she had the courage to do something brave, dangerous, and important through her own free will- going against the grain, standing up for someone she loved, etc. that's an essay for another time tho. to me that's what makes it so powerful- yeah this (back)story is still a tragedy, but there's hope. she found her own path. she still had to undergo lots of suffering afterwards but she had what she needed to succeed. and she got her happy ending in the end. i probably don't need to explain why that's so meaningful to me as someone who loves her so much and relates too hard. also her dad died (i am NOT wishing that upon my dad to be clear). i mean for her that's a bad thing bc he did regret his actions and never get to apologize to her and she wishes she had gotten to see him again but also that's in the fantasy world where one could reasonably expect their father to change. i've kind of given up on that but maybe someday after we've gotten some distance... idk

in short. botw hits me like a truck with the way it brings you so, so low, in the pits of despair, and then brings you back up. not everything is fixed and perfect at the end, the characters who died stay dead, but they finally get to pass on and rest in peace. we free zelda. we bring back the most significant parts of link's memory. we watch the broken and scattered world begin to grow and breathe again. perfectly cathartic and hopeful and powerful for someone going through such awful things. i'm not out of the woods yet with all my ten thousand problems but i'm in a much better place now. i've typed way too many words here and it's still like not enough to express just how much this game means to me. i could go on forever and ever about the things i find objectively good about this game but this ramble was meant to focus on the subjective meanings i've found within it. breath of the wild has been nothing short of a blessing for me. thank you nintendo, truly.

[mrsalwayswrite]

A Ship’s Arrival (Ivar x reader)

Here is my (second) contribution to @ofmanderley 300 followers celebration challege! Thanks again for doing this challenge! 

My prompt was a gif set you can find here. Check it out! 

Fun Fact: Hnefatafl (‘King’s Table’ in English) is the board game most commonly associated with the Viking Age, I’m guessing this is what Ivar and Aslaug were playing in Season 4 when he was a child.  

Warnings: fluff, Ivar being a prickly boy who is really a softie. 

Words: 2600

Tag List: @youbloodymadgenius

(Note- this gif is not mine. It is apart of the gif set I chose, so all the credit goes to @ofmanderley​)

  Earnest blue eyes stared out over the water with all the intensity of one seeking answers from the gods themselves. Those who worked the docks bustled around him, making sure to stay out of his way and his reach. The youngest Ragnarsson ignored them, too focused on watching the water between the fjords and leading to Kattegat. His piercing gaze eagerly sought for the ship's promised arrival. He knew it made more sense for him to watch and wait on the overlooking hills; from there he could see farther and be out of the way. But he did not care. He wanted to be here when the ship docked. If he was above Kattegat, it would take too long to crawl down and be at the docks in time. 

 He looked up at the bright sky. Sol drove her chariot upwards; the sunrise having faded hours ago. Now the azure sky matched the glistening water below. Tonight was a full moon. The thought released a torrent of emotions through him, threatening to overwhelm his otherwise shrewd mind. The feeling he chose to focus on, that he hoped would drown out the fear and insecurity within him, was a giddy excitement. 

 Tonight, you were supposed to return. 

 *****

 The festivities raged around him, filling the Great Hall to the brim with useless noise of laughter, conversation and drunken singing. Ivar sat at one of the long tables near the thrones, only one filled with his beautiful mother. Alone, he watched the revelry around him in his usual aloof manner, shooting glares of disdain frequently. Sipping on his horn of ale, he wondered how soon he could leave, or how much trouble he would get in if he stabbed one of the drunken men that kept knocking into his table and bumping his crippled legs. 

 He considered crawling over to sit on the empty throne next to his mother, but seeing her glassy gaze as she stared into her horn, he knew he would be just as alone beside her as he currently was. 

 Used to being ignored, surprise filled him when someone slid across the table from him. Expecting one of his brothers, a sharp barb laid on the tip of his tongue, only for it to dissipate when he realized who it was. 

 You relaxed on the bench across from him, elbows on the table and leaning slightly forward. What startled him the most was the way you were obviously studying him with your head slanted to the side, eyes intent upon his face. Without a word, he matched your scrutiny, unwilling to lose this silent battle to some maiden. He had seen you before around the Great Hall, although you two had never spoken, let alone made eye contact. This was the first time either of you acknowledged the other's presence. 

 Your father was an accomplished tradesman, recently expanding his route to include Kattegat. The first time he came to inquire about trading here, he spoke with the Queen. With her approval, he left with promises to return soon. This time he arrived with goods from foreign lands that caused many to marvel. What most caught Ivar's attention- this time your father brought you along. 

 After several minutes of the silent staring, each moment further making Ivar grit his teeth and his fingers itch for an axe to bash into your head. What upset him the most, you looked so serene staring at him; like his furious gaze, that sent many before you cowering in fear, had no hold over you. He refused to break the silence, to break the stalemate you two were obviously locked in. He could read the stubbornness in the curve of your lips, the slow blinking of your eyes that remained solely focused on him. Clearly you forgot he was Ivar the Boneless, being obstinate was a specialty of his. 

 Finally, you broke the silence. "I heard you are one of the best players of Hnefatafl."

 "It is a game of skill, cunning, and strategy. Things I excel in, unlike most." He scoffed, trying to determine what you hoped to get out of your statement. There were none that could beat him in the game, only Floki ever came close. He wondered not for the first time if his father was around, if he would actually provide adequate competition for his youngest son. 

 "I bet I can beat you."

 His jaw threatened to drop at your blasé statement, said so easily, so casually, like it was a fact. His blood boiled. How dare you think yourself better than him? Leaning forward, he snarled at you. "No."

 A smirk caused your lips to turn upward, infuriating him even more. 

 His fury spilled forth with vitriol coating each word as he sneered at you. "You are just some tradesman's daughter. Just like any other useless, pathetic girl. I am the son of Ragnar Lothbrok. You have no chance of ever beating me."

 You leaned forward, your posture reflecting his. Though your demeanor was serene, like a still lake; while his body trembled like a wildfire, threatening to burn everything within reach. 

 "Prove it."

 His mind froze for a brief moment, unable to believe what you just said. "Are you…. challenging me?"

 "It's only a challenge if there is any hope of you actually beating me."

 His rage resurfaced, clearing his mind of the surprise. A dangerous excitement coursed through his blood. This would give him an opportunity to teach you your place, to remind you of those who will always be above you; and he planned to destroy you in both the game and in tormenting afterwards. Oh, this could be the most fun he had in a while. "Tomorrow."

 Your smirk widened. "Tomorrow." You confirmed with a single nod. Without another word, you rose gracefully to your feet and walked out of the Great Hall.  

 *****

 The dagger spun easily in his hand, twisting, turning, an extension of his hand. The sun had risen to its zenith, the light making the water sparkle and shine. Still, Ivar refused to move from his spot on the dock. 

 His mind drifted to the new axe he was working on at the blacksmith's. It was supposed to be done by now but his impatience had gotten the better of him one day. After that, he was forced to start over completely. He wondered if you would want to come watch him work. Would that interest you? 

 Suddenly, his attention was diverted to a ship heading towards the docks. He straightened up, eagerly watching its arrival. As it drew closer, his excitement dissipated like smoke, replaced by annoyance. The ship was one he recognized as a larger fishing ship. Not a tradesman's ship. Not your ship. 

 Frustrated, he ran his hands through his hair. He should return to the Great Hall, either to spar with his brothers in the training yard or help his mother. Do anything but sit here pointlessly. Waiting around for some girl sounded like something he would cruelly tease his brothers for doing. Yet here he sat, unmoving. His gaze focused once more on the horizon, as if his will alone could summon you to appear faster. 

 *****

 Over the next fortnight, countless games of Hnefatafl were played between Ivar and you. To his immense pleasure and frustration, you were good. Not just good enough to barely entertain him but good enough that Ivar had to actually work for each win. The only other person who came close was Floki. But here you were winning, just as many times as he won. He internally debated if he loved or hated that.

 Soon your competition expanded to other activities, making even mundane activities into fierce battles. He was slightly better than you when it came to archery, which brought him immense pleasure. You were better at fishing, which all the brothers found humorous. Even at meals, you two would compete who could chug your ale the fastest. Something Queen Aslaug disliked immensely but kept silent about for her joy of her youngest son finding a friend overshadowed her displeasure at some of your antics. 

 During this time, the two of you were hardly apart. Though on numerous occasions, Ivar still considered splitting your head with his axe. He found that each day the violent feeling lessened and his excitement to see you increased. His brothers tried to tease him but his mother quickly silenced them with a sharp look. It did not matter what those fools thought, none of them ever held his interest, his attention, his respect like you did. 

 When the fortnight drew to an end and your father began preparations to leave, Ivar found himself trying to create excuses to delay the impending departure, no matter how ridiculous they sounded. 

 That last night found you and him sitting alone on the dock, looking up at the starry sky above. All the dock workers were either at the meal in the Great Hall or in their own homes. 

 "Father says we'll be back on the next full moon. Trade here has been good." You said, tracing a knot in the wood below you. 

 "Why do I care?" He scoffed with a roll of his eyes. "You are an annoying person to have around. I plan on feasting and celebrating once your ship leaves tomorrow."

 "Good, you waste your time, so when I return, I will beat you in archery since I plan on practicing every day."

 "You could practice until Ragnarök and still never beat me."

 You shrugged, his mockery amusing you more than anything. You had learned over the past two weeks that taunts and ridicule flowed from his mouth easier than any kind word. "We shall see."

 A comfortable silence settled around you two once again. The gentle crashing of waves and the call of seagulls filled the air, lulling you both into contentment. You shifted to lay down on the dock, raising a hand to trace the constellations in the sky above you. After a couple of minutes, Ivar laid down next to you, your shoulders touching, as he watched your hand. 

 "Next full moon?" He confirmed quietly, his raspy voice just above a whisper. 

 "Try not to miss me too much." You quipped. 

 He chuckled, turning his head to look at you beside him. "I won't."

 "Good. I won't miss you either." 

 Smiling, you mirrored his action. Time froze as you two stared at one another, realizing how close you actually were. As if on its own accord, Ivar's gaze drifted down to your lips, so close to his own. Suddenly, your tongue darted out to wet them causing Ivar to jerk his eyes back up to meet yours. Insecurity and doubt prevented him from moving, from kissing your lips like he had dreamt about so many times. At first, he had rejected the dream, convincing himself it was pure foolishness, that he could never be interested in someone like you. Yet over the passing days, the dream never abated. When alone with his thoughts, sometimes he would retrieve the dream from his mind and turn it over like a treasured item to admire before putting it back on its shelf. 

 With widening eyes, he laid there stunned as your gaze dropped to his lips and that hand that had been tracing the stars now gently caressed his bottom lip. His mouth opened in a gasp, beyond astounded by your action, but more surprised by the feelings it invoked in him. 

 A shout from the end of the dock shattered the intimate moment. You rapidly sat up, your attention fully on the person who yelled your name. Moving slowly, Ivar pushed himself up and looked down to the end of the dock to see your father standing there. You waved in acknowledgement, a nervous giggle slipping from your mouth.  

 "I have to go."

 Even as disappointment tainted his world, he refused to let it show, making sure to keep his tone harsh and mocking. "Finally, I was starting to doubt I could get rid of you."

 You laughed, starting to rise to your feet but froze for a moment. In the next moment, you scooted closer, grabbed his face and kissed him. It was only a gentle press of your mouths, full of innocence and familiarity, yet it felt like a promise. Before he could respond, you pulled back and practically sprinted down the dock. He watched you disappear amongst the buildings of Kattegat at your father's side. Once gone from view, he turned back to look at the stars. Though his focus remained solely on the tingling sensation on his lips and the memory of your first shared kiss. In the moment, Ivar wondered if the gods were finally smiling down on him. 

 *****

 Footfalls approached him from behind. The steady steps slapping against the wooden boards of the dock let Ivar know who it was without him even having to look. The ruffling of his hair confirmed the person's identity. Only one person was allowed to do that to him. 

 "Still waiting I see." Ubbe asked, looking out over the sparkling water. "Mother is getting worried. You've been here most of the day."

 "Let her worry. As you can see, I am fine."

 "Mmmm…. you sure it is just friendship between you and y/n? I have never seen you wait for anyone else so relentlessly to return from a trip."

 "Say another word and I'll gut you." Ivar narrowed his eyes at his brother, a growl clawing at his throat to erupt at the teasing. 

 Ubbe just chuckled at the threat. He reached over to ruffle Ivar's hair once again but Ivar smacked his hand away with annoyance. 

 "I'll come back for you for the evening meal." Ubbe started to turn when something caught his eye. "Ivar…. a ship."

 Ivar tried to straighten up further in a futile attempt to see farther. It was a few more minutes before he was able to see what caught his brother's eye. There slipping through the water was a ship, one he recognized. A smile lit up his face without him even realizing, diminishing his usual severe expression into a boyish glee. Though he made no comment, Ubbe certainly took notice.

 The ship slowly approached, the men at the oars bringing the ship closer to Kattegat's docks. Ivar found himself tapping his hand on the boards beneath him as if that could somehow speed up the ship's arrival. 

 As the ship prepared to dock, your face popped up over the side, eyes scanning the dock furiously. When your gaze landed on him, a smile split your face that rivaled the warmth of the sun. Soon as the ship was tied off, you scrambled awkwardly over the side and ran straight at him. Ivar barely had time to brace himself before you dropped to your knees beside him and cupped his face, bringing your lips to his. This time, he was ready. He grabbed your head, keeping your mouth on his. What was meant as a sweet kiss quickly turned greedy with the way you both demanded attention using teeth and tongues. 

 When the two of you separated, lungs screaming for air, you stared at each other, your lips swollen and eyes alight.

 "Did you miss me?" You asked breathlessly. 

 "Not at all." He quipped, though you both knew it was a lie. Especially when he pulled you back in for another searing kiss that left no doubts of his true feelings towards you. 

[guerilla935]

My Favorite Fishing in Video Games Where Fishing is Not Core Game Play

A really awesome surprise for me is always to boot up a game that is full of action and suspense to be introduced to a fishing side activity. I have toiled away at fishing in games for hundreds of hours at least. It has gotten so bad in some instances that my friends have asked me why I haven’t just taken the plunge into real fishing. It’s definitely because that is a lot of work and in real life I don’t catch a fish every 30 seconds. They have also wondered why I don’t just play a fishing simulator like Planet Fishing (Shout out to Planet Fishing that’s a great game). And that’s where I have to think for a while. Fishing while you have better things to do like save the world is very special. You aren’t fishing because it’s the objective of the game or because that’s why you are there, you are fishing because it’s fun and maybe you need a break to swing a fishing rod instead of a sword. And then you can stop, and get back to fighting or whatever the rest of the game entails. Below are games that have fishing in them for mostly no reason at all. I have shamelessly spent way to long with my bait in these waters and absolutely loved every second of it and I hope that you (the reader) can find a lot of relaxation in these waters as well.

Pokemon Series

Since the very first Pokemon game there has been fishing. You get the old rod from some guy and then you are free to fish up as many goldfishes that you want hoping that one of them will grow up to be a 21 foot tall dragon. Pokemon has combined their fishing with their main game play and makes you at least start a battle with the fish you drag onto shore. Now fishing in Pokemon is pretty subpar mainly because a single Pokemon game hasn’t really been known to have more than a handful of Pokemon that you can fish for. Also if you are looking for a strong water type Pokemon you could do a lot better than fishing for it. Typically a Pokemon player will fish about 5-10 times total. And although fishing for Pokemon isn’t all that great it has been in every game for over 20 years and that is pretty impressive. It’s a small detail that makes the world of Pokemon feel like a real world of wild creatures.

Sonic Adventure DX

In Sonic Adventure DX you are given the choice to play as a lot of different characters, one of which is named Big the Cat. Most of the characters are combat characters that rely on speed and attacks to get through levels, some even wielding rocket launchers and extremely oversized hammers. However when you start the story of Big the Cat you are thrown in a completely opposite direction. Big the Cat is a giant purple cat who lives in the jungle with his best friend Froggy. Froggy accidentally swallows one of the most powerful objects in the Sonic universe and Big the Cat must chase him all over the world trying to fish him out of where he is hiding so that he can eject the Chaos Emerald out of him and they can return to their life in the jungle. The fishing mechanics in this game actually are really good and this is probably because Sega had just put out a series of mildly successful Bass fishing games before releasing this game. Either way its absolutely hilarious that Big the Cat gets to defeat Chaos 6 right before Super Sonic has his showdown with Chaos Perfect.

Final Fantasy XV

In Final Fantasy XV you play as Noctis and his favorite hobby is fishing. When I first played this game I sped through it and never fished once and reached the end of the game never indulging Noctis in his hobby. When I replayed Final Fantasy XV I fished for 50 hours and then ejected the disc from my console. The fishing in Final Fantasy XV is surprisingly deep with a lot of the vendors supporting what you could call a fishing road trip. In the game it is extremely dangerous to be out at night so I would plan day trips to lakes to maximize the amount of fishing I would get to do. I would prepare days in advance to make sure I could afford the trip and that I had enough supplies to both protect myself at the lake and have enough supplies to last the whole day. Final Fantasy XV really is a game about getting really distracted and fishing is probably its best distraction. My days on the lake were the perfect balance of peaceful and rewarding, this game offers an awesome reward of well planned trips and a good haul of fish.

Final Fantasy XIV Online

Final Fantasy XIV is the only game I have ever played where the fishing played exactly like its combat. When you are fighting enemies in a dungeon in FFXIV you are constantly adding buffs, landing hits, using consumables, and managing resource bars. When you are fishing in FFXIV you are constantly adding buffs, landing hits, using consumables, and managing resource bars. Note you are doing so at a much more leisurely and less life threatening pace but you are still doing it. I never maxed out the fisher class but I got it into the expansion content which was a really long and relaxing experience. Yet another Final Fantasy title where the real meat of the game is in getting distracted. When you fish you also sell on a player market that fluctuates based on market price just like real fish. You get the relaxing fishing side of the game and also an aggressive economic number crunching side as well. I spent way too long with a real pen and paper deciding how much I should sell for on any particular day and bossing around my two cat girl employees.The MMO aspect of the game adds so much to what you would expect to be a very solitary experience.

The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess

Have you ever gone fishing for hours to receive an empty bottle? That is exactly what kick started my addiction to fishing in Twilight Princess. An empty bottle in Twilight Princess means another way to heal yourself, another way to add oil to a lantern, another way to carry useless water around. The only way to get the 4th bottle in the game is to go to a dedicated fishing spot and fish until you pulled it out of the pond. The actual fishing is pretty weird, it involves motion controls which I still am not entirely sure what they do or how to properly use them but it is really fun to hold the pole in gyroscope and set the lure in the water waiting for fish to come get a nibble. Although the physics with the water make it difficult to see if you have actually gotten a bite or not it still is enjoyable the other 85% of the time it works.

Stardew Valley

So this one is at the top of every other “fishing in games” list and there is a big reason for that. It’s really good. I think in my first Stardew Valley farm I gave up farming entirely and fished all day every day and stopped to buy food to replenish my energy and go back at it. I really didn’t care about getting rich or making enough money to expand the farm or get to know everyone I actually spent about 50 hours just fishing. The fishing takes some skill and a pretty keen eye but the random jerks of the fish and the rhythm of the game play are so fun to try to master. It’s a part of Stardew Valley that I felt like I was continuously improving on as time went on and it was really fun. I mean I don’t recommend it because you’ll end up moderately poor but it was really fun.

Fantasy Life

Fantasy Life offers you 12 potential jobs, you could be a brilliant blacksmith or a devious potions maker, a lumberjack or a knight, a hunter or a seamstress. However your inner dad is calling and you decide you want to play through a fantasy RPG as a fisherman, hell yeah. the story is relatively short so you can quickly unlock a lot of locales to fish at and there is a manageable economy system that lets you deal in fish in advantageous ways. You can even pick up cooking on the side and make fancy dinners and sell the fish for higher you can do that as well. Fantasy Life is like a clever mix between Animal Crossing and Final Fantasy XIV and it kind of succeeds and falls short of it. The fishing also takes a good amount of skill and rhythmic approach to master so it doesn’t get boring almost at all until you have cleared the game.

Maple Story 2

Maple Story 2 is one of the most expressive and cutest games that I have ever played. And the fishing is no different, its all about style. The fishing in Maple Story 2 is monotonous and can get old but you do it for the chibi clout. Because much like the rest of the game you can look however you want and do whatever you want and sometimes you just feel like kicking back and throwing lure in the water at the beach. I never got super into the fishing in this game but it won me over with its adorable design and stylish atmosphere.

Animal Crossing Series

Of course I had to include the most popular game right now. Animal Crossing has become something of a connection between people when we can’t leave the house. A thing we all have in common on social media and with our friends. My first experience with Animal Crossing really starts with New Horizons and I was completely blown away. The fishing isn’t super complex or difficult but the range of what you can pull out of the water and what you can do with it is absolutely breathtaking. For a game about cartoon people living with humanoid cartoon animals the fish looking photo realistic. And the museum where they can be kept is stunning. The museum looks like it was designed to capture the feel of being in a museum and matches the design of all the great real life aquariums and observatories. Although it is a bit frustrating when your rod breaks it is easy enough to make one (or worst case buy one) to get your bait back in the water.

Super Smash Bros. Ultimate

Tell me I’m wrong, you can’t. Isabelle getting added to Smash brought a very powerful fishing move that isn’t practical all the time but is really funny. Wouldn’t recommend this game if you are looking to relax and fish but I do recommend hooking your friend with a fish hook and send them flying off screen if you had to.

Minecraft

I have a very special role in Minecraft when I join a friends server. A role that I assign to myself. While everyone is off getting awesome swords, spelunking for diamonds, and exploring the infinite landscape, I build a small wooden shack and I set up a farm with an irrigation canal and start fishing. A steady supply of food is necessary and while I’m hanging out with my friends in a server I’m happy to be the one to provide it. The fishing in this game is probably the slowest of all the ones on this list but is the most useful. just throwing the fish in the oven creates food that can help keep you and your companions alive for a long time. I think I definitely have my limits with Minecraft fishing and I couldn’t do it for hours on end it is rewarding to set up shop and find a nice place to settle down for a few hours to fish.

Fire Emblem: Three Houses

This is the only Tactical RPG in this post. Fire Emblem: Three Houses has sections between combat where you can go and talk to your students and do other activities. We aren’t here to discuss other activities though we are here for the fishing. The fishing allows you to catch fish for some reason that I’m sure is good but never intrigued me enough to learn. All I know about the fishing in Fire Emblem: Three Houses is that it’s fun. I started to bust through combat just so that I could get back to fishing. The funniest part about this one is that the fish has a health bar. Pressing the A button at the exact moment finds a way to become easier and still find ways to mess you up. Either way, I’m not that interested in tactical RPGs but I heard there was fishing in this game so I had to play it and it was worth it.

Jak & Daxter: The Precursor Legacy

In Jak & Daxter, Daxter gets turned into a small animal by dark eco while exploring a dangerous island off the shore of his home with his best friend Jak. To get back to the island to investigate, the pair have to borrow a boat owned by a fisherman who is troubled by an invasive species of poisonous eel that is ruining his haul. He asks Jak to catch fish for him without catching any eels. This fishing mini game can only be done once but it is going to either be something you think is very unique or a huge waste of time. All I’ll say is that the sound that the fish makes when it goes into the net is absolutely a reward in itself it is so satisfying. But anyways, more intense than some other options here but get it done so you can get back to absorbing eco powers and jumping on stuff.

Shovel Knight

Shovel Knight is a 2D action platformer but you can also fish. And you fish for the best kind of fish, money. You can get some other stuff too like health pickups and magic replenishers but we know what you want. You see that little glint and you pop out the fishing rod and pull out those money bags. If you are devoted enough you can even get a surprise from the Troupple King (long live his highness) if you fish out the right stuff. I don’t even know if I fished all that much when I played Shovel Knight but it’s hilarious that you can.

NieR: Automata

I did not play a lot of NieR and that’s because I was fishing. I don’t know why all I did was fish but you throw your little robot in the pond and you lean on a magical stool so honestly it was good enough for me.

Club Penguin

If you know then you know. In hind sight there really wasn’t a whole lot to do in Club Penguin but this mini game really messed me up. You basically get to move up and down, catching fish and avoiding trash and other hazards. Basically trying to do this and catch as much fish as possible to avoid having to ask your parents for real money to pay for snacks to feed a virtual ball of fluff with eyeballs. I don’t really remember how challenging it really was but I remember getting decently high scores to about like 100 fish per round so I guess it was pretty easy if I could do that at age 10.

Rune Factory 4

I’m gonna be very honest about this one and say that the fishing in Rune Factory 4 is basically just Animal Crossing fishing but more anime. The fish react to the pole the same, the fish almost look the same, and the buttons to respond are the same. What makes this one special is where you can take it. You can fish in the little moat in town, in the lake, in a dungeon full of monsters, in a lake that is eternally the season fall, anywhere. You are constricted by the boundaries of Stardew Valley and that is how much energy you have and how much time you have in the day. It’s still fun to fish but I wish that they had used their fun fantasy setting to give the ability to fish up some cool made up fish instead of strictly things that exist in real life.

Xenoblade Chronicles 2

Ok, diving, fishing, same thing. Diving in Xenoblade Chronicles 2 is just fishing with your whole body. It works a lot in the same way as Pokemon where you fish up monsters to fight and get the rewards from them. It is a completely optional activity however if you decide to undertake the grind of scavenging in Xenoblade Chronicles 2 then you will never hurt for money ever again. It makes my wonder why Rex stopped being a salvager to do odd jobs because this was PROFITABLE. The main incentive is that there are spots that spawn a certain enemy that drop cores. Cores are like gacha or loot boxes that contain new anime girl partners that deal huge damage in fights. They even have their own side quests and story lines. I spent maybe 30 hours grinding before giving up on this game and while it does become tiresome I really enjoyed the random rewards of possibly getting a new companion or a really cool weapon.

It’s been tossed around that every great RPG has fishing in it. I won’t argue that point but a lot of great RPGs certainly do have fishing in them. Everyone needs a break sometimes and fishing is the perfect activity to remind us to stop and take that break. Even games can get long and without these distractions it might be so much harder to complete these harrowing tasks. Don’t forget to take breaks and just enjoy the sound of the water every once in a while because there’s no rush playing video games.

Honorable Mentions:

Kingdom Hearts: Sora fishing with his bare hands on Destiny Island

Persona 4: Weird aqueduct fishing

Persona 5: Marina fishing life

Sea of Thieves: A pirates life for me

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Understanding the aftermath of r/wallstreetbets

A couple days back, I wrote up my best understanding of what happened with /r/wallstreetbets and meme stocks like Gamestop, trying to show how all the different, seemingly contradictory takes on the underlying financial stuff could all be true.

https://pluralistic.net/2021/01/28/payment-for-order-flow/#wallstreetbets

In the days since, a new series of contradictory takes has emerged, these ones disputing the meaning of this bizarre financial spectacle, and likewise what response, if any is warranted as it unfurls.

I think that all of these takes can also be true, and as with the trading itself, reconciling them requires that we widen the frame.

Let's start with Jimmy Carter.

In 1978, Carter's IRS created the 401(k), a tax-sheltered account for people who wanted to gamble on stocks to fund their retirement.

That was a fringe proposition at best.

The normal retirement system was a "defined benefits" pension where your employer guaranteed you a certain monthly percentage of your salary from retirement to death.

The vast majority of Americans wisely prefered a guaranteed payout to a tax-advantaged gambling account.

Obviously, right? On the one hand, you have the guarantee of a pension (maybe even inflation-indexed); on the other, you have a bunch of bets, that, if they go wrong, leave you literally homeless and starving.

When gamblers remortgage the family home and cash in the kids' college funds to play the tables, we consider them to have a mental illness, a pathological condition that harms them and the people around them.

Giving up a defined benefits pension in favor of a 401k is just the same kind of bet - staking all the money that will support you when you exit the workforce on the movement of stocks and bonds.

Who would do that voluntarily?

Pretty much no one. But the transition from defined benefits to 401k was not voluntary. Finance ghouls like Ethan Lipsig wrote memos to major employers like Hughes Aircraft showing them how they could ditch their pension obligations by moving workers to 401ks.

In the 80s, Reagan created a bunch of legal tools that allowed employers to coerce their workforces into giving up the security of a pension and force them into gambling their salaries on the prayer of a win in the markets.

This was insanely, amazingly great for the finance sector, in three ways:

1. It made companies more profitable. Guaranteeing that the workers whose labor made your company viable wouldn't spend their dotage starving and homeless is expensive.

Helping fund wagers on shares is much cheaper. The finance sector represented the major shareholders of the companies that transitioned to 401ks. The savings were transferred to these shareholders and the finance sector got commissions.

What's more, this temporary inflation of share prices disguised what was going on with the pension switcheroo: workers' defined benefits pensions were liquidated and turned into stocks, just as stocks were going up because their pensions had been liquidated!

Their legs had been amputated out from under them, but so subtly that they didn't yet feel the pain - and now their bosses cooked their legs and snuck them into their dinner, and everyone marveled at how full they felt after that hearty, meaty meal.

2. 401ks brought a lot of suckers to the table. The market was - and is - dominated by "sophisticated investors," AKA predators, who knew all the ways to fleece the rubes who had no idea how any of this worked.

The predatory nature of finance only increased over time. Hedge funds, for example, exist to find unethical practices that are legal (thanks to loopholes in the rules) and exploit them until they are illegal.

3. 401ks created a political force outside the finance sector that would lobby on its behalf. Transforming America into a nation of stockholders meant that workers had to choose between supporting rules that protected their jobs and rules that protected their retirement.

For your pension account to grow, you had to support policies that permitted finance ghouls to offshore your job, or misclassify you as a contractor, or eliminate the safety rules that prevented you from being maimed, or take away your right to sue for compensation.

Every time there's a particularly ghastly bankruptcy driven by PE or hedge funds - Toys R Us, Sears, etc - it emerges that at least some of that money is coming out of a union pension fund.

That's marketization - turning the once obscure, boring business of market-based capital allocation into a matter of import to everyday people.

Marketization begat financialization.

While marketization is primarily about capital allocation (who gets what money), financialization is about bets. Sometimes those bets are about things - businesses, houses, coal and timber - but things are limited. Mostly the financial market consists of bets on other bets.

Bets are infinite. Every time you make a bet, you create inventory for a market in a bet on the outcome of your bet. And that's inventory for a new market: bets on the outcomes of bets on the outcomes of bets.

It's called Wall Street Bets for a reason.

Bets need referees, someone who decides who the winner is. In sports, it's a major scandal if a referee is caught wagering on one of the teams in a match. In the financial markets, it's the norm - referees that lay wagers on the outcome of the contest they're overseeing.

Let's take stock:

Workers are forced to play the casino, and if their bets fail, they spend their old ages homeless and starving;

The vast majority of casino games are wholly abstract - bets on bets on bets - and require layers of refs;

the refs are all crooked.

Every couple of years, we have a massive, systemic financial crisis, and every time that happens, the finance sector lobbies for a no-strings-attached bailout, abetted by suckers who hate the finance sector but fear starving in their old age.

We're about to be engulfed in the second-largest crisis of our lifetime - the reckoning from trillions in capital market gains propped up by the Trump administration's policy of buying all corporate debt as a covid stimulus.

https://pluralistic.net/2020/09/28/cyberwar-tactics/#aligned-incentives

(the largest crisis of our lifetimes is a few years off, as the climate emergency piles losses on losses, stranding tens of trillions in assets, from fossil fuels to obsolete gas-stations to literally underwater coastal real-estate to whole towns incinerated by wildfires)

That's where we're at: a crooked casino that we've trusted our futures too, a crisis on the horizon, and a bunch meme-stock "players" who have thrown the normal weirdness of the market into stark relief through a spectacular stunt.

A lot of people are angry at Robinhood, the stock-trading platform at the center of all this. Robinhood froze trading on meme stocks, and has only allowed it to come back in a useless, performative trickle that is seemingly calculated to prevent more meme-stock gamesmanship.

Is Robinhood just another crooked ref? Yes…and no. The meme stock run upset the stable cheaters' equilibrium whereby cheating never escalated to the point where the game just collapsed.

For example, the total short position on Gamestop exceeds its total stock issuance.

Translation: there were more Gamestop shares promised between bettors than exist. When the game stops, all those promises come due, and they literally can't be paid off because there aren't enough tokens in circulation to settle all the debts.

Robinhood halted trading in part because the big fish upstream of Robinhood also halted trading, because they have even more at risk than Robinhood does if the game collapses - they the refs for MANY players, all the same size as Robinhood or larger.

https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2021-01-29/reddit-traders-on-robinhood-are-on-both-sides-of-gamestop

But remember, the refs are cheating. And they are both downstream and upstream from other games in which the refs are also cheating.

And the games, as a whole, encompass our economy, including the solvency of the "real economy" (the people who make masks, deliver groceries and drive ambulances), and whether you spend your old age homeless and starving.

So the people who say, "Don't blame Robinhood, they didn't halt trading to help billionaires, they halted trading to prevent the game from collapsing are right."

But they're not the only ones who are right.

Also, there's the people who say that meme stocks aren't making money for little guys at the expense of the big guys. They're right too.

First, because these stocks will all need to be converted to cash, and that means selling them.

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2021/01/the-gamestop-bubble-is-going-to-hurt-a-lot-of-ordinary-investors/

When the selloff starts, the price will plunge, because even if the stock was undervalued before, it's certainly overvalued now. Every bubble produces wealth for its early bettors who sell out to later players who lose everything when they can't find a sucker later on.

From Beanie Babies to subprime, bubbles burst and leave suckers holding the bag. If you just heard about meme stocks last week, you're too late to make money off of them.

There's another version of the "this isn't little guys, it's big whales" that's *also* true: the main beneficiary of the meme stock runs is giant funds who magnified and the bets from r/wallstreetbets and got out smart and fast.

https://twitter.com/zatapatique/status/1354904995901136896

So given all this, what can we make of calls (from parties as varied as AOC and Ted Cruz) to investigate Robinhood and other retail brokerages to see whether they're honest refs, or in the tank for billionaires?

At Naked Capitalism, Yves Smith calls this a "fatuous uproar," saying that the Senate has more important things to do during the racing-out-of-control pandemic than to investigate a literal penny-ante grift.

https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2021/01/the-fatuous-uproar-about-robinhood-and-gamestop.html

Do we really care who the winner is in "a beauty contest between Cinderella’s ugly sisters" ("clueless new gen day traders versus clumsy shorts")?

Smith is right too.

A speculator-v-speculator contest that falls apart when the crooked ref halts play to prevent collapse - who cares who "wins?"

But here's how they can all be right - the "who cares" and the "goliath v goliath" and the "bubble" and the "Robinhood is a plutes' honeypot."

*If* there's hearings, and *if* those hearings expose the absurdity and corruption of the system, *then* there is a chance to build the political will to make real, systemic changes when the crisis comes.

And there's a real crisis coming: two, in fact. The covid junk bond financial crisis, which is due very soon, and the climate crisis stranded asset emergencies, which will unroll with increased tempo and intensity for decades to come.

The half-century cycle of "addressing" finance crises by increasing financialization MUST stop.

If the meme stock spectacle gets us to pay attention to hearings that reveal the irredeemable rot of the system, then it's a unique chance to spread *real* "financial literacy."

And that literacy is the necessary (but insufficient) precursor to taking action when the time comes - and the time is certainly coming soon.

[marginalgloss]

I turn 35 tomorrow. How better to celebrate that than with some notes on the handful of video games I have managed to finish over the last ten months. In no particular order:

Judgment (PS4)

Something I think about often is that there aren’t many games which are set in the real world. By this I man the world in which we live today. You can travel through ancient Egypt or take a trip through the stars in the far future, but it’s relatively rare to be shown a glimpse of something familiar. Hence the unexpected popularity of the new release of Microsoft Flight Simulator, which lets you fly over a virtual representation of your front porch, as well as the Grand Canyon, and so on.

I found something like the same appeal in Judgment, a game which took me longer than anything else listed here to finish — seven or eight months, on and off. Like the Yakuza games to which it is a cousin, it’s set in Kamurocho, a fictional district of a real-world Tokyo; unlike other open-world games, it renders a space of perhaps half a square mile in intense detail. I spent a long time in this game wandering around slowly in first-person view, looking at menus and in the windows of shops and restaurants. The attention to detail is unlike everything I have ever seen, from the style of an air conditioning unit to the range of Japanese whiskies on sale in a cosy backstreet bar. And this was a thing of value at a time when the thought of going anywhere else at all, let alone abroad, seemed like it was going to be very difficult for a very long time.

It’s a game of at least three discrete parts. One of them is a fairly cold-blooded police procedural/buddy cop story: you play an ex-lawyer turned private eye investigating a series of grisly murders that, inevitably, link back to your own murky past. In another part you run around the town getting into hilarious martial arts escapades, battering lowlifes with bicycles and street furniture. In another, you can while away your hours playing meticulous mini-games that include darts, baseball, poker, Mahjong and Shogi — and that’s before we even get to the video game arcades.

All these parts are really quite fun, and if you want to focus on one to the exclusion of the others, the game is totally fine with that. The sudden tonal shifts brought about by these crazy and abrupt shifts in format are, I think, essentially unique to video games. But the scope of Judgment is a thing all its own. As a crafted spectacle of escapist fiction it’s comprehensive, and in its own way utterly definitive.  

Mafia: Definitive Edition (PS4)

I was amazed when I found out they were doing a complete remake of Mafia, a game I must have finished at least three or four times in the years after its release back in 2002. Games from this era don’t often receive the same treatment as something like Resident Evil, where players might be distracted by the controls and low-poly graphics of the original. 

A quality remake makes it easier for all kinds of reasons to appreciate what was going on there. (Not least because they have a lot of new games in the same series to sell.) But in the early 00s PC games like this one had started to get really big and ambitious, and had (mostly) fixed issues with controls; so there’s a hell of a lot more stuff going on in Mafia than in most games of that era. It was also a very hard game, with all kinds of eccentricities that most big titles don’t attempt today. Really I have no idea how this remake got made at all. 

But I was so fond of the original I had to play it. The obvious: it looks fantastic, and the orchestral soundtrack is warm and evocative. The story is basic, but for the era it seemed epic, and it’s still an entertaining spectacle. The original game got the balance of cinematic cutscenes, driving and action right the first time, even while Rockstar were still struggling to break out of the pastiche-led GTA III and Vice City. 

They have made it easier. You’re still reliant on a handful of medical boxes in each level for healing, but you get a small amount of regenerating health as well. You no longer have to struggle to keep your AI companions alive. Most of the cars are still heavy and sluggish, but I feel like they’re not quite as slow as they once were. They’ve changed some missions, and made some systems a little more comfortable — with sneaking and combat indicators and so on — but there aren’t any really significant additions.

The end result of all this is that it plays less like an awkward 3D game from 2002, and more like a standard third-person shooter from the PS3/360 era. Next to virtually any other game in a similar genre from today, it feels a bit lacking. There’s no skill tree, no XP, no levelling-up, no crafting, no side-missions, no unusual weapons or equipment, no alternative routes through the game. And often all of that stuff is tedious to the extreme in new titles, but here, you really feel the absence of anything noteworthy in the way of systems. 

My options might have been more limited in 2002 but back then the shooting and driving felt unique and fun enough that I could spend endless hours just romping around in Free Ride mode. Here, it felt flat by comparison; it felt not much different to Mafia III, which I couldn’t finish because of how baggy it felt and how poorly it played, in spite of it having one of the most interesting settings of any game in recent years. But games have come a long way in twenty years.    

Hypnospace Outlaw (Nintendo Switch)

If this game is basically a single joke worked until it almost snaps then it is worked extremely well. 

It seems to set itself up for an obvious riff on the way in which elements of the web which used to be considered obnoxious malware (intrusive popups and so on) have since become commonplace, and sometimes indispensable, parts of the online browsing experience. But it doesn’t really do that, and I think that’s because it’s a game which ends up becoming a little too fascinated by its own lore. 

The extra science fiction patina over everything is that technically this isn’t the internet but a sort of psychic metaverse delivered over via a mid-90s technology involving a direct-to-brain headset link. I don’t know that this adds very much to the game, since the early days of the internet were strange enough without actually threatening to melt the brains of its users. 

(This goes back to what I said about Judgment - I sometimes wonder if it feels easier to make a game within a complete fiction like this, rather than simply placing it in the context of the nascent internet as it really was. Because this way you don’t have to worry too much about authenticity or realism; this way the game can be as outlandish as it needs to be.) 

But, you know. It’s a fun conceit. A clever little world to romp around in for a while. 

Horace (Nintendo Switch)

I don’t know quite where to begin with describing this. One of the oddest, most idiosyncratic games I’ve played in recent years. 

As I understand it this platformer is basically the creation of two people, and took about six years to make. You start out thinking this is going to be a relatively straightforward retro run-and-jump game — and for a while, it is — but then the cutscenes start coming. And they keep coming. You do a lot of watching relative to playing in this game, but it’s forgivable because they are deeply, endearingly odd. 

It’s probably one of the most British games I’ve ever played in terms of the density and quality of its cultural references. And that goes for playing as well as watching; there’s a dream sequence which plays out like Space Harrier and driving sequences that play out like Outrun. There are references to everything from 2001 to the My Dinner with Abed episode of Community. And it never leans into any of it with a ‘remember that?’ knowing nod — it’s all just happening in the background, littered like so much cultural detritus. 

A lot of it feels like something that’s laser-targeted to appeal to a certain kind of gamer in their mid-40s. And, not being quite there myself, a lot of it passed me by. Horace is not especially interested in a mass appeal — it’s not interested in explaining itself, and it doesn��t care if you don’t like the sudden shifts in tone between heartfelt sincerity and straight-faced silliness. But as a work of singular creativity and ambition it’s simply a joyous riot. 

Horizon: Zero Dawn (PS4)

I stopped playing this after perhaps twelve or fifteen hours. There is a lot to like about it; it still looks stunning on the PS4 Pro; Aloy is endearing; the world is beautiful to plod around. But other parts of it seem downright quaint. It isn’t really sure whether it should be a RPG or an action game. And I’m surprised I’ve never heard anyone else mention the game’s peculiar dedication to maintaining a shot/reverse shot style throughout dialogue sequences, which is never more than tedious and stagey.

The combat isn’t particularly fun. Once discovered most enemies simply become enraged and blunder towards you, in some way or another; your job is to evade them, ensnare them or otherwise trip them up, then either pummel them into submission or chip away at their armour till they become weak enough to fall. I know enemy AI hasn’t come on in leaps and bounds in recent years but it’s not enough to dress up your enemies as robot dinosaurs and then expect a player to feel impressed when they feel like the simplest kind of enrageable automata. Oh, and then you have to fight human enemies too, which feels like either an admission of failure or an insistence that a game of this scale couldn’t happen without including some level of human murder. 

I don’t have a great deal more to say about it. It’s interesting to me that Death Stranding, which was built on the same Decima engine, kept the frantic and haphazard combat style from Horizon, but went to great lengths to actively discourage players from getting into fights at all. (It also fixed the other big flaw in Horizon — the flat, inflexible traversal system — and turned that into the centrepiece of the game.) 

Disco Elysium (PS4)

In 2019 I played a lot of Dungeons and Dragons. I’m talking about the actual tabletop roleplaying game, not any kind of video game equivalent. For week after week a group of us from work got together and sort of figured it out, and eventually developed not one but two sprawling campaigns of the never-ending sort. We continued for a while throughout the 2020 lockdown, holding our sessions online via Roll20, but it was never quite the same. After a while, as our life circumstances changed further, it sort of just petered out.

I mention all this because Disco Elysium is quite clearly based around the concept of a computerised tabletop roleplaying game (aka CRPG). My experience of that genre is limited to the likes of Baldurs Gate, the first Pillars of Eternity and the old Fallout games, so I was expecting to have to contend with combat and inventory management. What I wasn’t expecting was to be confronted with the best novel I’ve read this year.

To clarify: I have not read many other novels this year, by my standards. But, declarations of relative quality aside, what I really mean is that this game is, clearly and self-consciously, a literary artefact above all. It is written in the style of one of those monolithic nineteenth century novels that cuts a tranche through a society, a whole world — you could show it to any novelist from at least the past hundred years and they would understand pretty well what is going on. It is also wordy in every sense of that term: there’s a lot of reading to do, and the text is prolix in the extreme. 

You could argue it’s less a game than a very large and fairly sophisticated piece of interactive fiction. The most game-like aspects of it are not especially interesting. It has some of the stats and the dice-rolling from table-top roleplaying games, but this doesn’t sit comfortably with the overtly literary style elsewhere. Health and morale points mostly become meaningless when you can instantly heal at any time and easily stockpile the equivalent of health potions. And late on in the game, when you find yourself frantically changing clothes in order to increase your chances of passing some tricky dice roll, the systems behind the game start to feel somewhat disposable. 

Disco Elysium is, I think, a game that is basically indifferent to its own status as a game. Nothing about it exists to complement its technological limitations, and nor is it especially interested in the type of unique possibilities that are only available in games. You couldn’t experience Quake or Civilisation or the latest FIFA in any other format; but a version of Disco Elysium could have existed on more or less any home computer in about the last thirty years. And, if we were to lose the elegant art and beautiful score, and add an incredibly capable human DM, it could certainly be played out as an old-fashioned tabletop game not a million miles from Dungeons and Dragons.

All of the above is one of the overriding thoughts I have about this game. But it doesn’t come close to explaining what it is that makes Disco Elysium great.

[svtwritess]

Chapter 1

➬ warnings: sexual content

➬ word count: 6.2k

➬ pairings: wonwoo x reader, mingyu x reader, joshua x reader 

➬ genre(s): fluff, angst, smut

➬ college!au, vampire!au

You loaded the last of your boxes into the moving truck and stood at the back of it contently with your hands on your hips. Finally, you were off to university, and with your best friend of 20 years nonetheless. Everything the both of you needed seemed to be in the truck and the things that needed to be secured with rope or tape were fastened properly. With a great effort, you reached up and pulled the door of the truck down and locked it, entrapping all of your things safely inside before you headed into your house. 

You entered your house, feeling relieved as the air conditioning overtook your body. Loading the truck had made you quite sweaty. You heard your and Wonwoo’s parents in the kitchen, so you made your way to the spacious room. Upon entering, you saw both sets of parents leaning against the counter by the sink, and Wonwoo on the island next to none other than his male best friend Joshuaz

The pair met the first day of your freshman year of high school and they instantly became best friends. They were both pranksters but responsible enough to know when to stop. They loved picking on you together the first two years of high school, but in the beginning of your third year Joshua became much more mature, seemingly in the blink of an eye. Over the summer, his face became more structured, he grew taller, and he had large muscles in places he didn’t seem to have any muscle at all in before. Naturally, you found yourself attracted to him, and him to you, but neither of you dared to make a move because of your joint friendship with Wonwoo. You didn’t want to make anything awkward for him. However, at a beginning-of-year party that one of your school’s basketball players held, you found yourself hooking up with him in a dark and desolate bedroom. The only person you had ever kissed before him was Wonwoo, and that was when you were both in elementary school. You didn’t have sex that night, the two of you just made out with Joshua initiating some light petting. You liked it. You really liked it. But you and Joshua made a pact not to do it again and to never tell Wonwoo. 

Though, of course that didn’t go as planned. You hooked up a few more times, but you only ever did so at parties. It then got to the point that you’d sneak over to one another’s houses in the middle of the night, the activities the pair of you would partake in becoming more and more sinful with every visitation until eventually, you lost your virginity to him. He was kind and gentle and non-judgmental; he was the perfect first time. And second time. And third time. And fourth time. 

After your fourth liaison, when you both realized there was no end in sight, you decided it was time to tell Wonwoo. You brought him his favorite food and watched a few episodes of his favorite food with him before breaking the news. Needless to say, he was furious. He kicked the both of you out and didn’t talk to you for two whole weeks. During those two weeks, you and Joshua couldn’t find it in yourselves to do anything close to hooking up, so you kept your distance as well, only conversing when one of you would ask the other if they’d heard from Wonwoo. 

After a little while, Wonwoo forgave you, but for some reason continued to keep his distance from Joshua. You never knew why. But on the day of graduation, when everybody was congregating and celebrating in the middle of the football field, the two males made up with a simple hug. They probably realized that they only had one summer left together and didn’t want to spend it holding whatever grudges over each other. You were happy that they made up, but you decided it was best to not see Joshua in any way other than a friendly one after that, and he agreed. Though you had many aroused and lonely nights over the summer and Joshua was less than a mile away, you kept it to yourself.

That’s why Joshua hopping off of the counter and running over to pull you into a hug caught you slightly off guard. You hadn’t seen him since graduation day, but you knew him and Wonwoo hung out all the time. It didn’t bother you, you knew they needed bro time. 

You hugged Joshua back with a small smile and felt him lean down so his luscious lips were level with your ear. 

“I’m gonna miss you when you leave.” he said quietly and you chuckled. 

“You were fine without me the past three months, I’m sure you’ll do just as well the next four years.” you replied.

“Who said I was fine without you?” he inquired, and before you could ask what exactly he meant, he pulled away from you with a smug look on his face. Your cheeks were very obviously red from his unclear words, but you shook it off for no other reason than because your family and best friend were in the room and you had to. 

You reeled your thoughts in as you walked over to Wonwoo and your parents, Joshua returning to his spot on the kitchen island. Wonwoo gave you a look that said he knew something suspicious had happened between you and Joshua, but he wasn’t about to bring it up in front of your families. 

“Well?” your mom questioned causing everyone in the room to look at her, ��Are you guys excited to head off to college tomorrow?!” she was very clearly excited for the both of you, even though you knew she’d miss you and tell you that far more often than necessary. You’d miss your home and your family as well, but you were extremely excited to move out, live with your best friend, and finally get to experience independence. 

“Well duh.” Wonwoo responded playfully, his deep voice coating your eardrums. 

“Are you guys living in dorms?” Joshua asked. You shook your head in response.

“Nah, we found an apartment off campus that we’re gonna live in,” you said and Joshua just nodded.

“Well, when something happens, just remember to use protection.” Wonwoo’s dad said as he brought his cup of water up to his mouth to take a sip. Meanwhile, Wonwoo’s mother nearly spit out her beverage at her husband’s remark, hitting him on the arm while the rest of you tried to stifle your laughter. 

It wasn’t an awkward thing to joke about, really. You recognized that Wonwoo was attractive, but having been friends for such a long time and seeing him do so many weird and disgusting things, being attracted to him was something you never really thought about. He’d always thought you were pretty as well, but again, he expected those few kisses the two of you had shared because of triple-dog-dares at the age of 7 to be the only times he did anything more-than-friendly with you. 

“Okay, I think I’m gonna go upstairs and clean up.” you announced to the group. You bid Wonwoo’s parents goodbye with a hug and did the same with Joshua, though his obviously felt much more sexually tense. 

You made your way toward the stairs, Wonwoo unknowingly in tow. 

“Am I spending the night?” he asked, startling you beyond belief. You clutched your chest and held onto the railing as you turned to look at him. He had a small smile on his face and a curious look in his eyes. 

“Yeah, if you want,” you said as you turned back around, the two of you continued up the stairs. “It’d be easier since the truck is over here.” you said nonchalantly, and Wonwoo simply nodded. 

He followed you into your room and plopped down on your bed, instantly pulling out his phone and beginning to scroll through it. 

“Can I shower and eat here too?” he asked, glancing over at you as you rummaged through your drawers to find some pajamas. You settled on a slightly cropped black t-shirt and some checkered pajama shorts.

“You know the answer is yes, you’ve been doing that stuff since you were 5. Why do you feel the need to ask?” you chuckled as you closed the drawer, standing up straight to look at him. He merely shrugged.

“I don’t know, we’re just older now, so it feels a bit weird you know? Being up in each other’s houses all the time,” he stated, and you couldn’t help but roll your eyes.

“Well we’re about to move in together, so get used to it!” you shouted as you headed toward your bathroom. 

“That’s not what I meant!” he yelled back as you shut the door. You just laughed at him, put your pajamas down, and turned the shower on. You took off your clothes and checked to make sure it was a comfortable temperature. When you stepped inside, you let the warm water consume your body and mind. 

You tried not to think about Joshua’s “who said I was fine without you” line or his extraordinarily good looks and instead tried to think about the people you could potentially meet at school as you washed yourself. Maybe, hopefully, you’d meet a guy or girl that you really liked there. Joshua was really the only person you’d done anything with, and though you’d done plenty, naturally you wanted to broaden your horizons. Would you hook up with a bunch of people at frat parties? Would you meet that one person who you’d pine over and think about constantly until finally they admit their feelings for you? Would you be stuck with only Wonwoo as a friend due to lack of interesting or attractive people on campus? Only time would tell. 

You finished washing out the conditioner that remained in your hair and turned off the water. You reached for your towel, drying yourself off to the best of your ability before stepping out of the shower and putting your clothes on. You continued to dry your hair with your towel as you left the bathroom and headed to your bedroom. 

The second you entered your room, Wonwoo spoke.

“Why is Joshua blowing up your phone?” he asked, voice stern with your phone in his hand. You really didn’t have an answer, so you wished he wouldn’t get upset about it. 

“I genuinely have no idea.” you told him. You hung your towel on the corner of your door and walked over to your vanity to grab your brush. Wonwoo, not proudly, made it a point to look at your ass as you stepped, being careful not to get caught. Just because he was your best friend didn’t mean he couldn’t appreciate your ass, in way too short of shorts nonetheless, from a distance. 

You quickly ran the brush through your hair, being sure to part it properly and get all of the knots out before walking over to Wonwoo and taking your phone from him. You rolled your eyes. 

“He only texted me 4 times!” you said, “You’re so dramatic...” you trailed off as you unlocked your phone, Wonwoo looking over your shoulder. You opened the messages app. 

[5:46pm] it was really great to see you today :)

[5:46pm] you look even better than i remember

[5:48pm] listen... if not it’s totally cool, but do you think i could see you tonight? 

[5:48pm] i figured there’s no harm in hooking up one more time before you leave haha, so yeah just let me know ;)

Before you could do or say anything, Wonwoo grabbed your phone from you and bolted out of your room. You ran after him, nearly slipping as you began to chase him.

“WONWOO!” you screamed, following him down the stairs as fast as you could, “GIVE ME MY PHONE!” He ran past your parents in the kitchen and they merely gave the situation a glance, they were used to it. Wonwoo went to go through the door that led to your garage, but you caught him before he could close the door and snatched your phone from his strong grip. He groaned in defeat and threw his head back. 

“God please don’t say yes to him! This is supposed to be our night before college.” Wonwoo whined, a pout on his face. You shot him a glare. 

“Isn’t he your other best friend?” you asked and Wonwoo nodded. “Then why don’t we just invite him over to hang out with the both of us?” you suggested. Wonwoo grunted and pushed past you, exiting the garage. You followed him, closing the door behind you and walking quickly to catch up with him. “What, are you not gonna answer me?” you questioned, but again, no answer. 

When you got up to your room and closed the door, you brought up the situation again. 

“Is it really that crazy of an idea?” you said as he sat against the headboard of your bed. You sat at the end by his feet and put your phone down. You heard his head hit the board behind him and saw him close his eyes and let out a sigh. 

“It’s not, and I would be happy to do it if I didn’t think he’d try to fuck you in the same room as me.” He opened his eyes and looked at you knowingly. You knew that the scenario Wonwoo had proposed was very likely. You would never try to pull something like that, but Joshua would, and knowing how weak you could be sometimes, there was a slight chance that you would give in. 

“Okay listen,” you scooted toward him, “I promise you that nothing even remotely suggestive will happen between Joshua and I tonight.” You held out your pinky and waited for Wonwoo to link his with yours. He let out a sigh and picked up his head, interlocking your pinkies and pressing your thumbs together. 

“Fine.” he stated. 

You smiled widely and reached over to grab your phone that was still by his feet. 

to: joshua

[5:58pm] come over tonight and hang out with the both of us instead :) it’ll be fun, i promise

Joshua arrived at around 8:30pm. He was nice enough to go out and pick up some food for the three of you, knowingly purchasing you and Wonwoo’s favorite snacks. You had on your pajamas, Wonwoo had on black joggers and a forest green sweatshirt, and Joshua wore a form-fitting black t-shirt and grey sweatpants with a silver chain resting on his chest. You knew the second you saw him that it would be a long night for you. 

Your parents were in their room for the night, so you set up some blankets on the floor of your living room in front of your TV, the snacks laid out in front of the three of you in an organized line. 

You picked up the remote and scrolled through Netflix trying to decide what to watch. As you searched, Wonwoo picked up a blanket and lifted it up so it spread out in the air. He covered the two of you with it and you sent him a look. 

“I don’t wanna use that one.” you told him. He quirked his head in confusion. 

“This is the best blanket in your house!” he said passionately, causing you to chuckle. You shook your head no and grabbed the big down comforter that rested behind the snacks. It was a tan color and made a swishy noise when you touched it. You spread it out over yourself and Joshua, earning a jealous and disapproving glare from Wonwoo. You would feel bad if you were planning on doing something with Joshua under said blanket, but since you promised your best friend that nothing of the sort would happen, you felt no remorse. 

You came across the movie “Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark”, and since you all loved action movies, you unanimously decided to watch it. Though right as you pressed play, Joshua spoke up. 

“Oh, y/n! I put some soju in the fridge when I got here, would you grab it?” he asked kindly. You nodded with a smile and a small “Mhm!” before pausing the movie, getting up and heading to the refrigerator. For the second time that night someone was looking at your ass, and it wasn’t Wonwoo. Joshua checked you out shamelessly as you went to get the soju, his bottom lip finding its way between his teeth. Wonwoo, noticing his male friend’s wandering eyes almost immediately, reached over to smack Joshua’s arm with no restraint. 

Joshua whipped his head around with a look of surprise on his face, but said nothing as you were sitting down beside him with 3 bottles of soju in your hands.

“One for you,” you gave a bottle to Wonwoo, “one for you,” one to Joshua, “and one for me.” you smiled happily as you opened the bottle right away and brought it to your lips. As you chugged the somewhat bitter liquid, you remembered you hadn’t eaten anything since before you started packing the moving truck at 11 that morning. However, you didn’t slow your drinking. With the way Joshua looked that night, you were gonna need alcohol to get through it without breaking your promise. 

“Jeez, slow down,” Wonwoo said and gently removed the bottle from your lips, “it’s not like we’re out clubbing or something.” he scoffed. You knew he wasn’t trying to sound rude, but you figured Joshua’s presence that was initially unwanted was doing something to affect his mood. 

“I’m sorry! It’s good!” you shrugged before raising your bottle into the air, “Cheers to college?” 

Wonwoo looked at you for a moment, then a small smile crept its way onto his face. Unable to resist you, he picked up his bottle of soju and tapped it against yours with a subtle “cheers”. 

You took a sip from your bottle and looked over at Joshua. He was looking at you with pure admiration as he raised his bottle too. 

“Cheers to not knowing when I’m going to see either of you again after tonight?” he looked over at Wonwoo who was, thankfully, still smiling. The two of you said a joyful “cheers” and drank from your bottles once more. Due to your empty stomach, you were already feeling a slight buzz. You pressed play on the remote and reached forward to grab one of the many snack options that lay before you. You decided on a snack sized bag of chips before leaning back against the bottom of your couch. 

As the movie went on, you snacked, drank, and made little comments about the plot and characters to each other. You were the utmost content to be in their presence; you knew the night would go well. 

Though about an hour through the movie, you felt Joshua’s hand move to the middle of your thigh. You whipped your head in his direction, eyes wide and ready to tell him to stop, but his eyes were locked on the television screen. He must have felt his eyes on you, because he looked over and smirked at you before returning his attention to the movie. 

You just rolled your eyes. Even though Joshua’s action was small, it ignited a fire in your stomach and caused your skin to heat up. After being lonely all summer, it felt nice to feel the touch of someone who wasn’t Wonwoo trying to throw you into your pool. Admittedly, you wanted more, but you wouldn’t let yourself give in. You figured as long as he didn’t try to go any further, you weren’t doing anything wrong. You weren’t breaking your promise. 

Just as soon as you got used to his hand on you, he moved it higher. You thought he would stop, but he just kept going up and up until he neared your sensitive spot. You reached down and stopped his hand from going any further as subtly as you could. You shot him a glare, but he just sat there, smugly looking at you. You wanted to punch him in his beautiful face. 

You leaned over and put your lips right next to his ear, whispering as quietly as you could, “I told Wonwoo we wouldn’t do anything.” You looked over to see if the other male had heard you, but you could tell by his eyes that he was completely entranced by the movie. 

“And I told myself that I wouldn’t try anything, yet here we are,” he whispered back just as quietly. You kept a firm grip on his hand that was on your thigh, not wanting it to move upward any further in fear of how you might react. You thought about somehow moving up to your bedroom so you could keep your promise of not doing anything in the same room as Wonwoo, but he would know exactly what the two of you were up to anyway, so there was no point. Besides, you didn’t want to leave him alone. 

As you tried to figure out a solution, you noticed that Joshua had, at some point, taken a pillow from your couch and placed it on his lap. ‘He could have just been using it to rest his head on’ you told yourself, or maybe...

With your thoughts running amuck, you bravely removed your hand from his and reached up to try and pull the pillow off of him. Somehow he kept his hand on your thigh while still being able to hold the pillow in place. Curse those damn biceps of his. 

“Are you hard right now?” you questioned in disbelief as you continued to try and take the pillow from him. 

Joshua went to respond, but before he could, Wonwoo had paused the movie and was looking over at the two of you.

“Is he what right now?” Wonwoo asked, fuming. You must not have spoken as quietly as you thought you did... 

You and Joshua turned to look at him, anger was evident in his eyes. His fiery orbs then traveled to where Joshua’s hand rested on your thigh. Your eyes widened as you realized what he saw and you threw Joshua’s hand off of your thigh as fast as you possibly could, but you were too late. Wonwoo was standing up and heading towards the door in a very justified fit of rage. 

You scoffed and rolled your eyes at yourself. Why were you so stupid? You called your best friend’s name as you untangled yourself from your blanket and headed out the door after him. He was half way down the side walk when you ran up to catch him. 

“Wonwoo-” you said as you grabbed his arm, but he pulled away instantaneously, turning to look at you. The only other time you’d seen him this angry was when you told him about you and Joshua the first time. 

“God I can’t believe you!” he raised his voice, making you feel extraordinarily small. “You guys couldn’t go one night without being complete horndogs for each other?! You promised me y/n!” he turned around and took a few steps, looking down at the sidewalk in defeat. 

“We didn’t do anything!” you called after him, catching up to him again, “He tried to, but we didn’t.” you stated calmly. Wonwoo turned to look at you again. 

“Well it wouldn’t take a genius to know that you both wanted to, if you didn’t you wouldn’t have let him... touch you.” he cringed at the end. 

You let out a breath that you didn’t know you were holding in, not wanting to have this conversation. “Listen, I haven’t really gotten any all summer, so I guess it just felt nice to actually get some attention.” you had your arms crossed and were looking down at your feet in order to avoid eye contact, “I know I made a promise so I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to upset you.” Your words were genuine. You really did feel bad and you hoped that he could hear it in your voice. 

He sighed a long sigh before wrapping his arm around your shoulders. “Fine,” he said calmly as he walked you back up to your front door, “but I’m kicking that asshole out.” he said, causing you to let out a light chuckle. 

“Deal.”

Early the next morning, as you got ready to head to your new home, your mind wandered to last night’s events, specifically Wonwoo kicking Joshua out. He had surprised you. You thought he would get up in his face and yell at him for pulling something like that 5 feet away from him, but he simply walked inside and said “You gotta go man.” Joshua seemed just as surprised as you were, but didn’t say another word as he brushed past you and walked out of your house. 

You didn’t let your mind linger on it for too long as you felt bad for Joshua, but only slightly, and decided to focus on the exciting day ahead of you instead. 

You looked at yourself in your vanity one last time before putting your brush in your bag and heading downstairs. Wonwoo’s parents were over again, giving their son one last goodbye hug. They pulled away from him and saw you, keeping their arms open as and waving you over to them to signal they wanted to give you a hug as well. You smiled cheekily and waddled into their arms, embracing them the best you could. 

“Take care of our Wonwoo, okay?” his mother said, sounding as if she was on the verge of tears. 

“I will.” you said reassuringly as you pulled away. 

“Pffft,” Wonwoo said, the three of you turning to look at him, “I’m not the one that needs taking care of.” he joked, which provoked you to playfully hit him on the arm. However he was right, between the two of you he definitely had a better head on his shoulders, though you weren’t that far behind. 

You all headed out to the moving truck where your parents were. Your father wanted to make sure there was nothing wrong with the truck before you started driving. It was a five hour drive, so there was no room for malfunction. 

You and Wonwoo gave both your mother and father a hug and they told you how well they knew the two of you were going to do. You thanked them graciously and walked over to the passenger side of the truck to get in, but Wonwoo’s mother called out that she insisted that her son and his best friend just had to take a picture in front of the truck before leaving. You both groaned, but humored her anyway as you walked to the side of the truck that faced your families. 

Wonwoo put his arm around your shoulder, and you wrapped yours around his slender waist. You smiled widely for the picture, as you knew your parents would treasure it, and held the pose until Wonwoo’s mom said she was done. You waved and said your final goodbyes as you climbed into the passenger seat of the moving truck. You shut the door and buckled your seatbelt, Wonwoo doing the same. 

He turned the key of the truck before looking at you, excitement filling his cat-like brown eyes. 

“Let’s go!”

You pulled into the parking spot in front of your new apartment. You and Wonwoo had switched driving half way through the trip due to it’s length, and needless to say you were both exhausted. The complex had sent you the apartment key in the mail and it had been sitting in your bag since the day you got it. You took it out of one of the inner pockets and inserted it into the lock that was located in the handle. You turned it and pushed the door open, unveiling your new home for the next year. 

It smelt and looked surprisingly clean. You had only seen it once before when you toured the place a couple of months ago, but it looked exactly how you remembered it. A small living area and a kitchen were visible upon entry, and down the hallway were two bedrooms and a bathroom. It was a minimalist apartment, but it was all you needed. 

You put your bag down on the tile-covered kitchen counter and looked at Wonwoo. He was standing in the center of the space with his hands on his hips, looking around with a judgmental look on his face. 

“Well, I guess you can’t expect luxury in your first year of college.” he said matter-of-factly and you laughed at his words. 

“It’s nice,” you contested, “plenty of room for the both of us.” he nodded in agreement and sauntered over to you. 

“Now can we please get the couch in here? I need a nap.” You nodded happily and walked back out your front door. You pushed it so it was open all the way and hoped that the couch would fit through the frame. You had bought a simple grey one from Ikea the previous week and put it together in your garage. It took about 3 hours, but hey, it was a bonding experience.

Luckily, it was the last item you loaded into the moving truck. Wonwoo pulled the ramp down and you both headed toward the couch, you going to the left side and him going to the right. You lifted it at the same time and Wonwoo turned around, heading backwards down the ramp. 

“Be careful!” you called out, earning a mere grunt from your best friend as you inched toward your door. You successfully made it to your door, though you had to turn the couch a few times to get it to fit through the doorframe. 

You set it down a good 6 or 7 feet away from where a TV would potentially go and Wonwoo laid his long body down on it the second it touched the linoleum flooring. Part of you wanted to nap as well, but the other part just wanted to get the unpacking of the truck over with. So, you did your best to shake off your tiredness and headed back outside to start grabbing boxes.

If you were handling smaller boxes, you would try to take 3 or 4 at a time, but most of them were so large and heavy that you could barely carry just one. A lot of the big boxes were packed last, so you were taking your sweet time, carrying one per trip. 

After about 15 minutes of excess amounts of lifting and carrying, your arms were starting to feel like jelly. Boxes that wouldn’t have felt that heavy at the beginning of your task felt like they were full of bricks. You considered waking Wonwoo up to help, but it hadn’t been that long since he laid down, so you decided against it. 

You walked up the ramp of the truck and picked up a large rectangular box. The shape made it difficult for you to get a good grip on it, and to make matters worse, it was beyond heavy. 

You ever so slowly stepped down the ramp, being careful not to drop it. However as soon as you stepped off of the ramp, you felt your legs about to give out beneath you. Right as you were about to fall, a man appeared in front of you and placed his hand on your back. He prevented your descent onto the pavement and took the box from your hands effortlessly. 

“You okay?” he asked, concern evident in his brown eyes. He held the box between his waist and one of his long, muscular arms as he looked down at you. You took in his immaculate features. He was exceptionally tall, tan, and handsome beyond words. His hair was brown and fluffy and his shoulders were the perfect width. 

You realized how long you’d been staring at him and grew red in an instant. 

“S-sorry, I just... thank you.” you said, moving your hand up to rest your forehead in your palm. He chuckled at your flustered state. 

“It’s no problem. You look like you could use some help.” he said with a smirk, not-so-subtly looking you up and down. Your face heated up again and you suddenly became self conscious of your moving clothes that consisted of an old white t-shirt, tattered jean shorts, and some Nike tennis shoes that you’d had for a few years.

“Uh, yeah,” you chuckled nervously, “I mean I have it, but he’s kind of asleep…”  you said as you motioned toward your door. He nodded in understanding and smiled at you.

“Can I put this down inside for you?” he asked and you replied with a small yet perky ‘yeah’ and led him inside. He set the box down to the side of the door quietly before heading back outside with you.

“Lazy boyfriend?” he questioned, but you shook your head no, admittedly more aggressively than you would if someone that wasn’t as gorgeous as this generous stranger was asking.

“No! No, he’s just my best friend. We’ve known each other since we were kids.” you told him and walked back up the ramp of the truck next him. You picked up a smaller box and he picked up another one of the larger ones.

“Ah okay, good to know.” he said suavely. It sounded relatively flirty, but you didn’t want to get ahead of yourself. You were just surprised that someone as attractive as him was even interacting with you.

You made small talk as you carried boxes and various pieces of furniture to and from your apartment, Wonwoo sleeping through all of it. Him being able to continue his slumber through the moving process didn’t come as a shock to you, he was a pretty heavy sleeper.

You weren’t surprised that the man helping you was able to carry a total of 12 dresser drawers, 2 dresser frames, 2 bed frames, and 2 mattresses on top of the enormous amount of boxes he carried prior to that, but you were surprised that you were able to help him carry all of those things. Maybe it was because you just wanted to get it done, but it very well could have been because you wanted to impress this handsome, and rather intriguing stranger. 

When you were done unloading everything, you walked back to the truck. The man picked up the ramp and slid it back into the truck before sitting on the edge and patting the spot next to him. You blushed slightly and jumped to sit next to him, swinging your legs happily.

“Oh! I never asked, what’s your name?” you asked casually as you looked over at him.

“Mingyu. Kim Mingyu.” he told you. 

Mingyu, you thought, what a nice name.

“And yours?” he asked, holding his hand out.

“Y/N. Y/L/N Y/F/N.” you replied, putting your hand in his and shaking it. His grip was gentle and his hand was large and incredibly soft.

“Well Y/N,” he raised your hand to his lips and placed a tender kiss on it, “it’s lovely to meet you.” he smiled.

His action was cheesy, far cheesier than you would normally like, but given Mingyu’s insanely good looks, you had butterflies fluttering around in your stomach.

“That was a bit tacky,” you admitted, “but I liked it.”

He smiled at you, a playful glint in his eyes. “You know I thought it may be too much, but I wanted to try it out.” you nodded in understanding and sat there in a comfortable silence for a moment. When you went to speak up again, Wonwoo came stumbling around the corner of the truck. He was scratching his head, his hair messy from his nap.

“Who’s this?” he said tiredly, motioning toward Mingyu.

“Kim Mingyu.” he said and offered his hand.

“Nice,” Wonwoo said, not even doing as much as looking at the other man’s hand. “Well thanks for helping Y/N unload the truck, but we have to take it to the company to return it now.” he crossed his arms, giving Mingyu a ‘time for you to go’ look. 

“Well considering we did all the work, how about you take the truck back?” you suggested, but Wonwoo shook his head.

“It’s in your name, so you kinda have to be there.” he said matter-of-factly, causing you to groan.

“Don’t worry, it’s fine. I should probably be heading home anyway.” Mingyu said, standing up from the edge of the truck. He offered you his hand and you took it, hopping down as well.

“I’ll be in the truck...” Wonwoo mumbled, leaving you and Mingyu alone. The thought of Wonwoo backing the truck up enough to hurt Mingyu in some way crossed your mind, but you had faith that he wouldn’t.

“So...” you trailed off shyly and looked at the ground, “thank you for helping me today. Really, you didn’t have to.”

You heard him let out a breathy laugh. “It’s nothing, really. I had fun.” he stated.

“Me too,” you looked at his chest, “is there any way I can make it up to you?” you inquired. Your heart began to race as you waited for his answer.

He reached up and placed his pointer finger under your chin, tilting your head up so you were looking him in the eyes. You swallowed nervously as he looked into your eyes meaningfully.

“Promise me I’ll see you again?”

The butterflies in your stomach were worse than ever.

“Promise.”

a/n: hello!! sooo this is the first chapter of hunger.. i know some stuff may not make much sense yet, but i promise everything will come together later on in the story :) if you liked this chapter please don’t hesitate to tell me!! getting feedback really motivates me to write, so it would be lovely to hear from some of you!! if you got this far thank you so much for reading & i’ll have the next chapter posted ASAP! - j💗

[malecsecretsanta]

Merry Christmas ninwrites!

For @ninwrites. I was so thrilled to get you for Secret Santa this year as your Malec fics are some of the very first that I ever read when I fell into Shadowhunters way back in 2016. You gave me so many great prompts this year that I really struggled deciding what to write, especially because I know we share so many common interests! Part of me wanted to write a sweeping sci-fi, and another part of me wanted to write a clever procedural, and then I know how much you love superheroes and I also love superheroes, so that could've easily happened ...

But in the end, I decided to strip everything down and write a story about second chances. About seemingly unrequited yearning and human connection and liminal spaces and time unravelling backwards and friends-to-almost lovers-to-strangers until serendipity intervenes. Of course, I went drastically over the word limit but this happens every year so I am no longer surprised.

Merry Christmas! I hope you enjoy this little microcosm of a story!

Tags: malec | rated: t | extended oneshot | human AU, roadtrip, friends-to-lovers-to-strangers-to-lovers, hurt/comfort, surrealism

Read on AO3

*****

saudade in the key of highways

saudade

/saʊˈdɑːdə/

noun

(especially with reference to songs or poetry) a deep emotional state of nostalgic or profound melancholic longing for an absent something or someone that one cares for and/or loves. Moreover, it often carries a repressed knowledge that the object of longing might never be had again. It is the recollection of feelings, experiences, places, or events that once brought excitement, pleasure, and well-being, which now trigger the senses and make one experience the pain of separation from those joyous sensations. However it acknowledges that to long for the past would detract from the excitement you feel towards the future.

"as we fall / into the common, suspended disbelief of love, you ask / will I still be / here tomorrow, next week, tonight you ask am I really here."

— Olga Broumas, Beginning with O; “Bitterness”

first chord

There is rhythm to this loneliness.1

The endless darkness. Passing headlights; the hum of the engine; the splutter of the heater fighting against the cold that claws and scratches at the windshield. The highway, deserted, is like a strange and eerie dream that travels on and on and never ends.

The rental car: new. Nondescript in its newness. Two hands on the wheel; the faded hum of the radio, a soft accompaniment to the bright beam of the headlights. The car has a cassette player, but no cassettes. It never has any cassettes.

There’s a gas station like a beacon in the distance: a faint glow of sodium yellow that slinks along the horizon but never draws closer, spilling light like fuel out across the open fields.

Alec prefers driving at night. There is never any need to ask for directions because he never passes anyone he could ask for directions; he might be the only car he’s seen in fifty miles.

The radio crackles, then laughs, ‘ we know it’s only November but nothing gets us in the mood for Christmas like -’  

Almost immediately, the signal drops, but the interluding white noise is familiar too. It fills the silence with unimportance, an invisible presence in the passenger seat who doesn’t require conversation or stops to stretch their legs, but is company enough for long drives across the country.

Moments on the road are filled like this: a hundred similar soundtracks for a hundred indistinct highways, their miles wearing down the tread on Alec’s tires and the lines of Alec’s palms, where he grips the steering wheel for hours without a break, in much the same way.

‘So if you’re listening at home, or you’re stuck on a late-night shift, or if you’re driving cross-country and need a pick-me-up, give us a ring and tell us about your favourite ever Christmas song!’ says the radio. ‘But to get us started, we have Marnie from Portland on line one -’

Alec punches the buttons on the radio until he finds a classic rock station. He taps the steering wheel, not to the beat of the song, but to dispel some of the restless energy that tingles in his fingertips.

A sign on the roadside passes him by at high speed; it tells him that he’s a hundred miles from nowhere in particular - but at the last intersection, a similar sign told him he was a hundred-and-one, and now he’s acutely aware of creeping ever closer to his destination.

It’s a destination he’s not sure he wants to reach. A destination he calls home.

There is rhythm to this loneliness . Alec is used to it: the anxious churning of his stomach, the longing for the road to continue beyond its end; the endless, perpetual, and pointless journey of back-and-forths.

One: drive across the width of the country. Indiana, Iowa, Nebraska, Oregon, again and again. A country of ochre-yellow wheat; plains and flatlands; tractors abandoned on the roadside.

Two: report to the local field office, where he’s given a desk too small for his long legs and a computer he doesn’t have a password to. Talk to the county sheriff who snaps at him, ‘ the FBI has no business out here, we can handle this on our own ,’ and then to the man who refuses to open his door wide enough for Alec to get a good look at his face, but whose eyes skip over Alec’s badge and land on the gun on his hip and he thinks the same thing as the sheriff.  

Three: avert his eyes from the body lying on the steel table in the morgue. Pretend that federal intervention was warranted, even though he knows this case is another crime of opportunity and the sheriff was right. The sheriff is always right. ‘ Waste of the FBI’s time, if you ask me. ’

Four: write up another field report that uses all the same words as the one before. Mail it back to Washington. Hopefully it will reach the Assistant Director before he does.

Then, five, begin the drive home.

Rinse. Repeat. Repeat again. Avoid his mother’s calls when he stops for the night at an interstate motel. Make excuses not to see his father when he’s in town. Pretend like he’s not bothered missing out on another promotion, because that would mean moving to a desk job and he likes being out in the field.

He likes driving. This is the mantra he repeats in his head rather than listening to the song on the radio.

There is rhythm to this loneliness .

The car’s engine rumbles on an empty stomach and Alec glances down at the fuel meter, ticking ever closer to the red with each passing and uncountable mile. The gas station in the distance begins to draw closer, finally allowing Alec to catch up, as its cluster of lights shift and reform into the familiar shape of civilisation.

Alec’s turn signal lights up the immediate stretch of highway with flashing orange and a click-click-click sound in the front seat of the car. There’s no-one behind him and no-one ahead of him, but he slows almost to a stop as he eases the car off the road and onto the crunch of hard-packed sand.

A single streetlamp overlooks the highway, casting a pool of unsettled yellow-white light across a phone booth that stands slanted upon the roadside. The gas station lingers a little further back: a small, stout building with a flat roof and a pile of browning-Christmas trees propped up out front. Its two gas pumps advertise diesel at a discounted price, but one of them appears to be out of order.

Beside the gas station, there is a diner; it’s old and clapped-out and almost empty at this time of night, but the bright light beaming through its windows in all directions is painful to look at. The movement of people inside is like a scene playing out in an old movie, stuck on repeat over and over again, the tape unable to skip forward. A repeated moment, and one which Alec has played his part in too many times to count.

Again, his stomach rumbles loudly and he guides the car to a stop before pulling up the handbrake.

He’s alone at the pumps. As he steps out of the car, the silence greets him; the wind falls and the road is swallowed up behind him by an encroaching night, compressing the universe into a single point. A single flicker in time.

Alec retrieves his service weapon from the glove box and clips it onto his belt, pats his chest for his badge tucked into his breast pocket, before drawing his overcoat tight around him. He won’t linger out here, not when it feels like something just out of sight is holding its breath and shifting in and out of bounds; he’s far too afraid of falling back into the passage of time.

Instead, he turns towards the diner; the bell above the door jingles the same as it always does. The TV in the corner is on mute but hums with static. The sound of plates clattering in the kitchen is enough to drown out his shoes on the chequered floor as the waitress looks up at him but doesn’t say hello.

Corner booths are best placed for people-watching and people-hiding and Alec, in his non-descript suit that matches his non-descript car, sinks onto the squeaky red-leather bench without being seen at all. He sighs heavily, rolling the stiffness out of his shoulder that has been bothering him for the last fifty miles.

There are scuffs on the leather and old coffee stains on the table, but he fishes his keys, wallet, and badge out of his pocket and tosses them on top of the menu; he already knows what he’s going to order and there’s no need to look. He’s been craving something greasy since he left Portland this morning, fuelled only by a cup of filter coffee from the machine in the motel lobby.  

Alec grinds the heels of his palms into his eyes, a soft groan catching in his throat. In the same moment, the lights overhead seem to flicker, although not for long. Must be a short circuit. The waitress rubbing down the bar doesn’t look up, focused too intently on a coffee-ring stain that isn’t really there.

Diners late at night are strange places. Liminal places. Places of beginnings and endings and threshold moments and tangled journeys, forever caught in that feeling of arriving or departing - but the longer one lingers, the more reality begins to distort.

Alec is not alone in the diner, but the diner is alone in the night that laps and recedes against the windows that look out over the parking lot. Beyond, the gas station hums with a familiar argon sound, bright and electric and not-quite-right in the dark and, behind that, the edge of the highway outlines this displaced moment.

There is nothing else. Alec’s eyes haven’t adjusted to the dark, and for all he knows of the endless fields of wheat that stretch out to the horizon, he cannot see them. The bell above the door chimes again and a young couple slips into the diner, their arms slung low around each other’s waists, giggling as they take up two stools against the bar. Three seats down from them, an old man in a trucker hat and a Chicago Bulls’ jersey is frowning at the TV above his head, trying to lip-read the late-night news anchor because there are no subtitles. In the far corner of the diner, a group of teenagers are tossing fries at each other and one of them makes a milkshake bullseye.

Alec doesn’t know why these people are here, in the middle of a late-night nowhere. He can’t remember the name of the last town he passed through, but it wasn’t more than a handful of houses and a couple of telephone poles kept upright by plywood and nails.

He glances back out at the parking lot, but his rental is the only car there. Strange.  

Strange, but not unexpected. He has learned not to question it, these fragments of unaligned reality, because soon enough he’ll be on his way again, a burger in his belly and bacon grease smeared across the corner of his mouth, and this diner will cease to exist as soon as he’s out of sight and over the ridge of the highway.

Perhaps it will appear again somewhere else. Perhaps he will come across this place again, another mile or two down the road, inhabited by a different group of late-night travellers who will watch him from the corners of their eyes but not say a word, because a lone man in a cheap suit is no more out of place here than they are at two in the morning.

The waitress brings over his burger and a side of fries, setting a mug down in front of him and filling it up with coffee from her pot. Alec nods at her in thanks and she blows a bubble of gum that pops across her mouth and sticks to her teeth, before she retreats behind the register and starts again on that stain.

Alec doesn’t waste any time tucking a napkin into his shirt collar. His tie is cheap and he doesn’t really care if he ruins it; there’s a spare in the bag in the trunk of his car anyway. He takes a large swig of coffee, and then a bite out of his burger, and ketchup and burger juice leak out through his fingers, splattering on the paper wrapper that covers his plate.

It tastes the same as it always does. His stomach growls loudly as he takes another bite and ketchup drips down his thumb.

Movement through the window catches his eye. He looks up and there, on the very edge of the light emanating from the gas station, is a man in the phonebooth next to the road. His back is to Alec but he’s gesturing wildly as he talks into the receiver, and the wind, now returned, billows through his long woollen coat.

A slice of tomato falls out of Alec’s burger with a distinct plop . He’s not sure why the man draws his attention, but Alec has long since learned to trust his gut - it’s an invaluable skill to have in the Bureau , his father would say. It will get you places. It will make people see you as someone they can trust to watch their back. You can’t buy that sort of loyalty, Alec.

The man is tall. He has dark hair and long legs and he grips the edge of the phonebooth with his free hand. He seems to be having a very intense conversation, unlike the hum of background noise that surrounds Alec now.

The man is an anomaly. He is not someone Alec has seen at a diner before - not a truant teenager or a trucker or a pair of lovers on a late-night tryst - and he doesn’t fit the narrative.

Alec wolfs down the rest of his burger, barely pausing for breath, and washes it down with a swig of coffee that burns slightly too hot. He leaves his fries untouched and throws down a twenty dollar bill, stuffing his badge and wallet into his pockets as he makes for the door.

The bell jingles a third time. Alec wipes the back of his hand across his mouth as he steps out into the cold, no doubt smearing ketchup across his chin. He knows his suit is creased and his shirt is rumpled from the drive, his hair upswept by the sudden gust of wind that threatens to knock him off his feet, and he can almost hear Jace laughing in his ear, alright, G-Man?

Alec passes by his car and heads straight for the phonebooth, but the closer he gets, the more he can hear of the man’s one-sided conversation.

“And there’s no way you can get a guy out here tonight?” the man is saying. “I can pay extra for the trouble. Uh-huh. Yes. Yes, it’s pretty urgent.”

Alec draws to a stop when the length of his shadow steps upon the backs of the man’s shoes. He shoves his hands into his pockets so as to appear as unthreatening as possible when the man inevitably turns around, but -

“I don’t see how a service can advertise itself as 24-hour and then not be available in an emergency,” the man says into the phone. He sounds stressed; there’s something about the cadence of his voice that rumbles through Alec’s chest and draws the hair on the back of his neck up on end. Something decades-old familiar. “The least you can do is give me the number for another rental service. A cab company. Something. Anything .”

The man turns away from the phonebooth, catching sight of Alec from the corner of his eye and holding up a finger as if to say hold on a minute , but he stops, whatever words on his tongue extinguished into roadside dust.

Alec’s eyes widen. He knows this man.

Fuck. He more than knows this man. He remembers the first time they met, the firm confidence of his handshake, the bright colours of his shirt, the way Alec thought, at the time, this man is going to change you .

It’s Magnus. Magnus Bane.

Alec never expected to see Magnus again. Not since -

Well, not since then .

“Magnus,” says Alec, like an exhale. And God , his mouth has not formed that name in years; he’s heard it, sometimes, inside his memories, but never beyond. “What are you -”

Magnus stares at him in disbelief, and Alec can hear the man on the other end of the phone line asking hey, are you still there? Hello? where Magnus holds the receiver away from his ear.

Something doesn’t make sense here, but Alec can’t put his finger on it. Not once has he met someone at a diner who he recognises. They’re all meant to be faceless people; people he could meet again a hundred times and still not recognise.

But Alec would recognise Magnus Bane with his eyes closed. It’s been years, and yet the feeling that floods his chest now, is -

An ache.

“Yes, sorry,” Magnus says suddenly, half-turning back to this phone call. His disbelief becomes a scowl. “No, it’s fine. I’ll call them myself. Thank you. Okay. Goodnight.”

The man on the other end of the line hangs up first and the dial tone echoes in the night for a moment, and then another, and then another.

Alec swallows thickly. He draws his hands out of his pockets and folds them behind his back, clenching his fingers in a tight grip where they can’t be seen.

Carefully, Magnus sets the phone down inside the phonebooth, and turns back to Alec, and then - he smiles.

“Alexander Lightwood,” he says, with a shake of his head. His smile grows broad, but it doesn’t reach his eyes. “God, what are the chances? Any other night, and I’d think this was a figment of my imagination, but with the way today’s been going, I-” He stops himself and takes a half-step forward. “I haven’t seen you since -”

“Since before Quantico,” Alec interrupts. He knows he’s staring but he can’t help it. “Ten years. Yeah.”

Ten years, three months, and twenty one days. Alec has been counting. If he looked down at his watch, he would know the amount of time that has passed to the minute, to the second, in fact, but he’s not about to admit to that.

He never expected to see Magnus again, and yet -

He hoped.  

“Ten years, really?” Magnus remarks, folding his arms across his chest. Alec follows the movement with his eyes. “Yes, I suppose it must be. 1985, wasn’t it? Christ, that makes me feel old.”

He looks Alec up and down, focusing on Alec’s dust-scuffed shoes, and then on the gun that sits snug on his hip. The corner of his mouth lifts, and his smile becomes a little more genuine.

“I see it’s Special Agent Lightwood now, though. Congratulations.”

“Alec’s still fine,” Alec says quickly. “I mean - you can still call me Alec. That’s fine.”

“Alec,” says Magnus, sounding it out. He’s always held Alec’s name with a special sort of care, but now, he says it like he’s saying it for the very first time. “Alexander.”

Alec doesn’t know what to say. He stares at Magnus, at the space between them that is too large for strangers who have just met, and which belongs only to two people who once knew each other well.

Serendipity laughs at Alec now; it sounds like the dull hum of neon light in a desert. It sounds like a hundred unanswered phone calls stretching back years.

“Alec -?”

“Sorry, this is - this is weird, I’m being weird,” Alec blurts. “I didn’t, uh - I really didn’t expect to see you, especially - especially here . I mean-” He squeezes his fingers tightly behind his back to stop himself from talking with his hands. “What, uh, what are you doing out here? I thought you still lived in L.A.?”

Magnus rolls his eyes. “Where to start?” he says softly, “I had some car trouble. The tire blew like a mile back and I swerved off the road and hit the fence. It won’t start now, which is something of a mild nuisance - because apparently we’re so deep in the ass-end of nowhere that I can’t get a mechanic to look at it until tomorrow afternoon at the earliest - but not as much of a nuisance as the meeting I will definitely miss if I’m stranded out here for the next God-forsaken twenty-four hours.”

Alec’s eyes flick to the highway, as if he might be able to see a mile into the distance and find the 1970 Dodge Challenger that Magnus had, far too many years ago and long-since sold for scrap, wrecked upon the roadside. It is, of course, too dark to see much of anything.

“I don’t even know if I’ll be able to call a cab out here,” Magnus continues, his mouth drawn down into a frown. “And I’m far too old to be hitch-hiking. The thrill of climbing into a potential serial killer’s car lost its appeal some decades ago.” With a brush of his fingers, he flicks away hair from his temple and huffs. “I suppose if I started walking now, I might reach Salt Lake by, I don’t know, Friday morning at best.”

Alec’s eyes snap back to Magnus. “You’re heading East?” he asks, far too eagerly. “Are you coming home?”

Something minute pinches in Magnus’ expression at that word. Home . Alec doesn’t miss it.

Magnus shakes his head.

“No,” he says, and he looks away, but there’s nothing there to pretend to be looking at. “No, not quite. If I had the time to drop by and see everyone, I would, but - I’m due in Baltimore in four days for a meeting with our investors.” He smiles wryly to himself. “And I thought it would be, oh, I don’t know, meditative or something equally asinine to make the drive across the country myself, rather than fly. See the sights. Enjoy being off-grid. Which, in hindsight, was very, very stupid.”

“What are you gonna do?”

Magnus shrugs. “Wait, I suppose. There’s not much else I can do. My cell phone is out of battery and I used up the last of my change on the payphone, so it looks like I’m stuck here until tomorrow.”

“Oh,” Alec says awkwardly.

“Yeah,” agrees Magnus.

In the glow of the gas station, reality trembles, hollowing out the shadows on Magnus’ face and flickering across the back of Alec’s knuckles. The motion of coming and going calls Alec back to the road and he glances back at his rental car.

It makes sense to offer Magnus a lift. Alec is heading in that direction, and he has an empty passenger seat and a working heater in the car, and a Bureau credit card in his back pocket.

It makes sense, and yet, he still hesitates.

“Well,” Magnus announces, “I don’t want to keep you. I might as well see what sort of coffee this place has on offer if I’m to be stuck here until tomorrow. I don’t suppose I could interest you in a drink before you go -”

“I’m actually on my way back to D.C.,” Alec says, thumbing over his shoulder at the car. He wets his lower lip with his tongue. “Baltimore’s not that far of a detour, so I, uh. I could give you a lift. If you want.”

“If I want?” Magnus repeats.

Alec swallows and nods. “If you want.”

Magnus’ face softens and he smiles at Alec. “Well, I’m not going to say no, am I? Although I don’t think I’m going to get my deposit back on my car.”

He looks over Alec’s shoulder at the rental. His expression changes, and if Alec were a kind stranger offering a ride to a man in trouble in the middle of the night, perhaps he wouldn’t notice.

But they’re not strangers, and in Magnus’ eyes, there is something Alec can’t quite place. It seems a little wistful. A little sad.

He says, “I would like that very much, Agent Lightwood.”

interlude

It’s 1985 and a man stands on the edge of the sidewalk, watching as a car turns right at the end of the street and disappears. He waits, half-expecting it to come back, circling around the block and pulling up beside him, the window already rolled down, but it doesn’t.

Ten years pass, and it doesn’t, and the man has to live with it.

Empty spaces and hands on the steering wheel and loneliness and want . In the end, that’s what everything boils down to.

I want you to come back. I want to see you again. I wanted you to stay.  

This is the rhythm Alec knows well, played out in the key of highways.

I want something I still don’t have a name for.

second chord

The soundtrack to night-driving is a composition of three things: the car heater as it puffs out warm air; the rental wheezing in the cold, coughing and spluttering with seasonal flu; and the deep stretch of silence.

Usually, Alec welcomes the silence.  

In the passenger seat, Magnus shrugs out of his overcoat and tosses it into the backseat, scrubbing his hands together in front of his mouth as he wills circulation back into his fingers. His shirt, open at the throat, looks thin and flimsy and hardly warm enough for a Midwest winter, but the soft shimmer of the satin is devoid of the harsh shadows that cut across Alec’s chest like the black line of a seatbelt.

Alec forces himself to look away. Keep your eyes on the road, he tells himself. And think of something to say before he thinks you’ve forgotten how to talk entirely. He fiddles with the dial on the radio until he finds the company of static, but it morphs all too quickly into Wham!’s Last Christmas .

Alec grumbles below his breath.

“Still a Grinch, I see,” Magnus says with a smirk. “Where’s your festive cheer?”

Alec returns both his hands to the wheel. “It’s too early for Christmas songs,” he replies, “Thanksgiving was literally three days ago and it’s not even December yet.”

“Are you saying the dulcet tones of George Michael don’t do it for you?”

“I prefer Mariah Carey,” Alec mutters. It makes Magnus laugh.

Alec glances at him from the corner of his eye as Magnus begins tapping his finger to the beat of the song against the door handle.

Alec, too, feels restless, but in a different way. He can’t stop looking, stealing glances at Magnus in the rearview mirror. Perhaps he is a trick of the light. Maybe Alec has been driving too long without a break and now he’s seeing people from his past who shouldn’t be here - but are.

Nothing that happens on the road is real, after all.

He digs his fingernail into the skin of his thumb and begins picking.

He’s lived this moment before; he knows he has. Him and Magnus alone in the front seat of a car and Alec’s tongue heavy in his mouth with all the things he doesn’t know how to say, and all the things he couldn’t say ten years ago, because he wasn’t brave enough then.

Hell, he’s hardly brave enough now. He wonders if Magnus remembers any of it.

The space between them is too large for small talk. Conversations that begin with All I Want For Christmas Is You is overrated though, now that you mention it , or so, how is your mother?, or even do you remember the last day we saw each other? are not enough to bridge the gap carved out by a decade of silence.

The thought stretches Alec so painfully thin. He picks at his thumbnail until it begins to sting, then winces, and draws it to his mouth to soothe it with his tongue.

“So,” Magnus begins, in the same instance. He’s still drumming his fingers to the beat of the radio, but now he’s slightly out of time. “What are you doing all the way out here in Idaho?”

Alec could laugh. “I was in Portland,” he says, “Local P.D. request FBI consultation on a case, so. Yeah. Turned out they didn’t need my help.”

“And they made you drive all the way out there?” Magnus asks, and Alec nods. “Sounds grim.” He stops tapping and runs his index finger across the dark polish on his thumb in thought. “Are you still living at home?”

Alec clenches his hands on the steering wheel. “No, I - I moved,” he says. “Uh, not long after I graduated the Academy, actually, but only to D.C.”

“Ah,” Magnus remarks. He pauses for a moment long enough to become awkward. “Still close enough to see your mom on the weekends, though.”

Alec nods again. Close enough , yes , but he doesn’t say it out loud. Close enough for New England ghosts to haunt every intersection between the city and his parents’ big white house in the country whenever he makes the drive upstate.

In ten years, he’s barely moved fifty miles, and Magnus -

Well. The same cannot be said for Magnus.  

Magnus clears his throat, louder than the hum of the radio. “And your parents?” he asks. “Isabelle?” He scans the horizon, fixed on the markings in the road disappearing beneath the wheels of the car. “How are they? Well, I hope?”

“Same as always,” Alec shrugs. “Overbearing. Dad’s retired now, and Iz moved to New York for work last year. Max is in college, so mom’s started questioning him about his life choices instead of mine.”

“Only took thirty-five years,” Magnus chuckles. “How is your mom? Are you seeing them for the holidays?”

Alec makes a noise that amounts to yeah, something like that .

What he doesn’t say is this: his parents’ marriage has been strained a while now - not as many years as Magnus has been gone, but close enough - and Alec is thirty years too old to be used as ammunition, or worse, a bartering tool in a messy ending. The divorce is only a matter of time now.

If only the road continued on forever, he would not have to go back home for the holidays. He wouldn’t have to sit through another Christmas of icy silences and thinly-veiled insults and his mother trying to butter him up while his father does the same to Isabelle. He wouldn’t have to lie awake in his childhood bedroom and listen to his parents screaming at each other downstairs, all the while wishing for the tap-tap-tap of pebbles thrown against his window, begging for it to be open.

A lot has changed since Magnus last saw him, and Alec didn’t have to move across the country for that.

A lot has changed since Alec stood on the sidewalk and watched Magnus’ car turn the corner at the end of the street for the very last time and not come back.

A semi-truck appears in the distance: first, as a pin-prick of light, and then as two beams of headlights striking the highway and the growl of its engine. The whole car rumbles and Alec grips tight to the steering wheel as the headlights blind him and shapes dance across his eyes. The light bleaches through Magnus’ dark hair and streaks across the skin visible beneath the open collar of his shirt; he holds his hand over his brow and winces.

The truck is thunder: a brief jolt and a flash, and then it’s gone, an aftershock of red light disappearing in the rearview mirror.

For a while, there is only silence. A mile, maybe more. Long past the truck vanishing from view, its light fading into the dark; and it’s the sort of silence that is thick and heavy and awkward.

At the five mile mark, Magnus inhales and turns in his seat to look at Alec.

“So, the FBI,” he says, like he has an obligation to fill the quiet, because letting it stew is somehow worse. “What’s that like? Maryse must be proud.”

“Yeah,” Alec mumbles. “She is.”

“It suits you, you know? Alec Lightwood, Special Agent. Not that I didn’t always know that it would.”

Alec’s mouth twitches, a smile in another lifetime. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

Magnus gestures with his hand. There are rings on his fingers that fail to catch the thin and distant light, but his fingers, long and slender, draw focus.

“You’re smart. Logical. Far too severe for your own good, which I imagine serves you well in law enforcement. You’ve always had a keen sense of justice,” he explains. His voice softens. “You know I’ve always thought that about you.”

Alec swallows thickly. “Magnus, you don’t have to -”

“And besides,” Magnus interrupts. “I always knew you’d look good in a suit.”

Alec looks down at himself. “What, even a suit off the rack?”

“Well, I didn’t want to say anything.”

Shakily, Alec laughs under his breath, but he relaxes his hands on the wheel and his knuckles fade from white back to pink. He lets the tense line in his shoulders fall flat.

“I don’t really have anyone to give me advice on what I should be wearing anymore,” he admits. “Or what colour ties match my -”

“Complexion?”

“Yeah. That.”

“Green. It’s dark green,” Magnus says. He smiles to himself, amused by something far back in time. “Do you remember that time when-”

“Yes,” Alec says. Yes, of course I remember. I haven’t forgotten a single thing . “Yeah. Yeah, I do. I still have that tie, the one you picked out for me that Christmas.”

“And the pocket square? They were a matching set -”

“Still the only pocket square I own,” says Alec.  

Magnus chuckles to himself, swiping his thumb across his lower lip in thought. The nostalgia becomes him; his expression softens with the memory of something fond.

The same cannot be said for Alec.

If only pocket squares could be metaphors for other things. For years gone by and silences that were once not this awkward and filled with jilted conversation. Or for a place once frequented but now abandoned; or a past that Alec still calls his now .

Alec is too clumsy at this; he doesn’t know how to step back into a space once occupied with ease, making smalltalk and laughing about Christmases in 1979 as if they were yesterday and they haven’t gone ten years without talking.

He’s not like Magnus; he couldn’t drop everything and leave it all behind. He didn’t get to move on. He had nowhere to go, trapped in this endless back-and-forth of travelling, always returning to the very same place once departed.  

interlude

On a postcard never sent:

What is worse: the separation, or the place where we will meet again, afterwards, that looks and feels like nowhere and is no longer familiar?

I miss you. I am afraid that I will no longer know you when I see you again.

third chord

Two motel room doors. Two identical rooms with identical twin beds and box-set TVs with only five channels and VCRs that don’t really work. Two sets of keys, although the weight of the fob in Alec’s hand feels more like brass than cheap white plastic.

He’s been here before: a shared dorm room, long, long ago. And then, after that, two houses on the same suburban street, sharing the same zip code. And then, finally, two cities, half a world apart.

He and Magnus, half a lifetime spent apart.

Alec did not notice the growing distance until it was too late; in hindsight, he’s not sure if that hurts more or less, to be blindsided by a farawayness he never saw coming. But here, now, there’s five-and-a-half feet of space between his shoulder and Magnus’, standing in front of their respective motel room doors, and happenstance has crossed their lines again.

Alec looks down at the key in his hand and then back up.

Beside him, Magnus casts a long and lonely shadow, thin and black as it stretches back into the dark. The wind ruffles his hair and plunders the pockets of his coat in an act of midnight robbery. The cold has chapped his lips already and he grumbles below his breath as he jams his key into the lock with frost-bitten fingers.

Alec doesn’t mean to be looking, but he is. He’s not sure he’s looked away since Magnus stepped out of that phone booth, as if slipping through a gap in time connecting two unrelated places that somehow ended up overlapped.

Magnus’ door clicks and he pushes it open with a soft, “aha!”, flipping on the light inside. The light tumbles out of the room - cheap, yellow, glaring - and Magnus bends down to grab his bag from his feet.

He pauses, then, in his open doorway.

“Well, then,” he says, looking at Alec with a half smile. “Until tomorrow, I suppose?”

“Yeah,” says Alec. He clenches the key in his palm until the metal digs into his fingers. If Magnus notices, he doesn’t let on. “Listen, Magnus. About what happened, when you left-”

“I’m glad, you know,” Magnus interrupts. “For whatever serendipitous force brought you to that gas station tonight. It’s good to see you. I mean it.”

“It’s good to see you too,” Alec replies. “I didn’t think - I didn’t think that day was going to be goodbye. I didn’t realise. If I’d known, Magnus ...”

“I didn’t either,” replies Magnus. His voice becomes softer. His eyes, too. Apologetic in a way that might take Alec years to unravel - or seconds. “But these things happen. You can’t stay stuck in one place forever, Agent Lightwood.”

Alec nods stiffly but says nothing.

Magnus offers him another smile, leaning heavily on his door frame.

“Alexander?” he asks, as if oblivious.

Alec squeezes the key tighter in his hand. “Yeah?”

A pause, then. Deliberate and weighted, and for a moment, Alec wonders if Magnus is going to answer the question that hasn’t been asked.

(Do you remember the day you left?)

(Let’s not talk about it. Let’s not talk. It’s in the past and we’re both different people now.)

But, instead:

“I’ll see you in the morning, Alec,” he says. “Goodnight. And thank you, again.”

The door closes and the light vanishes, and Alec is left suddenly in the darkness, gazing at the space once occupied. The night around him is cold. A whisper sets heavily upon his tongue but goes unspoken.

Everything always goes unspoken.

interlude

Somewhere between here and 1985, there is a man who doesn’t regret letting his feelings go unsaid. There is a man who moved on with his life; a man who doesn’t live in a moment years ago, with someone else’s hand playing idly in his hair.

There is a man who meets an old friend at a gas station in rural Idaho and it doesn’t hurt in a way he can’t ever explain.

Alec wishes that he knew him.

fourth chord

It’s always night, on the road.

As with endless highways and endless diners, other things begin to repeat themselves too. Alec prefers driving at night. It’s quiet; he can hear himself think; he can run red lights without being pulled over, without anybody in the world seeing him at all. He affords himself this one little thrill, the knowledge that the power to swerve off the road is clenched in his fists.

A fuel tanker passes the car on the opposite side of the highway, the sound of its exhaust like a fog horn parting thick cloud; for a moment, the low hum of the radio is wiped from existence. Alec eases the car over into the middle of the lane with the barest adjustment of the wheel, avoiding the spray of wet grit kicked up by the truck’s wheel arches. As the rumble fades, the melody of late-night jazz begins anew.

He glances sideways at Magnus in the passenger seat. His temple rests against the window and his eyes are closed but he’s not asleep; Alec can tell by the way he’s drawing his thumb in tiny concentric circles against his index finger again, as if deep in thought.

It was always a tell of his.

There is so much of him that hasn’t changed. So much of him that has crossed the threshold from Alec’s memory and fanned out into reality, and Alec is not quite sure where it all meets and blends together. Magnus is half a stranger and half a man ten years younger than he is now, with expensive clothes and the same aftershave and a twinkle in his eye and a strange, unspoken grief on his face whenever he thinks Alec isn’t looking.

But Alec is always looking.

There are memories in the footwell and on the dashboard and in the usually-unoccupied passenger seat of his rental car. Memories that Alec often revisits on other long and inconsequential journeys as a way to pass the time as the odometer climbs.

Magnus is always the main feature of those memories.

It’s 1978 and Alec is a junior in college and Magnus is stumbling into a lecture hall half-an-hour late with a thermos in his hand. He’s wearing the shortest shorts Alec has ever seen, and he’s slumping into the seat next to Alec, whispering in Alec’s ear that he’s so hungover he’s about to revisit Thanksgiving dinner.

Then, it’s 1981 and Magnus is trading secrets with Isabelle at a drive-in movie theater while Alec buys the popcorn; and he’s flattering Maryse’s cooking while leant across the kitchen island, chin in his hand; and he’s slamming the door to his and Alec’s shared dorm, before sneaking back in an hour later, only to find Alec waiting up for him with an apology at the ready.

It’s 1982 and he’s laughing. He’s giving Alec the grand tour of his mother’s home, three streets down from the house where Alec’s parents live. I can’t believe it took moving away to college for us to meet , he says to Alec. We’ve lived this close for so long and we didn’t even know.

It’s 1984 and he’s curling his hand over the back of Alec’s neck, feeling out the knobs in Alec’s spine. His breath is warm against Alec’s jaw as he whispers gentle words into Alec’s ear.

It’s 1985 and he’s packing up his car for the very last time.

Yesterday is tangled in Magnus’ hair. Memories twist time out of alignment and rearrange it into something, and someone, that Alec does not recognise. Ahead of them, in the distance, on the horizon, is a year from a decade ago.  

But here in the car, moonlight makes crosses on Magnus’ body. He is beautiful, still. Older, more refined, more improbable , but the composition of him is something that makes Alec’s heart ache as if he’s eighteen again and they’ve only just met.

The mole above his eyebrow is too familiar.

The lines around his eyes that appeared only after his mother passed. Alec remembers that summer well. He remembers listening to Magnus cry as he stood in Magnus’ kitchen doing the dishes that had been neglected for a week.

The map of his hands. A journey that Alec never took but longed for. Longed for and left to gather dust, like an atlas tucked away on the highest shelf of a bookcase.

In the dark, Magnus cracks open one eye, as if aware of being scrutinised. Alec turns his attention back to the road, but it is too late. He’s been caught.

“What is it?” Magnus asks, and his voice is smooth and rich and fills the car like music, even so shortly after waking. “Are we out of gas already?”

“No,” says Alec. “We’ll be fine for a while.”

“Hungry, then? We could stop for a late dinner. Or early breakfast. I’m not entirely sure what time it is, but I can always eat.”

Alec doesn’t reply, but he presses his mouth into a thin line.

Magnus’ eyes narrow. “What is it?”

“What’s what?”

Magnus scoffs. “You’ve always been many things, Alec, but able to lie to me is not one of them.” He laughs a little. “You think I’ve forgotten the look on your face when you’re trying not to spill your heart?”

No , Alec thinks. No, of course you haven’t. You should’ve, but you haven’t. You should’ve, because then at least one of us could say they moved on.

Alec exhales through his nose and flexes his fingers on the steering wheel. He glances in the rearview mirror, but there’s nothing behind them for miles. Much like pocket squares, perhaps that is a metaphor too.

“You never called,” he says, trying to sound casual.

Immediately, Magnus tenses. He shifts in his seat and sits up a little straighter, angling himself to look at Alec.

“I did,” he says, “At the start. You never answered.”

“You were in L.A. The time zones -”

“Oh, come on,” Magnus laughs. “You could’ve called me, you had my number. I know you did, because I wrote it down for you and left it on your bedside table, the day I moved.”

Alec squeezes his eyes closed; for a brief moment of respite, the road ahead of him vanishes. He thinks about letting go of the wheel at 90 miles per hour - not because he wants to, but because the thought of picking up the phone and hearing Magnus’ voice on the other end was always something that felt like driving his car into a ditch.

It’s the fear of impact. It’s the old hurt of being abandoned. It’s the longing to have run after Magnus’ car and asked to go with him that day in 1985. It’s all such a blur. Alec cannot sift between it all.

Magnus sighs heavily, knocking his head back against the seat. He looks at Alec from the corner of his eye and studies him at length.

“Maybe we should stop,” he says slowly. “The next town, find a diner. Get some food.”

“It’s fine. I’d prefer to keep driving,” Alec says, “If we keep stopping, you won’t make your meeting in time.”

Magnus frowns.

You clearly want to talk about it , Alec imagines him saying. Evidently, there are things that went unsaid.  

Magnus says none of those things. His phone begins to ring and it shatters the strange tension in the front seat, splitting it like a sudden burst of lightning. Magnus twists around and reaches into the backseat, rummaging through his bag. He returns with a cellphone in his hand, pulling out the antenna and flipping it open.

He meets Alec’s eyes in the rearview mirror as he presses it to his ear.

“Magnus, speaking.”

Magnus listens to the voice on the other end of the line and taps his fingers on his knee. He makes a low noise of disapproval to whomever he’s speaking.

“Yes, yes, Raphael, I know,” he says. “My battery died and I didn’t have a chance to charge it - do you know how much payphones cost? Do I look like the sort of person who carries change in his pocket?” A brief pause. “Don’t answer that.”

Alec reaches for the dial on the radio, intending to turn the volume down, but Magnus’ free hand darts out and swats his fingers away.

He mouths the word no and returns to his phone call, but Alec’s hand remains outstretched.

There’s a tingle in his fingertips, a short spark of static that leapt from Magnus to him, and he stares down at his hand as if he’s been burned.

And it makes Alec realise, oh.

So you’re lonely -lonely.

“I’ll be in Baltimore in four days. I ran into an old friend who offered me a lift,” Magnus continues into his phone. He listens to the other speaker for a moment, glancing briefly at Alec’s hand and frowning. “You’re lucky I phoned you at all after all that car trouble. It was a courtesy only.”

The radio briefly breaks into static before the song resumes again. Magnus begins drumming his fingers on his leg, listening intently to his phone call. He uhms and ahs and says something about investors and capital and shareholders and begins talking numbers that are too big for Alec to really understand.

He opens up the glove box and pulls out an old diner napkin that Alec shoved in there three states ago, and scribbles down a note, but he has to tap his pen against his thigh for the ink to flow.

Alec curls his hand into a fist and rests it on his thigh, but the tingle doesn’t go away. He listens to Magnus talk - this whole other person that Alec doesn’t know, but who he was clearly always meant to be - but all he can think about is how long he has gone without being touched.

Do you know? he thinks. Do you know that the last person who touched me was you? Do you realise at all?

interlude

Driving is like running. The rhythm of the road; the splattering of rain against the windshield; the thrum of a heartbeat as the speedometer tips over ninety. Clear head. Relentless motion.

Forward, forward, forward, always and forever. Try to keep up. Don’t stop. Keep going. Don’t look back.

fifth chord

The diner is the first sign of civilisation that Alec has seen in over a hundred miles - and it is the same diner as it always is, an eminent glow on the 3AM horizon that creeps closer and closer like a spaceship hovering over the fields and drawing circles in the wheat and the barley.

It draws circles around Alec too, this singular moment in time. This microcosm that exists in the form of red leather seats and bright, fluorescent light, and the same empty parking lot and abandoned phonebooth on the highway verge. The waitress changes; sometimes, the group of teenagers in the booth at the back is an old couple embarking on a long trip south before they get too old to make the drive; and instead of a man at the bar watching the baseball, every few miles there will be an off-duty sheriff nursing a cup of diner coffee.

In the end, it’s all the same. A small pocket universe that Alec has crossed a thousand times in a thousand different rental cars.

Perhaps the people in the diner do not exist outside of it. Perhaps they are like pictures on a TV screen that cease to be once the lights have gone off and the static has fizzled and died.

Perhaps they exist only because Alec and Magnus are passing through, creating the world around them as they go. The Midwest has that quality about it.

“I can’t remember the last time I ate diner food,” Magnus says as Alec holds the door open for him and the bell jingles above their heads. “L.A. is on a health kick right now. Everything is kale. Try ordering a steak at any restaurant within a half-mile of downtown and they’ll have the bouncer throw you out on the sidewalk with your drink still in your hand.”

“Not sure they know what kale is out here,” Alec murmurs, leading the way to a booth by the window. He slides onto the bench as Magnus slumps down across from him, dramatically throwing his head back and closing his eyes. “You’re probably safe here.”

Magnus cracks open one eye to look at Alec. Beneath the table, his toes nudge against Alec’s, and then he shifts so that their knees knock together too. He throws a grin at Alec and expects a volley.

Alec tucks a smile into the corner of his mouth and rolls his eyes. He feels fragile, but he’s always been good at acting like he’s not. He picks up the menu and pretends like he doesn’t already know it like the back of his hand.

The waitress approaches their table with a megawatt smile that only brightens when Magnus turns his focus on her, casting her in spotlight. She laughs, tucks her hair behind her ear, and asks where they’re from. Magnus says Los Angeles. The waitress tells him she has a dream of becoming a singer and moving out West, seeing Hollywood and all that .

Alec has never been, but there was a summer back when Alec was in college, where Isabelle decided to follow a boy to California, swept up in the promise of love and adventure and new opportunities. Jace and Alec had protested, their mother had expressly forbid it, but Izzy had gone anyway, and it had ended in heartbreak six months later, as these things always do.

“Everybody in L.A. is from somewhere else,” Izzy had told him, when she came home for Christmas and Alec picked her up at the airport, her life packed up into suitcases in tow. “I don’t know how to explain it. You’re drawn there because of all the - you know, all the sparkle. The glamour, Alec. But really, people there are just running away from somewhere else. Somewhere they don’t really want to be.”

“You don’t want to be here?” Alec had asked.

Izzy shook her head. “It’s not that. It’s more … you don’t realise what was good in the place you left until you’re somewhere else. But then you’re too far to phone, or it costs too much to get a plane ticket, or you just don’t want to give people back home the satisfaction of knowing that they were right.”

Back in the diner, the waitress scribbles down their order on her notepad, pours Alec a coffee, and then tells Magnus she’ll be right back with his seltzer water.

Alec can’t help himself. “Seltzer water,” he murmurs. “And you say you don’t fit in in Los Angeles.”

Magnus laughs. “I didn’t say that .”

The diner coffee is cheap and watery; the burger Alec gets has no bacon, but too many gherkins soaked in brine. The fries are soggy, left bathing in grease all evening, but the waitress brings them an extra portion at no extra charge, because she mistakes Magnus’ friendly conversation for flirtation. Her number is tucked on a napkin beneath the plate.

Magnus rolls his eyes as he shows Alec, but he’s too good a person to crumple it up and toss it to the side. Instead, he slides the napkin into the pocket of his jacket, a keepsake. A souvenir of someone else’s dreams for the future. In that sense, it almost seems precious.  

“What?” Magnus asks when he notices Alec staring. “What’s the matter?”

Alec turns his attention back to his food, pulling out a soggy gherkin from his burger and draping it across the edge of his plate. “Nothing. Don’t worry about it. I was just thinking.”

“Thinking?”

Alec’s eyes dart to the pocket of Magnus’ jacket and then away again.

“Alec,” Magnus gently scolds. His smile becomes sympathetic. “Just ask me what you want to ask.”

“Are you gonna call her?”

Magnus shrugs. “Probably not. But who knows. Sometimes the people you meet by accident re-enter your life further down the line and become important. I don’t know where her story might take her.”

“What about your story?”

“My story?”

Alec nods, but says nothing.

Magnus leans forward across the table. “You know my story, Alec.”

A man lights a cigarette at the table two rows behind them; he draws smoke into his lungs and it escapes through his nose, a thin grey stream falling upwards, towards the tiled ceiling. Alec watches him tap the filter on the ashtray in the middle of his table and a clump of ash disintegrates from the lit end; it lands silently, like snow. Like dust on the highway.

Magnus follows Alec’s line of sight and turns in his seat, glancing over his shoulder at the man. When he looks back, he has one eyebrow raised expectantly.

The smell of cigarette smoke fills the diner - acrid, bitter, and faintly earthy. It takes Alec back to college, to sitting out on the back porch of Magnus’ mother’s house before Magnus sold it because he couldn’t bear to look at it any more. He can picture the pack of Morley's tucked beneath Magnus’ thigh. He can still remember the way the unlit cigarette bobbed between Magnus’ teeth as he told his secrets to both Alec and the dark.

“I quit, you know,” says Magnus, in the present. “They say it’s bad for you.”

“I always told you it was.”

Magnus smirks at him and leans forward again, his elbows resting on the table. He steals a limp fry from Alec’s plate and pops it into his mouth. “I listened, didn’t I?” He nods over his shoulder towards the cigarette-smoking man. “What do you think his story is?”

“Huh?”

“What do you think his story is? Why is he here, alone at a diner in the back-end of Wyoming, past midnight in the depths of November? Smoking a cigarette? He must have a story.”

Alec’s never really thought about it. He’s always imagined the inhabitants of the diner as a backdrop, not as characters in their own story.

He looks harder at the man now: he’s older than both Alec and Magnus, salt-and-pepper hair thinning at the back. Once handsome, perhaps, but the years have stretched out his face and made his jaw sag. He’s wearing an ill-fitting suit, his shirt rumpled and his tie missing, the top button of his collar undone. He takes a deep puff of his cigarette, looks at it, and then extinguishes the lit end, grinding it into the ashtray.

“I don’t know,” Alec says slowly, looking back at Magnus. “Some sort of business trip?”

Magnus’ mouth lifts at the corners, drawing Alec in. “Perhaps, but I don’t think so. You see how he’s fingertips aren’t yellow? He’s clearly not a smoker, but he’s stressed enough to do it now.” Magnus reaches across the table and taps his finger against Alec’s fourth knuckle on his left hand. “And he’s not wearing a wedding ring, although looks like he was until recently. You see the mark?”

Alec steals a glance at the man, and then shuffles forward on the bench, so that he might drop his voice low and conspiratorial.

“Divorced, then?” he proposes.

“Maybe,” Magnus grins, “Or cheating, and he’s about to go back home and face his wife and pretend like his fishing trip with the guys from the office didn’t turn up much success, so they’re going to try again next weekend. He’s probably never fished in his life.”

Alec laughs then, loud enough to draw some attention. The sound is foreign in his mouth and a flush surges up the back of his neck as he sinks lower in his seat, hunching his shoulders and biting down on his smile.

Magnus looks delighted; in his eyes, Alec sees the reflection of the fluorescent lights above their heads, laid out like stars.

“You just made all that up from looking at him?” Alec asks.

Magnus beams at him. He reaches out and touches Alec’s fourth knuckle again. “Why, of course,” he says, and then he nods his chin towards the sheriff sat alone at the bar, making smalltalk with the waitress. “Now, how about him?”

sixth chord

The sun rises over the endless Nebraskan fields in shards of light.

Alec adjusts the rearview mirror. He will remember this moment later in figments of pale winter blue, snow-hazed pink, and November sky through the passenger window as Magnus gazes out across the passing countryside: a blank canvas for a painter to fill with bodies.

The color changes depending on where Alec chooses to angle the reflection of the mirror. Slightly to the left, and Magnus’ hands are stained in a pale wavering indigo, a purple so rare that it is only ever seen in the fleeting hour between twilight and sunrise. Move the mirror to the right, and that colour becomes orange, then gold.

Magnus swipes his hand across the condensation forming on the inside of the window, smearing colour across the landscape, but the story he might paint is hidden from view. Alec knows the start and he knows the middle - the brushstrokes the ones Alec remembers, but it’s the details that differ now -  and it’s the end of the story that is vague and undefined in sepia.

Alec thinks about cigarettes again. He wants to ask Magnus who it was that finally got him to quit. Or when exactly he started drinking seltzer water instead of shitty beer from Walmart, or decided that listening to the dial tone while waiting for Alec to pick up the phone was too much.

‘Let’s start the morning right with some ‘old but gold’ ,’ announces the radio. ‘ We’re going back twelve years to 1983 with this first track …’

Magnus makes a nose of protest in the passenger seat. The indigo has already faded from his hands, moving on to become something else, something more.

Faithfully by Journey begins to play. Alec recognises the song; in much the same way that a breath of fresh air on a cold winter morning can take him back to another place and another time, the first note paints a picture in his memories.

“This song played at Isabelle’s quincea ñ era,” he remarks. “D’you remember?”

“I remember,” Magnus says, tipping his head back against the seat and staring up at the roof of the car. He closes his eyes and basks in the light of the early morning sun. His smile grows gold. “That was the summer she dragged us all to see them in concert, wasn’t it? Jace had me make a tape for her, for the party. She played it on repeat all night.” Magnus pauses for a moment, letting his words sink in. “I also remember asking you to dance to this.”

Alec remembers that too. “Dad didn’t like that. He was pissed.”

”I’m not surprised. He tolerated me, at best. He was clearly jealous.”

Alec huffs on a laugh. “Jealous? How’s that, exactly?”

“Mhm, jealous,” Magnus reminisces. “Specifically of when I spun you around and dropped you on your ass in the grass and you laughed like I’d never heard you laugh before.”

Alec’s neck grows warm, a flush curling around his throat. He pinches at the skin between his thumb and forefinger where his hands both rest on the wheel.

“I was drunk,” he says, like an excuse. “I don’t remember much after that.”

That’s a lie. He was drunk, but he remembers being sprawled out across the grass and staring at the sky and laughing, until Magnus dropped down beside him, his hands planted either side of Alec’s head as he bent over him, and kissed him on the corner of his mouth. And he had laughed it off like it was nothing, pulling Alec back to his feet, but Alec spent the rest of the summer picking that feeling out of his teeth.

Magnus turns his head to gaze out the window again. The curve of his smile speaks of fondness, of a quieted sense of longing and looking back. He seems at peace.

“I was drunk too,” he says, after a beat, to the countryside.

And oh, Alec wants that. He covets that like he covets touch. To be able to look back and not feel all this … regret.

Isabelle’s fifteenth birthday was the first and only time they kissed. Magnus probably doesn’t even remember that night, not beyond the dancing, the beer, the spinning around and around in dizzying circles. There’s no way he would remember a kiss that wasn’t really a kiss.

Alec never once told him how he wanted to do it again.

That was the problem, in the end.

interlude

“You haven’t moved on?” says a man, once, in a bar. He’s tall and handsome, with curly blonde hair and large hands that Alec has imagined once or twice upon his chest, although it never makes his heart leap like it should.

His name is Andrew. He works in the building next door to the J. Edgar Hoover Building in Washington. They met at a coffee cart on the corner of the block, and this, now, is their third date.

Alec had thought it was going well.

“What?” says Alec, turning to look at Andrew, leant beside him at the bar. “What do you mean?”

“You haven’t moved on from whoever it is that you loved first,” says Andrew. He pulls his American Express from his wallet and passes it to the bartender to settle their tab, but they’ve only had one drink so far. “And you know, that’s okay. I get it. The first is always different, especially when it gets left unfinished. But I can’t see this working between us if you’re still in that place. You’re a good guy, Alec, but I deserve more than that.”

seventh chord

“Take the next left.”

Alec scowls at the road before turning to look at Magnus. He is bent over an atlas he found beneath the passenger seat - it’s not Alec’s and must’ve been left behind by whoever rented the car before him. The pages are dog-eared and coffee ring-stained, and Magnus’ finger is pressed against the thin line of the highway that divides Nebraska in two.

“What? Why? This is the quickest way.”

Magnus glances up, a look of mischief on his face. He grins at Alec.

“There’s something I want to see and we’ll be passing right by. Seems like a shame to miss it while we’re here.”

“What is it?”

Magnus’ tongue pokes out between his teeth as his smile broadens. He mimes locking his mouth with an invisible key, tucking it into his shirt pocket.

Alec huffs. “Magnus, we’re in Nebraska. All they have here is grass. And nothing. And more grass, and more nothing.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t be so sure about that.” Magnus folds the atlas up and sets it on his lap. He pats it with his hands. “What’s so wrong with a little spontaneity?”

“Uh, the fact that you have to be in Baltimore in three days? For an important meeting?” Alec says, gesturing with his flat palm at the road ahead. “You know I’m still on the clock, right? This is Bureau time you want to waste.”

“It’ll be an hour’s detour. We can afford it.”

“ Magnus .”

Magnus just grins at him. It’s the same grin that used to get Alec into so much trouble back in college; it leans against his doorframe with arms folded and a come-hither look in its eyes, and Alec has never been able to say no. Not to Magnus.

Magnus laughs. “Wow, they really did shove that stick right on up your ass at Quantico, didn’t they?”

Alec glares at him, but Magnus reaches out and pats Alec on the forearm, gently curling his fingers around Alec’s wrist. His touch, unfairly, is warm.

“Come on. The turning’s coming up,” he says. “Time to make a decision, Agent Lightwood. You don’t always have to play by the rules. Live a little.”

Alec rolls his eyes, but flicks the turn signal and merges into the outside lane, slowing as the turning approaches. Magnus beams at him and his laughter is buoyant, delighted as he claps Alec on the shoulder. His hand lingers, fingers pressing into Alec’s shirt, thumb against Alec’s pulse point.

Alec takes the turning.

He takes the turning and he wishes, only once, that Magnus might tell him exactly what those rules are. For a situation like this, he wonders, when you’re in the front seat of a car on an endless highway with a man you haven’t seen in years and who, once upon a time, you would’ve followed anywhere.

Although, in the end, not everywhere.  

A sign on the roadside welcomes them to Alliance, Nebraska, but instead of houses and street lamps, it’s grass that stretches for miles in every flat direction, endless swathes of frostbitten green. The road, now, is dirt and dust, and in the distance, a single white building and a cluster of standing stones appear as a landmark on the horizon.

Alec slows the car, but as the stones come into focus, he realises they’re not stones at all.

“Are those … cars ?” Alec asks, squinting into the distance. He looks sharply at Magnus. “Magnus, what -?”

Magnus holds up the atlas, his finger pressed against a roadside attraction labelled Carhenge .

“Please tell me that’s not what I think it is,” Alec says.

“Stonehenge replicated entirely out of cars, you mean?”

“Yes. That .”

“Well, it’s not as exciting as the World’s Biggest Ball of Paint , sure,” Magnus grins. “But when in Rome, Alexander. When in Rome.”

Alec pulls off the road, passing by the visitor’s sign that reads: Carhenge and Car Art Reserve. Welcome! The parking lot, little more than a field worn thin by tire treads, is scarred by muddy trenches that have frozen solid in the night and not yet thawed, and the rental’s suspension works hard to navigate them.

Alec huffs as he pulls up the handbrake and cuts the engine, but Magnus is already twisting in his seat to reach for his coat. He shoots Alec a cavalier grin as he opens the car door and tumbles out into the cold, and the blast of icy-cold air hits Alec square in the face.

Alec grimaces, but in front of the car, Magnus knocks his knuckles against the hood and gestures for Alec to follow him. Alec grumbles and pats himself down for his keys-wallet-ID-gun , before grabbing his own coat and shoving open the driver’s door.

The only other vehicle in the parking lot is a campervan, shiny and white and sparkling in the winter sunlight, either a midlife crisis or an early retirement investment. An older couple - a man and a woman - are standing in front of it, peering over a large DSLR camera. He’s in socks and sandals and she has binoculars looped around her neck, and if the weather was any warmer, Alec is sure they would both be in cargo shorts too.

“What attracts people to places like this?” Alec mutters, stuffing his hands into his pockets and turning up the collar of his overcoat as he hurries after Magnus. He hunches his shoulders, but the wind feels like it’s gusting through him, with nothing to stop or hinder it across the plains. “Why would you drive all the way out here to see … this ?”

“It’s not about the destination, it’s about the journey, Alexander,” Magnus teases, walking backwards so that he can face Alec. “Why do we do anything without purpose? Because it’s there, and because we can.”

Behind him, the large circle of cars stands out of the landscape, spray-painted grey to look even less like standing stones. Alec grits his teeth.

“It’s about those little moments that break up a long drive,” Magnus continues, nudging Alec’s arm. “Or making small and inconsequential memories that can be revisited whenever one needs something slightly absurd to fall back on. It’s something to do with another person, even if that person is insistent on being a grouch the entire time we’re here-”

“Alright, alright, I get it,” Alec grumbles. “Let’s just hurry up and look because it’s fucking freezing out here and I wanna get back in the car.”

Alec’s dress shoes sink straight into the mud as they traipse across the grass towards the circle of cars; the squelch-squelch-squelch of his feet is loud enough to be heard over the wind. Along the horizon, the sun is weeping yellow, low in the sky and sinking moment by moment towards sunset, and the shadows that stretch out lengthways from the stones-that-are-not-stones are long and warped.

Alec stops when his toes meet one such shadow and he looks up at the stack of cars towering over him. He tilts his head to the side, but it looks no better from an angle. Magnus steps away from him, meandering over towards an information sign.

“ ‘Carhenge is formed from vintage American automobiles, all covered with gray spray paint,’ ” he reads out. “‘ Built by Jim Reinders, it was dedicated at the June 1987 summer solstice in memory of his father. ’ Huh. How about that.”

“My dad would kill me,” Alec mutters.

“Oh, yes, mine too,” says Magnus. He bends down and squints at the smaller text on the sign. “‘ Carhenge consists of 39 automobiles arranged in a circle measuring about 96 feet in diameter.’ ”

“That seems excessive.”

“I think it’s strangely compelling, actually,” Magnus says. “There’s something about roadside Americana that has its own distinct charm. It’s a product of human eccentricities and I like that.”

“Oh yeah, and what are you seeing?” Alec says, gesturing with his hand. “Because all I see is a 15ft tall metal monstrosity.”

Magnus wanders back over to him, pressing up against Alec’s arm for the sake of warmth. He folds his arms across his chest, shoving his hands under his arms, and huffs out warm air that forms white clouds. He gazes up at the monolith above them.

“Well, beauty is in the eye of the beholder, Alexander,” he says. He frowns then, studying the twisted shapes of metal and fibreglass as if they’re some extraordinary work of art kept behind velvet ropes and a glass case and only allowed to be looked upon for a fleeting moment, and not an old car barely spared from rusting. “Michelangelo despised the roof of the Sistine Chapel, and yet it’s one of the most impressive feats of Renaissance art that still exists.”

“ Magnus ,” Alec presses.

“Mhm?”

Alec pauses. He studies Magnus’ face in profile: the line of his nose, the sharp cut of his jaw, the purse of his lips as he contemplates some deeper meaning that passes Alec by. High in his cheeks, the cold paints his skin red.

Alec thinks he understands a little, then. Nobody really comes to Alliance, Nebraska to see thirty-nine vintage cars spray painted grey and stacked together like some prehistoric monument from halfway across the world. There are other things worth looking at.

Alec shrinks down into the collar of his coat. “Michelangelo is overrated anyway,” he grumbles.

interlude

Here is the creation of a new memory: the orange-gold of a sunset, the cold metal of a rental car against the back of Alec’s thighs, and the warmth of a cheap coffee in his hands, steam rising and obscuring the face. The sky, shifting into navy, into darkness, into the pitting of stars as the temperature plummets and each breath becomes a plume of smoke rising heavenward.

Here, sat together on the hood of the car, Magnus touches him. Not an accidental brush of the fingers or a friendly hand on the arm while driving, but instead, Magnus tips his head to the side, letting his temple rest on Alec’s shoulder.

Here, Magnus’ whispered name crosses Alec’s lips. A question posed to the night, painful and tender and purple like a bruise (‘ what are you doing? ’), but Magnus doesn’t reply. He hums and turns his head and presses his nose to Alec’s coat.

Alec’s doesn’t dare move. Magnus’ hair tickles his jaw, and Alec wants to turn his head and press his nose there and breathe him in, but he doesn’t. Ten years ago, maybe. But not now.

So, he looks up, and he exhales as the last fragments of the sun shatter into a thousand tiny pieces. The night sky, in its infiniteness, mirrors the high plains of the Midwest: how endless, how deep, how black it all is, away from the city.

How less lonely it is with another body tucked against his shoulder. How much it hurts.

eighth chord

They find a cheap motel, afterwards, on the outskirts of the Alliance city limits. This time, there’s only one room left. One room with two twin beds made up in ugly floral sheets, and a TV without cable, and a minifridge, because that’s how it always is; how it’s meant to be; how it was, once, years ago.

Standing in the doorway of the room, Alec thinks back to their college dorm. He thinks about being eighteen and away from his parents’ home for the very first time - only one city over, but far enough, far enough to breathe - and Magnus crashing into that room, laden with boxes and a bright smile.

He thinks, aged eighteen, God, he’s the most beautiful person I’ve ever seen .

He thinks, aged thirty-something, that’s one thing that hasn’t changed.  

Magnus, in the present, slumps down on the bed furthest from the door with a heavy sigh and immediately toes off his shoes and flings off his coat. His suitcase is beside him on the bed, but Alec’s bag - Alec’s bag is still clenched tightly in his fingers.

He doesn’t move from the doorway. He can still feel Magnus’ head against his shoulder, Magnus’ weight against his side, and he’s not sure he’s taken a proper breath since; but then Magnus looks up and catches his eye and tilts his head as if to say, what next, Alexander?

He offers Alec a smile which Alec can’t return.

Alec swallows thickly and nudges the door closed with his hip. He pads over to the other bed, his feet sinking into the plush carpet and leaving tracks, and he sets his bag down on the very end of the mattress, and -

What next, Alexander?

There was never a what next . That’s the problem; it’s always been the problem. Alec, afraid to put a name to the feelings in his chest and step outside his comfort zone, and Magnus, unwilling to push him. This is the point they always reached: the touches, the glances, the wondering. The waiting for someone to do something. Around and around again, until Magnus couldn’t do it anymore.

This is always the point. The moment, repeated, just like the highway. Just like the diner.

Magnus exhales and cards a hand through his hair, combing it back against his head. He looks away from Alec, eyes drifting across the room until they settle on the cheap plywood door that leads to the ensuite.

“I’m going to take a shower,” he announces, and then he’s up, grabbing a towel off the bed and disappearing into the bathroom.

The shutting of the bathroom door is too soft and too careful, and Alec sinks down onto the end of his bed and rests his head in his hands. He closes his eyes and focuses on the outline of his badge in his jacket pocket, digging into his chest. The weight of his service weapon on his hip. The scratchy linen of the bed, the stains on the ceiling, the fuzzy TV as it cycles back and forth through the few sparse channels, even though the remote is on the bedside table and out of Alec’s reach.

He tries not to listen to the sound of rushing water through the walls.  

He goes to shower, after. When Magnus emerges from the bathroom with wet hair and a freshly-scrubbed face, there are no words exchanged as Alec passes him by.

The bathroom is small and full of steam, windowless and ventless and hot like a sauna and that’s definitely a fire hazard. Alec peels out of his suit and tugs the tie from his collar. His undershirt goes next, and then his belt, which hits the floor with a heavy clank. He stares at himself in the mirror but the reflection that stares back at him is blurred by condensation, and Alec’s finger is drawn to it, if only to leave a mark.

He wonders what Magnus would say if Alec told him of how he would write Magnus’ name in the steam on his mirror in the days after he left, standing in front of it to watch until it faded.

And it faded every time, until Alec stopped doing it.

He steps out of his pants and underwear, a puddle of creased suiting on the floor, and climbs into the shower, turning the dial up as hot as it goes. He stands beneath the spray until it scalds his skin pink, and then, once done, sits on the edge of the tub with a towel wrapped around his waist and finds himself craving a cigarette. He doesn’t smoke, not really. He just needs something to do with his hands.

When he leaves the bathroom, the TV is quiet and the light is off. A faint, electric glow escapes the bottom of the curtains, the same blue colour as the NO VACANCIES sign that overlooks the parking lot outside.

Magnus has his back to the bathroom door, his hands tucked beneath the pillow where he rests his head. He’s not asleep yet; Alec can tell from his breathing, not yet slowed. He will be able to count every long second that Alec spends staring at him, watching the rise and fall of his body beneath the covers, and he will be able to hear the moment Alec sighs and turns and leaves, padding across the room to his own empty bed.

Alec has lost count of the number of times he’s rolled over in the dark of a shuttered room that smells of mothballs and stale cigarette smoke, and reached for something that’s never been there. That hasn’t been there for years.

His mattress dips in the middle with the weight of one body. The pillow scratches at his cheek. He sets his service weapon on the bedside table, within easy reach, but hides his badge within the pocket of his jacket, out of sight but not quite out of mind. This is how it always is.

He listens to the rustle of blankets from the other bed and wonders, briefly, if Magnus has turned to look at him in the dark. He wonders what Magnus’ expression might be, and if Magnus stares at him now with the same sort of regret that Alec fails to hide.  

He is still in love with Magnus. He never stopped being in love with Magnus. This, too, is still the same.

interlude

In a wealth of human experience, the worst, by far, is what if .

ninth chord

Magnus taps his fingers against the car door, beating out an inconsistent rhythm. Alec knows it’s not a love song, but it could be something similar - a song about lost chances or maybe second chances. Sometimes, it’s difficult to distinguish between the two.

‘ THE PEOPLE OF IOWA WELCOME YOU ,’ reads a passing road sign, and it catches Magnus’ attention for a moment long enough to falter his rhythm. ‘ FIELDS OF OPPORTUNITIES. ’

There is little else to distinguish the crossing of the state line: the fields still stretch in endless directions, swathed in a fog the colour of glass. They set off late from the motel this morning because Magnus overslept and then insisted on breakfast, and refused to ask for the cheque until he had seen Alec consume something other than filter coffee.

He had offered to drive too, but Alec remembers what his driving is like: one arm propped on the wheel and the other fiddling with the radio, eyes barely on the road because, to Magnus, highways are straight lines from point A to point B and he has no time for speed traps or taking corners slowly or braking .

Alec, meanwhile, always has his hands at ten and two.

“Alexander, can I ask you something?”

Alec reaches for the dial of the radio and turns it down; this time, Magnus doesn’t try to stop him.

“I’m not stopping at another Carhenge,” Alec says. “Once is enough.”

Magnus rolls his eyes and continues tapping his finger against the car door.

“No,” he says, “No, I’ve seen my fill, I think.”

“But?”

Magnus smiles a little. “What makes you think there’s a but?”

“Because you haven’t said a word since I told you there’s no way in Hell you’re driving,” Alec chuckles. “And you’ve been thinking about something. I can tell. You do this thing with your hand -” He mimics the rubbing of his thumb and forefinger together, and then the touching of his ear. “And then you touch your ear. You used to have that piercing, remember? You’d always fiddle with it when something was on your mind.”

Magnus tugs gently at his earlobe. “I didn’t think I was so easy to read.”

“You’re not,” Alec smiles, “I’ve just known you too long. Or, uh. Knew you too long.”

Magnus hums at that. He begins spinning one of his fingers around his forefinger.

“Do you think I’ve changed? Since then?”

Alec shrugs. He’s never been that good of a liar, not in front of Magnus. And Magnus knows that; he told Alec as much, two days ago  “A bit. It would be weird if you hadn’t.”

“Hm,” Magnus considers. “You’ve changed, you know. And it’s like the strangest sense of deja-vu, because I know I know you, and yet there are these little details, these little things that seem slightly off. That I don’t recognise and I don’t know where they came from.” Abruptly, he stops fiddling with his ring and curls his fingers into the palm of his hand. He smiles wryly to himself. “And why should I? You don’t stay the same person your whole life.”

“I don’t think I’ve changed,” Alec murmurs, chewing on his lip. “I’m pretty much the same person I was back then.”

Magnus shakes his head, his smile fading. “That’s not true. I can see it in your face. You laugh more. You roll your eyes at me. Tell me no. You didn’t used to do that and I would drag you into so much shit , Alec. God, I was such a bad influence on you back then.” He pauses then, and his expression sobers. “But then, sometimes, when I catch you looking at me now, you seem ...”

He trails off, searching for the words with a flick of his hand. Alec doesn’t know what he means.

“I seem like what?” he asks.

“You seem so sad .”

Alec laughs in disbelief. “Sad? What - Magnus - I’m not sad, what do I have to be sad about?”

Magnus runs his thumb over his lower lip in thought. “That’s what I wanted to ask. Last night, in that motel room, I wondered - well. I wanted to ask if you resented me, after I left.”

Alec’s hands clench on the wheel. “If I resented you?” he repeats carefully. “Magnus, I didn’t resent you. Where’s this come from? What - what sort of question is that?”

“A genuine one,” says Magnus. “Just humour me a little. I want to know.”

Alec’s heart thumps in his chest. He forces himself to stay focused on the road. “Why are you asking about this now?”

“Why not two days ago when I found you at that gas station, you mean?”

No , Alec thinks. Not then. Before. Ten years ago, maybe.

Why didn’t you ask me then?

“Yeah,” Alec lies. “Something like that.”

Magnus frowns. “Do you not want to talk about it?” he asks.

“Do you?”

Magnus hesitates. He presses his mouth into a flat line and with his clenched fists, he taps his knuckles against the glass of the passenger window. The beat is one-two three-four , like a pair of heartbeats.

“I want to make sure you know why I had to go,” he says, eventually. “You understand that, right?”

“Right,” says Alec, unconvincingly.

Magnus huffs and leans his head into his hand, rubbing at his temple. When he continues, his words are addressed to the horizon and the straight line that leads them there and disappears into a singular point in time and space.

“I know I hurt you, Alec,” he says. “And I think you’re still hurt, in a way, because you’re both the most obtuse person I’ve ever met and yet the only person who I was always able to - who I can always see . And ... can I be honest here?”

Alec nods, but says nothing.

“Right, well,” Magnus continues. “How do I explain this? It’s … it’s frustrating . Sometimes. The way you keep looking at me out the corner of your eye like it causes you suffering to do so but you can’t help yourself. The way you didn’t pick up any of my phone calls, back then. The way we just … the way we just ended. Snuffed out like a candle.”

“But you’re the one who left , Magnus,” Alec interjects. “You’re the one who - it wasn’t me. I didn’t decide that.”

“I didn’t want to be stuck there. I wanted a career, Alec, I wanted to see what else there is ,” Magnus says, gesturing with his free hand to the open road and empty Iowan landscape. He sounds weary. “And there is so much else, so much more than a nice house in a nice neighbourhood with a white-picket fence and a dog and two-point-five kids. I couldn’t wait around for you to - I didn’t want to live the life my mom lived. She never left that place, not once. The same four walls, the same dead-end Middle American town until the end of her days. And that ... that was too small for me.”

He talks about getting out the same way painters talk about muses, the same way a traveler searches for God in the landscape: something they had to see before they died. A holy calling.

He always has.

Perhaps Alec is the ghost lingering at those New England intersections that keeps Magnus far and away from home. Alec, too afraid to cross over the threshold of a highway, destined to haunt the same small town for the rest of his life.

Too afraid to wander so far from home that he might not be allowed back. Too afraid to say something that he can’t recant, even if it’s the truth.  

Alec chews on the inside of his cheek. “Didn’t you ever ... didn’t you ever think about that sort of life? With the house, and the yard, and the dog?” he begins. “Just a little? Just a bit?”

Magnus shakes his head. “I didn’t want that,” he murmurs. “It’s not me. You know that. And after my mother passed and I sold the house, I - God, sometimes I would sit on the front porch and watch all the cars go by, passing through that town like it was nothing, like it wasn’t even a blip on their map, and I would think the world moves on without you . It doesn’t care if you don’t catch up. It doesn’t care if you’re - if you’re waiting for someone to say something they never want to say.”

He glances at Alec as he says it, and Alec realises then that he knows.

Magnus knows. Perhaps he’s known a while; perhaps he’s known since they were young that Alec loves him but refuses to say it. It is Alec’s worst kept secret, after all.

“I had to get out, Alec,” Magnus continues. “Sometimes I thought, if I stayed, I’d suffocate.”

I was suffocating too , Alec thinks. A gay man in the early 80s didn’t get to breathe . That’s just how it was.

Magnus, of course, already knows that. Alec would only be preaching to the choir if he said it aloud.

Instead, he mumbles, “I wanted to say it.”

“What was that?”

“I wanted to say it,” Alec repeats. He sinks his teeth into the inside of his cheek and wishes he could squeeze his eyes closed for just a moment - but there’s the road. There’s always the road. “I just - I couldn’t. Not then. But I wanted to say it. The thing you were waiting for. From me.”

Magnus’ mouth falls open a fraction, as if, somehow, he is surprised by such a revelation. Alec feels Magnus’ stare boring into the side of his face and he fights every muscle in his body not to turn and look back, because he knows exactly what he’ll find in Magnus’ eyes and he’s not sure he can stomach it.

He has looked at Alec this way before. Hell, a thousand times before. He’s trying to understand Alec - why here and why now, why are you finally saying something after all these years of pulling me along at the other end of a string, leaving me hoping and desperate and in love with someone who couldn’t ever say it back - but Alec is not that complicated.

He’s just scared. Scared of change. Scared of veering off the side of the highway that he has driven all his life, even though a part of him wants to know what it feels like. A part of him longs for the impact because, at least then, it will all be over.

And Magnus -

Magnus has always been so difficult to pin down, so close to chewing through his own foot to get away (and Alec had always hoped he’d never quite manage it, so that he might stay with Alec, forever, in some selfish vision of the future). It’s inside of him, that need to wander and see the world and meet new people and learn from them and be better and be something . The need to throw the roadmap out the window at high speed.

“Was that -” Alec begins, but clears his throat again. “Was that not enough? For you to stay, I mean?”

Magnus’ expression softens. His shoulders slump and his hand falls away from his temple and his mouth curves upwards at the corner and he says nothing. In his eyes, however, Alec finds an answer.

Sometimes, you cannot wait to be loved at someone else’s pace. Sometimes, you deserve more than that. I deserved more than that.

And maybe -

And maybe I’m still waiting.

interlude

Another postcard, this time purchased from a roadside gas station and then left crumpled in the glove box of a rental car:

I loved you then. I love you now. I still don’t know how to say it.

tenth chord

The day Magnus left was a Sunday. The beginning of August, 1985. The sun was bright that morning, harsh on the roof of Magnus’ new car as he piled boxes and suitcases into the trunk.  

Alec had not understood what ending meant until he was standing on the sidewalk and watching Magnus pack up his life into ten square feet. He had not understood that some endings aren’t peaceful or satisfying or tie up all the loose threads of a story tangled by the writer; some endings are excoriations. They leave you raw and wounded.

The realisation, now, is that letting Magnus go a second time will be a worse experience than the first. This time, Alec already knows what it’s going to feel like.

In the rental car, the heater works hard to circulate warm air into the front seat. The windshield wipers battle against the thick blanket of fog that has rolled in across Lake Michigan and which obscures the signposts for Chicago from view. Frost covers rural Illinois in a comb of silver, not quite yet snow, but soon. Soon enough, the country will be white and glistening in the low sunlight as far as the eye can see.  

Magnus has his coat draped over him like a blanket, his arms backwards through the sleeves and his head resting against the window. He hasn’t slept, but he’s been quiet for a while now, watching the world pass by with little commentary, save for when a song to which he knows the words plays on the radio.

On the side of the road, timber-frame houses disappear in and out of existence, reappearing in various states of disrepair. A barn, an old farmhouse, a disused gas station, a tiny church built on stilts that extends out over a frozen lake on a wooden walkway.

Magnus makes a noise of interest as they pass it by, turning in his seat to look back at it as it vanishes into the fog.

“Did you see that?” he asks. These are the first words he’s said to Alec in nearly a hundred miles. “That church.”

Alec glances in the rearview mirror but, as always, they are the only car on the road and the fog swallows up the passing seconds behind them. He’s not sure how long they’ve been on this road without a turning, nothing but an undeviated line for miles, and sooner or later, the end of the road is going to take them by surprise.

Alec takes his foot off the gas and presses down on the brake instead, and the car lurches to a near-stop. Magnus jolts forward in his seat, his seat belt cutting into his chest and stopping his momentum. He turns to stare at Alec, but Alec throws his arm over the back of his seat, knocks the gearstick into reverse, and spins the car into a three-point U-turn.

Magnus sits up in his seat, his coat slipping down from his shoulders and onto the floor.

“Baltimore not on the cards anymore?” Magnus asks, as Alec turns the car around and begins driving back the way they came. “Alec, what’s going on?”

Alec leans forward over the steering wheel, squinting out into the fog. The shape of the gas station reforms out of white cloud, and then, beside it, the shimmer of the frozen lake and the small church that sits atop it. A place for prayer amidst the smell of petrol fumes and gasoline and road dust.

A traveller’s chapel , Alec notes. It seems apt.

The church is small and squat and built of dark, gnarled wood, falling apart at the seams. From a distance, it seems almost black, but the need to pull off the road possesses Alec and he pulls into the parking lot of the gas station, before locking the handbrake.

Once parked, he turns to look at Magnus, both hands still clenched on the wheel. The radio crackles with white noise, interspersed with the tune of a Christmas song that Alec doesn’t recognise. Magnus reaches out and turns the volume down.

There’s never really been a need for words.

Alec unclips his seatbelt first. He doesn’t pat himself down for keys-wallet-ID-gun . He grabs his coat from the backseat and leaps out into the cold, and doesn’t look back when he hears the passenger door slam and Magnus follow after him, albeit at a distance.  

What Alec finds is this: the wind is brittle and the walkway that leads out over the lake creaks and groans beneath Alec’s weight, but doesn’t make a noise for Magnus. On the highway behind them, a truck rumbles past, but the fog is so deep that Alec cannot see it, save for the glow of its headlights. There is a small placard nailed to the outside of the church that reads: Visit Your Roadside Chapel and a big red arrow points down at the doorway.

Alec reaches for the doorknob and gives it a twist. Behind him, he can feel Magnus watching him, arms folded across his chest to ward off the cold, in silence. He says nothing to Alec, no witty remark about the FBI’s predilection for breaking and entering, no tired smile, no weary remark about how he’s tired of waiting, which they both know means far more than it seems.

The door to the church is not locked and it opens with a fair shove, and out spills the smell of damp wood and dust and old smoke. Magnus coughs lightly, wafting his hand in front of his mouth, but Alec steps inside.

The church itself is small and cramped, barely wider than the span of Alec’s arms from wall to wall, and the cold sweeps through the gaps in the walls, carrying with it the earthy smell of burning. There are no church pews, but a padded piece of wood for kneeling in prayer sits beneath a floor-to-ceiling cross, and bible verses are scratched into the plywood walls in a messy hand. Empty beer cans and extinguished cigarettes litter the floor, and cobwebs are strung like garlands above Alec’s head, which he reaches up to swipe away.

A row of candles stand where the altar should be. Soot still clings to the wicks, as if freshly extinguished.

Alec steps forward and his feet crunch on dried leaves that have blown in through the door. He lifts his foot and looks down and finds a crumpled receipt stuck to the sole of his shoe, grey with running ink and dozens of footprints that have come before Alec’s. The date on the receipt is fifteen years ago. It was issued in Dallas, Texas.

This is a space of comings and goings. Of passing throughs. The afterimages of a thousand travellers linger here like memories and, carved into the cross above Alec’s head, he notices the words: what is more important to the traveller, the journey or the destination?

The silence sings, or maybe it hisses, like the wind rustling through the endless miles of wheatfields between here and where they’ve come from.

What is more important to the traveller, the fact that we got lost along the way, or that we made it back here, in the end, and met again?

Alec looks back over his shoulder, and Magnus is there, standing in the open doorway, waiting. His nose is red with the cold. The light behind him casts him in the pale yellow of a winter twilight. He is watching Alec with an expression that Alec doesn’t understand.

“Magnus?” Alec asks, low and gentle.

“Yes?” he replies.

“Do you have a lighter?”

Magnus’ mouth tips upwards at the corner. “I said I quit, remember?” he says, but he reaches into his coat pocket and pulls out a shiny, silver Zippo lighter, engraved with his initials. He places it in Alec’s outstretched hand, but his touch lingers against Alec’s wrist and the staccato of his pulse. “Here.”

Alec turns to the candles and flicks his thumb along the lighter. The flame is summoned into existence, its light dancing across Alec’s thumbnail as he lights the wick of the tallest candle.

He lights it for his mother, and then, once it catches, he lights another for Izzy, and then one for Jace and Max and his father. He recites the Catholic rotes his grandmother taught him beneath his breath, in Spanish, a whisper. Then, a prayer for Magnus, and for his mother too, wherever she might be.

And lastly, a prayer for himself, aged eighteen and away from home for the very first time. Aged twenty-three and in his graduation gown, Magus’ mortarboard on his head and Magnus’ arm around his shoulders, laughing in his ear. Aged ten years younger than he is now and standing on the sidewalk of his parents’ house, watching Magnus’ car pull away.

Magnus joins him at his side, his head bowed and his hands clasped in front of him. An inch of space exists between their shoulders, but, even now, Alec can feel the warmth of him through his coat.

Alec has missed this. He will miss it again, he’s all too sure, but maybe it’s okay to have it only for a moment.

Maybe that’s enough. Maybe it has to be.

“Alexander?”

“Yeah?”

“I meant what I said yesterday,” Magnus says quietly. He tugs on the sleeve of Alec’s coat and turns Alec to face him. His eyes are bright - not wet, but earnest - and drop to Alec’s lips before returning upwards. “That it’s not about the destination, it’s about the journey. You know that, right?”

He squeezes Alec’s arm. He wants Alec to understand something that still remains out-of-focus.

“What do you mean?” Alec asks.

“I am sorry for the way we left things,” Magnus says, “And I’m sorry that it hurt more than I realised it would. I really am. But it doesn’t have to end the same way this time. You can change the way you remember it. Make it mean something, something fond that you can look back on. You can make it good, if you want.”  

Alec frowns. They’re a day away from Baltimore. In forty-eight hours, Alec will be back home in D.C., and in a week, Magnus will return to L.A. and the life he has built there, where he drinks seltzer water and no longer smokes and talks a mile-a-minute on an expensive cell phone about investments and equity and big-ticket numbers, and is loved by Alec at a distance.

It’s not like the highway extends into the sea. All roads eventually end, and this one must too, amounting to nothing more than four days in a nondescript rental car with Christmas music playing on the radio, but -

This doesn’t have to end the same way this time.

“Doesn’t it?” Alec asks, unable to help himself.

Magnus shakes his head and lets go of Alec’s arm. He takes a step forward and lifts the last unlit candle, holding its wick to the flame of another until it catches.

“No,” he says. “No, it doesn’t.”

interlude

Nothing that happens on the road is real. This is what Alec tells himself between diners and gas stations and faded markings down the centre of the highway.

I can love you now, while the engine’s still running. And you might love me too, while the engine’s still running. Sometimes I think that you do, when I look at you from the corner of my eye.

In the distance, Chicago rises from the fog, lit up in one thousand pin-pricks of light. It makes the world glow in the colour of cities and concrete and it feels a bit like a dream after so long passing through nowheres.

If we drive far enough, we might make it back to the place we once called ‘now’. If we drive fast enough, maybe that day will end differently and you’ll stay.

The speedometer tips over ninety and the countryside blurs into rooftops and stop lights and traffic backed up across the bridge that spans the highway. Streetlights line the side of the road and pass across the rental car in flashes of strobe and yellow.

“I don’t want you to stay there,” says Magnus, in one such patch of light. Sometimes, it’s like he can read Alec’s mind. “I want you to write a different ending, Alec. I want you to want it.”

eleventh chord

Chicago is behind them as they cross into Indiana with the stroke of midnight, a dull orange glow that seems too bright for the eyes after so many repeated nights driving in near blackness.

Their destination is getting closer, and Alec eyes each passing road sign that counts down the miles to Cleveland, then Pittsburgh, then Baltimore, then home with a heaviness in his heart that beats a slow rhythm.

It’s the rhythm that he knows - that lonely beat that matches the roll of the odometer on the dashboard - and yet it seems too fast now, accelerating towards an end point at which he has a choice to make.  

He tries to match it, that rhythm. He tries to strike a chord with the bouncing of his leg in the footwell, with the tapping of his fingers on the steering wheel. He glances across at the passenger seat to see if Magnus is looking back at him, but he’s not - he’s staring ahead through the windshield and holding himself unnaturally still.

Alec wants to slow down below the speed limit; put his foot on the brake; stall the car. Drive it off the side of the road and into a ditch and then shrug and say, guess we’re stranded for another night ‘til the tow-truck can get here . And maybe that’s dishonest - or too honest, because the thought of spending the night in the car together, crowded around the heater as if it’s a bonfire keeping them warm, does something strange to Alec’s insides - but the relentless momentum if the car is no longer a balm on his nerves.

He can’t help but think about what lies in wait at the end of the road. Another goodbye. A polite smile and a parting hug and some kind and empty and wistful words; longing and loneliness and more of the same heartbreak, made worse by the fact he knows, now, what they could’ve had, if things had ended differently the first time.

Alec doesn’t want to leave this car; he wants to keep Magnus here forever, the two of them trapped in this rocking motion of roads and highways, where Magnus tells him over and over again that it doesn’t have to end and Alec believes him.

Alec wants to keep driving off the very edge of the continent and into the Atlantic Ocean. He wants to arrive in Baltimore and say, take me with you . He thinks about grabbing Magnus’ hand when he steps out of the car, and saying, don’t leave me behind this time. Take me with you. Take me somewhere that isn’t here. I’ve had enough of coming and going back to the same place as before. You’re right about that. You’ve always been right about me.

Magnus shifts in the passenger seat, clearing his throat.

“We should probably find a motel. It’s getting late,” he says. He doesn’t need to say it, because Alec is already thinking it: tonight is the last night. Tomorrow, Alec will be in his own bed, and Magnus, in some fancy hotel room paid for on a corporate credit card. “We both need a good night’s sleep. For tomorrow.”

“Right,” Alec echoes. He clenches his jaw. “Tomorrow.”

The air in the car is thick and heavy, so Alec reaches for the radio to try and suffocate his own thoughts. He skips through the stations until he finds one that sticks, and then turns up the volume. The voice of a man quoting late-night scripture fills the front seat:

‘So, flee youthful passions and pursue righteousness, faith, love, and peace, along with those who call on the Lord for a pure heart.’

Magnus exhales through his nose and runs his palms up and down his legs, digging his fingers into his thighs. His eyes catch Alec’s in the rearview mirror.

A decision, then. Alec has seen this look before.

“I really think we need to find a motel,” Magnus says again, more forcibly this time. “Let’s check the map. Can you pull over?”

“Huh?” says Alec, “Just switch the light on, it’s okay. I don’t mind. Pick somewhere that sounds good and tell me which exit I need to take.”

“Alec,” Magnus insists. “Pull over.”

Alec looks at him, confused. “What? Are you okay?”

“I’m fine. Really. I just need you to stop driving, please.”

“Okay, uh. Okay. Hang on, I’ll just -” The turn signal flashes and Alec steers the car off the side of the highway and onto the grassy verge. The tires sink into the mud and the car jostles them from side to side until, finally, coming to a stand still.

Magnus unclips his seatbelt and reaches for the glove box, retrieving the atlas from inside. He spreads it out on the dashboard between them, running his fingers down the page until he finds where they are, and then flicks on the cabin light above their heads.

The car becomes an island, then. The sky is clear and the road behind them is almost empty, and the world outside is completely black and they are floating in an endless void. And all that exists is Magnus leaning across the gearstick and grabbing Alec’s hand and pressing his fingertip to a point on the map and saying, “there.”

“There?” asks Alec, looking up at Magnus’ face. His voice is a whisper now. “What’s there? A motel?”

“A motel,” Magnus agrees, shifting forward on his seat, closer to Alec. His grip on Alec’s wrist is vice-tight, his rings cold against Alec’s skin. “What do you think?”

Alec pauses. There is an unasked question here, hidden in the silence between words. It’s a proposition and Alec wants to get the answer right.

But Alec also wants to kiss him. He can smell Magnus’ cologne, the aftershave patted onto the slope of his jaw in the bathroom of a cheap motel that morning. He can feel the heat of him. He can feel the flutter of Magnus’ pulse where Magnus’ thumb is pressed insistently against his skin.

He wants to kiss him and muster the courage he could never find before, and he wants to say fuck it . Give him that moment of undoing, or redoing, or whatever the fuck it is that he wants the last few years to have meant.

He’s pretty sure that’s what Magnus wants too.

“Alexander?”

Kiss me now while the engine’s still running.

“I don’t want this to end.”

“I know you don’t,” says Magnus. “I don’t either.”

“No. No, Magnus, you don’t know. You don’t - you can’t ,” Alec insists. “You can’t know because I never said anything. That’s the whole point. I never said anything, even though we both knew how I felt. We both knew. And despite all that, we still didn’t do anything about it because in the end, it didn’t matter. It didn’t matter. I loved you and I think you loved me and it didn’t matter.”

He and Magnus exist in a not-time. This place isn’t real; Alec can speak to these feelings and not be beholden to them in the morning, or at the end of the road, or wherever it is that they’re heading. Not if he doesn’t want to.

But he does want. He wants more than one man with a body can bear.

I loved you then but it didn’t matter. But it matters now because I can say it. Because we have circled around and found each other again after all this time and that -

That has to mean something.

Magnus’ hand relaxes on Alec’s wrist; his fingertips brush across the back of Alec’s knuckles, across the roadmap between them on the console. It is tentative and questioning and even now, still says, you can drive away if you need to.

Alec inhales deeply. He shakes his head.

He meets Magnus’ eyes on purpose.

“I was afraid that the next time you walked into my life, I wouldn’t know how we fit together,” he whispers. “I was worried that something inside of me, inside of you, would’ve changed, because things always change after this long, but - it hasn’t.”

Beneath Alec’s palm, Washington lies hidden. In the dark, the paper rustles.

“You haven’t, Magnus. Not when it comes to me.”

interlude

The radio sings, ‘It will never be the same, baby.

We will always be the same, baby.’

twelfth chord

Alec’s hand shakes as he fumbles with the key in the motel room door.

Magnus stands a half step behind him, his breath forming white clouds that float and dissipate over Alec’s shoulder. The smell of his aftershave carries. There’s a deliberate space left between their bodies, greater than the distance that has existed between them in the car for the last four days.

It’s the furthest they’ve been apart since Alec approached that phone booth back in Idaho.

“Fuck,” Alec mutters, as the key sticks in the lock and refuses to turn. His palm is sweaty and anticipation licks up the side of his throat where the collar of his shirt is too tight. “Sorry, just give me a sec-”

Magnus leans over his shoulder and takes the key from him, sliding it into the lock with ease. The door clicks, and then swings open.

This motel room is just like all the rest: two beds, one TV, the oddly stained carpet. Thin plywood walls. A single light that plunges the whole room into that low-res yellow of cheap nighttime lodgings.

Alec places both their bags on one of the beds, exhales, and then, when he turns back, Magnus is standing against the closed door. His head is tilted back, his chin aloft, and his arms are folded across his chest, the sleeves of his coat tight around his arms.

His eyes are dark and molten. Where Alec is an unlit cigarette, he is the match.

And that’s enough. All things end and all endings are terrible in their own way, and Alec doesn’t know why he shouldn’t lean into the inevitable if it’s something he can’t avoid.

He abandons the bags and steps towards Magnus, grabs him by the lapels of his overcoat, and kisses him.

Immediately, Magnus opens his mouth to Alec; the sound he makes into the kiss has the hairs on the back of Alec’s neck standing on end. They stagger back against the door with a thud , and Magnus grabs at Alec’s coat, shoving it from his shoulders, then pulling Alec’s shirt out of his belt, his hands slipping beneath Alec’s undershirt so that he can feel skin.

Something rattles around inside of Alec and maybe it’s his heart come loose at last. He kisses Magnus ever deeper for it; his chest aches; his heart aches. He should’ve kissed Magnus sooner, and yet it feels like this is the only moment in time and space where it’s meant to happen: some dingy motel in rural America where it’s just the two of them and Alec has made a choice where he refuses to let this separation be the same as the last.

They’ve never needed to speak. The span of time hasn’t changed the connection between them; Alec could be his twenty-three year old self; he could be his eighteen year old self; his self from five days ago, picking up the keys to a rental car in the backwoods of Oregon state - he would still be in love with Magnus, whether or not he has said it out loud.

Alec cups the sides of Magnus’ jaw and tilts his head back, deepening the kiss. Magnus’ tongue presses into his mouth, his hand flat against the small of Alec’s back, his fingers pressed against Alec’s spine. He pulls Alec closer until their bodies are flush.

And oh, it’s so easy for Alec to lose himself to the push and pull of it: the lick of Magnus’ tongue, the pliance of his mouth. His hands are so warm as they settle on the slope of Alec’s waist.

Alec feels like he’s standing in the middle of a highway, staring down the headlights of an oncoming truck, willing it to move first or be moved . His heart is pounding loudly in his chest. The light is so bright that he is blind to everything else.

Is this driving off the edge of the road or is this the impact?

The kiss leads to the bed. The bed leads to shucked clothes and kicked-off shoes and Alec tossing his badge and service weapon blindly onto the bedside table as Magnus kisses down his throat and the blood rushes to Alec’s head.

Magnus pins him back against the starchy motel pillows, one hand splayed on Alec’s chest - stay still, don’t move - while his other hand cups Alec’s hip and his thumb slips into the band of Alec’s underwear.

No. It is the destination.

Magnus runs his hands down the inside of Alec’s legs, his palms smoothing across Alec’s thighs. His eyes meet Alec’s as he presses his mouth against Alec’s knee.

Alec’s eyes fall closed.

He wants to say something about endings, to gasp, to whisper it. He wants to ask what happens next: if he is to leave Magnus on the side of the road in Baltimore tomorrow and never hear from him again; or if Magnus will fly back to Los Angeles in a week’s time and only look back on this moment as one of those pocket memories of his, something fond to warm him on colder nights.

Alec doesn’t want that. He doesn’t want to be an uncalled telephone number in Magnus’ diary again; he doesn’t want to stop here , with Magnus’ mouth slowly kissing up his inner thigh. He cannot let Magnus slip through his fingers a second time, so he reaches out and pulls Magnus towards him, up the length of his body, crushing his mouth against Magnus’ and swallowing Magnus’ untethered gasp. He kisses Magnus’ jaw, and then the side of Magnus’ neck, and then he presses his nose to Magnus’ shoulder and breathes him in.

He says nothing, but he has to screw tight his eyes to stop himself from doing something stupid, like letting a stray tear roll down his cheek and wet the pillow. Magnus wraps his arms around him and holds him tight, words whispered in Alec’s ear that he’s been waiting ten years to hear and which Magnus thinks must all be said in one night.

Alec is too old for messes of the heart like this, but maybe that’s the problem: how long they’ve delayed this particular end, to the point that neither of them know how to exist in a world after .

interlude

The final postcard never sent:

“The boy in the yellow shirt walks like there is all the room in the world. I am standing on the edge of what is an ending world.” 2

I read this in a book that Catarina leant me. I think it’s about us, or at least it’s about me, the first time I laid eyes on you.

Come to L.A.

thirteenth chord

Alec wakes up alone in the bed, his arm outstretched across the mattress, his hand palm-up to the ceiling. There is an ache in his legs, bruises scattered across his thighs like the shattered glass of a windshield spread across the road. The smell of sex hangs heavy both in the air and on his skin where sweat has dried and not been scrubbed away, and when he tries to speak, his voice is hoarse and raspy.

Beside him on the bed, the pillow is cooling - but not yet cold.

Disappointment curls in Alec’s gut, but in his head - well, that’s empty, devoid of the constant noise that has existed there for the past few days, if not years. He hasn’t noticed until now that it mimics the sound of a car engine, a forever rumble.

There is simplicity to the silence now. The carpet is cold when Alec’s feet hit the floor, a draught slicing beneath the bed. Magnus’ suitcase is gone from the other bed; his clothes gathered from the floor. The smell of his cologne has faded, replaced by the musty smell of floral bedsheets and mothballs and wallpaper that has absorbed the smoke of a hundred cigarettes.

The only evidence of Magnus being here is his absence.

His absence - and the way Alec’s mouth tingles when he brings his fingers up to touch his lower lip.

Alec brushes his teeth to the sound of the faucet running, water gushing down the drain. He splashes his face and dresses in the crumpled clothes from yesterday that still smell like the front seat of the rental car and shakes carpet fibres out of his overcoat where it still lies by the door.

Keys. Wallet. ID. Gun. He moves through the motions on autopilot, patting his pockets and then his chest as he mentally tallies up the parts of himself worth collecting - but then stops. Standing in the middle of the motel room with his bag in his hand, he turns to look at the unmade bed, the sheets kicked into a pile, a backdrop to a journey he has taken so many times before.

The difference, now, is in the details. It feels significant. It’s worth remembering.  

Crossing to the window, he throws open the curtains and sunlight streams into the room, flooding every dark corner. Alec squints against the light, raising his hand to his face to shield his eyes. A faint sheen of frost forms fractals on the outside of the glass and, beyond that, the roof of the rental car, the prelude to the first snow of winter.

Leant against the side of the car is Magnus.

Alec inhales deeply, his breath clouding upon the window. The cold draws down into his lungs - a sharp ache inside of him that he holds for a count - and then he exhales. Deflates. Sinks back into a rhythm that is both familiar and somehow different to the one he has known for so long, as if the world now beats in imperfect time.

Magnus is propped against the hood of the car with his eyes closed and his head tipped back to catch the sun, and he doesn’t stir when Alec shuts the motel room door behind him and the gravel of the parking lot crunches beneath his shoes. On the side of Magnus’ neck, there is a hickey bitten darkly into his skin. It’s the colour of rare indigo.

Alec doesn’t feel the need to avert his gaze now.

“Have you ever been on a roadtrip?” Magnus asks, opening his eyes when he feels Alec’s shadow cross his body.

Alec frowns at him as he bends down to grab Magnus’ suitcase, before tossing both their bags into the backseat. “Isn’t this a roadtrip?”

Magnus waves his hand aimlessly. “No, this is serendipity, Alexander. I’m talking about a comprehensive tour of all the worst diner coffee in the continental United States. Hiking in the Grand Canyon. Exploring the redwood forests of the Pacific Northwest.” He looks at Alec and smiles a coy smile, pushing away from the car. “You know, in Indiana, they have the World’s Largest Ball of Paint? I’d like to see that sometime. All the best roadside Americana that the country has to offer.”

Alec rounds the car to the driver’s door, opens it, but doesn’t get in. He leans his arms on the roof of the car and Magnus, on the other side, turns to face him.

“But Baltimore,” says Alec.

Magnus’ smile softens. “But Baltimore,” he agrees, across the span of the roof. He glances at his watch. “Providing we don’t hit gridlock outside the city, I should be right on time for my meeting and Raphael won’t have the pleasure of removing my head from my shoulders. You always were excellent at keeping me punctual.”

Alec smiles quietly, ducking his head. “Yeah, well, one of us had to live in the real world.”

He climbs into the car and Magnus follows, folding himself into the passenger seat and draping his coat across his lap. He buckles himself in and then leans back to look at Alec as Alec slots the key into the ignition.

“What?” Alec asks. He reaches up to touch his neck, in the same place where the bruise forms on Magnus’ throat, but can’t find any tenderness. “Is there something on my face?”

“No,” Magnus says gently. “No, not at all. I was just thinking that sometimes the real world is rather overrated. In my experience, the longer one can put off returning to it, the better.”

Alec turns the key and the car splutters into life. The heater blows warm air into the front seat, condensing upon the windshield, and when Alec reaches out to direct the flow of air downwards, Magnus covers Alec’s hand with his.

It’s a reflection of the night before, but without the urgency.

Magnus curls his fingers around Alec’s hand and brushes his thumb over Alec’s knuckles. Then, he brings Alec’s hand up to his mouth and presses his lips to Alec’s fingers, his eyes falling closed and his eyelashes casting feathered shadows on his face.

Alec holds his breath. He waits for Magnus to say something, to say so let’s not go back to the real world yet because I’m happy here , but he doesn’t.

Happy is too vague a concept. Not that Alec isn’t happy here, in this particular not-real moment, but it’s a feeling that belongs to strange, liminal motels and repeated diners. It is hard to grasp, and harder still to fathom how it might slip into the spaces occupied by a life back in the city at the end of the road.

Magnus sets Alec’s hand down on the gearstick between them, and settles back into his seat, kicking his feet up on the dashboard. He tips his seat back and rests his head against the window as Alec puts the car into reverse.

The road is quiet but not deserted. Alec knows that they will meet traffic before too long, but, for a moment, he imagines the highway stretching beyond the horizon and continuing into the sky, winter-blue and endlessly deep, leading above and beyond the curve of the Earth.

There’s a very thin dusting of snow on the hard shoulder, and the sun, shockingly bright, refracts off it with a white glare. It’s the sort of daylight that possesses Alec, that fills him up and makes him feel separate from his body.

If Alec rolled down the window, that daylight would spill in and flood the car, crisp and cold and foreign. But here in the warmth, he unspools a story in his half-awake mind: him and Magnus and the unending road. If they stop moving, they’ll die. If they stop driving, they’ll die. There was a Keanu Reeves movie about that recently , Alec thinks. It probably didn’t end well.  

“Do you mind if I smoke?”

Alec glances sideways at Magnus. “What happened to quitting?”

“Oh, I did,” says Magnus. He produces an unopened pack of Morley’s from the folds of his coat and inspects it curiously. “But I got this from the motel reception this morning on a whim and it feels like a waste otherwise.”

Alec rolls his eyes. “Right,” he says, but he cracks open the driver’s window and the cold rushes in. The wind ruffles through his hair, funneled by the cuffs of his jacket up the length of his sleeves and into his coat. A shiver ripples down his spine and he grimaces.

Beside him, Magnus pulls a cigarette out of the pack with his teeth and cups his hand around his lighter as he lights it, before holding it out to Alec.

“I haven’t smoked in years,” Alec says, but he takes the cigarette anyway and taps the lit end against the ashtray on the console. “You can’t laugh.”

Magnus lights a second cigarette, the clink of his lighter sharp, like metal. He draws in a deep breath, pulling smoke down into his lungs, and then exhales. The grey plume rises towards the roof, only to be sucked suddenly out of the open window.

Magnus coughs, clearing his throat, and takes the cigarette from his mouth, only to pull a face at it.

“Tastes like what I imagine licking the floor of that motel would be like,” he says, before stubbing the cigarette out in the ashtray. He frowns at the packet in his hand, before throwing it into the glove box. “Let’s stop at the next gas station. I need something to wash that out of my mouth.”

“Okay,” says Alec, unable to stop himself from smiling. His cigarette warms his fingers. His stomach growls at the thought of cheap diner coffee and a greasy bacon burger for breakfast. He presses his foot down on the gas and shifts the engine up a gear.

A passing road sign reads: Baltimore, 405 km . About a five hour drive.

Alec will miss this rental car.

interlude

In the dark of a motel on the night before, Magnus’ eyes are almost black. Alec studies him from across the pillow, their noses nearly touching. Magnus’ hand, splayed on Alec’s ribs, draws gentle circles into Alec’s skin, while Alec’s ankle lies tangled with both of Magnus’ legs.

Magnus’ body is warm. It’s rhythm is familiar in the way that it matches Alec: how he moves, how he breathes, how the sound of his heartbeat disturbs the silence of the motel room.

If Magnus were to speak, he would say, ‘something is only beautiful because it does not last forever .’ But he does not speak, so Alec cannot say back, ‘ that’s not true. You’ve always been beautiful .’

Instead, he leans forward and he kisses Magnus and he earns a soft groan for his troubles as Magnus curves into him like the other side of a parenthesis, ‘til now unpaired.

Magnus’ hand slides upwards, cupping the back of Alec’s head. His thumb caresses the shell of Alec’s ear and the soft hair above it.

He pulls himself against Alec’s chest, his other hand trapped between them, pressed over Alec’s heart.

He kisses Alec back.

outro

The woman in the apartment above Alec’s has Christmas lights in her window: red and green flash in alternating patterns and Mariah Carey’s faint warble can be heard from the sidewalk as Alec gazes up at his building and allows himself to watch, if only for a moment.

His bag is heavy on his shoulder and his suit is stiff across his back; the thought of a shower is calling him home, but he wants to linger outside a little longer. The cold is sharp against his face and draws a red flush to his cheeks. His breath escapes him in white clouds, tumbling upwards. Baltimore lingers on his skin with the memory of a parting kiss.  

He is, now, alone.

On his doorstep, his neighbour has left him an early Christmas card; she has done the same for the last few years, concerned for the young man who lives alone and never has his family visit once December comes around. As Alec unlocks his front door, he slips his finger beneath the seal of the envelope and tears it open, and the message inside is the same as it always is, wishing him and his loved ones well for the holidays.

He places the card on the sideboard by the door as he toes off his shoes, and wanders into his living room, dumping his bag on the floor as he goes.

The stillness in his apartment is strange: the air is musty, the windows unopened for nearly two weeks now, and while there’s no dust on his coffee table yet, the scattered paperwork and unwashed coffee mug are somehow disturbed by his presence.

There are dishes in his kitchen sink and his bed is still unmade; the space is exactly as he left it, and returning to it feels a little like disembarking an airplane after a long journey spent cramped in one mindset, and now having to reacclimatise to solid ground.

Alec is not sure why he expected his apartment to be changed. Even in some small way, like the rotating characters at a diner, or the different coloured carpet at each roadside motel, or the occupancy of his passenger seat by a man he thought he’d never see again, he hoped for something new. Something welcomed but unrecognised, symbolic of a new start or, perhaps, a second chance.

Oh. Maybe he’s the one a little changed, then.

It’s not about the destination , after all , he tells himself, reaching for the remote to turn the TV on for background noise. It’s about the journey.

Briefly, he wonders if this happens every time: if each successive back-and-forth across America wears him down just a little, like the treads on car tires, and it’s only now that he has changed enough to notice that he no longer fits into the routine once occupied with ease. In his footsteps, he brings the liminality of the road into his own apartment, the threshold moment between one state of being and the next.

And Alec is okay with that.

He locks his service weapon in the safe on his desk. Loosens his tie. Pulls a bent postcard from Carhenge, Nebraska, a receipt from a gas station just outside of Baltimore, and a nearly-full pack of Morley’s from his jacket pocket and sets them all on the coffee table, before throwing his coat over the back of the couch to take to the dry cleaners tomorrow.

His suit jacket goes next - two days old and creased around the elbows - and then his belt, a heavy thunk on the floor, before he pads into the bathroom and turns on the shower so that the water might have time to heat up before he gets in.

He strips down to his underwear and wanders back out into his living room, and it’s then that he notices the red flashing light on his answering machine: a voicemail.

He hits the play button - ‘ you have three unread messages ,’ says the disembodied voice - and he pours himself a glass of water as he listens first to Jace ramble on about not coming home for the holidays, and then to his mother discuss her plans to visit her solicitor next week.

Alec empties his glass and sets it in the sink to be washed later. He heads back to the bathroom, rolling the stiffness out of his shoulders, and the answering machine beeps to signify the final message.

‘ Alexander, it’s me. ’

Alec stops and turns to stare at his answering machine as if it might come alive in front of him.

‘ You’re probably not even back in D.C. yet, but - well ,’ says Magnus. ‘ I made it on time to the meeting, in case you’re interested. I’m never going to hear the end of it from Rafael, of course, and he’s never going to let me drive anywhere alone again, but it’s looking like we’ll be able to close a deal before Christmas. It sounds like I’m going to be back and forth between L.A. and Baltimore a lot next quarter.’  

In the background, Alec can hear the sound of people, of a bustling street, of taxi cabs blasting their horns as Magnus tries to hail one down.

‘ But I all that aside, this couldn’t wait and, I suppose, serendipity can only get you so far.’

Alec reaches for the handset, poised above the redial button, but then something in Magnus’ tone changes. In his words, Alec can hear the sound of his smile.

‘ How far is the drive from Los Angeles to Indiana?’ Magnus asks. ‘No, wait, how far is the drive from Baltimore to Indiana? I’ve been thinking a little more about the World’s Biggest Ball of Paint. Perhaps you’d like to see it with me.’

The beat of Alec’s heart shifts in its rhythm once again. He holds his breath. He imagines himself taking a step over that imaginary threshold.  

‘There are too many things I haven’t told you yet. ’

*****

“They have worries, they're counting the miles, they're thinking about where to sleep tonight, how much money for gas, the weather, how they'll get there - and all the time they'll get there anyway, you see.”

― Jack Kerouac, On the Road

[courtorderedcake]

Roses : A CS retelling of ‘Tam Lin’ chapter 3

 Hi, everyone! Thanks to @kmomof4​ and the extremely talented @eastwesthomeisbest​ for their patience on this. As usual, thanks to @ultraluckycatnd​ who I would be lost without, the woman is a monster editing machine, and super beta. I live for my updates from her. Without further ado, here is my laaaaaaaaaaaate contribution to @cssns​​.  It's been a while, hasn't it? I promise you it was worth it.Smut a'heckin'hoy! Two other things : This will be updating between MTFB and Hallow, as well as my CSMM ficlet. It also gained another chapter. Secondly, this chapter is MASSIVE. I tried to cut it down but it just didn't work right unless it was altogether. I promise you the smut fest was worth it.

Read on Ao3 right here, darlings!

Chapter 1/5 Chapter 2/5 Chapter 3/5

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The Soldier is feverish, when he falls upon the land of Carterhaugh. They have returned uneasily to the house, or the Lady has, her husband belongs to the forest more than she does. Her son teeters between both worlds, and with nothing to mother or care for, The Soldier becomes a welcomed friend. As he heals, and The Lady finds herself in his warm company, he becomes more. He learns how to tend to the Gardens with The Lady. She teaches him to talk to the birds, to sing to the plants, how to keep things green and blooming, and eventually how to touch them to illicit responses.

Eventually, he learns how to touch her, as well.

The Lady does not age, and as more war looms on the horizon, The Soldier finds he has only aged slightly. Where he should be gray, he has retained his youthful glow. When he asks, The Lady admits the truth about her family.

She tells The Soldier, about her son, about the Lord of the Wood, and about herself, The Lady of Carterhaugh. She begs him to come with her, to let another war rage on in the outside world, and to give himself to them. She asks him to join their dance, but not as a dancer, as a player with a role. She asks him to keep her tied to the earth, to the green that lives outside the darkness in the wood. To remind her of what she was leaving.

And The Soldier agrees. How can he refuse her?

It is his fault when she fades, no matter how much he tries. It is his fault that she is gone, and still remains.

His banishment is blessing and curse. Even still, when he hears the bells, he must answer the summons.

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Two weeks Earlier...

Killian has never liked the forest.

It's not for a lack of trying, and there is a level of bias involved, he will admit. A more honest statement is that Killian has never liked this forest, this particular forest down the hill from Carterhaugh. This accursed, twisted, blight on the land; sitting just close enough to the sea for it to have caught him in its gnarled fingers. For it to have caught them. For it to have changed Milah so much that imagining being a 'them' feels a lifetime ago.

Killian could remember her voice before it became cold and empty. He'd noticed their change, his ears pointing slightly the longer he stayed in her palace chambers, his canines becoming slightly sharper the more he ate of their food, his thoughts becoming colder and emotions numbing. The strange way time passed, and his promises to himself that he would contact Liam the next day, sending word once and then forgetting. It wasn’t him.

He tries to process these changes when a description of war to the Lordling makes Baelfire smile in wonder, an eerie and unsettling gleam there at the words of how many lay dead in trenches. It does not work then, or later. It's not as bad as the secret of their youth settling in his gut. Close, but not enough to end the longing for the taste of his beloved's neck.

There are more times than not he thanks the stars he is banished, even if banishment as an immortal is cursed and tedious work (or was), because what would he be now if he had stayed? The same sort of creature who lets mortals throw themselves at their feet for sacrifice?

Milah had reasoned with him that at least it was willingly, that at least Rumplestiltskin let them choose a life of bliss if they came, and it gave them a way out of the terrible situations they came from. Killian wasn't sure, the humans coming through looking too sick, starved, empty, or adrift to seem actively aware of their decision.

He'd accepted it numbly, even as his Milah had hurt him and others in affection. Her eyes had become sharp and cooled to a tawny color, hair flowing with invisible wind blown tentacles, cheekbones too sharp, skin too pale, nails too long, ears pointed and stretched. She no longer tasted like rum and lavender tarts, but of copper and earth. Her love making left him raw and scarred, and he'd tried to not drown in her tempestuous moods, clinging to his acceptance by her. Even when she had forced his want against his will, balking at his shame, he tried. When it became something she forced from him without mercy and in cruel humor, he retreated into himself.

Baelfire's disappearance and the note he left behind had been a mercy. When Killian’s head had cleared in the empty halls, Liam was long dead, and the Jones family long gone. He could return to Milah and beg for her forgiveness and her love, but without Baelfire that was never going to happen. He would instead be signed away with the house until Baelfire returned.

But Baelfire is not returning. Baelfire is never returning. Baelfire is lost, because if he isn't, Emma could not be there with the key in her hand.

Emma is there instead, and Killian will stop at nothing to keep her safe. He would never let her be lured to them, had taken great strides to consecrate the grounds, and had fiercely guarded her so many nights when he heard their songs call from down the hillside. It is the bells that he can't ignore, while everything else that had once been wondrously alluring now falls flat.

"You're in for it now," an amused voice calls from the wood as he steps past the threshold. The Green Fairy is there, her smiling face unlike her cousins that now dwell in what she claims was once her people's lands. No one knows what is true other than the King, and he surely isn't going to reveal anything of value. Thus, The Green Fairy torments who she calls the false denizens, wreaking havoc just for the fun of it. "She's in a mood today, the wind brought down strange tidings when it whistled through. She believes that you have let an imposter into her dominion, banished one."

Killian laughs at that, bitterly. "Are you sure it's me she's angry at?" He asks, pointing to her satchel, the huge blooms of crystalline flowers from the royal gardens barely hidden under the leather flap.

She smiles coyly, batting her eyelashes. "You didn't see me, and I didn't warn you?"

"Fair enough." He grunts, and she slips away with a wave.

She navigates the forest supernaturally, disappearing somewhere they cannot follow, in between trees, behind tall stones, more than once offering him escape with the caveat of being unable to return. At one point he had sought her for comfort, his despair at banishment leaving her pitying, even after she professed dislike of males in most species. She had given him her name, Tinkerbell, and he had tried not to laugh or offend her but failed miserably. Despite all of her kindness, she was quick to anger, and no longer ventured close to the house.

Twigs broke as another creature approached, this time someone unwelcome and familiar. He was close to the castle now, the trees and mossy floor moving around him, drawing him in as they shifted.

"Look who thinks he can come into our domain as he pleases!" a voice called, a Faery named Regina giggled, appearing by his side and slipping her elbow through his. Her long, deep red talons brushed against his sleeve.

"I have an announcement for the Queen that involves sensitive news."

Another giggling voice, this time like an ooze that made Killian feel uncomfortable and unclean. "Oh? Do you Dearie?" Rumplestiltskin drawled, a chair with him sprawled in it materializing in the gloom, the palace springing up around Killian. "What have you to tell my queen?"

Milah sat in the throne next to her scaled husband, her expression reading nothing but boredom.

Killian cleared his throat as the court appeared in different puffs of smoke, anxiety heavy on his shoulders. "Your Majesties, this may be a private matter -"

Rumplestiltskin laughed at that, and Milah stiffened in anger. "You dare tell us what our court is fit to hear -"

"Quiet yourself," Milah hissed, interrupting her husband's mocking. "Is this in regards to our son?"

Rumplestiltskin's face paled as Killian nodded once, Milah giving a thunderous clap of her hands. The palace moved around them again, Milah plucking silver flowers from trees to put in a basket.

"Tell us how he fares, and if he was well met! When will he return?" Milah exclaimed, and Killian let his heart ache for the woman she had once been. He steeled himself, Rumplestiltskin's demeanor ashy and nervous. Killian briefly wondered why this news would be alarming, but shook it off.

"The owner of Carterhaugh has returned, the woman who you saw before does indeed rightfully hold the key."

"That can't be right, she must have cheated or tricked him for his -"

Killian interrupted, shaking his head. "Queen Milah. She was married to a man named Neal. She has no idea who Baelfire is."

"Then we'll kill her and take the key, and when Baelfire returns -"

"I have come here to formally end our accord. I want to be with her and end my watch on the lands, as agreed, my Queen," Killian said calmly, trying not to betray his fear. Milah looked at him in shock, the silver of the room making her seem as if carved from marble, an angry goddess sent to smite errant worshippers. The force of her slap sent his head wrenching to the side, her eyes a deep black.

"You dare to spurn my gifts? You dare to ask for a reprieve from your post? And you dare to ask this of me for the foul creature who may be holding my Baelfire captive?" Milah seethed, her hand shooting out like a viper to grab his chin. "You are mine, and your punishment is befitting of how lucky you are to be mine. You should be grateful!" Killian pulled away from her as she tried to dip her tongue in his mouth, shaking her off. Her mouth tasted like cold, wet earth and sickenly sweet rosewater.

Killian felt bile rise in his throat, but swallowed it back to yell. "I want nothing from you, and will take nothing! Baelfire is -"

"Do not finish that sentence!" Milah screamed, and the world shook, dark fog again returning as trees formed from the mist. "Begone from my realm. I will call to you when I have made a decision, but for now your presence repulses me."

The fog lifted, depositing him at the beginning of the forest in the rotting clearing, his boots beginning to wet from the boggy groundwater. Taking a deep breath of air, he began the long trudge back up to Carterhaugh.

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Present day, post kiss

Sex had been a divisive and troubling prospect for Killian with the Fae court. Their psychological and physical abuse as they edged him for days, left him bleeding or bruised with no thought of soothing his skin or aftercare, and the degradation he begged not to consent to with disregard to any pleas he uttered had left him cold. In his exile, he rarely touched himself, and rarer still had any desire to do so.

The Fae world that originally poured vibrancy, milk, honey, and untold treasures had grown into something crooked that corroded and burnt any life. Even after his banishment, his exile did not return the colors they had taken, life left muted and gray.

Emma was an explosion, too bright at first for him to look at, and then a fire that he could not hope to seek refuge by. She would burn him, blind him, or he would snuff her out, let her smolder down to ash.

When she kissed him, neither happened and it was fireworks that did nothing but heat his body, light magnified. Emma was not a fire, but sunshine after too many long days of rain. She filled him with hope, illuminating the world again to push away the gray and reveal the hues he had lost.

When she fled, it was an all encompassing dread that filled him. He had realized that he was in love with her far before, but had been content for the cloudy summer days she brought him, peeking bits of color here or there to sustain him - her affection and attention like watering a withered flower.

Now it was alive, facing the sun happily, and it was like a sword through his chest when she took it away. She would leave, leave him in this house with its halls and secrets, leave him with the ghosts of the others that left. Killian texted her frantically, called her both through the door and over her cellular phone, tried to see her from his balcony, and had sat in the darkness staring at the lit screen of his own phone when no reply came. That was all the answer needed. The first bottle of wine was choked down in the kitchen, a bottle of cheap cabernet meant for cooking. He had asked Emma for it, had asked her for everything really, to cook meals they could share together. Eating alone, drinking alone - how could he go back?

The buried bottle of whiskey in the solarium was meant to be for Baelfire's return, but Baelfire would never return now that Emma was here with the key. He was gone, lost somewhere in the human world. If Killian had asked to pursue the lost boy's trail, if he hadn't waited in this tomb of a house, would things be different? The whiskey is smoky, a burn of fire inside him that licks his insides along with his self hatred. There is nothing more in him besides regret. Regret for not saving Baelfire, for letting Milah transform into the monstrosity she had become, and for Emma - everything he touched turned to dust. He was poison.

The emerald bloom of a flower he doesn't recognize is blurred in his drunken vision, but the thorns are sharp enough to make him curse as he bleeds over the strange petals. Even the solarium rejects him, his laugh bubbling out despite his hatred of everything around him.

Wandering the halls with another bottle in hand, he can't remember where this one was stashed. It's an old bordeaux that is wasted on him and dropped carelessly in the hall, probably hidden by Milah for some celebration - there were too many nooks and crannies in Carterhaugh stuffed with something, be it drink, memories, or ghosts like himself - it's not hard to imagine being as dead as he feels himself longing to be. Milah had warned him of this fate, her heel on his throat as he gasped for air.

"There is no escape from us for you Killian. Accept this. You are mine."

She had beat him bloody, used him until he felt hollowed out, carved clean of any kind of emotion. Breaking him took time, and she had more than enough of it. Depositing him at Carterhaugh in banishment at the end of her torture had been the hardest withdrawal he had faced until now, imagining Emma leaving him here when he had done all he could to heal. Maybe he deserved this hell; after all, the Fae were a form of damnation.

This torture was the worst and most effective the devils could have used. He was left blind now, her light too much up close, left to wander in the dark for his attempts to see her. In a room he doesn't immediately recognize as he stumbles through the door, there is a cool armoire that lets him crawl in like a beaten dog, the moth eaten linens inside serving as a soft cocoon around him. It's blissfully dark and enclosed, a coffin for the phantom he is. He should not accept becoming a ghost again, but in truth he should not have accepted a lot of things.

It might be best if he cut out his heart and buried the burden of it in the garden after all; to be blind, heartless, and complete his own transformation into the damned spirit of Carterhaugh. Maybe then the next owner might have pity for him, and he could forget about the losses that make his chest ache.

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The quiet stillness that settled over Carterhaugh when Emma padded to the kitchen was oppressive, the smallest movements tensed as if she were a thief in her own house. It felt wrong to be here, the change in atmosphere reminding her of when she had squatted in a museum's unfinished exhibit space for a few weeks, the edge of always being caught like a predator she knew lay just outside her peripheral vision. The difference was that she had caused this change, brought it upon herself by being careless and selfish and naive. He was gone. The absence of another presence was like a vacuum, and it sucked the life she had worked so hard to put back into the giant house without mercy.

No, that wasn't quite right. She was a ghost in this house because it was him she rebuffed. Others could come and go, but it was Killian who had actually made her feel like the building had a soul.

Touches of him were everywhere, even in her own decisions. She spent breakfast wrapped up in one such choice, his preferred coffee mug warming her hand under his preferred blanket that smelled like him. There was no one here to judge her if she wrapped herself in what was gone, or cried bitterly into her drink. There was only her. Only Emma, lost girl, left again and again.

Lunch rolled around faster than she could have anticipated, watching windows as she tried to convince herself to do anything but look for signs of him. His room was unslept in, bed made and tidy. It struck her as so entirely him, the lines of the crisp sheets creased with care, and she laughed out a strangled noise. He had cared about her, and she should have told him that he was cared for too. Laying in his bed, wrinkling the smoothed linens and holding his pillow tightly as she curled around it, her heart ached with unsaid admissions.

When he came back, she would tell him. Emma willed herself to have courage and take a leap of faith just this once, to trust that he would come back. He had to come back, and when he did, he would have to let her tell him the truth.

A spiteful voice slithered in her ear, its words making her lungs constrict.

He doesn't have to forgive you for pushing him away.

You don't deserve it.

Emma was tired of not deserving what she so desperately wanted. She had wanted a family, friends, safety, a roof over her head, trust, and love for so long. Fighting for those things after being let go from foster homes, after living in abandoned places, after the house with too many doors that haunted her nightmares, after Neal's destruction of her trust, after her forced committal and subsequent release, after making a family and making friends who she knew cared - Killian could be something new if she just let him in to try.

He had proven himself worth it time and time again even before her kiss, a kiss she now dreamt of in his bed. She could hear him, his mumbled and worried voice full of concern he shouldn't have over her, wetness drenching her cheeks from tears cried into his pillow.

Time is a wheel, and it turns and turns and spins and whirls as it pulls Emma along with it. It's as if her eyes are covered in gauze, her smile feels forced but she also craves having her lips upturned for him. When she is alone, completely and blissfully alone, she examines the confines of the ring that surrounds her. In the silence, there's clarity. Emma breaks it with whispered words she repeats to herself. The feel of them on her lips gives her hope, as if she can beat whatever this is by practicing the magic words that she longs to say.

'No.'

At one time, he had told her with his grin (too sharp, she can see it now, his teeth are sharpened and too white) that people knew better than to say no to him. She had done so with correction (he had called it correction when his hand met her face, or torso, or wherever he could reach with the open palm, then closed fist) and then by choice, not realizing what she had given away. First her name, then accepting all of his hospitality, giving him the power of her voice and will, and then letting him lure her into his ring completely. It glittered on her finger, too bright, overwhelming in its gaudiness. It's a wonder that she hadn't known and hadn't seen it behind the glamor.

Emma wonders idly if this is madness, if she's gone insane or broken to a mental fracture. Every time she sees him now in his true form (with the long fingers, the hair that moves sometimes as if in an invisible wind, his pointed ears and sharp teeth, the cold steel eyes that seem to glow, the carved angles of his face casting deep shadow) and cannot control her actions fully or fight against his will, she fears that her mind is lost. When people that aren't made of the glittering marble look at her, do they see what she once saw? Do they see a beautiful vision of a happy couple, that seems to exist outside of reality? Are they able to see how her face strains and her fingers spasm, all in attempts to claw at her face?

She knows that Neal and his kind can see the truth, even as hard as she tries to hide it. She knows that Neal is quick to take her hand in his (too tightly, as if to break her fingers) to still the tremors. She knows that Neal will kiss her (He always tastes of wine and honey, but now there is an aftertaste of something old, something gone sour and bitter, it makes her tongue feel as if she has licked an old battery covered in wet earth) to cement her smile.

The more she tries to break free, the more he presses down to keep her under his thumb. He grips tighter, beginning to take away the freedom of her silent reprieves by never leaving her alone. Emma can hear him in the next room, hear what he is doing and can hear the other woman as the purple haired beauty watches her with amusement.

'In the olden days, they warned you mortals not to dance with us,' She purrs, her warm colored skin ice cold when she curls to take a selfie with Emma, 'Say Hi, Emma. This is for my Instagram page, TheSeaBitch - Hey unfortunate souls! Ursula here, with Emma Gold, the it girl, hit girl, socialite you all want to be! We're reminding you to come out to Atlantica to dance this Friday, first drink is free and no cover for you other it girls. Come on, dance with us!"

Ursula twists the camera, and Emma's mouth moves on its own.

"Please, come dance! I could dance forever…" Her voice sounds foreign, but as Ursula presses a button to close out the video, she giggles while changing the filter.

"Great job, Emma. Neal will love this, after he finishes with her make sure to tell him that is our next ring." Ursula's cold fingers pinch Emma's cheeks, pushing her lips out into a pout as nails dig into the skin. Emma does not wince, even as the sharp pang of it hits her. "You have truly been such a perfect little thrall. I bet you'll be the one he chooses as his first attempt now that he's ready."

Emma grins, not understanding what that means, only happy to please. Her nose begins to bleed. Ursula looks at her with a too wide grin, the noises finally stopped in the room she cannot and does not want to see into.

Neal walks out as he finishes buttoning up his pants, his shirt open and tie slung around his neck. Emma stands dutifully as he approaches, carefully smoothing down his shirt, buttoning it and tucking it in his pants, then tying his tie. She can feel his eyes on her, watching the gentle trickle of blood slide down her face. He kisses her hungrily, the taste of copper unwelcome to her even as he groans, his eyes fluttering closed. From behind him, Emma watches the woman leave through the door, looking confused and dazed while she adjusts her skirt, Neal still pushing his tongue down her throat.

'I didn't want to do that, Em.' He whispered in her ear. She pulled off his lap in the car, adjusting her dress and then attending to cleaning him. 'I had a deal I needed to take care of, that's all. You're special. I know you are struggling with this, but I am keeping my promise to you - we are going to run away together, have a family, live in happiness. I just need to get things in order to make sure it's perfect.'

Emma stares, looking at him carefully. The air in the car shifts, as if a gust of wind has forced past the partition or closed windows.

'I don't want this Neal, I don't know what you've done to me, or how, but I don't want -'

The sleepy feeling of comfort rises again, a smile creeping up her face. Her head is so heavy, and Emma lays it in his lap as he strokes her hair, curling it around his fingers with a kind smile. He is so good to her, isn't he? So wonderful…

It echoes, again and again, how much she loves him, and how wonderful it is to be loved by him. How grateful she should be. He takes her shopping, her previous dress wet and stained, dressing her like a doll until she's perfect to stand at his arm.

They dance at Atlantica, the bright colors of outfits and gleam of sparkling fabrics among bubbles that fall from the ceiling makes Emma feel as if they are underwater.

(Part of her feels as if she is drowning)

Ariel and Ruby come, they appear as if they are parting the sea with their presence. Emma tries to tell them to flee with her slow blinking and blurry gaze. They don't. Neal is delighted when they dance with them, and when they drink. Emma watches them spin in circles while her feet step in choreography she can't control.

That night he presents her with the emeralds, the circle cut necklace, the bracelets, the earrings - the green so bright it seems as if it's a growing plant. Emma holds it in her palm, feeling it pulse, feeling it dig into her hand as if it wants to fuse with her skin. It whispers, and Neal whispers with it.

(It says, 'I am the ring of green mantle, I am the double rose with biting thorns!

I am the wands and I am the maidenhead!

I am everything that takes root, that will snap, and that will break forth!')

(Neal says, 'I'm ready. Let me show you the dark wonders, and the many terrible things. Let me have all of you. Let me have you, give me life from you, and from me.

Let me take you to what will be our home.')

(It sits heavy on her chest, just below her clavicle and between her breasts, whispering without pause. It is clear what it wants, it is clear what he wants, and Emma will not give him this. The whispers curl like worms, they crawl over her and make her itch. It laughs at her when she thinks about contraception, cackles when she thinks about her birth control pills taken religiously when Neal sleeps.

It tells her they won't work. It tells her that she should be happy. )

Neal takes her hand, and they step out of his car. It's different, less ostentatious, the neighborhood they are in is dark. The house looks shabby, a window boarded up and a wilted chain link fence covered in rust so foreign to her now, it pushes a memory of who she used to be up from the depths of her mind. She was on streets like these before. She fought. She punched back, made her own fate. No fairy godmother's, no fairies at all. No one saved her except her.

Rage prickles down her spine, sweat beading at the nape of her neck.

Ariel and Ruby step out of the car behind her. They look tired, almost asleep on their feet, but with happy smiles that make them look drunk. Emma knows they aren't drunk.

They stepped inside the house, it's dark wood paneling smelling like cigarettes and dust, the linoleum as they walked into the kitchen peeling. The cupboards are crooked and an old fridge hums when they turn beside it to go down to the basement. The wood stairs squeak under their steps, until her foot connects with white stone. They walked further, until Emma first sees the house for what it is - The house with too many doors.

Neal twirled her, laughing, and through opened doors she sees the shivering women with their blank stares. He spins her into him, and she feels the press of him against her, his breath on her neck. Her fingers curl closed, nails biting into her palms as she tenses. Neal rocks her, slowing as he turns her to look at him with confusion.

"We're finally ready. You're ready, and I," His grin infectious. It made her stomach turn. "I found you. You are so beautiful. You are so perfect for this. I made you, and you will make for me, in turn."

The rage under her skin heated to fury. No one has made her anything, and she is not this. She is not owned. She will never be owned. She isn't nothing. She has never been nothing!

She is Emma Swan, and she is not about to be shackled into this prison.

"You're… Why aren't you smiling, Emma?" He asked.

Emma blinked, touching her face. She wasn't smiling. She was frowning. Her eyes narrowed, watching Ruby and Ariel shuffle into a room. Neal touched her cheek, pushing her gaze back to him.

"Emma," Neal gritted out, his face contorted in fury. "Why aren't you smiling?"

Emma didn't answer, her hand gripping the emerald necklace by its whispering pendant and jerking it off of her neck with as much force as she could. It shrieked at her, she was sure she heard it scream, heard the cry of it like some horrid changeling infant.

She ran, ran to the steps, Neal on her heels just behind her. He caught her ankle and yanked, they fought on the stairs as she kicked at him. Her fingers dragged along the wood, splintering the boards. Another strong pull and her head landed hard on the cool rock, dizziness taking over, Neal looming above her as darkness began to bloom in her eyes.

'Oh, Emma.' Neal said with a nauseating fake tone of concern. "What ever shall I do with you?"

Emma tried to turn her head, tried to turn away from him, but she couldn't move as he dragged her.

"Emma. Oh, Emma." He tutted, her hair wet against the stone, her fingers tracing the trail that followed behind her. "Emma, Emma, Emma." He sighed.

"Emma," it was sighed, more exasperated now, but so much gentler. "Swan, you need to get up."

Emma blinked awake with a deep gulp of breath, sitting up to find a red eyed and bleary looking Killian watching her on the edge of his bed. He looked as terrible as she felt, which should not have made her heart warm as it did.

"You're here? You're back?" Emma whispered, and his sad smile at her brought more tears to her eyes.

"I didn't leave. I got a bit…" He blushed, sheepishly scratching behind his ear. "I got a lot drunk, and ended the night sleeping in another room. A closet, actually. I just woke up."

"A closet?" Emma asked, trying her hardest not to laugh, even as her eyes misted.

He chuckled nervously. "An armoire, actually, if we're being technical."

"Semantics," Emma teased, gently, an awkward silence following the way they fell back into easy conversation. Swallowing hard, Emma scooted over to his side. "Look, Killian, I -"

"It's alright, Swan. I overstepped, and I need to put my feelings for you aside." He shrugged, even as Emma gaped at him. "I shouldn't have kissed you, it was inappropriate and -"

"I kissed you, Killian. I was the one, and - Wait," She blinked, trying to clear her head. "Did you say that you have feelings for me?"

Killian nodded once, sagely. "Aye, lass. I do. I won't act on them again -"

"No!" Emma blurted, her hands finding his. "I want - No. I have them too. I don't want - I didn't want you to leave, and I thought you -" She paused, and he gently stroked her knuckles in encouragement as she met his penetrating gaze. "I've been abandoned so often. I was scared to let you in, to feel all of this so strongly, but thinking you left…"

"If you'll have me, darling," Killian whispered, his arm moving to bring her into his embrace, "You have no reason to fear I'd ever leave your side."

Emma laughed, happiness and a sense of joy flooding her veins as she looked up at him from where he held her against his body.

"I am so sorry for freaking out. I'm sorry for -"

"Apology accepted," Killian interrupted, kissing her forehead. "You needn't have even one, You have -you had an aversion to touch, and I -"

"Can I kiss you again?" Emma asked, surprised how breathless she suddenly felt.

Killian grinned, shaking his head. "No."

"Oh," Emma let out an exhale, trying to not show her hurt. "I just thought -" Killian held up a finger to silence her, tracing it along her lips to the apple of her cheek where he cupped her face. His eyes crinkled at the edges, the blue of them light and clear of worry despite their redness. He leaned closer, licking his lips, whispering against the corner of her mouth as she gasped.

"Because, darling, this time I am kissing you, if it's alright."

Emma nodded, swallowing hard. He pressed against her, and she molded herself to him, half wondering if it was a dream as her hands curled behind his neck. Her tongue slipped along his bottom lip until he was moving his head to deepen the kiss, his own tongue tracing hers while she let out a moan. This seemed to spur him on, his teeth joining the exploration as he gently bit on her bottom lip, her body grinding into his with sudden need. When she returned the teasing nibble, his answering groan made her shiver while they broke away for air.

"I think," Emma panted out, smiling at Killian's darkened gaze and mussed hair. "I like this whole you kissing me thing."

"Good," Killian smirked, his mouth trailing kisses up her neck as he pushed her back to lie on his bed. "Because I am not going to stop unless I bloody well have to."

His hands roamed her body over her pajamas, her eyes falling closed in bliss when he moved to cage her body and kissed her senseless again and again.

"I've wanted this for so long, Emma," he murmured, holding her as they lay together under the covers, her head resting on his chest. "You're beautiful, and everything I could have wanted. I thought - I thought I had ruined everything -"

"Shhhh," Emma murmured, rolling herself onto his chest, her legs straddling him. She had felt the sweatpants covered heat of him against her thigh before, but now it twitched back to life underneath her where her own warmth emanated. Killian hissed, his eyes widening. "This is a happy beginning."

Leaning down and hungrily kissing him, she pulled a wrecked keening noise from his throat when her hips rolled against his. His hands clutched at her ass, and she let her own fingers wander, splaying a palm under his waistband. He gasped when her warm palm lay against his hip bone, pulling away to search her face.

"Are you - Do you want to? It's just fast -" He let out a groan when her fingers stroked down against the heated flesh of his thigh. "Say that this is alright, Emma, because we don't have to -"

She silenced him by removing her loose top and bra, his gaze raking over her body more than appreciative. "I want this, Killian. I want you, all of you."

"Then you shall have it, love." He grunted, pulling her down to press hot kisses up her neck. He sucked on an earlobe and she whimpered, heat pooling in her belly. Frantically, Emma helped him rid himself of his clothing, kissing down his chest while her clever tongue found his nipple. The kisses turned more wild and possessive as they rolled, her body ending up over his. His cock jutted proudly against his stomach when she sat on her haunches, looking him up and down. The coil in her belly felt tight already, but the idea of his considerable size in her made it burn with want.

Emma let herself go, giving in to what she so desperately desired.

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Emma sat looking at him with lust hazed eyes, the green darkened to a stormy sea glass. Her body was perfect, her breasts bare above printed shorts and some lacy garment that had matched her discarded bra. He had felt the silky softness of it when tracing her hip bones, but now as she took off the shorts covering them his breath caught at how positively sinful they looked against her creamy skin. They did little to cover her heat, and as she shimmied out of the other garment he could see how they framed the globes of her ass perfectly. The wonders of this new world did not cease to surprise him.

Killian suddenly felt self conscious, realizing that her touch was driving him mad quicker than he wished.

"It's - ah - been a while since -"

"Me too, me too, but we'll go slow." Emma tentatively licked the large vein that throbbed under his skin, sending all thought scattering.

"You don't have to -" he tried to start as she lowered herself into a position better suited for her exploration. Braced on his forearms, he watched her smile up at him teasingly, pumping him a few times with a loose grip that he rutted into slightly.

Fae women were cold and calculated when they'd joined him, Milah growing fond of pain, but this was heaven in every sense of the word. Gods above he was a fool to not see that sinful smirk and not know Emma was perfect, fucking perfect -

Licking up his length, she bobbed and he lost all thought; his head falling back as his hands gripped the sheets tight enough to make his knuckles go white. Her mouth was so warm, sucking and swirling on the head of his cock then bobbing down to his base. He wanted to buck, but resisted to stay on the sword’s edge of pleasure, only thrusting upwards when Emma's tongue danced along a sensitive ridge.

"Em - Emma -" Groaning, he pulled her up, kissing her roughly, nipping at the corners of her mouth. Her moan tasted like warm honey, tongue guiding him into a gentler and slower pace that unraveled the rest of his thinking, the pads of her fingers nimbly finding his cock again. Killian gripped her hand firmly, pulling away from her lips to chuckle darkly under her ear. "My darling, I want this to last. I want to taste every inch of you - and you're making that incredibly difficult."

Her voice was wrecked and came in small pants, much to his satisfaction. "You did say," Emma let out a little moan as his hand found its way past her navel, "You liked a challenge."

"Mmmm." Killian left wet kisses in a trail down her neck, the bite right under her collarbone causing her hips to buck, and letting his fingers slide past her pushed aside silky underwear. The fashion in the modern age had never once been of interest until now, his other hand pulling down her shorts to reveal the barely there wet fabric his fingers swiped through.

He groaned and Emma ground herself down on his fingers, with a slight gasp that made him ache for not being between her thighs already. Her walls were velvety around his fingers as they slipped in and out, curling them he could feel her neediness as he wound her up, thumb rubbing circles before withdrawing his soaked digits. Popping them in his mouth as she watched, grumbling expletives at him for leaving her so close, she whined at his groan of pleasure at her taste. For a brief moment his eyes fluttered shut, her scent and the taste of her on his tongue both too much and too little. Emma looped her own wet fingers around the base of his cock and his eyes shot back open.

Killian pressed his lips hard against hers, hungrily and frantically desperate to feel her body against his. Pulling clothing aside to help her wiggle out of those blessed, beautiful, frustrating, underwear, then she was sinking down on him and he was praying to the stars behind his eyelids that he wouldn't spill right then and there.

He thrust up in ecstasy, pressure building as she ground her hips down, so tight and wet and perfect. She was perfect, he needed -

Lurching forward, Killian pulled Emma tightly to him, hugging her close and changing the depth of his strokes.

"Killian, please!"

"Oh, my love, you have no idea how good you feel, how much I need to hear you say my name just like that. Do you want to come with me, my darling?"

"Yes!"

"Good Gods, please - Please, tell me what you need -".

Her hand led his, his fingers working her as she tensed. "Killian!" Her nails bit into his back as she moaned into the juncture of his neck, everything condensed to a fluttering tightness as his own release chased just behind hers. The hand that clawed at his back gripped him tighter reflexively while her body tried to hold him everywhere they met.

She rolled her hips, his head falling back at their last jerking movements, bodies shuddering together in embrace.

"You are bloody spectacular," Killian whispered, leaning back again carefully, cradling her against his chest with his other arm. "Magnificent."

Emma smirked. "I couldn't tell, you give absolutely no praise or direction."

"Be fair Swan, you must understand that I never thought to do this, and I never believed that you would return my feelings."

"Me either. I suppose I could settle for you though." Emma's smirk turned to a smile of bliss, a late aftershock rippling through her when she adjusted, attempting to pull away. Killian made a keening noise, eyes falling shut as he bit his lip and she rose again, just slightly in exquisite torture. She could feel his once softening member twitching inside of her still, and she moved in a slight shift again. Already sensitive from before, his thighs quivered. The Fae could be thanked for his better than average recovery, at least. Decades of their brand of torment had one silver lining.

"Emma, I - fuck."

"Your begging? That was sexy for me the first time, so let's see if we can move past this being a one time thing. I am hoping with practice, thorough practice," Emma rolled her hips in a tight circular grind, earning a string of expletives as Killian’s back arched again, "We can make it an every week thing."

Flipping her as she squealed, he slowly started to thrust into her as she moaned.

"Start small, work our way to twice a day?" he grinned ferally, withdrawing in a slow pull to push back in at a teasingly languid pace.

"Whatever you want!" Emma whimpered.

His breath was hot on the shell of her ear, fluttering starting in her belly again. "Then we probably should make sure that our form is perfect, too."

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Emma found Killian making coffee, hugging him from behind with her face pressed into his back. Nuzzling against the thin cotton shirt, her hands dipped to splay along his hip bones. He made an indecent noise between a purr and a breathy moan, turning to pull her against him in one swift motion. Hips rolling into her, he hoisted her up into his arms.

"A man can't get a moment's rest around here, Swan." He grinned as he pressed her against the wall. Kissing her roughly, and forgetting about their breakfast until the clock chimed noon.

"You are just as insatiable." Emma smiled, untangling herself from him on the floor of the library. His bark of laughter and gentle poke in her ribs brought a grin to her face, her stomach rumbling loudly against his cheek.

"I suppose I should make something for you to eat." Killian whispered, rubbing his scruff against her navel. "It's only fair when I've had seconds of my own."

She hummed, offering a hand as she stood, leading them both toward the kitchen.

Weeks passed like this, intimacy laying itself over every aspect of their routine and relationship. Emma moved into Killian's suite at some point along the way, a vanity added to the corner while her bathroom products were gently reorganized by Killian much to her chagrin.

He made it up to her with enthusiasm, his tongue making her toes curl into the sheets as she rode his face. Hearing him moan into her folds and grip her ass tightly sent her higher and higher, up into the clouds. Even more pleasure came from watching how it affected him, if she turned to watch his cock leak, or his hips twitch upwards with desperate need for friction.

When she moved to swallow him with the same abandon he gave to her clit, he practically screamed. His whimpered breaths and puffs of hot air made her clench, until he was throwing her aside, eyes wild and face a mess of her own wet slicked juices.

Emma reveled in pushing him into a sort of frenzy, making his eyes go almost black with lust and his lips curl into a carnal smirk while filth poured from his mouth - with slight pushing Killian seemed to forget the prim and shy gardener in favor of becoming wild, animalistic. The things he whispered in her ear, as he licked up her thigh, in the soft nuzzle of one of her breasts; they could be soft and flowery, or erotic wishes that made her cheeks flame and heat lick her core.

Nowhere in Carterhaugh was too sacred to keep them from each other.

In the music room, light streamed in as the curtains lazily danced in a chilled breeze, Killian's hands threaded in the halo of her hair, setting a rhythm as he thrust up. His thighs spread further, shakily, while his other hand grappled at piano keys, playing a loud accompaniment for his groans as she bobbed her head and sucked him within an inch of his life. Feeling him send a rush of his hot cum down her throat while chanting her name made her feel pride, his protests at her interrupting a practice forgotten by both.

His hands felt amazing on her skin; the rough calluses from his hard work in the garden circling her nipple, while his soft lips followed behind could practically make her come on the spot. Emma would catch him watching her through the haze of their fucking, half lidded eyes looking up at her while he let his nose lead a trail for his lips to follow. She loved the way his palms kneaded her thighs, or pulled her up roughly, or splayed on the small of her back when he took her from behind. In the solarium he draped himself over her body in a possessiveness she hadn't ever known, torturously grinding against her to turn her into a writhing mess. Killian had chuckled into her shoulder when she had begun to whine in her throat, his hands gathering hers in a stretching thrust that made her see stars.

The way he mapped her body, admitting his memorization to her earnestly, his fingers stroking lazy patterns through the sheen of sweat on her stomach - it should have terrified her. She should be running, should know better than to stay and let someone pull down her barriers with not only sex, but with every part of their presence.

A snow storm moved in outside, both of them knowing the other well enough to know the edge it brought to their nerves. Killian made tea, while Emma chose a movie and created their blanket fort over the couches in the den. They lit candles together, the power going out as it always seemed to in heavy rains, but it was fine when they were snuggled together with warm mugs watching the screen of her laptop. Or, in Killian's case, watching her. The mugs were pushed aside, going cold while the movie played for no audience, the two preoccupied by their own rising needs.

His hands held her bouncing breasts, massaging them as she rode him with a deep circular grind that made both of them feel electric.

"God's above, oh - oh my darling - do you know how good it feels to have your sweet quim tight around my cock? You're going to make me come undone my love, please don't stop!"

Emma was being lit, flickering herself, wanting nothing more than to combust. "Close, close again, ah! Ah - Killian, I'm so so close -"

With a hiss, he moved to be above her and she lost the heat of him inside for the briefest moment before he was filling her again. He looked unearthly in the candlelight and occasional flicker of electricity, his chest hair against her nipples and the softness of the blanket underneath her a perfect combination.

"I can feel you, I want to feel you come - bloody hell , love, I - fall apart for me, fall for me, just like that," The hoarse whispers echoed through the room, the cords in his neck as strained as the groans tearing from his throat. "Good God's, Emma , just like - fuck, just like that!"

Her body shook, muscles tightening and fluttering as a fire that burned away everything but ecstasy consumed her. She was aware of the half scream she let out, but with everything pinpointed to the pulse just below her belly, she was more conscious of Killian chasing his own release with abandon.

He grunted, the hard thrusts using her weight and his muscle to ease the fury of his pace, her legs pulled over his shoulders to hold her flush and bent. She heard him utter a string of curses, the clear sign he was close, his formality falling away. Every aftershock and subsequent clenching as her body tried to hold him earned a gasping moan practically torn from his throat.

"Fucking hells, Emma - I'm - God's Emma, you feel so bloody amazing - so fucking good, Emma, yes," The word came out with a hiss, the 's' sound long in his mouth, his eyes pressed close when her hand snaked to stroke the sensitive skin below where they were joined. She squeezed, feeling the tightening in her palm as his body drew up, the vein pulsing under her thumb. " Emma , Emma, I fuck - Fuck !"

She felt his hips stutter, heard his cry, and then he was filling her with erratic strokes. Emma attempted to soothe him, the whimpers and guttural pants sounding almost pained. Lowering her legs to wrap around him, and her arms embracing him around his neck and shoulders, she peppered his face with soft kisses while the pads of her fingers ran over the lines of his muscles. His head fell, bowing from her ministrations, and he buried his face in the crook of her neck as his weight pressed down on her.

"Am I crushing you?" he whispered after a moment.

Emma shook her head, her fingers raking through his hair. His sigh of contentment and the feeling of his eyelashes on her collarbone filled her with another sort of weight instead.

She felt safe.

Not only safe, but cherished. When had anyone ever been so tender and treated her like this? Sex aside -

(No, not sex. Not fucking. He loves you, he loves all of you : body, mind, soul and heart. You know this isn't just sex and that you can't go back - )

His lovemaking aside, Killian cared about her more than anyone she knew. His love and affection were everywhere, like dust motes in the air. Sometimes seen, sometimes not but still present, and other times catching the glints of sunshine he brought into her life, valuable and precious, like gold leaf or diamond dust.

Stranger still, was knowing that Killian knew she cared for him too. There was an understanding that they both had rough edges, they both had secrets that lurked just out of sight, neither of them wanting to examine them closely. His scars and his gentle questioning that accompanied his careful touches or the way he flinched if she moved too quickly changed their relationship for the better. Emma felt his ease afterwards grow, the worry replaced by trust. On more than one occasion Killian had mentioned in quiet mumbles that his last partner had been too rough, averting his eyes.

On more than one occasion, Emma had taken his hand in her own, whispering that she understood. When she told him he never had to be ashamed around her, he scoffed, rubbing at his eyes.

"I mean it Killian," Emma waited until he turned to look at her, his face inches from her own. His eyes were wet, the blue the color of an overcast day. "I choose to see the best in you, no matter what. Whatever you have done in the past, the acts committed by you or against you, I know who you are. You could never be the villain to me." He allowed her to kiss his cheek, and curl into his side. Emma basked in the gentle embrace as his fingers traced trails down her hip bone.

He treasured her, Emma began to believe.

She was a treasured thing, falling fast and headlong into disaster, but didn't care about the consequences when that feeling was bestowed on her so liberally.

Even if more terrifyingly, she had slowly begun to realize that she, too, treasured him.

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To say that Mary Margaret Nolan was perceptive was an understatement. David and Double Ems had been Skype calling her almost every day since they had left for Christmas, as if they were looking for something. When nothing had happened the calls had tapered off slightly, until a few days after Emma and Killian had begun whatever it was that they were doing.

It was if Emma had writing on her forehead her friend could read, her eyes scrutinizing every detail and the questions becoming pointed. Finally, Emma had gotten an invitation to a big announcement from Mary Margaret, in which Killian was invited. When Emma booted up Skype, Mary Margaret's face greeted her, but her eyes were searching for someone else.

"Where's Killian? Did he not get my invite?" She asked, the accusation clear in her question.

"Look, about that -" Emma began, but Mary Margaret shook her head, scowling. She actually looked angry to Emma's surprise.

"I cannot believe that you stupid oblivious idiots don't realize that you not only are pining for each other, but you are perfect for each other, and he is head over heels -"

"We're dating, Mary Margaret." Emma admitted, begrudgingly interrupting the tirade. Seeing the look on her friend's face, Emma groaned. "Don't make it weird, but I really like him -"

"Ha!" Mary Margaret craned her head to yell across the room. "David you owe me 20 bucks!"

"No, really? Ugh, gross," David shouted from somewhere she couldn't see.

"Invite him on camera, I want to see him! We miss him!"

"You miss him, I want to question his intentions with Emma - " David grumbled, walking past in the background.

"Does he know about…?" Mary Margaret trailed off, her eyes searching Emma's face on the screen.

"No. Kind of. He knows something happened but not the details. I haven't told him about the psych ward, the fire, and Neal." Emma chewed her lip, wondering how Killian would react to her past, her hallucinations of the house with too many doors, her paranoid delusions about her friends disappearing, the fire she thought she had caused - would he still accept her knowing that she managed an illness so severe? Would it change the way he looked at her, from adoration to that smothering gaze of pity she got from everyone else?

"Are you going to? Because if you slipped back into that psychosis -"

"Eventually." Emma said, cringing at how fast the half truth slipped off her tongue. Mary Margaret's eyebrows rose, her lips pressing together. Before she could object, Emma pointed off camera. "I'm going to go get him, please don't talk about it when I get back, OK? Please don't go all Psychologist on me, I promise I'll tell him, but on my terms and later on. I'm not ready yet."

"Oh Emma," Mary Margaret sighed, her face softening. "Of course."

"I'll be right back."

Killian was waiting for her in the kitchen, handing her a hot chocolate as they settled in the living room and loaded Skype on the television's screen.

"Hi Kill - Are you both seriously in a pillow fort?" Mary Margaret asked, leaning in to her computer so her eyebrows took up the frame. "Oh my God, that is too cute, David look at them -"

"I told them to be cool about us dating," Emma grumbled, Killian letting out a snort of laughter as he kissed her cheek.

"Hello Nolan family, thank you for the invite to this, er, announcement." He blushed, and Mary Margaret giggled again. David sat beside her, finally coming into views she backed up.

They practically glowed together, David relaxing immediately when her head rested against his shoulder. Looking at where their own mirrored image was displayed on the screen, Emma could see Killian’s loving stare, her face in a resting contented grin. She looked - they looked -

"So, this announcement. I'm sure you've probably figured it out Killian, but my sister is completely oblivious to almost everything, it seems." David snickered as Emma protested, Killian laughing along with Mary Margaret.

"I might have," Killian admitted. "Congratulations are in order, I believe?"

Emma blinked, staring at Mary Margaret and her bright smile. She glowed.

To say Emma wasn't perceptive was an understatement. Her brain clicked, but she could not push the words from her mouth in surprise.

"Double Em, you're -"

"We're pregnant!" She laughed, David kissing her as Emma stared at them in complete shock. "We did some calculations, and it looks like, um," Mary Margaret's blush deepened. "It happened very likely at Christmas, most likely -"

"You -" Emma stammered, her own face reddening. "Seriously? You guys conceived in my house?"

David laughed at her grimace, before they were all laughing. Emma found herself curling into Killian’s touch, listening to her brother and Mary Margaret's plans for what they were going to do with a nursery, and how she was feeling, how they'd found out (a fainting spell during grocery shopping, of all things), the call stretching on as they simply enjoyed each other's presence. Killian traced his fingers along her back, pulling her to him immediately once the call was over and she had shut down the television.

"Mary Margaret says David and her are sending us a gift, which I'm a bit afraid for. She mentioned to me last time that they found these garden gnomes, and David thought it might spook you because you don't like -"

"Gnomes are not traditional Fae folk, at least not here. They're bloody Scandinavian, and only go after those who smell of unwashed feet." Killian sniffed, annoyed, holding her tighter. He let out a hum of pleasure when she turned to sit in his lap, eyes half closed while he stared up at her. "You're so beautiful."

Emma giggled lightly, feeling warmth in her chest and a lightness that relaxed her further. She yawned, and he followed slightly after, both of them curling into the pillows that made up their fort.

"Hey Killian?" Emma mumbled, exhaustion catching up on her.

He replied in a slow, groggy, hum of a question.

"You think you could be happy like that with me?" The question hung in the air, and Emma wanted to regret it, to take it back as her eyelids drooped.

"I think I could be anything with you, Emma," He whispered into her hair, falling to a low murmur. Her eyes blinked close, longer and longer. "I'd be happy just like them if not more. Enough to never need to compare. Incandescently happy."

The warmth Emma had felt earlier settled on her skin as she drifted asleep in his arms.

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Happiness felt strange to Emma, no real comparison to be made in the fleeting moments that it stayed in her life. She had thought she was happy, though worry and doubt had plagued her. She had wondered why others accepted happiness as it being the end all be all; hanging their joy to hitch their wagon on. Now, she knew.

There was a slow summer laziness to happy contentment, even in the early spring chill. It was as if happiness rolled over her, laid over her in a warm blanket she only wanted to burrow deeper into. Killian was tender, sweet even, his gestures so different than she had ever known. Her one night stands or Neal's rough uses for her had never shown any level of care Killian did, even in the smallest of actions. He kissed her shoulder every morning, bringing her coffee while reading her the news in their bed. He knew how she took it with more sugar than cream, knew how she sometimes needed time to forget her nightmares, and knew without needing to be told that probing the issue was not something she wanted.

I'm his eyes, she swore she could see something akin to understanding. It was too terrifying to bring up yet, but he seemed to read her. How he figured out how she had no idea, but Emma desperately wanted to hope that maybe he would listen. Maybe he would tell her she's not insane.

Maybe he knows about the darkness, about being adrift over pitch colored seas that have no end, no fathoms of depth. Maybe he knows what it's like to ride out waves that crash and claw through daily life, as if they were ships in the night passing close now, so close. As long as she doesn't ask where they're going or what lies below they can be fine forever, but for once Emma didn't want that; Because there is something that lurks, It lurks in his eyes and warnings, something scares him that he can't say, and it's the first time she has found another lost soul. She has found someone she empathizes with, her own monsters behind locked doors bursting at the hinges. He might take comfort knowing he isn't alone.

For all she knows, he might know of houses like the one Neal took her to. He might have seen places with too many locked doors, might have had too many missing friends, coworkers, neighbors, and acquaintances, might have wished to bite his tongue off than say anything but 'No' ever again.

And as she watches, she finds herself wondering if he might be the one she'll let herself sink into, not worrying about a destination any more as she simply enjoys the peace of floating in this current, no longer afraid that there might be monsters in these depths trying to pull her under.

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Summer tore through Carterhaugh's halls in a heatwave that made Emma thankful for fans and the installation of central air. Killian didn't notice the sweltering air, but she made it clear she felt free to notice him. Where she had blushed and her eyes had shied away before, now she was free to ogle without reservations. If he made more efforts to keep her eyes on him, he could always claim coincidence.

"I noticed before too, you're not exactly stealthy, Swan." He'd grinned into her jaw, kissing softly as they finished the final window of the main rooms. The stained glass lit the room in fire hues, as if the wooden floor was licked with a visible sign of the heat. Emma had been dressing much more delectably in turn, short trousers and tops with no sleeves that showed off how defined her arms were. Occasionally they had no straps, or fell just below her breasts baring her stomach and midriff.

When they lazily made love in the shade of the tree outside, blanket on the grass, it was easy to convince her to bask naked with him in the sunlight after. Emma was a marvel, a wonder, and she was his. Everything about her was like magic, her eyes finally full of trust when she looked at him. She was his, and he knew that meant all too soon she wouldn't be.

The bells came as July rolled through, Milah summoning him down to the wood. The house was finally finished, and Emma was exhausted. They had eaten a light lunch before she had fallen asleep on the couch, lost to the world in a well deserved nap. Kissing her forehead, he rolled out of their bed to stand before the Fae Queen's judgement. Emma stirred lightly, the whisper of his name sweet as she hugged a pillow with a sigh. It bolstered him, his feet carrying him quietly down the hill under the dark sky.

He could hear the hunt before he was even more than two steps into the forest, Tink running past him, then turning to run back with a smile.

"They are in a mood today, Killian!" She laughed, greeting him with a wave as she giggled. Somewhere to his right, he heard Regina bellow, the whinnying of her steed a shriek. He sighed, shaking his head as he continued deeper. Tink pouted, walking backwards on her toes with small little hops. "Killian," She whined, "Aren't you going to ask me what I did and why -"

"Why is it every time I have to kneel before the throne, you have agitated the hornet nest that resides on it?" Killian growled. She blinked, her pout turning to shock.

"I - I'm sorry. I try to distract them, and I have to keep the forest at bay…" She mumbled, looking down.

"All you do is make them angrier!" Killian gritted out, his jaw twitching. "I don't care about the forest, I just want Emma to be safe, and you -"

Tink straightened, her shoulders tightening as she stomped toward him. "I'm trying to help you, you dense - you idiot - you cabbage brain!" She sputtered, her face going red. "The forest spreads when Milah sees you, her avarice and wraith twisting the land further. I'm trying to keep you and your mortal lover safe. I'm trying to distract them!"

Killian blinked, his mouth falling open. "I didn't -" He stammered, trying to apologize. Tink shook her head, looking to where approaching war cries grew louder.

"I have to go. Just know that I have been trying to help you and this forest since… Well, forever. Neal wasn't your fault, and Emma, she -" The hoofbeats drew closer, and Tink took a sideways step towards a copse of trees. With a flick of her wrist they curled into an arch. "This place is cursed. I wish I had the time to explain, and I wish you would come with me. I'm sorry."

She took a leap through the arch, disappearing into nothingness as the horses swept through the clearing. The wind whipped around him, mud spraying his clothes as the horses passed. Regina cackled, the shrill noise falling away into the night as they chased their tails. He pressed on, the wood shifting around him, revealing how true Tink had been. Vines with thorns the size of his hand curled around dead trunks of trees, branches stretched crookedly to claw at the sky. The grass grew in black or a deadened white, no creatures stirring or making noise. The palace shifted, leaving him at the entrance, briars and strange shivering plants that snapped dripping jaws at him.

An audience awaited him when the throne finally appeared before him, the glinting silver, diamonds, opal, and glass blinding him momentarily and the jeers of Fae deafening him. Milah sat on the throne with her legs crossed, lapis lazuli and silk dripping off her body. Gold sat beside her, his tunic and breeches seemingly made of golden thread, adorned with jewels. Neal's empty throne lay empty, a red fur lined cape draped over it.

Milah stood, taller still, her features even sharper. Her lips twisted in a sneer as he knelt, the crowd booing louder. Milah raised a hand and they grew silent.

"I've thought about your proposal, and I know that you are not telling untruths, because I cannot march to Carterhaugh and kill this usurping tart myself." She drawled, clearly annoyed.

"Milah - " The crowd jeered, but Milah swept her hand toward the crowd.

"Silence!" The room fell silent again, and she stepped down towards him. "That said, regardless of previous arrangements, I request that you end our accord."

"Thank you," Killian sighed, even if the crowd voiced their upset. "You don't know how -"

"Sign it in her death blood," The crowd cheered, and Milah grinned widely. "Then you may go free."

"No!" Killian reached for Milah as she turned away, the guards moving forward from his peripheral. Shouts and cursing echoed around them at his loud refusal. "Milah, No, I won't let you -" An apple hit him on the shoulder, raucous laughter beginning while the crowd followed suit. Rocks pelted him as he curled into himself and sat, covering his head and face. He heard Milah's calm voice hush the crowd again.

Her heels clicked on the stone, nails digging into his chin and neck to raise him up. He struggled slightly, her strength unsettling, but her eyes worse so - cold and dead.

"We need a sacrifice, Killian. Do you dare deny me that which is my right? My duty?"

He rasped, her claws pulling free. Backing away, Killian coughed until he could manage a lowly growled whisper. "You shouldn't be sacrificing anyone to that thing. It's changed you, all of you. Please. Milah, I loved you. Now my heart belongs to another and she is… She's everything."

Milah's face pulled taut in rage for a brief flicker, disappearing into an almost convincing aloof shrug. "You have swayed my choice then. It will be you."

"Mí, please -" Killian tried again, taking a step forward, but she was in front of him in a flash.

Silver tendrils of lightning moved around her, crackling in the air, her eyes and skin gleaming an emotionless metallic.

"Do not address me like we are still lovers. Like you still come to my bed, and still ask me my desires. It will be you, or it will be her. You have offered yourself as her replacement by refusing to follow my directives." The stands that held the crowd began to smolder, Fae fleeing in all directions. Killian covered his face with his arm, staring at where Milah was bathed in bright light that made the air ripple in heat. "This shall be your last year."

There was a thunderclap that made his teeth rattle, then Milah stood back in front of him, her features carefully schooled even as her chest heaved. They stared at each other, Killian seeing her for the creature she was.

"October then?" he asked. "I have until then without your games?"

"Yes." Milah answered simply, returning to lounge on her throne.

Killian nodded, swallowing hard against the lump in his throat. "Fine. That's… fine. I'll enjoy every second of that time with her."

"Enjoy it," Milah spat, the facade of boredom failing completely. "Enjoy every second with your human whore."

Killian practically ran from the woods, clambering up the hill like a madman. As soon as he stepped foot through the doors of Carterhaugh he felt the curse shift. He almost fell to his knees in relief, wanting to weep at this newfound freedom, but then Emma was flicking on the light in her bed clothes looking at him in fear.

"You were gone, and I thought - I just knew you wouldn't - but I've trusted before and…" Her voice caught, eyes widening as he stepped forward to sweep her into his arms with a spin.

They had thirteen months together. They could do anything, go anywhere, they had thirteen months -

"Are you alright then? I was so scared, I didn't know what you were doing. Did you just go for a walk or -?"

Killian pressed his lips to hers hungrily, memorizing her taste and swallowing her protests. "I just - I really desperately need to kiss you."

She gasped, her legs parting for his knee to grind against her center. "Well, I'm not complaining," Her head fell back and he sucked on her earlobe, her hips bucking against his thigh as she keened a pretty noise. "But Killian, are you certain you're alright?"

"I will be. Let me love you tonight, properly make you dinner, drink wine with you, tell you how beautiful you are in every language I can speak -"

"What has gotten into you?" Emma squeaked out. He squeezed her ass tightly, eliciting a squeal. "Killian!"

"Nothing, nothing darling. I only want to get in to you, and taste you - "

Emma pulled away from his grasp, her smirk teasing. "You said wine and a dinner?" Her stomach growled loudly and her cheeks flushed a bright red.

"I suppose that is well in order first." Killian laughed, adjusting himself and trying to calm his racing heart. Quickly tossing together a salad, Emma argued with him over health benefits until he looked it up using her lap held computer. An ad caught his eye on the side of the page, Emma leaving to grab cheese from the fridge.

The lap-top type-writing device still gave him pause, although he handled it much better now. It had helped to have the learning curve of having a bank account that did not actually hold gold or coins, and to research. Killian had made a few mistakes, but managed to figure out the complex web that made up the interred net.

They sat down to dinner together, opening a bottle of white wine that sparkled in their glasses. Everything felt new now that he was freed, as if everything around him was clean and refreshed. With no hold barred, he prepared himself, readying for the brutal shutdown Emma might give him instead. His questioning wasn't subtle, but Emma was more than oblivious to it regardless.

"If you could go anywhere, have a dream vacation or a do over of traveling you've done, where would you go?"

Emma mulled the question, chewing her salad slowly. She liked it, complaining about the greens until he'd added an unhealthy amount of cheese. It still counted as healthy enough and a win in his books.

"You know I was married, but I don't know if I told you just how bad my honeymoon was," Emma said slowly, her voice the impassive, steely, aloof tone she reserved for touchy topics. "I - I know he cheated on me, and I know he… He wasn't a good person. I just thought, well, even then I expected him to be there."

She shrugged, briskly and Killian blinked.

"What do you mean, 'be there'?" He asked, his brows furrowing in confusion.

Emma pushed her fork into the greens with a stab, sliding them around the plate. "He uh, he skipped our honeymoon; the entire thing. He had to work, so I stayed in our room and did our couples activities alone." She didn't look up, even as his hand found hers and she smiled wryly, remembering. "When I got back home he told me I'd gained weight. Truly, a winner."

"Oh, love -"

"It's fine. I mean, I don't want another honeymoon, I don't - that's out of the question, but, I'd love to go back and feel what it was supposed to feel like." Laying her fork down, Emma pinched the bridge of her nose, chuckling. "All those activities I skipped, or couldn't go on, or were supposed to be romantic and were instead so lonely… I just wonder what it would be like to do those with…"

Her eyes met his, and she blushed, yanking her other hand from his to stab at her salad again.

The tickets weren't expensive, the resort covering more amenities than he could fathom. His passport and making the documents that he needed were trickier, his supply of false papers just new enough to only need minor doctoring. Driving down into town with her in tow and their suitcases squirreled away in back, he watched her fidget with the radio.

"I don't think you've ever driven me anywhere before," Emma groaned, ducking her head from sight. "Ugh, there's that crazy old lunatic. He's obsessed with our house for some reason."

The windows were fogged, but Killian could hear the man's cries as he paced on the corner.

"The Fae! The Fae are at Carterhaugh, they will take your soul and beget you with changeling child to steal your youth, your luck, your fortune! Stay away from that cursed place, stay away from the wood where nothing grows!" The man screamed, waving his hands. He began to laugh wildly, running at their car while shouting nonsense, but Killian pulled away as the light fortuitously changed.

Emma peeked out, looking around confused as they turned off the main road, and onto the turnpike.

"You said we were going to the hardware store?" She asked, and he nodded, turning up the radio as he drummed on the steering wheel with his fingers. Emma cocked her head, squinting as she looked at him. "That's… That's not a lie, but it's not the truth either. What's going on?"

Killian mimed being affronted, his hand rising to his chest. "I need to go to the Hardware store, Swan. Can't a man simply just go about his business to get a certain piece of hardware with his lady love?"

"Not when you are acting so weird about it. Where are we even going? What store do you have to go to out of town?" Emma's eyes narrowed further. "You never go out of town."

"For you I'm making an exception. It's a special part. I need it, and it's only available at this certain store." He smiled, watching her chew her lip.

They arrived at the airport, and Emma refused to get out of the car as he unloaded their luggage onto a cart.

"Nope. Nuh-uh." Her arms were crossed over her chest, her eyes slitted slivers of sea glass. He tried to hold back his laughter, but settled for a grin as he held out his hand. "I don't know what crazy idea of yours you have cooked up in your mind, but I -"

"Take a leap of faith, love. I promise you that it might be worth it," Wiggling his eyebrows and giving a wink, he watched her fight a smile. "Very worth it."

"I'll come in the lobby if you tell me -"

"I'll tell you everything on the plane Swan, but we are running behind schedule because of your stubbornness. I would hate to have to go by myself and leave you here without my presence." Her hand met his, fitting perfectly when he pulled her forward. A valet took the car, Emma trying her hardest to hide her excitement.

"On the plane?" She murmured as they moved through TSA, some sort of inspectors that roughed up his intimate places a bit too much for his liking. He produced her passport when asked, watching her eyes widen as she read the ticket. "Wait, is this what I think - oh, Killian, I appreciate it but we can't, the house -"

"Will be there when we get back, and is being watched by Widow Tremaine," He grinned, and she smiled back with a brightness that made his heart soar. "If anything gets past the threshold of Carterhaugh, that old bat will kill it thrice over."

"The garden though, and my appointments with the contractors -"

"Will be fine, and rescheduled."

"I didn't pack -"

"I packed for you. Anything else, we can get there. The Navy taught me how to pack lightly, I have half a suitcase for you to fill with whatever you like."

"This is -" Emma sputtered, unable to protest.

"This is an adventure, love," Killian pressed his lips to her temple, swaying her when she pressed into him. "Really get into, alright? This is for you. Don't freak out or worry about anything but being happy."

Shadows flickered across her face when she looked up at him, but after a moment, she broke into a smile she reserved for him.

"Alright. Let's do this."

They stepped on the plane together, and off hand in hand.

He purchased the part he needed at the store a few blocks from their resort, the lovely bit of hardware gleaming in the jeweler's hand before it was placed carefully into a plush velvet box.

Emma was waiting for him when he returned, the masseuse just finishing her work. Killian signaled for her to go, his hands taking over to knead Emma's soft skin, feeling where the sun had kissed it on their beach walks and scuba trip.

"This is truly -" Emma giggled, swatting at him when he kissed down her back while tickling just under her ribs. "This is perfect. This is everything I wanted."

"I'm glad, darling." Killian smiled, Emma pushing him aside to sit up.

"No, I mean it. This… Killian I know this has been a lot, and I'm not ready for big declarations or conversations, because I just - I can't," He met her eyes, trying to hide his longing for just that, but she continued, her hands sliding up his chest. "But with you? I want to. I want that, all of it, and not because of this or anything like it."

"Emma -"

"Because of all the small things, and maybe yes, parts of this grand gesture, but mostly because I… I want to have someone build pillow forts with me, and looks at me the way you do."

"I always knew pillow architecture would show the true mettle of my wooing a beautiful woman." Killian grinned, her gentle smack to his chest making them both laugh.

Emma's lips met his, her fingers curling into the hair at the nape of his neck, and if he was not completely hers before that moment, it didn't matter -

He belonged wholly and entirely to Emma Swan when they parted to breathe each other in, and after when that wasn't enough and their bodies demanded more.

Lying next to each other while his bones worked on becoming something other than jelly, Emma curled into him like a perfect fit. In the back of his mind October loomed, it's thirteen months a ticking time bomb to this heaven on earth.

"Hey, Killian?" She murmured into his chest. He glanced down, her half lidded gaze soft as he held her.

"Hm?"

"I love you."

"I love you too, Emma."

Holding Emma even tighter to him, he savored every single second they had.

[radramblog]

Every Mono-Black Commander, Part 4: Designed for the Format

In what will be the penultimate edition of this weekly word stream, the cards steadily on average get better, as WoTC realises commander is the most popular format and starts designing specifically for the format. On the other hand, people don’t play lots of these cool and interesting cards because everyone’s obsessed with “multicolour”, the cowards.

Moving on.

Sidis, Undead Vizier (245 decks, 25th most played)

Sidisi is one of those cards I’m surprised sees as much play as it does. Not because it’s bad, but because it seems to belong a lot better in the 99 than in the zone- they’re pretty much just a tutor with a body attached, after all. For a while, though, it was the only commander you could run that was a pure tutor, so if you were into just comboing people out it’s probably not a bad idea.

I think part of the reason I underrate this card is that I always assume it’s 6 mana. And it’s a lot better at 5 than it is at 6. And you can always just sacrifice itself if you really want your commander to just be an overpriced Diabolic Tutor.

 Kothophed, Soul Hoarder (29 decks, 73rd most played)

I actually rate Kothophed a bit higher than I think most do. While as the 2nd of Lilliana’s demons he was obviously a fair bit weaker than the extremely banned Griselbrand, and the only one of the 4 not to be mythic, he does do a couple things really well.

For one, he draws a lot of cards. Things are going to the graveyard all the time, especially in multiplayer, and he makes the artifact/aristocrat decks think twice about popping off. The other is that he’s super cheap, at like 40 cents a pop. And I appreciate that, especially considering some of the cards surrounding him.

 Liliana, Heretical Healer//Liliana, Defiant Necromancer (645 decks, 9th most played)

Baby Lilli herself looks a lot better than Ob Nixilis of the Black Oath as far as Planeswalker commanders goes, and it’s therefore unsurprising that she breaks the top 10. Everybody loves Planeswalkers, lots of people like Lilliana both as a card and a character, and the card that puts her in the zone is quite solid.

What does she do, though? Well, of the 6 Creature->Planeswalker transform cards, she’s one of the three that can theoretically flip the turn you play her without a haste effect (and Nicol Bolas is only on that list by technicality, because that’s a loooot of mana), and it’s not particularly hard to do so considering the colour she’s in. She then protects herself a little with a Zombie token and acts as basically a multiplayer-tuned Lilliana of the Veil, with a bigger number on her plus and minuses that better suit commander. This lets her work quite well for discard decks, reanimator decks, aristocrats decks, zombie decks, and of course, Lilliana decks. She’s just really solid overall, making up somewhat for the fragility of walkers in the format by being cheap and making herself a blocker.

 Drana, Liberator of Malakir (82 decks, 49th most played)

Drana I guess could be used as a tribal or Voltron commander of some description, but to be frank, she’s here for one thing- aggro. Anthem effects are uncommon in black, and Drana just piles on so many counters in such an efficient manner that she kinda makes up for that on her own. I’ve actually never seen anyone piloting a Drana deck (of any of the three Dranas, actually), so I don’t know exactly how effective it is, but putting her at the helm of a stack of tokens or efficient threats just sounds scary. I’m pretty sure she’s only liberating Malakir from its remaining life points.

 Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet (124 decks, 38th most played)

Kalitas seeing this much play…actually frustrates me, seeing as he’s basically just a hate piece. Like yeah, he has another ability, and he makes tokens, but come on. You’re just playing this for the exile clause, and it’s never going to make you any friends. Headcrab Vampire over here doesn’t do anything much if your opponents just wait til he’s off the field to do anything spicy, and in that case, what are you doing with him? Very inefficiently voltronning up? Gaining 3 life? It’s a bit sad. I don’t really like him.

 Gonti, Lord of Luxury (550 decks, 11th most played)

Aww man, they’re not in the top 10 anymore? Fucking Tergrid.

Gonti is another card advantage commander, but everything on them lines up to make both a fun and a powerful effect. They’re not too expensive, and in addition to effectively drawing a card, deathtouch makes them a great way to dissuade attacks from other players. Their ETB not only acts as card selection, but it also gives you access to effects mono-black lacks, silver bullets you don’t play, or just surprise threats that vastly open up your options. They can whiff, sure, but that doesn’t happen especially often.

I’m biased, because my Gonti deck is among my favourite of my 100-card children, but Gonti is just such a fun commander that I don’t even mind the lack of direction they hand you. I run them as grindy valuey control, but they work great as the helm of flicker, theft, and even Aetherborn tribal decks as well. Just a stellar little commander.

 Yahenni, Undying Partisan (306 decks, 21st most played)

Speaking of Aetherborn, Yahenni is also here, and I really appreciate that the two Aetherborn commanders we got are both really cool both in game and in the lore. Shame about most of the rest of the tribe being draft trash. Also, WoTC brought all sorts of old tribes back into the limelight for Commander Legends and the Modern Horizons sets, so where are the new Aetherborn at? Wizards pls.

Yahenni themselves is a pretty interesting commander. Their effects combine into a powerful package more subtle than their flavour text suggests- they not only are a threatening body, as a hasty commander that grows significantly as the game progresses, but they’re also incredibly sticky- a free sacrifice outlet that protects itself from most removal. They’re just a card where all the pieces come together just right, and I appreciate that a lot. One job and that’s aristocrats, but they’re good at it!

 Bontu, the Glorified (59 decks, 57th most played)

When we finally got eyes on the Amonkhet gods, I think Bontu was my least favourite. Like, she’s hard to turn on, and has to be done repeatedly? A 3 mana 4/6 menace is a lot, but not enough to justify that in my opinion. And that activated ability is painfully mediocre.

At this point I like Kefnet less, but that’s just because I’ve cast him a bunch of times and I’m pretty sure he’s done nothing most of those times. Both of them are just kind of shithouse though. I expected more from the Magic equivalent of Set.

 Razaketh, the Foulblooded (74 decks, 54th most played)

The only thing foul about Razaketh is that mana cost. 8 mana, holy shit. But you get paid off for it, don’t ya? A free-ish sac outlet that, oh, also just demonic tutors. If you have an infinite combo in your deck, this’ll get it.

I wouldn’t be surprised if Razaketh decks therefore get focussed pretty hard once people recognize the power in the zone. Like, running him as a commander is basically saying “sup once I get to 8 mana y’all are fucked”, and in that case people are going to do all they can to stop you getting to 8 mana, whether by blowing up your rocks or just killing your face and dudes. Perhaps consider an alternate route if you don’t like getting beaten up.

 Spike, Tournament Grinder (N/A)

Aight, this is kinda cheating, but shshshsh it’s fine. Now, I’m not sure exactly how this works in the zone, but I’m just assuming it can get any “spikey” card that fits within your colour identity? Or maybe it’s just anything. Either way, this gets some bonkers shit.

Even if we assume it’s only legal commander cards in identity, Spike can still draw you some funny things. Dark Ritual, Crucible of Worlds, Bitterblossom, Demonic Tutor, Ancient Tomb, and that’s just the first page. If we do include commander-banned cards, then you can also use them as a spicy secret commander for such hits as Griselbrand, Emrakul, or Braids. Overall, they’re definitely fair and balanced. Un-Commanders when.

 Tetzimoc, Primal Death (15 decks, 86th most played)

Oh, Tetzy. I love this stupid stupid card, one that seems to get worse the bigger the decks get. And by that I mean, it’s completely stupid broken in its original draft format, fringe playable in Standard at the time (and by that I mean… I mean I played it), and thoroughly mediocre in Commander. And that’s in the 99, because much like Haakon and Phage he doesn’t work in the zone. He’s a fair bit easier to enable than they are, but it’s for much, much less payoff. Alas poor Tetzimoc.

 Demonlord Belzenlok (110 decks, 41st most played)

The last Lilliana contract demon, and the first Dominaria card of the 6 we got to talk about. Belzenlok’s ability is frustratingly awkward, however- while it will never draw you land, in my experience you’re rarely drawing more than two cards off it, and one is very common. Because the thing is, in order to support the dummy thick cards Belzenlok likes to see, you need a lot of cheap ramp and draw, which he does not like to see. And said ability takes up all the space on his textbox that could be used on other things. He’s basically okay, but I don’t see running this over basically any other demon.

I mean, he’s in my Gonti deck, but that’s besides the point, making a fatty and drawing cards is what that deck’s about.

 Josu Vess, Lich Knight (69 decks, 55th most played)

Lilliana’s dead brother is an army in a can that packs a mean punch- 20 menace power is absolutely nothing to sneeze at- but 10 mana is monstrous. And casting him for 4 is just not worth it, especially since it makes that 10 into 12 next time. With that said, I recall once a Dominaria draft on arena where I used Muldrotha to cast this guy kicked twice in a row, and while this might just be magical Christmas land, getting to reroll this guy repeatedly with Disentomb effects might be spicy. You can just bury people in Zombies, ain’t that fun? I mean, it’s still 10 mana, so that’s a lot, but yknow

I guess you can also sac the tokens to some variety of altar, but that’s boooooring.

 Torgaar, Famine Incarnate (99 decks, 44th most played)

Wait, if it’s Famine Incarnate, why is it an Avatar instead of an Incarnation?

I’m woefully unfamiliar with Torgaar, but it seems like a relatively effective general. It hits that 7 mark for a three-hit commander damage kill, while being able to cost as little as two mana, which is enough on its own- but  that chunky power also helps with that second ability, setting someone to 20, assuming other people are willing to help pick up the slack. Fuck your infinite life combo, back down to the ground with the rest of us.

Honestly, this guy just looks really fun. It’s nice that in a pinch you can just have them gain you up to 19 life (or more I guess if you’re Platinum Angel-ing), and they don’t seem broken enough to garner hate. Not bad, potentially underrated.

 Urguros, the Empty One (29 decks, 73rd most played)

On the other hand, I’m not sure why you’d pick this of all cards to head your deck. Looking at it, though, it’s mostly just Spectre tribal, which makes sense to me. Don’t think there’s another Legendary Spectre outside of changelings, though that would at least get you Blazing Spectre.

Shoutouts for Spectre being one of the words with different spelling in America that people don’t know about as well.

Urguros is not a powerful commander. They’re slow and their effect is weak. But if you’re running them, you don’t care about power, you care about creature type, and that’s fine too.

 Whisper, Blood Liturgist (150 decks, 33rd most played)

Oh, ok. blood liturgist.

Jokes aside, Whisper is more popular than I would have expected. Considering they’re basically reverse Victimize, I’m surprised that people are so into them when that card exists.

Ohh, wait, there’s probably a bunch of infinites with this and Thornbite Staff, huh. Yeahhh, that scans. Though even outside of combo bullshit, I bet they get a bunch of fun value stuff with army-in-a-can-type creatures like Abhorrent Overlord and Sengir Autocrat. Shame about the stats.

 Yargle, Glutton of Urborg (208 decks, 27th most played)

A literal vanilla creature, Yargle has overcome the odds to bargle into the hearts of many. The undeniable Best Frog Commander (Gitrog players do not interact), Yargle has clearly captured as many hearts as he’s eaten, considering he got his own Secret Lair filled with cards he can’t really play. His bit in the lore was also kind of hilarious, nearly killing all the protagonists until Muldrotha deus-ex-mythic rare-d him out of there.

The thing is, Yargle is not even that bad aside from the meme. He might be literally vanilla, butt he has 9 fucking power for 5 mana. He’s probably one of the cheapest creatures that breaches the 3-hit rule, and only needs 2 more to get down to 2. And 2 power isn’t super hard. Strap this bad boy with a sword or two and you can just gettem. Let alone the fact that he one-shots things with Tainted Strike. Or Grafted Exoskeleton. Or just about anything plus Fireshrieker. Unironically one of Mono-Black’s best Voltron options.

 Isareth the Awakener (30 decks, 70th most played)

Skipping the Battlebond cards because…who plays Virtus or Regna solo… brings us to the painfully mediocre Isareth. A 3 mana 3/3 that lets you cast one thing from your yard, and only if she risks her own life. And you still have to pay for the reanimate. And it gets the exile clause as well. Man, this was the same cycle as Goreclaw and Sai, too. Hell, I even like Lena more after I designed a deck around her. This just sucks. Like, I cannot imagine playing this over Chainer or something.

 The Haunt of Hightower (168 decks, 31st most played)

Speaking of Voltron, this Buy-a-Box exclusive is basically a self-sufficient beast of a flyer. Cards go into opponent’s graveyards all the time, and one mass mill effect makes this thing get huge fast as fuck. Add in lifelink so it keeps you going and all it’s really missing is the ability to protect itself, and there’re equipment for that.

On the other hand, it’s 6 mana and a 3/3 base, so if you aren’t able to get things in bins (or if a Rest in Peace/Leyline of the Void is out) it basically isn’t doing anything. And Flying is a much worse keyword in commander than one would think, being probably the most common Evasion mechanic. But I think this haunty boy is still solid.

 God-Eternal Bontu (81 decks, 48th most played)

If only the rest of us could age so gracefully. Er, die so gracefully, I guess. Zombie Set is kind of a beating, turning all sorts of useless shash into pure cash. And she can go to your deck if the zone is getting too costly, and she’s a cool crocodile zombie god.

Unfortunately, she does suffer from being an ETB-effect commander, which always feels a bit more mid than I’d like- they do their thing and then just…sit there… and unlike Gonti she doesn’t deter attacks that well. She does attack pretty alright herself, but it’s only 5 power and can’t even trade with two 3/3s. And it’s harder to fuel this all-or-nothing kind of ability repeatedly. There are a few (crocodile?) rocks to use, as well as chump creatures that crave death, but fill your deck with those and that’s all you’ll draw. It’s…fine. She’s fine.

 Massacre Girl (285 decks, 22nd most played)

The final card under the magnifying glass today, and probably still the best boardwipe/commander combo. Massacre Girl basically just kills everything, provided things aren’t too massive and there’s fodder around to bite the dust first. If anyone played Hearthstone back when I did, she’s basically a way, way better Defile.

Wait, that’s also a Magic name now isn’t it, shit.

I still think the notorious M.G. goes better in the deck than the zone, but I suppose control decks would appreciate having one of the things they crave most- board clears- available at a moment’s notice. And if you’re building around her, then you can fill your deck with the fodder that fuels her best. But I’m not sure where you win from there.

Ehhh, probably just Revel in Riches.

This brings us to the end of this edition of Black Commanders, and to the start of 2019. Which means the remaining 21 cards all came out in the last 2.5 years, which speaks a lot to how much they were designing cards for commander, and how many sets they’ve been coming out with. Until then.

[inventors-fair]

A Brief History of Surprise

I feel that with this first round of submissions, I’m seeing a lot of “complexity for complexity’s sake,” a lot of “what ifs” that rely on clever appearances taking precedent over elegant design. With that in mind, I thought I’d do a little bit of a personal essay on what I found surprising over Magic’s history. I hope that you will learn a little more about what I’m after and maybe relate to some of it yourselves.

So, what surprised me?

Incremental Rewards

My first block ever was the Alara block, and I’ll always have some nostalgia for it, despite the weirdness. Following that, though, was Zendikar. Zendikar was a fast, aggressive set, and yet there were payoffs that I found amazing once you got there. Sadistic Sacrament was pretty mediocre on its own, but once I ramped up to ten mana, I could selectively mill my opponent and they would know exactly what I had taken out. Hopelessness! Fantastic! And then I saw my first brand-new build-around-me card: Archmage’s Ascension. You could build up over time, over specific cards, with specific strategies, and then control to your heart’s content. Tutoring every turn! What power! And all you had to do was work for it. 

Following this, I will say that the Eldrazi surprised me too. Big creatures with massive rewards, sure, they were...something. But there was something off about them, something that I still find strange. I think that their god-like card value was too much for me to handle. I didn’t focus on playing them — I focused on how to beat them. And that wasn’t fun. I was scared. Keyword soup has its time and place, but ability soup has to be balanced.

That New Recursion

The Return to Ravnica prerelease was the first one I had ever been to. Scavenge, Overload, Unleash, Detain and Populate were all fantastic mechanics, and then came along Gatecrash. The fact is, Extort remains my favorite out of all of them to play, but I keep coming back to Cipher. What a messed-up and amazing flavor, complex and strange, nuanced and difficult. Hitting with a creature and creating spells every turn was hard to pull off, but the design remains one of my favorites, and I don’t know why.

I wish they had brought it back for Modern Horizons, honestly. It’s hard to make flavorfully work in every context, because frankly, it almost sounds like sci-fi. And yet it works! It’s shadowy, powerful, strong-get-stronger vibe. And even though it wasn’t really popular, well, I still loved it. I wanted to give other spells Cipher. I wanted to see more than what was there. I wanted to unlock its secrets.

Just my Type

I groked Bestow. Theros as a whole was the set I played the most socially for a good long time. I didn’t like every aspect, but I think that Bestow was the mechanic I was least expecting. Enchantment creatures made sense, no different than artifact creatures. But now, we had creatures that could become auras, creatures that targeted upon casting, beings that engulfed other beings in light and stars and the power of Nyx!

Bestow was the first mechanic I knew I couldn’t have come up with by any stretch of the imagination, not on my own. I had been making custom cards since high school, and this was early in my college career. I was bowled over, blown away, enthralled — enchanted, if you will. I still enjoy Theros limited. It’s no Innistrad, but it’s fun, a swing between battlecruising, aggressive strategizing, and the occasional God.

Speaking of, the Gods surprised me as well. I loved these things. Their lack of creature-dom, the ability to become real and then swing in with cackling precision, was just what I loved about powerful cards those days. You had to work for them. They didn’t just do things on their own. I liked Magic the most when you had to figure it out. Maybe that’s why I’m liking Party so much in this new set.

Coming Together

You know, looking back on my Magic history and personal journey, I find myself pleasantly surprised by two specific mechanics: Party and Historic. These aren’t mechanics per se like Cipher or Bestow, but the batching made sense in a flavorful way that changed the way I build decks in limited. I searched for specific aspects, played my cards to maximize the benefit of playing other cards, and had to make something cohesive that rewarded me for playing right. That’s really all you want out of a game.

I had a blast playing with ZNR and DOM in the drafts that I was able to do, even if I didn’t do the best compared to other players. Utilizing complex mechanics made me feel good even when I wasn’t the best at them. That’s what surprised me the most, considering my lukewarm reception to the cards at first. I underestimated how much I’d enjoy playing with them because I underestimated myself.

Okay, now I’m going to run down a list of surprising cards to me and why I love them. Most of these cards I was surprised upon seeing them, and many played well as well. Let’s get specific.

Mirror-Sigil Sergeant: I get to play my favorite color AND get hella rhinos out of it? Double double, baby!

Thraximundar: I think this is still one of my favorite legends. I want to know everything about him. That name, that flavor... Oh, and a decent card, I suppose.

Ransack the Lab: This is exactly what black should be doing! Great card, you love to see it and play it.

As Foretold: Holy crap, this card. I love it so much. Combo exploitable, free spell increments, great name, great art. I had to reread it so many times.

Vorapede: I always love my Baneslayers, but I pulled this card blind, and the aggression was more than I was used to.

Elbrus, the Binding Blade: Another blind Dark Ascension card! This was the kind of reward I loved working up to.

Gauntlets of Light: I wanted this card and I got this card. Toughness aggro is a beast to beat.

Klothys, God of Destiny: This card surprised me because I hadn’t expected a multicolored God. But she fit well, she played GREAT, and I love her.

Shaman of the Great Hunt: Repeatable multicolored draw? Jesus, what a beast. I felt my stomach turn when this thing hit the table.

Bestial Menace: Oh, an old favorite. Animal summoning never felt so good. I wanted them all to be friends.

Avacyn, Angel of Hope: So simple, so powerful, and she did exactly what she said on the tin. Feels good every time.

The Adventure mechanic: Never before seen, impossible to conceive, staggeringly surprising, and it played great.

Ugin, the Spirit Dragon: Powerful, yes, but the flavor? Ghostfire, plus removal, and then the inverse of his brother Nicol Bolas. Could not have been better.

Should you play to my favorites? Well, obviously not. Should you push the envelope? Don’t push it off a cliff; it’s not a paper airplane. Should you think about your past and consider how the designers of Magic created your own favorite cards that made you gasp and squeal and swear?

YES. Yes! That’s the whole point of this contest! Delve into yourself! Make something that you love! Do something that’s new and yours but is rooted in the real! You’re not here to show off the possibilities of your custom card maker, you’re here to make something you love! If you don’t love it, start over. If you love it for the wrong reasons, start over. Magic should be for everyone. That’s the thing about all those cards and mechanics and ramblings above there: those are the reasons I love those cards. A thousand other players can love them for a thousand other reasons. Empathize beyond.

We are a community. Never forget that. 

@abelzumi​

[pianosmasher]

I find it... interesting that Resident Evil 8, subtitled Village, is the first to introduce vampires and werewolves to the series. Up until that point, the series had always been about biological weapons, mainly of the viral kind. As a Dracula fan, I immediately pledged myself to catch all the way up on the series in anticipation for VIII after seeing the announcement trailer in June 2020. I basically didn’t know anything about the series, as I was too young for M-rated games during its heyday (at least by my parents’ standards) and had no older cousins or siblings who’d introduce me. I didn’t even make the pandemic connection at first. All I was thinking of was how my new PS4, bought with the money I’d originally saved to go see my mom in Tennessee one last time, was slowly becoming my new favorite thing. It’d gotten my roommate through April with The Last of Us Remastered and it got me through May with Horizon: Zero Dawn. If I’m gonna make the switch from Nintendo to Sony, I may as well get to know Resident Evil starting in June.

The pandemic parallels came in much later. I’m playing them in release order, and it’s not until the second game that the characters have the time and awareness to consider synthesizing a vaccine. The characters in the first game have to figure out what’s going on as it’s happening to them, and it’s important to remember that zombies came back into popularity due to the efforts of that first game, meaning the exact nature of the threat would have come off more ambiguous at the time. The game’s Japanese title, Biohazard, holds the clue: we’ve scarred an ecosystem, and the human damage may be beyond repair. All you can do is try to save all the people who don’t deserve to be there as it happens.

Starting in the second game, I'd hear the characters talk about vaccines. I myself will reach full vaccination status tomorrow afternoon, and here I am playing games with characters who’ve killed just to get close to making one. The difference between our viruses in theirs is that we actually have some hope of curing ours, as in the world of Resident Evil, everything seems unstoppable. Momentum never seems to end once it’s been picked up - not for the virus, not for the destruction, and certainly not for human greed. The player is supposed to survive and nothing more, not live and thrive but to continuously struggle, lose, and sacrifice as they make their way through an environment that is either mastered or deadly to the touch. “Don’t get too close,” the special operatives say to their fellow agents. Resident Evil offers the power fantasy of knowing how to handle something impossible through trial and error. The horror is overcome by learning to live with it. 

At least that’s how the first three games work. Starting with the fourth, all the atmosphere, pacing, and level design keep their levels of quality, but instead serve a much more direct fantasy of power in the form of a dread thriller with a pint of action thrown in for good measure. It’s clear that our relationship with the environment had changed by the time it was released. RE4 became the blueprint for third-person shooters, but funnily enough, going back to it reveals that it’s everything around the shooter that allows the main mechanic to shine that deep into the spotlight. The characters, for instance: Leon, now a professional, is infected with the game’s new virus himself early on, and he begins to have nightmares about what it might be doing to his body. If you’ve just come off playing through Leon’s first day as a cop in RE2, this is terrifying. He is practically a special agent at this point, meaning he’s accomplished quite a lot since the last game, so his plot armor can’t exactly be thick. Are we gonna see a character in Resident Evil, a game requiring a lot of death at first, actually die in canon? 

More importantly: what does he do now that he has the virus? Is he gonna be okay? Am I hitting myself too close to home? Or is this the only piece of media that feels relevant to me anymore?

Resident Evil 5 takes place in Africa, and despite semiplausible claims of racism actually ends up being a staunchly anti-colonial parable about overcoming a world of fear. Chris Redfield finally lets go of fear when he looks over at Jill Valentine and Sheva Alomar, the two women who have now saved his life too many times to count. RE5 was built for co-op play, and its story is based around the vulnerability and necessity of partnership. It’s not defeating the big bad in a giant volcano that helps Chris live uninhibited. It’s his support network, however small it may be. (There’s even a woman of color in it). The characters of RE have always been at the forefront of the experience, but 5 at least tries to make it clear that there really are people worth fighting for out there, and ten times out of ten, you can spot them as the ones who’re fighting right there with you. 

RE6 picks up on this theme of connection, gets high on nostalgia, and plays fast and loose with tone in a sort of victory lap. I’m not finished with it but it isn’t great so far. I also haven’t touched RE7, Code: Veronica, or Zero, as I want to finish those last two spinoffs before I move on to another phase of the mainline titles. And all the while, all my gaming channels are covering RE:Village without really covering it at all. I know that Capcom is bound to have some scientific explanation as to why vampires and werewolves made their debut in the series with this game, as it’d been in development for three years prior to its announcement, an echo of the past finally heard. But still, even if we’re grading on a curve, context is context. How wild is it that a year and change after the pandemic began, a game series known for its bio-weapons turns a gothic corner and drops its original moniker? Indeed, RE:Village is also the first not to have “biohazard” on any release title anywhere, regardless of region. In truth, I can’t quite blame the publications - I wouldn’t have noticed if I didn’t sit down to write this tonight.

Would I have boarded that hype train in June if the game had kept its chemical warfare? The Last of Us: Part II, another franchise brought to me by Sony, also had its virus and pandemic in the foreground, and that’s a top ten game for me now given my specific experience with it. But then, Resident Evil is special. The beautifully detailed graphics, endearing character moments, atmospheric pacing, motivated sound design, and confrontational control schemes have all made it stand apart to me as a series. I really have no comparison for how these games have challenged me and made me feel during this time. I’ve watched Chris become a soldier, Claire become a mother, Leon become a hero, and Jill come back from the brink, all while underneath the heavy horrors of a natural environment turned unstoppably hostile. One way or another, I’m glad I met them.

This was the year everything in my life took off in directions that I could no longer follow or keep up with. I can’t describe to you how much I feel like I’ve lost, despite all the incredibly important personal work I have done behind the scenes. I realize now that there are some changes that simply can’t be stopped or unchanged, only survived, endured, and adapted to. It’s taught me that we hardly ever seek change - it seeks us, and we are offered the task to accept it or defend against it. There’s something that feels right about playing these games at this time, of that I’m sure. I find it interesting that, by the time I get to RE:Village, the franchise itself will have changed into something quite different. But with each new game I’ve crossed off my list, RE has earned more and more of my trust as a series that knows all too well how changes come and go. Hopefully I will change right along with it. 

[raven-wraith]

This is Actually a Completely Subjective List Written in a Completely Objective Voice, so I’m not Wrong, Y’all just had a Bad Year: A Look at the Best Titles of 2020 A.D.

By Orova

I feel like a recap or an intro that encompasses the past year will be redundant to both the reader and the writer, so I just won’t. Instead, I’ll just say that due to circumstances provided by 2020, I had a lot of time to just shut up and play games. And games did I play. I played a lot of good games[1]. I played a lot of bad games[2]. I bought the newest games that came out[3] and I went back down memory lane with some classics[4]. But at the end of every day, I was completely satisfied with how I spent my time and did what I wanted. So this is a list of the games that surpassed satisfaction, pushed the bar higher, and made me reconsider what a truly great game can be in 2020.

The Last Of Us Part II

This game is a beautiful work of art and storytelling. If gripping gameplay is what you came for, then you’ll be staying for the story. Naughty Dog continues to come out with games that push current gen Playstations to astronomical heights, making that hardware and software work overtime to get a game that becomes so overwhelmingly tangible that it cause the player to stop. The Last of Us Part II is no exception to this rule. So often does this game take lefts and rights when you expect it to go straight that it is absolutely insane how much ground it truly covers. Sneaking about before getting into claustrophobic gunfights feels smooth and natural, the new mechanics and enemies are unique, and while the non-linear parts can overstay their welcome at times, the game is long enough for them to not fill in empty space. 

When I first played this, I was with my girlfriend for the whole journey and at the end, I didn’t feel quite as fulfilled as I thought I should’ve from the sequel to one of the greatest games I’ve ever played. It wasn’t until I returned on a higher difficulty did I find just how much this game has to offer, making the story all the more powerful as every fight truly felt like my last and every enemy made me rethink my choices and decision making and every arrow I fired and molotov I threw felt a nice weight to it that I have to emphasize once more. This game is a beautiful work of art and storytelling as the gameplay speaks for itself before anything else.

Final Fantasy VII Remake

To those that actually care, I reviewed this game when it came out[5] and I was shocked to find how many people didn’t appreciate it as much as I did. Final Fantasy VII is one of the most influential titles of my life that being able to see Cloud’s hair rendered so cleanly in this dystopian futuristic gothic fantasy world was a miracle in my eyes. A dream come true. The action comes in spades with enough sword fighting and magic to make Power Rangers to look like a fucking picnic.

The graphical design of the game, the direction of animation, and the cunning take on a lot of depth we never got to see so early on makes me very excited for future titles to come. There are some downsides, lots involving the side quests and voice acting, but that is just some of its downsides to look past to find the content at its core. Shooting moonbeams out of your greatsword at stormtroopers while in chase on a motorcycle. Take down a tyrannical oil monger as an eco-terrorist. Find cats for a little girl. Is this a Bioshock? No. But is it a game I keep trying to remind myself to not replay? Yes.

Tony Hawk Pro Skater 1 + 2 Remake

Superman by Goldfinger played and my sister laughed as she watched me cry. This game brought tears to my eyes, literally. As I got to relive sitting in my grandma’s basement, I was propelled to complete absolutely everything I wanted to do. This game was a complete package and its delivery was spot on with what a remake should be. A collection on a past game with quality of life improvements, enhanced handling and accessibility, and a software overhaul.

The game is simple. Complete challenges, unlock drip, flex on your friends. Usually in that order. But it is finally that simplicity in a new game that makes it such a good title. We wanted the game we knew and loved and they promised that. Nothing more, nothing less, it is exactly what we got. A new soundtrack, updated graphics, and nostalgia not most can achieve is a massive point to play this game.

Huntdown

Contra meets Kung Fury. Why the fuck have you not grabbed a friend and played this masterpiece yet. I mean seriously. If you’ve got a roommate or SO or friend with nothing going on tonight, play this shit. It’s great. Moving on.

Mortal Shell

I would like to address the fact that, yes, this is a souls-like and it isn’t exactly the most friendly game because of it. However, this game came out of fucking nowhere and blew me on my ass. Going back to delivering on a promise, these guys crafted an unforgiving title with little to no hand holding to show that this-THIS[6]-is how you make a souls-like. It is balls to the walls skill based combat where the player has to use what little tools they have to overcome a myriad of enemies. Progress is possible only through rewards and items, meaning there is no grinding or farming, just straight gameplay.

This is a game where I paid half the price for a full game and got, while a shorter title, the enjoyment from a full priced AAA game. It takes no time to complete when the “click” happens and it is a fun, fulfilling title the whole time. There are some incredibly unique mechanics that forced me to break my souls brain and for that, it just makes the experience far more personal. If you aren’t weak hearted, I cannot recommend Mortal Shell enough.

Doom Eternal

When Doom Eternal dropped, my sister was playing Animal Crossing: New Horizons. After we both went into respective video game comas from it, we dubbed March 20th Doom Crossing Day. Doom is Doom. Nothing more to say past that honestly, but I will continue my rambling cause I know it’s what you all want anyway.

These guys keep cranking the intensity knob higher and higher. With Doom 2016 these guys said, “Hey, what if we gave the best first person shooter that requires no thinking whatsoever to completely obliterate enemies and zoom around the map at breakneck speeds?” With Eternal, the guys said, “Hey, what if we did what we did for 2016 except this time, we actually have the everyone (enemies and the player) move faster, hit harder, and actually require them to think?” With that, the gore orgy of Doom Eternal was born. Still very much a fast paced shooter with some extra content to fill the pockets of completionists, it delivers in fucking truckloads exactly what it wants from the player. To let loose and fucking floor every hellish abomination in their path.

And the soundtrack, while a sad story, is still one of the best things to listen to in gaming and probably the world.

Darkwood

The only thing that made me stop to consider buying this game was how reliant on a crafting system it seemed. I hate games that force crafting. I don’t know why, so I won’t elaborate. But, done with The Last of Us Part II and needing a survival horror itch to scratch, I sucked it up and bought it. After all, being an indie title for a genre I admire more than most, it couldn’t have been a terrible waste of time. That was probably the single best decision I made during the last year and Darkwood is not lost on me in that sense.

The fact that Darkwood has not only exposed the horizon of top-down horror, but it has experimented and perfected its use for the camera angle is astounding. The atmosphere rides on that perspective and, between the short days of scavenging and talking to the few NPCs you meet to the long nights crouched in the corner of your (un)safe haven, it is never lost. It’s a game where you constantly hear your heart in your ears. The combat can be sloppy at times but the story is one of a kind and its execution is phenomenal. If you are a fan of horror games or roguelikes, I cannot tell you enough. Get Darkwood.

Deep Rock Galactic

After lots of thoughtful consideration, I have deemed this the number one title of 2020. Not only did it keep me and my friends together and in touch during the hard times, it is a shooter that I support with my whole body. You and your friends play as a team of drunk space dwarves, tasked with a mission that sends you deep into a spider-infested planet, where you will have to use your class sets to fight, plunder, and escape the hostile environment.

With PvE at its core and ridiculousness as its foundation, Deep Rock Galactic is a masterpiece of cooperative shooting and procedurally generated dungeon crawling. Blending class play from Team Fortress 2 with unexpected and differing missions from Darkest Dungeon, one will find this lighthearted shooter is an easy, accessible title. With a hint of Risk of Rain to complete its graphics, the game is above all fun. That’s right. It. Is. Just. Fun. Shoot a spider that launches fireballs from its mouth, drink beer that teleports you into the farthest reaches of space, get rich off of gold veins while your team calls you greedy, dye your beard purple, and Rock and Stone in this amazing fusion of PvE and dungeon crawling. 

Thank you for coming. There will be no score. It is simply a list where I feel those that need some new titles after the biggest disappointment of them all[7] should find some great titles in here for themselves. Have a safe next year and be patient. Patience is what will reward you. Practice is what humbles you. Hesitation is defeat. Toodles.

[1] Ghostrunner

[2] Hellpoint

[3] Mafia: Definitive Edition

[4] Silent Hill 3

[5] 9/10

[6] Not you Hellpoint

[7] Cyberpunk 2077 but I mean, we all saw this coming. I had to put it in here somewhere.

[sanne-star]

Don’t Challenge A Promise Between Friends

Kinda sad that this is my first fic here. Well, better write now than never, am I right?

TW: spoilers for Demise, backstabbing, blood, and death/death mention.

An unpleasant aura filled the air as the greyskin entered the Deadquarters as he came back from setting his own trap. He may not have made as many explosive traps as Cub had for the alive hermits, or made any misleading deals as some other greyskins did. But that didn’t mean he wasn’t doing anything useful in regards to Demise.

In fact, he was doing his part of a deal- one he’d made when there weren’t as many greyskins walking the earth as there were now. Disabling traps and what not to get right where he wanted. For when he makes a deal, he does all things necessary to stand by that deal.

So when he entered the meeting room and read that yet another rather cruel trap was set up in the book of secrets, he wasn’t too pleased. The greyskin wasn’t too keen on getting out to disable it, since he had just come back from doing a few errands in his base. But he couldn’t just sleep on it, especially when there wasn’t as many live hermits left in demise as there were greyskins, and a promise on the line of breaking because of this very same trap.

So emptying his inventory of any important valuables, but keeping his trusty sword in its place. In case he ran into a mob trap on the way there of course. He flew out of the Deadquarters and into the portal, heading straight to New Hermitville.

The only thing he could think about was how it all went down, and when it started getting so serious. Ever since Cub demised, almost all the traps afterwards were somehow related to TNT and Cub. And while it was funny at first, seeing the remains of the blown up builds wasn’t that great.

That’s why he went into hiding. To disable traps quietly and stay out of the Vex’s sight while doing so, only going to the Deadquarters to catch up with the others, and see if there were any traps that got in his way plan-wise. He really wasn’t expecting the game to get this dangerous, and the letter warning he got after making that deal wasn’t making things easier either.

And before he knew it, he was in New Hermitville. And the builds around him still roared with life and energy just as they were first created in that build-battle. The dragon on top of Grian’s stacked houses looking over the horizon ready to strike, the dabbing penguins taking a sweet nap to ignore the happenings around the village, and the Scara plant eyeing him with a look of hunger, ready to take another taste of the player in front of it. But he was too occupied with the mission at hand to take a look around the place.

Flying over the Area 77 gates he saw two things that definitely weren’t supposed to be there. A small half-dirt covered obsidian box, with the top open, and his fellow greyskined friend holding a minecart TNT.

He slammed into the ground behind the greyskin with an audible thud in anger, causing the builder to jump a little back in surprise. Looking back at whoever interrupted their moment of peace. “Who’s there? This isn- oh, it’s just you. How’s it going? You gave me quite the scare there!” The perpetrator- revealed to be Grian- gave a warm smile to a very contrasting cold scowl.

The greyskin glared at the TNT minecart in Grian’s hand before clearing his throat to speak. “You do know that log in traps aren’t allowed, right?”

The builder looked quite confused, noticing the tension change he glanced around for a way out. “Um, since when was that a thing? Was that discussed in a meeting? Because I can assure you, I have no idea what you’re talking about.” Trying to get out of a possible bad situation through a scared-lie turned out to be successful, in some sense. Because the greyskin before him was taken aback by the response, walking up to the prankster in question with careful steps, with a look of both sympathy and guilt.

Grian could feel himself shrink back in fear as the person in front of him set a gentle hand on his shoulder. Which further deepened the guilt in the other’s eyes as they spoke softly. “Are you scared? It’s alright, I won’t judge you for not knowing.”

Grian felt tears welling up in his eyes, latching into the man’s robe unexpectedly, words flowing out of his month like a waterfall. “I don’t like this game anymore, I’ve been trying to end it ever since Cub died, I’ve been putting traps all over the server but someone keeps breaking them. I’m just- really scared, I keep starting all of these problems all throughout the season and leaving others to fix them. There’s only two people left, please let me fix it this time, let me be a good guy for once, please.” By the end of his rambling he realized he wasn’t looking up anymore, but more so being held in a comforting way as he cried, clutching the robed person tightly as if they were his lifeline.

Grian almost didn’t notice they were walking away from the trap. He almost wanted the man holding him to take him away from this mess, he couldn’t deal with it anymore. All the stress, all the blame, all these fun ideas turned upside down because of him and him only. There’s only so long til you realize you’re just a walking curse to your friends. But he couldn’t, he had to fix this mess, he pushed out of the greyskin’s grip so that Grian could see the trap straight on while the other could just see the builder’s growing curiosity in his eyes.

The dragon bro had so many questions, but only one screamed louder than the rest. “Wait a second, are you helping Doc? But why? It’s not like he helped you-“ A sword swinging at him had almost caught him off guard before blocking it with his own.

“You really think I’d forget everything I’ve been through with him? Of course I’d help him! And if you don’t approve then why not fight it out? Fair and square.” The greyskin’s eyes held a slight glint of light as he swung again, while the other’s still had some tears in it as parried the hit with haste.

Weaving and dodging, the swords kept clashing together.

Grian tried to reason his way out of this situation as adrenaline filled his system. “Why are we fighting?! I know you want this to be over as much as I do! So why can’t you let me be good and end it for once?” He was about to throw an ender pearl far away to recharge, when he noticed that he didn’t have anything on him, he wasn’t even wearing any armor.

Looking at the hooded man he could see a grin starting to spread wider across the man’s face as he ran toward him with a dangerous aura, realizing in horror right as he accidentally blocks the hit with his arm. That the greyskin had taken it all for himself.

All he could do in this shocked state was jump a couple feet back, and clutch his bleeding left arm. There was no backing out of this situation now.

With an unknown anger entering his system. He charged toward the greyskin, slightly grazing their cheek as they just barely dodged the attack.

Slash. Dodge. Block. Repeat.

It went like that for a couple more minutes, it was like a dance sequence at this point. Only really changing after every few swings that hit.

It came to a point where both greyskins were bloodied and at their last three hearts just staring at each other, waiting in anticipation for the other to make their move.

Grian had an abundance of scenarios running in his mind of how this fight would end, many ending in his demise. But he didn’t know what to think when the man in front of him dropped his sword and raised his arms as a sign of surrender. “Alright, alright. I give up, can we talk it out? You wanted to know why I’m protecting Doc, right?”

Completely caught off guard from the sudden change of tension. Grian almost slipped on nothing, accidentally dropping his sword to gain balance. “Uhh.. I guess so, uh sure..?” He wasn’t too sure about this whole thing, but if it meant ending the game quicker, then he’d have to bite the bullet on this one.

The hooded person chuckled with a bittersweet smile. “It’s simple, really.” He looked over his shoulder, Grian following his gaze to the trap he’s yet to finish.

He suddenly feels a burning sensation in his body, looking down to see the blade had been lodged in his stomach. The greyskin’s eyes going cold as he continued, slightly twisting the weapon with every passing second. “One of the players of Demise will suffer a very painful and permanent death.”

The builder’s eyes widened in fear. Permanent death? One of his friends never coming back? Because of this game? This news has ironically brought some devastating memories of his own friends back. “Wait- does that mean-“ His question was cut short as he coughed out blood.

But the hooded person seemed to have already known what he was about to ask, because he chuckled sadly at the failed attempt of a question. “That’s right, it means we might lose either iskall or Doc in this game of ‘trick or treat’.” He frowned, glancing back at Grian’s trap. “It was very difficult to choose who to save, because they’re my friends too. But I’m sure iskall can handle it just fine, he’s been through worse.”

Nothing could describe the amount of emotions Grian was feeling. But the look on his face summed it up quite nicely. He was absolutely terrified.

Especially after hearing the last thing they said. “So, no hard feelings my dude, ‘kay?” Twisting the sword before he even had a chance to respond, Grian was no more.

Grian was slain by Renthedog

The reaper looked at the bloodshed left by his former friend with little to no emotion in his eyes. Maybe this will teach him not to mess with me again.

DocM77 joined the game

Falling to the cold obsidian floor, Doc let out a yelp. Confused and dozed from the sudden change in surroundings. He was sure there was a lava trap waiting for him here, so where did it go?

He didn’t bother with the question as he noticed light was coming in from above him. As though there was some kind of greater being above him, the top half of the obsidian box wasn’t there to begin with. But that raises the question of why, Grian wouldn’t just, remove his own trap, would he? “I guess there’s no other way to find out other than getting out of here..” Doc muttered to himself before climbing out of his prison. Only to see a hooded grey figure standing silently over the grass at the top.

And although they weren’t facing him. The air around them felt familiar in a way, more familiar than Area 77. Somehow drawing him in closer to the hermit. But they didn’t seem to notice his presence, not even giving a reaction to him dropping down from the prison. They were more focused on a spot of darkened grass to pay attention to their surroundings.

Something in Doc suddenly clicked when he heard them let out a low chuckle. “Ren, is that you? Wh.. what happened? Wait, what are you doing here?” A storm of questions danced in his head, confusion and suspicion rising with each new question.

Ren wasn’t startled by the sudden second presence accompanying his own, rather he just turned to look at Doc from the side, revealing the blood that coated his robe. In a very protective but mencing manner to anyone that wasn’t Doc, he answered with an actual smile. “Don’t you remember? I promised I’d protect you.”

Doc was about to ask what he meant when a beep on both their communicators grabbed both of their attention. And while Ren was grinning ever so greatly, Doc couldn’t help but feel his blood go cold at the sight of the message. Something big had gone down between the time he was out and now. Doc couldn’t take his eyes off the message, re-reading it to make sure what he’s seeing is actually there. But that didn’t reassure him in the slightest.

iskall85 was slain by his worst nightmare

[acleaks]

Animal Crossing: New Horizons Treehouse.

In case you don't have the time to watch the Treehouse stream, here's a little bullet list of things they discuss and interesting things shown.

The idea behind making the setting a deserted island is that every game in the franchise has you arrive in an already created and established town. Wanting to create a new experience, you will be building the town from the ground up.

Just like in HHD, half units are in the game

Just speculation, but I think we see a new bug or something right off the bat. It's a small shadow in the sand that's spitting water.

The mention placing furnitue "on the field," I'm assuming this means anywhere, not just a yard.

Cell phone (called a Nook Phone) with the options; Call Islander, Map, Nook Miles, DIY Recipes, and camera.

Using materials, you can create many outdoor type furniture. Ex. log bench, fire, etc.

NORTH AND SOUTH HEMISPHERE CONFIRMED. Seasons and time will now be accurate to where you are!

Crafting will cost... something, I believe. The mention going someplace that will let them craft for free.

Resident center with Timmy and Tom Nook offers craftin, buying, and selling your items and material

Nook Miles is like a list of goals. When you complete one, you get miles. In Japanese, it is Tanuki Milage.

Miles can be exchanged for activities and items

Local two player! If two people have a home on the island, you can play together!

Graphics are so cozy, sound is great

Everyone has accurate shadows.

Some sound effects are made by doing something irl, like walking on sand.

Wind strength can change, affecting the leaves on trees!

You can change the host in multiplayer, indicated by a small yellow flag above your head. It seems this allows you to access your inventory

New squid look? Looks slimy and grey instead of white and bland. I like it!

The grass texture has changed. Instead of being shapes all over, it's just a grassy texture with the signature shapes in small patches here and there

Place and item VS Drop an Item. Place an item is to place it outside as furniture or what have you, drop an item is to drop it as a leaf

Camera can zoom, apply filters, and show emotions.

Remember the spitting bug I mentioned? It's a clam and can be used to make fishing bait. They need to br digged up or brought at a store.

Also in the trailer, you can just??? straight up dig up a tree?

i uninstalled pocket camp

It's likely I missed some stuff, but what's what I've gotten from it! Have a nice night!

[allysonallysonallyson-blog]

Quarantine: The Rise of Video Games

         The COVID-19 pandemic severely limited the ways in which people can safely and efficiently interact with one another. Technology’s role has become increasingly important as governments began mandating strict isolation restrictions i.e. six feet apart, self quarantine, and capacity limitations since March. Though the outbreak restrictions have seemingly decreased, the resourceful, alternative ways in which people choose to interact with one another during the pandemic are still healthy, relevant ways to socialize rather than default back to large social gatherings and frequent face to face interactions.

http://publiclibrariesonline.org/2020/03/covid-19-its-impact-on-public-libraries/       

                      So with a sudden mandate to self quarantine at home, what are the resourceful ways in which we can stay busy and entertained? Many are citing communication through social media platforms like Zoom and Skype. Others are looking to streaming services like Netflix and Hulu for movies and television shows. When the world is turned upside down and inescapably lonely, my best counter is to find other worlds to interact in with games like Animal Crossing (download the app through Google Play here) and League of Legends (download on PC here). In gaming I get the benefits of connecting with others like a Zoom call, but also the same intense entertainment value I get from watching a movie. With a limited set of activities that can be done at home, many of my friends and I have turned to video games as a way to connect with one another and stay entertained.

https-//www.searchenginejournal.com/social-media-usage-2017/183880/.png

           According to a study done by Verizon, gaming usage increased on their networks by up to 75% within just the first week of quarantine. And while it might seem counterproductive to spend your free time playing video games, there are many proven healthy benefits that coincide with its usage especially during this unique situation. In fact many health officials have supported its usage as a safe way to stay connected and pass the time. Research psychologist Rachel Kowert argues that, “in this time of high anxiety and reduced social access... video games allow us to maintain friendship bonds in a multifaceted way. There's collaboration and competition around a shared activity." And while these relationships that are formed, maintained, or strengthen through games may still seem suspiciously impersonal to Boomers, interpersonal connections through interactive media like video games or social media has become a normal standard for today’s age. Mark Griffiths, video game researcher and professor of psychology, noted that 75% of his respondents (male and female) reported making friends while playing video games. These results suggests a great socializing benefit at a time when the mental health stressors of the pandemic are significant causes of concern for everyone. 

           The best video games for users during a quarantine are those with a strong, positive social context. It’s why games like Animal Crossing: New Horizons are topping video games sales charts as it guides users in a wholesome, interactive community. Users spend their time fishing, building their community, making friends and other simple, relaxing tasks that helps to combat the stress and anxiety associated with other fast-paced, competitive games. 

          Romana Ramzan, a lecturer at Glasgow Caledonian University, believes the success of Animal Crossing: New Horizons is largely contributed to the peaceful, parallel universe that the game provides. She says that, “There’s no nastiness. There’s no violence that exists. They get absorbed into the day-to-day things without the real world consequences.” Its Nintendo Switch sales reflects the enormous amount of critical and audience praise, ranking in at the 6th highest selling Switch game. The colorful, friendly aesthetic is non-alienating to all consumers, especially those who are new to the gaming community. 

https://www.theverge.com/2020/2/20/21143335/animal-crossing-new-horizons-nintendo-switch-preview-hands-on

            Even while immersing myself into a stress-free, interactive world, I still found myself fighting my own guilt of playing video games. The activity itself has been stereotyped and stigmatized from all sides for a number of years. Think of the image that conjures in your mind when you think of a gamer. Why is it the image of a lonely, awkward teenage boy trapped in his mother’s basement the one that conjures up for most of us? Media outlets have been quick to demonize gaming and the gaming community with flashy words promising brutal gore, violence, and disturbing graphics projected onto vulnerable kids.

https://psychcentral.com/blog/the-surprising-truth-about-stereotypes-of-online-gamers/

        Video game usage isn’t exclusive to teenage males. Because of its accessibility on a variety of consoles and its vast library of games, there are options for everyone at every age to leisurely enjoy video games. In fact, the gender split for video game usage is a lot more balanced than one might think. In the United States, women account for approximately 46% of all gamers. And while our stereotypes of gamers may be limited to teenagers, a poll of 4,000 respondents in the U.S. show that millennials (age 18 to 35 years) are consuming the most games at 40% of the population.

          Video games should be less stigmatized and be seen as non-threatening as other leisure activities like reading, watching a movie, or playing sports. The key to healthy usage is time limitations, interactions with a positive community, and choosing games that enhance or teach skills. According to Tutor Doctor, video games have a lot more to offer than pure entertainment value. There are numerous skills and cognitive benefits to gaming such as: hand-eye coordination, organizational skills, memorization, strategizing, and educational learning. Though many health experts cautiously warn users of gaming addiction, something that is officially classified as a mental health disorder by the World Health Organization. The disorder is all-consuming; causing significant impairment to the player’s physical and mental health, social relationships, and educational and work related activities. If you or someone you know begins displaying negative behaviors like avoiding responsibilities or damaging personal relationships, it’s important to seek a medical professional for a diagnosis. While heavy risks like these are at hand, health experts are advocating for video game usage in the unique pandemic circumstances because for most people the benefits outweigh the harms.

  Top Selling Games of April 2020

          The COVID-19 pandemic has caused a global surge for not just video game consumption, but all media consumption. So as we are given instructions to stay isolated in our homes, it seems most of us are turning to engaging on social media, watching more news coverage, spending more time on messaging apps, buying more subscription based streaming services, and staying immersed in our online world. The circumstances of today have brought to light our dependency on technology media in keeping us entertained and connected. For many, such as myself, the use of all these digital spaces has brought me to some level of normalcy in a world clouded with confusion and panic.