#is jeremy stepping up to the role anyways?

[cubbihue]

Weird Bug asks too many questions. Nooooot important!!!!

Bugs: [Start] > [Prev] > [Next]

[faecaribou]

I absolutely love the idea of your Scout time travel AU!! Please make more lmao

oh boy i really meant to be like "ough im lazy heres this idea someone else make it" and then i started writing like a gajillion words about it and texting my sibling about it. im cooked this idea has taken over frfrfrfr

in order to write about the time travel I have to write about Scout passing away. I'm going to be sick

Here goes:

https://archiveofourown.org/works/63190489

Chapter One: We Know Where We're Goin'

December 4, 1987 is a date that Scout’s been dreading for a very long time.

Oh, he lived his life to the fullest, staying in touch with his fellow mercenaries and having enough money to get by from suing the town of Teufort that he never needed another job (not that he could with his fingerprints gone), and making God happy by being His gift to women and sleeping around. But the moment he held his first child in his arms and fell in love he knew he’d dread this day.

It’s not fair. He has a family that depends on him, in the form of an elderly mother and many older siblings and their wives and children, not to mention his own beautiful children. His sons and his daughters. Tanya, Tabby, Tommy, and Tristan.

He loves his children more than anything else in the world. He loves that he has no job, that he can spend every second possible with them. Whenever he looks at a calendar, anticipatory grief crawls up his throat and he needs to excuse himself to his bedroom and fight back tears.

Every night he closes his eyes and prays. He’s never been a praying man before his kids. But every night after tucking his babies into bed and kissing them goodnight, he squeezes his eyes shut as hard as he can and he begs in his mind for a little more time.

His youngest is Tanya, and she’s only three and a half. She can walk and she can talk (only stumbling over words sometimes) and she’s going to be only ten and a half when Jeremy is set to die.

She’ll have more time than Jeremy had with his own father, he thinks rather cruelly to himself at his lowest points. They’ll have plenty of support; no doubt his mother will take his kids in rather than let them be separated by their mothers, who didn’t want them anyway, and if his mother can’t do it by herself Jeremy’s brothers are many.

They might even have the mercenaries, Scout thinks hopefully. Maybe Soldier could-

He imagines Tanya, his little princess, covered in dirt competing to use the bathroom like the Does, and stops the thought in its tracks.

Perhaps Heavy and Medic- (the baboon.) Or Sniper- (in that camper van?) Or Engineer, Scout called him Dad on accident enough times (No.)

Some selfish, buried part of him thinks Spy should watch over his kids. Spy owes him. Spy is good with his kids. Spy gave Tanya his mask. Spy cares about his kids more than just a friend ought to-

And yet, Scout is afraid of Spy ending up with his kids. He can’t stand the idea of Spy stepping into the role of a father for his kids, his kids who will need a dad. He worries about the possibility, feels ashamed at the worry, feels anger at the shame, and it cycles through until he can admit that none of the mercenaries, and certainly not Spy, will be getting his kids when he dies.

When he dies. Not if. It sends a pang of despair through him.

So one of the other Willis-es will take in his kids. His Ma raised him and his brothers right, his kids won’t get separated. He has plenty of money left over. They’ll be okay.

They’ll be okay, he tells himself as the date creeps closer. They have to be.

He reads them children's books about the concept of death. Books about parents loving their children no matter what. He never, never, wants them to think he doesn’t love them, no matter what they do when he’s gone. There is nothing that could stop him.

He’d like to think that nothing will stop him from coming back, either. When he sees God again, he’s going to beg and plead and drop to his knees, and if that doesn’t work he’ll start shouting and throwing punches. He’ll be stubborn and relentless and every frustrated thing his Ma or Spy ever called him and he won’t stop until God puts him back with his kids.

It’s not fair. He doesn’t have enough time with his kids.

Tanya, his youngest. She’s three and a half. She likes it when he styles his own hair into short pigtails like hers, she likes wearing Spy’s gross mask (Spy let her keep it, and Jeremy washed it because he knew the man never took it off). She wants to be an assassin princess.

Tristan, his loud little swimmer. He’s four years old and five months. His blond hair is the easiest to brush, but he keeps running around without his clothes on. At least he only does it inside the house. He has the most trouble sleeping at bedtime. His favorite animal is the elephant.

Tabitha, his smart little baby. His Tabby. She’s five years and three months. His quietest and his shyest, but her siblings are loud enough for her. She has that Willis pride in her though, and though she wears glasses she has never expressed any self-consciousness about it. She reads so many books she loses track of time, and Jeremy is so proud of her.

Tommy, his eldest. He turned six only a month and a half ago. Jeremy likes to think he looks like Tom Jones, though his boy is nothing like the singer, he's his own person and Jeremy loves him for it. He bounces off the walls in a clumsy way that reminds Scout of when he was younger, and he constantly asks his father when his growth spurt will come. His favorite color is blue, despite all his old team mates encouraging him to switch to red.

His children. He can’t imagine how he ever lived without them. He hasn’t had enough time. It’s not fair.

A year passes. Then another. It’s easy to keep the dread and grief and sorrow to the dead of night, out of his children’s sight. He has time. He still has time. He can’t ruin what little time he has left.

More years pass. His children grow. Tommy enters middle school. He’s eleven now. It’s like watching his clock run out.

Tabitha turns eleven. Tristan turns eleven. He’ll never see Tanya turn eleven.

He struggles to eat sometimes. His kids are young. They don’t notice. Some of his friends worry, but it’s not that big a deal. It’s not going to hurt him. There are no long term effects to worry about. His stress will not cause future heart conditions.

He’s running out of time. Tanya turns ten.

He wants to tell God it’s not fair. But the hours keep ticking on the clock, the days keep counting down, the calendar keeps switching to the next month, and one morning he wakes up and it’s December 3rd, 1987.

His children are excited. He caved in a moment of weakness, and sent letters to his friends and family, asking for an early holiday party. He can’t do Christmas, won’t they stop by sooner? And most of them replied yes, they’ll come.

So he spends the day cleaning up, and giving his children toys and chores to keep them occupied, and when the clock hits noon there’s a knock at his door.

Some of his brothers drop by. His mother arrives, Spy’s arm tucked in hers, and while the thought still makes Scout tense up with unease, he manages a laugh at the way that Spy looks like one of his mother’s purses, standing there only to look pretty and hold her things. Spy hits him when his mother and his kids aren’t looking before the two start cooing over Scout’s kids.

Demo is next, bringing booze, and Jeremy chases Tommy away from it, scolding loudly. He’s only thirteen, and yes Jeremy was drinking by then, but behind his mother’s back and no, Tommy cannot drink. Not even a sip. Go play with your siblings.

Heavy and Medic couldn’t make it, Soldier informs him when he and Zhanna and their kids arrive. Scout lets it go. He didn’t tell them. He didn’t tell them, they don’t know.

Pyro arrives, their dog much older and more tame with age. Jeremy’s children are still fascinated with Pyro’s lighters, but Jeremy lets it be. They’re being watched by Spy and his mother.

Engineer doesn’t come. Sniper arrives late in the evening. His brothers leave for hotels. His mother and Spy take the guest room. Sniper parks his van in the driveway and sleeps there. The rest of the team bids adieu. Spy helps Scout tuck the kids into bed.

Jeremy waits for Spy to leave, then pulls his kids out of bed to crush them into the tightest hug he can.

“Ouch, daddy,” Tabitha laughs. “Too tight!”

“Sorry!” He loosens his grip but he doesn’t let go. The group hug is going on too long, he knows, because Tristan is squirming with pent-up energy.

“I love you so much.” He says. “I love you to the edges of the universe and back. I love you times infinity.”

“Eww,” says Tommy, because he’s almost a teenager now and things like your parents loving you is gross. Jeremy gives him a big forehead kiss. “Dad, stop!”

“Mwah!” Jeremy gives him another kiss before letting go. He gives the rest of his kids big smooches on the tops of their perfect heads. “You are all my babies and I love you more than anything.”

You know that, right? His heart screams. You know that you’re the most important things on this planet to me? He doesn’t dare say it out loud, doesn’t want to them to pick up on his anxieties.

“I love you too, Dad,” Tristan sighs, and Tabitha pipes up, “I love you!”

“I love you!” Tanya adds.

“Love ya,” Tommy mumbles from his bed, and Jeremy’s heart is fit to explode. His chest hurts.

“Good night,” He says. He wants to stay here forever, hugging them and assuring them of his love. But it’s late, he’s dragging them past their bedtime. So he turns off the lights and heads to his bed.

He gets dressed in his pyjamas slowly. He creeps around the dark house, staring at the photos on the walls and at Sniper’s van outside, the lights still on from inside. He looks at Spy’s parked car. He wonders if Spy let his mother drive. He looks at all his Christmas decorations, already set up. He pulls his pre-wrapped presents for his kids from his bedroom closet and set them under the tree. He knows it’s not enough. It will never be enough.

He could have the perfect last day with his kids and he’d still go to bed crying, except there’s a spy in the room down the hall and he’s not sure what he would do if he were confronted about crying in the morning.

If he wakes up at all tomorrow. He checks the clock and sees that it’s now 11:45pm. Fifteen minutes left. If he tries to fall asleep now, maybe he’ll pass away in his sleep. Except every second left is a moment longer with his family, and Jeremy is greedy, so greedy. He’ll take every second he can, even if it means his death isn’t peaceful. Except he doesn’t want to die in front of his kids. Anything but that. So he sighs quietly and goes back to his room.

It takes him a long time to fall asleep.

He wakes up in the morning with crusty eyes from crying. It’s barely light out. He hardly got any sleep at all. He’s so thankful to have a little more time that it isn’t until he’s opened his bedroom door and stared at his sleeping children that he realizes it’s not going to be a peaceful death. Which means he can’t be near his children when it’s time.

He stands in the doorway a little longer. He knows that they’re probably all sick of sharing the same bedroom, and he’s promised them different rooms for themselves soon, but really he held off just for this. So he can look at all of them at once.

He closes the bedroom door silently and creeps out the front door without a peep.

He goes for a morning walk. He walks and he walks and he walks. He’s not sure what he’s looking for, what he’s hoping for, he just wants it not to happen in front of his kids.

He’s so caught up in his worries that he doesn’t see the car.

SCREECH!

BANG!

Pain-

Bright-

Ow-

Jeremy falls off the bed and lands on the floor with a crash. His face meets the dusty tiled floor.

“Agh, my nose!” He croaks out, nasally and high-pitched, and his voice sounds wrong but it must be from smashing his stupid nose into the floor.

Wait. What the fuck?

He sits upright. “God?” He asks, but this isn’t the heaven he remembers. Heaven was bright lights and clouds and foosball tables, not��. Not…

Not plain brick wall, a white wooden door, tiled flooring, and a small window. Not an army cot and a small room with no decoration save for some half opened boxes stuffed with, of all things, his old Team Fortress uniforms.

The room looks unlived in. Weird of God to use this place from his memories, his old room in Teufort, but. Okay. Maybe he thought he could use an old familiar location to tame Jeremy’s rage before he beat God a new one until he agreed to send Jeremy back.

There’s a quiet knock at the door.

“You alright there, son?” A familiar Texan accent asks through the door.

“Yeah, Engie, it’s all good,” Jeremy replies on autopilot, before pausing. Engie wasn’t dead. Why was God using his voice? He lurches to his feet and swings open the door.

Outside is the hallway of the RED base. Engineer is several steps away, likely heading to the dining room. He stops and glances over his shoulder at the sound fo Scout’s door opening.

Jeremy gapes.

Dell looks… young. Well, younger than he has in his recent years.

“Is that why you didn’t come to my early Christmas party? Are you dead too?” He asks, alarmed.

“What?” Dell looks baffled. “What are you talking about, boy?”

“I…” Jeremy can’t find the words. He’s worried. He’s confused. He’s-

“Just a tip of advice for today, don’t get into anymore fights with the team, Scout. I don’t know what Spy has against you being on the team but it won’t do well for team-building if you introduce yourself to everyone by butting heads.”

Jeremy stares at him. Engineer sighs and turns back to leave.

“This whole team’s full of eccentrics,” The Texan mutters to himself.

Jeremy watches him walk all the way down the hall before entering the dining room. He stands there, in the doorway of his old room, feeling distinctly wrong-footed.

“Huh?”

and that's a wrap on chapter one! I cant believe I wrote over 2,000 words personally begging God to let Scout live. At 1 AM. ha. ha. ha............ (shaking)

[fivenightsatfreddysfanfiction]

The Shadow He Cast

Gregory and Damien talk about Mike Schmidt, the person, rather than the data Afton managed to collect.

===================

.

Damien opened the door to the workshop, looked down at Gregory’s beaming expression, then promptly closed the door again.

“Hey! Rude! What if I’m a paying customer?! I could totally leave a bad review for this!” Gregory yelled through the wood. He shifted in place, bouncing on his heels so his backpack bounced with him. In fairness, he expected a reaction like that after what he did. He would have done the same if the roles were reversed, him guarding a building and its contents and a punk kid showing up with a grin to pester him.

..Or maybe he already had? Kinda felt like it, now that he thought about it.

Gregory grimaced a little, shoving the uncertainty of weird nostalgia into the back of his mind as a faint headache began creeping up. He’d been having more and more of those lately and his headaches had been mostly going away or not been as painful. Just not fun getting more nervous about what it could all mean.

The door opened again in the brief moments he’d been thinking as Damien looked down at him in exasperation. “And are you a paying customer?” he asked dryly.

“No, but can I come in anyway? I wanted to ask you something,” Gregory told him and Damien scowled.

“No, you’re not getting access to the Afton Files, not after grabbing copies when we weren’t looking,” he scolded, fists on his hips, “That’s extremely dangerous! If you’re found with that info on you, that’ll give Afton Robotics a new reason to come after you! Plus, you betrayed our trust by taking those copies without asking.”

Yeah, he expected that too. Gregory swallowed hard, trying to not break into tears at hearing the words out loud. “I.. I know. I’m.. sorry I did that,” he managed to get out, twisting his fingers in his hands, “I needed those files, but you’re right; I should have at least asked. Mr. Fitzgerald printed stuff out for me last time I asked but.. I didn’t know if he’d give me all of those files, cuz he said he was taking information out of the other ones he gave me and I needed all of those ones I copied.”

“You don’t need the complete files,” Damien stressed through his teeth, eyes narrowing, “The stuff in those files, the things William Afton did, his whole family.. that’s not something you show to a kid!”

Gregory inhaled deeply, then very slowly exhaled, not so much a sigh but an attempt to let go of the tight grip he had on his fears just enough to get help from someone closer to the point of time that mattered most. That would probably be able to explain things to him and wasn’t Mr. Fitzgerald.

“What if.. I’m not.. just a kid?” he asked carefully, shoulders rising as he huddled in place.

Damien blinked a few times with a confused look before his eyes widened, blood seeming to drain from his face and giving him a more blanched complexion.

“Can I.. come in and talk?” Gregory asked again, softer this time.

Damien opened the door fully and stepped aside.

.

A can of soda was set on the table in front of him and Gregory watched a drop of condensation gather and start trailing down the can. He wondered what it’d be like, to just empty his head and slide down into a puddle like that drop, just exist like that with no thoughts, no cares.

He reached out to wipe the water away and open the can before he could start feeling too envious of the droplet.

“So, what did you want to talk about?” Damien asked cautiously, a pink sports drink in front of himself, “Do you want me to get Jeremy in on this too?”

“No, I don’t wanna bother Mr. Fitzgerald about it, just in case I’m spinning wild shit,” Gregory replied with a shake of his head. He drummed his fingers against the soda can, letting his thoughts whirl. Where to start? How to start? Why was it so hard to grab onto an idea now when before he could just set a goal and run for it with no hesitation?

When the silence stretched on, Damien spoke up again. “What did you mean when you said you might not be just a kid?” he asked hesitantly.

Gregory pursed his mouth into a thin line as he sifted through his thoughts to follow that one. It was something at least. May as well start walking towards that, however slow he may go.

“I’ve been remembering.. or feeling.. things that I don’t really know are mine,” he said, picking his words with the same care as he took with tiptoeing around S.T.A.F.F. bot patrol routes. “I thought that Afton lady only uploaded William Afton’s knowledge of animatronics and programming and research stuff into my head,” Gregory went on and twisted his fingers in his hands again, “but what if she uploaded other stuff too? Like, I dunno, memories? Experiences?”

Damien blinked rapidly at him, opened his mouth, closed it, then sighed heavily, closing his eyes as tension bled from his shoulders. He sat like that for a moment before opening his eyes again, the dark brown color warm and rueful. “Sorry, was expectin’ you to say something else but I really read the room wrong,” he said and sat back, folding his arms over his chest.

 “If she did upload memories, then she did a really shit job of it. Vincent’s been through your dreams plenty of times and dreams are basically a state of processing or displaying memories,” he went on and gestured towards Gregory. “But he hasn’t come across any memories that have the same feeling as William Afton’s Remnant. There was just that one Vanny figure and the odd endo, but those were Remnant coding implanted to try and continue scrubbing your personality from your soul.”

“But what about that nightmare I’d been having?” Gregory whined. He hated it; the covered statues were mostly the same except for the one leaning over his head. It now had a face painted on that looked like that stupid Puppet at Circus Baby’s and it pissed him off to know that the real thing wasn’t giving him directions to the last relic.

“Vincent said it didn’t have any negative Remnant in it and it didn’t feel like an illusion or something that came from outside yourself, so it has to be your own memory,” Damien explained, reaching out to get his own drink for a sip, “He’s not sure what the memory could be cuz all that symbolism and metaphor stuff covering it isn’t false so he can’t just pull it apart like a fake memory or a deception. He needs information about what went on at the time the memory was made to decipher the scene and tell you what’s actually happening.”

“Why can’t he just tell me now?” He felt like flipping the table or screaming and stomping, both things he couldn’t do because he was both too small and not willing to mess up things with the only animatronic engineers who could work on Freddy. Still, lack of answers coming easily didn’t serve to make him feel better about everything.

“He needs more context for why you dreamed the way you did,” Damien replied with a puzzled frown, shifting in his chair. “Kid, you dreamed you were put into a golden coffin and shadow monsters attacked Sydney. Nobody knows where the hell a golden coffin would be and there wasn’t anything attacking Sydney at any point for as long as we’ve known him. Well, unless you count us chasing after him in that rescue.”

“What about Mr. Fitzgerald being in my dream?” Gregory pressed, pouting as he grew more annoyed by what was looking like another dead end. Damien shrugged, pulling out a small mechanized cube from his pocket and fiddling with the tiny knobs and switches on it as he looked aside at the workshop’s office.

“Dunno. Ven said that Vincent said he called Jeremy about it and asked if he had some ideas on what the coffin and statues could be, but Jeremy hasn’t called back about it except to ask me to run the shop for a few days cuz he wasn’t feeling well,” he answered and sighed, brows furrowed, “Hope he’s okay. Faith said he wasn’t really talking to her when she brought him some soup to help.”

“Well, how do you guys know that that dream really is based on a memory of mine if I don’t remember that context?” Gregory asked, trying a different approach. If the memory didn’t come from William Afton, which was good because that guy was batshit crazy and he wanted none of that near him, then how was everyone so sure it was his? What if it came from someone else and also uploaded into his brain? That animatronic knowledge came from William Afton, but Vincent never felt it as negative, weird. “And if Vincent can tell if something came from Remnant code or from William Afton, how come he didn’t say or do anything about the animatronic stuff in my head?”

“Knowledge and information is neutral,” Damien told him with a small frown, “It’s just there. They can have positive or negative effects based on how they’re used by the person with that knowledge. It’s like how a gun or a knife isn’t inherently ‘evil’ until they’re used by a person to do bad things. A person’s intention and emotions are channeled through how those things are used.” He traced a circle in the air with a finger. “Like the difference between a chef using a knife to chop vegetables and a murderer using it to kill.”

So if Gregory used William Afton’s knowledge to bring back the Fazband better and helped others with it, then he could make a positive effect with it instead of the negative the Afton lady wanted? He turned that over in his mind. Sounded good to him, and he liked the idea of taking Afton’s shit and using it to help people and not whatever the hell that family was planning.

“As for the memory bit, the fact that it’s still pretty broken up either means that it came from before your Remnant was being scrubbed of memories and personality, or Elizabeth uploaded stuff and then started scrubbing,” Damien told him with a roll of his eyes, “which is fucking stupid if she wanted to help William’s memories rebuild in you.” His thumb kept flicking a switch on the cube and Gregory drummed his fingers on the tabletop to try and stop himself from turning his focus on it. “So best bet is it’s a memory from you before she started her experiments because she wouldn’t risk William’s memories before you were ‘ready’ to be taken over by him.”

That sounded about the same as what Gregory had figured, but it still made the realization more sour, considering the feeling he had in that dream. That awful feeling of vindication; if Panther had been such a bad guy, then wouldn’t it have been better to just arrest him and put him in jail, or if he had to die, then at least make it quick and humane? Why do what the shadow monsters did? How did that make anything better?

“You don’t look happy to know you’re getting back a memory of your past self,” Damien remarked cautiously, tapping the lid of his half-emptied sports drink bottle.

“Cuz I don’t like what it says about the ‘me’ from the past,” Gregory muttered and downed the last of his soda before crushing the can between his hands.

Damien’s eyebrows lifted at the action.

“Can I ask about something else?” Gregory went on, looking up at him. Damien was pretty close with Mr. Fitzgerald, so maybe he could be a good second source of info? “I was reading through the files I got, but all it had was, like, data and records about Mr. Schmidt,” he said and tilted his head. “But I wanna know about what he was like as a person. I’ve heard stuff but what was he really like? Have you met him? You hang around Mr. Fitzgerald a lot.”

“Yeah, I knew Mike since I was in college,” Damien replied, reaching out to collect the crushed can Gregory was playing with and dropping his cube in its place. Gregory immediately grabbed for the toy and fiddled with the switches to soothe the itch to mess with them, then set it back down. “If you wanted to know about him, why didn’t you ask Jeremy?”

“The few times I did, he looked really sad about it and I didn’t wanna bring up more grief for him,” Gregory returned and Damien nodded in agreement.

“They were very close,” he said and settled back in his chair, lifting his legs to rest them on the table as he looked skyward, “Okay, so Mike Schmidt, huh? He’s basically a legend among the Guards; survived just about anything being thrown at him, waves of animatronics coming at him but as long as he had control of the camera system watching them, he pretty much could stay out of their reach for hours on end.” Damien grinned and Gregory put a hand to his FazWatch under the table. “He was an asshole but his heart was genuinely good. Couldn’t stand when a kid was upset, didn’t always know the best way to cheer them up but he made efforts to make ‘em feel better. Judged people by their actions and stood up for those who couldn’t. Got into way more fights than he should’ve but what can ya do when he gets pissed off at the drop of a hat?”

“He sounds like.. just a guy,” Gregory remarked quietly, briefly lowering his gaze to the table.

“Well, yeah, he was. Medical marvel, living without his frontal lobe, and working six hours a night for a crappy check. Just trying to live like anyone else through his determination to have a decent life with his girlfriend.” Damien gestured at the desk with Jeremy’s photo of his adoptive family and Gregory looked that way, discomforted by the image of the man in his beanie surrounded by his wife and kids.

“Sure, he was haunted by the ghost of the 5th Child and she helped him a ton on the night shift, but other than whatever she loaned him in the way of abilities, Mike’s strength was all his own,” the man went on to explain with a smirk, “That’s why the curse that manifested in him thanks to all the Fazbear shit was called Strength to Survive.”

“Oh! That!” Gregory sat up in excitement; that was something else he wanted to know about. The thing that the Afton lady was potentially after! What exactly was this curse? “What’s the deal with that? What does Strength to Survive do?”

Damien moved suddenly, leaping to his feet and pacing around while Gregory jumped in his chair, wide eyes following him around the workshop.

“Strength to Survive... In the most basic possible description, it’s a curse that gave Mike functional immortality. When I said he could survive pretty much anything thrown at him, I meant he literally survived through shit that would kill anyone else on the spot. There were very few things that could happen to him or situations where it couldn’t overcome something that could put him at a point of death,” the man declared in an awed tone, “Injuries that would put the rest of us down and out for the count, Mike would just power through. Superman, without the everything-proofness and with a lot more spite and cynicism.”

Definitely sounded like something Elizabeth Afton would have tried to get her hands on to put in him so crazy old William wouldn’t be as easy to kill again. Gregory tried not to grimace at the idea. “Um, can anyone else use it?” he asked with a tilt of his head.

Damien paused, mouth pursed as he seemed to consider it. “I want to say no, because the curse is based entirely on Mike’s natural strength and will,” he began and shifted on his feet, “but Jonathan’s been piping up that the Marionette had managed to siphon some of Mike’s Remnant and curse to give out to the ghost kids. It strengthened their hold on their memories so they stopped degrading over time, otherwise they’d probably have turned out just as batshit as Emelia Afton or.. some other ghosts.” He looked distant, as if listening to something far off, then frowned deeply. “Hang on, what do you mean ‘that’s not the only curse he has’?!”

An uncomfortable sensation crawled over Gregory’s skin at that. More than one curse? Six did say he didn’t want the Aftons to get Strength to Survive and one other thing. What was it? Life, something...

“Oh my god, dumbass old man fused the original Warmth of Life into Mike’s soul with Strength to Survive,” Damien groaned, slumping in place, “So if Elizabeth had managed to get hold of Mike back then, we’d all be royally fucked?!”

“That.. doesn’t sound good,” Gregory chimed in warily. That sounded like what Six was warning him about. But why warn him if Mr. Schmidt had passed away? Didn’t that mean the curses stopped working? “What’s that one do?”

“Warmth of Life was Jeremy’s curse, constant self-healing and able to give Remnant to others to heal them without taking over their souls,” Damien explained with a harsh sigh, “He’s got a weaker version of it now so he can only heal himself, but the original was strong enough to help him recover faster from getting stuffed in suits and could restore lost Remnant, or patch it if there’s damage. Couldn’t bring back the memories, but could give a new ‘canvas’ for new memories to write to in the soul.” He lifted both hands and brought them together, palm to palm. “Separately, very powerful curses, but put together like that? Yeah, that’s pretty much as true immortal as you can get; even if the body somehow fails, that soul would still surpass death and either reincarnate on demand or just take over a new body through sheer force. Guess Mike didn’t know that, since a year and a day after he gave up Six he passed away with his wife peacefully.”

“So, the curses are gone then?” Gregory asked dubiously and Damien shrugged, sliding his hands into his pockets.

“Seems like it. Mike gave Six back to me, but he didn’t come with any form of the original Strength to Survive or Warmth of Life. Without Six, the curses likely went dormant, which is how Mike was able to pass away,” he answered and sighed softly. “If he didn’t reincarnate, and his Remnant has been messed with enough that he’s pretty much guaranteed to, then we gotta assume those curses are gone for good.”

So then why was Six so up in arms over Gregory collecting Mike’s stuff when none of it had anything to do with those curses? “You couldn’t put them on things? Like Knife Lady and Freddy?” he pointed out.

“Maybe back when they were separate and just kinda piggybacking on Mike and Jeremy’s souls,” Damien chuckled, “Not after they got fused to Mike’s soul. They’re part of his Remnant, so when he went, he took them both with him.” He tilted his head, a faintly suspicious look to his eyes. “Why so much curiosity over Mike and his curses? Was Elizabeth really looking into him?” he asked in return.

“Like I said, his picture was on her monitor when I made my escape from her lab,” Gregory replied with a dismissive gesture of one hand, looking away from Damien, “If she was planning to bring back Old Man Afton in me, she probably wanted a way to make sure he wouldn’t die again so easy. She probably didn’t know about these curses, but she’d probably know about him being the Bite of ‘87 Survivor and think something about him helped him live through it.”

That sounded reasonable enough to pass, right? He did remember server racks somewhere in the Pizzaplex, lit up with the flow of information, images of people he didn’t know until now flashing rapidly on monitors. Was that during one of his failed escape attempts? Trying to recall anything more around that moment made his head hurt and he narrowed his eyes at the sudden pressure in his skull.

“I wondered if she somehow learned about Strength to Survive or Warmth of Life, but maybe not,” Damien relented, seeming to relax a lot more, “It’s not exactly something you can scan for. There’s tech to detect and collect Remnant, but not to identify curses and their effects.” He tilted his head and Gregory could feel that sharpness to his look hadn’t fully gone away. “Was that all you wanted to know about Mike? What he was like, the curses he had.. I don’t see why you’d be so interested in the guy when Elizabeth can’t get to him or those curses. Like, yeah he’s pretty legendary, but he’s still gone. We miss him, but we gotta move forward and deal with shit ourselves. It’s what he would’ve wanted, I believe.”

Gregory nodded. It was the same line of thought he had when it came to dealing with Fazbear Entertainment and Afton Robotics. These guys had so many years to deal with their shit and so far did fuck-all about them. Nice people, but unreliable when he wanted to put an end to the bullshit once and for all. So he’ll have to do it himself.

Well, not entirely by himself. Cassie and Oswald and Freddy’s faces came to mind, along with the memory of those hard drives safely stored away in his room, waiting for the final one to join them. Waiting for him to get a grip on Afton’s knowledge and use it to bring the Fazband back on his side.

“Yeah, I understand,” he finally said solemnly and nodded, “Thanks, Mr. Woods. I think I needed to hear that.”

Damien grinned at him, wide and mischievous. “Well, that’s good to hear, kiddo! Don’t worry, we’ll get those companies sooner or later. Just leave it to us!” he declared and laughed as Gregory hopped out of his chair.

“I guess I should get home now. Hey, I hopped a bus to get here but I dunno if there’s one that’ll take me back, so could you call Vanessa to come pick me up?” he asked, making his eyes as wide and innocent as he could.

“Sure, but only if you come to the front with me,” Damien replied with a knowing smirk, “Fool me once and all that shit.”

Gregory stuck his tongue out at him but dutifully walked alongside him to the front of the workshop. He could always bug them for another look at the Files if he really needed something else but for now, this was good. His memories were weird but they were all his own, and Mike’s power was well out of reach of those crazy Aftons under the Pizzaplex.

Now all he had to do was figure out what those memories actually were and maybe he could actually get somewhere with pinning down who he really was before he had to become ‘Gregory Afton’.

[fairytales-and-folklore]

Because We're Soulmates

The Good Place » Cheleanor

Title: Because We're Soulmates

Author: fairytalesandfolklore

Fandom: The Good Place (Masterlist)

Relationship: Chidi Anagonye x Eleanor Shellstrop

AO3 Rating: Teen & Up (a complete collection of author's notes, inspiration credits, content warnings and tags can be found on AO3)

Summary: Chidi's memories have been erased, and he believes that Simone is his soulmate. Eleanor remembers everything, but in order for this experiment to succeed, she has to pretend to be the Architect, and watch as the love of her afterlife spends eternity with someone else. But no matter how many times they get rebooted, or how hard they try to stay away from one another, Eleanor and Chidi always end up finding their way back to one another. Because they're—

"Eleanor, do you remember that one reboot where you and Chidi came into my office to confront me?" Michael asks. "Do you remember what you said?" Eleanor blinks several times, trying to coax some manner of coherent thought to the forefront of her mind. After a moment, her eyes widen in surprise. "We're in love," she recites with perfect clarity. "And love is stronger than anything you can throw at us." "And no matter what," Chidi chimes in, the words summoned from some shadowed recess at the back of his mind. "We will find each other, and we will help each other…because we're soulmates."

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Honestly, it's better this way. If Michael hadn't spiraled, and Eleanor hadn't been quick on her feet and assumed the role of the Architect, then she wouldn't have all of this extra stuff to do to keep her mind off of things. 

Keeping Michael from having yet another existential crisis. 

Catering to the needs and whims of three new souls.

Stepping in whenever the Bad Place demons interfere. 

Making sure none of the Janet-Babies malfunction and ruin the experiment. 

Making sure Derek doesn't keep reappearing at random intervals sipping an all-olive martini and ruin the experiment. 

Talking Tahani out of plotting Tabloid John's demise by reminding her that they're all in the afterlife and he (probably) can't die twice. 

Trying to keep herself in check so she doesn't murder Brent, because again, they're already dead, which means the arrogant bastard probably can't die twice, so there's no point in trying. (And anyway, she'd probably end up losing, like, a million Good Place points. But hey, a girl can dream, right?)

So yeah, it's a lot of work. And Eleanor is honestly grateful for it. Because if she wasn't running around like a maniac 24/7 dealing with all of this nonsensical bullshirt, then she'd have all the time in the world to think about—

"Chidi!" Simone calls cheerfully from across the sun-kissed cobbled street, making her way over to a table in the middle of a cozy café with outdoor seating. Chidi immediately drops the book he'd been reading (What We Owe To Each Other, Eleanor takes note, and a brief smile flashes across her face) and rises to meet her.

Today officially marks six months since Eleanor told Chidi that Simone is his soulmate, and things are…fine. Honestly. Everything is fine. She's happy for them. Seeing the pair of them together absolutely doesn't make her want to curl up into a ball, shotgun cheese whiz, and cry.

Nope. 

All good here.

Because she's over it. She is so totally over it. Chidi has clearly moved on (not that he even knows there was ever anything to move on from, but whatever) and Eleanor is moving on right along with him. She's running a forking afterlife neighborhood, after all. She is totally winning this break-up. 

Granted, it's not exactly a break-up in the strictest sense of the word, because technically, neither of them actually wanted to break up. And anyway, Chidi made a promise to her that they'll always find each other, that time means nothing, Jeremy Bearimy, baby, and someday this will all be over, and then it'll be just the two of them chilling in the dot of the i forever, and—

Chidi looks up suddenly, his eyes locking onto Eleanor's from across the crowded square. He tilts his head to the side, fixing her with a curious frown. Eleanor feels a prickle of heat rise in her cheeks. Motherforking shirtballs, she's been caught staring again. Feigning a friendly smile and a casual wave, Eleanor quickly dips behind a pillar, beating a hasty retreat along a well-worn path on the outskirts of the neighborhood in the middle-of-nowhere Medium Place: Mindy's St. Claire's house.

Eleanor spends most of her time at Mindy's these days. It's kind of become her go-to whenever the gang needs a place to meet up and figure out a solution to the neighborhood's latest problem. Or whenever she needs a break from all the fake smiling and pretending she's got her shit together, because grabbing a lukewarm beer out of the fridge and screaming into a decorative pillow is just as good a method of self-care as any, right? In any case, it's one of the few places in this neighborhood that doesn't completely bum her out. At least, as long as she steers clear of the guest bedroom where she and Chidi first—

Anyway. 

It's not exactly ideal, but it's a damn sight better than her stupid clown house. After the promise of a live-in boyfriend in a home she begrudgingly grew to love only because of the company it kept, Eleanor just can't bring herself to return there, night after night, trailing her fingertips through thick layers of chalk dust settled into the grooves of his old blackboard. 

Eyes roving over the ghost of a space where leather-bound spines of long-forgotten novels used to line her bookshelves in an infuriating, overly-organized system that only Chidi could understand.

Closing her eyes against a fresh wave of tears as short bursts of laughter echo through her memory, at war with the deafening silence that rings through the darkened living room. 

Wrapped in one of the few button-down shirts or turtleneck sweaters of his that Janet had forgotten to transfer over to his new apartment, only to wake from a fitful sleep to find that Chidi's side of the bed is still cold. 

That this is all still happening.

That Chidi's memory wipe hadn't been just another bad dream. 

So yeah, that place doesn't exactly feel like home anymore. Not without Chidi. And sometimes, some nights, (most nights, if she's being honest,) Eleanor just can't bring herself to go back. 

There's too many memories attached to that place. 

Literally too many. Over 300 years' worth. 

And Chidi doesn't remember a single second.

• • • 

She used to think that maybe soulmates really do exist, and that maybe, Chidi was hers. How else had they managed to keep finding one another, falling in love, helping one another grow and learn and become better people, over and over again, across a multitude of different timelines and reboots? It had to be fate. It had to be…something. It was the kind of love story she'd always dreamed of having, (not that she would ever, ever admit it) one that transcended life and death and found a way, against all odds, in a world that was constantly cheering for its demise.

But as she watches, from afar, as Chidi and Simone find their way to one another, talking late into the night, laughter ringing in the air, flirtatious smiles exchanged from across a charming little banquet at a romantic Parisian café under the glow of the golden moon and silver stars, Eleanor starts to think that maybe she'd just been fooling herself. That she and Chidi were just a fluke. That Chidi and Simone are the ones who truly belong together.

"Maybe you were right," she whispers softly, leaning her head on Michael's shoulder as the pair of them sit side by side on a park bench overlooking the lake. "Maybe it was stupid to believe that soulmates really do exist."

Michael stiffens, as he usually does whenever he's reminded of the kind of demon he used to be.

"I honestly couldn't tell you one way or the other," he says around a heavy sigh. "I don't actually know if soulmates exist, and I could never get a straight answer out of Janet every time I've ever tried to ask. All I know is that it's not stupid to want to believe in something. Especially when it comes to you and Chidi. And I like to think that everything that's meant to be has a way of working out, in the end."

Eleanor's lips twitch into a smile.

"When did you become such a sentimental old fool?" she teases, hastily swiping at the corners of her eyes.

"Call it a side effect of spending too much time around humans," Michael laughs. "And again, my offer still stands—"

"Do not try to break up Simone and Chidi," Eleanor warns with a watery chuckle. "Come on, man. We've been over this."

In the beginning, it was difficult to tell who was more upset over the split: Eleanor or Michael. Reeling from the guilt that his breakdown had, at least partially, caused the demise of his favorite relationship and cost two of his dearest friends their happiness, Michael had tried his damnedest to sabotage any chance of Chidi and Simone getting together, from accidental spills of the darkest red wine, to inclement weather pouring out of the sky at random, to dropping in unannounced as the self-imposed third wheel and overstaying his welcome with all manner of awkward conversation topics. As soon as Eleanor had caught wind of what he was doing, she put a stop to it.

"Look, I appreciate the concern, bud. But this is just how it's gotta be," she says, just as much a reminder for him as it is for herself. "As much as it kills me to see the two of them together, we've got to let this play out. Let the cards fall where they may. Whatever happens, happens. Because ultimately, all that matters is the experiment. All that matters is getting this right, proving to the Judge that humans can get better, and that this flawed point system they've got going on needs a major revamp."

"As always, you're right," Michael admits begrudgingly, heaving a frustrated sigh. "I'm just sorry it has to be this way."

"I am, too," she says, swallowing against a lump lodged at the base of her throat. "But honestly, when it really comes down to it, all I want is for Chidi to be happy. And if Simone makes him happy, then we can't stand in the way of them being together."

A bittersweet laugh escapes, and the knot in her throat lessens, if only slightly, at the thought of how proud Chidi would be if he could see her now. How far she's come. How much better of a person she's grown into. How much she's willing to sacrifice just to ensure they all make it out of here unscathed. 

It's a far cry from the kind of person she used to be back on Earth. Selfless. Vulnerable. Brave. Willing to let herself feel. To take those feelings and express them in a healthy way. To stand and fight, rather than run away or bury her head in the sand. To do the right thing, even if it means she gets the short end of the deal. As much as it hurts, she wouldn't have it any other way.

• • •

Every day, Eleanor relives that highlight reel that Michael had shown the two of them, just moments before Chidi's memory had been erased. 

All the time they'd spent learning from one another. Becoming better versions of themselves. Growing so close and so in sync that they even started anticipating each other's needs without being asked. 

All the times they'd ever fought and made up, always, always, always coming back in a moment of clarity to talk it all out. Deciding that this, whatever it was that they had between them, was more important than a silly disagreement. That they could overcome anything.

All the times he'd ever wrapped his arms around her and held her close as they snuggled up together on the couch, sharing movie nights and popcorn shrimp. Living in domestic bliss as they cooked dinner together every night. Stealing kisses on their way out the door. 

Afternoon dates walking hand in hand down bright, sunny streets, sharing bites of each other's frozen yogurt, kissing chocolate sauce and whipped cream off the tips of each other's noses. 

Adrift on a quaint little boat in the middle of a crystal-clear lake with the tranquil backdrop of lush evergreens and misty mountains.

Sprawled out on a plushy blanket underneath an endless starry night, cuddled up against his side as he'd regaled her with star facts and whimsical fairy tales about what life might be like on other planets, fingertips tracing constellations in the freckles that dapple her skin.

Romantic picnics in the park, sun shining overhead like the perfect replica of a warm summer's day, before getting caught in an impromptu rainstorm, and choosing to make the best of it, to see it not as an afternoon ruined, but as a chance to make their date even more exciting. Laughing and smiling and slow dancing to music of their own creation in the eye of the storm as the rain swirled all around them and soaked through their clothes.

She wonders, idly, if he ever remembers them. Catches glimpses of those long-forgotten memories in his dreams. And maybe, just maybe, wishes that they were real. Wishes that he could go back in time and relive them all over again, just to have another moment with her.

Every night, she replays everything he'd said to her in those quiet moments in the aftermath of Michael's memory movie reel, a bittersweet, hopeful smile set into the curves of his lips.

Time means nothing. Jeremy Barmy, baby. We'll just get through this. And then you and I can chill out in the dot of the i forever.

We've found each other hundreds of times before. We can do it again, she'd said, and in that moment, she had truly believed it.

Sometimes, in those quiet moments, when she can't seem to fall asleep in the too-big bed of her stupid clown house, or on the rough, springy pull-out couch in Mindy's living room, Eleanor ventures out into the night. Strolling the streets of the neighborhood, delighting in the rare moment of peace and quiet all to herself. Reminiscing as she replays 300 years' and 800 reboots' worth of memories of their time together, letting her mind wander to all manner of what-ifs and wonderful impossibilities.

And maybe, she muses, when all of this is finally over, we will.

• • •

Despite a somewhat tumultuous start, Chidi finds it rather easy to strike up a relationship with Simone. It's actually crazy that they never managed to meet back on Earth, given that they'd both worked for the same university around the same time. It must be a twist of fate. Confirmed, in fact, by the Architect herself. Simone is his soulmate. How quaint! 

As soon as the phrase "soulmate" leaves Eleanor's lips, Chidi feels the familiar pang of a stomach ache, and he's hit with a curious burst of wistful longing, a bone-deep sadness he can't quite seem to shake, and an air of hopefulness that makes his entire body feel like it's buzzing with electricity. Which is…probably normal. 

(So, okay, maybe the whole wistful longing and bone-deep sadness thing is a little bit of a weird gut reaction, but one could probably chalk it up to, perhaps, a sense of regret that they never got to meet and spend time with their soulmate back on Earth. Much like older couples who wish they'd met when they were younger, so they could have spent more of their lives together. Yes, that makes sense.) 

This is probably exactly how you're supposed to feel when you finally discover who your soulmate is. And sure enough, when Chidi meets Eleanor's eyes, he feels inexplicably happy.

This is good. This is a good thing. It's a…good stomach ache? He's not entirely certain how that makes even the slightest bit of sense, but, well, Chidi trusts Eleanor. Really, truly trusts her. Something about her makes him feel at peace, like coming home after a long journey. So he'll take her word for it, and trust that this is a good thing. That Simone is his soulmate. That they'll make each other happy.

At first, it's absolutely wonderful. They stay up all night talking and laughing, going out to dinner at charming little restaurants and cafés, basking in the sunlight as they enjoy lovely picnics in the park. They do research together and share their findings, musing over all the ways their two fields of study overlap and intertwine, a marriage of neuroscience and philosophy, of mind and morals.

It's perfect…or at least, it's very nearly perfect.

Chidi likes Simone. Truly, he does. She's brilliant, and she's witty, and she's kindhearted, and she's beautiful, inside and out. But there are…not flaws, he wouldn't call them flaws, just…subtle differences between their personalities and core beliefs that started as a minor trickle in the cracks of their foundation and quickly became a torrential downpour.

So, you know. No biggie.

It's just that, sometimes, Simone is a bit too…technical.Quick to judge and slow to forgive. Immovably rooted in logic and fact, relying solely on her own experiences, on tried and true data, trusting only what's right in front of her, only that which is tangible and can be concretely proven. She's not exactly one for abstract thinking, doesn't really care for dreaming up whimsical what-ifs and fanciful impossibilities. 

Which is okay, really. Those aren't inherently bad qualities, they just don't exactly line up with his own. That is to say, not anymore. 

For example, Simone doesn't believe in the concept of soulmates. Even laughs at him when he brings it up over breakfast one morning. And that's fine. It's totally fine. He knows she's not being intentionally hurtful or dismissive, lightheartedly teasing him over, admittedly, quite a nonsensical notion. (His heart doesn't shatter into a million pieces or anything. He's fine.) 

But, mystical afterlife destiny hokum aside, there's still the issue of the very distinct divide in their core beliefs. Chidi has always strived to uphold a strong ethical and moral code, to treat people with kindness and respect, to do his utmost to help them, no matter what, whenever they're in need (even if, perhaps, they're not the most upstanding people.) 

Simone, on the other hand, believes that this way of thinking is selfless to a fault, almost to the point of being naïve. She simply doesn't see the point in helping people who don't deserve it. For example, she wouldn't dare risk her life for someone unless she was absolutely certain that they would do the same if the situation were reversed. With Simone, first impressions are everlasting, and she'd be hard-pressed to believe that a person is capable of changing for the better after proving to be problematic time and time again. 

And as much as Chidi understands and respects her position, it's just not how he functions. Chidi likes to believe that there's always a sliver of hope, that ethics can be taught, that people can change, and that good behavior is simply a matter of practicing until it becomes habit. Whereas Simone would rather focus on things she deems a worthwhile use of her time and energy. 

Simone likes to tease Chidi, calling him a walking contradiction of anxiety and optimism because honestly, what kind of sane person simultaneously strives to believe the best in people, but is also terrified of absolutely everything? She jokes, and she teases, and she offers him warm, playful smiles as a balm to soothe his frazzled spirit, but underneath it all, Chidi is fairly certain that he secretly drives her insane. 

He can see it in the crease of her brow and the hard set of her lips every time she watches him struggle to make a decision over the simplest of things, wasting precious hours of their time and causing them to miss out on fun neighborhood activities. 

He can see it in the way the sparkle in her eyes flickers and fades like dying candlelight every time she gets excited about embarking on some grand new adventure she'd always wanted to experience back on Earth, but never had the time or the ability to do so (skydiving, snorkeling with tropical fish, rock climbing, skiing through snow-swept mountains) only to be met with a wide-eyed look of horror from her supposed soulmate, working himself up to a panic and talking himself in circles about all the potential risks and dangers, even though, hello, they're in heaven and they're already dead. 

After a handful of half-hearted attempts to get him to tag along with her, Simone had given it up as a bad job, and simply gone out to enjoy these activities on her own, content to leave Chidi behind in his quiet little study, surrounded by mountains of dusty old books. 

Never changing. 

Never evolving. 

No challenges. 

No surprises. 

Nothing to keep him on his toes.

Every little detail automatically decided for him.

Which is exactly what he had thought that he liked.

Thought that he wanted. 

Thought that he needed.

Until, of course, he didn't.

Chidi can't quite explain it, but something about this place feels wrong. 

It's everything he's ever wanted, only a little bit ruined.

For instance, the tea he brews always tastes a little watered down, like the second pour after the initial steep, and it's always lukewarm, even when it's straight from the stovetop to the kettle to the teacup. 

The food is always just a little bit too dry, the frozen yogurt just a little bit too soupy, melting all over his hands before he's even taken his first bite, and all the coffee comes in those little pods. He nearly always has a stomach ache.

Sure, he can summon any book at will like Thor's hammer…but they usually end up bashing him in the head at full speed and knocking him out. 

And sure, every detail of his apartment, from the muted earthy greens and warm golden yellows, to the pristine bookshelves and well-worn faux leather armchairs, feels like it's been plucked straight from out of his home décor Pinterest board…but the empty space fills him with an intense loneliness, even when the room is filled with Simone and all of their friends.

His soulmate is this wonderful, bright, vibrant force of a person, matching his love of academia and thirst for knowledge…but they don't see eye to eye on such fundamental things. They're perfectly suited to one another…on paper, perhaps, but not in practice.

It's all a little too perfect, and yet, devastatingly imperfect.

He doesn't know why, but he feels restless. Like something is missing. A void in his heart that he can't quite seem to fill. 

He doesn't feel challenged, doesn't feel like he's making any kind of progress, moving forward, or changing for the better. He feels stagnant. Frozen. Like he's standing still, rooted to the spot, while the rest of the world flourishes all around him.

He's in heaven. He should be happy. But he's not. And the fact that he's not happy in paradise is driving him up a wall.

• • •

The Era Of Restlessness, as Chidi calls it, ramps up to an all-time high around the six month mark. Granted, it could have been earlier, could have been later. It's so hard to keep track of time when you're in the afterlife, after all. Sometimes, Chidi could swear it's not even linear, but more like this big swirl of events, like loops and dotted i's in a signature. 

Crazy, right? 

Anyway. 

It's around that time that he starts having trouble sleeping, all of those imperfect little details of his time in the afterlife prickling at the back of his mind like nettles, planting seeds of doubt feeding those all-consuming feelings of restlessness and emptiness rattling around inside his head. It's absolutely maddening, and nothing he does in an attempt to soothe it seems to work in his favor.

After nearly a fortnight of tossing and turning, glaring at the alarm clock on his bedside table, tired eyes tracing patterns in the cracks and grooves of the textured paint on his ceiling, Chidi makes the choice to get up and do something about it. 

It's like there's this invisible string tugging him toward the door, out into the endless expanse of the neighborhood after hours, but instead of his usual apprehension about the idea of exploring unknown geography in the dark, Chidi feels almost giddy at the prospect of trying something new. So he sets out into the night, charting a course for his favorite stargazing spot at the park, hoping that the crisp night air will help clear his mind. 

He doesn't expect anyone else to be awake at this hour. Figures they're all sound asleep, snuggled up in their perfect, cozy beds in their perfect, cozy homes, not a care in the world to keep their minds buzzing well past midnight. But then, the Architect of the neighborhood isn't just anyone, is she? 

As he's strolling down the docks by the lake, far too caught up in the struggle of trying to decide which jaunty tune he should whistle aloud (or hum, he still hasn't decided) he quite literally collides into her, eliciting a terrified shriek and a collection of half-censored expletives, and before he knows it, Chidi is thrashing around in the shallow end of the lake.

Half an hour later, Eleanor is still an apologetic mess, wrapping a thick, plush blanket that feels like it's been pulled straight from the dryer around his shoulders, rattling off a never-ending list of comfort food and hot drinks she could magic into existence as a way to make it up to him. 

In the battle of apologies, Chidi is more than a well-matched opponent, assuring her that the fault is entirely his, that she simply reacted out of instinct, and he truly hadn't meant to startle her, politely declining her offers, insisting he'd filled up on maafe at dinner. 

In the end, Chidi surrenders at the sight of two steaming mugs of hot cocoa overflowing with mini marshmallows, surprising himself when he wholeheartedly accepts Eleanor's handful of popcorn shrimp and thoroughly enjoys every bite, full to the point of painful groaning as the two of them swap spoonfuls of vanilla ice cream melting into a mountain of molten fudge brownies.

But the most unexpected thing of all is the sight of the sunrise, brushstrokes of blood orange, grapefruit, and gold peeking through the treetops, tumbling over the mountainside, dancing in the delicate waves of Eleanor's hair as she sits beside him on a bench overlooking the lake, coupled with the realization that he'd spent the entire night in her company, talking and laughing and reminiscing about all the things he'd hated and loved about life on Earth, never once sparing a thought to all of the pent-up restlessness that had been plaguing him for what felt like an eternity.

• • •

He'd never intended to make it a habit. Certainly, it's a rather strange phenomena, how often their paths seem to cross for these impromptu midnight meetings. Stranger still is the fact that it's always perfect timing, seemingly whenever Chidi finds himself most in need of a confidant. And talking with Eleanor, he finds, is unexpectedly wonderful. A perfect blend of comfort and familiarity, but with an enigmatic edge of excitement that keeps him on his toes from midnight to sunrise. 

It's enthralling, the way they can talk for hours on end about anything and everything. The way she speaks to him with blunt honesty and bold statements he'd never expected to hear from a divine, celestial being. 

The way she holds her own in an argument, passionately debating him into the ground with counterpoints he'd never even dreamed of, but never in a way that makes him feel foolish or judged. 

The way she makes his head spin, gets under his skin in the best possible way, and makes him tick, makes him think, makes him question everything he ever thought he knew, chiseling brand new grooves into all the things he'd always thought were set in stone.

It's not long before he finds himself growing impatient for nightfall, face aching from an all-day smile at the memory of something she'd said the night before, heart thrumming in his chest as he locks the door to his apartment and sets off in the direction of their favorite café, breath held aloft as he strolls down crystal-flecked cobbled streets, hoping against hope that tonight will be the night he'll find her sitting cross-legged in a chair tilted back at a dangerous angle at their usual table, sneakers kicked off to the side, brow furrowed in concentration, nose-deep in one of the books they'd traded the last time they'd met.

• • •

"It's an impossible decision," Chidi remarks as the pair of them lay side by side on a plush checkered blanket underneath an inky black canvas bursting with silver stars. "I mean, how do you even begin to choose your favorite among seventy-nine Jovian moons? This is, by far, the cruelest round of Would You Rather that you have ever proposed, Eleanor."

"Worse than the time I made you choose between Snickers and Milky Way?" Eleanor teases around an impish grin. "Come on, man, it's not like I've stuck you in the middle of the Trolley Problem."

"Fair enough," Chidi concedes, muscles aching from the wide grin that had, over the past few months, become something of a permanent fixture. With a jolt, Chidi realizes that at this time tomorrow, it will officially have been one full year since he'd arrived in the afterlife. Strange how time moves here, in both a blink and an eon, ephemeral and eternal all at once.

"Personally, I like Callisto the best," Eleanor says with a wry smile. "Mostly because it sounds like Calypso, who was a total badass in Pirates Of The Caribbean."

Chidi barks out a laugh, closing his eyes and shaking his head from side to side. Scowling, Eleanor pokes him none too gently in the ribs, which only makes him laugh harder.

"What?" she whines, mock-offended. "That's a good reason."

"I'm not making fun of you, I swear," Chidi says, struggling to stifle his laughter as he rolls over onto his side, head propped up on his elbow. "It's just…sometimes you say things, and I…I'm reminded of—"

He pauses, searching for the right words as a collection of images, distorted and blurred, flash across his mind. The faint outline of a silhouette, shrouded in hues of blush and gold. The distant sounds of laughter and the roar of a train chugging along a track. It's there, and then, all at once, it isn't.

"Sorry, it's just…sometimes you just seem so intrinsically human that I forget you're actually…not. And it's…forgive me for thinking so, but I find it incredibly charming."

For the barest hint of a second, Eleanor's eyes grow wide, but it's gone before Chidi can convince himself he'd actually seen it, replaced with a tight-lipped smile.

"Oh, well, you know," Eleanor says with a lighthearted chuckle and a casual wave of her hand. "You spend so much time around humans, I guess eventually you start acting like one."

Chidi pauses, not quite certain what to say. Not for the first time, he feels like he's missing something, something vital. It's like he's got all the pieces, but he can't quite seem to remember where he'd mislaid them in order to put them all together. Sometimes, Eleanor feels like the most complicated puzzle of them all. Every time he thinks he's got her figured, she throws him another curveball.

"Of course," he says after a moment. "I suppose that makes sense."

"Still, though," he presses on, rolling over onto his back and turning his attention toward the night sky, determined to keep the conversation going. "How do I choose? I mean, even if you narrow it down to the obvious four, it's still a choice between Europa, the ice moon, or Io, the active volcano moon, and then there's Ganymede and Callisto, both of which are—"

"…bigger than some of the planets in our solar system, and rumored to have an underground ocean," Eleanor chimes in.

"Yes," Chidi breathes, choking on the rest of his words as he whips around to face her. "You took the words right out of my mouth."

And she had. Everything he was about to say, to a t. But it's more than that. There's something very curious about the way she'd matched him word for word, mirroring his mannerisms with perfect precision, every tremor, every cadence, every pause for breath, like this wasn't the first time she'd heard him say all of this. Something so achingly redolent about the far-off look in her eyes as she'd said it, like she was reliving some long-forgotten memory, reciting lines from her favorite fairy tale.

But that's…no. He's being ridiculous. There he goes, getting carried away with impossible notions and ludicrous theories again.

"I mean, of course you already know that," Chidi sighs around a self-deprecating little chuckle. "You know everything. Listen to me, reciting star facts to an all-knowing deity like she doesn't already know everything there is to know about the entire universe."

"Not everything," Eleanor insists with a modest smile. "I'm not Janet, after all. Honestly, my knowledge doesn't really extend past Earth and humans and the residents of this neighborhood. When it comes to, say, life on other planets, your guess is as good as mine…"

Eleanor tilts her head to the side, a magnificent smile tugging at the corners of her lips, like she knows she's just laid the bait for one of Chidi's all-time favorite creative pastimes. (Even if, technically, he doesn't actually remember just how much he loves it.)

"And besides," she says with a dulcet smile. "I like listening to you talk."

And that's…well, for someone who spent the majority of his life getting teased and chastised for long-winded, incoherent, contradictory circular rambling, to hear her say that with such genuine conviction is…well, it's…

For once, Chidi simply doesn't have the words. 

But it's okay, because Eleanor does, diving straight into a detailed rendering of a fictitious ocean world in a galaxy far, far away. One that sounds so familiar, Chidi could almost swear he'd seen it once in a dream. In no time flat, they're off, debating the finer details of aquatic alien life, down to how many rows of teeth the biggest shark-like creature could realistically fit inside its mouth, and what color scales the merfolk of this world might have, depending on whether they live closer to the surface or dwell in the darker depths of the sea.

Eleanor's eyes light up in wonder as Chidi gestures wildly, the sky above them his canvas as he swirls his fingertips in a complicated pattern of curves and spirals, painting invisible portraits of bioluminescent flora and fauna on some distant garden moon. As the hours tick by, the two of them collapse into a fit of giggles, laughing until they can hardly breathe as they hold a competition to see who can come up with the best and worst names for fictional planets and alien creatures.

There's something oddly familiar and comforting about it, sharing wacky ideas and theories with Eleanor, the sound of her laughter ringing in his ears, breathing in the scent of wildflowers and lakeshore, fingertips threading through thick tufts of dew-soaked grass, the crowns of their heads a mere whisper from one another's as they lay side by side underneath the endless, star-strewn sky.

He chances a glance over at her, drinking in the sight of her, head thrown back in laughter, hair splayed all around her like a suspended waterfall, like she's drifting through space, tangled in the grass and tickling the sides of his face as it brushes up against him.

"You know, I never used to be good at this," he says, his own laughter subsiding and settling into a warm, comfortable glow in the center of his chest. He can't quite explain it, but something about her makes him unravel, makes him want to be candid and vulnerable. 

"Dreaming up far-off magical worlds that may or may not exist somewhere out there in the universe," he clarifies. "But then I met you, and you…you made it fun, imagining all of these different possibilities, not needing to know for certain if any of them are actually real."

"People used to call me the human equivalent of a migraine," he admits with a grimace. "Because I would always poke holes in games like this, trying to fit everything into rigid parameters, pointing out logical fallacies, instead of just taking pleasure in the experience of it. Creative thinking for the sake of pure enjoyment. Dreaming up all manner of wonderful, impossible things." 

Eleanor tilts her head to look at him, the silver glow of the stars dancing in her eyes. A hint of a smile twitches at the corners of her lips, and Chidi finds himself drawn to it, wanting nothing more than to make it bloom.

"These past few months have been…I've really enjoyed spending time with you, Eleanor," he says thoughtfully. "As crazy as it sounds, you make me feel…more human. You make me feel, instead of always having to think. And I never stopped to realize just how important that is, until I met you."

Chidi stills, his heart skyrocketing into his throat, every nerve ending in his body lighting up like a live wire. For in that moment, Eleanor had reached down between them and laced her fingers with his, giving his palm a gentle three-pulse squeeze. Such a simple, tender thing. Such an innately human thing. Done as if by instinct, out of pure muscle memory, as though they had done it thousands of times before. Without even realizing what he's doing, Chidi squeezes back three times in return. And then something incredible happens.

A burst of images, like scenes from a movie, flash across his mind.

The two of them, laying across a checkered blanket identical to the one currently beneath them, sunshine spilling through the leaves in the trees, warming their backs as they split the spines of a couple of books from his cherished collection, laughing and talking and reading passages aloud to one another. 

A sudden onset thunderstorm, pouring down on them in rivulets, soaking through their clothes and the pages of his beloved books. Much to his surprise, he finds he hardly cares, simply making the best of it, laughing and kicking up his feet to the tune of Singing In The Rain, delightfully carefree as he takes her by the hand and leads her in a whimsical waltz.

Just the two of them, lost in their own little world, holding each other close and swaying to the melody of distant thunder and pouring rain. He leans in close, fingers threading through the tendrils of her rain-soaked hair as he gently cups the side of her face, warm breath ghosting over the magnificent smile curved across her lips as he draws her in for a spectacular kiss, and the fire that erupts in his chest is overwhelming, all-consuming. Never before has he felt so warm, so happy, so enthralled, so alive.

It's different from some of the dreams he's had before…blurred and faded, like a channel coming in on the wrong frequency. But this…this vision, this daydream, this lucid phantasmagoria, whatever it is, makes him feel like he's actually there, like he's reliving it. It's so real, and so vivid, that he can feel everything. Every detail. Every touch. Every drop of rain that falls against his skin. The smell of petrichor as the rain settles into the desert air. The hard line of Eleanor's smile pressed against his lips. The vibrations of her laughter radiating against his chest. 

How freeing it feels simply being with her, acting on desires and impulses he'd been struggling to suppress for months. Everything he's ever wanted, but convinced himself he could never have, so intently focused on trying to make things work with his universe-approved soulmate, on simply settling and letting everything be decided for him, that he never took the time to consider what he actually wants, how he actually feels. But in that moment of perfect clarity, he finally knows. 

He feels like he could live in that moment forever.

But then it's over, as quickly it had begun. The vision fades, ripping him out of his marvelous reverie, cold hard earth and dew-soaked grass digging into the muscles of his back, grounding him in reality. He opens his eyes, blinking rapidly as an infinite cluster of silver starbursts punctuating an endless sea of black comes hurtling back into focus, the chill of the night air rolling over him like ocean waves.

His hands are cold. With a jolt, Chidi realizes that Eleanor has let go of him, her own hands folded neatly across her torso, seemingly struggling against an urge to fidget, worrying her lower lip, eyes wide like she'd just been caught doing something she knows she's not supposed to. Rosy patches paint the pulse points of her collarbones and the apples of her cheeks, just barely visible in the golden glow of the moon. 

Chidi has no idea how much time passes as they stay like this, unnervingly still, neither of them daring to be the first to speak. And then, without warning, Eleanor springs into a standing position, brushing nonexistent blades of grass from the thighs of her jeans and pointedly avoiding looking anywhere but directly at him.

"Well, it's getting late," she says, an unmistakable note of panic in her voice. Chidi knows that tone well, it's basically his default. "I should probably get going. Lots of…um…lots of Architect stuff to attend to. Goodnight, Chidi."

And before he can summon the nerve to say something, anything, a thousand different questions poised on the tip of his tongue, Eleanor is gone, turning on the spot and disappearing into the darkness, leaving him standing there, positively dumbstruck, heart pounding to the beat of his racing thoughts as he tries to make sense of what had just happened.

All she had done was reach across the space between them and hold his hand. And yet, somehow, it had changed everything.

• • •

There's a knock on Eleanor's front door at a quarter to eleven o'clock the following evening. Hastily shoving Mindy's special edition copy of Cannonball Run 2 in between her couch cushions, Eleanor springs up from the sofa and rushes to open the door, assuming it's Michael, or Tahani, or even Jason, with yet another report of something in the neighborhood going ass-up in flames. Much to her surprise, the person standing on her doorstep, hand held aloft in a gentle fist, mid-knock, is—

"Chidi!" she says, wincing at the way his name comes out in a breathless, half-shouted whisper, trying desperately to school her features into something cool and casual, because she totally hadn't spent the entire day freaking out over the whole hand-holding incident from the night before.

"I'm sorry," he says in lieu of hello, glasses fogging up from a nervous sweat despite the brisk autumnal weather outside. "I hope you don't mind, but I was hoping to get a chance to speak with you. I know it's rather late in the evening, but I figured maybe it would be alright, considering this is around the time we usually meet. I would have called first, but then I realized that there aren't any phones here, so I asked Janet for the best way to get in contact with you, and she gave me your address!"

All of this comes spilling out of his mouth in a rushed, jumbled mess at varying pitches and volumes, making it clear to Eleanor that Chidi is feeling just as flustered and anxious as she is. Heart hammering in her chest, Eleanor plasters on a polite smile and invites him inside with an overly enthusiastic make yourself at home! 

As Chidi takes a look around, he can't help but feel like Eleanor's house is bizarrely familiar. It fills him with a strange combination of nostalgia, comfort, and distress.

"Your home is…different than what I was expecting," Chidi remarks as he glances around at all the clown paintings. 

So. Many. Forking. Clown. Paintings. 

And…one of a shirtless mailman? 

"I didn't know you liked clowns," he says, fixing her with a quizzical sort of look as he pries his eyes away from the trashy erotic calendar, which seems to be permanently stuck on March. "In fact, I'm pretty sure you've told me that you hate clowns, many times, on several different occasions."

In her defense, it's not like Eleanor ever expected Chidi to just show up at her house out of the blue. 

It's fine, though. She can do this. She can improvise. Time to smooth things over.

"So I mean, yeah, I do hate clowns," she says with an attempt at a lighthearted chuckle. "Or at least, I did hate clowns…but they kind of grew on me after a while, because of…uh…the person who used to live here. He…well, he didn't really like clowns, either, but we…ah, you know what? It's a long story. I'm sure you don't want me to bore you with the details."

Yup. Nailed it.

Except, Chidi actually does want to know. All of it. All the details. Very badly. But he's not here to talk about creepy clown paintings or gratuitously bare-chested postal workers. Granted, he's not exactly getting to the point of why he's here, but for some reason, he just can't seem to work up the nerve to come out and say it.

Stalling for time, his eyes rove the landscape of Eleanor's living room, cataloguing every impossibly familiar little detail of the décor, from the eggshell whites, cloudy grays, and muted pastels that paint the walls, to the primitive Icelandic style furniture arranged in a quirky yet classy minimalistic fashion, to the rich mahogany bookcase in the far corner of the room that looks oddly out of place and honestly, more to his taste, to the—

"Cool chalkboard," Chidi says with an air of surprise, wondering how he hadn't immediately noticed the grand blackboard set in the middle of the living room, opposite a charming little white loveseat and a rustic coffee table littered with magazines, sticking out like a sore thumb.

"You know what I always thought would be great?" he says conversationally. "A magic chalkboard that anticipates—"

"…anticipates your lesson flow," Eleanor blurts out with an amused roll of her eyes, like she'd heard him say that exact thing hundreds of times before.

"That's the dream," she says in a playful, sarcastic tone, before catching sight of the bemused expression on Chidi's face, and adding, "…or so I've heard."

Chidi tilts his head to the side, utterly bewildered by the way she'd known exactly what he was going to say before he'd even said it, just as she'd done the night before. There's something very peculiar about the way she's staring at him just now, like a deer caught in headlights. 

Chidi's eyes dart briefly back to the living room. There's a thick layer of dust settled into the grooves of the chalk bed and the slate of the board itself, like it hasn't been used in at least a year. If he takes a few steps closer and squints his eyes, he can just barely make out the shadow of hastily-erased handwriting that looks startlingly close to his own.

"Didn't exactly take you for a chalkboard enthusiast, either," he says, trying very hard not to sound as suspicious as he feels.

"Oh, well…yeah. I mean, I'm not," she backpedals. "It's…it belongs to a friend."

Chidi narrows his eyes, fixing her with an intense, curious gaze. Having spent his entire life on the verge of a constant low-grade panic attack, Chidi has learned to recognize the symptoms for what they are. He's also learned how to suss out whenever someone is trying to put on a brave front, feign confidence, and power through it. Especially when they're so appallingly bad at it, like Eleanor seems to be.

Could she be feeling nervous about what happened the night before? Had she, too, seen the surreal visions of the two of them together flash across her mind, just as vividly as he had? Was she, perhaps, feeling foolish or regretful for having reached out and held his hand? Had she done it out of some kind of magical pull, instinct, or desire? Or had it simply been an accident? 

No, it couldn't have been. She'd done this intimate little three-pulse squeeze, as well. You don't just do something so specific like that without realizing you're doing it. Then again, he had when he'd responded in kind. He couldn't help it. It had just felt so natural. Like something they'd done hundreds of times before. But what did it mean? Did it even mean anything? Was she even allowed to do as she wanted? Was he?

He becomes so lost in the deafening grinding of his own thoughts that he doesn't hear her speak at first.

"I'm sorry," he says, shaking his head as if to clear it. "Could you repeat that?"

Eleanor stares at him for a moment, eyebrows arched, features painted with something akin to incredulity.

"Is there…uh…anything I can help you with, Chidi?" she asks, and oh yeah, she definitely sounds annoyed…and maybe, dare he say it…a little defensive? "Or did you come all the way over here to quiz me about clowns and chalkboards?"

"Oh my god. No, of course not. I'm so sorry," Chidi falters, embarrassment washing over him in waves as he starts to fret and wonder if coming over here had been a giant mistake. He'd set a course with the clear-cut intention of talking to her about last night, and all he'd done was show up at her house, uninvited and unannounced, and proceeded to interrogate her about the details of her décor.

A dozen different potential excuses to hightail it out of there sweep across his mind like names in a rolodex. 

Sorry, I have to—

Feed my plants.

Water my cat.

No, wait. That can't be right.

Perhaps he'll just tell her that he isn't feeling well. It's not exactly a lie, after all, seeing as he's nearly always got a stomach ache. Nearly always on the verge of a panic attack. Nearly always kept awake by a constant barrage of what if and why am I not happy, grinding away in the back of his mind like a fork caught in a garbage disposal.

Until, of course, one fateful evening six months prior, when Chidi had spent the entire night from midnight to sunrise in Eleanor's company. He couldn't quite place how or why she had had such a life-changing effect on him. All he knew for certain was that all of that restlessness, that desolate feeling of emptiness gnawing in the pit of his stomach, had utterly disappeared the moment he'd spoken to her. 

Replaced, instead, by the thrill of wandering the neighborhood after hours, night after night, hoping to cross paths with her, and discover more about her. By an exhilarating curiosity to puzzle out the reason for all of these strange and wonderful dreams he's been having, so real and so vivid, like a mosaic of memories from another life. And isn't that exactly why he's here, to find the answer?

He thinks of a night under the stars, the way they'd danced in her eyes, the way her laughter had sounded like music, the feel of her hand in his, and he's reminded of the reason he made the choice to come here, the reason why he needs to be here.

"Okay, so. Yeah. So. Here's the thing," he says around a quavering breath. "There's something I've been meaning to tell you for a while now, but I could never work up the nerve, or find the right words. And I didn't want to make it seem like I'm ungrateful for everything you and Michael and Janet and Tahani and Jas…that is to say, Jianyu…have done for me, because you guys are amazing. Seriously. You're genuinely the most wonderful people I have ever had the pleasure of meeting."

"Sounds like you're about to say but," Eleanor quips, concern bleeding through her carefully crafted lighthearted expression.

"But—" Chidi continues with an assenting nod, eyes fixed to the floorboards as he begins his descent into frantic pacing. "I feel out of sorts. This place is a perfect paradise, and yet, I don't feel happy. Not completely, anyway. I can't help but feel like there's something missing. Like part of me is missing. There's something about this place that isn't quite right. So, I've given this a lot of thought, and I have to ask…"

Panic floods Eleanor's senses like a dangerous cocktail of fire and ice, a frenzied greatest hits compilation of choice uncensored swear words racing through her mind at the loudest decibel. This is it, she thinks. This is how the experiment dies. Not with a bang, but with a rousing encore of This Is The Bad Place.

"What if the universe was wrong?" Chidi asks, and Eleanor holds her breath.

But instead, he surprises her by asking—

"What if Simone isn't my soulmate?"

"Oh," Eleanor breathes a sigh of relief that quickly turns into a scoff.

"Trust me, she's your soulmate," she says, injecting, perhaps, a little more venom than she really ought to have into her reply.

Chidi pauses mid-pacing, his eyes growing wide with alarm.

"That!" he says, pointing an accusatory finger at her. "That right there. That hitch in your voice. The hint of something that can only be described as bitterness every time you say the word soulmate. What aren't you telling me?"

Eleanor opens her mouth, but all that comes out is a series of high-pitched choking sounds.

"I…wha—…Nothing! I'm not hiding anything!" she shrieks.

"Oh, sure, that's not suspicious at all," Chidi retorts in a perfect impression of Eleanor's usual brand of sarcasm, eyebrows arched so high, they practically straddle his hairline.

"Look, dude, I don't see the problem," Eleanor scoffs. "You and Simone are perfect for each other."

"Are we, though?" Chidi challenges. "I mean, maybe on paper, but in practice, it's…"

Chidi heaves a heavy sigh and resumes his harried pacing.

"Look, don't get me wrong. Simone is great. She's a brilliant neuroscientist and a wonderful person, and I care about her very much…but I just…I don't think that she's my soulmate. When I'm with her, I don't feel like you're supposed to feel when you're in love. In fact, I'm quite certain I've never felt that way about anyone," Chidi pauses and chances a glance over at Eleanor, swallowing against the nervous lump in his throat. "That is…until last night."

"What are you saying, Chidi?" she asks cautiously, hardly daring to believe it.

"What I'm trying to say…though I'm not exactly going about it in the most eloquent fashion," he sighs, offering her an apologetic smile. "…is that, no matter how much I try to deny it, or talk myself out of it, it appears that I have developed feelings for someone else."

Eleanor's heart skips a beat.

"It took me a long time to figure it out," Chidi explains, tracking a faint trail of tread marks into the hardwood floor from his beleaguered pacing. "Mostly because I was too busy trying to force something that clearly wasn't working for both parties involved."

He gives an agitated little shake of his head, chastising himself for his own stubbornness.

"And it wasn't until last night, when a certain someone reached across the space between us and held my hand, and I saw this…I don't know if it was a vision of the future or the past…but I saw things, and I felt things, and I…I could've sworn I remembered things that I should not have been able to recall with such perfect clarity…and it made me realize something I've been fighting against admitting, all this time," Chidi trails off, gazing into space in a dreamlike trance.

Eleanor opens her mouth, a million different questions poised on the tip of her tongue, all begging to fire off at once, as she tries to make sense of everything he'd just said.

"It was such a small, simple thing," Chidi says fondly, offering Eleanor an affectionate smile. "But somehow, it changed everything. And ever since then, I haven't been able to shake the idea that maybe that same someone is my real soulmate."

All of the breath rushes out of Eleanor's lungs. For a moment, she simply stares at him, stunned to silence.

"Me?" she asks, her voice barely above a whisper. "You think I'm your soulmate?"

Chidi's answering smile all but melts her heart.

"Is that really so crazy?" he asks, and the overwhelming warmth and gentleness of his tone makes her feel like she's just downed a mug of hot cocoa.

Even in this timeline, even though he'd had all of his memories of their time together erased, even when she was pretending to be this, for all intents and purposes, unattainable immortal god, Chidi still found his way to her, fell in love with her, thinks that she's his soulmate, even though he'd already been paired up with—

The unwelcome thought creeps up from the back of her mind, dousing that hopeful, happy warmth with ice water.

"What about Simone?" Eleanor asks, fearing the worst. As much as she's been dreaming of this moment every day for the past year, she doesn't want it if it comes at the expense of someone else's happiness. She's not a homewrecker.

"Simone and I have agreed to end our relationship," Chidi says matter-of-factly, seemingly unaffected by such a weighted statement.

"What?" Eleanor half-shouts. 

Is that, like, allowed? Can soulmates just decide to break up and then go about their afterlife like it's no big deal? But then, Chidi and Simone aren't actually soulmates…probably…so, who knows?

"No need to worry, Simone is perfectly fine," Chidi clarifies, offering Eleanor a small, reassuring smile. "I went over to her apartment this morning with the intention of coming clean about my feelings, and talking things out with her. But Simone is very perceptive. She saw where the conversation was headed before I even opened my mouth, literally breathed a sigh of relief and said, 'Oh, thank God.' Turns out, she wasn't happy being with me, either."

"Oh," is all Eleanor can manage. And then, because it's probably the polite thing to do, she adds, "I'm so sorry, Chidi."

"Don't be," Chidi says, waving a dismissive hand. "It was, quite possibly, the healthiest and most amicable breakup I've ever had. Trust me, Simone and I just saved ourselves an eternity of misery. It wouldn't have been fair to either of us to keep the relationship going. I frustrated the hell out of her and held her back from doing all the fun, adventurous things she wanted to do. And she…well…let's just say, Simone deserves better than being stuck with a man who's in love with someone else…"

Momentarily starstruck by the casual ease in which all of these puzzle pieces seemingly fell into place, Eleanor arches her eyebrows and blurts out an affronted, "Wait, who?"

Chidi blinks several times in disbelief.

"Seriously?" he laughs.

"Oh! Right," Eleanor winces, closing her eyes and shaking her head. "Sorry, it's just…it's a lot to take in. I just…I guess I just don't understand. Why me?"

After all, Simone is practically perfect. And Eleanor is just—

"Honestly, I don't know how to even begin to quantify it," Chidi replies. "This isn't something I can explain away with logic or facts or a well-reasoned argument citing specific examples from a book. I just know what I feel, and what I feel is that I like you. I like spending time with you. I like the person I've become because of you. You challenge me, and you humble me, and you excite me, and you keep me on my toes. But it's more than that. When I'm with you, it just feels right. Like this is how it was always supposed to be. I've only just met you, but I feel like I've known you my entire life. Isn't that exactly how you're supposed to feel about your soulmate?"

"But I…" Eleanor says softly. "I'm just a girl from Ariz— oh fork. I mean…just a regular old immortal being from the Architect…uh…academy? Yeah, that. Because I'm the Architect."

And that's when it hits her.

She's the Architect.

The experiment.

The very reason for Chidi's sacrifice.

The fate of humanity literally depends on Eleanor keeping up this year-long charade, on making sure everything goes according to plan. Though very much welcome and wanted, Chidi confessing his undying love for her and proclaiming her his soulmate wasn't exactly part of the plan. 

Who knows how many points this could cost them? Who knows what kind of damaging effects it could have on Chidi's progress, if the whole complicated mess of the truth were to come out? She can't risk anything potentially messing up the experiment, not now that they're so close to the Judge's ruling. 

She squares her shoulders, schooling her features into impassivity, and says, "People like me, Chidi…we don't get to have soulmates."

Chidi stares at her for a moment, his eyes narrowed, and Eleanor is surprised to find that he looks almost angry.

"Well, pardon my language, but that's bullshirt," he says with uncharacteristic fervor, and Eleanor has to stifle a giggle at how much he sounds like her, only far more polite. 

"Everyone deserves to find love and happiness. Even all-knowing, immortal deities. In fact, especially all-knowing, immortal deities, I would wager. I mean, look at everything you do for us," he argues in her defense. "I spent my whole life in pursuit of absolute moral truth, but you, dedicating your entire existence to guiding humans through the afterlife. It's amazing. You're like the perfect paradigm of what absolute goodness should look like."

"Well, that's very kind of you to say, Chidi, but—"

"But at the same time, you're…imperfect, in the best possible way," he continues. "Sometimes, when I'm with you, it doesn't feel like you're…not a human, you know? Everything you do, everything you say, how casual and comfortable and open and honest you can be, you just seem so…intrinsically human. Sometimes, it's hard to remember that you're not. But really, what difference should that make? Does it really matter what we are? Janet and Jason fell in love, even though Janet isn't human. If they can make it work, why couldn't—"

Oh no.

Oh god.

Oh no oh god oh no, he's just spilled all the secrets he'd promised Jason he would keep. Chidi winces, waiting for the inevitable pandemonium, but what Eleanor says next feels like a bigger blow by far.

"We just…we can't, Chidi. I'm sorry," she sighs, looking for all the world like it's absolutely killing her to say it. 

It's that unmistakable look of pure misery that gives him the nerve to push forward, because it's the same look that's mirrored on his own face, every single morning when he wakes up and feels like there's something missing. And he's tired of feeling miserable.

"But why?" Chidi challenges, then pauses, trying to walk the razor-thin line between wanting to boldly profess his affections and prove to her that he's willing to fight for her, and not wanting to make her uncomfortable, just in case he's misread the entire situation, and this isn't what she wants.

"I mean, look, if it's because you truly don't feel what I'm feeling, and I've misinterpreted everything, then that's on me," he amends. "I will offer my sincerest apologies, and go about my afterlife, and I'll never bother you or broach the subject again. But if you do feel the same way, and we both end up spending the rest of eternity secretly pining for each other but never working up the nerve to say anything about it, well then…this might as well be the Bad Place."

"Chidi, I…" Eleanor sighs, her expression pained.

"Look, if I'm completely off-base here, please just tell me," he insists. "Tell me I'm wrong, and I'll never bring it up again, and we can go back to being platonic friends who occasionally cross paths in the middle of the night, sharing delicious food and delightful discourse. Or, if you would prefer, we can stop doing that, too."

"No!" Eleanor practically shouts, a look of panic in her eyes. "I don't want to stop seeing you!"

"Then what do you want?" Chidi asks.

"I…" Eleanor falters, battling back the urge to tell him everything, knowing full well the inevitable ruin it would bring upon them both.

"Look, it doesn't matter what I want, or how I feel," she admits, heaving a despondent sigh. She can't give him what he wants, but she's tired of having to lie to him. So, until the countdown hits zero and the experiment ends…enigmatic, vague half-truths it'll have to be.

"But you do feel something," he says, and Eleanor's heart clenches at the little sliver of hope that lingers in his tone. 

Chidi takes a tentative step toward her, closing the distance between them. Eleanor's breath catches in the back of her throat, lost for words as she stares into the eyes of the man towering above her. He leans forward, his lips a mere whisper from her own. As if on instinct, Eleanor's eyes flutter closed and she tilts her chin to meet him halfway, just like they always used to do.

It takes every ounce of her remaining willpower to recognize what she's doing, and wrench herself away from him.

"I'm sorry, Chidi, but I can't be your soulmate," she says. "No matter how much I might wish I could be."

Chidi presses his lips into a hard line, staring at her with some indecipherable spark in his eyes.

"Okay, so maybe we're not soulmates. Maybe the concept of soulmates doesn't actually exist," he concedes. "Honestly, it doesn't really matter. What does matter is how we feel, and what we choose to do with those feelings."

"I spent my whole life allowing fear and indecision to control me, to the point of madness and daily mental breakdowns, missing out on all manner of what-ifs and what-could-have-beens, all because I could never commit to a choice," he says, and Eleanor is momentarily stunned by his unexpected candor. 

It's the kind of self-awareness she had learned to expect from a Chidi with all of his memories still intact, a Chidi who had learned from his mistakes and changed for the better. A surge of pride rushes through her at the fact that this version of Chidi had managed to make so much progress in just a year's time.

"For once, I actually know what I want. For once, I'm making the choice to pursue what makes me happy, even though I am absolutely terrified of doing so, because I have no idea if it's the right thing to do, or what the outcome will be. But I'll never know unless I try. So here I am, standing in front of you, working up the nerve to finally tell you how I feel. I know what I want, Eleanor, and what I want is you," he says softly, his voice as dulcet as caramel wrapped in espresso, and Eleanor could swear she's never heard her name sound so sweet.

She feels dizzy, heady, like she's caught between the realm of waking and dreaming, hardly daring to believe that any of this is actually happening. It's been a whirlwind of an evening, and Eleanor is struggling to keep up. Every detail of what Chidi has confessed finally starts catching up with her, and with a sudden jolt that rips her out of this marvelous wish made real, she realizes—

"Wait…what did you mean before, when you said you can remember things you shouldn't be able to?" she asks, bracing her hands against his shoulders to try and keep herself steady amidst the swirling panic that's just begun to resurface.

To Eleanor's surprise, Chidi's expression shifts from hopeful and adoring to conflicted and embarrassed.

"I know it sounds crazy," he pauses, pursing his lips as he puzzles over how best to explain himself. "And I don't know if it's just the result of an overactive imagination, or some kind of weird side effect of the afterlife that makes wishful thinking come to life in a very real, very intense sort of way, but…sometimes, it's like I can remember all of these little details about you, and about us, that I shouldn't be able to remember."

"It feels like we have all of this history, have known each other for hundreds of years, even though we've only just met," he says thoughtfully. "And I keep having all of these…I don't know if they're dreams or fantasies or memories from another life, but I can picture them all so clearly. Mind you, I couldn't always. But something happened last night when you touched my hand, and now, it's like I can feel everything…every touch, every sound, every smell, every emotion attached to them, crystal clear." 

"What, um," Eleanor swallows thickly, heart thundering against her ribcage in equal measures of apprehension and euphoria. "What kinds of things?"

The answering smile that blooms across Chidi's face is like actual sunshine.

"Dancing in the rain with you. Arguing with you inside a weird, minimalist house surrounded by clown paintings, unnervingly reminiscent of the one we're currently standing in, right down to the very last detail. Hiding behind a bar with you while a fight breaks out overhead, and amidst all the chaos, you turn to me and tell me that you think you've fallen in love with me. Lying in bed with you in a strange house out in the middle of nowhere, telling you that I love you, too," he says as recalls each memory with wistful fondness. 

A loose lock of hair slips out of place from behind Eleanor's ear, and Chidi's fingertips twitch at his sides.

"I could almost swear I know exactly how it feels to walk down a sunny lane with you, hand in hand, with nowhere to go and nothing to do but enjoy each other's company, to hold you close and bury my face in your hair."

Daring to be bold, Chidi reaches forward and tucks the wayward lock of hair back behind her ear, reveling in the delicate blush that blossoms under the surface of her skin.

"What your lips feel like pressed against mine," he says, gently grazing his palm down the side of her cheek and watching, with baited breath, as her eyes flutter closed and she leans into his touch. 

"And I don't know if any of it is real or where it all came from, but I want it. I want it more than I have ever wanted anything in my entire life. And, forgive me if I'm way out of line here, but sometimes it feels like maybe you might want that, too?" Chidi asks, reaching out across the space between them and tentatively offering Eleanor his hand. Caught up in the moment, Eleanor takes an involuntary step forward, fingertips ghosting over the palm of his hand. The way he looks at her with such a yearning conviction makes her heart sing.

He wants me. 

He wants us.

He wants the life we built together, all the things we used to share.

He wants—

And all at once, the gravity of his words finally catches up to her, and the wonderful, terrifying impossibility of what this means comes crashing down around her.

Hummingbird heart at a loss for whether to skyrocket into her throat or plummet down into her stomach, Eleanor turns her head to the side, and shouts a half-hysterical, "Janet!"

"Wait, what?" Chidi exclaims, indelicately ripped out of the heartfelt moment.

With a melodic bing, Janet pops into existence right in the middle of Eleanor's living room, sporting a cheerful smile.

"How can I help you?" she asks, casting curious glances back and forth between Eleanor and Chidi.

"Could you please get Michael?" Eleanor asks, eyes fixed on Chidi like he's a spider she's just trapped under a cup.

"And, um, also, could I please have a drink with a lot of alcohol in it?" she adds with a sheepish grimace.

"Sure thing," Janet replies, looking thoroughly confused, but deciding it's better not to ask. She'll find out soon enough, anyway.

Janet twists on the spot and disappears, reappearing just seconds later with a wide-eyed, panic-stricken Michael clutching onto her arm.

"Sweet forking hell, the tension in here is thick," Michael exclaims, wafting his hands through the air. He glances back and forth between Eleanor and Chidi, looking alarmed. 

"What happened?" he asks. "Why is Chidi in your living room so late at night? Oh no. Tell me he hasn't figured out that we're actually in the—"

"Oh my god. No, you walnut!" Eleanor shouts, frantically waving her arms in the air to shush him.

"He remembers," she says. "He remembers everything. The memory wipe didn't work. He remembers. Oh my god, what do we do? How is this happening? What if it jacks up his final score somehow? It could ruin everything!"

In a perfect imitation of Chidi, Eleanor begins pacing.

"Holy smokes," Michael whispers, clapping a hand over his mouth.

Several minutes pass with Chidi simply standing there, stunned to silence and frozen to the spot, Eleanor tracking scuff marks into the hardwood floor as she paces in a dizzying blur, and Michael raking his hands through his hair, chanting Jason five times to trigger the cheat code and ward off an impending migraine as he closes his eyes and pinches the bridge of his nose.

"Alright," Michael says in a sage and soothing tone. "I think I might know what happened."

In unison, Eleanor and Chidi whip around to face him.

"Eleanor, do you remember that one reboot where you and Chidi came into my office to confront me?" Michael asks, a small, prideful smile tugging at the corner of his lips. "Do you remember what you said?"

Eleanor blinks several times, trying to coax some manner of coherent thought to the forefront of her mind. After a moment, her eyes widen in surprise.

"We're in love," she recites with perfect clarity. "And love is stronger than anything you can throw at us."

"And no matter what," Chidi chimes in, the words summoned from some shadowed recess at the back of his mind. "We will find each other, and we will help each other…because we're soulmates."

Eleanor simply stares at Chidi, open-mouthed and disbelieving.

"And I blew it off and made fun of you, thinking it was nothing, but it was everything," Michael says, a full-blown smile erupting across his face. "It was strong enough to break through the walls of a reboot."

"What?" Eleanor asks, incredulous. "How is that even possible?"

"Oh, how do I explain this?" Michael sighs, stuffing his hands into the pockets of his waistcoat and swiveling on the spot. "You see, every time I reboot you guys, I'm not exactly erasing your memories. That is to say, your memories don't just disappear into the void. Think of your brain as a filing system. All I've done is taken your afterlife memories and filed them away in a folder at the back of a cabinet that says DO NOT OPEN. So all of your memories are still there, they're just…tucked away, laying dormant in the back of your mind, waiting to be unlocked. Now, typically, the only way of getting them back is for me to actively magically summon them back for you. However, there is one other way to reawaken them…which, before now, I never actually believed was possible."

Eleanor quirks an eyebrow.

"I never considered the possibility that any of you would ever fall in love with one another," Michael continues, pursing his lips. "Quite the opposite, in fact. I just assumed you'd all loathe and torture each other. I never expected you to build such strong positive emotional attachments to one another. But you did, and apparently, that connection that you two share was powerful enough to unlock Chidi's memories."

"So," Eleanor sniffles, tears swimming in her eyes. "So, what…you're saying…you're saying Chidi remembers…because we're soulmates? I thought soulmates didn't exist."

"It's like I've said before, I don't know," Michael sighs. "Personally, I don't think that they do. If soulmates do exist, then they're made, not found. People meet, they get a good feeling about each other, and then they get to work building a relationship. Like you and Chidi did, countless times over the span of three hundred years and eight hundred different reboots, even when you had a whole team of demons conspiring against you."

"So maybe you're not universe-approved soulmates chosen by some complicated matchmaking formula…but you still managed to find each other, and help each other, and fall in love with each other, over and over and over again. I'd say that still counts for something," Michael insists, aiming an affectionate smile and a hearty wink at the pair of them.

"Essentially, Eleanor," he says, with a lighthearted sigh. "Chidi remembers because he loves you."

A small, tentative smile curls at the corners of Eleanor's lips, a warm, golden glow blossoming in the center of her chest. Ever so slowly, Eleanor turns to meet Chidi's gaze, and is delighted to see her own emotions reflected in Chidi's answering smile.

"Okay," Chidi says after a moment, shaking his head and turning to face Michael. "I'm happy, but very confused. Could somehow please fill me in on what just happened here?"

"Oh, right," Michael says, stirred from out of his fond reverie at the sight of his favorite couple finally happy and back together…well, almost.

"So, Chidi," he says, adopting an air of professionalism. "I'm about to unlock the rest of your memories. This might be a little overwhelming, but, seeing as how you're already dead, it shouldn't have the same hair-frying, teeth-extracting effect it had on Eleanor back on Earth. So."

"Wait, what?" Chidi exclaims with a frightened frown, but before he can protest or level Michael with a cascade of questions pinging back and forth across his mind, Michael snaps his fingers, and everything goes pleasantly blank. Seconds later, a series of images, like slides from a sped-up film, race across his mind with alarming acuity. All at once, the dormant part of Chidi's brain unlocks, and a stream of memories comes flooding back, filling in the remaining pieces of the puzzle his dreams had so cleverly supplied these past few months.

"Oh!" Chidi gasps, struggling to keep up with the sudden influx of vivid, vibrant details pouring into his mind, a cataclysm of emotions battling for dominance as he relives every moment of his afterlife. 

"Eleanor, I'm…we're…you…" he exclaims, his exuberant smile twisting into one of malaise as the last few details fall into place. "Oh, but the experiment! The whole reason I gave up my memories in the first place! What if I—"

"It's alright, Chidi," Michael says, giving him a comforting pat on the shoulder. "We're literally getting evaluated by the Judge any minute now. Not a whole lot of damage you could do at this point, bud."

"Oh," Chidi sighs, wild heart rate steadily slowing to a normal pace. "Well that's…simultaneously terrifying and reassuring."

Chidi turns to Eleanor, a hopeful smile curving across his lips. 

"So…how do you think we did?" he asks.

Before Eleanor can answer, the clock strikes midnight, and Janet reappears holding a massive pitcher and four margarita glasses, as Jason and Tahani burst through Eleanor's front door.

• • •

"You came to me and said that the points system was flawed," says Judge Gen. "A system that has been in place since the dawn of time, and has judged every soul that has ever walked the earth. And I have come to the conclusion…"

The six of them, Eleanor, Chidi, Tahani, Jason, Janet, and Michael, all stand together in a circle, clutching each other's hands, waiting on baited breath for the verdict that could make or break humanity.

"I have come to the conclusion that you're right. Humans are not fixed at one level of morality. They can always get better. Which means that the points system does not accurately judge how good or bad they are. You won. The universe owes you a debt of gratitude for bringing this to my attention," says the Judge, and a collective cheer breaks out across the room, overpowering the disgusted groans from Shawn, Bad Janet, and the rest of the Bad Place demons that had decided to tag along.

"In terms of how we handle this moving forward," Judge Gen presses on. "Obviously, Earth is cancelled. Clearly, Earth has become too complicated for the points system to accurately reflect the true value of human behavior. So, all humans on Earth and in the afterlife will be extinguished, and we will start the entire human race over from scratch. Now…where did I put that human-wiper-outer thingy?"

And with that, the fragile hope that had ignited in their hearts just moments before is swiftly extinguished.

• • •

"Not in this Janet," the Judge scowls, marbelizing one of several Neutral Janets and moving onto the next one in a long line of rebels playing keep-away with humanity's reboot button.

Eleanor, Chidi, Tahani, Jason, Janet, and Michael all turn back to look at one another, the same horrified expression mirrored on all six of their faces.

"So, if we can't change the points themselves, then maybe we can change what we do with the points," Michael suggests hurriedly. "Yeah, we just need a brand new system for judging humans in the afterlife. We can do this, right?"

He aims the question primarily at Eleanor, who answers with a reassuring smile and turns to face Chidi.

"There is literally only one person here who is smart enough and thoughtful enough to save humanity," she says, beaming up at him. "Designing a better afterlife is the ultimate ethical question. Chidi spent his entire existence pondering the biggest questions. He is brilliant and empathetic. All he cares about is how best to treat other people, and he is willing to sacrifice his own happiness in order to do it. I couldn't think of anyone better suited to guide us through this and find the answer."

Chidi stares back at her, equal parts elated by the spirited sincerity of her praise, and terrified at the prospect of the task he's just been asked to undertake.

After a brief moment, he gives a decisive nod, and replies, "Well, here's the thing: this kind of dilemma doesn't just have one answer. There could be 800. There could be zero. Who knows? The journey is the destination, right? So, that being said…let's get to work."

• • •

Forty-five minutes into their maybe an hour time limit, and the six of them are nowhere closer to mapping out a brand new points system for designating whether humans end up in the Good Place or the Bad Place once they arrive in the afterlife. Time ticks past them in a blur of heated arguments splitting hairs over which actions qualify as innately good, and how many points should be given or docked based on good intentions vs. unintended consequences. 

Chidi jumps as yet another marbelized Janet hits the floor with a resounding thwack, just inches away from where he stands, as the Judge rifles through their voids, bringing them all closer and closer to the literal end of the world. He glances around at his closest friends, red in the face as they trifle over which brand of water a person could drink that's ethically sourced enough to grant them a sufficient amount of points to just barely make it into heaven, and avoid being tortured for all eternity. 

And that's when it hits him: how utterly and completely pointless the points system actually is. 

It's just numbers in a system that simply cannot accurately measure goodness. What's the point of having a points system that doesn't measure a person's intent or willingness to try and do better? 

You can't just separate people into black and white, cut and dry categories of good and bad. It's much more complicated than that. You need all of those little details. You need context. You need to know their intentions, their motives, their reasoning. You need proof that they are willing to learn and willing to change. 

Turns out, life isn't a puzzle that can just be solved one time and it's done. You wake up every day, and you solve it again. You keep going. You keep moving forward. You keep learning, and growing, and changing. 

Everyone is capable of change. Everyone is capable of becoming better than they were the day before. Even Bad Place demons. Even Good Place angels.

A collective pearl-clutching gasp issues from the committee of Good Place angels, watching the mayhem unfold from their place in the pews with mingled expressions of sympathy and polite interest, and that's when Chidi realizes that the entire room has fallen silent and he's been saying all of this aloud. 

For what it's worth, he's never seen Eleanor or Michael look so simultaneously shocked and proud of him, and it's enough to strengthen his resolve, even as every inch of his skin burns with embarrassment.

"I…look, I'm sorry," he says, taking a tentative step forward and addressing the room at large. "But think about it. Do the Good Place angels ever actually help anyone? All I have ever seen them do is get caught up in an endless cycle of strongly worded letters, memorandums, minor mistakes, grand apologies, and resignations. When it comes to making actual decisions, they are even worse than I am. The only difference is, they do it all with a smile, genuinely convinced that they're helping."

Shocked to their core, the Good Place committee breaks out into a chorus of hushed murmuring, assuring one another of all the good deeds they've done over the millennia, followed by gentle shushing, followed by a series of apologies for having shushed each other, followed by even more apologies for having interrupted Chidi with all of their apologizing and shushing. Shawn, looking thoroughly amused at the chaos Chidi's candor seems to have incited, starts to giggle maniacally.

"Don't even get me started on the Bad Place demons," Chidi chides, earning a sarcastic eye roll from Shawn as he huffs, crosses his arms over his chest, and shuffles down into his seat, sticking his tongue out and fixing Chidi with a childish scowl. 

"The point is, pobody's nerf— sorry, I mean, nobody's perfect," Chidi sighs, casually slipping into lecture mode as he strolls the perimeter of the room, like he's back teaching in front of a class of college students, instead of monologuing to a rowdy group of immortal beings who could erase him from existence with a simple snap of their fingers.

"Everyone is capable of change," Chidi reasons. "And I think that everyone deserves the chance to do just that. After all, what good does it do, sending people to the Good Place or the Bad Place, based on a total number of points they were assigned for their actions back on Earth? Why are the Good Place and the Bad Place our only two options? When it really comes down to it, what point and purpose do either of them actually serve?"

"If you go to the Good Place, you're basically handed paradise on a silver platter," Chidi says. "And sure, that's great and all, but where's the motivation to try to become an even better person? If you end up in the Good Place, then you're probably under the impression that you're already perfect just as you are, that there's no room for growth, no need to try. If you go to the Bad Place, then all you're doing is getting tortured, and all that does is punish people for mistakes they probably didn't even realize they were making, reinforcing all of those flaws and bad habits they picked up back on Earth…or worse still, creating new ones."

Every member of the Good Place committee shudders in horror, while Shawn guffaws with glee and high-fives one of his fellow Bad Place demons. Chidi pointedly ignores him, and speaks even louder over the interruption.

"The point is, what we currently have in place is a system that functions as a means to an end, ultimately culminating in either praising or punishing people based on a total number of points they got for doing what someone else decided were inherently good or bad things. What we need is a system that focuses instead on rehabilitation, and allows people the chance to change for the better. Why torture people for being bad, when you could expend that time and energy helping them to change?"

To Chidi's surprise, Shawn arches an eyebrow, a look of genuine intrigue flashing across his eyes, before he catches sight of Chidi's encouraging smile, shakes his head, and scoffs. With a disheartened sigh, Chidi turns back to address the crowd.

"Look, I know what you're thinking. That's a lot of work," he admits. "And you're right, it is. But it's worth it, and the four of us from the original experiment are proof. Look at how many lives Eleanor, Tahani, and Jason affected when we got sent back to Earth."

"Eleanor helped her mother, Donna, who in turn helped her stepdaughter, Patricia. Tahani helped her sister, Kamilah, who successfully created a scholarship in Tahani's name that sent 213 women to college. After Jason helped his best friend, Pillboi dedicated himself to caring for the elderly. Their love, encouragement, and emotional support paved the way for positive change, which rippled out and set off a chain reaction," Chidi says, a surge of pride blossoming inside his chest as he locks eyes with each of his fellow cockroaches in turn.

"If there's anything I've learned from my time in the afterlife, it's that being a good person and helping other people is infectious. You help one person, and they'll carry on what they've learned and help someone else in return," Chidi says, a brilliant smile lighting up his every feature. "And isn't that what we should be striving for? An afterlife filled with well-intentioned people who genuinely try their best to learn and grow and change, who actively and willingly help one another for the sake of kindness and compassion? Isn't that better than assigning meaningless point values to actions and judging people without any kind of context for intent of good will?"

Chidi pauses, patiently waiting for the quell of whispered musings, until finally, a hushed silence falls over the crowd. He opens his mouth, and then promptly closes it, puzzling over how best to pose his conclusion. With shaking hands, Chidi turns on his heel and addresses the Judge directly this time, whose amused smirk and arched eyebrow does very little to calm his nerves. Still, he persists.

"The points system is not only flawed, it is useless. I suggest we do away with it altogether, disestablish the stark divide of the Good Place and the Bad Place, and build an all-inclusive afterlife that focuses on rehabilitation. It's what we owe to each other," he says, fighting to remain composed as startled gasps and cries of outrage erupt all around him.

For a moment that spans an eternity, the Judge simply stares at him, and then a radiant smile curls across her lips.

• • •

Eleanor and Chidi stand together in their brand new headquarters, peering through twin reciprocal port windows set into the handsome oak double doors that connect the office to the lobby, curious about the status of their very first resident. Just outside the building, Michael and Janet await, ready to take the newcomer on a tour of the neighborhood, and welcome them to their brand new forever home.

Across the way, Tahani strolls through a magnificent floral garden, her smile as radiant as the sun that shines overhead, while Jason tucks into a mountain of chocolate sauce drizzled overtop of his massive ice cream sundae (absolutely delighted to discover that all the frozen yogurt shops had been replaced with seashore style ice cream parlors) both ready to jump in and offer help if need be.

After the Judge had officially abolished the old points system, the boundaries dividing the Good Place and the Bad Place were dissolved, merging two polar opposites into one all-inclusive afterlife. The newly-formed team of Janets was then assigned the detail of constructing a series of interconnecting neighborhoods all throughout the boundless landscape of the afterlife realm.

Michael, commended for sparking change in an entire crowd of Bad Place demons with his heartfelt speech, as well as a change of heart in a former Bad Place Janet, was tasked with the rehabilitation of his own kind, for after all, if he could forge a path to redemption, so could the rest of them.

Before the Judge could even ask, Eleanor, Chidi, Tahani, and Jason had all stepped forward and volunteered to dedicate the remainder of their existence to being guides for each new person welcomed into the afterlife, insisting that there was nothing they would rather do more than help in any way they can. The one thing they asked for in return was that they all got to stay together, living side by side in the same neighborhood.

It's a daunting task for four humans to undertake all at once, but, over time, they're confident that the more people they help, the more people they inspire and incite change for the better, the bigger their team will grow.

Out in the lobby, under a magnificent banner that simply says Welcome! in bold, lime green lettering, the newest resident of the neighborhood begins to wake up. Eleanor flashes Chidi a brilliant smile that's equal parts nervous and excited, which he returns in kind, before grasping the handles of the grand double doors, and stepping out into the corridor.

"Hi, Doug Forcett," she says with a friendly smile. "I'm Eleanor, and this is Chidi. Welcome to the afterlife."

[wrongcaitlyn]

this is completely self-indulgent, but i was thinking about apollos career before him disappearing and stuff and now i cant stop imagining apollo in a similar situation to Jeremy Jordan with the greatest showman. i know you are not that into musicals so long story short, jeremy jordan (who is like a big deal on musical theater) was supposed to play phillip on the greatest showman but ended up being replaced by zac efron even though he (jeremy) kind of saved the entire movie by singing all the songs during the demo (except "from now on"). i can 100% see apollo taking part of a demo for a musical movie and being promised a part to later on be replaced by someone else. jeremy actually told his side of the story (and sang snippets from the songs) and how he was super excited to play the part and be part of the project (ill link the video in case you want to check it out) and it was actually his way of telling this story what sold me on it being something apollo would do. like apollo is such a theater kid in my mind that him doing a whole stand up thing talking and singing about how he did not get a role for a movie is just soooo in character.

anyway, here's the video im talking about, its just such an insane story that i still cant believe it actually happened https://youtu.be/08AGzOmCk-s?si=XfX3xIpFmkqQePrI

wanted to wait until i watched the video to respond to this so sorry that it took so long!! but WOW. oh my god. that's so... i want to say rude, but also frustrating, and heartbreaking to a certain extent?? like to have done all of that just to know that you were never actually gonna get the part and it was going to go to someone that just had a bigger name - i loved the greatest showman when it came out (and ngl my family was a bit obsessed with it, i can't even count how much we rewatched it) and ngl, was a huge hsm stan as a kid (also cannot count how many times i rewatched those movies) so seeing zac efron be in the greatest showman was part of the incentive that got me to watch it for the first time - but it's still just such an asshole move??

as for your question, i feel like that ABSOLUTELY would happen. even though apollo is technically like the "big name" in this, and would be offered roles without even an audition, i do think that his father may occasionally just have gotten him to sing demos and have to step in everywhere, seeing as his father was a director and producer and occasionally just needed an extra person to sing/act - but then the role wouldn't actually be given to apollo because his father wouldn't want that role for him or approve of it, or any other reason.

apollo probably didn't care much of the time (except his sleep deprivation definitely did, because also the flying across new york while being horribly sick and still having to sing?? definitely smth that has happened to apollo) but i bet there was at least a movie or a show or something that he was really disappointed about not being a part of :/

thank you for the ask!!

[bitchinbarzal]

okay here it is finally, "you are in love" is so sway and mama reuniting and their little friends to lovers era

One look, dark room / Meant just for you

once they run into each other and become friends again they're constantly looking at each other when the other isn't looking

The light reflects / The chain on your neck

mama playing with her necklace when she's nervous, she's done it since college so jeremy always knows, so when they're hanging out and he sees her playing with her necklace, he wonders why she's nervous, little does he know she's thinking about how much she still likes him and wants to do something about it

Morning, his place / Burnt toast, Sunday / You keep his shirt

their first sleepover post reconnecting, maybe it wasn't planned, mama was over and it got too late to go home so she spent the night and he made them breakfast the next morning

He keeps his word

him promising to never hurt her and never let her go, and he never does

And for once, you let go / Of your fears and your ghosts / One step, not much / But it said enough

mama realizing that jeremy isn't her abusive ex, he won't hurt her bc he's still the same goof she fell in love with in college, so she opens up more to him more, jeremy knows how hard this is for her and he appreciates it so much

Pauses, then says / You're my best friend / And you knew what it was / He is in love

they fall back into their "best friends" roles so easily, but they can feel the change in their relationship. the way jeremy calls mama his best friend allows her to see that he does feel the same way she does, now it's only a matter of confessing their feelings and making things official between them

And he keeps the picture of you in his office downtown

he keeps a picture of her/them in his locker, he looks at it before and after every home game. he also keeps a picture of her and a note from her in his bag for away games

You can hear it in the silence, silence, you / You can feel it on the way home, way home, you / You can see it with the lights out, lights out / You are in love, true love

their love is so all consuming it exists in every form, in every part of their life, it can always be felt around them

anyways this is one of my favorite taylor songs and i'm actually really happy how this came out

-linkedin anon

their first sleepover post reconnecting, maybe it wasn't planned, mama was over and it got too late to go home so she spent the night and he made them breakfast the next morning

Iike I just imagine the soft moment here just them staring at one another while eating, no words just love

[theficplug]

Nights Like This.

Carmen Berzatto x Black Reader

Summary : A fluffy little look into Carmy helping his fiancee after a girls night out.

Warnings: 18 + as always, no actual smut just slightly sexy moments-loads of fluff though.

unedited. sorry, i know i'm still rusty lol, i hope you like it still.

(watch The Bear , it's so good and Jeremy Allen White / Ebon Moss-Bachrach always eat up all their roles.)

“I want you to have fun tonight. Call me when you’re ready for me to pick you up baby. You got your pepper spray? Did you charge your phone? ” Carmy anxiously asks against your lips with a final kiss.

“Baby, My phone is fully charged. I’ve got the pepper spray and the lipstick knife that you got me last weekend. It’s okay, I’m okay. What are you gonna do tonight?” You ask, nuzzling his nose and he shrugs.

He then leans his head for a moment like he's weighing his options. 

Ever the old man. If you knew your man well enough, you knew that he'd probably be at home with a wine older than both of his parents and he'll be yelling at Beat Bobby Flay. Or something along those lines.

“Probably watch Iron Chef or some shit until I nod off. Richie wanted me to come over for some football game, but he knows I don’t watch sports like that. I only ever really watched it with Mike- Go go go, they’re waiting for you. Say hey for me and call me when you’re ready. No Ubers or Lyft or whatever the fuck it’s called. I’ll come scoop you up.” He insists again and with that you’re giving him one final kiss before you’re being pulled away by your girls. 

He didn’t trust Ubers or any of that stuff late at night and always insisted on taking you to and from your night outs with your girls. No matter how tired he was from being at work all day. 

The night was beyond fun because you hadn't seen your girls in forever and of course you were going to celebrate Davena's birthday on Throwback Night at your favourite place. The lot of you settled on going as Destiny's Child.

Hours later when your feet were aching and the room felt like it was moving like a Tilt-A-Whirl and all the uncles had came out two stepping towards you and your friends. You knew that it was time for Kelly Rowland to head out and home to her man. 

You pulled out your phone to call your fiance. And the press of a button he was outside waiting for you and your friends within the next 15 minutes. 

“Heeeyyy Carmy. I'm gonna get Luke to come around tomorrow to take a look at that stove. It might be time to do a replacement.” Davena says entering the car

"Hey, okay, yeah. It hadn't been changed since like '03 anyways so it's time. It's the one that Michael loved, and it was like the only stove he cooked on 'cause when the place first opened he was broke as fuck and couldn't afford more. But I'm tired of that shit nearly catching on fire every time Syd turns it on." he answers and earns a chuckle from her.

“How you doing Carmy? You still trying to learn how to make gumbo? I told you that an Italian boy from the Chi don't know nothing about that. You need to get my grandma up in your kitchen, but she's never giving that family recipe up." Naomi teases as she sits back in her seat.

"No doubt, No doubt. I wouldn't even dare ask Ms. Monroe about that. I learned my lesson from the peach cobbler." he says and they both laugh for a moment thinking about her grandma asked Carmy to buy a peach cobbler from the store to bring to the cookout instead of making one because she didn't believe that he was actually a chef.

They always joked and chatted like this back and forth like brother and sisters and you were grateful that they got along like family because they hated your long term boyfriend before Carmy with a passion.

In all fairness , his family and friends watched you like a hawk as well until they realized that you were damn near perfect for him. You were Carmy's first serious relationship so you understand their caution and concern.

It took one time for them to sse the way that you and Carmen interacted and they just knew that you two were meant to be.

“Boy, you should’ve seen how she busted her ass coming outside to you. Talking about my mans outside.” Naomi jokes as she pretends to fall over in her seat.

They all talk at once slightly slurring their words as they enter the car with you .

You, took the passenger seat while they piled into the back still laughing at you holding onto Robin so that you didn’t completely fall down. 

“See, I wasn’t going to say nothing about you throwing ass on Mr. Leprechaun but- sis next time I’m going to need you to turn around and see that it’s not us.” you reply to Naomi before she shakes her head in disgust. 

“His , ‘where’s me gold’ looking ass almost gave me a damn heart attack. Y’all wrong for that one.” she says throwing a peanut from her bra at the back of your head. 

"We got him out of there when we realized , didn't we?" Robin says still laughing and wiping at her smeared corner of her eyeliner.

Carmy smiles sleepily at you while stopped at the red light and lean over for a kiss. He sucked on your bottom lip for a moment tasting the remnants of the sugary drinks and peanuts from the bar when you leaned back to hiccup.

“The girls wanted to stay over tonight and go home in the morning?” you question and he nods, tapping his tattooed fingers on the steering wheel to the music with the other resting on your inner thigh. 

“That’s fine. We’ve got the pull out and then someone can take the air mattress that’s still up from the last time Tiff put Richie out. So it all works out.” he answers and you turn up the radio as Davena starts singing along to the song. 

You know that it’s a successful girls night out when you, Davena, Robin , and Naomi are in the car singing along loudly and off tune to Keyshia Cole after countless fruity colorful drinks that snuck up on you way too quickly. 

“LOOOOOVEEE. NEVER KNEW WHAT I WAS MISSING, BUT I KNEW ONCE WE START KISSING-” all 3 of you sing as you point at Carmy and he just laughs sleepily while shaking his head at y’all putting on a full concert in his small car. 

“Love you though.” You whisper to him as he nods and gives your thigh a small squeeze.

The car ride ended quicker than expected as the 5 of you made it to your shared apartment with Carmy and he immediately began to set things out for them.

You not only loved how he has been a gentleman to you for the past 4 years of you two being together but also the way he treated the women in your life. He was always polite, loving, and kind to your mother sister and friends. 

He found multiple blankets in the storage closet with pillows and laid them out before sluggishly turning towards the group with your purse and heels in his hands. 

“There’s blankets on the couch. I made lasagna earlier. You are more than welcome to it. Just please keep it down for me. I have an early morning, thank you. Goodnight crew." Carmy says quietly to the group before heading off to the bedroom. 

“OKAY, LASAGNA.”

“They really could not cook at that place because everything they offered was either cold or cooked too hard.” 

“ We love you Carmiiiinnnee” they call out to him.

 “Right back at you.” he responds quickly before finally making it to the bedroom and sliding off his shirt. He sits on the bed and watch as you wobble and scurry around the room. 

You grab clothes for your girls to change into before making your way into the bedroom after Carmy.

He smiles at you for a moment getting wrapped up in watching you before stretching and moving to the bathroom to find your cleanser.

Your heart melts when you notice Carmen was prepared for you to return home. He had a cold bottle of water set out for you, meds, a night gown, peppermints, and your makeup remover wipes. This man is truly one in a billion let alone one in a million. 

“Come to the bathroom so that I can help you.” he calls out to you while looking through the cabinet to find your cleanser. 

“I also have your robe right here if you don’t feel like wearing anything tonight. I mean- I’m not complaining if you don’t want to.” he states half jokingly as he stoops down once you reach the bathroom to rub your aching foot a little before switching to the other one. 

He moves back up to slowly making his way up your legs as his hands find the button to your mini skirt  and you shimmy it down your legs along with your panties.

You notice how his eyes are following the curves of your body as if he’s seeing it for the first time.

You don’t miss the way that his fingertips ghost up from the bottom of your stomach and up your sides to slide off your top and then to unstick your boob tape. 

You hiss for a second and he gives you a small chuckle and faint pout. 

“Aww baby, I’m sorry. I had no other way to get it off. Let me kiss it better?” he asks in faux concern.

He just wanted to take the moment to get his lips on you. 

The mix of the way he’s eyeing your breasts and putting his pouty pink lips all over your glistening bronze skin has got you on go.

His tongue briefly swirling over the now hardened little dark brown bud while your hand makes their way to the back of his head, flushed against the soft waves to steady yourself. 

You moan softly and wobble over slightly,  leaning over and putting all of your weight onto him tiredly. 

Carmy laughs for a moment before remembering what he was initially supposed to be doing in the first place. 

You let him sit you on the bathroom counter and watch him leave and re-enter with the water and meds. 

“I know you're sleepy but you’re going to have to let me get this off of you because if I don’t get this makeup off of you and put your bonnet on for tonight. A very happy drunk you will turn into a very upset hungover you in the morning. I’ve got to be at the restaurant early tomorrow. I don’t want you crying into my chest telling me about how much your head hurts. Then they’re gonna be on my ass for missing the meeting ‘cause you know I can’t leave you like that. You know Syd is the only one I trust with the place but they don't listen to her. Drink your water and then close your eyes so I can take your lashes off." Carmy says finally while putting the cold bottle of water to your lips. 

“Wish Syd would've gone out with us tonight... Hmm, Yes, Chef. Love it when you take care of me. Always take good care of me". You purr teasingly while running your fingertips up and down his bare belly and then down to the inside of his boxers and sweats, sending slight shivers up his spine. 

“Stop that shit. Ferma quella merda (stop that shit). ” He repeats half heartedly, swatting your hands away and stepping back slightly to keep you from palming him. 

You could tell that your antics were getting to him while he tried to focus on washing your makeup away because his breathing quickened and his heart began to beat a mile a minute. 

“You don’t want it?” You ask slightly, separating your legs for a moment and he looks down, contemplating while licking over his bottom lip. 

He brings one hand over your thighs giving the thick soft skin a squeeze before dragging his hand between your legs letting his fingertips dip into you slightly.

You instantly scoot up against his hand, thighs locking around it like a vice.

Carmen lets out a long drawn out sigh at how wet you are while shaking his head. 

You place your hand over his before working your hips against it and yours finds its way inside of his boxers to palm him again. 

"What's got you dripping like this already, pretty?" he asks quietly taking his time his fingers exploring and moving without haste inside of you.

Carmy removes his hand and licks his fingers clean before taking your hand out of his boxers with a soft groan. 

“I know. I know.” he coos to soothe your protesting . You look at him with a frowned expression and it takes everything in him not to laugh at you sitting on the bathroom counter stark naked, mostly drunk, and pouting at him like he had just offended you. 

He ignored you staring daggers into him as he put the minty toothpaste onto your toothbrush. 

“If you start some shit- you know that i’m not going to be able to finish it. Not with you like this. Come on, I have to be up at 4 tomorrow. Stop pouting and gimme kiss.” He asks with his lips puckered out and you take the opportunity to lean up and kiss him until he’s moaning softly against your lips, then kiss all over his face. 

“Thank you baby. Open- ahh.” He instructs and helps you brush your teeth  gently before that post-alcohol breath starts to hit different. 

"I promise. Tomorrow after work, I won't even make dinner because I already know what i'll be eating all night. Deal?" he offers feeling bad that you're now trying to give him the puppy dog eyes.

Carmen couldn’t help but to laugh at your antics because if sober you knew that you were being all sappy and affectionate she would go through the floor. 

"Deal. Wanna taste you too though." you finally respond.

You were eyeing him and taking in his mousy brown hair and his slightly tired eyes and puffy kissed bitten lips. He looked so beautiful like this.

A moment where he isn't stressing about 9,000 other things. 

“Gonna marry you and have all your babies. You know that? If we have a boy. We have to name him Michael. ” you say to him , half awake at this point. 

He knows that you’re tired and drunkenly saying what’s on your mind but the fact that you wanted to name your son after his brother made his heart feel like it was going to leap through his chest.

He knows that Michael would’ve loved you. Carmen's sister and his entire family adored you already as if you were their own. 

You were the reason why he began to rebuild and repair the relationship between them that was strained long before the grief. 

He knew the moment that you walked into the restaurant with all of your color samples and designs for the remodel that you were going to be it for him.

Call it fate, divine timing, luck, or whatever else. You two got on from the moment he sat down across from you in the booth. 

By the end you two had long forgotten that the purpose of the meeting was to talk about interior design and renovations. You were too busy telling him that he hadn’t lived until he tried Ethiopian spaghetti.

You two didn’t stop talking until well after the restaurant had closed and everyone had gone home. But, not before Richie yelled “wrap it before you tap it, cousin” from outside of the restaurant window and you both turned to flip him off. 

You two were friends for a long while and it took everything to convince each other that it wouldn’t end in disaster before you both just gave in to the inevitable of falling in love. 

Even as the restaurant's changes came to an end. The bond you two had forged so quickly within those months was just getting started.

“Gonna make me a husband and a daddy? How did I get so lucky, hmm ?” he asks, leaning down to nuzzle your nose and your neck. 

After brushing your teeth and completely taking off your makeup Carmy places a final kiss to your forehead and lips.

 “Let me see you, my pretty baby.” he coos , holding your face in his hands.

“You always take good care of me baby. Love you so much.” you mumble half asleep as he slides the silk gown from the counter onto you. 

You place your head against his chest to hear his heartbeat. 

“‘That’s what I’m supposed to do because I love you too. Always gonna take care of you. Come on, let’s get you to bed, pretty.” he responds, sliding the bonnet onto your head and tucking it up so that it doesn’t irritate your ears.

He had finally got you into bed and spooned comfortably in his arms.

It took him all of 10 minutes of humming and letting you trace his tattoos for you to fall asleep, snoring softly.

He didn't bother even bother to turn on the t.v. because he already knew that he'd be following shortly.

Both of you grateful that you get to be husband and wife officially in 4 months time. 

[tiptapricot]

So we know Jake fronts in emergencies, in times of distress, in cases Marc can’t handle when it comes to protecting the system (or at least that’s how I read it), but what if that extended to certain emotional situations too?

Steven seems to be the main emotional protector, yes, but his role in that also hinges on being unaware of a lot of the stuff happening around him. In addition, Marc and Layla’s relationship seems to have been an overall very loving and positive one, but we also know there’s been dysfunction, that they fought at points, had to work through rough patches together. You don’t get married to Marc Spector and experience completely smooth sailing.

So then… what happened when Marc and Layla fought? When Layla had her own breakdowns and yelled or cried or lashed out in highly emotional scenarios? What happened when Marc couldn’t handle that? When seeing her like that was too familiar, too deeply triggering and close to home?

Well… Steven certainly couldn’t pick up the reigns, he doesn’t have the context to handle it properly and gaining that context would severely damage his ability to continue on normally. So then that just leaves Jake. Jake, who takes care of threats, who steps in for Marc, who gets them to a safe place after dealing with the enemy.

And Layla’s not an enemy, she’s not, but sometimes their brain still feels like she is, and those are the times where Jake finds himself holding a crying woman in his arms, and apologizing, and letting her rant, and sitting her down somewhere he can hug her shaking bones together.

And he gets good at it, after awhile, good at being Marc. A Marc that’s quieter, that’s there for her, that does what he’s supposed to so she can breathe again. It’s what he’s there for, so it’s what he does.

And he has no right to touch her, he knows, no right to be this close. He doesn’t belong in her life, isn’t the one who should be running hands through her hair or pulling her to his chest, or wiping away her tears, but he does it anyway, because he has to.

Jake Lockley has always been a necessity, the man to fill the spaces the others can’t, the one to adapt seamlessly, quietly.

And so he does so. For years.

And when it all comes crashing down—the walls between them, the secrets—and Layla sees him for the first time, she asks such a simple question, and it breaks him.

“Have we ever met before?”

Yes, he thinks immediately, his mind going to the days her grief for her father was too strong for her to stand, or the days her tense muscles and tight jaw couldn’t relax after fights that brushed too close to being deadly. He thinks of Marc and Layla yelling across a room, cheeks wet and angry and chests shattering, and all he can do is look at her, his mouth a thin line, his brows knotted over themselves, and lie.

Yes, would be the right answer, because it’s true. He’s been there for so much of her, seen some of her most vulnerable moments, pulled her back and held her close, but he doesn’t say that. He can’t.

No, Jake Lockley just shakes his head, and mumbles something quiet, and squeezes his heart a bit tighter to keep it from spilling.

Because there’s no use in telling her, in letting her see the ache he has to hold her, in telling her how much she deserves to be happy, in revealing how well he knows the tense squeeze of her fingers. After all, she could never reciprocate that. She could never know him like that in return, and he’s not quite ready for that reality. Not yet.

(Had a moment last night w @steverogers-against-disney and @guss-other-fin going a bit nuts over some songs in regards to the MK sys, and LONG STORY SHORT it sparked this idea and I’m now holding it close to my heart. Inspired by Breaking Down by Jeremy Messersmith, bc the lyrics make me bananas pls go look at them)

[ddwcaph-game]

Dear Diary,

Since I promised Franzinyte to shoot an Our Life-related one of these days, i decided to go for this question first. Who among the cast of DDWCaPH (so feel free to include everyone who isn't in the main cast) would get along with those from Our Life?

Hehe. For those not in the server, I did play Our Life as Roselyna a while ago, and I was pleasantly surprised that there's actually quite a few similarities between MC and Cove, with Wayne and Roselyna. 😄

Now that I think about it, MC, Lizzie and Cove would fit right in with F6E—MC and Lizzie are adopted, and Cove's parents are divorced 😅

Anyway, to keep my answer shorter and more consistent, I'll just assume that the characters are just neighbors (or at least go to the same school) instead of taking the MC's role, and limit it to the Volume 1 cast.

Wayne would most likely get along with everyone (except Shiloh and Jeremy), but especially MC's and Cove's parents, considering how close he has gotten to Rosie's parents.

I don't think Wayne would like Step 1 Cove very much, but would start warming up to him in Step 2 for sure, and would share his love of birds with him (he likes sea creatures too). He'd like Lee, Terry and Miranda as well, but probably not Baxter, at least on his first impression. Oh, and I get the feeling he'd like teasing and annoying Lizzie, hehe.

Also, Wayne adores Tamarack very much and would definitely have a crush on her. He'd probably like Qiu as well, but I'm not sure how well their personalities would work for now.

Like Wayne, she'd try to get along with everyone, but unlike him, she'd try to make Shiloh and Jeremy like her too. And just like with Nestor, she might want to call Cliff "Daddy" too, heehee. 😊

Rosie had a near instant crush on Cove in my playthrough, but if she wasn't the MC, it probably won't happen until Step 2 when he becomes a lot taller, hehe. I can see her getting along nicely with Derek, Lee, Miranda, and Terry as well.

Baxter isn't exactly her type, but she'd definitely love to go ballroom dancing with him.

She also has a crush on both Qiu and Tamarack, but I'm leaning more towards Tamarack in my playthrough, mostly because they look similar and it seems like they vibe well together. (If she had to choose though, it'd be Cove for sure.)

There isn't really much to say for Lily and JM since they're both more introverted, but they'd try to be at least casual friends with everyone, although for different reasons.

It's in JM's interest to be helpful to his class/schoolmates, while Lily likes to keep tabs on everyone, and more "friends" means more contacts.

Lily would probably be at odds with younger Lizzie though, and then grow closer and have mutual respect for each other when they grow up. Also, I can see her teasing Cove a lot. 😄

B probably wouldn't like the other characters that much by default if they see them hanging around with F6E, but wouldn't start bullying them necessarily unless B has reason to.

If that wasn't a factor, B would probably have at least an amicable acquaintance with all the other friendly characters, not being particularly close to anyone.

As for Little B, it really depends on whether or not the characters can handle Little B's hyperactivity. 😛

I'd imagine Paddy's relationship with the others would be similar to their relationship with F6E currently. Just friendly acquaintances, unless they approach Paddy first to be friends (as in the case with Wayne and Rosie) or give Paddy reason to dislike them (as with B).

Paddy would definitely like MC's and Cove's parents though.

***

I like to think Julie, Robert, and Wayne and Rosie's parents (plus Yaya Connie) would get along with MC's and Cove's parents a lot, and maybe set up some events for them and the kids to hang out together (maybe a trip courtesy of LT?).

Lily's moms are too busy to get involved, JM's dad wouldn't be interested at all, and JM's step-mom only shows up occasionally, enough to just be friendly acquaintances with the other parents.

Anyway, as a little bonus, here's some portraits of F6E in the OL: Now and Forever MC creator:

[garc-i-a]

Learn Separation

Okay I am writing this because I keep seeing this post coming up on my Instagram explore page and I need to say something about the whole situation. It is about the comments on Madison’s lives. More specifically, it is the comments about the boys. Now we all know how she gets these comments all the time and that she ignores them or makes it clear from the start they are not joining the live. The issue is that people seem to think Mads is annoyed with the boys.

Mads is annoyed with people coming into the comments and asking for the boys. It is majority Charlie comments obviously. Since he is the “unattainable Canadian sweetheart”. Let’s not get it twisted. She loves her Phantoms. Even when they are being super himbo. The fact Charlie couldn’t tell bill from belle when trying to write that song at the convention….anyway. Mads doesn’t like seeing people go to her lives but want someone else. It is the simps that piss her off.

It is understandable to some degree to want to see the boys (really Charlie and Owen realistically) on a live with Mads. They don’t go live very often and are not putting up Instagram stories like that. So it is nice to see them interacting with one of the band or being live in general. That does not mean it is okay to blow up the comment section in Madison’s live every single time and basically beg for them.

Now here is where it gets really frustrating. As I said, Mads loves those three. Jeremy is her fellow anime loving older brother. Owen is her bestie she can gossip and shop with. Charlie is probably her closest guy friend who matches her crazy. She was so happy to see Owen when he came on the stage at the con. And despite what people claim, she is closest to Charlie out of the boys. But for whatever reason, there are people who believe that to uplift her, they should tear down and discredit the boys.

Mads has been working on her own music as we know. She even had Jadah collab with her and it came out so fire. She has also been auditioning for movie, stage, and guest roles on TV. And some people think that Mads is better off without Julie and the Phantoms. That it is just a stepping stone and that she is meant for “better”. Mads LOVES Julie and the Phantoms. She isn’t going to leave it just like that. It is more than just her first role. It is a part of her. She has a new family from the show.

Yet I have seen comments saying she needs to “move on” and do something else. I have also seen a comment from someone who doesn’t want her to work with Charlie. Someone made a comment on the video of the original soft rock Perfect Harmony video saying they wanted to see what other music they could make together in the future. Another person came out of left field saying that Mads working with Charlie would not help her career and not be a good idea. BISH, WHAT!? Perfect Harmony is so good because they made it together. And Mads worked with Jadah and the video for “Main Thing” got over a million views! Charlie also co-wrote “Talking to a Memory” with Jeremy and that song is considered the favorite off the Vintage album by many. Mads and Charlie work great together in whatever they do. Doing any project together would benefit them both.

People need to get it through their thick skulls. Mads adores her band mates. You can be a fan of her and love the boys too. Don’t demonize them in some convoluted attempt to make it seem like all white boys are bad or that they are purposely trying to take the shine away from her. They all support her in everything and she them. Don’t make this into some racism/sexism drama that it isn’t. Stan this band of goofballs. That’s all you got to do…..and keep Owen from sleep shopping, Jeremy from losing it when Carolynn is gone, and Charlie from….everything. Okay soap box is down now. I’ll be back tomorrow with my usual analyses for the show.

[creativeashproductions]

We Wouldn’t Be Us // Charlie Gillespie

IN WHICH: We get a look into the timeline of the reader and Charlie’s relationship from the first date that wasn’t so perfect to the news they get. The relationship has its ups and downs like all relationships do but this one brings the birth of a song. They know in their relationship that anything less just wouldn’t be them

Warnings: Swearing, an argument, allusion to sex (NO SMUT), pure fluff

Words: 3.1k

A/N: I suppose this is an entry for @cherrymaybank​’s Valentine’s Day Fic Challenge. 

Based on the song We Wouldn’t Be Us by Alexandra Kay

TO BE TAGGED SEND AN INBOX/ASK PLEASE!

Masterlist

Every dress didn’t seem to fit properly no matter what mirror with different light in your apartment you tried. The spare bathroom’s bulb was dying, so that made the colour appear off, and the best mirror was dirty, which would dampen the romantic goal. Nothing made you feel that oomph that you desired for this date. 

You could wear the standby little black dress of which you had two options, the clubbing one or the work appropriate one. It didn’t seem right to choose a standard black and no colour for this insanely sweet guy that had this insane energy. With that thought in mind, you dug deeper in your closet for that special dress that you’d never found someone worthy of it. It was your best dress and your most expensive with the tags still on. You would have gone for the maroon dress but it was Valentine’s Day and that seemed like over kill.

Somehow it still fit perfectly despite the length of time from purchase, it was a vibrant green satin with lace matching the colour. The dress's satin ended just below the knee with the matching lace falling an additional six inches past. The A-line skirt was loose flowing contrasting to the form-fitting material across your bust and midsection. 

One of your favourite parts of the dress was the off-shoulder bateau neckline that gave a tasteful sneak of your cleavage. The bottom of the thick straps came to make a perfectly straight horizontal line. Across your waist was a one-inch wide satin ribbon attached to the dress that formed a perfect bow that tied the outfit together, no pun intended.

“Whoa.” You breathed stepping in front of the floor-length mirror kept in the spare bedroom, it had once been your roommates’ room before she moved.

You had to admit the dress was magical with it, bringing out all your curves and went with your skin tone. It was a pure shock to see how you managed to make the dress come to life with just a makeup look that was easy to do. All you did next was your favourite beige heels that went with everything. You had just slid on the left heel when the buzzer sounded and slid the right on as you hit the button unlocking the apartment building door.

“This is going to be perfect.” You breathed leaning into the mirror beside the front door. You inspected your lipstick as a knock sounded on the dark brown wood of your door. 

“You look gorgeous.” Your date breathed, widening those colour changing irises as he took in your outfit, “You take my breath away. Happy Valentine’s Day”

Your cheeks flushed, “Thank you, Charlie.”

He stepped into the apartment as you quickly went to the kitchen to grab your coat and purse with your essentials. He had gently retrieved the coat from your arms to help you into the cold jacket. 

“I know traditionally I would have brought you flowers, but I also know you love books.” Charlie breathed grasping the items in his hands, “So I got these flowers.”

His warm hands held three books. The top one was The Orchid House by Lucinda Riley with a cover that had the background blurry with only the back of a girl in clarity. The girl’s pink dress matching the flower in the upper corner of the book. The next cover proudly displayed The Rose Garden by Susanna Kearsley with red flowers growing down on a stone building. The third one was a light pink book with an anatomically correct heart with flowers growing out of the arteries, veins and valves; a collection of poetry I Saw You As a Flower by Ellen Everett. Lastly, you held Rupi Kaur’s second collection of poetry The Sun and her Flowers that had come out a couple years ago.

“Charlie, this is so thoughtful. You even has a rose one!” You breathlessly spoke gently touching the covers, “Thank you so much for these.”

“I thought we could read them together?” Charlie was bashful as he quietly asked with flushed cheeks. He didn’t know why he felt like this was his very first date all over again.

“I’d love that.” You softly told the Canadian with the manners a mother would be jealous to have in her home. Charlie’s fingers linked with yours as he tugged you out of the apartment into the hallway.

Your hands swung during the short walk from the apartment building to his bright orange Subaru across the street. The sound of the light wind rustling the trees lining the sidewalk mixed with the humming from Charlie was a perfect film score. He was the ideal gentleman even before he asked you out.

You couldn’t wait to tell your close loved ones about Charlie. You could really see this going somewhere. The relationship that is, as you were now on the side of a road with the Subaru’s hazard lights flashing.

“I forgot to fill the tank.” Charlie moaned, pressing his forehead against the steering wheel. His eyes clenched just as tight as his fists.

The Canadian was so embarrassed to have had what he thought was the best date of his life. He’d played music from the playlist he had patiently curated specifically for this date, and he held your hand to the restaurant. He’d already made plans for another date when his car’s warning beeped.

In Charlie’s haste, he’d forgotten to fuel up his car, so here he was with the prettiest person he’d ever seen in his passenger seat. His confidence in a second date had greatly diminished.

“Char, you said Owen was on his way. There isn’t anyone else I’d prefer to be stranded with. Don’t be so hard on yourself.”

“I wanted this date to go perfect. This is my first Valentine’s Day with someone.” Charlie admitted turning his head to stare into warm pools of your e/y colours. His eyes scanned the soft smile that appeared on your face as his confession, “I had this whole thing planned out, and now you definitely won’t want a second-”

“I’m gonna kiss you. If you don’t want that, let me know.” You murmured before pulling him in for what would be the best kiss of your life thus far.

Sure his car broke down, but you kissed him anyway. He tasted of the complimentary chocolate dessert from dinner.

A Year Later

A young, admittedly broke couple sat on the cold floor of the unpacked kitchen eating SpaghettiOs. You had only just moved into the studio apartment with Charlie that had drained most of your savings. Had it not been in a decently safe area in the city and a close commute you would have said no.

But it was the perfect starting place for you two as you both were unfamiliar with living with an SO. It sucked on each of your ends to not have a better situation, Charlie wanted nothing more than to spoil you on the first day living together. Unfortunately, it wasn’t possible but sitting on the floor with a cheap candle was imperfectly perfect.

“I’m sorry we’re eating out of cans.” Charlie whispered pointedly, keeping his eyes on the spoon, stirring the red sauce with the beige circles.

“Char this is perfect. As long as it’s you and I then anything is perfect. Besides we didn’t label the boxes, I have no idea which box has our kitchenware.” You admitted glancing at the boxes boarding the edge of the room. 

You ate out of cans for at least a week before you had unpacked the kitchen and had the means to buy actual groceries. Living together thus far had been going super smooth until wasn’t.

It was a bad day on both your parts, your entire work was deleted after a computer glitch. Charlie had auditioned for a role he had been really really wanting since he heard about it. Your father came down with the flu axing the plans to meet for dinner; it would have been the first time in six months you saw him in person.

The apartment's atmosphere had been rising and very volatile by mid-afternoon when Charlie blatantly forgot a deal. If he was going to play music, it had to be in the study so you could focus on your work. 

Today he’d decided to be in close vicinity to have a virtual jam session with both Owen and Jeremy. He’d chosen the room you were in solely because it had the best wifi reception which you needed as well.

“Charlie, please can you go to the study? I’m trying to finish this!” You cried out as he struck a chord on the electric. His eyebrows came other in the glare he sent you, “I lost all my work last night.”

“The guys and I are working on songs-”

“-Charlie, this is due tonight. I can’t concentrate with-”

“It’s not my fault you have a shitty attention span!” Charlie angrily snapped contradicting the gentle touch on his guitar. He placed it back on the stand to not accidentally damage it, “The wifi is best in this room.”

“I’m very much aware of that Charlie. Out of the two of us, I use it the most. Can you please either move to the study or at least wait an hour so I can finish?” You pleaded with the Canadian actor ignoring the two guys on the computer silently waiting for the fight to be over.

“Why can't you mov-”

“Fine. I will.” You fully stared down your boyfriend for a full five seconds before you harshly closed the top of your computer. It took seconds to gather your work stuff into the leather satchel you stored the computer in, “You didn’t even mute the call.”

Charlie watched as you swiftly pulled on your jacket, “Babe-”

The sound of the door slamming shut cut his sentence before he even had a chance to speak his thoughts. The apartment was eerily silent compared to the sounds of music that always played through the Bluetooth speaker.

The inspiration to play evaporated with the aftermath of a stupid argument permeated the apartment typically filled with love. All three actors quietly said their goodbyes before they ended the video call.

You spent an hour uncomfortably sitting in a cafe finishing up what you’d needed to finish with the argument replaying. Your finger barely hit the button to send the email before you had already stepped outside the business. You spent the walk struggling to draft a text to your boyfriend. 

It didn’t matter because when you walked into the apartment, you heard the soft song you’d both deemed yours. It was cheesy, but that was part of Charlie’s charm. Speaking of your boyfriend, he was sat on the floor of your kitchen with matching mugs of brownies.

“I’m sorry. I was insensitive.” Charlie started as soon as your jacket was draped over one of the kitchen chairs. His usually wide smile was as bashful as the one he’d worn on the night of your first date.

“No I’m sorry, Charlie. I could have easily put on my headphones or moved to the bedroom for a bit. The fight was stupid, and I love you so much that sometimes I think I take you for granted. I mean, look at you! You made the brownie cups-”

“Even sitting on the cold floor like when we moved in.” Charlie cheekily inserted, reaching over to hold your hands in his, “I like our tradition. I definitely like how we upgraded from SpaghettiOs to brownies.”

“Me too.” You breathed leaning over to press a lingering kiss on his lips. His hands delving into your hair to keep you close.

The butterflies stormed your stomach as the heat slowly inflated from your toes until it reached your flushing cheeks. Raw emotion pouring into the passionate kiss that only closed down as you broke for air. But you also went back in as that warmth slowly built in your tummies. Charlie’s eyes marginally opened to ensure he wasn’t imagining the Angel he got to kiss.

Finally, with heavy breathing, you pulled apart, but only a fleeting moment froze the time in the apartment. For, as soon as Charlie caught your dilated pupils, his one hand cupped the back of your hand, fingers tangled in your h/c tresses. 

Soon enough, you were making up on the kitchen floor with each article of clothing tossed in the vicinity. A shirt landed on the kitchen sink spout. The brownie mugs forgotten as you gave into the passion with your boyfriend. Your lovemaking had you missing supper.

Charlie’s solution was a trip to the local authentic English pub founded by a nice guy from London. You never failed to stop him for a dance in the empty street as his smooth voice gave music for smooth motions. Dancing was a common thing from pulling off the road in Dieppe to dance. You drank and danced at the pub until Jack cut you off at 2am as his pub rules had.

You and Charlie just laughed in a love bubble as the real-world worries faded because you always came together in the rough times.

Months later you returned to Dieppe with Charlie to spend the holidays with them. The entire family together creating such a welcoming atmosphere.

“I’m gonna grab a glass of water.” You informed the group of gals ad non-binary pals who had gathered in Meghan’s bedroom. The group had decided to sleep over Meg’s childhood room with face masks, nail polish and lovely wine.

Meg and Jeannette both nodded to acknowledge your announcement before they returned to their respective conversations. You took a moment to take in the great group of Gillespie and Co you had the honour to be part of. The thirst was only temporarily forgotten in the happy bubble you found yourself in.

You practically skipped to the kitchen, barely noticing the two people in the living room, but their words stopped you in your tracks. Your boyfriend, Charlie Gillespie, stood close to his older brothers Ryan, Patrick and Michael.

“I’m gonna ask her to marry-” Charlie caught himself from finishing the sentence when he saw you standing pale-faced at the opening into the living room.

His entire body was encapsulated by the lights casting in the living room from the Christmas tree. The tree couldn’t hold a candle to the ring of your dreams that promptly had you bursting into tears.

“I RUINED THE SURPRISE!” You sobbed dropping your face into your cold hands, avoiding the gaze of the Gillespie brothers. Had you not been hiding in your hands you would have known the older three had vacated the room.

“Hey, it’s okay.” Charlie cooed with the ring safely put away in the box he had shoved back in his pocket, “You didn’t ruin the surprise. I shouldn’t have been telling my brothers in the middle of the living room.”

Charlie’s warm hands slowly pulled your hands from your soft post-mask skin with such a pretty healthy glow. He could see the remnants of the mask on the edge of your scalp, but it didn’t take away from your beauty.

“I’m sorry.” You whispered, staring up at him from underneath your eyelashes. The soft hazel eyes not upset in the least, things often didn’t go the way you wanted to together.

Take the first date from over two years ago where you and Charlie had waited for Owen to meet you with a jug of gas. You’d shared childhood stories and future dreams. Or the time you hadn’t marked the boxes creating an entire week of eating out of cans and cartons.

Ruining the proposal was almost expected at this rate.

“I knew from the moment I saw you in that emerald dress I knew that you were the One for me. I’ve adored each moment I’ve gotten with you from the spontaneous dances on the side of the road. To bursting into song in the middle of the street.” Charlie shakily started with sweating bands but an open heart, “When your best friend told me the emerald dress was the special one, it melted my heart.”

“Charlie.”

“Other than my belief that this relationship will last, I was only ever sure of one thing in my life. I was sure I would be an actor, but now I’m more sure that my favourite role will be supporting you, loving you and evolving with you as your husband.” Charlie sniffled, taking one hand from yours to wipe the tears flooding his cheeks, “Will you marry me?”

“Yes.” You breathed lunging on your tiptoes to kiss him with as much passion as you could. Your hands caressed the skin of his cheeks; his long tresses tickling your wrists.

“God I love you.” Charlie gushed with a gentle shake of his head. His hazel pinned to your e/c eyes as if you were the most precious gem in the world.

A voice cut the bubble enveloping you, “Well are you gonna put the ring on her finger or what?”

Charlie’s head moved to meet the teary eyes of his mother surrounded by his siblings as they bounced on their feet. You laughed as your now fiance clumsily rushed to slide the absolutely gorgeous ring on your finger. 

“Welcome to the family officially.” Jeannette cheered along with the celebratory whistles and yells as the crowd of the family grew more and more. Soon enough, the entire room was overflowing with people congratulating your new engagement.

Months later, you stood in front of that same group holding the hands of your handsome fiance. Both dressed to the nines in front of the officiant.

“I wasn’t looking for a fairytale, because they all end the same. The princess has a conflict that she revolves with the help of the prince. They get married and live happily ever after. I adore how we’re writing our own story that fits our relationship. Charlie Gillespie, I wouldn’t change a thing about our lives. I wouldn’t have it any other way even with the fighting and slamming doors, but we always end up on our kitchen floor making up with two brownies in mugs.” Your vows brought tears among the onlookers along with the Canadian barely keeping it together.

The vows would later be eloquently transformed into lyrics from you with the accompanying melody provided by Charlie. On Valentine’s Day, you played the song on the kitchen floor with a plate of brownies. Three brownies waiting to be devoured.

“Three for each of us.” You wept as you watched as Charlie melted into a puddle of joyful tears. He took no time in placing his hand over your flat stomach.

Yeah, you wouldn’t have it any other way. Especially when Valentine’s Day become more to the Gillespie family; a new little love taking up the day.

(Reader’s Dress In Beginning)

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[shadeofazmeinya]

That Golden Spark

Summary: Los Santos was alive most at night. When the artificial lights shine brighter than the sun, when all the real business happens between whispers and concealed hands.Trevor has the unfortunate task of gathering the Fakes for the night. Surely they couldn’t have gotten into too much trouble without him.

A/N: For the @rtwritingcommunity Springfairy fic exchange! This one for @uy8hg! A simple fahc fic that was a lot of fun to write!

Los Santos was alive most at night. When the artificial lights shine brighter than the sun, when all the real business happens between whispers and concealed hands. And the bars were the most lively, the music swirling through the streets, the sounds of people’s yells and laughs bouncing off the buildings. It was no different this night, at a small but no less crowded bar in the Fakes area of the city. A favorite and Trevor knew that this is where everyone will be.

Trevor can only sigh as he walks up to the dive bar, the building vibrating with shouting and crashing. A pair tight in a brawl burst from the door, nearly colliding with Trevor as they fell to the street. Not breaking apart as they roll around and chase each other down. Trevor rolls his eyes, sidestepping as he pulls the door open and heads in.

Inside, fists and feet were flying. It was every definition of a bar brawl, people wrestling. Broken bottles and shattered wood scattered everywhere. Two people locked in arms pass in front of Trevor, collapsing a table that splinters and crashes. He hears all the voices blurring together, some unfortunately familiar. But as Trevor scans the place, it doesn’t take long to find the center.

Gavin sits on a stool at the bar, one arm resting on it as he is facing the crowd. His legs were crossed, with a foot tapping to the barely audible music. He shifts just enough to avoid a brawl slamming besides him, lip pulling into a smirk as he takes a drink from some brightly colored concoction. His sunglasses are on, the scenes of violence reflecting against the gold as he watches like he was enjoying a movie.

Trevor has always known Gavin was a talented fuck. Gavin knows how to wrap people around his finger, get people to do what he wants without them even realizing. Unfortunately, Gavin doesn’t tend to use these powers for good.

“Free,” Trevor huffs, pulling one of the only standing stools over to sit besides him. “Fredo said you got here only 15 minutes ago.”

Gavin laughs. “New record, innit? Barely even had to talk this time. Just a few looks, a few winks. Bloody almost got hit!”

“Gavin,” Trevor says, glaring. “Seriously, I thought I told you to lay low.”

“We are laying low. No one will be able to remember anyone in this. And besides, Michael and Jeremy needed a go-” Gavin points and Trevor dreads looking over but does anyway. Sees Michael and Jeremy laughing as they both are taking on four different guys. It is impressive to watch, the two twirl perfectly around each other, knocking out their drunken opponents. At least Trevor knows their brawlers can handle these bar fights. But there was one more.

“And Alfredo?” Trevor huffs. 

Gavin blinks, mind falling in a sudden realization and looks around. “Bloody hell, where did he go? He was the one that wanted a bar fight!”

Trevor lets out a deep sigh at that, standing back up. He drops a few hundreds onto the counter, nodding to the cowering bartender who stood in the corner. Then he faces the crowd, glaring. He lifts his hand and lets out a piercing whistle.

The bar stills instantly. People pause mid swing, with arms wrapped in headlocks, bottles settling onto the floor. Michael and Jeremy both drop who they were wrestling, exchanging sheepish looks as Trevor speaks.

“I’m sure you’re all having fun here. But I would suggest to anyone I do not know to leave. Now.”

People just stare, frozen in their place. “Now.” Trevor snarls, voice thick with unsaid threats, and finally the crowd kicks into action, scrambling out of the bar.

“Cmon, Trevor,” Jeremy whines as they step over, whipping their bloody knuckles on their shirt. “We were just getting into it!”

“And now you’re done,” Trevor huffs. “Do you two idiots know where Alfredo is?”

“Is everyone gone?” a small voice is heard behind them and they all glance to see a familiar pair of eyes peeking out from under the bar.

Gavin smirks, shaking his head. “Trevor scared everyone off. You’re safe now.”

Alfredo sighs, climbing out and over the bar, sitting on the ledge. “Fuck, that shit got intense.”

Michael smirks, laughing. “That’s what fucking bar brawls are. You’re the one who said you wanted to be in one. Because you’ve never been in a fucking proper fight before.”

Alfredo shrugs. “Well, I can scratch that off my bucket list. Can I go to bed yet? I think I’ve had my experience and I learned it doesn’t need to happen again.”

“You’re all heading home,” Trevor sighs. “We have a heist tomorrow. In case you forgot.”

“We’re all ready,” Michael laughs, leaning over the bar to grab another bottle of beer. But Trevor smacks his hand, swiping the bottle away.

“We can drink more after the heist. So you don’t have hangovers. And can focus.”

“We really didn’t drink that much,” Jeremy assures. “One beer each so far. We know not to be too impaired for a heist.”

“At least one of you is responsible,” Trevor hums. “Fredo, you ok?”

“Yeah, I’m fine,” he assures, grinning. “Just didn’t expect the fight to involve so many fucking people. Gav can rile a whole crowd in seconds.”

“It’s one of my many talents,” Gavin purrs then laughs, setting his drink aside and standing up. He opens his wallet, slipping out another stack of cash and setting it down. He just winks to the poor bartender who’s still squished into the corner, shaking. “I’m sure this’ll cover the damages, luv. Sorry about all this.”

The bartender just nods, carefully taking the cash, eyes widening as they flip through the hundreds that Trevor and Gavin have both set out. Enough for the damages and more.

The night air chills through all of them, as Trevor leads the way out to the cars. Michael and Jeremy laugh and push each other around, retelling their victories of the night. Alfredo sheepishly adds the hits he got in, earning cheers. Trevor rolls his eyes, but can’t help the fond smile that grows. He knew how much he was inheriting, taking over more of Ramsey’s roles, becoming the boss. And while these idiots certainly don’t make the role easy, he doesn’t regret it at all.

[pleasereadmeok]

A Goode Year? Review of 2020

Can’t believe it’s that time again.  What a weird year.  Despite Covid and Lockdowns we have actually seen quite a lot of Matthew Goode this year - so this is a long post to save for when you are bored of eating over the holidays!    I’m not adding links to vids, etc. like previous years because tumblr doesn’t like them anymore [Grr] but all of them are still available and I’ll signpost them. 

In January Matthew was finishing filming A Discovery of Witches Season 2 in Turin and we had some glimpses of his leather clad bod in some Teresa Palmer instastories - 

...and in Sky’s ‘blink and you’ll miss it’ Excellent sneak peek. 

... and Joshua’s uncle Lee gave us a few gorgeous pics ...

In February we saw Matthew and Sophie having fun at the Pre - BAFTA party 

[Pics - Dave Benett] 

The rest of that month was all about Leap Year’s 10 year anniversary and we drooled over Declan all over again ....

In March Matthew was finishing filming Silent Night with Keira Knightley when the world changed.  We were introduced to ‘social distancing’.    We had to keep a full Matthew Goode length away from other people - a handy reference is below to remind you -

[Pic - Ellen Von Unwerth]   On the upside the news broke that Matthew would be playing Keira’s husband in Silent Night (as we suspected) and that they had finished filming before lockdown in the UK.  

In April Matthew had his 42nd birthday.  Check out all of the fabulous birthday tributes posted on here around 3rd April.  As a special birthday present Sky released ‘Four Kids and It’ on their cinema channel on the same day with Matthew playing the role of slightly harassed parent David.  It was a goode family movie and just what we needed in lockdown. 

[Pics - Sky Cinema] 

In May we got our first glimpse of Matthew in lockdown when he made a poignant contribution to Bletchley Park’s VE Day celebrations - 

[Vid available on Bletchley Park You Tube] 

It was perfectly judged - just Matthew filming himself on his phone, in his garden, complete with birdsong.  

“This is your finest hour.”

According to James Purefoy and Joe Fattorini Matthew shaved off his hair with the dog clippers in lockdown so he looked a bit different the next time we saw him in June!  

Matthew appeared via zoom on ‘Dan Nicholls Really Likes Wine’ show - ‘Drinking the Goode Stuff’.  It was great seeing these old friends bantering away and drinking wine.  Of course Goode fans immediately campaigned to get Matthew on The Wine Show @ Home and we got our wish a few weeks later when Joe and Matthew had a virtual wine tasting on zoom - 

The whole session was hilarious.  Matthew was completely adorable and funny as usual.  Amongst other things Matthew told us that Sophie had gone off pork (not a euphemism) and we got another peek at his beautiful home with Sophie’s interior design skills on show.   This is also still available on The Wine Show @Home You Tube. 

June also gave us the new trailer for ‘The King’s Man’.  We heard Matthew’s unmistakable voice as the Scots bad guy and there were some tantalising peeks of his character’s mysterious alter ego ‘Shepherd’ - 

In July we finally got to see one of Matthew’s Q & A sessions for actors in training at Bow Street Academy in Dublin that he had recorded in May - 

Matthew gave frank, funny and very practical advice on auditions, preparation for roles and demonstrated how to be scary with a knife! 

August was a bit quiet - we got news that A Discovery of Witches Season 2 would now be aired in January 2021 but a new promo image helped soften the blow of that delay. - 

[Pic - Sky]

Kingsman was delayed yet again....  but at least we got some new promo images of Matthew’s character - Captain Maximillian Morton.  (Morton? Hmm - someone on here (not me!)  spotted the relation to Roxy!]

[Pics - Total Film/Empire]

In September Matthew’s new movie ‘The Duke’ received glowing reviews at the Venice Film Festival and we got confirmation of my speculation that he would play barrister Jeremy Hutchinson.  

Tantalisingly goode info about Matthew’s up coming movie Silent Night came from Baz Bamigboye from the Daily Mail as he called it ‘the most astonishing Christmas movie ever made’ - hopefully he meant it in a goode way!  We had fun spotting Matthew’s body parts in the pictures accompanying the article ...  

[Pic Daily Mail] 

Production on A Discovery of Witches season 3 started under strict Covid rules and Matthew was seen filming for ADOW Season 3 in Bristol - 

[Anthony Ward]

October was a very goode month!  

It kicked off with The Wine Show Season 3 teaser - 

Matthew ‘sub-section’ Goode joined in with the ADOW cast Q & A.  He was a funny and engaging as ever including an unforgettable impression of a ‘wafter’ and a hasty exit at the end!  

We had the official ‘first look’ trailer for season 2 of A Discovery of Witches - 

[pic - my edit]

The Wine Show season 3 landed on Amazon Prime in the UK and it is SO goode even tho’ there is less Matthew than usual due to filming clashes with ADOW.  Matthew was still his adorably goofy self and gave us the usual interesting fashion choices and jokes.  

[My Edit] 

October also brought us a new tie in cover for Shadow of Night - 

[Pic - Deborah Harkness Twitter]

And as if that wasn’t enough excitement for October we got the official news that there will be another Downton Abbey movie - starting to film in March 2021. Hopefully we will see more of him in this one! 

[Pic - Carnival]

Matthew usually keeps his charity projects private but in November we saw him donating his ADOW ‘wedding day’ boots to be auctioned for the Small Steps Project ....

...complete with on mud from the set.  Some lucky person is probably stroking that suede as I write this! 

[Pics - Small Steps project] 

Matthew also recorded some charming contributions to the #SaveJenny campaign.  He evicted the dog from her favourite chair by the radiator in the kitchen and sat there to read the opening chapter of Wind in the Willows - 

and later ‘The Night before Christmas’ poem complete with music! 

You can still see these contributions and most importantly DONATE  - links are listed below - 

December has been all about A Discovery of Witches season 2 - with a stunning second trailer and plenty of teasers and pictures from Sky and Bad Wolf - there are too many to include but here’s a few - 

[Pics my edit / sky/badwolf]

So what of next year?  So many goode things to look forward to.  I’ll do ‘Goode Things coming in 2021′ a bit earlier next year because January is gonna be BUSY for Goode fans!   

Thank you SO MUCH for making time to read this blog.  And a big thank you to Goode fans who create content to share with others on here and on matthew-goode.net.  We really appreciate the effort that everyone puts in to sharing the Goode Stuff.  

Lastly I have to thank Matthew Goode who patiently tolerates the fan nonsense while he tries to pretend that he doesn’t actually have any fans anyway!  

Cheers Matthew! 

[postmodernmulticoloredcloak]

Fantasies, dreams and desires, ideas of normalcy and fears of difference. A slightly queer reading of 15x14

Mrs Butters is a delightful character who is built to parallel so many things in the show. She occupies perfectly the semantic sphere that the narrative has crafted around Dean’s desires; also, you know, cake.

We could talk for days about the significance of food and drink in Supernatural. One of the biggest themes that run through the entire show is hunger (or thirst) and food is very often a symbol for an emotional need of sorts. Supernatural draws a lot folklore, and human stories have always used symbologies that put together food, desire, love, sex, family, goodness and darkness and all those human experiences.

We have discussed the shit out of every instance of food in the show, analyzed parallels to other stories and fairytales, scrutinized queer-codings and subtexts, got called nasty names by impolite people accusing us of saying that a slice of baked good means Dean likes sitting on dicks. So, yeah, I’m not gonna start explaining everything from the beginning. Let’s jump to the parallels.

- The comfort food. Motherhood, hugs, and the past that can never return: the ideal of childhood and the 50s fantasy

We’ve already talked about how Mrs Butters functions as a parallel to Mary and a symbol of the ideal motherhood that both Mary and Dean struggled with. In Dark Side Of The Moon, we see a memory from Dean’s childhood, where we learn that Mary would cut off the crusts off his sandwiches. Mrs Butters also says that she cut the crusts off, establishing a direct parallel to Dean’s ideal of childhood and child-parent relationship. Or, we should say, as both Mary’s and Dean’s ideals of a child-parent relationship, because we know that Mary set up her life with John and the kids as an elaborate “scene” according to her idea-slash-fantasy of the perfect safe life.

She strugged with that, because her ideal life could never match with reality - she had loose ends from hunting to deal with, she at some level liked having those loose ends to deal with because as much as she hated the hunting life and craved for safety and “normalcy” that was still something she was in her element doing, probably more than the perfect housewife role. Of course when she came back she attempted to recreate the scene but quickly discovered that it was impossible and dropped all attempts to do so, embracing the opposite, or at least what she perceived as the opposite (having a pretty dualistic view of hunting life-domestic life where they cannot be reconciled).

Dean, on the other hand, started out with a similar dualistic view, figuring that he’d always belong to the hunting world and could never have the domestic, “normal” thing at all, embracing his “freakness” as opposed to the concept of normalcy represented by civilians, by the middle class, by the suburbs, by the apple pie, white fence life (insert heavy queer subtext here). And yet there was always an ambiguity with him (again, he’s never one-or-the-other, he’s always both), because, while on the surface he embraces this rebellious, devil-may-care persona, that’s not quite what he is as a full individual. He grew up essentially a housewife from a very early age, has a very caregiving personality, and thrives in taking care of others.

Dean is both Mrs Butters and Mary, where the difference between him and Mary is that Mary couldn’t (didn’t have the time, support, resources?) reconcile parts of her that Dean instead was able to (and in fact recently helped her with: before dying, she’d reached a pretty healthy balance of living her own life as a hunter and having a warm relationship with her sons, at least as healthy as it can get in that kind of circumstances).

Another important parallel to Dark Side Of The Moon, borrowed by Scoobynatural, is the nightgown that feels like being wrapped in hugs: we are reminded of Dean’s “I wuv hugz” from when he was a kid, a symbol for his early life of affection and safety that he lost with his mother. Childhood hugs, comfort food, loving gestures like cutting off the crusts are all symbols of a past that cannot return.

On a level, from a “coming-of-age story” perspective, childhood, with its innocence and perception that adults will always keep us safe, is obviously something that everyone needs to accept as something that belongs to the past and cannot return, to embrace instead the responsibilities and risks of adulthood in a healthy way. In a sense, Dean needs to go through all these steps - acknowledging that his mother was a flawed person, that in fact both of his parents were flawed people who made mistakes but he can forgive them for his own sake in order to be able to let go of trauma and carry on... - to become a healthy adult able to be a good parent to his own child.

(There’s also the cholesterol thing - Mrs Butters chastizes Dean for his diet, but we know that there’s a depth to Dean’s diet, not only his extreme appreciation of food due to experiencing food scarcity and insecurity as a child, but also the memory of his mother’s comfort food, such as the “Winchester surprise”, a monstrosity of meat and cheese. While the “meat man” persona would appear on the surface as a sterotypical masculinity thing, it has layers, in a typical Dean fashion... not coincidentally, in the latest episode he calls himself the meat man while wearing an apron that we’re told he’s very fond of, painting him, again, in a mixture of different meanings, masculinity and femininity, fatherhood and motherhood, devil-may-care attitude and caregiver attitude.)

On another level, a more political level, there’s the 50s fantasy element. We all know the significance of the idealization of the post-war period as the “good ol’ times” in American culture, and it’s an ideal that Mary definitely drew from when she built her perfect life with her family. Mrs Butters represents this in a very literal way, being literally from 1958 when she “froze” herself, and acts as a very stereotyped governess for a bunch of men that feel like they are above housework, what is considered women’s work. Dean initially comments “how progressive”, knowing exactly how bullshit these conversative ideals are, but then appreciates the comforts of the perfect caretaker.

In fact, Dean’s “giving in” to the comforts of a governess makes me think of that famous feminist manifesto “I want a wife” by Judy Syfers... because housework is very much Dean’s work in the bunker. It’s interesting that Mrs Butters immediately comments negatively on the cleanness of the bunker and their clothes: we know that Dean cleans and washes, and, while it’s likely that he cannot keep everything super perfect like a governess would because he’s busy doing many other things, it’s a way Mrs Butters uses to establish roles that she knows and is comfortable with. She is used to being the one who does “feminine” work while the Men of Letters have absolutely zero skills in that regard, and doesn’t really even stop to question if that’s the case with the men in front of her.

Anyway, let’s go back to the 50s fantasy. The show has repeatedly made commentaries on the vacuity of it. Peace Of Mind is the most obvious instance, but there’s plenty of subtext in the show that deals with that typically American aspect. Just like the childhood aspect, the narrative tells us that the “good ol’ times” are also an idealized thing that cannot return (if it ever existed, because Dean’s childhood was built on a fantasy, and the “good ol’ times” are also a fantasy, because the real 50s were horrible for anyone who didn’t swim in privilege). Mrs Butters cannot stay, the 50s fantasy-slash-childhood fantasy cannot last, and Dean embraces his role as an adult-slash-modern housemaker. Blah blah gender, blah blah cake. (Yeah, sorry, but you can fill in the blanks.)

- The contaminated drink. Poison and weakness from the forbidden sexual desire to the forbidden family domesticity

Aaaand now the second branch of parallels that Mrs Butters pinged on my radar, which sends us in an even more queer-subtext-heavy territory. We’re going to talk about the smoothies and the tomato juice. Yes, I know, the smoothies are given to Jack, not Dean, but symbolically Dean and Jack share the same semantic area; both are given a magically conjured drink, and both end up locked away waiting to be killed. For this analysis, they basically overlap.

Let’s start with the tomato juice. I don’t think that it’s a coincidence that Dean is given something that visually reminds of the blood the vampires drink. The tomato juice is a stand-in for blood, and blood in relation to vampirism has a long history of subtext in the show that connects to sexuality, sex, sexual fears and contamination. While vampires are not necessarily always invested of those meanings every single time they appear in the three-hundred-whatever episodes of the show, their main symbology is connected to sex and sexual fears, as vampires do in modern western literature, after all.

You’re probably going to think, wait, what? What has Mrs Butters got to do with sexual fears? Yeah, I know, it sounds weird, but hear me out.

The tomato juice - a stand-in for blood, with a vampire reference - parallels Mrs Butters (who represents trauma, remember) to 6x05 Live Free Or TwiHard. Sexual assault, blood, contamination via the poisoning liquid.

Next to the tomato juice there’s the smoothie. It’s a poison in disguise, a contaminated drink that makes Jack weak. We have, in fact, a pattern of Dean being given contaminated drinks that place him under another’s power. Not just the vampire’s blood, but also Jeremy from 3x10 Dream A Little Dream Of Me, who offers Dean a beer through which he connects him to his dreams. There’s Nick the siren from 4x14 Sex And Violence, who contaminates Dean through the flask. The venom in the siren’s saliva parallels straight to the gorgon Noah in 14x14 Ouroboros, and I don’t have to start explaining what all those things represent, right? (I have written posts about these things, it would be nice if tumblr didn’t suck and showed them to me when I go look for them.)

(Oh, there’s also Crowley’s human blood addiction, which is not, as one might expect, a parallel to Sam’s demon blood addition, but Dean’s First Blade/Mark Of Cain issue, and the First Blade/Mark Of Cain arc is all imbued by the queer subtext of the Dean-Crowley-Castiel triangle.)

Basically, Mrs Butters is inserted in a history of queer subtext, although it appears as obvious that Mrs Butters hardly represents homosexual desire, unless we go a pretty stretchy route of her occupying Cas’ space in the Dean-Sam-Cas-Jack family (I mean, that’s true, but it’s not simply that). It is also true that Mrs Butters represents Cuthbert Sinclair, and here the radar pings, because Cuthbert Sinclair is totally inside the pattern! He wanted to make Dean part of his collection just like the vampire in 6x05 wanted to make Dean part of his pack, with supernatural means of exorting control over Dean and heavy heavy rapey tones. (I know we don’t like to talk about this, but the show does play with incest subtext, John mirrors are often rapey.)

So, we have all this semantic area of poison, weakness and submission to external control painted in overtones of sexual assault and sexual fears especially in relation to homosexual desire. (I am NOT linking homosexual desire to sexual assult, nor the show is, it’s a wide and volatile semantic area where the common denominator is fear, fear of being hurt FOR being different sexually, it’s about vulnerability because of being different. It’s a horror narrative, guys, remember, queer fear is a recurrent theme in the genre. Dracula was about the horror of what happened to Oscar Wilde, we’re running in circles.)

Now, what kind of fear is explored in 15x14? Well, the episode is about the fear of losing family. The plot is about Dean’s feelings towards Jack after he killed Mary. Dean doesn’t know it yet, but he’s going to lose Cas soon also because of Jack. Mary and Cas are both very noisy absences in the episode, and we know that Dean is going to suffer something horrific again that will shatter his family again. This goes past the fears regarding forbidden sexual desire: we’re in the territory of forbidden familial desire, so to speak, Dean’s craving for a domestic peace with his family.

Jack is both the culmination of Dean’s process of family-building, as the son figure of the family, and the element of destruction of that family-building. Not a coincidence Jack’s birthday was referenced, as Jack’s birth coincided with Cas’ death and Mary’s supposed death or at least separation. Now Jack has supposedly killed Mary (or is it a inter-universe separation again? @drsilverfish​’s theory always pops up, and we keep getting reminded of other universes - the telescope is broken...) and we know that Cas’ ultimate death hangs above us.

We’re always running in a spiral, Dean’s relationship with Mary, Dean’s relationship with Cas, Dean’s relationship with motherhood and gender roles, Dean’s relationship with sexuality. There’s a big picture of mirrors in the semantic area of fantasies, idealizations, desires and dreams. I hope I managed to make this post make sense, but I’m always open to requests of clarification or elaboration. Thanks for reading!

[the-roanoke-society]

Is there any way you could tell us about Former Technical Officer Drake? (The one that uses Tom Holland as a face claim?) Like what happened to him that made him become a Former officer?

let’s talk about jude shepard.

and note, that i can’t talk about jude shepard without also speaking of where he died.

it isn’t often i get to tell a story that begins in one decade and ends over a century earlier.

details of violence, sci-fi-induced stressful situations and implied gore and body horror below the cut. proceed with caution.

turn back the clock to 1996.

jude—that is, drake, at the time—was one of the youngest people ever to be brought onto the basement crew. our watchers pinged him at just 14 for showing exceptional aptitude to what i would best describe as technomancy. the phrase ‘wiz kid’ was used often, and seriously. but, the then-wyvern—justine—knew that lilith wouldn’t bend on recruitment rules. she waited patiently until jude was old enough and immediately “adopted” him as a mentee.

our gate had been completely built by this time. at least, an early version of it.

but we knew way less then, than we do now.

and what we know now, we’re realizing, is still precious little.

i wish that i could tell you what happened to jude was significant. i wish i could say that it was meaningful, that it happened for a just cause. i wish i could say that for the handful of officers our homemade portal has swallowed over the decades.

but—well.

a year and a month. that was how long jude had existed fully in his role, fully as drake. justine trusted him completely, why wouldn’t she? he passed training with flying colors, of course he did, that genius born out of the bronx, maybe he’d graduate to her title someday, of course, why not, he’d make a great leader—

so of course he could do routine maintenance by himself.

of course, his hands would never slip and puncture the wrong wire, triggering an instantaneous opening that would have felt like stepping into a sauna turned way too high.

of course, he would never be snapped up, as though raptured.

but they did. and he was.

now, the good news, what slivers of it were to be found, were that we did trace his landing point.

the bad news—he wasn’t in north america in the 1990s.

he was in 19th century prussia.

and the worse news—which everyone knew was the worse news as soon as they saw lilith’s expression shift when she realized the coordinates—was where exactly in prussia he’d been spat out. it was why we couldn’t pull him back, even after repairing the gate’s puncture. why we couldn’t get a push signal to re-generate to the same point.

brennenburg castle.

she recognized it, of course she did.

alexander.

“lady,” lilith began. her eyes didn’t leave the screen, didn’t leave the green dot blinking in russia. “will you please get brosnya on the phone.”

when was it that she’d last spoken to yekatarina, the head of the order of snow and sun? a year ago? two? five?

because of the atrocities committed in that castle, the order is very—protective, of that particular parcel of land. today, as it was then, it’s heavily warded, and regularly observed. the structure itself still stands, condemned and rotting.

lilith had always run on the assumption that, surely, they’d sent field agents down into the castle���s interior to clear it. to make sure that nothing was left behind that shouldn’t be, like say—a proverbial open door.

an exquisitely, ridiculously dangerous open door.

but she still had a sense of decorum, and wasn’t about to point blank ask for some kind of verification as if it was owed to her. after all, the heaviest parts of that investigation would have been years and years earlier.

surely, they had.

surely.

but the unfortunate truth was that there wasn’t much to be done. alexander’s property was cursed, and that curse was powered by something far bigger, and far older, than us. jude was doomed as soon as he hit the ground.

the gate is our homemade doorway. we made it ourselves.

the orb that lilith desperately hoped was in the order’s protective custody, the entire reason behind the castle’s ruin? was built by something like a god. or gods. we’re—we’re not sure.

but it’s not our fault that research is limited.

remember another time we had someone try his hand at technomancy?

remember the time we hit a wall?

turns out that there is a way behind it after all.

remember, there was never any doubt that it wasn’t a wall, and a wall is not a wall without the other side.

if what had happened at brennenburg castle was anything like the world beyond the wall, lilith had zero desire for us, or any other agency, to go there.

more recently, dohbar has been sending her updates. there are seven orbs. “it’s all set up like spokes on a wheel, diana. spokes on a wheel. are we turning? where we are going? how many spokes? and where is the hub, you think? what could possibly lie at the center of something so vast? so ancient? what do you think, diana?” he was getting worse every month. she could see it in his writing. she knew ness was watching him, but not in the role of distant, mournful witness, not like she was watching him.

we have evidence that alexander managed to secure at least a beginning signal, an initial push, to this other plane.

we have no evidence that it was successfully destroyed—beyond the order’s word.

but lilith wondered.

justine was heart-broken, which is why the handle was retired for fifteen years, even as her title passed to jeremy, who followed protocol out of respect—up until he actually met drake and it felt a little too much like a ‘stars aligning’ moment.

a clever cover story was crafted for the benefit of jude’s parents. one that made his ending quick, easy. pure accident. pure fate. pure whatever would bring them peace.

lilith didn’t know it. she wept, god, how she cried, for nights, praying for the first time in what seemed like lifetimes to anybody, please let it have been quick. please let it have been easy. please let him be in peace. please let it have been quick— a never-ending mental prayer chain, timed with her heartbeats, with her jagged breaths. because she knew it had been none of those things. she knew this for a fact. but she whispered into her hands anyway, cupping her own pleas like water to offer to the universe for just this one thing.

at least... as much peace as they could offer at the price of a body. there was nothing to bury. nothing to burn. “we’re sorry. he is gone.”

they bought a plot anyway. they upturned the soil, (”ned--neddy? honey, is this--are we breaking the law?” “oh they wouldn’t dare touch this flower bed, analiese. it’s--it’s the principle of the thing!”) planting begonias. jude’s favorite flower. and yes, he has a tombstone, calling him by his names: jude levi shepard. beloved son. beloved friend. beloved, beloved, beloved.

jude was “buried” in between his paternal and maternal grandparents in a cemetery in long island.

annabelle has a saved photo on her phone from drake of the view from jude’s garden, looking at the city’s skyline.

[adoraang]

She-Ra Week Day 5 by @fauxghosts

Prompt: PRINCESS PROM / healing

Summary: When Glimmer and Bow bet Adora she can't ask Catra to prom before the end of the spring musical, she gets frustrated with her feelings.So what do you do when you've got a bunch of pent up frustration?You duke it out in the Denny's parking lot with your crush in a lightsaber duel.

Read it on AO3

“You’re not gonna do it.”

“I am not gonna do it,” Adora said dramatically as they stepped off the stage after finishing Act Two.

Their school, after constant begging, had finally decided to do a production of Les Miserables. After doing things like Seussical (they don’t talk about that) and High School Musical (nothing wrong with it, just mundane), the theatre department wanted something more serious. Something that would challenge them.

So they forced their director, Double Trouble, to fight with the school about doing Les Mis. Despite some of the… suggestive stuff from the show, the school probably didn’t want to fight some theatre kids, and let them have their show.

The audition process is always the scariest. Being a soprano, she only had one role really available to her: Cosette. Glimmer and Bow peer pressured her into auditioning for a lead instead of going straight to ensamble, and she still wasn’t going to do it, but then Catra asked her to do it, and she couldn’t say no.

Adora ended up cast as Cosette, and she had practically cried of happiness when the cast list came out. Glimmer had gotten Fantine, being a very low mezzo. But then Catra’s name was listed for Eponine, and she just about proposed right there.

They were far from love interests. In fact, they were love rivals. Sea Hawk was the one playing Marius, and the two girls spent the entire show in love with him, which wasn’t the funnest. Neither of them even liked boys, so for Catra’s character to die because she was delivering a letter to Marius… It was a trip.

Even if they weren’t true love interests, and only shared one song with each other that wasn’t the Act One finale, Catra and Adora still spent the most time in rehearsal together. Ironic, because the one song was called A Heart Full Of Love, and it’s Adora’s hardest song, in her opinion.

She gushed about Catra to Bow and Glimmer everyday in the car home from rehearsal. “Guys, I think my heart is full of love. Would it be weird to ask Double Trouble to switch Marius and Eponine? I’d rather spend the whole show simping about Catra then Sea Hawk-”

“Adora!” Glimmer cut off. “You’ve been halfway in love with Catra since Seussical, and I think that’s saying something. You should tell her. What’s the worst that can happen?”

“She rejects me, never talks to me again, drops out of the show, and I can’t spend the rest of senior year with her or college, since we’re both going to University of San Diego together to major in theatre, and she’ll never want to be in another role with me!”

“You’re freaking out again,” Bow childed, not turning away from the street as he drove. “You know Catra isn’t like that. And I don’t think she’ll reject you in the first place.” “I am so tired of hearing Adora talk about Catra when Catra probably likes her back,” Glimmer growled. “I’m going to do something about it.”

She reached into her pocket, and Adora almost hopped over the console. She thought they were going to call Catra and tell her something, and it was enough to make her take off her seatbelt, despite Bow’s car safety. “Glimmer, wait-”

Instead, she pulled out her wallet. “I will give you fifty dollars if you ask Catra to Princess Prom as a romantic date. I’ll double the offer if you do it before closing night.”

“An extra twenty if she says yes!” Bow chimed in.

Glimmer and Bow don’t struggle with money, so a hundred wasn’t a lot for them, but Adora’s eyes grew wide as she thought about it. Of course, it involved asking Catra out, but she’d figure that out later. “You have a deal.”

“Now please put your seatbelt back on!” Bow screeched, his voice cracking.

Which brought them to now, as they got into position for curtain call. She’d be bowing with Sea Hawk after Catra had hers with Kyle (who played Enjorlas, and it’s still shrouded in mystery how he got the role). Glimmer was one of the first to bow, but she still caught the wink as she walked away.

“That thing is huge,” Catra mumbled when she got in line backstage, waiting for their cue.

Adora looked down at her costume. The huge wedding dress wasn’t her favorite costume from the show, but it couldn’t be more appropriate for the moment (or inappropriate, take the pick). Catra couldn’t look more beautiful in her sleeveless white shirt and brown skirt that hit the floor. Despite the fact that the belt on her waist was big on her and she had dirt slathered all over her, she’s never looked better. Plus the red cap… That stupid thing was going to be the death of her.

“It’s always been like this,” Adora replied, falling into her place next to Sea Hawk, who busied himself with Kyle. Her heart thumped with the question. She doubted Catra had feelings for her, but she could always ask as a friend. Not like Glimmer and Bow needed to know anyways…

Bow had been a life saver in tech. He always knew when to turn off people’s mics, including that one time he turned off Catra’s when she started shit talking principal Hordak backstage when he came to watch rehearsal. Luckily, he turned them off now as Adora made her attempts to approach the subject.

“Princess Prom.” That’s not a question, it’s a statement! “Uh, I mean…”

“Catra, you and Kyle are next,” Scorpia, their stage manager, said.

Catra nodded, then turned back to her. “So, this is it, huh.. Our last curtain call as seniors, being cast as the leads for the first time, our last show in general until San Diego.”

“Don’t remind me.” She already cried in her car as she drove herself and Catra to school, emotional about ending her last show already. Closing nights are always a mess, but it just hits differently as seniors, and when you’re playing love rivals with the girl you’re pretty in love with.

“I’ll see you on the flip side,” she whispered before she ran out on stage, the bright lights shining down on her.

Even though Adora could only see Catra’s back, they were both sad about this being their last show. They had identical tears pricking their eyes, and when she rushed off stage with Kyle, she braced herself for the emotions to come.

She took Sea Hawk’s hand, and they ran to center stage when Scorpia gave them their cue. She couldn’t stop the tears from coming, even as she bunched her dress in her hands to give the curtsey bow. Sea Hawk did the Jeremy Jordan bow, where he clasps his hands in front of him and takes his bow.

Their last show…

The cast got into a line going horizontal, pointing to their lovely orchestra for their part of the bow. They started to make their way backstage again, and Adora took Catra’s hand. For emotional support, you know? She wasn’t going to see the blinding lights or the tech week shenanigans or the mic taped to her forehead in high school again! Obviously she’s going to be very dramatic about it.

As the cast made their way to the green room, everyone was in the same mood: sad. Catra had opted for letting go of her hand to wrap an arm around her shoulders as they silently sniffled. She was going to miss this…

“Closing night isn’t over, people!” Sea Hawk shouted, pumping a fist into the air. “Let’s go say goodbye to Double Trouble, and head over to Denny's!”

Ah, yes. The theatre kid ritual. Every show, they have to go to Denny'safter closing. It’s the law, and she looked forward to it every time. It always created the best memories, like when the obnoxious senior from last year, Octavia, got arrested for stealing a shopping cart.

Denny's always made her night.

“He’s not wrong,” Catra said to her. “Am I driving with you?”

“Duh.” Wasn’t that a given? Or was it too forward to assume. Or maybe-

“That’s what I thought.”

But when they stepped into the green room, all thoughts of Catra disappeared (for one second exactly) as Double Trouble walked in, whopping loudly. They gave their speech about this being one of the funnest shows to do, but Adora was too busy wiping her wet cheeks to really listen.

“Go out there, kids, and rule the goddamn theatre world!” Double Trouble finished, dismissing them for the night.

“To Denny's!” Glimmer exclaimed, giving everyone the pick-me-up they needed.

“To Denny's,” Catra repeated to her, quieter. To Denny'sit was. They walked to the parking lot, heading to her car, but Glimmer caught her wrist as she was opening her door.

“You only have a couple hours left. Use them wisely.” Satisfied with her words of wisdom, Glimmer got into the passenger side of Bow’s car parked next to them.

“I’m really going to kill them,” Adora whispered to herself as she put the key into the ignition. Her little yellow beetle may not be anything for any other high school kid, but it was perfect for her.

“Why?” Catra asked, having apparently heard her. Rats.

“Because.” And it was left at that before Adora opened her mouth again. “Princess Prom. That’s a thing that’s going on. It’s going on very soon. Like, in a month soon.”

“Yes, what about it?” Catra seemed so dismissive of it. She looked out the window, listening to Somebody’s Watching Me on the radio. Was she even going to go? What if she asked and Catra had no plans of going, and Adora’s unknowingly forcing her into it?

“Nothing.”

“Oh…” Catra traced the window with her nail. Now why was she all deflated? This girl is way too confusing for her brain. “I want to go, but I don’t want to be alone.”

Adora is going to kill someone. Seriously, all it would take is driving the car into Denny's. “Really? You’re going?”

“Not as of right now, but I kind of want to. Like I wouldn’t wear a dress or heels. But… I would want to wear a suit and maybe get my nails a color that isn’t black. But I don’t know who I’d go with.”

She momentarily turned away from the road to look at Catra. Bow would be screaming at her right now, but she couldn’t find it in her to care. She was basically given an invitation to ask, but what if Catra didn’t want her to ask? What if she’s just talking about it? What if she wants Adora to set her up with someone else?

Catra opened her mouth to say something, but she got distracted by something gleaming in the backseat. “There’s no way I didn’t notice these earlier!”

She reached into the back, leaning across the console. Her white sweater rode up on her waist, and Adora exploded into a blush at the sight of some skin. Seriously, what is wrong with her? And because she doesn’t get cold, she wore a cropped red cami and regular black jeans. Her outfit did nothing to hide the blush.

Catra came back up, holding the hilt of two lightsabers. They were both big Star Wars nerds, and she spent thirty dollars (each) on these sabers. But the money from the bet would pay it back, if she actually did it. Catra dove into the backseat again, bringing the two sticks of plastic that she fastened back onto the hilt.

She pressed a button, and the blue light from Anakin Skywalker’s lightsaber lit up the car. Catra stared at the saber, and Adora couldn’t help but notice how her skin managed to light up perfectly in the blue light. “Try the red.”

Catra turned off the blue saber, and grabbed a hold of Darth Vader’s lightsaber. The red added a dangerous feeling to the atmosphere. Blue was fun and playful. Red was full of passion, and the silence that followed afterward proved her point.

Finally, Catra cleared her throat, moving the saber around a bit. “Oh, I like this one.”

“But I like that one,” Adora protested as she pulled into a parking space at Denny’s. She could see everyone had already arrived. Not like she was driving slower than usual just to get a couple more seconds of conversation. No doubt they would see the red light and question what they were doing.

She pointed the end of the saber at Adora. “Well then, I guess it’s going to have to be a duel to the fate.”

Adora rolled her eyes at the reference, but grabbed the blue saber from the console, igniting it with the push of a button. “Okay, Eponine ‘I Died Delivering A Letter To My Love Interest That Was Actually About Another Girl’ Thénardier.”

“That’s the show’s fault, not mine.”

“Unimportant.”

Catra opened the car door, bouncing to Adora's side within seconds. She hastily took off her seatbelt, practically sprinting out of the driver's seat, spinning the hilt in her hand. “I’m pretty sure you’ve never fought with one of these.”

Adora scoffed. “I own them.”

“Yeah, just like I’m gonna own you!” Catra charged forward, raising her saber above her head before bringing it down on Adora. She barely had time to respond, lifting her own saber to block it as she sunk down to her knee.

“Hey, I just ordered our table! It’ll be ready in a couple minutes,” Scorpia said as she came out the door in time to see Adora stand and knock Catra away from her. “What are you guys doing?”

Catra held Adora in a parry as she turned around to yell, “Fighting, duh!”

“Yeah, we see that!” Bow shouted as Adora brought her sword back to her chest, making Catra stumble as they slowly moved away from her car. “Why are you guys mad?”

“Not real fighting!” Adora answered, moving in closer to Catra as their sabers met in the middle time and time again. “I’m defending my honor and rights!” “Yeah, her rights to dance with me instead of fighting in a parking lot!” Catra responded.

Adora faltered at that. Before she could begin overthinking what that meant in the middle of a lightsaber duel in the Denny's parking lot with the entire cast of Les Mis watching, Catra caught her saber and twisted her arm, causing Adora to completely let go of her saber.

“It’s over, Adora. I have the high ground,” Catra boasted.

“Not yet!” She dropped down low, catching the saber by the hilt before it hit the ground. She brought her blade back up, the two of them getting caught in another round of aimlessly swinging and blocking.

“You guys are ridiculous!” Glimmer shouted, her head in her hands.

“You don’t appreciate the true art of Star Wars like we do!” Adora yelled back.

Truthfully, this isn’t how she expected her last post closing night dinner at Denny’s to go.

When she was talking about it to Catra on their way to school, they imagined a tearful night. Majority of the cast and crew were seniors, and everyone loved them. Glimmer had basically adopted a little sophomore, Frosta, who played Gavroche (no one even noticed the genderbend!). They all thought they were going to be sad, and cry in the back of Scorpia’s pick up truck as they sang One Day More as a cast, one last time.

Instead, Adora was sword fighting Catra in the parking lot as all of their friends watched.

A great conclusion to her senior year musical, honestly.

Adora stood in front of Catra for a moment as they caught their breath. In an instant, they started twirling their sabers in their hands. The light from the blue and red was a whirlwind, and Catra laughed as they recreated that one scene from their favorite Star Wars movie: Revenge of the Sith.

Catra’s laugh was intoxicating. It made Adora let out her own giggle. They went back to fighting after a second, but Catra’s face illuminated by the red light in the nighttime made her stomach go up in butterflies.

“You were supposed to join me, not leave me in darkness!” Catra recited, smiling the whole time.

Adora swiped the saber at her feet, and Catra hopped over it. “Well, I love you!”

She froze, and Catra even faltered. But because she froze, Catra pushed her onto her back, pointing the red saber at her. “I know!”

For a moment, she forgot it was a reference to another one of the movies. But Adora let her saber fall out of her hand, looking up at Catra. The red light was stunning. Everyone else around them had fallen silent to watch the exchange. She then realized no one else knew what the reference was from.

“Guys, it’s from one of the movies!” Adora called out from her place on the ground. “Empire Strikes Back, it’s pretty good. You guys should watch it!”

Catra panted, looking down at her. “What?”

She was equally as confused. “What? What happened?”

“Oh, forget it.” Catra turned off the saber, holding her hand out instead. “Want to rule a galaxy together instead?”

“How about we start by taking over Broadway,” Adora grinned, helping herself up with Catra’s assistance. She turned off the blue saber, but they continued to stare at each other. Catra continued to hold her hand, but neither made any attempt to move away.

“Did we just hash everything out in a Denny’s parking lot?” Catra asked.

“I think we did..”

“Adora!” Glimmer shouted, interrupting their staring contest. “So like, I have a hundred with me. Bow has a twenty, but…”

The bet. A hundred and twenty dollars if she successfully asked her crush out to Princess Prom and didn’t get rejected. But they just beat each other up with plastic toys from the Disney store. Maybe it just wasn’t meant to be. Or maybe they were, but then one of them would fall to the dark side and tragically die. Who knows?

“Oh, that thing where Glimmer and Bow were going to give you money if you asked me to Princess Prom?” Catra raised an eyebrow, laughing at Adora’s horrified face. “Bow told Scorpia, and she accidentally let it slip.”

Adora groaned. She wanted to go fall in a hole and die in a ditch. Maybe she should’ve been shot on stage instead of Catra. “Yeah, about that-”

“I’ve been waiting for you to ask me,” Catra said, tightening her hold on her hand. “I didn’t think I wanted to go, but then I heard that and I realized… maybe I did. The dances and stuff always felt really corporate to me, and it wasn’t my thing. But I went home everyday wondering why you hadn’t asked me yet, and then I realized-”

“Oh my god I am so sorry,” Adora interrupted. She was horrified. Catra knew the entire time. She’s been tripping over herself for the two months of rehearsal and three weeks of the actual production, but never stopped to think what if she already knew. She’s absolutely mortified. “You got dragged into this mess of a joke between me and Glimmer then Bow came in and I just thought, I don’t know. I don’t think or I think too much. Oh my god, I can not believe this is happening!”

Catra chuckled when she spoke without a pause. “Breathe. I’m not mad. Or upset or anything like that. I like you too, Adora.”

Her cheeks flamed. “You did?”

She nodded. “You’re not exactly subtle, per say…”

Adora didn’t feel like crying out of embarrassment anymore. She put her free hand in her pocket, ghosting her fingers over Catra’s knuckles with the other. “You actually like me?”

Another nod, accompanied with a gorgeous laugh. “Yes. Yes, I like you and all your high notes. You think I liked seeing you kiss Sea Hawk every rehearsal and show?” They both laughed. Neither of them like it, apparently, because Adora didn’t. “You and your private story where you rewatch Clone Wars with me and we both cry, and I get to see the video and laugh at how oblivious you were to notice that I liked you. You and your bootleg pirating, despite the fact that Newsies is your favorite and it’s literally proshot. So yeah, Adora. I do like you. You and your overthinking.”

Adora was over the moon, and she wanted to stay here in the parking lot all night and talk. But first, she had something to conclude. “So, Princess Prom. That’s a thing we should go to together.”

“We should.”

They did.