#idk just wanted to have it somewhere timestamped

[robo-dino-puppies]

sooooooo... s2 of good omens is coming out soon and I’m hyped (but nervous! but also hyped!). I’ve stayed away from most promotional material so aside from knowing about some new characters I’m going in pretty blind.

I don't really consider myself a writer ... I've never posted anything anywhere, or really shared anything ever. I don’t read a ton of fanfic bc for whatever reason the stars have to align just right for me to be into it, and that doesn’t always happen even for my most beloved fandoms (like star wars - love Luke to bits, can’t stand to read practically anything about him. and yet I can read Rebels and Clone Wars-era fic just fine. idek). buuuuuuut after s1 of good omens I did devour several months of other peoples’ fic, and start (and never finish) a thing myself, and I kind of wanted to post the very rough first draft snippets I had for... posterity? I guess? or... as a push for me to try writing more? so. be warned if you click the readmore it’s gonna be a giant text post.

I feel a little sad that I never did more with it, and a little sad that now with s2 it will be firmly AU instead of... whatever you call canon-compliant things that continue on after canon has ended, but also excited because maybe s2 will spark more ideas, since I kind of ran out of inspiration and drive. anyway!

working title was Fire Above the Tideline, and it follows a surveillance demon (Kri) and a filing angel (Elstael) and what plans Heaven might have had after the failed apocalypse.

if you’re reading this (why? haha) snippets are separated by ‘--’s and some might make sense in sequence, but some others have big timeskips with no context.

--

Kriddar watches. Surveillance and intelligence are far too sophisticated words for Hell's work, she thinks, after a few years of doing it. She just... watches. Things, people, places. High-valued souls ready to stumble. It's not exciting work, particularly. She's never there when things go down, as the humans say, if the things in question ever do, in fact, go down. Her rank is unremarkable - not the lowest of the low, but whatever happens at the top is far beyond her paygrade. (Not, of course, that she's ever been paid.)

Watching Earth isn't considered a desirable position. She gets jeering laughter and sneers when she tells other demons her job (although to be fair, that’s a common reaction from other demons about anything). You had to be stuck on Earth, after all, and spend a lot of effort avoiding getting too noticed by the humans. But Kriddar finds she actually likes it. Earth has air that isn't stagnant, humid, and choking with bitter ash. It has climates that aren't sweltering or freezing. Even in crowded cities, which remind her of Hell quite a bit, people tend to respect as much of a personal bubble as they can. In Hell, her fellow demons go out of their way to purposefully elbow everyone they can in a crowded hall. There are a lot of humans, but Earth is quiet in a way Hell could never be.

After the Armageddon-that-didn't, Kriddar is afraid that she's going to be called back to the home office as upper management figures out what to do. But she hears nothing for three days until she she gets her new assignment out of a tinny smartphone speaker. The kid in possession of said smartphone is annoying the very limited good graces out of a whole car of New York subway riders with a loud video of another child who is opening a toy for the camera. The level of discontent and malice being directed at both kid and parent from the rest of the commuters is truly breathtaking (to use a human turn of phrase) and would probably fuel the bubbling sulfur pools Downstairs for several millennia to come.

"DEMON KRIDDAR." The video-kid's obnoxious, ear-shattering voice gets a definitely demonic undertone that no one can hear but her. "YOU ARE BEING REASSIGNED."

"Mm?" she says to her book. Although people talking to themselves are not exactly an uncommon sight on the train, it's enough to draw people's attention when she doesn't want it, so she concentrates a little harder on being unremarkable. She's told them time and time again not to call her in public, but do they listen? No, of course not.

Nothing to make her job easier.

"LONDON. WATCH THE DEMON CROWLEY. MONTHLY REPORTS."

"Mm-hm." She flips a page. Watching a demon is unusual, but if this is the same Crowley that was mixed up in the botched apocalypse it makes sense. She's heard some rumors.

"FIRST REPORT DUE BY MONTH’S END. DO YOU UNDERSTAND?"

"Mm-hm," she repeats, and casually closes her book. The video goes back to being the shrieking kid, who is now screaming with laughter, and the palpable fury in the car ratchets up another notch.

Kriddar sighs and twitches her fingers against the creased paperback cover of her book. The smartphone miraculously flashes and spits a cloud of acrid smoke. The kid drops it with a yelp, and then starts crying. The murderous miasma that had settled over everyone in the car slowly starts to dissipate. Wet snuffles and wailing aren't actually much better than the previous noise, in her demonic opinion, but at least she's fairly sure that now the humans aren't going to pull out a weapon and commit homicide. That would have necessitated police, who would have asked everyone questions, which would have meant delays. Kriddar wants none of those things.

Now that she has a new assignment, she's got a plane to catch.

--

London feels much the same as the last time she'd been there, although that had been forty years ago. Of course, it looks different. The cars, the buildings, the people... She hangs around in Heathrow for a bit, watching the humans bubble about in the messy, harried, angry soup of emotion that is any international airport. The clothing isn't all that different from New York, of course, so she leaves her appearance as-is and gets on a bus heading toward Soho.

She's got a slip of paper in her pocket with the demon Crowley's last known whereabouts. A bookshop, apparently. This makes her smile. Kriddar likes books. They give her plenty of plausible cover when she's sitting around waiting for something to happen. For a while, that's all she'd used them for. But then, out of the boredom visited upon her by a target who refused to do anything reportable for days on end, she'd actually tried reading them, and... well. Humans were fascinating. She's read books about what they think Hell is like (all inaccurate, on the whole, but some parts they'd imagined are startlingly worse than the reality), on Heaven (she can't remember Heaven enough to judge their accuracy, but she figures they'd done about as well as they had with Hell), on human history (shockingly inaccurate considering they were the ones who had lived it), and everything in between. She likes fiction the most - imaginary humans doing imaginary things. Sometimes imaginary not-humans. It's like they’d invented their own plane of existence, drawn in it ink and stuffed it into the space between fragile paper pages. Creation on par with the Almighty Herself, if Kriddar felt like being blasphemous (she did).

The bookshop is on a corner, painted brick-red, with light stone columns framing a wooden door. She walks up to read the sign in the window, reaching for the handle, and immediately pulls her fingers away and hisses. She takes a step back. Something is awful about the door - no, not awful. Good. It's radiating... the whole place is steeped in... in angelic energy. She scrubs her tongue against the roof of her mouth and makes a face. Well, no new books for her, then. Anything coming out of that shop would reek of goodness and light. Entirely off-putting.

"He's closed," someone on the street says.

Kriddar winces. The shock of the bookshop's aura must have made her don't-notice-me glamour slip. She slowly gathers it around herself again as she turns. "Oh?" she says mildly to the human.

"Yeah, been closed since Saturday, I think. Some people around here swear the place was on fire then, but... well, looks fine to me. He keeps daft hours anyway."

"I'll try later, then. Thanks," she says. Her glamour should take care of it, but it never hurts to be polite when interacting with the humans, if only because they're less likely to remember her that way. With a final metaphorical tug she secures the I'm-unremarkable compulsion around her and watches as the encounter dribbles out of the human’s mind like water squeezed from a sponge. He continues on down the street as if he'd never stopped.

She retreats from the shop and finds a place to settle in and watch, and to check the paper in her pocket again. No, she definitely has the right address. The thing is, she just can't understand how a demon could be inside such a place for any length of time. It would have her tearing her corporation’s hair out. Perhaps it's the right address, but Crowley is no longer there? As she hides herself behind a newspaper, she reaches out with senses honed by centuries of observing. And yes, there is unmistakably one demon inside that shop. As well as one angel.

--

Four days later she sees the door to the bookshop finally open into the bright late-summer morning. Two figures come down the steps: Crowley is easily recognizable from his description, so the other must be the angel she'd heard about. They're smiling, arm-in-arm, and positively joyous. They both circle a shiny, black, illegally-parked car, and Crowley opens the door for the angel before sliding into the driver's seat himself. The car rumbles to life; he drives away with an unlikely effervescent laugh and a speed that the other humans on the road don't appreciate.

It should turn her stomach.

But there's something about them that is intriguing, pulling at her mind much like an unexpected plot twist in a book. Despite the positively heavenly vibe of the bookshop, the angel hadn't been throwing off holiness and Grace like the few other angels she's had the misfortune of meeting during her stint on Earth. And Crowley - for all that people said he was Satan's favorite, that he's been working temptations and wreaking havoc among the humans since Eden - was more of a mild, mosquito-like buzz of evil rather than a maelstrom of it. She folds up the newspaper and taps her fingers against the soft crinkled pages before dropping it on the sidewalk.

Now that Kriddar has the sense of him, she can follow his energy across the city. It's (unfortunately) not as easy as how the humans plug an address into their clever handheld computers and have it spit out a flag on a virtual map, but it's far better than trying to find him by sight alone.

It takes her a while, but she finally ends up at a restaurant. Going inside is far too risky - it's hardly two tables across, no corners to surreptitiously peek around, not even a leafy ficus near the door to lurk behind. There's a window, but the odd pair isn't seated next to it. She grumbles to herself. Outside will have to do.

She walks up and down the sidewalk on the other side of the street to judge her options, picks a spot, and waits.

They're just visible inside the shop - two figures seated opposite each other, plates and cups on the table between them. The angel tends to gesture enthusiastically; Crowley, on the other hand, is nearly motionless, leaning toward him with his chin propped on his hand and an expression on his face she can only describe as besotted. Every once in a while she can see that he speaks and laughs, but the angel clearly carries most of the conversation. Over an hour later they finally emerge. Again smiling and happy, again Crowley opening the door for the angel. His hand lingers on the angel's shoulder as he settles into the car's leather seat. They share a look of such overpowering fondness that even across the street, Kriddar sneezes. And then he gets into the other side of the car and speeds away.

She puts down her book and stares after them. This is not, she thinks in bafflement, at all what she expected.

--

The sign on the bookshop's door has not been changed to open, but she can see movement inside the windows. It's not him, but the angel. He walks around the shop, talking, picking books off shelves and tables, then walking out of her view. A little while later, he repeats the process. This goes on for long enough to force her to choose a different spot if she wants to stay in the shadows.

Finally the doors open again.

"Just think of it this way," Crowley says, stepping out. "Now you actually have some books to sell."

"I've sold books before," the angel insists, coming to the door and watching Crowley saunter to the car.

"Mm," he says. He opens the driver's side and leans against the frame casually. "How many? One every decade? One every two decades?"

"Oh, hush," the angel says, and they both laugh.

Kriddar barely holds in the sneeze this time.

Crowley slides into the seat. "Be back before dinner."

"The Ritz?" The angel's eyes light up.

"Whatever you want, angel," he says, and drives off with another unbearably fond look.

She waits until the angel has gone back inside the shop and she can no longer see him in the windows before following the trail of Crowley's energy. It leads her to a block of expensive flats in Mayfair. The car is parked outside and he is nowhere in sight. It presents more of a challenge, snooping-wise, than the bookshop had. There's far less cover.

Eventually she decides to use the roof of a neighboring building. It's short work to miracle the locked lobby open and take the stairs to the top floor. Another miracle and she's through the door to the roof.

Crowley's flat is a penthouse, and she's got a great view of it from her new spot. She immediately sees motion through one of the windows, although she can't see him, exactly. There seems to be a great deal of vibrant green vegetation in the way. She settles into a seated position and props her chin on her hand.

--

The unexpected whump of seriously strong demonic wards materializing out of nowhere nearly knocks her sideways. For a panicked second she is sure he's spotted her and she's going to have a fight on her hands, and Kriddar is terrible at fighting.

But nothing comes, and when she gathers her courage to probe at the wards, she finds them neatly contained by the walls of the flat. She can no longer sense his presence behind them.

"Well fuck you too," she grumbles. First the assignment turns out weird - demon and angel, somehow involved in the failure of Armageddon, apparently best of... friends? - and now he has to go and make it difficult on top of that?

She climbs to her feet, feeling suddenly exposed without her supernatural senses being able to pinpoint him. The ward even seems to block her human vision though the windows, because they've turned both strangely flat and excessively reflective at the same time. It's enough to give her corporation a headache.

The roof is no longer a good vantage point, so she goes back down the stairs and reinforces her don't-notice-me enough that she hopes it will work even with on demons. There's a good view of his car through the lobby windows, so that's where she parks herself, doing away with any pretense of books or newspapers.

She can feel the second he leaves the flat and pops back up on her metaphysical radar. She holds perfectly still.

He doesn't even glance around as he saunters out of his building and climbs back into the car. A pedestrian has to dodge him before she loses sight of the car to traffic.

--

It's already getting easier to track him, now that she knows some likely places he'll go. She travels rather confidently back to the bookshop, pleased to see the car parked carelessly outside it, but she freezes as she gets closer. The same dark wards that he'd put up at the flat are here, too, as well as a shimmering angelic protection that floats outside the whole building, looking like a soap bubble if she stares into another dimension. She grumbles.

--

What Kriddar doesn't realize is that Heaven has sent another angel. It's just that they're as astonishingly good at their job as their previous colleagues have been bad at it.

The don't-notice-me around them is so intense that it takes her five whole days to, well. Notice. When she does, it's just the tiniest itch at the back of her brain. Like a toothache that your tongue couldn't leave alone, she imagines, if she'd ever have had a toothache. Her eyes keep wandering away from Crowley to a particular bench, then she scolds herself for getting distracted and looks back at Crowley. But then her brain says, hey, wait, there's something... and she looks back to the bench. It's nearly ten minutes of this before she sees the angel, sitting upright and still, and it's a minute more before her brain can comprehend that she's seen the same angel for four days in a row, but just not noticed them.

"Well, damn," she breathes to herself. She's never been aware of being on the receiving end of a misdirection before. It's unsettling and impressive at the same time.

She gets up and walks over to the bench. It's a risk, she supposes, but she's so curious. This angel is clearly different from the others.

--

[cw: uhhhhh violent “death” (discorporation) lol - nothing too graphic I think]

"Remove your hand from me," the angel says coldly.

Kriddar blinks and does so. Then she steps back onto the sidewalk and shrugs, palms up.

"Do not presume to touch an angel of the Lord," they say, and walk on.

Unfortunately, straight into the path of an oncoming red double-decker bus.

Tires screech, as do humans, and a fragile flesh-and-blood corporation goes flying. Kriddar slides her hands into her pockets and surveys the grisly scene with no small amount of amusement. The angel's corporation isn't getting back up, that's for sure. It gives a few wet, pained gasps before going limp as the humans scream and flutter about.

"Watch out," she says, with the mild air of someone commenting on the weather. "There's a bus."

The angel, floating ethereally above their former corporation, sends a blistering metaphysical glare in her direction.

"You might want to learn how traffic works," she suggests. "Otherwise you were doing great. Top notch, really. Much better than your colleagues." She gives a jaunty wave and picks her way through the stopped cars, around the vaguely human-shaped smear and the unhappy mortals, to the other side of the street. She can practically feel the glare on the back of her neck before she hears the whoosh of the angelic energy leaving the earthly plane of existence. She allows herself a laugh and continues on to the Soho bookshop.

Two days later they're in the park again, and so is a certain angel.

"That must have set a record, getting the paperwork for new corporation through so fast," she says, coming up behind the bench and dangling her arms over the back of it.

The angel doesn't respond for a few long minutes. Kriddar doesn't mind. She watches Crowley instead, noting the way he leans into Aziraphale's shoulder and how their fingers brush together as they toss peas to the ducks. Don't presume to touch an angel of the Lord, indeed.

"You were trying to warn me," the angel says.

Kriddar gives them a sideways glance. "I was."

"Why?"

"We were having a conversation, weren't we?" She shrugs. "Terrible way to go, anyway. Happened to me once, back when cars were newer and traffic wasn't so... regulated. By the way, you read up on that yet? Traffic?"

"I... yes." If she's not mistaken, the angel looks sheepish. "I believe I underestimated the dangers of this plane."

Kriddar laughs and leans closer. "Oooh, yes, lots of lovely ways to die here. Humans are very creative."

"It's amazing that they survive against such adversity."

"Suppose," she says.

They fall into silence, watching their respective targets. They finish with the peas and lounge against the fence for a while, watching the ducks. The sun floats lower, painting the pond with autumnal gold light. That's a sight you wouldn't get in Hell, she thinks. And probably not Heaven, either. Nothing holy about it, after all, just... Earthy.

"I like this one better, anyway," the angel says, apropos of nothing.

Kriddar blinks, and wonders if she’s missed the angel saying something before. "Sorry?"

"This corporation." They look down at themselves, stretching long fingers out above their knees, sticking their feet out too, as if to examine them. They're taller than the last time, obviously taller than Kriddar (most people are). Their features are less masculine, although not what she'd consider particularly feminine, either. Too strong a nose and too sharp of a jaw for that. Their skin is darker than Kriddar's, sort of a latte-ish color (Kriddar likes lattes, especially from a particular American chain of coffeeshops - there's a bitterness in them that's not entirely from the coffee that is a delight to her demonic tongue), and their hair is a dark brown halo of curls.

"Well, better try to stay out of traffic, then," she says.

For the first time, the angel cracks a smile. Just a tiny one, just a little lift of the corners of their mouth, but it sparks something inside Kriddar. Hell isn't the place to trade jokes. Derisive laughter, sure, but not friendly amusement. And that's what it feels like - friendly. It's a new feeling. She's surprised to find that she likes it.

"Do you like yours, ah, Kree- Kree..."

"Kree-dar," she enunciates. "My body?" She wiggles her fingers. "Sure, I guess. A bit short, but nice enough. It does its job."

"Kriddar, sorry. I'm Elstael." The angel holds out an elegant hand.

"Thought I wasn't supposed to touch you?"

The angel looks... embarrassed. "I apologize for that. I misjudged you."

She takes their hand and gives them a sharp smile. "You really didn't. I could've stopped you getting run over by the bus if I'd tried."

A flicker of uncertainty crosses their features, but they don't drop her hand for another second. "And I could have researched Earth more thoroughly and not assumed the worst of you. But here we are."

"You should assume the worst of me. I'm a demon."

The angel folds their hands on their lap. "I suppose that's true."

But they say it with another twist of their lips, like they're sharing a joke, and for some reason Kriddar doesn't feel like pushing the issue.

--

She thinks about the exchange later, staying out of the rain in dragonfly form as she watches Crowley's flat. The angel - Elstael - had unintentionally shortened her name, as if it were a nickname. She is... unused to the idea. If you got a nickname in Hell, it wouldn't be a nice one. Kriddar wasn't her original name, of course, but it was the only one she could remember. It had never felt right, not exactly, but it was what she had.

Except.

Except she had heard that after the fall, Crowley had been called Crawly, and he had chosen the name Crowley for himself some time later. "Flash bastard," they'd said, scornful. But just like that, he’d picked a new name, and kept it. And most demons called him Crowley now.

"Kreeeee," she says to herself. "Kri."

It sounds interesting. Fun. Different.

She thinks she'll keep it.

--

"Kriddar," the angel says the next time they see each other.

"Actually, it's Kri now," she says.

The angel raises their eyebrows. "Oh?"

"Yeah. You messed my name up the other day, but I like the way it sounded. So. Kri."

The angel presses their lips together and frowns. "Can you do that? Just... change your name?"

She shrugs. "Why not?"

Silence falls as the angel - Elstael, she figures she should call them, since they don't seem to be going anywhere - considers this. Crowley and Aziraphale share lunch at a cafe, their legs tangling under the little table. A cup of steaming coffee and a single plate with half a sandwich sits in front of the demon; there's a much wider spread in front of the angel - pasta, a salad, a few half-eaten appetizers. As she watches, Aziraphale offers some of the pasta to Crowley, who leans across the table to bite it off the fork. He licks his lips and smiles, says something, and Aziraphale smiles back.

She doesn't feel the urge to sneeze, anymore. Perhaps she's become immune.

"Do you understand this?" Elstael asks, after they're done with their meal.

"Understand what now?"

They wave a hand at the scene in front of them. "The whole... That."

"Nah," she says. "Not my job, anyway. I'm just supposed to watch and report."

"But..." They rub their fingers against their crisp dove-grey trousers. "Don't you wonder?"

She smirks. "Careful with wondering, your celestialness, that's dangerous for angels."

"I’m not entirely sure it is, though? If that," they gesture to the cafe, where Crowley is gazing nothing short of adoringly at Aziraphale, who is returning the gaze in kind, "isn't enough to cause him to Fall, I don't think that wondering about it is either."

They have a point, there. Crowley is her job, not the angel, but she has to admit she’s through about it. Why hasn't the angel Fallen? It must be a sin to... to do whatever they're doing. Angels and demons don't mix. They're like poles on a magnet, aren't they? They should push each other away. They shouldn't be able to touch.

Aziraphale slides his arm around through Crowley’s. For a fraction of a second, she thinks Crowley actually blushes, which shouldn't be possible for a demon, should it? Then he smiles easily, brightly, and they walk down the street.

Before they get too far away, she and Elstael rise from their bench and start to follow.

"I kept track of his file," they say out of nowhere.

"You know," Kri says, "you really need to work on your conversational rhythm."

"Sorry. Aziraphale's file, in Heaven. With all of the records we had on him. Centuries of travel records and photos. He shows up a lot."

"He shows up in his own file, does he? Shocking."

"No, I meant... the... the demon." They hesitate before saying quietly, "Crowley." As if his name will summon him.

Kri frowns and looks over. "'Shows up a lot' meaning...?"

"Frequently," Elstael says.

She makes a face and lets her head fall back in exasperation. Conversations with the angel are a bit like taking a tapestry apart thread by thread. Painstaking and excruciating, but she wants to know what will happen if she tugs at a strand, so she keeps on doing it.

"I meant," she says, with a patience that surprises even herself. "How. Frequently."

They look at her, hesitating, as if they've just realized that perhaps they shouldn't be sharing this information. She uses her experience with human interaction to look open, friendly, nonthreatening. To her surprise, it seems to work just as well on the angel, and they continue. "At first, not often. Then every few centuries. Then every few decades. Quite frequently, in this last millennium."

"Heaven knew this and didn't do anything?"

Very intriguingly, the angel looks uncomfortable. "Well, I was in charge of the file."

Pick, pick, pick. Kri pulls at the thread. "You mean, you knew, and didn't tell them?"

"I didn't know anything." Elstael sounds, if anything, regretful. "I didn't- he was just around. They were enemies, weren't they? They would meet sometimes. Er, in that capacity."

"But...?"

They don't answer right away, because their targets have stopped. There's a little food cart selling frozen desserts. Aziraphale orders, hands over the bits of plasticky paper the humans value so much. Takes ice creams from the vendor, passes one to Crowley.

"You ever had ice cream?" Kriddar asks.

"Of course not," they answer, immediately.

"Afraid it would tarnish the holiness of your ethereal person?" Kri thinks the pair has moved on enough, so she steps into the line. Elstael joins her.

"No, I've never eaten anything before. I told you this is the first time I've been to the physical plane."

"Oh." They wait, the angel looking over her head toward Crowley and Aziraphale, who have stopped to peer in some shop windows. "You want one, then?"

Elstael doesn't answer until she's next in line. "I suppose."

"Two vanillas, one plain, one with sprinkles," she orders, holding out some rather confused pound notes that had seconds before been unsuspecting scraps of paper in her pocket. "Loads of sprinkles."

Elstael eyes the money suspiciously, but says nothing. They take the plain cone in hesitating fingers and examine it as if looking for a hidden grenade.

"Either convince it not to melt or eat up quick," she says, taking a messy lick of her own and getting sprinkles on her face. Elstael looks satisfyingly horrified at her lack of manners.

They continue on down the street. It's hard to keep an eye on Crowley when she really wants to see the angel's reaction to ice cream, the first thing they'll ever have eaten.

Elstael takes a breath like they're bracing themselves for pain. Then, gingerly, stick their tongue out and touch the ice cream.

"It's cold!" they say, as if taking offense.

"Ice cream," Kri says, not holding in her laugh.

"Ah." They take a tiny bite off the top of it. "Hm." They swallow. "It's.. sweet."

"That's the point. It's dessert."

They're silent again for a while (Elstael may find it strange at first, but has no difficulty finishing the ice cream) as they pace behind Crowley and Aziraphale. The angel miracles their fingers clean and disposes of the wrapper neatly in a trash receptacle. Kri catches their eye and drops hers on the sidewalk.

"No!" they scold, and retrieve it with a glare. Kri grins and shrugs with her hands out, sticky fingers and all.

"Was it any good, then?" she asks.

"Don't litter," they say. "Yes, it was actually quite nice. Is all food like that?"

"Not at all. You got your sweet, your sour, savory, salty, spicy. Or any combination."

"How interesting."

"Yep, humans are fascinating. So back to the files," Kri says, unable to let it lie any longer. It's like a book she can't put down, fingers drawn to turning the pages until she finds out what happens. "You knew they'd been meeting, but...?"

"Ah. It just seemed - well, I was only a clerk, after all. I didn't have anything to do with collecting the information. No one asked. So I never brought it up." They pause again as their targets do. "I thought it was strange, though, an angel meeting a demon like that. I kept track, whenever I had to add anything to the file. And I suppose..."

Kri waits, the weft slipping out of the warp slowly, tortuously. Don't make me pull more, she thinks.

"I suppose I thought they were happy."

She quirks an eyebrow.

"I know it seems strange. They shouldn't be, should they? They’re opposites. But look at them." They gesture to the pair, standing at the base of the wide steps leading up to a museum. "They are happy, aren't they? Despite... everything."

"It appears so," she agrees.

"I didn't think it was wrong. And then after... well, what happened..."

"The failed apocalypse?" Kri supplies.

Elstael gives her a little sideways look. "Well, no. I mean after."

"What about after?"

The angel looks startled. "You don't know?"

This puts her ill at ease, that the angel knows something she doesn't. But she doesn't let that show. "I know what happened in Hell," she lies confidently.

"Well, I don't know about down there, but I heard Aziraphale was, er, escorted to Heaven to face his punishment, and he was able to stand in a hellfire inferno without it so much as singeing a hair out of place."

Kri feels a chill go down her spine. She had heard rumors to the same effect concerning Crowley, except with holy water, but she'd dismissed them as wild hyperbole. Demons couldn't survive holy water. And angels couldn't survive hellfire. Those were just facts.

But apparently they weren't. Not anymore.

"So that's why they want to keep an eye on him," Elstael finishes, not noticing her discomfort.

"Obviously," she says.

"But he hasn't done anything since then, has he? Neither of them have. They're just..." Here the angel sighs. It's a delicate, almost longing sigh, and it makes Kri's lip twitch in distaste. "Well, they're in love, aren't they?"

"Yeah, and my sinuses don't thank them for it." The two are going up the steps now, into the museum. She starts to follow them, but the angel stays put.

"Wait, won't they see us?"

Kri laughs. "They already know we're around. If they wanted their privacy, they should have tried harder to lose us. We know they can if they want to."

Still Elstael hesitates, so she shrugs. "I'm doing my job, featherbrains. See you later."

She leaves the angel at corner of the street and jogs up the steps.

--

The place is full of art. It is, in her opinion, staggeringly uninteresting. She would think that as a fellow demon Crowley would share said opinion, whatever company he was keeping these days, but he seems to be as engaged as Aziraphale. They trade quiet comments, laughing sometimes, silently observing at others. Some of Crowley's thoughts on the artists are properly unkind, which she approves of, but then sometimes Aziraphale agrees with him and adds his own biting, decidedly unangelic commentary as well, which is unsettling.

...stood in a hellfire inferno, they'd said. But Kri can feel the holy presence of him all the way across the exhibit hall. He's no fallen angel, and Crowley is still definitely a demon. The shiver revisits her spine and she thinks, the world really is different now, isn't it.

She loses them about halfway through the museum. Fair's fair, she decides, and starts to head back toward the entrance, when a hand clamps around the lapels of her jacket and throws her against a dimly lit wall. Her useless breath escapes her lungs in a squeak.

"You're following usssss," he hisses, and she presses herself back against the wall.

She's been trailing him for over a month now, and she's never been this close to him. She's seen him laugh, and make a ridiculous number of besotted faces at Aziraphale, and drink coffee and wine and eat ice cream and feed the ducks at the park. The only demonic thing she's really seen him do were the wards around his flat and the bookshop, and they weren't even nasty ones. The impression she had formed, given what she had observed, was that for being the Serpent of Eden he was seriously off his game, and therefore harmless.

She is hastily revising this opinion.

Back when she had first clocked him coming out of the bookshop, she had expected him to be a maelstrom of evil, but she'd thought he was more like a mosquito. Now, here, with one of his hands twisted in her jacket and the other planted by her head, slitted snake eyes just visible over the top of his sunglasses, he puts her more to mind of the fire in a forge - banked, but ready to be stoked to an inferno within seconds. She's not afraid of his rail-thin corporation, or even what he could do to her in a fight, but rather the concentrated, determined intensity of his occult aura. It's not vicious or hateful like some of the more powerful demons she's met, it doesn't make her want to cower like the one time she'd had to give a report to Lord Beelzebub, but he wasn't off his game, not in any way that mattered in a confrontation like this. If anyone were off their game, it was her. She doesn't think she's ever misjudged a target this badly.

Slowly, she raises her hands, empty and placating, and tries to keep her voice calm. "Just doing a job," she says.

Her honesty seems to surprise him. He narrows his eyes further. "Oh, that'ssss it, is it?"

"It is. Observe and report. That's all."

His poison-yellow gaze travels across her face. "Hm," he says, twisting his grip tighter. "And what if we don't want to be followed?"

She coughs. Bargaining has been a successful tactic for her in the past. "Discorporate me and they'll just send someone else. Maybe someone who won't back off if you give them the slip around exhibit hall C. Devil you know and all that."

His lips twitch. "Not a terrible offer," he says. "But you're asking me to trust a demon. That rarely works out, in my experience."

"I've got nothing against you. Or him," she adds. "This is a nice assignment. Nice city. Trust that I'm lazy and selfish." And scared out of my fucking wits right now, she doesn't say.

Gradually, the fingers on her jacket loosen, and he gives her a wry smirk. "You've got a point there."

She keeps her hands up even after he lets go.

"I doubt Downstairsss will be very happy if they hear I caught you." he says, pushing the sunglasses up his nose. "I'd keep your reports short and sweet."

"I'm not stupid," she says. "Told you I wanted to keep the job."

--

Elstael stops to read some advisory signs before descending onto the beach. Kri waits, because she knows if she doesn't that she'll be called back to hear what they're about and it's easier to get it all over with in one go.

"It's a marine protected area," the angel says after finishing one of them.

"Good for it," Kri says.

A group of young, brightly-clothed, slightly raucous people approach the stairs and stop at the top of them as they shuffle various belongings among themselves for some reason. A woman dressed rather more plainly comes up behind them and frowns that they're blocking the path. She's wearing an expression that would be a perfect textbook example of "local resident observes tourists and is Very Tired of it" had any language possessed a word for such a thing.

"No fires above the high tide line?" the angel reads. "What does that mean?"

Kri shrugs - she's not planning on starting any fires - but the woman answers them.

"There's not much sand here, usually," she says. "It's mostly rocks, and underneath the rocks there's driftwood, even though you can't see it. So if you start a fire where the high tide won't put it out and it starts the driftwood smoldering, you could catch the whole beach on fire."

"Oh!" Elstael looks distressed. "Has that actually happened?"

The woman nods. "Yeah, in the seventies, I think. Some teenagers started a big one down at the other end."

Elstael tries to look down at the beach, but the view is blocked by the cliff and the young people. "And where is the high tide line?"

"This time of year, it's right at the bottom of the rocks, on the sand. You can see where it leaves a line of seaweed and stuff. In the winter it's practically up to the base of the cliff." She frowns harder at the group, who have finally started their descent. "But hardly anyone visits in the winter."

"Bit wet for sightseers?" Kri asks. She's had assignments in this part of the world before, and remembers what the winters are like.

"A bit," the woman agrees.

"Thank you," Elstael says to her, and she gives them a mild smile and nod before disappearing down the stairs.

The angel takes a few moments to finish reading the fire sign. Kri waits for them to move before following.

The woman had been right about the amount of rocks. There are at least fifty feet of grey, round-tumbled stones in a messy slope down to the sand. They're mostly on the large side, some as big as a human head, and they both have to be careful to not turn their corporations' ankles on them.

It's windy closer to the ocean. Before too long Kri feels her skin getting salty-sticky and her hair tangling with itself. Still, the sun is just the right temperature and the constant hiss and crash of the waves is soothing. She takes a deep breath and lets it out slowly.

"What do you think?" she asks Elstael after a few beats of silence.

They turn their face into the wind. "I like it," they say. "It's very different from London, though."

"I'd say," Kri laughs. "Lots of places are different from London."

They turn bright, curious eyes to her. "Oh?"

"Well, yeah. Pretty much everywhere is different from everywhere else. Big cities tend to share some things, and small places do too, but everywhere is... unique."

"I didn't know." They start walking along the edge of the wet sand. "Heaven is more or less the same all over."

Hell isn't, Kri thinks. Hell is all sorts of uncomfortable differences - hot and cold, generally crowded but sometimes achingly desolate, dank, parching, filled with agonized screams or vicious whispers. It goes without saying that she tries not to think about it at all.

Instead, she points out a purple snail shell a little bit further on, and the angel inspects it curiously.

"This was an animal," they say, almost scandalized.

"Yeah. It was a snail." Kri points out the empty space inside the shell. "Not anymore."

"How sad," Elstael says, and they sound genuinely distressed about it.

"Circle of life, innit?" She shrugs. "You didn't kill it."

"I suppose," they say, bending to put the shell back on the ground.

"You can keep it," Kri says. "Take it as a souvenir. That's what people do at the beach."

The angel hesitates, the shell still pinched delicately between their fingers.

She chuckles at their indecision. "The snail isn't gonna want it back."

"It is beautiful," they say, straightening up.

Kri grins. They continue on down the beach, until they reach an outcropping of rock that stretches all the way into the water. There are tidepools there, and they inspect them for a while. A (living) relative of Elstael's shell leaves a squiggly trail in the sand in one, and intensely - almost neon - green anemones wave short tentacles in another. "Nice color," Kri compliments them. It's nothing compared to electric blue, but still a good effort.

As they peer closer at the other inhabitants of the rocks, the tide sweeps up unnoticed behind them and surges in around their ankles. They both yelp and leap away from the chilly water. Elstael looks around to see if their embarrassment was observed by anyone else, and Kri starts laughing. The angel joins in after a second.

Slowly, shaking waterlogged feet every few steps, they make their way to the sun-warmed rocks safely away from the waves. Kri sits and stretches her legs out in front of her, decides not to waste a miracle, and toes off her shoes to help them dry. Elstael copies her after a moment.

It's silly and simple and rather human, nothing either of them would have the chance to do in the course of their jobs, normally. But it's nice.

The sun sinks lower and paints the sky in fiery colors where it strains for the horizon. Above, the view into the firmament is all cool purples and blues, desaturated, soft. They are alone in the little corner of the beach, saltwater evaporating from their trousers and leaving behind crystals in the weave of the fabric and on their skin.

"The sign got me thinking of something," Elstael says, apropos of nothing, as per their usual.

"Marine protected area?" she asks, although she can't imagine what that would have to do with anything.

"No, no. About the fires."

Kri looks over at them. "What about the fires?"

The angel spreads their hands out, splaying their fingers across their knees. "The woman said the driftwood underneath the rocks, the stuff that you can't see, is the real danger."

Kri hums.

"It's sort of like us, isn't it?"

She blinks, frowns. "How so?"

"Ah, well..." They clear their throat. "Understand I'm not trying to insult you. But. You're not someone who's very important, er, Down There, are you?"

"I'll have you know that I'm quite insulted, Feathers." Kri makes a face of mock rage, and the angel laughs. "But yeah, I'd say that's fair."

"And I'm no one of import in Heaven. There are lots of other angels like me, just doing small jobs. Menial tasks, really. Are there lots of unimportant demons? Menial tasks in Hell?"

She blinks again, and thinks that she sees where this is going. "Yeah."

"And we were expected to fight, in the war with the Antichrist."

Kri remembers the sick feeling in her unnecessary stomach when she'd heard the call to arms, her travel orders to Meggido, and the guilty tsunami of relief she'd had when the whole thing had been called off. "Mm-hm."

"They need us to fight, even if they ignore us otherwise."

"I'd think so."

They reach down and crunch some salt out of their trousers. "But we don't want to."

"Not me," Kri whispers, almost afraid to say it aloud.

"Nor me." They lean their chin on their first, elbow propped on their knee. "We're already aflame with these ideas. So what if we catch some other unseen things on fire?"

Kri is silent for a long time, and Elstael lets her be. What they're saying... it's dangerous. More dangerous than what they've been doing, shirking their jobs and sending off half-fictional reports to their respective superiors. They're taking about rebellion, about revolution. About treason. Does the angel even know how dangerous that is? She glances over, sees the slight crease of skin at the edges of their eyes and between their brows. But of course they would.

"Would that... work?" Kri's voice is hushed, just audible over the susurration of the waves. "Are there angels who would, ah, catch fire?"

"There must be," they say firmly. "Look at me. And... him." They turn their head toward her, burnt-sugar eyes molten. "Aren't there demons who would? Look at you."

"And him," she echoes. She thinks of other demons in Hell, how she has never liked them. But now she wonders if that's by design. Hell is unpleasant, even for those who revel in its unpleasantness. It's really no surprise that its denizens aren't the best company. She'd be hard pressed to name someone who does actually enjoy their job, aside from the perhaps demons at the very top. She wonders what would happen if she showed them a little bit of Earth. A little mundanity, as a break from the exceptional torture that was the kingdom of the damned.

--

Kri doesn't quite understand what's going on when she gets there. There's a whole lot of people frozen in place, shimmering darkly with a demonic compulsion over them, and a very heavenly aura pulsing somewhere ahead of her, behind one of the doors. She can hear voices, a familiar rhythm of back-and-forth bickering, although it's more strained than normal. Then, loudly, "Where did you get that?!" overlaid with "Oh, no!" and a second later, the sharp retort of a handgun.

"FUCK!" Crowley spits, loud and agonized, and the compulsion vanishes like smoke. The people around her start to move, confused, angry. "FUCKING shit shit shit bloody hell-"

A flash of an angelic miracle makes her flinch, and Crowley continues to swear.

"Where is the Virgin?" one of the people asks. There are quite a lot of them, and the tenor of their minds sets her on edge. They are feverish with belief, zealous. They start toward the doors as a mob.

She thinks of several things in the space of hardly a second: Elstael, gingerly tasting an ice-cream. A demon and angel, hand in hand on the seashore. The wide sky and the quietness of a meadow, a yellowing paperback open on her knees. The oppressive weight of an infernal pen, searing words into decades of endless reports. Fog on the Thames. Shave ice melting in the bright Hawaiian sun. We should go someday. I'll show you.

She snaps her fingers, and the mob freezes.

The gravity of controlling so many minds at once makes her knees buckle, and she braces her hands on her thighs to stay upright. It's staggering, the determined force of the humans' consciousnesses, and she sucks in an unnecessary breath through her teeth. Her forte is not influence and control, not like this. She's all about indirectness, about deflecting glances like rain bouncing off an umbrella and easing human suspicions with a unremarkable smile. This is direct. Aggressive. They're fighting her, and she can think of nothing to soothe them. She's out of her depth.

Please hurry, she thinks. Whatever you're doing, hurry.

Another angelic miracle, stronger than the last, tasting like petrichor in the air. The cry of a child. "You won't remember this," Aziraphale says kindly, softly, but his voice is exhausted. "You'll wake up and all will be well."

"C'mon, angel," Crowley says. He sounds even worse. "We gotta hurry."

They step out of the middle door. Aziraphale is cradling a bundle in one arm and trying to support Crowley with the other. Crowley is leaning heavily on him, one hand mangled and bloody clutched to his chest. They freeze when they see her.

"Go," she rasps. "Go, go!"

They don't need telling twice. They start moving again, weaving their way quickly but unsteadily through the frozen bodies. As they go by, Aziraphale says, "Thank you so much, my dear, thank you," and she feels as if something brushes her shoulder though there's nothing there to see. A wing, she realizes, breathing in the passing ethereal energy almost against her will, glowing warm like sunlight, smelling like lilac and clover and ferns and running water. She feels stronger, the burden of the human minds lighter, and she gapes in amazement as they rush out the door.

She holds the humans for as long as she can, backing out of the room around them in an awkward shuffle as she tries to concentrate on both the metaphysical task of keeping minds still and the physical one of not running into bodies. She makes it out, lets go of the control and uses a much simpler miracle to lock them in. Almost immediately they start rattling and banging on the door.

The air outside boils molten with righteous fury.

Behind her, there is the well-tuned growl of a sports car. A woman is driving, not young but striking, with dark hair and dark eyes. Aziraphale bundles Crowley into the passenger seat, and Kri meets the demon's stare behind his sunglasses.

I understand now, she thinks. I understand.

He rolls down the window. "Get outta here!"

She gives him a sharp nod. The sky is starting to roil with bruised clouds, pregnant with divine lighting, and Aziraphale pulls the back door shut behind him. The woman peels out, and Kri starts running in the opposite direction. She thinks she hears someone call "good luck!" before they're gone.

She runs as fast as she's ever run before, but she's still close enough to feel the crack of the sky splitting and Heavenly wrath pouring down to Earth.

What did I do? Oh God, what did we do?

She is running so blindly away from the furious angelic presence behind her that she doesn't notice the one in front of her. Except it's not furious, it's Elstael.

"Kri?" they say, gripping her arms to keep her upright. "Kri, what-"

She has a plan. The beginnings of a plan. Well, less of a plan and more of an idea. But it's something.

"Can you-" she gasps, "can you smite me without actually, you know, smiting me?"

"What?!"

"Just singe me a bit. Or lop off an arm or something? Without killing me? C'mon, c'mon, quick!"

"I- uh, think so, yes," they answer. "But-"

"Do it!"

Elstael stares. There are angry voices coming from the direction of the building, angel and human. Kri thrums with impatience and panic.

"I don't want to hurt you," they say.

"It's fine," she says. "It's fine. It'll work out out. Tell them you chased me and fought me. You nearly got me, but I got away, right?"

"I don't want to hurt-"

"I let you get hit by a bus, fair's only fair."

Still they hesitate.

Kri twists her arms so her hands are mirroring Elstael's, resting just below the angel's elbows. "Trust me, please," she says, and means it.

Slowly, finally, they nod. Kri steps back, steeling herself for whatever smiting feels like. She's not sure - never experienced it, quite obviously - but it has to hurt.

Elstael lets their hands fall out to their sides, palms up, and raises their eyes, a picture of angelic holiness. They start to glow.

"Begone, demon," they say, and reach out to wrap elegant fingers around Kri's bicep. The glow immediately vanishes, but they keep their hand there.

It burns, but not like Falling at all - a clean, sharp, perfect fire that bites into her skin, muscles, bones, slicing like a million razor-sharp papercuts through her mortal corporation all the way down to her demonic self, a wave of holy pain rippling out from the angel's hold on her. She hears herself scream and Elstael's grip tightens. The burn stops advancing, but it smolders, from shoulder to fingertips. A good sign, that, she thinks. If her fingertips hurt it means she's still got fingertips, right?

"-sorry, sorry, sorry-" she realizes Elstael is saying, repeating it like a mantra.

"-'s'fine," she slurs. "Great. 'S great. Good job. Now. Just." She pushes herself upright, shaky, but determined, and also determinedly not looking at her arm. "Just tell 'em you chased me, right? You w're tryin' to protect the... the... the thing, 'n we... fought. 'N we'll meet back up wh'n'ev'r this blows over, right? 'Kay?"

"Yes, okay," they say.

She forms her un-smited hand into a thumbs-up and tries to smile at the angel. She probably looks wretched, but Elstael gives a watery laugh and smiles back.

"See y'later," she says, and lets herself sink into the ground that cracks apart to swallow her up, lets herself fall back into Hell.

--

The pain gets easier, Downstairs. She doesn't truly need her corporation down there, and with all the infernal energy around, it's easier to heal. All that said, an angelic near-smiting is nothing to sneeze at. She's still letting her arm hang limp when she's called to give her report. It goes over about as well as can be expected.

"How was I to know they were trying to steal the new Messiah or whatever blessed stunt they were trying to pull off?" She glares, covering the lie with indignation. Rightful indignation. "No one gave me any new info! I was just following him! That was my job!"

"You got yourself noticed by an angel," Regish scolds.

"Kinda hard not to, they were bloody everywhere," she mutters.

"And you lost him."

"Well I'm sorry I couldn't pay closer attention while I was being smote," she says, snappish. She has a risky thought - one that could help her, but potentially endanger everyone else. They're going to have to put the baby somewhere - either that, or disappear, and she doesn't think they'll do that. There are any number of places they could go on Earth, or even off Earth, unlikely as that would be. She just hopes she doesn't guess right.

"I think I heard the angel say something about Siberia."

Regish raises his eyebrows. "Which angel?"

"Which do you think? Crowley's... pet." She gathers all the disgust she feels at her current surroundings and infuses it into that single word. It seems to work, because Regish gives her a look that could almost be called commiserating.

"Siberia? You sure?"

"I heard him say the word Siberia, I don't know what he meant by it," she says. "That's all I got. But I can track them down again. Just send me back up."

He eyes her skeptically. "You want to go back?"

"To do my job, yeah! We can't let 'em get away."

Her artifice seemed to have worked, because three days later, when her arm is no longer stinging with holy fire, they send her back up the escalator and into London.

--

She goes straight to the bookshop. It won't look suspicious if they're watching her - obviously Crowley spends time there, so she's safe claiming she's looking for clues. It's still warded, and the windows still opaque to her eyes, so she lurks very obviously outside it until the door finally opens.

Aziraphale stands there inside the wards, looking cautious.

"You didn't send it to Siberia, did you?" she asks, not glancing at him at all, trusting that with his powers he can hear her across the street. "I'm not asking where, you don't have to trust me, just, I told them to look in Siberia. So if you sent it there, sorry, you've got a problem."

"Not Siberia," he says very quietly.

Her shoulders slump in relief. "Good. Great. Okay." She starts to move on - she'll go to Crowley's flat next, then the cottage, then back to LA - but his voice freezes her in her tracks.

"Thank you again for what you did. Would you, ah," he turns for a moment, looks over his shoulder. "Would you be so kind as to come in?"

She glances around. It's unlikely Hell is watching her - she's given them no reason to doubt her work, as far as she can tell. Still, the invitation feels enormous.

"Crowley says it's clear," Aziraphale reassures her. "But hurry, please."

She crosses the street and walks up to the door.

The bookshop still feels eye-wateringly good, but it provides no barrier to her entry. The angelic ward passes over her like a blanketful of static electricity, all sparks and crackles, and the demonic one slows her steps for an instant like she's forcing her way through mud. But then she's through, and she can finally see the inside of the shop.

There are books stacked everywhere - on proper shelves, on tables, on the floor. The place is all warm browns and golds and creams, like a box full of chocolate truffles, the kind that have the hard shell and the white chocolate drizzle and bits of actual gold leaf to make them fancier. She thinks maybe she can smell cocoa over the sugary-musty perfume of old paper and faded leather covers. It's wonderful. These aren't her kind of books, but she loves it all the same.

Absorbed as she is by finally seeing the interior of the shop, it takes her a moment to realize there are other people inside. Elstael is standing by a little round table, and Kri doesn't even try to hide the smile that stretches her face when she sees them. The angel smiles back with so much relief that Kri can practically taste it in the dusty air. Crowley, of course, is there too, sprawled across a plush chair and eyeing her with caution, and some of the humans that she's seen in Tadfield - the witch and her companion, and the former Antichrist.

"Er, hi," she says.

Crowley gets out of the chair, unfolding like some terrifying articulated origami, and starts to stalk toward them. "You sure we should trust this one, angel?"

"Yes," Elstael says firmly as Aziraphale opens his mouth to answer. They lift their chin bravely when Crowley shifts his gaze toward them.

"Well, no offense," he says, eyes unreadable behind the sunglasses, "but you don't have all that much experience with demons, do you?"

"With her I do." Elstael swallows nervously at his increased scrutiny but keeps their head high. A warmth like hot coffee spreads through her, but unlike coffee it doesn't stop at her stomach. It gets all the way to the tips of her fingers, she swears, and she grins in what she expects is a rather stupid way. For the moment, she can't care.

"Crowley, you saw what she did to help us," Aziraphale says as Crowley comes up to them. She notices that one of his hands is wrapped in a bandage, and she remembers the sound of a shot, and the bloody mess he'd been holding to his chest.

"She could be working for them, still."

"'She's' right here," Kri says, perturbed. "And I'm not. Working for them, I mean."

"Well, er." The human man next to the witch raises his hand slightly, as if he's in school asking a question. The witch gives him a withering, but fond, look, and he drops the hand. "That is, no offense, but... isn't that what you'd say that if you were?"

He has a point. She shrugs. "Dunno what I can say to convince you."

"What's your reason?"

She blinks. It's Adam, the former Antichrist, who has spoken. "I'm sorry?"

He's sitting in a rolling desk chair like it's a throne, the afternoon light making his curly hair glow. The effect is unsettling. "Why do you want to help?"

"I..." She doesn't answer right away. He's staring at her with a haughty sort of intensity, and she can't look away from his eyes. She takes a breath before launching into it, not because she needs air but because it gives her another second to collect her thoughts and she's always thought it gives the following words a bit more gravity. "I spent most of my time Downstairs, after... after the Fall. And it was... fine. Not good, obviously, it was terrible, but... it was what I had, so it was fine. And then about fifteen hundred years ago, I get my job up here. And it's way better than fine, up here. There's... there's sky, and weather, sunsets, trees. Animals that don't drool acid, rivers that aren't sulfur. And the humans are so... they're just so clever, aren't they? Making all sorts of things. And writing stories. Good and bad. Wonderful and terrible. I just... I like it." She feels like that wasn't coherent enough, like she's made a rambling mess of it all. "Er. I don't want it all to go down - or up - in flames, Earth. It's... well. It’s nice. I guess it's selfish, but, y'know. Demon."

"But it is true, isn't it?" Aziraphale says. He beams at her, and she feels, shockingly, pleased that he's pleased, and then quite unfortunately he claps a hand to her shoulder - the same one that had started healing in Hell but wasn't quite done yet.

She nearly falls over. Pain shoots down her arm and she lets out a choked wheeze, the ability to vocalize apparently punched out of her along with the ability to stand. In a fraction of a second Elstael is beside her, holding her up, and Aziraphale is apologizing profusely, hands fluttering about like a pair of agitated birds.

"It's fffffffine," she breathes, only the rough shape of the words and none of the voice behind them. At least, she hopes that's what comes out of her mouth - she's not too sure. "Just... not quite... hhhhhealed yet."

"Oh dear," he says, now twisting his hands together. "My dear, I'm so sorry. Healed from what?"

She takes a moment to compose herself and tilts her head questioningly toward Elstael. "Y'... didn't tell 'em?"

Elstael shakes their head. With a start, Kri realizes their hands are clasped around hers, fingers interlaced, both of Elstael's surrounding her own despite her black nails that she is convincing very hard right now not to be chitinous claws. It's warm and soft and... Well. Nice.

"After what happened with the Messiah, when I found Kri running away. She told me to smite her, and to tell Heaven that we had fought, to keep my cover." They grip her hand a little tighter. "’Just singe me a little or lop off an arm without killing me,’ I think you said."

Kri shrugs her uninjured shoulder. "Worked, didn't it?" Thankfully her voice has returned.

"Oh my," Aziraphale says. "That was... very dangerous."

"Not half," Crowley says, sounding a bit impressed.

"I figured it would be better to keep up appearances. Hell would believe I'd been caught by an angel, and Heaven could commend Elstael for nearly getting a demon."

"And it was quite a good idea," Aziraphale says. He smiles at her, still apologetically. "If we're going to do this, it will be invaluable to have inside information. Especially since Crowley and I, er, no longer do."

--

[toytulini]

me, stupidly and weirdly resistant to listening to audio books vs reading a physical book for no real reason: man i wish there was a way to like, read a book while i crochet like i do with tv shows and movies and podcasts

[icannotgetoverbirds]

it's called cowpunk

BUT THERE'S NO FUCKIN'. PLAYLISTS ON YT THAT ARE SONG COMPILATIONS

IT'S ALL PLAYLISTS PUT TOGETHER USING THE FUCKIN' PLAYLIST FUNCTION AND MY BRAIN WON'T LET ME TRY THOSE OUT FOR SOME ARBITRARY REASON

please for the love of god i want to listen to punk country music. i've secretly always loved the way that country music sounds but the lyrics are just so terrible so often that i've stayed away from it for the sake of my sanity

but punk as a genre has never failed me so COWPUNK, which is the punk subgenre in country music, should be fucking amazing. but there's like 5 playlists and brain is too scaredys to look at them. screaming crying throwing up taking my brain out and picking it apart with tweezers until i can figure out why those aren't good enough so i can problem solve

[nomairuins]

i am okay tho i just have momeys sometimrs . please do not ever worry abt me guys

[tubbytarchia]

the final day. of the 30 day hardcore series. jimmy aka solidaritygaming has gone live. the final day is upon us. (although theres actually like 1 day 23 hours left. so idk what hes on about. if it were just him id say its cuz he doesnt stream on weekends but martyns title says final day too. theyre all a bunch of liars) ITS A LONG ONE GET READY

anyway. he logs on and immediately gets up to gay shit

anyway he sees martyn and they start going ITS COOOOOOMING HOME ITS COOOOOOOMING HOME because theyre both football nerds. then sausage and mog comes over. martyn has a censor/beep on his soundboard and he says something with it and jimmy gets annoyed so martyn tells jimmy to **** himself. off to a great start

jimmy starts attacking him with a bow and martyn keeps pressing the button. martyn traps himself in an obsidian box.

sausage and mog are thinking about bringing the ender dragon to the overworld. idk how to do that but i wouldnt put it past them. they all want to do a raid too.

THERES FINALLY AN EXPLANATION FOR THE CHICKENS. martyn has a thing on his ship that fires out chicken eggs. they keep trying to guess when its going to fire by counting down. they keep saying theyre going to kiss each other if they get it right. ?? sure. then they start trying to get it to hit them on the head

riveting content. they do this for like 10 minutes. they start gambling using martyns on-stream tamagotchi thing. its like a higher or lower thing using a roulette table. u say red or black then if its the right colour martynll say like... "red 7 higher or lower" then u have to guess if the next spin will be a higher or lower number?? i have no idea whats going on. but jimmy got the highest streak so WOOOO

it hits martyn. low quality martyn getting hit with an egg.

THE DISCS ARE MISSING. someone has taken the discs. theres some in both sausages and martyns base. jimmy challenges martyn to a 1v1 (if they both survive the raid) and jimmy then turns to say if he survives he'll challenge sausage next.

sausage says theyre all going to kiss after the raid and jimmy says he does not kiss thieves.

they start to prep for the raid and jimmy gets a trident. he immediately starts attacking cpk who starts attacking him with his mace. jimmy gets his ass beat as sneeg and sausage start attacking him with their maces too. he calls out for martyn to save him.

when martyn does not come to rescue him scott logs in so he runs to scotts house. its actually really sweet do not talk to me.

j: SCOTT?! SCOTT THEYRE BULLYING ME :(

s: whats new though? you normally get bullied.

j: no theyre really- theyre coming for me.

s: ah. are they being extra mean today?

j: theyre being very mean. very mean.

s: aw im sorry. (he says something else idk what he said though)

FULL CLIP/TIMESTAMP CUZ I DONT WANT TO. TRANSCRIBE IT ALL its so sweet. dont talk to me ever.

theyre doing the raid at the disc. sneeg brings a bunch of villagers out of... somewhere AND IT STARTS!!! the raid gang/everyone online is jimmy, martyn, sausage, sneeg, scott, mog, and cpk.

jimmy realises on wave 2 that he doesnt have a shield?? surely this wont go wrong. he keeps "accidentally" hitting sneeg with his trident. good thing it barely even does half a heart per hit.

martyn calls jimmy a potato/spud then says something like "you look like one of andys toys mr tater head" and jimmys like you know thats a sore subject. and martyns like oh i genuinely did not even think of that. then jimmy goes searching through cpks chests and martyn breaks them so back to normal.

jimmy gets a shield :) then he goes to sort out cpks chests because hes nice like that. he then threatens to kill martyn. hes THEN LIKE "im the bigger man arent i chat. tell me i am."

jims worried he missed the whole raid then he looks over and theres just. a ravager. so hes like okay nvm and goes back to the group. he immediately starts trying to kill martyn and i think its really funny that nobody really tries to stop jimmy. however neither of them kill each other so.

jimmy/cpk/scott get distracted trying to shoot sneeg then jimmy turns around AND THE ENTIRE NEXT WAVE IS BEHIND THEM so he just. screams.

jimmy flees to mogs base in the middle of the water and just starts shooting at anything that moves. mostly sneeg.

MARTYN KILLS JIMMYS DOG. HONK IS GONE. jimmy is setting up a pvp arena he is so desperate to kill martyn.

sneeg wants to mess with his mace so scott holds a totem and sneeg hits him. he gets the achievement for doing 50 hearts of damage in one hit so.

anyway arena is ready. sneeg takes jimmy off to the side and gives him a god apple.

martyn burns all the discs he has on him and they start fighting. its kind of pathetic. jimmy DOES kill martyn but he has a totem so. cpk tries to give jimmy a totem BUT HIS INVENTORY IS FULL so martyn picks it up. he has like 3 totems on him now.

martyn says to call the fight quits. as soon as jimmy agrees martyn tries to attack him again. MOG COMES IN WITH THE STEEL CHAIR

scott starts attacking jimmy (if he dies you have to die :( SHUT UP SCOTT) and jimmy takes a moment before he defends himself. he was not expecting martyn to die. theyre all bickering about it THEN JUST,, SAUSAGE YOU MOTHERFUCKER PUT YOUR MACE DOWN. THEN SNEEG KILLS MOG.

im genuinely so emo about this ending btw do not talk to me. do not. if u do get the time/energy i so recommend watching the vod im so. oh my god. WHATEVER!!!

anyway stream ends soon after. among us video tomorrow. roblox channel video sunday. monday stream maybe at 6pm bst (an hour late since hes recording roblox with katherine). do not talk to me ever again ok bye im gonna be thinking about this for weeks.

HATE. HATE ON THIS PLANET HATE AND WAR. GRRRRRRAA ok starting from the beginning

Seapeekay get away from him. I don't trust you anymore. Not since the "I'm killing myself if you don't come to me fast enough" incident

YAYYY JIMMY ATTACKING PEOPLE WOOOOOOOOO ATTACK MORE PEOPLE YAYYYYYYY the way Martyn doesn't really retaliate either ugh. My property police...

I fucking love that "low quality Martyn getting hit with an egg" screenshot this is the best content I could ask for

"I do not kiss thieves" is terribly ironic but um. Jimmy saying to Sausage that he will not kiss him IS SO GOOD GO JIMMY GO YEAH!!!!!! Stop letting this sex pest get away with his sex pestery. Every other exchange Sausage has with Jimmy is seriously just "oooo let's be gay" or "oooo sex joke". I seriously don't get it. If it's ship bait then it's obnoxious. Tell him off Jimmy

HELL YEAH JIMMY ATTACKING PEOPLE WOOOOO wait but this time 3 people dogpile on him. Why. Stop that. Martyn didn't do that. And yet Seapeekay, Sausage and Sneeg start dogpiling him. Leave him alone. And he calls out for Martyn..?? STOPPP this is making so genuinely sad and upset NOOOOOOO!! This is awful!!!! Martyn please... where are you Martyn...., AND THEN SCOTT LOGS IN JUST TO SAVE JIMMY? AND THEY HAVE A REALLY NICE AND PLEASANT EXCHANGE? WHat the fuckk mannn. It's awesome I do like this but knowing Scott I KNOW this will come back to bite me in the ass and make me even more sad later

Jimmy "you know that's a sore subject" to Martyn basically calling him a toy noooo THIS IS MAKING ME SAD THIS IS MAKING ME UPSET!!!!!!!!!! At least Martyn didn't mean to get at Jimmy from that angle but mmgh...

"I'm the bigger man aren't I chat. Tell me I am." NOOO WHY'D HE SAY THIS! THIS MAKES ME SAD TOO!! Awwghh man he needs the confirmation... You ARE the bigger man Jim you have been... Go be awesome...!! But at the same time maybe you don't need to try and kill Martyn for like the 3rd time Jimmy it's okay... Tensions been high, few misunderstandings, it's okay Jimmy...

The way Jimmy starts attacking Martyn (oh well :( )and nobody stops him?? Oh but when he attacked Seapeekay then he got dogpiled by 3 people what. Are they like "Oh yeah that's just what Martyn and Jimmy do" or something. Huh. Ough I hate to see them fighting at a time like this though... But at least neither of them die... and then Martyn kills Jimmy's dog?? NOOO ARE YOU KIDDING ME NOOOO Honk... Honk shoo now...

And then... And then Martyn and Jimmy fight in the arena... And Jimmy wins, and Martyn says to call it quits, and then he immediately attacks Jimmy again??? man all of this is no property police banter this is malice. Property police is on pretty rocky ground to begin with but I didn't think it'd come to this wow... They are just straight up fighting. Hatred and war on planet earth. And yet, when Mog comes in swinging and kills Martyn, he chokes up... Jimmy hadn't expected Martyn to just die so soon... Oh Boatemboys oh it's getting really miserable. And he fails to defend himself in time when SCOTT STARTS ATTACKING HIM? AND SAUSAGE GETS THE FINAL HIT? Oh Scott and Sausage oh I am. Putting you in a box and shipping you to Madagascar

And Scott's reasoning for attacking Jimmy "If Martyn dies you have to die" oh so Scott suddenly cares about Martyn huh. He suddenly doesn't care so much about Jimmy even though he makes a flower husbands reference like every SMP. Suddenly Jimmy has to die because Martyn died, huh. Did that cute little conversation earlier mean nothing to you Scott. I am so upset right now. I am so fucking upset.

I need to watch this VOD for sure sometime but wow. What I've gotten from this is: - further Sausage dismay - I do not trust Seapeekay - I do not trust Sneeg - Scott is Scott - Property Police had a lot of very nostalgic and nice moments and then they started fighting each other with malice like I've never seen before. (Also Martyn killing Jimmy's dog kinda symbolic to me. Big dogs...)

The only truly good thing here is MOG I LOVE MOG YAYY Mog is AWESOME Mog even came in to defend Jimmy from Martyn. Mog has done nothing wrong ever. He especially didn't deserve to die to Sneeg. The only thing well and good in this SMP is Mog which is funny because I have two nickels now (cough cough SOS SMP) (This SMP wasn't trying to be anything it wasn't though so I'm very much not putting it on the same level as SOS but where SOS was just kinda lame to me, This SMP just made me really upset from the characters' perspective so Mog ends up being one of the only truly positive aspects both times)

[deanwithscissors]

Love In An Elevator - Part 1

Title: Home Sweet Home Timestamp

Pairing: Jensen X Reader

Word Count: 870

Warnings: Swearing, teasing, dirty talk, fingering, semi-public indecency

Summary: Jensen's due on stage in twenty minutes, the fans are waiting, but [Y/N]'s been riled up all morning and she's not going to wait a second longer to get what she wants. The fans will have to wait

A/N: i was honry af last night, idk why, but this came from it. there's gonna be a second part, but i just wanted to share this :) also i haven't written in months so be kind

The ravenous fire bubbling inside her chest was insufferable, climbing her veins and rattling her bones with each thud of her foot to the floor. She tried to compose herself, using the bright blue lines on the carpet as a guide, like a plane coming in to land.

The devil swarmed her brain, overpowering her mind and corrupting her thoughts as hellfire gushed between her legs, triggering heart palpitations and sharp gasps for air to fill her struggling lungs as she willed herself to remain standing.

With taught shoulders and a puffed out chest [Y/N] shouted down the runway, her voice strained and tone urgent as she glared at the love of her life fifty feet ahead.

Even from this distance his broad rounded shoulders contrasted so delightfully against his narrow waist and tiny toosh. The crisp white shirt barely keeping his biceps in check and jeans unable to disguise his bowed legs which only excited her more.

Jensen twirled on his heels at the sound of her call, t-shirt hugging his toned stomach as he stood like a toddler with curved legs and twisted feet.

“What?”

“C’mere, quickly,” she said, ushering him with a flick of her wrist.

Heat prickled her skin, sizzled her insides and forced her to bite her bottom lip as his hips swayed and long legs strode towards her. His enchanting beauty and flowing movement created a hectic whirlwind in the hallway and deep in her heart, not to mention the storm that was raging in her pants.

“Are you okay?”

“Come with me.” Her hand clasped his as she escorted them down the isolated hotel lobby, the final location and their heavenly destination vivid in her mind.

“[Y/N] I’ve not got time, I’ve gotta go,” he insisted. “What’s wrong?”

Halting mid step, her long hair whipped through the air as she faced him. The manicured finger prodding his chest advised him to back up.

Stumbling backwards into a cramped little elevator, mirror lining one wall, the remaining ones cold sheets of metal, his blazing green eyes were stuck on her.

“What’s wrong?” Stifling a sigh, [Y/N] aggressively forced his hand under her skirt and between her thighs, manipulating her thong to the side, she manoeuvred his fingers across her soaking slit.

Jensen’s legs buckled as he reached out to the wall for support, the cool shiny metal helping to contain his fever. A pathetic whine slipped between his lips as temptation entrapped his soul in a cage of pure exhilarating lust and his fingers drowned in her arousal.

“That’s what’s wrong Jensen. I’ve been like this all morning, waitin’ and waitin’, I can’t fuckin’ take it any longer. I need you. Right now.”

“Here?” His voice hit a few octaves higher than usual, his right brow reaching for the ceiling as he eyeballed the compact space.

“You’d love that huh? Fuckin’ me somewhere public, someone catchin’ us mid act. You get off on just the thought dont'cha?”

His fingers rolled over her aching folds as if exploring the deep blue sea blindfolded, this time a synchronised moan fell from both of them.

“I’ve not got time to be teased,” Jensen said fiercely. “I can’t go on stage hard.”

“Why? Not like you haven’t been before. Quite a few times if I remember correctly,” her voice was low and breathy, full of unfiltered need and want.

Despite being extremely aroused, a twinge of irritation flashed across his face, “That’s not funny.”

“It is to me. Hot too.”

“Look, I promise, as soon as I’m finished I’ll come straight up to the room okay? I’ll do anythin’ you want.”

“I want you now. I want your fingers deep inside me, hittin’ that beautiful sweet spot, your body crushin’ me against the wall, my dainty hand chokin’ your dick while you attack my tit with your mouth. I want you to make me moan, scream and beg, loud enough that someone hears and then they hide, spyin’ on us, watchin’ and gettin’ turned on as you make me cum on your fingers.”

His thoughts were stolen as intense arousal demanded all blood relocate to his crotch. He was rock solid and pulsing in his jeans, his bulge almost breaking the seams, his thick shaft and seeping head begging to escape and get wet, all while his restricted lungs pressed against the walls of his rib cage desperate for air.

“He’d cum in his pants if he seen you finish,” he scoffed with utter pride as he looked down at his petite girlfriend with fire in her eyes.

The tight white t-shirt she wore clung to her body, revealing the curves and bounce of her small breasts, her nipples like granite and breaking the smoothness of the material, taunting him to play and indulge in the pleasure she was offering.

“Want me to make you cum in yours?” she said, her hand covering his twitching dick like a blanket.

Jensen’s hips flinched as a small hiss squeezed between clenched teeth.

He couldn’t contain another slithery hiss when his well used and calloused hand engulfed her left breast entirely and kneaded her flesh with a hearty grip.

“No,” he growled, “I’m cumin’ inside you.”

[ofoceansandtombsanew]

idk if you'd ever make a sequel to the gojo timestamp where he asks the reader to be co-parents with him, but how do you think the reader and gojo's relationship would develop after the events of the timestamp?

hmmmMMMM i do think ultimately that the reader and gojou would end up a couple after the events of the timestamp, but it would be a slowburn

it's definitely onesided to start with gojou gaining a crush on the reader fast and the reader selectively acting oblivious to it. your friendship with gojou develops slowly overtime with the remainder of your years as students and that flowing into your time as co-parents post-graduation

you said it best all those years ago. satoru is although you can respect his abilities, gojou satoru is an annoying individual. but you like him a lot more when he's annoying and overbearing than sad and depressed. so despite you both initially running in different circles, your reaching out to him meant a lot to him. he can usually take your annoyed zesty zingers in stride, it's strange how those zingers ended up being what comforted him most after suguru left

when he actually gets to know you, he found there was a lot to like. your humor is on the dry side, but you're pretty hilarious. you have a surprising amount of animal-related fun facts up your sleeve. and you somehow keep his ego from going too large while making him feel on top of top of the world in the same breath

it's hard not to fall for that. he falls first and honestly, he probably falls the hardest too

but when romantic feelings start developing on your end, you end up drawing back as you things over. in some ways you can't help wandering what part of satoru's feelings are true and what part of it is because he latched onto you after suguru defected? is he actually in love with you or are you just a replacement for his friend?

it's not something easy to bring up and without even meaning to you end up causing a bit of distance between you both. it's nothing too overt. you still come over a lot and help with tsumiki and megumi but something's different

satoru can tell even if you don't say anything and it immediately sets off alarm bells. so it isn't much of a surprise that this introspective period of yours doesn't last too long. he reaches out for you pretty quick to ask what's weighing on your mind. he doesn't want to lose someone he cares about again

he tells you as much in his own satoru way. don't go somewhere he can't follow. he doesn't have to be yours, you just have to stay. he can be satisfied with that

you're able to alleviate his worries when you tell him softly that what you're thinking isn't nearly as worrisome as whatever he's thought up. you're partners, regardless of how he roped you into parenthood. you're set to have him annoying you for the indefinite future so he better be set to have you there to get it back in quips and snarks

[aimwigs]

hey I've been listening to the yard for about a year and a half and I want to get more into it ifywim do I just start watching old vods to catch up or is there any content u can recommend as a baseline must-watch

this is by no means a comprehensive list because i've only really been watching the yard since dec 2022 and my 2021 stint in lud viewing was brief and casual (didn't know what i had) but it is a fucking long list so i'll keep it under the cut. included stuff that maybe i wouldn't classify as a must watch but i wanted to include it so you can pick and choose what interests you

PODCASTS - I know for a fact there are other podcast appearances out there that I don't know of but here are a few:

the yard x wine about it - it's just the four of them and qt which means good times! this is an essential imo

there are a few eps of fear& that they appear on! specifically rec the ep with nick and aiden and the ep with ludwig and aiden. there are also a few eps with ludwig and slime (not at the same time) if you're interested in those

i've watched aiden on three different interview podcasts all are worth a watch to me: karat interview, across the bar, and good griefed (audio a little scuffed on this one but it's cute)

fucking loved nick's ep of across the bar because his outlook on creativity is super relatable to me. he also did something with safety third that i've been meaning to watch but haven't yet!

VIDEOS AND STREAMS - there's a lot here but i'll try to describe what's what

mogul money ft the yard - this is the full vod, there's also a cut down video. extremely fun watch

nick was also on mogul money live (first game specifically) and he and aiden appear in the bts video a little bit

qt posted vlogs from italy! they're all fun watches and there's some good moments. one, two, three, four

qt and aiden halloween gingerbread house video. ludwig and aiden kiss in this one. i think the full vod is in god's hands unfortunately

qt and aiden make shit in an ezbake oven and make the guys eat it. fun little video. idk if the vod is out there somewhere or not

there's a cut down version of this too but the full stream of qt having all the guys do a gingerbread house competition is very peak

lud did a shit load of taste test videos with the guys for a slim jim sponsor. this might not be all of them but here are the ones i cold find off rip (fruit, cheese, chocolate, water, steak)

ludwig has done a shitload of ylyl streams with slime that you can find and honestly i have a horrible mediashare allergy so i haven't watched a lot of them but i have watched the one they did with aiden and the one with everyone but idk where the full vod is for the latter

from ludwig's fortnite mondays, there was a week where slime and nick played with jerma and sapnap. idk if any of the others posted the vod but here's sapnap's

the subathon has a shitload of stuff that i can't even begin to link but if you want the experience of the dcom series without subbing to tier 2 they watched the truman show starting about an hour thirty into this vod, tho it takes a hot minute to get everything lined up with the time stamps

halloween po unboxing where them + qt dress up as characters from scooby doo. nick looks frankly obscene as velma this is a great vod

how many flashlights does it take to cook an egg is exactly what it sounds like. it's lud slime and nick ft a little bit of yingo

they play the family feud game together in these two vods: just them and against miz/otk (can't stand miz but it was still good)

RECENT STUFF - aka stuff you probably know about or have seen because you've been around a year and a half but i figured i'd include them anyway since they happened off the pod

two months ago they all played fortnite on lud's stream and it was awesome

both the show matches of the ludwig tarik invitationals are worth watching if you're into valo! the first one is team mogul v otv and they're split up in the second. if the timestamps are broken it's 2h30 in both vods

the rivals 2 tournament is fun! i don't understand shit about fighting games but i love to see the boys play

cdawgva ski vod with lud and aiden from the japan trip! there's also a cut down version of youtube but i found it a fun watch

recency bias alert: they all played in creator dodgeball

the qt and aiden winter cocktail tierlist stream was so good like genuinely a stream of all time to me. ludwig hangs around for parts of it

the yard doing the dougdoug fast food challenge is a MUST WATCH! they celebrate and they suffer what could be more beautiful

otv's fear pong video with them is so fucking good. SO GOOD!

and finally i guess i should mention beerio because it just happened LOL

[olderthannetfic]

We talked about Ao3 kudos and statistics once, and someone said that a kudo doesn't have a time stamp coded into it but I wonder if that's true. The daily kudos email only shows the kudos from the last 24 hours so there has to be a time code somewhere 🤔

And Ive heard once or twice about people hunting logged in users for harassment with the kudos they left on problematique fics. An anti-harassment feature that OTW could implement there would be an anonymous kudos button.

Sth like an author could anonymize all the kudos on their fics and a reader could decide on kudosing with their name or give an anonymous one.

(Don't know how easy or hard the coding would be on this though)

-Paper-plate Anon

--

I would not assume that each individual kudos has a permanent timestamp attached. It's just as likely that there's some sort of 'state of kudos as of 24 hours ago' and 'new state of kudos that's going to overwrite it' comparison generating that e-mail. Clearly, what order they arrived in is being recorded, but I just don't know beyond that.

If you want to leave anon kudos, you can log out/use a private window. It seems like people can even do this on archive-locked fics, though IDK if that still works.

[skibasyndrome]

🎁💡🚦🦈

Thank you so much Joshua!!! <3<3<3<3

🎁: Have a piece of a WIP you want to share?

“I might’ve googled some stuff the other day,” he admits, and Simon continues to stare on, now in wonder. “And uh, took a shower and all” he adds, now very sure he’s blushing. “You know, just kinda… anticipating that maybe something could happen if you came over” And when Simon still doesn’t say anything, the floodgates open. “Not that I was, like, expecting anything to happen at all,” Wilhelm runs a hand through his hair, just looking for something to do. “And obviously we don’t have to do that if you don’t want to, I was just kind of curious, because I really like doing it to you, and then I thought-”

It's very unedited and from the last part of You crave the Applause / Yet hate the attention, my beloved that I've been meaning to finish for... I don't even wanna look at the timestamp of the last update tbh gaaaah where is writing time when you need it

💡: How many WIPs do you currently have?

I have this bad boy right above that should get done very soon hopefully, then Vampire fic (my beloved), I have a kinda angsty Simon POV oneshot sitting around in my drafts and then I have tiny, tiny snippets/ideas waiting around in my docs for another 4 possible fics (but some of these are supposed to be collabs and both parties haven't found the time to seriously work on them yet), so uh? 3 very concrete ones and 4 that are somewhere between an idea and some first written words, idk if that counts.

🚦: What sort of endings do you prefer to write: ambiguous, bad, happily ever after, etc.?

Oh gosh... tbh I LOVE the impact of an ambigious/angsty ending, but for the fics where I kinda wanna keep the ending like this I ALSO wanna do like a part 2 that resolves it because I'm weak like that 💀 So I guess happily ever after if I'm being truly honest.

🦈: Which character is the toughest to write?

I haven't done Simon POV before, so that's a bit more difficult for me tbh. I just feel like I can look into Wille's head better, idk?

Send me fanfic writer asks

[be-good-be-safe-be-kind]

.

no one's really asked, and i don't really like telling people about the different parts, but i do tend default to basics like these circles bc idk really how else to explain. and also i'm almost always on the fence with if i even have DID or not, even with all the symptoms and conversations with therapist and evaluators and 'proofs' after social events and stuff where hearing what happened, the reaction of 'i would not do that' and stuff.

approximate age and gender is the 'easiest' to pinpoint, since my overall concept of gender is just -shrug-, and gender presentation i don't really think about but there are things like 'oh this one likes when the hair is in a ponytail' or 'this one prefers short shorts to basketball shorts' (and someone else is the opposite in that regard), which might be easier to explain as gender for the sake of simplicity. age is more like a 'grade' level than an age, or a 'group' like anywhere under 5, or somewhere between 5 and 7/early schooling. 12ish to early/middle teenager, or vague age between 14 and 18. a couple of 'adults' with nothing more to go on except as a kid, they're whatever i guess i though an adult was like, and they're anywhere between always 5ish years above me or just 'adult'.

temperament and likes/dislikes, or interests/disinterests is a bit trickier, but this blog does help. i scroll through the dash and random blogs and sometimes things just stand out as someone's, so they get tagged and drafted, and then i use the drafts as a dash and if i feel like whoever and see something at the time, it usually gets posted then. the thing is though, idk even if i am them at the time or what the deal is but sometimes interests just 'speak' to me or not-me and i want it archived/ timestamped for that time. and also led to a bit of a panic attack a while ago where the ocean/waves sometimes feels more like a part than an interest, like there's more of a person attached to it kinda in the [ws] way and not in ways like with toys or tv.

the blue circle with the layers is a really helpful diagram bc i also am not usually thinking or feeling distinct. i mean i can recognize some distinctions like right now i'm able to use personal pronouns and complete sentences and not worry about how grammatically incorrect they are, which sorta points to a certain part/feeling/mode but idk. idk if this is more conscious or subconscious but i am aware of it right now and how these things aren't 'universal' / collective / communal things, but idk really what to do with that. i don't think it matters much, as long as i'm this 'awake' or whatever and know where i am and what's happening. the problem is more when there's awareness of distinctions but mostly confusion, like the times when i almost literally can't speak, like it feels physically impossible, and can't really move either and sorta wait it out or until i guess the other subconscious parts push forward more and break out of that mode?

life usually is kinda rainbow-y and blurry. although i have my circle kinda the opposite of this diagram i think, where the conscious layer is the outermost circle and the innermost one is unconscious, bc i feel like most of the time things move from the inside out than outside in? or like, there's a lot of unconscious stuff all the time, but maybe it sorta blurs with the subconscious, which then moves closer to consciousness/what presents to me and others/what i guess i look like on the outside. idk. i just know that language like 'fronting' confuses me bc i don't think i ever know who is the one entirely 'facing' the world.

and now i'm running out of steam and getting brain foggy so gonna call it a day with this one

I made a thing that’s entirely based off personal experience.

For all the people who struggle to figure out “who’s fronting” or even “who’s around”…I’m right there with you.

[DID/OSDD Casually Explained Masterpost]

[luvhrs]

(´-ㅅก`)

first post & its a diary entry. i think i might be breaking some internet safety rules here. sorry dad

i wanted to post somewhere where id see a timestamp bcs what do i have if not the need to document as it happens every thought. feeling. memory memory memory (& u kno the rare accompanying energy to actually... do that). of all the social media i have (& am barely on lol) tumblr seemed like a good idea for some reason. so here i am blessing(?) the new main blog with ye olde thoughts!!

its almost the middle of the year like damn alr a week into may but still i felt compelled to write a lil thing even if i (...again) failed to keep up with daily diary entries after january. weirdly enough the reason was that i had a rly nice midnight shower. warm. gentle. unhurried. the likes of lizzy mcalpine, searows, niki, & phoebe bridgers as bgm

ig i dont get to sit in my pleasant feelings much. & i just want to rmbr a time when i did :)

today's fav things:

☆ still deciding what song to sing for my bday cover :o i was originally planning to do my all time fav song (which will be my lil secret first heh) but,,, idk if its the mercury retrograde effect lol but i thought i wanted to do smth more raw this time? unpolished. heartfelt. not too high effort & processed. ig i want it to be a reflection of one of my wishes for myself as i turn another year older: that i allow myself to do more things even without thinking abt them too much that i get paralyzed

☆ SPEAK NOW TV ON JULY 7TH HELLO????? im so excited for every track even the ones from the vault goddddd but probably long live especially 🥺

☆ ate my fav famous bowl fully loaded meal & turon !!!!!

☆ found & saved a bunch of new songs from clara benins small town song radio. fav from those is nikis backburner <3 maybe im just not better than this, i havent tried. maybe lifes less romantic when i dont wanna die

i have to be somewhere in 6 hours. i slep

[naggingatlas]

idk if anyone will see this but MY ULTIMATE GUIDE TO SPARK is:

⭐⭐🎪⭐⭐ ROUND ONE

stej 1 longplay (there r level by level and seamless ones) / playing the game but don't feel bad if you need to quit on the last levels the difficulty spike is. eh. there's also a quality of life mod for it in the works! it's called recharged :) <- u can download it already

u can also switch the controls by pressing ctrl+y

also available in stream flavor if u need someone to ramble over a game: a merry gentleman who really enjoys the soundtrack and does NOT understand the sacred value of knight hat, and this depressed fox-thing who keeps buzzing his ass on everything (a two-parter) 1️⃣1️⃣1️⃣ and 2️⃣2️⃣2️⃣. we're not jermaing here unfortunately, so i prefer longplay commentary w friends and just. pausing when u can't read as fast. guaranteed to have that overhaul thingy tho.

fark's story!!! yes it's non canon but!!!! eughuehuhgh!!!!!

it's the hardmode of this game so if you're not into that it might not be super accessible, but is an interesting look into the character of fark felipe had been working with at the time and how the community saw him. as fark appreciator #1 - is required reading.

if youre not ENAMORED! with the footage being mostly just "stej1 levels but w FAAAAARK", you can just press forward until something catches your eye, the levels r the same rly. it's really quiet. it's the one where the robot gets the nightmares.

prolly the sluggiest part of ur journey tho

also available in both commentary and shutthefuckup flavors.

fark moves in w spark in it btw. ⭐

⭐⭐🤖⭐⭐ ROUND TWO

for stej 2 it's either cutscenes + playing the levels yourself in 3 - their reworks were added as a free dlc - or just watching a full longplay.

not worth the time and brain cell cringe investment at the familiarization stage. but if you go into it with the full knowledge that it's going to be GOOFY, the cutscenes do their job - i laugh my ass off at the 3 microframes of armstrong being carried away by ej at the start of it. get a beer n some chips dude.

tho imo? auntie yasha opinion? just do the cutscenes and then, after you're done with everything, play the levels in 3's rendition as like a throwback. you'll love it much more this way i think. honestly that's the whole deal w 2, it's a shitty itchy sweater made by yo ma when she was just learning to knit but you wear it to keep the memory of that time alive yknow. gotta give her credit for starting somewhere.

if you do play it the floppy discs contain concept art n stuff but u can find that online obv

⭐⭐🍔⭐⭐ FINAL LOOP

stej 3 you just buy it you play that shit that's it. ok or watch a longplay (this one has timestamps just don't. like. accidentally take a peek at the later timestamps ok you got me buddy you hear me. ok. thanks). but yea.

if u got a pc just buy the game oh my god buy this game play it i've written and screamed and chewed a hole in my red skull chewtoy over this game so many times me n my niece could open a university course on it.

play it however u want (only advice is try to get as many completion (not exploration!) medals in the levels as u can. or don't if ur hardcore like that.) just one rule - normal platforming difficulty and no spoilers absolutely none.

btw don't worry abt the gamepad thing felipe jumpscares you with at the start i honestly prefer keyboard n mouse in it <- filthy tf2 player who has the medicmain strafing spasms so ingrained in her hands she did them mid air for the first 3 hours.

and that's pretty much it! you're free to roam afterwards. join the official discord server, read up on the wiki, watch lakefeperd's (that's felipe! that's the mom!) dev streams (Goofy. the story beats r so off in the final material every time i love this guy. leather jacket indoors in the brazilian heat. ah), check the twitter n tumblr tags, watch speedruns, miserably try to recreate speedrun tech, do an endless dive stream with buds cheering you on, watch essays about out of bounds in games and cry, you'll figure it out. and then after you have 50 hours in 1 and 3 and are starved and emaciated you may go play stej2. maybe.

tl;dr ⭐🍔🤖🎪

stej 1 longplay/play the game. ||| level by level playlist / seamless playthrough / stream 1 / stream 2 part uno + part dos /// quality of life mod

buy stej 3

stej 2 cutscenes + play the ported levels in 3. if step two skipped - full playthrough. ||| cutscenes / longplay

play stej 3 with no spoilers whatsoever. if not possible - longplay and don't you dare move your cursor or fat sleazy finger ahead of where you currently are. ||| longplay

🌽 also if u just wanna try the games out and are stingy w your money i can always provide a torrent link via dms. that's how i got familiar with them and then decided to support the author :]

as always, best enjoyed in the company of mocking friends

and thank you @starfall-isle for inviting so many people into this cozy, dark, but ventilated hole . godspeed.

do you have any recommendations on where to start with Spark the Electric Jester? is it worth starting from the very beginning, or can you jump in at the newest game and still get the full experience? thanks! (I have an undying need to get into this fandom now and it's your fault)

I would personally recommend starting with the first game yeah! It’s much less plotline driven, but it’s a very good introduction to the characters and tone of the series. +it is so fun and has a stellar soundtrack. It’s a little difficult to find many longplays for the first game though, most of the ones I found were before the game had a big overhaul and dialogue update and a lot of the time people jumped through the text boxes too fast for me to keep up with lol. (If u have a computer all the games are on steam! 1st is pretty cheap.) The second game also acts a bit like a prelude to the 3rd so i would also recommend that one, but tonally it feels a bit different to the other two which is partially why I think the first is a good starting point! Hope you enjoy them ^^

[kallikrein]

SWEET FAVOR

— in which imaushi wakasa treats himself with a snack.

genre. smut. MDNI.

contains. fem!reader, uhh explicit content (help idrk what to tag lol) and not proofread.

word count. 1.1k.

note. this is just supposed to be a timestamp but it reached a thousand words so... haha. welp, here’s my first fic of the year. it’s a thirst lmfksksks. might edit this later. idk.

Wakasa must have something inside his mouth at all times. May it be a sweet rice cake, a hard lollipop, or the straw to his drink that always ends up looking like it has been chewed by a dog.

He needs to keep his mouth preoccupied. Or hell, amongst other barbaric tragedies, would unleash on the very earth he walks upon.

So it has become a habit for the two of you whenever alone together that he would place his mouth somewhere on your skin: on your fingertips, the delicate back of your hand, the silkiness of your temples.

He would, without fail, keep them there, inhale the blissful scent you harbour that he found so soothing, and purse his lips after some time to plant a tiny kiss on the side of your head.

He would always trail those warm lips down to your ear, slowly caressing your lobe with a heavy breath before taking it between his teeth, nibbling on the lug like it’s the perfect snack to treat himself with. Upon sensing your shiver, his tongue would dart out, licking a stripe on the inner shell of your ear to create goosebumps that ran along the expanse of your forearms.

Your lips parted slightly, a wordless message that you welcome his inviting actions — how your one hand nimbly wrapped around the back of his head to guide him further on the enticing skin of your neck.

He’d hear his name come out breathlessly from your lips when he bit the sensitive spot he so dearly adores to abuse, bruising the skin until it’s all red and splotchy, marking what is clearly his — and only his. “Waka,” you would murmur and it’s all he ever wanted to hear.

Wakasa traced down the fine column of your throat, tongue poking out every now and then, teasing you what he could be doing to your other areas instead. However, he didn’t want to stop taunting you just yet. He was still having fun being coy. Your little gasps, the squirmish moves that your hips make alongside the grip you have on his colored streak hair getting tauter and harsher, he wanted to make you feel loved by his mouth alone.

He then dipped low into the collar of your shirt, calloused hands headed for the mounds he never ever wanted to let go, fixing his parted lips right above your clothed nipple. His palms pawed skillfully at your breasts, pushing them upwards as though it’s the only bra you would ever need before rolling the pink muscle that was his tongue on your pert, unattended nipple.

The reaction you let out made him keen in an instant, going straight to the appendage between his legs, hardening and throbbing to be relieved by you. His mouth hungrily closed in on the bud, wetting your shirt — his shirt in the process, watching you mewl and trying to contain your squeals with one hand.

He’d move to the other side, feasting on your clad breast just like he did with the previous one. His right hand softly stroking your tummy down to your navel, and beginning to undone the button of your pants.

He slowly smiled against your chest when you shimmied the obstructive thing away, a bit shy when speaking but your actions were undeniably hurried. “You want this so bad, huh?”

Although seeing you nod, helplessly as he must say, the once provoking grin he has turned into a searing look of need. Amethyst eyes flaring with heavy-lidded desire whilst the evident arousal he has in his pants got even harder and all the more painful. He didn’t think twice, he knelt down before you like a servant preaching his goddess, spreading your legs wide open as a wet patch of your heat became the sole thing he focused on.

Wakasa’s mouth immediately salivated, planting harsh bites on your inner thighs with his tongue soothing the painful sting right after. He could smell your own slick, your own need, dripping down the sofa you were arousingly perched on. He could even taste it in his tongue, running down through his throat. He could just dive right in, but he wanted to hear you say it first — needed for you to demand him to eat your pretty pussy out.

“What do you want, Princess?”

Instead of proper words, he only heard a whimper. Your hand pressing his head closer to your core, trying to get him to do his job even though he’s utmost willing. He deemed he should be renounced as a saint for trying not to indulge into your wild temptation, cooing his own words of encouragement against your skin, breathing them right where you need him the most, “Say it.”

“I- I want your tongue inside of me.”

There, and Wakasa didn’t waste a second anymore. Giving your clit its much needed lick, he did it over and over until you’re tugging at his scalp, legs twitching by the sides of his face as he laps up rather greedily at your soppy lips. He took your little sensitive nub to his mouth, sucking it in whilst he closely watched how you threw your head back moaning, and your beautiful eyes squeezed shut tight from pleasure.

He slithered his tongue between your folds, observing how your voice became an octave higher, keeping him in his place with both of your hands as you rolled your hips against his face, gasping his name weakly again and again, yet riding his face with much enthusiasm.

He could only grunt whilst his tongue and lips do its job, his bright eyes memorizing every curve and gyrate that your body deliciously makes. He even traced letters of his name on your needy hole, watching you tremble each time he finished one — so much that he could also feel himself wetting his own pants.

The sticky leaks of his own arousal made his mouth move rougher, teetering you over the satisfying edge he loves to orchestrate and push you over. He groans whenever you whine a ‘please’ or ‘fuck’, but nothing could be better than his name being moaned by his perfect, pretty girl who’s right now very much desperate for some sort of release.

Seeing how you’re all teary-eyed from his ministrations, Wakasa reached for your spot — the spot where you never fail to whimper, twitch uncontrollably whilst sobbing his name, and feeling the tight coil in your tummy that he slowly built becomes freely unraveled.

And he would just watch you become limp from euphoria, catching your breath, and reaching for him to give him a grateful, well-pleased kiss. “Good?” He’d ask. Determined, lilac orbs burning holes through your blissed out face, and still keeping his mouth preoccupied, kissing your lips oh so tenderly, even though he just tasted you. “Is it my turn now?”

taglist. @sugokawata, @baji-san, @gwynsapphire, @eriskaitto and @manjiroarchiviste.

[mingkii]

{4:29}

Warnings: cheating au (I'm sorry jahsjdj)

A/n: idk, i feel like this is juyeon and y/n's like break up story in winter nights. Not meant to be a long timestamp, it's literally about to be 5am hhhh.

The droplets of rain dripping from outside of the window. The cold breeze seeping through the cracks of the house making the atmosphere perfect for blanket cuddles in bed. Though, today wasn't really the best day.

You paced around in your room waiting for your boyfriend to get home. Biting the skin on your thumb with anxiety running through your skin. What happened to make you feel this way? That's what juyeon needed to explain.

The door unlocked making your ears perk up. He's here, your mind goes into shambles thinking of what to say to him. Your heart was beating faster and faster until....

"Hey baby, what happened?"

God that made you wanna throw up. The name, the look on his face, the tone in his voice. It's all an act, a game, that he enjoys playing on you. You almost want your anger to take over but the affection you have left for him managed to overcome it.

You looked like you were about to break down so juyeon ran in and held you. Held you like you were gonna disappear. You wanted to push away but you didn't want to. His warmth, his scent, his heart beating in his chest. Your arms hesitated to wrap around his neck. Your body clung onto his, his clothes damp, probably had to run through the rain.

You wanted to cry but nothing was coming out. "Can you tell me what happened?" He held your head in his hands, softly caressing your cheeks. His eyes held sincerity but your heart ached even more. Was it real?

You swallowed the lump in your throat, you couldn't tell him. It hurts just trying to think about it. "What day is it today juyeon?" You finally let out. His brows furrowed, looking at the calendar at the corner of the room.

Anniversary

His eyes widen, "Oh my god, I am so sorry baby," he held you in his arms again. Even tighter than before. "I swear I had it on mind, I— I guess it just slipped out? I am so sorry," he choked.

You were always so good at acting lee juyeon. You didn't even bother hugging him back, a cold look on your face soon replace the heart broken feeling. "What if i take you out somewhere this weekend? I'm free that time?" He pulled apart, looking at your eyes.

"I-its fine juyeon, can we just go to bed, I'm tired," you said plainly. It drained you, today was a lot to take in. "Sure sure," not bothering to take off his wet clothes, he got in bed beside you. He pulled you into his arms, tucking the blanket over you. Did he always feel this cold?

You head laid on his chest, hearing the soft beating of his heart. Just like the first few weeks of dating. When his eyes still looked at you like you meant the whole world to him, when he was so into you he couldn't let you go out of his sight for more than a minute, when you two were so madly in love with each other.

What really happened?

You didn't know either. Was it the busy schedules both of you had after college? Did you fall out of love? So many possibilities you didn't really understand. But he did had the time to text another girl behind your back, his old "friend" from school. You knew something was up when he started smiling so brightly looking at his phone, texting someone out of the blue. Every day and night.

Did he think you wouldn't catch him? Surely he was mistaken, and right on your anniversary. What a nice present, it made you wanna break him like he broke you. But you still felt something for him. Why? He broke your heart, you still want to be with him? You knew your conscience wouldn't let you do that, you gave yourself a pity moment. Just one last time.

You didn't want to cry, so you just let yourself fall asleep in his arms, thinking about how this'll be the last time you'll ever do.

[threecrowsinatrenchcoat]

Paint My Spirit Gold

Dukeceit Week Day 2: Green/Yellow

Fans of the YouTubers "Deceit" and Remus "The Duke" Sanders start to suspect that maybe, just maybe, the two of them are more than simple internet pals.

AO3 Link: [here]

Word Count: 2187

Warnings: n/a

@dukeceitweek <3

-

[ID: A screenshot of a Twitter post by user @CallMeDukie. It features a watercolor-style painting of a snake. The snake appears to be made of melting chocolate, and there is a large bite taken out of its tail. Cherries and jam are leaking out of the snake at the bite wound. The snake's expression of horror is overly-exaggerated to the point of comedy. The caption reads: "liked your snake boi, @SerpenThyme. thanks for the inspo." /end ID]

- 

A notification ding cut Janus off mid-sentence. 

“Wow, someone left their cell phone on, so professional,” he said, giving the camera a dramatic eye roll. That someone was him, of course, because he was the only one in the apartment- just him and the running livestream- but that was no excuse not to be a drama queen about it. He finished wiping flour off his hands and grabbed his phone to silence it; but the notification made him pause. He flicked his eyes up toward the camera and gave a slight smirk.

“My goodness, I’m famous,” he drawled. “The Duke himself has graced little old me with some fan art.”

Most of the comments in the chat wanted him to show it, so Janus opened up Twitter to see the full post he’d been tagged in. It was a watercolor painting of the coiled-snake chocolate sculpture- lovingly named Jake by his viewers- he’d made for his YouTube video last week; it was wearing an expression of such comedic horror that Janus had to stifle a laugh. He flicked his phone screen toward the close-up camera on his counter so his viewers could see.

“How kind of you, Remus,” he said. “All of you should go scold him for what he’s done to poor Jake here.”

Most of his viewers would know he was joking- after all, they were the ones to nickname him Deceit when he provided neither a real or fake name for his online persona. They knew full well what he was like by now.

The oven timer dinged. Janus silenced his phone and set it aside.

“And our first batch of cookies is done. You know, why don’t we show the Duke some appreciation?”

-

[ID: An Instagram post by user @SerpenThyme. The photo is an artistically-framed shot of a stack of sugar cookies with green, yellow, and pink icing. Propped up against the stack is another cookie, with an intricate icing-drawing of an octopus. The photo appears to have been color corrected to have high contrast, low saturation, and a dark vignette at the edges. The Instagram user @OctoDukie is tagged. No caption. /end ID]

- 

“You know, I have often been accused of actually being a little old lady, what with my fondness for knitted jumpers, rocking chairs, and incredibly fucked up murder mystery books. Today I am doing nothing to dispel this accusation, by making soup.”

The studio was dark and empty aside from Remus' workspace. Everyone else had left long ago, even his own brother, which meant that it was officially ass-o'clock in the morning (or, as most people called it, somewhere between 1 and 2 a.m.) But Remus was stuck in hyperfocus, honed in on putting the last touches on a commission that he'd been putting off for weeks. It's not that it was a tough painting- once he'd gotten started, it was actually a very creatively satisfying piece- but man, executive dysfunction could go suck a dick

“French onion soup, specifically. Because while I do like to pretend I am a classy bitch, I am also, regrettably, a lazy bitch with a distaste for anything that takes longer than one bottle of wine to make.”

Remus hated working in silence. It was stifling, almost suffocating. His brain needed noise like his lungs needed air. So when the studio had grown still and silent, Remus had flipped open his laptop and queued up some YouTube videos. 

“So we have here three pounds of onions that we need to slice up, pole to pole. You’re going to cry no matter what, so if you have any memories you’ve been repressing since middle school, now is an excellent time to dredge those up.” 

And if it happened to be 90% SerpenThyme videos, well. Sue him. 

“Now the first rule of caramelizing onions: fast and sloppy is always better than slow and thorough… at least, that’s what every man I’ve ever slept with tells me.”

Remus choked and glanced over to his laptop screen just in time to catch Deceit's trademark smirk directed at the audience just for a moment. It was the deadpan delivery that always got him. Remus could barely hold onto a joke long enough to get through it without cackling mid-punchline, but this fucker could say the funniest shit like an off-hand comment. 

He wiped his hands off on his jeans (what use were clothes if you couldn't use them as paint rags?) and pulled his laptop across the table.  He typed out a quick comment, citing the timestamp of the joke, and after it was posted, he shut his laptop. 

'Cause ass-o'clock was short for "get-your-ass-home-or-I’ll-kick-it" o'clock. 

-

[ID: A screenshot of a YouTube comments section. The first comment is by user TheDuke, and reads: "10:42 wow, rude." The second comment is a reply by user SerpenThyme, and simply reads ";)" /end ID]

-

Janus plopped down on the couch with a slight groan. He didn’t need to stream today, but he really hated missing days. Besides… he was fine. Really. 

He adjusted the camera until he was happy with the framing, and then checked the settings on his streaming software. Satisfied, he started the stream, and watched as his usual viewers rolled in. 

“What do you mean I’m not in my kitchen?” Janus drawled, addressing the chat. He glanced around with an expression of faux-shock on his face. “My goodness, when did that happen?”

He chuckled, and then gestured to his surroundings. “Yes, we are in my living room today. If you must know, my closest and most trusted friend tried to murder me today- yes, Virgil, it was attempted murder and nothing less- and I survived with nary a scratch… and a broken foot, but that is beside the point. Anyway, I’m not allowed to stand for long periods of time, and I may or may not be somewhat inebriated by pain pills and couldn’t stand even if I wanted to. So we are cooking from my couch today.”

Janus paused for a few moments to read the chat messages as they popped up. A few get well soon’s, a few theories about the “attempted murder,” Virgil- who moderated his chat for him- vehemently denying the “attempted murder” but otherwise refusing to clarify the event, and a large volume of wtf why are you streaming today, take care of yourself comments, which made him smile. But one particular comment caught his eye, almost lost amid the torrent of an active chat: wait this kinda looks like the Duke’s living room?

“Oh, VampSuga,” he said, addressing that commenter in particular with a slight smirk. “I haven’t the faintest idea what you’re talking about. Anyway, since I can’t reach my oven from here, I thought some no-bake cookies were in order. For these you will need-”

-

[ID: A screenshot of a Discord conversation. The text reads:

“VampSuga: Ok ok hear me out. Dukeceit. 

Starstruck96: who?

IneffableSnek: lmao

FeralBeauYasha: lol

VampSuga: Deceit and Remus Sanders! They’re totally dating. I will die on this hill. 

FeralBeauYasha: Isn’t the duke w/ PatPat?

IneffableSnek: no thats his brothers bf

FeralBeauYasha: ohh

VampSuga: Did anyone see Deceit’s stream today? I swear that’s the Duke’s livingroom. 

StarStruck96: idk that seems like a stretch

IneffableSnek: no wait i kno what u mean

IneffableSnek: im watching the duke’s old videos and that one where he shows off all his old weapons he’s in a living room kinda like deceit’s 

FeralBeauYasha: They were acting all cute on twitter too

VampSuga: DUKECEIT”  /end ID]

-

"Hey guys, been a while since you've seen my face and not just whatever my hands are busy with, when it's within YouTube's terms and conditions I mean. They used to be way more lenient…" Remus trailed off for a moment, then shook his head sharply and plastered on a grin. 

"Anyway! In June me and a few other creators did a fundraiser for the Trevor Project, and y'all smashed the goal, so I let you decide what video I'd make this month." He paused, and gestured to the mountain of clothes piled behind him on the bed. "And you had so many juicy ideas to choose from, but you decided to dress me up like a Barbie instead."

Remus paused to scroll through his phone for a few moments. "Ah, ok, here we go. Twitter user YoonIsMyCat- oh, BTS, nice- sent in this first outfit. Uh… future Remus, put up the post here somewhere." He gestured vaguely to his right. "Y'all went with either a fuckton more clothes or a fuckton less clothes, which I respect. Apparently this outfit is called…” He squinted at his phone. “Amish chic? I take it back, no respect at all.”

Remus cycled through the outfits his viewers sent in, which ranged from the aforementioned “Amish chic” to “2008 rave attire” to “ok now you guys are just fucking with me” (which consisted of one of those big puffy snow coats, lime green in color; booty shorts with the shrug text emoji across the ass; fuzzy pink boots; and a yellow cowboy hat to top off the whole thing. It was awful. Remus loved it.) The mountain of clothes on the bed gradually became a mess of clothes spread across the floor instead, until there was just one outfit left. 

“Ok so Twitter user VampSuga sent me this outfit that I’m gonna call ‘sexy librarian.’ I couldn’t find this exact sweater online, but-” he paused for dramatic effect, before brandishing a sweater toward the camera like a bullfighter. “My boyfriend had something that was close enough.”

Remus hopped up from the bed and switched off the camera so he could change.

“They’re going to lose their minds,” a voice drawled from the doorway. Remus threw his shirt at him.

“Shoo, I’m getting naked.”

-

[ID: A Twitter post by user @CallMeDukie. It features a selfie of YouTuber Remus “The Duke” Sanders, a Hispanic man with his hair dyed green and styled into a spiked mohawk. He is wearing a yellow knitted cardigan over a black button-up shirt. He is grinning widely at the camera. The caption reads: “my viewers pick my outfits! now live on youtube. go see what i look like as a sexy librarian!” /end ID]

-

DukeceitStan

first and only dukeceit shipper ig

DukeceitStan

wow there’s so many of you now! Hi!!

DukeceitStan

i want this to be canon so bad omg

DukeceitStan

i mean just look

[image]

how 

[image]

cute

[image]

[ID: A series of three gifs featuring Youtubers SerpenThyme, aka Deceit, and TheDuke, aka Remus Sanders. Deceit is a black man with long, dreadlocked hair, and vitiligo patches along the left side of his face. Remus is a Hispanic man with green-dyed hair styled into a mohawk, many ear and facial piercings, and tattoos covering both arms. Each gif is edited so that the highlights are tinged yellow when Deceit is seen, and tinged green when Remus is seen.

The first gif depicts a close-up shot of Deceit’s hands as he carefully decorates a cookie with green and yellow icing. The cookie art he is working on appears to be a half-finished octopus. The gif then fades into a mid-shot of Remus, with his back to the camera, facing a canvas. The canvas is blank, and Remus appears to be laying out paints on a table to his left. 

The second gif depicts Deceit seated at his couch, facing the camera. He has many ingredients spread across his coffee table (including oats, cocoa powder, and butter) and appears to be in the process of laying out several more. The gif fades to show Remus seated at a similar couch with a similar coffee table in front of him. The camera is angled slightly downward to better show the myriad of knives spread out across the table. Remus is gesturing wildly with a morning star held in his hand. 

The third gif depicts Deceit in his kitchen. He is pulling on a bright, yellow knitted cardigan, and smirking toward the camera. The gif fades to show Remus in his bedroom, seated on his bed. He is holding up a similar-looking cardigan toward the camera and grinning. /end ID]

- 

“Remus, it’s almost two in the morning. Come to bed.”

“I’m coming, sorry. Twitter distracted me.”

“Mm. I can’t believe the bird app is more distracting than I am.”

“You should try harder.”

“Come to bed and maybe I will.”

“Ok, ok, I’m coming. Hang on though, is it cool if I post this?”

“Sure. They figured it out anyway.”

“Sweet. Ok, Jannie, I’m coming.”

-

[ID: A screenshot of a Twitter post by user @CallMeDukie. It reads: “Dukeceit is canon.” /end ID]