#if you want me to do more math and figure out uh. how much weed it takes to get coco fuckin blitzed somehow. hit that subscribe button bayb

[lunearobservatory]

"New York, you've been quiet."

"That's new."

(tw alcohol)

There are ten visible 18oz cups on screen. Lowballing, I’m going to say this is all he has had. I’m also going to say each counts as 12oz since it’s possible they weren’t filled up all the way, also standard Budweiser can and bottle sizes are 12oz, so it’s an equivalent of one can/bottle per cup. I’m saying Budweiser bc it’s statistically the most popular beer in New York which. It’s also the most popular beer in the entire country so like. Whatever. I’m going for it.

Okay.

10*12oz=120oz

It could be either Budweiser (5%abv) or Bud Light (4.2%abv) and I’ll go with Bud Light, again going for the lower number.

In my heart of hearts I know this is Wildly going to affect the outcome of these results but God damnit I have NO other form of reference. So. I’m using Ben as a body ref. Personally I hc NY as around the same height anyway so fuckin? Sure I guess.

Ben is uhhh self stated to be 5’5 and 125lbs which LMAO I COULD THROW HIM SO FAR but also I’m gonna use that as the metric.

120oz of 4.2%abv for a 5’5 125lbs person is. HURRKKKHH A LOT LMFAO.

That rounds out to 0.29%bac (aprox 20h until 0%abv) at minimum

And for shits and giggles 0.5%bac (aprox 35h until 0%abv) at most (10*18oz(5%abv))

0.08%bac is the average level New Yorkers start feeling “drunk” (it’s also the legal driving limit lmao). The national average for that is 0.099%bac, so I feel comfortable saying it’s sssssimilar enough to just. Use those numbers with a pinch of salt which isn’t how math works but ffff.. Sshhh…

So basically, yeah, I guess based on my word and above numbers he’s anywhere between 0.29%-0.5%bac in that. If he’s only passed out that’s WILD LMAO

0.25%bac is starting stage 5 (level that passing out is listed at); 0.29%bac is the bottom line so it makes sense he would be passed out at this mark if his tolerance is above average which! Probably! It's fuckin New York!

But. 0.45%bac+ is like. Pretty damn assured death for errrrrrr. Most people!

So. Yeah! Between 116-200% tolerance when compared to average citizens. I know that’s a big discrepancy just play with me in this hypothetical math hell please!

The point of all this being. Yeah. I do maybe believe the states are a little tougher than humans and I had to justify it to myself in some semblance of reality

Thank you.

[dexter-doll]

Incorrect quotes from a generator

Ft my ocs

—————————————————

Alen West: The joy of hanging out with Cerena. You look away for 5 seconds to make sure something is set up correctly, and they bite the tip of a marker off.

—

Cerena Demon: I wish I was a cat, but not in a furry kinda way, more like a “I can sleep all day and hit people with no consequences” kinda way.

—

Cerena Demon: The risk I took was calculated but, man, am I bad at math.

—

Cerena Demon: Wow, it sure smells like wrong dog in here!

Alen West: Oh buddy...

Cerena Demon, already sobbing: ASK.

—

Alen West: I'm having problems with a guy...

Cerena Demon: Like his dead body won't fit into your trunk kind of problems, or you like him kind of problems?

—

Alen West: One time I went to hand Cerena a bowl of soup. I wanted to say “Careful, it’s hot!”, and “Here’s your soup!”, so instead I blurted out “Careful it’s soup.”

—

Cerena Demon: The ‘how the fucks’ and 'why are you so dumbs’ don’t matter. All that matters is that I have a new gun.

—

Alen West: Do you have any skeletons in your closet?

Shadow Cerena: Literally or figuratively?

Alen West: I have to specify?

—

Cerena Demon: That’s illegal, right?

Shadow Cerena: Why do you care? Are you a fucking cop?

Cerena Demon: No-

Shadow Cerena: Then shut the fuck up.

—

Alen West: Where are you going?

Shadow Cerena: Hell, eventually.

—

Shadow Cerena: Am I a boy? Am I a girl? It doesn't matter. I'm going to burn your house down.

—

*Cerena Demon is casually searching around the room*

Shadow Cerena: Hey Cerena, what’re you looking for?

Cerena Demon: My will to live.

*Alen West walks into the room*

Cerena Demon: Oh, there it is.

—

Alen West: You look mentally ill.

Cerena Demon: I am. Let’s go.

—

Shadow Cerena: :)

Cerena Demon: >:(

Shadow Cerena: Turn that frown upside down!

Cerena Demon: ):<

Shadow Cerena: Not sure what I was expecting...

—

Cerena Demon: You know, sometimes dandelions remind me of that shadow version of me.

Alen West: Aww, is it because they’re like a little sunshine, spreading light and hope everywhere?

Cerena Demon: What? Gross, no, it’s because they’re like a weed that you can’t get rid of!

—

Shadow Cerena: I baked you a pie!

Alen West: Really?! What flavor?

Shadow Cerena: *pulls gun out of the pie* DEATH!

—

Cerena Demon: So my therapist was talking to me and she said that I really just need to break down my walls and let people in.

Cerena Demon: So I’ve decided to break the fourth wall.

Cerena Demon: *looks at camera* Hi there. I use humor as a coping mechanism.

—

Alen West: I’m not so sure you’re stakeout material.

Cerena Demon: I’m a chronic insomniac, I was born for this.

—

Alen West: Though I admit I don’t know much about you, I am feeling pretty confident in my assessment that you are probably some sort of sick deadly fuck.

Shadow Cerena: Who told you my secret?

—

Cerena Demon: You disgust me.

Shadow Cerena: *eating a kitkat sideways* I realize this and don’t care.

—

Vic Demon: Do you want this handful of moss?

Cerena Demon: Why would I want a handful of fucking moss?

Vic Demon: Damn, you could’ve just said no.

—

Vic Demon, at Shadow Cerena’s funeral: I need a moment with them.

Everyone else at the funeral: Of course. *leaves*

Vic Demon, leaning over Shadow Cerena’s coffin: Okay, listen here you little shit. I know you’re using my brothers body and also not dead.

Shadow Cerena, sitting up in the coffin: Yeah, no shit.

—

Shadow Cerena: Thanks for not telling Alen West what happened.

Cerena Demon, dumbfounded: I wouldn’t even know where to begin trying to explain this.

—

Vic Demon: When's the last time you slept?

Cerena Demon: Uh... a few days ago, I think.

Vic Demon: A few- how many?!

Cerena Demon: Uh... *starts counting on fingers* I need more fingers...

Vic Demon: What you need is sleep!

—

Shadow Cerena: Anything else?

Cerena Demon: Yeah. Stay away from me!

Shadow Cerena: Alright. See you in the room we share.

—

That’s it for now

@crossover-enthusiast

[rwprincess]

Head Over Feet (Brian Johnson x Fem!Reader)

Masterlist

Word Count: 4.8k

Synopsis: What’s that sound? It’s another anachronistic Brian Johnson songfic! (Based on Alanis Morissette’s Head Over Feet) You’re one of Bender’s trash-punk friends and things change drastically when he brings the scrawny brain from detention with him to meet you all. Set up in snippets, your relationship develops with Brian, even if you weren’t really looking for a relationship.

CW: Teenage smoking (including reader), swearing, parental abuse (being being kicked out), sexism, angst and fluff

“This is Johnson,” Bender indicated the boy he brought along to your group’s spot under the bleachers.

“Brian, please.” The kid corrected. You eyed the gangly youth from top to bottom; in his sweater over a crisply-ironed collared shirt and khakis, he definitely didn’t fit in here with you all. You’d be called grungy punks at best. You didn’t think any of you even owned an iron and crisp definitely wasn’t your style. You blew out a puff of smoke, exhaling the nicotine from your lungs and shifted your gaze to Bender, wondering what he was at with this. He wasn’t the best guy, but pranking this preppy little nerd by bringing him down to your hangout? That seemed beneath him.

“You, uh, running some kinda charity here, Bender? We’re not exactly Make-A-Wish material, kid.” Scorch told the blonde dweeb and you snorted at the thought.

“Shut the fuck up,” was all Bender said in response. The rest of the twenty minutes of Brian Johnson standing there was of course, incredibly awkward and it was clear to everyone that he didn’t fit in. But that didn’t stop him from coming back a week later. And again a few days after that. And again and again until, well, that dork had grown on the lot of you. While he didn’t partake in cigarette smoking like most of you, he did take Bender up on his weed on several occasions and was actually really funny while high. He did weirdly spot-on impressions and had a sense of humor that none of your group had anticipated.

And, as much as you would vehemently deny it, you liked him when he was sober, too. He was incredibly smart and helpful and while his jokes were different without marijuana in his system, he could be amusing. That first awkward encounter was back in March, maybe April. But now you spent time with him without the convenience of school pulling you together. Now it was June and you sought to spend time with him, even without the group. Tonight, you were laying in a field not far from the high school, just the two of you. You liked to listen to him ramble on about the constellations and the myths about why they were named as they were. You remembered liking that as a kid, but you didn’t remember most of the stories. You knew you could ask him questions about the actual stars, too. Like, the science of it, and he would know. But you’d rather let him ramble and tackle one subject at a time. Even though he focused more on science and math, he was a pretty good storyteller, and right now that provided you with more of an escape than talking about the chemical composition of a star. When he finished his retelling of Ursa Minor’s story, however, he remained silent and didn’t start up a new piece of lore. After a moment, you looked at him to see what the hold up was, but you just caught his eye as his gaze was already fixed on you. Your heart started pounding in your chest because you knew what was coming.

“You know, we could go on an actual date some time.” Brian suggested, breaking the silence. You closed your eyes, almost wincing at the words. He was generally more subtle than this, but the same idea had been brought up before. It wasn’t that you didn’t like Brian. In general, you did, and in the honest depths of your soul, it was as more than a friend. But, every time it came down to this subject, you panicked. You had never been serious with anyone and the thought of dating was completely foreign to you. You had messed around with some guys before but you never had feelings for them. You didn’t know how to depend on another person, to have an actual relationship with them.

I had no choice but to hear you

You stated your case time and again

I thought about it

You sighed, your eyes still closed. You didn’t know what to tell him. Before, he always left it as more of a hint and it was easier to dodge. Now he was just coming out and saying it. Basically asking you out, so you would actually have to turn him down this time. The terrible thing was, you didn’t really want to. The conscious side of you wanted to agree and go out with him, on a proper date. But your subconscious kicked you into fight or flight mode and if you weren’t in the middle of a field, you might have picked flight and walked away. But that didn’t seem to be an option.

“Look, Johnson. It’s not that easy. Just...don’t waste your time on me.”

“I’m already wasting my time on you.” He pointed out, but when you took a peek at him, he didn’t seem upset about it. He was actually grinning about it. “We’re already wasting our time out here. Or at the library, or under the bleachers… So why not like, a movie theater or dinner, or my house?”

“Oh yeah, your mom would love having me around.” You joked, humorlessly. The smattering of times you had met Brian’s mother hadn’t gone swimmingly. You could read the derision in her voice and knew she did not approve of her good little baby hanging out with a ne’er-do-well like you.

“She’d come around. You’re different once someone actually gets to know you.” He meant it as a compliment, but you took it as your out.

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?” You leapt up, indignantly and he just gaped at you like a fish out of water.

“I didn’t mean anything bad by it, I swear!” He put his hands up defensively as you looked down at him. “Forget it, I’m sorry.” You had victory, he dropped the subject and your friendship could last another night and you could try to pretend like he wasn’t right, that you two weren’t meant to be something more.

*~~~~*

You treat me like I'm a princess

I'm not used to liking that

You ask how my day was

For the most part, working at Bert’s auto shop felt worthwhile and valuable. Other days, it chewed you up and spit you out. It was hard being in such a masculine environment and not fitting into that type. Customers (mostly men, but even the women too) thought that you were less knowledgeable and handy than your cohorts. Bender’s teasing didn’t help that image, either.

Now you slid into the booth at Gino’s pizzeria utterly deflated and defeated. Of course, Brian took notice right away. “Rough day?” He inquired, pushing a menu towards you even though he knew you ordered the same thing every time.

“That’s not even the half of it. Why does Bender hafta be such a dick all the time?!” You asked, incredulously but sincerely, diving right into your problem.

“I don’t know. I think he thinks it’s part of his charm? Maybe it is. I mean, we’re still friends with him.” You nodded at his point, but clenched your fists just the same.

“I just wish he knew when to back off sometimes. Like, he never realizes he’s taking it too far and digging you further into a shithole.”

“What did he do this time?” Brian’s gaze on you was unbroken; it made you feel important, like your opinion, your story, was the only thing that mattered.

“So we got this old guy in the shop today. Beautiful car, so of course he was hesitant with me touching it.” You began and his eyebrows furrowed, already not liking the direction this was going. “And I’m trying to prove myself worthy to work on this car, even though I would just be doing an oil change, which isn’t like a big deal anyway, right? Simple stuff.” You looked to him to get acknowledgement to move forward.

“I mean, I guess. I don’t really know about oil changes or anything about cars. But I know you do.”

“Right, so Bender has to go and make a crack to the old guy about how they won’t let me near it and I’m just the secretary for the shop or whatever. Just a total dick move. But of course the guy believed him and laughed with him and sent me to go get him a cup of coffee? I mean, what the hell is that?”

“That’s not right. And you wear a mechanic’s uniform at work, why would he think--?”

“Because macho man Bender told him I was! He was more believable than me.” You sank back and put a hand up to brace your forehead as the waitress approached the table. You prepared to order your drink when she set down exactly what you would have ordered in front of you and walked away, promising to come back in a few minutes. You blinked at the cup as if it magically had appeared.

“I uh, figured you’d get the usual and you’d need it when you got here, so I ordered for you. I hope that’s okay.” Brian said and then looked away, suddenly embarrassed by the idea. Since he wasn’t looking at you anyway, you allowed your lips to twitch up into a smile threatening to break out on your face...but only for a moment.

“Yeah, whatever. So anyway, Bender…” you carried on, pretending nothing happened, but secretly cataloguing his gesture in your memory.

*~~~~*

The only thing worse than arguing with Brian or him pissing you off was him making you laugh. There were times that you would go home with sore sides and itchy eyes from the tears that formed while laughing so hard. Then you would always, always reflect on the hours you just spent together, feeling the warmth and butterflies tickle your insides and a nervous heat would prickle your skin as you thought about how happy Brian made you. He never pushed you to do anything; he liked you the way you were. Sure, he would drop hints here and there about how you should stop smoking or give you advice when you had a particularly bad argument with one of your friends, but overall, he just accepted you. And you knew how hard that was to find.

You had never been popular and when junior high rolled around, you accepted that you never would be. You found your own little group of outcasts who understood what it was like to be kicked down time and again, and now he had somehow joined that group too. You knew he understood how it felt. Even though he looked different and came from a very different social circle, he had been looked down upon by his peers all his life. You were guilty of judging him the same way when you first met him, but now you couldn’t imagine life without him. He was cut of the same cloth and you could see yourself in him, which is why you just clicked. And he was so kind and so patient with you. You tried to push him away dozens of times, to put up the barriers and the walls that worked so well for everyone that came before him; you couldn’t be hurt if you never got attached. Where most people gave up and only saw the cold, distant bitch you gave them, Brian always saw something more. He didn’t give up in breaking down those walls, and even accepted just being your friend. That made you love him even more.

Shit, wait. Did you just think about loving Brian? A crush is one thing. Having a buddy to fool around with is one thing. Being in love was quite another.

You've already won me over in spite of me

Don't be alarmed if I fall head over feet

Don't be surprised if I love you for all that you are

I couldn't help it

It's all your fault

*~~~~*

Mercedes Johnson was all about keeping up appearances, but that didn’t mean you couldn’t hear her arguing with Brian on the other side of the door, about you. Again. You had known from the second you met her that she didn’t like you. She was instantly worried about the influence you’d have on her son; it was a common reaction from parents based on the way you looked and the company you kept. You would think you’d be used to it by now.

However, it truthfully bothered you more because this was Brian’s mother. You were hoping that she would be different and see the person underneath like her son had, or at the very least, that she would eventually warm up to you. You had no luck with either.

“I’m not comfortable with having her over at the house right now.” You could hear her tell Brian.

“She’s my friend, ma. Of course she’s going to come over--”

“I’m aware of that but you know I wish she weren’t. I would prefer that you keep the company of other friends.” The formality of her sentences while she was still cruelly putting you both down made you cringe.

“You don’t know her because you won’t give her a chance. She’s not that different from my other friends.”

“You have friends in the Physics Club, from Knowledge Bowl, Honor Students. You don’t need the association with a hoodlum like that or John Bender and I don’t know why you keep insisting on bringing them into my home when I have repeatedly told you no. I don’t want them around your sister, or even you!”

“Fine. Then we’ll leave.” You heard the door swing open harshly and Brian was motioning for you to follow him out of the house.

“Brian Ralph Johnson!” You heard his mother cry after the two of you. Brian held open the front door for you and you looked at him cautiously before rushing out. You knew you weren’t wanted there, but you were worried that he wouldn’t come with you. You were even more worried that he would. “You are not leaving this house.” Mercedes put on the most intimidating tone you had witnessed her use.

“No, I am. We are. I’ll see you later.”

“Don’t bother coming back tonight if you walk out of this house!” She was now pink-faced and losing all of the reserved, polished look you had seen her have. She had never been so...uncomposed.

“Don’t worry. I won’t.” Brian said and grabbed you by the elbow as he escorted you down the driveway to your car. He immediately got into the passenger seat and as you sunk behind the steering wheel, you glanced at him.

“Brian, this is stupid. You don’t have to---you shouldn’t do this.” The whole situation reminded you of the many times you had been kicked out of your house. This was just another home you weren’t welcome in.

He clenched his jaw in response. “Let’s just go. I’ll figure it out later. Please, just drive.”

Your love is thick and it swallowed me whole

You're so much braver than I gave you credit for

That's not lip service

“Your mom gave you a choice, you know. It’s not like she told you to get out. She actually told you not to leave.” You said as you both sat on the trunk of your car, looking out across the field that was slowly turning to a golden hue, both from the afternoon sun and the change into autumn. Neither of your houses were really an option to go to, so you just chose the empty field that you would look at stars in during the summer.

“It’s not like it was really a choice though, was it? I’m tired of her trying to control every part of my life. I need to start thinking for myself, doing things for myself. She needs to understand that I’m going to do what I want, and like who I want to like.” He looked at you meaningfully for a moment, but you looked away quickly. It was too heavy for you to process right now.

“That’s a big step. I’m really impressed with you for standing up for yourself.” You told him, and he gave you an appreciative, heart-stopping smile in return that caused your cheeks to flush. Your parents had shouted at you to leave so many times before, any time you were ‘inconvenient’ for them, that it was hard to relate to someone who chose not to stay. But you wanted to support him and you did feel proud of him today. You thought back to the most recent event in which you had been dismissed from your family, and how you had tried to take it out on Brian:

You slammed your locker and watched him almost jump out of his skin. “I don’t want to talk about this.” You growled at Brian.

“I understand that, but you need to. You can’t just--”

“Just what?”

“You can’t just act like nothing happened or run away from it...run away from here.” You had been disciplined at school yet again and your parents had had enough. You had a big fight with them the night prior and did not sleep in your own bed. The tiredness racked your body today and you were stiff from sleeping in your car. If it weren’t for the social aspect, you wouldn’t have bothered coming to school. But you quickly realized you weren’t in the mood to talk to anyone, and you were only making the situation worse.

“Like hell I can’t.” You stated, quickly turning to walk away.

“Y/N, don’t. Come on, talk to me. Tell me what happened. We can figure it out together.”

“There’s nothing to figure out, bucko. I’ll be fine. I’ll do this on my own. I’m used to that anyway.”

“But you don’t have to be alone, Y/N. That’s what I’m saying! That’s my whole point: I’m here for you!”

“I didn’t ask you to be, Brian.”

“No, because friends don’t have to ask.” His words scared you. Nobody had so adamantly offered to be a safety net to you before.

“Yeah,” you scoffed, “we’re great friends. We’ve bonded so much in the, what, four months you’ve known me?” You rolled your eyes, trying to make him feel uncomfortable, to drive a wedge between you. You only knew how to put up walls, how to run.

“You know we are.”

“Yeah, sure, right. Friends. Not like you want to sleep with me or anything.” You tried to drive another knife into him, to play it off like he was following you only because he had a crush on you, one you tried to pretend wasn’t reciprocated. “It’s not going to happen, Brian. So just accept that we’re not friends.”

He let you get about three steps away before you heard him say, “No. I know what you’re doing, and it’s not going to work. Sure, part of me wants something more, but...I care about you, Y/N. And if we can just be friends, I am happy with that, I swear. But don’t do this to me. Don’t try to shut me out or walk away or act like you’re fine. I know you well enough to know you’re not.” When you turned around, you could see that he had tears rimming his eyes, threatening to fall, which made your own tears spring up as well. “I am your friend. I’m not going to just let you go and do something stupid. You are going to talk about this. If not to me, then someone else. But you can’t just run away or sleep in your car or, or…”

“Okay.” You said, softly.

“Okay?”

“Fine, let’s talk about it. I screwed up again and my parents kicked me out. So what do I do?”

“Y/N, I’m so sorry. I...we’ll think of something.” He began to tell you, but you bit your lip and drowned him out in your own sobs. Everything crashed in on you at once; you hadn’t escaped in time. You slid down your locker wall and sat on the floor. Brian joined you and put his arm around you tentatively.

You are the bearer of unconditional things

You held your breath and the door for me

Thanks for your patience

After that day, you knew he wouldn’t let you go. You tried your best to brush him off, to hurt him, to land irreparable blows. But it was all in vain; he stuck by you. You admired how he stood up for you, for your relationship, whatever that meant. He didn’t back down, even though you knew he genuinely cared what you thought. He was willing to put everything on the line just to be with you, in whatever capacity you would allot him. And today, he had chosen you again. He had picked a fight with his mother and chosen you. He placed you above being safe and comfortable and at home right now.

“I’m sorry, this must seem so stupid to be complaining about. I know I don’t have it that bad, it’s just that--”

“No, your problems are valid, too. Your mom sucks.” You told him and he laughed, “But I would be lying if I said it wasn’t...weird to have someone be given the choice to stay instead of being yelled at to get out and that you’re worthless and---I’m sorry. I don’t mean to make this about me.” You said softly, looking down at your hands.

“No, I get it. It’s gotta be on your mind a lot, the uncertainty. Plus, I don’t mind talking about you.” He nudged your shoulder with his own, trying to be playful but you knew he meant that. He always put you first. You couldn’t help your next impulse as your hand shot up to cup his face and you leaned in and kissed him roughly. You weren’t entirely sure why you had done it. It would probably change everything and you couldn’t tell if you were doing it selfishly to feel like someone cared or to keep him around or because you truly wanted to. Of course, he kissed you back, and the feeling it gave you pushed a lot of those doubts from your mind.

You're the best listener that I've ever met

You're my best friend

Best friend with benefits

What took me so long?

*~~~~*

The kiss in the field still didn’t mean you were “together.” Realistically, it complicated things for a while. You avoided Brian for a couple of days and didn’t discuss it when you finally caved in to your desire to see him. He didn’t bring it up either, even though there were many times he would look at your lips like he wanted to make a move again, but you never talked about it. Things began to look “normal” after about two weeks. You spent time at the record shop, or under the bleachers with your friends or in the library with his friends. He nagged you about giving up smoking and you finally listened, much to his surprise.

“What made you finally decide to quit?” He asked, looking at the nicotine patch on your arm. You shrugged, not wanting to tell him the truth.

“I guess I just finally got tired of you being a broken record, mother hen.” You teased him, but he just smiled because he was happy with your choice. The truth of the matter was, you had done it for him. While you weren’t with him, you wanted to be. You didn’t want to keep doing something that bothered him so much, but you also knew that eventually, your habit of smoking would cost time with him and you didn’t want that. You lied to yourself that you didn’t want a relationship and weren’t thinking about a future with Brian, but you were. Every time he helped you study or encouraged you to do your best, the time your parents were out of town so he had made you his “specialty” of spaghetti in your kitchen, when you drove him around singing songs together on the radio...you thought about doing those things with him forever and instead of the fear you used to feel at such a thought, you felt happiness. You anticipated a future with him, something to look forward to.

I've never felt this healthy before

I've never wanted something rational

I am aware now

I am aware now

*~~~~*

“It’s kind of weird, yeah. But they’re cute together, I guess.” You had just returned from a movie with Bender and Claire. You were surprised at how long their relationship had lasted, especially since you had hated Claire at first. You assumed she was dating Bender as a statement, but it had been over six months and they were still together and it just seemed to work.

“It must be nice to have someone like that. Even if they don’t make sense, they care about each other. It just must be a nice thing to have a relationship like that.” Brian looked at you for a moment before backpedaling, realizing he must have made it sound like he was guilt-tripping you. “Don’t worry, I won’t ask you out again. I really just was complimenting them--”

“Well, maybe you should.” You cut him off.

You realized how rare a find like Brian truly was. He always put you before himself; he listened to all of your problems and knew when to offer solutions and when to just listen. He was endlessly supportive, and kind. He kept taking giant risks just to be with you, to show you that you mattered to him. You knew, without him saying it, that he loved you. Why else would someone go to the lengths he did, just to make you happy? You had tried everything to shake him, to get rid of him so neither one of you would be in too deep to get hurt. But he stayed, and now, you wouldn’t want him to go anyway. It was too late; you were both already in too deep.

He just blinked at you, sure he had heard incorrectly. “Wh-what?”

“I said, maybe you should. Ask me out again.”

“Y/N, do you want to go out with me?” He asked, unsure. It felt like a setup, but he knew you wouldn’t do something so cruel to him.

“Yes.” You replied, softly.

“Why?” He asked with furrowed eyebrows.

“I don’t know. I guess you won me over.” You chuckled, but he failed to see the humor in it, so you changed to a more serious tone. “Brian, I thought that these feelings would go away, that you would go away. Lord knows how hard I’ve tried to push you. But...you didn’t and the feelings didn’t. I-I love you. And I’m pretty sure I’m going to keep loving you, I don’t want to waste my time with anyone else. And...And I think that you love me.”

“I do.” He breathed quietly, with zero hesitation.

“So, why fight it any more? I was afraid that I would hurt you, but I think I’ve already done that and you’ve stuck around.” He nodded in confirmation of that fact. “And I was scared that I would get hurt but...but I’ve realized that you won’t do that to me, either.”

You've already won me over in spite of me

Don't be alarmed if I fall head over feet

And don't be surprised if I love you for all that you are

I couldn't help it

It's all your fault

He took your hands in his, “You’re serious? You really want this? Because, you know how I feel. How I’ve always felt.” You nodded in response, tears quickly filling your eyes, which was a rarity for you. He leaned in towards you to kiss you, for the first time since your conversation in the field over a month ago. He waited for you to be ready in every aspect of your relationship and you had never known so much love and respect before. It took some adjusting to, but he had pulled you in and made you fall for him again and again.

Just gonna tag my buddy...

@90sinequity

[luminnara]

Flying On Wings Made From Feathers And Wax | Ganondorf x Gerudo!oc chapter 2

Part one | Part two | Part three

Growing up in the Gerudo Desert is hard. 

The sun is merciless, especially to the small. For someone like Ilula, it is draining, seemingly determined to exhaust her as it beats down on her during the day. It will never stop doing so, but at a young age, she learned how to deal with it. 

The others called her lazy, but she considered herself clever. Just like the lizards that liked to snooze while they sunned themselves, she took naps during the day. It wasn’t that the other Gerudo didn’t—naps were almost a necessity in such a hot environment, and it was common to see be back in an hour signs hanging on merchant stalls—but Ilula simply napped more than the rest of them. 

It concerned her mother greatly. 

Kiluki took her daughter to the best healer in town, the one who looked after the chief and royal family, hoping to find answers about Ilula’s small stature. Just like the Hylian healers, though, this one declared that Ilula was, for the most part, fine, she was just...small. Small, and a bit weak. For Kiluki, a tall, strong vai, who had once been a member of the Chief’s guard, Ilula’s relatively tiny stature and shortcomings were cause for major concern; she knew that many Gerudo never joined the guard, and to keep Gerudo Town running, they needed all sorts. But she wanted Ilula to follow in her footsteps, to become stronger and braver than even she, and Kiluki feared that it was a dream that could never be.

Ilula knew that her mother worked, but what could she possibly do about it? It wasn’t anything that she could control. She spent her days playing or helping Uvira sell her produce while her mother advised the Chief, trying to forget the way that she couldn’t reach things the other girls could. As she grew older, it became obvious that she would never hit a growth spurt, and while Ganondorf shot up like a weed, Ilula stayed at least a head shorter than the others her age. 

“C’mon, pipsqueak!” Ganondorf scooped her up one day, interrupting her midday nap.

“Gan!” She yelped in surprise as he threw her over his shoulder. “Put me down!”

“Not a chance,” the prince grinned as he ran towards the palace. “I’ve been looking all over for you. I’ve got something to show you.”

Even at twelve years old, Ganondorf could carry her easily. He spent his days studying and training, his mother keeping a watchful eye over him and ensuring that her son would become strong and capable. While Ilula had already finished most of her schooling, knowing how to read and write and do simple math, the prince had many years of studies still ahead of him, his chambers lined with shelves full of thick books. Being royalty meant that he needed to know everything about the world, and he enjoyed reading about Hyrule and its politics and history. Ilula didn’t share quite as much appreciation for the Hylian kingdom neighboring the desert, but whenever he was reading, she had a chance to take a nice nap in his incredibly soft bed, and that was something she could absolutely appreciate. 

“It better not be stupid,” she grumbled with a yawn. “Interrupting me on my day off…”

“Day off from what?” He snorted. “You can’t even start real training until you’re twelve. That’s a whole month away.”

“So?” She argued.

“So you can’t possibly be too busy for me,” he rolled his eyes. “Sav’aaq!” He called to the guards at the top of the steps as he passed them. 

“Sav’aaq, my prince!” They snapped to attention, bowing their heads. “Ilula, sav’aaq.”

“Sav’aaq,” Ilula mumbled. She was used to the guards keeping watch over her and the prince, and they had all developed a certain fondness for Ganondorf’s runt of a friend. 

Ganondorf carried her through the throne room, past the chief and her advisors as they pored over a map of Hyrule. They bowed to him as he walked by and he grunted in acknowledgement, too focused on his task to stop and ask what they were doing. 

They allowed him to rush by without interruption. He only had a few years of childhood left before the burdens of leadership would fall on his shoulders, and his mother wished that he enjoyed his time as much as he could. He was growing into a fine young voe, the Sheikah prophecy a distant memory now, and As any voe, he should be enjoying the years of his youth as much as possible.

When he reached his chambers, he threw Ilula down onto his bed. She laughed as she bounced, sitting up to look at him as he grabbed a wooden box from his desk.

“Here,” he said, slightly out of breath as he pushed it into her hands. 

She took it, hearing something rattle inside. “What is it?”

“Just open it!”

With an inquisitive glance up at him, she slid the lid off the box. Inside, something was glimmering, reflecting the light of the desert sun that streamed in through the windows. As Ilula reached inside, she picked up a set of earrings, a teardrop-shaped sapphire hanging from each hook. 

“Oh, Gan,” she breathed, holding the jewelry in her palm as she stared down at it, “these are beautiful…”

He was watching her anxiously. “Do you like them?”

“I do!” She looked up at him with a wide smile. 

The prince let out the breath he had been holding, relieved. “Oh, good.”

“Did you have these made?” Ilula asked, peering closely at the stones. 

“I did,” he smiled. “Just for you. Well, actually, they were going to be a birthday present, but Amira finished them early. I couldn’t hold my tongue for an entire month.”

“This is the best early birthday present I’ve ever gotten,” she beamed up at him. “Thank you, Gan.”

“Oh, they’re not a birthday gift anymore,” he laughed. “I figured out something else for your birthday. These are just normal gifts now.”

Ilula raised an eyebrow. “You really shouldn’t be spending so much time spoiling me, you know…”

“Or what?” He laughed. “You’re my best friend, Lula. You deserve gifts.”

“Well, it’s not like I’m not going to accept them,” she grinned at him as she stood and walked to the mirror on the wall. 

“I put a spell on them.” he blurted out. “To help you stay cool in the sun. Sapphires are good for that.”

She glanced back at him. “Really?”

“Yeah,” he nodded. “I had the jeweler make them and then I enchanted them. I’m supposed to be practicing, and I wanted to try it out…”

“I can’t believe you know magic,” Ilula said as she faced her reflection. “I wish I could put spells on things.”

“It’s not that big a deal,” he shrugged. 

“Shut up,” she laughed. “It’s a super big deal!”

He watched with a serene smile on his face as she took out the big gold hoops she was wearing and replaced them with her new earrings. Just as he had hoped, the bright blue sapphires contrasted perfectly with her fiery red hair…though the thick green band she used to keep it up off of her shoulders didn’t match at all. He made a mental note to add a new, nicer one to the small pile of birthday gifts he would be giving her in a few weeks. 

Ilula admired the way the sapphires hung from her pointed ears. She had to admit…Ganondorf had an eye for jewelry. Maybe it was because he had so much of it himself; as she looked at his reflection behind her, she could count no less than ten incredibly expensive precious stones on his head and arms alone. The perks of being a prince, she supposed.

When he noticed her watching her, he suddenly shuffled his feet awkwardly, glancing away for a moment before looking down at his hands. 

“I’m, uh…glad you like them.” He mumbled. 

“Gan, don’t be sheepish,” Ilula laughed, turning to face him.

He looked up at her, hoping that she couldn’t see the blush on his face. She was the only person who ever made his skin heat up like that, the only Gerudo he ever wanted to be around, the only vai whose hand he wanted to hold. It confused him, the way he felt about his best friend, but he was headstrong and determined not to shy away from whatever he was beginning to feel. 

“I’ve never seen a sheep,” he chuckled. “What does sheepish mean?”

Ilula’s laughter grew louder as she plopped down on the edge of his bed and looked up at him. “They’re soft. Hylians cut their hair and make things with it. They look like fluffy little clouds with legs.”

Ganondorf grinned. “I can’t wait until I’m king and I can see all of Hyrule. I want to go to the castle, see the Hylians.”

“It’s a long walk,” Ilula said. “…well, Mama carried me most of the way, I think. I don’t really remember much of it. I know it rained a lot before we got to the outskirts, though.”

Ganondorf suddenly sighed and turned to the window. He walked towards it, placing his hands on the cool sandstone and leaning on them as he looked out over Gerudo Town and the wide, flat desert outside the gates. 

“What is it like there?” He asked, gazing towards the distant mountains that marked the Gerudo Highlands and the edge of Hyrule. 

Ilula frowned at his change in demeanor and stood to join him. “It’s…green. Everything is green, and you can smell all the plants. And there’s so much water, everywhere…when it rains, it isn’t like here. It just rains for a few hours, and then the sky clears up again, and the birds come back out.”

“It sounds…nice.” He admitted.

“It is,” she agreed. “You can just lean down and drink out of a stream if you’re thirsty. And if you’re hungry, there are apple trees all over! And fish in the rivers, and boar in the woods…”

“I like boar,” Ganondorf laughed.

“Yeah, they taste pretty good, I guess. When you add enough spices.” Ilula shrugged.

“No, not to eat!” He looked at her like she was crazy. “I like the way they look. Those big tusks…there are drawings of them in some of my books. I’ve always liked them.”

“Yeah, I guess they’re pretty cool.” Ilula giggled. “There are lots of other animals, too.”

“Life there must be easy.” He commented. “The Hylians have it all.”

“What do you mean?” Ilula frowned. “I thought you liked the desert.”

“I do, I just…wish we had things like grass and trees and forests. I wish we lived more comfortably.”

“You live very comfortably.” Ilula snorted. 

“What do you mean?” He looked down at her, nose wrinkled slightly. 

“Uh, all of this?” She gestures to the room around them. “The palace? You’re royalty. You hardly have to worry.”

“I have to think about our people!” He argued. “What’s Castle Town like?”

“Busy and big.” Ilula shrugged. “The streets are all made of stone, and there’s a big market where people from all over sell things. Mama didn’t let me go there very much, because of the way the Hylians are sometimes.”

Ganondorf looked down at her in surprise. “What do you mean?”

“They don’t really…trust Gerudo that much.” She folded her arms, hugging herself lightly. “They don’t treat the Rito or the Zora like Hylians, either, but they like them more than they like us.”

As Ganondorf listened, he considered her words. “I’m going to change that.”

“You’re going to change how they think?” She asked skeptically.

“I’m going to show them that they should respect us.” He said. 

“How?”

“Maybe I’ll…send them aid, if they have a natural disaster.” He thought out loud. “Or take a big delegation to visit the castle, or invite them here.”

“The king can’t enter Gerudo Town,” Ilula laughed. “You’re the only voe allowed. Remember, you spoiled prince?”

“Oh. Right.” He chuckled. “Well, I’m going to be in charge someday. I’ll have to figure out this whole diplomacy thing.”

Ilula smiled softly as she looked up at him. “I’m sure you’ll be good at it.”

He grinned down at her. “Only if you help me.”

She returned the grin. “Deal.”

“I don’t think I could handle the throne without you,” he bumped her with his shoulder, nearly throwing her into the wall. “I still have so much I have to learn.”

Ilula stumbled, but she didn’t fall like the last few times he had forgotten how big he was. “That’s why kings always have advisors. Nobody can run everything by themselves.”

“Yeah, I guess you’re right.” He sighed, his attention returning to the world outside his window. “I’ve got six whole years to figure it out, though.”

“Yeah, and it’ll be fine.” She tried to bump her shoulder into his arm with the same force that he had, but he didn’t budge. “Hey, seriously, are you made of rock?”

He barked a laugh. “No, I’m just bigger than you!”

“Well stop it!” She snapped, only half serious. “If you keep this up, you’re not even going to be able to see me!”

“Maybe you should just start catching up!” He retorted.

“I would if I could.” She rolled her eyes. “My mom keeps making me go to the healers to figure out why I’m so short. I keep trying to tell her that it’s not that big a deal, but she won’t listen.” 

As she spoke, her tone grew more serious, until it had Ganondorf frowning. “You’re fine.”

“That’s what I keep saying, but it doesn’t matter.” Ilula sighed. “She’s always worrying that I’m going to get hurt because I’m fragile. I always tell her that I’m not, and I know I’m not because you’re always throwing me down off the walls or into the aqueducts or whatever, but she just always gets mad and tells me to be more careful.”

“Do I ever hurt you?” Ganondorf asked, his eyes wide in alarm. 

“No, you don’t,” Ilula shook her head. “I’m serious, I’m not that fragile, but all she ever sees is me lagging behind everyone else. That’s why I want to start training with the guards, so I can show her that I’m fine.”

He narrowed his eyes slightly. “You know, if you start training, you’ll be busy all the time…���

“Gan, they train literally right outside your window.” She rolled her eyes. “You won’t miss me. I’ll be right there.” 

“…oh. Yeah, I guess you’re right.”

“But I bet my mom is going to be all worried about me training, too.” She sighed. “Until i show her that I’m not some fragile little flower. You know, back in Castle Town, I was always the biggest kid. She didn’t worry as much back then.”

“Do you ever miss it there?” Ganondorf asked, studying her face. 

“Sometimes. I miss everything I could get at the market, and I do miss my father. But…I didn’t fit in there. I guess I don’t really fit in here, either.”

“Yes you do.” He nudged her with his elbow, gentler this time. “You’re Gerudo. You belong here, with your people. With me.”

Ilula smiled up at him. “I know, Gan. I think it’s less about the place, and more about who’s there. You know?”

He looked down at her, his heart fluttering in a way he wasn’t used to. “Yeah. I know.”

000

On Ilula’s twelfth birthday, she woke to the smell of meat cooking over the fire. As soon as her eyes were open, she remembered what day it was, and she shot out of bed to investigate the main room of the home she and her mother shared.

“Sav’otta, my little desert flower,” Auntie Uvira greeted her as she prepared breakfast over the small wok in the middle of the room. “Sleep well?”

“Fine,” Ilula shrugged. “Where’s Mom?”

“Right here,” Kiluki appeared in the doorway, a parcel in her hands. 

Ilula eyed it. “Sav’otta, Mama.”

“Sav’otta, Ilula,” Kiluki smiled, holding the parcel out towards her. “Happy birthday.”

Ilula lunged for it excitedly, tearing the wrappings open while Uvira yelled at her to be mindful of the fire. 

As the brown paper fell away, airy pink fabric was revealed, and Ilula pulled out a bandeau top. Matching pants were next, made of a thin, breathable weave, and as she rushed back to her room to try the new outfit on, Kiluki smiled. 

“How do I look?” Ilula asked breathlessly when she returned, holding her arms out as she spun around to show it off.

“Oh, it’s stunning!” Uvira clapped.

“I think it suits you perfectly,” Kiluki nodded. “How is the fit?”

“I think it’s good. What’s for breakfast?” Ilula was buzzing with energy, bouncing over to look at what Uvira was cooking. 

“This is for later,” her aunt laughed as she sprinkled in some Goron spices. 

“We will be eating breakfast at the palace,” Kiluki informed her daughter. “That’s why I wanted to give you that gift first thing in the morning. You should look your best.”

Ilula grinned. Eating at the palace meant getting to see Ganondorf, and as she rushed to get ready, she wondered what sort of gifts he had in store for her. 

She found out soon after she walked through the impressive archway and approached the throne. The chief sat with her hands on its armrests, her back straight as she looked down at Ilula and Kiluki.

“The prince and queen mother are awaiting your arrival, Ilula,” she said, her voice firm and strong. “I would not keep them waiting. Kiluki, if I could have a quick word.”

Ilula glanced up at her mother in confusion, but when Kiluki waved her off, she was eager to run towards the dining hall. It was her birthday, after all, and she wasn’t going to allow herself to worry about anything. Whatever the chief wanted wasn’t of her concern, and when she saw Ganondorf waiting for her with a pile of gifts, any and all thoughts about what her mother could possibly be needed for flew out the window.

“Happy birthday, Ilula,” Ganondorf’s mother, Mira, said, a smile on her face as she watched her son shove a box into Ilula’s arms.

The Gerudo royal family spared no expense. Ganondorf had given her a sapphire necklace, one that matched the earrings, and a ruby wrist cuff that he said would keep her warm at night when the desert winds pierced Gerudo Town. His eyes lit up at the sight of her happiness, and though he had certainly given her birthday gifts before, he was especially glad to see that all of his hard work and pondering over what to get had all paid off this year. He gave her a new sirwal, the light, baggy pair of pants a bright white with golden accents threaded throughout. Then came an assortment of her favorite candied fruits, a beautiful sand sealskin journal, and the biggest breakfast feast she had ever seen.

By the time the unwrapping was finished, the table was covered in a plethora of delicacies. Everything from platters of sliced hydromelons, to gourmet meats hunted in the highlands, to rare seafood brought all the way from the coast, was piled up and presented to Ilula. It was a lavish celebration, the kind usually reserved for holidays or royal birthdays, and with Kiluki returning from the throne room to partake, the festivities were finally truly underway. 

The adults drank as the children laughed and played. They were nearly too old to be doing so, both nearing the age at which they would begin training for adulthood, and one last romp before it all started seemed to be in order. The day was full of merriment and their spirits were high, and as the two tore out of the palace to get themselves into trouble elsewhere, Mira turned to Kiluki with a sigh. 

“He will be devastated,” she said.

“As will she.” Kiluki raised her cup to her lips and drank. 

“How long do you have?”

“I do not know.” Kiluki lifted her eyes. “Ryla did not say…all I know is that we are to return to Castle Town when she deems fit.”

“Why is she sending both of you?” Mira asked. “I hardly see the sense in taking Ilula away from her training.”

“I believe she wants us to keep up appearances.” Kiluki sighed. “Perhaps by the two of us seeming to return home, the Hylians will be less on edge.”

“Still…” Mira sighed again. “I am sure we will all be focused on our tasks, but your absence will be hard.”

“I only wish I knew when we would be leaving.” Kiluki frowned. “Ryla told me that it could be tomorrow, or in five years.”

“And I don’t suppose you’ll be allowed to visit home…”

“I doubt it.”

“Not even if Ganondorf requests it?”

Kiluki pursed her lips. “Perhaps after he takes the throne, he will summon us back to Gerudo Town. I should hope he will see the value in placing me amongst the Hylians, though, and so close to the royal family…”

“Like a spitting sand cobra, nestled right within their own walls,” Mira chuckled. “You must do your job well, for Ryla to send you back again.”

“Yes, I suppose I must. Though it was easier back then.”

“Will you return to that voe?”

Kiluki wrinkled her nose. “Perhaps, if he is willing to see reason.”

“What did you even fight about?”

“Everything.” She shrugged. “Hylian voe have a single use. The rest of the time, they are wholly disagreeable.”

Mira threw her head back and laughed, the hearty sound echoing off the sandstone walls. “That they are! That they most certainly are.”

[morwensteelsheen]

If Faramir went to Rivendell, how would the whole ttt/rohan plot be different?

A good question that I have spent an unreasonable time thinking about! My first LOTR fic was going to be an attempt to answer this, but then I got so wrapped up in not having the answers that I sidelined it and wrote WC instead. So I think instead of giving you one definitive answer I’ll give you a couple scenarios I think are plausible? If that’s not too much of a cop out lmao? Apologies in advance for the inevitable spelling errors, I did this on my phone and my dyslexia is off the charts today.

I think it’s basically unavoidable that he goes via Rohan first, geographically he’s sort of left without an option there. When he’s there, we get into this issue of whether and how he and Éowyn interact. Worth noting, I think, that the Unfinished Tales has Éomer living in Aldburg by the War, but Éomer does seem to imply he’s around for Boromir passing through. Is this because he knows and already is a fan of Boromir? Maybe! Or maybe Éomer goes to Aldburg after.

But I digress. We have to ask the question of whether Faramir falls in love with Éowyn because he was always going to fall in love with Éowyn, or if it’s because the things he’s gone through immediately preceding it primed him for it. I — perhaps quite cheaply — come down on the side of Faramir always having it bad for her on first sight. And contextually I think that comes from his, rather sweet, enunciation of the way his regard/love changes for her. He says that at first he pities her, and then he gets to know her and he doesn’t pity her anymore, he respects and admires her. That’s an interesting dynamic to bring into play in basically every AU, because you get this double barrel characterisation of his attitude to her changing, and his own character maturing/sharp edges softening.

I think he off the bat he sees that she’s beautiful, and immediately is drawn to her for that. Shallow? Maybe! But, to badly paraphrase my ol fav Victor Hugo quote — love always begins with a glance.

I imagine he stays for a short while, maybe a week, two at most. At this point I think that Éowyn’s basically viewing him as an official guest that she has to entertain, and I think Faramir is, in his own, slightly stilted, slightly wanky way, putting the moves on her. This can go, imo, one of two ways. She can either be receptive to it (which is a nice thought!) or she can be aware of it but mostly ignore it because, really, she’s got lots of shit on her plate.

Either way, he leaves Edoras at some point. The big question is where does his go from there?

One thing I toy around with is that, given his pre-existing relationship to Gandalf, maybe he’s willing to trust the Istari a bit more and goes straight for Isengard? Which, and I think I did the math on this once a few months ago, would have him arriving at Isengard around the time Gandalf’s getting his shit kicked in by Saruman lol. I think this could be a really compelling plot point, but I’ll be very honest with you, I 100% don’t have the imagination or writing skills to figure out how it proceeds from there, so I’m not going to try to.

If he goes the normal Boromir route, he still loses his horse at Tharbad and walks (lmao jesus???) to Rivendell. When he gets there, I think he’s immediately going to have everything he knows put to the test in quite jarring ways. First off, he’s going to be infinitely more deferential to Elrond, Aragorn &c when they’re trashing Gondor. He’ll push back a bit, no doubt on that, but he’s going to be starstruck by Aragorn in a way that Boromir just wasn’t.

No real difference I imagine between Rivendell and Lothlórien, except that he’d definitely be laser focused on palling about with Aragorn, and he’d probably spend more of his time being friendly with Frodo than with Merry and Pippin tbh (not in a douchey way, I just think he and Frodo vibe a little better. Though I bet he and Merry had some interesting chats about pipe weed history).

The underlying question here is what sort of relationship does he have to the ring? I don’t buy this idea that he’s not tempted by it, I just think that what the ring offers him is a bit shit. We don’t know what the ring tempts him with, he’s not clear on that in TTT. I can’t really see the ring being like ‘oh I’ll give you a king to follow’ because that is some intensely nerdy shit, but is somehow the one thing I could see Faramir actually being tempted by. Regardless of what it offers him in this AU, he resists it on the basis that he’s got this mythical king he’s been desperate for, and he’s not gonna risk that for anything.

Lothlórien comes next, and oh my god when I tell you this is the part I genuinely have no answer for. I stopped writing my first fic at Lothlórien because I couldn’t cope. Tbh it probably lowkey fries Faramir’s brain, and for so many reasons. The whole godmoding Númenórean stuff he’s got going on probably interests Galadriel a bit, and so that whole conversation is going to be wildly different than it was for Boromir. But what does she say to Faramir? I have no idea. I really don’t. There’s also probably a million and one things also going on psychologically for him at that point, which makes dealing with this bit difficult. Really difficult. So I’m gonna, uh, conveniently smash cut away.

Parth Galen! Again, another two potential splits here. The first, (from here on out I’ll refer to as Plot A) which I find rather endearing, is that he goes off with Frodo and Sam when Frodo makes the decision to split. I don’t know that I believe he’d do it, but it proves for a very delightful interpretation of his character.

Plot B is that when the Orcs show up, Faramir survives not by virtue of his being a ~ better warrior ~ or whatever than Boromir, but by the terrain surrounding Parth Galen being something he’s far more in the habit of dealing with, and by virtue of his having a bow at his disposal. I know there’s room for an interpretation of Faramir as not primarily an archer, but narratively I think that’s less interesting. So he’s an archer. He’s an archer and also his priority is on Aragorn first and foremost, so Merry and Pip still get taken, and Frodo and Sam use the hubbub to GTFO, which is actually slightly more in line with the movie’s chronology, funnily enough. The three hunters become four, and then go on Merry & Pippin’s trails.

In Plot A, they’re hauling ass across the Emyn Muil, bolstered in some ways by Faramir’s experience as a Ranger. The problem is the issue of getting into Mordor and whether or not they pick up Gollum. I think, in a way that frustrates me immensely, they do end up taking Gollum, not because they need a guide, but because Gollum fulfils this deep psychological need for Frodo, and I think he would have argued for keeping Gollum regardless. Faramir is going to be fucked off about this, but will ultimately, I think, be deferential to the ringbearer.

So they go across the Dead Marshes, but they do NOT attempt the Black Gate first because Faramir’s not a fool. Do they go to Henneth Annûn? I say yes, but with the caveat that in all likelihood Boromir is gonna be there, which is gonna complicate stuff tremendously.

Over to Plot B!

The four hunters go to the Mark! They meet Éomer! Hey! Éomer recognises Faramir! (And he’s probably a little fucked off that he lost his horse lol). But whatever, he knows this guy, so he’s probably gonna be like, uhhh, everything you saw before in Edoras is much worse now. Also my cousin's dead and everything is bad. Here’s some horses, sorry for maybe accidentally killing your pals, see ya! And at this point I think Faramir’s probably having a, hmmm, g e n t l e  p s y c h i c  c r i s i s, because if he’s still very 👅 for Éowyn (which he is, sorry, he has to be) then he’s going to want to go there ASAP. Obviously though that’s not gonna happen, so: Merry and Pip chasing, Gandalf finding, Edoras arriving.

Which means Éowyn. If, at this point, she and Faramir already have something of an arrangement going on (nudge nudge) then she’s really not gonna give a shit about Aragorn. You know how in TTT it’s not even clear that she actually sees Legolas and Gimli? 100% that vibe with Aragorn too. Théoden’s gonna get his house in order, they’re going to head to Helm’s Deep, and Éowyn’s gonna get named head of house. (Faramir, if he starts off just thinking she’s beautiful, is going to have quite the paradigm shift here, because he’s going to have to start reckoning with her as not just a beautiful woman, but as a very, very intense person. This is how his love for her starts to mature.)

Sometimes I dream about him being like, ‘hey! I have some first hand experience of ruling a kingdom, how about I stay and…….. lend you a hand……..’ to Éowyn while she’s keeping watch on Edoras. This is wildly unlikely, but a delightful thought nonetheless. In the more likely case, which is that he goes to the Hornburg, she’s going to start feeling some strain about this whole war shebang, and it’s going to lead to some difficult conversations. Chief among them is that Faramir, as second son, actually has basically nothing to give her, which is not exactly a great position to be in when you’re in love with the niece of a king. I’m of the opinion that Éowyn’s not fussed by that stuff (she agrees to marry him when he’s prepping to give up a shit ton of power anyways), so she’s probably like, 'no, fuck you, we’re getting married.' And then he leaves, and it starts to emotionally unsettle her more and more.

If they don’t already have a thing, then it either begins at this point OR he gets overshadowed by Aragorn. In either case, off to Helm’s Deep he goes.

Helm’s Deep happens, I think Faramir ends up extraordinarily impressed by how the Rohirrim handle the Dunlenders afterwards, which also begins to soften his harsh opinion of them more generally.

They go to Isengard, Pippin looks in the Palantír, and away Pippin and Gandalf go. Both Gandalf and Faramir here would recognise that it would be batshit insane for Faramir to go back to MT now, because Denethor would read him like a picture book and he’d have to admit to the entire mission of the Fellowship.

Over in Plot A, I think we’re going to have some real emotional complexity vis a vis Faramir showing up at Henneth Annûn with two hobbits, a ring, and Boromir in control there. God, it would just be a disaster. My incredibly generous interpretation of this is that Faramir keeps the plan vague enough that Boromir lets them pass unhindered. My less generous interpretation is… yeah I don’t wanna do it tbh. It’s not pretty. It's also, to be clear: not an indictment of Boromir as a character. His response is entirely rational for someone expected to lead a kingdom and for someone put up against the unbelievable power of the One Ring. The reason Faramir continuously gets to pass largely untempted by the ring is because he's a guy with no actual responsibilities once you take the Rangers away. His understanding of his duty to Gondor is almost entirely conceptual in nature. He can think and talk about defending Gondor as it once was because there are several people above him in the hierarchy defending Gondor for what it is. This is also not an indictment of Faramir. He and Boromir just have wildly different realities to contend with.

They are going to go through Cirith Ungol even though Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dumbass both speak Sindarin and don’t cotton on to what its name implies lol. This whole scene is much shorter because Faramir’s significantly more cautious, so there is no Orc capture and Sam doesn't take the Ring. This is where things get a bit complex, and where I don’t think I have the imagination to say much more. Sorry!

Back in Plot B, the lads catch up with Éowyn as they prep to go down the Paths of the Dead. If she and Faramir are a thing, this is where the real emotional distress kicks in for her. All of the men in her life have, at one point or another, functionally abandoned her, and here’s Faramir, love of her life, about to do the exact same thing. Faramir inevitably goes with the Grey Company even though she begs him not to. When she tries to convince them not to go down the Paths at all, he is in the fortunate enough position to throw up his hands and say 'not my call, actually. King’s in charge,' which lessens the emotional conflict there somewhat.

No part of me doubts that Éowyn wouldn’t then immediately go over his head to Aragorn. She would, she absolutely does not give a fuck. And she’s going to get knocked back re: joining them in exactly the same way as in the book, because Aragorn’s take here isn’t actually dependent on her personally, it’s dependent on the duty she’s been charged with, which is taking care of her people. (Also going to be an interesting narrative parallel to a later conversation between Faramir and Aragorn after the Pelennor, which I’ll explain in more detail later.)

Faramir will, perhaps somewhat less dismissively, say this to her. He learns much more obviously the way to talk to her on her own terms, and he’s not gonna fall into the trap of letting her be like ‘you just want me to wait and die after all the men are dead.’ He’s going to probably give her some line about her being the last organised line of defence, and he might even invoke Haleth! It’s not going to work, because Éowyn’s very aware of the apocalyptic nature of all of this, but it’s not going to cause such abject hatred and fury as it otherwise would.

If she and Faramir are not a thing, her emotional distress is as it is in the book, except now Faramir’s trying not to pout in the background. He might even step in to try and soften the blow.

Regardless, she ends up as Dernhelm, she rides to the Pelennor.

Boromir is the one responsible for the Osgiliath retreat, and because it’s heavily implied that Faramir only keeps his seat because he’s got this dumbass Númenor garbage going on ('master of man and beast' — king Beregond), Boromir’s going to get killed by the Witch king here.

This is going to send shockwaves through not just Denethor, but Minas Tirith more generally, because Boromir is fucking adored. Denethor’s going to go high holy crackers much quicker, mostly because Gandalf is a shit stirrer and is going to waste no time at all in announcing that Aragorn, The Rightful King, is on his way, and Denethor will — correctly — surmise that Faramir has chosen Aragorn over returning with whatever Isildur’s Bane is to Gondor. This is the end for Denethor.

Éowyn rides from Dunharrow, slays the Witch king. Faramir and Aragorn show up with the Army of Dead, Faramir does not end up injured, but does end up as the Steward (obviously) and (obviously) aware that Éowyn is in the HOH. And also that everybody else he loves is dead. Yeehaw.

Here’s where I think things get really interesting. I think, counter to the way this is portrayed a lot of the time, Faramir doesn’t go to the Black Gate at all. I think he stays in Minas Tirith, not just to organise the wider range defences (esp the Rohirrim dealing w the Druadan) but in this very grim preparation to lead the retreat from Minas Tirith if/when Frodo & Sam fail. I think he's kind of fine with this for two reasons. The first is that him being conscious to process the death of his father, and it coming hours after the death of his brother means that he's going to have a personal-political crisis, and he's going to have to take the defence of Gondor more seriously than he did before. Second, Aragorn's going to tell him to fucking stay put, and he's going to be fine with it because it means he's going to get to spend the last few days of his life with Éowyn.

He and Éowyn reunite in the HOH, there’s still a lot of deeply emotional stuff going on, but, at least now Faramir’s conscience is clear re: marrying her because, well, he’s the Steward now. Also their reunion is going to take on greater significance because she’ll have killed the thing that killed his brother. So, that’s a lot.

If they are not a thing before the Pelennor, she's still going to drag his ass over to the HOH so she can bitch about being stuck there. But this time he's not a fellow hospital-prisoner, he's having to actually do things, and he's going to use that to his advantage in terms of keeping her from doing stupid shit. I think he's going to try to involve her in some of the strategic questions re: the retreat if the Morannon feint fails. I think he's going to make a point of talking to her to get her help on dealing with the Rohir forces that are in and around the City. I think that's going to go a huge way to helping to ease her misery, and it's going to be such a significant vote of trust in her (even after she's done the unthinkable and deserted her people) that she's going to fall in love with him here, as per. And the contrast between him and Aragorn is going to be all the stronger for it.

So yes. Those are just some of the possibilities I think! Sorry for the word dump!!

[ghostnebula]

Wait does human richie lick into the other losers’ mouth? I get wolf but i thought human richie just made out with eddie like that. Also 2 questions: 1) how does reddie get together in this au? 2) pls get horny with this au and mouth licking ajdjdjdjdjhf

No, he only licks inside Eddie’s mouth when he’s human. He is well aware of what he’s doing. Eddie, on the other hand, is oblivious. At no point does it occur to him that wolf Richie will lick every Loser indiscriminately because he is a puppy with limited self-control who loves his friends, but human Richie only ever specifically targets him.

Like. Richie is pretty much making out with him and he’s like “Yeah normal werewolf behaviour lol”

(Of course once they’re dating he catches on but by then he’s like “Okay Richie just so you know that actually really turns me on so if you could like, exercise restraint, that would be fantastic.”)

I think that EVENTUALLY Richie is going to figure out how to woo Eddie with things that don’t involve hunting or finding good dens. Every time he brings Eddie to another hole in the ground or pile of rocks he is SO proud of himself and so excited to show Eddie and get his approval but Eddie is just... “Dude. This is the third time this week you’ve brought me all the fucking way out here to show me some dirt. You’re my best friend, Richie, and I really appreciate that you appreciate this... this dirt hole, but I was in the middle of doing my math homework.” 

Two things happen: 

One - Richie gives up trying to be traditional because he realizes Eddie isn’t even intentionally rejecting him, he just doesn’t get it

Two - Eddie complains about his predicament to some of the other Losers and how he swears it’s Richie leaving these dead animals at his door, and he doesn’t want to like... upset him by telling him to stop, but why is he even doing that? Is anyone else getting dead rabbits delivered to their porches on a regular basis? Also has anyone else had to deal with Richie taking them on wild adventures through the Barrens just to show them some kind of burrow? Is that where he’s getting the rabbits from?

Ben is laughing so fucking hard by the time he’s done ranting, and Mike is trying really hard not to laugh, and Eddie’s all “What’s the fuck’s so funny?!” And. Well. What kind of friends would Mike and Ben be if they didn’t tell Eddie he’s being very overtly flirted with? 

Eddie: No I’m not?

Mike: He’s been in love with you for as long as I’ve known you? He is very clearly trying to get your attention and is just doing that the way werewolves probably do.

Ben: I thought Richie was supposed to be the blind one?

Eddie: *bluescreens*

Of course, Richie has realized Eddie isn’t getting the hint, so the next morning he intercepts him on his morning jog with a bouquet of wildflowers he picked himself because he was in a rush and didn’t have time to wait for the fucking florist to open shop. And Eddie takes one look at Richie, all ruffled and out of breath clutching some fucking dandelions and chicory and he’s like. Yeah okay maybe Mike and Ben are right. Maybe this is really a thing. And he happens to have it on pretty good authority that he has also been in love with Richie for longer than Mike or Ben have known them and just got really good at hiding it because -- well, duh. Even if he had the slightest clue that the feeling might be mutual, he also has a sense of self-preservation. 

“You’ve been leaving dead animals on my porch,” he accuses one final time, and Richie goes all red in the face (well, more red than before) and nods, thrusting the flowers out towards him.

“I thought you’d get the message, but apparently werewolf traditions aren’t common knowledge. Who woulda thunk?”

“You’ve been leaving dead animals on my porch,” Eddie says again, reaching out to take the flowers (and weeds) Richie is presenting him with, “because you’re... in love with me?”

Richie nods mutely.

“Okay,” says Eddie. “Okay. Uh-huh.” He’s definitely blushing, too, but mostly because he’s realizing that he is an idiot with the observational skills of a cinderblock. “Well, I’m also in love with you, so that works out.”

Richie, of course, is more relieved than he’s ever been in his life, but before he can ask permission to kiss Eddie (like actually kiss him, properly, for the first time) Eddie interrupts with a, “Hey, Richie? Isn’t this poison oak?”

I don’t wanna make this too long but I’ll include horniness in the mouth-licking scenario in another answer. I am... pretty sure there are one or two asks in my inbox with the same idea anyway.

[gamerwoo]

Junhui: Oh, Positive (Part One)

Characters: Junhui x female reader

Genre/warnings: vampire/vampire hunter au, kinda angst but not really that angsty tbh, kinda crack thanks to flirty and sassy vampire!jun, lots n lots of cringey flirting

Word count: 2,163

Summary: As a vampire hunter, your job is pretty self-explanatory. But sometimes, the enemy has to become your ally, and that’s exactly what happens when you're ordered to track down Jun. To stop the coven of vampires that’re bringing up the death toll in Tokyo, you have to work with the thing you’re trained to kill -- assuming the two of you don’t kill each other in the process.

a/n: there will be more parts but i’m not sure how many which is why there isn’t a masterlist yet. this is just a lil idea i’ve had for a while sooooo it’s not really top priority so updates will probably be slow. but idk i wanted it out there (and yes i wrote this bc i love vampire!jun from that web series)

Next

“Don’t kill him, just capture him. Bring him back here when you do.”

Those stupid instructions kept repeating in your head. What was the point of capturing a vampire and not killing it? All vampires were bad. They killed humans. That’s why you existed. You were trained to kill them on sight, but now you were being told to show some sort of mercy. What sort of bullshit was that? 

But your boss gave you orders so you would follow them even if you didn’t agree with them.

It had taken a few days to figure out where to find this Jun. There were apparently a few places he hung around, so you were checking those places. It was well into 2am and most of the streets were empty. However, most vampires were known to linger in the alleyways of more crowded places, hoping to lure humans away to feed on them. So you stuck to the shadows, watching and listening carefully for any sign of--

‘Vampire.’

You froze as soon as you sensed it, knowing exactly where it was. You didn’t make it obvious you knew, but you stayed in your spot, slowly moving your head to seem like you were surveying the area. In reality, you knew it was perched on the fire escape above you, ready to pounce down on you.

But you were ready for that.

Just as it leaped down, you rolled out of the way, swiftly and smoothly pulling your knife out of its sheath. You were on your feet and running at the vampire quick enough to catch it off guard. Since you knew where it was, you had time to figure out your plan. So you tackled it to the ground, straddling it and holding your knife to its throat.

And lo and behold, it was just the vampire you were looking for. Jun looked up at you with a smirk, his eyes blood red as he eyed you up and down, licking his lips hungrily.

“Wasn’t expecting my dinner to be so quick on its feet,” he chuckled. “Shouldn’t have been so careless, I guess.”

“Shut up,” you stated boredly as you used your free hand to get the handcuffs from your belt.

“So what now?” he asked, ignoring your order. “Are you gonna kill me or whatever?”

“As much as I would like to,” you sighed as you began cuffing his hands together, “I have to take you somewhere.”

“Ooh, an adventure,” he grinned, wiggling his eyebrows as you managed to get off of him and tug him to his feet. “Just one question, sweetheart--”

“Don’t call me that.”

“Do you really expect some handcuffs to stop me?”

You rolled your eyes before looking at him, “Do you not know anything about vampire hunters?”

He shrugged, “Never been caught by one.”

“Well, those will keep you from running away. Now let’s go.”

You turned to walk away, but, of course, Jun had other ideas.

“Thanks but uh, I think going home with you after the first date is too early for me,” he said, miming tipping his hat to you. “Sorry, but this won’t work out. Please don’t contact me again. Bye!”

You knew vampires were quick. You knew Jun could easily get away and you wouldn’t catch him. You’d have to follow your instincts to find him again, but you knew he’d definitely be hiding pretty well for the rest of the night and probably for a few weeks at minimum. But you also knew how the handcuffs worked while Jun had no idea.

He was only a few feet from you when he shouted out in pain and had dropped to his knees. He was hissing as he stared at his wrists that had felt the painful shock, looking between them like he was trying to figure out a difficult math problem.

“Those’ll shock you if you’re a certain distance away from me,” you explained, “and it’s so painful that you can’t get away. So I suggest you keep up or you’re going to be in a lot of pain.”

“Look, I’m into pain, but this is too much,” Jun huffed with a small pout as you dragged him up off his knees and shoved him to walk in the direction you wanted him to. “Do I at least get a safe word?”

“Shut up,” you groaned.

“That’s a really shitty safe word.”

-

You wondered why you’d spent days trying to track down Jun when he was so obnoxious and annoying. The entire way back to headquarters was awful, containing him trying to flirt with you or make some sort of comment that walked the line between flirting and being a snarky asshole. Honestly, that seemed to be all he was capable of.

“I really wish I wasn’t told to not kill you,” you sighed halfway through.

“Well isn’t that unfortunate,” was all he replied to you with before he carried on with whatever he was saying before -- you weren’t paying attention, you’d learned very quickly to tune him out.

Once you were back at headquarters, you thought maybe Jun would shut up a little bit. You thought maybe being in a place full of top of the line vampire hunters would intimidate him into silence, but he seemed to not be fazed by anything at all. He had something to say to pretty much every person you walked past, and it got to a point where you were pretty positive every hunter in there wanted to kill him. The guy was just so annoying.

You finally reached the boss’s office. You knocked on the door three times as Jun leaned down and whispered, “Is this where I die? Because I’d like the heads up when it finally happens, y’know?”

You knew Jun definitely wouldn’t just take his death lying down. Hell, he probably had something up his sleeve to get out if he had to, he probably wanted to just see where this was going -- and you would be right about that because he figured he had nothing better to do. 

“I wish,” you mumbled as you heard your boss tell you to enter.

Opening the door and walking in, you went straight to the boss’s desk. Jun, however, decided to take his sweet ass time and look around the large room, his head tilting back as he looked all the way up at the ceiling and rolled his head around to look at the other side of the room. But being too far from you caused his cuffs to shock him, and he let out a surprised yelp.

“Are you kidding me?!” he demanded in annoyance.

You just silently snickered at him.

“I’m impressed you found him,” your boss, Jicheol noted as he stood up from his desk and observed Jun.

Hearing that familiar voice, Jun snapped his head down to look at the man behind the desk. His face spread into a smirk as he approached the desk, standing beside you.

“Ji, long time, no see,” he said casually as if they were old friends. “Been a while since you were trying to slaughter me. How’s the wife?”

“Dead,” Jicheol deadpanned.

Jun opened his mouth but nothing came out as he blinked, “Okay, not the reply I was expecting...”

“So what did I have to drag this pain in the ass here for?” you sighed, wanting to get this whole thing done and over with.

Jicheol grabbed his computer monitor with both hands and turned the screen to face you. It was an article about the death toll in Japan going up, and the worst of it seeming to stem from Tokyo. Nobody was able to figure out what it was, but the three of you knew exactly what was causing it.

“As you’re aware, _____, a powerful coven of vampires is ravaging Tokyo and spreading to the rest of Japan,” Jicheol began, looking between you and Jun. “Jun here is, unfortunately, one of the most infamous vampires in Korea for how hard he is to catch, and for how strong he is.”

“Thanks, chief,” Jun grinned.

You already hated where this was going.

“That’s why I want you to go with him to Tokyo--”

“Wait, wait, hold on,” Jun quickly interrupted. “Let’s go back to when you were just complimenting me, yeah? You ruined it with the whole ‘go to another country with this party pooper’ thing.”

Jicheol sighed, folding his hands together in front of him, “_____ is the strongest vampire hunter we have, but all the best in Japan have tried to catch this coven and have come up dead. If we want to stop them, we need the help of a strong vampire, too.”

“And why would I help vampire hunters?” Jun quizzed, raising an eyebrow. “You’ll just kill me when it’s over.”

“Maybe not...” Jicheol shrugged.

“What do you mean ‘maybe not’?” you demanded. 

“He could be useful to us if he chooses to cooperate with us for this. And if he chooses to stay with us, of course he’ll be spared his life, and we’ll provide protection, housing, and means of food.”

“We’re going to protect a vampire?” you clarified. “Jicheol--”

“Yeah, that seems counterproductive for a group of vampire hunters,” Jun agreed.

You rolled your eyes, grumbling, “Can you not interrupt me?”

“Can you get to your point faster then?” he countered.

Instead of speaking on your bickering, Jicheol sighed and continued, “It would be helpful to keep a few vampires on our side to weed out the difficult ones. Look, we could sit here all night and discuss rhymes and reasons but the faster I get the two of you to Tokyo, the faster we can fix this issue.”

“Do I get a negotiation?” Jun asked.

You snorted, glancing down at his handcuffed wrists before looking back at him, “I really don’t think you’re in a position for negotiating, bud.”

But instead, Jicheol replied with, “What kind of negotiation?”

Jun flashed a snarky grin your way before taking a step forward and clearing his throat, “I want protection for my brothers, too. That’s first and foremost.”

“How many?” Jicheol questioned, raising his eyebrows to show he was interested.

“Four.”

“Would they be willing to help?”

“...I can talk to them.”

Jicheol nodded, “Continue.”

“I want cool clothes like sweet cheeks over here,” Jun said, nodding his head toward you, “and I want a really nice umbrella so I can go outside during the day. And I want--”

“We can offer your friends protection,” Jicheol stated.

Jun nodded, stepping back, “Cool, thank you, sir.”

You looked incredulously between the two men, “So this is seriously happening?!”

“We’ll prepare the flight for tomorrow night,” Jicheol explained, essentially ignoring your comment, “so that gives Jun time to talk with his friends. _____, I would like if you accompanied him to make sure he doesn’t go anywhere.”

You wanted to tell Jicheol he was out of his goddamn mind if he thought sending you alone into five vampires was a reasonable idea, but the look on your face said it all. He simply said he knew you could handle it before carrying on.

“We’ll handle packing and such. We’ll equip you with everything you’ll need and everything that’ll help you. Please report back here tomorrow at midnight.”

“What do I do with him until tomorrow night?” you wondered.

“Take him with you,” Jicheol replied as if the answer was obvious.

You raised your eyebrows in surprise, “You-- Y-you want me to babysit a handcuffed vampire all day?”

Jicheol cocked his head, “Do you think you can’t handle it?”

“Of course I can!” you insisted immediately.

“Then what’s the issue, _____?”

You really wanted to snap at Jicheol and tell him to go fuck himself, but instead you just grumbled and turned sharply on your heels to leave. Jun giggled at your angry expression and began to follow after you.

“Goodbye, Jicheol!” he sang over his shoulder. “See ya later!”

“You two have fun,” Jicheol smirked playfully.

Jun sighed as he fell in step beside you, seeming more amused than ever now, “Oh, I’m positive we will. Isn’t that right, _____?”

You frowned, refusing to look at him, “Eat a dick.”

As the door closed behind you and the two of you walked down the hallway, Jun tisked, “I would watch your attitude around me or I just might end up eating you, sunshine.”

“I’d like to see you try, bloodsucker,” you shot back, glaring at him now. “I can kill you just as easy.”

He chuckled shaking his head as his voice dropped lower, “That’s not the kind of eating I meant.”

You cursed yourself for blushing -- and Jun definitely noticed because he was giggling about it -- and cursed Jicheol for getting you into this mess. But the sooner everything was over with, the sooner you didn’t have to deal with Junhui.

Tomorrow night really could not come faster.

[whumphoarder]

Death by Waffles

Summary: When Tony decides to adopt a cat for Morgan, Peter is almost more excited about it than the six-year-old. He just failed to mention one minor issue before coming to visit at the lake house for the weekend.

Or, in which Peter is horrifically allergic to cats but JUST LOVES THEM SO MUCH.

Word count: 1,638

Genre: Fluff, slight whump, humor

A/N: Thanks to @xxx-cat-xxx & @sallyidss for beta reading and giving me ideas! 

Link to read on Ao3

“I still think we should have called him Winston Furrchill,” Tony says with a shrug, watching Peter, who’s sitting cross legged on the living room floor, grinning ear-to-ear, stroking the long-haired cat’s fur.

“That’s so boorrring, Daddy,” Morgan complains. She grabs the little feather teaser and dangles it in front of the cat’s face. He lifts a paw lazily to bat at it. “All your ideas were so boring.”

“What are you talking about?” Tony balks at her, eliciting giggles from Peter and a dramatic groan from the six-year-old. “My ideas were gold. Mr. Meowgi. Bill Clawsby. Genghis Khat.”

Peter snaps once and shoots a finger gun Tony’s direction. “Luke Skywhisker!” he throws in, causing Morgan to groan. “Ooh! Call him Nick Furr-y!”

“No! His name is Waffles!” Morgan exclaims, throwing up her hands in exasperation and causing the kitty in question to dart across the room and dive into his favorite hiding place—the cardboard box that his brand new, untouched, three-hundred-dollar cat tree came in. Tony just rolls his eyes; it’s behavior like this that makes him almost regret spending the last four days in the workshop designing that damn feline an elaborate catwalk and perch system spanning every room of the lake house.

(Almost.)

Morgan sticks her lip out in a pout.

“Aw, Mo, we were just teasing,” Peter says, patting her arm with a kind smile. “Waffles is a great name—I love it.”

That seems to console her. She grins back at him. “It’s ‘cus when we brought him home, he was really scared the first day and he just wanted to hide under my bed. So Daddy said I could eat breakfast in my room with him so he’d feel safer, but then I had to go to the bathroom and when I was gone he stole my waffle,” she rambles.

Peter quirks an eyebrow. “Your cat ate a waffle?”

Morgan nods. “Uh-huh, and then he puked it up again on the carpet!” she explains cheerfully.

“Ah yes, fond memories…” Tony mutters.

“So I named him Waffles,” Morgan concludes. “But I almost called him Syrup, ‘cus he got that on his paws when he walked on the plate, and then he ran around everywhere and it was all sticky. Mommy says that’s why we got ants after.”

While Peter snorts out a laugh, Tony just runs a hand over his face and sighs. “It’s been a long week.”

“Yeah, I’ll bet,” Peter laughs, rubbing a hand at his eyes. He uncrosses his legs and gets to his feet to walk over to the box where Morgan is trying to lure Waffles out again. “I always wanted a cat, but May never let me get one—said they were too much hassle.”

“They are,” Tony says emphatically.

“Are not,” Morgan disagrees. As Peter sits down by the box, she picks up the bag of kitty treats and starts shaking it, causing Waffles to poke his head out. She pours out three little treats onto her open palm. He sniffs them suspiciously, then turns his nose up and buries himself back in the box.

Morgan turns to Tony and shrugs. “I don’t think he likes chicken flavor anymore. You gotta get him the salmon ones, Daddy.”

“But you told me this morning that he doesn’t like salmon,” Tony argues. “He only eats the premium chicken with gravy.”

Morgan shakes her head. “No, no that’s his wet food. He only eats dry salmon, and wet chicken. And sometimes tuna, but only that one in the blue bag.”

“And waffles,” Peter throws in with a wry smile, sitting down to start stroking the cat inside the box. “Don’t forget the waffles, Mr. Stark.”

“At this rate, I’m thinking it’d be better to just install a cat flap and let him find his own mice for dinner,” Tony grumbles.

As if on cue, Waffles meows irritably and leaps out of the cardboard box, straight onto Peter’s lap. However in doing so, the cat’s fluffy tail tickles the kid’s nose. Peter sneezes twice—rather violently—startling the cat to the point that it shoots across the room and climbs halfway up the drapes.

“Waffles!” Morgan cries and races after him.

Sniffling a bit, Peter gives a sheepish smile. “Whoops.”

Tony rolls his eyes and extends a hand to help lever the kid up again. Peter rubs at his eyes again—which Tony notices are redder than usual. He raises an eyebrow suspiciously. “Are you sure ‘too much hassle’ was the only reason May was against you having cats?”

Something flashes across Peter’s face, but it’s gone just as soon as it appears. “Yeah, yeah of course. Well, that and she’s more of a dog person, really, but they’re not allowed in the apartment.”

“Hm.” Tony glances at his watch. “Alright, well it’s almost His Royal Highness’ dinner time.” He gestures to the kitchen. “Let’s go see if we can get him to choke down some caviar and truffles or something…”

X

Three hours later, Tony can’t ignore the signs any longer. After witnessing Peter’s third sneezing fit since dinner, he privately pulls the kid out into the kitchen. “Pete, c’mon,” he sighs. “Just admit it already.”

Taking a tissue from the box Tony holds out to him, Peter shrugs innocently. “Alright, you got me. Guess I’m coming down with a cold.” He wipes his nose.

Tony raises an eyebrow. “A cold that began ten minutes after entering our home and has only gotten progressively worse since?”

Peter chuckles a bit. “Yeah, go figure, right? Perfect timing for my weekend off. What does Doctor Banner call that again?” He tilts his head to the side in thought. “Starts with an L…”

“Pete…”

“Leisure sickness!” he recalls, his face lighting up. “That’s the word. Think I’ve got that.”

Rolling his eyes, Tony starts ticking each symptom off on his fingers. “Your nose is running, your eyes are watery, you’re sneezing—”

“Which is all from the cold,” Peter cuts him off. He coughs twice into his elbow. “See? Sick.”

Tony scoffs. “In all the years I’ve known you, you’ve never once admitted to being sick unprompted.” He pauses a beat. “Including that time you were actively vomiting.”

Peter rubs a hand at the back of his neck and gives a sheepish grin. “So I'm really demonstrating growth, then, huh?”

Tony ignores him and soldiers on. “You’re itching,” he says, gesturing to the red welts emerging on Peter’s forearms and neck. “You’re getting a rash—”

Peter tugs his hoodie sleeves down to cover them. “I think that’s the new laundry soap I’ve been using...”

Tony blinks at him. “Your eyes are bright red, kid.”

Peter opens his mouth to retort something, but then closes it again. He drops his gaze to the floor and lets out a hard sigh. “Okay… okay you’re right,” he admits. “I’m sorry. I just didn’t wanna say it around Morgan.” He looks up and, with a totally straight expression, whispers, “I’ve been smoking weed, Mr. Stark. I’m actually tripping balls right now.”

“Peter, just admit that you’re allergic to cats!”

“Huh?” Morgan cries from the living room where she has her kitty on her lap while she watches Curious George. “Peter’s allergic to Waffles?!” The cat dives off her lap and out into the kitchen, hiding behind Peter’s leg.

Peter winces. Then his nose wrinkles up and he sneezes four times into his wad of tissues. When he draws in his next breath, it’s more of a wheeze.

Tony heaves out a sigh. “Alright, we’re done here.” He bends down and scoops the cat up. “Waffles is staying in Pep’s office for the remainder of this weekend.”

“What?” Morgan blurts.

“Yeah, what?” Peter echos, snatching the cat back from Tony’s arms. “You can’t do that!”

“Pete, he’s making you sick,” Tony points out as Peter sneezes yet again. “If you’re already this bad in three hours, how do you expect to breathe in a couple more days?”

Peter looks stricken. “But… But you don’t understand.” He hugs the cat a little tighter and Tony swears he can see fresh hives emerging on Peter’s neck. “I just love him so much, Mr. Stark,” he says earnestly. “I would honestly die for this cat.”

Tony sighs and pats his shoulder consolingly. “Yeah, and that’s looking more and more like it might become reality, kiddo...”

X

It takes some convincing—and a bit of bribery—but eventually he gets the kids to agree to his plan. In the end, Morgan and Peter settle for a six-foot-tall ‘Royal Castle Kitty Condo’ (complete with a litter moat) in exchange for Waffles’ temporary banishment. He then sends Peter to the guest room while he and Morgan transfer the cat’s most essential supplies into the office, grateful for once that Pepper’s staying downtown this weekend.

Waffles promptly makes himself at home on the very top of her bookshelf—after first knocking over two glass figurines and a meticulously ordered stack of papers, sending legal documents flying around the room.

(Tony wonders just what kind of royal castle equivalent he’s going to have to bribe Pepper with when she gets back.)

X

It’s 12:16 a.m. when Tony remembers that they forgot to give Waffles his anti-hairball paste that evening and comes grumbling out of bed to do so.

It’s 12:19 a.m. when Tony opens the office door to see Peter, sitting on the floor with that damn cat curled up in his lap, wheezing out a high-pitched chant of, “Who’s a good kitty? Who’s a good boy?” between puffs of his inhaler as he strokes Waffles’ fur.

It’s 12:21 a.m. when Tony just gives up trying to reason with the kid and goes raiding the bathroom cabinets for Benadryl.

X

Link to all my fics

If you liked this story, you might also like:

Beanimia

Morgan Stark, M.D.

Fevers, Bananas, & Math Lessons

[supercalvin]

breaking the rules but 5WR for the prompt thing? i was just thinking they went well together and you’d be able to do something crazy awesome with it :)

5. High School AU + W. Pretend Relationship + R. In Vino Veritas

There are no rules here, friend. You can do whatever you want, and I certainly love this combination of tropes+AU. Have I ever mentioned that High School AUs are a guilty pleasure of mine? Which is probably why this turned out so long. Omg why can’t I write 500 word ficlets anymore???

Prompts  (or any prompt)  + Ficlets

***

Lance had invited Merlin to this party, which was the only reason he was here.  It wasn’t that hed didn’t normally go to parties. He did. It’s just he usually hung around a different crowd. Will’s parties were smaller, usually no more than ten kids sitting around his living room, staying up too late, playing video games, and maybe baking some of Freya’s weed into badly made brownies.

Lance, on the other hand, was the type of person to get along with a lot of different people. So not only was he close friends with Merlin, but he also happened to be friends with people in the drama club, the student council, and the football team. To be fair, it was hard not to like Lance.

So Merlin didn’t usually go to crazy house parties filled with football and rugby players. He was beginning to wish he had made Will come with him, even though he knew Will would just complain the whole time. Merlin was chatting with Elyan, a bloke he knew from maths class, trying his best to not seem out of place. He sipped on his beer, and prayed Lance would come save him at some point.

“Hey, it’s Merlin!”

To say that Merlin was surprised when Arthur Pendragon flung an arm around his shoulder and smiled at him would be an understatement. To say that Merlin was surprised Arthur Pendragon knew his name and apparently was happy to see him, was an astronomical understatement.

“Hey,” Merlin smiled, trying his best to seem nonchalant. Arthur smelled strongly of cologne, and Merlin had to mentally remind his tipsy-brain that saying ‘you smell good’ would be supremely awkward.

“Lance said he invited you,” Arthur said, still smiling at him. “I’m glad you made it.”

Merlin shrugged, “Why not, I guess?”

“Arthur!” Someone from across the kitchen yelled, “Where are the towels?”

Arthur groaned, “Bunch of children. I’ll be back,” Arthur tussled Merlin’s hair, playfully.

“That was weird,” Merlin said.

“Was it?” Elyan asked, “Arthur’s just like that when he gets more than one beer in him.”

“Really? I don’t think I’ve ever had a conversation with him. I didn’t know he knew who I was.”

Elyan tilted his head to the side. “Didn’t you have history with us last year? You know, with Mr. Garrah?”

Merlin thought back. Maybe he had. But he hadn’t spent much time with Arthur. To say the least, Arthur Pendragon was the Golden Boy oftheir school. He was certainly one of the most popular kids. He was a star footballer. Alright enough in his classes, from what Merlin could tell. Definitely was fit. God forbid if Merlin forgot how fit Arthur was. Merlin was bisexual and was very aware of the fact that in a few hours it would hit him that ArthurPendragon had just been pressed up against him.

But, Merlin reminded himself, he was the only out-and-proud kid at school. And no matter how much Merlin drooled over him; Arthur Pendragon was in a serious relationship with Gwen Smith. Merlin had known Gwen since his first year in Camelot. They had kissed during a Truth-or-Dare game at Will’s back in Year 9. He hadn’t spent much time with her lately, since their schedules didn’t line up, but he assumed if Gwen liked Arthur, then he must bealright.

The party continued for another hour or so, everyone loosening up as more beer was drunk. Merlin mingled with people he had never talked to before and if he was being honest he was having a great time. Merlin wasn’t drunk, per se, but he certainly wasn’t sober by the time Arthur crossed hispath again.

Merlin was sitting on a couch, and Arthur plopped himself down right next to Merlin.

“Hey, you like Triple Goddess, right?”

“Yeah, how’d you know that?” Merlin asked, not sure how Arthur would know his favorite band.

“You wear their concert shirts a lot.”

Merlin wasn’t sure how often he wore Triple Goddess shirts, but he wondered if it was too much if Arthur noticed them.

“I looked them up after I saw your shirt. They’re really nice to listen to while I study. They’re really low-key,” Arthur said.

“Yeah, I listen to them while I code,” Merlin said, wondering too late if it was too nerdy to mention that he liked to write his own computer programs. He tried to cover it quickly, “I haven’t listened to their new album yet. Haven’t the time.”

“I have it upstairs, if you want. Come on,” Arthur stood up and offered his hand. Merlin took it without much thought.

Upstairs was less crowded. Most of the doors were closed andwhen Arthur pulled out a key to open his bedroom door, Merlin figured that was how Arthur managed to keep things from getting out of hand. It didn’t click that Merlin would be alone with Arthur until the door closed behind him.

Arthur pulled out his laptop and popped open the album. The noise from the party was much more subdued in Arthur’s room, and the low sounds of piano and violin came through clearly. Merlin looked around the room as themusic played, unsurprised to see a football banner along with an action movie poster. The desk was scattered with books and the bed was a rumpled unmade mess. Arthur obviously hadn’t expected anyone here tonight. Merlin wondered if Gwen was at this party. He hadn’t seen her. Probably not, if Arthur was here with Merlin of all people.

“Isn’t the lead singer of Triple Goddess gay?”

Merlin chewed on his nail nervously wondering if this was a trick question. He tried to remember that Gwen was a cool person, and she wouldn’t date a homophobe. Hopefully.

“Yeah, she is…” Merlin said, “And the drummer is trans, actually.”

Arthur hummed. He was leaning against his desk, flipping around one of his books. He looked nervous, which was strange to Merlin.

The song changed and the beat was mellower.

“Is that, uh, why you got into the band?”

Merlin rubbed the back of his neck, “Actually, yeah, that’s how I found out about them. They have a music video with two guys, uh, you know, together.” Merlin shrugged. He hadn’t talked much about his sexuality with anyone besides Will or his mum. He wasn’t sure why Arthur was asking. Maybe he was just trying to make conversation with what little he knew about Merlin.

“Yeah, I saw that one.”

Merlin rocked back on his heels.

“So…” Merlin struggled to think of anything he knew about Arthur. But before Merlin could ask about football, and absolutely stick his foot in his mouth, Arthur beat him to it.

“I’m glad you came. To the party. I told Lance to inviteyou.”

“What? Why?”

“I, uh,” Arthur looked up, like there was going to be an answer on the ceiling. “Shit, Gwen said this was going to be easy.” He set down his book and stepped up close to Merlin. He cleared his throat.  “I think you’re fit. And smart. And I know we don’t really know each other, but I’ve never had a good reason to talk to you before.”

Merlin blinked at him.

He took several seconds to process all that.

“Sorry, what was the first one?”

Arthur smiled, “I think you’re fit.”

“B-but what about Gwen!” Merlin stuttered.

“Oh, right.” Arthur said, as if he had forgotten about his girlfriend. “I’m her beard. Or we are each other’s beards? Doesn’t matter. She’s dating my step-sister Morgana. We told our Dad that she’s dating me, so that when she stays over, she sleeps in Morgana’s room. It’s a nice set up.”

Merlin blinked a couple times.

“Uh. Merlin?”

“I think I’m going to need a moment,” Merlin held up a hand. “You’re gay?”

“Yeah,” Arthur shrugged and gestured to himself, as if that cleared that up.

“Holy shit, thank you Jesus,” Merlin said, before slapping a hand over his mouth.

Arthur laughed hard and Merlin smacked his shoulder when he wouldn’t stop.

“Fuck off, you know you’re fit! Don’t torture me.”

“You think I’m fit?” Arthur asked, seeming to be truly interested in the answer.

“Uh, yeah,” Merlin said, trying to suppress a nervous giggle.

Arthur smiled, and Merlin noticed that his teeth weren’t completely straight. There was something charming about him that had butterflies flutteringin Merlin’s stomach.

“So, uh, I’m not out to my Dad. But uh, would you like to, Idon’t know…We could see a film. Or you could come over and we could play some video games? Or something.”

Merlin smiled, “Yeah, I could do that.” Merlin stepped up closer to Arthur, suddenly feeling very brave. “How do you feel about snogging for a bit before going back down to the party?”

Arthur’s eyes widened, “Really?”

Merlin raised a brow.

“That wasn’t a ‘no.’” Arthur said quickly, “I’m just, uh… I’ve never kissed a boy.”

Merlin smiled, “Want to?”

Arthur nodded, “Yeah,” His eyes trailed down to Merlin’s lips. It didn’t take much movement to tilt his head to the side and pull Arthur into a kiss.

When they made it back down to the party, no one seemed to notice that their lips were red and chapped. Merlin had a bit of a bruise on his neck, but he would just cover it up with a scarf tomorrow.

***

Prompts (or any prompt)  + Ficlets

[m-rphy]

Stochastics

Give this some love on my ao3 as well

Matteo pulled his laptop closer to himself and opened the next set of exercises. He let the air fizzle out through his lips before he read the problem aloud to David who sat opposite him on the other end of the bed, his notepad on his lap, his left leg stretched out towards Matteo.

“There are six red balls and four green balls in a container. Two balls are randomly selected. Calculate the probability of the following scenarios: 1) Both balls are green, and 2) No more than one ball is red.”

He sighed and looked over at David, who raised one eyebrow at him.

“What's the problem?”

“Urgh, stochastics,” Matteo grumbled, thinking that would be sufficient. But David's second eyebrow followed his other.

“Stochastics are literally the easiest field of mathematics, Matteo,” he replied half-mockingly.

“Yeah sure,” Matteo retorted with a scoff. “Geometry, that's the shit.”

David's eyebrows traveled yet a bit farther up his forehead, part of them disappearing behind the side-swept fringe that fell into his eyes.

“Hey, not everyone can be a genius at math like you!” Matteo spit back playfully, smirking. He saw how the corners of David's mouth stretched into a grin for a split second before he collected himself again.

“You won't get out of solving this problem by complimenting me, you know that, right?” David asked in return, which wiped the grin off of Matteo's face. Fuck. He had complimented him. He was toeing a line he had promised himself not to cross, but with every smile from David, that promise became harder and harder to keep, and the voice deep inside him that told him that David did reciprocate him feelings louder. He inhaled and exhaled noisily.

“Worth a shot.”

At this, David grinned back at Matteo, which caused his heart to flutter in his chest. He would never forget the first time he had seen this grin, back when they had ditched the Abistreich committee together to smoke weed. Maybe...

“Come on, let's solve this,” David then said and leaned over to turn the laptop around so that he could read the problem again himself. When he had done so, he asked, “So, how do you calculate this?”

Matteo licked his lips, trying to remember everything they had learned about stochastics and realized a lot of it had slipped his mind. He hated that his memory was like a sieve sometimes. But he was grateful he had something else to concentrate on than the thought of how beautiful David was when he looked over at him like this.

“Uh... tree diagram?” he tried, semi-confident that it was the right answer.

“Uh-hu. How many branches?” David continued, twirling his pen between his fingers.

Matteo grimaced, knowing he was making a fool of himself right about now. “Two?”

“Is that a question?” David answered, one eyebrow raised yet again. Matteo had been intrigued by this side of David since the first time they had met, this deadpan, matter-of-fact behavior. At times it still caused him to be thrown off, but he got better every day at telling if it was actually extremely deep sarcasm (which almost nobody ever got) or not. This time, he knew it wasn't.

“No,” he simply replied thus. “Two.”

“Okay,” David said and drew two branches on his notepad and Matteo followed suit on his own notepad. “Next?”

Matteo thought for a moment before the answer came to him. “Label the branches. Should beeee... six tenths for the red ones and four tenths for the green ones.”

“You're not as stupid as you look,” David mocked him, which earned him a playful kick into the side of his thigh from Matteo. He was aware that he was dangerously close to crossing the line, but he couldn't help himself. Everything between them was so easy. Natural. In a voice that almost convinced Matteo that he was being serious, David snapped, “Ow! What was that for?!”

“For being a smartass,” Matteo replied mischievously and, with a grin, gave David another kick. What he hadn't anticipated was that David would grab his leg, keeping it in place with a firm grip. Matteo looked at him with wide eyes and saw that David couldn't hide the grin that was spreading across his face.

Matteo was sure that he'd never get over this, that glint of mischief in David's eyes whenever the mood changed, the air suddenly full of chemistry. At times it felt to him like the space between them was charged with electricity, threatening to give him an electric shock as soon as their skin touched. He held David's stare for a second, two, three, before Matteo, without thinking twice about what he was about to do, lurched towards him.

“Hey!” David called, half of the word swallowed by the laugh that found its way from his throat to his lips, as Matteo curled his hands around his shoulders and pushed him onto his back, straddling him. The notepad fell to the floor with a rustling thud. “This is not was I came here to do!”

Now that they lay like this, Matteo realize what a stupid idea this had been. He was pretty sure they had never had this much physical contact before. “Well, it's what we're doing now,” he tried to reply in a smug sort of way to cover how much being this close actually affected him, but it came out softer than he had planned. He was thrown by how loud his heartbeat thumped in his own ears. David seemed to notice, or at least registered the change in his voice, and stopped struggling against Matteo's grip on his shoulders. Instead, he raised his left hand, causing Matteo's right hand to slip off his shoulder onto the mattress underneath. This brought Matteo's face a good ten centimeters closer to David's and both of them stilled, David's hand hanging in the air in front of Matteo's face. For a moment, neither of them moved, trying to figure out how to go on from here, before David continued to raise his hand and brushed the strand of hair that fell into Matteo's eyes aside. His fingertips brushed lightly across the skin on Matteo's temple and he held his breath. They stared at each other.

The tiny voice inside Matteo whispered to him and just now, with the sunshine painting golden streaks across his room and David moving his hand so that his thumb ran along his jaw, Matteo threw all caution overboard.

He leaned down and closed his eyes and kissed David.

This was so very, very, very different from kissing Sara. Or being kissed by her. With her, he had never been sure what to do and had done everything in his power to avoid getting kissed but this? Oh. Ohhh...

David's thumb rested lightly on Matteo's cheek, the rest of his fingers brushing across his buzzed hair in the nape of his neck, holding him close. God, he never knew kissing could do that. Their lips were so soft against each another, no heat, no rush, no urgency. Just the two of them caught up in the moment. This right here should've been his first kiss.

A moment later, Matteo pulled back, feeling like he had to catch his breath. Not that he was out of it, he just had a feeling that he'd be overwhelmed by emotions (something he didn't think was possible up until now) if he kept kissing David. He opened his eyes and found David already looking up at him, his eyelids heavy.

“I'm not dreaming, right? You just kissed me?” he whispered thunderstruck and Matteo could see his chest rising and falling heavily.

“No,” Matteo replied with a small smile. “You're not dreaming.”

“Good,” David said, a similar smile appearing on his face, and he brought his other hand up to Matteo's face as well, and pulled him close again.

God, he never wanted to stop kissing him.

[idkthisisjustforfanfic]

Chapter 12 - Come Sunday

“I don’t like that melody,” I shook my head, looking over to Julian and another writer, Jamie, as we sat in one of the writing rooms at the label. The walls were a light beige, we were hidden away inside the big building--no windows showing the sky to help us keep track of time.

We’d been working on songs for three days straight--trying to find the right demo for this band that Julian was really trying to launch.

Jamie let out a sigh, it was the fourth melody I’d shot down in the last ten minutes. I strummed the same chord, looking over the words we’d scribbled on paper in front of us.

You said apologies don’t work

But I know it’s not just words that hurt

“What if we sped it up?” I asked, changing the strumming pattern to be a bit more upbeat. “I don’t know, something like this?”

Julian let his head bob from side to side, listening to me hum the words over the new tempo. “That’s not bad,” he said. “We could do a more descending melody over that.”

“That’ll be hard to synchronize all of the words over the chords,” Jamie pointed out, rubbing a hand over the stubble on his chin.

He was right--and in fact, I’d been too much of a stickler about every single suggestion that had been tossed into the room. All I knew was that whatever song was going to be the first I’d write with the label again had to be a good one.

It’d been three weeks since I came back from Jamaica. Three weeks since I wrote with a group of people that made it feel natural--and not that Julian and Jamie didn’t, it was more that something in me had been off since I’d left.

My brain went back to Harry, back to the studio, wondering what was happening and what they were all doing. Even here, sitting in the writing room that had no windows, I was thinking about what he thought and how he felt.

“Can we just scratch this one?” I asked, looking up to see both Julian and Jamie watching as I strummed the same three chords. Julian scrunched his nose and looked to Jamie--waiting for further input. “I have a better one, I have something that I started working on the other night.”

“Yeah--sure, okay,” Julian said, shifting in his seat and watching as I pulled my phone out from my bag on the floor. I pulled up the note, put the capo on the second fret, and strummed.

I’d like to think that you know this

But I’ve got a feeling you might not

Coulda sworn that you’d notice

Maybe it wasn’t all our fault

Cause now I know, there’s no choice but letting go

So I’ll just be with you tonight

I’ll just push all this aside

Cause I’ve got my heart in my hands

And I don’t have a plan how to hold it

Cause I knew this wouldn’t work

And we’d both end up hurt

Yeah I told ya

“It’s just the first half,” I shrugged, looking back up from the lyrics on the screen.

“That’s good, Maggie--like really good,” Jamie’s voice was quiet but sure. I looked up at him quickly, I didn’t expect the reaction to be that positive. I thought--if anything--the song would get us into a different groove. It was a different tempo, a different chord progression, different key entirely.

I wanted to give us something to just regroup, start fresh, think in a different way. “Oh,” I said, “really? I just had that chorus in my head last night and came up with the first verse.”

“Where would you go for a bridge in that?” Julian asked, leaning his arm on the table and resting his head in his hand.

“Same chords, I think, different melody.” I nodded confidently, it didn’t feel like the song that needed a huge turn around bridge. Julian nodded again and was quiet for a second--I suddenly felt like I’d just played my first demo to the first B-list producer who would listen.

Julian--who was probably one of the most reputable producers in London--was someone I’d known for so long. He wasn’t a new person or a scary producer that I’d never worked with. Yet for some reason, playing a song that was only mine felt terrifying.

I’d long gotten used to the idea of rejection. I mean, when you sell your creations for a living, you kind of have to. I got used to apologetic emails and short voicemails telling me maybe next time, kid, by the time I was 15. I’d sent so many demos to so many people that eventually, I just wanted someone to say I was good.

When I first started writing songs I’d play them alone in my bedroom. Then I played them for my parents. Then for my friends. And slowly I got more comfortable putting them out there and letting the world hear what was going on inside my head.

But, without fail, playing a song for a person in the business always felt somewhat daunting. It was the Monday morning anxiety you felt on your way into a difficult job. It was laying everything out there and hoping you don’t crash and burn.

I was more than comfortable throwing my ideas around. Words, melodies, I was even comfortable singing in front of people despite the fact that my talent was clearly in verse-crafting.

I’d brought in a few pieces of songs before--melodies, some phrases or even a verse or two, but this felt different. This song was fully formed--it just needed another verse and a bridge and it was finished. Julian seemed to think so too.

“Finish that, bring it back tomorrow.”

**

I was sat on my couch later that night, weeding through the words that were tangled in my head. I’d written two separate verses that could complete the song. I wrote a bridge that was fine. Nothing seemed to click though, at least until my phone buzzed on the couch beside me.

Harry’s name on the screen made me push my guitar off of my lap, abandoning it on the cushion beside me. I clawed for it quickly, my heart it in throat as I swiped it open to read whatever he’d said.

Was it an accident? Was he meaning to text a different Maggie he knew?

Can you talk?

I let my thumbs hover over the screen, completely unsure of how to respond to his vague and hopeful question. Should I be hopeful though? Was it fair to think that this was good? Perhaps he wanted to call me up to put one final nail in the coffin; let me know that he never wanted to speak to me again and was officially deleting my contact from his phone and any trace of me from his life. In all honesty, I wouldn’t blame him.

I did the time change quickly in my head. It was 2:09pm in Jamaica--if he was still there. I wondered where he was. At the studio? In a different country all together? He could be in Japan with the Queen and I would have no idea--something about that struck me as disheartening.

And how long did I wait? Should I respond quickly to show my remorse--or did I play some form of hard to get and make him wonder how I felt?

I decided to go with the former before I could overthink things too much, and typed an answer.

Sure.

My phone rang within seconds, reflecting the image on my ceiling on the screen. Not only did he want to talk, he wanted to see me.

I ran a hand over my hair once, trying to smooth it out. I wiped under my eyes to clear any smudged mascara before clicking the green button.

“Hi,” I said, feeling my face flush just looking at him. He was in a dark room somewhere--not Jamaica, the walls were too dark.

“Hi,” he said, his lips set in a straight line. He had some stubble on his chin and he looked a little tired.

“How are you?” I asked, pulling a leg up to lean back against the couch. My stomach was in knots--I simultaneously felt like I could cry and throw up, and I was probably sweating through my shirt.

“M’okay--how are you?” his words blended together a bit, his accent seemed stronger than usual. I wondered if he’d been home to see his family.

“I’m fine,” I said, shrugging slightly. I didn’t know if I should go into it--did I apologize again and tell him that I fucked up? Did he know already that I felt that way? Did it need saying?

“Listen--I uh, I just wanted to reach out to let you know that we’re doing an equal cut for everyone who wrote. Jeffrey offered to call, but I figured I’d just let you know myself. We settled on 25% broken up amongst the creative team. Writers, producers, mixers, engineers, the like.”

I nodded slowly--math wasn’t my strong suit, so I had no idea the actual percentage that would leave me with. I figured the other 25% would go to the admin side of things--the label, management, HR, publicists. And then, as per usual, Harry got around 50%.

And it was fine. I was used to it. There were often 40 people behind the scenes that got a small cut of the profit. Harry--or the band, whoever was the face of the project--got a the biggest chunk.

“So you’ll get 2.5% of every sale.”

I pulled myself back and out of the numbers. I looked at the screen again. It wasn’t terrible. That was about average. In fact, I think I made less during his days in the band. The album would definitely sell a couple hundred thousand copies. If there were any other royalties--radio plays, streaming, touring royalties, music video royalties--my income would be set for the next two years.

“Okay,” I said, offering another nod with small smile. “Harry, can we just talk for a second? I know you--”

“Maggie we’ve already talked,” he said with a sigh. He rubbed at his eyes and didn’t seem to look back at me.

I trailed off, licking my lips and waiting for him to say something else. When he didn’t, I blinked a few times. “Okay--sure, yeah. I just, I don’t know.”

“Listen, I’ll talk to you later, okay?”

I nodded slowly, searching for words to change his mind. “Yeah, okay.”

And then he hung up.

**

It’d been a whole year since I’d stepped foot on U.S. soil, and being in Hopkins International Airport for the second time in a week felt overwhelming. I’d let Julian know that I needed some space, so a trip to Cleveland to see my parents was a given. Being on a different continent seemed to be enough distance between Harry and I that I could actually breathe.

After our business FaceTime call--which felt too professional for the nature of our previous relationship--I decided to figure out where he was. A quick google search and some social media scrolling let me know that he was, in fact, back in London. I had no idea the duration of his time in Jamaica or when he returned to the city I’d learned to call home, but I figured running into him would be the cherry on top of the shit-cake that 2016 had shaped up to be.

So, in true Margaret Mable O’Rourke fashion--according to my mother--I was running away. And now, after a week in my childhood bedroom wondering if the U.K. was really the place for me, I was headed to Nashville to see Chelsea in all of her stateside glory.

She’d begged and pleaded and I’d submitted three finished songs to Julian to make up for the time that I’d be gone--but timing was good. The duo we were working with--two girls from Manchester--wanted to record a few demos to prepare an EP of sorts for the label--letting the execs pick which song would be their first single.

When I took off for Ohio, I got a text that the song I’d played him and Jamie the other day had made it onto their mini portfolio. A week later and now I knew that my song had been chosen, and was now in a final stage of mastering for radio and streaming distribution. It was huge news--news that made my parents feel a little bit better about letting me go back to London after crying in their kitchen about my break up and the hiatus and the sudden shift that left me feeling lonely and incompetent.

So naturally, here in a bar with Chelsea in downtown Nashville kind of amped that feeling up. Because once again, it was extremely unclear to me why we were still here at 1:34am, with Chelsea giggling into the neck of her man of the night.

It was nice to see that she hadn’t changed a bit--not that it’d been so long since I’d seen her. A few months between us and Chelsea was still wearing her bright red lipstick and her hair was as blonde as ever. What had changed, though, was that I was now a miserable, pessimistic, and somewhat drunk girl in a bar in the U.S. who’d gone and fucked up a relationship that could have been something great (pun intended, I wrote that song with Harry and Julian in the Summer of 2012).

I held my drink up to my lips, letting my tongue find the straw as my eyes wandered around the room. Everywhere I looked, people seemed to be paired up. Groups of girls, groups of guys, couples sprinkled around the room with heads tilted together, laughing as the alcohol in their cups slowly disappeared.

Chelsea and her new friend, however, were much louder and much closer than anyone else in the room.

I was thankful, then, for the distraction of my phone vibrating in my back pocket. The name on my screen seemed to blur out the rest of the bar--the noise, the music, and the people seemed to dim and fade as my eyes focused in on the words.

Julian played me your song the other day, it’s really good. Congrats.

I read it three times. I stared at the punctuation and calculated the different options for the end of his sentence. Did he actually like it? Did he realize that the song was about him? Was he saying that to be nice? Was he throwing me a bone after having a too-professional conversation as if he hadn’t watched my face while he made me orgasm?

I sucked down the end of my drink and left Chelsea behind, heading for the bar to refill. More liquid courage for whatever type of response I settled on.

“Dirty Shirley, please,” I said, thankful for not having to explain what I meant. Sometimes, in London, the idea of a Shirley Temple struck people as odd. I’d gotten used to following the name with ‘sprite, grenadine, and vodka, please.’

The bartender handed me my drink with a smile, letting me disappear back into the crowd to have a moment by myself. I read the message again.

Julian played me your song the other day, it’s really good. Congrats.

Thanks for the feedback? Why did he play it for you? What did you really think? My options were endless, but none of them felt appropriate for the current lack of communication between us. So I sipped at my drink and read it again--hoping, maybe he didn’t pick up on the things that sounded eerily similar to us.

And then I read it again.

And again.

And then my drink was gone, and then my finger was pressing his name in my contact list and the phone was pressed to my ear as it rang.

“Hello?” his voice was quiet, which made me realize that it was early in the morning there--if that’s where he was.

“Are you in London?”

“No,” he said, “I’m in L.A. Where are you?”

My question surprised him--or maybe it was just the sound of my voice. “I’m in Nashville.”

“Why are you in Nashville?”

His curiosity sparked a feeling of power in me, I turned on my heel and headed for the door to find more quiet. “I’m visiting Chelsea.”

“Oh--how’s that?”

“Did you really like my song?” I changed the subject, wanting to get to the real conversation before he inevitably said he didn’t want to talk to me.

“I did,” he said confidently, his voice calm and sure. Why was he calm and sure? “Are you drunk?”

“No,” I said, shaking my head aggressively, denying the fact that there was--undoubtedly--alcohol in my system. “I’m at a bar, though.” Tossing that detail in felt like a surefire way to ignite some jealousy.

“With Chelsea?” He asked, his voice a little higher pitched.

“And some other people,” I lied, watching as the door open and closed as new people filtered into the bar. The noise got louder and then quieted, “Chelsea’s friends from work.”

“How’s she like her new job?”

“She likes it,” I said, not wanting to get too sidetracked. “Why did Julian play you the song? When did you see him?”

“Last night--he’s here for work and I’m here for meetings. We had dinner. When did you write it?”

“A while ago,” I lied again. “It’s in my catalog.”

The lying would have felt more concerning had it not been for the Dirty Shirleys. The next words came out of my mouth without much thought. “You’re kind of a jerk, though.”

He let out a quiet laugh on the other end of the line. “I’m a jerk? Why’s that?”

I sighed, somewhat hesitant to continue my sentence. He was a jerk because when I spoke to him two weeks ago he didn’t even give me the time of day. Maggie with alcohol brain didn’t really care though, at least he was listening now. “Because you didn’t listen to me,” I said.

“Maggie, I--” he started to speak but I cut him off.

“You didn’t even let me explain and you just made your assumptions about what happened.”

“I don’t know if we should talk about this now, Maggie,” his voice seemed sad and quiet, less entertained that he was a few seconds earlier.

“Then when, Harry? When will you listen to me and let me actually get a chance to talk?”

He was quiet for a second, I shoved my hand in the pocket of the leather jacket I wore. “M’not sure it’s a good idea.”’

“Of course, Harry. Of course it’s not a good idea,” I said sarcastically.

He let out a sigh, “Maggie…”

“Harry,” I shot his name back, still sarcastic and still with an attitude.

“Let’s talk tomorrow. You can sleep this off and we can talk in the morning.”

“It is morning,” I told him matter-of-factly.

“In your time zone,” he corrected.

I let out a short laugh. “Okay, fuck you.” I was getting more angry with his reluctance to even acknowledge my feelings. Sure--he had the right to feel his own, but that didn’t mean that I didn’t have any and didn’t get to share them. This wasn’t all about him, but I guess that’s what he was used to.

“Alright Maggie, I’ll talk to you later.”

I hung up before responding, the anger building in my chest until it made its way to my eyes, forming as tears that threatened to spill over. I stormed back into the bar, storming past people to find Chelsea--now sat in a booth--with another drink and a different guy.

“I’m going home,” I told her, my hands on my hips as I waited for a response. She stared up at me, my words taking a second to settle in her head and find meaning.

“What? Why?”

“It’s almost closing time anyway,” I defended, ignoring her question altogether. “I’m calling an Uber.”

“Okay, alright, fine,” she said, pulling her phone up to check it. The screen lit up, she had a few notifications, but she clicked it shut quickly. “Let’s go.”

She followed me outside, glued to her screen as we waited for our ride to pull up curbside. Plenty of happy and intoxicated people stumbled by us, drunk on the winter air and the Tennessee whiskey that they’d certainly consumed. But I wondered, for a second, if Harry was as sad as I was.

Did he care? Did he wonder how I felt or wish we hadn’t fallen apart? And maybe it was silly to wish that something that had barely taken flight hadn’t crashed and burned, but maybe it wasn’t. Maybe it wasn’t silly to hope that someone who brought a new meaning to my life felt the same way. But I didn’t know if I’d ever find out.

He said we’d talk later. I didn’t believe him.

**

I woke up the next morning on Chelsea’s couch. Her flat in Nashville was smaller than what she’d had in London--but she had the same blanket that I’d curl up with back home.

“Morning,” she smiled at me as I blinked a few times to clear my vision. She was stood across the living room, leaned against the doorframe to the kitchen, clutching a cup of tea. The sun filtered in through her oversized windows, letting me know that it was probably closer to noon than I’d like for it to be.

“Hi,” I groaned, pushing myself up off of the couch. I rubbed at my eyes and cleared my throat, feeling a wave of nausea hit me. “How are you?”

“How are you is the real question,” she laughed and walked to come sit on the couch. I bent my legs at my knees, making room for her to sit on the opposite end.

“What do you mean?”

She gave me a sympathetic look, sipping her tea before responding. “You called Harry last night.”

“Oh, yeah, I know,” I said, laying back down and closing my eyes, hoping to avoid the embarrassment that was sure to be showing on my cheeks.

“You called him a jerk.”

I let out a groan--I’d forgotten that part--but then opened my eyes to furrow my brow at her. “How do you know all of this? Did I tell you?”

“No, he did.”

“He did?”

She nodded. “He texted me to make sure you were okay.”

“To make sure I was okay?” I asked somewhat incredulously as I stared up at the ceiling. “What does that even mean?” What I meant, what I thought, was: no, I wasn’t okay, and it was because he wouldn’t give me a chance to figure things out.

“You were drunk,” she shrugged.

“I know, but--why does he care? He won’t even listen to me.”

“He does care, Maggie, he just--” she trailed off, looking down at her tea.

“He what?” I sat up again, keeping my eyes on her as she carefully picked out her words. Was she defending him? How much did they actually talk?

“He doesn’t know what to do.”

“Well neither do I, Chelsea. He’s the one who won’t listen. I’m willing to talk.” I said all of this as if it were old news--but I realized that I hadn't really told her much. I filled her in on Jamaica and the break up and me coming home, but I’d yet to really tell her about the conversation about the royalties via FaceTime. I also hadn’t really told her how I felt about it.

“I know, Maggie.”

“What did he say last night?”

She shrugged and seemed to look around the room, wondering whether or not to answer my question.

“Let me read your texts,” I ordered, my eyes on her face to see her reaction. Why would she hide anything? She shouldn’t have to, so I should be able to read them.

She let out a sigh and stood from the couch to fetch her phone in her bedroom. When she returned, she handed it over and sat back down.

Hi Chelsea. Are you with Maggie?

Hey, yeah I am. Everything okay?

She just called me. How drunk is she?

I guess drunk enough to call you haha

Is she alright? She seemed mad at me.

She called me a jerk.

We’re going home, she’s fine, just tired and drunk.

Sorry she called you a jerk.

It’s fine, haha. I guess she just wants to talk.

She definitely wants to talk. Do you not want to?

Not sure yet.

Just wanted to make sure she’s okay, is all. Have a good night, sorry to bother. X

I let out a sigh and looked up at Chelsea--I couldn’t really be mad that she had spoken with him. I was the one--alcohol and all--that decided to give him a call and apparently, a piece of my mind.

She stared back at me, her eyes soft and understanding as I tried to search for words. But I couldn’t find any. Because the only words that played on a loop in my head were: you fucked up, Maggie.

AN: Hi all!!!! Your love for this story is seriously amazing and I super super appreciate it. This story has been tough to write at times because it’s different than what I’m used to tbh. But alas, thanks for reading. Feedback is always welcome!!!!! 

[turtle-steverogers]

Departed Chap 4 Pt. 1

This is a long chapter so it’s going in two parts YEET

Ship: Slow burn Sprace

Warnings: None for this chapter yet?? But pt. 2 oof

It was 10:30 am by the time Spot was fully awake the next morning. Race was still asleep, his arm draped lazily across Spot’s stomach. For the moment, Spot decided to ignore the warm feeling that their closeness gave him, he’d deal with that later. As of right now, he had to get ready for the class he was instructing at the Tae Kwon Do studio at 11:15. He allowed himself two more minutes to lazily drink in the morning sunlight that shone across his bed, then carefully extracted himself from Race’s embrace and grabbed his uniform off of his desk chair.

Once he was dressed, he got to work cooking some scrambled eggs to eat before he left. A loud groan sounded from his bedroom and a few moments later, Race was dragging himself into the kitchen.

“Mornin’, Champ,” Spot greeted, smirking at Race’s obviously hungover state.

“I never wanna even see eggnog ever again,” Race grumbled, slinking over to the medicine cabinet and pulling out some Advil, “Ya got any orange juice?”

“Yeah, in the fridge,” Spot said, taking the eggs off of the heat and transferring half to a plate, “Ya want any eggs?”

Race nodded and Spot pulled out another plate for him, dumping the second half of the eggs onto it. Race poured two glasses of the orange juice and the two of them ate in peace.

Spot rinsed off the dishes while Race scrolled through his phone.

“How long you at work for today?” Race asked.

“Just ‘til two, itsa short day cuz of winter break.”

“Cool. Al was wonderin’ if we wanted to go ice skating later, should I tell him we’re in?”

“Yeah, I’m down.”

“Aight, everyone’s meetin’ at five.”

“Okay, I gotta head out.,” Spot said, grabbing his keys off of the hook, “I’ll see ya ‘round two ish. Ya know where ta find me.”

“‘Kay, bye.”

XXX

By the time the last class rolled around, Spot was at his wits end. Winter break having just started for the kids meant that they were exceptionally unfocused today, especially with the promise of snow that weekend.

“Aight, class, Charyut!” Spot called to the orange and green belts he was teaching at the moment, “We’re just goin’ ta go through your combinations real fast. When we move past the orange belt combos, all orange belts start back at the first one while the green belts do theirs, got it?”

A chorus of ‘yes, sirs’ rang from the group and Spot silently thanked the gods that this was one of his more mature classes.

“Good. Turn to your left with a loud yell, joon bi!” The class did so and Spot began to lead them through their combinations, only having to stop every so often to help a lost kid catch up. Twenty minutes later, he bowed out the class and went to get the mop from the back. He glanced at the clock, which read 1:30, and sighed.

‘Thirty minutes left,’ he thought to himself, pulling out his phone to listen to music, ‘then I’m off for two weeks.’ He grimaced and got to work cleaning the studio.

“Spot, man, I can clean,” Spot pulled out his headphones to see Elmer, his fellow instructor, crossing the mat to join him, “You’ve cleaned the past two times, it’s my turn, anyway.”

“Ya sure?” Spot asked.

“Positive,” Elmer said, already reaching out to take the mop from Spot, “Head home, man, Happy Holidays.”

“You’re a blessin’, Elmer, seriously,” Spot smiled, “Thank ya, Happy Holidays.”

“‘Course, I’ll see ya ‘round man.”

Spot signed out and waved to Elmer once more before leaving and walking to his car. He got back to the apartment at exactly 1:50 and found Race playing Fortnite in the living room. His eyes flickered away from the screen for a split second to look at Spot before returning his focus solely to the game.

“You’re back, early.” He said, his tone distracted.

“Yeah, Elmer offered ta clean,” Spot said, chuckling lightly as Race stuck his tongue between his teeth to concentrate, “I was wonderin’ when ya’d invade my X-Box.”

“Oh hush up, I’m doin’ better than you apparently have been.”

“Whatever, I’ma shower,” Spot said, already tugging off his black belt.

“Yeah, please do, you smell like feet- even from here.”

“Fuck you.”

“Only in ya dreams, Spottie-boy.”

By the time Spot got out of the shower, Race was in the kitchen hovering over the stove.

“Dude, ya don’t gotta cook anythin’,” Spot said, lazily towelling off his still damp hair, “We still have leftover lasagna and meatballs.”

“I know, but I saw this recipe for mac and cheese grilled cheese and ta hell if m’not trying it.”

Spot laughed, “Aight, just don’t make yourself sick.”

Race just shrugged as he pulled every kind of cheese that Spot owned out of the fridge, “Can’t make me any sicker than that goddamned eggnog from last night.” He said, squinting at the expiration date on some parmesan.

“Oh yeah, speakin’ of last night,” Spot said, tossing the towel over his shoulder and sitting at the kitchen counter, “How much d’you remember?”

Race stopped pulling out ingredients for a moment, furrowing his brows in thought, “Not much after I had summa Al’s weed. Why? Did I do somethin’ stupid?”

Spot hesitated, “You brought up Melissa.”

Race’s shoulders flinched slightly and he asked in a clipped tone, “Oh?”

“Yeah,” Spot bit his lip, trying to decide how to proceed through the conversation, “You, uh, told me about how she’d, uh, make you have sex-”

“Stop,” Race snapped, “Stop, I don’t wanna talk about this.”

“Race, you shouldn’t hafta handle this on your own. I-”

“Sean,” Race said, his voice dangerously low, “Stop talking.”

Spot nodded, “Alright, sorry.”

Race stood still for a moment before hastily shutting off the stove, “I’m not hungry anymore.” With that, he stalked out of the room. A second later, Spot could hear the bathroom fan turn on.

Spot sighed and got to work putting away all the ingredients and pots that Race had pulled out. It was obvious that Race wasn’t handling this whole ordeal as well as he had let on. He wanted to help him sort through it, but he couldn’t if Race refused to talk about it.

‘Oh well,’ He thought to himself, ‘I’ll let him come to me when he’s ready.’ He glanced at the clock. It was 2:30, which meant that they had about two hours before they had to head out to meet the others at the ice rink.

Race was evidently still camping in the bathroom, so Spot decided to go check on him.

He knocked lightly at the door, “Racer? You good?”

The door opened and Race pushed past Spot, his eyes obviously bloodshot.

“Yeah,” He called over his shoulder,“I’ma take a nap, wake me up when we gotta go.”

Spot felt worry itch at the back of his neck, but it was clear that Race wanted to be left alone, “Alright, I’m gonna do some grocery shopping, you want anything in particular?”

“No.”

Taking that as his cue to leave Race alone, Spot grabbed his keys off his hook and exited the apartment.

Although Race hadn’t asked for anything, Spot decided to pick him up a box of Honey Bunches of Oats. He figured he may as well get Race’s favorite if he was going to stay there for a while.

When he got back, he found Race fast asleep on his air mattress. It was still about an hour until they had to leave, so after putting away the groceries, Spot flipped on the TV and pulled up Netflix. He had just finished an episode of Breaking Bad whe Race stirred from across the room.

“What time’s it?” He mumbled, rubbing sleep from his eyes.

“4:30, we should leave in fifteen minutes if we wanna get there by five.”

“Okay, I’ma jus’ change and freshen up real fast.”

Spot turned off the TV as Race made his way to the bathroom and pulled himself off the couch to grab a jacket and thicker socks to wear to the ice rink. When he got to his room, he found Race digging through his duffel with a toothbrush sticking out of his mouth.

Spot scoffed, “What’re ya doin’?”

Race looked up at Spot, a bit of toothpaste smudged on his chin. He reached up and plucked the toothbrush out of his mouth, “M’lookin’ for my hat and gloves, but I think I left it back at my-uh..other place.”

“Here, jus’ borrow some of mine,” Spot suggested, strolling over to his closet and picking a blue winter hat and matching gloves out of a bin. He crossed the room to Race and placed the hat on his head.

“There,” Spot smiled, “Looks cute on ya.”

Spot froze, realizing that he had just called Race cute, but Race just smiled around the toothbrush, which was back in his mouth, “Thanks.”

“Uh..no problem.” Spot said, watching as Race stood up and went to the bathroom to rinse. He shook his head lightly- what was getting into him? First they had cuddled through the night before and now he was calling Race cute? Did he even have a right to do that since Race and Melissa were technically still in a relationship? Though he wasn’t entirely sure it was a relationship anymore, but they had never explicitly broken up. Beyond that, since when did Spot think about Race that way? Since when did-

“Spottie-boy, ya good?” Race said, effectively breaking Spot out of his thoughts, “You have the same look on your face thatcha have when you’re tryna do math.”

Spot scrunched his nose, “M’good, ya ready to roll?”

Race nodded and the two of them put on their jackets, hats, and gloves before leaving the apartment and walking down to Spot’s car.

TAG LIST: @bencookisagod @we-dont-sell-papes @suddenly-im-respecsable @aw-jus-let-em-spook @well-the-kids-do-too @spot-conlon-king-of-brooklyn @thatpoorguysheadisspinning @newsies-of-nyc @andthewoildwillknow

[pacman-tattoo]

Fish Out of Water [michael m. x reader] pt.2

this was demanded so i gotta do it lads

warnings: uh reader talks about said “tragic backstory” which involves bullying. it’s not recounted in detail but there’s just the mention of shit. other than that, everything should be fine.

      Michael was determined to unlock your tragic backstory. Luckily for him, you would sit with him and Jeremy at lunch, which definitely made talking to you easier, even if you were only sitting there to keep Wes from thinking you were “being a loner” again. But it was fine - Michael and Jeremy were both huge dorks and would go on and on about different dorky shit and sometimes Michael would made dumb references to memes.

    Not that it didn’t make you smile. It always did - just a little.

    You decided against the auditions - at least for this year. Maybe next year you’d try out for the play - but something told you that you had some serious competition, considering how many stories keep flying around about this weird incident and the kids who were getting interested in it just because of the shit that went down. When you asked Jeremy and Michael about it, they shot each other a quick glance before shrugging it off and saying it was some weird shit you shouldn’t worry about. Suspicious, but you had your secrets and they had theirs.

     “Why don’t you invite them over?” Wes said one day, sitting at the foot of your bed in your now-furnished room.

    You shrugged, “I dunno.”

    “You should. Mom and dad are worried, y’know.”

    “Why?”

     “At least talk about them.”

     Which led to you approaching them the next day and sitting there with words weighing you down. 

    “What’s up?” Michael said at one point, and you shrugged. “You alright?”

    “Yeah.”

    “Alright.”

     He and Jeremy resumed their conversation.

    “Do you two wanna come over?” You blurted out, immediately catching their attention.

     So they were coming over tomorrow. Wonderful.

    “Sorry my room’s kind of a mess, I meant to clean it before you two showed up-”

    “It’s fine,” Jeremy chirped, “it’s not half as bad as Michael’s room!”

    “Dude!” Michael protested, and you smiled - again, like with Michael’s dumb memes, it was only a little, but it was still a smile.

     “So, uh,” you said, rocking on your heels a little, “what do you two wanna do? I can probably steal Isaac’s games after he and Wes leave...” 

     So you did. It took a few minutes to find something the three of you could play, but you found Isaac’s copy of Little Big Planet and figured that it was worth a shot, since you’d only played it a few times before.

      It was adorable. Holy shit it was adorable. And that was without the thirty minutes of the three of you generally fucking around and designing your Sackpeople - which in itself was fun. And adorable. You made a mental note you’d have to play this more.

     “So,” Jeremy said, dragging out the ‘o’, “where are you from?”

      You rattled off your hometown and a few facts, “but uh, we moved here for a few reasons.”

     “Which are?” And there was Michael.

     “Not important,” you shrugged, “work, mainly.”

     “Ah.” He didn’t believe you - not completely.

     “What do you think of Middleborough?” Jeremy said - did he just jab Michael with his elbow?

      “It’s fine. Better than my old school,” you said - fuck you missed that jump ugh - before mulling over a few thoughts, “not as many assholes. Wes and Isaac seem to like it.”

     “Assholes?”

     “Yeah... just... assholes,” you spat.

     “Did they bother you?”

     “Me?” You said, “not really. No one really had a reason to single me out,” you tighten your grip on the controller, “I did get in a fight though.”

     “Wait wait waitwaitwait- you can’t just say that,” Michael said, “you got in a fight?”

     “Yeah.”

     “How? Why?”

     “...I don’t want to talk about it.”

      And that’s all that was said.

     “So who’s your friend?” Isaac said one day, sliding into your desk chair, “not Jeremy. The other one.”

      You looked up from your textbook, staring for at him for a moment - how did he know who Jeremy was?  - before shrugging it off. “Michael. He’s cool.”

     “He seems like a nerd.”

     “So do you.”

      He goes to retaliate before frowning, leaning back in your chair, “true, but still. I’ve heard rumors about your friends.”

     “What kind of rumors?”

     He glanced back to the door, rolling the chair slightly closer as he pushed it shut before looking back at you.

     “So I heard from this guy that Jeremy and all of his friends were doing drugs-”

     “Isaac, I don’t care about that-”

     “At the school play.” 

     You frowned a little, “maybe that’s a little stupid-”

     “AND,” he said, “one of them burned down a house.”

     “What the fuck?”

     “No idea why,” Isaac shrugged, “but I’d watch out if I were you.”

      And then he left, only to pop back in seconds later, “dinner’s ready, by the way.”

      Little shit.

      You sat in Michael’s bedroom for the first time since you’d started coming to his house. The first few times never really went farther than his living room - and whether that was his choice or for his own comfort or for yours, you weren’t sure - and eventually you ventured down to his basement which reeked of weed and jesus, Michael how do your parents not catch you? But this was the first time you sat in his room, legs crossed and a binder with your math homework sitting in your lap.

     “You stuck?” You looked up at his voice, confusion apparently etched into every feature, “you... haven’t answered anything in a while.”

     “Oh. No. Just... thinking.”

     “About?”

      You chewed the inside of your cheek. “Some shit Isaac told me. About Jeremy. Or at least, someone Jeremy knows?”

      He doesn’t speak. He just somewhat stares at you, thumb running along the edge of a plastic binder nervously. Then he slowly nods. “What did he say?” His voice is soft and slow and so low and you have to wonder what else have people been saying for him to act like this?

     “Just... that someone burned down a house? And no one knows why - he just told me to watch out and I... don’t think Jeremy would be the kind of person to just hang out with someone dangerous, so I just... thought... maybe you could explain something.”

     He took a deep breath. “Fine. But.” You know what he’s going to say. “You have to talk to me.” You simply nodded. It was going to come out sooner or later and you might as well let Michael think you’re a freak. “So... there were - are.. these things called SQUIPs and... all I know is that they’re this supercomputer thing.”

       You nodded, taking in every word he said. When he asked whether you were going to tell Isaac, you only shook your head. “We all have our secrets,” you muttered. And then you took a deep breath. “Isaac used to be bullied.”

     “What-”

      You continued on without a second thought, “when I said I wasn’t bullied, I lied. But Isaac got the worst of it - even though everyone knew Wes and knew that all three of us were related. They just... they called Isaac some shit and I was there so I got into a fight with the fuckers and I got detention and I guess that was the last straw because next thing I know, mom and dad said we’re moving.”

     Michael stared at you. “Just.. how?”

     “Apparently,” you began, “they had a job offer up here but were on the fence about it because of us. They...” You drifted off for a moment, “didn’t really know. At least, until the fight. Dad was pissed because the school wasn’t doing shit, and mom was appalled at the bullshit that was going on.”

      When Michael doesn’t speak, you continue on, “I think... she was upset at us, too. For not telling her. For not doing anything. And, uh...” You paused, “you look like one of the guys that gave Isaac shit. Or at least, you did. I didn’t really get a good look at you when I ran into you and just-”

     “Hey,” he stopped you, “I’m sorry-”

      Words spilled over, and your voice began to shake but you just kept on going because you’ve already said so damn much and you just can’t stop, “and I just... I regret it. I’m not proud, Michael,” you stared down at your hands, “but the fucker was asking for it - and andandand- Isaac...”

      Then Michael’s arms are around you and the sound of his plastic binder topping off the bed greeted you, and your digging your nails and gripping his jacket so damn tight as everything fell silent. And then it’s broken as you choke back a sob before burying your face in his jacket. You were breaking and crumbling and unraveling and the only thing that held you together was Michael.

      At some point it stopped being you and Michael and Jeremy and started being just you and Michael - not to say you didn’t still hang out with Jeremy (and, after a while, the rest of their friends, who apparently took to you quickly and accepted you into the group, albeit a little warily at first) still, since you did. But things changed. Sometimes your hand would brush past Michael’s for a split second and your heart would skip a beat, and sometimes his hand would find yours and he’d just run his thumb over your knuckles and it was soothing.

       3:00 A.M. blinded you one day as you woke up, Michael’s arm draped around you, your cheek pressing against his chest. Fuck. Your head was pounding and your mouth felt dry as fuck - damn it Michael, he could have warned you.

       You somehow managed to wiggle from Michael’s arm, running a hand through your hair, mumbling profanity as you stepped away, finding your phone. One click of the button was enough to blind you momentarily - enough for you to see a wall of texts from who you could only assume to be Wes or Isaac. You ignored it - you’d text them back soon. You’d wander upstairs first, maybe find some water because fuck, cotton mouth is terrible. You’d fight Michael later for not warning you.

       You found a bottle of water in a drawer in the fridge and stumble to the dining room, sitting down and trying to recollect your thoughts as you down half the bottle in an attempt to relieve the desert feeling. Wes. Fuck, did you text Wes?

       Surprisingly enough, it wasn’t Wes who texted you.

      Jeremy: [y/n] are you okay?

      Jeremy: you and michael just disappeared???

      Jeremy: oh.

      Jeremy: i stopped by to check on you and michael

      Jeremy: but uh.

      Jeremy: sorry, i just didn’t want to disturb you!!!

      Jeremy: [image]

      You stared at the image - four hours ago? - of you asleep on Michael, his arm draped over you as it had been when you first woke up.

       ... Would it be weird to save it and maybe set it as your background?

       ... Maybe.

       You ended up doing it anyway.

      “Hey,” Michael said, sliding into the seat next to you at the lunch table, setting down a slushie in front of you, “got you something.”

       You thanked him and nearly dove back into the conversation, only to find it had halted at Michael’s entrance, eyes pinned to you.

      “So,” Chloe finally broke the short silence, “whatcha got there?”

       Michael looked up, glanced to you and then realized she’d either been talking to you or him, “just... thought I’d get [y/n] their favorite.”

      “So you know their favorite?” 

      “Uh, yeah? He’s my friend,” you said after a long sip, only to hiss softly - “fuck.” Fucking brain freeze.

      “So what’s my favorite?” Rich asked, staring at Michael.

      “... Cherry?” 

       For the rest of lunch the group kept stealing glances at you and Michael, as if the two of you would just spontaneously start making out and announce your love to the whole cafeteria.

       Not that you wouldn’t mind the first part.

       3:00 A.M.

       Why were you always awake at three in the morning? At least this time you had a reason. The same question would worm it’s way into your thoughts:

       Were you in love with Michael Mell?

       Dear god, yes.

       Christine had a nice house. Everyone was asleep in the living room, so you escaped out to her back porch to think - and you may have left Michael lying on the floor.

       At least, you thought you did until you heard the scraping of the glass door, which caused a quick “sorry!” the moment you jumped. 

      “You alright?” He asked as he sat next to you. You didn’t look up, but you nodded. “You sure?”

      “Yeah.”

      “Good.”

       A pause. “Michael?”

      “Yeah?”

      “What are we?”

       He’s caught off guard, before he answered shakily, “... friends?”

       “Are we?”

       There’s another pause. “Are we?” He asked softly.

       “Fuck, Michael, I don’t know. I look at you and my heart fucking races and sometimes I look at you and I just-” You stopped, looking up at him, “fuck.”

       Michael was staring at you.

       Your voice shook and grew dangerously quiet, “can I kiss you?”

       He only stared.

      “Michael?”

       Nothing.

      “Fuck, sorry, just - forget it. Sorry-”

      “Yes.”

      You’re stunned for a moment. But you leaned forward and gently press your lips against his and for a moment, everything fell away. His hand is warm at your cheek and his lips and hair are softer than you’d ever imagined. At least for a moment, is him and you and nothing else mattered.

[element-effect-blog]

"Generating Leads With Podcasting Feat. George B Thomas" The Inbound Success Podcast Ep. 10 [Show Notes]

Looking for a way to generate leads, establish thought leadership and get massive return on investment from your marketing? Look no further than podcasting.

Listen to the episode here, or read the transcript (below), to learn how George raised his profile as a thought leader, got invited to speak at INBOUND and generated hundreds of thousands of dollars in business leads...all from a podcast.

Transcript

Here’s what George and I discussed on this week’s show:

Kathleen Booth (host): Welcome to The Inbound Success Podcast. My name is Kathleen Booth and this week my guest is George B. Thomas of the Sales Lion. Welcome George.

George B Thomas (guest): Kathleen, thanks for having me.

Kathleen: I am so excited to have you here. I specifically waited to have you as my guest for a few weeks after starting the podcast, because even though you and I have known each other for a while, I wanted to have some kind of a track record before I invited you in because you are a pro at this.

George: Well ... I've done a few podcasts, let's just put it that way. But, I love being on podcasts. It is a great medium to educate, to inform, all that good stuff. And I'm glad to be here. Finally, I'll say, you know, tonight I'll sleep. At home tonight, I'll sleep cause I've been on the podcast.

Kathleen: You crossed one off your bucket list right?

Kathleen: Well I'm really appreciative of it and before we jump in, I've known you for a while but maybe not everybody who's listening does know you, so tell us a little bit about yourself, your background and what you do these days.

George: Yeah definitely. So my name is George B. Thomas. Like Kathleen said, I do work at The Sales Lion. I started out as an employee, and I'm now a co-owner, which is always interesting. I started with inbound marketing in 2012, listening to Gary Vaynerchuck, and decided I wanted to become a thought leader in something that I knew absolutely nothing about, so I started educating myself, started growing myself, kind of changing my mentality of "never arrive but always succeed." And now I go out and I give workshops, I speak professionally and I train clients over the internet from the comfort of my home office, which is awesome.

Kathleen: I wish that people listening could actually see what I'm seeing, because we're on video as we record this and George does have a really cool home office. 

George:Let's just say super heroes people, super heroes.

Kathleen: It's pretty cool. Well, I think one of the reasons I was excited to have you on is that you've kind of made a career out of educating other people, and what I love is you just said, you started this journey in 2012, which funny enough is kind of when I started focusing on inbound marketing. Your career has been fascinating to watch. As an outside observer, I give you so much credit because you, more than anyone else I think I've ever met actually, are so committed to teaching yourself and going out and learning and not waiting for the information to come to you.

You're so proactive and I really see that as something that everybody can learn from in this space.

George:Yeah, Kathleen, I appreciate that. I'm humbled because I'm just trying to be me and I'd like to say that there's a sexy answer for that but there's really not. I tie the way that I am with education to the fact that when I was 17 years old, I had somebody tell me that I would never amount to anything, and for the rest of my days I will be able to wake up in the morning and say to myself, no, I will be something and they're wrong.

And so there's this innate desire to know as much as possible about anything that I dive into. I'm hoping somebody will get something out of this. I think they will because we're talking human level, which we'll get into podcasting in a minute, but there's something that is really awesome about being able to be a sponge. This is what people will usually say about me is, hey I'm gonna head George in this direction, and then just absorb the information.

This is what I did with Hub Spot in 2012, 13, 14, 15, 16 right? It's what I do now. But 18 months ago, 24 months ago, Marcus, knowing that I'm this type of person, Marcus Sheridan by the way other owner of the Sales Lion, pointed me in the direction of video and said, "go do what you do, but with video versus Hub Spot." And now we teach video workshops as well as go out and teach at workshops and stuff like that. But we'll talk about that more.

Kathleen: Well, whoever that person is that said you would never amount to anything, has spent many, many years eating their words.

George:Well yeah, and it's funny because, and again I'm just trying to speak to somebody out there, for a lot of years Kathleen, I was like I really hated that person, it was a place of anger. But, now I'd actually love to go back and see my math teacher and thank him. Because, it is that spark that fueled this forever educating mentality in my brain.

Kathleen: Yeah, and you were saying there's not really a sexy answer, and again as somebody who kind of is an outside observer, what I have observed is it's "roll up your sleeves and do the work." We happen to be Facebook friends, and George will post at like eight o'clock in the morning, that he's starting the day with a bang and he woke up early and he got a new Hub Spot certification. Or it'll be a weekend and in between taking his kids to the movies, he's getting another one. It's really amazing. And this is gonna sound really corny, but you totally do inspire me.

George:I appreciate that.

Kathleen: You're an amazing role model.

George:I'm humbled, I'm humbled.

I'm trying to do the best I can, and if people can come along for the ride, if I can change my corner of the universe, which really ties back to The HubCast and the podcast, if I can put a little dent in my side of the universe, when I get to the end of the road ... I should start singing Boys to Men right now, but I won't. When I get to the end of the road, I want to be able to look back and be like, yeah that's a good dent right there.

Kathleen: That's so funny cause that's what I say when I send my son ... I have a fifth grader ... when I send him off to school every day. I always say, "make the world a better place." I think he thinks I'm nuts, but no, someday you're gonna remember that I said that to you.

George:Absolutely, absolutely.

Kathleen: Well, speaking of little corners of the world and wanting to make a difference, I started this podcast because I really felt like there's a lot of companies and people out there that are doing inbound marketing and it's been around for a little while now. I do feel like if you sort of follow the plain vanilla play book, it's getting harder and harder to see results. One of the things I wanted to do with this, is shine the light on people who are getting creative and following the play book, but adding to it with their own spin and testing out and doing new things and getting awesome results. And really pick apart what they're doing so that the average inbound marketer - the person who is in the weeds, in the trenches, boots on the ground, doing the work every day - can extract some lessons from that, apply it to the work they're doing, and also improve the results they're getting.

We could probly have you on five different episodes. You talked about video, and I feel like that's another one but, for this one, I specifically really wanted to talk about the work you've done with podcasting because we haven't talked about podcasting on this podcast before. It's very meta! When I spoke to you and to Marcus about some of the things you've done with podcasting and what that has meant to your organization from a lead generation standpoint, I was really fascinated and it seemed to me to be a best practice.

I'd just love to turn it over to you and have you tell us a little bit about the podcast and how it came to be and what the original purpose and objectives were.

George:Yeah, and it's funny that we talked about video a little bit. Before we get into podcasting, my biggest fear that video is so hot right now, and 99 percent of the people who haven't even touched on podcasting for their business. You're like, well blogs aren't working anymore and everybody is saying "well video is the wave of the future", which is true, don't get me wrong, again probably a different episode. But podcasting is so, so magical.

Let me kinda just paint a picture for you. It was 2014, Marcus Sheridan sent me an email and said hey, I think we should create a podcast. I'm like, "uh I don't know." Cause, side note, I hate my voice.

Kathleen: You actually have such a great DJ voice.

George:I hated my voice for years. And I'm like, "okay dude, if you think this is a good idea." And he's like, "I want you to put together what you think would be a great show for HubSpot users." And I don't want to gloss over that. I want everybody to realize that immediately we were focused on a niche audience. We were not creating a podcast, and we were not about to create a podcast for marketing automation, or inbound marketing, or marketing. This was going to be a podcast specific for HubSpot users. 

And so I put pen to paper and I started thinking, "What are the goals? What are we trying to do with this? And how powerful could it be?" First of all, we had to figure out a name. We came up with The HubCast because at that point, if you tried to use "HubSpot" in your podcast name, HubSpot probably would've crapped a brick and there probably would be some legal things happening. So we're like "Hub" for HubSpot and "cast" for podcast. We just mashed it together.

Kathleen: It's a great name.

The HubCast was born. And with the outline, what I realized I wanted to do, I wanted to have something that I could spin up quickly. So the show notes would be repeatable, meaning there were going to be sections that each week I would just be able to copy a template, paste it and then fill in the slots. And so, from that, I knew that I wanted to be able to do this quickly. From that I knew I wanted to be a resource. It had to be educational. So we put in a strategy section, we put in a question of the week, and then I knew that it needed to be focused on somehow building a community. Cause I knew, people aren't just waiting around for a HubSpot podcast to come out and if they do, it's gonna be slow growing. So how can we implement this to be a little bit faster.

So we put in tweets of the week. The whole strategy behind tweets of the week, was to actually find people who were using #hubspotting, #Inboundmarketing, whatever, #INBOUND16, etc, and actually find things that they were saying that we thought were creative so that we could then mention them on the show and then mention that we mentioned them on the show so that then they would share out that they were on the show and other people, friends, family, dogs, cats, would actually start listening to the podcast, which worked really, really well.

We also did another section in there, which was agency spotlight where we'd start to talk about what agencies were doing well. Again, it was all about mentioning people so we could grow the community.

Kathleen: If I could just interject on that...That's something that I've always thought you guys did particularly well. Because The Sales Lion is an agency and not everybody realizes that at first because you are so much about education and about helping, but you do have clients. And it seems counter intuitive as an agency to promote other agencies. But back from the very beginning it starts with Marcus and River Pools and the famous story of how he would write blog posts about the top pool companies that were not his own on his website and what that did for his business. And I think you've taken that "aha moment" that came about through that initial experiment and really ran with it very successfully.

George:Well, I'll tell you a couple things. One, we bleed the fact - the truth - of there is no secret sauce. In podcasting you gotta talk about it. In the written words you gotta write about it. In video, you just gotta show it. There is no secret sauce. And the other thing is some of these posts that we do have become the most magical moments of our content marketing.

For instance, we have a Top 12 Hub Spot Partners post. It's a huge post. We don't mention ourselves. We mention all these other people. But I can tell you, the amount of traffic that we get, because we mention these people in a post. And also agencies who have said, how do I become the first person on this list. And then us adjusting overtime where we actually put people on the list. It's just, you have to be transparent, honest, authentic (which, by the way, those words I just said are key to the success of The HubCast podcast as well). That's the way that you have to communicate in today's space.

Kathleen: So you, had an objective, which was to create a podcast for HubSpot users. You determined that, and that audience was specific. Did you go out and look at other podcasts to try and get an idea of what the best practices might be for your format? Are there other podcasts that you look at as really good examples or get inspired from?

George:Yeah, I'd love to say that I was that smart at the beginning, but there has been a lot of learning along the way. However, I was a podcast junkie before this. And so I had listened to and paid attention to what other folks were doing at a very light level on educating myself. But there was really no "I want to be this type of podcast". It was more of like, "hey this is something new and I have no clue what it's going to look like, this is how we're gonna initially mold it and see what happens."

And one of the major things that we talked about was there's not gonna be any sponsors at first. No sponsors. And I think we made it to episode, Kathleen I think it was episode 54 before we ever actually talked about a sponsor. Now, one of the things that we weren't worried about in the beginning was how are we gonna generate revenue from this podcast. However, it has become one of the larger revenue generating sides of the business for us, which I'm sure we'll talk about in a little bit.

Kathleen: I think we understand the general concept of the podcast, and you talked about building community, obviously a campaign involving a podcast starts with making the podcast. You record it, you produce it, you publish it on your website, on some kind of hosting platform, but then how specifically have you promoted that podcast and gotten it in front of more eyeballs, more listeners? You have your show notes, which you do a very nice job with the show notes and we want to talk about that at some point too. But I'm curious, what are your lessons learned for how you promote a podcast and really start to get a bigger audience?

George:Yeah, I'm still learning. As a matter of fact, when you emailed me over before this podcast, and you used the word "campaign" attached to a podcast, I was like, all of a sudden like sparks started coming out of my brain and I'm like, "oh my gosh, this is the longest campaign that we've ever run and there are pieces of a typical campaign that are missing from what we're doing right now." It repositioned the way that I looked at the content that we are creating. So, that was amazing.

I'm always learning. As far as promoting the podcast, it was really just an organic thing at first where we would just create it, we would mention people, they would mention it. And because it was so authentic, transparent, useful stuff that was just important to them as a HubSpot user, it started to get noticed. Then we started doing other things where we would do social publishing. One of the smartest things I ever did probably - well, I mean I've done a couple smart things - but, one of the smartest things with The HubCast was that back in the day, when you could actually use the HubSpot share tool and share to LinkedIn groups. What I did was I went and I actually, not for a spammy crappy way, but just to be a helpful utility unto the HubSpot world, I went and I signed up for every possible HubSpot user group that I could on LinkedIn and then when we would produce a new episode of The HubCast, I would send it that way.

Here's the amazing thing, not once ever did anybody who was in charge of a LinkedIn group say, "oh you gotta stop sending us content." They were like, "yeah, bring it, this is good quality stuff." It's providing great content to a niche audience of HubSpot users, in a HubSpot user group, which if you think back is exactly why the podcast was created, so it was a perfect match.

Now that's a little bit more difficult and time consuming because you can't do it with one click, one button.

Kathleen: You gotta go in to LinkedIn to do it. Yeah, my heart shattered a little bit when they made that announcement.

George:Yeah, I think I cried for at least 30 seconds. Then I was like "I got work to do so let's just do this."

Kathleen: Time to move on.

George:The thing is, so we started to do that and it really helped.

The other thing that is really helped us is we've leveraged hashtags. As INBOUND has done a lot of work, to go from 2,500 to 5,000 to 15,000 to 21,000 attendees, they've given us a large amount of people that we can hashtag. Like if you look, there's a lot of titles that have #INBOUND15, 16, and 17 in them so that people are like, "oh I'm getting ready to go on a flight. Let me see what this podcast is about because I can listen to it while I'm 50 bazillion miles in the air."

Kathleen: So, that's a good thing. So you put the hashtag not just in your tweets, but in the titles of your podcast?

George:Because then, when anybody shares it, what's there? The hashtag. And so it spreads like wildfire. And so that is definitely another kind of social strategy that we have done.

Now I'll tell you what's in the horizon. We've actually talked about, because we've realized the power of, if we can get people to listen to The HubCast, if they see the value that we can add, there is revenue on the other side of it. So, it's working, now let's add gasoline to the fire and really fuel it up. So we've been talking about starting a Facebook lead ads campaign where we're just using some type of video content to get them on a page where they can subscribe to The HubCast and they can just realize "wow, this is super awesome, super valuable and I need to listen every week."

I want to rewind for a second and pick apart what you do for the podcast. You have the show notes published on The Sales Lion website. In sort of a blog format, correct?

Kathleen: Do you host your podcast on a platform like LibSyn, or where is it hosted?

George:Let me just give you the kind of run through. Anybody who's trying to do this, cause I wish everybody would do this. First of all, let's just talk about gear and how simple we've kept it.

We use Skype, we use Skype Call Recorder and we use ATR 2100 microphones. That's it. That's how we record it. Boom. The way that I edit it, is I split the track with a piece of software that comes with Skype call recorder, I put it in Adobe Audition, I add an intro, I add an outro, I sometimes add a commercial for the HIT workshops or the video workshops that we do, I export it out to an MP3, I upload it to LibSyn, I throw all of the metadata that I need in there for iTunes, Stitcher and all those good places, and then we put it on our website. Then when we publish as a blog article to this specific category called The HubCast, then it shoots out to iTunes, Stitcher, blah blah blah.

Behind the scenes of that, before the recording, we use Dropbox Paper to create the outline for the show notes and where I can, again, take that template, paste it, fill in the blanks, and then share it with Marcus. He shows up, we look over the show notes, we record it, I do the whole editing part, then I take that outline, and I put it on our website as a blog, add images, tweak the links, make it look pretty, add a call to action, hit publish and then people can either listen on iTunes, Stitcher, wherever or on our actual webpage.

But we're never really trying to always drive them back to the webpage. I don't care where they listen. I just want them to listen. And that's pretty much the whole process other than like, on some episodes we'll have a special guest and there's another layer of complexity to that. That's pretty much it.

Kathleen: Do you have any sense of which platforms people are mostly listening on?

George:Yeah, for sure. It's a lot of IOS. So iPhones, iPads, whatever. Website might come next. Stitcher is probably after that. But you know what, while we can look at some of that granularity, I don't look at it very often. Really there's ... this is sad. I mean it's not sad. Well, it's sorta sad. There's really two metrics that ... well there's more than two metrics. There's some hard core metrics and there's some soft core metrics that I look at when it comes to the podcast.

When I think of hard core metrics, I think of things like, we started with 53 listeners. So, that's 53 downloads. Now we get well over 5000 downloads a month. And we've even had ...

Kathleen: And you're measuring that through LibSyn?

George:Yes we're measuring that through LibSyn. And we even had, Kathleen, this one time, I may have like pooped myself just a little bit. We had one episode that got 2185 downloads by itself. And we're like, "we're big time now people."No, I'm just kidding. We didn't say that at all. We're like "wow, what happened?"

So we went from 53 listeners to 5000 listeners and so every month I'm looking at, "are we up and to the right?" Are we always gaining more listeners? Did something fall off? Are we not talking about the right topics? What are the hot topics? And then there's the intangibles, the soft metrics like the hand shakes, the high fives. And being able to tie back, if we didn't start The HubCast in 2014, I probably would've not spoke at INBOUND in 2016. I would've not spoke at INBOUND in 2017 because there was a power, a brand, a growth that was shown, and a massive amount of people who were like, "hey we wanna see George B speak at Inbound," this was 2016. So, that doesn't happen.

Because that doesn't happen then you can't say, well the deals that we closed because of INBOUND and speaking in front of an audience or retainers or whatever, that doesn't happen. You have to look at the audience growth year over year. So like, 2016, I think I spoke in front of 500 people, and then an overflow and this year it was a room of 1200 people with an encore and an overflow to the encore.

There's those metrics that aren't somewhere on a chart but you can visually see them. And then we can track back for 2016, over six figures of income that came from our services that we sell on just The HubCast. That's the only place we were promoting them. And this year of course it's still calculating. I don't know what it will be this year but last year was well over six figures.

Kathleen: Now, how are you tracking that?

George:If you have a podcast, and the only place that you promote a HubSpot Intensive Workshop or a video workshop or a workshop on workshops, all of those things, if that's the only place you're promoting them, and you can then sit back and go, "well we went out and did this many workshops for this much money," it's tracked. That's it. It's simple.

Kathleen: Do you have other, for example you do provide agency services, do you have a way of knowing if somebody comes in through your website and it's not something that was solely promoted on the podcast, do you have a way of being able to attribute that to the podcast, like a question and a form?

George:No. Other than, we'll hear people when we start to train them, they'll say things and you'll be like, "you listen to the podcast don't you?" And they'll be like "yeah, come on." But we never ... although Kathleen this would be a really good idea. On our onboarding of new clients we never say to them "are you a HubCast listener, or have you been a HubCast listener." So that's interesting, which might need to happen in the future.

Kathleen: It would be interesting to almost incorporate that into lead scoring and try to figure out, is somebody who is a HubCast listener more likely to become a client because they're already bought in to you, on a personal level, which is really a game changer for most of the leads that agencies get? Because, I don't know, I've owned an agency, I've worked for an agency and I do find that when somebody comes in cold, it always starts with an element of adversarialness to it. "Prove to me that you're as good as you say you are."

Kathleen: "Have you really gotten the results you talk about?" And so, part of the challenge in the sales discussion is overcoming that adversarialness and developing a different relationship.

George:We've never had that.

Kathleen: Because people listen to you online and they know who you are.

George:I say this humbly cause it's funny you're mentioning that and I'm remembering back in the old school days when I worked in an agency where we did have to claw and bite for the business. We're thought leaders. At The Sales Lion, we honestly do not have that issue because, after 154 episodes of The HubCast and over 400 HubSpot tutorials that I've done on YouTube, they've seen my face, they've heard my voice, they've tied it back to Marcus Sheridan and the larger strategy of "They ask, you answer," the Big Five, and as a client you sit back and you go, "well holy crap." We've got strategy and the most tactical tactition that is going to educate us on what we should be doing. And so usually its just like, "where do I sign?"

Kathleen: Yeah, and that's something that I want to pause and just emphasize. The concept of thought leadership. I talk to so many companies that are either doing inbound marketing and want to be able to do it better, or just starting to do it. Almost, I would say 90 percent of them at least, come to me and say, "we want to establish ourselves as thought leaders." What I find is that in today's world, it can be harder to do that in a blog because there are so many of them. Especially if you don't already have an audience that you can start to get really great content in front of.

But podcasting, there's a little bit more of an opportunity. It's a little bit more of the wild west still. There are a lot of podcasts. But not necessarily in every industry.

George:But specific. Specific.

I will tell you right now, one of the trainings I did last week was to a foam installation company to start a podcast. That's the thing, if you go very niche, into your industry or the services that you provide, there is still a lot of gold that can be mined. And that's why I said at the beginning, I get nervous that video is so popular because podcasting is still an area where you could be crushing it. I know you're gonna ask me some questions later, and what you'll notice is there's some names in there and they are podcasters, but they're also thought leaders. And when you talk about thought leaders, what I really want to say to those folks who say, "man I really want to be a thought leader," then I'm gonna say two things. Educate the crap out of yourself and work your butt off.

George:Cause if you don't do those two things, it doesn't happen. And so there's this thing I talked about at INBOUND17 where people want to educate, educate, educate, educate; that does not equal a thought leader. That also does not equal inbound success, but if you educate and execute, educate and execute, then you'll be an Inbound hero and you'll be a thought leader and then your world changes. Trust me. Your world changes.

I look at me, my family in 2012 and me, my family now in 2017 and whew, my goodness.

Kathleen: But you're also the master of if you put your vision for your future out into the universe, it will come true because having been a loyal HubCast listener from day one, I know that you've gone on that show and said, "this is what I want to accomplish next year and it's gonna happen." And every case when I've heard you say it, it has. There's something to that.

George:I live and die by goals. I'm always focused on what the next thing because I never want to feel like I've arrived. Not that I don't want to feel like I've succeeded, I just never want to feel like I've arrived. I think there's two differences there in the way that you look at the world. And even as we speak Kathleen, there's a board over to my left that has three year goals, things that I want to reach by the year 2020.

Kathleen: I want to know what's on that board.

George:I'll share with everybody.

George:I'm gonna get some people paying attention. I'm gonna talk specifically, talk about specifics. This is video, just for the use of talking to people about what I'm going to do, the micro moments to get to that larger goal. I'm sharing how I'm growing my community, how I'm working out, trying to lose weight, how I'm educating myself. So you're gonna see the nuts and bolts of, if I make it, how I made it through this video thing.

Kathleen: I love it, I love it.

George:Take the summer off ... by the way, not all of this is business related, which is something to think about listeners. Take the summer off to travel with family. 2020 will be my oldest daughter's senior year, and I want to take three months off, and I just want us to go travel around america and do whatever we can do and see whatever we can see.

By 2020 I want to write a book. And I even have the title, I have the idea. I've been through enough stuff that I think it would be really interesting to put out this manual if you will to the world. I've had, and I say this humbly Kathleen, I've had people come, several, multiple, many actually, people come up to me and say, either in email or in person, how do I find a George B Thomas for my agency? I think this book helps them find that person or build that person.

I want to ... this is the big hairy one where, when I wrote it I laughed, and I know people will laugh. By 2020 I want to make 250,000 dollars a year. Which is a lot of scratch right? That's a lot of money. What's a guy gonna do with that? Well a guy's gonna make a bigger dent in his universe.

Kathleen: Guy's gonna put his kid through college.

George:Yeah yeah. Guys gonna make a bigger dent in the universe.

Kathleen: Speaking as somebody who has four kids, two of whom are in college at the same time right now.

George:Exactly. I already put one through college, I got three more to go. Statistically, one probly won't go to college, which is shameful. But then last but not least, I want to sit on a board of a non profit organization. Again tying back to the deeper reason of why I'm actually here on the planet, versus just being an inbound thought leader.

Kathleen: I love that. And I'm gonna do an ask, and it may or may not be possible, I don't know what's on that board. But would you be willing to snap a photo of the board and share it with us so I can put it in the show notes?

Kathleen: I love it, that's awesome.

Kathleen: It's funny that you said you have personal goals on there because a couple years ago I read, I think it's like Mastering the Rockefeller Habits or something along those lines. And he talks in the book about how your goals have to be personal and professional because you're really not a complete person unless you can balance those two and be equally fulfilled in both realms so I totally agree with that.

George:I live my life, and I know this has gotten a little bit off of podcasting but, I live my life Kathleen, in a way that there is no work life balance, there's just life.

Kathleen: Love it. Alright so, back to podcasting for a minute.

Kathleen: I want to come back to something you mentioned earlier. So we've talked a couple times in this podcast about video. And you mentioned that you talk about video a lot. And you also mentioned that when you were making The HubCast you made a lot of videos and put them on YouTube. I think a lot of people, when they think about podcasting, it's very binary. It's like we're gonna put out this audio file, there might be some written show notes and boom we're done, but you managed to combine video as a really important part of that podcast. Can you talk a little bit more about that?

George:Yeah. This ties into the show notes. One of the things that I realized is, and this is because of weakness, I'm not a great writer. Okay, I just can't write. My spelling sucks, my grammar sucks, it probly has something to do, tying back to the math teacher who told me I would never amount to anything and at the age of 17 dropping out of high school. Not having the education I needed for that part of my life. When Marcus said, "hey let's do The HubCast," which by the way people, that was being vulnerable.

When he said "lets do this podcast," I was like, I'm gonna make the most incredible show notes, where it has nothing to do with if I can write great but I can be creative and I can put images and words and videos and whatever on this page where people are like, "man these show notes are awesome." Cause that was my side of the written word right? And people, our content manager or Marcus, would go through and just make sure that the parts that I did write, were like, yeah you're good and the rest is awesome.

But, going more specific into why video in the show notes, was, one of the sections, because one of our goals was to educate and its very hard to show people how to do things in HubSpot in audio form. I'll tell you, Chris Handy with Hub Spot To Go did a great job. I'm sad that that podcast isn't continuing to go more and more and more. But it's just very difficult. By the way, Chris Handy is one of my heroes. I just love him in the space and hey, I mentioned him alright, cool. Check.

So I wanted to be able to show people how to do things in HubSpot and that became a section that was HubSpot Tips and Tricks. It grew and it had its own thing where, all of a sudden Marcus one episode called me "Georgie Claus" and there's this whole "ding, ding, ding" thing that happened around every time that I would have the tutorial in one of the episodes. And what we found was super interesting as people would come to the show notes and then go to our YouTube channel and watch these videos. And so it was something that was working.  It stuck, and we could educate them while they are walking up the mountain or while they are driving down the road and when they got to their office, they could then get these micro moments of video content specific to, tips and tricks in the tool of HubSpot or HubSpot CRM.

Kathleen: That's great. It just goes to show that you don't need to be such a purest in your format. Somebody actually told me that the other day about podcasting. In fact, it was somebody fairly high up at HubSpot. I was asking what he saw as some future opportunities in marketing and he said, I would look at different formats of podcasting. There's a Hamilton podcast, which is a musical podcast. And they're doing great and they're different experiments. You don't have to follow the traditional playbook. I think that's a great example of how you built on what were your strengths and found a great solution.

George:Yeah, you just have to find ... it is, it's about your strengths and how you can tell the story. And how you can kind of lead the way through that story.

Kathleen: You have gotten fantastic results for the company through podcasting, you've built this large community, you've got a big following on the podcast. What I've loved hearing about this story is that you did come about the format and the whole campaign, which we're now gonna call it, organically.

Kathleen: You came about it organically in a way that really good marketers should, which is what's our objective? Who's our audience? And what's really gonna work for them? I would love to know, as somebody who is so committed to learning, where do you turn for information? When you go look for websites for ideas and the latest thinking and cutting edge tactics and strategies, who are you looking towards? I feel like a lot of people look towards you.

George: First of all there's a butt ton of podcasts that I listen to as I'm flying or traveling. But if I have to give you the default answer to this, I would of course say, it's HubSpot Academy. I mean come on. I've got 14 certifications out of the 15 so that's definitely a huge part of it.

Kathleen: Probably the only reason you don't have the 15th is they keep releasing new ones, darn them!

George:No, to be honest with you it's because it's Growth-Driven Design and you need a snack and a backpack to get that one done.

Kathleen: Nice, put it on the board.

George:Yeah, put it on the board.

There's other pieces like Moz for SEO and Lynda.com for other things. But here's the not so, again not so sexy answer is more times than not, I learn stuff about inbound marketing when I'm working through things with my own clients. There are several systems in place that are not taught anywhere. Like anywhere else. The fact that I got up and at INBOUND this year, one of my sessions for a Highly Effective HubSpotter was triple qualify your leads. And I was talking about informationally qualified, engagement qualified, and persona qualified. And there were HubSpot users and agency owners that came up to me and said, "Holy crap, gold! Where did you learn that?" And I'm like "no, no, no, I built that."

That's something that has happened more and more and more. And Kathleen the reason I think this has happened is because, I'm able to take the things that I have learned through 14 certifications, and because there's not one two or three certifications, but there's 14 certifications and I'm literally looking at the landscape from marketing, sales, design, development. Because I used to be a nerdy designer and developer, I'm able to piece ... and add in the fact that I understand humans from being a recovering youth pastor, I'm able to see all of this and kind of like, ooh if this part of the brain attaches to this piece over here and we add two of these and a little dash of this, pppffff, inbound goodness right. That's part of the answer as well.

Kathleen: Awesome. My next question, which I always ask everyone who comes on this podcast is, who - company or individual - do you think is doing inbound marketing really well? So if the listener wanted to go out and see an example of somebody who's just killin' it, who should they look at?

George:Well I should say you. Cause you're doing a podcast.

Kathleen: You can't say ... cause that's you know ... well aside from us.

George:Again, IMPACT is killin' it, you guys are killin' it.

Kathleen: It's not about us.

George:I know, it's not. But I did prepare. If you wanna see people that are out there that are killin' it inbound and just general good people, I would say people like Stephanie Casstevens, Moby Siddique, Francess Bowman, Dan Moyle. Those are like the core group of people that I'm watching and excited about their growth in life and where they're going.

Of course, then you layer on the people who are doing podcasts like, HubShots with Craig and Ian. Zon and Adam from The Kingdom who are doing HubnSpoke. Any of those people who are doing what we're talking about today. Creating content through a podcast or have just generally been killing it with very interesting out of the box things or ideas. That's where I'm at.

Now, that's people. And in the question, people or companies. Companies, and I don't wanna turn this into a TSL client show, cause it's not what it should be. But I will tell you, we have one client that I'm super excited with in particular. I've been watching them. And it's Slick Woody's. They sell Corn Hole boards, Corn Hole bags, Corn Hole lights and other stuff like apparel and adirondack chairs. They have been killing it. When we say write these things, or do these tactics or use HubSpot in this way, and what's really neat about it, is they've been leveraging HubSpot and Shopify and The Sales Lion training for a year, just signed on for another six month contract of, I think it was like, we just love you so much we wanna keep you around to be honest with you. But just signed on for another half a year contract with us. But have, just astronomically blown out their yearly "this is what we'd like to make" number. And their customers are super happy with the way that they are actually doing it.

That to me is a "win, win" scenario. And then I think of a couple UK clients that we have. OSV and Triaster, they historically have been killing it with their inbound marketing.

Kathleen: That's great. I definitely will put a link to Slick Woody's

Kathleen: ... in the show notes. Everyone go check that out. I think it's nice to see examples from different industries too, cause everybody always comes in and thinks, "oh I can't do that in my industry," there's another one - corn hole boards - that who knew, was a great candidate for inbound marketing.

Well thank you for sharing all this George. It's been so fun and so interesting and I love that you shared a lot of the personal stuff in addition to the podcasting stuff. You're always so good about walking the walk with being honest and transparent and authentic.

George:Yeah, sometimes I'm ... I'm waiting for it to get me in trouble. But so far, it's been a good thing.

Kathleen: Well, it's great. And if our listeners have questions, obviously they should definitely listen to The HubCast. I recommend it.  When I had my own agency and I would hire new people, one of the things I would assign them - I don't think I ever told you this - as a new employee, was that they should listen to every episode of The HubCast. For everybody listening, that's definitely a great place to start if you want to be a better inbound marketer. But if people specifically want to reach out to you with questions, where can they reach you?

George:So I'll give you a couple different places. First of all, that is kinda cool that like, "hey you're hired but you have to listen to these 150 episodes of a podcast." I love it.

If people want to reach out to me, by the way, if you have questions about podcasting or whatever, you can email me, george@thesaleslion.com I did just give you my email.

But if you just want to have a conversation on the socials, then you can reach out to me on Twitter @georgebthomas and on Facebook, which is really the place that I love to jam the most, @mr.georgebthomas, which now that I said that I feel like maybe I'm saying I'm old, cause I like Facebook. But anyway. Doesn't matter.

Kathleen: I love it. Well thank you for sharing all those different ways for people to get in touch with you. And for sharing all this awesome feedback on podcasting, I definitely am gonna hound you about getting that picture of your board cause I think that's so cool and I might just start my own board as a result of this.

Kathleen: I have all kinds of thoughts in my head right now about what my goals are gonna be. But anyway, thank you so much. And for people listening, if you liked this episode, please review us on iTunes or Stitcher. It means a lot and helps us get in front of other people. And if you know somebody who's really kicking it with their inbound marketing results, let us know. Because we're listening for and looking for new people to interview every week. And if you are somebody who's killing it, we'd love to talk to you. So that's it for this week and, join us next week for our next interview with an inbound marketing rockstar.

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[written-s0ul]

Finding Home (1)

Summary: Avengers High School AU. Gender neutral reader-insert. You, the new kid, just want to be left alone. But instead, you get the Avengers gang – and maybe, a new home too.

Warnings: Cursing. Mentions of weed? Something resembling a panic / anxiety attack, though probably not, but just in case. No specific ship in this entire story, tbh, but I’ll make sure to add some fluff + sexual tension between you and everyone, lol.

Author’s Note: HEY. So, it has been a long time since I’ve written any fanfic, much more an Avengers fanfic. I hope all the characters are in character, ehehe. So, I’ve decided to do a series of connected one-shots of your high school senior year with the Avengers gang + other Marvel characters, inspired by the 30 day drabble challenge (although I will not be doing drabbles, and for now, I’ll just do seven of them, depending on my inspiration). So, hope that you enjoy this! Let me know if there are any mistakes. Thank you! (:

Finding Home: Part #1: beginning. Part #2: accusation. Part #3: restless. Part #4: coin. Part #5: haze.

1: beginning

n. a starting point / new or inexperienced

This office was such a fucking dump. You looked at the pee-colored wall, bare but for the chippings on the corners by the ceiling. Good thing a few bulky, metal cabinets covered that eyesore of a wallpaper – although that still didn’t help in the general aesthetic quality of the room. There wasn’t even a window in here.

Your gaze fell on the small desk in front of you, unoccupied except for a laptop, a fuckton of paperwork, and some kind of 1940 action figure of a man in blue-white-red spandex. Oh, and of course, the name of your class advisor-slash-guidance counselor on a rusty, golden plaque: Mr. Phil Coulson.

He cleared his throat. You looked up to meet his gaze, and he raised a brow at you. “So?” he said. “How’s your day going?”

You cocked one brow in return, but couldn’t help the chuckle huffing out in between your teeth. “You excused me from class to – to check up on me?” You shook your head, amused. “You’re not being paid enough for this.”

He breathed out a sigh, almost as if to say no shit, but then leaned forward, the chair rolling with him, hands clasped on the desk. “Look, you’ve been here for three months already,” he said. “And I can still see you sneaking out of the cafeteria to eat by the bleachers. Or the library. Or, I suspect, even the restroom.”

Your heart squeezed. How could he know that? But you swallowed the creeping anxiety, and instead, gave him a tiny smile. “I’m fine alone, Mr. Coulson.”

“Your parents are worried about you,” he said, his already thin lips pressing down to a thinner line. His brows drew together, creases cracking his immaculate forehead. “I’m worried about you.”

You waved a dismissive hand. “I’m–”

“That’s why I’m assigning someone to you.”

You froze. What?

Knock, knock! The door behind you clicked, then creaked. You didn’t dare look who it was.

“Sir, you called?”

Mr. Coulson grinned, brighter than anything in the office. “Come on in,” he said. He waved a hand in the direction of the newcomer, and you looked up to the familiar flames-of-hell red curls on porcelain skin and the most intimidating pair of eyes you have ever seen. Correction: most intimidating human being. “I presume you’ve met Natasha Romanoff?”

When did your back become so rigid? In fact, when has your entire body been this tense? Goddamn it, Mr. Coulson. You nodded at her anyway, giving each of them a tight, tiny smile, then dropping your gaze onto a loose fabric on your shirt. “We have History and English together,” you said.

“Oh, right,” she said, nodding. A smile of her own, much more relaxed and genuine than yours, bloomed on her plump, pink lips. “Aren’t you new?”

You were about to bob your head in response, but Mr. Coulson spoke up first, providing your formal introductions – which you could most certainly have done yourself, thank you very much, but also relieved you didn’t have to do it yourself, thank you so fucking much. “That’s exactly the reason why I called you, Miss Romanoff. Our friend here needs some help around the school and, uh, getting some company – you know, the usual. Do you mind?”

Heat sizzled underneath your skin, blood swelling and tainting your whole face to the sheeny shade of a tomato. Asking another student to carry your deadweight shit? What the hell is he thinking?

“Consider it done, sir,” she said. Your eyes widened, and you couldn’t help looking up at her now. Composed and pleasant, the edges of her lips were tilted up, as if she hasn’t been asked to basically watch over another student. Another student that she doesn’t even know. She glanced down, redirecting the smile to you.

The heat in your body suddenly didn’t twist your insides. Instead, it warmed them, the way a mug of hot chocolate would be reassuring in a freezing, stormy night. You smiled back, small and hesitant.

“Great! Thank you, Natasha,” Mr. Coulson said, nodding in approval. “Always knew we can count on you.”

Riiiiiiing!

Your stomach dropped. Oh, shit.

“Just in time for lunch,” Mr. Coulson said, rising from his squeaking seat. “Go grab your bag from your classroom, Miss Romanoff, we’ll wait for you outside.”

She nodded, and after sending you a see you later look, left the room. The moment the door clicked shut behind her, you stood up and faced your adviser. “What. The. Hell?”

He pushed his chair back into his desk, then pulled out a drawer underneath. “If you’re not going to approach other people, I’ll make other people approach you,” he said, taking out a brown paper bag and setting it on the desk. You glanced at it. Does he pack his lunch everyday? “And Natasha knows a lot of other people.”

You shook your head, teeth gritting. “Sir, you’re just putting us in an awkward and embarrassing situation. This isn’t going to work.”

“Well, if it doesn’t,” he said, meeting your gaze with one corner of his lips perked up. “At least, it’s a start.” He stepped towards the door, his fingers encircling the knob, and his expression softened. “We both know you need this, kid. Give it a chance. I’ll see you next week.” Pulling the door open, he gestured for you to leave, and after shouldering your bag, grumbling to yourself, you stepped outside. Right next to Natasha herself.

“Hey,” she said, just as the door behind you clicked shut.

“Hi.” You looked down at the dull shine of your shoes. The dreaded, uncomfortable silence, you could sense, was already settling in the air between the two of you, in spite of the background noise of the chatter and laughter of a hallway full of students.

She cleared her throat. “So. Is it okay if we pass by my locker first?” she said, adjusting the stack of thick books – with foreign titles, you noticed – in her arms.

You swallowed. “You don’t have to do this, you know,” you said. “I’ll just make something up for when I see Mr. Coulson–”

“It’s fine,” she said, dismissive, as she began walking ahead, staying at the shore of the river of students, and not totally immersing herself into it just yet. “He always asks me to help out with the new kids, so I don’t mind.”

Catching up with her, you furrowed your brows. “Why?”

She shrugged a shoulder. “I guess I get along well with everyone.”

Huh, that made sense. You’ve seen her in the hallways and during classes, hanging out with such a variety of people: from elite bad boy Loki Laufeyson to young prodigy Peter Parker – a sophomore who’s in your Math class already – to Class President Steve Rogers himself. She’s quite everywhere. Or maybe, for you. It’s hard not to notice someone with a presence as intimidating as hers.

“Nat!”

Both of you spun to the voice, found a blonde in a tight pair of black jeans jogging towards you, backpack over his shoulder. Upon closer inspection, you recognized him as the guy who not only hung out a lot with Natasha, but also has the sharpest eyes in probably the entire school – Clint! Yeah, Clint, uh, Bartson. Barton. You think.

He reached behind his ear, as if adjusting something, then beamed, like an excited kid. Throwing you a nod, he looked at Natasha. “New assignment?”

Her nose wrinkled. “You make this sound like some extra-credit homework.” Gesturing to you, she made the proper introductions, and you had to pat yourself on the back. It was Clint Barton.

Looking at you, his eyes narrowed. “Have we met before?”

You nodded, keeping your heart calm and your face clear of any emotion. “We have–”

“PE!” he said, brightening. “We have PE together! You’re the one who keeps on tripping in the gym, right?”

Beside you, Natasha raised her brows, amused. You looked away, lips pressed together as heat crawled up your neck. That’s not exactly your fault. Mostly, it’s the awful combination of a frictionless pair of sneakers and a constantly mopped, smooth floor. You nodded anyway.

Clint huffed out a chuckle. “You’re a lot fun.” Then, looking at Natasha, his eyes lit up, as if remembering why he was here in the first place. “Oh, you guys getting lunch?” His gaze flickered between the two of you.

Natasha shook her head, lifted her books. “Got to do something first. You can go ahead, grab a table before everything’s occupied.”

“I’m pretty sure Pietro’s got that covered,” he said, grumbling. Pietro, you thought, then remembered: one of the foreign exchange students from a country in Europe that you can’t recall or pronounce!

“Assuming he’s not getting high in the backstage of the auditorium,” Natasha said.

Whoa. Well, he does look like a very chill guy. But now, Clint does not, his forehead creased and his jaw unhinged as if affronted. “That asshole! Why doesn’t he ever share?” he said, then frowned, contemplating. “I’ll look for him–” He stepped aside, ready to leave, but somehow, with one look from Natasha alone, he returned to his position in front of you, looking like a child who’s just been scolded.

“Are you more hungry for weed or for food?” she asked, brow cocked.

The corners of his lips dropped even further. He breathed out a reluctant sigh and hiked up his backpack up his shoulder. “Fine. See you later.” Giving her a solemn salute and you a playful smile, he sauntered off to a nearby stairwell.

“Clint!” Natasha said, a warning in her tone as she turned to watch him go. Without looking back, he raised a thumb-up in response.

Your brows furrowed. “He’s not going to get high in the middle of a school day, is he?”

She heaved out an exasperated breath from her nose. “Not usually. At least, ninety percent of the time.” Turning away, she headed to the row of lockers in the corner of the hall, with you trailing behind her, and throwing one last look to where Clint had disappeared.

Reaching the lockers, you let yourself avert your gaze as she unlocked hers. Once it was open, she stuffed her books in there, but not without arranging them first – alphabetically? You weren’t sure. Some of them were in a foreign language.

Behind you, someone cleared their throat. Your heart leapt as you stepped aside to see the intruder, Natasha turning to face them too, for both of your gazes to fall on none other than the mysterious Bucky Barnes. Or, at the moment, the uncomfortable Bucky Barnes. He was shuffling his feet, hands shoved down into the pockets of his ripped jeans, and face contorted in such a way that it seemed as if it physically pained him to even stand there. It was almost kind of cute, if his presence wasn’t so alarming.

Natasha blinked. “You have a message for Cap?”

The Cap? You frowned, shot her a questioning look.

She caught this, shrugged. “It’s our nickname for Steve.”

Ah, Steve Rogers, you thought. Him being the class president and an amazing athlete, it made sense.

He ran a hand through his shoulder-length locks, strands of it swaying beside his face from the movement, reminding you, for some reason, of a field of tall grass dancing against a strong breeze. Sparing you a look, for a moment, it looked as if he was considering whether or not to speak with your presence nearby, but then, he returned to Natasha, and nodded. “Let him know I can’t make it to movie night, will you? Gotta serve detention under Mr. Sitwell … again.”

Crossing her arms, Natasha raised an amused brow. “You gonna leave him all alone with Sammy-wammy?” she said, playful.

He shot her a look, the kind one would have when they’ve heard a joke too many times for their patience to take it, and stepped back, ready to depart. “I’ll see you around, Romanoff.”

“How about lunch?” she asked.

His face squirmed again, like he didn’t like what he was going to say. “Detention. Mrs. Carter.”

Wow. Can someone really have two sessions of detention in a day? Beside you, Natasha shook head in a manner of why’d I even bother, but waved him a hand of farewell, before returning to the contents of her locker.

At the corner, you caught Bucky sending you another look, this one much more piercing, brows furrowed, as though trying to remember something. But before you can decipher it any further, he has already disappeared among the mass of students. You looked back at Natasha, just as she slammed her locker shut, locking it. “Is he … okay?” you asked, tone somewhat playful.

But as she met your gaze, her face darkened. “He’s trying to be,” she said. Then, her eyes brightened, and she raised an arm, waving at someone over your shoulder. “Steve, c'mere!”

Turning around, your eyes fell on the magnificent Steve Rogers, who was just about to turn into another hall, but now paused in his tracks, looking up from a folder of documents, just as his gaze landed on you. Or Natasha. Right, Natasha. Sauntering over here in a jacket and a t-shirt too tight for the good of anyone’s eyes, it was like he was glowing.. But that may also could’ve been the sunlight from the windows. Probably. You doubted it.

“Yeah, Nat?” he asked, once within earshot. Seeing you, he flashed a smile of greeting, but then froze, brows knitted. Then, he said your name, face igniting with a look of recognition. “Don’t we go to the same Arts class?”

You nodded, heart bouncing. Whoa, he’s noticed you? From what you can remember, your interactions with him was limited to mostly staring at the way his face and muscles moved while he sketched, and picking up fallen pencils. Oh god. You hoped he hasn’t noticed you staring too.

“You draw pretty good,” he said, the corners of his lips stretching to a smile that could hearts. It most certainly could have melted yours. Especially with such a compliment.

Brushing hair off your face, you tried to return the smile without compromising your stoic disposition, tight but abashed. “Uh, you too.”

In between the two of you, Natasha cleared her throat, and the focus was on her. With an amused sideway glance at you, she looked at Steve. “Barnes wanted to say he can’t make it to your movie night threesome with Sam–”

“It’s not–”

“He has detention with Mr. Sitwell,” she went on. “Oh, and right now too, with Mrs. Carter.”

Steve drew his brows together, disapproving and dismayed. Creases lined his forehead, and it was almost tempting to smooth them out. “Right. Thanks for letting me know, Nat.”

“One of the many services I offer,” she said, waving his gratitude away. “You joining us for lunch?”

He shook his head, low and disappointed. “Council meeting. I’ll just catch up on you guys later,” he said, now walking backwards. “See you around!” Flashing you another brilliant smile, he turned and disappeared into another hall.

You looked at Natasha, frowning. “Are all of them your friends?”

One corner of her lips perked up. “You haven’t even met half of them.”

Soon enough, you reached the cafeteria. An open dining, students gathered in this area, purchasing and consuming their food, in such great numbers that they have spilled to the surrounding picnic tables outside, beneath two towering trees and stretching, bushy branches. Friendly breezes blew past, bringing along with it chatter, laughter and the smell of … roast beef?

“Food first?” Natasha said, as both of you approached the main cafeteria, overflowing with so many students that stepping inside felt like being in a stuffy oven, despite the lack of any walls to actually contain anything. “Hopefully, Clint and the others saved us a table.”

Oh, right. You’re going to eat lunch with her and her friends. With actual people after three months of lunch solitude. Or isolation, Mr. Coulson will probably say, because you have no life. Unlike Natasha, who does, and whose life you’re now basically intruding. Fitting, squeezing yourself inside of it. Damn it, Mr. Coulson. “Natasha–”

“Call me Nat.”

“Okay, uh, Nat–” you said, clearing your throat as both of you stepped onto the end of the line. She leaned forward and grabbed two trays. “I think for today, I’ll eat somewhere else–”

She turned around, and gave you a look. The line moved forward, but she didn’t budge. “Listen, if I didn’t want to help you out, I wouldn’t. Really. But I do. So, are you going to take this tray or not?” She shoved it towards your chest.

If the line hadn’t been moving, and the other students behind you weren’t complaining, maybe you wouldn’t have taken the tray. But either way, you did, and the corners of her lips perked up, small but satisfied. She turned back to the line and edged forward, selecting the food she wanted. You followed suit, taking whatever suited your appetite at the moment. It wasn’t much.

After paying for the food and stepping out of the line, you wondered – why? Why did she agree to help you? In fact, why does she even want to help? It wasn’t like she has anything to gain from this. You looked at her, watched as her sharp eyes narrowed, scanning the tables for familiar heads. Does she?

“Oh, there they are,” she said, nodding at a crowded table underneath one of the trees. Her whole face seemed to must have brightened, thrumming with a controlled level of excitement. That’s what it must be like to have friends, you thought.

Your throat dried up, chest squeezing your already galloping heart, as you stared at that table, that table of Nat’s friends. Even from afar, you can already see some familiar heads: Clint Barton, Tony Stark, Bruce Banner – even you’re-pretty-sure-he’s-from-another-world Thor Odinson, and the twins from that European country you can’t pronounce, and that sassy guy from that African country you can’t remember, and three other guys who’re probably in your other classes too. But none of whom you have ever interacted with. Not a meaningful interaction anyway. Maybe bumping them in the halls, helping them pick up a fallen pen, vice versa. But nothing real. Now, maybe you’re about to have that. Meaningful, real interaction. And who knows where that could lead to?

But you already knew the answer to that, and it’s not a happy one. Fuck, fuck, fuck. You can feel the panic clamoring in your chest, building and slamming into the walls of your insides, pushing sweat out of your pores and tying your stomach into ribbons and chasing your heart–

“Hey.” You felt a gentle hand on your arm, and your wide-eyed gaze fell on Natasha’s concerned but kind face, her brows furrowed and the corners of her lips tilted up, as if she was torn between looking worried or comforting. “You okay?”

Stepping back, you blinked a few times back to the present, but nodded. “Yeah, sorry, I just–” You shoved some saliva down your desert-crisp throat, and cleared it. “I don’t think I can–”

“No one’s going to hurt you,” she said, tone soft and reassuring. “And you’re not going to hurt anyone.”

You stared at the table, as a wind whispered past, bringing along Thor’s booming laughter and Tony’s witty remarks. They looked so … happy. You’d hate to ruin that.

“You don’t even have to say anything,” she said. “I’ll handle it.”

You fixed your gaze on her, and watched the sunlight play with the color of her eyes. Flickering from green to gray to blue to green. Sweet, comforting, safe. You wondered if she understands, understands why you just can’t jump into … something like this. She looked like she does. Maybe, maybe it won’t turn out too bad. Maybe.

With one last inhale and exhale of air, you gathered all your strength, and nodded at the table. “You sure we can still fit in there?” You’re not sure of the capacity of the tables here, but you’re pretty sure ten students – a few of whom were built like Roman gods – couldn’t possibly fit in that single picnic table.

She released a relieved breath. “We better,” she said, approaching them already, with you lagging a bit beside her. “Or someone’s going to get their ass kicked.”

Ha, funny. But then, you saw her face. Wait, was she serious?

Part #2: accusation.

Author’s Notes: Okay, I think I’ll leave the whole “introduction to the team” to you, lol. Sorry! No matter what, I can’t seem to write down that scene right. No idea how those Marvel writers can handle such a humongous cast. But anyway, I’ve made it look like you already do know the cast, being in the school for three months already and they’re also well-known students, so I didn’t think it was totally necessary. The important part is bonding moments with them, yieee. Which we will all get into soon. (:

Thank you for reading! Let me know what you think. ❤️

[darkhymns-fic]

The Value in an Ending

Being a judge can be tiring (especially when you're swindling the government), so Sans always makes sure to visit the bakery down the street for some good food, some bad laughs, and the lovely voice of a nice friend.

He wants to make sure to keep this happy ending.

Fandom: Undertale Characters/Pairing: Sans/Toriel, Flowey Rating: G Mirror Links: AO3, FF.net Notes: This was written as a response to my boyfriend's most recent story, Murder with a Side of Lies, part of the Detective Papyrus series. Takes place after that story's events with a lot of references to it, and it's a super-fun read anyway that you should check out. *hint hint* 

Everyone knew about Toriel’s Bakery café that was huddled between the barber shop and the small fruit market down on Old Abode Lane. Even if you didn’t know it by name, the scent of her famous butterscotch pie was hard to ignore when you passed by. The waft of golden, flaky bread and the tinge of cinnamon spice would make its way through the air, unhindered by the constant storms and showers that took over the dreary skies, enticing the curious, the hungry, and those with a weakness for sweets.

Sans didn’t fit any of those categories (indifferent, no stomach, and he preferred food of the greasy variety), but the scent of that pie made him go to her shop anyway.

There was a sign over the door. It was printed boldly and clearly for all to see, along with a useful design of a clock. ‘Will be back in exactly 1 hour. We are sorry for the inconvenience.’

Nah, that’s alright.

He pushed open the door, the bell atop tinkling as he entered. It was good to get out of the rain, and him being the numbskull that he was, he didn’t bring an umbrella or a hat to cover his shivering bones. Well, usually the rain didn’t hit him- it just always seemed to miss him at the right moment. But this time, Sans didn’t try to cheat out of it. After all, it was okay to get dunked on once in a while. And hey, this way, his skull was now shiny and clean.

Pink slippers placed themselves on the welcome mat, which was both simple and elegant, if he had to describe it. The ‘Welcome’ on it was stylized in cursive, printed against a violet background with pretty designs of curls and columns that resembled architecture. It was also large enough for the feet of the biggest of monsters. Sans, being the opposite of that, felt quite engulfed within the mat’s confines.

“yo, tori,” he called out, but she wasn’t present. It seemed no one was in the shop right now. (Guess that sign was for something). He walked towards the displays of cakes and cookies, pies and pastries, and the special snail creations counter. It was midday and items from each section had been sold to prospective customers, except for the snail treats. A shame, really. The snail pie wasn’t so bad if you put enough whipped cream on it and ignored the crunchy texture of shells between your teeth.

Sans then went through the little open space between the shop counter, heading straight for the back door.

Can’t break with tradition.

“knock knock,” he said, rapping bare knuckles against the wood.

He heard two distinct sounds then; the airy laugh of that sweet old lady, and the sigh of a certain bud of his.

He was hoping the kid would be taking his nap right about now. Oh well, can’t have everything.

“Who’s there?” spoke the kind voice.

“ice cream,” he answered.

“Ice cream who?”

“ice cream if you don’t let me in.”

He basked in her laughter, which was only slightly ruined by another’s groan and frantic whisper of, “Come on! That was lame!”

Hearing plates clink from beyond the door, his joke buddy then spoke out, “It’s open.”

Sans was greeted to the sight of the shop owner known as Toriel. She was tall and poised in her posture, hands clasped delicately on the dining table within the room. She was seated among a pie tin that was placed within the center of the table, several slices already having been cut from its shape. Sans saw his own plate – the one with the ketchup bottle next to it. On the pie slice was a red-drizzled drawing of a skull. Aww.

A bit further off from the condiments and sweets, the other side of the table had different objects; namely books, some paper and pencils, and a hat with a grumpy-looking, golden-petaled flower on it.

“I was just helping him with some of his homework,” Toriel explained as Sans made his way to his seat. “Right now, we are on algebra.”

“Math is dumb!” Flowey declared. He held a pencil in his leaf, albeit with some difficulty.  “Who even uses this trigonometry junk in real life anyway?”

Sans looked at the flower. Man, this was good to pass up.

“you use it all the time, kid. triangle shapes are all around you. why, it’s as easy as pie.”

Flowey narrowed his eyes at the skeleton, particularly at the way Sans’ jacket was still sopping wet from the rain outside, damping both the carpet and seat. “That was stupid. You’re just stupid!”

“Flowey, that is quite enough,” Toriel chastised. She gave a little tap on Flowey’s head, making the plant flinch. “Please behave yourself when we have a guest.”

“no sweat, tori. he just hasn’t discovered math’s inner sweetness. it’s the reason pie even exists.”

Flowey threw down his pencil. “No, it’s not!”

“kid, would i lie to you? you ever hear about the worst thing about getting hit with pie?” Sans grinned wide. “get this. it’s because pie…” He turned his eye sockets to Toriel.

She finished with, “It never ends!”

Flowey groaned and growled and pushed away his math assignment. “I still don’t get it!!”

“oh yeah, tori. got, uh, a message for ya.” Sans took a crumpled-up note out of his pocket, though that was being generous. It was practically wadded into a paper ball, down to the size of a nickel. He tossed it over to Toriel, who deftly let it bounce upon her palm.

“…Sans, usually your letters are a bit more… well-prepared. Though I supposed this would have been difficult to mail.” Despite her words, she didn’t sound annoyed in the slightest. She smiled at the skeleton, and went to work on the paper ball as if it was a gift ready to be unwrapped. It was a challenging exercise for her large hands, but she was determined to see it through!

“now you know i like the snail mail we have going on between us.” Sans’ voice was light as he spoke. He watched as Toriel untangled the crinkled paper, and then looked away. Eye sockets wandered back over to the bakery shop section, back to the glass door, the bell above it, and the sign hanging over the front. The rain continued to pour, and the faint sound of thunder muffled through the skies.

“but it ain’t my message exactly.” He turned back to her. “big guy wanted to pass a word along.”

That made Toriel’s hands pause.

Flowey looked from both monsters, his dark eyes swishing around the empty space that was his petaled head.

Then a grin formed.

“Oh! Did Daddy say hi to me?”

Toriel didn’t say anything. Sans shrugged at the flower. “can’t tell you, kid. he didn’t mention hi or low of you.”

Flowey scoffed. “You know that’s not what I-”

“Asriel.” Toriel raised her head. The ceiling lights glinted off her eyes, highlighting the crimson that swirled within their depths. “Please take your homework and go upstairs to your room. Try to finish the rest of your assignment and I will come along to check it over.”

“What?!” The plant quivered with impatience. “But I wanna know what Dad said! And I told you that my name is Flo-”

“Asriel,” she repeated. Her mouth was set firm. “I’m not asking you again.”

The air felt hot, despite the cool rain outside. The flower wilted.

“…Ugh, fine.”

Was an interesting sight to see a houseplant try to cradle both a heavy-bound textbook and a sheaf of written-on papers in their leaves, all while holding a pencil in its mouth. “think you can handle all that, bud?” Sans couldn’t help but ask. The little weed predictably growled and tried to yell, but only ended up dropping the pencil and some spit onto the table.

Toriel glared.

“…I still want my pie later!” Then the flower nabbed the pencil with his teeth, and hopped off the chair to the floor, still attached to that hat that Toriel usually wore. Toriel’s home didn’t pave the way for a dirt floor, so the flower stumbled a bit, all the way through the living room and up the stairs, making sure to grumble all the way. “And don’t let him eat it!” Flowey shouted down before a door slammed.

Sans leaned back on the chair, shrugging in the most innocent way possible. “don’t know what the kid’s talking about. i already ate his slice five minutes ago.”

Sure enough, Flowey’s plate was cleared off except for a few crumbs.

He saw something then – the quirk of a smile that tugged at Toriel’s lips. But it faded fast the moment her attention went back to the crumpled letter.

“i can come back later if you want.”

“No, no, you do not need to.” Toriel took a breath, finally unraveling the letter. She stood up from her chair, reaching for a pair of reading glasses that she kept on her dress. “I will just be a moment.”

Sans resigned to that. He pushed away his own pie plate that was just as empty as the other.

It was probably weird watching her as she read the letter, he figured. But it’s not like he had anything much better to do. Besides, it was a good way to identify her tells – how her muzzle twitched like so when she was annoyed with something, or how she absently toyed with the blunt of her horn when she came across a mental obstacle. He noticed that same thing when they would both solve the crossword together – or more recently, the horoscope. (His cool bro’s suggestion).

At one point, her glasses seemed to steam up and, wait, was it getting hot in here? Having no skin made it hard to tell these things. But Toriel had removed her glasses then. She neatly tucked it back in her dress pocket, then proceeded to fold the letter into a nicely-shaped square. (Sans would have done that the first time, but it wasn’t like ol’ fluffybuns even asked him to. No need to do extra work like that). She stared at the letter with casual disinterest and walked over to the trash bin that was placed neatly by the door that led back to the bakery shop.

Then the letter immediately combusted into flame, illuminating the room harshly before extinguishing, all in a matter of seconds. The ashes fell into the trash.

Sans blinked. “guess that got you pretty heated.”

She didn’t smile at his joke this time. The fire was still in her eyes, before it dulled to a cautious warmth. “He wanted to know of my… progress.”

The skeleton was absently playing with the ketchup bottle. The opening of it was clogged over with some crust. Bummer. “yeah, guy’s a bit nosy, huh?”

“Sans,” she spoke to him seriously. “You are the judge. Is not inquiring over the affairs of his previous business in violation of his current sentence?”

“eh, probably.”

“…Did you tell him that?”

“think i mentioned a word or two about that.” Sans finally picked away the gross crust stuff, and was able to take a nice, refreshing gulp of the processed condiment. “but, uh, he’s pretty good at wording things just the right way, you know. making it legal and all that.”

Toriel sighed. “I must say I am not surprised. Asgore and his loopholes.”

“yeah.” Sans saw how Toriel stared at that trash can, the ashes already disappearing among the crushed bits of snail shells. “said he just wanted to ask how you were.”

“Yes, that sounds very chivalrous of him.” Toriel had to edge herself away from the trash to go back to the table. Her hands made as if to go for the pie, but she stopped herself, laying them clasped together on her lap.

“tori, ya know i’m the last person that’s going to judge ya for binge-eating.” He drank another swill of salty ketchup. “it’s a favorite pastime of mine, after all.”

There was a giggle this time from her – and it wasn’t totally forced either. He could appreciate that.

Toriel lifted her hands to place them on the table. Her claws tapped against the utensils. “It has been very busy lately.”

Sans nodded. “heard the family business was tough.” Especially when one was head of said The Family – the volunteer-run group of monsters that sought to help out all monsterkind with fundraisers, social work, and the like.

Toriel breathed in gently. “That’s a bit of an understatement. Just this week, a very curious, armless monster child had run away from his home. Said he got lost trying to find a job to help his family. It took quite a while to locate his parents.” She rubbed a hand against her temple, then gave a little sigh. “We were able to offer them some occupation, to help out with the home construction on the west side for the vulkins. They really do quite amazing work just using their feet.”

“good ol’ charity work.” The skeleton favored her decision with a wink. “we all knew you’d be great for the job though.”

“You mean the only one for the job. Certainly no one else was grabbing for it. Especially not after the reputation that Asgore had left it with…”

Yeah, having a criminal record over killing another monster probably had something to do with it.

Well, allegedly.

“you don’t have to stick with it though.”

“Yes, I do, Sans,” Toriel nodded. “I’ve run away from my responsibilities long enough… And someone has to clean up the mess.”

Sans didn’t have much to say to that. But he did have another thing to mention. Seeing Asgore on his weekly judicial visits (which really consisted of playing checkers and having chamomile tea) made him remember again.

“oh yeah, and the kid’s doing just fine. don’t know if fluffybuns mentioned that.”

He could hear Toriel hold in her breath. “He made a passing mention of them, yes.” She paused. “They are not safe with him.”

“don’t gotta tell me twice.”

“Apparently I do.” Her tone suddenly had an edge to it – one that was rarely pointed at him. “You know what he is capable of, and yet you allow this.”

And the thing was, Sans knew he didn’t have much of an excuse, except for…

“frisk is a pretty determined kid, you know. not much i can do against that.”

One reason he didn’t hang out with humans much. Or trust them either. Never know what weird stuff they were capable of.

Asgore must have thought the same thing.

She didn’t look convinced, and he didn’t blame her, but having her angry eyes on him was putting a damper on his mood. “kid looks healthy though. not hanging out on the streets anymore. knows how to brew a good tea – and can bake, too. and, uh, someone’s gotta do the big guy’s shopping since he’s under house arrest and all.”

“And why can’t that someone be an adult?”

“no adults were willing.” Not even Undyne, which he thought was weird. Guess she really wanted to let the past be. Maybe he could learn from her, someday. “and legally, can’t let past business associates have contact with him either. but you know, the kid’s been smiling lately. seemed real happy hanging out there… kinda creepy, actually.”

Toriel still huffed at the explanation. Sans tried another avenue. “ya know, being legal guardian and all, i’m sure you can talk to ‘em and they’d come running back.”

She finally relented and went to cut a piece of pie for herself. The tin clinked against both knife and fork as she brought a slice onto her plate. “I don’t believe they will, no. I was hoping… you could talk some sense into them.”

“ah, tori.” He leaned back against the chair, hands in his pockets. “you expect too much of me.”

She didn’t deny that.

Sans will always remember when he first met Toriel. It had been another rainy day, a quiet one, with the cars swishing by on the pavement as nightfall descended. She had been there on the sidewalk, umbrella in hand, her fur slightly matted from the rain. Despite the weather she wore a wide-brimmed sunhat, topped with a flower that even had a kinda-smiley face on it. She had been the first person to even look at him that day.

Oh, and he had been begging her for money.

“spare some change, lady?”

The skeleton had picked the perfect spot for his shtick. Just right by the mailbox underneath the lamppost, across the street from this adorable-looking bakery that always had the best smells. He wasn’t really a pie and pastry kind of guy, but he liked the aesthetic of it.

Seating his behind on the wet sidewalk, she had been looking down at him. Not condescendingly or anything like that, just literally looking down, especially at her height. He had to crane his neck bone to meet her eyes.

“Oh? Have you met some misfortune, young man?”

“yeah, haven’t had a bite to eat in weeks. now i’m all-bones.”

An unexpected laugh had bleated out of her at that – which was surprising. He couldn’t remember an audience that responded so well to the warm-up jokes.

Through stifled laughter, she gestured to him. “But then, why do you have a nice cream cone?”

Sans shifted his gaze to said nice cream cone, held within his right hand’s grip.

“…beats me, actually. but hey, it’s nice, huh?” Usually, he could think on his feet when it came to his stuff. (But then again, he wasn’t standing anyway). He was also a bit distracted by the way her long ears framed her face, and the sheer snow-whiteness of her fur.

“You know what goes great with nice cream? A hot slice of butterscotch pie. Oh! Or do you prefer cinnamon? Or perhaps both?”

“well, i’m more of a ketchup and fries guy myself.”

That wasn’t even really a joke, but she laughed anyway and hey, that was nice.

Then he heard a groan. “Who is this loser? Can we go home already?!”

Sans craned his neck some more. “heh, didn’t see you, bud. how’s the weather up there?”

Toriel poked the complaining flower, then smiled apologetically. “Please excuse his behavior. He’s just shy around new people.”

“I’m not shy around trash- ow!”

Okay, Sans had to laugh. Something about a goat lady scolding a plant was hilarious.

It was a real bonus that she seemed to like bad jokes, too.

After Flowey was made to mumble out an apology, Toriel pulled out a few coins of monster currency, laying it within Sans’ empty palm.

“I wish you the best of luck in your future. My bakery is just across from here, and I would love for you to visit when you have found your way. I will give you a pie slice on the house!”

“What?!” the flower shouted, absolutely mortified. “Don’t do that!”

First thing Sans thought when he heard that: alright, some freebies.

Second thing: this lady seemed very nice and genuine. It was hard to tell the real genuine folk of this town, even from other monsters. But not this lady.

“careful. i might take up on your offer.”

She smiled even wider at that. Perched underneath her umbrella, and dressed in a long, swishing dress, she looked like she brought spring with her wherever she went. Just have that flower on her hat smile more often, and it’d be perfect.

“I cannot wait until then,” she said to him, then proceeded to cross the street. He heard the flower grumble more, until they were both out of earshot.

He kept the change she gave him. In his back pocket, always just out of reach from his other coins.

You don’t give away gifts.

Sans will always remember how he first met Toriel.

And he will always remember just what she asked of him only moments before.

He tried not to think too hard about that, already fiddling with the radio that was set up on a small coffee table. Static kept interrupting the sound waves, morphing the voices coming out of the speakers. Toriel didn’t have a television set – too high tech for her tastes – but it gave Sans a great excuse to rest his eye sockets when they listened in on the latest radio drama. Maybe catch a few Z’s here and there.

“heard metts’ switching gears now. literally and figuratively, heh. wanna catch his latest show?”

Toriel was gathering up the plates and pie tin, her back to Sans as he laid back on her plush sofa. “I must now get back to work, Sans. Perhaps next time.”

“aw, come on. sure ya can’t just leave the shop closed for an hour? this one sounds really good.”

“…and then I told him, “That’s not my engine coolant, that’s my wife!” Cue the canned laughter, along with brief interruptions of more static. “Oh, thank you, beauties and gentle(fzzt!) Remember to call in now to get the chance to speak with your favorite (schzt! fshhh!) and everybody LOVES me!”

“killer new song,” Sans commented.

Toriel turned toward the stereo sound. “Oh, it does sound quite fun, though I should have that antenna fixed. But I really must get going. Hopefully they will do a repeat of it later tonight.”

Sans reached out to reluctantly turn off the radio. Too bad, he could snooze easy to this.

“Alphys, darling, you’re talking (rrrek!) again. Game of Bones is not of any relevance to this program.”

“B-but the mangaka is not even writing anymore and-and (tshiig!) o-opened a f-film studio to waste even more time (rrek fzzzt!) st-stupid sell-out and a h-hack!”

“Oh my god, just play a record already-!” Click.

He edged off the couch, watching quietly as Toriel made her way to the kitchen. “it’s pouring pretty hard out there today. more than usual. might not get many customers.”

“Actually, someone is helping take over the afternoon sales. I have other matters.”

“oh?”

Disappearing through the kitchen doorway, Sans didn’t expect much else. Then she stepped out again, leaning backwards with a grin, the dirty plates still held within her arms.

“Yes. Family matters.” Then she winked, and vanished once again.

Sans choked on air. Did that joke even made sense? Who cares? His bones were light from her delivery.

It wasn’t long before Toriel’s bakery replacement came in. The buff bunny monster was a bit eager for his shift – he was already wearing the pie-patterned apron and everything. Though he no longer wore the pin-striped suit, he still had his hat on, which shadowed most of his face.

“Yo! I’m like, here to help, boss lady!” he called out from the front. The shop looked ludicrously small with this bench-pressing monster standing within the middle of the place.

“Oh, he is here quite early.” Toriel, having already finished her washing, was now dressed in a more business-casual outfit, it’s colors muted instead of the brightness that was her sundress. Atop her head, she wore a pillbox hat, it’s surface absent of patterns and sentient flowers. “I supposed that gives me a head-start.”

Sans walked her to the front, eyes latched onto the purse she carried. Very elegant, with golden clasps. And the way she walked spoke of a regal authority that was awfully familiar. “what’s on the agenda today for ya, queen tori?” he asked her naturally.

Toriel blinked at the royal address – yeah, he didn’t know where that came from either – but she answered him still.

“Another monster family was unfairly kicked out of their home. Apparently, their human neighbors complained and cited a housing violation. I will be going to the regulations office for a meeting. I am hoping we can reach a sort of mutual arrangement for equal housing.” She tsked, already gesturing for the buff monster to take his place behind the counter. “It is not the poor monsters’ fault that they are completely made of fire.”

“yeah, grillbz has the same problem. guess his landlord just can’t stand the heat.”

Toriel stifled her laugh, but it came out as a hiccup, which only made Sans grin even more. “Yes, well, if your friend needs help, he can come over for a chat anytime.”

“i’ll make sure to pass it along,” he said, kinda meaning it.

Toriel was back to instructing her worker. “There are several loaves of bread in the oven there. Be sure to check on them. Oh, and Mrs. Waters will be here in about an hour to pick up her cake. It’s right there on the left shelf.”

“Gnarly prep work, boss,” said the bunny monster, openly admiring the cake’s decorative work. A birthday cake, clearly, with fanciful ribbons, rainbow rosettes on its sides, and a neatly-written ‘Happy Birthday, Joel!’ written with the neatest and florid of penmanship… or pipesmanship. (Because using a cake piping and all. Only cake aficionados would truly get the joke. Sans thought it was probably best to leave it out of his set).

Once the bunny dude was set-up, Toriel and Sans left the shop. The rain was still pouring heavily outside, washing the sidewalks clean. They both stood under the awning of the bakery, hearing the raindrops plunk against the material.

“Ah, and there is my car ride.”

Sans looked to his left and, sure enough, a fancy-looking blue car was parked just a little upwards of the bakery. With a squinting of his eye sockets, he could see the other half of the buff duo that Asgore once employed in his flower shop. The dragon-looking monster was still dressed in his pinstripe suit, from what Sans could see through the constant shower from the skies.

“I am sorry to leave so abruptly today, Sans.”

“no worries, t.” He shrugged. “i still got a free meal out of it. why would i complain?”

Just as she was about to laugh again, he saw her eyes widen curiously. “Oh my! You’re missing one of your adorable slippers!”

The skeleton looked down and, what do you know, he was wearing only one of the things. The other was living free in the rain, toe bones planted against the pavement. See, if he had skin, he could avoid these mishaps.

“how about that? must have left it on your couch. i’ll get it later.”

“Sans, are you admitting you put up your feet on my upholstery?”

“naaah.”

Another smile from her. He could do this all day. He wouldn’t mind it at all.

But she had to go. Though the car horn didn’t beep, her chauffeur kept staring at them in intervals. Toriel then hurriedly made her way to the car, one hand holding onto her hat, the other clutching her purse to her chest. Even so, she made sure to turn to him with a wave of goodbye. “Please come back tomorrow. I will make sure the radio is properly tuned this time!”

“wouldn’t dream of missing it,” Sans said, fully meaning it, as he always did.

He remained underneath the awning, watching as the car drove down the street. Though it was only mid-afternoon, the lampposts outside were already lit. They casted pools of light on the streets. The car passed underneath one such light, it’s coat looking to nearly shine from the washing it received from the rain. Then the car made a right turn, leaving Sans with nothing more than an empty, noir-painted street.

Welp. Time to get back his footwear.

He didn’t feel like going through the front door again (boring) and just walked straight into the living room. There was the turned-off radio on the coffee table, his ketchup bottle in a cup holder, and a pink, fuzzy slipper laying on a couch cushion.

Also Flowey was there.

“She’s already gone, you idiot,” the flower snapped. He was perched within a little flower pot this time, one that was situated squarely in the middle of the coffee table. Yeah, soil was probably an important thing for this kid.

That and manners.

“nice seeing you again, bud. betcha finished that homework, huh?”

“Hmph!” Flowey pouted, crossing his leaves together, as if leaves had elbows and joints and all that. “since you’re so interested, why don’t you just finish it for me?”

“ok.”

Flowey sputtered. “Wait? Really?! You’ll do it?”

“nope, just messing.”

He juggled his unworn slipper in his left hand, too lazy to put it on. “see ya.”

“Wait!”

He didn’t really want to, so just kept walking forward. The walls to his right shifted. Plaster cracked, leaving little shards on the floor. Vines extended from the damaged walls and floor. Wood boards were torn in half from the strength of it.

Flowey’s face hovered before him, features stretched to nightmarish proportions. Sadistic intent played out in the plant’s eyes.

Sans stood where he was, slipper still in hand. “you know i’m gonna tell your mom.”

The flower flinched. His elongated eyes and sharp-toothed mouth reverted back to normalcy for a second, before reaffirming themselves. “L-like I care!” he shouted, his voice’s tone distorted and low, but also having cracked there for a second. It had been a really weird sound, basically.

“i mean this is cute and all, but papyrus has a plate of expired spaghetti waiting for me that i need to figure out how to miss.”

“No!” The abomination of a flower stretched out his stem, grinning wide, opening his maw that was only blackness and despair. Or, at least that was the impression Sans figured the kid was trying to do. He wasn’t paying all that much attention to be sure. “I know… I know that- that you know! And that you know that I know… that you know! You idiot! Ha!”

“wow kid, you’re really bad at this.”

“Shut up! I’m not going to let you get me like-”

“hey. look. why don’t we sit down and forget all this?”

“Don’t interrupt me!” Flowey shrieked, his malformed voice now high-pitched. Amazing the bunny monster didn’t hear any of this. Asgore sure knew how to pick ‘em. “I’m going settle things with you, and then-”

“kid.” Sans dropped the slipper to the floor, putting it back on his foot with the laziest of motions, his skull angled downwards to better see. The continued casualness of his tone stopped Flowey in mid-gloating. “how about we take a breather?”

Just a moment of hesitation before the flower tried again. “I’m not done!”

Sans raised his head. He opened his eye sockets.

“Y e s  y o u  a r e.” A pause, to lay on the effect. “N o w  s i t  d o w n.”

Sometimes you need a professional.

The flower shrank back then, fangs hidden away, eyes reverting back to the normal dots.

Sans remained where he was.

The flower then started to shrink, his winding vines disappearing, though leaving a mess behind. Eventually, the flower was in the middle of the floor, planted in his flower pot. Flowey grimaced, looking almost ready to cry in frustration.

“see?” Sans shrugged. “if you wanted a chat, should’ve just asked.”

The flower grumbled some more.

“but hey, we all get a little grumpy when we’re young. you’re like in your terrible two’s, right?”

“Shut up already.” Flowey wouldn’t look at him. “I… changed my mind. Just go.”

“heh, okay then.” Sans walked around the plant, heading for the kitchen for some reason.

Then he stopped.

“one thing though, bud.”

The flower timidly angled his head towards Sans, nothing but venom in his eyes. No joy or thrill. Good signs. Maybe he won’t make these same mistakes if they bring him nothing but headaches.

“i don’t know what you’re assuming, but i don’t know nothing. and that’s all well and good, right? as long as things stay nice and normal.” He paused. “just a good time for everybody.”

Flowey flinched.

“capiche?” Sans winked. “here, go buy yourself a soda pop.” Sans took a coin out of his back pocket, still reflecting that light like it once did out in the rain. He tossed it towards Flowey who caught it with a fumble.

But he let a thought slide. Easy to catch wind of when you were magically-inclined, like a certain talking flower.

So don’t mess up the happy ending we got.

At that, Flowey shot out of the flower pot, straight into the upended floor. Sans watched the ground upturn as the flower ran off to his bedroom. (Which meant the stairs were slightly broken afterwards).

Sans was never that great with kids.

Now as the only monster judge available, Sans had to make… good judgements. And the only way to do that was to keep an eye on people, and observe them routinely.

Or in lamer terms, spying.

Sans had already done so with Asgore before the whole court trial, and even then, for a huge furry goat monster, the guy was rather sneaky. Sans couldn’t keep up half the time, which was why he was glad on having a cool bro help out with said case. Asgore had a lot of shady dealings – some downright killer even – and Sans wasn’t a big fan of surprises. He hoped that would be the last.

Besides, barely competent spying was really all he could do anyway. Whatever wards Asgore had set up back then, they were strong, keeping the skeleton out of the inner space of his home, where he knew those souls stayed contained. It was enough to make his shortcuts just really long detours back home instead. Probably Alphys’ handiwork, that poor nerd.

Too bad really, that those missing kid reports had to stay missing.

Now that Asgore was under house arrest, and his pursuit of souls to harness their power for a long-dead son was out of the picture, it made Sans’ job easier. He could just perch himself up on a fire-escape and keep spying for hours instead of following the guy from place to place. No room for error. Just the best scenario all-around for him.

On that same fire-escape, hood of his blue jacket pulled up over his skull, he watched. Along with his basketball shorts, he did not fit with the…atmosphere, and he knew this. But he was here, and that was good enough.

What would Papyrus do in this situation though?

Oh yeah, the whole detective reporting shtick. Well.

There was that kid again, still wearing their striped shirt, and their hair barely combed. They were seated on the floor in Asgore’s living room. A tea cup was cradled in their hand. And across from them, the big guy himself was seated too. He was hunched over, his burly body looking too big for anything. But Asgore persevered, holding his own teacup between thick fingers. His great horns bobbed along with his head as he nodded and spoke to Frisk.

And Frisk was smiling.

Weird.

Sans wouldn’t stay long. (Cold plate of spaghetti? Cool bro Papyrus, remember? Keep up). But he noted some other strange things before he would leave. Like an illusion kind of deal. Where a color would shift, and the rain would mute itself. Sans couldn’t really tell what it was all about exactly, and honestly, he didn’t feel comfortable anymore.

Still, it was worth keeping tabs on. Gotta keep the happy ending, after all.

Besides, Tori had asked him.

“Watch over them, will you not?”

The kid’s smile was a small thing, gentle and understanding. That was a good thing, but…

Eh, he just needed some sleep.

“you expect too much from me, t,” he said out loud.

But he was looking forward to tomorrow still.

With a sigh, Sans laid back against the fire escape grating. Then he was gone.

Meanwhile, both human child and big fuzzy pushover continued to chat with each other, late into the afternoon.