#instances but one watching the other die solidifies it

[taegimood]

— my girl (c.yj) ♡

pairing: choi yeonjun x fem!reader genre: friends to lovers, non-idol au, smut, fluff rating: nsfw, mdni wc: 6.1k warnings: unprotected sex, pwp (6k but most of it is smut tbh lol), softdom!yeonjun, inexperienced!reader, dry humping, oral + fingering (f receiving), squirting, petnames (baby, princess, doll, good girl, pretty girl), daddy kink (yeonjun refers to himself as daddy), spanking, creampie, multiple orgasms, light choking but not (he doesn’t squeeze), one instance of spitting, it’s established that jun is older than reader so OPPA IS USED AS AN HONORIFIC and idc if people hate it lol as a korean speaker i’m tired of westernizing shit

a/n - pls picture temptation era hair yeonjun 😵‍💫 this is inspired by a dream i had.. dreamt every part in his room up until the actual penetration 😮‍💨 cockblocked by my own brain

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yeonjun’s sheets are soft as you sit observing his bedroom, taking note of all the little details that his strong personality shines through, the first time you’ve seen the other side of his door — though how you even got to this point in the first place is still something you’re going over and over in your head as you wait for him to come back.

his soft smile is met with your nervous one as he enters the room with two water bottles in hand, shutting the door quietly behind him — your eyes follow his lithe fingers as he turns the lock — and you watch as he places the drinks on his nightstand before turning to you.

the air suddenly feels much warmer when he sits down on the bed beside you, so close that you’re almost touching, and that fond look on his face only serves to heighten your nerves as you remember that he knows what he’s doing, and you don’t.

well… sort of.

everything happened only a few hours before.

your best friend kai had invited you to hang out with him and his roommates, a chaotic group of guys who you’ve grown to call your friends as well; even yeonjun, who you may or may not have developed the hugest crush on ever from the minute that you’d first met him.

it’d been a few months of back-and-forth, sometimes convinced that it must be mutual and other times doubting your judgement completely — has he always been this flirty, or is it your imagination when his eyes linger just a little too long? — and it was on this fateful day at their apartment when it all fell apart.

(or should you say, all came together).

everyone knows to watch out once beomgyu’s got a couple of drinks in him, so it was only a matter of time before your unlucky day came when he’d decide that you would be his glorious first victim of the afternoon; and that was exactly where you found yourself as he took it upon himself to announce to everyone in the room that you and yeonjun needed to admit you wanna fuck each other already, or else he’d “just have to do something about it himself” (whatever that meant).

to say you wanted to crawl into a ditch and die would be the biggest understatement of the century.

your wide eyes were pinned to the floor as the room erupted into multiple reactions; soobin groaning with a smack upside beomgyu’s head as he scolded the younger not to say stuff like that, taehyun’s “damn,” as he knocked back his beer to cover a laugh, kai burying his head into his hands with a shriek — he swore he didn’t mean to spill your secret to beomgyu a few weeks ago, it just slipped out — and of course, the culprit in the center laughing his ass off unphased.

the only one who had yet to say anything was…

you steeled yourself and glanced up, meeting yeonjun’s eyes that were already watching you from across the living room.

your own widened marginally.

he didn’t look disgusted. he didn’t look put off. in fact, he looked…..

your breath caught. there was a small upturn to his lips, a confirmation, the hint of a smile that solidified as he quirked a brow as if in question. as if he was asking you,

“well? what should we do about it then?”

and everything changed from there.

~

it hadn’t taken long for beomgyu’s quick-moving attention span to be directed elsewhere thanks to some faithful effort on hyuka’s part, the others following suit to spare you from the spotlight — and it was only about an hour later when you found yourself alone in the kitchen for a breather, the sounds of your friend’s quarreling and laughter slightly less eardrum-shattering now from where you stood leaning against the sink.

a few minutes passed before the sound of someone else slipping into the room grabbed your attention.

your peace quickly morphed into apprehension.

“hi,” yeonjun whispered, a small smile on his face that read somewhere between gentle and amused.

his hands were in his pockets as he came to lean casually against the counter opposite you, head tilted slightly to the side as his eyes trailed over your expression, and you cursed your mouth for going dry at the sight of him.

his simple black tank top and sweatpants combo had you fighting to keep your eyes on his face — his face, pretty and framed so nicely by silky black hair that was grown out quite a bit longer than usual these days, and you wanted nothing more than to run your fingers through it as your thighs rubbed together subconsciously.

“…hi,” you whispered back.

he breathed out a small laugh.

“i wanted to talk to you, but i didn’t want the others to hear.. figured this was a good opportunity when i saw you get up.”

“r-right..”

why am i so awkward? what the fuck? oh god wait why is he coming closer-

your hands gripped the counter behind you as yeonjun stepped forward. his voice was low, quiet, meant only for you as he stood in front of you with a look on his face that had you melting in more ways than one.

“listen... i know that we’ve never talked about this thing between us. i didn’t wanna scare you off by being too forward, but now that beomgyu ran his mouth about it…”

with a feather-light touch, yeonjun reached up and tucked a piece of hair behind your ear.

“well, i’m not gonna deny what he said, and i’m pretty sure that i’m right when i say.. i think you want me the same way that i want you.”

you felt heat running down your entire body like a zap of electricity.

your fried brain didn’t even have the chance to fully process before you heard beomgyu shout from the living room, “hey, what’s taking so long?!” and the scent of yeonjun’s cologne was like a drug as he leaned in and whispered in your ear,

“if you feel ready to see where this goes.. stay here with me when they go out.”

and just like that he was gone, random assortment of snacks in hand to avoid suspicion as he called back to beomgyu, “i’m coming, just couldn’t decide what to eat!”

and you slumped against the counter with legs like jelly.

~

you received a chorus of groans and boos when you told the guys you were gonna go home instead of joining them elsewhere for dinner and drinks, earning brief suspicion only from taehyun as he eyed you questioningly for a moment — their focus primarily resting on yeonjun’s uncharacteristic opt-out that he’d blamed on a sudden migraine.

you felt ridiculous as you even headed down the elevator with them to the street outside, going out of your way to be believable, rounding the corner towards the subway station until they were well out of sight in the opposite direction before heading back up towards the apartment.

you’d’ve been lying if you said that you didn’t consider leaving yourself; your jittery nerves and quick-beating heart nearly convincing you, until you remembered the look in yeonjun’s eyes and the wetness between your legs returned.

yeonjun, choi yeonjun, one of the most popular and charismatic guys that you know — wants you.

and now here you are on his bed.

when you think about it, in your eyes yeonjun is a lot of things that you’re not; the way he just naturally draws people in, the way he carries himself, always making friends so easily; the fact that he’s genuinely cool, somehow good at everything he does and always looks hot doing it; he’s older than you — not by much, but still — and the number one thing on your mind right now:

he’s experienced.

now you’re no virgin, but your measly 1 past boyfriend is nothing in comparison to the fact that yeonjun’s ability to please a woman is a very well-checked box on his long list of skills (if beomgyu is correct about anything he’s blabbed about, at least. which today so far he seems to be).

and now, as he sits here so close to you with that same look on his face as before, that gentle smile and amused little twinkle in his eyes — well, you know right then that you’re a goner.

“hi,” he whispers, just like he did in the kitchen earlier, and you whisper it back with a shy smile.

this is the first time you’ve ever truly been alone with him.

he looks at you for a few moments, and you wonder if this is what amoebas feel like under a microscope until he places his hand on the bed beside you and rests his weight on it, by default leaning in even closer than before.

“i like you.” he says simply.

in panic mode, you resort to sarcasm - “y-yeah-“ you clear your throat - “um, yeah, i think we established that.”

his laugh sends tingles through you as a real smile not stricken with awkwardness finally blooms on your face, the ice slowly melting for you as you start to remember that right, okay, he’s a friend and not some unreachable deity (for the most part, at least).

“i.. like you too,” you respond sheepishly, and you bite your lip at the underlying shift in his tone as he keeps his eyes locked on yours and says,

“i know.”

the mood has suddenly deepened into something else.

his hand comes up to your cheek, thumb ghosting over your bottom lip as he murmurs, “is this okay?” and you don’t know when his face got so close to yours but your eyes are already threatening to flutter shut as you hum in response, lidded gaze glued to his full, pretty lips that you want so desperately all over your body.

“words, baby.” his voice is a whisper, breath warm against your lips, his own so close now that you can almost feel them —

“y-yes.”

and just like that, choi yeonjun is kissing you.

whatever you thought a real kiss was supposed to feel like, whatever kisses you had felt with your ex —

none of it compared to this.

you feel his smile when you quietly moan, his lips even softer than you had imagined, moving against yours slowly, deliberately, expertly, the hand that had been on your cheek sliding gently to the back of your neck as he deepens the kiss.

his tongue is warm and soft as it traces along your bottom lip, and you don’t care how eager you probably seem as you let it in immediately, trying not to moan again as he slips it past your lips to caress yours; you melt as he sucks lightly on your tongue before giving a teasing, gentle bite to your bottom lip as he pulls away.

you can’t even imagine how dazed you must look — but his knowing smile tells you enough.

you can’t explain it, but in that moment you gain a hunger-fueled confidence. you want to give yeonjun everything.

fuck, you want him bad.

you’re pulling him back to you faster than you can chicken out otherwise, and the pleased noise he makes as you connect your lips again only spurs you on further to do what you’ve been so badly wanting to:

you touch him, hands sliding from his shoulders up to his soft hair, pulling at it gently as his lips travel down your jaw to suckle at the skin of your neck; you moan, freely this time, eyes sliding shut and head tilting back to give him all the access he wants as you wrap an arm around his shoulders and keep him close.

his hand slides around your waist to your lower back as he slowly guides you down to lay against his sheets, your legs instinctively widening for him as he slots his hips between them, and you groan at the bulge now resting comfortably against your clothed core.

it doesn’t take long before he gently rocks his hips forwards.

you whimper, clutching to his tank top as he continues to kiss and suckle along your neck; your legs tighten around his hips and his lips tilt into a smirk against your skin as your body responds to his like it’s what it was made for, and so he does it again, this time continuing into a steady rocking pace.

the hardness of his cock drags deliciously against your center as he rolls his hips into it again and again, slow enough so that you feel everything, but firm enough that it makes your head spin and your thighs twitch with need.

“oppa,” you whisper, pleadingly, and you don’t even know what you’re asking for but you know that you just need more.

“hm?” he hums back, lips still sucking pretty bruises into your neck,

and it’s like he can read your mind as he asks with another smirk against your skin - “want more, baby?”

you nod quickly with a weak, “mhm,” and your heart jumps as his lips move up to your ear.

“tell oppa what you want.”

the husk of his voice sends shivers straight downwards.

he pulls away just enough for you to meet his eyes and you feel like a rabbit hunted down by a fox, but in your case, you never want to escape from his grasp.

“i.. i-i want…”

you can feel the heat blooming in your cheeks, remembering once again how much you haven’t experienced, and you want to tell him exactly where you want him to put his mouth — but instead your eyes avert from his as you mumble in admission,

“i-i’ve never been… well i’ve never been eaten out before. s-so.. um..”

in your peripheral you can see yeonjun’s brows lift to his hairline in disbelief. “what?”

a finger beneath your chin gently draws your gaze back to his and the genuine bewilderment in his eyes is enough to deepen your blush as he asks, “how could that bastard have possibly survived never tasting you?”

your body buzzes with electricity as your eyes widen; there’s a hunger and determination dancing in yeonjun’s stare that you’ve never been looked at with before.

his intensity makes you shiver in anticipation and it’s like you can taste the honey dripping from his words when he says,

“let me make you feel good, baby. let me give you everything that he should’ve.”

your head spins.

you’ve never felt so desired.

the second that you say okay, yeonjun places one last dizzying kiss to your lips before he’s moving down your body, guiding you out of your shirt as he slowly maps out your skin with his lips — you breathe out a sigh at the way his large hands caress you, intentionality in every touch.

eventually he sits up on his knees, pulling back from a kiss to your navel to reach for the hem of your panties. you shiver when his fingers ghost over your hips.

“lift for me,” he instructs softly, and you do, biting your lip as he begins to slowly pull them down, eyes glued to your cunt, and you watch the way his breath hitches in his throat at the strings of wetness that cling to the fabric.

“fuck,” he whispers, practically groans,

“can’t believe no one’s ever tasted such a pretty pussy before… gonna eat you so good, baby..”

you’re going out of your mind with need, his words alone sending another gush of arousal to your heat, your hungry eyes traveling down to trace the imprint of his rock-hard cock in his sweatpants.

teasingly you ghost your foot over it as he slides your panties from your ankles, and his eyes flicker up to yours as you stare back innocently; his gaze narrows and lips quirk up into a lopsided smirk as his warm hands slide up your legs.

“getting brave, now, are we?” he taunts, stopping at your thighs as he wraps his hands around them and spreads your legs open.

slowly he lowers himself between them, all the while keeping his eyes on yours, and your hips jump at the whisper of his breath against your aching cunt when he says,

“better be careful, doll… any game you try to play, i can play it better.”

and when his fingers spread you open and his lips kiss your clit, you already know that he’s ruined you for any other man.

how could you even dream of anyone else when the tip of yeonjun’s velvety tongue slips out to trace teasingly up and down your slit, or when the pad of his finger circles so lightly around your leaking hole that you might even be imagining it?

no, there’s no way you could be imagining this, not as the warmth of his mouth caresses you as he closes his lips around your clit and gently begins to suck, your head tipping back with a shudder as you whine at the feeling.

“eyes on me, princess,” he murmurs against your cunt, and when you manage to bring your gaze back to his, the sight before you is sinful.

his foxlike eyes dark and dangerous and twinkling as he watches you through his lashes, pretty lips forming a smirk that you can only feel and not see as he whispers “good girl,” - before the next thing you know, his tongue is flattening against you as he licks a firm stripe up your pussy, big hands keeping your jerking hips in place as he begins to ravish you, sucking, licking, kissing, groaning shamelessly at the taste of you and sending vibrations straight through your quivering core as you unravel beneath his touch.

“so fucking good,” he moans, sliding a finger inside of you with ease as he begins to pump it steadily in and out, practically making out with your pussy as you whimper, hands instinctively flying to his hair — you almost pull them away when suddenly he adds another digit, the stretch causing your fingers to tighten in his dark strands as your hips instinctively grind forwards against his mouth.

you’re about to apologize when yeonjun moans even deeper than before.

“that’s it, baby,” he grunts, “use my face. want it so bad, don’t you? go ahead and chase it, cum all over daddy’s tongue.”

something unholy snaps inside of you at that.

“f-fuck-” you cry, doing exactly as he said; you can’t help it as you grind your clit down on his warm tongue over and over and over, hands tightening in his hair as his fingers work impossibly faster, and a new sensation takes over you as the dam breaks and you reach your peak;

you don’t realize what’s happening at first as you’re carried through the most mind-blowing orgasm, until you feel the unusual amount of wetness soaking his sheets and hear yeonjun groaning “fuck, fuck, that’s it, baby, that’s it -“ and he’s three fingers deep as you realize you’re squirting.

it’s as though he can read your body like a book the way he can tell when it’s suddenly too much, his pace slowing gradually until he gently slides his fingers from your sopping hole, placing a final feather-light kiss to your clit before his lips and hands move to soothe your quivering thighs.

“you did so good, baby, holy shit..” the bottom half of his face is soaked in your juices as he mouths along your skin, hands massaging and caressing whatever his lips aren’t kissing;

you’re still bewildered, and can feel the raging blush on your cheeks as you’re quick to blurt in embarrassment, “i-i’m so sorry, i didn’t mean to-“

“y/n.” yeonjun looks up. “seriously, that was so fucking hot, you have no idea.”

you can see in his eyes that he’s telling the truth.

“r-really?”

he laughs, finally sitting up; “baby, i- fuck, like, you actually have no fucking idea how sexy you are.” he pushes his hair out of his face and it’s only then that you realize how heavy he’s breathing, the bulge straining against his pants somehow a million times more prominent than it was earlier.

“y/n, i’m so turned on right now that i can hardly think straight. please-“

you meet his eyes again quickly,

“please, i need to be inside you.”

apparently today is the day that you learn just how crazy choi yeonjun makes you, because despite your still-twitching thighs and your pussy so sensitive that you’re sure a slight breeze would send it into overdrive, your body is quick to betray you at his toe-curling words when your walls clench from the emptiness and a fresh wave of arousal gushes from your soaked heat.

“if you don’t fuck me right now i’m gonna go clinically insane.”

his brows lift only for a moment before he’s laughing, swooping down to catch your lips in a kiss. “well we can’t have that, now, can we?”

he gets off the bed, your eyes hungrily tracking his every move as he peels the tank top from his torso and casts it to the ground; “fuck,” you whisper as your gaze trails down the defined ridges of his abs; “fuck,” you groan when he hooks his thumbs around the waistband of his sweatpants and pulls them down with his boxers in one go.

his cock is long and slender and flushed pink, the prettiest thing you’ve ever seen as you imagine the weight of it in your mouth.

if it were anyone else, you’d wanna slap the shit-eating grin right off of his face, but this is yeonjun, and the fact that he knows he’s all that only makes him 10x hotter.

you can’t tear your eyes away from his length as you sit up on your elbows to watch, and he enjoys it, pumping himself in his hand and smearing the pre-cum around his tip with a satisfied hum.

but as he reaches for the condoms in his desk drawer, you surprise both him and yourself when you stop him.

“no.”

he pauses, looking over his shoulder at you with quirked brows —

“want you to fuck me raw.”

his mouth goes dry. you can see the fire dancing in his eyes as he slowly straightens, keeping himself under control as he asks carefully,

“are you sure?”

you bite your lip and quickly nod. “wanna feel you,” you breathe, and that does it for yeonjun as he’s back on top of you in an instant, his lips pressing to yours in a searing kiss as you moan around his swirling tongue.

his hand is on your throat, not squeezing, just resting there as if to say you’re mine, and you whine deep in your chest when you feel the tip of his cock sliding through your slippery folds.

“gonna fuck this pretty pussy so full of my cum that it’ll be dripping out of it for days,” he rasps as he taps the head of his cock repeatedly over your clit, the lewd noise met with your whimpers as you grasp at his bicep.

“please,” you whine, “want it, please-!”

his hand slides from your neck down to squeeze your tit as he sits up and hooks one of your legs over his shoulder with his free hand.

“so good for me,” he murmurs, eyes half-lidded and lusting as he looks down at you, dragging his shaft back and forth along your slick pussy; “such a good girl, begging for daddy.”

and when he finally pushes the head of his cock past your entrance, stretching you open as he sinks inside, stars explode behind your eyes and you nearly cum again right there on the spot.

“fuuck..” he groans in a drawn-out moan, eyes sliding shut and head tipping back as your walls suck him in, mouth falling open before he catches his plush bottom lip between his teeth and looks back down at you through hazy eyes, giving another rough squeeze to your tit in his grasp.

he slides his hand down to press against your lower belly as he bottoms out, your hips twitching as you gasp, and with his other hand he grips your leg that’s slung over his shoulder as he begins to grind his hips against yours.

you can’t breathe, can’t speak, overwhelmed by how fucking good it all feels, the head of his cock massaging places inside of you that you didn’t even know existed as he rolls his hips over and over, whispering fucked-out nothings;

how tight you are, how good you feel, how he’s gonna make you forget your own name by tomorrow.

and when he starts really moving, hips separating from yours only to connect again with a lewd slap of skin on skin each time he delivers a slow, firm thrust to your cunt, holding you in place so you don’t jolt up the bed — well, you never knew that something so delicious existed, and now that you’ve had a taste, you’re already rendered insatiable.

you paw at any part of him that you can reach, hands finding purchase on his thighs as his pace picks up into a steady rhythm, your lips moaning and pleading and begging around words that you can hardly get out of your mouth.

“look at you,” yeonjun coos breathlessly, “so drunk on my cock already.. perfect pussy made just for me, hm? taking daddy so well? good baby.”

he looks as blissed out as you feel, face wracked in pleasure as he picks up the pace, his hand so large where it still presses over your lower belly that his thumb is able to reach your clit, and the added stimulation along with the pressure of his palm sends your head lolling as you twitch and tremble underneath him.

“j-jjunie..!” you whimper, and you can’t help the nickname from slipping between your lips; you’ve never called him so intimately before, never said his name so freely, but your accidental drop of honorifics seems to stir something inside of him as he groans and fucks you harder;

“say that again,” he grunts as you gasp out from the sudden increase in pace.

“jjunie,” you keen immediately, gripping the sheets, gripping his arms, gripping anything as a muttered curse leaves his lips and his thumb circles faster around your aching clit.

“love it when you say my name, fuck,” he groans, hips slamming into yours and jolting you like a ragdoll as you cry out for him, the knot in your stomach tightening so fast that you swear it’s about to snap, and when he leans forward with your leg still gripped over his shoulder and his cock pounding into you at a far deeper angle than before, fireworks fill your vision as you cum around him harder than you’ve ever came in your life.

“yes, yes, yes, fuck, that’s it, cream on my cock, baby, fuck you’re so- s-so tight, fuck- just like that, let go for me, baby, good girl-“

yeonjun’s voice sounds far away as you spasm around him, his thrusts growing sloppier as your cunt clenches him so tight that it nearly forces him out; he lowers your leg back down to the bed and slows down a little to let you catch your breath but he doesn’t stop, and your watery whimpers are like music to his ears as you clutch onto him desperately.

“t-too much, too much-!” you hiccup, tears spilling from your eyes at all the overwhelming sensations, but you don’t actually want him to stop and he knows it too — he coos at you, hand sliding up to rest on your throat again as he leans down and licks a stripe up your neck to your ear.

“you can give me one more, baby, can’t you?”

a shiver rolls down your spine at the devilish smile in his voice, sweet like honey as he catches your earlobe between his teeth.

“one more so daddy can stuff you nice and full.”

your pussy clenches. “w-want your cum,” you whimper dumbly in response, too fucked out to think of anything else, and yeonjun smiles as he leans back and runs his hands down your body until they reach your hips and squeeze.

“i know,” his thrusts are still steady as he watches you with twinkling eyes; “and i’m gonna give it to you.”

your eyes widen in protest as he suddenly slides out of you without a warning, but the words die in your throat and are replaced with a squeak of surprise when he flips you over onto your stomach instead.

“ass up for me, pretty girl.”

you obey immediately with what strength you have left in your shaky limbs, a quiet whine escaping your throat over not being able to see or touch him anymore.

his little laugh from behind you indicates that he caught it.

“don’t worry, baby,” he soothes as his hands massage over your ass, “we have all the time in the world.”

your heart doesn’t even have time to skip a beat at the promise of his words when suddenly his tongue is on your pussy, your knees nearly buckling at the heat of his mouth as he licks from your clit up to your fluttering hole, and you gasp as he spits on it before his cock enters you fully in one single thrust.

you cry out, knees buckling for real this time as he holds you up, sheets crumpled in your fists as his hips immediately pick up into a quick, dizzying pace.

“love the way you fall apart around me,” he murmurs from behind you, squeezing your ass, “love how you take me so well…”

you want to touch him so badly, want to see the pleasure pooling in his eyes; you don’t have time to respond before he lands a smack on your ass, your surprised squeak spurring him on as he does it again, drilling into your cute little hole like it was made just for him as he breathes out a moan.

from this angle he can see the way your pussy swallows him so hungrily, and his grip on your hips tightens as he drags you back and forth on his cock.

“love.. l-love your.. love this so much… w-wanna be yours…”

he almost misses your dazed mumbling over the loud sound of his hips slapping lewdly against your ass, but he makes out what you said, heart swelling in his chest and cock simultaneously twitching inside of you as he leans forward, his palm sliding up along your spine to brush the hair from your fucked-out face as he pushes your body down against the sheets, chest pressed to your back now and breath caressing your ear as he continues rocking his hips even deeper.

“you’re mine, baby, you’re mine..” he whispers between kisses along your jaw, a reassurance, your soft whimper of a response causing him to bite back a smile as he continues,

“i’ve wanted you for so long.. can’t believe i finally get to have you.” his hand slips beneath you to toy with your throbbing clit, and your ass grinds back against him as a result as you moan wantonly into his sheets.

“i’ve been yours since the.. fuck.. since the second i s-saw you..fuck, p-please don’t stop..!”

your hips are moving with his now as he works your clit faster, mustering your strength and pushing your weight back as you desperately try to fuck yourself on his cock, on his fingers, chasing the rising wave in your belly that’s threatening to break as he meets your quickening movements with his own.

“touch yourself for me, baby,” he murmurs in your ear before removing his hand and propping himself up on his forearms, allowing for a more concentrated angle as he ruts into you, your choked moan muffled by the sheets as you immediately slide one hand down to rub rapidly at your clit, your other one weakly moving to tangle your fingers with his the best that you can;

“gonna cum, gonna cum,” you whimper, drool pooling at your lips, the scent of yeonjun’s cologne and the weight of his body on yours like pure intoxication as he fucks you harder, breaths heavy and staggering in your ear as he grunts,

“cum for me, baby, need to feel it, cum all over my fucking cock-“

and when your third orgasm washes over you, you’re too weak to do anything but let it, body going limp as it wracks over you in pure bliss, the warm feeling of your clenching walls finally sending yeonjun over the edge this time as he shoots his cum into you with a loud and drawn-out moan, voice breaking as he spews filthy words and incoherent curses; he presses his hips impossibly deep against yours before stuttering into sloppy thrusts to fuck himself through the rest of his orgasm as your fluttering pussy milks his cock of every last drop.

the room grows silent save for your heavy breaths, both of your chests heaving as his forehead slumps down to rest against your back; you didn’t realize how tightly you were holding onto his hand until you carefully untangle your fingers from his.

he hisses from the sensitivity as he slides his twitching length out of you.

you look at yeonjun as he rolls off of your back and flops exhaustedly onto his side next to you, and when he meets your eyes, there’s only a passing moment of silence before you both giggle.

his smile is fond and blooming with affection as he rubs a hand up and down your back, moving to smoothe the hair from your face and gently brushing his knuckles across your cheek before resting his hand on top of yours.

“hi,” he whispers.

you giggle again.

“hi,” you whisper back.

“so.. would this be a good time to ask you to be my girlfriend?”

your heart skips a beat and you bite back a smile. “i was worried you’d just want to stick to the sex..” you admit.

yeonjun shakes his head, lips forming into an endearing pout as he laces his fingers with yours.

“nah, you’re stuck with me now, princess,” he grins. “i meant what i said… i’ve been wanting you for so long.”

an indescribable feeling flutters in your chest as you giddily turn your head to bury your face in the sheets, yeonjun laughing as he shuffles closer, rolling you over onto your back despite your giggle-ridden, poorly-executed attempts to fight him off.

you grin up at him and he grins down at you, hovering over you now with a hand on your cheek as his endeared eyes trail over each of your features as if to memorize them.

“my girl,” he whispers, tucking your hair behind your ear.

you tilt your head up to meet his lips when he leans in and kisses you softly, your hands playing with the long hair at the nape of his neck.

“i meant what i said too,” you murmur against him.

“mine since the second you saw me, huh?” yeonjun’s cocky grin is light and teasing as you scrunch your nose at him, flicking his forehead and sending him into another pout.

“yeah, yeah. whatever, pretty boy.”

instead of responding he buries his face in your neck in a flurry of kisses as you squeal in surprise, laughing as you wiggle around underneath him;“stop, that tickles!”

“gotta make up for all the lost time when i didn’t make a move,” he reasons as his kisses move to your cheeks, your nose, your lips — you’ve never seen this side of yeonjun before, so soft and gentle and sweet; the fact that it seems reserved only for you sends butterflies fluttering through your tummy.

you spend your evening like that, wrapped in each other’s arms as you talk about your relationship, talk about the feelings that led you here, talk about this and that and everything in-between;

“does this count as our first date?” you ask quizzically. he wrinkles his nose.

“no way, i’m gonna do the most romantic shit ever for that.”

you snort. “isn’t that what this is?”

but you don’t have the chance to tease him any further when the beeping sound of his apartment passcode being entered causes you both to freeze.

you were so caught up that neither of you considered the time; nor the fact that yeonjun does indeed have 4 other roommates who would in fact be coming home at some point or another.

that some point apparently being now as the rowdy chatter of your friends erupts into the foyer until you suddenly hear soobin’s tipsy mumble. “what the… what are y/n’s shoes doing here?”

you and yeonjun turn to look at each other as your friends’ voices fall silent.

the seconds pass and you almost wonder if you’re in the clear…

but of course, no peace lasts forever with beomgyu in the house.

“OH MY GOD,” he screams.

“THEY FUCKED!”

[24-guy]

3070 words later. I present to you...

What was the deal with the grill brush?

An amateur essay on “Just for Once” from Nerdy Prudes Must Die by J

When listening to the soundtrack for Nerdy Prudes Must Die (NPMD), I realized that the song that was hitting me most was, unexpectedly, Just for Once. This was odd to me because one could argue that, of all the songs in the musical, Just for Once isn’t that emotional of a song. Especially since it was sung by a side character like Ruth. But since this instance, every time I listened to it, I was struck with the desire to sit and properly delve into the lyrics and try to understand what exactly it was about it that made it so emotional to me. My aim in writing this is to understand how this song develops Ruth’s character further than her initial portrayal.

To do this, we need to take what we already know about Ruth and put it into context. Before this song happens, we have seen Ruth, as a character, in five of the nine songs, with Just for Once being the tenth song in the musical. This feels important to note as this is a significant amount of time to get to know Ruth and her character as well as her motivations and story through the musical.

Ruth is one of the two characters that open the musical. The first is a fellow nerd, Richie, who sings that he is dead. The stage is set in red lighting. When Ruth joins as a second voice to follow up his line, the context stays the same. We know from the first song of the musical that Ruth is going to die. As the performance continues, we go into a bigger piece with the students of Hatchetfield High School singing about how much school sucks. This doesn’t tell us much about her character, so let’s move on.

Literal monster is a song where the nerds of Hatchetfield High sing about their bully, Max Jägerman. Ruth’s part in this is telling us that she is a nerd and that she gets bullied. She has both solo and group lines that tell the audience and the listener that they aren’t enthusiastic about the bullying stopping. However, one of the lines in the part after the first chorus gives us our first hint into Ruth’s main character trait, she is extremely sexual.

The musical continues after this to see our main trio of nerds at a library. Peter, Richie and Ruth are working together on a thermodynamics paper. Here, we get another line that cements Ruth’s main trait being that she is extremely lonely, and that comes across in often uncomfortable moments. This scene we also get told that Ruth craves contact enough that she will talk telemarketers into hanging up the phone, and that she sees Peter getting a call from one as “lucky”. As the scene continues, we see that Ruth doesn’t seem to understand personal space and is nosey as she asks Peter about what Stephanie Lauter – a popular girl from school – is talking to him about. There is some minor things to note from this scene too, like how she references Star Wars and how she initially agrees that Peter shouldn’t get his hopes up about Stephanie because they’re too different in the social hierarchy in school.

Our next proper character moment happens when Ruth, Richie and Stephanie go to the boy’s bathroom to find Peter after he didn’t show up to study at a restaurant with Stephanie. Here, she remarks how the boys are lucky because they can all watch each other go to the toilet thanks to the urinals not having walls between them.

Our last major scene with Ruth and new traits to note, is during the set-up and consequence of a prank that the nerds, Stephanie and a girl called Grace play on their bully, Max. During the set-up we see that Ruth’s history of bullying leads her to lash out at Stephanie for calling them nerds, going into too much detail about her allergy to deodorant. It helps to solidify Ruth as someone who tends to make people uncomfortable with her lack of a vocal filter. In a later moment during the same setting, Ruth is talking to a telemarketer and gets hung up on. When Ruth talks about her nervousness about pulling off the prank, Stephanie comforts her. This leads to Ruth saying that Stephanie is nice, and that she might be in love with her. This helps us understand that Ruth probably doesn’t understand a lot of what she’s feeling, considering that earlier on she seemed almost negatively inclined towards Stephanie. In a moment between Richie and Peter, we get further confirmation that Ruth is “thirsty” all the time, and that it would be easy to sleep with her and then leave her because of it. When the prank goes wrong, with Max fighting against the perceived ghost and skeleton, we see that Ruth – in the skeleton costume – seems flattered and happy with the praise from Max.

So, to recap. In the lead up to Just for Once, we can understand that Ruth is an anxious character. She doesn’t think too highly of herself or her fellow nerds and will only really push for them to try to get ahead if someone else seems to be reaching out with them to support them. We know that she is touch starved enough that someone being kind and touching her shoulder is enough to make her think that she is in love with someone and that, because of this, she will take any human contact that she can – even if its salespeople on the phone.

With this foundation, we can now talk about how Just for Once expands our view of Ruth as a character.

In the opening before the song, we find that Ruth thinks she can perform on stage better than one of her classmates. This leads into our “musical in a musical” song that is a staple of StarKid shows. This song is supposed to be sung within the context of the musical “The Barbecue Monologues” that exists within the Hatchetfield universe, but I think it can do well at telling us a lot about Ruth’s character as she did decide to sing this song over any of the others that possibly exist within the rest of the production.

The first hint that the song means more to Ruth than immediately apparent is during the end of the second verse, where Ruth sings “And life is fine, if only it were mine.” While it may be because the character that she’s singing for is discontent with life, we have also seen that Ruth doesn’t really fit in outside of the nerd friend group she’s found herself in. We can speculate that she also feels like life isn’t hers to hold. She may feel like she would enjoy life, if only it was something that she could enjoy, seeing as for so long before this point in her story, she was being bullied.

Before this, she sings about how the character has “installed a new bay window” and that they were shopping “for shutters to obstruct the view”. I think that this implies that Ruth understands that having improvements to her life is something that she should want (after Max’s death, the bullying stops entirely), and that she can see the appeal of, but she still wants something to conceal the view of the outside, or even stop the outside from seeing who she is on the inside.

The chorus is the main tell that this song goes deeper than surface level to me. Ruth sings that “just for once I’d be the centre of attention, just for once, remember what a life could be, just for once I feel the light inside the burning of a candle, living just for once…” I’m going to take apart this chorus piece by piece to explain what I think each part means.

The opening line states, “just for once I’d be the centre of attention,” and this lines up with what we know already about Ruth’s character. She has demonstrated already that she craves attention and affection. We have seen her reaction to being praised for her performance as the skeleton in the prank to Max. Ruth wants to be loved, and to have her performance praised. She wants to be the lead of a play.

The next is “just for once, remember what a life could be” this feels like it’s reiterating my point where Ruth wants to remember what her life could mean if there was never any bullying that happened as it has warped her view of what life is. She now has a downplayed life where there’s no point in standing up to people because what’s the point if they all have more worth in your school than you do?

The second to last part is “just for once I’d feel the light inside the burning of a candle” and I think that this means that she wants to feel the light of the spotlight on her, that she wants to be in the spotlight. The way candles are always described is as calm, dancing flames. She wants to be like the flames on candles, to be seen as a delicate but bright focal point of the entire picture.

The final line of the chorus is “living just for once” and it is repeated halfway after the initial singing of it. This, again, just gives the impression that Ruth doesn’t think she was ever really living. She wants to live a good, happy life. But she can’t.

There is a line in the third verse that states “and I was not unhappy about the attention I ensnared, judge me”. This is referring to the character she’s singing for losing their hair after chemotherapy. It can also be read as Ruth not being unhappy about the attention she possibly got after the news of Richie’s death got around. After all, they were both nerds, and in a superficial school like Hatchetfield High even if they weren’t friends, she’d probably get some attention thanks to the apologies gained. This isn’t to say that she was happy, or even neutral, about Richie’s death. This is me pointing out that she would have gotten some of that attention she craved from the loss of her friend.

The following lines don’t stand out to me as anything personal as they start to feel more like the story that she’s singing about is getting across comes in. But the chorus changes again, so I’ll cover those lines too.

The first of these lines is “just for once my life could be just what I wanted”. Here it feels, again, like Ruth wants her life to be something specific, that she could just be better, and be more confident, popular, whatever.

The following is “just for once I’d feel the spark that I once knew”. This introduces another piece of information when it comes to Ruth’s character; she used to know what it felt like to be like this, to perform. She has felt that spark of being on stage, like she is while singing this, and she wants to feel that spark again.

The next is a similar line to one in the first, with a single word changed. “Just for once I’d feel the fight inside the burning of a candle”. This doesn’t change a lot about the implications of the line, but it does give the feeling that she feels like she could be ready to fight for wanting this. She wants this bad enough that, just for once, she’s ready to fight for it.

“Something more than I can handle” is the last line before we have a “just for once” and I feel like this calls again to her wanting to be in that spotlight. She wants to be in the spotlight, even if she knows that she can’t handle the pressure it puts her under for doing so. This marks a turning point in the song where the tone shifts, paralleling what Ruth may be going through with realizing she might not be ready to handle the pressure that being on stage could cause.

The first line of this section is “Should I flip the burgers now? Should I double check its well done on the outside not within?” This is filled with confusion about what she is doing. Ruth’s character has been placed to supervise something they don’t know what they’re looking for when it comes to checking it’s fine to flip the burgers. I believe this parallels Ruth’s hesitance and uncertainty when it comes to navigating a space like theatre, or high school, where she does know what to look for in theory. But in practice she falters, consumed by insecurity and self-doubt, potentially ruining her reputation/ ”burgers” if she does one thing wrong.

Breaking up the lines in this portion of the song are painful sounding “oh”s that sound like pleading to whoever is listening.

“Should I let the coals burn out? Should I let the years cook my body down in front of him?” Is the following line. And, again, this feels like a parallel between the character’s doubt about themselves and their health struggles with getting cancer at a reasonably early age, and Ruth’s doubts about her popularity and lack of connection, feeling like her life is over even though she’s only eighteen years old and her life is barely properly begun. She feels undesirable now, how is she going to feel when she’s older?

This next part of the song, while just repeating the line “Just for once”, has a portion of the music playing that is a leitmotif that has shown up in a lot of the songs before this point. Most noticeably, it takes centre stage first during the song “Cooler Than I Think I Am”. It plays over the top of a part of the chorus where Peter – the lead singer – sings the line “I’m not a loser”. This is brought up again during the titular song “Nerdy Prudes Must Die”, where Max is about to kill Richie, and Richie sings the line as a last-ditch effort to prove he’s no longer a loser, Max shouldn’t kill him. This musical idea is used as a point where the nerds are breaking out of their set place in Hatchetfield High’s social hierarchy. Richie uses it as a beg to be spared. The music behind Ruth’s vocals use it to foreshadow her demise at the end of this song thanks to the use of it in Richie’s number. It sets hope up and dread in the audience when they remember that Ruth was alongside Richie in the opening number singing about how they were dead.

The final part of the song doesn’t seem like it’s a part of the song from the in-universe musical at all. Ruth sings about how a family is borrowing her tap shoes. It’s melancholy in tone, and she continues, singing how it’s “no bother, I never ever use them”. And in a heart-wrenching moment, she says “I used to dance”, before repeating “I used to dance” like she’s about to cry.

I think that moment of the song is the most plain about Ruth’s feelings. I think she did used to dance, and that she did lend her tap shoes to someone because her anxiety stops her from performing anymore. This is a sad moment that lingers slightly before we return to spoken dialogue for the end.

“I found your grill brush, Maurie. It was right here, all along.” Right. The grill brush. This is one of the main reasons I wanted to write this in depth look at Just for Once, because I feel like the grill brush holds more meaning than it first appears. When it is first mentioned, the character of Maurie is looking for the grill brush and Ruth’s character gives a sarcastic comment about how they used it to brush their hair that morning. We know this is even more of a joke thanks to the later lines describing the chemotherapy. However, this ending says that the brush was there the whole time.

I think that the grill brush is symbolizing Ruth and her ability to perform. Given the initial response, it would make sense for the parallel to be how Ruth wants to perform but can’t because, well, she’s herself. She’s nerdy little Ruth who makes sexual remarks and Star Wars references and has anxiety so bad she quit dancing even in her free time. But, after this performance she does while the rest of the cast for The Barbeque Monologues are taking a break, she has more than enough ability to act on stage if the pressure isn’t there. She can do it. So why does she sound so sad when she says, “It was right here, all along…”? Because she knows that even if she can perform, she can’t do it with an audience thanks to her anxiety and self-doubt.

So where does this leave us with Ruth’s character after watching this performance? We now know that Ruth, despite initial appearances, is an aspiring actor with the ability to act but her anxiety is holding her back. She’s performed willingly on stage, but when she knows there is no audience to watch her perform. Even though she wants attention and to have the comfort of people seeing her, she still wants to have the ability of shutting everything out, letting herself be a secret because that’s what she’s used to.

Just for Once feels so sad because it’s an “I want” song that ends with the lead dying. The audience listens to her story, her wants and desires, and knows that she is going to die before the end of the musical because that is what we were told with the opening number. Just for Once is a song that Ruth sings to herself because she can let herself be selfish, and she can let herself want to be the centre of attention when she’s stood on stage alone with nobody to judge her.

Maybe if she survived, she would be able to gain the courage to handle the pressure she feels when she’s stood up on that stage.

[eddie-hellfire-munson]

𝕭𝖔𝖗𝖉𝖊𝖗𝖑𝖎𝖓𝖊

pairing: Eddie Munson x Steve Harrington

synopsis: "Somehow Eddie returned" [it's a star wars reference].

warnings: alcohol abuse, unhealthy coping mechanisms, Steve being miserable.

word count: 5651

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When the sky went dark and ash fell from the clouds above Steve Harrington knew things wouldn't be the same. When they'd entered the Upside Down and attempted to fight off the things that went bump in the night he knew somehow, call it a sixth sense, that things were going to shift. He knew the world was going to tilt on its axis though whether that would be for good or bad he couldn't say, that was until the darker half of Hawkins began to bleed into their current reality. It started small after the earthquake- such as the occasional red strike of lightning through the sky during a storm or that first initial instance of cold ash falling to blanket Hawkins in dusty gray. Other than that things seemed relatively normal, or as normal as they could be. As much as he himself tried to ignore it, fend off the feelings of guilt and fear, his world had tilted on its own axis as well. After the death of Eddie Munson he wasn't the same, nobody was for that matter. He and Robin continued to go to work with Keith at Family Video, the media shifted it's blame onto Jason Carver after it was revealed how he'd chased down an innocent man- which was really the only positive thing that had come of all this, and the kids all eventually went back to school now that things were deemed safe. Their close knit relationship due to the shared trauma both strengthened and began to fall apart at the seams.. mainly on the end of one Dustin Henderson. Steve couldn't blame him, hell if he lost his best friend he'd probably react much the same. Dustin had taken over the un-appointed leader role in Hellfire, Steve knew he wasn't trying to replace Eddie and that he was coping the only way he realistically knew how... but the issue was- well Dustin and Steve weren't on speaking terms. It had been weeks and while Steve tried to apologize, tried to help, Dustin didn't want to hear it. That night in the Upside Down had been brutal on them all, Dustin had to watch his best friend die- and Steve had to set his feelings aside and play mediator yet again. He dragged Dustin away from Eddie Munson's mangled corpse.

He could still recall so vividly the way he looked. Eyes wide and unblinking, lifeless and empty. Hair matted and stuck to his face, caked with grime and dirt. Blood soaked clothes, open wounds still oozing and angry- his Hellfire shirt a tattered mess. Dustin had pulled him up onto his lap, cradling him and sobbing- begging him to wake up and shaking him as if that would bring the other man back but Steve knew better. Steve had to pry him away. Steve had to hoist Dustin over his shoulder when the younger boy tried to scramble right back to Eddie's side. Steve had to carry him up through the portal in the trailer. Steve had to sit him down on the mattress in the real world and tell him Eddie was gone, that he wasn't coming back and watch as the sheer horror and realization sink in. Steve had to hold back his own emotions, his own feelings of guilt clawing at his chest while bile rose in the back of his throat because if he'd just stayed behind maybe things would be different. He had to watch over the course of four days as Dustin's sadness turned to rage, had to sit and watch silently as Dustin shut him out- his last words hitting the nail on the head and solidifying Steve's guilt.

"If you would've been there, Eddie would still be HERE- Steve. Fuck you."

That was the first time Steve had heard Dustin Henderson swear. Sure the kid dropped the occasional 'bullshit' or 'shit' on him and was always reprimanded for it but this time Steve had let it slide. He let Dustin swear and point fingers and place blame because deep down he knew the kid was right. If he had been there.. maybe things would be different. Everyone grieved in their own ways, and Steve threw himself into work. He picked up extra shifts so he'd have to spend less time in an empty house, his parents had decided to extend their ‘business trip’ in New York leaving Steve in an empty home for an undisclosed amount of time. They could be gone days, weeks, months, and while he didn't mind them being gone- he didn't want to be left in an empty house with only his own thoughts to keep him company. Steve Harrington went to work by day, and at night he found solace and comfort at the bottom of a bottle of whiskey. He drank most nights, but even the sweet embrace of a good buzz couldn't always keep his thoughts at bay. Sometimes his mind would wander, wander to what could have been if he would've said screw it and stayed behind- or if the party would have never separated at all. Would Eddie slot so effortlessly into his life just as Robin had? He could have gotten the man a job at Family Video, could've spent more time with him- and Robin of course him and Robin. Sometimes when he drank these ideas came to fruition in his dreams, taunting him and fueling his survivors guilt when he woke up the next day. It bothered him how quickly everyone aside from the party seemed to move on, Eddie hadn't had that big of an impact on their lives so he couldn't blame them for losing interest when his name was cleared and he was pronounced missing but it still hurt. It hurt that nobody cared that he was gone, meanwhile Steve drank himself silly and vented his emotions to the man's jacket that maintained a permanent residence on the chair in the corner of his room. Everyone grieves differently, and for Steve that involved cradling a jacket and sobbing while apology after apology tumbled from his lips like a mantra- sometimes he'd fall asleep with that jacket still clutched to his chest.. sometimes he'd fall asleep knelt at the base of the chair it always sat on, cheek resting on the plush cushion like a pillow.

He'd woken up, unsurprisingly, on the floor. His knees were cramped and sore from kneeling on his carpet all night, cheek pressed to the now warm fabric of that denim number- emptied bottle of jack sat at his side. With a groan he sat back, rubbing the indent of Eddie's iron maiden patch against his cheek in an attempt to soothe the angry red skin as he glanced over at the clock. One in the afternoon, the glowing numbers of his analog clock mocked him- he'd slept through half the day. Like every day he went through the motions- brushing his teeth, taking a hot shower that lasted a good hour because he tended to stand in there for prolonged amounts of time just staring at the wall, get dressed, attempt to do his hair, make coffee: black with one scoop of sugar, pound a Tylenol or aspirin- whichever he saw on the counter first, head out the door to pick up Robin for their shift. 

"You look like shit Steve." 

No 'good afternoon', no 'hey how was your night'- just 'you look like shit Steve' as if he wasn't already acutely aware of how awful he looked. There was still a round indent in his cheek from having fallen asleep on top of Eddie's denim jacket, his hair hadn't wanted to behave and he'd given up trying to get it to coif like it usually did so it sat entirely deflated, and there were thick puffy bags under his eyes.. all this being on top of the throbbing headache he was doing his best to power through. So yeah, yeah he knew he looked like shit but when he turned his head to quip back he was met with concerned eyes and an arched brow. With a sort of defeated sigh and a hand running uselessly though his hair he just fixed her with a soft smile and a shrug that was meant to be reassuring combined with his pathetic little excuse of "Im fine Robs, just slept a little rough is all." It was obvious she didn't buy it, but he was thankful she didn't press him for more information as they pulled into the parking lot five minutes past two- five minutes late for their shift. Things between Steve and Robin hadn't changed too much- they were still thick as thieves and closer than ever, though Robin had lost just a little bit of her spark since the incidents in the Upside Down. She was a little less energetic, tended to ramble just a bit less, and they fell into comfortable silence during their shifts more often than they used to. Today was no different, settling into their routine at work- Robin managing the counter while Steve walked around the aisles and put movies back. It was nice, quiet but not in the uncomfortable or unwelcome way- and they had little to no customers throughout their entire shift. On their drive home Robin had gone on a tangent about how weird it was that Steve hadn't tried hitting on a single girl since they started working again- going so far as to press the back of her hand to his forehead when she stepped out of the car and he'd actually laughed for the first time in days. He didn't want to go home.

8:30pm- Following his usual routine he kicked his shoes off at the door, not bothering to put them on the shoe rack as he made his way into the kitchen to retrieve a six pack of beer. He sat on his bedroom floor, back propped against the bed as he cracked one open and stared at his usual company for the night: Eddie's Jacket. "Hey man, how was your day?... Mine was alright, Robin made fun of me for not knowing who Marty McFly is... someone also returned Re-Animator finally, dunno if you've seen it but it seems like something you'd be into." Slowly he raised the can, taking a long hard swig as he just stared at the faded and worn out denim. It looked just the same as it did the night that Eddie had thrown it at him, still spattered with his own blood from his run in with the demobats. With half the can chugged down he set it between his feet, propping his elbows up on his knees as he cocked his head to the side. "Dustin hasn't spoken to me in a few weeks.. but I think he's doing alright from what Mike has told me. He's in charge of Hellfire now, you'd be proud of him.. he's just like you. He misses you, we all miss you....I miss you. I know we didn't really know each other, it's probably weird that I'm sitting here talking to your goddamn jacket, probably weird that I still have it, but I fuckin miss you Munson.. maybe not as much as Henderson does- but I miss you." and it was true, he did miss Eddie. He missed the moments in between the chaos, the times where they all laughed because of something Eddie said or did. He missed the way his eyes lit up when he got really excited over something, was it strange that he noticed these sorts of things? Steve didn't think so, he was an observant man- to an extent. He could appreciate the beauty in another person without it being romantic, he did it with Robin- the pair were platonic with a capital P and yet he found things he enjoyed about her as well. He enjoyed the way she rambled, how Eddie rambled when he was nervous. It was endearing, but platonic with a capital P just as his feelings towards Robin were.

10:39am- He didn't remember finishing that pack of beer but the empty carton was sat on his floor still and at some point he'd dragged himself up onto the bed with Eddie's jacket wrapped around him like a security blanket. For the first time since returning from the Upside Down he'd slept through the entire night without a spot of night terrors or nightmares plaguing him. He woke up with a mild headache from all the beer but he felt well rested, deciding to skip this morning's cup of coffee in favor of a tall glass of water before again going through the motions of getting ready for work. Shower, brush teeth, fiddle with hair until it looks decent for once, add a few things to the grocery list, get dressed, head out the door- in that order. It was a muggy summer afternoon but despite this he left the house with a bounce to his step, settling into his car and drumming his fingers against the steering wheel the entire ride to the Buckley household. There was no concern for him this time when Robin hopped into the car, the pair making idle conversation that consisted of Robin going on about how she had plans with Nancy which earned a raised brow before the girl went into a spiral promising that it was purely platonic "With a capital P! She's still with Johnathan-". Steve had gotten a word out here and there, letting the other ramble on about how excited she was to actually go and do something.. Steve wished he was so lucky but he had a routine- and if he wasn't home on time who would talk to Eddie? No that wasn't right.. Eddie's jacket, not Eddie. Eddie was gone. This shift went by considerably faster, maybe due to having gotten enough sleep- or maybe because Robin kept him from looking at the clock every five minutes by forcing him to play checkers with her in between customers... either way when the sun began to set and the clock read 7pm he was excited to close up and head home for the day.

9:03pm- Steve had arrived home later than intended, having stopped at the store on his way home to pick up a few necessities since his parents still hadn’t returned and someone had to keep the house in a livable condition. Toilet paper, bread, frozen pizzas, batteries for the tv remote, and of course a new bottle of Jack. Breaking routine a bit he kicked his shoes off in the comfort of his own bedroom, bottle of jack in hand as he brought it up with him after unpacking the rest of the groceries. He twisted the cap off as he carefully kicked both shoes away from the door, glancing over at his chair expecting to be met with the sight of Eddie's jacket only it wasn't there. His hands rattled, nearly dropping the bottle as his eyes darted around the room- panic clawing its way up his throat and chilling him to his very core until his gaze landed on the familiar worn denim sitting on his bed still crumpled from when he'd slipped out of it before work. "Jesus- sorry I'm late Munson... I uh- needed more whiskey." Everybody grieved differently. Dustin had busied himself with Hellfire club, Mike had begun planning a new campaign for Dustin, Robin had begun spending her free time with Nancy, and Steve spoke to a piece of fabric. He supposed it made him a little strange, treating an article of clothing as if it were a living breathing human being wasn't exactly normal but it helped him in a weird way. If he could treat this jacket the way he'd treat Eddie.. maybe, just maybe, he'd be able to forgive himself one day. He didn't bother getting dressed again after his uniform hit the floor and he was left standing next to his bed clad in a pair of boxer briefs, nor did he hesitate to slide that jacket back over his shoulders as he leaned back against the headboard of his bed.

1:54am- Dreams weren't something Steve had too often, unless you counted the nightmares he had on an almost weekly basis ever since Barb had 'drowned in his pool' some years ago. He had a few recurring nightmares about the things that went bump in the night- getting eaten alive by demobats being the new one that he found almost ironic since.. well.. that's how Eddie had gone. His own near-death experience at the hands of those winged devils was enough to give him a lasting fear, seeing Eddie's mangled body had solidified that fear for him. Steve wasn't a dreamer usually, but what constitutes as a dream? Well, a dream is a series of thoughts, images, and sensations occurring in a person's mind while they're asleep. Most people think of dreams being good, positive, often enjoyable or mildly confusing things that once awake can just vaguely be remembered or in most cases are forgotten entirely seconds after waking up. Nightmares were the negative dreams- scary and unpredictable.. they could rear their ugly heads at any given time and turn a good dream over on its ass. What Steve experienced was neither good nor bad.

Out of body experiences were always something Steve assumed to be a myth, some made up thing you only heard about in movies about magic- not that he enjoyed that sort of thing but he’d been making his way through Eddie’s extensive collection of fantasy films on his days off. When drifting off to sleep it was a sinking sort of feeling despite still being propped upright against the wooden headboard. It was like some invisible force was pulling him down.. down… down into the plush depths of his mattress and into total darkness before he snapped back up like the ricochet of a rubber band pulled taut and then released. All of a sudden he was in Eddie’s trailer, in his room that he’d seen just in passing during their brief time inside.. and there, sat on the couch, was Eddie. His jaw was slacked, eyes dull and lifeless and yet Steve found himself reaching out for the other but before he could touch the man he’d turned to smoke and vanished. Steve’s legs were welded to the spot, he couldn’t move as he sank into the carpet like quicksand- dropping down deeper until he was engulfed in darkness once more only to emerge on the other side spat out like a hiccup into the Upside Down. His back hit the carpet, eyes wide and alert and as he sat up he came face to face with Eddie again- only he looked like himself.. like not a thing had happened to him. He didn't open his mouth, didn’t move or blink, he just stared Steve down with wide panicked eyes as a slowed rendition of Trapped Under Ice by Metallica played slowed down and distorted through the alternate version of Eddie’s living room.

No release from my cryonic state

What is this, I've been stricken by fate?

Wrapped up tight, cannot move can't break free

Hand of doom has a tight grip on me

Freezing, can't move at all

Screaming, can't hear my call

I, I'm dying to live

Cry out

I'm trapped under ice

Those lyrics, just those lines, played on repeat like a mantra as Eddie stared at Steve- looked directly into his soul. They sat like that for what could have been minutes, hours, days- Steve wasn’t sure, time in the Upside Down had always been a little wonky and he supposed that went for the dreamt up version of it as well…. assuming this really was a dream. With motions quick as lightning Eddie’s hands shot forwards, gripping each side of Steve’s face as tears as black as night welled up and slid down his cheeks thick as molasses. His jaw twitched, popping open just a fraction as Steve watched on in shock.

“RUN!”

8:30am- Birds chirped just outside the clear glass of Steve’s window as he shot up in bed, eyes wide and chest heaving as he’d been forced out of his dream by the blaring of his alarm clock. He didn’t know how to feel about the things he’d seen, didn’t know how to process seeing Eddie so clearly.. so vividly as if the man were actually there. He could still feel the chilled press of clammy hands against his cheeks, still feel the frantic tremble in those limbs as he’d shouted at him without even moving his mouth. Normally he would’ve called Robin to ask but her shift started later than his- so he instead busied himself with getting ready for the few hours he’d be spending with the man.. The myth.. The legend- Keith himself.

10:00am- Steve had walked into work right on time, an exceedingly rare occurrence as of late but Keith didn’t seem to mind either way. Without Robin there to keep him company and keep his mind occupied the first few hours of his shift were absolute hell on earth, the worst form of torture known to mankind! It was, in short, boring. To give Keith some credit he wasn’t all bad, sure the guy was weird and had a knack for taking things way too seriously but he wasn’t terrible in any way shape or form. 10am until 1pm- exactly three hours were spent in the other man’s company and god was he happy to see that familiar head of messy chestnut hair when Robin finally strode through the big glass doors. He didn’t bother idle chit chat, didn’t bother avoiding the topic of his dream- he needed advice and who better to give it to him than his best friend and platonic soulmate Robin Buckley?

“So- Eddie grabbed your face… told you to run… and then you woke up?”

Steve nodded profusely, hand instinctively raising to fix his hair- smooth it back out as he cleared his throat. “Yeah, I mean he looked scared… and I think I should’ve been scared too Robs but I wasn’t. It was really weird.” Maybe he was insane, maybe he’d missed the other man far more than he’d initially thought or maybe he was just going off the deep end and the dream meant absolutely nothing but it didn’t feel like it was nothing. It didn’t feel empty and it didn't feel pointless. Robin had always been good at deciphering these things, had always been good at reading between the lines and seeing the deeper meaning within and as he watched her nod along he’d held out a little bit of hope that she’d be able to tell him something about his dream.

“Steve… are you getting enough sleep? Are you drinking again? Look at me-”

And that was it. Disappointed wasn’t quite the word for what Steve felt, betrayed maybe? For the first time in their friendship he and Robin weren’t on the same page, not even remotely although she was pinning him yet again with that knowing look of concern that he didn’t quite understand. With a sigh he slouched back against the wall behind the counter they occupied, arms crossing over his chest as he shook his head and did his best to smile though the light behind his eyes had gone out and suddenly he wanted the floor to swallow him up. He didn’t usually take dreams seriously, usually didn’t think they would or could have any lasting impact but this one… he couldn’t put his finger on why exactly but it had felt so real, like Eddie had genuinely been warning him of something. “I’m fine Robs, seriously- I’m fine. Just a wild dream that’s all.”

The rest of their shift went on in relative silence, Steve didn’t feel like talking after that and Robin didn’t force him to socialize. He was hurt, but he couldn’t expect her to understand how real it had felt, like Eddie really was reaching out to him somehow… she wasn’t there, so of course she didn’t understand. It was a quick close when the sun set, and after dropping Robs off at home Steve returned to his own empty estate. He slid his shoes off at the door, setting them on the shoe rack on his way to the kitchen where he could see the flashing green light of the phone signaling there was a voicemail waiting for him. He pressed the little ivory button, one hand on his hip as he listened to the recording.

“Steven? Honey? Are you there? Pick up the phone please.” It was his mother, he could hear his father in the background cut in with a “Elaine he’s probably at work, hurry up we have dinner reservations at-” before a soft intake of air from his mother as she covered the receiver so it didn’t pick up whatever muffled and brief conversation they were having.

“Steven we’ve decided to extend our stay here just a little bit longer, now I know you have a job but we sent you a check in the mail. That should be enough to cover groceries and-”

“Elaine. Dinner reservations.”

“Sorry sweetie I’ve gotta go. Kisses!” and then the line cut and the voicemail ended.

That was the first Steve had heard from his parents in a little under a month, they’d left right after the earthquake hit- didn’t even tell him. No warning, no invitation- he just woke up to a note and some cash on the kitchen counter. He could only scoff, fists clenching at his sides for a moment before he closed his eyes and took a deep breath in. There was no use getting mad, he knew this would happen. It always did. He left the phone then, spinning on his heel and entering the kitchen. Immediately he headed for the fridge, yanking it open to pull a six pack out. That was left in the living room, Steve making his way upstairs to change into a pair of pajamas and he had been on his way back out when he paused in the doorway. He glanced over his shoulder, gaze drifting down to the denim sitting neatly this time on his side of the bed. “Shit, sorry Munson- you wanna watch a movie?” He didn't even hesitate, entering the room again to pick up the battle jacket and shrug it over his shoulders. It was still a little small on his larger frame though with the weight he’d been losing he didn’t doubt it would fit perfectly in a couple months time. It’s weight on his shoulders was comforting as he made his way back downstairs, setting up shop on the couch to watch The Hobbit. It was one of the movies Eddie had owned, one he watched frequently despite not really understanding anything going on in the animated film.

2:30am- Steve jolted awake, startled by the sudden ringing of his landline. He’d fallen asleep on the couch, the sixth and final beer still clutched in his hand half drank. Rubbing sleep from his eyes he set the bottle down, wobbling as he stood up- feet dragging against the hardwood floor on his way into the hallway where the phone sat on the wall. With a groan he picked it up- putting it to his ear to mumble a “I swear to god Robin do you have any idea-”

He could hear breathing on the other line. It sounded labored and choppy, as if every inhale was effort- as if it was painful to breathe. For a moment he just sat there, listening to that sound and processing it- one glance over at the caller ID told him it definitely wasn’t Robin. The display itself was flashing on and off, the numbers scrambling themselves like static though every few seconds they would solidify into a readable number and when he finally saw the name displayed his jaw went slack.

M-u-n-s-o-n.

“Hello? Who the fuck is this? This shit isn’t funny-” Steve was cut off by the sound of a choked out sob from the other line before the other person’s breath cut short and a sort of gurgling began. It was low at first, escalating in volume quickly as it was accompanied by coughs and grunts as well as that same labored breathing as if the person was choking on liquid. Water? It sounded thicker, rougher, like something was coagulating and getting caught in someone's throat. Blood.

“Eddie?” he was met with radio silence aside from the continued gurgling though it slowly faded out, the labored breathing however- that remained.

“Ste-”

The line cut out entirely and Steve stood there listening to the dial tone for a long while before hanging up. Frantically he pressed the call back button though when selecting the number to call back- Eddie’s wasn’t there. In the list of recent callers there was his Mother, Robin, and Family Video. No Eddie, or Munson, or anything to confirm that had been him or that the call had even happened in the first place. His head hurt, throbbed as he stumbled back over to the couch to sit down. Had he imagined all of that? There was no way that was actually Eddie either way, he’d seen the guy's corpse. He’d seen the state he was in, there was no coming back from that- there was no coming back from death. Sleep didn’t come easily after that, Steve laid awake on the couch staring up at the ceiling as his thoughts raced. When sleep finally did take him again, he’d clutched a pillow to his chest- needing something to hold onto as he drifted off.

11:32am- His body ached from sleeping in a twisted position curled up on the couch, sitting up slowly and setting the pillow that he’d been cuddling beside him. It was odd having a day off, even more odd knowing that Robin had to be stuck at work without him. Steve had a routine for his days off- specifically for the days where he couldn’t invite Robin over to watch movies but before he even started he needed a drink. His first initial instinct when walking into the kitchen was to reach for the beer- having to pause and remind himself that it was far too early for that before he shut the door and instead poured himself a tall glass of ice water. Now- normally he’d go visit Robin and hang around Family Video to keep her company and keep her from murdering Keith with her bare hands but it was a little too early for that. So instead he made his way back into the living room, picking the tv remote up off the coffee table to turn on the news.

“I'm standing in front of the once abandoned Munson trailer-”

Everything fell on deaf ears from that point on as Steve’s vision blurred at the edges, focusing entirely on the familiar mop of brown hair in the background of the scene. He was inside the back of his van next to Wayne- the much older man cradling none other than Eddie Munson. Eddie who had died in Dustin’s arms. Eddie who they’d left behind in the Upside Down. Eddie who had a healthy glow to his skin as he glanced up at the camera and Steve was rooted to the spot. Eddie was staring at him, through the tv and directly at him and it sent a violent shiver down his spine- fear and elation coexisting as he stared right back. His hands rattled as he watched the slowly forming smile stretch Eddie’s features, dropping the glass cup as it shook straight out of his grip to shatter on the floor. There was something unsettling about that stare, that smile, like it was fully directed at him and only him as if Eddie knew he was watching but he didn’t have the facilities to delve too deep into that… he was too elated that Eddie was apparently alive and well.

The loud ring of his phone cut through the still muffled and almost muted voices of the news reporter as he continued to speak but Steve was still frozen in place staring straight ahead unwilling to break eye contact because somewhere in the back of his mind he was afraid to look away, afraid that if he did the other man would vanish like this was all just some twisted trick- a hallucination of his broken and fragile mind. Despite being ignored the phone continued to ring until the answering machine clicked on and Dustin’s voice cut through.

“Steve? Steve I know you're there man please tell me you’re watching the news right now? Are you watching the news? I’m coming over-”

As the phone cut out he released a shaky breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding, one equally shaky hand moving to run fingers through locks of brown hair before gripping onto it gently. He took a step back, then another, and on the third his calves hit the couch and he collapsed onto it. The reporter approached Eddie and Wayne, uttering something that again fell on deaf ears before holding the microphone out towards Eddie who leaned in slightly to speak as the camera zoomed in on him.

“I don’t have much to say, just happy to be back.”

Steve watched, couldn't tear his gaze away as he studied Eddie’s features through the tv screen as he smiled again. He noted the light dusting of freckles across the bridge of his nose, a scar just above his right eyebrow, the subtle flush in the apples of his cheeks before his gaze dropped down to Eddie’s lips and stayed there… had Eddie’s teeth always looked so sharp?

Authors Notes: this will be updated at my leisure but I've got multiple chapters planned already, I hope you enjoy it! This is posted on my AO3 as well at welcome_to_hellfire

[earlyschoolwithdeepika]

How to Use Hallo Deutsch Textbooks Effectively for Grade 6 and 7?

The Hallo Deutsch textbooks for grades 6 and 7 are fantastic resources for young learners beginning their journey in the German language. These textbooks provide a structured framework that introduces vocabulary, grammar, and cultural insights, all tailored to young minds. However, simply reading through the material isn’t enough to master the language. To make the most of these resources, you need a strategic approach that makes learning interactive and enjoyable. My YouTube channel, Early School with Deepika, is dedicated to helping students learn German effectively. This blog will guide you through practical tips and strategies to maximize the benefits of the Hallo Deutsch textbooks while integrating the resources available on my channel.

1. Understand the Structure of the Textbooks

The Hallo Deutsch textbooks are divided into sections that cover different aspects of language learning:

Vocabulary and Phrases: Each chapter introduces new words and expressions related to a specific theme.

Grammar Lessons: The books gradually build grammar concepts like articles, tenses, and sentence structure.

Exercises and Activities: These sections test comprehension through fill-in-the-blanks, translations, and matching activities.

Cultural Insights: Each chapter includes snippets about German culture, traditions, and everyday life, helping students connect language with its context.

2. Start with Vocabulary Building

Every chapter in the Hallo Deutsch textbooks begins with vocabulary. Here’s how to approach it:

Use Flashcards: Write new words on flashcards, with the German word on one side and its English meaning on the other.

Practice Pronunciation: Watch my video, “How to Pronounce German Words Correctly,” where I guide learners through tricky German sounds.

Create Word Groups: Group words into categories like food, clothing, or school-related terms to make them easier to remember.

In my video series, “Chapter-Wise Vocabulary from Hallo Deutsch,” I provide detailed explanations and usage examples for new words.

3. Master Grammar Concepts

Grammar is the backbone of language learning, and the Hallo Deutsch textbooks introduce it systematically. Here’s how to master these concepts:

Follow the Step-by-Step Approach: Tackle one grammar rule at a time, starting with basics like definite articles (der, die, das) and plurals.

Practice with Examples: Write sentences using the rules learned in each chapter. For instance, practice forming sentences with haben (to have) or sein (to be).

Watch Video Tutorials: On my YouTube channel, I break down complex grammar topics into easy-to-understand segments.

4. Engage with the Exercises

The exercises in Hallo Deutsch are designed to reinforce what students have learned. Here’s how to complete them effectively:

Do One Section at a Time: Avoid rushing through the exercises. Complete one section before moving to the next to ensure full understanding.

Check Your Answers: Use the solutions provided in my Hallo Deutsch Workbook Solutions video series to verify your answers and understand corrections.

Repeat Difficult Tasks: Redo exercises where you make mistakes to solidify your understanding.

5. Immerse in Cultural Learning

The cultural notes in Hallo Deutsch are a treasure trove for young learners to understand the context of the language. Make them more meaningful with these tips:

Relate to Daily Life: Discuss how the cultural practices mentioned in the book compare to your own. For example, explore German festivals like Oktoberfest.

Watch German Videos: On my channel, I share insights into German traditions through videos like “Exploring German Festivals for Beginners.”

Create Projects: Encourage your child to create posters or presentations based on the cultural topics in the textbook.

My video, “German Culture Explained for Kids,” provides an engaging introduction to these topics.

6. Use Workbook Exercises for Reinforcement

The Hallo Deutsch workbooks complement the textbooks by offering additional practice. To use them effectively:

Schedule Workbook Time: Dedicate specific days to solving workbook exercises.

Focus on Weak Areas: Identify topics your child struggles with and prioritize workbook exercises in those areas.

Refer to Video Solutions: I provide detailed explanations for workbook answers in my Hallo Deutsch Workbook Solutions series, which ensures students grasp the concepts fully.

7. Integrate Multimedia Learning

Textbooks are just one part of the learning journey. Enhance comprehension with multimedia resources:

Watch Related YouTube Videos: My channel offers video lessons that align with Hallo Deutsch chapters, making it easier to understand and apply the material.

Listen to Audio Clips: Practice listening to native speakers through German podcasts or songs for kids.

Engage in Interactive Games: Play online games that reinforce vocabulary and grammar, such as matching games or quizzes.

8. Track Progress and Set Goals

Keeping track of progress helps motivate students and ensures steady improvement.

Maintain a Journal: Encourage your child to write down what they’ve learned each week.

Set Milestones: For example, aim to complete one chapter every two weeks.

Reward Achievements: Celebrate milestones with small rewards to keep motivation high.

The Hallo Deutsch textbooks for grades 6 and 7 are incredible tools for mastering German, but their true potential lies in how they’re used. By building a solid foundation in vocabulary and grammar, engaging with exercises, and immersing in German culture, students can make learning both fun and effective. Remember, consistency is key, and integrating multimedia resources like my YouTube channel, Early School with Deepika, can significantly enhance the learning experience. Subscribe to my channel today for detailed tutorials, workbook solutions, and cultural insights that make German learning an exciting journey for young minds. Together, we can make mastering Hallo Deutsch a rewarding experience for your child! Subscribe Now : Early School With Deepika Hallo Deutsch Playlist

[colsonlin]

“The Moral Infection” (2010)—a horror story. (Warning: all the trigger warnings. All of them. Not a false alarm. All of them.)

I.

Leadership only goes as far as “commonality of purpose.”

Labor, for instance, is a commonality of purpose shared by employer and employee—the employer wants to eat, and so does the employee. In the early days of the pandemic, we passed the time by watching a lot of prestige TV. I myself watched a lot of dystopian fiction, zombie shows and trash like that. What I didn’t like about the zombie shows was how they romanticized the post-apocalyptic worlds they depicted—the main characters always turned into heroes. Families didn’t turn on each other. Tribes cohered. Hierarchies solidified. Hollywood operates under a misapprehension of the animal kingdom—in a world of unshared Power, commonalities of purpose will be hard to find. I want to tell you now what the color of the apocalypse will be.

The apocalypse will be Satanic red.

A Satanic mist is settling over the United States—Satanic possessions make commonalities of purpose hard to find.

In the existential setting where there is no afterlife (“And countless odd religions too”), it’s natural to “maximalize.” When one person maximalizes, the people around them start to maximalize too. And when a society loses its moral foundation, the principle of maximalization becomes a tone-setting deluge. Dog-eat-dog scrambles become a Biblical flood.

At first, leaders will emerge. Tribes will cohere. Hierarchies will solidify. But then the hunger sets in.

Not the hunger to live.

But the hunger to eat.

Speaking of hierarchies, why do minorities always die in zombie shows disproportionately first?

(And what is “proportionate” anyway?)

The principle of maximalization is the first sign that a Satanic possession has settled over your country.

The worship of money is the second.

Labor survives by creating a commonality of purpose between employer and employee (they both need to eat). The only question left is: how scarce are the resources? When resources are abundant, societal fragmentation swallows only the weak. When resources are scarce?

Social fragmentation will swallow everyone.

II.

It’s August 6, 2042.

Brianna is forty-one years old—born in 2000, she was a child of the internet. The internet was sort of like a global neural network: it revolutionized how ideas spread. All the moral values humanity had evolved over two hundred thousand years to cohere as a species, were now suddenly up for grabs (blame postmodernism). Countless odd religions rose. Everybody maximalized—everyone except Brianna that is, who’s knitting a shawl for her daughter on the kitchen table.

The apocalypse began on June 6.

Brianna has the soul of softness in her.

A soul of softness is humanity’s only defense against Satanic possession. At the table next to her, Brianna’s fifteen-year-old daughter is listening to music. “Mom?”

“Hm?”

“A caravan was just blown up trying to cross the border.”

Brianna doesn’t look up. On top of the table, a white cat stirs. “Mom, did you hear me?”

“I heard you.”

“Nobody can get in or out of the city anymore. We’re barricaded in.”

Sexual dimorphism is one source of inequality.

“When’s Dad getting home? How long has he been gone anyway—it’s been a few hours now, hasn’t it? He’s never taken this long before, has he?” Caileigh, her youngest, was born in 2027. Brianna was married to Jorge by then. When Brianna was a teenager, skinny jeans were all the rage—now the trend is to wear wide-legged pants, to hide as much of the body as possible. The cultural liberalism of the twentieth century had sparked so many backlashes—until at last, in 2040, authoritarianism won. Authoritarianism always wins.

It’s encoded in our DNA.

“Mom?”

“Hm, honey?”

“I’m scared.”

Brianna looks at her daughter.

The Satanic possession—that’s what the biologists called it, then the mainstream media picked up the term—spreads informationally. Biologists called the particles B. Satanichryium. They weren’t so much fungal as they were fundamental—they bonded to massless photons and traveled at the speed of light—but inside a microscope, they looked like bright red yeast cells. B. Satanichryium turns everything it touches red. Brianna studied nursing in college—she was lost and fearful in her early twenties, but those years are long behind her now. She found God in 2028. Her hospital unionized in 2029, and Brianna was one of the founding organizers. “We’ve known this day was coming for a while, sweetie,” Brianna says as she loops the yarn into the needle, her movements careful and precise. “We take each day as it comes. Day by day, we strengthen our minds.”

Human beings strive toward perfection.

        Why?

At an early age, Brianna realized she wasn’t pretty. She tries to remember what her teenage years were like—Kim Kardashian was the most popular woman in the country back then, and Barack Obama was the most popular man. They each looked like the parts they played.

The feminine sex symbol.

The masculine role model.

All of our fears stripped down boil down to the same fear—the fear of deformity.

Deformity represents the unknown.

Death is a deformity of life—pain, likewise, is a deformity of pleasure. What the mind praises above all is a sense of correctness. In isolation, she wants to remember this moment as a blanketing correctness—her kitchen, sturdy and calm. Her daughter, strong and true. Back in June, Brianna read a comprehensive account in The New York Times about how B. Satanichryium was studied. Biologists who were willing to lay down their lives took turns examining the bright red spores inside of a microscope—within minutes, they’d “turn.” The colleague behind them would inject them with pentobarbital before taking their turn in front of the microscope, continuing where the previous scientist had left off.

Sentence by sentence, a report was produced.

All 154 biologists who participated in the creation of “Novel human pathogen with quantum-fungal qualities,” the first academic paper about B. Satanichryium (June 19, 2042, Nature), were listed in The New York Times. A girl who Brianna had met at the University of Florida, Yong-Zhen Wang, was one of the names on the list.

By then, society had entered into full lockdown.

The monsters invented by every society are an expression of whatever the society happens to value at the time. Zombies were an efficient expression of the minimalist-naturalism embraced by the West in the early twenty-first century, as idealized by modernist architecture and IKEA design cues—they’re human deformities stripped down to its barest parts. A deformed twitch. A deformed walk. A deformed appetite. Regan MacNeil in The Exorcist was the first modern zombie to feature in a mainstream Hollywood production.

Brianna saw The Exorcist with her first boyfriend, Henri, at a drive-in movie theater in Ocala, Florida, in 2018.

Brianna was always on Instagram back then.

Even during The Exorcist.

Which had upset Henri—they had gotten into an argument about it afterwards.

“A shrub of nerves.”

Underneath our skin—we’re nothing more than muscle tissue, organs, and bones. A skeleton can rotate its head all the way around, one-hundred and eighty degrees: our muscle fibers alone constrict us. The human nervous system resembles strands of fungi, which sort of resemble the roots of trees (“Bronchi sort of look like branches,” Brianna remembers her ninth-grade science teacher once pointing out in class, before saying: “We share half our DNA with trees”).

A shrub of nerves.

Overseeing our muscles.

Overseeing our blood.

Overseeing an orchestra.

Brianna earned her nursing degree from the University of Florida in 2024. She moved to Boston later that year.

She met Jorge at a nightclub in Cambridge.

Day by day—that’s all a human life is. A helicopter is flying over their apartment. It’s Day 62 of the pandemic.

III.

On the table next to the cat is a bowl of oranges. (The last supermarket in Boston ended operations three weeks ago.) Brianna selects an orange from the bowl, then drops it.

“Mom—what?”

“Nothing,” Brianna says, looking at the orange in her lap. Its underside is covered in white mold.

Days before the Nature article was published, The Daily Mail published a detailed article about what an MRI scan of a victim who had succumbed to B. Satanichryium looked like. The brain glows bright pink. Even in a black-and-white MRI scan—not even Photoshop could remove the pink glow, and anyone who saw it would turn within six days.

Raw fungi inside of animal-sized husks—that’s what you’d call fungi that evolved to grow skin, organs, limbs, and bones—a competitor kingdom to the bushel of nerves concealed inside of animal husks today. Brianna looks up.

Her cat stares at her.

“What are you staring at?” Brianna thinks, staring into the cat’s mouthless eyes. “My nerves are stronger than yours.”

Unsettled by this thought, she resumes knitting.

Two billion people have already died. As of August 6, the size of the global population currently infected by B. Satanichryium is said to be anywhere from six hundred million to four billion—nobody knows for sure.

The animal kingdom shares its domain with many other kingdoms, but we the humans surpassed all of them.

We the nerve cells.

We the bushels of nerves.

When you take away our faces, our limbs, our musculatures—our organs and our bones—we’re just shrubs. An MRI scan of a basketball arena would look ten thousand shrubs in the stands and ten shrubs on the court.

It’s almost four o’clock.

B. Satanichryium can live inside MRI scans. It can live inside videos. It can live inside photographs—it can even live inside certain combinations of words, seen or heard (“Satanic incantations,” they’re called)—but it can’t attach to light-emitting diodes: it survives as a particle of information.

Information travels at the speed of causality.

You learn something about the nature of the Universe when you see it—or you learn something about the nature of the Universe, “that’s how you see it,” Brianna isn’t sure.

She doesn’t want to know.

The Satanically possessed—“Satanists” for short—are taking active steps to self-limit the spread.

They want the strongest minds only from now on.

Brianna remembers the first time she met Jorge—he was a man’s man, yelling into her ears on the dance floor. They hooked up, broke up, got back together, all within the span of a year. Before the pandemic, he worked in IT.

Death was coming, Brianna knew. Maybe death will feel like living all of the intelligences in the Universe at once—defragmented. Unlikely. Brianna examines the white spores on the underside of the orange. I’m a mother, she remembers.

The words come to her like a solemn oath.

The commandment to forgive our children even if they turn evil is the tallest commandment. “And as for me? But what about me?” she allows her mind to wander, stumbling into a sentence that comes to her not as an ineffable mist but as effable language: And as for me? But what about me?

But just as quickly, gratitude bears into her soul—a gratitude she doesn’t have the words for.

“Death is the end of a life well chosen.”

She hears the jangle of keys inside the front door—Oh, thank God, she thinks, just as it swings open.

“Rachel? Caileigh?” a man’s voice calls out. “We’re in here,” Rachel says, as the cat hops off the table.

Coming into the room now is Jorge, rugged and handsome, carrying a black backpack full of supplies and a large metal pipe. Caileigh glances up from her phone. Jorge drops the backpack onto the table with a thud, which startles Brianna, and then goes to the window. He rests the pipe against the refrigerator. “How was it?” Brianna asks as Jorge strips down to his underwear. “I killed someone,” he says.

“Come again?” (“Dad.”)

So it happened.

So it finally happened—so a barrier was crossed.

“A woman. The highway was clogged—there were raiders goin’ up and down with guns. I drove through a metal fence and ended up at a gas station—it was ransacked. There was a pickup truck parked behind it and—there was a lady in it. She had turned. I hit her over the head and found—that.”

Jorge points to the backpack, and Brianna peers inside. It’s bags of meat, all wrapped in white butcher’s paper.

“Enough to last us a month.”

Brianna stands to move the bags of meat into the freezer, still clutching the moldy orange as if holding a primitive intelligence. Jorge says nothing as he watches his wife pack the freezer, and then watches the helicopters in the window.

All he can hear is gunfire.

“Caileigh, give me your phone.”

“Dad—what?”

“It’s not a request, Caileigh, it’s an order,” Jorge says, confiscating his daughter’s phone.

“Dad? Mom!”

Brianna is silent for a second. “Honey?” she says, and at that precise moment the power goes out.

Brianna looks up at the ceiling. From rote instinct, she reaches out to flip the light switch off and on.

Nothing.

Rolling blackouts have inundated Boston since June 6, but what Brianna doesn’t understand yet is that this will be the final one. Decisions will have to be made. It would be life-and-death from that point on—life wasn’t a game anymore, or if it was, it was now on famine setting.

Later that night, Brianna tries to convince Jorge that the three of them should try to make a run for the border.

“How do you get around a military blockade?”

Brianna closes her eyes. “I don’t know,” she says.

“How do you get around a fuckin’ military dictatorship?”

“I don’t know,” she says again.

When Jorge and Brianna first met, Jorge had said one sentence that would ingratiate him to Brianna forever.

“All I want is for all my brothers and sisters in this world to prosper.”

A bushel of nerves, she thought. Bushels of nerves animating human husks—that’s all they are, and yet they think they rule the world. By what right? By what right do these plants think they can rise above all other plants—just because they have guns? In an MRI machine, they don’t look any different from fungi. That’s what the infection had proved—underneath our bones, it’s just a bushel of nerves that animates us—nervous anatomies that when naked look like nothing so much as fungi. What if in a million years fungi evolved faces?

How would we negotiate our common existence?

Brianna looks at her husband inside the dark of their bedroom—illuminated by candlelight. They stopped making love years ago. Raw nerves hulked inside this hull of a man.

Why are we drawn to more beautiful faces?

What is facial beauty trying to tell us? And why does beauty feel so much like a correctness?

Brianna remembers her own face. In her youth, she’d wasted so much time not feeling pretty enough. In fact the purity of her humanity glowed in her face, inside her plainness. After her third pregnancy, her face began to sag. Her eyes—always a little too far apart—now identified herself to herself. “Beauty is the story of a life courageously lived.”

Pure schlock, but what can you do?

The son she had killed was nothing more than a fungal structure—a mass of B. Satanichryium, concealed by the clothing of Adam’s skin and bones. She wants to die every time she remembers Adam’s face. Brianna remembers her first daughter, remembers her face. My tallest child. The soul produced by that shrubbery of nerves—animating Blakely’s limbs, animating Blakely’s compassion—was an angel’s soul.

Lit up by intelligence.

Shrubbery that just wants to make its existence known—do trees have this problem? Do trees have individual personalities? Are all trees everywhere the same?

Or are some trees hungrier than others?

She was at Massachusetts General Hospital when the apocalypse began, on the overnight shift in the psychiatric unit. It was Friday, June 6, 2042. Blakely had called twice from college. “Mom, there’s a video going around—you can’t look at it. It’s a viral video.” Suddenly, there was a breaking news alert on her phone—a second plane had crashed near Birmingham, Alabama, and a third and fourth crash had been reported near Hoboken, New Jersey. Then she heard a blood-curdling scream from down the hall—she’d later learn it was Sandra Bellingham, her supervisor of fifteen years. Over seven hundred planes crashed that night in the United States before all planes were grounded by the FAA.

It clicked like an on-off switch. All of a sudden, the End Times turned on.

Envy.

Envy causes plants to grow, causes men to grow muscle and women to go to the gym.

Rachel had spent half her life at the gym—and for what?

The power never came back on.

For the next few weeks, Jorge used a hand-crank radio and lithium battery packs to receive communications from the outside world. Rachel boarded up the front door, which she spray-painted: This home is armed.

The board was stolen the next day.

Jorge made two more food runs to the outside world, killing five more people. Every person he encountered had the same sentence written across their face: “I am the star of my own post-apocalyptic T.V. show.” Adrenaline inside Boston’s quarantine zone ran high—anybody unafraid to leave their home was also unafraid to kill.

Brianna only left the apartment at night.

After Jorge and Caileigh were asleep, she’d climb out of bed and smoke by herself on the fire escape.

In the absence of air-conditioning, they slept underneath single bedsheets—summer nights in Boston reached 100 degrees. Apocalypse morality had undone two hundred thousand years of human morality. Anyone who watched the wrong video or heard the wrong combination of words would contract B. Satanichryium—B. Satanichryium was a particle of information that traveled at the speed of light.

The hallmark of Satanic possession is Power.

Humans were as Powerless against B. Satanichryium as trees were to humans. Any human who encountered a Satanist in the wild had only one choice—try to kill the Satanist, or beg the Satanist for mercy. Brianna decided after Adam’s death that she would choose the third option.

She’d let herself die.

“Better to die an angel than live forever as a demon.”

All there was left to think about was what awaited us after death—and Brianna did, every night, alone on the fire escape.

She wondered if it’d be an Intelligence unlike any that even a Satanist could imagine. Unlikely.

But why?

At night she read the Bible. The Bible bored her, but she compelled herself to read the Bible—she read the Bible without understanding what the parables meant, but with total awareness of what the parables were supposed to make her feel, and without even realizing it, she was able to induce in herself the feeling—forgiveness and grace.

Forgiveness for the world.

Grace for her species.

She had to forgive herself every day for what she had done to Adam. Never again. She knew in her heart never again, because she’d have no more children left to protect.

She didn’t cry.

Jorge didn’t either—they looked sad all the time, but they never cried. They ate beef twice a day for two days.

Day by day.

IV.

B. Satanichryium, like the kingdoms of animal and bacteria, was Satanically possessed.

Plants and fungi?

One morning, Caileigh woke up with a fever of 106.6° F (41.4° C). It was September 11, 2042—Day 98. Brianna was in the kitchen clutching a bottle of ibuprofen, boiling a kettle of water for her daughter, when she heard the scream.

“No-o-o!”

“Give it to me!”

“No-o-o!”

Brianna, still clutching the bottle of ibuprofen, sprints down the hallway and toward her daughter’s bedroom.

In the doorway, she gasps.

Jorge’s hand is bloody, and he’s clutching Caileigh’s phone. “Give it back to me!” Caileigh says, her face smothered by her father’s right hand. “Where’d you get that?” Brianna says, trying to stay calm.

“She stole it from the safe! Stole a battery, too.”

“Give it back to me!”

“Is she bleeding?” Rachel asks from the doorway.

Jorge, with his right hand still compressing his daughter’s face, looks at his wife and says, “What do you think?”

The first video of B. Satanichryium was recorded in Hollywood, California, on June 4, 2042. Kanye West, while visiting his attorney about an ongoing lawsuit, bit four people. Three of the victims died of organ failure. The fourth transformed after forty-eight hours, and so did anyone who saw any frame that captured West’s pink glow.

Caileigh stops resisting.

“I wasn’t using the internet,” she sobs, “I was just listening to music. Music is the only thing I have left. Jeannie’s dead—look at us! We’ve been trapped inside this apartment for three months! I wasn’t using the internet—look at my phone history! Mom, you have your knitting. Dad, you have your food runs—what do I have? How we supposed to go on like this—just—existing?” From the doorway, Brianna no longer saw her husband and daughter: she saw two plants—two erect, fibrous shrubs of nerves that had grown limbs around their skin. Plants and fungi need to grow limbs too, if they want to survive. Limbs are a solution to a timeless problem.

Mobility is a timeless problem.

So this was it.

Day 98 was when their luck would run out—and so what? They had outlasted the majority of the human species.

Brianna looks at her daughter.

Satan is red because blood is red, and blood belongs on the inside of the body, not on the outside. Blood on the outside of the body signals a deformity.

B. Satanichryium, an ancient particle, is the oldest living spore in existence—its spores are in all bacteria and in all animal cells. B. Satanichryium is the repression of submission, and humanity relied on B. Satanichryium to solve problem after problem. B. Satanichryium, meanwhile, relied on human intelligence to grow stronger and stronger.

Telekinesis.

The ability to levitate.

The ability to contort one’s body into impossible forms. The Satanically possessed were a whole new species entirely. They weren’t invincible—shooting them in the head was enough to kill them—but they were difficult to kill, because they were difficult to find. Unlike the zombies of Hollywood, they were hyper-intelligent: more cunning than any human.

They were post-human altogether.

A proof existed inside B. Satanichryium that had never existed at any point in human history before.

Something taller than man existed.

As the Mayo Clinic’s website put it, “Anyone who observes the red particles, or reads or hears a red sentence, will develop a B. Satanichryium infection within ten minutes to six days,” depending on the size of the initial dosage, and on how soft their souls are—depending on how hard the human soul inside them can resist the pull of Satan. A murderous hunger to eradicate all human beings sets in by day six—even your own parents look like trees that need to be razed to make room for a supermarket. Human compassion was B. Satanichryium’s sole evolutionary roadblock, and murderous hunger is the ultimate expression of Power.

The murderer gets to live.

The murderee has no choice but to die.

“I’m not infected, Dad, I swear! I was listening to music! Mom! Dad! Listen to me—I didn’t see anything!”

Deep down she knew.

Deep down Brianna knew why her daughter had stolen back her phone. “Tie her to the bed,” Brianna says.

Jorge looks up.

“What?” Caileigh says.

“The incubation countdown begins today. In six days, we’ll know if she’s infected or not,” Brianna says.

My loyalty is to my species, Brianna would later explain to Jorge. My loyalty was to my children all my life, Brianna would explain to Jorge with violent clarity. There was a time when I would have died for them.

But I’ll kill her myself if she turns.

Just like I killed Adam.

“We give her food. We give her ibuprofen. What we are not doing is losing our daughter to an infectious mushroom called Satan.”

Why this year?

Of all the years humanity’s ever existed—why 2042?

Why did I have to see this?

It took Jorge and Brianna ten minutes to tie Caileigh to the bed using bedsheets—Caileigh at one point tries to run out of the house, but Jorge catches her. After she was restrained, they barricaded her bedroom door with a bookshelf. “We’ll need a transom at the top of the door,” Brianna said.

“What for?” Jorge said.

“To put food through.”

I’m the main character now, Brianna thought as her husband rummaged the closet for his power drill—five fully-formed words that were like music to her ears: I’m the main character now. Brianna was born twenty-seven years after The Exorcist, but she knew every word of The Exorcist by heart.

She saw it with Henri twice.

Power.

Unchecked power is a good thing, as long as “I” was the one holding it. Over one hundred million people died at the start of the pandemic in the United States alone. The New York Times, before it went down, estimated that only ten percent of the dead were Satanically possessed. Children and the elderly were killed in disproportionate numbers.

So were racial minorities.

On September 2, 2042, the Satanically possessed took control of the federal government.

Full control of the police.

Full control of the borders.

The Satanically possessed were ready to cut a deal with the surviving humans. For one month only, they would absorb any human being who agreed to turn their back permanently on a morality of submission and shared power. In city after city across the United States, the power came back on.

But not in Boston.

Boston, being a stronghold of the Catholic Church, had become an international site of resistance. Almost every major religion across humanity—with the notable exception of the Scientologists—called on surviving humans to resist the Satanic spread. The raiders who had mauled the highways at the beginning of the pandemic had all transformed into B. Satanichryium by early September. Bands of human resisters meanwhile organized into rebel factions. The first faction to break away from the rest was the atheist faction, who refused to use the name “B. Satanichryium.”

They called the particle “C. Darwinium.”

On the first night after Caileigh’s door was barricaded, Brianna tried to kill herself. Her hopelessness was more total than any hopelessness she’d ever known.

Adam watched the video on July 4, 2042.

He died two days later, after trying to bite Caileigh in the living room. There were five rooms in the apartment at all, not including the closets, and the living room was the room they never used. It didn’t matter. Brianna’s sobs could be heard in every room of the house. Jorge, holding his wife on the floor, told Brianna: “We’re no longer living for happiness anymore. We’re in prison, and we’re going to be imprisoned for the rest of our lives. The sooner we get used to these cell walls, the sooner you’ll recognize: beauty is the story of a life courageously lived.” Brianna wailed upon hearing this.

But she didn’t kill herself.

That night she fell asleep on the kitchen floor—it was 104 degrees outside. Jorge put a blanket over her legs and went back to their bedroom, and at his table he sobbed.

What did he want to do to B. Satanichryium?

If it were just him and B. Satanichryium alone in a room, what did he want to do to the substance that had destroyed his wife, destroyed his children, destroyed his life, and destroyed his species? Pathetically, he cranked his radio until he could no longer feel his arms, searching for new frequencies.

On “Catholic Resistance Radio,” his arm stopped.

A Whitney Houston song was playing.

He hated the Catholic Church.

His reason was personal.

He himself had aligned with the atheist faction all his adult life—but most resistance factions, including the atheist faction, had been decimated in the past two months by internal discord. The largest surviving factions united into a group called Merrin, named after the titular priest in The Exorcist.

It was nominally nondemoninational.

V.

On September 14, 2042, a new frequency came online on the hand-crank radio. The entire island of New Zealand’s South Island had been liberated by the Catholic Church—all computers and cell phones on the island had been destroyed, and the Pope had taken control of telecommunications. Beginning September 16, any survivor who could present a government ID of any kind with an ID number that ended in the letters X, Y, Z, or the numbers 7, 8, or 9, would be granted free passage from Boston Logan International Airport to Christchurch, New Zealand—up to four family members were allowed to join, but only if valid birth certificates and marriage licenses could be presented.

Jorge put down the radio.

Brianna was in the kitchen, making a lunch of roasted earwigs and termites. As if he were a parasitic larva commanding a host organism, Jorge impelled himself to go to the closet, unlock the safe, and open his wallet. The first thing he saw upon examining it was his employer-issued ID. The apocalypse’s only bright side—he no longer had to log into work every day. He looked at his driver’s license.

His ID number ended with a 6.

In a fury, Jorge rummaged through his wife’s clothes until he found her old handbag.

Her ID number also ended with a 6.

Our passports, he thought. Jorge went back to the safe, located the manila envelope with three passports stuffed inside, and examined each passport carefully.

1, 3, and 6, respectively.

On the floor of the closet, he had a hunger cramp.

The human will to survive—why bother? Why try? “Beauty is the story of a life courageously lived.”

But why be beautiful, if nobody else could see it?

In the nightclub in 2024, Brianna was the most beautiful woman Jorge had ever seen—not physically.

But gravitationally.

Her presence felt like a warm mitten that fit his hand perfectly. He felt so relaxed around her that he eventually felt nervous—he didn’t want to fuck any part of a good thing up. All the most interesting people I know are only ever passing through, was the first thought he had immediately after kissing her goodbye on the dance floor—and so he did something he had never done before. He did something courageous. He ran out of the club and caught up to Brianna right as she was entering her car with a girlfriend.

“Rachel,” he said, tapping her on the shoulder. “Hi.”

One week earlier, Jorge heard a rumor on the radio that the federal government would establish death camps for all surviving humans after the September armistice. “You have to remember, they’re Satanists,” the man on the radio said. “When a man cuts down a tree, he takes a moment to admire the tree’s beauty as it falls. That’s how the yeast-zombies feel about us. They enjoy the feeling that lights up their yeast-cells every time they huddle a new group of women and children into the gas chamber, force them to strip, and delight in their screams.” Early on in the pandemic, Jorge and Brianna made a list of all the things they wanted to do before they died—the list was all different video games they wanted to play. Six billion people had been slaughtered by September 2042.

Over ninety-nine percent of them were human.

Less than 0.01% of the death toll were Satanists.

The tribes of human resisters continued to fragment as a result of internal power differences.

In the doorway of the kitchen, Jorge appears.

His face has aged ten years in two months. Brianna listened patiently as Jorge explained the transmission to her. “How do we know we can even trust the transmission?” Brianna asks. “What if it was hijacked by Satanists?”

“It could be,” Jorge says.

“And what about the Catholic Church?” Brianna continues. “Even if the transmission is real, even if the transmission is accurate—it’s the Catholic Church.”

“Caileigh,” Jorge says.

“Where are you going?”

“Caileigh!” Jorge calls out, storming into the hallway.

Brianna follows him.

It was hopeless.

Brianna knew it was hopeless. The human race would end—there was no way around it: the less Powerful couldn’t beat the more Powerful. That wasn’t Brianna’s definition.

That was the definition.

“Caileigh,” Jorge says, knocking on the bookshelf.

“What?” a faint voice answers from behind the door.

Brianna reaches her husband. “It’s only day four,” she reminds him. What a sad and unbelievable end to the human story—six million years of evolution and this was how it all ends? Did plants and fungi feel this way? Were plants and fungi jealous that they couldn’t produce limbs?

Mobility.

Mobility was the timeless problem that animal DNA solved, and that human ingenuity had taken to the next level.

Human faces were so complex.

“Caileigh, I need something from you.”

“What?”

“Do you know where your driver’s permit is?”

“I need to go to the bathroom.”

“I need to know where your driver’s permit is!”

“Jorge, stop,” Brianna says. “It’s hopeless.”

Caileigh had received her driver’s permit on June 1. Jorge had driven her and Adam after school to the DMV.

Three days later, West went viral. Two and a half months later, shots rang out inside the Arizona Statehouse, signaling the first takeover of a government institution by hyper-intelligent zombies with murderous intentions.

Three statehouses fell that afternoon.

The Pentagon fell five days later.

Zombie movies are fundamentally reassuring to watch, because zombies aren’t intelligent. Hyper-intelligent zombies wouldn’t stop at eating our flesh—they’d control our empire.

And that’s not fun to watch.

A bookshelf blocked the entrance to Caileigh’s room—above the bookshelf, Jorge had used a power drill to carve a small transom into the door. Twice a day, he dropped a paper bag filled with cooked insects into Caileigh’s bedroom.

In the first three hours after she was restrained, Caileigh’s sobs filled the apartment.

Then she fell asleep.

When she woke up, she began sobbing again. Her restraints had been loosened, but her door had been barricaded. “I need to go to the bathroom!” she yelled, but it was no use—the cat’s litter box had been dropped through the transom. “Caileigh, do you hear me?” Jorge says.

“I don’t know where it is.”

Jorge looks at his wife: What have we done?

What have we become?

What has Satan done to us except make us afraid—except make us distrustful of each other? Empathetically, Brianna could read this thought on Jorge’s face, Jorge thought.

No more lies.

“Remember what the priest said in The Exorcist?” Brianna whispers into Jorge’s ears.

At the very beginning of the pandemic, Brianna had told Jorge: “The Devil will mix lies with the truth to try and confuse us.” Only angels always tell the truth, Brianna suddenly realizes, staring at her arms and hands in a new light.

They glowed brown with angelic possession.

No more lies.

If I could go back in time, I’d share every part of myself with you. “How are you feeling, honey?”

“How do you think I’m feeling? It smells like shit in here—the cat sand doesn’t hide shit! I’m tired and I’m hungry and I just want to go to the bathroom. I’m not infected. If I wanted to watch the video, I would have watched the video along with everyone else three months ago.”

“She’s our child, Rachel,” Jorge says.

“Please, daddy! Open the door! If I haven’t been infected by now—why would I have the infection?”

“Do you have any fungal markings?” Jorge asks.

“No, my skin is clean! I just showed you yesterday! Mom! Mom! Please open up! Please—I’m your daughter! Please! Open up! Open the door!”

Nearly everyone in the world who wanted to become Satanically possessed had watched one of the two million videos on the internet that captured on film one of the scenes of violence and carnage—pink-hued zombies shooting indiscriminately into a bar or outdoor plaza in early June.

What a time to be alive.

Brianna closes her eyes and begins to pray. “The incubation period is only two or three days. Please, dad—please let me out? Mom? Please!” The soul of an angel—and now I finally have one. How lucky am I, Brianna thinks to herself formlessly, helplessly, to have the soul of an angel? But this recognition, once molded into words, embarrassed her humility—so they stayed suppressed inside a self-recognition that she refused to touch: she just let it glow across her face like a newfound pregnancy. The first song she and Jorge had danced to at the nightclub was “I Wanna Dance with Somebody (Who Loves Me)” by Whitney Houston.

Brianna was there for her friend Sara’s birthday.

Jorge was there for his friend Adam’s birthday.

They had created three children: Blakely, Adam, and Caileigh. Brianna had dated three men before Jorge.

Jorge had dated no women.

Empathetically, they were growing into each other for the final time. She had lived a good life. If she were forty pounds lighter, she’d still be plain—but she had the soul of an angel.

“Why did you do it—why, why-y-y?” Brianna had screamed at Adam, on the night of July 4, on her knees.

Adam looked at his mother but had no words.

“I’m sorry, Mom,” he finally stammered out.

“Why-y-y? Why-y-y?” Brianna’s sobs reverberated throughout the house. Jorge had tried to throw Adam out but Brianna wouldn’t let him, so she threw Jorge out instead.

(“I don’t care if you die!” was the last thing she said.)

“Why did you watch the video—oh God, kill me! Just kill me! Somebody kill me! Somebody please, just ki-i-i-ill me.”

Blakely’s death was never confirmed. She was at the University of South Carolina when the nuclear bomb dropped over Columbia. This isn’t a life I would’ve ever consented to.

So why were we born?

Toward her parents, she felt nothing but a murderous rage. “So why was I born?” she demanded to know, as Adam just stared at her. “Why this life? Why this world? Why this hell?”

“I’m going back to my room now,” he mumbled.

“Qua-ran-tine!” Brianna yelled, but she was too weak to pick herself off of the floor.

Suddenly, Rachel felt the weight of Paul the Apostle coursing through her veins. “Open the door, Jorge.”

Jorge looks at his wife.

“Are you sure?” he asked.

“Please—I can’t breathe in here, everything smells like shit!” Caileigh sobs as she pounds on the door.

All of her coworkers at the hospital were dead, and the hospital’s ex-CEO was now an upper-level Satanist.

Grace and forgiveness.

To have grace and forgiveness for even B. Satanichryium was a courage she had never known.

A quantum-fungal particle that desired so much to live, to live on its own terms—what madness to witness.

Life.

White-hot life—only an angel could see it, forgive it, and remain an angel. Brianna lowers her knees to the floor and begins to pray. “Dear Lord, thank you,” she thinks, her hands clasped in prayer as sincere tears stream down her face. “Thank you for every joy I’ve ever had—it was too much and I didn’t deserve any of it. Thank you for my mother. She was too regal and I didn’t deserve any of it. Thank you for my brother and sister. They, too, are regal and I didn’t deserve any of it. Thank you for my husband—he is too pliant and I didn’t deserve any of it. Thank you for every friend I’ve ever had—they are too much fun and we didn’t deserve any of it. And most of all, thank you for Adam and Blakely and Caileigh. It was my selfishness that caused them to endure this Hell. They didn’t deserve any of it. Thank you for every moment I’ve gotten to spend in angelic company. Thank you for this white-hot life.”

To forgive even the apocalypse was the angel’s courage.

A sublime doom, outlandish and symphonic, had transformed itself into a sublime forgiveness.

Jorge stares at his wife on her knees, wide-eyed, tears coursing down her cheeks, and says: “The night we met, I didn’t have any friends to go with to that bar in Cambridge. I went alone. There was no Adam. I told you I was there for an imaginary birthday because I was too embarrassed to tell you I had gone there alone.” Brianna looks at her husband. She has never loved him more than she did in that moment.

“Adam isn’t yours,” she says.

“What?”

“I’m kidding,” Brianna laughs through sublime tears.

Jorge looks at his wife. He can’t bring himself to laugh, but his arms, strengthened by laughter, heaving and grunting, pushes the bookshelf away from the door. As soon as Caileigh hears this, she stops pounding.

“Okay. You can come out now, honey.”

Behind the bedroom door, Caileigh’s face, arms, hands, and legs are covered in giant white pustules—fresh blood trickles down from every part of her body. Her face is as pale as paper. B. Satanichryium doesn’t feel any of its host body’s pain—it desecrates the human body the way a teenager in love might carve a pair of initials into a tree.

There is a pause.

All of a sudden, Caileigh springs open the door and leaps onto of her father, embracing him with a giggle. “Daddy—it’s so good to see you again!”

Brianna watches as Jorge falls backwards.

Caileigh reveals a knitting needle she had stolen from her mother’s sewing kit along with her phone. She stabs it through her mother’s neck: “Mama—aren’t you glad to see me again?”

Brianna’s eyes widen.

She pushes the knitting needle through her mother’s throat, pulls it out, and then stabs her father in the eye. This he didn’t even see coming. Even after everything he’d seen on TV in the early days of the pandemic—“Do not watch the videos, do not search for the videos, do not let your children search for the videos,” the news anchors warned in unison, but it was no use, the videos were all over the internet—he still didn’t see this coming. “Caileigh,” he says one second before he realizes he’s been stabbed through the Adam’s apple.

This, too, he hadn’t seen coming.

How dumb am I, Jorge thinks before blacking out, in a torrent of thoughts that all come to him as a series of successive recognitions. How do you fight Satan? It’s impossible. We’re overpowered. How dumb am I? I should forgive myself. This was inevitable. I wasn’t strong enough.

And Satan is all too powerful.

Caileigh tosses her head back and laughs demonically. Jorge lets out a blood-curdling scream and collapses to the floor—Brianna, still on her knees, falls to her hands and vomits. Caileigh’s head spins around one-hundred and eighty degrees—just like West’s had in the viral video.

Just as forests were razed to provide resources for humans, humans were raised to provide resources for Satanists.

A small percentage of humans are immune to the Satanic mist, and some of them—teenagers, mostly—begged the Satanically possessed to transform them by biting them and infecting them with spores. The Satanists complied happily. All the immune who agreed to serve B. Satanichryium for two years would be transformed into Satanists themselves at the end of the two-year period, the Satanists promised. (In 2045, the teenagers learned that Satanists couldn’t be trusted.) Meanwhile the Merrinists continued to fragment into smaller and smaller factions—by 2046, they had fragmented completely. Some disputes were purely semantic.

The rest were purely nostalgic.

The last of the human resisters—in Micronesia—were eradicated by the Satanists in 2048.

Six million years of human evolution.

Wiped out in six years.

Gone in sixty seconds.

Hyper-intelligent zombies that can raze a species like humans raze a rainforest—what a bittersweet end to the human symphony. And what an unfilmable nightmare. There were no protagonists. There were no heroes—there was just raw power trying to figure out what to do with itself. No human being can survive for long in the face of something that is both stronger than them, and that has no pity for them. Plants and fungi don’t have the intelligence to fear or envy us, but almost every human has the capacity to either fear or envy hyper-intelligent zombies with murderous intentions—some sacrifice themselves to avoid betraying their humanity. While others submit and fight—irrationally—for the chance to serve Satan. “Take me!” Caileigh had already decided.

“Take me!”

Caileigh had already made up her mind.

It was either Satan or a slow and painful death by starvation. Every day Caileigh hoped a nuclear bomb would drop on their city. How many people had starved to death before the Satanic possession even began—how many in India? How many in Syria? How many in China?

How many on the continent of Africa?

A loud, stabbing hunger.

A maddening desire to eat, that can’t be satisfied except in the mind’s wildest imagination: meat. Fresh meat—not even sweets would do, the hungrier she was, the pickier Caileigh became as an eater—not even sugar would do, she’d spit in the face of anyone who tried to offer her some, for what she wanted was bowls and bowls of pasta with marinara sauce squeezed from the freshest tomatoes, and meatballs the size of turkeys.

“Take me!”

Starvation is unlike any other hunger in the world.

The mouth longs to swallow.

The stomach longs to be filled.

With self-disgust, Caileigh even wondered at night what her cat tasted like—her cat who she longed to bite into after the mere foreshadowing of a days-long hunger. On September 1, 2042, Caileigh’s ex-girlfriend Caitlin showed at Caileigh apartment. Caitlin’s parents were dead. “You’re not opening the door,” her father had yelled, and Caileigh had screamed.

What if her father had been a little less adamant?

What if her mother had stepped in? Well then—Caitlin would be in this apartment with Caileigh right now.

Ready to die together.

This final act of cruelty was what had convinced Caileigh to turn her back on her species altogether. Humanity—what a joke! There was nothing worth saving in this species. There was nothing worth saving about a family that would let their own daughter’s ex-girlfriend starve alone after she had made it all the way across a city that was being actively firebombed, in the middle of a zombie apocalypse, in the middle of nuclear winter. Caileigh hadn’t turned her back on humanity.

Humanity had turned its back on Caileigh.

In the final analysis, what a sad but predictable outcome to an all too predictable species. Human civilization began in the Fertile Crescent eleven thousand years ago and ended in 2042—humanity had survived for several thousand years as a hyper-intelligent species before evolving into something else.

Something stranger.

Something freer.

Something Godly when you think about it—because now that she was alone, Caileigh finally had a chance to practice her powers. She wasn’t strong enough yet to levitate a bookshelf, but she could remove her mother’s knitting needle from her father’s throat without even touching it. Alone and bloody, Caileigh dances and elongates on the floor of the Great Hall. She isn’t hungry anymore—since it’s massless, B. Satanichryium doesn’t need food at all. The only hunger Caileigh has inside her is the hunger to bend the laws of the Universe to her will—she can rotate her head all the way around now, one-hundred and eighty degrees. She can disobey gravity—she can spider-walk up the walls and across the ceiling. She is a nervous anatomy with a higher mastery over Reality than all other human beings. She’s superhuman.

And just like humans who don’t blink when they cut down a tree, despite sharing half the tree’s DNA, Caileigh doesn’t blink when she cuts down a person. Satan frees you from caring about something just because it shares your DNA.

Freedom that Powers the Self.

What else in the world could matter?

VI.

One spring morning in 2048, humanity ended.

The spoils of humanity were inherited by the Satanically possessed. B. Satanichryium is a higher kingdom than any plant, animal, or fungi: they are the blessed neural flowers of the Universe. The microscopic spores of B. Satanichryium has replaced every nerve cell in Caileigh’s body, forming its own branchlike skeleton that can only be seen on MRI. The only animal Caileigh took any pity on that night—her last in her childhood home before she sets off by foot the next day to Logan International Airport, disguised as an orphan—is the cat. She’ll cradle the cat as she approaches the airport.

She’ll transform herself into a beautiful young woman.

“Now, now, Jeannie,” Caileigh says, as the cat circles the corpses on the floor. The cat, without knowing why, gazes up at Caileigh and goes to her.

Caileigh scoops the animal into her arms.

“There, there, Jeannie.”

Ten decisions shape your life.

You’ll be aware of five about.

Caileigh directs the cat’s mouth to the open sores on her arm, which the cat licks greedily.

Twenty ways to see the world.

Twenty ways to start a fight.

A fully intact, fully dissected human nervous system looks like nothing so much as a dead mushroom—minus the skin, minus the bones. Caileigh and Jeannie will cause quite the stir in Christchurch, New Zealand, in about three and a half months—all Satanists will.

But for now it’s only September.

And the winter of our lives hasn’t reached us yet.

— Rachel Redwood-Ramirez

2010

[whump-a-la-mode]

Ok so I had a prompt idea? We’re all familiar with the “villain is sent to a ‘rehabilitation center’ that turns out to be secretly torturing the villains there” trope, but consider this: scared villain is captured by a kind hero and sent to a villain rehabilitation center, and villain has never experienced such warmth and kindness! Not to mention frequent visits from hero to check up/see how they’re doing. Maybe it’s no good but just a thought I had; I love your writing so much!! 💛🌼

(No pressure though, I know you’re probably busy!)

Oh, I absolutely love this prompt! Evil rehab centers are all well and good, but I’d never thought of one as being a source of comfort. I hope you like this! I was going to do some more with it, but it was already running a little long ^^

Thanks so much for the prompt!

CW//Arson, burning buildings, smoke inhalation, fear of death, gross food, mentions of torture, animal disease

As though singed by smoke, Villain’s lungs burned.

Even as they gasped, they felt as though they could not inhale a single breath. Yet, somehow, they had enough air to keep going.

It wasn’t as though they had a choice.

They were unsure, at that point, if their legs were truly moving at all. They had lost feeling in them far too long ago to be able to verify such a thing. Somehow, though, they were moving forward. Even if they wanted to, they didn’t know if they could stop, with momentum pushing them as it was.

Everything was riding on this. Days of keeping ahead, of leading the chase. If they stopped moving for just a moment, it would all be wasted.

And their life would be over. If they stopped running now, there would be no Villain left.

In that instant, they understood what it was to be a rabbit. When there was a fox on your tail, there were no do overs. No second chances. It was run or die.

As long as they could, they were going to run.

Villain couldn’t remember the name of the building in which they had managed to find the briefest of respites. Despite its sprawling size, there was nothing truly remarkable about it. Perhaps it did not have a name in the first place. At some point, it had been some sort of industrial complex-- the home of half a dozen separate companies, each clashing and butting up against one another.

Yet, the structure had long since been left to rot. They had a feeling that mold clinging to every corner had something to do with that.

Just a week ago, they would never have dreamed of so much as going someplace like this. The air smelled rotten, and breathing it left a sour taste sticking to their tongue. Not to mention the fact that several animals of varying size and danger had already claimed the rotten complex as their home.

But, they weren’t the same Villain they had been a week ago. Stumbling upon the building had felt like a gift from above, and, the night prior, they’d managed to get some honest-to-god rest among its sodden carpeting.

It was the most rest they’d gotten in days, despite the fact that, halfway through it, they’d awoken to a diseased rat with its teeth buried in their forearm. They’d had worse awakenings.

After shooing away the animal, they’d managed to sleep an hour or so more. Then came the worse of their two awakenings, that night.

The shouting voices of heroes.

Villain didn’t know how they’d found them. There was no trace, no trail. They had no vehicle-- instead moving through the woods on foot. ‘On foot’ was quite literal in that instance, considering the fact that they’d lost their shoes three days ago to a patch of quickmud.

But, still, they’d been found.

They didn’t no how long ago it was, that they’d been awakened by those voices. With the darkened building’s clocks hanging stubbornly on the wrong minute and hour, there was no way to tell how long it had been.

How long they’d been running...

Villain skidded around a corner, hissing as their foot caught on an uprooted carpet tack. Had they been this way before? It was impossible to tell-- all the halls looked the same.

The halls repeated, just as the heroes’ footsteps did.

How were they not tired?

Maybe because they’d eaten. And slept. And had water.

Villain had found that stream the other day, though...

Everything about them seemed to be repeating. The walls. The footsteps.

The lies of the heroes.

“Just stop running! We don’t want to hurt you!”

They couldn’t count just how many times they’d heard those words. Lies. Of course they were lies! Or, perhaps, it was their own sick attempt at a joke. We don’t want to hurt you, we just want to kill you!

Villain wasn’t ready to die. Not just yet.

Another corner was taken with haste, and their nostrils were overwhelmed with the scents of rust and oil.

The garage was massive-- reaching further upwards than the shreds of sunlight filtering through dusty windows could reach with their furthest rays. Its concrete floor stretched out, seemingly, all the way to the horizon-- dotted only by support beams, and whatever scattered machinery and supplies the company had not deemed valuable enough to bring along.

The source of the scent of gasoline was quite rapidly made apart. Stacked haphazardly in the corner, red gas containers stood. Their reek alone made it well known that they were far from empty.

But the gas was far from Villain’s main concern regarding the garage.

In the past few days, they had become awfully good at finding exits. It was with a ruthless instinct that they scanned the room for one.

But, in the end, they reached a terrifying conclusion.

There was one exit. It was the same door as the entrance. The garage doors on the other side of the chamber had long since been chained shut, and there was no time for lockpicking.

The heroes flooded in.

It was with an exhausted hopelessness and steadfast stubbornness that they kept running forth. Of course, with their terrible luck, they did not make it very far. A rebar pipe caught their toes, sending them sprawling onto the concrete, pain shrieking from a thousand different, tiny wounds.

For a few seconds, Villain let themself breathe. They figured that, at the very least, they should let themself enjoy their last moments alive.

Their relaxation did not last long. They refused to die laying down. Trembling from exhaustion, pain, starvation, dehydration, and terror, all at once, they staggered to their feet. For a moment, their vision blurred, before solidifying once more.

Half a dozen heroes fanned out before the entrance, guarding it ruthlessly. Faux looks of concern painted their countenances.

From the array of aches and pains swarming Villain, a single one, all at once, made itself known. Something pressing up against their leg.

Their lighter.

Their trembling gaze flicked to the pile of glimmering red gas cans. It was behind them-- only a few steps back. If they could just...

“Villain!” The person in the front of the group called out-- Hero. “There’s nowhere else to go. It’s okay. Everything’s okay. You just need to come with us. You can’t survive like this much longer, you know that!”

No. What they couldn’t survive was the heroes.

But, they didn’t have to.

Villain took a step back, inching towards the pile.

“Come on, buddy!” Another hero called. “What are you so afraid of?”

It was the heroes who should be afraid. Another step back.

“There’s nowhere to run, Villain.” Hero spoke once more. “Just come with us. No harm will come to you, I swear to it.”

No.

Villain wasn’t ready to die. Not today.

They took the final step, until they were mere inches from the pile. With a well-placed kick, and a horrible clattering, the cans toppled from their precarious pyramid. The reek of gas grew tenfold as brown liquid spilled out, onto the concrete below.

Stepping back from the gasoline-- they were ready to go, not just yet-- they reached into their pocket. The heroes had no time to identify the object they pulled out. By the time they realized what had happened, the lighter had already been thrown.

The flame leapt into the air with such force that Villain was thrown back, tossed to the concrete like a ragdoll.

The faux compassion on the heroes faces turned to an emotion that was very, very real.

Fear.

Spreading so fast that its growth could be heard, the inferno pounced, grabbing onto the base of a wooden support beam and licking its way upwards.

“Everyone!” Hero shouted-- terror in their voice overpowered by sheer determination. “Get out! This building’s not stable.”

“W-what about you?”

“If I’m not out within five minutes, send someone in after me.”

“Are you certain?”

“We’re heroes. And, sometimes, that means saving villains, too.”

Despite their clear reluctance, the other heroes, one by one, nodded, allowing their terror to spur them to flee.

When the last of them was gone, only two remained in the garage. The villain and the hero.

Villain looked upwards, watching as the flame reached the top of the support beam and rippled onto the ceiling.

There were only two ways this could end. They knew that.

Either Hero lost their nerve and fled, allowing their prey to escape, or they both perished in the flames.

No matter which came to pass, there was only one thing that mattered:

They would not die by the hands of a hero.

“You’re scared.” Hero began. Another stupid speech. “I know. I know you’re scared. This last week has been hell for you, I know that. But it doesn’t have to go down like this. You can still make the right choice. 

Please. Come with me. I don’t want to hurt you. Believe it or not, I don’t want you to die!”

“You’re a bad liar, you know.” They croaked.

Villain’s lungs were already torn from gasping. The slowly-rising smoke only served to salt their wounds.

Before them, a flaming ceiling tile fell, spraying them with embers.

“You don’t want this! I know you don’t! You don’t want to die!”

“Why do you think I’m doing this?! Of course I don’t want to die, you fucking idiot!”

“Then come with me!”

“It’s like you don’t even hear yourself.”

The building shuddered as a support beam splintered and collapsed. The force of it sent Villain, once again, to the concrete, bathing their face in smoke. As they scrambled to their hands and knees, they could not help but let out a shuddering cough.

“Villain! Watch out!”

“Wh-”

The ceiling tile struck their head, burying them under its accompanying rubble.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 

Warmth... and music.

They awoke to warmth, and music.

The first of the two came in the form of something soft, heavy, enveloping them, making them feel as though they were buried within a cloud. The music, too, seemed to surround them-- there were no words to it, just the soft, lulling tone of a piano, accompanied by the occasional splash of waves.

It was confusion that first whispered to Villain, when their leaden eyelids at last agreed to open. Above them sat an off-white sky, stretching out to meet with a light blue wall. They blinked once more.

Where...

The chase the heroes the running the building the gas the fire the rubble the-

Villain jolted upright, tossing off of themself a heavy, fleece blanket. Trembling fingers gripped the mattress below them as they scanned the world around, instincts kicking in, searching frantically for an exit.

The room was small, walls colored a soft, baby blue, and lit by a pair of lamps with warm, orange bulbs. The few items of furniture were made of a light brown wood-- three small nightstands, two in corners, and one next to the bed in which Villain lay.

Next to one of the stands was placed a small writing desk and chair, while the other was accompanied by a potted plant, petals just starting to emerge from its buds. Embedded in one wall, a window stood, a small radio perched upon its sill.

The door was at the room’s far end, next to their bed. A wooden door with brass handle-- easy to break down.

But guarded.

Before the door, a figure stood-- a person dressed in a bright flannel, from the breast pocket of which stuck an overabundance of pens.

They did not look particularly strong, but, then again, neither did Villain. At the sound of their movement, the figure turned to face them, a smile growing upon their round face.

“I didn’t even notice you waking up.” They hummed. “Good morning.”

There were two options for escape: The door or the window. Neither was particularly desirable, but they had to choose one...

“Hey, buddy.” The stranger’s voice felt almost as warm as the fleece blanket. “You’re looking a bit like a deer in the headlights, there. I’m sure this is all a bit overwhelming, and I’m sure you’re pretty confused. I’d be confused too, trust me.”

No. There was no confusion in Villain’s mind. They were focused on one thing, the only thing that mattered: Getting out of here!

The flannel-wearing figure took a few steps towards the bed. In instinctual panic, the villain scrambled to their hands and knees, shuffling backwards until their spine was flush with the headboard.

“Hey, hey, shhh.” They hushed. “I’m sorry I scared you. I’ll stay right back here, okay?”

“L-Let me out of here!”

The figure frowned.

“Bud, I’m not sure that you’d last another day out there. Not in the state Hero found you in.”

Hero. Of course they were working for Hero.

“I’ll explain everything, alright bud? But let’s just start here. My name’s Doctor. What’s yours?”

Villain only then noticed that they were shaking like a leaf. Whatever this method of torture or interrogation or whatever it is was, they wanted no part in it. They just wanted to go home! To get out! Warm bed or not, this was a prison. They were sure of it.

But, the bed was comfortable, and there wasn’t a single rat in sight...

“How about this...” Doctor coaxed. “You tell me your name, and I’ll tell you what’s going on, okay?”

A trade. Information for information.

Was it worth it? They supposed there was little use in lying.

“V-Villain. My name’s Villain.”

“It’s nice to meet you, Villain.”

“Now, wh-what is this p-place?”

Doctor nodded.

“This is the Supervillain Memorial Villainous Recovery Center. We’re in the city, right by the river. Next to the botanical gardens, if you know where that is.”

They were really telling them the location of their prison? Surely it would have been better to keep such a thing secret. That is, assuming they were telling the truth.

“I believe you’ve been asleep for about... seventeen hours.” Doctor glanced to their watch. “Yep, just about. You’ve been here for maybe half that time. After you got caught in the fire, Hero brought you to the hospital. They bandaged your wounds and brought you here. I hope you slept well.”

Villain almost laughed at that, before a realization struck them. They had slept well. Sure, remnants of the specter of fatigue still haunted them, but for the first time in days, they felt awake enough to think clearly.

But, this was still a prison.

Right?

Prisons didn’t usually have soft beds and fleece blankets, but...

No. It was a trick. This was a prison, and they were a prisoner.

“Let me go.” Villain insisted, though it was halfhearted. “Y-You can’t keep me here! I’m leaving. I need to leave!”

Doctor frowned again, biting their lower lip.

“I’m sorry, Villain, but for now, you’re going to have to stay here. But, I promise, you’ll like it here.” They sighed. “I know you’re scared, and confused, and a thousand other things. But, here, you’re safe. There’s other people here-- quite a few of them, in fact. And, at one point, they were all like you. But ask any one of them. This is the best place for you to be.”

Other people?

“Where are they? W-What are you doing to them?!”

Doctor smiled.

“They’re in our main wing, right now. I believe everyone is eating lunch right about now. I don’t know about you, but where I come from, lunch isn’t a form of torture.”

Villain pursed their lips.

“Then, where am I?”

“This is our arrivals wing. You’re going to stay here, for a few days. Until you’re comfortable, and we can make sure all that smoke is out of your lungs. Then you can join in with everyone else. I’m gonna move over to the side of the bed now, okay? I won’t touch you.”

Even with the warning, Villain couldn’t help but flinch as Doctor approached. They moved to the nightstand at the bed’s side, plucking a small, red box from its surface.

“Hero told me to give this to you, when you got up. It’s not exactly the most nutritious thing to start your day off with, but I think you deserve something tasty.”

They offered the box. After a moment of hesitance, Villain snapped it from their hands, drawing it close to their chest. Was it a threat? Some kind of warning? Morbid curiosity took hold of them, prompting them to open the box’s lid.

Chocolates.

A dozen chocolates, laid out in the design of a star.

“I can eat these?”

“Go ahead.”

Without hesitance, this time, they popped one of the candy pieces into their mouth. Its flavor overwhelmed them, strong enough to nearly knock them over. It’d been days since they’d eaten anything that didn’t come off a bush or from the dumpster.

“Um...” Villain looked back up, closing the box. “So, when are you going to kill me?”

Doctor laughed.

“Hero will be visiting tomorrow. With how long they can talk for, I think you’re only in danger of dying of boredom.”

This was a prison. Of course it was.

Yet, as they glanced down at the box of chocolates, they could not help but forget all thought of panic and escape.

[ninyard]

Could you write something with a Nicky & Kevin friendship or just supporting each other, set at any point during the series

you know what anon I don’t think I’ve ever genuinely thought about Nicky n Kevin’s friendship before ?? But! What a fantastic friendship it is!!!! I think there’s a pretty pivotal moment in the series of their relationship, but obligatory CW for The Raven King Chapter 11 (the thanksgiving dinner) before we get into it

First of all I think when Kevin first arrived in PSU, and when he was staying with Abby, still healing his broken hand, Nicky was the only fox except for Andrew who visited him regularly? Even Andrew didn’t really “visit” at that point, but Nicky was the only one who pro-actively wanted to see how Kevin was doing, instead of asking Wymack or Abby or gossiping between the team. It was probably in part because Nicky LOVES breaking a good story, but mostly it was because of the fact Nicky is such a genuinely kind person? He knew how alone Kevin must’ve felt after being essentially banished from his “family”, with no future in sight or a will to live, really. So Nicky showed up. He always brought a gift, and even though Kevin didn’t really speak much and really seemed to hate Nickys fast, drama-filled way of speaking, he never told Nicky to leave.

When Andrew came along and took Kevin under his wing, that kind of drove a wedge in between any semblance of relationship they could’ve had. It was Andrew And Kevin, and that was it. Andrew didn’t see a point in leaving room for Nicky in that. But Kevin never forgot what Nicky did for him, and even though they’re practically opposite types of people, Kevin and Nicky never had beef, like literally ever. Nicky tried flirting seriously with him once, but Kevin scrunched up his nose and shook his head and for the first time Nicky didn’t persist. They really just had this unspoken respect for each other, but their relationship was never really much more than that. Whereas Kevin’s relationship with Andrew was a joined-by-the-hip kind of deal, Kevin and Nicky more so looked out for each other in the smallest ways. When Nicky sprained his wrist during practice the end of freshman year, Kevin was there for him to show him the best ways to move it to build his strength back up and to take care of it so it could heal properly. When Nicky was struggling with some type of homework on the bus to a game, Kevin would peek over his shoulder and nonchalantly point out the answers. When Kevin was starting to play again, Nicky always offered to play defence to help him regain his strength against an opponent.

But you know, as soon as you mention Nicky and Kevin my head INSTANTLY goes to the aftermath of Chapter 11 in TRK. Like, Kevin had to go downstairs after finding that situation, and presumably Nicky had no real idea. So Nicky looks in the Kitchen window, while talking to his mom about nothing, and he sees Neil and Aaron head out of the kitchen. He watches Kevin follow. It’s not long before Luther is back outside with a look on his face that says nothing good, and then Nicky sees Kevin. He’s on the phone, chewing at his fingernails, face white like he’d seen a ghost. He leaves the table, overhearing Kevin reciting his parents’ address and they lock eyes when he enters the room. Kevin’s eyebrows are knitted together like he’s about to cry. He puts a hand out when Nicky tries to push past him. It takes him a minute to hang up, and suddenly Nicky’s heart is racing and he’s desperate to go upstairs. Kevin can’t find the words.

“Andrew’s hurt.” The words don’t do it justice. It feels like a lie coming out his mouth. “Nicky,” he tries to push past again. “I don’t know if you should go up there.” Nicky turns back to see his mom and dad watching them. They look like they’re about to follow. Nicky asks if he called the police or an ambulance. Kevin says both.

“Who hurt him?” Nicky doesn’t know what to say. He can hear the mumble of voices upstairs.

“I don’t know.” Kevin’s voice is almost a whisper. “There’s so much blood.” And then Nicky shoves him out of the way and suddenly Kevin’s following him up the stairs and Nicky’s reaching out to hold Andrew’s face, Neil holding a blanket around his presumably naked bottom half. Kevin nearly got sick at the sight again. He’d seen enough blood in the nest, he’d seen enough rapes and tortures and beatings and dead bodies, but this was so much worse. This was messy, this was family, this was Andrew’s abuser killed at the hands of his brother, blood on the wall of Nicky’s childhood bedroom.

So Andrew and Neil leave in the ambulance, Kevin and Nicky left to take a taxi to the police station, waiting for Aaron who left in cuffs, waiting to give their statement. They don’t say much, but Kevin puts a hand on Nicky’s shoulder when he finally cries, and leaves his own shoulder free as a place to cry on. They’re told to leave without Aaron and they’re left alone again in Columbia, waiting for David to bring Andrew home safe. Neither of them have much of an appetite to eat, and it’s a while before either of them speak.

“Did you see it happen?” Nicky is staring at a wall, hands wringing around the end of a pillowcase. “Did you watch him die?”

“No,” Kevin fought off another panic attack that crept up his throat. “Did you know who he was?”

They skirted around the topic, afraid that if they said what really happened, it would be real, it would be unfixable. But Kevin knew Nicky needed him, until somebody else came back. Can you even imagine how much Nicky must’ve been in shock? I don’t think he even called Erik until the next day, you know. The only person he spoke about it with was Kevin, and when Betsy arrived he cried with her for ten minutes before a car was pulling up and he knew it was Andrew. Kevin and Nicky had never spent so much to me alone, but there was a strange comfort in the air. Kevin was the rock that Nicky needed, and Nicky was the distraction Kevin needed. Kevin wasn’t a hugger, really, but when Nicky asked to be held, he pulled him into his chest and didn’t let go until he was ready. They both comforted each other that night, but they never spoke about it again. Nobody else had to know that they’d practically broken down in each other arms, half in shock, half processing the trauma they’d just witnessed. Nicky had never been exposed to something like that before; Kevin knew it was a life-changing event for him. Nicky didn’t have any sort of ideas of superiority about his relationship to Andrew, either. He knew how much Andrew meant to Kevin, how he had walked in to see his protector so vulnerable, so hurt. He knew Kevin had to say that word down the phone to the operator, and how he had to say it to Coach, too. And he had to say it again and again and again to the cops in the station.

I know it’s an extreme example of their friendship, but I think a lot of it goes unspoken. That night was the night where their respect for each other became physical, and visible. It became more than just nods across a court or a pat on the shoulder after a good game. They were all they had that night. Just Kevin and Nicky, alone for god knows how long, just waiting, trying to keep it together. They each took a shot of whatever spirit they could find before Betsy arrived, and nobody had to know about that either. They coped in their own ways after that, but it really solidified how much they cared about each other, I think. Kevin texted Nicky for the first time that week, a couple different times, just to see if he was okay, how he was doing, if he needed anything. And oh man, did that mean the absolute world to him. Kevin and Nicky’s relationship is probably one of the more unexpectedly close relationships in the series, when I think about it. They didn’t experience what happened that night in the way Andrew or Neil or Aaron did, but the way they looked out for each other when both their worlds came screeching to a halt in the upstairs bedroom in a house that was no longer home? Unmatched.

There’s definitely softer/“fluffier”/funnier instances of them being friends but my mind couldn’t NOT let me write about this cos it was all I could think about SORRYYYY

[ficsnroses]

Let Me Help - Keanu Reeves x Reader

summary : during quarantine, your husband keanu worries you’ve been working too much and offers to comfort you, by helping you wind down. requested!

warnings : smut. oral sex [female receiving] loads of fluff! a very concerned keanu. x f! reader. 3.3k.

notes : this was requested by a lovely reader. I wrote this near the end of august, and touched it up a little last night for posting. I’m hoping to get back to writing some new stuff real soon, look forward to that! feedback appreciated, hope you enjoy xx :)

In the wake of the day break sun, a fatigued Keanu trudges down the wooden stairs of your shared home; a hand raked through tousled bed head locks, half executed yawn breathed off his lips. The house seems dead silent, the sound of a hissing coffee pot and keyboard clicking fingers apparent far distantly downstairs.

He’d woke up to the spot beside him in the bed vacant, and the figure that had quietly been tucked under the security of his arm all night, absent.

Normally, the morning dew would greet him with the feel of his love curled against his chest, consumed in a warm sea of silky sheet enveloped around them. Mornings like that were his favourite; where you’d hold him close, your drowsy AM gaze would open to the sight of him, his mocha eyes locked to your resting frame, limbs tangled as one.

“Good morning, handsome.” You’d quietly mumble, tinted smile groggily musing with a deeper cuddle into his chest, and he’d quietly chuckle at the way stray locks fall in your eyes, barely peeking his way. ‘Good morning to you too,’ the words would sweetly melt off his lips, peppering small, gentle morning greetings into your hair as he’d draw you closer, smiling.

Smiling at your little, personal piece of heaven you’d built.

Keanu trudges further, slow pace deliberate, swallowing tightly to the known sight he knew he’d perceive as he’d venture to the bottom of the stairs to your kitchen, where you were surely sat. He wasn’t tired, per say, yet his mood tinged a drought of sour.

You’d been working, constantly, through out the entirety of the declared lockdown in your home town. Those once blissful mornings had been rare; stolen, gentle kisses and mindless relishes in each other’s arms non frequent since the quarantine began. Not only did his lovesick heart miss you, his mind also worried. He worried far, he worried frequent-

that the women he loves with his entire heart, hadn’t been taking care of herself. Over the years spent together, Keanu had come to learn all too well. You take immense pride in your work; nevertheless, that strive for excellence often has tendency to override, to conquer each ounce of energy and dedication that courses through your veins.

He admires, loves your dedication. Yet he worries. He fears that you’ll overwhelm, burn out.

Over anything; any hinder, any instance, the sole triumph had always been you. You, your health, your safety. It’s the lone thought that matters to him, the only thing that truly matters.

Through sickness and through health; it’s what you’d both promised.

Approached to the kitchen entrance, Keanu sighs a warm smile, seeing your frame lounged against the granite wall counter, coffee pot in hand as you’d replenished your favourite noir mug. Dressed in a pair of sleeping shorts equipped with his oversize t-shirt, his heart hitches, his breath catches in his throat at the sight of you.

Each breath taken around you, capsules in a warm, heavenly kiss. Only you’d ever been able to do that to him. Only you could bring his heart to its knees, each and every day.

Soft, quietly, Keanu lingers behind your smaller figure, humming a gentle morning ease, thin lips placed to the back of your head as his arms circle your waist. “Morning, gorgeous.” he whispers, a gravelly rasp thick to his sleep awoken voice. Tinged to a curled upwards smile, his nose idles in your locks, senses enveloped by the sweet saccharine of coconut shampoo and something that resembles florals, flowers, silk and satin.

All things good, all things beautiful. All things that take his breath away.

You’d told him the day you first met; your fascination with the sun, and her flowers. Her roses, her violets, her world that breathes, only when she lights a glow, revitalising all that live under her, flourish under her.

Smiling faintly, a hand reaches behind, tangling in the dusty strands of his lengthy mane, as your other plants warmly to his arm that holds your body close by the waist. “Good morning.” You smile, turning gentle in his warm embrace, with a delicate kiss pecked to his thin taut lips. “Sleep okay?” You wonder, escaping his hold to return to your impromptu work station, situated at the marble kitchen counter. Stray papers decorate the surface, ball point pens and open laptop screens speckled about. Keanu’s smile fades, and he watches your weak frame shift back to your occupied spot.

“Didn’t like waking up without you there.” He confesses, watching the way you resume lineage to the sheets and workload below. An old, half empty cup of morning dark rests to your table side, cold; long forgotten and forlorn. It had solidified his assumption; you’d more likely than not been up for far longer than he’d originally supposed, slaved, laboured to the never ending, self assigned work load purging at your fingertips.

Thus far, avoidance had been crisp on his lips, the words that threatened to spill had seldom died in his throat before extending any further. His love for you ran farther, deeper than could be explicable. He’d always strived for you to do anything you thought was right, he’d never come in the way of you or your career.

Yet as of late, the boil, the sear of burden inside his veins threatened to leak. Through tired eyes accompanied with dark, tiresome bags, he’d noticed the toll never ending workload had begun to take on your brittle form. He’d sensed the way a part of you faded day by day, succumbing to the drudgery toil. With his toned arms crossing, and an attentive lean to the granite kitchen counter, a worrisome Keanu speaks into the empty, quiet AM air, his voice a certain echo through the gray kitchen corridors. “Baby, do you have to work today?”

You’d barely glanced his way, before continually reverting to your task below. Inhaled deeply, a sip from your mug swelters on your tongue, the bitter taste of a roasty caffeine kick igniting that acquainted burn to your tongue. A burn, something familiar, something that reminds you of there still being discipline, still being normality. “Of course I have to work, Keanu.” You’d dryly returned, tone singed with a far bitter tint than you’d intended. Yet, you’d pledged known thought that he wouldn’t let the issue die so easily. He’d press, he’d push; knowing it was the pull you’d sometimes needed.

“Hey,” Keanu barely speaks, his voice a quiet whisper so calm, so soothing, you’d nearly succumbed into his arms to the mere hint of it. His larger frame falls to its knees, kneeling beside you sat on the kitchen chair. Heavy, gentle, his breath falls dense, weightier hands collecting your softer ones in return to a gentle grasp. His lips are warm; brimmed with special affection; admiration.

Before Keanu, you’d not known the feeling of being completely, hopelessly adored by someone. He did that to you. He did that, for you.

He’d never let you forget the feeling of being adored.

A few measly kisses pepper to your hands from his lips; to your palms, your knuckles, your fingers, and with a hefty sigh, he voices his unease. “I’m just worried.” He begins, eyes connecting to yours in a knowing plead. Keanu is a man of few words; his speech proves selective; he’d never say anything that would interfere with what you truly wanted.

Yet, his heart, and yours, are old friends.

He knows you all too well, knows you’re not where you want to be. “You can understand that, right?” He asks, a gentle nod accompanying. Fixed on yours, his eyes hold your gaze. Warm, cocoa eyes that gleam with that beautiful familiarity. His eyes were something else,

something calming, something that grounds you when you’d need it most. Security.

Only to him, you could express any thoughts, any feelings, anything at all without the fear of what would follow. His heart and yours, are old, old friends. Looking away, you sigh, locking your fingers around his hand that holds your tighter. “I…I know.” You declare. “I get it. I just…” Keanu watches you keenly, his hands never letting go of yours as he listens intent.

“I just feel like…I need to be doing something. I need a routine, I need something prolific, something…productive while we’re stuck at home.” You lament, heart heavy as your deeper fears paint clouds of grey in your chest. “I need something real.” Whispering almost, your eyes fall disheartened, a frown douses your features. “Something that feels like I’m not wasting away.”

“I’m real...” Keanu explains through a quiet undertone, murmuring, eyes desperately trying to hold your fraying gaze that almost feels…ashamed to look at him. Awful feelings flood your mind, the thought of letting him down overwhelming.

“You know what I mean, baby.” You reason, head tilting to a noticeable look of blue on his darker features. With your gentle hand cupping his beard ridden cheek, your eyes sadden. You’d never want him to feel as if he wasn’t enough,

because he was everything. He was all that had truly been keeping you alright, keeping you from slipping into an overwhelming whirlwind of self destruction over this period of uncertain time.

“Hey,” Keanu assures, taking hold of your wrist that holds his cheek. “We’re real. This is real.” He speaks. “You, are the realest thing I know, baby.” And the to sound of his voice, you smile. This man, the man you so gratefully call your own, never fails to cast a smile to your lips. “Let me take care of you.” He speaks, voice thick with reason, as your brows furrow to the proposition. “Just for today. You deserve it, sweetheart. I’ll do anything you need; cook, foot rubs, massages, anything at all.” He appeals, desperately hoping you’d agree, rather than burying yourself under an endless workload for the remainder of the day. “I need you here on earth today,” He smiles, knowingly. “With me.” And to the sight of his glowing orbs, and hopeful gaze, your heart fills with warmth.

Watching his profile with a halted breath, another beat of silence follows, flows before a slight smile ultimately tugs one side of your mouth upwards, heart warming at his determination. Your lover, is something different. Something special inside him grows. Something warm, something,

that you fail to remember when,

had become a necessity.

“God, I’ve missed you so much, baby.” Keanu quietly whispers, your satin skin sprawled upon the silky sheets of your California king, hands tangled to his hair as his lips daub gentle, love soaked kisses along the silk of your body. Through a broken moan, laced with a breathy gasp, your lips barely manage; the feel of his warm mouth marking a delicate, violet bruise into the skin of your breast overwhelming shockwaves, piercing each and every wavelength inside you that longed for him now, craved to feel him closer.

When he’d insisted on taking the day to make you feel ease, you should have known right away, swift, that the first activity on the menu would be a good, much needed, passionate

fuck.

Moving from your lips, Keanu’s kisses trail gently, feverishly across the bare skin of your mid, bulkier hands palming the soft swell of your breasts, soft and tender to his touch. “Gonna make you feel so good, baby.” He assures, between peppered pecks, grazes of his lips across your skin, inching near the throb that ached between your legs. Fiddling with the flimsy material of your underwear, two stocky digits slip into the fabric, gently peeling the textile off, discarded mindlessly to the carpeted floor below.

“Ke…” You breathe, heavy, restrained. His face hovers just above your bare, exposed centre, and his arms move to plant under your thighs, urging your pussy closer to his lustful lips that begged for a taste. Back arching, your nails tangle, scratched to his scalp when his mouth delves lower, trailing a few sauntered kisses to the insides of your thighs, two sturdy fingers slicked between your moist arousal, rubbing a swell to your clit as it thrived for more stimulation; ached for his mouth to make art along your womanhood. To decorate your warm, wet haven with a symphony of his want. “Relax for me, sweetheart.” He murmurs, pressing a kiss to your pulsing clit, licking a gentle stride to the slit of your fold. With one of his hands moving to hold yours on the rippled bedsheets, his other pumps sinful fingers inside your cunt, adding stimulation. Merely a lewd moan flees your lips, eyes clasped shut as the feel of his sinfully warm tongue lapping your nectar overtakes, and you practically cry a whimper when the feeling of sheer, burning bliss coils, bubbles in your mid. Keanu has always been a giver, his skill, his expertise, his attention to detail never fail to make you feel as if a painting; a mural he paints with vibrant hues, vibrant tones; music he makes spill out your body each and every time he works you this way.

Each time he shows you the stars alike; each time he shows you just how fucking much he loves you.

The sounds of your wetness slicking his lips fill the room, laced with the searing sound of your gasping moans, yelping groans at the way his hold on your hand tightens, tongue flattening with alternating flicks between fast and slow, delicate sucks and kisses to your ached clit. Keanu works a symphony of pace, spreading your folds as needed, skilfully conjuring an orgasm to build inside you that you knew would channel you into absolute oblivion, at a mere 10:00AM in the morning.

“Please…” You beg, pleading, gazing down at the sight of your love between your legs, devouring you whole. “Please don’t stop, babe.” You drip, toes curling, spare hand clenched to the bedsheets. “I’m so close.” Hips bucking, disjointed moans squirm under his touch, his suave voice pushing your need for release further to the end.

“You sound so sexy, angel.” He encourages, circular motions firm, stubbled beard burning against your core. And to the sound of his lust thick tone, your climax washes over you with the force of a strong ocean current; one that rummages over the ocean shore, spilling strong, warm relief over each inch of your body.

As the nirvana dies, and your eyes barely open again, his chocolate gaze watches you with a smile; clearly pleased with how deliciously he’d given you the orgasm of your dreams. Glossy on his beard, your release coats in a glaze to his chin, and you bite your pink stained lips, sighing at the way he still looks into you,

as if viewing his favourite picture; his favourite dream. As if the light of every star in the universe’s dire sky had been embedded inside you.

Something special grows inside him; something so sincere, something that thrives off of nothing, but loving you so well, so good.

“Thank you.” Is all you’d managed, sighing, cupping his dark tined cheek when he comes up, offering a soft kiss to your lips as his hand still holds yours, tenderly. You hadn’t realized how desperate you’d needed relief, how frantic you needed escape from the world around.

And with a simpered smirk and wet kiss daubed to your neck, Keanu kisses your forehead, one hand still held to yours as his other strokes his meaty shaft, fully erect from the pornographic sight of you moaning, whimpering, embellished in utter ecstasy as you’d cum for him. “Oh baby,” He kisses the corner of your lips, sloppy palm tugging a few measly strokes to his dangerously thick, glorious cock; felt strongly aroused, stabbing against the soft skin of your stomach. “I’m not done with you just yet.”

The day had complied, had been spent with just you, and him. Together, through each waking minute, lost together, relishing together.

After drawing you a steamy, heavenly eased bubble bath, in which he’d joined you tenderly after your AM rumble, your dream of a man had helped wash you, massaged a gentle cleanse to your hair through soft kisses, and intimate grazes of each other’s skin.

“I love you, so much.” He’d whispered into your ear, flushy pink chest pressed firm to your back as you’d lounged against him in the soapy water; fragrant aroma of roses and lavender kissed to each sense. Bubble bath’s shared with Keanu had always been your favourite; you’d forgotten how dire you’d needed simplicity. How great you’d needed to share simple, carefree, intimate moments with him during the chaotic shambles the world held, upon these uncertain times.

You’d forgotten that your remedy, the only antidote you’d ever needed, had been resting at your finger tips. He’d been holding you tenderly each night, kissing you awake every morning. He’d been checking in on you, gently brushing strokes to your hair and offering you kind hugs when you’d needed them most.

He’d been silently, quietly forgetting to care for himself as he watched you, trying everything in his power to make sure that you’d be alright. So much, that he’d broken down in his own, unique way today, for you.

What you saw in his eyes this morning, as he begged, pleaded for you to allow him to take care of you; was something different. It was fear, it was surrender.

He’d surrendered a part of himself to you. A part you’d always hold, always keep. This morning, he’d begged you to remember it. To remember, that a part of him, lives within you, part of him resides within you.

He’d begged you to take care of that part of him today. To allow yourself to remember that you need to flourish, need to slow down, before that part of you breaks.

A piece of him belongs to you, and he’d begged you to care for it. To care for yourself; because you and him, that us that resides within you, is truly,

something else.

Something so powerful, so real.

You and him, against the world.

       It’s what you’d promised.

“Baby?” You barely whisper, snuggled into his warm embrace on the snug living room sofa. With your head on his chest, both his arms wrap around your body, holding you close as you’d both gazed the blue TV screen; reruns of your favourite 90’s sitcom portrayed to the motion picture. Against your ear, his heartbeat had been calm, collected. Serene, to the feel of your skin against his, knowing you were safe; at ease, resting.

“Yeah?” He quietly wonders, a stray kiss softened to the top of your head. The sun had set, and a gentle evening glow dims in the room, moonlighted silver threatening to spill in soon. As the world outside darkens, and all living things bid goodnight; the world prepares to flourish again. To revenue a moment of calm over the silvery night, to replenish, to prosper tomorrow,

When tomorrow shall come.

“Thank you for holding me.” You whisper, calmly, sweetly, drowsily into his chest. And with a deep chuckle, Keanu’s hands smooth over your back, deep baritone of his chest sending that familiar wave of warm, complete and utter,

gratitude, soaring, flowing inside you. “I’ll always hold you.” He returns, quietly, another kiss into your maven locks, arms tightening around you further as if in fear, that you’ll disappear if he doesn’t hold firm enough. And to the sound of his heartfelt confession, you sink further into the feel of him

holding you,

with every last breath. And you remember, that him, this dream, this symphony you fear might just be a dream, is the embodiment, of a thousand feelings, complied all into one. Roses are beautiful, flowers are gorgeous, the sun and her blossoms are wonderful too. But all you really need, is him. This man, that reminds you, that you too,

need to breathe.

You too, need to flourish.

➶ ➴➶ ➴➶ ➴➶ ➴➶ ➴➶ ➴➶ ➴➶ ➴➶ ➴➶ ➴➶ ➴➶ ➴

My taglist will be posted in reblogs, let me know if you want to be added or removed! :)

[flightfoot]

Apollo’s Redemption Arc

Apollo was never “evil” per se within the books, not really being actively malicious during the course of the story. He did some stuff that COULD have given him the villain slot (What he did to the Cumaen Sibyl, to Harpocrates, and to Coronis most specifically) but those terrible, malicious actions that led to IMMENSE suffering were only introduced via flashback, and not in great detail. Before that, his worse actions were only referenced vaguely, like him talking about sending heroes to die on quests and not caring, and other things were toned down, like the flaying of Marsyas which supposedly didn’t happen the way it’s portrayed in myths, so it’s up in the air how bad that actually was.

The jarring change in Tyrant’s Tomb came from seeing his more actively malicious actions instead of aggressively uncaring actions and attitude of previous books. During The Hidden Oracle, The Dark Prophecy, and The Burning Maze we learned how he used to watch demigod battles on TV as entertainment, not caring about the suffering they went through. Not to mention how he didn’t care much about Commodus beating his cupbearer for spilling a drink beyond some vague pity and think it was distasteful. He’s mostly chastised for being a bystander during these first three books. The great harm he’s caused more actively was only really emphasized in the fourth book, after he’s already turned around enough that he’s not really considered the same person anymore, something that’s accentuated in the text by Reyna and Meg during the confrontation with Harpocrates.

It appears to be an effort to strike a balance; making sure the reader doesn’t forget Apollo’s screwed up and needs to change, but also never wanting him to come across as a true villain. So in early installments when he’s first starting his redemption and is still a bit of an arrogant prick at times, it just portrays him as being MORE of an arrogant prick at first, along with being uncaring. In later installments once he’s changed and any vestiges of his jerkishness have been swept away, Rick’s able to delve into how bad he’s been in the past. We’re already invested enough in Apollo to not only want him to be redeemed, but to already have seen his growth, to have already gone through a lot of it. It takes a lot of the sting out of his horrific actions in the past. 

Redemption arcs need something to use to redeem a character, something that makes them realize they need to change and provide ongoing motivation for such a strenuous task, beyond just stopping doing bad stuff. Because just not doing evil things anymore ain’t a redemption; that guy who killed Katara’s mother in Avatar: The Last Airbender wasn’t redeemed just because he retired. It takes changing as a person. Often doing some specific redemptive action is also required to sort of ‘solidify’ the character change, to demonstrate that the change isn’t just in their words, that it’s a change that will stick, as well as to bring the audience and those who the character hurt or who were wary of them because of their past, onto their side. Even if the character knows they’ve changed, it’s not like anyone else can see into their heart; they can only judge by what they observe.

One thing that’s needed here is relatability; can we put ourselves in that character’s shoes and see and understand how they view the world? If a reader can do that, can understand that thought process, the redemption arc will be far more likely to work; it might even be required for a truly great one. 

A lot of Apollo’s actions that require a redemption arc (sending demigods off on frivolous, dangerous quests as errands, standing by while people are slaughtered, enacting petty punishments on people who really don’t deserve it, for instance) are written in such a way that the reader could reasonably understand his mindset, though it’d vary by reader obviously, as personal experience and mindset play a large role here. It helps that for a lot of Apollo’s actions we’re inside his head, we know what he was thinking, even if we don’t know the full story of how he developed into thinking that way. With him starting off thinking of demigods and mortals as expendable, we get to thoroughly understand that aspect before changing it. Others are more mixed, like with seeing his thought process concerning the Cumaen Sibyl and her curse. He helpfully explains a piece of his thought process, namely about hoping to find the one true romance that would wash away his past failures, and then how he started hating her when denied what he wanted, and couldn’t understand that her love wasn’t transactional, wasn’t to be bought. 

Come to think of it, he may have had that viewpoint because as a god, he had a lot of capital to trade. Power, wealth, longevity, all sorts of extremely valuable things he could use to ‘buy’ what he wanted. So the idea of being able to obtain love, peace, and fulfillment that way was tantalizing - especially since it wasn’t something he could obtain that way from most of the other gods. He was fortunate enough to have his sister and mother at least, so he DID have some good, healthy relationships, but that didn’t provide immunity from that mindset.

Being thrown down to Earth, being among mortals as one of them, changed everything.

Having good role models helped.

Even way back in THO, Apollo’s touched, nearly driven to tears at his children’s desire to protect him, at their love and care for him. He doesn’t expect it since he can’t provide them anything special.

And it’s not like it ends with them.

TDP: Jo and Emmie’s kindness towards others, their acceptance of those in need, their desire to help even people like himself and Lit, touches him deeply.

TBM: Jason sees worth in him, SAW worth in him, even back in Blood of Olympus, first time seeing him. Even then he risked his father’s wrath to try to get him to go easy on Apollo, because he thought it was the right thing to do. And ultimately he was willing to die in part to save Apollo.

TTT: The camp just accepts him in, weary though they are. Frank in particular expresses concern for him, that he wouldn’t want to live in a world without Apollo.

TON: Any sort of kindness towards him drives Apollo nearly (or actually) to tears (granted this isn’t exactly new). The Jackson’s/Blofis’s willingness to shelter him and Meg despite the danger, treating it as a natural sort of thing that they couldn’t possibly NOT do, Will having gotten clothes for him on the off-chance, on the hope he’d be back and wanting him to have his own stuff - the casual kindness and compassion just continues to drive home to him that THIS is how people should be - including himself.

While Apollo was shown the negative effects of his previous terrible actions, shown why he needed to change, it wasn’t just left at that. Throughout the entire series, he saw, he experienced what being better would actually look like. He wasn’t just torn down, but also built up again at the same time, this time with a healthier view of the world.

That’s one of the things that really stood out to me with Apollo’s redemption arc in particular; while he faces the consequences of his previous terrible actions and mindset, even having them thrown back at him at times, experiencing them from the other side (hello Britomartis); he isn’t treated cruelly by the people around him… pretty much ever. People are temporarily mad at him, but not for more than like, an hour, and they usually come around pretty quickly. (Not counting the people he wronged REALLY badly in ancient times, talking more about current demigods). It doesn’t feel like a redemption arc based around punishing Apollo, but one around changing him.

It’s especially fitting since this whole thing was *supposed* to be a punishment from Zeus, but ended up being far more than that.

I think Apollo put it well here, near the end of TON.

To be honest, though, I could no longer consider my time on Earth a punishment. Terrible, tragic, nearly impossible… yes. But calling it a punishment gave Zeus too much credit. It had been a journey - an important one I made for myself, with the help of my friends. I hoped… I believed that the grief and pain had shaped me into a better person. I had forged a more perfect Lester from the dregs of Apollo. I would not trade those experiences for anything. (TON 373)

[la-mariposita-de-palestina]

Azula

!SPOILERS!

!DON’T READ UNLESS YOU’VE WATCHED ALL OF ATLA!

!PLEASE GO AWAY!

!YOU KNOW WHO YOU ARE!

!BEGONE!

Long Post:

Azula is not a good person and does not deserve redemption. But that does not mean her redemption would be impossible, and that it should not happen in the coming ATLA media. Azula is a child, a sick, twisted child molded by the factors surrounding her. She was raised in an abusive household where safety was in the hands of her father. She never received genuine affection that she could directly identify as affection. And she was highly skilled and intelligent in an environment of war.

The royal family consists of Ozai, Ursa, Zuko and Azula. Azula must have noticed at a young age the environment she lived in, with one parent that held power over the other. Ozai abused Ursa, and Ursa seemingly favored Zuko, therefore Ozai abused Zuko. And so Azula absorbed this information and in order to be safe chose to adopt the ideals and behaviors that her father showed and shunned her mother’s and brother’s traits. Because one is safe and the other is not.

So she earns her fathers approval and “love” and faces scrutiny and “hate” from her mother. But she knows that her fathers love comes at a cost; her skill and usefulness to the Fire Nation, to him. She is never given the unconditional love she craves, at least she doesn't think so. Her mother loves her and the audience knows this and somewhere Azula knows this, but she never sees that love. We are never shown an instance where Ursa outwardly approves of anything her daughter does, only criticism. We know this criticism is Ursa’s love trying to reverse Ozai’s damage, she criticizes her because she loves her, but Azula can’t see that. She craves her love and when she sees that her mother outwardly loves Zuko, (who is inferior in her worldview; her fathers worldview) she doesn't understand. And finally when Ursa leaves, Azula is intelligent enough to connect the dots. Zuko was supposed to die, Ursa left, Zuko is alive, Azulon is dead, Ozai is Firelord.

Zuko is everything Azula hates, and everything she never wants to become and yet he has something she thinks she can never have: their mothers love. It only solidifies her toxic personality and values. Zuko is abused by Ozai, Azula does not want to be abused by Ozai. Zuko holds his mothers values, Azula holds her fathers values. That is what endangers him and keeps her safe. And Ozai’s abuse is not private, in fact it is very public, and Azula sees it all; his constant disapproval of Zuko, the Agni Kai, and finally, his banishment. She rejoices when it happens to Zuko, because it means she’s safe as long as she isn’t like him. It’s sick and wrong, but it’s a child trying to be safe.

Everything she is is a result of her father, her imperialistic nation, and a need to be safe yet loved (which conflicted in her home). But, the moment she is taken away from the eyes of her father and country she no longer needs to be safe, because the threat isn't here. And this is where things start to reveal themselves. Now she shows glimpses of what could’ve been. You know what I’m about to talk about; The Beach. Now yes I know, her seemingly affectionate moments could've all been a ploy at manipulating those around her, but all Azula’s actions of manipulations have previously had a specific goal. But Azula had no real reason to apologize to Ty Lee when she offended her. To keep her on Azula’s side? Azula is not afraid of being cruel to keep Ty Lee’s allegiance, after all she put Ty Lee’s life in danger to recruit her. So why use compassion now when her previous tactic of fear has not failed her? Azula had no real reason to get Zuko away from their old family cabin. To keep an eye on Zuko? She has let him out of her sight often since his return to the Fire Nation. Why bring him to sit with everyone now? Why keep him from loneliness and dark memories now? And then express an understanding of those feelings, that she too feels put down and saddened by the atmosphere of the place. It has no tactical value. Azula had no real reason to open up around the campfire. It served no use, and Azula is anything if not purposeful. But the whole day she was slipping up, letting her guard down, so why not now?

“My own mother thought I was a monster” She says like it was a constant thought in her mind. “She was right of course but it still hurt” She said like she didn’t care.

Yet the way she says it directly contradicts her words. She says it like she doesn't care, yet she explicitly said it “hurt”. To hurt is to be weak, and Azula hates weakness. And yet she plainly told her peers that she was hurt, that she is weak. That has no tactical value to Azula, once again, so why say it? Because Azula is unraveling. Her whole life she lived to serve the Firelord and her nation, but now that she is separated from that, her adopted values her behavior is breaking. She is showing compassion, remorse, and pain. She is not being tactical. She showing what could’ve been.

But Azula is not allowed to break, not yet. She is returned to the fire nation and reverts back to what she was, a skillful, manipulative, cruel Princess. Her brother is now a fugitive and she is chasing him once more. The Boiling Rock; the first time she sees that the system she has built to ensure her safety is flawed. Her system of fear, manipulation, and distancing herself from emotions. And so when Mai betrays her she cannot fathom why. Her methods worked so well before, why now? And Mai tells her it was love. The one thing that was unsafe in her home. Ursa and Zuko showed love, and Ozai hurt them. So how can love rival fear? She calls her a fool because that's the only explanation, a lack of intelligence. Then Ty Lee’s betrayal follows, but this one leaves her physical incapacitated. In a physical show of weakness, by the people who she thought she controlled, those closest to her. In one day, the two people she deemed most like her equals betrayed her, not because there was more power to be gained by doing so, but because of affection. And affection is inherently weak and unsafe in Azula’s mind. 

Azula begins slipping.

She chases after Zuko screaming “I’m about to celebrate becoming an only child!”

In itself that line is not remarkable, but before all her words and actions are the epitome of control, and here she is yelling borderline hysterically after she has been betrayed shows that not only did it anger her, it might have broken her perfect image. And attacking Zuko is her way of reclaiming it. By attacking the embodiment of everything she can never be and never wants to be.

Finally, Sozin’s Comet; Azula wants to go with her father to cast the final blow against the Earth Kingdom, but Ozai has different plans. At first Azula doesn’t know why she won't be going with him and panics, stating he can’t treat her like Zuko. Zuko, the weak, imperfect one. The abused one. Azula has worked everyday to be safe. She is strong, perfect, and so she should be safe. So if he disapproves of her now, Azula is no longer safe. But he reassures her, telling her that she will become Firelord. Ozai used her to do all his bidding, capture Zuko, kill the Avatar, take over Earth Kingdom, but now that there is something she wants he ushers her aside to do something else for him. She wants to be with him when they enact HER plan, but once again she is neglected. But Azula accepts her new position, telling herself it's exactly what she wants, after all, being Firelord gives her safety, doesn’t it? And then Ozai proclaims himself the Phoenix King, Azula is once again inferior, at his mercy. But no matter, she must prepare for her coronation. And one by one, she interprets everything as a betrayal. a cherry pit, slight tardiness, and worry for her sanity. For if the two people closest to her could turn their back on her at a moment's notice then the slightest wrongdoing can become a most traitorous act in Azula’s eyes. 

Azula is broken.

She can no longer take care of her appearance like she did previously and begins to hallucinate her mother.

But you see, she doesn't care what her mother thinks of her. That’s why she gets angry at the hallucination. That’s why she desperately explains her methods to her mother. That’s why she cries when Ursa says “I love you Azula, I do.” That’s why she lashes out violently at the mirror. She doesn't care. And finally when she sees Zuko, she reacts violently, and her fighting is erratic, and imprecise. Very unlike her. And she is bested, not even by the one she sees as her rival, her polar opposite, but by a bystander. Chained down. Crying. In front of her enemies. Just crying.

She adopted her fathers mentality for safety, when removed from the imperialist environment she was in we see her show compassion for no reason, and when returning to that environment she returned to those habits, she benefited from a system of fear and when it didn’t work her entire world view crumbled along with her composure, leading to her demise. 

Azula is not a good person, she does not deserve redemption. But given time Azula has shown she can unravel, her cruel thorns can be soothed, and can be broken down. Azula is a sick, twisted child, and if the new ATLA media wishes to redeem her, I don’t see why not. And part of me wants that for her. To take away the last bit of power Ozai had in the world. To heal this 14 year old girl.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R4544ZUr_gA 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hnpcAt_jaes&t=609s

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sKjB19FKhHI

[thewildwaffle]

The Prisoner - Part 4

I was on a roll after part 3 and had this cute little scene pop up into my head. Plus, Garn really needed a moment to rest and take a breath, he’s been through a lot these past few days!

Part 1       Part 2        Part 3

The ship was relatively quiet. Or at least as quiet as a ship can be while bumbling around in space. Perhaps the more appropriate description was that the ship was peaceful. Garn decided that he liked peaceful. He wasn’t sure he understood what it was that he was feeling at first, he’d had so few peaceful moments growing up and working under the Syndicate, but once he figured it out, he decided that it was quite agreeable with him. It seemed to be for Porter as well. His smaller human friend had been recovering quickly after their run-in with Maika the assassin back at the Tupiti Space Port. He could now walk on the leg, albeit with a noticeable limp. Thankfully, it hadn’t seemed to affect his bright and energetic personality, much to Garn’s relief.

Right now though, Porter was asleep. As was Embry, the ship’s medic of sorts. During his time on the ship, he’d been able to piece together a bit more information about his new companions. Embry, he’d learned, had never actually received a medical license. She had training but had never finished. When he inquired more as to why, Embry changed the topic and became much more curt with any further additions to the conversation. Porter was a lot more forthcoming with his backstory. The gist of it was that he’d taken part in some big trading agreement with a private Earth organization and a splinter group from the Bartu Sovereignty that went bad. There’d been some illegal business “under the table” as Porter put it, and he’d been set up as the “fall guy”. The fact that he was a weapons expert and many of the illegal going-ons had to do with the criminal trade of experimental weapons only helped solidify his “guilt” to the authorities that cared. Porter had spent a good part of an entire rotation explaining in great detail how he’d talked, bribed, and fought his way out of the hands of bounty hunters, angry crime lords, sneaking under the radar of law enforcement, and in general living life on the run before he stowed away on The Shasta, this ship, where he met Kaya and Tig.

Then there were those two. The elder human and the kloxan’s story were still a mystery to him. All he’d really gotten to know so far was that they’d been part of a Galactic Confederation crew together. Garn didn’t know much about the Galactic Confederation, other they were considered a continual, pestering antagonist of the Trinn-Har’rups. He’d guarded prisoners of the GC captured by the Syndicate before they faced an unknown, though likely grisly, punishment for the crime of standing in the Syndicate’s way.

Garn felt that among the ranks of guards and soldiers, the Galactic Confederation and those that aligned with them were thought of to be pretentious, power-hungry manipulators. He’d always been around that sentiment, so he never questioned it before. He’d had no need to. Now he was on a ship that had two of them as acting captain and first-mate. Granted they were former Galactic Confederation, so maybe that old profile didn’t fit them. After all, he was now a former guard of the Trinn-Har’rup Syndicate, the stigmas tied up with him probably no longer fit so well either.

And anyway, Porter stayed with them, so they couldn’t be so bad.

Garn rose from the small pile of blankets, pillows, and towels that was currently acting as his bed. Porter had Embry help him scour the ship for as many soft fabrics and items that could be spared to make a spot for Garn to sleep until they could install an actual bed for him. It was nice, but he’d never slept on anything so soft before. Comfortable as it was, between the unaccustomed softness and the overall unfamiliarity that surrounded him, he’d had a hard time finding sleep. As carefully and quietly as he could, he made his way out of the sleeping quarters and down the short hall toward the main hangar room he’d been in when he’d first entered the ship.

The ship was old, but he had to admit that it had been well kept and he’d almost say lovingly maintained. He gave a small half-smile as his eyes ran over the designs in and around the ship. They were outdated. He might even call them antiquated. He liked it though. It felt right and… well he wasn’t sure how else to describe it. Inviting? Warm? Graceful? It was… he felt… like he could belong here. And that made him all the happier.

As he shuffled into the main room, he stood for a moment before he sat down on a bench along the wall to continue processing his thoughts. He wasn’t sure how long he sat there like that, listening to the hum of the ship’s engines and systems when he heard a small quiet grunt to his left. Snapping his eyes open, he searched in the darkness for the source.

His eyes caught a glint of movement from a chair. He felt his fur rise as he instinctively anticipated having to defend himself from an attack. None came though. His brain finally took in what his eyes were trying to see. There was no secret attacker, just human Kaya sitting in a very regal-looking chair. His fur dropped back down and he sighed a breath of relief.

“Sorry I startled you,” Kaya chuckled quietly. Garn could see her shoulders bounce slightly as she shifted in her chair. His eyes ran down her arm. Or where her arm had been. He’d been right earlier that day they’d first met. She hadd stopped what she must have thought was him going to attack Embry. The prosthetic he’d seen her wearing that day and every day since was now no longer attached. Her arm ended just above where her elbow should have been.

After a few tries, he was able to successfully look away. It was hard though. He’d heard humans were capable of surviving attacks or accidents even after losing a limb, but it had seemed like such a far-fetched tale that he wasn’t sure if he’d believed it. The shock alone of having lost a body part was enough to kill many species, but humans, as he now knew, were hardy and stubborn when it came to staying alive and continuing on.

“I… I didn’t realize you were here. I’m sorry I disturbed you,” he murmured as he stood up, feeling like he had intruded on something he shouldn’t have.

“You’re fine, Garn. Sit back down.” It wasn’t a command, it came out softer, like an invitation. He paused and considered that. An invitation. He slowly nodded and sat back down.

“Having a hard time sleeping too, huh?” the human sighed as she leaned further back in her chair.

Garn nodded sharply, then unsure how well humans could see in the dark followed up with a curt, “Yes ma’am.”

Kaya laughed again. “I told you before, you don’t need to call me ma’am.”

“Sorry ma-... uh, sorry. I will try to remember better.”

“It’s okay. I’m sure it’s what you’re used to. I, for one, know old habits die hard.” Her tone was soft and quiet. So unlike the interactions and reprimandings he was accustomed to in his life up to this point.

He settled down a little more, muscles finally starting to drop their worried tension as the two of them sat in the darkness. He eventually relaxed enough that he felt comfortable to break the silence.

“Are you… are you having a hard time sleeping ma- uh, human Kaya?”

She didn’t laugh this time, but Garn could hear the quiet smile in her voice, “We’ll get you through all your formalities yet.” She sighed and stroked her hand over where her left arm ended. “I am. Just some old phantom pains acting up again.”

“Phantom pains?” That sounded serious. Should he go wake Embry?

The worry in his voice must have been picked up because Kaya gently waved him back down as she reached to the counter and picked up a dark mug and sat back in her chair. “My arm may be gone, but sometimes my brain forgets. Sometimes it feels like my arm itches, sometimes it hurts, or at least my brain thinks it does. It doesn’t happen as much as it used to, but still more than I’d like. Especially when I’ve got a lot on my mind.”

She sipped slowly from the mug in her hand. Whatever was in it smelled sweet and calming. Kaya noticed him watching as she lowered the cup and rested it on her lap.

“Mint tea,” she explained. “It helps. Or at least, enjoying a warm cup of it helps me take my mind off the pain.”

Garn nodded silently, not sure what to say. He wasn’t sure what the etiquette was for this situation. He couldn’t take his eyes off her arm and where it ended, but he also knew that for many species, staring for too long at a person could be considered a challenge to a duel, or at least considered rude. Kaya didn’t seem to notice though, more focused on the mug in her hand.

“I brewed it myself,” She continued. “We’ve got a room here on the ship that we’ve filled with plants. It helps keep the air fresh, takes a bit of the strain off the o2 systems. That and sitting in the room or taking care of all the plants helps keep star sickness at bay.”

“Star sickness?” Garn cut in, unfamiliar with the term.

“Void sickness, star sickness, planet separation anxiety, there’s a lot of names for it. It’s not so much a physical sickness, but a mental one. I don’t know how many space-faring races have to deal with it, but it affects humans pretty frequently. It can get pretty nasty too, if it’s not dealt with. I make sure Porter, Embry, and I each spend a chunk of time in the plant room pretty regularly. It’s grounding. And relaxing. Smells nice too. A lot of the plants are, of course, good at filtering the air of impurities, but quite a few of them smell nice. Like the mint, for instance.” She took another sip from the mug and chuckled. “Even Tig likes going in there sometimes. You would think he’d find the humidity levels a pain on the circuits, but he says it doesn’t bother him. I think he finds the plants interesting. Sometimes I notice him laser etching bamboo stalks on packaging scraps when he’s bored.”

Garn hummed and nodded. He’d seen the kloxan do that too. Thinking of him and the human next to him now, he again started wondering at how different they were than what he’d always expected of someone from the Galactic Confederation. Just even in the past few solar rotations, the hard, no-nonsense shell he’d immediately attributed to her when they first met was actually more just her being firm and strong when needed, but thoughtful and gentle at her base. He’d learned so much in such a short amount of time. The galaxy was such a bigger place than he’d ever thought, so much more detailed and nuanced. It had all been so cut and dry and simple when all he knew was what the Syndicate told him. He exhaled deeply as he leaned his head back to rest against the wall.

“That’s quite the sigh,” Kaya noted. “Got a lot on your mind?”

Garn grunted an affirmative. Kaya sat silently as if waiting for him to elaborate. When he didn’t, she leaned her head back to rest against her chair and they both sat silently for a while.

Garn’s mind was racing, and at the same time, it felt like it was stuck in a sticky zawki pit. His thoughts were starting to run into each other and stretch or slow down until nothing was making sense anymore. Maybe he should return to the sleep quarters and try again to get some rest. He looked over to the human who also looked like she was having trouble with her thoughts.

“If I may ask,” he asked quietly so as to not startle her, “what made you want to leave the Galactic Confederation?”

Kaya tilted her head down to consider him a moment. Even in the darkness, he could see the lines around her eyes pull.

“I left,” she began and thought about it a moment, “I left to find my partner.”

Garn wasn’t sure what that meant, so he waited unmoving until she finally continued. Her voice was slow and deliberate, like she was carefully picking through every word.

“We… we were on a scouting mission and there was… an accident. We were separated. I was, well, I was recovered, but he wasn’t.” She paused again and looked down into her mug. Or maybe at her arm, Garn wasn’t sure. “I tried to convince them to go after him. They said he was gone. I appealed. I appealed again and again to higher and higher powers, but I kept getting nos. They told me he was gone and that trying to… recover him would… that it wasn’t worth the risk. He was a good man.” She frowned and looked up sharply. “He is a good man. I think he’s still out there. He survived. I can feel it. And I decided I was going to get him, by myself if I had to. Tig was on our crew as well. He’s been... a dear friend. Both to Ahmad and I before, and now. He believed me. He came along to help me find Ahmad.”

She looked back up at Garn. “Since we left the GC, we’ve found evidence that we were right, that he made it out alive. We just need to find him. And along the way, we’ve picked up a few other lost souls.”

Garn matched her gaze as he listened and thought on the information. She was on a mission. He, well, he was now for all intents and purposes, a fugitive on the run. Other than staying alive, he had no real plans, no goals. What was he going to do now? He must have spoken his question out loud before he realized it, because Kaya cocked her head and gave a small chuckle in response.

“What are you going to do indeed, dantum? I think that’s what everyone has to figure out. Until you do, though, I suppose you can tag along with us for a while.” She took another sip of her tea before she set it back down on the counter. “After all, it’s not like we’d be able to get rid of ya any time soon. Porter’s gotten attached.” She smiled and gave a short hum, “and I think you’d make a decent enough late-night conversationalist. Granted, you do need a little more practice.”

Garn felt a flicker of surprise and returned the smile. He’d like that. Here on this antiquated but cozy ship, surrounded by terrifying but welcoming aliens, he thought he’d really like that.

[jjongleurs]

Here we are, yet again on my great 2020 re-watch of Supernatural. Just for a bit of context: I have not watched these earlier seasons in maybe about 6 or 7 years, and although I do remember some some things like general plot and some of my favorite moments, a lot of it is pretty blank. Between then and now, I have also had my Great Bi Awakening (this is a little important for when I get to talking about bi Dean). 

I am now on 5x3 “Free to Be You and Me” and THIS EPISODE. Before I start babbling about how much I love this episode and the multitude of reasons why, let me just debrief about what I have seen so far of the Dean and Cas dynamic. 

They started out simply just working together, but they’ve slowly built up trust and some affection for one another at this point. It’s still very fresh and new, and it’s starting to solidify into their friendship. Dean has begun to genuinely trust and depend on Cas which is HUGE, and Cas... oof. Cas has already started to have feelings for Dean he doesn’t understand. We see him struggle with these feelings through his facial expressions quite a bit. The confused head tilt we all know and love, and the more subtle yet somehow more obvious look.

Start playing at 1:24 to see what I mean by the look. Cas observes intensely, then looks down. I think in this particular instance Cas was feeling some kind of faint jealousy he doesn’t know how to recognize yet. We all know Cas had begun to change from the moment he pulled Dean out of Hell, and with that came human emotions. Moments like this keep happening in regards to Dean, and its not always exactly romantic. Cas often has these moments where the gears turning inside his head are practically visible as he tries to decipher whatever new emotion Dean stirs up in him. Here it was jealousy, but we have also seen doubt, defiance, affection, and the emotion we are beginning to see more and more often is care, specifically towards Dean and humanity. Cas’ feelings for Dean start developing in season 4, but Dean’s? They start developing in season 5. 

This is where my blabbering on how much I love 5x3 begins. Dean, the ever repressed bisexual—yes, even before Cas, it was becoming apparent around 2x11, I can also make a post about this if y’all want—has already cemented his friendship with Cas, but now he’s dealing with attraction! This attraction, I think, is both of the romantic and physical sort. And Dean’s already kicking himself for it.

So, this is where my background (and many of yours, I believe) as a queer person becomes important in deciphering Dean’s attraction to Cas. When I first saw these episodes for the first time, I had no idea who I was (well, the sheer amount of repression I dealt with made it so) and was doing the same dumb things as Dean. Now, having come to understand myself and my past actions as a bi person, I feel like I can understand Dean, too.

Firstly, let’s take a look at the Thelma and Louise clip from this episode. For context, it’s a reference to a movie which ends with two women, friends who have been through a lot together, holding hands and kissing before driving their car off a cliff to escape being captured by the authorities.

Dean here is drawing parallels between himself and Cas to Thelma and  Louise which FLOORS me every time. This is also where I think the romantic attraction comes in because Thelma and Louise is the reference he chose to make. This is where my experience as a dumb, repressed bisexual comes into play. It’s hard to articulate what this exactly means to someone who hasn’t experienced it, but being a repressed bi comes with something akin to intrusive thoughts (which are just the gay feelings we don’t yet understand) and lack of a filter at times. Not to mention the mentally kicking oneself à la why did I even say that, that was so stupid of me, what does that even MEAN, oh my god I can never speak to this person again why am I so dumb. You can see Dean doing just this and mentally kicking himself at 0:14 where he’s closing his eyes for a second and slightly shaking his head. He knows what he just said is low-key REALLY gay, and it doesn’t matter that Cas doesn’t understand the reference because HE understands it but he has no clue why he said it. He probably laid in bed awake in the middle of the night ages later asking himself why the hell did I say that???

Second, this hilariously glorious clip wherein Dean says, with certainty, that Bert and Ernie are gay and that Cas isn’t going to die a virgin.

Dean is amused and surprised by the fact that Cas hasn’t done the deed, and I can almost certainly guarantee that his first thought wasn’t to take Cas to a brothel. His first thought was probably a more... involved plan *cough cough* but he treated that like an intrusive thought like the poor repressed bastard he is.  The reason why I think this? The “There are two things I know for certain: 1) Bert and Ernie are gay, 2) you are not gonna die a virgin.” line. There was NO REASON for those two things to be put in the same sentence other than the weird inner-workings of the repressed bisexual. See, our brains are kinda funny like that. Even when we are trying our hardest to not think about our physical/romantic/whatever attraction to someone in a non-heterosexual manner, sometimes we fail spectacularly. The filter between our mouths and brains? Temporarily gone sometimes. Things just slip out without us meaning them to, and sometimes they’re accidentally super gay. 

(Also, because I can’t just not mention it, Cas being all flustered and ruffled feathers about being asked if he’s a virgin by the one human that makes him feel things? *chef’s kiss*)

In conclusion, Dean is a disaster bi and Cas is starting to feel things. This is the first episode I can point to and say, specifically in regards to Dean and Cas, there is no heterosexual explanation for this. And it’s just the beginning.

[littletoska]

Mirror: A Tale of Twin Cities [Episode 5] Also, I'm Dropping it.

A lot went down in this episode yet I felt absolutely nothing as I watched it all play out on screen. I know these seemingly, hefty scenes were supposed to make me emotional (at least, that's what the director was going for) but I don't know these characters or their world well enough to be invested in anything that happens for it to pack a punch. Like, from the first episode to now, we've been given no foundation or buildup to the story. Just these maddeningly random sequences that make no sense to the narrative when combined as a whole.

For instance, we get scenes like:

The princess' Chastity Stamp becomes null and void but not for the reasons one would expect. Apparently, it's a purity detector for unladylike thoughts not pertaining to her betrothed. And here I was, thinking it was some weird Xianxia take on a Chastity Belt to keep the boys away from her virginal body. But what amuses me to no end about all of this is how she literally entertains the idea of eloping with Su Mo for a few seconds when the Chastity Stamp just...dissolves. Poof. Dust in the wind. If that's all it took to deem her impure, I would've been thrown in harlot jail on day one. Also, equally amusing is the security system equipped with this magical Chastity Stamp. It instantly alerted the Purity Apostle or whatever he is of its corruption and a slew of palace soldiers were on the princess in less time than it takes me to blink. She's then arrested along with Su Mo and they are taken away for Judgment Hour.

The next memorable scene is the Crown Princess flinging herself from the the top of the pagoda because she's now "unpure" and can't inherit earth's power or something and believes she has to die for her next of kin(?) to inherit the power that's needed to become queen. It's absolutely wild and makes no sense but yeah. That's what happens. That's the best answer she could come up with to stop an impeding war and save her family's legacy. Of course, Su Mo is witness to this and he does what any Xianxia hero would do: runs in slow-mo to save the self-sacrificing heroine and helplessly watches as she oh, so slowly plummets to hard ground because he was a few seconds too late. Better luck next time, buddy.

Then we randomly scene cut to Su Mo despairing away in a dungeon as the Crown Prince passionately berates him for lowkey causing the princess' death when all three of these characters got, maybe, 2 scenes together in 5 episodes? Like? Why is the Crown Prince this invested in two people he's only just met? One of which he only become acquainted with a few minutes before she jumped to her death? Why is he guilt tripping a man he doesn't know? Why is he acting like he had any emotional stake in these nonexistent relationships? Why is Su Mo even in a jail cell when he's going to be banished to some other region? It's not like he's going to high tail it out of there. He's too busy hating himself to want to preserve his life. I am confusion but okay...moving on.

Now, here is my favorite scene out of all this tomfoolery. Su Mo has been banished and he's now listlessly wandering through a blizzarding wasteland. Why and to what end? Unclear. My guess would be he's looking for a nice spot to lie down and die in. He manages to find said dying spot and as he's just lying there, ruminating in his despair and regret, his gender-fluid seal disappears, permanently solidifying him as a Real Boy. Apparently, merpeople have this seal on their foreheads that allow them to change genders at will and that ability only goes away when one falls in love with the opposite gender. Thus, bye-bye goes the pride seal. But out of everything I had to suspend disbelief in to carry on watching is the fact that Su Mu didn't turn into a mericle while he roamed the below freezing mountains for God knows how long. Are merpeople immortal? Immune to extreme temperatures? It's a plot hole but one that's minute and weird to fixate on seeing as there's more glaring question marks in the story but here I am.

And now we are on the final part of this post. Fucking finally, am I right? I can prattle on for days, I know. But here we are, if you're still with me:

The last couple of minutes of episode 5 takes place 100 years after everything went to shit and it's just...a lot. It begins with the Crown Princess narrating how she didn't die after jumping from the pagoda and what she's been up too these 100 of years past. Apparently, this magical earth ring flew on her finger before she went caput and it ultimately saved her but put her in a coma for 100 years. Where did this ring come from? Why did it knock her out? No one knows. It just appeared out of thin air to save the day.

The princess then miraculously wakes up from said coma after her 100 year nap and the Crown Prince loses his earth power in a battle against darkness(?) I'm not too clear on that tidbit but then he too, is put into a magical coma. Again, I'm not sure why the coma but yeah. The princess then goes on a quest for his misplaced earth magic to wake him up? At least, I think that's her goal. There are a lot of things I'm not clear on.

As for Su Mo, I'm not 100% sure what he had been up to the all those years but I think he just roamed the snowy mountains in regret? From the little we are shown, he also reluctantly acquaints a band of refugees and a refugee child who has prophetic powers and divines his future which he gets sensitive about because Bai Ying is mentioned. Lord forbid the woman you loved a century ago be brought up in conversation. You know you have it bad when you develop a crush in a week but stay emo about it not working out for 100 years. That's some metal level pining right three. But I digress. So Su Mo, refugee girl, and traveling band of refugees are met with an avalanche and only Su Mo and RG surive it. Neither Su Mo or RG were too concerned with it either. People die and what of it was there take on that. In hindsight, it was an odd scene to include but whatever. Finally, the closing scene is of Su Mo and the princess coincidencely meeting in a forest (how does Su Mo even get from point A to B? I thought he was despairing in the mountains. Did he fly? Can merpeople fly? What am I saying? Ofc he can can fly, it's a Xianxia) when the episode ends.

Finally takes a deep breath.

And that's it, folks.

This pretty much sums up of all the key points from episode 5. Although, I'm left to wonder where the cohesiveness in all of it is. I'm sure had the screenwriter and director planned out a storyboard, these seemingly random segments would make more sense in the grand scheme of things but they obviously didn't and nothing adds up and I'm left highly amused by it all.

Twin Cities by far is the trippiest drama I've seen in recent years and the only way it'd make sense if one's system was pumped with psychedelic drugs.

[p-artsypants]

I’ll Handle This (7)

I really just want to say thanks. I love this fandom, and I love this story…just the overwhelming excitement for this fic makes me so so happy. Everything that happens is really just me saying ‘whatever, I want to see this’. Does it make sense? Not always. Is everyone completely in character? Maybe. Am I having a blast? Absolutely! 

Thank you for all the comments and kudos! 

And sorry for the wait. Wedding planning! 

In Which Gabriel is Serenaded

(Ao3 | FF.net)

—

Day three, Adrien awoke on the pillow. He was used to it now, officially. How scary a thought! 

Plagg had laid out his outfit, thankfully so Adrien could approve, or at least warm up to the idea. 

It was one of the shirts that Marinette had Frankensteined together from the pieces they had found. Absolutely gaudy, atrocious, and a pain to look at. Stripes, polka dots, plaid, little patterns of flowers, all saturated as far top right of the Hue/Sat scale as possible. 

It would make his father cry. It would set the media into a frenzy. It was glorious, and that scared Adrien. 

It scared him that he was starting to come around. He was starting to enjoy this reckless abandon. It was cathartic to watch his world shift and change into something more chaotic, and yet somehow pleasant. Organized Chaos. 

Plagg came out of the bathroom, devoid of mohawks or any other bizarre hairstyle he could have done. His hair was just swept to the side, combed, but not gelled, into place. 

The perfect amount of wild. 

“You don’t have to wake up when I do.” Plagg stated. “I’ll just drop you in my pocket.” 

“It’s alright,” Adrien assured, yawning. “I’m used to waking up this early.”

Plagg dressed quickly, and just as he slid into his moccasins, the room glowed red, and heavy bars slammed shut over the windows. 

Both Adrien and Plagg jolted in surprise, Adrien falling into panic.

Plagg just scooped him up, and held him to his chest. “Hey kid, it’s alright. You can phase through things. You can escape if you need too.” 

This helped calm him down slightly, if ever so minutely. Plagg tucked him into his pocket, and confidently walked downstairs. 

Gabriel and Nathalie were waiting for him in the foyer. 

“What's the deal, old man?” Plagg asked, bluntly. “Akuma attack?”

“No,” replied Gabriel, his head held high. “You’re grounded. No school. No friends. Nothing.” 

Plagg scoffed. “I’m under literal house arrest?! Come on! I have a sleepover at Nino’s tonight!”

“Did you ask if you could attend this sleepover?” 

“No. You were going to say no anyways. Better to beg forgiveness then ask permission and all that.”

“Well, that really solidifies my decision to ground you then. You clearly show a clear lack of critical and mature thinking.” 

“Ah, a pompous way of calling me stupid, hmm?”

Gabriel frowned harder, a line forming at the corner of his mouth. “I am not calling you stupid. I just don’t see you making good decisions.” 

“Gabriel, before this, I wasn’t making any decisions. Everything I did was according to your will. How can you be mad at me at being bad at something I have no practice doing?” 

Gabriel’s eye twitched. “First, do not call me by my first name. Second, I have already made up my mind. If I say you’re grounded, then you’re grounded. Deal with it.” 

Oh that was not a good answer. He may have well just said, ‘because I say so.’ 

And Plagg would not stand for it. He wasn’t standing for it anyway, but he’d at least be willing to bargain with Gabriel if he was offering some excuse about safety for his well being or something.

This was just a power trip.

“Fine,” Plagg smiled maliciously. “Lock me in. But you’re locked in with me. And you’re going to hate it.” 

“I don’t have time to entertain you, Adrien, go to your room.” 

As a kwami who spent most days in Adrien’s bag, Plagg consumed a lot of media. A pair of headphones, an external battery, and a phone that connected to the school’s wifi, Plagg had days to binge all the things that Adrien was interested in. 

And some things that Adrien didn’t care about, like historical dramas, documentaries, and recently, musicals. Especially for time periods that he had witnessed and experienced. He wasn’t omnipotent, so seeing what the humans had thought was important during these periods was fascinating.

But I digress.

The point was that Plagg had a song stuck in his head from a musical and the perfect opportunity to use it had just presented itself.

Gabriel had deemed the conversation over and started to walk back to his office.

“Close every door to me,” Plagg sang, in Adrien’s sweet voice.

Gabriel halted, but did not turn around.

“Hide all the world from me.” Plagg took a step towards him, still singing softly. “Bar all the windows and shut out the light.”

Gabriel turned, raising an eyebrow. “If you think serenading me is going to make me change my—“ 

But Plagg cut him off, raising his voice slightly, “Do what you want with me, hate me and laugh at me.”

Gabriel just stared, and listened.

“Darken my daytime and torture my night…” Plagg came closer, singing with feeling, trying to convey, even for an instance, a flicker of the emotions that Adrien had.

“If my life were important I would ask ‘will I live or die?’ but I know the answers lie far from this world.”

This was horrifying to Gabriel, apparently, as he protested. “Of course your life is important! Why do you think I—“

“Close every door to me, keep those I love from me. Children of Israel are never alone.”

“Children of—what? We’re not even Jewish. What are you singing about?”

“For I know I shall find my own peace of mind. For I have been promised a land of my own.”

Confused, Gabriel just scoffed and started back to his office. Plagg stayed hot on his heels.

“Close every door to me, hide all the world from me.”

Even Gabriel saw the irony of slamming the office door in Adrien’s face, so he resisted, and let his son continue to serenade him into his office. 

“Bar all the windows and shut out the light.”

Gabriel stood at his workstation, determined to ignore his son’s weird emotional outburst, and opened his recent project. 

“Just give me a number instead of my name. Forget all about me and let me decay.”

Plagg fought the smile of victory when Gabriel hunched his shoulders. Was that guilt on his face? Perhaps Gabriel wasn’t as shallow as Plagg had thought and lyrics like this would get through to him. 

“I do not matter, I'm only one person. Destroy me completely, then throw me away.”

And Gabriel sat, staring with his wide gray eyes. His full attention on his son. 

“If my life were important I would ask ‘will I live or die?’ But I know the answers lie far from this world.”

Plagg pounded his fists on the workspace, crying out the words with passion, actually making Gabriel jump. 

“Close every door to me! Keep those I love from me!” He leapt up on a coffee table, putting his entire body, his very soul into this performance. “Children of Israel are never alone!”

Gabriel couldn’t move. Why couldn’t he move?

“For we know we shall find our own peace of mind! For we have been promised a land of our own!” He held out that final note, letting it hang in the air, as Gabriel continued to stare, mouth slightly open. 

Truth me told, Plagg was just intending to annoy him to freedom, but had the song choice done more? Did Gabriel finally understand? 

“Well,” Gabriel adjusted his glasses. “That was...certainly something. If I knew you could sing like that, I would have tried to find a use for it. Never mind, I’ll add it to your resume now.” 

No. It seemed that Gabriel was as stubborn and obtuse as ever. 

“Close every door to me,” Plagg began again. 

“No no no,” Gabriel spoke over him. “One performance is more than enough.” 

“Hide all the world from me.” 

“Adrien!” 

“Darken my daytime, and torture my night.” 

Gabriel groaned, and made an effort to ignore Plagg again. A real effort this time, with no eye contact and no facial expression. When that didn’t work, he moved from his workstation and went to grab Adrien. But Plagg evaded him, continuing to sing, with every grasp.

How many times did he cycle through the song? His throat hurt, as every time he reached the climax, he belted out the notes with passion. 

It would be surprising if no one outside could hear him. 

He climbed up on a table. “If my life were important I would ask will I live or die—“ 

“Enough! Shut up! Shut up shut up shut up!” Gabriel shouted. “I can’t take this anymore!” He bolted over to the security control panel, and shut off the lock down. The bars on the windows disappeared. 

“Go...please, just go.” Gabriel said desperately. 

“Cool, thanks dad!” Plagg said cheerfully, skipping out of the room. 

Gabriel collapsed onto his workstation. 

Whatever tricks Adrien had learned, whatever manipulation guru he had visited, he was good. Very very good. It would take a while to get him back under his thumb. And he might need to resort to more drastic measures. 

What was more drastic than putting the house into lockdown? He’d need a little while to contemplate that.

—

Plagg had missed several morning classes thanks to Gabriel’s stunt, but his friends heaved a relaxed sigh when he arrived.  

“Hey hey hey!” He sang, coming in the door. “What’s happening, party people?” 

“Mr. Agreste!” Miss Mendeleev barked. “You better have a good excuse for being tardy!” 

“A great excuse! My dad shut the house down to ground me, and I had to annoy him with Broadway until he opened up. He was a lot more patient than I expected.” 

“Are you serious?” Miss Mendeleev asked. 

“Madam, do you really think that my father, fashion mogul, would allow me to leave the house like this?” He gestured to his mismatched outfit.

“Point taken. You may take your seat.” 

Plagg shot a thumbs up to his friends. 

—

After school, the group of four piled into Nino’s family car and headed over to his house. 

“I’m so excited! My first sleepover!” The excitement was genuine, as this truly was Plagg’s first sleepover. Of course, his whole life had consisted in sleeping in different places that weren’t his home (the Miracle Box) but the concept of going to a friends house to eat food and gossip all night long was novel and exciting. 

“What curfew do you girls have?” Mrs. Lahiffe asked. 

“I have until 11,” beamed Alya. 

“I have to leave at 9,” Marinette pouted. “I have to help my parents in the bakery tomorrow.” 

It was also Ladybug’s solo patrol tonight, Plagg noted to himself. Kind of a saving grace, since Chat certainly wasn’t going to be on it. 

“I’ll be sure to count you both for dinner then!” Mrs. Lahiffe chirped. 

Adrien had been to Nino’s house a handful of times, all under the pretense of working on homework of course. And it wasn’t a house either, it was an apartment, like most residences in Paris. It was warm, not always clean, and the smell of their cat’s litter was just a hint in the air. 

Major Tom was a right good cat. An old gray tabby, who was far too wise for his own good. Plagg had met this family member in person, since the cat was still pretty curious in his age. 

As soon as the group of friends entered the apartment, Major Tom stretched and trotted toward them, toward Plagg, and rubbed against his leg. 

“Hi Tommy,” Plagg smiled, an inside joke passing between them. 

“I swear,” said Nino with defeat. “Major Tom likes you more than anyone else in this house...and you’ve barely met him.” 

Plagg just shrugged. “What can I say? I’m a pussy magnet.” 

“DUDE! My mom is right there!” 

Mrs. Lahiffe was not amused, but the furious giggling from behind him made it all worth it, he supposed.

“Sorry mom, Adrien’s going through a rebellious streak. He doesn’t usually make jokes like that.” 

“Yeah, sorry, Uh...I just couldn’t pass up the opportunity.” 

Mrs. Lahiffe shook her head. “I noticed your outfit was rather...daring. Is that from your father’s new collection?” 

“Nope! This is a Marinette original!” 

Marinette smacked him in the arm. “I told you not to associate me with that abomination!” She turned to Mrs. Lahiffe and quickly clarified, “He designed it and I carried out the deed.” 

“Oh you kids are so funny!” She laughed. “Well, you didn’t come over to entertain me! Go have fun, I’ll get pizza around 6?” 

“Thanks mom!” 

“Thanks Mrs. Lahiffe!” 

On the way to Nino’s room, he asked. “What movie do you guys want to watch tonight?”

Plagg grinned, “Have you ever seen Joseph and the Technicolor Dreamcoat?” 

—

Chapter is kind of short, but I have delayed it long enough, and sleepover shenanigans need their own chapter.

The song Plagg sang was ‘Close Every Door’ from Joseph and the Technicolor Dreamcoat.

[madmachaca]

On Pisces Aphrodite:

Originally I was just going to make a post saying that, much like Deathmask, I consider the way Aphrodite is portrayed in Saintia Sho is the best (Chimaki Kuori really did a great job with the golds), but then I remembered I wanted to make a post dedicated to the most beautiful saint in Athena's army...so here we are now

One of the biggest problems with Aphrodite is not the character himself, but how he is one of those character whose interpretation and general characteristics about his personality recognizable among fans, are mostly fan made. And it bothers me a little because, though I don't mind comedic takes and memes on a show or a character (actually you may have realize I don't like taking things seriously now and then), there will be a momemt when we wouldn't remember who the character really is.

(I should mention that I mostly blame the Abel movie for solidifying the idea of an overly vain Aphrodite. I don't particularly like how he is pictured there...but that didn't stopped from making a meme...because it was funny)

So who is Aphrodite then?

Let's begin with his personality.

He is a very calmed person. In contrast to Deathmask, who he is normally associated with, he doesn't have aggressive outbursts of laughter or yelling. Not that he can't lose is temper or anything like that, but he seems to be among the calmest saint among the 12. He also doesn't wear his emotions on his sleeve as visible as some of his companions. But this doesn't mean he holds back his opinion or that he cannot be cruel. This may be an stretch but he did told Shun that Seiya was going to die right before reminding him he was supposed to be looking for revenge (whatever it was done in a mocking way or not is up to debate)

This could be with the intention of shaking his opponent core and ability to focus. Though he would be able to stop Shun if he had tried to run and help Seiya, it would be easier to defeat an oponent who is emotionally invested (in theory, look at tbe battle between Deathmask and Shiryu to see how emotion can turn a fight around).

Aphrodite is proud and considers himself above other in terms of power and hability, but this isn't a feature exclusive to him. All gold saints KNOW they are on a different league, and Aphrodite is not someone who is constantly pointing it out... that would be Shaka...for example.

The way Aphrodite does patronize Shun is by calling him "child" or "naive" (which he arguably is). Not by being particularly self absorbed.

Now let's talk about his philosophy.

Aphrodite believes that the strong carry justice. He thinks that if someone is strong and powerful enough to vanquish their enemies, then they would be strong enough to look after others

His perception of the world is not black and white. He understands that in order to accomplish peace and prosperity, sacrifices need to be made. Justice may sometimes seem as cruelty in the eyes of those who don't know how complicated the world could be. He didn't became a traitor because he was evil, he saw how small and fragile Athena was and eventually realized she wouldn't be enough. We may understand this better if we consider that even by the time Saga's rebellion happened the santuary was already getting ready for the holy war, they didn't know if it would come the very next day, or 13 years later, but they had to be ready anyway.

It was maybe there where Aphrodite realized that a baby couldn't do much, and after Aioros and Athena supossed death happened, he convinced himself it was for the best.

Saori's more passive take and overly kind attitude may would clash with him and his views of justice, but he would had follow her anyway. After all he has been shown being very respectful to authority.

Fighting style

By the way he fights,we can tell he falls more into the "silent assassin" type.

His attacks are discrete, fast, lethal, and elegant. As far as I know, roses were (goddess) Aphrodite's flower, and the pisces constellation is directed tied to her for it tells the story of when she and Eros transformed into fish. Given the origin of his constellation, and the deity he's tied to, it makes sense beauty would be found not only on his face, but on his fights as well.

Saga even acknowledged him as lethal.

Yes, he doesn't like losing (but who does, really?)

During his fight with Shun we see Aphrodite go from calmed and even patient, to confused and surprised.

When he had the higher ground, he even advice Shun let things be

It seems like he acknowledged Shun lack of experience in real war, it can also be that he didn't consider him a dangerous enemy, after all, he was just a mere bronze saint. The panel above shows Aphrodite trying to spare Shun from further suffering. Little he knew Shun's cosmo is unexplainable strong

Later, he got desperate. He used an attack he never needed before, but it was too late. Shun's strength along with Athena's blessing, signed Aphrodite demise

(Before going to the next point, I have to say that in the manga version of Hades saga, he didn't beg for his life like he did in the anime. He just watched in silence until the very last moment, when he asked Radamanthis to stop)

His views on beauty

Honestly, I don't know what he thinks about his own looks... he never speaks about it.

So, please repeat after me:

APHRODITE DOES NOT PAY SPECIAL ATTENTION TO HIS OWN LOOKS

Whenever his looks are brought up is by someone else. He doesn't really seems to pay much attention to them. The only instance I can remember he addressing the issue was not in the manga or anime but in the awakening game which so far had kept them all in character

"Since I first arrived here, everyone praised my beauty, but they never acknowledged my strength".

So, it's the Saintia Sho take really that good?

I humbly think it is perfect

[lokislittlesigyn]

so....that episode of loki amiright? how do you feel abt it?

Ah, Nonny. That's what I've been trying to figure out all day.

I watched the episode twice now, and after a very long and eventful day, full of emotional highs and lows, I'm really not sure where to stand.

Let's start with the good. Spoilers below.

- Sylvie's backstory. I want to know more, and hope they show more. But this episode really solidified how much I like her as a character. I hope she can truly move forward as herself - whether she wants that to be as a Loki or as something different. Maybe both.

- Loki's line about how Lokis (this is from memory, sorry) "We might lose, painfully even, but we don't die. We survive." Hearing those words? After Infinity War? It felt like he was saying them to me. And to all the other fans who need to hear that. Loki is intensely important to a lot of people, and seeing him get hurt in such horrific ways leaves a lasting impression. At the very least, knowing he's never gone for good? That nothing stops him? That helps.

- Hunter B-15. I never disliked her as a person, just felt she was very set in her ways and absolutely devoted to the TVA. When that came crashing down, as we saw, things really changed for her. I'm honestly really glad for this character growth and I wish her the best. And I desperately hope C-2O isn't actually dead... if she is, I want to know who killed her.

- More Mobius and Ravonna being friends. I love that. And I do still like Ravonna, as a person - I believe she truly believed the Time-Keepers were real. Or else, she was afraid of whoever was controlling them. Because we can see in that scene when she walks to them, she looks scared - and the only other beings there are the Time-Keepers, so she has no reason to be putting on a show. I believe she really was that apprehensive. I also think lying to people like she did is wrong, but we have yet to see the fully story of why.

- Lovely to see more of Asgard, even a glimpse. Lovely to see Lady Sif again. Absolutely BRILLIANT to see some myths being worked into the MCU! I plan to write a full fic of Loki cutting Sif's hair! But seeing Loki get repeatedly assaulted? Intensely upsetting. I really didn't enjoy seeing him in so much pain. I am not a male so I don't know how much that kick would hurt, but it certainly seemed to wear him down... sigh.

- Loki being honest with himself. I don't think he's a narcissist, but I do think he needs attention and he's afraid of being alone.. And honestly, I am too. I hate feeling alone. So seeing him say that, hearing that confirmation of what I thought, it really encouraged me.

- Mobius is well-written, though I don't necessarily agree with all his decisions or what he says, I really appreciate how he investigated what Loki said and chose to help him. Also, I think Mobius is going to find Loki in that place where the Variants are and save him. Team up against the TVA.

- The Time-Keepers were fake I KNEW they had to be fake I KNEW it. It remains to be seen if they were ever real or not, and who's behind the TVA (again I don't believe it was Ravonna, especially as we saw her as a hunter earlier, so she likely wasn't there at the start) but I feel rather clever for not believing in the Time-Keepers.

- Loki. Variants. Comic Loki. Young Loki. Alligator Loki. More Lokis. I want all of them, I want every single one of them, Loki in all his forms is wonderful and I want to meet them all.

- Honorable mention: A friend told me that Loki got pruned but showed up later. Honestly? If they hadn't shared that? I don't think I would've been able to make it through the day. That, and some theory posts about pruning being transfer than a murder, saved me.

Now for the things I was mixed on or didn't exactly like...

- The elephant in the room.. Loki and Sylvie's relationship. Now, to be clear, I love the idea of Loki seeing himself from an outside perspective, seeing the potential, and being able to directly empathize and emotionally grow by connecting with someone. I also love the idea of that happening independent of romance because it doesn't have to be romantic.

I can't find a real confirmation of if it's romantic or not. An official Marvel article talked about how the writers created Loki "falling in love with himself" while an interview with Kate Herron said it's "Not necessarily romantic." There are so many mixed signals.

//TW for PTSD, panic/anxiety, mental health here

For a while, I felt absolutely crushed and heartbroken. I didn't anticipate seeing Loki look at someone like that to do that to me. I felt numb. I cried a lot. And this afternoon, for the first time in a long while, I didn't imagine him with me when I was scared. I didn't imagine him being around, telling me it was okay, telling me we'd get through it together. Instead, I was just alone. I had to not think about it or I would've honestly broke down into sobs. My mental health took an incredible downward spiral and I was stuck trying to fight off a panic attack in public for over an hour. it was not easy. I've since pulled myself up and told myself to wait and see what happens. There are options. For instance, this is one version of Loki.. There are obviously other versions of Loki that I can imagine as "mine" if I so choose. Time will tell what happens.

- This isn't necessarily a .. Bad thing, in terms of story. But seeing how broken Loki was after Mobius was pruned absolutely shattered me. I cried. I cannot stand seeing him so upset. That same horrible expression is what he wore in IW for part of the opening scene and I can't get it out of my head. It's horrible. I am really holding on to Loki seeing his friend again. They have to reunite.

//TW ends

- I would've preferred to see B-15's life? Maybe I'm just too invested in the side characters, and the acting in that scene was certainly great! But I just, I really care about her and I want to know what makes her happy. I want her to be happy...

- C-20 is dead. Maybe... I really hope she isn't actually. I really liked her too...

Ah, that's all I can think of for now.

Overall, I feel a lot of emotions. Confusion, hope, worry, sadness. I hope next week's episode will continue the story well, and help make sense of things.