#i was sleeping on reed's nose and I wish I still was

[tricornonthecob]

did all of the continental army's top brass have the same fucking nose or did Peale just black out when it came time to paint the noses and made the same one every time

[mystical-flute]

Checkered: Chapter 6

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There was no sense of time in the Field of Reeds. Days blend into weeks bled into months bled into millennia. There was a time when it had been possible to sort of gauge how long it had been, when her children and grandchildren had met her here, but once everyone she had known in life had joined her, everything had bled together

She had known since coming to the Field of Reeds that she would eventually go back to Earth, to help guide the spirit of the Puzzle to come to home, where he had belonged for thousands of years.

The problem with this was that she wasn’t sure who the Spirit of the Puzzle even was. She knew someone had been sealed away, but who he was or what even happened had been lost, and Osiris had not been forthcoming in the answers. How was she supposed to help the Puzzle’s spirit get to the Field of Reeds if she didn’t know who they were and what even happened to lock them into one of the items?

But here she was, standing in front of the veil between the living world and the world of the dead,

"You will be an excellent guide, Azila," her husband said, leaning to press his lips against her forehead. "I wish you luck. See you soon."

Azila nodded. "I will be back as soon as I can."

It was a rare gift, to be able to travel to and from the realms, and she intended to embrace every second of it that she would.

Stepping through, Azila found herself in a dark room, lit by only what was coming in through the cracks of the fabric covering the window.

A shifting noise caught her attention, and she glanced over to find a bed with a sleeping young woman inside it. Her wrist was out from under the covers, and there was the Bracelet, visible in the moonlight.

Azila smiled. So it was another young woman who ended up with her bracelet. Though it was dark, she could see that there were… very similar features between the two of them. The shape of their noses, wavy hair, though this girl was missing the blonde strands Azila was currently sporting.

Strange, she had stopped dyeing her hair long before she went into the Field of Reeds. Why would Osiris had dressed her like this? So many mysteries to unravel, and yet she was supposed to help escort the Spirit of the Puzzle onward?

She looked around the bedroom, seeing what looked to be a large, ornate lantern on the bedside table next to a small rectangle with a string attached to one end. Next to the window was what Azila assumed was a work desk, with a strange closed rectangle with another long string attaching itself out the back of the rectangle and into the wall behind the desk. Against the wall was a large shelf full of tomes. The girl liked to read! How lovely!

Azila moved over to the shelf to take a look at the tomes.

Geography, mathematics, Japanese history (Japan… is that where she was?), Ancient Egyptian history -

"Ancient? Well I'm sure that can't be right…"

"What the hell? Who are you?!"

Azila turned to find the young woman sitting up in bed and switching the lantern on. Interesting - so she could do it without fire? Still, Azila gave her a polite smile. "Oh wonderful, you're awake! My name is Azila. I was sent down here to help the Spirit of the Puzzle discover who he is, and train you in the art of shadow magic."

The girl blinked at her several times, then rubbed her eyes and heaved in a breath before picking up the brick and staring at it. "I'm dreaming. It's three-thirty in the morning, I have brunch with KC at eleven, and I've got exams next week. I'm on edge. This is a dream."

"You are most certainly not dreaming," Azila scoffed, making her way over to the bed just as the girl flopped back down and switched off the lantern. "Young lady, I mean it. This is not a dream, and it is important that you listen."

The girl let out a groan and opened her eyes. "You don't have to sound like my mom when you talk to me y'know."

Azila chuckled softly. "Forgive me. I spent most of my life as a mother and grandmother. It comes naturally."

"Okay, okay fine. If all of this is real and you're really a ghost come down from on high, who exactly are you and who sent you?"

Finally, the girl was amenable to discussion, and Azila smiled as she settled - or settled as much as a spirit could - on the end of the bed. "As I said, my name is Azila, and I was sent down by the god Osiris to help guide the Puzzle's spirit to the Field of Reeds."

The girl gestured to the door. "Well, he's in the living room with my cousin. Have fun."

Azila chuckled again. "I'm afraid it's not that simple. The truth is, I don't even know who the Spirit of the Puzzle was. Just that I have to help him… somehow."

"Oh my god," the girl muttered, putting her head in her hands and rubbing her temples. "If you don't even know who he is, how are you supposed to help him?"

"He owned a Millennium Item, so he must have been someone important to those of us in Court. That is why it is important that he come to the Field of Reeds… there are so many people waiting for him."

The girl stared at her in sleepy confusion. "So, let me get this straight. You have no memory of this guy, but you think he's super important that you and a bunch of other ghosts have been waiting for him in the afterlife. And you're only here because Osiris told you to?"

"Yes, now you're getting it!"

"You picked the wrong girl to try and help you with this," she sighed. "I'm not even going to be living here in a few months."

Azila shook her head. "Whatever you might believe, you will be involved. The Items do not choose their owners lightly. You are meant to wield the powers of the Bracelet. Besides, have you not noticed that we look similar despite being born years and years apart?"

The girl blinked again, but turned the lantern back on to get a better look, squinting in confusion. "Your hair… you have wavy hair like me, the black and magenta like me… but you have a streak of blonde framing your face, like the men in my family. I don't understand. Why do we look alike?"

"Fate. It is the most powerful force in the world. And I will teach you - "

"I knew there was another soul here."

The girl blinked in surprise at the sudden arrival of another, the room door cracked open. "Yugi, I'm fine. Go back to bed."

Azila stared in horror as the figure approached. "No, it is not fine. Look at his forehead. The symbol there…"

The girl focused on the spirit (it was a spirit in charge, not a human, she could tell), before her eyes widened and she got out of the bed. "Wait - hold on. Who are you?"

The spirit grinned, though Azila could see - and sense - nothing but malice. "Consider me a guardian angel. I will determine if this spirit is actually safe or not."

"Where's Yugi?"

The spirit shrugged. "He is resting. He had such a tiring day. Everything with Ushio was exhausting. Surely you know that, Reika."

The girl - Reika - shuddered. "How do you know my name?"

The spirit tapped his temple. "Yugi's memories are available to me."

"Well get out of his head and get out of my room."

"I will… just as soon as I make sure this spirit means no harm."

The room began to warp, and Azila instantly felt the old, familiar tug of the shadows and the games they played. Reaching out with her hand, she could feel the power of the bracelet radiating, tugging and pulling and wanting to be free. Reika was woefully unprepared for this, especially against an opponent as unstable as… whoever this was.

"You are not the only one experienced in the Games," Azila said, her fingertips brushing against the bracelet and drawing its power to her, felt the DiaDhank form on her arm. She didn't want to - she really didn't want to - but she would summon what she needed to if it meant stopping this boy. "I will be your opponent and prove to you that I am not the hostile spirit here."

The Puzzle's spirit laughed. "Are you implying that I am?"

Azila raised a brow. "Yes."

"Interesting," the spirit said, tilting his head before flicking his wrist.

Reika went sent flying back onto the bed, the covers wrapping around her and binding her down onto the mattress despite her struggles.

"What do you have in mind for this Game?" Azila asked.

"I call it Truths and Lies. We each write down facts about ourselves and one lie. Then the other must guess which is the lie."

Azila raised a brow. It sounded simple enough, but these games never were. "And what does the loser get punished with?"

"Banishment."

Azila tilted her head in confusion, unsure if the spirit had played many of these games or if he just hadn't played one with another spirit. Azila hadn't either, but she was fairly certain neither of them would be able to be banished. She was at the mercy of a god, and he was bound to the puzzle itself.

But she knew the rules of a Shadow Game, and so she nodded, taking a seat at the table that had materialized in Reika's bedroom. "I accept your terms. Let's begin."

The pen she wrote with was strange, not nearly like the ones she used when she was alive, but she managed to write down her list.

I am a Great Royal Wife

I am a healer

I am the youngest of seven children.

The spirit laughed as he picked up the paper. "Do you want to lose? Clearly the lie is that you're a Great Royal Wife!" The shadows swirled around him, but she kept her gaze even with him as she spoke.

"I was the eldest, and I only had four siblings."

"'Only?'" came Reika's mutter of disbelief.

The shadows swirled around her, and as the Puzzle's spirit looked at her in horror, she only gave him pity.

"I do not know your name, nor do I know who you were in life, but I make a promise to you that I am only here to help you, so that one day, you can gain entrance to the Field of Reeds with your memories in tact," Azila said carefully. The shadows did not move from around her, but stayed pointed at him in warning. "I do not wish to bring harm to any of the humans. Nor will you be banished. We must work together to find out what is happening."

The Spirit looked at her, no longer looking manic, but instead quite sad, and very, very, young. "You… want to help me? How?"

"I do not know. But I do know that our god Osiris was the one to send me down… you are meant to come home to the Field of Reeds, I promise. But you cannot do so if you keep running around harming people with the Games. That was never what these powers were for."

Not exactly true, but the less insanity there was surrounding them, the better the world at large would be.

The spirit nodded, and the shadows began to vanish, freeing Reika from the bedding. Azila watched as the human scrambled off the bed with wide eyes.

"Yugi?" she whispered when the shadows completely disappeared, and the spirit retreated back into the puzzle in a flash of gold.

The boy, Yugi, snapped his head up in surprise. "Reika! What - "

(The spirit and Yugi were disconnected… interesting)

"This… is going to be a very long conversation that we can finish tomorrow but… you need to know that what gramps told us about the shadow games is true. They're real. And… your puzzle has a ghost in it."

Yugi stared at her. "Wait, the Shadow Games? So that means Ushio playing in the dirt and thinking it and the leaves were money…"

"He was being punished for his transgressions," Azila said, coming into Yugi's view. "I have seen that game used before, on con men."

Yugi blinked. "Who - "

"My item has a ghost attached to it too. This one is Azila. She wants to help us figure everything out," Reika explained, rubbing at her eyes. "But we really should get some more sleep."

Yugi nodded, but hesitated in turning around. "I… don't want him to take control of my body again."

"I will keep watch over you," Azila said. "I am well-equipped in the art of the shadows as well. You will be safe to sleep, I promise."

Yugi nodded and began to make his way out of the room. Azila turned back to look at Reika, who was sliding back under the covers.

"Thank you, Azila…" Reika said.

Azila smiled. "You are very welcome. Get some rest."

And with that, she followed Yugi out of the room.

-

"Yugi, I've got some books on Ancient Egypt in my room, if you want to take a look at them. See if you can figure anything out about… all of this," she said the next morning, glancing at Yugi with a shrug.

Yugi nodded. "Thanks Reika. Do you mind if I invite Anzu over too?"

"Of course not. Just don't make a mess and don't eat all of our food. The takeout menus are in the drawer next to the stove if you get hungry again and I'm not home," she replied as she made her way to the door. "I'll be back as soon as I can."

She paused at the mailbox upon realizing it had mail in it, and felt her eyes widen when she saw what exactly had been sent priority.

A letter - from the University of Kyoto.

Reika practically sprinted to her car and tore the letter open the moment she was alone.

Dear Miss Mutou,

Congratulations! You have been accepted to the University of Kyoto's Music Education program -

She stopped reading. That was the only sentence she needed for now. The rest would come later, after brunch, after the weird conversation with Yugi about the Shadow Games. For now, it was time to be a member of the Young Five.

"You cut it close this morning, Miss Reika," Lector said as she rushed into the restaurant's private room. "It's not like you."

Reika bowed deeply before she made her way to the table and took a seat next to him. "Apologies, Mister Lector. I received some big news just as I was leaving and I needed a moment to gather myself."

"Oh? Good news I hope."

"Yes sir. I got accepted to Kyoto for their music education program."

Lector grinned. "Well that is excellent news Miss Reika. Congratulations! I suppose that means all of you now know what your plans are for after graduation."

"A toast is in order then," Seto said. He was sitting at the head of the table and radiating an aura of being in charge despite five men in the room having decades on him in life and work experience. A wave of his hand, and servers were arriving with wine and sparkling cider, quickly placing them on the table. "To the Young Five. May the dedication and commitment they have shown to KaibaCorp carry them into their future endeavors, and may they excel at all they choose to do."

The glasses clinked together gently, and she took a sip of the cloyingly sweet liquid.

"Hey Reika! What's that design on your bracelet?" Mokuba piped up.

She blinked in surprise, momentarily forgetting what she was wearing. "I - oh, it's an artifact my grandfather brought me from one of his expeditions in Egypt. He gave it to me when I was nine."

"Hold on, didn't you tell me years ago you said you wouldn't wear it unless Yugi finished that puzzle?" Noah asked with a frown.

"And I kept my word. He finished it last night."

Noah stared at her. "He did? It was taking him so long I never thought it would happen!"

"Heh, yeah, neither did I."

"Is it true? Do they actually have powerful ancient magic? Your grandfather mentioned that once, didn't he?"

Mokuba's eyes widened, but Seto's rolled. She already knew how this conversation was going to go, but she soldiered on.

"Ah - right, that's the rumor," looking at Mokuba, she continued. "The bracelet and Yugi's puzzle are part of a set of ancient objects known as the Millennium Items. There are only eight of them in the world. Each one is said to contain powerful, dark shadow magic."

"Really?" Mokuba gasped. "Like what?"

"Mokuba," Seto said sharply. "Don't be ridiculous. None of that is real."

Mokuba frowned and turned back to Seto, but Noah rolled his eyes.

"It's real," she murmured, leaning closer to Noah. "The Shadow Games, the spirits… all of it. We don't know what it means but… gramps wasn't just telling us scary stories."

Noah's voice was low and level with hers. "What are you going to do?"

"Research, I guess. Deal with whatever comes our way. I don't think this is something e can avoid, Noah."

"You are correct. It is not."

She rolled her neck in an attempt to shake off the uneasy feeling of hearing Azila's voice in her head.

"Reika?" Noah murmured.

"It's fine," she said. "I'm fine."

So why were her hands shaking?

—

"Are you sure you don't want your father and I to check on you?" her mother asked, worry clear on her face even on the small cell phone screen.

Reika groaned and rolled her eyes. "Mom, I'm fine, I promise. The nurse said almost everyone gets a cold this time of year."

After not being sick once during the first semester of university, luck had not been on her side going into the second, and instead of being able to attend Yugi's first non-tabletop duel, she was being forced to watch it via streaming.

"You can call us at any time if you need us. We'll be on a train in seconds," her father added. "With food and medication."

She didn't have the heart to tell them Seto had already sent her a large care package with just those things. "I know you will, and I'm fine for now, I promise. I've got soup and honey. and tea. It'll tide me over until tomorrow. I'm going to be watching the duel tonight so I'll have something that makes me happy."

Her mother sighed. "Don't stay up too late! Go straight to bed once the duel is over."

"I will, promise."

Or not.

With a sigh, she ended the call with her parents and connected to the stream Noah had sent her to watch the duel. Yugi and his friends were just entering the arena, with the Young Five already sitting in the stands with Mokuba and Noah. Seto was standing in his spot at one end of the area already, a manic grin on his face.

She had been worried about him for a few days, even when they'd managed to get together for dinner for his birthday, he'd been wild-eyed as he talked about the future, and about the upcoming Japanese dueling tournament, and it had all felt so off.

Seto was always a passionate about whatever caught his interest, but his face, and the way his pupils seemed to shrink as Yugi stepped into the arena, told her something was wrong.

"I think you'll find our brand new duel arena to be quite exciting Yugi! And how lucky you are to be one of the first to test it out!" Seto laughed.

"There is a heavy energy around him," Azila said, materializing into the room with a frown. "It feels dark but… not in the way the shadows do. Has anything happened to him lately?"

She shook her head. "No, not that I can think of. Mokuba and Noah haven't said anything either." Mokuba, of all people, would have told her if there was.

"Odd… he was not like this before, was he?"

The duel began, both players making their first move.

"No, he seemed okay, until a couple of days ago," she said, coughing into the crook of her elbow miserably.

"Have some tea, and a spoonful of honey." When Reika gave her an odd look, she shrugged. "I was a healer before my marriage. There has been much changed in the world since my death but those two have remained."

Reika rolled her eyes as she got off her bed and moved to the small kettle already filled with hot water. While waiting for the tea to steep, she did indeed take a spoonful of honey. With that done, she returned to her bed with a mug of chamomile, leaning back to watch the rest of the duel.

It… was not going well for Yugi. He was down to four-hundred points to Seto's one-thousand, and Seto had all three of his beloved Blue-Eyes cards on the field. She could tell Yugi was using Grandpa's deck, so what other tricks could he possibly have…?

Surely not -

"You are pathetic Yugi, and so is your deck! So go ahead and draw your last card so I can end this duel already!" Seto still had that manic grin on his face, that seemed to only grow with each turn taken.

"Pathetic? The only pathetic thing I see here is you, Kaiba! My grandfather's deck may not be the strongest, but it does contain - "

It was.

"The unstoppable Exodia!"

Grandpa was a lot of things, but a fool was not one of them. He had stacked his deck for strategy, not just for strength, and it seemed that was a lesson about dueling Seto had forgotten.

The other Yugi was standing in Yugi's place as Seto's life points hit zero. "You have so much hatred in your heart, Seto. It has started to cloud your judgment. But don't worry… I can help you. Mind Crush!"

The Eye of Anubis flashed on Yugi's forehead, and Seto fell to his knees, his eyes clearing, pupils returning to normal.

And the feed went black.

"Reika…" Azila asked. "Are you certain there has been nothing wrong with Seto recently?"

Reika's heart was in her throat. "I - I - "she glanced up, spotting the calendar hanging on the wall across from her bed.

October thirtieth.

"Oh shit," she whispered. "Today is the anniversary of Gozaburo's death."

[aglimpseintomysoul]

I hear your voice singing to me on the way to work in the quiet comfort of my car, replacing names in songs with mine

During fall you’re everywhere, I can’t watch the shining without seeing you, Halloween has your name written all over it, my once favorite holiday is ruined now

I hear you explaining director cuts to me of your favorite films, Stanley Kubrick, Quentin Tarantino, & Martin Scorsese were household names to me

The books that sat on your shelves for years that I turned my nose up to because I only read romance are now staples in my bibliography, I wish I could tell you how fantastic they were, I can hear your laugh when I tell you I had to google the big words and deeper meaning of the plots

I can smell your baked beans, I can hear you clacking on your keyboard at three in the morning…somehow that was the only time you could get work done

I found your old guitar pick & hoodie in the attic, I smelled it hoping for a reminder of what you smelled like, cigarettes & mint maybe?

I can hear you singing to me, playing me music that I didn’t appreciate when I was younger, I wish I could show you the music I listen to now, you would be proud

You learned Taylor swift songs for me when you longed for me to sing Lou Reed

I see you in my dreams, I know it’s not real but it feels so real like you never left, like you’re saying hello to me somehow from somewhere else

I found your short stories & folder of lyrics you wrote on a type writer many moons ago, it felt secret like it wasn’t for my eyes but I can’t talk to you anymore and I wanted a glimpse into your mind as it was incredibly creative and magical

I wish I could tell you amongst many things you are a terrific writer & my band now plays those songs that you never showed the world, it feels wrong in a way, I can’t ask you if it’s okay but it feels like I’m paying homage to you in a twisted way

It’s been three years and these feeling still hit me like a tidal wave, I never want to forget your voice and it seems like I have, I go back and watch videos of you although it pains me, to hear your voice, I can’t allow myself to forget

It’s so unfair. Incredibly fucking unfair.

Why did I only get twenty years with you, I envy the people that got to know you longer

I see you every time I go to the river, I remember when you took me there for the first time

I see you everyday on my route to work, when I was a kid you would drive the same way to put me to sleep as a car ride was the only thing that would work at the time, I’d pretend to fall asleep so you’d carry me inside

I don’t even remember our last conversation.

Our relationship was horrible when you left. I will regret that everyday until I die. I wish you could see how much better off I am now. I wish you could see dad.

Now I see your name on a plaque at cemetery, I can’t even reach it to put flowers up, I leave a cigarette for you instead, you’d laugh at my gesture

I talk to a wall hoping that you can hear me like I still hear you, I’ve cried enough tears to fill a dam, I don’t think it will ever stop hurting and there’s a sick part of me that hopes it doesn’t because if it does then I feel like I’ll forget you

[the-fiction-witch]

Pillow Talk

TV SHOW GAME OF THRONES COUPLE BRAN X READER RATING: SEXY

I shivered huddling in my little dress as all my other clothes were soaked thought from the rain I had removed them down to my underdress with a blanket that was only mildly damp in the bottom of my backpack, from the intense rains today, I went close to the fire trying to get warm everyone else was fast asleep even summer fast sleep by the fireside

"Y/n... you should be getting some sleep" I heard Bran say as he sat against the wall I looked at him too wrapped up warmly by the fire some of his millions of layers gone too

"So should you, why are you awake?" I ask

"I can't sleep, come on I haven’t done nearly as much as the rest of you, least I can do is keep a watch" he shrugs

“I suppose so”

"why are you still awake?" He asks

"Cold" I answer pulling my blanket closer to me he got up moving closer to me putting his hands on my blanket

"Your as cold as ice," he says tugging it away from me “It’s still wet, silly girl you’ll just make yourself sick” he says

I quickly crossed my arms to cover myself even if I caught his eyes on me "here, it's not to thick but at least it's dry" he says wrapping one of his fur blankets around my shoulders "y/n... You really need to get some sleep Little flower" he says “Go on get some rest, I’ll keep you safe don’t worry” he says he looked at me strangely a moment before giving my forehead a little kiss and I nodded and headed back to my little makeshift bed beside jojen, but he had already taken most of the bed and the blankets

"Bran?" I ask

"What is it?" He asks

"Would you mind...if I laid beside you tonight? You and Hodor still carry your things from Winterfell and all" I ask

“Or has jojen stolen all the bed again?”

“A little”

"Course...uhh here you can have my bed tonight," he says moving away from his bed

"Thank you" I smile

“I suppose it won’t be long till you two are married”

“I suppose not. My father insists. I can’t blame jojen, our fathers arranged it with nothing to do with us, I suppose I’ll be a reed soon. It's alright greywater seems nice and I’ll have Meera as a sister in law” I smiled

“Not all bad then, maybe jojen will mature a little see what a wonderful wife you're going to make him” he smiled

“I hope” I shrug, I knew it was a fool's hope, jojen wanted little to do with me since the moment our marriage was arranged he wasn’t exactly excited about marrying me, I made the best of it knowing I had little choice in the matter

“Here, I’ll help keep you warm” He smiled wrapping his arms around me to pull me closer to him

"your too sweet to me Bran" I smile "goodnight" I giggled giving his cheek a gentle kiss

"goodnight" he smiled pulling me closer unable to stop his smiles

"What are you so happy about?" I ask him cuddling closer to the blankets

"That I got a kiss from the beautiful little flower, that's more then jojen gets at bedtime" he blushed

“Well you're sweeter to me” I giggled

"I shall savour the kiss, from my sweet little flower, that I may I have loved for a very long time" he smiled “and was rather furious at her arrangement to the reeds instead of the starks”

“Ohh” I blushed

“I have long loved you my little flower, it torchers me to see his disinterest in you. If you were mine. I’d worship you you are the most beautiful girl in westeros and I wish things could be different, I’d have adored to have you as my bride”

“You would?”

“I would. Still I’ll have to just… savour our kisses and snuggles” he smiled giving me another little kiss

“Thats sweet Bran, but I’m engaged, come on lets get some rest”

“You rest, I’ll stay up a little more”

“Alright, can I get a little closer?” I asked moving closer to his warm body

"how close do you want me to be?" He chuckled and I just tugged him closer to me so not an inch was between us “Alright, if that’s what my little flower wants” he smirked a little slipping off his small cotton shirt and laying down next to me so close his nose was against mine our bodies close together so much I snuggled into his body heat nuzzling my head closer to him cuddling him tightly he gently wrapped his arms around me his hands on the small of my back as he smiled at me

"hello" I giggled

"Hello" he blushed "Would perhaps you allow me to kiss you again?" He asked

"Well…. alright, you can kiss me as much as you like Bran" I giggled "so long as they're all asleep, so we don’t get in trouble" I smirk

"We should keep quiet then" he smirked moving closer and kissing me I melted into his soft lips as our grips tighten on each other till I moved back letting us both take a breath and snuggly into his bare skin he pulled me tight keeping me warm “Your kisses are perfect. I wish I could kiss you forever” he whispered in a hushed pillow talk like tone I giggled a little at his whispered words as he began kissing my neck and bitting starting to suck making a hiki on my skin "uhhh..uhh!" I gasped in shock at both what he was doing and at my enjoyment of it "Brandon..stop it what if someone saw that mark, what if jojen saw it" I argued

"I'm sure you could make a excuse for it my little flower, a bruise perhaps, or maybe just let his mind wonder to what we may have done int he dark of night, so he’ll call off your marriage so you’d be free as a bird to marry me” he smiled

“Bran come on, we need to rest”

“Alright, goodnight y/n my sweet little flower” He cooed kissing my lips softly before we got cosy and I quickly fell asleep not long after given I was so tried and so cosy.

[selkiewife]

TYRION APPRECIATION MONTH

Prompt: A Dance with Dragons

Favorite Quotes from Tyrion’s POV

He had been thinking of those guardsmen during his flight, trying to recall how many there had been. You would think he might remember that, but no. A dozen? A score? A hundred? He could not say. They had all been grown men, tall and strong … though all men were tall to a dwarf of thirteen years. Tysha knew their number. Each of them had given her a silver stag, so she would only need to count the coins. A silver for each and a gold for me. His father had insisted that he pay her too. A Lannister always pays his debts.

She loved me. She was a crofter’s daughter, she loved me and she wed me, she put her trust in me.

The dwarf studied the dish before him. The smell of garlic and butter had his mouth watering. Some part of him wanted those mushrooms, even knowing what they were. He was not brave enough to take cold steel to his own belly, but a bite of mushroom would not be so hard. That frightened him more than he could say. 

“I have no wish to die, I promise you. I have …” His voice trailed off into uncertainty. What do I have? A life to live? Work to do? Children to raise, lands to rule, a woman to love?

Stronger than Tommen, gentler than Stannis, with a better claim than the girl Myrcella. A savior come from across the sea to bind up the wounds of bleeding Westeros.” (Illyrio to Tyrion)

“Viserys was Mad Aerys’s son, just so. Daenerys … Daenerys is quite different.” (Illyrio to Tyrion)

When he was still a lonely child in the depths of Casterly Rock, he oft rode dragons through the nights, pretending he was some lost Targaryen princeling, or a Valyrian dragonlord soaring high o’er fields and mountains. Once, when his uncles asked him what gift he wanted for his nameday, he begged them for a dragon. “It wouldn’t need to be a big one. It could be little, like I am.” His uncle Gerion thought that was the funniest thing he had ever heard, but his uncle Tygett said, “The last dragon died a century ago, lad.” That had seemed so monstrously unfair that the boy had cried himself to sleep that night.

Tyrion listened to Illyrio’s snores, the creak of the leather straps, the slow clop clop of the team’s ironshod hooves on the hard Valyrian road, but his heart was listening for the beat of leathern wings.

Are you down in some hell, Father? A nice cold hell where you can look up and see me help restore Mad Aerys’s daughter to the Iron Throne?

In the dream he had two heads, both noseless. His father led the enemy, so he slew him once again. Then he killed his brother, Jaime, hacking at his face until it was a red ruin, laughing every time he struck a blow. Only when the fight was finished did he realize that his second head was weeping.

I am traveling through years as well as leagues, Tyrion reflected, back through history to the days when dragons ruled the earth.

Tyrion closed his eyes to bring her face to mind, but instead he saw his father, squatting on a privy with his bedrobe hiked up about his waist. “Wherever whores go,” Lord Tywin said, and the crossbow thrummed. The dwarf rolled over, pressing half a nose deep into the silken pillows. Sleep opened beneath him like a well, and he threw himself into it with a will and let the darkness eat him up.

“I understand hate well enough.” From the way Griff said the word, Tyrion knew that much was true. He has supped on hate himself, this one. It has warmed him in the night for years.

As the nightingales fell silent, the river larks took up their song. Egrets splashed amongst the reeds and left their tracks across the sandbars. The clouds in the sky were aglow: pink and purple, maroon and gold, pearl and saffron. One looked like a dragon. Once a man has seen a dragon in flight, let him stay at home and tend his garden in content, someone had written once, for this wide world has no greater wonder. Tyrion scratched at his scar and tried to recall the author’s name. Dragons had been much in his thoughts of late.

Laughing, the septa walked to the prow of the boat. It was her custom to bathe in the river every morning. “Plainly, this boat was not named for you,” Tyrion called as she disrobed. “The Mother and the Father made us in their image, Hugor. We should glory in our bodies, for they are the work of gods.”

His uncle had taught him a bit of tumbling when he was six or seven. Tyrion had taken to it eagerly. For half a year he cartwheeled his merry way about Casterly Rock, bringing smiles to the faces of septons, squires, and servants alike. Even Cersei laughed to see him once or twice. All that ended abruptly the day his father returned from a sojourn in King’s Landing. That night at supper Tyrion surprised his sire by walking the length of the high table on his hands. Lord Tywin was not pleased. “The gods made you a dwarf. Must you be a fool as well? You were born a lion, not a monkey.” And you’re a corpse, Father, so I’ll caper as I please.

Griff had even insisted that Tyrion help with the cutting and sewing. No doubt he meant for it to be humbling, but Tyrion enjoyed the needlework. Lemore was always pleasant company, despite her penchant for scolding him whenever he said something rude about the gods. If Griff wants to cast me as the fool, I’ll play the game. Somewhere, he knew, Lord Tywin Lannister was horrified, and that took the sting from it.

Tyrion took a mordant pleasure in inventing the details of the colorful life of Hugor Hill, also known as Yollo, a bastard out of Lannisport. The best lies are seasoned with a bit of truth. The dwarf knew he sounded like a westerman, and a highborn westerman at that, so Hugor must needs be some lordling’s by-blow. Born in Lannisport because he knew that city better than Oldtown or King’s Landing, and cities were where most dwarfs ended up, even those whelped by Goodwife Bumpkin in the turnip patch. The countryside had no grotesqueries or mummer shows … though it did have wells aplenty, to swallow up unwanted kittens, three-headed calves, and babes like him.

Not mine. I carry mine own sorrows with me, everywhere I go. He thought of Tysha and wondered where whores go. Why not Volantis? Perhaps I’ll find her there. A man should cling to hope. He wondered what he would say to her. I am sorry that I let them rape you, love. I thought you were a whore. Can you find it in your heart to forgive me? I want to go back to our cottage, to the way it was when we were man and wife.

The ruin was sad enough, but knowing what it had been made it even sadder. There was laughter here once, Tyrion thought. There were gardens bright with flowers and fountains sparkling golden in the sun. These steps once rang to the sound of lovers’ footsteps, and beneath that broken dome marriages beyond count were sealed with a kiss. His thoughts turned to Tysha, who had so briefly been his lady wife. It was Jaime, he thought, despairing. He was my own blood, my big strong brother. When I was small he brought me toys, barrel hoops and blocks and a carved wooden lion. He gave me my first pony and taught me how to ride him. When he said that he had bought you for me, I never doubted him. Why would I? He was Jaime, and you were just some girl who’d played a part. I had feared it from the start, from the moment you first smiled at me and let me touch your hand. My own father could not love me. Why would you if not for gold?

“Wherever whores go,” he said. And where is that? Tyrion wanted to ask him. Where did Tysha go, Father?

“If it please Your Grace to call me Yollo or Hugor, so be it, but know that I was born Tyrion of House Lannister, trueborn son of Tywin and Joanna, both of whom I slew. Men will tell you that I am a kingslayer, a kinslayer, and a liar, and all of that is true … but then, we are a company of liars, are we not?”

“Stand aside!” someone shouted, far away, and another voice said, “The prince! Protect the boy!” The stone man staggered forward, his hands outstretched and grasping. Tyrion drove a shoulder into him. It felt like slamming into a castle wall, but this castle stood upon a shattered leg. The stone man went over backwards, grabbing hold of Tyrion as he fell. They hit the river with a towering splash, and Mother Rhoyne swallowed up the two of them. The sudden cold hit Tyrion like a hammer. As he sank he felt a stone hand fumbling at his face. Another closed around his arm, dragging him down into darkness. Blind, his nose full of river, choking, sinking, he kicked and twisted and fought to pry the clutching fingers off his arm, but the stone fingers were unyielding. Air bubbled from his lips. The world was black and growing blacker. He could not breathe. There are worse ways to die than drowning. And if truth be told, he had perished long ago, back in King’s Landing. It was only his revenant who remained, the small vengeful ghost who throttled Shae and put a crossbow bolt through the great Lord Tywin’s bowels. No man would mourn the thing that he’d become. I’ll haunt the Seven Kingdoms, he thought, sinking deeper. They would not love me living, so let them dread me dead. When he opened his mouth to curse them all, black water filled his lungs, and the dark closed in around him.

“Griff brought me up?” He must hate me, or he would have let me die.

“I know that she spent her childhood in exile, impoverished, living on dreams and schemes, running from one city to the next, always fearful, never safe, friendless but for a brother who was by all accounts half-mad … a brother who sold her maidenhood to the Dothraki for the promise of an army. I know that somewhere out upon the grass her dragons hatched, and so did she. I know she is proud. How not? What else was left her but pride? I know she is strong. How not? The Dothraki despise weakness. If Daenerys had been weak, she would have perished with Viserys. I know she is fierce. Astapor, Yunkai, and Meereen are proof enough of that. She has crossed the grasslands and the red waste, survived assassins and conspiracies and fell sorceries, grieved for a brother and a husband and a son, trod the cities of the slavers to dust beneath her dainty sandaled feet.

“Trust no one, my prince. Not your chainless maester, not your false father, not the gallant Duck nor the lovely Lemore nor these other fine friends who grew you from a bean. Above all, trust not the cheesemonger, nor the Spider, nor this little dragon queen you mean to marry. All that mistrust will sour your stomach and keep you awake by night, ’tis true, but better that than the long sleep that does not end.”

“Westeros is torn and bleeding, and I do not doubt that even now my sweet sister is binding up the wounds … with salt. Cersei is as gentle as King Maegor, as selfless as Aegon the Unworthy, as wise as Mad Aerys. She never forgets a slight, real or imagined. She takes caution for cowardice and dissent for defiance. And she is greedy. Greedy for power, for honor, for love.

“You are the last of her line, and this Mother of Dragons, this Breaker of Chains, is above all a rescuer. The girl who drowned the slaver cities in blood rather than leave strangers to their chains can scarcely abandon her own brother’s son in his hour of peril.”

“I lied. Trust no one. And keep your dragon close.”

The slave soldiers of Volantis were fiercely proud of their tiger stripes, Tyrion knew. Do they yearn for freedom? he wondered. What would they do if this child queen bestowed it on them? What are they, if not tigers? What am I, if not a lion?

“...but the girl’s true sin cannot be denied. This arrogant child has taken it upon herself to smash the slave trade, but that traffic was never confined to Slaver’s Bay. It was part of the sea of trade that spanned the world, and the dragon queen has clouded the water. Behind the Black Wall, lords of ancient blood sleep poorly, listening as their kitchen slaves sharpen their long knives. Slaves grow our food, clean our streets, teach our young. They guard our walls, row our galleys, fight our battles. And now when they look east, they see this young queen shining from afar, this breaker of chains. The Old Blood cannot suffer that. Poor men hate her too. Even the vilest beggar stands higher than a slave. This dragon queen would rob him of that consolation.”

He rolled off feeling more ashamed than sated. This was a mistake. What a wretched creature I've become... Her back was crisscrossed by ridges of scar tissue. This girl is as good as dead. I have just fucked a corpse. Even her eyes looked dead. She does not even have the strength to loathe me.

“The gods are blind. And men see only what they wish.”

Some allies are more dangerous than enemies.

The dwarf did not need to be a prophet himself to foresee how Benerro and his followers might react to a second Targaryen. Griff will see that too, surely, he thought, surprised to find how much he cared.

He wondered how much his father had hurt when the quarrel punched through his groin, what Shae had felt as he twisted the chain around her lying throat, what Tysha had been feeling as they raped her. His sufferings were nothing compared to their own, but that did not make him hurt any less. Just make it stop.

“I am no lady,” the widow replied, “just Vogarro’s whore. You want to be gone from here before the tigers come. Should you reach your queen, give her a message from the slaves of Old Volantis.” She touched the faded scar upon her wrinkled cheek, where her tears had been cut away. “Tell her we are waiting. Tell her to come soon.”

She might be a dwarf, but she was also a woman, and women were bad luck aboard ship. For every man who tried to rub her head, there were three who muttered maledictions under their breath when she went by. And the sight of me can only be salt in her wound. They hacked off her brother’s head in the hope that it was mine, yet here I sit like some bloody gargoyle, offering empty consolations. If I were her, I’d want nothing more than to shove me into the sea. He felt nothing but pity for the girl. She did not deserve the horror visited on her in Volantis, any more than her brother had. The last time he had seen her, just before they left port, her eyes had been raw from crying, two ghastly red holes in a wan, pale face.

“I know her name.” He hated her name. Her brother had gone by the name of Groat, though his true name had been Oppo. Groat and Penny. The smallest coins, worth the least, and what’s worse, they chose the names themselves. It left a bad taste in Tyrion’s mouth. “By any name, she needs a friend.”

On moonless nights the water was as black as maester’s ink, from horizon to horizon. Dark and deep and forbidding, beautiful in a chilly sort of way, but when he looked at it too long Tyrion found himself musing on how easy it would be to slip over the gunwale and drop down into that darkness. One very small splash, and the pathetic little tale that was his life would soon be done. But what if there is a hell and my father’s waiting for me?

He was reading the girl’s account of the day she and her sister were taken by slavers when Penny entered the galley. “Oh,” she said, “I thought … I did not mean to disturb m’lord, I …” “You are not disturbing me. You’re not going to try to kill me again, I hope.” “No.” She looked away, her face reddening. “In that case, I would welcome some company. There’s little enough aboard this ship.”

My hands …” Tyrion turned them over, inspected them, coiled them into fists. “… my hands are crusted with old blood, aye. Call me kinslayer, and you won’t be wrong. Kingslayer, I’ll answer to that one as well. I have killed mothers, fathers, nephews, lovers, men and women, kings and whores. A singer once annoyed me, so I had the bastard stewed. But I have never killed a juggler, nor a dwarf, and I am not to blame for what happened to your bloody brother.”

Tyrion Lannister had scant experience with other dwarfs. His lord father had not welcomed any reminders of his son’s deformities, and such mummers as featured little folk in their troupes soon learned to stay away from Lannisport and Casterly Rock, at the risk of his displeasure.

“I thought I wanted to die,” she said, “but today when the storm came and I thought the ship would sink, I … I …”

“You realized that you wanted to live after all.” I have been there too. Something else we have in common.

An honest kiss, a little kindness, everyone deserves that much, however big or small.

“Prophecy is like a half-trained mule,” he complained to Jorah Mormont. “It looks as though it might be useful, but the moment you trust in it, it kicks you in the head. That bloody widow knew the ship would never reach her destination, she warned us of that, said Benerro saw it in his fires, only I took that to mean … well, what does it matter?” His mouth twisted. “What it really meant was that some bloody big storm would turn our mast to kindling so we could drift aimlessly across the Gulf of Grief until our food ran out and we started eating one another.

Tyrion gave her a lascivious grin. “A clever slave deserves a clever master, and you lot all look like fools.” That provoked more laughter from the bidders, and a scowl from the auctioneer, who was fingering his whip indecisively as he tried to puzzle out whether this would work to his benefit. “Five thousand is an insult!” Tyrion called out. “I joust, I sing, I say amusing things. I’ll fuck your wife and make her scream. Or your enemy’s wife if you prefer, what better way to shame him? I’m murder with a crossbow, and men three times my size quail and tremble when we meet across a cyvasse table. I have even been known to cook from time to time. I bid ten thousand silvers for myself! I’m good for it, I am, I am. My father told me I must always pay my debts.”

Tyrion gazed across the Yunkish camp to the walls of Meereen. Those gates looked so close … and if the talk in the slave pens could be believed, Meereen remained a free city for the nonce. Within those crumbling walls, slavery and the slave trade were still forbidden. All he had to do was reach those gates and pass beyond, and he would be a free man again. But that was hardly possible unless he abandoned Penny. She’d want to take the dog and the pig along.

Penny began to cry as the armorer was fastening her own into place. “It’s so heavy,” she complained. Tyrion squeezed her hand. “It’s solid gold,” he lied. “In Westeros, highborn ladies dream of such a necklace.” Better a collar than a brand. A collar can be removed.

The fact that there were any good wells at all within a day’s march of the city only went to prove that Daenerys Targaryen was still an innocent where siegecraft was concerned. She should have poisoned every well. Then all the Yunkishmen would be drinking from the river. See how long their siege lasts then. That was what his lord father would have done, Tyrion did not doubt.

Tyrion did not dispute him. The most insidious thing about bondage was how easy it was to grow accustomed to it. 

Sometimes he wanted to slap her, shake her, scream at her, anything to wake her from her dreams. No one is going to save us, he wanted to scream at her. The worst is yet to come. Yet somehow he could never say the words. Instead of giving her a good hard crack across that ugly face of hers to knock the blinders from her eyes, he would find himself squeezing her shoulder or giving her a hug. Every touch a lie. I have paid her so much false coin that she half thinks she’s rich.

He had even kept the truth of Daznak’s Pit from her. Lions. They were going to set lions on us. It would have been exquisitely ironic, that. Perhaps he would have had time for a short, bitter chortle before being torn apart.

Nurse did not expect us back. He had looked around at other faces. None of them expected us back. We were meant to die out there. The final piece fell into place when he overheard an animal trainer complaining loudly to the pitmaster. “The lions are hungry. Two days since they ate. I was told not to feed them, and I haven’t. The queen should pay for meat.”

What do you miss, Halfman?” Jaime, thought Tyrion. Shae. Tysha. My wife, I miss my wife, the wife I hardly knew.

“They say all Lannisters are twisty snakes.” “Snakes?” Tyrion laughed. “That sound you hear is my lord father, slithering in his grave. We are lions, or so we like to say. But it makes no matter, Kem. Step on a snake or a lion’s tail, you’ll end up just as dead.”

“… even giants fall if you slice their feet off. Once they’re down, they’re no bigger than you.”

[extasiswings]

15 + buddie

15. "Shouldn't you be with her?" On ao3 here.

When Eddie is eleven, his class gets a new student. Her name is Maria Esparza and her family is from Arizona. She has dark curls that look like they would be soft to touch and a smattering of freckles across her nose and she’s so smart—always reading and forever raising her hand in class, always with the right answers—but she never acts stuck up about it.

He thinks she’s beautiful and when he gets home from the first day of school he promptly announces that he’s in love. He doesn’t understand why his mother laughs or why Sophia rolls her eyes and calls him an idiot when he’s perfectly serious.

He’s in love, he insists, and goes on believing it for three whole weeks until he gets up the courage to give Maria a flower at recess and she looks at him like he has two heads. The rejection smarts for a couple of days, but then he’s fine. So, he figures...maybe it wasn’t love after all.

Eddie is fifteen when he finds his eyes slipping too frequently to Diego Reed in autoshop, lingering on the other boy’s long, dexterous fingers, his forearms, the sharp edge of his jaw. Eddie can’t explain it, he just knows those stolen glances make him squirm, make him flush, make him feel too warm and like his very skin is too tight.

Diego steals Eddie’s first kiss two weeks before winter break, pushes him up against the back wall of the shop where they’re hidden by a truck and licks into his mouth with a confidence that Eddie can’t imagine ever having when he himself can’t even figure out what to do with his hands. But it makes his knees weak and leaves him breathless and panting when Diego pulls away with a smirk and tells him not to say anything.

It’s not love—for one thing, Eddie knows he’s not supposed to love boys, and for another, the only time he suggests it might be anything at all, Diego gives him the same look Maria had once upon a time and walks away—but it’s nothing he’s ever felt before. The next year, Angelica Phelan asks him to go to the winter formal and he gets to second base in the science lab when they slip away from the chaperones. It’s different from kissing Diego. But it’s just as good, he enjoys it just as much, and part of him is…relieved.

He doesn’t think about that too much.

Eddie is eighteen when he’s not watching where he’s going and runs directly into his future on the sidewalk. Thankfully, the only casualty is Shannon’s coffee, and after she snaps at him for not paying attention and he offers to replace her drink—well. They close down the coffee shop, emerging, startled, from conversation only when interrupted by a mildly disgruntled employee trying to lock up. Eddie walks home in a daze, Shannon’s phone number burning a hole in his pocket, and he’s simultaneously elated and terrified because it’s never been so easy being with someone, he’s never felt so seen so quickly. He’s old enough to realize that love at first sight is bullshit, but he thinks he could fall very fast.

He’s right.

They take things slow because Eddie wants to do things right, doesn’t want to risk confusing love with the heady cocktail of teenage hormones and sex. So he knows by the time he does fall into bed with her, eight months in, that he’s in love. Really in love, thinking about the future in love, factoring her into the mix when he thinks about what the hell he’s going to do with his life in love.

And then Shannon gets pregnant. And it’s too soon, he loves her but it’s too soon, and he’s terrified all over again—

He loves her though. He loves her. And she’s pregnant so—they get married. He wants to do the right thing.

At their wedding the readings are selections from Song of Songs and Corinthians.

Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud....Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things...

With all due respect to St. Paul, Eddie doesn’t think he knew what the hell he was talking about. Or at least, maybe he did, but he was being pretty damn aspirational and left out a few things.

Because after the wedding…after the wedding, Eddie learns a lot more about love.

Love is beautiful, yes. But love is also…trying to do the right thing and fucking up. Love is fighting and knowing exactly what to say to cut the deepest and not always holding back. Love is forgiving, but after a point finding it difficult to forget.

Or maybe that’s not love, maybe that’s just marriage. Maybe it’s a little of both. Because love endures—sure. Love endured with Shannon even when trust was nonexistent, when their marriage was fractured, shattered pieces strewn across the floor ready to draw blood if either of them tried to pick them up.

Love isn’t enough. That’s what Eddie knows. Or maybe it is, maybe love would have been enough to fix what was broken if it hadn’t been his. Shannon’s gone, so they’ll never be able to have that conversation. He’ll never know the answer.

Love endures. Eddie kind of wishes it didn’t. It would make a lot of things a lot easier.

But…it’s fine. He’s fine. Shannon dies and he locks that piece of himself away and has no plans to ever fall in love again.

Then again, God has a funny sense of humor and never seems to resist an opportunity to be an asshole, so of course…he does. Slowly. Quietly. The threads slipping through the cracks in his walls so carefully that he doesn’t even notice until they’re twined around his heart, unspooling through his blood, through his veins with every pulse. Eddie doesn’t notice.

And then he gets shot and it’s like being hit by lightning, an electric shock of clarity down his spine, rooting him in place as he meets Buck’s eyes.

Oh.

Oh, fuck.

***

Eddie despises recovery.

He’s never been good at being still, at being useless, at being left alone with nothing but his own head. And maybe he’s not entirely alone—he has Christopher, after all, and Christopher is understandably a little clingy now that he’s home from the hospital—but Christopher sleeps and has play dates and spends time in his room and just in general isn’t in Eddie’s space every second of every day.

And then there’s Buck. Buck who offered to keep staying on the couch to take care of everything they needed when Eddie came home from the hospital. Buck who Eddie sent home to his own bed with promises to call if he needed help because having Buck so close after Eddie’s little realization was stirring him up, making everything a million times more difficult in his head. Buck’s still over frequently, but it’s less dangerous if he’s not staying overnight, if Eddie can’t wake up and be tempted to walk out to the living room and pull Buck into his bed. Not for anything sexual—he’s on too many medications and too immobilized for that even if it was remotely a good idea—but to be held. To feel wanted. To feel safe.

He knows Buck probably wouldn’t say no, wouldn’t think anything of it except that maybe he’s a little raw and fragile, which he is. Which is exactly why he can’t ask. So. Removing the temptation it is.

But. Being left alone with his own head is a terrible idea. He’s in pain because he lowered the doses of his pain meds so he would stop worrying about developing any dependency. He can’t sleep without waking up with screams trapped behind his teeth and the smell of blood and gunpowder in his nose. And he can’t stop thinking about Buck. About being in love with Buck. About wanting Buck. About whether he could ever have him or whether he’ll ever be okay enough to be in a relationship. About whether Buck could ever want him back or if he’ll ever feel safe enough to risk their friendship by even asking.

He broke up with Ana the second he was able to figure out how to do it without feeling like a complete dick. But he hasn’t told Buck that. He doesn’t know why.

And then there’s—

The key turns in the lock and Eddie starts, looking up from his place on the couch. Christopher is with his abuela for the night, and he didn’t expect—

“Hey,” Buck calls, stepping through the door. “I brought dinner.”

Eddie stares.

“What are you doing here?” He asks, before he can stop himself. “Shouldn’t you be with Taylor?”

—Taylor. Buck and Taylor. Which, Buck waited weeks to tell him about, hedging about why he wanted to know if it was okay to invite her to Eddie’s welcome home party. Which, Buck only did admit to when Eddie called one night at 2AM and Taylor answered Buck’s phone.

Eddie clears his throat, the question sounding a little too sharp and accusatory to his ears.

“I just meant,” he adds, softening, “I thought you said you had a date tonight.”

An odd look passes over Buck’s face.

“Isabel called me,” he replies. “She said you were by yourself, asked if I would check on you. We rescheduled, it’s fine.”

Eddie nods once and pulls the couch throw tighter around his shoulders with his good arm. A petty, possessive piece of him is pleased. That Buck’s there. That Buck would drop everything for him.

He’s always been wary of Taylor. Even way back when they first met and she was prowling around the station filming everyone and flirting with Buck. But now? Now he’s jealous, his stomach twisting at the very reminder that she has Buck the way Eddie wants him.

But at the same time…he hates that. Hates the jealousy, hates feeling possessive. Because what claim does he have over Buck’s affections? None. Especially not when he can’t even admit to loving him outside his head.

He hates it because he knows that more than anything, Buck deserves to be happy. And maybe Eddie could make him happy, but—

Even if Buck felt the same—and Eddie isn’t convinced of that, doesn’t have the arrogance to assume—what right does he have to say please, to say wait, to ask Buck to put his life on hold indefinitely while Eddie sorts through the tangled mess in his head in the hope that one day he’ll finally be ready? He can’t be that selfish. Especially not with Buck.

Buck deserves to be happy. Even if that’s with Taylor Kelly. Even if it means Eddie loses him.

He doesn’t get to be jealous.

“You didn’t have to do that,” Eddie replies quietly. “I’m fine.”

Buck sets the bag in his arms down on the coffee table.

“You don’t look fine,” he points out. “Actually, you look like shit. Isabel was right to call me.”

“I’m fine,” Eddie repeats. His heart pangs at the concern in Buck’s eyes. “Really, it’s okay—you should—you should—”

Go. Call Taylor back. Enjoy your date.

He wants to do the right thing. He really does. But the rest of the words refuse to leave his throat.

Buck shakes his head anyway. “I’m not going anywhere,” he insists. “So tell me what’s going on. How can I help?”

Eddie bites his lip. Drags his hand over his jaw before making a face. The messy, overgrown scruff is itchy and difficult to manage on his own, and the foreignness of it doesn’t help him feel grounded in his own body when he wakes up gasping in the middle of the night.

“It’s stupid,” he says.

“I’m sure it’s not,” Buck replies. “And I’m here, so you might as well just talk.”

I’m in love with you, Eddie thinks. And I can’t sleep. And I can’t shave. And everything hurts. And I just want to stop being afraid—

He swallows. He can’t say all of that. He can’t blow everything up that way.

So, he picks the easiest one.

“I can’t shave with my left hand and it’s driving me insane.”

Buck blinks. Then he laughs as the worry in his brow smooths out.

“That’s it?” He asks. “Well, that’s easy. I can do that. Come on.”

And that’s how Eddie winds up sitting on the bathroom counter with shaving cream all over his face while Buck wets a razor and steps between his legs.

His breath catches.

“You good?” Buck asks, his voice low. His eyes are soft and focused, and Eddie almost regrets everything because the proximity—god, the proximity. He’s been so cold since the shooting and Buck is so warm, heat spreading through Eddie’s body from every discrete point of contact. Buck tips his chin back and Eddie lets his eyes slip closed.

“Yeah,” he breathes. “I’m good.”

The razor drags along his skin. Neither of them say a word, the main sound in the room the drip of the faucet when Buck rinses the razor between passes. They’ve always been physical with each other, but this sort of thing is new. Intimate.

Eddie aches.

His eyes open a crack to watch. Buck’s lower lip is caught between his teeth, and having every ounce of that focus on him is…intoxicating.

I love you. I love you, I love you, I love you.

Buck steps in closer, Eddie’s legs spread ever so slightly wider. A spark of heat flashes through him and he inhales sharply—Buck’s startled enough that his hand slips and the razor nicks Eddie’s jaw.

“Shit,” Buck swears. The razor clatters into the sink. “Shit. I’m sorry.”

Eddie opens his eyes the rest of the way. “It’s fine,” he assures. “What, you think I’ve never cut myself shaving before? It’s still better than I would have managed myself.”

“I’m—” Buck looks stricken, his fingers reaching out to gently cradle Eddie’s jaw only for him to snatch them back almost instantly, the tip of one faintly smeared with blood. His hand trembles.

“Buck,” Eddie says quietly. Buck’s eyes are fixed on the red smear and Eddie is sent back—

Watching his blood splash across Buck’s face and not realizing at first that it was his. Being half-delirious on the way to the hospital worrying that Buck had been hurt—

All this time, Buck’s been moving forward, pushing ahead, for Christopher, for him, for everyone, and Eddie knew he wasn’t entirely okay, knew he was fucked up from the moment in the hospital when he said I think it would have been better if I was the one who got shot, but since Eddie’s been home, Buck has seemed…better.

Maybe not. Maybe he’s been struggling to pretend as much as Eddie has.

Eddie twists around to grab the towel draped over the faucet and wets it enough to wash the rest of the shaving cream off his face, feels the sting of soap and water in the cut. And then he reaches out to grab Buck’s hand, wiping the blood off of his finger.

There’s something profane about blood staining skin. And something sacred in the act of washing it clean.

Eddie wonders if anyone helped Buck wash his blood off when he was in surgery. Taylor, maybe.

But no, that doesn’t feel right.

Buck probably did it himself. Alone.

“Hey.” Eddie squeezes Buck’s fingers. When Buck doesn’t look at him, he reaches out and curls his hand around the side of Buck’s neck, tips Buck’s chin up with his thumb to force him to meet his eyes. “Hey. It’s okay. I’m okay. No harm done.”

Buck breathes out shakily. His throat works, his face passes through a million stages—finally, his hands fall to the counter on either side of Eddie’s hips and his forehead drops to Eddie’s good shoulder. Eddie lets his hand slip around to the back of Buck’s neck, his fingers combing up through the short hairs there. He turns his head and he’s close enough to kiss the side of Buck’s, but he holds off. It feels like it would be too much. Too much when Buck doesn’t know how he really feels, what he really wants. But even just this—the closeness, the touch—is good. Needed. A balm to the itch under his skin.

When Buck turns his face into Eddie’s neck and inhales, Eddie thinks maybe Buck might need this just as badly.

“I’m okay,” he repeats, closing his eyes again as his fingers comb through Buck’s hair. “We’re okay. We’re okay.”

They stay like that for a long time. Buck’s phone rings out once, but neither of them moves to answer it. Eventually, Buck lifts his head and clears his throat roughly as he steps back.

Eddie’s hand falls away from Buck’s neck. He feels the absence keenly.

“You good?” He asks. Buck nods. His eyes are red.

“Yeah,” Buck replies. He pauses. Shakes his head. “No. But—can we just—can I just finish this for now? I want to finish this.”

Eddie watches him for a moment. Wets his lips. Then finally nods and passes over the shaving cream again.

“Sure,” he says. “I trust you.”

I love you.

Maybe…maybe eventually he’ll be braver. Maybe eventually, both of them will be free at the same time and he’ll be whole and healed, or at least something closer to it than he is now. Maybe eventually…love will be enough. Maybe.

For now, he has this.

[kojinnie]

Of Levi Ackerman!

Based on the request by an anon (whose ask I accidentally deleted), @weepinglevi​ and @thebubblybakery​​ for the 24/7 Writing Event from a loooong time ago.

Sorry for taking so long, hope you enjoy!

08.00 - Things he wished he could change about himself 11.00 - Their choice of music and their favorite musicians 20.00 - How do they sleep at night with you

.:24/7 Writing Event Masterlist:.

08.00 – things he wished he could change about himself

One of the best things about Levi is the fact that this is a person, who was born unfortunate, and had to overcome a lot of grievance in his life, yet still he managed to persevere and had his heart to the betterment of humanity with no ulterior motive. He had fought and lost a lot of things close to his heart for what he believed would bring them to ‘peace’, despite the fact that he was never acquainted with the idea of peace itself ever since he was born. Imagine how pure this man’s heart is by the fact that Levi could persevere that long for nothing but an obscure idea in his mind that he never had grasped before.

So, naturally, in order to keep fighting, Levi had come to the point where he had a lot of self-acceptance for himself. He had grown past the need to change himself, for he already understood that the energy he spent grieving for things he could not change, were energy wasted when he could use it to do better things for the humanity that he cared for. Sure, there were years in his life where he wished he wasn’t mocked for his height, or his uptight nature. But to be humanity’s strongest soldier, one has to have the utmost awareness of one’s strength and weakness, and Levi was very well aware of his qualities as much as he had embraced it. He knew where he lacked, so he could devise moves and strategies to patch the areas where he would be susceptible in. And that’s why he always excelled against someone like Zeke, because Levi accepts his flaws and learns not to ignore or deny it, but rather makes adjustment in form of strategic thinking and hard work to make up for it. Levi is far from being conceited, he knew the goal of his effort was not himself, but rather the world around him, so he’d learned to accept of who he was and who he will always be.

11.00 – their choice of music and their favorite musicians

We knew that Levi had dreamed of having his own tea shop once the war ends, but he also had the dream of building a warm, comfortable home he never had growing up. He’d always dreamed of a breezy home, with sun rays shining through large windows – something that was nothing but imagination for a man growing up in the underground.  And with the idea of a homely dwelling, also came the idea of melodious tunes that would seep throughout the room of his cottage-like house. Tunes that he’d listen to serenely, as he sips his self-brewed tea. He’d want something comforting. Music as sweet and as temperate as his tea.

In the modern!au, he would listen to classic jazz or big band jazz when he’s feeling upbeat, but overall it’d be old-timey songs that evoked a keen sense of nostalgia. If you visit him in his home, you’d be greeted with the likes of Nat King Cole, and Billie Holiday, or even older tunes from Bessie Smith, while Levi’s around and about in the house; cleaning, cooking, or working on a new project – the music would never stop playing. It would take a while for Levi to open his front door when you come visit, because he’d be so kept-up with his work and with the music playing all through the house.

Levi is definitely the type to have a particular song that he’d play every day at specific time of the day. He does not have a lot of expression, so he’d need some kind of output to display how he’s feeling, and he does it through the music that he listens to. When he wakes up feeling giddy, he’d put ‘Those Lazy, Hazy Days of Summer’ by Nat King Cole, and probably dance a little with his broomstick, but only strictly when no one is around except his cat to watch. Levi would also have a specific tuned he’d play when he’s cooking, mostly Bessie Smith’s songs. Levi would never sing it though, for he knows he’s not good at carrying tunes, he’d just hum, as he stirs the stew in the pot. If Levi had any song to play during intimate time with his significant other, he would definitely choose ‘I’m A Fool to Want You’ by Billie Holiday and ‘The Very Thought of You’ by Nat King Cole.

He’s the type of person who’d like to put his hands into good use – he brews his own tea, builds his own furniture, and plays music exclusively on turn-table’s vinyl. Not because he was pretentious (like Zeke), but he’d enjoy the process of it. He would have a closet dedicated to store all his vinyl collections that no one knew before. In fact, no one would ever guess that Levi’s big with music for he never talked about it. They’d just assume that this seemingly cold man finds music irritating, when actually his heart is full of tender melodies – he would just never utter it out, because music is his personal enjoyment, not his outward hobby and interest. In conclusion, Levi is alike to a cat, he might appear mean and cold, but inside he is awfully domestic.

Click here for the music: Those Hazy, Lazy, Crazy Days of Summer - Nat King Cole I'm A Fool To Want You - Billie Holiday The Very Thought of You - Nat King Cole

20.00 – how do they sleep at night with you?

This man is so meticulous about the arrangement of his sleep, especially when you’re in an established relationship, before you spend the night, he would want to know whether this is the type of sleep that’s meant for sleeping cause, or is this another alternative where one of you’d end up panting and coming. Whenever you inform him that you’re coming over, he’d be blunt and asked, “Should I prepare?” which by any means, he’s asking whether he’s gonna get laid or not. Answering no would be the answer he looks forward to most times, because you’re dealing with a very busy man with very little amount of sleep – he’d like to keep you around, to have your scent and warmth lingering around his bedroom for days on end, but not so much on having sex. Before you come over, he’d make sure to change the sheet, open new reed diffuser, and stock up your favorite snacks. He’d cook a little too, maybe small finger foods that you’d munch on as the two of you watch your favorite docuseries.

When the two of you sleep, most often you’d go to bed earlier than him, because he’d sleep very late at night and wake up very early as well. Sometimes it can feel lonesome when you’re about to drift off to sleep and he’s still not by your side, pacing around doing work or cleaning stuffs. You’d call out for him, and he’ll just hum acknowledging or yelling over from the other room, “You go sleep first.” Just when you’re about to fall deep into your slumber, you can hear him entering the room, and go on with his nightly ritual. He’d clean himself up in the en-suite bathroom, washing his feet (something he’d always do before climbing up to bed), brushing his teeth, moisturizing himself (because’ he’s got dry and flaky skin). He’s got this odd habit of re-ironing his pajamas before bed although they’re neatly hung already. He just likes to feel the warmth left by the iron slate, and the smell of Fabreeze on the garment he sleeps in.

He’d turn off his alarm when you’re sleeping over because he wakes up at dusk and he doesn’t want to ruin your sleep. He’d always sleep on the bed side by the window, and you’d already know not to roll over to his space. Levi likes to see you sleeping, hearing the soundly noise of your breath makes him feel at ease and it may be one of those few times in a day where he smiles. Standing by your bed side, he’d run his fingers through your hair and leave a small peck on your eyes and nose. You’d scrunch up your nose because sometimes his kiss tickles, and he’d chuckle. Once he finally decides to go to bed, he’d immediately glide his arms to wrap your waist and be the big spoon to keep you warm. He’d kiss your shoulder and keep his face there for a while, breathing to your neck. He’d draw a very deep exhale, as if he’s glad to retreat to your embrace after a hard day. When you mumble, “Go to sleep, Levi.” He’d hum and bury his face in your neck and hair as he mutters, “I love you.”

A/N: I’m sorry I had to skip the request for NSFW parts, I have been feeling very off with all things sexual and didn’t wanna force it. Sorry again :(

[nothing-but-dreamy]

ON THE EDGE ~ Pt. 7

Characters: Gavin Reed x fem!Reader; Connor; Hank Anderson;

Warnings: cursing

Words: 2.204

Sweat was running down Gavin's muscled body. He was groaning and moaning breathlessly while he enjoyed the sweet pain shooting through his lower abdomen. He was shuddering and shaking. The rhythmically moves were what he needed now. The physical interactions were what he craved for.

It was three in the morning as Gavin trained on his boxing bag until he almost collapsed. Gasping for air, he hugged the bag and slumped down on his knees. He closed his eyes violently as burning sweat was running into them. The past evening was running endlessly through his mind like a broken record or … a rollercoaster. Once again, he was tormenting himself.

…the kiss … I love you … he's nice… why him … I wish you two just all the best … Gavin, wait! …

"Fuck, damn it…", Gavin whispered. He was exhausted and not just because of the training and the lack of sleep. But rather emotionally. Like he had feared, the situation was a mess. It was a disaster. He had waited too long with admitting his feelings and now, he had lost yn to an android. Nothing was as worst as the thought that he had lost the fight about her because of Connor.

Gavin knew he would go crazy if any of this would last longer. Slowly, he opened his eyes, determined that he had to change something. He couldn't force yn to love him back. Mostly not if she had chosen someone else instead of him. But he could force himself to store away the feelings he had for her. It would need some time and it wouldn't be easy but Gavin had to do something or otherwise it would end him.

*

Yn wasn't able to find sleep during the last night. Everything that had happened was a bit too much and a bit too confusing. Connor. Gavin. Two guys kissing her at the same evening. Was that a prank and she just couldn’t understand the payoff of the joke? And not just that Gavin had kissed her, he also had confessed his feelings for her? Feelings she never expected him to have for her. Of course, they were working together and they had grown together as very good friends but … Gavin Reed was loving her? Her idiotic douchebag partner was loving her and she had no idea?

Then, there was what had happened during the kiss with Connor. Sure, she liked the android. He was nice, friendly, handsome but after all, he was an android. Since they got invented, she was a supporter of them. She couldn’t see them as ‘things’ like others did. She would never get one on her own but she also couldn’t imagine being with one of them. She knew herself good enough to know that she would miss something. And as Connor had kissed her, surprisingly skilled how she had to admit, something got triggered inside her. Connor kissed her but it wasn't the lips she wanted to feel on hers, she realized. As he brought her closer, it wasn't the hands she wanted to feel on her body. As yn stopped the kiss, it wasn’t the pair of eyes she wished to look into…

It was three in the morning and yn accepted the fact that sleep was something she wouldn’t find, therefore, she just stood up, took a shower and filled herself up with as much coffee as she could to get through the next few hours. She was thankful as it was time to go to work.

As she entered the DPD, she was glad to see Connor already sitting at his desk AND she was happy to see that Gavin hadn’t arrived yet. Therefore, she could talk with Connor first before she could speak with Gavin.

Connor shot up from his desk as he noticed yn coming over to him, “Good morning.”, he said with a broad smile but he also noticed that she looked tired, “Is everything okay?”, he asked concerned.

“No, if I should be honest-”

“Is it because of the kiss? Like I said, I’m sorry. It was a thoughtless reaction-”

“I know and I’m not- look, Gavin had seen us yesterday. He told me that as we met in the bar… Gavin, he wasn’t really … pleased about it-”

“Not please? What does that mean?”, Connor asked confused.

Yn felt how her brain was just goo and she had no idea how she should go through this day with all this useless, emotional crap during the preparation time for this important case. But she had to deal with it. She pinched the bridge of her nose before she looked up at Connor, “You know how he is. I will talk with him. Trying to remember him to focus on the case first.”, she said calmly. She already felt bad for rejecting Connor how she had done it the previous night. Now, the android didn’t also need to get treated badly by Gavin who felt rejected as well. She feared he would try to take out his anger on the android. Yn wanted to talk with Gavin, to tell him the truth, telling him what she had found out about her feelings but this morning wasn’t the right time. She hoped he would understand that.

Never in her whole life, Yn was so wrong.

As she saw Gavin entering the DPD, she hurried over to intercept him, brave enough to speak with him, “Gavin, hey, about yesterday-”, she tried but his dead glance stopped her.

“Not now, yn. We have work to do.”, Gavin said ice cold. He saw her shocked expression about his distanced behavior. It hurted him to see her like this because of his reaction but if he wanted to get over her, he had to be strong. The last thing he needed was to hear anything about her developing relationship with Connor.

He was about to leave but yn grabbed his arm, “No, please. Don’t run away. We really have to talk, okay?”

Gavin looked into her eyes and he was about to give in but his will was stronger, “No. I don’t wanna talk. Just let us focus on the case.”, he pulled his arm out of her grip and went to his desk.

Yn stared after him speechless. No matter how bad their fights had been before, he never had been this ice cold towards her. Even as they got partnered up he had been an asshole to her at first but never like this. A thick lump was building in her throat and suddenly, yn feared to not just have lost her partner rather even her friend.

*

As Captain Fowler got the newest results of the case of Yn and the team, he called Captain Allen to secure him and his SWAT unit as support. Captain Allen joined the team as well, and all together they planned the whole mission. Allen didn’t notice anything but Hank saw that there was something going on in the team. Yn and Gavin barely spoke to each other. Whenever she tried to get closer to Gavin he stepped back a bit and focused on some file. Avoiding her at all costs. With Connor was it the same. The android watched Gavin and yn with an unreadable expression. Hank was sure that there was something going on he didn’t know and the way all three acted, he was sure, it was not case related.

To escape the tense air, yn went to Fowler, she got coffee or she talked with Captain Allen about a detail of the case. The whole thing wasn’t that complicated but she was glad to have Allen on their side. Captain Allen and his team would be the backup around the warehouse while Gavin, Hank and Connor would make the raid. As yn and Allen discussed a few more details, a sudden turmoil coming from her desk caught the attention of everyone.

Connor’s unusual behaviour caused yn to run to the android and Gavin as she saw how Connor tried to attack her partner. With a swift move, she brought herself between Connor and Gavin, stopping the android with her hands on his chest. From behind her back, Gavin was yelling at Connor, “You stupid tin can!”

“Yeah? I will show you how stupid I am!”, Connor yelled back and yn had difficulties holding Connor at bay.

Slowly, she pushed Connor back before she looked alternate from Connor at Gavin and vice versa, not understand what had happened, “Both of you calm the fuck down! What is going on here?”, she asked serious. Sure, she knew what the topic could be but how that could escalate this quickly was a miracle.

Connor, still with a raging glance in his eyes, answered the question first, “The whole day, he makes some remarks.”

Gavin stepped forward, “Yes, because you stupid plastic toy are getting on my nerves!”, he yelled back.

“Gavin! Calm down!”, yn tried to sooth her partner but Gavin was in his raging mode, staring at the android with dark eyes.

“What is your problem, huh? Can't you accept that you will never have a chance with her?”, Connor asked teasingly. Yn was shocked that Connor was able to be nasty like this. He was provoking Gavin even more but on the other hand she had no idea what Gavin had done the whole time. A movement on her side caught her attention.

“You mother fucking prick!”, Gavin cursed, ready to jump at Connor.

Yn held Gavin back, her hands were barely able to push the man back who was so angry, “Gavin, no!”, she said seriously. As she noticed that Connor wanted to react as well, she looked at him warningly, “Connor, no!”

“What the hell is going on here?”, Fowler yelled from the opened door of his office. Connor and Gavin were still staring at each other, ready to explode any second.

“Nothing, Captain. Just their typical bickering. I will take care of it.”, yn tried to reassure her boss.

Angry about both of them, she pushed Gavin and Connor out of the open office, “Get into the kitchen! Both! Now!”, she demanded angrily. Her nerves were raw. The day was almost over. The operation had been planned completely. Everyone knew what they had to do and yet, these two couldn’t be as calm as she had hoped for.

Hank followed them and stayed near the entrance as help if needed and to prevent someone from walking in.

“What the hell is going on?”, yn asked angrily and annoyed. Gavin had walked to one wall, leaning against it with crossed arms and looked at a point on the ground while Connor just stood there in the middle of the kitchen.

“He was getting on my nerves all day.”, the android said as a defence.

“Yes, because you’re a stupid plastic-”, Gavin called out.

But yn stopped him as she stepped forward, “You! Don't act innocent! We have to work together! All of us! This case is important! So, we have to sort things out, now!”, she said serious.

Gavin stepped forward. Even Hank was alarmed but Gavin just stared down at yn angrily, “No! You have to sort out things with him. I didn't start the fight. He attacked me!”

Now, Connor stepped forward as well, anger rising in his system, “Because you couldn't stop bothering me the whole day!”, and because Connor wasn’t used to such emotions, he started to attack Gavin once again.

Yn stopped the android and even Hank stepped forward to hold his partner back.

Gavin saw yn touching Connor and something broke inside of him. The whole day he tried his best to keep his temper down. He had picked on Connor because otherwise, he would have let out his anger on yn and that was the last thing he wanted. But now, to see them together, in such an intimate way, was too much and Gavin did the only thing he could do to prevent something worse, “I don't need this. I'm outta here!”, he called out and passed the three to rush out of the DPD.

“Gavin, wait!,” yn called out but once again, he was running away from her. The same move he had done the last few days over and over again, “Fuck damnit!”, she cursed, kicking against a bin and walked up and down.

Hank noticed quickly what was going on. To him, everything made sense. Now, yn just needed a push into the right direction, “Kiddo, follow Gavin. He needs you now.”

Yn looked up into the friendly expression of Hank before she nodded. She looked apologetically at Connor before she left the DPD as well to follow her stubborn and idiotic partner.

Confused, Connor watched after yn and looked at Hank, “Why have you sent her after him? Reed acted like an idiot.”

“Look, these two are... They have to find out what they are by themselves. But, obviously, you were the trigger.”

“What do you mean?”

“I guess they're more than just partners. They have to talk about what they are. I will explain it to you.”, Hank said as he saw Connor's confused expression.

[wesimpforxiao]

Inception: Chapter 8

You slept well into the following morning only to find some kind of gift basket on your kitchen counter.  Chocolates, some fancy teas from Liyue and Snezhnaya, even press-dried flowers were all tucked neatly inside.  It was clearly from Childe.  Who else would have the nerve to send something Snezhnayan to you?  Wait.  How did he even get back into the apartment?  You altered the door in such a way that it would automatically lock itself when shut--did he steal your keys?!  But one glance-over confirmed they were sitting by the stove.  Hm...

You took your time getting dressed for work, not particularly caring if you got in trouble for being so late; it was doubtful considering you never missed a day ever since you were hired.  The reflection that stared back at you from the mirror had a red swollen nose and bloodshot eyes.  Your throat was blooming with bruises so distinct one could distinguish each of Kliment's fingers.  The back of your head was still sore.  The more you stared at yourself, the less severe your obvious injuries seemed to be.  But Zhongli thought otherwise.

"Reed," the startled consultant couldn't stop himself from staring when you walked into the parlor.  "What happened?  Your injuries--"

"Let's just say all my preconceived beliefs were proven true," you answered without looking him in the eye.  Your voice came out scratchy, but it wasn't related to the fact that that was the first time you've spoken today.  Your words didn't prevent Zhongli from approaching you either and he lightly tilted your head upward for a better view.

"You're badly injured, Reed.  You should take the day off; I have everything covered here, so it wouldn't be any trouble."  His gloved thumb ghosted over the bruises on your neck, and his brows furrowed in deep thought.  "...Were you...entertaining your hobby again? Is that what this is from?"

"Come on, Mr. Zhongli, you know I'm not that careless when it comes to that.  They're..."  Your gaze dropped to your feet.  "It's--It's nothing."

Sensing some sort of distress unrelated to your vigilante tendencies, Zhongli lightly placed his hand on your shoulder.  "Have you contacted the Millileth?  They may be of some help."  It was unusual to see you in such a vulnerable state considering you were more than capable of defending yourself.  But as soon as the words came out of his mouth, the door behind you opened and some sort of realization flickered across his face.  "Good morning, Childe."  His hand caught onto the rising tension in your shoulders.

"...Morning."  Was that a sleep-deprived voice, or was it guilt in his tone?  "Mr. Zhongli, Reed."

You sidestepped Zhongli and began walking to the corner of the room opposite of the entrance.  "I should get to work.  I can't afford to slack off even if I am injured."

Zhongli's dragon-like eyes narrowed as they remained locked with Childe's.  "What is it you wish to discuss?"  He already knew the answer of course, especially when a hurt expression flickered across the harbinger's face when you weren't looking.  The two men walked into a separate room and Zhongli closed the door.

"How is she?"

"You tell me," the consultant folded his arms across his chest.  "She's covered in bruises.  What did you do to her?"  Childe had already informed him of your discovery of his Fatui status, but he hadn't expected you to return to work beaten.

"A few of my men went rogue last night and decided she was the perfect target."  Childe ran a frustrated hand through his hair and pulled on the strands.  "I got there a bit late, but I managed to get the situation under control."

"And?"

The harbinger shifted his weight and leaned against one of the bookshelves.  "You know, I'm trying really hard to make it up to her.  It's like life is throwing everything at me to prevent that from happening."

"Would you like to hear my thoughts?"

"Please.  I need to know how to fix this."

"Stop."  A confused expression prompted Zhongli to elaborate.  "For one, stop following her around on your spare time; she finds it creepy and infuriating--and I support her on that.  Secondly, stop approaching her altogether.  It takes time, Childe, not a week or two.  You broke her trust; as far as anyone's concerned, that is a very difficult thing to earn back.  Even if it's regained, it will likely never be the same again."

...........

"That'll be fifteen thousand mora."  The herbalist at Bubu's Pharmacy placed your prescription on the counter.  Despite your protests Zhongli sent you home and promised that the funeral parlor would pay for your pain medication.

"Alright."  You began to pull out your wallet, but then a hand stopped you.  Puzzled, your gaze moved upward to meet with a familiar battered face.

"Please, allow me."  Charlie gave you a faint smile and paid the herbalist in full without skipping a beat.  

"...thanks..."  How were you supposed to react in this situation?  Was this supposed to be some sort of apology for abandoning you last night?  What does this guy have up his sleeve?  Your eyes narrowed as he handed you your medication and then signaled that he'd walk with you outside.

"Charlie, by the way.  How're you feeling?"  The afternoon sunlight seemed to soften the look of his chocolate hair.  He suffered from a black eye that was of different shades of purples and greens, and also a busted lower lip.  At least the eye mask managed to cover a majority of the bruises.

"Alright," you muttered wearily while analyzing him from your peripheral vision.  Like hell you were going to give him your name!  The two of you slowly descended the stairs.  "What's this about? You left the scene yesterday."  It wasn't like you expected him to help you out or see it through, but him showing up after the fact was suspicious.  He's one of them, after all.

"I didn't think Honqi would stop bashing your skull in unless I brought Childe."

"YOU brought him?"  A nod of affirmation, and you scoffed.  "I could've done without him."

"It didn't look like it."  Charlie stopped you from walking off after you reached the bottom of the steps.  "I didn't expect you to stand up to Kliment so well.  I guess what he was saying was true.  You're the one that's stealing our stuff?"

"What's it to you?"  You glared.  

"N-Nothing! I--I'm just impressed.  And don't worry, I won't report you to my superiors."  Geez!  You're entire personality is as feisty as your night job!  Talk about walking on eggshells--

"I could care less what you do.  Wait.  Did Childe send you to follow me?"  Is he changing tactics?

"Actually, he granted me the day off.  I figured I'd find you at the pharmacy at some point, so I waited."

"You waited all day, until two in the afternoon, until I showed up?"  You finally faced him fully and raised an eyebrow.  "I can't tell if you're just nice, or insane.  We don't know each other, and last night isn't some catalyst for a friendship."

"I'm not expecting anything," Charlie admitted.  "But allow me to treat you to lunch, will you?  I think you deserve it after last night and well, dealing with a Harbinger--that's not the easiest of circumstances for either party, don't you think?"

Cynical eyes looked him up and down.  "...Fine.  But don't tell Childe about this."

"So, what makes you hate the Fatui so much? Besides last night, I mean."  Charlie was chowing down on some sort of Mondstat-inspired dish while you were picking away at a simple salad.  You weren't that hungry to be honest.  "You speak Liyue's language well, but you're not a native, are you?"

"I was born in Snezhnaya.  My dad was leading a resistance against the corrupt Fatui in our town, and they in turn set our house on fire."  You pushed your plate away and locked eyes with Charlie.  "He died."

Charlie swallowed what food he had in his mouth and stared at you for a moment.  So that's why?  This might be easier to recruit her than I thought.  "Wow.  I-Uh...Sorry to hear that."

"Since you've been so kind to me, you won't be a target anymore.  As long as you stay out of my way."

"By all means, do what you gotta do.  If it's for your family, I think it's a noble cause."

"In fact, you're too nice even for the Fatui.  How and when did you find yourself in such an organization?"

"To be honest, I'm not a huge fan of it all either; I decided to join so I could change it from the inside."  He scratched the back of one of his ears as if he were shy.  From where he sat, you were eating up these lies too easily.  It won't be long.

"Two different approaches," you marveled at your similarities.  "Huh."  Suddenly it was a little easier to eat...

.............

Childe had finally stopped following you.  Finally.  Or at least he's stopped following you around Liyue.  There's no signs of him breaking into your apartment anymore, which was a plus, but he still left dried flowers at your doorstep whenever he got the chance.  Silk flowers were probably the most common ones he left; their deep pink petals faded into a subtle pastel.  

You didn't hesitate to throw them in the trash or burn them in the palm of your hands, making a show of leaving the ash where he had laid them.  That was until one of the specimens had caught your eye; a flattened glaze lily with perfectly-dried petals that reminisced of the sky above. That one, you kept.  And then another: violetgrass, with it's multi-budded stems of purple petals. Childe seemed to pick up on the lack of ash when he left these ones, because soon enough he had eliminated silk flowers in their entirety and only left these species at your doorstep.  You didn't have the heart to throw these ones away and kept them in a separate drawer in the kitchen.

W-What?  It's not like you're forgiving him.  Hell no!  He'll have to work a lot harder than give you flowers just to get you to look him in the eye again.  But...these flowers are pretty.  It would be a waste of their short lives to be discarded.

Childe was approached by Andrei and his associates a few weeks after Kliment's confrontation with Reed blew over.  Though most of the people of Liyue had stopped talking about it, they often gave Childe and his agents the side-eye whenever they walked around or would even clear the area out of fear.  All of the work the harbinger put into rebuilding the Fatui's reputation after Osial was washed down the drain--all thanks to Kliment and his accomplices.  

He hasn't once made an effort to see you--save for leaving flowers at your doorstep every once in awhile--which he thought Zhongli would be proud of.  Returning to his normal routine before you came along was a bit of an adjustment, but he managed.  He hoped his efforts would be acknowledged and it appeared you were slowly getting there, what with your softening reception of his dried gifts and lack of push-back.  Or perhaps you had given up on dissuading him--he pushes that idea out of his mind constantly though.

"Have you heard the news, Sir?"  

"About?"

"There's a group to the east of Liyue.  Some are reporting cult activity to the Millileth."

"Cults aren't anything new, Andrei."  Childe fidgeted with one of his gloves out of boredom until a sudden interest dawned on him.  "Unless of course, you're telling me a battle with them is waiting--"

"AHEM."   Andrei spread an expansive map of Liyue onto his desk and pointed at an area by Mount Tianheng.  "These reports could be unrelated, but given your idea that our missing men could be linked to one of these emerging groups--the Rogues, they call themselves according to alleged eyewitnesses--I wouldn't call it a waste of time to inspect them, Sir."

Childe's nose shriveled in distaste and his shoulders dropped in disappointment.  With the lack of sparring between you two, he was growing bored of this place rather quickly.  Even the Treasure Hoarders had gone quiet recently.  So when he approached the map only to humor Andrei's more calm and collected idea, the remaining agents in the room shifted excitedly.  Finally! They wouldn't have to suffer as much under Childe's insistence for daily recruit training...This was just the thing the Lord Harbinger needed after his obvious breakup with that one rumored girl:  an outlet to unleash his feelings on.  Don't get them wrong, though; having the opportunity to personally train with a harbinger was a blessing, but they were being overworked.

"They're saying this group has been dressing in black robes, chanting quietly at random hours.  And get this, Master Childe, there is a report dated on the eve of the Lantern Rite."

The night of the break-in, Childe pieced together while he hovered over the map.  "When did these incident reports start?"

"From what I've been able to gather, roughly about two months ago.  The black robes are a constant, even when they were few in number.  Their cause seems to be growing as quickly as we've lost men, too.  Your orders, sir?"

His eyes swept over the map once more before he inhaled sharply.  No matter how badly he wanted to charge in and spill blood, he has to set an example and prove to his men--No! He has nothing to prove to his agents...Kliment was an isolated incident.  Still, he needs to regain control of the reigns around his men.  Settling on his answer, Childe straightened out.  "I want a scouting team assembled and sent out by tonight.  No confrontations until I see clear evidence that these 'Rogues' are involved with our disappearances.  Understood?"

Everyone's excitement and adoration for their superior seemed to explode all at once.  "Yes, Master Childe!  We won't let you down!"

[galadhremmin]

mise en abyme

(for the WIP meme)

okay so I better explain what this fic is about first-- I wanted a very different take on the first orcs. Instead of either a secretly 'good' Angband or brutal torture I wanted to use the way cults indoctrinate victims in how Morgoth (well Sauron actually but under his supervision) 'turns' the first elves. He abducts them and does mutilate but they never know it; he makes them fear the outside world and establishes himself as the 'safe' point, an artificial us vs. them... creates an adverse reaction to starlight in them but not much else permanent. Also, elves are special in how much their fea controls (and presumably shapes over time to a degree) their bodies. If you can irreversibly change someone's idea of what and who they are there is no need to mangle them all that much in that case. If someone is sure they are a monster they might over centuries take on those characteristics. Wiki defines 'mise en abyme' as 'a formal technique of placing a copy of an image within itself, often in a way that suggests an infinitely recurring sequence.' And yes, basically... that too. Irretrievable original self.

It is also about the horror of not being capable of regretting what you have become because that ability has been taken away from you; horrifying joy, incapable of grief!

Anyway the actual writing is shitty and doesn't reflect any of that because these are tbqh, these are hard themes for me to write about. Dunno when I will try again. I know what I want from it, just hard to get there!

He is the only warmth you know, for a long time.

Mise en abyme

You wake up with bandages over both your eyes. Something here smells foul. But even through the fabric the warm light of a fire can be seen, and when he tells you with soothing voice that everything will be fine you still beneath his touch. Nothing has hurt like this before. You find you know no way to respond to it. A shiver runs over your frame. The air is cold, and damp; it carries the scent of deep caves. His hand is warm.

Sometimes you fall asleep, still trying to remember. Often you suddenly fall asleep. He says; it was a fall. It was a hunting accident. It was a fall, during a hunting accident (a black rider silhouetted against faint white stars, and the crack of branches (branches?) snapping). Scraps of shifty memory drift in and out of immaterial reach; and you reach, and you reach, listening to the sound of water on stone, smelling the cave's faint scent of rot, its strange sounds scuttling away on the dark until you dream again at last. But now the night is full of eyes where light, you think, should be. What shines through is too sharp, and you-- with your bandaged hands, with your stench of rot, you, you-- (he cannot always be there for you, it's not that you are ungrateful, but-- it is so hard to move, so hard to stay still, so hard to do as he wishes and so hard not to do it; when you feed on squirming larvae because he has nothing else to share and feel such terrible guilt for your disgust, invisible in the dark--)--

Soft and enfolding it is, damp and dark; with sleep an oblivion to sink the sharpest pain into, still healing only slowly, the location of fissures somehow unable to pin itself onto still evasive memory. Something seems to slip. Something struggles to the surface, must have hurt you, terribly; and the thought sends your entire body into shivers, playing at more than it is willing to tell. But silence settles over you, eventually. Sometimes a current of warm air passes through the room at even intervals, trailing over bare skin like the hot breath of a beast. It comes with a kind of terror at first, but nothing ever hurts you here. The warmth becomes another comfort, eventually. 

He does not speak to you often.

Most things do. Almost anything does, once its repeat becomes predictable.

When you dream now a darkness which should remain unseen from beneath the soft fabric of your dressings insists on itself a presence, not absence; surrounds you like the oil-slick that coated to your fingers one time, a strange bubbling stink only Finwë had known what to do with, had scooped up carefully to seal the tightly woven reed of his fishing raft with. There must be—something similar, here. It is hard to say. A crushed nose (a fall—)-- all smell is stifled. All sight is. You are becoming very good at listening.

Time-- almost impossible to gauge in this meagre refuge where your rescuer has hidden you from the hungry eyes of beasts that prowl the shores of the lake, from the harsh white light the made you such an easy prey. 

The only stars you see are those in your dreams, and even those seem to lose their shine, somehow; and even when you dream of them the eyes beneath your wraps are full of useless burning.

[buddyhollyscurls]

FADE IN:

THE DAVIS FAMILY LIVING ROOM - MORNING 

A nearly vacant room. The only remnants are a sofa and a few moving boxes placed neatly 

on the floor. It is quiet and still - an almost unnerving silence that makes it easy to forget that the house once held a family. Suddenly the front door bursts open and the house is brimming with activity once more. GREGORY DAVIS is accompanied by his wife CHARLOTTE DAVIS. She is carrying their infant daughter GRACE. At her heels is her daughter HEATHER. Heather is a lively and energetic two year old, and she takes great pleasure in the empty space by running around like a plane. She races back to the door at the same time one of the movers is coming through the door, nearly knocking her over. He quickly halts and nearly loses his balance but stops just in time for Heather to avoid him. He balances himself on the doorframe and Heather takes it in stride. She laughs and carries on racing around the house - much to the annoyance of her mother who witnessed the near - collision. She places Grace on her opposite hip and grabs Heather when she flies past her. 

CHARLOTTE DAVIS

Heather Margaret Davis you settle down! These men are trying to finish up 

with the boxes and you nearly topple this man over. Apologize to him right now.

Heather turns to the mover and looks down at her shoes. 

HEATHER

I’m sorry, mister. 

GREGORY DAVIS

Oh, let her have a little fun. She’s just excited about the move, is all. 

CHARLOTTE DAVIS

Greg, she nearly ran into one of the men and hurt herself. 

GREGORY DAVIS

No harm done. Let’s just focus on the big day!

Charlotte lets out a long sigh, but smiles and nods at her husband. He helps the movers with the last of their things. When the house is completely vacant she stands for a moment gazing at the kitchen. She turns and notices her oldest daughter AMY standing at the door.

CHARLOTTE DAVIS

Honey, is everything ok?

Amy takes a beat before looking up at her mother. 

AMY

Mama, do we have to move?

CHARLOTTE

Oh, sweetie. I know it’s scary moving to a new house. But you’ll like it there. I 

promise! You’ll have a bigger room, more toys, a bigger backyard. 

AMY

But I like it here. We don’t need a bigger house. Why did Daddy want a new 

house, anyway? Wasn’t he happy here?

CHARLOTTE DAVIS

Of course he was. But isn’t it nice that Daddy was able to get us a new house?

AMY

I want to stay here. We were okay here. Mama, do you really want to move?

Charlotte smiles softly at her daughter but doesn’t answer. She gently takes Amy’s hand and leads her out to the car. 

GREGORY DAVIS

About time you ladies joined us. What took so long?

CHARLOTTE DAVIS

We were just… saying goodbye to the house.

GREGORY DAVIS

Don’t worry. The girls are going to love the new place.

He starts the car and begins to drive. Charlotte gazes out at the house with a frown on her face. She keeps the house in her sights until it is no longer in view. She then glances at Amy through her rearview mirror. She sighs softly and feels her husband grab her hand. He gives it a gentle squeeze. Charlotte turns to him and plasters a smile on her face. 

THE NEW DAVIS HOME - LATER:

The family arrives at their new home and all three of the children are sleeping. 

GREGORY DAVIS

Girls… girls! Wake up! We’re at the new house!

CHARLOTTE DAVIS

Oh, Greg, let the girls sleep! It’s been a long day for all of us. 

GREGORY DAVIS

But I want them to see the house! And to pick out their rooms!

CHARLOTTE DAVIS

So they’ll see it when they wake up. Come on, just have the movers put in the 

sofa first so the girls can nap there. 

GREGORY DAVIS

Well, what about Gracie? We can’t have her sleeping on the sofa and have her fall over, now can we?

CHARLOTTE DAVIS

No, Greg, of course not. I can just lay a blanket down for her on the floor by her sisters. She’ll be alright. 

GREGORY DAVIS

Oh… alright. You win, Lottie. I’ll help them bring in the sofa. 

Charlotte wrinkles her nose at him and sits with the girls as Gregory and the movers bring in the sofa. She waits until Gregory returns to the car and helps her settle the girls in the living room. She puts the girls down and looks around the house. Gregory grabs her hand and shows her to the different rooms. 

GREGORY DAVIS (CONT’D)

Well, honey. This is it. What do you think?

CHARLOTTE DAVIS

Well… it certainly is spacious. 

GREGORY DAVIS

I know! The kids are going to love it! More space to run around in. You can 

garden in the backyard. We could even get a dog! 

CHARLOTTE DAVIS

No! Definitely no dogs. I already have my hands full with the girls. 

GREGORY DAVIS

Oh, you’re no fun. But can’t you see us all being happy here?

Charlotte takes a beat before answering.

CHARLOTTE DAVIS

Yes, darling. Of course.

THE DAVIS FAMILY KITCHEN - THE NEXT MORNING

Charlotte hums lightly to herself as she pours coffee into the coffee maker. She sets about making breakfast when she hears a knock at the door. She makes her way to the door and opens it to find a young woman dressed in a domestic servant outfit. 

CHARLOTTE DAVIS (CONT’D)

Oh! Good morning. May I help you?

KATHERINE

Yes, good morning, ma’am. My name is Katherine. Is this the Davis 

residence? I’m the new maid you hired.

CHARLOTTE DAVIS

This is the Davis residence, yes. But I’m sorry we didn’t hire a maid. Are you 

sure the name was Davis?

KATHERINE 

Yes, ma’am. I was hired by a Mr. Gregory Davis. 

CHARLOTTE

That’s my husband. But he never told me about - 

Charlotte stops talking when she hears Gregory bounding down the stairs. 

GREGORY DAVIS

Honey, which tie do you think would be best to wear on my first day - 

He pauses his sentence when he notices Katherine at the door. 

GREGORY DAVIS (CONT’D)

Ah, you must be Katherine! Hello, good morning! I was hoping you’d arrive 

before I left. Come in, come in. I see you already met my wife Charlotte. 

Katherine smiles, nods and enters the house. 

KATHERINE

Yes, I have Mr. Davis. Good morning. 

GREGORY DAVIS

Let us show you around the house.

Katherine slowly begins to follow him when Grace begins to cry. 

CHARLOTTE DAVIS

Oh, dear. Gracie woke up. Greg, do you mind helping me with her?

GREGORY DAVIS

You can handle it. 

CHARLOTTE DAVIS

Please. Come help me, Gregory. 

Gregory reluctantly agrees and excuses himself from Katherine. Charlotte quickly smiles at her but says nothing. They go upstairs and Charlotte grabs Grace from her crib. 

GREGORY DAVIS

What’s going on? Why did you want my help?

CHARLOTTE DAVIS

Honey, you hired a maid?

GREGORY DAVIS

Yeah, what’s wrong? 

CHARLOTTE DAVIS

I just - you never told me anything. Can we even afford it?

GREGORY DAVIS

Well, with the new house I figured you could use the help. She’ll only be here 

a few times a week. Besides, have you seen this neighborhood? I bet most 

people here have a maid.  Why are you upset about this? I thought you’d be 

thrilled to get some help.

CHARLOTTE DAVIS

It’s just… a surprise, that’s all. I wish you would have talked to me about this. I mean I don’t know how I feel about a stranger being in the house with the 

kids..

GREGORY DAVIS

Oh, Lottie. She’s a young girl. The kids are going to be completely safe. And 

think of it this way, now you have more time for yourself. You can relax, start 

that garden you always wanted, go shopping.

CHARLOTTE DAVIS

Well…

Gregory kisses her head with a smile, takes Grace, and heads back downstairs. Charlotte can hear him showing Katerine around the house. She sighs and heads downstairs with a smile fixed on her face. She goes to the kitchen, pours herself a cup of coffee and makes breakfast. When Gregory leaves for work Charlotte begins putting the dishes in the sink. She begins to wash them.

KATHERINE

Oh, ma’am don’t worry about the dishes. I can wash them.

Katherine quickly takes fresh gloves and begins washing the dishes. 

CHARLOTTE 

Well, then… I guess I can just worry about finishing unpacking the boxes. 

KATHERINE

Oh, I can finish when I’m done with these. Mr. Davis specifically asked me to 

help with that today.  

CHARLOTTE

Oh! Well, thank you, Katherine. 

KATHERINE

Of course, Mrs. Davis. 

Charlotte goes into the living room and sits down on the sofa. Her leg begins to lightly jiggle. She brings her hand up to her mouth and almost bites her nails but catches herself before she does so. She goes upstairs and checks in on the girls who are all napping. She goes into her room and reads a book, ignoring that her leg is still jiggling.

THE DAVIS LIVING ROOM - LATER THAT NIGHT

Charlotte is on the couch with Grace on her lap. Amy and Heather are playing on the floor beside her. They hear Gregory’s car pull in and they hurry to look out the window.

AMY

Daddy’s home! And he brought something big!

Charlotte gets up and looks out the window herself. She sees Gregory struggling to carry a large box. She opens the door. 

CHARLOTTE DAVIS

Greg, what on Earth?

He places the box in front of the sofa.

GREGORY DAVIS 

Girls guess what? Daddy has a surprise for you!

He opens the box and reveals a television set. The girls squeal with excitement.

CHARLOTTE DAVIS

Gregory, you bought a television?

GREGORY DAVIS

Yeah, isn’t it great! It’s the newest kind, too. The girls are gonna love seeing the Flintstones.

And you may even like the Donna Reed show. What do you say girls, want to help daddy set it up?

The girls cry out in agreement. Charlotte stands in silence until Gregory looks up at her.

GREGORY DAVIS (CONT'D)

What’s wrong, honey?

CHARLOTTE DAVIS

Gregory, first a maid and now a television set?

GREGORY DAVIS

Oh, honey, lighten up. Tv’s are the new thing I bet everyone around here has 

got one. Why are you getting so worked up about this?

CHARLOTTE DAVIS

Well, I’d wish you’d talk to me before you make these big purchases. Can we really afford all this?

GREGORY DAVIS

Let me worry about that. Come on, honey, enjoy it!

CHARLOTTE DAVIS

I just… I don’t think I want the girls growing up with a television. I don’t want to see them with this darn thing on all day. 

GREGORY DAVIS

We’ll keep an eye on them. Anyway, now they have something to help keep them occupied. I bet you’ll enjoy it after a while.

Charlotte lets out a long sigh but smiles when the girls look up at her. She gazes at Gregory as he and the girls play with the television. 

THE DAVIS KITCHEN - THE NEXT MORNING

Charlotte sits at the table with a cup of coffee and her book while Katherine is wiping down the counters. She hears Grace start to cry. She begins to get up but Katherine puts up a hand to stop her. 

KATHERINE 

Please, Mrs. Davis, let me. That’s what I’m here for. 

Charlotte slowly follows Katherine to the living room and watches her climb up the stairs. When Graces’ cries have stopped she sits down on the sofa. Her hands make her way up to her mouth, her leg jittering in place. She quickly steadies herself and turns on the tv. 

THE LIVING ROOM - A FEW YEARS LATER

Charlotte is sitting on the couch watching tv. 

[ilguna]

Lacuna - Chapters 13-16 (f.o)

summary: they say the odds tend to favor those who need them. well, they were wrong.

warnings; swearing. MURDER, GORE.

wc; 10.3k

NOTES; I give reader a last name to fit the world.

–

-- CHAPTER THIRTEEN --

If this is what it’s like to be dead, then you don’t want to be dead anymore. 

First off, it’s cold as all hell in here. It’s like when you were younger and your brothers would throw you into the frigid ass water for fun in the winter. Of course, you could swim back then. Like every other person in district four, you had learned to swim at the sprightly age of four, probably younger. You start young when it comes to knots, fishing and swimming.

By the time you’re seven or eight you’re basically blending in with the water. Most kids by then can swim like they never left the water, they’re fish themselves. You used to race the kids back home all the time to see who could swim fastest from dock to dock. And those were like a quarter to a half a mile apart each. Every single damn time, you somehow managed to beat them. The runner up would always be at least thirty seconds behind you. On good days, more.

Fishing? Well, if you’re old enough to hold a rod then you’re old enough to get your ass sat on the boat. You can surely get something caught on the line, and then your parents would reach over and get the fish off of the hook for you. Then, you throw the sucker back in, and the process repeats. Really, they’re doing all the work, you’re just sitting there to keep the rod from going anywhere when something does tug back.

And knot tying is easy. Clumsy fingers get better as time goes on, but you observe until you’re eight or nine. You don’t start the knots until you’re nine to ten because the chances of the kids fucking up a perfectly good line with a bad line, is more common than you think. Even the prodigies are prone to messing up on the simplest ones. It’s fine though, they’ll learn it in the next couple years of their life, and soon they’ll be doing it in their sleep.

When they’re bored, they’ll ask for a rope or a wire to mess with so they can fuck around and tie knots. Practice gets you everywhere in this day and age, so there’s no better way to do it than when you’re bored. If you can do it without looking, then god damn, you might as well be teaching the others. Sometimes, you still catch Reed looking down to tie them, and he’s been doing it for over ten years by now.

The room is cold, and it only gets worse as time goes on. Sometimes, it’ll ease up just a little bit, but that’s rare. Every couple of hours, you’re certain. It’s not a constant feeling of the warmth of a goddamn grizzly bear snuggled right up against your side. You wish it was though, then you wouldn’t be shivering and chattering your teeth. They hit against each other, and you think that you’ll bite your tongue or chip one of your many teeth.

Not to mention the fact that it’s wet. There’s always the sound of water running, every now and then you’ll get a drop of water on your forehead or something. Furthering the fact that you’re cold. Who knew a single drop of water could ruin the temporary warmth that you’d falsely given yourself?

You, you guess.

“I-I-It’s cold as b-buh-balls in he-here.” you mutter, going to turn over.

The stabbing pain in your lower abdomen makes your eyes snap open, a muffled scream tries to leave your mouth, but a hand reaches over to place it over your mouth. Your entire body begins to ache. From your neck to your thighs. The left side of your face is swollen and your nose is very much crooked. It’s throwing you off.

When you raise your hand to grab the arm, you see that your own are littered in purple, blue and black bruises. In a panic, you shove whoever it is off, as you desperately tear off the sleeping bag without actually ripping it.

You know who it is next to you. You can see the wide green eyes staring at you in shock. His blonde hair is stuck to his forehead like he just came through the waterfall a minute ago. He’s in nothing but his pants, probably letting his jacket and shirt dry. You can already hear him asking you what you’re doing and he hasn’t even opened his mouth just yet.

“Woah--” Finnick starts, the second you unzip the jacket, pulling it off, “Are you cold? You might have hypothermia--”

“It’s not burning!” you snap, pulling your shirt up, and only then do you slow down for a moment. To see the shirt wrapped around your waist and the blood seeping through along with the bruises blossoming across your stomach, “How many of my ribs are broken?”

“I don’t know.” Finnick sits down now, rather than crouching, “I thought you were dead when I found you.”

You look to him, squinting, “When did you find me?”

“The uh--the night that two had died?”

“Very specific.”

“A couple days after Allio had died.” he tells you.

“Three days?” you ask, you’ve barely been keeping track, and now that you’ve been out for fuck knows how long, this entire thing has thrown it off balance.

“Yeah,”

“Who died? I only heard one cannon.” you mutter, zipping the jacket back up, and you notice that the jacket isn’t very breezy in the back.

Motherfucker! He’s tied his shirt around your waist and gave you his jacket. He has to be freezing, and he’s doing it to make sure that you get better. Or Finnick has an ulterior motive, he’s trying to win you back after he pulled that ass move and left you behind.

Finnick’s face twists with worry the second your eyes turn on him, “I’m sorry, okay? I couldn’t just stay there--”

“Like hell you couldn’t!” you shout, shouting hurts your side, but it’s a dull pain.

“Playing pretend? Playing house? I don’t know how you lasted for so long.” he says calmly.

“It was going well until they fuckin’ figured out that I killed Allio,” you sigh, propping yourself up on the rocks behind you.

“You killed Allio?”

“You killed the girl from six?” you mock.

“And Thyme.” he tells you, moving away from you now, and before you can ask, he answers, “Mercy kill.”

“Who died after that?” you ask, running your fingers over your nose. You’re not too thrilled when it doesn’t hurt as badly as you thought it would. It means that it’s setting. Your nose is going to be fucking stuck like this.

“Guys from ten and three.”

You nearly choke on your spit, “Blaire? Blaire’s dead?!” 

“Is that ten or three?”

“Three!” you cry, you can feel the frown on your face before it’s even settled, “He saved me from Lennox. If it weren’t for him, I would have been beaten to death. But I guess he felt like he owed me after I saved him from starving.”

“You saw him a second time?” Finnick looks over his shoulder.

“The day you left I saw him down by the lake or something, don’t remember exactly. Spent most of my time at the pond-lake and he kept showing up. My little bit of company.”

“Leave it to you to make friends in everyone you meet.” he mutters, you glare at the back of his head.

“Leave it to the fourteen-year-old boy to bail on his first alliance to deal with the career pack alone.” you pick up the nearest rock and hurl it at the back of his head for emphasis.

He groans, rubbing it and giving you a small glance over his shoulder, “Like I said--”

“I don’t want another apology.” you tell him, “Or an excuse.”

He doesn’t say anything, staring off into the water.

“Anyone else die?”

“Boy from eight.”

“Any of those kills yours?”

“The girl from eight on the first day, Thyme and the girl from six. Then the boy from ten and also the boy from eight.”

Quick mental math tells you that it’s five. He’s killed five so far, the same as you. Ten people that were in this arena have been killed by the district four participants. Everyone back home must be thrilled. You can’t wait for people to ask you what it’s like being a murder. It happened to Mags, it’ll surely happen to you.

And your response? You’ll ask them if they want to be added to the numbers.

“Damn. You know mine already.” you begin to push yourself up, and with all the noise, Finnick turns.

“What are you doing?”

“Fresh air.”

“You’re going to get the bandage wet.”

“Then I’ll take it off, it’s bloody anyway.” you begin with the jacket.

“Wouldn’t be if you stopped moving.” he mutters.

“I’m going to give you a black eye.” you threaten.

“To go along with yours? Along with that broken nose?”

“Finnick I swear to god, I don’t have a problem with stabbing you to death in here.”

He laughs, “You’re weak. Probably can’t even hold your arms above your head.” it’s quiet for a moment as you debate if you’re willing to prove him wrong, he adds, “That wasn’t a challenge.”

“It’s about to be.” you tell him, grabbing the bottom of your shirt as you very slowly pull it off. It starts in your ribs, and then slowly travels to your shoulders. When the rim--is that the right word?--of the shirt hits your swollen eye, you wince. 

“We’re in the third week, I think. Six people left. Four if it’s just me and you.” he looks over.

Final numbers.

“Well, good.” you say, but it’s not good. You’re covered in bruises, broken bones and a stab wound in your stomach. You’re useless. Finnick could have killed you in your sleep and you wouldn’t have known. It would all have been done for you.

Once you start kicking at your shoes, Finnick realizes that you’re serious. He moves over, untying the boots and then helping with your pants. He carefully unties the bandage, since you hadn’t touched it just yet. And then he takes off his own socks and pants so it won’t get wet. Might as well come back into the little cave with dry things to wear.

It’s daytime, you can see it through the water. You put one hand over the stab place, passing through the water. It’s a little hard on the head, from the gallons of water hitting your head. But as soon as you pass through, you’re heading for the pond-lake water.

“It’s salt.” Finnick says as if you don’t already know.

You slip in, and you can hear Finnick splashing behind you. Probably worrying that you’re going to end up drowning or anything. You can swim even in the worst conditions, he can go fuck himself.

Despite this, he holds beneath your arms, helping you into the water slowly. You want to leave the second that the salt water enters the wound, but you push through it. He can clearly see how uncomfortable you are, but allows you to continue. He’s smart, knows not to try and tell you what’s best for yourself. You need to be up and on your feet, running around like you’re good as new.

Not saying that you want to kill off the last four, but there’s no way that you can stay in here for another week. Another goddamn agonizing week of eating fish, drinking iodized salt water and shivering in a sleeping bag. It has to end, you’re hungry, you’re tired, you’re absolutely exhausted to your very bones.

“Mac, Trink and Lennox and whoever the last--”

“Girl from five.” Finnick interrupts, and you nod.

“Girl from five.” you agree.

“What about them?” his hands are very gentle on your sides, and they eventually fade away in the water.

“They need to--” you try, but Finnick’s hand really is ripped from your arm now, jerking you harshly. You’re about to complain, until he’s pulled beneath the water, sending water flying into the air, “Finnick?” 

How? How has he--you’re standing in the water! You’re fucking standing in it!”

You take in a deep breath, even though your lungs complain, following Finnick under the water. And you see the crevice he slipped into. A ravine in the middle of the pond-lake, and it goes down a while.

He’s reaching up for you, pointing to his ankle, and then making a stabbing motion.

His knife is on the seafloor, so you grab it. Something is holding onto his ankle and he needs you to save him.

You return to the top for air, knowing that it’ll be your last for a few minutes, and then you dive down. It’s probably not smart to have the knife sticking out from your mouth, or for it to be placed there in the first place, but it makes it easier for moving your arms. Before you know it, you’ve hit the crack, and you’re getting closer to Finnick by the second.

You take it out of your mouth, offering the handle to Finnick. His fingers graze it, and then he takes it after. Your lungs are burning, and you wish you could stay, but you’ll only drown. He’s working at his ankle, as you’re swimming up and occasionally looking down at him.

Then, he gets free, and he’s swimming faster than you are straight towards the top. On the way, he makes you wrap your arms around his torso, before he continues. When you’ve broken the surface, he’s gasping for air, you have a pounding headache, and it feels like you’ll never be able to hold air ever again.

“We need to leave.” you tell him, taking his arm as you pull him back to the waterfall, “Are you okay?”

“Yeah, fine.” he tells you, and hisses when you take his hand instead.

You pull it up to look at, tilting your head when you can’t see anything, but then you bring it closer, seeing all the little cuts on his fingers, palms…

“Are you using vines?” you turn to look at him, he nods.

“How’d you know?”

“Because Blaire had the same cuts.”

“Sounds like you and Blaire were getting cozy.” he mutters.

“No time for jealousy after you ran off with Thyme.” you tell him, “the cuts aren’t poisonous I don’t think. You’ll live.”

“Thanks.” he says, “Hungry?”

“I guess.”

It’s a bummer that the pond-lake time was cut short. You were really looking forward for planning out the future. What you want to do as soon as you’re better. Mags has to send shit now, you’re awake and there’s no better way to heal your wounds than when you’re cognizant. 

You’re ringing out your hair, which has grown a little longer in your time of being in the arena, when there’s a series of chimes, stopping you. Finnick looks to the sky from where he’d been staring off into the water.

“What the hell?”

“Congratulations on being the final six alive.” The gamemaker tells you guys, you feel like this is a trap, and you reach for Finnick immediately, he takes your hand, “There has been a rule change. If you and your district partner are still alive, then both of you may be crowned victors in these hunger games.”

You turn to Finnick the same moment he looks to you.

The gamemaker repeats what he says, as if you guys don’t understand. But you heard him the first time. A loud, crystal clear rule change. Who else would miss something this big?

“We can go home.” You laugh, grabbing Finnick, “Four more people and then we can go!”

“Only four?”

“Only four.” You confirm, pulling him closer.

-- CHAPTER FOURTEEN --

The rule change benefits two districts only. There’s obviously yours, you and Finnick are very much alive. District four has to be celebrating at this exact moment. Mox definitely cried when he received the news, and Reed was surprised. You can see it now.

This isn’t the first time the gamemakers have made this change. Every now and then, when there are districts with two people left in them, they’ll make this change. The particular district that wins, brings home their two kids. Celebrations are grand, bigger and better. And it’s expected that the winners are especially grateful. After all, you guys are supposed to be learning from your mistakes your ancestors made.

It’s only happened ten other times in the last sixty years. It’s not allowed during the Quarter Quells, at all. Because those are the special events. The twenty-fifth they chose the tributes, the fiftieth they got double the amount, and in eleven years there will be a third one. You’re just glad that you’re going to be a victor now. So they can’t throw a huge twist like six kids go in or something.

The rule change is never predicted, it’s a random choice. There have been times in the past where someone was able to guess that it would happen. People found out the system on why they did it, and started to find their way around it. After having the rule change twice in a row, the gamemakers realized that tributes were manipulating it.

They would choose the couples. So when everyone was beginning to cuddle up with each other—except for the huge age gaps like the twelve year olds and the fifteen—it became more common. Again, they figured this out and stopped doing it. Now it’s a once in a blue moon sort of thing.

You got really lucky.

You know that Reed is on the edge of his seat now. He’s cheering you on harder, telling you more advice, even if you can’t hear it. He has to be driving everyone around him nuts, even himself. He’ll be afraid to get on the boat to fish because he doesn’t want to miss anything important, like you or Finnick dying. Reed will be counting on Finnick to keep alive.

However, if Finnick were to die, it’s not an automatic crowning to district one—they have Trink and Lennox still alive, which is why there’s a rule change—they have to survive the other tributes. Kill one of them, Trink or Lennox, it doesn’t matter, then the rules will revert. There will be one victor only.

You could still very much win, it would be a lot more difficult. You’ll be fighting against the four others to make it home. Trink or Lennox would have to be the first to go. To even the playing fields, if one of them is dead, then they can’t team up against anyone. 

District One will probably shower the brats with all the riches they can afford. You wouldn’t doubt it if they got special treatment from the Capitol too. They have so many goddamn victors, it’s annoying. There are constantly houses being built for a new victor each year. They don’t win? No biggie, they’ll win next year.

Four won’t get the same treatment as one, or two. You guys will get the houses, the infinite riches and the celebrations the same as everyone else. But it won’t be as grand, it’ll be like the other districts. Four is a career but four is treated like it’s one of the rich districts but nothing important.

Anyway, the rule change is very important. Keep you and Finnick alive, kill the others and go home. You need to wipe out Trink or Lennox, either or, doesn’t matter. And the others will fall into your hands eventually.

“These vines are insufferable.” Finnick whines, you look from where you’re sitting to see that his hands are completely raw.

“Stop touching it!” You kick his arm with your foot, before going back to the fish.

“I can’t, it needs to be fixed.” Finnick mutters, you get up, yanking the damn thing out of his hands before throwing it through the water, “Hey!”

“Mags will send us rope or something,” you tell him, going to look at his expensive ass gift in the corner of the cave, “And then we can make a proper net.”

“Do you even know how?” Finnick puts his hands into the water to wash them off.

“Didn’t I tell you already? Blaire taught me how. I’ll be able to make a sturdy net with some rope.” You tell him.

You take a moment, deliberating if you want to go through the water or not. But the music from a sponsor makes your ears perk up practically, and you’re stumbling through the water, trying to keep your balance from the force of the water. 

Mags has sent a couple of things since you woke. The first thing is the cream for the wound on your side. You’ve been applying it every night, and it’s done it’s magic. It’s nothing but a bright pink scar now. She had nothing for bruises, or broken bones. So you’ve had to tough it out.

Finnick got his gift a couple days after he had left, sometime during the second week. You hadn’t even noticed it until you and him went back inside after the rule change. To see the silver trident staring back at you. Finnick was all smug talking about how it had to have cost thousands. All you could say was that he could have done just the same with a spear. But he told you that it wasn’t the same.

Whatever, both of you have your respected weapons now. He told you his technique on how he killed so many. You listened as he informed you of the net, that he would throw over the people, get them trapped and tangled. Then he would come in with the trident and kill them just like that.

Unfortunately, with that technique, it meant he kept losing the vine-nets. He’s made four, and he was on his way to making the fifth. Finnick wasn’t too fond of the idea of untangling the bodies of the people he killed from the nets. So instead he just let the gamemakers take them, because they’ll be able to cut it apart and take the body after that. Plus, he didn’t want to take the chance of the gamemakers getting impatient.

But with a rope, no more tiny cuts in the hands. It saves time, it means you guys can kill more people with the light through the waterfall technique. It draws people in, he nets them, kills them, and then the process repeats. But the nets took so much time to make that it would be hard to get two in a day.

Finnick splashes through the water faster than you can. On the way, he steps on the vine-net, and he hisses. Jumping on one foot for a second, holding the other he whines about the thorns. And then he continues, wobbling on his feet slightly.

“This is why you wear shoes!” You tell him, kicking the vines off to the side, away from where either of you would bother to go.

“It’s the hunger games, I don’t need shoes!” He tells you, grabbing the floating sponsor gift. He brings it all the way back over, being careful not to let it touch the water.

It would be fine, if it can float in the water, then it can sink or take in some. It’s probably waterproof, actually. But you can say that you’ve ever seen a gift sent when the tributes were in the water. This is a first for you.

Finnick stands on the rocks next to you, and carefully unravels the parachute, and then opens the lid. It’s a fairly big gift, so when it shows a shit ton of rope, you cheer slightly.

“See! Told you—“

Finnick tilts his head, pulling up the paper. It’s sogs a little in his fingers since they’re wet, but it would be the same for you. Going through the waterfall had completely soaked you like you were swimming in the pond-lake like Finnick had.

“It’s from our district.” Finnick tells you, moving it so you can see.

And clear as day, it says, “This will work better than vines, District Four.”

Tears gather in your eyes and you have to cover your face for a moment, “Just a second.”

“Don’t worry, I’m crying too.” Finnick laughs, and you move your hands.

He pulls out the rope, weighing it in his hands, “Can this stand four more?”

“It could stand the entire twenty-two had we gotten it at the beginning.” You laugh, he joins in.

You look to the water, there has to be a camera on you somewhere, “Thank you, it won’t go to waste. We love you, and we’ll both be home soon, I promise.”

Finnick nods along, “We miss you tons.”

“Can’t wait to start fishing again.” You snicker, and Finnick punches your arm this time, “No but seriously, thank you.”

You and Finnick slip into the cave, being sure to cover the rope so it doesn’t get wet. When you get inside, you unravel the coil, and grab your knife.

“Gonna teach me how?” Finnick asks, you grin at him slightly.

“Sure. If you promise to be a good sport about it.”

—

If Finnick says that it has worked four times before, then it’ll work this time too, if the others will take the bait. The singles are probably desperate to wipe out the doubles so they’ll be able to go home. It’s the same tactic that you were saying before. They’ll be able to make it home if the doubles are taken out because they can’t team up.

The fire is like luring them to their deaths, almost. The both of you are prepared to take them down, and they might be thinking that you’re stupid for even trying a fire in the first place. Wondering how you’ve managed to stay alive so long with such stupid ideas. 

Instead, you guys are clever. You guys have got everything on lock. The fire, the net ready and the trident and spears within grasp if necessary. Unlike all the other times though, Finnick has someone to help. All it’ll take is for them to get caught and for him to stab. There’s no reason for him to even bother helping you with the net.

You’ve made it big enough for them to get caught in, and you didn’t cut the string for the rim. You pull it shut, there’s no escape, and they're tangled in the mesh. Finnick can get them within a couple of seconds, send the body off, and stomp out the fire. Make a new net, rinse and repeat.

“How do you like your fish? Burnt or extra burnt?”

“Preferably not burnt.” You look over to see that they’re practically black, “Remind me why I put you on cooking duty.”

“Because you were wallowing in your own misery?”

“Y’know Finnick, it’s really not that hard to not be a dick.” 

“Some girls think it’s charming.”

“I’m not some girls.” You huff, “But I’m guessing Thyme was?”

Finnick rolls his eyes before shoving the burnt fish your way, “I didn't like her like that.”

“Try again.”

“You are jealous.” He looks smug, again.

“Were you jealous when I told you that Blaire, boy from district three that I was hanging out with for a week straight, no supervision. Just me, him, the vines and the water were together? Him teaching me how to weave the vines, me feeding him so he didn’t die? Were you jealous then?” You tilt your head, watching as the smug falls and turns into something else.

“No.”

“Your voice cracked. You’re a fucking liar.” You tell him, “And by the way, it’s your own fault that I had to make friends with other people while you abandoned me. Leaving me to the fucking hounds.”

“You managed it seems.” He goes to eat.

“That’s not the point.” You tell him, “Partners in crime. An alliance! We were in this together!”

“At least we’re in it together now.”

“Yeah,” you mutter bitterly, going to eat.

It has to be only five minutes of silence, before the splashing of water interrupts you both. Finnick jumps immediately, kicking everything out of the way as quickly and quietly as he can. You take one final bite, getting a mouthful before the net is in your hands.

“Dumbasses.” It's a female voice, but it’s not Trink.

“Who?” you mouth to Finnick, and he thinks for a moment.

“Girl from five.” he mouths back, and then shrugs, “Trink?”

You shake your head.

The splashing gets louder as time goes on, and then you can just barely see her silhouette through the water. Finnick nods to you, letting you know that you should do it.

You get a little closer, hands through the water and then you toss it. There’s a yelp, and you yank the rope, trapping her inside. Finnick goes through the water.

“Wait!” the girl screams.

“Who’s the dumbass now?” Finnick asks, and then the cannon sounds.

Crouching down, you cut the rope, “You can send her into the water.”

“The careers--” Finnick barely gets out, you grab onto the spear. Your heart is pounding in your ears when you stumble through the water.

It’s just Lennox in the water, and he’s bearing a sword. When he sees you, he hisses, “Bitch!”

He turns to leave, but you raise the spear, going to throw it. Finnick grabs your hand, stopping you, “Not today.”

“I can hit him.” you reason, and Finnick goes to your ear.

“They’re going to want a show.”

He’s right, Snow will want a show. So, you’ll just have to wait for another time to kill them. It’s a shame, because you could wipe Lennox right off the fucking map, and all you’d have to kill is Mac and Trink.

When Lennox is out of sight, you send the girl from five off. 

“He knows where we’re staying.” you lean into Finnick a little.

“He won’t come until he’s prepared with Trink,” Finnick tells you, and you watch as the girl gets taken away. You wonder how the family is taking it. If you make it, then that means on the victory tour you’ll have to see their families.

For you, five to six--you’re not sure if the five girl will count as the sixth, since you didn’t kill her directly, you just assisted--different families you have to face. Stand tall and bear your chest and try not to cry because you’re guilty to the very last cell. You killed their family. You killed that twelve year old boy from twelve.

You killed the girl from ten, the boy from eleven, Eytelle, the boy from twelve and Allio. And now the girl from six. You’ve got five deaths on your hands, and you’ll have to face them.

Is it even worth it?

Yes, it is. You’ve gone all this way, you can’t just bow out of it now. You’re almost done, three more to go.

“I’ll go make a net big enough.” you turn, leaving Finnick outside.

-- CHAPTER FIFTEEN --

The sound of a cannon jolts you awake. Finnick, who’s beside you, jumps three feet in the air as he suddenly reaches for his trident. He creeps out of the only sleeping bag that you have, and he goes to the water. Before he can cross it, you grab his ankle.

“You’ll get all wet.” you whisper.

“I need to see.” he tells you, but he knows you’re right. So he strips free of his boots, socks, jacket, shirt, and pants.

He leaves it in a disorganized pile off to the side. Out of reach of any water that might backsplash when he walks through. You watch as he winces at the cold water, before disappearing. The faint sound of splashing allows you to calm down a little bit.

It would be a blessing to get up and follow him. So he wouldn’t be going out there alone, you’d be right next to him in case there is someone else. Ready to pounce and strike.

They know where you are, so sitting here, inside of this cave makes you feel like you’re trapped. At any given moment they could show up and you would be fucked. Especially with Finnick gone, there’s nothing you can do.

Whatever you caught while being in here, it’s bedridden you. Getting up and around is painful. It’s hard enough to sleep at night when it feels like a thousand tiny needles are jabbing into your stomach. It took you over two hours to fall asleep, and you can take a safe bet that you only slept for a couple of hours.

It feels like it’s only been a couple of hours. You should be wide awake, ready to help Finnick if he were to call for help, but your eyes are drooping. Begging for another couple of hours before your body realizes you’re awake and starts the pain. You don’t close your eyes, laying your head down instead.

The spashling has long since stopped. It’s almost pure silence, except for the sound of cicadas and the random shuffling of leaves. The water is a constant, you’ve managed to drown it out by now. Not even background noise, it’s silence due to the consistency. However, you can hear the waves, coming up onto the shore of the rocks nearby.

You try to focus on them, hoping that there will be an irregular rhythm, but it turns out that they too have their own system. Before you know it, your eyes have closed on their own. You grind your teeth to keep yourself awake, it doesn’t work. Your jaw will go slack and it jolts your awake almost.

With a sigh, you push yourself up. Your muscles complain, and you’ve already stirred something in your stomach. Ignoring it, you begin pulling off your own boots, following with the socks.

You strain to hear any sort of sound that would indicate that he’s alive. Water splashing, heavy breathing, the trident accidentally hitting the rocks, but you get nothing.

The clothes come off a little faster now, socks, jacket, pants. You take a breather because the shirt is going to cause more pain that it’s worth. When you feel like you can tolerate it, two hands on the bottom of the cloth, and a quick movement. 

The stabbing appears, and the lines are blurred between your still very broken ribs or the sickness in your stomach. When the shirt is off of you, and you have a moment to breathe, nausea hits you like a truck. You place your hand on the wall to steady yourself, thinking that the cold will jolt your brain.

It works a little bit, but the idea of you puking is at the front of your mind now, unwillingly. You can’t puke, it’s taken you days to work up an appetite. Whatever you have has completely gotten rid of hunger, which is making you drop weight. Finnick can see it, you know.

He gets this worried look in his eyes each time he watches you get up and move. Or try to choke down food, even if it makes you gag. He probably isn’t on your back about it because he knows that you’re trying. You’re not trying to be bedridden, you’re not purposely starving yourself. He knows you want to live, and you guess that he’s waiting for the moment you give up.

It’s charming for him to be worried like that but it makes you feel like a baby. If you wanted to be babied, you would have acted like this since the beginning, even if you weren’t sick. Being incapable of taking care of yourself isn’t a trait that you want in here. Doesn’t get sponsors, at all.

As you get up, you feel like you’ve gained forty years of age. Your muscles are aching, everything hurts in general. The dizziness and the pounding headache comes back. Besides this all, you reach over for the spear, using it as a cane as you hobble your way out of the cave.

The water is cold, and once again, the force of tons of water hitting you nearly knocks you off your feet. On a regular day, sickness and injury free, you would be able to walk through this like it’s nothing. Look at what time has done to you. Made you the goddam laughing stock of the pen.

It’s still dark out, the moon is fairly high, you guess that it’s midnight to one in the morning. It’s an odd time for someone to die, unless Trink and Lennox we’re hunting down Mac or something. Could be the other way around and got himself killed. Mac killed one of them, got away. One of them died of the same sickness you have…

Possibilities are endless here. There’s hundreds of ideas they could have used on you guys. You just want to know what’s so special about midnight, if the gamemakers had done it. Maybe all of you are having trouble sleeping and this is their way of torturing you guys. Subtly, and with sacrifices.

There’s no sight of Finnick, anywhere. Even though you’re already soaking wet, you’re not too fond of the idea of going into the water. The night time is when the creatures come to life. If Finnick had gotten grabbed, then that’s it for him. You can’t go in to save him blind, the automatic right to the win would be given to District One.

You sit in the cold water, knees to your chest as you look over the water, and then the nearby trees. Then to the sky as if they’ll display whoever it is that died. You’ll have to wait tomorrow to see, unless that’s what Finnick is doing.

If he went to the cornucopia by himself then he’s stupid. You get the motive—he goes to see if Trink and Lennox are there, then comes back without being seen—but he’s half naked, soaked in water with a metal trident. The motherfucker is probably slipping and sliding out of his hands. 

You sit out there for another ten minutes, no longer tired, splashing the water onto your stomach every now and then to ease the pain. Eventually, you hear splashing that isn’t coming from you. Your eyes dart over, and you see Finnick, trident in hand as he wades through the water. He makes stabbing motions to keep the creatures away.

“Sorry, I didn’t think I’d be so long.” Finnick tells you, “But it’s hard to leave when they’re talking about an attack plan.”

You perk up, “You’re forgiven, what did you hear?”

“Well, Mac is the one that’s dead.” He tells you, but you guessed that already. The psychopaths from district one are smarter than whatever Mac did to die.

“That’s fine.” You tell him, “A bummer, he was nice. But fine.”

Finnick chuckles, he takes a seat next to you, and then presses a quick kiss to your lips. You scowl, because you’re not looking forward to him getting sick too. But really, he would have had to be sick by now if it’s contagious. What the fuck did you get sick off of?

“They want to attack in two days. Build up on body weight and all of that again. They don’t know if we’re the ones that are dead or killed Mac or whatever. Taking a guess it was Mac that died at least.” He informs, you nod along to it. 

“Two days to plan their murder, huh?” You quirk an eyebrow at him and he chuckles.

“Any ideas?”

“A few.” You admit, a small smirk coming over your face, “Remember how Lennox choked me?”

“Wasn’t there but yes.” He says, crossing his legs.

“And my last name is Gallows…” you trail off, splashing water a little bit.

“Uh huh.”

“What if we take that extra rope, tie it into a noose, lure him in and hang him?” You look over to see him with the same sickening grin that’s covering your face.

“Sounds interesting. Who’s luring and how are we hanging?”

—

Finnick has to watch you way more carefully now. One of your hands are either on his shoulder, so that you may catch yourself in case you stumble. Or it’s in the crook of his arm, where he’ll be able to swoop you into his arms if your legs buckle beneath you. The sickness is eating away at your muscle.

There are times when you’ll be standing, perfectly fine, and you’ll forget about the illness altogether. And then, your legs will give out, Finnick is diving across the room to catch you so you don’t snap anything like a wrist, trying to catch yourself. Your body will slump, like you’re lifeless, but you’re so very aware of it.

It’s scaring him now. He doesn’t think you’ll make it out alive, he thinks that you’ll die in here, from whatever you caught. You’re not hungry, you gag and throw up most of the food you get down. The lack of exercise is diminishing what little muscle you came into the arena with. There’s a high fever, you’re sweating almost constantly, but then the chills will swoop in out of nowhere. Not to mention the round-the-clock headache. 

You want it all to stop. You’ve never got this sick back home, it was the common flu that went around. Only the very, very poor, skinny kids would die to it, since their immune system can’t handle anything. But that’s hardly ever the case, even the poorest people in the district have a fair chunk of change to carry around.

If you’re going to die from whatever Capitol-altered disease, you’d just have it done in a snap. It’s been almost a week of you having it. And the fact that it had gotten so bad overnight is not a good sign. It was just earlier this morning, midnight when you were conspiring with Finnick on how to end this.

It evolved and it’s completely ruined your body within an eight to eleven hour time span. This means that today, tomorrow, or the day after are your final days. You die tonight, it just leaves Finnick to deal with the others. You can’t do that to him, you can’t send him home alone after all that has happened.

You’re not going to give this up.

“Eat.” Finnick shoves the fish into your hands and you take in a small breath, to keep your side from being stabbed. 

“Finnick this won’t stay down.” you tell him calmly, but you pick it apart anyway, using the water to drink it down.

And then you stop as you stare at the water, then back to the fish. There’s only really two ways you could have gotten sick. It wasn’t because of Blaire, he was healthy as fuck, and the only reason why he died was because he attacked Lennox while he was trying to kill you.

You couldn’t have picked it up from Trink, Allio or Lennox--assuming that it had some sort of incubation period--because that means they would have to be crawling with the disease too. From what Finnick has told you, they seem to be just fine. You’re the only one dying in here. 

Finnick is an automatic no, he isn't sick either and he isn’t catching it. Another reason why you couldn’t have caught it from the others, is because it doesn’t seem to be contagious through human contact.

Which narrows down the possibilities. You got it from eating berries and leaves, fish, or the water. You haven’t eaten berries and leaves in a while though, so those have to be out of it.

It’s the water and the fish, they have something to do with it. It can’t be an allergic reaction, because it doesn’t deteriorate the body like this. If it was a reaction, then you’d be breaking out in hives, through closing in and you’d been dead by now. Unless it’s a small allergy, but that’s not the case either. 

“Finnick, what are some diseases passed through water?” you ask, slowly setting the food down.

He tilts his head slightly, “Uhh, E coli, Cholera, Typhoid, Salmonella--? Why?”

Typhoid is the one you recognize, because of the few cases some of the neighborhood kids back home had. With the right treatment, they wouldn’t die, but for the few who let it go on for too long, or didn’t have the money to pay for it, their kids--or themselves--would die. 

“The symptoms to…” you lean back, “What’s the--?”

The headache seems to increase, stopping you from thinking any further. You press the heels of your hands to your temples to ease the pain. Of course, it does nothing, but it feels better than just sitting there. You clench your teeth and squeeze your eyes, rocking back and forth.

Think, think!

What the fuck is the cure to Typhoid? Hell, what are the symptoms? What’s it related to? How can you get it?

“(Y/n)? What’s wrong?”

Few cases back home. Parents who go down to the sea to collect water. Use for baths, and the kids accidentally drink it. It’s not the salt its--its the bacteria.

“Water,” you look to Finnick, “Have you been treating the water?”

His face twists, and then he pales, “I--I forgot once--”

That’s enough for you to catch it. Just a little bit of contaminated water will get it going. Your body has been fighting off this sickness for a week, and it took you this long to think it over. 

That’s not the matter, though. The matter, is that if you don’t get medicine, you’ll die from it being untreated.

“Mags, if you’re listening--it’s Typhoid fever,” you tell her, “Untreated it’ll kill me. Please, please send me something. Whatever it is that’ll cure it. One pill or sip is better than none, please.”

Finnick looks guilty, but you don’t care. It was an honest mistake, he didn’t know that the water was carrying the disease. None of you would have ever knew if he hadn’t accidentally skipped it. You’d still be up on your feet moving around like none of it ever happened.

This must be what he’s thinking, “Finnick, don’t punish yourself for this. Not now, do it later when we win.”

“What if we don’t win because of my mistake?” he asks, you point your finger.

“Hope. You have hope now, because I can’t carry it for the both of us. I forgive you, we’re going to win.”

Silence, as you wait for the sound of a sponsor gift. But the chiming never sounds, letting you know that you’re on your own. It must be far too expensive, or they just can’t hear you.

“We have better things to worry about, Finn.” you shake your head, “We need to do it tomorrow. We can’t wait until the end of the week.”

“I know.” he whispers, “Are you sure?”

“We have to.”

-- CHAPTER SIXTEEN --

There used to be a song that your mother would sing when you had caught the cold. It was more of a poem, but she would sing it like a lullaby to ease your headache and get you tired. It would always be the first couple nights of the cold, which are the worse days, and as it got better, she would stop. A bedtime remedy, to getting you to fall asleep quickly instead of letting you toss and turn through the night.

As you lay awake most of the time now, you think of it all the time. Reciting the words back to yourself softly. You can’t necessarily sing it without waking Finnick, so instead you turn it from a chant to a couple of lines at a time. You decipher the words, find meanings and then you’ll repeat it back to yourself when they make sense. 

It tires you out a lot quicker than you thought it would. Lately, it’s been working like a charm. Tonight, it offers no comfort though, because later today, you’ll be luring the last two tributes to their deaths. You’ll be using the last of your strength to win the games. If today doesn’t work, you give yourself permission to fall over and croak.

You’re in the final hours of your life. Finnick might be seeing it, but it’s not as clear to him. He’s not feeling all of it directly, he’s watching you pretend. He’s not seeing the way that you flinch and wince when his back is turned. If only he saw how much pain you’re in. 

The second you win, you’ll be fine. You’ll be on that hovercraft, they’ll be feeding you to doctors as Finnick has to watch. They’ll be hooking you up to water and liquid food, and medicine that stops the pain and diminishes the fever. They’ll be working their best to save you, because they can’t have a victor die on the craft. 

Finnick wouldn’t need anything done to him. They’d probably take him and marvel. They’d have to fix up a few scars but that would be it. There would be no reason to save him from anything. Unless something goes wrong today, he gets stabbed or something. Not going to happen on your watch, even if he doesn't like it.

The sun rises a little faster now, and you come to terms with the fact that you'll be working off of nothing today. There’s a few things to do to set up the scene, and then you’ll be able to execute it perfectly. 

“Finnick.” You nudge lightly, he opens his eyes slowly, “It’s time.”

“Did you even sleep?”

“An hour or two.” You tell him, “Woke up an hour or so ago. Not much.”

“Okay,” he says, you slip out of the bag first. Your muscles slowly stretch, making a low groan come from you. You’ve been stiff for long enough, your body thinks that you’re a statue.

Finnick slowly starts pulling out food, you make the last fire you’ll ever have to make in your life. When it sparks, your hands go over it immediately, the fever might be burning your forehead, fueling your headache but it’s also controlling the chills. The truth is, is that you’re cold as fuck. When you leave, the water will make it worse. But you’ll get there when the time comes.

The both of you heat up the food, watching as Finnick uncoils the rope, trying the noose. You don’t ask him how he knows to tie it, you just watch, and then you prod yourself a little bit. Taking in an assessment of how you’ll be able to turn your body.

Your ribs on your left side are still very painful, turning that way is like getting stabbed. It’ll take a while for them to heal, unless the Capitol has something for that, to get it to speed up and get placed right back where they need to be, not floating around in your body, causing more harm than good.

The bruises are almost gone, they’re just a very light purple now. Pressing on them doesn’t hurt anymore, it’s nothing compared to everything else that you’re feeling. Your body as a whole is weak, so there's no worry about specific knees or arms, it’s just the both of them. Not good, but you won’t have to catch yourself before you use the wrong one. You’re always taking a chance.

All cuts are now scabs, there’s a few more scars here and there, but besides that, you’re ready to go. Finnick finishes eating pretty quickly, you guys finish off all the food that you had set aside. You feel absolutely sick to your stomach, since it was hard getting it down in the first place. Overfeeding isn’t helpful by any means, until you’re trying to put on weight.

If you guys get hungry later on, it’s possible to grab something from the pond-lake or whatever. You’ll be inside of the woods, near the middle, but it won’t be that far from the pond-lake if lunch would be needed. But by the look on Finnick’s face, he’s not that hungry either. He stuffed himself just as badly as you had. 

He shoves everything into the backpack. The rope, what water you guys have, which he still looks guilty about. Small meaningless knives that you don’t need, the works. After that, he helps you onto your feet, you both take your weapons of choice, and leave the cave.

There was no point in stomping out the fire, you guys won’t be back. Which is why you guys left the sleeping bag, and all the other little things that came with the backpacks when you got them. For all you care, they can burn up in a blaze. The fire will put itself out before it reaches the water.

Finnick leads the way through the water. Instead of going straight out of the waterfall, a little to the left, you guys go right diagonally. If you were to go straight, you’d head right for the cornucopia. You guys want to do it in one of the big ass trees, out of sight of them in case they were to come looking.

You hold Finnick’s trident, as he holds the backpack above the water since it isn’t waterproof, and you guys don’t want the rope to get wet. You’d rather it be dry, it’ll be more harsh when it gets around Lennox.

“Almost home.” 

“We should have built a treehouse. I mean, it’s been a month, we had the time.” You laugh, he snickers.

“Gamemakers would have had a fire.”

“Wouldn’t have been smart. I’m sure that the tourists would have loved to stay in a personalized treehouse! Oh Finnick, do you think we have time?” You bat your eyelashes when he looks to you, he rolls his eyes.

“Don’t be ridiculous. You can hardly stand.” 

“So? It won’t be so hard.” You reason about the hypothetical treehouse, daydreaming about having one. What would go inside, how much time it would take. How you would replace materials like nails with vine and all that. Or very thin rocks that you can hammer into the wood.

“No treehouse.” Finnick tells you, and then the both of you laugh at each other.

When you reach the land finally, you guys take the time to ring out your clothes. Then you continue to the place that Finnick had picked out last night. When you get to it, you’re thoroughly impressed to see that it’s a big ass tree, and there’s plenty of land around to run around in. This is a place you could build a house, raise a family and all of that.

Finnick unpacks the rope, you take it, throwing it around your neck to keep it from going anywhere. You tuck your spear between your pants and belt, with the blade down. You take your water and put it in your jacket, Finnick kisses you quickly, wishes you good luck, and then you turn to the tree.

Spear, rope, water, a good luck kiss. Now, to climb the tree without falling. Your body will complain and give you hell for this, but it’s all for the greater good. 

You climb the tree slowly, being careful of your left side. Right hand, left hand, right foot, left foot. Occasionally you’ll reach higher than you should, wobble, but catch yourself the next time around.

The spear gets in the way and you have to keep moving the water to where it needs to be. You take a break on the sturdy branches, and continue when it’s just enough to make it to the next one.

Before you know it, you’re at the one branch that stretches over Finnick below you. You wrap your legs around the branch, and even go as far as to tie the non-noose end of the rope to your body. Then, you strip free of the jacket, dropping it for Finnick. The boots follow, and you’re disappointed to see that he dodges where you tried to drop it on him.

“Pants too?” You ask, Finnick shakes his head.

You take a long drink of water, since the sun is in your eyes. And then you take another before dropping it for Finnick, setting up the scene where Trink and Lennox will come along just to die.

Lennox is going to be heavy, he’s had plenty of food to eat from because of the middle. He’s going to weigh what he normally did when he came in. Maybe a few pounds shorter. You however, aren’t at all where you need to be. 

The big breakfast helped, but it wasn’t perfect. You’ve got one, two, possibly three pounds more than you had originally. You’ll fail when it comes to pulling Lennox up with the rope using just your muscle strength. To actually hang him, he’ll need something to balance out his weight, almost.

He’s going to be below you, you get the noose around his neck, you yank and what? Choke him for a split second? Finnick will be fucked.

You didn’t propose this part of the plan to Finnick because you knew he would say no. He won’t ever say yes to something this dangerous and risky, which is the exact reason why it’s going to work. Risky, but odds in your favor.

“I’m ready.” Finnick tells you, you nod.

“Let’s do it!”

You cut yourself free quickly, then you measure out just about what you’ll need to fall through on this. Your eyes keep darting to Finnick, worried about when he’ll yell.

You drape the extra rope across the branch behind you, out of sight out of mind. The noose rope is shorter, but still long enough to reach Lennox. Finnick comes over now, standing right next to it, and nods up at you. Perfect length.

It’s going to get shorter though. You tie a constrictors knot, which will be impossible for the Capitol doctors to get off of you, but they’ll manage. They have to save you, and your leg if it’s possible. If there’s no reason to cut it off, then they can’t. It’s not a medical problem, it’s rope.

You dangle your leg, seeing how it reaches the same height as before presumably. Then, you draw some of it back up to keep out of sight of the others when they come in.

Just in time to listen to Finnick give a blood curdling scream. You clench your teeth together, eyes on the direction the others are going to be coming in at. Listening as Finnick continues to scream for your placebo self to wake up. Yelling for Mags to send in some sort of medicine, to save you.

“Please! Please!” Finnick screams, and at the first snap of a branch, your eyes flicker to Trink and Lennox, “No—!”

“She’s not dead yet?” You think you hear Trink ask.

You wonder if the Capitol can spare a false cannon to see what happens. If they’ll attack him immediately, like a bunch of rabid dogs.

“Leave her alone,” Finnick seethes, he’s crouched over, backing up which is drawing the others to walk over. You can see the smiles on their faces from here.

“I’ve got him.” Trink chirps.

“No!” Finnick lunges forward slightly when Lennox gets close to your body, you begin to lower the rope little by little.

Lennox jumps for your body, you can feel your heart pounding in your chest when you free the rope. Only to see it come up short.

“Shit.” You curse, and then you dip your leg over, getting it right around Lennox’s neck.

Finnick attacks Trink, who’s caught up watching the rope. She goes to warn Lennox, but Finnick shuts her up.

Before Lennox can do anything, you take a deep breath. Feeling the fear try to paralyze your body into rethinking this. You don’t let it, you throw your body the opposite side, to the left.

Lennox chokes, you feel the air on your skin as you watch the branch of the tree get further away. Until the momentum comes to a slow, and you’re dangling in the air by a rope from your foot.

You look to see Lennox, face turning purple as he grabs onto the rope to relieve the pain of choking, you curl your body slightly, pulling him up a little, and his eyes bulge. The sound of a cannon startles you, because it’s clearly not Lennox, who you’re staring at, and he’s staring at you. Still alive.

You go to yell Finnick’s name, but it gets caught in your throat. The blood is rushing to your head, the headache increasing in power. The pain just seems to skyrocket the longer you hang here.

“I’m alive.” Finnick tells you, and then you watch as his trident flies through the air.

It misses Lennox by an inch or two, getting lodged in the tree. You sigh, reaching for your spear now. You don’t want to get yourself free. You want to kill Lennox, and you’re sure that it will be a sight to behold, him hanging from a tree, with you suspending him on the other side, a spear through whatever you can get. 

With it in hand, you lean forward, your left side aches from the sit up. You and Lennox lock eyes, and he shakes his head slightly, beginning you not to even though his face is a deep purple and blood is coming out of his nose, trickling down his lips.

You draw your arm back, waiting for the rope to stop swaying, and then you launch it forward, the very last of your strength going along with it. You’re not even able to see if it goes through anything. The sound of a cannon gives it away.

“You did it!” Finnick yells, but his voice is drowned, you can hardly hear it.

You can feel your body relax, arms going past your head. You try to blink away the spots, but they don’t go anywhere. In fact, they take out your vision completely. 

—

I told her so, and if she say,

That she was wrong,

Then may it be,

A quick little bug,

That will come and go.

—

She will lay,

In clean, white sheets, 

A full tummy,

And a cup of tea,

She will rest,

And she will think,

How this will be,

The very last time.

—

But here comes grey,

Water-filled clouds,

She pulls on her shoes,

And her coat,

So that she may,

Go in the rain.

—

I will come,

To the porch,

To warm her of,

What may come,

She will laugh, 

She will splash,

But she won’t listen.

Then she will come later with;

Rain-soaked clothes,

Not feeling good,

And beg me to care for her.

(the poem is a circle).

--

LACUNA IS THE FIRST VERSION OF BELAMOUR

//MASTERLIST//

[fandom-necromancer]

Coffee, crushes and Complications Prequel

This was prompted by an amazing anon! just a warning, this short got dark real quick. So please, heed the warnings and stay safe! It has a happy ending, but I have said in the other parts Gavin hit rock bottom, so I had to make him hit rock bottom. He does recover in the end and gets back on track that has him being happy as we know from part 1 and 2. It’s just a hard contrast, therefore I wanted to warn you. I hope you still enjoy heavy angst!

Fandom: Detroit become human | Characters: Gavin Reed, Tina Chen (Warnings: depression, description of depressive behaviours, Character thinks about suicide, implied suicide attempt (that doesn’t happen, not even the attempt!), suicidal thoughts) If you want to skip the suicide related part skip from “It was two weeks...” to “Tina! Tina, don’t say anything!”

[Part1]   [Part2]   [Part3]   [Part4]

‚Hey, Boss, what’s up?‘ Gavin marched into Fowlers office with a grin and a spring in his step. He had all his cases solved in record time and had finally endured the cry-babies of machines that had come in lately with stories of assault and attempted murder. What had they expected simply stopping to work to looked like? But he had done nothing wrong, at least nothing Fowler could prove, and that was the most important thing. ‘You are fired, Gavin.’ Gavin blinked. He must have misheard something. ‘The phck?’ ‘You are fired, Detective Reed. Hand in your badge and pistol and pack your things.’ ‘What? Why?’ ‘Why?!’ Fowler stood up and leaned over the table. ‘You really even dare to ask that?’ ‘Errr…. Yes?’ ‘Well, then sit down and get comfortable, because I have a whole fucking list!’, the Captain shouted. ‘And I finally can say what I wanted to tell you for so long, because I will finally get rid of you now!’ Gavin did sit down, but not because he wanted to. His knees had suddenly failed him.

‘First of all: You are a real asshole.’ ‘Yes, I know but-‘ ‘I don’t mean it in a funny way!’, Fowler interrupted. ‘You are a true asshole. A bad person. You treat your co-workers as if they personally attacked you. You are unable to work in a team without sabotaging the whole mission for your benefit. You actively try to make others look worse than you are so you seem like the best one. You are so obsessed with getting promoted you fail to do your work, you are constantly breaking protocol and don’t think I didn’t realise! I did. I just never said anything because, shit, sometimes that was an advantage. But this was the final misstep, Reed! I can’t tolerate your shit any longer!’ Gavin swallowed, then threatened: ‘And what should that be exactly?’ He let his anger speak for himself, but deep inside his guts had twisted into a tight ball.

Fowler leaned back. ‘Your anti-android behaviour. Fucking hell, I thought you would learn with time. I thought you would catch up to the others. But no, you continue calling androids names, calling them “it” instead of he, she or they and treating them like malfunctioning machines. These people come to us for help and you laugh them in the face!’ Gavin huffed amused, then outright laughed in Fowler’s face. ‘Captain, that’s a good joke. You don’t actually believe… They are not human. They will never be. Phck, I wouldn’t even consider them persons. They are some fancy part of machinery, so complexly programmed that maybe they even believe themselves to be persons. But they are not! They are objects, robots. And some fancy revolution and new laws can’t change that simple fact!’ ‘And that’s why I have to fire you. I can’t have you interrogating someone knowing you will personally dismantle them if they don’t talk! They are machines. But they are persons too. And you have to respect that. Fuck, Gavin, what did you think?’ ‘I thought and still think they are not alive. It doesn’t matter what you do to them, it’s just simulated. They don’t feel a thing.’ ‘Are you really sure about that?’, Fowler asked, weirdly calm considering he had been furious just before. ‘Even after Connor?’ ‘Connor is a big reason for me being absolutely certain’, Gavin said.

‘Then hand in your badge and service weapon.’ Gavin stared at the outstretched palm. ‘Oh, come on, Jeffrey, you can’t do this to me. I’m your best man!’ ‘I can, I will and I must. And you haven’t been my best officer for a long time. Hank is back – thanks to that apparently lifeless android Connor – and the RK800 is the best Detective you can wish for. Now, I won’t repeat myself.’ Gavin was sitting there completely numb. He didn’t even have energy left in him to complain and that was saying something. He pulled his pistol out of the holster and handed it over, before unclipping his badge. He looked down on the polished metal with his name on it and thought back to the day he had been handed it. How proud he had been. How much of his pride still was engraved in this piece of metal. He had worked hard for this and by now… Shit, this little piece of leather and metal basically was his whole identity. He pushed his thumb over the letters. G. Reed.

‘The badge, Reed.’ He blinked, took a deep breath, held it and pressed the badge into Fowler’s hand. Then he stood up and pressed out: ‘That’s all?’ ‘That’s all.’ Gavin contemplated saying something. Something witty maybe, or something mean, something that would hurt and gave him that little satisfaction of revenge, even if it didn’t mean much. But he couldn’t think of anything, his head was filled with cotton and everything tingled with numbness. So, he just nodded and left, trying to keep up his composure. It was hard without the added weight on his hip that had made his step a bit broader than it normally was. He stared at the ground not to have to look into their faces. Would they laugh? Would they care? Or worse: would they pity him? Whatever they might feel towards him leaving, he couldn’t face it and so he just took what little possessions he had decorated his table with and left. ‘Hey, Gavin, what’s-‘ That was Tina, but Gavin had already passed the security gates and as soon as he was outside the building he ran to his car, dropping his things on the passenger seat and starting the engine to speed off. He was just moments away from a total breakdown, the fact that others might see him and that he couldn’t drive in that state the only thing keeping his composure up. He parked the car messily in front of his apartment, took his things and stumbled up the stairs in a hurry. He barely managed to unlock the door, dropping his keys once and failing to pick them up first try as his eyes had blurred over.

Then finally he was inside, had closed the door and dropped his things on his sideboard, before leaning on it heavily finally allowing his feelings to spill over. He knelt in front of the small wooden furniture, his hands holding onto the edge to keep him steady somewhere. How could this happen? He was untouchable. He was good at his job. He was damn good at his job. He wasn’t good at anything else. He had only ever been a Detective and… Oh god, he didn’t have a job anymore. He wouldn’t be able to pay his rent. He could make it a few months, but he would have to find something else soon and oh god, what if he had to give his cat away and phck he didn’t have a job anymore and… Did the whole world hate him?

He half kneeled, half sat there, crying, his stomach cramping and heaving and trying to keep his meal down through it all. His shoulders shook and he didn’t trust his hands or his legs for that matter. Standing up was out of question. He crawled over to the wall to prep himself up against it and the sideboard, that was about all he did that day, crying until no more tears would come, his nose was hurting and the muscles of his abdomen aching from overuse. He was thirsty, but at the same time it didn’t matter. He was cold but hell, what did that mean? He needed a shower to get out of his partially wet clothes and maybe feel human again. But he knew he wouldn’t even make it to the living room. So why bother? He didn’t move and tried not to think.

He woke up still in the same position and sat up with his back cracking. Something warm shifted against his legs and stretched. He looked down on his cat, who looked up to him as if asking why her human was so upset. ‘I phcked up, Bready. I’m sorry.’ He scratched her behind the ears. ‘And I haven’t given you anything yet, have I? Sorry. You must be starving. Come on, daddy will get you something.’ With that he finally managed to stand up, but still had to lean against the wall, waiting for his circulation to catch up. He carried himself into the kitchen, gave Bready her food and threw himself a frozen pizza into the oven not wanting any poor delivery guy to see him like this.

He rubbed his forehead that by now hurt like a thousand needles from his dehydration headache. So, he opened the fridge and his eyes fell on his liquor collection. Should he… But it would only make things worse. Could things go worse? To be honest, he just wanted to sleep. He should save the alcohol for tomorrow when he would need it. He ate his pizza, drank his water, forced himself to take a shower and dropped into bed. Maybe this was all just a bad dream.

-

It wasn’t. He was awoken by his alarm, had sat up and halfway left the bed as he remembered that right, no work to go to. Rubbing his face and scrunching it up as he rested his face in his hand, he thought about what to do. In the end he did stand up to give Bready her food and retreat back to bed. She soon joined him, a welcome weight against his legs. As he woke up hours later, she was still there, and Gavin watched her for a while. Damn, why couldn’t he have been born a fat, carefree housecat? He fetched his phone, tried to switch it on and sighed as it wouldn’t. He struggled to get the charger out without disturbing Bready. When he finally could switch on his phone, he immediately was bombarded with messages and missed calls from Tina. He read over them but deleted the notifications from the calls and left her on read. He didn’t feel like talking. He didn’t feel like anything at all. In the end he flicked through the same apps on his phone, fell asleep and circled them through again once he woke up. He stood up to get his cat some food, then went straight to bed. He didn’t want to eat, so he didn’t.

The next day he managed to eat breakfast, but only because he had switched off his alarm and his cat woke him up with screaming. He threw some water in his face, then returned to bed. Tina had called again. Had messaged too. Gavin put his phone on his nightstand face down.

In the evening he couldn’t lie in bed anymore, never feeling comfortable and always sore. He faced his fridge again and took the next-best bottle. When he fell asleep on the couch hours later it was empty.

The hangover was hard, but Gavin liked the sobering pain. He didn’t like throwing up in the toilet first thing in the morning though. He skipped breakfast and lunch lying in bed. As Tina had called for the millionth time, he finally got the energy to answer the call, shout: ‘Phck off, don’t wanna talk!’ into the mic and drop it back down. Dinner was some instant noodles. With lots of alcohol.

When the weekend came, his reserves had been depleted. He was left to water and stale coke. Maybe that was something good? Gavin didn’t think in these categories anymore. Then the doorbell rang. And it rang again. And again. Gavin would have appreciated it staying this way of it ringing and him not answering, but then the call came from outside: ‘Gavin, you absolute fuck, I know you are home and you know I will kick down this door, now open up before you have to pay for a new door and lock without a job!’ Way to go Tina. Gavin just sighed, but obeyed, opening the door. He had planned to tell her to go, but she somehow already had made it past his sluggish reflexes. ‘Holy fuck it reeks!’ The first thing she did was opening the windows, letting in fresh air. ‘How the fuck did you live like this?’, she asked pointing at the dirty plates on the floor. ‘And fucking hell, you look like death!’ Gavin just shrugged. ‘Feel like death too.’ She took him by the back of his shirt and pushed him towards the bathroom. ‘You will take a shower and if I have to watch you do it!’ Gavin tried to protest, but somehow he was already standing under the stream fully clothed. His hoodie began to weigh him down, but he didn’t care. ‘Gavin, I won’t mother you. You will get out of your clothes on your own. Call me if you need anything, I will cook you something.’ Gavin shook his head violently. ‘Tina!’ She turned around to look him in the eyes sternly. ‘You should go. I need more time.’ ‘You got plenty of time. I won’t let you destroy yourself like this! You got fired. That’s all. No one died. No one is ill. You will find a new job and better days will come.’ ‘Someone died��, Gavin disagreed. ‘I did. I died when I handed in that badge, Tina.’ ‘Oh fuck off you melodramatic asshole. I am speaking to you right now. So you fucking are alive and need to wash yourself. And you need food, so I will cook. And then we will talk.’

She had left, but Gavin still winced as if she had struck him with a knife. Talk. Oh, please, anything but that.

‘Any plans what to do now?’ ‘Any idea what kind of job you would like?’ ‘How about going out to a movie tomorrow?’ ‘Gavin, fucking talk to me!’ Gavin swallowed hard. ‘You should leave, really. Thanks for the food and for kicking my ass, but I’m not ready yet. This job was all I ever wanted and all I ever had.’ ‘Bullshit.’ ‘No! No bullshit! For once I’m completely serious Tina! What do you think I have except for it? Everyone phcking hates me, I can’t do anything else and I don’t have anyone to help me! All I have is this flat and my useless phcking cat! I. Have. Nothing! And I’m sorry if a few nice words from pity-party Tina won’t suddenly make me function again!’ ‘Pity-party?’ ‘That’s what this is, isn’t it?’, Gavin shouted. ‘You secretly enjoy it, don’t you? Oh, look someone that has phcked up! Let’s pretend we actually like the guy and don’t just profit from him! Then we can say: see? See how he got better? That was me!’ ‘Gavin!’ ‘What?’, Gavin spat back. ‘Tell me that’s not what you are trying to do! Tell me you mean it, it will be a real nice joke, I can tell you that!’

Tina stood up and in exactly that moment, Gavin had realised he had made a mistake. Another mistake. He had wanted to be angry, about who and what didn’t matter. But well, it did. ‘You know what, Gavin Reed? I’ve been your friend for a long time. Do you really think I listen to an asshole like you, to talks like this and fake being your friend? What weird twist of logic is that? I wanted to help! I really wanted to. But if this is how you respond to that, I clearly wasted my time! Goodbye.’

And Gavin’s days turned back to lying in bed with his cat and stupid phone games, getting up only when he needed to pee, when Bready needed food or when he couldn’t postpone eating any longer himself. One day he actually went out to get some canned food that was easy to prepare, food for Bready and alcohol. Lots of alcohol.

It was two weeks after he had been fired, that he sat in the corner of the living room, a bottle next to him and the shards of a broken glass in his hand, that he carefully pulled out. He didn’t even feel the pain. Not really. Should he… It was tempting. He had no one, he had no job, no goals… Was it even worth it? He had looked far too long at the blood pooling in his hand and the largest shard in his other. It was just a movement after all. But then Bready’s head suddenly appeared and Gavin cursed. ‘No, bad! Shoo! This is dangerous! Damn cat!’ He let the shard fall to the ground and picked up his cat with his uninjured hand, carrying her over to the kitchen and keeping her busy with some treats. Once he was sure she was occupied, he returned to his corner outfitted with a dustpan to pick up the shards so Bready couldn’t step in them.

Only when he saw the bloody shards, he flinched back. He had seen these pictures far too often. Had filed them away as evidence. Had asked himself how people could do something like this, often leaving family and friends behind. And now… Phck no! Phck no, not him! He wouldn’t… He had always been a fighter, hadn’t he? Then why had he given up just moments ago? No, he wouldn’t… He would. He would finally get his ass up and act! What had Tina done last weekend? What had she done…

Open the windows. He retraced her steps after he had gotten rid of the shards and bandaged his hand. He opened the windows, looked to the ground and fetched the dirty plates. He put them in the dishwasher. He cuddled his phcking lifesaver of a cat extra-long and took a shower – this time without his clothes. Then he took his phone from the shelf he had put it on to ignore it and sat down on the couch. He dialled the number on autopilot and waited until he got an answer. It didn’t take long.

‘Tina! Tina, don’t say anything! I don’t know if I can build up this courage again if you say something. Just listen, please. I was an idiot. I was a total asshole to you, and I understand you completely if you don’t want to talk to me or ever see me again. But I really need your help and I want to make up to the terrible things I said to you. I may not have much left, but I have my fantastic cat, I am still alive, and I hope I still have you. I need someone to kick my ass and I know you are best in that. I need you right now. I want to look for a new job, I want to start again, and I don’t want to lose you as my friend.’ He pressed his eyes closed and waited for an answer. ‘Tina?’ ‘What? You told me to shut up and listen! I’m already on my way over to your place with job offers from a few newspapers, you giant asshole. Should I get takeout? Are you hungry?’ ‘You are not mad?’ ‘Oh, believe me, I am mad. But I am also proud of you, Gavin. And if you think you can get rid of me, you don’t know me!’ Gavin audibly exhaled. ‘Oh, Tina, I don’t know what I would do without you.’ ‘Yeah, sometimes I wonder, too. I’ll hang up now, okay? Gotta go place our order. Just wait for me, okay? We’ll fix this shithole of a situation you are in in no time, believe me!’

Gavin smiled, the first time in two weeks. The call had already ended, but he still whispered: ‘Yes. I believe you.’

[>next part]

[yamithediaperdork]

Baby of the family OR Birthday wishes are tricky pt 1 (Power pack)

Baby of the family OR Birthday wishes are tricky

It was Alex's 15th birthday and while he found the party his parents were throwing him to be a little cheesy and childish. He did understand though at a certain level this party wasn't just for him even though it should of been. Being the oldest meant his needs were put on the back burner for Julie or Jack's or Katie's needs, and toss in Katie was STILL wetting the bed at 8 years old (and wearing pull ups for longer car trips) and well, he'd basically had to become a mini adult. it was Katie and Jack who drew his attention now, watching them run around the living room with Jack having apparently stolen Katie's stuffie again. 'You know, for someone who so desperately wants to be man of the house..he needs to stop being such a bully.' Alex thought and went to move over to stop him. "Don't worry Birthday boy, I got this." Julie said, holding up a hand and marching over. his oldest sister and still younger then him, Alex smirked as he watched Julie snag jack by the ear and march him over to say sorry to Katie. having a big sister like Katie would of been sooo cool growing up, he watched Julie interact with Katie and Jack lots and while her and Jack didn't always get along, she tried. "alright everyone, to the table. time for the birthday boy to blow out the candle!" Came Mr.Parker's voice. His parents just knew of him as a nice guy who had recently moved into the neighborhood to help look after his aunt but of course Alex and the others knew the truth. Mousey gentle Peter Parker was really spider-man. And he wasn't even the only superhero at the party! of course with the kids being the hero team known as power pack one would expect a few heroes to show up but mom and dad were actually STILL clueless about the powers. That said Jack being best friends with Franklin Richards, AKA the son of Reed and Sue Richards meant that not only Franklin but Johnny and Sue had a excuse to come over. (the thing while loving birthday party's had excused himself apparently upset when he was told he couldn't go in the bounce house this time, while reed who Alex had hoped would show up had gotten busy with a experiment.) Mix in the other kids who'd been invited and a whole lotta people were singing happy birthday to Alex as his barbie princess cake (He'd made the mistake of asking Katie to pick out a cake for him) was carried over and he closed his eyes and thought of a wish. 'I wish I could be the baby of the family for once. see what it's like to be like Katie.' he thought, then blew.

The party went on for awhile longer but soon guests were excused and some of the family had to get ready for bed.  and by some of the family that meant Katie on her back in the living room, both hands on a sippy cup of warm milk and watching the last of a cartoon movie as Julie got her tapped up in her thick bed time diapers. Of course they didn't WANT to put the 8 year old back in diaper diapers, but without how much Katie flooded the bed there was no choice. heck, the car trip Pull up's were starting not to be enough. the sippy cup was because once it got close to her bed lately Katie seemed to zone out and as funny as seeing her dump a drink on her face was, the clean up was awful and she had started asking for warm milk before bed and no one wanted her to burn herself. "hey Alex, I know your the birthday boy and all, but my show is coming on and if I don't claim the tv now Jack will put it on something stupid and say he was there first just to tick me off...you mind?" Julie asked, scooping up the almost asleep now padded Katie and offering her to him. "heh, I got this." Alex said and took Katie who oddly..seemed heavier then normal. 'must be from all the sweets she packed away.' Alex thought and struggling to not show he was having a little bit of trouble, carried her up the stairs.

with Katie bear in bed, Alex yawned big time and headed for the bathroom. it was only going on 8 pm but he felt just wiped as he paused to look in the mirror. 'no bags under my eyes and I look ok..maybe it's just sugar crash.' Alex thought and shrugged. Normally one to put off his shower till right before bed, Alex started the water running and heating up as he stripped and answered natures call, then got in and started to wash himself. on a silly whim he made use of one of the pink extra soft cloths they used on Katie because of her baby soft skin and also used some of the fruity smelling princess shampoo she had, giggling and picturing a old bugs bunny cartoon as he lathered up his hair.

Downstairs Julie and Jack exchange puzzled faces as the water started up for a shower. Mom and dad were a few doors down meeting aunt May and Alex never went for a early shower unless forced too. heck, you could set a clock to his shower time! "..Maybe Katie sprung a leak already and he's cleaning her?" Jack suggest and shrugged a little. "no way! those new diapers are MASSIVE! even a little pee princess like her couldn't make them leak THIS fast." Julie said shaking her head. "welp, that's all I got. Maybe he just wanted to cover up the sound of his taking a massive dump. you KNOW how much he blushes when we tease him." Jack laughed. "Pffft yeah..mister gruntzilla. I think the whole block knows when he's going he grunts and whimpers so loud. " Julie snickered. "Remember when Katie knocked down the bathroom door convinced he was being attacked because he kept going..oh god..what was it.." "Oh! 'please god please god Oh oH oHHH!'" Julie said, mimicking Alex's whimpers of despair. "Bwhahahaha yeah! That was when he took too much diarrhea medicine because he had to give a speech to the whole school and kept getting the runs." "then couldn't unload for five days. yeah. Mom and Dad were gonna take him to the ER if he hadn't of gone when he did." the middle siblings laughed and shared more embarrassing stories about their respective roomies as the TV show was forgotten.

Alex was swaying back and forth on his feet, having fallen asleep standing up in the shower and only woken up when the cold water hit him. He was shivering a little from that but mostly moved as if drunk he was just sooo tired out of the blue and hauled himself out of the shower and turned it off and grabbed a large white towel and started to dry himself but was doing a worse job of it then Katie had when she was 5. shrugging it off he just wrapped it around him like a damp clock and made his way into his way into his and Jack's room, and headed for his dresser. deciding to go with a KISS solution since he was so tired, Alex just tugged on a pair of old white briefs (he'd been avoiding them lately despite liking their cut better then boxers because Jack kept calling them toddler pants) Tossing the wet towel in the hamper Alex stumbled over to his bed and plopped down, face first and was out like a light before he could even cover up.

around 9 was Jack's bed time and their parents where back, having asked where Alex was and Julie and Jack told them as far as they knew, he'd gone to bed. Making his way upstairs Jack had 'somehow' managed to put off taking his shower and gosh, would just have to get it in tomorrow. It wasn't that Jack didn't care for showers or liked being stinky, just there was ALWAYS something better to do then take a shower. Coming into the room he shared with his dweeb of a big brother, Jack noted that the light was still on which meant Alex had to of been super tired since he was super OCD about turning off lights if they weren't being used. Looking over Jack snorted at the site of Alex on his back, legs and left arm sprawled out in his bed while he was sucking on his right thumb, in just his toddler pants. 'what a doofus.' Jack thought and shook his head. Doofus or not, he was still his brother and Jack didn't want the dork to get a cold.  with that in mind he tugged Alex's Blanket up over him, then as a after thought grabbed one of his own old stuffies (that he was keeping around because they'd be worth money some day. not that he still totally needed ot loved them!) and held out Mr. Fuzzy wuzzy , having it brush on the blonds arm. Alex reached out with his free arm in his sleep, coming out from under the blanket and whined around his thumb. "whoa..too much cake and pop and Alex goes baby brained! awesome!" Jack thought with a grin but then let the big toddler have the stuffie and huggle it. 'I'm going soft in old age.' Jack thought to himself then after changing into just his boxers got the lights and climbed into bed.

In a universe where a god of Myth fought alongside with a world war 2 hero, a man who had built his own battle armor and well, any number of different heroes and villains and forces exist, it was amazing that random wishes weren't picked up by more cosmic being's who might just answer them. and for the most part, it's a good thing that most of these are ignored because Alex was about to learn what happened when a simple wish can get granted, at least to a degree.

Alex hung his head in shame as he showed his parents what had happened the next morning. Having always told Julie, Jack and many many times Katie that they should be honest with their parents if they have accidents, it had been Alex's turn to practice what he preached when he'd woken up this morning in a very soggy bed. Thankfully it didn't smell THAT bad and mom and dad were going to open the windows and air out the mattress in the back yard, but Alex was still SUPER ashamed. He'd of course gone and gotten washed up but came back to find the others in his and Jack's room, and two out of three of them were being less then nice with no mom or dad in site to call them off. "Sheesh, and I thought I dodged having to deal with anything worse then you with a milkshake in you!" Jack said, holding his nose and waving a hand. "Oh puh-lkease. you think this is bad? try waking up in a diaper pail everyday because of pee princess here." Julie said, and jerked a thumb at Katie. "H-hey! don't be meanies!" Katie huffed and then turned to a mortified Alex, patting his leg. "It's OK Alex, accidents happen. but worse case you can come into my room. as Julie said..it uh..kinda smells.." "Kinda?" Julie asked and then shuddered. "and that's all i need, twin pee fountains going off in stereo." "I-it's not that bad!" Alex whined. "and really? Little miss farts rainbows is gonna start giving lip about sleeping arrangements!?!" Katie added as Julie's cheeks flared red now. "we talked about that,m you're not su-" "and YOUR not 'pose to complain about me either. fair's fair." Katie said and nodded her head. Alex gave Katie a weak smile. "heh, thanks for coming to my defense..kinda, Katie bear." Alex said and gave er a hug. He was sure this would prove to be a just one time thing, and as such, tried to put it out of his mind as much as he could when a look out the window showed his mattress being set up in the back yard.

[geminimoonbeamx]

Moon lit Serenades

A/N: Dedicated to the reader, may you find happiness. I am so nervous for TROS, I saw a rumor that Poe dies and lost it. That plus the fact that there is literally no Plus Sized ReaderxPoe community? I had to remedy that. This is porn.

Warnings: This is porn. Serious smut from pretty much start to finish. Please enjoy.

Summary: Poe seeks comfort after a particularly hard mission in the only way he knows how. A Poe x Plus Sized Reader story

I am a moth, who just wants to share your light.

I’m just an insect, trying to get out of the night.

I only stick with you, because there are no other’s.

You we’re all I need.

I’m in the middle of your picture.

Lying in the reeds- Radiohead 

War had finally caught up with Poe Dameron.

Had finally taken it’s toll, and far more then it’s chunk of flesh. Battle wary and blaster shocked, it was hard to think of the resistance these days as just that- a resistance. No, this was more of a bloodbath.

War.

He’d never thought of it like that before, always held his head high, a defiant flame in his eyes. This was fuck the system- fuck the First Order. Fuck anyone who tried to tell him what to do. He was willed, motivated by the sheer rage that anyone would have to live their life in oppression. Under the thumb of Snoke or Phasma, dead and gone now- Hux and Ren hopefully to follow sooner rather than later.

And that fire to see them fall was still there...but it was dimmed.

Had been stomped on, choked out.

Watching people you love die for you, because of you on a daily basis...it wasnt something he’d wish upon anyone. Friends, family. Allies, brothers and sisters in arms. His fleet which had once flourished with dozens of pilot’s was down to a mere handful of lucky ones.

He was willing to breathe and bleed for the cause. It was in his blood- the sticky substance that matted his dark hair to his head as he climbed out of his X-wing. His parents had been the same.

Was he willing to keep watching others die for it though?

He couldn't stop form pondering the question as he and his unit arrive back to the makeshift base, in the middle of nowhere on a planet in the outer rim- the name of it he could barely pronounce. The shabby hut like quarters made the memory of D’quar and its green covered everything throb longingly in his gut.

That seemed so long ago, now.

No matter. No time for getting attached. They’d be on the move again within a fortnight, never staying any one place longer than a month at a time. Rey usually kept them one step ahead, connected to Ren through the force in a way that made Poe’s stomach churn, but that came in handy with them not getting caught.

Thinking about Kylo Ren always made him sour from the inside out. Muscles clenched in memory of the torture he’d endured at the hands of what used to be Leia’s son, but was now just a shell with his dead fathers nose and the mark of his dead uncles betrayal on his black soul.  

Poe would kill him in an instant if he got the chance. He prays to fuck that one day he does.

Clenching his fingers into fists is painful right now- the small mission had gone awry and they’d had to punch their way out of it. Literally. He’s feeling the aftermath of it all over, aching and sore.

He doesn't have it in him to attend the debrief. Can't muster the will, not right now. Maybe after a hot shower, maybe after he gets some food in his stomach and allot’s himself a moment to wallow. He forces himself to stand straight, spine elongated in a way that has his bones and muscle screaming.

Poe tries not to limp, as he scurries away to lick his wounds. He fails.

“Poe, you need to see a medic!” Finn insists, somewhere behind him. Always worried, always caring. Poe has nightmares about the night that he eventually loses him, too.

“Don't worry, I will” Finn wonders how someone who looks like they’re going to keel over at any moment- can manage to sound so cheeky.

Rey, who stands beside Finn, bruised bleeding herself wonders if he realizes that Poe is on the verge of tears. The pilot rippling and vibrating so hard she could feel it, taste it on the air.

Neither of them say anything though. The just watch him disappear into the stormy, starless night.

----

Sleep isn't something that comes easy to you as of late.

Not only did you spend your days(and most hours of your nights, too) in the Med Bay, you had never been the kind of person that could handle big changes, sharp adjustments. This hop forts every couple of weeks trend was killing you.

Your mind couldn't relax, R.E.M. State was always just out of reach.

Especially when he was gone...which also seems to be a trend these days. The missions just kept getting longer and longer- the time that he was on base shorter and farther between.

But it was raining tonight- the soft rhythmic  pitter patter of it on the roof of the hut reminding you of your home planet, you could almost pretend you were there; the smell of petrichor tricking your brain. Making it easier to curl up on the bed that was really more of a cot and cozy into the Resistance standard blanket.

For the first time in two weeks- you sleep. Hard. Like a rock. The exhaustion finally overtaking your body, and putting you out of commission. General Organa was right to send you back to your bunk, physically removing you from your post.

You feel kind of, extremely, guilty for the attitude you’d thrown at her -

“I’m fine, if I don't do my job, who’s going to?”-

aimed her way even though she didn't deserve it. She was right, of course. She tended to be most of the time. Why anyone ever doubted her, why you ever doubted her, you didn't know.

The sleep is dreamless, just the way you prefer it...you hadn't always, but nothing was better then the nightmares. Nothing is far from peace, but close to quiet. A middle ground that could be called purgatory, depending how you looked at it.

So when there's a knock at your door, the wooden one that gave you more privacy then you’d had in months, that wakes you from your much needed slumber, you can't help but feel the irritation surge through you. Your hypothetical feathers bristled as you huff and puff and pull yourself out of bed, yanking a pair of breezy sleep pants up your chubby legs and a robe over your shoulders- not wanting to answer whoever it was in the near nude.

When you pull open the door- well, it was the one person who wouldn't have minded if you had greeted him in your panties.

“Poe?” You question, because your eyes still haven't adjusted, your mind still three fourths asleep and one fourth confused.

“Yeah, it’s me, sweetheart” And oh? Sweetheart? In that gravelly voice, tired and worn and fragile...you're instantly aware of what kind of state he’s in.

When you pull him inside, flipping on the light orb, and are able to see him. Clearly now; all bloody and bruised, you inhale sharply. His eye is blackened on the same side of his face that seems to be saturated in crusted crimson.

“Stars, Poe” You whisper as you crowd him, urging him to sit on the cot that’s still warm from your body heat. Poe frowns, pretty lips pulled down as he takes it, and you in. Your hair rumpled, your robe falling off your shoulder as you gather medical supplies from what seems like all over your small “room”

The first thing you do is take out a small capsule full of neon blue liquid from a jar and hand it to him. He takes it gratefully, tossing it down the hatch before you can even offer him water. Painkillers aren't the easiest to come by since they’ve been on the move.

“I woke you up, didn't I?” He inquires, after he swallows.

“Obviously” You answer as you step back into his orbit, close enough that he can smell your skin. That his eyes can trace each of the freckles that dot across your nose, your cheeks. You put your finger under his chin and tilt his head up, and fuck, isn't that a pretty view?

“I’m sorry” He whispers, hissing between his teeth as you, gently but deftly, begin to clean his head.

“Mmm, it’s fine. I’m awake now,  Kriff Poe, you look like warmed over shit. This gash in your hairline is going to need stitches” You’re focused, wiping and dabbing as you speak.

He didn't realize, until that moment, just how much he missed your voice.

“Your bedside manner is spectacular as ever” He grins as he says it, even though it hurts to do so. His busted lip is next on your itinerary.

“Well when you show up at my bedside and not the other way around, I’m pretty sure that changes up the rules”

“Didn't you miss me...at your bedside, that is?” He pushes on, he wants you soft and sweet for him but he knows from experience it takes a bit to get there. Especially since he’s been gone so long.

“Stop distracting me” You mutter. You're only half pretending to be completely focused on the task at hand, at this point you could probably stitch a wound with your eyes closed.

“M’sorry” He’s not. It’s selfish, but he really isn't. He’s not sorry for barging in on you and waking you up, or for sitting in your bed reeking of blood and days worth of dirt. How can he be, when this feels so good? Your soft little hands working at him, healing with every touch. There’s no hurt when he’s around you- only good.

The painkiller makes the edges fuzzy, makes the fact that your repeatedly pulling a needle through his skin seem mild. It’s not like it’s his first time getting sewn up, and he highly doubts it’ll be his last.

Poe can't stop staring at you, dark eyes hooded. Hungry in a way that he doesn't care to hide. Drinking you in, gulping. It’d been almost a month and he was dying to get his fill. Your round body, nothing but curves and dips that he was itching to touch, is mostly covered, but the robe is still hanging off your shoulder. Satin skin exposed, so pretty and pristine.

It’s almost out of his control when his hand skims up our arm, skin seeking out skin. His palm sears as it settles on your upper arm. The plush flesh so soft under his calloused hands that he’s almost worried that it would give if e pressed down too hard.

In the back of his mind he knows better, though. Recalls just how much you can take.

“Poe” You warn tightly, lashes fluttering as you shoot him a look. One that makes him chuckle, because you're not fooling him.

He’ll play, mostly because he wants to, but he knows you missed him as much as he missed you.

You wonder if he can feel the way that you're trembling, already shaking for him. It’s stupid, you feel stupid, and yet you cant stop it. You have healers hands, medic’s hands- and at least you can get them to stay still as you finish with his head, then his lip.

Going insane from the simplest touch, from the way that he rubs his thumb in circles over and over on your upper arm. You remember when that would have made you uncomfortable, big arms that you wanted covered at all times used to be a big no-no.

But with Poe it was different. He wasn't there to judge. He just wanted to feel.

You don't want to pull away, but you have to. Your brain is torn, but ultimately resorts back to it’s resting state: health driven. Medically inclined.

“You need to go take a shower, wash the rest of the blood out of your hair. The hot water will help to start to bring down the swelling” you instruct, and it would be how you talked to any patient. Except for the way you cradle the side of his face, your voice breathy as you touch is thick locks that are greasy. A bit tangled.

Poe nods, he knows your right. Knows he should have done that before he even came here…

“Can I come back?” It’s hopeful, he spits it quick- desperate.

It feels like someone yanked, hard, on a loose thread inside your chest.

“Always. You know that”

--

While he showers, forced to go a few huts over to the community bathrooms, you’re a flurry of anxious thoughts and movement. Tidying up the small space and yourself the best you can. You’d showered earlier in the evening, using the last of the last of the Obsidian Lily oil that you’d carried with you. You still smelled good, pretty.

Your hair was wild, but not untamable and you end up brushing it smooth. You hadn't shaved since before he had left and curse yourself for not doing so earlier. How were you supposed to know that he was coming back tonight? Growing up on your home planet, there was a moss based soap that everyone used that minimized body hair. But still…

You wished, like you had more than once, that you could be better for him.

You're trying to swallow that horrid ugly little thought back down when your door opens, Poe not bothering to knock this time. Barges in, and he seems a bit more like himself in that moment.

His hair has gone back to his natural curls, thick and bouncing, dripping and the navy, loose materialed sleep clothes hang on him. Dont cling to him with dirt and sweat...all and all, he looks so much better.

Or so you think. Until you see him in the right light, his top falling open and revealing his chest.

“Poe!” You exclaim and his thick brows furrow, he had been drying his hair with one of your spare towels.

“What?”

“Take off your shirt” You demand and one side of his lips pull up- a smirk that doesn't meet his eyes.

“You know if you ask me nicely, sweetheart, I’ll give you whatever you want” It’s a purr, a ploy. Many a person- male, female and Wookiee had fallen for that charm of his. Your own name thrown in that pot.

But he was hurt, had to be in pain, and that thought cut through the others that that coy tone had stirred up.

“I’m serious, that bruising looks deep- why didn't you show me this earlier? You could have internal bleeding! Something could be broken”

Poe would never let it be known, would deny it to the ends of the galaxy...but he loves the way you fret over him. It makes him feel warm.

“Okay- Okay!” He sighs as you start to reach for him demandingly, knowing that you'd pull it off yourself if he didn't. There's a handful of winces as he tugs the fabric up and over his shoulders. You’re silent the whole time, and then for a long moment after.

“Oh...baby”

It’s the first time you've called him that tonight. In weeks. The first time an affectionate name has slipped from your mouth.

You can't help it, can't help the overwhelming feeling of...horror. Of shock and worry. His tanned chest and abdomen are hard, dusted with ebony hair that matches that of which grows from his scalp...and covered in bruises.

Four huge patches of yellow, and black and purple and blue...he looks like a fucking water color painting. You’d seen him in some pretty bad states over the years, and this was up there with some of the worst. The worst? Well you didn't like to think about that particular bloody day.

You reach out, fingertips tracing the purple bloom on his left ribs.

“It’s not so bad” And that’s Poe in a nutshell. Always trying to convince not only the people around him, but himself, that things were going to be okay.

“That one’s a deep tissue bruise” You point out to him, fingers gently probing, trying to detect if anything is broken “It has to hurt like a bitch, it’s going to get worse before it feels better”

“Not so bad” He loves the way you're touching him, and his hand, that big paw, goes to our waist. Holding you. Urging you to keep going “Those painkillers are something else”

You snort through your nose. He’s something else- you tell him of that fact, often.

Poe can only be so patient, can only allow you to touch him, feather light, for so long. Eventually, his impulses win out. Just like the always do.

You’re almost done, checking his bones, when he grabs your hand, envelopes it in his large one. It’s still for a moment- the air sparkling with energy. His eyes are mahogany, dark wood. Deep forests as they stare down at you.

The want in them is raw, unbridled.

“I missed you, so fucking much. Every day. Have I told you that yet?” His words, mixed with the timbre- vehement. Honest. It makes you want to squirm.

“No- you haven't” You wish your voice at that moment wasn't so anxious, weak and almost a whisper. Something about Poe had always brought this out in you. He was so bright, beaming. Everyone around him flocked to him, in hopes of just being able to taste a fraction of his light.

Sometimes, you still couldn't believe that he let you fill your cup, that he sought you out, parted the crowd for you.

You had never been a weak woman; had never let your weight or your too loud opinions or your tendencies to be overly emotional make you feel small, or less then...but being with Poe-- the level of intimacy was suffocating.

You felt burned up. Icarus who flew too close to the sun, who willing allowed himself to be burned up just to feel its warmth for a moment...you could relate.

“I did” Poe continues “I missed the way you feel, the way you taste-”

You close your eyes at that, images of the last time you’d gotten a moment alone with him, of a head of dark curls between your legs, assaulting you. Smacking you right in the face.

“-You taste so good, Y/N. Should've bent you over when you came to say goodbye. You would've let me, huh? Let me get one more taste- you have no idea how bad I want to stick my tongue inside of you. All the time. No one else gets to taste, right?”

Poe is well on his way to being rock hard, already. It had taken all of him to not jerk off in the showers.

“No one, Poe. You know that” you’d meant to tell him to fuck off, that you didn't belong to him. That he couldn't just have you whenever he wanted you. That came out instead.

“I need you” He tells you, roughly “feel how bad I need you, Y/N, fuck” he still has your hand in his grasp, againts his chest. When he begins to slide it downward, you know where its destination will be.

That doesn't stop the thrill, the flip flop of our tummy that comes with Poe pressing your hand to his crotch, hard and hot. The thin pants the only layer between your palm and his erection.

“You’re the only one who gets me like this, I need you to make it better, Y/N”

The switch is flipped then. Hard.

You’re surging forward, and he's meeting you halfway, your mouths slotting together. Lips and tongue, so much tongue. He talks all about how you taste, but stars, the way he tastes is intoxicating. Want to suck the taste of him off his tongue, off his cock.

Its blurry and ferocious. Hands everywhere. Touching, grabbing. While you are gentle with him and his tattered body, he doesn't extend that same sentiment. He’s groping, fingertips bidding into flesh. Groaning into your mouth as he clutches your thick, dimpled thighs. Reaches around to squeeze our ample ass.

Best ass in the galaxy, he'd write fucking sonnets about it, if he was good at anything but flying.

Clothes are shed, way too fast you worn Poe who doesn't listen. Because he never does- and he ends up hissing in pain, and relenting, sitting on the cot and letting you take off his pants. Slowly. You make it up to him by standing over him, grabbing his hands and guiding them to strip you. Slow drags of fabric over supple skin.

You’re so fucking sexy, and he tells you so as he urges you into his lap, you stay on your shins to mind his middle. Poe worships with his words. His fingers and lips do their fair share of praying next.

“Fuck I missed these the most” your breasts are large, heavy globes. Puffy sweet nipples are pebbled and just begging to be sucked on. He licks them messy, wet before he does just that; sucks them into the hot cavern of his mouth.

“Oh, oh, ugh” Your hands are twined in his hair, dripping down onto his thighs already, when Poe feels the wetness drip on him, his fingers go searching, hand pressed in between your thighs. Fingers slipping through sopping, heated flesh. You grasp, a high sound as he presses up and circles your clit, firm and pointed.

It’s so good, pleasure shoots down your legs, all the way to the tips of your toes.

It’s not enough. For either of you.

“Poe, fuck. Please” He’s injured, and you know it hurts him to do, and you should scold him for it, but when he manhandles you, flips you easily onto your back to that he can climb on top and situates himself between your thighs-

It’s just as hot as it always is. You know you have to be dripping down onto the cot, can feel your slick covering your thighs, slipping down your crack.

Kiss, Kiss and Kiss and Kiss and Kiss and…

You get lost in it, caught up in the way his stubble burns. His fingers slide back inside you and he watches your face as he crooks them, pumps them fast. Finger fucks you until you’re sobbing, letting out animal sounds.

“Do you still have the implant” he pants, head swimming. He gets like this when you let him make you feel good- wants to go down on you, but wants to be inside you even more.

“No, I took it out in the last few weeks” You’re cheeky, even with his fingers burried inside you. He loves that about you, “Of course I do, Poe”

You’d be damned before you ever brought a child into this world.

Poe holds your thighs wide, staring between them, your pussy wet and clenching around nothing. You’re so vulnerable for him, it makes you dizzy. He lines himself up, clock head dipping into your slit, resting against your hole, when thrusts inside of you it’s in one fluid movement.

You mewl, so full it’s hard to breathe and Poe makes a punched out sound. Like he’d been shot by a blaster in the chest and his hips start undulating, needing to be deeper. It feels so right inside of you. Feels safe. He wants to tear into your softness, rip you open and nestle inside. Settle himself in your bones.

You let him take what he needs, how ever he needs it. On your back, on your hands and knees. You bounce on his cock when he gets to achy,letting him run his hands all over your tummy, sides, breasts.

He can have it all.

After, the two of you lay spent, cuddled tight to one and other in the small cot. Standard issue thrown over your naked bodies, the sound of the rain starting up again mixed with Poes breathing is a lullaby you hadn't known you needed.

This...thing between you might have started as a way for both of you to numb the pain. To seek support. But it was more now. You were so in love with him that it made your eyes sting if you thought about it for too long.

“You’ll always come back to me, right?” Its so, so timid that he almost doesn't catch it and you almost hope he’d miss it.

Poe does what he always does; tries to convince you both that it’s going to be okay.

“Always”

You let yourself believe him.

Well I wasn't expecting this to turn into pure porn, but here we are lmfao. I loved writing for Poe and there will definitely be more of him coming soon! If you are able- listening to All I Need by Radiohead and the Hot Like Fire cover by the XX really sets the tone for this. I actually dropped a line from hot like fire in this- who can point it out?lol

As usual, I'm going to ask that if you can please give me some feedback. I truly love interacting with my readers and would love to hear your thoughts and opinions.

[365days365movies]

February 3, 2021: Sleepless in Seattle (1993)

The year: 1986. A small new fictionation is founded as part of a disparate group of similar territories. Near to another civilization founded by Woody Allen (we’ll get to him later this month, whoof), a new settlement was founded by one Nora Ephron. It began with Heartburn, a rom-com starring Meryl Streep and Jack Nicholson. While it was somewhat successful, it wasn’t exactly a dynamo by any means. And that is when Nora met the future Empress of her fictonation.

Her name was Meg Ryan, and the film...was When Harry Met Sally.

Ephron only wrote this film, rather than direct it. But it didn’t matter, as this film was CRAZY successful (and I’ll be watching it later this month). Some years past, and both Ryan and Ephron rose in power. Ephron became a director, Ryan became a movie star, and the two pillars would reunite for greater things. And THAT is when the future Empress met her Emperor.

Enter Joe vs. the Volcano, where Meg Ryan...met Tom Hanks.

Now, was this movie amazing? No, not from what I’ve heard. But the two new co-stars apparently made an impression on Hollywood at this point, as their respective stars would only grow brighter. And so, when 1993 came along, the three pillars finally met, and ascended to their true roles as the rulers of a now united Holy Romance Empire. And that film...was Sleepless in Seattle.

Time to witness a nation RISE. SPOILERS AHEAD!!!

Recap

We start where all romantic comedies should start: at a Chicago graveyard!

Architect Sam Baldwin’s (Tom Hanks) wife, Maggie, has sadly passed away, leaving Sam and their son, Jonah (Ross Malinger). Sam’s clearly broken, understandably, and he decides to move from Chicago in order to leave behind the bittersweet memories of his wife. And where he’s headed? You know where.

Jimmy Durante’s rendition of “As Time Goes By”

Jimmy Durante sings us in (I love this song, for the record), and we head not to Seattle, but to Baltimore, 18 months afterwards. There, reporter Annie Reed (Meg Ryan) is going to a Christmas party with her new fiancée, Walter Jackson (Bill Pullman), which is announced to great aplomb at the party. Her brother Dennis is played by Niles from Frasier (David Hyde Pierce), and I nearly spit out my sandwich.

That night, Annie’s mother gives her her old wedding dress, and have a VERY frank conversation about their sexual relationships. It is...awkward. Anyway, the dress tears, which Annie sees as a sign. In any case, she still seems happy...I think. On the way to Walter’s parents’ place, she tunes into a radio talk show, where a child is making a Christmas wish to the station.

This child is, of course, Jonah, calling on behalf of his father from Seattle. He tells the host, Dr. Marcia Fieldstone (Caroline Aaron), that his father is lonely after his wife’s death, and that he wishes he had a new wife. She convinces Jonah to put him on the phone, and while he’s reluctant to do so (understandably), he accepts. All the while, Annie’s listening, and seems to sympathize deeply with him and his sarcastic responses.

However, Sam begins to open up, and Dr. Fieldstone christens him “Sleepless in Seattle,” after the fact that he doesn’t sleep much at all these days. His story resonates with a number of people, Annie included. A few people call in to respond to him, and at the end of the call, he describes how much and why he misses his wife. And I gotta be honest, I’m with Annie here. It is...very moving.

Damn you, Tom Hanks, it’s only 20 minutes in, why are you already making me FEEEEEEL?

The next day, it’s a splash, and over 2,000 women call in in response to this. This is discounted by her co-worker and friend, Becky (Rosie O’Donnell). At the New Year’s party soon after, she and Walter make a date to meet in New York City, and register for their eventual wedding. Meanwhile, Sam tucks Jonah in to sleep, as Nat King Cole serenades us (I ALSO love Nat King Cole, real talk) and Sam stares at the fireworks off of his houseboat.

And, mentally haunted by the ghost of his wife, he’s seemingly literally haunted by the ghost of his wife, Maggie (Carey Lowell). The next morning, he goes to help a client, Barbara (Dana Ivey), and his co-worker Jay Matthews (Rob Reiner) with a house, and finds out that everybody knows who he is at this point. Additionally, Jonah also give the radio station their address, and MANY women are now soliciting Sam, including...his third-grade teacher. Ew. EW.

Sam and Jonah next have a talk about whether or not a prospective new wife would have sex with Sam, and I wonder if sexual conversations with your parents are supposed to be this common, or if I’m just crazy. Because me and my Dad? Nuh-uh. And no worries if your relationship with your folks is like this, but mine DEFINITELY IS NOT, lemme tell you.

Annie and Walter prepare for bed, and Ray Charles sings them to sleep, followed by Carly Simon talking about the wee small hours of the morning. During those hours, Annie gets up, also unable to sleep, and turns on the Dr. Marcia Fieldstone show. During the highlight reel for the show, Disappointed in Denver notes that:

Everytime I come close to orgasm, he goes and makes himself a sandwich.

...Wow. Um. Asshole? And then Marcia tells her to make a sandwich for him beforehand, WHICH IS NOT SOLVING THE PROBLEM. Anyway, Sam is also featured in that highlight reel, and Annie cries again as he talks about his wife, and it’s a disproportionately long excerpt compared to the others, what the hell? Marooned in Miami is DISAPPOINTED now.

Annie goes to meet her brother Niles (he’s basically Niles from Frasier, seriously) the next day, and explains that she’s fantasizing about Sam, a man she’s never even MET. She’s also feeling doubt about her upcoming marriage, which is...interesting. I’ll get to that later. In Seattle, meanwhile, Sam asks Jay what it’s like as a single man in Seattle, and they have a conversation about how cute Sam’s butt is. Nice.

Upon the realization that his 9-year old son is hanging out with more girls than he is (yeah, there’s a kid named Jessica hanging out with him when Sam gets home, it’s awkward), Sam’s back in the saddle again (as the song indicates; that said, goddamn is the music choice on the nose sometimes, seriously). He calls a woman named Victoria (Barbara Garrick), and asks her out on a date.

Annie’s watching the movie An Affair to Remember (lateeeeeer) at Becky’s, as she’s lamenting her fixation on Sam, while also struggling to fully understand how she feels about Walter. Becky RIGHTFULLY accuses her of believing in Hollywood, movie love, which is demonstrated by Annie’s meaningless platitudes about her supposed love for Walter. This is while she’s writing a letter to Sam, then aborts it when she realizes what she’s doing. She sits on the couch with Becky, they mouth the words together in the movie, and they cry while I laugh, because that was funny.

Things aren’t as jovial for Sam and Jonah, as Jonah’s had a nightmare, and the two reminisce over missing their mother. Sam notes that Maggie could peel an apple in one long...curly...strip. You mean...like Annie was doing earlier? I see what you did there, movie. I see what you did there. As if to compound their invisible connection, both of them sit on a dock, staring into two separate oceans at night.

Sam proceeds to write a story for the paper on “Sleepless in Seattle,” and through some...mildly creepy personal invasion, she finds his address in Seattle, and a hell of a lot more personal information. Like I said, it’s a little creepy. Sam, meanwhile, is going on a date with Victoria, when Jonah opens a letter...from Annie.

Annie. What’re you doin’?

Jonah appears to IMMEDIATELY ship the two, but Sam quotes the coast-to-coast distance as being a bit too much, and goes on the date with Victoria. While on the date, Jonah tries to hook Sam up with Annie by getting him to agree to take them to New York City on Valentine’s Day. Damn, Jonah, you lookin’ to escape a whale, because you are BUILDING A GODDAMN SHIP

Victoria, a woman with an amazingly obnoxious laugh, does not rub off well on Jonah, or me, or my girlfriend. I’m really hoping that somehow, in SOME WAY, Victoria and Walter get together. He’s boring, she’s obnoxious, who knows? They might like each other. My ship...is being built.

Jonah, meanwhile, is TAKING THE FUCKING WHEEL of this ship. He calls the radio station once again, and Annie is alerted to this by Becky. She wakes up, punching Walter in the process (dude gets HURT), and goes downstairs to listen. Jonah’s telling the station that Victoria SUUUUUCKS, and straight up calls her “a ho.” He hangs up abruptly, and screams to stop his father from kissing Victoria. Annie, meanwhile, listens to this in the closet for some reason.

The next day, Jonah’s friend, Jessica, tells Jonah to send a letter to Annie on his father’s behalf. Meanwhile, Annie flies to Seattle in the guise of doing a story, when she’s actually going to try and meet Sam. Victoria, meanwhile, is leaving from the airport, where Sam and Jonah are seeing her off. Victoria basically implies that she’d like to ditch the kid and go fuck someplace sometime, which might FINALLY rub Sam the wrong way.

Sam talks to Jonah about the fact that he’s dating Victoria, not marrying her, and that she might not be the one for him. He also says that there’s no such thing as soul- 

-mates.

Yeah, they actually did just do that. Sam loses Annie at the airport, after immediately chasing after her. They’re perfect for each other, as Annie goes RIGHT to Sam’s houseboat address. She hangs around the neighborhood, and sees them having fun on the beach together as Harry Connick Jr. plays in the background. That night, she confides in Becky about her guilt in lying to Walter.

And if I can just say this...yeah, THAT isn’t great. I get that there’s some cinematic paegentry to the whole thing, but, like...tell your FIANCEE about your FEELINGS. It’s hard, yeah, duh, but YOU GOTTA DO IT. You most certainly owe it to Walter. At least she appears to know it, though.

Annie at the hotel

The next day, Annie goes once again to weirdly spy on Jonah, and sees him hug a woman very happily, and of course believes that that’s Victoria. However, this is his friend, Suzy (Rita Wilson), who’s visiting with her husband, Greg (Victor Garber). In any case, this leads to Sam and Annie seeing each other for the first time. He says hello. She says hello. Then she almost gets hit by a taxi, and she IMMEDIATELY flies back home WHAT THE FUUUUUUUUUUH

We find this out later, but the taxi and the fact that all she could say was “Hello” is actually all a reference to the film seen earlier, An Affair to Remember (again, later this month). This is also part of the repeating motif that this film has: signs. Y’know, the kind of “IT’S A SIGN” thing. However, the real twist here is that the signs are the ones that they can’t see. Like the apple and the hello thing. Not yet, anyway.

Also, dear lord, An Affair to Remember is just making EVERY woman in the film cry, even when they’re TALKING about it. And every time, the men just look at each other like “WOMEN, with their EMOTIONS and their VAGOOOOOOS.” Jesus, ‘90s movies. Even JESSICA (Gaby Hoffman), Jonah’s friend, the LITTLE GIRL, is crying at this movie. JESUS, I’m really interested in seeing this movie now.

Jessica and Jonah start conspiring on how to get to New York to meet Annie, and do so by FAKING AIRLINE TICKETS OK THEN. Meanwhile, Annie’s given up on the whole “Sleepless in Seattle” thing, and goes to meet Walter for their Valentine’s date in NYC. Walter rightfully comments that Annie’s seemed distant, and here’s the thing: Walter deserves better than this. Yeah, he’s BORING AS SHIT, but the dude’s committed to her, and she’s amazingly flaky in comparison. I dunno, maybe it’s because it’s Bill Pullman, but I feel bad for him.

Anyway, in New York, the two begin to rekindle their relationship, and Walter gets a ring for her at FUCKING TIFFANY’S HOLY SHIT. Meanwhile, Sam’s THIRSTY AS FUUUUUUUCK, and is leaving to spend the weekend with Victoria, which Jonah is NOT a fan of. This ship is gonna SAIL if JONAH HAS TO FLY TO NEW YORK CITY HIMSELF

So, Jonah flies to New York City himself, in order to...meet his new mother. This movie has some VERY interesting issues, Jesus. Jonah does, indeed go to the top of the Empire State Building to look for Annie, and he asks all the girls on the Observation Deck if they’re Annie. Which, of course, none of them are. Why?

Annie’s at dinner, that’s why, and at the FUCKING RAINBOW ROOM DEAR LORD HOW MUCH MONEY DOES WALTER MAKE? Sam also makes his way to New York, probably to DESTROY HIS CHILD

And at dinner, Annie actually redeems herself by telling Walter the ENTIRE TRUTH about her feelings, and about “Sleepless in Seattle.” And Walter is a CLASSY-ASS GUY ABOUT THE ENTIRE THING, and the two break off their engagement amicably. Annie says that she doesn’t deserve Walter, and BY GOD SHE’S RIGHT. Walter’s a sweet dude. And as soon as they break up...a sign.

Sam finds Jonah on the Observation Deck, and the two tearfully reunite. And as they two unite, and everybody else leaves the Observation Deck as it closes for the night, Annie rushes on her way there. An Affair to Remember is invoked one last time, as Annie convinces the guard to let her up there. But, OF GODDAMN COURSE...she goes up in one elevator, and Sam and Jonah head down in another.

But wait. Isn’t that Jonah’s backpack on the ground of the Observation Deck? 

Yup. THERE’S the happy ending we’re lookin’ for. They finally formally introduce each other, and Sam says that they’d better leave...ALL of them, together. Love at first sight. PLAY US OUT JIMMY DURANTE!!!! And yeah, I know that Celine Dion sings the end credits song, but NOPE! TAKE ME AWAY, JIMMY! MAKE ME HAPPY!

And that was Sleepless in Seattle! And again, I liked it! I’ll get more into it during the Review!