#its not even hard its just that theres a bunch of steps and my brain always goes. TOO MANY. and we sit here making posts about it instead.

[thecubes]

my new bit apparently is i make gifs under the emotional duress of this one anon who will check in with me when i havent been making gifs finster style except im not girlmoding and theyre not paying me

[hms-no-fun]

Currently struggling a lot with getting very excited about a project, writing a lot, editing that writing until it's way more polished than what I can come up with off the cuff, and then being too intimidated to add to the document anymore since the previous good writing still gives off this looming intimidation if that makes sense? The more I write the greater the fear is I'll crash the story into a ditch that reveals the premise can't work. have you had that "its not all coming together shit theres a snag thats really important that i missed" moment? I realize it's pretty inevitable for that to happen, but whenever I write myself out of a moment like that I always second guess that I'm still overlooking something important or taking the easy way out. I know it's probably just all about pushing through but I worry that by pushing im just further diluting the original spirit of the project? Sorry for the all over the place ask, hope you have a good day :3

this is always a tough situation to navigate as a writer. happens to me often, and it has taken me a very long time to come even remotely close to being able to deal with it productively. believe it or not, i actually have quite a lot to say about this, so prepare for that below the break.

first of all, no, it's absolutely NOT all about pushing through. i find "pushing through" can just as often make the problem worse. keep in mind that i can only speak to my own experience and process, so any advice i might give here should only be taken insofar as you personally find it useful.

this is a form of writer's block. there are many different types of blocks, each with their own causes and hypothetical treatments. a big part of becoming A Writer as such is learning the difference between them, and developing methods for dealing with them on a case by case basis that don't involve substance abuse. don't do cocaine. that's step one.

most of my blocks are in the vein you describe. i'll be writing a scene that feels good, until i cross a threshold somewhere and suddenly the whole thing feels dead in the water. the first thing i do when this happens is stop writing. it's hard to stop when you're on a roll, i know. life is short and it's hard enough to write even on a good day, but sometimes you can just tell that you're on the wrong track and at that point you're probably not gonna be able to write your way back on.

once stopped, i check the basics. have i eaten recently? am i hydrated? have i taken my medications? these are rarely my problem (i keep a big water bottle with me at all times and my gf makes sure i'm fed), though you never know how useful a snack break can be. most of the time if the problem isn't with the text, it's that i've been writing for too fucking long and i need to clock out. learning to clock out is SO hard. but as i've been getting into the habit these last couple months, while i generally write less per day i ultimately end up writing more over time. i can feel my brain cooking when i've been writing too long. it's a muscle like anything else. if you did a bunch of overtime shifts at a more physical job, you'd need time to recover too. your body isn't a machine, your brain isn't a computer, and living things are inconsistent. it sucks but you'll have a better time all around when you learn to work with your body instead of against it.

another question is, have i showered recently? i find showers tedious and boring. also i still have depression even though my life is a lot better than it used to be. i lived on my own for a very long time as a deeply closeted self-hating trans woman, so my hygiene habits are not always up to sniff. as much as i hate to admit it, showers help. i can't tell you how many times i've sat at a godfeels chapter or video script and just felt fucking miserable, only to come back forty minutes later from a shower, full of creative energy. i despise self-help shit. just not a fan of the culture of positive attitude wellness check stuff because you can't self examine your way out of your class position. sometimes the problem is that you're broke. sometimes life fucking sucks and you just don't have the art in you, and that's okay. there's a common misconception that if something bad happens to you, at least you can make an art to get through it. but in my experience it's actually a lot harder to make art about bad times when you're still in them. most of the time it takes months if not years of safety and recovery before you can really face it head on artistically. so like, be nice to yourself. it's not your fault that you live in a society.

but also sometimes literally you just need a shower or to eat some leftovers or to go to fucking bed. i hate it every time that is true because i want my problems to be real and philosophical and not just some dumb body thing that happens to everyone. alas, no one can escape the quotidian obligations of simple mortality.

THAT SAID! this stuff isn't usually my problem, and often i find that what's solving the problem when i do step away to eat/drink/shower isn't even the specific activity, but the act of stepping away at all. getting my mind off it for a sec. when i hit a block that doesn't feel completely insurmountable, i like to back away from my computer and pace around a bit. then i'll stare at my big whiteboard with a marker in hand and just let my mind wander. i don't even write anything half the time! but the mere act of trying to compartmentalize the problem into something brief enough for shorthand helps me spot the pain points.

one of my favorite books is Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, which despite what you might assume from its title is NOT a self-help book but instead a work of philosophy from 1974 taking the form of a travelogue. what Robert Pirsig explores in this book is what he calls the Metaphysics of Quality. basically he's trying to understand the split-second judgments we make of things we like and things we don't. i absolutely do not have time to go into the specifics, just know that his Quality refers to the abstract certainty you have when something is Good or Right or Correct or Qualitatively True. like how you pull your hand away unconsciously when you touch a hot stove, but for ideas. you just Know.

a scene that really sticks with me from that book (probably the most famous scene) is when Pirsig describes needing to fix a mechanical problem with his motorcycle only to be stopped dead in his tracks by a stripped screw keeping him from removing the engine cover. he talks about being so focused on the obvious solution to the primary complex problem that, on encountering a smaller, simpler problem that has to be dealt with first, he finds himself completely stuck, calling this "a zero of consciousness." it's a problem so annoying and minuscule and stubbornly unsolvable that you just want to hit the thing with a wrench and throw it in a river. addressing this new problem, this block, requires an adjustment in thinking. and here i'm going to quote a pretty lengthy passage, but don't worry, i'm typing it out by hand with the book in front of me so there's no time saved on my end:

Consider, for a change, that this is a moment to be not feared but cultivated. If your mind is truly, profoundly stuck, then you may be much better off than when it was loaded with ideas. The solution to the problem often at first seems unimportant or undesirable, but the state of stuckness allows it, in time, to assume its true importance. It seemed small because your previous rigid evaluation which led to the stuckness made it small. But now consider the fact that no matter how hard you try to hang on to it, this stuckness is bound to disappear. Your mind will naturally and freely move toward a solution. Unless you are a real master at staying stuck you can't prevent this. The fear of stuckness is needless because the longer you stay stuck the more you see the Quality-reality that gets you unstuck every time. What's really been getting you stuck is the running from the stuckness [. . .] Stuckness shouldn't be avoided. It's the psychic predecessor of all real understanding. An egoless acceptance of stuckness is a key to an understanding of all Quality, in mechanical work as in other endeavors. It's this understanding of Quality as revealed by stuckness which so often makes self-taught mechanics so superior to institute-trained men who have learned how to handle everything except a new situation. Normally screws are so cheap and small and simple you think of them as unimportant. But now, as your Quality awareness becomes stronger, you realize that this one, individual, particular screw is neither cheap nor small nor unimportant. Right now this screw is worth exactly the selling price of the whole motorcycle, because the motorcycle is actually valueless until you get the screw out. With this re-evaluation of the screw comes a willingness to expand your knowledge of it. [. . .] What your actual solution is is unimportant as long as it has Quality. Thoughts about the screw as combined rigidness and adhesiveness and about its special helical interlock might lead naturally to solutions of impaction and use of solvents. That is one kind of Quality track. Another track may be to go to the library and look through a catalog of mechanic's tools, in which you might come across a screw extractor that would do the job. Or to call a friend who knows something about mechanical work. Or just to drill the screw out, or just burn it out with a torch. Or you might just, as a result of your meditative attention to the screw, come up with some new way of extracting it that has never been thought of before that beats all the rest and is patentable and makes you a millionaire five years from now. There's no predicting what's on that Quality track. The solutions all are simple-- after you have arrived at them. But they're simple only when you know already what they are.

this is, in brief, my entire creative philosophy when it comes to writer's block. i share such a lengthy passage because i think it's useful to underline that we're not talking about a problem that is necessarily unique to the labor of writing. this process is a human process. it's just that with writing, the nature of the block itself is often much more difficult to identify than a stripped screw.

there's a couple things i do to try to identify what's got me stuck. a lot of times what happens is that everything in a scene felt good until it didn't, and then everything after that moment fell flat. so i'll go back and read the whole thing and just try to feel the scene. is everyone in character? is their dialogue too quippy, or too aggressive, too expository? are we in the midst of a conversation that has simply gone on way too fucking long? i know it can be torturous to reread your own stuff but idk what else to say except get used to it. especially when you're still early in the drafting phase! like if you know you're not gonna release this thing imminently, there's no reason to be precious about the stuff that's good or to beat yourself up over the stuff that's bad. i know that compulsion to try to Get Everything Right The First Time is strong, but it's completely unsustainable.

sometimes the block is that i just don't feel like writing narration. i've always sucked at grounding a scene with descriptions of the place. lately i'm trying to get away from relying solely on descriptions of staging/blocking, but it's hard for a bitch like me who mostly prefers writing dialogue. i've gotten a lot more comfortable with putting notes between dialogue exchanges like [character moves, looks at picture, has a dramatic thought, other character fiddles with object]. it can feel like cheating sometimes but it's not. there's no such thing. no one will know the route you took to get to the end. they will only see what you show them, when you decide to show it to them.

sometimes the block is in some minor or major betrayal of the story's spirit. the (Terezi) & Jade scene i talked about in this ask is a good example. i hit a point where nothing was working anymore. no one would talk to me. the light was gone. i can always tell when i made the wrong choice. it's such a particular sensation. as though i'm walking and i realize i no longer recognize the road i'm on and must've made a wrong turn somewhere. the solution to this particular block is introspection, retracing my steps, because the wrong turn isn't always obvious. maybe it's that someone in the scene is being too mean, or that i've failed to accomplish what the scene exists to do in some way, or that someone's made an uncharacteristic choice that now everyone in the scene is arguing about and it's like, man, this is taking too long, i'm not enjoying this anymore.

another example from A1 is the second half of the solo. i'd had most of the jasprose scene, the karkat-calliope-roxy scenes, and the vrisrezi-jade scenes written since i posted the A1 chorus. where i ran into trouble was that i needed to get jane, jake, and (terezi) to show up. my original plan was to have them arrive one by one, thus allowing their individual dramas a moment in the spotlight before being subsumed into the group. not a bad idea in theory but in practice it was fucking tedious. here we have a bunch of characters already immersed in the scene captured by the intrigue of Jade being enigmatic, and then some unawares jagoff wanders in and suddenly everyone has to stop what they're doing and be like "hey hello how are you what's up" and then they explain how they got there and then they ask what's up and it's such a DRAG. honestly i would say the majority of my creative blocks by volume are moments when the story really wants me to just cut to black for a smoke break and come back when somebody gets mad enough to throw a punch. i mean that's the the development of A1 in a nutshell. originally everyone was gonna start the track locked up in space-jail on the hopebringer, jade would show up all apologetic and say what she expects padua's deliberation to be, then the whole cast would see her throw a fit over a decision she knew was coming, they'd all be absolved of guilt and let free, then they'd all argue about who's staying or going with Jade in the morning, they'd split up to go pack their stuff and then...

well that was exactly the problem. i wanted to get all the pertinent things out of the way. jade's code switching, voidthought, some EWL teases. give the whole cast a chance to react to it. i thought that would be expedient, because it got the Plot out of the way and gave time to characters for Feelings. if that version of the scene had come at the end of chapter 8, it might have worked. but i realized that as soon as jade's audience was no longer captive, i had no fucking clue what to do with them anymore. we already knew who would go with jade, so acting like that's some kind of mystery is just lame. i started writing A1 from a place of desiring informational density & a quick pace, because we've got places to go and things to do. but if the real purpose of A1 is to explore why these characters choose to go with Jade, then that needed to be done with a lot more care and precision. that's when i decided to let Jade spend two days underground making the earth right again, so that she has to come to everyone individually rather than the other way around. and it muddies her motivations, if you don't mind the pun. it puts her at an appropriate remove from the others. i ultimately wound up conveying all the same information as in the original version, but i did it in a way that was more appropriate thematically and artistically. it wound up being longer road than i anticipated, but this is a long story and in this case the longer road was better for the journey.

take the chapter where Jade visits Roxy. i needed some time with Roxy alone to set the scene, since she's the first person Jade decides to visit and i like writing about the insides of trailer homes. i wanted to get some politics from Jane in this chapter, so hey, why not throw in a televised speech? oh, and then i can have some tucker carlson types remind us that Earth C is a fucking mess. i wrote all that, and it was good, but it was just Roxy watching tv. i tried to get into Jade's arrival and couldn't. so i went back and realized, oh, Roxy should be yelling at the tv the whole time! now we get Jane's politics, Roxy's reactions to those politics, as well as bits and pieces of context re: Jane's relationships with Karkat and Roxy. now when Jade arrives, we can play with the question of whether she heard the speech from outside Roxy's door, and why neither of them was physically at the speech in the first place. there's tension and imbalance in Roxy's state of mind when Jade does arrive, so we're more inside her perspective than we usually are, which in turn helps us identify with her when Jade starts infodumping about antimemes.

so often for me, working through a block is a matter of doing a better job utilizing what's available to you. going back to the A1 solo and trying to bring Jake, Jane, and (Terezi) into the scene. i finally returned to it after a couple months of being sick and dealing with life problems. i was frustrated because i'd hoped to be several tracks in to 3.2 by now, and instead i was confronted with just how much more of this thing is left and how long that might take if i couldn't pick up the pace. this thing NEEDED to get done.

and then i remembered that Jasprose is literally right there.

and that was it! problem fucking solved! i had jasprose drop all three of them into the scene completely unceremoniously using manic teleportation through a fenestrated plane, and from there the entire rest of the chapter erupted out of me in a single go. it's such an obvious solution to the problem that you as reader probably assumed it was the plan from the very beginning. but it's like Pirsig says: the solutions all are obvious-- after you've arrived at them.

then there's the problem of overwriting. i actually did i think four different versions of the opening to the A1 solo. the first person narration was a late addition. i tweaked that scene so so so many times. it kept feeling close but not quite. when i did the thing where i reread to find where the block happened, instead of actually reading the thing i just kept finding spots where i could write more. i can extend this anecdote. this line could be better. maybe a comma here would work better than an ellipsis...

this can be good because sometimes what's blocking you is that you skipped over something that needed more time. maybe some information or a dramatic emphasis that gives the stuff you can't yet write the momentum it needs to get going again. but i've gotta be real careful doing this, because i can do it forever. and then, as you describe (hey look, i'm actually talking about your specific problem now!), that hyper-polished section sets everything else up to fail by comparison.

i think the trick is knowing the difference between when a scene needs an editing pass vs when a scene just straight up isn't working. when it's not working, sometimes you do just have to throw it all out and start over. but if it's good enough that you feel like all it's missing is better dialogue and some more description, then you can hold off on that polish until the rest of the thing is done. this conundrum is most common at the beginning of a chapter or story in my experience, precisely as a result of the process i've been describing this whole time. when you hit a block and retrace your steps, you can always find things to fix. so it's sort of natural that any given chapter becomes less polished the further along you get in to it. that's why it's so important to understand the differences between all these different types of blocks, and to remind yourself that literally nothing you've written is finished until the moment you've made it public.

a big part of getting the A1 solo out the door was me swallowing my desire for perfection in every exchange and saying, no, this is good enough. it's not 100% what i want, but it's close enough that it just isn't worth the effort it would take to get there. sometimes there are scenes that are worth that effort, but they are always rarer than you think and they're never the ones you'd expect. i will freely admit that there are a lot of characters expositing their motivations in this chapter. i tried to embed as much of that in humor or drama as i could, but sometimes you just have to shrug your shoulders and walk away and hope your readers will be nice to you.

of course the funny thing is, once i finished the chapter and had all the panels sketched out and wiped my hands clean of the whole affair, janet needed two weeks to make the images. so i ended up having time to polish up a couple of those things that i felt were lacking after all. but those additions were radically small and intuitive, because i'd divorced myself from the raw production and had committed to so many directions that i *couldn't* change much. i'm so used to writing for release that i don't know what to do with myself when my part of the job is done before i can kick it out the door. i've come to find that waiting, taking breaks, walking away and coming back, do wonders for your ability to egolessly examine your work and identify what's wrong. sometimes you just need a day or two to sleep on it.

and sometimes you realize that you've really just over-written a scene, out of preciousness or insecurity or whatever else, and the result is so much bigger than everything else you want to do that it's more expedient to just scrap it. i hate when this happens, man. i did this with an early version of the A1 chorus, when Jade is stuck in space alone and shouting about how unfair her life has been. you know sometimes there's an emotion in a scene that's addictive. some bit of pathos that you just feel down to your bones, fuck me man, this is so GOOD, this is so JUICY, this shit has QUALITY. it's so good you don't want it to be finished. so you keep writing it, and writing it, and you rewrite it, and you add to it, because you really want to squeeze every drop of emotion you can from the thing. and then you wind up with a bloated melodramatic mess that's so overplayed you've annihilated everything that compelled you to write it in the first place.

i want to be clear that this isn't wasted work. nothing you ever put to the page, no matter how ultimately useless it might prove to be, is wasted work. the way i see this whole process, top to bottom, is that there's this thing. i don't know what it is, but it's there. maybe it starts with an image, or a line of dialogue, or a relationship, or a natural vista, whatever. it can be anything. what matters is it's a sign pointing you in a direction. it's something that has Quality that you can feel with such potent immediacy that you have no choice but to write it. the act of writing is something of an expedition, because the real magic of it comes when those disparate signs start colliding with one another. an image becomes a scene, a house, a world, a universe. sometimes these signs lead to dead ends, but with experience you learn to tell the dead ends from the rough patches. you learn how to make your own way. you do this by listening to what this thing is telling you. every story i've ever written has known better than me what it wants. i can impose so much onto it, i control 90% of the process at least. but that other 10% cannot, should not be quantified or controlled but simply understood. if you try to bottle the flame, you'll just end up snuffing it out.

no artist really knows why they do what they do or how they're able to pull it off. they can tell you their methods, their process, their coping mechanisms, they can write ludicrously lengthy diatribes on tumblr in response to an innocuous ask, but you can't pin down the soul of the thing. Quality is ephemeral, because it's first. it happens before you've had time to think, like putting your hand on a hot stove. you just know. and you have to trust that knowledge to carry you forward, not second guess it too much, not try to wrangle the thing into a shape it doesn't want to assume. sometimes this requires writing scenes that you don't love, because it's easier to build a messy bridge between the moments that drive you than it is to perfect every single moment out of an artificial commitment to like, Being A Good Writer or whatever.

a lot of this is just practice. you get better at communicating with your creative impulses. but also i think it helps to internalize that nobody sees the rough drafts, nobody sees the duct tape. and nobody knows the perfect vision you'll be convinced you failed to meet. nobody has ever made a perfect thing, and no one ever will. who wants to be perfect, anyway? godfeels wouldn't be what it is if i wasn't willing to let it be messy. if i'd tried to do it better, it never would have gotten done, and nothing i'm doing now would have even conceptually gotten to exist.

also, it's okay to abandon shit when it stops feeling good. i have so many unfinished books kicking around from my 20s, dude. i feel bad about some of them, but ten years not finishing books is still ten years spent writing. it's actually quite rare for good ideas to result in finished works, because good ideas are cheap and they're not all for you. but you gotta keep trying anyway because sooner or later you'll catch a spark that has real gas, and if you've done the work you'll be ready for it. it'll feel like destiny. it'll feel like magic, how matched that idea is to your skill level. but it won't be magic, it'll be skill. if you hadn't put the work in to know how to follow that intuition, it'd be just as dead an end as everything else you never finished. you do the work so that when you get lucky you can take advantage of it. so in that context, writing is quite low stakes. if it's not good enough, fuck it, try something else!

anyway i hope there's some decent insight buried in here somewhere. thanks for such a good question!

[garbinge]

Hey!!! I've read a couple of your fics recently (mainly twisters) and I'm in love with ur writing and all so I was wondering if you could share any tips on writing? I'm trying to get into it but I've been struggling a lot especially with writing some twisters stuff so if you could share any tips I'd appreciate it. Thanks so much 🤍🤍

First, thank you so much! Really appreciate your kind words! <3 As for writing tips, I feel like I'm just bopping along looking at other writers like HOW are you doing this?? writing these AMAZING things???? A lot of imposter syndrome if you will lol. But here's somethings I do below the cut...

I rewatch shows like crazy. Its because I enjoy it but also because it helps sparks some ideas for me. And I think that's the first step for me the ideas. With that, I really enjoy thinking about my ideas, so like if the smallest thought pops in my head with a character I'll think about it whenever I can. Honestly, its also an anxiety thing for me, its something to keep my brain occupied when I don't want to overthink. (For context I have OCD and things can be hard on my brain so I try and fill void with fic thoughts). But by thinking things through I feel like I start to filter through things and get some solid ideas. I started a doc that holds a lot of those ideas, because I don't want to forget them or forget where I landed with them and when I'm in the mood to write, I'll jump into that doc and see what pops out to me. Okay, now to the nitty gritty, when I actually write, I try and just get out the parts that feel easy, that might be jumping around timeline wise or "scene" wise but usually when I get out the part that's "easy" it makes the other parts easier to piece together. For me, it's usually dialogue because that's what my favorite stuff is lol. And then I go back and try and fill in some descriptions and actions. Sometimes I'll even think through backstory and character traits before I get into writing which also helps me get in the mind/feel of a story and character. Besides all of that, I utilize a lot of amazing resources. I google a lot lol. Reddit a lot too. Reading threads on the most random things lol. But also some other resources here on tumblr, I'll link them below. @creativepromptsforwriting has AWESOME resources. Their how to write list is amazing as well as their prompt lists. @saraswritingtipps also has some great posts that I've saved to refer back to when writing. I also read a lot from people that inspire me as well! Here are some writers that I think have really amazing writing styles and skills, they might even have different tips themselves but being inspired is a great first step! @drabbles-mc @narcolini @ashlingiswriting @iraot @yourwonkywriter @hausofmamadas and theres a bunch more that you can find reblogged on my blog! Overall, my best advice can be just put some stuff on paper! My first go at writing was not what it was now, and I'm sure I'll say the same in few months! As you keep doing you keep evolving! You got this!! Hope to read your stuff someday :)

[sidesteppostinghours]

9 and 25 for all of them !! :)

evening gideon!! thank you for the ask :]

9. Do you have a specific lyric or quote which you associate with your OC?

ok. so. the thing about me is that i dont actually listen to music all that often??? its mostly when i draw digitally, and im primarily a traditional artist so i dont really know that many songs. i also have shitty memory so its hard for me to remember quotes. aka this is a pretty hard question for me to answer, but i will try my best:

Caine-"Oh, captain, make up your mind/Before the salt burns your eyes and you run out of time/'Cause you're popping the cork, you get lost in your brain/And you lose touch with all the things that made you feel sane" - Ship in a Bottle (fin)

honestly ive never really associated this song with him before but i looked into the lyrics just to see whether it had anything i could think of them with and theres??? actually a bunch of lyrics there that fit???? like to the point i was struggling to decide which one to use for this. but i think this one, the second chorus, really encapsulates the biggest parts of their character. hes the decision maker out of all my steps, the one that knows how to make the logical choices and think his way out of a problem. but hes on a time limit. he doesn't know when it will end, just that it will at some point, and they cant stop if they want everything done in time. also sight and eyes is something i associate caine with a lot, especially closing your eyes/refusing to see. "you get lost in your brain/and you lose touch with all the things that made you feel sane." COUGHS. coughs. caine has the most gates open out of all my steps. i also fully intend to make them the source of hb 2.0. yeah.

Cyrus- HE WAS THE ONLY ONE I THOUGHT OF AN ANSWER FOR STRAIGHT AWAY AND I SPRINTED TO HIS TAG JUST TO FIND THE POST

look him in the eyes and say this to his face. he will look like he got hit by a freight train.

Cecilia- another quote!

im just gonna go ahead and put my own tags to this one because thats where i put it best:

#thinking about this again with ceci#the best part is the bullet hole#like yeah shes not ready to face the fact that everything shes been doing up till now#was just to distract herself from the absolute misery life became after heartbreak#she has FRIENDS she has people she CARES about and they even seem to like her back!!!!#she even has a girlfriend!#isnt that enough?#tell her thats enough#cecilia rider

theres a reason shes a thrill seeker yall.

Cynthia- "I swear, I'm so fucking sorry/I'm not a good person, I'm barely a person at all/But someday I'll be perfect, and I'll make up for it all" - Against the Kitchen Floor (Will Wood)

uh. *looks at cynthias relationship with ortega* uhhhh. *looks at cynthias relationship with sidestep*. uhhhhhhhh.

this song was also difficult to choose lyrics out of, but there is just something so special about girls who simply have to be the best they can to make up for the sin of being. there is something equally as special about girls who take their past selves as judge, and their lover as executioner. also "im not a good person, im barely a person at all" kills me. the regene flavouring on that line??? utterly insane of mr wood to make a song just for her.

25. What is your favorite thing about your OC?

THESE BITCHES ARE SO CONTRADICTORY!!! THERE IS ALWAYS SOMETHING CLASHING ABOUT THESE FUCKERS AND ITS DELICIOUS. not even just trait wise, but with their themes? their core ideals? their relationships???? its always some sort of fucking fundamental difference shaping the way they act and i am Obsessed with it. also all of them are dangerous and it makes me vibrate a little bit. rangers you are so lucky that none of them are interested in leaning into being a full blown villain. but this question is,,, also difficult to answer because idk how to pick just one favourite lmfao. i will attempt it though.

Caine- he is the normalest guy around. there is also something Deeply Wrong with him. my favourite thing about caine would probably be how fun it is to dive into his psyche! ill often have times where i get bored of them and wonder why i got so interested in the first place, and then i get hit with another round of it and i remember "oh right! its because hes insane." his whole character revolves around what is going on inside their brain, from their high subterfuge to their connection with heartbreak and his relationship with the puppet. theyre the most fun to play with in their mind.

Cyrus- god. my favourite thing about him is a tie between his stubbornness and his surprisingly strong sense of empathy. both of those were the things keeping him from becoming a villain in the first place, and now its whats stopping him from going back to being a hero. i want him to confront what hes become so bad yall dont understand-

Cecilia- cecilia is just. a breath of fresh air. shes easy and super fun to play, and while she certainly has her moments (i am looking directly at the checkpoint three mortum reveal scene), shes mostly lighthearted fun cruising through the game as nothing more than a silly guy. i think the next game will actually dig into her character more deeply and allow me to showcase the parts of her shed usually keep hidden, but for now im having a good time getting her to kiss argent and embarrass her friends.

Cynthia- somebody come pick her up please before she starts crying in this club. she is crying because of me but lets not talk about that. i think my favourite thing about her is the contrast between her general wimpy sad lovergirl disposition and her revenge scar, and how she chooses to cope with it! because like,,,, it is just so so tasty watching her fumble with the overwhelming emotion, Especially since the emotion is hurting people. she never learned what to do with the anger! she does not want it! she wants to be as kind to other people as possible! "im not a bad dog, i dont know why i bite" etc etc. eventually she might figure it out, but Definitely Not Now lmfao.

questions from here!

[abcdosaka]

i feel like this was kinda a long time coming but it definitely feels weird to write it down.

having a weird time trying to, i guess, 'solve' my sex life and kinda by extension love life and reconcile it with having an actual relationship with my family. the hilarious part is the thing that brought this on was me shopping for toys lmao. this post is like half sex half depression.

like i was browsing dildos bc i wanna try to experience penetration for once without clenching up like a vise grip like i wanna try to learn to enjoy it bc ngl im getting a bit of fomo of all the other girlies out there. and also ive never really had the opportunity to kinda explore different things sexually like maybe i was just afraid but now that im basically financially independent its like i want to try. the same way i tried last year but this time i dont feel like there's other people or things holding me back. except there kinda is

anyway the entire time i was thinking like wait isnt this kinda like analogous to a man's penis? yeah no shit but its the realistic ones specifically that get me. i'm like wait i really do not like that. it really shoves in your face that like this is a MALE sex organ (which ya ik gender and sex is not real but for all intents and purposes in this case, it’s male). and its weird its like my brain kinda gets that im a lesbian but there's a disconnect with my body somewhere. like ok i know there's a huge thing about this and its like stepping on a minefield but just for me personally. i never thought i had a strong genital preference specifically like i always thought well, i like boobs and i like pussy and if i'm like watching porn or whatever and a dick pops up im like cool fine that is an object thats not a human. sorry to anyone i dehumanized just now. but its not like i HATE dick i think its alright sometimes even great but is it something i want inside me? idk. not really. especially not face to face with a man its just disturbing idk.

but point is im still kinda mentally in denial somewhere like my brain thinks theres some deep trauma or problem or bias against men that needs to be solved so that i can like men. but ive never been through a trauma like that. and obviously im well aware i am a little sexist like i dont vibe well with men. is that why? like i don't like the idea of having to have a relationship with a man bc i need to feel superior somehow? or maybe not superior but just not inferior. like its just more equal between women. yeah i think thats maybe it. but i feel like thats not just it. i also feel like theres some biologic instinct that turns me off to them. or maybe its nature vs nurture and ive nurtured myself so hard that im like well i can't like men now. the weird part about that is that i'd think it should be the other way around. like how straight incels will be like god i wish i was gay but i can't help being attracted to women. its a question ive been trying to solve for a decade and maybe i already know the answer but idk how to feel solid about it

anyway i saw one that was so cute it was like a bunch of pink hearts but its way too girthy. plus it was like $55 which is just. its probably normal for dildo prices that arent the microplastics shein ones but also like seriously. i might wait for if it goes on sale if i think ill like it after i try a smaller one. ill have to order it next week bc i wanna ship it to the post office so theres no chance my upstairs neighbour would get it by accident. but tbh ive experienced enough embarassing things that when i recall them i dont even get embarassed im just numb so i think if that happened itll just go in the numb pile or maybe funny pile.

now to the kinda sad part. how tf do i tell my family? ive always known that im gonna have to tell them sooner or later and id do it after im financially independent but this is the thing in my way that i was talking about. my family is not perfect or even close at all but idk. they kind of are all i got. yeah i have friends but nobody close enough to call in an emergency or whatever. and i feel a bit bad bc they have actually done a lot for me. like the shit before uni was whatever like thats what you do for family but everything they helped me with during uni, even though i hated it, i did need their help. i guess if i had other people to rely on i wouldn't have. but im a really fucking guarded person like i really dont like trusting people like that. at least with my family i believe they wouldn't screw me over bc of something petty. i moved halfway across the country so i could have the sort of privacy i wanted and seems like my mom knows that but i talked to her today and she was like maybe i could come visit in july and i was like alright i guess. but now im like wait so what happens if i start dating.

i actually really dislike that it seems like everyone in my family, extended and all, all of the sudden wants to hang out all the fucking time.

you know i bet they wouldn't even acknowledge it. in which case im not gonna acknowledge that they aren't acknowledging it. like ill just pretend they accept it. i need to make some queer friends here like actually

or maybe it isn't as big a deal as i think it is. i do live pretty far away. wtf are they gonna do from all the way over there lmao. nobody's gonna kill me over it. worst is i probably get disowned or cut off. or ill have to be the villain and cut them off. thatll be interesting

[actualbird]

Been watching a video of a former art thief and a detective rating art heist scenes in movies and one that was shown was in a film called The Thomas Crown Affair. A thief steals a priceless Monet painting and its handled ROUGHLY, broken outta it's frame and BENT. IN. HALF to fit in a suitcase. It made me wince so hard and I can only imagine how much rage Marius would have felt at seeing such a scene a h a

KJBDJKGJDS THIS REMINDED ME OF AN EXCHANGE I HAD WITH A FRIEND WHO STARTED PLAYING TOT RECENTLY

UR RIGHT THO!! marius values art so fuckin much, he would BEYOND wince, he may just stop watching the show out of spite. you cant just show him a piece of art (a MONET!!!!) being mishandled like that without any warning!!!! whats the tv show equivalent of a rage quit? he does that if he sees this scene.

my brain went in another direction now tho, forgive me, but im thinking bout how precious art is to marius. not just his own, but like, all of it.

if anybody ever gave marius ANY piece of art, he would cherish it SO MUCH

a little doodle from mc goes on his fridge, pinned by a magnet. whenever she comes over she sees it and groans like "come on, i can draw you something better, take it down!!" and hes like "nope! if it's on the fridge, it stays forever! it's special now! ;)" and he pointedly does not tell her just how much that doodle matters to him, as silly and casual as the doodle is. it's on the fridge, it's special, he cant help but smile whenever he sees it.

luke gives him a tiny action figure that luke made himself and the action figure is now on marius' office desk at PAX. marius is not sure if this action figure has a button that makes it shoot a tranq dart, any gift from luke has the POSSIBILITY to be a fucking weapon somehow. still, he keeps it at his desk, making sure to get rid of any dust that gathers. feels as if theres a little soldier here now, protecting him from anybody who wants to go for marius' throat

vyn has never given marius a tangible thing but one time during one of their tutoring sessions, when marius was dead tired from lack of sleep and frustrated with how he couldnt think, vyn had gone to the piano in the study room and played a gentle melody to calm marius down. when marius asked what song vyn played, vyn shrugs and said it was a piece he was trying to write. marius has never forgotten the melody. he hums it to himself when hes stressed.

artem cant make most art at ALL but when marius voiced that he wanted to learn how to cook, artem had sent him a bunch of his own recipes. all of them take SO MUCH SKILL and marius is like I DONT KNOW WHAT SOME OF THESE WORDS MEAN but he knows that artem is trying, in his own weird way. and maybe marius likes the challenge. he keeps the recipes and laughs at artem's side comments about the cooking steps, and marius wonders if artem knows just how much of himself he's revealed in these words

art takes a lot of forms. the definitions of art just broaden even more when you yourself are an artist, and marius welcomes that.

is it a bad thing, to want to cherish more and more things? maybe. but if theres one thing marius will always believe in, it'll be art. and art from people he cares about is some of the most valuable shit in his life.

if u give marius art, hes basically never gonna leave u ever. good luck getting rid of him now, team!!!!

[dyketubbo]

when you get a chance, thoughts on seer of space tubbo?

(i am also open to maid of space tubbo, and many others, but i am currently seer leaning)

*wakes up* oh boy time to classpect! under the readmore because seers are interesting enough that i ended up going on a tangent

of course no argument about the aspect because hes 100% a space player, ive discussed heir before i believe, so seer analysis it is, because i havent thought about it before (seers slip my mind sometimes, i love them, my brain is just the equivalent of a ground with a bunch of banana peels and cant handle having more than 4 coherent thoughts at a time).

like said with knights, he doesnt exactly try to tell anyone what he wants to come off as, sure he wants to be intimidating enough that people leave him alone, but, well. he does fit the intimidating thing, its less a facade and more a warning, he doesnt want to hurt anyone, but he will should he deem it necessary (thankfully, tubbos kind enough that he deems it unecessary in most cases). hes a bit too likely to follow through, and its bred from feeling unsafe, rather than feeling insecure. c!tubbo knows he can do things, the cc is more likely to downplay what he does than the character is (not that c!tubbo doesnt, but he does still believe in his abilities, he just doesnt think hes important enough to emphasize his impact. difference between going "oh no it was all __" and going "oh no it wasnt just me" when theres something hes done most of the work on)

so, he almost fits knight, at least in abilities, after all knights are capable and they know theyre capable, and hes very good at the exploitation aspect, pushing limitations and using them for their benefits. i could see him as maybe a knight thats actually gotten past the insecurity and facades already, if we're to consider his spy history as him being pre-actualization. being a space player doesnt really change how solid knight arcs are, so the combination of knight and space doesnt make knight much more fitting for tubbo

similarly, he does fit a few aspects of being a seer (having similar struggles, talking a shitton sometimes, sitting back and observing the world around him when he finds it beneficial to do so, generally very smart especially within their group), but not so much others (seers are often overbearingly smug in a way tubbos a bit too humble for, learning through education rather than experience, having a habit of getting too focused on their goal, and theyre overall passive, being too active is actually how they get themselves into shit, while tubbo gets hurt when hes too passive). seers of space focus more on the present than the future or past, which almost fits tubbo.. if it werent for the fact that he doesnt focus on the future or past out of repression cknsks. not that he would much anyways, but the intentional focus on the present is out of stubborness and trauma rather an actual trait of staying in the present. notably, theres quite a few times where tubbo does think about the past and future, especially when he was younger, and he does try to work towards his ideal future, he just doesnt talk about it much.

funnily enough, because of where seer falls through, he ends up being closer to the mage struggle of, well, getting their asses kicked when theyre too passive because things work out best when theyre involving themselves. mages also have that posturing thing as well, though its connected to intelligence (desperately trying to come off as smarter because they believe theyre still too dumb and naïve, even though theyre actually doing fine), so again, not exactly tubbos kind of posturing. plus, hes pissy, but not pissy enough for a mage, as theyre more likely to get caught up in how fed up they are with everything, while tubbo gets caught up in how much he still cares no matter how much he seems like he doesnt. the space aspect adds that theres.. a shitton of shit happening to and around him, which does fit, at least, and mages of space usually suffer because of their passions, knowledge, and experience, as well as they're rather hands on. again, fits, but, well.

seers and mages are a bit too focused on knowledge for the kind of person tubbo is. hes smart for sure, has a lot of knowledge, and even when hes not a spy he does want to know things and looks for that knowledge, but while he fits the goals and positives of seers (and mages), he doesnt exactly fit their flaws or what happens when theyre unhealthy. not that he needs to show signs of being unhealthy, but even healthy players still show an ability to be the unhealthy versions of their classes. he doesnt get his ass kicked for being too active and tunnel visioned like seers do (and it can sometimes come from ego trips, which tubbos very unlikely to have, even if he fits the "my solution is the most correct here, so we have to follow it" part of it all) like seers, he doesnt have any moments of just refusing to learn and complaining about how everything sucks rather than doing anything about it (nor is he likely too) like mages. he does vaguely fit where the unhealthiness of a knight can come in, propping up a shield to a ridiculous extent and lashing out when their insecurites are picked at, but that feels a bit too reckless to be tubbo (though it does fit tommy).

overall, i can kind of see seer for a slightly different version of tubbo, but it feels too passive for tubbo, if that makes sense. he is passive at least, in terms of classes anyways (note- despite how some classpectors define it, passive doesnt really mean you serve others, its not an insult, it just means you weave your aspect through others, rather than yourself. its the difference between a prince destroying x/destroying through x and a bard allowing destruction of x/inviting destruction through x. still listen to passive classes, thats what seers fall into after all, and seers are very important). its just that tubbo usually gets hurt by being too passive rather than getting hurt by being too active (not that it couldnt happen, which is why i say it could still fit under other circumstances).

speaking of passive v active, if i had to pick a passive class i feel fits tubbo the most, probably heir. active wise, id say maid does actually fit rather well. i feel like ive talked about maid tubbo before but i might be remembering a different analysis so just in case ill generally say i feel he fits the arc of going from a "doormat" to taking their life for themselves. theyre stubborn, stressed out from listening to others, like banter, occassionally silly and can start arguing in circles due to the stubborness (think that one patrick id scene, but smarter). maids are also heavy repressers, they fear being seen as weak, and are unwilling to ask for help. they rely on their environment and hate it.

and, painfully enough, some classpectors state that when pushed into being unhealthy, maids explode. maids are already intimidating on their own, being powerful and smart enough to know what to do with that power, and when they get stressed out enough, they, well, explode. they hurt everyone in one big event (think aradias actions in make her pay). its not necessarily a reckless lashing out at everyone like knights, but a giant burnout that happens to effect everyone. tubbos not at a point where it seems likely for this to happen, but i wouldnt be too surprised if something like it did happen were things to get too be too much. he is the mf with nukes after all. healthy maids are independent, with maids of space specifically, well, making space for themselves and others (sound like a certain snow commune anyone), attempting to start new lives. an independent maid, allowed to be their own person without anyone stepping on them, is a healthy maid. unfortunate for tubbo that his life fucking sucks too hard for him to really get to this point KEKW

heirs fit a similar "followed others then became more independent" arc, mostly unaware that theyre being lead around but, if whats happening aligns with their own ideals, dont really care much that theyre being a follower when they are aware of such. heirs have an instinct to stick to comfort, rather than an instinct to be independent like maids. heirs still need to find their independence and autonomy, but need to do so because they can change things, theyre also very powerful when they play correctly. however, going against what they may feel is best and is more comfortable for them can be actively painful, early heirs often would rather be comfortable and happy even if things arent going well than take the difficult route, know that theyll suffer, and temporarily risk comfort and happiness in an attempt to reach an end they dont know will be there for sure. they can deal with suffering, but choosing to stay constantly aware of this suffering hurts and they struggle with dealing with the fact that they need to be aware to stop the suffering.

heirs change by picking up on subtle details naturally, subconsciously effecting those around them, making either themself or others interact with their aspect differently (or actively not think with their own aspect, in a positive way). heirs, when self aware, want to help. thats an important detail, and its why heirs are often protagonists, they dont have the ambition to do things that only benefit themselves when they realize theyre in a position of power. at their core, heirs usually want to make things better, but learning to move on and better themselves can hurt, and it takes a lot for heirs to to let it be apart of the process.

unhealthy heirs fade. they get so stressed out by getting hurt that they shrink back into themselves, they stick with what makes them comfortable and refuse to acknowledge that they and others are hurting, wrapped up in their more selfish instincts and becoming hard and stressful to deal with. "i want everything to be okay" becomes "i dont want to deal with the idea that nothings okay right now", soon getting to "im okay and you cant tell me otherwise, fuck you if you want to take this away from me, you cant stop me but i will stop you". of course, that last one can be useful if a heir were to use it to change things for the better, but the tunnel vision on "i want to be comfortable even if im making others uncomfortable" is, well. shitty. unhealthy heirs wont actively try to hurt anyone unless pushed, but they can they can still manage to through a lack of acknowledging that they have to help. and well, that sounds somewhat like tubbo, the hurting through a lack of helping, at the very least its present in things like him not visiting tommy during exile (partially because it was safer to just not challenge dream, partially out of guilt and belief that tommy hated him)

heirs of space specifically are about flitting from project to project, learning about what interests them, impatient when others dont share their excitement, and learning when to adapt and move on from things. generally, if i had to put a scale on it, id say tubbos most likely to be a heir, then a maid, then a seer. it all depends on what aspects of him you wanna focus on, really. seer tubbo is really interesting though! i think seers are more smug than he is though, not that he doesnt have his moments, but his tendency to believe hes right isnt all too prominent compared to other traits of his, and its less from a smug "i know whats right" and more just a firm "this isnt right, i have a better idea". he wants to do whats right, but if he feels like he doesnt know whats right, hes willing to rely on others, it just.. takes him a bit of pushing to admit such

[carry-on-my-wayward-butt]

do you ever just get angry about something and then there’s just a bunch of little things that build up and you can’t stop being angry because Things keep being Not Right and then before you know it it’s been 5 hours and you have a headache from being pissed at everything? or is that just my burden?

yes frequently! its the Disorder :)

not sure what it is for you but in my case its The Cluster B and in davyn’s case its The ADHD and in my mom’s case its The Trauma but in all cases, we all need to take the time to figure out FIRSTLY what will allow us to release that energy, and THEN what distracts us best and calms us down at the same time.

writing it all out and chewing the paper or smacking pillows or scribbling furiously on paper with cheap ass markers that you wouldnt feel bad about smushing too hard or singing rude songs really loud. anything that wont hurt you or anyone else, but will allow you to direct the energy outwards and away from yourself and others.

and then reading a fun manga or doodling something small and cute like a burger with a face, or playing a fun little browser game, or a shitty little app like a temple run clone, or watching asmr kinetic sand videos!!! how its made is really relaxing too. my FAVORITE one is to gently wash my face for a minute or two with cool (not cold) water, pat dry with a towel, and then step outside to get some sunlight on my fresh clean face. if you have a little more time, a shower + sunlight is also a top tier idea. if sunlight is available i highly recommend those! even if theres no sun, the water on your face will make your brain be like ‘aw yeah fish brain time’.

stress is an important signal, but a constant signal for stress only hurts your body. and anger is useful and feels good for a while, but starts to become draining! once you notice yourself getting tired of it, its time to direct it out and away, then to calm your body. once your body begins to calm a bit, it will be a little easier to work on getting your mind to follow!

[autisticangus]

anyway im so out of the loop on the mcelboys

i pretty much only keep semi-up to date with Sawbones at this point, not cuz i dont still LIKE everything else, just a lot has been goin on in my life

if anyone wants a long and rambly update on All Of The Bullshit im gonna stick a read more down here, asks are open and its cool to message me abt any of it if u want cuz i have some really nice and cool followers/mutuals here that make me comfy talkin abt that shit

as far as the future of this blog goes i wanna start using it more again! the mcelroys have gotten me out of some really dark places before so i hope having more connection to this community and the people here and their content again will help me like it has in the past! ill probs post more general mcelroy content here than previously rather than just taz btw i just gotta fuckin uhhhhh,,,, catch up on a bunch of shit again before this blog is even semi active lmaoo but im like alive and on tumblr regularly again!!

Wow u clicked on this and wanna hear me talk? Ur awesome and sweet, thanks for caring!

These past two years have been extraordinarily tough. This is gonna be a pretty long and detailed post that deals with the sensitive topics of emotional abuse, abusive relationships, and alcoholism. Please read on with caution.

Back in March of 2019, so this was about 3-4 months after i left tumblr, I got a new boyfriend and things started out really good, he was kind of a "bad boy" and it was fun at first. Im kind of a goody-goody so it was very interesting for me at first to be with someone so different who had such different life experiences than me. I liked hearing his stories of living in a traphouse, and running with gangs, and selling drugs, and knowing people who had killed people. I assumed a LOT of it was lies, obviously, who just brags about that shit u know? I just rolled with it, didnt take it seriously, and found the imagined scenarios interesting to listen to. So much of it was obviously played up to make him seem cooler, and I shouldve seen that as the red flag it was, and all my friends did but I didnt. 

He had a serious alcohol problem, I mean I had coffee in the morning and he had 2 four lokos before noon. it was bad. about 6 months into the relationship he decided i was cheating on him with my ex who i had recently reconnected with, we missed being friends and things were really going well talking and being friends again, he was really important to me! but my boyfriend saw this as yet another thing i was doing wrong. when he decided i was cheating, that become his focus of alcoholic rage. nearly every time he got drunk, which was several times a week, he would accuse me of things, he would yell and scream, he would call me horrible names and make me cry for literal hours, he never hit me but that shouldnt even matter, i was emotionally battered and mentally bruised and everything hurt. he gaslit me into believing i said and did things i never said or did, i admitted to things that were not real, and then i was yelled at for admitting them. i didnt know what to do.

he was threatening my ex too, he would get drunk and say he knew where he lived (he didnt) or he knew what car he drove (he didnt) and explained to me many times that although he had never killed someone, people had been killed before at his command. he said a bullet in the back of my ex’s brain was just a phone call and $500 away. somedays he would tell me he was just going to do it himself, with a hammer, or a kitchen knife, or whatever weapon he could get his hands on during his explanation of how he would do it. my only option was to agree, to say it didnt matter to me what happened to him, i had to pretend my on

/ly concern was him going to jail for the crime, if i showed any sign that i didn’t want my ex murdered, it clearly meant i was cheating on him. 

i pretended to block my ex on social media to get him off my back and it worked a little bit but he still brought it up. and even if he didnt directly mention him, he would always tell me when he was drunk that i was the cause of all his problems, i was why he was so self conscious, i was why he drank so much, i was why he had to work so hard, i was why every single issue he had was happening. logically i knew it was wrong, but i was so conditioned to it by then that i just went with it. i knew that agreeing and apologizing made the fighting end quicker.

things spiraled this past summer. his job needed us to relocate so we moved like 4 states away, away from all my family and friends, and lived in a tiny hotel room for a month. during this time, his drinking was somehow worse. he was drunk literally every night but he was passing out so we didnt fight and i was relieved. i was depressed being stuck in the hotel room all day alone, but thankful i wasnt being abused at least. then he started getting into drunken fistfights with his coworkers in the hotel parking lot. one day he came home just in time to find one of his drunk coworkers trying to break into the room with me there desperately trying to keep him out. i was terrified and wanted to go home but he convinced me to stay. a couple weeks after that we travelled for his work again several more states away. his drinking got a little bit better here, but i was so depressed and lonely, i was so isolated, he was all i saw day in and day out besides his coworkers and i was nervous around them. one day the guy who tried to break in on me, purposefully, while drunk, hit another coworkers car and totaled it and tried to run the guy over and i saw the whole thing. a week later my boyfriend was also fired because he got so drunk he passed out in the hotel parking lot and the company needed to save face with the hotel after the whole car incident. 

so we travelled back home, but not my home, to his where we lived isolated on a mountain with no phone signal or wifi. the house was old and not well kept from being empty for several years, half the appliances didnt work. i was more isolated than i have ever been in my life. for 4 months i stayed there and just dreaded him coming home because i knew he would be drunk again and he'd yell or accuse me of things or otherwise belittle me. it was horrible. my friends all said to leave and my parents said to leave but i was so brainwashed into thinking that if i was just a good little housewife and if i just stayed home and did the dishes and the laundry that he would be nicer but he still found things to point at and say i was cheating. he was also becoming really controlling about my food intake and weight and i already struggle with an eating disorder so that just made me feel even more like i had to stay, my brain felt like if i wasnt under his watchful eye id gain weight again, like somehow it was thanks to him i had lost weight and not my own choices.

one day last week i expressed to him wanting to leave, saying how unhappy i was, i told him how sad i felt and how i didnt think we were such a good match. he didnt take me seriously, so the next day when he got sloppy drunk before 5 pm i packed a small bag and went to my moms. i was just gonna stay for a night or two but he called and screamed at me for leaving without telling him, i told him he just didnt remember me telling him because he was so drunk, and he accused me of not caring about his feelings and made me sound like the bad guy for leaving without his permission. i told him it was just for a few days but the angrier he got the more i knew i was in the right and told him i was done. i told him we were breaking up and id come get my stuff soon.

i got my stuff while he was at work this past weekend and moved in with my best friend. im safe and happy now. things are looking so much better for me and im so thankful to my friends and family who supported me all the way to the end.

i just wanted to make this post because, i know its not mcelroy related, and a lot of ppl probably dont care for stuff like this on this kind of blog, but i think its important.

its important to friends and family of people in abusive relationships to be steady. dont give up your ground. even if the person keeps pushing back and wont leave the person, keep being there for them, it can take a long time, it took me almost 2 years to leave, it takes some people even longer, but just stay there for them and be there for them when they finally make that step. dont give up on them.

and to those who have been in these kinds of relationships, and especially those who are there right now: it is not your fault. it is so, so hard to leave, i know, but please try to find help and support and resources to do it. if all your friends dont like someone, theres a good reason for it. please dont fall into the trap of thinking your friends dont have the best intentions for you. there are so many things you may overlook in the moment that others can see from a mile away are horrible. especially if you have been abused in the past. its incredibly hard to tell what is a red flag when your gut instinct is that anything and everything is a red flag. surround yourself with people who you can trust and listen to them

and trust me, i know how hard it is when youre stuck in that spot of KNOWING you should go but fearing that first step away. its scary. its difficult. but it is worth it. find someone safe you can be with. and if you arent sure, find a reason to leave for just a few days, an excuse, anything. give yourself space from the abuser, tell yourself youre going back in a couple days, just get out from under the thumb long enough to clear your head and things will make more sense with the fog lifted.

when i first got in my car and put my kitten on my lap and told her we were going to my moms for a couple nights, i didnt know if that was the truth. i planned to come back and i knew i didnt want to. i only took enough stuff for a couple days. i couldnt imagine my life changing so drastically. where would i live? how would i make money? who take care of me? i had no clue about any of those things. but after a couple days away I realized i would take care of me. i remembered that i had worked jobs before i was with him, i could do it again. i remembered that i had options of where to live. all of those things were so clouded when i was with him, they felt like impossibilities. once i was away, even just for a short time, things were so much easier to parse.

and i know i had many privileges in this journey not everyone is afforded, and my heart goes out to those who read this and are in this situation and the options i had just arent accessible to you, i am so sorry, i wish i had something more to offer you but all i have is my story, and a wish that it gives you some hope at the very least, and a promise that if you need someone to talk to, im here, i will listen, and you will be heard and loved.

i just want everyone who reads to take something small but important away from it. love your friends, love yourself. please stay safe. please dont give up. remember love should not hurt.

[ajokeformur-ray]

✨ Unfiltered Joker thoughts ✨

I watched Joker with a bunch of lovely clowns on my Discord and while they werewolf’d in the chat, I typed out my thoughts here as they came to me. These are unedited, unfiltered, and exactly as they were in my head. I don’t know who’d be interested in this but 🤷‍♀️ who doesn’t love unfiltered thoughts about our man? NSFW ahead in places, lmao and some self-ship elements because it’s always on my mind.

There are Controversial Things within, I’m sure - be nice about it if you wanna comment, or unfollow/block etc. if it bothers you I won’t take it personally. I will take it personally if I’m sent a rude message, though. Fair warning. You curate your own online experience so scroll past silently if you gotta!🥰🥰🥰🥰

Tagging @arthurflecc @jokerownsmysoul @daincrediblegg @sweet-nothings04 bc they were in the chat and missed me there!! 

 Word count: 4, 597.

OMGOMGOMGOMGOMGOMGOMG JOKERJOKERJOKERJOKERJOKERJOKERJOKERJOKERJOKERJO -

*Presses play*

OMG THERE HE IS BABYYYYYYYY ~��

Ugh that white shirt... 🥵

“paint me like one of your french girls” 👀

oh, honey, no. 

Don’t force yourself to smile, my love, it’s okay. you can be hurting.

sweet angel who can do no wrong asdfghjkl

wanna kiss that tear away...

CARNIVALCARNIVAL CARNIVAL *STARTS SWAYING IN MY SEAT*

jaunty piano to juxtapose his shitty mood

you spin me right round, baby, right round...

ohhh, baby 🥺🥺🥺

someone’s honky lmaoooooo ~ 

that cello

Ohhhh, darling man.... i’m so sorry. I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry

WOOPS CRYINGGGG ~

sweet angel love still tryna be funy with the flower squirting...

what else will squirt tonight???👀

ohhh, darling. deep breaths baby. it’s okay. you’re okay.

CRYINGGGGG

ohhhh baby boyyyy....

legit just cooed aloud

oh angel <3 

“is it just me or is it getting crazier out there?”

it is my love... it is. 

let me sit on your lap and still the shaking of your legs

ohhhh my love. you’re okay. just breathe.

Dr. Kane was doing her best but you’re beyond what she can handle

you deserve better, sweetheart.

my love, my life.

I JUMPED WHEN HE HIT HIS HEAD IN ARKHAM

“who knows?”

yeah me too, my love. me too. 

“i just dont wanna feel so bad anymore”

oh baby.

i know, my love. i wish i could hold your hand and stroke your hair and kiss your cheeks 🥺🥺🥺

had a shitty day but wants to comfort a child on the bus. thats my manssss ~ <3 <3 <3 

okay but his peekaboo makes me giggle please do that to me when im sad

“‘cuse you bitch?”

the greasepaint still on his face is endearing omg 

GIVE HIM BACK HIS CARD OR IMMA RIOTTTT

CRYINGGGGG 

ohhhh baby. no. deep breaths. i’m here, my love. not going anywhere

those fucking steps

me too, darling. i feel your exhaustion like it’s my own and i long to take it from you without changing a single thing about you.

my love, my life

the weariness of an unchanged routine is a paralysing one

wanna rub cream on your bruises

“yeah, mum” so soft im cry

“eat. you need to eat” i hear you in my head when i wanna skip meals and it helps me.

“oh yeah? who do you talk to?” YES SASS HER

“yay murray” ohhhhh angel you’re so cute I’m cry 🥺

murray you wankstain - old and crusty 🤮🤢🤮🤢

arthur’s laugh in his daydream 🥺🥺

“i love you murray” // “you’re awful murray” baby noooooo

“theres something special about you arthur” the only real thing murrat ever fuckin said AND IT WASNT EVEN A REAL THING IT WAS IN HIS HEAD

“I TAKE GOOD CARE OF MY MOTHER” YEEEES BABY YOU DO! SO PROUD OF YOU!!!

just wantin recognition in your daydreams bc you dont get it in your real life

YOU SWEET THING

HIS SWEET SMILE AND THE CELLO OH BABY 🥺😭

YOUR BACK 😭😭😭😭😭😭😭

shoes are too tight so you gotta stretch em 

can you stretch me too???👀🥵💦🔥

“chuckletown” RANDALLS LEGACY AND WE TURNED IT INTO SMTHN LOVING AND NOT SARKY LIKE HE INTENDED LMAO FUCK YOU RANDALL YOU PIECE OF SHIIIIIIIIT

arthur’s hair in the sun omg like a halo

randall fuck off fucking fuck off go aWAY LEAVE MY ARTHUR ALONE

you asswipe

arthurs shy and nervous lil giggle omg baby say no give the gun back its not well intended 

“my boy”  AHA LMAO HE DOES PAY YOU BACK BUT NOT HOW YOU EXPECT LMAOOOO YOU GET WHAT YOU DESERVE

THOSE CURLS

arthur’s sweet little lilting voice in front of his boss omggggg ~ 

HOYYYYYYT 

his logic makes no sense wtffffff ~ 

RETAIL SMILE LMAO THATS A MOOD 

brewing insanity..... 

POUND ME LIKE THOSE TRASH BAGS

RUIN ME AND THEN REBUILD ME IN YOUR IMAGE 

those mf stairs again

it’s the same old team since 1916... in your head, in your head...

never in my LIFE have i been aroused by a FOOT

lmao only Arthur istg that man is the exception to my every rule

Gigi is so CUTE 🥺

THAT SMIRK SIR CAN YOU NOT

“hey” omggg look at you tryna connect ugh so proud of youuu ~ 

the moon is a silver dollar... 

THOSE CURLS

THOSE BARE FEET

THAT SOFT VOICE

ARTHURRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR 

frances conroy is a goddess omg i love herrrr ~ 

espesh on ahs she’s a queen

but i digress lmao wrong fandom

“dont you have to be funny to be a comedian”

FUCK OFF PENNY 

FUCK RIGHT OFF THEN FUCK OFF SOME MORE PLEASE

slap that bass.... 

FINGERSSS ON THE GUN ASDFGHJ PUT THEM ON ME INSTEADDDD

zoom zoom the world is in a mess

LMAO YEP

“psh” omg you sweet angel asdfghjk

THAT EYEBROW RAISE ASDFGHJK SASSY KINGGGGG

GET ITTTTTT

UGH THAT BODY WANNA COVER IT IN MARKS OF LOVE TO REPLACE THE VIOLENT MARKS

ARTHUR @ HIMSELF “YOURE A GOOD DANCER // I KNOW”

omggggg sweet clumsy babyyyy

lmaooo “old war movie” do you tell penny that when we get caught having sex on the sofa????

arthur honey following sophie isn’t.... the best way to get her attention asdfghjk 

someone needs to teach you social interactions... 

I VOLUNTEER AS TRIBUTTTTTE

that student/teacher roleplay comedian at pogos makes no sense to me???? i dont get his jokes at all

lmao bad comediannnnnn

arthur’s cute lil mistimed giggles ksksksksk 

wanna kiss your cheeks every timmmme 

you’re working so hard to achieve your goals im so so proud of you

ambidextroussss ~ (just like me omg we’re perfect for each otherrrrr)

“people expect you to behave as if you dont” YOU INTELLIGENT LIL SHIT OMG I LOVE YOU AND YOUR MIND

you know its a daydream if arthurs wearing a shirt at home 

his shy “yeah” omggggg ~ angelllll 

“i have a gun i can come by tomorrow” LMAOOOOOOOO 

“youre so funny arthur” YES HE IS DREAM!SOPHIE

CARNIVAL CARNIVAL CARNIVAL

I ACTUALLY STOMP MY FEET HERE BC IM HAPPY FOR THE TIME HES ON SCREEN SWEET CLOWN 

THE ONLY ONE IM NOT AFRAID OF

HES SO SO HAPPY OMGGG

BABY BOYYYY IN HIS ELEMENT

SAD THO BC KIDS ARE TERMINALLY ILL 

bestest party clownnnn 

“I love this job” oh baby 🥺🥺

aaaaaaaaand now the betrayal from randall lmao fuck that dude

NO BB YOUR FOREHEAD NO SMASHY GLASSY

LMAO THE FUCK ERIKA???

dudes 35 not a kid 

throwing greasy chips into a girl’s hair isn’t how to flirt my dude lmao you’re gross??? 

ew

EW EW EW WIGGLE YOUR CHIPS ELSEWHERE

ohhhh arthur, honey no omg breathe it’s okay

you wanna help but you dont know how

you sweet thing 

send in the clowwwwwwwwwwwwwwns ~ 

IM CRYINGGGGG

“they couldnt carry a tune to save their lives”

JOEKR ITS NOT YOUR TIME YET GO AWAYYYY

lmao jokes stay you know im lost without you 

HOW CAN YOUR HAIR LOOK SO GOOD AFTER BEING UNDER A WIG ALL DAY ?????

carnival with arthur’s hair is just 👌👌👌👌

WHERES HIS CARDDDDD 

nooooooo omg baby no omg i wish i could take all those punches for you

i’d take it all in a heartbeat to save you

gritting his teeth not taking in anymore

YES BABY GET EEEEEEM

YES YES YES YES STAND UP FOR YOURSELF SO PROUD OF YOU

first 2 self defence, 3rd one unsure lmao but fuck it 

no PUT THE GUN AWAY FROM YOUR FACE BABY ITS OKAY DONT FORGET YOUR BAG OR YOUR WIG ITS EVIDENCE

KILL THE 3RD COVER YOUR TRACKS

GOOD BOYYYYYY

carnival with blood on face = killing your insecurities

8 bullets from a 6 chamber????? mm-hm lmao i know @daincrediblegg wrote a thing on this once lmao bestest Egg is smart and i love her muchly 🥰🥰🥰🥰

run baby run, dont ever look backkk... (check yes juliet)

BATHROOM SCENE BATHROOM SCENE BATHROOM SCENE

fuck me against that dirty counter

joker’s waking uuuuuuuup....

that cello though unffff 👌

got me clenchinnnnn you fluidddd ~ 

and in his eyes, all the sadness of the world. those pleading eyes that both threaten and adore (phantom of the opera)

my brain is 90% song lyrics 

hes so graceful and ethereal so full of pain and of love and of adventure and worth and need and yearning

my sweet boy

my wonderful angel

my fallen angel

T POSEEEEE

DAYDREAM KISSSSS

ugh push me against the wall and shove your hand down my panties and take whats yours 

please and thanks

so confident

so smooth

so sure

unf

take me angel im all yours 

and my name is carnival

SASSY BOYYYYY

I SAY BOY BUT YOURE A MAN LMAO 

YESSSSSS TELL THEMMMMMMMM 

LMAOOOOOO RANDALL SEEMS LEGIT CONFUSED PFFFT

TOUGH SHIIIIIIIT

LMAOOO PUNCH OUT

BUSTING A LUNNGGGGG

HE DOESNT KNOW HIS OWN STRENGTH

OR HIS OWN LIMITS

“DONT SMILE”

MOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOD

nothin worse than being told to smile when you really wanna bare your teeth and let rip

aka me every fuckin minute of my life 

SHUSH ME SHUSH ME SHUSH ME

ILL CRY BUT DO IT

LMAOOOOO CHOKE ME WITH THOSE BICEPS 

ILL GO OUT DOIN WHAT I LOVE

YOUUUUUUU 

“gotham’s lost its way” ok trump

“thats not funny” SHUT UP PENNY YES IT IS

STOP SMOTHERING ARTHUR LET HIM BE FREE

“nobody ever saw me. even i didnt know if i really existed”

and

“you dont listen do you”

BOTH ARE MOODS

i feel them so hard

hes so sure of himself in this session

so angry and done and weary

“people are starting to notice” ALMOST A YEAR OF YOU BEING NOTICED

that green jumper omggg 

good luck getting me out of it pfffft 

“erika have you seen my - oh, there it is. never mind.”

want it back???? payment is kissessss

EW SEXIST COMEDIAN

arthur honey stop primping youre perfect <3 <3 <3 

im so so proud of youuuuu

COLLARBONEEEEEES

OMG HE STUMBLES UP THE STEPS DARLINGGG

I wish i could hold your hand while youre on stage and comfort you while you deliver your jokes

just breathe, darling. it’s okay. i’m here, i promise. <3 

every time you gag on your laughter my heart clenches

CRYINGGGGG

oh, my love, it’s okay. just breathe. dont fight it. dont fight yourself 

you’re so good at imitating your ma pfffft 

lmaoooo you’re so funny arthur 

WOO BOI DONT FLASH YOUR PORN PAGES AT THE AUDIENCE 

givin me ideas.... 

SMILE THOUGH YOUR HEART IS ACHING

SMILE EVEN THOUGH IT’S BREAKING 

WHEN THERE ARE CLOUDS IN THE SKY

YOU’LL GET BY

SMILE THROUGH YOUR FEAR AND SORROW

SMILE

AND MAYBE TOMORROW

YOULL SEE THE SUN COME SHINING THROUGH

arthur is my sunshine

EXCUSE ME HEART EYES OMGGGG

ME AND ARTHUR HEART EYESING AT EACH OTHER PFFFFFT 

gonna put people off their food doin that 

thats life

arthur’s imitations and those soft curls and the dancing and the - 

erika.exe has stopped working 

“come on dance with me”

👀👀👀👀👀👀👀

i prefer the horizontal dance myself...

“big date”

“deliver the letter”

NARCISSISM 

ARTHUR YOU DESERVE BETTERRRRRRRRRR

IS IT BAD HIS EYEBROWS TURN ME ON?? SO THICK AND DARK AND STRONG I - 

and those eyes

ugh fuck meeee ~ 

yes thats an invitation

penny “needs care” but her handwriting is that neat???? yeah fuck off 

sorry i dont buy it

she was grooming him i think into some kinda husband role and its fucking gross as fuck she was abusing him and he just wanted her gone 

CUTE LIL NOSTRIL FLARES BC SAD AND ANGRY

OMG

his quiet anger scares me but i admire how he calmed down so fast

angry penguinnnnn

HE CARRIES HIS CLOWN NOSE AROUND IN HIS POCKET

CUUUUUUUTE

the similar clothing colours of arthur and bruce is v def intentional 

in another life, arthur....

i’m so sorry darling you deserved and deserve so much better

legit one small change in anything coulda prevented 80% of this film

your magic tricks are gorgeous ~ 

you’re so funny and soothing and comforting and so good with kids

you are the best party clown

I GASPED AT THE FLOWERS

like my server nameee ~ 

“hi” that soft noise 🥺

arthur’s hands on those bars omg 🥵🥵🥵

okay i’ll admit i still dont get the whole arthur/thomas thing lmao is he his dad???? ive seen this film 10000000 x and i still can’t decide.

i wanna say he is but like ??? idk ??

it’s tragic either way omg arthur’s wasted in gotham

ruuuun arthur run run runnnnnnnn 

the bg music isss 👌👌👌👌

arthur accidentally caused penny’s stroke bc med w/drawal but all that abuse, like ????? i get why he kept her sedated lmao i’d want her knocked out or smthn too

7 meds between the two of them, probably.... that might be why he wanted an increase???

you gotta lie, angel.

you’re in way over your head but lie

yeeees good boy!!

“a clown thing?“ lmaoooo tell them!!!

NO ITS EXIT ONLY

KINDA LIKE MY ASS LMAO NO ANAL FOR YOU 

he just wants love and comfort and for someone to stay omg you sweet thing 

you deserve the world and all the forehead kisses 

TURN THE TV OFF

TURN IT OFF

TURN IT - 

OH TOO LATE

arthurrrrr ~ 

its like a car crash lmao you know its coming but you cant stop looking

fuck off murrat

FUCK OFF SOME MORE

oooooooh thats a danger face....

lowkey want it between my thighs lmao use me to work out your frustrations i can take it 

“kill the rich” lmao relatable 

this film revealed to me that i have a flexible morality ksksksk im all for it though 

sleepy bb ~ 

“we are all clowns” ALSO RELATABLE

🤡🤡🤡🤡🤡🤡🤡🤡🤡🤡

arthurs thriving in the crowd omg yes baby looks so happy

flashes of joker comin throughhh... 

sneaky baby...

quick on his feet, light on his sense... 

tread lightly on my ground, (abba; andante)

THE RED THEATRE SUIT OMG FORESHADOWWWW

he looks good in red

he looks good out of red too 👀👀

that is the smile of the world’s most precious angel omg babyyyy ~ 

he makes me smile omg hes my sunshine

my love my life 

you saved my soul do you know that??? do you feel me and how much i love you? do you see me and these tears? 

do you feel me like i feel you?

ohhhhh boy here we go asdfdgfhgjhk arthur going to meet his dad, only asking for love and instead he gets punched in the face

i mean i get it bc of what arthur did to bruce with the whole hands in the mouth thing but bruce is barely mentioned, like an afterthought?

thomas has a nasty temper i wouldnt want him for a dad

thomas legit only mentions bruce after he’s punched arthur its like his only thought is really protecting himself and his rep with the whole penny thing

his son comes after; legit as he’s walking away he mentions bruce so hes obvs not that concerned????

shitty dad award lmao

not that what arthur did is okay im not excusing his admittedly misguided and lowkey creepy actions but like ????

lmao prob gonna get hate for this ^^ like i did last time i mentioned it but i dont care im allowed an opinion

too tired to care rn anyways pfffft its storming so bad outside and my wifi has dipped idk if this’ll save

c’mon wifi, for me... 

yes

arthur didnt have an attack til he got called crazy, its a trigger word for him 😭

oh baby its okay, deep breaths.

dont fight your laughter, that’ll make it worse 

the way he bounces back from that punch though - you know how to take it, dont you, my love?

you sweet thing.

i wish i could get you out of that fridge omg baby those old ones lock - how did you get out ????

meds are wearing off now.....

darling say no to the show lmao you dont wanna go

*facepalm*

every time i watch this i hope it turns out different

it never does

arthur honey dont ask questions you dont want the answers to

that clerk was protecting you not letting you see the file

that clerk and gary were the only ones nice to you

but it wasnt enough

you needed love and support and help and guidance 

and instead you got literal and metaphorical punches and no break

the hand puppet omgggg ~ 

i want him to play peekaboo with me when im sad/upset/make a hand puppet over my shoulder aszdxfcghvjbkn

ohhhhhh darling stop reading stop reading stop reading

put it down. 

this entire scene is confusing and heartbreaking

ive seen this film 10000000 x and im still not sure i fully understand

his laughing is so much like sobbing here

omg moonshine its okay you can cry. let it all out. 

newspaper clips in a real file???? mmmm - unprofessional or arthur’s manifestation of news??

🤔

we love pathetic fallacy in this house

i wanna get you in the shower and wash you down and feed you and wrap you in my warm embrace “i had a bad day”

my dark angel, it’s okay. i’m here. i love you and im staying with you no matter what

sophie was his last hope, his last chance to reconnect

again im not excusing it lmao but im saying i understand him

hes touching everything to experience it for the first time

he knows shes a daydream

hes self-aware but he needs his coping mechanisms

we all do it

not the breaking in, i mean the daydreaming 

“i had a bad day” shatters my black, shrivelled heart 💔💔💔💔💔💔

ohhh, darling.

istg you’re the only person i ever fucking coo at 

finger-guns = reconnecting = remember me see me

but i guess to sophie it came across as ominous/creepy??

poor arthur trying so hard to reconnect to people and he just cant do it he doesnt have the social know-how bc no one bothered to ever teach him

again im not saying its okay im just saying

lmao i hate how i always feel like i have to justify myself even before thats called into question pffft the internet is cruel and prev times ive voiced myself ive been sent rude messages and once bitten twice shy

the sword forgets but the tree remembers

hes sobbign and laughing and its gut-wrenching

that neighbour yelling “shut up” better catch these hands imma square up

have some compassion dickwad

you never know what someones going through so be kind

always always be kind

^^^ film takeaway right there

if looks could kill penny would be 6 feet under

OH WAIT LMAOOOO 😂😂😂😂😂😂

in killing her he sets himself free. but the trauma and the damage done to him leaves him open to more of the same bc hes so vulnerable

that heart-rate monitor went quiet so quickly did he tune it out????

OMG THE WAY HE REHEARSES FOR THE SHOW YOU SWEET MAN OMG YOU DESERVE THE WORLD

sir thats my seat lmao my throne of red

“yeah? all of you? okay” 🤡🤡🤡

us lining up to fuck him into next week 😂

THATS LIFEEEEE ~ 

the fuck kinda hair dye you usin’???

CHOKE ME W THOSE BICEPS

DANCIN TOGETHER IN THE BATHROOM

THOSE HIPS DONT LIEEEEE 👀👀

scissors = pre-med murder but triggered by “my boy” - term used by abusers. 

poor angel’s triggered by lots of things, i think. theres no telling what triggers his violence and thats what makes him dangerous

could be anything and theres also no telling what his “you wronged me” scale is so ??? 

he’s like a kicked dog... lashes out when hes had so much and wont/cant take anymore

“COMING” yeaaaaah i bet....👀

“i stopped taking my medication and i feel a lot better now” GET OUT GET OUT THATS A RED FLAG OUUUUUUUUUUT YOU GO

OOOOOH JOKER’S LAUGH IS OUT - HES MOCKING YOUUUU AND YOU DONT EVEN KNOW IT BOY’S SMARTICLES

this is why arthurs so dangerous. he looks lithe and weak and fragile but he takes down a man twice his size with scissors in one hit

do not underestimate him it’ll be the last thing you ever do

I WANNA LICK THE BLOOD OFF HIS FACE

BRITISH ACCENT ON POINT 

LMAO he’d so mock me for mine 😂

“you were the only one who was ever really nice to me” a moral codeeee; flexible morality like meeee ~ 

okay but he so made gary jump bc he knew gary was too scared to move otherwise

loooooving the gallows humour with the door lock PFFFT

gotham slept on arthur dude’s hilarious

OH OMH OMG OMGOMOMGOMGOMGOMGOKMG JOKER JOKERJOKERJOKERJOKERJOKERJOKERJOKER

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

MY LOVE MY LIFE MY CLOWN MY HUSBAND OMGOMGOMGOMGOMGOMGOMGOMGOMGOMGOMGOMG

IM CRYINGGGGGGGG

JOKERRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR

JOKERJOKERJOKERJOKERJOKERJOKER

I CANT BREATHE FUCK OMFFFFF LOOK AT HIIIIIIM

LOOOOOOOOOK LOOK LOOK ASZDXFCGVHJBKLKJHGFDSZDXFGHJHKJLKJHGFD

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MY LOVE MY LIFE MY JOOOOOOOOOOOOOOKER

JOKERJOKERJOKER

LMAO HE’D BE GIGGLING AT ME RIGHT NOW OMGGGG

lmao let randall rot there fuck hiiiiiiim (and not in the fun way)

i want Joker to touch my clit like he did the lift button 👀

ohhhhh look at you having fun on the stairrrs

happy babyyyy ~ 

dancing  towards what you believe to be your death

so glad you changed your punchline at the last minute you didnt deserve to die

SWEET FLAWLESS ANGEL I LOVE YOU I LOVE YOU I LOVE YOU I LOVE YOU I LOVE YOU

his “oh” when the cops come lmaooooo ~ 

he does that when you grind down hard on him...👀

so used to pain he gets up from being hit by a car and carries on 😔

run baby run...

hes so agile and so quick on his feet

thinks fast too

arthur for fuck’s sake dont you dare stop

you’re almost there, my love.

im so so proud of you

SASSY DANCING ANGELLLL

i love that smug smirk he has and that chuckle omg lmaooooo ~ 

i’d do anything to see you look at me with such pride

ooof you look so angry in the subway but i’d happily cup your face in my hands and smother you in kisses

your eyes red rimmed with tears. youve been sweating and crying ohhhh ~ 

my love omg you didnt want this, you didnt want the riots and you dont know how it spun so outta control and you didnt choose this

i so desperately want to be with you right now

“i dont believe in anything” THATS OKAY I DIDNT NEED MY HEART ANYWAY

I MEAN ITS ALREADY YOURS BUT YOURE STANDING ON IT OUCH

💔💔💔💔💔💔💔💔💔💔💔💔💔💔💔💔

“mm-hm” i love that little noise

“i love dr sally” BITCH YOU HAVE A WIFE AT HOMEEEE

“THATS WHAT YOU CALLED ME ON THE SHOW. A JOKER. DO YOU REMEMBER?” THATS SUCH A DANGEROUS LOOK ON HIS PERFECT FACE LMAO MURRAY HAD ONE CHANCE TO CHANGE HIS MIND AND APOLOGISE AND HE DIDNT EVEN KNOW IT LMAO

fuck ‘em, Joker.

You deserve better

GET

THAT

FUCKING

GUN

AWAY

FROM

YOUR 

FACE

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

all that pain in his eyes....

oh, darling. how did no one see you????

his backstage dancing got me 💦💦💦

hes so ethereal and mysterious, so free yet so constrained, so beautiful and so himself

i love him i love him i love him i love him

smile playing as he comes out on stage lmao even now hes being told what to do and how to act

hes never free

spinny baby

you spin me right round...

he suits the stage so well

lmao woop sexual assault (kissing dr sally without consent) isnt a good move Joker but damn what a first kiss...

never thought i’d be jealous of an elderly woman but here we are 🤡

he looks so good under the lights omg so crisp....

wanna mess and smear it uuuuup

~

you’re all being mocked and none of you fucking know it lmao get wrecked

memory problems bcof the notebook + “get it right” - he really cares

ohhhhhh baby come on change your punchline, come on....

okay but that drunk driver joke does make me giggle lmao it’s so out there and honestly my sense of humour is just as dark as his is

i just sHIVERED 🥵

“arthur” HE SAID CALL HIM JOKER DONT BE RUDE

ohhhhh i’m cryingggg 😭😭😭😭😭😭

i cant watch this without crying ohhhh all that pain, all that suffering and all that anger, confusion and betrayal. a mental breakdown on nat tv and no one sees him. how the fuck are you all so blind?????

“mur-rray” LMAO YOU FUCK MY NAME I FUCK YOURS

SAY IT JOKER IM SO SO PROUD OF YOUUU

hes speaking facts

“they couldnt carry a tune to save their lives” and that eye roll and groan yes we stan a dramatic CLOWN

this is fucking heartbreaking omg “i dont care about anything” but then he rants in the next minute - so unpredictable and dangerous and untamed but so so pretty in his pain so beautiful and so free

but hes not free... not really

“werewolf” as a verb omg only you could make that work

im so fucking proud of you

“youre awful murray” ooooooooh....

LMAO JOKER’S JOKE BLEW MURRAT’S MIND

hes crying and shaking and no one ??? sees him ???? how????

i legit dont understand how people just dont see him? people see what they wanna see but it’s right there???

he seems almost surprised by the fact he killed him

YES GRAB MY FACE LIKE YOU DID THE CAMERA PLEASE

IN THE WHITE ROOOOOOOOOM

UGH I LOVE THIS SONG SO FUCKING MUCH ITS SUCH A FEEL GOOD SONG

GOTHAM IS SO PRETTY WHEN ITS ON FIRE OMG ITS SO ALIVE

I LOVE THE ENERGY THIS SCENE GIVES OFF

ITS LIKE HOW JOKER HIMSELF MAKES ME FEEL

ALIVE

his little “hi” like they can hear him 🥺🥺🥺🥺

his laughter omggg sweet angelllllll ~ 

“i know. isn’t it beautiful?” YES IT IIIIIS

AND SO ARE YOU

OH NO OMG NO NO NOPEEEE

this scene always scares me even though i know hes okay pffffft 

the birth of joker lmao

be careful with him please hes precious cargo

omggg i wanna sit on that car and wipe his blood away and help him to get home so i can patch him up

lmao im a scaredy cat til my loved ones are threatened then i scare up this fawn bites

i wanna help Joker to get help and support

i wanna love him through it all, the good and the bad

his slow dancing always gets me omg it’s arthur, still there, still suffering, still unseen and unloved

hes crying and hes in pain

blood smile - my inside is on the outside now and it still hurts

he didnt want any of this. he chose his name ubt not what came with it

my poor clown...... 

CRYINGGGGGG AGAIN

HIS GENUINE LAUGHTER SENDS ME OMG ITS SO PRETTY

i wanna make him laugh like that

it always makes me smile omg those cute lil hiccups 🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺

THATS LIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIFE

i love the audio muted during the scene he sings it omgg it’s so prettyyyy ~ i like to pretend hes singing to me sometimes asdfghjk

metaphorical or literal blood???

hes accepted who he is now.

hes free

dancing in the white light like an angel

i love him i love him i love him i love him i love him i love him i love him i love hiiiiiiiiiim ~ 🥰🥰🥰🥰🥰🥰🥰🥰💖💖💖💖💖💖💖💖

~ THE END ~

[many-gay-magpies]

Smh i should really stop talking to my mom about anxiety/mental stuff because every time it only makes me feel worse

I love my mom a lot but like . sometimes there are just things that get on my nerves even though i love her. I kinda feel bad because like she tries so hard to understand and says she understands and I know she DOES to a degree so I feel bad for lowkey thinking like the whiny teenager all like "yOu DoN't UnDeRsTaNd Me" sometimes, y'know? Like the bottom line is our brains just work really really differently a lot of the time and she either wants to believe or genuinely believes that they dont

Every time I talk to her about my (non-clinical, probably) anxiety and what caused it (this girl bullying me for six years) she goes on to mention all the ways she was bullied as a kid and all the terrible shit she's gone through to say in the end "so I understand" when like all of that shit is way different from my experience so every time she says it inside I'm just like "yes but actually no"

Like, today i was talking about my bully to her and how I've started realizing that all my responses now are responses i was forced to give as a kid because of the situation i was in with my bully, and she went in depth and told me (all stuff she had already told me about before and also when i had been talking about my anxiety stuffs before) about how her mom forced her to sleep in curlers so she would have banana curls and made her wear dresses and how she got mugged really bad when she was older and all this stuff that is very valid trauma and sucks ass and i thank her for trying to understand me but at the same time all the shit that happened to her was surface level. Neither of us could control what was happening to us, because her mom made her dress like that and I couldn't just make this girl suddenly not have issues, but like a dress is still something you can change??? Take off??? Like it isnt attatched to you as a person. I cant change the fact that i exist, which this girl bullying me apparently hated me for. To her my existence was just like "oh i must hurt this person" not because of what i wore, what i looked like, etc etc.

She also kept subtly bringing up the fact that i had never been PHYSICALLY hurt by my bully and implying that because she HAD her pain was worse and i could have had it worse if my bully physically hurt me and ACTED on the threats to hurt me (which my mom's bullies did) and while yes that was true . My bully didn't threaten to physically hurt me at all so there were no threats TO act on she just talked to me like i was shit all the time and beat my self esteem about my personality into a meaningless pulp . I kind of wanted to scream in my moms face "YOUR PAIN WAS MOSTLY PHYSICAL WHILE MINE WAS EMOTIONAL, BOTH ARE VALID AND DIFFERENT" but i know she does know that-- but maybe it would have gotten the point across idk

I wish so badly that i could just tell my mom "I dont want/need you to understand, i just need you to be here" and like i could but . I'm not there yet

(Warning ahead, I'm sorry if this gets really long but like I wanna get it off my chest before i go to sleep bcs i feel like ill sleep better if i do)

Another thing that annoys me is that??? Every time??? I say something??? Or tell her how I'm feeling at the moment??? She just asks me??? "Why?"??? And yes its good to talk about stuff but I'm trying to explain to you in a polite way why i want to leave the conversation and that its making me uncomfortable and i just want to go to bed and you just go "but why are you uncomfortable?" Or like if i tell her I'm upset and i want to stop talking about it she goes "why are you upset? I dont want you to be upset" and I'm just. I literally just said i dont want to talk about this anymore can i please leave you cant control that I'm upset about this because continuing talking to you is just going to make me more upset because no matter what way i try to explain it i cant get my points across right to you and i dont want to say you dont understand bcs thats immature but you kind of dont understand

I want to tell her "This conversation isnt having the outcome i wanted it to have and i want to leave it before it makes me more upset so that i can go think on it for later" but I'm sure if i do. that shed just go "but WHY arent you happy with the conversation tell me so i can fix it" and if i tell her blatantly what is making me unhappy (the fact that she keeps saying she understands and pouring stories of her traumas onto me to "prove" that she understands) then she's going to guilt trip me when were talking in the future by emphasizing the fact that i dont like when she talks a certain way and be all like "oh i wont tell you about my OWN experiences though because you said you don't LIKE when I DO that" and i just hhhhhh

Like every time i tell her she doesnt understand and try to explain it in a way that she WILL and it'll finally click it just. Doesn't and it makes me feel so defeated because every time i do that she just circles back around to "well i experienced all these types of trauma so i totally understand" and i appreciate the effort but that just isnt the kind of support i needed to make me feel content

And also when i was talking to her tonight i told her about a specific instance that happened in like 1rst or 4th grade where I was crying because the girl bullying me was just in one of those. Bad Moods™ where like she hated me for existing and talked to me like i was a piece of trash she had stepped in or smth and then she and a couple other kids asked me WHY I WAS CRYING and I didn't want to tell her "hey I'm crying because you keep hurting me and i dont want you to" because if i said that she would just hurt me MORE so i made up a lie on the spot and said that my parents had a small argument (I'm a sensitive kid and will cry at the barest hint of conflict between my parents so it checked out) and i was crying because of it and . Out of that ENTIRE STORY the one thing my mom zeroed in on was the fact that i told a lie that "painted my parents in a bad light"

Just. Like. Yeah. It did. But I wasn't even thinking about that at the moment?? Like it didn't even cross my mind??? The only thing i was thinking about was that i was scared and in danger and i probably would have said anything to get OUT of that danger (as fake or ill-perceived it might have been). But no, even later on after i had explained that in basically those exact words she still went back around to say "oh if it was bad enough that you told a lie about your parents to get out of it then she REALLY fucked you up"

Which??? By the way??? Is a whole other reason why i try not to talk to my mom about this shit??? Because every time i open up about it and want to have a conversation in a more logical/organized/"well here's the situation and here's what we can do about it" kind of way she always turns it around and says stuff like "damn [REDACTED] really fucked you up didn't she" and "I didn't know it was that bad"/"I didn't know it effected you that bad, you should have said something!" which. Makes me Feel Bad™, for some reason way more than my dad excitedly talking about reptile and monkey brains and how stuff that happened to us in the past is engrained into our brain and still effects us now, like instinct

She also always turns all of my stuff talking about emotions into "oh you're just a teenager" "you're pms'ing" "you'll grow out of it later"

Like one time i told her that her mind was always in the past or the future, always worrying about the past or the future, never in the present, in response to her worrying a bunch about something and how i had my mind in the present more often and her response was something along the lines of "well you're like that because you're young and a teenager, you CAN stay thinking in the present because you dont have all that stuff to worry about like an adult does, I'm an adult and i work a bunch so i constantly have stuff to worry about" and like. Yeah theres some solidity to that. But also i literally talked about that exact thing with my dad and HE said her brain was always in the past/future and never the present so I'm pretty sure its not just a teen vs adult thing

And then towards the end of this whole thing when i had finally managed to tell her "hey I'm uncomfortable in this conversation can i please leave and go to bed" and even further explained that it was because i went into this wanting to have a more casual/logic-based talk rather than an emotional discussion and . she's kind of of the mind that "why did you bring it up if you didn't want to have a deep emotional discussion about it" and I'm just HHHNNNNGGGG but also i actually DIDNT mention it, first i was mentioning how id been having sensory overload lately and how certain sounds of words hurt and then she said i should have a doctor check that out and then i said "I've been reading up on anxiety and sensory overload is a part of that so i figured that's just what it was" (bcs my dad gets sensory overload a lot too) which then ensued a ten-minute conversation about how i probably dont have clinical anxiety because mine isnt as bad as/like all the many, many people my mom has known who DO have it (throughout which i kept trying to tell her "just social anxiety exists too tho" to which she would respond "yea but u dont have these symptoms of general anxiety so i dont think u have it" and while i hope and think i dont i was just like HHHHHHH because i mean social anxiety and by social anxiety I DO NOT MEAN GENERAL ANXIETY YOU CAN HAVE SOCIAL ANXIETY WITHOUT HAVING GENERAL at least i think idk i might be wrong) which i ended by saying "i probably dont have clinical anxiety but i do believe my brain has been wired to react to certain situations based on how i had to react to those situations for six years" which then lead to me talking more about my bully and my mom pretty much siphoning as much emotional vulnerability and opening up out of me as she could

And then at the end i told her "can i please leave i kind of feel like crying and i dont want to do it in front of a person at the moment" (because I haven't cried in a few months and i feel like I'm in need of a good cry tbh which in itself is something she doesnt really understand) which lead her to go "why do you feel like crying now I'm worried for you" and HHHHHHEBDJBEHNDEJHBDNEHDBEH yeah--

There's probably more i could say but I'm not going to, because its almost 1 am and while i had actually been about to sleep early at like ten she ended up roping me into an hour or two long talk about emotions, which is. Fun. And i have to get up in six hours so I'm going to go to bed. Sorry if this was a mess which I'm sure it is, i really just needed to get this out there lol

Also when i went to my dad after this to say goodnight (i actually like talking to my dad abt this stuff a lot since his brain and mine are just really similar) he gave me this lil smile and just said "deep breaths" and that made me feel better

[nie7027]

Super5 headcanons pt 2

Edit:    Part 1    Part 2     Part 3    Part 4   Part 5

Minegishi can only stare

"Where the fuck have you been?"

"What do you care?"

"Why are you here?"

"I was bored"

Shimazaki could be here to kill him for betraying him but Minegishi is too tired for this and there are dishes to wash.

In the time it takes him to do the dishes and calm down his plants, shimazaki falls asleep so he goes to the living to room to get a better look at the man

Shimazaki looks almost the same except maybe a bit thinner and with possible hollower eyes. The crooked nose is definitely new. A crooked nose?? Did he broke his nose at some point?? He is even wearing the same clothes as last time. His precious jacket ripped at the edges. Scorching marks and bullet holes here and there.

With a long sigh he takes out his phone, turns off the volume and opens the super3 chat(the too spicy for Seris innocent eyes). The messages start to come in rapidly

Minegishi: Shimazaki is back

Hatori: what

Hatori: what do you mean Shimazaki is back???

Shibata: how did he find us? Did he try to fight you?

Minegishi: i mean he is asleep on my couch. No, he just ate all of my cereal.

Shibata: what the fuck?

Hatori: what the fuck?

Minegishi what the fuck indeed

Shibata: did he say what he wants? Do you know why is he here?

Minegishi: He didnt talk and I dont know

Hatori: what do we do?

Minegishi:

Minegishi: i dont know.

Minesishi: i cant make any calls or else he could wake up and seri isnt logged in so can someone call him and tell him whats going so they can take the necessary precautions

Shibata: im on it

Shibata: hatori is freaking out in his room anyway. I think he is begginin to build a security system.

Minegishi: ...

Shibata: yeah yeah ill go calm him after i talk with Seri.

Minegishi stares at his phones and then at the man on his couch, he cant blame them. Shimazaki is a really dangerous person and they dont know what he is doing here. Minegishi just wanted to do the dishes, water his plants and go to sleep.

The super5 will never know but Shimazaki wasnt lying per se. He WAS bored.

After he ran away from the fight against seasoning city espers he hid here and there taking his sweet time at recovering and once he did(his nose still felt strange but he ignored it) he started to look at what to do.

He joined many criminal organizations, afterall a teletransporter was very valued in the underworld. But not matter how petty or big the crime was, he got bored. So he ended leaving all of them. he even left some in the middle of a important job, not caring whether his employers got caught or not( it was their fault for being stupid and not having a backup plan anyway)

After some months of this he realized he was bored of normal criminals. He was bored of normal persons with narrowed mindsets who conformed with just comitting stupid crimes. HE HAD BEEN PART OF A PLAN TO TAKE THE WORLD and now he was trafficking some drug?? Lame.

Most of all he missed the thrilling sensation of being surrounded with persons that could actually put a fight against him. So he searched for something alike to claw, an organization of espers.

His search turned out fruitless and he decided then he should return to where all started. Claw. It was time to pay a visit to his expartners.

It took him just a week to locate them. It would have took him just a day but he was finally having some fun and god he was gonna drag it all he could.

So here he was in a tiny empty apartment, the crazy amount of plants with a certain aura being the only indication that it belonged to Minegishi...WHERE THE HELL WAS HE? Oh well. He had been waiting for a year. He could wait a little more. In any case in his hurry to get here he forgot to eat and he could hear a fridge running.

Shimazaki, still on the sofa, wakes up the next day at the sound of a blender. He is being held in place, bounded by lots and lots of thick green vines and sturdy roots from which he easily frees himself. The moment he does so the noise at the kitchen stops and an annoyed minegishi steps out. Shimazaki can feel him tensing, preparing for an attack and that makes him smirk .

Until an alarm clock goes off that makes Minegishi mutter a curse

"If you are gonna do something do it now. I have better things to do and i have to go now"

"Better things to do?? What can possibly be better than this??"

"I have work so if you are gonna just stand there and smirk be my guest"

"Work?"

"Yeah, work. you know? That thing you do for a living and that contributes to society? Fuck it.You probably dont. Anyway i gotta go" Turning his back on shimazaki is probably the worst idea but he couldnt sleep at all, he is late and he hasnt had breakfast so if shimazaki wants to kill him he will gladly accept it.

He miraculously manages to exit his apartment and make it to his work. He only hopes theres an apartment to come back later.

Shimazaki can only stare increduously to where minegishis used to stand. 'Work'? 'Contribute to society'? THE FUCK WAS HE BABBLING ABOUT this was completely unexpected and he doesnt know what to do until he notices theres a smell coming from the kitchen where Minegishi left his untouched breakfast. Well he supposes he can muse how to proceed over breakfast.

Hatori isnt allowed to use his phone at work but he is too anxious to care and he has powers to do it without anybody noticing

Spicy3 chat

Hatori: how did it went?

Minegishi: ...well...i guess?? I am alive and my flat was still in one piece last time i saw it

Hatori: he didnt try anything?

Minegishi: he woke up when it was time for me to go...so i just kinda left

Shibata: you just left? He didnt try to stop you???

Minegishi: no

Minegishi:but i think...

Hatori: WHAT

Shibata:what

Minegishi: i think he is...tired.

Minegishi: I bound him while he was sleeping and he never woke up nlr stirred. He didnt notice.

Hatori: weird

Minegishi: i know. Worst of all i couldnt eat and i have 2 hours more left until my break.

Shibata: i can pass on my way to gym and sneak you something

Minegishi: thanks

Hatori: if you want you can hang in our apartment for the time being. We still need to know what he wants

Shibata: yeah, and if he shows up we can fight him together💪

Minegishi: if Seri asks, everything is under control

It takes a week for Shimazaki to finally show up. Meanwhile Minegishi has to use Hatoris and Shibatas washing machine to wash his work uniform daily(it can get very dirty when you work in a flower shop) because his other sets of uniform are back at his place trapped with Shimazaki. So is his money and he has to lend some from Hatoris and shibatas and ask his boss for an advencement in his payment. He hates Shimazaki more now.

They cant do anything but stare blankly when he suddenly shows up in the middle of the living room where they were eating pizza holding an empty box of cereal and says "Theres no more food back there and i want more of these but i cant see how they are called" while pointing at the box.

Sometimes its very easy to forget he is actually blind. Hatori weakly says the name of the branch of cereal he is holding and Shimazaki dissapears again before anybody can say anything.

"Did everybody saw what i just saw right??what the fuck? What the fuck?" shibata exclaims

"...my food"minegishi laments

Its not until an hour of wondering what was that and wracking their brain for an asnwer after that shimazaki returns, a brand new box of the cereal in his hands. He picks up a slice of the forgotten pizza and sits besides Shitaba.

"You didnt pay for that did you?" asks Shitaba

Shimazaki just turns around and stares st him with his hauntingly empty eyes "you too?"

"PAY? WORK? CONTRIBUTE TO SOCIETY? THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH ALL OF YOU"

"Weve changed"

"Yeah we have jobs and stuff, we help peopl"

"YOU HAVE SUPERPOWERS! WHY ARE YOU EVEN WORKING?"

"TO NOT PARASITE ON OTHERS HARD WORK LIKE SOME PEOPLE IN HERE" finally explodes Minegishi

The man frowns and rapidly done with the conversation teleports away.

Minegishi finally returns to his place, his web of plants telling him Shimazaki isnt there anymore. Re stashing his fridge and cabinet is a pain in the ass.

Shimazakis plan had been to either find his expartners and form something alike to Claw with them or just antagonize them until he gets the fight he so much craves. None of that has happened because all of them had turned to a bunch of weakling pussies and he cant even find Serizawa.

He could still try to fight them but he bitterly realizes he wont get any satisfaction of beating them if they keep acting like that, restraining themselves and trying to be civil as if they werent the same persons that destroyed this very city a year ago. It would be like punching flowers!

The point was to get rid of his boredness and now he is just angry!

He needs them to drop the act.

Thats when a plan starts to form in his head and he smirks. He is going to show them what they are missing on.

Thats how he finds himself back in minegishis apartment.

"Im just saying you could probably grow tons of weed, good quality of course. And i take care of the transport i know a bunch of people-"

"Weed? Are you serious? Is this why you came back? To start a drug trafficking bussines?"

"Im just saying with my teletransporting abilities and yourplant thing we could save lots of money in transport and become richer than-"

"No"

"AREN YOU TIRED OF THIS? OF SHITTY CUSTOMERS GETTING YOU IN TROUBLE JUST BECAUSE THEY DONT KNOW RAINBOW ROSES DONT NATURALLY EXIST?"

"WHERE YOU SPYING ME AT WORK?"

"MAYBE SO"

"DONT DO IT AND STOP EATING ALL MY FOOD"

He then tries with shibata, approaching him during one of his morning running routines. Teletransporting every 2 meters at his side while he keeps running clearly ignoring him

"With your force, not that i need it, we could terrorize all the bussines of a whole prefecture and force them to pay for protection. We win, they win"

"Not interested"

"Why not?! It would be so easy"

"I dont want to"

"Could you stop running? This is important"

"No thanks"

"You arent even listening!"

"Good"

He finally tries with Hatori thinking he would be the easiest of them

"You hack the system and we force all those politicians to pay us to not release all their dirty secrets"

"I am busy"

"No you are not. You are playing mario kart. I can hear Yoshi"

"Ive changed"

"Have you? Really???" at this point Shimazaki raises an eyebrow, he is so done and he wont keeo with this bullshit "because everywhere i have been, and i have been everywhere, the interpol, cia, you name it HAS BEEN AFTER ME whereas you three can waltz into a store like nobodys bussiness. WE COMMITED THE SAME CRIME. WE DESTROYED THIS CITY so how come im the only one being persecuted? Huh? You think I DONT KNOW WHAT YOU DID"

Hatori pauses the game and glares at him. Good, he is finally getting a reaction.

" i did what had to be done and i wont let YOU of all people tell me-"

"Me? Of all people? You believe yourself so grand and high when you are nothing but THE SAME AS ME" immediately shimazaki feels hatoris aura flare. what must have been his console shifting and changing into something new. Whatever it is, he is sure he can block it.

"Really? You are gonna fight me? I want to see you-" a horrible sound like nothing he had ever heard before pierces his ears making him howl in pain and he teleports away.

After that accident shimazaki never mentions Hatoris dirty secret again but that doesnt stop him from keep trying to get them to commit felonies again.

He thinks he once "saw" Serizawa on the street but his aura was quickly eaten by the aura of the person by his side. He didnt stayed to find out and quickly teleported away.

And this goes like this for 3 months, his proposals becoming more and more desesperate until one day he just... gives up.

Shimazaki should have left or killed them months ago but for some reason he prefers to stay here. He wont admit it but hes having more fun living on their couches annoying them than what he would have had they accepted his proposals.

He takes special delight in annoying them when they had hard days. (Minegishi comes home covered in something stinky and almost strangles shimazaki with his own hands after he comments this wouldnt have happened if he had accepted to traffick weed in a yacht with him)

...besides he has noticed that now in both apartments there is always a box of his favourite cereal (hatori sweared it was the cereal what placated Shimazaki given how docile he was whenever he was seen eating it, shibata and minegishi just liked it)

The super3 cant believe it themselves but they have now gotten used to the constant presence of Shimazaki in their lives (which isnt surprising given they spent at least 3 years together).

Well constant is a way to put it because the man still has the habit of dissapearing 3-5 days every once in a while and reappearing like nothing happened

But they know this cant keep going like this and thats how minegishi finds himself texting the super3 chat one day he comes to an empty apartment

Minegishi: is shimazaki there?

Hatori: yeah, hes playing smash with shitaba

Minegishi: playing smash??

Hatori: its seems he learned the patron of my movements by observing me and now hes kicking Shitabas ass as princess peach

Minegishi: ?

Hatori: we told him he was playing bowser

Minegishi: whatever, tell him to bring his ass back. I need to go grocery shopping and i need his help

"Why would i help you grocery shopping?" says shimazaki suddenly to his right

At the same his phone sounds 2 times

Shibata: hatori said something to him and he just teleported

Shibata: is safe to assume he is with you?

Minegishi: yea, im taking charge from here

"Im teaching you to do grocery shopping"

"I dont need you to teach me shit"

" yes, you do if you want to keep eating that cereal you like and that you finished this morning"

Shimazaki raises his eyebrow, teleports and after 5 min returns with 5 boxes of the damn cereal in his arms

"There. Its done"

"DID YOU JUST ROBBED THEM? YOU CANT KEEP DOING THIS"

"WHY NOT? ITS EASIER"

"THATS NOT THE POINT"Minegishi stops, breathes amd tries again "Shimazaki you cant keep doing this and i dont mean just the whole robbing, i mean i dotn know what you do when you dissapear for days but when you are here you just eat our food, wait for us to come home from work and then annoy us?"

"So? I can do whatever i want"

"Do you realize how pathethic it sounds?Is this really all you want to do? Do you even know what you want to do?"

Shimazaki doesnt wanna hear anymore of that and teleports

He ends teleporting to a random alley where he passes the night

The next days his mood isnt any better and he spends them sleeping, terrorizing random deliquents he finds in his way and kicking bags of trash until one day of the "bags" lets out a yelp.

Its shibata who finds him some days later during one of his running routines when he follows the sound of a hurt dog

Expecting to see a bunch of nasty kids terrorizing a poor animal he steps up to confront them only to find his missing "friend" glaring at poor dog and screaming "STOP COMPLAINING ITS YOUR FAULT FOR NOT MOVING I DIDNT EVEN KICK YOU THAT HARD"

He texts a quickl "Found him" to the group chat and marches up to him

"You shouldnt be kicking random things in the first place"

"Get lost"

" are you sure you didnt kick him hard? He is limping and we both know your kicks arent exactly soft"

"If i had wanted, a limp would be the least of its problems" still he makes a face as if he isnt sure

With a sigh Shibata carefully picks up the dog and motions to shimazaki "theres a vet nearby. You kicked him so you own him that at least. Dont worry ill pay" he doesnt wait for Shimazakis response and walks, relief overflowing him once he hears footsteps behind him

The consult is quick and the vet gleefully hands shimazaki "his" dog while she explains to shibata the treatment they should follow the next three months

Shimazaki...had never in his life pet a dog, much less carried one. His fur feels dirty and is tangled everywhere but the vet said it just needs a bath. It is warm and he can feel and hear his steady breaths. His mental eye allows him to perceive the flowing of his blood, the currents in his brain, the beating of his heart...all what makes a living being held in his arms. Things he has always perceived but never payed attention. The fact that the dog starts to lick his hands doesnt go unnoticed and he feels strangely calm. His grip tightening.

They are about to exit the clinic, shibata saying his last thanks when a woman and a girl enter. That very moment the dog starts to squirm in his embrace. And he doesnt know what to do

"Hey are you alright? I can hold it if you want" asks shibata noticing his turmoil

" yeah, its just the stupid dog WHO HAS FORGOTTEN HE CANT WALK"

The girls who shibata notices has red puffy narrows her eyes and yells "DONT CALL HIM STUPID YOU ARE THE STUPID" before turning to look at shimazaki, whatever she was going to say next is forgotten as she stares with wide eyes.

Both the moms and shimazakis replies are drowned by the girl scream of "UESAMA! MOM ITS HIM ITS MY DOG"

For some reason shimazaki feels his blood run cold and lifts up the dog even more when the girl comes clashing at his legs desesperately trying to grab her dog

Shibata who noticed shimazakis earlier expression cant believe what hes seeing (please god, please tell me he isnt gonna fight a girl over a dog) when the vet decides to come out to see what is happening

"Im sorry, my little girl believes those boys over there have Uesama"

"ITS HIM"

"Uesama?..." the vet stares some seconds in confusion before her eyes grow wider "Oh how didnt i notice it before! Im sorry sirs but it seems you have found this little girls dogs" the vets looks expectantly at shimazaki

Shimazaki who has been holding a very squirming dog and listening to the screams of a girls is starting to get very annoyed. The tempation to teleport away with the dog too big to ignore. Hes about to do it when he hears the dog crying again.

With a huff he hands it to the very thankful mother and exits the clinic as quickly as he can.

Shibata follows suit "I saw your face before they arrived. I can tell what you did"

"Shut up"

The walk home is strangely quiet but at least he is back.

The joke on the spicy chat is that the super 3 are dumb and believe they are protecting oh so pure Seri when in reality they just share dumb penis jokes while Seri is actually riding Reigens dick.

And yes as his last crime Hatori threatened with realeasing all the state secrets of all the goverments and provoking a worldwide crisis if they didnt allow them to try to live normal lives

I just noticed this is more of a fanfic than a list of headcanons now but meh. What i wanted to actually be part 2 is gonna be part 3? 4? I didnt even get to write the prank the super5 were gonna pull on shimazaki but now you have something to look up next time.

Im not that happy with how the second half turned out but maybe im just tired.

[fightevilandthengetblownup]

The Chats That Only Happened Cause /Someone/ Was Bored And Wanted To Do Chats

Set all after the last chat from https://fightevilandthengetblownup.tumblr.com/post/187458138693

Also all set post ‘mindwipe’ and post-Whispering being removed.

#1 - Anna decides she wants to Learn How To Hunt Again... Yeaaah... Also yeah, seemingly Anna just took it upon herself to /always/ show up once she knew where to find Jo >_>

<Anna> *Anna walks over to Jo’s house, there’s snow on the ground and she’s bundled up, walking as fast as she can because the wind coming of the lake is biting. She’s breathing hard by the time she gets to that end of town her, leg with the brace aches in the cold more than the other and she realizes just how out of shape she is as she stands on the door step, knocking loudly.*

<Jo> *Jo’d been moving in and out of the house frequently, not quite sure what to do or how to take the strange actions of the returned monster, so continuing to work on her own things in a day. Its while she’s inside warming up from the cold again that she hears the knocking, going to check the door and smiling at Anna when she sees her* “Hey, what are you doin’ here? I… come inside. Through to the kitchen?”

<Anna> *Anna smiles stepping inside glad that it’s warm and she wipes her feet at the front door before moving in the direction of the kitchen.* “Hello. I was wondering if you are busy right now?” *Anna holds up a case folder that she had tucked under her arm*

<Jo> *Jo looks between the file and Anna curiously as she shuts the door behind them, double checking that she couldn’t see Grey in the lounge or kitchen before shutting the door to the hall behind them as well* “I’m free if you’ve got something for me. Coffee?”

<Anna> *Anna nods at the offer of coffee.* “Well it’s more for you.” *She pauses as she moves to sit at the kitchen table, opening the file up and spreading the papers out.* “And me to work.”

<Jo> *Jo almost drops a coffee cup as Anna adds that she was looking to be part of it too. Turning the pot on and letting a new round start, she leans back against the counter raising an eyebrow at the redhead* “You want to work a case? Together?” *Letting out a laugh, Jo rubs the back of her neck before nodding* “Okay, hit me, what is it?”

<Anna> *Anna suddenly feels like she’s back presenting papers in college and she wonders if that’s an actual memory or a fake one but she clears her throat and she pushes the clippings of a fatal wreck a state over to Jo.*  "Early this summer, some kids went off a back roads, down a fairly steep hill. One was killed the others lived, ever since then around the same time of the month people have started to have wrecks on the same road and the people say that it’s a teenage boy that runs them off the road.“

<Jo> *The choice of case makes Jo raise an eyebrow, smiling to herself when she can’t help but think Anna’s picked something up much the same way she picked her own first case - though not sure how much the other remembered of her own crash* "So, you think its a haunting? I’ve heard cases like that before, sounds likely. …so what’d you want to do about it?”

<Anna> “Well here is where this one gets muddy. The boy was cremated after a close casket funeral, he was pretty torn up. And the car was towed off to a scrap yard. So either something is still on that hill or in the car.” *Anna shows Jo the obit from the paper and then the police report with the tow company listed.*

<Jo> “Definitely would be. Unless Mommy’s keeping baby hair and teeth.” *Jo nods her head, looking over the pages as she pours out their coffees and moves over to the table with the other, sliding a mug over* “Shouldn’t be too hard - find the car and torch it, sow some salt and start a controlled little fire. Should work to get it done.”

<Anna> “It’s snowing, not sure how well burning the hill is going to work and what if the car has already been scrapped out?” *Anna takes her coffee thanking Jo and pouring a healthy amount of sugar and creamer into it.*

<Jo> “Shovelling snow is a fair bit easier than digging a grave, lemme tell you that - though you’ve got a point.” *Jo sighs, scrubbing a hand over her face* “Then you figure out where the scrap bits went and cleanse them too. Talk to Mommy about if she has any of little Johnny’s things that he was really attached to..”

<Anna> “So when are we going to leave then?” *Anna nods and smiles at Jo, pleased that it seems she was right that it sounds like this wreck spawned a ghost and Jo had agreed with most of what she thought.*

<Jo> “Uh.. when did you want to? There haven’t been any deaths yet, but I’d put money on that just being from luck.” *Jo smiles back slightly as she takes a mouthful of her drink, mentally tallying up how much salt, kerosene and salt rounds she had on her already. She’d figure she had enough on hand if need be*

<Anna> “It’s not like I have anything pressing to do, so when you’re ready.  The next wreck should happen sometime tomorrow also.” *Anna is feeling more confident as she drinks the rest of her coffee, glad for the warm liquid.*

<Jo> “I’d just need to let Grey know, write a note or somethin’, then we can if you want.” *Shrugging a shoulder, Jo continues to look over the pages as though she might have missed something before jumping up to grab her own journal out of her bag near the back door to confer with it*

<Anna> “You and Grey are back together?” *She’s surprised and she smiles as leans back looking at Jo, as if expecting to get all the dirt.* “I guess we have a subject to talk about in the drive up.”

<Jo> “I… yeah, we’ll talk about it in the car.” *Jo flushes slightly, standing up as she spins her journal and one of her entries from an unusual ghost case around for Anna to look over before heading over to the fridge and the small note pad there* “Just need to grab the guns and some rounds from upstairs and we can go if you want to now. Drive isn’t very far, is it?”

<Anna> “Next state over, about six hours by the looks of the maps.” *Taking the journal she looks at the entry Jo hands her and she then starts flipping through the rest of it.* “Hopefully won’t take make than a day, it seems fairly simple.”

<Jo> “Yeah it shouldn’t be too long, home in the early hours of tomorrow at the latest.” *Jo tips her head back, finishing off the rest of her drink even as it burns, as she scribbles out a note saying where she’s gone and when she expects to be back before slapping it on the front of the fridge* “If you want to pack that stuff up and head outside, I’ll run up and get things, meet you out there, limpy?” *Jo teases slightly, washing out her mug*

<Anna> *Anna gives her a look as she calls her a name.* “Sure, wouldn’t want to strain the blond brain to make sure all the research is packed.” *She says as she folds up the journal and then starts to gathering up the papers, putting them all back in neat order into the folder.*

<Jo> *Letting out a laugh, Jo grabs a few cool soda cans out of the fridge and drops them into a small bag before opening the hall door and heading upstairs to get the few other items needed, actually thinking this could be a fun case - if only to see how the new Anna deals with things*

<Anna> *Standing up she goes the hall looking around, finding an empty pack and she puts the folder and the journal in it. She didn’t think there wouldn’t be any need for much other than salt and fire she zips it up and heads outside to wait at the car.*

<Jo> *It takes a few minutes for Jo to grab her shotgun and a spare for Anna, as well as the rounds she still had made up. Pausing, she grabs two knives as well fitted with iron blades before taking her coat off the back of her bedroom door and heading outside, unlocking the car and trunk to put the things away, settling into the drivers seat* “Ready for your second first hunt, Anna?”

<Anna> “If I wasn’t I wouldn’t have decided to do this again.” *Anna gets in the car and stretches out as much as she can, she’s more ready to just get out of the city for a while and this is a good distraction from everything.* “You aren’t trying to talk me out of this, why?”

<Jo> *Jo lets out a laugh at Anna asking why she isn’t trying to stop her as she turns out towards the right roads out of town, slowly creeping up the speed as they get out further* “Why would I? If you’re sure, its your choice and I guess it’s better you’re asking for help or for me to come along with you than go by yourself. That, and enough people have tried to talk me out of it in my life I don't want to do the same to you.”

<Anna> “Wow, that’s really logical and makes a lot of sense. I thought I would hear some thing about my past or whatever.” *Smiling she relaxes and reaches for the car radio.* “I used to be good at this so I hear, so why not.”

<Jo> “Nah, you’re just talking to someone who got repeatedly asked if I was sure this is what I wanted - theres other things out there for you Jo, you could do something different, go back to school, you’re better than this, and getting yourself killed on some dusty back road, that’s where you belong..” *Jo mimicks several voices, still smiling as Anna fiddles with the radio and they get past the outskirts of town* “You were good, Anna, and not just cause of what you were. Much more logical and calm headed than I was.”

<Anna> *Anna laughs listening to Jo.* “You are going to have so much fun when you have your own kids and get that paid back to you.” *Watching the scenery go by she’s not really caring about how good she was before because she wasn’t good enough to avoid being some demons toy.*

<Jo> “Oh god, please don’t talk about kids. I think Mom’d have kittens if she knew she was getting grandbabies.” *Shaking her head, Jo frowns slightly at Anna’s choice of music but not really caring as she finally gets to build up some speed*

<Anna> *Finding a clasical station she leaves it there and she smirks at Jo* “I don’t know, maybe it’s because the idea of having a bunch of small copies of you running around might be making her have kittens.”

<Jo> “Ha ha. I didn’t run her /that/ raggard.” *Letting out a sigh, the blonde shoots the other a look before laughing* “She can keep her kittens to herself though.”

<Anna> *Anna chuckles as she watches Jo squirm.* “Why don’t you and Grey hunt together? I would think that him being a monster would be an advantage in killing other monsters.”

<Jo> “He’s… weird. About how he, uh, hunts.” *Jo flushes slightly, having considered the idea a few times - especially since the months when the shadow was reluctant to go out himself - but knew it made the other much more uncomfortable than her* “He doesn’t like me watching when he feeds, even if he does have the advantage of being able to find them easier than me.”

<Anna> “He eats them? I thought they ate people? So he doesn’t eat you?” *Anna thought they were all the same and it’s interesting to hear that they can eat other creatures.*

<Jo> “The monster equivalent of tofu, I’m guessing.” *Jo smiles slightly to herself, almost amused by Anna’s reaction before shrugging a shoulder* “Grey doesn’t want to be a monster, doesn’t want to act like one. He..doesn’t want to hurt people; so he doesn’t feed on human energy as a choice. All the others I’ve met do, though if they want a body, then they feed on demons occasionally too. And, uh, he..” *Flushing slightly, Jo presses harder on the gas before continuing to speak, almost certain she was getting as red as Anna’s hair* “He doesn’t feed off of me usually. There’s… I’ve made him a few times, and he has some control issues when there’s a lot of emotions, so there's been some slips.”

<Anna> *Feeling the car getting faster and watching Jo blush she realizes how it sounds and she blushes some too clearing her throat.* “So, not all shadows can take a human? Grey and Gray fed from a demon? What do angels have to do to take a person?”

<Jo> *Jo nods, letting out a breath before glancing out the side of her eyes at the other* “If you’re worried about you, that’s your body - one hundred per cent Anna. As for other angels.. they have to get a person to say yes to letting them. Completely by their own free choice.”

<Anna> “I’ve already had that freak out, thanks. Have you ever seen what Gray or Grey look like outside of their body?” *She snorts, conversations now are so strange sounding if she ever stops to think about them.*

<Jo> “Haven’t actually seen Gray that way, but I was on speaking terms with Grey before the split and before he ever took on a human form. And I’ve seen it a few times since then.” *Jo smiles slightly, thinking back the the fuzzy memories she has of that time, though there were times she wasn’t sure if something was a dream or real given how blurry her time in Heaven even was*

<Anna> “Before the split?” *Anna tilts her head looking at Jo curiously. She knew they shared a name but she thought hearing them spoke of like they are twins or brother that maybe they came from the same litter or hatching or however they are born.*

<Jo> “Long story short, they were originally part of one another, a deal went haywire and Grey had a part of..well they call it a Vice, but it’s kind of like angel’s have their Grace and humans have their souls.. well part of that was broken and split off and that sort of made Gray. Out of all the bits of himself that was being denied by the changes in lifestyle Grey had.” *Jo’s a little fuzzy on how it all went down herself, but she knows how much of a struggle that was to begin with for Grey, and can recall just how dreadful both were before and after the split occured* “It’s confusing to think about, honestly, but their more like good and evil twins but..less good and evil divide.”

<Anna> *Leaning back she puts a hand over her eyes and she rubs them, feeling a headache starting.* “I’m going to learn to stop asking questions one day, really I am. So they are the same person, different aspects of personality, then why does both of them like you and only one likes me? Shouldn’t..you know what, never mind. I can live with knowing this and just dealing with it.”

<Jo> “Personality clashes, Anna. That’s all. I’d say its cause Gray doesn’t hold grudges, least not when he thinks he’s earnt what he’s got.” *Jo laughs loudly at Anna saying she’d learn to stop some day from asking questions, and figures that thats the easiest, least complicated answer she could give her.* “I’d just quit while you’re ahead on the question front, Anna.”

<Anna> “I’m going to eventually run out of things that I don’t know right?” *Hitting her head on the seat rest she realizes that she just asked another question. “Have I been shot yet? Because, shoot me, we can add that to the list of things that’s happened.”

<Jo> *Jo can’t stop giggling as Anna keeps asking questions, nodding her head* “I don’t think you got shot, that’s more my department and its not often we’re on the other end of something which handles a weapon like a gun.”

<Anna> *Sighing she closes her eyes* “Wake me when we get there? I think sleeping is safer than talking right now.” *Anna slouches down in the seat further once she’s scooted it back as far as it will go so she can spread her legs out.*

<Jo> *Jo bites back a joke about Anna’s comment from earlier to speak in the car, figuring letting the other sleep a while longer was better over all before turning the music down a little. The trip is a little shorter than Anna had estimated, if only because of Jo’s speeding through some more well known areas from her own travels and as they turn off the free-way into the back road towards the township  Jo leans over to hit the other awake* “Hey, wake up sleeping beauty, you’ve got a ghost to hunt.”

<Anna> *Waking up startled she looks around and then at the clock in the car, rubbing her eyes* “You drive too fast, about as smooth as Dean.” *She says barely awake as she sits up and stretches, running a hand through her hair to get the tangles out.*

<Jo> *Chuckling, the blonde shrugs her shoulder with a grin on her face* “Remember how bumpy his rides are, then? I’ve got faith in my love that she’ll stay on the road - got a mechanic in town who helps me keep her in tip-top shape.” *Watching Anna try to wake up, Jo slows down as they get near the edges of town* “Be glad you got to sleep through most of it then.”

<Anna> *Looking at Jo likes she’s talking about a conversation she’s not been a part of she just shakes her head and she looks around and then reaches for the file folder.* “The wreck happened on the other side of town by article of the  wreck the news reported on, it was a popular local cut through between towns.”

<Jo> *Jo blinks blankly back at Anna’s confusion, before taking a right when she sees the road sign for the junk yard* “Figure we go to the junk yard first then? Just to be sure?” *She’s fairly certain, given that the haunting is at the location, that the road is going to be the spot, but sometimes things aren’t that straight forward*

<Anna> *Anna nods and she gets the photo of the car out.* “It’s a blue Honda Accord, lil street racer. Are we going to ask to go look at cars like that because we need a part?”

<Jo> *Parking, Jo takes a quick glance at the photo before letting out a disgusted noise* “Yeah, that’s probably best, though if you can keep whoever runs the places attention if I gesture for you to..” *She’s actually thinking Anna might have been on to something about the car being taken apart for bits and figured finding details on where they might have gone might be impossible if that did happen*

<Anna> “Just keep them distracted? Okay I think I can do that, maybe.” *Anna climbs out, she’s stiff and she leans against the car stretching out for a moment, so she doesn’t move like an old woman.* “Are you going to go check the car?”

<Jo> “Yeah, shouldn’t be too hard to find. Bobby’s got a yard like this and something like that’d probably be in the newer vehicles..” *Locking the car and moving around to the trunk, she slips her lighter into her pocket and fills a small bag with some lighter fluid and salt* “See if you can’t find out if they sold any bits too.”

<Anna> “Alright.” *Walking into the office Anna smiles at the guy there behind the desk, asking him about cars that match the one they are looking for by making up a story about looking for a part to fix her boyfriends car that she might have wrecked and she wants to get it done before he gets into town and finds out since that car is his baby and she’s sure the car is in higher rank than her in her boy friend’s life, rambling and smiling and looking as dumb as she possibly can when describing the part she needs.“

<Jo> *Jo was glad most yards worked the same, newer stock to the front, older to the back and that it wasn’t too hard to recognise the make and model for the (in her view) dreadful car they were after. Looking around to see if there was anyone else looking around or working, she sighs happily when they aren’t before climbing up and into the car to look for any blood or parts left behind. The covers of the backseat where the boy had been were missing, and she’d assume they’d been too coated in blood to bleach out - probably been burnt which worked well enough in her book. There was a section of carpet and a small bit of the roof which looked bloody, and cutting them out, Jo pockets both pieces before triple checking for any more.*

<Anna> *Anna looks out over the yard nervously as the worker there is clearly not amused by her questions and her lack of knowledge but she keeps on asking questions and then distracting him when he starts to walk out to the car to check by describing something that’s totally not the original part that she asked for.*

<Jo> *So far no ghost, and moving behind an empty shell of a car a few feet from the Accord, Jo sets the pieces on the ground and douses them in fluid and salt before lighting them. When nothing seems to happen, she stomps out the flames with her boot before heading towards the small window of the office and waving for Anna to get out as she heads back towards her car*

<Anna> *Anna watches Jo get in the car and as the yard worker goes to get his coat because she finally shut up for two seconds she ducks out of the office, walking quickly back to Jo’s car, sliding in and shutting the door.* "Did you find anything?”

<Jo> “Some blood stains but no ghosts popped up to knock me out for setting them alight, so I’d hazard a guess that’s not the case. Wasn’t even the boy’s car so he probably doesn’t have that big a connection other than dying in it.” *Jo starts the engine and pulls away just as she notices the yard worker stepping outside to look for Anna. Turning towards the road of the crash, she shoots Anna a look* “Just how painful were you for him?”

<Anna> “Well let’s just say, if you ever need parts from this place, never send me to get them.” *Anna grins as she sticks her hands infront of the heating vents.* “So are we going to try and talk to the mother now or just go investigate the road?”

<Anna> “Well let’s just say, if you ever need parts from this place, never send me to get them.” *Anna grins as she sticks her hands infront of the heating vents.* “So are we going to try and talk to the mother now or just go investigate the road?"

<Jo> "Noted, Anna and cars don’t mix.” *Chuckling, Jo considers for a moment before turning the car towards the road* “I want to check out what this thing is. And maybe if we head out to the road the boy might show up and try to scare us off if we get near the crash site?”

<Anna> “And it’s safe because you know it’s a ghost and you aren’t going to drive off the road startled right?” *Anna tightens her seat belt and looks up to see if the car has an ‘ohshitbar’ to hold onto.* “What if we can’t find anything to burn, how do we get rid of it then?”

<Jo> “Well depends on how the other crashes say he shows up, if he messes with the wheels and controls.. that won’t be pretty. But yeah, I don’t scare easy.” *Jo slows her speed down as she approaches the area* “Or we can pull over a little before and go hunting. If we can’t find anything, then it might be a specific type of ghost, which..could be more annoying but they’re rare”

<Anna> “Alright, it would be safer than driving in and risking a wreck.” *Anna can’t help but find this fun, it’s different to the things she’s been doing at it’s keeping her mind active.* “It was about half way down the slope on the steepest part before the car came to a stop according the police report.”

<Jo> *Jo nods, driving in silence until she reaches the top of the hill and pulling off to the side of the road at Anna’s suggestion that it would be safer* “Well, lets see how we go heading down there to look for something.” *Getting out of the car and grabbing two bags with kereosene and salt, as well as the knives, shot guns and ammo as discretely as possible, Jo hands one of the bags over as she slips one of the knives in her belt loop before offering out a gun and knife to Anna* “Mind you, getting shot with these is going to hurt like a bitch, but it’s easier than a normal gunshot wound, okay?”

<Anna> *Anna takes the bag but then she looks at the gun and Jo.* “I don’t know how to use those, you really want me to walk around with a gun?” *She was looking at the snow covered leaves and just hoping that she wasn’t going to bust her ass in front of Jo.*

<Jo> “You slash with the knife if Mr. Blair Witch shows up, and the guns loaded..safety is off, so just point and trigger if he gets too close. I’ve got faith even if your mind doesn’t remember your hands will.” *Jo shrugs a shoulder, having gotten a salt round to the back a fair few years ago and not too worried about getting the same if it happens even if it did end up bruised and sore for a long while. Heading down the slope, Jo’s glad the road seems less populated - probably due to the number of crashes recently, towards where Anna suggested the crash had been, keeping her eyes out for the boy*

<Anna> *Looking at the gun she turns it on the side, trying to find where the saftey is on it, she’s not comfortable at all with it and the knife and she wonders if she can just point and let Jo shoot things as she follows behind Jo. She’s struggling to carry the bag, teh gun and hold to the trees because it’s hard to tell if she’s got solid footing with her bad leg.* “If he’s just running cars off the road do you think he’s going to come after us walking?”

<Jo> “Because, we’re coming to get rid of him and in my experience they don’t like tha- get down.” *Jo’d just crossed towards where she could see the recent skid marks of several car crashes when she notices a figure roughly ten feet back from Anna. Drawing her gun, Jo fires off a round and smiles when the boy seems to disappear* “Okay.. obviously something is here then. Did you want to look while I..?” *She waves her gun before firing another shot around the same place, cursing when the boy vanishes before hand and the round explodes against a tree*

<Anna> *Anna only ducks after the round explodes on the tree near her, her ears ringing as she looks around wildly not having seen anything.* “I..that was ..you don’t have to shoot at me!” *Scrambling to get back up she’s mostly sliding down the hill now on her ass towards the tree that was clearly scarred by the wreck, her jeans and hands soaking wet from the snow.* “Jo, near the road!” *Looking past Jo she can see the outline of a person.*

<Jo> *Jo lets out a laugh watching Anna, though the direction gets a quick response, lining up the boy in her sights as she keeps an eye on him. He’s young, that much is obvious, and seemingly not sure which of them to go after* “Anna, try looking for something, I’ll keep him off you.” *Firing another round, she’s glad to see it hits and scares him off only to end up flying backwards at an unseen push*

<Anna> *Anna watches Jo get shoved and she’s scrambling trying to get the saftey off, her hands are cold and she’s more than a little freaked but finally she gets it off and she raises the gun trying to shoot but nothing happens and she looks at it, realizing she has to cock it. When the ghost appears again she shoots in it’s general direction.* “Are you okay?”

<Jo> “Just look for something!” *Jo shouts back as she sits up with a groan, fingers going for her ammunition to refill her shot gun as the boy vanishes and reappears again towards the road* “I’ve got this.”

<Anna> *Anna gets to her feet, wincing as she rushes through the underbrush, looking around and then she spots a piece of red material. Scrambing to get it she’s shouting at Jo that she found it, a baseball cap with blood on it when she feels something shove her the moment she grabs it.*

<Jo> *She was looking around for where the boy’d vanished to when Anna shouts, spinning around to catch sight of her going down from the ghost on her back. Swearing, Jo aims another shot at the ghost’s back, firing quickly and mentally crossing her fingers that Anna wouldn’t get hit as she approaches* “C'mon Anna, hurry up and torch the fucker.”

<Anna> *The shot explodes close to her and she curls up covering her head, hearing Jo screaming at her and she fumbles for the pack, trying to get it open and she’s got the salt out, dumping it over the hat but as she’s reaching for the lighter fluid the pack is thrown away and she screams as she looks up at the bloody boy standing there, his face crushed in.*

<Jo> *Seeing Anna get pulled away, Jo slips and slides her way across to the hat Anna’d lost hold of before flicking her lighter and dumping it ontop of the frabric, hoping it’d catch alight without the lighter fluid - smiling as the tag at the back catches fire and the rest follows suit, turning to see if the ghost would burn up*

<Anna> *The ghost makes an awful sound as it goes up in flames and she turns looking at Jo with wide eyes, she’s sweating like she’s just ran a marathon in summer and fact Jo is smiling is bewildering.* “He’s gone?”

<Jo> “Dead gone.” *Jo grins widely as she moves over to help Anna up, bag back on her back and knife back in her pocket* “Not too hard for your first hunt, was it?”

<Anna> “It’s not as hard I guess as having to dig the grave up.” *Anna takes the hand up and she makes her way to her pack, she’s going to be so sore from this but she feels like she did something at least this time.* “Hardest thing now is getting back up this hill I guess.”

<Jo> “Nah, you stay here. I’ll go get the car and we’ll head home.” *Jo sets down her gun and bag with Anna before heading back up the hill, tossing the knife into the backseat when she gets there before driving slowly down the hill to where the other was standing, more than ready to head back home now that the dusk was falling and getting cooler again* “I’ll drop you home, okay?”

<Anna> *Throwing the stuff in the trunk she happily climbs in and she nods* “Sure, home sounds good. I’m sure you and Grey have a lot of making up to do and I think I have a date with a hot bath.” *Now that the adrenaline is wearing off she’s feeling exactly how cold she is and every little scratch and bruise. Closing her eyes she drifts off again on the way back.*

#2 - Another where Anna was bothering Jo about wanting to hunt. And at the end Anna yet again asks about Grey vs Gray... (Jo was always going to answer the same way as she does, but also embarrassed about answering correctly)

<Jo> *Jo’d startted to make three different lists of hunts, some for herself, the list on the fridge for Grey and a smaller list of hunts she thinks that Anna might possibly be interested and capable of coming along on. The struggles of her leg damage hadn’t escaped the blonde’s notice, but she figured that that wouldn’t stop her from going on any if she was actually interested. Heading to the other’s

<Jo> apartment, Jo knocks once sharply, waiting outside rather than heading straight in like she used to as she is glad to be out of the cold outdoors as she waits*

<Anna> *Anna is napping when she hears the knock, the trash can is full of tissues and she’s down to using a roll of toilet paper now as everyhing that’s been backed up has starting to come out with teh cold breaking up. Getting up she shivers not sure if the apartment is cold or if she still has chills, with the blanket wrapped up around her she makes her way to the door and opens it up.* “Hey Jo.”

<Jo> “Hey… you alright?” *Jo’s eyebrow shoots up when Anna answers the door wrapped up in blankets even as the warmth of the apartment basically hits her in the face. Moving inside and shutting the door behind her, the hunter smirks to herself seeing the piles of tissues* “I’m going to guess not too good?”

<Anna> *Blowing her nose she goes back to the bed and sits down on it and curls up on it.* “I’m fine, it’s better now, should be over it in a couple of days. How have you been?”

<Jo> “Mostly alright. Better than you at least.” *Jo smiles to herself, grabbing the back of one of the chairs at the kitchen table and dragging it across to the bed before flopping down in it. Resting her ankles on the edge of the bed, she smirks slightly at the other* “Well then, I should come back in a couple of days then. I have some things you might like.”

<Anna> “You have cupcakes?” *Anna grins and as she pulls the blankets up around ehr more and she looks at Jo expectingly.* “Or is this about the hunt? Going to tell me what I need to do better?”

<Jo> “Not on me I don’t. I’ll remember to bring some next time I’m over if Grey doesn’t steal them all..” *Laughing, Jo shakes her head and digs in the pocket of her winter coat before tossing a small notepad towards Anna* “I actually started keeping a list of hunts I thought you might be interested in joining me on. Mostly ghosts  at present..”

<Anna> *Anna comes out of the mound of blankets enough to pick up the notebook looking over it before looking at Jo with a stupid grin on her face.* “Really? So you’re willing to go with me again? Or take me hunting with you again?”

<Jo> “Yeah, I am. For the things I think you’d like or be up to, definitely.” *Jo smiles back at Anna, leaning back on her chair legs, stretching* “If you want to work with me, yeah.”

<Anna> *Anna nods and she looks over the notebook.* “I do, I had fun, in a weird, this could kill me sort of way. I did something though and it felt good to not just be the one on the sidelines or needing to be saved.”

<Jo> “I know exactly what you mean.” *She nods her head, finding her balance easily.* “Well, I’m happy to work with you, Anna.”

<Anna> “Was it like before? When we worked together?” *Anna watches Jo balance and she looks to see if Jo falls back she’s clear of busting her head on the table. She doesn’t say anything but there’s a vague memory from a nightmare she had a couple of nights ago about a rawhead.*

<Jo> “Sorta?” *Shrugging, Jo runs a hand through her hair as she tries to think about the differences between the past hunts and the most recent* “Never were that good with a gun, actually. So I figure we might need to work on that on and off hunts; but yeah it was near. We used to work well together when we weren’t fighting over who was doing what..”

<Anna> *Anna nods and she puts teh note book down and she blows her nose, throwing the tissue at the can.* “Can we find a hunt some place warm?” *She looks sheepish about the gun suggestion, not really liking this part of hunting, she’s just not comfortable with them and they’re loud.*

<Jo> *Rocking back with her heels, Jo watches Anna with a laugh as she blows her nose* “We could, yeah. I’ve got a few friends down south as is so I’ll see if they know anything. That, or we’ll try not to be out of houses instead.” *Snickering, she pushes back a little far as she imagines Anna trying to relearn shooting and lets out a shriek as she falls back*

<Anna> *Anna’s head jerks up as Jo shrieks and she watches the blond woman’s arms pinwheel as she tries to stop the backwards decent but it doesn’t help and Jo lands on her back.* “Graceful. Are you alright?” *She’s trying to not laugh but she’s failing.*

<Jo> *Jo blinks in silence for a few seconds before laughing loudly* “I’m good, I’m good.” *Pushing herself back up, she sets the chair back up again, leaning against it as she rubs her lower back* “Grace is your department, not mine.”

<Anna> “Then we both fail in it.” *Anna laughs, coughing as she does and she sniffs wiping her nose.* “At least you can can get Grey to kiss your booboos. Tell him the chair was possesed and tried to eat you.”

<Jo> “Yeah, I don’t know about that.” *Jo shakes her head, flushing slightly as she continues to rub at her back before standing up straight* “Did you need another toilet roll?”

<Anna> “I’m good, I think. Did you want me to research these hunts you have wrote down?” *Anna grins at Jo’s blushing, enjoying being on the otherside of it for once.* “You might want to get Grey to ice that down for you, a bruise there isn’t going to feel good later.”

<Jo> “If you could, that’d probably be good. I’ve only just been able to pick a pattern for some hauntings so I’m not sure who yet..” *Noticing the other’s grin, Jo ducks her head and shakes it again* “It’ll be alright, I wouldn’t want to bother him with it, Anna.”

<Anna> *Anna just nods and she puts the notepad on the table beside her, getting up to get her laptop so she can research while under her blanket mound.* “When do you want to go on the hunt Jo? Soon as I have the research done?”

<Jo> “Whenever you’re better or the researchs been done, yeah.” *Jo smiles slightly, sitting down gingerly*

<Anna> “Need a pillow?” *Anna teases as she watches Jo ease herself down in the chair. She was still sore from the hunt and it showed but at least it was from a hunt and not a falling chair.*

<Jo> *She waves off the offer, shaking her head* “Nah, I’m good.” *Rubbing the back of her neck, Jo squints at the look on Anna’s face, trying not to smile at the teasing*

<Anna> *Anna laughs at Jo’s look and she opens up her laptop booting it up.* “So, are you wanting something harder than last time? And possibly easier than the chair?”

<Jo> “I’d think something harder than the chair might be far out of my level..” *Jo jokes along, shaking her head* “Take your time though, like I say - we’ll go when you’re healthy again, nothing worse than hunting with a cold honestly. But yeah, most seem to be more active ghosts; figure we’ll work our way into some of the things which require more tangling..”

<Anna> “More active? Like haunted house?” *Anna has started files for each case on her laptop and she tosses Jo her notebook back after copying all of the information.* “Do they all like to do the whole grab and toss like the last one?”

<Jo> *Tucking the list back away, Jo shakes her head* “Yes and no on the haunted house. Most ghosts /do/ haunt houses; but that ghost was relatively new. Most ghosts have decades to learn all the tricks. And yeah, the tossing is a regular thing. Some have a lot worse habits though; some can even jump you.”

<Anna> *Anna looks up, confused look on her face.* “Jump you? Like demons or the monsters? Why would a ghost want to do that?”

<Jo> “Well… you know what ghosts /are/, right? Like, how some people end up as ghosts while others pass on and either go to Hell and become demons or go to Heaven, right?” *Jo leans forward, resting her arms across her knees as she looks back at the other*

<Anna> “People that don’t move on, I know that much Jo.” *Anna nods but she never thought about them doing more than just throwing you around or killing people.* “I know some have a goal or some are sort of stuck.”

<Jo> *Jo shakes her head, smiling slightly* “Most aren’t staying because they’re stuck or have a goal. They just don’t pass on, and then they become angry. Or they’re already angry and that’s why they don’t move on..” *Shifting slightly, she begins toying with the end of her hair as she watches Anna* “But some when they become mad, they want to do more than toss and shove and kill through normal ways. Sometimes they latch onto people like them, kindred spirits almost, and take over them and control like a demon or monster. Other times they just want to get out or get control of something too.”

<Anna> *Anna nods listening, taking it in* “I wonder what happens to them since they missed their chance to go upstairs or downstairs. They are just souls at that point.”

<Jo> “Well, what would you do if you couldn’t communicate with anyone you loved; watched them mourn and miss you; maybe one day forget you? Eventually leave where you were trapped for eternity, or worse, watch them die there too..” *Jo shrugs a shoulder as she speaks, pulling at a split end* “Eventually you get depressed, then angry, and then you want to make other’s hurt like you too..”

<Anna> “I was just wondering if we destroy them totally since they don’t move on and we burn them is all.” *Anna yawns closing her laptop as she looks at Jo.* “You were dead, what was it like?”

<Jo> “I don’t know what happens to them…they disappear? Most wouldn’t go to Heaven if they had the option of passing on..” *She looks surprised when Anna asks her what dying was like, dropping her hands between her knees as she thinks what to say* “I..what do you mean? It hurt, I died, I don’t remember the between time from here to Heaven. Most of that’s a fuzz now, but it was pretty… standard life, memories.. stuff.”

<Anna> “So you know you were dead but you don’t remember it? It’s like you just woke up alive again?” *Anna tilts her head looking at Jo curious now.* “What made you go back to hunting if that’s what killed you?”

<Jo> “Remember bits, I remember how I died but not chosing to pass on or stay around; guess cause I got cremated fully, salt and all, I didn’t really have anything to tie me anyway. And I remember what Heaven /is/ but not much of my time there..” *Jo pulls a face slightly, flushing as she tries to remember most of it and comes up with a lot of blanks* “I’m a hunter…”

<Anna> *Anna just lays back and thinks about it.* “I know we knew each other, hunted before but how did we meet?” *She knew how her and Gray met but she wasn’t sure other than she and Jo knew each other on how they met and what made them hunt together.*

<Jo> *Rubbing at her neck, the blonde woman stares at the other even as she flops backwards, thinking about it* “I think we met when I was still dead. One of the perks of being an angel, I guess, is being able to travese both Heaven and Earth.. Its the only answer I can think of, because I knew we were hunting together when I came back to life. You… you used up a fair bit of what Grace you had left to help me back then..” *Jo keeps back what she remembers about the first while back on Earth, that the whole original problems with Crowley so far as Anna was concerned came from her entanglement with the demon..*

<Anna> *Anna watches Jo thinking back, getting lost in thought. The idea of knowing her in heaven and not here first is a strange idea but she’s slowly understand that  strange is her normal now. Looking back Jo’s still lost in though and she smirks asking casually wondering if Jo will answer.* “Who’s better in bed, Grey or Gray?”

<Jo> *Jo’s not paying attention when Anna speaks, the question not really registering until she’s answered* “Dunno, Gr-. …I…wait, what? Why are you asking that?!” *She flushes as brightly as Anna’s hair, blinking at her in shock, glad she cut herself off quickly enough*

<Anna> *Laughing she lays there watching Jo turn red, she’s not sure why she’s asking but at the time it sounded like a good idea and she raises a brow.* “What was that Jo? You sort of stopped midsentence?”

<Jo> “I… I don’t even know what you’d count as better!” *Jo bites down on her lip, feeling her blush get slightly deeper as she tries not to laugh alng too*

<Anna> “Better, you know, who you liked more.” *Anna yawns as she laughs before blowing her nose and she pulls the covers up more, she felt wiped out but seeing Jo’s expression is worth it.*

<Jo> *Shaking her head, Jo leans back before hissing slightly and sitting upright instead* “Given I wasn’t bleeding or tied to anything and get very well taken care of; I’d say Grey…” *Pulling her hair back from her face, she stands up to go check on Anna’s radiator*

<Anna> *Anna laughs watching Jo lean back on her sore tailbone and then confess to Grey. She takes pity on her and she just yawns again as Jo gets up to mess with something. She’s going to say something but she’s forgotten what it was and she just blinks slowly before falling asleep*

<Jo> *Jo was half expecting a further inquisition, not sure she wanted to give any more explanations of things given the awkwardness around at the moment; but when she can’t make the room any warmer, she turns around to see the other asleep on the bed. Shaking her head, Jo goes to set a glass of water and some flu tablets on the bedside before heading home*

#3 - More of the Same

<Jo> *Jo figured Anna’d had enough time to recover, at least enough for some practice outside of town. Rocking up at the redhead’s door, she tucks her scarf into her jacket as she knocks on the door, leaving the rest of her things in the car*

<Anna> *Anna looks up from her laptop hearing the knock. She’s dressed in sweat pants and a few different layers of shirts, she’s starting to understand why the rent is cheap, the heating barely works so she’s been infront of her oven with the door down all morning. Opening up she smiles seeing Jo.* “Hey.”

<Jo> “You up for some target practice?” *Jo asks happily, looking a little too interested in the idea of going out to shoot things*

<Anna> “Sure, let me get my coat.” *Anna grins seeing Jo looking like a kid that’s about to go to the toy store and she grabs her coat and keys off the back of the chair.* “So, by shooting you mean guns right?”

<Jo> “Yep, I figured we’d get some practice in before the next hunt.” *Jo heads out to the car, starting the heater as she guns the engine waiting for Anna to lock up and get in* “Theres some out of the way fields outside of town we can use”

<Anna> *Locking up she gets inside the car, holding her hands up to the heater.* “You know, I could just be in charge of throwing the lighter. You could do all the shooting. It’s loud.”

<Jo> “What happens if I get knocked out? Or pinned down? Or we get seperated?” *Jo teases back, pulling out and heading towards the edge of the city* “You get used to it, and you need to learn how to do it.”

<Anna> “Just don’t get knocked out, pinned or seperated.” *Anna smirks making it sound so simple and she sits back relaxing as Jo drives. “It’s mostly just shotguns right?”

<Jo> *Letting out a laugh, Jo shakes her head as the car builds up speed and they angle towards one of the less used routes out of the city limits* “I guess you can get away with just shotguns, but one day I’ll get you good with handguns and stuff too”

<Anna> “You’re just asking to get shot aren’t you? It’s not like I’m ever going to hunt anythign that needs silver rounds, I doubt I could move well enough for that kind of hunt.” *Anna sits up and grabs the ohshitbar as Jo speeds up turning off the main road.*

<Jo> “That… well, at least you know you wouldn’t. Guess we’ll just stick with the shotguns.” *Jo smirks to herself watching the other’s grip on the handle and steps down harder for a few seconds before slowing down again*

<Anna> *Reaching out she grabs the dash and she cringes* “You know to teach me to use a gun I have to live to make it to the shooting range!”

<Jo> *Laughing again, she slows down further until she’s going much slower than she normally would but probably closer to what Anna would be comfortable with* “Yeah, okay, okay. We’ll be there in a few minutes.”

<Anna> “Who taught you to drive?” *Anna grins relaxing as they go further out into a snow covered area that is away from the city.* “And did your driving instructer survive?”

<Jo> “Well, the main ones survived past my learning how to do it at least.” *Jo jokes slightly, though her mirth is slightly lessened before shaking it off* “They were better than yours at least.” *They reach the turn off for Jo’s chosen spot, mostly just the land far from the popular road areas and far enough away from any houses that no one would get there and interupt*

<Anna> “I can drive, safely, without breaking the laws and sanely thank you very much.” *Anna smirks as she feels the road get rougher, clearly having left the paved part and she reaches down zipping up her coat as the snow starts to fall again.*

<Jo> *Pulling over and parking behind a row of trees, Jo warms her hands over the heater for a few moments before shutting off the engine and leaning into the backseat to grab her bag* “Yeah yeah, you ready to learn something today?”

<Anna> “First aid for a gun shot wound?” *Anna teases as she gets out, pulling the hood of her coat up over her hair and she grins to Jo as she looks around the area Jo’s found.*

<Jo> “You’ll only have to learn that if you hit my sweetheart.” *Jo pats the roof of the car in explanation before shifting the bag up on her shoulder and reaching out to grab the other woman’s wrist as she steers them to walk along the tree line until their further away from the car and towards a rundown old stone wall.*

<Anna> *Anna raises a brow as Jo implies that she might accidently shoot the car, she doesn’t tell Jo the car is safer than the person because no way is she walking out of this place.* “So why Duluth? What was it about this place that we decided on?”

<Jo> *Shrugging, Jo sets down the bag, reaching in and pulling out two pairs of worn, fingerless wool gloves - holding a pair out as she pulls on the other* “The bar. I used to work there before my old home burnt down and my mom came and found me. I figured you wanted somewhere stable, I wanted somewhere hunters knew to go..it worked out.”

<Anna> *Taking the gloves she puts them on nodding, it made sense and she rubs her hands together as a wind blows across the open area.* “They didn’t have hunter bars in say, Hawaii?”

<Jo> “I wouldn’t know, haven’t left the mainland before.” *Jo lets out a laugh as she fumbles about in the bag before pulling out a few brightly coloured pieces of fabric and plastic of different sizes and visibility* “It was somewhere I knew would be safe.”

<Anna> “Safe, doesn’t really sound like any place is safe from monsters or demons really, I guess there are places less dangerous than others.” *Anna watches Jo and looks around in the bag, noting the different kinds of ammo and the two shot guns.*

<Jo> *Shrugging, not really having any defense to that, Jo grabs the pieces and goes and sets them at varying levels and patterns along the wall. She used to go target practicing with Ash where they’d use his leftover beer cans each time he finished one, but she doubted Anna could fire straight or she could drive straight if they went that way. Coming back, she offers one of the shot guns to Anna as well as a handful of salt rounds* “First things first - the ones you’re going to be after most. Try the yellow targets..”

<Anna> *Anna takes the rounds and the shotgun and sort of looks at Jo and then between the items. Hitting the targets didn’t sound that hard but first she had to figure out how to get the ammo in the gun. Pocketing the rounds she shifts her weight onto her good leg as she starts looking the gun over, trying to figure it out.* “So, maybe you should show me how to load the gun first?”

<Jo> *Jo tries not to snicker as she watches the other, nodding when Anna finally asks for the guidance, amused that it didn’t come straight away. Using the other gun, she checks the safety on the side before leaning the barrel against her thigh as she gently slips one round against the loading flap and pressing until the click of the shells rim moving past the magazine catch. Doing the same with another two rounds, Jo then pumps once to load and points the end of the barrel towards the ground away from the both of them, much slower than she normally would and then looks at the other* “And /then/ try the yellow targets..”

<Anna> *Anna watches Jo and she then takes her own gun pointing it away and she attempts to do what Jo did by checking the saftey and fumbling with it till she finally cracks it open so she can load it. Once the ammo is in she snaps it back and she holds it away from her before turning to the targets. * “Yellow targets..” *Looking down the barrel at the sights she cringes as she squeezes teh trigger.*

<Jo> *It takes biting down on her lip to not react to Anna’s fumbling through the steps, though she didn’t have to help before Anna had it loaded which surprised her a little. When Anna cringes and fires, Jo tilts her head when she sees the round explode a few inches away from the largest yellow target.* “Good first try..” *Setting her own gun down carefully, Jo moves over to reach around and reposition the other’s stance, pointing the gun again* “Try to put your feet in the way you want to shoot, to start at least. Now…try like this, and don’t flinch.” *She presses against Anna’s finger, as the gun’s lined up, waiting for the other to pull the trigger*

<Anna> *The sound is loud and that’s what Anna doesn’t like, she jumps and looks to see where she hit as she hears Jo say good try. Jo helps her and she bites her lip as Jo stands beside her, pulling her arms up, pushing her legs out to a more steady position. The not cringing part might be hard as she squeezes the trigger again, feeling the kick not as bad this time.*

<Jo> *This time it hits the edge of the plastic, cracking one side of it.* “Hey, you got a hit. Try again.” *Jo steps back, crossing her arms as she stands back to watch* “And /don’t/ flinch!”

<Anna> *Anna fumbles with the gun again, struggling to open it without grabbing the hot part of the barrel to reload it as Jo steps back and she mouths quietly “And don’t flinch” as Jo says it.* “Easy for you to say.”

<Jo> “Hey, stop.” *Jo steps back towards her pre-loaded gun, checking the safety again before offering it to Anna* “I’ll do the loading on the hot ones; you just work on getting your shots.” *She takes the half packed one off of Anna as she steps back* “It’s not hard to do either. Try breathing out as you take the shot”

<Anna> *Taking the fresh gun Anna looks down at her feet, getting back in the position Jo showed her and she raises her arms up, pushing her shoulders back as she aims. Breathing out slowly Anna tries to not flinch as she shoots again.*

<Jo> *The shot is closer to the centre, enough that if it werfe a ghost they would have vanished for a time. Smiling, Jo nods her head as she reloads the gun in her hands* “Good work, Anna. …try the red cloth on the end next.”

<Anna> *Anna looks down the wall, the cloth is moving and she frowns as she moves to get a better angel on it. She takes her time aiming again, carefully lining up and as she breathes out again firing the second cartridge but the wind picks up and she totally misses the red cloth*

<Jo> *Jo’s got her eye on the cloth, watching it flutter and as it falls down slightly she can tell the winds about to gust when she hears the gun fire. Letting out a laugh, the blonde offers the newly filled gun as she watches Anna’s reaction* “At least you didn’t flinch that time?”

<Anna> *Anna huffs at Jo and takes the other gun, her fingers that are exposed feel cold and she aims again, thinking she’ll have it when the wind moves the cloth again making her miss.* “Oh for fu..” *She stops mid swear as she looks at Jo like she’s supposed to make the wind stop.*

<Jo> *Laughing again, Jo reloads quickly before letting out a sigh* “Okay, watch me.” *She twists her body and feet towards the target, raising and lining up her sights as she focusses. Breathing slowly, she stands stock still for a long moment watching the changes of the wind and how the fabric waves; until suddenly firing and catching the end of it* “Just…take your time, okay?”

<Anna> *Watching Jo, she can’t help but huff at how easy Jo makes this all look and she wonders how good she was before with this stuff. Anna takes the gun and she waits, trying to time the wind so it’s not working against her as she squeezes off another shot, barely catching the end of teh cloth.* “I kinda got it.”

<Jo> *Jo smiles watching the other woman, before nodding and smiling wider when it catches as well* “Kinda is good enough sometimes, just a bit of salt’ll stop a ghost.” *She waves her hand for the other woman’s gun* “C'mon, into the car to warm up a bit and we’ll start again in a few minutes..”

<Anna> *Anna hands over the gun and she rubs her arms, feeling them ache from firing the gun. The idea of getting warm sounds good, going for a second round doesn’t sound so good and she looks at Jo.* “I can shoot, we don’t have to do a round two do we?”

<Jo> *Laughing, Jo tosses the keys to the other, resting the guns down gently before following into the car and rubbing her fingers together in front of the heater* “A few more, yeah.”

<Anna> *Anna grumbles as she cranks the car and turns the heater up to high* “So how like accurate do I have to be on hunts?”

<Jo> “The times you’ve hit each you’d be pretty alright. ..Advantage if you decide to stick to spirits is it doesn’t require quite so much accuracy.” *Jo continues to smile at the others grumbling, cheeks flushing bright red as the change from cold to heated air hits her face*

<Anna> “My arms hurt, I just got over being sore from the hunt.” *She knows she sounds whiney but Jo’s clearly enjoying this more than her even though she’s having some fun, mostly annoying Jo.*

<Jo> “Uh huh. Well, you want to do this - constant soreness is something you’ll get used to.” *She can’t stop the smirk at Anna’s almost whinging tone as Jo continues to move her fingers - the cold weather getting to the breaks from not long ago in a small ache she hopes will be this winter only*

<Anna> “No wonder you move like an old person sometimes.” *Anna slouches down in the chair turning the heat onto the feet setting and she stretches.* “Speaking of old, how long do like monsters live?”

<Jo> “Ha, ha. ..Depends on the monster..” *Jo continues to rub at her few recent injuries, twisting her ankle and glad that none of the areas that hurt last year hurt this year* “Though I get the feeling you didn’t mean in /general/.”

<Anna> *Anna shrugs, just wondering as she turns the engine off.* “The wind isn’t blowing as much, maybe now I can hit the damn red one.* *Climbing out of the car she can feel the cold make her legs ache that had just been under the heater.*

<Jo> "Try to reload straight off this time.” *Jo stays in the cab for a few moments, hoping out and traipsing along after the other once she sees her standing ready to shoot. Seeing the red fabric not moving at all and hanging limply, she can’t stop the small smirk before she chimes out as Anna goes to fire* “I think the boys are around two hundred and fifty..”

<Anna> “Talk about robbing the cradle..” *Anna tries to not think to hard about the age difference and she takes aim with the reloaded shotgun, breathing out she fires and without the wind she hits one side of the red cloth*

<Jo> “The other Anna was older, so she was sort of robbing the nest. Though glad someone else is, mentally, younger with me.” *Jo snickers, watching and grinning widely when Anna hits the cloth without the movement* “Try for the blue plastic this time.”

<Anna> “What do you mean mentally younger?” *Anna looks back glaring at Jo some and she grumbles about bossy old hunters as she reloads the shotgun before looking at the blue targets, they are the furthest away and her first shot is wide, missing totally*

<Jo> *Smiling as she watches the other miss, Jo offers the other gun like before as she shrugs* “I mean that someone doesn’t have over the number of years they look a memories too finally.”

<Anna> *Not sure if Jo is insulting her or not she just ignores her and fires, barely hitting the blue target.* “So, moving and far away, means basically I’m not hitting it.”

<Jo> “Yeah, pretty much.” *Jo watches on, absent mindedly reloads the other gun as she waits* “It just takes practice..”

<Anna> “Practice..well, I can hit the wall at least. I could be missing that totally and the targets.” *Anna grins some looking back at Jo pointing out the bright side of her being a bad shot.*

<Jo> “True, but you could also be hitting the targets.” *Jo teases back, smirking slightly before shifting her weight as she rolls her ankle* “Least you’re still not jumping.”

<Anna> “Maybe I need a bigger target, go take a jog down the field.” *Anna jokes as she sets the gun down rubbing her hands back and forth trying to get some feeling back in fingers.*

<Jo> *Jo frowns slightly before shrugging and setting the gun she has next to Anna’s feet* “That’s a good idea.” *Stealing herself, she runs back to the car and grabs one of the blankets from the car and wraps it around herself before jogging out* “Go ahead, give it a whirl!” *As she shouts, Jo spins herself, letting out a laugh as her blanket, jacket, scarf and hair fly out around her*

<Anna> *Anna just stares at Jo and she shakes her head.* “I am not going to attempt to shoot you! My luck something would happen and I would kill you even though it’s just salt and then not only would I be going to jail I would have a pissed off monster at me that already doesn’t like me!”

<Jo> *Laughing, Jo waves at Anna as she gets near the wall, hopping up on it and grinning like a child as she starts to move along the top* “Oh c'mon, I only brought salt with me, I’m not going to die, and if I do you can tell Grey I was askin’ for it! Just shoot, Anna”

<Anna> “No! I am not shooting you!” *Anna stares at Jo and she fights with the gun to get it back open to take the shells out, forgetting to put the saftey back on.* “I think the cold has shrunk your brain if you think this is a good idea!” *Anna is yelling down at Jo when the gun goes off and she screams in surprise when the sound of glass is heard breaking when the salt rounds hit the car*

<Jo> *Jo’s opening her mouth to shout back when she hears the sound of the gun followed by the glass shattering, spinning around too fast to look and falls over the back of the wall. Without a seconds hesitance, she pops back up looking across the distance towards the shocked other woman and then on to her ‘sweetheart’ and lets out an inhuman noise as she flings herself over the wall towards the car*

<Anna> *Anna carefully places the gun on the ground and she backs away as Jo makes a scream that doesn’t sound like anything a human should be able to make. She wants to ask if Jo’s okay from falling but the way Jo is running she’s guessing she is and wonders if she should use Jo’s distraction to put distance between them.* “I..well..it’s just a car right? A little paint, new window, good as new.”

<Jo> *She’s not even aware that she’s basically growling as she sprints past the other to the car to look over the damage, fingers shaking as she looked over the car and getting louder at Anna’s comment* “YOU SHOT MY FUCKING CAR!”

<Anna> “I didn’t mean too, it just happened. Calm down Jo, you were fine with me shooting you and it’s not like you can’t fix the car.” *Anna holds her hands up in a calming manner like when you’re trying to pacify an angry child.*

<Jo> “You shot my fucking car!” *Jo screams again, staring at the broken window before spinning around on the other woman* “I told you to shoot me! Not the car!”

<Anna> “I didn’t mean too! And look at this way, now you have a good reason to repaint it and get rid of that ugly blue color!” *Anna’s trying really hard to not laugh as she watches Jo come apart over the car.* “At least I didn’t hit the engine?”

<Jo> *Letting out a strangled noise, Jo tugs at her hair before stalking over to pick up the guns, leaving the targets behind as she shoves them and the blanket into her backseat* “Get in, we’re done for today.” *Settling into the front seat, she pulls her scarf up over her nose and mouth, fumbling in the glove box for some sunglasses*

<Anna> “Um the one side is still loaded Jo and I don’t know if the safety is on, not sure you want it going off in the car.” *Anna points out Jo is clearly pissed at her and she goes over, opening her door, raking the glass out of her seat onto the ground.* “I didn’t mean too, you know.”

<Jo> *Hissing, Jo reaches into the back and shoves the door open, standing half in and half out of the car she turns towards the wall and fires the gun towards one of the targets now further away and hitting straight through the still floating red target. Shoving the gun into the back again, Jo starts the car as she slams the door, waiting for Anna*

<Anna> *Biting her lip hard she meekly shuts the door, not saying anything else to Jo as she slouches down feeling a few pieces of glass she missed under her legs and ass. It’s going to be a cold ride back but she isn’t going to dare complain.*

<Jo> *The slight slush under the wheels sprays up behind them as Jo pulls back onto the roads and puts her foot down, feeling the wind sting against her cheeks and hair despite the protections she’d put on. After a few miles, she turns towards Anna and nods her head to the glove compartment* “Theres more glasses in there, you could use the fuckin’ blanket too.”

<Anna> *Anna is holding on for dear life  wondering about her chances of making it by walking back to town as Jo drives like she has a demon after her and she’s just nods as Jo screams above the sound of the wind coming into the car.* “I’ll be okay till we get back to my place.”

<Jo> *Nodding, Jo continues to grumble under her breath quietly as they finally get back into town, her fingers feeling like ice on the steering wheel as she slows down as she gets closer to Anna’s apartment. Pulling over out front, Jo lets out a sigh as she reaches out to touch the broken glass before looking across at the other woman* “We won’t be able to go until I’ve got this fixed, but I’ll let you know when we go.”

<Anna> *Anna’s teeth are chattering and her face feels raw as she nods, getting out and walking stiffly to her apartment. She’s got a date with the shower and then her bed and blankets.* “Sorry..really didn’t mean too ya know, shoot the car.”

<Jo> *Jo nods, leaning through the front window as Anna gets out and heads inside* “I know. I’ll see you later, Anna..” *Shivering, she turns away and heads back towards home - already planning to thaw out in the shower and in front of the tv*

#4 - Might have put this one up already, Grey won’t be happy cause Jo bakes for others...

<Jo> *missed that LOL*

<Anna> Soooooo

<Jo> ooooooo..?

<Anna> “Can I drive the car?”

<Jo> “No!”

<Anna> *Sigh*

<Jo> LOL

<Anna> =P

<Anna> “Jo”

<Jo> “…It rhymes with my name, and starts with an ‘n’.”

<Anna> “nacho?”

<Jo> “…You suck. You suck so so bad.”

<Anna> *Anna grins*

<Jo> “Not gonna happen.”

<Anna> “So we don’t ever go out for Mexican?”

<Jo> “God, can you just… Just go make friends with Grey or call up your guy or something. Annoy someone else too!”

<Anna> *Anna looks innocently at Jo.* “What am I doing to annoy you? I’m just asking questions, how am I supposed to know that we don’t go out for Mexican.”

<Jo> “Fuckin’ God and Mother help me.” *Jo rubs the bridge of her nose* “What were you going to ask /other/ than that you can drive then?”

<Anna> “If you wanted to go out for coffee.”

<Anna> “And not Mexican it seems.”

<Jo> “So long as theres some cake included..”

<Anna> *Anna laughs quietly*

<Jo> “I like sweets, alright. Shut up.”

<Anna> *Anna ticks off on her fingers* “Sweets, no nachos, no driving for me..”

<Jo> “Sounds about right”

<Anna> “I can see how you and Gray are alike, he says I’m also annoying.”

<Jo> “Yeah, but I’m sure he means it much more affectionately than I do.”

<Anna> “No not really, he sounded about as annoyed as you do.”

<Jo> “Yeah, but he /always/ sounds annoyed. …Mostly.”

<Anna> “Not always but when I’m teasing him like I am you right now, he does.”

<Jo> “That’s because you suck.”

<Anna> *Anna smiles* “I don’t remember, do I?”

<Jo> “Oh no, I think you know pretty well right now.” *Jo shakes her head, rubbing the back of her neck with a laugh*

<Anna> *Anna just smiles staring at Jo*

<Jo> “Coffee, cake. No car.”

<Anna> “I can drive while you eat your cake.”

<Jo> “/No!/”

<Anna> *Giggles*

<Jo> “You touch my sweetheart, I’ll touch yours.” *Jo teases back, sticking out her tongue*

<Anna> “But I don’t have a sweetheart.”

<Jo> “Gah! I will go, buy you something, make you enjoy it and it become important to you and /then/ touch it!”

<Anna> “That sounds dirty.”

<Jo> *Jo raises an eyebrow* “That’s really not dirty by my standards, angelcake.”

<Anna> “Clearly I have higher standards than you.”

<Jo> “/Clearly/.”

<Anna> “Jo.”

<Jo> “…What?”

<Anna> “Are we going for cake and coffee or are we going to stand about talking about touching things.”

<Jo> “…Fine, we’ll go for coffee and cake. You’re going to have to walk though.” *Jo shrugs a shoulder, fiddling with her jacket buttons*

<Anna> “Why do I have to walk?”

<Jo> “Well, someone blasted a shot gun round through my car window and they’re not being exactly quick at getting it fixed.”

<Anna> “Oh well, I have coffee here, I’ll just stay in where it’s warm.”

<Jo> “…You don’t have cake do you?”

<Anna> “Yes, I make pancakes sometimes.”

<Jo> “Fine, I’ll just bring some stuff around 'nd make my own.”

<Anna> “Alright but I don’t have fire insurance.”

<Jo> “Ah ha, I’m good in a kitchen. You can ask anyone. Except my mom.  I’ll be around soonish then.”

<Anna> “The door will be unlocked.”

<Jo> *Jo hangs up and stuffs a few things into a plastic bag before heading out, glad to have already thrown on her jacket and scarf thinking they were going somewhere else. It takes a while to walk, but when she gets there she just heads in and straight towards the fridge* “Please tell me you have better than my coffee at least. I ran out of filters yesterday.”

<Anna> *Anna has the heat up for Jo as she comes in and makes a bit of a face as Jo tracks snow across the floor.* “I have some stuff from the local coffee shop down the road and I have some of that necter sweetner instead of sugar.”

<Jo> “Anything better than instant is good with me. Though that’s awesome.” *Jo kicks her shoes back towards the door as she pulls her coat and scarf off, throwing them over the back of one of the small chairs after digging out Anna’s milk, eggs and butter* “You got any particular allergies to anythin’, Anna?”

<Anna> “No, not that I know off. Do you? Is there anything I should not buy when we are out together?” *Anna takes a mop and quickly cleans up the floor before throwing a towel infront of the door to block the draft coming under it.*

<Jo> *Jo bites down a smirk at Anna’s cleaning as she unpacks her own mmixing bowls, meausring jugs and other utensils, before starting to measure out from eggs and butter before pausing* “Where’s the flour? And no I don’t, I’ll eat basically anything. The more meat the better. Or sugar. One or other.”

<Anna> *Anna chokes as is Jo makes a comment about eating meat and sort of blushes.* “I’m sure, you do and flour is to your left, top of the cabinet in the white container.”

<Jo> “…What? What the heck were you just thinking?” *Jo gives Anna’s flush a curious glance, though her lips quirk up in the hint of a smirk as she’s certain she could guess. Turning to grab the container, struggling for a second to grab it out before spinning back around to continue adding vanilla essence and a mixing up some buttermilk before mixing together, feeling about in her bag for something*

<Anna> “I wasn’t thinking anything..” *Anna leans back against the counter not being used as she watches Jo with a bit of a raised brow.* “You are far more domestic than I would have pictured you.”

<Jo> “Uh huh, then what was the blush about, Anna dear?” *Smirking still, Jo gets the limes she was after out, quickly grating the rinds into the mix* “In pretty much this one and only way.” *Finishing the batter, she grabs four spoons out of the cutlery drawer before offering two out to Anna as she gets the baking tray and cupcake liners ready* “Help me with this?”

<Anna> *Anna shakes her head* “I’m not blushing about anything!” *Taking the cupcake liners she turns around starting to seperate them out and lay them out in rows.* “So did you learn this from your mom? Did she bake for all the other hunters?”

<Jo> “Mhmm, you sure Anna? You /sure/?” *Chuckling, Jo quickly squeezes and mixes in one of the limes’ juice to the batter before begining to spoon in to the liners, leaving two of the spoons for Anna to join in* “Mom cooked for them all, but I’m not the greatest chef about the place. I always had a sweet tooth so she showed me the ropes as a kid and I’d bake while she made more substantial things.”

<Anna> “I’m totally sure. You’re the one talking about how you like your meat.” *Anna smirks as she dips a finger in the bowl quickly, tasting the batter as Jo measures it out in the cups.* “I’ve never met your mother right?” Did d she know about us?“

<Jo> "Oh that’s what that was about? Well, I am a fan of a nice piece'a meat..” *Smiling, Jo whacks the others fingers when she goes for another taste, topping up each of the cupcakes until the batter was gone other than the remainder around the edges of the bowl. Pushing it and the spoons across to Anna, Jo sprinkles a tiny bit of salt on top of each cupcake before slipping them into the oven, and sucks her fingers off* “You have actually, though she’s spending most of her time down with Bobby these days. She knew, she didn’t really approve but she doesn’t approve of a lot of things.”

<Anna> *Anna yelps as Jo whacks her fingers but then takes the bowl, licking the spoon as she shakes her head.* “Well as long as you keep your meat out of the cupcakes we are good.” *Putting the spoon the sink she runs a finger around teh bowl.* “So your mother and Bobby are a couple?”

<Jo> *Snickering, Jo turns to Anna’s cupboards and grabs another bowl for her to start the frosting* “I don’t think I would ever try to mix my two favourite things like that. …I..don’t know? Sure? They’re my mom and Bobby. They’ll let me know if anything turns serious; so I’m expecting a call any day now.” *She laughs, smiling as she mixes some butter with the icing sugar before grabbing out the bottle of tequilla from her bag*

<Anna> *Anna raises a brow as Jo get the tequilla out of the bag obviously intending it to go into the icing.* “So then your totally cool with the idea of your mom and Bobby..ya know..doing it.” *Turning around she turns on the water and begins washing the bowls so that there isn’t anything piline up.* “I guess that’s cool that you would like your step dad if they ever get married.”

<Jo> *Measuring out a little more than she thinks the reciepe quite calls for, Jo continues to beat and mix the mix as she turns to watch the other, pulling a slightly face and pausing for a sip of the drink for herself* “I’d rather not /think/ about it, but.. Bobby’s a good guy. He’s always treated me and Mom well and its not like I couldn’t have seen it comin’ eventually.”

<Anna> *Anna laughs watching Jo take a drink as she talks about marriage and step dads.* “Well still it’s good that she’s happy. How would Bobby feel about having Grey as a step son-in-law with him being a monster and all?”

<Jo> *Jo almost drops the bowl, her grip slipping for a second and catching it only at the last second as she spins back around to face the other way as she starts whisking again at double the speed* “I just want Mom to be happy, she deserves it these days…” *She studiously avoids commenting on the other’s question, flushing brightly*

<Anna> *Anna raises a brow as she dries her hands off from washing the dishes, Jo’s usually not clumsy and she sort of smirks.* “Everyone should be, I’m sore Bobby and Grey will get a long well.”

<Jo> *Setting the bowl down, Jo takes another mouthful from the tequilla bottle, hissing slightly at the taste more than the burn* “First time they met Bobby shot Grey. Course, first time my Mom met Grey she also shot /at/ him. ….Mom’d have the same issue as Bobby, probably more, about what Grey was - Bobby…was..well, he’d be a bit of a hypocrite to be angry about me bein’ with one.” *Shrugging, Jo starts to mix up the icing again, getting the mix slowly but surely more light and fluffy* “Though I don’t think they’d be ending up with any son-in-law’s at any point.”

<Anna> “Too bad, I was just thinking that with all the shootings as first meetings we could do a double shotgun themed wedding. It would be cute and I’ve helped with other weddings at my parent’s church so I could organize it.” *Anna reaches over trying to get a taste of the icing as she watches Jo.*

<Jo> “I.. …Last time this ever got mentioned, it was well known I’d be the one with a shotgun on them, and I don’t think that’s the greatest…idea. Things are just..” *Jo sighs, not stopping Anna from stealing a taste before squeezing in some of the lime juice and sprinkling in a fair two pinches of salt* “Things aren’t exactly normal, right now.”

<Anna> “Things not being normal is an understatement but as long as things have a chance to become normal then there is hope.” *Anna smiles at Jo as she takes a glass and pours herself a shot of the alcohol.* “I think it would be worth it just to see you all dressed up like a girl for once anyway.”

<Jo> “Well, I have plans. Hopefully..” *Jo pulls a face at Anna, taking the bottle back and swigging a mouthful before setting it back down again* “Next time, I’m going to wear a dress over here. Get your girly fantasies of seeing me all pretty for you out of the way.”

<Anna> *Anna snorts* “You don’t have too make a special effort on my part.” *She wonders if Jo’s going to be sober by the time the cupcakes get done.* “So besides baking and shooting things what else do you do?”

<Jo> *Measuring out a small cup of the liqiud, Jo sets it to the side as she starts to mix up the icing again carefully folding in some of the lime rind but keeps a quarter of it untouched* “Oh no no, much easier for me to wow you with my feminine charms without going through all the trouble of organising a wedding.  …I mostly do research, help out other hunters, keep tabs on the bar. Work on making new weapons and such if I’m bored, build some things sometimes, work on my car and watch tv or movies mostly.”

<Anna> “Wow, you really are a tomboy.” *Anna chuckles as she steals another taste of the icing, licking it off her fingers.* “We could go out shopping at some point, there are a couple of malls it looks like or maybe catch a movie. I’m not sure how good I would be at building weapons.”

<Jo> “At least you’re not callin’ me butch.” *Jo laughs, watching Anna before just holding the whisk out to the other woman instead as the timer on her phone goes off and she checks the cupcakes, smiling when they’re the right amount of springy to the touch* “Neither of those sound like a bad idea. Except for the weapon work, I’m not letting you near my workspace. But a movie or shopping could be fun.”

<Anna> *Taking the whisk she happily takes care of the icing as she smirks at Jo, watching the blond woman happily cook away.* “Just don’t park the car next to it and I’m sure everything would be fine.” *Steping out of Jo’s reach she turns to wash the whisk once the icing is gone.*

<Jo> *Jo makes a sharp noise at the joke, shooting the other a dirty look as she begins to brush a small amount of the alcohol over the top of each of the cupcakes until the cup she’d set to the side was empty* “Like I say, shopping or a movie. Probably much less dangerous for /everyone/.” *Smirking back at the other, Jo leans against the counter setting another alarm for when she can start icing*

<Anna> “It was just one shot and I didn’t even hurt the car that bad, it was a flesh wound.” *Anna teases her more and she grabs another drink, the tequila burning going down.* “Let me guess if we go shopping, we have to go to the gun store after the shoe store right?”

<Jo> “I guess I’m going to go ahead and paint it black with just a /hint/ of red next time then?” *Jo snickers back, continuously pressing at the top of one of the cupcakes before going to start making up her typical DIY piping bags* “Nah, I have a guy I go to for most of mine, or at least the ones I care about. Make most of my own salt rounds and order the silver and iron from him; so no gun stores necessary. …Might need to go to the comic shop or game store though, I’m trying to understand what the hell Harry goes on about more.”

<Anna> “Oh! I found the gun I want, I bet you could modify it. I was looking online and there’s one that’s pink with Hello Kitty on it and another that’s purple with a unicorn.” *Anna is saying this with a totally straight face as she watches Jo make her own piping bags, remembering her mother doing the same.* “Harry once spent a whole afternoon explaining the mechanics of a game, not sure what it was.*

<Jo> *Jo blinks back at Anna, face twisting into a horrified and disgusted look as she tries to invision that such a thing exists before shaking her head* "Ah ha, no.  But yeah, Harry’s strange. And Grey used to play a lot of video games though..I don’t know, I haven’t spotted him doing it recently but I figure its easier to learn in advance.” *Setting down the bag, she starts to cut the lime with rind into little wedges for decorating*

<Anna> *Anna bursts out into laughter at Jo’s expression as she describes the guns she saw online and she spares Jo the girly looking protection gear she saw as well.* “Those two seem like they would get a long really well, Harry really likes his games and comic books, he once spent a whole shift giving me a lecture of Marvel vs DC.”

<Jo> “Trust me, they do. Swear its like watching two teenagers, except they have very stupid thoughts that Spiderman and Iron Man are better than Batman.” *She can’t help but snicker to herself, knowing exactly what that lecture sounds like after several rounds of it with the geeky researcher. Feeling the top of the cupcakes again, she decides to just ignore her timer and start piping out icing*

<Anna> “Oh lord you are one of them too.” *Anna grins as she tries to make a grab for the first cupcake Jo finishes.* “How did Harry get into this life, he seems so far removed from someone who would be a hunter.” *Pausing she looks at Jo.* “He is human right?”

<Jo> “You thought any differently?” *Jo lets out a laugh, giggling to herself as she smacks Anna’s hand before studding the top of the icing swirl with a small slice of lime and then handing it over* “Harry’s definitely human. He and his friends were always into ghosts and they…did, you know those reality ghost hunting tv shows? They were doing one. But..online and not really popular.”

<Anna> “And just when I thought he couldn’t get any more of a geek.” *Anna takes the lime off that Jo put on there and sets it aside as she peels the paper off the cupcake and takes a bit. It’s really good even though she’s surpised how much it tastes like the drink.* “This is good Jo!”

<Jo> “Yeah well, he didn’t really appreciate my calling him and his friends hackjobs the first time we talked, but he’s actually pretty good at this stuff. Guess it sort of appeals to the geeky side, right?” *Smiling at the other’s reaction, Jo continues to make up the rest, putting a sliver of lime rind on some while wedges on others and sprinkling a small bit of salt ontop each* “Yeah? Well, I have had a lot of practice. Should have asked what you like first but..I had the stuff for these ones.”

<Anna> *Anna doesn’t say anything else till the cupcake is gone and she’s licking her fingers.* “Next time strawberry maybe?” *She’s relaxed and she’s really enjoyed just hanging out with Jo lately, it’s nice to have a friend again.* “Oh maybe chocolate with cherries and rum.”

<Jo> *Scrunching up the baking paper piping bag as she finishes, Jo smiles back at Anna as she tosses the sheet in the trash before picking up a cupcake herself* “I could do that. I’ve been trying to make a cherry cola rum one but haven’t quite got the right amount of cherry to cola yet. Though chocolate would probably be easier, actually.”

<Anna> “Oh chocolate and strawberries, that would be so good.�� *Anna thinks the colo and cherries sounds good too.* “I’ll help you test out any thing you want to try, you can use my kitchen anytime. If you ever get out of hunting, you should open a bakery.”

<Jo> “I think you and Grey are going to be fighting over my baking now.” *Laughing, Jo makes her way through her cupcake, holding the wedge of lime in one hand as she licks up the icing before squeezing the juice over the top of the cake and eating the rest* “We’ll if we do go shopping, can always come back and try out some things after. …A bakery? That’s..a funny mental image, Anna, gotta admit.”

<Anna> “I think you could do an amazing business, do it after hours, serve these with the drink they match. And Grey can bite me, I call dibs on anything you bake.” *Anna takes the lime wedge and squeezes it onto the cake part before biting into it.*

<Jo> “Next thing you know, Harry’ll hustle in and try to get me to make themed cupcakes for things like new movies or DnD stuff.” *She chokes on a laugh at Anna saying Grey can bite her, coughing as she takes a mouthful of her own cake as she has the mental image* “I think he might have already, but you’re welcome to battle it out. Or I’ll just make seperate batches for each of you!”

<Anna> *Anna’s head snaps up as Jo says Grey already has and she has a look of panic on ehr face.* “Wait, please tell me that we haven’t he..Grey, your Grey and I ..oh my God I am the town bicycle. Did Harry and I? I thought it was just you and Gray, my Gray..” *Anna reaches for whats left in the bottle.*

<Jo> *Jo stares back at Anna before collapsing into laughing again, holding out a hand* “No! No no no! I meant he already called dibs! You’ve only been with me and your monster, and Dean but I didn’t know back then.” *She shakes her head, trying not to flush as she tries to think about any of what Anna suggested*

<Anna> “Oh thank heavens..I..just I am not like that!” *Anna blushes as Jo is laughing at her and she thinks this is karma for the car.* “You could have just said that he called dibs..”

<Jo> *Jo shrugs, still laughing to herself before her phone goes off. Looking at it confusedly and realising it was a call from a different hunter, she steals another cupcake and packs up her things - still joking with Anna and promising they’ll work out another day to hang out soon - Jo heads off towards the bar to make sure the book needed was ready for the other before heading home again*

[jackandmarksavedme88]

Anything But Average

TW: Alludes to some violence. @weirdmixofweirdness i had a brain and thought: why not pull up desktop mode ONTHEFREAKINPHONE. DUH 😂🙈

Formatting sucks but. Yeah.

@ashphoenix06 @nekob00

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

Chase sat at the bar, his second glass of whiskey in his hand. He didnt want to go home, JJ and Jackie would want him to talk. And he just didnt feel like talking now. Itd been so long since she left it seemed...but seeing her today, across the street, holding hands with some guy theyd gone to school with, it seemed she was his just yesterday.

"Oh suck it up. She didn't want you. Youre here drowning your sorrows, and shes onto the next dick..deal with it" he thought to himself, draining the glass and waving for another.

"Ya know. Thats the cheap crap. You really wanna get blasted theres better stuff.." The bartender said "Yeah well. Im just drinking. Not getting crazy."

His phone buzzed and he looked down, laughing to himself at the meme Jack had sent him. Then a text came through from Alison She was Jacks friend that had become close with the Septic guys over the last few years. Based in Texas in the US they didnt see her in person much, but Chase and her communicated almost daily

A:Heyyyy. Whats up?

C: *picture he took of Stacey and her boy toy* Thats a guy we went to school with 😑. They were 'friends'

A: Dude. Thats a downgrade. Although she was never good enough for you anyway. Only good thing was the kiddos

C:yeah. It still hurts like hell though.... I need to run away. Get out of here. Theyre going to her moms for a month or so for school holidays and i dont want to be here.

A:well. You could always come here? My Dad and step mom are leaving so i have my cabin on the ranch plus the main house to myself for like a month. You should come!

Chase sat and pondered this. Him go to Texas? With horses and a lake and a bunch of land to explore with fourwheelers....that sounded like heaven

C: Are you for real? Because i could seriously use that lol

The phone rang with Alisons ringtone "Hello?"

Alison: Hell yes im serious! Itd help me out because i don't really want to be by myself out here that long. And you sound like you could use it. Seriously. Fly in, ill come get you and we can tear some shit up

Chase laughed 'alright. Be careful what you ask for Allycat"

Her laugh echoed across the line "Ohhh im shaking Mr Brody. Figure out a flight and let me know!"

Chase told her ok and hung up with her, immediately finding a flight that left in a couple of days "I am outta here" he said

************* 'Wait. So youre going for a month??' Jackie said in shock , 'Just like that??' He was standing in the bedroom door watching Chase pack. He had to be at the airport in about 2 hours

"Yeah. I need to get outta my head and Ali offered. So Im going. I think it'll do me some good. She has a computer and Stacey said i could skype the kids, they wont be in town anyway... I just need this Jackie" The hero stared at him knowingly and then nodded 'ok. Just be careful.... Hey..She ever say anything to you about her going MIA a while back?'. Chase shook his head. Thats one thing he hoped to get out of her. Even Jack had tried to get her to tell him where she'd been, but no dice. 'Hm. Ok. Well, let us know when you get there man...'

Chase zipped his suitcase and grab his backpack and slung it over his shoulder. 'I will bro. Thanks for understanding' he hugged his brother hard and then grabbed the suitcase and left.

******* Chase sat in the passenger seat of the truck, still speechless at Alison's appearance. He was expecting the Alison hed seen two years ago; but shed been training and gained muscle and holy hell. She was dressed in cutoff red shorts and a sleeveless black shirt. When she ran up to him at the airport hed almost stepped on his own bottom jaw. Her auburn hair gleamed in the sun as she talked about everything she had planned for this weekend

"Uh...chase..you ok? Awful quiet there bud" she looked over at him. Chase shook his head to clear his brain 'yeah. Yeah im good.... Hey. You look incredible!"

Alisons face flushed 'aw. Thanks' she laughed. "So. Here we are" she pulled the truck up to a gate and punched in a code. As she drove onto the ranch Chase stared out the window.

'Holy hell Alison. This is gorgeous.' They drove for another fifteen minutes, passed the huge main house and pulled up to a log cabin.

'Alright. Let's go in.' She grinned and stepped out of the truck. Chase smiled and followed her. She walked up the steps and unlocked the door. As Chase walked in he laughed. A Sam pillow and Pink Mustache pillow decorated the couch on either end.

'Really Alison?' He said, picking up Septiceye Sam "Hey! Yes really!' She said laughing. 'Just because im friends with them doesnt mean im not going to buy their shit!' He shook his head, all awkwardness gone.

There was the Alison he knew, a goofball with an affinity for Markiplier and Jacksepticeye.

She walked into the kitchen and opened the fridge, pulling some steaks out. 'You hungry?' Chase nodded. 'Hell yes, ive been needin some of your cooking!' He said, his smile lighting his face. 'You know. Im gonna have to teach you how to cook Mr Brody.' She grinned at him. And he looked at her wide eyed "um..alison. You sure you wanna do that?' "Um. Yes" she said. Grinning at him. 'First lesson..music!' She pulled up an app on her phone and music began drifting through the room. Chase shook his head. Yep. Still Alison

****** Chase watched as Alison danced in place as she cut up some vegtables and potatoes. She was barefoot, singing along to the beginning notes of 'Small Town Boy' by Dustin Lynch, he smiled as he stood up from the barstool he was sitting on... Vegatables could wait He walked up behind her and took the knife from her hand, she turned to him 'what are you-?' Chase grabbed her hand and pulled her to the open kitchen floor and started dancing with her. She threw her head back and laughed as they swayed and Chase sang along

* I'm a dirt road in the headlights I'm a mama's boy, I'm a fist fight Kinda county line, kinda cold beer Little hat down, little John Deere I kinda give a damn I kinda don't care You see that girl standing right there She loves a small town boy like me She's my ride or die baby She's my cool, she's my crazy She's my laid back in the front seat She's my with me to the end girl My turn-it-up-to ten girl....* Alison laughed and sang with him. She was in trouble if her stomach and heart were going to continue playing Zoo escape with him here. Shed been friends with the guys a while. But this was out of left field. She hadnt expected her heart to try to beat its way out when she saw him standing there at the airport. His green hair had been replaced by a natural brown and his eyes shone as blue as ever. When he saw her and smiled as she started to run toward him for a hug, shed almost fallen over. This would be a very interesting visit.

*********** They were sitting on the back porch after dinner. Chase was watching Alison animatedly talk about training with some of the guys in her Dad's work, laughing when she knocked over her water glass when her hands flew into it 'Oh shit!' Alison cried out. Then she just started laughing and Chase couldnt help but laugh along with her as he went inside the sliding glass door to the kitchen and grabbed a towel and handed it to her. She mopped up the mess and then sat back down, still giggling.

'Well. Still gracefull as ever i see Miss Calaway' Chase said teasingly She stuck her tongue out laughing 'oh fuck off Mr Brody' They laughed and then sat in silence, watching the lake.

'So.' Alison said quietly 'how are you...really?'

Chase smiled at her 'you know.... Earlier this week i was in hell. Seeing her with him opened old wounds...but being here now i feel a little better. Like i can breathe. It hurts still. But i can breathe' Alison nodded and reached over and squeezed his hand 'im really glad you came. I needed some company...'

She dropped her hands to her lap and stared out at the water. The energy around them shifted and Chase could sense something hed been feeling all evening. Something was weighing heavy on her. 'Alison....whats going on? You never told me what happened that two week span you quit replying to anyone..and ive left it alone this long but.. i can tell now sitting here it wasnt a case of being too busy with fun stuff to look at your phone' Alison looked down, a mixture of sadness and guilt shadowing her face. He was talking about last year. Even Jack had tried to get out of her where shed been...but she hadnt told a soul. Only her family knew. Tears welled in her eyes... that had been during a bad time for Chase...she remembered the pain in the drunk texts from him that shed read when she got the phone back...

She stood and walked over to the railing. Trying not to cry and failing 'Hey...alison im sorry. I didnt mean to-..' Chase stood and walked up beside her and put an arm around her shoulders. She turned to face him and burying her face in his chest, silent tears rolling down her face for a moment. Then she took a deep breath, stepped back and wiped her face 'Sorry...its just... I never apologized for not being there for you. I read those texts a million times after the fact and... Im so sorry Chase'

Chase stared at her shocked 'thats whats upsetting you? Alison, i send angsty texts to my brothers every time im freakin drunk' he laughed. "You dont need to apologize. It was a bad point but nothing for you to feel guilty for being absent for... But i would like to know where you were. We all know when you reappeared you were different." Alison stared into his eyes, hed had never noticed how green they were. She was searching...but for what? 'Chase.... Not even Jack knows what happened...' She took a deep breath '....i was in the hospital.' Chases mouth dropped open in shock 'What?! Why???'

She stared at her feet and was quiet for a minute. 'Do you remember Chris?' She asked. Chase grimaced at the name, he remembered Chris. He also remembered the broken nose and black eye he gave him a couple years back when he saw him shove Alison to the ground "Yeah. Your boyfriend that no one liked?' She nodded 'yeah. That one.... God i shouldve listened to yall. ' Chase put his hand under her chin and lifted her gaze to his and spoke softly 'what did he do ali?' She swallowed hard. 'Short version? Got mad that i wanted to leave the country to come see yall.... Tied me up and used me as a punching bag for 3 days....'

Chases eyes widened in horror 'what the fuck....howd you get away???' She snorted 'my Dad came to find me.... Imagine for yourself how pretty that was' Chase knew it hadnt been.

Her father was famous for being called The Undertaker. Almost seven feet tall and 300lbs...and Alison was his little girl. His first daughter. His pride... Oh lord that couldnt have been good....

'So' she continued 'i was in the hospital for a good while... Actually the first time i texted you i was still there for another week.... ' Chase pulled her into a hug 'Ali im so so sorry..my God if i had known...' Alison laughed 'if you had known you wouldve been deported and arrested for murder...no i didnt want anyone knowing. Im the one who stayed when yall told me to leave. I'm the idiot.' Chase leaned back, arms still around her. 'No! Its not your fault. I dont care what we told you to do. You want to see the good in people. You want to believe everyone is good and thats an amazing trait. You should never think thats stupid' She smiled and leaned into his chest savoring the warmth and safety.

Later, after they had said goodnight and gone to their rooms, Chase lay there awake. He could still feel her head on his shoulder, feel the warmth from her, and his heart skipped. "What the hell is going on ??' He hadnt felt that since high school...that first skip of the heart when you find someone.... 'Oh grow up Brody. Shes your best friend and doesnt need your damaged ass complicating her life..' Little did he know she was in the room at the opposite end of the hall thinking along the same lines...

****** A week had gone by, they danced around the flirtation and the obvious tension that lay under their banter. The day before it had rained, creating mud puddles everywhere. Now it was sunny and muggy out. Alison excitedly threw a pair of 4-wheeler keys to Chase and grinned as she pulled her ponytail through the back of the hat she was wearing. Chase watched as she bounded down the front steps and followed suit. They were both in jeans. The day before Chase had bought a cheap pair of boots he could get muddy. They were heavy but at least it wasnt his sneakers. They headed down the path between Alison's and the main house. Chase studied her as they walked. He hadnt been as brave since the first night. He wanted to say something....anything. But he wasnt sure where to start. 'You good ?' Alison stopped walking and looked at him, his face flushed slightly "Yeah, im good. Ready to tear up the mud' Alison laughed 'well the shed is right over here. I keep mine here since its closer to my place' They rounded the bend in the path and came upon the metal shed. She unlocked the door and walked in, pulling the tarp off the two four-wheelers. She threw a michevious grin at Chase as she climbed on hers "You ready to get dirty?' She laughed Chase grinned 'Hell yeah!' He climbed on his and they roared to life, Alison shot out of the building and took off, he threw his head back laughing and started after her

****** After about an hour or two of flying through mud and water puddles, they were sitting on the edge of the lake on a blanket Alison had laid out under the big umbrella. Chase had his shirt off as it was wet and muddy. He looked over at her and couldnt help but laugh. She had mud streaked down her arms and some on her nose.. The only part that wasnt spotted was her legs. Shed taken off the jeans and was in her swim shorts that had been under them.

'What?!' She said

'Youre a little...uh...dirty there girl' She laughed 'you should see yourself, your floofy hairdo aint cuttin it kid' she said as she reached over and messed up his hair, dirt falling out 'Hey!' Chase cried and grabbed her hand as he chuckled 'you leave my hair alone. Youre just jealous' Alison laughed and rolled her eyes. 'Yeah. Ok' They sat next to each other in silence, her knees pulled up and arms wrapped around them. She leaned against his side and looked like she was ready to fall asleep on his shoulder. Chase scooted over to the far side of the blanket and laid back, then pulled her down so her head rested on his chest and an arm was around her. His pulse raced and she easily fit in his arm and curled against him.

She sighed contentedly 'hey Chase... Anytime i need to lay with someone im gonna find you. Because youre really comfortable' she said giggling. He laughed 'ok. But youll have to come across the pond a lot' 'Hmm' she said thoughtfully 'ok. Im good with that. Ill come over there for some Brody cuddles' He squeezed her and smiled. 'Hey....Ali?'

'Yeah?' She shifted her head so she could look up at him. Her heart raced as she caught his eyes. Shed been having trouble concentrating on anything since he took his shirt off and this wasnt any easier.

'What are we avoiding here?' He asked... He hadnt meant to be so blunt but it just kind of came out that way. 'I mean. We're good and normal and then other times its so freaking awkward..i dont get it' 'I-.' Alison didnt really have an answer for that. She knew what she thought she was avoiding. But she wasnt 100% sure. 'I dont know.. I mean... I think its obvious theres something to talk about. But neither of us wants to say it'

Chase stared into her green eyes intently 'Well if you want to say what i want to say, then fuck this silence. Tell me'

Alison sat up and looked the other way and he followed. 'Its not just that easy for me Chase.... I dont know what you want...i dont know what im supposed to do..i dont know wh-'.. '

He grabbed her chin and turned her face towards his 'what i want is for you to shut up and kiss me...what youre supposed to do is stop rambling and let me show you'

With that he pressed his mouth to hers and kissed her. Slowly at first and then harder. She sat up on her knees and wrapped her arms around his neck as she kissed him back. They pulled away breathless and stared at each other.

'Now alison' he said, his voice husky "Whyd you wait so long to do that?' He grinned and pulled her to him again and kissing her deeper, laying back, her laying halfway across his chest. After a moment she pulled away and laid her head down on him and laughed 'Holy crap' He laughed out loud, 'yeah... Thats one way of putting it' He kissed the top of her head and wrapped her in his arm, they both drifted off..

****** It was a month and a half later. Chase stood by the front door. Nervous. He didnt want to leave. They hadnt been what youd call official..neither of them labled it . Sure they had held hands, slow danced with each other, kissed and gotten close..but it wasnt like *that* was it?... And now he was going home. He wasnt supposed to feel this way. His heart wasnt supposed to ache like this....

Alison stood in her room making sure she had her keys and phone...stalling. "What the hell...why is this so damn hard. Hes my best friend....a great kisser...but my best friend! Its not supposed to be like this' she thought to herself. Walking out she caught his eyes and saw her sadness reflected there

'Are you ready to go?' She inquired, trying to sound happy

"....you want the truth or the answer thatll make you feel better?' He chuckled.

'Chase...' She stood by him and grabbed his hand... 'I know, i know. We live a million miles from each other... I just didnt think it would-' 'Hurt this much?' She said, staring up at him He sighed and wrapped an arm around her, pulling her in and kissing the top of her head. 'Yeah' She opened the door and they walked out to the truck.

******** 'Seriously. Come out sometime, the boys and me will show you a good time' Chase said Alison smiled at him ' Definitely...ill miss you. Thank you for coming. I had a blast'

Chase smiled and her 'And stop standing so far away.' He grabbed her hand and pulled her close 'its harder to kiss you goodbye from over there....if thats okay.... Just one last time?' She smiled and nodded as a blush crept to her cheeks he leaned down and kissed her, both of them holding on longer than they intended. 'Alison...dont be a stranger' he said. Hugging her one last time and picking up his bags. 'I..i wont Chase. Tell everyone i said hi'

She waved goodbye and watched him walk toward his gate, then turned and headed for her truck. When she got inside she let go of her control and cried. The tears didnt stop until she was back to her place. She walked into the room Chase had been staying in and found one of his worn shirts folded on the bed with a note and a small bottle of cologne. She smiled and cried a little reading it

'I know its not the same as falling asleep on me. But this is the cologne i use, you can wear the shirt or use it as a pillow case... Ill miss you' She laid down on the bed and could still smell him as she drifted to sleep

******** 'Dude. You were supposed to go over there to get happier. Now youre just more mopey. What the hell happened?' Jackie asked Chase

They were in the living room, Chase sprawled on the couch. It had been almost two weeks since he came home 'Jackie. Just leave it alone man. Ok? I dont want to talk about it'

'Chase, you need to talk about it. I havent seen you like this ever. When Stacy left you cried and drank and talked about it... You dont even drink anymore. You just sit and watch tv or sleep' Jackie said, worry coating his words.

Chase sat up 'look man. Im an idiot and i caught feelings at the wrong time and the wrong place. Ok? And it hurts because i cant be where i need to be and where i want to be at the same time! I dont drink because then i dream about her and....'

His words drifted off Jackie came to sit by him and put an arm over his shoulder ' you always dream about Stacy though. I thought the sleeping pills helped with that'

Chase put his head in his hands 'Bro. This isnt about Stacy. I never thought id say this but i think this hurts worse'

Jackie was shocked. He couldnt believe what had just come out of his brothers mouth 'Then...who? And what did they do that was so bad???'

Chase shook his head 'thats just it. Nothing bad. It was all amazing... But.. Damnit man. I just wish it wasnt so fucking far, you know?' Jackie thought for a minute and his eyes widened and mouth dropped as he caught on

'Holy shit you mean Alison???' Chase's head shot up 'Jackie if you tell anyone so help me ill strangle you' Jackie put his hands up 'No no. I wont..but..what happened?' Chase laughed 'nothing like that... We just kissed and cuddled a lot and... I really think i fell for her man and i dont know how to process it... I feel like I'm losing my mind.' Then he opened up and told Jackie everything about the trip. His brother just sat and listened.

*************** Two weeks later...

'Alison!' Jack ran over to her, shed begged him to pick her up at the airport but hadnt wanted anyone to know. Hed been happy to oblige. Confused. But happy

'Jack!' She ran over to him and hugged him hard. Shed missed this goofball

'Ok so are you going to tell me whats going on?' Jack said as they grabbed her bags and walked outside to where the Uber was waiting for them

' um.... Its a little hard to explain. But.. I just had to come ok? Im actually meeting my Dad tomorrow. Theyre here because of a movie shoot. We are all staying a month or so.'

Jack shook his head 'i know when youre lying. Theres something youre not tellin me Ali' She looked at him. Knowing hed either laugh or help her... Well only one way to find out

'Jack....when Chase stayed with me for that month... We..I.... I fell for him ok? And i think he feels the same way. And this last month has been hell because i cant stop thinking about him. I know it sounds crazy but i had to come see him, and yall. ' it came out in a rush.

Jacks mouth dropped open in shock. 'You mean...youre the reason Chase has been so mopey? Thank God i thought he was on about Stacy again' and he laughed 'So. Wanna suprise him?' His smile conspiratorial Alison grinned. She shouldve known she could count on him.

*********** 'Well why do i need to go Jack? Why dont you?' Chase whined into the phone 'i dont feel like talking to anyone about filming man. I dont have it in me' 'Chase. Youre going. Trust me. Just meet the agent at the park. Theyll be by the river. Itll be a good opportunity for you man' Jack said on the other end of the line, trying to keep from laughing. 'And what about the others? Jackie and everyone left the house today. They said they were staying with you tonight because you were filming some stuff. Why cant i help?' Chase questioned 'Look Chase. I need you to do this for me. Ok? Please bro?' Chase rolled his eyes 'fine. But this better be a good meeting' Jack hung up the phone and laughed 'oh trust me Brody. Youll love it' he said to himself. Shooting alison a text. 'Now we wait'

At the house Chase threw the phone. He wanted to be mad but he knew Jack was just worried. Hed been holed up in his room since he came back, hadnt touched his skateboard in a month, hadnt even looked at his PS4.. All he could do was go through the photos from his trip. Hed talked to Alison on facetime and she seemed to be happy, was training and riding horses. She had sent him phtos of her and her Dad and little sisters... He felt like he was lying to her. He said he was okay, just more tired...but the reality was he wanted to beg her to come to him. He wanted to tell her he thought he loved her-- but he just kept a smile on his face because as long as she was happy, thats all that mattered

****** Later that night Alison sat on the bench. Nervously playing with the hem of her dress she had bought that morning. He should be here any minute.... What if he was mad...what if he didn't want her here? What if.... She recieved a text from Jack

J:Hes there.

Her heart pounded. Now what? She sat and waited...hearing footsteps

* Chase could see someone on the bench by the water and headed that way. As he walked his eyes focused on the figure. Their hair was an auburn color... That thought made his heart ache as he remembered brushing Alisons from her face... He got close enough to the bench and the figure stood and turned toward him. His heart jumped and he almost fell down 'Al-alison?' He whispered. Not believing what he was seeing. 'Chase..' She said softly. Her face broke into a smile as tears filled her eyes. She ran to him and he embraced her. He finally let go and looked down at her grabbing her face with both hands "ali what the hell are you doing here?!' Tears rolled from her eyes 'Chase....i couldnt stay away anymore. Im sorry...i know i shouldve told you but i didnt know if you wanted me here and-' her words were cut off as he kissed her. She wrapped her arms around his neck and kissed him back. When they pulled back he looked at her for a long minute and then spoke as he wiped her tears 'Dont ever apologize for making me this happy...ever. Of course i want you here. Its been hell just talking to you on FaceTime and not being able to say what im thinking. My God Alison i missed you more than i thought possible' She smiled and kissed his cheek and hugged him again. Savoring the feel of his arms around her

'Cmon. Lets go talk' he said pulling out his phone to call a ride 'I got it' she said grinning 'My dad loaned me a driver for my trip' she called someone and said whered they be. As they walked to the road Chase saw a black limo waiting and laughed 'Well. That beats an Uber'

As they rode he just stared at her. She was looking out the window. His heart beat faster. She came....she missed him so much that she came all the way here. He smiled to himself and then shot Jack a text

C:'Youre an ass for letting me walk into that unwarned....but thank you man'

J:no thanks needed. I did it for both of you. You both deserve smiles on your faces man. Now put the phone down... Also Jackie said to tell you 'stay in your own room' 😂

Chase laughed out loud and covered his face. He was going to have to smack him Alison looked over 'whats so funny?' She reached for the phone and snatched it before Chase could stop her 'alison i wouldn-' he warned laughing 'Oh my god.... Im gonna have to smack him when i see him' she said laughing as her face turned red. They both giggled and Chase grabbed the phone and turned it off after sending 'tell him i said ..' Followed by a couple of middle finger emojis

***** They walked into the house and Chase locked the front door before grabbing Alisons hand and kissing her again. He couldnt believe she was here. Alison leaned into him and kissed him back and then said smiling 'i cant believe im standing here' Chase laughed 'i cant either! I mean...why would you come all this way??' Alison locked eyes with him. 'Because... I never knew i could miss someone so much Chase. Honestly it was driving me nuts. I got tired of having the pictures from your trip and FaceTime with fake 'hey buddy' bullshit..... But i wanted to say it to your face.

Chase nodded. He knew exactly what she meant.

** Alison had been there a week and couldnt get over the fact that she was with him. Chase was sprawled out on the other side of the king sized bed and snoring. They had both decided to stay in the hotel room she had reserved for her time here. Chase wasnt used to such a huge bed and Alison laughed thinking back to his face when he first laid on it. She laid her book down and reached over, brushing his hair back and smiling. He stirred and blinked at her sleepily "Ali-- you ok babe?" Her heart jumped at that name. She felt a blush spreading as he sat up and his bare chest became visable. "Yeah- yeah. Was just admiring how cute you were when you sleep" He chuckled and ran his fingers through his hair "what. Are you saying im not cute when im awake? " "Well....when youre asleep youre much quieter" she said laughing. His mouth opened in fake offense and then he grinned mischeviously "Oh. Okay.." He rolled over and caught her and tickled her and she laughed and squealed. 'Chase! Chase! Okay i give i give!!" He stopped and looked down at her as he laid across her and laughed 'youre pretty cute yourself Alleycat " he kissed the tip of her nose and she craned her mouth up. He smiled and leaned down to kiss her and she wrapped her arms around him. He still wasnt used to the sparks that went through his brain with her. That first night hed stayed with her they... Caught up.. quickly. He was still addicted to the taste and feel of her even after as many times hed experienced her. "Ali-" he whispered as he placed his forehead to hers "Yeah Chase?" "I...i think... This is gonna sounds insane' he laughed She pushed him up so she could look in his eyes "Baby...what?" Chase stared into her green eyes. Never having been more sure of what he was about to say...knowing if he didnt hed never sleep "Alison..... I love you...and i know thats crazy. I never thought id ever say that to anyone with this feeling behind it after her....but honestly if she walked up to me right now and asked me to come home...id say no. Youve made me feel whole. You make me the man i want to be. Even my kids when i saw them yesterday asked why i was so happy... ' He stopped and grinned sheepishly "i kinda talked about you a little...they want to meet you. I told them maybe in a couple of weeks..but thats up to you..Stacy was cool with it if you are..' She stared at him, not knowing what to say. A smile broke across her face and her eyes misted over "Chase...id love to meet them..." She pulled him to her and kissed him before saying quietly 'and Mr Brody...you should know. I love you too.." *****

[everydayanth]

The Liam Neeson Thing...

Okay guys, this is gonna get complex and personal right quick. But it’s been bothering me and I’m working on posting more without thinking about it for two weeks until nobody cares anymore.

So here goes.

Context matters. Context is important and it can be complicated, but it freakin’ matters. 

In my opinion, Liam Neeson’s flaw was that he thought a rapist would be the kind of person to also attack him. 

Here’s the thing guys, if you’ve never heard someone you love confess to you that they have been irrevocably hurt by a person, you need to take a step back for a minute. 

That moment, talking about it, it’s extremely vulnerable, so this is a bit hard for me, but in a moment of chaos and torment, a person you love and care deeply for is breaking apart in front of you and there isn’t a damned thing you can do about it. There’s not a damn thing you can do but hold them and cry with them and hurt for them and try to help and figure out the right thing to say. 

And when they’re tucked safe in bed and you’re researching what you can do for them or laying awake thinking about what you could possibly say, the amount of guilt and hurt and anger hits you in the chest, it fills you so wholly that you just need to find a way to let it out. It’s a dangerous rage, it’s immature and unhealthy and so so so painful. 

We don’t talk about emotions in America. We just don’t. So of course we want to put this emotion into a context we discuss, and idea we understand. 

But it’s not an -ism, it’s an emotion. 

If you don’t think when my sister told me about our cousin assaulting her that I didn’t wander around my ghetto ass neighborhood waiting for some big white guy to try to hurt me, well, you’d be wrong. Our brain makes patterns, my cousin didn’t live in our city, but I knew he was a big white guy with a shitty pencil beard, my brain classified that as a pattern. Every time I talked to a big white guy, I had to check myself, yeah. But when my brain registered a human who looked like my cousin, my heart rate ran up and I would will them to attack me. I wanted to fight because I didn’t know what else to do with all that pain, all that helpless emotion. But I could wander around places where someone was bound to get hurt anyway and invite the fight to me. 

Neeson was wandering around areas inviting a fight. INVITING, not instigating. It is a common reaction of revenge and feeling hurt, and we’re shoving this idea into something familiar - outrage, racism, etc., anything so we don’t have to actually talk about emotions. 

He was looking for a “black bastard,” poor choice of words, I agree, but he was hoping that guy, the one who hurt his friend, would challenge him, and it would just happen to be the same guy and he could get his anger out. It’s not healthy, but if they man who hurt his friend had been white and he’d wandered around lower class white neighborhoods inviting a fight, would it have been racism? 

This had an opportunity to be a conversation about what the fuck you do around a friend who confesses they were raped and hurt to you. After all the #MeToo (or in the midst of it), how do you be a friend to your loved ones who feel ready to confess to you? What do you do to manage that amount of disgust you feel at the world, that rage and hate and hurt and horror that there’s not a single damn thing you can do? 

This could have been a conversation about grief and friendship and growth and complex emotions. But we made it about the race of a rapist instead. 

That’s how much we don’t want to talk about feelings. 

We would focus on a man talking for the first time about the anger of helplessness in the face of a friend’s pain and come out in outrage. 

Here’s the reality guys, racism is forming a series of patterns based on skin color that aren’t true. They can be based off stereotypes or influenced by false representation in sensational news. Racism is NOT fighting your brain’s reality in order to form a more balanced understanding of the world. I was assaulted by a bunch of black kids at a playground when I was 14, it was terrifying and it’s a long and complex story but the short of it is very simple: I lived in a black neighborhood and this was not my only experience with black kids. I went to school with middle class black kids and I hung out with other black kids, this was NOT my only experience, and therefore, my brain was capable of nixing the pattern before it was created. Black kids weren’t dangerous, those kids were just assholes. 

Racism is if Neeson went to those places and started fights. I can’t know whether he did or not, but it’s if he went around and accused every black man of being a rapist, in his head or otherwise. I didn’t have a lot of experience with big white guys, so it took me much longer not to feel nervous around them than it did to write off my brain’s pattern about the black kids. Emotions and how our brains work are important details for us to know, and it’s the real reason diversity matters, it keeps our patterns in context. Neeson coming out of the situation horrified at himself shows growth of emotion, the dismissal of the pattern, recognizing that it is false without acting on it, understanding the power of agency is an illusion because he would never find that particular man. 

Comparing this to the policing issues isn’t the same, because of their place in society, their home culture society, and the results of their opinions. A police officer has a responsibility to the public to understand their emotions and their racial biases, an actor is responsible for displaying emotion. We can’t hold these people to the same accountability, that would be ridiculous, for a police officer, emotions need to be stable and understood and should involve a LOT more psychology training. For an actor... they entertain us with their emotions. They need to be self aware and reflective in order to project our experiences in stories. We still expect race car drivers to follow the speed limits and we understand that doctors have to call in sick sometimes, the world isn’t fair and occupation doesn’t dismiss personal biases or professional demeanor, but context matters. A doctor calling in sick after handling small pox in a lab requires observation and questions, an actor talking about rage and looking for a fight when he was younger and confessing horror at that version of himself while promoting a film about revenge kind of seems like part of the job, of doing the job well.  

And it’s not racist because it was not instigated by the color of skin as perceived by an individual to be less or more - he was inviting a fight with a black man on the word of his friend. That was wrong, and so was me doing it with large white men (also because I am not that large of a white woman, so that wasn’t going to end well for me), but he even said in a follow up interview that they could have killed him. The interviewer says she thinks of the innocent black man that could have been killed and Neeson responds “Or he could have killed me.” BUT HE WASN’T INSTIGATING FIGHTS, he was INVITING them! He wasn’t looking for an innocent man, he was waiting for someone to try to hurt him so he could release the extreme emotions. These are different. These are SO different. 

This conversation can go back to what it could have been. Race of the rapist aside, what do you do when a person you love confides in you that they have been hurt and scared and they are breaking apart in front of you? How do you process your emotions and heartbreak? What can you do or say? How can you feel like you’re helping? Is that selfish? Why do we need to feel like we’re helping? How do you manage your own trauma so you don’t loop theirs in with yours? How do you self reflect so that you stop your brain forming false patterns when you’re filled with so much hurt and pain? How do you not become a villain of the world, hating everyone for always telling you you are helpless? How do you find control in yourself when you’re imploding and be responsible and mature with emotions? How do you talk about it in a society that wants to be angry? How do you not hate them for focusing on your reaction to a rapist rather than being angry with an individual for being an asshole and RAPING your friend?

How do we return to a conversation about emotions and how, unchecked, they can lead to pain and anger and rage, and eventually, if we don’t have a moment of clarity and rationality, if we are not balanced in the world, they can become biases that develop into ignorance and racism? How do we focus on context so that we don’t become arrogant and disconnected, classists by nature because we interact with such a small and similar world? How do we connect and talk about the human experience when society turns away from us in favor of what is familiar? How do we have a logical discussion about emotion when we can’t even talk about meaning and intent? How do we accuse someone of racism when, had the rapist been white, the conversation might have focused on the context of emotion and pain and hurt and the process of healing - it was the outraged audience that pointed at the race as important, as the meaningful factor, how do we look at that hypocrisy and not feel utterly defeated?

How do we scream at the world that we need help, we all need help, without crucifying ourselves? I have no idea, this post is terrifying and I have no idea what to expect. Maybe nothing would be good? To return to not a single note or like or comment, to be unheard and dismissed and navigated around might be good because I want to talk about this reality but it. Is. Terrifying. 

And maybe it’s all a projection. Maybe I’m the racist and I want to defend someone I relate to. But it feels more right that we as a society don’t talk about emotions, we lock them up like these secret things we’re terrified other people will discover. I’m working on vulnerability lately, and what better place to talk about all the shit that’s ever happened to me than the freakin’ internet! I’m just a person and from my experiences, I think I understand what Neeson meant. But that could equally be a self-aggrandizing reality that doesn’t exist. Perhaps he’s just a racist, a professional actor with a successful career who took this exact moment to reveal his true colors, what a sneaky man! 

But more probably, the logic says, he’s a professional actor with a successful career who took this moment to discuss the emotions he’s had to reflect on and relive for the past year or so in order to play a role in a film that he hopes will entertain and reflect something of the human experience. He more probably took the moment to discuss a human experience and we did not listen because it’s more popular not to listen or because we could not relate or because we just want to be angry and sometimes pulling weeds is so exhausting we raze the whole garden instead. We did not talk about the moment he was horrified with himself because we don’t want to talk about growth or greys, we want the world to stabilize so we can see the bad guys clearly. 

We really ought to know by now that there are no clear bad guys. 

And we know Neeson likes to play in those lines. What is good? What is bad? They aren’t a duality, they are a false dichotomy, created by whatever world you grew up in, whatever experiences you had, whatever your society or culture told you, whatever education you discovered, and whatever philosophy you’ve come to believe. But in a moment of vulnerable confession, in all that grey reality, your friend tells you about a bad guy and they become singularly bad. They don’t exist beyond that. And that’s what is horrifying. That you stop seeing humanity as grey and suddenly it becomes good or bad, that’s the scary part about revenge and inviting fights, it encourages a black-and-white view of the world that says the rapist is ONLY bad and your friend is ONLY good. 

A bit ironic that, in trying to talk about that tunnel-vision-rage, Neeson found himself the target of it.

It’s raw, that anger. It’s part of all the hurt that has happened to you and then you couldn’t even protect your friend or family. Why did you go through all that pain if you couldn’t grow enough to save them? That guilt is a liar, you didn’t hurt them, the asshole did, and you need that to be true or else you were also the cause of all your own pain as well. So you look for the assholes because then at least you could be useful, you could protect them from one asshole by taking the hit. We need to talk about that kind of hurt, about sacrificing the self for revenge because you can’t find worth anymore. We need to talk about existential nihilism that hides inside outrage because you can’t find meaning anymore. We need to talk about emotions and how to talk about them so we can be better friends, better people, so when we look for guidance on talking to friends about their hurt, we find advice on how to not be overwhelmed by rage and guilt and disgust and anger and violence. 

That’s the conversation we could have had. That’s the world we could have started to create. But outrage culture is racist and racism gets attention and we all just want to be heard because we don’t know how to talk about our emotions. Interesting how it keeps going around like that. 

[iceamericanoventi]

Love Will Find a Way, Well, Eventually : 2. In Between

“Where are you going?”

If it was inside Cartoon Network’s universe, everyone must be able to see the smoke fuming from both his nostrils and ears. Jinki looks beyond distressed when he’s lifting his ass from the chair. No one on the table was his partner, but Minho decided to throw some ridiculous question then played dumb as if he didn’t just ask one.

“Should I have number one here?”

He started getting irked, but that doesn’t stay long until Kibum casually munched his breadstick while spluttering his witty comments as usual, “Surely Taemin would be delightful.”

Taemin who didn’t do anything almost chocked himself with a piece of tomato and kicked Kibum’s shin under the table, eventually.

“Promise me you won’t run away?”

Dumbfounded, Jinki emptied his pocket and almost smashed the table with his belonging.

“Are you my husband? Here’s my wallet. And my phone!” and with that, he left the other three men finishing their meal.

“Is he always in this temper?”

Lee Taemin gave him another look, pleading him not to embarrass them further, but Kibum just shrugged and muttered ‘I’m just asking’ under his nose.

“He was mad with me since this afternoon. Plus, he has lots of stuffs to think about these days. But don’t worry, he never really got mad unless you disturb his nap.”

“What is he? A bear?”

“Yaa! Kim Kibum!”

Minho couldn’t help but laugh to the scene happened before his eyes. Taemin is famous for being friendly and very expressive only if you know him, even if he’s talkative. To penetrate his bubble is very hard at first, but this man sitting across him, he seems like he’s already inside that bubble since the very beginning. He really is someone closed to him. Kibum looks mesmerizing, even in his grumbling nature. The oversize sweater wrapped his lithe build perfectly.

A phone call arrived to Kibum's phone, he picked it up frantically and excused himself to take it outside.

"What do you think?"

“Eh?” Minho doesn’t even realized he got his eyes entailed Kibum’s silhouette until it disappear by the entrance door.

“You seemed in trance. I know Kibum is beautiful but I didn’t expect you’ll be this amazed with my friend,” Taemin’s sipping his wine, a smirk is very apparent in his devious face. 

“I guess it’s safe to say that you’re not a liar.”

Minho reopened his mouth few minutes after he’s assured that Kibum’s not going back any soon. Taemin is not ecstatic, sometimes he wondered if Minho has a decent sense of humor of a friend.

“For your information, I’m not and never been. I’m the most honest person you’ve ever encountered in your life.”

“Everyone in this room knows that’s not true.”

“Whatever. I might know my ways deceiving people, but I never lie to my friend.”

 “Did you just admit that you’re lying here and there, Lee Taemin?”

Taemin rolls his eyes, again, probably for the nth times already this evening. Without Jinki around, he can be more relaxed on throwing his tantrum on Minho.

“Choi Minho, people lies at some certain points of their life. Get over it.”

He gulped down the rest of his wine, Taemin then called a waiter near them to bring him another one.

“Kibum seems nice. He sounds smart.”

“Sounds? Did you even listen to yourself? No writer is not smart, Choi. Moreover, someone who’s been writing the past decade!”

“I only know him for one night. Who knows he’s just acting?”

“Dude, not everyone is an asshole like you.”

“An asshole wouldn’t agree to bring his best friend along in front of a psychopath like you.”

Taemin snorted and Minho’s smirk reappeared on his face.

“That is literally what a psycho would do, selling their friend for their own benefits.”

Minho wiped his mouth before washed down the dinner with cold water, “And that’s exactly what Jinki accused me for. You two shared a brain or what?”

“Any sane people would say the same, Honey,” this time Taemin’s smirk that made the other scoffed, “By the way, what’s the deal with Jinki? He looks like he’s been sitting on thorny cushion the whole dinner!”

Minho knows Taemin would ask such question eventually. However, he couldn’t say that Jinki hates the whole dinner date plan, it’s impossible. Besides that, knowing him for years, Jinki really is an angel in disguise, well, at least when he’s in the mood.

“People have different, what should I say, defense mechanism? And that’s how he is. What kind of person who talked nonstop during their first meeting, anyway?”

“Oh, I don’t know, me?”

“That’s why you’re a freak.”

“A freak who introduced you to your potentially next boyfriend.”

“Ha. Point taken,” Minho raised his hand to ask for the dessert, “Jinki is just not the type of person who will talk a lot and open up in a second. But I guarantee you, he’s a good person. Sometimes a little bit care too much for other at certain time so probably being brazen is his forte.”

“That reminds me of someone.”

Taemin and Kibum spent their high school days together. Separated for some years due to works and educations, their relationship’s all well maintained. They understand each other, including Kibum’s nature to always put others before him at any given situation.

“Appearance wise, though, what do you think about Jinki?”

“Choi Minho, I’m not a teenager anymore. Judging people around by its cover is no longer my habit.”

“But a designer like you must love a beautiful package, don’t they?”

“Well, to be honest, his lips and eyes itself could get me floored in one glance.”

“I knew it.”

“You’re a famous photographer for a reason.”

***

Cold wind slapped Kibum’s cheeks lightly when he pushed the door and parched to the corner near the valet post.

“Okay, now you can speak. Sorry, I don’t know why the reception wasn’t good enough inside.”

“Then I’ll be frankly here. There’s a possibility for making the special edition for the short story collection. But then, we’re still short of two stories at the moment.”

“Wait, wait, but we already have nine! I finished writing nine! Why should I add another two?”

“The publisher agreed to the preposition for at least twelve stories. You should be grateful I could pitch one less story!”

Kibum looks like he’s about to punch anyone passed within radius one meter around him, but nothing in reach besides a huge pot of short palm tree and concrete wall. And he needs his hand to finish his books still.

“But, Amber. Page wise, those are more than enough to make two new books. Are they out of their mind?”

There’s a loud groan banging on his ear drum came from the other line, “Dude, I almost flipped the table when I was at the meeting you have no idea. The board has new man and that guy is a pain in the ass.”

“Would it change the circumstance if I talked to them by myself?”

“Since when do they have time to talk to the writer directly? We’re head to head with bunch of snobs here, did you forget?”

“I should had not agree to let them touched my writings. Now we’re about to face dead end.”

It was a dream to work along this publisher. It was Kibum’s dream since he started writing when he took gap year after graduated high school. And as if it’s a fate, it was the only publisher agreed with his graphic novel concept five years he climbed his career professionally.

“Listen, Kibum. When I met you years ago, I promised I’ll work my ass hard to help you publishing your books. Not because I knew you, it’s because you’re good. You’re amazing writer and I’m not giving up easily. And neither you. Not when anybody can tell that you’re a gem.”

“I haven’t written any book since last year, Amber. I’m in a slump. Writer’s block is not even describing my bad luck at the moment.”

“Honey, you haven’t written any because you’re currently waiting two books released. And if I could do my magic, another one in, let’s say, six months.”

“If I could make up some words into another story within two weeks. If you could convince them to give me mercy.”

“Did you just know me yesterday?”

Kibum’s tired giving sane response, “What do you mean?”

“I’m waiting their secretary to call me in ten minutes. We’re going to discuss some new deals and I’ll make sure one of them is going to be your new nine stories book.”

“I actually have no idea if I don’t have you as my editor slash manager slash friend slash personal ranting partner slash whatever you want to be.”

“Rockstar. That would be cool.”

“You’re going to be a kick ass one to be honest.”

“I bet. Anyway, expect another call from me in the next couple hours. I’m sorry, but tonight we might need video call to resolve some issues.”

“I hate you for confiscating my time but you’re the best.”

“As always, ain’t I?”

The phone call ends already, but he still forlornly looking at his phone’s screen. With that, Kibum remembers all the works he needs to catch up for tonight. With that, he can put aside all the unnecessary anxiety and tension of tonight’s stupid match making session.

He took a glance of his watch and could only sighed, he better hurried inside to his dessert. The faster he finished, the sooner he can hit home and face the real deal. His deadlines.

Two steps away from the entrance however, he caught a familiar face sitting by themselves, staring to the busy street in front of the restaurant.

“Jinki?” he carefully calling the man, “Lee Jinki, right?”

The later tilted his head to the right and gave Kibum a simple smile, didn’t realize it dropped Kibum’s heart by the bottom of his gut.

“Aren’t you cold?”

Everyone would agree this winter is even harsher than last year’s. Jinki just lifted his left hand to make sure Kibum saw a cigarette slipped between his fingers, “Can I sit here?”

Jinki chuckles, “Aren’t you cold?”

Listening to the same question he threw a minute ago, he just rolled his eyes and took a place next to the other man.

“I’m waiting a phone call.”

“Important?”

“Kinda.”

Jinki blew some smoke out, “Hmm, I guess so. You sounded pretty upset over there.”

“Did I scream that loud?!”

“In my opinion? No. but a girl flinched and buzzed off rather hastily, so, you tell me.”

When he saw Kibum’s gaping like a fish in frantic expression, Jinki has no choices beside laughed again, surprising Kibum who’s quite convinced with his aloof personalities.

“I didn’t know you have so many jokes in store.”

“You learn something new every day.”

“Your face doesn’t show.”

“What about my face?”

“It’s handsome but with that attitude inside, seems like you’re the type who woke up at the wrong side of the bed every single morning and could kill someone annoys you at any time.”

“Well, to be fair, I did wake up in the wrong side of my bed this morning. But it’s because a certain dog occupied half of my blanket so I couldn’t disturb her.”

“You have a dog?!”

Kibum’s face lit up thousand times as if he just won some lottery. Strangely, it warms Jinki’s heart. No, scratch that, it would warm any heart, Jinki tried to generalize the situation.

“I don’t, unfortunately. She belongs to my friend. I’m taking care of her while he’s travelling abroad. Her father will pick her up this weekend.”

“Ah, too bad. We could have play date with my boys.”

“I’ll make sure to give you a call when I decided to adopt one later.”

“Do you think my invitation hasn’t expired yet by that time?”

“A man can only dream, can’t he?”

Kibum’s laughter is muffled by his own palm covering his mouth.

“Let’s go inside, you must be shivering.”

“But your cigarette?”

Kibum’s half stuttered caught red handed, Jinki already pressed the half-done cigarette on the sand bowl on his left, “I can always have another one at home. Besides, I doubt you would go inside without me dragging you along.”

Kibum thanked the universe that the place is not well lit, so he could hide the blush creeping his cheeks. Unfortunately, Jinki has a very good eye sight.

***

“Is my baby being a good girl when daddy’s away?”

Jinki scoffed when the man just entered his living room just literally threw his suitcase aside and scooped the little dachshund running toward his embrace. He gathered the suitcase and poor leather bag on the floor and placed it neatly near the saffron color couch.

The man later dropped himself next to Jinki who’s lounged himself there, checking his phone halfheartedly.

“Minho texted me the other day.”

“Why did he keep texting you?”

The man with dark grey hair didn’t catch the frown hanging on Jinki’s face and buried his face to the dog’s belly, making him groaned again. He lightly pushed the dog further and toppled his head on the other man’s laps.

The dog owner realized something’s happened when he’s not around. He put the dog on the ground and tapped her butt to send her back to her small bed near the pantry.

“Minho has my number and I have his name in my contact list. He can text me whenever he wants. Still jealous?”

Jinki closed his eyes when he started playing with his hair, “He’s still one of the reasons we broke up.”

“Baby, the only reason we broke up is because neither of us didn’t want to succumb into marriage. Minho was just a handsome face happened on the wrong time.”

“I have no idea why I still befriend him when it’s clear he wanted to shove his face to yours, all the damn time.”

“And I have no idea that you’re this type who holds the grudge for a long time. We were already out of relationship back then.”

“Still, a friend wouldn’t openly chase after their friend’s ex.”

“A friend wouldn’t, but a best friend would.”

“Whatever.”

He almost lost his control and slapped Jinki’s head of him, “Oh, come on. What’s bothering you this time?”

“Nothing.”

“Bullshit. It’s written all over your face the second I saw you behind the door. And I’m pretty sure it’s not because my daughter misbehaved while I’m on my annual pediatric conference.”

Jinki sighed, nothing he could really hide it from the other man. Since they were in their almost five years relationship, since they became best friends around three years prior.

“Minho invited me for a dinner night.”

“Wow, fancy,” actually Minho already texted him about the dinner a bit, how he wanted to introduce Jinki to some acquaintance he has, “He gave up on me so he went for the only option?”

“For the record, your mom agreed that I’m way much sexier than you.”

“Three years ago, before your cheek bones buried under those mount of fluffy fat.”

“Said a man who came to me and straight ahead told me I looked cute after leaving a piece of paper with their number on my table.”

“I will put aside the fact that I love how romantic you’re for still remembering our first meeting but let’s back to the right path here because I don’t like the upset you. It’s fucking annoying.”

“He introduced me to someone, Jonghyun.”

He let out inaudible gasp and thanked the universe Jinki’s still closing his eyes. Otherwise, he would stop at once and avoided any discussion of the main reason which distressed his ex-boyfriend. Knowing the scenario before hands didn’t prevent him with the sheer pain graze him when it came from Jinki’s mouth himself.

“So? Isn’t that great? Do you think it’s about time?”

“I was about to argue that two years are still not enough to get over you but I guess you’re not in the same page with me so I’d say that I’m not interested into some relationship whatsoever at this point.”

Jonghyun wanted to cry listening to such words. His heart clenched, he inhaled – a very long one – before he continued caressing Jinki’s forehead.

“I am flattered, but I know you’re just teasing me.”

“Ha, you know me so well.”

“I’m not gonna fall on the same hole, Lee.”

“You won’t. You’re too smart to repeat the torture on the loop.”

“It wasn’t a torture, Jinki. I love you as much as you do. Or maybe just slightly more.”

“Not a chance. I love you more.”

“Stop it or I will kiss you.”

“I dare you.”

“I told you I’m not gonna fall on the same hole.”

“Smart, very smart,” Jinki opened his eyes only to find Jonghyun sticking his tongue out, “Okay, so at first, I don’t like the idea already. You know I hate any type of match making method. Even the online one. But being there, I realized that my current focus doesn’t involved other party besides me, my business, and—“

“And your grandfather?”

Jinki looks annoyed, “Remind me to add ‘always-cutting-people-sentence’ on the list of reasons why I broke up with you when I’m writing my journal tonight.”

“It’s true. I think he was also the cock blocker during our relationship back then.”

“Dude, we’re talking about my gramps. And to put him on the same category with Minho is beyond weird.”

“We already broke up when Minho made his move, for Pete’s sake!”

“Okay, okay! No need to raise your voice, you’re so scary when you’re angry.”

“Then don’t make me! Now, now, can you please be a normal human being so we can talk like adults for once?”

Jinki pulled himself from the couch to the pantry, snatching a pack of cigarette on the tea table before slipped one on the corner of his mouth.

“Can you not smoking inside?”

He snorted and padded to the direction of his balcony. It’s in the middle of winter but he doesn’t care a bit to the wind ready to slaughter his bones. If tomorrow the cold prevented him to leave the bed, then let it be. For once, he just wants to free his mind from the business.

“You need to remember that I can only treat patient on certain age,” Jonghyun followed few minutes after with a blanket he spread as wide as possible to cover both of them without feeling suffocated for standing too close.

“The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends people be under pediatric care up to the age of 21, though.”

“Did you just quote Wikipedia? And we’re not in fucking States! Above and beyond, shame on your wrinkles!”

“Rude.”

“You’re the rude one to your lungs!”

“Then tell me how to ease my mind without nicotine! Tell me how to forget all those troubled night and just sleep! Do you think it’s easy taking care of worrisome business and messy family without distraction?! Stop talking non sense if you do know how to save my days!”

Any word seems taboo once Jinki exploded. Both man just staring into the dark evening below Jinki’s unit. People paraded as quickly as possible on the street to fight the harsh weather. It’s not that late, but only few cars passed by. The dim light of the street lamp’s soothing the tense atmosphere in a way.

Jonghyun leaned closer to Jinki’s arm and rested his head on his shoulder.

“I’m sorry I couldn’t help you with that.”

“I’m sorry I yelled at you.” 

“You know that you can always talk to me right?”

“I’m tired bothering you. You already have a lot in your hands.”

“Besides my patients and Roo, there’s nothing really confiscated my time.”

Having someone like Jonghyun who would stand next to him, scold him then hug him right after, no matter how awful he behaved and treated the other man, Jinki every so often thinking what kind of good deeds he did in his previous life.

Jinki cocked his head, inhaling the trace of scent of Jonghyun’s favorite shampoo. Initially, he was about to kiss the top of his head, like he used to do when the other man leaned on him for whatever reason it was. He remember, though, the earlier period after their broke up – after settling their feelings for few months of course – the shorter man told him not to do that anymore because it was the doctor’s Achilles heel. So instead, he rubs his cheek over the thick hair, silently telling Jonghyun he’s sorry.

Some nights – especially right after that dinner date – he had thought, maybe one of the reason he reprimands Minho’s idea is just because he still has tiny hope that Jonghyun and him might had another chance in the future.

“From time to time, I was thinking that the more day passed, we’re closer to the image of friends with benefit.”

“Friends with benefit? Tsk,” Jonghyun slapped his forearm, “The only benefit I got from you is you’re the only perfect nanny for Roo when I’m away.”

“Those cups of coffee every single time you stopped by my shop?”

“Pfft. How stingy. I’m leaving.”

“Heartless.”

Jonghyun didn’t say anything more and returned inside to gather his things and called Roo. He desperately needs some hot shower. Somewhere inside him, he was expecting Jinki offering him to stay the night knowing how caring the man and the fact Jinki knows he bolted to the other’s apartment right away after landed.  

When Jinki handed him the leash, that hope vanished in second.

“What if later I really considered this person? Or any other person collided with me on the future?”

Jonghyun smiled, he looks tired, but very sincere, “Then good.”

“Because I’m not gonna bother you anymore?”

“No. Because you’ll have someone to share the happiness with.”

***

cross-posted in my AFF