#it’s just this! it’s just this. all the time. I bounce interests and recycle old ones

[goldkirk]

When did the latest 1,000 of you follow me??? good lord hi and welcome, I should maybe pay attention to my notifications and activity page more 😭

[ohnococo]

A Mess | Zeke x F!Reader x Reiner

Summary: You and Zeke sleep together from time to time, even though he knows Reiner has a thing for you. Eventually he decides to do something about it. (MODERN AU)

Warnings: Sleazy Zeke, Sex, Cumshots, Threesome, FWB

MINORS DNI/18+ ONLY UNDER THE CUT

Zeke had this innate ability to just make things messy in a way that favored him perfectly. He’d done it with you - starting out as friends with benefits and progressing that into something a little more shameless that had your whole friend group seeming a little tense about you two potentially dating, knowing none of Zeke’s trysts lasted long. He was doing it again now, albeit this one had been a much slower build up. He’d been stoking this fire from before the two of you had even begun fucking, in fact.

He saw the way Reiner always looked at you, the schoolboy crush he’d harbored from way back when he was, well, an actual schoolboy. Except now he was very much a grown man and was very much still squandering every opportunity he’d had to get with you.

Zeke knew what Reiner was like, what reservations and morals the younger man had that he certainly did not share. When Zeke had finally made the move to kiss you in front of your friends - or rather next to them while you were all on the couch during a movie - Reiner hadn’t been pushed into action. No pulling you aside for a sudden confession of love, or plea to give him a chance. Instead, Reiner seemed to decide that instead of it being now, it was going to be never. The idea of two long-time friends of a close knit group dating was already a bit awkward for everyone, you all were never the type for love triangles and unnecessary drama, there was no way Reiner would add an attempt to date you to that awkwardness. A girl dating one of her old guy friends is one thing, romantic even if it all works out, but a girl dating two - meaning most - of her guy friends leaves a bad impression. That’s what Zeke figured Reiner had reasoned, at least.

Messy bitch that he is though, Zeke decided to test Reiner’s resolve at being the noble martyr, tortured by his unrequited love that was all his own doing. Maybe he would lighten up a bit more too. So Zeke did small things to set the wheels in motion, making plans with the two of you to play a board game or watch a show then finding some excuse to leave suddenly half way through. Pretending to be much more drunk than he is while setting you on Reiner’s lap at a party, exaggeratedly slurring out, “Keep an eye on her while I go piss. She’s a wily one.”

Through it all Reiner was respectful as ever: hands to himself except for sliding you off his lap to take his seat while he stood and waited for Zeke to return, never even entertaining making a move on you. It drove Zeke up a fucking wall, especially when Reiner would end the nights he’d been stranded at your house (while Zeke feigned some sudden need to pick up Eren and drop him off at his dorm) with a text to Zeke at a nauseatingly sensible 9:30.

Reiner: Hey just got home. hope Eren’s didn’t puke in your car again lol

Reiner was big, Reiner was beefy, and Reiner was a fucking coward. Zeke didn’t know why he cared so much. Maybe because he was always trying to show his friends he was better than them in some way or another and Reiner had just taken it on the chin. Maybe it was because he felt a little bad for fucking around with someone who had been a dear friend, he didn’t intend for this to go anywhere after all, and Reiner did really like you. Zeke would never admit it if it was indeed the second one, though, so he just decided to get messier.

It was easy enough with the three of you being the only ones in the group to have the shared interest of board games. So he invited you both over to his place to try out a new game he’d gotten. You and Reiner chalked up Zeke’s smug demeanor to him showing off another overly-complicated board game he’d surely win despite playing it for the first time. Really, it was the undeniable feeling that tonight would be fun keeping Zeke in such high spirits.

One game in - that Zeke won of course - and he’d already managed to coax Reiner into drinking. Just a beer to start the game, then one more to keep it going. He wasn’t getting wasted by any means, not a man his size, but Zeke knew him well enough to know that he wouldn’t have a third beer and drive. So while Reiner set the board up to start again, Zeke gave him another beer, clearing the table of old drinks and setting the new one down casually enough that his friend wasn’t even thinking about how he’d get home after finishing off the new drink.

The game went by, Reiner went through another bottle, and as Zeke was satisfied with winning again he decided to bring this part of the evening to a close.

“I’ve had enough of winning for tonight. The two of you will have to have a 1v1 on your own sometime to catch up with me.” Zeke teased, packing away the little pieces.

Reiner is quick to respond, “Pretty cocky for a guy who still can’t win at Sorry.”

Zeke takes the bait, only because he wants Reiner feeling confident for later. “Only because that game is pure luck.”

“Sure it is.” Reiner stands and stretches, grabbing his bottle to put with Zeke’s recycling. “Anyway, I should head out now, it’s getting late.”

“Not after four beers you shouldn’t.” You warn, Zeke can’t hide the way the corners of his mouth turn up, you did always pay awfully close attention to Reiner, didn’t you?

“Shit, you’re right - mind if I stay in your guest bedroom?”

Zeke shrugs, no stranger to having one of his friends crashing at his house, “Go right ahead.”

“Thanks.”

-

Zeke is quick to get you alone, and you only half push him away as he begins kissing at the spot on your neck that has heat building in your stomach as soon as you’re both in his bedroom. He’d made sure to leave his door cracked, and made sure to pick you up and lie you down on the bed before you noticed. As you sigh at his touch he decides he’s waited long enough for the main event, pulling your pants and underwear off in one rough motion and burying his face between your legs.

“Zeke, stop it.” He knows your protests are hollow, your hands coming down to tangle in his hair rather than push him away. His tongue works its way gently but purposefully through your folds, just barely brushing over your clit before working his way back to tease at your entrance. Your moan is only half out before you’re clasping your hands over your mouth, looking down at him and laughing. “At least wait until Reiner’s asleep.”

He smirks up at you and makes a deal, knowing you don’t understand the full extent of it and know he won’t be losing anyway. “If he’s not asleep in ten minutes, that’s his problem.”

You think for a moment, biting your lip, but as he locks his lips around your clit you’re not really in a position to protest as you rock your hips up against his face.

Zeke goes easy on you, sort of, he refrains from sliding his fingers in your tight little hole while he laps at your swollen clit - and he at least listens when you ask him to slow down for a second, giving you the chance to catch your breath and keep yourself from getting to the point where you can’t control the noises you make, but you were still getting steadily louder. The ten minutes go by slowly for the both of you, as Zeke teases at your most sensitive spots, until you’re glistening beneath him. His wait is over as he kisses his way up your body, pulling your shirt up and off as he goes until his lips meet yours.

“It’s time.”

You’re too far gone to pick up that hint of something else in Zeke’s voice as he flips you over so you’re on your stomach facing the door and he’s quickly in place behind you, pulling you onto all fours. You’re too ready for his cock to pay attention to how loud his soft slap on your ass is before he pulls off his pants and rifles through his bedside drawer for a condom. You turn your head to watch him as he slides it on, arching your back so he can get an eyeful of your awaiting pussy. He’s not feeling gentle or merciful tonight, and that doesn’t seem to be what you want anyway as you groan at the feel of his cock stretching you wide as he enters and bottoms out inside of you in one smooth motion.

Zeke knows you’re holding back though, doing your very best to stifle the noises he’s forcing from you as his cock slides against your walls just right, and that’s not what he wants. He slaps your ass again, hard, and you keen before getting a hold of yourself to send him a look of warning over your shoulder.

“You think Reiner’s still awake to listen to how good you sound when I fuck you?” You tighten around him, pussy fluttering at the thought, and that gives Zeke the final push to do just what he’d intended. “Do you want to find out?”

There’s no time to think about the implications of his question, as Zeke wraps his arm around your waist, hoisting you up so your back is pressed to his chest as he sets a brutal pace.

“Reiner!” Zeke’s voice booms, and this time when you’re pussy clenches around him he knows it’s not just due to the pleasure coursing through you. “Reiner, come here!”

“Zeke-”

“Shh…” He brings the hand that was previously gripping your hip tightly up to cup your face, rubbing his thumb over your lips, “He knows what we’re doing. If he doesn’t want to see it he’ll stay in bed.”

You’re blushing, equal measures embarrassed and aroused, and the wait only makes your heart beat faster. A few moments of what was no doubt tortuous conflict passes and you hear the door to the room next to Zeke’s open slowly, followed by another long moment before Zeke’s door is pushed open fully.

“See, I knew you weren’t that much of a coward, Reiner.” Zeke’s voice is straining from how hard he’s fucking you, and how excited he is to have his plan come perfectly together as Reiner locks eyes with you.

He looks you over slowly as none of you speak, watching your tits bounce as you take Zeke, swallowing hard at the sight of your slick dripping down your thighs, ears ringing at the sound of skin on sin. He’s already hard and tenting his boxer briefs, hair already disheveled from tossing and turning in bed as he listened to you try and fail to stay silent. Zeke is happy to let him watch, but he decides he wants him to do something more than just stand there like a lost dog.

“Well?” Reiner is snapped from his daze and looks at Zeke as if he’d only thought about him being there. “Are you going to do something about it?”

Reiner looks at you, and your soft cry of his name thrusts him into motion as he comes to join the two of you on the bed. He cups your face in his hands, kissing you and drinking in your moans as your pussy flutters around Zeke’s cock. Reiner is soft, so soft compared to how hard you’re being fucked, but intense as he groans into your mouth and bites at your bottom lip. He pulls away to breathe, but only for a moment before he’s working his way to your neck to leave all the marks he’d dreamt of gifting you with for years. His hands are quick to find your clit, rubbing soft circles as Zeke continues to work at you from inside, and your hands quickly reach for his cock in turn.

“So big…” you sigh, savoring the feeling of running your hands over his thick cock through his underwear, before pushing them down as far as you can reach with Zeke pulling you into his thrusts. Thankfully, it’s far enough to free Reiner’s cock and you shiver in Zeke’s grasp as it rubs against your stomach while Reiner presses his body to yours. You barely have your fingers wrapped around him before he’s thrusting up into your hand, already groaning, already close - you wonder for a moment if he’d already been touching himself to the sounds of you.

Zeke would guess yes, and can’t help getting his sly little digs in even as the two of you do exactly as he’d intended, “Close already? Good thing I’m here to satisfy her.”

Reiner doesn’t take that easily, working your clit faster and the way your pussy grips Zeke has him hurling closer to the edge right along with you both. Reiner breathes his words into your skin, sending shivers through you again and again, “Cum for me… cum with me…”

You do, and both of your work against each other stutters as you cum together, Reiner painting your stomach as your pussy threatens to undo Zeke right along with you. He holds on, however, fucking you through your orgasm as Reiner thrusts into your hand until the last of his cum is covering your soft skin and the fluttering of your pussy slows.

Zeke pulls out and releases you, sending you forward and into Reiner’s waiting arms as he pulls off his condom and finishes himself off on your ass, adding his mess to the mix as well. Reiner keeps kissing you, rubbing your back, smiling at the way you shiver when Zeke begins rubbing his cum into your skin.

“That was…” Reiner starts, then stops, looking into your eyes and trying to parse what just happened.

Zeke doesn’t want to give him too much time to think, knowing that just leads to more annoyance with Reiner, so instead he lies down, pulling you with him. “The bed’s big enough for three.”

Reiner pauses, still thinking instead of doing, until you’re patting the space on the bed next to you. “C’mon, Reiner, lets get some rest.”

For you, he’ll listen to anything, something Zeke huffs at as you rest your head on his shoulder, and your hand on Reiner’s chest. You’re first to fall asleep, and Reiner lies there staring at you dreamily, finally basking in the moment for once. Then, it’s Zeke’s turn to think, and think too much as he considers just what he might have started. He wasn’t sure what he felt, not quite jealousy… but not victory either. He felt smug, but also like he’d gotten himself in over his head. Maybe he wanted Reiner here for different reasons than he’d originally thought. Maybe he wanted you for different reasons than he’d originally thought too. Zeke closes his eyes and decides everyone’s had enough thinking for the day, deciding to sleep before he dwelled too long on the mess he’d made.

CHAPTER 2

CHAPTER 3

[natromanxoff]

19 - The Dynamic Duo V Montreux

Hello folks. I was sitting around twiddling my thumbs and I thought I would give the old hard drive a clean up, so before I dump a load of rubbish I thought I'd better answer these before I throw everything in the recycle bin. Let's start with a lady from New Jersey who goes by the name of Dorothy who gave me a very interesting offer for the next time I'm in New York. If you're reading this Dorothy, could you send Jacky your email address so I can reply to you. I've just opened up a "secret" Hotmail account so I can send replies without pestering the lovely Mrs Smith all the time, and to test it I went to the guestbook and picked a few names at random. Maybe I should reply to the irate drummer, but if I do that he'll just reply to me and the girls in the office will miss out on laughing at him as well. Staying with the skin bashers for a mo, Ron Hansen in Madison is a drummer, and said he liked my jokes and reckons Mr Irate uses three sticks, two in his hands and one up his arse (his words not mine). Would I be correct in saying your a Zep fan Ron? Today's question is, "What do you get if you cross a drummer with a roadie?" The answer is a stupid roadie.

Moving on, last time around I mentioned a drink which we consumed in Brazil, and the charming Sonia and Dina informed me it was called Caipirinha, and a pleasant little tipple it was to. Somewhere in Australia there is a lady called Karen who is listening to the Offspring CD non-stop, so I'm gonna have to try and answer her question as she has such great musical tastes, even though she wants to know the..........(flashing lights, fireworks, drum roll) Hoover Salesman Story. ARGHHHH. Its actually a very short tale, and I think it's quiet boring but it seems to have grown in stature over the years, and as always I'm gonna drag it out and start from the first skiing expedition that I ventured on with RT.

Having checked my trendy little biog mag, I reckon the year is 1980, and the dynamic duo are in Montreux putting the finishing touches to Fun in Space and we have a few days off before a tour starts in Zurich when Rog says, "Let's go skiing." He had skied a few times before and was ok at it, but I had never put a pair of skis on in my life. I said, "Lets go, but you ski and I'll just get pissed." He then went on about what a buzz it is and how I would love it, etc. As we were touring soon our American crew had to fly out, so I called up Jim Devenney and told him to come over a couple of days earlier cause we were gonna ski. Jim is a great skier and was on the first flight available and I picked him up at Geneva airport ready for some fun. That night we hit the town and have too many drinks and Rog goes off to bed semi early, while Jim and myself sat out on the jetty of Duckingham Palace with a ghetto blaster, Derek and Clive tapes, and a vat of wine singing disgusting songs at full blast, which must have echoed over to France. Suddenly we hear a French voice screaming at us and we have no idea what he was saying so we carried on goofing around, and the next thing I hear is a huge splash as Devenney falls in.

Let me assure you that a drunk trying to get a drunk out of Lake Geneva is not an easy task, but we succeed and head back to DP and retire to our rooms. I'd just got into bed when I hear a crash and go to investigate, only to find JD had gone in the wrong room and was trying to get into a baby's cot, and getting him out of there was harder than getting him of the lake.

Next day Roger, Dave Richards, his wife Collette, Jim and myself set off to Zermatt, and on arrival we stock up on skis, passes and other skiing paraphernalia (big words now!) Dinner, drinks and off to bed. Next morning we're up and ready to go, and thinking I'll never ski again after this I refuse to waste money on a ski suit, so I wear jeans. My second wrong move, the first was agreeing to go. The hotel owner wouldn't let us leave the hotel without first drinking a couple of Sambuccas, not my idea of a good breakfast, eggs, bacon, tea, toast and Italian liqueurs, but who are we to refuse. Next I've got to try and walk in those godamn boots, and we eventually arrive at the top of the Matterhorn.

The OK skiers, RT and Dave set off on their own, Collette begins a very slow trip down while JD tells me he'll stay and teach me. On go the skis, and down I go, flat on my arse. Up I get and I'm off, for all of about 2ft before I'm down again. This is not any fun. After a couple more tumbles my great mate Jim said, "If you're gonna f*** around I'm going." And thats the last I saw of him all day. Thanks pal. I'm standing there watching people ski and think, "It can't be that hard. If you stand like this, lean like that, you can ski." So I stand and lean in the correct positions and I'm away, screeching down a mountain with only one very small problem, I have no idea how to turn or stop, so as I'm flying past Collette, and she reckons I looked very worried, I yelled for some advice and all she said was, "DIVE." Sound advice, so thats what I do, and by now I'm getting wet. I wait for her and then we set off together, the blind leading the blind, with me diving at the slightest bit of speed or bend in the piste. A million years later we eventually reach the bottom of this awful slope and it's finally over. Wrong. Theres a T-bar to get on so we wait in line till it's our turn. You're supposed to put the bar just under your bum and it drags you up, but I'm 6ft and Collettes about 5ft 5in, so the bar was either in the middle of her back or around my knees, and no one told me not to sit on the f***ing thing and we bounced around for a while until we fell off. I'm now getting really pissed off with all this, "Get me a helicopter," I demanded from Collete. She told me they don't just send them, you have to be hurt. I replied with, "I'll break my f***ing arm but I've gotta get off this mountain." Realising I'm not getting a copter I light a ciggie and ponder.

We agree to split up and go with someone our own height, so I ended up with a great German guy who was really helpful. Once on the T-bar I can see that it goes way up and I would have to ski back down to base camp, and in case you've forgotten, I can't ski, so I said that I was gonna bail out, and jumped off. I then head of in a straight line to the cable car, skis on the shoulder and wading through 3ft of snow in a pair of very heavy and very cold jeans. What seemed like hours of wading I make civilisation and head to the bar for a triple strength coffee and a triple scotch while everyone gawked at me cause I looked like I had a shower fully clothed. Yeah, I wanna do this again.

Dinner that night was great fun for the others cause they got to take the piss out of me. Their day will come. The rest of the nights activities shall remain sealed away, but a good time was had by one and all. The tour went smoothly and I try and put Zermatt behind me, except Collette, still to this day, takes great delight in telling everyone about it, and everytime she says it she makes me look more and more pathetic.

The next winter appears and I'm at home and the phone rings, "CT, wanna go skiing?" To which my reply was nothing like, "Oh I'd love to you fabulous little drummer boy." I can't believe he talked me into it again, but this time we were gonna do things correctly and go to Aviemore in Scotland and take lessons, this was the saving factor in his plan. So once again we pile into the Range Rover and aim north. We split the driving (for a change) and had a good journey up through the snow covered mountains till we get to the resort. A usual night was on the cards, dinner, drinks and bed, then up bright and early for some lessons and a good day on the slopes. This time we've both got the correct outfits so we head off to where our little group of idiot skiers are. We're all standing in a line, with Rog and me at the end, and each person gets to snow-plough a few feet. These clowns have less idea than my first try, and it's also incredibly cold and we've now got icicles hanging off our hair. It's our turn and we both look like olympic champions, but the only thing wrong with getting it right the first time is that the instructor then turns his attentions back to the start of the line. Here I am once again standing on the top of a mountain, freezing cold with two 'things' stuck on the end of a pair of stupid boots, and I inform His Royal Highness that the next trip away involves sand and sun, no excuses, end of argument. RT agreed that this wasn't much fun and thought my idea worth considering.

We finally heard the two magic words, "Lunch Break." We're gone in search of some good HOT food and a nice beaujolais, and we found both. We also found that the hotel bar had an amazing selection of whisky, and we had to try as many as possible. We're now semi pissed and decide that as we're warm we might as well go back to this lesson even though we are very late, and the instructor looked at us and said, "Where have you two been?" Rog came back with "Trying lots of your wonderful scotch's." He was fine with that answer and we carried on trying to learn something, and would you believe by the end of the day I could actually turn and stop.

Back to the hotel for a nap before dinner. Over a very nice meal and a couple of little drinkettes we agree that it's far to cold here and we'll clear off the next day, so into the bar we go with our earlier mission of trying all the scotch's. We were sitting at a table chatting away and cracking jokes with each other and end up talking to the couple on the next table, swapping skiing stories, needless to say mine were very short, and having a bit of a laugh, when the woman said, "What do you two do for a living?" God knows why, but I said; "We're Hoover salesmen." At first they didn't believe us but we both started going on about the difference between domestic and industrial cleaners, uprights, backpack types, ones you pull along the floor. We went on about the different wattage, suction power, the amount of pressure on Axminsters and Wilton carpets, even a couple of car expressions like overhead this and thats. What the hell do we know about vacuum cleaners? But boy are we good at this. After about 30 mins of utter bullshit the subject finally changed and they wished us all the best with our door to door salesmanship and off they went to bed. We then had to reassure each other what we actually did for a living, had some more drinks and tried to work out how we knew so much about cleaners as both of us have spent most of our lives trying to stay well away from them. We spent the drive back to London having a good laugh about the one day we spent in a Scottish ski resort.

Well that's it folks, the story of a small company, R & C Taylor,..... Hoover Salesmen. I did learn to ski quite well, and whilst in Gstadd doing the Shove it album Spike flew out cause he fancied learning to ski, and the fool asked me to teach him. I wasn't much help because everytime he fell over I burst out laughing cause I kept seeing myself in Zermatt, and Spike looked just as worried and stupid as I did.

Before I go I noticed that Jacky had to get her boiler fixed and said for me not to make a comment, but little things like that spark me off and I remembered that when we were recording in the Townhouse Studios I had a little, no a big affair with the studio chef. Every three months Virgin would do a magazine for all their staff, written by all the heads of various departments, airlines, studios, video, shops, films, etc. and they would say what was going on with their particular section. Alan Douglas, who was chief engineer of all Virgin studios wrote who was recording where, and he wrote, "Queen are in studio 4, and Crystal, their main man is stoking the kitchen boiler." I thought that was hilarious, but Jane went ballistic. That's it for now.

Loadsa luv Crystal (Carpet cleaner to the stars)

[reelwriter19]

A Better Man

Pairings: Erik Stevens X Black Reader

Warnings: Fluff, Angst, Implied smut, cursing

Word Count: 3241

“Sssshhh...Erik you have to stop yelling.” You pleaded with your husband as you struggled to get his oversized drunken frame through the front door.

Slurring every word, “Y/N, I DON’T CARE! These colonizers know who’s buildin’ this is!”

You shook your head and couldn’t help but smirk as Erik kicked his boots off and planted himself on the floor in the hallway like a toddler. It was LATE and you were exhausted, but you gave him a pass on this f**k boi behavior because his 35th birthday was in a few days and even though he’d never admit it, that number was messing with his head. So when the owner of the lounge called you personally to come pick him up at 1:45AM, you threw on a sweater, grabbed your keys and ran out the door.

Erik looked up from his stooper just in time to catch you undoing your bra in annoyance. “YES!!! My girls need to be free!”

“Wow…..goodnight Mr. Stevens.” Shaking your head as you walked away, he seemed to find his sea legs long enough to scurry after you, wrapping his arms around your middle and slowly creeping his hands up to ‘the girls’.

“Come on ma, let me hit. You know I sleep better after.”

His touch in this moment was making you weak, but as you turned your head to permit him a kiss, you were hit with a heavy dose of reality. Erik hadn’t drunk this heavily in a while, and the evidence of it was seeping through his pores and breath in the worst way. You turned to face him, now keeping him at arm's length.

“UGH...nigga let you hit?! I love you, but the last time we tried to have sex when you were this drunk, you fell asleep in me, during said process. Uh huh...nope, not tonight. The girls will be all yours tomorrow.”

The next morning you awoke to find Erik still fully clothed, knocked and snoring on the chaise lounge in your walk-in closet. He still smelled, but you were grateful for the fact that he wasn’t too drunk to remember how you felt about outside clothes on the bed. You kissed him on his forehead, got dressed and started making calls. You were throwing him a birthday party that night at the house. You had to confirm food drop offs with the caterers, pick up some balloons and grab one final gift to surprise him with the next day. His training made him really hard to surprise, but you knew he wouldn’t be expecting this.

You heard the shower turn off as you walked back into the house from your excursion. “Erik!” You hollered putting bags and what seemed like 100 balloons in a corner, making your way upstairs to the bedroom.  “Kia and Shuri will be here in a few hours to help me set up. I’m gonna need you out of here soo…”

Your words trailed off as your ebony Adonis emerged from the bathroom, towel low on his hips, scars glistening on his chest. He knew his power over you and now you were the one intoxicated. He raised an eyebrow as he slinked over to you ever so slowly, you, still frozen, allowing him access to begin undressing you without much of a fight.

“You were sayin’ somethin’?”

“Baby...I have so much to get done for the party.”

“I remember you saying that these right here were all...mine...today.” He started to pepper kisses across your chest and conveniently dropped his towel to the floor. Every task on your list quickly faded into the background. He was the soon to be birthday boy afterall. Who were you to deny him this gift?

-------

The house was filled with laughter and music. You sat on Erik’s lap with his arm wrapped snug around your waist as he and some of his boys laughed about stories from their days at MIT. You knew the majority of the people there, Erik always kept a tight circle. But there was one guy, Malik, from his days in foster care that he recently reconnected with that hadn’t made your acquaintance. He was mostly quiet throughout the night, sometimes too quiet, but you chalked that up to how he was raised. Knowing what your husband went through, bouncing from house to house, no one really caring if he lived or died, you always had a soft spot for the people he bonded with during those years, and Malik was one of them.

T’Challa walked over to the rowdy bunch in his usual stoic way, hiding something behind his back. Nakia stood next to him, beaming from ear to ear.

“Pardon me Y/N, gentlemen, but N’Jadaka, I have something that might interest you.” He revealed a black velvet cigar box with the word “Daka” embroidered on the top in gold. It was rare to shock this man, it was even more rare for T’Challa to pull a reaction from Erik that wasn’t sarcastic or flippant.

“Yooooo, T! You wild out man!”

Turning to you as Erik stood up, “Is that a good thing?”

Before you could reply, Shuri belted out a laugh from across the room and said, “Oh brotha! That’s a VERY good thing!”

Erik hugged T’Challa, which was enough to bring a tear to your eye, as the men clamoured for access to a cigar as they walked out on the balcony to light one and commemorate the occasion.

You and Nakia locked arms and laughed at the group as they ran outside as if hiding a porno tape from their mothers.

Turning to her, “Should I ask where you got those?”

“Let’s just say, they once belonged to a very bad man with many items that needed to be confiscated for...archiving. And now they have been gifted to a better man to celebrate his life and the passage of time.”

“Riiight. Well thank you, for everything. I really appreciate you guys. He’s been so down lately. I couldn’t have done this without your help. I’m gonna go get the cake ready while they’re out there.”

Walking towards the kitchen, you noticed Shuri trying to hide behind a few other guests that were deep in conversation in the dining room. Pausing, you didn’t even have to walk her way to know what she was up to.

“Shuri! Put that drink down right now!”

“Awww, Y/N come on! I thought we were cool. I just want a taste of this good American stuff.”

“Girl, your mother will kill me! Put it down and go find the candles for the cake.”

She stomped over to you and you grabbed her in a tight hug.

“You’re no fun, Y/N.”

“I love you too.”

You walked into the kitchen dancing and singing to yourself. “Tell Me” by Groove Theory was now playing through the speakers Erik insisted you guys have installed when you first brought the place. A few of the guests trickled out of the room as Erik’s friend Malik followed you in.

“Tell me if you want me to, give you all my time. I wanna make it GOOD FOR YOUUU!!!!”

You grabbed some plates and napkins from the cabinet and turned mid groove to find Malik standing a little too close. He was taller than your husband but his facial features were no comparison. Let’s be real, not many faces could compare.

“Oh my bad. I didn’t mean to scare you...I was just lookin’ for a garbage. Y’all recycle?”

“Yep, uuh, right there by the door.”

“Cool cool.” Walking over to discard his beer bottle, he turned back around and extended a hand to you. “Malik.”

Switching the plates to your left hand, you extended yours to shake his. “I know. Erik told me about you. He said you guys were like brothers growing up.”

“Yeah, that’s my dawg.” Licking his lips and taking you in a little too intensely, he continued his thought. “We always liked to share things when we were comin’ up.”

You snatched your hand back as Shuri walked in with the candles in hand, dancing to herself.

“Y/N, you have to make me a playlist of these songs for the lab!”

“I will, I promise.”

You walked towards her, grateful to your God and Bast that Shuri’s timing was so impeccable. As you handed her the other items and took the cake from the counter, Malik touched your butt and quickly left the kitchen.

Did he just grab my ASS?!

No, no, he didn’t, he couldn’t!

That nigga just grabbed by ASS!!

You stormed out of the kitchen ready to raise hell, but as soon as you did, a smiling Erik black man jogged towards you and greeted you with a kiss on the cheek.

“You good babe?”

Hands on his chest, gazing in to his bright eyes full of happiness and peace for the first time in a while, there was no way you could ruin this night.

“Yeah, yeah sweetie I’m ok. I was just looking for the candles that’s all. You ready for your cake?”

Nestling his face in your neck as he replied, leaving a wet kiss. “As long as I can have the rest of my dessert later.”

You giggled as his facial hair grazed your skin and planted a passionate kiss on his lips. You hoped that Malik was somewhere watching, being reminded of who the hell your man was and the imminent danger his life was in if he EVER decided to touch you again.

-------

“Aight aight, enough of this terrible singing...blow out the candles man!” One of Erik’s college friends yelled, causing everyone to erupt in laughter. Erik obliged and everyone cheered. He found his way right back to you, engulfing you in his embrace from behind.

“I wanna thank y’all for coming tonight, for real. To have everyone I care about in the same room celebrating me, it’s just, yeah…...I especially wanna thank my princess, my QUEEN who pulled this off without breaking a sweat. I love you, Y/N.”

Turning to face your man, you couldn’t stop cheesing, caressing his dimpled cheeks as he pecked your lips repeatedly.

“Damn, I guess this is what happens when a nigga gets old. Got me all emotional and shit! Shuri, turn that music back up!”

-------

The house had finally cleared of most guests, finally allowing you to put your fuzzy slippers on. You were saying your final goodbyes to T’Challa, Nakia, Shuri.

“Are you sure you don’t need Shuri to help you stay and clean up?” T joked as they walked towards the door.

“Haha! No it’s ok, really. There’s not much more to do. Thank you again. You really made his night.”

“It was our pleasure, Y/N.”

“Make sure you stop by before you head back to Wakanda.”

You closed the door and the newfound silence of your apartment caused you to immediately flash back to that moment in the kitchen with Malik. You had to make sure it got dealt with, but not tonight.

You walked out on the balcony to take in the night air. The life of a hostess was not easy and fatigue was hitting you like a ton of bricks. Out of nowhere, a massive hand smacked you on the butt, scaring the crap out of you. You turned to see it was Erik and not the filth who had violated your space earlier.

“Why you so jumpy girl?”

Attempting to gather yourself quickly and avoid his gaze, you brushed past him and went back into the living room. But as always, he was hot on your heels.

“I’m not E, damn! You just...I thought you were upstairs.”

“You only call me E when you’re annoyed at something or pissed at me, so what’s up?”

“Nothing ERIK, nothing. You’re just always on your sleath shit moving around this house and I wasn’t ready. I’m just tired, baby, that’s all.” Walking towards the steps, you prayed that was enough to hold him off for a bit.

“I’m gonna go change clothes. I left the cake on the counter if you want another slice. Cuz I know you want another slice.”

Whew! Home free, at least for now. You knew your nightly routine would at least give you some time away from him to think. Of course you’d tell him, eventually, but you knew Erik’s past too well to pretend that you weren’t fearful of what he’d do. You’d never be able to erase the sound of the guy's jaw breaking because he put his hands on you at the club when you first started dating. Or the time he threatened your old boss's life and family for overworking his ‘princess’ when you started having panic attacks because of your job. You weren’t at all scared of him, but you were scared of how this news would set him back.

You emerged from the bathroom, fresh faced and wearing Erik’s shirt, to find him perched on the corner of your enormous bed, cake in hand and staring at you. You playfully walked towards him planting yourself in between his legs.

“Can I have a piece?”

“Not until you tell me what’s wrong.”

“I’ll just go get my own.”

“I ate it all before I came upstairs.”

“You better be lying.”

He wasn’t budging and you could tell his patience was starting to wane.

“Fine! Since you refuse to drop this.” You hesitated, backing away from him, bracing yourself for impact, but quickly decided to go another route. You walked to the closet and grabbed a small gift wrapped box from where you kept your extra tampons. He joked with you once that he’d be willing to buy them for you, but after that, you were on your own.

“I made us reservations for tomorrow night. I was going to give this to you then, but you’re so impatient.”

You handed over the box with a huge smile on your face, the giddiness now starting to set in.

Erik looked down at the box and back towards you, rubbing your thigh slowly.

“Well, open, open!”

He chuckled, finding your sudden excitement amusing. “Oh I’m the impatient one?”

He finally opened the box and pulled out a black dog tag necklace with the word ‘Baba’ inscribed on one side and a fingerprint on the other. Erik stared at the necklace in awe. When he finally looked up, he had tears in his eyes, which always made you full on cry.

“Happy Birthday! I’m pregnant. This is your father's fingerprint. I had Nakia do some digging to…”

Before you could get another word out, Erik’s lips were attached to yours. He lifted you off your feet bridal style and placed you on the bed as if moving too fast would break you. Erik made love to you as if it were the first time. Covering every inch of your body with attention to make sure you knew how appreciative he was of the best gift he could have ever asked for.

-------

You laid on your husband's chest, tracing his scars while his fingers made lazy circles along your stomach.

“How long have you known?”

“A few weeks.”

“Damn, I must’ve really been out of it.”

You smiled because him admitting it meant he was finally back.

“E…” You sat up, gathering the sheet around yourself to face him.

“What’s up?”

“Is it hot in here? Wow, i’m sweating.” You jumped up suddenly wrapped in the sheet to go open the window. Now pacing…Erik sat up fully and gave you a minute to process whatever the hell you refused to spit out from earlier.

“Y/N, talk to me.”

“Ok, Erik, listen. Before I tell you anything, I want you to remember that you’re about to be a father. And before I needed you but now it’s your family that needs you. You hear the difference there? We’re a family. And I have a doctors appointment tomorrow afternoon so now that you know I want you to come so you can meet the doctor and get used to…”

In his usual sleath-like manor, Erik had hoped out of bed to stop you from pacing. Once you finally turned around, you were face to chest with him. He lightly grabbed your chin and raised an inquisitive brow. You took a deep breath and finally blurted it out! By the time you finished recounting the story, Erik’s jaw was locked and his body frozen. At this point, you were sitting on the edge of the bed because, exhaustion.

“....I didn’t say anything earlier because you were so happy. Baby I hadn’t heard your laugh in such a long time. I also know how close the two of you used to be. I’m so sorry.”

Hearing that brought your husband back out of his daze. He knelt in front of you making sure your eyes were locked with his.

“Y/N, listen to me. You have nothing to be sorry for, do you hear me? You’re my whole world..” Touching your stomach, “Tonight you’ve managed to make that world even better. That nigga violated my trust and made you feel less than in your own body, in our house...f**k no.”

Erik was eerily calm. The man you knew would’ve been dressed at the part of the story with the handshake and in front of Malik’s house with you on speaker by the time you said, “...touched by ass.”

Instead, with a kiss to your forehead, he made the choice to lay back down. “It’s all good baby, let’s get some sleep.”

-------

The next day you awoke to an empty bed. You got dressed quickly and headed downstairs to find Erik in the kitchen making breakfast.

“Good morning beautiful.”

This was always one of your favorite sights. You stood behind him, wrapping him in a hug while he plated the cheese eggs and breathed him in.

“It’s your birthday Erik. I should be cooking for you.”

“Please...besides your doctor called and had to push your appointment up by an hour so eat up quick! I don’t wanna be late.”

You watched him run upstairs, still wondering who the hell this new guy was and what he did with Erik “the colonizers can kiss mine” Stevens.

He came back down, keys in hand, dog tag on next to his father's ring, sneakers and glasses on. Damn you loved when he wore those glasses. That’s probably how you got pregnant in the first place.

“You ready?”

“Yeah…” You put your plate in the dishwasher and grabbed your bag, walking towards the hallway with him.

“Baby? About our conversation last night. You’re not gonna do anything crazy are you?”

“Oh, you mean Malk?”

“Yes, Erik, that’s what I'm talking about”

“It’s already handled.”

“Erik...what did you do?! Didn’t we discuss this? FAMILY. BABY. Us NEEDING you to not get locked up or worse.”

“Relax, Y/N. I didn’t do anything personally.”

You breathed a small sigh of relief, but he wasn’t quite done. “...let’s just say no one will see him anywhere, EVER...AGAIN.”

“E! You can’t just go offing people at every whim, even if you do hire someone else to take care of it for you. That’s not what I meant.”

“Baby steps, ma. Baby steps.”

[avengerscompound]

Running to a Standstill - 1

Running to a Standstill: A Captain America Fanfic

Masterlist

Buy me a ☕ Character Pairing:  Bucky Barnes x Steve Rogers x F!Reader

Word Count:  2188

Rating:  E

Square filled: @star-spangled-bingo​ - Widow’s Bite

Warnings: none for this chapter, there will be smut and canon typical violence, etc for the series

Synopsis: While on the run from an unknown organization trying to take your son, you meet two super-soldiers.  While they try to help you get to the bottom of who is hunting you and your son, feelings come out and admissions are made that make your personal life even more tricky.

Chapter 1

Bucky sat cross-legged on the floor of Clint’s apartment fiddling with Natasha’s widow bites.  They'd malfunctioned while they were out chasing down some creeps trying to hold up a bank using stolen alien tech and now parts of them were spread out on the stained Ikea coffee table along with his machine gun, Clint’s bow, a handful of arrows, and some throwing knives.  Bucky had already been zapped three times, and at this point, he was determined to fix these things just to spite them.

“Fuck,” he cursed as he was zapped once again.  He shook his hand and sucked on his finger.

“Just leave them, James,” Natasha said, as she passed through the room on her way to the fridge. “Stark can fix them.”

“This is way below Stark’s pay grade.  I can do it,” Bucky argued, and like the miniature tasers were trying to spite him right back he got zapped again.  “Fuck!  You little…”

There was a rapping on Clint’s door followed by a snuffling sound and scratching.

“I’m comin’, I’m comin’,” Clint complained, tripping over Steve’s shield and then his own quiver as he made his way to the door.

He pulled the door open to reveal Clint’s one-eyed Labrador mix, a little boy who looked to be about three or four years old, and you.

“Hey, Clint,” you said, cheerily as the little boy chased the dog inside.  “Returning Lucky.  Thanks for letting me take him out.”

“You kidding?”  Clint replied as Steve quickly got to his feet and started picking up weapons and putting them up out of the reach of little hands.  “Did me a favor.  Thanks for taking him with you.”

“Of course, Geo loves him,” you replied.  “Geo, you say thank you to Mister Barton?”

“Dank,” the little boy who seemed to be named Geo said.  “Nad, Nad, Nad…”

Natasha smiled softly.  It was a rare thing to see and it made Bucky feel a little warm on the inside.  A feeling he was still getting used to experiencing.

“What is it, malysh?”  She asked.

Geo then babbled a series of words that seemed to include ‘balloon’, ‘doggy’, ‘fly’, and ‘cake’ but Bucky couldn’t quite follow what he was actually saying.

“Well that all sounds fantastic,” Natasha said, brushing the little boy's hair off his face.  “What a wonderful day you’ve had.”

He bounced on his toes and kissed her cheek before running off toward Bucky.

“Geo, honey,” you said in that patient voice that some parents couldn’t seem to be able to perfect.  “We need to go,” you said taking a step into the room.  “Sorry, Clint.”

“Mama, but dis,” Geo complained, coming over to Bucky and patting his arm.

“No, honey, they’re doing work,” you said, as Geo caressed the metal plates on Bucky’s prosthetic arm.

“Whad dis?”  Geo said, looking up at Bucky.

“Oh my god,” you said, sounding mortified as Clint stifled a laugh.  “I’m so sorry, Sergeant… Barnes?”  You said his name like a question, confirming his identity.

Bucky shook his head.  “It’s fine,” he said to you and turned his attention back to Geo.  “That’s my arm.”

“Is a robod arm?”  Geo asked.

“Yeah, it’s a robot arm,” Bucky answered.

Clint laughed and closed the door behind you.  “You might as well get comfortable.  This is gonna be a while.”

“You’re sure?”  You asked, “You look busy.”

“Nah, Bucky’s just trying to fix something he can’t fix,” Clint said.  “You want a drink?”

“A beer would be amazing,” you said and took a seat on the couch.

“You fix fing?”  Geo asked.

“Yeah, that’s right.  I’m fixing these?”  Bucky said, showing the little boy the Widow Bites.  Steve gave Bucky a look that was slightly disapproving but he didn’t actually say anything.  Bucky wasn’t sure he was good with kids.  He always felt a little awkward, like he was going to say or do the wrong thing.  He did like kids though.  They didn’t know what he was and they were true to their emotions.  If they didn’t like you, you knew right away.  Maybe showing the Widow Bites to a toddler was a terrible thing to do, but he seemed interested and you didn’t say anything, so Bucky figured he can’t have done anything too bad.

Clint handed you a beer and introduced you to everyone as Geo looked at all the pieces of the Widow Bites carefully like he really understood what was going on with them.  “They rent the place two floors below this one,” Clint explained.

“Geo loves Lucky, so Clint lets us take him to the park when we go and he doubles as my guard dog,” you added.

“So what is it you do?”  Steve asked.

“Oh, this and that,” you said, cryptically.  “I sometimes do shifts at a coffee place down the street.  I babysit.  I do some temp work here and there.”

“That must be difficult,” Steve said.

“I make do,” you said.  “Geo’s dad died and I do what I have to to get by.”

Steve frowned.  “I’m sorry to hear that.”

You shrugged.  “Thank you, I’m sure you understand loss.  Given… everything.”

“Dis go dare,” Geo said, pointing at one of the wires and moving his finger to a circuit board.

“Yeah?  I dunno, buddy,” Bucky said, not sure how to tell a toddler that he could just randomly solder pieces of a weapon together.

“Goes dare,” he insisted, climbing into Bucky’s lap.

“You might as well just do it,” Natasha teased as she lounged back on the recliner.  “It’s not like he’ll make it worse.”

“Alright,” Bucky said.  “You keep your hands back okay?”

“Otay,” Geo said, putting one hand on each of Bucky’s arms.  Bucky carefully soldered the wire into place and powered the tasers on.  They started up fine and when he gave the to Natasha and she tested them out they seemed to work fine.  Bucky looked from you to Geo and back at Natasha with the tasers.

“Did … did you just fix them, pal?”  He asked.

“Uhh… he… kinda has a knack for things like that,” you said, putting your drink down.  “Hey, Geo, maybe we should go.”

The way you reacted reminded Bucky of a prey animal who’d realized they’d just gotten themselves cornered. Your eyes flicked to the exits and back to your son.  “Hey,” Steve said, gently.  That commanding but soothing tone coming to him instinctively.  “You’re alright.  You’re safe here with us.”

“Yeah, hon,” Clint agreed.  “If you can’t trust Captain America, who can you trust?”

You seemed to relax back in the chair and Geo climbed off Bucky’s lap and toddled over to where Lucky was lying and lay down against him.  Steve looked at the little boy and then at you.  “If you need to talk to anyone… or you need any help.”

You shook your head.  “It’s… fine.  I’ve been dealing with it.”

“Dealing with what exactly?”  Steve asked.

“You ever read the book ‘Firestarter’?  Or see the movie?  The movie had Drew Barrymore in it?”  When Steve’s blank look never changed.  “No, of course not.  Why would you?  Anyway, it’s like that.  And … well, less attention the better.  So thank you, but I’m fine.”

Steve looked you over and gave a nod.  “If you ever change your mind…”

“I know where you are.  And I appreciate the offer,” you stood up and threw your beer bottle into Clint and Natasha’s recycling bin.  “I better take him back home.  He’s gonna pass out.”

Bucky looked back over at Geo who now had his eyes closed and was curled into Lucky’s side.  You picked up the little boy and he snuggled into your neck and opened and closed his hands on your back.  “Thanks again, Clint.”

“Yeah, no worries,” Clint said getting up and opening the door for you.  “He likes going out with you.”

“I’ll see you,” you said and hurried out of the room.

“Way to go,” Natasha teased.  “You scared away our only normal friend.”

“What did she mean by the Firestarter thing?”  Bucky asked.

“See, that’s new,” Clint said, flopping down on the couch. “I just knew she was a widow.  Firestarter is a story about this couple that goes through a bunch of medical testing at college and then they have a kid who can light fires with her mind.  And the people who did the testing on them start chasing them around the country to get the kid.”

Steve stiffened up and pulled out his phone. “You didn’t know she was on the run?”

Clint shook his head.  “Just a widow with a kid.  I have heaps of single mom tenants.”

“Clint likes to offer them cheap rent and then they’re so grateful they sleep with him,” Natasha explained.

“Hey now!”  Clint spluttered.  “Don’t make me sound like an asshole.  I offer them cheap rent ‘cause they are usually getting back on their feet.  Plus they’re often divorcees and they feel safer in the building two Avengers live in.  Can’t help it if some of them start hanging around and making me food and then one thing leads to another.”

“Maybe I should do some checking up on that,” Steve said.  “If she’s in trouble, we can’t just ignore it.”

“She obviously doesn’t want to be noticed, maybe you should just leave it alone,” Natasha said.

“We’re authority figures.  I can understand why she might not trust that we can help,” Steve said.  “But you and I both know we can.”

“Fine!” Natasha said, holding up her hands in defeat.  “Do what you like.”

“Did you really sleep with her?”  Bucky asked, getting up off the floor and moving to the recliner as Steve tapped around on his phone.

“Her?  No.  Just something that’s happened a few times with other tenants.  Nothing planned,” Clint explained.  “She’s cute though, right.”

Clint wasn’t wrong.  Bucky did think you were attractive.  You seemed nice too, the fact you trusted Geo with him meant a lot to him and the way you didn’t make a huge deal about Steve.  A lot of women always made a huge deal of Steve.  Not that Bucky could blame them for that too.  He’d been harboring a crush on Steve that stretched way back before most women even looked twice at Steve.

“You’re really okay with that, Tasha?”  Bucky asked.  Natasha and Clint didn’t exactly have a conventional relationship.  It wasn’t really one he was used to seeing but they seemed happy.  He kept expecting jealousy to rear up but they just spoke about how they each slept with other people like it was no big deal at all.

“Yeah, of course,” Natasha said.  “Gotta let go of the idea monogamy is the only possible happily ever after, James.  Some people find happiness alone and in themselves, some find it in the beds of strangers, some with one loving partner.  And some with multiple.���

“And some people like to shack up with their best friend and get up to all kinds of shenanigans,” Clint added, moving from the couch to the recliner with Natasha and curling up with her.

“Find what it is that makes you happy,” Natasha concluded.  “Besides sleeping with one person for the rest of my life-” She mimed yawning and Clint laughed and snuggled into her more.

“If only…” Bucky muttered as he looked at Steve.

Steve looked up from his phone puzzled and raised an eyebrow at him.  “What's that, Bucky?”

“Nothing, go back to being a snoop,” Bucky grumbled, once again ignoring the clear opportunity to come clean about his feelings.

“You want us to set you up with her, Buck?”  Clint asked.  “She's really fun. She and Geo come up a bunch.  We eat pizza and play videogames or take the dog out.  She's artistic too and snarky.  And Nat even likes her.”

“It's true, I do,” Natasha said.  “She brings us coffee and croissants from the place she works.”

“Then what would she want with me then?” Bucky asked, almost folding in on himself.  Clint gave him a look that both said he understood and that he pitied him and Natasha scowled at him.

“James,” she said.

Bucky knew he had to deflect quickly or he'd get a lecture about being worthy of love, and he was really not in the mood for that.  He quickly waved a hand in Steve’s direction.  “Set her up with Steve.  He's the one worried about her past and she treated him like a normal person.”

“Oh that's a good point,” Clint said, nudging Natasha.

Natasha picked up a cushion and threw it at Steve.  He caught it on reflex and looked up at him. “How about we organize dinner for you and her?” Natasha suggested.  “Then you can try and get her backstory in person in a less aggressive fashion.”

“That's a good idea,” Steve said, completely oblivious that he was being set up on a date.  “Set it up.”

Natasha smirked at Bucky and winked.  Bucky smiled back and hoped that it hid the little flare of jealousy he just felt raise it’s head.

// NEXT

[greenninjagal-blog]

Loop Number Three Hundred Twelve

Hello who wants a quick one shot about Time Loops!

Summary: Patton is having a really bad day, and Virgil and Janus might just have a fix. He just wishes he found them three hundred loops ago.

Word Count: 5453

Quick Taglist: @alias290 @chelsvans @coyboi300 @dante-reblogs @dwbh888 @glitchybina @faithfulcat111 @felicianoromano @harrypotternerdprincess @holliberries @jemthebookworm @killerfangirl3 @mrbubbajones  @musical-nerd18 @nonasficcollection @stricken-with-clairvoyancy @the-sunshine-dims @themagicheartmailman @themultishipperchild @thenaiads @treasureofpriam @vianadraws @welovelogansanders  

Read on AO3 || My General Writing Masterlist

Janus is folding origami snakes when Virgil finds him. 

Which, in itself, is not new or unusual. Janus has been making origami creatures since before Virgil had ever met him: cutting perfect squares of papers, folding along invisible lines, creating something new from the boringness. Some people like making tiny stars, but Janus turns squares of paper into pocket sized friends. Some of Virgils’s favorite presents are books in which he found little purple and gold paper spiders tucked between the pages, or the cranes that he unfolded to find little sweet and sappy messages for him, or when he was emptying out his school bag and found butterflies hidden in the depths, left there with care and love and waiting to be discovered on a rainy day.

Janus folds origami and Virgil keeps every single one he’s ever gotten his hands on-- sometimes even going as far as to dig the few Janus recycled out of the bin and keep them in his collection.

So the origami isn’t necessarily new or weird or confusing. 

Finding him behind the school building, cutting class to fold them is.

Janus is, despite his outward appearance and his claims to the otherwise, a huge nerd. Virgil finds that adorable about him: the way he gets excited to go to school and learn something new, the bounce in his step when he was heading towards his psychology class, the rumbling of his words when he forgot to take a breath while describing history to him. He’s a nerd who reads autobiographies with crappy romance novel covers strapped on them and begs Virgil to watch the new Netflix documentaries with him.

When they had been seven, Janus had been very adamant about being a host on the History Channel. Virgil had been interested as long as he got to be the guy that went out and found Mothman to invite on to Janus’s show. 

(Sometimes Virgil finds himself missing the simplicity of being seven-years-old and knowing what he wants to do with his life.)

Still Janus isn’t the type to cut class usually. Playing hookie was Virgil’s game, not his. But Janus hadn’t shown up to meet him outside his locker at the break between their classes, and Virgil had made the decision that locating Janus took priority over Personal Finance. 

 Its nice outside, far nicer than it has any right to be. The sun is shining, with just enough heat to make Virgil consider taking off his jacket (he doesn’t), a breeze carries through the air playing with his bangs, and the bells had just rang so everyone is in class and not outside. There’s barely any noise out here: a zombie apocalypse  picturesque scene. It used to unnerve him, but now it just gives him peace of mind.

Behind the school is his fifth place to check, right behind: the far corner of the library that Janus likes to power nap in during lunch, the stairwell to the roof that is supposed to be locked but they’d jimmied open last year, Janus’s actual class where his seat was empty and several kids glanced at Virgil as he had scurried by, and the parking lot where Virgil checked to make sure that Janus hadn’t just driven away and left him in this hell alone without even a text message goodbye. 

Janus is, in fact, still at the school, sitting in grass against the wall of the school that faces the parking lot. If Virgil hadn’t been looking for him, he might have mistaken him for a dark shrub or the Art Club's newest modern art installation. His bag is next to him, half his books spilling out into the lawn and at least a whole tree’s worth of folded paper around him. The piles of origami snakes remind Virgil of noodles, a mixture of colors and then twice as many in just plain white. 

“Hey,” Virgil says, approaching slowly in case this is one of those times when Janus wants to be alone more than he wants to feel alone. 

Janus folds another crease with the edge of his thumb nail and throws his sloppily made friend into the pile with the others. There’s a stack of pre-cut paper next to him, but it's all loose leaf paper. Which meant that he had folded his way through his stash of actual origami colored paper, which meant that he had been doing this since a lot longer than before second block, like Virgil feared.

Janus sighs thumping his head back against the brick walls and picks up another sheet. Virgil takes that as a sign to sit down next to him. He drops his bag off at his feet and reaches around the assortment of pins (Xmen, Marvel, gay flag, banned books week, one from a video game he liked the art of but had never played, etc) to unzip the smallest pocket. He pulls out another stack of the thin paper in an assortment of colors and places it on top of Janus’s current stack.

“So,” Virgil says, picking a snake off the ground. “Wanna talk about it?”

Janus flips the snake over and begins the process of folding the tail, ruthlessly. “Do I want to talk about it,” He echoes sourly, pressing each fold like it was a matter of life and death. “No, I do not want to talk about it. Because its stupid and a waste of time and I shouldn’t care but I still do and you have so many better things to do than listen to me whine about Patton Hart, yet again!”

Janus folds the head down and then stars into the empty eyes with a glare.

Virgil points his own snake at Janus and wiggles it a bit, “If its bothering you this much, then it can’t be stupid. And besides I love hearing about how much you hate Patton Hart. What did he do this time?”

“I don’t hate…” Janus lets out a sigh, “He didn’t do anything. In fact he didn’t even show up to class today. I heard a couple sophomores say he was acting funny earlier so I assume he went home early.”

Virgil frowns at that, trying to think back to the morning. He’d been running late and preoccupied with a Spanish test that he had forgotten he had first block, but he does remember seeing Roman and Patton in the halls. They hadn’t been holding hands like usual, which is probably why it stuck in Virgil’s head. They were the most lovey-dovey couple in the whole school: holding hands, kissing, flamboyant declarations of love... Virgil has nightmares about the way that Roman had asked Patton to Prom Junior year and had made Janus swear that if he ever plans on taking Virgil to a dance, he wouldn’t do it with glitter, the marching band, and in front of the whole school.

Patton had also looked different, Virgil remembers. Less cheery, more despondent. He had a smile on his face, but it looked forced and his eyes were glazed over like he wasn’t listening to anything at all.

Which, okay, fair. Roman tended to say the same things every day but phrased them differently. There were really only oh-so-many ways to say the words “I love you” and Roman had used up all of them in freshman year.

“So he wasn’t there,” Virgil says, shrugs, and takes a moment of silence to hope that Patton is getting some well needed sleep: Patton is one of those guys that just...finds a way to be involved with everything. Bake sales, choir, poetry club, talent show, office runner, treasurer of the student council-- if there’s something anyone needs to get done, Patton probably can do it. Not to mention he’s the nicest person Virgil has ever met. He honestly sees the good in people and its a shame that he’s dating Roman, because otherwise he and Janus would have invited him into their relationship a while ago.

(Roman isn’t exactly someone Janus or Virgil could stand on a weekly basis, much less daily. Virgil is pretty sure if Roman ever tried any romantic shit that he pulls on Patton, on Virgil he’ll spontaneously combust. Janus gets hives from being in close proximity to the gooey lovefest that Roman brings around any time he opens his mouth. And of course, Roman isn’t the type to share anything.)

((Ninety percent of their relationship these days is locking eyes while Roman did something and fake gagging like the mature adults they were.))

“What’s the big de--” Virgil stops, “Wait, isn’t debate today?”

“And take a guess who was my partner,” Janus summarizes. He tosses the snake to the ground and picks up another sheet of paper. “He...The Dragon Witch immediately failed me because he didn’t….and I couldn’t…”

He messes up the fold because his fingers are shaking too much. Virgil gently reaches out and takes the paper from his fingertips. It floats down to join the other snakes, and Virgil gives Janus’s hands a squeeze. 

There’s a welt of anger in his chest, bubbling up in a nice simmer. He hates the Dragon Witch, although he’s never had her class or even knows her real name (Roman had coined the title in freshman year back when he had been a benchwarmer for the football team and it had caught on until the whole school used it). She’s known for being generally awful to every student that came in, a little unhinged, and even her own daughter-- a girl in the grade below them-- agrees that nobody wants to be in her class. Unfortunately, despite the many protests held by small pockets of students, the Dragon Witch has tenure and the school board’s stance is “if it isn’t broken, don’t fix it”. Ergo, she still lives on this plane of existence and Virgil thinks about egging her car often. Probably too often.

“Its stupid,” Janus repeats and the cavity where Virgil’s heart should be aches a little for him, “I know she’s had it out for me. Ever since that first day when I pointed out all the books on the syllabus were written by rich white men. But it was just… I felt really good about this one, Vee.” 

Virgil knows this. Janus had been practically vibrating since the assignment had been given out. He’d gone above and beyond with his research for the topic-- something about selflessness that had gone straight over Virgil’s head when Janus had been talking about it. Patton hadn’t even been that bad of a partner, Janus had said, despite never having time to practice for it. They had exchanged numbers and texted details and notes to one another all week.

If Virgil hadn’t spent most of the afternoons lying next to Janus playing League of Legends and listening to Janus’s black pen scratch out preparation notes, he might have been jealous of how much attention Janus had been giving Patton. (and vise versa.)

“We were going to win,” Janus says softly. “And then Patton decided to just not show the fuck up! Why can’t I count on anyone but you? Why must I suffer in a world full of idiots?”

“Hey, at least he’s cute,” Virgil says.

“At least he’s cute,” Janus agrees, resignedly. “Do you think he’s going to break up with Roman?”

Virgil shrugs, “Do you want to ask him to join us if he does?”

“I would never pass up an opportunity to spite Roman like that,” Janus says, which is actually code for “I would never pass up an opportunity to dote on Patton and Virgil, do you think he’ll let us paint his nails, I have the perfect shade of blue to match his shoelaces--” 

(They’ve had this conversation at least once every season since Janus had caught Virgil sighing at the smaller boy in the halls midway through freshman year.)

Janus wiggles his hands from Virgil’s and picks up the unfinished snake but its softer now, less angry and more care. When he completes it, he points it at Virgil and offers a guilty half smile.

“Sorry for making you miss class.” 

Virgil wants to laugh because really that was the last thing on his mind right now. He shuffles through the snakes on the ground picking out his favorites to add to his collection. “Nah, its cool. You can just do my taxes and budgeting in the future and we’ll call it even. What are you gonna do with all of these?”

Janus hums, looking at all of them, “Maybe we can hide them around school to confuse people.”

“Can we write “you’re next” in a red pen on the inside of them?” Virgil asks with a grin, “like some horror movie shit?”

“Whatever you desire, darling,” Janus says and Virgil is incredibly grateful that he’s in love with his best friend. Virgil doesn’t usually count himself as lucky, but Janus had to be some kind of miracle: a person who understood Virgil the way that no one else ever bothered to. Janus has the type of laughter that makes everyone else want to laugh as well, the type of smile that begs for mischief, the type of loyalty that reassures Virgil no matter what happens they have each other’s backs.

Also he’s pretty, and Virgil likes staring at pretty things.

Janus leans forward and gives him a peck on his cheek. “Thank you.”

“You missed,” Virgil says with a stupid ass smile, because he’s stupidly in love and wouldn’t have it any other way.

Janus rolls his eyes very fondly and leans in again, until Virgil can see every shade of brown and green in his mismatched eyes, until he can feel Janus’s breath on his face, until Virgil loses track of the nanometers between them. Virgil’s eyes are half closed already, anticipating how the rest of their newly established free time is going to be spent and not feeling a speck of embarrassment or guilt about it--

And then he sees the movement out of the corner of his eyes and freezes up. He’s certain without looking that it is a teacher and oh god they were going to get expelled for something. There’s too much stuff around them-- their bags, the millions of snakes, their own bodies-- and even if they left everything there they’d surely get found out from that stuff, and then the school would call his mom and Virgil did not want to have that conversation with her again. 

But then he does look and its not a teacher at all. Virgil blinks, once, twice to make sure he’s seeing things correctly.

“Virgil?” Janus says, still several centimetres away from kissing him and obviously aware of how Virgil had tensed to high hell.

“I thought you said that Patton went home sick,” Virgil says absently.

Janus sits back, following his line of sight to the corner of the building where-- sure enough-- Patton Hart was walking without a care in the entire world. He was dressed differently today than Virgil remembered him ever dressing: the memories of his polo and his cardigan give way to the reality of sweatpants and a soft sweater that cannot be comfortable in the heat of the day. Virgil tries to remember if that’s what Patton had been wearing earlier and… yeah it was. From this distance Virgil can’t tell the look on his face, but he doesn’t look like he’s worried at all.

He’s walking with a purpose. And that purpose looks angry. 

“Does Patton have a car?” Janus asks.

“I don’t...think so…” Virgil says tracking Patton’s progress across the lawn.

“Then who’s keys does he have in his hand?” Janus says not entirely rhetorical.

With barely a nod between the two of them, they scoop all the paper snakes into Virgil’s bag and take off after him.

Its extremely weird, Virgil thinks. Because its so quiet that their footsteps sound like slaps, and they have to duck around a red truck to avoid Patton’s glance back. Janus crouches delicately, slinking between the cars and Virgil wastes a moment watching how gracefully he moves. 

He’s like water flowing, controlled and effortless and an undercurrent of power. Virgil doesn’t doubt his ability to fight right this moment, doesn’t doubt his killer left hook, or his dirty fighting tactics that Janus picked up in the name of self defense and preservation. Virgil’s body hums with adrenaline as he watches Janus follow after Patton.

He leans against a jeep that doesn’t actually have a parking pass but no one’s complained about it and Janus peeks around the bummer to see where Patton was heading.

For a second, Virgil thought he was going after Janus’s car-- the little gold mazada 3 thats a year and a half old and a gift from his parents. He’s just about to yell, to scream, to ward Patton off, because it was already shitty of him to not show up to the debate, but touching Janus’s car? That’s like super assholeish and Virgil has never once wanted to call Patton an asshole.

Janus, however, is quicker and covers his mouth with his hand. “Look, I think...he’s crying,”

“What?” Virgil whispers, squinting-- oh shit, he should probably get an appointment to update his contacts soon -- and Patton is crying. Its the silent type of crying that's born from using a smile to hide the hurt too much and Virgil immediately decides that Patton doesn’t deserve that ever. He feels each one of those tears like a punch to the gut, each soft barely audible gasp like a knee to his jaw, each sniffle like an elbow to the back of his head.

Patton storms past Janus’s car and goes straight to the fiery red Prius that Roman (and his twin Remus) share.

“Oh my god,” Virgil breathes at the same time as Patton takes the blade of a key to the side of the car.

The noise is awful. Janus flinches curling into Virgil as they watch with morbid fascination: Patton doesn’t waver, doesn’t hesitate as he carves deep into the paint and the metal, perfecting each and every letter.

By the time he’s finished, he’s bawling big fat crocodile tears that soak all turn all his cheeks puffy and soak the collar of his sweater and Virgil’s stomach is a twisted knot of emotions he doesn’t know what to do with.

“FUCK OFF” written on the side of Roman’s car explains things very well, anyway.

Patton drops the keys on the ground and then follows after in such a dead weight fall that Virgil feels the shockwaves from where he is. He curls in on himself, sobbing horrible, gut-wrenching howls of pain.

Janus leaps around Virgil to run after him, and Virgil only stumbles slightly trying to come with him. 

“I didn’t…” Janus says, loudly--loud enough to make Patton jump and Virgil flinch and the empty parking lot feel crowded, “I didn’t know you were into Modern Art, Patton.”

Virgil thinks that if it were any other situation, he might have snorted. But when Patton turns to them with his blue eyes so full of tears that Virgil thinks he might drown in them, he forgets every other thought he has had.

Its just...rage.

“I’ll kill him.”

And Virgil means it, the same way he says that the sky is blue, or that he won't take off his sweatshirt, that he loves Janus with all his soul. He means that he will go right back into that building and search through every single fucking classroom until he finds wherever Roman spends his third class of the day and then he’ll drag him out to the parking lot by his stupid perfect hair and run him over a couple hundred times.

Virgil will go to jail for manslaughter and he wouldn’t even feel sorry.

Patton lets out a shuddering sob and frantically tries to wipe away his ugly tears, making noises that Virgil assumes are meant to be words but they come out scrambled and grated and wrong. And Patton who’s never done a single mean thing in all the time that Virgil has known of him, does not deserve to feel a hurt that bad. How dare Roman make him feel a pain that bad.

Virgil rolls up his sleeves and spins on his heel to go take care of the issue-- but Janus catches him by his hood and yanks him back.

“Patton,” Janus says softly (a tone that's normally reserved for two AM sleepovers and lazy saturday movie marathons and sad boi hours that come and go like the seasons), “What can we do?”

Patton lets out a shriek, and when he looks back up there’s no sadness. Its a fury, an anger, its frustration that boiled into a suffocating gas and Virgil guess that he’s not going to need to end Roman’s life because Patton is perfectly capable of doing himself.

“You can shut the hell up!” Patton screams, “And Leave me the fuck alone!”

Virgil and Janus share a look.

And well...Virgil has been breaking rules since he was a kid and Janus isn’t the type of follow orders simply because. Without discussing anything they both sit down next to Patton, and Virgil starts pulling out the origami paper again.

“What are you doing?” Patton hisses in a way that Virgil has never once seen him do. His fingers shake, but he keeps himself calm and cool and collected.

“Its called origami,” Janus says, although he knows very well that’s not what Patton was asking. Virgil watches his fingers flick in the air, a mesmerizing dance that once Patton looks at he couldn’t look away from. 

Patton’s tears drop, his face is still puffy and dangerous, but Janus says nothing about it. Virgil holds his breath and watches as Janus folds, unfolds, pinches, twists the paper into a jumping frog. He sets it out on his palm and lets Patton stare at it like it holds the secrets of the universe.

“I like making things when I get upset,” Janus says. “Would you like me to teach you?”

“I…” Patton sniffles, rubbing away his tears again. He sounds so small and insignificant that Virgil wants to wrap his arms around him and protect him from everything. “Why…?”

“I know how to do many animals,” Janus continues on, “frogs, snakes, spiders, cranes… Or we can just fold paper in any way we want to, too.”

Patton is silent. Janus picks up another piece of paper and begins folding it in half. There’s a breeze through the parking lot, colder than before, bitter and smarting. Virgil tugs the sleeves of his jacket over his hands and tries not to wonder what happened to the sun. 

“The motion is calming to me,” Janus explains, “I like the creation of something new and different, the repetition--”

There’s a huff.

A snort.

And then...well then Patton is laughing a terribly wet, mean laugh. Janus pauses halfway through folding the head of the frog to make sure Patton hasn't been replaced by a skinwalking alien wearing Patton’s face, and Virgil can’t really blame him at all. The small boy kneels over laughing so hard he ends up gasping for breath and Virgil shivers at how the noise steals all the warmth from the air.

“Fucking stupid,” Patton manages, through gasps that sound suspiciously like whimpers. “Everything is so fucking stupid.” 

“I see someone taught the five-year-old a new swear word,” Janus says. “Who was it? Remus?”

“Just go away, Janus,” Patton says, laying his head on the asphalt.

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” Janus tuts finishing off his second frog, “You really don’t know where that piece of road has been.”

“Actually I do!” Patton bolts upright, “I do know! Its been right here! Its been here no matter what’s happened, never moving, never changing, and even if I marked it with chalk or paint or took a jackhammer to it or blew it the fuck up it will still be here when I wake up tomorrow! Now fuck off!”

Virgil blinks, tilting his head to the side ever so slightly. 

“I am learning so many things about you today, Patton,” Janus says without missing a beat. He picks up another sheet of paper, “You’re into modern art, you’re passionate about parking lots...my, my, my. Perhaps we should have done our debate on road construction instead. Would you have bothered to show up then?”

“Like it matters.” Patton says, even more unlike himself. Virgil thinks he’s seen Patton overbook himself for commitments more times than he can count and apologies are nearly always coupled with food of some sort: cookies, fudge, pasta salad. Sometimes even to things he never even said he could be there for. Patton is more apologetic than Virgil ever has been, and Virgil likes to apologize for existing.

But here is a Patton, or a version of him, that seems so defeated, so angry, so sad and upset and miserable that he’s just...given up. Consequences be damned.

“We lose,” Patton says looking up at the sky, “We lose because Mrs. Hydrus hates you, Janus, and so she makes us do it without any notes, then every time you stumble, she interrupts and asks for clarification despite being the moderator, and she cuts down our time by a whole minute. And when you say anything back to her she sends you to the principal's office and gives us a zero for the assignment, anyway. We lose. But its fine because you never remember anyway and then you get to wake up and be humiliated all over again. And it doesn’t matter what I do! Okay? We lose!”

Janus stops folding his frog and turns to look directly at Patton. Virgil is too, and he can scarcely breathe.

“What did you just say?”

Patton turns to face him swiping away another round of tears. “Go ahead, Virgil! You’re just like everyone else. Go and call me c-crazy! Tell me I’m insane! T-take me to the doctors! Whatever! I’m so t-tired of this and I can’t even die.”

Virgil swallows hard. There’s a lump in the back of his throat, a lump that’s growing until he can barely breathe around it. Janus brings a hand up to his mouth like he might be sick right there on the concrete. 

“Patton…” Virgil breathes. “Are you a paper frog?”

Patton stares at him like he’s stupid so Virgil reaches out with shaky hands and picks up one of the finished frogs from the ground. He carefully unfolds it, piece-by-piece, until its back to the original square. Then he holds it up for Patton to see, and begins to refold it the way that Janus had.

“Are you,” Virgil asks, “being refolded like a paper frog?”

Patton’s face says everything.

“H-how,” Janus asks, “how many times?”

The other boy blinks long and slow and sniffles. “I-I don’t know. Around three hundred twelve? Maybe? I lost count so long ago.”

“Three hundred twel--” Virgil repeats, “Holy shit, Pat! That’s almost a year.”

“Why didn’t you come to us?” Janus asks, although they all know why really. Despite them being debate partners, Patton and Janus don’t talk. Janus and Virgil admire him from afar, and only talk to him in passing. For the longest time Virgil didn’t even know if Patton knew his name, and now they’re sitting here wondering why strangers would ever interact with one another?

“What about…” Virgil motions to the car, the keys, the fun words written in the red paint.

Patton shakes his head so hard his body trembles. “He doesn’t...he never...I tried so so hard but its so much easier to leave him be. It takes so much to convince him and then… then its not a true love’s kiss solution.”

Virgil’s gut twists just thinking about that. About how many times that Roman made him prove that he had seen everything before, and then for a kiss not to work when they both were head over heels in love with each other and then waking up again, convincing Roman again, then telling him the kiss didn’t work? Virgil could guess it didn’t go over well at all. 

Knowing Roman it had probably dissolved into a “we’re not meant for each other?”, followed by a “i will always love you no matter what.” , and finished with a “If it will save you from this loop then we’ll have to break up”.

From the sight of the keys on the ground, Virgil can guess how far it went this time.

“I do love him,” Patton says almost desperately. “I do, I do, I do! I swear I love him so much--”

Janus puts a hand on Patton’s shoulder and he falls silent immediately. “I believe you,” Janus says, “I’ve seen the way you look at him, Patton. No one here thinks that the two of you aren’t perfect for each other.”

Its a pain to admit because its friendzoning both of them right now, but Virgil would weather that if it meant Patton wouldn’t sound so heartbroken. Janus meets his eyes over Patton’s shoulder and gives him a nod. At least they’re on the same page for this.

“Three hundred twelve time loops,” Virgil says, “does not sound like it was fun at all.”

“Are any loops fun?” Janus asks.

“Fruit loops are fun,” Patton sniffles again. He rubs his eyes and hunches over in his sweatshirt. “Do you guys...do you guys really believe me?”

Janus’s lips curve into a wry smile, “Patton in all the time that I can remember, I’ve never seen you have the guts to key someone’s car. And now you’re saying fuck? And telling me off? That's a whole lot of character development to happen without me noticing, unless it was a time loop.”

Patton giggles, just a bit. It's still weepy but it makes Virgil feel like he can breathe for the first time. 

“Don’t worry, Pat,” Virgil says, “We’ll figure this thing out.” 

“H-how?” 

Janus sighed leaning back a little, “Well we could ask Logan.”

“Logan?” Virgil echoes, “you mean Remus’s boyfriend? You think he’s got something?”

Janus shrugs, “He is a witch.” 

“A what now?” Virgil says. “Since when was he a witch! You never told me that!” 

Janus grins sheepishly, and rubs the back of his neck, “I forgot? I love you?”

Virgil blows a raspberry at him. “Just like how I’m gonna forget to mention you when I find Mothman. But I love you, too.”

“Its a cruel love, this thing we have.” Janus says rather poetically and Virgil reaches over to shove his shoulder. Janus laughs sways so he falls onto Patton’s shoulder. Patton for his part smiles, bright and blinding and it takes both their breaths away when he laughs again.

Virgil can’t imagine having to redo the same day twice, much less three hundred times. He wonders vaguely if Patton has any idea how strong he is, how amazing, how inspiring he is to keep that glow inside himself despite everything.

He’s smile fades for a moment and he perks up all of a sudden. “Oh My Gosh! Logan’s a witch!” He makes a flurry of arm movements that forces Virgil to duck, “Oh my gosh that means--!!”

“Deep breaths, dear,” Janus suggests, although it goes ignored.

“Yesterday--like actually yesterday, your yesterday, not the last loop, Logan and Remus got into an argument over a bottle and I thought it was gatorade! Remus was trying to drink it but Logan wouldn’t let him and they ended up spilling it on the floor! I helped them keep it up but I got a little bit on my hand! I didn’t think too much of it but what if it was like some sort of potion?”

Janus considers it, “Hmmm, its a good starting place. Let’s go ask him what it was.” He stands up and offers a hand down to Patton and Virgil each. Virgil takes it and turns back to also offer his own hand to the smaller boy. 

“Come on, Hart, this is going to be your last loop.” Janus says.

Patton stares at their hands almost as if he was afraid to take them. He glances down at the origami frogs, at the keys, and their bags, then back up at them with an fearful expression. “You...you promise?”

Virgil laughs, “Yeah, we got you, Pat. Promise.”

Patton shakes from head to toe, but he grabs both their hands and smiles like he has hope for the first time in three hundred twelve days.

[imjustthemechanic]

A Romantic Night at the Museum

Happy valentine’s day to @tytythepilot, who wanted a Pepperony HSAU in which they start out hating each other!

💘 - 💝 - 💌 - 💝 - 💘

It was a requirement for graduation: every senior at Triskelion High had to do thirty hours of volunteer work at one of a number of school-approved venues.  It was a duty a lot of students complained about, but Pepper Potts had known right away which she would choose.  There was a soup kitchen, a retirement home, a recycling centre, the humane society, and a few other places, but on sign-up day her eyes had gone right to the bottom of the list: the Empire State Museum of Modern Art.

It seemed ideal.  Pepper was planning to major in accounting, but she was interested in art and art history, and enjoyed visiting the ESMMA.  She was already familiar with all their permanent exhibits, so she probably wouldn’t even need an orientation.  The people who worked there would doubtless be impressed with her dedication.  When she put her name on the list, she did notice that nobody else had chosen the museum yet, but since she was one of the first to choose a venue, she didn’t think much of it.

On November first, Mr. Coulson the history teacher called the seniors down to the gymnasium to get the permission paperwork for their assignments, and to hand out the lanyards and tags where they would log their hours.  Pepper set impatiently in the folding metal chair while the various venues were called out. Red lanyards for the humane society were popular, as were green ones for the recycling centre.  By the time he got close to the bottom, there didn’t seem to be very many people without lanyards, and Pepper was starting to wonder if there would be anybody else volunteering at the museum at all.

As it turned out, there was one other.

“Finally, for the ESMMA,” Mr. Coulson read out at last, “Potts, Virginia, and Stark, Anthony.”

Pepper bounced to her feet and looked around, blinking in surprise.  Tony Stark?  She knew he went to Triskelion High School – who didn’t? – but so far she’d only ever glimpsed him from afar.  From the gossip that surrounded him she knew he was the son of a wealthy and powerful businessmen, that he’d dated most of the cheerleaders but couldn’t remember their names, and that his picture had been on the front of the October issue of the Triskelion Shield newsletter because he’d won some sort of state science prize.  He wanted to work at the museum?

She didn’t see anybody else standing up, though. The other students were all chatting together and comparing lanyards… maybe Stark wasn’t here today?  Pepper grabbed her canvas backpack, covered in pins and buttons for various causes she supported, and hurried to the front.  Mr. Coulson was waiting at the bottom of the stage, holding out the orange lanyard for her.

“There’s nobody else for the museum?” she asked.

“Word gets around,” he replied, ticking her off on his list.  “You and Stark were the only two who signed up.”

“Great.”  Pepper hung the lanyard around her neck with a grimace.  “I get to babysit the rich kid all by myself.”  From what little she knew of Stark, she had no illusions that he would do anything during their volunteer time.  As far as Pepper had ever been able to tell, he didn’t even do anything in his classes – she’d seen him sleeping in Ms. Hill’s Calculus course. He probably paid somebody to take his exams for him.

“Depends on where the museum needs you,” Mr. Coulson said.  “You might not even see him.”

“God, I hope not!” Pepper snorted, and turned around… only to find herself face-to-face with a boy.  He was about her own height, with unkept dark brown hair that needed trimming and brown eyes, and wearing an expensive-looking blazer over a Pink Floyd T-shirt.  She recognized him immediately, of course.  It was Tony Stark, in the flesh.

The colour drained from Pepper’s face.  How much had he heard?

“At least the babysitter’s cute,” he said.

That answered her question – he’d heard all of it.  Pepper stepped past him and walked away as fast as she could, shaking.  Now she was in for it.  The whole school knew everything Stark said and did… it would be a miracle if they weren’t all talking about her by this time tomorrow. And she was going to be stuck with this guy at the museum for two hours a week, the rest of the semester!  Maybe she could catch pneumonia or something and be excused from the rest of the school year.

Her friend Betty was waiting for her at the gym exit, wearing the red humane society lanyard.  “You’re going to be volunteering with Tony Stark?” she asked.

“I don’t wanna talk about it,” Pepper informed her, and kept going.

💘 - 💝 - 💌 - 💝 - 💘

Tony watched the girl disappear in a huff of ginger hair and oversized sweater, then turned to Coulson for his own lanyard and badge.  “What crawled up her butt?” he asked.  There were lots of girls in school who didn’t like Tony – there were lots of girls outside school who didn’t like him – but most of them at least knew him.  As far as he could remember, Tony had never spoken to that one before.

“I don’t think she believes you know anything about art,” said Mr. Coulson.

“Yeah?” Tony asked.

The truth was, he didn’t really.  Tony’s parents were patrons of the ESMMA, along with several other museums in the city, so he’d figured the employees there would be nice to him – but he wasn’t into art for its own sake.  Tony preferred things that could be quantified and figured out, while art, particularly modern art, was the exact opposite of that.  He’d signed up on the assumption that the museum would give him flash cards or something so he could lead tours and answer questions.  He could memorize things like that in a few seconds and be fine. Now, however, he’d been given a challenge.  Who was this girl to judge him when she’d never even met him properly.

“Well,” he said, “she’s gonna find out how wrong she is.”

That evening, Tony sat down in front of his computer – he’d built it himself, out of parts of several others – and pulled up the museum’s website.  With a can of Red Bull at one elbow and a package of pretzels at the other he sat up almost until dawn, going through the online collection and reading about artists, movements, and styles.  Tony could handle being called a lot of things but nobody was going to think he was dumb.

By Friday afternoon, after a couple of additional trips to both the public and museum libraries, he felt he was more than ready. He’d even dug out an old ESMMA t-shirt he’d gotten for free at one of Mom’s fundraisers, and was wearing that and his lanyard as he leaned against one of the metal pillars outside the museum entrance.  The museum wasn’t expecting them until four, but there was no way Tony was letting the girl be earlier than he was.

It worked, too – he’d been waiting nearly fifteen minutes when she finally got off the bus.  Her long ginger hair was in two braids, and her slender figure was absolutely lost under an enormous camo-green cardigan.  Tony was gratified to see her surprised to find him there.

“Afternoon,” he said.

“Hi,” she replied warily.

Tony smiled at her.  “What’s your favourite piece in the ESMMA collection?” he asked, as if making polite conversation.  “I’m partial to Csaky.  Picasso’s a little too abstract for my tastes.”

She frowned for a moment, then shrugged one shoulder. “I’ve never thought about it. Probably the Water Lillies.”

“Monet, cool,” Tony nodded.  “Nobody else I asked at school had signed up for the museum. It’s good to know there’s somebody else around who’s got some taste.  What do you think of Monet’s red paintings?  Are they artistically interesting, or just medically?”

The girl began to smile.  “They can be both,” she said.  “With impressionists it was all about how they saw the world, right? It was their impression. Both Monet’s cataracts and the removal of them affected that, so it should be reflected in his art.”

Tony had expected her to be squirming by now, having realized she was wrong about him, but that didn’t seem to be the case.  He tried to go a little deeper.  “What do you think of the idea that after his surgery he could see into the ultraviolet?” he asked.

“I hadn’t heard that before,” she replied.  For a moment Tony felt triumphant, but then she continued on, apparently oblivious to the fact that he’d just shown he knew more about impressionists than she did.  “I wonder what effect that would have… could we even see it?”

Tony was about to cite a Journal of Art History paper he’d read on the subject, but then one of the big glass doors opened and a man in a blue shirt and white tie, wearing an ESMMA nametag that identified him, appropriately enough, as Art, looked out at him.  “Are you two the kids from Triskelion?” he asked.

“Yes,” the girl said, reaching to took the guy’s hand. “I’m Virginia – people call me Pepper.”

“And I’m Tony,” he stepped up to do the same.

“Oh, I know who you are,” said Art, and shook Tony’s hand with enthusiasm.  “I’ve seen you here with your folks.  Come on in! We’re always happy to have kids from the school.”  He held the door open for them.  “We look forward to it all year.”

“I’ve been looking forward to it, myself,” said Pepper. “I’ve been to the museum quite often, and I know the layout pretty well.”

“And I can identify every piece in the place!” Tony bragged, not to be outdone as the followed Art inside.  The foyer of the building was spacious, with high ceilings, white walls, and abstract-shaped red couches.  “That one behind the admissions counter, for example, that’s Matisse’s Two Masks.”  He snickered. “The one that looks like a mantis shrimp wearing cool sunglasses.”

Pepper looked at him as if he’d just sprouted a second head, but didn’t say anything.

“Man, it kinda does, doesn’t it?” said Art, grinning. “Great, now I’ll never unsee that! Right this way.”  He led them to a door marked staff only, and touched his employee ID card to a panel to unlock it.  The inner side had a complicated push-bar arrangement on it, the sort that would probably set off an alarm if somebody tried to open it without permission.

“Ohhh… are we gonna be working in the off-view collections?” Pepper asked in a reverent voice.

“Sort of,” said Art.

They went down the stairs to the basement level, and through a maze of rooms full of shelves and boxes and things carefully stored in glass cases, to a door with no special signs or locks on it, just an ordinary lever handle.  Beyond that was a little room with one tiny, dingy window way high up in the wall, looking out on a parking lot, and a lot of metal shelves stacked high with what appeared to be garbage.  There were cardboard boxes full of paper, trash bags bulging with heaven knew what, stacks of old magazines, packages of unopened paper plates and plastic forks. Tony frowned as he looked around. He hadn’t seen anything like this on the website?

“Is this art?” he asked.

“This is our surplus from last year,” Art replied. “Menus and leaflets and merch.  We need you guys to sort it out – what we can still sell, what we can recycle, what we can donate, and so forth.  We save it all year so you kids will have something to do.”  He looked so proud of himself, as if he were expecting them to be excited about this.

Tony glanced at Pepper.  Her mouth was open in astonishment.

“The café and vending machines will give you sodas and snacks at half price with your lanyards,” Art said cheerfully.  “If you need anything, you can call somebody there.” He pointed to a set of buttons below a speaker on the wall.  “See you at six!”  And he walked out, whistling.

Pepper’s backpack fell out of her hands and landed on the floor.  “Word gets around,” she said aloud.  “Nobody told me.”

The look on her face and the mournful tone of her voice would have been full as hell if Tony hadn’t been feeling pretty betrayed, himself.  “This is bullshit,” he declared.  His parents had donated thousands of dollars to the ESMMA over the years.  He’d studied for this, and they thought all he was good for was sorting garbage?  “I’m going to call my Mom,” he said darkly.

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Pepper felt like the bottom had dropped out of her stomach and all her insides had gone splat on the gritty concrete floor.  She’d been looking forward to this for a month, as a chance to work in the stimulating environment of the museum, enjoying art and helping other people enjoy it, too.  Now it turned out they expected her to spend the whole time shut in the basement?  No wonder nobody else signed u for the museum! Why hadn’t she asked around? Clearly somebody was telling the seniors to avoid the assignment!

It was Stark’s statement that snapped her out of her moment of shock.  Pepper had kept her head down the last few days at school, waiting for the ridicule to start, but it never had.  It seemed like nobody had overheard the exchange, and Stark must not have told anyone about it.  She’d begun to hope that he just wanted to forget about it, too.  Her hopes had risen even further when he’d actually seemed to want to talk about the museum and the collection, and when she’d noticed his parents’ names on the big granite slab in the lobby floor.  Maybe they were going to get along after all…

Now it was clear after all that he really was just a spoiled jerk.  He was here because he thought his family’s involvement would get him special treatment and he was pissed because it wouldn’t.  Well, maybe it would do him good to live in the real world for two hours a week.

“Is that what you do every time you don’t get what you want?” she demanded.  “Go crying to Mommy and have her fix it for you?”

Stark scowled at her.  “Oh, and I guess you’re totally fine with it?  You were geeking out a minute ago!”

“I am not fine with it!” Pepper informed him.  “I am bitterly disappointed, but some of us don’t have rich parents who can make sure we get our way!”  She looked around again at the room’s ill-organized contents, then picked up her backpack and set it on a chair.  The sleeves of her cardigan wouldn’t stay up, but she made a show of rolling them anyway before she dug into the first box of magazines.

“What are you doing?” asked Stark.

“I’m doing what I was told to do!” she snarled. “Because I need the credit to graduate, and unlike some people I can’t just nap through all my classes and bribe the school to pass me anyway!”

For a moment Stark just stood there as if she’d slapped him. Then he drew himself up to his full height, which was not impressive when he wasn’t any taller than Pepper, and demanded, “what is your problem?  I never even met you until the other day, and you already hated me!  You honestly think I can’t do this?” He gestured to the piles of junk.

“I think you won’t,” Pepper replied primly.  “I mean, look at you – you’re just standing there! Your parents are so rich you’ve probably never had to do anything in your entire life!  I bet your Dad pays off the teachers to give you good marks!”

“I get good marks all by myself!” Stark huffed.  “I happen to be a genius!”

If that were supposed to make her think more highly of him, it failed miserably.  Pepper threw a magazine at him.  “You’re an egotistical twit!” she said.  “If you can work, prove it!”

“Maybe I will!” he said.  He stood there a moment longer, looking around, and Pepper wondered if he would refuse after all, out of sheer spite.  But then he grabbed a box of merchandise from a now-defunct special exhibit on Lichtenstein and started sorting them, rather violently.

Pepper smirked.  At least she’d gotten him to participate.

“You’ve got no right to pass judgment on me when you don’t know me,” Stark said after a while.

“Maybe you shouldn’t worry so much about what other people think of you,” Pepper retorted.  She opened a second box, and found it was full of old calendars.  The guy named Art had said they saved things all year for the Triskelion volunteers, but these were fully three years old.  Whoever had been conned into doing this in the mean time couldn’t have been very thorough.

“I don’t care what other people think of me,” Stark said.  He was stacking souvenir water bottles into two pyramids, one of bottles that had last year’s date on them, and one that did not.

“Obviously you do, or you wouldn’t be mad at me for not liking you,” Pepper pointed out.

She looked around at the mess, and felt her jaw muscles tighten.  This was clearly a job that desperately needed doing and, just as obviously, nobody wanted to do it.  The museum staff didn’t want to deal with it, so they left it for the students.  The students didn’t want to deal with it, so they didn’t  sign up for the volunteer work.  Pepper certainly didn’t want to do it… but that in itself awakened a weird form of rebellion in her.  Fine, then. She would do it, and she would do a spectacular job, so that nobody else could ever do half as well! She dumped the calendars back in their box, and got out a marker to write the word recycle on the side.

“I’m not mad,” said Stark.  “I couldn’t care less if you like me or not.  I’m just saying you have no right to an opinion.”

“Of course I do,” Pepper said, “and you’re not making me like you any better by whining about it!”  She grabbed another box.

“Maybe I don’t like you, either,” he retorted.

“Good thing I actually don’t care what you think of me,” sniffed Pepper.  After their interactions so far, she would have been disappointed if he didn’t hate her.  The last thing she wanted was to appeal to a spoiled brat like Stark!  She looked over her shoulder at his pyramids.  “What are you doing with those?”

“Seeing how high I can stack them,” he replied.

“We’re not here to play,” Pepper informed him.  The next box contained multicoloured stress balls. For a moment she wrestled with temptation, then she threw one at Stark’s bottles, as if they were a setup pin a carnival game.  They wobbled, then crashed down.

“Hey!” he protested.

“We’re here to work,” she told him.

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That interaction seemed to have set the tone for the entire evening, Tony observed.  This girl was absolutely determined to do the job they’d given her, even though it was a stupid rip-off of a job, and if Tony hadn’t been so determined to hate her back he would have found it kind of admirable.  If she had that kind of work ethic in her classes she might well end up valedictorian… and since the school was in the habit of choosing one valedictorian of each sex, that meant Tony might find himself sharing a stage with her in June.  That sounded like a disaster waiting to happen.

Art had promised to let them out at six.  He’d also told them they were welcome to go for snacks or bathroom breaks, but Pepper – why was she called that? Because of her freckles, maybe? She certainly was peppered with those – didn’t stop.  Tony was getting hungry and cranky, but he didn’t stop, either.  Pepper had thought he’d know nothing abut art and he’d proven her wrong.  Now she thought he wasn’t willing to work hard, so he was going to prove her wrong on that, too.

Six o’clock came and went.  Upstairs the museum was probably closing up, and Art would arrive any minutes.  Pepper kept at it, though, tossing vaguely cubist plush animals around like she planned to do it all night, using her phone as a flashlight to peer into dark corners of the room looking for more.  Tony wondered if he ought to say something, but if he did, she might think he was being lazy and he wasn’t going to let her have that.  He continued taking bundles of pamphlets out of their elastic bands and dumping them in the ‘recycle’ box as his watched ticked past six thirty and approached seven.

Then the lights went out.

For a moment the two of them just stood there in the dark, blinking.  A little bit of light came in through that high-up window, but it wasn’t really enough to see by.  After a few seconds, Pepper turned her phone flashlight back on, which made Tony yelp as she shone it directly in his face.

“Hey!” he protested.

“Sorry!”  She quickly moved it.  “Did you do that?”

“What?” asked Tony.  “Turn the lights off?  Why would I do that!  They probably went off because it’s way past six and the museum is closed.”  He went and moved a box so he could stand on it and look out the window.

Pepper stared at him, then looked at her phone screen. “Why didn’t you say something?” she asked.

“Because you would have gone aww, is the little rich boy tired?”  Sure enough, there was nobody moving out in the courtyard.  The café tables had been put away, and he thought he could make out somebody on the opposite side locking a door.

“So you do care what I think of you,” she said, but didn’t seem interested in arguing the point.  As Tony opened his mouth to reply, she turned away and shone the light around the room.  “Which way to the stairs?”

“This way.”  Tony hopped down from his box and turned on his own phone for extra light. A fat lot of good it had done him, he thought, to memorize those museum maps.  None of them had included the basement!  But by the light of the LEDs the two young people managed to wind their way through the maze of rooms.

“Oh, Jesus!” Pepper exclaimed, grabbing Tony’s arm.

“What?” he turned around, and nearly jumped out of his own skin as he saw what looked like a winged, humanoid figure looming over them.  Then he realized what he was looking at was the shadow of a sculpture in dark stone, projected on the wall and ceiling by the light, and recognized it from the website catalogue – at least that had done him some good. “That’s Csaky’s Messenger,” he said.  A black granite cubist angel.

“I knew that,” said Pepper, relaxing her grip.

“No, you didn’t,” he teased.  “What did you think it was, Mothman?”

“Shut up and let’s get out of here,” she said. “This place is creepy in the dark.”

It had been kind of creepy in the daytime, Tony thought, with all the old sculptures covered in sheets and so forth.  When he moved his own light around the room the shadows seemed to come to life, and it did make the statues look terrifyingly animated. He tried not to think about that as they continued to the stairs.

It was an effort not to cheer when they finally sighted the red EXIT sign.  Tony took the stairs two at a time and pushed on the bar handle, not really caring if it set off an alarm.  It did not – in fact, the only sound was a dull clunk, and the door did not move.

Tony tried again, wondering if he’d simply pushed it too hard.  He got the same result.

“Now what?” asked Pepper.

“It’s locked,” he said.

“What?”

“Don’t panic, it’s not like we’re gonna run out of air or anything,” said Tony, rolling his eyes.  “It’s just a locked door.”

“Yes, but that means we’re stuck in here!” she protested.

“It’s not like the museum’s empty!”  Tony put his shoulder against the door to rattle it. “Hey!  Hey, we’re locked in!” he shouted.

“Help!” Pepper chimed in.  “Anybody out there?  Help!”

They continued shouting for a few minutes, but it got no reply.  If anybody were out there, they couldn’t hear them – or they were just ignoring the cries.

“Why didn’t that guy come back to tell us it was time to go?” Pepper wailed.

Tony very much wanted to know that, himself.  “I guess he forgot about us.”  He rattled the door one last time and waited a moment, but there was still no response.

She grabbed his arm again.  “You can call your parents!”

Tony pulled free of her grip.  “Oh, now who wants to call my rich parents to fix everything?” he couldn’t resist saying.

She narrowed her eyes.  “That was a tantrum.  This is an emergency.  I’m sorry I made fun of you, okay?  Please call them.”

The apology was startling, but it didn’t change one important fact.  “I can’t,” Tony said.  “Or if I did, it wouldn’t do any  good. They’re in Vienna this week.”  He scowled.

The light on Pepper’s phone shut off with an unhappy buzzing sound, but by the light of his own Tony could see that she looked disappointed.  “So you were just ranting when you said you were gonna have your Mom yell at the museum people?”

“No, I was gonna talk to her, it’s just that it’ll probably take ages for her to do anything about it, because she’s out of the country and she doesn’t like staying up all night to make phone calls,” Tony grumbled.  “Why don’t you call your parents?  At least they live here in town.”

Pepper nodded and looked down at her phone, then swallowed when she saw the screen.  “Uh… actually, I don’t think I can.  I’ve had the flashlight on too long and the battery is dead.”

He reached into his pocket.  “You can use mine.  You know their numbers, right?”

“No,” she admitted, squirming a bit.  “We haven’t had a land line since I was twelve. I’ve always had their numbers in my phone.”

“Well, that’s just great!”  Tony kicked the door and then went to sit down on the top step. “So what do we do, just sit here all night?”

“You said you were a genius!  Can’t you figure something out?” she asked.

Tony huffed.  There she was again, thinking he was dumb.  He knew that she was doing it on purpose, and that if he kept reacting the way she wanted, she would quickly come to decide that she could make him do anything she wanted by saying she thought he couldn’t or wouldn’t… but at the same time, he couldn’t let her think she was right.  He thought back to the museum maps he’d looked at… this stairwell hadn’t been marked on any of them, which meant the public wasn’t supposed to use them.  All the exits probably locked the same way.  What he needed was a way to pick the lock, which was going to be difficult when it was inside the bar apparatus.

“Well?” Pepper asked.

“Shut up.  I’m thinking.”  Tony turned and directed the light from his phone onto the bar.  There were some screws that would be easy to take out, but they were in the push panel at the hinge end of the door… he’d need to reach inside somehow.  “Okay,” he said, standing up again.  “There’s gotta be some tools in that basement, right?  I need a screwdriver.”

“Is this a good idea?” asked Pepper.

“I won the Pym Prize for Robotics last month!” Tony reminded her.  “My picture was on the cover of the school newspaper, and you don’t trust me with a screwdriver?”

She threw up her hands.  “Okay, okay!  Do your genius thing!”

Tony checked the battery on his own phone.  With the flashlight on it was draining fast.  If they didn’t want to be in here with no light but the EXIT signs, he was going to have to find another source of illumination.  “And a proper flashlight,” he decided.

“That’s the smartest thing you’ve said all evening,” said Pepper, and followed him down the steps.

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Pepper realized she was being mean and snappish, but she couldn’t help it.  How was she supposed to feel when they were locked in a basement?  They couldn’t just stay here all night.  What about dinner?  Her stomach was already growling.  She’d been ignoring it earlier because she had wanted to show that she was willing to work.  Where would they sleep?  There was nothing soft down here to lie on.  And good lord, what was going to happen when one of them needed to pee?

All that nervous energy had to go somewhere and the only possible target was Stark – and he was doubly convenient in that capacity because this was his fault.  He’d noticed the time passing while she had not.  He couldn’t have said something.  If he’d spoken up, they could have decided it was time to go and done so, but he hadn’t, the staff had forgotten about them, and now they were stuck down here!

Back at the bottom of the stairs, Stark located a janitor’s closet.  This seemed a good place to start looking for emergency supplies – there was a first aid kit and a fire extinguisher hanging on the wall, and on a shelf above them he found a utility flashlight.  He gave the latter to Pepper, and had her hold it while he rooted around inside a cupboard, looking for something else.

“What are you doing now?” she asked.

“I’m looking for tools,” he replied.  “A screwdriver.  A hammer.  Something. I’m gonna take the door apart and open the lock from the inside… and don’t ask me if I can do that,” he added, pulling his head out of the cupboard to look straight at her.  “I told you, I’m a genius.  I can figure it out.”

Pepper sniffed.  She would wait and see how he did at getting them out of the basement, but she knew one thing for certain.  “You may be a genius, but talking about it all the time still makes you sound like a jerk.  Why do you care so much that people know how smart you are?”

“Because it’s important!” said Tony, going back to his rooting around.  “Fine, I admit it: yes, I want people to know I’m smart, okay?  I’m proud of it.  Why shouldn’t I be?”

“It’s fine to be proud, but if you go around talking about it, you’re bragging,” Pepper said to his butt, which was the only part of him she could see.  “What happened to humility?”

“False humility is just another kind of lying,” he said.

“It’s polite,” Pepper insisted.  “You don’t see me go around bragging.  I could be standing here going, oh, they gave me this job because nobody else wants to do it so I’m going to be awesome at it just to show them.”

This time, he actually wiggled back out of the cupboard and sat up, frowning at her in evident confusion.  “Is that really what you’re proudest of?” he asked.  “That you’re willing to do crappy jobs?”

“I’m willing to do them well,” Pepper clarified. “The people who left all those three-year-old calendars in the box sure didn’t do a very good job of it.  Just because nobody wants to do something doesn’t mean you shouldn’t do it properly.  I’m a Hufflepuff,” she said firmly.  “I believe in doing things right.”

“Yeah, but that seems like a weird thing to brag about,” he insisted.

“I just said I don’t brag about it,” huffed Pepper.

“No, I mean, it’s a weird example of a thing you might brag about,” Stark said.  “Most people would say something like, I’m good at math, or I  can beat a new video game faster than anybody I know, or I’ve won prizes for my robots.  Your thing is doing terrible jobs?”

His mention to the robotics prize made Pepper wonder if all three of his examples were things he personally considered himself amazing at.  “No, they wouldn’t say that, because most people don’t go around bragging.”

“If you asked them,” Stark said, frowning in frustration.  “If you go up to somebody and ask them what are you best at they’ll always tell you something!  Like, my friend Rhodey is really good at building model airplanes.  He’ll tell you all about how he changed them to be more accurate than they were on the box.  Or there’s Janet from my physics class who’s really good at her fashion Instagram.  What’s your ‘thing’?”

Pepper winced, wishing now she’d never spoken. Everybody had a ‘thing’, didn’t they? Something they were really into. With Jane it was astronomy – everyone knew she’d been accepted to Culver for astrophysics and she could take you out on a dark night and show you three planets, nine constellations, and tell you about how people could figure out the date of supernovas from tree rings. Pepper never understood half of what she said.  With Natasha it was ballet and gymnastics, and the phys. ed teachers said she’d probably be in the Olympics someday.  Pepper was madly jealous of both of them for having something they were so good at and so passionate about… because she didn’t.

She was silent for a moment – and her very hesitation must have told Stark all he needed to know.  “Oh, come on, you must be good at something,” he said.  “How about art?”

Pepper shrugged awkwardly.  “I like art, but I can’t do it.  I took art in freshman year but I wasn’t any good at it. I never felt inspired.  I’m more interested in the history than in actually doing it, but that’s not really… not really something you can make a career out of.  I guess I could be a museum curator, but…”  She looked around the dark room, with that unsettling statue still looming in a corner of it.  “A museum doesn’t sound like a great place to work right now.”

“I hear that,” Stark grumbled.

“I’m gonna do accounting in college,” she went on, “because I’ll be able to get a good job that way.  I get decent grades in math, but they’re not any better than the grades I get in anything else.  My Dad was always one of those if you put your mind to it you can do anything people, and he’s right, because I can do a lot of things well but there’s not really anything I’d say I’m good at.”

Pepper stopped there, because… why had she told him that?  It wasn’t something she ever discussed, even with her friends or family.  They wouldn’t understand.  All of them had a ‘thing’, but Pepper was just… Pepper. She worked hard because if she couldn’t be good at something, she wanted to be decent at as many things as she could. Jill of all trades, mistress of none.

Stark was looking at her like he didn’t know what she was talking about.  He probably didn’t.  If he was so damn smart, he was probably good at everything and couldn’t imagine what mediocrity was possibly like.  What would he know about insecurity?

“Look, just find your tools and get us out of here,” said Pepper.

He crawled back into the cupboard, while she knelt down to shine the flashlight over his shoulder.  After a minute or two of sorting around amid cleaning supplies and a set of wrenches, he sat up triumphantly.  “Aha!” he exclaimed, holding high a beat-up screwdriver with an orange handle.

“Finally!” said Pepper.  “Let’s go!”

They returned to the main floor and Pepper continued to hold the flashlight while Stark knelt down to turn the screws.  He tried for a few moments, then stopped and muttered a bad word under his breath.

“Now what’s wrong?” Pepper asked.  She could feel her stomach sinking again.

“It’s a Phillips,” said Stark.

“What’s that?” Pepper wanted to know.

“It’s a Phillips head screwdriver!”  He pointed it at her like a magic wand.  “The screws are all flat heads!”

“Can’t you still use it?” she asked.  Pepper admittedly knew very little about tools but she had assembled furniture with her parents, and she was sure her father had once said she could still use a particular screwdriver even if it was the wrong shape.

Stark appeared to disagree – he tossed the screwdriver back down the stairs, and she could hear it clink as it bounced off the concrete steps.  “No. You could use a flat head screwdriver in a Phillips screw, but not the other way around.”

“The Phillips… is that the one with the plus, and the flat head is the one with the minus?” she asked.

“Yeah.”  Stark sat there for a moment, then examined the screws again.  “You got a dime?”

“Nobody carries cash in New York,” Pepper scoffed. She thought for a moment, herself, and then unzipped her backpack and started sorting through it, looking for her keys.  “Here!” She pulled them out.  “I have nail clippers on my keychain!”

“So what?” he asked, annoyed.

“So they have a flat end!”  She took them off the loop and lifted the lever to show him. “Will that fit in the screws?”

Stark blinked, then snatched them out of her hand, grinning.  “You’re a genius!” he said, and turned around to start removing screws.

“Oh, like you?” she asked, eyebrows raised.

“Maybe not quite like me,” he said, but he glanced back over his shoulder to smile at her, and something inside Pepper gave an involuntarily little flutter.  Stark was clearly joking, but when he’d said you’re a genius, it had sounded so sincere and spontaneous she couldn’t help but think he meant it.

“There we go!” Stark dropped one screw on the floor, then removed another, and took the entire bar off the door.  “Shine the light in here, would you?”

Pepper directed the beam over his shoulder, while he first peered in and then reached to feel around.  For a moment he frowned, and Pepper started getting worried again, but this time he seemed to figure out a solution quickly.

“Another equipment run!” he declared.  “I know I saw wire cutters in there… I need a coat hanger.  I’m gonna snip a length of it so I can manipulate the lock from the inside.”

“There were coat hangers in the junk room!” said Pepper. “They had a box of souvenir sweatshirts that were already on them inside the plastic!”

She pulled open one such packet, and Stark cut himself a length of wire about six inches long.  Pepper was starting to feel quite pleased with their collective problem-solving abilities.  Stark could find, or at least make, whatever tools they needed, and Pepper had a good memory and could tell him where to find things.  When they returned to the door, Stark stuck his makeshift lock pick into it, his hand disappearing into the bar mechanism right up to the wrist, and within a few second there was a clunking sound, and the door creaked open. The light that flooded in was faint, just the evening glow of the city and the fading November sky reflecting off the white walls and tile floors of the lobby, but Pepper was so happy to see it, she almost cried.

“Ta-da!” said Stark proudly.  There was a clink from inside the bar as he dropped the piece of wire.  “There we… ow!” he exclaimed, and quickly yanked his arm out… or tried to. Something clearly went wrong, because he stopped short and howled!

Pepper almost dropped the flashlight. What?  What happened?” she asked.  Her imagination offered up horrible possibilities.  Maybe there was a mouse or a spider or something in there. Maybe he was going to need her to suck the venom out.  Maybe she wouldn’t be able to do it, and she would be known as the girl who let Tony Stark die…

“I’m stuck!  I’m caught on…” he gritted his teeth and swore again.  “I’m caught on… I think I stabbed myself.”

Pepper felt herself go cold.  She set the flashlight down on the floor so that its beam would still illuminate him.  “Okay, well, don’t panic,” she said.

“Don’t panic?  You’re the one who screamed because you thought the statue was Mothman!” he pointed out.

“Only for a moment!  When you’re hurt,” she explained, “you shouldn’t panic because it’ll only make you freak out and do more damage.  Now, take a deep breath.”

He breathed in, hard.

“Let it out,” said Pepper.

It came out in a woosh.

“Now tell me what happened.”

Stark grimaced in pain.  “I dropped the coat hanger wire,” he said, “and I think it got caught on something.  When I tried to pull my arm out it poked me, and when I tried to yank it out fast it went in really deep and I think I’m actually sort of impaled right now.”

In the dim light, Pepper couldn’t see his face very well, but he sounded like he was on the verge of passing out.  She thought fast – if he did that, he would go limp, and the weight of his body would pull on that arm, and if what he’d just said was accurate, that could make things much worse.

“Okay,” she said.  “Can you back your arm up so it comes out?”

He tried.  “I don’t think so.  The bar isn’t long enough.”  Stark looked at her hands, held up in front of her as she tried to reassure him. “You’ve got small hands.  You think you can reach in there and move it?”

“I’ll try,” said Pepper.  She took off her cardigan and examined the situation… how would she do this?  Stark was right up against the door and couldn’t exactly move over to give her space. She was going to have to practically sit in his lap.  “Don’t get any ideas,” she said, moving into place.

He snorted.  “I’ve got my arm stuck in a door!  Getting ideas is about the last thing on my mind.”

She settled down, sitting on his knee, and wiggled her fingers in around his arm.  Immediately she felt something wet and sticky.  She pulled her hand back and held it in the flashlight beam, and was horrified to see the red on her fingers.  “Oohhh,” she said.

“What?”  Stark looked over her shoulder.  “Oh, no. You’re not gonna faint, are you?”

“I don’t know if I’m the best person to do this,” said Pepper.  She almost stuck the fingers in her mouth, but that wasn’t a good idea when it wasn’t her blood.  She couldn’t wipe it on her clothes, either, it might stain.  How much more blood would there be if she managed to pull the wire out?

“There’s nobody else here!” he protested.  “That’s the whole problem, remember?”

“Yeah, but…” Pepper said helplessly, and stopped there because he was right.  It was just him and her.  Like sorting the garbage downstairs, it was a terrible job but nobody else was going to do it.  It was up to Pepper.

“Right.”  She tried to wipe her fingers on the floor, which didn’t work very well, then took a deep breath and tried again.  Stark’s chin was on her shoulder watching as she stuck her fingers in between his flesh and the edge of the opening, feeling around for the problem.  She could follow the piece of wire for about two and a half inches, the length of her thumb and index finger, and then had to stop. There just wasn’t room to fit the rest of her hand inside and go any further.

“Don’t tug on it,” said Stark weakly.  “It’s definitely under the skin.”

“That’s so disgusting,” she whimpered.  The blood had been pretty awful, but she could handle it. The phrase under the skin, however, was horrible.  Pepper hated things like needles and IV lines.

“Can you get it out?” he asked.

“No,” was Pepper’s immediate reply.  “That’s as far as my fingers will go.  I’m gonna see if I can find the other end.”  She felt her way back, trying to ignore the feeling of warm, damp blood between her fingers.  The other end of the bit of coat hanger turned out to be stuck under a lip of metal at the edge of the piece next to the one Stark had removed.  She tried to pick at it with her fingernails, to no effect. “I can’t.  It’s stuck.”

Pepper wanted to pull her hand back, but realized if she did, it might be covered with blood.  For a moment, she didn’t move.

“Okay,” Stark said in her ear.  “If pulling it out won’t work, can we push it a little further in?”

“What?” Pepper asked.  “No, I’m not going to do that!  I wouldn’t do it even if I could!”

“I didn’t mean into my arm, I meant into the space!” said Stark.  “I’ll push my arm in as far as I can, and you see if you can get the other end loose and hold it there so I can get out without it getting stuck again, okay?”

“I can’t do that!” she insisted.  “What if it pierces something major and you bleed to death?” There was already enough blood on her. The idea of more made her feel ill.

“You won’t if you’re careful,” he said.  “Even if you do, I don’t think there’s any major blood vessels in that part of an arm.”

“You don’t think there are?  You mean you don’t know if there are?  I thought you were a genius!”

“That doesn’t make me an encyclopedia!” he protested. “Being smart doesn’t mean I know everything.  Intelligence is a stat – knowledge is a skill!  You have to roll a check for it!”

“What?” Pepper asked.  The statement made no sense whatsoever for the first few moments, until she realized what he was talking about.  “Is… was that a Dungeons and Dragons joke?”  His arm was impaled on part of a metal coat hanger, and he was joking?

“Yes!  I’m trying to distract us,” Stark said.  “Just do it, okay?  Stop thinking about it.  The faster it gets done, the faster it’ll be over with and we can both get out of here.”

“Right.”  Pepper took several breaths in and out, the way she’d told him to do only a few minutes earlier.  “Keep distracting me,” she said.

“How?” he asked.

“I don’t know.  Tell me about… tell me about your parents.”  It was the first thing that occurred to her.  She worked her fingers further into the space, to press the piece of wire against his skin.

Stark snorted.  “What’s to tell?  My Dad’s the smartest guy in the world and nothing I do is ever good enough for him. Have you got it?”

“I hope so,” she replied.  “I thought you said you were a genius.”

“I am a genius, just not as much of a genius as he is,” said Stark.  He moved his arm a little further, but it wasn’t enough for the wire to come loose.

“Keep going,” said Pepper.

“No matter what I do,” Stark went on, “he’s like, oh, I did that when I was younger than you, and I didn’t have all this money or this fancy edu…” he hissed through his teeth as something hurt, and Pepper began to ease off the pressure she was putting on his arm.  “No, hold it there!” he said.  “All this fancy education.  I didn’t even… oh shit… I didn’t even tell him I won that prize or that I was on the cover of the school newspaper, because he wouldn’t have… oh shit… wouldn’t have cared…”

“Am I hurting you?” Pepper asked.  The end was still, just barely, under the lip.

“No, it just hurts!” he said.  He moved a little further.

It was only a fraction of an inch, but it was enough. Pepper felt the end of the wire come free, and held it as tightly against his arm as she could.  “I got it!  Pull it out now!”

He yanked his arm out of the bar.  The door, now free to swing, fell open and dumped both young people onto the lobby floor.

Pepper held up her hands.  The lobby was semi-dark, but there was enough light to see that her fingers were smeared with blood.  It was getting sticky as it began to dry, and the metallic scent stung in her nostrils.  Her stomach lurched.

“Oh, man,” said Stark.

She knew she didn’t want to see his injury, but she turned and looked anyway.  It wasn’t as bad as she was picturing.  The end of the piece was very sharp, but it was only under perhaps half an inch of skin and so close to the surface that the dark metal was visible through the translucent layer of tissue.  It was still horrible to look at, but impaled was an exaggeration.

“I gotta… I gotta…” Stark stammered.

“Lie down!”  Pepper pushed him onto the floor.  “Don’t you dare pass out on me.  Wait right here, and I’ll be back.”

She ran back down the steps and grabbed the first aid kit out of the janitor’s closet.  When she got back, she found Stark lying there with one cheek on the cold tile, but his eyes were wide and he was still very much conscious.

“I’m gonna pull it out,” she told him.

“Tie something around my arm first, so it doesn’t bleed too much,” said Stark.

“Got it.  I think that’s what this is for.”  Pepper pulled out a stretchy strap and tied it around his arm above the injury. “There… now like I said, keep talking. Your Dad isn’t impressed by you. Is that why you want everybody at school to know you’re a genius?”  Honestly… it would explain an awful lot.

“I guess,” said Stark.  “I didn’t think about it that way, but… yeah, probably.  It’s nice to be able to brag a little without him telling me how much better he could have done it, you know?  He actually wanted to send me to boarding school. Mom talked him out of it, but he just wanted to get rid of me.”

Pepper nodded.  “You ready?” she asked.

“No,” he said.

“Me, neither,” she admitted.  With her left hand she held his, while gripping the wire with her right.  Should she pull fast or slow?  If she were doing this to herself she would have done it at slowly as possible, probably crying the whole time, but this wasn’t for herself… so she decided to just yank.  She held on tight so it wouldn’t just slide through her fingers, and pulled.

It came right out.  Pepper tossed the wire aside and grabbed a wad of gauze out of the kit to press against the wound.  “How’s that?” she asked.

“Way better,” said Stark weakly.  “I don’t think I could have done that myself.”

“That’s my thing,” Pepper said, her voice shaking. “I do stuff nobody else is willing to do.”

“You sure do,” he agreed.  “That’s a really great thing to be good at.  Go ahead and brag about it, okay?”

Pepper of couldn’t wouldn’t do any such thing, but she nodded, giggling a little in relief.

“What the hell is going on here?” demanded a voice.

A light was suddenly in their faces.  Pepper shrieked and grabbed Stark, as he hollered and grabbed her back.  Both of them looked up, and then relaxed again as they realized it was just a museum security guard.  He was a tall white man with a shaved head and a mustache, staring at them both in horror.

“Who are you two?” he asked.

Pepper couldn’t help it – she started giggling again. “We’re the kids from Triskelion High!” she managed in between bouts of laughter.  “We were sorting the stuff in the basement, and they forgot about us and locked us in!”

“Why are you covered in blood?” the guard asked, aghast.

Pepper looked down – she’d now gotten blood from her hands all over Stark’s shirt where she’d grabbed him, and he’d smeared it on her arm.  He was also now wiping his face, which got more blood on his cheeks and forehead, but whether because Pepper was setting him off or just because he was relieved, too, he was also laughing.

“I cut myself trying to take the door apart,” he said. “She helped me get unstuck.”

“Why didn’t you call 911?” the guard demanded.

Pepper blinked.  That was a good question – why hadn’t they?  They could have done that before they even started trying to open the door. They definitely could have done it when Stark first got his arm stuck.  Pepper’s phone had been dead, but Stark’s had some time left on it.  It just hadn’t occurred to either of them.

Stark laughed louder.  “Yeah, why didn’t we do that?”

“I don’t know!”  Pepper said.  “So much for being geniuses!”

“We’re idiots!” he agreed.

💘 - 💝 - 💌 - 💝 - 💘

The security guard was not laughing.  He dialed 911 himself, and summoned the janitorial staff to repair the door and clean the blood off it and the tiles.  When the ambulance arrived – along with someone who had the front door key to let them out – the EMTs bundled Tony into the back for inspection.  Since it was a chilly evening, they let Pepper sit inside with him while they slathered disinfectants on his arm.

“Are you put to date on your tetanus shots?” one woman asked him.

“Yes, absolutely,” said Tony.  “I work with metal all the time, so I keep an eye on that.”

She nodded.  “You said your parents are in Austria.  Who is your emergency contact?”

“Mr. Jarvis, my Dad’s old butler.  I’ll give you the number.”

The medic went to make the phone call, and Tony looked up at Pepper, sitting next to him.  He smiled at her, and was gratified to see her smiling back.  Apparently she… well, she obviously didn’t dislike him anymore.  He’d take that.

“I have a confession to make,” he said.

“Oh, really?”  Her thin ginger eyebrows roses.

“Well, you’re sitting there with my blood on your shirt, I figure you deserve the truth,” Tony said.  “I don’t know anything about art.  At least, I didn’t before last week.  Mr. Coulson said he thought the reason you were upset was because you didn’t think I knew anything about it, and I decided to prove you wrong, so I did a bunch of research.”

“To impress me?” asked Pepper.  “You didn’t even know me!”

“Well, as we established, I do kinda care what people think of me,” said Tony.

She shrugged.  “If my Dad thought I couldn’t do anything right, I’d probably want everybody at school to think I’m a genius, too.”

“I bet everybody at school does think you’re a genius, if you work at everything as hard as you worked at sorting that garbage.”

“Then I’ve fooled them all,” she sighed.

Tony gave her another smile.  “No fooling me,” he said, “you’re awesome.  Maybe not as much of a genius as I am, but not every girl would get covered in blood to help you get your arm out of a door.”

Pepper shook her head.  “Never ask me to do anything like that ever again, okay?” she said.  “Next week, you tell me when it’s six o’clock!”

“Yes, Ma’am,” said Tony.

A car horn honked outside, and the EMT peeked back in. “Miss Potts?” she said.  “Your parents are here.”

“Tell them I’m coming!”  Pepper stood up and grabbed her backpack.  “See you next week, Stark.”

“Maybe sooner,” said Tony.  “We both go to the same school, after all.”

“Yeah, we do,” she agreed.  “Maybe sooner, then.”

He reached out and took her hand, and pulled her a bit closer for a kiss.  She ducked out of it.

“Oh, no you don’t,” she said, pulling her arm free. “I know what you’re like with girls!”

“Do you?”  Tony asked.  “You don’t know me, remember?  Give me a chance!”

“Pepper!” a voice called from outside.

“Please?”  He pouted and showed her his best puppy dog expression... the one that always worked on Mrs. Jarvis.

She hesitated a moment, then smiled. “Maybe.  See you on Monday, Tony,” and leaned back down.  She only kissed his cheek, and then she was gone in a hurry, her cheeks flushed as she ran off to meet her parents at the car.  Tony, however, was grinning as he watched her go. As evenings when he’d nearly stabbed himself went, that one hadn’t been too bad at all.

[lloydskywalkers]

There’s Insurance for That

In which Skylor buys lunch, stops a criminal, and learns the best way to blow up the kitchen electronics section, which is a pretty normal week for her, she guesses. Or, five places the ninja are no longer allowed into, featuring Skylor.

(been hitting a bit of a writer’s block with everything else lately, so here’s this...disaster, i guess?? because these ninja are definitely a disaster in this, but i was having fun so. this is the bed bath & beyond fic btw, in case anyone was wondering gdfkgdh)

1. My. Kazami’s Ramen Place

At this point, sadly, Skylor’s used to it.

It’s around a quarter to noon on a Monday, just as she's leaving the noodle shop for her well-deserved lunch break, when a familiar scream splits the relatively-quiet afternoon air on this side of Ninjago City.

The only reason Skylor does not immediately dissolve into panic at said scream is because she is — also sadly — familiar with the variations of it, and this one sounds less like it’s Lloyd’s “I’m-in-terrible-danger-and/or-pain-again” scream, and more like his “I’m-free-falling-on-purpose-from-the-sky-again” scream. Which is, in and of itself, not entirely concerning. In fact, it’d probably be more unusual not to see Lloyd go falling from the sky at some point during any of the ninjas’ higher-than-eight-feet battles, because somehow that’s become a habitual thing. The sky is blue, fire is hot, Kai uses hair gel — Lloyd is going to drop screaming from the sky at some point this month.

So instead of panicking, Skylor figures she’ll just stand in the vicinity until Lloyd either climbs out of another dumpster, or lands on top of her. Kai doesn’t seem to be around to catch him, so Skylor’s prepared to step up, even though it looks like Lloyd’s got a pretty good handle on landing, at the angle she’s watching him from.

Still though, she muses. You’d think he’d have started actively wearing a parachute at this point.

“Kai suggested that,” Lloyd says, after he’s finally able to stand straight, and he’s not quite as cross-eyed. He frowns at his reflection in a store window as they pass by, scuffing at his windblown hair again. “But it gets in the way, you know? It throws off my backflips.”

“That’s a nail in the coffin right there,” Skylor agrees, leading them across another sidewalk. Lloyd’s attracting a lot of looks, with his bright green battle gi and razor-sharp sword strapped across his back, but fortunately no one’s started crowding them yet. Probably because the razor-sharp sword strapped to his back. “Can’t have your fighting style completely crippled,” she adds.

“I don’t backflip that much,” Lloyd huffs. Yes, you do, is on the tip of Skylor’s tongue, because she’s seen him fight, but she decides not to pick that battle…this time.

“Besides,” Lloyd continues. “I don’t really need a parachute, anyways. I always make sure to aim for like, somewhere safe to land. Relatively safe. Safe-ish.”

Skylor eyes him. “You landed in a dumpster.”

Lloyd bristles in offense. “I did not! It was a perfectly respectable recycling bin.”

“Same thing, if you ask me.”

“Not even close. Dumpsters are gross. Recycling bins you just crash through a whole bunch of cardboard and old newspapers. It’s luxury trash diving.”

Skylor just sighs, shaking her head, and edits the text she’s been tapping out for Kai.

Skylor > found your kid in a recycling bin

Skylor > taking him to lunch bc you’re clearly starving him again

Skylor > he’s alive btw

Kai > oh thank fsm

Kai > tell him he’s grounded

Kai > u never take me for lunch :(

Skylor > maybe if u dropped on me from the sky sometime i would

“Hey, are the others busy?” she asks Lloyd in afterthought. “Like…fighting anyone?”

“Huh?” Lloyd blinks. He then flushes, rubbing the back of his head. “Ah, no. We’d pretty much finished up the fight when I, uh…there was a break-in, on the Bounty? We had the guys all taken care of, but they blew part of the mast up, and it left debris all over the deck, so I kind of…maybe….tripped…”

Lloyd is bright red by the time he finishes the sentence. Skylor wouldn’t feel so bad about it, if she wasn’t doubled over laughing at him in the middle of rush hour traffic.

“You are a trained ninja,” she breathes out, between snickers.

“I know,” Lloyd moans.

“You’re like, part god.”

“I know,” Lloyd moans again, into his hands this time. Skylor has to grab his shoulders and forcibly drag him along down the crowded street, trying not to cringe inside at all the looks they’re getting.

“Kai says you’re grounded, by the way,” she says, as the last of her laughter fades.

That snaps Lloyd out of it. “He can’t ground me,” he scowls. “I’m leader.”

“Stop falling from the sky, and maybe he’ll give it a rest,” Skylor replies, glancing down as her phone buzzes again.

Kai > I’d join u but I’m stuck on prison delivery

Kai > nya’s coming to pick up the demon spawn tho

Skylor > nice I’ve been wanting to buy her lunch

Kai > cruel

“—don’t know what you mean, I don’t fall that often, and most of the time it’s on purpose, anyways—”

Skylor chooses to ignore Lloyd’s slightly-concerning, sulking rambling, and pats his shoulder instead. “Nya’s coming for lunch, too,” she says. “Does ramen sound good?”

“Oh, yeah.” Lloyd brightens, seemingly cheered by the reminder he’s getting food out of this. “It’s been a while since I’ve eaten out.”

“I can tell,” Skylor says, eyeing him. “Cole hasn’t been cooking for you, has he?"

“No, but we put Zane on mandatory break so he could relax a bit, and we’re all suffering for it.”

Lloyd and Skylor both jump at Nya’s voice, not having heard her coming up behind them.

“Nya!” Lloyd beams. “Skylor is — ouch, hey, let go!”

“That’s what you get for giving me gray hairs again,” Nya scolds, digging her knuckles into Lloyd’s hair. She looks up from the hold she’s pulled him into, and smiles brightly at Skylor. “Hi, Skylor. Nice to see you.”

“Hi, Nya.” Skylor gives a little wave, watching Lloyd squirm out of Nya’s grasp in amusement.

“So, ramen?” Nya says, giving Lloyd one last elbow in the side before joining Skylor.

“Yeah,” she says. “I was thinking the place down on seventh, the Sobahouse, I think?”

Lloyd and Nya both stiffen, their steps slowing. Skylor pauses, turning to stare at them in confusion. “That’s not the one owned by someone named Mr. Kazami, is it?” Nya finally asks, hesitantly.

“Uh, yeah, it is, actually,” Skylor blinks. “He’s pretty nice, we go to the same grocer on weekends.”

“Ah,” Lloyd says, carefully.

“Hm,” Nya hesitates.

Skylor looks between the two of them, now completely stopped in the middle of the sidewalk.  She really hopes no one is getting pictures of her like this. There are enough flash articles about the rumored orange ninja cryptid on the internet as it is. “Is that…a problem?”

Nya pointedly stares at the sky as if it’s the most interesting thing she’s seen all day. Baffled, Skylor tries the weaker link. Lloyd swallows, avoiding her eyes as he bounces from leg to leg, as if the mere thought of trying to enter the restaurant is terrifying. Which is mildly alarming, because this is the same kid who power-walked straight into a prison full of escaped violent criminals, his psychotic ex, and his undead murderous dad without hesitation.

“We can’t,” Lloyd finally mutters, staring at the sidewalk. Nya elbows him in the side, hissing “weak link” as she does. Lloyd just glares at her.

“O-okay,” Skylor says, unsure. “I mean, that’s fine if you guys want to go somewhere else. I just didn’t know you…didn’t like this place…”

“No, we do,” Lloyd grinds out, and he looks more embarrassed than terrified now, so Skylor aborts her half-formed plans of speed-dialing Karloff. “We just can’t. Go in, that is. We’re not allowed to.”

Skylor stares at him. “You’re not allowed in? Why not?”

“Because,” Nya forces through gritted teeth. “They banned us.”

“They what?” Skylor gapes.

Nya presses her lips together tightly. Lloyd stares very hard at the ground, as if desperately trying to convince himself to keep quiet. Skylor can pinpoint the moment he breaks, his expression contorting as he throws his hands up wildly. “You blow their electrical system up one time—”

“Oh guys, no,” Skylor groans, before bursting into laughter at him for the second time that day. Lloyd looks incredibly unappreciative, his expression scrunching up in annoyance like she hasn’t seen since that one stupid skating match with Chamille, and that just makes her laugh harder.

“We were trying to save them!” Nya defends indignantly. “It’s not our fault they had weak wiring—”

“I just got a little too into it, it’s — it’s Nya’s fault, she’s the one that said it’d be cool if I tried to do shockwave thing like in—”

“That was a mutual thing and you know it!”

“Oh guys, no,” Skylor wheezes into her hands.

“It worked!”

“Poor Mr. Kazami,” Skylor manages, through snickers. Lloyd’s shoulders slump, his upper lip pouting, and Nya crosses her arms, as if refusing to look ashamed.

“It’s not like the other guys aren’t banned from anywhere, either—”

“Alright, alright,” Skylor waves her hands, taking pity on them. “We’ll go somewhere else.”

“Good,” Nya mutters, as Lloyd exhales in relief. Skylor just snickers again, leading them down the sidewalk in the opposite direction. She bites her lip, shaking her head, before a thought occurs to her.

“Wait, what do you mean, ‘it’s not like they aren’t banned from anywhere’?” she frowns. “You guys are banned from more than one place?”

“No,” Nya says firmly, before Lloyd can even speak up. “Forget I said anything.”

Skylor will do no such thing, but she decides it’s in her best interest not to pursue it. Nya is not the sort of person to trifle with, and she does want that ramen.

She gets her answer soon enough, anyways.

2. Ninjago City Aquarium

While Skylor has the early shift on Tuesdays, she does get the afternoons off, which is pretty nice for the most part, if it didn’t mean she’d be bored for the rest of the day. So she hits the grocery store and decides to take the long way home, partially because walking is supposed to be good for you, and partially in hopes that one of the ninja will drop in on her again.

She’s not disappointed.

Granted, a minor explosion going off from inside the Ninjago City Aquarium wasn’t exactly what she was expecting today, but the figures in bright red and white arguing furiously outside the security perimeter are par for the course.

It’s a little odd that they haven’t already rushed in yet, Skylor notes, but with the way they’re loudly yelling at each other in the middle of the street, she figures she’ll find out soon enough.

“No, Kai, it is our civic duty to follow the laws put in place for the safety of civilians—”

“Oh come on, you get brainwashed into a slightly-murderous emperor one time and now you’re a stickler for everything?!”

"One time was enough, Kai!”

“Uh, hi guys,” Skylor approaches the two, hesitantly. “Is everything alright?”

“Skylor!” Kai whirls on her, his eyes wild. “Thank FSM, you’ve gotta help us out — they won’t let us in!” He shakes his fist at the aquarium doors, before springing for the security gate. “Let us in, let us in—”

“Shaking the gate like an animal is not going to convince them, Kai!” Zane pleads, prying Kai away. He shoots Skylor an apologetic glance as he wrangles Kai into a gentle chokehold. “We would greatly appreciate your help, if possible. There’s a low-threat criminal with an unfortunate assortment of weaponry who ran into the aquarium, and we’re legally unable to pursue. If you could try to drive him out, perhaps?”

“I — you — you’re what?” Skylor has the weirdest sense of déjà vu, before it’s lost in confusion. Her head swivels from the frustrated expression on Kai’s face to the pleading one on Zane’s, then to the grocery bags in her hands. She looks back up at Kai, who’s now giving her the puppy eyes. Something from inside the aquarium explodes loudly.

“Sure,” she sighs, handing Kai her grocery bags. “Just one guy?”

“Just one guy,” Kai exhales in relief. “You’re a lifesaver, Skylor, I — hey, are these those snack cakes they made to look like us?”

“Yes, eat them and you die,” Skylor hisses. She turns to Zane, holding her hand out half-hesitantly. “Lend a girl some ice powers?”

“Of course,” Zane nods, letting her take his hand. There’s a brief moment as Skylor melds her power with Zane’s, absorbing the icy force and mimicking it to her own — a part of her notes vaguely that it’s stronger than the last time she borrowed it, but she shakes it off, pulling her hand back and tugging the hood of her jacket up, mentally hoping no one writes another article about the possible existence of a cryptid orange ninja after this.

“Alright,” she says. “Be back in five.”

“Thank you,” Zane says fervently, as Kai sputters, “Hey, why didn’t you borrow my power?”

“Because fire is explosive, and you’ve gotta be banned from here for a reason!” Skylor calls back, ice already misting over her fingertips as she sprints inside the aquarium.

“You’d be surprised,” Kai mutters, after her retreating back.

***********************

“So,” Skylor says, flexing her right hand and wincing briefly. That last right hook she’d thrown at the guy might have been a little too hard, in hindsight. But he was being a jerk, and threatening to set off a bomb near the little seahorses — and it did do the trick, so now the aquarium can have the host of cop cars off its back. Skylor feels pretty accomplished in her good deed for the day, actually. “Why, again, couldn’t you guys have taken care of that yourselves? Not that I minded,” she adds, quickly. Using the ice element had been fun. She’d forgotten what she could do with Zane’s powers.

Kai gives a nervous laugh that’s so fake it almost hurts, especially with the pained expression he makes at the end. Zane just rubs his temple with a hand, looking eternally weary.

“Like I said, we are legally not permitted to enter the aquarium, until…when was it again, Kai?”

“Five years from now,” Kai mutters. “Or whenever the director dies.”

“Yes, five years from now,” Zane repeats, with a dead sort of look in his eyes. “So your assistance was very much appreciated. Thank you.”

“It was no problem, but — wait, hold on, how are you banned from the aquarium for five years?” she stutters. “I mean, I can get Lloyd and Nya with the ramen place—”

“Ha! They told you about that? It was great—”

“Kai, please.”

“—and I can understand Kai, but you, Zane?”

She feels a little guilty for calling him out so bluntly, but it’s Zane. Zane doesn’t just get banned from places, she has to know. And he doesn’t look too upset at the question. Kai looks mildly betrayed, but not that much. They both know Skylor’s point is too valid for him to argue with effectively.

Zane gives another bone-weary sigh. “There is a small chance, that there was a time we were pursuing another villain here, and during that battle, I might have…underestimated the amount of ice I was putting out.” Zane shifts, looking pained. “Which in turn accidentally spread to any bodies of liquid that happened to be nearby at the time, which perhaps were filled with rather expensive aquatic life.”

“You froze a fish exhibit,” Skylor deadpans.

“They were merely in extreme hibernation,” Zane grits out. “They would have been fine, had Kai not tried to fix the ice.”

“Hey, it made sense! I could melt it quickest!”

“Except you didn’t just melt it, did you? No, you had an entire fish fry—”

“The poor fish,” Skylor says, staring at them blankly. “What were they?”

“Like, these rainbow fish, from way up north, I think?” Kai says. “I swear I didn’t make it that hot.”

“The water was boiling, Kai!”

“You fish murderer,” Skylor says, the corners of her mouth trembling with the laugh she’s holding back. Kai glares at Zane, then her, then Zane again.

“I didn’t freeze them solid.”

“Whatever the cause of their death, they died, and we’re banned now,” Zane says, hastily. “End of story. Would you like to take this back to the Bounty, Skylor? I know the others have been wanting to see you, and we can at least offer you tea in thanks.” He eyes the grocery bags Kai’s still holding. “Unless, of course, you wish to return home…”

“Nah, tea sounds good,” she smiles. “Besides, I bought the snack cakes for you guys to try anyways. They’ve got little squashed ninja faces in icing on ‘em.”

“You’re the best,” Kai says, looking somewhat relieved, and oh, he definitely ate one while Skylor was in there. She’s going to have to pay him back for that one…

“Tell me something I don’t know,” she says airily, figuring she’ll take her revenge later. “You can tell me more about the fish massacre on our way back. By the way, Pixal wouldn’t happen to have heard this story, would she?”

Zane gives her a look, and she almost feels bad about it. “I’m going to regret inviting you, aren’t I.”

“Maybe,” she grins. “Jury’s still out.”

3. An Entire Drugstore Chain

Wednesdays are always busy at the noodle shop, for reasons Skylor has yet to figure out. Fridays she understands, but the middle of the week? Nothing kills your drive like knowing you’re going to do this all over again in a day.

It’s good money for the shop though, she reminds herself as she locks up that evening. Any money is good money for the shop, because her stupid dad made sure she’d have a real hole to dig herself out of there, but Wednesday money is always especially good. Even if she ends up leaving the shop late and can’t get the noodle smell from her hair for the next three days.

Normally, she’d trudge home and crash into bed after these kind of shifts. But tonight is different, because she stayed long enough at the Bounty yesterday to get invited to game night, and once you’ve promised the ninja you’re going to bring snacks for Monopoly, you can’t just say no. Not unless you want Lloyd to shoot betrayed glares at you the rest of the month.

Besides, she’s promised Kai she’ll sneak out to the movies with him afterwards, and she can’t just go breaking that promise. Plus, she’s not heartless enough to deny Cole cake when he’s got the most spectacular black eye she’s seen all year bruising up around the left side of his face.

“Lucky hit,” Cole grumbles, after she’s been caught staring too long. She hasn’t wanted to ask him about it, since it seems a sensitive subject and he’s already taking the time to help her pick up (carry) all the snacks. But it’s impossible to miss, even in the dim streetlights they’re walking under, and Skylor cares about her friends, thank you very much. “We busted some drug dealers today, and I got too relaxed.”

“They normally really aren’t any match for you, to be fair,” Skylor offers.

“They weren’t this time either, that’s the sad thing,” Cole says, scrubbing a hand through his thick hair as they wait at the stoplight. “This was all on me. I kinda deserved it.”

“I’m sure it wasn’t that bad,” Skylor tries to console him, even though the ugly red at the edge of his eye says otherwise.

Cole gives her a bleak look. “Jay made a joke, and I laughed at it. And then I got hit across the face with a baseball bat, mid-laugh.”

“Ouch,” Skylor hisses through her teeth. “Never mind, that’s bad. Was it a good joke, at least?”

“No, that’s the thing,” Cole groans, as the light finally turns red, allowing them to cross the street. “It was terrible. And I still laughed hard enough not to notice a bat coming for my face.”

Skylor grimaces. “You were just being a good friend, I guess,” she says, and Cole snorts. “Like you are to me, right now,” she continues, glancing ruefully at the shopping list she’s been sent. “I was going to say I had it handled, then I actually looked at everything you guys asked for.”

Cole laughs sheepishly. “Yeah, that’s…that’s us, I guess. Sorry about that. We’re paying for it all, don’t worry.”

“What?” Skylor blinks. Oh no, no way. The ninja have done enough for her, the least she can do is cover a couple bags of popcorn and like ten things of M&M’s. “No, I got it. I owe you guys, anyways.”

Cole bristles. “No way. We owe you, if anything. The amount of times you’ve covered our tab at the noodle shop?”

“How about the amount of times you’ve saved my noodle shop?” Skylor shoots back. “That outweighs a few measly tabs.”

“The only reason we had to save it was because we were there in the first place,” Cole points out. “We’re danger magnets.”

“I’m sorry, I’m the daughter of Chen, remember?” Skylor huffs. “I can attract enemies all by myself.”

“Not as many as we do,” Cole says. “Also! You helped us beat Chen, and get Zane back. We’re eternally indebted to you.”

Skylor narrows her eyes. “Only after I stabbed you all in the back. So I eternally owe you.”

“Bold of you to assume we haven’t all stabbed each other in the back at some point,” Cole scoffs. “Trust me, you’re nowhere as bad as Lloyd — he like, single-handedly ruined our whole month by letting a bunch of snakes out.”

Skylor pauses at that, torn between refuting his argument and asking how in the world Lloyd, of all people, could possibly manage to wreak enough havoc to—

Actually, she doesn’t have any trouble believing that at all. But to be sure— “Lloyd let the Serpentine out? All by himself?”

Cole looses a bit of his fire, and scuffs his shoe awkwardly across the sidewalk. “I mean, we did give him a pretty hard time when he was like, eight years old and homeless and starving, so uh, it might’ve been a little...provoked.”

“FSM’s sake,” Skylor mutters, staring at the sky and trying not to be surprised, because she really shouldn’t by now. “I can’t believe you guys are all still alive.”

“Neither can we, if it helps,” Cole shrugs, grinning. “But you know, technically—”

“If you make another ghost joke, we’re skipping the cake section,” Skylor says, firmly.

Cole sulks. “Jay would’ve made a ghost joke,” he mutters.

“Jay also got you hit in the face by a bat, so his judgement is questionable as it is,” Skylor shakes her head. “Oh! There’s a drugstore right here, wanna hit that instead?”

“Sure,” Cole says. “As long as it’s not…oh.”

Skylor makes it another three steps before she realizes that Cole’s fallen behind. Confused, she turns to stare at him where he’s frozen on the sidewalk, looking up at the bright red drugstore sign and biting his lip.

“Everything okay back there?” Skylor says, wondering if he didn’t get hit in the head harder than he’s let on. Cole nods, but he also takes several steps back out of the streetlight, hiding himself from view of the store.

“Here’s an idea,” he says, suddenly. “How about we go anywhere else.”

Skylor stares at him, a sinking feeling in her chest coupled with the slowly-growing-familiar sense of déjà-vu. “Cole.” He doesn’t meet her eyes, and Skylor sighs. “Please tell me you haven’t been banned from somewhere, too.”

“It’s not just me, Lloyd and Jay also got banned,” Cole snaps, before realizing his mistake and ducking his head.

“You’re kidding me,” Skylor says flatly, looking back at the drugstore, then to Cole. “This is like, the shadiest drugstore on this side on Ninjago. How?”

Cole mumbles something under his breath, and Skylor strains to make it out. “Sorry, what was that?”

“I kind of, um, threw Lloyd through their wall,” Cole mutters again, looking as if he’d like very much to disappear entirely into the street side. Which is funny, because—

His sentence finally registers, and Skylor blinks rapidly. “Wait, you what?”

Cole’s eyes widen, and waves his arms quickly. “Not like — not like Garmadon-throwing him through a wall! He was fine after.”

Skylor has a brief, bizarre kind of moment to digest the fact that there is a distinction for throwing the youngest of their team through a wall, before Cole continues.

“I was aiming for the window — that one right there, see? The robbers were already on the move, so Lloyd was like ‘launch me, Cole’ and I said ‘great idea’, but we were also maybe high on adrenaline at the time and I forgot how much of my lava punch I had going, so I overshot and ended up smashing him through their wall, a little bit.”

“You smashed him through their wall. Just a little bit.”

“Hey, it worked. He took out all five guys in one go and only had a tiny concussion after—”

“How do you even have a tiny concussion—”

“I still don’t get why they were so mad, I mean we stopped the robbery! Sure, half their storefront wall sort of collapsed afterwards, but like, we got their money back.”

“So that’s why they were closed six months for renovations,” Skylor groans into her hands.

Cole crosses his arms, glaring stubbornly at the store’s sign. “It wasn’t six months,” he protests. “It was only like, four. I don’t see how that gives them the right to ban us for life.”

“For life—” Skylor can’t decide if she wants to laugh at him, or cry because her list of places she can hang out with the ninja is shrinking faster than she’d thought possible. She finally blows her breath out, rubs a hand across her face, and glances back down at the shopping list.

“You aren’t banned from the one on eighth street, are you?”

Cole bites his lips. “We’re uh, banned from all of them. It’s a chain store, so…”

“Of course,” Skylor sighs. “Walmart it is, then.”

And if anyone pesters them about being late, she’s going to ask how many times, exactly, somebody’s smashed Lloyd through a wall. Because really. This is getting ridiculous.

4. Bed Bath & Beyond

Thursday is normally her day off, but whatever she had for dinner last night gave her freaky dreams, so Skylor ends up puttering around the shop early that morning just to take her mind off it. It’s a bit overcast outside, and the forecast predicts rain, so Skylor’s already making plans to curl up in her bed and watch movies all day, and maybe get a bit of laundry done.

She should know better.

It’s a commonly known fact that the ninja, Kai especially, would do pretty much anything for their pseudo-little brother. Skylor’s actually heard Kai, on multiple occasion, threaten to die for Lloyd, then immediately try and make it reality. No one ever really appreciates that, Lloyd especially, but Skylor can give him credit for trying.

However, it’s a commonly overlooked fact that Lloyd would do anything for his pseudo-older siblings. It’s an even more commonly overlooked fact that Lloyd is the spawn of satan, and was raised at a boarding school for future villains and terrible children. Combined, these two facts mean that while you should definitely fear Lloyd trying to die for you, you should probably fear him trying to look out for you more, because it’s likely going to end with somebody dead. Or at least the total disruption of your plans for the day, as Skylor opens the shop windows to come face with an absolutely terrifying expression on Lloyd’s face, followed up by a deadly calm “Kai came home sad last night.”

Skylor scrubs at her eyes, and thinks, it’s too early for this.

A while back, when she was still stuck with her jerk of a father, Skylor might have found Lloyd’s part-Oni expression of doom intimidating. Now, however, she just rolls her eyes, and sticks one of the little ‘50% Off!’ stickers she’s been putting on rice cakes across his forehead.

“The dog died in the last movie we saw last night,” she explains, as Lloyd sputters at her.

He pauses, nose wrinkling. “Oh,” he says. “Boo.”

“Yeah,” she says, stepping back and allowing him to neatly front-flip through her window. Darned show-off kid, she thinks despairingly, watching him land perfectly on her freshly-waxed floors.

“Well, you’re good then, I guess,” he says, expression lightening. “That makes sense. How many movies did you make it into this time, by the way?”

“Only four this time,” Skylor sighs, turning to plaster the rest of her stickers on the nearly-expired rice cake packages. “We caught the beginning of that new superhero movie, then the opening fight of some spy movie, and the middle of that one horror movie with the dolls.” Lloyd shudders. “Yeah, Kai wasn’t a fan either. Anyways, we made it into this new romance one, but we ran into a theater employee on the way in and Kai had a guilt attack, so we stayed until the end of that one.”

Lloyd tsks. “Oh, Kai. And he’s so sold on his bad boy image.”

“One day he’ll embrace the fact that he’s just a big softie,” Skylor nods. “One of these days.”

“Yeah, when hell freezes over,” Lloyd snorts. He glances around at the empty shop, then back at her. “Hey, today’s your day off, right?”

Skylor gets a sinking kind of feeling in her stomach at that, alarm bells going off in the back of her head. “It might be,” she says, warily.

“Good,” Lloyd grins. “You should come to Bed Bath and Beyond with us, then.”

Well, she wasn’t expecting that. “Why…would you be going there?” she asks, blankly. Do they have a secret ninja weapon bargain bin she’s been missing out on? Is Bed Bath & Beyond secretly hosting an illegal crime ring she’s been unaware of? Does she need to return the shower curtain rings she bought there last week on basis of being a good citizen?

“Zane froze the blender solid before practice this morning,” Lloyd explains, his mouth twisting a bit. “We were making smoothies and someone accidentally brought up the Never Realm.”

“Ouch,” Skylor winces sympathetically. She’s still not heard the entire story of what went down during the ninja’s jaunt out of realm, besides a whole lot of panicked texts from Pixal and half-explanations from Kai, but she knows it wasn’t fun, especially for poor Zane.

“Yeah,” Lloyd sighs. “So now our blender is dead and we can’t make smoothies anymore, so we’re buying a new one before Nya can start strangling people. Wanna come?”

Skylor eyes him shrewdly. At face, it’s an innocent enough request. She’s certainly been invited to worse places than a household furnishings store, and picking up a blender is quite possibly the simplest thing the ninja have ever asked her to do. Which probably just means it’s going to go horribly and the store’s going to blow up ten minutes in, but hey, Skylor’s day was looking pretty boring anyway.

“Sure, why not,” she shrugs. “Lemme stick the last of these on, and I’m in. Just — hey, no, I’m selling those!”

Lloyd freezes in place, the rice cake package dangling from his fingers. He gives her the most pathetically sad-eyed look she’s ever seen, and not for the first time, Skylor finds herself wondering how this is the same kid who runs a highly-skilled ninja team of unimaginable power.

“Just the one,” she finally relents, because Skylor is a spineless weakling when it comes to puppy eyes, apparently. Lloyd beams, snatching the cakes up happily. “And just because you look like a starving vagrant again.”

“I do not,” Lloyd protests, through a muffled mouthful of rice cake. “I’m just super in shape. I’m jacked as heck.”

Skylor rolls her eyes. “Sure you are, you — hey, I said just one!”

***********************

So Skylor ends up at Bed Bath & Beyond on her day off, five minutes after the store’s opened for the day, and already wishing she’d slept in later.

Nya brings her coffee, though, and their bright-eyed enthusiasm at reclaiming their means of smoothie-making is infectious, so Skylor finds herself in high spirits as they walk through the store doors, almost to the point where she lets Lloyd go for stealing all her rice cakes.

However, she’s already let him get away with too much as it is, so Skylor decides to take her revenge by ruffling Lloyd’s hair, before informing the sales lady that it’s her “darling little brother’s thirteenth birthday, and he’s finally outgrown his kiddie bed, could you point us to the big kid ones, please?”

Lloyd’s attempts at strangling her are thwarted by Nya as the lady smiles airily, before pointing them to the back, and Zane has to drag Kai along with them before he suffocates on the laughter he’s choking back.

“Family shopping trips are always so much fun,” Jay remarks, as they browse the bedding section, having been successfully distracted by the animal-shaped pillows. They’ve already had to flee the lamp section, after Lloyd and Jay started having a little too much fun, despite Kai’s despair over being robbed yet again of a new lava lamp.

“One day,” he mourns. “One day, I will own another.”

Skylor pats his back consolingly. “I’m sure that’s what everyone else whose lava lamps got smashed by a giant stone colossi say.”

“I still don’t see why we can’t invest in a cappuccino maker,” Nya pouts, as they pass the coffee appliances section. “Look, there’s one on sale, too!”

“Because you can and will abuse the use of it, and then someone will end up going to the hospital for extreme heart rate elevation,” Zane glares pointedly at her. Skylor smothers a laugh as Nya scowls.

“I’m not that bad,” she grumbles under her breath, only for the others to all chime “ice cube incident” in unison. Nya goes a dark shade of red and glares at the floor as if she’s capable of lighting it on on fire with her eyes, but she doesn’t argue back.

Skylor doesn’t even want to know.

“Alright, here are our options,” Cole announces, when they’ve finally fought their way to the blender shelves. “We can get the same one we had, just a little smaller, or we can get this other one that’s half-off.” He squints at both tags. “Having looked at our bank account recently, I vote the half-off one.”

“No way,” Jay argues. “Do you see how small that one is? I can’t make my triple-espresso energy-drink smoothie with that!”

Lloyd stares at him in concern. “That’s…probably a good thing?”

Jay glares at him. “You’re one to talk, Mr. night owl.”

“I’m with Jay, that one’s way too small,” Nya says. “It won’t do.”

“What, and the other one’s better?” Kai shoots back. “Look how cheap it is, I could break this thing in my sleep.”

“The online reviews for both are perfectly fine,” Zane adds, half-heartedly, as if he already knows they’re all going to ignore that particular statement.

“What about this one?” Jay says, his eyes lighting up as he gestures to the extra-large, fancy blender. “Think of all the smoothies we could make, Cole. Think of the milkshakes.”

Cole pinches the bridge of his nose. “We are not investing in some fancy blender, just for you to complain it’s too complicated five seconds in.”

Skylor crosses over to the blenders, glancing at both. “I mean, you could always just return it…later…” She trails off, realizing that everyone’s suddenly gone deadly silent. She looks up, and starts as she comes face to face with the store manager, who is frozen in place, his mouth half-open as he stares at them with wide eyes. Behind her, Skylor is highly aware of six ninja going similarly still, all utterly quiet.

“You,” the manager finally squeaks out. “You are’t supposed to — you can’t be in here, not again—”

“On second thought, let’s get a blender next week,” Cole says, quickly.

“Yeah, I can live without smoothies a little longer,” Jay agrees, rapidly paling.

Skylor’s at a loss. “What’s going—”

Before she can finish that sentence, Kai and Nya both have hands on her arm and pull, hauling her along as they break into a dead sprint for the exit.

“Explain later!” Kai yelps, dodging employees as the manager shakes his fist at them, his yelling following them through the doors.

“I filed six restraining orders! Six!” he shrieks as they slip out. “Do you know how long that took?! Two of them don’t even exist in the legal system!”

Skylor doesn’t miss the incredibly unsubtle fist bump Lloyd and Zane share, nor the near-tears  sigh of despair from Cole.

She really, really doesn’t want to know.

***********************

Except that maybe she does, so there’s nothing stopping her from asking as they walk home, having bought smoothies from the corner store instead (that they are not banned from, which Skylor is starting to think might be miraculous).

“I don’t know why I’m surprised at this point, but how did you get banned this time?” she asks them, after a particularly long sip of smoothie. “Did you demolish half the store there, too?”

The ninja are silent for a moment, all refusing to meet her eyes. Then—

“It was Jay’s fault,” Cole declares.

Jay whirls on him, his expression wounded. “I trusted you,” he whines. “And you — you bed bath and betrayed me.”

“Because you bed bath and blew up the bedding aisle!”

“It was the kitchen electrics aisle, give me some credit.”

“Oh, because that’s so much better.”

“It is, do you know how hard I’d have to be trying to blow up the bedding aisle? It’s all weighted blankets and like, silk and stuff, no conduction at all—”

Skylor returns to her previous stance on not wanting to know, sips her smoothie in silence as they break into loud arguing in the middle of the street, and hopes once again that no one’s getting any pictures of this.

5. Jamanakai Village Candy Shop

Friday’s her busy day, so Skylor’s spared any chaos other than a jammed mixing machine for the day. It doesn’t come to a head until Saturday, when she cautiously accepts the ninjas' invitation to scout out potential terrorist activity in Jamanakai.

The terrorists turn out to be punk kids who got a little too obsessed with the idea of the Golden Master, which is an unfortunate choice of role model for them, when they have to face up to the ninja. Zane just looks mildly annoyed though, and Lloyd stares into the sun for a full minute before rolling his eyes, so the kids make it out alive.

“We weren’t going to kill them, geez,” Jay says. “Maybe just…lecture them, a bit.”

“Oh yeah, lecture them,” Kai scowls, cracking his knuckles. “The Golden Master, are they kidding?”

“To be fair, they don’t have the same experiences we do,” Cole points out, but he doesn’t look too opposed to the knuckle-cracking, either.

“No harm was done,” Zane says, a bit wearily. “We should simply let it go."

“I dunno, I say we should’ve hung them from a roof for a bit,” Lloyd says, evenly.

The other ninja all cringe in unison, except for Nya, who smothers a coughing sort of laugh. Skylor stares at them, bewildered. “Why would you hang them from a roof?”

“Not sure,” Lloyd says, his lips twitching. “Probably because crime doesn’t pay, muchacho, or something like that—”

“Alright, alright, we get it,” Kai says hastily, clapping a hand over Lloyd’s mouth.

“The guys would know,” Nya smirks, ignoring the looks of utter betrayal she’s getting. “That’s what they did to Lloyd, wasn’t it?”

“Nya, why,” Jay moans into his hands.

“You — hung Lloyd from a roof?” Skylor repeats, thrown for a loop. “Why on earth would you do that? What if he like, fell and died?”

“He was fine,” Cole assures her, hastily.

Lloyd is quick to protest, glaring at them. “No I wasn’t, it was literally scarring! Look, I got this scar from scraping my arm when I fell — oh, wait, oops, that one’s from the Never Realm, it’s this one here.” Lloyd winces as he finishes, suddenly looking contrite as he shoots Zane an apologetic look. “The Never Realm one was from Boreal though, don’t worry.”

Zane looks down, his face shadowed. “It was still my—”

“Nuh-uh,” Jay cuts over him, wagging his finger. “Remember the rule?”

Zane hesitates, looking as if he’d very much like to remember no such thing, but he finally slumps, relenting. “Scars dealt to each other while under the influence of malicious possession by person and/or ancient malevolent artifacts do not count, regardless of extenuating circumstances or deep inner psychological issues that may be brought to light during said influence,” he quotes dully, on a defeated sort of sigh.

Skylor doesn’t know whether to be impressed at that, or depressed that it needed existence in the first place.

“Exactly,” Jay nods. “Which means that any scars from you, Zane, or Lloyd — oh, and Kai, I guess — and Cole, technically, with the Hypnobrai that one time— wow, that’s, hm, that’s a lot of us.”

“If you count the dark matter, we’ve all been possessed,” Zane says, drily.

“Not me!” Kai says, mock-cheerfully.

Jay shakes his head. “Nobody got scars while we were on dark matter! I checked.”

“Why are you saying it like we were on drugs or something?”

“Speak for yourself,” Lloyd scowls. “I’ve still got that stupid ankle one.” He glares at the offending ankle, as if it’s personally disappointed him.

“That was the Overlord, not us,” Nya reminds him. “And uh, your dad, technically.”

Lloyd’s scowl just deepens, his eyebrows tilting downwards hotly. “If I had a dollar for every scar that’s from my dad…”

“I hear you,” Skylor sighs. “Dad scars are the worst. They really know where to hit.”

“Right? It’s always personal with them,” Lloyd shakes his head. “Dads are the worst.”

A beat passes before they both realize the others have fallen quiet. Her and Lloyd blink, and Skylor fights back the urge to cringe at the looks they’re now receiving.

“Well,” Jay says, bleakly. “This is a, um, miserable turn.”

“Hey, hey, no sad faces,” Lloyd scolds, reaching for Kai’s face, which is indeed sporting a pathetically teary-eyed kind of look. “Get that look off your face, off, off—”

“I’m not — stoppit — I’m just— hey, stop it— that’s my face, you brat—”

“Guys, c’mon, cut it out, you’re making a scene,” Cole scolds, pulling them both apart. “How about we stop and get ice cream before we go, okay? To like, cheer us up. Because that was completely depressing, no offense, guys.”

“None taken,” Skylor says, as Lloyd nods in agreement. Cole looks relieved, even if Kai’s still looking a little weepy, and he directs them down another street, heading toward a brightly labeled ice cream shop. Skylor can see tiny rows of candy inside, and there are a bunch of kids gathered around the little stand the owner’s set up at the door. It’s a cute place, all in all — the candy looks good, and it seems pretty cheap.

So it makes zero sense that Lloyd, of all people, would suddenly go painfully tense in the middle of the street, and refuse to take another step forward.

“I can’t go in there,” he whispers.

Skylor’s having that sense of déjà vu again. The rest of the ninja trade confused glances.

“Uh, Lloyd?” Kai says, hesitantly. “They sell candy in there, you know.”

“I know,” Lloyd grinds out, his teeth clenched painfully together. “I’ve been in there before.”

“You have?” Cole frowns. “You — oh.” Realization dawns in his eyes, and he’s suddenly biting his lip, holding back laughter. “Oh, I forgot.”

“Forgot wha—” Jay looks between the two of them, then back at the shop, before something sparks in his eyes as well, and he doubles over in laughter.

“Shut up,” Lloyd hisses.

“Why are we laughing at Lloyd,” Skylor finally sighs, as Kai and Zane break into barely-stifled giggles as well, and Nya rolls her eyes.

“So, um,” Lloyd swallows, shifting anxiously from side to side. “You know how I said they hung me from a roof? There might’ve, uh, been a reason for that.”

“Of course there was,” Skylor says.

“I kind of threatened them, a little bit, and uh, tried to steal half their shop, one time.”

“Of course you did.”

“Lloyd,” Nya sighs. “That was forever ago.”

“I stole from them,” Lloyd bites out. “If I show my face in there again, they’ll kill me."

“I highly doubt they will resort to murder, Lloyd,” Zane says, flatly. “Besides, you did not actually succeed in stealing anything, because we caught you and hung you from a roof. Remember?”

“Yeah, and then I came back with the Serpentine, and made it worse!” Lloyd exclaims. “Just go in without me, I’ll sit out here and cry.”

“We’re not just gonna leave you outside,” Kai rolls his eyes. “C’mon, let’s mend some old wounds. Just go inside and apologize.”

“I would literally rather die.”

“Lloyd, seriously.”

“I’ve done it before, don’t test me.”

“Lloyd.”

“You can’t make me, I’ll fight you—”

“Alright, alright, we’ll find a different shop!”

***********************

“Okay, I have to know,” Skylor finally asks, as they pass the outskirts of the village, heading back to the Bounty. “How many places are you all banned from, in total? Because this is ridiculous. I can’t take you anywhere.”

“I mean, you can’t take us anywhere even without the bans, anyways,” Cole says wearily. “To be fair.”

“We’re not that bad,” Lloyd protests, only to wilt immediately under Skylor’s stare. “There are just…a few places…”

“Zane, how many is it now,” Nya asks, rubbing her temples.

Zane is quiet for a moment, slowly ticking off his fingers as he stares upwards. “Did we ever decide if that one museum counted?”

“The vote was yes,” Jay mutters.

“And the Explorer’s Club, did we decide that one?”

“I’d say that’s a pretty hard ban,” Lloyd winces.

Nya huffs, crossing her arms. “I still say it doesn’t count, because like, everyone’s banned from there, with their stupid stuck-up membership requirements.”

Zane takes this into account, his eyebrows furrowing. “That leaves us with…seventeen places we cannot return to, I believe? Unless I missed one.”

Skylor’s left wordless, gaping at them. She knew there was a lot, but seventeen—?!

“I’m almost a hundred percent sure we’re also banned from the Never Realm,” Kai points out. Zane gives him the iciest look Skylor’s ever seen. Kai simply shrugs. “What? Just stating the facts.”

Lloyd frowns. “I don’t think we are? I mean, Akita wouldn’t—”

“Oh, Akita wouldn’t,” Jay cuts over him, a gleam in his eyes. “Would she, casanova?”

Lloyd goes scarlet, sputtering. “I told you, she kissed me! On the cheek! I just stood there, you can’t—” He buries his face in his hands, and despite her amusement (and rampant curiosity, because this is Lloyd and kissing), Skylor feels bad for him. “I can’t believe I ever told any of you about that,” he whines, sounding tragically upset with himself.

“You were the one having a mental breakdown over it,” Nya reminds him, almost gently. “You need to work on setting boundaries, bud.”

“It’s not like I didn’t tell her I had horrible issues with romance!” Lloyd throws his hands up, frustrated. “Because I did, in painfully honest detail—”

“And yet you refuse to open up to me about it,” Kai says plaintively.

“Turn into a dog for a bit, you might get lucky,” Lloyd grumbles.

Skylor doesn’t want to know. She really, really doesn’t want to know. “Well,” she finally says. “I do know one place you aren’t banned from.”

They all look up at her, and Skylor shakes her head. “You fly me back to the shop in time for dinner, and noodles are on the house tonight.”

Six faces brighten considerably. “Seriously?” Cole says. “Skylor, you’re an angel.”

“Seriously, the best person ever—”

“Our favorite cryptid orange ninja there ever was—”

“Yeah, yeah, keep flattering me,” Skylor sighs, trying not to smile, and failing woefully.

She doesn’t know why she still hangs out with these people, getting banned from everywhere in the city. What a bunch of nerds.

[poutyhannie]

Here is some fraking Han Jisung, my bias and muse. :)) 

warnings: angst, college student!han jisung, college au

word count: +2k

part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4

Nervously, you open the door to your first summer class at the university you’d be attending in the fall.  Having been sheltered throughout your private school education, you really didn’t know what kind of people you’d meet at your university, being that it was home to over 40,000 students.  However, you were relatively mature and could hold your own.  All you needed to do act tough and above it all.  

Your walls have served you well from heart ache before.  

Not specifically on the field of romantic love, but of platonic love.  Your last ‘best’ friend had held your vulnerable heart in her hands and utterly mutilated it to the point where its scars and scabs formed a hard, impenetrable shell.  And you learned to like it that way.  Being in control of who you opened up to and knowing how to act so that others wouldn’t get close to you.  You never denied that it wasn’t lonely but at the same time, you’d rather be lonely and cry alone into your sheets than have a facade of companionship and cry onto the shoulder of someone who used you.  

You tuck these reminders into the back of your mind as you step into the lecture hall.  It could fit over three hundred students but because it was a summer class, there were about a third of that.  Still, your palms began to moisten at the chitter of so many people.  Studying their faces as you head to the empty front row, you conclude that most of them were just as wide-eyed as you.  Except, they sooth these nerves by guarding themselves with a plethora of friends.  

You’d researched your professor before enrolling in her course.  She was renowned in her field, having been one of the group who was tasked with translating an undecipherable ancient text a few years back.  Clapping her hands, her surprisingly booming voice silences the lecture hall, “Alright, class.  First day of summer courses.  Some of you are future freshmen here and some are continuing lower and upperclassmen…”

Listening intently, it’s all the more obvious when the door swings open and a wide-eyed boy hurries into the room.  Internally groaning, you realize you didn’t block the seats next to you with your bag.  Surely he wouldn’t choose the front row in a hall full of them.  You don’t make eye contact with him as he enters the room, quickly bows and mumbles an apology, and you especially don’t make eye contact when you feel the heat radiating off of him when he plops down right next to you.  Annoyed, you sigh, engrossing yourself in your notebook as the professor continues her lecture about Old English epic poetry with a forgiving smile at the boy’s direction.  

Though he smells like the scorching summer sun, when he leans over, a refreshing, warm scent fills your nose.  It reminds you of soft, wooly blankets, which, you tell yourself, would be horrible in this weather.  “Hey, what’d I miss?”  The boy whispers at you, his hushed voice irritatingly fanning over your cheek.  You finally glare at him and he still wears that dumb wide-eyed expression.  It falters a bit at your harsh gaze but he stretches his smile wider, tilting his head.  Your stomach squeezes again at the prospect of a new person and you quickly shove your notes at him to get him to stop talking to you.  Taking out his own notebook, which is yellow with patterned black bees, he nods, copying your notes.  When he’s done, he gives you a content, toothy smile and hands you it back.  

You chose not to notice it before, but his dyed blonde tips poke out from his black bucket hat and you wonder if he wore a hat because he didn’t shower.  His collarbones stick out from under his baby blue t-shirt and the little green bird emblem on his chest is almost as cute as the bees on his notebook.  He’s tucked in his shirt to his black, tech wear pants which are laced with silver chains.  Looking down, you can see he has chunky, black boots and wince at how sweaty his feet must be with those fluffy pink socks poking out of his boots.  Still, his lightly flushed face doesn’t show signs of perspiration.  By the time you look back up to his face, he’s intently taking in everything the professor is saying.  You follow suit.  

When students begin glancing, antsy at the clock, your Professor reminds the class that she has office hours.  Quickly and wordlessly, you shove your notebook into your backpack because that boy seems like he has a novel at the tip of his tongue.  With a groan, you realize the only exit is blocked by his chair and when you turn to face him, he smiles brightly, shoving out a hand.  “Name’s Jisung.  I guess we’re desk buddies now?”

Giving him a tight smile and firm shake, you reply courtly, “Yeah, I’m Y/n.  See you tomorrow.”

When you pass him, he still wants to say something.  “Do you wanna study together later?  It’d be easy to finish the homework before tomorrow then.”

You glance back at him, donning your best bored, accusatory, and patronizing look, “I don’t like studying with other people.  Thanks for the offer though.”  

Walking off with that cold combo, you expected to never hear from the baby blue boy again.  

Still, here he is in the library, leaning over your shoulder annoyingly to stare at your book.  With an amuse smile he whispers, “What question of the homework are you on?”

“23.”

“Wow,” he lets out a low whistle, “You’re quite the reader, huh?”

You ignore his remark and ignore him when he plops onto the seat next to you.  Thankfully, he pulls out a well-worn copy of Beowulf rather than talking to you.  The next two hours continue in silence as you efficiently finish the ancient epic for the umpteenth time and complete the homework reflection questions.  You easily fill out all them, recycling your old views of the characters, symbolisms, and plot into your answers.  However, the last question in bold stops you short because of its moral aspect absent in the other, more literal questions.  

“Was Grendel justified for killing those in the mead hall?”

Obviously, any reader would side with the monster slaying Beowulf, but the way she phrased the question prompts you to think that maybe she wants a different answer.  After pausing for a moment, you begin your answer, something along the lines of empathizing with the annoyed monster who just really wanted the late night partying to end.  Chuckling to yourself, you realize how much in common you have with Grendel.  

Forgetting the boy’s presence, you relax, stretching out your arms.  He looks up at you from the book, his eyes droopy and glossed over. “You done, study buddy?” He asks around a yawn.

Though the nickname prickles your annoyance, you nod and begin packing up your bag.  “See you tomorrow.”  Is all you can manage to give his hopeful gaze.

He’s on time today, scurrying into the seat next to you.  Without a bucket hat, you see his blonde tips and black roots fully.  He seemed to have showered.  The boy wears a pastel pink shirt this time, chains still jingling infuriatingly at his hip.  “Hey, Y/n,” he greets.  You expect him to launch into a monologue—or more accurately, a soliloquy because you wouldn’t be listening—but instead, he leaves you at that and with his toothy, uneven grin.  

Your Professor’s voice interrupts his dangerous smile, “My last question which asked whether Grendel was justified or not was almost entirely responded with that he wasn’t.  I would disagree with that and I agree with Y/n.”

You feel his stare as you will your cheeks to stop flaming at the unsolicited eyes of your classmates.

“We always want to side with the ‘good’, with those who don’t kill that we’re so ready to don a mask of righteousness.  I believe Grendel was justified because the people in the mead hall needed to be good neighbors.”  She smiles, continuing, “if both sides had just shown kindness, compassion, and understanding, they’d all be alive.”

Your heart tweaks at her lecture, hitting too close to home for your guarded liking.  

Though you carry out the rest of your day busily, your mind is stuck on her words.    Guiltily, your mind wanders to the boy as you walk back to your dorm as the sky turns black.  You had already moved in, but your roommate was going to join you in the fall so it was empty.  Just how you liked it.  You fill your head with thoughts of your dorm, cleaning, and classes just so that you don’t have to think about his gummy smile, his fluffy socks, or his comfortable silence.  Maybe you had judged him too hard, even with your walls, you could have at least be civil.  What was his name, again?  He had given it to you on that first day…You try to drift off to sleep but the guilt in your heart still gnaws.  

There he is again, in the middle of the Uni courtyard in the middle of the day, laughing his ass off with two other boys.  Just as you force your gaze away, his meets yours, recognition spreading a smile over his face as he beckons you over.  Your shoulders drop in annoyance, but you quickly remember last night’s guilt, walking over to the laughing boys.  

He nudges you softly, “Y/n, I want you to meet my friends.  This is Bang Chan hyung,” gesturing to a black haired, charming older boy who gives you a dimpled smile and extends his hand.  “This is Seo Changbin hyung.”  A shorter, cold-looking boy gruffly nods at you and you like him immediately.  

Chan lifts his eyebrows at you, “We were just gonna go grab a bite, you hungry, Y/n?”

You begin to shake your head until you see the boy’s—Jisung’s, you remember now—excited eyes and how he’s bouncing on his combat boots.  “Sure,” you sigh in defeat, “I’ll go.”

You learn that Chan is a lot older and has an administrative job on campus, impressive for someone so young and that Changbin is studying to become musical producer.  Quite the weird mix of interests and people, but they seem to enjoy each other’s company so much, you assume there was history.  When you ask about it over fries and burgers, Jisung nods excitedly, “Yeah, I knew Channie hyung and Changbin hyung were both coming here so I reeeeally wanted to come here too.  I’ve enrolled for the fall but wanted to come sooner.”  Chan giggles at the younger boy’s excitement and gives Jisung more of his fries.  

Changbin shifts, looking at you with a calm, still gaze, “We’ve known each other since before Jisung was a teen,” he shrugs, returning to his food, “it seemed natural to continue college together.”

You feel a pang in your chest, looking quickly down.  You’d always say to your best friend that you’d both get into your dream college and graduate together.  Their unchanging friendship festers a longing in your heart that you’ve tried so damn hard to lock away.  Thankfully, they don’t notice your moment of weakness and begin conversing about Jisung and your summer course.

“Yeah,” Jisung reminisces, laughing, “when I first saw Y/n, I thought I’d shit my pants.  She gave me this glare when I sat down next to her.”

Changbin laughs, a bubbly giggle you’ve never head before, “Well you probably did something.”

Jisung’s eyes widen and he snaps his head towards you, a fry frozen on its ascent to his already stuffed mouth, his cheeks round.

“No, no,” you respond quickly, shaking your hands in front of you, gut dropping in guilt again, “A lot of people think I’m a bitch.  Its not Jisung’s fault.”

Chan giggles, nodding his head eagerly, “Yeah, I’m sure you really scared our precious little Sungie.”  Cries of protest and denies erupt from Jisung, who continues whining at his hyungs.  You choose not to notice but you watch them longingly, the ache in your heart for someone tearing a hole in your chest.

[thistreasurehunter]

Outer Banks: Reality TV AU

Okay, this was supposed to be a quick little imagine/headcanon, but it kind of got away from me… I actually feel like I’ve just experienced an entire season of Big Brother in the last 30 mins while I was writing this! (The images above are from Pinterest)

*********************************************************************

Okay, but imagine if they all met on a reality TV show instead. Big Brother, for instance…

VTs + entrances:

JJ would be set up by the show as the sexy one that all the girls are going to love – a 2D dumb hottie.

He’d love his entrance, grinning and waving and high-fiving the cheering audience.

And Pope’s VT makes him sound like a bit of a straight-laced nerd.

And he’s a bit shy on his entrance walk, but he still gets a big cheer.

Sarah and Rafe would come in as a brother and sister duo,

But as separate housemates.

Rafe makes a couple of ~questionable~ comments in his VT and he gets a mixed reaction from the live audience.

Sarah wears a slinky floor length gown and looks amazing as she makes her way in.

Kie mentions sea turtles twice in her VT.

She opts for more of a casual-glam look, but still owns that catwalk as she enters the house.

The Kie/Sarah arc:

Kie and Sarah are framed by the producers as powerful, confident, head-strong women.

So at first, the audience all think they’re going to clash over which one of them gets to become queen bee of the house.

And, to be fair, they do clash a bit to begin with,

Because they’re both so strong-willed and sure of their own mind.

But really, it’s actually all just low-key sexual tension.

Because those girls have the hots for each other!

But they’re both a bit too proud to say anything at first.

Then, slowly, they realise they’ve got so much in common.

And they bond over environmental issues and feminism and convincing their housemates to recycle more.

And they become friends.

Friends who both look really hot in their bikinis when they hang out in the pool or the hot-tub;

And who have long, soft chats late into the night, kind of curled up in the cosy chairs in the garden;

And who often sit with the other’s head in their lap.

And who take turns doing each other’s hair and make-up;

And who talk about how hard it is style different hair types or apply good make-up on a skin tone other than your own, so they teach each other.

Then one night they’d be messing about in the pool, laughing and splashing each other, and suddenly Kie would just lean forwards and kiss Sarah. And Sarah would kiss her back and they’d both be wet and pressed up against each other in their bikinis, and all the cameras would suddenly be pointing at them.

The video of it online would become one of the most watched clips of the show ever and it would go down in BB history.

And then they kind of become an awesome power couple.

And everyone would just know that the house was ruled by two queens.

The JJ/Pope arc:

At the beginning, the audience think JJ and Pope are going to annoy each other. Because they’re just so different: like, stereotypical cautious nerd vs stereotypical reckless jock.

And in the first few days, they don’t spend much time together, because they both did kind of low-key judge the other from a distance too.

But then to spice things up, Big Brother teamed them up together for a task.

And to begin with, they were both so dejected at having to endure the task with the other.

But when they actually started the task they ended up getting along so well.

Like, their personalities complemented each other’s, and they worked really well together.

And they were surprised by how much they could make the other laugh.

And they ended up acing the task.

And then they just sort of… fell into hanging out together.

All the time.

JJ brought out Pope’s fun side and Pope brought out JJ’s sensitive side.

JJ would do something daft, and Pope would join in and they’d both end up creased in laughter.

Or Pope would be a bit sad about something and JJ would be right there, making him feel better.

And their bromance literally became the highlight of every episode.

The entire show, really.

Because everyone just LOVES watching them hanging out, having fun, looking out for each other and just hyping each other up every chance they get.

It was the friendship that shouldn’t have worked, but just did.

And they form a little friendship group with Kie and Sarah. And they all just get along and have a lot of fun together.

One time, one of the other housemates said something mean and unfair to JJ. And JJ was about to get angry in his direction. But then Pope cut in and just verbally took that guy down!

And JJ was just so bewildered, because nobody had ever stood up for him like that before.

And then in letters-from-home week, JJ is happy for everyone, but also a bit sad because he knows he won’t have one – I mean, he knows his dad definitely wouldn’t have bothered.

And Pope asks JJ to read his letter from his parents and it’s beautiful and JJ chokes up a bit and they both hug afterwards and it’s really emotional.

Then just when JJ thinks they’ve finished, there’s one letter left at the bottom of the box, and it’s from his JJ’s BFF from back home – John B.

And Pope reads it out to him, and it’s really lovely and John B tells JJ all the funny things that have happened since he was gone and also that everyone on The Cut is really behind him and JJ is laughing and welling up and just so happy. And all the other housemates – the nice ones – kind of get that this was a big deal for JJ and sort of envelop him in a big group hug, Pope right there in the middle holding him.

And throughout their whole friendship, the camera doesn’t miss the way Pope and JJ look at each other.

And they become the will-they-won’t-they pairing of the series.

They both get asked a ton of leading questions about the other in the Diary Room.

And they get such a huge audience following and end up having a load of fan accounts dedicated to them.

They even get a ship name.

Well, two ship names.

And nobody can really decide which one to use.

But the boys just keep it completely bro-mantic and platonic, to the dismay of the audience.

Even though it’s completely obvious to everyone that they clearly have ~feelings~ for each other.

The Rafe arc:

And, of course, every season has it’s ‘baddies’.

This year it was Rafe and his gang of stuck-up, snobby ‘Kooks’.

Rafe gets a little bit too drunk on the first night and decides to go for a middle-of-the-night swim.

There’s a lot of flexing.

And some of the housemates are a bit wary of him because he comes across as quite unpredictable.

In general, Rafe’s ‘popular group’ are a bit mean to some of the other housemates, particularly JJ, who they keep tormenting,

They try to provoke him into getting so angry he’s removed from the house.

And they keep nominating him for eviction.

But week after week, JJ always survives the public vote.

But then one week he’s up for eviction against the most popular ‘Kook’ housemate and JJ is sure he’s going to leave.

And he’s sad because he knows how much he’s going to miss Pope and his friends in the house.

And on eviction night he can’t keep still and his leg keeps bouncing with nerves.

And the Kook is so over-confident.

Pope, Sarah and Kie all sit around JJ as the results are read out…

And the Kook is evicted and he gets booed when he leaves.

JJ is saved and gets a huge cheer from the audience outside and Pope, Kie and Sarah all pile on top of him in a big group hug.

And Sarah tries to talk to Rafe about cooling it. Telling him to stop being a jerk to everyone, especially JJ.

But it isn’t until Rafe has to do a task with Sarah, Kie, JJ and Pope that it really starts to sink in.

Because the task is really hard and they have to spend quite a bit of time just the five of them in a separate task-room.

And Rafe gets to know the others a bit better and sees how much fun they are and how much nicer they are to be around than the people he hangs out with.

And they all work together and win the luxury shopping budget.

And afterwards, Rafe kind of rejects the ‘popular’ group and starts hanging out with Sarah and the others.

And he just doesn’t tolerate any of his old friends saying anything mean about his new crew.

And so he gets a bit of a redemption arc on the show and the audience go from loving-to-hate him, to just sort of loving him in a he’s-a-bit-flawed-but-aren’t-we-all kind of way.

The Final:

Rafe, Sarah, Kie, Pope and JJ all make it to the final.

John B is in the front row of the audience with a massive sign that just says “JJPope Nation”.

And it’s really emotional when they say goodbye to the house.

Because they all know how life-changing the last couple of months have been.

Rafe’s exit interview is intense – he’s grilled about his change in attitude and he gets a bit emotional. He explains how eye-opening the experience was and how he want to move forwards as a better person and the audience all fall in love with him a little bit.

And Kie and Sarah both look incredible and work that catwalk as they leave.

In their interviews they both get asked a lot about that first kiss…

But the girls are more interested in talking about equality and sexuality politics.

And that just end up solidifying their new roles as LGBTQ icons.

Pope and JJ are the final two.

And as they wait for the final result, they just sit on the sofas a little in shock because neither of them ever expected that they could get this far.

And they both think the other deserves to win much more than they do.

And just before they get the results, Pope takes hold of JJ’s hand.

And when the winner is announced they both just hold onto each other and end up sobbing into each other’s shoulders, because they’re just so happy and shell-shocked.

And when they finally exit the house they both get such deafening cheers and they can’t keep the smiles off their faces.

And their Best Bits videos are amazing, because it’s basically like a montage of their whole friendship.

Their funny, chaotic, sweet, intense, glorious friendship.

And of course they get asked about whether there’s anything more between them than friendship.

And they’re both really evasive.

And they just cannot believe they have fan sites!

And the after-party is loud and wild and brilliant and lasts all night.

Afterwards:

Rafe has redeemed himself in the public eye and ends up being universally loved by the female audience.

After the show, he does a series of work-out videos that become hugely popular.

He also becomes a regular guest on TV panel shows.

After the show ends Sarah and Kie start their own ethical, environmentally friendly beauty brand and later add a fashion line.

They make sure they promote true representation and employ models of all ethnicities and body types, showing girls everywhere what true beauty looks like.

With some of the proceeds of their company, they set up a number of charities that focus on environmental and humanitarian projects all over the world.

And they live their best lives, knowing they’re helping make the world a better place.

After the first wave of interviews and photo shoots die down, JJ and Pope both sort of fall out of the public eye.

There’s still a lot of speculation about them.

And the fan sites never really give up on the ship.

They both occasionally post things to their Instagrams,

JJ mainly posts photos of the ocean or his surf board,

And Pope posts food shots and inspirational quotes.

Occasionally a photo shows up of them hanging out at one of Kie and Sarah’s glitzy fashion events.

And Rafe once posted a photo of the old BB gang, and also John B, in a bar somewhere. They were all crammed into the shot. But JJ and Pope were sitting really close, JJ’s arm slung over Pope’s shoulder.

That photo ended up getting a lot of likes.

And then a few years after the show ended, Pope posts a photo of a heart drawn in the sand with the letters P + J inside.

And then at almost the exact same moment, JJ posts a close up photo of Pope’s hand resting on his own, their golden wedding rings shining.

And so many people like the photos at the exact same moment the boys temporarily break the internet.

[miaparkerxx]

is that [NAOMI SCOTT]? no, that’s just [MIA PARKER]. [SHE] is [TWENTY-EIGHT] years old and is a [ANIMAL CARE ATTENDANT & PET ADOPTION COUNSELOR AT PAWS 4 LOVE, & FREELANCE BOUDOIR PHOTOGRAPHER]. rumor has it they’ve been in town for [TWENTY YEARS]. on a good day, they’re [SELF-RELIANT & CONFIDENT]. but watch out! they can also be [TEMPERAMENTAL & FOOLISH]. [RECKLESS SERENADE BY ARCTIC MONKEYS] plays in my head whenever i think of them. can’t wait to see them around springhill!

👀 hi, friends - i did it. it’s official, you all now know that LA has absolutely no self control. BUT ANYWAYS, i’m crazy stoked to introduce you guys to mia. i’ve never had the chance to really get her developed, so my fingers are crossed that this is my chance to watch her grow however she might. i haven’t had time yet to get connections together, but she has been here since she was 8, so there’s plenty room for some established connects - like this & i’ll hyu.

FULL NAME: mia candice parker DOB | AGE: august, 11, 1991 | 28 OCCUPATION: animal care attendant & pet adoption counselor at paws 4 love, & freelance boudoir photographer SEXUALITY: Bisexual

         notable character traits + creative, confident, self-reliant, honest, perfectionist, playful -  temperamental, foolish, emotional, guarded, willful, vindictive

         hobbies & interests keeping fit & healthy, clothes & makeup shopping, photography, animals, crafting, soap making, acroyoga, cooking, gardening, kickboxing, recycling 

                                                        ~

( TW DYSLEXIA, TW MENTIONS OF INFERTILITY )

> ( TW MENTIONS OF INFERTILITY ) born in hounslow, uk - mia’s mother had her at the age of 15, so it's no surprise that she grew up in foster care & group homes. she bounced around quite a bit until a family from america ( springhill, nj ) changed her life by adopting her when she was 8 & bringing her to the states to give her a life she didn’t know that she was very lucky to have. her parents are financially pretty well off - father a lawyer & mother an interior decorator. she has 2 older sisters & 1 younger brother - all of the kids have been adopted as her mother is unable to have kids of her own.

> her childhood bouncing between foster & group homes has made her guarded. she saw the worst in people during that time in her life & it’s stuck with her. she doesn’t trust others easily - not at all. 

> she’s passionate about two things in life - doing what she can to help the helpless/homeless animals around springhill & photography. she’s worked at paws 4 love since she was 17 & found a passion in boudoir photography in her early 20s. what started as a hobby in her teens has turned into a literal side job - she gets to travel to do shoots which she also enjoys. she does the occasional wedding & events, but in her free time, she especially enjoys street photography. her main focus though is boudoir photography. she enjoys capturing sensual & intimate moments of her subjects often for their own personal use.

> ( TW DYSLEXIA )  isn’t very book smart & she has dyslexia, so school was very much a struggle for her. until her high school years, she was bullied quite a bit & tended to keep to herself minus a couple of closer friends she stuck with. since getting older, she’s learned coping strategies that have made handling her dyslexia easier. though she still struggles with spelling & pronunciation. because of this, she tends to stay away from books & such. even prefers talking on the phone over texting.

> despite being a highly guarded & a bit rough around the edges, she’s actually very passionate & loving. nurturing, even. she can come off a bit off-putting to some, but she does like to have fun & be around others. 

> has been aware of her sexuality since high school - she is bisexual & tends to lean more towards women, but likes men, too. she enjoys intimacy. she isn’t the sort of person to hook up with anyone & everyone, but she isn’t opposed to ‘ friends with benefits ’ because she doesn’t catch feelings very easily.

> stubborn af, as well as vindictive, so if you hurt her, her immediate reaction is to hurt you back. 

> she cares a lot about the environment, so she’s an avid recycler, doesn’t ever use plastic ( no plastic cups, takes her own bags for her groceries, that sort of thing ), she also only uses her car when she needs to otherwise she rides her bike or walks. HATES littering & will say something if she catches someone littering. 

> keeps fit - does a lot of acroyoga & yoga, really into kickboxing, too. she’s also a vegan & has been since she was 22.

C O N N E C T I O N S

again, not put together just yet, but some basic connects i’d love for her to have are listed below ! lets brainstorm ?!

FRIENDS & a couple of BEST friends friends w benefits people that don’t get along with her for whatever reason we come up with ex friends ex girlfriends ex boyfriends neighbors people that let her shoot them for her portfolio & her work, in general maybe a roommate ?? or someone she used to live with crushessss bc why not unrequited crushes people she can’t STAND

[letswritefanfiction]

Pokémon Alphabet Challenge: Z is for Zeitgeist

Can also be read on ffnet here.

-

“You’re frustrated.”

“I’m not frustrated.”

Ash grit his teeth and clenched his hands under the desk. He was frustrated. He’d been frustrated for a long, long time and had been holding it in. But recently, his great effort to seem appreciative and happy appeared to have spouted a leak and frustration was slipping out, steadily and persistently. It was all he could do in this meeting to keep from letting it all go here, in this office room, and be done with it once and for all.

Sitting across from him were Kunihiko Yuyama, Daiki Tomiyasu, and Aya Matsui—the big three. No one else would have been able to secure a meeting with the three of them. And it had taken a few attempts for him to be able to as well. But they couldn’t say no to him forever. After all: he was Ash Ketchum.

“Well, if not your frustrations, then tell us your grievances,” Aya said.

Her face was unreadable, at least to Ash. But if he had any guess, he assumed she was the one he was offending the most. She was head writer and, after all, it was the writing that he was…aggrieved by.

“Does it have something to do with Gen 8?”

That question came from Kunihiko. It was the obvious one. Obvious because it was absolutely, one hundred percent spot-on. It was, after all, once the talks of Gen 8 had taken off that his frustration leak had begun. Well, kind of. Perhaps it had begun with Movie 20. Or, if he was being one hundred percent honest, Gen 3. And then there was the beginning of Gen 5…

Maybe this had been going on longer than he’d thought.

But Ash had never been a good liar, so he went with the truth. The simplest truth, that was.

“Yes. It does.”

“Well,” Kunihiko continued, “feel free to elaborate.”

It was lucky that Ash had been thinking about this speech for weeks, because suddenly, he felt like he was going to blurt it all out. And, since he was given the opportunity to do so, that’s how it came.

“Okay,” he sighed, “here’s the thing. I liked Movie 20, right? And 21. But you have to admit that there was a lot of internet backlash, especially in the west, when they were announced. And the Mewtwo redo. They’re not what the public want. They want to see what happens to Ash in the world that already exists. The world that some of them have been invested in for twenty years. And I know target demographic and all that but, like, really? Come on, why start Ash’s story over again?”

“You sound like a Genwunner,” Daiki commented.

“I’m not, believe me,” Ash said. “Almost all of the things that lived and died with Gen 1 were good things to let go of. We all know that. But at the same time, risks were taken! When the most interesting risk you’ve taken is a soft reboot, you know you’ve gone wrong somewhere.”

“Risks are not what the stockholders are looking for,” Kunihiko explained. “After twenty years of consistency, people know what they’re getting out of Pokémon. If they want a little something different, maybe they try Pokémon Origins or Pokémon Adventures Manga or even Pokémon Mystery Dungeon. But the anime has its target audience and a massive shift would ruin that in a way we might not be able to recover.”

“So that what? In fifty years you’re still—well, you’ll be dead—but someone’s still using CGI to give me the appearance of a preteen? And I meet a new friend in every episode that’s never seen again? And there are thousands and thousands of newly discovered Pokémon?” Ash argued.

“We changed it up quite a bit last season and it was largely well-received, especially in Japan,” Aya argued. “Certainly we’ve recycled storylines in Pokémon before, but it’s not all we do.”

“Okay, fine. I know I have no control over the plot,” Ash admitted. “Or lack thereof. But hear me out. I’m a thirty-year-old man. I live the public life of a ten-year-old. In the past twenty years, I’ve done this for you—before you all even were here, in fact. I’ve done it for the brand. I’ve never grown so much as sideburns, or even changed my hairstyle. Enough is enough. Either things change around here or…”

There was silence across the table as Ash trailed off. It was Daiki who finally prompted him again.

“Or what?”

Ash’s expression had fallen to his lap. His long bangs were covering his eyes in that dramatic way that the directors always loved when he was having an emotional moment on the show. That thought was enough to bring his eyes up.

“Or I quit.”

The three across the table from him were looking at him as though he was a petulant child throwing a tantrum. Or about to throw a tantrum—he wasn’t sure. But as a person who had been playing a child for twenty years, he knew that he was far from that. He was being the more level-headed Ash of XY, not the hot-headed kid from the Original Series. Well, more than that. He was being his actual adult self.

Aya sighed. “I’m sure we can find ways to incorporate past stars like we did in SM042, 43, and SM102, 103. Things like that are a big hit, and I know you enjoy them.”

It was a compromise. A piece of candy to keep him from throwing a fit at not being able to buy the bag. It was not at all what he wanted.

“That’s not what I’m talking about,” Ash said, suddenly exhausted. “How does that even make sense with a soft reboot?”

“We’ll make it work.”

He knew what that meant. It wouldn’t make sense. Just like it hadn’t made sense with the supposed soft reboot of Sun and Moon. Just like it hadn’t made sense that he was still ten in Black and White, but knew Dawn from his past travels with her. By this point it was what the public expected and understood, so it wasn’t a hard sell. People would poke fun at it on the internet, but they’d hardly be mad about it. That was a tough anger to stoke for twenty years.

“Most people don’t keep doing a show for twenty years,” Ash said quietly.

“I don’t know what you’re trying to tell us,” Kunihiko said.

“I don’t know either,” Ash said, the frustration reentering his voice. He rubbed his head as though trying to massage the thoughts out. “I just don’t want to do this anymore.”

-

“How did it go?”

Ash had arrived at Brock’s house for a drink—lord knew he wasn’t supposed to be seen drinking in public. Even being seen buying a six-pack would be ‘bad for the kids’. Regardless of the fact that he hardly resembled the character that he played on television anymore. In 2019 there were now grocery services that would help him keep surreptitious, but he enjoyed the habit of going to Brock’s. And he always paid him back for the beer.

“Not good,” Ash groaned as he flopped down on the sofa. Brock put a beer in his hand in eleven seconds flat.

“Didn’t hear you out?” Brock asked, sitting down with his own. Ash relished in the sound of the can being opened and then pulled the tab on his own.

“Nope. They have no interest in anything but going ahead with the plan.”

“That sucks, man.”

Ash took a gulp of his beer. Beer wasn’t something to be savored over time; it was to be drunk quickly while it was still cold and palatable. “Nobody knows what this is like,” he said finally.

Now, if most people had said that—or if Ash had said that about nearly anything else—it would have been all Brock could do not to shut them down immediately. No one’s experience was unique, there were always people to talk about it; you were never alone. But this existence of Ash’s…Well, Brock had lived it for about four years himself. But that had nothing on Ash’s twenty. So he could relate. But not entirely.

He’d bounced, after all. He’d bounced after the OS, then come back for a few more years and bounced after year five of the show. He’d had that choice. And, sure, Samuel and Delia were still around after all these years, but only for a few episodes each season.

Actually, there were only two other people who really understood, and that was Jessie and James. But Ash wasn’t meant to fraternize with them often in public for publicity. It wasn’t ‘in character.’ And since Jessie and James were portraying adults—and not the star—things were a bit more lax for them.

“I know, bud.” Brock got up again and reached for a bag of pretzels. Ash no longer ate as ravenously as his character on the show did, but Brock still showed love through offering food and drink to his friends. “What’s your next move?”

Ash had to chew through the dry handful of pretzels he’d just shoved in his mouth before answering. “I don’t know,” he groaned. “I really don’t want to do this anymore, but they’ve already confirmed Ash Ketchum for the next season. And, you know, my contract.”

“And who can imagine the PokéAni without Ash Ketchum?”

“Ugh, don’t say that,” Ash moaned, throwing a pretzel at Brock’s head. Perhaps he still did share some traits with his 10-year-old persona.

“My bad,” Brock said, chuckling as he blocked the pretzel and let it fall to the ground. He’d pick it up later. “Look, Ash. All I can say right now is that you don’t wanna burn any bridges until you know what your next step is. Being Ash Ketchum comes with a pretty sizable shit sandwich, but there’s a reason you’ve kept doing this for two decades. So keep being Ash Ketchum until you’ve got a plan.”

“Uh-huh.”

It was little more than a grunt as Ash took another swallow of his beer. Brock looked at his despondent friend. It made him sad to see, but TV show or not, this was Ash. He’d bounce back by tomorrow.

-

“Brock, I’ve had a realization.”

Ash was on the phone this time, instead of in Brock’s living room. And, as Brock had predicted, it was the next day and he appeared to have fully bounced back. He looked excited and full of that youthful energy he’d been paid for so long to exhibit.

“What’s that?”

“If the company wants me to stay on brand, than what is more on brand for Ash Ketchum than burning it all down?”

“Um, a lot of things.”

“Okay, yeah, bad phrasing,” Ash admitted. “I just mean being brash and impulsive. Making a big choice and sticking to it. This is all very Ash Ketchum. And besides, what hero doesn’t break a few things while saving the day? Ash Ketchum has destroyed a lot of property in his day.”

Brock sighed. “Ash, what are you gonna do?”

“I’m going to be myself. For fucking once.”

Swearing. Very off-brand. Absolutely not E for Everyone. Brock could see where this was going in an instant.

“Ash, no.”

“Yes, Brock! If they’re not going to listen to me, then I’m going to have to act independently.”

“And pay the sizable sum I know is in the fine print of your contract for breaching it?”

“I can afford it,” Ash said, surprising Brock by having thought about it at all.

“Okay,” Brock said, putting his phone on speaker so he could start texting. “You need an intervention. I’m calling for backup.”

“Brock,” Ash whined. “I’ve thought long and hard about this!”

“You’ve thought long and hard,” Brock agreed, sending the text off. “But not precisely about this. You’ve thought around this, and I’m not denying that you’ve been frustrated for a long time. But come on, Ash. You dreamt this up last night at the earliest.”

Silence. Then: “That’s longer than I’ve thought about most things.”

“Yeah, that’s what happens when you’re in a twenty-year long habit.” His phone buzzed. “Anyway, backup is on its way.”

“Brock,” Ash whined again. If Brock hadn’t already known Ash was in therapy, he would have suggested it be written into his contract as a necessity when playing a preteen for twenty years. It was bound to have an effect on an adult man’s psychology.

“Don’t even pretend to be upset about it, Ash. You’ll be happy to see her.”

“I see her without your help,” Ash grumbled.

“Doesn’t matter. Now don’t do anything stupid until she gets there.”

“…Define stupid.”

“Ash.”

“Fine, fine.”

-

The buzz up to his penthouse came surprisingly quickly given Tokyo traffic. It must be a good day outside. Not that he’d know, because he hadn’t left the house that day, as per Brock’s instructions to not do anything stupid.

Then he got an idea.

Instead of buzzing her up, Ash got into his in-unit elevator and went down. He strolled through his lobby and ignored that he could see her through the glass doors in the front—her and her scowling expression. When he opened the door, he swept her into a kiss—one of the dramatic ones like in the movies. Not Pokémon movies but actual movies. Like, rated PG-13 movies. Their bodies were all twisted, and it occurred to him that this was very uncomfortable for the spine. But it always looked good in the movies, so he went with it.

Until he felt her pinching his arm terribly hard and putting firm pressure on him to retreat back into the lobby. Just to have a moment of defiance, he held on for one more minute and then pulled away, acting the part of pleased lover, accepting his publicly-known lover into his apartment building. She played along. For the thirteen seconds it took to reach the elevator. Then she thwacked him upside the head. He’d known she would.

Worth it, though.

“Brock said not to do anything stupid,” Misty hissed. She should have known, though. Ash had never been good with instructions, no matter how simple they were.

“Hey, he only said until you got here. You’re here now.” Ash shrugged. “You went along with it.”

“Yeah, because it would have looked even worse if I’d shoved you off like you were assaulting me,” Misty explained. “#MeToo isn’t just for America, Ash.”

Ash smiled a little bit despite himself. She was always one step ahead of him—simultaneously one of his favorite and possibly the least favorite thing about her. Even surpassing her violent streak.

“Why did you do that?” she hissed.

“Why are you whispering?” Ash asked in an exaggerated whisper.

“Because you just did something stupid!” she shouted. “Stop deflecting!”

“I did it,” Ash started as measured and calmly as he could. It always threw her off when he was measured and calm, “because there’s no logical reason why my long-term girlfriend and I shouldn’t be able to kiss in public.”

Misty shook her head. “Brock was right. You have gone off the deep end.”

“I’m sure Brock didn’t say that.”

Misty took out her iPhone. “Brock, 10:42am. SOS. Ash’s gone off the deep end. You know why.” She looked pointedly at Ash.

“Isn’t SOS the signal they use when big ships crash? This is hardly a Titanic kind of situation.”

“You’re deflecting again!”

Damn, she was good.

They’d arrived in his penthouse by then and Misty had set her stuff down. Already she was heading into Ash’s kitchen for a glass of water.

“Misty,” Ash started in a sickly sweet tone. “Imagine how nice it would be if you could live here. If people could see you coming and going as you please.”

“I have. It would be great.”

She didn’t make it sound great. Her tone was dry and almost angry.

“Yes, it would?”

Misty set down her glass and went to sprawl on one of Ash’s too-wide couches. The seats were so long you couldn’t lean against the back without bringing your legs onto the cushion. It was like they were made for basketball players. Or a thirty-year-old man-child who never sat on a couch without making himself fully comfortable. The only time his feet were on the floor was when he was leaning forward, vigorously playing one of his hundreds of video games.

“I have thought about it, Ash, of course I have. Many times,” Misty said, patting beside her on the couch. That made Ash feel relatively assured that she wasn’t mad at him. “I would love to live with you. And perhaps redecorate this place.” She was always critical of his rather barren apartment. “But I also get why it makes sense to keep our relationship private for the show. It matters that you not really have any particular favoritism towards any of your traveling companions.”

“But Misty, don’t you wanna get married someday? I know you’re the kind of girl who already has a wedding dress picked out and probably a whole Pinterest board about it.”

She did have a dress style in mind, though not a particular one. And she didn’t have a Pinterest board, but she certainly had pins that she thought might…someday be nice for a wedding. But he wasn’t going to get her that way.

She groaned. “This is frustrating for me too, Ash. When we started this, neither of us thought it would have to go on like this for so long. But Brock’s right. You have a contract. There’s very little we can do until that contract is up.”

“In another five years,” Ash shouted, picking up a pillow to muffle the sound. Not because he had any neighbors who would hear, but because he felt like being melodramatic.

That little detail bothered Misty too. But Ash was not a person who needed fuel added to his fire.

“Tell me,” Ash asked, face still in his pillow, “what’s so wrong about breaching contract?”

“Disappointing your fans?” Misty asked. “Your fans who love you and would feel betrayed by you leaving the show?”

Ash shouted again. “I can’t make all my life decisions because of other people!”

Misty put an arm around Ash’s shoulder, trying to coax him out of the pillow. Then she said gently, “Sounds like something Ash Ketchum would do.”

Ash leaned into her embrace and took the pillow away. But he glared at her as he said, “You suck.”

She smirked. “I thought you liked that.”

“See!” Ash exclaimed, bolting up. “That’s the kind of thing that people say! The kind of thing that adults say! If I got caught saying that, the entertainment media would be all over me for days!”

Misty pulled Ash back down, ignoring his indignation. He let himself be pulled into her embrace.

“Give me another reason,” Ash asked.

Misty had to think about that. At this point, she didn’t even know the people working at The Pokémon Company very well. She had no particular loyalty to these people, and she knew that Ash’s was waning. Ash had made them all rich over the years. Of course, they had made him rich as well, but that had never been what he was about. Sure, he had a bit of a show-off streak, but he was a fairly low-maintenance guy. For the huge, expensive apartment he had, it was pretty sparse with actual belongings.

She didn’t give a damn about the stockholders. Maybe she should, because she and Ash were both stockholders themselves, but it would hardly ruin them if the stock went under.

“The employees,” she offered after a while. There were a lot of animators who had to work towards creating the world of Pokémon and making Ash into a preteen week after week. She knew the incredible hours they worked and the burdensome workloads. Not to mention musicians and writers and all the other actors. They certainly deserved the consistent paycheck they could expect from Pokémon.

“Fair point,” Ash said.

“The fans and the employees…” Misty started. “Woah, weird thought.”

“What?” Ash asked, perking up. While she’d been thinking, she’d been rubbing the base of his hairline, lightly pulling his hair and massaging his scalp and neck. It had lulled him into almost a catatonic state. She redoubled her efforts.

“Never mind, don’t worry about it.”

“No,” Ash said, pulling away, however unwillingly. “That was an idea voice. Usually a good idea voice. What was the good idea?”

“It wasn’t. It was an idea, not a good one.”

“Then let me know the not good idea.”

“Well…” Misty started, biting her lip. “It’s really half an idea.”

“Then let me know the half an idea!” Ash insisted.

“Okay, okay,” Misty said, still holding the idea close to her chest. “Just…what do you know about copyright law?”

-

It was a fucking brilliant idea. One that would probably get them both—but hopefully no one else—sued. But a brilliant idea, nevertheless. And if Ash did end up getting sued, at least that would get him the flames of glory he’d said he wanted this to go down with.

Job one was the hardest, by Misty’s estimation. And when they sat down with his laptop, he realized how right she was.

“This is really for you,” she said as they looked on at the blank document in front of them. “What do you want to include?”

The image felt clear in Ash’s head. He felt like he knew what he wanted. And he did know the major points that the story needed. Ash had to age, the content matter should be darker, the story should progress and have a real overarching plot. Actually, the more he thought about it, the more things came to mind that he’d have to get a stronger grasp on. Certain things in the world needed to be explained more when he really thought about it. But when it came down to it—writing the script meant to rewrite the whole Pokémon universe and he had no idea where to start, even with all these thoughts bouncing around in his head.

Worse than that, he didn’t want to mess up.

“I’m not a writer, Misty,” Ash said, pushing the laptop toward her as he put his head in his hand. “In twenty years, I’ve never written a script. Hell, I’ve never even had significant contributions to one. Just an altered line here and there. Mostly accidents. I know nothing about this.”

“Okay, let’s think about this,” Misty said, accepting the laptop and leaning over it. “We like Pokémon because it has good bones. It’s an interesting world with great outlines of characters who lack depth. It’s got a functioning if somewhat unexplored magic system. It’s touched on some good plots and then backed off of them. That gives us somewhere to start.”

“What, so we copy and paste the first season and then start to do our own thing?”

“Obviously not,” Misty shot down. “There’s no way we’re doing that Christmas episode again. No Santa in this world. And no Christ, for that matter. No, there’s gotta be something that makes more sense…”

“Like hiring a writer? We’re hiring everyone else, so why not that?”

Misty stared at him for a second, her face contemplative. Then her eyes flew open and she kissed him on the lips. “Ash, you’re a genius!”

That was certainly something he’d never heard before. Still, Misty was quick to begin typing something on the computer, and it wasn’t in the text document. He leaned over her shoulder to see what it was. She was typing into the searchbar:

Fanfiction.net.

“Fanfiction?” Ash asked, almost spitting the word. “What do you know about fanfiction? Don’t tell me you read that porny stuff.”

“It’s not all porn, Ash,” she said without looking at him. “And, for your information, I really enjoy RWBY fic. You probably would too if you read anything more verbose than your scripts.”

“I read!”

“Not for fun.”

“…Touché.”

“From my experience, most fic is terrible. God-awful. Way worse than anything Pokémon spews out. But when it’s good…by God, it’s incredible, Ash. I really fucking wish you read it.”

“Not a chance.”

“Well, you are now,” Misty said as she seemed to arrive at her location on the site. “We’re going to have to spend the next few days, at least, combing through this crap in order to find something promising. It’s in there. Pokémon is a huge fandom, so even if only one percent of this is amazing, that’s still a thousand masterpieces. We just have to be patient.”

“I’m not reading a hundred thousand stories, Misty. Not in my whole life, much less a few days.”

“Not to worry,” Misty said, patting Ash’s arm patronizingly. “I’ll teach you my ways. It won’t be long before we find the good stuff.”

Ash scoffed. “And I thought I was the dangerously optimistic one.”

“Can’t be around you without being optimistic. That’s the magic of Ash Ketchum.”

-

Ash awoke to the sound of his phone ringing. At 4am. He groaned and rolled over. Obviously some American had gotten a hold of his number again and wasn’t thinking about the time change. The buzzing finally abated, and Ash felt his brain turning off again, about to let him sink back into delightful sleep when it started up again. With an even louder groan, he rolled back to the other side of the bed and began groping around for the phone on his nightstand. He had to pick it up, if only to swipe away the call and block the number. But, when he picked up his demonic phone, he saw Misty’s name. He really hoped her dog was dying. Or something equally tragic.

“What?” he croaked, his voice not appreciating being used at this time of night.

“I found it, Ash. This is it. It’s perfect.”

So, not her dog, apparently. “You found an author.”

“Better than that. Way fucking better. I found a story. An actual story. Some crazy bastard is rewriting the whole anime themselves and it’s incredible. I’m only about fifty chapters in—”

“Fifty chapters‽”

“—but it’s perfect. Unless it goes really downhill, then I think I found our person. We can really do this now.”

“Great, Misty. Glad you found it. Now kindly hang up the phone again so I don’t have to look at the screen again and ruin my sleep even more.”

“Sleep‽ There’s no time to sleep. Gen 8 comes out later this year. By that time, we need to have enough episodes out to have built up a presence big enough that Pokémon Company will care. Our names will do a lot of the heavy lifting for us, but what we’re pitching is only going to appeal to a fraction of the market audience. We’re going to have to pull all of those people and new ones to make any kind of a splash. Ash? Are you listening?”

Ash had put the phone down on the pillow and was resting his head on it, eyes closed. He had been beginning to drift. But for as raspy as Misty’s voice was from evidentially having been up all night, she could still make it piercing when she needed to.

“I’m listening,” he grunted. Even though they had already gone over all those logistics a few days before.

“Well, we need to finish reading this story ASAP so we can see if it’s really the story we wanna tell and then contact the author. They probably won’t respond immediately, so we wanna be doing that as soon as we can.”

“It sounds like you’ve got a head start on the story out of the two of us,” Ash said through a yawn. “So you can finish reading it and then we’ll DM the person.”

“No, Ash,” Misty said firmly, as though she knew he was barely listening. Heck, she definitely knew he was barely listening. “You have to read it too. We have to be sure about this.”

“Fine,” he groaned. “Just let me go back to sleep.”

“Fine,” Misty agreed. “But I’ll be calling you back at seven to make sure you’re up and reading. I’m putting in a scheduled delivery for a breakfast sandwich and coffee too.”

“Thanks, Mist. G’night.”

“Goodnight, Ash.”

He was out before the call even ended.

-

After his false start that morning, the day had still begun too early. This was the off-season for shooting the show, so he slept in most days as late as he wanted. But right at seven, with Misty calling and his doorbell ringing, Ash realized Misty hadn’t ordered the food to be nice. It was because it would force him out of bed in a way that her phone call simply wouldn’t.

Devious girl, she was.

But there was a little part of Ash that felt guilty that Misty had been up all night for the sake of his project, so after downing his sandwich and starting on his coffee, he did set about clicking on the link she’d sent him in the wee hours that morning.

And he balked at what he saw.

It turned out that fifty chapters wasn’t even scratching the surface. The story she’d linked to him was close to one hundred chapters and the first words of chapter one kindly informed him that this was going to be a series. A monstrous series that planned on rewriting the whole PokéAni.

In his mind, he vaguely heard the words Misty had said on the phone to that effect, but by now that phone call felt like little more than a dream. The only way he knew that it had actually happened was the fact that the consequences of that call had led to him being awake at this almost equally unholy hour.

After breezing past the author’s note informing him of the impending series, as well as a whole website devoted to further resources—this person had rewritten the whole Pokédex!—he began the first chapter. It actually started with Ash Ketchum as a child, younger than ten, and seemed to be giving some back story to the characters of Pallet Town. Delia, Professor Oak, and Gary Oak were all appearing, as well as a number of new characters. He was intrigued. And then…he wasn’t.

Well, he was still intrigued, but he found himself skimming some of the longer paragraphs and soon he found himself on Twitter. He only scrolled for about ten minutes before he realized what was happening and closed the tab. Well, minimized it. He wanted to save his spot.

He called Misty.

“How do you read?” he asked after she said hello.

Usually a stupid question like that would have prompted either a sarcastic comment, or straight-up laughing at his expense. But, instead, Misty said. “Ugh, Ash, it’s already 8:30. Please tell me you’ve read something.”

“I’ve started chapter one.”

“Started chapter one‽”

“I’m almost finished!” Ash defended.

“God, I forgot about your ADHD,” Misty moaned. “Okay. You’re going to have to figure out what works for you and figure it out quickly if we wanna move on this. Try copying and pasting into a text to speech website. It’ll sound unnatural, but if you can listen to that while reading or listen to it while doing a coloring book or something maybe that’ll help. Or find something to do with your hands while you read. Chewing gum might help? I think I’ve heard that? Or google it. I’m sorry, Ash, I don’t know as much about it as I should.”

“No, that’s a good start,” Ash said quickly to appease his girlfriend. Sometimes Misty came off as tough or even mean, but she really wasn’t, otherwise Ash wouldn’t have dated her for so long. She did make fun of him often, but he did the same to her. It had been their dynamic on the show when they’d first started; it was the basis of their chemistry. But she wouldn’t ever make fun of him for a behavior disorder. He just didn’t want her to feel bad for not being able to help. “I’ll give those a try.”

“Okay,” Misty said, sounding a touch more relaxed. “I’m almost done with the Kanto arc and I’ve gotta say, this story is still really good. They’re incorporating the bones of the anime, and weaving in the first movie whilst also having more through-lines and stuff. Fewer CotDs and instead really focusing on us discovering stuff about Pokémon. And, like, growing up. And you should really read the resources they’ve created; they’re amazing.”

“I will,” Ash said, hoping that he’d actually be able to. “Try to get some sleep, okay, Mist?”

It was as though the word ‘sleep’ triggered her to yawn. He heard the sound on the other line and then she said, “I will. I just wanna finish this arc.”

“And then sleep. Immediately. Okay?”

“Okay, Ash. I will.”

“Good. You sleep. I read.”

As if emulating a sports huddle, she said, “Okay, break.”

“Go team,” Ash said with a little chuckle.

He hung up the phone and set about finding a blank coloring book page on the internet. He’d make this work however he could. He wasn’t going to get tripped up at stage one.

-

He didn’t read as much as Misty did. It turned out Misty was a fairly quick reader and, as he already knew, he was very, very slow. But he read a good portion of the first story in the series that day and texted Misty to let her know that he agreed. The story was as close to what he had been murkily envisioning as possible. Well, much better, actually. He could see it on the screen, could feel the choices he’d make as that version of Ash Ketchum in his muscles as he was reading. He even found himself saying his character’s lines out loud.

After that came the strange moment that made it all real. It turned out Misty already had an ffnet account—which he fully intended to explore later—and all they had to do was send the author or authoress in question a PM. That’s where things became sticky. What they were going to offer—payment for the use of an adaptation of her story, plus for her continuing writing the story, as it was still ongoing—was going to sound illegitimate. One hundred percent fake.

“We just have to go for it,” Misty said on the phone. “And hope they’re a good person and won’t leak this first thing. I mean, that should be our real concern.”

That hadn’t even occurred to Ash. He’d considered the fact that they would need a large team of people to pull this off, and that that would significantly drain his overflowing bank account. He hadn’t considered that he’d have to have absolute loyalty from the people he was asking to be disloyal to the company that had employed all of them at one time, at least as far as the actors were concerned. Except this mystery writer, of course. He’d have to get his lawyer to start drafting some NDAs.

“Yeah, we’ll just have to hope for that. You don’t have any identifying features on your account, so worse comes to worse, you just tell the public it wasn’t you and there’s no way to prove you wrong.”

“And then we’re back to square one.”

“Let’s not worry about that now. Just cross your fingers and send the message.”

“Okay. Crossed. And…sent.”

Ash realized he was holding his breath. This was the biggest thing he’d done since he was ten and had first accepted the role of the then-unknown Ash Ketchum. And, while that had been big, since he’d never had a star acting role before, he’d had no idea of the implications. No one had known the international phenomenon Pokémon would become. This, he knew, would be big. Whether it ended in the biggest success of his life, or destroyed it.

-

As Ash and Misty were on an internet frenzy, looking up people for all the different roles they needed to fill. Animators was the number one job in their list. They were hunched over their computers, doing search after search, occasionally exchanging work and sending out emails. Then, suddenly, Misty’s phone rang.

She groaned. She and Ash had managed to rein in his attention and they’d had a vibe going. Now he’d probably get up saying he needed to pee and wanted to order take out and it would take an hour to get him back on track. When she saw Brock’s name, she cringed. She showed it to Ash, wordlessly, and they exchanged worried expressions, the corners of their lips pulling to the side. This wasn’t great. But it wasn’t like she could blow him off, right? With a steadying breath, she answered the call.

“Hey, Brock, what’s up?”

“What’s up?” Brock echoed, his tone one of disbelief. “I thought I’d get some kind of update on the…you know, situation by now. A text at least. It’s been two days!”

Misty looked uneasily at Ash. The phone wasn’t on speaker, but she knew he could hear every word. Not that she cared if he heard—he fully knew what Brock was referring to after all. But still, Ash was a bit of a blabbermouth…

“Everything’s under control, Brock!” she said, trying to keep her voice down from the strident place it wanted to go.

“You mean you’ve talked him off the cliff.”

“That’s right!” Misty exclaimed. “Absolutely no cliff here!”

Misty couldn’t so much as glance at Ash. He was making all kinds of facial expressions—she could practically see the subtitles below his chin. He clearly thought she was doing a terrible job lying, but also wanted to jump in and spill the beans himself.

Like he could say anything. He was a good actor, but a truly horrible liar.

“Okay, good to hear,” Brock said, a little sigh of relief pressing into the phone. “I was concerned about that picture of the two of you online…”

Ash and Misty had both forgotten about that. There had been a number of snaps taken of the dramatic kiss they’d had outside Ash’s building, which had led to a lot of scrutiny online. Most people were under the correct but unconfirmed assumption that they were dating, while others said that it was so dramatic that perhaps it was some kind of stunt. Little did everyone know that both were right, more or less.

“Oh, no nothing to worry about there,” Misty confirmed.

“Good. I really was worried about him.”

“I was too,” Misty agreed, her voice nice and easy this time. “But we’ve got a plan now.”

-

Ash and Misty hadn’t planned into their timeline the time it would take to build trust between themselves and the mystery writer, who they now knew as Tess. She was a young American woman who just happened to love Pokémon and fanfiction; she wasn’t even a professional writer. Not yet, at least. But Ash and Misty quickly realized that they were basically performing an interview. However, instead of each question taking a few seconds to answer, they took hours to get a response. They had to get this right, though. No horsing around.

Fortunately, after a few correspondences, both parties seemed confident in each other to move to Skype and expedite the process a little bit. Their first interaction went a little like this.

Tess: “Oh my God, it really is you!”

Ash: “Heh, yeah, sure is.”

Tess: “I really just thought this was some really elaborate troll! I was prepared to change my Skype name after this.”

Misty: “Well, hopefully there won’t be a need for that.”

Tess: “Right. Oh my God. Okay. Professional. That was my fangirling, and now this is totally professional. Promise.”

It did proceed to be fairly professional after that, though Tess did seem to be in a rather constant state of disbelief. Behind the scenes, Ash and Misty had already been working on turning her narrative into a script and translating it into Japanese. Which, when fluent in both languages, sounded easy. But it—like everything—was more time-consuming and way more specialized than they’d hoped. They’d have to hire someone soon.

But after growing confident enough with Tess to send her a contract—and an NDA—everything became real. And instead of being a project of three, it was going to have to become a company of dozens.

“You’re going to have to be the one to enlist everyone,” Misty said the night after they’d finished the list of all the people and resources that they’d thought they’d need for the pilot episode. Or at least finished as far as they could tell. They’d need Ash, Gary, Samuel, and Delia at the very least, plus a couple other voice actors that they liked, preferably ones who’d be able to play most of the other Pallet human characters and Pokémon, since they wanted to start with as small a cast as possible. They’d need a recording studio and a number of animators, plus whatever equipment those animators would need.

The show was going to have to be different than Pokémon at heart. Instead of the quasi-live action with heavy CGI that Ash had physically been starring in for two decades, this was going to have to be full animation. Live action would simply take up too many resources, not to mention that meant they’d be acting out on location, where people would see with no small amount of curiosity what all the stars of Pokémon were up to. This meant that they’d have to create a fresh animation style, since there was no way to copy Pokémon’s current look.

“Why do I have to enlist everyone?” Ash asked. “This idea was both of ours.”

“Because you have that magic Ash Ketchum extroversion. Everyone loves you and will follow you wherever you go. They won’t do that for me.”

“The execs sure didn’t do that for me.”

“They had no reason to,” Misty explained. “But these people might. They do. Everyone loves this show and they’ll want to see the story that Tess has created. They’ll want to be a part of that. So long as you’re the charming Ash Ketchum they’ve all fallen in love with.”

“Charming like this?” Ash asked quietly, leaning in to give Misty a kiss. They’d become more lax with having her over to his place more often. After all, soon that would be small potatoes compared with the bomb they were planning to drop soon.

“Charming with your words,” Misty whispered against his mouth. But she didn’t seem to mind his advances as she closed the gap and began kissing him in earnest.

They didn’t get much else done that night.

-

The first episode took over a month to create. They’d had to work back and forth with Tess for script rewrites, not to mention that this was being done in both English and Japanese, plus including English subtitles. If they wanted to gain an audience, they’d have their best bet by engaging both Japanese and English audiences. And, best case scenario, many more languages after that.

Then there was finding actors. This was the most painless of all the processes, except for where the lawyers had to get involved. It was always sticky to present legal documents to friends—and after all these years, Samuel, Delia, and Gary were dear friends of Ash’s—but they were receptive. And, most importantly, they thought Ash and Misty’s idea was good. Of course, they thought it was batshit crazy, and none of them were afraid to say that. Which they all did on separate occasions. But they still got on board. That was more reassuring to Ash and Misty than most anything else.

The hardest part was assembling an animation team. They had no idea how many animators were needed, how responsibilities would be split up, how they would work together or anything. Plus, they couldn’t just poach from the show for two reasons. 1.) Ash didn’t intimately know any of the animators. They had no loyalty to him and no reason to jump ship from the show. 2.) They were working on an entirely different kind of animation. Ash and Misty didn’t know the repercussions of that, but they were sure they must exist.

But after a frustrating amount of trial and error—and a lot of money bleeding from Ash’s bank account—there it was. A final product. And a polished, decent one at that. Everything was professional quality, it was a standard twenty-seven-minute length, despite the fact that there would be no advertisements, and it had subtitles in both Japanese and English. Then it was all about what to do with it.

They did nothing. For a time.

In the process of working on the episode, they’d realized they’d need the next couple stocked if they wanted buzz to continue around this series and for people to take it seriously. Fortunately, it only took a few weeks to create the next two episodes. The bulk of the work on their end at that point was in the script, but Tess had been prolific with her turnout of drafts. They were already interviewing a few impeccable translators, as they had quickly realized what specific skills were needed for subbing versus dubbing and that simply being bilingual wasn’t going to cut it.

Then it was time. Ash would have to go back to the real show soon, and they had to drop these before that happened. So Ash made a YouTube channel—because where else could they put something like this? The show had to be free, otherwise they’d be sued faster than someone could watch the first episode.

That part wasn’t stressful. Uploading a video to a YouTube channel with zero subscribers was hardly a leap of faith. It wasn’t like Ash was a master of search engine optimization. No one would find this thing.

Until he tweeted it. When he tweeted it, there would be no going back.

“Are you ready?” Ash asked Misty as his finger hovered over his laptop’s touchpad.

He wasn’t really asking it for her. He was asking it for himself. Not out of selfishness, even though his job and reputation were the ones on the line. Sure, Misty had done a couple episodes recently, but she was a relic of the show, not a star. And he, next to Pikachu, perhaps, was the star. And people would either love him or hate him for this.

But he just wanted a little reassurance. That they hadn’t gotten swept away in the excitement of it all in the past few months. That all the work and dedication hadn’t clouded the possibility that this wasn’t a good idea after all. But Misty just took his other hand in hers.

“We’re ready.”

He had to look away as he clicked to send the link to the video out to the world. He was fully wincing, as though the action would send a shock wave through his system. He stared at the screen for only a second, his live tweet burning into his retinas before shutting the laptop screen violently and recoiling onto his couch. Misty, meanwhile—seeming much calmer than he—was on her phone, hopping over to his Twitter account to retweet the post. Then she, too, put away her phone.

“Wanna watch some anime?”

“God, yes.”

-

“Misty, what the fuck?”

Brock’s was the first call they bothered taking. Their phones had started blowing up with notifications soon after the video had gone up and they’d silenced all alerts. They’d already ignored a few phone calls. But Brock was the couple’s best friend, just like in the show. There was something about spending your formative years together that left a lasting bond. They owed him an explanation, at the very least.

“Hi, Brock!” Misty said, sounding fake with cheer. “What brings about this call?”

“I thought you had talked him off the edge? But you’ve been doing whatever this is for however long you have. I assume you’re a part of this, right?”

“I did talk him off the edge, Brock,” Misty said, her phone on speaker between herself and Ash. “Instead of self-destructing he crafted a beautiful and intricate bomb and threw it at his whole life.”

“Oh, my bad. That sounds like a great idea, Misty.”

“Yeah, you didn’t make that sound any better,” Ash agreed, making himself known on the call.

“Hello, crazy man,” Brock greeted. “Glad to know your bosses haven’t harpooned you yet.”

“They’ll have to go through my doormen before they can come up here and harpoon me.”

“Lucky dog,” Brock said sarcastically.

“I’m sorry we didn’t tell you, Brock,” Misty said, getting at what she suspected was at the real root of this call, whether Brock knew it or not. “We were already having everyone sign NDAs. It didn’t seem smart to tell anyone who wasn’t absolutely necessary to the beginning of this project.”

“Beginning?” Brock said. “There’s more?”

“We’ve already got the next two episodes in the bag and are in production on the fourth and script-writing up to the sixth.”

Brock was quiet for a second before he asked, “Just how long are you planning on doing this?”

“Don’t worry, your character is coming,” Ash said with a laugh.

“The writer we’ve employed already has a story loosely plotted all through Kalos. They’re nearly done with all the specifics of Kanto—though we have slowed down her progress significantly since starting this.”

“Kalos‽” Brock exclaimed. “You have eighteen years worth of content for this?”

That was putting it in a perspective Ash and Misty hadn’t yet thought about it. Would they be fifty years old and still working on this project?

“We truthfully have no idea how long we have, Brock,” Misty admitted. “This could be shut down at any time by something we haven’t foreseen. So we haven’t looked that far into the future.”

“Well,” Brock said, finally at a bit of a loss for words. “I just can’t tell you how heckin’ proud I am of you crazy bastards. This was the biggest leap of faith I’ve ever seen.”

That brought a big grin to both Ash and Misty’s faces. They looked at each other and nearly giggled. If Brock was on their side, then they were doing just fine.

“You watched the episode?” Ash asked.

“Of course I did. And it was great. Truthfully, I’m not sure everyone cares 100% about a Pokémon prologue, but as soon as it becomes evident that you’re going to continue this…I can’t imagine the response. Seriously, you guys shouldn’t read the comments but…they’re mostly really good. People like it. They love it.”

The conversation with Brock petered off after that. He’d said his piece, but really he’d just affirmed everything they were doing. That was all they wanted out of their best friend.

“I didn’t realize people would think of it as a prologue,” Ash said once Misty had hung up.

“Yeah,” Misty agreed. “We might be out of the woods until we get to the part where this story meets up with canon.”

“Which gives us the time to build up loyal viewers and get the hang of this producing thingy.”

“This producing thing-a-ma-bob.”

“Producing thing-a-ma-jigger.”

The two stared at each other for a moment, the laughs building up in their throats before they burst out, laughing hysterically on the couch.

It was done. It had started. They’d done it.

-

“My reviewers think you’ve stolen my story,” Tess said on their next Skype call, going over one of the scripts. “They’re indignant on my behalf and ready to burn the show to the ground.”

The words were dark, but Tess looked practically giddy.

“Honestly, even if you had, I’d have counted myself lucky,” she continued. “It would have been the most flattering thing that’s ever happened to me. Certainly more flattering than my 150 reviews for 93 published chapters of labor.”

“You need to make an announcement,” Misty said. “Also, your name is in the credits, but do you want us to add your username so that people will be able to see that? Or do you not want the two tied together?”

“Hmm…” Tess intoned, considering that. “Fanfiction has always felt like a secret identity to me, so my impulse is to say no. But now my name is on the show anyway…Tell you what. I’ll scrub up my profile and delete some more indulgent author’s notes tonight and then you can include it next time. No need to make any changes to the episode that’s already out.”

“By the way,” Ash butted in. “We probably should have talked about this earlier but…are you going to be continuing your story on ffnet?”

Tess sighed. “No. I don’t think I’d have the time even if it weren’t probably a breach of the NDA at this point. So I’ll have to include that in the announcement. I’ll make an author’s note chapter telling everyone. All 28 followers of mine.”

“Well, that’s one potential drama storm put out,” Misty said.

“There is actually something I wanted to talk about,” Tess said slowly. “Regarding the longer arching plot.”

“Shoot,” Ash said.

“Well, regarding the ships—er, relationships,” Tess corrected. Misty knew most fanfiction terms well enough, but Ash knew next to nothing. He was learning, through talking with Tess and Misty, but it wasn’t penetrating very much. “Uh, what are we going to do with them?”

“What do you mean?” Misty asked. “I thought you had things basically plotted out through the Kalos League?”

“I do,” Tess said. “For my story. My story that’s a love letter to the anime and the fandom. Where I’ve basically taken the most popular couples and rolled with it. In PokéAni fanfiction there are basic couples that are usually grouped together. The two of you, May and Drew, Dawn and Paul—”

“Dawn and Paul‽” Ash interjected.

“That’s why I’m bringing this up!” Tess said. “Yes, Dawn and Paul, Cilan and Iris, and Serena and Clemont. And Gary with Leaf, but there’s no way we’re doing that. I personally think some of these pairings are pairings of convenience than real chemistry or shipping hints from the anime. But they’re what the fans have accepted. Just like the fact that your last name is Waterflower, Misty.”

“Which it isn’t.”

“Well, mine isn’t really Ketchum!” Ash said. “That would be too ridiculous.”

“I know, I know,” Tess said. “These are things that wouldn’t matter in fanfiction, because they’re accepted. But for a broad audience where this is essentially television and not fanfiction…I’m just not sure about pairing any of you together.”

“Well, there has to be romance,” Misty argued. “We want these characters to grow up, and that’s a part of most people growing up. We can’t assume all these characters are ace and aro.”

“No,” Tess agreed. “Though I think we should include some.”

“But that doesn’t help us with the issue at hand,” Misty said.

“Well, what about us?” Ash asked, taking Misty’s hand. “I think we should end up together.”

Those words made Misty’s ears turn pink. It was the kind of thing Ash didn’t say in real life. She felt it, certainly, but being in a relationship when you were thirty and not having any particular talk of marriage and engagement was discouraging. Of course, that was part of why they’d undertaken this whole project to begin with. But still, even hearing Ash talk about the fictional versions of themselves ‘ending up together’ was heartwarming.

“Yes, I totally agree,” Tess said without hesitation. “You two and then May and Drew are basically non-negotiable for me. But with the others I’ve been of many minds. First of all, people should date around. My whole thing with this series is that it should be realistic. People don’t all end up with the first person they partner with. They don’t all get married in their early twenties. That’s not the story I wanted to tell.”

“I don’t want that either,” Misty agreed. “But if this story is a love letter to the fans, then when do we indulge them and when do we not?”

“Well, not everyone ships the same people,” Ash said. “I said that right, right? Ships?”

“Yes,” Tess answered quickly, smiling at Ash sounding like such a fanfic nerd.

“Right. So what’s the point in pandering at all?”

Misty looked surprised, eyebrows raised. “The man makes a good point.”

“Really, it all depends on how long this goes,” Tess said. “If the show finishes after Kalos, then only a few couples should be together. If it goes into adulthood, then more should be together, though not everyone with their #endgame. If it goes into next-gen—”

“Next-gen?” Ash interrupted.

“Kids,” Tess clarified. “Your kids.”

“Oh,” Ash drawled, a blush coloring his cheeks as he glanced at Misty.

“If it goes into next-gen, then even more people will be paired off…but then there should also probably be divorces and separations. But those things would really anger the audience. Especially if we’ve been working towards a pairing being together for a long, long time. Have you ever seen How I Met Your Mother?”

“Nope,” both Ash and Misty said in unison.

“Oh,” Tess said, her energy dropping a bit. “Well…if you did you’d know what I mean. But you’ll just have to take my word for it. Even if we’re not pandering to the fans…I’d rather not anger them. But, like I said, it comes down to when this story ends. And, well, I hadn’t quite gotten that far in my outline yet, since the actual anime isn’t over yet.”

Yet. That sounded suddenly ominous. Perhaps this was the moment Ash was first realizing it, but it suddenly occurred to him that that’s what they were working toward. The actual destruction of the show that just wouldn’t end. It felt like the intentional murder of a life-long friend. He had to brush that feeling away immediately.

“Right,” Ash said. “So, perfect world, how long is it?”

Tess just pulled the corners of her lips down and shook her head to show she had no idea. Ash turned to Misty.

“Ideally? As long as Ash has a story.”

“Ash?” Tess asked.

“That’s the one thing the Pokémon anime has right. This story is Ash’s. So, as long as he has a story to tell, then we keep going for as long as we can.”

-

Finally, Ash had to address the elephant in the room. Well, the room that all this had begun in, which is to say Kunihiko Yuyama’s office. His agent had informed him that Kunihiko, Daiki, and Aya insisted on seeing him again. Suddenly, Ash felt like he had been summoned to the principal’s office. He wasn’t far off.

It turned out he didn’t have to do much haphazard explaining as to what he’d done. They could already guess that Ash’s new show wasn’t just a prologue, but out to rewrite the whole anime. And they knew exactly what that might mean for the show. But it turned out Ash didn’t.

“Ash,” Kunihiko seethed, barely able to keep his voice under control. “Do you have any idea what you’ve done?”

“If you’re talking about a breach of contract, I’ve taken that into account and am willing to—”

“Of course it’s a breach of contract!” Kunihiko exclaimed. “But that’s not what I’m talking about. You’re not just out to destroy the Pokémon anime, but all of Pokémon as a franchise. That number one media franchise slot? Gone.”

“What are you talking about?” Ash asked, genuinely confused.

“Think about it,” Kunihiko explained. “When a new anime season comes out, the new games come out. The new manga comes out. New trading cards. New merchandise. All these things support each other. If one of them deteriorates, they all do.”

Ash’s heart dropped. He actually hadn’t thought about that.

“The anime is what a significant portion of our fans follow. It brings in new eyeball for the youth, some too young to even play the video games. No anime, fewer game sales. Fewer merch sales. Fewer trading cards. Then boom, Hello Kitty is the top franchise again. Are you a closet Hello Kitty fan, Ash?”

“No, sir,” Ash answered, suddenly feeling even more the part of the primary schooler being chastised by his teacher.

“So, what do you suggest as a solution, Ash? I know what I want. But I’m curious to hear your thoughts.”

“You want us to stop production,” Ash said, evading the question. “At least before it starts to replace the anime.”

“Of course. Do you have any plan of doing that?”

Ash wasn’t a child. These people might think of him as a ten-year-old—and he was really good at being one. But in the last couple months, he’d like to think he’d gotten pretty damn good at being an adult too.

“No, sir.”

“So I’m forced to ask once again, what’s your solution?”

His solution was to go back in time and have Tess’s story be the PokéAni from the start. Then she never would have felt the need to clean up the mess that the original writers had made before they’d known the phenomenon Pokémon would be. That it would one day be the top grossing media franchise. Then Ash never would have felt trapped by this show. The show that had given him everything. But, unfortunately, this was the real world. It wasn’t Pokémon. He couldn’t get a magic necklace or travel in a magic elevator to a different time period. He was stuck here cleaning up the mess that he and everyone else had made.

“You wanna know what my perfect solution would be?” Ash said finally. “If you let Ash Ketchum go. We can keep doing our show, hopefully with your blessing. Maybe even with your support, so that it could earn us some money to keep it going. And you keep your anime going, but with a new star. Because, like I tried to tell you, I can’t do it anymore.”

“But there is no Pokémon anime without Ash Ketchum and his Pikachu,” Aya insisted, finally speaking up. “He’s synonymous with the show.”

“So make it the next generation,” Ash blurted out, thinking of his conversation with Misty and Tess. “In our show—” Kunihiko scoffed at the word ‘our,’ “—Ash Ketchum and Misty are eventually going to get married and have kids. Let the Galar region be about that kid. He’ll—or she, I guess, I don’t actually know—be really similar to Ash Ketchum. Maybe even with another Pikachu. And then Ash Ketchum will be able to make cameo appearances. C’mon, the viewers would love that.”

“No,” Aya said. “That adds too many complications. Where’s Professor Oak? Is he dead? And Ash and Misty getting together canonically isn’t an option. We want Ash to stay relatable, and getting married to one of the Pokégirls isn’t a part of that.”

“Well, I don’t want to say take it or leave it,” Ash said. “But that’s the best compromise I have for you right now. We can both keep thinking, but my hope is that this new show will reignite the fans. It will make them feel that we care. Since it’s actually me and Delia and everyone in it, and not just a fanfiction in the corner of the internet. This is the kind of thing the diehard fans want, even if the youngsters don’t. But, then again, what difference would the youngsters know between Ash Ketchum and his kid?”

The group across from him was silent for a second. Then Kunihiko put his hands on the desk.

“Fine. We’ll adjourn this meeting for today. But don’t think you’re off the hook, Ash. Any change to the current track for the anime would mean a delay in production, which we can’t afford for the aforementioned reasons of the games and merch already in production. That would be millions and millions in losses. Our stock is set to plummet at any wrong move.”

“I understand that,” Ash said, though it hadn’t occurred to him until just then. “But I hope you’ll consider the idea.”

“I suppose we don’t have much of a choice,” Kunihiko said. “We’ll just have to speak with the heads at The Pokémon Company and to see.”

-

It turned out Ash had left Pokémon Company with very little choice. In only a week their pilot episode had gone viral and, since Ash hadn’t received a cease and desist or anything like that, they followed up in posting their second video which accrued almost the same number of views, proving that their audience was captive.

Perhaps if they hadn’t done that, the Pokémon Company could have tried to sweep it under the rug. But with the first and second episodes already out, damage control was needed more than anything else. To their advantage, all that had been announced about the Gen 8 anime so far was that Ash Ketchum would continue to be in it and that there was a new traveling companion. These things would technically still be true, under Ash’s compromise, though a bit of backtracking would be needed. Surely, Ash Ketchum would still be in the anime. Just in an entirely different capacity.

There would be backlash. No one knew whether it would be more from the fact that 10-year-old Ash was being retired or because Ash and Misty were going to be canonically married with progeny, but Pokémon Company had to be prepared to handle both of those. They were bound to get an even bigger reaction than the debacle about the lack of a National ‘Dex in the games—though admittedly more mixed rather than overwhelmingly negative. Ash and Misty had agreed to be a part of the damage control process. And what they realized quickly was that they needed to do something that no other television show ever had to do: state its intensions.

Of course, Pokémon Company would first have to air its trailer as usual, which would be a bit of a rush-job, since so much would need to be reanimated. Its release would have to be pushed back, but that wasn’t too bad, since it hadn’t had a public announcement. The drop was meant to be a surprise. Then Ash and Misty would have to issue a follow-up video to what was sure to be a big reaction from a trailer of a new generation of the anime in which Ash was not the protagonist.

After that, Pokémon: The Retelling, as they had been bold enough to name it, was up and running. And with greater ease than ever because, while Misty now had a small role in the anime to fill, Ash was basically jobless. Compared to his schedule as the star, at least. So they could put all their time into the new show. Well, all their work time. Because now, for the first time since he was ten, Ash was able to have a personal life.

A dozen episodes of the show had now been released and the original—or new, depending on how one wanted to look at it—anime had just started generation 8. For once in his life, Ash was a free man. He could go to bars, he could swear, and, best of all, the world now knew he had a girlfriend. Some AmourShippers, among others, were a little peeved about this revelation—and what they correctly guessed it would mean for The Retelling’s plotline—but Ash didn’t care. They could get married. He could propose.

And propose he did.

Even though this whole saga had begun with the Pokémon writers refusing to change the script for him, Ash managed to eke out one tiny favor. Sure, he’d been in their bad graces for a while after The Retelling had dropped, but as the anime continued to do well—as well as could be expected, since PokeAni viewership had been down for years anyway—it seemed he was forgiven.

It showed growth in the PokeAni that a line at all about romance was even able to make it in, but Ash managed to squeeze a line into one episode that Ash Ketchum had proposed to Misty Waterflower on a certain day in 2020. The same day that episode was set to air. And, thusly, Ash proposed in real life.

In the future, Ash would regret that move. He would be able to see that he’d done that as a result of his censorship of the past years and he wanted to be overly-bold. He’d wanted the proposal to make a big, public splash. It had been an overcorrection. In the midst of their engagement, he realized that something more personal and intimate might have been better. But, as Misty reassured him many times over the years, she would have been happy for it either way.

Of course, the other issue was that fans were quickly able to suss out when that would mean that their child, the current protagonist, would be conceived and born, assuming their real life relationship was to match that of the characters in the show. That led to some embarrassing and surprisingly aggressive hounding from the fans. Of course, their first child didn’t end up being born for a few more years, and they were quite different from the Ketchum child on the show.

Years later, after the PokeAni had run its course and The Retelling had come and gone with massive fame and success, Ash had one final interview before declaring himself fully retired. Of course, his interviewer was some youngster who hadn’t even been born when The Retelling first came out.

Three cameras were focused on the two of them sitting across from each other in lounge chairs. The set was sparse, but when Ash looked beyond what was visible in frame, he saw dozens of pieces of expensive film equipment. There were booms, monitors, and lots of people with headsets fussing about. Frankly, it was much more pared down than what he’d worked with for much of his career. The technology had grown so much smaller—tighter and better than when he’d gotten his start in the ‘90s. But no matter the differences, he was perfectly at ease as he fell into the role of interviewee and focused all his attention on the young man in front of him.

If Ash wasn’t mistaken the boy across from him looked a little nervous himself. But, nevertheless, he gave one final look at his first note card as people around him moved and called for the cameras to start rolling.

“Hello, Ash, we’re so pleased you could join us here again today.”

“Happy to be here,” Ash replied, the old song and dance coming off his lips as easily as any script had.

“We both wanted this final interview of yours to be the definitive Ash interview, so do you mind if I just get into it?

“Not at all.”

“Great. So what led you to betray the show that gave you your fame and success?”

That was a planned question. The one he’d shown Ash before so that it wouldn’t come across too harsh. But it wouldn’t have anyway. All of the drama of that time was so far in the past, it was easy to talk about. So he did.

”All I wanted was to have my life. And the fact that it led to Ash Ketchum finally having one himself has made me very happy.”

The interviewer leaned back, settling into it. “You have played the role of Ash Ketchum in various capacities for nearly your whole life. Do you think his character has greatly impacted who you feel you’ve grown to be? Is that why it was important to give him a fuller life in The Retelling?”

Ash chucked, his laugh sounding nearly like a croak in his old age. “That boy and I have been together so long, I nearly couldn’t tell you where he stops and I begin. Even at my most frustrated with the role, though, I always had this love for him. I think people all over the world have held a deep love for all versions of Ash Ketchum in their hearts. He’s the quintessential hero, and his many failures never impeded that.”

“You speak of this love for Ash, yet you ultimately caused the character to change entirely after a pretty consistent twenty year run for him. Did you ever have small regrets about that or grieve the ten-year-old version of the character?”

“I definitely never regretted it,” Ash said firmly. “This is the one great truth of my life. But did I grieve the boy I knew? Sure. I’d grown up with him as he’d stayed the same. Constant. Suddenly having such a role in his shaping, his adolescence, adulthood, marriage to my wife’s character, having kids…it was hard. The fans didn’t like everything we did with him unanimously, of course. But for me, I knew if I misstepped with this boy, it would break my heart.”

“Did it break your heart when the show ended?”

“Which show?”

The interviewer thought for a moment, then answered, “Both.”

“Well, the answer is yes, for both,” Ash said, then chuckled. “I suppose I didn’t have to ask ‘which show,’ then.”

“We always like clarity around here.”

“Right, me too,” Ash agreed. “The truth is, when we started The Retelling, I’d been ready to quit the Pokémon anime. In fact, I’d been all set to do so before we came up with the, in hindsight, very complicated solution of entirely rewriting the show. The Retelling, of course, ended up being the best decision of my life. At the time, it was part of a handy solution to keep me from causing an abrupt end to the anime. I think the show ending there would have upset me, but at the same time, it was easy to feel it had run its course. I truly think nearly everyone involved in the show at the time felt that way.

“But then we ended up breathing new life into it. And I was so glad the show hadn’t ended and that the creators thought there was more to add to this world. They started taking fan-created Pokémon for new generations and it really felt like the show was doing more than ever. But still, its time came and went. It was sad, but it was like the passing of a grandparent. You mourn, but you now it’s right.”

“And the Retelling?”

“That show was a blessing, top to bottom. An incredible amount of work, but it saved me in so many ways. We were so lucky to be able to tell that story to the end, to the end of Ash Ketchum’s life. That was the only natural end, and we concluded that early on. Of course, it seems as though some fans continue to write about the children and the next generation, but those stories belong to the fans. Ours was only Ash’s. We told it to the best of our ability, from his birth to his death, and I’m ever so grateful that we got to give him that life.”

“You’re leaving so much behind in your retirement and I wonder, is there any one thing that you’d like the people to remember about Pokémon or Ash Ketchum or your legacy?”

Ash was quiet. In his old age, he’d come to take his time a little more. The impulsive, rash Ash of his youth had been left behind, and now he was ponderous. “There is no right way to tell stories,” he said finally. “I think that when we first started, myself, Misty, and Tess were arrogant enough to think that our way was the right way. The original show had gotten it wrong and we had to right it. But the truth is, that show was wonderful. And our show was wonderful. And every other story out there about Pokémon is equally wonderful. I’m lucky that the story I wanted to tell about these characters had the gift of a large, kind, and receptive audience. Not all stories get that. But they’re no less valuable.  Pokémon is such a gift. It provides an amazing world that we all have spent so much time playing in. You, sir, have you ever watched the show?”

The interviewer nodded. If he was taken aback that Ash had turned the tables to ask the questions, he had the professional veneer not to show it. “I grew up watching reruns.”

“And did you play the games?”

“Some, not a lot.”

“That’s wonderful,” Ash said. “I’m so happy to hear that. They say that generative pieces of art, the books, movies, television shows that inspire people to create themselves, these are sacred. Pokémon, for me, has been the gift to never stop giving. It’s given me my wife, my livelihood, my dearest friends, and the ability to make change in this world. Now, it hasn’t given all those things to most of its fans, but they too have received things. There’s a reason Pokémon kept on coming back, that the new generations of kids kept playing the games. There’s something magic about it. I’m still arrogant enough to like to think I was a part of that. But it will continue to be there after I’m gone as well. And that’s the beauty of it.”

“…So you’d like to say that Pokémon is for everyone?”

“Yes,” Ash answered firmly. “It’s yours. Take it and do with it what you will. I did just that for a long time and it’s brought me much of the joy of my life. I hope it does the same for all of you.”

“Well,” the interviewer said, folding his legs and looking a great deal more comfortable. “I’d say that that’s the end of our exclusive final interview with the inimitable Ash. Thank you, Ash, for speaking with us one more time.”

“Yes,” Ash said, also leaning back and relaxing, looking into the camera one last time. “Thank you as well.”

[ajm-1994]

Time had changed everything for the council. Every event sparked conflict within itself, and the conflicts didn't just involve words on some occasions, for millennia the band of creatures and alliances argued and fought over every scrap of rock, moon and planet. There were the wars of old in stories. Some classed as myths and legends, with all evidence removed. The council hid truths to protect it interests as all good governments try.

Space had always been cold, dark, and had the weirdest sounds, as if the stars themselves were singing.

Tret'od (Tret) and Livaens (Liv) we're both salvage scavengers for the council. Tasked to travel out to the edges of deep space and pull any debris worthwhile back so it could be recycled for future use.

"it's always the same! There's never anything here they just want to get rid of the two D'vaki whenever they can" moaned Tret.

"Well it's our job so just shut up and watch the screens, there's been reports of metals out here"

The screens pinged green and lit up the console.

"I think we've found the metals, it's the only thing on screen. Open the view shutter and let's take a look at the lump of rock we'll be dragging"

The shutters rattled down, eons of light hit the window falling into the console in a wave. Then out on the distance they saw it.

"What in the mother's name is that?" Tret echoed.

“I don't know and I don't like it. Call the council and tell them we've got... Whatever that is" Liv replied.

"And tell them what exactly? We've got a perfectly cut metal rock with symbols eched into it? That'll go down well! They'll do what they all do and just destroy it"

"Well what do you want to do? Go and see what's in it?" Liv said sarcastically.

He probably shouldn't have said that because Tret was scrambling out of the locks towards it with haste the moment the sentence ended. She dived out of the scrapper and across the void, a weightless second adrift in the void. The moment she hit the side she noticed a small enough hole she could squeeze herself in.

Once inside Liv clambered in behind Tret standing into the shadow. Both of them awestruck at the size of the walls in tfront of them, and as if out of nowhere the darkness flickered as the ship screeched. the lights rattling and screaming at both of Liv and Tret sensor screens and sound modifiers and both blinding and deafing them momentarily.

"I don't like this T, we should not be here"

"Grow a vert, Liv, this could be one of them! Do you think they were as bad as they say?"

"There is no way those creatures could be real, they lived on a level 9 for mothers sake. They can't be"

They softly wandered into the darkness ahead, again the lights flickered as they entered the cavern, a single podium sat in the centre of the room. Tret ran and jumped at it taking the helm and that's when all hell broke loose.

Liv squealed as the consoles rose and lit up from the ground, running back out. Tret gleefully smashed and hit at the consoles as all the signals and symbols bounced around her visor. Then the door opened at the far end of the room. Tret ran back to Liv as the door slid open, grinding to a halt before fully opening.

Tret slid across the room, peaking into the darkness ahead, a single light hummed into life above the casket. A single panel attached at the end, Tret creeping closer with each step being shadowed by Liv panicking and gripping at Tret.

"We need to go now T, this isn't safe, we need to get the council here now"

"Just be quiet and let's see, there's no life on board. We'll be as we are"

Tret brushed at the panel on the casket. Her sensors picked up voices from the ship, unlike anything she'd ever heard before, her translator now deciphering the sounds in the room as the casket lid popped, and softly creaked open.

Tret peaked over the edge of the casket, and there it was. An ancient one, laid in front of them. An orifice opened with force and gasped, drawing its first breath. Liv and Tret retreated to the doorway, Liv scrambling behind the wall, reaching for her communicant

"We are Allairs Crux and we have found life on the edge. Rush to our coordinates now. We have found life"

A claw gripping at the casket wall, followed by a second in tandem. Pulling itself to the edge it's head revealed itself into the light. It sounded almost as if the voices of the ship and being were communicating. The beings head snapped towards the door, before it clammered and fell out of the casket, it body wet and laying against the cold metallic floor.

It laid onto the floor staring at Tret, her visor reflecting the light back she knew she had been seen.

"Liv, stay here and wait for back up. I've been seen. I'm going to make contact" she whispered as she crept around the corner.

Her arms narrowed infront of herself trying to make herself seem smaller, it worked against the Kox, why wouldn't it work on this creature.

The creatured dragged itself backwards towards the edge of the casket, pulling a device from the panel, it raised an arm and spoke to her. Trets visor still scanning trying to make sense of the sounds to no avail. That's when it pinged.

"What on God's green earth are you? And where the hell was the council after the war?!"

[folerdetdufoler]

for all of that hotel nonsense i was spouting last time, i’ll admit it’s mad convenient to be so close to the station. it’s nice having a stopping point on the way to something, no matter what. on sunday morning nadège and haidee could use my room as a storage space for their suitcases, since they had to check out of the flat but still had time to do other things. we met up at the hotel and hopped back on the bus to marienlyst. the trip takes you past sagene kirke, like i think we had to transfer there to another line, so we went to see if it was open for haidee to finally step inside, but they were closed.

we were cutting it a little close for comfort with haidee’s schedule though, so she turned back before we got to nrk. better safe than sorry, to not miss a flight back to your family. nadège and i continued on to the tour.

over the years i’ve been more and more curious about nrk as a company so at this point i was legitimately excited to just be in the office. the tour is in norwegian, and includes sights targeted for children and adults, so it’s pretty well-rounded as a family activity. we followed the group through the building, trailing behind, checking in with each other to confirm what we’d just heard and make sure our translations made sense, i’d say i understood about 40% of the words as they were spoken, and picked up the rest from what they were physically showing us: a few studios, some educational displays, the costume department, a room for their foley artists to work on the effects for radio dramas. it was a mix of the history of the company and a behind-the-scenes look at how they produce the shows that they do. they told us about the genesis of slow tv, showing an old camera pointed at an endlessly fascinating fish tank. i listened hard for the names of shows or actors that i recognized but i don’t think she mentioned skam in any significant way. when we went through the costume closet i looked for clothes and snapbacks that i might recognize, but then i was missing out on what the tour was actually showing me. i had to find that balance of looking for what i wanted to see and seeing what they wanted to show me. i wouldn’t get anything out of the tour if i didn’t just listen.

we did get to see the cross, though, hanging on the wall in a passageway to one of their broadcasting studios. we made weird noises when we noticed and broke away from the group to take pictures. i felt a little sad that it was just hanging there out of the way, above a recycling dumpster, but at least they still had it. and it was a good moment of perspective, realizing that while skam was this massive part of my life, and was kept on a pedestal, in reality it’s just a smaller piece among many productions that nrk is known for. skam isn’t everything to anyone and i shouldn’t expect that.

i was struggling with my numbers for most of the tour, and had to pee when it was over, so i was both bummed it was done so fast and relieved at the same time. i wish i was confident enough in my norwegian to ask a question at the end, but i didn’t have anything that wouldn’t also expose myself as a crazy skam stan or just a dumb tourist. so we left and filled the rest of our day with walking.

we headed back toward the center, getting waffles again for a late lunch. i did it properly this time, with jam and cheese and sour cream. i sort of had a list going to things i wanted to still see, but i think i had scratched them off. but we could do the little things left, like go to akrobaten bridge, which nadège had never seen, and she could show me other scene background places, like the bridge by the hotel, the small park where isak ran with even’s clothes and called sonja (which was right by the hotel and which i had walked past many times without realizing). we stood in those places and watched the scenes on her phone and relived both those viewing moments as well as the things she learned from her safari. basically nadège was giving me my own personal safari, which was very cool. we went to see kollektivet, and she showed me the street where they faked the filming for season four. we walked along the river again, and then down to the harbor, casually making our way toward a restaurant for dinner. the whole time we bounced between skam and more personal things, and i learned more about her family and france and just...who she is as a person, which is also something i’ve been wanting to do. skam is obviously a large part of her life, so it’s not like she’s a complete stranger outside of it, but i don’t know, i’ve just been meaning to give these people who i hang out with more context in my head. they’re people not just other fans. they’re not just replies on the internet, or sources of information. we’ll always have this huge thing in common, a touchstone to return to, but there is other shit too.

down at the harbor we had italian for dinner. we walked all the way down to the art installations at the end, and marveled at the teenagers swimming. i know it was summer but it was still butt-clenchingly cold in the water. we walked to stay warm as it got darker, going along the water’s edge, through akershus festning, and heading back to the train station. she was going to meet her family, arriving late for their portion of the vacation, and we’d used up our last day.

we were back to talking about skam at that point, about some fics that she loves and the art that was made for them. i want to call it “the viking fic” but i don’t know if that’s right. i know it’s in my bookmarks though, for that eventual day when i miss skam enough to want to read fics. but i was more interested in nadège’s ability to read all of these different stories and pay such kind attention to them. she’s such a good person, and a good reader, generous with her support and enthusiasm. i don’t know what made me so selfish and cynical about reading, about consuming media, but it feels like it’s the one hurdle i have to stretch over in order to get to nadège’s side of things, where you enjoy things for enjoyment and know how to express that enjoyment in order to create and inspire more of it in the world.

that’s what i first noticed about nadège and haidee, what drew me to them last year and brought us to oslo: i wanted to be closer to them to learn how they did it, how they found that goodness in themselves and in the things around them. i don’t know that i’m any closer to figuring out that puzzle for me, but i at least get to pretend when i’m with them. i can pretend i’m a good person too, when i experience the world next to them.

and i can understand what it’s like to have your fill of oslo and skam and then be ready to see your family and appreciate the rest of the world too. we’re never done with skam, but we’re okay for now. until next time. i hugged her goodbye and pretended i wasn’t crying and went up to the hotel. i had to pack. and for the first time this whole trip i would be in bed before midnight.

i think this is my last post about the trip. you know how the next day goes: breakfast, airport, plane, home. i tried using up all of my cash buying chocolate at the duty free. on the plane i sat next to an old lady who i helped translate some norwegian foods for. i was still struggling with my numbers so i had to pee more often than usual but luckily she did too, so we were bathroom buddies for the trip. and then i was home.

i watched the rest of nadège’s trip in her instagram stories. i saw more things i wanted to see next time, oslo things, not skam things. and now we’re back to dreaming of that next time. it’s always nice to have something to look forward to. not sure what it will be, but there has to be something, right?

[shhh-no-ones-home]

carnival of character ted “Theodore” Logan x reader

+++++++++

a day going to the carnival goes from boring to interesting real quick

Song: hoodie by hey violet

+++++++++

I stepped out of the car and closed the door with a loud bang. My little brother got out and did the same thing, earning a glare from our tired mother. I looked longingly across the parking lot at the schools massive carnival. I knew I'd have to babysit but I'd be damned if I didn't get to ride the rides I wanted. As we walked towards the ticket booth my mother handed me some money and headed for the picnic tables. All I could do was roll my eyes and try to keep up with my excited brother. When we reached the booth he was looking up at me, slowly losing patience. I was surprised though to see bill sitting on th other side of the glass.

"Hey dude."

He looked up at me and smiled.

"Nice to see a familiar face, what can I get ya?"

I smiled back.

"Two wrist bands please."

My brother jumped up and down in excitement as he started pulling them apart.

"So how come they got you working the booth? I would've figured you'd be at home with Ted playing guitar till the wee hours of the morning."

He sent me a look.

"Believe me, I would've if my dad hadn't told me to try to get a job. Ya know, I can't live off him forever. Or at least that what he tells me."

He handed us the bands.

"I hear that, at least your getting paid right?"

He side nodded.

"Yeah but I'm missing out on all the rides."

After I put my bracelet on I shook my wrist in the air.

"I'll be sure to ride enough for the both of us."

I winked at him before watching my brother take off.

"Shit. Guess I better go, wouldn't want the monster getting nabbed."

He laughed.

"Find Ted, he's with deacon and I'm sure he wouldn't mind hanging out with him."

I waved at him and started to walk away.

"Thanks Bill, I'll be sure to swing back by before we leave."

I ran to catch up with my brother who was already getting in the line for the ring toss game. I could tell this wouldn't end well but joined him anyways. When it was our than I handed the man running the game a dollar and took the three rings from him. I looked down and handed two of them to my brother for him to toss. When he didn't win he pouted and stomped his foot, I nervous smiled at the man sending me a pity look and tossed the ring. My brother jumped as it bounced from one bottle to the next and tilted right down onto the neck. My mouth hung open in disbelief as the man handed my brother the small stuffed giraffe he had pointed out.

"nice shot dude."

I turned around slowly, side stepping out of the way of the next person in line and smiled at Ted. Bill was right, he was here with deacon who looked like he couldn't be more done with hanging out with his brother.

"Thanks, I don't think I've ever won one of those games ever."

"Guess playing all the other carnivals payed off"

I looked down and smiled. When I looked back up I shook my head.

"Ted, I wanna go ride the dragon, you said we could."

I raised a brow and Ted sent me an apolagetic look. He turned his attention to deacon.

"Can I send you off by yourself for that"

He perked up. I tore my gaze away from him though when my brother hit my arm.

"I wanna ride the dragon coaster too!"

I just groaned. Then something clicked.

"Hey deacon, I'll give you five bucks if you keep my brother with you for the rest of the night."

My brother looked at deacon with pleading eyes.

"Sure but I want the money now."

I held up five single dollar bills, handing him two.

"You get two now and three later when I get him back. If I see you walking around without him you don't get it."

I turned my attention to my brother.

"And I get to keep the giraffe so you don't lose it on a ride."

He quickly handed it too me and stood next to deacon.

"Deal."

Ted just turned and stood next to me, arms crossed over his chest. I waved as the two ran towards the dragon coaster, pocketing the other three dollars.

"A fifteen year old can keep track of a ten year old right?"

Ted turned to me and laughed.

"I dont see why not. I think he's good, your adding to his allowance and all he has to do is ride roller coasters for it."

We both laughed and I nudged him.

"Speaking of which, let's go ride some ourselves."

He nodded and we made our way across the lot to the dizzy dragons. As we stood in line we talked and people watched. There was a group of guys in front of us that we're stuffing their faces full of fried foods that were planning on spinning so fast they guaranteed one of them was bound to throw up. Ted and I just wished them luck and kept talking. He stopped though, mid sentence, like a scared dog and stared behind me. I sent him a look.

"Ted?"

I waved my hand in front of his face.

"Earth to Ted."

He quickly grabbed me as the line moved forward, pushing me toward the gate to the ride but the operater stopped us as the ride was at max. He sent me a look and let go of me.

"Sorry y/n, I really did try."

I looked at him like he was crazy before following his gaze and turn it around. I quickly lost my smile as I watched my ex boyfriend slowly make his way toward us. I just turned back around.

"Maybe if we don't look at him he won't notice us."

Ted looked from him to me.

"I don't think-"

"Y/n!"

He was cut off, I groaned and turned around to face him.

"Brandon."

I said flatly.

"Funny seeing you here."

I looked at him like he was stupid.

"I still go to school here so why wouldn't I come?"

He shrugged.

"I just figured you were avoiding me, and you knew I would be here."

I nodded.

"Both true, you made it very public you were gonna be here actually."

Ted piped up.

"Yeah it was written on almost every flyer at school."

I just sent him a look and he just stepped back behind me. I turned my attention back to Brandon and crossed my arms over my chest.

"In case you wanted to know I had to being my brother. My mom doesn't exactly trust him by himself."

He raised a brow and looked around.

"And yet I don't see the little bastard."

I dropped my arms, beginning ball my hands into fists.

"He's off with friends actually."

Brandon laughed.

"Sure he is, you just wanted to hang with this loser."

I looked over at Ted who seemed kind of hurt, and rightfully so.

"He is not a loser. He was still my friend when we were dating and that says way more about his character than I think you give him credit for. Cause he saw how big of an ass you are and still stuck by me even when I ignored him about it."

He scoffed.

"What does it say about him letting you still wear my hoodie?"

We all looked down at my top. It had been so long I had completely forgotten where it came from. I had since cropped it and wore it all the time. I looked back up at him.

"Didn't think I'd recognize it did you? Yeah you can't just cut the pocket full of burn marks off for that to work. I know you still miss me."

I stepped forward ready to swing but Ted caught my arm.

"The ride is over."

I looked over at him and them over at the ride operator who was letting people out of the spinning dragons. I turned back to Brandon.

"For you information I boiled the shit out of this hoodie to get your foul stentch out of it. I kept it cause it's comfy and I knew I could recycle it into something better. Much like I did to myself after we broke up."

I gave him a wicked, spiteful, smile.

"Plus now it smells Ted."

I pulled it up to my face and inhaled, giving him a look. I caught his angry expression before turning and dragging Ted by the hand to a purple dragon on the far side of the ride. When we were in and buckled he smiled at me.

"So you like the way I smell?"

I laughed at his goofy smile and gripped the wheel in the middle of the two of us in a playful manner.

"Shut up and spin."

[our-jensen-ackles-love]

Wicked Games; 10

Jensen x Reader 

Summary:  He was poison. She was the whiskey. They were wrong. But then again they were so right.

Word Count: 1498

Warnings: mentions of cheating, angst. 

Author’s Note: thank you @jerkbitchidjitassbutt for helping my old, tired eyes. 

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NINE;

Dee stared at her husband, the wide smile on her lips beginning to falter while his words bounced around in her head. She wasn’t quite understanding just what he was saying to her, but judging by the reactions of several of those around her, it was something cringe-worthy.

The smile stayed put as she spoke slowly. “I’m sorry, what?”

“I want a divorce, Dee.”

Something pricked at her eyes, but she refused to acknowledge the oncoming emotion. Not now and not here, where there were witnesses all around and some well within earshot. She had worked too hard to make their life look like the ideal marriage, she loved reading comments on her social media pages talking about how they were what some considered “goals.”

“Jay,” she took a step forward and placed a hand on his bicep, to which he quickly curved away from her. “This is not the place to play this kind of joke.”

His teeth tore at the skin of his bottom lip while he shook his head at her, eyes tearing away from her face to steal a glance back at the building behind them. “What in your right mind makes you think that I’m joking?”

“‘Cause none of this makes sense.”

--

The rest of the day was spent in very robotic like motions, between smiling with excited fans, handing out gift bundles filled with goodies from the set of Supernatural to the participants who had won raffles and thinking to keep it together for the sake of the cameras surrounding her. She started to feel a whole new level of admiration for what her husband did every damn day.

Husband.

Danneel had been trying to rack her brain for what she did wrong. She made sure she kept herself in tiptop shape, she made sure that she cooked for him whenever he asked, she made sure she tried to initiate sex a couple of times a week. The only thing that stood out was the fact that they hadn’t had a child together - despite her best efforts to make it happen.

She knew she’d have to fess up at some point. Especially should the question arise if he actually decided to follow through with the actions that his words presented; she just knew that it would come out.

The fact of the matter was, she lied. She had been told a year into their marriage that she would never be able to bare kids, a side effect of the horrible eating disorder that plagued her all throughout high school, that was until Jensen came into her life. All it took was a smile one night at the homecoming football game from all the way across those flimsy metal bleachers. He made her feel beautiful, he made her feel wanted. And sure, she had to force her way into his line of sight, making sure to be at every party he was rumored to be at, making sure she was always readily available when he showed up alone and when she finally got him to kiss her - it was like the stars aligned.

At least to her, they did.

One of her fellow cheerleaders had fallen pregnant and was going to be sent away to be with relatives while she sorted through her options - it was the exact same week that Jensen had told her that he wasn’t going to college, but going to pursue acting in Los Angeles.

She was crushed. She didn’t eat or get out of bed for three whole days before the idea came to her. It was not something she was the proudest of, but she knew it would get Jensen to make the right choice. If that meant he didn’t want to be with her then she could at least keep him in her life because of the “what if” aspect.

Thankfully her friend didn’t bat an eye at the prospect of sharing her “pee” stick.

It had been over two hours since the event ended. When she tried to get in the car with Jensen and Cliff, her husband told her that he would be staying behind. He mumbled something about all the guys staying to help clean up, but she had just witnessed Jared and Misha both leave with their wives - and she, sure as hell, didn’t miss the way he went over to the woman from the cookie table.

The way he brushed against her shoulder in passing had been lingering with her ever since.

She heard the back door slide open slowly, causing her to stand from her spot on the couch. “Jensen?”

There was an overly audible sigh from the kitchen. “Dee, why the hell are you sitting in the dark like some kind of serial killer in waiting?”

She didn’t answer him, just continued to head over in the direction of his voice. There was no denying the smell of whiskey on his breath or the slight twinkle in his eye that always hung around when he drank too much. Danneel hadn’t bothered to change out of her clothes either, but he looked particularly out of sorts at the moment.

“Where the hell have you been?”

He gave her a lazy shrug before stumbling over to the fridge and fishing out a chilled water bottle. “I just needed some space to think before coming back here.”

Waiting for him to crack open the bottle and take a swing, she looked him over, noticed the way his shirt was rumpled and bunched in odd places and the way his lips looked a little more swollen than they should have. “Did thinking involve that girl with the cookies?”

Judging by the way his shoulders stiffened, her hunch had been right. “No.”

“Are you really going to lie to me right now?”

He downed the bottle quickly, scrunching it up and missing horribly for where their recycling bin was stationed. “I’m not lying. I’ve wanted a divorce for quite some time now.”

“Why?”

“Really? Are you blind?” He gave her a strained laugh, rubbing his pine eyes excessively in the process. “Dee, we got married because you were pregnant and I was terrified to what that would do to my career. It was horribly selfish on my part, I admit, but I also felt that a baby would complete us. That maybe it would open my eyes to something I had been missing.”

His words stung, but she refused to show as she blinked at him slowly, hands balling at her sides. “So the year that we were together, not once did you think you loved me?”

“Sure,” he gave another shrug like they were simply deciding what to eat for dinner. “It crossed my mind, but we were just kids. I didn’t know what love was.”

“Well,” her voice cracked slightly, “do you now?”

Jensen paused, his eyes shifting from his crushed bottle on the floor to the top of the sink, but not once looking in her general direction. “Yes. Yes, I do.”

--

She had kicked him out, told him that he could take his sorry ass to the couch. He didn’t fight her, not like he had been spending much time in their bed anyway. The more she started to think about how things had been the last couple of months, it was all starting to make sense. The late nights, the many unanswered voicemails, even the smudge of makeup and glitter she had been finding here and there on his dress shirts. She had been chalking it up some interesting scenes at work, but Gen had never mentioned anything similar.

Hoping that she’d be able to fall asleep and wake up from this horrible nightmare, Dee found herself failing horribly. It didn’t help that it sounded like there was some sort of noise reverberating from somewhere in the house.  

After the fifth time of hearing it, she decided to get up and find the source - not having to go far, finding Jensen’s smartphone on the floor. He must of dropped it in his effort of grabbing pillows and blankets to make himself nice and cozy in the living room. There appeared to be a text message with the name Daisy across the top.

Testing her luck, Danneel swiped her finger to the left, finding his phone lazily unlocked. Pausing over the unread text message, she weighed her options, but something told her that she needed to know what it said.

I can’t be the reason you are getting divorced.

It had only been sent minutes ago, meaning that Jensen had clearly been with this girl before he came home. She didn’t know how to feel, except even number than before, but she knew that she needed to find out who Jensen had been sneaking around with. Even if it was the final nail in the coffin, she had questions that needed to be answered and she knew just who she had to find.

Daisy.

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