#it’s weird all boxes instead of pews

[a-mag-a-day]

MAG 20 - Listened to while dying my hair. (From now on, I remember exactly what I did while listening for the first time to each episode. As I said in the last one, I took quite a break before then. I listened to this episode on the 31st of July 2021, and for example MAG 15, 16 and 17 on 28th of February - that I still know because I messaged my sister - I started TMA early September 2020.)

"Gospel of Luke, the words were from Genesis: “Behold"" - Ha!

"I just lay there for hours. There seemed a safety in stillness, as though inaction could do no harm." - This could be a way to prevent being marked by all entities, right? Father Burroughs made this decision a second time and therefore denied the End.

"And he began to list them. Every transgression I had made since I was six years old." - The Eye there.

"In the hallway I ran past two other priests, who looked more worried than ever. One of them was Father Singh." - Uhhh, this could be interpreted as the Stranger? But also just another manifestation of the Spiral, leaving him not able to trust his senses.

"The church’s large round window shifted as I watched, as though it were a tremendous eye that were turning to focus upon me. " - Obviously Eye.

"It was bright, so bright. Candles covered every surface, each glowing so powerfully that I could barely look directly at them" - Desolation?

"Instead it [the stole] was a pale, sickly yellow." - Corruption? I also heard the theory once, that this might have been a Web artifact? Some seem to think it's the thing Breekon talks about in MAG 128 "thrumming silk-wrapped thing of the spider, hiding away in an old steamer trunk." Not so sure about that myself though.

God, I love that ambient bell we hear in the background!

"Each was dressed in black from head to toe, and their skin was fevered, jaundiced yellow." - Corruption? But: "The eyes of every man, woman and child stared blankly forward, and their mouths hung open, wide and smiling, like their jaws had locked in silent rictus." sounds more like the Stranger…

"he raised his head and looked up as though to speak, but all that came from his throat was the single tolling sound of that bell" - Aaah, this is so alienating, it weirds me out and I love it!

"I noticed fewer and fewer of the parishioners seemed to be in the pews. Hope began to rise within me, as it seemed the words would work to banish these jaundiced watchers, and I pressed on. Finally, the pews were empty" - the Lonely?

"It was strange, the rich cloth curtain that covered that ornate metal box seemed stuck, so I pulled and pulled and eventually it came free." - Uhff…

"At that moment, seeing those bound corpses before me, I made the decision to take no action ever again. I will not commit the further sin of ending my life" - There, that's what I meant earlier, denying the End.

"Was my predecessor reading it at some point?" - Researching the Watcher's Crown perhaps???

"He was wearing a butcher’s apron and sat in front of two students" - Flesh.

"as well as removal of both their faces with a sharp blade, possibly a scalpel." - Could also mix in the Stranger.

"The face of James Mann was found to have been partially eaten by Father Burroughs." - Flesh.

"at no point did he perform any actions that might be analogous with the binding and actual murder of the students. Also, it strikes me that the altar server he described seems out of place with most of his other delusions, in that he appeared to have active agency, which is uncharacteristic for these visions the priest describes. Finally, there is the small detail mentioned in the police report that none of the tools used to kill or mutilate the victims were found at the scene. This all leads me to believe that there may have been a second person there that night" - Classic Knife-Hands Distortion!

"there is little appetite for re-opening the case" - Jon and his inappropriate puns^^

"the package was handed to them by a company called Breekon and Hope Deliveries." - Best boys!

So from visiting Hilltop Road to talking to Father Singh to cannibal Mass there was only one day right? He went to bed and missed morning Mass, got up because he wanted to talk to Singh and then ran away to The Oratory… Cause in MAG 19 Jon describes this as "could have led to the incident in 2009". Also! It is said that Bethany O’Connor matriculated in 2008, but MAG 8: Burned Out already happened in 2006?? Well…

All of your insight is making me think that through marking him with so many Fears (with a religious ritual no less) they felt closer to earth than they've ever been before and thus learned what they needed to do in order to pass through

[talenlee]

Why do Transformers Have Guns?

In a world of giant robots with special powers and abnormal body shapes, many times with bodies that can then take on the forms of impressive melee weapons or specially constructed predatory structures, how weird is it that so many of those characters run around with what is visibly a handgun, which they point at things to make a blue laser go pew pew pew?

Well, fool, joke’s on you, those aren’t guns. Autobots don’t carry guns! Guns are weapons of war! Why, you fool, you should know that all of those things aren’t guns, but are instead elaborate tools.

Here, lemme show you.

I’m just going to grab the Transformers Universe book resources for this, because it’s the last time I remembered seeing a single coherent text for this. It’s still something the Dreamwave books do and if you go digging into the comics, thanks to the endless reference spiral that is Transformers media, chances are you’ll find a comic panel where one of these characters explains what they’re holding and it will never matter.

Now, importantly, most Decepticons have guns that are, recognisably, ‘a gun.’ They work by shooting things. They are disruptor rifles, laser guns, missile launchers and of course, in one important and memorable site, fusion cannons. Decepticons are baddies, they’re allowed to have guns that are ‘just guns.’

Air Raid has a ‘torque rifle’ whose beams apply up to 80,000 psi of rotational force. Do you know what that means, or what that looks like? It looks like a blue laser going pew pew pew. Blades, beloved violence boy of the Protectobots, wields a Photon Pistol, which shoots light bursts with the equivalent brightness of 5,000 watt light bulbs, which supposedly can blind anyone but the most well-shielded. Know what that looks like? A blue laser going pew pew pew. Cliffjumper has a gun that fires what he calls ‘glass gas’ which turns metal into something as brittle as glass. Know what that looks like? A blue laser going pew pew pew.

This is one of those wonderfully weird, extremely unnecessary parts of the ‘lore’ of Transformers, which nobody in any book – even Marvel’s own books – needs to follow up on. This stuff shows up on the character bios on the back of the toy boxes, which will tell you, straight facedly that Windcharger attacks people with ‘magnetic charges’ and you have to make up the rest of that with your imagination.

It’s not like it’s weird for characters to have guns! Air Raid is a fighter plane! Why wouldn’t he have guns!? We’ve talked about Powerglide in the past, why doesn’t he, an A10 Warthog have actual guns? They would make his disguise better.

Then there are of course, some characters who just turn into guns. The most obvious example of this is the early versions of Megatron, who turns into the ridiculous Uncle Robo gun. It’s the least practical weapon in the world for what it is; oh, sure, size shifting technology allows the characters around him to use it, but fundamentally, Megatron is a guy with a big gun who turns into that same gun that others can use. The effect is that of a narrative spike in importance – if Megatron is turning into a gun he’s being a really dangerous gun as opposed to himself as a really dangerous dude.

Anyway, then along with him there’s also Galvatron, who is basically just the same guy trying out a different hairstyle, and Shockwave, the guy who can claim that Megatron is just a cover band. If you’re reaching out around things that are ‘basically just guns’ there’s some implied space between them. A tank isn’t really just a gun but dang if it’s not notable that the few Autobot tanks also swing around a gun that is just meaningfully described as a gun that shoots things to hurt them.

There aren’t a lot of Autobots who are guns, of course. In fact, there’s pretty much just one, Warpath, and to further compound him being ‘just a gun,’ Warpath’s personality is fundamentally a walking dick joke that gets hurt about potential harm to his ‘barrel,’ and anxiety about bad performance. This is to say, Warpath may not be a gun, but Warpath’s personality is that he is a gun.

Of course the real answer as to ‘why do transformers have guns’ is because of the normal tedious response to questions about Transformers as a franchise: It’s the optimal alignment of traits for making money without much effort. Guns are objects that can be low-effort combined with the toys to add to the play pattern, and any kind of narrative followthrough on the guns and what that means is something to be slushed to writers that are being paid by the word to see if they make product that more or less works, more or less.

It’s one of the funniest parts of Transformers canon, where for all that this is a huge, sprawling universe with a fanbase dedicated to integrating its parts and harmonising it with the sort of dedication you only get from Biblical Apologists, it’s also the byproduct of what a company could afford to produce as cheaply as possible to maximise the output of products that they only make now at this point because they’re on the hook for making them as part of their throughline. The system that makes money happen requires the toys that were only being made because they were already made for another purpose. In that time a lot of ancient texts were laid down and they were completely nonsense and now they’re part of this lumbering machine of, yes, undeniably imaginative and talented creatives who are doing their best…

… For the least cost.

And that’s boring! That’s really boring! Transformers is the way it is because of capitalism again! Oh no! This toy commercial that literally defines the way all culture is made and engaged with right now, not really even kidding, it’s just another outgrowth of the last stage of capitalism being perfected, and we know that, and that’s boring!

What if we instead re-invented the same thing and gave it a weird name and implied it worked totally differently, as long as we could represent it with a blue laser that goes pew pew pew.

Check it out on PRESS.exe to see it with images and links!

[buildoblivionthenwewilltalk]

“My god, but it'll be a quare scowderment at the Day of Judgment when they come tumblin' up in their death-sarks, all jouped together an' tryin' to drag their tombsteans with them to prove how good they was”

todays dracula daily has me pining for beautiful whitby <3

[ginwhitlock]

summary: JASPER/ BELLA. set in eclipse (but is so far from canon honestly all you need to know is that victoria is after bella). When Jasper snatches Bella away to Texas to escape a vampire’s hunt for the girl who killed her lover, Bella comes clean about her hearts unfaithfulness on an unsettling summer morning, in front of God and everybody.

fic type: oneshot, no explicit scenes

warnings: religious guilt, Bella’s weird brand of horny, cheating on Edward, oh and Alice just doesn’t exist— don’t think about it too hard

There was this openness in the air, something stirring from the west, saturating the cotton fields. A yellow eyed barn cat stood still in the morning light, it’s black coat shifting with the bite of ghostly mice. Whiskers twitching. 

It was watching her, she was sure of it, like the pecan trees and the paddock mud and the mosquitoes. All beady-eyed and searching the brown haired girl, the one with crooked ankles and misaligned bangs that just barely kissed her cheeks in the late summer sun. She looked home grown. Wheat wild. A child of desert planes. And most importantly, she looked lost. 

“I thought you’d still be sleeping by now.” A hushed baritone slipped from the screen door, it’s owner donned in dark royal denim and loose leather. 

If it had been just months before, Bella would’ve rolled her eyes. 

But she was different now. As different as Washington was to Texas. As different as evergreens were to red oak. She swore even the sweat didn’t smell right. 

“Wanted to catch the sunrise.” There was a softness to her front teeth, the round of her molars quiet against one another. To whose ears she was catering to she didn’t know. And to be honest, she didn’t quite care anymore. 

Bella made out a lazy nod from her peripheral, the shaggy haired man seemingly relaxed out here on the front porch of her judgement day, all tan and tall and scented like rolled tobacco. 

Shut up, stupid girl. 

Jasper murmured out a response, something about humans needing sleep and southern sunrises being worthy enough to diminish the former from its place on his immortal pedestal. There was a creak and a groan from the haint green floorboards underneath her before she found herself shoulder to shoulder with the two hundred year old soldier; a stray wind had blown through the shaved baby blond hair lining his chin in the slightest of ways. There was a caution light screaming out from his stature and the brunette girl had the painful urge to swallow it under her teeth and tongue. Soak it in holy water and hide it in her skin for him to find. Or rather, Him, if this stay was going to end like she thought it ought to. 

He couldn’t feel that… could he? Stupid, stupid—

“The marigolds should be blooming about now, just west of the barn. They’re quite a bit prettier than Peter’s fields.” There was something off in the lit of his tongue, the way it flipped and rolled off his teeth. It came out… wrong. Forced. Like he was trying to be overtly kind. The way you talk to a frightened rabbit you clipped with the lawn mower. 

Bella frowned something deep and turned nose at Jasper. “Why did you bring me here, Hale?” 

With the question came a wince to his brow, a noticeable blow to his stature. He seemed to fold ever so slightly towards the young girl. 

“Don’t— don’t call me that.” 

Silence filled the unwalled prison of the porch like nothing else, the birds and wind seemingly gone to rest whenever the two entered into each other's space. Like worldly magnets, chess pieces that threw blows instead of diagonals. The quiet held them both. It held them together. 

Bella Swan blinked slowly in an unknown apology before settling back on the blond with the stone facade. She waited for him to continue. 

He sighed. “It’s safer here. Victoria wouldn’t come this far south without encountering things far worse than the likes of Emmett or Rose.” 

“But this wasn’t Edward’s plan, was it?” Bella’s lashes were like rodeo announcers with their back and forth turns to the outlook of western Texas. 

Jasper looked every bit of his one hundred fifty years as he laid a freezing hand on hers, their knuckles slotting together with unpracticed ease. “No. But it’s mine. And you’re gonna have to accept that.” 

She refused to nod at the man with the thigh clenching, hard work mending, touch, for more than a second. She was far from the type of girl that would lay down and let the boys run out their wildest stupidities on her seemingly catastrophic life, but she felt almost resigned in Jasper's hands. There was a calmness between them she couldn’t place as artificial or not, the soft wool of contentedness slowly covering the surveyor-ship she felt stepping outside this morning. The stares of the flora and fauna turned internal. Fire burned in the pit of her stomach, on the nape of her neck, across the fragile skin of her cheeks where freckles started to show, and mostly, on the warming flesh of her hand where their hands met gently. 

Maybe it was Edward looking onto them from a frozen forest hundreds of miles from here as he hunted a scarlet monster, discovering the hidden plumpness swirling around in his lover's chest for the brother he always worried about, but for all the wrong reasons. 

Or maybe… 

“Jasper, can I ask you something?” 

His eyes were like serpents, glowing yellow under the copper wind chimes above them. 

“Whatever you wish, Isabella.” 

Swallow. Breathe. “When you were human… did you believe in God?” 

A pause sliced the air in two. The cotton plants seemed to stop swaying. The feline vanished. A golden eyebrow fell to his browbone. 

“Yes, Isabella. Yes I did.” His face was drawn, distant, like an old time movie screen was playing out on his stone eyelids. 

Bella’s lips pulled at themselves with her front teeth. “Do you think He’s vengeful?” 

Their eye contact sealed itself, his hand moving on its own accord up her hand to her wrist, cradling the small, delicate bones that allowed her to touch him— but not now. Not ever again. 

“When I was a boy, my mama took me to church every Sunday at seven A.M sharp, and sent me to Sunday school after the service. I was the oldest, even then, and I had more responsibilities than just listening to the preacher ramble on about divinity and charity and sacrifice.”

Jasper's face was taught with memory. 

“I had two baby sisters by the time I turned seven and they were the number one priority, you have to understand, Isabella. Ada and Caroline couldn’t have been older than three when the Leroy boy died sitting in the pew behind us… poor child got heatstroke in his wool britches and after that I started dressing the girls in the lightest things I could find and never waited long after the sermon to get back.” 

Bella turned stormy under the weight of the seemingly young man's words, her eyes dropping from his own to study the way his fingers wrapped around her skin like a life jacket, one part caregiver and one part destroyer. Jasper's own hands seemed to start to tremor just slightly under her stare, or maybe it was from the wash of his own words. 

He took a breath he didn’t need. “But. I started listening when my mother got sick, before the girls finished schooling. Started praying. A part of me was guilty that I hadn’t started before I needed something, that the reason I spoke to Him was for a favor, and a big one at that. I was making up for lost time, I thought. I was begging on my knees for anything. And I didn’t get it.

“They buried an empty coffin with my name on it under a white wooden cross after the army said I went missing. Caroline would plant violets around it in the spring, weed out the planters and start again in the fall. She’d leave me communion wafers in our family pew and have Ada try to talk with me through the minister.” 

“I’m so sorry.” A true sadness settled in her bones, her seemingly selfish desire to have the question answered sat like a heavy stone in the out of her stomach. Her heart held out a warm woolen space for him and she silently begged he would sit in it, for his own sake. 

He waved her off and took on a slight smile, something she had never seen from Jasper. Not in any capacity before that very moment. 

She decided she would try to see it every chance she got for as long as he’d let her. 

“I wasn’t a man of religious structure, Isabella, but. I was a man of faith. The small times I was allowed to watch over my sisters only reminded me of that, no matter how far down to hell I had reached, I still had faith in redemption.” 

His teeth clicked together not unpleasantly. “But I haven’t answered your question have I?” There was a knowing-ness in his voice box and Bella wanted to drink it down like communion wine. She smiled back slightly. 

He was beautiful when he sighed. 

“I’ve done horrible things. Killed innocent people. Slaughtered children and mothers and lambs of God. I have worn blood on my hands like a second skin and not once during any of it did I feel remorse. But darlin,” his lashes fluttered like leaves, “not once did I think God wanted me to hate myself for what I had done. I think… He forgave me a long time ago, before I ever forgave myself. So no. I don’t believe in my brother’s vengeful punisher. Not today. Not in this lifetime.“ She’d never hear the ‘not with you’ fragment he had stuck in his mind.  

She had to step back from him then, the vampire who had become all consuming to her chest and her heart and her fingers. The air was warmer in the space behind him but it almost didn’t matter, the warmth layering her skin was enough to burn through an air conditioning unit anyway. Bella’s hands found clumsy solace in her back pockets as she stared ahead at the rows of painful cotton buds waiting to be harvested. The blood almost pulled to her fingertips. 

Teeth and lips found each other. “I don’t think I’m not going to get punished for this.”

Her words were concrete. Cement. Blacktop on a Kansas back road. They could’ve cut glass if she wanted them to. They almost did as he looked at her. 

“For what, Isabella?” 

Knowing bastard. Always. Knowing. 

No trembling allowed now. 

“For wanting you when Edwards away. When he’s in the same room as us. When he’s hunting the woman who's trying to kill me and you’re just standing there telling me not to be afraid of my own horrible heart… for betraying everything I’ve begged for since me and your brother met. I deserve to get punished for this, don’t I? Don’t you think?” 

She was sweating now, cold droplets running down her back to her the soft slope of her ass. Her knuckles were popping against each other like fireworks and she thought she might faint right then and there, MONSTER written across her forehead in a bruise from the impact. 

A scarred hand felt itself into its place under Bella’s chin and forced her rocking skull to finally glimpse the face she had been thinking of every moment she pulled her eyes away. Jasper Hal— Whitlock? And his clear midnight pupils branding her soul in a sinner’s blush. His lips formed a wonderful crook as he slowly pushed her flat against the ancient siding of the old farmhouse belonging to his long standing brother who looked like everything Jasper was except for his spirit. 

She could die this way and she would face God with a smile. 

“What I feel for you deserves no punishment darlin, but if you insist, I think I’d rather do the punishing than any divine power.” 

His lips were light rosy steel against Bella’s own as the clouds started to stretch out infinitely behind his back, unnoticed by the interlocked couple in their wake. A soft moan escaped as felt the soft chill of a crucifix digging into her neck. 

Maybe God would forgive her for this. Just once.

[lilblog-asatreat]

Prompt: Woman with ice-blue hair; fanciful; temple

(Prompt from Roll-A-Prompt Writing Journal Boxed Set)

Lup stood facing a full body mirror and admired her reflection. The main part of her hair was done up in a high bun with the hair on the sides of her head let loose and cascading down her shoulders. The sleeves of her dress hung off her shoulders, and the body of it hugged her nicely down to the waist where it fanned out and trailed behind her. It was colored with bright reds, oranges, and yellows, and when Lup spun around in it, it glowed as if the dress itself was made of fire.

It was the most beautiful dress ever crafted, and it was made for her specifically for this very day. This very moment. Lup had never felt so awe strikingly beautiful.

There was a knock on the door, and then Taako entered the room, wearing a cinnamon colored suit with black sequins. He stopped for a second to take in Lup's appearance. He started to tear up, but he cleared his throat and closed the door behind him.

"Is it time?" Lup asked.

Taako nodded. "You look beautiful."

Lup smiled and turned to look at herself in the mirror again. "I feel beautiful. I mean, more so than usual." She laughed a little and grabbed a tissue to dab at her eyes. She can't cry yet. She hadn't even walked down the aisle.

Taako moved to stand next to her. "It's been one hell of a journey to make it to where we are today, hasn't it?"

"I'll say." Lup turned to look at him. "Taako, I-... I never thought I'd make it this far. I mean, I hoped and dreamed and I talked about having future plans when we were kids because I needed our lives to mean something and to feel like we'd eventually find a way to do more than survive, but this... I never I thought I'd find someone, Taako. I never thought I'd find someone who I'd want to share the rest of my life with and who'd want to do the same with me, and now I have, and I'm going to, and I have to thank you so much for that."

Taako raised an eyebrow. "Thank me? For what? You picked him out yourself, homie. Unless you mean thanking me for putting up with your whining and complaining that 'he doesn't love me in that way' and 'I don't want to ruin things with him by talking to him about it' for decades when I told you point blank that he told me the exact same things about you."

Lup laughed. "Yes, thank you for that, but also... I wouldn't have gotten into the Institute without you. I wouldn't have gone on this mission and met him without you. You're my one constant in my life, and I want to thank you for that."

Taako blinked and looked away. "Thank you for being my one constant too." He said thickly.

Lup gave him a hug, and he hugged her back. "I love you."

"I love you too."

They stayed like that for a moment before Lup pulled away to place her red veil delicately on her head.

Taako cleared his throat again, wiped his eyes, and walked back to the door. "Ready?" He asked with his hand on the handle.

Lup smiled. "Ready."

The guests in the pews stood up as the twins walked down the aisle, arm in arm. There were so many familiar faces. Davenport, Lucretia, Merle, and Magnus who was waving wildly with a big goofy smile on his face. There was their favorite aunt who taught them how to cook and Grandpa Tostada. Friends Lup made while on the road and at school though it didn't really make much sense that some of them were there because humans don't live that long? There were also some unfamiliar faces who looked vaguely like her husband-to-be.

Lup smiled and waved at all of them as she passed. The light pouring in through the long windows of the temple from the double sunset made her dress look like it was set ablaze. She looked around at the banners lining the walls which were emblazoned with a design of a needle with thread weaving around it and a circle encapsulating all of it: the symbol of Istus. She looked in front of her at the tapestry hanging on the wall behind the pulpit. It was depicting a woman with long white hair knitting a blanket with the whole world tucked inside it. Standing in front of the tapestry and behind the pulpit was a tall dark woman with ice-blue hair. She smiled as Lup and Taako made their way forward, and Lup smiled back. Then she saw him, and she almost tripped over her own feet as she paused for a second while Taako kept moving on ahead.

Barry Bluejeans stood in front of the pulpit with his lips turned up in a nervous smile. He wore a bright blue denim suit with an indigo bowtie, and he was already teary eyed as he watched Lup walk closer and closer to him. This was it. This was happening. And Barry looked stunning. All Lup wanted to do was kiss his brains out, but she could wait.

When she made it to the pulpit, Taako squeezed her hand then left to take his seat. The priestess started talking the usual spiel that happens at weddings about their union, but Lup couldn't be bothered to listen. She found studying every inch of Barry's face and wondering how she got to be so lucky as to have him in her life much more interesting. The way Barry smiled softly at her with so much love in his eyes made her feel like she was the most important person in the world.

"Lup, do you take Barry Bluejeans to be your lawfully wedded husband?"

"What?" Lup looked up startled.

A couple of the people in the audience snickered.

The priestess smiled. "Do you take Barry to be your lawfully wedded husband?"

"Oh. Oh yes, of course I do!" She giggled a little sheepishly.

"Barry Bluejeans, do you take Lup to be your lawfully wedded wife?"

Barry chuckled quietly. "I do."

The priestess turned to the altar that was a few feet away from her where a couple of unlit candles stood on top of it.

"Lup."

"Lady Istus, Goddess of Fate, do you bless this union to be part of your design?"

"Lup!"

Lup wakes up with a start. She sits up, rubs her eyes blearily, and blinks a couple of times before looking around and sighing. She has never felt so happy and so heartbroken about finding herself in bed with Barry in the small room they now share on the Starblaster. She pulls her knees up to her chest and hugs them tightly as Barry wraps his arms around her and gives her a kiss on her temple.

"I'm sorry I had to wake you up, babe, but Taako just finished making dinner, and Davenport wants to have a team meeting while we eat," he says quietly.

Lup nods, but instead of getting up, she buries her head into Barry's shoulder and starts to cry.

"Babe! What-"

"We were home, Barry," she mumbles through muted sobs. "We- we were home and we were- were getting married the way people at home d-do. At a Temple of Istus with all of our fr-friends and family, and Istus was just-just about to give us her blessi-ing."

Barry kisses the top of her head and holds her closer. "Were you wearing that dress you told me about? The one you've wanted to wear since you were a kid?"

Lup nods. "And you were wearing a d-denim suit because of course you w-were."

Barry laughs and rubs comforting circles into her back. "Denim looks really good on me, sue me."

Lup laughs and hiccups. "It was a ver-ery flattering suit."

Barry continues to hold her as she calms down, and soon she's breathing heavily against him though her tears have stopped. They sit in silence for a few more minutes before Lup says, "Barry... I want to marry you again. But not like how other people do it. I mean, it's been fun learning the different cultures of the planets we touch down in and getting married their way, but I want to have our planet's wedding. I know it's fanciful dreaming because we're probably never going to be able to go back, but it's not fair that the opportunity got taken from us, and I just want to have it our way."

Barry hums in agreement. "It's a shame none of the realities we've come to has as big of a following for Istus as ours had. It's been really weird not having her as a central pillar of everyday life. But I promise, the next reality we come to that even has one temple of hers, we'll go there and get married and have her bless our union the way that she does at home."

They sit quietly again for a few more minutes, and Barry plays with her hair. Finally, Lup sits up and kisses him slowly, savoring the warmth of his lips, before pulling away again and wiping her eyes. "So Taako made dinner, and Davenport wanted a group meeting?" She asked, still breathing shakily.

Barry nods and squeezes her hand reassuringly. "Yeah, Taako made that one dish you and he had back in Tesseralia."

"Oh hell yeah!" Lup jumps up from the bed and runs out of the room, leaving Barry laughing behind her.

[zmediaoutlet]

(read on AO3)

Sam’s cast comes off in Youngstown, Ohio. Dean offers to buzz it off with a chainsaw and Sam rolls his eyes. They go to an Urgent Care instead. Dean sends Sam inside with a fake insurance card that says Scott Smalls and idles in the lot for a while, watching the sliding glass doors. It’s cold and he doesn’t want to be here. There’s nowhere else to be. He wants to be sitting in there with Sam making fun of him for getting his arm fucked up by some co-eds ghost. He wants—

A motel. Two beds because—two beds. He orders pizza, extra mushrooms and sausage, and walks to the liquor store next door, and the clerk is one of those guys who looks at Dean’s mouth before he meets Dean’s eyes. Dean adds a bag of chips from the impulse rack to his pile and smiles with lots of teeth.

He has a drink. He refills his flask. He sits on the bed with his bags on it and looks at the other bed, and then he gets out his shotgun and cleans it, trying to focus: there’s the barrel in his hands and the smooth sweep of the brush, and the oil that needs applying here, and there. The heavy action of the trigger. He points the barrel at the purple carpet between his boots and pulls the trigger, feeling it, and makes the pew gun sound to the empty room. He lets the barrel sink down to the floor and lets his head sink, too, his shoulders tight and his spine feeling like it’s slotted wrong into his back, somehow, like from the base of his skull all the way down to his tailbone it’s an inch off. How long since he slept well? He can’t remember. That haunted hotel—

The pizza arrives. He tips the kid a ten and asks for extra parmesan. First slice hot enough that he burns the roof of his mouth like always. He eats it fast, anyway, and then sits back in the weird vinyl bucket chair at the table, tipping his head back. He’s tired. Tired, tired. The ceiling has a stain like a coffee spill, a pale brown lake spread on the popcorn, and he looks at it. Imagines a lake of coffee to swim in. Imagines adding creamer, sweet’n’low. How it’d swirl through the seaweed. Caffeinated fish. Fuck, he’s tired. He’s tonguing the blister forming behind his front teeth when his phone beeps. Out in two minutes. Dean presses his tonguetip up into the tender spot where it aches, sits there and looks at the phone screen for a while, and then goes to get his brother.

Sam takes a shower when they get back, ignoring the pizza. “Getting cold,” Dean says, but Sam’s throwing off his big brown coat onto the same bed that Dean’s bags are on and he says, “I know, but—ugh, I forgot how weird this feels, I need to—” and he’s pulling off his shirts over his head so Dean doesn’t quite hear what he needs but there’s Sam smooth tanned back and his hair all ruffled up around his head before he finally makes it into the bathroom, and the water crashes on, and Dean turns his face away from Sam stripping all the way down and thinks, screw it, and has his share of the pizza while he’s waiting.

Sam smiled when he saw the car, even if Dean left him standing out there by the entrance for ten minutes. He waved so Dean could see his freed hand, and he'd blown into the passenger seat in a billow of cold air and the smell of antiseptic, and he'd sighed like it was a relief. "Doctor didn't cut my arm off," he said, with a smile like he was sharing a joke, and Dean found his mouth tugging up, like it hadn't done in, what. Six hundred miles. Since Massachusetts. It still worked. Imagine that.

Sam’s always fast in the shower, because he doesn’t appreciate the finer things in life. The water shuts off when Dean's uncapping a beer to wash down his half-a-pizza and so Dean uncaps a second and sets it on the other side of the table. Rattle of the shower rings, and then through the open rectangle of the doorway Sam's arm appears, weird pale flash as he yanks the purple towel off the rack above the crapper. Dean swivels his chair around to face the doorway and drinks his beer, stretching out in hopes that somehow his spine will align right if he gets long enough, and so he's watching when Sam reappears—same old boxers tugged on, white undershirt, rubbing his hair dry uncareful and fast. Dean swallows a too-big gulp of beer and coughs. Sam, hunched over the toilet, white shirt and sweat in his hair. A secret clanging in Dean's throat. But—no—Sam walks out into the room bringing the smell of pine-fresh and damp and he says, "Man, I needed that," and he says, "I'm starving, did you get—" and Dean pushes the extra parm packets toward him, and Sam drops down easy into the other stupid bucket chair like he hasn't got a care in the world, like everything's hunky-dory because he asked Dean please to kill him, if it weren't any trouble, if things got too bad. Cast off and hair clean and food in front of him and his world seems to be spinning right. He slept, all the way through Pennsylvania. There aren't any dark circles under his eyes.

Plenty of cold pizza in their past. Sam eats and makes a surprised sound at the second, third bite. "Actually pretty good," he says, through a half-full mouth, and Dean nods. Feels too hard to form a sentence. He tongues the blister, watches Sam. "You check the news?" Sam says, and the remote's right there on Dean's side of the open pizza box so he finds a channel. The volume's so low he can't make out the words as the anchor-lady's mouth shapes them. The caption below says Robberies Continue. Sam squints at the television and shrugs a shoulder, and sips his beer, and they sit there quiet while Sam finishes his dinner and watches the news, and Dean sits and watches Sam.

He's been bulking up. Dean doesn't see his shoulders bared like this, not enough. Not nearly enough. His shoulders, and his arms swelling out of the short sleeves of that undershirt. Tan, still, somehow, even when it's been so cold and half the time they're both bundled up under coats—except for his healed-up arm, skinny and pale, the hair on it dark enough to look black. Sam's wrist is white, so that the veins stand out thick blue when he lifts the beer bottle, and Dean's thinking, blueblood. Blood. Blood of my blood, bone of my bone. Where did he read that? Somewhere. A romance novel, maybe, or maybe somewhere else, but now that he's thought it it's stuck in his head. Sam finishes his beer and Dean's just sitting there, tired, and his back still hurts, and Sam's shoulders are beautiful, and those bones, they're Dean's, aren't they? The bones that make his shoulders that broad and that make him that tall, the ones in his wrist that healed up finally, the long solid bones of his thighs and his shin and his sharp knees that get Dean, sometimes, in the night, if they fall asleep somehow together. How could he ever think that Dean would. How could he make Dean make that promise. When it'd be like breaking his own arm. His spine.

He's had—a gulp of whiskey, a beer. Two beers. Not enough booze to be thinking about this. Sam pushes his better hand through his hair, settling messy and half-dry around his head, and holds his beer with the pale hand, and flexes his fingers around the brown glass, closing them again. Dean pushes his tongue hard around the hard ridge of the roof of his mouth and says, "Hey, Sammy," and it comes out brittle, weird. Sam looks at him. Mild furrow, mouth soft. The TV-light on his cheek. Dean licks his lips and Sam's eyes drop, like they do, when Dean licks his lips, when Sam sees his mouth and isn't thinking about other things. Dean wants not to think. It'll do.

The move to his knees isn't graceful. He sort of slumps out of his chair. Sam's already spun away from the table to watch the newscast and Dean can get right up inside the spread of his legs, and he grips Sam's shins and drags his hands up and Sam says, "What," startled, but just at the speed Dean thinks rather than at the action. He slides his hands up over Sam's knees and gets his thighs, ropy muscle rather than thick, and he squeezes up there where Sam's boxers end and Sam says, quiet, "Dean?" but Dean doesn't—he just doesn't want to talk about it, at all.

"You're killing me, Smalls," he says, a joke that's barely a joke so Sam'll just let him do it. And Sam huffs, and touches the back of his hand with the fingers of the hand that was hurt, and Dean ignores that and slides up and up inside the leg of Sam's boxer shorts until he finds—the warm heavy weight of his nuts, and his dick, soft now but warm, warm. Sam pulls in air above him and Dean kneels up higher, ass up on his bootheels, sliding his other hand around to Sam's hip, to his ass. Leaning in, over Sam's lap, and Sam's up above him and touches the back of his neck instead, inside the leather collar of his coat, his finger sliding underneath the cord of Dean's amulet, his nail scratching a little while Dean squeezes, feels. Warm—the surge of blood—and Dean knows how to do this, always has, and he switches his grip to underhand and pulls, feeling Sam lengthen, thicken up, the head bumping the inside of his wrist. A squeeze at his shoulder and he shifts, grips the sloped arm of the chair with his free hand instead. Sam's legs spread wider and Dean pushes up the leg of the shorts to see—Sam's dick, full and flushed, the rosy-red head and the weight of it, the ropy vein along the underside that Dean runs his fingers along, feeling. The heavy shape of his sack still caught up in the thin cotton, warm and full, and Sam's fingers curl against the back of his neck, his hips tipping flat in the chair, his breath—against the back of Dean's ear—and Dean dips, licks his mouth wet and sucks the head in, and Sam says, "Fuck," soft but meaning it, meaning it. His hand slides from Dean's shoulder to his back, between his shoulderblades, and Dean tips his head and bolsters Sam's dick up and slides down, filling his mouth. Tasting. Clean, but still that bite of salt that makes it—Sam. That familiar taste, curling up under his tongue, making his mouth water. Making it right.

Sam's quiet, mostly. Lets Dean work. Dean sucks slow, doesn't use the tricks he knows. Slicks his tongue fat against the sweet soft ridge there at the head and feels Sam's thighs clench, and sits with his lips broken-open and lets Sam pulse thick and needing up against his soft palate. He slides his hands back down Sam's thighs and grips under Sam's knee, feels it tip in and dig into his side. He hums and Sam says, "Jesus," quietly, and then he laughs a little and says, "You're killing me, man," and Dean pulls off and looks at him, holding the fat pole of his dick warm in one hand, and Sam's looking at him—dark red pooled in the hollows of his cheeks and streaked down his throat, and his hair all fluffed and dry, and his eyes dark, bright. Lips red. Dean reaches up, drags his thumb over them, and Sam lets him—lets Dean's thumb drag his lower lip down, so Dean can see the white of his teeth—and Dean pumps Sam's dick wet in his fist and then ducks back down and sucks it in, meaning to finish the job this time, and it's not long really before Sam's clenching and gripping at him and lifting his hips helpless and pumping into him, his thighs shaking, his hands greedily tight at the back of Dean's neck and then soft, apologizing. When the bruise is already there. Dean swallows, keeps his mouth there. Sam's thighs jerk and close around his shoulders and Dean holds his balls through the thin barrier of the boxers and sucks, steady, making Sam shudder and say, "Too—too much, jesus—Dean—" but he doesn't shove Dean off and so Dean doesn't stop, taking everything he can until Sam's soft, heavy and sore inside his mouth, and only then does Dean pull back, and tuck his forehead down against Sam's leg, and breathe, slow.

His lips feel fat, tender. He's got his hands curled around Sam's hips but they're loose, and his legs have gone to sleep from kneeling so long but—he doesn't feel like moving, so they can just stay that way. He lets his head tip and Sam's fingers touch the little hollowish spot right at the very top of his spine. "Can I…?" says Sam, but Dean shakes his head as much as he can caught there in Sam's lap. He's hard, sort of, but it feels distant. Sam's thumb slides behind his ear. Dean sighs. He realizes, after a while, that his back doesn't hurt.

"You going to stay there all night?" Sam says, later.

Dean lifts his head. The room feels bright although he knows it isn't. Sam's dick has gone small, curled against his thigh, and Dean tugs his boxer-leg down so it's hidden again. A snort, above. Dean wipes his mouth with the back of his hand and his lips smear, tacky. He needs water. Sam's taste—bitter, but not as bitter as he could be—caught up in his mouth. He sits back and Sam sits forward, almost too fast, and he catches Dean's head between his hands and kisses him, shocky-quick, so Dean's still blinking and surprised when Sam lifts up, and looks him in the eyes. Dean licks his lips and it still tastes like Sam.

Sam thumb drags along his cheek. "C'mon," he says, and stands up, and pulls Dean along. Oh—rush of blood, pins and needles. Dean staggers and Sam catches him, steadies him. Even the thin arm with its fresh-healed bones, strong and sturdy. How does he manage it, Dean wonders. He's dizzy from the change in elevation, from being so tired. From taking Sam and yet never, ever being able to—to make Sam see—

"When did you sleep last?" Sam says, and drops Dean on the empty bed. Sam's bed. There's a glass of water, then, and Sam says, "Dude, take your boots off at least," so Dean drinks the water and takes off his boots, and his leather coat too, and lays down off-kilter. The mattress is softer than he thought it'd be. Sam sits next to him, backlit by the lamp, and Dean looks at the ends of his hair caught almost bronze, and the way the hairs on his arm gild the line of it, and how his body—his bones—

"Sorry," Sam says, but he doesn't sound sorry. Dean turns his head the other way on the pillow and squeezes his eyes closed. "I'll get you back in the morning. Will you even remember?"

I'll remember, Dean says, or maybe he only thinks it. Sam's weight sinks the bed at Dean's side, and he's just about to fall asleep when there's a shift and it's gone. He dreams of lakes, dark, and a cast on his arm dragging him down into the deep water.

[definitelynotadeathclaw13]

To Be Free

@inthisfire-ifindrain

Brian didn’t know much, but what little he did know, he knew.  He knew, for instance, that the only place he hated more than The Cage was The Table.  He knew he hated every one of these people that put him in The Cage and on The Table.  He knew he hated the guards.  He knew he hated The Doctor.  He knew he hated their “Enclave”, whatever that was.

He also knew he wasn’t alone.  He had never met the other little torture victim, but he had seen her once or twice when they transferred him from The Cage to a test room or The Table.  They were keeping her in some kind of big tube thingy.  He didn’t know who she was, what those white fluffy-looking things on her back were, or why she was in all that green stuff, but he knew she didn’t deserve to be there.  Whatever it was, it was just another Cage.  Nobody deserved to be in The Cage.

The guards had just opened The Cage to lead him back to The Table when it happened.  There was a loud BOOM that reverberated throughout the base, causing everyone to stumble and for the guards to raise their guns and look around in panic.  It was but a moment of laxity, the barest instant where they forgot that Brian existed in the face of this new unknown threat.

A moment was all Brian needed.  He grabbed the guard closest to him, lifting him off his feet (power armor and all) and using him as a club to clobber the other guard.  With them both thus concussed, it was child’s play for Brian to tear off their helmets before doing the same to their heads.  His claws freshly caked in blood, he quickly took off down the halls.

Free!  Finally, finally free!  He could finally get out of this place!  No more experiments!  No more Table!  No more pain!  But as he ran, he passed by the room with the girl in the tube, and he stopped to stare at her.  He was free, but she didn’t look like she was awake in all that green stuff.  She was still trapped.  Saving her would slow him down, possibly get him caught, but could he leave her like this?  Could he sacrifice her freedom for his?

No, he found.  No he couldn’t.  Brian quickly ran into the room and looked between the tube and the metal box in front of it.  Brian recognized the box.  What was it called again?  A “Cohm Pew Tahr”?  The Doctor loved the stupid things, but for once that was good; Brian knew that those weird metal boxes were somehow connected to all the other weird medal doohickeys around this place, so if he could figure out how it worked, he could probably free the girl!

He ran up to the Cohm Pew Tahr, staring at it for a moment before poking at the weird shapes in little squares attached to it.  The first time he did so, nothing happened.  The second time he did so, nothing happened.  The third time he did so, he accidentally put too much force into it and shoved his claw straight through the square and into the thing’s guts.  He howled more in surprise than in pain as a shock of electricity rain through the offending claw.  He let out a frustrated roar at the Cohm Pew Tahr, grabbing the stupid box on either side and forcibly wrenching it out of its proper place before smashing it as hard as he could against the tube.

That glass tube was built for many things, but the frustrated tantrum of an angry deathclaw was not one of them.  It shattered into a thousand tiny shards, all of which found their ways back to Brian as a veritable tidal wave of green goop carried them out of the tank.  His skin was tough enough that he was poked and prodded instead of stabbed and sliced, but it was still pretty damn uncomfortable, and he was knocked back a couple steps from the unexpected green tide.

With that excitement over and sirens still blaring obnoxiously in the background, Brian looked up quickly to check if the newly freed female was alright.

[antoine-roquentin]

These pixels of joy may not seem like much to the average person: According to a 2015 Pew Research survey, a quarter of all adults regard most video games as a waste of time. But for Guyton, gaming is a hobby like any other — an activity that values a momentary feeling of immersion above other forms of success. And despite living on the margins, Guyton remains eager to spend what little coin he has, sometimes waiting in long lines for a piece of the latest digital adventure. There’s no shame, he says, in “wasting time” seeking fun in gigabytes of alternative realities. For him, gaming is as priceless as peace.

It’s no accident that a greater percentage of lower income people consider themselves “gamers” (the same Pew survey found that across income groups, although those making less than $30,000 a year were the least likely to report they played games, with only 46 percent saying so, low-income respondents were still the most likely to actually describe themselves as “gamers”). Chris Arnade, a photographer and author of the recent book Dignity: Seeking Respect in Back Row America, explains that gaming is “one of the few virtual communities open to a lot of lower-income people.” Arnade, who’s spent “a lot of time basically sleeping in cheap motels when I was on the road or in my van,” tells me that while looking for a good WiFi connection, he often came across people from families with Section 8 housing vouchers in search of prime gaming real estate “with their old, beat-up PC.”

Through his lens, Arnade has been clued into a more intimate, nuanced view of the low-income gaming community than most. As such, much of the discourse around gaming pisses him off. “This whole language of, ‘Young men should be doing something better with their time,’” he says. “Like what?”

But even within the gaming community, Arnade has noticed a discrepancy between how people judge rich gamers versus poor ones. “You have rich kids who game, but that’s not what I usually see people making fun of,” says Arnade, who believes that this sort of antagonism comes from the “idea that poor people shouldn’t be allowed to have fun.” “We celebrate consumption because our society is built on consumption,” he argues. “Yet when poor people consume, it seems ugly and crass.”

Pathetic and depressing sight. pic.twitter.com/GoeVrvV5kx

— Sohrab Ahmari (@SohrabAhmari) November 27, 2020

He uses the example of the way people look with disgust toward those who line up to get deals at GameStop on Black Friday because they don’t have a lot of money. “With something like the PS5, when there’s a new game launch or a new console launch, wealthy families like me, we pre-order well ahead of time and put a deposit down and put it on credit and that’s not really hard,” he says. “A lot of people can’t do that. I mean, they don’t even know they can do that. They don’t have the money to do that. They don’t have the cultural capital to know that you should do that.”...

According to K’ryzt (the online moniker of another gamer currently living in low-income housing), because gaming helps people create relationships with people outside of their own cultural bubble, “having affordable prices for consoles and gaming PCs is so important.” “Nowadays, voice chat is almost required in some respects for competitive games, from FPS [first person shooter] to raiding in MMOs [massively multiplayer online games],” he tells me. “When consoles are too expensive, they have a pretty steep barrier to entry for people who can’t afford them — and when the peripherals became more and more of a necessity to play games successfully, it’s important to make sure they’re priced in a way that it isn’t just gouging.”

Growing up, K’ryzt’s family was, he says, “fairly poor,” so he never had the next generation gaming system “until it was in its second-gen iteration.” “I got a PlayStation relatively shortly before the PS2 came out,” he says. His Gameboy Color was a hand-me-down from his then-church. “I worked summer jobs for my first PC, which wasn’t even a gaming PC — just some old stock Walmart Gateway [computer],” K’ryzt adds.

Echoing Arnade’s earlier point, K’ryzt tells me that what he’s found in gaming that he believes exists in few other places, is a level playing field. “Even in the case of pay-to-win loot boxes, you mostly have situations where skill trumps all,” he says. “So when you’re behind a computer screen and you’re playing a game with people from all over the world, they don’t know your economic or social status, what race or gender or orientation you are, or if you have a disability.”

In that way, K’ryzt says, gaming gives low-income people an opportunity to be on equal footing with their peers in a way that often isn’t true in real life. “When I log in to play Final Fantasy XIV, I’m a Male Miqo’te White Mage,” he says. “All that matters to the people around me is, ‘Does he heal well?’ And unless I reveal how I’m somehow different to them, I’m just another Warrior of Light.”

It helps, too, that apart from a few hundred dollars in start-up costs — which is steep, but can, according to Guyton, be “built up over time” — the thing about gaming is that unlike most real-world communities, be they professional or social, there isn’t an impenetrable barrier to entry. “Once you’re in, you’re in,” says Arnade. And though the language of gamers has long been the subject of controversy, in Guyton’s circle, it’s just “kind of bull-crapping around” and “just being weird to each other.” For him, that means sometimes doing “funny dances in the game and just acting out of context.”

“People seek status in different ways,” says Arnade. “[Low-income gamers] are never going to obtain status signifiers that rich people want, like a house,” he says. “That’s just too distant.” Instead, Arnade tells me, you seek the status you can obtain. And getting a new PS5 or, in Guyton’s case, a copy of Cyberpunk 2077 — which Guyton’s heard is “going to be really good” — is a piece of status that feels realistically within reach.

[invisibleinorange]

Chapters: 14/? Fandom: Bridgerton Rating: T Warnings: Presumed Character Death Relationships: Colin Bridgerton/Penelope Featherington,  Eloise Bridgerton/Penelope Featherington(besties),  Bridgerton Family Dynamics, Simon Hastings/Daphne Bridgerton Characters: Colin Bridgerton,  Penelope Featherington, Eloise Bridgerton, Anthony Featherington,  Benedict Bridgerton,  Portia Featherington, Violet Bridgerton, Genevieve Delacroix Additional Tags:  Bridgerton, Polin Summary:  Unexpected bad news arrives for the Bridgerton Family (and friends) regarding Colin's travels. This will be a series that is set after "The Duke and I" or season one of the show. It is a companion piece to "Goodbyes".

It had come to pass that Portia Featherington hadn’t been wrong about everything. Penelope couldn’t help but begrudgingly give her mother some credit as she paced the small room she was waiting in for her wedding: the books had ruined her.

Everything that she knew about life and love came from the pages of the damn things.  Even if she had always had her doubts whether she would actually get married, the small bit of her that held up hope had this foolish fantasy of what it was supposed to be.

When she’d pictured this day, Colin had always been her  romantic lead.  It had been that way even before she was old enough to fully understand her feelings.   It felt a little bittersweet that he couldn’t at least be part of it.

If he couldn’t be her husband, she would have at least felt better having him there as her friend.  Knowing that he fully endorsed her choice would have been important. All she could do now was assume that he would have be happy to see her well-matched with his brother.

She was still anxious about it, as fond as she had become of Benedict in recent weeks.  She’d felt as if they’d made progress in transitioning from whatever they had been to what they were going to be.  It was all tentative, a bit weird but it was no longer awkward to converse at length or hold hands.

They were both trying.

There was a lot more that would come after the wedding and that was what she was terrified of.  Violet in her infinite wisdom had attempted to have an adult conversation with her about wifely duties when her own mother neglected to call on her for such a thing.  Then Daphne had made an appearance and attempted her own conversation.

She wasn’t quite sure if she was supposed to be excited at the prospect of her wedding night or terrified.

Either way it went, she knew that there was no real pressure to do something that she didn’t feel comfortable with. Benedict might not have approached the subject but she knew he wasn’t the sort to demand anything.

They were going to do something different and it might take her time but she was going to be happy.

She just had to work past her nerves first.

She was mid-stride through her forty or fiftieth spin around the room when the door opened and in strode her mother.  

Penelope had invited her (and her sisters) to the wedding. They were her family even if things had dysfunctional at times. That didn’t necessarily mean that she wanted to open herself to feedback or criticism for her choices or the timeline of them.

She also wasn’t quite sure her nerves could handle a third conversation about her duties as wife.  

“Mother,” she said with a polite nod and bow.

Her mother seemed to stand there for a long moment, looking her over as if appraising the situation.

“This dress will do,” she said after a long moment.

Penelope’s dress was one of the new ones that had been purchased in recent weeks.  It wasn’t white but it was a pale blue and had white lace over it. It wasn’t as extravagant as the dress she might have worn if it hadn’t burnt but she was pretty content with it.  She’d even added little blue flowers to her red curls.

“I appreciate your approval,”  Penelope offered after a moment, deciding that she should just be grateful that they decided to show and actively be a part of this.  “You should probably find your seat. Anthony will be presenting me.”

It was a bit of a slap in the face. If her father had been alive, he would have been the one to do such a thing. He was long gone and Penelope hadn’t considered herself a member of her mother’s household since she’d left it.  Anthony, as misguided and overprotective as he could be at times, was the only person deserving of such an honor.

Portia might have wished to object but she closed her mouth as soon as it opened.  Instead she decided to proceed with her original mission for coming.

“I won’t trouble you for long,” she told before snapping her fingers and a servant came with a box.  She opened it and inside was a beautiful, ornate veil.   “This is a family heirloom of sorts.  I’d thought to give it to one of your sisters but your father insisted it be put aside for you.”

Penelope could gloss over all the negative undertones to just see the fact that it was actually quite remarkable. She’d honestly not planned to wear a veil at all but it looked as if it belonged with the dress.  Her mother would have sold it if she’d had the inkling. The fact that she was there at all with it said that somewhere she did actually care about her.

It was enough.

She turned to allow her mother to help her pin it properly in her red curls, a light smile playing on her features.

“Thank you for this,” she told her quietly.

--

Benedict was grateful for his mother because Violet had this strange way of making things always come together, even when there was a limited amount of time to do it. Weddings were relatively simple affairs in the great scheme of things. In a family like theirs, it was harder logistically to get everyone around.

As he gazed around the church, he was glad to have all of them.  Violet was sitting up front with Gregory and Hyacinth on opposite sides.  Eloise was to the right of Hyacinth which brought a smile to his face because she’d joked that she might sit on the other side of the aisle.  Francesca was behind them with the Duke and a visibly pregnant Daphne. The only other people were those on the other side – Penelope’s mother and siblings.

The whole situation felt surreal to him. There was literally no scenario where he could imagine wedding Penelope Featherington before recent months.  He had always felt like he’d known her but he hadn’t known her at all. He felt as if by getting to know her better, he’d seen her potential.

He could even imagine being happy which was more than he ever thought he could say about most of the other potential matches he could have had in the Ton.  It was going to take them time but he liked where they were.  There was no rush to become something that they weren’t.

He would be patient and a good husband to her.

He didn’t get married every day though so he did feel a little nervous about the whole situation.  He’d definitely had to ease his nerves with a drink beforehand.

As he caught sight of Anthony at the entrance, making a gesture that things were to begin it all begin to set in.

Everyone sat quietly but they all sort of blurred out of space when he saw Penelope move into the entrance with him.  He’d never quite had such a visceral reaction to her before but she really was vision.

She seemed nervous so he offered her a smile and she returned it as she approached on Anthony’s arm.

They were both shaking by the time her hand was in his and the clergyman began to speak.

--

The doors crashed open with a thud making such a disturbance that there was no way to ignore it.

Every single head turned including that of the bride and groom.

Colin Bridgerton was a dusty mess of a man but out of the darkness of the hallway, he appeared to the audible sound of gasps.

Everyone was so focused on his appearance that it was only Benedict and Colin who felt Penelope go limp.  The shock had caused a fainting spell and it was any wonder that Benedict caught her. Colin couldn’t quite get to her at the moment.

“Colin!”  Violet Bridgerton practically screamed, moving from her seat toward her wayward son.  She didn’t stop until her arms were around him.  He hugged his mother for a moment,  shaking off his own disbelief at everything that was happening.

Concern washed over him at what was going on before him. He couldn’t properly even focus on the words that were coming at him from family members as they touched him and made sure that he wasn’t some apparition.

“Mother, I – please, I need to-“  he tried to explain, to get out of her grasp and direction the attention to the person maybe needed a little more attention at the moment.

For her credit, she did let him go long enough for her gaze to realize Penelope was still out cold.  The fact her child was back from the dead was temporarily forgotten as the need to care for the problem at hand send her moving with him up toward the front pew, where Benedict has maneuvered the unconscious girl with a little help from Portia Featherington.

Her blue eyes began to flicker back open after a long, quiet moment. She came back to life in a minute, fully prepared to fight. Her body upright, terror on her face.

“I’m dead,” she said after a long moment when she caught sight of Colin and his concerned eyes.  “I’m clearly dead because you are dead.”

If he hadn’t been so worried about her, he might have laughed.  Instead Colin reached for her wrist, dipping enough for her hand to his chest so she might see that he wasn’t dead.

“I promise you that I’m here,” he told her, eyes finding hers. “I’m alive. I’m here and I’m never leaving again.”

There was clearly a lot that needed to be said.  More than just to her but in that moment it was just nice to see her face, to know she was okay even if she’d gone from fainting to crying.

He didn’t quite know if what he wanted to do was appropriate at the moment.  Whatever business he had with Benedict could wait, for now the urge for violence was low.

“…I wouldn’t miss your wedding,” he said after a long moment, trying to lighten the mood to make her stop crying.  “I just had to be my dramatic flare to things.”

“Wedding?” she asked.  Oh God, she’d completely forgotten she’d been in the middle of her own wedding.  She shot an apologetic look to Benedict, biting her lip.  Colin’s hand was still over her own and she didn’t want to let go of it but she wasn’t sure what was okay anymore. “I just can’t believe you’re actually here. I should have never encouraged you to go. I should have stopped you.”

“It’s okay,” Benedict said, giving her a quiet nod as if reading her thoughts. He turned to the clergyman and politely explained that there wouldn’t be need for his services after all.  The wedding wouldn’t be happening today – if ever.   As he completely made way for Colin to take back his place in life, Penelope couldn’t help but feel a little sad to lose something she didn’t really know that she wanted.

Whatever she felt about that didn’t lessen how she felt about the fact that Colin was home. He was real and he was there with her.   The fact he was touching her and looking at her like that.

“You were only trying to encourage me to do what you thought I needed to be happy,” he told her with a nod.  “I maybe could have done a better job communicating after I left.”

It was Daphne who interjected this time, socking him hard in the arm.  Simon didn’t even try and stop her.

“You could have communicated with your family that you weren’t dead,” Daphne told him.  “We’ve already replaced you with Penelope.  We thought giving her your bedroom would be in bad taste though.”

“I don’t know that sorry is going to cut it.  I was sort of out of commission for a lot of it – it’s a long story,” he tried to explain.  “I am sorry though.  Very sorry and – I don’t want to know how I’m going to make it up to all of you.”

Apparently something that had been said triggered something in Penelope because her response was to start looking around, “ANTHONY?”  she practically screamed.

Anthony came darting at his name though based on the tone, he wasn’t sure that he wanted to be there.

“Colin sent the dress not some … scorned lover of Benedicts trying to kill me,” she said after a moment.

“Wait, what?”  Colin couldn’t help but ask.

“He burnt the dress and everything else in my wardrobe,” Penelope informed Colin.

Colin’s murderous side turned on Anthony.  If they hadn’t been in a church, there would have been blood.

“I was trying to protect her,”  Anthony said in his defense.

Penelope apparently caught onto the fact, Colin’s ability to keep cool with fleeting because she felt her hand tighten in his and it did calm him down just a little bit.

“It was the most beautiful thing I’ve ever owned,” she told him honestly, kindly.  “Can you please never have someone send a vague note with no signature again?”

“I promise,” he said after a long moment. “And I’ll buy you whatever your heart desires then keep it far, far away from my idiot brothers.”

Penelope smiled at that.

There was honestly so much to say and it was going to take time.

She definitely couldn’t talk as openly as she might wish with half the family still waiting on their opportunity to chat with the recently returned.

They exchanged an extended gaze that didn’t make giving them that space any easier.

An exaggerated, pained sound coming from Daphne was enough to pull them from their moment.   She was too early in her pregnancy to be making any sounds like that but all the excitement couldn’t possibly have been good for her.

“Go be there for your sister,” she said after a long moment.

“We’ll take more later?” Colin asked.

She nodded and that was all he needed to run off to assist the Duke and everyone else in getting Daphne’s needs met.

[claracastellan]

so say luke and clara never make it to camp

the co-dependency tho, we’re talking Winchester levels here

So say they don't end up going to camp, Grover takes Annabeth and sends her there alone. Luke and Clara dip and head back onto the streets on the basis that anything is better than the gods, especially after they've just watched Thalia die

And Luke's fourteen, so Clara's about seven and they run they head down to Florida first, so they can stay warm in the winter and they find some city to hole up in, sleeping in alleyways in cardboard boxes with newspapers and running from the cops/CPS/concerned citizens when they turn up. Luke's paranoia comes up and he'd convince Clara anyone like that would only take her away from him so she doesn't go near them and would fight anyone tooth and nail

They stay in Catholic Churches sometimes, sleeping under pews or, once or twice, curling up on the alters. Clara prays, Luke never does. Sometimes he'll pour holy water on his hands, just to remind himself he isn't evil

Searches from Camp get sent to find them and even though they can usually avoid them, a couple of times they're too determined and it ends in a fight. In the worst fight, the satyr knocks Luke out in self-defence but Clara thinks he's dead and kills the satyr. When Luke comes too, Clara's sewing up the gashes on his skin with shaking hands, they are both covered in blood.

By the time Luke hits 18, he starts getting under the table work and they are able to rent motel rooms occasionally and they squat in a lot of empty houses in bad neighbourhoods. At the start, the backstreets crawling with hookers, druggies and rats scare Clara, but the longer they spend there the more she starts to find it comforting. Eventually, Luke saves up enough to buy an actual car (and a couple of cars he stole and re-sold) instead of stealing them and ditching before the police can catch them, so they start travelling the US in Ernest. He does more work while they're on the road, lots of manual labour and thinks like that

Neither of them have had any formal education (Luke had more with a couple of years at school) so although they're practically clever, they can barely read and write – not to mention the dyslexia – and they end up with this weird, partly-phonetical, partly-symbol short-hand they use between them that pretty much only they can understand.

The first time Clara kills a mortal, she's fourteen and some guy drags her into an alley with the obvious intention. Luke always makes her carry a knife and she doesn't warn him before she digs it into his throat – the blood ends up all over her. She bolts to the bar Luke had been in ('help needed' signs become one of the few written words she can recognise immediately) and she's crying and still covered in blood. They skip town, leave the motel bill unpaid and all their clothes there (they'll steal new ones, he tells her in the car as she cries hysterically, everything will be okay). Before they leave, Luke finds the guys friends, the ones who encourages him to go after Clara in the first place and sliced off his cock and leaves it on the church alter for good measure.

They never learn not to be dependent on each other and since splitting with Annabeth, they're the only company they have. It gets to the point that Clara can't stand to have anyone but Luke touch her and it feels like it burns. They rent motels with one bed and he stays awake long after she drifts off, knife in hand just in case a monster comes through the door after her

When she's seventeen with a fake ID – the years make her look older than she is, with all the travel and outdoor work and beatings she's endured, she does coke for the first time in a club bathroom and her blood sings

Luke has an opiate habit. They don't talk about it. But one of his dealers ends up dead and he holds her hand while they drive away from town, sirens echoing in the background

She comes home blood stained and beaten one night, nose broken, jaw shattered and so high she can't feel the pain. Luke patches up what he can and listens to her ramble about the nice man and the snow and the way bone feels cracking under her fist and for the first time there's some power there. he wonders what Thalia would say, because frankly he has no idea.

She learns to fight bloody, brutal and dirty and makes it a habit. Underground rings, sometimes, for money. More often than not it's just for fun. Her body is coloured in bruises almost permanently and she wears them with pride, even as the drawn out ache in her bones makes it difficult to move or breathe. Luke's the best with a knife of anyone she'd ever seen. They have a gun in the glove compartment. There's a warrant out for their arrest in half the states in the US.

Clara wears her hair in a tangled mess or braids when she needs it out of her face. One day in the height of summer, she cuts it off so it hangs at the base of her neck and holds the remains of her waist-length hair in her hands, dead end curls. She burns them, since why not?

He's 26 when he sees Annabeth again. she's nineteen and in college, snuck into a bar with a dark haired friend of hers. He glares at Luke and Luke bares his fucking teeth on account of how dare he? Annabeth's careful and angry. She looks like a girl, with her neat hair and fresh clothes. "What happened to you?" she asks, staring at the scars and dirt and blood under his nails. He smiles something mean. "What didn't?" she asks if Clara's still alive. He says yes and nothing else. He doesn't ask about her. He gets the drink he's come for and gets back to the motel. It's earlier than he's supposed to be back and he catches Clara by surprise, she's sprawled out in the middle of the floor, a book on witchcraft open and a fire burning in an empty bin – it smells like blood and she looks like power. "I met Annabeth." he tells her, looking at her badly cut hair, face marred with scars and the brutal look she carries like a weapon. "Do you regret this?" he asks her. He should have known the answer. She grins with her tongue in her teeth. "We'd be wasted there." she says, her smile turns dark, "we'd be dead."

They never visit their mother after they run away. Once, they make it all the way to the front door before hearing her scream from within. They don't look back when they drive away. "Just us." He vows to her, eyes on the road, music blasting out of the speakers. "You and me." She agrees.

He figures out she's still a virgin when she's 22. "Why?" he asks, laughing at her just a little. His back aches. "Waiting for Prince Charming." She tells him to fuck off and smiles secretly. "Maybe I just don’t wanna condemn some poor man to murder?" she looks at him knowingly. He doesn't correct her. He thinks she's probably right.

They're both covered in tattoos. Sigils and symbols and mythology and bible quotes and each other's names over their hearts. She has angel wings across her back and a cross down her spine. Luke has her date of birth on the inside of one wrist over his vein and the date they ran away from home on the other. she has his birthday in roman numerals at the base of her neck. He says she's fucked up. she says she got it from him. Katrina and the time it stuck the city curl around her arm, partly a reminder, partly penance. She has Annabeth and Thalia's names tucked behind her ears and that's definitely remorse. There are spells inked into her skin, half of them she did to herself, a patch work body of scars and magic.

She insists they get a motel with a kitchenette that actually works over the weekend he turns thirty. He thinks she's being difficult for the sake of it (and it wouldn't be the first time) but he find out why when he wanders through the door the morning of his birthday, breakfast in hand. She's there with a single yellow balloon and a badly made, probably foul tasting cupcake in hand with a candle stuck in it. "Surprise!" she offers, smiling her 1000 watt smile he hasn't seen for years. He laughs aloud, swings her into a hug and eats every crumb of the cupcake (it tastes worse than he expected. He doesn't care)

Clara meets a med-student in California when she's twenty-six. It's the only time she's ever thought about not getting home for the night. He's gorgeous and funny and clever and when he flirts with her, he looks her in the eyes, not peaking down her bra. The scars don't seem to bother him – he has enough of his own. He's got a strange tattoo – twenty lines and an eagle and letters she can't quite read – and an unearthly quality about him that makes her think he must be like her and Luke. He doesn't speak Greek though. She loses her virginity to him in the bar's backroom (she's good with locks and he really is gorgeous). After she leaves, she never goes back to the bar and convinces Luke they should skip town early. She forces herself to forget his name.

Clara overdoses. She's in intensive care for a week.

He asks her what brought it on a hundred times, a thousand. She keeps the secret for three years. Then, an unremarkable afternoon in February as they pass through some arse-backwards town in Indiana, she sits with him on the bonnet of his car and tells him their father spoke to her. "So you OD?" he asks, just barely not shouting. She rolls her eyes, not intimidated in the slightest. "I wanted to forget him." he frowns and tells her she can't, he's their dad. "You're my dad." she counters. "And my brother and my best friend. You're my everything."

Someone hits on her in a bar in Kansas and Luke knocks their teeth in. they have to abandon the car to avoid the cops.

Luke asks her if she believes in angels when they crash in a Church back in Louisiana. She's lying on the pew, staring up at the arch ceiling above. She wants to be asleep but it won't come. Luke lies next to her, on the cold stone floor below (it's hell on his back, but he insists). She tells him she does. She says she doesn't think they're good though. "I don't know if our life now's worth a damn," he considers, "But I'm glad we never worked for the gods." she knows they can't cross the boundaries into a church, some spiritual bullshit, but she looks to the door anyway. "Me too." she takes his hands and squeezes.

Luke dies on a Monday. She finds the torn up pieces of his body in an alley in New Orleans, of all places, on Tuesday morning. On Wednesday she rips apart the monster that killed him and makes his death last. On Thursday she tracks down Annabeth – she's married, almost thirty. She did become an architect. She says goodbye. On Friday, she takes enough cocaine to stop her heart. Someone finds her in a gutter on Sunday, her hand is open like she's expecting someone to hold it. Hermes steps away from his daughter's body, her rosary in hand and takes it back to her mother, chest heavy.

Neither of them have marked graves – Annabeth tries to find them, but never can – but Hermes ensures they're buried together.

[forsakentoast]

WildFlower

*Thought you’ve seen the last of me? Me too. Life ain’t vibing well but I’m trying. Hope you enjoy a taste of what’s to come!  Thank you Din for helping me*

Hateno had provided an atmosphere of comfort, a home far from home. Whether it was watching the village children run around and play a game of chase or have a small soak off by Wild’s house, everything was just so relaxing. Even on rainy days, the heroes would often find themselves in contentment under the big tree, chatting away with Bolson and Karson. 

One of the favorite places on the list to visit was the Hateno Ancient Tech Lab. And that is where some of the heroes are currently found. 

“Man, it kind of sucks that the others are not here.”

“Well, you already know that Time and Twilight are wary of this place and prefer to not be near here if not needed, Hyrule.”

“I know, Warriors. But there are so many cool things here though! Like this!” Hyrule delicately took a small bottle that contained a blue beetle. “I bet Sky would have loved to see this little guy.”

Taking a closer look at the beetle, Warriors admired the blue color that donned its shell. It was kinda nice. Particularly the blue. Taking the bottle from Hyrule to get a better look, Warriors took one last look and put it back from where Hyrule got it. 

Despite the lab not being big, the small space still harbored so many interesting things that the heroes loved looking through. Purah even threatened to kick them out after Sky almost knocked over some vials of green liquids and some other mishaps... Something about hard to get parts and what not to make those liquids. Curiosity was always running wild when it came to pry on boxes that obviously were labeled: DO NOT TOUCH!

When Wind let curiosity win, he barely opened the box when a shoe appeared out of nowhere, narrowly missing Wind’s head by a few inches. When Wild would tell stories of Purah’s anger, especially when she found out that her diary was read, no one really believed him… Until that fateful day. Never had they deemed Purah to be so murderous to those who offended. And never did they want to. All of them were barred from entering the lab for three weeks. Once the ban was lifted, that box was no longer there. What happened to it? No one knows. But no one rose any questions. From then on, Purah and Symin made boundaries of where off-limits were at. 

“Whoa! Warriors, come look at this!”

Looking at Hyrule’s back, Warriors made his way towards the other when suddenly Hyrule turned with some weird looking thing in his hands, pointed directly at him. Warriors could not help but put his hands up and stare at Hyrule.

“Y-you should put that thing down yeah?”

“But isn’t it cool though? I wonder what it is.”

“Whatever it is, I don’t think we should touch it.”

Turning it around to show it better, Hyrule responded, “I mean… it wasn’t in the off-limits area.” 

Closing his eyes, Warriors took a deep breath and mentally told himself, ‘It’s a trap. Be the bigger person and resist.’ Over and over as a mental mantra.

“And Purah didn’t say anything to not touch it. So...”

Dammit. He was right. Purah did say they couldn’t snoop or grab anything in the off-limits zones. Technically, this thing wasn’t in that zone. Plus, she didn’t comment anything on it before leaving with Wind and Wild. So it was okay, right? Of course it was.

Stepping closer to the thing and ghosting his fingers over as if it would have burned suddenly. Finally settling on the thought that it was completely harmless, Warriors took the thing from Hyrule.

“Hmmm… I wonder what sound it would make,” Warriors said as he aimed it someplace else. “I’d say… bam bam!”

“That sounds so stupid though.”

“As if you know any better,” came the hot reply. 

Taking the thing away from Warriors, Hyrule gave it another once over. “Hmmmm… I think it would be like pew pew.”

“That sounds even more stupid than mine! Where would you even get a sound like that? You know what, I don’t even want to know. I think we should put it back. I hear footsteps approaching from outside.”

“I’m just going to put it on the table. Looks like it didn’t belong where I got it from.” Walking towards the table, Hyrule continued, “Besides, Purah won’t get mad. It still is in th- oh… I am falling.”

The worst of luck was going down as Hyrule accepted his fate to fall, Warriors reaction was slow, and Wild decided to walk right in at the exact moment the thing clattered to the ground, releasing a high pitched sound and shot out a beam of light towards the frozen boy at the door.

After time finally seemed to start once more, Hyrule lifted himself up from the floor and mumbled to himself, “At least we know the sound it makes.”

----

Hyrule did everything in his power to look anywhere but the disappointed stare Time gave. 

Purah was looking over Wild who seemed to be responding well to the impromptu physical. One could see the way Wild was holding back on rolling his eyes when Twilight would demand he did whatever task Purah had given him. 

Clutching his tunic and looking to meet the eyes of Wind, Hyrule silently begged with his eyes to have him do something, anything, to break the almost suffocating stare Time was delivering.  Warriors was let off a bit easier, but not Hyrule. He admitted his crime to Time as he felt the guilt consume him a little. But this, the stare, it was suffocating. And he knew that Time was severely disappointed. Gosh… was this how Wind, Wild, and Twilight felt? He put everything to beg Wind to get the message and was greatly relieved when the young hero got the cry for help.

“H-” Wind barely opened his mouth before Time lifted a hand, effectively silencing whatever the young lad was about to say. The stare never left Hyrule.

“No, Wind. He is in time out and he knows it.”

Drat.

“Tell me, young man,” shoulders tensed as Hyrule knew who was addressing him, “Care to tell me why you were touching the age-reversing rune?”

It was hard not to sputter when two gazes were boring straight to Hyrule's soul. "W-well… uh… curiosity?" Could it have been possible to ask Hylia to take him away that instant? Relief came in the form of Warriors interjecting and taking both gazes off of Hyrule.

"You can't really blame us though! We followed instructions and this… rune… happened to be in the zone we are permitted in."

Time scrutinized the young man before him and Purah rubbed her temples.

"It would have been common sense to have left that alone and not touch it. Even if I didn't mention anything," she quickly added. 

Off to the side, Legend laughed. "Ha! These two have none when paired together!" Legend did not miss the two glares thrown his way. He smugly basked in that.

"Shut up. You don't either."

"You happen to forget that you are the leader in our shenanigans, Legend. You just weren’t here to take part of the credit," Hyrule added smugly. 

That definitely knocked Legend down a peg. 

Instead of responding back, Legend just grumbled and spaced himself away from the two trouble makers.

All attention was turned to Wild and Twilight when a stumble and a startled sound left the mouth of the former. A small smile adorned Wild as he just slightly shook his head at the fawning Twilight did. He was not a child. He wasn’t injured. Just shot with a beam. 

“You make it seem as if I got shot with an arrow.”

“A piercing beam of light is what hit you. Let’s just get you back home.”

Rolling his eyes once more, Wild scoffed, “I’m not dying Twi. in fact, I’m all well.”

“Says the one who stumbled not to long ago.”

As the bickering between the two continued, Purah interjected. 

“Link will be fine. He does not have the immediate symptoms, but I do need to keep a close eye on him. With the rune still being incomplete, there is no telling how he would react. Do expect changes, young man.” Purah earned a groan as she ruffled Link’s hair. 

As all other heroes set off to return to Wild’s home, Hyrule stayed behind.

“I just want to apologize. I didn’t mean for the thing to go off.”

“I am upset, but curiosity seems to run rampant with the lot of you. Just be prepared for any changes.”

Slowing nodding, Hyrule bid his farewell and left to catch up with the others.

With just the two of them, Symin finally broke the silence that enveloped the room.

“He will change, Purah. Unfortunately we don’t know how far and how deep the change will be. I just pray Hylia will watch over him.”

Sighing, Purah just rubbed her temples. “Knowing how this boy gets into trouble, it is no surprise that it follows him like a shadow. I just hope that all else is not severe and crippling.” 

[norristheundying]

ALL QUESTIONS FOR HWAN AND VI PEW PEW

I’M SO, SO SORRY!!!! I HAVE ENTIRELY FORGOTTEN ABOUT THIS ASK!!

Here are the answers for Vi:

🌹 Where in the world does your OC feel most at home? – Outside the city, exploring caverns. Vi used to work at an animal reservation site, which was a much preferable environment than their abusive household.

Is there any reason why? – Vi loves animals, plus it was a sanctuary for them too.

If it’s not the place they were born, where were they born? – In one of the poorer district of Zuian’s capital city.

Is there a certain somebody that makes them feel at home where ever they may be? – Yes, their best friend, Piers uwu

What does home mean to them? – A place of freedom with company they feel safe around.

🍄 What are your OCs favourite snacks? - Dried mushroom jerky, sour jelly, crispy shrimps. Basically anything with interesting texture and taste.

Their favourite comfort food which always cheers them up when they’re down? – Probably some very unhealthy cheap snack their mum used to buy her kids to cheer them up. It reminds them of happier times.

Favourite meal to make? – Mushroom stew.

Do they enjoy baking and cooking and are they any good in the kitchen? – Vi used to cook a lot for their family from scraps, and they learned how to make good dishes from leftovers / what was available. For them this was mostly a chore, but after their sister was born they tried to make it more „fun” for her, so she would eat the dull meals with more appetite.

🍁 Where does your OC go when they need to have some time to themself? – Some hidden nook nobody would look for.

Would they ever have their own “comfort corner” filled with all the things they like? – Both at home and at the military they have a small box full of trinkets and souvenirs they like to look through alone, or with their siblings / friends.

Do they have a favourite spot outside that feels like its theirs and theirs alone? – Not really.

🍂 Does your OC enjoy hugs? – Oh yes! Vi is very touched starved and enjoy receiving hugs. Other way around they like to make sure first the other person is comfortable with hugs, and if so then they like to give big hugs.

What do they do as a show of affection for: their friends, their family, their significant other(s) or for strangers? – They are very expressive; they like to hang around their friends and family (not the dad bc fuck him), smile a lot, give hugs, make silly jokes, give compliments, lift up others’ spirit, take part in activities the others would enjoy. For strangers they simply smile, just have a vibrant energy, and speak politely.

Overall what are they like with receiving affection from others? – They love it! Can’t get enough.

🌻 What little things do they notice about people or the world around them that make them happy? – Vi is very observant; they like to see other people happy or content in everyday situations, find little joys in the dull routines. Other than that, THEY LOVE WORMS. If they are outside in the caverns, they are always on the lookout for critters (which is not hard to find, considering it’s their job to maintain the monster and beast population).

What tiny little treasures do they find in the normal every day that makes the world seem a little brighter for them? Every worm is a treasure. Seeing their loved ones happy makes them happy as well. Also geodes are pretty cool.

🌾 Describe your OC through the eyes of someone absolutely head-over-heels in love with them - Devy, I let you fill in the blank from Piers’ POV.

💐 How does your OC handle being unwell or forced to rest in bed? – Since medicine is really expensive, they didn’t always get appropriate treatment, so they just suffered through the illness until they got better, or forced to be bed bound with a bad fever, in which case medical treatment was a must. Possibly going to suffer from sequela in the near future, like other Zuians! Huzzah for health care!

Who cares for them and in what ways? – At home either their mother or brother. In the military any illnesses are treated immediately and responsibly to prevent the outbreak of epidemic, so medical wards are always accessible.

Does your OC enjoy being doted on or are they a terrible patient? – It’s a weird feeling for them to be doted on, but they don’t mind. They listen to their caretaker and don’t make a fuss whatever they’re told to do (either to stay in bed and take meds, or to just “man up”).

Reversed: is your OC good at taking care of others who are ill or in need? – Yes! Whenever someone just gets a bruise, Vi is already there with a kiddie band-aid and healing kiss.

🌿 What way does your OC show that they care without using words? – They are very good at non-verbal communication; with reassuring gestures, a smile, giving or lending small objects (ie. reserving their dessert for a friend, giving away their last blunt).

What way do others show your OC that they’re cared about without using speech? – Vi generally has the “must be protected” vibe, so people with a spine will always stand up for them and be kind to them.

🌳 What is your OC’s favourite way to relax after a stressful day? – Hug Piers, hug Sparkles, smoke a blunt.

Do they have a favourite book to curl up with? – Anything about worms.

A hobby? – Learning more about worms, duh. Tending to Sparkles is a good spare time activity. They also like to collect geodes or mushrooms.

Or do they have a nice bubble bath and have an early night to bed? – Vi would definitely enjoy a good bubble bath, it’s a luxury they can’t enjoy at home.

🌲 How deeply does your OC feel? – Very deeply. Vi is quite emotional, but hides any hurtful feelings thanks to domestic abuse.

Are they typically empathetic or do they have a hard time connecting with others in this way? - Vi is very empathetic and a good judge of character. That helps them show compassion towards those who need emotional support, or steer clear from assholes.

What are they like when offering support and comfort to someone they care for? – A bit timid and uncertain, but if the person allows then they would hug them, listen to what they have to say, let them tell about their worries, then ensure them with kind words.

🌺 What does your OC do to calm down when they’re scared or after a nightmare? Do they have any special comfort items or need to be reassured by a specific person? How do they handle this if they’re alone? – If a loved one is around, they would cuddle with them to feel safe. If they’re alone, they would just silently cry.

🌸 What are some of their favourite things and why? List as many as you can think of! – Piers (their bff who makes them feel loved), their friends (Vi values friendship), worms (funky little dirt eaters), Sparkles (it’s a slug! and it’s cute!), siblings and mother (Vi just wants the best for them), geodes and quartzite (because they look pretty!), mild drugs (yea).

🥀 How would your OC decorate a notebook or journal? – For their own research they would sketch anatomical drawings. If it’s a personal journal, probably some silly doodles of others and the environment (mostly worms).

What kind of things are written in there?  - Their notebook would be very messy, full of side notes written in a fast almost undecipherable way, but with massive amount of information. A journal would be about the highlights of their daily life.

Could you give an example of a nice entry? – “Got detention again for pranking the Cap’. I feel a little bad but I’ve gotta admit, it was pretty funny. Like, the whole soufflé just exploded!! Even the neighboring table got dirty! Anyway, it wasn’t that bad. We had to scrub plates and stuff. Had a fun time spraying each other with water! I think we will get another detention for drenching the kitchen tho.”

🌼 Who are this character’s friends and found family? How did they meet, how long have they been friends for, could they ever be something more than just friends? What do they look for in a friend or a romantic partner? – The infamous wimp squad is their found family, and they’ve known each other for hmm three or five years now? I don’t remember what I established. And of course they met in the army, each one of them are from different divisions. Kinda in love a with Piers, but I’m not going to say more!!

Questions for You!

💫What is your favourite fact about this character and why? – Vi had only one trait when I created them: a weird fascination with worms. And I wasn’t sure they would end up a creepy weirdo or something else, but eventually they became a sweet, lovable weirdo instead.

☄️ Does this OC deserve better treatment from you? Do you make them suffer just a little bit too much? Be nice to them! – I never treat my characters kindly (:

🌠 On a scale of 1 - 10 how Baby is your OC? BONUS when asking this question rate the OC yourself as see if the reply matches up!! – 10/10 big baby energy.

💦 If you as the writer could erase one traumatic event from this OC’s life what would it be and why? – Losing Piers :)

(I’ll answer the questions for Hwan another time because I’m pooped right now.)

[artyrogue]

Blind Date Gaming: Konami GB Collection Vol. 3

Boy, I am WIPED after my date last night. It all started out as it usually does -- a quick visit to PRANG for an introduction to my next potential video game suitor. Who could have guessed that I would served up 4 dates! They all came together at once under the guise of Konami GB Collection Vol. 3.

I was greeted at first by an anime schoolgirl with a huge hand and quite possibly a contender for the weirdest hairstyles I've seen in a while. What is that, a grass-inspired mohawk laid over top a normal haircut?

Is this what the cows that make cowlicks eat?

What happened next was an eventful set of speed dates. This onslaught left me with no down time, thus the exhaustion. However, I did end up meeting some nice games. I'll speed through them each quick-like to keep this from being overly long. Luckily each of the games are pretty short (as expected from Game Boy games)!

First up is Gradius II! Now, I've never actually played a Gradius game, so I can't say if this is a port, some reconfigured version of Gradius II, or what. What I CAN say is that it has tight controls, beautiful graphics, interesting bosses, and some fun gameplay.

Looks like a rocky magic 8 ball

You start off hangin' out with what I assume are your dad and mom starships. Aww, family time! Soon, however, someone decks your old man and blasts your momma fulla lasers. Obviously disturbed, you fly forward and get chased by the perpetrator through a buncha rocks until you escape.

Good thing this guy doesn't feel like firing at me for whatever reason

...Except you kind of don't? You end up going through a bunch of planetary landscapes, shootin' dudes and grabbin' powerups that let you fire lasers and stuff. Pew pew! You eventually get captured, break out, and summarily fly through a ship, an asteroid belt, and I think some alien's guts? I'm not sure; I never went to med school for interplanetary digestive systems. Bosses fight you at every turn, and they are so sweet. Like, I don't always know what I'm attacking, but it just looks so cool that I really don't care!

Ever want to fight a kneeling, fanged alien stuck in a wall with detachable mouthy-brains? Yeah, well now you do, obviously!

In the end you find the enemy ship that assassinated your nuclear family with nuclear weapons, commit your own brand of galactic revenge, and I assume go on with your day in a half-arsed way, never addressing the journey you just went through for fear of sparking up some majorly weird PTSD.

Next up is some Castlevania game! It claims to be Castlevania II, but don't think it's Simon's Quest since it doesn't have slow-scrolling text boxes telling me that night is a poor time to explore the world when suffering from a magical adversary's angry sentiments. Instead, you just go about whippin' junk. Alright, I can be a lion tamer for the undead.

Why do cultists always gotta wear hoods? Can't they wear like a polo and some comfy slacks?

So in this installment, you can apparently shoot fireballs from a fully-upgraded whip, so it's instantly MUCH easier than most Castelvania games. The list of enemies is kind of lacking, but it was enough to feel competent. The level design was pretty spot-on, which is par for the course, though for some reason this game has a love affair with ropes? They're EVERYWHERE, but there's enough variation in the levels to give them pass. For example, some areas have auto-directional-pulling ropes, some ropes are spider webs made by enemies, some require quick sliding to avoid obstacles, etc.

You gotta wonder, does the guy living here have to go through all these traps every day just to get his mail? And how does he carry groceries back to his (probably rope-decorated) kitchen?

The boss fights were definitely memorable. Some of their designs were flat-out brilliant, and they were all pretty fun! Your sub-weapons weren't really that useful here, but that's fine. The bosses, too, were made a little easier with the projectile whip, but the designers struck a good balance between fun and hard.

These guys shoot out vertebrae in an arc, transferring them from one head to the other. I don't have a quip here, it was just a stupidly awesome designed boss that I wanted to gush about for a bit!

Well, perhaps I spoke too soon. The bosses were all fun except for the last 3 in the game. Allow me to whine and complain about them for a bit, if you will! The first was a tunneling snake on a forced scrolling screen that made you take damage unless you memorized where he was going to surface next (I HATE memorization-by-death gameplay). The next was a fellow Belmont who would relentlessly whip the crap outta you, throw swords all over the screen, and would probably be nigh impossible if I didn't have Holy Water. The final was Dracula, who I suppose gets a pass for being hard since he was the final boss...but he, too, was pretty much a memorization-by-death fight, too. The dude has 6 orbs revolving around him that spread out, essentially making 85% of the screen unsafe. Unless you know the specific spot to crouch down for the given position he's in, you get hurt, and you get hurt pretty badly. Oh, and you can really only hit him once per attack, so you'd better learn the safe spots for all 8 of his attack spots and hope you can hurt him and get into your safe position before taking damage.

ouch ouch ouch OUCH

In the end, it was overall a pretty fun time. Konami definitely knows how to make a good sidescrolling action game, which is probably why they're half of the name of the 'Metroidvania' genre. Go team Belmont!

Next up: Yie Ar Kung~Fu! What is this? I've never heard of it. It's a simple fighting game where you face off against 5 fighters, each with their own weapons and special moves. You play as a normal weaponless guy who can only kick and punch, because that's fair? Regardless, you must persevere through 4 rounds of these 5 fights, each time with your foes getting slightly harder.

Mmyep, this is fair.

My trademark fighting game strategy of sweeping seems to work for the most part, though as the difficulty ramps up, the other fighters move with ridiculous speed between attacks. Eventually, the game just becomes 100% about approaching a foe with more range than you, which obviously is the main focus of fighting games. What's that? Combos? Pffft, those are lame, just have the enemies fly across the ring like a sugar-high Jack Russel Terrier.

So this guy's power is to propel himself like a missile and look like an absolute goon while doing so

There's also a mini-game where you hit things thrown at you, but like they show up so quickly and your animation speed is so slow that it's impossible to do very well. It was an okay game overall, though, but I can sort of see why it isn't as well-known as Gradius or Castlevania.

Last game: Antarctic Adventure! It's a penguin-based racing game! I think? Does this count as a racing game? Well, you race against the clock, so sure. You gotta move at top speed through an icy wasteland, avoiding sea lions and holes in the ice.

I like how this sea lion looks after getting plastered in the face by a penguin moving at ~120 km/hr. Is he in shock? Is he alive? Should I notify his next of kin?

The lore is actually pretty deep in this game. The world has fallen into ruin due to global warming, and the glacier sheets on Antarctica are slowly melting away. As a penguin trained in espionage and terrorism, you must travel to the different embassies that many countries have propped up in an attempt to stake a claim in possibly the only livable area in the near future.

The french are planning to build replicas of their famous landmarks here, like the Ice-full Tower and Arctic de Triomphe.

You're not exactly racing as much as you are keeping ahead of the authorities pursuing you for planting bombs in the embassies. If you successfully plant your payloads in all of the embassies across all of Antarctica, you destroy their chances of bringing cultural imperialism to the local wildlife. Your customs are at stake! You must cast your empathy aside for the greater good of penguin-kind!

Also, you can sometimes turn into a helicopter? Not sure what that was about.

Okay, okay, yeah, I may have embellished a bit there. No, it's not as cool as that. You just run from one place to the next and heck if I'll ever find out why miscellaneous countries happen to have little castles in a barren arctic wasteland. People's taxes at work, I guess!

Oh right, there's also a fifth option on the main menu. It's Ms. O.C. Anime Girl explaining things about the games to you. I can't read anything she's saying, though, so I can only imagine the shady koala statue in the back has some relevance to her dialogue.

So that ends an exhausting series of dates. Whew! Glad you toughed it out with me. As I've completed all of the games this time, I didn't think another date was warranted. However, Gradius and Castlevania were fun enough to say that sure, I guess, it's worth going on another date in the future. Maybe it'd be better to find the original games, though, instead of this particular port. I can only assume the extra screen real estate, better sound effects, and greater ROM size would only enhance their experiences. And speaking of experiences, grab a Sprite of Passage from the jar over there on your way out! It's mint-flavored and can double as a water purification tab if you're ever stuck somewhere in the wilderness!

Man, I would kill to watch a skeleton ballet

[theentiregdtime]

macdennis fluff plz - Mac has a nightmare and has to sleep with Dennis for the night (obviously) and has a story read to him maybe whist cuddling?

Mac’s having that dream again.

He’s in a recurring nightmare and he knows it’s anightmare, but he doesn’t know how to wake up. He’s not strong enough to stopit from playing out.

The room is on fire. It’s on fire and he’s sitting on thesofa beside his mom, nursing a road-rashed knee. He’s maybe eight or nine or ten-he doesn’t know, but he knows he doesn’t feel like a kid at all anymore. Hetries to tell his mom he loves her and she chokes on her cigarette, coughs likeshe’s dying, asks him why he hasn’t put the groceries away. He tries to tellher again, that he loves her, and she nags him to shut up and take the dog out,clean the garbage off the lawn, fix the leak in the bathroom- because his dadisn’t around anymore and that’s his job now. She doesn’t love him, but sheneeds him, and that’s as good as it’s going to get.

The fire envelops him, burning a hole through the floor,and suddenly he’s sitting across from his father, divided by a pane of glass,phone pressed to his ear. He’s maybe fifteen or sixteen, but he doesn’t feellike a teenager. The prison is in flames and there’s nobody else in the roombut the two of them, and before he can stop it, he’s telling his dad he loveshim through the receiver. He responds like he didn’t hear it, tells him heneeds to get a message to a friend of his on the outside, and that he has tolisten carefully to every word he says, because he doesn’t have a lot of time-not one of those words is “I love you, too” or anything close. This is his jobnow and it doesn’t matter if he loves him, because he needs him, and that’s asgood as it gets.

The phone melts and the glass splinters and everythingdrips away until Mac is sitting in the pews of his church, all alone, hands claspedtogether and telling God that he loves him and pleading for a response, a sign,any kind of answer. He knows he’s not supposed to ask for an answer, he’s notsupposed to expect a reward- that’s what the church has taught him all hislife. He’s supposed to love unconditionally and just know that he’s loved back,to trust it, and that’s supposed to be good enough, that’s as good as it gets.He knows it would be blasphemous to admit out loud that it’s never actuallyfelt like enough, that he wants to hear it back from someone, anyone. He asksfor a reply out loud and it’s too late to stop it, the flames are rising upfrom underneath the pews, wrapping around his legs, scorching him until a hand with long, sharp talons rises up and grabs him by the arm to yank him downinto hell.

The flames die down, but don’t disappear, and he’s on theother side of the bar with Dennis’ fingers in his arm. Suddenly he’s an adult- he’salways felt like an adult, he’s always had to be, but now he’s really one- notjust mentally, but physically. He doesn’t know why, but he feels like a burden,he feels weaker than he’s ever felt. It’s so fucking hot and Dennis isignoring the fire, and Mac tries to tell him that he loves him, but before heeven finishes saying it, Dennis is going on about how annoying it is to livewith him and how loud he snores and how he never does the laundry and how heleaves a mess everywhere he goes and how much he hates him. But Dennis needshim, he needs him to make his coffee in the morning and bring him pills for hisheadaches and remind him to eat and put a blanket over him when he falls asleepon the couch- he needs him, and he doesn’t know he needs him, but he does, andthat’s as good as it’s ever going to get. He tries to reach out and touch him,but his skin is peeling off, his flesh is molting, and everything around him isconsumed by fire.

Mac shoots up in bed, hyperventilating and clutching at thesheets.

He’s still registering what’s happening, but he knows heneeds to steady himself. He needs to find something to anchor onto, somethingto remind him he’s awake and he’s safe and he isn’t burning.

The room is dark- so dark he isn’t sure it is hisroom- and his heart is pounding so loud it seems like it’s coming from thewalls. His head feels hot and his ears are ringing, and all he knows to do isknead the blanket in his hands until the haze starts to clear.

It takes a few minutes, but eventually, Mac’s panting slowsdown and his heart stops beating so rapidly. The anxious knot in his stomach doesn’t untwist, though. He feels small and the room feels small and hedoesn’t know how to fix it when he’s alone like this.

He misses when he and Dennis were sleeping in the same bed,and he could roll over and tap him on the nose and tell him all about his baddreams- even if there were four of them crammed onto the same mattress back in those days.

Mac’s had this nightmare before, lots of times, but Dennishas never been in it. Some nights, someone out of the ordinary- Carmen orCharlie or one of his estranged cousins- would make an appearance, but… it wasnever Dennis. He never used to worry that he was a burden to him, that he madehis life worse, that he didn’t love him with the fury of a thousand suns orwhatever- but that was before things got all weird between them.

He tries to stay put, but he knows the only thing that’sgoing to soothe his anxiety is to go talk to Dennis and get some reassurancethat everything is fine. But it’s the middle of the night, and he shouldreally forget it and go back to bed, but he can’t sleep and his lungsare still shaky and he feels strange in his own skin.

Before he can tell himself he definitely shouldn’t gowake Dennis up, Mac is shuffling off the bed and making his way out into theliving room.

——---

Dennis is busy rifling through a box of old mementos, staring at photographs that feel like they were taken centuries ago andtrying to convince himself he hasn’t peaked yet, when he hears the door open.

“Why’re the lights on, man?”

He slams the yearbook he’s holding shut- drops it back inwith the rest of the bygone, dust-sheathed crap- and glances up at Mac, who’sjust waltzed right in for some reason. What business of his is it if he choosesto have the lights on at this hour? It is his room, damn it.

Dennis rolls his teeth over his lips before he speaks.

“What, uh…” he stumbles softly. “What’s up?”

Instead of answering, Mac shuts the door behind him and sitson the edge of the bed. He’s facing the wall, but just by watching the waythe muscles in his back move, just from hearing the hitching of his breath, Dennis cantell something is wrong. He doesn’t know what to say, though, because hedoesn’t know what the problem is- so he simply sits there and listens to thesound.

“Can I just,” Mac says and sounds so far away, “stay here…for a little while?”

Dennis has known Mac for more than twenty years now, and heknows him well enough to recognize when his anxiety is off the shits. But it’sbeen a long time, and Mac isn’t so helpless anymore. He’s a lot biggerthan he used to be. He’s a lot stronger. He’s gotten himself together in waysDennis can’t even begin to process, and only knows to react to with anger.

Right now, though, he looks kind of small again.

Slowly, but not at all hesitant, Dennis reaches out andplaces a hand on Mac’s shoulder blade. He presses his palm against himhard and digs his fingers into his shirt, reminding him that he’s there, buthis hand looks so little and fragile compared to the muscles in Mac’s back, andthings are so different than they used to be. He knew how to deal with thisbefore, and in turn, Mac knew how to handle him when he had his episodes, butnow…

Dennis isn’t so sure who they are or how they fit aroundeach other anymore.

He sinks his hand into Mac harder, because it’s all he knows.

“Mac-”

“It’s cool… I’m fine.” He doesn’t sound fine, hesounds fucking awful. “I don’t wanna bother you.”

“Well, you sort of already barged in, so…”

Dennis feels him shudder underneath his fingers andknows right away that he’s said the wrong thing.

“Fuck, I’m sorry, man,” Mac whimpers.

“I was just,” -he clears his throat- “just joking.”

That sounds so stupid and shitty out loud.

Dennis slips his hand off of Mac and returns to the cardboardbox in his lap, trying to ignore his presence and give him the space he soclearly wants. He rifles through Polaroids and scrap papers and notes andthings he’s not sure why he still has, but that make him feel so disconnectedfrom who he used to be, like a stranger in his own body.

He and Mac and Charlie and Dee… they were all so small andmessy and confused and young, but they had each other and that madeeverything make sense. Now, Dennis has been away from them for a year, and hefeels smaller and messier and more confused than he’s ever felt- but he doesn’tfeel young. He feels so, so old. He feels like so much time has gone by that hecan’t recapture, so much potential has slipped through his hands, so many morewrinkles have made a home on his face, and he’s losing all his chances and losinghis friends and losing Mac.

It’s getting harder and harder to convince himself he’sstill got charisma and looks, that women still want him, that everyone stilllooks up to him, that he’s still got time to figure his life out and be a realperson. He feels like he’s on the far side of a hill, but when he looks aroundat his accomplishments, they’re no more than they were ten years ago or twentyyears ago or… well, ever. He feels like this is as good as his life is going toget.

Mac’s panting starts to pick up again, and Dennis sets hispapers down and quirks an eyebrow at him. He opens his mouth to ask what’swrong, but before he can say anything, Mac is getting up off the bed.

“Wait, Mac, goddamn it, just-”

Dennis leans over to wrap his fingers around his arm and tughim back down.

“I don’t wanna bug you-”

“You’re not- I’m just…” -he realizes he’s snapping andlowers his voice- “going through some old shit.”

Mac glances at him over his shoulder, and his eyes are allglassy and distant, like he’s there, but he’s not really there, because he’sall up in his own fucking head.

“What’s all that stuff?” he mumbles.

With the distraction of Mac’s hyperventilating gone, Dennis suddenlyrealizes how ridiculous this must look. What sort of patheticman sits in bed and sorts through his forgotten junk from high school at twoin the morning?

“Here,” Dennis says rather than explaining, passing the box tohim.

Mac doesn’t question it- likely because he’s still too fuzzyto make fun of him- and starts digging. He flips through their yearbook and stopsto chuckle at a couple of stupid pictures while Dennis observes him in silence.Eventually, his muscles soften and his breath planes out as the tensionin his body unwinds.

A quiet sense of relief washes over Dennis as he watches Macreturn to reality.

That is, until he snorts and waves a tattered green notebookin his face.

“Bro, is this your diary?”

“It is not-” Dennis snatches it in his talons like abird scooping up a field mouse. “It is a journal, Mac. A boyish sort ofjournal, the kind young men keep!”

Mac rolls his eyes and huffs, and part of Dennis is thankfulhe’s acting like himself again, but the other part of him wants to shove himright off the edge of the bed.

“Well, can I read it?” he pesters.

Dennis clutches the dia- journal to his chest. “Absolutelynot.”

“Why not?”

“It’s personal.”

“What are you afraid of-”

“I am not afraid-”

“Then let me see it, dude!”

With a deep breath, in and out, Dennis takes a long momentto contemplate the situation. He certainly can’t hand the notebook over to Mac,it would be embarrassing- not because it’s a diary, but because he wasnowhere near the stallion he is today when he wrote it. To know of hisconquests now and look back on this… it would seem ridiculous in comparison.

Besides, there’s… there’s a lot of private stuff in there. Alot of stuff about his parents and Dee and Ms. Klinsky and… a lot of stuffabout Mac.

He comes up with a compromise.

“I will read you a couple of pages…” Dennis agrees, carefully,like he’s handling a spooked horse, “if you settle down.”

Mac zips his mouth shut, actually makes the motion with hishand like he’s a damned toddler, and cozies against the pillows.

He clears his throat and flips through ten or so pages, thefirst of which he’s dedicated and signed for some reason. Clearly, he assumed hisbelongings would be worth money at this point. The next few are allintroductory- no doubt describing himself as a lost, misunderstood soul wisebeyond his years and far too superior for the highs and lows of high school-which he was, but there’s no need to recount it aloud.

“All right, here we go.” Dennis zeroes in on an entry,prodding at it with his finger. “I skipped algebra today and got high withMac and Charlie. Is it really skipping, though, if you never intended to go?And who’s to say that living in the moment is less important than math? Ithink, if you show up to class every day, you’re skipping life.”

Mac snorts with laughter. “Who talks like that?”

“I thought it was profound, Mac, but if you’re going tointerrupt-”

“No, no, Dennis, I’m sorry!” he whines. “I won’t sayanything.”

Dennis pretends not to notice him scooting closer as he readson.

“Charlie came up with an idea for something he calledfinger-bread, but I think it was essentially just a bagel. He tried to do ademonstration and caught my shirt on fire. The whole sleeve burned before wecould put it out. He has no idea how much that shirt cost. Mac let meborrow his hoodie for the rest of the day, but it smelled like a pickup truck andthere was ash in the pockets. It was humiliating.”

“You never gave that back,” Mac chimes in.

“I’m certain I did,” Dennis lies through his teeth, rememberingall the nights he spent tucked away in it, using it as a pillow, throwing itover him like a blanket- because things were shitty at home and Mac was acomfort, because it smelled like cigarettes and gasoline, but cigarettes andgasoline smelled like Mac, so it didn’t bother him, “and if I didn’t, it’sbecause I burned the thing. It was absolutely repulsive. I mean, had you everwashed it?”

“You don’t wash jackets, Den. They don’t touch your skin.”

“It’s not about the skin, Mac, it’s-”

Dennis sighs and goes back to hunting for the next suitable entry. “Wouldyou be quiet?”

He skips the all-too-personal shit and reads the lighterpages, relating his teenage prose about staying home to take care of Dee whenshe had the flu, going to the movies with Schmitty and getting bored because hedidn’t want to talk in the theater, pointing out the flaws in his Englishteacher’s lecture and somehow ending up with detention, getting rejectedby a few potential homecoming dates… typical high school days. Mac interruptswith a laugh or a passing comment now and then- “I remember that” or“You were so lame!” or “I wonder what she’s doing now”, and his voicegets louder and more comfortable each time.

It all seems a bit trivial in hindsight (except for the bit abouthis English teacher, Dennis is still outraged by that), but it wasall big enough back then that he felt the need to write it out as soon as hegot home. He wishes he could go back to when getting high and listening toCharlie talk about some strange invention and obsessing over girls were the majorevents in his life.

Even a few years ago, things were still like that- but it’sall been so complicated lately…

Dennis feels Mac shuffle uncomfortably against his shoulderand wraps an arm around him, only because it’s irritating to have his headdigging into his arm. Absentmindedly, he works his fingers into the fabric ofMac’s sweatshirt as he flips the page.

“Dear dia-” He clears his throat and skips that line,and if Mac notices, he doesn’t say anything. “I have a problem. It’s aboutMac- of course it is.” Mac lets out a short grunt, but doesn’t complainlike Dennis expects him to, so he continues. “He’s pretty cool for a weeddealer. Actually, I think he’s probably my best friend.” Charlie was hisbest friend, too, though, and Schmitty was in the mix somewhere, as well… sothat’s not really as sappy as teenage Dennis made it sound. It didn’t mean muchof anything, really. “Sometimes when we hang out, just the two of us, it’slike everything else in the worlds sucks, but we’re going to be okay.”

Ah, shit.

Dennis doesn’t know why he keeps reading- it’s like tyinghis own noose tighter with every word- but he’s searching desperately for thepart where he finally complains about Mac and salvages this sentimental backwash.

“He brought over some whiskey he swiped from his dad’s oldshit and we got wasted last night, and I almost messed up really bad. We weresitting on the floor and it got quiet and I tried to…”

His throat closes up like he’s gone underwater, and hestops reading, but it’s too late to avoid it, because he’s already started tosay it. It’s like he’s balancing on the edge of a cliff, and if he breathesout, he’s going to topple one way or the other- and he doesn’t know which wayhe’s going to fall.

I tried to kiss him and it was totally stupid, but Ididn’t know how else to tell him I love him.

Dennis’ fingernails crinkle the edges of the page.

He needs to say something, anything. He needs to look over.He needs to come up with an explanation for himself before he’s completelymortified.

He stammers, “I’m- uh- it’s hard to read- the pencil-”

Mac snores thunderously in his ear and, somehow, it’s themost relieving sound Dennis has ever heard.

Phew.

Briefly, he considers stowing the journal away again-but he figures he’s gotten his fill of it, and it’s humiliating, anyhow- so hetosses it in the garbage can beside the bed. Good riddance.

Dennis glances over at what’s essentially a half-ton rhinosleeping against his shoulder, listens to his savage snoring, watches his eyelidstwitch, feels the rise and fall of his breathing against his hand. I don’tknow how else to tell him I love him echoes in his head, and he wants topretend that’s long-forgotten nonsense from his angsty teenage years, but heknows what he was trying to say.

He has trouble expressing his feelings like that. With Dee,it always bursts out of him at the worst times- and she always shuts him down.With his mother, I love you was such a habitual phrase that it lost itsmeaning eventually. With every woman he’s ever been with, it’s been an act,part of a system to get them into bed with him as easily as possible.

Dennis doesn’t know how to tell people what they mean to himuntil it’s too late. He doesn’t know how to talk about his feelings unless hecan write them off as part of some elaborate hoax.

Mac, on the other hand, simply blurts out whatever he’sthinking or feeling, all the time, constantly. It’s annoying, but Dennis sort of enviesit, though he’ll never admit to that. It’s so easy for Mac to love people so loudly. Dennis doesn’t think anyone’s ever loved himback, though.

At least, Mac doesn’t think anyone’s ever loved him back.

He sighs to himself and slips his arm free, getting up toturn off the light. On his way back to bed, he tosses a throw blanket over Mac.It’s a struggle to yank the covers out from under his elephant body, but Dennismanages to wriggle into them. He could wake Mac up and kick him out, or atleast shove at him to roll over further, but… it’s simply not worth thestruggle.

It’s good that he forgot about that night. It’s good that heburied it. It’ll be gone, again, in a week tops- stuffed deep down inside ofhim like everything else. He reminds himself that he was probably justplastered, that he might have confused Mac with someone else- and pretends hedoesn’t remember the way their legs brushed together as they sat on the carpet,the smell of cigarettes and whiskey on Mac’s lips every time he laughed, theway his hoodie felt wrapped around him, how everything- for one short moment,the kind of moment they play Air Supply songs over in the movies- everythingwas just Mac.

He gets weird on whiskey, Dennis reminds himself. He wasyoung and confused and whipping through puberty like a tornado. He would havedone the same with anyone. It meant nothing then and it means nothing now.

… He’s not sure who he’s arguing with.

Rolling to his other side, he waits for his eyes to adjustand watches Mac sleep. His sloppy, uncomfortable position doesn’t seem tobother him any, and his mouth has dropped open so his snoring can reallyecho through the room.

He doesn’t know what Mac was so anxious about earlier, buthe seems all right now- if only because he’s passed out. It was probably justsome stupid, shitty nightmare.

Dennis reaches out and pulls the blanket up around Mac’sshoulder to keep him from having another one.

Before he drifts off to sleep, he thinks that, maybe, this isn’tas good as it gets. Maybe there’s still one thing left in his future.

[literallyusuk]

Just For Us (USUK)

Summary: England. 76 Chambers Street. 6:30. The door will say ‘closed for renovation’ but it’s open. Meet me inside? A

Notes: HEY @diurnaldays HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!! I really hope you enjoy this!!

Warnings: None

England

An innocent note lay on his briefcase when he came back from lunch. Rather than handwritten, the word seemed to have been typed on a typewriter. England took the paper into his hands carefully and could make out a similarly typed message inside. In the interest of safety, he examined the paper first to make sure there was no residue or anything off about it before opening it up.

76 Chambers Street. 6:30. The door will say ‘closed for renovation’ but it’s open. Meet me inside?

A

The other nations had slowly filed in while he was reading, and England looked up to catch America’s eye.

His boyfriend winked.

England sighed and tilted his head down to hide a small smile. That man. Always trying to be dramatic or mysterious, as if his entire existence was part of some movie. But England’s curiosity had been sufficiently piqued.

The note was tucked away into his briefcase for the rest of the day’s meetings, but England kept thinking about it. It wasn’t his first time in the city so he relatively knew where Chambers Street was, but his mind couldn’t conjure up any specific buildings of interest.

He made eye contact with America a few more times, but other than a bright smile or another wink, the bubbly nation didn’t give any indication that something was going on.

When he tried to grab America’s arm at the end of the work day, America just sidestepped him and laughed as he ran down the hall.

“You-!” But England just allowed his arm to fall back to his side.

“He’s being weird again?” Canada asked, stopping next to him and watching America tripping out of the building along with England.

“He has something planned.”

Canada nodded solemnly. “In case this is it for you, thanks for everything.”

England just snorted. “You’re very welcome.”

“By the way, Alfred keeps stealing cat treats from your house for Hero.”

“Bastard,” England murmured fondly. “In any case, see you tomorrow.”

“Or not,” Canada said with a cheeky grin.

“Or not.” England’s lips quirked up. He nodded to the other man and started down the hall.

He still had over two hours before he had to be at the agreed spot, so he stopped at a nearby restaurant for a quick meal before heading back to his hotel for a shower and a change of clothes. Since he wasn’t sure what exactly was going on, he settled for dark skinny jeans, a deep forest green dress shirt, and a steel grey vest along with his work shoes.

76 Chambers Street turned out to be a tiny stone chapel, squeezed in between two more modern buildings that absolutely dwarfed it. As promised, there was a sign on the door that proclaimed the building closed for renovations, but it opened easily under England’s hand.

The lights were off, but the interior was lit up with hundreds of small candles. It gave the place an even older air, a hush that draped itself over England’s shoulders and lungs like a veil.

A solitary figure sat in the first row of pews on the left side, golden hair glinting faintly in the light.

“This had better not be a recreation of a horror movie,” England murmured as he started down the aisle.

“It’s not,” America replied softly. Solemnly. He stood up and turned to face England, a small smile on his lips. He wore dark grey fitted slacks and a black sweater over a navy dress shirt. “Hey, we kind of match.”

“Do we?” England examined the two of them as he came to a halt beside him.

“Yeah. Grey and black and you’re in your green and I’ve got my blue.”

“I suppose so. Why are we here?”

America kissed him instead of replying right away. Broad hands cupped England’s face, cradled it and turned it just so.

“This is one of my favourite places,” America said when he pulled away. His hands dropped to England’s neck, then shoulders, then finally to his own sides. He half-turned away, looking around. “I come here a lot. No one else really does, so a lot of the time I have it to myself. I’ve slept here a few times, but usually I just talk for a while.”

“I didn’t take you for being so religious anymore.”

“I’m not. I don’t talk to anyone in particular, but there’s just something…something here that makes it easy to.” He laughed. “Or maybe not. I don’t know, but I just tend to come here when I need to.” He took in a deep breath and released it slowly.

England noticed for the first time the slightest of trembles in his shoulders. “Are you alright?”

“I’m fine. Just…a little nervous, I guess.”

“Why are you nervous?” England’s eyebrows knitted together and he reached for one of America’s hands. “Alfred, what’s wrong?”

America slipped the hand free and put both of them in his pockets. “I’m thinking you’re gonna think this is silly. Or stupid.”

“I won’t.”

“You don’t even know what it is yet.”

“Alfred, when have I ever actually, genuinely thought your thoughts were stupid? And wars don’t count. I’m not going to just dismiss whatever you have to say. We know that doesn’t work.”

“I know.”

This time, England stepped forward so they were toe to toe and tilted America’s head down for a brief kiss. “Now tell me what’s up,” he said when he moved back.

America nodded. He withdrew something from his pocket; a small black box, and knelt onto one knee. “Arthur,” he said softly. “Will you marry me?”

The breath rushed out of England’s lungs. He had been proposed to many times over the centuries, but never did his heart beat so wildly as when America did it. His lips curved up in a sad smile and he closed his eyes as he shook his head. How many times had they been through this? “I can’t. You know I can’t-”

“I know.” America was smiling too as he climbed to his feet again. “But would you? If you could?”

“In a heartbeat, my dear.”

“Then would you- Would you accept this ring anyway?”

England’s eyes flew open. This was a deviation from their script. “What?”

“Like.” America shrugged and opened the box to reveal two gold bands inside. “It won’t mean anything to the rest of the world. But it can be just for us? Just so we- Just so we know if we could…” He looked down. “We’re not human and things get so weird and hurt so much so much of the time, but my love for you will never change, England. And I don’t doubt that you love me, of course I don’t, but I’m just thinking it might be nice to just…have a more physical reminder.”

England swallowed. He didn’t trust himself to speak quite yet, so he simply stepped forward and nodded.

“Really?” America’s face lit up.

“I don’t think that’s silly at all,” England whispered thickly.

“Can I- Can I put it on you?”

“Well surely you don’t expect me to put it on myself.”

America let out a laugh at that and slipped the smaller of the rings from the box’s velvet lining. He took hold of England’s proffered hand and lifted it to his lips before sliding the ring onto the ring finger. It was a perfect fit.

England’s breath caught in his throat again as he watched the band glittering in the soft candlelight, and he held it up closer to his face. Just a simple gold ring, so unassuming, but America had given it to him and so it meant the world.

“Let me put yours on too?” he asked after a moment, drawing his gaze back to America and the ring that still sat in the box.

America smiled so brightly he could have powered a city. “Please do.”

England plucked the ring out and slid it into place with little fanfare, but once the band was on America’s finger, he brought it to his cheek. His eyes closed as he leaned into that roughened palm, and he smiled as he kissed along it until he reached the ring. The metal was cool against his lips.

“I have.” America stopped and wet his lips, then tried again. “I have matching chains back at my house. So you can wear it around your neck if you can’t have it on your hand.”

“You’ve thought of everything, haven’t you?” England asked, the smile on his face growing as he glanced up at the other man from under his lashes.

“I was determined to marry you some way or another this time,” America said with a sheepish grin.

England laughed. “Your persistence is endearing this time.”

“This time!” America squawked, but he was still grinning.

“This time,” England agreed. He looked around again, at the chapel and the candles and the rings on their fingers. His chest swelled, and he abruptly pulled America into a hug.

“England?” America asked, wrapping his arms around England’s waist in return.

“You’re…incredulous. I love you.”

“I love you too.” The taller nation dropped a kiss into England’s hair.

They stood there for a moment, England’s head resting on America’s shoulder. Then, England glanced up at him again. “Since this is some sort of an engagement and renegade wedding all rolled into one, should we have a first dance?”

“Hell yeah.”

“Alfred, you’re in a sacred place!” England admonished, but he hid a snicker into America’s sweater.

“Yeah, yeah, it’s fine. Hang on.” Trying not to jostle England around too much, America fished his phone out of his pocket and searched up a song on YouTube. He soon set it down on the pews and pulled England into a more proper dancing position as Peter Gabriel’s version of ‘The Book of Love’ started playing from the speakers. “I always think of us when I hear this,” he whispered.

England’s eyes softened, then dampened as they swayed. “So do I.”

Even though the music was playing out of a phone, the chapel’s acoustics did a good job of bouncing the sound all throughout the space. America squeezed his hand and leaned his head against England’s. He led England in a slow dance up and then back down the aisle, twirling dipping him in front of the altar and singing quietly into his ear.

England joined him for the last verse.

“And I, I love it when you give me things.

And you, you ought to give me wedding rings.

You ought to give me wedding rings…”

He buried his head into America’s shoulder once more as the music faded away, his fingers gripping onto his lover’s – his husband’s – sweater tightly.

“Are you crying?” America asked softly.

“No,” came the wobbly reply.

“Okay.” America hid a smile in England’s hair and pressed a few more kisses into the silky strands. He was content to stand there and just hold England until the older nation had composed himself again. He also tactfully ignored the damp spot on his shoulder, and refrained from commenting on England’s red cheeks.

“Well,” England said, sniffing rather harshly. “I do believe that was the shortest wedding I’ve ever attended.”

“The best though, right?”

“Yes. The very best.”

America suddenly grinned. “Should we move onto the wedding night?” he asked, waggling his eyebrows.

England swatted his arm. “Sod. At least dine me first.”

“You’re in luck; I made us dinner reservations for eight just a few blocks away. You’ll love the place.”

“We still have some time before then,” England said, glancing down at his watch. “What shall we do until then?”

America reached for his phone. “Dance?”

England smiled and nodded, reaching for it. “Let me pick a song.”

Music filled the air again as they danced and twirled, the golden bands shimmering on their fingers, the candlelight their only witness.

[bodega-daydream]

November 22, 2019

It started out as kind of a nice dream. I was in a class and in the class there was an assignment to bake the best pie, and the old man teacher would rate them. I had a pie but for some reason didnt think its was worth having him rate it even though it looked pretty good. Finally at the end I was made the snap decision to have him rate my pie, but I had apparently blended it up into this really sugary red slushy drink. He tasted it anyway but couldnt really rate it because he couldnt see the crust. fine, whatever. I was then talking to people from school when Josh from BP came up and said that he, Tony, and two other BP workers were going to be on 8 out of 10 Cats and I was sooo excited to know someone who would be on the show for me to watch. Cut to later- I'm at the lake down the street from my house. I was looking through videos on my laptop and was showing Michael to see if he remembered them. Undetermined, but they involved me with shorter hair and a GIANT frog. I think this was based off my frog stuffed animal, but it was real in this video and I had taken him to the lake for a swim. I had had him for years and wondered how long he'd last and then the frog was like I haven't laid my egg yet so pretty much he couldnt die until he laid his one giant egg? whatever. Then I was cold and on the sand and I think we were heading back up to my house. It was dusk. We heard a scream from the neighboring property. There were already a few people over there that seemed to be looking for the source. It sounded like a little girl. I shouted to ask if anyone needed help. But they couldn't find anything. Toward to the top of the beach now, and at night, we saw a bunch of children in this fenced in area. IRL This woman is a swim coach, so it wouldn't be insane for her to have kids at her house, so in the dream, I didn't think anything of this. Yet. The longer you observed the kids, they were kind of running wild in this fenced in area. Then I noticed that one of the kids has smashed his head on a rock and his head was covered in blood. But I think it was suspicious circumstances because the cop lights were flashing in the background through the trees. Though no medical help was there yet. Starting that moment, I had been hanging out with Lewis who showed his EMT badge while walking over. I saw through all of the mess him trying to help out a different kid (for some reason no the kid with the giant hole in his head from the rock lol) but he didn't have any of his supplies with him (because we was just hangin out). At this, I ran over because I had a bunch of stuff that could help. Apparently I just keep a very make shift first aid kit on my person. Though when I got over there, this one kid we were helping looked absolutely fine but apparently had these invisible type of burning sensation on his cheeks. I looked into my bag but it was like kind of useless lol had a small bottle of tea tree oil and some other random stuff. I knew what kind of pain the kid was dealing with though. Lewis gave him something and I told him that I understood and that the best thing to do was to just take a cold hand (bc mine are always cold) and just hold it against it and feel the pain until it stops hurting, because it won't last that long. We then walked away and went back to the police station where I was apparently a detective there. This station was also the house across the street from the lake. Daytime now. One of my detective colleagues was this man who looked like John Krasinski meaning it actually was him, but not him. There were some kids outside (outside was now a city street) being lined up as witnesses or something. The other detective there, a woman, was taking statements from the kids. But then I overheard her make this plot to frame my John Krasinski coworker. I tried to warn him without giving away who was trying to frame him and he help trying to insist on telling his partner, this woman. I was like dude. no. and he wouldn't listen. The kids started walking through and that kid I had helped passed by and gave me this look. Then someone else came in and sort of yelled at me for encouraging his growing sexual love for buses lmao said I was too accepting and that I should have discouraged it from the beginning. My argument was so what, he loves to love buses. Anyway, I was trying to tell John Krasinski about the plot and then I was walking away and he grabbed my wrist. But then the other woman came over instead of letting go, we hid the fact that he was holding my wrist behind my back which also looked suspicious. Then there was another line up of kids outside. They had turned around and this one kid was looking up at us and was like I want to talk to her. I assumed he was pointing to the woman he had spoken to before, which was the 3rd detective. But when he came inside, he wanted to talk to me. I was surprised, but then it was the kid that kind of confessed to lying to the other cop about how the evidence she gave him (to frame John Krasinski) was a lie. But dude, the truth was like 20x worse. Instead of some tiny piece of metal sticking him from inside some box, he admitted that it was actually just part of this bracelet he was wearing. I asked to see the bracelet but it had no metal sticking out of it. Then he was like no, it's part of me. and then this series of spikes that had been implanted in his wrist stuck out through his skin like barbed wire. At this I was like nope! and took a step back. His father came rushing in but he had the same thing going on in his wrist. They could control when the spikes would come out. We learned that they were both extremely violent. The dad was bad, but the kid looked like he would be much worse because he was learning it all from his dad. I didn't want to be near this kid anymore because he seemed to fixate on my fear, as if he would come and find me one day to hurt me. I wouldn't look at him. The wife showed up and she was drunk because she was usually being abused by her husband. I think we let them all go because we couldn't do anything about the situation because she wouldn't accuse her husband of anything. Cut to me going to the live taping of 8 out of 10 cats starring my BP coworkers. Instead of sitting in the studio, there was a ton of outside seating that faced the studio that had large screens on it that was displaying what was being filmed. It opened with Kate McKinnan so this was apparently SNL instead lol but whatever. I was sitting out there in what seemed like stadium pews. The place was decorated in vines and leaves, kind of medieval. A lot of people were moving around the pews, but I had a large space open next to me. The drunk mom came and sat next to me. It made me so nervous because I didn't want to deal with an intoxicated person, but also her husband must be around. The show goes on and she gets up and walks to the doorway to enter the stadium. I somehow acquire this little girl that's sitting on my lap, maybe 7 years old. Turns out this is the daughter of the drunk woman. I'm very protective of this child for some reason. The mom and the husband are doing this weird princess knight act idk, I just know it's happening but I'm more focused on the crowd. Some tiny elderly people come and sit next to me and are asking about this girl (rightfully assume she's not mine bc this girl is blonde). Cut of after this performance, and I'm with/kind of am this woman. I'm on a bus and I'm heading to this beach area. I'm trying to get away from this crazy husband of mine. There was some floaties put out in the water and it was like yes, she's finally getting away. But then I'm like...no this is too easy, and I dive down underwater and I see this man with all of his evil friends waiting there to grab her. She manages to swim away. She's running and running trying to get away. They had this evil dog that was kind of also the husband and kept barking and biting her trying to alert him to where she was. Somehow we got the dog off and jumped onto one of those mini school buses (I'm with her now). There's only one seat and she takes it with her daughter on her lap and we tell the bus driver to gtfo of here. He knows the situation, and drives off. I'm sitting on the floor and looking out the window. Both me and her are in white spa robes, not significant, just random. There's this sense of relief as we're driving off. The dog had kind of handed me this piece of metal and I gave it to her. This apparently meant something as she looked at me and she was like "he really did love me." as in he let her go despite not being able to control his violent nature (even tho it was way worse than that). The mini bus pulls up to the back parking lots of the woodbury commons. We think we're safe until I see this man running a hot dog stand taking pictures of the bus we're in. The bus driver had pulled over and got out of the bus but then I yelled wait, we're not safe here and then her husband pops out from behind something and starts coming for us. The bus is moving and I think this dude some how offs the driver. The woman gets up and goes to the door of this still moving bus and shoots her husband in the head. I'm am #shook. I did not know she was going to do that with such ease or that she even had a gun. I took control of the bus because there was chaos now because she just shot someone and cars were appearing out of nowhere. I was like, flooring it and I was like OKAY I'm taking us straight to the police station. I was way more affected than this lady. Realizing now this was not a great decision and that we should have stayed put, we got pulled over at her parents house. We couldn't exit the bus without being processed by a cop (I was a normal person now, not a detective). I was instructed to head straight to the Montgomery police station to pay a $250 bail (I know, doesnt make sense) but I was compliant. I had to get there. I thought about calling Lewis to help me with the bail because I knew he would, but then realized I had that cash on my person and that I could just go over there and pay it myself. As I was walking toward the kitchen to get my stuff, I realized that I shouldn't be driving because I just went thru a trauma that hadn't hit me yet. I decided it was best to call Lewis after all and have him pick me up so I could freak out in the car and not be driving. But as I was going through my phone to find his contact, I noticed this woman's 3 sisters trying to slyly take pictures of me, just like the hot dog man and I started freaking out. And then my phone was going crazy, receiving every photo they took of me instantly. They didn't know what was happening and I was checking their phones and someone had set that to default and my phone was going crazy. I couldn't get to the call screen. I knew someone had bugged these phones so they could locate me or get my info. I decided to use someone elses phone to call Lewis. The mom was looking through the phonebook for his number when I was like Lewis can I just borrow your phone, you already have the number in it (only realized this flaw when I woke up lol) but I made the call and he answered. He had just said, "Hello?" when I heard the husbands voice in the background saying that he was a police officer to someone. And then I woke up, and I couldn't tell where I was for bit or if I was safe.