#just need to ramble and expunge my thoughts

[lordsardine]

.

[irregularmelody]

This post is a lowkey venting one (albeit vague, you won't have any context), me rambling about a situation that happened IRL. Feel free to skip.

…I didn't exactly understand but I got the gist of it. I'm not stupid.

I feel like something just shattered inside me. So that's why I didn't receive any approaching from them before I got expunged from the deceased bird app. And here I was, waiting. Waiting like a fool.

It shouldn't affect me as much, I barely knew them really but… Fuck, that day. It was one of the best days of my life. I finally found someone who was on the same page as me and now, here I am, all alone again. I can't even talk about that subject. I don't know what happened and I won't pry into it but it hurts. It hurts and I cannot deny it.

Perhaps they never thought of me as I did of them. No, it wasn't idolization or anything of sorts. It was meeting someone who acknowledged the world the same way you did, a missing piece to this incomprehensible puzzle, a ginger flame in the eternal darkness. It was fondness. And before the worst is assumed, no, not in a creepy way. It leaned more in the platonic side. A friendship. It's not everyday I meet people nor talk to them but I smiled more than I ever did in my entire life on that day. I was honored to be recognized by them.

Only now do I encounter this information. I don't know what to feel other than heartbreak, sorrow. Maybe I am being overdramatic, maybe I am overreacting but it felt like I was punched in the gut. It has nothing to do with me, it really doesn't and I recognize that. But, ugh. The bitter taste won't leave even at the sight of acknowledgement.

It's not my fault, it's not theirs. None of us has control over this situation. Things come and things go. I'm just scared of change and feel like I am left behind. No matter how I claim otherwise, that's me being human, I suppose. I can't help it.

People don't owe me anything and I don't expect them to do so and I always do everything to not let myself fall off. Then why this time I let indulgence take over me? Because someone extended their hand to me? Because I thought someone's circumstances were similar to mine, I let down my guard like an idiot. I do not need anyone to be on the same frequency as me but I hoped on it, nonetheless. I should've known better.

This isn't the end of the world, I am aware. It will pass and soon, it's going to be a breeze in the air. Guess I am disappointed – it's a harsh word but there is nothing in the English lexicon that will do justice to what I feel – but I have to work on this sentiment, in this messy relationship on how I view people who dare to interact with me and, if I'm feeling courageous, interact back.

I was planning on throwing away my philosophy ever since, however, it is unfeasible. It's what protects me and I was idiotic to ever let go of it in the first place.

I would talk more but this should suffice. I don't want to expose my inner troubles to the world like this. I hate feeling vulnerable.

[cantfixyou]

🔭  YES YES YES

stargazing meme | always accepting ! | from @inkmchine

it's the middle of the night, and they're both awake. it's not shocking, really, considering the two of them are who they are - charlie's brain just never turns off, doesn't ever get quiet enough to let her rest, and bendy, well, she's pretty sure he doesn't physically need sleep. that's what makes this so PERFECT, though. she's wide awake, doesn't even need any energy drinks to keep her up, and right next to her, still just about hip-height, is her little devil darling, listening to her talk about the stars. and he's just been... letting her, rambling and expunging and going on and on and on about constellations and the night sky. just like her dad did with her when she was young. and just in front of them - a telescope. clean silver and black accents, something she brought along with her on the last five years, careful to keep it safe. and it's finally getting a little bit of use, out here in the dead of night, in all this darkness. she picked the darkest place she could, to hopefully show him something good.

" alright, and so, jupiter - that's why it's my favorite planet ! " she's done talking, trying to round herself out, laughing at the end of her sentence about it, shrugging like she hadn't just talked for SEVERAL minutes about the planet and how cool she thought it was. it's very unlike her, to be so soft and so casual, so HUMAN. " did you wanna see ? " is what she says next, so excited about the possibility of getting to show her friend space, even if it would end up blurry and out-of-focus due to distance and lightwash. " i can hold you up to it. c'mere. " immediate, without a second thought, she's crouching, arms open, ready to embrace him, pick him up, give him THE UNIVERSE, like she always wanted to.

[sxdmoonchxld]

Tell Me U Luv Me| MYG

Summary :  You should have stopped this a long time ago. Hell it wasn't even supposed to begin. But now it's too late no matter how hard you try you always go back to him. And now he wants you to tell him the feelings you've been hiding...the feelings you weren't supposed to have.

Genre: smut, smidge of angst, fluff if you cross your eyes and read it upside down

Theme: Infidelity

4k words

Warnings: Rough Sex, Oral Sex, Fingerfucking, Vaginal Fingering, Vaginal Sex, Cunnilingus, Begging, Multiple Orgasms, Fuckbuddies, Bad Dirty Talk

a/n: i use to be lizardsocial, so if this seems familiar that's why.

———————————————————————

You stood outside the cracked door to his room shaking as frenetic nerves fired through the synapses of your brain. The cold draft flowing from the inky darkness escaping the room assaulted the warmth of your skin with coolness. Galvanizing waves of charged currents rushed through your bones, blunt teeth worried the inside of your lip as sizzling bubbles of anxiety, and zealous anticipation boiled in the pit of your gut.

"Are you going to just stand out there the whole night? " His voice, sonorous and smooth akin to dripping molasses reverberated softly through the quiet hallway. 

His words mixed to the distorted pulsing of the blood in your veins. Flowed so heavenly to the crashing drumline beat of your heart resonating violently in your ears. You glanced down focused on the jittery motions of your hands. Remorse and guilt waged in the jumbled mayhem of your thoughts. For a spilt second. Oh such a painful second the image of your original lover manifested itself through your cloud of ignominy. This was wrong, the truth apparent. It didn't take a genius to deduce how inequitable and sickening it is. He didn't deserve this cold dose of adultery and deceit you served him with a cum smeared smile.

But you are weak.

There were several countless failed tries, where you sought to stay away. To purify yourself of his narcotic magnetism, to expunge all late-night escapades unraveling when the moon kisses the sky. Altering to omitted memories to never resurface in the sunlit horizon. Many times there a been that expected moment of reasoning. Albeit choosing to strike post-coital when you’ve been belatedly freed from the smog of arousal. Momentarily sated with the pulsating of your cum filled cunt. It’s usually then, only then you find yourself with the urge - the need to flee. 

To be spooned in the warming embrace of your loving, naive boyfriend. To shield you from the freezing chills of your sins, and help sooth the pain as you reflect on your harrowing actions. Pathetically the shame, pain and regret are wistfully short-lived emotions, forgotten like an old childhood toy. Not soon after, in their place the yearning begins. Boiling at odd hours in the night, symptoms of withdrawal surfacing, devising you desperate.

Oh so fervent

Aching - desirous for your next moment with him.

He is slick and cunning like a snake. Coiled in captivating colors, poisonous, yet so enticing. He was no good for you, it was no secret. But when it all bubbled down to a concentrated thought. You were like a drug fiend, addicted to the empirical taste of his angel dust. Caught deep in the sweet down spiraling remedy that was Min Yoongi. He was the proverbial forbidden fruit and the serpent mix into one deadly package. 

Not much coaxing was needed to take a bite. His tempting words and intoxicating presence was just enough to seal your fate. So with unsteady sock laden feet, your body propelled toward the dimmed room. The creator of your greed and secret ruler of your body waiting just beyond the door.

“I didn't think you were coming."

How funny. In a pathetic way that is. He didn't think you were going to come? Where could he possibly get that idea from? Admittedly it's been a while since the last encounter with busy and conflicting scheduling keeping you apart. Though not once have you missed that hypnotizing tune that always led you to him. Not once have you denied him a chance to ravage a body that was never his from the beginning.

“Did you finally get him to fall asleep?”Yoongi mused, the bed creaking lightly as he rose from lying down. You watched as he began walking towards you with a steady gait. The lamp on his nightstand casting a shadow to hide the right side of his face. Shivering you nodded, a small shaky smile of fondness playing on your lips as you reminisced your boyfriend's excitement over their new album.

"Good. You know how restless Namjoon gets when we have new material on the way." Spoken like a man who knew his best friend, his fucking brother. Yoongi was right though, it took time and patience to soothe a riled Namjoon. 

Listening to hours of animated rambling, chatted amid eye-watering yawns and repetitive strokes through chemically damaged, yet soft and lush strands of hair. Though once his burning enthusiasm trickled down to a burnt-out wick, he was dead to the world.

"Yeah. I know." You responded with stifling discomfiture, a wave of salty transgression washing on the sandy banks in your chest. It was an unspoken rule. Namjoon was not to be mentioned in the immoral extent of you and Yoongi. Not to be slandered and tainted with the actions that would inevitably condemn you to hell. Now wasn't the time to be thinking about him while in this place, in this position; in this context. It served no relief. Only proving to be a conduit of neglected emotions that would be mulled over in the future. 

You flinched at chilled forearms enclosing around your waist. The thin silk material of your nightgown, ineffectively blocking the cold press of his fingertips against the lower portion of skin on your back. Yoongi habitually kept it cold in his room. He joked claiming he liked the way your nipples hardened to stiff little nubs when they met the air. Yet he knew the biting element of his room did naught to rouse your body. It was him, simply him.

"I've missed you," he spoke soft and sweetly with cool lips resting patiently below your ear. His heated breath a spreading raised goosebumps to the surface of the skin on your neck. Pulling back to glance at him, you internally gasped. The verve burning in his eyes as he stared at you unwaveringly, was startlingly surprising. The passion swirling in his chocolate orbs were strange but not unfamiliar. Still, they held his desire and lust, but there was something else mixed in that was unknown, and didn't belong there. It made your heart speed up and palpitate uncomfortably beneath your ribs.

Scowling, your eyes dropped at his words and your own foolish flare of emotions. Of course he missed you, but not in the same way you missed him.

"You just missed my pussy Yoongi," you said unfiltered because it was true and despite knowing that truth, you hated the way your heart pained with a tinge of sadness.

‘No! Feelings weren't to be caught’, you scolded yourself mentally. It was unfortunate enough that you were already addicted to the sex with him. A weakness that you were failingly to recover from, a flaw Yoongi exploited with sick joy. The extent of this relationship carried no purpose beyond a way to release the sexual tension. 

Temporarily rectified by secretive fucking behind his best friend and your boyfriend, Namjoon's back. Any feelings could and would utterly ruin you, except in the recess of your mind, you knew it was too late. The opening for evacuating slipped through your fingers the moment you opened your legs for him.

"It's okay because I've missed your cock." You tried cooing seductively, the partial lie trailing with the hand maneuvering between your frames as you lightly palm him through his sweatpants. An exciting jolt and rush of arousal raced down your spine at the discovery of his cock already at half-mast. Yoongi hummed appreciatively at the feeling of the palm of your hand rubbing slow circles on his clothed member.

"Hmm, are you sure that's all you miss?" he asked his hands languidly stroking your waist.

"I can assure you, your tight little pussy isn't all that I missed from you." His eyes burned into you like he was capable of seeing the hidden parts of your soul. Jarred, your palming slowed down to a stop. Your hands falling limply to your sides and brow bone turning down into a perplexed frown.

"Y-Yoongi, what are you talking about?" You tried pulling away from his hold, exceedingly confused to the implication behind his words. That out of place, foreign emotion whirling deeper, burning brighter in his eyes. 

This wasn't like Yoongi, in fact, it was unnervingly out of character. He wasn't one for teasing or insignificant banter. Honestly, you were surprised you were still on your feet and clothed. If this were like any another of your previous encounters, you would already be on your back. Legs lewdly spread, your gushing pussy filled to the brim, trapped in the clutches of primal fulfillment.

"W-what are you talking a-about." He mocked, tongue sucking his teeth.

"Don't try and deny it. I see right through you. In you."

Enthralled, Yoongi pushing you towards his bed didn't register in your muddled brain until the plush softness of his bedspread cradled your spine. You flinches as hands slammed down beside you caging your head in among extended elbows and bent knees straddled over trembling thighs. 

Yoongi drew his head down to your neck and like a bitch in heat, your neck craned effortlessly. Lips parting for the escape of an airy whine at his warm lips on your skin. The next Picasso in the making he nipped at the column of your neck, sucking your skin with differing pressure, painting the bare canvas with blotches of cherry and mulberry.

Another big no-no.

"Y-you can't see a-anything, because t-there is nothing t-to s-see." you lied again, stuttering terribly in between breathless pants. Yoongi chuckled, you could feel his leer against your skin.

"I can feel it-," he said with a tender lick to the blemishes littering your neck. His head moved down your chest, irritatingly feather-light pecks left by a brush of his lips. His mouth coming to rest over the swell of your breast where your heart pounded furiously below his lips. "-the way your heart beats for me."

A large hand abandoned its post beside your head, cupping a breast wrapped in delicate silk. Gently he massaged the soft tissue, alternating amidst firm and gently caresses. The meat of your breast spilling between clenching fingers. You arched your chest further into his hands, fluctuations of venereal relief rippled from his touch, your throat fluttering out moans. Warm wetness engulfed your other unused breast. Helpless you keened lustily and flagrantly, as flat teeth nipped at the hardened nub poking through the material of your gown. 

Another lusty moan rumbled from your throat as a thick tongue began laving around the bud to soothe the sting of his bite. Your nipple stiffened further the cold air hitting the wet splotch, as Yoongi detached from the fabric encased teat. With seductive chocolate feline-like eyes scorching with ardor. His gaze lingered to your exposed thighs and the bunched up bundle of cloth resting on the apex of your legs.

Your heart throbbed in a frenzy when you noticed the focus of his gaze. Was he actually thinking about eating you out? As long as this affair has been occurring, never did he perform the act, or hint at wanting to. Judging by the cockiness of his rap lyrics, its apparent he is confident in his skills. 

There was usually little to no foreplay, with your pussy easily dripping like the cock slut it has proven to be. Not much needed to be done to have you soaking for Yoongi. A couple of rough fingering thrusts with stomach coiling pressure against your g-spot and you were ready to meet him raw and ready.

A lecherous leer quirked the corner of his lips, he trained his eyes on you as he shifted down your body, his stomach now flat against the bed. You yelped when frigid fingertips seized the flesh of your thighs yanking you closer to his face. The rest of your nightgown rising up to rest in a crumpled heap underneath your breast. He snickered condescendingly at the exposure of the slick wetness coating the center of your panties. 

Unfazed, thick fingers pressed into your dampness, collecting more of your arousal in the seat of your panties. You always got so wet for him, copious fluid dribbling to catch between your ass cheeks, your cunt pulsating wildly in anticipation, eager for his next move. With no hesitation, Yoongi pushed his nose into your pussy, the tip nudged against your covered clit, shamelessly breathing in your fragrance deeply.

"I can even smell it." Another deep inhale through his nose and a hot exhale through his mouth.

“So sweet.”

He pushed your panties to the side, a trail of sticky slick following its wet departure.

"I bet I could even taste it. How much you missed me."

You whimpered, your hips shoving up in silent desperation. You wanted, no needed Yoongi to give you more. You weren't accustomed to being teased, never having to beg. Yoongi always delivered with hip bruising, backbreaking, unrestrained strokes, his cock splitting your walls in rapid succession. That was what you were accustomed too. It was what you thought he wanted, the foundation of this liaison, fast and rough fucks. This time something was off. Things were changing, his intentions shifting, and you were scared, deathly frightened. 

That even an ounce of his true affection, would overpower you. The taking over of your being complete, the tipping point of your inevitable overdose. An abrupt bloom of pleasure unfurled in your lower gut as Yoongi spread your pussy lips lewdly. The thumb of his hand hooked deep within your ribbed walls, your cunt clenched tightly around the thick digit. The stark temperature difference of his thumb and the torrid heat of his ascending tongue drew a high- pitched yelp from your throat. Searing energy blossomed through your core as the tip of his tongue flicked off your fattened clit at his first swipe. Brazen and amplified he sucked on his pink muscled appendage mouth parting loudly with a pop.

"You taste delicious, sweet like I said," he complimented before burying his face in your pussy. His thick tongue squirmed within your core joining his thumb, as it shoved as deep as it could reach before it started flicking out in an amalgam of movements liquifying your insides. You cried out helplessly throwing your head back against the mattress, your hips angled high pressed against his face to him feed more of your cunt.

"Tell me I’m better," He spoke around mouthfuls of your center. You whined, his words cutting through the buzzing vibrations in your ears. He was better than Namjoon, on a different spectrum. It was evident in how your body sang for him, how your hips ground helplessly on the twisting muscle inured so fathomlessly in your cunt. But you couldn't say it, you wouldn't dare say it out loud even though the words burned the base of your throat. That was too close in crossing forbidden territory.

"Tell me how much you missed me." His tongue drew your clit in his mouth, plush lips sucking the corded nub.

"No!" You denied him for the first time.

You just couldn't say those words no matter how much your vocals cords seized to shout the words Yoongi’s request. A muffled chuckle spilled out of him at your surprising defiance. He was calm in his movements, his thumb dragging along your walls to shift to press up against your g-spot, applying pressure with each outward stroke. His gaze was heated, staring at you over the mound of your cunt, balmy puffs of air fanning over your jumping clit as he spoke.

"Tell me how much you missed this. Us. How right this feels."

"Tell me how much better I am than him-" he demanded again. "-can he make your body sing like I can?"

"Y-Yoongi," you gasped harshly sweat permeated on your skin. Descending over the valley of your breasts in opaque pearls. You couldn't say it. Ceasing his stroking thumb, the whine bubbling in your throat was choked down by the replacement of two of his fingers. Scissoring them apart, his fingers curved on your g-spot assaulting the area with pressurized tenacity. With lips back on your clit sucking all the collected fluids down his greedy throat. Your teeth clenched together, hands fisting into the bedspread, your thighs shuddering terribly around his body.

"How much you wished, that was me fucking your pussy 5 days ago instead of him."

You gasped at his words surprise and fear mixed with lust, distorting your features into an almost comical expression. Yoongi laughed cynically.

"Didn't think I'd find out, would you kitten?"

Fucking Namjoon was more so out of guilt than some kind of vendetta against Yoongi. Namjoon was your boyfriend for fuck's sake, you couldn't go on denying him for much longer without him becoming suspicious; if he wasn't already.

"N-o, no!" Still you denied him, unwillingly to come to terms with the truth, both the latter and internally.

Toes folded in on themselves as Yoongi sped him his fingers to deep thrusting aimed directly for the spongy bundled of nerves. Your orgasm started intensified at an alarming pace, you could feel it in the way your stomach cramped. How your hips sloppily thrust toward Yoongi's face, your back arched off the bed. Soft, euphoric cries ruptured from your larynx, binding themselves onto the edge of every fleeting gaspy breath disbanding in the air. You slapped your hands over your mouth to muffle your scream, the sudden snapping ties of your pleasure, hitting you with the force of a freight train. Your upper body flailed around on the bed, unrestrained portions of your legs kicking out at the intensity of your orgasm. Your eyes pricked with tears and lungs suffocated as they were robbed of air.

Floating in post-orgasmic limbo, you vaguely registered his fingers withdrawal from your clenching cunt or the shuffling of his sweats pants down his hips or he hiking of your legs to perch against his waist. It wasn't until the fevered eagerness of his leaking cock head pressing against your quivering core, did you return from the clouds. 

Yoongi stroked the skin of your thighs with sticky tenderness, his face coming closer to yours to capture your chapped lips in a sweet kiss. You gasped in frail distress and shock, your heart constricted tightly within your chest. Stars bursted behind your eyes at the strange feeling of his lips moving against your own. Another act taboo in the relationship that was this. Yoongi seized the perfect opportunity to ease his tongue into your mouth, dancing with your own. He was tart with your flavor, mixed with his addicting treacle.

Gradually his cock split your glossy folds, breaching your cunt's hole with the tip of his cock. You cried out in his mouth, detaching your lips from his. A string of conjoined spittle landing on your cheek as you turned your head to the side. Yoongi's lips followed you, connecting your mouth once again as he began surging his cock, deep, deep, and deeper. The slow pace allowing you to feel the burning stretch, every eager throb of his cock, every engorged vein pulsing under his skin. 

Yoongi didn't give you much time to adjust as he started his leisure strokes. He barely withdrew before he was spearing you back on his cock, much deeper than before. Tearing your mouth from him again, you gasp with the stinging need of air, a forearm coming over to cover your face. The bright light of the lamp on his nightstand shining across your face suddenly a nuisance, as you greedily swallowed in the fresh air between mewling cries of pleasure.

"Does your slutty pussy squeeze him as tight as your squeezing me?" Yoongi grunted reducing his already sluggish pace, his hips rotating with each stroke.

Your head felt like it was ready to implode. You were overheating, short-circuiting, the blood in your veins boiling and curdling. Namjoon infiltrated your thoughts, his kind hardworking nature, how much he loved and adored you, but was it enough? Did you even love him anymore? Or were you stolen away by the man he considers his brother? It was all becoming too much, Yoongi's slow strokes and demanding queries were causing you to overthink. You needed him to speed up, to fuck your brains out so you wouldn't have to be pestered with your evolving thoughts.

"Yoongi, I-I need you to speed up. I want you to fuck me faster, fuck me harder please!" You begged as if your life depended on the tempo of his thrusts, and in a way it did, at least your sanity did.

"Shhh" he cooed. One of his hands abandoning its place on your lifted legs, to come and pry your arms away from your face. Your breath hitched as your blurry gaze focused in on the unbridled emotion raging in his dark eyes.

"Tell me I'm the one you want." He eased out of your body, grunting lowly as your cunt clutched desperately at his retreating cock.

"Tell me I'm the only one who owns you, who owns your heart." Again he sunk back within your depths.

"Tell me you love me and not him, and I'll fuck you until your coming on my cock."

Yoongi promised in one swift stroke buried deep within your cunt, speeding up his thrust to his usually relentless rhythm. You screamed in familiar delight, arms wrapping around his neck in a loop. Your breast crushed into his chest, fingernails embedded in his shoulder leaving raised red crescents. You could already feel your second orgasm approaching, your cunt enclosing Yoongi's cock in a vice-like grip, you never lasted long when he rammed into you like this. It was what you needed, the perfect escape to the feelings boiling in your chest. Another mind-numbing orgasm and he would follow suit, then you could leave and close this chapter of your life, the end of a book with a bittersweet ending.

"Oh, no you don't." Yoongi tsked. He knew the telltale signs of your orgasm, he ruled your body with an iron fist wrapped in a velvet glove. Reducing his strokes to that of a snail's pace, he laughed at your wail of frustration, a bead of sweat dropping off his body at the shake of his shoulders. How obtuse of you to think he was going to let you come without you telling him what he's been dying to hear from your lips the whole night, for months.

"Say it. Open that pretty mouth sweetheart and tell me what I want to hear." Yoongi cooed, his cock now surging into your depths with shallow, unfulfilling strokes.

"Yoo-ngi." You hiccuped clamping your eyes tight. The coiling tightness of your orgasm was still there, maybe if you concentrated hard enough-

"Say it! Tell me you love, how I love you!" Your eyes flew open, dilating to focus on a blurred image of Yoongi. Him? Love you? How? Why?

"Yes, I love you." He said smoothly, no hesitation, not an inkling of regret, just confidence and love glimmering in his eyes.

"Now. Tell me you love me too and don't lie." Yoongi reiterated with a rough thrust.

"I-I don-" your mouth opened and closed, a fish out of the water you were caught. You fell back on to the bed, a hand placed on your chest over the blood-filled organ crashing against your chest. Your heart captured by another, no longer could you deny it, deny him, deny yourself. So with a heavy heart...you told him. "I love you."

You didn't want to. It wasn't supposed to happen like this. A one-time thing, he...you let escalate too far. Now it was too late. The truth was out now, and all hell was about to break loose.

"Tell me again."

You strangled on a wad of spit at the sudden rough thrust, your teeth clanking together at the single motion. "I love you."

Yoongi groaned loudly, the loudest you think you've ever heard from him at your affectionate confession. His hands readjusted themselves off your thighs to better support himself as he began lifting his your legs to rest on your chest, your knees pushed into your breast. Immediately his hips set off at a fast pace, the slaps of his balls hitting your ass nearly rivaled the shout of pleasure or the wet slapping of where you were connected. 

Your hips met his with bruising contact, but you didn't care, the angle of his cock drilled at your g-spot relentlessly. Black and white dots floating in your vision, eyes rolling in the back of your head. Jumbled repeats of his name wretched themselves from your lips, you were sure the other boys in the shared apartment could hear your cries of satisfaction. Namjoon as well.

You didn't care, your love for Yoongi, the feeling of his cock in your guts, was the only thing on your mind. A couple of more thrust and your orgasm was ripped from you, your legs thrashing about in Yoongi's hold. The sweet pull of your cunt on his cock bringing forth his own release, and with one last surge of his hips, the bulbous head kissing your cervix, he spurted warm ropes of his cum straight into your womb. Breathlessly he dropped your legs from his hands, a mixed wad of your and his cum spilling out from around him. Gently he withdrew and fell onto the bed beside you, lowly he sighed in satisfaction.

"Tell me again."

You told him.

"I love you."

[skinks]

So we know there’s homophobic graffiti about Richie in the girls’ bathrooms at school. At least. It’s not much of a stretch to imagine it was elsewhere; written on paper airplanes, scratched into desks, even scrawled on his locker.

Beverly would scribble out the one in the girls’ bathrooms, I’m sure. She might even tell Ben or Eddie about it, and that would give Eddie an idea - Eddie, the walking embodiment of the totally uninformed “well actually” response. It’s not like Eddie thinks he’s that much of a smarty-pants (he gets his facts muddled sometimes, he’s not like Stan) it’s just that whenever a topic arises he feels he can contribute to, he can go a little overboard.

This is because most topics Eddie’s familiar with are the ones that stress him out, and the nervous rambling calms him down. It’s out there and expunged for the others to pick at and argue with. It’s like letting air from a balloon instead of waiting for the needle to burst it.

The point is, there’s another topic on which Eddie’s a true expert (insofar as someone can be an expert on the completely bewildering) and that topic is Richie Tozier.

So, Eddie feels this need to set the record straight. Funny choice of word, that - straight. He doesn’t - Eddie doesn’t know about that stuff, about straight and the other things that kids cough into their fists when Eddie and Richie walk to shop class together, even though they’re never even doing anything. Seems all it takes is just... existing. Getting in the way.

Eddie thought straight meant doing what Nancy Reagan says on TV, Going Straight, Just Saying No to Drugs, but then, Eddie can barely remember a day in his life he hasn’t swallowed some kinda pill. It’s hard to say no when you need ‘em. Even when you know they’re bullshit or they’re bad for you or they could get you killed in a town like Derry.

It’s hard to go straight when you like ‘em.

Eddie may need a helping hand to know bullshit when he sees it (a consequence of growing up with Richie Tozier, when bullshit and truth are tied up so close together like captives on a railway line, you forget the difference even matters that much if it’s all to make you laugh regardless) but once Eddie knows bullshit, he never forgets. These things they say about Richie and Bev and Mike and all of them, they’re bullshit, if only for how they make Richie’s shoulders jerk up to his ears like his spine broke. For how he’s always surly and cracks meaner jokes in the clubhouse afterwards, as if he thinks being worse than the bullies will make things better. It doesn’t. It’s bullshit, but Eddie’s not allowed to throw rocks in school, so.

He uncaps his pen. Not with his teeth. He’s afraid of the ink leaching poison in between his tastebuds like an oil slick through cobblestones, though the cap is still a chewed victim to Eddie’s ongoing feud with the quadratic formula. This is his second correction of the day, concealed by the lockers in the bustle of third period changeover. His first was actually in math that morning, the need presenting itself when Eddie had knocked his protractor off the edge of his desk and seen what was written on the wooden underside when he shuffled and scrunched down to retrieve it.

richie tozier is a dirty fag

He’d hunched there, tense and staring. His fingers found the hard edge of his protractor as he looked at the black little missive in the wood, nestled angrily between two gray lumps of chewed gum like a spider. Teeth marks in the gum and Eddie hadn’t even cared, because a hot spout of anger had flushed through his entire body. They didn’t know shit. They didn’t know shit. Eddie might let himself wonder in the dead of night what it means that his mother hates Richie more than all the rest and calls him dirty, like she calls Bev dirty. He leans up against the notion and hears something telling, like sitting against a wall and hearing mice scrabble secretly inside. But his anger was really at the crime of these assholes thinking they have the right to say anything at all about Richie Tozier, like they know him.

Like Eddie knows him. He’d groped around for his up-above pen and done it quickly, so hot in his chest he’d almost whimpered, almost cried. The wood gave a hollow rasp of a laugh as he scraped with his ballpoint at a funny angle, until Mr. Warwick had asked if Mr. Kaspbrak planned on joining them any time soon. Eddie emerged with his pen and protractor clutched like the angel Michael’s sword, his face red from the blood hung there, upside-down. Truth matters more, Eddie knows that better than most.

Now he braces his forearm to the cold metal of Richie’s locker, hiding his work. This is the right answer. Let them all copy if they like, once he’s done. His chin crumples and his lower lip begins trembling when he thinks of Richie’s expression when he saw this one. It was yesterday, but Mr. Gray the janitor hasn’t cleaned it off yet.

ritchie tozer has aids, it says.

He scribbles it out. Eddie’s jaw quakes remembering Richie’s face, and so he clenches his teeth, bites down like he would do to his inhaler and pretends it helps. Bite on this, Eds, Richie would say sometimes, holding the aspirator steady. Eddie pretends any of this helps, just like he pretends the stinging in his eyes is because of the jabbing stench of the marker.

Squeak, squeak. The marker, those mice again, chewing holes through Eddie’s frightened fabrications to let the truth shine through.

Richie Tozier made me laugh so hard I snorted a booger into my coke, bold on metal.

Richie Tozier eats sandwiches with no filling just butter, under a desk by the window in room MA3. They might never find it there, scratched into wood like people do to the Kissing Bridge. It makes Eddie’s chest hurt in a funny way, to imagine coming back for some school reunion to see that again, when they’re old. No track trophy or academic legacy to denote Eddie Kaspbrak’s time at Derry Middle, just one lone shout in the darkness. Beep beep motherfuckers, you let him go. Anyway, Eddie thinks maybe it’s not so bad to be defined in the end by the effect you had on those you love.

Richie Tozier’s hot, riding three small hearts on the grubby side of a second storey girls’ bathroom stall. Beverly told him about it, then laughed at something, clapped her hand to Eddie’s tense shoulder with a jolt.

It’s just to cover up the bad stuff, Ed, she said. The words don’t really matter at all.

Someone knocks past Eddie’s backpack, jostles him forward. He rests his hot forehead to his arm as he finishes things up, hot with anger, hot with pride, hot with something else like fever that wants to be as brave as Bev, as eloquent as Bill, as big-hearted as Ben and write—the truth.

He can’t. Richie Tozier made me laugh so hard I snorted a booger into my coke is still true, after all. Nobody else ever makes Eddie laugh that hard.

Further down the hall and unbeknownst to Eddie, Richie squeezes his backpack straps until his hands shake. He stumbles back to lean against the wall, and watches.

[glittercracker]

Kingkiller Crap

So, I’ve never really posted much here that involves my own thoughts. There are a number of reasons why, but whatever. I feel the need NOW to post some thoughts, and having no working independent blog (yet!) I suppose this is the place to dump them. PSA: none of this is about anime. None of this is frivolous or fun. TW for sexual abuse. You have been warned! So. I’ve been rereading the Kingkiller Chronicles. aka “Name of the Wind” and “The Wise Man’s Fear” and “That Other One That Shall Not Be Named.” This reread was, at the beginning, almost an afterthought. A way to keep my 13 yo happy on a 7 hour car ride. Except, he could not have cared less, and I got sucked back into the story (and okay, if that is how all our audiobook car rides go, meh? At least it keeps me sharp!) I raced through book one, and bought book 2 on audible with an eye to my upcoming surgery and recooperation. Book one was problematic in the places I remembered, but also as generally engaging as I remembered. And then book 2 happened, and surgery happened, and I have had weeks to lie in bed listening to this bloody interminable sequel, and I find myself lost in a morass of, “WTF was I ever THINKING?” Namely, how did I ever love this book enough to pine for the next? It’s been hard to put a finger on exactly what is making this time through book 2 both a slog and also vaguely, creepily uncomfortable, but if you’re interested, my rather stream-of-consciousness ramble of thoughts ensues. First, the male gaze that rears its head at times in book 1 predominates here. But while I don’t love the way Kvothe describes women, I also have 2 degrees in literature, and I’m beyond that being a reason not to read an otherwise engaging book. Second, Kvothe is a Gary Stu, for all of Rothfuss’s protestations to the contrary. Again, so far, so much traditional high fantasy. But while, say, Aragorn is content to just quietly be Awesome At Everything, Kvothe is a braggy little shit of a Gary Stu: the person you hated for announcing their perfect scores in that hs class you could never quite master. I could fill several pages with examples, but for some reason what really made me want to kick him in the head was not Felurian’s disbelief of his virginity (though really, jfc, REALLY?) Nope, it was the end of his time w the Ademrae (sp may be off, remember, I’m listening not reading!) when he crows about having learned the history of his sword 2 days earlier than expected. Why does this stick out? Oh, idk. Maybe bc he sucks so hard he can’t even get past the first obstacle in his practical final exam? Yet he still has to tell us how fucking awesome he is for remembering 6000 names of previous owners.

I know, I’m supposed to forgive his teenage idiocy. The internet sympathists (no pun intended!) keep telling me this. And I suppose that I would, IF this were a simple first-person narrative - but it isn’t. Let’s repeat that, and really think about it. This story is being narrated by an older and presumably wiser Kvothe who has lost everything - whose abilities have been expunged to the extent that he can’t open his own chest of Cool Stuff. He shows humility in his actions, mostly. And yet when discussing his 16 yo self, the humility evaporates, and he speaks with no kind of perspective or lens of accrued wisdom. He still compares women to instruments waiting for the “right” player (i.e. him) and defends this choice of words by saying, essentially, “You aren’t a musician, you don’t know!”

Interesting assumption for an innkeeper in a medieval-esque world. Interesting assumption if this is in fact authorial interjection, too, because I suspect the majority of this book’s audience *are* musicians to at least an extent, and I also suspect that the majority of us (yes, us - I own several beloved instruments, including a harp custom made for me as a wedding present from my husband) would not equate a human lover to even the most beloved of instruments.

But all of this is well-trodden critical ground. As far as I can tell, though, my third issue isn’t: although it’s perhaps the most glaringly tone-deaf example of all of Rothfuss’s excruciatingly tone-deaf portrayal of his world’s women. Namely, the two girls kidnapped and gang-raped by the fake Ruh.

Almost all of the criticism I’ve read on this section of TWMF concentrates on Kvothe’s treatment of the girls’ abusers. What’s interesting is that no one ever seems to write about Kvothe’s treatment of the girls themselves. Yes, he treats them kindly. He tends their wounds, he feeds them, he tries (and succeeds, of course) to draw Ellie out of her shocked stupor. 

Yet what he never once does, from the moment he takes control of the situation, is ask their opinions on any of this, including what their next step should be. He just decides to bring them back to their families - families who, in this type of society, might well disown them for being “ruined”. And the girls themselves, namely the intelligent and savvy Krin, seem to go blindly along with what he says. Why? Would Krin at least not question this, or object to his making decisions for her, when a group of men had so recently and brutally taken away all of her agency? Would she not question whether being brought back to her family is the best thing for the catatonic Ellie?

Okay, apparently not. So they return to their apparently very forgiving town. Kvothe stands up for the girls against the village shithead: thank you, Kvothe, bc I’m sure Krin could not have said those words herself. He assures the reader that they are with people who will love and care for them despite what has happened to them: thank you, Kvothe, though it’s stretching my credulity a bit that you would assume that no one will take issue with their deflowering. But then he “gifts” the girls the spoils of his slaughter: the horses, the valuables, the wagons. And I was about to give him a (grudging) pass for being decent about this, EXCEPT: he goes on to say that these goods are meant for the girls’ dowries. Specifically, to make them worth enough financially for potential husbands to overlook their loss of virginity. He even tells Krin not to settle for a less-than-lucrative marriage.

And suddenly, I was outraged. Why? Because a man who had witnessed the full extend of these women’s abuse brought them back to a backwater town believing that he was being magnanimous both in doing so, and in giving up whatever share he might have taken of the spoils of the debacle to make them financially lucrative marriage prospects. Because he never asked these traumatized girls if they might rather cut and run with the money than use it to make some man overlook their abuse in order to make them his property. He never even questions the idea that they will be grateful to submit to marriage contracts that will no doubt require them to have sex with their husbands, even though these women have been abused to the extent that they cannot sit a horse for *two days* after being rescued. And the worst part is that 20-something frame-story Kvothe doesn’t question this either; he just goes on to gloat about people singing songs about his daring rescue. Maybe I was just ready for a straw to break my benefit of the doubt. Or maybe this really is as outrageous as it feels. Either way, I can’t help being angry at Rothfuss. As a writer, I am very well aware that character and author are not the same thing; that authorial intent is not the same as authorial beliefs. But there are moments in some books when I have to wonder if that line is blurring, and this is one of them. Kvothe has literally JUST left a female-dominated country full of independent women happily doing their own thing. He has given these girls the means to find themselves a situation that will never require them to be beholden to a man again - even houses ffs, in the shape of those 2 wagons, should they want them. There are so many options beyond marriage: I can’t, for instance, think of a medieval society that didn’t have its version of a convent. Or, for Krin at least, why not the University? For that matter, why not marry her himself, and then set her free to do as she likes under the awning of a respectable marriage? 

Instead he returns them to their fathers, and likewise gives their fathers the means to marry them off with no argument. Who, after all, holds the reins of the horses at the end? Why does Kvothe assume that these families will actually use the wealth even in the dubious way that he recommends?

And in this, I think, I am justified in giving Rothfuss the stink-eye. This is one more instance for Kvothe to play the hero with no real attention given to the consequences. Kvothe himself, I think, would be appalled. He has suffered so much deprivation in his life, so often been marginalized, scapegoated, powerless, how on earth could he so easily consign others to that fate? How could he think, loving Denna as he does, having heard her words to the beaten girl in Severin, that buying these girls husbands who will “overlook” their abuse for the sake of wealth is anything but a wretched life sentence for them?

Sigh. There was a time when I desperate awaited book three. Now, given the other women’s lives at stake in this series, I’m not so sure I want to know.

[shineonmalcolmbright]

Shine On, Bright: Chapter Thirty-One

Table of Contents

Present

Colette’s still upset over Malcolm. Both the thoughts in her head and her words out loud match up. “Your boy’s been working my case this entire time?!” She has every right to be upset, too. Just Gil isn’t sure how to approach such anger while dealing with other issues--intuitions--at hand. Colette is looking all around shouting, “Where is Bright?”

The problem with the shining is always knowing when something isn’t right. Dani stands behind Colette looking from her to Gil as Colette continues to ask. “Where is Bright? WHERE IS HE?”

Truth is. . .none of them know. The way Dani’s staring at Gil, she makes it clear she realizes this is an absolute fact. Nobody knows where in the world is Malcolm Bright. Doesn’t take a mind reader to see that.

Yet Gil admits the truth out loud. The way Colette’s staring him down suggests she already knows. Some part of Gil is sure because she has inklings of the shining. Something she probably noticed or never really cared about. She knew it was a gift, but not the sort of gift. Gil huffs. “We. . .don’t know. . .”

Dani and JT are staring at him trying to stay as stoic as possible. To them, what’s their to fear? Malcolm Bright’s the kind of person you say no to and he yells back yes and does precisely what he shouldn’t.

Those three words pretty much shatter the moment and while there’s some distance between them and he has no idea where in the world Malcolm is, he’ll figure it out, he’s always been able to figure it out. Even when the moment seems too dark to make light of.

Come on, Bright. . .BRIGHT. . .! Dani, JT, and Colette are all staring at Gil as some minor fury builds up. Hard to say at what though. Is Malcolm at fault for just running off like that? Is it his fault for not being able to pinpoint Malcolm? Is it both or something else altogether? “I’ll-I’ll get a hold of him, just give me a moment.”

BRIGHT!

Malcolm’s shuffling his feet away from the world upstairs at the Watkins household. Matilda is humming along to some Christmas carol Malcolm can’t quite make out. There’s too much energy brimming inside of him. Too much to analyze and too much to think about and then his phone starts to buzz as he scoots back into the little dining room area. He’s looking at it to see Gil’s calling him but he rejects the call.

“No phones at the table, Mr. Man,” Matilda calls him out in such a sing-song way.

There's no comfort in that.

Malcolm pauses as he tucks his phone away. Owen is still sitting at the table no longer interested in the so-called meal Matilda prepared for them. Malcolm offers up his best smile the sort that probably screams, I hope they like me, whenever meeting parental units. He slowly sits back down unsure of what the next step should be. This would be a lot easier if he could sense more about Matilda instead she’s only darkness.

Matilda carries on letting Malcolm sit. She returns to her rambling, which is good, has to be good. “Now, John, he was a quiet boy. Very observant. Watchful.” There’s immense pride in this last word. She continues talking, “He spent hours in the garage with Benjamin.”

Only it’s hard to pay attention when your heart is beating too fast. Malcolm feels the iciness of anxiety expunges all possible thought from his mind. He’s reaching for a fork but there’s blood pooled up across the table. Even if they sat around eating rare steaks, it wouldn’t look this way. The blood’s almost black and on plastic covering it. Malcolm follows the trail only to find Owen leaning to the side, he’s all crooked in his seat. Of course, he’s not eating with his throat slit. He’s trying to speak, but there’s no more words coming out.

Just Matilda’s words fill the moment with Christmas carols serving as a backdrop. It’s easy to miss them, it’s easy to miss what she’s saying. Owen’s thoughts are fractured light. There’s broken memories and warnings unable to from as they spark and spark and spark in his mind.

“He was interested in the way things worked.”

Malcolm blurts, “John’s here.”

“JOHNNIE IS HOME?” Matilda chimes forgetting to continue with her dribbling words on whatever topic she rambled on about. Matilda hops from her seat. Her mind is like a cavern, you’re unsure to how deep it could go or what’s really down there. Something is. Something dangerous. Malcolm’s stuck watching Owen fade with his fracturing lights. “Just in time for pie!”

Malcolm snaps his attention back to Matilda. He’s still there at the table. He’s still next to Owen who’s dying. Bloods pooling across the table and Matilda’s full of joy. That much is clear. Nobody else tries to reach out to him. The doors not too far from where he sits, he can run out there but something about Matilda’s rambling captures his attention. Holds it more than the chance of escape. Garage.

The fracture lights go dark. Owen falls from his seat and Malcolm finds himself speaking up again. Close to some sobs. He didn’t like the man but that doesn’t mean he wants him to die. “No. . .No. . .!” Malcolm falls from his seat as well. His knees pop as they strike the ground and he’s grabbing onto Owen. “No. . .No. . .”

Matilda’s bouncing around, she lifts her chin and continues with her shouting. The sing-song nature of it underlies all of her words. “Jooohn, my dear! You forgot one.”

Blood’s smearing across Malcolm’s hands as he struggles to remind himself, it’s too late for Owen. He can’t stop the bleeding, the bleeding’s going to stop on its own now that he’s dead and gone. He’s barely looking at Matilda and registering her words. She knows. She knows. She knows. This isn’t-This isn’t. . .This isn’t what?

Even with Owen still dead and gone, Malcolm attempts to save his life. Anxiety is rearing its ugly head, his eyes bulge as he takes in the silence of Owen. With one of the napkins, he presses it into Owen’s neck like that’ll help, that’ll help save the dead. Some deep back thought laments, Gil’s going to be so mad. Not mad about Owen. Not made about ignoring his calls. But so mad at him for being-for being-for being so. . .

The napkin soaks up so much blood so fast. It’s everywhere really and Malcolm’s turning feeling his own anger tremble inside of him. His hands are shaking as he goes to face Matilda. Not just his hands. The forks and food left on the table tremble as well as ice in Matilda’s drink strikes one another creating a unique ringing sound.

“You-You knew! You called him!” You only have yourself to blame, a separate thought laments because it’s true, it’s true. He has only himself to blame for Owen’s death and Gil’s fury and now for his. . . Matilda snaps her full attention to Malcolm while he loses touch with Owen. Some of the Jesuses on the walls start to tremble as well. He’s even causing this world to quake in fear, but it’s quaking, it’s simmering, it’s about to splinter because of his own fear. “Where is he? Where is John?!”

“MY JOHNNIE! MY JOHNNIE TAKES OUT THE TRASH!”

Malcolm stays crouching there afraid to move because maybe he’ll cause something to physically break then there’s a bump outside. Some movement as well. Matilda quiets down and he spots a shadow moving across the window. Whoever it is--John--is out back. Garage. It gets Malcolm off the floor, he’s slowly rising up as everything around him shakes. A Jesus paint does crash to the floor. His doing. Nobody else's. The glass breaks.

“HERE JOHNNIE!” Matilda’s screaming so loud and Malcolm’s left half risen and spotting the gun Owen carried. He’d been proud (maybe that’s the wrong word) about it, too, like it’d save their lives. Malcolm takes it and knows what he needs to do. Run. Garage. “HE’S IN HERE! JOHN! HE’S IN HERE!”

Time to try. . .something. . .Malcolm goes to chase after a shadow as Matilda spits out more words. “He’s gonna get you.” She’s hissing and dangerous but doesn’t lash out. Doesn’t need to because John Watkins is.

Malcolm’s got a gun, he has a gun to protect himself as he runs to the door, slows down as he exits the house. Somewhere down the street normalcy continues. There’s Christmas lights strung along so many yards like the sky threw up on them, spewing stars out onto the ground. Somebody plays music loud and maybe they’re even outside even though it’s chilly. He can clearly hear their voices and laughter chatter. Music ties them closer together with such promise of holiday cheer and there’s a dead man so close to all of them.

God rest ye merry gentlemen. Let nothing you dismay.

The door almost hits Malcolm on the way out.

He holds up the weapon.

He tries to swallow some potential bravery, but his mouth is all dry.

Energy thrums through him. The building up of anxiety, stress, fear, and a whole lot of other emotions. All while people join in their casual Christmas carols and laughter.

Remember Christ our Savior was born on Christmas day.

Somewhere out there, Gil’s still shouting for his attention like if he yells Bright even louder and louder Malcolm’ll hear him and respond. Like Malcolm isn’t responding. Another narrative is caught on the wind. All a sudden. It’s as if everybody Malcolm’s ever loved is fighting for brain space as he tries his best to focus, focus, focus on his present. Jessica’s out there thinking, Direct the narrative. And he wants her to know, he’s trying but he needs to focus as he approaches the garage that’s out back. Matilda’s inside and she’s laughing, there’s nothing for her to even fear. Ainsley is in shock, or at least, she will be, she just doesn’t know it yet.

Malcolm attempts to use the music as control. To save us from Satan’s pow’r.

But Satan has nothing to do about it. Malcolm almost loses his own breathing as he comes closer and closer. Somehow hearing Jessica louder than loud in his head as his mother pleads with some people. As you may know my husband. . . Louder than even Gil who hasn’t quite yet acted upon the fact he can’t get through to Malcolm.

. . .psychiatric hospital for killing twenty-three people, but I believe there were more. . .

Malcolm manages to inhale deeply, he can’t count the seconds or countdown to know he can accomplish something. He’s rounding a corner keeping his weapon trained and ready to fire, for protection.

Fear not then, said the Angel. Let nothing you affright. . .

Malcolm’s rounding to the back of this garage finding a door open. There’s some fallen tables out there. He looks at the ajar door almost falling out of time and back to the Overlook where Room 217 waited, it was always waiting for him. Behind him glass shatters and car alarms start blaring. Little garden figurines tumble over and he’s still present though, he’s still present, he’s still present and he’s staring at that open door.

Ainsley’s out there muttering to her own self not realizing how loud her own thoughts are. Maybe it’s just they’re all bound together and bound to another person, a shadow in their lives. You’ve got to be kidding. . .

Through some broken lawn ornaments, Malcolm walks closer and closer to that open door.

“J-J-John?”

If they met face-to-face, would he recognize the man as somebody he used to know? For somebody who’s haunted by so many memories, there’s so many he forgets. They’re drowned photographs, some of which are all because his own father is to blame.

“I-I know you’re here.”

It’s so dark inside the little garage out back, it’s looking fairly empty. Malcolm does his best to stay on edge, to stay present, he won’t fall out of time, and he won’t try and be with others. Instead, he’s here and now and he’ll stay here and now until Gil arrives to be angry at his mistakes of the night.

Something inside quakes, but so do Malcolm’s hands. He doesn’t spot anybody in there and almost lowers his weapon. But the quaking increases and a shadow burst forth and straight into him. John. . . Not that Malcolm can tell or has time to tell.

Malcolm's punched in the stomach and knocked off his feet.

The ground comes up so fast and it’s so cold. Not Overlook Hotel cold. But doesn’t matter, it still hurts.

It really hurts.

Malcolm chokes on a half sob-half grunt. Trying to bite back pain, Malcolm’s on the ground still and he’s-he’s-he’s feeling too lost to-to do. . .

He rolls his head to the side realizing John’s there, he kneels down from the shadows and a light in hand. Already John’s grumbling, “We have to stop meeting like this.”

He repositions his flashlight letting Malcolm get a better look. Drowned photographs all over again. Malcolm raises his head a bit trying to get too good of a look at John Watkins because he knows him, he knows that face, he knows him.

“Remember me?” John chuckles.

Malcolm’s looking at him, the wind’s still knocked out of him. He manages a whisper, a threat of sorts, “They’ll find you.” It’d be easy, too, he’d just need to reach Gil. . .

G. . .

John Watkins grabs Malcolm by the collar of his shirt and partially hoists him off the ground. Any intended thoughts stall. Malcolm stares at the man still recollecting some of a past life he forgot. Maybe memories don’t haunt him enough. John’s laughing at Malcolm’s come back, shaking his head, his grip tightens on Malcolm’s collar as if he’s going to strangle him.

“They’ll never find us where we’re going.”

_______________________

Emptiness.

Malcolm gawks at John with only a few clear words and by a few it’s two and those two are us and we’re.

Before he could ever manage any other life-saving technique, John punches him in the face. And just like that. . .Malcolm’s gone again, he’s falling back, and he’s not falling even out of time. He’s just. . .unconscious and a crumpled mess on the floor of the garage. John takes him by the ankles and tugs at Malcolm then drags him straight out of there to follow through with his own threat, They’ll never find us where we’re going.

###

Dani’s watching not much outside her car window. They’ve been driving around for how long now? Her heart feels a little swollen as bad thoughts keep chirping inside her mind. Worst-case scenarios all honing in on where in the world Malcolm Bright is. She tries once again to reach his cell. There’s a secret hope that they’ll laugh later about all the missed calls.

Her call goes to voicemail again and she flips her phone screen down on her leg so she can’t see it. Gil’s driving. The siren’s wailing letting people know there’s an emergency. Most people with emergencies know where to go.

“Bight’s still not picking up,” Dani whispers.

Gil’s trying not to look at her because 1. He’s driving and 2. He knows Malcolm’s not going to pick up. It’s as if the kid tumbled into a black hole. There once was Malcolm, a little blip of brightness out there he could find and now he’s just gone.

“I have a bad feeling about this,” Gil mutters and he drives a little faster. They’re still directionless, but it eases his anxiety. Dani’s, too. The faster they go means they can keep on keeping on as soon as they figure out his whereabouts and speed to the rescue.

It wouldn’t be the first time Gil rushed in to save Malcolm, but that time, he heard Malcolm cry for help and he knew right where to find him. It was easy.

The Overlook.

###

Leave it to Malcolm to show up when he’s needed. All night long, Ainsley’s called Malcolm or text Malcolm only to come up with nothing. Leaving her alone to take long, long sips of wine and so does Jessica as they glare at one another at the dining table. It’s as if they’re in a drinking contest, see who could drink who under the table. But it’s more than that. There’s spite threading through the air around them and an empty seat for Malcolm. He’s not there when Ainsley needs him and Jessica needs him. Both of them need him to argue their very valid points. Looks like Christmas is going to be a silent night.

[cryxmercy]

Dum Spiro Spero

When: apx 4 hours after this. Where: White Crest Morgue Who: @kadavernagh, @arthurjdrake, and Mercy 

Arthur meets Regan at the the morgue to identify Mercy’s body after the ‘incident’ at Dark Score Lake. Things go about as well as the rest of the night did. Which means exactly what you think it means.   

TW: character death, vomit, hospitals, drowning, description of bodies/autopsies 

This was one of Regan’s least favorite parts of the job -- possibly tied with expert testimony in a courtroom full of people. Confirming the identity of decedents. Ideally, each would receive identification via a driver’s license, prescription medication bottle, or someone coming in to confirm, in addition to biological confirmation through dental records or implant numbers. At least this time, she had a starting point and knew exactly who to bring in. Mercy Smith’s body was laid out behind the glass window of the viewing room, all but her head obscured. There was rarely any reason to expose next of kin to anything below that. The decedent’s phone has several missed calls from Arthur Drake, and there had even been an envelope with his name on it in her car. Regan guided Arthur through the long hallway of the morgue, wishing she could have been seeing him again under better circumstances; she’d come to like and appreciate him, even though they didn’t know each other well. “I’m really sorry to bring you in here,” she said, meeting his eyes with sympathy, “I know the two of you were close, and I’m here to help however I can.” She opened the door to the viewing room and walked in after Arthur, her chest tight with nerves. It was never easy being face to face with a deceased loved one, even behind a sheet of glass, and even in the clinical setting of the morgue. Regan stayed silent, waiting for Arthur to speak.

To exist even briefly in a place of apparent death while alive and healthy seemed to go against every natural wish a person might have. Life and death were a facet of existence that Arthur could intimately recognise and understand. The process wasn’t surprising, he’d seen battlefields strewn with broken and bloodied bodies, walked streets where stepping over an emancipated corpse was grim but commonplace and then he’d experienced his own death too many times to count - sometimes peacefully and other times not. Life seemed to lay a path out for each person and their choices carried them through until they met their end. He’d watched with his very eyes as folklore and history built legends out of the dead, glorifying their acts and expunging their faults. It had always been the way, but from the moment he felt the air leave his own lungs and fear swell up in his chest within the gasping for air that wouldn’t come within confines of his own home he knew something was wrong. The missed phone calls were wrong. The fact that she was… No. He wouldn’t say the word, couldn’t acknowledge the sentiment. She would come back, she always did. They hadn’t only just found one another for their time to be cut so short.

Every step along the empty, anonymous corridors of the morgue felt inexplicably wrong; a rising sense of uncertainty the nearer they drew to their destination. The drumming of his own pulse pounding, pounding, pounding, and his head with it. Drowning out any and all conversation after the drive here, seeing Regan a vacant hollowness that seemed to douse the spark of joy and life he always carried into most given situations.

He set the backpack down on the floor as they entered the observation room. No words of thanks were offered to her sympathies, they rang true but words were meaningless as he stared at Mercy’s pallid complexion. It wasn’t the first time he’d seen her like this, but it always caught him off guard. The tangle mess of spun gold pillowing her head in a halo-esque fashion that it could almost be falsely believed that she might just be sleeping. But there was no rise and fall to her chest, and the unnatural stillness couldn’t be questioned. She was no angel, but even now she was beautiful and radiant in ways no words could put into any meaningful fashion. A hand reached out, as if hoping to take her own but met only the cold wall of glass that separated them. His mouth pressed into a thin line, chin tipping down as he gathered his resolve formulating it into the first words he’d spoken since he arrived in a dull monotonous tone. “What happened?”

Regan was no stranger to grief. Mourning. Loss. It clung to her throughout her whole life, following her everywhere. Her friends, her brother, lovers, her dad. She could recognize in others when they’d lost someone special, how the grief became a physical ailment as well as a psychological scar. You couldn’t move past it; it was impossible. You could only trudge through it, slowly, painfully. And that was what Arthur was doing right now. There was no greeting, no smile, no pleasantries. Regan knew not to push for them or pretend they were necessary. If the decedent really was Mercy, then Regan knew this was the same woman who tended to the flowers in Arthur’s garden. Old friends who happened to both end up in the same damn town. Maybe more than friends. Probably more than friends. She trailed behind Arthur as he entered the viewing room, remaining silent and keeping her distance. It was strange; ever since her dad died, each decedent carried with it something she couldn’t explain or begin to understand -- an energy or a spark that jumped down her vertebrae and made her steady hands tingle. Mercy Smith hadn’t done that. Despite the stillness of her heart, and despite the deathly chill of her skin, Regan knew there was something off. But she never trusted feelings. They betrayed, where cold, hard logic scarcely did. 

She was almost surprised when Arthur had a question for her. Regan had expected him to stay there, staring through the glass, hand pressed against it like it could bring him close to her. She hesitated for a moment. “I haven’t made a determination of cause and manner of death yet. I need to autopsy the -- her first.” But that was hardly satisfactory, was it? “Based on my observations of her condition and where she was found, it’s possible she drowned. But drowning is a diagnosis of exclusion; there is no finding that is pathognomonic for it, so I have to -- it’s important for me to look at everything as a whole.” Inside and out. Especially inside. But she didn’t want to share those details with Arthur right now. He didn’t need to know that she’d be looking for hyperexpanded lungs and a trachea full of froth. “Arthur, I’m sorry to ask you this, because I think the answer is apartment, but… can you confirm that this is Mercy Smith?” Regan lingered by the door. “And would you like me to give you some time alone?”

It was perhaps every person’s worst nightmare to outlive the greatest loves of their life. A lover, a wife, a child. Loss cultivated a strange understanding of empathy, of how emotions could affect behaviour channeling actions that otherwise might never have been. Arthur had spent lifetimes struggling with death, disaster and countless crises and catastrophes moments of utter despair and profound exhilaration. But standing here, staring at the ring of dark splotchy purple bruises marring the smooth column of her neck like a horrific branding necklace were the marks of what he knew had happened. The clamp of stronger hands he’d felt by proxy around his own throat, trapping off the air before the light had gone from the world. An ire sparked, fuelled by anguish and the fury of any person thinking they might get away with laying their hands on her in such a brutal fashion, to steal even a day of her life away. His left hand tightened, fingers curling into the thick line of angular scar-tissue made anew several months earlier and countless centuries prior. A bond as evident and apparent as the invisible thread that had always led them back to one another, no matter the distance or time that had passed.

Regan’s answer was clinical, precise and omitted the details he knew any mourning party wouldn’t wish to hear but the unspoken act he knew Regan planned to perform was the last thread. His fist thumped the wall, “no, you won’t touch my wif-” he swallowed back the word with a choked sound “I don’t want anyone touching her.” Because they weren’t. They never had made it to that day. How cruel the fates were that each time they almost found that perfect ending, it was snatched away - the irony of how it was this time Mercy’s death wasn’t lost on him. He swallowed back the bile he felt working its way up his throat. “Yes,” was all the confirmation he gave “someone did this to her,” there was a strange sense of calmness in the statement. The low-burning anger simmering as he stared through the glass. 

He exhaled through his nose, she’d come back. She’d wake up and this would all be fine… That’s how it always worked. “How long ago did they-- How long ago did they find her?” How long would it take for her to come back? The question of needing time stirred him out of his stupor, “I have to… yes, I need to wait. I need to be here… I need to be here for her, when she comes back” perhaps it sounded mad, grief-stricken ramblings of a man that had just lost one of the most important people in his life. But Arthur wasn’t leaving the morgue any time soon.

Regan had seen this plenty of times before. Next of kin who couldn’t bear to think of their loved ones being under the scalpel. Legally, Regan had every right to proceed with the autopsy against anyone else’s wishes, especially if she thought there was likely to be a crime committed. She made few exceptions -- really, only in instances of apparent straightforward natural deaths where autopsy conflicted with personal beliefs -- and this was not going to be one of them. But she also wasn’t going to argue with Arthur while he was in the throes of grief. “I understand.” Was all she said. So many of the doctors she’d learned with would have been far better at knowing what to say here. Even Erin would have been more adept. Sometimes practice did not make perfect. “We’re going to find out who did this to her. That’s what I’m here for. We’ll learn what happened.” She kept her distance, as Arthur was still staring through the glass barricade, taking in the lifeless appearance of the woman he clearly loved.

“It’s been a few hours. Almost 4, now.” Of course he didn’t want to leave. But did he really think… Regan’s heart sank to her feet at the thought of Arthur waiting here, watching a decedent, waiting for the cadaver’s heart to start beating and fingers to start twitching. It wasn’t going to happen, and it wasn’t healthy for Arthur to hold out that kind of hope. “Would you like to stay in my office while I’m --” Right. He didn’t want anyone touching the body. She’d need to convince him, point out how important it was that this was investigated. She’d done it many times in the past; it was a well-practiced and sympathetic speech, but now wasn’t the time for it. “I think we should talk in my office. I can have someone come in to take care of her in the meantime, okay?” 

It was a nice effort Regan made, but it was the start of a sentiment that Arthur wasn’t by any means ready to hear. He’d seen just how badly the police and even the FBI were when it came to solving the true nature of these cases and this wasn’t going to be any different. A flare of anger overcame him, as he rounded on Regan “you won’t learn shit,” this was emphasised by a wildly animated gesture of his hand the sudden vehemence was a turn of face for the typically mild-mannered scholar who always did his best to watch his tongue and curb the harm his words could inflict. “Least of all you - someone who doesn’t even have any kind of control or understanding about what you are. Do you even know the danger you and your denial poses to the people around you?” His eyes blazed with a simmering preternatural fire, “this entire department is incompetent and ill-equipped to handle the true reality of what happens in this town because all of you choose instead to bury your heads in the sand - blind to what’s happening right in front of your faces!”

“So no, I’m not going into your office,” he retorted shortly, his back to the glass viewing window and plinth on which Mercy’s body rested “and no, you’re not getting someone to come and take care of her. Because she’s going to be fine. She’s going to come back, and you’re probably going to think I’m insane! Which, you know what, that’s fine as well. Because it’s all real. She’s not human, and neither are you. And no amount of placating and self-confirming speeches about how it’s all gonna be alright is going to change that fact - for you, for me or for her.” 

Mercy had not gone gently from this world. She’d fought until her last breath. Taunted the creature whose hands were around her neck, trying to choke the life out of her. She’d even spit words of defiance back into the face it chose to wear as it pushed her beneath the water and everything went dark. 

So it was no surprise that her return was also not gentle. Not gentle at all. 

Somewhere in the darkness of Mercy’s soul, a spark flickered to life. It grew and grew and grew… until it burned bright enough to fuel the almost imperceptibly slow curl of one delicate, pale finger. It didn’t last long, as the flame was still small, and Mercy’s body grew utterly still once more. There was a moment that followed, no more than half a minute, where the harsh, fluorescent lighting of the observation room started to flicker. Once, twice… three times. Before it went out completely, throwing the room beyond the glass into darkness. 

Another moment passed. Followed by another. And another. And still another. 

The air hummed with static, as it might just before a lighting strike during a thunderstorm. 

It was then that Mercy’s eternal flame reignited.

When the lights suddenly returned, too bright and insistent and glaring, the observation room table was vacant. 

Mercy lay on the floor, no longer lifeless and still, but suddenly very, very alive. She convulsed, gasping and choking on black, frothy water as her body did it’s best to right itself.   

Regan could practically see the rage building behind Arthur’s eyes; they burned with a hot intensity. She knew what was about to happen. Some next of kin lashed out, yelled at her, spat in her face, and they always had plenty of saliva. They couldn’t accept the death of a loved one, didn’t want to think about what came next -- only what came before. When she’d met Arthur before, she’d pegged him as a calm, rational intellectual. But Regan supposed grief could turn anyone violent under the right -- or wrong -- circumstances. Regan steeled herself, hands curled into fists, as Arthur raised her voice and his temper. She debated reaching for her pager. She didn’t want to involve security, but she would. She let Arthur’s vitriol and words slide off of her as best as possible, confusing though they were, and bit her tongue. Forcibly. It was the only way to stop the mounting pressure circling around inside her lungs. It wanted out. It wanted at Arthur. Regan clutched her chest and took a couple of steps back. She didn’t dare open her mouth. But at the same time, the insult to her ability to do her job made her temper flare. The pressure climbed, but Arthur’s instance that Mercy was going to come back made it dissipate, replaced by a pang of sympathy. To this, Regan also didn’t think it best to reply.

The lights went out before she could. For a second, Regan thought she might have screamed, breaking them, but -- no, that wasn’t right. Electrical malfunction of some kind. Just a flicker, and they were back on. She looked at Arthur, finally chancing opening her mouth. “That -- maybe it’s storming outside.” But when her eyes landed back on the glass, back where the body had been lain, there was nothing there. No body. No decedent. What? Had Arthur done something? No, he hadn’t left this spot. Had one of her technicians moved the body when they weren’t paying attention? That had to have been it. “Where… the body is gone.” She turned to Arthur, anger and fear twisted into panic. Surely it had been a technician, but… but she needed to check. She motioned toward Arthur, spurring them both toward the exit. They needed to check the other side of the viewing room, behind the glass.

A mild manner and placating tongue could get you so far in life, but right now Arthur had no bearings to lean into his good will. No valid reasoning to hold back. He’d been holding back for nigh on twenty years, never wanting to let his temper flare and lose the control he’d built across that time. It wouldn’t do to expose himself, he wasn’t so capable of defence as so many other species were. But the combination of his conversation with Nadia earlier in the night about her own safety, the truly staggering incompetence of WCPD and Mercy’s death? A death that very well could have been prevented if he’d just picked up the phone, talked her out of whatever god-awful plan she’d got in her head. She’d always been the sort to play the heroine, and look where it got her. On a cold metal slab on the brink of something horrific. The odds were slim, but they weren’t odds Arthur was willing to gamble on.

After all, what if she didn’t come back? What if she did get stuck on the other side never to return. What then? All for what? The guilt and anger mingled, fueling an ugly concoction that spilt over in vitriol that typically wasn’t imbued by the professor. 

The shudder of the lights, the spark dimming and reigniting caused Arthur’s words to fade and his eyes to go up to the light. Their eerie red glow grew more prominent for a second in the darkness before the natural lighting returned as did some of his rational thought. “Vi er født af stormen,” he muttered the words under his breath, born of the storm, “evigt lys vender sikkert tilbage” eternal light return safely. Though Regan’s explanation of a storm caused Arthur to grunt, roll his eyes and shake his head “You are something else Regan.” He grabbed the bag he’d brought along with him as he moved along to join her in the walk, his steps rapid, “I told you what it is. You just don’t believe me or anyone else in this town apparently.”

What choice had Mercy had this time? It had all happened so quickly… a call asking to help kill a demon and save the world, such as it was. Because if the creature survived, it would have laid waste to White Crest… to everything and everyone. So how was Mercy to say no? Considering what she was? And with the odds astronomically stacked in her favor to come out unscathed? This time it hadn’t been about being the heroine. It had simply been the right thing to do.

And if Rebecca hadn’t pulled on Mercy’s life force to power her final spell, they likely wouldn’t be here now. Nic would’ve never been able to harm her. But they were. And so Mercy’s Fury magic was making the situation right. And reviving her, one atom, one cell, one neuron at a time. Until she was snatched from the darkness and back into the light with all the force of a lightning bolt. Yet her body, as indestructible and immortal as it might be… was paying the price for that magic. 

What language was that? Arthur’s anger seemed to twist into something else as soon as the lights winked off and on, speaking in a language Regan did not understand. It didn’t feel like the time to ask him. “You didn’t tell me anything.” She bit back, still trying to keep the screech locked inside her. He was mourning. He wasn’t in his right mind. She needed to keep reminding herself of that to keep her own anger at bay. Her hand itched for the pager. Calling security could escalate things even further though, just when Arthur seemed to be simmering. Regan held off. For now. Other matters were more pressing. “Belief has nothing to do with anything. People in this town don’t understand that the burden of proof is on --” She pressed her key card to the side of the observation room where the body had previously been resting peacefully on the table. Dead. Unmoving. But Regan nearly tripped over the body -- now on the floor -- as she ran in, slipping on the pool of dark water. 

“How…?” Mercy’s body was still here. That was the first fact, the most important one. Had gases being released propelled her from the table? They could generate a lot of force. But, no. Regan’s eyes jumped around -- Mercy’s chest was moving. She was breathing. She was alive. She was coughing up more dark liquid. What did that mean? Had the first responders made a mistake? Had they not followed protocol? No. Regan had put the body in the freezer, had laid it out on the table for Arthur to identify; she would have noticed if it had a beating heart. She would have noticed. But hadn’t Mercy not felt dead, the same way her decedents did? She stumbled back toward the door, taking in what was happening as a scream took form inside her lungs like a brewing storm. 

“I did, you just didn’t bother to listen.” He shot off accompanied by a seriously withering side-eye. “Oh take your burden of proof and shove it Regan, I’m not in the mood for a bloody lecture from you of all people” his voice had adopted a sterner note; akin to that of a disproving parent tired of a child’s nonsense shenanigans. Arthur really didn’t have the time of day to placate to Regan’s denial nor did he really feel like pandering to her whims.

The keycard beeped and Arthur couldn’t help but hold his breath half-anticipating and half-dreading the sight on the other side of the door. But seeing Mercy coughing up black water much akin to what he’d coughed up in his own kitchen with Nadia caused him to exhale in pure relief. She was alive. Thank the gods. Willfully and pointedly ignoring Regan’s question he pushed past, dropping to his knees so that he could scoop Mercy and the sheet she’d been covered in off the floor and propping her up against his chest. 

“Shh, shh” the noises were soft and soothing as though attempting to calm a skittish creature as he brushed her hair out of her face “bare rolig, jeg har dig. Jeg er her.” Don’t worry, I have you. I’m here. She was wracked with shivers and Arthur closed his eyes resting his head against her temple as he pulled the sheet around her. Though feeling her grow restless again, the pulse of her energy amping like static on the air he hushed again “Hey, hey now…. I got you.”

Breathe. 

The voice in her head commanded her and Mercy had no choice but to obey. She gasped for air, but there was no room while her lungs were filled with water. So her body purged itself of the black liquid, quickly and violently. It hurt, gods it hurt… and Mercy coughed and choked and tried to claw at her throat… at the fire that burned it’s way up and out of her chest and onto the cold tile floor of the viewing room. But she couldn’t. Her body wouldn’t obey. The magic that made her what she was had only one goal: survival. And it would do that through whatever means necessary. Mercy’s confusion and pain were irrelevant.

Yet even the darkness of Mercy’s ‘rebirth’ couldn’t block out the light that came from Arthur’s presence. It burned against the blackness as he pulled her in, and even as she continued to tremble violently, her face turned towards him. Towards his voice and his warmth. Towards the one person she knew would always keep her safe. Her eyelids fluttered, lashes dark against her pale, hypoxic skin, and she seemed to grow more calm as Arthur spoke softly in her ear. 

Yet her shaking couldn’t be helped. She still felt cold to the marrow of her bones, even with Arthur’s preternatural warmth soaking into her skin. Her restlessness started to peak again, and the air hummed as it had before. Every breath was still like white-hot knives slicing through her chest… every cough rattled deep and wet and ominous, and her heart continued to flutter rapidly, trying to find a steady rhythm. 

“... gør ondt…”  Mercy’s voice was soft and weak. It hurts...

Arthur was down on the floor with Mercy in an instant, pushing the hair from her face and cupping her cheek. She was a her, now, right? No longer an it. No longer a cadaver. She never was. That thought practically froze Regan’s feet to the ground. How could that have happened? She so badly wanted to blame the first responders, never imagined she’d ever make a mistake like this. How -- more dark fluid being coughed up. Regan felt torn in several directions, like an aortic dissection after an ugly MVA. Mercy was clearly sick; she needed medical attention. Arthur was still being entirely unreasonable. She still wanted to call security. And the pressure in her lungs continued to build. Not again. Not here. Not at the morgue. The scream was urged on by the conflict and she couldn’t hold it back entirely -- a screech shot out of her mouth as soon as she opened it, breaking the flickering lights and cracking the sheet of thick glass between the two rooms. It was over in an instant, as she clapped her hands over her mouth and clamped her jaw shut. Regan stumbled back toward the door, an apology on her lips, but her concern about the potentially dying former-decedent and her irritable, irrational boyfriend won out. Mercy needed a hospital. She needed more care than Regan could provide. “She needs a doctor! Stay with her. I’ll be right back.” As much as she hated to leave the two of them alone here, she didn’t have a functioning cell phone, and an ambulance needed to be called. Leaving no time for argument, she dashed out of the glass-littered observation room and barreled up the stairs.

He hadn’t been paying attention to Regan the moment he’d seen Mercy on the floor, concern for her well-being overriding any good sense Arthur might’ve had in that moment of time. “I know,” he was just shifting her carefully in his arms leaning her over to help cough up any remaining water that might’ve settled in her lungs when the screech happened. Nothing he’d been anticipating nor could he brace himself and it earned a grimace of pain and discomfort almost enough that he dropped Mercy on the floor but his hold was secure enough that it didn’t happen. Thankfully his positioning let him shield her from the fall of shattered lightbulbs. “OW- The fuck?!” he shot a glare at Regan noticing her backing up over the crunch of shattered glass and then turning to leave barely hearing what she said he had to make a rush assessment of the situation. “Fuck,” he cursed, pulling Mercy and propping her up against the table he scarpered to his bag and ripped it open grabbing his oversized t-shirt and joggers out of the bag. “We gotta go… Gotta work with me now Frey,” there was an urgent note in his voice as he set about pulling the t-shirt over her head and arms (backwards in his rush) and did the same with the joggers. 

He wasn’t the strongest of people, and Mercy was fairly built combined with the fact they didn’t have the time to chance seeing if she could walk left Arthur with little choice. Hooking an arm under her knees and her back he heaved her off the floor with a grunt, and made quickly for the door. He’d have to backtrace the route he’d come in by, but he could remember it well enough. There were a couple of close-calls but he otherwise managed to pick a route that avoided any confrontation with other members of staff until he back barge his way out the doors, almost tripping in the process into the fresh night air of the car park towards his vehicle. “Almost there… We’re almost there.”

Mercy made her own sound of discomfort as the high-pitched screech echoed through the room. Her ears rang and there was a sudden, sharp pain behind her eyes that was gone as quickly as it came. The shattering of the glass was a side-note as she continued to cough up thick, brackish fluid. But there was less of it now, and by the time she was sat up against the table, it was only the deep, wet cough that persisted. Regan’s screeching had had one small benefit: it had jolted Mercy to a slightly more wakeful state. Her eyes slipped open for the briefest of moments as Arthur spoke before falling shut again. 

She did her best to help him, sensing the urgency of the situation. Lifting her arms and trying not be dead weight as he pulled the clothes on in a rush. When he hoisted her up, Mercy’s head spun wildly, and she felt vaguely nauseous as they started to move. But she did her best to wrap her arms around Arthur’s neck. They felt like lead weights, as did her head as it fell against his shoulder. She managed to stay somewhat awake as they moved through the halls, enough that her grip tightened every so slightly as Arthur stumbled into the parking lot. The cool night air washed over them, and when Arthur spoke to her again, she heard him. Almost there, he;d said. Almost there… 

To which Mercy could only reply, “... home... ‘s’go home…” 

The ambulance was on its way. Just a few minutes. Not for the first time, Regan was grateful for how close the hospital was to the morgue. She’d instructed security to let the EMTs in and send them down to the basement -- she needed to go stay with Mercy, make sure she wasn’t still on the edge of death. Keep Arthur calm, if that was even possible. She ran back down the stairs and headed straight for the observation room, but a few drops of that black fluid dotted the white hallway floor, making her freeze. There was a small trail of it headed toward the intake bay garage. She knew enough of blood spatter analysis to understand what those tails on each drop meant -- movement. Momentum. Her gut clenched and she kept running, slammed the door wide open and saw… just a lot of broken glass and black liquid. No Mercy. No Arthur. Regan pressed a hand to her forehead. How the hell was she going to explain this to the EMTs, who would be here any second? How was she going to explain to anyone? How was she going to explain this to herself? She stood in the darkness of the room, her eyes pressed shut. “It’s so much easier when they’re dead.”

end. 

[dollsted]

Rated: T

Pairing: JarethxSarah 

Plot teaser: The Goblin King is dead...at least in Sarah's normal life he is...but what happens if that turns out to just be a rumor? Source: Archiveofourown.com/F0rce0fnatur3 

Notes:

Hello my bebes. So just a little address to those who continue to read this. I have always been a fan of the Labyrinth and I know nothing could touch on or pick up where Henson left off but I've put a lot of thought into how my version of the story should go. I hope I can give fans back some semblance of what we've been waiting for since the story came out. I have read all there is and watched behind the scenes and rare footage on my favorite movie and so characters that are within the novel, concept sketches, and other works will be put in here. There may also be minor oc's as well as one big one. So I say unto you. I hope you enjoy my version because the goblin king may be watching over all of us in the heaven's and no one can take his place...I bring him back to life here on the pages before you.

Chapter 1: Rumors 

When I was a child, I thought like a child. But I did not do childish things. In fact, I don’t think anyone could call what I went through childish. But that feels like a time long, long ago. Even now if I think back on it, my mind becomes a fog. And then one day I just---forgot entirely. I do remember the days after vividly. I graduated and parted with my drama club family. I struggled with my major but suddenly all these dreams and thoughts of harrowing tales wouldn’t stop springing to my mind like an unlimited fountain from a spring that burst and never dried up. At first I would scribble the stories down in notebooks when I was supposed to be paying attention to the lecture in front of me. Now at twenty, I’ve found my calling and have become one of the bestselling fantasy novelists of my generation. I’ve heard all the praises. To be so young and have one of the most sought after series. One scholar I met at a gala party in New York City told me fantasy novels were an elder mans game. The older the person the wiser the writing as if the pages were scrolled on ink and parchment paper itself. I gave them their props as they rightfully deserve, but I planned to hold my own. I’d rather contend with the older crowd than the young teen romance category. I had no interest following on the coattails of finding a way to weave a story about a werewolf or vampire. I’m just waiting for the mummy revolution to peak.

           Now, I stare at a blank page. My well is congested and I need inspiration but a deadline for my eager fans want a rushed job. No one asks a baker to take the brownies out of the oven because they’re clamoring to eat it before its ready, mindlessly spooning the hot batter into their mouth. I understand the impatience but this is why the good writers have one hit wonders, or a series, and then slowly peter out for indefinite hiatuses. I can’t just expunge something onto blank pages without inspiration to fuel my motivation. So I gaze out my window on the reading nook watching the city life buzz about. I wish I could just reach down and pull their thoughts from them and manage to get something cohesive enough to send to my editor. I wring my hands around my coffee cup too jittery to even take another sip, the perfume from my eight o’ clock brew souring in my stomach. I can hear the battery warning on my laptop but I’m frozen where I sit. I came up with different plots but nothing made sense. I would need to cram at least four hundred pages into the novel and when I got rolling and tried desperately to fill the pages with random ramblings it came out in cliché bits and pieces that made no sense.

           Tonight there would be another gala and this was a black and white only listing. I was prepared but that’s who I was. I was ready within seconds. If I was given three hours I would be ready in three minutes. Always itching to go. Why slow life down anymore? Maybe it was just my mindset as a writer, maybe it was the pressure from the public. I was already a book behind and itching to be at this gala, perform my part of dutiful famous author, and then slip away with a spoon of ice-cream in my mouth and my silk gray pajamas on my body. Suddenly a thought rolled over my mind making me feel suddenly ill. When had I become the mirror image of my stepmother? My insides coiled tight like a sailors knot and I couldn’t stand to have this cup in my hands any longer and be alone with my thoughts. I needed to keep busy to numb my mind and run on autopilot.

           I glanced at the one newspaper clipping I saved of mom stuck to the corner of my corkboard. Around her ideas were peppered on yellow sticky notes. I was stuck in my fantasy that worshipping an absent parent who left dad and I behind for the stage, for fame and fortune, had abandoned us took precedent over reality. Before my epiphany I lived in a world where she would come back because daughters were invisibly connected to their mother’s right? Like sons and fathers. I had dreams she would ride through our suburban neighborhood on the whitest steed---well in a white limo, and she would come out with a plume of feathers in a pink boa around her neck and her finest ball gown and she would announce she was here to storm the castle and take me away with her where we would live in riches and in the lap of luxury. That’s the word she was, luxury. But that’s all she was. She wasn’t a dream that would ever come true. A mirage. She was just a word. One everyone knew how to speak, and only the rich could afford to. When I finally grew into myself and knew she was just another selfish story I made up in my head, I put my scrapbook and pictures of her away. Even now they’re packed in boxes I doubt I’ll ever open. The article is recent, her career had slowly plateaued when younger famous musicians rose to fame and glory on the stages of Broadway. And in some way, I had to thank her for popping my bubble of dreams because I didn’t want to follow in her footsteps in reality. Or dad. Or my stepmother’s assumption of what I should do with my life. I needed to do what I wanted. What my heart and head wanted.

           But now I’m stuck. In a bog of eternal stench. I raised a brow. That was an odd way of phrasing something. What did that even mean? What did I even just think? Before I could grasp it and replay the sentence it was gone. I needed air. And possibly something to eat. Normally I would go for a jog before the night fell but I had an hour left to get ready so I did what anyone would do in my position. I took a much needed nap.

           As I scan the crowd I notice little things. Another perk of being a writer. People watching. Noticing details. I watched couples stroll in, one couple shied away barely making it through the door when they realized they had forgotten or weren’t notified by the theme of the party. Even champagne colored attire wouldn’t fly in the mayor’s presence. The women who wore their hair down had coiled them in delicately hanging curls that bounced as they floated across the marble floor. There wasn’t a straight haired woman in sight. I was thankful I chose last second to throw it up in a chignon before I left from the house. I had to admit I still hadn’t mastered the art of being able to glide like most of these women had with heels and dress trains. My mermaid style dress was all in black and the design made it hard to take a good stride. I never cared for alcohol. I never developed the taste for it. The most I would take is a glass of wine, any color, and that was on my worst days. But I felt foolish just holding onto the flute of champagne clutched in my hand. Perhaps I could discretely slip it on a passing tray or abandon it in a less frequented area. I longed for my settee, ice-cream, movie, and pajamas. Depending how the night shaped, maybe I’d skip it all and just go straight to bed. Since I wasn’t stalled in conversation or mindless babbling I stole my chance to discard the flute. As I turned I became arrested by a form. I cursed wishing I had my precious solitude back. A bulky man towered over me. His jet black hair was slicked back and went against the grain of men who wore the signature penguin suites of stark black. He was dressed entirely in pure white. His hazel eyes bore into me seeing me and not just scanning over my bodice as most of the suitors that had pursued me during the eve had been. I spent more time dodging the men in heat that I barely noticed if there were any noble guests not just looking out for the single stragglers for a one night stand.

           I shrunk into myself and flushed tearing away from his gaze giving a slight curtsy. As much as the restriction of my dress would allow me to bend my knees. And then I felt even more awkward because I did that. I felt my brows knit and I mentally threw myself out a window before grounding myself. I expected him to start the conversation but perhaps I was being vain. Not everyone knew about me even if I lived in a city packed with my fair share of fans. I was used to having others pounce on me with immediate greetings and questions. To stop my internal suffering I chose to open my mouth and end my misery of turning into an awkward child and reminding myself that I was an adult. Am one. Speak!

           “Good evening.” Oh good, I just used the opening line to every gothic and creepy character would use. I really floundered instead of thrived in large gatherings. I wanted to wipe the slate clean, I hadn’t realized half of my champagne had been slugged back. I became aware of the stinging in my ankles and the pain on my feet as I balanced on my heels. He parted his lips revealing pearly whites. I could see his dimples and I found my hand busying itself by brushing a stray strand that had come lose from the chignon behind my ear.

           “It is.” His smile was warm and inviting. But I was on high alert none-the-less. I wasn’t sure how to further this conversation. I’d give anything to have my joggers on so I could shift my weight side to side. It was my tell that I was uncomfortable. But I was restricted in these damn stilts.

           “Are you here accompanying the mayor in his entourage?” Aside from the orchestra playing at the base of the stairs I could hear the soft chuckle in his throat.

           “Unfortunately no. I was a plus one with the Matthew party.” I had no idea who they were but I nodded in agreement as if I did. “What about you, lady?”

           “I only got my invitation because of my status. I’m a hot ticket item until my success runs its course and someone else comes along to claim the limelight.” I whisked my flute in the air toasting to my misery and draining the glass abandoning it on the wide railing. I was drowning. I wished for my friend from college to be at my side. She was excellent at steering conversations away from my failings.

           “That’s usually how fame works. May I ask, what your profession is now?” ‘Now’? It was an odd way to say something but I disregarded it as a slip of the tongue.

           “I’m a novelist.”

           “Fancy.” He waggled his brow and now it was my turn to laugh. It came out more like a bark.

           “Mind if we speak more but actually participate in this party by dancing?” I felt my face pale. I was meant to be a statue. One that showed up, soaked up the atmosphere, and then left without being drawn into something complicated. Like dancing. That was complicated. Especially in the prison I handpicked for myself. He offered his arm and I gratefully took it stepping as if I was made of china. I literally took baby steps painfully listening to the stairs announce our decent when the butt of my heel ricocheted in the scoop of the room. I could barely get one foot in front of the other, my dress demanding my steps be smaller.

           He blessedly closed his stride into small boxy steps allowing me to move with him. He lead, and I floated in the weight of his arms. His palm spanned over my entire back horizontally. I felt like a small hill up against a mountain. The tempo slowed, the musician’s skill amazed me. They could transition from fast pace to slow and sensual within the beat of a note. Before I knew it, we too had slowed, the only glimmer of having been keeping in step to the upbeat rhythm was my fast beating heart and the bead of sweat on the back of my neck. Somewhere between that transition, his body had mingled closer to mine and now his lips were at my ear in a gentle whisper. My eyes widened. I was confused. What did he just say? Was that really what he meant to say? I felt my world splinter. I felt like a dark void inside my heart was going to swallow me whole and I would be rid of all the people and buildings around me.

           I somehow made it back to my flat on the top floor. I slipped off my shoes, wormed my way into my pajama’s and when I came back to myself I was curled up in bed holding myself not caring that my chignon was half tamed and half wild. I didn’t even bother to wipe away my lipstick, clean the eyeshadow off with the liner above my lashes. I barely got my arm into the sleeve of my shirt. I hadn’t bothered to turn the lights on or button the shirt closed. My covers lay neglected at my back, my pillow barely touching the top of my head. I was staring into the black hole hiding the corner of my wall. Tears welling in my eyes. Why was I so tore up about this?

           I felt the hot coals roll over my cheeks staining my silk sheets. My muscles were stiff, my circulation numb from sitting so still. Why was I feeling all these things that made no sense to me? The thing the man said didn’t even make sense. It sounded like a joke or something he stole out of a novel. What did he mean when he said ‘The Goblin King is dead?’ and why was my heart breaking?

           I pulled my phone from the belly of my clutch opening up the web browser searching for anything that could connect me to those words. How was I supposed to react to that? Why was it even affecting me?! My mind was screaming. I found forums with geeks talking about video game references. Millions of results were nothing more than mindless ramblings of geeks and nerds. Broken phrases about movies, books, television, games. There was no viable information present. Frustrated I threw my phone against the wall but heard it hit my vanity instead shattering the mirror. I gasped at my own failings sliding off the bed to clean up my mess. My flat was empty. It was full of things that adorned the walls and filled the spaces so it didn’t look barren but---the truth was it was just me alone living here. I got to work brushing the pieces into the dustpan pausing when I caught a glimpse of my reflection in a giant ragged shard.

           Hadn’t those words meant something at one time? A title? I had an odd hazy thought that I was meant to remember something. Something significant. But my work took precedence. What that man said was nothing. If it was a message it fell on deaf ears. Maybe it was just highbrow humor I forgot to gloss in the New Yorker. But that was a business magazine and no imagination or right brained people were allowed to even grace those pages. I got the vaguest of feelings that I had been on the other side of this mirror once. A fleeting thought. I disposed of it climbing back into bed regretting the ruin of my mirror and phone. I was a person meant to be on call any time of day especially for my editor. I would rush first thing in the morning to the store to get a new phone and hastily set up my mailbox.

           I stretched arching my back like a cat reveling in the warmth my flat offered through the central air system and gazed out to the skyline barely looking back at my with a slit eye of pinks and purples. No signs of orange yet. Coffee time. The heavens answered my thoughts. I heard the timer chime awake and the maker got to work gurgling the water I poured the night before come alive. All I would need to do is feed it creamer and retrieve my mug. I tapped a key on my laptop forgetting momentarily that the battery warned me the night before I needed to charge its juice. It wouldn’t matter. There would still be a blank page and a blinking cursor angrily ticking to remind me my own time was slipping away to start a draft. I couldn’t get what the stranger whispered to me out of my head. I paced feeling the ache in my feet from my heels from the night before. I had darted from the party wanting to stretch that space between me and my dance partner. Away from his words. Away from the mocking eyes that gave me a headache and dejavu.

           It would’ve been easier to hail a cab but I felt like the world was crumbling down on me. I was choking and I needed to breach the surface and gulp lungful’s of air. And then I practically fell into the lobby before the doorman or desk clerk could barrage me with questions. I knew I was disheveled. I didn’t need to be prodded or gawked at. I clambered into the elevator fishing the key to activate my penthouse suite on the top floor. I wanted to get home. I needed my bed before I passed out here. Fifty stories up and I stumbled into my room listening to the whirling gears of the elevator haul itself back to earth while I stayed floating in space.

           I escaped the footmen who were busy busing in luggage and packages of other residents. My main focus needed to be a new phone. With my laptop dead I needed access to the internet now more than ever. I knew my editor would be trying to get ahold of me. I tried to keep my thoughts singular but after I began setting up everything on the little device I found my curiosity drawing me back to the same spot I fled from. Who was the man that approached me and I danced with? Why did he single me out? Did he know me? Was he using code that I should know? Was it a password to get into somewhere?

           All my thoughts were spinning in a jumbled mess worse than a tornado at level five and I wanted answers but only gained more questions.  

[nightingaletrash]

Hello, I always love checking your tumblr ☺️, you influenced me to play Morrowind, Hogwart's Mystery and Masquerade Bloodlines and I had great time (your OCs are becoming like a real people by now to me) . Are you taking prompts with kissing now? If so, then could you do 2 or/and 11 with Velyne and Julan? Have a nice day 😉

Okay so first off, thank you???? It makes me so happy to know that people actually pay attention to my rambling and that it’s helping to allow other people to experience some excellent games :D And I’m glad you enjoy my OCs!! Some times I just feel like I’m annoying people when I rant about them ._.”

Anyways, here’s the drabble, I hope you enjoy ^^

----------------

It was late. Secunda and Messer were high in the sky, and Velyne was double-checking her pack, ensuring she had everything she would need. There was no saying how long she would be away, but the supplies she had ought to last a while before they needed to be replenished. 

She heard the rustling of the yurt’s flap and knew immediately who it was, though she didn’t look up. Looking at him, hearing his voice, even meeting his gaze would make this harder than it already was. But she had to do this, and this time it would have to be alone. The Ahemussa needed its Ashkhan and its Gulakhan now more than ever; she couldn’t ask either of them to accompany her on what was a very personal mission.

This curse had begun with a Telvanni. It seemed fitting that it end with one too.

“Vel,” Julan called softly.

She wanted to reply, but there were no words she could think of that would make things any simpler and any that dig spring to mind stuck in her throat. They had already argued, had shouted themselves hoarse over the issue, and the facts remained the same. She was going and he was staying, and that was final.

So she carried on arranging supplies that were already neatly stowed away, and toyed with straps that were already adjusted.

“Vel.” He was closer now. “Can’t it wait til morning. Ayrea will-”

“Will be fine,” she cut over coarsely. “She has the whole clan to look after her.”

“She won’t want the clan. She’ll want her mother,” he said sternly, now standing directly behind her. “Would you really take away her chance to say goodbye?”

“If it means that I can’t change my mind? Then yes.”

The words were harsh, but she knew that the moment that those big pink eyes looked up at her, sparkling with tears and accompanied by a trembling lip, her resolve would crumble and she would be unable to bring herself to do what must be done. She needed a cure, a proper one. For this damnable disease to be expunged from her, once and for all. And while it brought her no pleasure to turn to a Telvanni - especially one such as Neloth - a Telvanni might be the only one who could do something about it.

Finally she straightened up, shouldering her pack. She checked the straps, still looking for excuses to not face her own husband.

He didn’t give her one. 

Instead he stepped around to her side, turned her to face him, and began to adjust the straps himself. Velyne winced. He wasn’t looking at her face, just focusing solely on the task of ensuring the straps were tight enough and that the weight was even across her shoulders.

“There,” he murmured, hands settling on her shoulders as he finally met her eyes. He was smiling sadly, his eyes glistening. “You’re all set.”

For a long few seconds, neither of them said a word or moved an inch. A thousand words passed between them, silent but heard, and Velyne took the chance to memorise his face.

The years had aged him significantly from the young, brash Ashlander she’d fallen in love with. The lines were deeper, crow’s feet crinkled the corners of his eyes, his hair was longer and accompanied by a beard, and both were peppered with tiny wisps of silver. He wore piercings in his ears and on the bridge of his nose - courtesy of Velyne herself - and now he wore the garb of an Ashkhan rather than the leathers he’d adopted back when they faced down Dagoth Ur. 

The last two centuries showed on him, and it was why her condition frustrated her. Her skin was still smooth, untouched by the ravages of time, and her hair was still a pure, silky black. So many lamented that they did not share her unaging beauty; they would natter on and on of their envy of her, wishing that they could look half so young at such an age. Even Shani ribbed her about it from time to time, prodding Velyne to share her ‘secrets’ with everyone else. 

Not one of them understood what it was like. Not one of them could understand why she wanted her curse gone. Why she would leave her husband, her child, and her clan behind to rid herself of eternal youth and beauty.

No one. Except Julan.

Slowly, his hands raised to the sides of her head, cupping her cheeks, and she knew he was analysing her face as she had analysed his own. A little security if the worst came to pass. If anything happened and if this was the last time they ever saw one another again…

It was as if the thought had crossed from her mind to his, as he pressed his lips hard against her’s, silencing it before it could take root in either of them.

Velyne grabbed his waist and kissed back hard, ignoring - or perhaps oblivious to - the tears prickling at her eyes. 

Julan was warm, as he always was, but somehow it was more intense than ever before. Like she was experiencing that enveloping warmth for the first time, and found herself not wanting to leave. He represented so many things to her. Warmth, safety, love… Home. Julan had given her a home, a family, a place to belong where she was more than just some thief. And she was leaving it all behind in the hopes of a cure that might not even exist.

Suddenly he broke the kiss.

“Sorry,” he whispered. “I shouldn’t have-”

She yanked him back in, silencing him before he could pull away, before he retracted that feeling of safety.

Maybe she shouldn’t have. It made leaving harder. But was it so wrong to take another minute of comfort when she knew it could be months or years before she experienced it again? A stolen moment wouldn’t hurt that badly…

Or maybe it would. Right now she didn’t really care. She just kissed hard until the need to breathe forced them apart once more, breathing hard and cheeks flushed a dark purple.

“I love you,” he whispered after a moment of extended silence.

“I love you too,” she replied, running a hand over his cheek. “I’ll miss you.”

“I’ll miss you too. Just…” He paused, his gaze intense. “Make sure you come back alive.”

“I’ll do my best, but you know what these Telvanni are like,” she joked weakly. “For all I know, I’ll end up with tentacles for eyes.”

His face softened, and he couldn’t quite stop himself as he chuckled and shook his head.

“And I’ll love you still, tentacles and all.”

[firesoulstuff]

15 for the found family trope, for Black Siren and Lisa Snart? Since Lisa is Leonard's sister, and Siren is (sortof) Sara's brother, just them becoming family as well?

And I now have a new BROTP

(Mis)Adventures in Babysitting

Read on AO3: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15952931

“I’m coming, I’m coming.” Laurel calls through her apartment as she makes her way to the door, in nowhere near as much of a hurry as whoever is banging their fist against the other side. “Hold your horses.”

Frankly she’s not even sure why she’s answering the door. It should be a crime to knock this harshly on a random person’s door this early in the morning, and it has to be a random person because any person whom Laurel actually knows would just knock once before letting themselves in, if they bother knocking at all.

She never had this problem on Earth 2, not since she was a kid anyway. Once she got her powers she made it clear who she was and what happened to people her bothered her. But, she’s changed a lot since then, and she’s doing her best to turn over a better leaf here on Earth 1.

Even if that does mean dealing with some sad middle-aged man selling calendars before noon.

She swings the door open with the full intent of sending away whoever she’s greeted with but, as she’s come to learn is the case with most plans, it doesn’t happen and instead Lisa Snart marches past her and into the apartment.

“I lost Rory!” The other woman exclaims before Laurel can even ask what she’s doing here, and at the confession her mind begins reeling.

“You what?” She demands, trying her best to stay calm as she shuts her door and turns to take in the sight of Lisa, wanting to confirm that this is all a joke.

Lisa’s a decent actress, and has enough of a wild child streak left in her to still pull off some pretty high level pranks, but she isn’t cruel. Much as Laurel wants to reopen her door and find Sara and Leonard’s six-year-old peering around the corner and giggling with mischief she knows she won’t find that sight, it’s written all over Lisa’s frazzled demeanor.

“How?” She demands, “And why did you come all the way here instead of calling?”

“I don’t know!” Lisa panics, still pacing circles around the living room. She pauses briefly at the side of the couch so that she can grab a pillow and clutch it to her chest. “We ate breakfast and then I turned on the TV for her so I could take a shower, then I got out of the shower and I got dressed, but when I went back into the living room she wasn’t there. I called her name a few times, checked out in the hall, but I couldn’t find her anywhere. When I got back from the hall I realized my window was open and so I ran outside, I ran around the block, I checked the dumpster in the ally, I-”

She’s rambling at this point, no longer breathing between her words, and so Laurel marches over and puts her hands firmly on her friend’s shoulders.

“Lisa, Lisa.” She says, waiting for the other woman to stop. When she does she begins to finally take in the breath that she needs. “Calm down and think, where would she go?”

“I thought, I thought she might come here.”

“Well she didn’t,” Laurel assures her friend, reclaiming her hands and finally beginning to process the gravity of this situation. “Why didn’t you just call?”

“I was already halfway around the block,” Lisa says through her continuous pants for breath. “My phone’s still on my bathroom sink.”

Laurel huffs, her hands on her waist as she begins to pace herself, trying to remain rational.

“Ok, let’s just call the police and-”

“No!” Lisa quickly, loudly, objects. Laurel just stares at her for a few second, disbelieving gaze fixed on the feral desperation in the other woman’s eyes.

“No cops,” she says in a voice that is almost begging. “Lenny’s record’s expunged but people don’t forget, plus my record is still out there. If the cops found out he left his kid with me and I lost her-”

“Bad news; got it.” Laurel finishes so that Lisa won’t have to. “Ok, well the park isn’t far, maybe she went to the playground.”

Lisa nods frantically, like she can’t think to do anything else.

“Ok,” Laurel says, “Let’s go.” With that she grabs her keys off the coffee and table and quickly runs to her room for her phone, just in case, and then they’re racing down the building hallways.

The playground, as Laurel partially expected, is a bust. They run all around the park, at first checking every square inch of the playground before moving on to every tree, bush, and large rock that Rory might fit either in or under.

“Did you find her?” Lisa asks as the two of them reconvene at the monkey bars.

“Does it look like I found her?” Laurel exclaims, “Yeah, yeah I totally found her. I’m giving her a piggyback right now.”

“Ok geeze,” Lisa winces with offence, “You don’t have to yell at me.”

“Oh really?” She demands, her voice heightening much like Lisa’s did back in her apartment. “Because you’re the one who lost your niece. All you had to do was keep track of her for a couple of days while Sara and Leonard are with the Legends, and she crawled out your window!”

“What was I supposed to do?” Lisa shouts in retaliation. “Make her sit on the toilet lid while I took a shower?”

“You could’ve locked the window!”They continue yelling at each other, making a much bigger scene than they probably should in the middle of the park, until Laurel feels her phone vibrating in her back pocket and pulls it out to see he’s calling her, and then her panic promptly doubles.

“Oh my god, it’s Sara.” She says, turning the phone so Lisa can see Sara’s ID picture.

“What?” She exclaims, “How? Aren’t they still on the Waverider?”

“I don’t know!”

“Well answer it!”

“I-uh…” Laurel splutters for an answer before she ends up pressing her thumb against the accept button and brings the phone immediately to her ear. “Hey Sara…”

“Hey Laurel,” Sara says on the other end, not sounding like she can hear her teeth gritting together in panic as Lisa crowds her, mouthing questions about what the time traveler is saying. “I tried calling Lisa but she hasn’t been answering.”

“Uh yeah, her, her phone died.” She lies, shaking her head cluelessly as Lisa questions her decision with hushed words.

“It died?” Sara asks, “That’s weird, it’s been giving me her voicemail.”

“I don’t, I don’t know. She said it was dead.” Lisa rolls her eyes and Laurel waves her off, she can only handle one stressful conversation at a time. “So, how exactly are you calling me? I thought you were still on the Waverider?”

“Ray’s been working on adapters for our phones,” Sara explains, “Anyway, we’re probably going to be here for another day or two, things got a little out of hand with the first running of the bulls.”

“Oh boy,”

“Yeah…” Sara drawls, “Anyway, I was just calling to check in on Rory, are she and Lisa with you?”

“No!” She answers a little too quickly, which sends Lisa back to her silent protesting. “Err, I mean yes, yes they’re with me but Rory… Rory’s asleep!”

“What?!”Lisa silently demands, looking like she is only one bad lie away from ripping the phone away, though Laurel doubts she could come up with anything better.

“Asleep?” Sara questions, sounding every bit as skeptical as Lisa is probably expecting she would. “Isn’t it the middle of the day for you guys?”

“We uh… we brought her to the park. Yeah, we’ve been here all morning and she just wore herself out running around.” She claims, making a little whirly motion with her finger as she fully commits herself to the lie. Lisa’s given up on getting any answers and is now standing by impatiently, which helps. “Yeah, she made a bunch of little friends and she was practically asleep on her feet when we left the playground. Lisa picked her up to carry her and she was out in a minute. We’re almost at the car.”

“Oh, ok.” Sara says, sounding like she does find the prospect of her daughter wearing herself into exhaustion unlikely, but not totally unbelievable. “I guess I’ll try and call again tonight, bye Laurel.”

“Ok bye, have fun running with the bulls.”

She breathes a sigh of relief as she hangs up, though it doesn’t last long.

“Well?” Lisa asks, practically bouncing on her toes.

“They’re still on the Waverider,” Now it’s Lisa’s turn to sigh in relief. “But she’s going to try and call again tonight.

“Ok, ok good. We’ll find her by tonight. If not, we call the cops.”

She doesn’t sound like she’s exactly thrilled about that plan, and Laurel isn’t either to be honest, but it’s they’re best bet.

“Why don’t we go back to your apartment?” She suggests, hoping to maybe lift Lisa’s hopes. “See if maybe she went back.”

“Yeah, ok.”

With that decided they continue towards the car, not saying anything, at first.

“Thank you,” Lisa eventually says, and so Laurel looks at her curiously. “For not telling Sara I lost her daughter, and for helping me look for her.”

“Of course,” she says, “She’s more or less my niece too, I mean not really but-”

“No really,” Lisa interrupts. “She calls you her aunt, even if Sara and Lenny never told her to. Which is why I’m thanking you, because I know you think you have a lot more at risk here than I do-”

Laurel stops dead in her tracks, holding up a hand to halt Lisa as well.

“Lisa,” she says, cutting off the other woman’s words.

“What?”

She points ahead, as though saying anything will make what’s caught her attention vanish. Just at the edge of the parking lot and getting out of a very familiar car they can see Dinah Lance, accompanied by Rory.

With only a quick glance to each other to confirm they’re seeing the same thing the two women break out into a run, and Laurel notes that Dinah is laughing but she doesn’t care. All she can think about is that Rory is safe.

“Oh thank God!” Lisa exclaims just as they reach the pair and she lifts her, their, niece up into her arms in a crushing hug. “You had us worried sick!”

Laurel smiles as she looks at the little girl from over Lisa’s shoulder to make sure that she isn’t hurt, and then she looks to Dinah who is watching this whole scene in amusement.

Well at least she doesn’t look mad.

“Where did you find her?” She asks through her relieved smile ad Dinah actually snorts, and then inclines her head towards Lisa and Rory.

“Would you like to explain that Aurora?”

Uh oh, the full name only comes out when there’s trouble.

Lisa notices Dinah’s tone and the name as well, so with a confused expression she places Rory on her feet and kneels in front of her, allowing the two of them who have been running around worried all morning to see that the source of their anxieties looks rather ashamed of herself.

“I thought you heard me.” She squeaks, her voice so quiet that Laurel needs to strain to hear it, and it doesn’t help that she’s keeping her chin tucked down.

“Heard you what?” Lisa asks, worry still the most prominent thing in her voice.

“When, when you were in the shower.” Rory explains, “I asked if we could play hide-and-seek when you got, got out, and I thought you heard, heard me. I was hiding under your bed.”

Lisa looks like she can’t decide between being angry, relieved, or embarrassed at that, and Laurel makes a note to later remind her friend that the next time she loses something, especially a child, she should check every inch of her apartment before running two blocks to her place.

“I thought you were playing, but then you left and didn’t come back, so I called grandma.”

“Oh my god,” Lisa exclaims again, “Rory, don’t just assume I heard you if I’m in the shower.”

“But when you yell, yell upstairs at my house and daddy doesn’t, doesn’t answer you, you say to take, take that as a, as a yes.”

Laurel actually laughs out loud at that. She’s seen that happen a few times, where Lisa will be sitting on the couch in her brother’s living room while he’s upstairs and so she’ll just shout any question she has for him. He only answer half the time, if that, and when he does answer it’s hard to tell what he’s saying, but she pretty much always takes it to mean yes.

“That’s… that’s not something I should be doing in front of you, I’m sorry.” She says and before Rory can start full on crying Lisa pulls her back to her chest for another hug, and then stands up fully so that she’s holding her.

“How did you find us?” Laurel asks Dinah, who simply smiles.

“We were waiting in Lisa’s apartment for her to come back, I called Joe West to tell him to pass along the message about what happened if she went to the police. We were playing checkers when Sara called me to ask if I had spoken to you girls, she said something about Lisa’s phone being dead but the voicemail working and that you were at the park. I told her I was actually on my way out to meet you.”

Laurel smiles at that, of all people Dinah Lance was probably the most against her when she decided to remain on this Earth permanently, not that she blames the older woman. To hear that she covered for them, it’s a testament to how far they’ve come.

“Wait,” Lisa suddenly says, directing a very confused look towards the little girl in her arms. “Why was my window open?”

“Oh, there was a fly so I opened it so he could go back to his friends.”

That does it. That’s the one that finally gets Lisa laughing. Of course that’s the reason the window was open.

Since they’re at the park Rory starts begging to go on the playground, and so they let her, but not before warning her that her parents WILL be hearing about this little stunt she’s pulled. She starts to beg them not to tell, of course, but Lisa stands firm that they’re telling and if she wants to play she had better go. So it’s with slightly broken spirits that the little girl heads off to what she must be convinced is her last afternoon of fun for a while.

“You know,” Dinah drawls as soon as her granddaughter is safely out of earshot. “It isn’t like she’s old enough to be grounded or anything, if you send her to bed early tonight there really isn’t a point in Sara and Leonard knowing.”

“You know I was thinking no desert,” Lisa says, raising an admiring eyebrow at Dinah. “But I kind of like that better.”

Laurel just smirks at the agreement, “We’re still gonna let her think we’re telling them, right?”

“Absolutely,” Dinah quickly agrees.

“We can’t let her think she’s getting off that easy.” Lisa puts in, and Laurel just smirks in agreement.

[peterlorrefanpage]

I love your rambles!

My first Lorre film was possibly Mad Love, albeit when I was a kid; I don't think it was M, though it seems like I had to have seen it ages ago as well. Growing up, it was Arsenic and Old Lace, Casablanca, and the Maltese Falcon. Even with those performances and the Spike Jones takeoff, it's like I just didn't get it all the same, how amazing Peter Lorre really was. He was described to me as "horror" or "scene-stealer" or seen as a cartoon caricature, and that was that.

It wasn't until a year or so ago that I stumbled upon Three Strangers and had a complete & utter obsession fall upon me like a ton of bricks. And the hunt for all his everything began! (Which led me to marvelous folks such as yourself on Tumblr.)

I love what you say about Dr. Gogol and Lorre's handling of that character. I have yelled at Yvonne to just PRETEND, COME ON, ACT LIKE YOU LOVE HIM. I'm just going to have to watch it again. He really does imbue his every scene with such shadows and heights.

--

I had to dig into his biography about the movie:

"'Peter had definite ideas as to his character portrayal,' confirmed co-worker Keye Luke. 'He was careful that his character had a sense of reality and vitality.' Where a gesture or look more economically expressed emotion, the actor scrapped dialogue. Lorre credited his imagination with introducing a new kind of villainy to the cinema. However, he balanced that menace against a soft vulnerability that was more real than imagined."

We can definitely see that vulnerability. The look on his face when he thinks the wax model has come alive - ! Okay, I need to watch the movie again.

--

Now to start untangling his complicated relationship with horror:

"At first, his sinister screen persona had amused him. But in true Hollywood fashion, it had grown larger than life. Lorre was weary of being reminded of M. Unless he expunged his identity as a 'horror hero' from public consciousness, he could not hope to reorient his image or his career."

Despite Columbia having no idea what to do with him when they brought him over, they did try to help his public image along: Studio publicists staged the pictures we see today, of Lorre gardening, Lorre pensive at the piano, Lorre standing by a car, etc., in the hopes of selling "the real Lorre" as an affable chap who could play everything from broad comedy to tragedy. It's only on screen that he's a monster man, they averred. I find this last bit quite ironic.

Lorre really wanted to do Crime and Punishment, which Columbia balked at despite him having sat around for a year - until they got him to agree to be lent to MGM for Mad Love.

"All he asked of his American debut was audience recognition," says his biography. Unfortunately, overnight, he became known as one of the "horror boys," with proclamations such as: "A one-man chamber of horrors. "A pint-sized Boris Karloff. "This offering of terror will climax all horror films." Even when Crime and Punishment came out, there was an article “Lorre in New Horror Role"!

Lorre hated the sound of the word horror. He thought such films appealed to base instincts and "its appeal is essentially evil."

So when I Was an Adventuress (1940) was due: "I hope the movie fans will laugh at me,” said a hopeful Lorre. “If they do, maybe Hollywood will give me another chance to be funny. This horror business, you know, gets rather tiresome, and no fellow ever particularly enjoys seeing himself constantly as a heel on the screen. He’d rather be a clown once in a while.”

He labeled himself a psychological actor and, as late as 1963, was still protesting his association with horror movies: "How this image always remains I don’t know, but it does remain. I have never played a single horror picture, as far as I can remember. I somehow got into that category, but it’s actually psychological terror I used to play, or do play."

And his tastes did indeed turn to Poe, as you said. I'm so glad he got to play some of his works on the radio. Lorre wanted Poe and his psychological terror / horror to be the sort of horror shown in the cinema. He was especially grateful for The Tell-Tale Heart, which crosscut his interest in psychoanalysis: "Poe never heard of psychoanalysis, or modern psychology, but he knew about it, just the same," Lorre said. "The double symbolism of the ‘eye’ and the ‘heart’ in ‘The Tell-Tale Heart’ anticipated Freud by many years. You can find a ‘scientific’ explanation of that tale in Freud, but Poe was nearer the truth, because he knew that psychoanalysis is not, as Freud said, a ‘nature study,’ but an expression of the deepest secrets of the heart and mind.'"

--

I love how his voice is so eminently suited to radio. The quietly sinister tone, the jaded hopefulness, the sardonic laugh, the hurt-puppy of a spurned lover, the instant switch to hysteria - he holds me captive no matter what the scene. For you are right, he definitely wanted to play deeper villains. I wish he'd stayed in radio longer; I think he could have gone further. But the style was probably changing as well (I should look up just how long the radio drama/ensemble show era lasted. Late 50s?).

Anyway: I love your thought that in the end, Lorre would have / could have come back around to the kind of work he did in his theatre days. He certainly enjoyed great versatility during those years. I really wish Der Verlorene had either been made sooner or much later, if that were possible. His timing just was awful, poor man. It's such a gripping, important film.

America just held such a thrall for him. He instantly took to the lush, sunlit lifestyle, so much so that I have wondered if when Brecht made his way over and established himself in a nice little nest of anti-everything, Lorre felt a sinking of the heart that he kept to himself. He'd gone so far past what Brecht expected of him and wanted him to do, and there's a significant bit in the book where Brecht keeps trying to entangle him right back again.

Peter Lorre - Mad Love (1935)

Something about this particular picture appeals to me in strangely enticing ways. It could be just an imaginary perceived difference from all the other Mad Love images floating out there, but all the same -

Lorre's expression caught here is superb. Sensuous and cruel, haunting and alluring, restrained and contemptuous; he is never just one thing, one emotion.

Seeing him like this makes me want to see the next moment, the unfolding of the promise that lies behind this expression. Those full lips could be just about to quirk up into a smile, but a smile that would have a remoteness and cruelty about it, for he doesn't quite interact with the rest of humanity in the usual ways, does he. . .

For all that and despite my own mad fascination with Lorre, the Gogol character in the film doesn’t generally appeal to me except in unconnected & scattered moments - and I don’t think Lorre played it so it would be appealing, however many other adjectives and feelings it invokes - but damn if this particular picture doesn’t want to turn that around.

Not that "the stare" doesn't already do a fine job of making me want to overlook all the dangerous and creepy obsessiveness (especially with a touch of slo-mo).

And of course The Kiss which, well, Lorre:

Once again I dearly wish I could go back and yank Hollywood's thumbs out of their asses because COME ON, people, a man who could turn even this role into something multifaceted and edgy and slickly psychological is a man you should never have typecast into "horror." Rlawrarrgh! <--inarticulate ragey sound

[the-pull-to-the-light]

As I while away the last few hours before I see TROS, I’m going to spit out one last rant about why Ben must be redeemed.  It’s nothing a million people haven’t said before, nothing groundbreaking, nothing even particularly well organized, but I have to ramble.

20 Reasons Why Ben Solo Must Be Redeemed

1.  Lucas, Abrams, and others have repeatedly stated that the core message of SW is hope.  Saying "Oh, except for that guy.  He's beyond hope" would end the nine-movie arc with a giant fart sound instead of playing into that theme.

2.  He is named after the man Leia called her "only hope" in perhaps the second-most famous line of dialogue in the original trilogy (second only to "I am your father.")

3.  Speaking of fathers, if Ben isn't redeemed it makes Han's sacrifice meaningless.  He laid down his life in an attempt to bring his son back to the Light, and with his dying gesture caressed Ben's face in a forgiving gesture.  Han did not die hating his son.

Ben staying evil would also cheapen Luke's final act.  He used up the last of his life force to face his nephew one last time, to give him one final lesson and warning.  

Considering how vocal the fans are who dislike how the original cast were killed off in the sequel trilogy, a surprising number of them want their favorites’ deaths to be futile.

4.  It would vindicate all the fans who have seen the hints and successfully predicted so much of the trilogy already, despite being the target of vicious harassment by a certain, toxic segment of the fandom.

5.  The prodigal son is an ancient trope, and it’s survived for thousands of years because it’s a satisfying story that speaks to a primal need for acceptance and reconciliation.  SW has always drunk deeply from the well of mythology.

6.  Ben remaining on the Dark Side would leave Rey without the companionship of the one person who truly understands her.  Through their Force Bond they know each other with a level of intimacy only a select few ever have.  Rey is the main hero of this trilogy, and heroes in fairy tales get happy endings.

7.  Speaking of fairy tales, that is what the SW saga has been called repeatedly by Lucas and others in the know.  Fairy tales do not end in nihilistic, tragic fashion (at least, not the versions that are widely known and beloved in modern times.)

8.  What message would it send for Ben to stay on the Dark Side?  "Once you do a bad thing, you're tainted forever and might as well not even try to be better"?  Yeah, that sounds like a message Disney would be behind...

9.  Ben has canonically suffered mental abuse since he was born (possibly even in utero).  His character resonates with real-life abuse survivors.  Again, this would send a terrible message to viewers:  "Abuse makes you evil and you can never rise above it."  It also means that he did not choose the Dark Side entirely of his own free will.  He was groomed and lured into it.  It doesn’t absolve him of all responsibility for his actions, obviously, but it does throw a whole lot of gray into the mix, and makes us yearn to know what he would be like without that influence.

10.  It would give Palpatine a victory.  The most evil being in the galaxy would win--if not the war, then a very significant battle.

11.  The Force would remain imbalanced.

12.  Characters are supposed to grow, change, and evolve throughout a story.  If a character ends a trilogy in essentially the same place as they began, that's unsatisfying and, frankly, bad writing.

13.  It would render all the previous movies pointless.  They are the story of the Skywalker family, and if we watched three generations struggle over nine movies only for the result to be “and then their last scion died in disgrace” that would feel like a colossal waste of time.  This is not a Shakespearean tragedy, where such a thing would be fitting; again, it’s a fairy tale.

14.  The movies hit us upside the head with lines like “Nobody’s ever really gone,” “I feel it again, the pull to the light,” and Snoke pointing out that even patricide couldn’t expunge the Light from Ben.  The camera cuts to his face when the word “hope” is spoken.  There are many, many examples of these subtle and not-so-subtle hints.

15.  The books and other expanded universe materials have given us scenes of Ben as a small child, doing and saying cute kid things that make us go “aww.”  That doesn’t strike me as “You should hate this character and cheer for his death.”

16.  Adam’s amazing acting has telegraphed the deep conflict, pain, and suffering of his character time and time again.  How many times did we see him on the verge of tears?  He is utterly miserable on the Dark Side, and even in his moment of supposed victory at the end of TLJ he was clearly broken and devastated.  He is not a cartoon villain cackling madly about the heroes’ downfall.  (That’s Palpatine.  Heh.)

17.  Adam is an artist of great skill and sensitivity who selects his roles with care.  He is not some shallow actor in it for the money.  They talked him into taking the role because of the depth of the character, and the nuance of his journey.  If the ending was “and then he doesn’t learn anything and just dies” I highly doubt Adam would have been interested.

18.  As fandom likes to say, “the man is a walking spoiler,” and it’s so obvious that he is at the heart of the biggest, deepest story beats based on how little we see of him in the trailers and promos.  We see him fighting with a lightsaber, because that’s expected and doesn’t give away the plot, but the significant moments (”But I do” and the bit with Palpatine’s voices) are few and far between.

19.  Perhaps the most important of all:  Leia.  She is one of the most beloved characters in modern cinema, and she earnestly, devoutly, passionately, desperately wants her son back.  Whether her character survives Episode IX or not, to have her left heartbroken about her only child would be unthinkable.  If for no other reason than for Leia's peace of mind, Ben must return to the Light.

20.  On a personal note, I’m still smarting all these years later from how disappointing the conclusion of the Pirates of the Caribbean trilogy was (the most kickass woman I’d ever seen on screen ended up literally barefoot and pregnant).  That left a gouge in my heart that will never heal.  After years of deep meta analysis and fangirling, for Elizabeth to end up that way, and for the sizzling chemistry between her and Jack to amount to nothing, was devastating.  I dread the thought of a trilogy I’m this invested in dropping the ball that badly again.  Game of Thrones ended up as a dumpster fire, too.  Even the last Harry Potter book was disappointing to me, although not as badly as the previous examples.  Anyway, the point is that I’ve been let down by other franchises in the past several years, and I refuse to see it happen again.

[olivcrisms-blog]

hiya everyone !! i’m lilac, she/her, 19, and hail from the desolate timezone known as aest (rip). just a lil bit about me - first up ,what’s my my fave band… what’s a 5sos. i also like twd and peanut butter cups, in that order. anyways, enough with my lame ass, below i’d like to introduce you to my lil bean, oliver !

♦ * ⋅ ⋆ — looks like「the ROSE COLORED GLASS」or as most would call HIM, OLIVER ELKS, has just enrolled at gmu! some would say the NINETEEN year old looks a lot like ASHTON IRWIN. truthfully, they can be AWKWARD, but also WHIMSICAL. more than anything though, i wanna know WHAT MADE HIM SO OPTIMISTIC? i heard HIS GRANDPARENTS RAISED HIM WITH LOVE AND TOO MANY FAIRYTALES. i also heard that they sometimes KNIT SWEATERS FOR DOGS. wonder if i have any classes with ‘em. [cismale]

alright below i’m just going to throw around a bit of info about oliver !! nothing too complicated (or interesting lmao), but oliver is a recently revived muse of mine so i apologise if everything isn’t sorted out yet. :) okay now to the fact mobile

MY MUNCHKIN

MY BEAN

MY DARLING

oliver is of a dying breed, the chivalrous gentleman. defs a boy-next-door type, he was raised with impeccable manners and respect and with too much empathy bottled up in one human tbh 

this is partly due to oliver just being a sensitive person to begin with, but also bc of the traumas of his childhood

tw: death & bullying - oliver was always the smallest kid in class, had a weird last name, and an easy target for bullies. he was bullied constantly, to which his parents constantly reaffirmed him and told him they loved him always. but still, he got picked on a lot. things only got worse when his parents passed away when he was 7 years old in a tragic accident caused by a gas leak. oliver lived with his grandparents after that on the outside of town.

the events from above didn’t harden him, they softened him ??? like, his mind became nearly expunged of everything negative and retained an optimistic outlook of the world (sometimes, to a fault). he can be a lil too trusting or naive, but his intentions are always pure. the bad things that happen sorta just fly right over his head now. most of the time this is a blessing, but sometimes it’s hard to be real with him bc he’s too busy just trying to put a positive spin on something that should be accepted for what it is y’know?

relating to the above, a lot of insecurities and harrows from his childhood have gone unresolved bc he just refuses to talk about it,,, like, if something’s not good, he just won’t acknowledge it. it’s part of the reason he’s taken to drinking a lil too much, and partying more than he should (part of this was bc he was late in his teenage rebellion, also due to the fact he just finds them,,, fun. he loves being happy and watching others being happy too).

also fun facts oliver’s dad was australian and so when he was 15, he spent a summer with his australian family bc he hadn’t seen them since his parents’ funeral basicaly and he kinda nevilled ™/archied ™… he went over as this tiny morsel of a kid and returned not only bigger physically, but his features had filled out more and his ears sat right and his teeth suited his face and basically… he got hot.  but the best thing that happened to him over that summer was he finally became a lil more confident !! 

he’s also a pure ROMANTIC. he watched too much disney as a kid and both his parents and grandparents had the most touching love stories. oliver has always wanted this. bc of this he has a tendency to ‘catch feels’ waaaay too quickly, but he’s not here for any of that ‘netflix and chill’ stuff. he panics when it comes to that sort of thing tbh, it’s actually sorta adorable lmao.

on that note, his sexuality has been something he hasn’t actively thought about, and he doesn’t like to label himself. he could fall in love with anyone really, it all depends on what type of person they are to oliver and such. but yeah, it’s not something he talks about v often, if at all. he’s not a labels sort of person 

he’s a psych major at gmu bc he wants to spend his life helping people (would have been a doctor or vet, however he’s scared of operations and things of that nature). he works part time at a pet store, lugging dog food and the like. he has a pet fish, but not an actual pet, which is something he laments on every day.

he takes photos of everything. he’s obsessed with capturing every moment, and bc of this, his instagram is LIT (and yours would be too, he’d happily spend 30 mins helping you getting that perfect shot). he also loves the outdoors and plays a lot of sports, however he competed in swimming carnivals since he was a kid. (he also plays guitar on the dl, but that’s not common knowledge)

don’t feed this man sugar, he’ll be hyped for days

as oliver grew up with his grandparents (who are quite a bit older bc oliver’s parents had him later in life via ivf), he has a lot of quirks he’s inherited from them. he literally loves knitting ?? it’s such a calming thing for him, and he’d happily knit you a scarf or something if you asked. he’s also quite a good gardener and sometimes he may just wear a flower behind his ear or whatever and like agiuhagsdaf he’s my sunbeam

he kinda wants to travel and see the world, but he needs to stay for his family ??

this boy has 19 years of baggage manifested inside him. it takes a lot to get him angry, but if you happen to be the lucky one that does,,, oh boy. oh boy.

how do you end these things ?? halp. nah i’ll just end it here bye

…

sike i’m not done rambling, i also i have a few wanted plots !! (this can be added to the 3 pre-existing relationships if it works !!)

a person who friendzoned oliver in high school, lmao 

maybe someone who really wants to sleep with oliver (bc who are we kidding, he’s hot) but oliver is just really not digging it ?? like just imagine him being all “um no thankyou i don’t want to have the sex, let’s play uno instead !! :D”

a toxic friendship or relationship !! oliver keeps seeing the good in this person and hopes this person would change, but they keep hurting him, and everyone knows the two are on the road to misery but oliver doesn’t want to give up on them ??? just angst and gdjsdnfs

also here are oliver’s bio/headcanons/stats and plots pages, but defs hmu if you wanna plot !! i have so much muse and my whole heart to give (to the highest bidder, preferably) and both oliver and i would just love to have you !!