#it would make sense bc it’s an international flight but it’s still just……… man… just scan the pass

[rurinnfane]

I just boarded a plane not with my boarding pass, but with a device that took a picture of my face and somehow matched my face to my boarding info ???????

[babybluebex]

Okay how about this prompt with young!helmut please? Happy Saturday btw!

“we haven't seen each other in two months and i'm at the airport to pick you up, then i see you, and i sprint over to you, and jump into your arms, with such force i almost knock you off your feet”

happy saturday nonnie! i misread this so the situation is backwards (as in helmut is picking you up from the airport) but it’s fine, everything’d fine

send me kiss prompts!

(also including a picture of what i imagine young helmut to look like bc oh my god hes a dreamboat) 

You looked at your watch once more, and you cringed at the lateness of your flight. Not only were you arriving at Novi Grad International Airport at two in the morning, but it seemed to be shaping up to be closer to three. You hated it, especially because you knew that your boyfriend was waiting for you there. You had begged Helmut not to come pick you up, because you knew that he would be hounded by the press, but he was adamant. He was proud of his American girl, as he called you, and he loved having you on his arm at all times. 

The plane jostled as it landed, and you clicked your phone on to see a flurry of texts from Helmut. He was asking about the late flight, naturally, and you quickly sent him a message. Just turned my phone on. We’ve landed. Just a few more minutes babe

As soon as you stepped into the airport, your stomach began a routine of somersaults. You were seconds away from your Helmut, and the thought of it made you walk a bit faster. Everything about Sokovia was a comfort to you, much more than your home in America; even the smell of the air was different and comforting. You pulled your backpack a bit higher on your shoulders as you stepped out of the gate, and your eyes scanned the spare people waiting for their loved ones. Usually, Helmut was easy to spot in a crowd; look for the flashes of paparazzi cameras, and there he was. 

He saw you first. You heard a shout of your name, the man’s voice cracking, and you turned to see your Helmut. He stood there in his baggy, ripped jeans and paint-stained flannel, his stubble a dark contrast to his strawberry-blond hair. He was gorgeous, even more so after two months of being apart. He carried a bouquet of red roses, but you watched him drop them as he ran to you. You did the same, and you crashed together in the middle. His arms were tight around you as he buried his face in your neck, and the force of his collison made your feet leave the floor. Helmut grasped you tightly and spun in a gleeful circle, laughing and speaking rapid Sokovian in your ear, and you squealed when you both toppled to the floor. Helmut was still laughing and talking as he laid beneath you, and you quickly shut him up with a kiss. It took him a moment to process the kiss but, once he did, he was kissing you back with a fever. It was a lot to ask a 20 year old to abstain from love-making of any sort while you were away, and you could already sense the need that was welling up inside him. His kiss was gentle, though, and you loved it. 

“Oh, fuck,” Helmut laughed softly, letting his head fall back to the floor. “God, I missed you, mein liebling.” His eyes were squinted as he laughed, and you placed a kiss on each reddened apple of his cheeks. 

“I missed you too, Hel,” you said. “Should we get up?” 

“I don’t want to,” Helmut laughed. “I want to hold you.” 

“You can hold me when we get home, silly goose,” you giggled. “You can do a lot more than that too.” 

[kerie-prince]

We're Worlds Apart (7)

Draco Malfoy x American No-Maj!reader

series m.list | general m.list | previous chp

warnings: none (other than blaise being jealous)

summary: Draco Malfoy is a pureblood wizard. Magic runs through his veins and has been since his birth. You're a Wiccan No-Maj; a non-magical being with ordinary blood through your veins, but practices what you call magick. And this very practice upsets your neighbor.

a/n: my workplace is under construction and i'm stressed bc i have to work around all the rubbish and it makes me stay longer when i wanna come home and write 😭 anyways, this is unedited so i'll come back to it after i clock off tonight

(gif cred)

Being friends with you was kind of weird. Draco couldn't really tell you about his day because it consisted of magic nearly the entire time. He’s also at work for almost the entire week, so he wasn't really at home much.

Except for now. Draco finally had twelve days off to spend with his best mates. He had been so caught up with the chaos that surrounded him at work that he wasn't able to plan any sightseeing activities to do with them, so he just let them pick whatever it was they wanted to do.

“I could always ask Y/N what to do,” Blaise suggested. Yes, Draco hadn't forgotten the small fling between you and his best mate. Blaise would go over to your house at least three nights a week while Draco stayed overnight at Santa Marie's. Theo didn't mind being by himself and was grateful that the guest bedroom was farthest from your bedroom window. Draco was also grateful that he chose to go on nights he wasn't home; he didn't need to hear you two throughout the night.

Now that a hatchet was somewhat buried, Draco thought that asking you was a good idea. He nodded his head and headed for the door. Blaise also got up, but the both of them stopped when their hands nearly collided on the door knob. “Oh, did you want to ask her?” Blaise questioned.

“Uh… no you go. She's your…” Draco paused, “You go ahead.” Blaise gave him a weird look before walking out the door and headed to your house. Theo watched the whole thing and waited to start laughing at Draco. He glared at Nott and spat out, “What are you laughing at?”

“What was that?” Theo held his stomach as he caught his breath. “Did you want to talk to her?” Draco didn't appreciate whatever his friend was trying to say. It's just a bloody question. He sat down on the couch and picked up the Daily Prophet from Theo’s hands. He wasn't surprised to find Harry Potter in it, a column about his recent marriage with Weasley’s sister. He was surprised that they hadn't gotten married sooner.

“Do you think it's weird that Blaise is dating a muggle?” Theo asked. His face was neutral, but his tone was suggestive. Draco internalized the question. On one hand, it didn't really disturb him all that much. He was confused as to whether or not you were his girlfriend, but Blaise doesn't really talk about you too much. On another hand, he knew Blaise and even though you annoyed him – or did you? – he always took pity on any girl that mixed with Blaise. Draco didn't know what Blaise would do, but it was enough to get anyone on their knees for him in more ways than one.

“I don’t care who or what he dates,” Draco stated. Theo went to minding his business, until something caught his attention from outside. “Oh Salazar, what is he doing?” Theo’s voice was filled with amusement. Draco turned from his sitting position and saw what was happening.

Blaise was fully making out with you right on your porch. Out where anyone could watch. One of his hands were tangled in your hair while the other one was resting gently on your waist. Your hands rested shyly on his shoulders and it looked as if you were on your toes just to reach up to his height. The kiss was slow and sensual.

It was exactly what Draco needed to see. Because from that, he felt nothing at all. Just a gross feeling that he was potentially invading someone's privacy. Sure, they were outside but it still felt weird. Draco wasn't one to enjoy public displays of affection.

“Wow, he’s really milking it out. You reckon he asked her about sight-seeing?” Theo kept observing them from the window. Draco hit his head with the newspaper rolled up. Theo laughed and turned to look at the blond man next to him. “How come you’re not with anyone?”

“With where I work, do you honestly think I have time to find someone?” Draco sassed as he continued reading. Dating was the last thing on his mind. He was too focused on work to even flirt with another woman. Pansy was the last person Draco had ever dated. He was meant to be betrothed to Astoria Greengrass, but Draco declined and started his path to becoming a healer. He also didn't want to be in a marriage knowing he couldn't genuinely love her.

Moving to America, he never found anyone interesting. Ashley was nice but not only was she already married, she was married to a woman. Other women in the department, or hospital as a whole, took an initial liking to Draco, but he figured it was solely due to the fact that he’s a foreign British man with an accent. After a month of women flirting with him, it died down almost completely and everyone treated him as normal which pretty much confirmed it to him. Would Draco like to date someone? Absolutely. But right now, he was perfectly happy being by himself.

Theo knew Draco enough to know when he was fibbing and this wasn't one of those times. He was glad to see Draco be okay with himself after all this time. He remembers the constant need of validation during their days at Hogwarts. And it was because of a certain wizard who Draco was always competing with. Now as for Theo, he had been out of the dating scene for a while and he was nearly desperate to get laid.

He dropped the topic and got up to take a short nap in the guest room. A few moments later, Blaise was knocking on the door. Draco got up to open it and was caught by surprise to see you standing behind Blaise. You looked like you weren't really sure what you were doing there either. “Mate,” Blaise started off, “what if we brought her along with us?”

You blinked at the tall man standing in front of you and then looked at Draco who had the same facial expression. “Who else better to show us around than someone who actually lives here?” Blaise suggested. It made sense; you would know your way around and Draco could save himself the trouble of not only Blaise and Theo being lost, but also Draco also getting lost. He still had a hard time with some of the streets. One-way streets, round-a-bouts, and bike lanes were still new to him. And you once mentioned how Manhattan was worse than the streets here in Buffalo, so how would he deal with that?

You stood unusually quiet. Blaise had only just asked you to tag along with them and before you could even process the question, you were being dragged to Draco’s house. “I don’t know, I don't want to intrude on–”

“Nonsense, you’d be our guide. I highly doubt Draco knows where he’s going,” Blaise assured. He got a stern ‘Hey’ from the blond but ignored it. “What do you say? Come with us?” You looked back and forth from the both of them and settled on Draco, your eyes asking him if he would even want you there. He shrugged his shoulders, leaving it up to you.

“Uh, sure. I’d just have to fix my schedule and–” you started before Blaise cut you off, “Great! We leave tomorrow at seven in the morning.” He kissed your forehead and walked inside. Draco stood at the door and was still confused as to what just happened. You started to walk away before Draco asked you, “Should we take my car?” You turned around and thought about it. “If you want.”

Draco preferred it, so he just agreed to it. “I’ll see you tomorrow, then.” You smiled sheepishly and raised your hand to say 'bye’. Tomorrow was surely going to be… something.

—

You were hoping to be able to rest your head on Blaise’s shoulder for the ride to the airport. But here you were, in Draco’s car with the largest cup of coffee that was barely keeping you awake as you drove there. You were glad that Draco had common sense to book two flight tickets for everyone to go there because there was so way in hell you were going to drive six hours to Manhattan and another six back.

Theo, however, was resting his head on Blaise’s shoulder as he snored away during the short ride. Blaise tried to shove him off, but it turned out that the sleepy friend was heavier than he looked. It was funny, really. Draco sat in the passenger seat next to you on his phone trying to read out directions. You insisted you didn't need them, but he said they were more for himself when they come back home.

Once on the plane, you finally got some shut eye. You stayed up all night thinking about what to do for the day. Where to go, what to eat, what to see. And other things kept you up, but that's besides the point. During the security check, you had to hold your laughter. It was hilarious to watch the three men be so confused as to what was going on. They acted like it was their first time in an airport.

The seats you had were nice and surely expensive. Draco insisted that you didn't have to pay him back. Must be nice being rich you thought. Blaise looked at you and poked your nose, “Is someone sleepy?” You glared at him before laying back into your seat, “Maybe if you didn't keep me up all night, I wouldn't be tired.” You didn't know how the man could have this much energy in the morning.

The hour went by quick and you were in Manhattan by ten in the morning. You suggested a local diner that was near the airport which they all agreed to since they didn't know their way around. At the diner, Blaise and Theo had made a dash for the restroom. You laughed at the view of Theo pushing Blaise behind him and Blaise glaring at him as he smacked the back of his head.

“I swear, they’re still childish gits,” Draco groaned. “26 years old and they still don't grow up.” You nudged his arm from across the table. “Leave them be. They’re still young, and so are you. Let loose, we’re in New York City after all. Can’t be brooding the whole time.” Draco rolled his eyes and looked at the menu that was under the glass on the table.

A waitress came up to your table with a small clipboard and notepad. “Are you two ready to order?” she asked sweetly. “Not yet, we’re waiting on two people to come back,” you answered. “Oh that’s cute, is this a double date?”

Without hesitation, you and Draco stated at the same time, “We’re not together.” The waitress looked between the two of you and just nodded. “I’ll be back, then.” The both of you hadn’t said a word when she left and patiently waited for his friends to come back. Shortly after, they did. Blaise took the spot in the booth next to you and Theo next to Draco.

“Alright, what do you suggest I get?” Blaise asked you. He had his body slightly facing yours and an arm over the top of the seat around you. He hadn't bothered to look on the menu and just focused on your features. “Depends, what do you like?”

“Anything,” he lowered his voice and was close to your ear. The breath tickled your ear which made you giggle. “Okay, we get it. You two are cute. Now keep it down, I’d like to be able to digest this food,” Theo’s nose crinkled as he complained. You still didn't know Theo all that much. This morning, he walked like a zombie and he probably just became fully awake, so to see his best friend making kissy faces at you before his first meal wasn't an ideal way to start the day. Draco chuckled in his seat as he was still figuring out what to order.

“I have to make a quick call,” you announced before pulling out your phone and called one of your employees, “Were you able to open fine on your own? Okay, call me if anything happens. Okay, bye.” The waitress came back and took down the order after she set a pot of coffee for the four of you.

Theo was the first to say something, “So, Y/N is it?” You nodded in response as you took a sip from your mug. “What is it that you do in your free time? Other than Blaise, of course.” He had a smug smile watching as you blushed. Two seconds later, the table shook and Theo groaned in pain. Unbeknownst to you, both Blaise and Draco had kicked Theo in his shins.

“Stupid git,” Draco said under his breath. Theo glared at his friends as he rubbed his legs. You cleared your throat and started to speak before Blaise stopped you, “You don’t have to answer that.”

“It’s okay, he was just joking,” you defended. “No he wasn't,” Draco added. You ignored him and looked at Theo, “What do you want to know?”

He had your full attention and ignored the looks from his friends, “What do you do for a living? What’s your work like?”

“Well, I uhh,” you started, “I own a store downtown. I’m there almost everyday.”

“What kind of store is it?” Theo asked as he leaned over the table closer to you. “What do you sell?”

“Candles,” for the second time that day, you and Draco synchronized. “Yeah, I sell candles and little… knick knacks,” you still hadn't opened up to Draco or Blaise for that matter about your Wiccan activities. So to say that you sold sage bundles, specially made oils and healing crystals would raise questions you weren't ready to answer now.

“Draco, have you ever been to the place? What is it called, by the way?” Theo kept on. Blaise was certainly not kidding when he said that Theo loved to talk. “No, I haven't,” Draco answered. “It’s called Soul Beads, wasn't it?”

“Yeah, that’s the name.” The food was brought on a large tray. Blaise handed your plate to you and you grabbed your fork to dig in. He was eating slowly, looking as if he was thinking about something. “Hey, you okay?” you whispered to him, Draco and Theo having their own conversation. “Oh, uh, yeah. I’m fine, love,” Blaise continued eating at a faster pace now. You looked around the men that surrounded you and smiled. Today’s gonna be fun.

—

The day went��� weird. Blaise tried to have as much fun as possible but something was bothering him. Was it Theo talking his head off the entire time? No, I’m used to that. Was it his legs tired after walking almost all day? No, not that. Was it how even though you held his hands the whole time and gave him occasional kisses on his cheek or lips, you had gone the entire day talking to Draco and shared a couple laughs with him? Absolutely.

Jealousy was always an ugly emotion to Blaise. It annoyed him during his time at Hogwarts, and it annoys him now. The way girls would ask him if he was messing around with other girls and he’d always say the same thing. “How could I when you’re the most beautiful girl in these halls?” They’d all swoon over it. And by the looks of it, you swooned over his every word as well. But the looks you gave him were different from the ones you gave Draco.

From all the letters he had gotten from Draco, Blaise knew how much he hated you. No, loathed. But after the two of you decided to make nice, it was like you had been friends since day one. Draco may have even looked comfortable talking to you. And it bothered Blaise. His time with you may have been short, but today made him realize something.

Blaise is nowhere near being in love, he knew that much. But he knew that he didn't want to be messing around anymore. He wants to have an actual relationship, and right now, he wanted it with you. Blaise was confused by it all. He should be happy that his best friend and a girl he likes gets along. It would make it all that much easier.

But something about the two of you was odd today.

Maybe there was a look that lasted too long. Or a tone that came out differently. Or maybe… no. Blaise knew what it was. He just wants to have that same friendship with you. Blaise still didn't know that much about you. He didn't even know you had your own store until that morning. And to hear that his friend who supposedly hates you even knows not only the name of the store, but what you sell, hit something in him.

So, he was going to change that. Because for the most part, you were pretty interesting. He knew you were a Wiccan and as much as he doesn't really care to know what it was all about – considering he can just do any magic with a flick of a wand – he’d at least know you a little better.

Momentarily, as he was deep in thought, Theo’s annoying voice popped in his head. Hey, at least you know her in a way Malfoy won’t. He mentally cringed at it for a second before he thought Wait. I do. It was a start, not one that someone usually prefers, but it was better than nothing.

You sat beside him on the ride back home and had a smile on your lips while you rested on him. Draco was driving and Theo wanted to raise the volume of the music but his hand was slapped away. “She’s sleeping, idiot.” Draco scolded.

“Merlin, look at this,” Theo looked at Blaise as he pointed to Draco’s face. “Malfoy caring for a muggle? I’ve seen everything now.”

“M-muggle?” You rubbed your eyes and yawned. The three Slytherin’s had wide eyes, Blaise cursing Theo with his eyes. “I've heard,” you let out another yawn, “Draco say that before.”

Merlin, how many times have these actually talked? Blaise thought. “I-it’s just slang from London,” he tried to cover up. You nodded your head and gave him a gentle kiss on the cheek before going back to sleep.

Once everyone was home, Blaise walked you to your door. “I had fun today, did you?” Blaise gave his most convincing smile, “Yeah, I did.”

You said ‘Good night’ and almost closed the door when he stopped you. “Is it alright that I stay with you tonight?”

“I'm kind of tired, maybe tomorrow–”

“No, not for that,” Blaise chuckled at your insinuation. You looked slightly surprised. And it made sense considering that's almost all he came over for. Nonetheless, you let him into your home. Blaise stayed true to his words and just laid beside you in bed until the two went to sleep.

In his own bedroom, Draco smiled as he thought about the fun day he had. Maybe being friends with you wasn't so bad. He went to his kitchen to grab a drink when he noticed there was one person missing. “Where's Blaise?”

“I think he's staying at Y/N’s,” Theo stated. Inside, Draco felt an unusual pang in his chest. He let it go and went to bed. Hopelessly trying to get out of his head whatever you two were up to.

—

next chp

(っ◔◡◔)っ taglist: @beiahadid @malfoy-styles-wife @fivenightslaughter @juneballoon999 @leydileyla @fangirlanotherjust @originalsoulcollector @opiomancy @lipstickandloveletters @ninacotte @daedric-sorceress @frecklesandfirecrackers @hahee154hq @disartrous @oh-those-barricade-boys @lunalovecroft @bornforfangirling @c4th3r1ne

[thedumpsterqueen]

Standards of Performance, Chapter 6: Buckshot and Tequila

Chapter 1, Chapter 2, Chapter 3, Chapter 4, Chapter 5

AO3 Link

Finally, I write most of the chapter before the day I’m supposed to post it. This was mostly done on my laptop (which I’m not used to) as we just moved and my PC is barely set up, so forgive anything that looks weird or wonky. As always, I hope you enjoy. I love getting all your kind messages <3 (Also message me if you want to be on the taglist - I suppose I should be better about that!)

Summary:  You’re the BAU’s newest intern, desperate to prove yourself amongst an established team of much more experienced profilers. Agent Hotchner, the seemingly infallible team leader, sets strict expectations for your performance. He commands your respect without even trying, but is there something more to your relationship than a simple desire to impress your stony-faced boss?

Chapter: 6, Buckshot and Tequila

Chapter Summary: Events during a new case test your ability to keep your feelings hidden, and a night out takes an unforeseen turn. 

Words: 3736

Rating: Explicit, 18+. Warnings on AO3.

Pairings: Hotch x Reader, Hotch x You

Turns out, lying to Hotch was easier than you thought.

It helped that you were lying to yourself too, of course - that you pretended your gaze didn't linger on his form whenever he was in your vicinity, that the swell of pride in your chest when he agreed with something you said was purely professional. There were times, though, that the facade was much harder to maintain. The most recent case had been one of those times.

You had been tracking down an unsub abducting children in a rural Iowa town. Three kids had gone missing in the span of two weeks, and after Garcia matched the victimology and MO with neighboring states, it looked to be close to a dozen in the years before that. The case started off rough enough - locals refused to believe it could be one of their own, police resisted the BAU’s guidance, the usual - but it came to a head when a fourth child went missing during the investigation.

Thankfully, the team figured out the identity of the unsub relatively quickly. Reid did a geographical profile of all the locations where victims were taken and found a public health clinic that had branches in each area. Garcia cross-checked the employee records to find that only one doctor had done travel shifts at each clinic during the time the children were taken, and within minutes, you were rushing to his address.

The SUV carrying Hotch, Rossi, and Prentiss arrived long enough before yours that by the time you pulled up, they were already kicking down the door and entering the home. The first thing you heard after you flung the car door open was the deafening crack of a weapon firing, and despite your lack of training with firearms, it was apparent that it was not an FBI-issue pistol.

You would never describe yourself as fragile - you couldn't be, not in this line of work. But when you registered the implications of that sound, your knees buckled, instantly bringing you down onto the dusty ground outside the farmhouse. The rest of the team sprinted in, guns drawn. You faintly registered Prentiss yelling inside, then more gunshots, but your head was ringing so loudly from the visceral panic that you couldn’t make out anything specific.

When Hotch burst back out onto the porch, you thought you might honestly sob with relief. That is, until you caught the glint of the sun in the slick, dark blood dripping down the sleeve of his suit.

That was when you puked.

Something about the sight of Aaron Hotchner bleeding felt so wrong that even as you struggled to your feet and stepped over the pile of sick you left in the dirt, even as you got closer and saw the rivulets of blood drip down to his fingertips and dot the wooden floors of the porch, you felt like you were in a dream. Your mind couldn’t grasp the sudden shock of his mortality, that he could bleed, that he could die, even, and he very well might, depending on what vessels were hit. You made it up the steps, only managing to call out his name - his first name - your throat still burning from bile. Despite the chaos of the current moment, he still whipped his head around at the sound of that, as if hearing the name Aaron desperately falling from your lips was more attention-grabbing than the rest of the team gathering around him trying to stem the bleeding.

“It looks worse than it is,” said Rossi, peering through the holes in Hotch’s mangled sleeve. “It was just buckshot, and he barely hit you. Nothing a few stitches won’t fix.”

He turned out to be right, thank god, and later that afternoon, Hotch was freshly bandaged and sitting across from you on the return flight to Quantico.

So, yeah, the “lying to yourself” thing wasn’t going so well at that moment. Hotch was absorbed in paperwork while the rest of the team napped - because of course he was; even being shot didn’t sway his apparently relentless refusal to relax - and each time he winced at the movement of his arm, your vice grip around your chest tightened a little more.

He must have sensed you staring, because he looked up, frown softening slightly as he saw the concern on your face.

“Don’t worry about me. I’m fine,” he assured you with a half smile.

Teetering on an emotional precipice, too scared to respond for fear of falling over the edge, you went back to your reading. After a few minutes of listening to him write while not turning a single page in your book, he set his pen down and took a breath.

“You were screaming my name,” he said, quietly, despite you two being the only ones awake.

“What?”

“Earlier,” he clarified, “when we went into the house. I could hear you outside, yelling my name.”

You looked at him, incredulous. “Of course I did. I heard the shotgun go off. Clearly,” you gestured at his arm, “I had a reason to be worried.”

He shook his head and cleared his throat, as if you didn’t understand the question. “Dave and Emily were with me. Any of us could have gotten hit. You only yelled for me.”

Oh.

You shrugged. “You’re the team leader. It’s my instinct to call for you when something goes wrong."

It was a lie, and a bad one at that, but Hotch gave you an unreadable look and let the subject drop.

The rest of the flight was uneventful, and when you finally made it back to your apartment, you had no plans other than to sleep off the stress of the case and the embarrassment of Hotch calling your actions into question. Garcia, however, wasn't about to let that happen.

BAU-tiful People Group Chat

Garcia: *added You to the conversation*

Garcia: Ok, my lovely children, I know you’re all tired, but I miss your faces, so I’ll see u at Whimsy tonight at 9! Notice I didn’t use a question mark bc it is NOT a question!

You knew from overhearing the team talk that Whimsy was a bar downtown they liked to frequent, but you’d never been invited before. Despite your overwhelming exhaustion, the idea of going out with the team, of finally feeling accepted by them, was enough to make you amenable to the concept. It may have seemed insignificant on the surface, but Garcia adding you to their group chat was the biggest welcome gesture you’d received yet.

Morgan: Only if you wear that dress you know I like ;)

You lived for the day they would realize they were actually flirting with each other instead of just pretending to.

Prentiss: Garcia… you’re killing me… but you know I’ll be there.

JJ: Contacting the babysitter as we speak.

Morgan: Fuck yeah!!! Pretty Boy, you in?

Reid: Can’t we ever go somewhere quiet?

As the group chimed in with various iterations of, “Shut up, Reid,” you hesitantly typed out a text to confirm your attendance. You were excited, of course, but nervous to be the new kid at their favorite hangout. After today's events, though, the desire not to be sober won out over nerves.

You: I’ll be there! Thanks for the invite!

Rossi: Hope you kids are ready for me to drink you under the table, as usual.

Morgan: Eyyy, you KNOW we party hard! See y’all tonight.

____________

Turns out, Morgan was not exaggerating. Not even a little bit. By the time you arrived, 15 minutes late, everyone looked to be at least 3 shots deep. Garcia ran over to greet you, squealing, and wrapped you in a suffocating hug.

“I’m so glad you came! What do you drink? Tequila? I’ll grab the next round!”

You laughed and confirmed that tequila sounded great, and as she scurried off to the bar with Morgan on her heels, you had a chance to look around.

The atmosphere of the club surprised you - it was all glass and steel and modernity, packed with people dancing to something with intense bass - not the low-key joint you’d pictured the team wanting to unwind at. But as you watched JJ, Prentiss, and Rossi cheer on Reid as he threw back a shot, doubling over in hysterics as he coughed and sputtered at the taste, you realized that this place was just loud and energetic enough to keep them from thinking about anything other than work. In that way, you definitely saw the appeal.

“I come bearing shots!” Garcia yelled as her and Morgan made it back to the table. “Grab yours… here we go- whoops! Alright, everyone got theirs?”

She turned to you, grinning behind a pair of hot pink spectacles. “Cheers not ONLY to rescuing four kidnapped children alive, but also to our lovely intern and her first Whimsy outing!”

The team erupted in cheers and you smiled back, downing the tequila. You chatted with the group while Garcia ordered more drinks, and then more drinks, and soon you felt a pleasant buzz filling your head.

“Morgan, you better ask me to dance right now before I go find another man to do the job,” Garcia said with a wink in his direction.

Morgan grinned and mock-bowed, holding out a hand for her to take, and led her off to the dancefloor.

“Should we join them?” JJ asked around the table.

“Someone’s gotta make sure they don’t do anything worth getting kicked out for,” Prentiss shot back. You giggled and followed the girls, leaving Rossi and Reid behind at the table in the midst of a heated debate about childhood brain development that you couldn’t even hope to comprehend.

Not long after you started dancing, you felt a gentle tap on your shoulder and turned around, looking up into the stunning green eyes of a man who looked to be about your age. It was hard to really tell what he looked like in the dim lighting, but by the way Prentiss was giving you a thumbs up and mouthing, “Go for it,” from your side, he was good enough for you.

“Do you want to dance?” he asked above the music. You smiled and nodded in confirmation, letting him wrap his arms around your waist and pull you to his hips.

He knew how to move, that was for certain. He ground against your backside lightly, snaking his hands around your stomach. You weren’t used to this kind of thing - dancing with random men at bars, letting them touch you like this - but the combination of the music and the booze and the relief at the last case being over was making you feel more free than you had in recent memory.

You exchanged grins with Morgan, who was dancing a few feet away in a much more R-rated manner with Garcia. The man behind you (whose name you didn’t know, but who cared?) leaned down to kiss your neck and you arched against him in response, reaching up to run your hand through his hair.

Throughout the song, you had rotated back to facing the table where the rest of your team was sitting. You glanced over, saw Reid and Rossi still deep in discussion, along with another man in a black button-up with a very familiar side profile and-

Hotch.

Hotch was here, and as if the powers that be were insistent upon proving to you that the opposite of serendipity existed, at the exact moment you had that realization, he turned and made direct eye contact with you. Drunk, wearing a skintight dress, a random man grinding on your ass, and staring right back at your Unit Chief at the motherfucking Federal Bureau of Investigation.

Your heart dropped to your stomach, and if you had been drunker, you might have hurled tequila all over the dancefloor. Instead, you pulled away from the mystery man behind you, ignoring his shocked, “Wait!” and beelined to the bar.

“Tequila. Shot. Please, I’m sorry, just saw someone I didn’t expect to,” you blurted out to the bartender, swearing you could feel Hotch’s eyes on your back from across the club.

The bartender, probably having seen much worse, nodded in understanding and poured your drink. You gulped it down, wiped your mouth, and leaned on the bar to get your bearings.

It’s not weird. It’s not. It’s a bar, it’s outside of work hours, it’s perfectly fine that you’re buzzed and dancing and having fun. Everyone else is!

Really, it wasn’t that you were worried about your job, or even that he would judge you (he probably would, but that was unavoidable regardless of the setting), it was just that you hadn’t mentally prepared yourself for the possibility that he would come. He was in the group chat - obviously, if he had seen Garcia’s invite - but had never struck you as the social type, the kind of boss that would interact with his team outside of work.

“Did you see that Hotch is here?” Prentiss asked breathlessly, appearing at the bar beside you.

Apparently, you weren’t the only one surprised.

“I did,” you whispered back, despite the thumping music and the rowdy patrons making it logically impossible for your words to reach the table 20 feet away. “Does he usually join you guys?”

“Never,” she said, before thinking and correcting herself, “Not in years, anyways. When Haley… we used to drag him out, but we stopped after a while.”

“Why do you think he came tonight?"

She shrugged. “Who knows? Far be it from me to explain why Hotch does anything.” An idea seemed to pop in her head, and she grinned. “Maybe it’s because of you!”

“M-me?” Your reaction to the suggestion wasn’t nearly as nonchalant as you’d tried for, but Prentiss was too drunk to notice.

“Yeah, gotta help initiate the intern on her first night out, right?” She grinned and clapped you on the shoulder, then turned away to head back to the dancefloor, leaving you alone. You sighed, gathered yourself as much as you could considering the effects of the tequila, and turned around to go greet him.

“Hey, Agent Hotchner. Didn’t expect to see you tonight!”

“Yes, well. Thought I’d show up for a bit; it’s been a while.” He gave you a tight lipped smile then looked back down at his glass of whisky, the awkward energy palpable.

Probably because he just saw you basically dry-humping some random dude.

“Well, I’m glad you came! Feel free to, uh, come dance if you want! Morgan and Garcia are showing us all up,” you said, gesturing to where Morgan and Garcia were in fact drawing the attention of several onlookers.

He chuckled at that. “They’re certainly a sight to behold, aren’t they?”

You nodded in agreement and headed back to the bar, the brief conversation pointing you towards yet another drink. Talking to him was so easy , sometimes, and others it was like pulling teeth to get a human response out of him. Could you blame him, though? Your last one-on-one interaction was you basically inviting yourself over to his apartment with takeout and listening to him spill his guts about his dead wife and kid, and he probably felt uncomfortable with you after that, and then you went right to this case without any chance for things to go back to normal, and then he got shot, and oh my god, you didn’t even ask him how his arm was doing, how fucking rude can you be, dumbass? and-

“Whoops! Shit, I’m sorry!”

You looked at the person you’d just bumped into in the midst of your internal crisis.

“Hey, it’s you!”

The man you’d been dancing with earlier, now much more obviously handsome in the brighter lights of the bar area, grinned in recognition.

“Hey, I thought I’d scared you off there!”

You laughed and shook your head. “No, I’m sorry. Just saw my boss and freaked out a little bit.”

“Oh shit, your boss is here?” he asked. “That’s uncomfortable, damn. I’m sorry.”

“No worries, it’s just… yeah. Anyways. Wanna pick up where we left off?” you asked, more desperate than ever to get Hotch out of your head. If he didn’t want to see you having a wild night, he shouldn’t have come to the club.

He took your hand, looking pleased. “Lead the way.”

It really was so much easier, you thought, to let yourself feel attraction for guys like this. Uncomplicated, willing to take what you give them, no backstory to speak of. They weren’t riddled with tragic history, unattainable in both position and personality, not to mention impossible to even imagine ever returning your feelings. Guys like Cooper (you’d finally learned his name somewhere amid the grinding and groping) were easy and fun and they didn’t keep you up at night agonizing over whether that thing you said at work was impressive enough.

But then again, they didn’t give you the roller-coaster feeling in your stomach that Aaron Hotchner did every time you locked eyes.

And lock eyes you did - an increasingly frequent number of times, actually. It seemed like whenever you turned to face his direction, he was staring you down. He always went back to his conversation with Rossi and Reid, but you noticed that he seemed to get more and more pissed off with every song that played. His frown was deepened, his expression dark, and you could tell even from a distance that his knuckles were white from gripping his glass.

You shrugged it off as Hotch being Hotch - who knew what that man was thinking? And besides, you were trying to forget him, damn it. At least, that was until a particularly raunchy song came on and you were in the middle of getting your ass felt up, when you felt a hand squeeze your shoulder and whip you around, bringing you face-to-face with your boss himself.

“Hey, what’s going on? Is something wrong?” you asked, utterly bewildered as to why he was interrupting you.

He ignored you, instead staring down Cooper, who very quickly decided Hotch wasn’t one to fuck with and walked away.

“Hotch! Is there a case? Should I grab the others?”

He shook his head. “Can you come with me, please?”

Perplexed, you acquiesced (not that you had much of a choice, with the way he was gripping your elbow) and followed him through the crowd, out the back door, and into an alley. He let go of you then, sighing and crossing his arms.

Your mind was wild with questions - did you do something you shouldn’t have? Get too drunk? Everyone was drunk, though, and you weren’t even half as wasted as some of the others. Did Reid or Rossi tell him something bad about you? Were you about to somehow get yourself fired off the clock?

“The boy you were dancing with was bad news,” he said, after an uncomfortably long period of silence.

What the fuck?

“What the fuck?” you repeated, this time out loud, and you knew you shouldn’t be talking to him like this, but you were too caught off guard to conduct yourself more appropriately.

“He was a drug user,” Hotch said, as if that would explain everything.

“A drug user,” you repeated back, no less confused.

“Cocaine,” he continued. “He was high - his pupils were dilated, he was rubbing his nose, and he's been to the bathroom several times.”

“So… you’re going to arrest him? For doing cocaine?” you asked, still baffled as to what he was insinuating.

“What? No,” he said, “I’m trying to warn you not to get involved.”

You had entered some parallel universe, you decided. There was no other explanation for your boss, a man you’d known all of four months, dragging you outside a bar on a Friday night and telling you not to dance with a hot stranger because he was on cocaine.

You took a deep breath, trying to calm yourself before you really did get yourself fired. “Sir, I appreciate the concern, but I don’t think it’s really any of your business.”

His face hardened at that. “It is exactly my business,” he said, eyes boring a hole through your skull, “to watch out for things that may compromise my team.”

“Compromise your team?” you repeated his words again. “I was dancing, not getting engaged to the guy.”

“Should I allow you to dance with a sexual sadist if it’s just dancing?” he pressed, using the stern voice that usually caused any sort of dissent to whither and die right in your throat.

It didn’t work this time, probably because he was acting fucking insane. “Are you seriously comparing a sexual sadist to a guy who does cocaine while he’s out partying?”

“It’s not just while he’s out partying, by the way he conducted himself, he was a chronic-”

“It doesn’t matter!” you said, nearly yelling now. “You had no right! I'm sorry, what are you, my dad?!”

His eyes flashed at that. “If I hadn’t already had to sit through an 8 hour surgery not knowing if Garcia was going to make it out alive because her date shot her, then perhaps I would have no right. But as it stands, I do. Please be more careful with who you associate with, even if it’s just dancing.”

He spat that last part out, more vitriolic than you’d ever seen him, and stalked back inside. You were left outside in the alley, alone, reeling from confusion surrounding the entire interaction and shock at the emotional charge he’d leveled at you.

Reentering the bar, you saw that Hotch’s seat had been vacated and his jacket was gone. You rolled your eyes, and on your way to the bathroom, nearly ran into Cooper again.

“Hey!” he said. “What was that all about? You good?”

You looked up at his face and for the first time, noticed faint traces of white dust around his nose. He looked keyed up, jumpy - his pulse racing and visible on his carotid. You sighed.

“I’m good. Just not in the mood right now, sorry,” and pushed past him into the bathroom.

Hotch was an emotionally stunted asshole with a control complex, but he was also never fucking wrong.

[sondepoch]

Day 1

10 Days (Jumin Han x Reader)

You didn't expect to find yourself locked in an engagement to Chairman Han, but with your own mother forcing you into it, you have no way of denying her. But as time continues and things change, you begin to develop affections for your fiance's son: Jumin Han. But the sad truth is that there's nothing either of you can do to stop the marriage, and you only have these 10 days before your future becomes reality. 10 days with Jumin Han.

Day 1 | Day 2 | Day 3 | Day 4 | Day 5 | Day 6 | Day 7 | Day 8 | Day 9 | Day 10 | ✔

MASTERLIST 

Perfection.

Your entire life, that was all you sought.

Perfection.

Your parents had raised you in an elite neighborhood, surrounded by the most prestigious of company, with the constant expectation that you'd be the best student in your school. Your room had been a paradise, your skin better than a model's, and you'd gone through years of training to always be the most ladylike in every room.

Perfection was never something you sought - but rather something that had always been expected of you.

From the day you were adopted at three years old, your parents had made it clear that the reason they had selected you of all the children was because you seemed the most moldable. The least resilient. The most willing.

And that much was true. You did everything they ever asked from you.

Now though, now that it feels like your whole life is about to end and your world is about to come crashing down: you can't help but think about that fateful day. You'd accepted their explanation at first, but now, you suspect that the reason for your adoption was because you best conformed to the image of what they wanted their child to look like. Just like your adoptive parents, you had (e/c) eyes and were (h/c), so to the public eye you looked like a natural daughter. And years of learning dance had toned your body to give you all the right curves and edges: true beauty, to any man who gazed upon you.

Even when your father had passed at the young age of forty years old, after protecting you from a drunk driver, he'd gazed upon you on his deathbed, telling you how much he loved you and how perfect you were.

But this whole time, I was incomplete, wasn't I? You think bitterly, as you stare at yourself in the mirror. You wish you have the courage to ask those words out loud to your mother, who's smoking a cigarette in the hotel room next to yours, just a call away; but why bother when you already know the answer?

No matter what you did, from bringing home trophies in middle school to skyrocketing the stocks of their company, your role as a daughter has never been fulfilled.

Until now.

You drop your gaze to the diamond band wrapped around your ring finger.

Perfection.

It's the ring that completes your package as the perfect daughter. In your life, you'd been slowly achieving all your parents' needs from you. Their demands had started superficial, with the requirement that you were beautiful and graceful. Then it delved deeper, and you had to make sure you were always ladylike and polite. Soon, your responsibilities turned to being the top student in all your classes and placing first in all your extracurricular competitions. Then, it had been soaring through college and working as the Director of Internal Affairs at your parents' company, BC-Sonic.

Yesterday, there had been only one thing left that your mother sought from you: an engagement to the wealthiest man in all of South Korea.

And as always, you'eve fulfilled their expectations.

Perfection.

There was no other word anyone could use to describe you.

If only you could feel the same way.

"(Y/N)," You hear your mother call from the other side of the wall. "Are you ready yet?"

You take a second glance at yourself in the mirror.

To please your fiancé, you'd changed into a stunning red gown with diamond jewelry to match the ring he'd placed on your finger just yesterday. It's the kind of dress that men love and women hate. The bottom of the dress hangs low, just barely scraping the floor when you stand upright in your heels, but there's a slit that reveals your provocative legs, trailing all the way up to wear your 'birthmark' is. As if that weren't enough, though the top half of you is far from modest and your back and shoulders are almost entirely bare, making you feel naked.

But you know you look radiant.

"Yes, Mother," You respond swiftly, satisfied with your appearance.

The woman wastes no time in entering your room, and she immediately comes over to you. Cigarette in hand, you can't help but tense at the sight of the burn stick even though you know it won't touch you.

"Chin up," She commands. "Shoulders back, jaw loose. Don't move your head when you walk, or your hair will come undone. Come here, sweetling, yes, perfect. Back straight, (Y/N). There you go, make sure to hold your posture. Eyes up, don't stare at the ground."

If your father was here, he'd scoff at your mother's remarks and tell you how pretty you look, and how Chairman Han won't back out of this marriage over something trivial as drooped shoulders.

But he's gone. And all I have left is Mother.

Your mother stiffens. "Remember, (Y/N). You will be a proper lady at all times. Just because your last name is changing doesn't mean that the media won't continue to associate you with me. Every public appearance you make must be perfect, hm?" The woman's eyes are cold as she reminds you of your duty. "Do not allow the paparazzi to waste the years of training that has brought you to this moment. Do not forget who you are for even a moment."

You swallow nervously, but don't allow your fear to show. "Yes, Mother."

"Are you ready to meet Chairman Han for the first time since the formalization of your engagement?"

"Yes, Mother."

"Good," She says, before looking at you quizzically. "I leave for my flight in fifteen minutes. I do not want any calls from you saying that you've messed this up. Do you hear me? Do not ruin this, (Y/N). Of all things, do not ruin this."

You meet her eyes for perhaps the first time today, and you can't decode the look in her eyes. What is it hidden behind that seemingly infinite abyss of (e/c)? Resentment? Wariness? Concern? You've never failed her before, she shouldn't have any reason to think ill of you.

Though for her, this is by far the greatest task she has requested of you in your entire life. You'd tried your best to hide your mislike for Chairman Han, but she was your mother. Not biologically, but still.

Does she sense your apprehension at marrying Chairman Han?

"I'll make you proud, Mother."

Whenever your thoughts fail you, those words won't. Because each time you speak them, you sincerely mean them.

No matter what your parents asked of you, you would do it. That's how it always had been.

Marrying Chairman Han will be no exception.

***

"Let's not order yet, my love," Your fiancé murmured, placing his menu down next to his plate.

Despite your confusion, you do the same. "Is something the matter?" You inquire, already fearing for the worst. What if the reason Chairman Han doesn't want to order is because he doesn't want to have dinner with you?

Horror floods your senses as you internally prepare for the worst.

What if he wants to cancel the engagement?

You try not to imagine your mother's fury if such a thing were to happen, already acutely aware of your trembling hands.

"Don't be nervous, (Y/N)," Chairman Han says, placing a hand on your cheek. His hand is gentle, but you have to remind yourself not to physically recoil from his touch. "It's just that I've invited my son to share dinner with us. Now that we're engaged, I think it's well past time he meets the woman I'm going to share the rest of my life with."

You smile softly at the Chairman, relieved that it was nothing more serious. "Your son agreed? The same man who declined all our previous invitation to dine together?" You laugh lightly, not truly offended by your future step-son's refusal to meet with you. It's no secret that Chairman Han is a womanizer, and there's no doubt that his son had thought that you were just another senseless fling.

"Don't be offended by him, he's just a little...clueless when it comes to some social cues."

You smile, unsure of what to respond with. You're about to compliment Chairman Han's tie when his gaze flits above you.

"Ah, Jumin! You're here!"

You freeze.

Jumin?

The man takes his seat at the round table and turns to greet you with a bored look in his eye.

As soon as his gaze meets yours though, his eyes widen. And yours do too, at the realization that this engagement will be far worse than you'd ever expected.

Of course, you think to yourself. How could you forget? Jumin Han had been your classmate nearly a decade ago when the two of you were in high school. The two of you hadn't been especially close—distant enough that you hadn't pieced together the fact that it was his father you're marrying—but still acquainted to the point where you knew a good amount of information about him.

Like the fact that he, your future step-son, is older than you by a good six months.

"Jumin, I'd like you to meet my fiancé. This is (Y/N). (Y/N) (L/N)...or, I suppose," The Chairman flashes you a bold grin. "(Y/N) Han."

You shift your gaze from the Chairman back to Jumin, terrified. What do you say? 'Nice to meet you?'

"It's been very long since I last saw you, (Y/N)," Jumin says stiffly, a cold expression on his face. "You've changed."

You swallow and try to remember your mother's instructions back in the hotel room. Be natural. Shoulders back, jaw loose. Back straight, eyes up.

As you force your body back into its proper posture, you feel yourself become more ladylike and somehow, your tongue unties itself and the words pour out of you. "Too long! How have you been, Jumin?"

You try not to cringe at the fakeness of your tone, but desperately hope that Jumin doesn't pick up on your fear. Of all the things to shake the foundations of your engagement, the fact that it's Jumin's father you're marrying is the worst.

Without a doubt, he's capable of convincing his father to cancel the engagement.

And that's the one thing you can't let happen.

"You two already know each other?" The Chairman asks.

Before you can respond, though, Jumin speaks up, his tone ice cold.

"Yes, I actually had the pleasure of knowing (Y/N) for four years when we were students. I suppose that's considerably longer than you've known her, Father?"

The Chairman raises an eyebrow, not liking the attitude he was getting from his son. "Excuse me, Jumin? It's true that I've only known sweet (Y/N) for a few weeks but our love is genuine, and I don't appreciate your implication."

"Your love is genuine?" Jumin responds swiftly. "Father, this girl is younger than me. You're marrying someone who should be your daughter."

You feel like this is a part where you should butt in and say something about how much you care about Chairman Han, despite his age, but thankfully the waiter interrupts the two men before you have to.

"Gentlemen, lady, might I take your orders?" He asks, and the tension in the room seems to settle.

Jumin orders his 'usual', whatever that is, but you haven't even had the opportunity to look at the menu. Momentarily flustered, you glance at your fiancé for help, but much to your relief, he orders for you.

He smiles generously at you once the waiter is gone as he pours you a glass of wine that had been brought to your table, and you try to ignore the fact that you won't be able to eat half of what he ordered for you.

"So, how is C&R doing?" You ask, trying to make conversation. "My family was checking this morning, and it seems that your stocks are faring extremely well."

"Business is going brilliantly, darling," The Chairman says, taking your comment as an invitation to regale you with all the details of how he secured two new investors in one day. You try to stay interested in what he's saying, but you find it difficult not to lose focus when the older man starts to rant about his theories for when the next depression will hit.

You spend the next few moments lost in your thoughts as you stare mindlessly into the man's eyes, seeming interested in his conversation but worlds away in mind. It's only when he dons a suspicious smile and slides his hand onto your thigh that you instinctively flinch, spilling wine on yourself.

You immediately stand up, apologizing for the mess while excusing yourself to the bathroom, finding an escape from the situation as fast as possible.

By the time you're in a stall, tears have already welled up in your eyes and you have to bend your body over and stare straight into the ground to prevent the tears from falling onto your cheeks. You can't risk ruining your makeup. You can't let Chairman Han think anything is wrong.

Calm down, (Y/N), You reason with yourself. If you're truly going to go through with this marriage, then you'll have to get used to Chairman Han touching you like that. You'll have to be prepared for even worse.

But just beginning to think about such awful things brings such a wave of nausea through your body that you decide it's best not to think about it at all, and you instead focus on your dress, dapping toilet paper at the small spot that's still wet.

You hear the bathroom door open, and initially pay it no mind until a familiar voice calls out to you.

"(Y/N)?"

Your heart nearly stops.

"J-Jumin?"

The voice pauses, before sighing. "Yeah. It's me."

Slowly, dreading the moment that's about to follow, you open the bathroom stall door and face the man, praying for this encounter to be over quickly.

"This is the woman's bathroom, in case you hadn't realized." You frown.

"I had." Jumin crosses his arms. "But I doubt you want to have this conversation in front of my father."

You stay silent.

"You spilled that wine on purpose," Jumin says. There's not an ounce of hesitation in his voice, and the way he says it, you can't even pretend that he's lying.

"On purpose, yes, but I do love your father." Woah. The way you said that so readily, you almost believe yourself.

Jumin takes a step closer to you, tilting your chin upward so he can better see your face in the fluorescent lights above. "You were crying," He says. Another fact.

"This was a nice dress. It's made me sad that I spilled wine on it."

"I don't recall you being that superficial."

"Why do you care?" You ask, taking a step back. Jumin's penetrating gaze bores into you, and you have to look away before your eyes can reveal how your heart feels.

"You've managed to convince my fool of a father that you're in love with him, and while I could not care less about you, I do mind what happens to him."

"I care about your father too," You say, but you can tell Jumin doesn't believe you.

"You care about him? Why, only ten seconds ago, you loved him. How much longer until you reveal your true intentions? I saw how fast you moved that wine glass, you can't tolerate his touch any more than you love him."

"I felt uncomfortable with you there," You respond swiftly. For a second, Jumin is taken aback, unsure of how to respond, and you take that as a victory. Have you finally said the right thing?

"Why are you doing this, (Y/N)? You could have almost any man you want, but really—my father? Your company is doing well enough that you don't need our finances, your family has more than enough connections, and it's not like..."

Jumin trailed off, his eyes narrowing.

"Is BC-Sonic in legal trouble?"

You practically roll your eyes at Jumin's absurd suggestion. "No!"

"Then why?!" Jumin asks. "Why have you targeted my father, of all the weak men in the world? What do you stand to gain from this marriage?"

You swallowed your doubts and took a step forward, knowing that if you had even the slightest hesitation when you uttered the following words Jumin wouldn't believe them. "Because I love him, Jumin."

And in that moment, it very well may have been true.

Near fifteen minutes later, the three of you are seated back at the table, making polite conversation about how C&R's export expansion goals would benefit from BC-Sonic's business connections in the Americas.

In fact, from a distance, the three of you look united. Jumin even smiles at you when you made a joke, and you feel a smidgen of hope flutter in your stomach when you realize that the three of you look almost like a family.

Your mother would be proud, you tell yourself, ignoring the fact that, to any outsider, they'd assume you to be betrothed to Jumin rather than his balding father.

Chairman Han is about to give Jumin some additional business advice when suddenly, he receives an emergency call from work.

You watch him from afar as he answers the phone, the pit of worry in your stomach growing stronger and stronger as you recognize the lines on his face contort into exasperation, then concern, and finally anger.

"(Y/N), darling, I'm afraid I have to fly out tonight," Chairman Han says, already wearing his jacket. "There's been some kind of security breach with our Director of International Communications and he's refusing to speak with me over the phone. I'll try to be back as quickly as possible, but..." The man trails off, and you realize where he's leading.

Where will you stay?

The words your mother said to you right before leaving suddenly seem more ominous than ever.   

I do not want any calls from you saying that you've messed this up. Do you hear me? Do not ruin this for us, (Y/N).

Does this count as a mess-up? What will your parents say? Can this cause the engagement to be canceled?

"Jumin, would you mind allowing (Y/N) to rest in your apartment for the night? I'll be back as soon as I can, and I don't want her flying all the way out to the BC-Sonic headquarters just tonight."

You bite your lip.

Staying with Jumin, horrible as it sounds, is still better than admitting failure to your parents. You gaze at him with hopeful eyes, and when he reluctantly agrees to his father's request, you have to physically prevent yourself from jumping for joy.

Chairman Han still seems apprehensive about the situation, regret painted on his features even as he rushes out of the restaurant, but suddenly your entire world seems brighter without the prospect of entertaining the older gentleman for the evening.

Unfortunately for you, though, Jumin picks up on your newfound happiness.

"You say you love him, but the first genuine smile I've seen from you all night only comes after he's gone."

You frown at Jumin, mood dampened.

"And how would you know what one of my genuine smiles looks like?"

Jumin sighs, putting down his fork. "(Y/N), we were in the same class for five years. My memory isn't so poor that I'd forget something so memorable that easily."

"'Something so memorable?' Are you saying that my smile is weird?" You accuse Jumin jokingly, hoping him to distract him from the topic of your engagement to his father.

"Of course not," He blurts, but it feels like the tips of his ears are the slightest bit pinker than they were one second ago. "Just eat your food so the two of us can be out of here as quickly as possible. I'm sure you're as eager for this night to end as I am."

You ignore Jumin's rudeness, glancing down at your plate. You awkwardly stab the corner of the dish and take a hesitant bite of it before butting your fork down, immediately realizing that your entire dish is inedible to you.

"What's wrong with the food?" Jumin asks. "Did the chef make a mistake while cooking it?"

You drag your eyes away from Jumin, suddenly hating the situation.

You want to be anywhere but here, doing anything but this.

"(Y/N)?" Jumin asks again, more gentle this time.

"I can't," You murmur under your breath, too quiet for anyone to hear. But Jumin's expectant expression forces you to repeat yourself. "I can't!"

"You can't what?"

"I can't eat this meal."

"...Is there a reason?"

You stay silent, already knowing that if you tell Jumin the truth, he'll just use it as ammo to ridicule the engagement between you and Chairman Han.

But as the silence stretches from uncomfortable to unbearable, you force the words past your lips. "I'm allergic to tomatoes."

And the dish Chairman Han had ordered for you was tomato-wrapped scallops with pineapple quinoa.

"And you two claim to be in love," Jumin mutters under his breath, scoffing. Wordlessly, he switches his barely-touched plate for yours and makes no further attempts at conversation.

You don't need to read his mind to know the mocking thoughts flitting through his mind, ridiculing the fact that your own fiancé didn't know such a simple fact about you.

The rest of the evening is spent in silence. But from the way Jumin stabs his scallops, you sense something deeper. Cruelty? Anger? Hate?

Resentment.

MASTERLIST

Day 1 | Day 2 | Day 3 | Day 4 | Day 5 | Day 6 | Day 7 | Day 8 | Day 9 | Day 10 |  ✔

Word count: 3.6k

Notes: And that's the first chapter of this series! Some general info: As the name indicates, this work will have 10 chapters total (no epilogue planned), and right now I plan to be updating once per week on Saturdays :) And heads up - this WILL end in angst

Comment & Like

Next Update: 4/04/20

I do not own the rights to Mystic Messenger or any of the characters within it.

[themarcusmoreno]

I told @opheliaelysia that I would elaborate on my connections to the Pedro Universe™️ characters and I am a woman of my word. So buckle in babes, we getting a little deep. I also want to tag @rzrcrst, @stevieharrrr and @callingmrsbarnes for their opinions.

Let’s start with Ezra: Okay, so. We aren’t really given a lot of his history or a really in depth peek at his personality but we got a good enough glimpse that I feel that we got to see that even if his morals be dubious, he had them. We got to see him go from almost shooting this teenage girl to trusting this complete stranger to save his life. I think we see that he wants to do good but something always comes up that causes him to resort back to his dubious ways. I guess the reason I kind of felt a connection to this character is because in all honesty, in my opinion anyway, Ezra is a loner, or at least to an extent he is. Sure he had his partner but they didn’t carry much conversation and we all know Ezra enjoys talking, who can blame him with a vocabulary that vast. Back to the loner bit, I say that in the sense that he gave me the vibe of being a man who’s always kinda had a crowd but prefers the luxury of being alone too and that’s how I am too. I can be around people, I can carry on conversation but I genuinely enjoy being alone. I feel like Ezra, I’m just trying to find a place in the world that suits me and my likes/dislikes. I enjoy the simpler things and can appreciate the beauty around me which is something I think Ezra does too. I mean.. look at that man and the way he talks and tell me he wouldn’t pen poems about the beauty of the green while also hating it. Basically, I vibe with my dubious space cowboy because I too am a creature of comfort with an old soul.

Now for Javier Peña, let me preface this by saying that I speak for the way Pedro played this person and not the real life counterpart: Javier, oh Javier. I don’t even know where to start besides I see him with a lot of anger and frustration, not even at things within his control because we see how things outside of his control frustrate him just as much. Javi is a man who is passionate and determined to get shit done and if the way he nearly threw his whole career away to catch Pablo wasn’t proof enough of that then I don’t know what is. I mean he basically (spoilers ahead) turned face on the whole of the Cali cartel and basically said fuck you to the US government. Javi also has a commitment issues, see his numerous hook ups and the thing with Lorraine. I’m not saying it in a completely negative way because he does have affection for people and tries to make connections but I think his line of work and his own self doubts of his worth as partner kind of fog his mind which is understandable for who Javi is. He is a grump but he’s also passionate, like I said above. As much as he may dislike his job at times I feel like he still goes above and well beyond what he has to because he wants people to be safe. As for my connection to this character, I am someone who is passionate (I mean I’m a double scorpio so it’s like in my blood basically haha). I either love hard or hate with a vengeance, there’s not much in between. I felt a connection to Javi because I am one to love and love hard but I can have a mean streak if you hit me the wrong way. I’m a double scorpio, like states above, so that basically spells extra passionate which is a storm in itself, and if Javi isn’t a storm crashing on a distant shore then who is? He has a lot of inner turmoil and I feel that. He wants so badly to do what’s right that he starts doing what’s wrong and while I’ve never fucked an informant or turned my back on the government (even if I want to bc no one would blame me tbh) I would do what I could for people I care about, definitely go above and beyond within legal reasons...well maybe illegal, wouldn’t be thr first time I’ve done something questionable for people I care about. ANYWAY for Javi the connection to him was his emotions, how passionate he is and the commitment issues he has.

Now Frankie: My precious, baby boy. I have a lot of feelings about Frankie even with the lack of set up we had for his character besides a few throw away lines. Coke? A new baby? Why wasn’t that discussed more? I’m looking at you Netflix, ya gave me nothing on Francisco and I still feel a connection with him. FOCUS ASH! Okay so, I think you get enough on Frankie that you can somewhat see that he’s the brains of whatever operation those men had. He had at least a decent form of moral compass, aside the coke thing. Anyway, I think with Frankie you see that he’s the quiet, more reserved of the group but that’s not to say that when he does eventually speak that he doesn’t have something to say. I think when he speaks, he speaks with purpose. Frankie has a lot more going on under the surface than we got to see and that’s sad. I want to talk about the coke thing really quick because this is my headcanon on it: I think that cocaine was something Frankie got into when he was in college, maybe even in flight school. I could see it being something he used to keep him up for exams and shit once he got a taste for it. Maybe he would’ve been hot and cold with his addictions like maybe he stopped to get into flight school but once he’s was in and licensed, I see him using it to stay awake during flights and such. Now with that being said, I can’t really pinpoint a certain thing that connects me to Frankie. I just see him and I immediately think home. Not in an obsession way, he is just a character that seems real to me. Realer than Javi, Ezra and even Din. Like he had real problems that caused he to go to an extreme, it had bad consequences it he did it. He knew it was risky and still did it, and I’ve been there. I’ve done a few things that weren’t quite legal, I dabbled in things that shouldn’t of happen but I did them, do I regret them? Yes. Would I do them again? No, definitely not. We learn from our mistakes and I think that Frankie learned the hard way along the way, I connect with that.

Din, now for Din: Listen, I have a lot of emotions about Mando (not as strong as @drakecaggiula91 but still). Din/Mando is definitely more complex than we got a glimpse of. I will say that besides Javi, he got more development than Ezra and Frankie. For Din/Mando he was a man with a plan, however bad that plan may be. He’s career focused and to me he’s seeking fulfillment in a job that he doesn’t entirely enjoy. Not to say he ain’t good at it, he is but I don’t think he enjoys it besides being able to provide for his clan and the foundlings. He’s definitely a man that lets few in but I feel like we see him opening up more as the season ended, he’s got trust issues but I think that’s normal after what he’s been through. He’s determined, he cares and he knows how show that in little actions because he’s not good with words. He talks but he’s more of an action guy. So how do I connect to our beloved Mandalorian? Trust issues, that old demon that loves to show up. Like Din/Mando, I have trouble letting people in because others have hurt me. I mean he thought he could trust his old team/crew and look where that got him, it takes a lot to earn his trust and I vibe with that. I’ve learned to not trust as easy or when I do and it goes south, I blame myself. I feel like Din/Mando has that same internal battle and that’s just something that makes him more relatable. I mean I too would take on a galaxy for someone I truly cared about but I’m obviously not a mandalorian. I just feel like for Din/Mando my connection is in the way he trust, the way he shows his affections in little actions. I’m better at words than Din/Mando but I love showing my feelings in little actions.

Wow.. okay. So this wasn’t suppose to be this long but I got into my emotions and realized maybe I love these characters more than I thought. Anyway, thank you for reading and I’m sorry it’s so long.

[purecamp]

Now I Just Made It; I Found You At Last

not submitting this to AQ bc it’s not like.... relevant but anyway have this

Justin stared blankly at the screen in front of him, willing the little clock on the right hand corner to tick by just a little faster. The week had been long, gruelling - a new project was in the planning stages and as the most qualified architect for the job, Justin was under pressure to deliver above and beyond his usual high standard. Of course, it was enjoyable work, and it paid well, but he was finding himself feeling… well, stagnant. He needed a change of scenery, a breath of fresh air.

New York wasn’t a source of fresh air, per se. It was the world of business, the world he had thrown himself into with reckless abandon and found himself all the better for it. At the age of thirty eight, he found himself in a spacious apartment, not quite a penthouse but near enough, and enough spare expenses to dote on himself any luxuries he desired.

It was a busy, bustling, comfortable life. Affordable luxuries, a good job, a nice home.

Admittedly it wasn’t the life Justin had expected to find himself in. He had been sure, when he was young, that at this point in his life he would be married, perhaps with a few children. Luxuries meant little to him - he preferred simplicity and experiences over the expensive pressed suits and cufflinks that mattered so much to the people around him. In a way, he felt like a marionette playing a part made for someone else. He had tailored his life this way, and was finally starting to feel like he had outgrown the role.

A change was needed, but the clock wasn’t ticking fast enough.

“Mr Honard? Sir? Your coffee.”

The timid intern nudged the door open with her foot, smiling shyly as she placed the cup onto the desk. A few moments passed, and she didn’t leave.

“Miss Michaels, is there something I can do for you?” Justin asked her, as politely as he could manage. The girl couldn’t have been any older than eighteen, and he still remembered the days of feeling like a useless asset to a company much bigger than him. Nowadays he was the big fish, but still held as much respect as possible for the new small fry.

“Is it true that this next deal could be multi-million dollars? The girls were talking and I…” She paused. “I’d love to be that good some day.”

He smiled. “Thank you, Miss Michaels. It is true, yes. I guess this weekend won’t be a weekend for me, so I can try and get all this planning done in time for the meeting on Monday.” Justin sighed, steeling himself for the remaining five minutes of his day. “Still, work is work.”

Miss Michaels - Kameron, Justin believed her name was - excused herself, leaving him to shut down his laptop and sink into the leather chair, his eyes closing against his will. A multi-million dollar deal lay in front of him, and would only take a weekend of precise work to consolidate. Why, then, did he feel so stale? Where was the passion? Why did he feel like he was just running in circles, getting nowhere?

His yellow cab was already waiting after his swift exit from the office, still unsure as to whether he wanted to take up the generous offer that resided in his emails, waiting to be picked up. He would be a fool not to do it, and he knew it well. But that didn’t stop the nagging feeling that something in his life needed replacing, or uprooting. He was stuck.

It was, unsurprisingly enough, a slight deviation from his usual habits that led to the chain events that would end that stagnant, stuck-in-the-mud emptiness from Justin’s life once and for all.

His first action upon hearing the telltale ‘ding!’ of the lift to his apartment was to check his mailbox. Normally, he’d wait and open everything on Monday; nothing of any urgency arrived through the mail, and it was usually work-related documents that he would prefer to handle at work, or useless promotions and menus from establishments he would never eat from.

But the day had left him feeling sullen and somewhat bored, and he subconsciously begged for something that would let him escape for a while. Maybe a brochure for a slightly discounted holiday would be stuffed within the bank statements and tax filings, and he could use that as an excuse for some sort of holiday. Croatia had been nice, as had Egypt.

He pulled the various envelopes out and unlocked the apartment, throwing himself onto the sofa to sift through them all.

Bank statement, bank statement, last month’s tax returns, a notice from the last build, an automated thank you letter from two months ago… and a blue envelope.

Hmm. A small stamp decorated the corner of the envelope, depicting a classically beautiful Aphrodite, rising in her nude glory from the depths of the ocean. In the middle, in black ink, unfamiliar handwriting had scrawled Justin Honard.

Curious but not yet hopeful enough to pin any excitement onto the contents of the envelope, he pulled out the paper inside. It was neatly folded in half, concealing the contents, although judging by its size, it seemed unlikely that it was a letter. Perhaps an invitation to a party of some kind, or a charity gala.

It is with sheer delight that this happy couple announces their engagement!

A date was printed underneath, and the name of a hotel that Justin didn’t recognise. Glancing up, he didn’t recognise the names of the bride or groom either - only first names were provided, under the assumption that whoever was receiving the invitation clearly knew the couple well enough to be certain of whose wedding they were going to be attending.

Briefly, he wondered if the invitation had come to him by mistake. Yet clear as day, his name was written on the envelope, and…

Justin’s heart skipped a beat. Beneath the unfamiliar hotel, a much more familiar location was listed, somewhere he knew he would never be able to return to in good conscience.

The island.

He held his breath. There was no way he could return, not a chance in Hell. God, he hadn’t thought about her in so long…

Well, that was a lie. She crossed his mind at the most inane of times, not always, but often enough that her presence remained always in the back of his mind, reminding him of the things he’d done. Her laughter still echoed in his ears, her tears still haunted his dreams. But he hadn’t properly relived that one awful, fateful day in decades. How could he go back there - her home - knowing how much he had hurt her?

Then his eyes darted down to the very bottom of the invitation, and he stopped breathing altogether.

Please come. -Sharon

She… She…

It made no sense.

Sharon hated him. She had made that clear.

It had been twenty years…

But no. He knew that girl - that woman. Their love affair may have been brief, but Justin knew more about her than he knew about the world around him, the career he had chosen, the life he had perfected. He knew that she smelt like vanilla and sea-salt and makeup. He knew that she liked short skirts and tight pleather and simple cotton sheets against her skin. He knew that her heart and soul were comprised of hellish fire, and for better or for worse, she felt every emotion that struck her with the intensity of a thousand lovers.

Sharon wasn’t a fool, he knew that. She would never carelessly forgive him for ruining her.

It made no sense. This was some cruel joke, a trick played by a god to punish him for daring to try and break free from his own life’s restraints. And yet… why had he sprung to his feet? Why were the rest of letters discarded on the floor, with only this invitation clutched between his trembling fingers? Why was he already heading towards the bedroom to pack his things?

Damn it all. Sharon hadn’t been part of his life for two long decades and yet she was still able to undo him at his very core and unravel everything he had built without her. What did any of it mean, anyway? His illustrious career and expensive apartment in a city he didn’t truly love - why did any of that matter? He had been searching desperately for any kind of whim that would allow him to escape once and for all.

Love him or hate him, Sharon’s name was signed at the bottom of the invite, and it took Justin mere minutes to fill his suitcase with clothing. Simple clothing - the kind one would wear to fall in love on a magical Greek island, rather than seal business deals in the industrial side of New York City. Anything else could be found on the way. Time, all of a sudden, seemed to be of the essence. Twenty years melted into nothing.

He dashed out of the door in disarray, his suitcase packed, his top-three shirt buttons undone and his hair mussed from raking his hands through it. A last-minute flight was booked to Athens and Justin knew that from array of taxicabs he could see from his window that making his way to the airport would be no trouble at all.

And somehow, just like that, Sharon Needles turned his whole life upside down once again, a whole twenty years after she’d done it the first time.

-

“Are you fucking kidding! Is this a joke? Is this some cosmic fucking joke?”

The man a few feet away from Justin uttered his inner sentiments perfectly as he gazed after the small red dot on the horizon.

“Hello? Fucking ferry? Come back!”

He sighed. “I need to get to that fucking island. This is fucked.”

Justin nodded in agreement. “Yeah. And the next ferry-”

“Tuesday. Bad tide or some shit like that. I can’t wait that long!” The other man complained. “I have a wedding!”

Justin’s ears pricked. “Trixie and Brian?”

“You know them?”

“No.” Justin answered truthfully. “I have an invite… I know someone on the island.”

That was as much detail as he felt comfortable providing to this total stranger. After all, how would he even begin to explain his predicament? Hi, stranger. I emailed the multi-million dollar deal company with a short email explaining that I am unavailable, turned down the biggest job of my career for a chance that I might see a girl whose heart I broke twenty years ago, and ten hours later I’m stood on a dock at the edge of mainland Greece next to you, having missed the only ferry that will take me to her, and somehow a wedding is involved in this entire convoluted mess of a story.

The other man shrugged. “Same. I’m Willam.”

“Justin.”

Willam’s eyes narrowed slightly, as if he recognised the name, but he shrugged a second time and held out his hand to shake it. Two heads were better than one, and somehow they needed to find a way across a large expanse of ocean to one of the most remote islands he had ever been to.

God, he’d missed that little pocket of paradise.

“Okay, maybe we can…” Willam trailed off. “Nope, I got nothing. Like, I have a boat, but it’s on the island and that’s not fucking useful right now. I need it here.”

“A boat? I have a boat!” A third voice chimed in. The owner of said voice smiled rakishly, gesturing to what looked like a barely seaworthy vessel bobbing in the waves a few feet away from them. Both Justin and Willam grimaced at it. “Uh-”

“Kidding!” He grinned, and pointed to a much larger boat, named The Carey. “She’s served me well, this one has. Anyway, you two gentlemen look like you need a ride and I’m nothing if not a generous Samaritan.”

Call him superstitious, it felt like a sign. The man introduced himself as Jaremi, and soon enough they were loading their things onto his boat, preparing to sail across to the island he’d missed so much. It had to be fate, for everything to align so perfectly. Someone up there was making sure, one way or another, that he would make it to this island. He was sure, tucked in his pocket, the little Aphrodite stamp was winking at him. This was her doing.

“So you’re Jaremi Carey? That guy who writes about weird places?” Willam interrogated him, the wind whipping his blonde hair into his face. Justin had taken a liking to Willam in the hour that he’d known him, and was warming to Jaremi too. He spoke little as the other two chatted away, keeping his eyes fixed on the horizon for any evidence that the island he had been dreaming of hadn’t been purely fictitious.

It seemed like one of those serendipitous moments in life where a common purpose united three total strangers. Jaremi, too, had an invitation to the wedding, and was equally as cagey about his association with the bride or groom. A more rational Justin would think on it, trying to conjure reasons for such a strange link between them, but he couldn’t.

Not once had he been able to think clearly when Sharon was around. She was all-consuming, her love encompassing him in ways he never knew love could. She had been self-professed innocent when he met her, but it was truly him who had been naive to what love could do to a man. In a matter of weeks he was completely changed, enthralled with this laughing goddess and her deep blue eyes. Her picture was as fresh in his mind as it had been twenty years ago.

Perhaps stupidly, he had dug out those photos of her and packed them into his suitcase, just to remind himself, selfishly, that she had loved him once. He didn’t deserve an ounce of her heart, not anymore, but it was a comfort to him knowing that, for a short time, she had loved him with everything she had. She didn’t need to know that his love for her had never died down, anyway. Justin was sure she was now perfectly happy with the man of her dreams.

But maybe…?

No. Justin stopped the fluttering hope in his chest as soon as it blossomed. She had asked him to come to the wedding, but that didn’t mean she had spent twenty years pining for his return. He was being ridiculous; a woman like Sharon would never allow herself to sink so low. She was strong, smart, resilient - and somebody as intoxicating as her would definitely have been treated right by now.

Whatever the situation, Justin told himself he didn’t care. He would get to see her again, and that was reward enough.

-

Oh my god, it was Sharon.

It wasn’t Sharon, but it might well have been. She was every bit Sharon, from head-to-toe she was his ex-lover, radiant and beautiful at no more than twenty years old. Standing before them, she regarded them with sparkling eyes and a nervous smile.

“Perhaps this young lady will be able to help us… Hello there! We three strangers have been invited to a wedding by Sharon, you wouldn’t happen to know anything about what’s going on, would you? I’m Jaremi.” He offered his hand for the young girl to shake, which she accepted.

When she spoke, her voice was breathless and yet - still so similar to hers. Sweeter, and higher, Justin noted. Sharon’s had more of a rasp to it, a husk that he had never been able to forget. Twenty years on, and the exact tone of her voice hadn’t escaped the depths of his memory.

“Yes, yes… Yes, we’re expecting you. You two must be Justin and Willam.”

Willam nodded and introduced himself, letting Justin go last. As each of them spoke, the young girl eyed them with a peculiar look. It seemed innocent and curious enough, but it was almost as if she was searching for something. After a few moments, she seemed to shake out of her trance and tucked a lock of her hair - golden blonde, like Sharon’s - behind her ear.

“Come with me, we have rooms for you. Well… one room. We’re a little tied up for space at the moment, with this wedding that’s happening.”

She led them, but she needn’t have bothered. Justin still remembered every step of the way, every winding path that would eventually lead to the taverna, every secret cave and cove perfect for a romantic evening or - as he tried not to dwell on for too long - a passionate embrace. It was only when they reached what used to be a rocky hill and an old wooden shack that things were new to him. The aforementioned hotel stood before them, shining white in the Greek sunshine.

She did it, Justin thought to himself, knowing he had no right to be proud and yet filled with pride all the same. She achieved her dream.

“We’ll, uh, have to go round the back of everything.” The girl told them, smiling sweetly as she took them into the lower courtyard. Her eyes seemed to be darting back and forth. “Everything’s a little hectic, so it’s easier that way.”

“Seems fair. Is Sharon around?” Justin spoke up.

God. Even saying her name was like a breath of fresh air away from his old life. It was as if at once, the stress and mundanity of his regular life dissipated. Her name on his lips had more power than he knew what to do with.

“Not at the moment, but I’m sure she will be.” She replied after a moment’s hesitation, steering them through alleys and shortcuts and clambering over boxes of hay and bottles and fresh produce. It seemed like a strange way to get to a hotel room, granted, but the three had decided unanimously not to argue with the girl. Clearly, she knew the hotel better than they did.

Maybe five or so minutes later, they arrived. All three began to settle their bags onto one of the three beds, as the girl dusted herself off to look a little more presentable for their official introduction. It had been a little bit of an arduous journey, given the morning heat, and she looked a little flustered as she smiled apologetically at them.

“Sorry if this seemed a little rushed… I’m Trixie.”

Ah. So this was the girl from the invite.

“You’re the girl getting married?”

Trixie’s face split into a beam, and she lifted her hand to reveal the silver ring on her finger. Justin’s vision tunnelled - that smile was one he had never been able to forget, practically pasted onto someone else’s face. He had known from the moment he saw her, but that smile seemed to confirm everything for him. Unknown feelings - not pleasant, but not unpleasant - bubbled in his stomach. She was talking, but Justin couldn’t understand a word of it. She… She…

“You’re Sharon’s daughter.”

Sharon had a daughter. Sharon, the love of his life, immortalised in his memory at the tender age of seventeen, had a daughter. This was undoubtedly her, stood before him. Proof that Sharon had managed to move on with her life after they had fallen apart. She had something truly marvellous to show for it.

Seemingly caught unawares, Trixie just nodded helplessly.

“I knew you looked familiar.” Justin found himself unable to stop, his mind now flooded with thoughts of her. “God, I bet she hasn’t aged a day.”

Seeing Trixie was jarring. He knew Sharon would be different now, especially given how much he had changed in their years apart, but meeting her daughter who was nothing if not the exact image of Sharon in her youth had fucked with his head. He somehow knew that Sharon would be even more beautiful than she had been before, a feat he had long thought impossible.

“I know she’s busy, but can I see her? I want to thank her for this invite-”

“No!” Trixie rushed out, her expression filling with fear. It was yet another look that Justin knew all too well; he had seen it on her mom, way back when her biggest worry was her own mother’s wrath. “I… shit. Mom didn’t send the invitations to you, I did. She doesn’t know you’re here.”

And just like that, Justin’s euphoria shattered.

“Listen.” She whispered, drawing closer. “She’s been so stressed constantly about my wedding, so I felt bad and invited you guys to cheer her up. She talks about her friends from the past all the time, I thought she’d like it.”

Friends. Friends didn’t even begin to cover what they had. Nor indeed what they had left behind. Justin was definitely something of an enemy, the way he’d broken her heart. He shouldn’t have come at all.

Trixie took a deep breath and continued. “Just… if she sees you, don’t tell her you’re here for my wedding. Make something up, a happy coincidence that you’re here. Please. She’ll freak out at having unexpected guests, I just know it, but once she gets past the stress she’ll be so happy.”

Justin sighed heavily. “I shouldn’t be here, I should go. Trixie, your mom hates me.”

Hate, too, felt like a massive understatement. He had been told in no uncertain terms exactly what she thought of his scumbag, lying self, and he had deserved every second of it. The pain it caused him bore no weight against everything that he had done to her, and he wondered if Trixie actually knew the truth about him. Surely, she wouldn’t be so kind if she knew how he had treated her mom.

“Maybe she did, twenty years ago.” Trixie countered, with that obstinate look he knew so well. “No one can hold a grudge, or any kind of feeling, for that long. You can’t just go! I want you at my wedding, all of you!”

Willam and Jaremi, slowly, began to laugh at the absurdity of the situation. Though his heart felt heavy, Justin cracked a smile as Trixie’s intent dawned on him. Whatever she was planning remained a mystery, but it was clear she had gleaned her persuasive skills from her mom.

Jaremi took his hat off and grinned. “You’re a firecracker, like your mom. He’ll stay, won’t you Justin?”

He sighed. “I suppose I have to. Seems like your mom’s taught you all her old tricks. There’s no way of getting out of this, is there?”

Trixie beamed, clearly relieved. “Nope! Remember what I said - lie, lie, and lie again. She can’t know I invited you, or that you’re here for the wedding. She’ll go insane.”

She paused. “And, uh, trust me when I say insane. She’s a little crazy right now, handling all this on her own.”

God, what a fucking superstar. She’s achieved so many great things.

“I need to get going…” Trixie murmured, her expression regretful. “Thank you so much for accepting those invites.”

Justin snorted, but there was no malice in it. It felt more like resignation - one way or another, he was going to have to stay here, all because Sharon’s daughter had convinced him. “It was always impossible to say no to your mother. Twenty years, and nothing’s changed.”

[justanotherdumpingground]

Chapter Reviews: May 21-25, 2019 + Thoughts on Upcoming Books

High School Story: Class Act Chapter 15:

The greenhouse is so pretty that I can stare at it for minutes and not get bored. Oh, how I wish I have a place like that. Anyway, I spent diamonds on the terrarium because I'm curious about it and wonder how it will be used in the next book. Pity I couldn't spend time with Skye as a result, though it's not like I have enough diamonds either way. Anyway, let's see how the tour to Europe in Book 3 will turn out. As long as it doesn't involve disrespecting the local culture, though. Man, I'm so glad this book is done. The student election drama is so darn boring, with a weak progression in the storyline. If it wasn't for Skye, I would've lost my cool. She's the only saving grace of the story, and I'm glad I get to be official with her. Wishful Thinking Chapter 7:

I don't care much about the power outage thing, though I'm glad Jaime came to help things out. What frustrates me is the premium option to spend time with a minor character with a recycled model, so hard pass, Tony. Can I punch Alec now? He's being nothing but unreasonable, only getting MC's ideas when there's something in it for him? His behavior towards Jaime is just... ugh. As for Ellen, I need a heart-to-heart talk with her and call her out on her pride as well as reprimanding her for sabotage and theft. Note to self: buy that premium option to follow her. A Courtesan of Rome Chapter 18:

Man, it's been so long since I last played ACoR! I never thought I missed it. I know the middle chapters are weak because of their emphasis on romance over espionage, but I still had fond memories of how badass the MC and her family are. Anyway, let's get to it, shall we? I literally agonized over the choice to free Victus or Syphax, especially since I like them both, and Syphax is my MC's love interest. I really wanted Victus to reunite with the rest of his family, but because I also roleplay my MC, I wonder what she would do in that situation. For now, I picked Syphax, and Victus said that she and Syphax are the future of the tribe, which shook me speechless. I feel like Victus is willing to make way for the future generation. Finally Cingerix shows up, albeit as a legionary. I understand his frustrations at his situation, but time can't be turned back. I cringed at the options to be harsh towards him when playing as Delphinia. Threesome with Caesar and Cleopatra? Sounds interesting, if only I have the diamonds. I'm not surprised the MC didn't kill Caesar with poison, because he died by stabbing. What's interesting is how she'll deal with meeting her brother again. Nightbound Chapter 6:

Once again, I'm at the mercy of idiots, or more specifically werewolves who refuse to see reason. If it wasn't for Katherine, Nik, and Cal saving MC's ass, they would've been dead. About time Vera shows up, and I should've known that she's taking care of Kristin at the hospital. Seriously, I respect her for that. Here's hoping she shows up more. Speaking of showing up more, that should also apply to Krom, Garrus, and Ivy. My ever-supportive pit crew needs more love than the story provides. I need to tag them along with MC throughout their misadventures, badly. Is it just me, or does this story have a slow pacing? I wonder when the next monster tear will appear. Passport to Romance Chapter 11:

Not much I could say in this chapter because there's not much going on in the airport. The outfit's tacky, Ahmed's suggestion to have a trolley race is stupid, and I couldn't afford to invite Sumire to the lounge. Honestly, Elliot never ceases to annoy me. His family owns an airline, and he waited until the next day to use it to provide his friends a flight on a private plane? What is wrong with this guy? Can he just set his grudge against his brother aside? And what does Elliot even do for a living aside from mooching off his brother? Open Heart Chapter 15:

Seeing Aurora and hearing about her struggles of being the Chief of Medicine's daughter makes me want to give her a hug. She needs to cry the stress out of her. It's definitely bad that she had to put up with sycophants like the ones seen earlier in the story, and I'm glad I finally get to comfort her. At the same time, I'm sick of being forced to hate her for most of the time. Sure her aloof behavior isn't helping matters, but the MC should also get off their high horse. She Nevertheless, her story is far from done, and I want to see what decisions she'll make. Not to mention that I'm willing to give her the chance to be nice to her fellow interns, not just towards patients. Every time I see a choice to act mean to Aurora, I cringe. Getting the help of the senior physicians was fine, though I hated the outfit, so I didn't bother buying it. Since the physicians have a neutral opinion on the MC, it makes sense to encourage them to testify without any bias. As much as I respect Ethan for his skills, he's too biased in favor of the MC, especially since mine just hooked up with him. On MC's little talk with Landry as he moved out, the part where Landry said the competition's going to come down to him and the MC annoyed me. He didn't regret sabotaging the MC, but justified the reason he did it in the name of competition instead. Jackie nailed it in the previous chapter, when she said she wanted to reach the top spot fair and square. It's one thing to stay in the competition. It's another to sabotage another competitor and put patients at risk of misdiagnoses in the process, all because of a petty desire to suck up to Ethan. Even if it wasn't his goal to do the latter, it shows horrible judgement on his part that deserves to be censured. I won't forgive him for this, especially when the narrative wants us to forget about it. Bloodbound Chapter 2:

Scholar Jameson really creeps me out when he talked about the MC being a Bloodkeeper, which sounds like he and Gaius are using her to free the First Vampire and usher in an era where vampires will enslave humans. Ugh... At least the new lore stuff got me hooked, even when I failed to get Gaius to reveal my plans. I'll replay this chapter someday. Great, the portrait fragment system is back, and this time it focuses on Rheya. I wouldn't be surprised if she's the First Vampire. If so, that's kinda underwhelming. I expected the figure to be super old, but Rheya dates from the 8th Century BC (800-701 BC), which means there are ancient civilizations that predate her. I was confused when MC suddenly wakes up in the same room she was found in, only to be woken up by the love interests. I mean, yay they came to the rescue, but that left me wondering about the whole scene. And double yay at Lily for her tech savvy! Since the next chapter involves going to Vegas, this probably means there won't be a cameo appearance of Grant Emerson, which I anticipated. Oh well. I hope the cameo is a fun one. More Thoughts on Platinum:

After reading the summary for the second chapter, I groaned that this story will most likely feature a female rival I'm forced to hate, a problematic cliché Pixelberry loves using just to encourage players to vilify women and girls as rivals. This is a worrying trend that should stop, especially because what PB writes is sometimes influenced by fan reception, which always distorts the writing of characters and fails to provide meaningful commentary. It reeks of narrow-minded superficiality that reflects badly on players and writers alike. At least it was funny to see the OH female MC models recycled to the point that it could pass for an alternate universe where her medical license is revoked, and she chose a different career path. This won't hold water for me because my OH!MC's male, though they might as well be relatives. Red Carpet Diaries Book 3:I'm still angry that RCD gets a third book after the fiasco that is the second book. I'll just play this book for free diamonds and a few characters I like.

[angel-gidget]

The Hop, the Skip, & the Endless Jump: My Tony Stark/Amnesia: Memories AU

I suppose we all have that one story for a fandom that's just sitting in our brains, marinating with little hope of coming to fruition bc it's just too complicated to quite get fully written out in actuality.

Mine is an MCU/Amnesia: Memories crossover au thing. Basically, Tony Stark wakes up with partial amnesia one day, and every interaction he has with every single person feels off. But being Tony, he adjusts and starts to kinda get into the swing of things over the course of the next 24 hours. Team? Avengers. Fiancé? Pepper. Bestie? Rhodey. Protege? Peter. Pain in the ass? Ross and/or Rogers depending on the day.

But then he wakes up on the same day in what is clearly a different universe.

No fiancé. Best friend? Rogers?! Protege? Riri. Pain in the ass? Some dude named Von Doom of all things. He figures out that he's in a different universe, but how he body-hopped into it and why is something he doesn't even get a chance to look into before he wakes up. Again.

Same day, different universe. Team? Avengers... Academy. Fiancé? None. Because apparently he's younger here? Best Friend? Janet Van Dyne and sometimes Loki. Protege? None. Because apparently, he can barely grow facial hair here. But he finds himself bestowing unwanted advice on Peter Parker anyway. Pain in the ass? Nick Fury. So he studies the local time-fog and only learns how utterly non-sensical the explanations for his situation could even be.

So he's kind of relieved when he wakes up again. But that relief dies with the next Q&A. Team? None. Fiancé? None. Bestie? Happy Hogan... but dead. Protege? Some Hulk-like kid who's clearly being emotionally abused. Maybe by Tony himself?  Pain in the ass? Definitely the man in the mirror because apparently Tony is a BAD GUY in this dimension. So Tony decides to wreck as much as possible for himself in the next 24 hours because, hey, might as well TRY to leave this world a better place, right?

When he wakes up again, the first thing Tony wants to know is if he's even a good person. But then the questions multiply because he realizes he's woken up on a space ship. Team? Guardians of the Galaxy. Fiancé? His teammates keep referencing a crazy alien protoplasmic being that is ruler of a distant planet, but Tony can't tell if they're joking or not. Bestie? Rocket or Peter Quill depending on the day. Protege? Peter Parker. Who is Iron-Spider in this 'verse apparently, and oh God, that is adorable. And apparently Peter is also his recently adopted son? What? Pain in the ass? Thanos. But also the Avengers, his former team in this dimension. (This entire universe is basically a slightly fluffier version of Influential Pineapple's AU, How to Repair a Broken Heart.)

.... so basically, the Amnesia: Memories premise just provides a framework for related dimension-hopping vignettes in which I could play with Tony's interactions with others, while still giving myself leeway for not being super-familiar with the comic-verse or writing Marvel fanfic in general. Also, maybe an opportunity to ask permission to play in the sandboxes of some of my favorite fanfic authors.

But unlike the Amnesia: Memories video game, Tony's dimension-hopping might actually have a lot of possible explanations. Did Tony get lost in a time-fog in his original universe? Did he get cursed by a magic user? Maybe this is the result of messing with infinity stones? Hard to say. He'd probably run a few of these theories in-story as well.

I guess notes have implied so far that Tony only spends 24 hours in each reality, but I think I'd also prefer to mimic A:M in the sense that his stays are not that consistent. He might spend anywhere from a day to a week in each reality. He's got no control over it. Until he realizes that if he dies, he'll wake up somewhere else. Thus Tony realizes he technically has the ability to shorten his stay. If he's desperate. Joy.

So the whole thing is an angstfest, basically. If he's in a nice comfy dimension, it's torture bc he knows he can't stay. Then the awful realities are just awful. And it only gets more and MORE tempting to apply things he learns about people into other dimensions.

Some of the WORST things:

Waking up in an addicted body. MCU Tony had a... less dramatic recovery from alcoholism than other versions of himself. Waking up homeless, curled up in a snow-covered dumpster, with every cell in his body screaming for vodka was an experience Tony could have 100% done without.

Going from 60 to 0 with Peter. Tony can adjust fairly quickly if he lands in a dimension where he's closer to Peter than he remembers. Hug more. Speak a little softer. It's nice, really. Maybe kinda addictive. Which would explain why following that up with a reality where Peter treats him like a total stranger makes him feel absolutely sick inside.

The revolving door of Romance. Tony is sure that in his original dimension he was with Pepper. At least, he's mostly sure. To be fair, the dimensions in which Pepper is his ex also have a feeling of... normalcy. Not good--not good at all--but not odd either. And of course, there are the worlds where he wakes up with someone else. Those can be tempting. Especially if the last few realities have involved waking up alone. Things sometimes go... badly if Tony explains the dimension hopping too quickly. He needs to know if he can trust people first. That often involves... playing along. Which may involve being a playboy again. He's too old for this. He's not the same age in every reality, but he knows he's too old for this. It sucks.

Steve. The pure whiplash of knowing the best and worst of the man, and having too much of all his lives affected by it. And then having to interact with whatever THIS Steve’s normal is. Good or bad, it never feels fair.

The damn dystopias. Some entire worlds are just that bad. Zombie plague. Dictator Von Doom. The Snap. Even one occasion where there was only a belt of iced-over rocks where the Earth should have been.

His own reaction to the damn dystopias. After the pile-of-rocks incident, Tony's first words when he woke up in the next dimension were "Screw this." He never found out if he was romantically involved with anyone, but he noticed Pepper left some calls. He told his AI--a new one, he didn't know this one. That was fine.--to book him a flight to the nearest tropical beach with minimal crowds. And to invite Peter Parker.

To his relief, a very confused eighteen-year-old Peter did show up in front of his private jet. This one didn't know him very well, but was his honest-to-God intern through SI. So of course he was up for whatever his boss's bosses' great-grand-boss wanted. So Tony lied and told Peter he'd picked his name at random, and that as an eccentric billionaire, Tony Stark invited random Interns on a flight of fun all the time.

He then proceeded to underhandedly use every little preference and detail he had learned about Peter over the span of realities to set him at ease as he proceeded to be a horrible influence and drag them both away from all responsibility. The Avengers tried to call him twelve times. Seven from Nick Fury. Eight from a Carol Danvers, whoever the hell that was.

Tony spent the week laying on a beach, playing video games, imbibing sugar, and listening to Peter call and make excuses to his aunt while joining him in all the above. It was funny until Peter dropped his phone into Tony's lap. Then May Parker reminded Tony that responsibility was a thing.

And okay, she didn't know. She didn't know that Tony was half-insane from witnessing the erasure of the earth. But she knew that her nephew was missing his classes and had been whisked overseas without a passport. And she knew that maybe Tony didn't care about what the consequences of that would be for Peter, but he should. He should.  

He looked up saw that Peter's eyes were wide as saucers and Tony realized his own cheeks were wet. So he told May he was sorry, and then told his AI to wire thirty-six thousand dollars into the Parker's joint bank account. (It was a strange tiny number, but it was the most money any May Parker had ever accepted from him in any dimension, and Tony remembered that.) It was just in case. In case Tony wasn't there the next day. In case they needed anything. Like a lawyer. Or a fund in case Peter lost his scholarship.

After a week of this? He probably had. And it would be all Tony's fault. Because he'd lost it and gone on a BENDER. And wasn't that a realization? He didn't need alcohol or sex to go on an irresponsible bender and drag his a kid into it with him.

Tony woke up in a new reality the next day, resolved to do better. He called May Parker first thing, and thanked her. This May Parker had never spoken to a Tony Stark, and assumed it was a prank call. That was fine. There were space aliens attacking, and Tony had a suit.

Team? Avengers. Fiancé? To be figured. Bestie? Thor? Thor. Okay. Protege? Harley Keener. Pain in the ass? The Chitauri today. Oh, goody. He already knew exactly what to do.

Time to be Iron Man again.

[bthump]

When Guts and Casca saw Griffith in the hill of swords, everyone thinks that maybe the two of them could possibly forgive him. But I always saw it as being surprised to see a pre-eclipse Griffith before he was tortured. I think guts would get use to it and proceed in trying to kill him, next time he sees Griffith.

Huh, I’ve never rly seen that opinion tbh, maybe we hang out in different parts of fandom. Well, I’ve seen a few people expressing worry that Casca might forgive Griffith, but honestly if Miura writes that I will like, personally fly across the ocean to salt his garden. And I definitely don’t think it’s likely.

As for Guts… hm I’m just going to go all out and explain my take on Guts’ reaction to NGriff bc you gave me an opening lol.

I don’t think forgiveness for the Eclipse rape is on the table. But I definitely think his feelings towards NeoGriffith are very complex and he’s absolutely emotionally conflicted towards him, not just surprised by his appearance.

But yeah I don’t think his emotional conflict stems from wanting to forgive Griffith. What he wants is for Griffith to be or contain the version of himself that like, doesn’t require forgiving, because the only thing human Griffith did that hurt Guts was sacrifice the Band - and Guts never seemed to really blame him for that anyway.

Like when we’re talking about a dude who has undergone two (2) magical transformations and basically exists as three versions of himself, each with apparently very different internal emotional lives, it’s hard not to be conflicted about him.

Guts differentiates between human Griffith and Femto, and Guts does not hate human Griffith. We never ever not once see Guts direct an iota of rage towards Griffith as a human. Not even during the Eclipse, after he sacrificed everyone.

Very consistently, every time Guts thinks about human Griffith it’s with regret, sadness, a sense of loss. He regretfully thinks about Griffith kneeling in the snow like a million times, and never expresses anger about how Griffith sacrificed everyone and turned into an evil demon a year later. He thinks about Griffith among the dead Hawks during his run through memory lane, right after the Eclipse, and cries. Griffith is the most prominent shining light Schierke sees in his subconscious. Griffith is a part of the “campfire from those days” that still burns in his chest, and prevents him from being fully consumed by hate. etc etc.

He thinks about demonic-looking Femto when he’s feeling rage and hate, never human Griffith.

And I’m going to suggest that there are three main, related reasons that Guts feels emotional conflict in regards to NeoGriffith.

One is that it’s another change. Guts doesn’t know what exactly to expect from this third version of Griffith, who looks human again rather than demonic. He knows that he’s not “his” Griffith, because Skull Knight told him the fifth Godhand would incarnate, because he flew away from the Tower of Conviction on Zodd, and because the brand bleeds around him, but there’s a reason Guts rather desperately searches for a hint that NeoGriffith has regrets or feels remorse. Deep down he’s hoping that he’s closer to human Griffith than to Femto, basically, or that more of human Griffith is in there and reachable, or however you want to phrase it.

He lets Rickert hold him back from attacking until NeoGriffith directly says he’s free from his emotions, and then doesn’t actually try to strike until NGriff reiterates that sentiment with “I’ll not betray my dream. That is all.”

If NeoGriffith had feelings, if he felt regret, if he was no longer a malevolent demon, then Femto could be considered an anomaly that would carry sole blame for the Eclipse rape. Like, when we’re talking magical transformations that affect your mind as well as your body, the concept of blame is kind of nebulous. If NeoGriffith basically had all of human Griffith’s emotions and was horrified by his actions as Femto, and wanted to regain his relationship with Guts, then tbqh Guts would probably be able to go “oh well it wasn’t really you anyway.”

Yk, kinda like a Berserk fan who doesn’t consider Guts to be responsible for “the beast of darkness” assaulting Casca, but with the handy addition of a literal transformation. You can argue fictional moral philosophy wrt the morality of magically transforming into a monster and back again lol, but I definitely think Guts would seize the opportunity to write Femto off.

So, to split hairs, it’s less about potentially forgiving him, and more about potentially not holding him responsible. But yk, unfortunately for Guts NGriff turns out to be an apparently emotionless asshole who still won’t give him the time of day and says straight up that he regrets nothing, so that’s not an option for him.

The second reason is that, well, he looks like the dude that Guts felt such ridiculously intense feelings for that he rearranged his entire life and abandoned the people he considered his family just to feel like he was worthy of being his friend.

It’s a whole lot easier to feel rage against an aspect of someone you’re p much in love with when they look like a bona fide monster, rather than exactly like the person you love. You’ll even notice that, except in moments that emphasize the potential Guts has of following in his footsteps, Griffith’s face tends to be obscured or completely nonexistent when Guts thinks about Femto.

And the third reason is that he was already very emotionally conflicted over Femto. Femto raping Casca did not make him retroactively hate human Griffith, but his love for the man Griffith once was absolutely complicates his feelings with regards to Femto.

We see this in the way becoming a rage-fueled monster is framed as a temptation because he still wants to be his friend and equal, as per Griffith’s Promrose speech.

It’s also there in how Guts blatantly wants his attention and regard after everything.

He “threw away” Griffith’s love, so if he can’t have that then he wants Femto’s hate. He wants to be seen and acknowledged, even as a threat, so when Femto says that Guts doesn’t even register to him as an enemy, it pisses him off so much it gives him the strength to climb a flight of stairs with like half his bones broken and potentially-fatal pain in his brand, and swing his giant sword at him.

And we see it when he still thinks of him as a shining light in the darkness, despite everything.

Basically, on some emotional, irrational level, he still wants this:

Like, to reiterate, imo Guts’ emotional conflict isn’t about whether he can forgive Femto/NeoGriffith. It’s about the fact that Femto and NeoGriffith are both aspects of a dude that Guts had incredibly intense feelings for. They are distinct from Griffith but also inseparable from him, and that’s really, really hard to reconcile emotionally.

Hence, eg, a bunch of this maudlin shit:

Idk basically no I don’t think Guts is going to forgive NeoGriffith, but I do think that he is still very conflicted about him. He wants to want to kill him lol, but just as much, he wants to be seen by him, he wants his attention, he wants his love, he wants to be his equal, and he also wants to completely move on and just forget all his painfully fucked up and conflicting feelings towards him.

And I guess time will tell whether he achieves any of that.

[hellyeahomeland]

HIDE YOUR DOGS. LOCK YOUR DOORS: In which Sara and Ashley finally recount what happened during last year’s finale

[Alternate title: GMTA.]

[Ashley and I have alluded to our whirlwind of a day during last year’s finale many times on various podcasts but we’ve never actually talked about what went on. Since we’re now a full season later, and once again watching the finale together, we thought we’d chat about that crazy night, and how we’re attempting to prevent another disaster from occurring this year (at least as far as we can control). --Sara]

Ashley: Okay, hello to my friend who is sitting 18 inches away from me.

Sara: oh hi!

Sara: i feel like we should be sitting on opposite sides of each other so you can't read what i am writing

Ashly: would you like a glass of wine or is it too early?

Sara: mm it's almost 4

Ashley: ok brb afk

Sara: what is afk

Sara: ty for getting me wine

Ashley: cheers!

Sara: Cheers!! 🙄

Sara: I meant that to be a 😘

Sara: they are just next to each other on my most used emojis

Ashley: i have not received an eyeroll emoji in a really long time

Ashley: times have changed

Sara: they sho have

Ashley speaking of times changing

Sara: and SHO

Ashley: you are very funny sara

Sara: ikr

Ashley: ya

Ashley: anyhoozles

Sara: i'm glad that word has caught on

Ashley: yeah with me

Sara: me too!

Ashley: ANY

Ashley: HOOZLES

Sara: ANYHOOZLES

Sara: today is the day of the finale, which you forgot about

Sara: and i want to talk about what we were doing LAST year for the finale

Ashley: we are coming atcha from across my friend’s kitchen table

Sara: this is a story we tried to tell on the podcast like 4 separate times

Ashley: last year for the finale was so good

Ashley: i know you think it was a disaster but it was a REALLY FUN DAY

Sara: that weekend started out kinda shitty though

Ashley: omg

Ashley: because my flight got canceled

Sara: remember your flight got canceled

Sara: JINX

Ashley: yep

Sara: it was v stressful but you ended up making it to chicago

Ashley: the weather had been horrific in boston all weekend, so flights were impossible. i ended up flying to indianapolis.

Sara: for some reason i had not internalized that you were vegan-ish then so i got like cheese and crackers for some reason idk

Sara: so much has changed in the past year

Ashley: did you? you got me cinnamon sugar pita chips from trader joes.

Sara: yes i did

Sara: later we got chicago vodka

Ashley: we did!

Ashley: but i think we did that on saturday

Sara: and remember you saw someone in trader joe's that was a friend of a friend? that was freaky

Ashley: yeah and i only knew him because i was wearing a t-shirt for the crossfit my friend owned

Ashley: and he was all, “do you know the lady who owns it?"

Ashley: no, dumbass, i just bought this random-ass shirt

Sara: in hindsight that was probably the beginning of your long con to make me believe this person existed

Ashley: anyway we got vodka

Ashley: and wine

Ashley: hahahaha

Ashley: i talked to her on the phone last night and you HEARD ME, i ignored you for 45 minutes because i am a good hostess

Ashley: i left you to the dogs

Ashley: do you think people are going to really want to read this sara

Sara: ok but saturday was brunch and hamilton and you went to take a nap but ended up sleeping the rest of the night

Ashley: i did!

Sara: SUNDAY

Sara: ok on sunday

Sara: finale day

Sara: LAST YEAR'S FINALE DAY

Ashley: we went to a white sox game

Ashley: and they lost

Sara: yes that was fun as fuck

Ashley: and we drank alcoholic root beer

Sara: that was delicious!

Ashley: which was the beginning of a D E S C E N T

Sara: yes

Ashley: your phone is buzzing

Sara: it was really hot that day too

Ashley: do you want to check it

Sara: i just did it's ok

Ashley: it was! was i wearing a hot pink running skirt?

Sara: idr

Sara: i have a pic from that day

Ashley: me too but it’s just our faces

Ashley: i was wearing a white sox shirt

Ashley: and we went to navy pier

Ashley: and rode the ferris wheel

Sara: look how long my hair is! look how red yours is

Sara: we went to navy pier and the ferris wheel on saturday

Ashley: oh i forgot i had that necklace

Ashley: REMEMBER HOW RED MY HAIR WAS IN THE SUN????

Sara: SUNDAY we went to two separate locations to buy a tv

Ashley: oh was that saturday?? yeah that makes sense.

Ashley: right, we had to buy a tv.

Sara: for anyone still reading this

Ashley: because the tv in our airbnb was not HDMI equipped

Sara: the airbnb where we were staying did not have HDMI hook-ups

Ashley: i was like “we can watch on my computer” and you were like

Sara: so we couldn't hook up a roku

Ashley: IT IS THE FINALE

Sara: yes, i don't play around with that shit

Ashley: you brought your apple tv too

Sara: we went to target first

Ashley: we were both prepared

Ashley: we just wanted to buy the shitty roku that has the AV cables but technology has advanced

Sara: and were like "do you have a roku that just hooks up with the red/yellow/white cables"

Sara: and the guy said they did but he was mistaken

Ashley: okay really we are the same person so like

Ashley: we’re just typing the same things

Sara: we're both telling the same story

Sara: ok i will finish

Sara: the story

Ashley: i know but we do this all the time

Ashley: SARA BOUGHT A WHOLE TV

Sara: we do remember when we both had the same question about why you would still PMS after you had a hysterectomy

Ashley: AND IT LIVED IN HER CAR UNTIL SHE MOVED TO NEW YORK

Sara: true story

Sara: I BOUGHT THE FUCKING TV

Ashley: that wasn’t the question

Sara: we went to best buy

Ashley: the question was where the eggs would go if you still had your ovaries but no uterus

Sara: oh yeah

Sara: i had to ask my mom

Ashley: shouts out to our friend who recently got de-utez

Ashley: ed

Ashley: de-utezed

Sara: the answer by the way

Sara: is that the eggs are just re-absorbed into your body

Sara: the human body is so silly!

Sara: BACK TO OUR STORY

Ashley: that entire quote is sara’s mom

Ashley: she was like “i don’t ask what makes my car work"

Sara: no my mom said the human body is amazing

Sara: and i said the human body is silly

Sara: OK BACK TO OUR STORY FOR REAL

Ashley: there is a dog outside

Ashley: the dogs inside are going crazy

Sara: much barks

Ashley: woofs!

Sara: dogs is going crazy*

Ashley: yes thank you

Ashley: BACK TO OUR STORY

Sara: so we get to best buy

Ashley: sara bought a tv and we had to uber it 12 minutes back to the apartment

Sara: and i ask the best buy man which of the TVs have HDMI hook-ups

Sara: and he's like "um all of them it's the year 2017"

Sara: and i said "ok i need to buy the cheapest tv because i really only want to watch one thing on it"

Sara: so i bought a tv

Sara: it was like $100

Sara: i intended to return it

Sara: but that did not happen

Ashley: i think it was $132

Sara: shit that's expensive

Sara: i'm so ridiculous

Sara: 132 american dollars to watch that shit ass finale

Ashley: i wonder if the best buy man’s ears are ringing

Sara: i'm sure he's reading this

Ashley: hi best buy man

Sara: anyway we uber'd back to the airbnb to drop the tv off

Sara: then went to the white sox game where they lost

Sara: THEN we went to the liquor store

Sara: to buy liquor

Sara: bc after 2 drinks at the baseball game that seemed like a good idea

Ashley: no we just went back to trader joe's

Sara: [we just had a verbal argument about whether we got the liquor at a liquor store or trader joe's]

Sara: [ashley was right]

Ashley: [ashley is often right]

Ashley: we also bought wine from walgreens

Sara: which is what i remembered as a liquor store

Sara: we bought cupcake wine in honor of carrie mathison

Sara: and some red bull

Sara: for red bull and vodka

Ashley: oh god the red bull

Ashley: because as you know ashley is sleepy

Sara: that was the first (AND LAST) time i ever had red bull + vodka

Sara: we pre-gamed with the red bull/vodka

Sara: by the time the episode had started we were drinking the pinot grigio

Ashley: and we got a bottle of whispering angel which i am also drinking tonight

Sara: ew

Sara: i can't drink that anymore

Sara: blech

Ashley: but i only have a little bit left

Ashley: i bought better wine for later

Ashley: remember? you were there.

Sara: ya i was there we got octopus wine too

Sara: AND PRETZELS

Ashley: how stoked were you when the OA said her fave food was pretzels

Sara: 

Ashley: and wtf kind of question is that to ask a woman who has been subsisting on fucking nutrition pellets for however long

Sara: i didn't feel like i drank that much

Sara: during last year's finale

Sara: but we somehow drank the entire bottle of pinot grigio despite me feeling like i had at most 1 glass

Ashley: wait am i going to have to tell the whole story of all of my adventures that night or can we skip it

Sara: you have to tell it but we're not there yet

Ashley: shit

Ashley: ok

Sara: i remember watching that godawful finale next to you so distinctly

Sara: like... i don't really allow talking during homeland unless i initiate it

Ashley: and you broke all your rules

Sara: yes, that's what i'm getting at

Ashley: well not the phone one

Ashley: gmta

Sara: when they showed quinn being shot i was like "holy shit. they killed him"

Sara: and you punched me

Ashley: and i was like

Ashley: NO THEY DIDN'T

Sara: ya you never believed he was dead

Sara: like

Sara: ever

Ashley: the past year has been remarkably similar

Sara: lol right??

Ashley: oh god that fucking finale

Sara: while i believed from the very second 100% he was dead

Ashley: as soon as it was over we decided to record a podcast

Ashley: but we were not allowed to release it

Ashley: and sara has deleted it

Ashley: sorry guys

Ashley: she failed you

Sara: i don't remember anything from the second half of watching that episode though

Sara: i also don't remember what we talked about on the podcast

Sara: it was SUPER drunken

Ashley: well we were so drunk

Sara: ya and i checked whatsapp

Sara: and it was in a full scale panic

Sara: and i just went to bed

Ashley: you went to bed pretty much right after the finale and i went into the bedroom to check in with everybody

Sara: i was like peace out homies

Ashley: and everybody was sad so i was like “i’m not doing this"

Ashley: sigh

Ashley: okay sara went to sleep

Ashley: and ashley, for once, did not.

Sara: at like 10 so right after the drunk podcast was finished

Ashley: i went and committed a crime

Ashley: the end.

Sara: that's a great teaser

Sara: COME ON you love to tell this story

Sara: it's really funny

Ashley: dude i don’t know if i’m allowed to publicly tell it though

Ashley: i almost broke up a relationship

Sara: use code words

Sara: or euphemisms

Ashley: okay so after the episode i really wanted to talk about ANYTHING other than homeland

Sara: [typing]

Ashley: dude stop it i’m telling it

Sara: i was typing to jordan not you

Ashley: HI JORDAN

Ashley: anyway i couldn’t really handle the whatsapp chat because everybody was sad

Ashley: and i was in denial. nothing has changed.

Ashley: sara just interrupted me to verbally spoil me about the homeland finale

Ashley: “I DIDN’T SPOIL YOU, FUCKING SHOWTIME TWITTER DID” - sara

Ashley: who is not obeying her own rules

Ashley: anyway i have a friend who watches homeland, and in fact got me into homeland, but he is what some might call a “casual viewer"

Ashley: he is usually 1-2 weeks behind

Ashley: that’s not really a problem anymore now that i have ALL YOU GUYS

Ashley: but i decided that i wanted to talk to him. also, he lives in chicago. this is pertinent information.

Ashley: so i tried to call him.

Ashley: no answer.

Ashley: i tried to call him like 50 more times.

Ashley: no answer.

Ashley: i sent a bunch of texts. NO ANSWER.

Ashley: finally i just decided to go over to his house.

Ashley: which was probably a ten minute walk from our airbnb, but i took an uber.

Ashley: and i got there and i rang his buzzer.

Ashley: no answer.

Sara: you also made friends with your uber driver who called YOU like 50 times over the next month

Ashley: i rang his buzzer again. NO ANSWER.

Ashley: i did. drunk ashley is retiring after the episode tonight.

Ashley: at least until season 8.

Sara: what? --me before you sent that last message

Sara: oh ok. --me after you sent that last message

Ashley: there were some people out walking their dogs, so i petted them.

Ashley: and eventually i just followed somebody who lived in the building into the building.

Sara: that's not suspicious at all

Ashley: walked up to his apartment

Ashley: and knocked

Ashley: NO ANSWER

Ashley: knocked a few more times

Ashley: NO ANSWER

Ashley: decided, in my infinite drunkness, to try the doorknob.

Sara: the thing that opens doors

Ashley: just fyi you guys, if you have a friend like me, you might want to lock your doors.

Ashley: because i walked into his pitch-black apartment at like 11:30 at night, because he is a grown adult and he had to get up in the morning.

Ashley: and ultimately walked into his bedroom and was like DUDE.

Sara: HIDE YOUR DOGS

Sara: LOCK YOUR DOORS

Ashley: and he woke up and was like

Ashley: i’m trying to figure out how best to describe his reaction

Ashley: he opened his eyes and was like, “oh, hi.”

Ashley: that’s it that’s all that happened

Sara: if you walked into my apartment in the middle of the night without warning i'd believe first that you were a ghost

Sara: a very lifelike one

Ashley: i spent two hours in his apartment in the middle of the night complaining about how carlos sanchez was going by his original first name, ‘yolmer'

Ashley: and apparently i told him straight up that quinn died

Sara: LOL

Sara: at the yolmer part

Ashley: he complained about some things of his own

ara: what kinds of things did he complain about

Ashley: surprisingly, not about the fact that i showed up at his apartment in the middle of the night.

Ashley: we had lunch a day or two later and i was like “what the fuck is wrong with you and how are we still friends,” and he was like

Sara: good friend

Ashley: “well i went back to sleep afterward and it’s not like you ransacked the place"

Ashley: anyway, this year i do not have anybody’s house to break into

Ashley: because i am already in the only  house i’d be able to break into easily

Sara: our tv has an hdmi cable

Sara: we have TWO DOGS

Ashley: TWO

Sara: one who is basically the dog version of me

Ashley: we are going to snuggle with both of them

Sara: the other who is a giant disaster

Ashley: don’t say what you’re typing

Ashley: oh

Ashley: never mind yes that is accurate

Ashley: i thought you were going to say that the other one reminds you of me

Sara: no

Ashley: but i can at least keep my tongue in my mouth

Sara: i've never met any human who is like the other dog

Sara: she is the happiest, most insane, most ridiculous dog ever

Sara: and we need to tire her out

Sara: before 9pm

Ashley: to be fair, i’ve met some insane and ridiculous humans.

Sara: same

Sara: but she is HAPPY

Sara: "her is a happy dog," as you would say

Ashley: yeah, and her crazy is nothing that can’t be dealt with by throwing a ball around the yard

Ashley: although her feets does get muddy

Ashley: anyway we have wine

Ashley: and only wine

Sara: i have pretzels

Ashley: and baked goods!

Sara: and bagels

Sara: this year, the key to not repeating last year is to eat something

Ashley: i have cookies shaped like unicorns and dogs and a few that are shaped like unicorn dogs

Sara: and also not be near houses you could easily break into

Ashley: didn’t we eat last year??

Sara: no

Sara: that was the problem

Sara: we ate some at the baseball game

Sara: but not for like 8 hours after that

Sara: despite the fact we continued to imbibe

Ashley: so i will blame it on the alcohol

Sara: i was feeling chill about the episode

Sara: until i just saw that time jump tweet

Sara: we should go play with the dogs now

Ashley: do you think you will stay up until 9:30pm

Ashley: or 10:30pm

Ashley: rather

Sara: yes

Ashley: i forgot what time zone we are in

Ashley: i also forgot the finale was on tonight

Sara: that happened

Ashley: what would you do if i was like “i’m gonna go take a nap"

Sara: i would say ok

Sara: go take a nap

Sara: you must be tired from driving literally all over boston and cambridge

Ashley: say what you mean

Ashley: “you must be tired from thinking you knew where you were going"

Ashley: “and then getting lost"

Ashley: “in the place where you live"

Ashley: “multiple times"

Sara: "getting lost all over boston and cambridge even though you have lived here your whole entire life except for a summer when you lived in canada"

Ashley: BULLSHIT i didn’t grow up in boston/cambridge, i grew up in the suburbs

Sara: "turn right then immediately turn left"

Sara: is basically google maps in cambridge

Ashley: also i didn’t tell you that i got a little bit lost on the way to the market after brunch, but i got there without any help.

Sara: HAHAHHAHAHAHAH

Sara: you handled it like a pro

Sara: i had no idea

Sara: i think because we were listening to a v funny recording of you reading fic dramatically

Ashley: to be fair though

Ashley: i didn’t JUST drive around cambridge and boston all day

Ashley: i ALSO went to CrossFit

Ashley: omg yes

Sara: this is so long we should wrap up

Ashley: and that’s when i forgot the finale was tonight

Ashley: because i attempted to schedule a personal training session for tomorrow morning

Sara: ok on my Things Carrie Wore This Week posts i always end with "IN CONCLUSION: _____"

Sara: so how would you CONCLUDE this conversation

Ashley: IN CONCLUSION what did YOU do this morning that was so strenuous

Sara: IN CONCLUSION NOTHING BUT I AM ALSO NOT ABOUT TO GO TAKE A NAP

Ashley: IN CONCLUSION I’m not either but I also wasn’t going to, I just wanted to know how you’d respond.

Sara: IN CONCLUSION: single-use TV, breaking and entering, DOGS, ashley take a nap what else is new

Ashley: IN CONCLUSION: why is almost all of that ashley stuff

Sara: single-use TV is mine

Sara: and DOGS is both

Ashley: IN CONCLUSION no charges were pressed

Ashley: Enjoy the show

Ashley: THE END

Sara: IN CONCLUSION

Sara: the goddamn

Sara: worst

Sara: $132

Sara: i ever spent

Sara: THE END

Sara: .

Sara: go take a nap

Ashley: I’m not tired I was just wondering

Ashley: GOODBYE EVERYBODY

Ashley: WE ARE GOING TO TALK IN OUR VOICES NOW

Sara: auf wiedersehen!

[justteamavatar]

Talk to me about Korra dealing her trauma post book four and how Asami fits into her long term recovery bc I cannot get enough

Oh man, you’re basically asking me to spill out mysoul. I could go on forever about Korra’s recovery arc as well as Asami in general(hence why it took me FOREVER to respond to this – !!! I’m so sorry @swatztj​ !!!). Let’s see where this goes… (warning - word vomit below)

** * * *

Korra’srecovery arc was one of my favourite about the entireseries. While it’s amazing to know that Korra and Asami are off living happilytogether (korrasami forever

Korrawas first introduced to us as the freaking Avatar, master of all four elements -we had to deal with it. We saw her as a very strong, physical being who mastered her waterbending, earthbending and firebending at a young age. Her demeanor wasbrash, loud, aggressive and direct, used (in many cases) as a tool to hide insecurities.  She was more of a punch first, think later sort of gal andall she ever wanted to be in her life was the Avatar, there was no questionabout it… that was, until the aftermaths of Amon, Unlaq and Zaheertranspired.

*Thoughsince this about Korra’s trauma in Book 4, we will focus more on thepost-Zaheer conflicts*

Korra was kidnapped, chained, poisoned, forced intothe Avatar State, smashed against mountains and stripped of the air within herlungs. She was at her most vulnerable moment and completely out ofcontrol.

Someof us believed that Korra would get right back up after Suyin removed the poisonfrom her system. After all, it didn’t seem to take too long for Korra to spring back into action after briefly losing her bending in addition to her connections with the past Avatars (though,this isn’t to say that she didn’t endure any pain, grief, self-doubt ornegativity during those periods).

However, at the end of Venom of the Red Lotus, we saw Korra as an empty shell – incapacitated,quiet and unresponsive to the outside world. Internally, a whole other battlewas being fought. 

She was told that the airbenders would return to theirnomadic roots while she recuperated. She was told that they would work togetherto end discord and restore peace and balance. The woman who had always dreamedof being the Avatar, master of all four elements and bridge between worlds, wasno longer needed. Her physical power and self-identity was gone.

* * * * *

“I’m trying to understand why this happened to me. But nothing makes any sense. I’m tired Katara. I’m so tired.” ~ Korra (B4:E2)

Inthe beginning events of Book 4, we see Korra detached from her friends andfamily. She could barely sleep or eat and spent much of her wakeful momentsin silence. When see was faced with times of sleep, she would constantly be plaguedwith the intrusive horrors she endured by herself in Book 3. This trauma caused Korra to fall into a depressive state as well as develop Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), and hope faded away from her at every passing second. With the little sliver of willpower she had left,she finally made the decision to visit Katara – the first step needed to beginher recovery arc.

After months of being incapacitated, the stepsneeded to regain mobility took time and patience for Korra. We slowly but surely saw her become more and more active. A quick toe twitch turned into a few walking stepswith Katara’s guidance. While these were fantastic accomplishments for someone wheelchair-bound,things moved a bit too slow for Korra’s tastes. We saw her lashout in anger/disappointment at Katara as well as Tenzin when he visited the compound to see her spar. Though Korra made progress, it doesn’t spark enough hope for someone who had been eager to getout in the real world her entire life.

While she was healing physically, Korra was still faced with phases of “fight, flight or freeze” throughout herrecovery. Certain triggers continued to appear when she began to walk,spar and bend again, which caused flashbacks to flare up at unexpected moments. Herbody would lock up and her mind became fixated on her traumatic past. She stillfelt as though she was being attacked, reliving the effects of the poison andsuffocation over and over again. This caused Korra to hit a wall – she didn’tquite understand why those flashbacks and freeze ups kept happening, but she trulybelieved that she needed to expose herself to action again. Here is whereanother key element to Korra’s recovery arc comes in – exposure.

* * * * *

“The mind canbe a powerful ally or your great enemy.” ~ Katara (B4:E2)

The opening shot of our Avatar in Korra Alone was very indicative of thecondition of her mental state – shattered, distorted, unstable, but notnecessarily unrepairable. After embarking on a voyage to Republic City, we saw another confrontation between Korra and her past trauma; this time in the formof an eerie apparition. She turned away from her destination (Republic City) to walk an anonymouslife in the Earth Kingdom with the hope of reconnecting with herself and her Avatar spirit.

Throughout Korra’s journey, she constantly struggled with hallucinations. Sometimes she visualized Raava – with whom she ran towards - but other times (more often than not) she faced with her own ghostly shadow – with whom shebacked away from. These apparitions only seemed to become stronger whenever Korra fought them. Her “punch first” tactics remained ineffective as herhallucinations constantly countered her with bending and chains. Even when she was in combat with other opponents, they morphed into her ghostlyvisions, forcing her to constantly fight with herself and lose each battle inthe process.

This, understandably, got quiet infuriating. A partof Korra knew that her visions were not real, but she couldn’t escapethem as they seemly controlled every aspect of her day-to-day life. She hadenough, making the decision to finally chase after these phantoms as opposed to fighting them. Little did she know that her decision would lead to the familiar face ofToph Beifong.

* * * * *

“…You need toface your fears. You can’t expect to deal with future enemies if you’re stillfighting the old ones.” ~ Toph(B4:E4)

Unsurprisingly, Toph hadn’t changed one bit. Her demeanourremained direct, harsh, taunting and honest and this seemed to take Korra bysurprise. After all, she was used to being met with looks and words of sympathy(understandably so) after her horrible incident. The bluntness used by our oldmetalbender, while unexpected, was another step that helped Korra towards herrecovery.

Toph was able to quickly realize that Korra was verydetached from the world; instead of looking forward she would always looked back in the past:

“If there’sone thing I learned on the beat, it’s that the names change but the streetstays the same.”

Yes Korra did hold Avatar title, but she was still aperson – a human being who could only accomplish and change so much within herown lifetime. Other Avatar’s would come and go and so would other acts of evil.

What was great about this confrontation was that little spark of defensivenessand enthusiasm we were used to seeing in Korra before the Book 3 finale. Korra knewof and believed in the accomplishments she achieved throughout her life as the Avatar.She challenged Toph on this exchange, but in a less angry and hostile way that we were used to seeing in the first few Books. 

This ultimately led to the two characters sparring,where Korra seemed to be having moments of excitement despite losing the battles. Itwas quite a refreshing site to see, in my opinion.

Not only did Toph confront Korra on these issues,but she also detected small amounts of liquid metal circulating throughout theAvatar’s body. She attempted to rid this metal of her system, but Korra resisted,letting her fears and flashbacks take over again. This would be a task that Korra would have to do on her own; and it is one that she would successfully complete.

Korra used Toph’s advice to metalbend the liquid outof body and release some of those fears that sheheld close, tapping into her Avatar state. Toph was able to ground Korra back to the world again and make her feel more in tune with reality.

While this helped her physically, Korra’sbattle was not over as she experienced yet another hallucination while facingKuvira for the first time. Now, Korra needed to revisit her biggest nightmare of all face-to-face– Zaheer.

** * * *

“That poison should have killed you. But you were able to fight it off.You think your power has limits. I say its limitless.” ~ Zaheer (B4:E9)

Korra’s confrontation with Zaheerimmediately began with an act of determination and fury. She finally stoodbefore the man that traumatized her life and boldly claimed how he held nopower over her anymore. That daring and direct demeanor she showed toZaheer was reminiscent of her persona back in the earlier Books. However, justlike in the past, these defiant acts were used as a way to cover herinsecurities.

Zaheer lunged towards Korra withthe intent of triggering her fears once again. Despite his chained position,Korra backed away in panic and this ultimately broke the belief that seeing him boundwould make her unafraid. Korra was terrified of not only him but of beingperceived as useless and of not being the person she used to be again.

Zaheer challenged these fears andclaimed that neither of them were the same since the events that happened yearsago; he was chained despite learning to fly and she was limitless despiteholding herself down. Korra would never be the same person again as she wouldhave to carry the trauma  with her for the rest of her life. 

However, instead ofassociating said trauma with pain and weakness, she could use it for strength.As Zaheer had said, the liquid metal should have killed Korra, but it didn’t.She was the one that survived despite all odds pointed against her. She had won the battle in the end and he had been the one who lost. The fact that she remained alive points to the ideathat she had no limits.

We have to remember that Korra wasalone in her showdown with Zaheer. None of her friends or family could aid her.Her severed connections to the past Avatars left her alone to fight against Zaheer and the poisonin her most vulnerable state. Korra resisted the poison by resisting theAvatar State for as long as humanly possible. When she could no longer hold offthat particular battle, she fought for her life as well as Raava’s, despite howpainful and agonizing every second of it was. She was truly unstoppable and shehad yet to recognize or consider this amazing feat.

Korra had to accept what happened to her andwhile this meant acknowledging the bad, it also meant acknowledging the good. Insteadof fixating on the moments of suffocation and powerlessness, she had to let the scene play outentirely - focusing on the future and not just the past. The past was not something she could change.

For the first time in nearly threeyears, Korra gained control over her fear. She accepted what happened – the pain,the exhaustion as well as the endurance. She had made it and in the process, connectedback with her spiritual energy.

Korra reached an understanding withher trauma. While her past was not something that she could simply shrug off or ignore,it could be used as a tool of recognition in which Korra could connect withothers at a deeper level. As Toph had said in the swamp:

“Sounds like you’re carrying around your former enemies, the same wayyou’re still carrying around that metal poison. You maybe consider you couldlearn something from them?”

Which can be coupled with Tenzin’s ownwords of:

“It’s true, there will always be new conflicts and enemies to face. Butthe important thing is to learn from yourenemies and better yourself over time, which you have.”

Korra learned from her painful struggles and was able to use new-found knowledge to reach outto others – including her own enemies. She greatly opposed the methods used byKuvira to unite the Earth Kingdom, yet she still related to and understood herat a personal level, even going as far as to risk her own life to save the dictator. She understood Kuvira’s emotions of fear, abandonment, vulnerabilityand lack of control and this level of empathy displayed wasn’t something we saw Korrause towards Amon, Unalaq or Zaheer.

Korra truly found inner peaceonce she found her way out of the dark tunnel. She proved to herself and others that shewas more than just a symbol of physical prowess. She had found inner peace with herself and her trauma, drawing meaning from it which will ultimately help to make her become even stronger in the future.

Korra fought, learned and recoveredfrom some of the darkest moments in her life. She will always carry thescars left behind from the incident that happened in Book 3, but she made herself an even better personby pushing forward instead of holding back. Korra became a beacon of hope forso many of us and remains a character that we will always hold near and dear to ourhearts.

* * * * *

“I want you to know that I’m here for you. If you ever want to talk or… anything.” ~ Asami (B3:E13)

Now, I’ll try to make the Asami part quick becausethis response has gone on for far too long :p.

I think Asami took the role of Korra’s anchor andvoice of reason, even if neither of them fully realized it from the get-go.

Asami bore witness to it all – Korra’s gravelyinjured body smashing into rocks as well as her diminishing hope and sense ofself. She saw her best friend falling deeper and deeper, but if there’s one thing we know about Asami Sato, it’s that she will always have your back.

Asami took on the role of Korra’s caretaker; she helped her dressed, pushed her wheelchair around, made conversation and she presumably helped her bathe, eat and sleep. She was truly there for her despite her other responsibilities of being the CEO of one of the most prestigious companies in the world. Korra was her priority. Heck, the woman was even willing to drop everything and accompany Korra while she recuperated in the Southern Water Tribe.

These feelings of sadness and hopelessness were quite familiar to Asami. We know that she’s had a pretty difficult life from the start - her mother was murdered, her father sided with the equalists, she had to take command of a large company at age 18 and overall, she had a lonely life. Due to these unfortunate events, it was likely that Asami understood Korra and her depressive state at a far deeper level than anyone else who was close with Korra. Asami neither pushed nor prodded and instead gave an open invitation for Korra to talk with her whenever she was ready. 

Korra did end up taking Asami’s offer up as we see her communicate to her via a letter in Korra Alone. Korra opened up quite a bit to her, explaining how hard the past few years had been, how she couldn’t tap into the Avatar State, how she kept having hallucinations and how she feared that she would never fully recover again. There was a reason why Korra contacted Asami and not Mako, Bolin or the others. She knew that Asami would understand her at that vulnerable time and felt comfortable enough to expose a very fragile part of her life. Asami was the rock that Korra could hold onto and I’m sure that she felt some relief and comfort after sending her letter off.

This comfort continued in Remembrances. Korra expressed her same worries again, but Asami’s consistent support, admiration and belief in Korra and her abilities shined through during the exchange.

And finally, we know that what goes around, comes around. After Kuvira’s attack on Republic City, Asami lost her father for good. This time, Korra was the one who took the initiative to provide emotional and physical support for her. She apologized for her three year absence and suggested taking a vacation where the two of them could finally relax and take care of each other without any interruptions (…besides the big rock spirit thing…). 

Korra and Asami had seen each other at some of their darkest moments and while they were strong and developed individually through their past traumas, they would and always will be stronger together and persevere through any obstacle thrown at them.

The. Freaking. End :)

[phoenixfire-thewizardgoddess]

Do you have any headcanons for ftm trans scout? Tf2 is a great game but it could use a little more representation..

Actually, I have a favourite little fanfic about exactly that. 

[That Name by Diredevil]

-

Headcanons?

Well, when they first band together, we know Scout is LOUD about how amazing a guy he is, and how fast/smart/strong/etc he is. And I think, perhaps under the circumstances there would be two reasons…The first being to establish himself as he/him to the group unforgettably, and secondly, to make himself feel comfortable in a new environment where things are uncertain.

That is to say, at home it’d been a bit weird for a bit as his Ma and brothers kept accidentally using [dead name] instead of Jeremy, and the wrong pronouns, but they got it eventually. Ma had cried when she realised, not bc there was anything wrong with Scout… just that “she’d accidentally given him the wrong name” (bc she had [dead name] and Jeremy picked out before he was born]. It was pretty touching.

Sure, someone made a smart comment about it… but Scout rarely had to raise a bat, before someone in the family was breaking their teeth and demanding they respect their brother. It was nice.

But on base, with RED? This was a different kettle of fish.

Scout had impulsively taken the job, even if it worried his family, that he was so far away with strangers. They didn’t say it out loud, but they didn’t want him away somewhere they couldn’t get to, if he needed them. And vice versa.The family was a Unit, and while their reputation kept low-level problems away, there were always threats that needed more than one person alone to deal with. 

Scout had fidgeted just about out of his skin the whole train ride to Teufort, it was boring as hell, especially for someone who liked to run. Besides, he was a bit worried about the outfit. You could see faint outlines of his bandages through it… he’d come up with a million excuses as to why he was wearing them… but who knew what would come out of his mouth when he was asked?

After a few useless minutes of internally panicking over it, Scout shoves the thoughts away and starts to hype himself up… 

RED didn’t just pick anyone, yeah? They needed the fuckin’ best!And here he was, the BEST at what he did!

-

Arriving was no big deal. 

Some others were there, others still coming. The Sniper seemed nice, but distant, but according to the others he was always like that. He seemed quiet, too, which was maybe why he’d just about run for cover when Scout started to rapidfire talk at the poor bugger… Funny, most Aussies were more… well, MORE. Then again, Scout wasn’t gonna go pointing fingers at the guy.He’d nearly been crushed by the Pyro’s hug, and Engineer slung a companionable arm over Scout’s shoulders as the Texan showed the runner about the place. If he noticed anything amiss, the man said nothing. Very friendly pair… Scout’d thought, til he saw the fucking flamethrower Pyro used… the way the flames reflected off the empty gasmask lenses sent a thrill of fear through the runner.

There was a Spy somewhere… Engie said he’d probably seen Scout already and would make himself known eventually.

The Soldier and Demo were playing cards when he’d met them; Soldier was almost as loud, and Demo seemed amazingly friendly. They’d invited him to play, but Engie pointed out they’d need to finish the tour first… 

So far, so good.

The Heavy hadn’t come in yet, something about having to take a secret flight out of Russia. And the Medic arrived an hour after Scout, so their introduction was brief… but the man had taken hold of the runner’s arm, when Engie was further ahead and asked how he was doing; and mentioned that he was aware of ‘zhe situation, so Scout should not hesitate to come to Medic vith any concerns, ja?’

Which was nice, but a little shocking even though it shouldn’t be. The doc would have been told… it was just, Scout wasn’t quite ready for others outside the immediate family and neighbourhood to know, right?

Medic had patted his shoulder, frowned a moment to himself, then ambled away. It was then the runner realised the man had a live, blood-spattered dove, on his shoulder… ‘Archimedes’ turns out, how’d he missed that?

Still, it was a solid introduction… his room was pretty nice, the lounge area or ‘common room’ had a sorta okay couch and a tv, so that was great. They were ordering pizza for dinner, but Engie mentioned something about making a cooking roster, once everyone’d settled in… that sounded exciting… not.Scout, despite his Ma’s best attempts to teach him, couldn’t cook for shit. Well, toast and basic stuff, but he swears the one time he tried to make a cake for his Ma’s birthday, the recipe book caught fire before he could start… it could sense an impending disaster.

The only real bother was… the bathroom. Standard set-up of a high school locker room, really… lockers, mirrors and sinks, a few cubicles, a urinal or two… and a long row of showers. Where were the stalls Miss P promised?

Fuck, this was going to be a problem.

Thankfully, he was still touring with Medic, who leaned over to mention that the Infirmary happened to have a small bathroom ‘vhich just so happened to have a shower if he vas interested’… and the runner let out a sigh of relief. “Doc, I could fuckin’ kiss ya…” he beamed, and the German chuckled.“Another time, perhaps, Herr Scout… I have to unpack first.” 

Seems like everything was pretty settled then. 

-

Miss Pauling called in, bringing the Heavy (or, as Scout first assumed, a mountain with a FACE holy shit the dude was big) with her. She spoke to each merc in turn, ascertaining whether they’d noticed anything they needed or if they’d noticed anything broken.

She was also trying to work out groceries, they’d get a weekly delivery from the local store at whatever base they ended up on… but for now there was an ad hoc list being tossed together. If they needed anything else… well, there was always the store itself. Engie had a truck, Medic an ambulance and the Sniper, his van.

Apparently this Spy fellow had a vehicle, but no one had seen him to ask. 

When Miss P got to Scout, and god did he have the worst crush on this amazing woman, she asked the same questions she had the others… then quietly leaned in to mention that if he told her his preferred brand, she could make certain any sanitary items he needed were sent on a bi-weekly basis. Maybe a calendar too. 

“Generous as you are smart and gorgeous, Miss P…” he’d grinned back, trying to charm.

She’d laughed, lightly, and put on a sympathetic smile. “Thank you, though you should know I’m not really into guys… or I’d date you in a heartbeat.” she teased. 

That? That sent Scout’s confidence into overdrive for the rest of the day… right up until he first met Spy.

-

Scout had taken a quick shower in the Infirmary when everyone else was busy. But as he left, he ran straight into Spy… the man literally appearing out of nowhere. He swore quite loudly in surprise, but the other remained nonchalant, narrowing his eyes at the runner.

“What are you doing here?” Spy asks, eventually. 

“Er… taking a shower?” Scout answers, truthfully. Holding up the messy bundle of his travel clothes and towel as proof.

“Non, I mean… what are you doing out here, on zhis base… ma fille?” Spy asked again, tilting his head. 

Now, Scout wasn’t sure what the french meant, but he had a feeling it wasn’t good. “I’m here cause I’m the best, ya fruity bastard, what’re you good at, hide’n’seek?” he mouths off in response.

Spy fixes the runner a look, dead in the eyes, as he says, “Zhis is no place for little girls, (dead name), you should know that by now.” 

And before Scout can even defend himself, the man has cloaked and gone.

Fear pools in the pit of his stomach, gnawing at him; it was all going so well, fuck, this wasn’t fair… his skin was crawling at hearing that fucking name again, especially laced with such-… such-… 

He wasn’t sure. Smug, condescending, cold… but all thrown together. That sense of wrongness, of displacement, which he thought had long since died since he’d had the chance to express himself properly… came flooding back. Fuck. If he could just… could just get to a phone and call Ma or one of his brothers… it’d be okay… he’d be okay…

“You okay, mate?” comes a voice by him, and nearly startles Scout out of his skin. Sniper’s by him, looking concerned. “Run in wiv the Spook, hey? Right bloody wanker he is, can’t wait to watch him die through me scopes.”

He’s hovering, not touching, because maybe he’s seen someone having a breakdown before, but the voice is a nice anchor. 

“B-be fine in a second, just gotta… phone home.” Scout says, simplifying his situation, and Sniper just nods. What had he heard? Fuck, did he know too?

Day one hadn’t been the time he wanted to disclose everything… 

“Sure, there’s one near the common room, but if you’re after privacy, I got one in me van, mate. C’mon… let’s set you right.” Sniper reassures, guiding the runner outside, and opening the van door. He points out the phone, offers a chair and asks if Scout was okay to be alone… the runner said yes, and dials the familiar number… relief flooding through him as his Ma picks up.

She’d sensed something was up with ‘her baby’ (he was going to be fifty with six kids of his own, and still be the family baby, Scout just fucking knew it)… and waited by the phone for his call.

“Jeremy, is everything okay?” she’d asked.Scout opened his mouth, took a deep breath, and told her everything. Afterwards, there was a moment of quiet before his Ma’s angry-calm tone came back on the line… “Oh, he did… did he?”There was three seconds when Scout assumed his mother was on her way here to flat out fucking murder the guy, before she sighed. “Scout, I didn’t wanna tell ya this LIKE this… but, I kinda knew about Spy before you left. He said he was working there too… was real pissed you were chosen’ n’everything. He knows, mostly ‘cause it’s his job to, and kinda cause he’s ya dad… I didn’t want you to find out like this, but it’s why he knew. No one told him or nothing. I’m so sorry honey.”

Spy was WHAT?

“Bombshell, huh? Well, least I got the best part of our union… you, baby. Wouldn’t trade ya for anything…” his Ma continued. She was always giving little peptalks like this to her boys… most of ‘em didn’t know their dads, but she was more than enough of a parent to them. Even when they surprised her on a daily basis (from pet snakes, to Johnny’s first boyfriend, to the time they put poprocks in a cake, and a thousand other ridiculous things). 

“Aw god, Ma…” he whines, flushing a little. “I’m good now… but thanks for picking up the phone so fast.”

“Anytime, my baby boy, anytime. And you let the bastard know I’m gonna kneecap ‘im when I see him next… love ya, bye!” 

He hears the phone clunk down, and chuckles. There’s a knock on the door, and Sniper peers in, “You good? Heard ya still on the phone when I got back… didn’t wanna interrupt, hate when people do that.”

“Yeah, fine… thanks.” Scout responds.

“Good, mate… time for tucker, anyway. C’mon, that Engineer bloke made something that smells amazing.” Sniper yawns, rubbing at his face. “Sorry, s’not you… timezones here are all warped around, still trying to get used to it. I mean, I did take international jobs before, but that was like, a week at most in another country, now I have to be on-board for battle in your morning… which is my night, y’see?”

The casual talk just seemed to set Scout at ease, as they moved towards the common room -it was the only room in the base with a dining table after all. He didn’t wanna go slinging the word ‘friendship’ around like some starry eyed primary schooler but… he’s pretty sure they’ve somehow formed one in the last hour. Not sure how, exactly, but it was pretty good.

-

Dinners were loud, chaotic and fun.

Spy slunk in at some point, but refused to talk. There was discolouration about his nose, and his mask seemed to bulge about the nose, like there was a dressing there. He glowered at Scout, then at Sniper; who grinned at the runner.

Turns out he’d decked the bastard one, when Scout was on the phone. Now, the runner wasn’t one for arbitrarily throwing marriage proposals around, but… He’d thanked him, and Sniper dismissed it with casual ease. 

Someone asked Spy about his face, and he made a scathing remark about feral bushmen and little girls that no one bothered to pry into. Otherwise, dinner was great, engie was a hell of a cook. 

-

Medic had to give them all their physicals, and insert the respawn chips… but apparently he also had something called an ‘uber implant’ that he was going to put in at the same time. Scout doesn’t remember much of it… just Medic doing a once over, tutting at the bandages (yeah yeah, not like ya can just order a freakin’ sports bra out of the Mann Co catalogue without someone asking questions), and using his bird as a distraction whilst he sneakily got the needle-fearing runner with the anaesthetic. 

Scout would never forgive archie, the fancy pigeon had fooled him with that fluffy please-pet-me wiggle… fully knowing his owner was waiting to pounce.

Still, when he woke up, his chest felt heavier than usual, not too bad just off. And the back of his neck was tingly. No scars though… which was fucking weird. That medigun thing was pretty amazing. 

For a second, Scout feels something wiggle around inside his ribcage… and then a coo. “Uh, Doc?”

He hears, “Oh schiesse, Archimedes you naughty bird!” before Medic’s at it with the anaesthetic again. 

-

When Scout finally wakes up birdfree, everything feels relatively normal. He gets up, slips on his clothes and thanks the Doc for everything, throwing a suspicious glance at Archimedes. 

“Uh, hey Doc… if ya got a fancy gun that can fix everything, how come Spy still looks like Snipes inverted his nose?” he suddenly asks, curious. 

Medic, looking slightly terrifying as he caresses his bonesaw, laughs. “Oho, vell… I vas informed by someone zhat his injury vas vell-deserved, und felt perhaps he vill learn his lesson better should he be left to suffer…”

…perhaps this was a man to be feared… even if he occasionally handed out lollipops after operations. Scout had a red one in his mouth right now. 

“Ya the best doc, I ever tell ya that before?” Scout grins. Another question was swirling around his mind, as he lingered in the doorway… and Medic seemed to sense it. “Uh, and also about ya medigun, can it… ya know how it don’t do scars and all, can ya maybe fix…” he points at his chest. 

“Vhen you are ready, a little later on, ve can discuss dealing vith other concerns such as zhat one. It is no big matter, surgically from my standpoint; but zhere are physiological implications to take into account. Und zhis is only day one… ve have time, I assure you; but for now you really must find something better zhan bandages. Zhe Medigun und respawn can heal some damage, but permanent use can deform your body…” Medic responds.

“I’ll try,” he says, “but ya mean it? ‘Cause we couldn’t find anyone at home who would…”

“Zhey are fools, zhen. Luckily, ve are on zhe same team…” winks Medic, “Now shoo, I have others to see today besides you, young man…” 

“Ya saying you don’t wanna appreciate all this gorgeous manly beauty for a little longer? I’m shocked! Here I was doing ya a solid by giving ya something nice to look at, when ya have to spend the rest of the day dealing with all the other old codgers…” Scout grins, cheekily, flexing… then ducking and laughing, as Medic tosses a handful of tongue depressors at him. 

“Get out of here, you cheeky junge…” the German manages, laughing heartily at the other’s antics. Scout pokes his tongue out as he disappears around the door.

-

His first death was a shock. Both to him, and the bloke who shot him.

The BLU!Scout’s eyes went wide as the scattergun exploded, and blood welled through the shirt; Scout felt fiery pain for a moment, then cold… then finally, nothing. His body hit the ground, before he could even process it… and then, he was kinda, here but nowhere.

Just for a few seconds though. It was like the teleporters, really, you just stayed in place, a continuous stream of consciousness… but you moved places. Some light, a weird whirring noise… and suddenly, he was back where he started the match. It was 2Fort, so the room was small, stark, and sparsely furnished. 

It felt real fuckin’ bizarre. 

He was immediately flattened by the Medic popping out of nowhere in a haze of light, landing on him. Scout made a strained wheeze, while the other scrambled up and off. 

“Scout? Oh, sorry… vell, zhat vas a unique experience, I must say. We had better move before Herr Heavy comes through…” Medic mutters. “Zhat BLU Spy is quite zhe pest, especially vith those disguises and all…”

“Sixty seconds remaining of Testing Phase Match.” warned the Administrator. 

This match was a formality, neither side was to win, just… die, and learn to cope with it. They’d only been in it for five minutes or so, so far, but it wasn’t supposed to last long… 

Scout’d made a  mental map of the sewers by now (that was a surprise), and even made it to the other intel room (though it was empty), before he’d been chased down by the BLU Scout. It was bizarre to think they could just… resurrect, no matter what… but everyone was getting used to it.

“See ya out there, Doc!” Scout winks, and leaves as Heavy reappears in the spawn sector.

-

Battle had been going great. Hell, he’d died hundreds of times that week alone, and killed almost as many; captured intel, lost it, taunted, attacked, defended, caught out the BLU Spy a few times…

Saved lives, had his life saved.

God, the Doc had even ubered him a few times and that was… wow, it was like being a god in a finite form, even for just a few seconds. He fuckin’ loved it!

Spy was still being a dick, but like, in French. Heavy and Medic seemed to understand him, because they tended to glare the man down… but Scout didn’t give a shit. Let the guy be bitter and weird about it, anyone who legs it on their family wasn’t worth anyone’s time anyway…

The others were pretty great to know, actually. Kind of like his own family, a bit weird, chaotic and sometimes the kitchen caught fire… but safe, fun, protected. Being here was turning out pretty great. 

He could almost forget who he was outside the base, ‘cause no one ever used names, only Classes here. And sure, that seemed real weird to begin with, but it made sense and all. Though he still called home once a week to touch bse with Ma and all… that was a given.

Apparently Snipes did too, so Scout didn’t feel so awkward about admitting to the others he needed to call his Ma… it was hard enough being the youngest without saying that sort of thing. Still, he can always use the one in the van if he needed, Sniper had offered. 

Engie kept calling him ‘son’, and teaching him things. Did something similar with Pyro, except he used ‘Py’, ‘cause no one was sure what the firebug identified as… never saw them outta the suit, either, to take a guess. 

Scout could now make… exactly one tiny model of a sentry that shot nails. He was also banned from pranking people with it…

Demo always had an amazing story to captivate the room with. Though Scout didn’t quite trust the magical talking sword the guy had… it gave the runner an eerie feeling just looking at it. He did like to drink, and who wouldn’t given some of the stuff the guy had seen? But he was pretty good at keeping the rest of the base from any drunken shenanigans. He’d even talked a very inebriated Soldier-Medic duo out of taking a nude dip in the water beneath the 2Fort bridge… despite how adamant the pair were at the time.

Heavy, as it turns out, was a ridiculously smart man. Just his English ain’t great, yet so Scout had to stop slinging slang at the poor guy, because it was too hard to keep up. Heavy sometimes read books aloud, for Scout… and sometimes Medic who was usually nearby pretending the two weren’t together, but Scout wasn’t an idiot. ‘Cause the runner had issues with words, they sometimes slid off the page when he was reading and it was a pain… made school harder than it had to be, really.

Medic & Sniper were consistently on his side.

Soldier was a very loud man, who firmly believed in certain ideals (e.g. all of RED were Americans) and acted like a commander most of the time. But he was a nice guy, if chaotic… he’d adopted a whole host of raccoons recently… that was a unique experience. Still, he never failed to let the team know his thoughts, nor failed to praise, bolster, encourage when necessary

Scout would just like it if the guy could stop with the “What are you, a girl?”/ “C’mon ladies, time to take your tampons out and man up!”/etc. thing. He knew it was just something the super macho army guys’d yell at each other but it was a little grating… but he wasn’t sure how to bring it up.

…until his tolerance level took a rather strong hit, as it usually did, once a month. He was a very fit young man, so generally it wasn’t a problem, you learned to live with it after a bit; even in guy clothes. His Ma worked out a solution with her sewing kit and twenty minutes of staring at a pair of new briefs. 

But even the most athletic people still have a bad period now and then. It wasn’t… like, traumatic or anything, for Scout; it was just part of his life, and he was a guy who sometimes felt like death was coming once a month. If he was lucky, a few cramps and that could be easily dealt with through painkillers and stretching… but there were times, when they were pretty damn bad. Like, on the verge of puking, bad. 

And of course, it had to happen eventually on base… but he’d been hoping, maybe, not the first month here. Of all fucking times!His performance took a bit of a dive, because of this, and maybe that’s why he didn’t censor himself when Soldier yelled at him. 

“C’mon maggot, stop being a damn sissy and get out there!” 

“How ‘bout you go fuck yourself?” he snaps back, breathing through the odd twinges emanating from his abdomen. God damn it, why now? They were 2-2 on intel capture, and his freaking uterus was trying to escape…

“How dare you backtalk a superior officer! Where’s all this sass coming from, you PMS-ing like a girl, soldier?” the other shouts, and Scout is thankful they’re alone, because he’s in too much discomfort to give a shit as he answers.

“YES, you flag-fucking son of a bitch!” he snaps back, and immediately panics. His eyes go wide, and they both stare at one another for a long minute.

Soldier looks him up and down, frowning. Or at least, Scout thinks that’s frowning, based on the fact the helmet obscures most of his face.

“…Private, I’m sorry.” Soldier breaks the tension with, surprising the runner. “Had I been informed of your tactical situation, son, I would have used different motivational techniques…”

Scout feels the anger, the fear, dissipate somewhat. Soldier seems genuinely distressed that he’s upset the runner…

“…I didn’t tell anyone ‘cept Doc and I think maybe Snipes worked it out. Didn’t wantcha to think like Spy, that I don’t belong on RED ‘cause they got my birth certificate wrong…” Scout says, clenching his fist as another twinge ruins the moment.

Soldier puts his hand on the runner’s shoulder in a companionable display of affection. “Son, I-… RED are the best at what they do, men, women, Pyro… it doesn’t matter. I’m not afraid to admit I was wrong, or that I’m sorry, and I’ll try not to say anything stupid like that again…”

“Nah I’m just a bit sensitive because-…” Scout tries, but Soldier interrupts.

“Son, if I have learned anything about people, and especially people with your monthly concern, it’s that they’re never oversensitive about things. They just put up with a tonne of shit until they’re too stressed out, too upset or in just far too much discomfort to play polite… never apologise for being real.” Soldier said, as if it was a throwaway statement and not the most epiphany-like moment Scout had ever experienced up until then. 

“Heh, thanks man.” Scout responds. Then lets out a shout of surprise as Soldier tosses him over his shoulder, “What the hell?”

“Doc was back by Engie, last I saw… one of them should have something to take the edge off… get you back in fighting form and all.” Soldier responds, oddly considerate. 

Scout lets out a startled yelp as they rocket jump off the platform, he’d always wanted to try it but not from this angle!

They do find Engie, and his dispenser provides some relief until the man can fish a small packet of panadol out of his toolkit. He doesn’t ask why, he’s laid back like that. 

Scout is honestly relieved at how this ended up such a non-event.

-

Some of the others have noticed Scout doesn’t shower with them, but have made their own assumptions (he’s young, it might be weird to shower with all these big, muscly older dudes). Scout’s honestly surprised Spy hasn’t used that in a big reveal, yet… but he senses the other is waiting for something. 

Scout still flirts with Miss P when she comes on base, because she’s beautiful and he does still kinda love her, but there’s also a degree of thrill to having her turn him down because ‘she’s not into boys’. She’s known from the start, and never once misgendered him… never leaves him without anything he needs, either. Last time, he even found a large box of his favourite chocolate in there amongst the items, and he had a feeling that was her doing too…

God she needed more than one day off a year, even if Scout only took her out as a friend… she was too damn good to them all. 

Demo did mention in passing that Scout had a nice body and if he was concerned about not measuring up to the others in the shower, then he didn’t need to worry, this wasn’t high school. No one pulled ye olde point and laugh here. Soldier had jumped in and gone off on a tangent about cleanliness in the ranks, and how privates should wash theirs whenever, and wherever possible. Which derailed the conversation a bit, though Scout could see the cogs whirring in Demo’s mind. Afterwards, when they had a quiet moment, Demo approached in a casual way; out of earshot of the others, to speak with him.“Lad... like I said before, it disnae matter what ye do or don’t have... you can always shower with the rest of the team, and no one’ll gawk. Pyro showers in their suit and it was only a bit odd the first time. But I’m sensing that the reason has to do with someone on the team, and ye should know I’m always ready to throw a punch for ye, lad, never forget it. Just say the word.” He winks. Or, Scout assumes it was, considering...“Thanks, man. Maybe... soon. I just-... I mean, I trust like, alla ya except Spy but only a few people either know or have worked it out. Not that I think Pyro’d care, or Engie... pretty sure Snipes knows, Medic, Soldier, Heavy probably worked it out, and now you seem to...” Scout trails off.

“...so Spy’s the blaggard, is he?” Demo’s voice was a little colder.

“Well yeah, but it’s... more than that.” Scout adds, shoulders slumping, “First thing he said was... well he kinda called me his daughter and used the wrong name’n’all. When I called Ma about it, ‘cause it freaked me out, she kinda mentioned he’s my dad...”

“Well, fuck, laddie. I’m going to get some of the hard stuff, and we can bag him out until we pass out, aye?” Demo offers, beaming.

“Sounds like a plan to me...” Scout answers, following as the Scot led the way.

Medic was too busy laughing at the hungover pair to do anything useful, for at least half an hour; because apparently they serenaded the Doc, whilst inebriated, in violently clashing accents and utterly out of tune. Heavy had had to carry them to bed.

Neither merc would let them forget it for years to come.

-

Everything just sort of clicked into place, really.

It was like home, with his Ma and brothers... except with more murder and death on a daily basis. Also, better cooking. Scout cannot emphasise that enough. Engie’d even managed to get Scout cooking basic dishes properly... and only the toaster had caught fire that one time. 

Actually, the more Scout interacted with the guy, the more he seemed to realise that Engie had known all along. Especially since the man went out of his way to call him ‘son’, ‘lad’, ‘boy’, and ‘young man’ in every sentence... it was nice. Scout should have twigged earlier, really.

So he stopped taking Spy’s shit, and decided to just confront the guy publicly. Spies didn’t like exposure, but Scouts revelled in it.

“....so emotional, don’t you think that’s a handicap for this line of work?” purrs the Spy, appearing behind Scout at the table. He’s eating cereal and reading a new Flash comic, but he’s not alone; most of the others are lounging across the room by the tv, but all attention is immediately, subtly turned on Spy and Scout. God help the man.

“Funny you should say that, I saw you losin’ ya shit after that Blu poured piss on ya, earlier...” Scout backhands, blandly. Not rising to the bait.

He can sense the man’s lips curling into a scowl of disgust. “Zhat is another matter entirely... I am talking about-...” Spy responds, but Scout interjects.

“Oh I know whatcha talking about, there pal, and if ya don’t fuck off I’ll slap ya silly with a used tampon... see how ya cope emotionally after that, huh?” Scout grins at the revulsion on Spy’s face.

“So vulgar, of course you get zhat from your mother... as daughters often do.” 

Well fuck. Scout slams the spoon down and stands up, getting right up into Spy’s face. 

“Now look, you creepy bastard, the reality of this is ya thought ya had a daughter... but surprise, it’s a fucking boy! Now accept ya have a son, that ya abandoned by the way, or go one annoying the shit outta him about the fact that ya wanted a girl to abandon instead. Either way, he doesn’t fucking care.” 

Spy looked taken aback. 

“Yeah, I said it out loud, surprised? The rest of the team knows, they don’t give a shit as far as I know... you’re the one with the hangup. So maybe just come to terms with your own crap, and when you think you’re human enough, we can try to do the whole dad-son thing, okay?” Scout finishes. He’s tired, of this fight, of this conversation. It had been building for months. 

Spy just stares at him for a long moment, as if he had never seen Scout before this very second... and finally composes himself. “Very well... mon fils.” He has cloaked and left, before Scout can fully register what has happened. 

“Good job laddie!” Demo cries, coming over to clap him on the shoulder. 

Sniper puts his Huntsman down, nodding to the runner as if it was nothing. Pyro hugged Scout, but that may have been unrelated to the whole situation... Pyro just liked to hug. Engie said, “Proud of ya, son.” and left it at that.

The others acknowledged the moment, but didn’t make a fuss.

All in all, it was pretty good.

-

Maybe in time Spy can reconcile.

Maybe not.

But it doesn’t matter as long as the team is on Scout’s side, no matter what. 

Scout... Jeremy... loves being a RED, for precisely that reason.

- - - - - - - - - -

The End.

Headcanons like that?

[july-19th-club]

Century 12

aka, My Very New Very Unfinished Immortal People Short Story, bc some of you asked for it and let’s be honest, I wanted to share it anyway

read ON

One of us has died.

          The strangest part about it is that the dead woman—she was a woman, from Argentina, short and stout and always wore her hair in a thick bun and sold handknit products online—was one of our youngest. Only on Century 3, she’d been doing well. That we knew of. She kept in touch, had been saying on the forum that she was going to bring treats to the meet, something homemade. And then three weeks before, when most of us were planning or packing or already en route, we all got notices on our group messages—she was dead.

         Suicide, of course. It’s all my seat partner on the plane talks about on our way over. He’s a long-legged guy from New York—long enough for it to give him an accent, anyway. He’s businesslike and well-dressed, but looks cramped and crumpled in the airplane seating. He’s doing good right now, he says. He’s in a stable relationship; they just adopted a new cat. He shows me pictures—a young, impossibly handsome blue-eyed man proudly holding up a disgruntled orange tabby. 

          “Found him in an alley. His name’s Mewcutio,” says my seat partner—and then he cracks a grin. “The cat, not my boyfriend,” he amends.

          “It’s so good right now,” he adds, looking at me earnestly. But I don’t know whether he’s trying to convince himself or what. Relationships—I gave up on those a long time ago. And this guy looks like maybe he did too, for a while. His face, when he talks about his blue-eyed boy, is a mixture of adoration and mourning.

          It’s not hard to guess why.

At the meet, we don’t sit down and break out a session immediately. That’s what local groups and semilocals are for. The coping, the therapy. This is a celebration for us—the precious few, to gather every ten years and remind each other that we’re still here, that we can and will and must by nature endure. For some of us it’s the thing that saves us. For others, it’s a reminder of how unsavable we really are.

          Upon arrival, we split up in the entrance to the hotel—we’ve booked over half of it for the occasion, as we do every ten years in a different venue in a different country—and we look for old friends. My seat partner and I walk in opposite directions, and in my head I wish him a good fifty-sixty-seventy with his blue-eyes. It’s the best they’re gonna get. I watch him jog down the steps and I take the elevator upstairs. Julie and Kim Mbege are already in the room they’re sharing. They’re sisters, which is rare. It’s not like anyone picks this—it just…happens. Family members who both get it are as rare as…well, as rare as the Argentinian doing what she did. As awful as it is, who we are, what we have to look forward to—it’s rare that we let go of it.

          Except…as the Mbege sisters and I sit on the made-up beds and chat and drink ice water from the minifridge, we can all taste it. The atmosphere has changed this meet. What normally feels like a giant, strange, supportive family reunion has taken on the tone of a tense political summit. Whispers are everywhere. Julie and Kim tell me that on their flight over—from Johannesburg; I can’t imagine the layovers—they were joined by the groups from Lesotho and Botswana. It’s all anyone talked about there, too. When we head downstairs we’re interrupted by Brazil and Chile, which is uncomfortable mostly because the Argentinian was apparently the only one of us from her country. That meant that these people were her semilocals; they actually knew her. In the crush of gossip and discussion, they’re subdued. They don’t know how she did it, they say, and they don’t want to know. It must have taken an enormous effort. They don’t think she left a note of explanation, or if something in particular in her recent life drove her to it.

          I tell them about my new pal from the flight over. “He’s dating,” I say. I suddenly feel worried for a near stranger. “But his partner, he’s not one of us. He says he’s so happy. Do you think that’s what happened to the Argentinian? She got too happy?”

          Getting too happy is a real concern for us. It leads to all sorts of shitty things, like engaging in relationships that are headed for the cliff edge. I haven’t dated seriously since…has to be…who was on the throne then? George II? I want to say it was. I was in Scotland, then. After that time I swore off closeness to people who weren’t us, very deliberately. We discussed it in my local group. And I realized that the only way to survive—the only way to not pull an Argentinian—was to swear off things that brought me to that place of sharp darkness, the pit you can’t claw out of. I spent a long time in that place. I know how bad it is to be there and have no discernible way out. I know how to avoid it, how it’s the worst feeling in the world, as easy to enter and hard to leave as quicksand, which I was once ensnared in and which is the only natural, physical thing that has ever really made me scared for my life.

          So now I avoid it, and I spend most of my time with others of us or with people who won’t worry if I don’t stick around. I’ve gotten close a few times to missing them after I’ve gone—but that’s how it works. It’ll always be like that. And I’m lucky in that I have a fairly big local and semilocal, and that I have friends out elsewhere in the world. We keep each other together. We call each other at four in the morning when we’re having a bad one, and somehow, we make it work. Even if we’re missing something all the time—faith, like Julie’s friend Clark—love, like…well, me—a sense of reality, like my new buddy on the plane—we find ways to fill that gap, for long enough that we can survive it.

          That’s what it’s really about.

Julie and Kim and I take on the bar downstairs dressed up, and we mingle with the non-meet guests at the hotel. They look breakable to me, always have. There’s a—speed—to them. Like hummingbirds or the clear, slender bugs you can find skating on the surface of a pond. Across the room, there’s a lot of whooping and hollering and synthesizer, someone’s trying to start a party—Kim points, and we all stop and stare, right in the middle of a tourist gang also staring. 

         “I think it’s The Stuntman,” Kim says.

          I’ve never met The Stuntman in person, but I know him by sight. He’s somewhat famous, not just among us but in the rest of the world too. He’s not much to look at—a tall, scrawny Irish teenager with wild hair and a frail figure—but when you get a close-up, you see big mournful eyes and delicate facial structure, boyish and brittle, like an early Bob Dylan. He’s really quite attractive then, mostly because he looks so mortal.

          That couldn’t be further from the truth. The Stuntman is one of our newest, and everybody knows who he is by reputation. His personality is said to be infections—filled with manic, hyperactive energy. He’s vulgar, unflappable, loud, YOUTHFUL, arrogant. It’s understandable. The first ten or twenty years are always like that. You’re drunk on the future because you don’t yet fully grasp exactly how heavy that future will settle on your bones. But The Stuntman has another gift that contributes to his particular reckless abandon—not only can he not age, he cannot die period. It’s a rarity so extreme that some people refuse to believe it’s actually possible. Some people even say that Jesus himself had that ability—regenerative immortality. Of course, since nobody’s seen Him for two thousand years and only a handful of us are old enough to have lived parallel to Him, it’s likely that the Jesus thing is faker than The Stuntman.

          The Stuntman is nothing if not visible. He blared onto the sensation-TV scene eight and a half years ago, hailing from a tiny factory town and quickly rising in international notice. Now he’s got this show, Live to Die, in which he tests rumored ‘killer acts’ and then, if it turns out they’re actually fatal, resurrecting himself over and over and over and over again. He doesn’t seem to care if most of his viewers think it’s an elaborate magician’s act. He knows that some of us see everything he does.

          The rumors are that he’ll probably stage something this week. It’s his first international meet, and he won’t be able to resist the attention. And before the Argentinian, we were looking forward to it, everyone talking about how he’d try to top his biggest tricks.

          But this is after the Argentinian. And watching him downing inhuman amounts of booze, the alcohol poisoning negligible when you know for a fact that you’ll wake up eventually, I think that he’s dancing a fine line between performance and something far more dangerous.

          The girls and I make our way through the buffet-style dinner spread, and bring canapes and drinks out to the poolside. I set a little plate of lemon-scented mussels and a glass of champagne in the special holders on my deck chair, and we stick our legs out long and coconut-oily to bask in the evening. Julie tosses us pairs of neon-rimmed sunglasses, and we lounge. The pool gradually empties while guests go back inside for food, then fills up again as they come outside for drunken games of chicken in the water. The smell of chlorine rises up past the bubbly and anchors me down, its sharpness clearing my head.

          There’s another commotion around 8:30, as the sun starts to sink past the bluffs beyond the resort. “He’s here,” somebody says, and Kim waves across the pool to the speaker.

          “Who?”

          “HIM.”

          “Oh,” says Kim, raising her sunglasses onto her forehead, and flips a few stray twists of hair back over her shoulder.

          I don’t need to know what they mean by HIM. Rembrandt – sorry, Mounet – sorry, Reeves – is the rarest of birds. Despite being Century 7-plus, he actively relishes his eternity, not in the brash, destructive way the Stuntman does, but in the way that you’d think we all would. He puts himself in the spotlight – as an artist, usually – never enough to be overwhelmed with celebrity, but enough to be memorable. There are even rumors out there: he’s a vampire, he’s immortal, he’s a time traveler. They’re idle rumors, the kind of thing people create conspiracy photosets of when they’re bored on the internet – but they’re rumors anyway. It’s not about vanity, I think, for him: just proof. I exist in a way that I should not. I have been and am still here.

          The downside, I’d imagine, is that to be visibly immortal, one must be constantly reinventing oneself – not just moving to new locations with slightly new papers, but changing identities entirely, complete with fake deaths and paper trails that aren’t just ruined, but burnt away completely. That’s got to be harder now than ever before, and soon enough, the man will have to come up with a public ending for himself. A plane crash, maybe, or a mysterious accident. In the Victorian times, if one of us got too heard-of and had to disappear, then illnesses used to be popular. Tuberculosis. Cholera. The ever-ubiquitous Brain Fever.

          In the meantime, he’s the closest thing we’ve got to a unanimous leader. Generous, tall, striking, adjacent to universally handsome, friendly to all – the kind of person you’d put your trust into in a crisis, believing that they could, if not fix the situation themselves, at least make you feel better about it until the proper authorities saved the day. As he enters the deck, long-haired, neatly bearded, holding a wine glass, we all turn, consciously and subconsciously. The atmosphere quiets down a little, the desperate fun-having slowing its pace. Tension dissipates. It’s all right, the new mood says, to mourn or be afraid. You don’t have to put on a brave face. The One Who Is Comfortable Enough For All Of Us is here.

Author’s Notes: ayyyyyyy hope you liked it don’t be dicks and repost this shit it’s original content right here 

[leakedinlondon]

Hey Courtney I'm going on my first over seas flight in 5 days time (like 20 hours or something with a brief lay over???) and I'm in desperate need of book recs. 21 year old female I like Harry Potter, dystopian future stuff, gay stuff especially wlw and also really love shitty cheesey light hearted stuff like Janet Evanovich. Would love your opinion!

tragically, i hav not read a lot of wlw books bc i’m a picky bitch about genres and a lot of the ones i know about are realistic fiction which i ain’t big on but i do recommend checking out Malinda Lo i rly like Adaptation which features a bi love triangle and aliens and has a part where some dude is talking about aliens and just starts humming the x files theme and that dude is me also i have heard v good things about Ash and Huntress but my bookstore doesn’t sell them and i’m like???? why

ok SO i hav a v v long dystopian masterpost if ur down to go through it but i’ll give u my faves from it here!!!!

Chaos Walking by Patrick Ness

Prentisstown isn't like other towns. Everyone can hear everyone else's thoughts in an overwhelming, never-ending stream of Noise. Just a month away from the birthday that will make him a man, Todd and his dog, Manchee -- whose thoughts Todd can hear too, whether he wants to or not -- stumble upon an area of complete silence. They find that in a town where privacy is impossible, something terrible has been hidden -- a secret so awful that Todd and Manchee must run for their lives.

these books!!!! are everything!!!!! if you haven’t read them u 100% should i swear they’re so fkn good

Unwind by Neal Shusterman

The Second Civil War was fought over reproductive rights. The chilling resolution: Life is inviolable from the moment of conception until age thirteen. Between the ages of thirteen and eighteen, however, parents can have their child "unwound," whereby all of the child's organs are transplanted into different donors, so life doesn't technically end. Connor is too difficult for his parents to control. Risa, a ward of the state, is not enough to be kept alive. And Lev is a tithe, a child conceived and raised to be unwound. Together, they may have a chance to escape and to survive.

i would die for Lev literally die for him at any given second this is also a very good series

The Passage by Justin Cronin

An epic and gripping tale of catastrophe and survival, The Passage is the story of Amy—abandoned by her mother at the age of six, pursued and then imprisoned by the shadowy figures behind a government experiment of apocalyptic proportions. But Special Agent Brad Wolgast, the lawman sent to track her down, is disarmed by the curiously quiet girl and risks everything to save her. As the experiment goes nightmarishly wrong, Wolgast secures her escape—but he can’t stop society’s collapse. And as Amy walks alone, across miles and decades, into a future dark with violence and despair, she is filled with the mysterious and terrifying knowledge that only she has the power to save the ruined world.

haven’t gotten around to reading the last book in this series yet but they are seriously epic like i swear this series is something else entirely

Maggot Moon by Sally Gardner

What if the football hadn’t gone over the wall. On the other side of the wall there is a dark secret. And the devil. And the Moon Man. And the Motherland doesn’t want anyone to know. But Standish Treadwell — who has different-colored eyes, who can’t read, can’t write, Standish Treadwell isn’t bright — sees things differently than the rest of the "train-track thinkers." So when Standish and his only friend and neighbor, Hector, make their way to the other side of the wall, they see what the Motherland has been hiding. And it’s big...One hundred very short chapters, told in an utterly original first-person voice, propel readers through a narrative that is by turns gripping and darkly humorous, bleak and chilling, tender and transporting.

this book broke my damn heart and ruined my life but oh my god it’s so good also a lil gay but like i said sad but it’s more 2 do with the setting like.... it doens’t have a happy ending but it felt right like that?????

More Than This by Patrick Ness

A boy drowns, desperate and alone in his final moments. He dies.Then he wakes, naked and bruised and thirsty, but alive.How can this be? And what is this strange deserted place?As he struggles to understand what is happening, the boy dares to hope. Might this not be the end? Might there be more to this life, or perhaps this afterlife?

this is my favorite book!!!!!! i would die for it!!!! i want to buy enough copies to fill an entire room of my house so i can just sit in it and cry!!!! this book is literally everything!!!! also gay!!!! she’s also sad but like...... i cannot express in words how much u need to read this damn book 

Bird Box by Josh Malerman

Something is out there, something terrifying that must not be seen. One glimpse of it, and a person is driven to deadly violence. No one knows what it is or where it came from.Five years after it began, a handful of scattered survivors remains, including Malorie and her two young children. Living in an abandoned house near the river, she has dreamed of fleeing to a place where they might be safe. Now that the boy and girl are four, it's time to go, but the journey ahead will be terrifying: twenty miles downriver in a rowboat--blindfolded--with nothing to rely on but her wits and the children’s trained ears. One wrong choice and they will die. Something is following them all the while, but is it man, animal, or monster?

another one of my all time faves!!!!!! i don’t even know what to say this is a masterpiece

ok so here we move on to the more fantasy and gay stuff these are less sad 

Six of Crows by Leigh Bardugo

Ketterdam: a bustling hub of international trade where anything can be had for the right price—and no one knows that better than criminal prodigy Kaz Brekker. Kaz is offered a chance at a deadly heist that could make him rich beyond his wildest dreams. But he can't pull it off alone...A convict with a thirst for revengeA sharpshooter who can't walk away from a wagerA runaway with a privileged pastA spy known as the WraithA Heartrender using her magic to survive the slumsA thief with a gift for unlikely escapes Kaz's crew are the only ones who might stand between the world and destruction—if they don't kill each other first.

this is.... so good.... also a little gay... hav heard the second book in the series is gayer but i haven’t read her yet

Carry On by Rainbow Rowell

That's what his roommate, Baz, says. And Baz might be evil and a vampire and a complete git, but he's probably right. Half the time Simon can't even make his wand work, and the other half, he sets something on fire. His mentor's avoiding him, his girlfriend broke up with him, and there's a magic-eating monster running around wearing Simon's face. Baz would be having a field day with all this, if he were here - it's their last year at Watford School of Magicks, and Simon's infuriating nemesis didn't even bother to show up. Carry On is a love letter to love stories and the power of words - to every 'chosen one' who ever had more on their mind than saving the world...

this book is literally just harry potter but gay and i’m still laughing i love it

A Monster Calls by Patrick Ness

The monster showed up after midnight. As they do.But it isn’t the monster Conor’s been expecting. He’s been expecting the one from his nightmare, the one he’s had nearly every night since his mother started her treatments, the one with the darkness and the wind and the screaming…This monster is something different, though. Something ancient, something wild. And it wants the most dangerous thing of all from Conor.It wants the truth.

can u tell i’m a fan of patrick ness i’m going to fucking fist fight him for this piece of shit like.... this book.... is about a little kid..... whose mother has cancer....... like u know it’s gonna be a fucking bad time but u read it anyway and u cry like a fucking baby but u enjoy the whole damn thing because u hate urself.... it’s a beautiful read but it hurts (((also yes there is a Literal Monster hanging around))

The Raven Cycle by Maggie Stiefvater

Every year, Blue Sargent stands next to her clairvoyant mother as the soon-to-be dead walk past. Blue herself never sees them—not until this year, when a boy emerges from the dark and speaks directly to her. His name is Gansey, and Blue soon discovers that he is a rich student at Aglionby, the local private school. Blue has a policy of staying away from Aglionby boys. Known as Raven Boys, they can only mean trouble.But Gansey is different. He has it all—family money, good looks, devoted friends—but he’s looking for much more. He is on a quest that has encompassed three other Raven Boys: Adam, the scholarship student who resents all the privilege around him; Ronan, the fierce soul who ranges from anger to despair; and Noah, the taciturn watcher of the four, who notices many things but says very little.For as long as she can remember, Blue has been told by her psychic family that she will kill her true love. She never thought this would be a problem. But now, as her life becomes caught up in the strange and sinister world of the Raven Boys, she’s not so sure anymore.

the description of this book doesn’t do it justice and i hate it i love these books i love my stupid raven kids i mainly love adam parrish who i would die for in a second ((also gay)) ((please read them if u haven’t i love adam so much he’s worth it)) ((the other characters are also amazing and i lov them too))

The Darkest Part of the Forest by Holly Black

Children can have a cruel, absolute sense of justice. Children can kill a monster and feel quite proud of themselves. A girl can look at her brother and believe they’re destined to be a knight and a bard who battle evil. She can believe she’s found the thing she’s been made for.Hazel lives with her brother, Ben, in the strange town of Fairfold where humans and fae exist side by side. The faeries’ seemingly harmless magic attracts tourists, but Hazel knows how dangerous they can be, and she knows how to stop them. Or she did, once.At the center of it all, there is a glass coffin in the woods. It rests right on the ground and in it sleeps a boy with horns on his head and ears as pointed as knives. Hazel and Ben were both in love with him as children. The boy has slept there for generations, never waking.Until one day, he does…As the world turns upside down, Hazel tries to remember her years pretending to be a knight. But swept up in new love, shifting loyalties, and the fresh sting of betrayal, will it be enough?

Hazel is literally me okay there is a scene in this book where she’s at a fairy party and u kno how ur not meant to eat or drink anything fairies give u or ur fucked???? hazel ingests fucking fairy wine bc it was in the mouth of some fairy girl she was making out with and if that isn’t me i don’t know what is (((also that’s the only scene that she shows any interest in girls i am very sorry i don’t want to get ur hopes up))) ((ben on the other hand he is very gay and is also me they are both me i love these two idiots this book just makes me really happy)) 

[pluckedrosepetals]

things are bad rn

father hates me so much that he has to dedicate half an hour to screaming at me about how i’m brainless and stupid and i need to think about very basic things that i’ve already been thinking about

1. driver’s license and car

he screamed and screamed and screamed at me about how i don’t have my license yet and tried to make me feel guilty that i wasn’t letting him provide for me bc he apparently wanted to buy me a car but you need a license for a car

meanwhile i’m not rushing my license bc it’s easier to buy a car after moving, i’m planning on moving halfway across the country it would be so much easier to buy a car after moving and transferring my license and it’d save so much money too but he won’t listen to me he just screams about how i’m a lazy undisciplined brat and this is why i need someone like him to guide my poor brainless stupid ass

2. Where i’m gonna live

first he asks where i’m planning on living then he screams at me for wanting to live in a specific city i have no idea what the purpose of this was

i told him about my plans to move to houston, he screamed at me for wanting to move to a new city halfway across the country with no job offers on the table. domestic job applications for 2019 grads usually open in the spring outside of business/consulting and grad school. do you see my problem

and then literally two messages later he complains that i’m not considering boston like

houston is so much cheaper and hopefully i won’t even need a cosigner with my credit score like i tried so fucking hard to minimize his costs bc he complains so fucking much about how expensive i was to raise like i didn’t have to go to an international school we could’ve lived in america and i could’ve gone to public school i could’ve gone to korean public school i never chose where he went to school, i could’ve gone to brandeis with a scholarship and saved him so much fucking money but he insisted that if i wasn’t going to apply to “real” schools that i go to the best one so obviously he chose amherst but i could’ve saved him so much money and in the end he chooses to spend that much and then make me feel guilty for his choices

3. lasik surgery

idek he screamed that he wanted to provide this for me but because i’m such a bratty bitch demon and a thieving liar he can’t, as if his hitting me and throwing shit at me had nothing to do with why i never want to go to korea again while he’s alive i don’t even know why he thought this was so basic like yeah in principle that’d be great!! but we both know that he’s just gonna hold it over my head as another way he COULD provide for me if i’d just stop being such a demon brat and be a good child for once in my miserable life

4. family

he says that i have no sense of family but guess what i do he’s just not part of it!! bc he’s an abusive asshole!! and i’ve passed afraid into tired!! he can’t control me anymore bc the stakes are exactly the same, if i do as he says eventually i’ll fuck up and he’ll kill me and what’s the worst that happens, he comes to kill me and then gets barred from campus? i am literally no worse off now so this is my choice, it’s my fucking life i’m not his to manipulate

also i fucking love how for over FIVE FUCKENING YEARS my mom let me believe that everything that was wrong between my father and me was all my fault? “he hit me and threw things at me” “well you deserved it because you were procrastinating on homework and your grades have been falling” i went from a 3.9 to a 3.0 that year bc of that incident and the next year i got a D in a class the next semester bc of the stress

we never talked to just check in we never had a casual conversation about anything since i came to college and anytime i tried he turned it into a sermon on what a waste of space i am

i don’t understand how a man can alienate his entire family to the point that his own wife won’t have a conversation with him while they’re living under the same goddamn roof, go through employees and coworkers like tissue paper (3 secretaries in 4 months bc they all quit are you fucking kidding me) and then lose all your friends bc they’re tired of you treating them like they’re morons and then still think that you’re the only reasonable person out of everyone in your life, like i’d feel sorry for him and how lonely that is and how it’s gonna catch up to him in a few years but honestly i spent so long thinking it was me that i even started calling myself a gremlin bc i thought i was that woefully inadequate at interacting with people like a goddamn human being when it turns out the problem wasn’t even me!!!! if you ask anyone at the college i have my faults but none of them are that i have a problem with communicating where i scream at the people i supposedly care about and call them terrible names and threaten to hurt or kill them that’s not a me thing!!

i’m just. so tired of living like this

meanwhile brendan’s really being such a trooper he’s been comforting me through all of this, tried so hard to make me laugh and feel better when i spent the entire day crying, called me on his way to work to check in with me, gave me some exciting news on his end to distract me

he’s been promised a trip to vegas sometime next year with his friend jim, he wants to take me with him but he also knows that i’m moving after graduation and he doesn’t want them to clash

he has an aunt who did this for his 18th birthday apparently he and jim went together that time too and his mom doesn’t trust him to travel alone bc he’s always losing things lmaooo but in all seriousness i’m just so grateful that he heard about the fact that he was being gifted a trip and the first thing he thought of was taking me along bc wow i do have a family it’s just not the one i was born with and brendan thinks of me as family too and i’m just,,, wow what did i do to deserve such an amazing romantic partner we’ve grown so much together and i love him so much

and my friends, my friends from flight rising who’ve become my gay snuggle pile, i love them so much too, they are my siblings and my parents and my family. jules bought me dinner yesterday bc my legs weren’t working and i was too upset to eat and when i told him i owed him my soul bc i’m broke as shit he said this was what family was for and honestly when will your friend-family ever bc i’m so cursed by my father and my paternal family but somehow i’ve landed in a place where i’m surrounded by love anyway despite my jagged edges and despite the fact that there are people who genuinely hate me in my biological family

my feelings are all over the place i need food and water and my stuffed sloth to snuggle for a bit

but tl;dr father called, of course it went terribly, it went something like: “You’re irresponsible and brainless so here are four very basic things to think about when you consider moving out after college” “I can answer these questions because I’ve already been thinking about it, here are my ideas” “YOU ARE BRAINLESS AND STUPID YOU NEED TO THINK ABOUT THESE BASIC THINGS YOU’VE ALREADY PLANNED FOR” “I already have though, here’s the framework of my plan and my timeline” “DON’T INTERRUPT ME YOU BRAT YOU ARE A DEMON BITCH AND IF YOU DON’T SHUT UP AND LISTEN TO ME I WILL MAKE YOU ONE WAY OR ANOTHER. HARMING YOU DOESN’T WORK SO I’LL HAVE TO THINK OF SOMETHING WORSE BUT I SWEAR I’LL MAKE YOU LISTEN”

... yeah he lowkey threatened to kill me so that’s fun c’:

but i’m still surrounded by love somehow and i don’t feel scared anymore

just so, so tired