#if ya roman anyway.

[catsconflictscopicsandchamomile]

Hey. Ares. Dipshit.

that's not your coat

that's not your FUCKING coat

you stole that. and now you're going to give it to me.

and then you're going to tell me where he is and what you've done with him

and maybe, JUST MAYBE

I'll consider not pounding you into a grease stain on the sand

how many parts of your human form can I remove before the rest of you dissolves back to Olympos?

*flips open pocketknife* ...I'm willing to find out.

[theoldkyokodied]

One wedding and three funerals

Background paintings under the cut

[windydesertart]

IANVS

● insta, prints, et cetera  ●  

[aquickstart]

I simply must tell you that you’re doing more effective marketing for Saltburn than any ad or preview ever could I’m fully about to go see it just to understand your hype

PLSSS this is the SINGLE best thing you can say to me about any of my hyperfixations. i am so so glad. so glad so happy. i genuinely hope you enjoy this freaky beautiful genius piece of a cinematic masterpiece. i truly genuinely do

[constantvariations]

Got to the part where Roman and Neo properly meet and I swear to ass if they go for a romantic angle with these two, I will vomit

[greenninjagal-blog]

Screaming Six Feet Under (ch2)

2 years ago I started a story about Virgil being kidnapped by a serial killer. Now I bring you the next chapter!

Summary: FBI Logan Ackroyd is chasing after a serial killer, but... why does he feel like he’s already failed to save the latest victim?

Words: 10292

Quick Taglist: @alias290 @chelsvans @coyboi300 @dwbh888 @glitchybina @faithfulcat111 @felicianoromano  @holliberries @jemthebookworm @killerfangirl3 @mrbubbajones @musical-nerd18 @nonasficcollection @penguins-penguins @stricken-with-clairvoyancy @the-sunshine-dims @themagicheartmailman @thenaiads @treasureofpriam @vianadraws     

Read on A03 || My General Writing Masterlist

“This place?” Remy Alyan asks. “You sure, babes?”

Logan’s nose twitches as Remy comes around the hood to stand next to him while clicking the button on his keychain that activates the locking mechanism in the car with a chirp. He’s still wearing sunglasses- those ridiculous, unprofessional aviators- despite the fact that it’s overcast and showing signs of quickly becoming a rainy day, and he’s finishing some caramel iced coffee concoction topped with so much whipped cream that the globs of it had overflowed the dome lid and he’d had to lick it off while navigating the mid afternoon traffic.

Logan does not believe in miracles, but he finds himself wondering every day how Remy has not managed to get himself brutally murdered in a horrific accident that would have been completely avoidable if he’d just had one single ounce of self control.

“Yes,” He says, in response to Remy’s unnecessary question. Logan would not have directed them to the wrong building. Not when time was of the essence now and he had wasted three hours with the less-than-helpful landlady who refused to come out here and then instead mailed him the keys to the building which had taken three more days to arrive. 

Remy swirls the dregs of his drink in thought-- or at least Logan hopes it’s in thought. Sometimes he can’t tell if Remy actually thinks at all. He has a table in the back of his pocket notebook where he complies evidence for and against the argument: he was thinking when he managed identify the serial bank robbers they were chasing after, but he most definitely was not thinking when he announced that information to Logan as he was cashing a check and the bank robbers were directly behind them.

“Woulda thought that the heir to a billion dollar corporation would have picked a place a little less….” Remy says, “...ravaged.”

“He’s not the heir,” Logan responds, starting for the door to the apartment complex. “Come on, if this is a lead, we’ve already wasted enough time.”

He hears Remy hum something under his breath, a mutter that could have been anything from a complaint to a prayer, but by the time that Logan reached the green faded door Remy was right behind him again, eyeing the sidewalk and surrounding buildings like he was expecting them both to be gunned down and wanted to protect Logan until he could make it into the building.

Which, Logan thinks, should not have his heart fluttering. It’s utterly ridiculous: both the notion of them being gunned down in this neighborhood and the idea that Remy is doing anything that he wouldn’t do for any other member of the FBI. It doesn’t matter if it’s Logan inserting the key the landlady had given them, or if it was Kai, or Mitchell, or Elliot; Remy would have all their backs because that is who Remy is and Logan would do much better remembering that at his age.

Inside the building is just as dismal as the outside appearance, which Logan is not exactly surprised about. He’d shown up at the landlady’s house waving his badge and the woman had barely looked away from her TV. If a literal FBI investigation couldn’t get her attention, he doubted that the complaints of her tenants rated very high on her To-Do list. There’s an elevator but Logan and Remy share a single look and both head for the creaking wooden stairs instead. 

They pass a few people in the narrowness: a woman with her teenage daughter, a young man on the phone, a few kids laughing at a joke and who stare after Remy with ogling eyes that makes Remy wink at them despite Remy being twice their ages. Logan tugs him by his sleeve up another flight before he can stop to chat while he’s on the clock, as helpful as any information gleaned about the person they're about to visit might be.

“You think there’s any reality where this is a totally unrelated thing?” Remy asks, conversationally, using the railing to help him up another step.

Logan crinkles his nose. 

Remy snorts, teasing his straw between his teeth. “Yeah,” he says, like Logan had humored him with an actual answer. “I thought as much, too.”

“You’re welcome to stay in the car,” Logan says, and it’s not… he doesn’t mean it to come out as cold as it does. Remy stutter-steps so quickly Logan almost misses it entirely, but the other man covers it up quickly with faux laughter and a smile that he’s practiced in every mirrored surface he’s come across. 

“What, and leave you to do all the work?” Remy swirls his drink in the air and darts forward  the last several steps ahead of Logan. Their arms brush in the movement and Logan’s whole limb tingles in a way it definitely should not. Remy turns back to face him, offering a honey-sweet grin, and Logan stops two steps short of him. He can’t see Remy’s eyes because of the glasses, but he imagines the deep coffee brown of them are harboring the mist of memories he prefers to pretend don’t exist.

Logan is acutely aware that he never liked coffee before he met Remy, that he never paid attention to the amount of sugar and cream he takes until Remy was asking what he wanted because he was stopping at a place before work, that he never appreciated the bitter taste or the short bursts of energy it gave until he was sitting at his desk beside Remy at three in the morning finishing that paperwork in a comfortable silence. He knows that the smell should have made him nauseous, but whenever he’s close to Remy he finds the scent of roasted beans comforting and real and familiar. He knows he needs to stop taking these facts of his and shoving them in a box in the back of his mind to deal with never, but for now he counts the inches between them, inhales the aroma of coffee, and thinks of those allusive brown irises he’s only gotten to see thrice before.

“You can handle the kid,” Remy says, because he’s not the one distracted by eyes of all things. “I’ll go routing through the bedrooms and find all the fun stuff, okay babes?”

He leans back and pushes open the door before Logan can remind him that Remy doesn’t have the authority to make those calls between the two of them. 

If it were anyone else…

Logan sighs to himself and follows after his partner. The third floor of the apartment building is decent, the floorboards creak and it’s more narrow than Logan would have settled for in an optimal location for a home. They can hear bits and pieces of the separate lives behind the doors as they walk towards the door they need: music playing, kids screeching, the hum of an extremely loud vacuum, laughter, loud arguments--

Remy jerks his head towards their target, where there’s nothing but cold empty silence behind it. Logan rolls his shoulders, steps up to the door, and knocks thrice on it.

“Ekans residency?” Logan Ackroyd asks the moment that the door opens. He’s wrong, of course; the apartment, even on the lease, is still Ekans and Storm, and still effective until next week. Logan had learned early on that getting one fact wrong about the case could tell a lot about the people he was dealing with. 

The person at the door is Janus Dante Ethan Ekans, who looks less like his yearbook photo than Logan would have thought he might: where the file has him with bright golden hair and a dangerously coy smirk, the real thing has dyed black stripes along his layers and a weary expression that makes him appear several years older than he actually is. There are shadows under his eyes that speak to his recent lack of sleep, and a hollowness to his face that whispers of his new diet of just not eating things.

Logan also guesses that he’s wearing the same outfit that he has for the past three days, based on the wrinkles and the casualness of it. His cheeks are a light pink, still raw from tears, which Logan would have thought he’d stop shedding by now. Curious. 

“It’s Ekans and Storm,” Ekans says in a tone that Logan believes is supposed to be haughty but it comes out as more tired. “What do you want?”

Behind Logan he can hear his partner slurp on the last dregs of his whipped cream monstrosity, and he does his best to keep his face clear of his personal annoyance. He holds up his badge for the young man in the doorway to see and hopes that Remy is doing the same, so that they might appear at least a little coordinated.

“FBI, wow,” Ekans says unimpressed. He leans against the door as if to hide his exhaustion but it only furthers Logan’s assessment of him: he hasn’t been sleeping, barely been functioning since the start of the process. “What can I do for you, agents?”

The politeness is fake. Their presence makes him upset. Although Logan thinks if they traded proverbial shoes, he would also be upset at the FBIs presence at his door slightly after four in the afternoon on a Saturday.

“I'm Agent Ackroyd and this is my partner Agent Alyan. We have some questions regarding the Missing Person’s report you filed. I was wondering if we might come in for a moment,” Logan says.

Ekans snorts, “What, you think I tied him up and am keeping him under my bed as we speak?”

Remy shifts to lower his aviators and look the guy over. “Babes, I don’t think you could keep a pet rock under your bed right now, with how little you’ve been taking care of yourself.” Ekans stiffens and glares at him, but Remy just swishes his empty plastic cup and straw at him. “Come on, cutie. Let’s have a little talk.”

Logan wants to be infuriated with his lack of professionalism, but Remy just has that magic touch. He can see the moment that Ekans gives in, where he accepts that they aren’t going to go away and let him be miserable in peace, the way his guarded expression flickers and gives hints of the hurricane of anger-fear-worry. Ekans stands back in the hall and opens the door for them to come in.

Perhaps that is why he and Remy have been paired together so often, Logan muses to himself. His own steady adherence to the rules makes him unapproachable to the common person and Remy’s utter inability to hold himself accountable makes him dismissible to their superiors. Together they managed to work out a balance, a Rosetta Stone of sorts: They learned enough of each other’s languages to be interpreters in their respective worlds.

Logan wonders if he will ever stop feeling like an alien race when talking to Remy. Three years sounds like a long time in theory, but Logan still finds Remy entirely perplexing.

The inside of the apartment is tidy and neat. Logan can appreciate the calming pale tones of the walls and the order of the place even if it makes it appear as if it hasn’t been lived in at all. There are picture hooks in the front hall but no pictures in sight, the front closet is partially open and has too many hangers for the two jackets hanging in it. Ekans closes the door behind them before herding them further in.

It’s a nice apartment. At least, it’s nicer than Logan had had when he was in his last year of college: the kitchen has a stove, a sink, a refrigerator and a microwave. The counter has a coffee machine that has seen better days and a toaster that Logan doubts is up to fire code. The sink is full of dirty dishes, and there are sticky notes on the fridge door and a few that have fallen to the ground, a single cabinet is still open showing an empty pantry except for what looks like a generic store brand of granola. But there’s no sign of pests or leakage and that in itself makes it better than what Logan had ever had in college. Past the kitchen is a long hall with a door on either side and ending in what Logan assumes is a bathroom.

More presently, Ekans points them to the living room. There’s a grey sofa that doubles as a pull out bed facing a TV that has the news playing at a volume so low it might as well have been muted. There are a handful of blankets thrown in a mess on one end of the couch, with a pillow on the other and an empty bowl on the coffee table next to three separate mugs with varying levels of tea in them that don’t look like they’ve been touched in a while. There’s an empty vodka bottle hiding around the foot of the couch, just out of sight and it’s gone entirely when Ekans manages a flick of his toe. There are three separate bookshelves in the room, filled with novels and manuscripts and binders marked in the same penmanship and Remy gravitates towards them immediately without more than a glance towards Logan, flicking his aviator glasses up to settle in his dusty blond curls. His hand goes out to rub on the spines of a few of the novels, but--

“Don’t,” Ekans says almost desperately and Remy tosses a casual look back at him with a questioning raised eyebrow, and in the same motion he flicks the glasses back over his eyes. 

“These yours, babe?”

Ekans’s nose crinkles before he can smooth out his expression. His eyes flick towards Logan, like he’s calculating how much information he is willing to give up. Curious, yet again. Logan expected it, predicted it really, from the files they had on Ekans and his short yet considerably reckless run-ins with the police as a younger man.

“No, they’re Virgil’s,” Ekans says finally, with a sour note in his tone. “He doesn’t like anyone touching them.” He picks up a blanket from the couch and folds it in half and then in half again just to have something to do with his hands. “His room is the door on the left.” 

Remy glances towards Logan, and he nods. The other man slips back from the bookshelf and heads in the direction that Ekans had pointed out, pausing only when Ekans snakes an arm out and snags Remy’s upper arm, to hold him in place and letting the blanket in his other hand drop unceremoniously to the floor. 

Remy’s eyes flick from the grip to Ekans’s face. “Problem?”

“Cup,” Ekans says shortly.

The plastic coffee cup with the straw hovers in Remy’s hand, looking mostly like Remy himself had forgotten he was holding it. Logan recalls dozens of crime scenes where he had picked up after the other man, who tended to leave his cups on desk, tables, the floors, and even once in an unlit fireplace while he was investigating a lead-- on two separate occasions he’s had to stop one of the forensic scientists from collecting it as part of the evidence. 

Still Remy with coffee was better than a Remy without: he was surly when he didn’t have caffeine, prone to headaches, and got reckless with his decisions. Logan tolerates his atrocious habits in the name of keeping the sanity of everyone else, and has long since decided he isn’t thanked enough for it.

Neither of Ekans nor Remy says anything for a solid minute; Logan waits quietly as they talk with everything but words. A tilt of Remy’s head, a flick of Ekans’s lips, a shift of weight, and a clench of fingers and then something flickers in both of their expressions for a moment, something more vulnerable than Logan thinks either of them mean it to be. Like ripples in a puddle, gone before anyone is there to realize how significant it is.

Remy lets him take the coffee cup and Ekans stares at the spot Remy had been for another twenty seconds after the man has disappeared down the hall and into the room that supposedly belongs to the victim, whistling a made up tune as he does. 

((Logan thinks the whistling oversells the bit; Remy has a habit of trying too hard to act like he’s not bothered, not affected, not emotionally compassionate, not caring at all and every time Logan thinks about telling Remy about his tell, his stomach twists with a fluttering feeling he resolutely won’t name.))

Logan lets Ekans have his moment, at least, before he clears his throat. Ekans’s head snaps up and he sets his piercing gaze on Logan. 

“I didn’t kill him,” Ekans says immediately.

Logan blinks at him, slightly disconnected. “Was I supposed to believe you had?”

“That’s what the rest of your people believe,” Ekans says. He kicks the blanket by his feet back behind him with the empty vodka bottle and heads into the kitchen where he opens the floor corner cabinet to reveal a trash can and throws down the plastic coffee cup with more force than is strictly necessary. It bounces and nearly falls back out on account of how full the can is already, but Ekans’s pretends he doesn’t see as he kicks the cabinet closed again.

“Curious,” Logan says, adjusting his glasses to get a better look at the young man in the glare of the artificial light. “My people?”

Ekans waves a hand in the air, possibly dismissive as he grabs a rag from a dish next to the sink and runs it under water. “Your people, the police, the FBI, the CIA if they decide to drop in as well. They questioned me.”

“It's standard procedure to question the families and friends of a missing person.”

Ekans snorts, turning off the water and wringing the rag. He wipes down a counter with his back pointedly to Logan, and Logan can’t decide if it’s because he doesn’t want to look at Logan, or if he’s trying to hide his own expression.

 “They weren’t really asking questions. They already decided that I killed Vir….” Ekans trails off and clears his throat as he makes a large swipe with his rag. “That I killed Virgil. Needless to say, they weren’t exactly the most helpful this past week, Agent Ackroyd. What reassurance do I have that this won’t be another round of ‘Pin It On The Roommate’?”

Logan watches him scrub at a spot on the counter, “I see. I apologize on their behalf. I’m sure that was quite frustrating for you.”

Ekans freezes. Logan watches as he folds at the elbows and leans over the counter, with his head bowed and lets out an audible shaky breath. “I don’t want your half hearted apologies.”

What do you want? Logan doesn’t ask the question, but then again, he doesn’t exactly need to. He might not be approachable like Remy, and certainly never anyone’s first pick for casual conversation, but he can see the poetic hollowness to Ekans’s movements, the clipped tension in his words, the sorrow swelling in the things Ekans doesn’t say.

And even if Logan couldn’t see it from Ekans himself, he’d only have to look around the apartment made for two and lived in by one.

Logan takes a few steps so that he’s inside the kitchen area as well. Ekans doesn’t turn to look at him, doesn’t pick up his rag, doesn’t breathe at all. 

“Ask your questions and get out of my apartment,” he says in a voice that is too empty to be fooling anyone, much less Logan. An agent of twenty years and a fool for none of them-- or perhaps a fool for all of them, he supposes when he still caught himself pacing after Remy took a bullet to the shoulder, the gut, the calf, and he had to remind himself that the placings were non-lethal and Remy was going to be fine and there was no reason to feel disappointed when he had to learn about Remy’s discharge from an agent on another team who found out before him.

“Very well,” Logan says, clearing his throat, and waving away memories of Remy’s scream piercing the air. “In your report, Mr. Ekans, you mentioned that you’re unsure of the time of his disappearance. Why?”

“As stated in my report, agent, because I hadn’t seen him for nearly twenty four hours before I realized he was missing. It took another three hours to collaboratively work out that no one knew his whereabouts, and who exactly talked to him last.”

“Ah yes,” Logan says calmly. “Anton Diemos. A close friend of Storm’s. Good Kid.”

“Sure.”

Logan watches over Ekans’s frame for a moment. “You don’t sound to be in agreement.”

“Anton and I didn’t hang out. I only ever heard about him when Virgil was complaining about something he did.”

“Was that often?”

“I’m not going to incriminate someone just because I didn’t enjoy his bland lifestyle choices and misguided declarative actions of loyalty.” Ekans says with a huff, “He took an hour to get back to me when I had texted him, and the first thing he did was threaten to block me. That’s all.”

“That was because of the argument?”

Ekans freezes, “What argument?”

“The one that had you running to spend the night somewhere that wasn’t your own apartment,” Logan says.

“I didn’t say anything about an argument. Here or in my report, agent,” Ekans says, coldly.

“But you had one.”

“How could you possibly know that?”

Which is the admission Logan had been waiting for: an opening that he latches on to with all the ferocity he’s known for. He settles back on his heels and folds his arms behind himself. “What was the argument about?”

“It’s unrelated to the case.”

“Is it?”

“Yes,” Ekans spits whirling around, Logan thinks he knows why the police thought that they had been looking at a murderer. “It is, agent. We were roommates. We get into tiffs and occasionally one of us leaves for the night and doesn’t return for twenty four fucking hours.”

He’s shaking, Logan notes. His expression is promoting all the anger he can, but underneath it, his hands are wringing the washcloth in a motion that speaks only of regret and fear. It makes him feel old, Logan realizes. Ekans is so young, barely starting out his life, barely knowing what he wants to do, barely done anything and yet their paths have crossed and Logan’s line of work very rarely follows with a happy ending.

Ekans must have realized that when he saw the badges, or perhaps even before that when he saw them at the door and realized it wasn’t Virgil coming back with some type of apology on his lips.

“Your lease was expiring,” Logan says and Ekans flinches so hard his leg slams into the cabinet under him with a bang. Logan pretends he doesn’t notice. “I talked to your landlord. Storm renewed; you did not.”

“His name is Virgil, agent.”

“Was your argument about the lease?”

Ekans snarls, “what do you think?”

“I think that you and Storm did not discuss your lack of renewal beforehand, thus leading to an explosive argument that incorporated dozens of other aspects of your time living together. When you got tired of arguing you left for the night, and Storm was alone for most of an evening in a location that reminded him of you to the point where he drove himself to leave it. From there he went to a location that was less likely to remind him of you, met someone who looked and acted nothing like you, and then proceeded to make an unfortunate, but entirely understandable misjudgement.”

Logan tilts his head slightly watching Ekans’s expression crumble to bits and pieces, shattering like glass when a bullet hits it, falling to so many pieces that there’s no chance of putting that facade of his back together.

“Is that the conclusion you also came to, Mr. Ekans?”

The air figuratively simmers between them, hot to the point where Logan suspects Ekans finds it hard to breathe. His calm and tired personality is gone and Logan finds himself face to face with the true Janus Dante Ethan Ekans: the juvenile delinquent whose rich parents cut him off and sent him away to school at the ripe thirteen years old, and who had since taken his anger at the world out on everything. Three accounts of driving while intoxicated, another two from loitering and littering, and records of being difficult and foul mouthed with the police for every instance he could; Logan had read over the report on his phone the entire drive and still suspected that several details and instances had been omitted from written record.

“Why did you come here to ask me questions you already know the answers to?” Ekans hisses. “Is this a joke to you, Agent Ackroyd? Are you finding this funny?”

“On the contrary,” Logan says. “I’m finding it informative.”

Predictably, Ekans throws the rag at him. Logan barely moves to get out of the way and it lands with a wet flop on the carpet of the living area.

"Wow, new record, Lo," Remy calls from the doorway to Virgil Storm's room, gently pulling off his white surgical gloves. "Usually it takes them ten minutes to start throwing things at you."

"I'd hardly call that an achievement," Logan says. "How's the room?"

"Looks like my college dorm from back in the day."

"When was that? Seventy years ago?" Ekans says acidly. Logan is almost surprised he doesn’t start frothing at the mouth.

"Ouch, kid," Remy says flippantly, because he’s always been the sort to brush off insults and digs and backhanded compliments like water off a duck’s back.��

((That was the reason why they had been paired together to start off: their superiors had hoped that Logan’s stiff adherence to the rules would make Remy wilter under their scoldings, and instead Logan’s heart had learned to jumping jacks at the sound of Remy’s brash dismissals.))

“Mr. Ekans,” Logan says.

“Get out of my house.”

Remy leans against the wall stretching his used gloves in his hands, until they snap. “Babes,” he says, and Logan ponders for a second if he’s talking to their host or to him. 

“I said get out!” Ekans yells.

“You really don’t want us to do that, cutie,” Remy says. “You think anyone else is gonna stop by with the answers to all the questions you have?”

“Is that what you’re claiming to have?” Ekans shoots back. He grips the counter behind him so hard that his knuckles turn white. Logan would be impressed with his self control to keep himself from launching at Remy and ripping out his throat, but instead he can see the shaking of Ekans’s legs, his buckled knees, his short sharp breaths and makes a note that the only thing between Ekans’s and the floor is that grip on the counter.

“Answers?” Ekans laughs, before Remy says anything. His smile is sharp and lethal and Logan thinks that for a child that grew up hundreds of miles from his parents, he sure seemed to have picked up their shark-like smiles. “No, that’s not what you have. You’re here to tell me he’s dead, aren’t you? He’s dead or good as dead now. You’re here, in my home, in his room, and you have the gall to tell me you have answers when all you have are half baked assumptions and shiny little badges! Get out of my house and don’t come back until you have Virgil Raiden Storm.”

The room hums and buzzes with emotions, something watery and angry and heavy enough that Logan feels it settle over his own skin. It’s cold and oppressive, strangling and familiar, so very different from the sizzling heat and not different at all: Ekans radiates with grief so strong that it flavors the air and makes it hard to breathe for any of the three of them.

Logan is well acquainted with the emotion: a victim by proxy of it. How many families had he had to break the news too? How many tears had he seen shed, fists raised, mouths spitting with angry denial? How many times had he been required to tell someone that they person they had been clinging to desperately to, the person that Logan was supposed to save, the person that never deserved it, the person that was always gone too soon, too young, too violently-- how many times had Logan had to say that their beloved wasn’t coming back to them?

Too many times. Logan is too old, and he feels his bones ache in a way that can’t be fixed with vitamins and posture stretches.

“Please,” Ekans says, in a tone so raw it feels like something that Logan should not be hearing. “Get out. Let me hold on to my hope a little longer.”

“Gurl,” Remy says, utterly unmoved, utterly unimpressed, utterly Remy-like. “Hope is dimestore temporary replacement shit. You hold on to that all you want; we don’t want it. We’ll get you the real thing soon enough.”

Ekans wobbles. His expression is lost. His head swivels between Remy and Logan stiffly, robotically, hesitantly and he doesn’t blink as if he’s under the ridiculous notion that blinking will make either of both of them disappear from his house the same way that Storm had. Or perhaps he’s waiting for Logan’s refute-- a correction maybe? If he’s waiting for Logan to say they don’t intend on getting Virgil Storm back to Ekans’s mundane apartment, he’s going to be waiting for a long time.

A long time that they don’t have.

“You have questions,” Logan says. “As do we. I propose a short game: You ask one question and Agent Alyan or myself will answer as honestly and accurately as we are allowed, and in turn we will ask a question and you will answer as honestly and accurately as you can.”

Ekans blinks slowly, swallows harder, squeezes the counter with his left hand and uses the right to rub his neck down to his collarbone.

“Will this…” He says, softly. “Will this help you find him?”

“Undoubtedly,” Logan says. “I’m not in the habit of wasting time when there are cases to be solved.”

“I’ll say,” Remy mutters with a crooked smile that doesn’t match his tone. Logan thinks for a moment he imagined the words slipping out of the other man’s mouth at all, but Remy waves his fingers in a dismissal at Logan’s confused look.

Ekans is quiet for a second longer. Then he exhales explosively, and his other hand lets go of the counter. He teeters on his feet uneven and out of place in his own kitchen. He looks around like he’s not sure what he’s doing at all, but then he meets Logan’s gaze again and steels himself.

“Okay,” He says. “Okay.”

Remy offers a smile, and Logan thinks if he were any less better at reading Remy’s expressions he’d believe it was genuine. Not that Remy isn’t being genuine, that he doesn’t care, that he’s just humoring them both, but Logan picks out the tension in his body even from a room away.

“Couch, babes,” Remy says, in a way that should have been a suggestion if it hadn’t nearly sent Ekans to the floor. “All the best secrets come out on the couch.”

((It’s not often that Logan wonders what he missed in college, when all his friends were going to parties, getting drunk, and making the most of their lives without their parents breathing down their necks, but Remy certainly makes him think about it. What secrets had Remy’s alcohol laden tongue told while sitting on a couch long before he’d become the man he was today? What secrets would Logan have been willing to tell him if they had met all those years ago?))

Ekans swallows and nods at them both, waving a hand in the direction of the living area again and waiting patiently for Remy to saunter down the hall, and Logan to mercifully turn his back. He pretends that he doesn’t hear Ekans’s sharp inhale or the wobbling two steps that it takes him to find his balance after all this.

Logan situates himself on the floor, with his back to the TV, and the door to the apartment in the corner of his vision. His knees whine and groan with his age, because he’s old now, and his body is withering much faster than he’d been told it would. Remy plops on the couch, throwing his arms up and leaning casually back in a motion that has Logan’s traitorous eyes following the arc of his biceps and the tug of his shirt teasing out of the tuck. His glasses reflect back the TV screen up until Ekans plucks the remote from another cushion and turns off the TV altogether.

The silence that follows is as close to oppressive as Logan thinks silences could be. The buzz of the TV hadn’t been noticeable, but the lack of it was impossible to ignore.

“Well?” Ekans asks, sitting delicately on the sofa opposite of Remy, with a generous amount of space and a dozen blankets in a pile between them. He looks small, young, hurt as he curls up and pretends not to be small, young or hurt. Logan wonders who he’s pretending for. “Who goes first?”

“Our turn first,” Remy replies easily. “Who else knew about your lease disagreement?”

Ekans’s fingers wring again without anything solid to hold onto. Logan’s eyes flick to the abandoned wet rag on the floor to their left, before settling back on the young man.

“I don’t know.”

Remy’s mouth opens back up, but Ekans shoots him a glare. “I truly don’t. The only person I told was an acquaintance of mine, Missy, who I was… am… planning on staying with when the lease expires. She was the one that I stayed with the entire night that Virgil went missing, and she had been the one that drove me to the apartment to help me pick up my stuff when we realized that Virgil wasn’t there. If you want to throw around technical terms, she’s my alibi and she’s not above spitting in the face of detectives who keep trying to accuse me of murder.” He doesn’t look at either of them, instead finding the bland carpet interesting. “Virgil didn’t know until that day, and when I contacted his friends, they knew that we had gotten into a row, but not what it was about, but that doesn’t mean that Virgil hadn’t told them, or that Virgil hadn’t shouted it at the rooftops at some point.”

Logan watches Ekans curl and uncurl his fingers for a moment in thought, but when he opens his mouth what comes out is not more information.

“You said you’d answer my questions completely honestly,” the younger man notes.

“I said I would answer to the best of my ability, yes,” Logan says, because it’s not the same thing, and Ekans is aware of that. He feels ridiculously like for a moment he’s on the stand in front of a jury presenting his evidence for court-- which he’s managed to avoid having to do personally for a whole year now. Curious.

“Why is the FBI interested in Virgil?” Ekans asks.

Remy raises an eyebrow, mouthing out a series of words that Logan recognizes as a meme but not enough to make any sense of it. Remy crosses his slender legs in smooth motion and settles back like he’s debating napping. 

“I don’t suppose you’ve been following the news recently Mr. Ekans,” Logan says back straight, waiting for the miniscule shake of his host’s head before he continues on. “About a year ago there was a report of a girl missing without a trace two towns over. Young, scholarly, she’d been out with friends at a bar and when her friends were wrapping up to go home, they couldn’t find her. Several months later, a young man in the physics department at the local community college also went missing without a trace from a bar, one town over. Three months ago another young man interning with the historians society in this town went missing without a trace. From a bar in town. One month ago another girl from--”

“Jericho,” Ekans whispers, faintly. Logan thinks that is a good thing he’s sitting down now because he doesn’t look like he would be able to hold himself up much longer. “She was the TA for a psychology class I took freshman year. She graduated last year. I...She was....”

Logan meets Ekans gaze, mulling over his next words. “Do you recall the rainstorm from two weeks ago?”

Ekans’s jaw clenches so tightly Logan doubts they’ll get him to speak another word the entire night, but he nods all the same.

“The bodies of the first two victims were found in a shallow grave along the hiking paths two hours outside of this city, when the rains half washed the top layer away. The third victim was found a little deeper a few yards away. The fourth, Jericho Kale, hasn’t been found yet.”

“Y…you,” Ekans croaks, “You think whoever took them… took Virgil.”

Logan glances at Remy in a rare moment of weakness he wishes he didn’t have to take. Remy’s eyes are focused on the shelves of books intently rather than the conversation.

“We don’t think,” Remy says, reaching up to assure his glasses are still in place. “Ackroyd and I are part of a specialized team of FBI profilers. Not to brag or anything but we tend to be decently good at our jobs, sweetheart. We’ve been working on this case since the bodies were discovered and we’ve built this nifty little thing called a geographic profile of our kidnapper. This apartment is right in the sweet spot of this creep’s comfort zone. There is some good news, though.”

“Which is?” Ekans croaks.

Remy flicks a hand at Logan instead of answering and Logan almost feels apologetic. But they’re low on time already thanks to the police taking their time notifying Logan’s team of the abduction and the landlady’s inability to take her eyes from her TV. Virgil Storm’s life was on the line and Logan unfortunately has a habit of choosing to save a life over comforting a witness.

“In your best estimation,” Logan says, “how would Storm react when his life is threatened?”

Ekans blinks at him, and Logan wonders for a moment if he’s about to launch across the coffee table and send them both tumbling into the TV. He’s sure that will look excellent in his report later; perhaps Remy might even help him wipe off the blood once he’s done laughing at them both. 

But the moment passes and the burning in Ekans’s eyes hollows out to an exhaustion that’s even more fierce. He sucks on his lip for a second, breathing in and then exhaling before he manages to get the words to come out.

“He…” Ekans hesitates. “Virgil has generalized anxiety. There are often times when I wake up in the middle of the night and have to coax him from his own head when his fears block out his perception of reality and leave him immobile. But... There was a time, last halloween, we went to a haunted house together and instead of freezing up he fought back. Left a killer clown with a deep black eye and we’re now banned from that haunted house.” Ekans lets out a shuddering breath and wraps his arms around himself. 

“If someone kidnapped him… I can’t see him not fighting back once he realized what was happening. Whoever it was would not have gotten out of it without visible bruises.”

Logan nods. He expected as much, and from a glance at Remy, he must have picked up on most of it as well from when he had glanced around in Storm’s bedroom; it wouldn’t have been the first time that they had seen similar victims in their line of work.

That, however, left them with a precarious situation. 

“What’s the good news?” Ekans asks in a whisper. It sounds foolishly like he doesn’t want to know the answer, but can’t help asking it.

Logan steeples his fingers. “You are aware of the statistics on adults being kidnapped, yes?”

Ekans’s sharp inhale is just as telling as his expletive.

“According to the analysis of the bodies we’ve found, this guy doesn’t adhere to the usual 24 hours and done,” Remy says. “He keeps his victims alive-”

“For how long?” Ekans asks almost before Remy has finished his piece. “I know it’s not my turn but please. How long?” He swivels so he’s completely facing Logan, leaning forward so that his knees hit the coffee table. “Am I holding onto hope for a corpse, Agent Ackroyd?”

Curious, Logan thinks. It's not often that the families of the victims trust him over Remy’s honey-ed casual tone. Logan, despite his best efforts, has always been the one that prompts grisled cold reality. Remy called it “the rain during a funeral” approach once long ago and Logan still finds himself mulling over it. He told them the truth, the most honest answers, the ones that are expected leaving very little room for anything but their acceptance that this was what had happened-- just like rain during a funeral.

“I don’t know,” Logan says. “It depends on Storm at this point.”

He’d seen the bodies-- both he and Remy had seen the physical corpses at the grave site and the medical examiner’s reports once everything had been cleaned up as well as they could. He’d seen the twisted necks, the fragments of bones shattered so thoroughly that the medical examiners needed a second person to help figure out how to put it back together, the dark sludge of the partially liquefied bodies that were well on their way to being just skeletons. Logan had seen a hundred cases like these before, but he still felt his stomach drop when they matched the dental records to the missing kids.

Real, once living, kids. Who’d barely started their lives. Who had families and friends and dreams. Who hadn’t had a chance to be someone to remember and who were unrecognizable by the time that Logan and Remy were alerted to the case. 

“We have time,” Logan tells Ekans. “Not a lot. The examiner’s reports say that our unsub keeps his victims for weeks.”

Ekans opens his mouth and then very smartly closes it again. He looks down at the shag carpet miserably, and Logan thinks that both him and Remy let out silent sighs of relief. He didn’t ask what happened to those kids in those weeks and Logan in his honesty didn’t have to answer with what they knew.

“Hey, doll,” Remy says to Ekans. “Tell us about him.”

Ekans looks a bit like he doesn’t know who Remy is talking about so Remy waves a finger around in a circle. 

“What is he? A nerd?” Remy asks. “I haven’t seen this many books outside of a library ever.”

“You’ve been in a library before?” Ekans bites, and Logan wonders if Remy is also remembering that case from three years ago with the serial arsonist who targeted locations on her school campus where her ex boyfriend liked to hang out, and Remy almost died in the fire set in the school library while saving a student. The scent of smoke wafts through the room for a moment but Remy just smiles, like he doesn’t smell it at all.

Ekans lets out a breath and stares at the floor again. “He’s a history major. He collects books in his free time.” Ekans nods to the corner where Remy had stood when they first walked in. “He keeps the first editions over there, signed copies to the left, accurate renditions of history over there and books he always says he wants to burn for their content are under there. He hates when people�� when anyone but him touches them. I’m not sure where he keeps getting more, but every other week it feels like he got a new one that he was bringing everywhere.”

Logan hadn’t noticed Ekans’s small smile until it was fading again.

“He… he’s always reading. Would have read straight through lunch and dinner if I didn’t threaten to set any of them on fire. Even when I got him to put the book down he would spend anytime we were together just… talking about whatever he was reading. He spent more time paying attention to those damn books than to….” Ekans blinks hard, fast and he runs his tongue over his teeth so hard Logan is surprised he doesn’t cut himself when he looks at the ceiling. 

“He’s smart,” Ekans says. “One of the smartest people I know. But he’s such a stupid dumbass.

“Aren’t they all?” Remy muses with him. “They’re so busy using 100% of their brains that us 10%-ers go basically unnoticed.”

“That’s a myth actually,” Logan says. “Humans use most of their brains all the time, even for the smallest of actions as shown through positron emission tomography, better known as PET, and fMRIs scans. Scientists have yet to find a piece of the brain that humans don’t use.”

Remy and Ekans both continued to stare at each other, as if he hadn’t said a single word. Logan feels vaguely like he missed something despite having been present and paying attention. The corners of Remy’s lips twitch in a way that Logan has always associated with Remy speaking that private language Logan isn’t yet privy too.

“Oh,” Ekans says.

“Oh,” Remy echoes in what could be confused with embarrassed agreement. “Yeah, I get ya. You still think I won't understand what that argument was really about?”

Logan opens his mouth to say something, but closes it before he can figure out what it is he wants to say, what he should say. He knows that this apartment is not a place that he’s supposed to be, but for the first time he feels like a true intruder: the silence is filled with words that Logan doesn’t understand, spoken through movements that Logan can’t see, and coming rapidly to a conclusion that Logan has no way to prepare for.

Remy is still enough to not give anything away, no clues, no hints, nothing.

“What does he do to them?” Ekans asks in a small voice. What is he doing to Virgil?

Remy double taps his shoe. “I think…. That should stay in the case details, hun.”

Ekans hugs himself around his middle, curling ever so slightly.

“We...“ Ekans starts and stops, “During one of those lunches when I actually got him to put down one of his books and we actually talked, we joked about taking over the world. I grew up speaking Japanese, Chinese, and learned Korean for fun once; he had Spanish, French, and Latin while working on German. I printed out a map of the world and we spent the evening bickering over what parts of the world we would take.”

“Is that the one hanging on the ceiling over his bed?” Remy asks.

Ekans blinks something impossibly soft and vulnerable in his eyes. “He kept it?”

“You thought he wouldn’t?” 

Ekans swallows hard, refusing to look at them. “Why would I think otherwise? Really, tell me what I was supposed to think after three years of living with him? Nothing I did ever got his attention in any way that mattered.” 

Logan’s mouth opens but Remy does a jerk of his head that tells him to shut it. Logan isn’t exactly sure what Ekans means-- pretty decently sure that they’re no longer talking about the sentimentality of a map-- but Remy seems to be tracking, following the unsaid things in the conversation far better than Logan could ever. He’s in his element, and Logan trusts him to handle it.

Honestly, why had Remy ever insisted on checking out the room instead of talking to Ekans in the beginning?

“Three years is a pretty long time,” Remy says.

Ekans shrugs to himself. “I haven’t talked to my parents in longer.”

“By your choice or theirs?”

“They’re not invited to my graduation if that’s what you’re wondering. I don’t think I could refrain from making it in the tabloids again for punching my mother in the face if that were the case.”

Remy nods, rolling his tongue in his mouth accepting that answer. “Three years, babes… I can’t imagine. I’m only on year two now.”

“I can’t imagine why.”

Remy’s lips flicker. “I’m stubborn. What’s your excuse?”

“He’s an idiot.”

Something about that seems as if it should be humorous, but neither Ekans nor Remy smile. Logan trails his eyes over the books on the shelves closest to him just to have something to focus on that makes sense.

Most of them are novels that Logan never had seen, and never would get a chance to read considering that he’s been stuck on the same book for the past six months even through the hours upon hours of endless cross country traveling he’s done for cases. It seemed that every time he had tried to set himself up to read there was something else that had appeared: a report to catch up on, social media posts to sort through, a new movie that Remy demanded he needed to see…

“He said I was selfish,” Ekans says. “For planning to move out. I should have told him right then. I should have…I almost did. But then he called me ungrateful and there are just some words that…well.”

He looks at his hands. “Well, suddenly I was thirteen again and my parents were shipping me across the country and cutting me out of the family.”

Remy didn’t make a face to show what he thought of that at all: carefully neutral and unjudging. “What did you do?”

“Ran,” Ekans says. “Didn’t anyone ever tell you us Ekanss are all cowards? I left him here in this apartment, sitting right where you are right now, Agent. I left because when I was storming down those stairs it was easier to feel like I hadn’t…fallen short again.”

He rubs his eyes, brushing away the beginning streaks of tears before they could truly form. “Billions of romance novels passed through those hands and you’d think-- you’d think he’d…”

Ah. Logan blinks. He recognizes suddenly, uncomfortably, bits and pieces of the hidden language that Remy and their witnesses speak exclusively. His mind decodes the conversation, playing back the grief on Ekans’s face, made only deeper by the lack of his own personal possessions lining the apartment that was a physical manifestation of his life with Storm. 

And if Logan also thinks of the taste of coffee or meaningless tally in the back of his personal notebook, well that is his privately to know about. 

Instead he looks back at Ekans. “Are you certain that he does not reciprocate your romantic feelings?”

Ekans’s face pales considerably, almost as if Logan had told him that he had Storm’s body in his trunk right now. He grabs the edge of the couch with a white knuckled grip, squeezing until the cloth fabric covering threatens to split at the seams.

"Christ, Logan," Remy squawks, tossing up his aviators so that Logan might recognize the frustrations in his coffee brown irises and Logan knows immediately that he said the wrong thing. "Shoot him in the foot next time, will you? It'll hurt less."

“What? I would never,” Logan protests. “I’ve sworn an oath to protect--”

But then Ekans is laughing. Sardonically and scraping and sound very much as if he wished he was washing it down with the bottle of vodka under the sofa. 

“Agent,” he says. “The only thing that Virgil Storm has had any affection for is writing essays about Revolutionary War submarines. I had three years to try to be more exciting than dead people, and I finally accepted that I was not and will never be.”

Logan is not in the profession of digging graves deeper so he wisely clamps his mouth shut and refrains from offering yet another comment that might trespass some social nicety that no one had ever given him a rulebook about.

“You look like you need a stiff drink,” Remy says gathering the boy’s attention back to him. “And frankly once we get this all sorted out and get your boy back to you, I’ll need one too. Where can I go for that, hon?”

Ekans blinks. “...There’s a Glory Days down the road if you’re just looking for a drink. But there’s a cocktail bar in town called Weekend Habit that has decent prices or Bliss if you want to be over charged but have the option to hop next door to Astro. There’s a liquor store by the shopping plaza called Val’s as well.” He glances towards where his own bottle of vodka is hiding. “I have some friends who like to party.”

“Gurl, if I was a business major, I’d also have some friends who’d like to party,” Remy laughs at his own joke. “But you didn’t mention Luxe or Zion.”

Ekans frowns. “I’ve never heard of a Luxe before, but Zion? That’s the bar nearly on the outside of the city, right? I mean if you wanted to go an extra hour and a half for traffic to it then, go ahead and waste your own gas.”

Logan and Remy share a look out of the corner of their eyes, but unfortunately Ekans is just aware enough to catch it. 

“What was that? What’s Zion got to do with anything?”

There’s a twitch of Remy’s fingers that signal he’s giving Logan the decision to reveal more or less information. But frankly Logan is far more baffled to consider not following through with this topic change.

“Are you unaware that Zion was the last location we can concretely place Mr. Storm?” Logan says. “Anton Diemos placed him there at nine pm on the day he went missing.”

Ekans glances towards the hall where Storm’s bedroom resides. “Anton wouldn’t tell me that much. Just that he hadn’t received a message back since. Are you certain it was Zion? Virgil hated going outside, much less so far away from his precious books.” His brows furrow further. “It’s not even a good bar!”

“You’ve been before?” 

“I told you, I have friends who like to party,” Ekans says blandly. “It was months ago, and Virgil had insisted on staying home when I went out. I remember being annoyed and complaining about it when I returned.”

Remy shifts. “That bad?” 

“It just wasn’t my style. I can’t think of a reason why Virgil would go so far away.”

And well, if that wasn’t intriguing to Logan, Logan wasn’t sure what would be. One of the first things they had insisted they got when they had arrived in the city police station and received their small corner for their work progress was a map. It had taken nearly an hour to procure for them-- the entire precinct was tied up in an emergency "twelve year old wandered away from their parents on a camping trip and was now lost in the woods that spanned into two other states", but once Remy gotten it he had hung it up on the wall and started cataloging the previous victims' living locations and last known places to build his geographical profile. Logan had been putting together a victim profile (searching for traits that their killer was looking for in his victims), occasionally glancing up at Remy’s back, and trying to figure out why it felt like he was crossing a line when he was just… noticing the curve of his work partner’s spine.

He’s decently sure Zion hadn’t come up before in their documents, but there’s something suspicious about how a student that never went out, managed to find a reason to be so far from home and to disappear from it.

Logan turns to detail his thoughts to his partner (abbreviated of course for the sake of the company they were keeping), but Remy already has his phone out looking at something.

“Zion was rebranded,” Remy reports. “A little less than a year ago. And get this, it used to be called Luxe.”

Yes, Logan thinks he has a slight idea of several working pieces now: their first victim had disappeared from a bar called Luxe, and shortly thereafter it had rebranded into Zion where another college student has just gone missing. Whether it is a clever attempt to keep the police blindsided or an unfortunate coincidence, it seems as though they have a very good reason to focus their investigation on the bar now. Logan begins to stand, shaking the aching of his knees and the the numbness of his feet out.

“Thank you, Mr. Ekans, for your cooperation,” Logan says. “I apologize that we impedied on so much of your time…”

But Remy is stalling getting off the couch, shaking his head at Logan, in a clear wait, hold off movement that Logan recognized from several instances where Remy had purposely drawn the attention of a criminal to get them their confession of guilt while they still thought they had the upper hand. It made Logan’s heart seem to beat harder and faster and his vision narrow, although no matter how many times he has gone to the doctor, he’s been assured he’s still in top health.

"Do you have anyone to stay with tonight?" Remy asks Ekans. "We can wait until they come."

Ekans nods slowly, appearing dazed and exhausted at the events. Logan would have more sympathy: showing up, dropping such news, gathering information and fleeing to his investigation was not exactly the more careful way to handle everything, but they had already lost another-- Logan checks his watch-- hour here. Logan tries to tell himself he has time, that Virgil Storm has time, even though there is a creeping feeling along his spine that whispers he’s already too late and it will take a miracle for them to save him now. 

Ekans fumbles around for his phone. He stares at the screen for a moment, before he pulls up a contact and presses the call button. It rings three times before the person on the other end picks up with extremely loud pumping music. 

"Janus?" The caller says, "hold on--"

The music quiets slightly.

"Sorry. Hey, what's up? Did you change your mind? There's a special on margaritas tonight and I'll even pay for your first--"

Ekans breathes in sharply. "Roman…right sorry, your promotion was the other day."

Logan turns away to analyze the picture hooks in the hall, imagining what photos Storm and Ekans had walked by every day for three years before the worst had occurred. At the very least, Ekans seems to relax at the facade of privacy.

"...what's wrong?" Roman, the caller, presumably says. The voice is distorted slightly, but from what Logan can make out they are probably around the same age as Ekans. "Did you get any news about Virgil?"

Ekans exhales heavily. "Not…quite. The FBI came, and I…Look, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to disturb your night--"

"Well fuck that," Roman says. "That can't be good news. Do you need someone right now?"

"You're having a party."

"I party every Saturday," Roman says flippantly and so very much like a college student that Logan cringes internally for their livers. "I'm coming over. Just uh….let me get Remus. He's my DD tonight, and I probably shouldn't be driving right now. I think he took a step outside, give me a moment to get him--"

"Roman," Ekans says, choked up, "thank you. Really. I know we aren’t even--"

“If you say friends I’m going to find a horribly unflattering picture of you to post online,” The caller sniffs. “Where the fuck did that asshole go? Tch. Just a heads up, it might take us a while to get back to your side of the city. I don’t know what traffic is like right now.”

Ekans frowns, and neither Logan nor Remy can continue to pretend as though they aren’t listening to the conversation at that. “I thought you were bar hopping tonight. You’re not starting in town?”

"Yeah, but Remus found this special going on tonight. Margaritas!” the speaker rolls the R hard and long and then laughs. “You know I’m a weak bitch for--oh motherfuck, did Remus sprint out here to go hook up with som--OH FUCK REMUS!" 

Logan frowns as Ekans yanks the phone away from his ear, and the voice on the other end of the phone distorts in panic. His own mouth opens to interrupt, but before anyone can speak there’s the sound of tires screeching, a far distant scream that does not sound like it belongs to the speaker, and a crunch.

Then there is just Roman's voice cursing profusely in a way that has even Remy looking over in concern. “Janus! Fuck! I need--n-need to hang up and call an ambulance. Some assholes just stabbed Remus in the parking lot and then nearly ran him over-- shut up dumbass, I’m trying to stop the bleeding--”

Someone else is talking, choking, gurgling their blood.

“Where are you?” Logan says, although he has a gut feeling he already knows, and from the way that Remy is already grabbing the keys and Ekans is going pale he assumes the others also know.

“The fucking bar on fuck,” Roman says. “Shit, Zion. You know the fucking bar --fuck! Remus stop moving!-- What the fuck is going on?!”

[Next Chapter]

[tomwambsgans]

finding out just now that my boss is the youngest of a family of 5, 3 of whom are involved in the family business started by a now semi-retired father, the oldest being like way older than the rest, not involved with the company, and living off the grid and also having attempted to run for congress, the one girl not involved with the business but her husband IS.... literally what the fuck

[tbartss]

wait. wait wait wait, what do you remember about this aftg fic. there's one that got privated recently

it's called light fires at night (to push back the void) by inthesea i found it on the wayback machine (through very extensive googling) and that's the only way i can read it ToT

[butchhamlet]

do you have any good shakespeare retelling book recs?

what a beautiful time to ask this, says guy who has left this ask collecting cobwebs in his inbox for months! because guess who has two thumbs and just finished queen goneril by erin shields! WHAT a fucking play, holy SHIT, this is some of the best characterization of the lear sisters that i've ever read and the exploration of womanhood as filtered through class + race + shitty families + political maneuvering is so so so good. also the things shields does with the og playtext... chef's fucking KISS

anyway, recency bias aside, i've been meaning to make a post about my favorite shakespeare retellings for a while, and i think i never actually did it because i wanted to make a lear retelling ranking list and then i never read some of the ones on my TBR. so whatever. the learlist will happen someday. here are my favorites in general. (here is my goodreads shelf for the retellings i've read, good and bad, and here is the shelf for the ones i have yet to read.)

in no particular order:

a thousand acres by jane smiley: outsold. epitome of what makes an effective retelling--a book that clearly has something to say about and to the original text, but that also isn't afraid to diverge, to exclude here and zoom in there. ungraciously, this is "lear on a farm" and it starts a little slow, but holy fucking shit, i can't do justice in a paragraph to the way this book unraveled me. one of the best books of all time mayhaps. also, introduced the edmund character by describing his ass. 10/10

the last true poets of the sea by julia drake: i don't read that much YA anymore but jesus fucking christ. books tailored for me specifically. twelfth night retelling about siblings + mental illness + being bisexual + love triangles that actually make sense (emotions are confusing!) instead of being contrived + beautiful description + excellent dialogue + THE MENTAL ILLNESS. books that made me start crying in zoom class in 2020

rosencrantz and guildenstern are dead by tom stoppard: kind of a cop-out answer because we all know this one. but that does not detract from how good it is. this is one of those plays, at least for me, that makes me think, "ohhhhhh, THIS is what theater can do. this is using its medium to the absolute utmost." it is so clever and it makes me want to cry. i think about "i don't know. it's the same sky" more often than i can say

american moor by keith hamilton cobb: not exactly a retelling, but a one-man play about a Black man auditioning for the lead role in Othello, tangling as he does with his relationship with shakespeare's work and cultural dominance. suuuuuch a good fucking play even beyond the analysis of othello (which is excellent); the language is so fucking incredible. everyone who likes shakespeare should read this.

teenage dick by mike lew: modern teenage richard iii; this one's more reimagining than retelling, because it diverges pretty sharply from the plot of richard iii, but god, it's so fucking fun. and upsetting! really upsetting also.

foul is fair by hannah capin: i will be so real. i read this in high school and some of the YA books i've revisited since did not hold up for me. so idk if i can tell you this is "good" with my full chest. but the pitch is "lady macbeth gets sexually assaulted at a party and decides to fucking kill the boys who did it" and i stayed up until like 1am to finish it because it was such a vicious gleaming wild ride

the stars undying by emery robin: does this count? hard to say, because it's just as much a retelling of roman history than shakespeare's antony and cleopatra (honestly, more, since it focuses on the era where caesar and cleopatra were lovers, which is before shakespeare's play). but i'm counting it anyway because it's bisexual space opera cleopatra and it's the best book i've read so far in 2024 and it's making me crazy and i'm writing a thesis on it < genuinely

peerless by jihae park: macbeth, but college applications, featuring asian macbeths (they're twin sisters >:3) who think their classmate has taken their place in their dream school because of affirmative action/DEI. this play is absolutely VICIOUS. it's macbeth x heathers. think it mirrors macbeth in faltering a little in its final stretch, but it still fucks hard

the wednesday wars by gary d. schmidt: okay, not a retelling; this is about a preteen boy in the 60s. but it's one of the best most genuine and heartwarming books i've ever read and it manages to be hilarious while also foregoing cheap slapstick punching-low humor for a hell of a lot of warmth and passion. and the main character interacts with shakespeare a lot as a running theme so i can justify putting it on this list. #evangelizing

of course, i would be remiss not to mention that @suits-of-woe / @mjulianwrites has written the best take on Two Gentlemen of Verona to ever exist, and i mean that quite seriously. unfortunately it hasn't been published yet so we'll all just have to prayer-circle about it. i would also be remiss not to take the opportunity to. uh. coughs. do a bit of casual self-promo. if you 1. have ocd 2. have gender or 3. think about malvolio a lot. boy do i have the novella for you

will definitely add to this when i read more retellings; feel free to drop recs in the tags/replies/reblogs/my askbox!

[its-your-mind]

This is a call to action for all the PJO girlies (gender neutral) that I know are sleeper agents on this webbed site

Go read Trials of Apollo. Go do it. Do it right now.

I know what you’re thinking. “Tbh I didn’t love Rick’s writing towards the end of Heroes of Olympus” “There’s no Percy so why bother” “All of the Argo II crew are kinda OOC” and listen my friends. You are so valid to have those opinions. I felt the same way after Blood of Olympus. But listen to me. Look at me.

Now that you have had some time away, you must give these books another try. For me. For Uncle Rick. For the demon baby grain spirit who is only able to say his own name (Peaches).

Do not worry friends, I do not expect you to read just based on my say-so - I also provide:

A list of reasons why you (yes you) should go read the Trials of Apollo series right now gogogo:

(Spoiler warning - all broad plot things that you learn early on, but I know some people (including me) avoid that shit at all costs)

All the chapters are titled in bad haiku. Ya know that one scene in Titan’s Curse where Apollo just starts reciting apropos of nothing? That’s every chapter title. They’re all so bad it’s amazing.

Apollo is so up his own ass about everything, and it’s so cool to experience the same world through the eyes of someone who is not used to being in amongst the chaos

Oh yeah the plot. That’s a reason to read it.

Okay so

Basically Zeus continues his streak of being a shitty shit parent and decides to blame like… every bad thing that has happened on Apollo, and punish him by turning him mortal and enslaving him to a demigod girl named Meg who is a garbage gremlin with a little demon baby guard named Peaches (see above)

And like the A plot is they gotta save the oracles from shitty old Romans who wanna take over the world (stop me if you’ve heard this one before)

But like the B plot is about what it means to discover that you’ve fucked up, you’ve made mistakes, you’ve hurt people, and you gotta fucking own up to that shit

But also

You do not deserve to be punished for every horrible thing that has ever happened because of you, or even around you, and when a parental or authority figure in your life tells you that, they are an abuser and they are wrong

And yet

It can be so hard to fully separate yourself from them. Because for so long, they were all you had.

But that’s okay, because when you start to learn that the people who were supposed to care for you and love you were not actually doing that, there are people around you who will love you, who will support you, who will pick you up and hold you close and make sure you know that you are okay

And they can’t fix you

But they can give you the safe space to fix yourself

hmm that was an essay about themes and metaphors BUT THATS WHY YOU SHOULD READ IT

also there’s a wikipedia arrow who only speaks in Elizabethan prose (in all caps)

OH ALSO ALSO you get to see Will and Nico being a CUTE AS FUCK couple in the first book. Nico smiles. Also makes skeletons grow out of the ground when people annoy him. Fuck I love this little gay death boy so much.

AND. You get to see so MANY of your old friends. And they still! Get! Plot! And! Character! Development!! Even though they are only there for a little bit

OH OH OH there are two old lesbians who run a halfway house for people who are tangled up in magic shit with nowhere else to go

Did I mention Peaches? I did. He’s my favorite.

OH ALSO. This is “unreliable narrator” executed SO FUCKING WELL. Like, all narrators are unreliable. But Apollo used to be a FUCKING GOD. He has not had to deal with the reality of death all that much. He’s used to people praising his name and bowing down at his feet. But that ain’t happening!! And he is Unhappy about that!! But it also lets there be such a clear juxtaposition between what Apollo believes about himself and about the world and what is really true, which is such a wonderful way to write about recovery from trauma.

Ahem

Anyway it’s just real good Uncle Rick continues to knock it out of the park but he just did something different and we (at least I) needed some space from OG PJO fan brain before I could appreciate how fucking awesome this series is.

OH OH OH and if you like audiobooks Robbie Daymond (hello CR mutuals - yes, this is the one who is our beloved Blue Boi who we (Orym) so desperately need returned) is the audiobook narrator and he is. So fucking good. Absolutely NAILS the dramatic-ass-inner-monologue of this dramatic ass ex-deity. Also nails all the other voices as well. 15/10 audiobook narration I’m lichrally gonna go listen to other books JUST cuz he reads them.

okay why the fuck are you still here. GO. GET THESE BOOKS. If your public library does Libby you can absolutely get them on there. GO FORTH.

[aroaceleovaldez]

i honestly wish rr would just write for something that has nothing to do with pjo not the same characters not the universe just go and write something new bc i really liked daughter of the deep and i think he's wrung everything out of the pjoverse yk? he's a good writer but he needs to go do something different

I agree - the problem with Rick's writing is he's heavily reliant on his writing being derivative. He struggles to write original stuff. PJO, HoO, ToA, etc are all derivative from Greco-Roman mythology/history. MCGA is Norse mythology/history, TKC is Egyptian mythology/history. Daughter of the Deep is Twenty Thousand Leagues Under The Sea. And he's not terrible at it! The problem is that can't go on forever. He runs out of material to work from over time and suddenly the quality of the franchise tanks dramatically. Especially as he loses overarching connecting threads to tie the plots together, so it just becomes this soup of throwing references at the wall with no cohesion to see what sticks. And it's bad!

We started seeing it in HoO, also in part due to Rick trying to combine too many disparate inspirations to the main plot to begin with and didn't know how to make them mesh well (Seven Against Thebes, Gigantomachy, Argonauts, Odyssey). TKC and MCGA were okay because they're only three book series, so that's plenty of mythology to draw from with stuff left over, and the majority of their companion novel stuff is ghostwritten anyways. The shorter series span means less filler required so less mythology is used up and there ya go. In the longer series, Rick has to spend those five books filling in the gaps of that overarching plot and he runs out of material fast - that's why by the end of HoO it was just turning into blatant Marvel references. Now that we're getting into a fourth installment in the main series collection, even though it's only a three-book series, Rick has basically written himself into a corner because he doesn't write anything else. He ran out of places to go with the franchise like two series ago! So now he's just throwing literally anything he can think of at things (literally just plucking random mythological figures and pop culture references or tropes), or if he can't think of anything, apparently just blatantly lifting stuff from the community.

At this point the only possible Greco-Roman series I think he'd be able to do without it being total garbage would be a 3-book Roman series set during SoM-TLO/The Second Titan War. I don't think he should do that and I don't want him to, but based on everything that's probably just what would have the best likelihood of success. It just seems like the only place he can go. Anything else he'd have to do something actually original, and he's shown time and time again that he's not interested in doing that and isn't very good at it anymore.

[theoldkyokodied]

Uploading all my Tomgreg art at once from the past few week before season 4 hits, who knows in what kind of mental state i'm gonna be once it does :')

[waggledoogledoggle]

SOMEONE GIMME MULTI-LINGUAL JED AND OCTAVIUS PLEASE

I NEED IT.

JED AT THE VERY LEAST KNOWS SPANISH AND ENGLISH IF NOT ALSO MANDARIN BECAUSE OF THE RAILROAD. LIKE, Y’ALL, HE CANONICALLY ON SOME LEVEL ACTUALLY KNOWS SPANISH

“No comprendo, amigo!” HE SHOUTS THAT AT THE AUGUSTUS BUST. IS THE ACCENT SHIT? YES. BUT IM CHALKING THAT UP TO ACTORS CHOICE CAUSE GUESS WHAT. HE CONJUGATED IT FUCKIN CORRECTLY.

GIMME JED SPEAKING IN ENGLISH COMPLETELY NORMAL BUT THEN HIS BRAIN DECIDES TO FORGET THE WORD IN ENGLISH SO HE JUST STOPS FOR A MOMENT AND STARES AT NOTHING, SO HE JUST SAYS IT IN SPANISH AND OCTAVIUS JUST STARES AT HIM LIKE ‘…tf?’ BUT THEN THEY GO TO CARRY ON THE CONVERSATION AND LIKE HALF A BEAT LATER JED JUST SHOUTS THE WORD IN ENGLISH CAUSE HE REMEMBERS IT NOW. LIKE:

“I mean, I ain’t ever seen such a mess! Hell we even had to get a new… uh…”

“…”

“…”

“Jedediah?”

“…mesa…”

“…mesa?”

“I… can’t remember it in English right now… but I’m sure it’ll come back to me… uhm, anyways, yeah we had to get a new one of those, which sucks cause it was the only good one in that tavern! I ain’t ever seen such a brawl, I mean- TABLE!”

“Jupiter- Jedediah what the fu-”

“That’s the word! Table! Alright, we’re good now, as I was sayin-”

AND OCTAVIUS? DUDE IS A FUCKIN ROMAN GENERAL, SO NOT ONLY DOES HE KNOW LATIN, BUT HE IS ALSO LIKELY FLUENT IN GREEK. SO ENGLISH IS HIS FUCKIN THIRD LANGUAGE

SO YOUR TELLING ME, THERE HAS NEVER BEEN ONE SINGLE MOMENT IN BOTH CANON CONTENT AND NON-CANON CONTENT WHERE OCTAVIUS FORGETS THE WORD IN ENGLISH SO HE COMES UP WITH SOME BATSHIT CRAZY SOUNDING DESCRIPTION OR MAKES A SOUND EFFECT AND JED JUST HAS TO TRY TO FUCKIN GUESS WHAT HE MEANS.

“Hey Octy, did ya see where lil’ Ted went?”

“Yeah he went on the- the um- the horse tornado.”

“…what?”

“You know, the horse tornado.”

“…do you mean the ‘Carousel’?”

“That’s the word! Yes, the Carousel, yes.”

OR

“He went on the… Jed how you say *makes helicopter noises*”

“…oh! Helicopter.”

“Yes! That.”

AND I WANT IT TO GET TO THE POINT WHERE JED STARTS GETTING IT FIRST TRY NO HESITATION WHILE EVERYONE ELSE IS LIKE “WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK DID I JUST WITNESS, HOW DID YOU GET ‘PEN’ FROM HIM SAYING ‘BLEEDING INK STICK’”

And even better. I want Jed learning Latin for Octavius once he finds out English is his third language. Because if Octavius learned his first language, then he’ll be damned if he doesn’t do the same for Octavius.

I BEG OF THEE, PLEASE

(Edit: yes I know that Jedediah Strong Smith irl knew some/the basics of Latin lmao, what I meant by 'learn Latin' was work to become fluent in it like how Octavius is fluent in English, my bad for not explaining more clearly lol)

[bravo4iscool]

hey!! i actually sent in the last two anon requests bc i get nervous, but you’re literally so nice i decided to be brave😭😭

anyways i just wanted to share a thought i had with you!! imagine simon with his partner, they’ve only been dating for a little while. they start to get intimate for the first time and reader is like ‘is this okay?’, ‘are you feeling okay?’, ‘do i have your consent, si?’

and Simon just malfunctions- imagine no one has ever actually asked *him* for *his* consent before :(( poor baby feels so loved for the first time ever

this is my Roman Empire😖

THANK YOU FOR SENDING THOSE ANONS!! they really made my day :))

and this is a very valid thought (especially if we look at his backstory)! i think he’s—in terms of sex—quite experienced. while i don’t see him as someone who fucks around 24/7, the consent thing makes 100% sense to me!

imagine, he’s always just down for a quick fuck, coming and leaving in a matter of maybe two hours. his partner(s) only did it for their pleasure too so i think maybe he’s also not used to someone focusing on him, y’know?

his brain’s really short cutting when reader asks him before touching his lower body or even his chest and checking in from time to time is he was feeling okay, if he wants to continue or not.

“ya don’t ‘ave t’ask me f’r that,” he mumbles, his hand cupping readers cheek.

“i know but i want to.”

and he’s a goner after that lol. this man doesn’t know what’s going on. he thought reader was shy and maybe a bit insecure—he didn’t expect them to be so thoughtful (maybe) and focused really on him.

he’s never felt that loved and appreciated and he probably fucks reader so good afterwards that they see stars and god himself.

yea, i’m really brain rotting over your asks😩

(masterlist)

REQUESTS/ASKS OPEN!!!

[athena-swords]

🎊 Gifts for our NEW YEAR 🎊

PAC

Disclaimer: people I am doing this in all seriousness and all and no it's not for entertainment purposes but ya collective readings so take what resonates

Pile 1. Pile2.

Pile 3. Pile4.

Pile 1❄️❄️🤍

We keep this love in photographs, so if you wanna buy cameras or just capture moments please go ahead and buy it it will give you lots of joy pile 1 new year could be looking as just any new year coming but you know that things are gonna change and maybe the people you are close with now will have to move and you too to other places so cherish this moments.Are you all joining colleges??or like your graduation is being done anyway congrats wishing you absolutely the best .

Maybe you will take the road less taken which will have its own uncertainty but for sure it's gonna be so worth it ,okay first of all whatever type of exams or test you are planning for they gonna give you your desired or expected results and you could be seeing true faces of your close mates and if you feel that you get easily evil eye or affected by others energies don't worry your guides are there to protect you ,this year you could have on issue in financial matter you are being in open to receive energy I see a energetic shit around you and you actually coming into limelight (attention song being played)you definitely should check your solar return chart could bein fire asc sign ok

And I am seeing or more of sensing lot's of puppy love energy so ya talking stages could happen and you ending up liking someone all over just enjoy your "up in the poppy hills" movie vibe so here comes the end of a eventful year wishing you all the best guys take care 💓

Oracle cards: Give it sometime approx 3 to 4 months,the more you live the less you worry,luck is in your favour,My gurl is the prettiest,Be careful with the people you choose

Please comment on your 2024 wishes and reblog means alot

Pile 2❤️‍🩹🥀

Some of you could be getting married or just getting your"THE ONE" for you if you wanted to meet your soul tribe and have been manifesting some wholesome human bond well I am pleased to tell you , you're making some lifetime connections this year , lots of self care products buying specifically perfumes and scented products if 2023 has been the pain the upcoming one will heal all those wounds and the word hork you thought no one saw wanna check some parts of pile 1?? I would recommend there could be a message for you there

Look you need to stop procrastinating!!!like if we wand our desires to turn into reality we need to put some action okkk and studyyyyy like when you study just put your focus on it if need then gurl you have to read it again n ugh that's more tiring.being more organised and balance is always a gift for you this year and a quote for you is "sometimes rejection is protection in disguise"so just jio lol even if it's your lala world I just said a paradox bit don't come to me fantasy and reality just need a little balance and we are good with it.

If you love gloomy weather then congrats you could experience it alot this year.I think you tend to underestimate your intuition and when it turns out right you regret so this year all about working on this and believing ourselves more then others 💗💗

Oracle cards: make a priority list,oh lala it's a love story, it's a yes, please zindagi jiyo baba...,study remember it's "you reap what you sow".

Please comment on your 2024 wishes and reblog means alot

Pile 3📸🦋

My Roman Empire is..... Idk lol.So travels travels and lots of travels in the list 😸 are you planning to fulfill your bucket list or something kya pile 3 anyway you could start talking again with a dear one with whom you could have stopped interacting or cut ties.Having a reunion of some kind being on backpack this could be the highlight of your year sudden plans being made you shifting family dynamics being changed

You again starting to learn alottt like an instrument, occult knowledge,your ancestors, about the world human body and many moreee.Having watermelon with closed ones on a beach or family farm haa such a vibe and keeping your room clean so it does not look like a messy place

Honestly I don't want to touch this past but somewhere along the line if you started feeling that it's hard uk to be happy like genuinely feel so content of life and kinda just at the starting stage of depression well this year is gonna prove your fact so wrong love muah muah have my love ok💓💓

On a side note your Cooking is good please try more

Oracle cards: Are you pretending love,the fingers create magic , living life king size , friends are the bigger enemy.

Please comment on your 2024 wishes and reblog means alot

Pile 4🪴🦓

Headache ahh you could be having them a bit this year ya but but it's because of all the packed schedule you need to get done with which you will be doing for not overthinking about "this" situation of yours someone from past could come back now it's upto you what you will do with them (it seems romantic connection btw).

Do you put this "I don't care" attitude I see you gotta change this one as there will be things you have to be responsible for alot this year.Emotionally you could be working on yourself listening to podcasts and actually making opinions of yours not just blindly following whatever is being said .you confused about something?? honestly sameee sorry for this just that your biggest gift could be knowing yourself more and handling just how you show yourself to the world

Oracle cards: posh lifestyle,lose yourself a little bit, it's not worth it,it worth trying,you know the answer

Please comment on your 2024 wishes and reblog means alot

Wishing you all a very happy New year 🧿🧿🤍

Pls message me my ishman fam i need someone to talk about them 🤌🤌

[written-beyond-the-grave]

Taking the Mikaelsons to a Concert

IK a bitch was gone, but a bitch is back… sparingly. I been on tumblr doing my shit but ummm I started this shit while in highschool like sophomore year… It’s been a year since I graduated college…. Anyway, fuck it we ball bc someone needs ot get this shit wet first with the Mikaelson’s… shout out to @starlightandfairies @wholoveseggs @klausysworld for holding it down. I love everyones work, y'all be feeding the fandom

If it’s snowin’ I ain’t going… leggo (once again, I write this for niggas. Mwah, to freedom)

So primarily I feel like the Mikaelsons would all be down to going to a concert, I mean Nicki, Doja, Lil Nas X, Mariah the Scientist, Chloe Bailey, Drake, Jhene Aiko, Victoria Monet, the Weekend, Kendrick Lamar, Travis Scott--- you get the point. You are the object of their desires and affections so they’ll go…. But what will ensue???

KLAUS

For nosey bitches in the back I got y’all…. This is Klaus finally biting the bullet and taking you to a Nicki concert, the Pink Friday 2 tour!

First, it would take hella time to even get him to go, this man is busy running lives, making hybrids, acting like he a real active party in whatever council shit he bullied his way into in New Orleans, and like running Rebekah’s love life…. He be busy 

He probably feels like he should take you out for something, so he asks you what you want. Anything your heart wants he’ll give it no problem: private helicopter tour of NYC, a week in Brazil, couples massage, hell even go see puffins up in Iceland. But you know what your bitch ass asks for?

To see Onika Tanya Maraj…. As you should

This man is staring at you like “Love… who is that?” And you look at him and tell him “Nicki Minaj, Nicki Lewinski, Nicki the Ninja, Nicki the Boss, Nicki The Harajuku Barbie…. Have you not learned????” And he just stares at you in amusement like ‘it’s no Mozart, you modern women have such…. Vulgar tastes… but I will endorse this, for you my love”

Wait till he gets there AHAHAHAAAAA

You’re pulled up in all your glory, pink everything, sunnies on, gloss on, heels as big as his dick… And you know I don’t think Klaus would ever let you put him in pink spandex. But I think he’ll allow like a shirt of Nicki’s face on him, and like maybe a barbie chain on his neck… He’s a hybrid, he can’t be seen out like this (you def sent photos to the rest of the family of this). 

I feel like Klaus would be chill af with the crowds and shit, until bitches start getting rowdy when Roman comes on stage. I feel like he’ll just be vibing, but mostly looking at you as you lose your shit 

“A 100 MUTHAFUCKA CAN’T TELL ME NOTHING, I BEEZ IN THE TRAP”... bby chill, you’ll sweat that wig off and it’ll slip back. But deadass, it’s like another beast when she comes out and it activates something in you. Like the regular old human that Klaus knew of is gone, and is replaces by a bad bitch that would definitely put her shoe on his neck and he likes that

Funny enough, there is one song that Klaus would know all the words to… Moment for Life-- HEAR MY OUT, DAMN. Ok, the song is about literally getting everything you want and being at a point where no one can touch you or even fathom to be at your height of success or clout. Klaus Mikaelson gets whatever he wants, no one touches him-- or if they do, they won’t live long enough to tell the tale. King shit, so imagine your surprise when you hear this man over everyone else singing along and being into it

Yeah, did that shit. “What I tell 'em hoes? Bow, bow, bow to me, drop down to ya knees” Drake type man…. And towards the end just reminisce of all the people, woman, children, and villages he pillaged to get where he is now… mentally deranged, having a god complex and inferiority complex at the same damn time, and daddy issues while treating his siblings like his own dad LMFAOOOO

Good luck Klaus whores

And then when she starts bringing in old shit like the songs with Sean Kingston or Gyptian…. Oh boy, I know that man is catching a whine as you yell at him “YOU’RE SO PRETTY AND YOU’RE NICE YUH DUN KNO SEH NICKI AS YO WIFE” Ik you bitches telling Klaus exactly that and putting emphasis on wife bc where tf this Icelandic viking silverback think he going????

But as the show goes on, it’s a cute experience between you two as you guys kinda switch roles and you get to be super unhinged and rock out with the other people there and go bar for bar. Like you couldn’t fuck Michael Kors if you was FUCKIN’ Michael Kors

dabs sweat off my forehead

He’s happy to take you home and baby you when you come from the energy drop, but he will be wondering were that energy comes from bc you ain’t putting all that work in when he fucks you soooooo

REBEKAH

Ok so for this one…. Give me a Lil Nas X, Doja Cat, and Rico Nasty ass collab in a concert (bc that’s my dream lineup and y’all can take all my money). I feel like Rebekah needs the girl power and the gays for this so let me cook

I deadass feel you wouldn’t need to convince her of shit, she’d be the one to ask if you wanted to go because she’s heard some of their songs via you jamming in the bathroom and just booked tickets as soon as you said yes. Hey, it’s to make you happy and you deserved to be pampered-- and she’s trying to get in her modern experiences since she was in a box for a long ass time

1st song is Montero, it has to be she definitely wants to fucked out from the jet lag and becoming part of the mile high club-- it’s her thing. Plus she loves the glitter and probably being two glitter gay/bi/whatever floats your boat people that are dressed in matching outfits, but different color combos. Titties are out, and y’all are sprayed down in glitter

Then after that I feel like it would be Rico Nasty coming in hot with “SLAP A BITCH” and I know you and Rebekah felt this song on a spiritual level, so it’s both you screaming in each others faces while she has her arms wrapped around you bc she loves love.

Then it pops off with “STFU” bc a lot fo y’all hoes needs to take a seat and shut the fuck up when big bitches are in the room… anyways, personal issues. A lot of y’all do not need a mic and are not the big titty bitches y’all make yourself out to be… and take the mics away from podcast men, please. I BEG

But anyways, it’s really a whole anthem to all the rock/rap alt girlies out here. Rebekah isn’t used to the music, but she can get buck wild to it, especially when it comes down to Doja and RIco when they interchange with “Swamp Bitches”.... That’s my shit ngl

Nah bc opening a verse with “I WISH DEATH ON ALL YOU BITCHES” was insane… love you Rico <3 That song makes you wanna fight ever bitch in the state that ever did you wrong, every bitch working at goodwill that couldn’t take your brothers army discount bc you wasn’t personally in the army, the wack ass bitch at the post office that didn’t want to work there that day, and that grandma down the block that keep eyeing you and telling you that you ain’t hot shit… she wasn’t even hot shit when Project C hit the neighborhood and niggas were getting sprayed with hoses

Anyways

I truly feel like she’d appreciate the girl time with you, and just to be, and have her shit out and have fun. It’s what she deserves

KOL

THERE IS NO HEAR ME OUT YOU WILL LISTEN: NF

I know I been on the black artists wave, but for the niggas that really be feeling shit NF just knows and I feel like with Kols past of always being the forgotten sibling, not being i the pack of “always and forever”, dying all the fucking time, and getting treated like shit by everyone else unless they need to minute magical thing that’s super important he’s left in the dark

He is the most self-aware sibling out of everyone out this fuck ass family. And I feel for him honestly, being the black sheep, being the outcast. Being able to use your magic when you were a witch and then all of a sudden you can’t do that shit anymore because you’re dumb ass mom wants to make y’all fucking vampires and freaks of nature and then wants to kill you, like it was your fault in the first place? Shit was really whack.

Like he calls his family and siblings out for having a para social relationship that is super into emotional and measurements, and having no boundaries whatsoever, killing other peoples lovers, putting them in coffins just so Klaus doesn’t feel like he’s losing his siblings because he can always take them whenever he goes. But they’re still in a box, they’re not living life they’re not being happy. And that just shows how much class is really his daddy‘s son, even though his dad really isn’t his dad because his mom cheated on, her husband with a werewolf. And Kol clocks all of that.

So I feel that he would really vibe with NF, I really do. Therapy session, intro, hope, all of those songs the whole album really would have him crying in your arms at sometime around midnight when he just came over to listen to some tunes and have a good time, and I feel like you introduce NF to him. He gets hugged, and he knows that NF is speaking about his life someway somehow and it just really hits him and he just cries in your arms for that time

I don’t care how corny you think this man is, this is real music and he writes about things that are real, and that happens to him. The song mansion is legitimately about Kol’s life with being being abandoned and abused by his own family, and his own father, as class was taking most of the beatings, he still had to watch all of that. But being the middle child that he was, he just was overlooked, and that probably speaks as to why he acted out and didn’t get any of attention that he deserves.

And I feel that as Kol gets into a relationship relationship with you, you being his black queen, because I know that man was up in Hady for some reason helping him with the revolution. He just doesn’t give a fuck does what he wants to do so it makes sense why he would be with the black woman because it’s just everything, they are on earthly, they are Wisdom and magic and chest seal combined into a specific human type. And I love this for them, I love this for me.

But anyways, back to the subject at hand. I feel like you, dear reader, would surprise Kol with NF tickets because he’s been wanting to go for a long time, and you guys went dress up any fancy just probably black, cute little combat, boots and things like that. And then just head to the show. But as soon as the show starts, he probably starts off with one of his hard hitters. I’m imagining either therapy session, or mansion to really get the tears going. And it’s really just the two of you standing side-by-side, maybe even hand and hand shouting every single lyric word for word, and just letting out all the shadow work and trauma, that you two have built up over the past couple years, granted Kol is Literally hundreds of years old, and you’re probably someone your 20s or 30s. But trauma is trauma and y’all need to deal with that.

Bc deadass, these lyrics are Kol: “What's my definition of success? Listening to what your heart says. Standing up for what you know is. Right, while everybody else is” because in every single episode, when Kol says not to mess with some dumb shit that causes about to fucking do everyone else ignores him, even Elijah, and they fuck around and find out, and they all of a sudden need help. And then complain like no one told them exactly what the fuck was going to happen in the first place. This man is always right, and he needs people to listen more to him. He’s been listening to what his heart says, he’s been going out and meeting new people and trying to live a life that he would really be proud of. Even though he’s very much unhinged and still acts out because he wants to be king of the world and wants to have some form of control like Klaus has because he knows that he can never get away from Klaus.

And then, when I feel like it’s towards the end of the show, and NF finally drops, hope, I feel like that’s when Kol really starts to let go of things a little bit, and really start listening to lyrics and make a promise to himself with like, maybe fighting against his dark side, a little bit of all the things that he’s known, and then just digging himself a deeper hole. He wants to actually get better for you, and for himself to have a healthy relationship. Because he’s never had that in his life, and you’re just not a play thing to him at all.

“Thirty years of running, thirty years of searching. Thirty years of hurting, thirty years of pain. Thirty years of fearful, thirty years of anger. Thirty years of empty, thirty years of shame. Thirty years of broken, thirty years of anguish…. I’m taking the reins” so it’s really just him taking the reins of his life, and just making it better than whatever it actually was. And I hope that can be therapy, I really do. But this whole concert experience would really just be a gigantic therapy session for Cole, but also having fun with you because there’s no one else that he would let see that vulnerable and that lively and have his whole façade slip down like that besides you.

But he’d be a Drake fan, Travis Scott, and probably XXXtentacion… he’s still a menace, but he’s a healed menace…. well, healing.

ELIJAH

Here is the black womans whore himself… and my man *does the debby ryan* 

I know that Elijah appreciates music in general, that man literally writes his own concertos, plays the piano, plays the violin. He is classically trained. And I expect nothing less. Honestly, he really is him. And he is also still very much worse than Klaus, even though he would like to believe that he is not.

Honestly, I don’t think you would really have to introduce Elijah to rap or hip-hop music. I feel like he would already be in Erykah Badu fan, probably really like the Beastie Boys, was into old school, underground in New York, hip-hop and rap. He was probably there, underground, too, for shits and giggles when he wanted a break. So no, I don’t think you would have to introduce him to hip-hop, maybe to a couple artists and everything. But, that doesn’t need help with that department

I feel like Elijah would definitely be a Kendrick, Lamar, J. Cole fan in the rap game and even Lil Wayne too. But I want to get into some good old Tom foolery before I say my crème de la crème.

With the whole Kendrick, J. Cole and Drake beef, that’s happening, I don’t think that Elijah would ever take any sides. But I do feel like he would definitely keep up with the news, even though you wouldn’t expect them to, with the whole suit and everything.

To start off, I feel like you being the reader would bring up the whole rap beef thing to Elijah. Since two weeks ago, you already brought up the Megan Thee Stallion versus Nicki Minaj rap beef that was happening. And now, this time it is Kendrick versus everyone, fuck the big three it’s just big me nigga BUM

And I feel like it would be brought up during lunch or something since you guys have lunch together, and you’re just giving him the whole play-by-play and then letting him listen to the song. And I feel like you need to play a couple times for him, so he really gets to like listen to lyrics and understand because one thing about it is…. Metro dissed everyone in morse code

NAHHHHH CUZ YALL NOT HEARING HIMMMM BEEP BEEP BOOP NIGGA

Mans said “BUM” with his chest

Like I know, J. Cole was on his bike on his way to the studio. As soon as he heard what Kendrick Lamar said, but then again, he could also not be doing anything because he’s not the type to just be on Rappy just to get some shit going you know?

But anyways, I feel like Elijah would totally indulge in this, and he would write down a whole play-by-play with what everything means because the power money and respect? “Sweetheart, Drake is the money, Jermaine Coke is the respect, and Kendrick is the power….” I can fully foresee that man giving you a dissertation on every single line and lyric and how it is a jab at every single one of them, and the meaning is behind it. You got not only a history professor, but one of the great literary investigators of all time for no reason.

I feel like Elijah is low-key. Also waiting for Drake and J. Cole to respond to what Kendrick said about them. And he’s so messy, for he really is, because he acts all high and mighty but he’s really waiting for the gossip about what people about to say

But moving along from the rat beef, I really do feel like this man would be a Lil Wayne fan because Lil Wayne was setting a standard early in the 2000s and probably even before then about how he really is one of the best rappers out there. Like, no one else was doing it like him and no one else doesn’t like him, and will never do it like him. You would catch yourself humming to a Lil Wayne, and I feel like that man would pick it up instantly, and just go bar for bar on whatever humming note that you were on and it’s amazing, but it seems so out of character for him, but it’s really not.

Because this concert is going to be one hell of a trip because first and foremost he is not going there with a suit on, you’re going to have to get this man to be casual. Which shouldn’t be hard because he loves you, you’re his little chocolate drop, pumpkin. But putting this man in a leather jacket and some jeans and whatever shoes that are comfortable for him to wear at this concert is gonna be one thing. Fighting off other bitches while in the crowd is going to be another thing entirely as well.

But listening to him, actually let lose for the good two hours that you’ll be there at the concert screaming at your lungs, and listening to this man stay on rhythm beat and have actual breath control when he’s going for a speed to is going to be insane in mind melting

Let’s be honest, you wanna fuck this man on the regular basis just because he’s him. But you’re telling me that he’s cultured and he can wrap and knows what the fuck he’s talking about?

Coochie hours have been extended

And it gets even worse when he knows that this turns you on so anytime that you turn back to look at him he’s already looking at you, wrapping the verse with little to no effort and giving you those bad eyes because he just knows. He knows what he’s doing to you and you have no Other choice but to either look away or to hold eye contact because we both know this is gonna end up messy when you guys get back to the Airbnb or hotel room

“I said, "He's so sweet, make her wanna lick the wrapper" So I let her lick the rapper”, and this mans eyes are dead set on you and his gives the lip bite… Yeah yeah… time for me to gooooo