#i was doing the digital stuff for this on a flight so i got sick of it too fast so its honestly like. not that good. but still

[vintrage]

it was that white cloak that soiled me

[anjumstar]

Sand Lines ch6, Sunday

Read on AO3

rating: teen

pairing: bakudeku

word count: 35.3/40.6k

summary: It wasn’t a vacation. It was only convenient that Katsuki’d managed to trick Miruko into thinking it was.

Katsuki doesn’t need a break. Post-war life has been peaceful. Too peaceful. So under the guise of a vacation, Katsuki heads to the American southwest, the only place where he can do the thing he wants to do the most: blow stuff up. Big time. And it’s all going to according to plan for about five minutes, until Deku comes along. They’ve barely seen each other since graduation last year and Katsuki could, should blow him up for getting in his business yet again. Instead, they learn about post-war life in the way they’ve done everything: together.

first chapter - previous chapter - last chapter

master list

Alamogordo, New Mexico

Sleep was no closer for Katsuki than Japan itself. The infernal red numbers of the digital clock were blinking just after midnight and Katsuki hadn’t so much as dozed since laying himself in bed.

It had been an awkward car ride back to the motel. Slight hand touching. The little rubs and stretches that Izuku had been doing for the past few days, but a little more mindless, softly grazing with a lack of intent. A murmured Is this okay? And Katsuki’s answered silence. But it wasn’t hand holding. That might have sent Katsuki screeching through the sunroof. 

The hand touching itself was liminal. It was almost like what they’d been doing before—everything would be marked as before now—but now it was after. Izuku was touching his hand, but they’d kissed. Izuku was touching his hand, but Katsuki had wanted to kiss him.

Katsuki rolled over again, shoving his nose painfully into his pillow, huffing in the foreign laundry detergent smell.

And they hadn’t said anything. The car ride had been spent in near silence, thicker than the humid air of Japan’s western coast. They hadn’t said anything over lunch, or the training session they’d fit in at the Missile Range, or during dinner after. What was there to say? What did Katsuki actually know?

Why had he done it? He didn’t have feelings for Deku, did he?

He did. He must. He had to.

That pit in his stomach was back in full force, and it wasn’t jet lag, it wasn’t dehydration, it wasn’t any of that shit. It was a feeling, what became of a feeling when words weren’t put to it, when it went long unacknowledged and your body wanted you to take note.

He’d taken note, alright. But if this was love, then he’d just as soon give it back. The cramp twisting in his stomach could just fuck right off if that was all it was going to offer him.

He flipped over again, sighing heavily as his mind buzzed. Sleep was still a long way off.

“Kacchan?”

Izuku didn’t sound groggy at all. His voice was light, lucid, tentative, high pitched. Apparently as far from sleep as Katsuki was.

“I can get a flight out tomorrow if you want. Or get a separate room tonight. There might be someone at the desk.”

The pit in Katsuki’s stomach tossed and turned much like Katsuki himself as he rose up on one elbow to look in the direction of Izuku’s bed. “Don’t be an idiot.”

“Aren’t I one?” Izuku asked. His voice had shrunk, so small over the sound of the air conditioner roaring.

“Of course you are,” Katsuki said, swinging his legs out of bed and speaking into the darkness. “That’s not new.”

“Please, Kacchan,” Izuku insisted. “What do you want?”

What did he want? He wanted to bite him and kiss him. Throw him and hug him. Fight him and fight with him. Save him and win him.

It was like being drawn and quartered, limbs pulled in opposite directions till his body gave in and they popped out of their sockets. Until he was nothing but pieces of bare flesh open and bleeding for a jeering crowd to see. He wanted, but the wanting made him sick.

Katsuki got out of bed. He walked to Izuku’s side of the room, working off feel and the sound of Izuku’s deep breaths. When he was at the edge of the bed, he kneeled down in front of it. “Hand,” he said.

The rustle of covers being displaced, and a pale hand drew the bare strands of light in the room to it like the moon. The fingers were limp, curled upwards in natural curves. Katsuki found the index finger and touched his to Izuku’s print to print, whorl to whorl.

“I don’t know how to be soft,” he whispered. It came out scratchy and breathy.

“I don’t want you to be.”

“I don’t want to be hard.”

“Then don’t be.”

Katsuki added another finger, hooking the first two together, index and middle. Even just that slight contact set his chest on fire. It was so little, and it made him so weak to be so affected by that much, but any more and he’d run away. Not just weak, but a coward. So he held firm and added a third finger. Index, middle and ring, all latched like a perfect clasp, like something that was never going away.

“I don’t know how to do this,” Izuku said.

“You don’t know anything,” Katsuki scoffed.

“Hah, I really don’t,” Izuku said, and dammit, the nerd was sniffling. “How does it feel fast when we’ve known each other our whole lives?”

“Because we do things one-hundred percent,” Katsuki said, finally finding the sureness in his voice. “Zero to one-hundred percent is fast.”

“It’s like One For All breaking my bones,” Izuku said. “Blowing me into the sky with no way to catch myself.”

If Katsuki were sappier, he might have said, I’ll catch you or some shit, but he couldn’t. The words got stuck in that tar pit in his stomach or the inferno in his chest or the dry tongue in his mouth. 

“So I start with just a finger,” Izuku continued, reaching out his pinky finger to tangle with Katsuki’s. That was nearly the whole hand, and now all they had to do was tighten the hold for it to be complete.

But they’d had a habit of holding each other too close back at UA. Unable to bear it when the other was gone, falling to pieces when the other’s gravity wasn’t holding them together. The barest loosening upon graduation was all it had taken for them to spin apart. So Katsuki kept the hold loose, but solid, at least for now.

“Come to bed, Kacchan,” Izuku said. “It’s a big bed.”

“I kick,” Katuski said.

“I’ve been kicked by you before.”

“That’s probably not a great start.”

“The start doesn’t have to be the best part,” Izuku replied, scooting back in bed so that Katsuki’s hand had to follow. “We’ve gotten better with time.”

Katsuki crawled up as Izuku scooted to the far edge, leaving Katsuki with a meager handhold and a body’s length of heat. Izuku was cocooned under the covers but Katsuki stayed on top, warmed enough by the heat Izuku had left. The only place they touched was their fingertips. Any more and the warmth would become a burn.

“Your arm’s gonna fall asleep,” Katsuki murmured, tugging at Izuku’s hand curving back behind him. 

“That’s okay,” Izuku replied. “So long as you fall asleep too.”

And not a few minutes later, he did.

*

Alamogordo, New Mexico

They woke up entangled. A blanket barricade wasn’t nearly enough to keep them apart, it turned out. Perhaps in the cold, Katsuki had sought out the heat of another body, because he’d thrown a leg overtop Izuku’s, and their hands were clenched so tight that the tips of Katsuki’s fingers were tingling.

And Katsuki could barely breathe.

He didn’t dare. Breathing would make it too real. And Katsuki needed to extricate himself before reality crashed down on him.

The leg was easy enough to swing off. But even when Katsuki loosened his own hand grip, Izuku’s fingers held tight. It was like the guy was grinding his teeth with tension, but instead he was grinding Katsuki’s already angry knuckles.

Katsuki leaned in, finally taking a breath that smelled like desert dust and hotel shampoo and clean sweat. He gave Izuku’s hand a light squeeze, and that was enough for his hold to loosen on his own. Then Katsuki slipped out of bed and pressed his face into his own mattress, letting out a silent scream into it. 

What the fuck. What. The. Fuck. The front of his body was still warm from Izuku’s, from spooning Izuku and his back was cold like he’d been standing flush against the air vents. And his mind was cleaved in half just the same.

He needed to go. He needed to do something. Light was poking out the sides of the blackout curtains, so it wasn’t too early. He threw on the top of his uniform as he walked to the sinks to brush his teeth till his gums bled.

“Mm, Kacchan?”

Katsuki saw Izuku fling a boneless arm behind him in the mirror, feeling for where Katsuki’s body had just been. It was probably still warm enough that Izuku could tell how Katsuki had migrated, how close they’d been. How they’d stepped over the line from a few fingers touching to whole bodies pressed back to front.

“Get ready, we’re going to the range,” Katsuki said through a mouth full of frothed-up toothpaste.

“Nngh?”

Izuku blinked as he sat himself up and Katsuki’s eyes fell to his lips almost automatically. Lips that he now knew fundamentally differently. He’d always known those big eyes and those stark freckles and scars that wound up his arms like broken chains. But he’d felt those lips. He’d tasted them. Licked them.

And he could do it again.

Katsuki spat into the sink and rinsed out his mouth with the hard water before spitting it out and taking a drink from the filtered pitcher.

“Get up,” Katsuki insisted, walking back to their suitcases and chucking Izuku’s costume at him. No way he was wearing Katsuki’s shirt today.

“Mm, alright,” Izuku said, dragging himself out of bed. Katsuki wasn’t sure if the lethargy was because Izuku had hardly slept at all, or because he’d slept so well he was still coming out of it. Now that Katsuki thought about it—and the adrenaline that he’d first woken up with was starting to peter out—he’d slept pretty well. Dreamless. Soundless.

He wouldn’t dwell on that now.

“What are we gonna do today?” Izuku asked, finally standing free from the covers.

He was dressed only in boxer briefs and Katsuki had to look away. That man had lifted an SUV just a few days ago. Katsuki couldn’t look at him mostly naked, not right now.

“You’re gonna get dressed and follow me out to the car,” Katsuki answered, slipping on his own socks and baggy pants.

“Kacchan…”

“We’re gonna train and be fucking responsible,” Katsuki clarified, clear as mud. “Promise.”

*

White Sands Missile Range, New Mexico

The silence between them during yesterday’s training had been covered by more big explosions and the distance they necessitated. Izuku had stood off to the side with his sensors and his notebook and Katsuki had let loose in the way Izuku had manipulated him out of for days. But they hadn’t gone crazy, and all those massages had helped. Katsuki felt good. He felt ready to whoop ass.

“Are you gonna tell me what we’re doing now?” Izuku asked, slipping on his gloves.

“We’re gonna spar,” Katsuki replied, walking ahead with long strides. They were here earlier than usual and it showed in the heat. The sand was still cool from the chilled desert night and the sun hadn’t quite crept over the mountains yet.

Izuku grinned. “I thought you didn’t wanna kick me?”

“Changed my mind.”

Katsuki wanted to. He wanted to touch Izuku, but everything was too novel and foreign and just fucking weird, but this. This was their comfort zone. This was the only way they’d touched for three years of school, and Katsuki was only just now realizing it had never been meaningless. Every moment with Izuku had been intimate in some way and had stretched the boundaries of their relationship. And they could do it again.

“Quirks?” Izuku asked.

“That’s why we’re here,” Katsuki said. “All quirks. Full out. No holds barred.”

“Five-second hold wins?”

“We’ll know when there’s a winner,” Katsuki said. “No rules is no rules.”

“I feel like this is how we get kicked out of the country,” Izuku said, his voice warm through his grin as he began to stretch an arm overhead. Katsuki lunged to the side.

“Fucking good,” Katsuki replied. “Get me out of this hellhole.”

They stretched out as the sun rose overhead and struck the land as white as its namesake. It was blinding, not the best place to be loosing bright explosions, but Katsuki’d had worse. He’d already started to sweat by the time they were ready to go.

“Ready to die?” Katsuki asked as they spaced out. 

“There’s no one I’d rather have kill me,” Izuku replied.

And if that wasn’t permission to go, Katsuki didn’t know what was.

He blasted himself forward, taking off with haste. He didn’t have physical speed over Izuku anymore, but they were at least matched in reflexes and ability to play out strategy. But there was one thing that Katsuki still had Izuku beat at for sure.

Izuku had already started running his way, just beginning to charge One For All up when Katsuki shot two blasts down at the sand and flew up in the sky. He kept his blasts short and underfueled, letting the reserves stock up in his gauntlets. After all, that was what he was here for. The biggest explosions he could make.

A strand of Blackwhip oscillated towards him and Katsuki dodged, only for a second strand to come his way. It was smart of Izuku to stay on the ground—Float just didn’t control as well as Katsuki’s explosions did, but Blackwhip had a long reach, longer than Katsuki even knew. Who knew how much Izuku had trained it up in the last year while he hadn’t been looking?

All of a sudden, a breeze began to pick up.

Blackwhip began spinning, and soon enough, Float was activated too. One strand served as a propeller overhead while another one spun behind Izuku to balance it out. He was floating like a goddamn helicopter.

The surprise threw Katsuki off just long enough for Izuku to loose a third strand of Blackwhip and wrap it around Katsuki’s waist to reel him in like the catch of the day. But Katsuki wouldn’t go that easily.

He fired a blast straight at Izuku and threw off his meager helicopter, sending the both of them tumbling toward the ground.

When they landed, Izuku had the gall to laugh and say, “I told you I was still working on it!”

But that wasn’t what Katsuki was focused on. They’d tumbled to the ground together, and now their proximity wasn’t so different from how they’d been when he’d woken up that morning. But how they were facing each other. Legs still tangled but now hands on shoulders, pushing the other away as much as they were drawn toward each other.

Katsuki released Izuku’s shoulder and grabbed his hand, glove in glove. That first contact that had freaked him out—hand holding. It drew Izuku’s eyes wide and Katsuki wondered if it freaked him out too. If Katsuki was the only weirdo who couldn’t handle even the smallest soft touch or if Izuku was the same.

He set off an explosion. It drew a shout from Izuku, but it was one of surprise, not pain, not really. Katsuki knew Izuku’s painful shouts well enough to chalk them each to a particular pain level, and he hadn’t even hit a one on the scale.

It wasn’t enough to burn him, or rattle his weathered bones too much. But it scorched his glove so that now his bare, pink hand was in Katsuki’s. For only a moment, before Katsuki blew himself backwards and gained some distance.

“My glove!” Izuku shouted in delay, still taken aback by the dirty move.

“I’ll owe you one!” Katsuki replied, pooling his sweat. “You’ll have to come collect!”

Izuku stood up, lightning crackling around a wide grin. “I will!”

Katsuki shot forward again and Izuku was coming at him in equal measure, one fist pulled back. Both of Kasuki’s hands were behind him, telegraphing nothing as he grew closer. In an instant, he was going to pull both arms out in front and blast Izuku back with a double whammy.

But Izuku was faster.

He faked out a punch, not so much as grazing Katsuki’s shoulder as that right hook went right around him and the left followed. Both arms went around his back and before Katsuki knew it, Izuku had him in a damn hug.

Katsuki’s arms were pinned at his sides, but he was far from out of options. He could shoot them both into the air, he could try and articulate his wrists towards Izuku’s body, burn another hole through his uniform. Or he could opt for the next best thing.

He kissed him.

That loosened Izuku’s hold for just a moment, as Katsuki took in the taste of salt and spit and Izuku. But Katsuki missed that split second to get free, because the next thing he knew, the hug was bone crushing, organ bursting. Izuku held Katsuki close enough to squeeze his soul right out and then taste it on his lips.

But Katsuki wasn’t that easy.

Katsuki lifted a leg to wrap around Izuku’s, halfway to crawling in Izuku’s lap while standing, only to tighten its hold behind Izuku’s knee and buckle the leg in one go.

They went tumbling to the ground, mouths separating just soon enough to keep from clinking each other’s teeth together hard enough to chip one. The moment their mouths separated, they hit the ground and gasps and oofs burst from both their mouths, giving way to laughs. Katsuki was on top, squishing Izuku into the ground, but Izuku made no effort to move. In fact, his arms were still around Katsuki’s waist, nearly as tight as before. Maybe even tighter when his ribs expanded in a desperate breath before more laughs crowed out.

“This is how we get kicked out of the country,” Izuku laughed, using a crackle of One For All to roll them over onto Katsuki’s back.

“Fine by me,” Katsuki replied.

He lurched his shoulder to one side, rolling them over again, both of them covered in pale white crystals nearly everywhere but their lips themselves. When they kissed, pieces of sand were knocked off each other’s cheeks by their noses and dug into the lines of their hands with how hard they gripped each other.

“My win,” Katsuki wheezed after certainly more than five seconds had passed.

“I don’t know,” Izuku breathed. “I think I won. Catch-a-Kacchan.”

“You didn’t do shit.”

“You’re here, aren’t you?”

This was how they touched. Muscles on fire, smoke still catching particles of light in the air, battlefield hard against their backs. Usually Katsuki’s lips weren’t pulsing, on the verge of bruising, but Izuku usually was grinning like this. They often panted each other’s air, sharing breaths better than they shared most things.

“It ain’t a real win if you don’t know you just got your ass handed to you,” Katsuki decided, pushing himself up. When he was upright, he extended a hand to Izuku. A new touch. “Round two.”

Izuku took his hand and pulled himself up, bicep bulging. “I’ll definitely win this one, Kacchan.”

He sent Katsuki a grin that made Katsuki’s heart thrash, nearly sent him into the air, ready to start another round.

“I’m definitely winning,” Katsuki argued back.

He was sure he would.

*

White Sands Missile Range, New Mexico

“Let’s go on a date.”

They’d collapsed under the shade of Katsuki’s beach umbrella. The shade was long as the sun crept over the mountains but shrank every minute, leaving their toes and fingertips open to its dry scorch.

“A what?” Katsuki’s throat had dried out, turning his voice into a scape of cragged ravines that his words fell into.

“A date?” Izuku repeated, this time with less confidence. “Maybe get a bite to eat and hang out?”

“Isn’t that what we do anyway?”

A week with every meal shared, every activity shared, every moment just as entangled as the rest of their lives had been.

“Hmm,” Izuku considered. “I guess I don’t really know what would make it different.”

Katsuki’s vocabulary had never expanded into this corner of human language. The part that talked about dates and romance and sakura petals. He didn’t even have the words to describe how he felt about Izuku. Something that meant pissed off and happy and concerned and drawn to. And that he liked the touching. Sometimes. So far.

“Maybe it’s just that we know it’s a date?” Izuku offered. “Maybe that’s enough?”

“Well, where do you wanna go?”

Izuku turned his head towards Katsuki, sand sticking to his hair and the side of his neck as he grinned. “Just give me the keys and you’ll see.”

“Remember, me giving you the keys awards me full veto rights.”

“That’s fine,” Izuku agreed. “I don’t think anyone would veto this.”

*

“Veto.”

“Kacchan, no,” Izuku said as he clung tight to the steering wheel. “You have to read the whole law before you veto.”

“I read fast,” he retorted as they pulled into the parking lot. “Veto.”

The building Izuku was pulling up to looked like Pepto Bismol had thrown up on America’s 1950s and called it an ice cream shop. The place was pink and chrome and tackiness wrapped in checker print and neon lights. A blinding abomination of nostalgia no one wanted to return to.

“You afraid of a little pink?” Izuku asked, reaching for the ignition but not quite moving to turn the car off. “The neon hurting your eyes?”

“Fuck you,” Katsuki grumbled, stepping out of the car and slamming the door behind him. Izuku was as transparent as a tissue soaked with his Midoriya tears, but dammit, Katsuki couldn’t fight it.

Izuku ran around to Katsuki’s side, and their knuckles brushed as they walked to the restaurant’s ordering window. It made Katsuki’s fingertips twitch, but he couldn’t quite bring himself to grab Izuku’s hand, and Izuku didn’t make the move either.

“I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised,” Izuku said as they made their way to the huge signboard with the various milkshakes and sundaes on the menu. Katsuki was surprised—though not necessarily pleasantly—when Izuku walked right by it and straight to the ordering window.

“Hello,” Izuku greeted the cashier. “I’d like to order two sundaes, please?”

“Sure, hun, what kind?”

Izuku pulled his wallet out of his back pocket. Katsuki followed the movement, watching as the pocket snapped flat against the firm, toned muscle of Izuku’s ass. He realized he’d never properly checked out Izuku, taken stock of his assets, or what a stranger might find physically appealing about him. Then, he horrifyingly realized that he was doing that right now.

Katsuki’s face scalded as his eyes shot up to the overhang the building had kindly installed, protecting customers from the New Mexico sun, and stealing Katsuki’s only viable excuse for why his face was suddenly so red. 

The guy was stacked, there were no two ways around it. His body was one of the fittest on the planet, and what he did with it—fuck, Katsuki had to get it together.

Izuku was attractive. Katsuki was attracted. And he was somehow only realizing this now.

“We’ll have one mango dango and one green chile sundae.”

Despite it all, Katsuki couldn’t help but laugh. “Damn, this place really is a one-trick pony.”

Izuku turned back. “You wish Japan were too.”

“I wish for nothing, numbskull, I have everything I—”

Katsuki cut himself off. Usually, he’d spit out that phrase thinking about his quirk, his hero status, having graduated top of class from UA. But now, the words carried a new undercurrent, an electric charge wrapped all around the guy in front of him, trying his best to count out American dollars for the cashier.

“Hmm? What was that, Kacchan?”

“Nothing. Stand aside, you’re holding up the line.”

There was no line, of course—it was church hours on a Sunday—but Katsuki still batted Izuku to the side, away from the ordering window. And he thought: Bakugou Katsuki ain’t no coward.

He moved the hand that was shoving Izuku’s shoulder around to Izuku’s shirt collar and fisted it between his fingers. Then he yanked it toward him. The noise of surprise that Izuku made was swallowed by Katsuki’s lips. A hard kiss of lips being smashed against teeth with the power of heroes who hadn’t really learned how to regulate their strength in this way yet. Izuku recovered fast, he always did, and brought a hand to Katsuki’s face to deepen the angle, soften the pressure.

As soon as the kiss was fixed, it was over, and Izuku pulled away, breathing, “Are we doing that now?”

Katsuki nodded. “I am. You can catch up or give up.”

“I never give up.”

The next kiss was softer but stretched longer. Spun sugar of a kiss. A cashmere sweater pulled over both of them in the winter time. A hand reached out to hold. It was only a shame sundaes took so brief a time to be served.

“Mango dango and green chile?”

When Katsuki pulled back, Izuku was still leaned towards him, eyes closed and lips plush and damp. He had to blink back to himself before turning and getting their ice cream. 

The sticky outdoor tables were just about empty at this hour, but they were still unappealing when Katsuki turned and looked at them. He didn’t have an interest in being seen slouching over a cup of ice cream, even by random extras. He could hardly believe this was what he was doing with his day, even though he’d been sparring, working out, just a little while ago.

“Follow me,” Izuku said, and, with their ice creams, he began floating in the air.

As he rose, he was hugging close to the building, and Katsuki quickly caught on. He put his hands behind him and fired four good blasts before he was on level with the roof of the single-story building. That’s where they landed, him with the thud of his heavy boots and Izuku with nary a sound as he floated down. The roof was hot, Katsuki could feel that much without even sitting. But there were some ridges of cinder blocks that were light in color and wouldn’t hold on to so much heat. So he sat down and took his cup from Izuku, the outside already soaked with condensation.

“I think better on rooftops,” Izuku said as he sat down next to Katsuki. “Or balconies or streetlights…not so many distractions up here.”

“Not sure what you could be distracted by in this town,” Katsuki said, diving into his sundae before it melted. There was some kind of jelly containing the chiles, and he made sure to get a good bit on his spoon before eating it. The tingle was immediate but cooled in equal measure by the vanilla ice cream, and Katsuki glared down at the cup. Fuck this dessert for being delicious too.

“I don’t know why you keep saying that, Kacchan, it’s really beautiful here.”

The view from the roof wasn’t anything special. In fact, it was worse than most other views they’d had thus far, as it was just of the parkway and the lame establishments surrounding it. Everything but the ice cream place was sepia toned from the dirty road to the hazy mountains in the distance. Like a volcano had erupted and left the whole region under a thin coat of ash.

Still. When that layer of ash was wiped away by the view from the top of the mountains or the depth of the starry night, the place had something going for it.

“Pretty don’t make you interesting.”

“Maybe,” Izuku said. “But things can be both.”

Katsuki glanced over at Izuku, who was dropping his spoon upside down in his mouth and licking the contents off. His hair was as green as it had ever been in the direct sunlight of midday on a chrome roof. His skin was darker, browner, and it set off the contrast up this close. “Yeah, they can be.”

“I think you are,” Izuku said. His eyes were stuck on the mountains they’d climbed just days before. “Is that okay?”

“Why wouldn’t it be?”

“I dunno,” Izuku replied, his voice thick with another spoonful of ice cream. A drop of water dripped from his hands down to the rooftop. “I don’t know anything that you’re thinking about this.”

“You’re not exactly an open book either,” Katsuki retorted. “Or if you are, you’re one of your notebooks with notes squeezed in the corner and kanji too cramped for anyone but you to read.”

Katsuki didn’t know why he was snapping, how he could still be so quick to whip his tongue when Izuku had practically been sucking it just moments before. He bit his tongue to keep as much of it as possible behind his teeth. Luckily, Izuku only laughed, but Katsuki still had to bite a little harder.

“Maybe I can’t even read it,” Izuku said, smiling a fake smile. Not even half the All Might smile he’d trained himself to wear through duress and calamity. “You’re a surprise, Kacchan, but I surprised myself too. I didn’t know I wanted you—isn’t that stupid? Of course you figured it out before me.”

Izuku fed himself another spoonful of ice cream, frowning around the upside down spoon. His lips curved around it and stayed like that.

“I didn’t figure out shit.”

Izuku turned to him, and it made him feel as raw as it always had. Exhilarating as a toddler. Judgemental as a kid. Guilty as a tween. Seen as a teen. Warm as an adult. So much—too much—all the time. He was an idiot not to have figured this out sooner.

“I can’t look at you,” Izuku said, turning away, and Katsuki prickled. Izuku’s gaze burned him, but no more than his quirk did. Hot as fire, but a fire he wanted to hold in his hands all the time. “I’ll kiss you.”

“Then look at me.”

“No,” Izuku said. “And you did figure shit out. You kissed me first.”

“I told you I didn’t figure out shit,” Katsuki repeated. “Sometimes the shit figures you out.”

Izuku smiled again, one that crinkled the corner of the eye that Katsuki could see, and scrunched his freckles closer together. “You moved without thinking for me again.”

If Katsuki could see more of Izuku’s face, he’d probably see some of the sadness that always appeared when Izuku thought about that. The sadness that Katsuki always wanted to wipe away with an eye roll, tell him that his sadness didn’t make Katsuki’s choice a bad choice. But if it was there, Katsuki let it be.

“I only ever do it for you.”

“Mm,” Izuku hummed, drinking some of the ice cream that had melted already. “We should have figured this out sooner.”

Katsuki laughed. If he’d figured this shit out the first time his body had moved without thinking, who knew what might have happened. Maybe he and Izuku would have run away together and the war never would have been won. Maybe they both would have died for each other and the war would still be going now. Maybe things would be exactly the same, except their relationship would be years old with wrinkles and soft edges instead of brand new and too shiny to see clearly.

“The mangos here are blander than back home,” Izuku commented, and Katsuki laughed again.

“You try growing a mango tree in hell’s asshole.”

“It’s really not that bad here!” Izuku insisted, turning back to Katsuki. When he did, his eyes stuck on Katsuki’s eyes, and then down to his lips. Katsuki didn’t know what his own looked like, but the cold had darkened Izuku’s, and they looked shiny and plump. “I said if I look at you, I’ll kiss you.”

Katsuki shrugged. “Fine.”

And he did.

*

White Sands National Park, New Mexico

“You missed the exit.”

“You know we’re not sparring again today,” Izuku said, and it wasn’t too long after that he flipped on the turn signal.

They turned off the main road and into White Sands proper. Not the missile range but the museum, the gift shop, and the dunes on dunes that went on long enough to paint a white stripe across the landscape visible from any mountain top.

“I want you to remember this place well,” Izuku said. “You’ve been griping and groaning, but I know you can see the beauty, and I want you to remember it that way.”

Katsuki didn’t say that the trip was already positively seared in his mind. That he was likely to look back and romanticize the town’s dirty sepia tone. That he’d think back on this place and think of Izuku.

Izuku paid at the tourist gate and then they were surrounded by hills of sand, split only by yucca plants and the one thin road that occasionally peeled off into little parking lots. A car or two was parked at each one, and people were running up and down the sand, but Izuku kept driving. He seemed to have a destination in mind.

The further he drove, the fewer plants dotted the sand until they were in a world entirely of white. Even the sky above them was bright, that hazier shade of blue that it became just before it darkened into the indigo and purple and pink shades of sunset. 

From there, the slopes that had been claimed were dotted with children sliding on sleds and even pieces of cardboard and trash can lids. Anything was good enough as the kids shot near into the street every time and ran panting back up the sand for another go. Meanwhile, the parents sat in sand thrones, maybe enjoying a beer or at least some water as the kids tired themselves out. Katsuki and Izuku probably would have loved it in their youth.

They kept driving until there were fewer and fewer families, fewer and fewer people, and then there were none at all. Just them and the hills, gypsum rained down from the mountains as the Ice Age melted away twelve thousand years ago. It was here, unchanged and changing every day, with every gust of wind, every child shrieking with joy as they slid down a hill, and every foot fall of every animal across the way.

“This looks good,” Izuku said as he pulled the car into park.

The first thing he did when he got out of the car was take off his shoes, and Katsuki was quick to follow suit. There was something reverent about it, like they were entering their homes. Like the car floor where they rested their shoes and socks was the genkan and they’d returned to their apartments after a long pilgrimage. 

The sand was cold beneath Katsuki’s toes. Even though the sun had been bald and bare all day, the sand’s light color kept it cool. And it was different than the sand on the beaches of Japan. This gypsum was as fine as freshly ground spices. Fine as pixie dust. Unlike the beach, there wasn’t a single shell or pebble marring the texture—every step was smooth and easy to walk barefoot on as they trekked up the slope.

It wasn’t more than ten meters, probably not even that much. But the hill was steep, and the weight of each footfall had Katsuki slipping a few centimeters down the hill, like walking on a Stair Master. His quads began to burn before he reached the top.

Standing at the top was like standing in the ocean.

There was nothing but waves of sand all around, and beyond that was all sky. Katsuki could no longer see any of the desert, and even the mountains were growing hazy in the diminishing evening light. The sand was no longer blinding, but rather soft and gray, something you could look straight at and take in fully.

“Why did you bring us here?” Katsuki asked.

“It’s our last night,” Izuku replied. “And everything online said that you have to watch the sunset here.”

As Katsuki looked at the dark blue sky, he wondered if they'd already missed it. The sharp, pointy mountains that they’d driven over yesterday were aglow with the last embers of the sun, but there was no way to see the actual horizon from within the desert basin. 

Izuku sat down in the sand and lifted a hand up to Katsuki. Instead of reaching to pull Katsuki up, Izuku was already down. And he wasn’t trying to pull or bring Katsuki down. He was trying to urge him closer, which Katsuki would be whether he took the hand or not.

Katsuki took Izuku’s hand. And when they were both seated in the sand, their hands remained together because that was easier than pulling them apart again.

He dug his heels in and wiggled his rump a little bit more into a proper seat. If this were a beach, it wouldn’t take too much digging for the sand to become wet and moldable, but here, like everything else in the desert, the sand was dry. It was more like sitting on a mountaintop of sugar than proper sand, each granule completely separate from the other all the way down until the pressure formed one solid layer of rock.

It wasn’t so hot, finally. The desert sun was no longer glaring down at them, and the sand beneath them was cool. There was even a breeze up at their modest height. It was the kind of weather that made you understand why someone would see this place and decide that maybe they’d settle down here.

“I think we could still be hero partners,” Izuku spoke into the silence.

The fingers in Katsuki’s hands twitched. They were warm. “What are you talking about?”

“I know that the Commission doesn’t want to consolidate too much power in one spot,” Izuku began. “But I don’t think that’s all we could accomplish as partners.”

Well, that, Katsuki already knew. Sometimes, it seemed like anything—good or bad—was possible when the two of them were together. The possibility of them as partners had just been too much for the Commission to handle.

“I think we’d be amazing mentors,” Izuku continued. “If we’re the best, then we’ll train the best sidekicks Japan has ever seen. And then there’ll be more power for the commission to spread around.”

“What makes you think we’d be good teachers?” Katsuki asked. “We were difficult enough as students.”

“We taught each other,” Izuku stated. “I’ve had so many amazing teachers, but you were the first. You probably taught me the most out of all of them.”

It was high praise coming from Izuku, who always had All Might at the front of his mind. And praise from Izuku had always gone to Katsuki’s head, warming him from his neck to his cheeks.

“Then there’d be no reason for us not to partner up anyway.”

“Right,” Izuku said, grinning. “And if we’re working together, then I’m sure we can keep our stats at the top, even if we’re spending more time training other people.”

“After this trip, I’m gonna be so OP, the villains won’t know what hit ‘em,” Katsuki agreed. “I’ll be able to get the numbers twice as fast.”

“See, exactly!”

With the sun still setting in front of them, Izuku’s grin was brighter than the sand or the ring of sun still illuminating the mountains. Katsuki imagined that smile looking back at him as they stood lookout on rooftops together, as they stayed up, red-eyed and caffeinated finishing paperwork, as he reassured sidekicks that Katsuki was berating, as they lay in bed together after a long shift.

“We’ll just have to go on another fake vacation to train up One For All,” Katsuki said. “Then it’s a real plan.”

“Hmm? Where’d you wanna go?”

“Someplace Jessica Rabbit wouldn’t follow us to,” Katsuki mused. “Think you can train up One For All in Antarctica?”

Izuku’s smile softened. “I’d train anywhere with you.”

The sappiness threatened to sink Katsuki down, drown him in a mound of sand. His face grew warm and he had to look away from that smile, back towards the dimming horizon. Only it wasn’t dimming anymore. The sky, which had seemed to be crossing from blue to indigo, a foreshadowing of the quick and cold desert nightfall, had suddenly erupted into yellow, pink and orange.

It looked like Katsuki’s quirk when it was just forming in his hand. A bright bulb of light still stood behind the mountains, but from it was a fan of brightest color. Usually the most beautiful sunsets were ones with many far-off clouds, bouncing pink light off of their bottoms, but there were no clouds to speak of in the sky, so the bright light was just a vivid gradient of color until it faded off into purple and then blue. 

When Katsuki pointed at it, he drew Izuku’s eyes, and then a gasp. The hand that had never left his tightened as Izuku lifted himself up, as though an inch or two forward would take him closer to the spectacular sight. 

The brief moment stretched as long as it could as the pink began to fade from the sky, taking the orange and then the yellow with it until there was only a dark purple haze and then nothing but blue. Though the sky had only just begun to darken, stars were already littering it, more than reached the big city on a good day. And then a horn blared, announcing that the park was closing, and everyone had to begin driving back to the entrance. Katsuki moved to get up, but Izuku held his hand tight, immovable in the sand.

“One more minute,” Izuku insisted. “Then we can go. Please stay.”

Then the sun rolled over and took the blanket of night with it.

[sparklingsin]

(push your heart, and pull away); - III

tom holland x female!reader

summary for series: you've got yourself in a predicament that involves fake dating the star employee of your company (who you might have feelings for), all to convince your family that you're finally happy, after what happened with your last shot at love. can you, the CEO of a booming business, your family's darling daughter pull off the biggest lie you've ever told? [inspired by and based loosely on The Spanish Love Deception by Elena Armas.]

tags and warnings: female reader, you have a brother, romance tropes, denial, banter, sexual tension, swearing.

a/n: 2.6k words // I am really excited for what I have planned for this series and I only hope I can translate it into my writing. sorry it's a slow burn but I promise the good stuff will be satisfying when it does come. (innuendo intended)

catch up: chapter one / chapter two

CHAPTER III

For an incredibly numbing moment, you thought Tom was not going to show up.

Maybe he had finally come to his senses and realised how god-awful this plan was. Maybe you should just call in sick too and not attend this wedding altogether.

You had already checked in and sure, boarding was still a good forty-five minutes away but it was still less than an hour and.. where the hell was Tom? A wave of cold panic swept down your back. The very thought of doing this alone, and worse— showing up without the boyfriend you had promised would come— made your anxiety spike. It wasn’t too late to make a break for it.

Get a grip, Y/N. This was your brother’s wedding. You couldn’t not go.

You bounced your foot in your seat, gaze falling onto the staircase that led to the waiting area once more. Hoping, no, desperately praying that Tom would show up.

C’mon, c’mon.

Switching on your phone again, you checked to see if you had correctly sent him his flight details. Of course, you had. You always double-checked everything and had discussed it at the office too.

Your chest started to cave in as you watched the minutes go by on the large digital clock at the terminal. You couldn’t do this, not without him, you thought, and then— God, when had you become such a wimp?

16:00, the clock beeped. What if he was stuck in traffic? Fuck.

You didn't want to be overbearing so you hadn't called or texted him all evening but as your flight showed up in the tabular list displayed on the terminal screen— it was going to land ten minutes early— you panicked and sent him a text.

Hey, where are you?

You watched as the text turned from 'Sent' to 'Delivered' to 'Read' in 20 seconds.

Three dots showed up at the bottom of the screen, and then a second later—

Look up.

And there he was, a bag on his arm and a backpack slung across his shoulder, standing at the top of the staircase, smiling. He was dressed in dark jeans, a denim jacket thrown over a pink hoodie, topped off with a black cap perched on his dark curls. If the word boyfriend could be a person, Tom would be it.

He started to make his way towards you.

The overjoyed relief that flushed through you at the sight of him was to be blamed for what you did next. You stood up hastily and threw yourself at him, meeting him halfway and tackling him in a bear hug.

He came.

“Oomph,” he mumbled, as he was thrown off-balance but caught you just fine, arms encircling your waist hesitantly. You buried your head in his shoulder, silently thanking whoever was up there for not letting you down.

"You came," you said, breath coming out shakier than you had expected.

“I’m here,” he said softly, his breath warm in your ear. You could’ve melted right there in his arms. He squeezed your waist, and you were suddenly aware of how his hard chest was pressing against your own, how he smelled like freshly ironed clothes and how inappropriate this probably was.

You released him with a clearing of your throat. He seemed flustered too as he rubbed his neck hard, quickly ducking to retrieve his backpack that had fallen to the floor when you had tackled him.

"Of course, I came," he said again, once you had both got your bearings. He reached for your arm. You stilled as he gave your elbow a friendly squeeze and then stepped back. "I made a promise, L/N," eyes gazing steadfastly into your own.

And for the second time that week, you could’ve almost cried. He sounded so sincere. And he had come. He hadn’t bailed. You could’ve hugged him again— which was stupid, but you really wanted to. Instead, you chose to shoot him a grateful smile.

"Uh, we should get going," he said, breaking up the awkwardness that had begun to simmer, gesturing at the screen behind you. Boarding had begun.

He watched as you rushed to pick up your bags.

"You have four suitcases on you."

You turned to look at him. "And?"

"We're only staying for five days, yeah?" he asked.

You stared at him.

"I'm a grooms-woman, I have a lot of outfits to pack, okay? Did you know I had to pack five pairs of heels?"

Tom held up his hands but he was chuckling, "Okay, okay, tiger, no need to get defensive. You do you," You smiled a little, there was room to breathe again. You were afraid you had blown it with the hug.

He offered to take two of the bags off your back, as you made your way to the counter.

"Bloody hell, woman," he called after you, shouldering the bags himself, "—what, have you got rocks in these?"

"Aunty Pam is—" you began.

“Aunty Pam likes to talk a lot and is always in everybody’s business. You don’t quite like her,” Tom said nonchalantly.

You narrowed your eyes at him. “Uncle Phil—”

“Married to Aunty Pam and keeps to himself mostly, but loves his wife a lot. Oh and, they have a kid, your cousin — name’s not important — who is always on a cruise somewhere.”

You raised your eyebrows. “What about my twice removed cousin, Fluer?”

Tom picked up a second pastry that the kindly flight attendant had bought in, thanks to the first-class perks. "She is the one with a poodle and a half-French accent, from the time she spent in France, innit? We like her. Yeah," he said, wolfing it down in one go.

Okay, you were thoroughly impressed, and judging by the slight smirk forming on Tom’s face, weren’t doing a good job of hiding it. Tom always gave his hundred per cent when it came to his work and maybe, that translated to other things in his life too. Still, you were in awe.

“Don’t seem so surprised, didn’t you want me to remember these things?’

“I…yeah, no, I did,” you said lamely. You’d told him about your family tree two days ago— and just the once. What other superpowers was this man hiding?

Tom threw you another cocky grin.

“Then maybe pick your jaw off the floor, babe.”

The gall. You should have been shocked at it, but you weren’t.

Instead, it lit something in you— that bright spark you had buried before. The spark, no longer a spark, but a small fire. If this is what Tom was like outside of work, you couldn’t be prepared for what was coming. The thought terrified you but also thrilled you. You found yourself looking forward to seeing this plan unfold, eager to know what Tom brought to the table as a boyfriend. He had called you babe. The nickname alone made your heart race.

“Aren’t you going to ask about me?” Tom asked an hour later, as you sipped the champagne that the attendant had bought. You needed alcohol if you were going to get through this thirteen-hour flight with a colleague who was messing with your head.

"What will you say when somebody asks you what your boyfriend's favourite color is?"

You looked at him, trying hard to not roll your eyes.

“Why did you sign up to be a part of something so crazy?”

Tom looked away for a moment, sighing. “I told you, L/N. I just thought it seemed like fate.”

You weren’t really satisfied with that answer, not even the first time around. Tom was a kind person, sure, but even this seemed too much for any sane person to agree to.

“Why did you lie?” he asked, turning to face you.

You averted your eyes. You were not sure if you wanted to go down that path, think about the heartbreak and pain that came with it. Especially with the alcohol bubbling in your system.

“You can trust me, you know,” Tom said gently.

You couldn’t bring yourself to look at him.

“My family… they pester me a lot about it. Ever since...," You took a shaky breath. "I just didn’t want to show up alone.”

You had barely offered him any information but something seemed to click in Tom’s eyes. Maybe he didn’t know the whole truth but he was getting close.

“My favourite colour is green,” Tom said after a while, finishing up the last of his drink. He hadn’t had much, but the tiniest hint of red suffused his cheeks.

“I know,” you said, taking a swig of your drink and looking at him through the glass. You were thankful for the change of subject.

He cocked an eyebrow at you.

“I —uh— you wear it to the office a lot. You use it in a lot of presentations and it’s the colour of Joanna’s eyes. So I assumed.”

Tom reared back at your words. “What?!”

Shit. Shit. You should’ve known better than to drink this much. Alcohol made your filters disappear into thin air.

“I just uh— notice things. Have to look out for my employees.”

Nice save, Y/N.

“No, the part about Joanna—” Tom said, blinking fast. “What?”

“...It’s the colour of Joanna’s eyes,” you mumbled sheepishly, looking anywhere but at Tom.

“And why would that matter?”

Fuck, this parachute was a knapsack. You wished you could just jump out of the plane right about now.

“Oh, don’t make me spell it out, Holland.”

Tom continued to look at you like you’d grown a second head.

“I don’t like Joanna like that. I don’t know where you heard that.”

You hadn’t heard it from anyone. Nobody in the office thought this except you. Sure, the only basis for this theory of yours was that you had seen Joanna and Tom walking down the street after office hours together once but you didn’t want Tom to know that, so you shut up.

“Good to know that even our boss isn’t above high-school gossip,” Tom muttered when you didn’t respond.

Now it was your turn to look offended. “Hey! I’m human too, you know?”

“Hardly seems fair that you lot should have all the fun,” you added, taking another swig of the sparkling drink. You should stop drinking.

“Gossip is fun?”

“Oh, so you’re better? You haven’t got any juicy stories about your boss to share with the class?” you were beginning to slur your words and that put a cork in the bottle. Literally.

“I am not at liberty to share,” Tom said.

“Hypocrite,” you muttered.

“You’re adorable when you’re drunk,” Tom retorted, one corner of his mouth curling.

Cheeky. You hoped you didn’t look too ruffled by his words.

‘I’m only slightly tipsy,” you sighed as you turned your attention to the attendant who had strolled by your seat.

“Do you need anything, madam?”

“Just water,” you said, suddenly feeling your throat parch up.

You turned to look at Tom, who was smiling fondly. Your stomach did a little flip.

“Anything else, baby?” you asked him, suddenly feeling bold in front of the attendant and taking your opportunity to get back at him for the brazen 'babe'. If you were going to be a girlfriend, you were going to commit to it. How fast the walls disappeared when you were inebriated.

Tom did a double-take at the word. His cheeks flushed red and his eyes widened. You’d never seen him this flustered before. You were tipsy enough to admit that you liked it. Liked calling him that and liked watching his reaction.

He was quick to regain his composure, however.

“No, thank you,” he told the attendant, dismissing her.

He looked back at you then, the brown in his eyes darkening. Your heartbeat surged, cheeks heating as he continued to stare at you. Something ticked in his jaw and it went straight to your core. Thoughts that you wouldn't be caught dead having sober, flooded your mind. Fuck. Fuck. He watched you, jaw taut, like he was rethinking some things.

You could only exhale when he looked away.

Maybe you had crossed a line but you realised, despite the alcohol, you didn’t really care. In fact, it made you more curious. All today had shown you was that there was a side of Tom you hadn’t seen. It was a side that brought out a different you too.

You weren’t sure if that boded well for the plan.

Or for you.

The trip to the baggage claim was a bleary-eyed one. You had had enough alcohol to get a mild headache and it was far too early when the plane landed. You counted six bags and made your way outside, Tom close behind you.

You hadn’t said anything to him all morning except for a quick greeting and that your brother was sending a car to get you. Tom had simply nodded in response.

The drive to the hotel was just as quiet.

The Anthea stood tall in the white sand, looking more like a monument than it did a hotel. The sun was starting to come up over the waters of Santorini, and as tired as you were, the sight from where you stood outside the hotel took your breath away. The sparkling blue waters were streaked with tendrils of gold and red, coming up the shore in tiny waves.

“It’s beautiful,” Tom’s voice came from beside you. He was standing close, after having brought out the luggage from the car.

You looked back at him, some of the sunlight reflected in his eyes, making them seem like pools of gold.

“Sorry if yesterday was too much,” you said, hoping he'd understand what you were getting at. You didn't feel sorry because you had absolutely enjoyed it...but you were still his boss.

Tom’s expression softened, some of his tiredness evaporating. “Hey, we’re just playing our parts. I understand, L/N,” he said.

Just playing our parts. That made your stomach sink.

“Y/N!” someone called from behind you just then and you turned, recognising the figure descending the steps of the hotel even before you saw him.

You looked back at Tom, making up your mind. You were going to do this. You’d deal with your… feelings later, but right now you had a plan to execute.

"Come on, pretend boyfriend, time to meet my brother."

feedback is appreciated! if you'd like to be tagged in the future chapters, please leave a comment or send an ask!

NEXT CHAPTER -

taglist: @boomitsallie1 @bruxa0007 @mn-jun @maybankssholland @berryologyyy @rayisthehoe @stiles-stilinski-24-dylan @gina239 @namoreno @itszulli

[tenspontaneite]

So Sponty, not only are you an amazing writer and artist, you also have all that knowledge about biology, medicine, history and politics, camping and survival, and whatever else. No really, what more are you hiding from us?

I'm actually a fraud, I just sort of pick up trivia here and there and make it seem like I know things. (I do research extensively for stuff in fanfics though which, uh, solves the fraud part for a lot of that lol)

So like I'm assuming you're asking me to show off here, yes? Ok hm here goes

Art: digital art, some zbrush, some painting, some sculpting (wire, sculpey), oil pastels sometimes, watercolours sometimes. Mostly digital though.

Writing: yeah babey. Also I'm making a conlang.

Reading: I'm a mega fast reader. Speed is somewhere around 600 to 700 words a minute. I regularly go through about 1mil of fiction weekly.

Gaming: Idk I'm relatively okay at some games?? As far as online web games go I'm on Flight Rising, but lately in the last year I've got very into Wolvden and I do sort of consider myself a 'big' player of that (they added some new leaderboards categories today and I am on Many. I've also been on the main ones in the past)

Music: never actually had music lessons but I play piano and also have been working on learning shakuhachi

Martial arts: I'm a (very out of practice) aikidoka, and one time I went and lived in a dojo for two months for that, which was sick, and also a very cool thing to be able to tell people

Animals: I'm pretty good at cats and rats in general

That's all I can think of right now but I'll show off again later if I can think of anything relevant or interesting

[etraytin]

Quarantine, Day 132

July 21

So I got as far as writing the date on this journal entry when I got a text in the group chat that one of my TNR friends was bringing in a five week old kitten that was sick. The recovery room he got taken to didn't have supplies for a sick baby, so I packed my kitten emergency kit and headed down there just before 10pm. I took a snuggle safe (microwave heating disk), a heating pad, a stuffed toy cat for fake mama purposes, and some high quality kitten food. I also took along chicken baby food in case he didn't want to eat, as well as formula and a syringe with a miracle nipple in case he was younger than we thought. And if things were really rough, I took my lactated ringers solution, a butterfly needle and a syringe to deliver sub-q fluids. So prepared!  I was very sad that Starbucks was not open, but that is probably better for me anyway.

 When I get called out at night for Red Cross or kitten rescue stuff, I usually have a drive ahead of me. We live in a little town bracketed by many larger cities, so I'm almost always called out to one of those. As soon as I get in the car and set my GPS, I plug my phone into the sound system (old school, yeah?) and blast the soundtrack to Come From Away. Nothing chases away the sleepiness and gets the blood pumping like that opening track, and the subject matter is so on point. More for Red Cross stuff, honestly, but at this point my body basically has a Pavlovian wakeup response so it's all good. It's the second song that really gets me going though, I think because of all characters in musical theater, it's Beulah Davis who embodies the me that I would like most to be.  And because it reminds me of why I joined the Red Cross in the first place, during Hurricane Harvey. 

"Crystal I saw on the news that they're looking for blankets and bedding And maybe some food. Do you know what they need and how much? I need something to do, cause I can't watch the news anymore! Can I help, is there something?  I need to do something to keep me from thinking Of all of those scenes on the tube, I need something to do Cause I can't watch the news, no I can’t watch the news anymore!" 

I think there just comes a certain point when something bad is happening that you do make the decision that you absolutely have to do something to help. That impulse got me self-deploying to a Red Cross shelter for Hurricane Irma when I was so new I didn't even have a vest yet (another volunteer gave me his spare) and it was the impulse that had my new colleagues working through days and nights to handle two massive back-to-back hurricanes a third of the country apart. I listened to this soundtrack back then, too, and it's always stuck in my mind. Going to the next town to help a sick kitten is perhaps less elevated a calling, but it's still trying to save a life. 

Anyway, I blasted my music all the way to the recovery room, and got a look at the kitten. He's just a scrawny scrap of a thing, all bones and fluff and goopy eyes, but he had some energy and was drinking and eating, so that was great. I realized I forgot my damn flea comb when I was packing everything but the kitchen sink, so they'll have to comb him out tomorrow. Poor bitty definitely has fleas, but is not in shape for a bath and too little for medicine. He's going to the vet tomorrow morning. For the night we cozied up his cage with a warm snuggle safe in a soft case and a snuggly fake mama cat. I left all the stuff I brought at the recovery room, just in case, since I'm going to be gone all next week and we are suddenly up to our eyeballs in kittens of all ages. At least they'll have access to formula and a miracle nipple if they need it! 

As I was driving home, I was treated to an absolutely spectacular show of heat lightning that lasted nearly half an hour with flashes just a few seconds apart. I much prefer that to the rain they were predicting, though at least now I don't have to worry about kittens in a storm drain. And because I did not get the coffee I was jonesing for, I do have some hope of sleeping tonight. 

Okay, now for the stuff I was actually going to talk about today, which thankfully wasn't too much. I started the morning early with another stakeout for Mamacat, once again unsuccessful. I just do not think she is hanging around the drain anymore! I waited for an hour and a half and saw not hide nor hair. I'll keep dropping off food for a few more days, just to be sure. The auction I've been following ended today, and as usual there were a flurry of last minute bids that drove a lot of the stuff I bid on out of my price range. That's okay, most of it wasn't stuff I actually needed, and it's good that these people who had to close their business are getting something back from their inventory and equipment. I did get some good deals though, especially on big baking pans and loaf pans. It's time to learn to make Italian bread, yay! 

The kiddo got his room cleaned today with help from his dad, so it is all ready for his new bookshelf to come tomorrow. He also got his electronic privileges back, so he spent most of the day alternating between Minecraft and Prodigy. Two digit multiplication is still hard, but he's hell on wheels for patterning and pretty good at factors so he didn't get too overall frustrated. He and his dad also watched Flight of the Navigator at dinnertime, one of my husband's favorite movies from when he was a kid. I really need to find a copy of SpaceCamp, my favorite childhood movie. I have a feeling it does not hold up at all, but it is soaked in enough nostalgia that I'm sure I'll still like it. I hadn't even thought about it for ages until Kelly Preston died last week, and then I was sad. It was just such a fun movie for a kid who loved space but was too afraid of heights to ever be an astronaut. Maybe I'll see if I can find it streaming anywhere tomorrow. 

[treh-co]

FAHC Headcanons

So I feel like a good amount of my hcs are a lot different than other people’s??? And I’ve done a LOT of thinking abt them so! Here’s kind of like a masterlist of my general hcs! I’m just gonna go through this person-by-person.

(This got Kinda Long, so it’s under a read more. Sorry mobile users,)

Geoff

Obviously, he’s the one who started The Fakes. Basically, he went into the military after high school, came back and was like “Damn. Hated that” and then some old friends are like “Hey wanna do crime” and he was like “Fuck it”. That ended up being the beginning of The Roosters, which would grow to become the most powerful crime syndicate in Los Santos.

However, when they started shifting more towards managing the organizations they controlled, Geoff felt like he was missing the hands-on action. With the others’ blessing, he branched out to create his own gang under the syndicate, which would be the Fakes.

Geoff was the acting boss, supervisor, and manager of the Fakes for many years, while still juggling responsibilities with the Roosters. After a while, he felt the stress of it all begin to weigh on him, so he decided to pass some of it off. He made Trevor the acting supervisor of the crew’s regular business, while he handed management of behind-the-scenes matters to Lindsay. He’s still technically the boss, though, and any Big decisions go through him.

Jack

Jack actually met Geoff when they were in the military together. While he was a journalist, she was a pilot, and while she’d always been a sort of straight-laced, innocent kid growing up, she discovered that she actually loved flying. More than that, she loved the excitement of a chase or a gunfight. When she got back, she found herself bored.

That was around when Geoff called her up with an offer- one that not only allowed her to get back in the cockpit, but promised twice the action way more money than she ever got in the military. Of course, she said yes.

Jack’s main role in the crew is transport and evac. She can fly or drive anything, from a city bus to speedboat to a cargobob. Unofficially, she’s a sort of second-in-command for Geoff. He usually discusses any business stuff with her before making decisions. She’s also probably the most capable medic in the main crew, though she’s not an expert, and will pass off the responsibility if they have access to someone more formally trained.

Gavin

I imagine Gavin comes from a criminal family. Nothing exciting; standard white-collar stuff, embezzlement and fraud. They were substantially wealthy from their exploits and sent him to private school and all that, but Gavin found it all horribly boring. By the time he reached high school, he was experimenting with every type of low-level crime he could think of; theft and vandalism, all that shit.

Eventually, his habit of making enemies got him in over his head, and eventually he found himself in serious hot water. Out of options, he forged some papers and got a flight out of Britain. He’d far from learnt his lesson, though. He didn’t plan on cleaning up his act, and he decided to hide in plain sight, in the most crime-infested city America had to offer- Los Santos.

That was where he met Geoff. He was working odd jobs around the city, still new to America (and, though he’d never admit it, pretty lost and scared- he’s only sixteen). He gets hired by some asshole to take out Geoff, and he isn’t familiar enough with the scene to know better, so he goes for it. When Geoff has the knife out of his hands and a gun pointed at his head in less than two seconds, he’s pretty sure he’s fucked- but Geoff doesn’t shoot. Because fuck, how the hell is he supposed to take out this scrawny, terrified kid? So he talks to him instead, and when he finds out that Gavin has no loyalties to the guy that hired him and has a much broader skill set than Geoff would have expected, he decides to take him in.

As for my take on The Golden Boy- I personally don’t see Gavin as a hacker, and tbh I personally Cannot picture him suave enough to be some smooth-talking informant. In my mind, he’s sort of the crew’s everyman. He does a little bit of everything- stealth, dealing, hacking, fighting- he isn’t really an expert at any of it, but if you need something done, he probably knows enough to help. 

Michael

Michael was raised in New Jersey with his brothers. His life was fairly normal, to be honest. He got a gig as an electrician, and it sucked, but he was doing okay. And then his mom got sick, and things started falling apart. Long story short, he ended up turning to more unsavory ways to get the money she needed for her treatment. He found out that he was pretty good at making bombs, and even better at cracking skulls. 

Michael only ever dipped into those practices to help his mom, but once you go in, it’s pretty hard to get out. He was running with a gang in New Jersey for a long time, until one day, their leader sold them out to the cops. He and some friends ran away to Los Santos, but still got caught, and suddenly he was locked up in a LS prison.

It was in prison that he met this guy named Gavin. After bonding through some good old fashioned prison fighting and saving each other’s asses, Gavin told him that he’s part of a powerful gang that was planning on breaking him out. He said that he needed help with the prep work they  needed done on from the inside, and if Michael helped him, they’d break him out with Gavin. Against every instinct, Michael agreed, and they broke out together. After they got out, Geoff decided to offer Michael a job- partly because he was impressed with him, and partly because Gavin wouldn’t stop whining until he did.

Michael is great for a steady gun or a good fight on missions, but his expertise is in demolitions. He’s self-taught, but he’s one of the best in the business, and he has fun with what he does.

Lindsay

Lindsay has always thrived on chaos. This presented itself more innocently in her childhood, but once she reached her teen years, it quickly spiraled into something more dangerous. She was always looking for something more risky, more exciting. Speeding, then shoplifting, then vandalism; it was never enough.

That being said, it shouldn’t have been that big of a surprise when some friends easily talked her into her first burglary. From then on, it was an easy slide into the more serious world of crime. She was a gun for hire by twenty, had long left her well-meaning parents behind, travelling with no real goal and making both allies and enemies everywhere she went.

When she cropped up in Los Santos, trailing gunfire and spray-paint cat tags where she went, Geoff knew she was meant to be one of them. He hired her for some odd jobs at first, just to make sure; but just a few looks at her style proved his theory. He offered her permanent position and she took it on a whim.

True to her role, Lindsay is the crew’s wildcard. Sort of like Gavin, except her skills are more specifically in the “fuck shit up” range.

Jeremy

Born and raised in Boston, Jeremy had a not-so-great home life and started hanging with the wrong crowds from a young age. He grew up through fistfights and car wrecks, and by the time he was grown, he didn’t really know anything else. He was actually pretty close with his gang back home. They were the ones who taught him the importance of loyalty; how important it is to have people you can trust. Nothing good lasts forever, though. When another gang- much bigger, much stronger- started picking them off, their leader made the tough choice to disband. Despite communal reluctance, she got them all set up to go underground in different parts of the country. Jeremy was sent to Los Santos.

While there, Jeremy saved a boy he saw being jumped in an alley. The boy turned out to be a hacker and information dealer named Matt. Jeremy was homeless at the time, and Matt offered to let him stay at his place as thanks. Somehow, this quickly turned into them being roommates and friends, and then partners, when they decided it would be a good idea for Jeremy to tag along on Matt’s deals for protection.

While helping Matt, Jeremy made a name for himself in underground fighting rings, known by his half-joke moniker “Rimmy Tim”. One night, a non-regular sat in to watch the fight, and afterwards approached him with an offer. The stranger was one Geoff Ramsey, and the offer was for a job with the Fakes. Jeremy happened to know who the Fakes were- and be a big fan of their work. He was nervous, but he accepted the offer, and it only took a few weeks for them to essentially pull him in.

Jeremy is, in simple terms, the crew’s muscle. He drives, he shoots, and most importantly, he can fight. If anything needs doing that involves those three things, he’s good for it.

Matt

Matt grew up in a small, boring town with a small, boring family. He filled his boredom with the digital world. Eventually, he started diving deeper; learning how to code, and then how to program, and then how to hack. By the time he was seventeen, Matt was going by the alias of “Axial” on dark-web forums, dealing information and breaking into everything from private systems to locked-down, international servers.

After turning eighteen, Matt decided he was sick of his home town and used the money he’d gained from his illegal business to disappear and move somewhere more exciting- Los Santos. After a few months of living there, he met a boy named Jeremy, who saved him from a deal gone wrong. He liked Jeremy, and it seemed like Jeremy liked him; despite the suspicions they both probably should have had in their lines of work, they became fast friends and roommates, deciding to work together.

When Jeremy got hired by the Fakes, Matt was disappointed, but resigned to the fact that he would be back on his own. Until he was pulled away from his work one night to a knock at the door, and found the Vagabond there, ready to take him to the penthouse. Apparently, the crew had been in need of a hacker for a while; and a certain new member had put in quite the good word for him.

Matt is, obviously, the crew’s hacker. He doesn’t really go on the field too much; he’ll tag along if there’s a proximity requirement on his part, or if a bunch of people are unavailable and they really need a backup driver or something, but for the most part he operates from the penthouse. He’s usually on comms during the heists to give directions or help with security or recon in real-time.

Trevor [TW: Sex work mention]

Trevor grew up in a trailer park in Blaine County, raised by a single mom. She loved him, but was involved with all the wrong people. When an altercation with an ex-boyfriend ended up deadly, fourteen-year-old Trevor up and ran as fast as he could, and ended up in the streets of Los Santos. He got by with begging and soup kitchens at first, but he started picking up tricks, on his own or from others he watched. Pickpocketing, manipulation, shoplifting; whatever he could use to get a bit of an advantage, he took.

It was just a while after he turned eighteen that a man he met outside a bar proposed he enter a different “path” of business. Trevor was reluctant, but he was also desperate, and the man made a lot of promises. He ended up spending two years as a prostitute, until one night he’d had enough. He killed the man who’d been selling him and ran once again. 

Once again faced with life on the streets, he returned to what he knew he was good at- lying and stealing. He came up with the alias of Reached, and became a thief and informant by commission, fairly well-known. He became close associates- maybe even friends, if such a thing existed in Los Santos- with another duo, Rimmy Tim and Axial. One day, they gave him a call- saying their new employers needed someone with his skills on a job. To make a long story short, when the Fakes met Trevor, he was pretty much already a part of the team.

Trevor is a thief by trade. Stealth, deception, and stealing is what he does best. He’s a master lock picker and an expert at slight of hand, and is far too good at putting on an innocent face. 

Alfredo

Alfredo was raised by a big, loving family; but people are a product of their environment. A combination of wrong place, wrong time, and peer pressure had him messing around with local gangs far before he should have even seen a gun. But Alfredo always had a knack for precision, and he had the aim of a trained vet, and he was probably a little too busy being cocky to understand the risks he was taking.

Eventually, those risks caught up with him. He was in a lot of hot water and he knew his family was in danger. He couldn’t let them get hurt on his account, so he ran to protect them. He considered turning a new leaf when he got to Los Santos, but quickly realized that if that was the plan, he’d picked the wrong place to do it. It wasn’t long before he was dragged back into work as a gun for hire.

He was good- really good, and when some hot shot rolls into the city with a sniper and skills like that, it shakes things up, and word gets around. Word even gets to some of the most powerful men in the city- including Geoff Ramsey, who decides that if this kid is really as good as he’s heard, there’s no way he’s letting him get snatched up by anybody else first. His invite to Alfredo is more short-notice than it was with the others, but he and the crew click in about two seconds flat, so it really doesn’t take a lot of convincing.

Obviously, Alfredo is their sniper. He’s a hell of a shot with any gun, and can do fine with up-close combat when he needs to, but he’s at his best when he’s giving cover from a rooftop.

Fiona

Fiona comes from one of France’s most infamous criminal organizations. Her parents run the group, and she was raised, essentially, as the heir to the business. She’s been trained since she was a child to be the best at any skill she might need. An array of languages, hand to hand combat in five forms, dozens of weapons, from blades to melee to guns- most of all, she studied deception.

There was a small problem, though. Fiona appreciated everything her family did for her- but there was also no way in hell she was just going to drag on the family business. She wanted to make a name for herself, and she wanted more than the stuffy, starch-white world they were giving her. So she ran away to America. She spent a few years travelling, testing out different paths. At one point, she ended up in long-term employment with a gang. Except she ended up hating said gang, and she wanted out.

Luck happened to be on her side. One day, she was told that they’d kidnapped two people who happened to be members of a powerful crew called the Fakes. Fiona knew the second she laid eyes on the two- a strangely similar looking pair named Trevor and Alfredo- that they were her ticket out. She made a deal with them, that she’d let them escape if they took her with them and kept her safe, and the three of them had a wild adventure that lasted about a week, and ended in the three of them strolling into the penthouse, ragged and exhausted but looking like they’d just had the time of their lives, with Trevor and Alfredo proudly declaring that Fiona was now their newest member.

Fiona is a master of disguise. She’s good at a lot of things, but putting on an act is what really sets her apart. Give her a wig and a makeup kit and she can turn herself into a new person in five minutes flat- complete with an accent and everything. She’s the go-to when the crew need undercover jobs done.

[chickensarentcheap]

Best Part of Me -Chapter 60

Warnings: none

Tagging: @innerpaperexpertcloud​, @c-a-v-a-l-r-y​, @alievans007​, @ocfairygodmother​

When she finally wakes, it's with sunshine streaming through the bedroom windows and the digital bedside clock advertising that it’s 10:35. The latter nearly sends her into a blind panic; bolting into a sitting position, eyes still blurry from sleep and her brain groggy as it tries to orientate itself with the unfamiliar surroundings. Momentarily oblivious to the fact that she isn’t at home. Briefly  not only forgetting that she’s actually thousands of miles away, but just WHY she is.

She’d spent the last nine hours in a deep and peaceful slumber; a feat she hasn’t managed to achieve once in the past six years.  Worn out not just from the lack of adequate rest over the course of the last month and a half or from  the gruelling twelve hour flight from Australia, but the hours after the conversation with Tyler that she’d spent dwelling over the pain and the worry that not only tinged his words, but dripped from his voice. He’d never admit just how things are; preferring to suffer in silence under the misconception that he's somehow a burden. It’s a hard habit to break someone of, if not entirely impossible. She’s been working at it for almost seven years now; attempting to not only break down that final barrier he’d long ago built up around himself, but convince him that the second they decided to have a life together, his issues and problems stopped belonging to JUST him. But he’s ferociously stubborn, and years of being raised in an abusive home by an extremely toxic and volatile man,  followed by military life,  has done a lot of damage.  The last effects and scars from physical injuries left behind, but the deepest and most painful wounds festering just under the surface.

She casts a furtive glance towards the cradle at the side of the bed; appreciative of the fully furnished and exquisitely decorated nursery that Anil had provided, but needing the baby as close as possible, at least for the few nights. And her eyes widen and her heart immediately begins thundering in her chest when she finds Addie’s bed empty; devoid of even the stuffed koala -which had once belonged to Millie when she was just newly born- that had been tucked into the corner of the cradle. And she’s ready to toss off the blankets and jump out of bed when a tiny voice pipes up from beside her and puts her worst fears to rest.

“She’s downstairs. With Prisha.”

Esme frowns. “Who’s Prisha?”

Tanner shrugs. “I dunno. I think she’s a nanny or something. But she’s old. Like grandma and Nana Bonnie. Why are there so many people living here? Why do they all do so much work? They clean, they cook, they watch kids. At home, you and daddy do all that stuff.”

“Because Anil has a lot more money than we do and he’s so busy, that he needs to have people taking care of things around the house. Which is bigger than ours. WAY bigger. And when you have a place that’s this big, you need help keeping up with it.”

“Our house is big.”

“By most peoples’ standards. But compared to THIS house, it’s tiny.”

Tanner shrugs. “I like our better, anyway.”

“You don’t like it here? I thought you’d find it pretty cool. TWO pools, a home theatre, all kinds of awesome animals…”

“I like home better. Because it’s home. Because all our stuff is there. I don’t want new stuff, I want OUR stuff. And the beach is there and the smell of the water and the sound of the waves and none of that is here.”

“And it will all still be there when we get back,” she assures him.

“What if we never go back? What if we have to stay here? I don’t wanna stay here. I wanna go back to our house. I wanna go back to our furniture and eating OUR food and sharing a room with TJ. I don’t like not sleeping with him. I’ve always shared a room with him. And I was with him in your tummy too.”

Esme lies back down and rolls onto her side, watching him. One his stomach beside her, knees bent and his bare feet slowly kicking back and forth. Brow furrowed in concentration as he uses a pencil to carefully circle things and fill in blank spaces in the workbook open in front of him. And she reaches out and pushes his hair out of his eyes and off his forehead, then runs a fingertip down the bridge of her nose and taps it against the tip.

“Anyone ever tell you that you’re really cute?” she asks,

“There’s a couple girls in my class that say it all the time.”

"Really?"

He nods. “But I told them I can only be friends because I don’t like girls in THAT way yet. I told them I only love one girl, and that’s mommy.”

“No wonder you’re my favorite.  Sweet talking me like that. What are you doing?”

“Homework.”

“Why?”

“‘Cause I want to.”

“Let me see…” she pulls back the corner of the cover to read the title. “Where did you get this? It’s for kids in grade three.”

“Daddy bought it for me the last time we were in town. ‘Cause he said the stuff at school is way too easy for me”

“And you actually understand what you’re reading?”

“Ummm...yeah…” Tanner gives a heavy sigh and a roll of his eyes. “...of course I do! I’m not stupid. Besides, daddy made me read some to him and made me answer some of the questions before he’d buy it. He said I have a huge brain pan, whatever that means.”

“You honestly can read it and understand it?”

“Mommy, I’m smart like you. Just ‘cause Millie and TJ as dumb, doesn’t mean I am,”

“Okay first off, that’s a little harsh. You brother and sister are not dumb. Far from it. But you? You’re insanely smart. Scary smart. You’re also very grumpy this morning.”

“I’m not grumpy.”

“You ARE. And I have seen that exact frown and those lines in your forehead and those serious eyes a thousand times. You are sounding and looking more like your daddy every day. He gets that same look on his face when he’s grumpy. And what are you wearing?” She tugs at the sleeve of the black and gray Emery t-shirt he sports; miles too big on his slight frame.

“It’s daddy’s. I asked him if I could have one of his shirts before he left and he picked this one and packed it in my bag for me. I wanted something that smells like him ‘cause it helps not miss him so much.”

Tears sparkle in her eyes. That honesty; so pure and so innocent. A little boy that possesses such huge emotions and loves so fiercely. “Oh little nugget…” she tousles his hair. “...you have such a big, sensitive heart. Come here; let me make it so it fits better.”  

She gathers him into her arms and rolls onto her back, and he sits crossed legged on her stomach while she gathers the bottom of the shirt and draws it around his waist; securing it in a knot before doing the same with each shoulder. “We’ll have to buy daddy a new shirt. Something tells me you won’t give him this one back.”

“Imma keep it,” Tanner says, then wraps both arms around her neck and stretches his legs out; pressing himself tightly against her, face nestled against the side of her neck, feeling the soft tickle of those ridiculously long lashes against her skin when he closes his eyes.

Despite how much he hates hearing it, he IS still so very little. Four inches shorter than his brother and at least fifteen pounds lighter; limbs not as long and shoulders much more narrow. But it makes for good cuddles, and she can still pick him up relatively effortlessly and carry him if she has to. And his personality matches his appearance. Softer and more tender hearted than his twin; affection and loving and breathtakingly sensitive and heartbreakingly wise. An old soul in such a little boy. And while TJ is rough and wild and carefree, Tanner is more cautious. Wary, almost. Fiercely protective of his own self. And her own eyes close when she wraps both arms around his slender body and drops a kiss on the top of his head.

“I don’t want to be the little one,” he laments.

“Where did THAT come from?”

“I want to be the big one. I want to be tall and strong. Like daddy. How come I have to be the small one?”

“You’ve always been small, nugget. Even when you were a baby. There’s nothing wrong with being small. I’m small.”

“But you’re a girl. How come I had to be the sick one?”

“It’s just the way it worked out. Sometimes things go wrong when mommies are having babies. And we didn’t know you’d be sick; it just happened. You guys were born too early and you ended up being the much smaller one.”

“And why couldn’t I come out first? I wanna be named after daddy.”

“What does it matter?”

“‘Cause it does. I want daddy’s name. It’s a good name.”

“You don’t like being named Tanner?”

“I’d rather be named Tyler.”

“I have a secret to tell you,” Esme says. “But you have to promise to never tell your brother. Because it would hurt his feelings and we don’t want that, right?”

Tanner nods.

“When you were in my tummy? When daddy and I found out it was two babies and not just one? We decided that I’d pick one name and he’d picked the other. So when we found out we were  having two boys, I said I would name the first that came out and daddy would name the next one. And I decided that I wanted the first to be named Tyler.”

“It was your idea?”

“Yep.” She combs her fingers through his hair and presses a kiss to his forehead. “Daddy didn’t want either of you named after him, but I got my way. And he picked the name Tanner. So you know what that means? You have the name you do because that’s what daddy chose. He wanted you to be named Tanner.”

He raises his head to look at her. “Really?”

“Really. He picked your name. That’s how much he liked it. That’s what he wanted you to be named. And you know what else? You were so sick when you were born, that daddy was the only person allowed to hold you before they took you to take care of you. And he stayed with you for two whole days in the NICU. He slept in a chair beside your bed and he never left; he didn’t want you to be alone and I was too sick too and I wasn’t allowed to see you yet. So it was just you and daddy for a whole forty eight hours.”

“Just us?”

“Just the two of you. And you remember what the doctor told us to do with Addie? When you place her against bare skin? Do you remember? What animal is it named after?”

“A kangaroo. Kangaroo care.”

“That’s it. Well daddy got to that with you, too. Even though you were hooked up to all kinds of wires and tubes, he still got to hold you like that. And the nurses said that was the only time you were nice and calm and never cried.”

“Never?”

“Never. And daddy was really, really sad. Because he was so worried about you. But stayed there  with you the whole time because he already loved you THAT much, and he would have stayed even longer, but someone needed to take care of Millie and TJ and I wanted to spend time with you. But see? Daddy’s always loved you. IT doesn’t matter how small you are or what your name is. He still helped make you. And that’s what matters, right?”

Tanner nods.

“He loves you so much, nugget. Right from the beginning. Right back to when you were still in my tummy and he used to talk to you guys and you’d both kick like crazy whenever you heard his voice. And you were strong even then. You kicked HARD.”

“I did?”

“Daddy would always say that you were going to be a professional soccer player.  Or an MMA fighter. That’s how hard you kicked! And you’re still strong; even stronger than your brother. You’re small, but you’re mighty.”

“Like you. And Addie.”

“Well  maybe not THAT small. But you’re probably going to have a growth spurt when you’re fifteen and end up as tall as daddy. I want you to stay small, though. It’s easier to cuddle you. I LIKE cuddling you. What if you grow big and strong and you don’t want to cuddle me anymore?”

“I will always want to cuddle with you. You’re my mommy. No one gives better cuddles than mommy. No one.”

“So when you are six foot five and weight two hundred pounds and you ARE a bad ass MMA fighter, you’re still going to want to cuddle mommy?”

“Always,” he promises, and presses a kiss to her lips before settling his face against the side of her neck once more.

“Is everyone else downstairs too?” Esme asks.

Tanner nods.

“How come you’re not down there?”

“I was. But I left and came back upstairs.”

“Why?”

Because Anil is trying to be daddy and I don’t like it.”

She frowns. “Trying to be daddy? How…?”

“He made breakfast for us. But nowhere near as good as daddy’s. And he let us sit outside while we ate and he told us cool stories and talked all about the animals he has and told us we could go swimming later. All the stuff daddy does with us, but not as fun. With daddy it’s different. It’s more fun. We get to go surfing and we walk on the beach and collect rocks and shells and stuff. And he’s nice and all that, but he is NOT daddy and I don’t like that he’s trying to be.”

“I don’t think he…”

“I don’t want him taking daddy’s place. I don’t want him thinking he can steal you away from daddy. ‘Cause I like him and all that, I don’t want him to be my dad. I already have a dad and he’s the best dad ever, so…”

“Okay, you know what, nugget? You and I need to have a talk. Sit up. I want you to look at me when I talk to you, alright?”

Tanner nods, then sits up and settles himself between her splayed thighs when she does the same.

“Now listen to me, alright?” She pushes his hair off his forehead, then places her hands on his shoulders. “No one is taking daddy’s place. Because for that to happen, I’d have to be okay with it. And that’s something I will never…ever...be okay with. I don’t want anyone taking his place. Because you know what, your daddy is perfect the way he is. He’s perfect for me and you guys and...”

“But if he dies…”

“Tanner, listen to me. He is NOT going to die. And even if he did...and that’s a huge if...I still wouldn’t be okay with someone taking his place. No one could ever do that. If something happened to him, it would me and your brothers and sisters. That’s it. Understand?”

He nods.

“Your daddy is way more than just your daddy. He’s my husband AND he’s my best friend. And I love him more than I even love myself. And there’s no one earth that could take his place.”

“Ever?”

“Ever. Anil is NOT trying to be your dad. He’s not trying to take anyone’s place. He’s a friend of daddy’s and he promised daddy that he’d give us a nice, safe place to stay while he works. And it’s a really awesome place isn’t it.”

Tanner nods.

“Daddy trusts Anil to look after us because he can’t right now. Anil’s just trying to make this easier on your guys. Because he knows how sad you all are and how hard it is to be away from home and away from daddy. He’s just being nice and trying to make us feel comfortable and welcome. That’s it. Understand what I’m saying?”

“I understand.”

“So stop worrying so much about all this other stuff, okay? Daddy’s not going to die, no one is going to take his place, and eventually we’ll all get to go home. You believe me, right?”

“I believe you, mommy. But I still don’t want to go downstairs without you. It’s bad enough I can’t do things with daddy. I don’t want to do things with you EITHER.”

“Well can I least go pee and put on something other than pjs first?”

“I suppose.”

“You suppose, do you?”  She smothers his face with kisses until he’s shrieking and giggling, then tousles his hair. “You want to call daddy? I told him I’d call when I got up. You want to talk to him first?”

Tanner nods enthusiastically, then scrambles across the bed on his hands and knees to retrieve her phone from the night table. “Can I dial it?”

“You know his number?”

“Mom, I know how to get into your contacts. I’m five. I know this stuff.”

“You are way too smart for your own good,” she declares, then presses a kiss to his temple as he settles himself between her legs, back against her stomach.

****

Tyler excuses himself from the team briefing when his cell phone vibrates against the tabletop and his wife's name appears on the screen. When she’d promised to call when she woke up, he’d expected it to be a lot sooner; mornings come quick with five, especially with an infant. With the lingering uneasiness from last night’s confession and subsequent conversation, it had been easy to let his paranoia and worst fears get the better of him; growing more and more concerned with each passing minute, yet resisting the urge to call incessantly and left umpteen messages. He’d KNOW if something was wrong. Nik is there. Anil had even gone personally to make sure that everyone is settled and comfortable and being treated well and to  check that things are running smoothly. Had something gone down...IF they were in any danger...he’d be the first one to find out.

He snags his half full take out cup of coffee from the table before heading into the central courtyard;  blinking against the harsh, brilliant sun, and groaning inwardly when two of Anil’s people -heavily armed- followed closely behind. None of the rooms that overlook the area have balconies OR windows that open; the only real threat could come from the roof, and that’s sixteen floors above and Anil has even more guards stationed up there. And he grimaces as he takes a seat on one of the concrete benches; an ache across the small of his back and stiffness in his knee.

Nothing a couple of hours in the gym won’t solve; working up a sweat and getting all the kinks out.

“Hey,” he says as he answers the call. “You sleep in or something? ‘Cause…”

“Hi daddy!” Tanner cheerfully greets, and a smile immediately plays on his lips. Six months ago he would never have been able to tell the twins apart on the phone. Now it’s more than obvious who is who; Tanner’s accent coming in much thicker and more pronounced.

“Hey, mate. What’s going on? What’cha up to?”

“Mommy said I could  call you. Are you busy?”

“I’m never busy when it comes to you.”

“You’re not beating up any bad guys?”

“Not yet. Later. Once you go to bed. You okay? Sleep alright?”

“Not really,” Tanner admits. “I didn’t like sleeping without Teej. The room is nice and all that and the bed is huge, but I’ve been with Teej for forever. Even when we were in mommy’s tummy. I don’t like being without him. I can’t sleep proper.”

“Well maybe tonight, just go in and sleep with him in his bed,” Tyler suggests. “He won’t admit it. But he’s probably missing you too. He’s used to you always being around. You having fun? What’s the house like?”

“Alright, I suppose.”

“Just alright? Your mom made it sound pretty awesome. Lots of cool stuff to do there, yeah?”

“I guess. I don’t know. I miss home. I miss our stuff. I miss the beach. I miss you making breakfast and waiting for the school bus with us.”

“When this is all over, we can go back to all that stuff.”

“How long?” Tanner asks. “Until it’s over?”

“I don’t know, mate. Not too long I hope.”

“We don’t have to stay here forever, do we? I don’t want to stay here forever. It’s nice and all that not, but it’s not as nice as home. Everything I know is at home. I don’t know any of this stuff. And there’s too many people here.  I don’t like lots of people around.”

“I know it sucks to be away from home, but I need you to do me a favor. I need you to at least give the place a chance. I know you miss home. I miss it too. But this will all go a lot faster and easier if you try to enjoy it. Can you do that? For me? At least try?”

“Just for you,” Tanner promises. “And I don’t want another dad.”

Tyler laughs, coffee cup poised against his lips. “What?”

“I don’t want another dad,” his son repeats. “Anil’s a nice guy, but I don’t want him as my new dad.”

“Tanner,” Esme sighs in the background. “We talked about this. Stop.”

“I’m telling daddy about it. He should know if someone is trying to take his place.”

“No one is trying to take his place. We JUST talked about this.”

“Anil is trying to be you,” Tanner explains. “Not you, exactly. But a daddy. He’s trying to be a daddy. MY daddy. And I don’t like it. I already have a dad. I don’t need another one. Can I come stay with you wherever you are?”

“I don’t think he’s trying to do that,” Tyler says. “I think he’s just trying to be nice.”

“What if he tries to steal mommy from you?”

“Well if he wants her that bad…”

“I can hear you,” Esme pipes up. “He has you on speaker phone.”

“No one is going to steal your mom away,” Tyler assures his son. “Or even try. Especially if they know what’s good for them.””

“You’ll beat them up?”

“I was thinking they wouldn’t be able to handle her cooking. But if you rather I beat them up…”

“You’re both on my shit list,” Esme declares.

“Anil isn’t trying to be your dad,” Tyler says. “He’s trying to be dad like, but not A dad. Know what I mean?”

“Not really,” Tanner admits.

“He’s trying to do things for you guys that a dad would do. So you’ll be comfortable there. So you’ll be happy.  That’s all. He’s not trying to be your dad or take my place. And unless your mom is planning on getting rid of me, you’re kind of stuck with me.”

“But what if you die?”

“Tanner!” Esme scolds. “What’s wrong with you?”

“It’s a valid question, mom. What if daddy dies? Then what? Then I have no dad.”

“Well then your mom would have to find you a new one, I guess,” Tyler tells him.

“No frigging way! I’d rather no dad than a new one. I don’t want some shitty new dad.”

He can’t help but chuckle. “How about you stop worrying about this kind of stuff? You’re five. You’re way too young for gray hair and an ulcer.”

“I can’t help it,” Tanner laments. “It’s how my brain works. I worry. It’s what I do.”

“You sounded so much like your mom just then. Why don’t go and be a kid? Go swimming. Watch a movie.  Go see the animals. There’s all kinds of stuff to do there. Go do one of them.”

“Nothing’s fun without you, though. It’s boring. You do cool stuff with us and now it’s boring as shit!”

“What did I say about giving things a chance?”

Tanner sighs. “Fine. I’ll try. But I’ll hate every second.”

“You’ll be saying that same thing when you’re older and you have to work for a living.”

“Not if I do your job. I’d like to beat up bad people.”

“Well there’s more to it than that and I’d rather you NOT do it. For now, you’re only five. Be a five year old, yeah? Leave worrying about adult shit to actual adults, hear me?”

“I hear you. And I miss you.”

“I miss you, too. Let me talk to your mom, okay? You go be a  kid. I love you.”

“I love you, daddy. Will you call me later? Before you go beat up the bad guys?”

“I promise I’ll call you. Try and have fun. Please?”

“I’ll try. But it won’t happen…”

“Tanner…”

“I’m nothing if not honest.”

“You’re grumpy is what you are. I’m serious; be a kid. Leave adult stuff to adults. Try to have fun. I’ll see you in a few days, alright?”

“Can you stay when you come? Even just for a couple of days?”

“I can’t. I want to. But I can’t.”

“Just for ONE day?”

“Not even for one day,” he reluctantly admits.

“Can you stay overnight at least? Then you can make breakfast in the morning before you go?”

“I’ll see, okay? I’ll find out if I can. I’m not making any promises, though. But I’ll find it. Let me talk to mommy. And NOT on speaker phone.”

“She’s in trouble, isn’t she.”

“You’re trouble, you know that?”

“What are you talking about? I’m the good one.”

Tyler smirks. “Tell that to the fifteen bucks you scammed out of me.”

“Listen, I did that fair and square. Not my fault you fell for it.”  His giggling stops and he turns seriously once again. “I miss you, daddy. My heart is sad.”

“Mine is too, mate. But I’ll see you soon. I promise. Now let me talk to your mom and you go be a kid.”

“Fine.” Tanner huffs. “But I still don’t want another dad.”

“Go downstairs,” Esme gently orders. “And be nice. Quit being such a grump. And don’t give me that look because I don’t put up with it from your father and I sure as hell won’t put up with it from a five year old. Just go. I’ll be down in a minute. I swear…” she sighs into the phone. “...he is five going on fifteen. Hi, by the way. I miss you.”

“I miss you, too. And what the hell is going on over there that he’s got it in his head that he’s getting a new dad?”

“Nothing. Nothing is going on. I haven’t even been downstairs yet. I don’t even know where downstairs is and if I can’t find it. I  need a map or a GPS to locate the kitchen. And you know what Tanner is like. He worries about things that aren’t even happening and probably never will. He IS going to give himself an ulcer. And you say he’s not like you?”

He sips his coffee. “What about the other ones?”

“They’re fine. I mean, as fine as they can be. They’re at least  embracing the whole thing and making the best of it. But I don’t know how much of this I can take. All these people around; maid and cooks and nannies and all that shit. I woke up this morning and Addie was gone. I almost had a stroke. I guess one of the nannies came in and got her.”

“It’s what he’s hired all these people to do,” Tyler reasons. “To take care of you guys.”

“She could have at least said she was taking her instead of just coming in and doing it. And I don’t need people watching my kids. This isn’t my first baby; I’ve taken care of four other ones, including two at once. It’s just weird. I don’t know how people live like this.”

“And you call Tanner grumpy?” he chides.

“I don’t like strangers just up and taking my children. I’m used to it being us. Not twenty different people I can’t even communicate with. And I’m sorry; I didn’t call to bitch at you, I swear.”

“I’m used to it. It’s been seven years. Nothing new to me.”

“You're such a smart ass,” she mutters, then turns serious. “Are you okay? Did the night get any better?”

“A little.”  He won’t tell her about the bottle of whisky he’d polished off, or how guilty he feels about it now. Some things are better left unsaid.

“Do you want me to come there?” Esme asks. “I could stay for a couple of days. Just to make sure you’re okay.”

“I’m fine,” he insists.

“That’s horseshit and you know it. If you want me to come…”

“It’s not that I DON’T want you to. It's that I also want you to say with kids. Where I know you’re safe.”

“I’m safer with you. I trust you. These people are strangers and I can’t just blindly trust them. I at least know...one hundred percent...that I’m safe with you.”

“They’re not all strangers,” he argues. “Nik’s there.”

“Nik isn’t you. Seriously, if you want me there…”

“I do. You have no idea how much. But I want you to stay with the kids. MY kids. Bad enough I’m gone; they don’t need the two of us taking off.”

“And you’re going back out tonight?”

“Yeah,”

“Alone?”

“Don’t start.”

“How dangerous is it? Is it something you should be doing alone?”

“On a scale of one to ten? Maybe a three.”

“I don’t trust your scale. What you can handle and what a normal person can handle are two entirely different things. How many people this time?”

“Four.”

“Four? By yourself? Tyler, what the fuck?”

“It’s not hands on. Sniper work. It’ll be easy. Four shots and I’m done. Nothing to worry about.”

Esme sighs heavily. “I think you just gave me a hundred more gray hairs. This is insane. Four people? By yourself?”

“I just told you…”

“I know what you told me. I think it’s too much. Even for you. Take someone with you. Please? For my own peace of mind.”

“Esme…”

“Tyler…”

“I’ll see what I can do.”

“Now is NOT the time to be stubborn. I’m just worried. You know that.”

“I do know that.”

“And I know that you won’t take anyone with you. Just be careful, okay? These people are smart. And that makes them even more dangerous. Just be careful and be safe, okay?”

“I will,” he promises. “I gotta go. I walked out in the middle of a team meeting.”

“You could have just said that at the beginning and you could have called me back.”

“You’re more important than any meeting. And I needed to talk to you. To hear your voice.”

“I needed that too,” she admits. “Maybe later you can phone and I can hear it again. This time saying more ADULT stuff.”

Tyler grins. “I could do that.”

“Oh I know you can. I know the filth that is capable of coming out of your mouth. I better go; before Tanner starts planning my wedding to Anil.”

“Well he could give you a better wedding than I gave you” Tyler reasons.

“Ours was perfect. It was small and it was quaint and it was very us. I love you. We’ll talk later.”

“Yeah, we will. And I love you, too.”

“Be safe. Call me as soon as soon as it’s done. So I know you’re okay.”

“I will,” he promises. “Let me know where you’re registered so I can get you and your second husband  a wedding gift.”

“You’re not funny. In the slightest.

“That’s ‘cause I’m fucking hilarious.”

“In your own mind, maybe. Talk later.”

“For sure,” he says, then presses end on the phone. And he sits there for several minutes; eyes fixated on the blackened screen of the cell clutched tightly in his hand. Attempting to control the profound ache that settles deep in his chest.  That overwhelming loneliness. And impending sense of doom.

[jovialyouthmusic]

The Many Lives of Drake Walker

A Royal Romance multiple AU fanfic

If you’ve not read any of the above, or Protect and Serve, this will absolutely not make sense. If you’re not caught up on P&S, briefly Sophia and Riley were kidnapped by Justin but rescued by Bastien, Drake and his men. This is the story of Drake and Riley behind the scenes afterwards

Word Count 2797

A/N Protect and Serve is getting over long, so I wanted to give Drake his own few moments with Riley - so here it is. There will be more. oh - and...

Happy birthday to @drakeandcamilleofvaltoria​ You said you liked this series so I hope you enjoy it xx

Recovery 

Drake paced up and down the waiting room, pushing his hair back from his forehead. I waited patiently for him to stop, playing with the pendant that confirmed that this was ‘my’ Drake in the digital world that I visited from time to time. I may just have crossed the line, I thought. At last he stood still, turning to me, his face set with anger.

‘Okay, We all – all of the Drakes here – took a hit when one of your ‘friends’ killed off her Drake’ He gestured with his fingers on the word ‘friend’. ‘But Les, you know that when you write, it directly affects me - as I’m your personal whipping boy’ he grimaced.

‘But Drake…’ I started. But he waved my words away with a sweep of his hand.

‘So, it turns out that Drake wasn’t dead after all so it was okay in the end.  Then you made up for me not being the main character in Protect and Serve by making a side plot where I hooked up – well not exactly hooked up because you took it away from me – with Riley’  I opened my mouth to speak, but he stopped me again.

‘So you not only had your main character – but MY love interest kidnapped by Justin’ he was really getting wound up, and I tried making a placatory gesture, which he seemed not to notice. ‘And then you go and let your Sophia get whisked away by Bastien on a freaking motorbike for some R and R and leave me holding the baby.’ He sat and rested his head in his hands.

‘This Riley’s not self aware’ he said, lifting his head up and looking at me  ‘she’s broken up, Les – she doesn’t understand she’s just an actor.’ He looked at me pleadingly ‘Every time someone reads it she has to go over it again. I know you made Sophia take the rap for her, but the poor girl’s still confused.’ He stopped, and I took a deep breath, waiting for a moment to see if he had anything else to say.

‘I’m sorry Drake, I guess I got caught up in it all. I mean to write you a scene but I just haven’t seem to have gotten round to it. I have to engage folk and I’m on chapter 32 and Liam hasn’t announced his choice of suitor yet.’

‘Yeah, and I’m left wondering if I’m taking a bullet again’ he growled. I took a deep breath

‘Okay then, how about we play a scene together – no writing, I’ll take over Riley and we’ll work it out together. You can have free rein within the restraints of the plot line – how does that sound?’ He looked at me sideways

‘You’ve not done that before’ he said ‘You’ll feel everything Riley does but you’ll be self aware – but you should have some control. I think’

‘You think?’ I said ‘That’s – not very reassuring’

‘It depends on the writer and the scene’ he said ‘If it’s very strong you can get lost – not for long though. He took a deep breath ‘When?’

‘How about now? I’m alone at home, I won’t be disturbed’

‘Okay’ he said’ slightly sceptical ‘Where shall we take it up?’

‘How about when Drake opens the cell door?’

‘Okay, I think you should just be able to jump in to the nearest Riley’ he said. We walked out into the hallway where Riley sat waiting for a reader, blank and limp. Drake pulled her gently to standing – he was so tender it almost made me weep. I stood behind her, closed my eyes and walked forward until I ‘felt’ her, like putting on a glove. I opened my/her eyes to see Drake gazing at me softly.

‘Okay Les, picture the scene and I’ll be with you straight away’

 Riley’s POV (Les’s thoughts in italics)

It was cold. I sat in the corner of the cold stone cell. I had heard sounds from the cell next door a little while ago, then the door had slammed shut, I heard voices outside and then silence. I thought I could hear Sophia weeping – or was it my imagination? The stone walls seemed to absorb sound and dampen it to nothing.

Noise – door opening, footsteps – was it Justin come back to give me his horrible ultimatum? I felt sick dread, though somewhere underneath I was calm and I knew what everything was going to be alright. I braced myself as I heard the key in the lock – and gasped in relief as Bastien and Drake appeared in the doorway. I cried out Drake’s name as he came forward, Bastien retreating to go to Sophia. I leapt up and threw myself into his arms.

‘Riley, it’s okay, I’m here’ he said, then quietly ‘Les, are you there?’ I drew back, puzzled

‘What was that?’ I asked, but strangely I found myself nodding. A strange expression crossed his face – hope, and worry and puzzlement.

‘Okay, we’ll have to play it out’ he said, and again I nodded without meaning to ‘Follow my lead and we’ll see how it goes’

Heck this is weird – I can’t speak, but I can move. I’m not sure Riley likes it – she’s a little puzzled. Hopefully I can take us from scene to scene and not have to go through real time experiences.

Drake held me, soothing me, telling me everything was alright, that Bastien had brought some of his men and had taken the castle.

‘Are you okay? Did they do anything to you – did they hurt you?’

‘I’m just a bit battered and bruised’ I said ‘Justin told me – oh God, he’s a monster’ the tears came and he held me until I could speak again

‘He told me I had to choose – he’d hurt me and leave Sophia alone, but it was plain he was going to tell her the same. I told him to stuff it up his…’ Drake put his finger to my lips

‘Okay, I get the picture. Did he do anything?’

‘Nothing more than threatening me, but I heard him go in to Sophia – he spent longer than he did with me, then someone came to fetch him, I presume that was when you arrived’ I felt safe in his arms. I was so angry that Justin had reduced me to this weak heap of flesh, scared of my own shadow, looking for assailants in the shadows. Right then, I didn’t want him to leave me for a second. I hoped against hope that Bastien really had control of the situation.

A little voice in my head, one I haven’t noticed before said it’ll be okay Riley. Drake will look after you. I wondered if I was going crazy, but remembered that odd things happen under stress. He led me out into the chamber, past Bastien and Sophia. She had a blanket round her shoulders and he was holding her, and Drake motioned that we should leave them alone.

‘Are you hungry?’ he asked ‘or tired – or do you want a shower?’ The poor lamb didn’t seem to know what to do but he wanted to comfort me. All I wanted was to be with him – or maybe I wanted to punch Justin. I ground my teeth at the thought of what I wanted to do to him. Drake looked at me sideways, and whispered

‘What next? I’m running on empty’ I rub my tummy, not intending to, but I do feel hungry.

‘Food’ the word came out of my mouth unbidden, and I add ‘I’m hungry Drake, we had water but nobody thought to bring us anything to eat’ He smiled, taking my hand

‘Well that’s easy’ he says ‘I make a mean pancake’

 Somehow I seem to skip where we go or what we talk about, but I’m left with a faint memory and a full belly. It’s interesting to see inside the thought processes of a character. I suppose these lapses in memory are normal for her – or maybe it’s a process of becoming self aware? Now then, she’s a strong woman, let’s bring it out in her. She’ll bounce back pretty quick, and with Drake to help, she’ll be back to normal.

‘Perhaps a shower and some rest’ Drake said ‘I’ll take you to the rooms Sophia and – where I stayed when we came here’ I looked at him sideways.

‘Justin said something about you sharing a room’ I said sceptically. He grinned lopsidedly

‘Bas told me not to let her out of my sight, so we pretended we were an item, and shared a room’ He saw my expression change ‘Nothing happened Riley, we took it in turns to sleep. There was one time we were both in bed – well, she was under the covers and I was on top. There was no touching’ I narrowed my eyes, knowing there’s something he wasn’t telling me. But that little voice in my head said He’s besotted with you. From the moment he saw you. I half believed the voice, but I had to know for sure.

‘Tell me, Drake’ I said, half in control of myself, half not. ‘Tell me how you feel. About me – about her’

‘Okay, but not here’ he looked at me hopefully ‘Let me take you to that room, the fire will warm you up.’ He lead me along corridors, up flights of stairs, up a grand staircase and more corridors and into a wood panelled room. Some of the corridors seem blurry – but then I had just been through quite an ordeal. I could have sworn when we entered the room the fire wasn’t lit, but the next time I looked it was blazing away. There was a huge four poster bed, and Drake sat down, patting the space next to him.

‘Okay, when I first met Sophia she shot me down’ he said ‘I have to tell you, before I met you I was a player, she was new blood and I wanted to – well you get the picture, women were just notches on my bedpost’

‘Before you met me?’ I asked. He nodded

‘Yes, you got under my skin, Riley. Everything you said provoked me, and I was snarky back. I – I realised I wasn’t interested in anyone else.’ He rubbed the back of his neck ‘Normally I’m a smooth talker – ask anyone. But you made me feel like a tongue tied teenager. You still do’ I put my hand on his

‘I could tell you were fighting it’

‘Well, you were supposed to be here for Liam. But what you told me the other day hit me for six – that he had a crush on me, that he’s attracted to both sexes. I didn’t see that coming at all’

‘So I’m free to choose who I want – and I want you, Drake Walker. Do you want me?’

‘Of course I do – you know I was getting ready to – well, to consummate our relationship when you went missing. I was half crazy with worry’ I frowned – sometimes I forgot things. I know we were in the stables together – Drake kissed me but I didn’t remember much until I was bundled into the back of a the van. As if he knew what I was thinking, he took hold of my hand.

‘You’ve been through a lot, Riley, and I understand that we might take a little while to get back to where we were. But I’m here for you – I’ll do anything necessary to help you get over this. Just let me know if I’m getting it wrong – hell, tell me if I’m getting it right, I’m not sure exactly what to do.’ There was a knock on the door, and Drake went. He came back with a suitcase.

‘Hana sent a bag with some clothes’ he said ‘So you can shower or bathe and have something to change into’

‘Thanks’ I walked Riley through to the bathroom. She’s not been as traumatised as Sophia, so she’s able to take a shower without freaking out. It was an odd sensation as the water flowed over her/my skin, but I went through the process and we both felt clean and refreshed. We went back to the bedroom clad only in a towel. I realised that was a little intimate for Riley, as she and Drake had only made out together.

I felt shy as I walked back into the bedroom. Drake stood by the fire, and turned to look at me. His eyes travelled up and down me, but it was respectful and reverent, and he was a little embarrassed too, as he looked away.

‘I – I’ll go shower myself’ he said ‘though I don’t have a change of clothes’ I smiled

‘Perhaps my dressing gown will fit you, it’s not fitted’

‘Uh thanks, I’ll try it’ he left me to dry myself by the fire, relishing the warmth on my bare skin, brushing my hair and running my fingers through it beside the flames to dry it. I fished out a pair of silky pyjamas from my bag, and put out the dressing gown for Drake, who came through with a towel wrapped round his waist, his hair damp, looking sheepish.

Something inside me recognised his broad chest, his flat belly, strong arms, sparse dark body hair. Part of me found it new and exciting, though I wasn’t nearly ready to continue what we started earlier. I pointed to the dressing gown hanging on the chair next to the fire. Drake came closer to the fire and bent over to do the same as I had to dry his hair.

‘Woops, towel nearly went’’ he grinned awkwardly, hand grasping it as it came loose. We were close, almost kissing distance, but I moved away to give him some privacy, turning my back for him to change. I couldn’t help laughing at the site of him wearing my flowered silky dressing gown. The fabric clung to his contours and left almost nothing to the imagination around his groin. I put my hand over my mouth and spluttered with mirth.

‘Oh hell honey, I think you’re better off nude’ He stood with his hands on his hips, a half amused look on his face.

‘So you think this is funny?’ he asked, waving his hand over his genitals

‘Hell yes’ He sighed and sat by the fire

‘Well, I’ll sleep here in the easy chair’ he said, and I chuckled

‘you will not, Drake Walker, you’ll sleep in the bed with me.’ He raised his eyebrows

‘Yes Miss’ he said sardonically, then more seriously ‘Are you sure?’

‘Well we might not make the bed rock this time round, but I’d appreciate you being close. I still feel like Justin’s going to burst in and…’ I shuddered, and he started forward and put his hand on my shoulder.

‘Hey, look at me. You’re safe now’ he said ‘I’ll not leave you. Tell me if there’s anything I can do’

‘Is the door locked – are there any secret passageways in this castle?’ He smiled and walked over to the door to prove it was locked.

‘I don’t know if there are any secret passageways – I do know of some that Liam and I explored years ago, but this part of the castle is solid.’ I yawned

‘I’m pretty beat, I think I’ll turn in’

‘Okay, how do you want me?’ I raised my eyebrows.

‘it’s okay to touch, but safe zones only’

‘Safe zones? Oh – I gotcha’ he said. I climbed into bed and he stood by the bedside fiddling with the belt of the dressing gown.

‘I uh – I have my boxers on’ he said ‘They may not be fresh on but it won’t scare the horses’

‘Honey, if you scare horses, a pair of boxers won’t do the job’ I smirked. He rolled his eyes and let the gown drop to the floor.

‘You’re always on the ball, you know that?’ I sniggered, and he made an exasperated noise as he clambered into bed.

‘How about I’m the big spoon’ he said, and I turned my back. I felt the bed shift, and his body was warm behind mine, his scent soothing me, his hand on my hip. We barely touched but I felt safe. ‘Is this okay?’ he asked

‘Mmmm’ I replied, already feeling myself sink toward sleep.

 We were back in the waiting area, and I stepped back out of Riley, Drake there to support her and then place her carefully in the chair.

‘Good job Les’ he said ‘She seems happier now. Next time she plays through she’ll cope with it better’

‘We can carry it on next time I’m here, get her a bit further’

Sure, why not’ Drake smiled ‘It’s a date.

@emceesynonymroll @sirbeepsalot @cora-nova @stopforamoment @drakeandcamilleofvaltoria

@drakesensworld @katedrakeohd @pedudley @indiacater @texaskitten30

@be-still-my-aching-heart @hopefulmoonobject @dcbbw @classylady1234 @fromthedeskofpaisleybleakmore

@bbrandy2002 @rainbowsinthestorm @nomadics-stuff @gardeningourmet @furiousherringoperatortoad

@kimmiedoo5 @bascmve01 @cgd03 @ibldw-main

[abyss-mal-blog1]

current mind-space//word vomit

it’s amazing how much can change in a few days, but it hasn’t been a week since my finals ended and i already felt so different. i have been doing f45 everyday this week (if not then some kind of workout, but i’ve really been into that recently). i am feeling so much better now without deadlines, sometimes i don’t know if i function better under pressure or not. i guess not, but then it’s amazing how much i can do and achieve under pressure. i need the right amount of pressure, and this semester it has been a little difficult for me to get around that. 

last friday was kinda my last day of finals, i just had an essay to submit, and i am disappointed in myself and my work ethic because i submitted it at 9pm, went to my cousin’s (disappointing) party, and then professor emailed me to say that she cannot read Pages format (seriously smh @ my tardiness!!!), only got back at 1am that night and sent my mediocre essay. i am a little sad about it because i know that is not my 100%. idk why but college so far has just been a series of 80% effort. this paper was an interesting one, on airbnb, on the sharing economy, it’s a performance studies paper where i analyze the hospitality platform in terms of host-user relationship, parasitism and (attempted) to talk about free online labor. it is a little too late now but i kinda want to work on it again and like, submit for feedback. maybe ill ask taylor. 

last saturday was kinda meh, i agreed to go to a *social* kinda event at a bar/club at chelsea, held for Asian-ivy-alumni-people that yanlin invited me too. it was at up&up and honestly a little...i didn’t enjoy it at all. the music sucked, the people were either too dorky or gross or old or weird, and the whole time i just kept saying to myself, “never again”. they said it was open bar but they only served absolut, which was shit. and then my friend’s two friends were...i feel sorry that this was their first clubbing experience. at the beginning my reaction was look at all these ivy alumni! get hitched with one of them for ~da connectsx~ (and nothing else) but no kidding i was actually interested in talking to them just to get to know what people who graduated from ivies are up to, and what are they doing at such events...and are they actually enjoying themselves because it was really kinda gross. met my friend’s friend who seemed like a really smart engineer (he asked for my number the next day lol), and a german dude at the bar who didn’t want to get me a drink. all i needed that night was a drink.....(i’m glad i didn’t drink tho because recently drinking has made me feel all kinds of bad)  we had ramen after at ramen-ya (most probably the worst ramen and charsiew i’ve had but what can we do at 3am and my friend wanted noodle and soup...)

on sunday i KNow i should have left my house earlier to workout but i didn’t. i was angry at myself that i didn’t. instead, i stayed at home and emotion-ate. i must have eaten more green bean soup than my stomach would have liked. what else...avocado? i remember..two bananas? god. this was the day i felt like i was n’s boyfriend because i had to do what she wanted to do. i know i had agreed on going, but at that point i really wanted to go thrifting or something. i mean when i got to central park it was fine and things were good but the whole day just felt like i was kinda pulled into doing something that wasn’t my first choice of plans, not that i didn’t enjoy myself lying under the sun at the park. it just felt like i was accompanying someone. i was half an hour late to meet her as well, and half heartedly got a burrito-wrap at newsbar. if you think about it it is really kinda funny, we’re just buying food and taking the subway to this grass patch 50 blocks away. we didn’t walk much, we literally only stayed at a little grassy slope overlooking the baseball pitch. anyway we went to a dance class after (the class was an hour long but i felt like n had asked me about when and what time we should book the classes for more than an hour by text so i just got really sick of it) i rushed home and got dinner with my uncle who’s in town for my cousin’s graduation. i was surprised that he chose the same japanese restaurant again, after dissing it half a year ago we ate here. the omakase was crazy and it cost 230 per person. (for the most expensive set) it was also kinda dumb because you aren’t allowed to order a different omakase set from anyone else - everyone on the table has to order the same - because of “timing”. i wonder if this is how it is in japanese omakase etiquette, but in any case it really earned them a hefty amount because my uncle decided to get 230 for all of us. qiyang didn’t like and said qiqi had bad taste, hahaha. the food wasn’t bad, i mean it’s japanese fusion, but the prices were way too steep for the taste. anyway enough about the food, during the dinner i think we talked about many things though. i kinda wanted to talk to my uncle individually because i think he is the only one who knows about ah gong, but he was sick, and i could tell he was exhausted. my aunt got a little impatient because i didn’t arrange plans to take their furniture and they were going to throw all of them away and it was actually the first time i’ve seen her get so worked up - but at the same time trying to control her emotions - because she was talking to me. i could tell she was annoyed though but i tried not to take it personally, and arranged it tomorrow. 

arranging the moving stuff was kinda last minute, i was walking to the library for work one day and i saw a truck that said MakeSpace. i assumed it was a kind of moving company and so i looked them up. they seemed to be pretty okay in terms of their services and so i decided to try them out. confirmation and setting up an appointment went pretty smoothly, except for the part where the guy i think his name was joseph, asked me to give my credit card details over the phone. idk why i did that! i stopped though, and asked him why, to which he replied he wanted to key in with the coupon code. this service has so much gimmicks within the first 2-3 minutes on the phone he was already telling me about how the first pick up is free, and that he will deduct 100$ off the first month...when people give you discounts too easily it just feels like a ploy and a thing they give to everyone, it’s not anything special and it’s probably calculated inside whatever we have to pay. anyway, i was just thinking it would be cheaper (assuming the maximum that i would have to pay is ~$500, as i confirmed with them on the phone yesterday), it’d still be cheaper than starting an apartment lease now and going through the trouble of finding two subletters. 

well. idk, it’s also easy to have things all moved in, i have to find a place to store my perishables!

moving is so much work, and storing things. this reminds me of my paper on airbnb and about the digital nomad lifestyle. it is interesting though, that this is what it has become. but the homogenized aesthetic is something i really cannot stand, in airbnb, in coffeeshops around the world..i am sure you know what i’m talking about. a new york times writer did something about this - he termed it “Airspace” - and apparently it originated from Brooklyn. I guess that’s where the art/avant-garde stuff started. well. keep a look out im gonna write a blogpost about that 

moving on 

nat came to sleepover on sunday night and a few days after because the school kicks you out of the dorms you pay so much for right after your final ends. i forgot if we did something fun but i probably just fell asleep. 

on monday i think i went to f45 and did cardio at Dumbo with Gi. he seems like a pretty nice trainer, the first time i went it was him and another girl Bertha (i think my first f45 was last tuesday) and i felt like i had two personal trainers with me - Gi was cheering me on and Bertha was doing it with me. it felt like such a good workout, one of the best ive had in a while. then work, where i arranged the movers stuff. i also realized i bought the wrong date for my flight ticket as my friends and had to buy one more...............

tuesday was the same f45 in the morning, and the bobst after. didn’t really get much work done at bobst. oh i also viewed a 3BR flex at 160. hella expensive and small, and dates didn’t work out anyway. also the broker who brought us to view the apartment was a very nice tall french man and his name was jean-francois which i couldn’t pronounce and asked nat but still called him jean as in jeen instead of john. this is why i have to learn french. you’re embarrassing. i also went to the itp/ima spring show with shubham which was super cool. there were many cool ideas, and i just wonder if i could create something like that. i didn’t get to see all of the exhibits which i regret, but i remember a few notable projects. one was an installation made with keyboards that randomly clicks, but when you hold your phone up it’ll stop. it’s made using 3d gestures. there’s also one at a gallery for surveillance, this team had a thing they call facebox, and it’s literally a box, that when you open it has a webcam that would capture your face, find you on facebook, and print out an invoice/receipt on how much you have earned for this giant tech company.  what else...an AR project that when you scan a food,  it shows you where the food comes from. nat said that she would love it if menus have something they could scan and then have pictures appear in ~holographic~ format, or maybe in the nearer future something on your phone that shows you a picture of the picture of the food. but isn’t it a surprise tho? sometimes the fun’s in the surprise, you read the description, you know what are the foods you’ll eat, leaving room to imagine or be surprised by how the chef puts it together! anyway, went for dinner with nat and jenny - got vegan shwarma (definitely wasn’t worth $14) and went to get crepes with will after. 

wednesday we were gonna go to the dmv but we weren’t prepared. nat also needed to get her passport and she was lazy. wow the number of times i mentioned her, it feels like she’s my boyfriend at this point. talked to famz, sister, and beatrix. am currently considering if i should even go to beijing or just go straight home. fuck. went to bobst for work but no one was there i was just really sleepy. viewed an apartment at 55 morton (it’s a nice quiet residential street that seems to be tucked away from the loud cars and bars and people) then i went to f45 again-varsity!!! cardio!!!, walked across brooklyn bridge (a little regret although i wanted to walk, but my bag was heavy and there were too many tourists to brisk walk) 

also the reason for this is that after my soba/miso/salad/shrimp dinner last night i was just watching a bunch of netflix shows and it was probably the caffeine from puerto rican roasting company - the barista made me a chai cappuccino with almond milk (3 SHOTS!!!)

me and nat couldn’t sleep, i really think i slept for an hour. i watched so many different shows, yoko and john’s documentary, while we were young, anthony bourdain, i was seriously flipping through all the shows and alternating between amazonprme and youtube and netflix and i even tried watching peaceful cuisine and making the brightness lower and had the sleep mode on and wow i just couldn’t sleep

so yeah the birth of this word vomit 

i am going to create more things

[emmettwrites]

Questions and Answers

I’ve gotten a lot of questions about a piece I wrote called ‘Vic Mignogna: A Love Story.’ I’ve spent a lot of time writing back to people, but it’s started to become a serious drain on my time. I’m going to cover a lot of the most common questions here so I don’t have to answer them over and over again. Do you have any proof or evidence that this happened? Absolutely, yes. A lot of the people who were there at the time of the incident remember this clearly, and will say that what I wrote was true in sworn testimony. I understand that this may not be ‘good enough’ for random people on the internet, but it’s certainly admissible evidence in a court of law. Do you have any photos or video of the incident? No. The incident occurred at a gathering of convention guests, not convention attendees. Generally, it’s considered unprofessional (or at the very least impolite) to be snapping pictures or shooting video in a group of professionals without their knowledge.

Why have you waited so long to talk about this? Why now? First things first -- I haven’t. I’ve talked about this many times to friends and family since it happened. A couple of weeks ago, I saw a Twitter thread in which someone claimed that all of the stories about Vic behaving inappropriately were fake, and one of the points they’d made to bolster their argument is that no one had ever been an eyewitness to that behavior from him. Sadly, that’s not true. Do you have screenshots of the conversations you’ve had with Orion’s Envy over the years that you mentioned in the post? Yes.

Why didn’t you go to the police or the con staff about the incident?

As indicated in the post, I did speak with the convention staff about it. The convention organizer has also spoken up, saying that he remembers the incident. As far as going to the police, it comes down to my personal interpretation of what happened. I don’t believe I witnessed a crime. I don’t believe I witnessed sexual assault. I witnessed Vic Mignogna being super-awkward and inappropriate. Please rest assured that if I saw someone being assaulted or molested, I would have called the police immediately. If I called the police every time I saw someone being super-awkward or inappropriate at a convention, I’d spend the entire weekend on the phone. In the past, I have never hesitated to call the police if I suspected a crime in progress.  Are you worried about getting sued? No. That’s not to say that I don’t think it couldn’t happen -- Anyone can sue anyone else for any reason they’d like. The issue really comes down to whether or not what I wrote was defamatory, which it wasn’t. There are a lot of legal points to this and you should definitely talk to a lawyer about it. I am not concerned about this in any way. I am concerned that a lot of people don’t really understand how the judicial system works, and are inflicting their ignorance on others as harassment. The best advice I can give on this matter is to sit down and talk to an attorney about it -- One that you know personally or one that works for you. They can explain all of this with much more authority and experience than I can. I think that the people yelling about this are actually kind of adorable. Getting served for a defamation suit on this matter would be legitimately entertaining to me, not frightening. My home address is a matter of federal record and I’m super-easy to serve. I’m thoroughly amused by the idea.

Why should we believe you?

Simply put, you shouldn’t. You should never believe what someone tells you on their word alone. If you’re interested in the truth about the incident, you should reach out to other people that were there and hear their side of the story and decide for yourself what is (and what is not) credible. Unfortunately, I don’t think most of the people that are angry about what I wrote are doing this. They seem to have decided that anything about Vic Mignogna on the internet is a representation of one side for or against another. Instead of looking for facts or the truth, they’re looking for ways to score points in some kind of internet hashtag team game in which I am not a participant.

Why are you lying about your career? This is a fairly common refrain from fans working with limited information -- notably, folks pulling their information from fan-populated resources like IMDb. STAR TREK is a billion-dollar franchise with products that span much more than just television and movies. I’m mostly known as an audio guy -- An engineer, producer and composer. I produced a huge number of STAR TREK audiobooks for digital distribution, novels (like the amazing Prime Directive by Judith and Garfield Reeves-Stevens) language learning (like Conversational Klingon I and II ) and fun art books (like How To Speak Klingon). My last STAR TREK project was writing music for STAR TREK ADVERSARIES last year, which sadly no longer exists. If you’ve ever seen me at a convention, you’ve likely seen me give a presentation called ‘FutureSounds: The Art and Science of Soundtrack Composition and Sound Design.’ The weirdest thing about this question (to me at least) is that there’s a link to my portfolio in the article I wrote and anyone can go take a look to see what I’ve worked on. I’ll link it again right here. I’ve done a lot more than STAR TREK! Again, as before -- You’re under no obligation to believe me. Please reach out to other folks, hear what they have to say and determine whether or not my claims are credible. 

Why did you choose to write your piece in the style it was written? Ultimately, it was the story about how my girlfriend and I met. It’s a love story, but the catalyst of our friendship was Vic being super-awkward and inappropriate at a convention. If you don’t like my writing style, you’re certainly not alone and you wouldn’t be the first to say so. I take a small amount of solace in that I’ve been paid to write hundreds of thousands of words professionally, so at least some folks feel that it’s good enough. Why are you buying Twitter followers? I’m not. My account gets deluged (and vacated) by bots and I don’t know why. I did a little research on this and learned that the same thing happens to a lot of people. From what I can tell, the bots tend to flow in around the time that there’s a new STAR TREK thing happening, and flow out over time as that news or information ages out. I don’t really care about the number of Twitter followers I have. Other people in the industry (notably actors) certainly do, because bigger numbers can be considered a ‘fan base’ that can give them a little bit of an edge in the casting process. I’m not an actor, and my career started years before Twitter existed. My twitter feed is incredibly boring, and is mostly made up of jokes about my favorite novel (Dune), stories from my D&D games, funny posts about my mom and They Might Be Giants lyrics. I’m obviously not super-interested in branding.

You aren’t relevant in the industry anymore! That’s not a question but yeah, that’s definitely true! I retired from creative work last year and dissolved my production companies. A few years ago I got very, very sick and had a number of intense surgeries. I was unable to work for a long time, and that causes a lot of perspective to shift. I’m still creative and make stuff, but I don’t take on clients anymore. My primary goal is to spend more time having fun with my family and friends. My recent accomplishments don’t have anything to do with the industry. I’ve managed to pass all of the amateur radio exams and hold an Amateur Extra license. I’m working on the commercial radio licenses now, even though I’ll never have a use for them -- It’s just something fun to learn. I’ll probably get back into flight training next year as my strength comes back up. My last guest spot at a convention was speaking about database software, not the audio universe of the Klingon Empire. Apart from that, I’m really enjoying being a convention attendee instead of a guest. There is life after a career in the entertainment industry, and it’s been very good so far.

[5pmcloudsinberlin]

Iris of All Trades, Chapter 1

Title: Iris of All Trades

Synopsis: When she was ten years old, her best friend saw his mother murdered right in front of him and his father framed for the crime. He believes that his father is innocent, that the man in yellow did it. While her father doesn’t believe him, she does. He is Barry Allen, her best friend, the person who she loves the most in the world. How could she not believe him? And she, Iris West, will always be there to believe in him and help him find the impossible. She just didn’t expect the impossible to find her way before it found Barry, or rather her friend.

Chapters: 1/?

Author Notes: This is my first Flash and WestAllen story so hopefully this doesn’t suck.

Chapter 1

“Daddy?”

Six-year-old Iris West wanders downstairs in search of her father. It’s late and she has school tomorrow but she had a nightmare about a fire and her mother. There’s an empty bottle of whiskey next to Joe’s spot at the dining table.

“Hey, pumpkin.”

He’s drunk. He only calls her pumpkin when he’s drunk. Iris walks towards him cautiously, concern in her eyes. “Are you okay, daddy?”

Joe moves a hand towards her and Iris tenses a bit, then relaxes when he softly cups her face. She knows that he’s never hurt her drunk but something told her that someone else did. Iris closes her eyes for a moment, leaning towards his warmth before opening them. He’s looking at her with a glazed look and a sad smile.

“How could Francine do such a thing when she was with you? How could she be so reckless around you?” What?

“Ira and Nadine would have watched you better,” He continues, talking about her maternal uncle and aunt. “Probably would have loved you better than Francine too.”

What did her mother do that was so reckless? Did she not love her? Was she not good enough for her?

“Although, it depends if you’re smart enough to catch Ira’s attention.” Joe chuckles quietly.

Iris hears it though. She remembers her Uncle Ira, a bit absent-minded during the few times she saw him but kind. He talked a lot about physics. Her family said he was brilliant, his son and her cousin Rudy said that was something she’d never be.

Rudy’s words always stuck with Iris, and now her father’s as well. Quickly, Iris runs back to her room with silent tears and cries. Then a soft warmth surrounds her. It’s comforting, powerful but soothing.

It’s alright, Iris. We’ll protect you.

The voice lulls her back to sleep. The next morning, Joe doesn’t remember a thing. Iris just smiles and hugs her father, keeping what happened and those words to herself.

- : - : - : -

“Hey Iris, I just got off the train at Starling City. It’s actually quite beautiful here, we should visit sometime. Maybe, uh, maybe just you and me? And-and Joe! If he wants to,” Barry says from the voicemail. “On second thought, that might not be a good idea. Especially since I’m not... I’m not supposed to be here right now.” She giggles as she walks to her car, class has ended and she needs to leave.

“Also thanks again, Iris, for covering for me.” The soft change in his tone makes her pause from opening the door. “I know that I came here on a whim to investigate a break-in and it might not be the, uh, the best reason to leave work. But thank you for believing in me and helping me try to find the impossible.”

A warm yet guilty feeling spreads through her once the voicemail ends. Before Iris leaves her parking structure at Central City University, she texts him: No problem, Bear. What are best friends for? Just let me know when you’re on your way back home. I miss you already.

When Barry left, she told Captain Singh and Joe that he caught food poisoning and wouldn’t be able to work for a while. They grumbled at the fact that their only CSI was sick but relented after she said that someone from an external lab could analyze data samples for them while Barry gets better. It isn’t the first time they’ve done it.

The case of files and data samples sat in the back of her car, safely secured as she drives to an expensive-looking apartment complex with a gate and underground parking. A smile grows on Iris’s face, excited and curious to read through the files and see what crimes have recently been committed. She carries her stuff to the third floor, opening the fifth door on the right, roughly throwing her backpack onto the couch and gently placing the case on the kitchen countertop. Her phone buzzes: You’re late.

Shit. Iris rushes to her room of the apartment, grabbing her bag and goes back to the kitchen for the case. She grabs the pocket watch necklace from her neck and clicks the button that opens the cover twice. Instead of its usual mechanical hand-dial clock, it switches to a digital one. She touches the acrylic front gently to allow a holographic screen to appear in mid-air. Iris types in her destination, closes the necklace and presses on the button long enough for it to start glowing. At one moment, she stood in the middle of the apartment, the next Iris stands in a white clear room on a large black platform machine.

Iris walks out of the teleportation chamber, moving onto the hallway and into the command center. Catherine Arcelia Marlowe stands near the monitors, talking to Douglas Parson who is behind the central computers. Her brown hair moves around her enthusiastically as she speaks about the current research project she is supervising. Catherine’s blue-eyed gaze moves from Douglas’s to Iris’ and her expression brightens. “Iris!”

Said girl quickly sets the data samples on a nearby desk before Catherine gives her a tight gripped hug. Douglas rolls his grey eyes and shakes his black hair at them. “You’re late.”

“Class ran late and I literally just got to Max’s apartment when you texted me!” Iris defends herself.

“And where is he?”

“Exam, he’s coming afterward.” Iris places her bag on the desk.

“Fine, now let’s start training.”

- : - : - : -

Iris and Douglas’ gazes continue to switch between watching Catherine, or rather Lady Faith, work through the training simulations that Iris and Max had designed and checking on how her vital signs and overall health are being affected.

“Her pulse and respiration rate just increased, what did she do?”

“She used two abilities at once.”

Lady Faith doesn’t have just one ability, she had multiple. The ability of flight, teleportation, telekinesis,  energy projection, and calming aura; although, she doesn’t have the ability of super healing.

“Her body temperature is getting high, I think we’re done with holographic simulations for today,” Douglas says. Iris relays his message to Catherine through her ear communicator within her purple and white supersuit.

The brunette takes off the silver bracelets that help her transform into Lady Faith as she walks out of the simulation room. Beats of sweat run down her forehead as she pants. Even though she has had three years to understand her abilities, it doesn’t mean it doesn’t take a lot of energy out of her. Iris and Douglas walk out of the control room, a towel and water bottle in the former’s hands while the latter leads her to the medical bed. He takes the towel and water bottle to give to Catherine as she sits on the medical bed while Iris gets the first aid kit.

She cleans up and wraps her bruises as Douglas goes over her biometrics from the training simulations. “Your heart rate increased when the ceiling started to collapse, remember to stay calm. Your energy levels started to decrease when you were flying and using energy shields if you use too many abilities at once you would have fainted…,” he continues on.

Catherine rolls her eyes and pouts. “Yeah, yeah, but I still fought them off good, right?”

Douglas chuckles. “Yes, Blue eyes, you did great.”

Iris packs up the first aid kit and leaves the room the moment they start to kiss. She could’ve easily interrupted them, but she has other things to do. She grabs her stuff in the command center and walks down the long corridor, up the stairs, and towards the door that only opens from face and fingerprint recognition. Once given access, she pushes the door open.

Scientists in lab coats and people wearing guest passes surround her vicinity. Iris walks swiftly through the crowd in elegant ease. Some of the scientists greet her as she walks down the halls, up two flights of stairs, and into her lab.

The rest of her time there, Iris reads through the files, learning about the homicides and auto theft, the witness reports, and looking at the size, shape, and overall appearance of the crime scene pictures. There’s a knock on the door as she places a blood sample from a piece of fabric into the centrifuge. “Who is it?”

“Hey Hot Pursuit, you gonna let me in?”

After starting the machine, Iris opens the door and hugs Max Bentley. Despite being younger than her, he is a foot taller and usually misidentified as her brother. She doesn’t really see the resemblance.

“How was your exam?”

“Okay, too many questions in my opinion, but at least they were easy.” He shrugs.

Iris rolls her eyes. “Well not everyone is a genius majoring in computer science wanting to become a software developer like you.”

Max just gives her a cheeky grin. “So how’d Lady Faith’s training go?”

He’s already gone through Catherine’s biometrics with Douglas, so they discuss improvements while Iris goes through her finished DNA analysis. From the apartment homicide case, she had cross-checked with the other samples and concluded that the third roommate was the one who murdered their first roommate Mendoza and framed the second.

Max finishes outlining the different training simulations that they will create next week as she writes out her report for Captain Singh. The one-way mirror windows that surround the building show that it’s dark out as they walk down the stairs. Only a couple scientists and researchers are still at their workstations doing some late night experiments. The few that see them go down to the basement floor don’t say anything, knowing that they aren’t permitted while knowing who is. They’re oblivious to the fact that the basement is the secret base of operations for the working team of Lady Faith.

There’s still three more cases with samples that Iris needs to analyze, but she’s working the closing shift at Jitters and had told her father she would be home afterward. But home is in Central City and Iris is in the Marlowe Research Facility in Janelia City on the other side of the country three hours ahead. Looking down at her pocket watch necklace, the dimness of the clock screen indicates that she needs to add more Barry sand in the back. She doesn’t need to use the Barry sand to get back to Central City, but she’ll need more sand in order to teleport with the necklace again.

Max and Iris stop by the equipment room, storing some black sand into her necklace and some into his watch before saying goodbye to Catherine and Douglas who are talking while on comms. It’s weird how a metal that came out of nowhere can help create a portable, wearable teleportation device, just like the other piece of metal that shocked Catherine and gave her superpowers.

- : - : - : -

They teleport back to the apartment that Catherine leased for Max while he’s studying and as a Central City base to focus on any Lady Faith work without traveling back to Janelia City. She hugs him goodbye, sisterly advising him to study hard before driving to Jitters.

The smell of coffee welcomes Iris the moment she opens the door, relaxing her body and making her smile. It’s her second favorite smell. In the back, her coworkers discuss the rumors that someone might be getting a promotion. Hopefully, it isn’t her.

Despite not being a licensed researcher or scientist, Catherine pays the three of them bi-weekly for working at the Marlowe Research Facility as she is the owner and executive director. Douglas is justifiable because he works security and as her bodyguard (she just pays him more), but Max and Iris are there for Lady Faith work.

Although, Iris has been there from the creation of the research facility and is practically the co-executive director she doesn’t really count it. There are times like today when she uses her lab to run data and samples for the CCPD. Max and Iris’ designs and patents can’t really be paid since working for a superhero isn’t a job that people can know about, but Catherine is stubborn and compassionate and I’m the heiress of Marlowe Industries! You guys are literally my first group of real friends. So goddamn it, let me do what I want!

She also says that she’s paying Iris for writing about her.

When Team LF started, Catherine wanted the secret to remaining between the three (later four when Max found out) of them, so they couldn’t tell their parents or siblings or Barry. It was hard not telling him, especially since Iris would ask him ‘hypothetical’ questions when they were trying to create something. And since he helped create the teleportation sand, it’s only right to name it after him.

But it is not Iris’ secret to tell and what could she say? The piece of metal that gave Catherine her superpowers had vanished once she fainted. There was nothing that could lead Barry towards finding her mother’s killer, yet it was still hard not to tell him. After all, she told him everything.

Iris had asked one of her friends who had recently graduated with a doctorate in psychiatry degree and was doing her residency at the Arkham Asylum in Gotham for help. Harleen Quinzel advised that since she couldn’t speak about it that she could write about it.

“Keep an online diary or write in a journal,” Harleen had said. “That way you can express everything you want about what’s going on.”

And so The Pyxis was born. An anonymous blog that Catherine was aware of and knew that Iris was writing about her alter ego to cope keeping a secret from Barry. What started as a way to release lead to the growth of her desire to seek the truth, writing to an invisible audience with a fierce passion.

///

THE RISE IN CRIME IN JANELIA CITY

Posted on 04/28/20XX @ 15:46

Janelia City is a growing tech hub and constantly have new people moving in to soak up its sources and intelligence. While it’s a great city for people to learn about technology and engineering and chemistry, it is still a city to be cautious of during the night. The increase in people moving has caused landowners to raise the rent and kick out those who can’t afford it.

What choices do these people have left when they’re kicked out onto the streets? While I don’t believe that stealing and going towards a life of thievery is a good way to go, I understand where these people are coming from. But you have to understand that these people are hurt and upset and angry, and they want revenge.

Have you heard of Slipknot? The black-suited man with durable ropes? He used to work for one of the chemical companies in Janelia but lost his job and his home due to new people moving in and needing work and shelter. He’s intelligent, like most of the people in Janelia City, and is the one who created a chemical adhesive that made his ropes indestructible. From the footages and pictures here, it’s easy to tell that Slipknot is a master of using ropes and not afraid to kill anyone in his way.

According to sources close to him, it’s easy to tell that his revenge was focused on his ex-landlord, ex-boss, and the people who replaced him and took his home. Slipknot is one of the many people who has been hurt by the increasing population in Janelia and won’t be the first to enact their revenge. At least Lady Faith seems to be handling them well, a superhuman using her abilities for good.

So to the people of Janelia, I caution you to stay aware of your surroundings and let me know if there’s anything to report on.

Always run towards the truth,

The Pyxis

///

It grew. Her blog grew as she wrote more posts and articles on Lady Faith’s fights with vivid descriptions and background information on the criminals. Douglas and Iris weren’t the best at hacking but knew enough to gain access to the files from the Janelia City Police Department. She would read police reports and rewrite the basic information on the blog, as well as her own sketch of the criminal.

There would be days where Iris would stay in Marlow Research, watching Catherine fight through the footage of the local surveillance cameras on the monitors and give her advice through the communicators on her super suit. Then there were days where she would trail close behind Catherine to take photographic evidence of the battles.

Iris was surprised by the response to her blog, people interested in the impossible superhero fighting intelligent revenge-seeking villains occurring in their city. But then again it isn’t like the impossible and paranoia isn’t happening in cities like Metropolis and Gotham.

It was fascinating finding out about the people Lady Faith had recently found and what their reasons were. It made her blog more opinion than fact when she included possible reasons on why they would do such a thing. But she can’t just write about a person with a fully negative viewpoint, especially when she doesn’t know the full truth. As Sherlock had said to Watson during the Case of a Study in Pink, “It is a capital mistake to theorize before you have all the evidence. It biased the judgment.”

It causes some debate within the comment boards on whether their actions were justifiable or not, but the majority of her readers understand (and enjoy having a chance to name the villain, 78% chose the name Slipknot).

They ask if she’d try to reveal the identity of Lady Faith which she respectfully and strongly admonished saying that she had her reasons and they should be thankful for what she has done so far and not push it. Douglas and Iris tried to create a firewall to protect their site from being hacked, not a strong one but enough that people wouldn’t be able to find her location. Their attempt wasn’t enough and was what caused Max Bentley to become a part of the team.

He was a high school junior when Iris first met him. During freshman year at Northwestern University, one of her science classes was giving students extra credit if they wrote about any of the high school science fairs occurring that week. She had watched him argue with his partner which accidentally lead to a broken project, and had decided to cheer him up. He didn’t have the best situation, a foster child who would leave his foster home once he turned 18 and wouldn’t have enough money to find a place to live or to further his education.

He had found her blog two years later by accident and grew interested in the possibility of superheroes. Originally, Max hacked her site so that she could blackmail the writer into letting him meet Lady Faith. He didn’t know that it was Iris, and he didn’t realize that Iris had known him long enough that she would help him. Now, he’s attending CCU with her while being the computer genius of Team LF.

So technically, Iris has three jobs, wait, well four soon. In a couple of days, she’ll be a therapist intern at the Central City Psychological Clinic about twenty minutes away from campus. Barry convinced her to put her Bachelors in Psychology to use to gain some work experience so that once Iris graduated with her PhD in Criminal Psychology it wouldn’t be too hard for employers to hire her.

She debated on the internship when they discussed it in his lab weeks ago, mostly knowing that it would make her life much busier since being a member of Team LF isn’t exactly a nine-to-five job. But she remembered the smile on his face.

“I feel like a lot of people would be missing out on what you can do, even as an intern,” Barry said. “You’re Iris West, you’re intuitive and you’ve not only helped me but other students in high school cope with their issues and illnesses. You’re always helping everyone and you make everything feel better. You make me feel better, like there’s nothing wrong with me, like I’m not alone, that I have someone to talk to. And talking to you is better than talking to all those psychiatrists Joe made me see.”

Her heart fluttered at his explanation and smile grew on his face just as big as his. Barry’s the reason why she agreed to apply for the internship. He helped her fill out the application and read through her essays and prepare for her interview, and he was there when Iris found out that she got in. The proud look on his face is something she never plans on forgetting.

- : - : - : -

Iris frowns at her phone. There aren’t any messages from Barry. It was supposed to be a quick trip to Starling City to see if the ‘impossible break in’ with the rumors of a man who can bend steel with his hands (although, Iris knows that the man who can bend steel isn’t in Starling City) would help provide clues to solving his mother’s murder. He’s supposed to tell her if he’s staying there longer. There’s a gut feeling that something isn’t right but Iris smiles at her father during dinner and answers vaguely on where Barry is. She texts him her usual Goodnight, Care Bear! And waits for his usual goodnight message but never receives it. Her instincts tell her that something is about to occur, but she doesn’t know if it’s a good or bad thing.

He arrives at the precinct a couple days later when Iris is giving Captain Singh back her completed case reports. Barry rushes over to where they are, about to ramble an excuse but Captain Singh stops him before he can speak. “Good to have you back, Allen! Wonder what you ate that caused you to have such bad food poisoning.”

He gives Iris a confused look as they walk up to his lab. He was gone longer than they planned so she lied about him having a weak immune system and that it took longer for the vomiting and diarrhea to fade away. She also tells him that all of the data samples that he needs to go through were taken to an external lab and are almost done being analyzed (just one more case then she’ll be done).

Barry sighs in relief before talking about meeting Dr Martin Stein on the train back and how they discussed physics and the particle accelerator that is being activated tomorrow. Iris nods at his story, wondering for a moment if Stein knew her Uncle Ira while making sure to not let Barry see that half of her attention is on the messages Douglas, Max, and Catherine are sending her about a possible supervillain. Luckily Joe walks in before Barry notices.

“Barry, there’s been a confrontation down by 13th street. Two dead, one injured. We’re needed at the crime scene. “ Joe says then turns to Iris. “Don’t you have a class starting soon, baby girl?”

“Right, an elective. British Literature, right?” Barry comments.

“Yes.”

It’s an online class but they don’t need to know that. She needs a reasonable excuse for when she needs to go to Janelia City. They exit the precinct at the same time, driving in opposite directions.

“Ok, so apparently this guy is able to use energy projection like me but it seems that he’s able to construct objects out of blue flames as well,” Catherine says when Iris arrives.

She points to the computer at the male figure wearing a cobalt blue super suit with a silver mask. On the screen, he’s confronting the police who are trying to get him to surrender. Blue flames came out of his hands that soon transformed into a sword. When the police began to shoot, he was able to block them with his sword before disappearing.

“How do you guys think he got his abilities?” Iris asks the group.

“Honestly, I have no clue,” Catherine admits.

“Do you think it’s similar to how you go your powers?” Douglas asks his girlfriend. She shrugs.

“I ran a scan and searched through the systems. He’s last been seen eighteen months ago in Kyanite City,” Max states.

Iris looks over to Max’s screen where the man was fighting off the Kyanite City Police Department. There was a close up on him when a bullet managed to strike his arm, but it seemed to quickly heal with blue flames.

“Great, this guy has healing abilities while I don’t,” Catherine grumbles.

“We don’t know anything about him yet guys, this is one of our first sightings of him,” Iris reminds him. “Let’s observe and wait until we know what he can really do.”

The only physical description they have of him is that he’s tall, Caucasian, with brown hair and dark eyes. There were times Iris thought he looked familiar but couldn’t place her finger why. Something tells her that his eyes should be green, but they aren’t.

- : - : - : -

She calls Barry later that night. He talks about how even though he’s glad that Captain Singh didn’t find out and threaten to fire him, her father did. Joe lectured Barry and said that he’s lucky that Iris knew people who worked at an external lab that were willing to analyze data and write reports for free.

“I honestly don’t know why anyone would want to do a forensic scientist’s job for free,” Barry says. “Especially since she does a good job at it too!”

“She?”

“Her handwriting,” Barry states. “It has a feminine touch. Anyways, Singh would not stop gloating about how detailed and on time the reports were. I agree they are well-written when I took a look at them, they kind’ve reminded me of your detailed essays, Iris. With enough experience, she’ll make a great CSI.”

The small bubble of fear when Barry said that her reports reminded him of her disappears into a sense of satisfaction at the rest of his words. There are times when she feels that Barry is too smart to be around her. He would sometimes have to explain in laymans terms, and Iris can’t help but feel like he should be surrounded by people who understand what he’s saying and appreciates him just as much as she does. He deserves someone that he doesn’t have to revise his explanations for.

She takes great pride in knowing that, despite not having a double degree in forensic science and criminology, her self-learning, self-teaching, and self-education for the past couple years have become good enough for Barry’s approval. Training to become an unlicensed professional forensic scientist was hard work, constantly having to double and triple check her work with Abby Scuito, a young intern from her other job that wants to become a forensic scientist. It took a while before Abby told Iris that her casework was professional enough and that she didn’t need to constantly get her approval for everything.

She arrives at the precinct the next evening after a shift at Jitters, two classes, training at the clinic, and a kickboxing session with Douglas. Captain Singh greets and thanks her once again when she gives him the last case report. It was everyone’s assumption that the victim died from inhaling too much smoke but, due to the swelling on her neck and small red spots on her earlobe, there were signs that someone had strangled her then left her there to die. The police will need to cross-check who met with her before the fire and get some fingerprint samples to match the thumb bruise on her neck.

At the corner of Iris’ eye, she sees a man with blonde hair and blue eyes talking to her father and looks away in surprise. No, it can’t be. She shakes her head and thinks about the reasons why the criminal would do such a thing and hopes that the blonde man isn’t who she thinks he is. Walking up to Barry’s lab, he’s on his computer looking at something and Iris smiles, momentarily forgetting everything else. “We’re not going to be late for this particle accelerator thing, are we?”

Barry looks up from his screen and smiles at her. “There’s no way I’m going to be late to something like this. Dr Harrison Wells is going to be giving a speech!”

“Hmm, given your track record you can’t say for sure. Even if said favorite scientist is going to be there,” Iris teases while reaching towards the bag of food on his table. “Are you almost done?”

“Uh yeah, give me a sec.” He pulls out a file and begins to write. “Need to finish this first, and hands off my fries!”

Iris rolls her eyes. “I’m stress eating over my dissertation!” And other things. “If I don’t graduate soon, I’m going to be more muffin top than woman.”

“You look amazing,” Barry compliments before quickly explaining the Mardon brothers robbery and how he found animal feces on the ground to analyze.

“Wow. Usually, you’re more drowned with work.”

“Not always! Plus I think it’s because of that external lab that you have connections to. I didn’t have to worry about any late assignments when I came back. I was able to finish yesterday’s work this morning.”

“See Barry, aren’t you glad you have me in your life to help make it easier?” Iris can’t help but say.

He gives her this look that makes her body shiver in warmth. She’s seen it many times before like when they were in his freshman dorm saying goodbye or during her junior prom. That wistful, rapt expression with his body relaxed as his gaze is fully on Iris. “Yeah, yeah I’m really glad I have you in my life, Iris.”

Not yet, a voice whispers. Suddenly, the intensity of his gaze feels too much for her. A jolt of trepidation runs through her body, and she quickly starts to speak.

“Is this the last report you need to write? Cause we need to leave soon and I’m curious on this atom smasher.”

“Last report, I promise and it’s not an atom smasher. It’s a particle accelerator.” Barry says, rolling his eyes.

There’s a glint of sadness in his eyes that Iris can’t help but feel. “Then clarify it to me before we leave.”

Barry’s eyes light up at the chance of explaining and stats to talk about quantum theory and subatomic particles and electric fields. He’s absolutely adorable with his expressive eyes and fast gestures. Iris understands about half of what he’s saying, a feeling of content as he spoke, happy at the fact that she doesn’t need to ask him to simplify his explanation.

Iris West is not smart enough nor does she know enough science to join our organization.

Doubt runs through her as that thought comes back to her mind after so many years. Even though she doesn’t need him to get her an easy explanation, he could be spending time with someone who could be getting excited with him about the particle accelerator. “You gotta get yourself a girlfriend.”

His face falls a bit and he opens his mouth-

“Leave him alone, he’s working.”

Iris greets her father as he asks Barry for the robbery report on the Mardon brothers. He grabs the file that he had finished writing in moments ago.

“The fecal matter I found was cow manure with traces of oxytetracycline in it. There are only four farms in Central City that still use it in their fields.” Barry hands Joe a piece of paper he just printed. “You should find a pretty sweet Shelby parked in one of them.”

Immediately, Iris grins at her father. “So Dad, Barry just solved your manure problem and this was his last case for today. Think we can head over to STAR Labs now?:

Joe examines the paper for a moment before looking up at them. Barry and Iris smile brightly at him, similar to when they were kids and he found them listening in on his phone calls and police radios or wanted play outside after finishing their homework. Iris gives him her innocent, wide-eyed look, blinking rapidly and he sighs. “Fine, go.”

She kisses him on the cheek as Barry grins and gets up from his seat. “Thank you, Joe!”

He grabs his coat and rushes out of his lab, Iris right behind him. They laugh in excitement as they hurry out of the precinct.

- : - : - : -

Iris runs her hand up and down Barry’s arm as an act of comfort while he keeps the ice pack on the side of his head. “Are you sure you’re alright?”

“Iris, I’m fine.”

She frowns at him. They’re at the precinct to file a report causing them to miss the particle accelerator from being activated. She moves her hand from his arm to his hair. He cleaned up the blood but there’ll be a noticeable bruise on the side of his forehead for a while. “Just making sure you’re not in pain.”

Barry moves her hand to his cheek and looks at Iris with a soft expression. “I’m fine, Iris. It doesn’t hurt anymore.”

Her breath is caught in her throat as she looks in his eyes. The same look is in them again. Warmth and unease spread through and quickly leaves her. Iris pulls her hand away and scans the room for a distraction. “So who’s the new guy?”

“He’s a transfer from Keystone City,” Barry says. “Eddie Thawne.”

The name confirms it. Edward Richardson Thawne. She hoped it wasn’t him, but it’s the same man. “So that’s Detective Pretty Boy.”

Barry has a confused look on his face, and she rushes to explain. “That’s what my dad calls him. Says he keeps track of all his arrests.” Iris rolls her eyes.

“He sure is pretty though.”

She’s too caught up on how Eddie’s not going to look so pretty anymore once she’s interrogated him to notice the wounded expression on Barry’s face. Iris turns her gaze back to Barry. “I’m sorry that we didn’t get to see the particle accelerator get activated.”

“It’s alright,” He says quietly. “It wasn’t your fault your laptop bag got stolen.”

“Maybe we could watch the rest of the broadcast in your lab?” She offers.

“Aren’t you tired?”

“Not really,” she shakes her head. “Plus we’re supposed to hang out for the rest of the night, remember?”

“Ok,” he shrugs. “I need to lock up the lab afterward.”

Iris frowns at the wet floor of Barry’s lab. The lightning storm outside pounds heavily against the skylight. Maybe she can leave CCPD a generous donation to upgrade their roof maintenance. Barry turns on his computer to check the coverage on the particle accelerator while Iris checks her phone. Notifications on Superman’s latest battle pops up and she reminds herself to look through them all later and contact her connections in Metropolis so she can write her article on her blog.

She turns to Barry, about to ask if he wants to wait until the storm is over before heading home, but he’s staring intensely at his computer screen. Iris walks over and sees Linda Park reporting live from STAR Labs.

“Officials are now trying to shut down the particle accelerator, but so far, have been unable to regain control of the system-”

Suddenly, the computer shuts down. The sound of thunder brings their gaze up towards the windows where a bright outburst of light is coming from STAR Labs. Knots form in Iris’ stomach, something isn’t right. Then a shockwave of energy materializes, knocking out the lights as it travels through the city.

“The skylight.”

Barry moves from the computer to the chains to close the skylight. Iris walks over to help but pauses when the liquids in the beakers start to float. It reminds her of when the piece of alien metal that caused Catherine to collapse and give her powers had started to float away and disappear.

Barry’s frozen as well, transfixed at the sight. It’s like he’s seen it happen before. The knots in her stomach continue to increase and Iris tries to clear her mind. There’s a lightning storm outside and a shockwave from the particle accelerator was just released into the city and Barry’s standing in the puddle of water, holding an iron metal chain.

She opens her mouth to call out his name but lets out a scream instead. A lightning bolt crashes through the skylight and strikes Barry in the chest, hurling him into the shelves causing chemicals to land on him. “BARRY!”

She rushes to his side, watching as a red bolt of lightning runs through his cheek before fading. She places two fingers near his carotid artery, brachial artery, radial artery. There’s no pulse.

“No, no, no. Not again.” Tears run down her face. “Barry, wake up. Please wake up. Somebody help! Somebody! Anybody! Eddie!”

- : - : - : -

They rush him to Central City Memorial. Immediately, the paramedics take over and Iris follows them. She tries to breathe but images of Catherine screaming and collapsing and Barry getting struck by lightning are coursing through her mind. They bring him to the emergency room with doctors everywhere. It seems like Barry isn’t the only one who got affected by the accident. Iris moves towards Barry, wanting to be next to him, needing to be next to him.

“You can’t be in here,” a nurse says, pushing her out towards the door. Eddie’s pulling her out as well.

“I’m family,” Iris cries out. Her teary gaze focuses on where he is. He’s flatlining. “BARRY!”

“CLEAR!”

- : - : - : -

Cold. It’s honestly so cold. Her body feels numb sitting in the chair, waiting for news on Barry. Eddie pulls Iris into a side-hug, rubbing his hand up and down her arm. She should interrogate him as to why he’s in Central City and not in Keystone City, but now is not the time. Everything around her is moving in such slow motion, the lights keep flickering in and out, she can’t hear anything that the doctors are saying as they pass by, and why is it so goddamn cold in here?

When Joe arrives, he’s soaked and looking frantic and tense.

“What happened? Where’s Barry?”

Iris opens and closes her mouth a couple times, wanting to explain but can’t. She can’t speak. Eddie explains instead. Her father has a suspicious look in his eyes, probably because she’s learning on Eddie’s shoulder. It’s quickly gone when the doctor arrives. Iris stands up.

“Excuse me, do you know this young man?” He asks.

“Yes, yes we do. We’re his family,” Iris immediately says.

There’s a look of judgment in the doctor’s eyes as he looks at them and Iris hides her clenched fists behind her back.

“His name is Barry Allen, I’ve been his legal guardian until he was eighteen,” Joe told him. “Is he going to be alright?”

“We were able to stabilize Mr. Allen at the moment.”

“But is he going to be alright?” Iris repeats her father’s words. The doctor hesitates before speaking.

Barry got struck by lightning. He’s in a coma.

That’s practically been Iris’s catchphrase the first couple days when she goes to Jitters or Marlowe Research or CCU or the psychology clinic. Immediately afterward they give her a sympathetic look and she has to leave the room. Cause she doesn’t need their sympathy, all she needs is Barry to get better.

“Mr. Allen was directly struck by a pre-eminent electrostatic discharge.”

“The electric current is affecting the neurons in his body. The damage makes it hard for him to maintain control of his body since his nerve branches to the spinal cord are impaired.”

“His body needs time to heal from all the damages he took in at such a fast rate.”

Barry needs time to heal his body so he’s in a coma. Barry’s in a coma. Just like Catherine after Iris found her on the basement floor of the abandoned research facility she just bought junior year of uni, surrounded by debris and rubble. It’s why there’s a breathing tube inserted down his trachea to keep him alive and oxygenated. Cause without it Barry could die.

“When he wakes up, there might be a chance that the damages in his nervous system are causing his higher mental functions to be in disarray so he might be a bit lethargic and bemused. There might be a chance of his personality being permanently altered.”

Iris was shaking that night when she heard the news. Her tears kept flowing non-stop and at the corner of her eye, she saw Eddie’s mouth move. Was he giving her words of comfort? Was he asking if she’s alright? Cause no, she wasn't. She wouldn’t be alright until Barry wakes up. Cause he needs to. Cause Iris doesn’t know how she can go on without him.

It’s a struggle for Iris, trying to continue life without Barry’s presence. There are times when she’ll wait during her shift for his visit before remembering that he isn’t coming or when she pulls out her phone to text him something to realize he’s not going to see it.

It’s been a while since she’s felt warmth.

[stompsite]

Dreaming Of Another World

It was all Narnia’s fault.

I grew up in a deeply religious family, one that eschewed ‘worldly’ media for the religious variety. I remember Dad dragging us out of a showing of the Lion King one rainy September day--I think we’d gone to one of those theatres where the tickets were cheap and they only showed movies that had been out for a long time because my family was thrifty like that--because he was furious. Some time later, he explained to me that Disney was trying to brainwash us with “New Age Philosophy,” and he was angry at the spirit that tried to do it to us. Not a great birthday memory for me.

But Narnia? It had magic and monsters and demons and werewolves, and for whatever reason, we were allowed to watch it whenever we went to Grandma’s house. My parents drove us up to Independence, Missouri every few months for something called Enzyme Potentiated Desensitization, where we would stay with grandma and watch Narnia. EPD was an experimental allergen treatment that was banned in 2001.

I remember drinking water with bismuth in it and eating an awful meal that had the consistency of literal shit. This was supposed to help us get over our allergies, but I think the treatment was far worse. We weren’t allowed to eat many things, and most of what we could eat was disgusting, so most of the time, we laid around, sick, feverish, and vomiting, and we ate reheated french fries from Wendy’s (McDonald’s wasn’t allowed due to the oil they used), and we watched all of Grandma’s old movies.

My favorite one was The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe, a movie about kids who escaped the horrors of World War II by traveling to another dimension where it was always winter and a cruel, monstrous witch ruled with an iron hand. Eventually, thanks to the help of the Christ-like Aslan, they overthrew her.

It was a dark movie, a far cry from the generally happy, low-intensity religious movies Mom let us watch. Aslan died, y’know. It was, to 8 year old me, the most incredible thing in the world. Later, I read the rest of the books, and I loved them too. My favorite was The Silver Chair, the darkest and least hopeful book of all. No one book had more of an impact on my artistic sensibilities than The Silver Chair. Real stakes! Real pain! Hope! Triumph! All the good stuff.

When I was 10, I found Digimon.

I was hanging out at Hyram’s place watching The Magic School Bus, a show that we weren’t allowed to watch at my house because of the magic. Hyram’s family, being Mormon, had a more enlightened--so it seemed--outlook on the world, being okay with sci-fi and fantasy stories that my parents forbade us from seeing. So there we were, watching The Magic School Bus, and the commercials came on, and Fox Kids aired a commercial for Digimon (Adventure 01, Episode 28, in case you were wondering--the one with the ferocious Devidramon).

Digimon was even darker than Narnia. It’s villains were literally Satan and a Vampire. There’s an episode where one of the kids is told her mother doesn’t love her and as a result, she’ll never be able to help her friends. There was drama, self-doubt, pain, misery, and, in the end, the kids overcame the darkness that opposed them and triumphed.

Over the years, I found increasingly creative ways to catch my Digimon fix, going to the church next door with a cable I’d found to connect to the TV so I could just barely catch Fox 24 when it was broadcasting. When Digimon stopped airing, I desperately searched for a way to download the show online, which led me to IRC, which took me to roleplay forums, which led me to Kotaku comments, and finally Twitter, which is where I know most of you from.

I realize this may all sound very self-indulgent, and I’m sorry for that, but I feel it’s important to establish the personal context here. I love these stories about going to other worlds and experiencing things that our worlds could never give us. The stories acted as a kind of meta-transportation, a way of letting me escape the frustrations of my own life.

When I finally made the transition from cartoons and books to video games, everything seemed to snap into place. Games were the closest thing I’d ever found to actually visiting Narnia or the Digital World. My friend Robert introduced me to Halo in his trailer home. My parents gave me Microsoft Flight Simulator, and it was like being able to fly planes in real life, so much so that when I eventually attended flight training, my instructors told me I flew like someone with thousands of hours under his belt.

Games let me go places.

Games let me see new things.

So, one day, in early 2007, I found a copy of PC Gamer with Bioshock on the cover in the Wal-Mart magazine aisle. I remember furtively browsing the issue, making sure Mom didn’t suddenly round the corner and catch me reading it. The game looked incredible, but I was focused more on roleplaying forums at the time, and I forgot about it until that fall, a few weeks after it came out. CompUSA was going out of business and was selling off their games. I couldn’t game at home--our computers were old Boeing surplus and ran the Half-Life 2 Ravenholm demo like a slideshow--but with a portable hard drive I’d purchased and hid in the ceiling tiles of my bedroom, I could play them at the university I was attending.

So I did.

First person games appealed to me because they let me experience the game worlds as though they were real experiences. It was the closest thing to going to another world; third person games didn’t elicit the same response, so I didn’t play them as much. I was a big fan of the Age of Empires: Rise of Rome demo that came with my copy of Microsoft Flight Simluator, though. But it was the first person games, the ones I found on Maximum PC demo discs, that really mattered to me. I’d played hundreds of hours of Unreal Tournament 2004, Call of Duty, and even Far Cry.

When I played Bioshock, everything changed. I had to get my own computer. Had to. I moved out in late December to go learn to fly at K-State Salina. Got really sick that spring--my illness was just starting to reveal itself--and I flunked most of my classes. I was so sick most days I couldn’t leave the house. Got diagnosed with severe social anxiety disorder later. Only left the house at night unless I had classes, when I could make it to them at all. I’d earned enough money the previous fall to build myself my own computer.

I played games.

Bioshock had led me to System Shock 2. I pirated a copy of STALKER: Shadow of Chernobyl because I’d seen the disc at CompUSA (alongside Blacksite: Area 51) but only had the cash to buy Bioshock and The Orange Box without my parents noticing. I played FEAR and its expansions. All the Half-Life games. Crysis. Call of Duty 4. It was a great time to experience a lot of amazing first-person games.

System Shock and STALKER were the biggest influences.

When I moved back that summer, I scrounged and saved and used the last of my savings to buy STALKER: Clear Sky and Crysis Warhead. I played them while living in the unheated camping trailer my parents used to own (it was cheaper than paying for dorms whenever we attended church camps). It was cold. I could see my own breath most days. I got a job at Office Max and used it to buy a copy of Far Cry 2. A few weeks later, I picked up Fallout 3.

If you’re familiar with these games, you’ll notice a lot of them have things in common. They do interesting things with the game world. Many are heavily systems driven compared to their contemporaries. STALKER’s world especially feels completely alive. System Shock 2 does a bangin’ job of making you feel like you’re really exploring an abandoned spaceship. Far Cry 2’s systems-driven gameplay is fascinating and influences designers to this day. Fallout 3 has one of the best ecosystems in a video game, with enemies who you can wound and terrify and allied characters who will come to your aid.

Even Blacksite: Area 51 was a fascinating game. It had this cool morale system that had your soldiers responding to your commands and combat prowess in ways that, at the time, felt believable and awe-inspiring. In Crysis, if you dropped an unconscious man in a river, he would die because he drowned. Incredible. It felt real.

The games that shaped my experience took me to other worlds, shaping my perception of what games could be in a very specific direction. As someone who’d grown up reading the old Microsoft Flight Simulator tagline “As real as it gets,” I felt right at home.

I tried other games, like Nintendo’s platformers or controller-centric spectacle fighters like Devil May Cry 3, but I didn’t like them. They were too obviously games. You got points. Everything was abstract. I was playing. I wasn’t going anywhere.

As my health declined, the importance of traveling to other places increased. The mark of a good game for me became one where I could forget about the world I lived in and exist in another world. I’m reminded of Lord Foul’s Bane, a book in which a writer with leprosy is transported to another world where he is healed of his leprosy. Games provided me that escape, especially the immersive ones.

Ah.

Right.

That word.

Immersion is nothing to be afraid of. Some people say that any game can be immersive, because one of the meanings of the word is roughly analogous to “engrossed,” but the English language is weird and tricky and sometimes two words share the same meaning in the dictionary but mean very different things.

To be engrossed in something is to have your attention completely arrested by it. To be immersed in something, well… when you’re immersed in water, you are literally, physically inside of it. You are a part of the water, as much as you can be.

I was seeking out immersive qualities in games without really understanding it. I would learn that some of my favorite games in the genre were literally called “immersive sims.” Some people will argue that they are not engrossed by those games, so they cannot possibly be immersive, but I’d argue that when you’re immersed in something, it surrounds you, you’re inside it. Whether or not it grabs your attention is up to you.

When a game is immersive, it might not grab your attention, but it’s doing its best to create a living, breathing world. When you drop an unconscious man in water, he drowns because that is what would happen in real life. When you perform well in combat, your allies rally around you. When you shoot an enemy in the leg, he limps.

An immersive game is one that does its best to represent a cohesive reality.

If you don’t believe me, go listen to Paul Neurath, a founder of Looking Glass, a studio that made games like System Shock and Thief, talk about why they made the games they did. Look at the cool attempts at simulation elements in games made by LGS alumni, like Seamus Blackley’s Jurassic Park: Trespasser, or Warren Spector and Harvey Smith’s Deus Ex. Emil Pagliarulo got a job at Bethesda and has a senior role (I forget what it is, exactly, sorry) on simulation-heavy games like Fallout 3 and Skyrim.

Heck, the Sega 2K Football games were praised as having some of the most sophisticated and realistic AI in sports games before the NFL decided it wasn’t cool with yearly games being priced at a sub-premium price point. Marc LeBlanc worked on the AI for those.

The way I heard it, Looking Glass made flight simulators with realistic physics (I believe that was thanks to Blackley’s background as a physicist). At some point, the folks at Looking Glass thought it would be cool to take Dungeons and Dragons style tabletop and make a game out of it, but instead of building something like the isometric Ultima, they’d apply the flight simulator logic to it. The whole thing would be first person, and you could treat it like you were really there. Their publishing partner decided this new game should be an Ultima game, so Ultima Underworld was born.

After that, Looking Glass made a mix of flight simulators, golf games, and weird first-person games that took you to other worlds. System Shock put you on a space station. Thief let you do exactly what it said on the cover. Terra Nova was… well, read this piece on Rock, Paper, Shotgun. All of these games were fascinating and transformative, even if they had weirdly inaccessible control schemes.

Eventually, the studio died. Sony and Microsoft passed on buying them, Eidos made some poor financial decisions and couldn’t pay them. Talent moved off to other studios. Eventually, they shut down.

A few developers tried to carry the torch. Ken Levine’s Irrational games released Bioshock, which was like the bro shooter version of System Shock. Ion Storm Austin produced Thief 3 and two Deus Ex games. Bethesda’s work has become increasingly Looking Glass-influenced over the years. Clint Hocking’s Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory and Far Cry 2 clearly learned from Looking Glass’ games as well.

Over in France, a guy named Raphael Colantonio founded a studio called Arkane. They made a game heavily inspired by Ultima Underworld called Arx Fatalis. Then they made another one, called Dark Messiah of Might and Magic, using a Ubisoft license.

As game tech got better, simulation elements became more pronounced. The German Yerli brothers unsuccessfully pitched a neat dinosaur game, but eventually managed to convince Ubisoft to publish Far Cry and EA to publish Crysis. Their games are mostly known for their graphics tech, but I’ve always been fond of their intriguing stabs at realism; on its highest difficulty, Crysis’ enemies speak Korean, making it difficult for most players to understand their callouts. Crysis lets players use the game’s physics to enhance its combat, collapsing buildings on enemies or leveling foliage to give them access to easier sight lines. I wrote about one of my favorite levels here.

Bioshock brought the attention back, though. Even though it wasn’t very simulation heavy, it gave players that sense of presence that so many had been craving. Some developers stumbled; Far Cry 2 is beloved by game designers but wasn’t the critical or commercial success Ubisoft hoped. STALKER was one of the buggiest commercial games I’ve ever played, capable of crashing if you so much as blinked, so it didn’t sell as well as THQ would have liked, and GSC Game World sought a new publisher for Clear Sky, then shifted to yet another publisher for Call of Pripyat.

Fallout 3 had more simulation elements than most of its contemporaries and, I’d argue, did a better job presenting a living, breathing world than any other game of its generation, but people were too busy being mad that it wasn’t a classic isometric RPG to notice.

So, this is where my head was at when I entered into the world of immersive sims. I was fascinated by simulation elements, in love with the idea of exploring other worlds, and, most importantly of all: I needed an escape from my health. Immersive games, some of them sims, some of them not, provided the escape I craved.

In 2011, I downloaded the leaked demo of Deus Ex: Human Revolution. I’d been mowing the lawn and was going to take a shower before sinking my teeth into it, but it was so engrossing that, before I knew it, five hours had passed and I’d played the entire thing. As soon as I scraped the cash together, I bought myself a copy. It was the first game I’d been able to afford in years.

I loved it.

The next year, Arkane roared back to life with Dishonored, which was one of my favorite games, not just because it’s really fucking good, not just because the world is fascinating and creative, not just because Harvey Smith, the man responsible for Deus Ex and Blacksite (he deserved better treatment from his publisher on that one; if they’d had more time, I think it would have been rightly hailed as a masterpiece; as it stands, it’s a fascinating thing that I love to pieces), partnered up with Arkane to make it, but because it helped me get my first writing gig.

If you wanna read my thoughts on Dishonored, check it out here.

And yet…

Something felt off.

Not about Dishonored, but about the conversation surrounding immersive design. I’d read posts by people who talked about the importance of design, who placed a weird focus on systems-driven design, who seemed to think that immersive games were stealth games and nothing but.

Before Dishonored and Human Revolution, I recall reading one of the foremost voices in immersive design discourse proclaiming the genre was dead because Looking Glass and Ion Storm had shut down. He argued, while Fallout 3 was selling millions of copies, that immersive sims were dead because they weren’t commercially viable. Many agreed with him.

After the apparent sales failings of Prey (Arkane), Dishonored 2, and Mankind Divided, I’ve heard those conversations picking up again.

I think they’re wrong, and I’d like to try to explain why.

I think a lot of the people who talk about immersive sims, focusing on immersive design and talking about what these games should be, tend to get hung up on Very Specific Details without looking at the bigger picture. Go watch the Underworld Ascendant Kickstarter pitch video, and you’ll hear Neurath talk about how important it is to solve problems logically. Go listen to a lot of the immersive sim fans talk about games, and you’ll hear them talking about… well, other things.

One thing I feel like I see a lot is an emphasis on stealth mechanics. That’s great! I love stealth games. But I’d argue that stealth is not an important part of immersive games. Some people have told me that they don’t think Bethesda games are immersive sims because the stealth in those games is nowhere near as in depth as Thief. Maybe, maybe, but here’s the thing:

I think you could make an immersive game where you’re 12 years old and you’re visiting your grandparents at their farm on an island somewhere, and the entire game is just about being a kid exploring a little seaside town and making new friends. I think you could catch fireflies and go to the library and go fishing and do all sorts of things on an island that feels just as alive as STALKER, without actually doing any stealth.

But if you go play Dishonored or Deus Ex: Human Revolution, or the Thief games, or whatever, you’re going to have the immersive sim community types talking about how important stealth is. Thief is good, but get over it. It’s just one manifestation of a broader genre. Stealth is GREAT. Dishonored so good I will buy any Dishonored game sight unseen. I would kill to get a job working for Arkane, even if it was like… as a janitor or something. I love those people and I love their games.

I think the emphasis on stealth is part of the reason a lot of these games have failed. I love stealth games for the same reason I love horror games; they’re high-intensity, high-stakes games that, when you play them well, make you feel like a real master. I’d also argue that stealth is exhausting. Maybe I’m more attuned to this than most due to the whole chronic fatigue thing, but like…

In a stealth game, success can feel like failure. You’re constantly feeling the pucker factor. If you are seen, you fail, even if the game doesn’t actually have an instant failure state. When I get seen in Dishonored, I have to fight. Fighting is really fun, but getting caught means I wasn’t able to do what I wanted to; I messed up. I’m a failure. A lot of stealth stuff ends up feeling like constantly being on edge and failing because you had to kill like 5 dudes who saw you. I played Hitman last night and every time I killed or choked out someone who saw me, I just wanted to start the whole thing over.

I’d argue that most people feel this way when playing stealth games. They don’t like the stress. A little stealth is nice, especially in a game like Far Cry 5 where you can approach a base with a sniper rifle and take out like 6 dudes without them noticing you, but getting into a firefight afterwards feels fun and purposeful too, so you get a nice mix of occasional stealth and action. I think that’s probably why Far Cry 5 is the best-selling video game of 2018 so far (Red Dead releases tomorrow).

I love that we’re making stealth games with immersive elements, but I think we’re making a mistake when we assume that immersive games must be stealthy ones. There are so many games that claim to learn from immersive games--Mark of the Ninja, Deus Ex: Human Revolution, Wildfire, Quadrilateral Cowboy--and they do, but they’re also so very focused on stealth (the ones I’ve played are all among my favorite games, by the way! Please don’t think of this as a knock against them!). I can’t think of any game that claims to be influenced by immersive sims that doesn’t have stealth.

Stealth is a verb (short version: game design speak for ‘thing you can do’). It is not the genre.

Then there’s the whole “design” thing. Mario games are exceptionally designed. Each level is a unique, bespoke challenge, stacking mechanics on top of mechanics and helping you develop your mastery over the experience. This design comes at the expense of… well, I’ll get to that later. For now, I’ll just say that Mario Feels Like A Game.

That’s not a bad thing, but, like, you’ve got this for, so you know what I’m about. You can see why that might not appeal to me personally.

Buuuuuuut… a lot of the newer, like… I don’t know, it’s weird to call them “design-focused,” because all games are designed, a lot of these newer immersive sim type games seem focused on that kind of immaculate design. Walk into the bank in Deus Ex: Mankind Divided and you’ll see The Person You Can Talk Your Way Past If You Have That Skill, you’ll see The Lasers You Can Sneak Past If You Can Turn Invisible, you’ll see The Vending Machine You Can Lift If You Have The Strength Ability, and you’ll see The Air Vent You Can Crawl Through To Get To The Computer You Can Hack If You’re A Hacker.

Mankind Divided will give you The Most Experience Points for playing this without being detected and without killing anyone.

Suddenly, you are incentivized to treat the game like a game because it is objectively better for you to approach all objectives in a specific way. Heck, in Human Revolution and Mankind Divided, after you’ve nonlethally subdued everyone in a room, you can hack all the computers (even if you have a password) and crawl through all the vents (though there’s no reason to) for Maximum Points. It… it makes no sense. You’re not trying to be a part of the world. The game rewards you for engaging with it on a level that must recognize the game as an illusion.

It’s not the only game. I loved Prey, but I got the sense that I was being graded as I played, which meant I started playing more to the game’s expectations of me rather than how I felt I ought to act. Look, I grew up in a family environment where people were sneaking up on me to see if I was acting righteously. I grew up in a church where I was paraded in front of two hundred kids and told that I had The Devil in me because my pottery had shattered in their shoddily-built kiln and destroyed most of the rest of the pottery. I am so fucking tired of being judged, so exhausted of having to act a specific way to avoid being treated like garbage, I don’t want games to do it to me too. I just want to act in a way that feels appropriate.

In Eidos Montreal’s immersive sim games (and most immersive games, for that matter), I felt like I was running into The Metroid School of Design, in which a player is unable to progress through a level without the right tool, with one key difference: there are multiple tools you can use to progress. Four routes into the same room, every room, all the time.

This creates a sense of artifice. When I see a bunch of chandeliers and mysterious, architecturally suspect vents that show me an obvious route through a map, I see the designer’s hand. I see that the designer has planned all these routes for me. They have planned for any eventuality. They want me to sneak my way through this room, regardless of the skills I have at my disposal.

I can play their game in just one way. I can ghost-stealth it perfectly and get The Good Ending, or I can Violence Through It and get less progress points and The Bad Ending. If I am a hacker, there will always be a door to hack. If I am a fighter, there will always be a man to fight.

Oh, sure, the best games will give you a dozen tools that can be combined in really interesting ways, but someone has figured out what all those tools are and designed each level to perfectly accommodate every. Single. tool.

Every level is a puzzle, and puzzles are designed by a human with the intent to solve them. You don’t need to be creative--heck, sometimes, being creative is actively discouraged--because all you need to do is figure out what the designer wanted you to do and do it. Ah, I have tools X, Y, and Z? I know exactly where I’m supposed to deploy them. See, there’s the path you can blink through and the door you can bypass with a specific tool or the fish you can possess to swim through.

And… I cannot stress this enough:

It’s not bad.

It’s good.

It’s very good. I fucking love these games. They mean the world to me. They do.

But can you see how that might not be what I was looking for, and how I feel that’s… quite a long way removed from what Looking Glass was trying to do? Instead of solving solutions in a natural way, these games have created very nice puzzle worlds. As someone who loves puzzles, this is wonderful, but as someone who loved what Looking Glass and STALKER were doing… I can’t help but feel my own needs and interests aren’t being met.

I mentioned I was playing Hitman. I love it. I love it to pieces. I just did a Suit Only, Silent Assassin run and it was thrilling. But, like… I knew the route the guy would take. I knew The Device that I could interact with to take him off his path. I didn’t feel like I was improvising; instead, I was looking at one of several dozen ways the designers had very carefully placed in my path.

I can see you, designer. I know you’re there.

I couldn’t see the designer in STALKER. Everything felt natural to me. I woke up in a bunk. I met Sidorovich. He asked me to run a job for him. On my way to the job, there were dead animals and a wounded Stalker. He asked me for a med kit. I gave him the med kit. He became my friend. I joined a few Stalkers and we took out a bandit camp.

This will happen in every playthrough. It has been designed. I get that. But it wasn’t like a designer came in shouting PLAY YOUR WAY, ALSO THIS IS A STEALTH GAME, right? I could take out that encampment however I wanted. The more I play, the more tools I find. Sometimes, they randomly pop out of an anomaly. Other times, I find them on the corpses of people who died in a brutal gunfight. In Clear Sky, the gun you wield in the opening cinematic can be found right where you left it. It’s broken, but you can find a man to repair it, and later, you can get ammo for it by eliminating high-level enemies.

If someone says “hey, please help me take out this facility,” that’s all the direction you have. How you take it out is up to you. Stealth it? Sure. Lead mutants to it? Absolutely. Come in under cover of night or rain? You bet. STALKER’s verbs might be limited, but the game itself is so much more flexible. Sneak in through a crack in the wall or charge the front gate.

You play your way, but “your way” doesn’t mean four skill trees, it means “here’s a real, tangible space, with no hint of the designer’s hand. This feels real, like it actually exists in the outskirts of Chernobyl. There are bad men inside. Go get them, using whatever tools you have available to you.”

STALKER feels natural.

In fact, if there was one word I’d use to describe my ideal immersive game, “natural.” Would be that word. When I play Far Cry 2, I am playing a Designed Game. This is the Friendly NPC Zone. There are no friendly NPCs outside it. You can safely kill everyone because they’re bad. Everyone hits hard, so it’s best to snipe them. Make sure to go to the safe house, which looks exactly like all the other safe houses (and has the exact same supplies plus one unique bonus gun) to engage The Buddy System™, recharging your Buddy Meter® so your Buddy® will come to your aid when you go down One Time. If you go down a second time, he will die. This is how it always happens. It will never deviate.

In STALKER, I was caught finding bandits when a man named Edik Dinosaur passed by. He and I had met on occasion on the road. Edik Dinosaur fought valiantly alongside me, because he hated bandits and he liked me. I accidentally shot him during the encounter. He died because of me. That was way more impactful than Far Cry 2’s Super Obvious Buddy System, you know?

It was like I was there. I had to grapple with a sense of guilt at shooting blindly into the brush after a fleeing bandit.

I remember a story of someone playing an old Zelda game, I think it was Ocarina of Time, when their mom walked in and asked them what they were doing. They explained that, to cross a bridge, they had to get some item to unlock it. “Why don’t you just chop down a tree to cross the river?” came the reply. The storyteller said they rolled their eyes at this and thought their mom was crazy, but later, they were like “actually, yeah, why can’t I do that?”

Breath of the Wild let players do just that. It was hailed as a brilliant new Zelda game and seems more beloved than… basically every Zelda game in decades? This is a game where you can shoot a fire arrow, watch the grass catch fire, and use the updrafts to fling yourself into the sky, which lets you drop down on top of your foes for a powerful melee attack.

I have my complaints with the game, which you can read here, but I’m fascinated by the way its overworld avoids just outright telling you how to play and letting you figure out how to solve the problems it presents to you. Instead of being A Puzzle Game, Breath of the Wild’s overworld feels like a stylized yet real space. Its people are alive. Its spaces are not clearly designed to be exploited by specific mechanics. The Designer’s Hand is invisible.

This brings me to Bethesda.

Yes, sure, if you’re an RPG fan, Bethesda probably isn’t going to make you a happy camper. The writing can be stupid at times. They let you do anything, even though the narrative acts as though you’re on an urgent mission. The modular system design makes the world feel super artificial, and you can exploit the game’s systems in dumb, unrealistic ways, like putting a bucket on a person’s head (the AI has no sense of personal space and doesn’t mind) so he can’t see you steal things, or you can craft a million daggers so you can be The Best At Blacksmithing or whatever.

But… the thing is, when I hop into a Bethesda world, it feels relatively real. While you have a lot of skills that make you better at playing specific ways, like Unarmed or Melee or Rifles or Handguns or whatever, you’re never walking into a fight and seeing Five Specific Tool-Driven Routes and deciding which tool is The Best One For The Job.

I feel like too many immersive sims are specifically stealth-driven games with immaculate designer-driven puzzles that give you a dozen different tools to use How You Want (but, hint hint, there are a few very clear routes).

Bethesda games give you a billion tools and let you loose in the world, much like STALKER does. You can shoot someone so much they become afraid of you and run away, but some people are less afraid than others and will fight you to the death. Take out a guy with a good gun, and his buddy will run over, pick it up, and use it against you unless you can get to him first. Approach this fort aggressively, sneak in, talk your way in, do whatever. It’s going to depend as much on who’s in the fort as it is on you. Heck, I think in Skyrim, if you’re wearing Imperial gear, you can walk into an Imperial fort without anyone realizing you’re not an Imperial.

Bethesda games let you play how you want in the moment.

They let you formulate a plan based on what you feel like doing, and sometimes, you’re going to find places you can’t take on because nobody bothered to design a way for a specific character build to attack. Come back later or get creative. It feels more natural than most immersive sims because it’s trying to be a real place, rather than an artfully designed one. Yeah, Bethesda games have rough edges. They do!

And yet… they are immensely successful, and I think it’s because they’re actually trying to send their players to other worlds. They’re not demanding you play stealthily, they’re not giving you the same routes so that every player can play One Specific Play Style. They’re bringing a world to life and letting you live in it. In Skyrim, I can go save the world and become the boss of the Magic College, or I can be a simple elk hunter, peddling my wares.

I guess where I’m at is… we saw one studio trying incredible things in games, and they went under through little fault of their own. Their successors didn’t find the smashing success that the enthusiasts think they deserve, but I think that’s because… well… a lot of the enthusiasts are just looking at one or two games on the spectrum and refusing to make anything else. I think so many of the genre’s fans have a very limited, very specific view of what the genre can be, which is why none of them have managed to recapture the glory of Looking Glass; they’re not making the kind of games Looking Glass was, no matter how much they claim that they are.

There’s too much artifice in the inheritors.

Bethesda’s out there making billions of dollars because their games live up to the Looking Glass ideal more than anything else out there. These other games, this other design philosophy, it’s great. I love it. It’s wonderful and beautiful and fascinating, but when I see people arguing that “nobody wants immersive games,” because those games didn’t break sales records, I want to scream “how would you know? You’ve made something else!”

STALKER sold like 6 million copies. Skyrim’s up at like… what, 20 million now? Breath of the Wild has sold a bajillion copies. Red Dead Redemption 2 is poised to be the second best-selling game of 2018 after Black Ops IIII. Grand Theft Auto V made a billion billion dollars and it’s got some of the most sophisticated immersion elements in video games. Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain is one of the “could this realistically work?” games out there and it made a ton of cash. When you make a game that’s really about existing in a living, breathing world, you can make a shitload of cash.

When you make a stealth game with a lot of Specific Tools and Obvious Routes, you’re making a great video game, but you aren’t making an immersive one. That’s okay, but please don’t argue that we should stop making immersive games because your model didn’t work. The immersive model is thriving. You just made something else.

I just want to escape to other worlds.

[aroworlds]

Aro-Spec Artist Profile: Luthyx

Our next aro-spec creator is @luthyx​, who also goes by Petrichlorine and MUSE-42. They’re better known on this blog for sharing snippets from an in-progress work called Sanction the Skies, celebrating all things a-spec and dragon!

Luthyx is a transmasculine, agender aro-ace creative with mental illnesses, specialising in speculative fiction and digital art, the latter both original and fancontent (primarily for How to Train Your Dragon). You can find their gorgeous art on their DeviantArt account and their writing at @sanctiontheskies​, currently featuring artwork, maps and a wealth of worldbuilding and characterisation teasers. Lastly, if you enjoy Flight Rising, you can check out their dragons under the name Luthyx!

With us Luthyx talks their confidence in their aromanticism, the need to live an authentic life on their terms, the way their characters and worlds become part of them, and writing spec fic as an aro. Their determination to craft and make as they need sparkles in every word and dragon scale, so please let’s give them all our love, encouragement, gratitude, kudos and follows for taking the time to explore what it is to be aromantic and creative.

Can you share with us your story in being aro-spec?

My tale is a fairly straightforward one. By the time I was of the age that most people started experiencing their first crushes, I’d moved to a different state and begun taking an online school, free of the peer pressure that lies ever-present in most traditional classrooms.

Even then, as I began to develop my skills and passion for writing, I’d already begun to see the influence of the omnipresent Romantic Subplot. It was everywhere: books, film, music, poems. I couldn’t so much as flip on the radio without hearing a disillusioned, autotuned cry for help healing a broken heart. I hated it. I still do.

It quickly became apparent to me that I wasn’t like the others. Every once and a while, my mom would drag me to her church, where I’d be forced to endure the company of undisciplined tween boys and catty, Twilight-obsessed girls. It was the girls especially that caught my attention: the sheer passion and fervency with which they discussed who they found hot, what Hogwarts house they were in, and their critiques and praise of The Hunger Games. I found it absurd to objectify people, fantasy or real, like that.

I think this was probably about the time I began to realize that I was agender, too, but that’s a story for another day. Thankfully, I’d already become a headstrong, independent teenager, and I was proud to say that I was different, that my interests were in something that, in my head, was much more important and much more intense than those of others my age.

I can’t recall the first time I heard the term aromantic or the first day that I applied it to myself. I think, deep down, I always knew, and I’ve always been astoundingly proud of it. To me, romance isn’t the be-all-and-end-all of things, but just another life experience I haven’t had, like owning fourteen chihuahuas or going on a warm summer vacation to the Middle East. Not everybody wants to experience those things, and society is completely fine with it - I see no reason as to why they should feel differently about romantic relationships, but I suppose they do. Dealing with the fallout of that bias is their problem.

I am me, and the me I know will not be held down by stereotypes, will not conform to any sort of life script I am handed, will not feel sorrow or remorse for a single experience lost. I’m here for a good time, and my idea of a good time involves doing what I love. Romance is not on that list.

Can you share with us the story behind your creativity?

My creative streak started young. For as long as I’ve known it, I’ve been drawing characters and writing stories. Mind you, the first stories were about Littlest Pet Shop figures and were written with the help of my parents, but it was a start nonetheless. Art, in its many different forms, has always been my form of self-expression. I often wandered off into my imaginary world when I got bored, and when I went to sleep every night, I’d often spend hours just imagining characters doing as they do before drifting off to sleep. I still do that every night - like clockwork.

I think it was when I was in my early teens - thirteen or fourteen, maybe - that I decided I wanted to be a writer. I recall turning to my mother one night and saying, “I wish I could write a book,” still believing that I was too young to attempt such a thing yet. “Nobody says you can’t do it right now!” were the words she gave back to me, and then off I started.

The project I started then is one that’s still ongoing now - a series of books I call Sanction the Skies, featuring dragons, wars, and a good hunk of divine intervention. I’ve worked and reworked it ever since that fateful day, improving the lore, changing the characters, watching my perspective of them evolve and change alongside me. They are a part of me, through and through.

It hasn’t been the easiest journey, but I’m still chipping away at it, ever-determined. It’s been doubly hard to follow my dream because of all of the messages about how impossible it is to be a writer in this day and age, and that you can’t do it without a well-paying side job. My stubborn self says, “To hell with you!” and works on it anyway. I want to write, to draw, to forge, to craft, and the world be damned if it tries to stand in my way.

Are there any particular ways your aro-spec experience is expressed in your art?

The only way it’s expressed is in my writing, where almost all of my characters are explicitly aro. The Romantic Subplot is a tiresome, often badly-done trope, and I’d like to steer away from it altogether. I want to show that a friendship is not worth less than a romance, and that a good story can still be told without the boy getting the girl - or the girl getting the girl for the sake of progressiveness.

What challenges do you face as an aro-spec artist?

Honestly? Not much, at least not yet. I think I may face a bit of pushback in the future because my novel features no romance, but overall, I’ll probably be fine in that regard.

How do you connect to the aro-spec and a-spec communities as an aro-spec person?

I rarely connect with them at all, honestly. Most of the discussion I see is either people screaming about amatonormativity or people asking, “Am I asexual/aromantic if…?” Alternatively, there’s people discussing their experience being partially a-spec or aro-spec, none of which I can relate to. All I want is a place to revel in my identity, to be able to talk about anything BUT romance, to form strong friendships.

Sometimes it hurts me to think that the friends I have now will soon find romantic partners, and I’ll be left behind in the dust as a third wheel. I hope my friends won’t do that, that perhaps I can still make myself heard - but who knows? I’ve had no luck with finding any other aro-spec people in my region at all, unfortunately, so the internet is all I’ve got in that regard. I’ll just have to wait and see what the future holds!

How do you connect to your creative community as an aro-spec person?

I find I connect somewhat decently. I write fantasy and sci-fi, which generally seem to be more acceptable genres to have a lack of romance, especially when a pair of dragons are the main characters. It is alienating from many fandoms, though, because they often focus so much on the romantic partnerships and shipping. Almost every blocked tag in my dash concerns ships, kissing, hugging, romance, children, and anything related to those.

Can you share with us something about your current project?

Ohoho, this is a fun one! Well, right now, I’m working on re-writing Chapter One for the trillionth time after giving the town it takes place in a complete and utter overhaul. I’m also working on making a short comic that takes place in the universe of the book but is unrelated to the main plot, though it features characters and locations that may be explored in future books. I want to do the comic in the hopes of gaining some traction and interest in the books, since I’m rather horrible at advertising at the moment.

Have you any forthcoming works we should look forward to?

Again, the comic! It’s about a con artist who incurs the wrath of the demigodess of misfortune after a con resulted in the death of a sick hatchling. There’s also some stuff with an ancient, precursor species of dragons and one of their final remaining sanctuaries.

[thegiddyowl]

Diagnosis: Lovesick

Here it is! My May the 4th Rebelcaptain fic for @cats-and-metersticks! Got it done just under the wire too.

The prompt was “hurt/comfort” but I know what she likes lol. This is set in the same universe as the Highschool AU. Read it on AO3!

May the 4th be with you!

It wasn’t until she reached the second flight of stairs when Jyn realized that she had been dating Cassian for a little over two months and had never been inside his apartment before. She had driven by it only once when Papa dropped Cassian off back when he finished his second swimming lesson with her. Of course, he had never been in her house either. It wasn’t like their relationship was secret, but they didn’t announce it 24/7 by making out in the hallway or grabbing each other’s butt randomly.

Why did her train of thought always end in butts lately?

Jyn reached the third flight of stairs and slowly made her way down the hall to find apartment 305. When she reached the red door with flecks of white paint near the peephole, she checked her backpack to make sure that yes, Cassian’s homework was in there. Bringing weekend English homework to a sick boyfriend was the perfect excuse to visit his home, maybe even get to know his grandmother a bit better. After inhaling a calming breath, Jyn knocked three times.

Nothing.

She knocked again before pressing her ear against the door and maybe hearing some movement inside.

“Hello? This is Jyn, and I have something for Cassian.”

Was that a cat crying inside? Cassian never said anything about owning a cat. The sound of the door unlocking made her jump and hold herself up straight with a smile on her face.

Cassian opened the door, and he looked like death. He held a pale blue blanket tightly over his hunched shoulders with one hand while he clung to the door knob with the other. The bright pink around his watery eyes and running nose made the rest of him look like a dull sort of pale. She knew he was sick, but not one step away from the grave sick.

“Holy shit,” she said.

He drew up a half-smile. “You have my homework?”

“Yeah, it’s right here,” she said as she handed it to him. “Where’s your grandma?”

“Texas.”

“Texas?”

“Yeah, for the weekend. Visiting my great aunt for her birthday. I would’ve invited you over, but then…” He turned away from her to cough behind the door. “Sorry.”

She shook her head and leaned towards the threshold.

“Do you need anything, or do you want me to stay?”

“I can…,” he stopped to hack his lungs out again. “I can take care of myself. Thank you, though.”

“Well, okay. Text me if you need anything.”

Jyn slowly walked back to the staircase, racking her brain of anything else she could do to help him. It honestly hurt seeing him so sick, and to top it off with his grandma being away too. What happened if he ran out of medicine? Just before he had closed the door, he looked like he might collapse. If she had to guess, he probably had the flu, and she remembered how hard it was to even be able to crawl to the bathroom and not pass out from dizziness.

Not knowing what else to do, Jyn pulled out her phone to text him that, seriously, she’ll do whatever she can to help him, but saw that he beat her to the punch:

Cassian

4:30 pm

Jyn wait

I went back to bed and left the door unlocked

I’m sorry can you lock it plz

4:31 pm

OMW

She jumped back up the stairs two at a time and rushed back to his apartment. The door opened up easily for her when she twisted the knob. She reached around and flicked the lock, but before she closed the door, she called out, “Ok, I locked it.”

No answer. Probably dead asleep already. She opened the door wider and stole a glimpse of the small apartment.

“Cassian? Anyone?”

She stepped inside to take just a peek of the living room that fed into the kitchen, a half wall separating the tile from the white carpet. The cozy living room was stuffed with an old green couch and a matching chair, their wood edgings chipped and scarred from age, a T.V. stacked on top of stand fit to bursting with DVDs, and a rectangular coffee table at the center of it all. Doilies draped over the backs and armrests of the furniture, a doily hung half over the T.V., and a wide square doily served as a table runner for the coffee table. What caught Jyn’s eye was the small alter tucked in the corner of the room. She closed the door quietly before she approached it. A hand-painted statue of the Virgin Mary stood at the very center of the table, high above the short candles, a small vase of white flowers, rosaries, beaded crosses, and a framed black and white photograph of an elderly man on her right and a color photo of a younger couple on her left. His grandfather, she assumed, and his parents.

Jyn shoved her hands in her pockets to squash the urge to touch anything on the alter. It was bad enough she was breaking and entering, and she didn’t need to make it worse by disturbing something so obviously sacred.

Jyn nearly jumped out of her skin when Cassian groaned from the back of the apartment,.

“Cassian? Are you ok?” she asked as she followed his voice down the hall.

“Jyn? Jyn, ’sthat you?”

She went into his room, the only room with the door wide open, and saw Cassian trying to grab a blanket he had managed to kick off but his bed was up too high for him to reach it. Jyn picked it up and tucked it over him and the three blankets he shivered under while trying not to knock over the small trash can overflowing with tissues.

“Yeah. I said that I locked the door, but I didn’t hear you answer so I got worried. Cassian?”

“Hm?” he grunted.

“When is your grandma coming back?”

“Sunday night,” he croaked.

Jyn surveyed his spare room, and felt a little jealous that even on his death bed his room was cleaner than hers, save for the few used tissues that fell out of the trash can and the pile of empty tissue boxes on his night stand table. She looked back at him, saw how weak and exhausted he was from that small walk to the front door and back.

“Are you sure you don’t want me to stay over?” she murmured.

“I don’t want you to get sick.”

“I’ve got the flu shot, so I’m good. I’ll just tell my dad that I’m staying over at Leia’s and she’ll cover for me so I can stay the night.”

He unglued his eyes and stared at her, and she could almost see the internal war going in his head until he pulled up a half-grin.

“I look that bad, huh?”

“You look like shit.”

He didn’t respond to that, his eyes drifting shut again. Jyn touched his burning forehead, and he spilled out crackling whimpers. Maybe she could get him a cold compress in the meantime, help him sleep easier.

“Stay, please?” he whimpered when she removed her hand.

“Yeah,” she whispered, eyeing the thermometer on his nightstand. “Have you taken your temperature?”

“I can’t remember.”

While he took his temperature, she found the washcloths and chilled one under cold water from the bathroom tap. She returned to his room with the cold compress and at tall glass of water. Even though he looked like he had been sweating, his forehead felt a little dryer than she expected. He let the thermometer fall out of his mouth, but picked it up with trembling fingers to put back on the table.

“What’s the verdict?” she asked, then read the digital number, “Oh my god--102.4.”

Cassian said nothing, since he fell asleep again. He stirred with a relieved groan when Jyn pressed the washcloth on his forehead.

“Your fever is way high. Too high. Maybe we should take you to the hospital.”

“No,” he grunted, then winced when he swallowed. He pawed at knob on his table drawer. “I have medicine.”

Jyn opened the drawer expecting to have to dig through a mound of crap like she did with her own drawers, but there was only a comb, a pair of nail clippers, a couple of pens, and a bottle of ibuprofen. Needing to have something to eat with the medicine or risk throwing up everything, Jyn made him some toast and sat on the edge of his bed making notes of what he needed between bites and sips of water: cough drops, throat drops, soup (there was a Chinese place nearby that made really good egg drop soup that Cassian was willing to try), and probably some more tissues. There was money in a coffee can on top of the fridge she could take, but to leave the receipt on his table so he could explain to his grandma later. After refreshing his compress, she left him to sleep and called Leia to pick her up.

Fifteen minutes later, Jyn and Leia were on their way to Jyn’s place in Leia’s silver Prius.

“Yeah, I’m gonna stay the night at Leia’s.  I’m heading home now to get my stuff for practice. I won’t be late, I promise. Okay, Papa. See you tomorrow night,” Jyn said crisply before hanging up. “Thanks again, Leia.”

“Well, it’s lucky that my parents are out of town this weekend, so your alibi is airtight.”

Jyn let out a sigh of relief that twisted in to a groan. “Just say it.”

Leia grinned. “Say what?”

“You know what.”

“That this wasn’t how you imagined spending the night at Cassian’s?”

Jyn groaned again as Leia laughed all the rest of the way to Jyn’s house.

*

When Jyn returned to the apartment, she heard Cassian speaking low and soft. After shrugging off her backpack, setting her small suitcase down, and taking off her shoes, she carried her shopping bags to his room. She hung back when Cassian laid on his side, his eyes closed as he spoke into the phone. Her nose twitched from the sharp smell of Vicks Vapor rub.

“Sí, estoy tomando agua,” he his breathing hitched and he hacked out a cough until he sat up to sip some more water. Cassian smiled at her as she sat down, then frowned when he continued, “Abuela…n-no, Abuela, no soy a levantarme de la cama.”

She texted Leia on her phone while she waited, enjoying listening to him speak in Spanish. She didn’t hear him speak it often, but when he did she liked how playful he sounded as he stretched out his vowels and rolled his r’s and spoke at nearly a mile a minute. In English he spoke much more carefully and seriously, even when he was messing around with her. The only language she knew was level 3 French, and she sounded like a toddler during oral exercises.

“Adiós, Abuela,” Cassian said sweetly before hanging up the phone. “Thank God you came back, Jyn.”

She grinned. “Was that your grandma?”

“Yeah. She was checking up on me.”

“These were the cough drops you wanted, yeah?” she said as she handed the bright yellow bag to him.

“Yes, thank you. Sorry, I know the rub smells awful.”

She shrugged it off. “How about you take your temperature again?”

He stuck the thermometer back in his mouth and struggled to open the bag until Jyn tore the perforated plastic edge off. He slowly unwrapped one of the menthol candies until the thermometer beeped with a new temperature of 101.9.

“That’s good, at least. Hopefully it keeps going down. Would you like some soup now, or some water?”

“Water, please.”

Before she’d forget, she put the receipt on his table and stashed the change back into the coffee can when she went to refill is glass. When she returned, he was already breathing deeper as he sucked on the cough drop.

“So what did you tell your grandma?” she asked him, sitting by his knees on the edge of his bed.

“I said that I would call Kay or Bodhi if I needed anything. You?”

“My dad’s out of town, so I told him I was sleeping over at Leia’s.”

“That was lucky.”

An awkward silence settled over them as the gravity of Jyn staying over at Cassian’s apartment finally made its impact. Jyn teased the fringed edge of one of his blankets drawn over him, a dark blue wool blanket with bands of black and white breaking the color like crests on a wave. Cassian’s hand peeked out from under the covers and grasped her hand.

“Thank you for helping me,” he said, his dark eyes shining in the dim light.

She leaned over and kissed his hot, greasy forehead, tasting the sweat in his stringy bangs. Something unexpectedly light fluttered in her ribcage.

“Hope you get better soon,” she said as she sat up. “I’ll be in the living room if you need anything.”

He squeezed her hand once more, letting it drag as she pulled herself away from his bedside. He fell back asleep with half a grin. Jyn left a crack open in the door as she closed it in case he yelled out for something, then scrubbed her hands and arms in the bathroom before going to the kitchen to pound down some orange chicken and rice. She moved the stack sales ads off the small kitchen table pushed up against the wall before sitting down to eat, the tangy sweet of the orange chicken already masking the new scents of the cozy apartment. Cassian didn’t make a peep while she ate and watched videos on her phone to crowd out the relative silence. Someone upstairs was vacuuming and a bus chugged down the street.

Eventually Jyn moved to doing on her homework, which was just a final draft for an essay on Jane Eyre they had been working for the last few weeks. After an hour of struggling with it she moved on to math and science, completing just as the clock hanging next to the kitchen cabinet struck ten. Christ, how did it get so late so fast without her realizing? Jyn shoved her stuff back in her backpack before getting her pajamas and toothbrush out of her suitcase and checking on the still sleeping Cassian before going into the bathroom to change.

One wouldn’t expect to get flustered in a locked bathroom, but Jyn couldn’t shake the feeling as she shucked off her day clothes and threw on her night ones as quickly as possible, like he was going to burst in the room before she finished buttoning her gray night shirt. She kept the door locked as she brushed her teeth, but when she finished she mechanically opened medicine cabinet and saw the razor, the stout green and black can of shaving cream, the chunky gray roll on--and shut the door, feeling guilty about trespassing. Sure, she’d seen the similar sort of hygiene products in her father’s medicine cabinet, but it was weird seeing it Cassian’s. It reminded her all over again that she was staying by herself at his home, and if he wasn’t sick…

She spat out her toothpaste and rinsed her mouth out. They had only dated for a couple of months, and both silently agreed to take these slow, to not rush into being intimate. Jyn took down her ponytail and brushed her hair out, her eyes roving over the small bathroom. She was making a big deal out of nothing! He shared the bathroom with his grandmother, for Christ’s sake, even though she felt like she was trapped in this tile room with his overwhelming scent of musk and grass and--

And she needed to get out.

Jyn stumbled out, Cassian’s door still closed thank God, and headed back into the living room. Still she felt cloistered by his scent, so she cracked open the window and wafted the fresh air in until her thrumming heart calmed down. When she sank down on the couch, she heard a door down the hall squeaked open, a couple of thudding footsteps, and another door opened and closed. The walls were thinner than she realized when she could hear Cassian pee just a few feet away from her. He flushed and, instead of going back to bed, shuffled down the hall in slow, groaning steps.

Cassian emerged still flush in the face and wearing a thin sheen of sick sweat on his cheeks. He cinched the blue wool blanket hanging over his shoulders with one hand while the other leaned against the wall and skated over to the back of the chair for balance.

“Hey,” he croaked.

“Hey.”

He plopped next to her on couch, his head lolling from exhaustion. Jyn scooted closer to him

“I brought soup back if you want it. Or do you want tea?”

“I want to die.”

“You can’t die on me yet. You still have to take me to prom.”

He smiled and snorted a laugh. “Soup, then. Please.”

After he directed her to the mugs, Jyn heated up the egg drop soup in one and poked him awake before giving it to him. She sat right next to him, keeping an eye on his grip.

“This is actually pretty good.”

“Yeah, and it’s good if you have a sore throat.”

He leaned into her. “It’s freezing in here. Why is the window open?”

Now it was her turn to flush.

“Because it’s stuffy and you’re sick. I can close it.”

“No, leave it open. I don’t want you to get sick. It sucks and everything hurts.” He sipped more of the soup, and grumbled, “Everything fucking hurts.”

His hand started to shake, so she held the bottom of the mug until he let go. At least he drank most of his soup. If he kept it down and slept some more, he’d probably feel better in the morning.

“Last time I got really sick, I couldn’t even walk. I had to crawl to the bathroom,” Jyn said as she rubbed his back. “My mom would get me egg drop soup and we’d watch movies when I was awake. Do you want to watch a movie?”

They ended up watching Warm Bodies, probably because Cassian related with the walking dead at that point, but also because it was a funny movie. Jyn turned off the lights, closed the window, and sat right next to him. He sagged against her shoulder, then she nudged him into resting his head in her lap. She sat straight up, combing his hair with her fingers until her shoulders slumped against the couch.

“This is better,” he mumbled. “Do you think in fifty years we’ll be like this?”

“That’d be nice,” she answered, feeling the light flutter in her chest again.

Cassian’s eyes flitted to the alter before he nuzzled against her knees. “It would.”

Exhaustion does funny things to a person.

Jyn woke up on the couch, the red and white menu screen playing quietly in the background. Cassian’s head rested on her abdomen, and his body slept between her legs. She breathed slowly, his head rising a little with every breath, but he didn’t seem to notice that she was awake. He just continued to snooze on, one hand curled around her waist. It was so adorable she couldn’t help but kiss him on the top of his head. She could smell the vapor rub, the cough drop, the shaving cream, the deodorant, and beneath all of that, his scent that belonged to no one else.

She kissed his head until she drifted off again, waking only when Cassian whispered her name while he played with the ends of her hair. Feeling his forehead, his fever was still there but not as hellish as the night before.

Jyn, however, felt a little scratchiness in her throat.

[cherrycapturedwolf]

suuuuuper belated fic prompt fill for @ourvelvetpetals for “You keep reserving the good study room in the corner of the library with the windows” -- hope you feel better soon from being sick and stuff, dear!

also, what better way to celebrate the new anime than with a ficlet? <3

(omg i just realized that this message says 2 YEARS AGO lmaooooo)

brief snippet:

Her legs scream in protest from the climb up of five flights of stairs but she makes the run within seconds, stopping once she gets there to lean an arm against the door of her favorite study room.

She gives herself a minute to catch her breath before lifting her head to look up at the small digital screen right next to the door.

Her face falls.

This room has been reserved by Li Syaoran.

read the rest under the cut ;)

Sakura-chan.

A light and airy voice calls out to her from afar. She turns in the darkness, expecting to see someone there, but ---

There’s nothing. The sound seems to be echoing back to her from a distance beyond her reality. If only she could reach out and grasp it in her hands, hold onto something thicker than sand, more solid than water. But then ---

“Sakura-chan!”

With a jolt, Sakura snaps open her eyes and sits up at once. Except, she doesn’t pull herself up so much as flail her arms in a frantic scramble until she’s seated in an upright position. Mind still fuzzy, she attempts to untangle herself from her blankets. Her legs kick against the silky fabric until, with a drop of her stomach, she slips.

“Hoe!!”

The solid floor hits her hard beneath the shoulder, the pain slightly cushioned by her blanket.

“I-itai...”

A delicate, melodious giggle bubbles out loud above her. Craning her head around, Sakura looks up.

Tomoyo-chan sits at her desk a few feet away from her, holding an iPhone up to her face. The sound of a snapshot clicks and Sakura ducks her head back into her blankets, her cheeks burning.

“T-Tomoyo-chan?” she says instead. “What time is it?”

“Your alarm rang,” Tomoyo answers. “Five minutes ago, actually."

Something in Sakura mind clinks into place. Her alarm. Set to 1:45pm. Meant to wake her so she could get to the library before...

“Hoe!!!”

Wriggling herself out of the blankets, she throws the sheets off of her and grabs her phone from the bed.

1:51pm.

“I’ve gotta go,” Sakura says as she grabs two of her textbooks from her desk and stuffs it in her backpack. “Be back around six!”

Bag secure on her back, Sakura runs out of the room and down the flight of stairs at top speed. With a final coming up in two days, she’s been banking on setting up the perfect environment for studying all week. She cannot let anything come between her and her study-habit-fenshui plans. She needs to get to the library before 2 -- and not just at 2, but before! Otherwise... otherwise...

Sakura skids to a halt in front of the large, familiar building she’s spent hours slaving away at for the last two years and pauses to catch her breath. She looks to her left, then to her right. No sign of him yet.

She checks her watch. 1:57pm. Is she early enough?

Without further ado, she marches right up the steps and into the library. Doing her best to stay below the speed limit of what might be considered inappropriate for a library, she walks as fast as she can up the curved stairway, headed for the fifth floor.

She’s panting and out of breath when she reaches the top, clutching the stitch at her side. Looking up, she spots her objective.

Please be available, please be available, please be available!

Looking to make sure there’s not a single library staff in sight along her walk from the stairs to the other side of the room, she makes a beeline towards the large, glass window paned walls. Her legs scream in protest from the climb up of five flights of stairs but she makes the run within seconds, stopping once she gets there to lean an arm against the door of her favorite study room.

She gives herself a minute to catch her breath before lifting her head to look up at the small digital screen right next to the door.

Her face falls.

This room has been reserved by Li Syaoran.

Li Syaoran, she repeats in her head. She’s never even seen this guy and she already holds a grudge. Every week, without fail, no matter how many different times of the day she tries to show up, Sakura always comes face to face with the announcement that Li Syaoran has reserved the room. This means, of course, that the door is always locked upon arrival but she’s always been too polite to try and break in.

However, it’s been ages since she’s seen her favorite study room. Ages. The windows here face the west side of the school, right above the row of cherry blossom trees lining the walk to the student center, and she just --- she misses it so much. Whoever Li Syaoran is, she’s starting to suspect that he lives here. Either way, he definitely does not deserve to have this room for the rest of her college career. It just isn’t fair.

No. This has to stop. She has a final in two days. It’s come too far.

Gearing herself up for a confrontation, she curls her right hand into a fist and pounds on the door at the highest acceptable volume she can manage.

A few seconds pass before she hears the scraping of a chair on the floor and footsteps on the other side of the wall.

The door creaks open. A pair of amber eyes blink down at her, but it’s all she can really see of the guy.

“Can I help you?”

“A-ano...Are you Li Syaoran?”

The fired up rage she had felt from just a few seconds ago seems to have faded the moment she finds herself face to face with the guy. The confrontation had felt much easier in her head.

“Uh, yeah?” he looks around behind her, trying to gauge what the situation is.

First impression? A little rude, she sniffs. No polite greeting, no apologies, not even a gracious avoidance of the eyes. Instead, he’s staring straight at her, one eyebrow raised, and a shameless scowl upon his lips.

“I... I---” Just say it, Sakura!

“I want to use this study room,” she blurts out. Guilt bubbles in her stomach, so she adds, “Please.”

Li Syaoran stares at her for a few seconds, and then---

“Sorry, I was here first,” Li-kun responds. He backs away and shifts to close the door, but no. No, she can’t lose her chance.

Moving fast, Sakura sticks her foot out right as the door swings shut. She feels a quick, momentary pain as it bounces back and, seizing her chance, pushes her way into the room.

“Oi!” he hisses quietly as he backs into the wall. Sakura closes the door behind her and rounds on him.

“You’ve had this study room all to yourself for the last three weeks,” she says, anger rising again inside of her. “Please, can I just use it this one time? It’s only fair.”

The boy folds his arms and stands his ground.

“Fairness is not what dictates who uses this room,” he replies. “It’s a first come first serve basis. I got here first.”

“Please,” Sakura bows her head, trying to be patient. “I have a final in two days.”

“And that’s relevant... how?” he asks.

“I focus best when I’m here,” she tries. “The cherry blossoms outside help calm me and make me feel... supported.”

Silence follows. Sakura doesn’t dare look up into his face just yet.

“I know it sounds silly, but it really helps,” she continues. “You can still stay here. I just want to study here. Please.”

Li Syaoran doesn’t say anything for a long time. Sakura starts counting the tiles on the floor beneath her. Anything to stop herself from worrying too much over what he’ll say next...

She hears a sigh and then the scraping of two chairs as they’re pulled out from under the table. Li Syaoran takes a seat. Sakura looks up just a bit to peek out at him.

He’s staring down at his books as though no interruption has happened at all. Sakura lifts her head and blinks up at him.

“A-ano... is that a yes?” she asks.

“What does it look like?” he replies. Without looking up from his work, he gestures to the second chair he’s pulled out adjacent from him.

Sakura looks down at it before putting two and two together. He pulled the chair out for her!

“Oh!” she says as she quickly sits down in it. “Thank you.”

Li Syaoran continues to look down, but she could’ve sworn she saw the faintest shadow of a smile.

“My name is Kinomoto Sakura,” she says, holding out a hand to him. “Sorry for being short with you earlier. I’m really grateful you’re letting me stay.”

Li Syaoran lifts his head just enough to look at her hand before turning his head away to face the far wall.

“Li Syaoran,” he mumbles. He doesn’t take her hand, so she drops it back down to the table.

Sakura gives a small giggle, causing him to turn back around to face her.

“I know,” she says, beaming widely at him.

“T-this --- This doesn’t mean it’s going to be a regular thing though,” he warns, throwing her another scowl, his eyes not quite meeting hers.

“I’ll take whatever I can get,” she grins.

“Just --- just study,” he says before turning back to his textbook.

Perhaps he wasn’t so bad after all.

[kelmcdonald]

Conventions Prep and Set Up

New Post has been published on http://sorcery101.net/news/conventions-prep-and-set-up/

Conventions Prep and Set Up

Like I said in January most of my money comes from conventions.  It’s from 10-12 different conventions a year. Here’s a break down of all the prep which goes into those trips.

HOW I PICK SHOWS

First, I need to pick which shows I go to. Since, convention sales are a big part of my income is really comes down to profit margins. I go back to any show where I have made $500 profit. (Though I might change that rule to 175 profits per day because more and more shows are becoming longer than 3 days. ) So after everything is paid for I need to take home at least $500. Some times I can make a low sales show work because I live close by or can crash at a friends house. For example, Rose City Comic Con has my lowest sales of my regular shows but I live in Portland and on the same lightrail line as the convention center. So my costs are $5 a day in public transit tickets and the table cost which is $200.  The other side of this is sometimes it means not returning to shows where I can have fun and see a lot of friends. I’m probably never going back to MoCCA because the tables are $450 (last I checked a few years ago) and a plane ticket cross country is $400-600. So it means even if I crash at a friends how I would need to sales twice as much as Rose City to just break even.

Now I am always looking for new shows, especially ones in February, June, August, and November. Those months usually don’t have shows. When I go to a new show I ask friends who have been and look at plane tickets. I try to figure out how sales will go. Right now, I’ve on the fence about trying Heroes Con, DINK, and Denver Comic Con.  I have heard good things from several friends but in both cases but I need to cover a hotel, flight, and table. So I might give one a try in 2019, but this year is out. Also keep wanting to hit up Wondercon, which would be much easier, but it keeps conflicting with Anime Boston which is one of my best shows. This year was one of the few times that conflict didn’t haven’t but I got waitlisted.

When I go to a new show I bring my 2 test boxes. My 2 test boxes includes:

10 of each Cautionary Fables and Fairy Tales

10 of Can I Pet Your Werewolf

15 Misfits of Avalon vol 1

5 Misfits of Avalon vol 2

5 Misfits of Avalon vol 3

15 Fame and Misfortune

15 Better to Find You With

20 From Scratch

5 Sorcery 101 vol 1

2 Sorcery 101 vol 2

If I sell all of this that will make me 1500 gross. In most cases that will get me over my $500 profit goal. Part of why I’m hesitant about Heroes Con and the others is I would have to sell all of it to make goal. Even then I might not.

PREP

Now that the shows are picked for the year, I try to make sure I got everything organized. Every December I go through all my past convention notes. I box up or order anything I’ll need for that con every. In my closet right now are several boxes that have written on their side:

AB (short for Anime Boston)

1 of 5

Holds BTFYW/BUFFY/MOA1 (short for The Better to Find You With, Buffy, and Misfits of Avalon vol 1 respectively)

On the inside flap of the box it will say

Buffy – 10

BTFYW – 40

MOA1 – 40

So as soon as I open the box I know exactly what is inside.

I always take as many books as I sold the year before rounded up to the nearest interval of 5. If I sold out I’ll add 5-10 to that number. So in this case Misfits sold 39 copies at Anime Boston last year, which is why I’m bringing 40.

Doing this lets me know if I need to order or reprint books before the season starts. Like I bought 200 copies of Misfits of Avalon and 50 copies of Buffy from Darkhorse to have them at shows through the whole year. It’s not that I don’t expect Buffy to sell, but more I want my con sales to focus on my creator owned things rather than work for hire so I limited Buffy sales to 10 – 5 per show.

I also have a con kit box that goes to every show. In that is:

Promo Flyers

Sharpies

Cough drops

Aleve (my preferred headache medicine)

Tums

Ear plugs

Square Reader

Sold out form

This will get update before every show. Promo flyers are obviously so people can find me website later. Sharpies are for signing and sketching in books. Square reader is how I take credit card sales at shows. Paypal also makes one but I like Square better. Cough drops, Aleve, and Tums are for if I start to feel sick during the show. Usually I use Fisherman’s Friend cause they are stronger than other cough drops. Since I mostly sell books and books are heavy I do my best not to over bring those. That makes the sold out form important.

If has a blue border to match the price tags and table cloth on my con display which is the same blue on my website. I circle the book or write what they want in the blank space. I usually write the persons name and address cause I have an easier time writing my own hardwriting. Basically, someone can pay for a book or original page at the con and I will ship it to them for free.

GETTING TO THE SHOW

Books are heavy and that is mostly what I sell. This isn’t much of a problem if I’m car pooling with a friend. Load the car up and go. If I need to fly to a convention, I used to try to fly Virgin America cause they let you check up to 10 bags. But they got bought by Alaska Airlines. I can still check up to like 10 bags but it’s way more expensive. So this year I will mail them ahead. I try to send them a month ahead of me. If the books get lost, then I’ll check them.

Mailing them ahead of time is also why that “AB box 1 of 5” label is important. Because then I know which box got lost and what was in it.

If I’m not staying with a friend and I’m mailing stuff ahead of me, I need to call the hotel or convention to find out how long the hotel/con will hold my books and if there is a fee.

All of my display stuff that I’ll explain in the next part, fits into a large suitcase that I always check.

DISPLAY AT THE SHOW

The last step before the show begins is my display. I tried to brand my display with the same color scheme as my website. I linked you to my Sold Out Form and that blue is color of my table cloth and the color of my price tags.

Books are where I make most of my money and what I want people to focus on. They are front and center. My books get displayed on a colaspable shelf like this one . It is 18 inches wide which works for me because all my books are 6 inches by 9 inches or 9 inches by 6 inches. I keep meaning to paint it black or blue so it will also match my website. This keeps all my books upright and facing people who are browsing. It also keeps them close to eye level. All the covers are clearing visible. Some of the books in the back get hidden, and because of that I try to group books vertically. So Misfits of Avalon vol 3 is in front of the Misfits of Avalon vol 2 which is in front of Misfits of Avalon vol 1. Someone who is familiar with the book will still see the series clearly, but volume 3 in front will let people who have other volumes there is a new book. But the title is still clear so that new people can flip through the series. Cautionary Fables and Fairy Tales also gets stacked vertically.

For each book I have made a price tag. They are 10 inches tall and 6 inches wide. They fit nicely behind each book and poke out. Sorcery 101’s price tag is 7 inches tall and 9 inches wide for the same reason. I do individual price tags because of something I learned from reading “Why We By: The Science of Shopping.” People only spend like 30 seconds reading signs. So a giant price list is less likely to me read than an individual price tag.

I have tote bags and still haven’t quite figured out how to display them. I try to find a place to lay them flat so the design is clear.

Also laying flat is my portfolio. I don’t usually sell prints because I’ve had better luck selling books. Prints of my character did okayish. But most people I sell to at shows have never heard of me and it’s easier to tell someone to try a book than to grab a print of a character they don’t know (And I don’t think people should sell fanart.) Also, laying flat is my price list for commissions. Commissions I could make more money off of if I put more focus on them. However, I don’t really like to do commissions at shows. I’d rather stay  in selling/pitching mode rather than switch back and forth between that and drawing mode. Also, I ink traditionally so it’s hard to make my work portable. All in all, I’m okay with them being an after thought. If you want a commission, you are better off shooting me an email before the show and picking it up there. I did recently get an ipad pro to draw digitally. So I might try to do digital commissions at shows now that I can be less concerned with bring all my inking stuff.

I also have two banners behind me. They are both the tallest version of this banner.   I picked that one because while most people have 3 foot wide banners, the 2 foot wide one will fit in my large suitcase. But the 3 foot one doesn’t. One design is the blue black and white color scheme of my website. That one has my name on it and characters from different comics. I might redesign it in a year or so. The other design has Danny lighting his cigarette and has Sorcery 101’s logo on it. The Kel McDonald banner is more helpful for people who already know me. The Sorcery 101 banner brings over more people who don’t know me. They ask about the title which leads to my sales pitch. The Sorcery 101 banner is also easier to spot cause it is bring orange. So if you need to design a banner and are still unknown, maybe make a banner for your comic rather than you. Both of these banners are VERY TALL.  They are hard to miss.

Giving someone a clear way to find you is important. I think that makes one of the most popular ways to display prints at shows a bad idea. I see it most at anime cons, but it happens are every show. I think it’s just more prevalent at animecons because the artists lean younger and therefore are less likely to have the funds for a big banner. There is a thin wall of prints taped together and only a small space for the artist to poke their head out. If you google anime con display you get 9 million examples of this. I don’t want to pick on anyone by grabbing a picture so I drew what I’m talking about.

First off, that display is flimsy and I’ve seen more then one fall over. Second, they are hard to put. My display can be put up by just me and takes ten minutes or so. Also, the sign being in front of the table means when the con floor is crowded someone can’t see it and therefore find you. Then the mass of images will blur together with nothing standing out from far away. If you and several other people in a row have a display like this is will be hard for someone to see you. And finally, this wall puts a wall between you and the person who wants to buy stuff. It’s hard to see if someone is browsing through that tiny window and hard to engage with a customer. If you want to do a print wall, try to put it behind you rather than in front of you. You should be visible. Part of why folks are coming to cons is to talk to/see you.

And the final part of my display is me. I’m not a very fashionable person. But I try to dress nicer than I usually do with a button up shirt. I pick button up shirts with a collar and a front pocket that has a button flap. The front pocket is where I put my large bills so the flap is to make it so they aren’t visible. Obviously most people have a cash box or bag, but I worry about losing it/forgetting it. I also wear a tie that matches Danny’s piano key tie. So I match my books and merch a little too. Now that Sorcery 101 is done I might switch to something kinda werewolfy if I can find it.

And all that is before the show even starts. Next month I’ll post about at the show stuff.