#ill probably keep going because its fascinating to me to hear everyones thoughts and learn bible things

[puppyeared]

who up seeing their disorder in a fictional character but feel like its not their place to put a name on it

[castielafflicted]

what is it w christians and demonizing various forms of pleasure. like the fuck. if god created the human body why would he give it the ability to experience various forms of pleasure (not just sex) if you werent allowed it. like they could make the argument abt the fruit in the garden or the devil being the one that caused it but like. why the fuck are you interested in a god that doesnt like you enjoying yourself and being happy.

[disturbedbydesign]

The Widow and the Wolf - Chapter 3

Pairing: Bucky Barnes x dark!exWidow!reader

Summary: After Natasha Romanoff took down the Red Room, the former Widows scattered to the wind. Raised to be a killing machine and released into the world with nothing and no one, you decided to use your newfound autonomy to take down the bad guys of your choosing. But now Natasha is riddled with guilt for leaving you on your own. She wants to recruit you, rehabilitate you, make you part of a team again. But the rest of the squad has reservations, and no one is more against you than Bucky Barnes.

Warnings: Graphic violence; Mentions of domestic violence, rape, pedophilia, human trafficking, child sex trafficking; eventual Dubcon (not Bucky); eventual smut; slow(ish) burn enemies-to-lovers. [More warnings will be added as necessary but these are the Big Bads.] 18+ only, no minors.

If you prefer to read on AO3, you can do so here.

Chapter Three

If you had a home, it would be Bucharest, even though you despise the place. It was the first place you went when you got free, because you know he’s here somewhere, conducting his evil machinations from the shadows, shielded by layer after layer of vile men across the globe doing his dirty work. There are plenty of men out there deserving of your particular brand of justice, but no one more so than the Viper. Sometimes you think that, if you can just find him and take him out, you might be able to move on—try to make a normal life for yourself, whatever that looks like. You don’t allow yourself to think about what will happen if you finally achieve your life’s goal and it’s still not enough for you.

You remember everything about the day you learned of the Viper’s existence. You were just 7 years old, one of many little girls packed into a shipping container. You had no idea how long you’d been in there or how long you would be in there. It smelled rancid, and there was never a moment of quiet. Most of the girls were screaming or crying, but a few (like you) were silent, just observing. You don’t know who sold you from your orphanage and shipped you off to Dreykov and you never will. What you do know is that you had no family to miss and no one to miss you, so you didn’t understand what the others were so upset about. From the very beginning, you adjusted to life as a Widow almost effortlessly, which is its own form of tragedy.

Others, though, they were stolen away from people who loved them. This seemed a foreign concept to you when you heard about it from the tiny, sobbing girl huddled next to you in the shipping container—the girl who told you about the Viper, the girl who would become your first and only friend until Dreykov took control of all of your minds. Once you were given the serum, your memories were locked up inside your own heads—none of you could have talked about your past lives even if you’d wanted to. Your words were not your own. You didn’t know what was real and what was planted there. Sometimes you still don’t, and nothing terrifies you more than that.

You have no idea how many little girls the Viper funneled to Dreykov over the years, but it was probably a decent amount. His real bread and butter had always been sex trafficking, and he’s still doing it—on an even larger scale if your intel is correct (which, of course, it is). But he won’t be operating for much longer, not now that you’re so close you can almost taste the venom. You were barely 8 years old when you decided you would kill him, and now you have your chance. You are so close, closer than you’ve ever been, but he keeps slithering out of your grasp. And so you’re in Bucharest, again, looking for answers, again. But you have other business, too—almost as important, if not more so.

You head to the safehouse on the outskirts of the city. The building doesn’t look like much on the outside, but you’ve made sure the inside is comfortable enough for the women and children who live there. The matron greets you at the door and you hand her this month’s envelope, which contains enough cash to feed everyone for the next two months, keep the lights and the water on, and some extra to fix the plumbing issues that have been plaguing the building since you bought it.

The building can house about 40 people comfortably—it’s not nearly enough, and you’re determined to create as many safe spaces as you can, but it’ll do for now. For now, you have to select your charges according to a very strict criteria: they are all women and children (and the children of women) who have been bought and sold by the Viper. Some of them escaped on their own; some of them had assistance from you and the very few people you trust in the city. But all of them have suffered, and all of them have information that you need. Individually, it’s not much, but the more women you talk to, the more pieces of the puzzle you have to work with.

Besides for the cash drop, today you’re here to see the newest resident: Irina, a 19-year-old beauty your Bucharest contacts had managed to snatch from one of the sex clubs. Irina was delivered to the Viper at 12, and her life since then has been an endless nightmare that you can’t think about for too long without feeling physically ill. She’s sitting by the window in the living room, cupping a steaming mug of tea, when you approach her. You walk towards her slowly, and when Irina looks over at you, there is recognition in her eyes even though you’ve never met.

“You’re the Widow,” she says.

“Not anymore,” you reply. “But if that’s what you’d like to call me, go ahead. May I sit?” She gestures to the seat opposite her and you settle in for a chat. “I’d like to ask you some questions, Irina. Is that ok?”

“The others told me you’d be coming.” She speaks softly, her voice hoarse from screaming or crying or both. “I know what you’re trying to do. You’ll never catch him, you know.”

“I disagree,” you say, “but I need more information.”

“Alright,” she agrees, “if you think it will help,” and you begin the gentlest of interrogations.

Irina tells you that for the first several years after she was taken, she hadn’t heard anyone mention the Viper. She thinks that a lot of the girls probably knew about him or came directly from him, but no one would talk about it because it was too dangerous or traumatizing (or both). Things were different at her last club, though. When you ask her how many of the girls at Delirium knew about him, she tells you that several of them had passed through him somewhere along their journey. One of them—one far too young to be working there—even admitted that she’d been with him only two months earlier.

Finally, after all this time, you’ve got a clear line from point A to point B. You feel it in your bones that Delirium holds the answers, that if you can just get in and poke around a bit, you’ll be able to find him. You take Irina’s hands in yours and thank her for her help, and then you hear it: heavy footsteps coming down the hall. No woman or child in the building weighs enough to make a sound like that, and no men are allowed on the premises. You know who it is before you see him.

*****

Bucky watches you enter the building from his position on the roof across the street. His contact had told him that there were whispers of a Widow safehouse at this address, though no one would dare set foot within 10 blocks of the place to find out. Bucky doesn’t believe the rumor, though. He knows you work alone, that you pride yourself on it. He assumes this is just one of many places where your targets meet their ends, and he knows enough about Bucharest to know that there are a lot of men in this city who fit your modus operandi.

Still, something is off. It’s not an empty building. There have been women and children coming and going all morning, and nearly all the apartments seem occupied. Why would you choose to do your dirty work in a place with so much activity, with so many innocents around? That seems not only impractical but beneath even you. He’s lost in these thoughts, checking each window with his binoculars, when he settles on a beautiful young girl staring out the window, looking desperately sad. She turns to look at someone he can’t see, and then he sees you emerge from the shadows and take a seat opposite her.

There’s a softness to your face—a gentle kindness—that knocks the wind out of him. Bucky can’t take his eyes off of you, analyzing your body language and facial expressions to try to figure out what the hell is going on. This is the last thing he expected to see, and he tells himself that this woman must be hiring you for a job—except the woman is nothing but a broken child and doesn’t look like someone who would be taking out a hit on somebody (and certainly not someone who could pay for one).

It’s unnerving, watching you this way, and Bucky is no longer sure that what he’s doing is right. There’s something about your interaction with this girl that makes him feel like a voyeur, witnessing an intimate moment that he should not be seeing but that fascinates him nonetheless. Still, he’s here, you’re his mission—albeit one he took upon himself—and he needs to finish it. By this time, Natasha and Steve are almost certainly on their way, and Bucky needs to get to you before they show up. He went rogue and committed to this plan; now he just has to execute it. He’ll deal with the consequences later.

Bucky makes his way across the street and around the back, where children’s toys litter the small yard of weeds and dirt. When he gets to the back door, he notices that it isn’t the usual ancient rusted lock that one finds on the old buildings in this neighborhood; it’s brand new tech. There’s a pretty decent security camera setup around the building, too.

What the hell is this place?

Bucky has two choices: he can rip the door off the hinges, or he can scale the building and climb in the open window on the top floor. You’re going to be homicidally pissed either way, so he might as well not destroy any property—you may be a monster, but the other tenants here look like civilians, and he doesn’t want to sacrifice their security in his quest to bring you in.

Bucky makes it into the building and weaves his way through the hallways. Along the way, he runs into a few women, and each one of them freezes when they see him. They are shocked and deathly afraid—a look he knows far too well—and they scurry back to their apartments and lock the doors. With his hair cut short, baseball cap pulled down, and leather jacket and glove hiding his prosthetic, it doesn’t seem possible that all of these women would immediately recognize him as the Winter Soldier. That’s what it feels like to him, though, and it’s a gut-punch sensation he does not like at all.

When he gets to the sitting room, the girl you are with has the same look of terror, and for a moment, so do you. But you snap back to yourself quickly—having gone from soft to terrified to hostile within a span of about 15 seconds. Before he can react, you stomp towards him, grab him by the jacket, and hiss, “Not here.”

Bucky hears you speak to the girl in Romanian, “Don’t be afraid, Irina. He’s a friend,” although he knows you think him anything but.

The second you get him into the hallway, you’ve got your knife to his throat. Even with your cold blade nicking his skin, Bucky fights the impulse to disarm you. He doesn’t want to fight you. He knows that he’s intruded on something here, though he doesn’t know what, and he actually feels guilty. He could break you in half if he wanted to, but he lets you pin him to the wall—lets you feel like you’re in control.

“What the fuck are you doing here?” you growl.

“You know why I’m here,” Bucky replies, but he doesn’t know—not really, not anymore. “What is this place?”

“It’s somewhere safe,” you say, “or it was until you showed up. No boys allowed, Soldat. Time to go.”

You catch him off guard when you flip him around and throw him through the nearest door, and before he can regain his balance, you kick him straight through the window and into the yard two storeys below. The fall is nothing to Bucky, and he knows that you know that, but it certainly made a statement. He looks up at the broken window he’d just crashed through and sees you peering out with a satisfied smile on your face.

Bucky calls up to you, “I just want to talk.”

“Bullshit,” you snap.

“I mean it,” he says, and he actually does. “You can pick the place.”

He watches as you consider his offer, weighing your options—you obviously don’t trust him, but it’s clear that the sanctity of this location is important to you. Now that he’s violated it, you can’t just let him wander off. You agree to meet with him that evening—in public, at a club in Old Town.

“Come alone, Soldat,” you call down to him, “and if you tell anyone about this place, I’ll throw you out a higher window.”

Bucky tries to hide his tiny smile but he knows you see it, just like he sees the little quirk of your lip just before you disappear. He hoists himself off the ground and brushes himself off. When he turns to leave, he sees a little girl holding hands with her mother. He has no idea how long they’ve been standing there, but the girl is pointing and giggling at him.

The little girl asks, “What happened to him, mama?”

“The Widow’s bite,” she replies.

*****

“He’s not going to hurt her, Natasha,” Steve says as he prepares the Quinjet for landing.

“She might not give him a choice,” she replies, strapping herself in. “What the hell was he thinking coming here alone?”

“I don’t know,” Steve says. “There’s something about this girl that’s really gotten under his skin.”

Natasha looks at Steve, asking the question with her eyes she wouldn’t dare say aloud, and he picks up what she’s putting out.

“He’s not the Winter Soldier anymore. All of that programming… it’s gone. You know that. He’s just Bucky now.”

Natasha nods in agreement, but a part of her still has questions—not whether the deprogramming worked, she knows that it did, and she trusts Bucky with her life. No, Natasha’s concern is what is going on inside Bucky’s head. He was doing well, he was adjusting, he was finally ok, but the existence of you seems to have triggered something in him that the words never had. The words made him cold and empty and ready to comply, but you—you make him think, and Natasha knows how dangerous it can be to dwell too much on things you’ve left in the past.

When Steve and Natasha arrive at Bucky’s old apartment, it’s empty, but there are small signs of life—the indent of a head on the pillow on the floor in the corner, an apple core just starting to brown. He’s been there, and recently. Natasha and Steve don’t know who he would still have contact with in Bucharest, so they are left with nothing to go on. Bucky knows how to cover his tracks, and he left them just enough crumbs to get them to Bucharest but not enough that they could find him when they got there.

“He wants us to trust him,” Steve says, “to wait for him to bring her back here.”

“I can’t just sit around waiting for something to happen, Steve. I have a really bad feeling about this.”

“So what do you suggest we do?” Steve asks.

Natasha sighs and looks out the window. “I have no idea,” she replies, and that’s when she sees it: a piece of graffiti spraypainted on the wall of a building down the street—a coiled snake ready to strike.

The memory hits Natasha like a freight train. She knows that symbol. She knows what it means. She knows exactly who you’re looking for and it seems absurd to her now that she hadn’t thought of it before.

“Let me make a call,” she says. “I think I know why she’s here.”

[work-of-waking-up]

In Defense of the Psychopath

Alright, wanna venture into my crazy ass brain? I’m going to start by saying one thing that will set the tone for everything else that follows: Villanelle is not a psychopath in the way that we currently understand them. Why am I even bothering to write about a fictional character, you ask? Because representation is important. Media portrayal of various mental and behavioral health topics (including ones that people might not think need to be discussed) is important and this show has a big audience. I also just want to contribute to the conversations that are taking place because I am seeing A LOT of them and the reason for that I believe boils down to the fact that Jodie makes Villanelle so relatable and people want to know what that means and looks like for them. Even those who felt they could relate to Sandra’s Eve, or the relationship between the two, maybe questioned what that meant the further they went down the path with them. “It’s probably a bad thing I relate to a psychopath, right? But she can’t be a psychopath because she cries and she feels things! Psychopaths don’t cry, which means she isn’t realistic so therefore it’s okay that I relate to her! Right? Or are my assumptions about psychopaths and people with antisocial personality disorder wrong? I relate to Eve but look what she is underneath it all...so does that mean I relate to that part of her too?” Not only is villanelles character relatable, but people see the freedom inherent within her, the freedom that Eve sees, and they realize that, at least on some level, they want it too. The show has (unintentionally I think) created a massive dialogue which is super cool and you can tell everyone involved on the show is aware of that now, I mean they have a consulting psychiatrist so I think that speaks for itself. This is less of a commentary on the character herself and whether or not she is a genuine psychopath, and more so a commentary on the conversations she has inspired and why... For the record, this is literally just my opinion sprinkled with a few facts, nothing else.

So, the term psychopath gets thrown around in the show, more so in the beginning, MI6 explicitly labels Villanelle this way, even going so far as to use her in a presentation about psychopaths, although I think that was more so to gauge Eve’s response than anything else. The reality of Villanelle, which we come to learn, is that nobody has been able to get close enough to really know the truth. Anna and Konstantin both got close but we never hear either of them use that word (Konstantin says it once but he clearly doesn’t mean it, it was more of an attempted manipulation tactic). They make it clear that she has, and can, and WILL cause damage, but that’s as far as they go. Eve is getting close and she tells Villanelle when they first meet that she knows Villanelle is a psychopath but it’s obvious from Eve's behavior and things she says later on that she truly doesn’t believe Villanelle is what everyone says she is. It’s easier to label her as a psychopath because that alienates and isolates her and her behavior completely. She is an outlier with behavioral anomalies and therefore it isn’t necessary to look any closer. For MI6 and others (not talking about the shows creators) to label Villanelle as a psychopath is easy, it’s lazy, it’s reductive, it serves a single purpose... a means to an end. They (anyone other than Eve basically) simply do not care about Villanelle’s truth. But as an audience we are lucky enough to see more of her with each episode. The psychopath label begins to fade and Oksana is what’s left. We know based on what she has said that she is aware that people think she is a psychopath, a monster, a person built to kill. It’s not always easy to decide that who you are is different from who you’ve always been told you are, especially given her history. Villanelle hasn’t told us yet if she thinks (or knows) that she is a psychopath, but it’s clear towards the end of last season that she no longer wants to be the person that they (meaning the twelve, Dasha, Konstantin, etc.) created. We see moments where she clearly has no remorse and clearly enjoys what she does, but then we have little moments sprinkled in between where she very obviously struggles, even if its short lived. And those moments are important. We have the moment where she struggles with the choice to shoot Konstantin, saying he is a good person, she thinks. This comes shortly after a conversation she had where Irina tells Villanelle she thinks she is a good person because she is sad, so we know she is thinking about it, we know the awareness is there, and it becomes more and more there as times goes on. I like to think of it in terms of having moments that are pure Villanelle (ie the way she killed Inga in the Russian prison), and then we have moments that are Oksana, vulnerable and emotional. Villanelle is a creation and a mask whereas oksana is the truth. Those moments are starting to really mean something. I'm not even going to start with her trip to find her family, that’s its own thing, but it's a Really Big Thing.

So. Villanelle is not a psychopath in the way that we currently understand and perceive them. Yes, she displays psychopathic traits, and yes, she absolutely has antisocial personality disorder. I read an article where the psychiatric consultant for the show (makes it pretty obvious how hard they worked to make Villanelle as realistic as possible) said that the Villanelle in Luke Jenning’s books scored a 32 on Hare’s psychiatric checklist, but I like to think (and I think a lot of people would agree) that number is a bit high, at least for Jodie’s Villanelle, maybe not even hitting 30 at all (close though, let’s be real lol). The max score is 40 which would be a fully blown primary psychopath. For reference, Ted Bundy scored 39. This checklist is flawed though, mostly created and based off the prison population. Which is why it isn’t used as a proper diagnostic tool. 32 is apparently extraordinarily high for a female (think Aileen Wuornos), which brings me to my next point which is that because it’s hard to measure a lot of the classic traits objectively, there is not a ton of solid data surrounding psychopathy, and even less of it is on female psychopaths. Like most things in life, psychopathy exists on a spectrum, there are levels and layers. It’s not black and white, there’s no definitive test (psychopathy isn’t even in the DSM-5 because as I said earlier it’s extremely hard to measure objectively) and it's important to distinguish between someone who exhibits psychopathic traits and someone who is actually an identifiable psychopath. Chances are high that someone you know displays at least one characteristic shared with psychopaths and this doesn’t make them one.

I think what’s important about this is that mental disorders (mental illness/personality disorders/etc.) of any kind are much more nuanced than a lot of people tend to think they are. That they exist less in black and white and more in shades of grey. Jodie Comer is absolutely remarkable for showcasing that through portraying the different layers of Villanelle. Her performance is a literal gift. We cannot keep thinking and acting like we know everything about how a person thinks, feels, and behaves based strictly and entirely on one label. The thing that has stuck out to me the most, the reason I decided to even write this bullshit babble, is that one of the most searched topics about the show is whether or not it’s realistic that Villanelle cries, and honestly how sad is that? That makes me sad for V. Is it more realistic for her to develop connections and cognitive empathy if she was made into a psychopath vs if she was born that way? Is there a legitimate difference between the two? And how do we even decide which one is applicable for someone? It’s important to add that antisocial personality disorder is not the same thing as psychopathy or sociopathy. You can have aspd and not be a psychopath. Research has shown that about only a third of those diagnosed with aspd would meet criteria to be considered a psychopath. Society is not doing a great job at getting people to understand this. But to be fair, understanding personality disorders specifically has been somewhat problematic, a lot of diagnostic confusion and overlap between disorders. A LOT of work needs to be done. But as far as portrayals go, society has strictly chosen to go the route of giving us psychopathic characters and having them be inherently violent, incapable of remorse, feelings, or change. Poverty of all emotions. Subhuman. They are made out to be so abnormal and unrelatable to the point where the character of Villanelle has sparked so much debate and fascination simply because she exists in a way that actually IS relatable...and layered and beautiful and thrilling. We thought she would be the bad guy and yet we root for her at every turn, we cry for her, we want good things for her! We see her darkness and without question or hesitation we forgive it. She makes us question what we’ve previously been shown. Questioning whether or not it’s realistic that she acts the way she does is less important than questioning our own personal assumptions and beliefs and where those come from. I think that’s awesome. Villanelle is truly a gift. She is hands down one of the most well written fictional characters, which is saying a lot considering when you put something, or someone, in a box it doesn’t leave tons of room for expansion. and I honestly don’t even really need to say this, but.. Jodie Comer.

[longitudinalwaveme]

Arkham Files: Heat Wave

Hugo Strange: From the patient files of Dr. Hugo Strange, director of Arkham Asylum. Patient: Mick Rory, also known as Heat Wave. Patient suffers from pyromania and cryophobia; the intelligence test administered upon his admission also suggests that he may have a mild intellectual disability. Session One. 

Heat Wave: Hi, Doc! It’s nice to meet you! 

Hugo Strange: (a bit taken aback) Hello, Mr. Rory. 

Heat Wave: You can call me Mick, Doc. Everybody does. 

Hugo Strange: Very well. Mick, do you know why you are here at Arkham Asylum? 

Heat Wave: I guess they finally decided I was sick enough to be sent here instead of prison. I know I’m not right in the head, Doc. 

Hugo Strange: Actually, no. You’re here because Iron Heights is currently incapable of housing costumed criminals, and a series of bewildering judicial and bureaucratic decisions resulted in all of you“Rogues” being transferred to Arkham until such time as Iron Heights is repaired. That being said, I am glad to hear that you are aware that you have a problem, as it means that you have overcome the first hurdle on the road to recovery. 

Heat Wave: (Pleased) Really, Doc? Boy, am I glad to hear that. 

Hugo Strange: Mick, according to your file, you suffer from pyromania and cryophobia. Is that accurate? 

Heat Wave: Yeah. (Brief pause) That’s what all the shrinks tell me, anyway...and I’ve seen a lot of ‘em over the years. 

Hugo Strange: Yes. And I am certain that you will be pleased to hear that I have experience in treating pyromania. You see, Mick, Arkham Asylum happens to have its own resident pyromaniac. 

Heat Wave: You talkin’ about Garfield Lynns? The Firefly? 

Hugo Strange: Yes, actually. 

Heat Wave: (Clearly nervous) He’s here? Now? 

Hugo Strange: Does that concern you, Mick? 

Heat Wave: Yeah. It...it does, Doc. 

Hugo Strange: Any particular reason?

Heat Wave: I’ve heard things about him, Doc. Bad things. 

Hugo Strange: What sorts of things have you heard, Mick? 

Heat Wave: That he...that he deliberately sets people on fire ‘cause he wants to watch ‘em burn. That he’s a pervert; that he burned his girlfriend alive ‘cause he couldn’t be happy with her unless she was on fire. That he burnt down a zoo to learn what a bunch of dumb, innocent animals looked like when they were on fire. I’ve even heard he intentionally set a little boy on fire once-a kid! How could...how could anyone do that to a kid? (Pause) I’m a sick, sick man, Doc, I’m not denying that. I know I’m the last person who should throw stones about something like this...but Lynns sounds like a psychopath. He sounds like he likes hurting people. I...I don’t wanna be like that, Doc. And I’m scared. I’m scared that that’s what my pyromania’s gonna turn me into. Bad enough that I hurt people when I set buildings on fire...bad enough that I killed my family when I accidentally set our home ablaze….I don’t want to do what he does. I don’t want to go around setting people on fire!

Hugo Strange: Mick, mental illnesses display differently in every sufferer. The fact that you and Mr. Lynns share a common mental illness does not mean that you are necessarily at risk of starting to behave in the way that he does. He has a more serious case of the disease than you do; consequently, his behavior is more destructive and aberrant than yours. 

Heat Wave: Are you sure, Doc? 

Hugo Strange: Quite sure, Mick. If your extensive file is to be trusted-and given the sheer volume of psychologists who have contributed to it, I believe it is-you have never, at any point, expressed any excitement at the idea of a person being on fire. As such, I have no reason to believe that you would take up the habit of deliberately lighting people on fire. 

Heat Wave: But what if I get worse? 

Hugo Strange: Given the diligence with which you apparently seek out therapy even when not incarcerated, I don’t think that your condition is likely to exacerbate, Mick.

Heat Wave: Come again?

Hugo Strange: As long as you continue to seek treatment, you’re not going to get worse.

Heat Wave: Doc, you have no idea how happy you’ve just made me! (Starts crying) 

(Long, awkward pause as Heat Wave cries and Hugo Strange attempts to make soothing “there, there” type noises) 

Hugo Strange: (Clears throat) I am glad that I was able to ease your mind, Mick. 

Heat Wave: (Sniffling) What do you think we should talk about now, Doc? 

Hugo Strange: To be honest, the first question that comes to mind is how you have survived so long as a criminal when you’re willing to weep so openly and readily over something comparably minor. I was under the impression that such behavior would be viewed as a weakness to be taken advantage of, Mick.

Heat Wave: I’m six foot four and weigh 240 pounds, and pretty much everyone knows that I’m a pyromaniac. That tends to intimidate people into keeping their mouths shut. (Pause)  I...I actually don’t much like fighting, and the sight of blood makes me feel a little ill, but almost nobody knows that because pretty much everybody’s too wary of me to try picking fights. The guys who are dumb enough to try get pummeled by Digger and Evan before they ever get to me. See, that’s the thing with the Rogues. If you pick a fight with one of us, you pick a fight with all of us...and Digger and Evan fight really dirty. 

Hugo Strange: In other words, you’ve survived because your reputation precedes you. (Pause) And, I suppose, because you have a pair of excessively violent friends. 

Heat Wave: Pretty much, Doc. 

Hugo Strange: In speaking of your friends...why did you join the Rogues, Mick? Serial arsons motivated by your illness aside, you don’t exactly strike me as a career criminal. 

Heat Wave: I...I was hoping to turn the pyromania into a gimmick. I thought that maybe...maybe it would help me get my sickness under control if I used it as a theme. Dumb idea, I know, but I was desperate. And in my early twenties. That makes you stupid by definiton. 

Hugo Strange: And why are you still with them, Mick? Is it the money? 

Heat Wave: No. It’s because they became my new family, Doc. 

Hugo Strange: Wanting to build a new family for yourself is an understandable motivation, Mick...but wouldn’t you be better off finding one that isn’t entirely composed of violent career criminals? 

Heat Wave: Probably...but Doc, the world wouldn’t be. The Rogues are the only family I can have, because they’re the only ones who can protect themselves from me. I destroyed my first family. I...I can’t risk doin’ it again. 

Hugo Strange: So in order to protect people from you, you help a bunch of career criminals rob banks and jewelry stores whilst wearing a fireproof suit, calling yourself Heat Wave, and wielding a flamethrower? I don’t understand your logic, Mick. 

Heat Wave: (Pause) You know, somehow it makes a lot less sense when you say it. 

Hugo Strange: (Sighs) I believe you honestly mean well, Mr. Rory. Unfortunately, you have very little common sense; most likely stemming from the fact that, as the intelligence tests that were administered to you suggest, you are mildly intellectually impaired. 

Heat Wave: I can’t say I’m surprised to hear that, Doc. The guys are always tellin’ me that I’m a bit slow. 

Hugo Strange: Fortunately, with enough therapy, I believe that we will be able to help you overcome your mild cognitive impairments. 

Heat Wave: Sounds great, Doc! 

Hugo Strange: You are by far one of the most cooperative patients I have ever encountered, Mick, and I would like to thank you for that. 

Heat Wave: Hey, Doc, no problem! With all that you’re doin’ to help me, I should be thanking you! 

Hugo Strange: That won’t be necessary, Mick. I am simply doing my job. (Pause) Now tell me, Mick-what do you think of the Flash? 

Heat Wave: The Flash? He’s great. I’ve never met a nicer guy. 

Hugo Strange: You...like the Flash? 

Heat Wave: Of course! (Pause) Just...don’t tell the guys, okay?

Hugo Strange: Nothing you say is leaving this room, Mick. You do not have to worry about my telling anyone, including your fellow “Rogues”. 

Heat Wave: Oh. Good. (Pause) Yeah, I like the Flash. He wants to help everybody. He’s even gotten me into contact with some of my therapists.

Hugo Strange: Fascinating. (Pause) Unfortunately, we have reached the end of today’s session. I will see you the same time tomorrow, Mick. 

Heat Wave: Okay, Doc! See you then! 

[starr-fall-knight-rise]

Humans are Space Orcs, “You Survive We Thrive

Things are heating up with Krill’s mini plot line. Sorry I posted a little late today :) Hope you like it

“So, what do you think?”

….

“This is… disturbing, most disturbing.” 

“That poor?”

The psychologist, a sturdy little vrul, steel grey in color, with red-tinted orange eyes looked up from where he was examining the projected data rolling in lines of minutely scripted characters through the air to vanish. 

He had no issue with his divided attention, continuing to read the scrolling data as he spoke with the official, “That bad, I have never read a psychological evaluation this….  Strange….”

“Psychological degradation.”

The doctor shook his head, “That is what seems strange about it. There WAS no psychological degradation. His intelligence quotient remains high enough that the test cannot accurately represent it in numbers. He not only succeeded in all our tests, but often broke them from the inside going out. He shows extreme scores on logical thinking, and procedural memory, but the strange part is his creative problem solving has skyrocketed enough to break the test. There is no degradation, but his scores and IMPROVING. I even created a matrix for emotional intelligence, not a perfect test, but  think accurate enough, and he scores extremely well on that.”

There was  a pause between the two of them.

“Did you think to test him against the human? See if maybe the changes could be explained by that?”

The psychologist looked on miffed, almost insulted, “Of course I took that into account. That was one of the first things I did.” He switched the projected information, “The human’s scores are….. Well they are erratic at best and downright confusing at worst. Let me explain. You see this here, as far as intelligence goes, he's about as smart as the average beta, which gives him a little over average for humans. I mean you would hope that he is, but there is nothing special. His spatial intelligence is…. Well its excellent, far beyond excellent. And the same can be said about creative problem solving. Emotional intelligence is higher than the doctors both show the same in procedural memory, however a relating to semantic memory the doctor far outstrips the human. Numerical intelligence does not seem to be the human’s strong suit. In fact, I don’t think I have ever seen someone score that low before. I would say the same for episodic memory, accept worse. The human seems to think that he can remember things well, but it seems that he actually cannot.” “What does that have to do with anything.”

“Well you know how I said that the human’s intelligence scores put him at the low end of beta…..”

“Yes.”

“Well in aggregate, putting all his scores together, he would count as an alpha.”

The official stood back in surprise, “How? How can that be possible.”

“I am not entirely sure at this moment, but…. It is quite fascinating… I was thinking about going to talk to the human face to face, see if I can’t figure out this mystery.”

The official nervously shifted in place, “You should be careful, psychologist, you are starting to sound like the doctor did before he went off his rocker.”

“Has he gone off his rocker though?” The psychologist retorted.

“I mean yes, of course he has.” 

“The tests say he hasn’t.”

The official harrumphed, “Well, aren't you also saying earlier that he had shown extreme increases on the aggression quotient as well as that for emotional response.”

“yes , but that hasn’t affected his other scores.”

The official sighed but then nodded, “Very well, but be careful, and don’t spend too much time with the human. He has proven to be dangerous, and may have an affect on you.”

“You worry far to much, it took the doctor months to be affected by him, and he had already showed signs of instability before that. I will be fine.”

***

“Dr…..Dr….. try to pay attention please.”

Krill lifted his head in annoyance pulling himself from a contemplation of all the stupid things the humans had probably been doing while he was gone, “I have answered all of your question. I have no idea why you would still be interested.

“We have plenty more questions.”

“No you have the same question but phrased slightly differently every time.” Krill sighed and glowered at the illuminated blue walls.

“Why are you so angry, doctor.”

He turned to look at them, “I am angry because I realize there are things about humans that I prefer over my own species sometimes.”

There was a pause.

“And what might that be?”

“Well, for one humans generally accept an answer after the tenth time I have given it. Not to mention that….. Well…. There are a lot of things.”

“Go on, we are listening.”

Krill sighed his shoulders sagging. He tried to control the human body language, but was finding it difficult, “OUr species has spent decades surviving, but isn’t the measure of a successful species one that can flourish. Our population has been stable for the past thousand years, and it has functioned the same way during that time. We don’t try to get better, we make it to, yeah that's ok and then we quit. Humans don’t just Survive, they TRIBE they are always trying to get better, to improve upon what they have. Where illness is a reason for death because we are no longer useful, they created technology to make life come to them. It has been less than a decade, and humans already live all across the galaxy. Their population has reached an all time eruption, and there is no reason it cannot get bigger. And here we are piddling along on our single planet, in upwards of ten cities doing the same thing we have done for generations.”  

“The point of our species is survival.”

“We have proven to be good at that, why not go on from survival and into…… thriving.”

“The Universe is not meant for us. We are not as durable as others. Our planet is all we have.”

Krill shook his head growing more excitedly agitated, “that is where you are wrong, the bigger universe is out there for us. I have proven it. I have visited and stayed on death worlds for weeks at a time. Do you want to know the secret?”

The other Vrul looked a bit surprised, but intrigued. Looking on at Krill like he was insane.

“The secret is sociability. I survived because I had humans to help me. WIth their help I have been able to go anywhere and survive in any place. If we learn from them, we have a chance to live like they do.”

“And how is that?”

“Free.”

***

Commander Vir floated in near darkness a soft blue light illuminating him from all sides. He couldn't have said which was was up or which was was down. The only color he saw was blue, and aside from his own body there was nothing else, so he floated, rotating slowly his hands held out to his sides his legs relaxed and resting easily in the air. If he closed his eyes, he could almost imagine the warm heaviness of a space suit, and his breath against the glass, a thin barrier between him and space.

Images of his first spacewalk ran through his mind with the fiery light of a star rising behind a strange alien world. 

There was a sort of soft rumbling that broke him from his thoughts, and he spun in mid-air to find a vrul float into the room. It seemed as if he was upside down though…. Or well he couldn't have said which one of them was upside down considering space didn’t seem to have a right side up or upside down.

He struggled for a few seconds rotating to face the Vrul.

Despite being the captain of a spaceship, he didn’t actually spend much of his time in zero Gs, though that was a fact he would forever be salty about.

“Commander.” The Vrul acknowledged  floating closer as Adam finally righted himself.

“I am afraid you have me at a bit of a disadvantage…. Who are you?”

The Vrul stopped his orange-red eyes glowing strangely in the blue light, “I am the psychologist.”

“Ah, let me guess, you wanted to see what about a human makes your species so vulnerable to change?”

“Precisely, smarter than your tests suggested.”

Adam frowned, “You know that seems to be a thing with you Vrul. Every time I meet a new one of you, I spend most of my time getting insulted, and yet there isn’t really much I can do, since you guys don’t say anything that isn’t true.”

“And the doctor does not?”

“Not anymore.”

“Why is that.”

Adam, in boredom, began rotating backwards feet thrown up into the air, watching the Vrul as he slowly spun in a circle, “Hmm…. I think…. I think the answer is because we socialized him.”

Spinning back around, the commander would have said that the Vrul seemed surprised. Generally those emotions were easier to read on Krill, but he supposed that was part of the reason why he said what he said.

“That is… an interesting theory, human.”

“Not really a theory. A theory implies that it cannot be tested. I would suggest it’s more a hypothesis.”

The vrul looked at him in a contemplative manner, “Go on, I am interested to hear what you have to say on the subject.”

Adam was a little surprised, “Vrul were kind of known for being stuck up pricks who thought they were smarter than everyone else, but he supposed that this might just help krill out of his current predicament.”

“Well you have talked about the doctor changing a lot, and I have this theory that every one of those changes have to do with his adaptability living in a pack.” The Vrul waited for him to continue, so he did, “You say something about how Krill is more emotional now, right? Well, emotions are adaptable to humans. Aggression allows people to keep their place in the hierarchy. We have trouble listening to krill like we should, so he gets mad at us, as a way to show us  he SHOULD be respected. You might have discussed his use of human facial expressions or body language, well, body language is EXTREMELY important to properly communicating with a human, if he didn’t adopt those habits than he wouldn’t be able to communicate with us effectively. You guys talk about how he moves wrong, well that's part to do with body language and part to do with how quickly humans move. He can’t keep up with us if he floats.”

The psychologist looked Adam over with a critical eye, “Have you been thinking about this?”

Adam shrugged, “Not really, it just makes sense. And I argue that it PROVES that your species is more adaptive than you originally thought. Krill isn’t broken, he has…. Well micro-evolved. I guess.”

The psychologist looked on with interest, “And…. what do you care about him.”

Adam snorted, “Look. Once you make friends with a human, or a group of humans your as good as family, sometimes better than. We have a saying on earth, the blood of the covenant is thicker than the water of the womb. It means that the people you choose can sometimes be more important than the people you didn’t. Well we adopted Krill into our pack, he's as good as family to me, and I will do ANYTHING to keep him safe.”

WIth a slight shift of his body, the Vrul floated back.

Adam floated forward, “And when I say ANYTHING, I mean it.”

“But he's not even your species.”

Adam shook his head, “Doesn't matter, the human bonding instinct is so powerful that we routinely bond with inanimate objects. I bought a cactus (a plant) during my time in the airforce academy. I named him melvin, he’s still alive and lives at my parents house. We are great friends. I know a guy who won a stuffed pig at a carnival, and now it goes with him everywhere. My sister always buys the most mangled shaped food because it makes her sad to think that no one will buy it….. She's sad…. For vegetables.”

The Vrul had floated back even further.

“So when I say that we can bond with inanimate objects, imagine how we feel about Krill. Not only my good friend, but our doctor and our surgeon. He saved my life on multiple occasions which also means I owe him a debt of honor like the Drev see honor. I can’t let him go until I repay him, and even then I don’t plan on it.” 

“What are you trying to say?”

“I am saying that I WILL get y friend back, no matter what I have to do.” 

[shiniestcrow]

Actually, you know what? I’ll post it here, that way at least it’s somewhere

The prompt was

You're a novice demon who managed to convice a mother to give up her first born in exchange for eternal youth. You did so, because it seems like the kind of thing all the other demons are doing, but now you are not sure what you are supposed to do with an infant and it's way too late to ask. 

Warning for vague description of torture

I made a mistake, that much is clear by now. The human keeps staring at me, reaching with its pudgy little fingers for my claws. I gave up pulling away after the what, twentieth time? Anyway. Human infants are disgusting with their weirdly big heads, their too-short limbs and useless claws. This one can't even lift its own head! Or maybe that's normal for them? I don't really care. At least it has stopped screaming for now. After it had rejected all the meat I offered, I finally got it to drink some milk.

The child makes a face I can't understand. As I lean closer, it suddenly makes a grab for one of my horns. I pull back just in time, but this seems to distress it. With a sigh, I lean forward and let it put its disgusting hand on me. It giggles. Which is one of the more pleasant sounds it can apparently make. Hell, what do I do now?

Surprisingly, I manage to keep the child alive for more than a few hours. I did consider just leaving it to die from time to time, but that would feel like a waste of my payment. It grows painfully slowly. But I have time. I take on a few more contracts. I grant an untalented young wizard more power than he could have ever dreamed of. I save a young woman's children from a deadly illness. Though I have changed my payment to favours instead of firstborns. No more children for me.

I study humans to learn how to take care of mine. I soon learn that they have names for each and every one of them. Demons don't have names. There is no need, after all, we rarely interact with each other. I decide to use the first name I hear: Alex. It can decide on another one itself when it's older. I don't really care. I also learn that human children should interact with other humans. That one is even more complicated. I finally manage to change my appearance to something resembling a human. They seem to think me disfigured when I show myself. It suits me quite well since they don't ask where I come from or where I acquired the child. The only one that knows who I truly am is the young woman who's children I saved. I call in my favour, so she lets my human play with her children.

The child, Alex, seems to develop quite well. The other children it plays with have grown attached, and the young woman talks with pride about all of them. She has told me her name is Miriam. I don't know why she felt the need to do so. She has also taken to invite me into her home when I come to retrieve my child. I have told her that I would not be indebted to her for this, but she seems not to care. I eventually accept.

Alex grows taller over time. It learns to walk and talk and eat on its own. It starts to call me Maman on the suggestion of the other children. I tell it that I have no need for a name, but it insists. I accept my fate once again.

Alex starts asking questions. I answer what I know. Surprisingly, there is very little that upsets it.

"Maman, why do you look and sound different when we are alone?" "This is my true form, child. Humans are scared of me like this." "Why? You're not scary." "I do not know their reasons."

"Maman, am I a boy or a girl?" "I don't know, decide on your own." "What are you?" "A demon. We have no such thing as boys or girls." "Then I'm a demon as well." "Alright."

"Maman, will I look like you once I grow up?" "I doubt it." "Why?" "We are not related by blood. You will look more like Miriam than you'd ever look like me." "Oh..." "Are you upset by this, child?" "No, but I would have liked to look like you."

"Maman, if we are not related, where do I come from?" "You're mother asked for eternal youth and I got you in exchange." "Oh. Then I'm glad to be with you." "Why? Would you not rather live with the one that gave birth to you?" "No, I don't even know her. And she thought looking young was more important than me. You're much better." "How so?" "You never gave me away."

When Alex reaches their twelfth summer, Miriam asks to speak to me alone. Unwillingly, I grow concerned. "Is something wrong?" She shrugs. "I wouldn't say it's wrong, but I think Alex should probably get some magical training." "What makes you think they have any magical talent?" She looks at me like she can't believe I missed it. "Alex has a different hair colour every day. Yesterday all of my kids where suddenly blonde." "Is this not normal for humans?" She sighs, but there is a smile on her face. "It's not. Have you ever seen me with a different hair colour?" I look at her head. I never really paid attention to her hair. Or her appearance in general. Humans aren't particularly interesting to look at. (Alex is the exception, though not because of their appearance.)

"I will see what I can do." Miriam nods with a smile. "That's all I ask."

I talk to Alex that same day. "Miriam thinks you should receive training for your magical talent." Their eyes practically light up at this. "Really? Will you teach me?" "You can not learn what I can do. Humans possess a different kind of magic from my own. But I can find you a teacher." Alex frowns, thinking. "Will I have to leave?" "You will likely live with your teacher while you learn." There is a long pause. "Can I come back once I finished?" "Of course. I do not wish to get rid of you permanently." "Okay. Then I want to go."

I contact the wizard I helped to power so many years ago. He works for a king nowadays and agrees to take on Alex as his apprentice as my favour. He even seems relieved that I do not ask for more. I do make it clear that Alex is to be treated well, however.

Alex says farewell to Miriam and her children. It's a tearful goodbye on all fronts, but soon we are on our way. I would bring Alex to the wizard Tibalt and then return to my own home. Perhaps go back to work. I have been slacking somewhat since Alex got handed to me.

The travel is uneventful, but Alex looks at everything and everyone we encounter with big, fascinated eyes. It is nice to see them excited.

When we finally reach the castle where they'll spend the next few years, Alex suddenly stops. "Is something wrong?" I ask. Concern does not come naturally to a demon, but somehow Alex has changed me in more ways than one. "No, I just," they bite their lower lip, a clear sign of distress. Suddenly, thin human arms sling around my neck. "I'll miss you," Alex says, not letting go of me. After a moment, I lift my own arms, returning the hug. "I will miss you as well. But we will see each other again." We stand like that, holding on to each other for a long while. Finally, Alex let's go of me, wiping their face with a sleeve. When they have regained their composure, they smile and nod at me. We go the rest of the way and, after one final hug, we part ways at the castle doors.

The following years are lonely. I had never expected to feel this way; Demons are naturally solitary beings. Alex writes me letters and I answer (with Miriam's help). It helps to stay in contact this way. They talk about the people in the castle, what spells and potions they are learning. I tell them news about Miriam and her children.

Once a year, Alex comes by to visit. The first three times I go to the castle myself, afterwards, they make their way alone. It is almost the end of Alex's sixth and final year of their apprenticeship when someone shows up at my home that I had never expected to see again.

The woman is wrapped in dark, expensive clothes, only showing her young face, which is enhanced by skillfully applied makeup. I'm sure she is quite beautiful by human standards. She smiles when I open my door. "I'm here to reclaim what is mine," she says, her voice melodious like a singing bird.

I tower over her and yet she seems not intimated in the slightest. "There is nothing here that could belong to you," I answer, my voice like rocks grinding against one another. Her smile falters. "Foul creature, do you think you can trick me? I asked for eternal youth to preserve my beauty, and yet I scar like any other." I stare at her. "You never asked to be invincible. Eternal youth is what you wanted, and it is what you got. You have not aged a day since I last saw you." She spits, rage twisting her face into something ugly. "You will return my child to me, or you will regret it." "There is no child of yours here. And even if it was, I would not give it away to you. I have kept my word, and you will keep yours."

She yells, and suddenly I am hit by magic of a strength I have never encountered. I am knocked off my feet and slammed into a wall within the blink of an eye. The woman now stands over me, a sickening grin on her lips. "Did you think I would come unprepared?" I don't hear what else she says as my mind slips into darkness.

When I wake, I am bound to a wall with thick chains, my arms above my head. I try to move, but a burning pain shoots through me. I hear cackling laughter and look up. The woman stands before me, arms crossed and clearly amused by my predicament. I try to speak but find that I can not.

"I will find my child," the woman says, "and until I do, you will keep me company." I struggle against my bonds, but I can only ignore the pain for so long. I slump against the wall, exhausted. "Do be a good pet and don't cause such a ruckus." Her voice is as sweet as her words are cruel, "You won't be getting away any time soon."

She is right. Days pass, and I grow weaker. The woman, whose name I still do not know, only feeds me enough to keep me from falling into permanent unconsciousness. She knows I won't die from starvation, but this only seems to make her crueller. She tries painful spells on me, makes me drink potions that cause convulsions. The chains cause blinding pain every time I struggle against them. I soon give up trying to escape her games. There is no use.

My mind keeps wandering to Alex, and even to Miriam and her children. I wonder if Alex has finished their apprenticeship by now. If they have returned to an empty home. If they think I have abandoned them. I was supposed to meet Miriam the day the woman appeared. Perhaps she too thinks I have finally returned to my demonic ways, fleeing without a word. I would not blame any of them.

The day I feared arrives. The woman stands before me once more, a triumphant smile on her face. "I have found my child. We will reunite, and you will rot here for all eternity. I'd say goodbye, but I don't think it will be particularly good for you." I barely lift my head to look at her. My horns have grown brittle over time, one of them even broke off a while ago. They still feel too heavy for me.

"Nothing to say?" She kicks my side, but the pain barely registers. My only thought is the hope that she won't hurt Alex. After all, why would she hurt her own child, if even a demon didn't? She clicks her tongue and turns to leave. "No one will find you. I placed wards around this place that even the strongest wizards would have problems with." She leaves. I stay shackled to the wall, too weak to give even a token of protest.

Days pass, maybe weeks. I can't keep count. I grow impossibly weaker. My second horn breaks off. It falls into my lap, laying there as if to taunt me. Perhaps I deserve it.

I welcome it when I finally fall unconscious. It is a relief.

To my surprise, I wake again. There is warmth on my face. Hands. Warm hands, stroking softly over my cheek. "Maman," a voice says, so far away. "Maman, I'm here." I can't answer, can't even open my eyes. Consciousness escapes me.

I wake once more. This time the chains are gone. I am lying down instead of sitting against the cold stone wall. Someone is holding onto my arm. My body feels heavy. I groan.

"Maman?" I open my eyes. Alex is leaning over me, tears streaking down their face. I try to lift my hand. They shouldn't be upset.

Alex suddenly throws themself on top of me, arms slinging around my neck. "I was so worried," their voice is muffled against my chest. I manage to put my own arms around their back, holding them close. "How?" I croak. Alex sniffs and pulls back. "I'll tell you once you have recovered a bit more. Miriam will want to know that you're awake as well."

True to their words, Alex helps me regain at least parts of my strength. And once I'm able to sit and eat on my own, they tell me what happened.

"When I finished my apprenticeship, I honestly was a bit confused that you didn't come to pick me up. But then I thought 'well, the last years I also went home on my own' so I said goodbye to everyone and went alone. But when I arrived, you weren't there. I went to Miriam, thinking that maybe you were with her. She told me that you had disappeared weeks ago and that no one had seen you since. She was really worried and so was I afterwards.

When I went back home to search for clues, this woman showed up. She said she's my mother and that I could come back to her now." Alex's eyes flare with a rage I haven't seen before. "She said that she had taken care of you and that I would never have to see you again."

Alex stays quiet for a moment, breathing in deeply through their nose. I carefully take their hand in mine. They smile a little.

"I asked her what she meant and when she said that she had locked you up I... I was so angry. I started yelling at her to tell me where you were, but she refused. She still tried to convince me to live with her of all people. She only got angry when I told her that she had given me up already and that I would never go with her now.

She attacked me with her magic, but I was stronger than her. I was so angry. I didn't think about what I was doing. She had hurt you, and so I wanted to hurt her." Alex grows quieter. "I did."

"I sent one of her spells back at her, and it hit her right in the chest. Miriam helped me bury her." I gently squeeze their hand. "You defended yourself." Alex nods with a sniff.

"Afterwards we still had to find you. We eventually did, but then I found the wards. I had to ask Tibalt for help. We finally broke through, and you were inside. I don't think I'll ever forget how you looked." A shiver runs through their body. "I am sorry," I say, but they shake their head.

"This wasn't your fault. I'm just glad I got you back. And you'll be okay, right?" "Yes, it is difficult to kill a demon."

Alex nods and pulls back their shoulders. Their eyes are filled with almost demonic determination. "I don't regret that that woman is dead. And I'll make sure nothing like this happens ever again.

No one hurts my Maman."

[mrs-ravens-nest]

Darkness and Decay (Whumptober Edition)

Summary: A scene featuring the main character and two side characters of my WIP, Allan’s Adventures in Darkness. Allan interrupts two beings who cause him to question existence. Editing and posting inspired by a prompt provided by @whumptober2020​.

Prompt: Day 4. Running Out of Time: Caged | Buried Alive | Collapsed Building

Word Count: 2889

Content Warnings: Corpses, blood, and mutilation

Two figures held a limp man by either side of his body. One gripped his arms while the other had a tight hold on his legs. I say figures because I am not quite sure how else to describe them. They held the shapes of men but were nothing like any other humans I ever met before. 

The one holding the man’s arms held a human shape but It was nothing but pitch black within, like a living silhouette. It seemed to have no substance whatsoever to the point that if its hands weren’t wrapped around a man’s arms, I would readily believe that it was nothing more than a cutout in the image of the graveyard before me and what I saw was nothing but the void beneath. 

The other figure is as hard to think of describing as it was to look at. What I saw before me with my own eyes was a person long dead. The body was naked but there was no skin to be found, just a brown and green putridness that surrounded skeletal limbs peeking out in the form of fingers yanking at a man’s legs and toes clenching the ground to provide traction for the tug-of-war. I began to notice small, white dots in the surface of the figure’s ‘skin.’ My curiosity caused me to lean forward out of my hiding place despite my fear. On close inspection, the dots were moving tubes swimming in and out of the muck. On even closer inspection, they were maggots. Maggots burrowed beneath the rot, eating from the living corpse. Some would fall to the ground with each sudden movement. I could see a few catching the pant leg of the pitiful man caught in the squabble and some were probably crawling up his leg. 

I shuddered and yet I couldn’t stop surveying the scene. My eyes next took in the poor fool who had somehow gotten caught up in this struggle. By poor, I mean one deserving of sympathy for their plight. Poor in the case of financial stability, he certainly was not. He was dressed in an unusually magnificent display of ball attire. From head to toe, his body flaunted the grandest of silk and ruffles. His frock coat was the brightest of reds consisting of black embroidery contrasting perfectly with its shimmering golden buttons. His buckle shoes were polished like only an aristocrat’s could be. The man sported a black mask adorned with a swirling gold design. This man seemed like he took a wrong turn on the way to the masquerade and somehow found his way to this disgusting place, being fought over by two dark creatures.

“We are not a circus act!” 

I jumped in place and stumbled against the gravestone that I had been using to balance myself on. My hiding spot had turned into the audience stand from which I watched the show without my knowing. My eyes followed the shrill voice to the eyeless sockets of the rotting creature who now paused in the fight to glare in my direction. At least, I believe it was glaring. 

“If you are going to gawk, you could at least pay your way!”

When the jaw of the thing opened and closed, I watched the yellowed and grime covered teeth with disgust. Debris of possibly dirt, possibly flesh, or somewhere in between left its mouth as the lips moved. My eyes tried to escape the sight only to focus once more on the empty sockets. Somehow, the unnatural gaze was more frightening than the rotted teeth. As frightening as it was, I couldn’t stop staring.

“Or if you’ve not the sense to pay, you may open your mouth to help us understand your illness and pity you appropriately.”

A much deeper, rumbling voice brought my attention to the black of the dark figure. From the change in the shape of its head outline, I was sure it must be looking at me but there were no signs of eyes or a mouth. Just nothingness. My fascination brought with it more stares and I’m sure more frustration from the two. I could hear a sigh that could have come from either or both figures before the body between them was dropped to the ground with a crashing thump. The man’s head hit the dirt with such force that it made me wince.

“He may be too far gone to speak, or maybe to even understand us.”

I came out of my stupor to glare into that black abyss. “I understand plenty,” I declared with a scoff. It finally came to mind that I need no longer ‘hide’ if the subjects of my staring were aware of me. I moved what little remained of my body hidden from behind the gravestone then took a few tentative steps forward. “I hold no illness except that which comes naturally as a side effect of life.” I looked around at the graves before me as if to prove my point. 

“Then you are rude,” the high-pitched, grating voice barked at me. I hated when it spoke. I hated that my eyes forced me to follow the voice to those grotesque teeth then always up to the horrifying sockets. 

“I am only one who watches in shock at the sight of such an odd occurrence as a squabble over a fellow’s body.” I again pointed with my eyes. The man’s body lay sprawled out on the ground, limbs flailed in all directions.

“Oh you need not worry over that,” the dead figure countered. “He’s quite deceased.”

“Unfounded and untrue,” the dark one contradicted. “He is but one who sleeps without waking.”

“Is that not the definition of ‘deceased?’” Both, even the dead one with which I agreed, seemed to frown upon me with two sets of unobservable gazes.

“Indeed, the man has not opened his eyes in weeks,” Dead One, as it was named in my head now, stated after a short pause. “His heart holds a stillness unsuited for the task of keeping one alive. He is fit for the grave.”

By the way Dark One’s facial outline moved over and over, ear outline to nose outline to ear outline again, I believed it to be shaking its head. “You know nothing but greed and because of it, mankind knows nothing but woe.” Its deep voice held a surprising amount of melancholy as it chastised its fellow demon. “Woe for those who suffer from your impulsiveness. Woe for the ones who cannot speak for themselves until it is too late to hear their cries. What then shall we do when one more is subjected to your possession who is not yet ready? Then the grave will be complete and what will we have to show but fidgeters and deceit?”

“It will not be deceit in time.”

“Comrades?” I cut into their argument, too involved now not to ask, “May I inquire upon the subject of your quarrel? I do not comprehend the point of the argument over a dead man.” There was that sigh again. Two distinct voices before me and yet I could not discern the source of the sound. It very well could have come from a different, unseen character. The thought caused my eyes to dart around me for a moment. In this place, who knew what new character could come about?

“If your senses lead you to continue your plea for attention, may you at least learn something.” The Dark one seemed to call to me with an odd wave of its void of an arm. As fearful as I was, I followed to approach the two. They moved away from the body to stand before a large gravestone. “Sit, my fool and gaze upon the graves.” Again, I followed the ever demeaning tone and sat up atop the large stone with a slight hop. 

The unusually tall structure seemed to tower over the nearby graves like a bench of judgement. I looked out over graves and suddenly realized that every grave starting from the one I sat upon leading all the way to the other end of the large graveyard was open. Holes dug, coffins lowered but not one of them was filled. Odd, to see this many unfinished gravesites.

“Look upon the buried. Look upon the dead. Do they not look the same?”

“The buried and the dead?” I asked quizzically. “They are the same.”

“You assume. And then look at this poor soul!” As that void once again moved, I followed the outstretched lack of color to a nearby grave where the lid seemed to have disappeared, revealing a corpse not far into its rest. It still held the dignified look of humanity very dissimilar to the form at my side. I forced myself not to look up at the Dead One as I thought about it and focused on the grave. 

“Do you not see the one with eyes wide, hair diminished, and hands bruised?” I leaned forward instinctively as I looked for the characteristics the Dark One spoke of. My eye caught them soon enough. The corpse’s eyes were wide with fright, a characteristic I thought the coronors were supposed to fix somehow before the burial. Or was I misinformed? 

‘Oh my,’ I thought when my eyes looked up from his eyes to his head. His hair. I suddenly noticed the way his hair stuck out wildly in certain directions and didn’t exist in others. A particular patch of baldness caught my eye because it was spotted with a dark red substance. I didn’t even think before I looked down at the hands that laid aside his body but something inside of me knew what I was looking for. Under his broken nails, somehow clear as day even from where I sat so far away from the tomb - blood, hair, and crumbles of something.

These hands were clenched hard in the shape of one with nails at the ready to attack. All around his hands, I could see more of these little bits of something and underneath those, evidence of something having peeled at the wood of the coffin.

“Oh my word…”

“He was a philosopher long ago,” the Dark One mentioned casually as if I weren’t sitting there next to him stricken with horror. “He fell asleep and lay still for so long, everyone assumed him to be dead. He proved them wrong not days later but no one could know and no one could hear.” The story caused my body to tighten in a fright. Was it true? I dared not ask. 

“The woman over there in the sheets.”

I would rather not answer why I looked. I am not quite sure myself but without hesitation, I turned my attention to another grave. It too was without a lid and so I could look upon the body within. A woman lay in what I would believe was a sheet at some point. The shredded pieces of linen lay construed all about her as if someone had sprinkled ripped material all over her large frame. The parts of her body not covered in ripped sheets showed signs of small cuts. There were scratches all over her shoulders, neck, and arms. Unfortunately, that was nowhere near the most worrisome part of her image.

Blood covered her mouth and the gashes on her lips were more than obvious. A fair amount of the mess also seemed to leak from her nose. Her face was so bruised, who knew what she looked like before. It was a dreadful sight.

“This lovely wife had a habit of drinking brandy to her heart’s content.” The Dark One’s rumbling voice crept into my ear once more. “One day, the brandy left her in quite a long sleep and everyone assumed her to be dead. Her husband wanted to wait to bury the body but the family preferred her buried right away.” 

He laughed. I think he did anyway. That low voice rumbled so deep in my ear that all I could hear was an emotionless “Hmhmhmhmhm.” I could swear I felt the vibration inside of my body.

“Some panic more than others, especially when they are buried twice.”

“Twice?” I just had to ask.

“Oh yes. The sheets were ripped the first time. Children playing alerted the family to her screams and she was unearthed with panic-ripped sheets but no sign of life. They buried her once more and that is when she hurt her face. Imagine the husband’s reaction to her state when she was unearthed the second time.”

“Oh no…”

“There,” he continued on as if I hadn’t said a thing. “Beaten, bloodied, stuffed in with a long decomposed neighbor-”

“I believe I understand!” I could take no more frightening tales and disturbing images. “I understand that not all is as it seems.” Only as I said it did the realization truly hit me as the most frightening thing I had ever heard. If these stories were true, how could one ever know what deaths were real? How long could I be sleeping when someone marks me as dead then buries me just like all those ill-fated wretches? Was it really so likely to sleep without waking until it is too late?

“What does it matter to you when you are already dead?” My attention spinned so quickly in the direction of the rasping voice that it hurt my neck. I stared wide eyed at the Dead One. My expression twitched at the sight.

“Excuse me?” I regarded it with a high level of scrutiny. “What could you possibly mean by that?”

The bare teeth opened wide and I swore muscles around them rose in a sickening smile. “I see you debating the difference between sleep and death when you are far past such matters, dead as you are.”

“Ha!” Its silly notion brought a nervous laugh to my lips. “What foolishness do you speak? I am certainly not dead. I sit before you here as alive as a man could be, speaking like a dead man cannot. What permits you to say that I am dead?”

“What permits you to assume that you are alive because you see and hear yourself?” My look of disbelief heightened. “What does that mean to me if you still see yourself as alive when you have no reason besides your own thoughts to think so? You speak and so you are alive? Do dreams not speak? Can you not hear them when you are asleep? If so, couldn’t you be nothing but the imagined nightmare of the man before us?” His decrepit arm pointed over me and it took every drop of willpower within me to not scream when a family of maggots dropped from his rotting flesh and into my lap. I frantically rushed to brush them off. I could see my own expression of horrified disgust in my mind but afraid to deny the Dead One, I looked over to our mysterious Red Prince while still rubbing at my legs. Still he slept, temporarily or forever.

“M-More nonsense…” We three could hear the uncertainty in my voice. “I know that I am alive. I exist. I am more than a memory or a dream.”

“Oh yes?” I did not see the movement of the dead arm and yet I somehow knew where to look. In the grave directly before me, the coffin’s lid had vanished and a still man lay within. Thank goodness he looked more peaceful than the others and yet, something about him disturbed me. He held a familiar visage. His hair was cut in a way I saw much too often. Even the clothes were identical to those which I knew. My double lay before me, as dead as one could see. 

I shivered in a fright. “No…” I continued to refuse belief. “It is not true.” I stared and stared at the corpse. This was not me. I was there living, breathing and looking down upon my own face. “I am alive.” I began to hear a pounding in my ears. A familiar pattern tortured my senses to the point that I felt the need to hold my palms against my ears. “I am alive.” I declared once more.

A sudden movement caught my attention. My eyes shifted to a nearby grave, lid vanished, containing a man who writhed and shook in agony. I looked away only because of the sight of a woman lying in the fetal position with knees wrapped in her arms and body rocking back and forth. She cried and begged for a way out. All around me was the movement of bodies and fists and nails and mouths. The fists banged in a constant pattern, all in unison, all too loud to be blocked by my hands. 

“I am alive!” I shouted, competing with the sounds around me. A symphony of screams added to the deafening rumble. 

“I AM ALIVE!”

A sudden shove at my back threw me forward off of the gravestone and a deafening screech sounded above my head before I fell into the grave below. My body replaced my twin’s as it crashed unto the hard surface. I turned, frightened and confused. The last image I knew was the sight of the Dead One closing the lid.

[gender-chaotic]

I don’t think I’ve hear anything about your Paranormal Investigator au?? Could you tell me/us about it?

Anon bless, thank you for giving me an exuse to info dump about my au. Also just a warning this is going to mix characters from all 3 canons and its gonna be pretty long. So this au takes place in pleasent pines Connecticut (based on peaceful pines from the show) that is a paranormal hotspot of sorts. Its seen as a town curse and while many of the townsfolk are vaugley aware of the cryptids,ghosts,monsters,ect. That are apart of the town they tend to turn a blind eye/ignore it. This also has to do with the witch trials that took place in Connecticut hundreds of years ago which raises the towns superstitions. Beej, adam, babs are paranormal investigators who live out of their van with lydia who doesnt live in the van with them but helps them hunt the paranormal Beetlejuice/bj/beej (Lawrence beetlejuice Shaggoth) (23) is one of the local paranormal investigator, at a young age he learned he could see ghosts due to the death of his father which was thought to be him leaving his family. After that beej started to see ghosts anywhere they were and tried to tell people around town and attempt to help ghosts as much as he could. This sparked beej's interest in becoming a paranormal investigator and he attempted for years to tell people and town and get them to pay attention but he ended up gaining the reputation as being the "crazy wierd kid who thinks he can see ghosts". Over the years as beej started to humant and investigate the paranormal more and more in town with the rest if the gang the town started to resent him more and he was also seen a making their "curse" worse not to mention breaking into buildings and generally "causing trouble" around town to do his job. Juno, mother to beej and his twin brother Donny hated this and for years tried to shut down his belief in the paranormal and discourage him from hunting ghosts. The fact that beej insists that he says he kept seeing his father as a ghost around made it worse. Juno is a successful buisness woman in town obsessed with her image and status in town and often pits donny and bj against eachother and cares more about they make her look than her own children. She made it clear all bj's life he was a disappointment and always insulted and berated him but favored donny, she even attempted to have beej institutionalized because of his ability to see ghosts and also undiagnosed mental illness she never took seriously, but since beej was always deemed "mentally healthy" it was never sucessful but gave him a fear of being institutionalized and asylums. When beej turned 18 she kicked him out of the house and beetlejuice dropped out of highschool, after this beetlejuice officially started his parnormal investigation buisness out of his van traveling around town and even out of town or out of state at times. Juno still lets him and the rest of the gang in the house at times or atleast let them sleep in the van in their driveway because donny begs her. Beetlejuice often steals food and supplies from his mom's place but donny replaces it for him and attempts to help beej out financially but of course beej is too stubborn to take it. Barbara(21) lived on a farm her whole life with a deeply religious family and was homeschooled, she often went into town to read books at the library where she learned about witchcraft and immediately took a liking to it, secretly practicing at home. Her parents unfortunatly found out multiple times and each and everytime threw out or destroyed any altars, books, herbs, ect. She had anything she had to do with witchcraft. When she was 18 a monster/crpytid started hunting down and killing local farm animals. Baraba who is an animal lover and also a very young witch secised to try and bring the animals back but failed and while doing so was kicked out of their home, blamed for the murders of those farm animals even after she insisted and begged it wasnt hrler and that it was somwthing else out there but none of her family believes her instead she is called the devil and various other insults. After this she moves in with adam for the time being who's parents reluctantly take her in temporarily. Adam (21) used to go to school with beej and donny back in middle/high school. For a long time he kind of saw beej how everyone else saw beetlejuice, and thought he was a crazy trouble making wierdo not wanting anything to do with him until one day barbara brings beetlejuice around telling adam they should help him hunt the paranormal, withadam being the tech guy since his love for fixing and building things carries over into more modern tech in this au. Adam doesnt believe beej at first but on their first job that quickly changes and the 3 of them eventually become paranormal investigation team, barbara being their witch/mystic and adam ad their tech/research/ and camera guy. Adam's parents eventually kick adam and barbara out because they don't approve of Barbara's witchcraft but also that both of them are working with the "town menace" beetlejuice so after that they live with beej out of the van. Often struggling to turn a profit or make ends meet . all of them become infamous around town and ans are mostly hated especially since they're rivaling otho. Otho(early to mid 30's) is the town's medium,exorcist ,paranormal investigator and rival of our mystery gang. Most of the town looks up to him and he's seen as the savior of pleasant pines when he's actually a fraud. He rarely actually solves any actually problems or finds a cheap/half assed way of doing it while pretending to this all powerful mystic. He also tends to just straight up exorsize ghosts even low level ones that arent demons or poltergeists when beetle juice tries to help these spirits and they down need to be exorsized. Otho is assisted by vanessa (She is the magician's assistant from the film)(24/25) his loyal assistant who enjoys having power in town and living ontop working for otho uaually willing to do whatever he says to help them rise to power of course she is very independent and will speak her mind, still often doing what she wants. They both along with otho's other followers want the mystery gang gone. Delia (early to mis 30's) is one of the the many deticated followers to otho in town, being one of his closest friends and wants to help in anyway she can. Delia is also a witch or a witch in training under otho but very new to witchcraft and since she is taken under otho's wing she doesn't really know alot of proper witchcraft. Delia is more naive and thinks otho is actually helping, wanting to assist him and the town in anyway possible. Lydia (13), Charles' daughter and delia's stepdaughter is fascinated with the paranormal and runs a blog "pleasant pines paranormal" documenting all things weird in town. Lydia is also obsessed with the mystery gang and desperately wishes to join them despite being so young and a job like this will put her in alot of danger. She eventually convinces them to hire them because of her father's connections to certain buildings and lands around town since charles has a job in real estate and is pretty successful/well off giving them leads ahead of otho. With her step mother's close friendship with him this also gives them a chance to one up him. Lydia can see ghosts loke beej but keeps it mostly a secret to not be ostracized even more by the town like beej is, and eventually learns witcraft under barbara. Through out the story lydia is also trying to look for emily's ghost around town or find her in some kind of after life. Charles (late 30's) as mentioned works in real estate in town inadvertently helping the gang with leads and investigation. Charles is more neutral toward otho and the mystery gang, he doesnt really see otho as a great saviour of the town like everyone else but luts up with all the otho stuff because of delia. He also doesn't hate the mystery gang just see's them as a bunch of kids making money the same way otho is although he isnt thrilled his daughter is following them around. This is the main cast and story for now, there are more characters like: tina (miss argentina) (24) who is childhood friends with beej and donny she like charles is more neuteral toward bith parties although since she ia friends with beetle juice she is more on their side, often trying to help them with food, essentials, somwetimes lets them sleep in her apartment and use her shower. She unfortunatly doeant areally believe that beej can see ghosts like the town and thinks its "delusions" which puts a strain in their friendship especially since tina thinks they should find a real job, this isnt malicious she's just worried about her friends and hates seeing them struggle. Tina Secretary/assistant to juno in this au and the ex girlfriend to vanessa. Tina doesnt really like otho and broke up with vanessa after she became closer and more loyal to him. Claire (13) lydia's classmate (and crush) like in the cartoon bullies lydia for being "weird" and helping the mystery gang, claire's parents are rich followers of otho. Sometimes acts as a spy/informant for otho to prove her loyalty to him and her parents. I think this is all the basic info and main cast stuff for the au im probably missing some stuff tho. Theres also alot of things i have developed already and alot more world building i want to do so if y'all wanna hear more about this au hmu in asks, I'll probably even draw some stuff for this au.

[troutpopulation]

It Becomes A Chain (Sigma x reader) pt.3

Summary: The whole gig isn't as glamorous as you initially thought. (Plus there's that annoying "Dr. de Kuiper" guy, and that's a whole 'nother mess.)

Ti volti e vedi la tua vita

Come la scia di un'elica

Caruso is playing. You couldn't tell from where. The Song was distorted, and rang out in the distance from somewhere inside your head.

Ma sì, è la vita che finisce Ma lui non ci pensò poi tanto

You're about to die.

E ricominciò il suo canto

You're in the greenhouse and it's dark. It must be night, but you think,  you can't see a single celestial body. You stare blankly ahead into the glass and try to make out your reflection, but nothing but the bleak void outside stares back at you. There's a light in the sky.

The moon?

It vanishes. Just as quickly as it appeared, it's gone.

Te voglio bene assaje

The greenhouse glass shatters in slow motion. You can't move. The shard of glass glide eerily towards you and slide into your skin as smooth and slowly as a knife cutting into butter. It doesn't hurt. But you're scared. 

You're terrified.

You look at you hands, but the shards of glass have already slipped beneath your skin and were swimming around like fish. Your skin rippled and bumped and protruded with something alive underneath it. It dragged along inside you, slithering, making visceral slicing noises as it grated past your bones. 

Ma tanto tanto bene sai

Mounds formed in your palms as what ever was slithering about beneath your flesh struggled to get free. You wanted to scream. The bump raised and raised and burst. Your flesh folded backwards, dry and raw. You didn't bleed. You had no blood. The only liquid inside of you was a sickly yellow fluid that coated the thorny mass of wriggling vines and torn tendons.

È una catena ormai Che scioglie il sangue dint' 'e 'vvene sai

Caruso was playing.

È una cat ena orm ai Che scio glie il san gue dint' 'e 'vve ne sai 

The vines writhed, alive without your control.

È u  na ca te  na o rm  ai Che sciog  lie il san  gu e dint' 'e 'v ven  e s ai

Caruso was playing

È     a ca    na    mai Che sci   lie il sa  e di  t' 'e 'v e s  i

Pull them back. Move them. Make them stop moving. Do something to show you're in control.

È u    at   a   mai Che sc  lie il sa       t' '     e    i

The greenhouse was glowing in your peripherals. Light. Dark. Light. Dark. But you couldn't take your eyes off of your busted open skin and the viens and ligaments that had been discarded carelessly over the sides of the holes in your hands.

u     a t     a   m       i  t   e    i

Caruso was playing. 

a   u    t   a i     t    m    e    i   

The thorn covered vines moved. The raised from your arms, slowly, two twin snakes  charmedby the distorted opera that haunted you. You watched as they ascended, up towards a light from an unseen source.

a     i     t      u      a        t  m   e    i

They snapped downwards, serpents striking and closing around your neck. 

Caruso no longer played.

You screamed.

Aiutatemi!

  You woke up with a dry mouth in your hotel room, and sat up groggily. You raised a hand and a vine shot forward, curling around the glass on your nightstand. 'Yep', you thought as you drank. 'Still in control.' Your nightmare left you waking up feeling sick. There was some sort of song playing you couldn't place, and you couldn't remember exactly what happened either, but it left a rather unsavory taste in your mouth.

Then again, that could just be your breath.

Go brush your teeth (y/n).

  ---------------------------------

  Siebren walked from his car to the laboratory. As usual, he parked far away and enjoyed the walk. His hours were flexible, and rarely was he ever late, but he felt like hurrying today. Why was that? It was a good question, and one he asked himself fervently. His work was going incredibly slow, and he seemed not to be reaching the event horizon of any particular discovery. But he supposed it didn't really matter. The quicker he got there, the more time he'd have to work and find that event horizon. He chuckled to himself, his nose crinkling. Alright, Siebren, what was it really? What were you so excited about? His own brain decided not to give up such privileged information, and it wasn't until he entered the lobby that it hit him. Or rather, you hit him. With an apple. Immediately you were upon him, apologizing up a storm.

"Oh my God I am so so sorry Dr. de Kuiper! Are you alright?" You looked like you were about to cry. "Yes, I... I'm fine." He blinked hard, touching the spot below his receding hairline where the fruit had bopped him. His colleagues chuckled among themselves. How ironic, is it then, they said, that the man studying Newton's laws is hit by an apple. You however, saw no humor in it. You apologized profusely, explaining that  you had been demonstrating for the others and recognizing him had startled you and the tree had detached from your hands. He looked down and surely enough, on the floor was a sapling with buds of sparsely developed apples. "Really, it's quite alright, Mr. (l/n)." He smiled, and put a hand on your shoulder in reassurance. "Its good to see you again, anyways."

    "Oh! Uh, you too!" You smiled sheepishly, glancing away for a moment. "How are things going with what you're working on?" Stupid (y/n). That was a stupid question. You didn't even know what he was working on and he knows that. You were pretending to care just to excuse hurting him through your carelessness. Do you realize how rude you sound right now? "Very slowly," Dr. de Kuiper chuckled, lighting up. "And you? How are the tests going?"

Small talk was going to be the literal death of you. You bit back a grimace at the question and gave a half-assed reply about how you were honored to be here and contribute. You've done this about a million times and at this point, have learned to just smile, nod and interject occasionally with the fascinated "oh wow" or "really?". 

 "That's fascinating, doctor! Well, I don't want to delay progress. Good luck in your endeavors." You smiled and extended a hand. "It was wonderful seeing you again." Dr. de Kuiper looked fascinated at your palm before he gave it a shake. That's the fucking worst, when people did that.

"Likewise Mr. (l/n)." He chirped. He said something else, but you'd already disengaged, walking back to the small gathering of scientists and apologizing for keeping them waiting. Your face burned with his eyes on your back.

Stop staring at me, stop staring at me, stop staring at me.

You followed the other doctors into the elevator and closed your eyes as you tuned out their murmuring and focused on the lift's melodic music.

You don't know why you thought you'd enjoy being studied like this. You hated feeling... less than human. And here? That's ALL you felt. You should be used to being a guinea pig by now, but never before was anybody ever this on the nose about it. In the hospital and facility you stayed in, you were a patient. When you were hired by farmers to kick-start their farms, they treated you like you were a man with a talent. When you grew food and volunteered at feeding shelters, they treated you like a friend. Here, it was different.

You'd never been in a lab this scale before. You'd never been surrounded by people and not know what they're talking about. Maybe it was because you were away from home, but you couldn't help but feel lost and nervous. You began to regret coming. The doctors ushered you into a large glass tank with a bowl of seeds, and your stomach dropped as it was sealed behind them. Over a PA they asked you to create from the bowl and you nodded, gulping, as you timidly walked over to the container and plucked out a seed. Visible over a woman's shoulder was a reading of your vitals. You were suddenly hyper-aware of everyone's eyes on you as you got to work.

  ---------------------------

   Siebren must have been dreaming! That went incredibly well. Did you hear what (y/n) said? He said it was wonderful seeing him again! And perhaps, and now this might be a stretch, but perhaps he might want to see him again! Should he ask him out for coffee? Maybe that would be too forward.

Oh hadn't the night they met been so memorable? He'd saved him from losing his work. That was wonderful.

Siebren ran his fingertips over the gaping hole in the paper he had brought with him to his desk. The power behind that vine skewering the paper was astounding, it was like a bullet! Oh but the man behind the weapon... (Y/n) must be busy, but later on, maybe the two of them could sit down at a cafe, and compare notes? (Y/n) must be some sort of botanist, but maybe he was an astronomer? He was probably a physicist! They could compare notes. Oh, he had so many questions! He burned to know, how did he acquire those abilities? How did he learn such control?

Siebren grinned. The man must be some kind of genius. Finally, he found himself an equal.

  ----------------------------

  You left the lab that evening feeling ill. This was turning out to be more stressful than you ever anticipated. You were no genius. You had no PHD, no masters degree, nothing. You felt stupid here, and for the first time in ages, began to doubt yourself. Why had you been chosen to take on these abilities? You had no idea how to handle them! You didn't know shit about plants in space, you didn't know anything about-

Stop, (y/n), breathe.

You do know how to handle them. You use your powers for good. Feeding your community? Planting trees? That's worth more than some shitty degree. That's worth more than some stupid math equation you couldn't read. So what if you failed math throughout school? You helped people.

But maybe if you could understand the science behind it, you could be doing more. Better yet, you'd not have people breathing down your neck and feel so exposed as they watched you grow plants from as many places on your body as you could. You hated how they glanced between you and their screen, judgement on their features. You felt small under the laboratory lights. You didn't want to even see a damn seed anymore.You were sick of being studied everyday. You were sick of the poking and prodding and awful scenarios. They nearly drowned you to simulate lack of oxygen in space yesterday. You complied, knowing you signed up for this but... You were TIRED.

You heard quickly approaching footsteps-

"Mr. (l/n), hello!"

Oh great, it was this guy. He kept popping up randomly this week, always pestering you. Hello, Mr. (l/n)! Mr. (l/n), hello! He couldn't take a damn hint and wouldn't shut up about his PHD. It was patronizing. He KNEW you weren't as educated and he wouldn't let you forget it. You responded with the most auto-generated shit possible and he still insisted on approaching you over and over, offering to show you his stupid research or equations you couldn't understand, or recommend some pretentious, expensive coffee you couldn't afford when you specifically told him your diet is being regulated. And now it seems like even AFTER hours he had to remind you he was better than you! What was it gonna be this time? He's smarter than you? More well liked? More educated? Richer? More handsome? Taller?

You glared at him, eyes red and glassy.

"What." Your voice was thick, and you hated it. "Oh... Mr. (l/n), are you alright?" "Can I help you?" You added, more forcefully this time. "I... This is probably a bad time-" "Yeah, it is." You muttered. "It can wait, never mind." Thank God. "Would you um... Do you need a ride home?" You grimaced. You should just tell him you're walking to yours. Or calling a lift. You looked into it, Uber was available in The Hague.

"Sure. Thank you." You were going to cry, how much more pathetic to this guy could you get? You followed him, tense as you held back exhausted, frustrated tears. Christ, how far did this guy park? You felt like you were walking into a trap. Suddenly you felt scared. "Where are we going?" You piped up, scowling. Vines began to sprout from your palms. This guy knew better than to try anything, you were sure, but in the off chance he did, you were ready now to turn him into a damn kebab. "I park a little far, sorry..." Dr. de Kuiper rubbed the back of his neck. He seemed relieved to speak, as if he'd been holding his breath this whole time. You glanced over at you, but you were shoving your hands in your pockets, nodding. He led you around the corner. Of course, his car was nice as hell. A black Tesla, a new model. Pretentious. You wordlessly got into the passenger seat, getting in before he had the chance to open the door for you. "Thank you for the ride, Dr. de Kuiper," You sighed as you put your hotel into the navigation. "I appreciate it." As if to further taunt you, Dr. de Kuiper beamed. He assured you it was not trouble, and you closed your eyes, pressing yourself back into the seat. This past week had been ridiculously uncomfortable, but this? This took the cake.

"How was work today? Did you make any progress with the tests? I've been dying to ask all week, actually." He chirped. You opened your eyes, glaring at the passing streetlights. "It was alright. I'm uh... I'm honored to contribute. As far as progress goes, I don't know. I don't even really understand what they're looking for anymore. All the math n' science is lost on me." You chuckled. "Major respect to those of you who work here every day... I couldn't. If I so much as see another lab I'm probably going to cry." You glanced over at Dr. de Kuiper. He looked shocked. If you thought this couldn't get anymore awkward, it did.

"I... Uh, I don't mean that literally."

"No, no I got it. It's stressful."

"Yeah... S'probably why I never became a scientist, heh."

"You don't say..."

You frowned. Alright. That was enough. You were getting really damn sick of this guy and his sarcasm.

  ------------------------------

  It clicked suddenly. Embarrassment flooded inside of him as the realization shot down his hopes like a firing squad. Those glances you threw at him as you walked away? They didn't mean what he thought they did.

And you weren't the person he thought you were. His excitement had skewed his perception. Perhaps it was lack of socialization, all cooped up there in his lab, but his fantasies had ran wild. He was nearing middle age, but like a young boy he let those few interactions with you go off the rails and he built a false persona of you in his head. How foolish of him.

His heart sank as you recoiled from his comment.

"You can let me out here." You blurted out sharply. "Wh- what? Your hotel isn't for another-" "Please, let me out." You were already reaching for the door and unbuckling yourself as he began to pull over. Oh God, oh God he felt so stupid, he hadn't meant to upset you. What had he said wrong, how could he fix this?

Nothing he could say could fix this. He felt himself dying inside as you slammed the door. Hastily, he parked and got out of the car.

"Mr (l/n), please wait-" "Ohmygoddd-" You groaned behind your hands. He could tell you'd started crying. "I just want to know what I did to upset you, I-" "Look, I get it OK, you're smarter than me, I understand! Please, just stop hinting at that every time you see me? It's not subtle! I get what you're trying to say! You're in charge around here, I understand!" You whirled around, face flushed but you refused to let him see you cry. His heart broke. Had you really, this whole time, thought he was trying to assert himself over you? No, nonono that wasn't right at all! He'd been trying to impress you! He wanted you to like him!

"Mr. (l/n) I didn't mean it like that at all! I was... I wasn't trying to make you feel inferior." You waved, nodding. "Yes, yeah I know I know, forget what I just said, that was stupid." You interjected, voice cracking. "No, I understand how it could have been taken that way, I really do, I'm sorry." Siebren stepped closer. You wiped your eyes, closing them and pursing your lips. Your expression was tight as you let out a deep, shaking breath.

"it's alright. I'm sorry for the outburst. I just... This whole situation has been really stressful. I'm far from home, I'm here alone, I'm being studied like an animal I-" You swallowed. "I'm just overwhelmed." "I understand, I'm sorry, if I'd known I..."

He already hates you, Siebren, you might as well say it.

"Do you want to grab a coffee sometime?"

You looked dumbfounded, brows furrowed. "What?" "I've... been meaning to ask you. I know this is a terrible time, but I feel like if I don't put the offer out there now I wont get the opportunity later. You don't know how many times I've been trying to..." You laughed as if he'd told you a joke. It didn't make any sense. Nothing in this universe made sense. "You've gotta be kidding. This whole time I thought you were, I dunno, subtly threatening me," You sniffed, chuckling. "And you were just trying to ask me out. God, I'm about dumb as shit... I'm sorry about," You gestured around, lips pursed into a tight line. "All of this." You looked aside, that same sheepish look on your face as you had when you'd accidentally beamed an apple into his forehead. "The stress got to me. Shit, this is so embarrassing, I feel like an asshole." "I promise you, it's more than alright. I know what it's like to be overwhelmed." You looked up at him, hopeful. For the first time, you looked like you actually believed what he was saying. "Right. I um... I'd love to, by the way. Coffee. With you. Get some. I mean-" You covered your face, and let out a long monotone groan. Siebren couldn't help but smile. He felt terrible that you'd been so scared and nervous and not told anybody. But, he was glad you finally had somebody here to talk to. He was more than pleased that it was him.

You, the real you, not the one in his head, were distrustful and anxious, cruder mouthed than he expected, and insecure.

But honestly? For the situation, you handled this all very well, he was impressed. You were not the prodigy he assumed you to be. (Though really, that was on him for putting you on that pedestal. He regretted the stress that had caused you, but he'd apologize properly later.) You were not some genius physicist.

The kick was, though, that you did not impress him any less. In fact, he was all the more intrigued.

[rogsclogs]

Some Day One Day (Brian May x Reader); part 5

Hello there! The first half of this was already written before my laptop died on me weeks ago, so I was able to finish it pretty quickly. I hope you enjoy, can’t wait to get on with this story. Feedback is always appreciated :)

Taglist: @brighter-thanthe-sky @im-a-sheerheartattack @fruityfreddie @discodeacygotmorerhythm @ladylannisterxo @destiel-stucky4ever-loki-queen @queenismylifenow (if you want to be tagged please message me)

previous parts are found under the ‘some day one day’ tag!

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Brian spent the whole 25 minutes between the phone call and Y/N’s arrival pacing around his living room in a worn out shirt and a pair of briefs, his mac and cheese long forgotten and his mind lost in space. He’d tried to tidy the house a bit, hiding dirty clothes and his daughter’s toys under the bed and in old plastic boxes, but his nerves couldn't let him focus on one task and he ended up ignoring most of the chaos he’d made.

He didn't know why, but he truly wanted to make a good impression on Y/N and for her to like him for who he was, although he knew that wasn't the reason she was coming over. He shouldn't even have had those thoughts in the first place.

He stared at the door for a couple of minutes until the doorbell rang and he felt his heart try to break his ribcage apart. 

After taking a quick look at himself in the small mirror he had hung in the hallway and shaking his head at the image reflected back, disappointed at his appearance with bags under his eyes from the lack of sleep he’d been experiencing lately and curly hair all over the place from running his hands through it way too often, he hurried to the door to not let her wait outside too long, considering how cold it had gotten that night.

When he opened it, he was shocked to see a very distressed Y/N who somehow looked tinier than usual with her shoulders hunched and makeup stains all over the soft skin of her face. Before he could stop his actions, he reached out and gently wiped the area under her eyes with his thumbs, holding her cheeks in his palms as she leaned into his right hand seeking comfort and affection. 

“Hi Brian”

“Hi my love, did you drive here?” He asked with concern, not wanting her to get behind the wheel in such a state.

“I did. It’s fine though, I’m a pretty good driver” 

“I don’t doubt that, but you should be careful. You could have asked me to come pick you up”

She shrugged and detached her eyes from his own, not needing to be scolded from him in such an emotional state. 

Brian stepped aside and finally let her in his apartment. She took notice of everything that surrounded her, the pictures on the walls and the shelves, the shoes that were left abandoned by the closet and the different pieces of forniture, some of which strongly contrasted with each other. She noticed an old black and white picture of a very young Brian holding a guitar and smiling at the camera and took it in her hands, admiring his features which she realized hadn't changed much since his youth days.

“You play?” For some reason that detail about him surprised her, maybe she thought someone as dedicated to physics as him couldn't have many other hobbies. To be honest, the guitar looked amazing on him, like he was meant to have it on himself at all times.

“I do. That picture is older than you probably, it’s from 1969. But yes, I do play, I’m in a band with a couple of my friends”

He smiled fondly at the memory of him and his three best friends playing for small crowds when they were younger and full of life as he watched Y/N take in every detail of his house. It wasn’t very big, anything he earned from his job he spent on spoiling his daughter, but it was cozy and homey, and Y/N thought it represented him very well, with scattered papers all around and posters of planets and galaxies almost everywhere. 

“I’d love to hear you play one day” she said before something caught her attention: a very tiny pink shoe left laying on the ground, which Brian must had forgotten to put back in its place previously. 

The thought of him having children had never crossed her mind for some reason, but in that moment she realized that she shouldn't have made assumptions, after all she knew almost nothing about him. He noticed her eyes wandering and took a close look at her reaction, not knowing what to expect from her.

“You.. have kids?” The words sounded even stranger on her tongue.

“I, uhm, I have a daughter, yes. Emily. Yeah. She's not here tonight though, don't worry” he blushed profusely at the idea of Y/N knowing about Em, he didn't even exactly know why but to him it was always a struggle to open up about anything even remotely personal. 

“I never thought you’d be the kind of person to have children Brian, but that's absolutely adorable”

He swiftly took his wallet from out of his old bag that he usually brought to school and pulled out a tiny picture of a very smiley, red cheeked and wide eyed little girl, proudly showing it to Y/N.

“This is her, she's the love of my life”

Y/N examined the picture, trying to find little clues that connected her to Brian and, in fact, finding many and realizing just how similar the two were. She was fascinated by the little girl and by the idea of tall, lanky professor May being a dad. 

“She’s beautiful, Brian. She looks just like you” she said after a while, hoping that with that statement she had made it clear that she thought he was also extremely beautiful. Actually, the word beautiful couldn't even begin to express the way she saw him, but it was a start.

He smiled fondly at the girl in front of him seeing genuine interest in her eyes. 

“You might meet her one day, I’d love for you to” as he spoke those words he realized just how true they were, he realized he wanted Em to get to know Y/N and watch movies about fairies and princesses with her, and he couldn’t understand why. Emily had a mother already, granted she wasn’t the most maternal person in the world, but she tried her best just like Brian did. Sometimes he felt like she didn’t do enough though, Emily would often come back home to him from a weekend spent with her mother craving affection and physical contact, so did that mean that her mother wasn't able to provide those things for her? He wasn't sure he wanted to know.

Y/N grabbed Brian’s hand and held it close to her body without thinking twice, she knew that would bring her comfort and all she wanted was a break from the emotional pain.

“Sorry for getting here so late, you’re always so kind to me but you really didn’t have to invite me here, maybe you had better plans in mind than listen to me whine”

“Don’t even say that love, I couldn’t stand knowing you weren’t okay and not doing anything about it”

Brian lingered a bit longer than usual on the last words, wondering if it was alright for him to keep going.

“I have grown quite attached to you Y/N, I only want what’s best for you, I hope you never forget that” he decided to say.

Almost instinctively he opened his long and skinny arms, letting Y/N crash her head on his firm chest then wrapping them around her, bending his head so that his curls would caress her cheeks as she left tears stains on his shirt.

“I’m such a mess Brian, I don’t know how to go on from here, I feel lost, I mean, I wasn’t even able to pass this test and that's a clear indication that I’m never going to achieve anything in my life” she was able to shakily let out a few words in between sobs and sniffles. She didn’t know what pushed her to feel so free and able to let herself be emotional around a man that she clearly didn't know that well after all, but there was an aura around him that smelled like home and family and love, and Y/N had never had much of any of those things.

He knew she wasn't thinking straight and that she was allowing her negative thoughts and insecurities run wild and take over her brain, he’d been in that same position many times in his own life. 

“Take a deep breath baby, you’re fine and I promise you’re always going to be fine. If it takes us two more years to get you to pass that test than that’s how long we’re gonna be working for. You’re gonna achieve such great things in life and I can tell because you’re so young and yet so determined and willing to fight already, that's not something everyone has in them. You are special love, I truly want you to learn to see that. Failures teach us how to keep going, not how to quit”.

His words were wonderful and spot on, she didn't know how he always somehow knew exactly what to say in any circumstance, but in that moment she felt the need to cry her feelings out, and Brian didn't question her, he understood her even when she didn't say a word. 

“Shall we make tea? Would that make you feel better in any way? It’s not magic, but I can make it for you just like my mom used to make it for me when I was young and ill, it’s life changing I promise” he said with a gentle expression on his lightly freckled face. 

All Y/N had to do was nod and she suddenly found herself sat on the kitchen counter staring at the gentle giant in front of her who was currently fixing her tea, she didn't even have it in herself to wonder how she got there because for once she felt like that was exactly where she belonged.

Brian could feel her eyes on him the whole time and he didn't mind the attention at all.

He handed her a steaming cup and got one for himself. Silence surrounded them, but it wasn't an awkward one, it was rather calming for Y/N’s nerves and excruciating headache. She was able to recollect her thoughts and realize just how lucky she was to have his support available at any hour of any day.

“I should probably head back home soon Bri, if my parents find out I’m not in my bedroom they're going to flip on me”

“What did you tell them about the test?”

He didn't know anything about her parents apart from the few things that had slipped from her mouth every once in a while during their tutoring sessions, but the fact that their own daughter was currently at his apartment seeking help and emotional support instead of being with them told him more about the kind of people they were than any words could. 

“I just said that I tried my best and that I won’t know how I did for another couple of weeks at least, then I gave them a big fake smile and disappeared. I kept it simple”

Brian nodded understandingly then wrapped his arms around her once more, not for any specific reason, but he felt that she could have used an extra hug. He felt weird, in a way that he would never be able to explain to himself even years after these events took place. He felt his stomach twist in a nervous knot and an overwhelming urge to kiss the girl and never let go of her. He wanted to be physically and emotionally connected to her and show her that not everything in life was so terrible after all. He wanted her, night and day, all of her.

A big part of him, however, knew very well that what he wanted was morally questionable.

He couldn't just go and kiss her without at least talking to her about it first, what if that's not what she wanted? She could have gotten him fired if she’d spread the word to anyone in school. Was it worth risking his whole career over this one girl? (Yes, yes it was).

Maybe if she hadn’t been his student and years younger than him things would have been different, but anyhow he was able to keep those urges under control by holding her tighter against his body, allowing himself to pretend for a second things could actually be different. 

He couldn't believe his own conscience, but his feelings were stronger than anything he’d ever experienced and later on, when Y/N left his house despite his concerns about her safety and his offer to let her sleep over for the night, he found himself wishing he didn't have so much self control. 

[ellanainthetardis]

I would like to read about the 74th hunger games, haymitch and effie make lots of noise during sex and the designers of the district, peeta and katniss listen and the next day talk to them about it, I think it would be hot and funny!!! I love your stories, you are a great writer !!!! (I'm using google translate, if I have something spelled wrong, I'm sorry)

Here you go! [x]

Making this vt becauseI don’t think stylists sleep in the apartments

The Pirate’s Bounty

Effie was burrowing into the source of warmthat her back before she even properly woke up, letting out a hum of contentment.Haymitch, for all his claims that he disliked sharing a bed, had a tendency totake up all the space and while that was a little annoying, there wereadvantages to this new habit of his to crash in her room: he tended to wraparound her like an octopus in his sleep. His leg was tossed over hers, herpillow was an arm that was curled around her head and there was a strong handholding her breast.

She was sticky in unpleasant places and soreall over. Her thighs, her right arm… She sighed softly and glanced at theclock, not surprised to find it was later than planned. Haymitch had a nastytendency to tinker with her alarm behind her back. She liked to be up and readyearly, so that she could keep an eye on everyone and have everything undercontrol. The Tour was bad enough without anything going amiss. But Haymitch –and Cinna and Portia – insisted she was pushing herself too hard and she wouldcollapse well before they reached the Capitol if she went on like this,reviewing schedules and working on speeches until the early hours of morning. Theywere conspiring behind her back to force her to get more rest.

They weren’t due in Six until the next daythough and the schedule for the day was light. She had insisted on some dancinglessons for the children because she didn’t want to be embarrassed at the ballat the Presidential Mansion but they weren’t in any hurry. If she could getHaymitch to actually work with her on the speeches in the afternoon, she mighteven go to bed at a proper time that night. Why, she might even have time for a manicure before that.

She gently tried to remove the hand from herchest and Haymitch grunted in protest.

“Go back to sleep.” he muttered against herhair. “Too early.”

“It is well past eight.” she argued in awhisper. “Everyone will be up.”

There was another groan and then he lifted hisleg from her thigh to push it between hers. It became obvious to her, shewasn’t the only one who had been enjoying the tight quarters. She giggleddespite herself when she felt him poking her and he snorted, kneading thebreast she hadn’t managed to get out of his grip.

“None of that.” she chided, whacking his wrist.He pressed his thigh harder against her core and she couldn’t help a smallfrustrated moan. “I am serious. I need to get out of bed.”

“You need to relax.” he argued, pressing longkisses on her nape. “I’m all about helping you with that.”

“I need to use the bathroom.” she protestedwhen he flicked her nipple. “And I need a shower. And I honestly do not think Ican take another round right now. Last night was…”

“Fuckinggood.” he smirked, nipping at her nape. “Thought I had died for a moment there.”

She chuckled and twisted to plant a kiss on hislips, feeling genuinely happier than she had in weeks. It was silly but theprevious night had been rather… athletic andcreative and it made her feel young and reckless. She used to feel that wayall the time but nowadays…

The kisses grew deeper and they eventuallyshifted as he rolled on his back and took her with him.

“Not this morning.” she insisted between twokisses.  

He pouted but eventually shrugged. “Fine.”

“You arewelcome to join me in the shower though.” she grinned.

It took a little more convincing but heeventually let himself get lured out of bed and into the bathroom. Inviting himinto the shower or the bathtub with her was the best way to make sure he wouldwash that day and it was a trick she had long mastered. Even if she sometimesthought he abused it as much as she did.

They fooled around a little in the shower, bothof them in an uncharacteristic good mood. She wondered briefly if that was howit could be like if there were no Games and no poisoned berries dangling overtheir heads. If amazing sex could be enough to make them feel good and brightabout the upcoming day. If they could have been just… happy together.

He sneaked out of her room while she finishedgetting ready. She just hoped he would have the good sense of not gettingcaught.

She was in such a good mood she couldn’t shakea stupid smile off her lips. She was humming a catchy popular song when shemade her way to the dining-room car, the last one to join the group for once.Haymitch was already there, as his usual seat, staring at the bottom of his cupof coffee as if it held the answers to every question in the universe. His greyeyes darted up to meet hers and a hint of a smirk briefly floated on his lips.

“Good morning, everyone!” she called outcheerfully, elegantly dropping on her seat at Haymitch’s right, barelylistening to the greetings she got in return.

Katniss was already sulking for reasons thatwere her own, Peeta was trying to cheer her up, Cinna was very focused onbuttering his toast and Portia had wrapped her hands around her mug of tea andwas studying her with a twinkle of mischief in her dark eyes. Effie knew herfriend enough to know it meant troubles. She lifted an eyebrow in the otherwoman’s direction but the stylist simply took a long sip of her tea, clearlyamused by something she wasn’t willing to share yet.

Effie was sure she would learn about it beforelong so she let the matter drop and poured herself a cup of coffee. By the timeshe grabbed a toast, Haymitch had placed half of his blueberry muffin on herplate, muttering about it being the last one because Katniss couldn’t betrusted around pastries. There were plenty of muffins left but, she saw, noblueberries, so she accepted it with a grateful grin.

He must have thought the night to be asincredible as she did because he also poured her some orange juice without herhaving to ask. It wasn’t like him to be so thoughtful. She discreetly hookedher foot around his ankle, the cup paused for the smallest moment on its way tohis mouth but he covered it well.

“Did you have a good night, Effie?” Portiaasked, a hint of laughter in her voice.

“Why, yes, I did, thank you.” she hummed. “And yourself?”

“We did not get much sleep.” her friendexplained.

“Really?” she frowned. “You weren’t ill, Ihope?”

“You didn’t hear the noises?” Katniss cut inwith a frown of her own.

Effie forcedherself not to glance at Haymitch as she assumed an expression of fakepuzzlement, too aware that everyone else had stopped talking to follow thediscussion. Cinna, like Portia, seemed to have trouble not laughing. Peetasuddenly seemed fascinated with the croissants.

“The noises?” she repeated in a tone of politeinterest, quickly but surely taking her foot away from Haymitch’s ankle.

“Yeah.” the girl confirmed, nodding her head.“It sounded like a wounded animal or something.”

“Yes, I dobelieve that is an accuratedescription of those strange, strangenoises.” Portia agreed, obviously fighting to keep her countenance. She turnedto Haymitch with a bright smile. “What did you think, Haymitch?”

Haymitch was chewing on a big piece of muffin,which afforded him a few seconds to school his features. “Can’t say. I wasdrunk. Passed out, you know.”

“Were you, now…” the stylist hummed. “How peculiar. I could have sworn I heard you call out to Effie atsome point…”

“Whywould Haymitch be calling out to me in the middle of the night, Portia?” Effieasked with a fake laugh. “Do not be preposterous.”

“My bad.” her friend teased. “I did think I heard you call back, mindyou, didn’t I, Cinna? We thought perhaps the two of you had gone to… investigate.”  

“I wanted to go look but Peeta said it wasprobably someone watching TV.” Katniss shrugged, completely oblivious.

“How clever of you to figure it out, Peeta!”Effie exclaimed with some relief. “Yes, it musthave been that. Someone must have been watching TV. I will have a word with thetrain attendants. Pass me the orange jam, would you, Cinna?”

Portia allowed the conversation to be stirredto safer topics but Effie knew her friend and she also knew that nobody at thattable, except for Katniss, was fooled by the TV excuse. As soon as she deemedit safe to do so, she glanced at Haymitch who was resolutely staring away from her.

“Would come with me to check Peeta’s outfit fortomorrow?” Portia asked after breakfast, before Effie could make the sort ofgrand escape Haymitch was already attempting.

“Of course.” she granted, unable to refuse.

Portia linked their arms together as soon asthey were a safe distance from the living-room car where the children usuallyspent their free time. The train’s corridors were narrow and it wasn’t reallypractical to walk like that but her friend was clearly in a teasing mood soEffie allowed her the fancy.

“Strictlybetween you and me, at one point I was unsure if he was trying to kill you or pleasureyou.” the stylist laughed.

“I have no idea what you are talking about.”she denied.

Portia rolled her eyes. “Darling, only onething does that kind of noises and there are only six people using that car.Now, it wasn’t me, it wasn’t Katniss… The conclusion wouldn’t be that hard toreach even if you hadn’t shouted hisname at the top of your lungs.”

She flushed crimson, battling her fakeeyelashes to hide her embarrassment. “Portia…”

“It sounded reallygood, I was jealous.” her friend pouted.

Effie cleared her throat and glanced around,but they were alone in that part of the train so she sighed. “Was I really that loud?”

Portia patted her arm in a comforting gesturebut didn’t part with the teasing smile on her lips. “You should probably keepin mind those compartments are not soundproof next time.”

“Oh, god…” she muttered in mortification,raising her free hand to her burning cheek.

“The banging of the headboard against the wallcovered most of it.” Portia mocked gently. “And, of course, there wasHaymitch’s triumphant grunting at the end… We could not hear you anymore bythat point, I really was scared hehad finished you off. That last cry of yours sounded almost painful.”

“So painfully good.” she confessed, biting down on her bottom lip at the memory.

Portia chuckled. “What was he doing to you?”

“Ravishing me.” she deadpanned with a chuckleof her own.

“That much, I gathered on my own.” her friendteased as they reached the car where the outfits were stocked. They crossed theone that carried Cinna’s work and moved on to Portia’s.

Effie hesitated a second but then threw cautionto the wind. At that point… “Two words for you: pirate’s bounty.”

“Oh, that isa nice one!” Portia approved with a knowing look. “You must be very flexible.”

“That has never been a problem for me.” sheconfirmed smugly. Even if her muscles were sore now. “Do we truly need to check Peeta’s outfit orwas it just an excuse?”

“His outfit will be fantastic as usual.” Portiadismissed with a wave of her hand, leaning against the wall with a smirk. “Now,tell me everything. Does the piratehave a long sword?”

“Portia!” she rebuked, eyeing her up and downwith her lips pursed. “A lady does not kiss and tell.”

“A lady should share with her best friend.” thestylist argued. “Besides, you forget I am his tailor. I know which side he dresseson.”

“Portia!” she gasped.

“Well, I cannot help but notice what is rightin front of my eyes.” her friend argued. “Impressive even at rest… You are a lucky girl, no wonder you were screamingso loud.”

Effie wavered between rolling her eyes andlaughing and ended up leaning against the wall next to her friend, shaking herhead at her stupidity today. As if her sex life was so important compared toeverything that was going on.

But it was good to be silly once in a while.

[bootypopper]

The 2nd December 2017 I had a terrible dream, or should I say nightmare. I don't remember most of it but close to its end; I am depressed, I hear about a trend of kids inhaling candle fumes and then dying suddenly. I then see a candle and without thinking I am over it and quickly inhale its fumes. Immediately, I slump into the ground, face down, and I feel my whole body become numb. As if my soul is slowly leaving my body. At that moment I felt a slight relief, but then I am consumed with regret as I see my mother plead and scream "No!No!Please NO!". I couldn't move and there was no turning back. I was dying. When I woke up, I felt more determined than ever to stay alive, to live my life to the fullest and never EVER place my mother in such position.  Now its Monday, 18th of December 2017 and I find out that a great artist and influencer of my life ended his life after struggling with his battle against depression. Kim JongHyun passed after inhaling fumes from a burnt brisket, consequently suffering from carbon monoxide poisoning. Like myself, fans and individuals all over the world were caught in disbelief and surprise to have lost such an amazing person to mental illness.  I spent my day remembering how Jonghyun impacted my life. I remembered being introduced to Kpop by my high school friends with Shinee's 'Ring Ding Dong' music video. It was all new to me. I probably commented how Jonghyun resembled a girl with his longish blond hair. That was the beginning of a whole new perpective. Thanks to that perfectly sounding "Babay~" I was interested and that interest only grew and developed to this wonderful love I have for Kpop and Korean culture as a whole.  I remembered getting my first taste of Korean reality shows through Shinee's 'Hello Baby'. I remembered wainting hours infront of Abbey Road Studios back in 2011 to get a glimpse of Onew, Key, Jonghyun, Minho and Taemin in British soil. I remembered how much my young brother loved the Ring Ding Dong song and how hard he danced to it during his Christening/Birthday party, making everyone so happy.  I must say that over the years I developed my own problems with depression. During that time I distanced myself from everything and everyone; friends, family, music, work, school, life. I chose not to be positively influenced by Jonghyun's or any other artist's work. I broke myself down and refused to set a new foundation. I was a lost soul and I accepted my end.  31st December 2016 I took a bunch of Anadin Extra packs I had at home and put then in my handbag. I had planned to leave the house, travel as far as I could and then consume them all in one go. I was on the hedge that day and an unnecessary argument with my mum resulted in me leaving the house suddenly with nothing but my coat, phone and debit card. I was so triggered but I couldn't do anything. I had left my bag at home. I contemplated suicide for so long before, that on the day I planned to die I could only think about the aftermath. How will they react when they find out? How will it affect them in the long term? I don't want to hurt anyone, I'm just sick of how useless I am. They'll be better off without me. They won't have to see how pathetic I look anymore. All I do is bring pain and disappoint. I don't deserve their love. I wondered around for hours and entered 2017 on my own ...in the middle of a bunch of strangers, watching the London fireworks. I can't remember what I was thinking at that time, but I guess I had given myself another chance. I know exactly how Jonghyun felt. It's the worst feeling of hopelessness you could ever have and it's all consuming. The truth is that I will never get over my depression but I will not allow it to get me to were I was the afternoon of New Years eve 2016 or the day I didn't go to school and sent a 'help me' letter to my teacher. I am still young and I have soooo much to give and receive. I am a special human being and I will bring hope and joy to you who may be experiencing the despair Jonghyun and I felt. I keep surviving and he remains alive through his music, craft, advice and countless memories. You too are strong and will continue to spread endless positivity in this beautiful Shinee world. You can do it. Earlier I posted: Jonghyun was one of those entertainers that exuded such happiness and positivity that you could hardly imagine him going through such hard times. I too considered myself to be a happy person and I'm sure my friends and family felt the same. Unfortunately, I let myself go and all of a sudden I lost all interest in life. If you don't understand that feeling, consider yourself a very lucky person and pray to never EVER feel that way. I could have been in his position at the beginning of this year and I am proud and extremely glad that I am  still here, today, looking forwards to another year. If you feel the slightest depressed, do not hold on to that feeling. Let it go. Speak to someone, anyone. Send me a message if you want. I may be a stranger but what I have to say may help you live another day. We failed Jonghyun but there are a lot more souls out there that need saving. I admit that this news is a trigger for me, although I only saw him through the eyes of a fan, it is extremely unfortunate that I now feel closest to him by knowing exactly how he felt in his last moments. I am crying but I don't grieve this Star with sadness, despite the unknown, Jonghyun brought lot of hope and joy to many of us along his short life. I Thank God for bringing such an individual to our lives and I wish that Kim Jong Hyun Rests In Pure Peace in Shinee World. His final letter read: I’m broken on the inside. The depression that slowly gnawed away at me eventually devoured me. I couldn’t overcome it. I hated myself. I resolved to hold on to memories and shouted at myself to come to my senses, but there was no answer. If there is no way to relieve stifling breath, it’s better to just stop. I asked who can be responsible for me. It’s only you. I was utterly alone. It’s easy to say you’re going to end things. It’s hard to actually end things. I lived with that difficulty this whole time. You told me that I wanted to escape. That’s right. I wanted to escape. From me. From you. You asked who is over there. I said it was me. I said it was me again. And I said it was me again. I asked why I keep forgetting my memories. You told me it was because of my personality. I see. I see that everything is my fault in the end. I hoped that people would notice but nobody knew. You never met me so of course you would not know I was there. You asked why I live. Just because. Just because. Everyone just lives just because. If you ask why people die, they would probably say it’s because they’re exhausted. I suffered and agonized about it. I never learned how to turn this pain into happiness. Pain is just pain. I tried to push myself past it. Why? Why am I keeping myself from putting an end to it all? I was told to search for the reason why it hurts. I know all too well. I’m hurting because of me. It’s all my fault, because I was born this way. Doctor, is this what you wanted to hear? No. I didn’t do anything wrong. When you told me in that calm voice that it’s because of my personality, I thought how easy it must be to be a doctor. It’s almost fascinating, that it hurts this much. People that have it harder than me seem to get along just fine. People weaker than me get along just fine. But that must not be true. Among the people in this world, no one has it harder than me, and no one is weaker than me. But I still tried to live. I asked myself why I had to do so hundreds of times, and it was never for me. It was for you. I wanted to do something for me. Please stop telling me things you don’t understand. You tell me to figure out why I’m having a hard time. I told you several times why. Am I not allowed to be this sad just for those reasons? Does it have to be more specific and dramatic? Do I need to have better reasons? I already told you. Were you even listening? Things you can overcome don’t remain as scars. I guess I was not meant to confront the world. I guess I was not meant to lead a life in the public eye. That’s why it was hard. Confronting the world, and being in the public eye. Why did I make those decisions. It’s ridiculous. It’s great that I even made it this far. What more can I say. Just tell me I did well. Tell me I did well enough and that I went through a lot. Even if you can’t smile while sending me off, don’t say it’s my fault. You did well. You really went through a lot. Goodbye.

[sicklylittlesnowflake]

Hi! I'm sorry this might be a little strange but I remember you said you've done some theatre and I really love the setting. I wondered if you'd be up for a LesMis theatre AU sickfic? I love the Ida of E nearly losing his voice and R forcing tea on him to get through the show. Then E crashing when it's over and R taking him home and E feeling like he late every one down and R having done of it. Thank you sweetie ❤️

(Strange?! This is not strange at all anon I lowkey wanted to write this and I’m so glad I have the excuse to lmao..theatre au les mis is my fav and the multi part fic I’m working on is actually an actor!e and struggling musician!r so..YES. I LOVE THIS. HMU WITH ALL UR THEATRE AUS. Ok so for background the Les Amis are doing a production of Next to Normal and E is Gabe and R is the head of the tech department!! Tbh R is on tech bc it reminds me of that tech girl I had a crush on when I did Les Mis :“) )

Theatre was the art of losing yourself and taking on a new soul.

Enjolras loved theatre and acting since he was a child. There was something so enthralling to him about taking on somebody else’s skin and becoming a whole new person with their own individual thoughts and perspectives.

Enjolras finds human beings fascinating, at awe with how complex they were and how each person to exist had their own vastly different thoughts and a whole new perspective to his own. It is such a wonderful experience to see the world from different eyes.

He isn’t comfortable in his own skin. He can never feel like he is good enough, he always feels like something is missing inside of him, he doesn’t feel at one with himself and like he’s detached from his own body, hovering over it and wondering how he’s supposed to get in and understand himself. Enjolras plays other characters so he can learn from them, hoping that he can begin to understand himself by understanding others. It’s a euphoric escape to be someone else and get away from himself for once. Enjolras is pretty tired of himself.

That being said as Enjolras pours his heart and soul into bringing these characters alive, in the process he neglects himself. Sometimes he forgets he’s real.

Enjolras blends away at his stage makeup tiredly, feeling exhaustion basically seeping into his bones. The lights fade in and out of his vision, he feels heavy, and too weak, and fevered. He sniffles, and continues to pat the concealer on top his darkly coloured under-eyes, trying to hide his true state beneath all this makeup.

His throat itches, and he turns away from his mirror and coughs violently into his shirt sleeve, tearing up as his chest aches from his chesty coughs, spluttering. He blindly grabs for a glass of water, and gulps the little that remains down hungrily. He groans, looking back to see his watery, red eyes and reddened nose.

He rolls his eyes at himself as he tries to carefully dab away at the wetness of his face, as not to ruin the makeup that’s already there, and nearly messes up the whole thing as he jumps when someone suddenly bursts through the door.

"Fuck!” Enjolras croaks, his voice raspy and all sorts of husky. He cringes, and clears his throat to fix his horrendous voice.

“Didn’t know Gabe was a heavy chain smoker,” Grantaire teases, a mug of tea and strepsils in his hands.

He’s a pain in the ass, but Grantaire is one of the reasons Enjolras wants to be comfortable with himself, because in this world, Grantaire is in it. It’s the only bad thing about theatre, because despite how amazing being in a different world is, Grantaire isn’t in it. That is a world Enjolras doesn’t want to live in, a world without his sunny, shining smile is already a little bit darker.

Enjolras rolls his eyes, opening his mouth to shoot back a snide remark when his nose is suddenly twitching and he’s turning away from Grantaire and retreating into the crook of his arm to sneeze twice.

Slightly embarrassed and not wanting Grantaire to worry about him, he clears his throat and bounces back, “Sorry, I’m just allergic to your bullshit, ‘Taire.”

Grantaire searches for a comeback, but he comes empty and he sighs in defeat, “Okay, that was a good one.”

Enjolras smirks in victory as Grantaire shuffles towards him and shoves the mug of tea into his hands, and presses a sweet little kiss on to Enjolras’s nose.

“You’re losing your voice, dear,” Grantaire frowns as Enjolras slowly takes sips of the hot tea mixed with lemon and honey. He lets out a small sigh of relief as the warm liquid soothes his throat a little.

“No I’m not,” Enjolras insists, although he’s not really sure if he’s trying to convince Grantaire or himself. He knows deep down it’s for himself, but Enjolras can’t let this bring him down, and all his friends.

The Les Amis have worked to the bone for this little off-broadway show. This show that spoke so beautifully about mental illnesses, and Enjolras was honoured with the opportunity to portray a personification of mental illness and perform to the best of his ability, and beyond that. He needed to be able to convey how it was like, to connect to other people through his performance so that they can begin to understand those with mental illnesses. Then he will be closer to helping create a kinder world.

Every show counted.

Each person in that crowd meant something, and if someone was out there and was touched by it, and felt a little less alone, or came out of it a kinder person, any sickness was worth pushing through. This was much bigger than him.

“Hm,” Grantaire huffs, clearly not believing a word he was saying.

“Don’t worry–"His words come out in a strangled noise that strains and pulls at the muscles in his throat. Enjolras turns away from his boyfriend and raises his elbow up to his face where he coughs harshly, the sounds resonating from his chest.

Grantaire frowns and leans in to rub his back and coax the coughs out of him, and when Enjolras finishes he’s exhausted. He leans back against his chair and wipes away at tears, chest heaving as he tries to catch his breath.

"That doesn’t sound too good,” Grantaire points out worriedly.

Enjolras opens his mouth to speak, but no sound comes out of his throat. There is only a light, raspy wheeze that escapes his mouth. His eyes widen, his blood running cold as he freezes in panic. He shakes slightly, his breathing picking up ever so slightly. He clears his throat aggressively.

Grantaire notices this, and he is just as alarmed and fearful as Enjolras but somehow he manages to keep a level head. He wraps his hands around Enjolras’s and intertwines his fingers with his, to keep Enjolras here with him and grounded. So he doesn’t float away.

“Enj, don’t panic. Have some more sips of this tea,”

Enjolras nods frantically and begins to drink more of the hot tea, and when he’s done he puts down the mug on his dresser. He clears his throat.

“Hi, is my voice back,” Enjolras croaks out, his voice is rough and husky but its there.

He clears his throat again, popping a strepsil into his mouth and lets out a shaky sigh, “That’s better, I guess.”

Grantaire looks a little more at ease at that, Enjolras’s voice is better then, with a rough edge to it.

There is a small silence that begins afterwards. It is calm, but suddenly Enjolras says quietly, sounding so small and afraid.

“I don’t want to mess this up.”

Grantaire softens, cupping Enjolras’s face and then presses a loving kiss against his cheek, “You won’t, baby. You never do.”

Enjolras manages a weak smile at him, “I love you.”

A blush dusts Grantaire’s face and a smitten smile spreads across it. They use the word sparingly, not rarely, but not excessively. It’s more special this way.

“I love you too,” Grantaire says softly, and then his radio is crackling to life, Bahorel’s voice calling Grantaire over.

Grantaire chuckles and confirms that he is coming, and looks back at Enjolras, “Bossuet probably fucked something up again. I’ve gotta go save their asses now–but good luck baby, drink up. You’re going to be okay.”

With that, Grantaire leaves the door and Enjolras is left staring at the door, unable to wipe the smile off his face.

“All cast members please report to Val Jean’s dressing room for a warm up in 10 minutes, you have 10 minutes,” He hears Feuilly say over the intercom.

Enjolras nods, letting out a small sigh before he finishes up his makeup and hair.

When Enjolras walks into Val Jean’s dressing room, everyone’s eyes widen and jaws drop like they’ve seen a ghost.

He smirks, and sings softly, “I’m alive I’m alive I am so alive~”

He clears his throat and smiles at them reassuringly, “’Im fine. My point is I’m not dead, because you’re all staring at me like I am.”

Marius shakes his head, “Your voice is as angelic as ever, it’s just..”

Eponine clears her throat, “You look like shit, E.”

Enjolras rolls his eyes and laughs, “Oh well, the show must go on, as they say.”

Fantine frowns and walks up to him, and before Enjolras can even decipher what she’s doing her hand is placed gently on his forehead. He tries to squirm away, but she’s strong.

“You’ve got quite a fever, sweetheart,” She says gently. She is just as motherly to him on stage as she is off stage. Hopefully, off stage he’s a slightly better person than Gabe.

“It’ll be fine,” Enjolras says coolly, but Marius is trying to secretly text someone. He raises an eyebrow at the younger boy, slightly amused as Marius seems so sure no one is noticing him.

“Pontmercy, what are you doing?” Enjolras sighs.

“..Uh…” He says awkwardly.

Combeferre bursts through the door shortly after, and crosses his arms, clearly not very happy.

Enjolras turns white, “..uh..”

Combeferre basically slaps his hand onto Enjolras’ forehead and his frown is further deepened, and a few various pills are being shoved into his palm, as well as some more tea.

Enjolras groans, “I am drowning in tea, Ferre, I–”

The way Combeferre is glaring at him shuts him up and he’s popping the pills into his mouth and downing them with the tea.

Enjolras coughs, and he thinks it’s just a single, one off thing but the next comes spilling out of him, and the next, and the next. He’s coughing and he can’t stop, and it stabs at his chest and at his lungs. He’s expelling so much he’s not taking anything in, he can’t breathe and his body needs to. He feels faint, his vision darkening as the coughs force their way out of his chest.

He feels weak and faint, trying to reach for a wall or anything so his body doesn’t collapse in on itself, but he one powerful cough sends him toppling over, his body light as it free falls.

But thankfully Valjean is quick and there’s a strong arm around his waist, supporting him, and lifting him back to ground. When Enjolras looks up from his feverish, blearily haze there is a soft, concerned gaze looking down on him.

“Are you sure you’re up to this, kiddo? You don’t have to if you’re not feeling well,” Jean says worriedly, as he balances Enjolras back on his feet.

Enjolras rubs at his nose, stifling two sneezes before he responds, “I’m fine. Tonight is important. I can’t miss it.”

Everyone in the room looks extremely concerned, but when Combeferre sighs, not pleased but approving, they all straighten up to start working on warmups. As he turns around to leave, he suddenly leans forward and gives Enjolras a hug, rubbing his back lovingly and ruffling his golden hair.

When Combeferre pulls away his gaze is kind and caring, “You’re going to be amazing, E. You always are, please take care of yourself out there. Gabe is cool, but so are you, okay? I feel like you forget that sometimes.”

Enjolras’s eyes prick with touched tears, and he bites his lip to stop himself from crying any more. He smiles weakly at him, letting out a shaky exhale, “Fuck off, Ferre, you’re ruining my makeup.”

Combeferre can only laugh at that and ruffle his hair, before turning to leave through the door. He can’t help but spare a glance at Enjolras worriedly, wishing and praying that he would be okay, and he leaves through the door.

“Are we all ready?” Javert asks.

Everyone nods in agreement, and Marius starts to play the piano as they all harmonise and warm up their voices.

Grantaire finishes his double checks on all of the sound tech, and he sighs in relief. He’s done all he could possibly do. All he can do now, is relax and hope to whatever higher being out there that everything goes well.

He keeps his headphones in his ears and picks up a small cup of tea and makes his way to the left wing, where Enjolras is waiting at his five minute call to start the show. Fantine is already on stage in the dark, curtains still close. Grantaire is not an actor, but he is still always so fascinated with how when an actor steps onto stage, they are immediately a different person.

Grantaire carefully makes his way past and finds himself in the wings, and he finds Enjolras standing in the wings. He looks tired, sick, worried.

He approaches him slowly, gently tapping him on the shoulder, “Hey baby.”

Enjolras whips around and smiled at him, but a chesty little cough escapes him. He clears his throat, and he’s shaking ever so slightly and Grantaire doesn’t know if he’s nervous or just feverish.

“Hi,” Enjolras croaks out quietly, he looks down at Grantaire’s hands and takes the small cup of tea from Grantaire and sips at it slowly. He looks a little more relieved.

“Better?” Grantaire says softly.

Enjolras nods lightly, and tiptoes to kiss Grantaire’s cheek. Grantaire thinks this is the cutest thing.

“I’m scared,” Enjolras admits, his voice low and shaky. He’s trembling slightly, his voice cracking with vulnerability. He looks a lot younger like this. It breaks Grantaire’s heart. Enjolras is rarely ever this vulnerable.

“I can’t mess this up, you know that there are–”

“Yeah, there are important people here tonight but you are going to kill it. I know you will, baby.”

Enjolras can only manage a weak smile.

“Mics are turning on,” He hears Bossuet through his headphones.

Grantaire nods, and whispers softly, “Mic is on, E.”

Silence.

“Curtains are opening. You are going to be amazing, E. Remember that. Good luck, baby. And you are on stage in 1..2..”

Enjolras closes his eyes, taking a deep breath. When he opens his eyes the light in them is different, shifting. He steps onto stage and when the light hits his face he’s a new person.

Any trace of Enjolras is gone, he has somebody else’s skin on and everything is fine.

Grantaire never doubted that for one second.

Every hair on Grantaire’s body stands with excitement and adrenaline, a exhilarating buzz boiling in his blood as Enjolras’s powerful voice booms across the theatre. His belt is as strong as ever, his voice so wonderful and satisfying, like the cold side of your pillow that feels amazing in the dead of night.

Enjolras is Gabe. He is perfectly portraying this complex character, the perfect embodiment. He has become this character, the way he looks at things is completely different. There is so much detail and depth behind every step he takes. He plays this character with this fresh nuance, played so lovingly and obviously painstakingly crafted. There is so much depth he embodies, a chilling performance that leaves Grantaire moved. Grantaire is unbelievably proud, it swells in his heart.

The act is coming to a close, and Enjolras sings. He’s so angelic and lovely, the light shining and framing him perfectly. But it is so chilling and eerie, his gaze is intense and bone chilling. His voice is this beautiful lyrical tenor and his vibrato is clear and satisfying, his voice steady and melodic in this incredibly angelic way.

Then the act closes, the curtains falling and the audience roars with claps and screams, whistling. Grantaire can’t help but try and peek through to see, and he can see people standing up as they cheer.

Grantaire awaits his star by the wings, and the moment the curtain falls he’s transported back into this world. He’s Enjolras, and he’s so weak. So sick.

He staggers weakly offstage, looking so weary and unwell that the moment Grantaire is in reach he collapses into his arms with exhaustion.

“Enjolras!” He exclaims as his boyfriend falls into his arms. Grantaire steadies him with some strength and pulls him into his arms. The younger boy weakly buries his face into Grantaire’s chest. He coughs harshly and sharply, his face scrunched in pain as he coughs.

Frantically, he feels his forehead and gasps at the intense heat radiating off of it.

“Fuck, E!” Grantaire hisses worriedly.

“Courf! Over here!” Grantaire calls over, and once Courfeyrac can see them his eyes widen and he’s running towards them. With his help, they manage to get Enjolras back to his dressing room.

“I’m so stupid, I’m so stupid,” Enjolras hisses to himself in self loathing, tears pricking at his eyes.

“No you’re not, E,” Courfeyrac reassures softly, trying to mask the worry in his voice.

Combeferre arrived shortly after with a damp towel and drapes it over his forehead. He is clearly shaken, very nervous and frantic.

“I failed you all,” Enjolras whimpers.

“What?! No you didn’t!” Courfeyrac insists.

“I can still perform, I promise. Just one more hour. I can do this. I promise, please,” Enjolras begs tearfully, stopping as Grantaire helps him drink more tea. He pushes Grantaire away shortly, to hack and cough powerfully, tearing up. He clearly looks like he is in a lot pain, and the sound of his coughing is awfully chesty and congested. It sounds horrible.

No one wants Enjolras to do this, but they all know Enjolras would never forgive himself if he couldn’t. They don’t want to see him in such a state. Courfeyrac and Grantaire look over at Combeferre for answers.

Combeferre looks conflicted, staring at Enjolras for a long time and sighs exhaustedly, “He can do it. But Grantaire, once you two get home you have to extensively take care of him.”

Grantaire nods determinedly, “Of course.”

The bright smile Enjolras gives them is undeniably precious.

Combeferre and Courfeyrac leave them alone, to which Grantaire sighs fondly and helps Enjolras drink more tea.

“You are a mess.”

Enjolras grins feverishly, “Your mess, though.”

Grantaire chuckles, and kisses his forehead, “Unfortunately. You are going to give me an ulcer, one day, you know?”

Grantaire doesn’t understand it–he believes it’s some type of magic or sorcery or witchcraft, the like–but when Enjolras is back on stage his symptoms disappear completely. He is energised and alive again.

Enjolras is so good that Grantaire forgets that just a short while ago Enjolras was breaking down backstage, sick as a dog. On stage Enjolras is at the best state he’s ever been. The audience could never have guessed he was running a borderline dangerous fever and what surely could become a chest infection.

The show comes to a close, and one of the last songs is this extremely powerful and moving exchange between Val Jean and Enjolras. They are both  talents, revelations, incredibly passionate. They are delivering a performance of a lifetime, pouring their hearts out to many. Grantaire can faintly hear soft sobbing from the audience. When they finish, the audience explodes into a series of claps, so touched and moved.

When the show closes, the entire theatre stands up and claps loudly. The theatre is exploding with cheering and whistling and clapping. Grantaire can’t hear anything but cheers. They can’t even start bowing because the cheering is lasting so long.

The small cast begins to bow, and Grantaire can’t help but start cheering too when Enjolras steps to the centre for his bows. He starts to tear up as the crowd goes wild for him.

When the curtains fall and the cast come out, they are bombarded by hugs by everyone backstage.

“You were amazing, 'Jolras! You’ve brought our show to life,” Courfeyrac cries, tears steaming down his face as he hugs Enjolras.

“You killed it!” Combeferre says proudly as he joins in the hugs.

But when Enjolras starts coughing again, bent over by the waist. His powerful coughs take what is left of his energy and he starts to tip slightly, and he’s leaning forwards too much and Courfeyrac is swooping in to catch him. That is when when everyone remembers that Enjolras is sick and needs to go home.

“We should go home,” Grantaire steps in, approaching his boyfriend and taking him from Courfeyrac.

“You’re right. You’ll inform us on how he’s doing, right?” Combeferre asks anxiously.

“Of course.”

“But Stage Door,” Enjolras says weakly.

“Oh my god, Enjolras. You are not in the state, everyone will understand. You need to go home,” Grantaire insists.

Enjolras becomes quiet and looks so miserable. Grantaire sighs and feels a bit guilty, helping him back to the car.

Enjolras sleeps the whole way back to their apartment. Grantaire’s glad, because Enjolras needs to recharge. Once he parks, he picks Enjolras up and starts to carry him up to the elevator. He finally makes it to their apartment, and immediately puts Enjolras down on their bed.

He is about to leave to get some supplies when Enjolras stirs and grabs for Grantaire’s arm.

“Grantaire,” Enjolras whimpers, his voice teary and obviously upset.

“Hey, baby, what’s up?” Grantaire coos as he sits at the edge of the bed to speak to him.

“I failed everyone, I did so badly, we’re going to get bad reviews and close early,” Enjolras chokes, a few tears beginning to spill from his eyes.

“What?! No! You were absolutely brilliant, baby. People were crying. Did you not see the standing fucking ovation at the end of the show? Fuck, there was one during your act closer! People loved it, Enjolras. Our message is getting out there thanks to you. So don’t you dare fucking tell me that you failed us. You’ve made us.”

Enjolras sniffled, inhaling sharply to sneeze harshly, then rubbing at his eye weakly, "I don’t believe you.”

Grantaire opens his mouth to bless him and to reassure him but his phone is beeping. Then again. And his phone is going crazy.

He pulls his phone out and quickly scans through the gibberish that is Courfeyrac’s recent texts, and when he scrolls to the original text his heart drops. Then it swells.

“Enjolras, do you want proof that you did not disappoint tonight?”

Enjolras only huffs.

“Enj, we’re going on Broadway.”

Enjolras eyes widen, and he starts crying again. He’s crying even more–but this time he’s happy. Enjolras forces himself up and throws himself over Grantaire and holds him close, hugging him tightly and continuing to cry. Grantaire presses a kiss onto the top of his head.

“We’re going on Broadway thanks to you, Enjolras. And I mean you. Not just the character you play. You. You made this all happen, and I know you aren’t always very happy with yourself and I hope this can help you start to see what I see in. I am so proud of you, and I love you so much.”

“It takes two, I thought one was enough, It’s not true, It takes two of us, You came through, when the journey was rough it took you..” Enjolras sings softly. 

“It took two of us. It takes care. It takes patience and fear and despair. To change.” Grantaire sings back. He’s a bit awkward, a little offkey, but to Enjolras it couldn’t have been more perfect.

[myhahnestopinion]

The Night A BUREAUCRATIC, OPEN-HEARTED NICE GUY Came Home: HOSPITAL MASSACRE (1982)

A hospital is a pretty solid choice of setting for a horror film. There’s a nice irony to a place centered around healing to be the site of a series of grotesque murders. Halloween II used this irony to great effect, to emphasize the inexorable horrors of Michael Myers’ pursuit of Laurie Strode on Halloween Night 1978. Other films such as A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors, Hellbound: Hellraiser II, and, to a lesser extent, Rob Zombie’s remake of Halloween II, also utilize this irony of transforming a hospital’s refuge into a house of horrors.

1982’s Hospital Massacre, also known as X-Ray and Be My Valentine, Or Else…, is not particularly concerned with this irony. It’s far too busy being fascinated by the bureaucracy of visiting a hospital. The film is most notable for staring Barbi Benton, whose career runs the gamut in moral inoffensiveness from Playboy model to Country music star (I’ll let you decide which constitutes the low point on that moral inoffensiveness scale).  Like Laurie Strode just a year prior, Barbi Benton finds herself chased by a masked killer around a hospital, but her pursuer is far more concerned with getting the proper paperwork filed than getting his kill. You really should feel sorry for this killer though, because, well, he’s just such a “nice guy.” Why doesn’t somebody want to date him?

The film’s cold open is one that certainly matches My Bloody Valentine, another clear source of inspiration for the film, in abrupt escalation, but, hey, love just moves fast sometimes. We open on “Susan’s House,” as the film’s inter-title helpfully explains, because we all know where Susan’s house is located and who Susan is, right? Here, a young, shy boy named Harold puts the finishing touches of his hand-made Valentine, before leaving it on the doorstep. Aww, we’ve all been there, right?

Harold watches from the window as Susan takes the Valentine back to her living room, where she and her friend David laugh at it and crumple it up. Susan abruptly ends her laughing to announce, “I’m going to go eat some cake now.” It’s a sudden decision that gets her out of the room long enough for Harold to break in, and kill David. Aww, we’ve all been there, right? Right? Hello?

Susan returns to find David’s dead body on the hatstand. Huh, looks like Harold’s not the only guy who’s hung up on Susan now! Ha ha ha ha ha!

But seriously, I wonder why she doesn’t want to be his Valentine? I mean, sure, his decision to murder her best friend may have come out of nowhere, but so did her sudden desire to get some cake, so they seem perfect to me! Love thrives on spontaneity!

There’s no follow up to these events before we cut to 19 years later. That’s the origin story. One of the trademark elements of a slasher film is a villain who has been wronged in the past. Freddy Krueger was burned alive in an act of vigilante justice. Jason murders teens because they let him drown, as did his mother before him. The killer from I Know What You Did Last Summer kills because he knows what they did last summer. What does Harold from Hospital Massacre have as a motivation? He was rejected by a girl once in grade school.

You know, sadly, this is probably the most believable slasher villain motivation that I’ve ever encountered.

So, in 1980, Susan has grown up to be a successful business woman, but is still unlucky in love, having divorced her husband Tom, with whom she has a daughter. That’s about all we learn about this now adult Susan before she is driven by her new boyfriend Jack to the hospital, where the remainder of the film takes place. 

The ninth floor of this hospital is currently being fumigated, which adds some nice eerie fog to the proceedings, as well as a lot of confusion as to why characters continue to visit this floor regardless. In the first of many instances of the poor communication between this hospital’s staff, Dr. Jacobs is called up to the 9th floor, and heads there, despite it being fumigated. She is promptly murdered by a mysterious man dressed in surgical scrubs.

After murdering her doctor, the surgeon killer swaps out Susan’s x-rays with a fake pair that apparently suggest that Susan is in need of immediate medical attention. The film can’t be bothered to specify just what life-threatening condition this could be exactly. All we know is that this is a urgent condition that requires Playboy model Barbi Benton to undress so that a doctor can re-evaluate her. Proper medical procedure or gratuitous nudity? I’ll let you figure that one out.

The movie tries to justify this nude scene by throwing in some hilariously lame attempts at building tension. During the check-up, the doctor moves his hands up towards Susan’s neck. Could he be about to choke her to death? Um, no, he’s just checking her pulse and breathing and stuff. But then, he picks up a sharp needle! Could he be about to stab her to death?! Um, no, he’s just drawing blood. Also, a needle poke wouldn’t kill someone.

While Susan awaits the results of her test, the film sets about establishing its murder mystery. The film’s pitiful attempt to build up a cast of suspects for its masked killer essentially amounts to the film making us question whether all the male characters are staring at Susan just because she is played by Barbi Benton, or because she’s played by Barbi Benton and so they want to kill her. 

Could the killer be Hal, a man who is allowed to wander the hallways of the hospital drunk for some reason, and who sloppily eats a hamburger with way too much ketchup so that the film can try to briefly trick us into thinking its blood? Um, no, ketchup and blood do not look similar. At all.

Could it be Susan’s ex-husband Tom, as suggested in a brief, unresolved subplot where Susan calls her daughter and is told that Tom left their child home alone? 

Could it be handsome doctor #1, Dr. Saxon, who seems intent on keeping Susan in the hospital at all costs?

Or could it be handsome doctor #2, whose name is Harry, just like the Harold from the film’s cold open, and who acts charming towards Susan before disappearing for three-fourths of the movie? 

Huh. I just don’t know, Hospital Massacre.

While a nurse is typing up Susan’s blood work, she is killed by the surgeon, who waited behind a closet door until she finished typing, despite the fact that he just wants to swap out the blood report with another fake document. Another nurse discovers this, and is strangled with a stethoscope, so at least the film delivered on everyone’s expected hospital themed murder. 

When the doctors receive this false report, they decide that Susan needs to be kept in the hospital for observation. She is placed in the same room as three elderly women, who gossip to themselves about the ways in which Susan’s still-undefined illness could cause her to shrivel up and die. Like the fumigated floor before them, the three elderly women add atmosphere to the film, being reminiscent of the Fates from Greek mythology, as well as add a lot of confusion, particularly as to who they are and why the film spends so much time on their bickering when it could be developing a more complex mystery.

With Susan kept in the hospital far longer than expected, boyfriend Jack decides to visit her. When told by a nurse that Susan was placed under observation and that she can give him no more details, Jack mutters, “That explains everything,” in a line that was clearly written as sarcastic, but is delivered in a manner that suggest the film really does want us to forget that it can’t be bothered to come up with some possible deadly disease that Susan could have.

While waiting for more word, Jack receives a phone call telling him to head up to the floor that is currently being fumigated. There, he crosses paths with the three elderly women, who are also just randomly wandering these gas-filled hallway, before heading into a nearby room. He begins to hear a menacing whisper from a shadowy figure. “Is Susan your mistress?” the voices hisses. “Can you touch her wherever you like? In all her… secret places…?” 

Secret places? Geez, I wonder why this guy can’t get a date. Well, there’s the breasts and the vulva and associated areas, but, well, most people know about those, surgeon killer… Or are there more secret places that we don’t know about?! Gasp! WHAT ARE YOU HIDING FROM US, SUSAN??!

The surgeon steps out of the shadows and kills Jack. He then delivers a Valentine gift to Susan’s bedside. Susan awakens and opens the gift to reveal a… Jack-in-the-box. Aww, how cute! Well, more accurately, it’s Jack’s-head-in-a-box, but, hey, it’s the thought that counts. This film is really trying to one-up the other Valentine themed slasher flick I’ve covered in this series with this bit, as that one only ever had cardiac organs in its Valentine’s Day presents. Eat your heart out, My Bloody Valentine!

After receiving her boyfriend’s decapitated head, Susan runs through the hallways of the hospital screaming for help. The only people she finds, though, are three men strung up in full body casts, which only causes her to scream louder. Oh my god! It’s people who have had severe enough injuries that they need extensive cast work on their bodies! The horror! How do we know if they are even people anymore with their bodies covered like that?!

Dr. Saxon finds Susan screaming, and returns her to her hospital room. After seeing that the Valentine box now only contains a cake, he decides that Susan needs to be detained, as one of the reported symptoms of her still completely unexplained medical condition is mental deterioration. With Susan now confined to the hospital, strapped to her bed, and drugged by some non-descript pink pill designed to treat her non-descript fake illness, it appears that the killer’s plot is almost complete! What could it all be leading up to?!

The surgeon picks off some more nurses and doctors before we find out. One kill involves the killer walking slowly down a hallway towards a nurse, holding a spread-out white sheet in front of him. For anyone with a dreadful fear of white sheets, such as this young nurse, it’s a terrifying sequence. For all of you out there not scared by bedsheets, it’s, well, pretty laughable.

Finally, the surgeon enacts the final stage of his master plan. With all this planning involved, I hope its something really good! He wheels Susan to a surgical table, where he begins to caress her “secret areas.” However, the surgeon decides it’s best not to leave Susan strapped down as he prepares to operate on her. And, so Susan reaches out and pulls of the mask revealing the killer to be…

Yeah, it’s Harry. 

Well, as an irritated Harry says, “Not Harry. It’s Harold, remember?” at which point the film flashes back to the cold open where child Susan laughs at child Harold’s Valentine. Yes, this film’s twist ending relies entirely on the viewer not knowing how nicknames work.

This twist is apparently targeted at the kind of people who can’t figure out that LarryBoy is actually Larry the Cucumber… which is honesty probably more people than I expect. 

But wait! There’s more! “Harry” backwards is “Yrrah”, which is approximately the sound I scream out in frustration when having to deal with how dumb this mystery was!

So, with the killer’s identity revealed, Susan asks Harold what he wants. “What I’ve always wanted,” Harold replies, while grabbing a surgical saw. “Your heart.”

…You know, I’ve heard of a lot of elaborate attempts to win over a romantic interest before, but, well, Harold here just blows them all out of the water. Here is a man who is willing to spend 19 years, during which time he made no further effort to communicate with Susan or express his feelings for her, building up his master plan, attending medical school, getting a job at a big-city hospital where Susan lives, waiting for her to get a work-related medical check-up, waiting for her to return for the results of this work-related medical check-up, murdering her primary physician so that he can swap out her X-rays for fake ones, murdering a nurse so that he can swap out her blood work for another fake, building up enough of a paper trail to get her placed under observation, and then finally taking her to an operating table so that he can literally, not figuratively, have her heart. 

Wow! How romantic! I mean, if it was me, I probably would have just cut out her heart without all that trouble or paperwork, or maybe just talk to her again because people’s feelings change a lot since grade school. But, hey, it’s just really sweet when someone’s willing to make such a grand gesture for the person they love. What a nice guy!

And so, after 19 years of careful planning, Harold’s master plan is undone when the three old women show up again, looking for Dr. Saxon, which distracts him long enough for Susan to stab him with a knife and run away. Yes, he would have gotten away with his elaborate murder plan 19 years in the making if it weren’t for those meddling… elderly people! Never underestimate the meddling nature of elderly people, dude!

The film then culminates with a tedious chase sequences around the hospital, ending with Harold being doused in chemicals, lit on fire, and tumbling off a roof to his death. Now that’s what I call burning love, am I right? Ha ha ha ha! Susan exits the hospital and is reunited with her ex-husband and daughter before the movie ends, because, hey, what other resolution do we need from a film with no plot and unremarkable characters.

You know, sometimes, the heart knows what it wants, and sometimes it doesn’t. Hospital Massacre does not know what it wants. Was it a Valentine’s Day themed slasher, or a hospital themed one? Was Harold meant to be a sympathetic character in that cold open, or was Susan?  Were those three elderly women meant to be comedic relief, or a deus ex machina, or did they serve no purpose at all? Was Harold’s forging of documents an elaborate plot, or was it entirely pointless? The film ultimately can’t decide on any of these points, leaving Hospital Massacre to desperate scramble to come up with increasingly absurd reasons as to why anything happens in this film at all, while always refusing to detail Susan’s supposed illness. While there’s a lot of charm from the film’s shlocky slasher nature, it really features nothing that hasn’t been done better elsewhere, such as in the hospital-set slashers mentioned at the beginning, or in My Bloody Valentine.

There is, however, one part of this film that truly stands out, and that’s Harold. His elaborate romantic gesture towards Susan is just truly inspiring. Seeing a man go through medical school and forge all that unnecessary paperwork just so he can gain the heart of his grade-school sweetheart… well, it was just really something. Hospital Massacre may be a terrible slasher, but I’ll always remember the way in which Harold’s gesture touched my heart, the most secret of all secret areas.

Hospital Massacre is available on Blu-ray and DVD.

NEXT: The Night A TRULY NUCLEAR FAMILY Came Home…

[raccoon-anarchy]

My Poetry Assignment thing

I still haven’t gotten my marks back for this, and maybe I’ll delete it later.

1. The Wishing Well

It’s a strange thing, love A well into which one, feeling lucky,

Willingly throws themselves down,

                                          like a sacrifice

And everyone, inevitably, hits the bottom        But, my god, does love feel like flying for a while

                                          My God

2. Pagans

Something is robbing me of my sleep

Leaving me scattered like a dropped glass

Or an ill set mirror

Leaving me to sweep the pieces off the floor,

When I can

                                           I feel restless; unsettled

                                           Like flower petals in an autumn breeze

The knowledge haunts me- that you are probably awake too

Just as unsettled

But we are too far apart

Clumsy, mismanaged words like clumsy, mismanaged hands

                                           You are not why I am losing sleep

We are two disciples of the hour of the witch

Familiar to its embrace

Its quietness, its allure, its unsettling air

We held hands and hearts across this dark

Moving together though so far apart

And carried out lamps close, blue lights upon our faces

Chanting back and forth silently with finger tips

The whole world holding its breath just for us

       You are gone now, just out of reach

       A figure, a shadow, a blur between the trees

That close in around me in the dark of my room

The whole world is holding its breath

Waiting for the chant that never comes

I’ve lost my way to the place of worship

And wander these winding hours

Unalone, but lonesome still

3. All the World’s a Choir

I’ve become fascinated by the musicality of things, places, people

The aftermath of a party feels like the start of a Violent Soho song

“The heat, it drowned itself and all the roads

with rattles from all the pubs and pokies rooms

The sound never goes...”

All the doors in the house are open, and the sounds of the morning haunt the outside world

But drift in anyway, uninvited, as sunlight reaches over crumpled cans

And

crumpled forms

Into tired eyes, to warm cool hearts.

Helium balloons quivering in the breeze like desire

Not yet given breath to.

My first love was a singer

                                          had a voice like liquid silver

I called her my stars because I swear

In her I saw a future, like a seer

Her laugh sounded like an angel taking flight

And she could touch my soul with a whisper

And those boys, that party

with their guitars slung low, lyrics curling from their lips

       like

Hymns to gods of elsewhere and other times

Their heads bobbing, hair waving

I can’t imagine my life without them in it

I count myself lucky to have fallen in with musical people

It's not something I appreciated, years ago

But the music found me

I knew a girl who I once wanted to make gasp

Just to hear what music her accent would lend my name

As it escaped her lips.

And the smartest woman I know is Polish

Her last name curls like the tail of a cat

Or the corners of her mouth when she smiles

I heard her reach back in time

And introduce the curve of a Pompeii street corner

With the notes of her voice

Come, touch my neck. Be my Dorian Grey, or I’ll be yours

Run a bow across my heartstrings, I’ll sing for you

Tease music out of me I did not know existed

I want to feel that again.

                                          I’ll put down my armor, I promise

The guitar suggested we share a bed

I like to think he was only half joking

                                          (but I could never get away with saying that)

Instead, I lay on the floor

       And we talk about girls

Why do we do that? Tiptoe around one another

I stumble like my shoelaces are loose

I’m no good at this dancing

You know that, my dear

Music was always lost on me

Always locked away

Ignorance places its hands over my ears

Takes my hands and holds my tongue

If I could only find the key

I would never stop finding rhythms

In the ways people speak

I’ve become fascinated by the musicality of things, places, people

But can’t quite grasp it

I want to learn, not for its own sake

But to know others

And to dance easily to the rhythms of their gentle hearts

All the world’s a choir, and I’m a pagan to its ways

My words never quite could hold to a stave

So I got stanzas instead

“Poetry is not real life”

The stars twinkle

“Poetry is not real life”

4. Shelley

Into me you poured kisses

and poetry under my skin ‘til it turned

my cheeks pink and warm

Bringing me to life, like a gargoyle, or golem

Made of clay and iron and black coats

And cheap whiskey

And smiles

       And bright eyes

              And a heart that beats despite its

Frankensteinian construction

You tapped lines of verse into me

Like tattoos I can’t undo

But you hated the kisses

And the poetry was not of

this reality

Someday, when they pick through my calcified heart

-Those vultures-

And peel back the layers

Under all the names of all I’ll ever love

They’ll find yours

and the white

       Scars

Left behind when I tried to scratch you out

but couldn’t

       Just couldn’t

              was not able to

And they may wonder, as do I

“Why he tattooed on his breastbone

Such a flagrant lie?”

5. Chasing Neverland

I’ve always felt out of place

Always feeling as though I’d be more comfortable in some elsewhere

- A changeling,

The green-eyed son of Oberon

Dropped in a cradle and left to cause trouble

In this world of mankind

A lost boy, looking for a Neverland

That probably doesn’t exist.

And so while I always tell people I’m going to run home

I don’t

I walk this strangely quiet and transient path

Here where the veil is thin at two am

With the trains rumbling far behind me, and the wander home ahead

Even when the night is dark

And combs my hair with an icy palm, I walk

                                          Or stagger

Watching entranced as flickering streetlights illuminate

The rain slick cement with a stutter

And the way car lamps cut through the slow dewfall

Showing the rain like a thousand shining stars

Flowers of all colours seem to wave and wink in the dark as I pass

I walk, and my mind runs away from itself, making the hills feel shallow

As I chase after my drunken thoughts trailing after your thorough absence

And do my best to reel them back in

For moments I fail and I get lost in swirling nostalgia mostly for things

That never had a chance to happen in this world

                                          But it’s warm there

                                          And it’s so cold here

                                          On these empty streets

As I wander my way back home. 6. Thomas of John

Sinner- I want what I cannot have.

These days my wine is just wine

But my bread is mouthfuls of codeine

And late nights on smoke swept streets

I fish for silver in my pocket and pass it off to the next, less fortunate, man

A sweet, poor sinner

The others tell me that he’ll just spend it on escape

                                          What do they think I’ll spend it on?

A sweet, naive sinner, they call me.

Under the judgemental eye of the watching sun

The sound of gentle hands on piano keys

Draw me in as they draw me back

To quiet moments shared when I was a humbler man.

The bags under my bloodshot eyes are swollen

Like the purses rich men push uphill

And my fingers are clumsy

                                          How did I get here?

                                          Did I even sleep?

A hopeless, faithless sinner

                                          Just like my namesake

The service is completed in a blur

Of well remembered movements

I stand in the carpark and smoke quietly

Feeling

       Cleaner?

I don’t disgust you here

Only pity, and curiosity

You ask why such a pagan

Would wander between these hallowed gates

                                          Rehearsing for my funeral

I smile, you laugh- I’m joking

                                          A little

I tell her that we are the only ones who belong here- not these older judges

This house of our childhoods,

Us poor and honest sinners

Our sweet and dying breed.

I hold this treasured moment

And want more, forevermore

Away from your new, perfect creature

A sinner- I want what I cannot have

                                                                                     Awake

       Of course

The church is no place for a pagan like me

And the distant sounds of keys

Vanish between the trees of this forest we used to wander, you and me

You are not far away, but just out of reach

So this familiar hour is just mine to keep

                                           Something is robbing me of my sleep