#i will genuinely crash out if i have another mental breakdown because of it

[j-crow]

yowch!! that hurt more than i expected!!!!!!

[saltwatersweets]

yknow, given the fact that it’s entirely possible wounds created by angelic weapons don’t fully heal (since vaggie’s eye never healed), and the fact that adam attacked alastor with an angelic weapon, and the fact i’ve seen a few fics in which alastor deals with chronic pain in his chest wound because of the injury, i’m surprised i’ve never seen anyone bring up an idea where adam’s axe landed just a foot or so above where it did in canon and ended up taking out alastor’s eyes, similar to how lute did with vaggie.

i’m not sure if i would be comfortable writing about this, given i am not physically disabled and i’m not sure if i could accurately portray blindness (especially with a character like alastor, who’s already so difficult to write), but i’d love to see this idea explored somehow. alastor is already someone who wants to be the most powerful (or at least in control) person in the room and so taking away his sight in a permanent way would definitely affect him badly. another reason i’m not sure i would want to write this out: the internalized ableism would be off the CHARTS. not to mention, a wound to the face isnt something he can hide like he could with a chest wound, so the other hotel inhabitants at least would see what happened as soon as they realised he was still alive after the extermination. he would not be happy about their endless concern one bit.

tl;dr: what if alastor was permanently blind after the extermination?

here are some ideas i have regarding this au (please let me know if any of them come off as insensitive):

alastor probably would try to use the recent lack of eyes to his advantage. after all, outside of one’s mouth, the eyes are typically the most expressive part about a person. even when he’s trying to conceal his emotions, you can tell what he’s feeling because of the expressions in his eyes. now, however, he’s even MORE difficult to read, which he likes to think gives him more control. the eyes are a window to the soul, they say? not anymore!

he looks rather similar to rosie now (based off how vaggie looked like when charlie first found her after she fell, with her eye socket just being dark and black)! once he’s accepted what happened to him, they’ll make an occasional joke about how now he looks more like a typical cannibal in hell, it just took him a century to catch up.

vaggie and him bond over losing one or more eyes because of adam (whether directly or indirectly). he hates the fact that he genuinely is more fond of her after this experience, because she never treats him like something about to break, for better or worse.

speaking of which, i feel the need to say that despite alastor likely viewing himself as weaker after the loss of his eyesight, he is not inherently weaker. it takes him a long time to know he is not ruined, he is just changed. doesn’t mean his musical mental breakdown in episode eight isn’t even worse than before now though. he hates that this has happened to him, that he has been permanently injured in this way, but he learns to live (or… exist? since he’s already dead) with it and accept his disability as a part of himself.

his staff (once repaired) and ears are incredibly helpful, especially since deer can hear extremely well. his shadow and microphone are also extensions of himself, so though he can’t see through them per se, they keep him from crashing into things when he’s in an unfamiliar area.

once mimzy gets over being “kicked out” of the hotel so to speak, they’ll still hang out and dance together! she doesn’t think of him as any lesser or any weaker after what happened, he’s still able to keep up with her on the dance floor even if it is a bit more difficult now.

the hotel inhabitants and some other people he regularly meets with will occasionally read his favourite books aloud to him (there were books in his room so i headcanon he likes to read in his free time). he never says it aloud, but he does genuinely appreciate this. he particularly enjoys it when niffty sits still long enough to read to him, especially if she’s reading out a cookbook and helping him make food. it is physically impossible for her to sound condescending to him.

on the other hand, charlie reading aloud is a mixed bag, because although she’ll always try to make it entraining for him (by being very animated in her voice acting), she’ll often interrupt herself to disavow the fictional violence. also, it is physically impossible for her to NOT sound condescending to him. he’s not a wayward sinner down on his luck for her to swoop in and save, after all! he doesn’t need her to try and “fix” him.

he has allowed angel to read to him a SINGULAR time, because while his voice acting is quite entertaining and he won’t complain about the violence (he has no room to talk, given the scripts he acts out), angel would rather die (again) than quit making sex jokes every two minutes. he could be reading a cookbook and sneak in a “that’s what she said” a good three times in a single page.

one of the first things charlie does upon seeing alastor is still alive after the extermination is ask lucifer to heal him, and lucifer has to tell her it’s not something that he can do. it’s actually something charlie initially responds with anger about, because at first she thinks he’s just refusing to heal alastor just because he doesn’t like him. it’s vaggie who steps in to calm her down, because she knows personally that angelic wounds can’t be fully healed. it’s been three years, she’s not expecting her eye back by now.

alternatively, it’s easy to imagine charlie still asking lucifer to TRY and heal him regardless, because maybe if they just try hard enough, they can do it! so lucifer tries. and it does not work. naturally, this only serves to make alastor more pissed off. he melts into his shadow and goes into his room, and doesn’t come back out until that night.

the next thing charlie does is spend no less than four hours looking up accommodations she can make to the hotel for someone with no sight. braille to all the rooms and other things that are labeled is among the first she gets lucifer to implement, as well as keeping nearly all of the floors loud tile instead of carpeted, so alastor can tell if someone else is in the room with him.

i swear i’m trying to think of something distinct for husk because his dynamic with alastor is so interesting to me, but i really can’t think of anything super specific. one thing that does stick out is that, like vaggie, he never regards alastor with pity, because he knows alastor better than most and knows he’s still extremely powerful. i’ve always thought alastor somewhat appreciates husk’s unflinching honesty (even though it’s a trait of his that undeniably pisses him off at times), and so he knows husk isn’t lying or acting when he still treats him the same way as before the extermination.

alastor will still make radio broadcasts, even if just for his own amusement. you don’t need to be able to see to be able to talk, after all! if anything, this experience only makes him hate television and modern day technology more. at least he revels in the knowledge that it is now impossible for vox to hypnotize him, if he ever dared to try.

he’ll make. so many eye puns. TOO MANY eye puns. you know that joke where people are like “we can’t ever let alastor know he’s asexual because if he does, the amount of ace jokes he’ll make will be through the roof”? yeah, it gets that bad.

i like the headcanon that alastor likes to draw on occasion (given the all but stated fact that he drew the hotel in the commercial in episode 1, as well as a few unnecessary but fun doodles outside of that), and he is initially saddened to realize that this is something he won’t be able to do anymore. however, niffty ALSO likes drawing, and she likes to rope him in to her drawings by force, giving him paper and crayons and always being completely honest if he ever asks what colour is in his hand. he’ll even occasionally let her move his hand to the right spot on his paper if he ever forgets where he drew the lines on his paper before. she likes to spend as long as she needs describing her drawings in vivid detail - she will talk to him about her gorey artwork, and no one will stop her!

[mingos]

hello, it me. this isn't just a check-in this time (hopefully). well, right now it is, but i'm peeking in my drafts for the first time in a little bit tonight so hopefully i can post actual content tomorrow.

in case you missed the note i wrote before about where i've been, here’s an abridged version in as light as possible terms:

terrible, no good, very bad fight with family member

(i thought i was gonna 🪦 i’m being so serious)

✨ severe mental breakdown(s) ✨ (developed a severe fear of people)

lived out of hotels for 3 weeks with my dog

eventually crashed at another family member's house

more fighting with family member #1 over the phone

i feel responsible for this person's safety but also refused to go back until they agreed to start seeking help again so we 'negotiated' for another two weeks.

also i attended my twin's wedding somewhere in there.

i know i'm not obligated to explain things on here (and, like i said last time, it's nerve-wracking when i do because i was once held responsible for the emotions of someone else because they were upset i was upset - so now i just feel like it would be preferable for people if i keep my emotions to myself and if i don't bad things will happen)

but. i needed some context to show how bad my mental state has been - specifically the fear of people thing? i'm still kind of dealing with that. i don't know how to explain it because i'm also lonely & would theoretically like to talk to friends so i can remedy that - but i think my brain is broken? i straight up just think i got emotional whiplash'd so hard by that "terrible, no good, very bad" fight that my brain is just... a cracked egg.

i screwed myself over by ending another hiatus to spend my birthday on here. like i mentioned, the birthday the year before was the worst i’ve ever had - anything would have been an improvement, so i just wanted to distract myself with my one safe outlet for socializing.

but it was so nice, and i was so happy (i got more birthday wishes than i've gotten in years, i got a physical gift sent to me when i don't even know the last time a friend got me a gift) that now it genuinely felt like the universe was playing some kind of sick joke on me? one day, i receive enough love & affection for my dumb abuse survivor brain to do a 180 & start thinking “hey, i do deserve to be loved like everyone else” only to be hit with an immediate “no you don’t” a week later so hard that the thought of speaking to another human being filled me with fight-or-flight levels of dread for weeks.

i have never felt like this. usually i don't talk when i'm upset because i don't wanna be a bother, or i don't have spoons - not because i'm scared. so i just wanna preface that, for the next little bit while i'm getting used to people again, in case i am in any way weird, or apologize a lot, or slow , or curt - or any of the 90000 off-putting things a person can do. i need to put this here because, just like the other note, the idea of explaining this in a one-on-one conversation with someone right now makes me want to jump through a windowpane. i don't know if it's a fear of being yelled at, or making someone uncomfortable, or making someone annoyed, or any way a conversation can go 'wrong' going wrong - but it's bad.

it is absolutely, 100% nothing personal. it is so not personal that, for the first 3 weeks, i was afraid to speak to the person i honestly consider to be my best friend in the rpc. we are so similar, we speak so much - & my brain still tricked me into being scared. i didn’t even approach him - he just kept messaging me until i worked up the courage like i was some squirrel he was coaxing out of hiding with a peanut.

anyway. uh. i'm still a bit unsure how stable my situation is with my family member - but there was a bit of a development that happened while i was bouncing around. my family member started dating apparently and got a partner - which is huge.

for me, i mean. my biggest anxiety and why i put up with this so much when things get dangerous is because no one else really checks in on them anymore and i feel really responsible for their safety as much as my own. lots of anxiety. lots of stress. sucks.

but now, for the first time in 2+ years, i get an actual break from that. for the past 2 weekends, they haven't even been here - they've been at this person's house, and i've had this house entirely to myself. i don't have to worry about a thing to do with them for 3+ days because someone else is doing it. incredible.

it's weird to say it feels like a victory because i didn't do anything and it has nothing to do with me, but after a month+ of what i've been dealing with i will take anything that takes a load off my mind and this is a huge one.

it gave me a much needed boost of energy, so i'm going to try to start queueing drafts again and getting back into my routine so i can hopefully start to feel normal too.

　　thank you for all your patience as always. even though i just admitted to being a very apprehensive & scared gremlin wilder and not chaos gremlin wilder, i do love & appreciate you all the same.

[kaijusdream]

Pigeon Scratch Music Update, Late 2023 Edition!

Wasn't intending on not posting a single update on how things are going for over half a year, but that is just how the turn tables I suppose. A little bit of laziness and procrastination, a little bit of art block, stressing myself to near breaking point on multiple occasions, both in music making and overall life stuff. Summertime this year was pretty damn rough, the lowest my mental health had been for a while, and the next couple of months were just trying to bounce back from that. During that time at least I've been able to have a healthier relationship with music. Both in how I feel about my own work, but also in how I enjoy music by others. I've been able to get back into the swing of things. Now it's just procrastination. Let's start with some of the tracks for Northern Minnesota, Part II.

The most recent song I've been working on is with the working title "Fargo Breakdown." About five minutes long, the general gist for this song is to be a slow build with more guitars and drums added onto itself with every repeat. A really big shoegaze-y, post-rock, wall of sound style crescendo that just abruptly ends and sharply transitions into the next song. Current plans is to have this be the first song on the album, with "Pretty Pink Eyes," what I used to affectionately call "The Long Song" going right after it. Can't call it that anymore because now we got at least two songs that are over ten minutes long.

As I've grown more comfortable working on Ableton, and understanding how to more properly produce on it, I've grown accustomed to a more wall of sound approach for this album. It fits perfectly with the genres of music I am making here. Working on this song, as well as The First Snowfall (more about that track and Pretty Pink Eyes later), has actually been helping me determine the kind of style and tone I want, something I'm more comfortable settling on than I was with what I had for Pretty Pink Eyes and The First Snowfall a year ago. One thing I've realized while working on this album is genuinely how well Post-Rock goes with the concept of suffering with OCD, escapism, gender dysphoria, stuff along those lines. And I'm really excited about the idea of mixing my style in more with that genre. Post-Rock has always been such a massive inspiration for me, so I hope I can do it justice with my own little spin on it.

"Muni" is one I can't exactly remember if I did ever post about it here on Tumblr. I did scroll through my entire blog and checked my tags just to make sure, but I didn't see anything. Started working on this track earlier in the year, I believe after my Vancouver trip. About seven minutes long, this is definitely more of a two-parter of a song, in vain to Pretty Pink Eyes and The First Snowfall being multiple parts in a track. Starts off as a slow somber piece with a ton of reverb and cymbals crashing, and the second half being another breakdown. Plans is to have this track on the latter half on the album, almost right before the final couple of tracks. Honestly not much more to say about this, it's just a damn solid track that really came out of nowhere. I think a good thing about Northern Minnesota, Part II is that it's more focused on longer songs than amount of tracks. Focusing on a couple of songs at a time instead of a bunch of one to two minute long tracks really lets me work on the smaller details of these songs to sound exactly how I want them too. I'd also have to assume it's easier for some listeners to listen to a ten track long album than a twenty-five track long album, even if they are about the same length. I just think it's cool I can actually make longer songs.

"Actually Leaving" Is the only song that has been released in full, albeit as an old demo version on EFMC Vol. 2. It also has been shown in full on my Tumblr page as well, over a year ago. Track used to only be two guitar tracks and a drum track, but I decided for the breakdown bit at the end to double the tracks just to get that wall of sound I desire. Still planning to have this be the last song of the album, since it's such a great end piece. Especially now, since Fargo Breakdown and Actually Leaving both have the same vibe, and I like the idea of all the tracks being similar enough to each other to really feel like a concept album. These tracks have different chord progressions and arrangements, different pacings, but very similar ideas for the base. My main concern with Northern Minnesota, Part II is just making sure nothing is filler, and nothing sounds too samey, while also sounding like it all belongs on the same album. All the main songs I've been working on as of late, the ones that have and will be shown here, are very much based on some sort of build up and breakdown, crescendo type of song. Personally though, I think each breakdown I've done in these songs are different from one another. Each showcase a different style of crescendo. At the end of the day, its okay for some of these songs to sound similar to each other because this is a concept album in heart. And it's especially okay since I'm planning on these songs to be related to each other's concepts. Lyrics, arrangements, even song titles. I want to go crazy with the song titles especially, because I'm a fan of complexity in titles. There is gonna be a lot of part II's in parenthesis and reprisals in brackets, vice versa. Just makes me stupid giddy over the idea of it.

The First Snowfall is one of my absolute favorites on this album. The arpeggio melody in the beginning, the first breakdown with the noisy leads similar to Godspeed You! Black Emperor, the jam session in the middle, and the wall of sound, noise, and reverb at the end as it just gets faster and faster in each second. This song was an absolute blast to make, as well as incredibly difficult and painful. Specifically at the end with the increasing tempo. Playing that on guitar and drums and trying my damn best to keep up was really hard, but I think the sloppiness at the end works really well in its favor. Planning this to be the second to last track of the album, right before Actually Leaving. About ten minutes long. I'm a little concerned that going from the wall of sound to another breakdown might screw up the pacing a little bit, but the times I have listened to the transition, It works pretty well. If I do need to put a trick in between, I'm sure I can figure something out, but we'll see later on when I got more songs to work on.

I remember talking about "Pretty Pink Eyes" on my Tumblr literally a year ago, at the time I'm writing this. That image of Ableton didn't have this many tracks, that's for certain. For the past year I've been struggling with how this song sounded in comparison to everything else. That struggle only got worse as time went on, when I started songs like The First Snowfall, Muni, and especially Fargo Breakdown. This was the first song I started working on alongside Actually Leaving, back in late June of 2022. That was during the time I was still learning how to use Ableton, and how to use it exclusively, no Audacity. Because of that, it just sounded completely different no matter what I tried, and my confidence in music making severely plummeted. There came a point where this song no longer sounded like a song to me, and it sounded worse each time I tried.

At the end of last month I finally realized what my big problem was. It was how I was trying to fix it. Working on old varnish doesn't make things better. They don't mix well. I was working on set ups for tracks that I did a year ago, give or take. It didn't matter if I added another guitar track, or if I changed the distortion or the amount of reverb, or even if I included audio recordings of the song through my speakers into the mix, it wasn't gonna sound like how I wanted it to. I had to start from scratch. I kinda knew this for a while, but I was so afraid to do so due to how hard of a task I thought that would be, and I was afraid I wasn't gonna get exactly what I wanted. There were parts I thought that fit the album well already, and there was the thought it'd be pointless to just restart in that department. But again, there came a point where I just said screw it, and just do it. Wouldn't hurt to try. So I created a copy of the project, got rid of all the audio effects, and reset all the volumes and channels, and started from scratch. And holy hell, the entire song sounds so much better, and more accurate to what I wanted for the album. The amount of relief I felt after finishing the base of the mixing in just a week was literally indescribable, and it felt really good to have been able to do it without that much hassle. Three part song, with three breakdown parts. About eleven minutes long. It's finally the wall of sound I've always wanted it to be. And that makes me incredibly happy. Plans for it to go right after Fargo Breakdown. Whenever this album release, remind me to never work on the same song for over a year and a half ever again. That shit was fucking brutal.

Here is the current tracklist. For clarification, this is nowhere near a finished tracklist, both in order and amount. I want to fill in the middle part of this album more. I just tend to focus on the beginning and end the most. I got plans for a song that will also be ten minutes long that would go right before The First Snowfall. A more slower piece, similar to Snow Globes right before Basketball Shoes by Black Country, New Road. All of these songs shown here, except Actually Leaving, will include lyrics or at least vocals of some kind. I will probably release an instrumental version of this album in the future, whenever the album comes out. I really thought I was gonna release this album this year. That's kinda funny. Soon, I'll probably release some snippets of these tracks onto here, just for fun. Don't expect anything much, probably just thirty second pieces of my favorite parts of these tracks. I might as well tease a little bit more than I have been, eh? Thanks for reading this painfully long post. I appreciate it.

[saiilorstars]

ch.9: And It All Came Crashing Down

Steve Rogers x OFC fic • squeeze your eyes for a Bucky Barnes x (2nd) OFC

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Story Masterlist • Seren’s Masterlist• Chloe’s Masterlist​​

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Steve followed Rumlow all the way to SHIELD dead silent, not having anything to say despite Rumlow's subtle attempts to get him talking. Knowing what he knew now, Steve knew that SHIELD was not the place to be honest. It was infested with liars and moles and double intentions and the worst part is that he didn't know who was who. He couldn't take the chance right now. Chloe was on the verge of a mental breakdown and Seren was only just escaping death now. Natasha was still in the gray area, truthfully.

He got into his stealth suit, his intuition just telling him it was better to be prepared in case anything happened. He was led to Alexander Pierce himself who was talking to a very familiar agent (just another reminder of the lies).

Sharon turned to leave Pierce and regarded Steve politely, even asking him how Seren was doing. Only out of gratitude for helping him save Seren, he answered her. He still kept his tone short and he did not look at her. Luckily, Sharon took the hint and continued on her way.

"How is Agent Soul?" Pierce asked once they were alone.

"Doing better now," Steve replied. She was practically kicking to get out of bed and back to work; she was back to her normal self. Still, he didn't add anything extra. He remembered Seren mentioning that the World Council wasn't exactly fond of her and her work.

"Good, that's good," Pierce nodded, leaving behind the subject soon after. "Well, I know introductions aren't very well needed from your end but I'm Alexander Pierce." He shook hands with Steve.

"It's an honor," Steve said quietly. What else could he say?

"The honor is mine, Captain. My father served in the 101st. Come on in." He led Steve inside his office and soon showed him a photo of himself with Fury. "That photo was taken five years after Nick and I met. When I was at the State Department in Bogota. ELN rebels took the embassy, and security got me out, but the rebels took hostages. Nick was deputy chief for the SHIELD station there. And he comes to me with a plan. He wants to storm the building through the sewers. I said, 'No, we'll negotiate' Turned out the ELN didn't negotiate, so they put out a kill order. They stormed the basement, and what did they find? They find it empty. Nick had ignored my direct order and carried out an unauthorized military operation on foreign soil. He saved the lives of a dozen political officers, including my daughter."

Not telling someone what he was going to actually do sounded exactly like something Nick Fury would do. "So you gave him a promotion."

"I've never had any cause to regret it. Captain, why was Nick in your apartment last night?"

Well, at least Pierce was direct. Steve would give him that.

"I don't know," Steve replied.

"You know he had the apartment bugged at one point?" Pierce saw the horrified look on Steve's face and took it as the answer. "Agent Winters made him take it down but Fury only allowed it on the condition that special Agent 13 take up an undercover post next door."

"That I knew," Steve said, "Because Agent Soul informed me once she found out."

"Mm…" Pierce didn't seem that surprised. Steve suspected that Seren's inability to fall in line with the lying part of the job is what made her undesirable in Pierce's mind. "I want you to see something." Pierce picked up a tablet on his desk and showed Steve footage of Batroc in an interrogation room.

"Is that live?" Steve asked, genuinely curious as he watched a SHIELD agent painlessly try to get information out of the man.

"Yeah, they picked him up last night in a not-so-safe house in Algiers."

"Are you saying he's a suspect? Assassination isn't Batroc's line."

"No, it's more complicated than that. Batroc was hired anonymously to attack the Lemurian Star and he was contacted by e-mail and paid by wire transfer. And then the money was run through seventeen fictitious accounts, the last one going to a holding company that was registered to a Jacob Veech."

"Am I supposed to know who that is?" Steve said just as Pierce handed him a file.

"Not likely. Veech died six years ago. His last address was 14-35 Elmhurst Drive. When I first met Nick, his mother lived at 14-37."

It took only a second for Steve to realize what Pierce was getting at. "Are you…are you saying Fury hired the pirates? Why?"

"The prevailing theory was that the hijacking was a cover for the acquisition and sale of classified intelligence. The sale went sour and that led to Nick's death."

And as much as Steve was irritated with Fury, he just couldn't see that being the reason. Fury was everything you believed, except a traitor. "If you really knew Nick Fury you'd know that's not true."

"Why do you think we're talking? See, I took a seat on the Council not because I wanted to but because Nick asked me to, because we were both realists. We knew that despite all the diplomacy and the handshaking and the rhetoric, that to build a really better world sometimes means having to tear the old one down. And that makes enemies. Those people that call you dirty because you got the guts to stick your hands in the mud and try to build something better. And the idea that those people could be happy today, makes me really, really angry. Captain, you were the last one to see Nick alive. I don't think that's an accident, and I don't think you do either. So I'm gonna ask again, why was he there?"

"He told me not to trust anyone," Steve said, "As well as Agent Winters."

"Mm, I wonder if that included them both," Pierce said with a small frown. "Agent Winters was also asked to make herself present." Steve started noting the growing irritation in the man's voice. "She takes too much liberty just because she's under — was under — Fury's direct orders."

"I asked her to stay with Agent Soul," Steve said, now really patting himself on the back for making Chloe stay behind. Something wasn't sitting right anymore and the further away they were from SHIELD, the better. "I'm sorry. Those were his last words. Excuse me." Something in his mind was yelling at him to get back to the hospital as fast as possible.

"Captain," Pierce's call stopped Steve by the door. "Somebody murdered my friend and I'm gonna find out why. Anyone gets in my way, they're gonna regret it. Anyone. Tell Agent Winters to report herself immediately."

Steve nodded. "Understood." Not in this lifetime. He picked up his pace down the hall to leave.

~ 0 ~

Seren was done lying down. As much as Chloe told her not to, Seren pushed herself into a sitting position on the bed. She wasn't stupid. She took the opportunity as soon as Natasha stepped out of the room for a moment.

"Alright Chloe, whatever you need to say, say it now or I swear to God that I'm gonna get out of this bed right now!"

"Seren, please don't over-exert yourself," Chloe came around Seren's bedside to get her to lie back down but unfortunately, she was no Steve Rogers and so Seren easily shoved her away.

"Enough with that!" Seren practically yelled. "I am not lying back down, I am not just going to stay here and do nothing while God knows what is happening out there!"

Chloe panicked when Seren started swinging her legs to the side of the bed with all the intentions of getting up. "Okay, okay, okay!" Chloe threw her hands in front of her. "I'll talk but just — put your — please stay in bed!"

"Then talk," Seren said through gritted teeth. "Who the hell killed Nick?"

"I-I'm pretty sure it was the Ghost—"

"I don't know who the hell this 'Ghost' is!" snapped Seren. "But I'm willing to bet that you already told Steve because he had this look on his face that I..." She shook her head. "And I'm trying not to feel offended because we've known each other longer than you've known him."

Chloe sighed and started pacing in front of the bed. "It's not good, Seren. It's really not good."

"I can tell," Seren said, gesturing to Chloe's current act. "What is going on?"

Chloe stopped pacing for a moment to meet Seren's waiting eyes. Her stomach was in knots. Steve was right, she had to tell Seren everything but how? Years worth of secrets were about to come to the surface and all of them were going to hurt her best friend. "You know that I'm very grateful with you, right?"

Seren sighed. She knew a tactic when she saw one. "Yes..."

Chloe licked her upper lip nervously. "Then you know that no matter what, I do not regret meeting you."

Seren raised an eyebrow at Chloe. "Why do you say that?"

"You have to understand that if I didn't say anything before is because I truly thought — I truly believed — that keeping you in the dark was the better option. I didn't want to put you in more danger and I just didn't want to disillusion you with something that has been your entire life."

"'Disillusion'?" Seren frowned. "Why-why do you say that? What didn't you tell me about?"

"Just remember that no matter what, it wasn't all fake and that there are people who truly adore you and appreciate all your work," Chloe said, stopping her pacing to face Seren. "Like me—"

"Chloe—"

"—and Natasha, Fury, definitely Steve—"

"CHLOE!"

"There's moles in SHIELD!" Chloe blurted and for a long while, there was nothing but silence.

Seren's lips parted as she gasped with Chloe's words. Very slowly, but surely, her eyebrows pinched together and her nose scrunched. "What the hell did you just say?"

Chloe passed her hands through her hair, hoping that she wasn't going to sound as crazy as the story was. "There are moles in SHIELD. Too many to count and we don't know who's one and who's not except for me, obviously you and Steve, then Natasha and Maria. Fury, of course is a given."

"What?" Seren glanced at her monitoring machine and wondered if the meds had affected her hearing.

"It's true, I swear," Chloe said once she realized what Seren was thinking. "There's moles within SHIELD and some of them, or maybe all of them, have been trying to hurt me ever since I joined."

Seren's eyes flickered to Chloe. "Excuse me?"

Chloe sighed. "Ever since I joined S.H.I.E.L.D., somebody—people—have been stalking me. In the beginning, they tried to kill me but then they stopped. They just...watched. I knew they were there, no matter how much I traveled. They wanted to kidnap me, I knew it. There were subtle attempts but they hadn't tried to kill me anymore until today."

"Oh my God, I am going insane..." Seren went to rip out her monitors from her fingers when Chloe pushed her hands away.

"No, stop! I'm telling you the truth!"

"What!?" Seren exclaimed. "You're telling me that the place I have worked for since I was a kid, basically, is filled with liars and murderers!? Stalkers!?" There was absolutely no way to describe what she felt and Chloe was conscious enough of the fact to not be offended that for a split moment, Seren didn't believe her. "I-I have worked there my entire life. I have—"

"I know," Chloe sighed. "You have given so much to...to people who didn't deserve it. And you have no idea how sorry I am—"

"No," Seren gritted her teeth. "This isn't...this isn't happening, no." She shook her head.

"I would have told you but...Fury thought it would be best to keep the circle between just us."

"Fury?" Seren frowned. "He did this?"

"He helped me, Seren," Chloe said before Seren started throwing any accusations around. "He made sure that only he knew the exact locations of my missions. It's why they were always spontaneous and all over the world. He had to keep the moles out my business."

And then something struck Seren's mind, something that she had dismissed because she felt compeltely awful for ever doubting in the first place...

"Do you realize that you've been working here for years and you didn't even know that your Agent Winters has little, almost nothing, to prove that she actually works for S.H.I.E.L.D.?"

"That's impossible," Seren said flatly. "I've written reports about Chloe over her time here. In fact, I was the one who brought her to S.H.I.E.L.D. in the first place. I've seen her grow up from a teenager into a young woman."

"Yeah? Well there's nothing to show for it."

"Stark knew..." Seren mumbled. Her hands fell one either side of her and gripped the bed. "Stark told me this the first time we met. He told me...he told me that your record had very little to show that...that you worked for SHIELD." She raised her head to see Chloe's guilt-riddened face. "And then I went—" she pointed at herself, "—and got your file out and it was—"

Chloe nodded. "It was filled with all your reports about me." Seren was shell-shocked. "Yeah, I...I knew that would happen. Fury, he...he—"

"He fixed it," Seren said sharp enough to make Chloe wince. "He lied. Oh my God..." She brought her hands up to her hair. "I hate liars and you...you have been lying to me for years?"

"Seren, I didn't want to, I was...I was scared. I'm sorry!" Chloe swallowed hard. "I truly thought that this was the only way to keep you and everyone else safe. It's why I never contacted my parents again, why I kept my visits to my aunt and cousin very short. But I never thought that...that they would try to hurt you."

"What?"

"It was a mistake of targets. Seren, the cyanide poison was meant for me, not you. My chocolates were poisoned, I know they were. They had to be. Cyanide kills humans. You just got lucky you're not entirely human."

"Cyanide poisoning can be reversed if treated on time," Seren recited by memory. "SHIELD is very thorough with training. That's the training I was taking as a frikin teenager. Because that's where my life has been..." She didn't want them but tears were pooling in her eyes. "They were trying to kill you...or kidnap you..."

"It's the tech piece and the Hive Mind," Chloe said quietly, her own eyes glistening with tears. "It's gotta be. I touched something I shouldn't have and the people who owned the tech want it back. There's always been something wrong but we never had the evidence to support it."

"You could have said something," Seren gritted her teeth. "I have always defended S.H.I.E.L.D. from everyone, including my own family! And now they may actually be right!?"

"I'm really sorry Seren—"

Seren raised a finger to stop Chloe. "You have been lying to me for years?" Chloe nodded silently. Seren brought her hands to her forehead, pulling back her hair as she took in a deep breath. "I brought you in...I wanted you to be safe. But instead I brought you into more danger…"

"Seren, it's not your fault," Chloe quickly said. "You are the least culpable party in this. Whatever has happened at S.H.I.E.L.D….you have always been the best of it. You...you're Stardust. You saved my life—"

"Oh, really?"

"Yes!" Chloe exclaimed. "Because if you hadn't found me, those people might have kidnapped me a long time ago. I may not have made it."

Seren stayed quiet. Chloe looked close to crumbling. She looked far younger today, almost like the 17 year old she found in the abandoned building. But she was also furious. She was furious at everything around her.

"I'm sorry, Seren," Chloe sniffed. "I know I shouldn't beg you not to be angry with me because I deserve it. I deserve your anger but you're the only person I have who I can really trust. My family hates me and I can't imagine where I'll be if you end up hating me too!" She got down on her knees in front of Seren and grabbed both her hands. "I'm sorry! I'm so sorry!"

Seren was gently pulled with Chloe's sobs but she didn't say anything. She was speechless, and yet her mind was spiraling with so many different thoughts and feelings. The whole time she thought she was doing something good for the world, she could have been doing someone's dirty work instead. She gave up so many years of her life — some would say her entire life — and now she comes to learn that it was all for nothing?

"Chloe, get up," she ordered. "First of all, it's a hospital, the floors are disgusting — get up." She shook her hands until it forced Chloe to get back up.

Chloe's entire face was stained with tears. "I'm sorry, I'm so sorry. You have every right to hate me."

"I don't..." Seren let out a heavy breath. "I don't hate you, Chloe. I can't. But that doesn't mean that I'm happy with you right now. Or anyone else for that matter."

Chloe wiped her tears with the backs of her hands. "You should only be mad at me. Nobody else knew, except for Fury of course."

"And Natasha? What about Steve? I mean, that is why you two were acting so strange before he left."

"Oh God no!" Chloe panicked when she saw new ire flash across Seren's eyes. "Neither of them knew! I just told Steve the truth and that was only because he and Natasha basically cornered me. But I swear that Steve didn't lie to you. He told me that...that I had to tell you. Either I did, or he would. Don't get mad at him because of what I did."

Seren swallowed hard. "He didn't lie?"

"No," Chloe said, quickly bending down in front of Seren again. She took both of Seren's hands in hers. "God, everything is already so wrong, I don't want to ruin anything else for you."

As angry as Seren was, and she was, she couldn't help the heavy feeling that settled in her stomach knowing what she knew now. "That...that's my entire life," she whispered. "My whole life has always been about SHIELD. All the countless arguments with my parents...my mother and my grandmother hate each other because of this. Because of me...because I worked for them..."

Chloe began to shake her head. "N-n-n-no, this isn't on you. It's not even on Atria. Some bad people decided to infiltrate something that was supposed to be good."

"Yeah, but..." Seren's expression began to crack and suddenly the anger that was once there was quickly being replaced with anguish. "Chloe, that's been my life! My—my—!"

Chloe started to hear the monitor beeping and realized Seren's pressure was rising. "Oh God, Seren you have to calm down!"

"I can't!" Seren cried. "SHIELD is a whole lie! You've been — you've been stalked for years, almost killed! Everything I know is a lie!" And then she panicked when she thought about the implications it meant for others. "Oh my God!" Her eyes widened. "My parents! My-my phone! Where's my phone!? I have to tell them what's happening!"

Chloe continued to hear the monitor practically raging at this point. "Seren, I'm begging you to calm down! You're still not completely well—"

"I DON'T CARE!" Seren then looked at her hands and started ripping off any monitors attached to her.

"No! Stop that!" Chloe hurried to put things back on her but she was no match against Seren's strength. Seren would push her hands away every time and rage about her phone and getting to talk with her parents.

Natasha came rushing in with a 'what the hell is going on?' and immediately went to help Chloe put Seren down. "God, Winters, what the hell!?" Natasha couldn't help but blame Chloe just a little bit. "She's supposed to be taking it easy—"

"I know!" Chloe exclaimed, already ridden with guilt about everything else. "But she's—"

"Screw this, and sorry in advance, Seren!" Natasha quit trying and ran out of the room again.

"Get off me! Get off!" Seren continued to yell against Chloe's hands. A few seconds later, her fears returned in full-fledged form as a few nurses came rushing into the room. "N-n-n-n-n-no!" She immediately pulled her hands away from Chloe.

"Wait, wait—" Chloe was shoved to the side by one of the nurses and as she tried moving on them again, Natasha came back inside. "Natasha, what—"

"It's for her own good!" Natasha said, yanking Chloe to her side.

"That's for her own good?" Chloe said incredulously, gesturing towards the chaotic scene of nurses trying to put Seren down.

Seren screamed and thrashed against the nurses, begging for them to leave her alone. One of the nurses managed to inject her with a sedative and little by little, the cries and thrashes slowed. Seren's words slurred and finally, she fell unconscious.

Chloe felt completely awful. As soon as the nurses left, she hurried to Seren's bedside. "I did this...I did this to her...I told her everything..."

"Gave her a crisis," Natasha said, coming up to the foot of the bed. Chloe glared at her. "Don't look at me like that, Winters. She was going to have a whole breakdown and neither you nor I are strong enough to keep her down."

"What are we going to tell Steve when he comes back and he sees this?"

Natasha shrugged. "Exactly what I just said. I'm sure he'd rather have her here then rampaging down the block in her state. Besides, Seren's metabolism runs faster so the sedative won't last as long."

"And if she wakes up in another crisis?"

"Then we'll do the same thing."

Chloe ran a hand from her forehead through her hair. "This isn't how things were supposed to go. What the hell do we do now? I'm supposed to go to SHIELD..."

"No you're not. Not until Steve gets back and we know exactly what's going on. Until then grab a chair and make yourself comfortable." Natasha started making her way out of the room when Chloe called to her.

"What are you going to do?"

"Get a snack," Natasha said, "Maybe some gum," she said before disappearing.

Chloe had no idea what to do so she grabbed the chair in the room and pulled it close to Seren's bedside and sunk down.

~ 0 ~

Lately, Steve felt like he was running faster than ever. He couldn't reach the hospital any sooner and he had done everything to get there as fast as possible. He practically fled SHIELD and to avoid any trackers on him, he abandoned his stealth suit and grabbed some normal clothes. He wanted to appear normal but that was impossible given how he dashed down the corridors. He couldn't help it.

SHIELD was coming after him and no doubt Chloe. And where was Chloe right now? With Seren.

His anxiety calmed for a brief moment when he saw Natasha standing outside Seren's room keeping guard. He gave her a slight nod then stopped at the vending machine just two doors down. He looked down at the choices and...panicked. The USB he'd stuck in there wasn't there anymore. Before he could even think about where it went, he heard footsteps draw behind him followed by the distinct sound of bubblegum popping. He looked up and saw Natasha's reflection on the vending machine. She blew a bright pink bubble with her gum and popped it like nothing.

After everything he'd gone through, everything his friends and girlfriend went through...Steve snapped.

He whirled around and seized Natasha's arm. He dragged her down the end of the hall and shoved her into one of the small break rooms, straight up against the wall. "Where is it!?" He demanded.

Even through all that, Natasha wasn't at all phased. "Safe," she barely uttered when Steve slammed her on the wall again.

"Do better!"

Natasha had never seen him that irate about something, nor that aggressive. "Where'd you get it?" She said curiously. Her mind was working up some plausible reasons for this behavior. "What happened at SHIELD?"

Steve towered over her. "Why would I tell you?" He was well aware that she was studying his new change of clothes.

"Fury gave it to you," she worked it out. "But why?"

"What's on it?"

"I don't know—"

"Stop lying!" Steve snapped through gritted teeth.

"I only act like I know everything, Rogers!"

"I bet you knew Fury hired the pirates, didn't you?" Of course as soon as he asked the question, Steve knew that she didn't.

For a brief moment, Natasha allowed her bewilderment before she reclaimed her coolness. "Well, it makes sense. The ship was dirty, Fury needed a way in, so do you."

"I'm not gonna ask you again…too many people have been hurt because you all keep lying."

"It's a game, Rogers. We all have to play it in this line of work."

"Not everyone," Steve said, eyeing her until she admitted that the 'game' had not been played by every single employee.

Natasha barely resisted the urge to roll her eyes. "We get it. You like Soul."

"Natasha, I swear to God—"

"I know who killed Fury." The certainly in Natasha's tone brought Steve to a pause. "So does Winters, she just doesn't know it."

Steve's brows furrowed. "The Ghost?"

Natasha nodded. "Winters told me everything and I realized who she was talking about. Most of the intelligence community doesn't believe he exists, the ones who do call him the Winter Soldier. He's credited with over two dozen assassinations in the last fifty years."

"So he is a ghost. A ghost story," Steve almost rolled his eyes. He needed facts right now, not stories.

"Don't be fooled," Natasha said. "Five years ago I was escorting a nuclear engineer out of Iran, somebody shot out my tires near Odessa. We lost control, went straight over a cliff, I pulled us out, but the Winter Soldier was there. I was covering my engineer, so he shot him straight through me." Natasha lifted part of her shirt to reveal a scar on the side of her stomach. It couldn't be faked. "Soviet slug, no rifling. Bye-bye bikinis."

Steve was dead silent. She wasn't a mole. "Yeah..." he stepped back from her, "I bet you look terrible in them now."

Natasha wanted to smile. "Going after him is a dead end. I know, I've tried." She raised the USB for him to take. "Like you said, he's a ghost story."

Steve took the USB from her. "Well, let's find out what the ghost wants. I'm pretty sure it has to involve, at least partly, a scared blonde with an alien tech piece in her head. Stalking her?"

Natasha shrugged. "First step in a long plan."

"Maybe. But I'm not interested in learning what the next step is."

"What happened at SHIELD?" Natasha made a clear point of looking Steve over with his clothes. She heard him sigh. "Not good?"

"Very," Steve said, letting his head hang low. "Chloe can't go back there. I'm going to take her and get out of here before they think to look here."

Natasha raised an eyebrow at him. "What? And leave Seren here?"

"I hate it but I need to keep her safe and out of this."

"I hate to break it to you but Seren know everything and she didn't take it very well..."

Steve looked at Natasha for a moment. "What do you mean...?"

Natasha didn't say anything but her face spoke volumes. Alarmed, Steve bolted from the break room and hurried down the hall to reach Seren's room. He ran inside and found Chloe sitting beside an unconscious Seren in bed.

"What happened!?" He looked at Chloe who quickly stood up. He moved around her to Seren's side, lowering to her level.

"I told her everything," Chloe said behind him. "And she..."

"She had a breakdown," Natasha finished for her.

Steve wasn't surprised by the news. He was almost mad with himself for not being there when it happened to help Seren get through it. He passed a hand through her hair, sighing to himself. "I'm sorry, Seren." It had to be hard finding out the truth about SHIELD.

"We had to sedate her," Natasha explained. "She was freaking out, trying to get out of here."

"And I'm sure the sight of the doctors must have really helped," Steve said, glancing back at the woman with a slight edge in his face.

"We did what we had to," said Natasha while Chloe ducked her head.

"How long has she been out?"

"Couple hours now. If you want to run, we can wake her."

"Run?" Natasha frowned.

Natasha ignored her and told Steve that Seren metabolized sedations quicker. "Waking her up would speed up the process."

"I don't..." Steve rubbed his forehead. He only had two options and neither of them were sitting well with him. He was supposed to help Seren and neither option would be helping her at all.

"If she wakes up and finds out that you ran without her, she'll never forgive you," Natasha said like she'd read the thought off his head. Steve glared at her, but she shrugged and stuck to her stance.

"Wait, running from what? What is going on?" Chloe demanded an answer from either one.

"SHIELD is coming after me because I didn't give Pierce what he wanted," Steve said. "And then I was attacked by Rumlow and his STRIKE crew. They want you too, Chloe. We need to go."

"Oh god..." Chloe pushed down a lump in her throat. "It's started..."

"And if you two run, it's only a matter of time until they reach Seren," Natasha continued to advocate for the unconscious agent. "In her state, they could do so many things to her..."

Steve scowled. Absolutely not. "Natasha, get her some clothes. Chloe, get her things. We don't have a lot of time."

Natasha gave a nod and quickly left the room. Chloe went to Seren's belongings left on a table in the corner of the room. Steve then started taking off the monitors off Seren's hands while gently trying to wake her up.

"C'mon, Seren, just wake up for a little bit, please?" He shook her a bit. "Just a moment, sweetheart, and then I promise you can go back to sleep again." He slid an arm under her neck and another under her legs. "Chloe?"

"Ready!" Chloe rushed to him.

Steve had no choice but to lead the way out with Seren in his arms. They met Natasha halfway down the hallway and then together hurried towards the elevator. Naturally, the sight of them caught various employees' attention.

"Winters, what are you doing?" Natasha muttered as they hurriedly reached the entrance of the hospital. She had already scared off a few employees trying to near them and she was ready to continue it but the fact that Chloe was making time for a text message was a bit over the top.

"Seren may have been frantic about things but she did make a point about her family," Chloe said, briefly meeting Steve's glance. "She wanted to tell them to be careful and I...I think she had a point now. If SHIELD is coming for us, and we have Seren now, what do you think they're going to do to her family in order to get to us?"

Steve didn't have to think too much to know the answer. "Do it. But keep it brief. Let them know that Seren's safe with us." He led them down a small hallway just at the entrance. "And tell Rebeca too. Seren's team might be in danger too." He stopped in front of the women's restroom. "Natasha?"

Natasha had thought just like him and got on it. "Yup. Chloe?"

Chloe quickly sent a brief joint text to Seren's grandmother and parents. She then sent another message to Rebeca and dropped Seren's phone on the phone, stomping on it for good measure. Meanwhile, Steve let Seren's body down between Chloe and Natasha and the two brought her inside the women's restroom for a quick change.

Steve kept looking around for anyone suspicious and thankfully nobody showed up. He was relieved that when the women returned, Seren was semi-conscious. She was blinking in a dazed manner, and tired. He felt awful and that was still an understatement.

"She's not entirely there," Chloe said as Steve helped Seren stay on her feet. He was basically keeping her up by the waist and even then he had to still lift her on their way out of the hospital.

"How'd you get her to wake up in the first place?" He asked curiously.

"Rough..." Seren mumbled the word and leaned her head on his arm. "Natasha..."

Steve sent a look towards Natasha. He thought about asking her what exactly she had done to wake Seren up but he quickly decided that knowing the answer would probably make him feel worse.

"Where exactly are we going now?" Chloe asked once they were on the street.

"We need to figure out what your ghost friend wants," Natasha answered her and ignored Chloe's confused glance.

"You say 'friend' like I had a choice in the matter."

"It's the fact that you weren't killed that worries me," Natasha said and that time, Chloe's head whipped in her direction.

"Uh, thanks?"

"The Winter Soldier murders, so that begs the question as to why you weren't put on the same hit list," Natasha explained. "What do you have that the others didn't?" Chloe didn't need to ponder about it. "And" — Natasha continued before Chloe even opened her mouth — "why was it so special that they didn't just rip it out of you?"

Chloe's eyes widened in horror. Steve didn't blink. Leave it to Natasha to ask the cold hard questions and out loud. He had thought about it too but didn't want to freak Chloe out more than she already was.

[sleepanonymous]

Okay, well, is this anything? I thought this was something when I wrote it and now I feel like it's not anything 😓

He had come to the conclusion that the bassist was pretty.

Was Sid his type? No— the more important question was if Eli was Sid’s type, to which Eli already knew the answer. The two were incompatible in the most fantastical ways he could think of. Sid was loud, in every way possible. He was a loud talker, and an even louder laugher, all to match the loud company he kept. He liked his music loud and played it louder. The pubs he visited were loud, and the parties he attended were loud. Even his sense of style, with bright colors and bold patterns, was genuinely loud.

Eli preferred the quiet. He knew how to be loud, he was familiar with it, and he’d utilized that aspect of himself in certain situations, either to fit in or to get his point across; but he always preferred muted things. Not with music, obviously, but with every other facet of his existence.

So why then, if the two of them were so incompatible, did Eli continually catch himself staring at Sid? Because he had come to the conclusion that the bassist was pretty, and, frustratingly, people could both be attractive and incompatible.

He had resigned himself to that fact; that he would stare and try to stop his mind from wandering to “what ifs,” because he knew he couldn’t acquire what he desired. Because if he did, it would only fester and rot and go stagnant in record time. No, Eli and Sid could only ever work as friends.

The vocalist was in the midst of reminding himself of this while, unfortunately, staring at the bassist that the band’s “manager” had found (that was another, much more indignant mental tangent; but Eli was fine with it because at least Zack trusted him, and the guy did seem to have his hands in several different pockets throughout the music scene in London). The two were in a makeshift studio, which was really just some old flat with a couple walls knocked out, mismatched foam lining the remaining walls, old carpet and rugs were strewn about the floor, and a sketchy plexiglass and plywood sound barrier stood around Zack’s drum kit in the corner. They were supposed to be rehearsing for their upcoming first live concert; Zack and he had cheekily dubbed it a “ritual” to play into the music video they did for Thread the Needle and the accompanying lore around the band’s formation.

To make his mental spiraling worse, the two were alone; Eli was cross-legged on a sofa that was at least twice his age, and Sid was sitting upon an amp— Eli’s amp, to be technical about it. Sid hadn’t even given it a second thought when he plopped down onto the thing, and Eli was grateful the bassist was mostly skin and bone. The others, their “manager,” Zack, and Connor, had left to get food nearly half an hour ago. Eli would have gone as well but panicked because the groups were already uneven, with Sid insisting on giving himself a crash course in playing bass, because, surprise, the bassist that their “manager” poached was actually a guitarist. But, again, it was fine; Eli himself was technically a pianist and he’d written all the bass for Sleep Token. And, to give him credit, Sid wasn’t half bad at the bass; but maybe Eli’s opinion was biased because he was so pretty, with his high cheekbones, baby blue eyes, and long eyelashes—

“You got an eyelash,” Eli stated, his tongue and lips forming the words before he even realized he was speaking. His sentence was barely loud enough to catch Sid’s attention; he was on his sixth repeat of the bassline in Nazareth’s breakdown, like he was burning the memory of the tabs into the pads of his fingers, when he jumped, hit a couple wrong notes, and then muted the strings with his palm.

“Huh?” he looked up at Eli in confusion, the singular noise almost as loud as the amp below him.

“You got an eyelash,” Eli repeated for Sid.

“Where?” was the next question, quieter and more coherent than the first, but the man didn’t wait for an answer as he rubbed at the wrong eye.

“Other eye—no—wait—” Eli had succeeded in making things worse as the long, singular lash teetered precariously on one of its brothers, threatening to impale the eye it was meant to protect each time Sid blinked. Eli jumped out of his seat before it was too late, once again acting before thinking, and rushed to the bassist’s aid. “Just—no, wait.”

Sid wasn’t keen at first to have Eli’s fingers poking around his left eye. The trust for his new friend was evident only after flinching thrice and blinking twice as many times, almost worsening the situation. Eli’s left hand settled on Sid’s jaw to keep him still, and his right gently plucked the offending lash before flicking it away to be forgotten to time.

And that should have been that.

Only, Eli found himself far from the end of the situation when he realized the position he’d put himself in— had put Sid in. Eli, to gain the best vantage point, had stood himself between Sid’s open knees, with his left palm cradling the other’s jaw and tilting his head upward so that Sid was staring at him through those same long eyelashes he’d just rescued the man from. Both men were frozen in that position, staring at one another. Any sane person would have simply stepped away and returned to the couch. Instead, Eli’s attraction to Sid kicked into overdrive, one because they’d never been that close before, Eli had barely ever touched Sid before let alone grabbed and held onto his face, and two because Eli was holding Sid’s head at navel height in such a provocative position that he could literally feel his blood draining to the lower half of his body.

Just as the panic set in, and realization hit him that he was never going to get this moment, this mental image of Sid staring up at him so prettily, out of his head, the situation got a thousand times worse. Sid, still looking up at him, smiled. Eli felt it at the same time he saw it, the man’s cheeks stretched beneath his thumb and fingers, to reveal his pearly whites. It was like Sid was telling him he could read his thoughts. Like he knew exactly what Eli was thinking and was silently taunting him to act on those impulses.

Eli was suddenly thankful he was frozen in place because otherwise, he would have dragged Sid up to meet his mouth. He would have fisted his hands in Sid’s shirt, thrown him onto the couch, and then thrown himself on top of the bassist.

Fuck rationality. Fuck incompatibility. Fuck Sid and his fucking smile. Quite literally.

Fortunately— or regretfully, Eli wasn’t sure which he felt— the door to the makeshift studio swung open. In reaction, he took one swift, large step backward from Sid as both men’s attention was turned to the returning bandmates and “manager,” brown McDonald’s bags in their hands.

“Maccies?” Sid asked, his voice full of nonchalance, that, for some reason, shot pain through Eli’s chest. Which was stupid, because it was the best possible way to play off what had just happened, what had almost happened. Eli should have been doing the same, he should have been fully redirecting his attention to the prospect of food despite his appetite disappearing and his mouth craving literally only one thing at the moment.

Sid and the guitarist (either they were longtime friends or Sid was simply a fan of Connor’s from a previous band, Eli wasn’t sure which) had launched into an immediate conversation as he collected his food, standing from Eli’s amp and abandoning his bass guitar. Watching Sid, Eli knew he should have been following suit. Instead, he found himself in an unforeseen staring match with Zack. The shorter of the two seemed to be the only guy who had entered the room who knew exactly what he walked in on. His cocked head and slightly narrowed eyes darting between Eli and Sid were asking silently, “Were you about to fuck our bassist?” while Eli was silently screaming back, “shutupshutupshutup!”

Thanks to pure adrenaline, Eli was able to catch a bag of food that was tossed at him either by Sid or Connor, breaking his silent argument with the drummer. Finally, the Earth shifted back into its correct rotation. Finally, things were back to the way they were supposed to be, with nuanced incompatibilities and friendship with absolutely zero spoken or acted-upon attractions. He had a distraction now. Zack had stopped silently teasing him, and he most definitely did not notice how Sid’s eyes wandered back and lingered on him as he collapsed onto his spot on the couch to shove chips and cheap burgers into his mouth.

Something extremely funny and not at all annoying about writing Sleep Token fanfiction is when the fake names you’ve chosen for the Eepy Guys— names that you’ve actually grown fond of and have trained yourself to use when writing so that it comes naturally and you’re no longer accidentally writing the forbidden Real Names™— end up being names shared by less than savory people in this fandom.

I’ve literally never had a writing crisis like this before. Like, I’m half tempted to just ignore it and be like “Do you eepy babes wanna read a oneshot that's almost finished about Vessel and III and attraction panic?” because I’ve been using these names for almost six months now.

[samanthadalton]

Star Crossed Lovers (part 14)

Do my eyes deceive me???? part 14???? we did it. im so sorry its taken forever, i will try my best to be more consistent with my writing. love yall for being patient with me it means the most. thank you, thank you. 

warnings: throughout this fic there will be mentions of substance abuse, homophobia, sexual abuse, violence, NSFW, mentions of abandonment, depression and death including suicide

reader discretion is advised

warnings: angst, swearing (lots of it) 

taglist: @drmmyrs @cloud9in @somewillwin @save-me-the-last-dance @baexpoppy @stanzoeywade @ognenniyvolk @thepotatobleh @crazzyplays @fall3ngods @helpconfusedpersonhere @clowneryme @dopeyouth @boys-girls-i-cant-help-it-baby @vonda-b-real @uselesslesbianfr @veenast @cloakanddaggerthings @somethindarker (sorry again if ive missed anyone, if you wanna be added on this taglist or my general one just let me know 😊) 

word count: 4k (i feel like its short considering how long it took me to write but i still hope you guys enjoy) (also i didnt check for grammatical errors properly so sorry if you find any) 

part 1 part 2 part 3 part 4 part 5 part 6 part 7 part 8 part 9 part 10 part 11 part 12 part 13

The first steps to moving on 

“Bea please,” Poppy whispers, a repentant look creeping up to her face as she looks away from her girlfriend. “It can’t wait.” 

Bea sighs, her shoulders slumping as the last remains of her anger disseminates from her body. “Okay fine, lead the way babe.” 

Poppy stiffens that the pet name but she doesn’t let her awkwardness slip as she leads Bea to a secluded classroom, far away from prying eyes. Both her and Bea turn to look at each other, and both simultaneously open their mouths to talk. 

“I know you wanted to tell-” 

“We need to talk-” 

Both clamp their lips shut, a mutual smile playing on their lips as they look at one another. 

“You go first,” Poppy gestures towards Bea, as she moves to sit on the edge of a desk. 

Bea inhales softly, her tongue darts out licking her lips as she looks down at the ground, her face calculating. “Why does Chloe hate me?” She looks up to Poppy, her eyes boring into the strawberry blonde’s, sadness swimming inside of them, “I just don’t get what I’ve done for her to hate me.” 

Poppy sighs heavily, her eyes awkwardly darting away from Bea’s. “It’s complicated Bea.” 

“Complicated?” Bea lets out a humourless laugh, “I almost just went off on Chloe after she gave her condolences for my mom dying because I just felt she wasn’t genuine and you wanna tell me it's complicated?” 

Poppy sharply inhales, contemplating for a few moments before saying, “it’s because of your mom.” 

Bea scrunches her brows up in confusion, “my mom? What the hell does she have to do with this?” 

Poppy ineptly plays with her hands, not being able to look Bea in her eyes, “at first it was just a classist thing. When you first came to Belvoire, she just wanted to make herself feel superior over you, but in the last year you’ve noticed her getting more mean right?” 

“Right.” Bea stares at Poppy, her expression emotionless. 

“Chloe’s parents have been fighting non stop recently, and it’s been affecting her a lot.” 

Bea’s brows furrow in confusion, “what does that have to do with me or my mom?” 

“Just let me explain first before you react, please.” Bea’s eyes bore into Poppy’s for a few seconds before she nods understandingly. “Her dad cheated on her mom. A lot of times actually. But he was blackmailed by one of the women he slept with.” Poppy pauses for a few seconds, “your mom.” 

Bea lets out a shaky breath, her eyes blinking in disbelief, “no, you’re lying.” 

Poppy nervously bites her bottom lip, “look Bea-” 

“How long have you known?”

Poppy’s face scrunches up in anger, “this isn’t my fault Bea. I only found out that day I went to talk to Chloe about us. Chloe made me promise not to say anything to you-” 

“Poppy! My mom OD and I don’t even know why. And now you’re telling me she was blackmailing the St James family and it doesn’t occur to you that might have had something to do with her death?” 

“They’re not the fucking mafia Bea, jesus. They were trying to settle it quietly by giving your mom some money and make her sign some stuff so she couldn't threaten them anymore.” 

The devastating ramification of Poppy’s admission hangs in the air as the two girls let the words settle into them. “Chloe really is sorry about your mom Bea, we all are.” 

Bea sighs, staring off into space, as a few tears begin to fill up in her eyes. “I just don’t know what to do.” Bea begins sniffling, but Poppy makes no movement to console her girlfriend. Bea notices and her expression sobers, “so, uh what did you wanna tell me?” Bea sniffs a few more times, before looking up at Poppy, giving her a small encouraging smile. 

Poppy looks away, guilt creeping up on her face, as she tries her damndest not to catch Bea’s small smile on her face. “Bea…”. Bea carefully assesses her girlfriend’s demeanour, noticing the similar body language during when they first asked to take a break, she thinks back to the last couple of days, she had barely heard from her girlfriend, and now she’s not affectionate, even after she almost had a mental breakdown in the middle of the hallway and her smile drops. “We have to break up,” Poppy says, her tone so monotone and dry as if she didn’t mean the words she was saying at all. 

“I don’t understand,” is all Bea can muster, evidently hurt by Poppy’s admission. Poppy winces slightly at Bea’s tone, finally breaking her robotic demeanour as she lets out a few sniffles. “So is that it? We have to break up,” Bea retorts mockingly, “is that all I get after all these years?” 

“Bea..” Poppy reaches out but Bea immediately takes a step back, tears flooding in her eyes. 

“No,” she holds her hands up, “I don’t get it, things are going good, or at least whatever twisted definition of good we’ve made up. Where the hell did this come from?” 

“Bea my dad-” 

“Of course! Hayden Min fucking Sinclair had something to do with this. Why do you still live under his shadow? You talk all this shit about breaking out of your father’s prison and wanting to achieve your own goals but he sucks you back in.” 

“That’s not fair Bea,” Poppy interjects, balling her hands up into fists in an attempt to subdue her trembling, “my dad has given me so much and he’s threatening to take it all away.” 

“Yeah, all you have to do is get rid of me. Me or the Min Sinclair name.” 

“Bea this is the life I have, okay I’m not like you, I’m not built like you.” 

“So what? I can grow up without a dad and now without a mom but it’s okay because I’m used to pain and disappointment?” 

“I didn’t mean it like that, you have a plan, things you can achieve, I need the Min Sinclair name, I’m nothing without it.” 

“Wow.” Bea shakes her head, “So I just meant nothing?” Bea wildy throws her arms in the air, anger bubbling under the surface of her demeanour. “We’ve practically been together since we were kids. And you’re just gonna fucking throw that away? And for what? Fuck you Poppy.” 

Poppy takes half a step back, dumbfounded by Bea’s outburst. She scrunches her brows, evidently hurt, “you don’t get it Bea. Even though your mom wasn’t the best, she still supported you, even if you didn’t know about it. My dad he- my mom what would she think?” 

“Your mom? Poppy what kind of shit is your dad brainwashing you with? Your mom is dead! You have no idea how she would react to having a gay daughter, but I know she’s probably disappointed in you.” 

“Fuck you Bea.”Poppy runs out of the classroom, tears streaming down her face, leaving Bea on her own. 

“Shit,” Bea whispers to herself before throwing a bunch of punches at the wall, each more cathartic than the last until she can’t physically hold herself up anymore. Bea defeatedly slides into a chair, cradling her head in between her hands, letting the tears free fall, as reality begins setting in that she lost the one thing in the world that was her everything. Poppy Min Sinclair was her rock, the girl who she gave her heart to, the love of her life and just in a matter of moments it was over. Maybe it was too good to be true. The beautiful, perky popular rich girl and the girl who had almost nothing, complete polar opposites, it never should’ve worked. But time and time again when faced against the world they persevered so why was this time different? Poppy had chosen her namesake over the love of her life. She chose the life of glitz and glamour over the girl who gave her her entire heart. Bea feels her entire world crashing down, how much more heartbreak could she take? Was her life always going to be so hard? So full of hurt? Full of pain? She winces at the thought, her head hammering as she comes to the realisation that she understood her mother’s pain more than she thought. 

…. 

Bea hops off her bike, parking it in front of her house, as she pulls her phone out to look at the time. ‘It’s lunch time,’ she thinks to herself. After the day she had today, school wasn’t the best option for her right now. She makes her way to her front door but stops in her tracks when she realises her front door is slightly ajar. Her survival instincts kick in as she effortlessly pulls out her pocket knife, carefully pushing the door fully open. As she steps into the living room, her eyes dart to the closed door of her mother’s room, but when she hears a creaking sound coming towards her bedroom, she cautiously moves towards the source of the noise, the grip on her knife tightening. As she creeps up, she sees the door of her room half opened, a hooded figure standing by her bed with their back facing her. 

Bea stealthily sneaks up to the figure placing the knife a few inches from their throat before lowering her voice to a threatening tone, “who are you and what the fuck are you doing?” The figure gasps, dropping a bag that’s in their hands with a deafening thud before raising their hands in a sign of surrender. 

“It’s me, it’s me,” the voice whimpers out. 

“AJ?” Bea raises her eyebrows, retracting the knife from his throat while pulling down his hood with her other hand. “What the fuck are you doing?” Bea takes a step back while AJ scrambles grabbing the bag he just dropped moments before. When he turns to face Bea, his eyes are wide, filled with fear as he clutches the bag closely to his chest. 

“I have to go,” he says as he attempts to run out of the room, but Bea pulls him back, her face crumpled in suspicion. 

“No we’re not doing this, give me the bag now,” Bea snatches the bag out of his hands before he can protest and opens the zipper to find it filled with cash. She grits her teeth, anger settling into her features as she whips her head up to AJ, “is this my fucking money?” 

“Bea, I- I can explain-” 

“What the fuck AJ!” Bea throws the bag onto the bed, the cash spilling out as she jabs an accusing finger at AJ’s chest. “You’re stealing from me now? I haven’t seen you in god knows how long, you don’t call, text nothing. Even after everything that’s been happening in the last few weeks but you have the audacity to fucking steal from me? Money that I’ve spent years saving? Money that I’ve bussed my fucking ass off for, are you serious right now?” Bea’s voice is filled with rage as she’s practically screaming, her voice now thundering. AJ winces, guiltily averting his gaze to the ground, unable to meet Bea’s eyes. 

“I’m sorry about your mom Bea, I wanted to visit-” AJ croaks out.

“But you didn’t,” Bea interjects, her voice lowered but filled with hurt. “And now you’re taking money- I mean what is so important you had to steal from me.” 

AJ paces towards the bed, hanging his head in shame, when he speaks his voice is quiet, full of fear, “I’m in some bad shit Bea. These guys aren’t playing around.” 

“I told you not to fall into the wrong crowd, I warned you this shit would happen.” 

“Bea please, I’ll pay you back I just need it.” 

“No! What the fuck, when will you pay me back huh? This is my college money, I’m not letting you give that away to your crackhead friends.” 

“Bea please,” AJ clasps his hands together, his tone pleading, “I don’t know what to do.” 

“AJ I have too much shit on my plate right now, I can’t deal with this. You need to find something else, I can’t help you.” 

AJ’s face pales but he stands up, and makes his way towards the door, before leaving he turns to look back at Bea, “I’m sorry about everything.” 

Bea keeps her eyes trained on her bed where the money is sprawled all over the mattress, “yeah me too,” she replies quietly. Bea hears the front door close and she collapses to the ground, letting the tears flow. 

……

A few days later, Bea sits in her dark living room, curtains shut and lights completely off as she wallows in her sadness, drinking from a bottle of cheap beer, as she stares absentmindedly at the ceiling, so drowned in her thoughts she doesn’t hear the resounding knocks on her door until she hears a voice call out, “Bea! Are you there?” 

Bea crumples her brows, forcing herself to stand as she makes her way to the door, she wearily makes her way to her front door only slightly opening the door before poking her head out. “Veronica?” Veronica gives the girl a wide smile before pushing the door more open, ushering the figure behind her into the house too, “Carter? What are you guys doing here?’ 

Veronica looks around the dark room, noticing the pile of empty beer bottles on the floor, “yikes, drinking on your own on a friday night Hughes? That’s really sad.” Carter stands near the edge of the living room, as if he’s an explorer, his eyes darting all over the living room as he assesses this new environment. 

Bea on the other hand scowls at Veronica, “what the hell do you want Veronica, I’m not in the mood.” 

Veronica frowns slightly, pouting her lips together, “we heard about you and Poppy.” 

Bea rolls her eyes, “yeah well I’m trying to forget about her.” Bea picks up her beer bottle from the ground and makes a show by exaggeratingly drinking from the bottle until it's empty. She discards the empty bottle along with the other ones before turning to look at Veronica and Carter, “so if you’ll excuse me.” 

Veronica steps towards Bea, wrapping her hand around the brunette’s arm, “we’re not here for Poppy stupid, we’re here for you.” 

Bea raises an eyebrow, “for me?” 

Veronica turns to look at Carter, beckoning him forward, Carter breaks out of reverie and clears his throat, “yeah uh, we wanted to take you to a party.” 

“A party?” Bea looks between them confused, “I’m not that interested guys.”

“Wait, wait, wait Bea,” Veronica pleads, pulling Bea closer to her, “you’ve never been to a Belvoire party and the year is almost over, we thought we should take you to at least.” 

“I don’t know guys,” Bea says skeptically, “a lot of people don’t like me.” 

“Who gives a shit? You just had your heart broken and you need to let loose.” 

Bea sighs, pulling away from Veronica, “I don’t think it’s a good idea.” 

“Come on, it beats drinking in the dark on your own.” 

Bea sighs, dropping her shoulders, “what about uh Poppy?” 

“Poppy?” Veronica arches a brow, “her and Chloe are staying in tonight, she said she needed to catch up on homework or something.” 

Bea purses her lips together in thought before sighing,  “fine.” Veronica cheers, “but,” Bea over enunciates, “only for a few hours and if I don’t like it I’m going home.” 

“Okay, deal,” Veronica squeals, wrapping Bea in a big hug. Carter chuckles as Veronica gestures for him to join the hug, he awkwardly wraps his arms around the two girls, before pulling away. 

“Okay, I’ll wait in the car while you girls get ready. Just uh don’t take too long.”

Veronica playfully rolls her eyes as she Bea towards her bedroom, yelling back “thanks Carter.” Giddy, she rushes to Bea’s closest, assessing her clothes until she finds a short red dress hidden in the back. “This!” 

“No, no, no,” Bea shakes her head, pulling the dress out of the ombre-haired girl’s hands. 

“Why not? It would look so hot on you,” Veronica’s eyes trail down Bea’s body, as she sharply inhales. “Bea, you’re single and sexy, stop holding yourself back okay?” 

“I’m not,” Bea pushes back defensively, “I just-” she sighs heavily, “no one at Belvoire has ever seen me dressed up, I’m just- I’m nervous I guess.” 

“Then we have to show them what they’ve been missing for the last three years,” Veronica gives Bea a devilish smile as she takes the dress from Bea’s hands, sliding the dress off the hanger before handing it over to Bea. 

“Uh you gonna stay in the room?” Bea nervously wrings her hands together. 

“Why, are you offering a show?” Veronica lifts a teasing brow, noticing Bea’s cheeks redden slightly, which prompts her to let out a small laugh, “I’m kidding, don’t worry I won’t look.” Veronica makes a show of raising her hands to cover her eyes. Bea laughs as she slips out of her clothes and into the dress, she awkwardly clears her throat, grabbing Veronica’s attention. 

“Hey, uh help a girl out with her zipper?” 

“Sure,” Veronica moves to stand behind Bea, her hands ghosting around Bea’s exposed back, her breath momentarily taken away. She sturdies herself and places one of her hands on the small of the brunette’s back while the other moves towards the zipper, zipping the girl up. Bea smooths the dress down with her hands appreciating herself in the mirror, “you look gorgeous,” Veronica whispers into the shell of her ear. 

Bea’s face completely flushes red and slightly jerks at Veronica’s admission, “uhh thanks.” 

Veronica notices the awkward shift in the atmosphere, and promptly changes the subject, “so where’s your sister?” 

Bea sits in front of her mirror, a comb in her hand as she brushes her long locks, “she’s staying at a friend’s tonight.” 

“Cool,” Veronica answers back but her tone falls flat. The girls bask in the awkward silence as Bea continues to get ready but when Veronica notices Bea struggling to do her winged eyeliner she breaks the silence. “Hey do you need help?” 

Bea smiles bashfully, “yeah.” She rubs the back of her head with her hand, “sorry Poppy used to help me with my makeup.” 

“Right,” Veronica’s face slightly falls but she quickly covers it up, ushering Bea to come and sit on the bed. “Come on, I don’t bite,” Veronica bites the bottom of her lip, “unless you want me too.” Bea laughs but obliges sitting on the edge of the bed. Veronica clambers onto her lap, her thighs settling on the sides of Bea’s legs, and in response, Bea’s eyes widen in surprise but she remains glued in her spot, too shocked to move. 

“V, what are you doing?” Bea whispers, her voice attempting to come across as reprimanding but it comes out as breathy. 

“Relax, I’m just doing your eyeliner.” Veronica plucks the wand from Bea’s hand and angles herself close to the brunette’s face, as she begins drawing on the wings on Bea’s eyelids. Bea steadies herself, as she feels the heat of Veronica’s body so close to hers and when Veronica is finished with putting the finishing touches on her eyelids, she hops off Bea’s lap, making her way towards the desk, scuffling through Bea’s makeup bag before taking up her place on Bea’s lap once again. “Now I think this colour would look good on you,” 

“You don’t think it’s too much red?” 

“Oh babe, red means power, dominance, you don’t wanna be thinking about Poppy the entire night, you wanna have all eyes on you Bea Hughes.” Veronica uncaps the lipstick, her eyes burning into Bea’s lips as she carefully applies the red colour to her lips. “Perfect.” 

Bea smacks her lips together, evenly spreading the red on her lips. “Thanks V.” 

Veronica’s eyes dart to Bea’s lips, her tongue slightly running along her bottom lips before she breaks out of her reverie flashing Bea a smirk, “don’t thank me yet, thank me when you’re having the time of your life at the party.” Veronica slides off Bea’s lap, holding her hand out, “come on let’s finish up because Carter’s been waiting for a while.” Bea smiles up at Veronica, taking her hand as she lets the ombre-haired girl pull her off the bed, as they continue getting ready. 

………

Once they arrive at the party, Carter drops the girls off at the front of the huge house before telling them he will park the car. Veronica’s gaze darts to Bea, who’s nervously toying with her hands, looking up at the intimidating house, the lights blaring and as the music echoes throughout, the bass thumping in their ears. Noticing the nerves settling into her, Veronica slips into Bea's, giving her a reassuring squeeze, “hey, it’s okay, it’s just a bunch of drunk, preppy uptight teenagers, nothing you don't usually face everyday.” 

Bea lets out a small laugh, “just in a big ass house,” she jests. 

“Yeah, just in a big ass house,” she gives Bea a light squeeze as she starts pulling Bea into the house with her. Automatically, they’re met with stares and whispers, as the students look astonished at Bea, some appraising her outfit, while others are confused about her presence. “Hey, just stay with me okay?” Veronica whispers over to Bea. Bea nods, her eyes roaming the room. “I’ll get us drinks.” The ombre-haired girl gives Bea a reassuring pat on her arm and leaves her side and Bea walks into the living room, observing the difference between the vibes of the party between the north and the south. Her thoughts then move to think about Poppy, how Poppy would love going to parties in the north but Bea couldn’t find the appeal in it. Poppy. Poppy, who broke up with her. She’s interrupted from her thoughts by a tap of her shoulder, and Bea turns around to see Veronica offering her a red solo cup, Bea takes a sip and winces. 

“What the hell is this crap?” 

“Yeah for a bunch of rich kids, their taste in beer isn’t the best,” Veronica jokes, slightly nudging Bea. 

“We have way better beer in the south side.” 

“That I can agree with.” Veronica looks over to Bea who looks lost in thought, “hey what are you thinking about?” 

Bea sighs heavily, “Poppy,” she mutters. 

Veronica nods once, “right, yeah.” 

“Poppy would’ve loved a party like this, big fancy house an-” 

“Bea,” Veronica says, her tone slightly agitated, “this,” she gestures around the room, “is a no Poppy zone. That means we don’t think about Poppy, only about fun.” 

Bea nods, “fun. I can do that.” Veronica lifts her cup in the air, “what are we cheering to?” 

Veronica gives Bea a smile, “here’s to the first steps in moving on.” The girls tap their cups together before downing their drinks. “Now if we wanna get drunk, we’re gonna need a lot more of these.” 

The party is still ongoing, and Bea sits in a circle with a few girls from the volleyball team and a few of the football team and other people she doesn’t recognise while Veronica sits beside her. 

“Bea you look so pretty,” one of her teammates says. 

“Yeah Bea your makeup is literally gorgeous,” another chimes in. 

“Who knew strip tease can clean up well,” Ford jests, but Bea slumps her shoulders a little, remembering that these people are not her friends. 

Carter enters the circle slapping Ford on the head as he goes, “shut up, Hughes is cool.” Bea gives Carter a nod of appreciation before looking down at the drink in her hands. Her thoughts move a million miles a minute, but there’s a constant one stuck in her brain, Poppy.

Veronica looks over at Bea, frowning. “Hey come with me.” She stands, excusing herself from the group and Bea follows her close behind. 

“Where are we going?” 

“We’re gonna play a private game of truth or drink.” 

[tenthgrove]

yess thank you for letting me ask you about the lore >:3c so I have to get my absolute favorites outta the way first— what kinda lore and thoughts do you have for sorbet or gelato ( <- before they get together and the earlier years of them getting together if you need a specific period ) I have to also ask are you ok if I go down the “line” and get your thoughts in other asks about the rest of the la squadra babes? Thank you sm 💖💖 I hope you’re having a wonderf day/evening

Ah! Now this is one of my absolute favourites! Apologies to anyone who has already heard me ramble about my Sorbet and Gelato backstory ad nauseam on multiple occasions, but this is really an area where I can't help myself. Besides, this is my opportunity to go more in depth where I haven't before:

(Note after writing this: It's stupidly long. I'm sorry I just can't help myself with these backstories. I couldn't decide what to leave out so I decided nothing.)

(Also please feel free to ask me more lore questions because I love doing this)

We'll begin with Sorbet, born in Naples in February 1967 if you follow the canon timeline (although by default I write in modern AU so move the dates 20 years later). His situation at birth was absolutely dire, the eldest child of an incredibly vulnerable woman and one of her clients as a sex worker. Sorbet's mother was by all means a decent woman but her severe mental illness and drug addiction made it impossible for her to be a good mother, which of course had a bad effect on Sorbet growing up. After Sorbet, she had 5 more children, all through clients, and Sorbet was saddled with much of their care.

Though he loved his siblings, Sorbet was pretty much done with this life by age 12 and was easily swept up by older boys from the local street gang, who paid him well to peddle drugs when he should have been in school. This was a very underfunded neighbourhood so nobody questioned his truancy, and within the next couple of years he had stopped going to school entirely. Shortly after this, having acquired sufficient money through his crime involvement, Sorbet left his family to stay with his new friends, moving between them on a regular basis. He also discovered his sexuality around this time and dated a few male friends, though none of these relationships got very far.

By age 16, Sorbet had earned a reputation in the street gang for skilled and passionate violence, and was selected by the ringleader to commit the group's first planned murder, in exchange of course for a lucrative reward. Sorbet accepted, succeeded, and became the group's de-facto assassin whenever needed. He continued to hoard considerable money for the remainder of his adolescence, though continued to be functionally homeless since he didn't see it necessary when sofa-surfing was suiting him fine.

Before resuming with Sorbet, let's explain the life that Gelato came from. Gelato was born in October 1967 in St. Petersburg, Russia, (Note- I previously used the city of Minsk, unaware that this is in fact, in Belarus) to an upper-middle class businessman and his Italian wife, a distant relative of French Monarchy. Gelato's relationship with his parents was rocky from the start due to the fact they would have preferred a girl after three successive sons, but any parental love they had for their youngest child broke down entirely after he was diagnosed with both Autism and ADHD at age 5, in an evaluation intending to find the cause of some behavioural issues that were really, just a response to emotional neglect.

When Gelato was 13 he, his parents, and two of his three brothers (the eldest was already an adult by this time and elected to stay behind) moved to Italy to escape some allegations of corruption in the father's business. They moved to a rural village in North-West Italy where the community was very middle-class and quite stifling for Gelato, who had enough social rules to remember in the familiar, economically-diverse city he grew up in. His behavioural issues got worse and began to include things he would later regret, such as attacking and stealing from younger children, and things he would absolutely not, like attacking and stealing from teachers. By this point the family had largely written him off as a failure, revering instead their academically successful, well-behaved older children, which absolutely contributed to the spiralling cycle of behaviour issues Gelato faced.

Then, at age 17, Gelato failed a crucial exam and was expelled from high-school. His parents kicked him out on the spot, and with no other family in Italy Gelato had very few options on what to do next. He recalled, however, one older friend having links to a street gang in Naples, and decided to see if this boy might have a route out of destitution for him. Indeed, the friend did know of a man in Naples needing assistance within the gang, but could offer no help in getting Gelato there. Seeing no other way, Gelato walked the whole journey.

Arriving in Naples, the friend's associate announced that the position Gelato was after had been taken, but taking pity on his distress, informed him of another friend who needed someone to look after an unlicensed bar that served as one of the group's main meeting points. He agreed to arrange for the small apartment above the bar to be given as payment.

Gelato accepted, but although he had now solved the problem of homelessness his life was still incredibly miserable. For one, with his pay being the apartment he had to rely on measly tips to get by, which rarely left him with enough to eat let alone anything else. Additionally, as an outsider with little understanding of the way gangs work Gelato was an easy target for abuse, and was treated like absolute shit by the bar's patrons.

By this point in time, Sorbet had just turned 18. He was, incidentally, in the same gang Gelato had joined, and a regular at the bar he worked in. For a good couple of months they took no notice of each other, until Sorbet came to be in a coincidental feud with one of the men who was violent to Gelato at the bar. When Gelato witnessed the two of them in a fight, he made the spur-of-the-moment decision to join in on Sorbet's side, knocking the patron unconscious and leaving him too afraid to visit again. For his trouble, Sorbet gave Gelato a portion of the money he looted from the fight's loser, and flirted with him lightly before going about with his evening. Unknown to Sorbet, he had just sent Gelato falling head over hills in love.

Gelato found out about Sorbet's sexuality from other patrons and, delighted, attempted to flirt with him the next time they saw each other, but his attempts came off very poorly and Sorbet actually thought he was being insulted. Angered, he dragged Gelato into the cellar to demand what was going on. Gelato, terrified, admitted having a crush, which Sorbet found to be the sweetest and most genuine thing he'd ever heard. While he couldn't promise a relationship, he did agree to show Gelato more attention in the future. But, it was only a matter of days until Sorbet found himself loving Gelato back.

This whirlwind relationship continued happily for three weeks, Sorbet greatly improving Gelato's situation through his saved money and helping him fend off the abusive patrons. Gelato, in turn, offered Sorbet a permanent place to stay in the apartment, which he accepted. Sorbet was in the process of moving his things, and they had plans to refurbish the place to make it actually habitable.

But then, everything came crashing down. One night the bar was subject to a surprise raid by the police, operating by the false assumption it was empty. Sorbet and Gelato attempted to flee but were caught, and in a panic, Gelato shot a policeman dead. Rushing to his defence Sorbet killed two more, but a fourth escaped to tell the tale. The couple knew they were screwed. Running to the headquarters of their gang they begged for protection but were informed the small group simply could not save them from a charge this serious, and gave them only a single night of shelter to plan their next move. Gelato, who remember had never committed anything more serious than minor ABH before, had an absolute breakdown over this predicament that night, and whilst comforting him, Sorbet devised a blood pact with him to stick together no matter what came.

Over the next few days, Sorbet and Gelato fled north, avoiding the police through Sorbet's skills as a criminal and Gelato's very convincing Russian tourist impression. They were almost at the French border when Sorbet awoke one night to find Gelato missing behind him. He chased his tracks to the driveway of a rural house, a tearful Gelato clutching a knife at the shut door and trembling. He informed Sorbet that he had intentionally led him to the village where his family lived, with the intention to break in and kill them as revenge for the years of abuse. Sorbet warned Gelato that this would not be good for their attempts to flee, but said he understood fully and would help him if this is truly what he wanted. Gelato agreed, and together they broke into the house and slaughtered Gelato's mother and father, additionally killing one of his brothers after he woke from the noise. The other brother, the youngest other than Gelato, was spared, as Gelato felt his role in the abuse had been comparatively more minor and he did not deserve to die. This of course, left another witness.

The massacre in the village was quickly linked to the one at the bar and Gelato was promptly identified from a comparison of DNA found at the scene to his surviving brother's. Sorbet, a known criminal, was identified soon after. Not only were the pair now known but the police figured out what their plan was and informed the French police as well, making things exponentially harder for the couple.

They made do for a while by hanging low and keeping on the move, living off money stolen from the parents' house. Eventually however, they needed more, and began making deals with local crime organisations to carry out assassinations in exchange for money or temporary shelter. While Sorbet was already a pro at this, Gelato found himself a fast learner, and soon realised he shared Sorbet's adoration for the act of killing. He felt as though he was finally coming to meet his true self.

Though the assassination deals were lucrative, they did not help the couple keep a low profile and the attacks from police were relentless. Several times, they barely escaped capture. All this was not good on their mental states, and after two years, Sorbet knew it needed to end. He and Gelato returned to Naples in the hope their old gang might reconsider protecting them, but they were met with a surprise as their old gang had been completely overtaken by Passione. Even still, the new mobsters had heard a lot about Sorbet and Gelato's exploits and agreed to get them an audience with a local Capo, Pericolo, who was impressed by the men's skills and moved by the sense of honour suggested by their love for each other. He agreed to initiate them into the gang.

Soon after this, Sorbet and Gelato recieved stands which, although not very powerful, assisted them greatly in the art of assassination. Soon, they were natural choices for Passione whenever a hit needed carrying out in the Naples area. At some point a few years in, they befriended a man named Prosciutto who had been recently forced into Passione due to his heritage. Prosciutto was also funnelled into assassination jobs and, with less of a reputation for impulsivity than Sorbet and Gelato, was the one given the order to form a new assassination squad when the need arose, around 1993 if we're following canon.

(Note, I hc La Squadra was created by Passione in response to a real life government crackdown on the Italian mafia around 1992-93, in response to an incredibly scandalous series of assassinations. In such a climate, it would make sense for Passione to want to consolidate an elite squad of its best hitmen, do avoid future problems.)

Due to personal commitments Prosciutto did not want to be the captain, so attempted to give this responsibility to Sorbet, a request the boss promptly denied. Prosciutto was, however, allowed to add Sorbet and Gelato to the team's ranks, cementing the three of them as the first members of the team.

Prosciutto would, soon enough, find another person to give the title of captain to, but that's a story for another time.

[nick-close]

Time for another nick-close rant but I am going to try and discuss why Glenn is my favourite dad because I want to. There’s no objectivity here, it’s the subjective stuff that makes me like him so much. I’m trying to solve this puzzle as I write so... incoherent ramblings.

There absolutely is that base level of ‘haha stupid charasmatic bard’ that I just always inherently love in any character- I mean I’m predictable. I love any character that’s full of themselves and has a stupid high charisma stat, that’s most of what I play. But if it was just that I probably wouldn’t have this much of my mental health depending on him huH-

The first time I really like. Fell in love with Glenn as a character rather than him just being my favourite silly dad was the prison stuff tbh- the energy shift in that. That’s honestly one of my favourite things in how Freddie played Glenn too, because at first you kind of don’t notice how drastic of an energy shift Glenn has gone through until you relisten to some of the episodes before hand. Glenn is so much more,,, feral? Like genuinely- but also not in some unrealistic ‘he is a wild animal’ type shit. It’s the type of thing where you’d almost see him as the same until a certain moment happens and somethings just... off. And you’re like. Oh shit.

For the first half of the podcast Glenn, although being the most complex character in my opinion, is consistent with keeping up his bright eyed bard persona. You can tell he loves his son, but there’s a sense of that wanting to impress him that ultimately wrecks a lot of their relationship. You can TELL Glenn HAS feelings, complicated ones- and he feels grounded in them. This is also one of the reasons I think Glenn is often disliked more than Ron despite them having some fairly similar traits in my opinion.

Although Freddie plays shit kinda goofy- Glenn is still very much grounded in reality. Glenn’s character is NOT a joke- whereas Ron very much is? ‘Who’s your daddy now’ is obviously an awful thing to say to a child- but Ron feels like a joke character so we don’t read that as anything harmful. This isn’t a BAD thing of course, I’m just making the comparison. Like, Glenn getting that upset over his kid liking minions- that was meant more as an overreaction for the sake of humour in my eyes at least- but since Glenn’s character IS so real, when those moments of ‘this is bad parenting played as a joke’ happen, I think that’s where people tend to lose him as a character. Which is completely fair, I’m not here to talk about peoples taste in character.

Oops, I rambled off topic. My main point here is that’s one of the reasons I really love Glenn, despite the occasional moment of. Eugg..... is just, his stupid ideas and eccentricities are things that you can very clearly connect to him,, being a person. They’re almost never too extreme to be real to me. When it comes to the post prison Glenn then, that person he was with deep thoughts and emotions he’s been really good burying down, is gone to an extent.

I mean you see he’s sTILL burying shit but it’s also met with him wanting to get that shit out! So then you get moments of him just. Saying shit that makes you pause and go. Shit, he’s not ok is he? He’s turned that chill, calm but charasmatic wild energy into,,, constantly on the verge of a breakdown? Or just, trying to be who he used to be but without that calm side to it.

Pre-prison Glenn feels like he’s a lake with some stuff stuck deeply in the sand underneath. It remains there, and really only appears if you’re digging for it. But post prison he starts to feel more unpredictable. More like an ocean that every so often carries a piece of something to the surface in a crashing wave. You can tell he WANTS to talk about stuff- but he also very much doesn’t want the confrontation that comes with that.

For the second half of the podcast, Glenn really is a story of a man with nothing to lose. Shit just keeps getting taken from him over and over again as he struggles to adapt to this insane set of circumstances. You can see him grasping at straws to find that stability he had before- the stability of denial and repression that he can’t keep up when everything just keeps coming down at him. Glenn was able to keep himself standing by just.. pretending the bad stuff didn’t happen. By focusing on his kid and getting him back. But what the fuck does he have to focus on when after years in prison, his distraction is gone? He can’t focus on Nick anymore. Nick isnt there. He can’t look anywhere but at himself. So hes constantly being forced to face the bad shit in his life because that’s all there is to see. Glenn was backed into a corner with mirrors on every wall.

Does this explain why I like Glenn? Actually I don’t think so this was kind of a mess- but,

Maybe the reason I love Glenn so much is because I CAN make posts like these, just thinking about his character and how much there is to him. Or maybe I just think he’s funny!! Who knows!!

[rosecoloredwriting]

Best Friend Tings~

A/N: This idea came to me and then boom! This might be a whole series of headcanons i got so many ideas bro!!!! 

Summary: Sometimes in life having a best friend is better than getting a s/o 

Pairings: Izuku Midorya x GN!Reader(Platonic), Katsuki Bakugou x GN!Reader(Platonic), Shoto Todoroki x GN!Reader(Platonic), Hitoshi Shinso x GN!Reader(Platonic)

Izuku Midoriya

We can see from the show he didn’t have any friends before u.a(katsuki doesn’t really count)

So boy must have been lonely before ua like todoroki

He nerded out by himself, no one else to talk to other than mama inko

So meeting you made his life better

he’s up to date on meme culture too

You slide in one vine reference during a convo ONCE when you met and he responds back subconsciously with his own

Instant connection

Like lightning strikes and you both just do the spiderman pointing at each other meme

Vine might be dead but that won’t stop you

Both of you start turning into beams of light

He gets sparkle eyes when you both don’t stop with the vine references

Numbers exchanged and you both find out to be major nerds for certain shows

Late nights are spent sending each other memes/videos and the next day you both are holding in fits of giggles

When the dorms are put in place pure chaos

Yall are inseparable 

There’s a lot of sneaking around because guess what you’re doing instead of sleeping 

watching✨✨TikToks✨✨

Or watching those Russian car crash videos

You go into a youtube deep dive at 3 am together

One brain cell is shared between you two ok

Deku squad are the vibes ok

Ilida can’t believe how 2 of some of the smartest people he knows can turn the exact opposite

“Ilida can you do us a favor? Would you be willing to run while holding us like balloons?”

“What are you talking about!?”

“Ilida me and (Y/N) thought of having Uraraka join us by making us float and have a rope tied around us with you running around!”

“As your class president I will not allow you to do such a thing-!” Cutting him off you turn to Izuku

“I told he wasn’t gonna say yes.” Sighing in disappoint.

“Should we try Kacchan?” 

“I’ll do the talking got it!” You leave behind a dumbfounded Ilida wondering why his friends can be so smart yet do such stupid actions.

Do not be fooled though

You call out izuku when necessary, you both may be chaotic with one another but like hell!!!! you’ll let him slip up because you’re besties and actually have brain cells(sometimes)

From the glare you’re sending him he feels like a disappointment because he caused his bestie trouble and worry

In conclusion: Yall are ride or die

Were talking the strength of the pillars of those temples in Greece

Katsuki Bakugo

It kinda just happened before the classes eyes

Like no one gets how bakugo manages not to blast your eardrums everyday

He just somehow sees you’re genuinely trying to be friends with him and get to know him

At first, he thought you were some extra following him like the rest of Baku squad at first and somehow saw that you don’t see him godly or anything you just really enjoyed being around him

Slowly you both understand one another

He’s kinda scared cause I don’t think bakugo has ever been like close close with someone before

So it’s slow like his friendship with Kiri

Speaking of Kiri cause this is a package deal if your friends with bakugo

You both will just watch him when someone pisses him off 

“Someone tried to test him right,” you said while passing Kirishima a water bottle. Coming back from the vending machine.

“Yeah he did” he replies deadpanning at Bakugou’s antics

You may be mostly a duo but its also a trio sometimes

So when he gets captured there’s a 50/50 chance that he will come to you

you managed to get knocked out during the attack so seeing one another safe really just lifts the blanket of fear off

So when the dorms come in he will barge into your room and start up your console and play

This distraction won’t last long cause at some point he just sits there stuck in his head

He holds back tears but you just help him through

Really just strengthens your bond

From then on he comes to you and he’s very vague on details but you just comfort him

somehow you both from this experience learn how to read what the other is feeling

If you have something going on the perceptive as ever bakugo will see and somehow do the thing that just gives you a boost, he’s not either an intimate or verbal guy

He’s trying his best alright

The same goes for you in bakugo accept your just a tad slower and use your words instead 

Best friend soulmate ✨✨tings✨✨

One of your past times is either playing fighting games or just relaxing in his room

Like you both will lay on the ground, speaker blasting, taking turns putting on songs

Feeling the vibrations 

Its how the aggressive boy cools down/relaxes

Being angry all the time is tiring

One time you were in a room with someone as they insulted bakugou

Right in your face not only did you defend your best friend but you also whooped some ass that day

Conclusion: the best friends that just get each other 

Shoto Todoroki

(If you’re an endeavor stan I don’t know what to tell you for this one)

Now hear me out on this

You find Endeavor hilarious

He is just the funniest person to you

Like just looking at him makes you cackle

So when todoroki fights midoriya and he used his fireside everyone was shocked because no one has seen him use it yet!!

But when you see endeavor on the other side of the stadium scream “SHOTOOOOO!” you burst out full-on laughing!!! WHEEZING IF YOU MAY!! Like do you not see his face

When he came back to the stands you just turned to him holding in a laugh

“Hey, Todoroki how are you so serious all the time with your dad looking like that all the time?”

“I beg your pardon?”

Don’t get me wrong he was pissed because like baby just had a mental breakdown but this type of comment is new to him

“Don’t you see how ridiculous he looks with those flames of him like damn. Of all the places! Why his fckin calves!!!!! Like what kind of egotistical man does that”

Todoroki hates his dad so you bashing him really opens up doors for you

Now to me, I think todoroki throws insults at everyone without even knowing himself

Like under his breath he will say a comment you will catch it and hold in a laugh

So you bashing his father made you an a+ in his book

And so the duo begins

Since todoroki does insult people without knowing you are there to be his audience

You will stifle and hold in giggles and laughs as you stand right next or behind him

Once he realized this he subtly increases the amount he says on the daily(These arent basic insults either but they aren’t harmful, plain fun ok)

One time your laughing got to the point Aizawa threatened to separate you two

But still, you helped cracked the boy’s frozen heart

Lots of hugs though cause the boy needs it

Once you’re close enough in the friendship you jump and hug the boy in surprise

Gets a little startled but loves the gesture cause guess what yall are besties

Opening his door, Todoroki meets the sight of you holding a pile of food. Ready for movie night. Quickly placing it down on the coffee table you jump and give him a hug. He stumbles a moment before he wraps his arms around your waist.

“Why are you hugging me? We saw each other all day.”

“Just thought you needed it.” Mumbling a thank you you go to the coffee table. The surface spilling with bags of snacks.

“I have my soba and more if you want any. I even got those candies you like.”

“Really! Thanks Sho-kun! I also got those chips you really enjoyed the last time. So you ready?” With a hum you both sit down opening the food you'll be eating for the rest of the night. Grabbing the remote Shoto hits play, the screen lights up to show the Disney logo.

Many movie marathons and binge-watching nights because you need to show him so much

When these hangouts happen you have hardcore munches together

You both will have a buffet of food because boy does he love his soba and you love to do to bring an entire pile and bag full of food

Just appreciates you and all you do for him

Will definitely sneak in really expensive gifts to you

Loves to watch Disney movies with you 

Conclusion: you are the best friend he needs, he wouldn’t have you any other way

Hitoshi Shinso 

Both of you met in gen studies class

At this point, everyone in the class knew one another names and stuff and when word got to you of his quirk oh boy

He was minding his business sitting in his desk

Slightly wishing he was dead or wanting to vibe at home

But here you come strutting on over and say hi to him

He was kinda nervous cause everyone knew his quirk and just got all those villain comments

You just talk and say how cool his quirk is and he’s like ‘aw shit here we go again’

Instead, you just ask why he isn’t in the hero course

Like his quirk amazing for that shit

He’s shocked alright

So you both just stick together

You are his wild friend taking him on adventures as he complains saying he would rather watch a movie or do something

Low key in on your plans 

He trusts you with his life so don’t take advantage of that

Teases you on a regular basis

Is the type of friend where if he makes fun of or teases you 

You’re his friend

at the sports festival, you treat him to lunch because he deserves it!!!!

He made it to the last round

And fought MIDORIYA!!!

“You don’t have to do this you know.” Dragging Hitoshi around the food stands he tries his best to stop you from doing this. Even if it’s your treat he rather pay himself.

“Hitoshi I swear if you don’t just pick what you want for lunch I’m fighting you.”

“I’m being serious you don’t have too. I didn’t even win against him.” You come to a halt both hands on his shoulders. Looking him in the eye you reassure him.

“You may not have won but you made it to the 3rd round. Do you know how amazing that is! A general studies student made it that far! You did that! You showed everyone we might as well be just as good as the hero course students! As your best friend to, I must treat you for this accomplishment.” This time he grabs your wrist. Pulling you around until he sees a food stand that peaks his interest. A soft smile on his face happy to call you his friend and to have someone care for him like you do.

He is the reason why you're an insomniac now

When you blame him for your sleeping schedule he just says in the deepest and seductive voice “it was part of the plan”

Makes you want to punch that handsome face of his(but you wouldn’t you love the boy too much)

Sometimes you guys sneak cats in like your dorms just somehow manage to have cats in them

The fur is everywhere but their you fur babies

You both spend your time playing board games and sometimes inviting the deku squad cause Hitoshi has a pretty chill relationship with Izuku(plus their too social for their own good)

So things become waaaaaaaay more lively

Both of your social batteries though are completely empty

There is late-night cuddling though as weird as it sounds

when you take turns slipping in one another’s dorm you both manage to hug like it’s super platonic and just find it comforting waking up to one another

the bond so strong that you protect one another even when you sleep

Conclusion: the besties that mess around one another but are like this🤞

[jaeminscoffee]

Little do you know | L. Ty

Pairings» Lee Taeyong x reader.

Genre» Fluff.

Word count» 1.53k

Warning(s)» tw/mental health.

Synopsis» Because little do you know, he was there to stay. Stay and love you. Love you till the sun dies.

Listen to: Little do you know; Alex and Sierra

Your mind could be described as a ticking time bomb. 

Your constantly flowing thoughts as the timer. And your insecurities; the safety that's threatening to pull itself off and just put you into this world of dread you've been staying cautious from for as long as you can remember. 

You've been a strong independent person prior to all misfortune in your life. You were capable of keeping yourself together, of keeping yourself anchored, or keeping yourself sane. Key word, were. 

Having regretted not listening to everyone around you saying "it just takes one dreadful event to spoil the rest of the entirety of your life" you let the bad take over the good. 

Obviously, you were warned and it's easier to just accept that you were in the wrong from the starting, but that's the catch, you weren't.

He was genuine, seemed genuinely into you and did of course care about you, a little too much maybe but that was, as you'd thought till now, for your sake. 

Sangyeon was the reason you'd worn few of your brightest smiles. He was the reason you'd been happy for a certain period in your life. He was the reason you'd been safe, barricaded by all those bad things happening outside this small love bubble he had created around you. It was just him and you against the world, again, that's what you thought. 

In reality it was him against all those who cared about you to drag you away from potentially ruining your life. And truth be told, this was something Sangyeon could have done nothing about. OLD, and schizophrenia. 

Not knowing about these until 2 years into your 'relationship' you were heartbroken but nevertheless, ready to stay by his side and help him out. But it was when he started viewing you as a prized possession rather than his lover when you started contemplating your decision which of course led to extra precautions, extra arguments, extra physical restrictions and extra everything. 

Jojo had warned you, Eric had warned you too, so did Juyeon and so did basically the entire senior year students, probably even the entire campus. Heck best friend!Taeyong had even gone as far as getting into a physical fight with your ex. The matters only got worse from then. 

Your ability to smile slowly deteriorated. Your ability to make out whether you're feeling too much or too little deteriorated. Your ability to feel loved even after being spoiled both materialistically and emotionally deteriorated. You were weakened. Mentally, and physically. 

Helpless.

Breaking free from such toxic relationships was a whiff of fresh air in a long time. But that regular breathing came with a cost. The cost of living on constant fear of never being able to go back to normal again. To never be able to know what true love is again. To never be you again. 

Taking a glance beside you with another silent sob breaking free from your throat. You felt nothing. Or maybe you did, you just didn't know. That overwhelming feeling of being a burden to the poor guy beside you due to your doings made you feel extremely horrible. 

Taeyong had always been one to warn you from the day he saw your ex steal a glance at you from way across the cafeteria. He was one to always walk on glass shards to have you walk on a smooth road. He was one to always be there for you sp that you'd have a shoulder to lean. He calls himself, your human diary. 

Of course being oblivious to your friends' genuine love and concern for you, you took it as Taeyong's conscience that asked him to move in with you when he got to know the state you were in. Rounding back to the point that you feared you could feel nothing, you couldn't feel his love for you. 

It took years of constant breakdowns and arguments with everyone around you to normal down a bit. When you could smile a little more usual. When you actually got to know all that Taeyong gave up to stay by your side for your healthy recovery. And that's where the feeling of being a burden comes in. 

Taeyong always reminded you of how much you mean to him. How much he's ready to wait. How much he likes you for how you are and how much more he's ready to express for you to believe him. And you appreciated that but at the same time, you didn't want him wasting your time on someone like you. 

You scoot further down the headboard, shifting closer to Taeyong's unconscious form as you wrap your arms around him, your shoulder shaking ever so slightly to not disturb the peaceful boy as you constantly let out chains of apology, pulling yourself even closer to him as you rest your head in the crook of his neck. 

You get flashbacks of your seemingly innocent relationship, how you'd be just in the same position with your ex, how he'd have his arms wrapped around you, keeping your body flush against his, how he'd always sleep only after making sure that you'd fallen asleep. Only encouraging your tears to flow down faster. 

Too focused in staying silent and indulged in memories you fail to notice Taeyong's shift in position, turning to face you as his breathing picks a steady pace at the sudden intrusion to his slumber, immediately shooting awake when he notices your trembling figure, wrapping his arms around you the same manner as yours around his. 

"Y/n?" 

"I'm sorry.." you shake harder with each loud sob that left your throat, squeezing him a little tighter, feeling guiltier now that you woke him up dead in the night. 

"Hey, it's okay.. It's okay, love. Let it out, hm?" he hushes your apologies, moving to shift both of you into a sitting position as his back rests against the headboard, while he lets you straddle his lap. 

"I'm so sorry you have to go through this all because of me.." 

"I'm not going through anything because of you, Y/n. I'm going through everything with you. Don't be sorry for that" He hums in a comforting manner, rocking your figure back and forth in an effort to calm your reckless cries. 

"I don't know why, Tae, i.. -i just, keep getting reminded of all the-times i spent with him and, the dread, the fear, it.. -it all comes crashing in at the same time and i keep pulling you into the pit too, I'm so sorry.."

"Your emotion's something you don't have a grip over, doll. It's like that for everyone. You really don't have to apologize for anything. I volunteered for this, I stayed because I wanted to stay. And I'm more than happy that I'm the one you're facing your worst at. That you're not alone. But I'll need you to stop feeling bad for it Y/n. So that i know you trust me a hundred percent.. "

"i need you to stop feeling like you have to apologize for something you can do almost nothing about. And I need you to know, I'll be there. Whenever, where ever." you sob silently as you let him do the talking from here on, not trusting your voice. 

"I also need you to just let go. Let yourself feel bad, let yourself cry, let yourself lean onto someone without feeling guilty because, y/n if you'd just let me, i could be your safe space in this harsh world. And I promise I'll stay, and no judgements will be passed. You're human. There's no way you can handle all by just yourself, you'll only end up losing yourself if you do that. So, don't apologize hm?"

"But, yong. You're wasting your time, your love. Yourself for.. Me.. -me. I don't. I don't deserve it. I d-don't deserve you.." you choke out as soon as he comes to an end to his talking. 

"That's how you think, darling. If anything, you deserve much more than me. And about wasting my time loving you?" he shifts again to rest his chin on top of your head. 

"I'm ready to wait, for as long as you want me to wait without reducing an ounce of my feelings for you. Don't worry about that. " Taeyong places a peck to the crown of your head, rubbing your back as you calm down a little, the soreness from all the crying kicking in. 

"But I'll need a little more time, Taeyong.. I don't know when, but i promise I'll get back and.. I don't know if that'll be enough to return all that you've done for me.. But i.. I'm trying." you lift your face up and away from his shoulder to look at him.

A faint, fond smile grows on the lad's face, as he let's go of one of his hands to brush the stray tresses away from your face and then proceeds to dry your cheeks, kissing the last tear away. 

"And I'll wait. And I'll love you till the sun dies. So just let go. Trust the process."

"Lay your head on me, and let yourself breathe"

[elindae-writes]

Ok, this is all about your headcanons. Is Starscream the oldest/youngest/middle member of his trine? Did he get his trine before or after losing Skyfire? During his time in the Decepticons? How did he meet his trinemates? Was there a cool ceremony? Just tell me everything about Seekers! (Without major spoilers, of course.)

He’s the youngest and he trined Skywarp and Thundercracker after he lost Skyfire and also after he first met Megatron. So they were officially in a trine before they joined the Decepticons. He convinced them to join the ‘Cons and without spoiling too much now bitterly regrets roping them into joining Megatron.

The scenes in which he meets the boys and trines them are going to appear later on, maybe during the Orion Pax arc, so I don’t want to spoil those, but I will gladly indulge your request for cool Seeker facts.

Seekers think in three dimensions and not two due to them being flyers and always having to ascend/descend. This is part of the reason they are so claustrophobic, it’s because they are highly attuned to sensing what’s above them at all times and are therefore hyperaware of when the ceiling is too low.

In Seekercant the word for “grounder” is just “taxi-er” because whenever airplanes are about to take off they taxi around first, so Seekers basically just see grounders as wingless bots who taxi everywhere without taking off.

Seekers are unusual in that they see their alt-modes as their true natural forms and think of their bipedal root-modes as their actual alternate modes. This is weird even by flyer standards.

Seekers used to go on giant migrations. I haven’t entirely thought this out because I’m not sure where they’d actually migrate to--maybe they’d just all instinctively fly up and around Vos without leaving the city, or maybe they’d go off and visit ancient older nesting sites built by ancient Seekers. Either way I just like the imagery of thousands of Seekers blackening the skies with their numbers and then the sad image of Starscream trying to complete a grand Seeker migration all by himself because there is no one else left. But someone still needs to follow the ancient winds, so it’s gotta be him.

Starscream is tiny by Seeker standards and Dreadwing and Skyquake are actually more average-sized. It’s also my headcanon his RID frame used to be his old frame, so when Megs downsized him he got fussy about it because he genuinely felt like a bit of his Seeker heritage got taken away.

There were a bunch of different towers in Vos and they all had their own slightly different cultures. Seekers from one tower would whistle and chirp in Seekercant in slightly different tones than Seekers from another tower, like the way whales from different pods have their own unique dialects. Starscream’s fellow Seekers from his tower were infamous for speaking real fancy-like, I don’t know why but I just picture them as speaking in weirdly complex, vague, and mystical ways like the elves from the Lord of the Rings. Despite there being hundreds of different dialects each Seeker is capable of instinctively recognizing the dialect you’re speaking and can just tell what tower you’re from. There was also a Seeker equivalent of Australia somewhere in Vos and it was completely full of weird and intense Cybertronian animals, it was just like that one weird tower where all of the odd little drones and robots ended up. I just like the idea of Vosian Australian memes.

Starscream was from a really high-ranking family, aka the equivalent of Seeker nobility, and was maybe in line to become or at the very least is closely related to the Winglord. That’s why it was such a scandal when he got the heck out of Dodge and decided to abandon his proud noble military family so that he could go blow stuff up in a lab in Iacon.

Shuttles have their own culture, but are weirdly symbiotic with Seekers. I just like the imagery of throngs of tiny Seekers who wandered around their towers with the occasional giant shuttle just lumbering through. Shuttles adopted Seekers and vice versa. Seekers were extremely touchy about whoever adopts baby Seekerlings and shuttles were the only non-Seekers who were allowed to adopt them. When Starscream moved out of Vos and got himself a roommate in Iacon his family was like “who?? who is dwelling with you, I refuse to allow you to have a non-Seeker roommate, we’d much rather have you dwell alone then dirty yourself by living with an Iaconian--”

And then Starscream just sent over a picture of Skyfire and then his family just said  “we will make an exception for him because he looks very polite”

Seekers were infamous across Cybertronian for being--I’m not sure if this is the right word--cryptids? They hate using doors, so if you’re a grounder and your Seeker buddy is bopping by for a visit you’ll just hear a soft tap tap tap by your window and you’dlllook over and see your winged friend waiting for you to open it up and maybe you’d shout something along the lines of “THE DOOR WORKS FINE”

And then your Seeker friend would just flare his wings and get all offended and it would be a whole thing--

Seekers very rarely make non-Seeker friends, but when they do they tend to make friendships for life. That is not foreshadowing, no, not at all. Non-fliers back on Cybertron would even leave their windows unlocked for their Seeker friends--even though the door would work just fine.

Another weird thing about Seekers is that they hate it when people actually see them entering or exiting a room. You’ll just turn around and a Seeker will be there, and then suddenly they won’t be, hence their cryptic reputation around Cybertron. They are infamous for being overdramatic and theatrical, but they just think of everybody else as being underdramatic.

They have no concept of personal space when in bipedal mode. When flying they normally have to fly wide apart in order to avoid collisions (military trines or just trines that are really in-synch are the exception, they normally flew only a few inches apart) so when in bipedal mode they make up for the lack of physical contact during flying by skooching up real close to each other when back on the ground. Seekers are very very good at forming neat and orderly lines. They have a tendency to sandwich confused and surprised grounders who are shocked to have their personal space so suddenly taken up by a bunch of pairs of wings.

Back when Vos was intact there was a big debate going on as to the proper way to teach your Seekerling to fly. There were two schools of thought:

Send your Seekerling to a school with safety nets and attentive instructors and teach the Seekerlings to just hover, then ascend three feet off the ground, then five feet, and then so on.

Or just chuck your Seekerling out of a tower 10,000 feet in the air while shouting “fLAP” and then just hoping for the best. That was how Starscream was taught. It’s also how he taught Eradicons to fly. He’d have them walk up to the edge, he’d go behind and just give them a good kick, and then shout “THIS IS THE VOSIAN WAY”

And then they’d return to the deck of the Nemesis, cold and shaking, and ask “why?”

And then Starscream would whisper back even more gently “it’s  t r a d i t i o n”

Whenever Seekerlings were really really tiny, as in only a few weeks or months old, the adult Seekers would transform, then also have their Seekerling transform into a very smol plane, and then they would secure the Seekerling to their back before taking flight. It’s like when that Boeing jet carried space shuttle Endeavour around, but much cuter. Seekers carried their newsparks around on their backs between their wings and their wings would widen in order to create more room. You can actually tell if a Seeker has tended to newsparks by just looking at their back. Starscream babysitted a lot, so he has this modification. I just like the idea of Seekers walking around like possums with like six Seekerlings on their back, they gotta make room, it’s the only way I could think of to accomodate all the kiddos

Seekerlings are like newborn horses. They can get up and run--or in their case, transform and fly--right after being sparked. The moment their systems go online they then immediately fly off and crash somewhere. Seekerling caretakers had it rough.

Seekers had potlucks. Their systems require very fine and refined energon, so they are very good at tasting subtle flavors. In other words, Vos was home to the Cybertronian version of professional chefs. Their energon was famous for being gourmet and it would be served in fine-dining restaurants throughout the rest of Cybertron. But back in Vos they’d just casually serve each other what was essentially gourmet energon during potlucks like it was no big deal. Like imagine going to the neighbor’s potluck and they’re all eating caviar.

Seekers instinctively cluster around each other in multiples of three. Three’s a very a lucky number in their culture and they had a base-six counting system.

Trinebonds are mostly just full of a very intense and platonic brother love, but there were some trines in which you’d have two Seekers adopt a more parental role towards the third, and in some other trines there would be more romance involved, but for the most part they were just bros through and through.

When a Seeker dies the other two feel an agonizing pain, but will eventually re-trine with a new third in an attempt to feel whole again. Seekers who lose both trinemates will tend to have a full-on mental breakdown and will get so stressed that their spark will actually begin to flare erratically, which unfortunately prevents them from re-trining. Seekers who lost both trinemates and yet who managed to pull through the pain and trine again were treated with great respect.

Trined Seekers are capable of sensing what kind of vague mood their two buddies are feeling at any given time. They can detect when their trinemates are in root-mode or alt-mode or when they’re healthy or sick. Seekers will lose the ability to sense their trinebonds when there’s too much distance between them or whenever their trinemates go into a deep coma-like stasis that slows their spark down.

All of the Seekers in a tower would be almost always all distantly related. The Seekers who lived beneath you were your distant cousins on one side of your family and the Seekers who lived above you were your even more distant cousins but like 53 times removed, but still family and therefore still invited to the family potluck!! They’re all like hobbits in that they are obsessed with genealogy and will gladly talk about it for hours on end. Seekers will greet each other by explaining their genealogy. This really confuses grounders.

Some random grounder: “Oh, hi, how are you?”

Starscream, probably: “I AM STARSCREAM SON OF STARFLIGHT SON OF SKYECHO SON OF AIRHALO SON OF SWIFTWING--”

The poor grounder: *softly* “What the fuck”

If you don’t interrupt the Seeker then they will just keep recounting their genealogy on the assumption that you are actually intrigued. This can go for hours. Seekers are mortified when they learn that grounders do not know the names, personalities, likes, dislikes, and favorite childhood snacks of their distant great-great-great-great-great grandfathers.

Orphaned Seekers who didn’t know their genealogy had multiple options: get adopted, then just list off the adopted family’s bloodline, or if they didn’t get adopted then they’d just list off the names of Vos’s mythological heroes and figures, or maybe even just claim Primus as their ancestor (which isn’t even wrong.) This is kind of like how people in ancient times claimed to be descended from gods. The human equivalent of this would be some dude walking up to you and saying “I am Bob, son of Zeus!”

Some Seeker towers had certain naming conventions. Like you’d have one tower full of Seekers who are all named after cloud formations, and another tower full of Seekers named after noises, like “whistle” or “blast,” and you guessed it--maybe even “scream.”

To be honest I’m not sure if I want Starscream to be a very common or very rare name. Vos was made up of ancient warring clans that all united under the first Winglord (he/she took Vos under their “wing” hence the title) and maybe they could’ve been named Starscream? In most human societies everybody and their neighbor always would want to name their kiddos after the current ruler, but in Vos maybe it was very rare and very bold of Seekers to name their child after the current ruler because it would be seen as an attempt to snatch up that ruler’s glory. So to name your Seekerling Starscream would be the Vosian equivalent of naming your son Gaius Julius Caesar. He’s an intense bot so it makes sense that he’d also have a very intense name.

But then again I also like the idea of the Autobots just thinking of Starscream’s name as being weird and rich and odd and  e x o t i c  but then finding out it’s the Vosian equivalent of John Smith and that there were eight Starscreams on any block at any given time.

Maybe Seekers would change their name whenever they have a big event happen to them, like a trining for example. I think a culture obsessed around airflow would be fine with people changing aspects of their identity like that because then you’re being like the wind, flowing and changing with the same wind that carries you. It’s also my headcanon that this is why Seekers change their frames a lot more. Your frame isn’t you, it contains you, and if you change then it would be really weird not to change the way you look too. 

Despite being really lax about some things Seekers can be very very strict and traditional about other things, such as etiquette. If you’re meeting a new Seeker for the first time and you rotate your wings 70 degrees clockwise that means “may the skies of the holy 70th tower of Vos bless you” but if you rotate your wings anti-clockwise it means “I curse your grandfather!” And then Starscream would just gasp in horror and then shout “DO NOT BESMIRCH THE MEMORY OF SKYECHO”

Some Seeker names were common--like, too common. There were a few thousand Skyechoes, Windblasts, and Driftwings who drifted around at any given moment. This made role-call in school very painful. Some caretakers would try to be edgy about it. “Oh, my son isn’t named Driftwing, he’s named Dreadwing!”

Seekers cremated their dead but in the most intense way possible. They took their dead up and just let them burn up in the atmosphere so that they can become one with the sky. This resulted in some pretty spectacular meteor showers.

Same random grounder: “What a beautiful shooting star!”

Starscream, casually: “Oh, that’s my grandpa, SKYECHO SON OF AIRHALO SON OF SWIFTWING--”

Same unfortunate grounder: “wHAT--”

Seekers make noises all the time and are very rarely silent. They hum when content, beep when excited, chirp when riled up, rumble when confused, trill when happy, and so on. Starscream used to be a chatterbox but was forced to repress his chitterings because Megatron would always tell him to shut up. He’s going to trill more and more throughout Unburied, especially around Optimus.

Seeker towers were infamous for their weird architecture. They weren’t designed to ever be wandered around in while in your bipedal mode. No staircases, period. Just extremely tall ceilings and arches with curved corridors everybody flew through with lots of balconies you could land on. There were lots of holes in the wall that they could fly through that led to actual rooms where they would transform and be bipedal (berthrooms, washracks, etc) but then after they slept/ate/partied they were just like “that was fun guys, gotta go” and then just flung themselves out of a hole in the wall over a 1,000 foot drop and then just transformed in midair and flew off. Grounders couldn’t visit the towers due to there being no grounder-friendly infrastructure. Special buildings had to be built near the ground to help accommodate visiting grounders, but you only ever really saw these kinds of grounder-friendly accommodations in towers meant to receive diplomats.

They had bathhouses in their towers, like the ancient Romans but with robots instead of old dudes in togas. Just giant birdbaths basically. Just lots and lots of splashing and chittering.

Seekers preen themselves, their circuitry is delicate and even the slightest of contaminants can cause big problems. That’s why they have such sharp talons---for getting in the small spots. And for stabbing people. That’s a nice bonus, too. They preen each other all the time. There were some regions on their wings that could be preened by anybody, but some other parts of the wings that could only be preened by close friends such as trinemates. So the outer planes of the wing could be preened by just a general buddy, but the actual area where they connect to the back? That’s trinemate-only territory right there. It’s not a sexual thing, just a cultural taboo they had.

When Dreadwing makes his grand debut I think I might have a scene in which him and Starscream are preening each other while angrily bickering, not because they actually like each other, but just because they’re the only Seekers around and Starscream’s had a rock stuck in his wing seam and slag it, Dreadwing is the only bot who knows how to get it out--so it’d just be angry bird bickering and arguing preen time.

“You killed my brother!”

Starscream would then flutter angrily and say something like, “NO, BUMBLEBEE DID, STOP BLAMING ME--please get that rock out of my wing seam k thX--IT WAS THE SCOUT’S FAULT!”

And then Dreadwing would just be like, “Skyquake is dead, and it’s all YOUR FAULT--I also have a rather unfortunate rock located in my wing seam, can you remove that--and it’s because of your cowardice I am now brotherless!”

Seeker talons were actually retractable. Some Seekers would have their talons out literally all the time though, these were Seekers who were high-ranking in the military or who were just on some quest of personal revenge. After the war began they modified their talons to just always be sharp because you don’t want to accidentally retract them when in battle.

I am only just now realizing that this got kind of long, huh. I hope this wasn’t too much!! I might post more Seeker headcanons in the future.

[writethelifeyouwant]

Dive Bar, Ch. 1/?

Pairing: Dean x OFC (Dany) x Sam (brief), Dean x Sam (eventually)  Rating: 18+ Prompt/Summary: @spnkinkbingo square - Gay Panic (eventually, I don’t know how to write short things, so the gay panic comes later). Dany and Dean hit it off at a bar and Dean is confident it’s a sure thing. But Dean doesn’t know that Dany’s has a dare to complete, and he definitely didn’t imagine his night would end with his pull inviting his little brother to come home with them too.  WC: 3278 Tags: alcohol, cheesy flirting, tags will change next chapter 😉😏🍆 A/N: Okay, let’s be real. Anyone who knows me by now, knows I can’t fucking cut to the chase. Welcome to part one of who knows how many. If you want the smut quickly, I encourage begging 🤣(and so does Sam 😏) Ambience: Really want to set the mood? Welcome to a dive bar in Nowheresville, USA: Playlist and Ambience 

***

Sam told Dean he was crazy for even trying but Dean had a sense about these things; Sam didn’t. He was too considerate. Sam thought the fact she was out with her girlfriends meant she wasn’t interested, she wouldn’t want to be bothered, but Dean knew better. The ones who went up to get the next rounds were the ones who were looking to be bothered. They were separating themselves from the pack on purpose, to give guys the opportunity to pick them up and show them a good time. They wanted to prove to their friends that they were desirable. It wasn’t a bad confidence boost either, even if the guys that came on to them weren’t what they were after. 

So, when the girl with the flirty eyelashes that had been staring over at Sam and Dean’s table for the past half-hour spun off her stool and went to lean against the unpleasantly sticky bar, Dean knew his window had opened. 

“Watch and learn Sammy,” Dean smirked and slapped Sam’s shoulder as he sauntered over to his target, fixing his best smoulder in place. 

The girl felt movement behind her when Dean slid up and motioned to the bartender that he was after another round, and she turned with a coy but almost predatory twitch to her smile. She knew exactly who was behind her. 

“Hi there,” Dean was almost leering at the girl. 

*

Across the room, Sam was resisting the urge to put his head in his hands and pretend he’d never met his brother. This was gonna be a train wreck. At the very least, Dean was about to end up with one of those margaritas the bartender was laying down in front of her thrown in his face. 

Deciding to spare himself the second-hand embarrassment of watching Dean crash and burn with the coed he’d been eyeing since they arrived, Sam let his eyes wander the rest of the bar absentmindedly. He was nursing his second beer of the evening, after pounding back his first one with Dean in their stupid post-hunt ritual. 

It was new, their whole ‘who can down their beer the quickest’ routine. Before Stanford, Sam was lucky if his dad let him split a beer with them after a hunt, let alone chug one. But ever since he and Dean had been back on the road, it was like Dean was trying to make up for a bit of lost time, and things that absolutely smacked of immaturity were becoming part of how they lived their lives. Like how now, after a successful hunt, they always raced to the bottom of the first beer bottle, leaving the loser to buy the rounds for the rest of the night. 

When Dean started it, it was because he figured he obviously had the upper hand. He had years more drinking experience than Sammy, and there was no way the little geek had drunk that much at college.

What Dean didn’t know is that, for a while there, Sam and his friends had gone through a bit of a mental breakdown that manifested itself in endless parties, borderline alcoholism, and a very brief experimentation with some drugs on the ‘gateway’ end of the spectrum. Really, it was Sam’s best friend Brady pushing all of that, but with how he had grown up, Sam felt he was due some kind of breakdown, and it had felt good to let go for a little while. So, when Sam beat Dean in that first chugging contest, it became a whole different ball game. Now every time they did it, Dean was defending his honor. And he defended it about half the time but that night, Sam had won. 

Exhaling quietly in amusement at the absurdity of their routine, Sam spared a glance back towards Dean at the bar. He quickly ducked his head down when he realised Dean and the girl were looking over at him, like Dean was talking about him. Why would you spend time telling the girl you’re trying to bang about your weird kid brother? Maybe she had asked who Dean was there with, just making small talk. 

Yeah, that must be it, Sam thought to himself as he took another swig and realised he’d finished it on the sip before.

Torn between wanting another drink and not wanting to walk into the middle of a Dean Winchester flirt fest, Sam tried to quietly observe his brother again, hoping he would have struck out by now and it would be safe to approach. Peeking out from behind his hair Sam could see them leaning against the high wooden bar quite cozily, and laughing all nice and friendly-like. 

Damn. It looked like Dean was gonna be right about this chick; she was into him. Really, she shouldn’t be surprised. Everyone’s into Dean. And now he was gonna have to sleep in the Impala tonight. For once he’d like to just have a drink with his brother and go home (to the motel) and sleep in his own (motel) bed. Just perfect. 

*

When Dany turned around to acknowledge Dean, who had just sidled up behind her at the bar, she was very pleased with herself. 

Guys are just too simple, she mused. 

“Hi there,” Dean smiled down at her (he was considerably taller, despite her heels), charm turned on full blast. 

“Hey yourself,” she smiled back. She was friendly, but careful not to be too forward. Dean was the kind of guy that felt proud of winning the chase, she could just tell. And considering how forward she was planning on being after she made sure this guy wasn’t an axe-murderer, she figured playing coy for a little wouldn’t hurt. 

“So, this is kind of embarrassing,” Dean leaned down conspiratorially but still had to speak quite loudly to be heard above the noise of the bar. “My brother over there is a little shy.” Dean jerked his head behind him, to indicate where he had left Sam a moment before. 

Taken by surprise, Dany leaned back to look at Sam sitting alone at his high-top, who happened to look over at the two of them at the same time. Sam quickly ducked behind his bangs, trying very hard not to make eye contact. Dany giggled to herself. She had figured this guy was about to chat her up but he was over here asking for his brother who, based on his reaction a second ago, definitely was shy. How cute. 

“And,” Dean continued speaking and pulled Dany back from her thoughts of his shy and cute younger brother, “he wanted me to ask you for your number, so he knows how to get a hold of me tomorrow morning.” 

It took a second, but when the penny dropped Dany burst out laughing. Dean beamed, proud of his choice in pick-up lines, and let Dany get the giggles out of her system. “I know, I’m adorable.” Dean shrugged as if to say ‘what can you do?’ and leant back against the bar, bringing himself closer to Dany’s level. “I’m Dean.” He held out his hand and she took it, still stifling the last of her laughter. 

“Well, let me congratulate you on your originality Dean. I genuinely have not heard that one before.”

“Do I get a prize?” Dean’s eyebrows arched cheekily. 

“I don’t know,” Dany shrugged. “What do I get out of this deal?”

“Sweetheart, you get whatever you want.” 

“How about we start with a drink?” 

“Sure your friends won’t mind me taking up all your time?” 

Dany looked behind her to where she’d left her friends. They were all giggling and looking at her and Dean at the bar but trying to look like they weren’t paying attention to them at all. She shook her head despairingly at how unsubtle they were. Her friends were the worst. But she supposed they had more of a vested interest in how her night went than usual. Tonight was her dare night. 

“I think they can live without me for a little while.” 

*

“Wow, you’re really putting ‘em back sweetheart,” Dean laughed as Dany drained another beer. She was matching him round for round. 

“Well, I came out to have a good time tonight,” Dany shrugged, smiling mischievously. 

“How’s that working out for ya’ so far?”

“I’d say, so far so good, Dean.” 

Dean made finger guns at the empty glasses. “Get you another?” 

“Yeah, thanks,” she grinned as tucked her hair behind her ear. 

Dean rocked up to the bar and motioned to the haggard looking student behind it that he was after refills. When something brushed against his shoulder he jumped, reaching under his jacket until he realised it was just Sam. 

“Hey,” Dean drew out the ‘y’ on the end of his word. “Ma’ man Sam.” Dean smacked Sam’s shoulder and his brother tried to tamp down his bemused grimace. 

“How buzzed are you, dude?”

“Just the right amount Sammy,” Dean grinned wolfishly as he accepted the new beers from the bartender. The kid tried to take Sam’s order but Sam brushed him off. “Woah, you’re not tapping out?” Dean’s concern was almost comical. 

“Yeah, I’m just gonna go back to the motel. Grab some shut eye.” Sam tried to sound sage, like he was making this move because it was the smart, responsible thing to do, and not let on that it was his loneliness driving him home too early for Dean’s approval. 

“No, come on man, I’m not letting you be a sap tonight.” Dean waved over to the bartender for another beer, over Sam's objections. “N- listen. You’re gonna take this beer, bring it over to my table with Dany, and we’re gonna pick you out one of her friends.” Again, Sam tried to protest but there was a cold glass sloshing into his hand and a commanding grip on his shoulder and… he was always gonna follow Dean. “They’re all college chicks Sam. One of them has gotta be geeky enough for you.” 

When Sam got dragged to the edge of the table where Dean had left Dany a moment ago, something felt off. Sure he felt a little awkward becoming the third wheel while Dean sealed the deal on his sleeping arrangements for that evening but that wasn’t what he noticed the most. Dany looked far too happy to have the extra company at the table. Most girls with Dean in their tractor beams didn’t want anyone interfering, he’d been on that end of the stick one too many times to forget how it felt. But Dany was relaxed and smiling, beaming even, when Dean pushed Sam into a chair between them. 

Sam tried to settle into the easy conversation that Dany and Dean were having but he’s too preoccupied trying to suss Dany out to contribute much, despite Dany’s attempts to bring him into the discussion. 

“So Sam, Dean said you were the college goer in your family, what did you study?” Dany sipped her beer with her eyes trained on Sam. 

“Uh, pre-law,” Sam’s answer turned up at the end like a question. He wasn’t questioning what he studied at Stanford but he was questioning Dany’s motives in talking to him. Why wasn’t she just ignoring him and flirting with Dean? 

“Ah, smart guy. Interesting.” 

“What are you studying?” 

“Media and communications. I want to go into news or television.” 

“Well you definitely have the face for it,” Dean cut in smoothly. Dany flushed but she didn’t look embarrassed. She knew what she looked like. 

“Okay captain obvious,” Dany laughed. “You usually try this hard to get girls?”

Sam snorted into his beer, highly amused someone was calling Dean on his shit besides him. 

“Well I’m sitting here drinking with a beautiful woman. I don’t see any reason to pull punches,” Dean grinned. “Speaking of,” he leant forward craftily, “you got any other beautiful friends we can hook him up with?” Dean jerked his thumb towards his little brother. “I feel bad leaving him high and dry for the night.” 

“Dean!” Sam objected loudly, rolling his eyes. Dany just giggled. 

“Yeah I think I can help with that.” She drained her remaining drink and stood up. “Let me grab us one more round.” 

“Sounds great sweetheart,” Dean swatted at her ass as she passed him on the way back to the bar, ignoring Sam’s further objections to Dean’s new-found mission to get him laid. 

“Dude what are you doing?” 

“Helping you!”

“I don’t want your help!”

“Well trust me, you need it.”

“Do not!”

Sam’s objections were cut short when Dany returned with three beers and three shots on a tray; one clear and two amber. Dean reached for the drinks to help her unload. “What are we celebrating sweetheart?” He nodded to the shots. 

“We’ll find out soon,” Dany hedged, without giving up any more details. “So Sam, what’s your type?” 

Sam nearly choked on his beer. “Look Dany, ignore Dean please, I don’t need-” 

“No, come on, I’m invested now. What are you into? Boobs? Ass? Both?” Dany’s questions were curious but clinical. None of the teasing that Dean usually injected into the conversation when he tried to get Sam to open up about his sex life. Something in her tone was compelling. 

“Are we actually having this conversation?” Sam glanced between Dean and Dany astonishedly. “Did you slip something in my drink?” 

Dany laughed at Sam’s attempts to deflect but she could also see something in his face twitch, like his brows tugged up the corners of his lips. Something in him wanted to answer the question, wanted to open up to her. So she pushed. 

“Well?” 

Sam chuckled once ruefully, more to himself. Cracked his neck and settled back in his chair. Dany could tell he’d made up his mind, he was playing now. 

“Both,” Sam smirked. He was invested now too, and he wanted to see where Dany was taking this. Plus, it had been ages since he’d gotten any. 

“Okay,” Dany nodded and processed the information, deciding how that affected her line of questioning. Dean was keeping to himself in his corner, but he was having trouble hiding his grin behind his beer. This was already more than he’d ever been able to tease out of Sam. 

“Okay, so, not specific about body type, what about attitude? Feisty and forward?” Dany leant forward and trailed her finger down Sam’s arm. He smirked. “Or shy, and sweet?” She withdrew her hand, and ducked behind her hair. 

“Okay, why do I feel like I’m getting shut out here?” Dean laughed from his over his drink, not sounding as cocky as he hoped he did. 

“Don’t worry Dean, I’m not letting you go anywhere,” Dany smirked. “I’m just doing what you asked, making sure Sam here is sorted out for the night too.” Dany turned her smile back to Sam. “So which one? You like feeling in charge? Or you like getting a little roughed up like Dean over here?”

Now it was Dean’s turn to choke on his beer. “Excuse me sweetheart, what makes you think-”  

“Come on Dean,” Dany batted her eyes back in his direction. “I know what you’re after. I know you’re a boob man, that’s why you picked me. Your pick up lines and bravado, they’re looking for validation. You’re looking after your little brother, trying to make sure he’s happy, taken care of… you want someone to do the same thing for you.” 

Sam and Dean were both a little speechless. Dany reached past her empty beer and grabbed the shot glass with the clear liquor. 

“You sure you don’t actually study psychology or something?” Sam drained the last of his beer, impressed. 

“I’m not a shrink,” Dany smiled and shrugged. “I’ve just spent some time with some people, I know what to look out for.” 

“So, who are you picking out for me then?” Sam leant forward, now profoundly interested in what Dany may have deduced about what he wants in the bedroom. 

“Come clean time,” Dany knocked back her shot with a grimace and let the courage that came from lower inhibitions bubble up. “My friends and me, we play a game most weeks, pick a dare out of a hat. This week mine… was ‘have a threesome.’” Dany peeked up from behind her hair to look at Dean, who looked like he had just won the lottery. Sam’s expression was cautious. 

“Okay, so who else we taking home with us sweetheart?” Dean rubbed his hands together and turned to look back at Dany’s group of friends.  

“Sam.” Dany answered simply. 

“Which one’s Sam?” Dean was still scanning the group of coeds. 

“Uh Dean, I think she means me…” 

“My dare was a threesome with two guys.” For the first time that evening, Dany’s grin was a little sheepish. “Look I uh- I’m not just doing this because of the dare, it’s not coercion or anything. I wouldn’t be asking you both back if I didn’t want it.” 

Dean hadn’t found his voice yet. He was just staring at Dany, mind clearly running a mile a minute, and resolutely not looking at Sam. Sam, on the other hand, couldn’t take his eyes off Dean. The only recognisable emotion on Sam’s face was the tinge of fear in his eyes, like he was waiting for the bomb to go off, and getting more and more anxious by the second the longer it didn’t. 

“Why don’t I give you guys a minute to talk,” Dany stood up and pushed the shots she had bought towards them, “and I’ll go grab my purse and meet you by the door?” 

“And by ‘you’, you’re speaking in the strictly plural sense?” Sam checked, fingering the whisky in front of him. 

“That’s up to you guys,” Dany smiled and rounded the table, dragging her fingers over Dean’s shoulders on her way back to her friends. That seemed to be enough to jumpstart Dean back into speaking.

“Dude what the hell?” Dean’s voice was so, so close to a squeak, Sam really had to hold in his laughter. 

“What?” Sam was good at poking the bear. 

“What do you mean what? What the fuck?” 

“Yeah, I think that’s what she wants Dean. She wants to fuck.” 

“Yeah with me and my little brother!” Sam could tell Dean wanted to be shouting but he was keeping his voice to a hiss as best he could. 

“Yeah, so?”

“So?!” 

God Dean was so easy to wind up, Sam grinned. “Dean, have you never had a threesome before?” 

“Uh, yeah, of course.” 

“You’re lying,” Sam was astonished. He figured of course Dean would have done this kind of thing before. “You’ve never done one before?” Sam had to double check. 

“What, like you have?” Dean defended angrily. 

“Uh, yeah,” Sam’s grin was an unusual combination of sheepish but proud. “I um- I have actually, yeah.” Sam reached back and rubbed his neck, at a loss of what to do with his hands right now. 

“What the fuck did you do at that college?” 

“There’s a lot you don’t know about me Dean.” 

“Okay, so what, you’re saying you’re okay with this?” 

“I’m saying, there’s a real pretty girl over there by the door that wants to have sex. And she wants it so much, she wants two dicks in the equation.” Sam fixed Dean with a firm, decided stare. And he was pretty sure that Dean’s uncertainty was about to evaporate. Dean finally met Sam’s eyes and Sam saw the fight melt out of him. 

“Son of a bitch,” Dean breathed, then downed his shot.

***

Tags: @negans-lucille-tblr @hawkerz12​ @akshi8278​ @babybrotherandthedemon​ @dylansbabygirl24​ @mineshinamary​ @popsensationnicole23​ @spn-problems​ @donthateme454​  @doyouknowsamw​ @peridottea91​ @delightfulbakeryaliendeputy​ @fictionallemons​

I tagged everyone who liked my ‘announcement’ post. If you want to be tagged or you want me to take you off tags, just lmk!  

[random-mha-thoughts]

Mama’s Boy/Lover’s Boy (Bakugou x Reader)

Pairing: Bakugou x Fem!Reader

Genre: Fluff

Inspo: “Down for You” by Cosmo’s Midnight/Ruel

Summary: Bakugou hates being dragged to fancy parties for many reasons, but only one thing makes it all worth it.

Word Count: 2,322

Tags:  @yuki-osaki​ @liviitehe​ @iamsoftsodonttoucheume-blog​ @bunnythepipsqueak​

a/n:  I absolutely adore this picture, ngl that was the whole inspo for this.

It's not fair that a whole Katsuki exists while I'm bleeding out and my hormones are out of whack.  I'M A LOYAL SHOUTO HO, STAY IN YOUR LANE KATSUKI!  DON'T TAKE ADVANTAGE OF MY INSTABILITY LIKE THIS!

When I was at the last few paragraphs, I realized I would've loved to let Baku lose his shit and almost crash the entire thing like in Murphy's Law (man I loved writing that), but that wouldn't be good.  We love a good chaotic fluff monster.

This turned out a lot longer than I thought it would, but I really like how it turned out!  Definitely more fluff than I expected, but who's mad at that?  I'm bleeding out of my uterus and my mom and dad got me feverish and sick and I definitely needed this, so I KNOW you Baku stans are gushing at this too.  Thanks to @rubyred-imagines​ for one of the story beats here!

Spice might be incoming in the next day or two ;3  Not sure which character yet, but it's gonna happen!

"Babe, your face."

"What about it?!"

"Stop looking like you want to kill everyone."

"But I do!"

"I know you do, but don't look it."

Katsuki walks into the grand hall, muscular arm linked through his dazzling girlfriend's slender one.  He really doesn't want to be here; he hates these high-class, uptight gatherings, he hates this constricting tuxedo he has to wear, he hates how he barely knows anyone here, and he especially hates that he could've been on a date with her alone instead of being surrounded by these suffocating faces.

His lovely girlfriend announced this unfortunate outing a few weeks ago right before Katsuki was going to suggest the idea of having a date night, since they haven't had any quality alone time together in a while.  Her eyes lit up when she reported that she RSVP-ed for both of them to attend her company's fancy dinner.  And his plans were crushed like that.  He wanted to grumble and refuse, but she'd yell right back at him anyway, being the stubborn person she is.

She reminds him of his mother.

"You're just like my mom," Katsuki rolls his eyes.  "She used to drag me to her company dinners all the time, too."

"We won't stay for long, I promise," she pats his arm with her perfectly manicured fingernails.

"She used to say that too, and then we'd be out for hours," he mumbles to himself.

The girl looks up at him sweetly.  "And you'll be a good boyfriend and stay here with me the whole time, right?"

The blond growls low in his throat.  "I don't even belong here, you were invited, not me."

"Katsuki, you're my guest, of course you belong here."  She leans up to whisper in his ear, "Besides, you're more handsome than any of the guys here, show them all up."

That makes Katsuki smirk.  "Damn right I am, babe."

The couple find their table after an irritating amount of time.  Every few steps, some other pretentious stranger from his girlfriend's company sweeps over to exchange empty kisses and the same empty conversation.  Katsuki thinks it's some kind of script everyone practiced from, no one deviating from the script or else the entire simulation might fall apart.  Actually, he would like to say something inappropriate just to relish their horrified or disgusted faces, but he for the sake of his precious girlfriend, he keeps his mouth shut, teeth grit, and smile plastered each time he's introduced to a new face.

"Do you really know everyone here, babe?" Katsuki mutters in her ear as they finally approach the table.

"Not everyone," she hums in response, "I don't know most of the employees from the other two companies here, but I know the higher-ups through my boss."

He briefly remembers her saying this dinner was for a big merger deal between these three companies.  His girlfriend works tirelessly for her boss, usually taking on more than she can handle and coming home late most nights.  She'd been promoted from just being a regular company worker to being in a near-the-top position right under the main board managers.  He admires her dedication, but he's always worried about her health and energy level.  He may be a Pro Hero, but she's the real superhuman in the relationship.

Katsuki does the gentlemanly thing of pulling the chair out for his lady and pushing her back in before settling in his seat next to her, purposely shifting closer to her than the person on his other side.

"What manners your boyfriend has," one of the older ladies at the table coos at the couple.

"Thank you, I'm very grateful to have him," the girl smiles politely in response.

Katsuki's heart melts at the pride dripping from her voice as she compliments him.  "And I'm very lucky to have her."  It felt like the right thing to say as he squeezes her hand under the table and briefly glances into her eyes.

The two don't tear away from each other until someone else approaches his girlfriend and she stands to greet him briefly.  Katsuki surveys him in case he would do something ballsy to his girlfriend.

She turns and places a hand on Katsuki's shoulder.  "This is my boyfriend, Katsuki Bakugou."

Hell yeah, I am, you better not pull anything, dumbass.  He stands and shakes the other man's hand, polite but stiff.

"Nice to meet you.  Your girlfriend is honestly a powerhouse, she's amazing," the man gushes.

"Yes, I'm aware," the blond replies tersely.  He's on guard because he doesn't get a good vibe from this man.

Sure enough, he goes on a little too animatedly about how much his girlfriend does for the company and the rest of the company.  It comes off to Katsuki as fake and kiss-ass.  Nonetheless, his girlfriend accepts all the compliments like the graceful goddess she is.  He realizes this boy is one of his girlfriend's juniors as they descend into a conversation surrounding work and future projects.

After dismissing him, another group of his girlfriend's underlings rushes over with compliments and "Oh my gosh, senpai!  You look amazing!" and the like.  Each time, she would accept the praise, introduce him, before launching into more work-related subject matter that Katsuki learned to tune out eventually.

Honestly, he's annoyed at how everyone here is overwhelmingly toxic.  All the subordinates or peers are kiss-ups and her superiors are pretentious stick-up-their-asses that look down on his girlfriend.  He can't stand that his lover is surrounded by this atmosphere all day.  They don't know the genuine type of person she is, other than that she's kind and easy to walk all over.  No one seems like they care enough to carry genuine conversation, and he'd rather not tune into that energy.

Instead, Katsuki directs his attention to his lovely girlfriend.  Staring at her face, he recalls how painstakingly long it took for her to paint her face with makeup to look this flawless.  He's sure she would've had a mental breakdown while doing her eyes, especially putting on her eyeliner.  She was chanting to herself cutely to get them even, almost coaxing her shaky hands in front of the mirror to perform some kind of magic.  If he had done the wrong thing and hurried her or teased her habits, she would've unleashed all her anger on him.  He's learned that the hard way.  In the end, she was able to achieve this masterpiece on her face without making herself look like a completely different person, highlighting her natural beauty.

Scanning downward to her dress, he remembers fondly going shopping with her last weekend.  Her hair was in a topknot as she fumbled through the racks for a dress to wear.  She had dragged him along because she trusted his opinion on fashion choices.  While he would've liked for her to choose a scarlet red gown, Katsuki knew she'd look infinitely better in the sapphire blue number she's wearing now.  The skinny straps holding the dress up leads down to a not-too-plunging neckline that suits her shoulders, collarbone, and chest perfectly.  The dress cinches in at the waist to emphasize the figure he knows she has before falling straight down from her hips, and the mid-thigh slit on one side is subtly sexy without having her risk overexposure.  Finishing the entire outfit is a classic pair of nude pumps, a dainty gold necklace, matching dangling earrings, and a clutch matching her shoes.  Her hair is curled in waves cascading down her back with some stands hanging over one shoulder.

Katsuki can't help but smile unconsciously.  He can't wait to someday place the finishing touch she deserves: a simple but elegant ring on her left hand.

After all the formalities, the two finally sit down and start eating the dinner courses that have started gracing their place settings.

"I know you wanted to go out for date night today," his girlfriend begins gently, "But we can imagine this is a fancy restaurant with just us two, and everything else is just a backdrop."

"Shouldn't you be paying attention to what's going on?" Katsuki quirks an eyebrow.

She waves her hand and takes a refined sip of her wine.  "I've already heard them practice this speech too many times."

The devilish blond smirks and slinks closer to her.  "That's not something a good employee would do, is it?"

"I'm not working right now," she smoothly responds back, replicating his energy.

The organizer of the dinner finally takes the stage and starts his speech.  Katsuki keeps his gaze on his beautiful girlfriend, admiring her delicately picking and eating at her plate.  She's so precious to him, he doesn't care if he's making heart eyes and everyone can see.

When the speech finishes, his girlfriend's glass also empties and she indicates that she's going to get another.  It leaves him on edge, he hates being alone with all these strangers even for a few minutes.  He doesn't want to tell you this, but if one of these people try to small talk him without you here, he might actually break something.

"So, Bakugou, what do you do?" the same lady from earlier chirps at him.

He whips his head up.  For fuck's sake.  "I'm a...public safety worker of sorts."  He tries so hard to sound polite for his girlfriend's sake.  He also can't resist scanning the room for her as a safety reflex.  With all the shady people around, he doesn't trust that something bad won't happen.  And he also wants your comfort in these uncomfortable situations, but he'll never admit that either.

"Oh, I see."  The old lady seems satisfied with his tone, barely noticing his fidgeting as she launches into a whole story about her grandson wanting to do something like that, and all the tangents related to that.

Katsuki is relieved that he doesn't have to talk for the rest of the time, just nodding along  and humming to prove he's passively listening.  He finally spots his angel a few tables away, groaning internally that she was stopped by someone, keeping her from coming back to him.  It seems they were having a deep conversation at first, but suddenly the man cracks a smile and a joke that makes her cover her mouth in respectful laughter.

Katsuki's annoyance is cut through at her wholehearted display of emotions.  The entire night, he's been complaining about how much he hates everyone here, but it's only now he realizes how relaxed she looks in the entire situation.  She's completely in her element; he'd get easily drained by all the suffocating small talk, but her?  She thrives off this, she gains energy from it.  Although she comes home late, overworked and tired, she still faces every day with a smile on her face.  She makes it look so easy to talk to people, striking up and following conversations with everyone in the most endearing and poised way possible.

Katsuki smiles to himself, warmth washing over him.  Yes, just like his mom, but it makes his girlfriend all the more stunning and admirable in his eyes.

His girlfriend finally returns to the table, her recently-acquired glass already half empty.  "What did I miss?" she asks, buzzing with both energy and alcohol.

Katsuki leans his head on his palm.  "Nothing much."  He's still basking in the glow of his wonderful girlfriend, casually sipping his own wine absently.

She turns towards the clearing in the center of the room and takes his free hand.  "Let's go dance, babe!"

Any other time, Katsuki would have sternly declined, but he can't resist her today.  Without a single complaint, he rises and lets her drag him by their entwined hands to the dance floor.  Guiding his large hand around her waist as her one hand plants to his shoulder, she raises their joined hands and starts swaying them to the classic orchestral ensemble's upbeat performance.

The man doesn't know if it's the overwhelming feeling of pride he recently uncovered, or the way their bodies press together gently as he inhales her floral perfume, but he can't find the words to describe everything he wants to say. He settles on simply smiling warmly down at her as he whispers, "You're amazing, you know that?"

His girlfriend's cheeks flush and she erupts into giggles.  "What's with the sudden compliment?"

He shakes his head.  "I just realized it, that's all.  Just like my mom."

"You sure are a Mama's boy, aren't you?"

He scoffs at the idea.  "I love the old hag, but I'll never tell her that.  Besides, I'd say I'm whipped for a different woman in my life."  He brushes hair behind her ear, her earring glinting against the light, and places a kiss on her perfect temple.  "You look stunning tonight."

His girlfriend's eyes close in half-lidded affection.  "I'm sorry this isn't the perfect date night you wanted."

The blond leans his forehead on her's, slowing their pace to allow time to pass much more leisurely around them.  "I get to dance with you, I think that's a definite win."

"I guess so."

Katsuki comes to realize that he can be forced to come to all of these events.  All that matters is his enchanting lover and her smile.  When the night is over, he can't wait to let her take her heels off and carry her bridal style to their car as everyone watches in envy and awe.  He'd let her recline and rest her weary feet, telling her stories of his adventures of night outings with his mom to lull her to sleep in his passenger seat.  And then he'd carry her sleeping figure up to their bedroom and wake her gently so she can clean herself up and change into her cute pajamas, just so they can cuddle in each other's warmth until they fall asleep.

Maybe he's not a Mama's boy anymore.  More like he's a Lover's boy.

[ghostiesblog]

CONGRATULATIONS!! YOU ARE SUPER TALENTED AND DESERVE ALL THE ATTENTIONS!!!!! and um, would ya mind doing a flarrie panic attack ficlet? and please dw about this if it’s in any way triggering to you, i would never want to make you write something actually hurtful for you /srs.

asddhsahsgf thank you anon! <3 Sorry this took a bit longer and thank you for being so nice, that genuinely means a lot! I have to say, this was very cathartic to write. Here you go:

Sitting still with a brain on fire

Pariring: Flarrie | Warnings: Detailed description of a panic attack

a/n: This is heavily influenced and modelled after how I feel during my quite frequent panic attacks. However, keep in mind that everyone's experience is different! Stay safe <3

Carrie can’t breathe.

She’s slipping, falling, scrambling for purchase but finding no way of holding on.

And the day had started out so well.

When Carrie had woken up, the kitchen and living room had been empty, much like the past few days, her father probably still in deep sleep. Carrie doesn’t mind the empty kitchen. She loves having the time to herself in the morning so her first reaction wasn’t worry, wasn’t unease, no, instead she revelled in the quiet while drinking her morning coffee and eating a peanut butter jelly sandwich.

On the way to school she had felt calm, steady, prepared for the day, prepared to take on anything that could face her.

If only she’d known…

That calm steady feeling was it that motivated her to smile at Flynn in the hallway, complimenting her outfit. Flynn had smiled back and for a moment Carrie felt on top of the world.

In the end, that only means her fall is so much deeper, when everything crumbles after third period.

She is working on a group assignment, huddled together at one table with Nick, Julie and Flynn when there’s a knock on the door and Ms. Brown, the school’s young secretary tiptoes in a polite but pained smile on her face.

“Carrie Wilson?” she says and immediately, Carrie knows that something is wrong. Something is very, very wrong.

“I need you to come to the office for a moment”

Carrie nods, numbly, getting up out of her seat. Julie looks slightly panicked, Flynn confused, while Nick reaches out to squeeze her arm comfortingly.

On the way through the hallway, Carrie almost drags her feet. “What’s going on?” she finally thinks to ask but Ms Brown just shakes her head.

“Principal Lessa is going to explain everything.”

Carrie fiddles with the nails of her thumb and index finger. She doesn’t want to know how bad this is if the principal is involved.

Once they get through the doors into Lessa’s office, Carrie almost suffocates on the pity that’s hanging in the air.

“Carrie”, the principal says, standing up to walk around her desk. “There’s no easy way to say this but there’s no use in beating around the bush here.”

Carrie clenches her fist tightly when Principal Lessa takes a deep breath and looks straight at her.

“Your father was checked into a psychiatric hospital earlier today after a mental breakdown.”

No.

“I’m sorry. They said he was experiencing worrying levels of hallucinations.”

No. This can’t be happening. Not again.

“They will help him get better, I promise. We just have to make sure you’re taken care of in the- Carrie!”

Carrie has stumbled back. She can’t listen to this any longer.

Her chest feels unbearably tight and something is stuck in her throat. She tries to swallow, opens her mouth to speak but nothing comes out.

She takes another step back, slams into a chair. Something falls with a bang but Carrie can’t see it, the edges of her vision are too blurry.

With effort she finds the door handle, yanks it open and bursts out of the room. She needs to get out, that’s all she can think of right now.

She crashes into the front doors of the school, then remembers to pull them, tries to breathe in the fresh air that hits her face, fails.

Her vision tilts, she slips, holds herself on the wall and then the floor. Her hands sting and somehow, it’s a welcome sensation, something else apart from the dizzying devastation that fills up her lungs.

She keeps falling and falling. Skin crawling, eyes burning, stomach turning. The outside world seems miles away now. Everything is dark.

Then, faintly, she feels a movement next to her, and a soft voice.

“Hey”

It takes effort to listen.

“It’s Flynn. I’m here.”

Carrie’s body reacts on his own, her hand reaching out to where the voice is coming from, finding the upturned palm offered to her automatically. Their fingers link together and Carrie holds on tight. She is relieved when she can feel Flynn squeeze back just as tightly.

She still can’t breathe, can’t see, but there’s something to hold onto now.

Luckily Flynn still knows her well enough to not move, not say a word, or god forbid try one of those goddamn breathing exercises.

Her father loves those, counts his own breaths out loud sometimes but Carrie, who feels every sound like a dagger piercing her skin, crawling behind her eyes, making her want to tear her skin off, can’t take someone talking to her, let alone trying to dictate when and how she has to breathe.

One time a teacher had frantically tried to get her to mirror his own deep breaths and in her panic and desperation, Carrie had instinctively punched him clean in the face.

After that incident, Carrie had sat down with her then best friends and told them about the panic, the fear, the burning sensation that fills her body sometimes. And she’s told them what not to do, and what she thinks might help.

Flynn clearly remembers that still, because now she’s here, solid and real and holding onto her hand like an anchor.

It’s enough that Carrie can at least formulate thoughts again.

“It’s fine, you’re fine, you’re okay, you’re safe”, she thinks, like a mantra, over and over, just like she’s practiced in therapy. “You’re okay, you’re okay.”

A squeeze of her hand and she adds: “You’re not alone. You’ll be fine, you’re not alone.”

Slowly, the world filters back in. It’s a bit much, bright and grating, but that’s okay.

Flynn is still holding onto her hand and when Carrie finally manages to take a full breath again and immediately starts sobbing, Flynn is there to catch her, rubbing her back soothingly while Carrie cries into her shoulder.

Eventually, the sobs lessen as well, the agony Carrie has been in slowly but surely leaving her body.

Shakily, she draws back, only to drop her head on Flynn’s shoulder. Now that the panic is gone, she has no power left to hold herself up anymore.

“Nick is inside dealing with Lessa and Julie is getting someone to pick us up”, Flynn says and her voice is calm and even, like she didn’t just see Carrie absolutely falling apart.

“We’ll get through this. I promise.”

Carrie nods, trying to get her voice to work again.

“Thank you”, she whispers finally.

“No need to thank me”, Flynn says, like it’s a well known fact. “You’re not alone” and it echoes around Carries head like the most comforting sound she’s ever heard.

You’re not alone. You’re okay, you’re not alone.

[zappho]

Some Meta on Murdock and mental illness

Generally speakig, The A-Team is a dumbass, light-hearted comedy with action on the same level as youtube poop videos. Obviously there isn’t alot of depth to be found here. The show had tons of different writers, all with their own take on Murdock and none of them offer any clear info or a proper backstory for the character. It’s basically up to the audience to fill in the blanks and that’s exactly what I’m gonna do by overanalyzing the mess that is the show’s canon.

The question of whether Murdock is ‘‘‘really crazy or just faking’‘’ has been around for over 30 years, but I’m gonna argue that he’s both.

When Kelly visits Murdock in the psychiatric hospital and confronts him about why he’s living there in the first place he gets instantly uncomfortable.

He really didn’t want her to ask, it’s why he’s been avoiding her. Joking about how you’re hashtag crazy™ is easy; having to admit that you’ve been institutionalized for over 10 years because you have legitimate problems is much harder. (Sure, the VA also gives him a convenient cover from the military police, but if that was the only reason for him to stay he wouldn’t react to Kelly’s question in this way). “It’s a long story”, is all he says. There are clearly some painful memories here that he’d rather not delve into.

He’d have to explain how he got committed in the first place. We know that after the gang was arrested for war crimes in ‘71, Murdock was still serving as a pilot in ‘72. They never clarified when and how Murdock was sent home, but i’m guessing without his only friends around and it being, you know...war, his mental health eventually deteriorated until he received a medical discharge straight into the VA hospital.

After Murdock gets wrongly released in season 1, instead of his friends being worried about his supposed cover getting blown they just shrug it off and go ‘Oh well!’ (This could all be due to the show’s inconsistent writing, but you know)

No longer being an inpatient would finally allow Murdock to be employed as a pilot again (his #1 passion), and yet he seems really disheartened about the situation. Even though the hospital gives him no privacy, the staff barely respects him and he spends most of his time there by himself, he still prefers to stay.

For a character who’s allegedly cheery comic relief, he sure gets his feelings hurt alot, mainly when dealing with other people’s ableism towards him. B.A. and Face are obviously just palling around, just guys bein’ dudes, they don’t want to hurt Murdock for real, they probably don’t realize how sensitive Murdock is about the subject. Usually he plays along or shrugs it off, but sometimes he gets genuinely upset. In the first half of In Plane Sight he’s so fed up with it he tries to ‘‘act normal’‘ until #Woke #Queen Hannibal reassures him that they love him the way he is.

PTSD was barely starting to become a diagnosis when the show first aired, but I think it’s fair to say he suffers from it. The pilot episode states that he has anxiety, paranoia and memory loss, so that checks out.

With PTSD you don’t just have to deal with flashbacks and nightmares, but also intrusive thoughts, images and memories about your trauma. Murdock copes with it by getting hyperfixated on a new activity or pretending he’s someone else. This is were alot of people will go ‘‘haha wow look how wacky and insane he is! He’s talking to his sock 😂’‘. But Murdock knows it’s all made up nonsense, he just needs his mind to focus on something else. What’s important here is that he never lets his coping mechanisms distract him when he’s flying, first of all he’s already focused and also he doesn’t wanna crash (lol). There’s a believability to his actions that’s missing in the 2010 reboot.

In the episode where the gang helps out the vietnamese cook from the POW camp where they’ve been tortured, Murdock tries to distract himself with some golfballs. He soon starts projecting his trauma on them however.

I think this is the only time in the show where Hannibal tears up, so this scene is kinda significant. As the leader, he probably blames himself for getting his team captured and tortured, and seeing that Murdock is still so strongly affected by it gotta hurt. 

Compared to the rest of the gang, Murdock’s alot more fucked up over the war. There are subtle changes in his voice whenever he talks about it. In the ep about their old war buddy Ray, Face was reminiscing about how cool of a guy Ray was for borrowing him his helmet, Murdock’s memories meanwhile are much less upbeat. ‘My bird was the only one left in the sky’ he remembers while we see an image of a field filled with shot down helicopters. His experiences are bound to be different from the other three as a huey medevac pilot. Murdock did have one off-screen breakdown in the present timeline, after collecting every newspaper article about the upcoming execution of the team in Firing Line. Apparently it was bad enough that he had to be restrained. It’s been 10 years, so he’s recovering and getting better, but he’s still not all there yet.

Everyone knows Murdock’s just messing around when he’s being interrogated by the military about his connections to the team, but like what about when the military isn’t there; or NO ONE is. He often talks to himself or just puts weird shit in his mouth for no reason while nobody’s paying attention to him (eating leaves, paint, an entire raw egg, a frozen sandwich). Sometimes he’s just unhinged like that.

Another thing that’s brought up a few times in the show is his anxiety. Murdock’s often seen being generally tense, sweaty, uncomfortable or reflective in the background of a scene. (I have no idea if this was a deliberate acting choice but Dwight does have anxiety irl so who knows if that had anything to do with it, I mean who knowsssssss, i’m just observing)

He’s got a habit of fidgeting with his hands or touching his neck when he’s stressed out. Murdock also does it when he’s telling his psychiatrist Dr. Richter about his dreams “If you were me, wouldn’t you be terrified to put your head down?” he asks him.

Richter isn’t really paying attention though, because he’s so used to Murdock’s non-stop clownery, he can’t exactly tell when his patient decides to be honest about his feelings for once. He just replies ‘Well only if it was a bad dream’. Which really irritates Murdock because what other dreams besides bad would he have? So he derails the session by rambling some made up bullshit on purpose.

Richter knows that Murdock uses humor and fantasy to cope, but he’s obviously tired of Murdock’s cringe antics, he just wants to help him. But Murdock doesn’t like to open up and be confronted with his traumas again, he just wants to avoid talking about it all together. There are still parts of reality that Murdock’s not ready to deal with, or he wouldn’t always retreat into his fantasies.

Before he can continue messing around a helicopter passes by and Murdock freezes for a second. Richter assures him that the helicopter is real; Murdock nods and starts fidgeting with his hands again, seemingly in deep thought. We know from the season 4 finale that he hears the sound of rotor blades when he dissociates. He was definitely being sincere here.

After getting drugged by some military goons he has a few brief flashbacks (feat. cheesy 80′s neon filters): seeing the chopper fly away, getting stuck in a potted plant as if he was walking through the jungle, being surrounded by heavy smoke and sparks from the burning carpet).

Despite being the 2nd highest ranked team member, Murdock dislikes being in charge and gets severly distressed when anything goes wrong that he might even be slightly responsible for. Most notably is the episode where the owners of the diner get kidnapped after Murdock got knocked out by evil cowboys or hill billies or whatever they were. Instead of telling anyone what happened, he’s just lying on the floor, repeatedly calling himself a failure until the others show up.

Seems like Murdock gets startled more easily than the rest of the crew as well. We often see him flinch when guns go off; one time he literally wore fluffy ear muffs to a backalley shootout.

This short moment from Family Reunion always stood out to me. Face opens the van door a little too quickly and it takes Murdock so off-guard he has to take deep breaths to calm down.

Murdock sounds exhausted when he has to remind Face not to sneak up on him. Face also realizes he messed up, he just wanted to check up on Murdock and not trigger him on accident.

When it comes to portrayals of mental illness in fiction there’s obviously better representation out there than Murdock. But sometimes you just wanna see a mentally ill character have a good time instead of being miserable 24/7. And Murdock’s already got the worst behind him, he’s had therapy for years and friends who love him. I just think that’s refreshing to see, especially with a character who’s so kind and openly affectionate.