#just part of it huh?? i mean a lot of the spiral is actually Wow. I really lost so much of my life (so much time. so many opportunities) to

[mieczyhale]

one of the guys that runs a reaction channel i've been watching for ages just announced that they're ending the channel next year bc he got a job offer and he's getting married and he's thinking about his family and his future and like...

my son in christ you are 21

i literally want to fucking die

[myddle]

Okay Uzi, lets start Murdering, some Drones

The finale of Murder Drones has come and gone, this show has successfully buried it's way into my cerebral cortex, and I will now think about it until I die

Anyway, lets speculate on what the fuck just happened in Episode 8 (And Episode 7 a bit too I guess)

Warning: Biggest Post Yet, Spoilers, Opinions

I Was Wrong About The Admin Thing, And I'm Okay With That

Last time I did a post like this, I speculated that Uzi's Administrator status would be the key to victory against the Absolute Solver. In truth, it was a blink-and-you'll-miss-it lore point, which makes sense in hindsight, because the whole Admin thing was a blink-and-you'll-miss-it lore point to begin with. This kind of environmental storytelling is good to put in a text, of course, but casual viewers need to be able to follow the plot without it. Truthfully, this is actually an area where the show usually stumbles a little; if there's one criticism I have for Murder Drones, it's that it show-don't-tells a little too hard sometimes. Luckily, this show is good enough for me to want to excuse it's flaws by any means neccessary! FOR EXAMPLE,

Khan Doorman: Mischaracterised, Or Traumatised?

So, Khan was kind of acting a little too badass at the end there, huh? This drone was a delusional door maniac at the start of the series, but now he's this stoic badass with a goofy side? Huhwhat? Explain THAT, Smart Genius!

How about I do? Call it a theory, but I think that THIS, is the real Khan, and the dingus we saw at the start of the series was a broken shadow of him.

Khan was a respected man, seeming leader of the Worker Defense Force, front of the line in finding Nori and Yeva just after the Core Collapse, and say what you will, he can build a good door.

And then tragedy strikes. The Dissassembly Drones strike, and while the WDF fends them off, they are not without casualty. Nori is devoured by nanite acid, and Khan beats her head in to end her suffering. The worst has happened.

While Nori's heart sneaks away to go make the plot happen, Khan spirals. His efforts to fight the DD scourge have failed, so he turns to doors. He doubles, triples down, becomes obsessed with the only thing that hasn't failed him. His daughter still wants to take the fight to the enemy, but Khan rejects the thought so hard, he rejects Uzi with it, hence his "doors>uzi" bullshit in the first episode (for the record, I'm not justifying it, I'm just explaining it, he was still a piece of shit for this).

By the time "Pilot" rolls around, Khan has been in a door-obsessed fugue state for... maybe years, I don't think we ever find out how long ago Nori's "death" was. But by now, he's barely functional; Uzi's second excuse to go outside literally only worked because it was door themed. His fear and delusion almost kill his only remaining family.

But as the events of the show go on, Khan is shook out of routine, and his stupor begins to fall away. In "Heartbeat", he defends his daughter's eccentricities. In "The Promening", he clumsily attempts to be part of Uzi's life again, and watches her build an alliance with N and V. In "Cabin Fever", he opens up to Uzi, revealing the darkness that haunts him and admitting to his mistakes. By "Mass Destruction" his mind has mostly cleared, and while he's still a door-loving goofball, he trusts his daughter, knows what he needs to do, and is ready to kick some Solver ass.

Wow, turns out I had a lot to say about Khan friggin' Doorman, do excuse me. Alright, onto the actual finale, now.

And Now, A Summarisation Of My Thoughts On "Nuzi"

yes

TradJedy: A Bootlicker To The End

I've seen some people are unsatisfied with J's villanous and, lets be honest, kinda pathetic role in the finale, but as sad as it is, I think it was true to her character. J is, above all, two things: Tessa's closest, favourite drone, and a corporate underling for some reason. Cyn wearing Tessa's skin was no doubt the most demoralising for J; Tessa is dead, the killer is pantomiming the life she never had, and you can't stop her. Plus, J likely knows better than anyone just how powerful the Solver is, how futile resisting it's conquest could be. But, to have a place alongside it? An offer of safety? Why wouldn't she take that offer? Hell, even V was tempted by it; when Cyn confronts her, she almost instinctively says "I can still...", as if her survival instinct is telling her to serve. J simply gave in.

Anyway, onto some details:

"If I promised you anything, it tricked me too."

I've seen people get confused by this line, but I think J is speaking on behalf of Eldritch J, formerly the J clone that led N & V's DD squad. That J seemed to fully buy the JCJenson cover story, at least to me, and J Prime appears to have deduced that. I don't think she has all of Eldritch J's memory, though; that "PRIOR HAZARD" poppup strikes me as the impersonal knowledge of an error report, rather than personal experience of getting blown to pieces.

"I never needed either of you."

Yeah, buuuuuullshit. J definitely doesn't really mean this. She's in bridge-burning mode, trying to convince herself more than anything that she's moved on. That offer of safety has gained a heavy price of two old friends, and J is pushing herself to pay it.

Local Autistic Teen Fights God And Wins

This uno-reverse-card moment felt a little out of nowhere at first, but on a rewatch, I think I get it. While the past few minutes fighting Cyn were utterly nightmarish, and some of the most gruesome stuff I've ever seen get done to humanoids, it did teach Uzi one thing; resisting the CallbackPing is suprisingly easy. Before this episode, it seemed like the USB Patch was the only hope for escaping the Solver's clutches, but apparently strong willpower and personality is enough to stop it temporarily, and that gets a lot easier to pull off once you know that you can do that. A single "Bite me" or the hand-hold of love is enough to stop Cyn's advance, and once Uzi fully realises that, it stops scaring her. In addition, Uzi's use of the [NULL] shows that she is a very quick learner, and can easily adapt to Cyn's tricks, allowing her to pull this "no-u" and turn the tables on Cyn. This quick thinking is also what wins the battle against Cyn in the end, catching on to how she uses the teleport.

Teleport... that seems familiar... hey, WAIT A SEC-

Doll Is Alive And I'm Not Coping; A Thesis

Everybody has pointed to this frame after Uzi eats Cyn's heart; the box that says "UZI DRN" briefly says "RSN DOLL" instead. But funnily enough, that isn't even the first thing that made me suspect that Doll might still be alive deep within Uzi's code.

If you look closely at Uzi's new gradient eyes, you'll notice that thEY'RE SO PRETTTYYY AAAHHH <3 <3 <3

*ahem*

If you look closely at Uzi's new gradient eyes, you'll notice that a subtle but distinct tint of red sits in between the yellow and purple ends. Admittedly, you can also see pink and orange, so it's not airtight evidence, but it was enough to get me speculating. Obviously, that RSN DOLL frame basically confirms it on it's own, but I found some other stuff too, and I thought it was interesting enough to share.

Uzi consumed Cyn's heart (some of it anyway), and Cyn lived on inside Uzi, possessing her tail in the post-credits. Back in "Mass Destruction", Cyn consumed Doll's heart, and while the scenarios aren't one-to-one, it can be reasonably inferred that Doll might live on in Cyn, who now lives on in Uzi, resulting in a situation oddly reminiscent... of Russian Dolls. BWAM BWAM BWAAAAAAM

It's thematically resonant, which means it's basically canon, right?

[There used to be another thing here about Solver Powers, but it turned out it was a lot less airtight than I thought, so I'm moving it to another post. Thanks to @1-800-hellyeah for the catch]

In conclusion, Doll lives on in the depths of Uzi's code, and that matters. The ramifications of this are unclear, and there's another thing with Doll in the credits, but we'll get to that in a moment with...

The Credits Scene Lightning Round

The credits are full of scenes of the surviving cast enjoying life after the Battle For Copper 9, and while I haven't heard anything about their canonicity... I mean, they look canon. Liam has stated that this is the end of the series, and I'm inclined to believe him, but a lot of this stuff feels like plot hooks he could pick up in a second season someday, if he wanted. Or maybe he just left them to feed the fanfic crowd long term. Either way, lets see what we've got to chew on!

J Prime, Alone

Man, despite how much of a prick she was, I feel kinda bad for J. She gave up everything for the Solver, only for the Solver to get defeated anyway, at least for now. She's repairing one of the ships she destroyed, presumably to leave the planet, but where is she gonna go? What is she gonna do? Fake Tessa's JCJenson credentials imply that the company might still be operating out in space somewhere, but trying to pal up with them feels like a long shot, especially since J Prime probably has some blood on her hands from Cyn's orders. ...What's left for her?

Goopy Ghost Doll

Okay, so if Doll is in Uzi's code, how is she also here? I honestly have no real clue, but my best guess is that since Uzi is arguably the most powerful entity in the setting now, Doll could utilise a fraction of Uzi's power to project herself out into the world, unnoticed? Maybe? That's the best I've got. Anyway, she's probably gonna try to kill V again, knowing her.

And don't say it's just a hallucination or something; everything* in the show has either been real, or an illusion with a clear source. They've been very good about not pulling the hallucination card, and I'm inclined to trust they wouldn't do it now.

*I just remembered the weird skeleton thing behind V in "Home", I'm not sure what that counts as

Yeva's Corpse, Or Lack Thereof

People have seen this shot of Doll's house, and said that the absence of one of the covered bodies implies Yeva is also alive. While Nori proves that your body doesn't even need to be missing for you to maybe be alive... I don't know. I'm hesitant. If she's alive, why get her body back now of all times? It feels like there are other much simpler explanations, like maybe her body is just on the floor now, 'cause everything started floating at the start of the episode, and actually, didn't N pull the cover off of those two, anyway? Maybe he put it back, I don't know. Make of this what you will, I got nothin'.

Eldritch J, Alone

Oh, SHE'S alive. Now THIS is interesting. Her heart did survive the explosion in "Heartbeat", and I guess nobody's been down to the Cryosleep wing since. Understandable, I wouldn't exactly be eager myself. But it's possible Eldritch J was able to recollect all the matter that Cyn "gathered" with her back then, and has grown back to full size.

Now that Cyn isn't around to run the Solver, Eldritch J is probably fully sentient and aware now. That must have sucked to wake up to; last she remembers, she got shot in the face by a purple gremlin, and now she's this fucking thing. Oh man, my brain is already writing the fanfic where J Prime finds her whilst infiltrating the Outpost for ship parts. (That concept is free to grab it anyone wants to)

Alright, lets finish this off...

Cyn

I've long wondered about Cyn's true nature, whether Cyn is a remorseless mastermind or a tragic puppet of the Solver's true will... The finale didn't give us a straight answer on this - The two seemed narratively entwined in Cyn's heart, but in the post credits scene she seems... friendly. Friendliest she's been, potentially. Plus, The illusory camera heads appear in Uzi's reflection seperately, implying a seperation between Cyn and Solver.

After everything, I think I've personally settled on somewhere in the middle. Cyn was a willing accomplice to the Solver... for as much as that can mean for Cyn. In "Home", Cyn is contacted by the Solver on the brink of death, and is offered salvation, to not be discarded like she was before. Her life before this was likely very short; her owners probably threw her out pretty quickly due to her "quirks". Tessa tried to give her the love she gave to her other drones, but it was already too late; Cyn would spend her formative years under the influence of the Solver, so it's no wonder she ended up so morally twisted. She talked about her "back-ups" to excuse the deaths and suffering of her fellow drones... was it an excuse? Or does she genuinely think that made it okay? How much does she understand... anything?

She's acted without remorse, but she's only had the full perspective of a detached eldritch being that only cares for consumption. But even then, her personality shines through. She seems to have genuine affection for N, even if she expresses it in horrid ways. Her alignment with the Solvers goals seems to come from a personal desire for revenge on humanity, considering how she plays out the gala. And despite the circumstances, she's visibly enjoying herself in "Absolute End", having an absolute blast fighting the trio. It's like a game to her.

Her crimes are great, but she's hardly the only one in this show with a kill count. I believe that if someone gave her that USB Patch, then sat her down and explained how reality works, she would have a full change of heart and crisis of remorse.

In a way, she was a lot like J; a willing, but coerced minion to the Solver of The Absolute Fabric. The Void. The Exponential End.

I like to call it The Voiceless One.

[rrking]

Me who never posts on Tumblr

Also me in my notes:

Not being funny I have a legit fantasy involving being pounded in the back of a Hummer truck after I saw that in an adult film LMAO

This is just a story based on that but from the perspective of someone quite closeted and inexperienced, I've been using writing to navigate my own feelings and this was one of the pieces

Plot: Girl in late 20s has first experience with real intimacy with her boyfriend in a car, (it's a nice car mind) after most of her life being afraid or avoidant of sex and intimacy. The boyfriend is a well known actor, which only adds to the uncertainty - and he knows this, but he tries to convince her that he wants to be together and he wants this, because he's just a person too.

Most of the story is her thoughts and feelings as described by her spiralling internal monologue.

❌NSFW❌

❌M/F PAIRING❌

❌DESCRIPTIONS/MENTIONS OF PREVIOUS SEXUAL RELATED TRAUMA❌

(I was groomed by an older man online when I was 16/17. I'm trying to heal from this even ten years on and that's part of the reason I wrote this.)

I can't believe I agreed to go up this stupid mountain with him. I already hate being stuck in a car, but how we're stuck at the top of some fucking mountain in the middle of nowhere.

To be fair, I would have said yes to anything considering I'm flying home tomorrow, and... Well...

LA looks beautiful from up here. I can see the entire city, from the centre to the stacked rows of houses on each side. I can see his house too... Maybe even our house, one day. What a dream.

My boyfriend is an actor, one of many trying to make it in Hollywood.

Well, he's already 'made it', actually. That's why I was so confused when he took any interest in me. But I don't see him as some big shot actor. He's just... Him.

Genuine, laid back, smart and funny - he even has a (good) sarcastic sense of humour which, I've honestly never known of in an American national. Oh, he's good at playing guitar and singing too - a talent I never thought I would truly appreciate. He likes the same obscure, terrible bands that I do - but not in an obnoxious way. We connected through music mainly, but our mutual love of sport was the first connecting bridge.

Then, there's the fact he's a bit older than me... Quite a lot, actually. About 11 years to be exact. It doesn't bother me so much because I've dealt with older men many a time - they're easy for me to attract apparently. Talk about being born in the wrong era. They say I'm an old soul.

But he isn't like that. He's kind and mature and caring... All the things that those men in my past masked themselves to be. There's no manipulative tactics being used - he's just one of the guys.

I mean, I was kind of surprised when he didn't find it weird or emasculating for me as a woman to enjoy and follow major league baseball to the extent I do. I had only been in the loop for around 2 years at this point, but I have developed a clear interest in it - and apparently, we even have the same team.

I felt such a connection the first time we spoke about the players and other teams.

He gets me.

The man points to a large building with specks of light hitting off the glass. It's one of the biggest in the city - his talent agency.

"That's my office. Pretty clear from up here, huh?" he asks, smiling as he looks over at me from the steering wheel. Wow... He's so handsome, especially when the sunlight hits his face just right.

"I've never been a fan of heights but... This looks cool," I reply, sweeping my eyes along the skyline. I want to remember this view forever... Even if it doesn't work out between us - which it never does. I've never had much luck when it comes to dating. I always guessed I just didn't have an attractive aura or I was just... One of the guys. I was never tomboyish or anything, so I always wondered where this unwanted masculinity came from. I have PCOS, which could explain some of it, I suppose. I try not to think about it - because that's when my thoughts turn dark and I begin thinking I look like a man when I don't want to.

Amidst my rush of thoughts, I feel him staring at me, drumming his fingers on the steering wheel. It makes me swallow and my body prickles anxiously.

"Whatever you're thinking... Please just say it," I whisper, feeling my heart beating faster. I bet he can hear it. "You're making me nervous."

He takes a deep breath, trying to mask his own awkwardness with a smirk. My guy is awkward in a cute way. He's clumsy and just does dumb shit without thinking - this week he pretended to spray something fruit scented into his mouth and actually did it by accident - remarking the false advertising because it tasted perfumed. I laughed and laughed and laughed and laughed. He laughed too - this loud, cackling clown laugh - and we continued laughing together, way into the day because it kept being brought up and we couldn't stop.

That thought quickly dissipates when I feel his hand reach over to brush my thigh, bare since I decided to wear a casual dress today. I panic, beginning to ramble about anxiety when he gently shuts me up by leaning close and teasing my lips with his. He always kisses me like that... I've never been kissed that way before. There's always a short, featherlight pass of his lips on mine - and sometimes that's the best part because my lips are so sensitive. Even something as simple as shower water grazing over them can set me off if I'm in the mood for it.

However, I've yet to decide if that's just his move or if he specifically targets me because he can tell I have such sensitive lips...

"Shhh..." He whispers, gazing into my eyes and reaching up for my jaw. I'm melting. I'm honestly melting.

"You wanna make out in the backseat?"

Ha. So American. No asking if I fancy a quick shag - no way.

I blush at first, but grin and laugh. I feel more comfortable around him now, I just lack confidence. Inside of me somewhere, is a sexy, fiery phoenix trying to get out... They just need some serious coaxing.

In my mind, the answer is already yes. We've made out many times before. It comes a bit more natural to me now.

I've wanted to get to fourth base for a while, though. Definitely, before I go home - but I'm just so unsure. So scared.

I'm a virgin.

I don't feel good enough - this guy could likely get any woman he wanted, I mean, he's rich, he's well known and well liked... he's probably dated literal models - so why settle for the likes of me?

However, I tuck that in the back of my mind, deciding to push myself to do this despite the gnawing, tugging feeling in my gut, behind my belly button. I've never had sex with a real person before - but I can't let him know that. Not when I'm as old as I am. He's about ten years older than me, sure, but I feel like that makes it worse.

God. I bet he's had so much practice over the years. He's probably slept with tons of women. It makes me feel so anxious. What if I'm not normal? What if I'm not up to their standard?

Does a beautiful model fuck different to a normal chick?

Finally, I clear my throat and reply, realising I haven't yet. He's so patient.

"Go on then, you first," I smirk, gesturing to the back. He presses a few times for the radio to go up just a little more, likely to put me at ease a bit, then squeezes through to the back seat. He's pretty skinny, so it's hardly some full on crush to get in there.

I'm next, getting my wide hips stuck a little on the way there, but ultimately laughing it off. Hopefully, that just makes me look all cute and not absolutely fucking goofy. I've got a fat ass as well, and it gets wedged into everything.

Stretching my arm to place my purse on the seat in front, realising I've brought it with me, I've barely even sat down before his skin is touching mine.

Holy shit. That's contact.

Warm hands touch my chubby thighs, cold from wearing a dress in November. The way he smooches me within an inch of my life - I can tell he's been holding back, by the way he's feeling every inch of me with his hands, beneath my clothes and along my thighs and ass, manoeuvring me into the position he wants. As I moan into his mouth, his tongue slips out and begs entry. Of course, my lips hardly put up a fight. I've slowly learned to let my hands wander over his arms and shoulders, to make things seem less awkward. He taught me to do that. Actually, he really enjoys it when I do that - it seems like something so simple, but it makes such a difference.

Oh... He laughed at first, telling me what a terrible kisser I was - he didn't believe me when I told him I'd only kissed a handful of people in my life.

"Huh? A cute face like that only got kissed like ten times?" he told me. He is such a patient guy, and an even better teacher. He's the one who taught me how to mould my lips to his without judgement. That's probably where he discovered my lips are sensitive from so much as a touch.

Without really thinking, I get brave and sling my leg over his to sit in his lap, facing him as we snog each other in the backseat. His hands are still feeling me up all over, moving only between heavy breaths and taking special interest in my black panties beneath my dress. I made sure to wear some good ones all week, just in case.

The seats are shuffling beneath our combined weight as we flit around in one another's arms, struggling to find a position that is comfortable to sustain and relaxing, too.

My body clearly feels so comfortable with this man, so why doesn't my spirit? How is a man supposed to calm a woman's spirit? Can he even do that?

I think he can. I swear I've fallen in love with him over this last week. Coming to America to hang out with him has been the best idea I've ever had.

I must have been zoning out and flagging a little since he pulls away briefly, instead trailing kisses down my neck towards my collar, sucking on my skin and forcing a louder moan from me in response to the pain.

I huff his name, and he unlatches, going to do another even deeper than the last, immediately.

"Mm... That fucking hurts..." I grumble, breathing through it with a bitten lip. I'm anaemic, so he probably shouldn't do that, but I don't care. I'll suffer the consequences later.

"Can't have you flying back without a piece of me," he smirks, nipping at me some more. Why is he so good at that? He's clearly enjoying it too, because I can feel his body reacting beneath my thighs.

"No, I suppose not," I giggle, making the mistake of matching his kind gaze. There is a spark between us. It's like our souls are speaking to one another.

Like he actually loves me. As in, the innermost me. I have never seen such an empathetic look in all my days... Could I really be loveable in that fashion after all? His hands are saying they want to break me, the way he's digging his fingers into my hips, pulling my skirt up some in the process... but his eyes tell me they want to save me, hold me, love me, take me... All together and all at once. Perhaps I'm thinking too deeply into this, but I've never felt this way. He makes me feel strange, like I'm going to die, but I just can't find it within myself to break away - because he also makes me feel so good.

Edging forward, he kisses me again - but with a different intensity from before. It's slow and passionate, far less feverish than initially. Fingers creep along my back, gradually coming down to my front, over my thigh and towards the inner part of it.

He hovers there, awaiting consent.

This is it.

I don't even give it because I swear I would be exerting more energy trying to speak. I just feel for his hand and guide it to my tingling mound as we kiss, trying to focus more on kissing than the delectable stroking of his slightly calloused fingertips in my panties. (He tried serenading me earlier in the week with his guitar, and of course I told him there was no such need... But I always wondered what calloused fingertips would feel like on the most sensitive areas of my body... His singing was cute too, of course. He sang something he performed in one of his first films.)

Along with the heightened sense of belonging as I squirm a little bit now beneath his ministrations, occasionally breaking the kiss to gasp or keen as he explores what works best, the lids of my eyes are beginning to droop slightly as I slip into what can only be described as heaven.

He's clearly used his hands before for things other than picking at strings and button mashing video games. My stomach pulls taut as one finger starts sliding its way inside me, somehow able to fight so gently against the raging seas that are my narrow walls. Initially, I tense up, but then remember I need to relax in order for it to work. He must have felt the sudden tightening, since he eases off for a moment.

"No, no..." I insist, taking a deep breath and shutting my eyes. "It's just a new sensation... I'm fine."

He seems a little guarded, but I've done this before with my own fingers and other such objects. The calmness just doesn't come very naturally to me. I have to remind myself at first that the initial discomfort is only temporary. However... Giving control over to another is different. I cannot control his fingers, all I can do is trust that he is patient and gentle with me - which I imagine he will be.

"You sure?" he says lowly, looking at me as if he's searching my eyes for some kind of celestial answer.

I'm sure.

With this, he continues to delve deeper into my velvet trap, watching my subtle facial changes and kissing my neck as he works his full finger inside to the knuckle, pumping it in and out gently. I'm so embarrassed, swearing I can feel his fingertip all the way up in my pelvis. It feels divine. I'm squealing because I can't help it and it's having such an effect on him. I think he's... Enjoying it. Getting off on it even. Then he speaks and that confirms my suspicions.

"Hm, wow... Noisy."

Oh. My. God. No. I want the car to just crush me, Optimus Prime style. I'm so embarrassed - but he's not. He's just grinning. That stupid grin. I swear that's what even pulled me into this situation in the first place.

There's a second finger poking my entrance. I change expression for a moment, but initially take that in, too. I don't know what the hell he's touching or how he's flexing his fingers this way, but I'm feeling actual sparks in my abdomen. I definitely can't get my fingers that far in. It feels amazing - and this is ONLY his fingers. I'm so hot and bothered, biting my lip. How am I even coping with this right now?

"Hhhaaa, fuck..." I moan breathily, whinging as I reach up to grip the carpeted ceiling of the car, my painted nails scraping over it as I arch my back into him.

"Is that alright?" He whispers, looking up at me with that same, longing stare from before. You can always tell when he wants something, because he has this thousand yard stare with a hint of softness - to anybody else, it would just look fucking creepy. But to me, it speaks pure desire. He's actually getting off on ME.

"I'm not hurting you, am I?"

"No..." I whimper, letting my head hang back as much as I can and trying to ease back some more, leaning back against the rear of the front seat and providing more room for him to work. Well, as much as I can. He's a skinny guy, all things considered. I'm short and round, so my thighs don't quite straddle over him completely.

There's a disgusting noise now beneath my dress which I can hear and feel but not see. It's making it so much worse. I am flushed. He is flushing. He's staring at my face and my bitten lip, trying to kiss my teeth away and stop my sound muffling.

"Oh my god, that's so good..."

I'm sure as hell flushed to fuck, redder than a lobster.

Oh, but that's nothing compared to my slutty whining. Despite my eyes being shut, I can feel his stare on my face, a toothy grin blooming on his lips as he watches me pant with bliss. I've only ever done this to myself before, so having someone else do it is tantalising. I never imagined anybody would be able to do such a thing. I've wanted this guy for a long time and that's possibly making this experience better than ever.

Slowly removing my hand from above my head, I slink it down between us, rubbing tight circles on my clit to propel things forward a bit. I'm tired of waiting. He's such a tease, and I am not used to teasing myself. I want this now. I need it now. I'll die if I don't cum on those slender fingers.

His lips press gentle kisses to the arm across me as if to encourage it away, and I feel myself growing closer, my ribs rattling against my chest.

"Ahh, shit... That's it-!" I squeal, biting my lip and still trying to muffle the noises coming from my throat to no avail. He's just panting, staring, appreciating.

"Ughhh, god... I'm gonna cum..." I try to warn. That's another thing I've never been particularly good at. Often, it just happens before I can stop myself.

But I'm too loud and he's breathing heavily, clearly more experienced at this than I am despite being unable to hold his own moans back as he works his fingers between my legs.

"Fuck... That's hot," he husks sensually against my ear. The sound of his American drawl and the feel of his beard is enough to send me over the edge.

Finally it happens, that gush coating his fingers in slick. I'm shocked at first, even embarrassed.

What if other girls don't cum like that?

Why am I even thinking this way? He wouldn't put himself through this if he wasn't even the slightest bit attracted to me, right?

I'm clawing into his neck right now.

He definitely doesn't seem phased... Not by my noise or my wriggling. Especially once the sparkles of my orgasm hit and I feel some... fulfillment.

However, I know that if he keeps up, I'll be unable to stop cumming - and I'm not sure I want to show him that side of me yet. After years of learning myself I've gotten to a stage where I know how far I can push myself.

Oh god, if he finds that out then... Then, he might beg me to stay in LA and I'm just not ready for that sort of commitment yet either! What would I tell my family? What about my life in the UK?

I know in my heart I would leave it all behind.

I'm still struggling to get my head around the fact that someone with such a following has taken an interest in someone like me.

I don't belong in Los Angeles. As much as I want to. As much as I want to belong with him. It's not like he belongs in my country either, really. His life is here. His job, his family, his friends... His shitty football team.

I mean, perhaps if he convinced me I was the one piece left that he needed...

Once my walls stop spasming, he gently pulls his digits out and that's what pulls me back again. Kissing me deeply, he takes care not to wipe his wet fingers on my clothes. Always so thoughtful. It actually brings me from my deep thoughts back into the real world and what's happening right now.

Going into his coat pocket, he pulls out some tissues he stashed there earlier, probably at the local coffee shop or something, making me giggle on his lap despite still being out of breath. He's so smart, sensible and mature. It's so him coded. I love it.

"That was amazing..." I gush breathily, craving more. I've started the obsession. I fucking knew this would happen. I'm going to be gagging for him on my flight home.

It feels a little easier now to push forward into uncharted territory, though.

Maybe, I won't look like a total fool trying to bounce and grind on a real dick for the first time ever... It can't be anything as embarrassing as the times I've tried in my bedroom, surely?

His hands trace the curves of my waist, seeking more, so I sigh and lean back, trying to remain calm. Full lips are peppering sweetness all over my neck again, making the skin of my cheeks heat back up.

"These marks suit you, y'know," he smirks. "I think I like them."

Why, oh why does he keep going for my neck?

"I want you..." He whispers, working me perfectly. Hearing it from HIS lips hits different.

This time, I waste no time and lean through the front seats again, rifling through my purse for some protection I've had stashed in there for a while. I have an allergy after all - another weird thing about me I figured nobody would want to deal with - so I just brought my own hoping it would help that burden. Maybe he'll just think it's some budget brand or something - god, why so I think so stupidly?

Oh no. It turns out men like it when you come prepared. It's a sexy thing. His eyes light up, and he looks between me and the packet with a gritted grin.

Holy hell...

With a hefty swallow, I place it into his hand. I'm not being lazy, I'm just submitting, I suppose. However, I reckon I would genuinely screw up this whole encounter somehow, so my external unease is probably obvious.

"I've been keeping these in my purse," I admit quietly, giggling nervously as I just try to say anything to fill the silence.

"Okay," he says simply. He says it in the dorkiest fashion, with the dorkiest, most clueless look on his face.

"W-Well I want to use it!" I stammer, waving my hands.

"I got that part, sweetheart," he teases me with a sly, mocking simper. The pet name honestly gets me feral. I need him now.

"Look, listen. I don't know what the fuck I'm doing.

He still doesn't talk. Instead he just takes my chin and pushes it enough to tempt my lips with his, choosing to encourage me physically. I'm not used to this. Not that I've ever really been outwardly judged before for such a thing, but why isn't he judging me?

Did I not explain properly?

"I've never done it before," I admit, blinking. Here it comes... I'm waiting for the distaste. The lecture about how I'm a walking red flag.

But it never comes.

"Cool."

That's what he says. He just smiles. He just nods. He laughs a little, but it isn't malicious sounding. It's more of a cute, excited laugh. A dorky laugh.

"I have to admit, I don't think I've had sex with a virgin since I was like, 19," he smirks, breathing a little more paced. "Oh man, this is gonna be kinda exciting."

He's such a dork. Is he seriously getting excited about this? I feel immediately more comfortable, even bursting into laughter myself. I feel so silly.

"So, you're not put off?" I ask, touching my red hot cheek.

"Put OFF??" he squawks, letting that goofy laugh he does rip from his throat. It's so not forced, which is how I know he's genuine. I love it.

"Hell no," he smiles, shaking his head and leaning close enough where my gaze crosses a little and I hold a breath. "No. No way. This is actually super cool!" He sees me swallow, and immediately lowers his chirpy tone. "O-Oh! I'll be gentle, I promise! 19 year old me remembers how nervous I was," he smirks.

A sigh. I think I'm in love.

"I-Ia'm not sure I want you to be gentle, honestly..." I huff, gazing into his eyes and explaining that I've built up a collection of toys over the years due to being perpetually single and generally untrusting of other people.

To say I'm surprised at his reaction is an understatement, once again.

He looks extremely ecstatic. He's buzzing. It's as if I just told him his birds scored a touchdown - because they're that shit.

"You seem aware of what you want. That's good. That's helpful," he explains, even gesturing with his finger as he speaks. "Less trying out weird stuff to see if you like it, y'know?" There's a pause, and his face softens up again. "I do care about what you want, you know."

I smile. If I wasn't so cautious and guarded, I would have grabbed him and kissed him there and then. But no... I have to go and make things weird.

"Hmmm... Well... Let me see. I can't do cowgirl on my knees, as much as I would like to. I have to squat because I'm so small. Um... What else..."

He laughs light heartedly, hardly bothered.

"How do you find out a thing like that?" he squawks through that laugh again.

"Oh, there's ways around that, honey," he insists huskily, and the serious tone in his voice paired with his scheming smirk does something to me.

He looks around, considering our surroundings. I mean, he seems to have a plan in mind. Clearly, this is not his first rodeo. These Capricorn men, man.

"Hm. Y'know, it might be a bit difficult with you on top, anyway. In here, I mean! I reckon you're small enough to lie back here," he instructs, trying to move enough to let me sink back onto the bench seat sideways. My legs are pretty short, so I'm able to hold them up around him, his skinny frame nestling between my ass and the side door. "And I'll just slink in here..." There's a rustle of clothes and a clang as he pulls his belt off, just enough to pull his trousers and pants to his knees, the rubber in between his teeth as he adjusts himself and takes me through what is about to be my first time. Wow, he looks so handsome when he's concentrating. I could lose myself in this face.

I wasn't expecting him to get undressed so quickly, though.

"Y'alrigh' 'own 'ere?" He mumbles, teeth getting in the way of his tongue as he speaks with the wrapper in between the white gnashers. Multitasking.

I go to speak as he sheathes himself - and REALLY wish I fucking hadn't. My eyes widen, since I can't seem to emote inwardly, and I see the size of what he's packing. It's different to how I expected, and I can't shake the image off. The slightly above average size isn't even what I noticed first, it was the weird twitching. I've never seen a real dick before. I'm grossed out, but also intrigued. He looks really swollen. It must be so uncomfortable.

"I'm fine," I huff, trying to think of something to blame to avoid looking like some super virgin at my age. (Despite the fact that's the truth, really. I never imagined as you got older, the prerequisite to being attractive went from sleeping with hardly anybody to at least knowing what you're fucking doing...)

Pulling his hoodie over his head, he exhales briskly as he throws it into the front, clearly getting worked up. He's really fit, especially his arms. I know he isn't stupid but... I hope he isn't expecting some fit little body under this dress.

"I promise that it LOOKS bigger than it is," he laughs, seemingly okay with dissing himself. Maybe it's his mature age, he's not some silly little boy anymore. There's no need for him to be insecure.

"I'm just... So embarrassed," I breathe, trying to save myself from further embarrassment. He doesn't seem concerned and I find it hard to believe. Taking my upper arms, he holds me up a bit, looking into my eyes as he sort of pant-talks.

"I promise, it's gonna be fine, I'm just... So... Fucking... Hard," he sighs, chuckling darkly and hanging his head. "I've wanted you for... Ages. And... This is what happens with long distance relationships, I suppose. I've not been with anyone for a few years, either."

That much is true. He lives here in Los Angeles, and I live in England. As much as I want to give up my life and spend the rest of it with him, I have some other responsibilities that I couldn't just drop and leave.

"Well, let's um... Let's go, then," I say, trying to shuffle back down with a face on. He takes the hem of my skirt and hikes it up, before remembering this is supposed to be my first time. Pulling his hands away, he holds them up in a surrender.

"Oh, I can do this right?"

I giggle breathily, agreeing with a nod.

"Um, okay. Cool," he says, his body clearly struggling to keep up with his brain. Pulling it up to my waist, there's a small gasp. A large hand moves to my hip bone, running over it.

"Wow, you've got really pokey hip bones. This is gonna bruise," he chuckles, continuing to stroke over my soft curves.

Taking a deep breath, I brace myself, most likely giving him a submissive look without thinking. I really don't understand why he's being so kind to me. Does he actually love me or does he just want to sleep with me that badly? Are all men like this? Is pokey hip bones weird?

I don't know why I think like this, and whilst he's always there to ping my fears back where they came from, it still haunts my head.

Taking initiative, I lie back some more, pulling my panties to the side and trying to adjust my position to make things more comfortable.

It's now or never.

He leans in, sensing my unease. Being sure to touch his lips to mine before letting the rest of him rub me where I'm sensitive, it's enough to make me huff a gasp into his mouth, and I almost scramble back at the sheer contact. Seems he was expecting that, though. He mutters some sort of horny praise, running his hands along my thighs slowly before gripping my hips and pulling me upwards to help the transfer. I wrap my fingers around his wrists, preparing myself for what is inevitably going to be a very uncomfortable stretch if it's anything like using a toy. Remaining close to my cheek and teasing my skin, he mumbles something about how I look uneasy. I appreciate that he is trying to make this as easy as possible, but it's also annoying me that he isn't just getting it over with. Like, just bang me already.

"It just always hurts the first time," I whisper quickly, to which he turns his head to kiss my mouth again. I can't admit to him that I've never taken a real dick. I just can't. He knows but I can't say it in this moment.

Rubber dicks aren't the same as real ones, but at least they don't talk back or judge you.

"It won't hurt if you trust me... I promise," he swears, gently pressing the head of his cock against my folds to test the waters.

As he pushes, it doesn't even slightly work the first time - if my vagina didn't make sure of that, my nails buried in his wrists sure did. He can tell how fucking nervous I am, my heart in my throat leaping out from under my skin.

"You trust me, right?"

I don't reply. Yet, he STILL seems unphased, simply huffing lightly and attempting the push again. It's a little easier this time, but he still isn't quite getting past the tight little ring of muscle yet.

I look away and shut my eyes, completely trying to detach myself from the moment, just for a second. Maybe that will help my body loosen up.

But he isn't going to allow that. He wants this to be the most beautiful, sensual experience... Even in the back of his car.

I just don't want to look stupid - that's if I haven't already.

"Hey," he whispers, brushing his crooked nose against mine and trying to bring me back into the present. "You need to relax, or this isn't going to work," he pants, his face flushing.

Taking the pad of his finger and gently swiping it over my damp folds, he keeps trying to talk me down. My jaw drops without me thinking, but he keeps talking.

"What are you scared of?"

I can't speak, especially not when he's now swirling his finger over my sensitive bud. It works some sort of magic and I feel as though my muscles are forcibly collapsing around him.

"Huh? Tell me. Are you scared it'll hurt?"

No. I'm not scared of that. I've fucked myself tons of times.

He asks if it's being discovered - a copper or a hiker maybe...

Ha. No. I don't really care about that, either.

Then what is it?

"I thought you might judge me... And it would be awkward and I'd just be..."

"Be what?"

"No, I can't even say it."

He cocks his head, following my every move with his eyes.

"S-Stop staring at me," I mumble, gawping up at him. He does this intense, creepy stare.

"I need to know what's on your mind before we do this."

"Why?"

"Because, it's a special thing. I don't want you giving it up for someone just because you feel like you have to."

I swallow. His hands stroke my knees, trying desperately to settle me somewhat again. He isn't just 'someone'. He's 'the one'.

"I've always been afraid of intimacy. Letting someone get close to me and seeing me so vulnerable," I admit. "Someone hurt me a long time ago and it's left me a little messed up."

"Do you trust me?" He asks seriously, staring into my eyes. "This isn't that big of a deal, I promise. Or... We can just stop." He smirks a little, trying not to laugh incase it has the wrong effect. "Believe me, in about ten minutes you'll be asking me why you bothered because it isn't that great," he giggles, making me giggle too. I do trust him.

"Alright," I sigh, feeling a bit more prepared. I lie back, tilting my hips up a bit to help the angle.

Taking the moment, he manages to inch in just enough to start breaking the wall down. I shift forward some more to help bridge the gap between us and trying to work out what the best angle is for this to execute properly. The groan that leaves his lips is the most spectacular sound I've ever heard. It's like a mix of absolute desire and relief.

"Oh my god... Fucking hell..." He grunts breathily, struggling to keep his breath level. "Aghh... That is tight. Wow. Okay."

"Sorry... Sorry..." I apologise with big eyes, not realising I'm just making it worse. He pants some kind of cute response back, along with a laugh.

"No, it's not bad! You can't help it. It's... Really fucking good, actually..." he slurs, trying to keep his hormones in check. "I-I-I take back what I said... You... You feel fucking incredible..."

Pulling right back, he thrusts in again, building up a slightly stuttered rhythm because he's so excited. I'm taking it, trying to stay relaxed but also squirming because it feels so fucking good. Having someone else drive into you is way better than trying to drive into yourself and having your arm get tired.

"Fuck, I've wanted you like this all week..." He groans between huffs, sounding absolutely desperate. "Well... Longer than that, really. Every time your name flashes up on my phone, I..."

He trails off, biting his lip as his brain finishes the sentence but his mouth doesn't. Wow... I've never felt so desired in my life.

I can't help my noise, but I swear that's what's actually getting him off and not the feel of my tight pussy.

"H-Harder..." I wail, gripping anything to steady myself. "I usually go harder on myself," I stammer, to which he complies, holding my hips to keep me close enough and stop it slipping out. There's the most disgusting slapping sound amidst our tandem moans and groans, but that's the last thing on my mind. His cock dragging along my walls is making me feel feverish. This is the experience I wanted. Mutual understanding and excitement.

Grinding my hips a little, I feel his face burying itself into my neck, like he's trying desperately to think of anything else and avoid finishing just yet.

"I ain't gonna last in this, babe... Jesus..."

I can barely reply, instead just moaning back with shuddered breath. Holding his head, I card my fingers through his hair and arch my back as pleasure begins building up in my core. He's slipping off the seat on his knees, so brings his leg onto the footwell to steady himself.

Then he calls my name.

"Get on your front for me, it'll be a bit easier," he says, pulling out for a moment to help me change position. I twist and bring my ass up, also using my foot in the footwell to try and steady myself.

"Like this?"

"Like that," he hums gently, holding my hips and pulling his meat between us again. It goes in much easier this time, and I'm liking this position. This is making me start to howl a little, my whimpers louder and louder as I use my hands to avoid battering the car door with my face when he thrusts into me.

I know he's fucking way too deep, but I don't care, it won't be like this forever anyway. As I think that, he finishes, groaning into my body and catching his breath.

Honestly, I would have been happy to leave it at that, despite the emptiness as he pulls out of me. However, he gently rubs my puffy lips with his fingers, causing me to shudder and almost jump a mile because I wasn't expecting it.

"Sorry! Sorry," he gasps, laughing into his hand. "I keep forgetting how jumpy you are.

"It's okay..." I mewl, my pitched voice muffled by my arm. My legs tremble as I approach another orgasm, his slow strokes helping me to calm down weirdly enough.

"I just wanted to finish the job, you know?" He torments, shaking his head from behind me and leaning forward with a chuckle.

"Yes..." I hiss, concentrating so he can rub me to completion.

"That's it," he praises gently, watching from behind as I bury my face into my arms and start wiggling my hips, silently begging him to hurry up.

We sit there in comfortable silence. I snuggle into his side, falling asleep in the warm car.

"We should probably be getting back soon," he says gently, stroking my hair. I hum some sort of response, and he calls my name.

"What?" I grumble, scrunching my nose and trying to go back to sleep against his soft hoodie.

"I said, I ought to be getting you back soon," he repeats, smiling. "You can't be falling asleep on me. I'll think you're cute and want to keep you," he teases, running a hand over my head. His voice sounds a tad sad. He's clearly upset about me leaving for home tomorrow.

"If you wake up, I'll go through the McDonald's drive thru on the way back," he persuades, laughing when I perk up at the thought of food.

Perhaps he really is the man of my dreams.

[bigskydreaming]

And one more bit from the “Kings of the Sky” AU albeit several installments in, because I just......don’t know when or why I stumbled into an obsession with the dynamics between Dick and Jason and Cass as the eldest three Wayne siblings, but its there, its real, and its happening. I’ve stopped fighting it. I just....enjoy writing those three being dumb siblings who are dumb like so, so much.

Anyway, in this AU series, Jason doesn’t go to Ethiopia and die, but rather eventually joins Dick at Titans Tower more regularly and is Flamebird. Both are closer with Bruce here than in canon because Dick helped Bruce and Jason get through the Garzonas stuff and Jason helped kick Bruce in the direction of Dick and adoption papers right after the Brother Blood storyline. Then Cass is actually the third to join the family, by way of Babs, and she’s Batgirl and then Black Bat, but there’s a period of time when its just Dick, Jason and Cass as the Wayne kids. 

(PS - this is the same series as where Jason ends up with his own age group of Titans, and accidentally falls into a love quadrangle of doom that is absolutely NOT a polycule dammit, with Tom Bronson (Tomcat), Ray Terrill (The Ray) and Todd Rice (Obsidian). Which amuses his brother and sister to no end).

Tim and Duke are both next, but sorta at the same time? Like Tim’s story takes a sharp turn when Robin II never dies and obviously is Flamebird now like Robin I is Nightwing, and Tim winds up in foster care after his parents die differently than in canon. Duke is also in foster care at this time, though a different placement, and while no Robin has died here, its been awhile since there’s been one in Gotham, and to kids who grew up with the idea of there always being a Robin, that feels weird and wrong ultimately. 

So Tim and Duke both hit on the idea of being Robin like, at around the same time and totally disconnected from one another, and that leads to them both joining the Batfam around the same time, and co-sharing Robin until Damian arrives much later and they both move on to new identities. But there’s no real confusion between Robins because Duke is the daytime Robin with more yellow coloring in his costume and Tim is the nighttime Robin with more red, and people say Red or Yellow if they ever need to differentiate which Robin they’re talking about. Anyway.

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

So [Tim and Duke] run into trouble eventually and then when running from trouble they run into each other and they’re like….huh. Awkward. And then they decide well, might as well both run from trouble in the same direction, I guess. So they do.

“Did you have a plan for dealing with these guys?” Tim yelled at Duke. The other boy looked back over his shoulder briefly and gave what would probably have been a half-shrug if he didn’t awkwardly try to barrel-roll over a car two seconds later.

“Umm, sorta?”

“How sorta are we talking about? Maybe the two of us together could fill in the gaps in the plan and come up with one full plan?”

“Uh yeah, no, its not that kinda sorta. I meant sorta in the sense that I thought I had a plan but it didn’t work and that’s why these guys are after me. Sooooo…”

“Not helpful, basically.”

“Yeah. Pretty much. And hey, I don’t hear you offering up a plan! Did you even have one at all?”

“Uh….I mean I kinda didn’t think I was going to need one because I figured some kid running around in a mask making a nuisance of himself was the sorta thing that was bound to attract Batman. And so I was just pretty much running around until that happened, and then I’d make a case for how I obviously need training and Gotham needs Robin and if its not me its likely to be someone else trying eventually anyway so why not be me?”

Duke paused just long enough to squint at him. “That’s a terrible plan.”

Tim rolled his eyes. The effort didn’t pair well with his huffing and over-all exertions from running for his life and all that, but necessity demanded. “Yeah I know, that’s why I never said it was a plan! It was mostly….more…idea-ish.”

“I’m just saying, I thought I was doing this wrong, but at least I had a plan! I mean yeah, it might have ended up with me accidentally busting in on what I thought was a bunch of Riddler’s henchmen setting up some kind of clue thing, only it was actually a bunch of Intergang type guys with alien space guns or some shit all dressed up as Riddler henchmen for some reason? I dunno what they were trying to do honestly, but so yeah I might have ended up running away on foot from like twenty of them and some kind of hovercycle -”

“I’m going to cut you off there and say wherever this is going its probably not the superior vantage point I think you think you have.”

Meanwhile, Batman was not going to be coming because he’s off on a JLA mission. However, in his absence Dick and Jason are in town filling in, and they finished taking out the bad guys several blocks back and caught up to whomever was running from them, figured out the situation and are currently sitting on the edge of a rooftop watching them realize they’re totally lost and trying to figure out where to go from here. Mostly because Dick and Jason are incredibly amused listening to their back and forth and also just…this whole situation.

Dick justifies not piping up to let them know they’re safe now by saying this is good intel gathering so we can offer Bruce our assessment as to whether they’re gonna try and keep doing this whether we train them or not, and also how they handle this whole being lost situation. Not knowing they don’t have to run anymore isn’t going to hurt them and really, this is a good field exercise almost.

Jason justifies not piping up by saying this is fucking hilarious and I will hurt you if you end this any sooner than we have to, I deserve this, I had a rough week.

Which is right around the time that Cass pipes up from where she’s been lurking unnoticed behind them this whole time: “Oh no. Was it Tom? Or Ray? Or was it Todd?”

And she does it right in Jason’s ear so he kinda aborted-shrieks and almost falls off the roof except Cass is ready for that and grabs his arm to steady him.

“I hate when you do that!” Jason growls in an attempt to cover up how badly she got him and also because he hates when she does it which is why she does it a lot. Again, they don’t hate each other at all, but they do seem to act like it a lot, and neither of them is entirely sure why. They kinda just started doing it and have each been trying to get the other back ever since and ended up locked in an unending spiral of gotcha-gotchaback, except, y’know, Batfam style.

Dick occasionally picks sides just to muddy the waters. And then he randomly switches sides without warning, so neither of them ever wants to risk getting too peeved at him even when he’s helping the other, because that might push him fully over to the other side and leave them permanently outnumbered, so they’re kinda stuck, which is exactly as he likes it, lol.

“Why are you Satan,” Jason hisses dramatically as he gets up and stomps over to the other side of the roof to sulk, lest she almost knock him off again. Its not the almost falling part that bothers him, its that she’s the one that snatches him to safety each time. She’s like a freaking cat toying with a - yeah not going there, just blaming Selina. Knew them hanging out was going to be bad news for me somehow, he gripes.

Cass just shrugs and smoothly sits down cross-legged right where she is, grinning Cheshire-cat style at him from there. “Childhood trauma,” is her answer.

“Great, and now you’re stealing my comeback on top of it?! Is nothing sacred to you?”

She offers another shrug. He would like to return those for store credit please. Maybe get something useful instead. “Haven’t decided yet. Babs is still helping me explore my options. We’re going alphabetically and we’re only on  the E-religions.”

“God, you’re the worst. I can’t believe you ruined sisters for me.”

“You already used that same line last week when you came out of your room still half-asleep and she was just sitting directly across from your door waiting and staring unblinking and you yelped and dropped your laptop on your toe, and then cursed so loud that B came running around the hall thinking we were being invaded,” Dick reported idly, still perched in the same position he’d been in all along and watching the boys below them. “Just in case you thought no one noticed when you recycle.”

“I noticed too,” Cass added solemnly.

“I have no siblings,” Jason intoned. He threw up his hands dramatically and then loudly jumped down to the street below with a little help from the fire escape. It drew both Duke and Tim’s attention and they startled before realizing it was Flamebird. And that he’d landed on the street and was stalking past them while barely acknowledging them. And that that was Nightwing standing on the roof now with his hands on his hips yelling after him.

“Oh, reeeeeeal subtle. You’re not having fun anymore so you gotta make sure nobody else does either. Wow, the Brat-like behavior, just jumped out of the shadows with that one!”

And that was Flamebird not even turning around and just yelling back. “I HAVE NO SIBLINGS!”

And also they were both pretty sure that was Batgirl crouched on the roof next to Nightwing now, and she was…..sticking her tongue out at Flamebird’s back? No, Batgirl very much definitely was sticking out her tongue, that wasn’t in doubt, it was more just….very unexpected to see.

What was happening right now?

********

Eventually Tim and Duke have inevitably worn down [Bruce’s] resistance to training them by insisting they’re gonna keep doing this and if its not them its gonna be someone sooner or later anyway. Because, as they put it, you guys may not know this but Gotham’s gotten used to Robins by now and it freaks people out not to see one and Robin’s as important as Batman really and there needs to be a Robin and its not just us that will think that, like look at the fact that already two of us had the exact same idea, huh? And also, we’re gonna keep doing it anyway, sooooo….there’s that.

And then Cass vouches that they’re both 100% serious about that.

And then Dick vouches that as a former determined daredevil kid that was absolutely going to keep doing the same thing no matter whether you’d helped me or not, B, I also am of the assessment that these two mean it all the way.

And not to be left out and just to have something to contribute but also grumpy because his brother and sister are picking on him and he’s eighteen going on ten, Jason throws in: “And my assessment is that they both definitely seem dumb enough to keep doing this without help anyway and they definitely need help or they definitely will die, I’d give it a month, month and a half tops.”

And then Bruce dryly thanks his children for their contributions, their keen insights in this matter have been absolutely invaluable, he has no idea how he would make a decision here without it.

“Oooh, a rare sighting of Bat-snark in the wild. Someone call Nat-Geo quick, maybe he’ll do it again,” Dick says.

Bruce sighs. Duke and Tim look like they’re trying to decide if they’re allowed to be amused or if that’s also part of some weird Bat-test that they’re probably taking without even knowing it.

So Tim and Duke move in, start training together, and then also get sent to school together and it takes a month or so of settling in before they decide whether or not they actually are happy about this. There’s a period of deciding they’re supposed to be bitter rivals who snipe at each other back and forth across the dining table at every available opportunity, but that changes the first night Dick and Jason come back from the Tower since Tim and Duke have moved in and where Cass is also home instead of at the Clocktower with Babs.

Since all three of the older Batkids, upon seeing Tim and Duke squabble at dinner, decide to obnoxiously coo about how adorable it is watching the kids play. Which pretty instantly cements Duke and Tim as realizing their best chance of surviving the sudden acquisition of three older superhero ninja foster siblings who all can be as obnoxious as they are dangerous but also as much as they are - Duke and Tim are convinced - all quite insane.

A belief further cemented the next morning, with all three of them having spent the night at the Manor as well. Treating Duke and Tim to their first Saturday morning episode of the Cass and Jason show.

In this episode, Jason emerged from his bedroom in his pajamas still but warily peeking his head out first to look both ways down the hall before deciding it was clear…..and then makes it just almost to the end of the hallway leading to the stairs, when Cass drops down from where she’d been waiting perched above the other side of the door, in such a way as to suddenly fill the doorway just in front of him, hanging upside down suspending herself just with her feet wedged above the doorway, all while keeping her hands crossed her chest, a dead-eyed expression on her face, and with her tongue hanging out like she’s some kind of vampire hanging upside down in mid-slumber.

Jason shrieked and stumbled back a foot before catching himself and shoving two fingers in a cross shape in her direction.

“Demon! DEMON! Goddammit, I abjure thee, that’s supposed to fucking do something about having a demon sister, now what the fuck does it take to banish you!?”

“Can’t be banished,” Cass informed him, still upside down. “Can be bought though.”

Jason halted. “What?”

“I’m really surprised you never figured it out,” Dick said from his room further down the hallway. He was leaning against the doorjamb, arms casually crossed.

“Why did you think she never goes after me?”

Jason swiveled back and forth between his siblings suspiciously, trying to scry both their inscrutable (and in Cass’ case, still upside down) faces for signs they were telling the truth. “You’re telling me that Little Miss Monstrous has been a pain in my ass from day one and the reason she’s never so much as eked a single boo in your direction is you’ve been bribing her all this time?”

Dick shrugged. “Its all about getting in on the ground floor.”

Jason squinted, still unconvinced. “Nuh-uh. No way. You’re just fucking with me. Like if this is for real, what have you been buying her off with?”

Dick smiled beatifically. “Cuddles and hugs.”

“NO! NO! Bullshit! I am NOT falling for this crap again, you are not gonna get me this way this time. I call BS, fuck you, nuh uh, you’re lying out your ass and your ass-face both.”

“Wait, what is this ‘this’ that I did before? What ever are you talking about?”

“You know damn well what I’m talking about.”

“Is this about the Care Bear you had when you were fifteen?”

“Shut upppppppppppppppp, I didn’t have a Care Bear then, you’re such a - “

“Oh, I dunno, I’m preeeeetty sure there’s some holiday photos from that year that would say otherwise, pretty definitively in the form of you and your Care Bear….”

“That I only had because you literally just gave it to me as a present solely so that you could claim that I had a Care Bear when I was fifteen, you douchebag!”

“Just because I gave you the Care Bear didn’t mean you had to keep the Care Bear and hold the Care Bear and love the Care Bear, Jay. You chose to do all that.”

“I only kept the damn thing because you’re an asshole who lied about it being a family heirloom so I felt like I had to or I’d be a total jerk. Is nothing sacred to you?”

“I didn’t lie! It is a treasured family heirloom! Its the first Care Bear I gave to my little brother to teach him the important and valuable lesson that Care Bears - say it with me now - “

“Finish that sentence and they will never find your body.”

“CARE!” Cass shrieked from behind him before jumping on Jason’s back and bearing him down to the floor in an undignified tangle as she splayed atop him like a starfish and he stared up at the ceiling in a kind of strangled frozen fury, like there was so much emotion he wanted to process he’d overheated and now was stuck like that until he cooled down.

That was when Dick leaned over him and solemnly added one final thought, as though it was a crucial addition of the gravest importance:: “A lot.”

Jason’s eye twitched.

Dick’s eyes went wide in response. “Uh oh. He went to the Danger Zone. Run Cass. We’ve unleashed the dogs of war!”

Cass was off and on her feet in a second, taking off down the hall like a rocket. “Not the dogs of war!” She yelled.

Dick was only seconds behind her when behind him, Jason rose like an eruption, growling wordlessly and sparks practically flashing from his suddenly flinty eyes. He charged after them like an enraged bull.

“Kenny Loggins wouldn’t want this!” Dick yelled over his shoulder as he rounded the doorway and vanished. Jason rounded it in hot pursuit.

“Poison Ivy won’t even be able to make compost from what’s left of you when I’m through!”

The yelling and running vanished into the distance. Duke and Tim finally looked at each other blankly.

“What?” Tim asked. Duke shrugged helplessly.

A door opened at the end of the hallway. Bruce stuck his head out. “Is it safe?”

Tim just stared at him.

“What?” Duke asked.

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

LOL mostly I just want to get to the tail end of the series, when Dick and Jason go undercover as supervillains in the Society of well, Supervillains....Dick as War Shrike and Jason as Gray Jay. (A kind of bird usually known for or referenced as being thieving and unpredictable and unexpectedly dangerous despite its size. Jason never went into the Lazarus Pit here and so isn’t as huge as he is in canon, he’s on the smaller side due to his early life’s malnutrition. Living with Bruce helped him catch up enough that he’s not TINY tiny, but he’s still smaller enough that this particular mantle fits him a little better than it would his massive canon depiction).

Cass also partakes in the undercover storyline, just showing up uninvited in a persona she’s crafted for the mission and calls Black Swan. And War Shrike and Gray Jay are both so startled and obviously a little freaked by her unexpected arrival, that combined with her being ticked at her brothers for leaving her behind, RUDE, and them sufficiently cowed and guilted by her wrath, that it all adds up to the other villains as being clear evidence that she is the boss and they are her advance minions. 

Which mollifies and satisfies Cass immensely, and leaves Jason grumpy that their mission was hijacked and also his sister is The Worst, and leaves Dick temporarily disgruntled because This Whole Thing Was His Idea DAMMIT but then five seconds later finding it hilarious because Dick is a chaos connoisseur and he has an appreciation for whimsy and the unexpected.

“I can’t believe you not only gate-crashed our extremely sensitive and delicate undercover operation, but you completely hijacked it as well! This is so typical,” Jason grouched.

Cass simply swept ahead of him and strode down the hallway with lethal grace. “Silence minion.”

Jason spluttered behind her and she grinned to herself. He really made it too easy sometimes.

[kpop-cakepops]

okok so my idea for snuggle donation continuation:

after/during the horror movie, they fall asleep in each other’s arms. and then like the girl wakes up before him and gently caresses Wonwoo and plays with his hair blahblahblah and thinks about how much he means to her omg //head in hands//. And like Wonwoo is half-asleep so he probably thinks he’s dreaming like he has NO idea aaarrrgggggg

Idk what happens after maybe they both wake up and are unable to go back to sleep so they go on the roof to look at the stars STILL in each other’s arms and they just exist together. Maybe it could end with Wonwoo looking at her and thinking.....thoughts? (like damn i wanna kiss her so bad) But she has no idea. And so the mutual pining continues but on steroids.

I just realized that the hip-hop half of my bias line (Vernon and Wonwoo) sleeps with their mouths open while the Vocal half of my bias line (Jeonghan and DK) sleep with their mouths closed 😭 WHY IS THIS EVEN IMPORTANT?! I DONT KNOW 😭

Anyhow! Here is your request, I actually liked this a lot 🥺! Thank you for requesting and hope you enjoy!

Genre: Fluff

Warnings: None

Word Count: 1,161

***

Snuggle Donation: Pact. // Jeon Wonwoox Fem!Reader

Wonwoo really is beautiful. Y/N came to that conclusion as she did one of her favorite things: watch Wonwoo sleep and play with his pitch-black locks.

"Wow... I guess you're not too bad when you're not being a little baby about everything" she whispered knowing her best friend was so deep in his sleep that he couldn't hear her.

A soft smile came to her lips as she watched his lips part cutely. Cutely? Y/N's thoughts seemed to spin that way lately, finding the things Wonwoo did cute and heartwarming. She had always felt that way about her friend, it was normal, but everything she'd always felt about her friend seemed to be exalted lately.

Y/N's mind started to go back in time, thinking of all the times Wonwoo had been there for her. When no one wanted to talk to her in middle school and kids were writing nasty things on her desk. In high school when a random pregnancy rumor was spread about the two of them. Throughout university when she had contemplated dropping out. When she was too sick to function, he was there to take care of her... in every one of those moments, Wonwoo had stuck by Y/N's side and cheered her on.

Something had been weighing on her lately too. Her mother had been pestering her about dating so she could start preparing for the future and marriage and children too. Y/N hadn't felt the need to get married or have kids, she hadn't even thought about it. She'd only ever just worried about keeping a stable job, having fun, and hanging out with Wonwoo... but Wonwoo wasn't going to be there forever... and that's how she found herself thinking about his future. He was bound to get married at some point, have a pretty wife and pretty kids... and that thought had sent her stomach on a downward spiral.

"Idiot..." she mumbled through teary eyes. "What am I supposed to do when you get married and leave me all alone... I don't know how to be me without my best friend."

Wonwoo was dazed with sleep as he heard her voice. Dreaming about Y/N wasn't anything new for him. It had happened to him since middle school, spending nearly every day with her, it was bound to happen. What he wasn't aware of was that what he was hearing and feeling wasn't a dream. His best friend was in fact playing with his hair, and telling him how much he meant to her... WHICH SHE NEVER DID UNLESS SHE WAS DRUNK.

Wonwoo stirred in his position before unwillingly opening his eyes while Y/N looked down at him with sad ones. The man blinked in confusion, "Y/N?"

The girl cleared her throat and looked back over at the TV that was now playing whatever had followed the scary movie he'd fallen asleep to. "Hey ugly" she greeted with a fake smile. "I thought you'd never wake up"

Wonwoo groaned and stretched himself out. The side of his face pressing to Y/N's tummy causing her insides to become fluff. "I was dreaming"

"Oh really? What about?" She asked peering down at her best friend's sleepy face.

He grinned up at her and reached out to ruffle her hair. "It's a secret."

Y/N rolled her eyes playfully and nudged her legs so he'd get his head off her lap. "We slept through the movie" she whined. "It's midnight now and I'm not sleepy"

"We could always go to the rooftop and have a beer," he said.

That was how they ended up on the rooftop of her apartment building. The two gazing at what little stars the big city lights allowed them to. Y/N found herself huddled up into Wonwoo's side. Lonely thoughts about Wonwoo being gone invading her mind yet again. Meanwhile, all Wonwoo could think of was how nice and warm she felt beside him and how, if he could, he'd love to stay just as they were for a very long time.

"Do you ever think about what life will be like later on?" Wonwoos deep voice reverberated.

Y/N was frozen in her spot as she heard him speak the very thoughts she was having. "You mean like... what we'll be doing in a few years?" Wonwoo nodded in response, face still lifted towards the sky. "Well, I assume we'll be working. I'll hopefully have my own business by then like I've always wanted."

"Do you think we'll get married?" He asked.

Y/N smiled at the wording he used but knew he didn't mean it that way. "Of course. We'll get married, you'll have a pretty wife and pretty kids and I'll have a husband that I... love and... kids..." that I don't even know if I want.

Wonwoo felt a sense of disappointment spread through him. He knew Y/N wouldn't answer his question the way he wanted but hearing her say that she'd be married with kids that were not his was suddenly painful to him. "What if we die alone?" He asked.

"Alone?! Not a chance," she exclaimed as she stretched her hands before her. "I'd rather marry you than die alone," She said almost tentatively. Every time Y/N said something like that it made her feel like she was dipping her toes into a pool of water, one that she was too scared to dive into.

"Should we?" asked Wonwoo catching Y/N by total surprise.

"Huh?"

"Get married, I mean. Should we get married if nothing else works out for us? Make a pact like those people in the movies?" He questioned. Wonwoo was good at hiding his true emotions, and Y/N really couldn't tell how serious he was being so she played along with a little bit of truth.

"A pact. What would the pact consist of?" She asked. "Would it involve you getting on one knee and asking for my hand in marriage?" Her tone was playful but deep inside she wished it did involve that.

"Of course! What type of man do you think I am?" he asked with a grin.

"Okay then, deal. If nothing else works out by 35 then we'll get married to each other and have 1 dog and 2 cats together" She laughed and took a sip of her beer.

Wonwoo smiled as he watched her happily sip at her beer while wrapped up in the blanket she'd taken up with her. It was so hard for him not to grab her and kiss her and just confess everything he felt for her. Yet the fear of losing her and the fear of hearing her say she didn't feel the same way about him, was far stronger than his desire to let it all be known.

"Yeah, if nothing else works out" he repeated quietly.

Guess I'll just have to make sure nothing does until then.

[achillestiel]

the parent trap only works if you’re identical | part three 

Tag List: @littlerachelbee @imthedoctorlove @deancas-handprint @castiel-loves-dean @wanderermatthews @thelahatiel @priscillahc @mridzyp @multi-fandom-dark-lord @thefantasyfiend @harmonyhelms @imlivingliferightnow

Dean knew that one day his life would catch up with him and he’d have to explain everything to Claire but this definitely wasn’t how he had planned on doing it. He definitely didn’t expect to be driving to Washington DC with his son. His son. The truth was that he’d thought about Jack a lot over the years. Time and time again he had wanted to call Cas and get to know his child but they’d made an arrangement. Dean got Claire and Cas got Jack. No need to see each and drive each other crazy. Still, Dean had always wondered about his son and now here he was, sat in the impala and complaining loudly over Dean’s music. 

“Ok, ok. Enough about the music.” Dean said when Jack’s complaining got to be too much. “We got a long drive ahead of us and I’m sure you have questions. Not gonna lie, I’ve got questions too.” Dean said. Jack let out a long sigh, clearly gearing himself up and Dean braced himself. 

“Ok...um...how did you and dad meet?”

“Wow, straight out the gate.” Dean said. “Um, well your dad was studying Political Science and Economics at KU. With you guys being in DC now I’m guessing he got that government job he always wanted. Anyway, I was working at the garage owned by a family friend, guy called Bobby. He’s like an honorary grandpa to Claire. So, Cas’ car broke down so he brought it to the garage. I thought he was cute so gave him a really good discount, in return he asked me out for a drink. The rest is history.”

“Not really…” Jack said. “I’m still confused. What happened after that?”

“Well...we dated while your dad was finishing up at college. After that we went on a cruise ‘cause I’m not great with flying and your dad really wanted to go to London. Turns out I’m not good on boats either. I threw up a lot.”

“Is that when you and dad got tipsy and got married by the captain?”

“How did you know that?”

“Uncle Gabriel told me and made me promise to not tell dad. Apparently it’s why dad refuses to watch Titanic.” Jack said. “Dad? Dean...no, dad...can I ask you something?”

“Of course kid. This is Winchester Question Time after all.” Dean said. 

“Are you mad me at and Claire for doing this? Why do we have to switch back so soon? Don’t...don’t you want to spend time with me?” Jack asked and damn if Dean’s heart didn’t break a tiny bit, ok a lot, then.

“Well damn Jack, of course I want to spend time with you buddy. Just ‘cause you’re not around doesn’t mean I don’t love you to the moon and back.It’s just, as much as I want you around, you belong to Cas. Kind of like how Claire belongs to me.” Dean explained. 

“We’re kids, not pieces of furniture.”

“Yeah I know and I know this sucks but it’s the agreement that me and your dad came to. Neither of us wanted you and Claire to constantly be going back and forth between houses and you were both so little at the time.”

“Personally I think Claire and my idea to switch places was less idiotic.” Jack said. The kid may have had a point. 

Before Dean could even reply his phone burst into life with a video call from Sam and Eileen. Dean stuck his phone into the holder and accepted the call. At once Sam and Eileen’s excited faces filled the screen. 

“Hey, let me just pull over so I can talk.” Dean said. 

“That’s fine, we just wanted to see Claire and say hi.” Sam said with a huge grin. “We can’t wait to see her!” 

“Yeah...about that...we might have hit a slight speed bump.” Dean said as he pulled the impala over and glanced down at the screen. “Claire’s not here.” he said, signing for Eileen at the same time. 

What? Where’s Claire? I thought you were picking her up today. Eileen signed.  

“Oh I was but she had other ideas.” Dean said. 

Where is she?

“Well she’s with her dad, just not the right one.” Dean said. Both Sam and Eileen looked confused for a moment before it seemed to dawn on them.

“She’s with Cas? How the hell did that happen?”

“Ask this genius right here.” Dean said, picking up the phone and spinning it around so Jack could wave at the screen. “Sammy, we got a Parent Trap situation going on.”

“Holy crap! Is that Jack? Wow kid, you grew up! Wait, don’t the twins have to be identical for the parent trap to work?”

“Don’t even get me started on that. I’ve already called both of them morons.”

“Hi Uncle Sam and Aunt Eileen!” Jack both said and signed. 

“You know how to sign?” Dean asked him. 

“Yeah, dad taught me.” Jack said before looking back at the screen. “Uncle Gabriel has told me so much about you two. It’s so cool to finally meet you!”

“You too kid, I haven’t seen you since you were a baby.” Sam said. “So you’re with Dean and Claire is with Cas...that’s interesting.”

“It’s not ‘interesting’ Sammy, it’s a pain in the ass.” Dean said bringing the phone back to him. “I’m now driving Jack back to DC so I can grab my moron daughter and ground her until she’s college age.”

And see Cas for the first time in over a decade. Are you nervous? Eileen asked.

Why would I be nervous? Dean shot back.

Obvious reasons. You and Cas came up with this cockamamie idea so you wouldn’t have to see each other. You only did that because you’d definitely launch yourself at Cas at the first opportunity.   

Don’t start that again Eileen, you know why me and Cas didn’t work out and I really wish you and Sam wouldn’t gossip about it so much. 

“We don’t gossip!” Sam said. 

“You do and you know you do!” Dean shot back, completely unaware that Jack was texting someone at the same moment. A huge, shit eating grin plastered on his face. 

-

In times of crisis, Gabriel Novak wasn’t normal who most people would have turned to but Cas was short on options. After driving Claire back to his house, Cas called Gabriel in a mild panic. Sadly, by the time Gabriel actually turned up, that mild panic had increased by a fair amount. 

“And we’re hiding in your bedroom while the daughter you haven’t seen in over twelve years makes a peanut butter and jelly sandwich because…” Gabriel asked, surveying the sight in front of him. Namely Cas, clearly having a ‘moment’. 

"Because Dean Winchester is currently driving to my house. I’m sorry Gabriel but I can’t handle this right now.” Cas said. “I haven’t seen him in over a decade and now he’s driving halfway across the country to swap our kids back!”

“Cas, I think you need to calm down or have a drink. Maybe a few drinks." Gabriel said as Cas shot him the crazy eyes. “Just a suggestion.”

“I don’t think I’m emotionally intelligent enough for this! The man drives me crazy! If he didn’t drive me that insane then I’d still be married to him!” Cas cried as he started to pull shirts out his drawer. “Do I look emotionally stable enough for this Gabriel? We decided upon this arrangement so we wouldn’t have to see each other again because if we did I’d do something stupid like throw myself at him because the man makes me crazy. Seriously Gabriel, have you ever seen me like this?”

“Well…”

“Actually don’t answer that.” Cas said, giving up on finding a shirt and opening up his walk-in closest. Maybe he could just hide in there and leave the whole thing to Gabriel. Then again Gabriel lacked the emotional maturity to handle something like this. Maybe he could leave the whole thing up to Claire. 

“No. Castiel, get out the damn closet and see your ex-husband like a big boy.” Gabriel said because of course Gabriel knew exactly what Cas was thinking. It was at that point that Claire strolled into the room holding a sandwich, stopping when she saw Cas stood in his closet holding out two nearly identical sweaters. 

"Um, Cas...Dad? Are you spiralling right now?" 

"No, why? Does it look like I'm spiralling?" Cas asked, walking out towards Claire. Gabriel opened his mouth to speak. “Don’t answer that Gabriel.”

"Well, yeah. You look like Dad does whenever he gets drunk and hears Since I've Been Loving You then cries while watching cowboy movies thinking that I don't know what he's doing." Claire said bluntly.

"Huh, that was our wedding song." Cas said before walking back into his closet. "Wait." He said, sticking his head out the door. "Does your father do that a lot? Not that I care, it’s just...I’m-"

“Spiralling? Interested in what Dean Winchester has been up to for the past twelve years? Clearly not emotionally intelligent enough to handle all this right now so you’re hiding in a closet like a child?” Gabriel intoned.  

"Yep, exactly like dad when he watches cowboy movies." Claire said to Gabriel. “He does it like once a month. It's cool though. I just bike over to Uncle Sam and Aunt Eileen's house. They have cable and Aunt Eileen is teaching me how to sign curse words." Claire said with a shrug. "Cas...dad...why are you spiralling?"

“He’s emotional unintelligent.” Gabriel said while Cas just stood there, still holding the damn sweaters. 

“I don’t know what that means.” Claire replied. “Anyway, I just spoke to my dad and they’re stopping for coffee. He said they’ll be here in four hours or so.”

“There you go, you’ve got four whole hours to get a grip.” Gabriel said. “Hey Claire, you gonna eat the rest of that sandwich?”

“Knock yourself out.” Claire said handing over the rest of her sandwich. 

“I like this kid, she’s cool. Huh, you make your PB&J sandwiches just like Jack." Gabriel said looking down at the sandwich. "Jelly between two layers of peanut butter..." He added looking over at Cas.

"Yeah, that's how dad always made them." Claire said.

“How bizarre.” Gabriel said wiggling his eyebrows. 

“How bizarre.” Claire intoned. Gabriel laughed out loud and high fived her with his sandwich free hand. 

“Claire...did your dad say anything else? Does he seem annoyed?” Cas asked before Gabriel could make a PB&J comment.

“Yeah but that’s just because Jack did the ‘puppy eyes’ thing and changed the station to the Billboard Hot 100. I don’t know how Jack does it but he’s gotta teach me that, I’ll get away with so much in the future.”

“Right...did he mention anything else?”

“He wants to know if Dean said anything about him.” Gabriel said, straight to the point like always. 

“Oh! No, not really...he stammered out a load of nonsense like always then begged Jack to change the station because Justin Bieber started playing and Bieber creeps dad for reasons I don’t understand.” Claire said with a shrug. “Though Jack said that when he was talking to Uncle Sam and Aunt Eileen he mentioned that they gossip about the two of you all the time.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, dad was signing it to Aunt Eileen. I didn’t know Jack knew sign language.”

“I taught him when he was little.” Cas said. Cas had learnt to sign when he’d met Eileen, it just felt natural to teach Jack. 

“I mean, he’s right. Uncle Sam talks about you all the time when I’m there. Not so much in front of dad ‘cause he gets real weird about it.” Claire said. “Jack said something about dad not wanting to see you so he wouldn’t do something stupid. He’s probably right, dad does stupid things all the time.”

“Well well well, who does that sound like.” Gabriel said, shooting a very pointed look at Cas. “Claire, kiddo, why don’t we leave your dad to freak out in the closet and make him some calming tea? Or maybe grab a bottle of tequila?”

“Sure.” Claire said before turning back to Cas. “Dad, it’s gonna be fine. I think my dad is excited to see you. If that helps.” she said with a small smile. Cas smiled back because it didn’t matter how much Dean drove him crazy or how badly his was currently handling the situation. What mattered was that Cas was excited to see Dean too. 

Now all he needed to do was pick out a sweater. 

[alittlebitgoofy]

if i had my way i would be yours - chapter six (taywhora)

here we are, the final chapter. it's time these girls get their feelings together, it's weird having finished this fic I devoted a lot of time, planning and energy to but all things come to an end, I've got another big taywhora fic in the works so enjoy!!

thanks to @goodemornting for betaing :)) ao3 link

A’whora felt a weight atop her as she awoke.

It was warm, an arm wrapped around her waist comfortably tight. Her tired brain tried to piece together the prior night as she melted under the warmth. Her brain felt like mush, the pleasure of being under another person keeping her too busy to think too hard about it.

But she hadn’t talked to any girls last night, she’d mostly spent time with Tayce. Sure, they’d gotten a bit drunk, but surely she would remember chatting someone up and getting them in her bed.

Wait. Getting drunk with tayce. Her roommate Tayce... Oh. 

Shit. Oh god. Well, It wasn’t as if she didn’t want to—

But it was so soon. She was Tayce’s first experience with a woman. She’d offered to, gleeful at the opportunity while cautious about not wanting to take advantage of her. She didn’t take advantage of her, they were two consenting adult roommates who happened to hook up. It came back to her quickly, now. How Tayce had kissed her. The way Tayce had cuddled up to her after, a warm mix of giddy and tired. Maybe this wasn’t so bad? She’d only be able to tell when Tayce woke up. A’whora finally glanced at her phone to check the time. 9 A.M. The fatigue in her body reminded her she had only gotten to sleep around 3, letting Tayce’s soft breathing lull her back to sleep. She’d deal with all this after a little more rest. It wouldn’t hurt to enjoy it for just a bit longer.  Tayce’s reaction was a lot less calm. She felt someone’s presence next to her as she stirred awake, failing to remember a thing before she opened her eyes to see A’whora with her arms wrapped around her waist. It was warm, almost suffocatingly so. The realisation that any movement would likely wake the blonde up dawned on her. Either Tayce would carefully wriggle out of her arms and risk waking her up or stew in the position and wait until A’whora woke up. Either way, they’d have to address this, and she didn’t know if she was ready to. Part of her was freaking out, how could they have gotten into this position? Would she regret it? This was her best friend, who she spent the better parts of all her days with. Tayce knew that if A’whora went cold on her again, she wouldn’t be able to cope for long.

But A’whora was next to her, asleep but still cuddled up with her. She would probably just make a dirty comment and shrug it off, right?. Though her mind screamed in what could happen the other half of her senses melted into the embrace of her companion. Her mind couldn’t help but stop racing while being engulfed in her companion’s embrace. A’whora had shown so much affection the previous night it was hard not to.  “Tayce?” A’whora’s eyes cracked open blearily, tilting her head in tired confusion. A dopey smile grew on her face as she noticed the position they were in. She looked beyond silly like that, but it still made Tayce’s heart skip a beat. “Morning to you, too.” 

Tayce shook her head at the laugh A’whora let out. She was clearly aware of everything that had happened, just plainly unaffected by it. Tayce envied the ease she took this with, her brain and heart conflicting with every action she made. “We fucked, huh?” “Yeah, we did,” Tayce spluttered at the forwardness, feeling her cheeks heat up. Of course A’whora would have no problem talking about the sex she’d had with her roommate the night prior. The blonde didn’t seem phased by her reaction, pulling her arms tighter around her body and bringing herself into Tayce’s side. “You’re warm.” Her words were followed by a content sigh, A’whora looking blissful as Tayce returned the affection, her arms looping around the smaller woman to pull her in tight as she could. “You’re such a softie.” Tayce tried to sound jokingly insulting, but any power to her words fizzled out as soon as she felt A’whora’s head on her chest. She melted into speaking loving words, holding the girl that caused her so much heartache like nothing had happened, as if it was second nature. They stayed locked together, the outside world not a concern in the embrace of one another. Though Tayce eventually shifted, her stomach roared with a ferocity that sent A’whora spiralling into a fit of hiccuping laughter. “Do you want beans on toast?” A’whora settled down enough to speak, a smirk still playing at her lips at the interruption of their moment. 

“Depends how you make them.” “Like you taught me. The ketchup, the cheese, the salt and the pepper and the butter.” The blonde laughed; Tayce was so specific about how she made her beans on toast. There was a method to it, she’d taught it to A’whora the instant they moved in together and made her come to love the breakfast almost as much as she did. “You’ve learnt well.” Tayce patted her on the back like a proud parent, before sliding herself out of the bed to follow A’whora into their kitchen. She missed the warmth of it. But the idea of food was more than enough to coax her out. --- There was something heart-warmingly domestic about making your roommate breakfast, the meaning changed dramatically with whatever was going on between her and Tayce, but A’whora tried to keep her thoughts up.Tayce was still around, she hadn’t freaked out and ran so it could be worse.

Tayce was too busy entrapped in her thoughts to spare the blonde much more than a sideways glance. Her thoughts were buzzing even as she was trying to silence them. It was a mix of things, fear for whatever this could mean or couldn’t mean but also comfort, she’d been with someone she trusted with her life and she’d not made it awkward. A’whora’s affectionate side was a welcomed addition, the way she’d cuddled up to Tayce left her feeling lighter than ever. The way her eyes crinkled as she laughed at whatever dumb comment Tayce has made was euphoric.

God damn, she was in deep. 

She somehow managed to look attractive, sat there with her hair messy in one of Tayce's baggy shirts she’d flung to attempt to cover herself, preoccupied with shoving beans in her mouth after she’d served them both breakfast. Tayce tried to focus on eating her own, though her eyes never quite left the blonde. Something about her was magnetic. She couldn’t help but look at her and feel her heart squeeze with how much she adored her. 

“You just gonna stare at me or are you gonna eat? Your food is getting cold!” A’whora pouted slightly at the lack of attention Tayce was giving her food. God, Tayce wanted to kiss that pout off her. 

“Hmm? You should be taking it as a compliment, I never normally put someone above my beans.” “Wow, she thinks I'm better than beans on toast. How romantic.”  A’whora scoffed, she knew that it was some kind of warped compliment, something Tayce didn’t want to actually say but imply through something humorous to shelter the realisation of the true meanings of her words. Though she did get it, Tayce held her highly, over most people even. It made her hopeful, maybe they stood a chance if she cared that deeply?  They ate with a few more quips, the atmosphere too easy for what they’d done the night prior. A’whora was thankful for the lack of awkwardness though her roommate was the other end of the spectrum. She had far too many thoughts and had to spill them to someone, maybe it would be good to give Bimini a call? 

God, this was a lot to deal with.

--- 

“Bim? I need help, asap.” Tayce rushed out as her friend answered the phone, more than ready to spill everything to someone. She felt like A’whora, unable to keep any secrets without telling at least one person. Oh god, A’whora was going to tell someone. “You two didn’t get into a fight again, did you?” Bimini asked cautiously, not ready to deal with that trainwreck again. At least Tayce was more likely to admit her own fault but trying to reason with her would take too much energy.  “No! The, uh, opposite actually.” The hesitation in her voice was way too obvious, the vulnerability threw Tayce through a loop. At least she knew Bimini wouldn’t bring it up to anyone. “You two fucked? Finally.” Bimini laughed down the line, it felt like inevitably they’d hook up especially after Tayce came out. The way they looked at each other? Nothing platonic about that, in Bimini’s humble opinion “Yeah, what the fuck do I do?” Tayce sighed, putting her phone to the side as she put her head in her hands. Why was this so complicated? All these feelings, it was so much to deal with. “Have you two talked about it? How’s she acting?” “She’s been pretty good, nothing odd, I guess. We haven’t talked about it really, just acknowledged it happened and then she made breakfast.” “Wait, she made you breakfast?” Bimini paused, Tayce could hear the cogs whirring in their brain. Tayce narrowed her eyes, trying and failing to figure out what she meant. 

“Does that... mean something?” She hesitated. Surely it couldn’t be that important. Making breakfast for someone wasn’t that deep. “She’s showing you how much she loves you!” “It’s not that deep, I was just hungry,” Tayce laughed, the idea was absolutely ludicrous. She’d just acted on Tayce’s stomach growling, like any sane human being would.

“It’s A’whora, her love language is gifts and acts of service, y’know. She adores you and does things for you to show it, you know she does.” Bimini followed up, knowing Tayce was silently admitting defeat when she didn’t answer. As much as she didn’t believe it, it made sense. She’d offered to buy food when she messed up, often doing things if Tayce was tired. She’d always chalked it up to A’whora being a bit dramatic, but it made a little too much sense to just be a coincidence anymore. “God, what… what the fuck do I even do in this situation?” Tayce sighed, groaning at the amount of things this could all mean and how she should approach it. Who could even make sense of these things? It was a nightmare. “I’d say talk to her but you avoided that last time.” “I can’t just tell her, what if it makes things awkward?” Tayce spoke softly, unsure of what could happen and too afraid to take a huge step. All she wanted was A’whora but she couldn’t risk losing her after what had happened last time.

Bimini paused, hearing Tayce so hesitant was strange. 

“This is why it took you 22 years to consider you were into women, isn’t it? You’re useless with girls.” Asttina chimed in, jumping out of nowhere to surprise both Tayce and Bimini. “Asttina! She’s going through a lot to cut her some slack.” “She needs to hear the truth, you need to talk to her or this is just going to become more of a mess.” Asttina sighed, Tayce didn’t want to admit she was right but she knew. They’d talked it out last time and it went smoothly, A’whora wouldn’t just turn cold on her if they were having a discussion. Her shoulders slumped in a small bit of relief, hoping that it wouldn’t be so scary, perhaps.

She could end up with the person that she wanted, the one no one could ever compare to. 

Maybe that was worth the risk? “Alright, you have a point. I’ll talk to her. What’s the worst that could happen? We’ve already fucked, there’s not more to it.” --- A’whora knew something was up with Tayce.

She was too in her head about anything to do with feelings, especially in the wake of her recent realisations and just attempting to converse with A’whora. The way they had acted last night would set her right off. She needed a second opinion, though she suspected Tayce was calling Bimini or Asttina out of panic again. The duty thus fell to Ellie, she knew how to keep her friend's mouth shut.

“Hey bitch, what’s up?” “I fucked Tayce.” A’whora got straight to the point. Ellie spluttered a laugh, her cackles crackling through the phone speaker. 

“You two shagged? Fucking finally, we’ve all been waiting.” A’whora huffed, unimpressed by the reminder of the constant jabs about sexual tension between her and her roommate. It wasn’t like she was unaware of everything, but it was mostly her profound ability to repress her feelings and Tayce being so affectionate, at least she thought it was before all of this. “Yes, but you can’t tell anyone,” She paused,  “Especially not Lawrence.” “Why not? She’ll hear about it anyway, God knows you can’t keep secrets for shit.” Ellie huffed back. The pair of them were horrible at keeping things from people, Ellie almost always ended up spilling things to Lawrence  when she had the chance. “Not the point, how did this happen?”

“We were tipsy and everyone else had partnered off, you were too busy making out with Lawrence, and Bim and Asttina were uncomfortably close to going at it. We went home and things escalated and she... ended up in my bed naked.”

“Do you make a habit of hooking up with your friends?” “No, only the tall ones. Which is exactly why you won’t tell Lawrence. She doesn’t need to know about what we did that time—“ 

“No one needs to know.” Ellie interrupted, desperately trying to steer the conversation away.She knew bringing it up would be the best way to buy Ellie’s silence. They’d never told anyone about that night and planned to keep it that way, alcohol did a lot to a person and almost shagging your friend is one of them. 

“Anyway, she’s a bit.. off now, I guess. Not bad or anything but she just seemed to be processing everything very slowly. How do you deal with that?” A’whora questioned, exasperated. Tayce was always a bit of an enigma, it made navigating everything needlessly difficult but she didn’t blame her. It was a lot to deal with realising your own sexuality and coming to terms with it, she had every reason to be shaken at anything happening between them. “You deal with it by not crushing on the most emotionally unavailable person you know.” A’whora wanted to get defensive— Tayce wasn’t emotionally unavailable, she was just.. complex. She wasn’t one to be super outward with things, she liked to keep to herself when something was bothering her and not make a big deal of it. Though it served no help to the current predicament, only to show how whipped she was for Tayce. 

“No, you torture your friends seeing you pine for years when it’s clear that you both love each other.” “I know you mean me and Loz but that’s you and Tayce, hen.” Ellie laughed, anyone with eyes could see they were a little closer than most friends. It was cute at first but neither of them acted on anything and one of them not realising her feelings until recently made it painful to watch. “She’s not in love with me!” The blonde huffed,  “I would’ve known by now if she was.”

“She’s in love with you you’re just too dumb to see it.” Even Ellie saw it, the way Tayce looked and acted around A’whora was way more loving and tender than she’d ever been with any of her friends. It was like she was the only person to exist, everything in the world that Tayce loved rolled into one person.

It would have been cute if it wasn’t so painful to watch her not realise her own feelings. “Like you were with Lawrence?” “Yes but I have a girlfriend, now go get your welsh hound.”

---

“Aurora?” Tayce poked her head round the door to her room, visibly nervous. 

Oh god. Real name, Tayce looked awkward, shit was about to hit the fan. 

“Come in, what’s bothering you.” Tayce settled next to the blonde on her bed, her nerves were clear as day from her body language. The way her eyes darted to anything other than A’whora, her finger restlessly tapping her leg. She looked uncomfortable, though there was a determination pushing her though it. The way she sat up so straight like she had something to do, no matter how much it ate her up inside.

“Nothing. I mean, it’s not bothering me, I just want to talk.”There was the usual denial, Tayce knew it wouldn’t fool A’whora, it rarely did and she couldn’t fake it at the minute, not with everything on her mind “I know what you mean but saying it like that is very unnerving” A’whora laughed nervously, she wasn’t the anxious one but the way Tayce was acting made her hesitate. “It’s okay, I'm not going to kill you.” Tayce eased the tension with a joke, delighting in how A’whora smiled at the joke, wide enough for her dimples to show.  “Alright come on talk to me then.” “I think i’m in love with you” Tayce blurted, mouth moving too fast for her mind to catch up. 

Oh.

Oh. 

That was. Sudden, Tayce felt frozen, A’whora’s eyes trained on her. What did she do? No lead up, just said it. It wasn’t that hard but she shouldn’t have said it. The shock was written all over her face, it made Tayces stomach twist, a sinking feeling engulfing her as the worst case scenario seemed to come to life. 

“You’re in love with me?” A’whora echoed, her voice soft with some emotion Tayce couldn’t catch on to, something meant to be comforting, hopefully.

She couldn’t reply, any words caught in her throat, fizzled out by the time she opened her mouth. What was she meant to say? She just said the scariest words she could’ve ever thought of saying. Her heart ached for her best friend in a way she never considered possible until a few weeks ago. 

“Tayce…” A’whora trailed off, Tayce’s stomach churning more by the second. 

She couldn’t make eye contact fearing what she might see on her face. She felt movement, A’whora coming closer to her. Was she trying to console her? Then she felt her face gently lifted up to meet A’whora’s eyes. Something shifted in her expression as she saw Tayce’s meekness, soft smile lighting up her features in a way that made Tayce’s heart flutter. She didn’t hold back, pulling her into a passionate kiss. 

Tayce regained herself, kissing back as she felt A’whora melt into her. She felt more confident, taking the lead, her hand running through the blonde hair as her roommate moved closer, taking place in her lap. 

They broke apart, a goofy grin growing on A’whora’s face as she stared at Tayce, eyes shining in wonder. 

“I’ve been in love with you for years.” she murmured, feeling euphoric after the progression of events. Tayce cocked her head in puzzlement. 

“Years?” “Years. How could I not? You’re gorgeous and the most positive energy I've ever met. Nothing is ever boring with you, there’s always something going on or that you can make interesting. There’s something magnetic about you, I can't leave you alone. We clicked so well, no one ever got me as well as you did and I think about how lucky I am we even became friends, Tayce.” “You’re such a hound.” Tayce laughed, visibly taken aback. She didn’t know how to react, that was a lot to process all at once but it made her feel on top of the world. The euphoria rushed through her, a grin growing larger on her face by the minute.

“Is that your way of saying you love me?” A’whora knew what she was trying to communicate, her face saying it all, she looked happier than she’d ever seen, apart from the time she’d bought her a personalised tin of baked beans, that was one of the few times Tayce had cried in front of her. 

“It is, you’re a hound but you’re my hound.” The brunette wrapped an arm around her waist, pulling her into her lap to cuddle into her back.  “Oh? Your hound? Sounds decent, I'll take it.” The wamrht in A’whora’s tone contrasted from her words, turning around to pull Tayce into another kiss. She knew this was going to be complicated, nothing was ever easy between the two of them but with enough communication it would work, they cared too much about each other to not try.  Maybe this whole mess had been worth it, cuddled in Tayce’s arms like nothing else mattered, just the two of them against the world like it always had been.

[relenafanel]

Dicks (in every definition): a fake-relationship AU

Geralt/Jaskier

Find it on Ao3:  Dicks (in every definition) by relenafanel

FOR THE MODERN AU CHALLENGE. WEEK 1: Fake-Relationships

Tag: witcherauseptember

________

“I can’t believe anyone could be such an unmitigated puss-filled dick,” Essi said, staring at her phone in disbelief. Jaskier groaned and let his head thunk on the bar.

“I can.” His sticky forehead was the least disgusting part of the evening.  He'd just come out to forget his ex, and maybe celebrate being free a little (as fucked up as that was) and quite frankly felt attacked by his social media.

“If I believed it from anyone it would be that narcissist,” she conceded, biting on her lip.

“I know,” Jaskier agreed. “That’s the worst part. I feel like it’s my fault being blindsided by this, as though I should have known something was going to happen today.”

Essi snorted. “It’s not your fault your ex is the worst.”

“No, but I was with him for almost 3 years. I don’t know. That’s my fault.”

“Don’t be stupid,” she said. “Look at this desperate fucker. Do you actually think he’s winning? He might be in a new relationship but the look of this guy makes my vagina want to shrivel up and die.”

Jaskier took her phone from her and looked again. Yeah. Yikes. Valdo was definitely scraping the bottom of the barrel with that one. Jaskier hadn’t even tried to join any dating sites post-breakup, but he was pretty sure there were better options. It wasn’t even the guy’s looks so much as he just screamed skeevy douchebag. It was making Jaskier’s metaphorical vagina also want to die.

“You need to get drunk. Maybe laid.”

“No,” Jaskier said, an idea starting to form as he looked at the relationship status change. “No. I need to match pettiness with pettiness. I need to find someone so hot that I’d have trouble getting him - let alone Valdo with his sad, small dick - and make sure to post a picture on Facebook.”

“Would that make you feel better?”

Jaskier smiled with teeth. “I think it would.”

***

It was their third bar of the evening and Essi was definitely sick of the manhunt. She probably hadn’t realized that when Jaskier was judging men fully objectively and not looking for matching personalities (relationship goals) or a willing body (one night stand goals) he had incredibly discerning tastes.

Probably too discerning.

“How about him?” Essi asked, barely looking up from her phone. She gestured to a guy sitting at the bar trying to make eye contact with a woman across the room.

“Ehh,” Jaskier said. “Sweater vest.”

Essi rolled her eyes. “But cute.”

“I’m not looking for cute. I��m looking for eye-searing hot.”

“I’m having trouble remembering how you’ve ever been in any relationships with these unrealistic expectations.”

“Valdo thought I was hot.” Jaskier thought about that for a moment. “Did I stay with someone for three years out of flattery?”

“Probably. Fuck. Get therapy.”

“I am.”

“You’re going to be working on tonight for a while.”

Fucking true. “Oh god, we just saw Valdo’s taste in men. Tell me true… am I ugly.”

“You’re spiraling.”

“That’s not an answer!”

“You’re spiraling!”

“Yes,” Jaskier agreed, pulling at his hair. “I’m so aware.”

“Based on the guy in his status update I’m going to guess you’re the hottest guy he could get.”

“You’re a good friend.” Jaskier pressed his head against her shoulder.

Then, a table opened up across the room, revealing the man sitting on the other side of it. “Holy shit.”

Essi looked up. Then she looked up. “Wow.”

“I hope he’s into men,” Jaskier said. “Or at least willing to play along with pretending to be for long enough for you to get a picture.”

“You’re going to walk up to that?” Essi asked. “You have more balls than brains.”

That was probably true.

***

“Hi, I’m Jaskier,” he opened with, dropping into the seat across from the gorgeous man. Up close he was even more startlingly pretty, with a chin dimple that highlighted his strong jaw and drew attention to his mouth. “And my boyfriend broke up with me two months ago, only to post his new relationship on Facebook today. Our three year anniversary. It’s the dickest of moves, right?”

The man hummed in agreement, but otherwise didn’t stop frowning in Jaskier’s general direction. Like someone waiting for him to get to the point. Jaskier saw that frown often.

“The reason for the oversharing is that I just forced my best friend to follow me to three different bars to find someone so phenomenally hot for me to spend time with and get picture proof, and here you are. I’d do jazz hands but you don’t seem like someone who responds well to jazz hands.”

“What are jazz hands?”

Whoa.

What a voice. What a sexy, sexy voice. Jaskier knew what he was talking about. He was a connoisseur of voices.

Jaskier wiggled his fingers at him. Tada! “Jazz hands.”

“Huh.” The man took a drink of his beer. “You want to use me as a revenge plot?”

“Exactly. Can I buy you a drink?”

The man gestured to his mostly full beer. “I’m not drinking to get drunk tonight.”

That was only a no to the beer. “Nachos or some other foodstuff?”

The guy seemed possibly interested in food.  

“Fine,” he agreed.  

****

Facebook: Julian Alfred Pankratz is in a relationship with Geralt of Rivia.

“Who’s Julian Pankratz?” Geralt muttered, staring at his phone.

“What?” Jaskier groaned, coming out a shitty sleep to a few realizations:

He’d gone home with the hottest guy on earth, which he should be pleased about, AND WAS PLEASED ABOUT

He might throw up

He’d done something last night. Something he’d said “that’s up for tomorrow Jaskier to sort out” because his drunk self was apparently a fucking masochist, and now Jaskier wasn’t really sure what that was.

Only Geralt was still scowling at his phone and seemed to know his real name.

So.

“Fuck,” Jaskier groaned. His mouth tasted like nachos and the regret of doing shots too late in life. He was 28 years old, not dead, but his hangover didn’t seem to know that.  “We didn’t get married , did we?”

“...”

Jaskier risked the light filtering in through the edges of the blinds to look at Geralt. His hair was beyond mussed - Jaskier didn’t know hair could get that tangled overnight. He was still frowning at his phone.

“I’ve been calling you Jaskier.”

“I go by Jaskier,” he promised. He was too busy having his own crises to deal with Geralt’s! For fucksakes. “Now, back to the marriage thing??”

“No.”

Phew. That was probably on him. He wasn’t sure people could actually get fake married overnight. Legally. He’d seen a lot of movies, though.

Ok. Next problem.  “I might throw up.”

Geralt turned his head slowly to look at him. Yikes. Too much beautiful-man-face in his face for this early in the morning.

“It’s eleven,” Geralt told him in the dry tone that told Jaskier he’d said that all outloud.

“Eleven after getting to bed at what? Five? Eugh, boo. Do you have any food?”

***

Geralt did have food.

Well, Geralt had protein bars and electrolytes, which was basically the same thing. Jaskier could always fall on top of a burger on his way home if he had to.  He’d finally looked at his phone by the time he was halfway through his breakfast.

107 new notifications.

What the fuck?

Julian Alfred Pankratz is in a relationship with Geralt of Rivia

Geralt and I were going to wait until announcing this wasn’t an asshole move, but now that it doesn’t really matter, I just wanted everyone to know that I’m doing GREAT.

Attached to it was the picture of the two of them together that Essi had taken with the caption of “I wouldn’t feel too sorry for Jaskier tonight”

His drunk self had a lot to answer for. No wonder Geralt had been scowling at his phone.

“I can’t believe I went Facebook Official with someone I haven’t even had sex with yet,” Jaskier mourned. “What is it, 2007?”

***

It took Jaskier almost the full day to recover enough to actually look through his comments on Facebook. By the time he had, they’d almost doubled and he’d made the mistake of clicking into Instagram to find one of those quintessential happy-relationship-our-feet-are-cute-together bullshit pictures. He had a different following on Instagram, mostly using it for pictures of himself singing.

Yikes. Yikes. Yikes. This wasn’t a contained problem, if you could call their mutual friends and families on Facebook that had been gathering in the wings for 15 years a contained problem . Fucking Facebook. Jaskier friended people he’d met once. He had a database of acquaintances. It was great for - you know - being a musician looking for gigs. He’d done 15 weddings in the last year.

It was pretty shitty when he’d faked having a boyfriend so people wouldn’t feel bad for him.

But, as he read through the comments and realized that some of them weren’t for him, he realized that maybe he wasn’t the one with the biggest problem.

Jaskier: Did you just come out?

Jaskier: Are you EVEN INTO MEN?

Jaskier: I REMEMBER YOU THINKING THIS WAS FUNNY AND AGREEING TO IT

Jaskier: BUT

Jaskier: I REGRET COMMITTING TO CAPS SO SOON BECAUSE I MEAN THIS IN CAPS AND BOLDED

Jaskier: WHOEVER LAMBERT IS JUST CONGRATULATED YOU ON FINALLY GETTING DICKED DOWN BECAUSE IT MIGHT MAKE YOU LESS GRUMPY

Geralt: I see you’ve read the comments

Geralt: my brother

Jaskier: YOUR BROTHER?!

Geralt: bold and caps?

Jaskier: and italics what the fuck. Why’d you let me do this?

Jaskier: wait.

Jaskier: WAIT

Geralt: there it is

Jaskier: this was your idea

Jaskier: did you use me to tell everyone you know that you’re gay or bi or whatever you identify as?

Jaskier: what a brilliant opportunity last night was for both of us

Geralt: you went back to sleep and didn’t process any of this yet, didn’t you?

Jaskier had been seen with that, fuck. He made a face at his phone even though Geralt couldn't see it.

A few moments later a response to Lambert popped up from Geralt himself.

@Lambert who says I haven’t been getting dicked down this entire time you heteronormative asshole

Followed by someone named Yennefer posting a picture of a strap on.

Who were these people? Could you love someone based on how their friends reacted to their ill-advised fake-relationship status change? Asking for a friend.

Geralt: for context, that’s my ex-wife

Geralt: we’re ok

Geralt: especially when she’s helping me fuck with my brother

***

Jaskier was debating the merits of asking Geralt if he wanted to come up with a break-up plan or just date when another comment showed up.

Vesemir left a comment:

You’ll bring him to brunch tomorrow?

Geralt left a comment:

We’ll be there

Vesemir left a comment:

Leave the frightening device at home

Geralt left a comment:

He doesn’t need it

This was followed by a string of variations of LOL and OH SHITs from about 7 different people. Jaskier watched it all unfold feeling like he’d stepped into the middle of something he didn’t understand - yet. He was definitely in trouble, if the way his heart rate increased at Geralt’s he doesn’t need it was any indication. It wasn’t even the dick reference, though that was amazing. It was the snappy, quick response. The underlying sarcasm.

Jaskier had a type. He could end a fake relationship that was based on seeing a searing hot guy across a room, but it was a bit harder when the guy had a personality he liked. If Geralt turned out to have a heart of gold, Jaskier was screwed and would probably be proposing marriage by year’s end.

Yeah, we’ll be there , he commented.

Geralt: my dad

Geralt: thanks

Jaskier: no problem

Jaskier : gonna call

“So I’m thinking,” Jaskier said the moment Geralt’s face showed up on the video call. He was squinting at his phone like no one had ever tried to video call him before.

“Hi,” Geralt replied, looking amused.

“I’ve been debating the merits of planning a breakup for our fake relationship or just… dating? I’m thinking maybe we should date? Do you have input?”

“Dating’s fine.”

“But do you… are you even attracted to me? Would you pick me?”

Oh fuck, what was that?! Something new to bring up in therapy.

Geralt tilted his head.  “You don’t know this about me yet, but I’m capable of saying no. Overly capable, some of my family might tell you.”

“So you’re not saying no?”

“I’m pretty confident I said yes instead.”

***

“As Jaskier’s best friend and the only witness,” Essi said into the microphone, holding up a glass of champagne to salute the two of them. “Our happy couple gave me full permission to tell the story of what happened the night Geralt and Jaskier met. Like Jaskier himself, the story is partially an embarrassing tale of bad decisions, half-cocked plans, and a lot of heart.”

Jaskier grinned, and nudged his shoulder into Geralt’s.

“And,” Essi continued with glee, “dicks in every definition.”

[isa-renee]

Secrets And Lies (And Quite the Surprise)

Alexander Gideon Lightwood, years deep in the closet and months deep into this particular lie, has approximately five minutes to find a fake girlfriend before this all blows up in his face. Enter one Clary Fray, friend to Magnus, stranger to Izzy, and the perfect candidate to fool his family. Really, it’s the perfect plan. So what could go wrong? 

read it on Ao3:

 Alec was in trouble. Major trouble.

 “So, big brother,” Isabelle started, sitting down across from him in the coffee shop. “How long until I can finally meet this mystery girl of yours?” She smirked as she took a sip of her latte.

 And there...well, there was the trouble. Namely that there was no mystery girl, that Alec secretly was gay as hell, and that there might in fact have been a mystery boy (not that his sister knew about Magnus of course).

 “Uhm well…” he started, trying to think of some answer that she might accept but drawing a blank. Oh no. This was not good.

 It had all started the month before when, fed up with his siblings’ constant pestering about his love life, he had caved and told Jace that he had a date one night. With a girl. This of course was a lie. (Well, the girl part. He actually had had plans to see Magnus.) And as lies are bound to do, it soon spiraled far out of his control. Jace had told Izzy, and Izzy, naturally, had not let him off the hook quite as easily as their brother had.

 The solution to his predicament? More lies of course! (What else?)

 So for the past month, he had pretended to have a girlfriend, carefully evading his siblings’ questions about her. And somehow it was working.

 Well, sort of. Partially. Maybe. A little bit. Okay actually the entire situation was getting way out of hand and it was not working at all.

 The good news? He’d had plenty of reason to sneak off and be with Magnus. He just had to tell Jace he was seeing his girlfriend and the blond would smirk and wish him luck. That bad news? Izzy was getting suspicious. And no good ever came from Izzy being suspicious.

 Which led Alec back to the coffee shop, and his now dire situation.

 “Alec?” he heard Izzy’s voice, a slight undercurrent of laughter. “Are you alright there? You spaced out for a second.”

 “Sorry,” he smiled sheepishly. “Just nervous,” he blurted out. Oh no.

 “Oh yeah? What about?” This was not good. “Are you actually going to let me meet Mystery Girl? Or at least tell me her name? Jace and I have started calling her Meg, you know. MG for Mystery Girl but that still took too long to say. But it would be nice to have an actual name.”

 “Uhmm…” Alec knew he had to say something, but his mind was blanking.

 Izzy smirked again. “Unless there's a reason you’re keeping her secret of course. Is she a professor? Are you dating one of your professors? You know I would have expected that from Jace but not you Alec.” She grinned at him, sensing his discomfort and hoping to lighten the mood, and he gave a weak chuckle. “Or hmm is she an undercover FBI agent? Secret service? Maybe she’s—”

 “Actually she’s on her way here right now.” Wait what?

 “Really?” Izzy asked, surprise evident on her face, but with a delighted look in her eyes. Oh God, what was he doing?

 “Yeah of course. I thought it was time you two met.” Crap crap crap crap crap. This had to be his worst idea ever. Why wouldn't the words just stop leaving his mouth?

 “She’ll be here in five minutes.”

 Oh, he was so screwed.

 So there he was, in a coffee shop with his sister, about to be caught in one of the biggest lies he’d ever told. Unless he thought of something in the next—he checked his watch—three minutes. Oh this was not good.

 Isabelle was talking to him still, something about a new friend she’d made, an artist or something? Honestly, he barely caught a word of it, caught in his worry spiral, desperately trying to find a way out of this hole he’d dug himself into.

 Izzy was still saying something to him, and he turned his head and saw a flash of bright red hair out of the corner of his eye. Clary, he remembered her name was, a friend of Magnus’ who he’d met a few times.

 And suddenly, he had an idea.

 He stood up, cutting Izzy off in the middle of her sentence. “Sorry,” he said, “One second and I’ll be right back.” He left the table and moved over to the line where Clary was standing. He tried to walk casually, though inside his head he was screaming, absolutely utterly freaking out at the sheer stupidity of his desperate plan. But, well, this was the only option he could see.

 He approached Clary with a wave, hoping she remembered him from Magnus’. She saw him and smiled as she waved back, so he really hoped she might be willing to help him out. If not, well, this would all be over sooner than he expected.

 “Clary,” he said as he approached her in the line. “Hi. I know we don’t know each other that well, and I’m really sorry to ask you for this, but I kind of need you to pretend to be my girlfriend for the next twenty minutes.”

 And she must have sensed the desperation in his eyes, because she leaned in close to him and grabbed his arm in the way a girlfriend might, obviously confused but trying to play the part. “Okay, explain.”

 And so he did. “So I’m here with my sister and it’s kind of a long story but she thinks I have a girlfriend and I sort of panicked and said she could meet her today. And the problem is that I don’t actually have a girlfriend. Because I'm dating Magnus. Because I’m gay. Which my sister does not know. And I know it’s a lot to ask but please I could really use your help here.”

 “You're dating Magnus?” And she sounded excited at the idea. “Oh I’m so glad, you two are always so cute together, and I had wondered, but he never mentioned it.”

 “Yeah,” he answered, color slightly coming to his face. “I’m not exactly out, which is the whole reason for all of this, and why he hasn’t said anything. But he and I have been together for a few months, just keeping it quiet for now.”

 “I’m so happy for you two! And yes, Alec, of course I'll do this. In the spirit of gay-lesbian solidarity of course!” She laughed as she said the last, and huh, Alec had never realized she was gay too. He had always assumed she was dating that boy she hung around. Simon? Was that his name? But apparently not. Whatever her reasoning, Alec was just glad for her help. “But I was actually here to see my girlfriend, so let me just text her that I’ll have to take a raincheck.”

 “Thank you!” he said, and wow did he mean it. He could have kissed her for gratitude. Well, if it weren’t for the gay thing. He supposes if he could have kissed her, that would have led to a very different afternoon. “This might actually work.”

 And, well, he should have known that it was too good to be true.

 He and Clary arrived at the table where Isabelle was sitting, though she seemed a bit hesitant to sit down there. Izzy, too, looked surprised, probably that he actually did have a girl here to meet his sister. He seriously could not believe how well his plan was working.

 He turned to Isabelle to introduce her. “Izzy,” he started, gesturing towards Clary. “Meet Clary, my girlfriend.”

 He pulled out the chair next to him for Clary to sit, only she didn’t move to sit down, just staring silently at his sister. And this did not bode well. Izzy was also just staring at him now, some expression on her face that he couldn’t quite place. And this was definitely not good.

 Isabelle turned from him to look at Clary, and the two locked eyes for a second, and he seriously could not puzzle out the expression on his sister’s face. Clary made some sort of noise to his left, evidently surprised by the sight of Isabelle for some reason.

 “Um, do you two know each other already?” Alec asked, by that point very confused.

 Izzy stared at Alec, then at Clary, then back at Alec once more. “Something like that,” she responded, and then she turned to Clary and. Winked? At her?

 And suddenly Clary just burst out laughing. She was doubled over in her laughter, and oh no this was so not good. What was going on?

 Izzy seemed close to laughter herself, though she tried to compose herself as she turned to Alec, doing her best to put on a serious face, though her grin managed to slip through nonetheless.

 “Alec,” she began, Clary laughing even harder as she tried and failed to use a serious tone. And oh this was not good, not good at all. Alec didn’t know what was wrong, only that something was, and that his plan somehow seemed to have failed pretty epically. How did they know each other? What was that wink for? Izzy continued, regaining herself after a pause. “Why, exactly, are you pretending to date my girlfriend?”

 And, huh. Well. He really hadn’t seen that one coming.

 Clary was still laughing, and Izzy had joined her too, by the time Alec had realized he should really say something. He opened his mouth to do just that, only he really had no idea what to say. Was there any way for him to fix this? Or would he finally have to admit to the truth, after his months of carefully constructed lies?

 He was so caught up in trying to find a way to fix the situation, that it didn't hit him until a few moments later, by which time Clary and his sister finally seemed to have calmed down.

 “Wait, girlfriend?!”

 Finally, after what felt like years but more likely was only about a minute, Alec found himself sitting at the table once again, with his sister across from him, and her girlfriend next to him, the two finally quieted down after his last comment had set them off laughing again. And it was official. There was absolutely no salvaging this lie. Oh, Jace was going to be unbearable when he found this out.

 “Yes, Alec, my girlfriend. The person I have been telling you about for ten minutes. And who came to this coffee shop to finally meet you, though it turns out you two are dating?” At this she turns to Clary. “You know, I could have sworn you said you were a lesbian. And now you’re dating my brother? Really?”

 Clary giggled at that, though thankfully it seemed the two were finally finished with their uncontrolled fits of laughter. “Oh I don’t know, Izzy,” she started, continuing in the joking mood Izzy had set, definitely no longer trying to actually pretend to date Alec. “He’s just so handsome.” She patted his cheek. “I just had to make an exception. I’m sure you understand.”

 “Well, good looks do run in the family after all.”

 The two started giggling again, and Alec knew he should say something, but found then he was having the opposite problem from earlier. While before, he couldn't stop words leaving his mouth, then, he found that he could not think of a single thing to say.

 Izzy seemed to notice how uncomfortable he looked, though, and she stopped laughing and turned to look at him, actually serious now.

 “Alec…” she prompted gently. “Okay, you obviously weren’t trying to make a joke, or you’d be laughing right now with us. What’s going on?”

 Clary sobered up at that too, realizing abruptly that, as funny as the situation was—and even Alec could tell, objectively, that it was pretty hilarious, though he was having a hard time feeling that to tell the truth—their plan had failed, which meant that Alec now had to find not only a new fake girlfriend, but an explanation for all of this, or else he would be outed to his sister, something he very obviously was not ready for.

 “It’s actually a really funny story,” Clary began, sounding surprisingly sure for someone thinking on the spot. “I’m good friends with Maia, who Alec is actually dating, and she wasn’t able to make it today, at the last minute, but she had realized that you and Alec were siblings and she had this great idea and–”

 “Clary,” Alec cut her off mid-sentence. She was doing a surprisingly convincing job of covering for him, and he was grateful for her in that moment. But he realized, as he was sitting there with his sister and the girl she was dating, that he really had nothing to worry about. And as he heard this new lie starting, he could so easily see himself going on with it, and getting deeper into it once again. He realized then that he didn’t want that. He didn't deserve that. He thought about lying again and realized that, for the first time, he was ready to tell the truth. “Clary, thank you. But I think I’m finally ready to do this.”

 So he turned to his sister. And she looked back at him, and he wondered why he ever worried about telling her. It was Izzy! Izzy had always supported him, in everything. Sure, she had always talked to him about cute girls, but finally he realized that that wasn’t her shoving him back into the closet, that was her coming out of her own. He could do this!

 “I’m not dating Clary. Or Maia. In fact, I’m not dating a girl at all.” He could do this. He could. “I’m dating a guy. I’m dating a wonderful man, and his name is Magnus Bane, and I really like him a lot, and I think you will too.” And it was done. He was out. (To Izzy at least, but he was out!)

 As he finished, the biggest smile came over his sister’s face, and she got up from the table and rushed around to give him a big hug right there in his chair. “I’m so proud of you,” she said softly into his hair, before pulling away to slide away and back into her seat opposite him. He looked up and saw Clary just beaming at the two of them, and was struck by the gratitude that his sister was dating someone so kind and, honestly, perfect for her.

 The plan may have failed epically, he thought, but everything still worked out alright in the end. He couldn’t wait to tell Magnus about it all.

[quickspinner]

Month of Miracles - Moments of Wonder

Well my plans for this prompt month definitely tanked but that’s okay, I’m still gonna finish this Hallmark AU at least. I’m gonna try not to write a ten paragraph authors note detailing all my struggles with this piece and just say, I hope the intention comes through even with all the life interruptions.

Find the prompt list here!

Hallmark Movie AU Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 (end) | Read Month of Miracles on AO3

“Spaghetti?” Rose screeched. “Luka, nobody looks good eating spaghetti. She’ll be uncomfortable. Make something else.”

Luka looked at the ceiling for a moment and prayed for patience. “It’s not like this is a date,” he muttered, going to look through the pantry to see what else he could make. Rose’s pestering was making him nervous, and his hand hovered over several options before he shook himself and picked up a bag of rice. Casserole seemed like such a homely option but—

Not a date , he reminded himself resolutely. He didn’t want to make Marinette uncomfortable. She hadn’t agreed to a date, so it wasn’t one, and he wasn’t going to let Rose’s fantasizing make him treat it like one.

“Casserole?” Rose said doubtfully when he got out the pan. 

Luka groaned. “Out, Rose.” He grabbed the kitchen towel hanging on the oven rail and snapped it at her, making her squeak and jump back. She folded her arms with a pout. “Nope. Not gonna work on me,” he told her, flapping her out of the kitchen with the towel like a fly. “Get lost.” 

“I’m just trying to help,” Rose wailed as she backed away. 

“And stay out,” Luka told her shortly, and turned to go back in the kitchen. He leaned on the counter and sighed. He was a patient guy, and he liked Rose, and okay so she was right that he and Marinette would hit it off, but— enough , already. He was nervous enough about whether she would understand what he wanted to show her tonight, and not really sure why it was important to him anyway. 

Maybe it was lingering guilt for disappearing without any real explanation or apology to his fans. Maybe if he could make even one fan understand, he’d feel better. 

Orrrr maybe it has nothing to do with your fans and you just want Marinette to understand, Rose’s voice sing-songed in his head, because you liiiiiike her. Luka sighed. 

He did like her. He liked her, and he wanted to know her, and the only way he knew of to do that was to invite her to know him. He sighed again, and went back to his dinner preparations.

Marinette knocked on the Couffaines’ door with so many butterflies in her stomach that she wasn’t at all sure she was going to be able to eat. It had been easy to accept the invitation with Luka there in front of her, with his relaxed smile and calm presence, but by the time she got back to her grandmother’s house, her brain had gone into a panicked spiral of overthinking that had her feeling jumpy and on edge. She always put thought into her appearance, but she’d agonized over it tonight, afraid of looking too...date-like. In the end she’d kept her pigtails and kept her makeup light, and worn a slightly oversized cream sweater over red leggings. Easy, seasonally appropriate, not unflattering but not aiming to attract, either. 

When the door flew open, Rose’s excited, beaming face did nothing to ease her nerves. As Rose dragged her inside, bouncing a little, Marinette had an unsettling feeling like she had been caught in a trap of some kind, and it didn’t get any better when Rose introduced her to Luka’s sister. Juleka gave her a quick once over and smirked, and Marinette was struck by an urge to flee the premises.  

Then Luka was there, taking her elbow gently and somehow getting everyone moving to the table. He wasn’t dressed for a date either, wearing a slightly worn navy pullover with the sleeves pushed up to his elbows and jeans that had seen better days. The look he gave her as he escorted her to the dining room said please ignore them, we both know better, and Marinette began to relax a little bit. That’s right. Rose might be scheming but she and Luka had already talked it out, and they knew where they stood. They were friends, and whatever he wanted to show her tonight had nothing to do with...with wooing her, or whatever Rose seemed to think was going on.

Dinner wasn’t fancy, either, and that made her feel better too. She managed to strike up a conversation with Juleka after Luka pointed out that many of the photographs on the walls were Juleka’s work. He turned all of Rose’s attempts to get them started on personal topics into casual conversation, and Marinette honestly could have kissed him just for making everything so... easy.

Not that she would. Not that he wanted her to. Not that she wanted to! Oh no, she was starting again…

Marinette nearly jumped out of her seat when a peppy tune blared out seemingly from nowhere. Luka put a steadying hand on her shoulder and gave her a reassuring smile while Rose pulled her phone out of her pocket, frowning. 

“Excuse me a second,” Rose said apologetically, “It’s work so I better see what they want.” 

Marinette had to blink for a moment. She’d forgotten that normal people didn’t take phone calls during dinner.

“Sabrina, what’s up?” Rose chirped, dabbing at her mouth with her napkin as she held the phone to her ear and slipped out of her chair to walk into the other side of the room—not that it really made a difference since they could all still hear her. “Well, finally, what took so long? So, what’s the big deal?” There was a pause, and Rose frowned. “Come down there? Why are you being so dramatic, Sabrina, can’t you just tell me?” 

That got Luka’s attention. He shot Rose an alarmed look, and Rose rolled her eyes at him. “Okay, fine. I’m on my way.” She hung up the phone and came back over to kiss Juleka’s cheek. “I have to go. There’s something up with the costumes for the children’s pageant and Sabrina’s making a big deal about it. I’ll come back after I find out what’s going on.” She grinned at Luka and Marinette. “Have fun without me.” She fluttered her hand and left the table, blowing a kiss to them all as she flounced out of the door.

Luka gaped after her for a moment. No, no, this was no good. Rose’s excited fluttering aside, she and Juleka were supposed to go do their own thing and get so distracted with each other that he could talk to Marinette in peace, but without Rose—Luka glanced at his sister, and saw her smirking at him. Luka tried to convey with nothing but his eyes that if she ruined this for him he’d never forgive her. Juleka just rolled her eyes and went back to eating. 

“Children’s pageant?” Marinette was repeating next to him in confusion. “At the library? I thought that was usually a church thing.” 

“Oh, it is,” Juleka smirked. “The church has one every year too, and Rose...Rose has a beef with it. Let’s just say they’ve had the same Joseph and Mary for the last three years and Rose doesn’t feel like it represents the proper Christmas spirit.” 

“Oh,” Marinette said, blinking. “Huh.” 

“Are you finished, Juleka?” Luka asked a little too quickly, standing up. “I can take your plate.” 

Juleka gave him a look that said she knew what he was doing, but she got up too. “Yeah. Thanks. It was nice to meet you Marinette.” She went to the stairs, but couldn’t resist a parting “You two have fun,” before she thunked up them.

Luka sighed, and took Juleka’s plate and his own to the kitchen. He nearly bumped into Marinette when he turned around, standing behind him with her own mostly-empty plate. “Oh, sorry,” he said, taking it from her automatically. “I didn’t mean to rush you, if you weren’t done.” 

“No, I’m good,” Marinette said, with a nervous little flutter of her hands. “I was done. Can I help you clean up?”

“Nah, Jules can get it later,” he said, opening the cabinet to dump the last of the food in the trash before he put the plate in the sink. “I cooked, so dishes are her job. Let me just put the leftovers in the fridge. Why don’t you come on into the great room while I do that?” 

He led her out of the kitchen into the two-story great room, with its huge windows and exposed beams and the large crackling fireplace. 

“Wow, this is lovely,” Marinette breathed, looking around.

“I like it,” Luka shrugged with a self-conscious smile. “Great acoustics in here, actually. Just have a seat wherever you’re comfortable and I’ll be right back. Watch your step, we’re...not exactly neat freaks, if you know what I mean.” 

“It looks lived in,” Marinette agreed diplomatically. The furniture was all mismatched and...unique. Some of it looked so old and rickety that she wasn’t sure it was safe to sit on, and there were...boxes everywhere. Not really boxes, but old army footlockers, heavy-looking chests, and a dozen other things. They were mostly tucked in the corners of the room, leaving the floor clear for the enormous Christmas tree that took up an entire corner of the huge room. 

Marinette made her way to one of the couches as Luka went back to the kitchen. It looked like an antique, with an old brocade fabric that was slightly faded but otherwise in good condition, and sturdy enough. Marinette perched on the end of it, feeling a little awkward. She looked around the room. Despite the size, it was cozy, with a rustic air, much like all the other buildings she’d been in around town, and though she’d been being polite, her statement was accurate. It didn’t look so much cluttered as lived-in, as if this room was used a lot by the entire family. As she looked at the Christmas tree, she had to smile. The decorations were a bit...eccentric. Several of the ornaments on the tree were little bats wearing tiny knitted scarves or carrying miniature instruments that looked like they might have come from a doll collection. Music seemed to feature prominently in the tree, she realized. Many of the figures had instruments, not just the bats (there were spiders, too, she saw with amusement). Some of the ornaments were cheap, clearly mass manufactured things, but others were carefully crafted and looked like they’d come from far away places. Guitars weren’t the only instruments featured, but they did outnumber the others by quite a bit. Luka wasn’t the only musical one in the family, she concluded. His father was Jagged Stone, after all, and boy there was probably a story there, but she’d never dare ask. 

Her eyes widened slightly when Luka reappeared with an electric guitar in one hand. Marinette blushed, one hand fluttering up to fuss nervously with her hair. Surely he wasn’t going to play now? For her? 

Luka smirked a little at the expression on her face, and winked at her as he set the guitar down in a stand she hadn’t noticed. “In a minute,” he told her, and Marinette wanted to sink into the couch and disappear. Could she act more like a starstruck fan? Luka crossed to a funny looking cabinet that turned out to have a CD player inside. “You know Blue Lightning, right?

“Yes, of course,” Marinette said, blinking. It was one of the singles off his most recent album—his last album, she realized with a pang.  

Luka nodded as he put the CD he’d been holding in the player. “This was the demo I pitched to the label when I wrote it.” 

He pressed play, and turned the volume up. He walked over to one of the windows and stuck his hands in his pockets as the music began to play.

Marinette’s mouth dropped open. It sounded so...different. Of course a demo would sound different, she’d heard demo tracks before and they didn’t necessarily have full instrumentation or backup vocals, but...the whole feel of the song was different. Peppier, more fluid, less...angry. Still a rock song, but not so...gritty, or harsh, as the version she knew. 

Luka kept his eyes down as he switched off the CD player and closed the cabinet, and then went to sit next to Marinette on the couch. Only then did he look up at her.

“The execs said they loved it,” he told her softly, “but it didn’t fit my brand. They didn’t think it would sell. Later, they told me. When I was a bigger star, then I could put out something like that, but not yet.”

“That’s—” a shame, Marinette wanted to say, but instead she twined her fingers together and looked down. “Well, I guess they know what sells, right? It makes sense that you would take their advice.”

“That’s what I thought.” Luka nodded. “So I agreed to change it. And then in post production they ‘tweaked it’ some more, and…” He grimaced. “And then I had to go up on stage and perform it like that, and even though it made sense at the time, I just...hated it. When I complained, they told me I wasn’t bringing in enough sales yet to be such a diva and that if I wanted to make the music I wanted to make, then I needed to work harder.”

“It’s hard, isn’t it,” Marinette sighed. “But you have to make your bones, right? It’s the same with fashion. That’s just...part of the industry.” She glanced at him uncertainly.

“So they told me,” Luka gave her a wry smile. 

Marinette looked back at her hands. “Well, if it was making you unhappy, then it’s good that you left,” she said, but she said it without conviction, and she knew that he could hear it. 

Luka sighed. “Well. There was more to it than just that.” He got to his feet. “You’ve been to one of my shows, right? I think you said you had.” He picked up the guitar from the stand, and slung the strap across his shoulders. 

Marinette nodded. “Mmhmm.” She watched as he rummaged behind one of the chairs, pulled out an amp cord, and plugged it into the guitar.

“Good,” Luka said, sitting down across from her in one of the rickety-looking chairs. Marinette’s hands moved involuntarily before fluttering back into her lap. He lived here; surely he knew the hazards of the furniture. She curled her fingers under and tried not to fidget. He grinned without looking at her as he tuned the guitar.

“It’ll hold,” he said, as if he’d read her mind. “I promise nothing around here is as fragile as it looks.” 

“Right,” Marinette said, hunching her shoulders slightly. “Of course.” She didn’t know where to look, and she suddenly felt very stupid. Why was she here again?. 

“Just relax,” Luka’s deep voice soothed, and she glanced up, color deepening. He sounded like Luke Stone in that moment, with the smooth, musical tone of his voice. “Just listen. If you don’t understand when I’m done, then...then that’ll be okay. But I’d like to try and show you what I mean. The difference between Luke Stone, and...me.” 

He took a breath, blew it out slowly...and played. Marinette’s breath caught. It was just White Christmas, which she’d heard a thousand times over in a hundred different styles. Even so, it was beautiful, embellished with unique touches that face it the same evocative quality that had first drawn her to Luke’s—to Luka’s music. 

Apparently he was just warming up, though, because he took another deep breath, and the music segued into a different tune—one she didn’t recognize. 

It resonated somewhere deep inside her, touched a well of pain she’d been trying to ignore for months. Not only the music, which by itself was beautiful and seemed to vibrate in her soul—but the artistry. And when she looked at him— 

Luka’s eyes were half closed, and his face was serene, with just a slight wrinkle of concentration between his brows. His hands, rough and abused as they were, moved easily and gracefully, with a confidence that Marinette suddenly realized was familiar. She’d had that once, back when she’d been young and inexperienced and thought too highly of herself. Before she’d learned better, and seen how far she still had to go. 

She found that she envied Luka in that moment. It must be nice, to be away from all that pressure and just...create for yourself again. Not to be constantly questioning your instincts, because you only had yourself to please anyway. 

Her chest suddenly felt tight, and her eyes stung. She swallowed hard and tore her eyes away from him, looking down at her hands. She closed her eyes and put her hand on her heart, determined to listen until the end. 

It was so beautiful. Poignant. 

She recognized now what he’d been trying to show her with the demo track. She had been too distracted at the time by the other differences, but...there had been so much more feeling in the demo version. Because Luka had loved it, she realized. He’d been excited about that song, and by the time the studio was done with it, that enthusiasm was lost. He played the studio version well, with all the technical skill he possessed, but it lacked the passion of the original. If anything, it sounded angry because Luka was angry when he played it.

That’s part of the process, though. It’s just part of the industry. Editing is important, even if it isn’t fun. Of course you’re tired of a project before it’s finished. You’ve still got to see it through. You don’t just quit or give up on a project because you feel pouty that people told you what was wrong.

It was the truth, so...why did watching Luka, and hearing him play, make it feel like such a lie?

The studio was wrong, she admitted to herself. Even if it was an objectively better song when they were done, even if the sales numbers said they were right...what they lost along the way was so much more precious than perfection. 

Luka’s song ended softly, but on a questioning note, without really concluding. He looked up at her, and then came over to sit next to her on the couch, his expression concerned. 

She wasn’t sure why until Luka reached out, and wiped away the tear trickling down her face with the rough pad of his thumb. “Are you okay?” he asked gently.

“Yeah, I’m—” Marinette began, trying to smile, but she couldn’t finish. Her face crumpled and she buried in her hands before she began to cry in earnest. 

Luka put the guitar down, and came to sit beside her. His hands curled around her shoulders and tugged her to him. Marinette yielded, letting him pull her close. One arm wrapped around her back and one big hand gently cradled her head, guiding it down to his shoulder, and he held her, swaying gently, while she hid her face in his shirt and wept. 

“I didn’t mean to make you cry,” Luka said apologetically, and Marinette shook her head without lifting it. He held her for a long moment, until she finally managed to pull herself together and pull away from him, sitting up and wiping at her eyes.

“I’m so sorry,” she muttered, embarrassed. “I’m so sorry, I was enjoying it so much, I can’t believe I just...lost it like that, ugh.” 

“It’s okay,” Luka soothed, putting his hand on her shoulder. He squeezed and rubbed it lightly. “Do you feel better?” 

“I...think I do, actually,” Marinette gave him a quick smile. “Thank you.” She was still embarrassed, but she meant it. It felt like a pressure valve had opened somewhere inside of her, and while nothing had really changed, it all felt just a little bit less oppressive. “I think I understand, at least a little. Why you left. But…” Marinette pressed her lips together, like she wasn’t sure she wanted to go on. Luka squeezed her shoulder again lightly, waiting for her to continue.

“I just...was quitting really the only way? Wasn’t it your dream? Wasn’t it worth fighting for?”

Luka swallowed and drew his hand back. He folded his hands together between his knees, looking at the floor, and hoped he could say what he wanted to without sounding like a pretentious drama queen or a weakling. 

“What happened between us just now,” Luka began slowly, “Luke Stone could never do that. I didn’t mind the work, or the hours, or even the touring. It’s just, the more we ‘refined’ Luke Stone’s image, the less it felt like me, and it put up this...wall between me and the rest of the world. It wasn’t just the label interfering with my music, it was the image they wanted me to project. The brand. It was harder and harder to be somebody different off-stage, because after a certain point, there’s really no such thing as off-stage. Jagged, you know, he can turn it on and off like that.” He snapped his fingers. “He tried to help me, he really did, but...I just...wasn’t connecting with people the way I needed to, for the music to really flow. I felt so alone, and unhappy, and I was still making music but it wasn’t mine, anymore. It was just something I did to keep the label happy. Finally I decided that clinging to the dream for the sake of the dream wasn’t very smart if it didn’t actually make me happy, and it was more important to be me than to be a star.” Luka glanced up. Marinette was staring at him, her eyes huge in her pale face. He felt himself beginning to blush and dropped his eyes again. “So I told Dad I was done,” he went on quickly. “He was disappointed, but he understood. I finished out my contract and came home to figure out what in the world comes next.” 

Marinette was silent for a moment. Luka swallowed nervously, and was trying to think of a graceful way to end the conversation when she finally said, “You’re really brave, Luka.”

He blinked, the words he’d been about to force out dying on his tongue. “What?” he said instead.

“I think it takes a lot of courage to admit that,” Marinette said quietly. “Even to yourself, let alone actually making the break and leaving it all behind. I’m glad you did it. I loved your music, but…” She reached out hesitantly, and slid her hand over Luka’s. He released his clasped hands to turn his fingers up to lace with hers. “I’m glad that you did what was right for you, instead of…”

“Flaming out and becoming an alcoholic drug addict?” he asked with a sardonic grin. Her hand was so small in his, he couldn’t help noticing. 

Marinette giggled. “Something like that. I’m sorry if I made you feel bad. You really didn’t have to rehash all of that for me.” 

Luka shrugged and repeated, “I wanted you to understand.” She had no idea how bad he wanted her to understand. He was grateful and relieved that she did...and at the same time, it was a little frightening. Things might have been simpler if she had scoffed and blown him off. Then he wouldn’t be sitting here, holding her hand and looking into her soft, beautiful eyes, feeling like all of the oxygen had been sucked out of the room. 

Marinette bit her lip, and his gaze dropped to it. “I should...if it’s okay with you, I think I should go home now.” 

Luka shook himself back to reality. “Of course. Are you sure you’re alright? Will you be okay to get home?”

Marinette nodded and tried a smile. It mostly looked steady, so Luka smiled back. He stood up, still holding her hand, and drew her up after him. “Thanks for taking the time to listen to me, Marinette.” Luka let her hand slide out of his. “It actually feels good to be able to explain it to someone.” 

“Thank you for sharing it with me,” Marinette told him, and they didn’t say anything more as Luka got her coat and held it for her. 

Once she was gone, he barely made it back to a chair before his knees gave way. He rubbed a hand over his face and then leaned into it, sighing. That had been…intense. All of it, not just Marinette, but...playing like that, when he hadn’t played for anyone but his family in so long, and trying to help her understand...he hadn’t realized how much it would take out of him.

He was still sitting there when Rose burst in. “Marinette!” she cried, looking at Luka with wide eyes. “Where is she?” 

“She went home,” Luka mumbled, leaning back in the chair.

“What? No, I need her!” Rose exclaimed, throwing her hands up. “Why did she leave? What happened?”

“Nothing happened—” Luka began, but a voice from the doorway interrupted him.

“He made her cry,” Juleka smirked. 

Rose whirled to look at her, while Luka glared at her over Rose’s head, but Juleka just grinned wider when Rose turned back and began to hit Luka in the arm over and over with her tiny yet surprisingly hard fist. “You idiot! You did not! You made her cry? What’s the matter with you?” 

Luka put up his hands in defense. “Rose,” he whined. “Look, I told you this wasn’t a date, and it’s not going to happen—”

“Who cares about your pathetic excuse for a love life?” Rose roared, hitting him faster. “You can’t run her off, I need her! The pageant’s going to be a disaster!”

“Wait, what?” Juleka frowned, coming into the room. 

“That’s what Sabrina was calling about!” Rose exclaimed. “The costumes that were in storage—they’re a disaster! Moths or rats or water or all three, I don’t even know. And here I made friends with someone who designs and sews and then like a bonehead I had to set her up with your stupid socially inept—”  

“He played for her,” Juleka broke in, and Rose stopped hitting him long enough to look at her. It took a moment for the words to sink in, and then Rose’s eyes widened. She turned back to Luka and he flinched. “You did not!”

“I did,” Luka admitted, running his fingers through his hair. “I really did,” he realized, feeling suddenly weak again. He covered his mouth with his hand and tried to pretend like he wasn’t suppressing the urge to scream. 

“Tell me everything right now!” Rose demanded, grabbing a fistful of his sweater and dragging him out of his chair and over to the couch. She sat down next to him with a determined expression. Luka looked up at Juleka pleadingly, but she just grinned. 

That’s for eating all the cookies, she mouthed, and left before Luka could make a rude gesture. 

Fiction Master Post | Month of Miracles

[magpiemorality]

Moceit pt 2, A Kiss With A Twist

This is the sequel to THIS oneshot that was written for @croftersgamer, make sure to read that first! Since the end of that first part Patton has indulged in a spot of deception on a semi-regular basis, as I wrote in the replies on the first part. It begins small but spirals quickly... 

First | AO3

***

“Morality, I ca-” Deceit is frazzled and dishevelled when he pops up in Patton’s room, but he barely gets a word out before the side in question pulls him in by his cape and kisses him enthusiastically. When they surface for air, Deceit is panting softly and Patton is grinning like the cat who got the cream, eyes glinting with an a fervent intensity. He may or may not be obsessed, or at the very least addicted. Deceit is only slightly concerned. 

“You’re late, I told Logan that lie almost two minutes ago,” Patton pouts, stroking the wrinkles out where he’d gripped the black fabric. Deceit pushes away from him to pace, eyes wild. 

“Look, we can’t keep doing this! I’m- I have other things to do than show up wherever you want for a snog, Morality! I can’t just be at your beck and call night and day- the other day I had to cut short a very important discussion with Thomas about changing his performers CV and now-” He groans, taking his hat and gloves off to run his hands through his wavy hair and collapse into Patton’s comfortable armchair out of sheer exhaustion. “You’re insatiable. I regret ever giving you this power, I swear to Thomas.” 

Patton slips off the bed with a gentle smile, settling over Deceit’s lap and cupping his face. “Now who’s the liar?” He murmurs, bending to steal yet another kiss, and their total has to be somewhere in the hundreds by now, maybe even past the thousand mark. 

Annoyingly he’s right. Deceit only came up with the kissing idea to push Patton’s buttons in the first place and it had spectacularly backfired and also worked out wonderfully for them both. Unfortunately, there were a few other issues that had arisen as a consequence. 

“Wait, I was definitely trying to make a point, stop distracting me,” Deceit grumbles, his hands falling to Patton’s waist to support his weight. “Something about- oh right about the lying.” 

“What about it?” Patton asks, playing with the clasps of Deceit’s cape. 

It’s very distracting, like everything about Patton. But Deceit soldiers on gamely. “Something’s changed. You’re- you’re summoning me even when you haven’t lied. I can’t leave you when we’re done. I don’t think it’s just the silly little lies you’re telling by keeping us- this- a secret that’s drawing me in anymore.” 

Patton stills and blinks at him. They blink at each other. And then Patton snorts and has to cover his hand to stifle his laughter. Deceit is very confused. 

Luckily Patton takes pity on him and kisses the tip of his grumpily wrinkled nose. “Oh dear, you’re making it sound like a love story. But this is... I’m having a lot of fun and I can stop if you like, but that’s all!” 

Ah, and there goes that same feeling again. Pinging around his chest and head. Deceit sits up sharply, catching Patton just before he can topple over backwards, and their chests are suddenly pressed close together and he can see every faint freckle on Patton’s cheeks. “I felt it. When you said that. It wasn’t a lie, well it was but it was more than that- you’re lying to yourself.” 

The panic sets in in Patton’s eyes, and he stumbles up onto his feet and back away from the other side, creating some distance. “Now that’s definitely not true.” 

“But it is! You’re repressing, Morality, you’re telling yourself-” Deceit stares at him as things click together in his mind, forming a very odd but appealing picture. “You like me. You actually like me!” 

“No! You’re a dark side, you’re bad and not good for Thomas and-”

“And you don’t really believe that anymore. And you like me and it’s confusing you and, oh Patton, did you even realise you were making me hide that from you every time you brought me here? That’s...” 

Patton is close to tears. “It’s not true it’s not!” He pleads, but when Deceit opens his arms he stumbles in without a single moment of hesitation, trembling against his chest. “Everything is so different now,” Patton whimpers, soaking up the warm scent of Truth woven into Deceit’s clothes and skin. “I don’t know what’s right and wrong anymore. It used to be so clear.”

“That’s... a problem for a different time, I think. But you should know that it’s not been so easy for any of us, either.” He holds Patton gently, feeling him curl to the shape of his own body. “But this that we’re doing, if you’re doing it to hide the truth from yourself? That’s not right no matter how you see things. I guess I’m to blame too, huh, for enabling you this whole time?” 

Patton makes a soft, wounded noise, but doesn’t disagree and it makes Deceit’s heart sink. “Gosh. Guess I’m losing my touch if I was so easily distracted by kisses. By your kisses...” He has to let go and leaves Patton in the centre of the bedroom while he retreats back to the chair, picking up his hat to turn round and round in his hands. “Um, so, I think it’s best we have a bit of a break.”

The resulting wave of emotion is followed so swiftly by the overpowering stink of repression that Deceit sways in the chair. Patton’s expression is murderous and then carefully neutral in the space of a heartbeat, but by the wary pinch around his eyes it’s clear he knows he’s been caught. And dammit but Deceit is getting pissed off now. Patton was supposed to be the honest one out of the two of them, and he was supposed to keep things simple, but of course where Patton and emotions are concerned things are anything but simple for long. 

He stands to leave. It’s time. 

“It’s been wonderful, truly wonderful, but I’ll go now. I’m sorry it has to end like this but I’m just not going to do your dirty work anymore!” The hat and gloves go back on and that same feeling of needing to stay don’t leave him stay stay stay comes back full force as he gets to the door. When he glances back Patton is already across the room and pushing him back against the wood to kiss him, full of emotions that are finally, gloriously shared, instead of discarded. Deceit can literally taste the difference. 

They stand there and kiss for what feels like an age, fiercely blazing fire cooling to a soft, gentle glow of embers. 

“Wow,” Deceit whispers, making Patton giggle quietly, a beautiful musical sound that he wants to capture and keep in a jar to cherish forever. “So that was... honest kissing. Who knew it was so much better?” They share a smile, before Patton’s turns apologetic. 

“I’m sorry I couldn’t admit it to myself. I was just so scared by all the changes and at least I could control this and kinda... experiment with not being so good, for a change. And it was kinda sucky, really.

“I do like you. You’re the most surprising thing in my life and I mean that in such a good way. You work hard, and you’re caring and loyal and you’re pretty darn good too, you know.

“That’s not a bribe to get you to forgive me, I swear! But, I like you. I would really like to kiss you without an excuse, sometime. Maybe even when other people can see, in fact. What do you say?” With an achingly hopeful smile, Patton gazes at Deceit. 

Deceit just smiles back. “Honestly, that sounds great.” 

Patton appreciates the pun. He proceeds to show Deceit exactly how much. 

(It only gets better from there)

They do have one other little scare when Deceit finally goes to leave, only to find that the same powerful impulse to stay is still going strong, but calamity is avoided when Patton suggests that maybe, just maybe, some of it is actually just Deceit’s own heart joining the party? 

He feels a little bit silly for not realising sooner, but Patton seems so pleased by the proof of Deceit’s equally strong feelings for him that well; maybe he doesn’t actually have to leave for a while longer. The urge in his chest certainly seems to agree...

--

Next

[kpopfanfictrash]

The Monogamy Monologues (Preview)

Status: Currently writing

Posting Date: February 7th (tentative)

Creative Contributor: @underthejoon​ for this lovely banner!

Genre: Rom-Com / Humor / Smut

Pairing: Jungkook / Reader

Synopsis: The year? Some point after college. The occasion? Namjoon is getting married and the Rich Man’s Crochet Club has convened once again. Somewhere between the drinks and the laughter, everyone has the same realization: Jungkook has never been in a serious relationship. In the name of all that is holy (Overwatch and booze), the club’s mission is revived. Now though, their goal is much more perilous. Now, they aim to find Jeon Jungkook a girlfriend. (Part of The Rich Man’s Crochet Club series)

Estimated WC: 40K

Rating: 18+

Preview: 2,088

“JIMIN!”

“JEON!” Waving wildly, Jimin flags Jungkook down as he steps off the escalator.

There are still several people between them, but none of them prove to be a match for Jungkook. Dodging them easily – spinning, at one point around a family of five – Jungkook dramatically runs towards the exit.

“JIMIN-SSI!” he yells. “I’M COMING!”

Jimin rolls his eyes at the display. “Get your ass over here, Jeon! Sorry,” he apologizes to the same family of five.

Although the mother shoots them both a dirty look, she hurries her kids towards the Taxi stand and does not look back. Jimin opens his arms just as Jungkook crashes into his chest.

Lowering his cheek to Jimin’s hair, Jungkook closes his eyes to whisper, “I think you got shorter.”

“Fuck off,” Jimin grunts, shoving him away before laughing.

Jungkook grins. “Anyways,” he says, slinging an arm about Jimin’s neck. “Are you ready for the best weekend of our lives?”

With a good-natured shake of his head, Jimin leads Jungkook out of the terminal. Always the excellent host, Jimin actually parked his car at the airport and walked inside to greet him. Jungkook cannot remember the last time his family did that for him, let alone a friend.

“Ready to assist Namjoon, you mean?” Jimin gives Jungkook a look. “You know – on his wedding day?”

“Yeah, yeah. That.” The moment they step outside, Jungkook takes a deep breath. “Ahh,” he groans, slowly exhaling. “You smell that, Jimin?”

“Car exhaust?”

“No. Lack of humidity.”

Jimin snorts, striding forward when the crosswalk turns green. “Still not sold on Miami?”

Jungkook opens one eye. “Miami’s fine,” he says automatically, following Jimin as they enter the garage.

Over his shoulder, the garment bag keeps banging his ass. As much as Jungkook hoped this would keep his suit from wrinkling, it is looking more and more like he will need an iron.

Not believing a word Jungkook says, Jimin raises a brow. “If you say so.”

As they reach the next aisle, Jungkook takes in deep gulps of air. Jimin shakes his head at his antics, but Jungkook could not care less. This city always smells like home to him. When they reach Jimin’s car, though – a sensible, gray Subaru – Jungkook’s feet falter.

“What happened to Liz?” he blurts, taken aback by the trade.

Liz was their college nickname for Jimin’s car, stemming from the infamous Liz Lemon of 30 Rock. So dubbed because Jimin’s old car was a complete piece of crap – a lemon, from the time he drove it off the lot.

Jimin pauses, flipping the keys in one hand. “Traded it in,” he says stiffly, pulling open the door. “Too many memories.”

Realizing what Jimin means, Jungkook winces. He had nearly forgotten about the break-up. Granted, it has been almost four months since Jimin and Olivia called it quits, but the two had been dating since college. Slightly longer than Namjoon and his fiancée.

Whereas Namjoon and his fiancée grew closer after University though, Jimin and Olivia were the opposite. Jimin graduated summa cum laude with an acceptance to one of the top medical schools in the country. His painful notetaking really paid off, as Namjoon was wont to say. When he moved to Chicago and began med school in earnest, Olivia left for New York to join a consulting company.

With their busy schedules and early twenties lives, the two drifted apart. Jimin was the one who held on, not wanting to end things with the first girl he loved. It was only when he surprised Olivia in New York over Valentine’s Day he realized it was over. Not that Olivia was cheating on him, or anything – maybe it would have been easier if she were. At least then, there would be somebody to blame.

No, Jimin merely realized they did not fit anymore. Olivia had her friends and interests; he had his and the two no longer meshed. Without realizing it, they had both reached a fork in the woods and turned down different paths.

Ever since their break-up, the chat has been wary of even mentioning her name.

Jungkook glances hesitantly at his profile. “You okay, man?” he asks as they enter the car. Tossing his duffle bag over the backseat, he prays it does not land on his suit.

“Okay?” Jimin places the car in reverse. “Could be better, I guess. Could be worse.”

Jungkook nods as they pull from the spot. Slouched in his seat, he stares out the window because in times like this, he is useless. When it comes to matters of the heart, Jungkook considers himself to be woefully inept.

“Sorry man,” he says quietly. A car honks in response as they get on the highway. “Wish I could say we always hated her, but you know that’s not true.”

Jimin snorts from the driver’s seat. “Yeah, I know. I can’t really bring myself to say that, either.”

“Well, maybe you two will –”

“No. We won’t.”

Seeing Jimin’s face, Jungkook shrugs and resumes looking out the window.

After a minute, Jimin exhales. “So, how’s Miami really going?”

Jungkook’s head whips sideways to face him.

The corner of Jimin’s mouth lifts. “Thought you hid it well, huh?”

“Better than five minutes into the car ride, yeah.”

“Well, you don’t.”

Jungkook snorts. “Miami is… fine. I don’t know. It’s not really Miami I have a problem with.”

“Your job, then?”

“Yeah, and… I don’t know. Everything.”

“Be a little more vague.”

Jungkook’s lips twitch. “I just…” He pauses, collecting his thoughts. “It was so much simpler in college, you know? Things were difficult, but it all had an end date. Right? Get through four years, and you’re done. I’m starting to realize… this doesn’t have an end date.”

Jimin’s lips purse at the road. “The end date is whenever you want it to be, JK.”

“I guess,” Jungkook grumbles, slouching lower in the seat. Any further, and he might slip off the edge. “But then I’d have to admit that I failed. That I spent eight fucking years of my life either in this job, or working towards it. What was the point if I quit?”

“What’s the point of spending another eight years doing something you hate?”

Jungkook stubbornly chews the inside of his cheek, knowing Jimin is right. The problem is, though – even if he quits, Jungkook has no idea what to do. Sure, he likes photography, but the field is competitive as hell. Jungkook wants to do something he loves, but he also wants to succeed. Taking such a massive leap terrifies him.

“Let’s talk about something else,” he mumbles, turning to Jimin.

Although Jimin arches a brow, he reluctantly lets the subject go. “Sure. Let’s talk instead about how Seokjin is bringing a date to the wedding.”

“Seokjin?” Jungkook’s brows shoot so far up, they near-disappear. “Who?”

“Some girl from LA.”

“No shit,” Jungkook exhales, slowly shaking his head. “Wow. We’re all settling down, huh? Soon, it’ll just be you and me, Jimin,” he grins, leaning over to punch Jimin in the arm.

The wheel jerks at the action, swerving them towards the next lane. “Hey!” Jimin blurts, straightening them out with a scowl. “At least I dated someone during the past five years, Jeon. Who’ve you been seeing?”

“No comment.”

“Huh. I don’t remember her. Was she the blonde?”

“Shut up,” Jungkook laughs, reaching out for the stereo. As the latest pop song fills the car, he pointedly stares out the window.

Jimin smiles, shaking his head. Namjoon’s wedding is being held in the city. His fiancée’s father is some big shot at a downtown law firm. From what Jungkook has gathered, the ceremony spiraled from a small, romantic affair into one of the biggest events of the season.

Jungkook’s lip quirks. That is how you know Namjoon’s fiancée’s family is rich. They use phrases like event of the season and christen their yachts with only the most expensive champagne. Having been to several yacht-christenings in Miami, Jungkook has never understood the event. What is the point of buying something expensive, only to ruin it?

Actually, maybe that is the point.

Pushing Miami from mind, Jungkook stares at the highway as they drive towards the city. The wedding has taken on a mind of its own, according to Namjoon. So detailed, so elaborate, they were forced to hire a wedding planner. Jungkook can only imagine Namjoon, micro-manager to the extreme, being forced to trust someone else with his life.

It has been a while since Jungkook last visited Chicago. Namjoon’s family is from here, and whenever they visited in college, they always had a great time. His mom sent them off each morning with fresh fruit and eggs – it was sweet; reminded Jungkook of home.

The familiar skyline arching above brings a smile to his lips. All in all, Jimin and Hoseok do not realize how lucky they are. If Jungkook lived here, he would – cutting the thought off, Jungkook sits up in his seat. Jungkook does not live here, so there is no point pretending.

Glancing down at his phone, Jungkook feels a modicum of guilt. After placing himself in airplane mode, he has not turned the device back on since he landed. Jungkook knows there will be a fresh wave of texts from his boss and for now, wishes to delay the inevitable.

“Where’s the wedding again?” Jungkook asks, turning his head.

Jimin shrugs as he rolls down his window. The night wind ruffles his hair, sending strands flying all over the place. “Some hotel by the river. Hear it has a great view.”

“And what’s the plan for the weekend?”

“Jungkook!” Jimin scolds, turning down the radio. “Did you even read the agenda Seokjin sent?”

Jungkook glances at him guiltily. “Um, I looked at it.”

Seokjin’s is Namjoon’s best man for the wedding. It makes sense – the two of them have been roommates since sophomore year of college, not to mention they both live in LA. Jungkook knows Jimin has also helped Namjoon with wedding details, since he lives in Chicago.

The look Jimin gives says he knows Jungkook is full of bullshit. “There’s a copy of the itinerary in my glove compartment,” he says with a nod. “I printed out a few just in case.”

“Why the fuck,” Jungkook grumbles as he opens the clasp. “Alright, here we go. Wednesday.”

“That’s today,” Jimin prompts.

“I know what day it is.” Jungkook clears his throat. “Alright, Wednesday. Bridesmaids and groomsmen arrive.”

“That’s us,” Jimin adds, shooting Jungkook a look.

“Yep, yep. Thursday – booze cruise. Woo! Seriously?”

Jimin rolls his eyes. “You really didn’t read this, did you?”

Ignoring him, Jungkook continues. “Friday – rehearsal ceremony and dinner. Be at the church by 4:00 PM.”

“Dressed.”

“Doesn’t seem like a necessary clarification,” Jungkook says, flipping over the paper. “Saturday, ceremony starts at 2:00 PM. Photos and reception following. Sunday, brunch.”

Jimin nods. “Don’t be late.”

“Jimin.” Jungkook lowers the sheet. “It’s Wednesday. How can you seriously tell me not to be late to brunch on Sunday?”

“Because I know you.”

“Touché.” Jungkook grins, crumpling the paper despite Jimin’s groans.

There are not many people heading into the city on a Wednesday night – turning on his blinker, Jimin switches lanes to pull off on an exit. As they slow, the buildings around them seem to stretch towards the night sky. Craning his head out the window, Jungkook exhales. When he pulls back, he finds Jimin watching.

“What?” Jungkook asks, somewhat defensive.

Jimin’s upper lip curls. “Nothing. You know, Hoseok and I’s roommate leaves at the end of the month. If you ever wanted to come to Chicago…”

Jungkook glances away. “C’mon, man. I can’t quit my job.”

“Can’t… won’t…” Jimin trails off at Jungkook’s expression in the mirror. “Anyways, the offer stands. Think about it, okay?”

Slowly, Jungkook nods. “Alright, I’ll think about.”

Jimin smiles, appeased and returns to the road. His hands stay firmly at the ten and two ‘o’clock position, which is so Jimin, it makes Jungkook smile. As they wind through the streets, Jungkook cannot help but think about what it would be like to live here.

He would probably be miserable if he simply transferred to Chicago. Maybe a little less so, since Hoseok and Jimin would be here – but nothing would really change in the long run. If he quit his job, though. Jungkook sighs. For now, that type of change remains firmly in the abstract.

“There!” Jimin squints at the building ahead. “That’s the hotel.”

[ TO BE CONTINUED ] 

© kpopfanfictrash, 2020. Do not copy or repost without permission.

[princessofgayskull]

somehow I’ll still love you more (kitra fic sneak peak)

so this is a scene from my upcoming fic somehow I’ll still love you more, which at is core is going to be a kitra/baby fic. However, there’s a lot I want to say about this (you know me, can’t keep that word count down) so this fic will be nothing if not a full course meal.

The fic is told in a nonlinear fashion. This particular scene I wanted to share with you guys because I believe it touches on a lot of what the fic is going to be about. It’s set between the episodes White Out and Light Spinner in Season 2. Enjoy! (this has not been beta’d yet)

“Scorpia,”

“Hmm- huh?”

“Stop doing that.”

“Stop doing what?”

Pulling up the hand brake, Catra stopped the speeder in its tracks before whirling around, her left eye twitching like the movement was the only thing keeping her eyeball in place. “That- that thing you’re doing with your mouth. That noise you’re making under your breath.”

“Singing?” Scorpia raised an eyebrow. 

“You call that singing?” Catra scoffed at her inferior. Look, Catra got that growing up in the Horde meant there weren’t any private music lessons (even if that was in Shadow Weaver’s job description she’d just relegate that responsibility off to some tone deaf Force Captain so she’d have more time to make Catra’s life a living hell and dote on Adora on the side) that all those half-witted princesses definitely got growing up, but it was like Scorpia was trying for the same sound her pincers made when she dragged them down slabs of concrete. 

Catra’s hand squeezed the brake handle until the pressure hurt the bones in her hand, her left eye still twitching. It was like Scorpia was trying to tank Catra’s recent promotion as Hordak’s second in command by being as annoying as she could on purpose. But who wasn’t trying to derail all of Catra’s hard earned progress these days?

“Oh um, I could stop. If you want.” Scorpia muttered, her face falling into an expression that gave Catra the urge to both scream, puke, cry, and beg for forgiveness at the same time. And lately, every action, every word, every little breath that any took in her direct vicinity set off a domino effect of violent emotions in Catra, every single one too enormous and too consuming for her body. 

Good thing Catra didn’t have time for any of that. 

“Just-” Catra’s breath faltered when Scorpia refused to look at her (what? Now she was the bad guy just because she needed focus or Hordak would have her sent to Beast Island? Or worse?!), “- just don’t do it right now, okay?”

This earned Catra an enthusiastic nod, and she was too fucking tired to do anything but figure that was going to have to do, given the time crunch, and not mention, the insane amount of pressure she was running under. Clicking the brake, Catra pushed the handle down, fucking ecstatic to be driving the speeder the rest of the way in peace and quiet. Finally. Scorpia didn’t say another word, didn’t make another noise, until Catra was pulling up to the edge of Dawn’s Pass and activating the brake again.

That was good enough for Catra.

Just as Catra moved up to the edge to take a watchful stance of the town, Scorpia opened her big mouth. “Uh, boss? Not that I don’t love these recon missions with you lately, but I gotta ask: why are we staking out this village again? The Horde’s occupied this place for the last twelve years, and this isn’t exactly what I pictured when you said we were going to start hanging out over work? I mean, unless Dawn’s Pass has a mean bowling alley. Does- does it?”

“No,” Catra’s tail twitched in irritation. 

“Oh.” 

A cadet, waving his baton in a steady motions, stood at the broad brick wall that blocked off the town as his shift replacement approached from the west, whistling a tune through their helmet so ear shattering it put Scorpia’s new little song to shame. Keeping her eyes trained on the two of them, Catra braced herself for the metallic scent of magic to hit her nose. There was the quick swish of her claws unsheathing, and then, a pregnant silence. 

If they’re going to strike, Sparkles and Rainbow and- and Adora, or any of the other dopey Princesses- are going to strike now.

But Catra watched unfold was a typical exchange between Horde Cadets: a simple salute, a complaint about standing for ten hours, and a wish for good luck during the dull, boring night shift. No Princesses. No magic. No threats anywhere in sight.

Nothing. Just like Dawn’s Pass went from being a primary target to just another boring occupied village and Catra’s paranoia had wasted another night. Grimacing, her claws digging into her forehead, Catra actually found herself hoping Hordak would be too busy wasting pleasantry on the Princess who sat at (or on it, literally, because Entrapta just thought she was the shit and that she could waltz into any room) his throne to speak with her tonight. Her lengthy string of failures was getting harder and harder to choke her way through excusing.

“So um,” Scorpia started up again, sending Catra’s ears laying flat up against her head. She exhaled a hot and irritated sigh, but the Horde’s hostage/princess stayed true to her inability to take a fucking hint, “when you said we were going to start hanging out after we came back with all that tech from the the Northern Reach, I just- I just didn’t picture us, you know patrolling.”

An angry pulse ran up Catra’s back at the mention of their tech victory- Entrapta’s tech victory- back in that shitty winter wasteland she almost froze her tail off in. “Scorpia,” her voice was thin, “I told you a thousand times, I don’t have time. Just take what you’re given and try not to complain.”

Wow, did she just sound like Shadow Weaver right then. Whatever, Catra turned her head away from Scorpia, in no mood to deal with the fallout of seeing her sort-of-friend’s expression, maybe the Old Crone was right about some things in the end.

“Can I ask why we’re here? Like here, here? What makes a place with no bowling alley so interesting?” The second Scorpia let up, Catra let her forehead hit the rim of the speeder and didn’t even blink at the ringing pain. Ugh, Scorpia just never gave up. How many times did Catra have to ask for some damn silence so she could think? 

Running her claws down her face- again- Catra grunted, “Dawn’s Pass can’t fall into the hands’ of the Rebellion. If we lose it, or if they’re conspiring with the Princesses, we’re going to lose the Horde’s longest occupied village and we’ll be giving up the tactical advantage it gives us against that flower Princess’s kingdom.” And I will have another failure under my badge. If I lose another town, I can basically kiss my Force Captain badge goodbye. And maybe my life.

“Ohhhh…” Scorpia trailed off. At this point Catra was going to end up with a bitch of headache just from rolling her eyes at the other Force Captain. “Yeah, that makes sense. This’ll be fun! Patrolling the occupied territories with my bestie!”

Catra made a noise of disgust, but it wasn’t enough to stop Scorpia from pushing herself onto the front seat and almost pushing Catra out of it. Leaning the exoskeleton covered parts of her elbows onto the rim, Scorpia let out a contented sigh, her ditzy gaze trained on the town as Catra struggled- yipping and yelping to no end and scratching up the dinged up leather of the seat- to get her tail out from under the other woman’s butt. 

Do the words “personal space” just mean absolutely jackshit to her? Catra, gripping her freed tail, growled under her breath and turned away from Scorpia. The seat was practically hers now! Looks like kneeling on the floor would have to do! It’s like I’m wearing a sign on my forehead that reads “what’s mine is yours, including the air I breathe!” Ugh, of course Hordak doesn’t listen to me, nobody does! Not even Scorpia! Everyone is too busy with their own heads up their asses to see what I’m trying to accomplish, or to give me enough space to let me do it! And she wonders why I don’t wanna “hang out after work,” or whatever.

Maybe bringing Scorpia as her backup belonged up there with some of Catra’s worst ideas; not like she didn’t have a pretty impressive tab of those wracked up already. Whatever, the universe wasn’t exactly open to responding to any of Catra’s actions with anything other than another round of punishment, so it wasn’t like acting on her impulsive or emotional notions were really going to be her undoing. Not with Hordak out for her neck, her badge no longer wielding the protective force that came with having real authority. 

Catra was an idiot to think that power would’ve actually lasted her longer than a week, that now that she’d taken out Shadow Weaver and left her to her rotting self in a cell that there wouldn’t be another player on the board that could take her shield of Second in Command away from her. Well, that’s what she got for letting Entrapta into their vents. Helping them win the war or not, Horde or not, their resident techwhiz was still a Princess.

And princesses weren’t good for anything other than being annoyances that stood in Catra’s way.

“Are you seriously humming again, Scorpia?!” Catra yelped out, the volume of her voice loud enough to scare several birds from off the town’s wall. Her split eyes had been trained on the town as she crouched at the bottom of the speeder, the only entertainment the angry spiral echoing in her brain, tailing the action of a family and their wagon of sparse supplies as they approached the gate when the grating sound smacked her upside the head. The resulting intensity of her fury was almost enough to give Catra the strength to put her fist through the wall of the speeder.

Scorpia retreated into herself. “Sorry.”

Holding back a response, Catra just scoffed again and turned back to the previous subject of her attention. Watching one of the men of the family reach the gate and request entrance into his town was better than directing a full on meltdown at her inferior, kicking her out of the speeder, and forcing her to walk her way back to the Fright Zone. Catra wasn’t so far drowning her rage to something that idiotic, yet.

It was big yet. Catra knew that as she tried to shift her position, rolling her head on her shoulders and squeezing her fists, breathing only through her nostrils despite understanding that there was no sitting with an anger this encompassing. The feeling pushed and pushed and pushed at her physical walls until it was practically promising that Catra’s building fury would end one mesmerizing explosion, one that would take her, Scorpia, the family, the Horde Cadet, the entire town, all of it, out with a bang. 

Now if only Scorpia had the brains to know that when she started her singing up again.

Catra peeled her blue eye open. The sun was beginning to set, and it had bathed the surrounding forest in shades of soft pink and orange, a scene so painfully ordinary it meant they couldn’t be anywhere else other than reality. Underneath the shadow cast by the stone wall, Catra took in a breath as she watched the first man continue to negotiate his family’s entrance into their own town.

Okay, so she’d hadn’t blown them all to fiery simtheriens- not the speeder, not the wall, not the little girl watched over by another man stumbling barefoot in the grass, letting out happy babbles as she pulled out clumps of grass and started sticking them in her cloth diaper until her father got down on his knees just to get her to stop. Guess Catra could count that as victory that her emotions hadn’t ended in an explosion that ended a child, a baby. Catra figured that given the fact that each step the little girl took on those chubby little legs of hers was a leap of faith that she probably wasn’t even a year and a half old.

The other man, the one that had chosen to forgo the customary negotiation in favor of watching the little girl experiment with walking near their wagon, moved from his kneeling position to pick her up. Something about the way the villager held her with a grip firm enough to keep his child from falling, yet not with so much strength that he hurt left a series of psychosomatic bruises up and down Catra’s ribs. She watched as the man ran a hand bigger than his daughter’s entire head through her soft and downy mauve hair, careful to avoid the tiny stumps in her head that would eventually become long enough and pronounced enough to match the horns of her father’s head. Catra let out a breath she was holding just to suck in another.

“Dada!” Even from the faraway vantage of the speeder Catra’s ears still picked up on the sound of the little girl recognizing her father. Because the universe was both impartial and cruel. Right as Catra realized she had stuck one set of claws in her mouth and she was chewing on them- who was she?! Adora?! Out her biting her freaking nails ‘cause something had the nerve to make her uncomfortable?- the baby stuck her tiny, chubby little hand into her father’s bright orange beard and yanked without mercy.

Now that guy’s screams scared the rest of the birds away.

As the family’s head negotiator rushed away from the Horde Cadet to tend to his husband’s facial hair, their daughter laughing up a riot at their combined reactions, Scorpia leaned over to where Catra sat on the floor, her tail twitching back and forth. “Uh boss?” she started but Catra didn’t turn away, her hand clutched into the fabric that rested above her sternum and not on her Force Captain badge for once. “Should we do something about these guys?”

“Why? They’re not Princesses.” They’re just a normal family trying to get into the place they live, so they can take their daughter home and have a dinner together that’s not mush, and then tuck their daughter in, tell her bedtime stories, be there in the night in case she has nightmares and needs them.

The fathers joined in on their daughter’s laughter.

“Well, that is true.”

A new feeling crept up Catra’s spine, but this time around the discomfort didn’t bring to her the edge of explosion. Implosion, actually. It was the same heaviness that settled in her lungs and crawled up to her throat, a slow and destructive effective infection of Catra’s self, when Hordak shut down her ideas to let Entrapta speak. When the Princesses left a trail of glitter behind running, tripping over themselves to follow She Ra’s lead. When Shadow Weaver cupped Adora’s face and showed her with praise for the simplest fucking task. 

Yeah, Catra knew it made her the world’s biggest idiot to keep her eyes on the seemingly indifferent family and the happiness that radiated off them. She was aware of the damage she brought on herself by not turning away, the risk she ran by letting her emotions run her. So why couldn’t she look somewhere else, anywhere else?

“I can’t wait to be a mom.” Scorpia said out of nowhere. Ears flying straight up, Catra blinked before turning to gawk at her. 

“Wait, really?” A mom mom, as in a  person who takes care of and looks after her children? 

“Yeah, I mean, it’s something I’ve always wanted.” Scorpia shrugged, somehow rubbing her neck with those big pincers of hers. “Why, do you think that’s a bad idea?”

“Scorpia, we’re in the middle of a war,” and that was putting it bluntly, “Besides, Hordak doesn’t even allow fraternization between his soldiers, much less-” her sputtering stops, Catra’s brain still tripping over the word fraternization, “having a family!”

“Well, we’re not going to be at war for the rest of our lives, Catra. Once we get the rebellion to surrender, I kinda wanted to set down roots, do something other than be a Force Captain, not that I don’t love doing that. I’m sure Hordak will loosen up about the whole fraternization thing as soon as we win! I mean, you’ve seen how he was with Entrapta!”

At her words, Catra came close to all out hurling over the speeder’s edge. It was crappy enough of Scorpia to bring up how Entrapta and Hordak were getting closer every day and shoving Catra out of the position she worked her ass off for, but then she had to go and frame it like that? 

Look, Catra got that Entrapta wasn’t the most socially aware princess, but yikes. That didn’t mean she didn’t have some sort of standard.

“What about you, Catra?” Scorpia continued, “What do you- um, what do you see yourself doing after the war?”

Catra met Scorpia’s eyes, only to regret it. “I- I-” she stuttered, looking away and forcing her eyes closed. Pfft, after the war? After the war? How the hell was Catra supposed to picture an after when her entire life, her entire purpose, every goal she’d ever had, was only because there was a war to begin with? 

The Horde conquers the rest of the planet, sends the Princesses running, puts She Ra in the ground, and what, Catra was just supposed to have a plan for after that? What… what was Catra supposed to do when they did win, when the Horde pulled off everything she worked for?

Even though she was expecting to find an emptiness, a blank space, a new start for the after the war when she tried imagining it, all Catra could picture was blonde hair tied up in a tight ponytail, melodic laughter accented by brief snorts ringing in her, the bluest eyes cutting through the longing. The same longing that plagued Catra when she forced her eyes open and saw the two fathers talking to their daughter in gentle yet bright voices, explaining to her that the soldiers had processed their papers and they could go home now.

“I don’t know.” was Catra’s quiet response. 

There wasn’t any promise Hordak would keep her alive that long anyway, or if there would be anything left to live for by the time Catra got Adora down her knees and ended it all- by giving into that implosion that lived deep down in her core, letting it rip right through her and seeing to it that her love for Adora severed the universe in two, creating black hole that would suck them all in eventually- right then and there. Like it always promised to.

A part of Catra tried to push beyond that implosion, tried to picture the future Scorpia envisioned in her mind of setting down roots and birthing legacies. Was there a part of her, beyond the pain and the brokenness, that wanted what Scorpia wanted, too?

Watching that family tonight had been the only part of her mission that hadn’t felt the same as downing a vat of acid down her throat. And as hell bent as Catra was on obliterating any princess that dared to mess with this town’s occupation, there was no animosity in her heart towards that little girl.

She was kinda cute, in the mischievous, funny kind of way. And almost fun- for a baby, that is.

But when Catra closed her eyes once more to picture that little girl and her happy, innocent smile, all that was waiting for her was the image of a shriveled shadow, locked and rotting away back in the Fright Zone.  

[marveloussupernerd]

OKAY. The only reason I’m sending this into you is because you seem to also be a fan of Taylor’s music. I hope you don’t mind! :)

This isn’t really a request, more like 2 random HCs I had while listening to Evermore. I’m not asking you to writing anything if you don’t want to. I just thought they were interesting!

Senario 1: what if in the RFA-universe MC was their version of Taylor Swift.

(Meaning her music was known world-wide, she had a massive fan base, she was known for writing stories about her personal life experiences and any album she released would go #1 immediately). Imagine one day she is sitting at the piano writing a song about a young women who turned down her engagement to the love of her life because she was suffering with mental issues (Champagne Problems). IMAGINE how sad the RFA+V+Searan would be when they think she is writing this from personal experience.THEY WOULD BE SO SAD. LMAO.

Senario 2: this one is a little more angsty

Imagine Saeyoung has been working on a task Jumin gave him for the past month. Imagine MC writing Tolerate It while sitting alone on the roof or in their shared bedroom. Imagine her telling herself that it’s all in her head but her insecurities get the better of her. Imagine Searan not knowing how to help but trying his best. Now I’m just sad..... T-T

bOnuS: imagine their reaction to No Body, No Crime. They would be like: “Mc? Did you kill someone?????” Lmao.

Wow genius stuff right here ! Also YES I love Taylor Swift... I have since fearless but honestly I’ve only listened to the entirety of her newest 3 albums oops

This will be multiple parts, also headcannon style? Imma play around w that tell me if you hate it tho

I showed this to my sister (who hasn’t listened to Taylor since 1989) and she goes you NEED to write this

MC is the in-universe Taylor Swift

Part 1: Sad Lyrics

A lot of these are them thinking the songs are about them

Zen (Champagne Problems):

He tries not to bother you while you’re writing

If you’ll let him sing with you to work on songs you’re planning on collaborating w guys on (think exile) he’s so there for you

He loves singing and has always loved your songs

But, as an actor himself, he respects the process and the alone time you need when you’re working on something new !

However

When he hears you singing Champagne Problems

Turning down a proposal because you just weren’t there mentally

Why is he... crying all of a sudden

I’ll tell you why bc if you don’t cry listening to the bridge of Champagne Problems you’re stronger than me

Waits until the piano stops

Then comes in

He has tears literally running down his face

“Zen! Are you okay?”

He plops down onto the bench next to you, pulling you into the biggest hug, which you, of course return

“We don’t have to get married. I’ll never pressure you like that. Are you okay? Do you need to talk about it?” He’s rambling

“It’s just a song Zen”

You have to rub his back to help him feel good enough to get through a sentence without crying

“I thought... I thought that really happened to you.”

Oh Zen, they’re not all based on your personal experiences

“It was so good though! It’s going to have everyone crying. Please tell me it’s on your next album.”

You have tears bc he’s so sweet !!

of course it’s on the next album

Yoosung (Coney Island):

Is dead silent when you’re writing

You literally don’t even notice he’s there

He gets jealous when you FaceTime other artists to work on a collaboration

They are literally so much better than him

And you’ve dated all these famous people

WHY are you with him !?

ANYWAYS

when he hears you playing Coney Island

He’s SOBBING

“Did I do something wrong!?”

“What? No? Of course not Yoosung”

Then why were you singing that

Not everything you write is what you’re experiencing right now

You had to explain to him that that song... you wrote it visualizing the pain you would feel if you lost him

Oh.

For real ??

And then he spirals into telling you how you’d be better off with one of your co-writers or whatever

But... you didn’t write the song thinking about your team

You wrote it thinking about him

It’s hard for him to understand

But when the album comes out... he listens to that song a lot

And still sobs like a baby every time

Jaehee (Exile):

Loves and respects your work

Not all your songs are her sort of thing

You make your newest albums a little more chill so she’ll enjoy them

You’d never tell her that though

You’re literally in a call with the guy you’re collaborating with working on exile

Singing about a failed relationship... for the second time

And experiences with bad relationships in general

It makes her worry that she messed up

Is this about the fight you two had a few months ago!? Did she make the same mistake? Are you thinking of leaving her

Waits until the call is over

“The song sounds beautiful.” Is all she can say

But you know her

“It’s not about you Jaehee”

“I love you like crazy the song isn’t about you”

Needs lots of affirmation bc that SCARED Her

The song is so good but she can’t listen to it more than like once or twice

She’s embarrassed that she thought it was about her

Little does she know you did write some songs about her... but only the happy ones

Jumin (Tolerate It):

He’s been busy with work

Buys a radio station that only plays your music though so he can listen to you all the time

Falls asleep to your singing voice bc it’s so comforting

You’re the media’s favorite couple

They’ve been speculating the two of you have been dating for a few albums now

Paper rings kinda gave it away huh

You thought he was working

Worked through writing a song about love that isn’t well-reciprocated

Honestly... you’re crying while writing it

It’s about an ex !! But also some lines make you miss getting to spend time with Jumin

He just stands there in the doorway

He doesn’t interrupt. Waits until your done

Heart breaks to see you crying

He’s shed a tear or two

Kneels down next to the bench

“I’m so sorry” is all he can say

“No!” Another tear down your face. “It’s not about you!”

He’s gently wiping away your tears

“I haven’t been here enough for you.”

“I’m okay. It’s okay. It’s not about you.”

“But it’s a wake up call. I’m building a home office so I can spend more time with you.”

Not a bad idea.

707 (Marjorie):

IF YOU DONT CRY EVERY TIME YOU HEAR THIS SONG

Again you are braver than me

Anyways Saeyoung can’t get it through his head WHY you like him / started dating him

Your relationship is completely off the radar thanks to him

Which means you DON’T write songs about him much because you don’t want speculation

You wrote this one after you read a sad fan fiction

Sobbing

I literally can’t sing during the bridge of this song I CRY

He listens to you. As you sob through the song. About how the person’s beloved died but they can still hear her and feel her in themselves

He sniffles

Interrupts you partway through

“Baby? Are you okay?”

You sniff and nod

“Is your mom okay? Your aunt? Your friend? Did someone die? Are you alright?”

“Yeah I’m alright.”

But... you’re crying so much how are you okay

“I’m going to need to work on singing this without being emotional” you joke, wiping your tears

“Wait... it’s not my fault right? I didn’t die or anything.”

“Huh!? No. This is about a fanfic”

He laughs, pushes you lightly

“YOU HAD ME WORRIED!”

V (Illicit Affairs):

He sits with you during your songwriting process

Sometimes will even suggest lyrics to you if he’s feeling bold

He’s shocked with how quickly Illicit Affairs comes to you

Singing about breaking off an affair that has torn you apart and feels one-sided and

Uh... are you okay? You never mentioned something like this before

“My Love,” he stops you, “did this happen to you? Did somebody do this to you?”

“Oh. No I’m okay.”

You’re smiling

He was so worried

“And this isn’t about us right?”

Of course not. Everyone knows the two of you are together

“Of course not.”

He smiled. “I was worried about you.”

You giggle, kissing his cheek

“You showed me colors I can’t see with anyone else,” he recommends. “Or something like it.”

“V? Are you okay?” How the tables have turned.

“That’s how I feel about you. All love though. No angst.”

Saeran (This Is Me Trying):

This one is actually about him

You try to only work on your songs when he’s working or when he’s out

You try to spend as much time with him as possible to help with his coping process of everything that’s happened to him

But it’s easy to feel overwhelmed.

He wakes up in the middle of the night with a nightmare

Hears you singing in the other room. He knew you did this at night, it’s okay with him but... he really could use your help right now

Pads over to the door, standing outside until he can gather the courage to interrupt you

He feels pitiful

And then he hears you singing about how you’re struggling with your relationship and everything going on but you’re trying your best

He just sits outside the door. He can’t confront you right now. You’re feeling this way because of him. Maybe he deserves the nightmares

Luckily you’re planning on going to bed and see him when you try to leave the room, curled up on the floor.

“Did you have a bad dream?” You ask, joining him on the floor, pulling him close to you

All he can do is timidly nod

“Come in next time. Nothing is more important than you. I promise you that.”

He shakes his head. “I’m making things hard on you. With your job and your mental health and you trying to help someone so broken...”

His voice cracks. He wants to cry

“Saeran...”

There’s so much you could say.

This song is too sad

Later you’ll add a line about wanting him. Wanting to be with him despite all the trouble

But for now... you’ll be with him

Holding him.

Taking him to bed

Hugging him

Staying awake a little longer just in case he gets another bad dream

You were trying your best. The best thing you could do was be there by his side

He slept a little lighter. It was comforting to know that even though it was hard for the both of you, you were doing it, and you loved him

[prettyallfriends]

Pretty Rhythm: My☆Deco Rainbow Wedding Chapter 13+14

(I'm weirdly motivated to just churn out a tonne of chapters tonight. I may get 2 more out of the way... Anyway, in chapter 13 we get some Rinne lore and general sadness. In chapter 14 we basically get confirmation that Ayami is in love with Chae-kyung. I got whiplash between these two chapters)

Chapter 13: The Runway Needs a Prism Heart

Mia: Aaaand here we are!!

Penguin-sensei: You insufferable airhead, dragging people along without thinking!!

Mia: People?? What are you saying~? You’re a penguin!

Penguin-sensei: Oh yeah, I forgot for a second! Yes, I am indeed a member of birdkind. I am, and always have been a penguin~ Penpen!... Wait, what are you making me say!?!?

Mia: Woah, now, don’t get mad. Anyways, what’s Rinne doing around here? (It’s a snowy tree ice rink type area)

Penguin-sensei: Geez! Rinne is entering a fashion show here today.

Mia: A fashion show!? Wow, that’s the perfect job for her, huh? I wonder what coord and what persona she’ll be wearing. That’s it! Why don’t you enter the fashion show too, Player?

Penguin-sensei: It’s not that easy to enter!

Mia: Huh really... Then, I have a question for you, Player… Does Rinne really enjoy being all alone?

Choice: She’s probably lonely / I think she’s fine

Mia: You really think so? No matter how much power you have, you’re bound to get lonely if you’re by yourself all the time. And she changes her personality so much, she might forget her true self. Let’s find her and ask her ourselves.

…

Mia: Hm, we still haven’t found her, huh? --??

Rinne: Seven-hued metamorphosis… Change!!! Pop!!! Yaaaay!☆ Today I’m gonna be super poppy and energetic! And I’m gonna work super hard for my fashion show☆

Mia: She’s changed her personality again!? So now she’s pop, huh… Wait a minute, I can’t just space out! Let’s go, Player!! Kaboom!! Excuse us!!

Rinne: Gah! You surprised me~ Oh? What’s wrong, Player?? Ah, I’ve got it! You want to enter the fashion show, right?

Picock: You fiends! What art you doing here!?

Rinne: It looks like Player wants to enter the fashion show too. It's fine, right? Whoo, okay☆

Picock: Poppycock!! Rinne, thou art entering the fashion show alone! Thou art more than enough! You must adorn yourself in the sexy coord next!!

Rinne: Seven-hued metamorphosis… Change!!! Sexy!!! Ehehe♡ Wow, I’m so touched that you came just to visit little ol’ me, Player-chan♡

Mia: And now she’s acting all sexy!?

Picock: As Rinne possess the powers of every variety of coord, she alone is enough to showcase them all. Next… is this coord! Rinne,--

Mia: That’s enough!!

Rinne: Hm…?

Mia: We don’t want to talk to the personas that Rinne uses with her coords… We came here to talk to the real Rinne!!

Rinne: The… real me??

Mia: Rinne, your said that Player has a wonderful heart, right? They use their own original My☆Deco coords. And you both want the Rainbow Wedding. If that’s the case, then fight Player as your true self!

Rinne: Stop it!!! Ugh… the power of the coords is… (she goes back to her normal outfit)

Picock: Rinne’s seven-hued metamorphosis has… reverted!?

Rinne: I… can’t do it.

Mia: Why not!?

Picock: You insolent fool! Thou art going awfully far… In that case, Player, you are to serve as Rinne’s opponent in this fashion show! Fashion a coord that suits your stage, and show us the power of My☆Deco!

Mia: Hell yeah! Player, you need to use your My☆Deco power to open Rinne’s heart!

(prism show yanno the drill)

Mia: Woohoo!!! Your coord and stage were perfect for each other! You didn’t have to change your persona to be able to perform a great prism show!

Picock: How can this be…? How canst thou perform so well without a seven-hued metamorphosis!?

Mia: It’s because Player is in tune with their own heart. My☆Deco is all about decorating your own heart, after all! Changing your persona to match your coord all the time, meanwhile? That's really sad. Rinne needs to realise that.

Rinne: Your own heart… The real me… Aaaaaaah!!!

Mia: Rinne!? Are you okay??

Rinne: I don’t get it… I don’t get it…

Mia: What don’t you get?

Rinne: I… I can’t remember. I can’t remember anything!!

Mia: Huh…?

Picock: Rinne, do not push yourself too hard whilst trying to recover your memories. There is no need to hurry. Once thou can acquire the Rainbow Wedding…

Rinne: ...I’ll remember everything I’ve forgotten?

Picock: Of course.

Rinne: That’s a relief…

Picock: It would be better if you two left for today. Rinne needs to rest.

Mia: But… Won’t she just keep doing her seven-hued metamorphosis? I mean, at this rate she’ll lose more and more of her true self!

Rinne: It’s fine… Don’t bully them, Picock.

Mia: Rinne…?

Rinne: I’m empty. But if I play all these characters… I feel like someone will tell me it’s okay to exist… After all… I’m…

Picock: Rinne, thou must rest.

Rinna: Right…

Picock: Player. If thou wishes to worry Rinne, the least you can do is polish your My☆Deco power first. The child who was chosen by the Rainbow Charm to wield the power of My☆Deco… Perhaps, you might… No, now is not the time for this.

Mia: For what? Now I have to know!!

Picock: Well then, farewell for now.

Mia: They left… Hmm. It feels like we’ve made a step in the direction of Rinne’s secret… But at the same time, her secrets keep piling up… What did Rinne forget? Agh!!! I! Need! To! Know!!!

(sad music still playing. ATARASII HAIR STYLE DE ASOBERU YO!!!! ATARASII KYOKU DE ASOBERU YO!!!!! Ljdkhjkasfj meganee realy knows how to ruin a moment. Anyway im sure it will be a great relief to learn that ive finally gotten my dream hairstyle and hair colour unlocked)

Chapter 14: Writing a Memomemo About the Secret of the Coord

Mia: You seem pretty down, huh Player? I’m pretty concerned about Rinne too, she seemed really sad… When I look at someone making a sad face, I end up feeling sad too… Ah... There’s a cat outside the window. Cats sure are great~ Not like they have anything to worry about. That’s it! Let’s become cats and just purr all day! Now, you do it too, Player! Purr, meow~~~

Ayami: STAND UP, GIIIIIRLS!!!

Mia: AHH!! Stand-up? Or is it stand up?

Ayami: That’s right. Stand up, girls. Memomemomemomemo…

Mia: What the hell, Ayami! I was in the middle of lazing around like a cat!

Ayami: Ah! Cats… A black cat!!! Cats sure are great… And they never have anything to worry about…

Mia: I literally said the exact same thing!

Ayami: Ah… I also want to become a cat.

Mia: Why? Did something happen, Ayami?

Ayami: Um…

Mia: That reminds me, you wanted to participate in Stand Up Girls, right?

Ayami: That’s right. I’m going to form a team with Chae-kyung-san and enter next time.

Mia: That’s cool. You’ll be able to pull off a very celebrity show then!

Ayami: Yes… And I’m happy about that, I’m really looking forward to it… but we decided that I’m going to be in charge of designing our coords.

Mia: But you’re great at designing, right?

Ayami: I really love Chae-kyung, but when I think of the kinds of coords she usually wears… Well, they’re the cream of the crop! They’re out of my league! ...which is what I’ve been thinking as I write memo upon memo upon memo upon…

Mia: Wow… Your notebook's completely full! You won’t thinking of any new ideas like this.

Ayami: I know that. But whenever I think about it… Ugh. Player-san, do your have any good ideas?

Choice: Try to get some inspiration from something around here? / I’ve got nothing

Ayami: Something around here… That’s actually really good advice! Hm…? What are you looking at, Player-san? Oh, Mr. Cat. Look, he’s sleeping with his tummy out, aww. He’s so cute, all relaxed like that. ...Ah!

Mia: Did you think of something!?

Ayami: As expected of Player-san! You wanted me to get inspiration from the cat, didn’t you? I need to learn how to relax my heart just like this cat!

Mia: Is… is that right!?

Ayami: I’ll take a memomemo! I’ve thought of a design! Player-san, could you do a show in the coord I’ve designed? I’ve taken a memomemo of the cute, meowing Black Cat Coord! Hm, that’s right… Powder Snow Park is close by, let’s go there!

(prism show. My nyas?)

Ayami: Amazing! That was a very meowmeow show! Chae-kyung-san will definitely like the coord too…

Chae-kyung: Ayami!

Ayami: Chae-kyung-san! You were watching too?

Chae-kyung: That was a very celebrity show. Ayami and Player are both amazing! With this coord, we’re sure to get a celebrally good result in Stand Up Girls.

Ayami: Ehehe… I’m so happy to hear that. It’s all thanks to Player-san. Carefully thinking things through is important, but freely thinking things through is important too! I’ll make a memomemo of that!

Mia: Wow, Player, you’ve really grown, huh! You gave Ayami design advice, you’re so cool! Your My☆Deco power has to have powered up too, right?

Ayami: According to my memos, by powering up your My☆Deco power… you’ll be able to decorate your prism stones with frames!

Chae-kyung: Being able to create your own celebrity original coords is wonderful!

Ayami: You should try making a lot of new coords with your new ability to add frames. That’s it! If you’re okay with it, why not use this Black Cat Part for your My☆Deco?

Chae-kyung: You’ll definitely be able to make a celebrally cute coord!

Mia: Now that your My☆Deco has powered up, you’ll be able to enjoy prism shows a lot more! The Gold Spiral Cup is coming up soon, too. Work hard up until then!

Chae-kyung: We’re also going to work celebrally hard at the Gold Spiral Cup!

Ayami: Player-san, thank you so much!

(naur bc why did google drive keep autocorrecting chae-kyung to chase-kyung. bitch who tf is chase-kyung. maybe chase-kyung is her mechas car transformation idk)

[thebibliomancer]

Song of the Dark Crystal liveblog pt 15

Song of the Dark Crystal by J.M. Lee because HELLO NEW SPOOKY FRIEND

Last times in book: Kylan, Naia, and Tavra have traveled to the Caves of Grot to find a magic firca that will help them warn all Gelfling about the Skeksis. A Grottan gives them a startle by lurking above a tunnel entrance.

Chapter 15

Kylan and Naia meet with Maudra Argot

"Shadowling,” Tavra growled.

“Silverling,” the strange Gelfling replied, with a casual but equal distaste.

Huh! Time for more Gelfling prejudice.

Its hinted at later this chapter why the Grottan might be annoyed at a Vapran but I have no idea why the Vapran would have strong feelings about the Grottan.

So let’s get a look at our new friend, Amri.

Pulling back his hood, his skin was pale like moonlight, with silky silver hair like Tavra’s, shaved on one side and falling to his shoulder on the other. Had Kylan seen him aboveground, he might have mistaken him for a Vapra - except for his eyes. With his face hidden by the shadow of his hood, Kylan had at first thought he had no eyes at all. Now he could see two, large and black, with no whites in them. It was like looking into one of the inky ponds that dappled the cave’s basin floor.

He had to be Gelfling, based on the shape of his face and body but he held himself differently. Like a river plant, Kylan thought, or maybe even an eel or fish, eerily graceful as he gazed down on them with an unreadable expression. His movements were as fluid as if he were underwater, slow and seamless.

Maybe that’s why the Vapran and Grottan don’t like each other.

They both want to be the pale, white-haired pretty Gelfling clan and are like ‘one of us is going to have to change.’

Speaking of change, I wonder what did between the books and the show.

In the show, the Grottan have a greenish tint to their skin, like the Drenchen. On the topic, Spriton have darker skin in the YA continuity compared to the show. Not a big deal, things got changed around between show and books but I’m wondering if this was a case where the books were working off an earlier version of the series bible.

Having the Grottan be super pale actually does make a lot of sense, since they live in caves. Cave-dwelling creatures tend to be pale because they don’t need as much protection from light.

Naia introduces the group, although omits Tavra’s title since there’s already animosity without it being known she’s the All-Maudra’s daughter.

Amri just stares at the introductions then tells the group to follow him.

Kylan looked up as they passed through the center of the cavern, losing count of the tunnel entrances and walkways. Now that the silence had been broken, eh saw silhouettes of other Grottan Gelfling stepping out of the shadows, gathering in groups of twos and threes on the ledges to watch them pass. They were all ghostly, clothing in black cloaks like their guide. Only their faces, hands, and bare feet showed, slipping in and out of the shadows like starlight.

Ah, so that’s where the whispers were coming from. The peanut gallery.

Naia asks if this is really the Caves of Grot, which Amri confirms but says that the Grottan call it Domrak which Kylan translates as “Place-in-Shadows.”

“A fair translation in the common tongue. Others have called it the Cave of Obscurity. Land-in-Darkness. Hole in Ground. Either way, grot means crypt. Though in truth, nothing has died here.”

I love that one of its names is just. Hole in Ground. Hee.

Kylan decides that Domrak means home, not just place.

Home-in-Shadows has a nice ring to it.

But if grot means crypt, then Caves of Crypt. Which sounds weird.

And could you translate, Grottan as cryptid? Heh.

Amri takes them up a long spiraling stairway and like other parts of the cave, it is just lousy with dream-etching. Kylan reads bits and pieces of stories as they climb.

They reach a triangular archway carved to look like a colony of hollerbats, which sounds amazing. Amri goes in to speak with Maudra Argot and when he pops back out he says that Kylan and Naia can come in but Tavra has to wait outside.

Tavra snorted through her nose, and Kylan wished she hadn’t. If they wanted to gain the trust and alliance of every clan, they would have to be respectful, even if they did not get the same respect in return. Shouldn’t a daughter of the All-Maudra know better diplomacy? Huffing, she turned away and crossed her arms.

“I have no interest in paying respects to a Shadowling bat, anyway,” she said, turning her nose up. “Be quick about it.”

“Don’t start any fights,” Kylan said. “Please.”

Hope springs eternal, Kylan.

The maudra chamber has exposed crystal veins lacing the walls, but with the crystal still showing as clear and pure. The Darkening hasn’t seemed to reach this deep. Possibly the tree protecting them, as in the show.

Seated on the stone floor, cross-legged, was an old Gelfling woman. Her wings were sheer, almost completely transparent, draped out behind her like a crystalline pool. Her eyes were black, like all the Grottan, but bore the mark of time. Her kind, wrinkled face might have seen more than one ninet - if the greater seasons even affected the Grottan clan, so deep in the earth.

Apparently, a ninet is roughly one hundred trine. Wow!

Kylan and Naia very politely introduce themselves.

“It must be important, indeed, for daylighters to bother making the journey into the so-feared Grot. Amri here tells me you have a Vapra with you as well. Has the great Mayrin finally invited us to the Silverling capital? Ho ho hoo! Don’t answer that. I know it is not true. So tell me, children, why do you stray from the daylight?”

She seems fun. I like her.

And reasonably enough, the Grottan dislike the Vapran because the Vapran tend to pretend they don’t exist. Rude.

Kylan tells Maudra Argot that they’re looking for the firca of Gyr the Song Teller and that he read in a book that it was entrusted to the Grottan.

“Oh yes! That. What do you want with Gyr’s bone firca?”

“You have it here?” Kylan cried, forgetting all formality. “It’s real?”

“Of course it’s real. How else did you think all that dream-etching got on the walls? All of us can read here, of course, but it would have taken a whole ninet to do just half the caves the regular way. We don’t have time for that. Yes, yes, the firca is real. It is in the Tomb. Ho ho! But I’m not going to just hand it over to you younglings without an explanation first. Why do you need it? What will you do with it? And so on.”

Score one for a random story you read in a random book!

Of course, they now have the problem of explaining why they need it. If Argot is loyal to the Skeksis, they could be in big trouble. Heck, if she’s like Maudra Fara and just afraid to act, she might refuse to help.

The best way would be for Naia to dreamfast with Maudra Argot to show what she had seen. A conclusion that Naia also immediately comes to.

“Then dreamfast with me. I will show you what I’ve seen. You can decide whether it’s an explanation or not.”

“So you think I’ll trust your memories, no matter what they are?” Maudra Argot asked, tilting her head in the other direction. When she got a confused, uncomfortable silence in reply, she cackled again. “Ho! Don’t answer that, either. I am not afraid of your dreams, little Drenchen. Show me, and we will see where they lead us.”

Hey remember when I said it’d be boring to watch Kylan watch someone else dreamfast and that’s why he had to do it with Rian instead of Naia?

Well, I was wrong. Watching someone else dreamfast takes like a couple seconds.

The maudra let out a long grave hmmmmm.

“You have the gift of dreamfast, that is for certain,” she said. “Never have I seen dreams so vividly... It was almost as if I had my eyes back! Ho ho hoo! What a delight you are, my Drenchen daughter.”

Naia repeats some of the information aloud for Amri’s benefit and says they need the firca to warn all Gelfling.

“The Stonewood will be first, until the forest is empty of their tales and noisy dances. Then the Spriton to the south. Perhaps they will go west next, to the Crystal Sea - perhaps north, to take the capital itself. It is only a matter of time before they come for us, I suppose, even if we are the discarded relish on the banquet tray. Ho ho hoo!”

She described an ugly future, but her chuckle was so light, it was almost the giggle of a youngling.

“Nothing but a garnish on top of a Vapra delicacy!” Amri added. The comment sent the old maudra into a new fit, her little body shaking with laughter.

What a fun, weird old lady.

Kylan and Naia are uncomfortable with how funny she finds the extinction of the Gelfling clans and just sit quietly. Kylan reflects that maybe the situation is so horrible, that there’s nothing to do but laugh but can’t bring himself to join.

“Ho ho ho hooo! Oh, don’t sound so quiet. We’re not making light of the situation. This old maudra has heard many trine come and go. Just when I think I’ve heard it all, the Skeksis surprise me with something new and cruel. I can’t help but think Thra is telling a wicked song-for-laughs... Or maybe it is me who is old and mad and laughing when there are no jokes being told.”

Think about being so old that you think you know everything the world can throw at you and then hearing the most horrible thing you never knew.

I guess maybe all you can do is laugh.

Although, she’s a pretty laughy individual anyway.

Unsure of how to react to any of that, Naia just does Drenchen hard-talk and directly asks for the firca. And adds that its important that the Gelfling come together to resist the Skeksis because they won’t be able to do anything if they’re at odds.

“We Grottan have remained out of the affairs of the daylighters; ours was a different burden to bear, here in Domrak. But you are right. The Skeksis will never want the essence of an old maudra like me, but my children... even the lazy ones like Amri. We are all Gelfling. I’ll give you the firca. I’ll even give you Amri. He will show you to the Tomb of Relics and then go with you to Ha’rar on behalf of our oft-forgotten clan.”

Yes yes yes yes yes yes yes!

New party member!

Amri is less thrilled than I am, protesting that he doesn’t want to hang out with snooty snoots in Ha’rar but Argot tells him to suck it up. She already knows that he sneaks out of the caves to gather alchemy ingredients and she’s tired of his disruptive experiments.

“Take your maudra’s offer, and come back when you are grown.”

Sweet dunk on Amri.

Then she picks up her weaving which is a polite indication that the conversation is over so Naia and Kylan leave, followed by Amri. Although they hear Argot talking to herself as they leave.

“Damned Skeksis. Your time has come, at long last. Ho ho hoo...”

This was a very productive meeting!