#it's probably the dress colour and guns

[soundcrusher]

Ratchet in a dress.

That's all.

[rynbutt]

pierced. pt.2 | spencer reid.

When you hadn't heard from Spencer in 3 weeks you thought you'd jumped the gun a bit... Or maybe he was just nervous.

pt. 1 | pt. 3 | pt. 4

cw: fem!reader, mentions of periods, mentions of alcohol, kissing, fluffy <3

a/n: i got carried away :,)

The bar bathroom smelled of booze, sweat and another third thing you’d rather not think about.

You stared at your reflection in the bathroom mirror, leaning over the sink to fix your lipstick with your finger and thumb. You fished around in your purse, pulling out the black tube of lipstick and plucking the cap off. You puckered your lips, admiring the matte colour in the smudged bathroom mirror that you dare not touch.

You were trying to be social for a change, perhaps meet some new people and make some new friends. After all, you didn’t know anyone and the cute FBI agent you met and gave your number to hadn’t called you since your interaction 3 weeks ago. You tried not to mull over it but you thought you landed a cutie, thinking he found you attractive too; he did find your boobs fascinating, the least he could do was buy you a drink. 

A pub crawl probably wasn’t the best place to start with making friends, it wasn’t really your thing. But after some of the new hires who started along with you invited you out to a pub crawl (you just happened to be sitting in the break room at the same time) you decided to just give it a shot. You soldiered through dinner and the first two bars you followed them along to, but when they left without you at the third, you were ready to down one more drink, call a cab and curl up with Tofu on the couch. 

You leaned over the sink, adjusting your black mini dress over your shoulders before grabbing your purse, letting out a tired sigh at your failed attempt at establishing some much needed friendships in this huge city.

“Shit, shit, shit! No-” A woman cursed from the stall behind you, sounding like she was rifling through her purse. 

“Are you okay?” You asked softly, knocking on the stall door.

“Oh, uhm, yeah… actually, do you have a tampon or something?” She asked quietly, seeming embarrassed.

“Shit, yeah, I do,” you quickly said, rifling through your purse for your stash of pads and tampons. A must whenever you go to bars, you never know when you or someone else will need it. “Here,” reached over the stall door, holding it as far out as you could for her. 

“Oh my god, thank you, you’re an angel,” she breathed a sigh of relief, taking the tampon from you. 

“Don’t worry about it,” you smiled to yourself.

“I’m going to get you a drink as a thank you.”

You chuckled softly, “oh, please. It’s really no trouble.”

“Ah- ta ta ta, I insist,” she retorted. 

Maybe you would make a friend tonight.

You stood by the basins as she flushed and pulled the stall door open. She wore bright pink heels and her hair sat in perfect curls over her shoulders, with thick glasses perched on her nose. She exuded sweetness. 

She smiled at you sweetly, “you’re a lifesaver.”

“It’s all good, I always have extra on me,” you grinned. “Just in case.”

“I like where your head’s at. The one time I didn’t bring my normal purse,” she laughed, washing her hands with the miniscule amount of soap left. “I’m Penelope Garcia,” she stuck her hand out for you to shake.

You shook her hand, “Y/N L/N.”

“I love your dress, you look gorgeous,” Penelope said, the two of you leaving the grotty bathroom together. You glanced down at your black mini dress, smiling to yourself at the compliment.

It had been a while since you broke it out of your closet. It was your favourite though, hugged your curves perfectly and had long sleeves that kept you warm but a deep neckline to show off your cleavage. 

“Thank you, it’s been a while since I’ve worn it.” You replied, letting Penelope link her arm around yours as she ushered you to the bar through the crowd of people. 

“Do you have a boyfriend?” she suddenly asked. 

You laughed at her abrupt question. “No… Why, you got a cute friend?”

“I do!” She exclaimed excitedly, making you chuckle. “He’s real sweet, you should totally hang out with us… That’s if you’re not here with anyone?”

“No, no, I’m not. Well, I was, but they left-”

“Without you?!”

“I don’t know them that well, it’s fine. I mean I just moved here.”

“But girl code? You never leave a girl by herself in a bar,” Penelope said, clutching her necklace, she seemed far more offended than you were. 

You and Penelope continued to talk and laugh at the bar while you waited for the line at the bar to subside. She asked you all about how you liked moving here and when you told her about your cat Tofu, she insisted on seeing photos. She bought you a tequila sunrise and ushered you over to the booth she said her friends were sitting at.

“Everyone, this is Y/N, she just saved my life,” Penelope exaggerated, introducing you to the very official looking group of people seated in the booth. 

But you lost interest in them quickly when you spotted Spencer Reid, the man who apparently doesn’t own a phone. 

“Oh, hey,” you said, your voice raising an octave as you pointed at Spencer. 

Spencer furrowed his brows, almost not recognising you without your tight baby blue tank on, “Y/N?”

“It’s Dr. Can’t Call Back,” you teased. The man you recognised as Agent Morgan let out a laugh, clapping a hand over Spencer’s shoulder.

“Wait, you know Reid?” Penelope asked.

“She lived in the apartment across from a crime scene, we interviewed her,” Morgan explained before staring down Spencer, “And little boy wonder managed to get her number and didn’t call her.”

“What!” Penelope exclaimed. “She’s hot!”

You covered your mouth as you laughed, “I’m joking, I’m joking. I’m sure he only took my number to be polite.”

“Oh he did not,” A blonde woman laughed. “He talked about it for days.”

“Oh, really?” You raised a brow at Spencer, who was almost beet red at the sudden spotlight on him. Penelope ushered you next to Spencer into the booth, the two of you pressed together between Morgan and the blonde woman.

“Yeah he did, couldn’t get him to shut up,” Another woman with dark hair said.

“I was going to call you,” Spencer said defensively. “But I got busy-”

“More like nervous,” Morgan retorted with a laugh.

Spencer sunk into the plush leather of the couch and you spent the next hour learning everyone’s names and learning that they were all in the FBI. Now that they knew who you were, there goes your chances of being a sexy drug lord.

It was nice to feel included, everyone asking you about your new job, where you grew up, what you liked about moving here, you finally made some new friends. Penelope sealed the deal when she gave you her number, promising to take you to lunch some time to thank you for your heroic act in saving her.

You glanced at Spencer as he shifted uncomfortably next to you, “you wanna get a drink?” you asked, attempting to get him away from everyone and talk to him. 

He nervously moved some of his hair out of his face, “Yeah…Yeah sure,” he replied quietly, a slight nervousness in his voice.

The two of you slid out of the booth and you grabbed his hand as you pulled him to the bar. His hands were clammy with nervousness but he didn’t let go of your hand until you dropped his hand, leaning on the bar.

“So…”

“I was going to call you. I really was,” he said quickly, letting out a shaky breath.

You laughed at his nervousness, “It’s okay, Dr. Reid. I’m not holding it against you.”

“Spencer,” he corrected. 

“Right,” you smiled, “Spencer.”

“Here, look,” he pulled his phone out of his pocket along with the note you left him, which was cute, considering it kept it on him for this long. He glanced at the note and quickly dialled your number. Your phone buzzed in your purse and you answered the call. “There, now you have my number.”

“Nice save, pretty boy,” you saved his number in your phone, typing his name into your phone along with a little heart. 

“...You look… very nice,” he said nervously, shoving his hands in his pockets.

You grinned coyly at him, “thank you. You look very handsome yourself. Though, I feel like you always look like that,” you flirted.

“I try to look presentable,” he replied, not really picking up on your flirting tone. “I have an important job.”

“Of course,” You laughed lightly, your fingers reaching up to gently fix his collar. Your fingers grazed the side of his neck and his breath caught in his throat, gulping back the lump of nervousness that formed. You were really pretty, someone he considered way out of his league. 

After you gave him your number, he spent the entire car ride back to the BAU staring at it, heart thumping loudly in his ears at the idea of seeing you again. He tried calling your number a couple of times and got nervous because he had no idea what to say. Would he ask you on a date? Obviously. But what do people do on dates? He had to be assertive, come up with something and be confident, but his mind went blank staring at your number. And wikihow really wasn’t helping.

“Hey guys, we’re off,” Emily walked over to you and Spencer at the bar. “Hotch’s hailing a cab.”

“Oh, right. Do you need a cab? I-I can cover it,” Spencer looked at you, reaching for his wallet.

“I live nearby actually, it’s just a couple blocks away. I’ll just walk,” you smiled. 

Emily frowned at you, “this late? That’s not safe.”

“I’ll walk her,” Spencer quickly said. “I’ll catch a cab from her place.”

“Oh, Spencer, you don’t have to do that,” you squeezed his forearm.

Spencer waved you off, “it’s safer if I walk you home.”

Emily glanced between the two of you with squinted eyes. She smiled cheekily, wiggling her brows at Spencer, “...be safe.”

Spencer scoffed at her implication, making you giggle. You picked your purse up off the bar stool and let Spencer lead you out of the bar. You said goodbye to Penelope and JJ, waving the rest of them down as Spencer waited for you to say goodbye.

“Keep him safe, pretty girl!” Derek called from the cab window.

“Will do!” You chuckled.

The more you thought about it, the more you realised it was probably a good idea Spencer was walking you home. You had learned a lot about your new home over the last 3 weeks but having Spencer, who you came to understand was a bit of a genius, proved to be very convenient. Spencer seemed to know where he was going more than you did, you just followed along next to him, your shoulders occasionally bumping. 

“How long have you been in the FBI?” You asked, linking your arm with his. He nervously let you do so but you could feel him tense under your touch. “This okay?”

“Yeah, yeah, it’s okay… Uh, I’ve been in the FBI for four years, two months and two weeks exactly,” he replied, “...Eidetic memory, I tend to keep track of that kind of stuff.”

“Mmm, I’ve always had a thing for dorks,” you flirted with an airy laugh.

“I’m not a dork,” he retorted defensively through a laugh.

You looked up at him, “Only joking, Spence. Intelligence is attractive.”

He beamed internally at the nickname. Sure, JJ called him Spence, but it sounded like honey when you said it, made his heart race and his skin run hot. The two of you walked in comfortable silence and you yawned quietly, not realising how tired you were until you left the overstimulating environment of the bar.

He walked you up the steps of your apartment building, waiting for you to take out your card that let you into the building. You pulled the door open and Spencer reached to hold it open for you. You paused, turning to face him.

“Thank you for walking me home. I really appreciate it,” you smiled. 

“It’s okay, I wanted to make sure you were safe,” he replied, exuding a kind of nervousness he wasn’t before. 

You laughed lightly at how adorable he was before pressing up on your tiptoes and pressing a kiss to his cheek. He tensed under your touch but soon relaxed. You pulled away and began laughing, “Oh shit, I got lipstick on your cheek.”

You pulled your sleeve over your finger and began smudging it away. Spencer suddenly grabbed your wrist softly, taking a deep breath of courage and pressing a soft kiss to your lips. You barely had time to register it and as soon as it started it was over and he pulled away, cheeks red with embarrassment.

“I… I’m sorry,” he quickly said, “Shit-”

“Woah, Spence. It’s okay,” you grabbed his hands, trying to recapture his attention as his eyes stared at everything but you. “Hey.”

“I don’t know why I did that,” he laughed nervously.

“...Maybe you should kiss me again?” You suggested, doe eyes staring up at him. His breath caught in his throat as you leaned up again, arms hooking around his neck as your lips brushed his softly. Your voice was quiet when you spoke, “Do you want to kiss me again, Spencer Reid?”

“...Yeah,” he muttered out. You grinned before leaning in to kiss him, hands cupping his face as his hands landed on your waist nervously. He kissed you with a gentleness that left you dizzy. He was clearly nervous but you stroked his cheekbones with your thumbs as he deepened the kiss, tilting your head back like he wanted to consume you. 

He pulled away, forehead resting against yours. You laughed gently at the smear of lipstick over his lips, your thumb coming to rub it off as best you could.

“Mm, that colour suits you,” you chuckled. He let out a breath of a laugh as he pulled away from you, moving a piece of hair out of your face. “I don’t usually kiss men I haven’t even gone on a date with.”

“Well, I don’t kiss girls… end of sentence,” he replied.

You laughed at his response, unhooking your arms from his neck and stepping into your apartment building. “Well, you’re good at it, Spence. I wouldn’t worry.”

“Well… Will I see you some time?” 

“Call me back first,” you teased.

Spencer stared at the pavement and laughed nervously, letting you kiss his cheek one more time before you left him at the door of your apartment building, heading to the elevator. You waved at him as the elevator dinged and he waved back with a tight lip smile.

You leaned against the cool metal of the elevator wall, grinning like an idiot as you watched the numbers above the door light up. You suddenly felt your phone vibrating in your purse. You pulled it out, half expecting it to be your mother calling. You smiled as Spencer’s name appeared on your phone, you answered, holding it to your ear.

“Hi, Spencer.”

“Can I take you to dinner?” He asked, his voice breathless as you assumed he was trying to catch a cab. “Tomorrow night?”

“I’d love to,” you grinned.

“I’ll pick you up… maybe don’t wear a tank top.”

a/n: kinda obsessed with these two, i'm creating a taglist if anyone wants on :) just send a message to my inbox <3

[littlebigmouse]

Sure, episode 7 doesn't really have much time to spend on Ekko's disorientation in this new reality and everyone else's reactions to it. But I have to respect that the writer's solution to this was to make AU Ekko pretty mentally unstable.

From Powder's perspective, she startles him, he throws something at her, becomes hostile, tries to defend himself with a screwdriver, and then just starts staring into space and goes nonverbal while giving clear signs of a panic attack, and Powder and Benzo's reaction to that is a benevolent and casual "One of those days, huh?"

Given where they leave off, and pick up in the Last Drop again, it's implied Ekko has his crisis the entire way over, and probably didn't react much to either of them the whole time. When Claggor and Ekko remain at the table while Vander and Powder have their conversation, Ekko is ignoring Claggor and drawing repetitive circles over his notes and constantly clutching his head in pain. Right up until he gets up, which is when Claggor finally reacts to what he's doing but is waved off easily, and stumbles outside throwing up in a dumpster. And no one seems to notice or care about him acting weird or being in pain.

Everytime he says something off-colour or outright concerning it's met casually or chalked up to his sleep deprivation and imposter syndrome. Man's dissociating like nobody's business and everyone just claps him on the back in understanding. If that's normal for AU Ekko, or everyone thinks that's normal for AU Ekko, that's uh, pretty concerning actually.

I mean, given context clues and Powder's conversation with Vander, all the kids (or at least Ekko and Powder) withdrew pretty heavily and keep themselves on the down low. I assume they both blamed themselves for Vi's death to some degree and became overly cautious and more quiet. Powder prefers to support her siblings similarly to how Vi did, but there's fewer problems to solve with violence as they grow up (and they all know how that ended) so Powder plays emotional support and prefers to stay in her familiar bubble (The Last Drop, close to her family).

AU Ekko seems to be overcompensating with his inventions, focusing on (academic?) success and productivity. Between his fancier clothes (even fancier than the others, who all have newer outfits, but stick more to zaunite dressing sensibilities than him) and his AU friendship with Heimerdinger it's reasonable to assume that he's involved with the academy in some way, maybe gunning to become a student if he isn't one already. That's a lot of pressure for a kid from the undercity, nevermind that academia itself is pretty competitive even if the deck isn't staked against him.

That all is to say, I don't think the AU is all sunshine and roses, for either of them. AU Ekko and Powder are both way less extreme versions of their canon verses, but especially AU Ekko is apparently way more quiet, withdrawn and insecure (and not at all active within his community?? I'm gonna be honest, I'm a bit mad the Firelights weren't even mentioned that episode, they've been Ekko's main family for the better part of a decade now, they deserve some focus, damn it).

So yeah, I don't think AU Ekko is doing too hot.

(And now I want a fic of him waking up in canon Ekko's body, lmao).

[lululandd]

hints;

pairing: simon ‘ghost’ riley x gn!reader

word count: 885

warning: and theyre housemates ᵒᵐᵍ ᵗʰᵉʸ’ʳᵉ ʰᵒᵘˢᵉᵐᵃᵗᵉˢ

note: very loosely based on real life events

summary: maybe you get a guess or two on what his job is

You knew the carnival would be in town this time or year, but wouldn’t have guessed in the slightest that your housemate would be interested in it. He brought it up during game night, where you would play a video game in the living room and he would watch. ‘Fun’ was the word he used to describe the carnival, followed with the notion that he would love a blooming onion and some dippin’ dots.

So you two went. He dressed in all black except for his bleached denim—which you laughed at bcause it looked like cumstains the first time before you helped him bleach it a second time— and you in your bright coloured shirt and overalls.

Simon got his blooming onions immediately after arriving and pointed out prizes that caught his attention as you two walked. You finished what little was left of it while he got his dessert.

“You gonna keep starin’ or you gonna play?” He nudged as he noticed you slowed down to look at a game.

It was one of those shooting games where there are cheap snacks propped up on a shelf and a couple of mascots strewn around for extra points. The overly friendly attendant waved you two closer and explained that you can get two of ANY of the big prizes on display, if you can shoot all fifteen of the little mascots in a row. There were big plushes of different animals, and unbeknownst to you Simon saw the sparkle in your eyes as you look up at them.

It was 50 cents for a try, and you gave him a dollar for the both of you. Simon wanted to wait until he’s finished with his dippin’ dots and opted to watch you for a little bit before he plays. The attendant grinned and wishes you luck as he puts a wooden rifle and a little bowl of corks in front of you without giving instructions on how to use them as he’s already helping someone else.

“Put ‘em at the end- Yeah there. Then yo- No. You cock em first. Yes, cock.” Simon laughed a little, “That handle— Wai’ a minute, I’ve seen you play shooters at home. You already bloody know how.”

“Well doing it in a video game and in real life is different, innit?” You emphasised to make fun of his accent a little.

He went quiet and pointed at the handle that needed to be pulled back. You can see him smile behind his facemask despite the silence. When it clicked, you readied up the rifle as best you know how, aimed, and pressed the trigger.

You hit nothing.

“Not as easy in real life, innit?” He mocked back.

When you were down to the last cork, Simon had long finished his ice cream and asked if he could try shooting before it was his turn. He seemed to weigh the gun, moving it back and forth in his hands before barking at the attendant, “I need to do em in one go, yeah?”

“Yes sirree!”

And with that you feel a difference in your roommate’s stance immediately. He seemed to stand up straighter, suddenly appear bigger somehow, and in a blink of an eye he got the rifle into position and hit a snack that was on the far edge of the shelf.

Oh.

He looks like he does this regularly.

He picked up his share of corks and picked the mascots off one by one, starting from the ones at the edge and working his way to the middle. Several people stood around you two and cheered each time Simon got a successful hit. The attendant cheered with them, probably happy about the prospects of more players.

You cheered and clapped the loudest as he shot down the last remaining mascot, and the attendant yelled at you two to pick your prize.

“You pick one, Simon!” You said to him as he looked at you.

He deliberately chose a rather misshapen shark—a discount blåhaj—and you chose an alpaca. You hugged them both as you walked around the place some more.

“See anything else you want?” He asked. “Can win all of ‘em for you.”

You laughed at him incredulously, “As long as they’re gun related games or just any?”

The slow head turn he did towards you was borderline predatory, and if he wasn’t your housemate for a couple of years it would have stunned you.

You shrunk a little, “Sorry, right. My bad.”

Back at the car, as he hit what seemed to be the hundreth red light, he spoke, “You get two yes or no questions on my job and thats it.”

Luckily you didn’t get whiplash, and he avoided looking your way as you stared at him, mind racing to figure out whether he was kidding or if he was serious.

Weighing your questions as they race around in your mind, it wasn’t when you get to the front door that you ask him, “Sniper?”

“Not really.”

You looked back at him as you walked in, “Wait what does that mean?”

“Dunno. You got one question left though.”

“That’s cheating, Simon!”

He took off his mask and you see him smirking all the way until he disappears into his room with his shark.

[merchantarthurn]

nicholas, quit your job. join my christian ska band

this was conceived as a joke with friends about how midvalley in modern AU would be into ska and then ‘the gung-ho guns as a ska band though. wolfwood has a keytar called the punisher’ ‘and it’s still shaped like the punisher - it’s 4 keyboards’.

obviously there’s others to add - like midvalley’s baeblade gauntlet. and maybe another (metal? rock?) band that’s vash (lead guitar, vocals) and livio (drums) and?? knives (bass) so that wolfwood has somewhere to go when he snaps out of his haze and leaves lmao (maybe he supplants knives as a bass player + backup vocals just to amuse me personally)

(i’ll admit to not knowing anything about ska so i just defaulted to making all the men look “uncool in a way that’s kinda swag in its own right” and elendira that kind of “probably smells of ‘’’incense’’’” vibe. i also could not suss out the instrument refs so i accidentally gave the trumpet too many valves and gave up on the sax lol) 

ID below the cut

There are four images - I’ve given each image it’s own ID.

[ID: Wolfwood drawn mostly in black and white - in his usual suit and unbuttoned dress shirt, with mullet-length hair, sunglasses, and a thicker patch of scruff on his chin. He holds a cross-shaped keytar with each branch having it’s own set of keys, with the words ‘Punisher’ and ‘Gung-Ho’ written at the ends. The centre has a skull-like decal shaped like the trigger of the actual Punisher. It’s held by a strap with black-and-white checkers. There are blue accents on the keytar and his shoes. END ID]

[ID: Elendira (Trigun Maximum) drawn mostly in black and white. She wears a black pillbox hat, a choker with a fake nail sticking “through” it and a studded belt. She also wears a black-and-white cropped wrap top with a baggy, hatched jacket overtop with the sleeves rolled. She’s playing a red bass guitar with a nail head at the top and a spike at the bottom. END ID]

[ID: Leonof The Puppetmaster drawn mostly in black and white. He wears a baggy black suit over a yellow shirt with a large collar and a bolo tie, a bowler hat with a wide brim and checkered band, and his usual round glasses. He holds a trumpet, also coloured in yellow. END ID]

[ID: Midvalley the Hornfreak wearing a white suit jacket, pink dress shirt, and baggy pink trousers. The drawing cuts off at the knees. He is passionately playing a saxophone, which is attached to his neck by a cord, so is leaning his torso back. END ID.]

[yeyinde]

SEA, SWALLOW ME | Simon Riley x GN!Reader

No one wrenches you open, leaving you raw and exposed, like Simon. A wound that never heals. A sickness that never dissipates. You carry the weight of him between your ribs and thundering heart. A place of safekeeping, protecting this precious knot that gnarls inside of you from everything else out there that might want to hurt it. It thrums now, dizzy with the feeling of him so close to you.

》 WARNINGS: 18+ – MATURE, SMUT | GN!Reader: no use of pronouns, gendered language or anatomy; very soft smut; light breath play/choking but. It serves a narrative purpose.

》 WORD COUNT: 9,4k (of pure, unadulterated nonsense)

》 NOTES: UM. This was meant to subvert standard D/s | Predator/Prey dynamics for Ghost but became a mess of nonsensical metaphors instead.

As far as missions went, this was slated to be amongst the easiest assigned out to your group—a standard hostage rescue of a foreign diplomat. 

It's a sequence you've played out many times over in basic training. The steps, drills, are already ingrained in your memory with minor changes to suit the situation unfolding in a place you'd never been before, and probably will never see again. Rudimentary. Boring, almost. 

The chance of injury was minimal. The probability of death is even infinitesimal. 

And yet—

He pulls you into an alcove in the safe house you've been holed up in for the last twelve hours, alternating between bouts of sleep, and pouring over each minute detail of your roles. 

Price's voice cracked an hour ago. 

It was Gaz who called it with a soft chuff. "Guess that means we're good to go, eh, cap?"

"Off with you, then," he groused, reaching for a bottle of water. "We'll head out in an hour. Be ready." 

You meant to sneak away to the gym and exercise some of the anticipation pooling inside your veins—a physical outlet to exert the antsy feeling that made your fingers tap a soundless beat against your shaking thigh; a post-mission ritual to saturate your brain in those feel-good chemicals caused by the rush of adrenaline. 

But you were stopped by a hand on your wrist. One that snaked through the tenebrous of the storage closet that housed the guns, weapons, and ammunition, all spread out on the walls with a bench in the middle. 

Simon leans back against it, guns spread out on the surface behind him. The hand not curled around your wrist is pressed flat, bare, to the granite top, only inches away from the collection of knives he meticulously tends to before each assignment. 

His sleeves are rolled up to his forearm, ink coloured in a hazy smear of yellow from the lamp spilling across the table in the corner. Your eyes are drawn there first—the shadows cast over the thick veins running along his forearms, hidden beneath the charcoal. 

The other flexes around your wrist, rough skin scorching when it presses against yours. Seeing the bulk of his palm swallowing the entirety of your wrist and half of your hand has your mouth running dry.

There's something about him, about the fold of his massive frame condensing itself into a nook much too small for him to fit, that feeds into a part of your head that aches to fly. To scale mountains, to reach the summit. To be the first person to stand on top of the highest peak, and gaze down at the world shaded in blues, greens, and greys below. 

Staring at Simon fills you with summit fever. 

"Did I scare you?" 

It's hard to rip your gaze away from him with so much of his flesh bared to you. He's usually dressed by now in his jacket and vest. Always prepared for the next slaughter. This—

This is new. Unusual. 

You huff, rolling your eyes toward the domed ceiling, and struggle to stave off the influx of anxiety that gnarls inside of you. A break in the routine. It unsettles you. "Hardly." 

He makes a low, starchy noise in his throat, muffled partially by the balaclava covering his mouth. "That so?"

He runs his thumb over your pulse, drawing your attention to the rapid thud of your heartbeat under his finger. It's a slow, meticulous circle, and his eyes dance with derision when you scoff, a touch embarrassed, and curl your fingers into a fist as if that would somehow stop the thundering in your chest. 

"Whatever," you murmur, defensive. "I drank an espresso. It's just a natural, bodily reaction—"

His hand twitches again, fingers lifting from your skin as he slowly peels away from you. The chill against your flesh makes you shiver, already missing the intensity of his heat. 

"If you say so," he volleys, settling his hand back on the table, palm cupping the thick ledge, fingers tucked under the surface. The motion makes his muscles quiver. 

Goosebumps prickle along your flesh. Your throat runs dry. 

"Got somethin' for you."

It's standard, benign—the words are flat considering the weight behind them, the potency. They're all he'll allow in this brief window of privacy when everyone else is busying themselves with their pre-mission rituals. 

Price leans against the wall in the corner of the room, fingers curled into the straps of his tac-vest. His chin is dipped low, eyes fixed on the table a metre away where the files lay open, floorplans exposed. Despite the evenness of his brow, and the squared set of his shoulders, you can see the weight of everything circling in stormy blue. 

The success of this will be shared amongst everyone, but the loss will be solely his own. 

On the opposite side of the room, Soap picks over every centimetre of your weapons and tactical gear. Scouring every iota in an effort to make sure nothing will fail anyone. 

Gaz, as the youngest, shoulders it all, and pours over the blueprints, committing each exit and entrance point to memory. He won't be caught unawares if a route is compromised. He'll get everyone out to safety. 

By stark contrast, Ghost does nothing. 

He doesn't look over the documents, but he doesn't need to. The blood vessels streaking through jaundiced white speak of a sleepless night staring at the photos of the men you're supposed to hunt down. The people you're supposed to rescue. 

Before he slips on his gloves, you catch ink stains on his thumb and inside his forefinger. The thick scent of gunpowder and oil clings to him. His weapon is sleek: gunmetal grey and cleaned. Meticulous. His attention to detail is unyielding. 

He did everything he was supposed to do last night when he didn't come and sneak into your room.

But he never does. Not before a mission. 

You sometimes wonder if he likes to torture himself with the if only or the what if that lingers whenever you split apart, left to your devices and wholly dependent on yourself for survival. He keeps his distance. Doesn't want, nor need, the distraction.

Some might think it cruel that he avoids you like you're already caught in the clutch of the Reaper; skin shading a sickly grey as your blood rots from within. But you know him. You know Simon. 

And when he hands you your gun, you can feel that it's already been loaded, and tended to. There's a fine sheen of oil glued to the tight folds of metal from where his meticulous cleaning couldn't reach. 

Your tac-vest is packed with everything he deems necessary for your own survival (and even a few things he doesn't but you do). 

He hands you a knife, too—one you know is from his personal collection. It fits into the palm of your hand like it was made for you, and you wonder—with a small smile blooming across your cheeks—how long he took looking over them before picking this one. A perfect fit. 

"Thank you," you murmur, low and soft. No one is paying attention to you at all—there is no time to do so when you can feel the seconds ticking down. "I'll do my best not to get your pretty knife dirty." 

He snorts. "Defeats the purpose, doesn't it? And it ain't mine." 

"My knife, then." 

You glance down at the smooth curve of the blade, sharpened to a deadly point, and twist it in your hand to stare at the handle. It's black. Two stems jut out from the hilt, extended a bit longer than the blade. It's triangular and pitched in the centre before tapering off to a sharp point. It's the length of your forearm. Longer than the tactical knives issued by the weapons branch in the SAS. Bound in leather. The stitches look much too similar to the ones he threaded through your gaping skin in Jakarta. 

"Fairbairn-Sykes," you say, glancing up at him. "Thought they stopped using these?"

He rolls one massive shoulder. A man with his girth shrugging insouciantly is a strange sight. You almost expect to hear the distant roar of an avalanche. 

"Much better'in the cheap ones they give you."

"Oh, yeah? Kinda hard to hide, though—"

"If you don't want it—" 

Simon reaches for it, but you pull it close to your chest, grinning. 

"You can't take my knife away." 

He huffs, lowering his hand back to the table. His eyes are piercing. Heavy. "Then stop complainin' about it."

A fly buzzes by your ear. A bead of sweat drips down the nape of your neck. Something about the look in his dark, shadowed eyes sets your teeth on edge. 

It wells on your tongue, then—soft words not meant to be uttered in a room saturated in contracted death—and the astringent flood strips your enamel until your teeth ache with the urge to let them out, or swallow them down. You wonder what he would say if you let them free. If they slipped from your tongue and filled the room with the stench of your poisonous wants, ones left to rot inside your chest, your throat. 

The burn of them blisters your esophagus, leaving behind open wounds leaking infection into your bloodstream, into the vessels that run to your lungs, your heart. 

The tremendous weight of them makes your knees quiver, struggling to stay afloat in the thick atmosphere that sits, oppressive and unignorable, between you. 

It's all one-sided, of course—a hunger felt only by you. He doesn't acknowledge the gossamer of tension that bleeds into the room, wrapping tight around your neck like a phantom noose. To Simon, nothing is amiss; nothing is wrong—

And it isn't, you think. This spooling knot inside of you, wound tight into a ball, isn't wrong. It isn't bad to feel this way, but it's terrifying. 

Being with Simon is a bit like climbing a mountain. 

But there is scaling one in a harness, secured safe and sound with ropes and pitons, and then there is this: 

A free solo up the side of a chossy. 

The chalk on the tips of your fingers clumps together under the stickiness of your damp palm. One slip, and you'll be a wreck at the bottom before you can even try to hold on. 

Jagged rock at the bottom gnashes its teeth together in anticipation, eagerly waiting its chance to grind your flesh into pulp, and offer your spilled blood to Thanatos. 

Melodramatic, maybe, but something about Ghost brings out a sense of morbid sentimentality from within you. The feeling is a harsh juxtaposition to who the man really is. 

A mythological being who lingers in the foreground like a psychopomp, but gives you whittled knives from his personal collection, carefully whet to a fine point, and cracks stupid jokes in a deadpan manner as if the world around you wasn't raining bullets and reeking of gun cotton. 

Your gaze wavers, falls. There are a lot of things you are meant to say now, and many more that are forbidden. None of them brim through the humus that sticks to your throat. Disturbed dirt in a lonely graveyard. 

A flurry of motion snags your attention. In the corner of the room, you catch sight of the fly sitting on top of an intricate web. It runs its hands together, waiting. Mischievous. A morsel of food is still tangled in white lace. It feasts without worry, unaware of its impending demise as its feet glue to the threads woven below, shaped like the cracked skulls in a catacomb. 

As the fly feeds, the spider cocks its head up from a darkened crevasse, a multitude of eyes gleaming in the flushed light hanging overhead. 

It waits. 

Poor thing. 

"Thanks," you say again, wrenching your eyes away from the opening maw of the ossuarium in the corner. The sight unnerves you. 

It's not meant to be any more sincere than the first utterance of your gratitude, but you say it—if only to fill the stifling silence, and wonder if that carefully curated mask would shatter into pieces, revealing the bare-faced man (human: flesh, bone; vulnerable) beneath, if you uttered the words pulsing against your vocal cords like a pizzicato. 

He levels you with a flat look as if he, too, hears the whine of c minor screaming in your chest. 

"Hilt is new. Try not to get it dirty." 

You fight a shiver. Force yourself to give some facsimile of a smile in response.

"Wouldn't dream of it, Lt."

(A liar.)

You tuck the pretty knife in a tawny leather sheath into your pocket. 

"I'll take good care of it." 

(A thief.)

Behind smeared grey, charcoal black, his eyes narrow. Pensive. Considering. Something rears, lurks. Hidden in shadows. Cut into brimstone. It's the same shade of death that only surfaces when he's on the battlefield—no longer Simon, but—

"See that you don't." 

A ghost. 

(Just warmer than most.)

Your eyes stray back to the corner of the room where the black spider prowls closer to the hapless fly struggling to be free. 

Yeah, you think, a touch dazed. Your fingers tighten around the leather-bound hilt of the blade. Me, too. 

You dirty his knife. 

The chance for an injury is minor, but never zero. You find this out when someone grabs you from behind, knife pressed to your jugular. There is no fear, no terror. 

Just—

Embarrassment. Stupid. You know better than to leave your six unchecked. 

It ends with a paper-thin cut to your skin, and your knife buried in flesh. 

The hilt is bloodied. Authentic leather stained red. Grotesque. Garish. You can't tear your eyes away from the droplets that stain the handle. 

Plastic, usually. You know this because you looked it up. Polymer-covered wood. 

The leather was handmade. Sewn with thick, black thread. Glued to the stripped wood. 

Wrapped up pretty just for you. 

(Just for you.)

And you ruined it like you promised you wouldn't. 

(A liar. A thief.)

It makes you wince, and the burn in your chest hurts more than the sting in your neck. You thought you heard death and his fiddle this morning, but who knew his boney, rotted fingers would wrap around your wrists like it was the hilt of a conductor's baton. 

Simon doesn't say anything, but there's a weight in his silence. A soundless ticking in the background as he watches, placid, as you make your way to him. 

Nails bite into your palm until they're sticky with the blood that pools between your fingers. It's meant to be grounding. Replacing one hurt with another, but the biggest injury is the one to your pride, your ego. It's burned, blistered, and not even the swell of something you feel roiling through you at the sight of Simon, steady and sturdy—faultless despite the roaring that seems to echo around, the scream of the tide trying to pull you under—is able to quell the sting of humiliation. 

Your hands are stained just like them. Scars mattered across soft tissue, and despite the way they spill over your flesh like Orion, you still feel the pull of torn flesh beneath your armour. 

This—

This was an accident. Unfortunate. Unforgiving. It lingers between aching teeth, and tastes of raw wire. 

You won't let the shame dip its talons into your pride despite the bruise forming on the side of your veneer. 

Your chin lifts: defiant, almost. As if waiting for him to say something. 

Anger, you think, is easier to wield than culpability. 

There are a number of derisive, droll words he can pin you with, and your mind runs through the possibilities, the ones you heard barked out over the comms. Things like: rookie mistakes. Shoulda checked your six. How'd this happen? Thought you were better than this. Another scar to add to your collection, then? Better stop before you end up lookin' like me.

It surprises you, then, when he says none of them. 

"Alright?"

His hand lifts, and a weight settles against your jaw, lifting your chin. It's barely a cat scratch, and doesn't even need stitches, but it stings something fierce when he stretches the skin around it. Pulling, tugging. You clench your teeth, swallowing back a wince. 

He catches it, anyway. 

Stupid. 

You wait for the rest. For the or what? that traditionally follows a simple alright, but nothing comes. 

His hand drifts, palm cups the side of your neck, and—

It's indescribable. A rush, maybe. A raw, pulsing wound throbbing inside your throat where his heavy, rough hand sits. A plinth. You can't lower your chin with it in the way. Stuck, you think, and then—

You shiver. It's instinctual. The curve of your neck is vulnerable; a sacred place. Animals protect their jugular, their soft bellies, from attack, and something primal in you tenses up. Waiting for the strike. For the snapping of jowls into your soft skin. 

None come. Stupid. Of course—

"Jus'a little scratch."

His hand leaves almost quickly as it appeared, and you drift aimlessly, unconsciously, after it. 

Snapped out of your strange reverie when Price calls out your name. Paperwork, probably. You've been hurt, and as a response—or a sneaky punishment—you have a mountain of forms to fill out, t's to cross, i's to dot. 

The weight of Ghost's gaze on you is almost as heavy as the heft of his hand, and you linger for a moment in that strange, phantom noose, wondering what it would feel like if he held on just a little bit—

"Go on, then," his chin jerks toward Price. "Get cleaned up." 

Something shifts inside of you. The open of a proverbial floodgate. 

It's instant:

The weight of his palm, the press of his fingers—you feel them against your skin, a phantom whisper. A breath. 

There's something almost comforting about the danger of exposure, you think. About bearing your neck to the biggest predator around. 

It's not an act of submission. You'd never submit to Ghost, much less anyone else, but—

There's a sense of vulnerability there. Trust. 

(It's that unseen edge of danger: a spark of life in a world that's always shades of muted grey, and draped in the folds of calamity. Death sits only a hair's breadth away no matter where you go. So close, you can feel the ghastly chill on your skin; always cold. Always freezing. You can set fire to your flesh, but your teeth still chatter.

For the first time in years, the skin on your neck burns with feverish heat.)

(The warmth fades. You chase it, pressing your fingers flat to your pulse, but still feel the icy drift of the waiting Sheol against your skin.

Cold to the touch once more.)

His fingers ghost along the skin of your wrist, skimming over your pulse. It’s soft. Gentle. A light brush that has no other meaning or purpose except to gain your attention— 

—and oh, doesn’t it just. 

Simon doesn’t let it linger. He pulls his hand away when your chin jerks toward him, and slides them into the pockets of his trousers. Hidden away. Out of reach. 

Your wrist burns. 

"Could've just said hello." 

His eyes are heavy under the hood of his sweatshirt and lined with the grease paint he couldn't scour off. Maybe he never even tried to. Glacier blue framed in ashen blonde. His eyes remind you of the sandstone cliffs that line the Corfu shore. Stark white. Deep blue. 

They're weighed down with something—exhaustion, maybe. The last you'd heard of him, he was chasing after leads that might link you to Shepherd with Gaz (who sent a dry text in the early morning, between the keds and the dad jokes, I don't know how anyone could be scared of this Manc; and: does the man ever sleep, or is he fuelled on Tenzing and spite alone?). And now—

“C’mere.” He murmurs, eyes heavy and lidded, sparking with something sharp, acrid. Humour, you think, heart stuttering in your chest. 

The word is uttered just as softly as the touch against your flesh, and the sound—the phantom memory of the featherlight brush—burns with the heat in his gaze, the warmth that seeps through the gloves, and into your skin. Bone deep. You can feel the burn of him congealing in your cartilage. 

"Finally gonna do me in?" 

It earns you a dry scoff, the barest hint of an eye roll. "If I wanted to, you wouldn't see me coming." 

"You could have just said no, never," you mock, stifling down a grin. "Or—I wouldn't even think about hurting you—"

The rest of the words are cut off when he steps closer. Liquid agility: he moves quickly for a man cut from Everest, sifting through the shadows with no more than a soft thud of his heel clipping the linoleum. Ghost looms before you in a blink, head tilted down to gaze at you. 

His hand lifts, knuckle grazing the swell of your cheek. It's softer than he has any right to be. A warm brush across cold skin. The Agulhas current colliding into the Somali. It ripples across your surface and rattles the rotting bones below. The empty husk of you trembles. 

"No," he murmurs, words distant and warbled under the roaring in your ear. You watch a flicker of something tremble across his face. A frisson shuddering too fast for your sluggish, mortal eyes to discern. 

You can't find the remnants of that ugly, gnarled thing that sometimes stares back at you when he's unaware. A beast hiding in a forgotten bivouac, creeping through the desolate ruins of a travesty that reek of upturned humus. A ghost disinterred from its slumber. 

But when you stare at him, bare-faced and uncertain, you see a darkening edge in the cuts of blue: deep canyons and crevasse that warm when your reflection swims in the glossy curve, wide eyes and parted lips filling the tenebrous, the shadows. 

The things, disentombed, are at rest. Clouded over by the shocked face that swims in endless pools of blue. 

"Never." 

"Oh," you murmur, honeyed sweet and viciously coy. "How sweet of you."

(It takes you a moment to realise he's mocking you.

Your heart still thunders like the words were true.)

Simon cleans the hilt of the knife for you, bare fingers scouring away the blood that stains the leather. He lets you watch as he works, content to lean against the wall in silence as he dabs a cloth in a petri dish filled with cleaning solution, and gently scours the stain from the hide. 

The motions are gentle, and familiarity bleeds into each swipe. This isn't the first time he scrubbed away the rotting blood of a dead man, and some part of you aches, stupid, knowing that it won't be the last. 

A testament to the age-old woes of an occupational hazard. 

Watching him work, silent and unbothered by your intrusion ("of all the bloody gits, you're somehow the least annoying. For now;"), fills you with a strange sense of comfort. Of longing. 

(Domesticity makes your teeth ache and your cheeks burn.)

His knuckles are bruised. He won't tell you how it happened. Doesn't say much outside of, it's done, already, so no sense in worryin' about it. 

You suppose he's right. No sense in dwelling over what you can't change. But the sight of his hands—bruised, cracked and bloodied—makes your mouth dry, and your heart race. 

There's something about his hands that captivate you.  

You can't stop staring at them. The memory of what his molten flesh felt like against your icy skin sears into you. The weight of his palm on your neck. Steady, solid. 

Something predatory had risen from within you, and cocked its head to the side, allowing him an ounce more of your flesh for him to take. To touch. 

A bear will seek the warmest cave to slumber after gorging itself on flesh and bone. A moth will kill itself just to touch an open flame. 

There's something alluring about heat. Flames. Fire. 

(Ghost smells of cedar embers: pyrolysis.

You're cold enough to want to burn the tips of your fingers in the open flame. To immerse yourself in the fire that'll char your flesh, and blacken your bones. Hollowed marrow, now filled with charcoal and brimstone.)

Your knuckles twitch. You curl your fingers into fists by your side. 

"Done," he says, sitting back in the chair, and shaking you from your reverie. 

He turns to you, the knife perched in his upturned palm. The leather is dark, wet, but the blood is gone. 

On the table, the water in the Petri dish is diluted pink. 

You let yourself linger when you reach for the proffered knife, knuckles grazing the rough flesh of warm, bare palm. Greedily catching tendrils of heat on the tips of your fingers. 

"Thanks."

His eyes brim with something you can't name. "Try to keep it clean, or you'll ruin the leather."

You want to say, no one told you to make it pretty for me in the first place, but you don't. You think, instead, of summit fever, of scaling walls. The view from the top of a mountain must be worth the risk, the danger. To see the curve of the earth, and pure blue of the horizon yawning for you. As close to god as a mortal can climb with their bare hands.

It hits you like a punch to the gut. The rock crumbling. The chossy wobbling. Your feet giving away, fingers scraping against the granite as you fall to the rocks below. 

He waits, eyes narrowing in that same shade of pensive contemplation as before. 

You're lingering too much. Touching him too openly. Greedily. You wonder why he lets you when you pull away, shamefaced and meek. 

(How much of it, you wonder, is an act and how much of it is real. Subconscious submission. Meek and unassuming. It rears inside of you, a skittish animal. But you're not scared. Not of him. Never.

A sick joke. Mortal folly. Something inside of you wants to know you're alive, and so—

Roll over and he'll think you're prey.)

You manage a shaky smile, mind racing to the same tremulous crescendo as the arrhythmic drum of your heart.

You don't meet his gaze. Can't when there's a deluge of something—ugly and awful—roaring through you at the sight of his hands, and the scars that cover them. Some, you note, deep enough to knick bone. False starts. Your teeth ache at the sight. Stomach knotting. Churning. 

Something vicious gnarls through the rotten entombment of your living heart. 

Gaze lowered. Neck bared. 

Hook, line—

"Got it, Lt." 

He fractures his fingers in Medellín after chasing a man through the barrios. They're cracked on the concrete when he jumps from the roof and catches it on a metal rod sticking out from the ashlar. 

Those same ones that tilted your jaw back, bones creaking under the strain of his grip.

Ghost doesn't flinch, of course—you don't even know they're broken until he asks for gauze and a splint at the safe house you're holed up in. You just see him swing that same hand out, catching the man by the throat when he tries to slip past. Steady. Solid. An expert killing machine, numbed to the pain, the carnage. 

Simon holds him tight to the wall by his jugular, barking out coarse questions, demanding answers. His voice carries (who are you working for? Where are the others? Gimme a reason not to snap your neck right now—), and you watch it all unfold from your perch on the rafters beside the alcove. 

Watching his six—supposed to be, anyway—but you can't stop staring at the way he dwarfs the other man. The curve of his fingers, long and thick, around his throat. It fits like a scarf. A neck brace. 

Simon's so—

Massive. Undeniably so. And seeing it like this is mesmerising. Hypnotic, almost. 

Whatever the man says is swallowed by the roaring in your ears; the rush of the wind whistling through the houses below. 

He gasps something out, eyes wide, and whatever it is, it makes Simon nod. 

Right, then. Target acquired. 

The moment his jaw snaps shut, information unveiled, he barely has a chance to beg before Simon's hand twitches. 

You hear the sharp snap from your perch above him, and barely have a moment to collect yourself before the man goes limp. Simon pulls away from him, a half step back, and without his support, he falls to the ground with a soft thud. 

His hand falls to his side when the man falls, and it's then, in the fading ochre streaking through the concrete, you notice the drops of red staining his gloves. They catch in the light—a Rorschach of brutality and death—and you can't stop staring at them. At his hands. 

A small thing, really. It's hardly anything noteworthy considering the litres of blood that saturate any of you on a particularly gruesome day, and yet something about the red smears on the back of his hands, staining the worn, faded white metacarpals catches your attention. Eyes glued to the way he shakes his big hand, as if throwing off the sting of split bones. 

(Even with splintered fingers, he was still able to snap a grown man's neck. The thought shouldn't be as enticing as it is.)

Later that night, you sit on your knees between his broad thighs, and gingerly take his bruised hand into yours. The contrast is laughable—his palm alone swallows the entirety of yours up. A cantaloupe to a satsuma. The mental image makes a smile crack on the corner of your mouth, a little twitch. 

He catches it. Always, always—

The hand that isn't several shades of indigo and burgundy lifts, settling on the curve of your jaw. Long, thick fingers splay out, stretching from the slope of your bone just below your ear, down to your chin. The entire expanse of your face cupped in his palm. 

Simon is a big man. Massive. 

(You sometimes forget that he's a direct descendant of Everest.)

Something inside of you gnarls, and tightens. There's always that thread of unease whenever he's juxtaposed to mortal men, to yourself; a lingering remnant, an atavistic fear for the beings that are bigger, broader than yourself. The primal instinct to run from the things that look like they could snap your bones into pieces with just their bare hands. 

It's a small thing, considering, and always washed away by the surge of desire that pools in the space it once occupied. 

He's big. 

(You've always had a fondness for heights.)

"Does it hurt?" 

If it does, he'll never admit to it; but you murmur the words, anyway—if only to feel the power in his hands when you move your jaw under his palm; the gentle resistance that meets you when you lower your chin, and hit the warmth of his skin.

"No," he says, and you fight back a smirk. "Are you finished yet?" 

His question pulls your attention back to his swelling hand, skin already turning glossy from the tumescence of inflammation. Irritated. Pulpy. The knuckles are split in the valleys; a deep divot of plum red. 

He has pretty hands, you think. 

Peached-tinged ivory dusted in a fine layer of coarse, flaxen hair, and broken into streams of scars and welts in a mosaic on his rough skin. Thick veins in ballpoint blue run from his knuckles to his forearms; all intersecting rivers that cross and meld into a confluence near the bend of his elbow. 

It's layered with fading charcoal ink pushed beneath his dermis. 

The slide of his palm is rough with a patchwork of scars that cut through his life line. Jagged little marks from the sharp end of a knife. Pockmarks from cigarettes. 

You like the way they feel on your skin. The weight behind them, the heat. The way they bend, and contort. Curling around the butt of a cigarette as he snipes game plans back and forth with Soap. Then the hilt of a rifle when he steadies it on concrete; playing God with gunmetal. 

The way they curl into loose fists by his sides when he's displeased, tense and ready for the impending alternation. 

How soft they are, then, when he slides the back of his hand against yours. Touches the small of your back, fingers curving around your waist when he pulls you close. 

The way he sometimes holds your face between his palms. 

You cover them up with the starchy gauze before lifting your chin to catch his gaze once again. 

His eyes are stagnant seas. 

You might think it's tranquillity that keeps the midnight blue surface from succumbing to the pull of the moon, and the tides; but that would be a fallacy. A death sentence. 

There's nothing calm in those depths. Below the thin film sits an endless abyss torn up by currents that carry the same inescapable grasp as the churning hydrology of a waterfall. It'll snatch you the moment you plunge into the blue, ripped through the water until it suctions you into a crevasse. 

But—

You hold his gaze as you lift your chin up, notching it higher until his hand slides down your jaw, palm now resting on the side of your neck. 

—You've never been afraid of drowning. 

"That's good," you murmur, tilting your head to the side until your neck is cupped in the palm of his hand. Algae blooms in those unfathomable depths when your pulse thuds against his thumb. "'Cause I was kinda thinking it would be nice to get your hands around my neck one of these days."

His hand twitches against your pulse. 

The usual caustic, derisive barbs and brackish quips are bereft from his hidden lips. You might mistake him as unbothered. Uninterested. But you've always been good at scraping off the veneer people tend to wrap themselves in, burrowing under their dermis, and the flash in those murky eyes—widened slightly at your words until it's a pretty polynya: icy white around a puddle of midnight blue—gives him away. 

His thumb slides down the column of your neck until it's pressed tight to the little jut of your jugular poking through thin, delicate skin. Ashen lashes flutter when you swallow against the soft press of his fingers; eyes flickering down, liquifying, as he takes in the way your muscles tense in his hand. 

He could close the entirety of his palm around the convex curve of your throat, and—if he really wanted to—his thumb and middle finger might meet in the back, nestled just above your spine. 

There's a heat simmering in your veins, stroked by the flex of his fingers as he mulls over what you're asking him for. The smooth, almost pensive way he brushes his thumb over your neck; an unconscious action, you think, with the way his lids dip, cresting over liquid black. 

His silence doesn't last long. Whatever conclusions he draws in that brief lull are tucked away, hidden from view, when he shifts in the old wicker chair.  

He leans forward a little—enough, you note, to hide the growing bulge in his slacks—and lifts his heavy gaze back to yours. 

"That so, pet?" 

It's rare you ever find Simon speechless, but you've known him long enough to know how to catch him off-guard. 

You swallow when his fingers thread through the loose hair along the curve of your ear, scratching his short nails along the skin of your skull. His thumb presses against the spot below your eye, lower lashes spilling over the tip of his finger when you blink up at him, eyes lidded with the weight of your want. Despite the languid, almost kittenish, way you tilt your chin until it's plinthed into his warm palm, your eyes are razors. Sharpened on the whetstone of your conviction. 

"Yes," you breathe. Your tongue runs across your bottom lip, as if chasing the words from lingering in the seam of your teeth. "That's so, Lt."

His fingers twitch at your words, eyes narrowing into those same contemplative slits as before. Then slowly, deliberately, he drags his hand down to rest once more over your jugular.

—sinker. 

Your nails dig into the hard flesh of his bicep until the skin breaks: crescent moons pool beneath the tips of your fingers. Red, raw. 

It makes him suck in a slow breath, the sound heavy in your ear. 

"Keep that up," he rasps, a livewire pressing into your naked chest. "And I'll have to do somethin' about it, pet." 

It's not an empty threat. You know Simon enough by now to know he never says anything he doesn't mean. But you still toss your head back, laughter slipping from your blood-red lips. High, you think, on the thrill of him. 

"Yeah? Promises, promises, Lt—"

A flash in liquid black. Napalm embers. 

One hand lifts, leaving the back of your knee. You know what's coming. Asked him for it, even, but it still takes you by surprise when his massive hand slips between your chin and neck, fingers curling until he has a perfect grip of your throat in his palm. Your head is forced back, pulse beats against his thumb; a frightened bird struggling in the grip of a predator. 

He isn't squeezing—not yet—but the hold he has on you is firm. 

You meet his stare, quivering in his arms. 

"Lay back." 

A slight pressure. You gasp. He feels the inhale under his hand, the thick swallow you take when he begins to push you down slowly. It makes him groan again when you lock up around his cock, tight and throbbing like the pulse under his fingers. 

"That's it." He holds you against the pillow. You don't test his grip, but you know it's ironclad. You're shackled to the bed. At his mercy.  

Tears burn your eyes. It's not fear, panic. The moisture leaking into the crease of your eyelids is involuntary. You want to tell him this, to let him know you want this, want his hand on your vulnerable neck.

You gasp quietly, the air barely slipping past the curl of his fingers—naked, warm, rough—on your skin. 

"Simon—"

"Relax," his voice is liquid sin; velvet draped over a kindling fire. The crackle floods you until you're panting, breathless. "C'mon…you can take it." 

Your fingers unfurl from his biceps, tips soothing along the irritated flesh, ghosting over scars—bullets, fire, knives, cigarettes: his flesh is a mosaic of history you're barred to ever uncover—but the way his muscles coil under the softness of your hands makes your chest lurch. 

You trail them down until you reach the thick forearm bent over your sweat-slicked chest, nails catching on the throbbing veins until you hear the rasp of his breath under the mask. 

Your palm is tiny, almost fragile, in comparison to his wrist. Wrapping your fingers around the thick of him is like holding onto the end of a bat. Your hands can only cup the width; a perfect crescent. 

It's that—the immense power, the strength of him, buzzing under his storied skin that makes your belly burn with the fever of your want. He's so—

Massive. 

Strong.

You can feel it, now. Fingers brush over the veins on the back of his hand, a seal around your throat, and you know that he's holding back. Has to. He could snap your neck with an ease that should terrify you. You've watched these same hands throw knives into men's throats. Watched them wrap around their necks, crushing the bones until the struggling ceased with a gut-wrenching snap, and they fell, limp, to the floor. 

His eyes flutter when you swallow, when your small, delicate throat works under his clutch. 

He has the capacity to ruin: 

Simon—Ghost��can break your neck without a flinch. 

And yet—

You meet his eyes, lips trembling, and then you slowly tip your head back. 

Submission. You give yourself to him wholly. 

(A toil—

come closer, pretty thing.)

Simon's breath stutters in his chest, his hand tenses. Eyes widened. The whites are stained with tendrils of red. 

His next breath is a snarl that bludgeons into your core. He leans down, cock jarring something inside of you that has the cosmos burning into your retinas. 

When he speaks, his words are raw. Scoured with sandpaper. It's almost animalistic when he growls your name, adds:

"So good for me, pet."

He matches the praise with a sharp jerk of his hips, sinking in deep until you can feel him throbbing in your sternum. 

When you clench, spasming around him, his fingers flex. 

It starts slow. 

He readjusts his grip until you're a perfect fit in the palm of his hand. A little bird begging for respite in the claw of a hungry lion. 

Ghost has never been a man of mercy. 

(And you'd long learned to stop trying to barter with a hurricane.)

There is no rhythm to the way he fucks you. An interrogation expert, skilled in torture, he keeps you on the edge the whole time. Left to do nothing but cling to him, and take it. All of it. Whatever he wants to give you. 

You suck in a breath, but it is stopped when his hand squeezes. Tighter, now. The air in your lungs is compressed, forced out until they're empty. 

His pulse beats against your throat. His heat is an inferno, a fever; he presses into you until you're panting, head soporific and gummy under the intense blaze of his body. Hard, firm: there is no give when you notch your knees to his ribs, pressing your caps into his flesh. He's unmovable. Unshakeable. 

Liquid pleasure spumes from that unfathomably deep place he batters into with his cock, and the tips of his fingers as he burrows both into your flesh. 

It's too much—

His hand drops from your knee, resting on the pillow beside your head. It brings him closer—now, almost chest to chest—and smothers the air from your lungs completely. His eyes, however, steal the last wisp of your breath away. 

Standing on the edge of a singularity, gazing into the event horizon. Black holes ready to swallow you whole. 

Bereft of oxygen, you begin to crumble in his hold. 

"That's it," he rasps, fingers tightening. "Fuck—you're so tight—gonna strangle me, pet—"

Your breath is clinched by the palm of his hand. Futile gasps, hiccups, spill from your lips as he shifts inside of you, bracing his knees on the bed, and driving forward until you see stars. Until you claw at his wrist, back arching like a bow. 

The cosmos tastes of gunfire. Smoke. The heavy scent clogs your throat until you're choking on the embers that seep from his skin.

"I'm not done with you, pet." His timbre pitches, low and sultry; a rough graze. A scraped knee. "I could do this for days."

It makes you whimper. Makes you thrash. He means it, too. Always. Always. He'll hold you down until you're drowning in it. 

Your head swims. Hypoxia bleeds into your eyes. 

"Simon…" you whimper when his hips slot into yours. "Simon. I'm—"

The words are swallowed down when he ruts into you again, driven mad by the clutch of your body, and the vulnerable way you look at him. His head drops, moussed hair tickling your nose. 

"Fuck, pet—," it's chiselled out of him. A warning, perhaps. Don't. Don't say any more. Don't—

His voice is polar when it drifts over you. The chill alone freezes the words in your throat. 

"You like this, don't you?" Detached. Distant. He can't let himself feel the quiver in your voice, the ache in your throat. If he lets himself have this, even a meagre amount of it—

You don't think he'll be able to let go. 

The words are tucked back into the pocket carved out in your ribs just for them. They'll sit until he's ready, until the storm in his Rorschach eyes dissipates—if, of course, it ever does. You'll wait for however long that might be, even if it lasts a lifetime. 

(closer, now—)

Your fingers spray wide over his skin, soothing and gentle—calm pets over a ruffled plumage—until you feel the tension bleed from his coiled muscles; softening back into the pliancy you've come to expect from him. 

He'll run if you're not careful. Flee. Disentangle himself from the weaved knots spooling between the fibrils of your bodies, atoms merging and moulding together in a joined entity. Severe himself even if it means losing limbs. 

You think of old dogs, strays. The ones that weave through the villages with matted fur, and battle scars; the wizened, grizzled muzzles from a short lifetime on the run. Wild, feral. Touches that don't cause hurt are bewilderingly foreign—the idea of a hand that doesn't maim, doesn't break is as unfamiliar to them as living inside of a home. 

The only way to gain their trust is patience. Perseverance. 

And so, you pull back. Let him breathe. 

"I love it, Simon."

The breathy utterance falling from your lips makes him twitch deep inside of you, a groan spilling out of the cage of his chest when he feels the vibrations of his given name against his naked palm. 

"Fuckin' hell, pet—," you might call it a snarl, a growl; a mangled curse in your likeness dipped in the palpable ache of his pleasure. 

He says nothing more. A man of little words and heavy actions, he shows you what he won't say, what he can't. 

His cock hits something deep inside that makes you see white; a nebula of bliss pooling deep inside of you until you're spasming over the absurd thickness of him. 

Ghost holds it for a moment, and it's that—the midnight hour pooling in black, covered in grease paint, and clothed under a thick balaclava—that, the subtle way he takes, takes, that makes you all too aware of who is fucking you right now. 

You're not fucking Simon. It's Ghost. Deadly. Dangerous. His eyes gleam in the light; dark and empty. Black holes pulling you in. 

He drags you to the edge until your eyes cross—hazy and unfocused, slipping into that blurred realm of semi-consciousness—and it's when you begin to slip down that precipice, head numbed and full of him, he pulls back. 

His cock bludgeons into you, seated deep, and when the head kisses the deepest part of you, grinding sharp, and intense, his grip on your neck eases. 

Air floods your lungs so quickly it hurts.

His name rushes out of you on the deep exhale, a wrecked, aching plea. It sounds like a hymn when you breathe it out, and the reverence of it makes him shudder. Makes his hand clench, and his cock throb. 

You feel it all. The deep twitch inside of you. The spasm of his knuckles. The way the air clicks in his throat, catching in his larynx. A thick swallow. Another spasm. You take it all. Everything. 

No one wrenches you open, leaving you raw and exposed, like Simon. A wound that never heals. A sickness that never dissipates. You carry the weight of him between your ribs and thundering heart. A place of safekeeping, protecting this precious knot that gnarls inside of you from everything else out there that might want to hurt it. It thrums now, dizzy with the feeling of him so close to you. 

His hand lifts from your thigh, reaching down to snag both of your wrists in the wide expanse of his palm. He drags them up, arched high above your head on the pillow stained with your sweat. The brassbound grip of his hold, locking you tight in the cup of his hand when he presses them into the pillow steals the last vestiges of air from your lungs. 

The hold on your neck eases. His long, thick fingers brush over the smooth column of your throat. You suck in a deep breath, letting it fill the vacancy of your lungs, and take the rich, dewy scent of him in until it clots to the fibrils inside. 

Filled, you think, to the brim with him.

He smells of chemise, tonyon, and dried hawthorn. Wet chaparral after a wildfire scorched the thicket to cinder and ash. 

With him perched above you, now drenched in the fullness of him—his smell, his touch, the way he sounds when he fits deep inside of you—you find the once unutterable words again. 

They've been buoying up and down for months now, maybe even years. Always left to rot in their esophageal prison, but as your airways open up, as this moment of utter vulnerability and underlying trust brims inside of you, hotter than the bliss burning through your core, they slip out, tangled up in the way you breathe his name. 

The orison rings with the palpable weight of your wants, oiled in the gossamer of your pleasure. It lingers in the scant space between you. 

Simon shudders as it tickles against his skin. A featherlight whisper over naked flesh stained with the brine of sex. 

You gaze up at him, burning the sight of him arched above you like the fruition of your yearning carved in flesh and bone, and a part of you selfishly hopes the barbed hooks of those words you're barred from saying sink into his pale flesh. Piercing deep enough to sink into his bloodstream. 

Infectious. Incurable. 

It's dark, and awful, and full of that ugly longing that makes your teeth ache to mark him up for the world to see, to know, that he's been conquered, claimed. Stupid. Silly. Infantile. You can't own a person, can't chain them to you through ichor and offerings, and yet—

Ghost groans when your teeth find purchase in the meat of his shoulder, a rough noise that rattles through your empty bones, and fills the barren space where humanity once beat. 

—You spill his blood on the altar. A sacrificial offering. Yours to keep. 

"Fuck," he rasps, the word sticking to the side of his raw throat. "Tryin'a give me a new scar, pet? Don't got enough already?"

Despite the weight of the words, they're uttered with a caveat that's almost indiscernible had you not the wherewithal to know him as intimately as you do. Equivalency bleeds in the vowels. 

It comes as no great surprise, then, when he huffs in your ear, dips his chin, and then sinks his teeth into your pulse point, just above the place where his thumb rests. 

(Matching offerings. A tangled web.)

The sharp sting condenses into a blistering pleasure: a damnable bliss. It's the victory of your acquisition, the satisfaction of your merger. Your release bludgeons into you—a mix of euphoria and pain—and the world around you wobbles, narrows. There's a pinpoint where only the hazy shadow of ashen hair fills your periphery. The dark silhouette of a man you itch to pry open and burrow inside. 

A muted noise spills from the back of your throat. His name, maybe (Simon, Simon, Simon), but it's swallowed by his wet groan—blood-drenched and bitter. 

Maybe it's the bitter tang of you on his tongue, or the dribble of red on the corners of your mouth, caught when he flickers his gaze up to your own, catching the smear of his blood staining your lips, but he shudders above you. Rumbling like an earthquake. The clash of plates grinding together. It splits you down the middle, and shakes the chill from your bones until you're a molten mess of liquified limbs: polymer bones, bubbling blood. 

You melt into the mattress below with a hymn of his name—a blasphemous orison that has no place amongst the debauchery of sex-soaked sheets, and blood-stained teeth, but fits like a second skin when it brushes past your lips. 

Simon follows. He says your name—a rough and gritty howl in the back of his throat—and then he's burying himself so deep inside of you that something breaks apart, gives, and the consuming hole, the vacuum he wrought, is filled with him. Him, him. A void. A cenote. 

A gaping chasm of rot, need. Unquenchable.

"Fuck—" he snarls like a beast, the words crushing your ribcage, and leaking brimstone in your empty marrow. "Feels so fuckin' good, pet—"

There's something alluringly victorious about catching the biggest predator in the pen. A man made of death now bowing at the knees with just a flash of vulnerability; the slightest tilt of your delicate neck. 

A string coils around your finger, pulling taut when you tug. 

Bones ache when you move. Muscles scream when you swallow. Still, you lean forward, and syphon the heat from his skin, the blood from his veins. 

Your spoils to keep, wrapped up prettily inside a diaphanous web. 

Your nails rake across his flesh when you pull him close, curling around him in a spooled knot. When you grin, you feel the thick film of blood on your teeth. Vicious, victorious. "We match now, Simon." 

He might run.

But you've always been good at running: a long-distance sprinter in perpetual motion.

(You'll catch up, no matter where he goes.)

And when he breathes your name through the wet fabric of his mask, trembling with his release, you know that some things are worth chasing after. 

"You, uh… got anything to tell me?"

Gaz can't keep his eyes from straying to the moulted bruise on your neck—a startling smear of charcoal, flaxen, and indigo, broken in a perfect crescent of teeth—and each glance feels like a physical touch to your sensitive, inflamed skin.

It's childish. Immature. 

(You wear it proudly, flaunting your win to the world.)

"Not really," you shrug, body buzzing with heat. It simmers in your veins now. Syphoned warmth that spools in your bloodstream, leaks from your marrow. "Just tamed a stray over the weekend. You know how it is."

There's a strange cut in melted brown. A look you're much too familiar with. One might mistake it as condemnation, scorn, but you know Gaz. The quirk of his lips gives him away. 

"A stray, huh?" He intones contemplatively, timbre breezy, light, as he was mentioning the weather in Birmingham. Light drizzle, should clear up in the aft'. "Don't come aggin' to me when this backfires on you, yeah? Some never learn to stop biting." 

Gaz pointedly looks out toward the table where Ghost and Price pour over another set of documents—shoulders drawn tight as they toss ideas and plans back and forth—before turning back to you. 

"But I guess you know all about that already."

The barb in his tone—equal parts admonishing, and scathingly facetious—prickles against your skin. You offer a small smile, a languid shrug, and let your gaze drift, dragged back to Ghost. 

His hands are wrapped in white, his mask pulled over his neck, hiding your mark from the world. Another scar on top of a storied history of others, but far kinder than anything else he'd ever received. 

It prickles in your gums when you see him, and makes heat fill your chest when his eyes list to you, to Gaz, as if he can feel your stare, even when you're tucked away in a hidden crevasse, watching, waiting.

He won't come closer. Not when everyone else is around, but you catch the hunger in his gaze when you tilt your chin, exposing the soft, vulnerable curve of your neck, baring the bruise for him to see. It's rough, abrading. His eyes scrape over the varicoloured smear with a rapacious greediness that burrows under your skin. 

"I'm learning," you murmur, words muted, heavy with something that tastes like triumph when it slips out. "Baby steps, right?"

Ghost turns away first, tearing his gaze from the bruise on your neck, muscles tensing as he ducks his head, and forces his attention back to Price. 

In the corner of the room, a spider reaps the spoils of its fruit: a webbed sarcophagus around an exhausted fly that has long since given up on the struggle to get free. 

It opens its maw, fangs glinting in the jaundiced light.

Vicious, victorious: it feasts. 

(You drag your tongue over your warm lips, and feel the stirrings of hunger gnarl inside you once more.)

[poppadom0912]

Gymnastics

Characters: Jay Halstead x Sibling!Reader, Will Halstead x Sibling!Reader

Warnings: Annoying girls, incorrect gymnastics, incorrect justice system, injuries, drugs, blood etc.

Summary: Today was your time to shine but someone just had to ruin it.

A/N: Hello, hello, hello. So it’s been a month since I last updated but i am officially back in business now that all my exams are over and education is done till September. I will be much more consistent in my writing now that I’ve got so much free time but I can’t promise much because my inspiration is still haywire.

I have never once seen gymnastics competitively and google was no help in the legal department so I apologise for any mistakes in advance. But I do hope you enjoy this!!

I also wrote this on my phone so there will probably be several mistakes.

"Are you sure blue's my colour?" You asked with uncertainty, smoothing down non-existent creases in your leotard. Last night, you were more than confident that everything was going to be perfect but now that you were standing in front of a mirror in the dressing room, you were starting to second guess yourself.

"Girl, that teal blue and your luscious red locks are a match made in heaven!" You best friend scoffed, a smile on her face as she looked at you incredulously, shocked that you were even doubting your appearance in the first place.

Tilting your head to the side, you hummed. She was right, you looked great and boy were you glad you got the good looking genes from your family.

Unfortunately for everyone today, Will and Jay couldn't make it because of work and you immediately understood. Being an ER doctor and a detective in Chicago was a big job in itself so when they sat you down the other night and remorsefully explained, you knew you'd be by yourself.

But, you had Emily and she'd been by your side every step of the way. gymnastics was actually how the two of you met. You were there on your own free will, her mother was forcing her but after sharing that class when you were five, you'd been as thick as thieves, even when she quit and started volleyball.

"I'm sorry that Jay and Will couldn't be here." Emily said, standing next to you, helping fix your hair when your were struggling to keep your baby hairs down. "But, I'm recording everything so they don't need to worry-"

Emily cut herself off, her eyes wide as she looked in the mirror that the two of you were standing in front of. Confused, your followed her gaze and the biggest smile broke out on your face.

Whipping your head around, you looked at your two idiots dumbfounded. What the hell were they doing here? Most importantly, how did they get in?

"What are you guys doing here?" You asked still shocked, going up to them and wrapping your arms around them individually. It was only now you also noticed they were in their normal day to day clothes-

Nevermind. You could see Will's doctor ID sticking out his pocket with his wallet and phone and Jay's badge and gun was secured on his belt.

"Did you just come from work? Why?" You asked again, your brows furrowed as you stepped back.

"You think we'd miss this?" Will asked rhetorically, holding his hand out for you to stop when you opened your mouth to reply. "It's a rhetorical question Y/N, of course we'd be here."

"Getting today off was easy." Jay shrugged, his lips tugging up into a smirk as he finally addressed your sparkly blue leotard. "You look great."

You rolled your eyes, swatting his hand away from touching your shoulder. You did not need him getting glitter everywhere now at all times.

"You know what, how about you guys go find your seats so I can finish getting ready in peace?" You said snarkily, walking towards your bag for your water bottle and your phone.

"You sure?" Will asked, wanting to make sure you had everything you wanted and needed. If you really wanted to be alone then they'd grant you that.

"Yeah." You nodded, gesturing for Emily to join your brothers. "The competitions about to start soon anyways."

Emily nodded without any reluctancy, having spent the entire morning with you. Bouncing on her toes, she was a ball of excitement. With a quick and brief hug, letting your brothers do the same, she showed them to their seats.

"Break a leg kid!" Jay smiled, wishing you the best of luck so that you could win the competition you'd been dreaming of.

"Don't listen to him, do anything but break your leg." Will tsked, pushing Jay out the changing room. "Good luck and kick their asses."

"Don't swear!"

"Jay! Let's move!"

Their arguing slowly faded away. You laughed, shaking your head at your stupid older brothers shenanigans because even though they were acting like a bunch of five year olds, they still managed to show up and now doubt, they were going to show out with their encouraging cheers.

"Where's it gone?" You whispered to yourself, emptying your duffle bag into the bench, all of its contents falling out, everything but your water bottle and your flask.

It'd become a thing since you started gymnastics. You always had a water bottle and a flask with a drink that usually had electrolytes to help you before, after and in-between. You swear your packed your bag this money, you triple checked with a checklist and everything.

Grumbling under your breath, you were stretching your arm out to grab your phone and text whichever brother was higher up your contacts so one of them could get your liquids but you stopped yourself upon the dressing room door being pushed open.

"What do we have here? If it isn't my favourite gymnast, Y/N Halstead."

Kelly-Marie was your all time nemesis since you started preschool. You weren't too sure how it all started out but you couldn't really care less. No matter how you acted, nice or horrible towards her, she was keen on making your life a living hell in and out of school.

Rolling your eyes, your swallowed back any snarky remark and remained crossed legged on the cold floor. Boredly, you looked up at her through your lashes, not wanting to waste any time of day on her because a minute was too precious for her.

"What do you want Kelly?" You asked, looking up at her briefly before going back to your phone to continue doing what you planned on doing.

"I just came to do two things, so simple even a raccoon could do it." She smiled, her hands behind her back obviously holding something.

Once again, you held back from replying, instead biting your tongue so hard that you could probably draw blood but the annoying voices of your brothers telling your off for hurting yourself if what stopped you.

"Good luck Halstead." She said smugly, her ivy green leotard sparkly under the lights on the changing room. "May the best gymnast win."

From behind her back, she pulled out two very familiar looking bottles causing your brows to furrow in confusion and curiosity. How the hell did she get her hands on your things?

Cautiously, you took your bottles from her hands, setting it down on the bench. Now that you were standing up, you were now chest to chest and thank goodness you didn't inherit your mother's height. You got your height from your brothers which meant you were taller than Kelly, you could look down at her a little. Such a small notion putting you on a higher pedestal than her.

"I'll see you on that podium Kelly." You replied calmly, not letting yourself get worked up over her. You weren't going to get someone as petty as her ruin your day.

Sashaying her hips, she walked away, her dirty blonde hair yet to be put into its bun that Kelly wore.

Burning holes into the back of her head, you gulped down your drink, the fact that Kelly found it and willingly gave it back to you on her own accord going over your head.

*****

Despite her name being Kelly-Marie, her surname was Ainsley which meant she went before you. You had mixed feelings. Her going first meant she would be hard to beat since she set an expectation for the rest of the competitors but it also gave you time to judge and compare your routine to hers.

And you could proudly say that when she finished, you were only filled with more confidence.

Bouncing on your toes, you blew out several puffs of air, smiling at your three supporters who were sitting next to you, keeping you company before it was your turn.

Both your water and drink was half finished and it it wasn't for Will who said you'd need to go toilet once it was your go that stopped you.

You didn't want to mention that you were starting to feel light headed, you could feel beads of sweat also starting to collect on your forehead because you'd have an entire doctor assessing you for problems which you obviously didn't have, you were just nervous and needed to win this; you wanted to win this so badly ever since the prime age of five.

Ignoring Kelly's haughty laugh as she skipped away to her filthy rich parents, you rolled your shoulders back so they wouldn't be so tense.

"Alright squirt, go show em what you got." Jay massaged your shoulders from behind you, bending down so he could speak in your ear alike to a coach. Speaking of your coach, she was rounding the rest of the girls from the changing rooms so they could watch you light up the room.

"Wooo! Go Y/N!" Your brothers shouted in sync, clapping as you got onto the mats once your name was called out. You sent them a bright smile, chuckling at your short best friend who was jumping up and down in encouragement.

Inhaling deeply, your swatted away the nagging voice at the back of your head telling you to sit down. Your hands felt clammy which was very unlike you and your throat felt weird.

Despite feeling fully hydrated, the room started to move, colours and people meshing together but that all went away with aggressively rubbing your eyes.

With your songs slowly bleeding out of the speakers, the mats vibrating coursing through your body, you swallowed back your desperate need to throw up. What the hell was wrong with you?

Not giving it another thought, the only thing on your mind being that you crushed this competition, you mumbled a quick prayer under your breath and the floor was all yours.

Your flips and rolls all started off perfectly precise. Your talent mixed with your red hair and blue costume was so mesmerising to watch from a distance, the whistles and encouraging shouts only proving so.

It was now that time in your routine that you got onto the balance beam, one of your favourite things to do whether you were upright or upside down but you felt less than excited to get on. Something was definitely wrong.

Jay and Will noticed it straight away. The way you faltered, swaying once you attempted to stand up straight with your shoulders back but from afar, they could only speculate on your wellbeing.

But then, despite you endless efforts to remain upright and continue on, you fell.

Now, the fall was from a big height but hitting your head on the beam and landing awkwardly on your foot caused you some damage.

Gasps echoed across the hall, everyone either on their feet or in their chairs, mouths agape at the sight of your limpy body falling onto the mats.

Without a second thought, your two brothers, who had been on their feet through the entire routine you attempted to finish, were apologising while they squeezed their way out the row of seats, running down the small steps and straight towards you.

Getting onto his knees, Will knelt by your side, his hands going to your pulse point on your neck, sighing in slight relief when it was there but it was weak.

On instinct, Will relayed everything he did aloud, not realising that he was actually doing it. Luckily for him, it allowed for Jay to be kept in the loop even if he didn't understand quite a few of the words that he was hearing. Also, no one from the public could hear so that too worked in their favour.

Putting his ear close to your nose, Will held his own breath while he waited for yours. It came out occasionally, along with the unsteady rise and fall of your chest but you were breathing.

Somewhat happy at his findings, Will began rubbing your sternum, the glitter feeling like sandpaper against his fingers and knuckles. It was only when you groaned, eyes still screwed shut that Will stopped.

"Y/N, can you hear me?" Will asked, not fazed by the blood coating his fingers when he checked the back of your head. "You with us sweetheart?"

"I'm calling it in." Jay said once he saw that you were bleeding from your head, even if you weren't, he wasn't going to take any chances.

"What's wrong? Is she okay?" Emily stood a metre or two away from your unconscious body. She desperately wanted to hold your hand but didn't want to be in the way. Her eyes widened at the sight of blood seeping from your hair and onto the blue mats. All of a sudden, she was assuming the worst.

With his hand back on your sternum, trying to wake you up properly, Will looked over his shoulder only to find an anxiety ridden Emily. "Hey, Emily, can your breath for me?"

"Um, yeah." She licked her lips, nodding repeatedly as she did so. "I'm okay, what do you need?"

"Can you check her bag? See if she ate something off or if she took something." Will hated the words that rolled off his tongue so easily but he had to tick all the boxes.

"Yeah, I can do that." Emily nodded again, taking small steps backwards, taking one last good look at you before rushing off towards all your belongings.

Your mumbles were basically incoherent, your lips too heavy to move but the words you were trying to make out caught the attention of both your brothers, their heads snapping up to yours.

"And there she is." Will said with a smile, relieved that you were no conscious. "Jay, keep her head straight, who knows if she's got a spinal injury."

"I thought you could check for that in the field?" Jay asked, swearing that he remembered Will telling him something along those lines one night.

Will rolled his eyes. "I can but I don't want to risk anything, it can be done at the hospital."

"She's definitely broken her foot." Will winced, gently feeling around for anymore broken bones, trying to see if you hurt yourself more than what they could see.

There weren't any signs but somehow, it was either the experienced doctor or the experienced brother but Will knew what was about to happen.

"Move her onto her side." Will rushed out, moving you along with Jay as fast as possible. With no argument, Jay listened to his older brother and within seconds, you were throwing up.

"She's ingested something." Will said lowly, rubbing circles into your breath as you finished up.

Before Jay could reply, Emily came running back with your two bottles in hand. "We ate brunch at our usual place and these are the only thing she's had since then." She said, gesturing to the two bottles in her hand.

Without a second thought, Jay shared a look with Will who nodded, silently telling him he had it from here. Getting back onto his feet, Jay told Emily to keep those bottles with her unless he told her to let go.

"Alright, listen up!" Jay shouted, not bothered that his voice echoed throughout the hall. "No one leaves! And I don't care what it is or who you are, no one means no one!"

Even if Jay wasn't a detective, he very easily would've spotted the family of three trying to escape from the corner of his eyes. "Excuse me! Did you hear nothing I said?!"

The family of three all halted, turning back one by one to glare at Jay because who was he to tell them what they could and couldn't do.

"Well, excuse me but just who do you think you are?" The woman replied. She had on heels and was wearing a black and green pantsuit, matching with her husband and her daughter. "Do you have any idea who we are?"

Jay rolled his eyes, he really wasn't in the mood. "No, i don't know who you are and I really don't care either."

"Watch your tone young man!" The woman tsked, scolding him like he was her child. "You have no right to hold us against our will."

Not wanting to hear the woman's whiny voice continue scolding him, Jay wasted no time unclipping his badge and showing it right to her face.

"Detective Jay Halstead, badge number 51163 with the intelligence unit.” Jay said with ease, almost robotically with a straight face, his lips curling into a smirk at the speechless family. "Once again I want to reiterate, no one leaves."

"Jay! The paramedics are here!"

*****

Without asking, once the paramedics arrived and saw the Halstead brothers, there were no questions asked about going to Med. Before they left, intelligence rolled onto the scene.

The details had been kept light and for a good reason. All Jay needed to say was that he possibly caught something and he needed someone, probably Voight but everyone ended up coming after hearing Jay needed help.

Walking into the hall, only now did they remember why Jay asked for today off and it was like a scene out of a movie when they all entered the competition hall.

You were being put onto the stretcher and wheeled away, Will telling Jay he was going with and he could come with them.

Despite his heart urging for him to follow his two siblings, Jay insisted on staying so he could hand everything over and as soon as he was done, he'd be over at Med.

Explaining the situation, Jay took the two bottles from Emily, putting them in an evidence bag before telling your best friend to go with Kim who was going to take her statement.

It took ten minutes max for Jay to relay everything he knew to Voight before he was being forced away. Family meant everything and even if you weren't blood you might as well have been.

At Med

"Alright, talk to me Courtney- Will?" Maggie cut herself off, walking besides the stretcher even as she stared at the doctor in shock. "What are you doing here on your day off-"

Once again, Maggie cut herself off, glitter catching her attention. Looking down, Maggie was shocked to find the youngest Halstead semi-unconscious.

With a knowing glance, Maggie shouted for any free doctor roaming around the ED which just so happened to be Connor. "Rhodes! With me in three."

With plenty of ease, everyone helped transferring you onto the gurney. Will extensively explained how you got your injury and the aftermath, only mentioning all the medical details, leaving out the very large blanks.

Allowing Connor to do his job, Will stood back and prayed that you'd come out alright. In his mind, you had an amazing success rate but it was the brother in him that made him think otherwise.

*****

With you still unconscious, Will forced Jay to leave and go back to where the competition was being held. He promised the second you woke up, Jay would be his first call.

The entire unit was still at the centre, questioning everyone. Antonio was currently talking to a very angry Mrs Ainsley.

"Emily's going to go the Med with her mum, I've got everything I need from her." Kim said, approaching Jay as soon as he entered the hall. "Took Y/N's bag and all her stuff to forensics."

Jay hummed, clenching and unclenching his jaw as his eyes remained glued to the three member Ainsley family. "Will said they'd get a toxicology report."

"That's good." Kim said, pressing her lips together as she looked at her colleague apprehensively. "How is she?"

"Unconscious." Jay kept it short, not wanting to think about you lying in a hospital bed. "Will wouldn't let me stay, annoying bastard."

Kim smiled, walking with Jay further into the hall. Before she could comment about how Will was only being any ordinary older sibling, she was stopped by a furious yell.

All eyes turned immediately to the rich woman who had now lost all composure. Kelly-Marie stood boredly in her leotard still, arms crossed as she waited without a care in the world.

Jay had been on the receiving ends of your rants way too many times - he's lost count at this point - but he clearly remembers several of them being about one person in particular.

"Kelly Ainsley?" Jay called out the teenager, stepping towards her, making sure his badge was on show along with his holstered gun that he completely forgot to take off.

"It's Kelly-Marie." The blonde sassily corrected him, looking him up and down with lots of judgement. "Who's asking?"

"Detective Halstead, Y/N's brother remember?" Jay asked rhetorically. "I've seen you around quite a lot. You've been in the same team as Y/N since you started."

No one was going to point it out but Kelly-Marie visibly gulped, her posture changing at the mention of being your older brother. Not only did she remember him but she heard things about the older Halstead brothers, she knew to be wary.

"Kelly, I've got some questions for you."

*****

When you woke up, you couldn't remember a thing. You recalled the competition and you remembered your name being called but that was it, after that, it's all murky and hazy.

Groggily you sat up, wincing at the pain shooting through your body, coming from no place in particular. What the hell happened?

Looking down, you found your hair had been taken out of its tight ponytail and your hair fell freely down your shoulders. You were also dressed in a hospital gown, your teal blue leotard probably cut up in a bin bag somewhere.

Confusion flooded you. Why were you all alone? Not that it hurt not seeing your brothers glued to the chairs by your bedside but you were genuinely curious about their whereabouts.

Before you could press the button to call for a nurse, the curtains were pulled opened and you never felt more relief than you did now.

The first person you saw was Will who did a double take upon seeing you awake, alert and sitting perfectly upright.

"Hey, how you feeling sweetheart?" He smiled at you, coming to your side to gently pull you into a hug, pressing the lightest but a very meaningful kiss into your hairline. "You gave us a scare y'know?"

You winced. "Yeah, about that, what happened?"

"You don't remember?" Will pulled back, looking down at you in concern but for some reason, he didn't seem surprised.

"Um, I remember getting ready and going onto the mats when my name got called but its all fuzzy after that." You said, squinting your eyes as you tried your hardest to try and remember but it only sent a wave of pain to course through your head.

"Yeah, let's not do any of that." Will said, grimacing when you winced through the pain, squeezing his hand as tight as you could without breaking any bones.

"Emily and her mom will be back tomorrow." Jay said, his badge now hanging from his neck. His eyes were on his watch as he walked into the treatment room. "Voight and Antonio are with the Ainsley's."

"The Ainsley's? What did they do?" You asked, genuinely wanting to know what a horrible person like Kelly-Marie and her parents had to do with all of this.

"Y/N." Jay said breathlessly, like all the breath had been knocked out his lungs. He'd never felt more relieved ever in his life than he did right now. "Thank goodness you're awake, we were so worried."

"Okay yeah, I get it. You were worried about me but what about the Ainsley's?" You waved off your brothers concern, curious to what happened to your long time nemesis and her parents.

Will and Jay shared a look, having a silent conversation with merely their eyes. It was something they always did when it regarded you and you always hated it. Even as you got older, they never stopped.

"Y/N, you were drugged." Will told you straight, deciding that beating around the bush would be useless.

Your lips formed on o shape, nothing coming out as you sat in shock. Trying to retain the very short and simple words, you looked at your brothers back and forth until it all dawned on you.

"It was my bottle, wasn't it?" You asked in realisation of when you could've taken any drugs. "What was it?"

Jay looked hesitant to answer you but knew you wouldn't let up. Holding your hand in his, allowing you to squeeze as hard as you wanted, he told you as gently as he could.

"GHB." Jay said grimly, looking at you closely for your reaction. "It's also called the date rape drug."

You felt like being sick.

“Wow.” You breathed out. For a second, you forgot how to breathe. “I know we hate each other but…”

You struggled to find the words, mouth agape as you looked at your brothers back and forth dumbfounded.

Finally, you set your eyes on Jay and asked. “What’s going to happen to her?”

Jay swallowed harshly, you could tell from how his adams apple moved and how tense his jaw was. His eyes met Wills for a few brief seconds before looking back down at yours.

“The most that we can legally do is charge her as a minor. We can request for things such as community service and probation if jail doesn’t stick.” Jay told you carefully, unsure of how you were going to react. “Her parents are rich and have a lot of influence but we’ll be pushing hard, don’t you worry.”

You hummed, fully understanding the means Jay was willing to go through just for you. You couldn’t help but feel guilt but you also couldn’t help the tears of anger that began to blur your vision.

“Hey, hey. It’s all going to be fine, alright?” Will said, squeezing your hand three times before lowering the bedside barriers and sitting besides your legs. “No matter what happens we’re always here and-“

“And worse case scenario, we just happen to know tons of people who are willing to do a favour or two if we need them.” Jay smirked, cutting of Will’s thoughtful words with his own that hinted as illegal violent behaviour.

“Jay, you are literally in my ER. Don’t even try it.” Will said with the smallest smile on his face while trying to sound serious. The threat was very clearly implicated though when Jay held his hands up in surrender.

“Okay but Y/N, let me remind you that Hank Voight is my boss-“

“Jay!”

[jazzythursday]

Prompts: Dressing | Sensitive (721 words)

It’s a known and documented fact that Wylan likes wearing Jesper’s clothes. 

He’s been doing it almost as long as they’ve been together. Slipping his arms into Jesper’s soft shirts in bed, nicking his rings to fiddle with and twist around his fingers during the day. Stealing a jumper left over the bed post or at the back of the wardrobe on colder days to wear as he sketches or tinkers, when there’s nothing to call him away from their room. Lifting his ridiculously loose ties over Jesper’s head and putting them around his own neck before moving to undo buttons. 

It’s like a reminder, like a message that says Jesper Fahey was here. An added layer of warmth and comfort when he puts on one of Jesper’s shirts in the small hours of the night. One that proves every morning they wake up together that it’s all real. 

Jesper’s clothes are as loud as the sharpshooter himself. He mixes patterns and colours Wylan wouldn’t ever dream of considering for himself. But somehow, Jesper manages to pull them off. 

“I dress to impress,” Jesper had said, the time Wylan commented on the fact that going to the Kooperoom in three piece yellow and blue plaid was hardly the casual breakfast he’d proposed. “And I am. Or, so I’ve been told.”

“I can imagine,” Wylan had teased, smoothing his hands over Jesper’s lapels and leaning in close. “You’re very impressive.” And he’d taken Jesper’s matching tie pin and wore it himself for the whole day, just to prove that he could.

Dressing up is part of the allure of Barrel life for him, Wylan supposes. Like the flashy feathers of a male Gouldian Finch or Scarlet Macaw. He wears colours like he wears his revolvers at his hips, proudly and with the express intent of drawing attention. A message to stay away or come closer. A constant reminder to everyone around exactly who he is and what he’s capable of. Jesper treats every day like a fashion show. Each hat chosen with the same flourish that he twirls his guns. It’s not a costume so much as it’s the parts of himself he chooses to present to the public, exaggerated. Jesper Fahey: Crow, sharpshooter, gambler, and renownedly generous lover. 

The last one, Wylan can attest, is not an exaggeration. Not by any stretch of the imagination.

He’s wearing one of Jesper’s shirts now, a silky and wide-sleeved purple thing with embossed curls patterned all over the delicate material. Jesper had worn it the night before while they were out, and the smell of gunsmoke and Jesper’s cologne and sweat still lingers on the fabric. It probably lingers on Wylan too, and he finds he likes the idea quite a lot. Likes the concept that Jesper, bright and dazzling and inexplicably warm, is leaving a mark.

“You’re a shameless thief, Wy," Jesper teases, when he sees, but it’s clear that he doesn’t mind in the least, and Wylan can’t really deny the accusations anyway. It’s no secret that Wylan likes wearing his clothes, and it’s no secret either that Jesper likes it too. He goes soft around the edges every time he notices Wylan’s wearing something of his. 

He’s just come back from the washroom, towel slung low around his waist, and his hair is still a bit damp. It hangs over his forehead in looser coils than his usual style, little droplets clinging to the curls. The sight does things to Wylan that he can’t articulate. 

“Am I?”

Jesper nods sagely. His eyes roam freely up and down Wylan’s body as he grins. “One day I won’t have any shirts left, at this rate.”

“Oh no,” Wylan answers, lifting his eyebrows and shrugging, not bothering to fix Jesper’s shirt—too loose on his smaller frame—as it slips off one of his shoulders and pools down around his arm. “That is a problem, whatever will we do?” 

“I have ideas.”

“Yes?”

“Well,” Jesper says, crossing the distance between them and joining Wylan on the bed. Hands already roaming under the folds of the shirt, replacing the reminders of Jesper with the real thing. Thumbs drawing brackets down the sides of Wylan’s rib cage, coming ever closer. Kissing the sensitive skin under Wylan’s jaw, his neck, further down. “I’ll just have to take it off.”

[freddiemercurylegendabovelegends]

June 18th, 1977 - NME - Is This Man a Prat?

🔸"A rock gig is no longer the ceremonial idolisation of a star by fans. That whole illusion, still perpetrated by QUEEN, is quickly being destroyed. And in the isonoclastic atmosphere of the New Wave, there is nothing more redundant than a posturing old ballerina toasting his audience with champagne."

- TONY STEWART

And in this iconoclastic atmosphere there is nothing more redundant, or meaningless, than a posturing old ballerina toasting the audience as Mercury does, with "May you all have champagne for breakfast."

"You hated that, didn't you?" He replies with a light laugh, colouring slightly. "I loved it, and I think that people love it. It's part of entertainment.

"God! You haven't an ounce of artistry in your veins really.

"What do you know about showbiz? That's the way certain things happen, can be done, and that's the path we've sort of allotted ourselves. That's the way we want to do it.

"Can you imagine," he asks, his voice shaking at the thought of such a horrifying prospect, "doing the sort of songs that we've written, like 'Rhapsody' or 'Somebody To Love' in jeans with absolutely no presentation? (Precisely. - Ed.)

"It's very difficult," he acknowledges, "especially after five albums, to come up with totally outrageous and original things."

Since our initial eventful, sometimes bitter, confrontation he has now mellowed slightly. Various complaints from both of us had been extensively voiced over the splendid fresh salmon lunch provided by the kitchen of Queen's manager, John Reid. On returning to the interview Mercury's dudgeon had diminished and he appears to be more rational and less sensitive to journalistic admonishment.

"I think you've slightly misjudged us in what we're trying to do," he suggests mildly. "You've probably written about all our bad qualities and veered away from the point.

"I am not," he emphasises, "using the band as a vehicle. I like to think we're exploring different areas, and it's also where our interests lie.

"I'm into this ballet thing, and that's why I'm trying to put across this Nijinsky costume'' and trying to put across our music in a more artistic manner than before.

"A lot of people just dismiss it and say I'm wearing a silly little outfit, rather than being critical and saying that formal ballet may not be quite right for rock 'n' roll."

Why is it so important for you to radically broaden the scope of rock' into other cultural areas?

"It's just," he answers simply, "a logical thing. I want to do different things. I don't want to keep playing the same formula over and over again, otherwise you just go insane. I don't want to become stale. I want to be creative."

And dressing up like a party clown is being creative?

"I want to put my music across, as far as entertaining is concerned, with everything: costumes and lights.

"It's a progression with the music and I felt, for want of better words, if our music was getting mature and sophisticated so should our stage act. Our songs needed a different kind of interpretation, and that's what we're trying to do.

“If I felt the band wasn’t going any place,” he answers easily, “it would have been disbanded.”

“Why do you think Hollywood was so successful? It’s the kind of lifestyle,” he justifies, “I’ve grown up with.”

“We will stick to our guns,” he says, adding firmly, “and if we’re worth anything we will live on.”

- Freddie Mercury

Extract from interview 06/18/1977 - NME

Freddie Mercury: Is This Man a Prat?

by Tony Stewart

Pic: 1977, Montpelier Square - Freddie Mercury at John Reid's house (Manager), during this interview with NME

👇 Full interview 👇

https://brianmay.com/freddie/nme/itmapa.html

[talenlee]

Game Pile: I Wish We Were Worse (Faith and the Satanic Panic)

Script and thumbnail below the fold

Content warning, this is a game with a lot of horror elements including demonic possession and catholic imagery.

Spoiler warning, I’m going to talk about the elements of this game that include the ending of the stories.

Tone warning, I guess? I don’t think very highly of this game, and as a direct result I’m probably going to be mean. And as we know, there are few things worse than being mean to a video game, especially an extremely successful and critically lauded one.

Introduction

Faith is a survival horror game from Airdorf Studios that came out in 2017 and has been gussied up and re-released and expanded on pretty much every year since then. It’s notable for a particular aesthetic that you’d have to be actually pretty well informed about historical video game consoles to accurately pin down, but most people will probably say something like a ‘retro computer.’ You know, an aesthetic space that reaches from the Tandi to the PS3.

The aesthetic is big chunky pixels on a solid black background without much capacity to genuinely do ‘behind’ or ‘layers’ in a contextual way, abstracted shapes that try to represent a thing in big, strictly defined, obvious shapes. There are simplistic animations that would normally betray a limited ability of the game to remember information for each entity. Locations are bare and boxy because that’s what the system can do, and colours are defined by outlines, not by fills. I like what it’s doing with how it looks, because it positions itself as being not just limited, but old. It shows what it can and explains what it can in this very difficult to parse, difficult to experience way, because it is an old game, or so it pretends. That oldness positions the story close to when it’s set — which is Connecticut in 1986.

Part 1

In Faith you take on the role of John Ward, a priest, though there’s asterisks around all sorts of things when you simplify descriptions like that. John’s a priest, formerly, and doing the work of a priest and dressing like a priest and considers the world through the mind of a priest, so y’know, priest. Priest enough. John starts the game disembarking from a car on the highway at the edge of the woods, intent on heading towards the wreckage of a failed exorcism that led to the reason he’s a priest (former). To make your way to the house you first must encounter things like an abandoned well, an old shack with a key in it, a pile of bones and a skittish deer, totally normal exploratory things to do until you encounter the flesh-eating monster that will eat you while you explore. These things need to be done in an order that involves exorcising spirits from stuff, getting a key from the shack, reading a bunch of notes, then getting to The House. Once in the house, you explore it, you encounter a… I guess there’s a better technical word for it, because it’s a possessed child, but we’re just going to go with ‘monster.’

Once the monster is activated, you need to go around the place, exorcise some stuff, understand some of the backstory, and avoid the monster hunting you around the house. Eventually you unlock the attic, head on up there, do another exorcism, which involves essentially, a kind of quick time event. At that point, Faith truly becomes a videogame because that’s when you get a gun. Since the gun is the all purpose sign of agency in videogames, the gun is where the story forks off into five different directions for you to pick and choose in true hypertextual fashion. I didn’t, I did one ending and got pretty much exactly what I expected.

I have no intention to comparatively line up all of these different endings one with another though, and try to explicate some kind of ‘true’ or ‘canon’ ending. This is silly, because one, videogames aren’t like that, and two, canon is for cops, but three, this is a game that’s meant to be examined critically. Engaging with the game critically means being able to look at the game closely and in a specific context that determines meaning out of the repeated use of symbols presented in the text. To quote Roland Barthes: Don’t have a cow, man. If a game is worth critical acclaim it’s worth critical regard and critical regard can bring with it a consideration of the ideas it’s using that doesn’t spend its time sucking the text’s dick.

One of the things about treating games as art and regarding things as works that can be critically engaged with is the willingness to say, even if other people like this, here are ideas that I find present in this work that I don’t like and I have this reaction to. It is not a matter of putting things on an objective scale where goodness and badness slide up and down, but rather that if this text is meaningful and artistic and representative of deeper thought, then it is a thing that it needs to be okay to call the story you find there bad. It’s the price of being interesting, I’m afraid.

Faith is interesting. I would never dare to claim it isn’t interesting.

Part 2

Fundamentally the story of Faith is the story of a priest reconnecting with his faith. That is, he had an experience in the past that shook his faith and had him separated from what he saw as the legitimising authority of his faith (the Vatican), then learning through doing that actually, he still had his legitimising authority of his faith all along (God). The story is framed as a horror and a tragedy — after all, a little girl dies, what could be more appropriately tragic in a man’s story than that? And he’s a priest, those, get that, those are meant to protect children, since they are good people, and turns out that the just and loving god they represent doesn’t do anything to protect little girls from being turned into meat portals. It really is rough on poor John.

In terms of engaging with the game, you can treat any given game in terms of the things it lets you do through its interface. These are the game’s affordances, the buttons it lets you push. Faith has at most five buttons, with one all-purpose ‘do stuff’ button, and four ‘move in this direction’ buttons. Four of those buttons give you a sense of material space, letting you move around in the game’s spaces, and that in turn lets you find and define the shape of the world you’re in. After all, a game can show you a wall, but if you can’t engage with that wall (by walking into it), it isn’t making that wall meaningful. Buttons create movement that create material space.

Following the idea that affordances create space in the game, then, the other button, the all-purpose ‘do something’ button that is ‘hold your cross up and hope something happens’ (which is really a killer way to represent faith) shows you a world where an excommunicated priest’s hope for change and presentation of a divinely specified object can change the world. I could not see any other sign the game is trying to represent this behaviour as anything else but ‘do faith at this object/in this direction,’ and imagining that it’s doing something else involves one of those favourite things of the pseudocritical, which is to remove one’s own ability to interpret the obvious in an attempt to determine the potential.

That creates our two affordances: Move around a space, and demonstrate faith in God at something. Eventually, ‘demonstrate faith in this’ turns into ‘use gun,’ which seems to suggest that this is a game where ‘having faith at things’ and ‘shooting them’ are reasonably comparable ideas. “Do faith” and “Do gun” being cognates is a really interesting kind of fundamental overlap but don’t take this as me trying to deliver some sort of deep cognate out of the game’s religiosity. In this game, you do faith at things until the faith doesn’t work any more and then you resort to using a gun. Faith drives out evil spirits that I assume are concealing paper scattered around the forest, gun drives out evil spirits that are inhabiting bodies and keeping them alive.

I think this is a reasonable assessment of what Faith is doing with its play mechanics. What about its setting?

Part 3

Faith is set during the Satanic panic, in the 1980s. It is set in the northern states of the United States of America, a country that has always been Christian and never not privileged Christians, and it’s set in 1986, which is smack in the middle of the period of what we now know in hindsight as the McMartin Preschool trial. This trial, which at the time of writing is the most expensive trial in American history, in which, to not mince words, a bunch of selfish assholes acted on their biases against people who they perceive as even modestly queer and inadequately Christian. Inspired and inflamed by popular fiction masquerading as fact, the book Michelle Remembers and the claims of some mentally unwell fantasists were stitched together into what, to some actual adults sounded reasonable as a basis to then mentally abuse children into corroborating.

The Satanic Panic was an example of a common Christian evil, to establish fictional rules for reality, then punish people for violating them, facts be damned. Some asshole writes a book for scaring people’s mums – sorry, moms – and then their work catapults out because the systems for the public good aren’t capable of looking at the supernatural and conspiratorial claims of people who also have microwaves in their homes and understand that compound interest exists, and go ‘uh, no, we’re not going to waste our time being mad at a guy for wearing shorts.’

Faith uses its visual aesthetic to frame itself as being from around this same time, too. It gives a specific date. It focuses on the heart of the panic, the idea of demonically posessed children thanks to inadequate care and protection of the church. The exorcism failed at first, John re-attempts it without the Vatican’s support and succeeds, which suggests that the Vatican’s disavowing of John is them being wrong.

I’m not divining tea leaves here: Airdorf have said that the Satanic panic inspired this game.

Thing is, the Satanic Panic, a real event, was a massive event of community-wide child abuse. The people who destabilised and endangered a community, telling children to lie about bad things happening to them, gaslit children into trying to support a horrifying experience of engagement with an international satanic cult that I really cannot underscore enough, does not exist. This game looks at that event in history and suggests, hey, what if that happened?

Or, perhaps more darkly, because of opinions on the Satanic Panic: That happened, right? What about using that idea for a game? And make no mistake: it is a very common thing for people to think that the Satanic Panic was based on a real thing. That, you know, sure, it didn’t happen happen but it kinda happened, right? It was kinda a real thing? Right? Didn’t a bunch of people go to jail because of the magical rituals they were doing? And they don’t think that’s a ludicrous thing to say.

Now, do not think I am saying ‘this game, set in the Satanic Panic, sucks, because you shouldn’t set a game in the Satanic Panic.’ I am by no means against the idea of using horrible topics for games. After all, Wolfenstein 3d is a great and classic game and it’s set during World War 2 and starts in a prison where Nazis torture Jewish prisoners. That game, however, is a game where you’re playing the tortured Jewish person breaking out of jail and killing a bunch of Nazis on the way. Wolfenstein 3D is a game where the game criticises the Nazis as bad people who suck and it’s okay to shoot at and hate, a position that really shouldn’t be controversial now but whatever. In Faith, however, whil it’s set in the Satanic Panic it doesn’t seem to be critical of it. In fact, despite being set so intentionally in the time of the Satanic Panic, it represents the Vatican’s unwillingness to properly torture and kill enough little girls to be a failing of the Vatican.

After all, God’s real, John is right, and the Exorcism’s problem was that he gave up on it, not that the Catholic church routinely supports people to tie up children to chairs and torture them because they think that demons are real. Which, videogames? Sure, videogames can work on the logic that demons are real, but if you make a game about demons being real, the followup is then that ‘oh, yeah, I guess real world ways of dealing with demons are legitimate.’

Look, I’m not on Team Catholic. I am in fact kinda on the opposite side of that conversation. To me, in the real world, Faith is not an idea with a meaningful value. It actually strikes me as the opposite of a virtue, a vice that lets you treat your ignorance and emotionality as something that demands other people’s respect. But even setting aside that personal value, Faith is a game that extols its value of Faith as a thing that you can do, that has meaningful, provable agency in its world, and then that agency, at its absolute limit, can’t really do anything that you shouldn’t be doing with a gun.

God is real, and so are bullets.

Conclusion

Fundamentally, the story of Faith is just another fictional work in the lineage of The Exorcist and Rosemary’s Baby and going back to Lovecraftian works like The Shadow over Innsmouth and then forward to Michelle Remembers. What sets Faith apart from those things is that with thirty years of hindsight, it steps back in time, positions itself as a story of the time, with those elements, and considers the struggle against evil as being very hard, very difficult, bittersweet and tragic, but ultimately worth doing in the name of fighting evil and holding to your faith.

It is a game that looks at how badly the victims of the Satanic Panic were treated and wishes that they had been treated worse.

[red-hot-moon]

@ my fellow Vicies, this documentary is pretty interesting and talks about the impact the show had on... everything, really!

Some of my favourite tidbits under the cut (known to some of you I'm sure but new to me):

It started out as a competitor show to the new and hip MTV and was originally called MTV Cops

Michael Mann originally pitched it as a buddy cop show pilot that he compared to Casablanca… Crockett/Tubbs was there from the very start wasn't it (and now I want a Crockett and Tubbs Casablanca AU!)

Tubbs' character was inspired by Sidney Potier's character Virgil Tibbs in the movie In the Heat of the Night (1967)!

"Johnson's portrayal of Sonny Crockett opened up viewers' and suspects' minds and hearts with a smile, a wink and a look" 👀 Yeah I bet DJ's performance made a lot of people real open-minded real fast…

There was an organized 'rain of panties' from fans dropped from a New York building during a shoot

Edward James Olmos talking about a squabble between him and DJ during their first scene in Castillo's office adding to the tension between the characters aaahh

Michael Mann set strict colour guidelines for the show based on swatches he collected on South Beach, with mandatory exclusion of red and earth tones in the wardrobe and prop department. This started to slip with Dick Wolf though obviously

They couldn't afford to put a real Ferrari Daytona in the show so they just built a fake one?? Putting a fiberglass chassis on a Corvette??? And when Ferrari got mad they made an agreement to replace the fake Ferrari with the Testarossa. And that's why they blew up the Daytona in the show. RIP to real (fake?) one

DJ was dressed by Gianni Versace himself. Also DJ came up with Sonny's look: the blazer to cover the gun and holster, the sockless shoes bc of the heat, and the stubble bc he had to look like he'd been up all night partying and slept in his clothes

Five series of MV remodeled Miami, as the production team created custom neon signs, painted walls and gave many shooting locations a pastel make-over to match the series' design, and so the fake Miami became the real Miami which then started attracting tourists again (tourism was in the toilet when the show first aired)

There is a Miami Vice board game???

"Philip Michael Thomas's performance in Vice City contained plenty of nods to Tubbs" aaaand cut to the scene where Lance Vance says "You're probably gonna wanna kiss me". That's Tubbs alright

Phil Collins played himself in a GTA Vice City prequel game. GREAT

[maximumwobblerbanditdonut]

FILM AND MOVIES

What Went Wrong With… SAS: Red Notice (2021)?

A review of SAS: Red Notice by What Went Wrong Or Right With...?

SAS: Red Notice is the latest Sky Original film to premiere on the satellite platform and unfortunately it’s another dead duck. Based on the book of the same name by Andy McNab, the plot is about a family-based, terrorist group known as the “Black Swans” who take over the Channel Tunnel. Interpol’s “Red Notice” (which alerts police worldwide to internationally wanted fugitives) gives this film its title (at least I think it does, although in S.A.S. terms it could mean a government sanctioned hit). Regardless of its meaning, the main part of the storyline (the hi-jacking) takes almost half-an-hour to get to, and once it does, it’s not exactly enthralling. The film begins with a preamble about “psychopaths” delivered by Tom Wilkinson’s character William Lewis who goes on to say “psychopaths who can learn to love are as rare as a black swan”. This I assume, refers to his baddie daughter Grace played by Ruby Rose or possibly the good guy Tom played by Sam Heughan. This kind of wannabe poignant dialogue is pointless to ponder over however, since this isn’t a character study of someone taught to kill and the parallels between the military and terrorists, or whether someone can switch off their violent tendencies and become compassionate. What this is, is a load of D-list actors saying “awight mate” a lot, posturing, chewing gum to look butch, and shooting guns, largely in the dark. Oh, and apparently, the elite of the elite in the S.A.S. are also bilingual botanists.

I’ll admit that I haven’t and probably never will read an Andy McNab novel, so I’m judging this adaptation against similar action movies. The plot to me, seems very late-80s or early-90s, very much like Ruby Rose’s bowl hair cut. SAS: Red Notice wishes it was in the same company as the original The Taking Of Pelham One Two Three, Die Hard, and every classic derivative action movie such as Speed, Under Siege, and Executive Decision but it’s instead more of a Chuck Norris or Michael Dudikoff-type flick.

Directed by Magnus Martens, the look and feel is more “TV” than cinema, and bad television at that. Magnus can’t seem to coax a believable performance out of anyone, and that’s alongside his appalling framing and camera movement, not to mention the seemingly non-existent art direction which leaves us with what looks like a home-made movie. The cast aren’t much better. Aside from the always decent Tom Wilkinson, the acting talent is also firmly in made-for-TV territory. We have Noel Clarke looking as convincing as Major Bisset as his Detective Inspector in Bulletproof, Anne Reid who played Jean in dinnerladies is still Jean from dinnerladies, and Andy Serkis plays Clements by overacting and probably wishing he was dressed in spandex and covered in white dots playing a different kind of gorilla.

We also have the aforementioned Sam Heughan as Tom or Thomas Buckingham III, a contrived yet somehow unbelievable rich, posh, heterosexual white male who lives in what looks like Wayne Manor with a butler not too dissimilar to Batman’s. Sam is a terrible, soap-opera-esque actor and as the lead, he’s the main reason why this film looks so cheap and tacky. Bad acting doesn’t end with Heughan however; we also have Ruby Rose playing his arch-nemesis Grace Lewis.

I suppose it’s progress to see a British Prime Minister played by a person of colour (Ray Panthaki) and someone from the LGBTQ community play the villain or antagonist in an action film but Panthaki is essentially a one-term baddun, and Rose is so lacking in charisma and acting skills that she won’t be spoken about in the same breath as Alan Rickman’s Hans Gruber or even Eric Bogosian’s Travis Dane, which kind of defeats the purpose. Grace Lewis is instead, in the same league as Thomas Gabriel or Alik from the inferior Die Hard sequels. Rose can’t even act like she’s been shot in the neck or smile convincingly with her “this isn’t a disguise” wig on whilst trying to ward off authorities, let alone look menacing or have a knife-fight (or spoiler alert: die).

Whilst on the topic of Grace, her tactic of “kill the men and the boys, leave the women to spread the fear” conveniently leaves out the all-too-common rape and torture. Make no mistake, this is a sanitised view of conflict where mercenaries, contractors, war criminals, and terrorists are completely unconnected to any military unit. The film begins with contractors tasked to clear a village in Georgia in order to lay a pipe line, and this seems very War On Terror and Black Water-esque (especially the name “Black Swans”) but the way in which this story is told, it’s less Iraq and more Tie Rack with a bunch of suits trying to make some soulless and shallow money from militarism. There’s no real opinion on whether contractors should be used in war, it’s more “it’s okay until they leave witnesses” which is a dodgy message to convey. That being said, even our hero Thomas hears his butler recount a story of Buckingham’s forefathers chopping off a Maharaja’s finger during an Indian “uprising” in order to take their ring, which means even the protagonist has a lineage of wrongdoing but I’m sure viewers of this trash will glaze over this. In order to bolster the concept of “good guys can do no wrong”, the wedding vows at the end of the film are cringe-worthy and go to show how not only the writers, but everyone involved in making this crapfest, love the idea of the infallible war hero who cannot and should not be criticised (or prosecuted) because they do such a difficult job… “For better, for worse, in war [and] in peace, knowing that in war, your crazy brain is always right”. 🤮

Whether pro-war or anti-terror or just unadulterated militarism, all this criticism is of course pointless to mention, as nobody watching Red Notice is looking for deep, meaningful subtext and opinion-challenging concepts. The camouflage-covered cinematic cliches of “this isn’t what I signed-up for!” and “take the shot!” are both present which means this is a hackneyed, straight-to-streaming, non-action, action film. I wouldn’t have minded if this shite contained a plot about what great jobs snipers do or how difficult counter terrorism is, instead it’s another mindless, gung-ho release. And while I’m at it: who gives a toss about what happens to a fictitious government and this film’s uninteresting characters during the end credits? Please don’t make a sequel or try to start a franchise about the exploits of Tom effing Buckingham the pissing Third!

As a Sky Original, I have to mention the inclusion of Sky News presenters Gamal Fahnbulleh and Jayne Secker (and Ben bloody Shephard of ITV’s Good Morning Britain) doing some suspiciously, similar-to-real-life acting. Similar to Jeremy Thompson in Shaun Of The Dead, the news casters’ or broadcasters’ acting looks as convincing as the actual news and their “breaking news” bulletins are read with the same vigour. Ignoring the fact that Sky are both feeding and eating itself in the creation of this film, it’s always disconcerting to see real-life news presenters read scripts as well as they do on air, which goes to show they’re not journalists but actors who err… read scripts for a living. But I guess that’s for another article.

Back to the film, no matter its formulaic-ness, it would have been a much better idea for John McTiernan to direct SAS: Red Notice, for the sole purpose to try and get his post-prison reputation back to the level of his original Die Hard and Hunt For Red October heyday. I’d like to think that the maker of the original action masterpiece from which all others originate could surely make even the lamest of scripts buzz with exhilaration? Instead, thanks to a director who cannot direct, especially action scenes, I wasn’t thrilled or excited at all.

Apparently notices of the rouge variety are very popular right now because confusingly, there’s a Dwayne Johnson “Red Notice” movie in the works too, unconnected to the McNab book but an action flick nevertheless. One thing’s for certain: this version isn’t the one that stands out. Even with a large Andy McNab fanbase, this is gonna go

BY WHAT WENT WRONG OR RIGHT WITH...? ON MARCH 11, 2021 • ( 7 COMMENTS )

This is the time to remember! the time is not gonna change 😬

[siriuslystargazing]

Sirius' Moving Castle PT1

... yeah i know it's probably been done before but what the hell.

In a small town, hidden amongst the valley, is a boy who makes shoes. These shoes are nothing special, but the boy tirelessly works on seven pairs a day unless he feels life broguing, and then it’s five pairs that day. But today, the boy made six and a pair of brown boots for himself. Simple in style but a perfect fit for himself. The boy looked out the window of the luxurious department store his mother owned, dusting off his hands and pulling up his goggles; soot from the fire pit left an ashen impression that covered his freckles but highlighted his amber eyes. His hair flopped around like a mop, and his mother was starting to nag at him. He did need a haircut, and it was the first Friday of the month, so that meant it was a half day.

“Remus dear”, the motherly voice came through from the grand shop floor, followed by a plain woman with chestnut hair. He opened the door to his tiny workshop. “oh good, you're getting ready. I want you to drop off this hat to Lily at the bakery.” her name was Hope. Hope Lupin, the local seamstress who fashioned the most exquisite dresses from the simplest of materials and the owner of Lupin’s Bazaar, the quality department store and hidden gem of the little village hidden away in the valleys. Remus looked at his mother, smiling. Remus thought he was plain like his mother, with sandy blond curls and amber eyes freckles that glittered on his face.

“Of course, I was thinking I might go to the barbers this afternoon to get my hair sorted.” Remus pulled the ribbons of his apron, shrugging it off and hanging it on the hook by the door. Hope held her son’s face in her hands, her heart melting at how Remus was growing older and into his face. “What?” Remus looked down at his new boots, letting a nervous chuckle slip,

“Nothing, Fy mab.” Hope planted a kiss on his forehead. She let him go, handing over the elaborate hat box to Remus as he left the shop.

The brass bell on the front shop door chimed in exit, but Hope did not let Remus leave without warning. “Do be careful on your way home, Remus. I heard news that the Dark Wizard Black is in the valleys!” 

Remus rolled his eyes and bid his mother farewell, entering the streets. He wasn't sure why his mother would warn him the Dark Wizard didn’t go for men. He only kidnapped pretty girls with no brains. Remus winced. He could feel the scolding his mother would give if he said that out loud, but it was a half-truth. Remus hated girls like that who just giggled and curled their hair around their fingers and batted their eyelashes at him. He wasn’t even into girls, but still, he would at least like to hold a conversation with them on more exciting topics. That’s why he liked going to see Lily. She was smart and enjoyed talking about the mysteries of the world. 

Remus continued down the street. Colourful bunting hung from the lamposts, and streamers were being fired off. The kingdom’s flag was flown from nearly every window and in front of horrible flying machines the domain felt so proud of investing in. It appeared The war effort was going well. A fresh batch of soldiers had just returned a few hours before, and another was about to be dispatched, but not without the pomp and circumstance. Remus saw it as a massive waste of time and money. The war was pointless over some missing prince and this war-hungry general from way up north fighting with the Wizard of the Wastes. Remus didn’t care for the politics of it all. He just wanted it over. In his eyes, if the great Kingdom of Griffdom had put the efforts and resources they did for the war into finding the Lost prince, he would have been found by now! Remus stayed on his path, avoiding the crimson and gold soldiers and drunken patriots. Heading down a secluded alleyway, it wasn't any better. He could see the piles of  ready-to-go packs and guns of the soldiers; it made him feel uneasy, but still, the bakery was just around the corner–

“You look a little lost?” a gruff older voice called out from behind Remus. He stopped suddenly tensing as a second, much older man appeared in front of him, a bushy moustache and a hungry grin on his face as he met Remus’ amber eyes. 

“I’m not lost”, Remus stated, straining himself up. “if you don’t mind, I'm running late–”

“He is quite cute.” the moustached man bent down to look at Remus in the eyes. Remus was tall, a good 6 foot, but he was skinny like a noodle and had terrible posture like one, too. The soldiers were also tall but stocky, just vast masses of men. “You look a little thirsty. Why don’t we treat you to some Tea?” he asked, his primal grin unnerved Remus even more. Remus wasn’t one to baulk at the sign of danger, but the men that were harassing him felt an unhuman sort of evil festering inside them. Remus stepped back into a body. 

“There you are, starlight; I’ve been looking everywhere for you”, a sultry voice, and a warm, comforting hand fell onto Remus's shoulder. Remus didn’t turn to look at the man that was essentially saving his ass but instead melted slightly.

The crimson soldiers soured at the presence of their prey being stolen. “do you mind? We were just –”

“Actually, it looked like you two were just leaving”, his silken voice spoke out again, and he lifted his index finger. The soldiers puffed out their chests, ready to fight, but stopped. Remus looked on in awe as the two men stood up straight and marched away like toys. Remus watched on in amazement. It was magic, real magic, so that meant only one thing: the man who was currently rescuing him was Sirius Black, the Dark Wizard. “Don’t hold it against them; the soldiers from this kingdom aren’t as bad... Now, where to?” Sirius bent down, picking up the hat box Remus so carelessly dropped; it really was him; with blond hair and steely grey eyes, he didn’t suit being a blond. Remus thought his complexion was too pale. He would be better with jet-black hair. Wait? Why did he even care?

“So where to?” gods above his voice were like melted chocolate. Remus wanted to combust every time the Dark Wizard Sirius Black opened his stupid mouth… 

“Oh, the um bakery.” Remus was sure he was blushing. His face felt hot. Sirius just smirked, slinking his arm with Remus and walking along the alleyway. His aggressively bright coat hung on his shoulders; obviously, it was kept there with his dark wizard magic. And then his waist. Remus was staring, and he didn’t care. He was also drooling a little at how Sirius's black high-waisted dress pants and a simple white frilly dress shirt hugged his slutty waist and fit him so perfectly. Then he saw his shoes… oh.

They were worn and not looked after, in dire need of a polish, and the leather needed rehydrating. They were abysmal. They–

“Everything all right there?” Sirius drawled, capturing Remus’ attention again 

“YES!” to loud! “Yes, it’s just your shoes, you might need new ones… if you come by the shop, I can–”

“Thank you starlight, but I must–” Sirius stopped, sensing a shift in the air. Remus just watched him. “Don’t get alarmed, but it appears we are being followed.” Remus went rigged, followed! But Sirius just smirked as they continued down the alleyways. “Just act normal.”

Something began oozing out of the walls; they morphed and slobbered across the floor, coating the cobbles in the dark, inky sludge as they manipulated themselves with human-like features, Giant noses and little straw hats. Sirius frowned but continued, “I’m sorry, it looks like you’re involved.” Remus gasped as many black oozy creatures slithered out the walls and shadows climbing over each other towards Remus and Sirius. 

Sirius quickly whipped round the corner with casual grace, the sunlight beaming into the alleyway. His smile wiedend, but Remus scoffed. How can he be so happy? It is horrible being chased around by slimy, oozy creatures! And now the creatures were oozing out from the exit. They were doomed; Remus looked over to Sirius, who was still beaming with pride as he swiftly moved the arm he had linked with Remus’ through his waist, drawing him closer to his side. “Hold on”, Sirius muttered as they continued walking with speed and Woosh!

Remus closed his eyes and felt the calm spring wind and the sudden warm embrace of the sun. he peeled his eyes open, not feeling the solid ground underfoot, but could still feel Sirius' tight grip on his waist. Remus looked out, shocked; he could see the rolling hills of the valley and the river that splits into a stream that runs through town, even the noon train! He was flying!

“Come on now, straighten your legs and start walking.” Sirius grabbed Remus' hand in his; Remus slowly extended his legs and began a walking motion; they were walking on air! But how? Remus looked down at the waltzing people; mothers danced with their sons and husbands, and young lovers waltzed for the final time as the music played out. Remus couldn’t describe the feeling, but a little bit of his heart broke at the sight, the thought of the men going out to the awful war never to return–

“Look at you, you’re a natural.” Sirius looked at Rmeus as they met eye to eye. Remus felt his heart fluttered as he lost himself in those stormy grey eyes. The two continued to walk on air, swiftly passing the street parties below and towards the giant bakery. 

Sirius landed on the railing of the balcony. Pulling Remus down gently, landing just below him, Remus finally got a moment to drink the handsome stranger who saved his life. He was gorgeous, just like the rumours said, with grey eyes that swirled like storms and blond hair that shimmered in the sun, with a mole under his right eye, sharp features and a constant smirk he was the Dark Wizard but how can someone so evil be so good looking? Remus let Sirius’ pale hand slip from his, and he landed on the oak wood balcony. Sirius handed over the hat box and laid his hand above his heart. 

“Don’t worry, I’ll make sure to draw them off, but wait a while before heading out again”, his voice silken and smooth, so intoxicating. Remus swore he could get drunk on it even if he just sang the alphabet. 

“Okay”, Remus sighed. Sirius smirked, jumping off the balcony; Remus gasped, leaning over.  

“That's my boy”, he smiled, disappearing into the streets below. 

The bakery was busier than ever. Lily was used to mad rushes like this, but it was even more active than expected, thanks to the street parties. The tables in the small cafe were all occupied by soldiers and their entourage of women and men. Lily went back and forth, listening to orders, grabbing perfectly wrapped boxes of business from the shelves and trying to distance herself from the more suggestive men who only wanted her and not the pastries. Luckily, one of the other bakery girls ran over to her, telling her that Remus was upstairs waiting on her.

Lily sped through the corridors and up the staircase to find Remus looking out the window as if he was searching for answers. 

“Remus!” Lily cheered, running up to him and embracing the skinny boy in a tight hug. “One of the girls told me you landed on our balcony!” Remus looked at Lily. Something sad hid in his eyes.

“So it really did happen. It wasn't a dream?” Remus whispered. Lily hugged him again, pulling him down the stairs and into the delivery room behind the kitchen.

Lily dusted off a few crates, sitting Remus down. He was still dazed as if he was running through what had happened, and then he remembered the hat box.

“Oh! Your hat, Lily, Here.” He handed it over. Lily smiled but did not open it. She just set it down. 

“Will you tell me what happened?” she grabbed a few pastries from the kitchen, and a chef followed her with two mugs of sweet tea; they sat for a few minutes as Remus gave her the rundown of his encounter with the Wizard. Lily listened intently, her eyes fixated on her friend as he looked at the bottom of his teacup.

“He must have been a wizard then Remus!” Lily protested, grabbing Remus' shoulders 

“But he was so kind to me, Lily.”

“Of course he was! He was trying to steal your heart!” Lily scrunched up her face, but Remus still stared out towards the piled stock boxes. She sighed. “you were so lucky, Remus. If that Wizard were Sirius, he would have eaten it”, Lily softened, slumping back, but Remus looked up at her. 

“No, he wouldn’t. Sirius only eats the hearts of beautiful girls, not plain boring men like me.”

“Don't say that!” Lily shrieked, “You need to be more careful out there. The wizard of the waste is back on the prowl. And his horrible henchmen, too, call themselves Death Eaters such a pretentious name– Hey! Are you even listening to me?” Lily looked down at Remus, who was lost in deep thought, probably thinking about the pretty wizard who saved him (he was). 

Lily and Remus sat in the stock shed for a while until one of the chefs told her some fancy pastry was done, so Remus took that as his cue to leave; he was sure he had given himself plenty of time for the Wizard to get rid of throes horrible oozy blob men. Remus bid Lily farewell and went on his way back through the once-crowded streets. The Parties had finally ended, yet a few piss-ups continued in the teaveners. Remus contemplated a drink but decided just to go home; he had enough excitement to last him a lifetime. 

By the time the tram took him back to the shopping district of the town, night had fallen across the valley, and the stars peaked through the clouds. Remus always stole a glance at the stars; he loved how pretty they looked, and the vibrant blue-green hues the clustered ones emitted were his favourite. He couldn’t quite grasp why he was so fond of the night sky or why he enjoyed tracking moon cycles. He honestly believed in a past or alternate life; he might have been a werewolf or something. Remus chuckled at the thought, his breath curling the cool spring air. 

The shop lights were out, an obvious sign Hope had gone to bed upstairs. Remus decided to go through the main entrance so he wouldn't disturb his mother; the shop was grand in design. The main floor was full of women's hats, and just at the back were the shoes, all the boots that Remus had made that month; he looked down at the new pair he had made just that day, smiling at the thought of his father being proud of him. Lyall had gone to war two months prior, but no word had come from him. Hope stayed strong and ironically hopeful, but Remus was sure his father was dead; it was easier to think that than torture himself with the idea he was missing in action. Remus tidied the shop floor up, putting hats back on the stands and pulling a few pairs of boots down to give them a touch of polish when the bell rang from the front door. Remus furrowed his brow, looking up. He could have sworn he locked that door. Remus got up, heading to the front desk.  Standing in the foyer, grinning ear to ear with gnarly teeth and a beastly face, was a Death Eater. Remus schooled his features to a neutral calm. He could hazard a guess as to what dark magic the Death Eater had used might have involved heightened animalist traits if he went off the strange maw-shaped mouth and nose.

“I’m sorry, sir, the shop is closed. You’re more than welcome to visit tomorrow during our opening hours of 9 am to 4 pm,” Remus stated, keeping his cool; the beastly Death Eater grinned, baring his disgusting teeth. 

“What a tacky shop... And yet you’re by far the tackiest thing here,” she growled. Remus narrowed his gaze, keeping his temper in check as he marched over to the door, whipping up the air around the Death Eater. His foul smell made Remus’ eyes water as he pulled the door open.

“Like I said, we're closed!”

Death Eater held his smile as if he had just caught his next meal. “Standing up to the Beast of the wastes, Fenrir Greyback”, Fenris chorteled. He unsheathed his clawed hands, and the firelight from the oil lamp danced across his black fingernails; Remus stood his ground. Just because Greyback, the beast from the western wastes and loyal Death Eater to the Wizard of the Wastes, was threatening him didn’t make him cower didn’t mean he wasn't scared shitless either way. 

Remus stood his ground, but Greyback didn’t care. He widened his eyes as dark magic flowed through and as if he turned into smoke. Greyback ran through Remus, leaving a viscous curse in his wake. Remus gasped at the feeling. He turned to see Greyback in the doorway, smirking. “The best thing about that spell is you can’t tell anyone about it.” Greyback grinned. “Riddle sends his regards to the Brothers Black.” 

Remus dropped to the ground, his body weak and heavy. He tried to run after Greyback but felt he had no energy left in him. Whatever that curse was, it obviously wasn't good. Remus pulled himself up, groaning. His bones creaked, clicked and popped worse than ever. He stumbled over to the vanity mirror, peering at his reflection, but an old withered man, a much older greyer version of Lyall, stared back at him. Remus gasped, taking a step back. Indeed, it wasn't him. Surely, he wasn't an old man. He was 18 years old, for god's sake.

Remus thought this couldn’t be happening. Perhaps it was just a bad dream or a funny hallucination from all the sugar at the bakery. Remus lifted his wrinkled hands to his face, pulling at his leathery skin; it was definitely him in that mirror.  On the bright side, he wasn't a dog or a wolf-shaped man. He was glad about that. Remus paced around as much as his old legs would let him; in his mind, he was still 18, but his body was pushing 90, it seemed. The only thing he could think of doing was to go to bed to sleep and hope he woke up himself and not an old man. So Remus did.

[niabang]

The Summer it Came True

Previous chapter & summary

Next chapter

Chapter 2

Pairing: Bangchan × black female reader named Kel

Word Count: 1489

I had to do some research for this since I don't live in Australia and it was interesting finding out that summer in Australia starts in December.

More under the cut!

You were in your beach home alone during summer, stuck at your desk working from dusk till dawn. Pathetic.

But you couldn't stop working. You had to create designs for a new collection the company was going to launch early next year, and nothing you drew seemed to be what you envisioned. The creative juices weren't flowing for some reason, but it was December, and you had to have designs ready by the end of the month.

You stayed in your mini office all day, tearing up papers, crumpling them up into balls, and eventually throwing them away. Why couldn't you get it right? You decided to call the one friend you had, which was CJ, for advice. Yes, CJ, the supermodel who was always on the cover of vogue magazines.

You guys got close after he was hired to style one of your collections, and it turns out you were the same age and had a lot in common. You instantly hit it off, and you've been kind of inseparable ever since.

The phone rang, but no one answered, which was kind of expected since it was summer and he'd be getting gigs left and right. He was probably getting on a plane leaving Australia as we speak.

You put on a hoodie and a face mask and decided to go out for a drive to clear my head (you didn't want to get approached by a rando on the street asking if they could get free clothes), and that was when you saw the building that made you remember him. The stadium he was going to perform in in a few weeks was just a few minutes' drive from your beach house. How convenient.

You wanted to see him again. You wanted to see him again and ask him why he left for years without letting you know.

You wanted to know why he was the reason you were never happy in any of your attempted relationships. Part of you hated him for it, but another part wanted to see him and embrace him in a tight hug. You missed him.

As you were driving, you decided to stop by a few stores to get a few things, so you found yourself in this mini mart getting Lays chips. It was just you and the cashier in there, which was reasonable since it was almost midnight.

Out of the corner of your eye, you saw someone else enter the store. This person was dressed in all black. Black hoodie, black shorts, black shoes and socks, black hat, and even a black face mask. You were kind of twinning, but at least you had some colour on you and didn't look like you were going to pull out a gun out of your back pocket at any moment.

That was honestly kind of scary to you because why would someone dressed as a black ops agent be wandering around at this time of the night.

You decided it was time for you to get going so you turned the other way to avoid bumping into black ops guy but you probably didn't think before you acted or even look properly to see where they were in the store and before you could make any sudden movements you bumped into something hard and your chips were scattered across the floor.

"I'm so sorry, let me help you." The person dressed in all black said to you.

Oh, so it was a guy... Why did his voice kind of sound familiar? He kind of sounded like- no, it can't be, there's no way. You quickly brushed those stupid thoughts out of your head.

"No, don't be. I was the one who wasn't looking where I was going. I should be the one saying sorry." You replied.

As you bent down to pick up your multiple bags of chips, he bent down along with you to help, and all it took was a brief moment for your eyes to meet for all chaos to ensue.

"Kel?" He said with a shocked look on his face. It was HIM. He was the only one who called you Kel. Other people called you Kelly. He started calling you after your forced playdate at the beach. He said Kelly was too tasking of a name to say all the time, and anytime you saw each other after that, it was always "Hi Kel." You acted like you hated it, but you never wanted him to stop calling you that. What was he doing here? And why now?

"CHAN?!"

You said at the top of your lungs, and he quickly made the "shh" sign with his index finger. Boy, it was only the two of us in this store, and you're shushing me for what? You said to yourself.

"Why- What are you doing here?" You stumbled over my words a bit.

"You don't seem too happy to see me after how long has it been exactly? Thirteen years?" He had now pulled down his mask so you could see his face. God, he was beautiful.

"Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think I was supposed to jump in your arms after you left without a trace for thirteen years." You snapped back.

He looked kind of hurt after you said that, and you yourself didn't know where your sudden vocal confidence was coming from because you were shaking like a wet dog under your hoodie.

"When you put it that way... It was honestly kind of an ass move. I'm sorry, but in my defence, I signed a contract. I wasn't allowed to let anyone except my family know that I was leaving." He defended himself.

You had now both gotten up from the floor of the store, and the fallen bags of chips were long forgotten as you engaged each other in conversation.

"The K-pop industry is really secretive, isn't it?" The sentence had already left my mouth before you could realise what you had just said.

"Yes, it is... Wait, how did you know?" Great, now you looked like a maniacal stalker who was keeping tabs on him for the past thirteen years.

"I saw you on TV last month when you announced your tour with your group. I was shocked, to say the least. And why are you shocked that I know who you are? Isn't that like the whole point of being a celebrity?"

He stood there in silence watching you speak with a cocked eyebrow like you were saying things that made absolutely no sense.

"What?" You asked him. The expression on his face made you question if you were saying proper sentences or just yapping nonsense the whole time.

"Nothing, you just look so different. I would have barely recognised you if it wasn't for mini Kel."

"Mini Kel." You chucked a bit at the name. You hadn't heard that in ages. That was what he called the mole you had on the outer corner of your right eye. You always hated that mole and planned to remove it when you got older, but after he gave it that nickname, it was one of the things you loved most about my facial features.

"Are you two buying anything? I have to lock up shop. It's past midnight." The cashier's loud voice knocked you out of your little daydream, and you suddenly remembered your poor little chip bags that were sprawled on the floor.

"Oh yes, I am. Sorry for keeping you waiting. Let me just pick these up from the floor." You picked up your chips and made your way to the pay point. Chan met you there with a canned drink in his hand and you both paid for your stuff and left the building.

As you got outside, it felt weird you guys just going our separate ways after our little reunion, so you decided to strike up a conversation even though all you wanted to do was get into your car and scream.

"So what brings you here if tour doesn't start till next year?" You asked the burning question in your mind.

"The boys and I were all given individual breaks to go spend summer and Christmas with our families before we start travelling around the world." He explained to you.

You didn't end up talking for that long, but the conversation ended with you guys exchanging numbers, and as you were saving his number, you saw that you still had his old number saved. You were really down bad for this man to still have his number saved after 13 years of him being Μ.Ι.Α.

You parted ways, and you drove home that night, smiling to yourself. You still had feelings for this man after 13 years. How did this make any sense?

You didn't know the journey you were in for over the course of the next few weeks.

[hettiesworld]

Name of fic: Coast

Pairing: Jeremy Renner x black!reader

Summary: You are an aspiring music artist who is sharing an apartment with Hailee. You both attend a party where Hailee is hosting it and you notice she invited Jeremy, your celebrity crush, to the party.

Inspired by: Coast by Hailee Steinfeld ft. Anderson Paak.

Word count: 2.2k words

Warnings: Language, fluff, implied sexual content.

Author's note: You have social anxiety and you aren't really used to parties, just to let you know.

2nd person POV:

You were sitting in your bedroom, writing some lyrics for your second album that you were going to announce at the next award show. Your first one was a huge success, making you win Best Newcomer at the MTV Music Awards.

Just then, your friend Hailee came into your bedroom wearing a beautiful purple dress with her hair down to her shoulders. She closed the door behind her and looked at you in confusion.

“Y/n? What the hell are you doing?” She asked you, putting on one of her earrings in her ear.

“What do you mean? I’m staying in tonight.” You responded.

“No, you’re not. We are going to a party.”

“Why?”

“Because this will be your first celebrity party and I’m hosting it. Also, you’re my best friend.” Hailee explained.

“Not a good enough reason.” You simply said as you looked back down at your notebook.

Hailee just sighed. ‘Well, time to bring out the big guns…’ She thought to herself.

She cleared her throat as she went over to your wardrobe and began to say, “He’ll be there.”

You looked up instantly. You knew exactly who she was on about. 

Her co-star and your celebrity crush. Jeremy Renner.

“Wait seriously? Did you invite him? Please don’t tell me you’re lying. You did that last time.” You said to her. 

“I know I did it last time, but this time I’m telling the truth Y/n. He’s going to be there.” Hailee replied, holding up a red dress that you owed. She threw it to the floor and continued to browse through your clothes.

“Hailee… You know we met on my first music video and he agreed to be my backup dancer for Best Behaviour. He probably won’t remember me.” 

Hailee then stopped in her tracks. She turned around and walked towards you. She then took your notepad and pen out of your hand and placed them besides you.

“Don’t. You’re doing it again.”

“I’m doing what again?”

“Doubting yourself. I think, by the end of the night, he will ask you to do a duet or something. And maybe something more…” Hailee wiggled her eyebrows suggestively, winking at you before going back to your wardrobe.

You just laughed at her predictions.

“Yeah. Right. I would rather not go and embarrass myself again, thanks.” You chucked silently, shaking your head.

“Oh come on Y/n!”

You sigh as you look up yet again.

“You’re not going to leave it alone until I say yes, aren’t you?”

“What do you think?” Hailee turned her head to look at you and raised an eyebrow. You decided to admit defeat, putting your head in your hands.

“Fine. But I don’t have anything nice to wear though.”

Hailee chuckled. “And that’s why you have me as your best friend. You can borrow one of my dresses.”

“Really? Thanks, Hailee.”

“Anything for my best friend.”

➽─────────❥

Later on, you both arrived at the party. You were wearing a short dark teal-coloured dress with leather lace-up white boots. You also had your y/h/c afro-textured hair, up in a bun. Hailee insisted on you wearing contact lenses, but you disagreed; mentioning that you wear them every single day for music videos, photoshoots and interviews.

Hailee left your side to become the host of her party and you went straight to the bar. You weren’t used to going to parties. Especially to the celebrity ones, in which you know everyone there. 

Speaking of, where was Jeremy, you thought to yourself. Hailee did specify that your celebrity crush was going to be here. You didn’t know what he was going to wear. Possibly not a suit and tie. It wasn’t that kind of party.

You decided to order a lemonade; you didn’t drink as you didn’t trust yourself with alcohol. Just then, as your back was turned, you heard a very familiar voice.

“Y/n Y/l/n?” 

You slowly turn around, sipping your lemonade through a straw and you couldn’t believe your eyes.

It was him. Standing in front of you. 

He was wearing a Led Zeppelin t-shirt, a black leather jacket, denim jeans and white lace-up trainers. 

Thank God you didn’t have to go up to him and say hi yourself. That would’ve been bad for your social anxiety.

“Jeremy! I can’t believe it’s you!” You said to him, as calmly as you could without freaking the fuck out. You already met him but he was still your celebrity crush.

Were you dreaming or something?

“It’s been a while.” He chuckled. “This isn’t your scene?” He asked you, gesturing towards the people dancing in front of them. 

How the hell did he know that? Were you the only awkward person there?

“Yeah, no. It’s not. I’m more of a staying-in kind of person.” You confessed, laughing awkwardly.

“Hmm.. same here,” Jeremy replied.

You weren’t surprised. He was more of a private than a public person than his co-star and your best friend, Hailee. 

“So, why are you here exactly?” You asked him, continuing to sip your drink.

“Oh, well Hailee told me you were here and I had to come, you know?” Jeremy explained. “Your cover of ‘What I’ve Done’ was amazing. Rock songs fit your style.”

“Oh thank you. That’s amazing, coming from you. You’re a great singer as well.” You blushed. 

“Thank you. Barely anyone listens to my songs though…” Jeremy mumbled.

“Well I do, that’s something, right? I bet a lot of people do!” You reassured him, placing your empty glass down.

Jeremy just smiled at you as he drank from his glass.

“You know… I would love to do a duet with you someday, instead of you being my backup dancer in a music video.” You managed to get the courage to ask him. He would probably say no, but it was worth a try, right?

“I would love to do that too. I did promise Hailee a duet as well.” He chuckled.

You remembered that interview where they were both asked who the better singer was. And that was when the interviewer mentioned them doing a duet at some point. 

“Oh yeah… she did mention that to me as well. We are kinda best friends. Ever since she did the first season of Dickinson. We met on the set and I was a makeup artist on there.”

“Wait, a makeup artist? You know how to do makeup?”

“Yeah… you were kind of my inspiration for doing makeup.” You blushed even more and ordered another drink, trying not to make eye contact with Jeremy.

Jeremy just smiled and laughed.

“Really? That’s good to hear! Anyways, do you want to dance, or is that not your thing either?” Jeremy asked you.

“No, no! I love dancing, don’t worry!” You laughed. “I would love to dance with you.”

As Jeremy held his hand out for you to take, you put your drink down and chuckled. You notice Hailee staring at you and Jeremy. She gave a thumbs up to you and you shrugged your shoulders, laughing back at her.

Hailee got the DJ to play your song Best Behaviour as you and Jeremy made it to the dancefloor.

You chuckled embarrassingly but you started to move your hips to the music, throwing your hands in the air.

As you got into the song, you started to sing and you made eye contact with Jeremy, who was also dancing. You had dance lessons recently and you made him impressed with your dancing.

“You’re a good dancer!” Jeremy shouted over the music.

“Thanks!” You shouted back.

You then weren’t expecting Jeremy to carefully touch your hips and move simultaneously with yours. You weren’t uncomfortable with it at all. Well, you were as if he was your crush, but he has done it before.

The eye contact between the two of you was inseparable. Your y/e/c eyes were gazing into his grey ones. Or were they green? 

Blue? 

You couldn’t tell to be honest.

“You wanna get out of here?”Jeremy asked you, his mouth near your ear. You flushed as your cheeks went red. “Is that a yes or a no?” He added on. You saw his smirk as you chuckled.

“Why would I say no to that?” You responded. ➽─────────❥

Back at his place, Jeremy was looking at you as he came out of the bathroom with just a towel wrapped around his waist. You didn’t mind if he had a shower once you both got back to his house.

You sat on the sofa, watching some TV whilst you wait for him. After a moment, you paused your show and looked up to see him staring at you. You just looked at the TV again and pressed play on the show again...

"Is there a reason why you're staring at me?" You asked him.

"Just.. wondering what you're doing?" He replied, crossing his arms.

"You didn't hear me screaming and shouting whilst you were in the bathroom? I was watching a fight on my favourite TV show."

"Sounded like something else to me..."

You looked up to see him in only a towel. You hesitated a little bit as you saw his body. His dad-bod was fully showing but you could tell he was training for Hawkeye. You didn't notice that you were staring at him with such a cute face, according to Jeremy at least.

"Stop doing that with your face, someone else might snatch you up," Jeremy mumbled.

"What am I doing with my face? And… 'someone else'? I'm not yours, you know?"

"You know damn well what you’re doing and well not yet anyways..." Jeremy mumbled to himself; you didn't hear the second part of what he said. 

He then cleared his throat as he continued to say, "Anyways, the bathroom is free for you to use. If you need it of course."

You hummed and nodded your head in acknowledgement as you got up and went into the bathroom.

You asked Jeremy if you could have a bath beforehand. And he agreed, of course.

After a while, you went to have a bubbly bath, spending about an hour in it. You got out of the bath eventually and wrapped a towel around your y/s/c body. You then stepped out of the bathroom and you instantly saw Jeremy lying on the bed in his boxers, reading a comic book.

Was he teasing you?

"Did you enjoy your bath?" He didn't even look up as he asked that, still reading his comic book.

"I did. Just.. going to get my clothes from my suitcase." You replied. Hailee managed to pack you a bag with spare clothing and stuff, just in case you did stay at Jeremy’s. You went over to the bag and got some pyjamas from it. It was a tank top and shorts that were purple and black. You took the towel off and started to put them on.

Jeremy raised an eyebrow as he quickly looked up to see you naked, but respectfully looked down. 

"Are you seriously dressing in front of me?" Jeremy asked you, hiding his face behind the comic book.

"I can't be bothered to go back to the bathroom, just to get changed." You replied.

"Then why didn't you take your clothes into the bathroom then?" Jeremy pondered.

"And get my clothes wet? No thanks."

"Do you want some privacy or something?" He looked up to see you topless. You already had your shorts on and were putting your tank top on.

"I don't mind. If it makes you uncomfortable, then you can leave the room..." 

You blushed as you realised Jeremy was looking at you whilst you were half-naked. 

“Could you not? I’m half-naked!” You exhaled slowly and heavily.

“Not my fault. You’re the one that is in front of me, getting dressed.” He answered.

“Wh – what? Jeremy, this is serious!" You sighed.

“And I’m being serious as well.”

You raised an eyebrow at him as you put on your tank top. You then looked at the obvious tent in his boxers. You looked away quite quickly, so he wouldn’t notice.

But it was too late.

He noticed.

You watched with your y/e/c eyes as he put down his comic book and got up from his bed. You slowly got up from your kneeling position as you faced Jeremy. 

He slowly walked towards you. He then stopped you from getting up. You kept the kneel position from before, realizing that your face was quite near his dick.

“It’s hot when you talk back, you know that?”Jeremy said with a growl in his voice. He then went to grab your hair softly, making you stand up to look at his face. “Does it make you nervous when I stare?”

You couldn’t talk as he then placed a hand underneath your chin.

He noticed you stammering and stuttering every word that was trying to get out of your mouth.

He just chuckled softly.

“It’s okay baby. “ You shuddered at the nickname. “I like you staring at me. Now… What are we going to do about this beautiful face, huh?” He stroked your face with his left hand, his thumb caressing your bottom lip.

You looked at him, with such lust in your eyes.

“Anything you want…” You whispered, hoping that he didn’t hear that. Unfortunately, he did.

“Anything I want, darling?” A Southern twang was heard in his accent; a twang you thought was so attractive and sexy. That was what you loved about him.

All you did was nod, biting your lip.

[mtlibrary]

This depiction of the "Hammersmith Ghost" murder can be found in Middle Temple Library's copy of 'The chronicles of crime; or, the new Newgate calendar' by Camden Pelham, 1887.

In the early 19th century a number of people claimed to have seen and even been attacked by a ghost in the Hammersmith area. The ghost was believed to be the spirit of a suicide victim who had been recently buried in Hammersmith churchyard. In January 1804 A local man, Francis Smith decided to take matters into his own hands and took his gun with him to find the ghost and put an end to his reign of terror. Here is sadly where things took a tragic turn.

While looking for the ghost Smith encountered local bricklayer, Thomas Millwood who was dressed in the traditional all white attire of his trade. Unfortunately for Millwood during this time ghosts were believed to dress in all white which was the colour of the linen shrouds that the dead were buried in. He had in fact already been mistaken for the ghost on a previous occasion and his worried wife had suggested that he should perhaps wear an overcoat to cover his clothes.

"Thomas, says I, as there is a piece of work about the ghost, and your cloaths [sic] look white, pray do put on your great coat, that you may not run any danger".

He didn't however, listen to his wife's warning and on encountering Smith on his return from visiting his mother and sister who lived locally he was shot in the jaw and was sadly killed.

This illustration is by "Phiz" who is probably best known as the illustrator of many Charles Dicken's works including David Copperfield, Martin Chuzzlewit and Bleak House.