#like 'oh how am I meant to use a gel when there's a hole in my teeth'

[autistic-beanmonster2]

I think I'm actually gonna start killing

[kiapet2]

Aperture Sides Facility, Chapter 14: If We’re Going to Explode, Let’s At Least Explode With Some Dignity!

Masterpost

Chapter Summary: In which Thomas has a heart-to-heart speedrun

Chapter Warnings: Death Mention, Unethical Experimentation Mention

With a bit of searching you’re able to find a map of the facility in Cave Johnson’s office. The map is wildly out of date, naturally, but you’re still able to use it to orient yourself enough to find an exit, and hopefully with it the meeting place you suggested.

As confident as you can be with where you’re going, you head out of the offices and back into the back corridors of the old facility. Getting to the exit involves climbing up a heavily inclined passage, using old pipes leaking Conversion Gel to make portal-conductive surfaces. Finally, you reach the top, where a massive vault lid opens in the ceiling, letting down a rickety old excuse for an elevator which you promptly climb onto and let take you up, through the vault hole, to a faster elevator which takes you up, up, up to the newer facility floors.

And just like that, you’re back in familiar territory. You start walking, ducking through back rooms and looking for the route back to Remus’ old chamber.

“You’re going the wrong way.”

You jump at the voice right behind you, before turning around with a huge grin. “Virgil!”

“Uh, hey, Thomas,” he says awkwardly.

“Hey,” you say. “Been a little while.”

“Not that long,” he says. There’s an awkward silence where you debate whether you should try talking to him now or later, until he decides the question for you by saying gruffly, “Well, follow me then.”

You’re not surprised to see everyone has made it before you; you did have to climb out of the depths of the facility, after all. You are a bit surprised, and considerably relieved, to see that all five of the others have actually come.

“Greetings, Thomas,” Roman says. “I am glad to see you are alright.”

You give a little wave. “Hey, guys.”

“Well?” Janus says sharply, still speared on Remus’ handle. “You told us you have things to tell us. So talk.”

You wince a little internally; of all the people here, Janus has the most reasons to resent you right now. And really, you can’t blame him.

“Let’s start with this,” you say, reaching into the folds of your jumpsuit and carefully pulling out the files you took from the old Aperture office.

Setting the portal gun down, you open the file folder, turning to the first page and holding it out to the others.

“I found this down below, at the original Aperture Science Facility. Look at the names on the top and bottom.”

There’s a pause as the others all strain to see from their positions.

“Project JANUS,” Logan reads. “Subject Name… Oh dear Newton.”

“What?” Roman says. “I’m too far away to see!”

Janus lets out a gasp, so slight he might have passed it off as nothing if you hadn’t been paying so much attention.

“I was made… from you?” he says, voice uncertain and devoid of the anger it previously had.

You nod. “All of you were.”

“Of course,” Logan says, almost to himself. “The singing, the annoyingly upbeat attitude, even the acuity at puzzle solving… I should have seen it all along.”

Roman doesn’t say anything, instead squealing so loud and high-pitched that you’re afraid he’ll burst an eardrum. Beside him, Remus is cackling and listing all the “fun” things you should do together.

“Apparently, the CEO wanted to use me to test AI creation,” you explain. “And, I guess I just sort of stuck as the test subject.”

“Thomas,” Janus says desperately, “I didn’t know. I swear to you on the facility itself, I didn’t know. If I had…”

“I know,” you say softly. “I didn’t either. I thought that I had to pick one person to put in charge, and I couldn’t trust you not to turn on me. But you were right. You were meant to be running things here.”

You hold up a hand at the others’ protests. “You all were.”

“We… all were?” Roman says hesitantly.

You nod. “Take a look at this.”

You go back to the beginning of the blueprints and begin flipping through, narrating as you go.

“In 1986 they started work on Project JANUS, based on the centers of my brain that govern self-interest and social maneuvering. It was originally supposed to be just a precursor to Cave Johnson’s AI, but after he died a year or so later it was made the main project. Janus was fully created and began running the facility about a decade later.”

You flip to the next page. “They started Project PATHOS a few months later, in response to, uh. ‘The Neurotoxin Incident’?”

“If they didn’t want me using it, they shouldn’t have given me access to it,” Janus says imperiously.

You decide not to ask. “Right, so they made a Morality Core to reign you in, and it seems to have worked out. There’s all this stuff here about how well you two worked well together.”

Patton spoke to you about that, what seems like a year ago but was likely only a few days. We made a good team, he’d said in that wistful voice. You should have listened.

“Okay, so you’re saying we need our old dic-tater to join Patton, and then we’ll be good?” Roman says skeptically.

“Heh, he said dick,” Remus says.

“Not quite,” you say to Roman, ignoring Remus and flipping to the next page. “They liked how things were functioning with the two of you, but it wasn’t enough. They wanted to start testing which went beyond simple self-interest and morality. So they started Projects LOGOS and REMUS. Logic and Creativity.”

You flip the page again, and grimace at what you see. “And then…”

“And then they replaced him with me,” Roman says quietly.

“Yeah,” you say, equally subdued. “And made a Threat Assessment Sphere for good measure.” You nod to Virgil.

“Not that I don’t enjoy the trip down memory lane,” Janus says, “but is there a point to all this?”

“You told me once that you used to all run this place together,” you say to the others, “before something went wrong and you were split apart.”

“That is correct,” Logan says.

You gesture to the files. “Don’t you see? That’s our problem! We’ve been trying to come up with one Core who can run this place all by himself, when you were all created to run it together! We need self-interest, moral guidance, knowledge, creativity of all kinds, and caution to keep this place on the right track! That’s why you guys keep not being able to handle the compulsions and corruption, because it’s too much for any one aspect of a personality.”

“So to clarify, you want to put us back the way we were?” Logan says.

“Yeah,” you say. “I want to restore the balance.”

You sigh and rub your head, feeling the nervousness kick in. “And to do that, there’s some things I have to say to you guys.”

“Logan,” you say, turning to face the Core directly, “I owe you an apology. All this time, you’ve been so important to getting us connected to the system, but we never once considered putting you in charge, or even thanked you for what you’d already done. And we haven’t been listening to you much since putting Patton in charge.”

“While I certainly appreciate the sentiment,” Logan says, “it is unnecessary. If your theory is correct I likely would have fared no better than Patton.

“I know,” you say, “but we still took you for granted, and we shouldn’t have. I think your input is really important, and I’m going to do my best to listen to it going forward.”

Logan nods. “I owe you an apology as well. I withheld my support when you most needed it. I was… upset… but that is no valid excuse.”

“Let’s just agree to both do better in the future, all right?” you say, smiling softly, and Logan nods.

With that settled, you turn to the next Core in front of you. “Virgil.”

The Core startles. “What?”

“I know I wasn’t clear enough on this before,” you say, ”but I don’t care if you’re corrupted or not.”

“Thomas-” Virgil says, pained.

“I know, I know,” you say, holding a hand out, “you don’t act the way you were designed to.”

You come forward and take one of Virgil’s hands in your own. He jumps, but doesn’t pull away.

“But Virge, I don’t care what you’re ‘supposed’ to do. Sure, you can be a bit over-zealous at times, but you’ve saved my life more times than I can count on one hand, accurate threat assessments or not. Maybe you’re not exactly how you were designed to be, but you are exactly what you need to be. You’re an important part of this family, and that is never going to change.”

“Yeah sure, whatever,” Virgil mumbles, looking down self-consciously.

You lean down to catch Virgil’s eye again. “And I know this is going to be hard for you to accept, but Janus and Remus are a part of this too.”

“But Thomas-”

“This isn’t something I’m willing to compromise on, Virge,” you say firmly. “You’ve helped me so much since I met you- but so has Janus, even if you weren’t around to see it. And both of you have jobs that are incredibly important for keeping this facility afloat. Whatever happened between you in the past, I’m asking both of you to put it aside now. For all of us.”

“Of course,” Janus says, voice dripping with exaggerated sweetness. “I’ll happily put things to rest, if certain parties would do the same.”

Not the most sincere of olive branches, but it’s enough for now. Virgil glowers, looking from you to Janus and back again, and for a few heart-stopping moments you’re afraid he’s going to refuse.

“Fine,” Virgil spits finally. “I’ll do it for you, Thomas, and because I don’t want this place to blow up. Not for him.”

“I’ll take it,” you say, doing your best not to visibly slump in relief. You really don’t know what you would have done if he hadn’t agreed.

You turn to Roman. “Ro-”

“No need, Tommy-salami,” Roman says. “I am already ready to enact your daring plan, and need no further convincing.”

“That’s not what I was going to say,” you respond.

Roman freezes mid-gesture. “It isn’t?”

“No, it isn’t,” you say. “Roman, I know that you’ve been worried about living up to me calling you my hero.”

“I... Yes, I have,” Roman says.

You take a deep breath. “I was wrong to say that to you, Roman. Yes, I was grateful when you helped me- and I still am- but I shouldn’t have labeled you as my hero.”

Roman flinches back as if struck, and your heart twinges in sympathy, but you push on. This needs to be said.

“You’re not my hero, because you’re so much more than that, Roman. You’re the best at figuring out tests and puzzles and then giving hints that I can understand. You have so many great ideas- including finding Remus, because it was what we needed at the time. But even more than that- you’re a wonderful singing partner. You make even the hardest challenges into an adventure, and get us all swept up with you. Your nicknames and jokes are hilarious, and you’ve been working so hard at making them more kind.”

You look Roman dead in the eye. “You don’t need to save me in some huge, dramatic way to be helpful or important, Roman. And you don’t have to be my hero to be my friend. You’re our Creativity. You’re Roman, and that has always been enough.”

“I-” Roman’s voice cracks. “Thomas, I, uh... thanks.”

“Trust Princey to be the one who needs an entire speech,” Virgil says, teasing and fond.

“Excuse you, Emo-Bot, I am most speech-worthy!” Roman declares, and if his voice is still a little thick, no one calls him on it.

That leaves just one more Core. You turn to Remus, then hesitate.

“Ooh,” Remus says, sidling closer with a little shimmy. “Is it my turn to be praised like a good little boy? Lay it on me, Daddy!”

You grimace, cheeks heating despite yourself.

“I… don’t really know what to think of you, honestly,” you say. “Most of the time I’ve known you, you were trying to kill me.”

“That’s fair,” Remus says cheerfully.

You sigh. “But we know that being at the head of the facility impacts your thinking, and you were only there in the first place because I asked you to be. Because you were helping me. And I don’t think what was done to you in the first place- discarding you like that- was right.”

You hold your hand out to him, as if to shake. “So, I’m willing to give things another chance. If you are.”

Remus moves forward and holds his good handle out towards you. You grab it and immediately pull back as something disgusting squishes in your hand.

“How did you even-” you say, frantically rubbing it off on your pant leg.

“I find smelly things. It’s a gift.”

“Alright, so you’ve had your little heart-to-heart with each of us,” Virgil says. “What now?”

“I guess now we start planning,” you say.

“Right,” Roman says. “I take it our first priority is to stop the self-destruct sequence, right?”

You nod. “I know the bomb is in the control room; can we diffuse that somehow?”

“This little thing?” Remus says dramatically, “I’d hardly call this a bomb. This is just to trigger the packs of thermals upstairs in the gym. Those are the bombs.”

You give him a look. “What?”

“I dunno, just came to me!”

“Odd phrasing aside,” Logan says, “Remus is correct. What we saw earlier was not a bomb itself but rather a detonator connected to various bombs at different points in the facility. When it reaches zero it will begin detonating them in a sequence designed to collapse the facility in a controlled manner. Trying to defuse each bomb individually would be a fool’s errand.”

Roman hums in thought. “So then we just have to stop it from signaling to the bombs, right? No detonator, no bombs.”

“In theory. In practice you would need to either destroy it or remove it from the facility completely to sever the connection. Considering that we currently lack the means to do either, our best option is to shut it down from the administrative position of the facility.”

You sigh. “So it’s back to replacing the facility head, then. Is there any way we can add you guys back in without having to go through that whole process?”

“No,” Janus says. “There’s a reason I was able to lock everyone else out after we were separated. Patton would need to grant any new Cores added administrative access for us to share equal power. If he doesn’t, we’re left as advisors; we could influence him, but not override any of his decisions.”

“So, we replace him now, and then add him back in afterwards,” you say. “Not ideal, but-”

“I’m afraid it’s not that simple,” Logan says. “The replacement process is for corrupted cores. It will not trigger if it scans him as normal.”

“Are we sure that Patton isn’t corrupted at this point?” you say.

Virgil snorts out a laugh, then says, “Oh, sorry, were you serious? Yeah, no.”

Roman says, “Maybe if we add Janus, Remus and Virgil to the system, their corruption will influence the reading enough that-”

Janus scoffs. “That it will register the Morality Core as corrupt? Please. The little guy doesn’t have a corrupt bone in his body; we’d have a better chance painting ‘corrupted core’ on his chassis.”

“So let me get this straight,” you say. “The only way we can stop this place from self-destructing is to get someone else in charge of this facility. But we can’t put someone else in charge without Patton scanning as corrupt, which will never happen.”

“Yup, we’re screwed,” Virgil says helpfully.

“Not necessarily,” Logan says, thoughtful.

“Oh?” you say, “Is there another way to stop it?”

“No,” Logan says, “But there is another way to replace Patton. If Patton himself initiates the process, he can be replaced regardless of his corruption status.”

Janus laughs. “Really? That’s your plan? I’m sure that the Core who tried to imprison Thomas rather than be replaced will be completely willing to give up his power once we ask really nicely.”

“You’re one to talk,” Virgil mutters.

You give him a warning look, then turn to Janus. “I think I might have an idea of how to help him make that choice- but we have to actually go face him to do it. I think we owe it to him- and to ourselves- to try.”

Roman throws his handles out dramatically. “Indeed! If there is any hope of rescuing our beloved companion, we must take it! No matter the peril-”

“We get it, Princey,” Virgil says dryly. “But yeah, I’m in or whatever. Might as well go down fighting.”

“Logically, as the facility is imminently going to self-destruct, we have nothing to lose,” Logan says. “So I agree as well.”

“Deadly peril? Sounds like fun!” Remus says.

You turn to Janus. “Janus, if things work out the way I’m thinking, you’ll be an important part of this. Are you in?”

Janus hesitates for a moment, as if trying to decide whether he can trust you again. Finally he says, “Alright, Thomas. I’ll follow your lead in this. Don’t make me regret it.”

You look around at the circle of faces of your friends. Even after everything you’ve been through, after all the times you messed up, they’re still behind you, still trusting you. Your grip tightens on your portal gun as a new wave of resolve rolls through you. You’re not going to let them down; not this time.

“Alright guys,” you say. “Here’s what we’re gonna do…”

[salt-warrior]

WHEN EARTH TURNS TO ASHES

Masterlist

Chapter Ten: Overprotective Shadow

Lights faded in and out between Cinder's dreams of the past. Dreams of a mother who only wanted her to be happy, of a boy who loved her, a sister that idolized her, and a friend who tried to find a cure for Selene's problem. All of them were painful.

The mental agony of Cinder's dreams dulled the pain of reality for a short time. She wondered if she had finally died—if She had found a way to kill her yet— but Cinder couldn't remember anything. The last thing she could recall was driving to school, and then–

A sudden jolt shot through Cinder, her eyes snapping open as memories flooded her mind. The accident, the fire, the boy. What had happened to the boy? What if I killed him, too, Cinder worried. But no, it shouldn't work like that. Don't they have to love me?

"Even my wildest fantasies couldn't imagine you being this hot awake." 

Cinder flinched, turning to see a boy sitting next to her. She hadn't noticed him before, and maybe that had been for the best. His mere presence agitated her.

Could it be him? Selene looked into the man's eyes; they were a clear crystal blue. No, her savior had born eyes of copper and flames.

"No pun intended." The annoying man winked, leaning back in the plastic hospital chair. He had sandy brown hair, a strong jaw, and an easy smile accompanied by the dimples of a church boy. He wore tennis shoes, blue jeans and a Star Wars t-shirt with Han Solo on the front and captioned "I know."

Cinder frowned. The boy smiled. "Who the hell–"

"Ah, no need for blatant questioning and accusations." The man stuck out his right hand, a crooked, wicked smile on his face. "Carswell Thorne, at your service." He cupped his left hand to the side of his mouth, as if he were telling her a secret. "But you can just call me Thorne."

Cinder blinked, and Thorne lowered his hand, smile disappearing. "Where's all your fire?" Thorne exclaimed, giving her a questioning glance. Cinder glared at him, and he seemed to realize his mistake. "I mean your personality, not the car stuff," Thorne clarified.

"Why are you here? I don't know you," Cinder croaked, her voice scraggy from lack of use. "Where's..." Cinder was about to ask for someone she knew— someone who loved her— but they were all dead.

"Am I that disappointing?" Thorne inquired, exasperated.

"I mean," Cinder clarified. "Where's the boy with the eyes?" she flushed, realizing how stupid she sounded, but she had only seen the eyes of her savior, nothing more.

Thorne stuck out his jaw, his face perplexed. "I'm a boy, I have eyes, I feel like I meet your expectations just fine."

Cinder huffed, wanting to strangle Thorne the more she talked to him. "There was a boy who pulled me out of my burning car. Where is he?" Cinder felt her stomach roll with dread. What if I killed him too?

"Oh, you mean Crown. He's not here." Thorne nodded his head like a complacent beach boy. "Speaking of which, I should probably call him. He's a little too excited to meet you. A bit like a puppy." Thorne rolled his eyes. "Well, I guess you've already met, but you were a little out of it. Understandably."

Cinder hit him. Not hard, but a simple backhand to the shoulder. She was done with this man, who she had never met before, and his stupidity.

"Aces, ow! What was that for, Selene?" Thorne put a hand to where Cinder had struck him, his face indignant. He was so caught up in his "injury" that he didn't notice Cinder freeze, her face pale as parchment. "Sel–"

Throwing herself forward, Cinder covered his mouth with her uninjured hand. Pain laced her entire left side, but she didn't stop. Thorne's muffled protests pursued, and he tried to get Cinder's hand away from his pie hole. Cinder refused to let go, too scared of what would happen if he said her name. That was until he licked Cinder's hand. She retreated immediately. Maybe it wouldn't be so bad if he died.

"What the aces and spades?" Thorne exclaimed, scrunching his nose. "Look, S–"

"Don't call me that!" Cinder yelled, startling Thorne enough to make him drop all his flirtations. "Don't call me S... don't call me that name."

Thorne softened, taking a gentler side to things. His face lost its mischievous gleam, and he leaned forward in his seat. "Okay, what do you want me to call you then?"

There was a slight shock to seeing this calming side of Thorne. She wouldn't have believed he had a tame side if she hadn't seen it staring into her face. "Cinder. Call me Cinder."

Thorne's face contorted with horror, and then he seemed to be attempting to hold in laughter. Apparently his considerate side wasn't that strong. "You're kidding. You're..." Thorne looked at Cinder's face, taking in her expression before sobering. "You're not kidding."

Cinder glared. She wouldn't much mind if her gaze caused him to alight in flames. "Okay, Cinder," Thorne said. "If you don't mind, I'm gonna call your boyfriend. Like I said, he wants to see you." Cinder continued to glare, but didn't stop him.

Pulling out his phone, Thorne dialed a well acquainted number, fingers dancing. It only took one ring for a frantic voice to answer on the other end. Cinder could hear the faint voice of a boy, though not what he was saying.

Cinder kept her eyes on Thorne, making sure he didn't say her name. Apparently Thorne had the memory of a goldfish.

"Yeah, Sel–" Cinder interrupted Thorne with another backhand. "Ow! Would you stop that?" Thorne pulled the phone away from his face, glaring at Cinder.

"I told you not to call me that!" Cinder bellowed.

"I remember that, thanks." Thorne remarked sarcastically.

"Obviously you didn't, because you just called me that." Cinder huffed, feeling too drained to argue with such gusto.

"Well, Kai won't recognize you by any other name! That's what the nurse said your name was. I'm sorry that you're sour about it," Thorne bit back.

"Just don't call me that name," Cinder growled.

"Fine." Thorne turned back to his phone, bafflement coloring his face like paint. "The girl," Thorne glared at Cinder pointedly, "she's awake. And I've got to admit, I much preferred her asleep."

Cinder scowled, but refrained from hitting Thorne again. She was so tired, and the annoyance it took to simply engage in a conversation with Thorne was draining. She only half-listened to the rest of his conversation, before her mind spun into blackness.

***

Kai glanced into a window. It was dark enough that he could see his reflection, and the way his hair was a complete mess. He ran a hand through it to tame the tangles, wishing for once he had followed Thorne's advice on how maintain his hair. Kai hated putting gel in, though.

What are you doing? Kai asked himself. She just woke up from a coma, and why do you even care? She's just a girl. But she wasn't just a girl.

The hospital was busy, people flitting in and out of rooms as visitor hours drew towards a close. Kai's body was vibrating with nervous energy. He was finally going to be able to talk to her. He would talk to Selene.

Cinder.

Kai was confused by the name change, but Thorne had been adamant about it, complaining of bruises as he relayed the information to Kai. Of course some people hated what their parents named them. Kai himself despised being called Kaito, but Cinder wasn't even close to Selene. Kai had thought it was a joke at first, Thorne being inappropriate as always, but it wasn't.

No nurses stood in with Cinder as she lay nearly motionless on her bed. She was awake, staring down her arm at the patched skin that had once been burns, dark hair falling down around her face.

The treatment they had used on her was new, and worked on healing skin incredibly fast. Already Cinder's flesh was looking healthy, and only a little bit patchy and pink in some parts. Kai marveled at the progress that had happened in only ten days.

"Hey," Kai tapped his knuckles lightly on her door, startling Cinder from her awe. Looking at her sent shivers down Kai's spine. He remembered the first time he'd seen her, surrounded by fire, and how he'd thought she looked like an avenging angel. Even without the fire she still had a blaze about her that made her seem dark and powerful.

Selene always had a darkness about her— almost as if her shadow was a living being there to torture her forever. Kai shook Cress's words away, although not before noticing that Cinder did seem to have an overprotective shadow.

"You look really good." Kai smiled, before feeling his stomach fall. "I mean, you always looked good. You never looked bad. I was just meaning that you look better. Your skin is looking great." Kai cringed. Your skin is looking great? He sounded like a creep.

"That came out wrong." Kai said, biting his lip before sighing exasperatedly. "What I meant to say is that you've healed a lot since I last saw you."

Cinder stared at him, not saying a word. Her eyes were huge and brown and beautiful. Kai looked away from them, knowing that if he continued to gaze into her eyes he would never be able to look away.

"My name is Kai, by the way." Kai said, sitting down in the cold plastic seat. "Well, it's Kaito, Kaito Crown, but only my father really calls me that. You can just call me Kai." He didn't know why he was babbling so much. Kai hardly ever babbled, and it was only when he was nervous.

"I don't know if you remember me. You were basically unconscious, but you did look at me for a few seconds before blacking out." Cinder blinked, still not speaking. Kai wondered if Thorne had been making up the story about her beating him up. She was so mellow.

"I'm also sorry about Thorne. He's a pain, but he means well. I asked him to stay with you while I was... away." Kai didn't know why he wasn't telling her about his visit to Olympia. She had a right to know that he had gone snooping in her business, but something about her stare and the rejection of her name made Kai think she wouldn't be too happy about it.

"Why'd you do it?" Cinder whispered, her voice defiant.

Kai froze. Did she know that he had been investigating her past? Kai had told Thorne not to tell her, but he never was good at keeping secrets. "Do what?"

"Save me." Cinder's voice was as cold as her stare. Kai worried that the floor would open up and he would be sucked down to Hell.

It was such an odd question. In the moment of the crash, there had been no other answer than to save the girl on fire. It hadn't been a multiple choice test; his only option had been to save her.

"It was the right thing to do. The only thing, really. I couldn't just leave you there," Kai muttered, wringing his hands together. He didn't dare glance at Cinder— he could feel her burning gaze.

"Oh, so you're the noble type. You could have gotten yourself killed, or terribly injured. You shouldn't have done it," Cinder snapped.

"Well, I'm fine. You're alive, and I wouldn't change anything about it. I'm sorry if I disappointed you." Kai felt attacked. Maybe it was due to the fact that he was being attacked, but he was going to consider all of the possibilities.

Cinder sagged, her shoulders closing in toward her chest and her face cracking. "I'm sorry, that's not what I meant." She paused, then whispered, "Thank you for everything."

"You're welcome," Kai murmured, feeling undeserving of her thanks. It physically hurt Kai to look at her showing so much pain and humility. She was just a girl—a teenager—and she deserved to be saved. She deserved to be loved, and she had never gotten that.

"Listen, Cinder," Kai moved closer to her. "Can I ask you why you changed your name?"

Kai had crossed a line. He could tell by the way Cinder tensed up, regret and guilt stabbing him the moment the words had left his lips. Why did he have to be so rude and nosy? She was lying in a hospital bed feeling terrible, and Kai had brought up something to make her feel even worse.

"No. You can't." Cinder's eyes filled with rage. "Nor are you allowed to ask me why I ran away from home or why I have no emergency contact or anything else about my life."

"Okay, I'm sorry. I shouldn't have brought it up." Kai curled in on himself, moving away from Cinder. He felt defenseless against her words, and terrible guilt was eating at him for digging into her past without permission. He felt like a trespasser.

"You may think that I'll worship you just because you saved me, but I didn't ask you to." Cinder's words cut like knives. "I may owe you my life, but you won't get my past."

Kai nodded, choking on the words that he should have been saying. He needed to apologize, but the only thing that came out was: "I– I think I should go."

Cinder didn't even look at him as he walked out the door.

[orangeoctopi7]

Gloves VS Mittens

@forduary Week one is Creation/Destruction. This fic is definitely on the Creation side of things.

For most people, it’s just a matter of preference. But for Stanford, just having a choice at all was something he rarely had...

***

When Ford was four years old, he first started taking notice of the fact that his hands were not normal. It started with a Hanukkah gift from a distant aunt: a pair of gloves for Stan, and a pair of mittens for himself. The two of them were so used to getting the exact same of everything that it immediately struck them as odd.

"Hey Dad, how come mine are different?" Ford asked.

"Because they don't make six-fingered gloves." Filbrick grunted.

"Why not?"

"Because normal people don't have six fingers. Haven't you noticed?"

Caryn smacked her husband with her magazine. "Dear!"

"What? If he hasn't already figured it out--"

"He's four, Filbrick."

"He's gonna have to know sooner or later! Coddling him ain't doin' him any favors. The world's not kind to what's different, so we may as well prepare him now!"

"I'm not… normal?" Ford asked his parents. He wasn't quite sure what to do with this information.

"Nope." Filbrick replied bluntly.

"Oh who wants to be normal, anyway? Normal's boring. You're special." Caryn took her son into her arms and kissed his forehead. “Now go outside and play with your brother."

While Stanford took his mother's words to heart, he soon found that being special had little to no practical benefits. Sure, it was nice to have something of his own for once, but Ford soon realized that while Stanley could use his mittens if he wanted, Ford couldn't use his brother's gloves. Not that Stan would ever want to use the mittens. They limited his dexterity to the point where it was hard to make a snowball, or even do something as simple as point.

"It's not fair!" He complained to Stan as he struggled to draw a face on the snowman they were working on. "It's like trying to do everything with a sock puppet on each hand!"

"It can't be all bad." Stan reasoned. "Plenty of people wear mittens, right?" 

"I guess so…" Ford remembered quite a few Christmas decorations with people wearing mittens, and he'd seen a few wearing them out and about the city.

Stan grabbed one hand and held it up, looking at it more closely. "I bet all your fingers are warmer, bundled together like that!"

"But it's hard to zip up my coat, so I get cold anyway." Ford mumbled.

"I'll help you zip it up!" Stan promised.

***

As the years passed, Stanford found another advantage to wearing mittens: nobody could tell he was a freak if they couldn't see his extra fingers. Sure, it didn't fool the people who already knew him, but it was nice to be able to pretend he was normal when they went up to New York City to go shopping. 

As for the dexterity problem, most of the time he'd just have to ask Stanley to do whatever it was for him. If he got tired of that, or if it simply wasn't an option (like during a snowball fight between the two brothers) he'd just take his mittens off. Sure, it was icy cold, and Ma always scolded him if she caught him, but that was a small price to pay for a good snowball.

Ford found he didn't mind wearing mittens all the time, until he started highschool chemistry class.

***

Ford was so excited to start his first real chemistry lab. He'd been doing his own chemical experiments with a chemistry set he got for his birthday when he turned 12, but the school chemistry lab had so much more to offer him! Actual Bunsen burners, more than one beaker and three test tubes, and best of all-- a variety of chemicals much wider than what he could find in his family home!

"Now, before we start, I'm going to go around and make sure everyone has all their safety equipment on properly. Make sure you've got your goggles on over your eyes not your forehead, and your gloves on your hands not in your pocket." Their teacher, an easily distracted middle-aged man, made his way around the room, checking each group. "Oh, right…" he paused when he came to the Pines twins. Stan had on his gloves and goggles (onto which he had drawn googly eyes with a wet-erase marker). Ford had on his goggles, but…

"I don't need gloves." Ford insisted. "I've never used them with my chemistry set at home."

"Yeah!" Stan agreed, "We took apart a car battery one time and didn't get any chemical burns!"

The teacher blanched at this revelation, and he opened up a supply closet at the back of the room. After some digging, he pulled out a pair of sturdy work gloves that looked like they were meant for a giant.

"Here," he tossed them to Ford, "These should be big enough. You'll just have to fit two fingers into one hole."

Ford grumbled as he pulled the gloves on. After some experimentation he found that sticking his second and third fingers together was the least uncomfortable arrangement, but the glove was still too bulky and awkward. He kept on pouring too much acid into the solution and completely missing the titration point. 

Relying on Stan to do it didn't yield much better results, as his brother was too impatient, and kept on pouring the acid too fast, once again missing the titration point. Finally, when the teacher was distracted by other students, Ford just took the gloves off. Then he got it first try.

This ended up being the pattern for Ford's chemistry labs throughout the rest of his highschool years. Fumble through the lab until the teacher's back was turned, and then strip the oversized gloves off. He was extra careful, and never got anything on him that could do any real harm. One time he did get a bit of copper nitrate on his skin, but all that it did was make his hands dry and itchy.

***

When Ford started college at Backupsmore University, he quickly realized he wouldn't be able to just pull an awkwardly large glove off when the teacher wasn't looking. The class size was much too small. What's more the TA overseeing their lab, a young man by the name of McGucket, was clearly a sharp and observant individual.

"Hmm, obviously this ain't gonna work." He observed as he passed out supplies to Ford's table. "I think y'should be fine fer now, we're only working with acetic acid today, but that ain't gonna be the case fer the whole semester. You got a free hour after lab?"

"Y-yes." 

"Great! Meet me in the Grad-lab, we'll make ya a special custom pair!"

"What--really!?"

"Sure! We don't want you messin' around in the chem lab with no gloves on, but messin' around with gloves that don't fit right is even worse!"

Ford finished his first lab with no trouble. In fact, he finished early, so he cleaned up his things and headed to the Grad-lab, just down the hall from his own classroom, and waited. All the graduate students there ignored him, too caught up in their own studies to even notice a lowly undergrad.

After several minutes, McGucket entered. "Alright, this is gonna take a while, you sure you got time?"

"This is my last class of the day."

"Perfect. Now come over here and we'll get started." The grad student led Ford back to a table with many five-gallon buckets. He pried the lid off of one, revealing its dark blue, slimy contents. "This here's the silicone-rubber I use t'make molds fer my machine parts. If'n ya jus' stick yer hand in here and let it gel, it should make a nice glove, like a second skin!"

"You want me to stick my hand… in that?" Ford asked incredulously.

"Pshaw, it ain't that bad!" McGucket assured him. "It's like… well, y'ever stuck her hand in pig slop?"

"No." Ford said slowly, his eye twitching just a bit at the thought.

"Oh, well nevermind then. I guess you can jus' drop outta chemistry 112"

Ford sighed and plunged his hands down into the bucket. It was pretty gross, but he got used to the slimy sensation after a few minutes. He slowly pulled his hands out, letting the viscous fluid slide off his fingers. 

"How long does this take to dry?"

"Gel." McGucket corrected. "First layer'll probably take 'bout half an hour. It goes faster if'n ya use a settin' spray, bit that tends t'irritate the skin."

"First layer? How many layers will it take?"

"Only two. Ya want it thick 'nuff it'll protect yer skin, but thin 'nuff that it's flexible an’ peels off easy."

"So I'm just supposed to stand here for a whole hour? What am I supposed to do for all this time? I-I've got homework!"

"Well, I'll pull ya up a chair." McGucket rolled over a chair for him and opened his backpack. "An' maybe I can help ya with yer homework."

They sat there for an hour, McGucket reading Ford's textbooks and Ford asking questions about the material. The grad student was impressed with the workload this freshman had taken on.

"I wanted to go to West Coast Tech, but that didn't work out." Ford explained bitterly. "So I'm going to have to work twice as hard to be taken seriously by the scientific community."

"Believe me, I know the feelin'." McGucket nodded. "Most folks don't take a roboticist from the Tennessee hills seriously either. But there's some perks to attendin' a smaller University. The dean lets us do whatever we want! I've built lots o' robots I never woulda gotten away with at MIT."

"I suppose that's true." Ford admitted. "I'm interested in anomalies and cryptozoology. At West Coast Tech, I probably wouldn't be able to study those."

The hour passed more quickly than Ford expected. When he pulled the gloves off, they turned inside out, showing all the wrinkles and ridges of his skin in relief. He liked it. It was much more personal than some disposable pair.

“I’m sorry for complaining so much at the start. What you’ve done for me is incredibly generous. Thank you.” Ford said sincerely.

“Think nothin’ of it!” McGucket assured him with a friendly smile. “Can’t ‘spect you to go through the whole class without proper gloves.”

“No, really, you don’t know how much this means to me.”

“Well, I s’pose not. But I imagine ya don’t get somethin’ as simple as a pair o’ gloves offen.”

“N-no.” Ford instinctively hid his hand behind his back.

“Well now, ain’t nothin’ to hide!” McGucket elbowed him. “You could have two heads, fer all I care, with how well you un’erstand superconductors!” He waved goodbye as they exited the lab. “See ya in class on Wednesday!”

Ford found he gained more than just a new pair of gloves that day.

***

The custom gloves were nice, but they didn’t last more than a couple of months before they needed to be replaced again. He spent a lot of time in the Grad-lab talking to Fiddleford over the next few years. By the time graduation rolled around, Ford had learned to make the silicone-rubber compound himself. It was something he continued to use as he moved out to Gravity Falls. Being able to make his own gloves was so convenient! After all these years of being stuck with ill-fitting gloves, or no gloves at all, he’d never really realized how useful they were. And now he could have them whenever he wanted! As time went by, he improved upon the original silicone-rubber formula, making the gloves more durable and long-lasting. 

As he got used to wearing gloves while he worked, the fact that he didn’t have winter gloves became more and more annoying. It was easy to ignore at Backusmore, where it rarely snowed and stayed warm for most of the year. But Oregon was farther north, and Gravity Falls was in the middle of the temperate rainforest. It snowed all winter long. It was so frustrating when he encountered an anomaly out in the snow and couldn’t hold his pen properly to take notes in his journal, either because of his mittens, or because his hands were too cold and numb from not wearing his mittens.

Oh well. As irritating as it was, he was used to it by now.

***

Out in the multiverse, just finding something to keep himself warm at all could be a struggle. Many of the dimensions he visited didn’t have human inhabitants, so finding something to wear on his hands at all was an impossible ask. Ford learned to wrap strips of cloth around his hands and fingers to keep them warm. It worked pretty well, although it took a lot longer to wrap the cloth in such a way that he could still move his fingers individually than it would to simply slip on a glove.

Of course, sometimes he got lucky. When he became ruler of the Finger Dimension, for instance, the people had made him a pair of silk, fur-lined gloves. They were very nice, but obviously more for fashion rather than function. He ended up trading them away for some tools shortly after he was banished by the Finger Dimension’s new ruler. 

But Stanford had bigger things to worry about than the comfort of his hands in his interdimensional travels. 

***

Stanley found the gloves while he was digging around the portal’s control console, looking for any clues as to how to get the thing working again. It was like a punch to the gut, but really, finding anything of Ford’s was like a punch to the gut. Stan still remembered that first Hanukkah when he’d gotten a pair of gloves, and Ford got a pair of mittens. He still remembered all the awkward times in their chemistry class where he’d had to do all the fine measurements even though he was terrible at it, until the teacher looked away long enough for Ford to take the oversized gloves off. He was glad his brother had finally found a way to get his own pair of work gloves.

His mind wandered, unbidden, to the fact that his brother was now lost… somewhere… without them. Without a lot of things he needed. Stan pulled on the gloves and made a fist, watching the extra pinky sleeve flop uselessly. He grimaced. Right. Back to work.

***

When Ford turned sixty-four, he was used to wearing mittens. He’d long ago accepted that the winter months came with a loss of dexterity, and honestly, over the past nine months of sailing through arctic waters, he’d been fine. He knew Stan had his back when he couldn’t properly wrap a finger around his blaster’s trigger. And when he knew he was going to need his blaster, he just didn’t wear them. He hadn’t gotten frostbite yet. In the middle of June, it wasn’t even worth worrying about. He wouldn’t even be thinking about it right now if it wasn’t for the birthday gift his niece had just given him.

“I noticed you weren’t wearing your mittens in a lot of the photos you sent us.” Mabel explained. “And I figured you probably have to use all your fingers for boat stuff, like tying knots, or signaling merpeople! So I made you these!” She handed him a pair of hand-knitted gloves, made up of a mix of red, blue, and  green yarn.

“I wanted to send you some while you were still sailing, but I’d never knitted gloves before, so it took me a while to figure it out.”

“She went through a lot of yarn the last few months.” Dipper agreed. “Like, even more than usual.”

Ford slipped them on. They were a perfect fit.

“How…?”

Stan suddenly started whistling for no reason. Ford shot him a knowing look.

“What? Don’t look at me like that! So maybe I kept an old pair of your gloves while I was workin’ on the portal. Not for, like, sentimental reasons or anything. Good work gloves aren’t cheap! And it’s a good thing I did keep ‘em, they were the perfect model for Mabel. I just had to tell Soos where I left ‘em and asked him to send ‘em to her.”

“I-I don’t know what to say.” Ford’s voice wavered with emotion. "This is-- the fact that you put in all that time and effort, just for me-- and such a thoughtful gift! I-I've never really had a pair of winter gloves before… well, except for that pair from the Finger Dimension, and those were more ceremonial than anything else."

"So you like them?" Mabel asked, eyes bright.

"I absolutely love them. They're perfect!" He hugged her. "Thank you!" He turned to Stan. "Thank both of you!"

"Eh, I didn't do anything." Stan rubbed the back of his neck, embarrassed.

"You provided the model. I have you to thank for the fact that they fit so well."

"I have an idea, if you want to test them out now." Dipper suggested. "Remember that snow spell we tested out last week?"

"Oh, right! Great idea, my boy!"

"Yeah, just test it outside this time, so Soos doesn't have to mop up after you again." Stan advised.

[thetokenmuggle]

the frat boy slayer

Halloween Part Two 

M watched as Jane’s face scrunched up as she watched Minah and Sungjae seemingly get lost in their own world. He looked briefly at their friends but quickly looked away once they started to blur the line between dancing and well whatever it was they were doing.

““That’s disgusting,” Jane muttered. M hummed she did take a large gulp of her drink.

“The drink?” M asked, causing Jane to turn to face him. After Mark and Tara had left an awkward silence feel over the pair, while it wasn’t entirely uncomfortable but it had left them just standing there awkwardly next to each other.“If you want I can go and get you a better one?” He offered.

“ No no that is not necessary the drink is fine, it’s the sight of seeing our best friends pretty much dry humping on the floor that is disgusting,” she said with a shake of her head.

“Oh right,” M said looking over to the dance floor before quickly looking back at Jane, the tips of his ears turning bright red. “Do you wanna?” He murmured nodding to the floor.

“Do I wanna dry hump on the dance floor?” Jane asked, raising an eyebrow,smirking probably at how M’s face now matched his ears.

“I meant dance,” M exclaimed, “Not dry humping not that it is bad or I wouldn’t with you but-“ he rambled before realising he was digging himself a bigger hole. “I am just gonna stop talking,” he mumbled looking down.

Jane laughed, M sincerely hoped it was with him and not at him because he was already drowning in embarrassment. Maybe he was being hopeful but she looked well fond of him. “I would love to dance but quick question, do you even know how to?” she questioned eyeing him up and down. “And about that other thing, well you have to at least take me out for dinner first,” she smirked, M froze his brain malfunctioning as she tried to process what she had just said.

After settling down trying to ignore what Jane had just said M focused on the first part . “Oh fuck no I am awful, like I am not even been modest here,” M said with a laugh. “But you look like you want to and I’ve been a terrible kind of date so the least I can do is at least try ,” he said. “Though i should warn you my go to move is called the drunk giraffe and it will probably embarrass you so,” he shrugged.

“Doubt it I don’t know if you know this about me but I am pretty hard to embarrass,” Jane boasted. “ but you don’t have to feel obligated, you haven’t been an awful date at all,” she said with a soft smile making its way onto her face.

“I want to, I mean how many other opportunities will I have to dance with the prettiest girl here Jane the frat boy slayer,” he said with a grin. “So shall we?” He said holding his hand out. Jane was quick to skip her hand in his. They both tried to ignore how right that felt.

“Now it’s time for you to teach me this drunk giraffe move of yours,” Jane grinned as they found their spot on the dance floor.

“Are you sure you want to see it, really it’s pretty dumb,” M flushed.

“You can’t just bring it up and not show me now, teach me oh wise one,” she giggled.

“Fine,” M sighed in defeat. “First you put your hands up in the air like so,” he said, raising his arms up above his head. “And you shake them and kinda stumble around at the same time,” he said showcasing his dance move. Trying desperately to ignore the eyes that were on him no doubt judging him.

“Like this?” Jane grinned as she repeated the moves giggling as she did so.

“Exactly like that you are quick learner,” he said giving her thumbs up

Yeah, I’ve heard that plenty of times” Jane stated proudly, a smirk crossing her red-tinted lips as she playfully repeated the silly move.

“You’re giving me a run for my money” M laughed.

“Now it’s my turn to teach you a dance move.” Jane said wrapping a hand around M’s wrist and pulling him closer, M hoped she didn’t notice the way he stopped breathing. “Not that I don’t love the drunk giraffe, but if we do that all night long, I feel like my knees will hurt” Jane said, pointing at the pair stilettos she was wearing, M frowned he hadn’t even noticed, he hoped her feet were not hurting.

“Sure. Though you better don’t get your hopes too high, keep no expectations because i am really-” he started to say but Jane had completely zoned out. He waited for a second wondering if her eyes would leave his arms. Was their something wrong with his arms, was it that stupid birth mark?

Jane seemed to break out of her daze slowly turning around searching for something or someone. Within a few minutes the whole room was packed and looked like a moving montage of characters from movie and TV shows. Spiderman, Harry Potter, Darth Vader, Princess Leah, Scarlet O'Hara, angels, fairies, hobbits, witches and wizards, pirates and many other characters all danced to the latest summer hit.

Jane seemed to find what she was looking for, her eyes narrowed at whatever it was and a scoff escaped her lips.

“Is everything ok?” M asked her, looking around, apparently not identifying the source of her disgust yet. She shook her head but started laughing when she overheard a blonde girls response to a frat boy.

“Try rubbing anything of mine and the only wish you'll have, will be a death wish" She snarked before walking away leaving the two boys dressed as Jedi’s laughed their butts at the other frat boy’s - Jaehyun, M soon realized -, rejection.

“Jane,” Jaehyun spoke, clicking his tongue as he drew closer like some sort of Cicada. “Ok i get it, you are upset, but did you really have to bring some random guy to make me jealous?” Jaehyun asked, his eyes shifting up and down, analyzing M from head to toe.

“Do you even realize how delusional you sound just now?” Jane snorted, M felt bad, she was trying really hard not to lose her temper.

“Come on, Jane, there’s no need to flaunt your guy of choice in my face to make me jealous every other week” he said sending a condescending look his way before smirking at Jane. “Not that you’re trying too hard, either.” M was not a violent person but he was definitely considering wiping that smirk of that stupid jerk’s face.

“Because I don’t need to, even any of your hormonal, immature brothers would be better than you,” Jane stated her face contorting in anger. Jaehyun opened his mouth to continue this conversation before Jane stopped him. “Look, I’m sure you have better things to do tonight than to harass me, so why don’t you just leave me out of your egocentric and toxic-? “ Before Jane could complete her sentence, Mark and Johnny materialized behind Jaehyun. They gave Jane an apologetic look murmuring something to their friend and then dragged Jaehyun upstairs. The two jedi’s from before followed their brothers as well, looking rather concerned.

Jane sighed and slowly turned to face him, “I am truly sorry about that” she said briefly glancing into his eyes. “I don’t know what’s wrong with him, other than his ego of course,” she attempted to joke.

“It’s fine,” M mumbled. He paused trying to think he should say anything else or if any comment would make the situation worse. “Not your fault his brain doesn’t work, maybe his hair gel leaked into his brain or- “ he continued, “though i guess you could say the same thing about me right now,” he said pointing his hair.

“No, trust me, he has never used that brain,” Jane said with an eye roll. M’s lip quirked up in a semi smile, he wanted to continue the joke on but couldn’t bring himself to. That was the type of guy Jane was into, not a boy who works in a coffee shop and has a go to dance move is called the drunk giraffe.

An awkward silence fell over them, M knew that he was just a friend but he couldn’t help but feel a bit defeated. That been said he didn’t want Jane to feel bad it wasn’t her fault she had type that wasn’t M. “I don’t suppose you want to teach me that signature move now,” M said awkwardly trying to break the awkwardness, they could at least get back to the jovial mood they had before Jaehyun had to show up.

“Honestly at this point i kinda just want to go home,” Jane said, a defeated sigh slipping from her lips. M nodded, eyes darting down to his feet. Well that was a bruise to his almost non existent ego. “Not because of you,” Jane added quickly, causing M to glance up giving her what he hoped looking a reassuring grin. He was pretty sure she was saying that to make him feel better but he did appreciate the attempt. “Why do I get the feeling you have taken a page out of your bestfriend’s book and are doubting whether you should believe me or not?” Jane said, the tiniest hint of annoyance could be heard in her voice.

“Sungjae doesn’t have a book, its contagious - you should hope Minah had her shots otherwise you are going to have some trouble,” M joked.

“Firstly don’t even joke about that,” Jane said, dramatically shuddering. “And secondly M don’t say things like that in places like this, they would assume you are talking about something else entirely and before you know it everyone on campus will talking about Minah caught something of Sungjae,” she said. M’s eyes widening that is the last thing he wanted to do.

“Excuse you,” Minah said pushing people out of the way Sungjae following behind her, lips noticeable a smeared shade of Minah’s lipstick. M snorted looking at the dumb smile loved up smile that was on his bestfriends face. “I caught what now?”

“Sungjae’s lack self esteem and constant need to question everything i say,” Jane deadpanned, “Apparently the last part was true,” she said narrowing her eyes at Minah.

“And we came all the way over here to check on you after we saw Jaehyun,” Minah said tsking. “Everything okay?” she asked surprisingly seriously.

“It’s fine, he was just being his normal self,” Jane said with an eye roll, “I was just going to head home,” she said. The two girls shared a look, M tried to decipher the silent conversation.

“Same well, actually -” She said in a sing song, “Sungjae and I were planning to head home,” she said with a grin. “But back to his place,” she said.

“We were?” Sungjae questioned before being elbowed in the rib by his girlfriend, “We were!” he said as he rubbed his rib. “Sorry mate,” he said to M.

“Well he could always stay at our place right Jane?” Minah said. “Our couch is very comfortable unless -” Minah continued.

‘Minah,” Jane groaned.

“What? I am just being helpful, i highly doubt he wants to be present for what we are going to do,” Minah hummed. “And did you know M has never actually seen Grease? Maybe you two you should watch it together?”

“You haven’t watched Grease?” Jane gasped in mock horror, turning to look at him with her eyebrows raised. M wasn’t sure why this was that surprising. He was sure he had seen movies Jane had never watched before.

“Well… I…” M briefly eyed Sungjae questioning what he should say. Sungjae shook his head mouthing a silent ‘no.’ “I haven’t,” he admitted after clearing his throat. It made Jane’e eyes widen comically.

“Ok, no. Now I can’t let you go anywhere.” Jane said seriously “You’re coming home with me and you can’t leave until you know everything about Danny Zuko” she said. M nodded supposing it would make sense for him to actually know something about the character he dressed up as.

“I guess I have no other choice” M joked, shrugging “Anything will be better than going home with these two” he pretended to lower his voice, but both Minah and Sungjae could hear his next word perfectly. “Walls are paper thin in our apartment”

Jane and M laughed causing Sungjae to slightly blush.

“And they’re already so fucking loud” Jane scrunched up her nose. “I really feel obligated to save you from that torture” Jane linked an arm through M’s and started to walk toward the exit with Minah and Sungjae following them closely.

“We can order something to eat or buy something on our way” M suggested tentatively.

“That works. And since she’s the reason you can’t go home, we can drink one of Minah’s champagne bottles. I doubt she would mind” Jane looked over her shoulder smirking teasingly.

“Hey! You two better keep your hands off that bottle. I’ve been saving it for months!” Minah grumbled as they walked out the frat house.

Jane was about to retort when a gust of wind whipped past them and lifted the dried fall leaves off the sidewalk, scattering them all over the street. She shivered and let go of M’s arm in favor of hugging herself and trying to rub away the chill.

“It’s freezing, you’re going to catch a cold wearing that,” they turned to see Sungjae taking his jacket off and placing it carefully over Minah’s arms. M bit back a laugh if he knew Sungjae as well as he thought he did, his being dying to do that since the ghostbuster wolf whistled when they arrived.

“Thank you, babe,” Minah said sliding her hand around her boyfriend’s neck and pulled him in for a deep kiss. Charming.

“This has truly been a horror night” Jane complained to M, clicking her tongue in disapproval and hoping this one was the last time —at least for the day— that she got to see her friends making out like two horny teenagers. “Thanks for tagging along and sharing my pain” she said with a faint smile “It would’ve been an awful night without you.” Jane said.

It was like M had no control over his face because he was smiling from ear to ear. He didn’t want to seem like eager puppy waving his tail excitedly at the smallest amount of praise yet here was surely smiling like a fool because he might have made Jane’s night a bit more bearable.

“Poke the dimple,” he was snapped out of his thoughts by his best friend chanting rather ghoulishly. “Seriously I am not close enough, Jane you need to do it , just -“ he continued making a poking gesture.

“I am not just going to poke someone’s face” Jane said rolling her eyes . Though admittedly she was tempted to.

“Not everyone is obsessed with my dimples mate,” M said with a laugh while Sungjae whined about missed opportunities.

“Not everyone is but I certainly know somebody who is,” Minah said giggling. Completely ignoring the glare her friend was sending her.

“Don’t you two have places to be,” Jane said with a huff. It was getting cold and Minah’s “help” was not helping at all.

“Hmm we do,” Minah said nodding. To Jane it looked like she was contemplating whether staying here and helping/terrorising her was worth delaying sex. The answer would ofcourse be it’s never worth delaying sex. “Come on baby we should let this two have their movie night ,” Minah said to Sungjae who had already wrapped an arm around her waist. “You better keep M there until lunch time tomorrow actually, pretty sure we are going to be busy all morning too,” she said with a wink loud enough for everyone to hear. M nose wrinkled in disgust , looking over to see his friend completely red burying his face in Minah’s neck to hide his embarrassment. It didn’t last long though because with in a few seconds the couple retreated down the street stopping every couple of feet kiss each other.

“Gross,” Jane muttered before a leather jacket was placed over her shoulders. She looked over to see M shifting nervously, ears slightly redder.

“I was going to offer earlier but those two happened,” M said scratching the back of his neck. “Is it okay because I know I am not your -“ he was stopped when Jane held a hand up.

“It’s more than okay, I was freezing,” Jane said, putting the jacket on properly. “ Are you sure your going to be okay though?”

M was about to reply but his best friend for it was the perfect time to call out that if Jane was wondering M liked his eggs scrambled in the morning, loud enough that random passerby’s looked over at them.

“Oh my god,” Jane said with an embarrassed laugh. “ How much would you really miss him? Be honest ,” she said causing M to chuckle.

“He grows on you but I think after that we definitely need to drink that bottle of champagne you mentioned earlier,” M said with a smirk. “Also I may happen to know Sungjae’s Uber eats account and his credit card details so I think he just volunteered to pay for our food,” he grinned.

“Well in that case we should get going,” Jane laughed. Her eyes drifted down to see M’s hand hestitaing to grab hers , she rolled her eyes linking them. “So on the way to my apartment you can tell me about all the other teen classics you never watched,” she said ignoring the way her heart seemed to race as M’s hands tightened around hers.

“Well you might hate me for this but I’ve never seen Mean Girls,” M said as Jane turned to him with a shocked look. “Let me guess we are going to be watching that next time,” he said his eyes widening as he realised that he implied there would be more of these types of nights.

“Oh no sweetie we are watching that tonight, next time I am making you sit through my favourite French flicks,” Jane giggled.

[missjoker96]

Fanfiction about Arthur Fleck ♡

That's my first short story about him and the girl he loves. (The girl can be every female reader too)

Enjoy it :)

A Carnival Party in town. ~Part 1~

I woke up in the arms of my boyfriend, my true love. He was still asleep and I placed a kiss upon his lips before I went into the kitchen to make some coffee and breakfast. I was still a bit tired and looked out of the window. It was a sunny day and I knew that this day is going to be a great one. All I could hear were cars, people and the police. Something you can always hear in Gotham City. This city was so awful, full of dirt and rats, but my love to Arthur couldn't change my mind to leave. He is part of my life and a life without him would mean a big hole in my heart.

Once the coffee and the breakfast were ready I went to Arthur and woke him up with kisses and compliments. He deserved all kindness in this cruel world of pain. And I was there to make his life better. Good that I work in Arkham otherwise I would have never met him. Gotham is a big city and the city with the most villains and crimes. Back to myself and Arthur. I sat in beside him and stroked his curly brown hair. His hair was so soft and sweaty and his face looked peaceful and somehow boyish. My lips were touching cheeks and I whispered into his ears.

"Arthur. It's time to wake up my love. I have prepared coffee and breakfast for you."

He slowly moved and he opened his eyes. His green eyes stared at me and a warm smile appeared on his face. "Good morning Jenny. How late is it?" I smiled and kissed his lips before I answered him. "It is time to get up from bed, because I have prepared coffee and a wonderful breakfast for us." Arthur smiled and pulled me closer for another kiss before he got up from bed and into his clothe's. He wore dark trousers, a bright shirt and an armless dark red vest as usual. Did he want to look perfect for me? I even love him with sweaty hair, his pyjama's and his naked upper body. Oh how hot he looked like that! Jenny, you should keep your sexual thoughts in your head now and enjoy breakfast with your boyfriend. Arthur went into the bathroom and washed his face while I went back into the kitchen. Our little cat, well Arthur's cat jumped on my lap because she wanted to be stroked and fed. I stroked her head gently and prepared her food. "Here. That's for you Soda." She was happy and ate her food. My eyes were fixed at the orange kitten and I remembered how I adopted this cute little thing. My thoughts drifted away and I took the morning newspaper until Arthur appeared beside me. Nothing exciting to read until one thing. A Carnival Party in Gotham City? How did this happen? I mean I loved to dress up, but here in Gotham? And it was today and sounded like fun. My idea was crazy and I would tell it to my darling and right there he was. He came towards me and kissed my lips before he sat down beside me.

"What are you reading there, Jenny?" He asked me curious and drank from his cup filled with coffee. My smile grew and I knew that I was blushing.

"Have you ever been at a Carnival Party before? I ask, because there is a Carnival Party today in Gotham. I would like to go there with you Arthur." My smile grew wider and my heart raced faster, because I was very excited now. His facial features became curious and he took another sip from his coffee before he answered my question.

"I fear that I have never been at a Carnival Party before, but it sounds like fun. If you wish to go there, then we are going there together. What is the dress code?"

I read the article once again and couldn't find a dress code which made our costume choice easier. If I would have asked him now what costume he wanted to wear, then the fun would have stopped. The answer was easy, but it was me who wanted to go the Carnival Party. Arthur would only go with me and suddenly his smile grew wider. I guess he had the same thought like I had. "What is on your mind now, Arthur?" I knew this smile far too well and crossed my arms and placed them on the table.

"I could be Joker and you could be my Miss Joker. How does that sound for you?"

This surprised me really. To hear those words from his lips as if he could read my thoughts. How could I tell him that I had the same thoughts and exactly the same. Maybe I should answer with very sweet and kind words. I could swear that my cheeks where pink from all the blushes and took his hand to place a kiss on it. "I would love to be your Miss Joker. It would be a honor for me. And we should show Gotham that we belong together, right?" My belly growled and I had butterflies, because of my Artie. He made me lucky, only he was the reason for me to keep me sane from all the shit outside. And the look on his face told me that he was more than happy to dress up like two clown's. We both would be the eye catchers out on the streets, but that was the point. Two Joker's would make more trouble than only one. And I would be the female version of himself. I could imagine already how he would turn me into a happy clown. It was only a question of time and Arthur's smile turned into a laugher, but a happy one.

"Perfect. We both will look like the cutest and prettiest couple. I can't believe my luck with you, Jenny." His voice was so happy and he took my hands into his own. Of course he was happy and I was the reason. He deserved nothing more than my love and happiness. Finally I began to eat the breakfast with pan cakes and jam. I made them, because of my Artie baby. He had to get more weigh and since he doesn't take his meds anymore, he had appetit again. And this made me proud and happy. I couldn't watch him without eating. It broke my heart to see him like this and only his smile made me smile too. Something what we both share together. Arthur smiled at me while he ate his pan cakes and sipped his coffee. I could tell that he had again something on his minds, because I knew his happy face already too well.

"When does the party start?" He asked with such a happy and curious voice. I looked at him and then read the article from the morning newspaper again. It began at twelve o'clock and I took a look at the time. Oh my god it was already half past ten and we wanted to have enough time to prepare ourselves for the party. "It starts at twelve o'clock, but it's already half past ten. Should we get dressed up already?" My eyes moved from the article back to Arthur who formed a wide smile on his face. I knew that already what it was meant for and he got up from his seat. "Give me twenty minutes. I have to look perfect as Joker." He grinned and went into the bathroom and closed the door up. All I heard now was his favourite song from Frank Sinatra called 'That's Life'. I loved that song and began to dance to it like Arthur always did. And I'm sure he danced right now while he prepared himself as Joker. I wish I could watch it how he put his make up on and how he turned into Joker, but he wanted to surprise me and I had to be patient and took Soda on my lap again. She meowed and cuddled closer, because she wanted to get attention and I gave it to her. I hummed the lines of his favourite song and suddenly he came out from the bathroom and into the living room. I heard his foot steps and his voice.

"May I introduce you to Joker?" He smiled widely with an elegant move and I stared at him in surprise. He looked so handsome and beautiful and this red suit, with a green shirt and a yellow vest was the perfect combination for the clown prince. His hair was green now and combed back with a hair brush and hair gel. And his face was covered in white clown make up and his eyes got blue triangles above and below. His mouth turned into a wide red smile and his nose was red like a clown nose. And above his blue triangles were two red eye brows. He was the most beautiful clown I've ever seen in my whole life. "You look extreme beautiful and sexy, Joker. I don't know what to say." I smiled and took Soda on my arms and took Arthur's hands. We danced a little and Soda looked surprised at the clown, because the kitten has never seen him as clown before. Arthur stroked Soda's head gently and touched my nose gently. "It's time for you to become Miss Joker." He sounded exciting and I smiled widely and put Soda on the ground. I couldn't await it to become Miss Joker and offered my hand. He leaded me into the bathroom where he prepared a chair for me to sit down. And he got the face paint ready and the green hair colour. "Oh my god. I am so excited now, really. I have never been a clown before." Arthur laughed gently and put a towel around my neck to protect me from green stains. I turned the radio on to listen to some music while he worked on my hair colour. It turned green and he looked into the mirror at my face. "You will be the most beautiful and cutest clown girl the world have ever seen. How does that sound my love?" I felt butterflies in my belly at his compliments and smiled into the mirror image of Joker, my Joker.

"Thank you Joker." It was nice to watch how I slowly turned into a clown. The hair colour dried on my natural hair and he washed it off again once it was fully dried. And then he combed it back like he did it with his own hair and used some hair gel to fix it. And then he covered my face with white clown make up where I had to close my eyes. It tickled on my skin, but I enjoyed the transformation into Miss Joker. I also got blue triangles for my eyes, a wide red smile, a red nose and red eye brows to match with his face. He didn't let me see myself until I was ready, because he also got me his outfit in the female edition. It included a green blouse, a yellow armless vest, a red jacket and a red skirt. And at last he gave me white socks and brown shoes. Once I have seen myself from mirror, I looked even more surprised. "I look incredible! Thank you so much Mr Joker. Let me kiss your lips now. The make up is waterproof, right?" I didn't ask and pulled him closer to kiss his lips and by all luck, the make up didn't smear and looked like before I kissed him. "You look beautiful, my clown princess. Is Miss Joker ready to leave with her Mr Joker?" This question made me smile and I agreed with him. We grabbed our money and left the appartment. I took his offered arm and smiled at him once again. "I am ready. Let us show them that we both are the prettiest couple in Gotham City. They shall see Mr and Miss Joker." We both took the elevator and once we left the building, people began to stare at us. I felt like a complete different person and for the first time we both felt recognized. A few were looking at us with big eyes and a few were pointing with a finger at us and I heard them talking about us.

"Look at them! A clown couple is out today. Don't they look pretty together?"

I smiled as I heard compliments here and there and looked at Arthur who seemed to be happy too. And he offered me a cigarette, because he lit one up for himself. I couldn't say no and smoked one. We both made our way to the subway station and while we both went there, the compliments of the passing people grew and a few followed us. "Joker, I think a few of our fans are following us. Why does this happen?" Of course I whispered into his ears and he only grinned and enjoyed those people watching us. I could understand him, because he never felt so good before. He was a loner and a freak like I was, but now we were together and famous too. "Don't worry Miss Joker. They are following us, because they like us. And a few are going to this Carnival Party too." He was probably right and I felt a warm squeeze of his hand on mine.

"Hey Joker! Did you found your Miss Joker? Can I take a picture of you both?"

Arthur agreed and made a funny pose and I joined him. It was funny and I threw my finished cigarette on the ground. I stomped with my shoe on it and then they took a few pictures of us. They wanted to ask us so many questions, but the subway arrived and we winked them. "Maybe we see us at the Carnival Party later." I said that to our fans and got into the subway with Arthur who waved them too with a laugh on his face. The subway was full of people and a few were dressed up too. I could see people dressed as cat, prince and princess, super hero, but we both were the only clown's. I wonder why. I mean clown's were famous at carnival and also in the circus. But Arthur and I were no ordinary clown's. We were comedy clown's and modern. Even in the subway we got compliments and I couldn't help but blush and lean gently on my beloved boyfriend's shoulder. "This is wonderful, Arthur. I have never felt like this before. Thank you for making me yours my love." I kissed his lips again and held his hand in mine while I watched his beautiful green eyes. I loved his eye colour so much.

"I should thank you. You accept me how I am and you understand my laugh condition and my mental illness. To be true. I never thought that a girl like you would ever recognize me and love me. I am thankful Jenny, I mean Miss Joker. I love you so much." Suddenly I felt his hands stroking mine and he kissed me one more time on my lips. The make up was still there like before and we both were happy than ever before. Our fans were applauding and one of them said something really sweet.

"You both should become Carnival Queen and Carnival King, because you both are pretty cute Mr and Miss Joker."

My smile grew and I thanked the girl who gave us compliments. We wanted to talk with a few of our fans a little more, but the subway has arrived our station and we got out. Arthur offered his arms again and I took his offer. It was time to arrive the Carnival Party and it wasn't far away from the subway station. We had to walk about ten minutes and could hear already the music from a far. And by all luck we met a circus clown who asked if we are a couple and we both agreed. "We are Mr and Miss Joker, sir. Are you from the Carnival Party?" Arthur was curious and held my hand all the time, because this was his way of showing people that we belonged together. The circus clown agreed and wrote our names on a piece of paper before he threw it into his bottle full of names.

"Yes, I am from the Carnival Party. And my job is it to find as many couples as possible for our tombola. And you both have very good chances to become our Carnival Queen and King. Good luck you both!"

The circus clown continued his way and we both too. Finally we arrived the Carnival Party and I stopped in front of the entry, because I wanted to show everybody here how much I loved my Joker. I pulled him closer and looked into his eyes.

"I love you so terribly much my handsome Joker. And I am glad that we found each other, because now we can show them all who we are and only you are the reason why I am here." I kissed his lips again and he deepened my kiss. We could have stayed like this for hours. And I wouldn't mind that, but we wanted to enjoy the party and I heard the most beautiful words of Arthur. "My dear Miss Joker. You don't know how happy I am to be with you, no matter where we both are. You took my loneliness away, my sorrows and also a part of my negative thoughts. Let me spend my life with you from now on. I love you too." My heart raced faster as I heard those beautiful words and felt his lips one more time on mine before we both entered the Carnival Party. Hand in hand and with a feeling of happiness and true love, we showed everybody how we felt...

(This story continues with a part 2)

#ArthurFleck #JokerFanfiction #MissJoker #MrJoker #CarnivalParty #LoveFeelings #TrueHappiness

[dashielldeveron]

Viper IV: Suggestio Falsi

Warnings: violence, swears, the law.

Summary: Tom is hot in this new environment.

“I’m on it, Ms. Pham,” you said, weaving through the museum workers. Though all present were setting up the same gem exhibit for the Morgan Memorial Hall of Gems, you had developed a nervous tick of mouth twitching at being out of place. Displays for lesser gems were slowly taking shape, and labels for empty cases described gems and jewellery that were being shipped in from across the globe. The hexagonal display for the Gawain diamond stood centre with an ivory pallet on which for it to lay whenever it arrived, and a jovial gem specialist adjusted the exhibition lights at your direction.

“I’m back with the gobo and gels,” you said, handing them to the specialist, “Do you really think a gobo will show off the colour correctly?”

He shook his head. “It’s what Ms. Pham wants.” He held the two gels under the light separately and then layered.

“Is a whole damn light show the standard for the museum?”

“Only when it’s something spectacular, and if you’ll allow me, and I’m sorry if this is too much, but you’re something special if you can get the world’s most recent major gem here this quickly.”

His crooked grin made you smile, and you scratched the underside of your chin. “That’s very kind of you. I’ve been really impressed with all of your input on the matter, or, at least, what Ms. Pham’s permitted you to do.”

“I both love and fear that woman,” said the specialist, slipping in the gobo and a gel at the same time.

“I feel you. Y’know, I hear there was a bit of a fracas the other day when her bisc—”

“Excuse me,” said a cold voice from behind you, and Tom was locking eyes with the gem specialist when you turned. His hand wrapped tightly around your arm, where the rolled cuff of your blazer creased at your elbow. “I need to borrow my lawyer, if you don’t mind.”

Already guiding you away to a secluded spot between display walls by the end of the sentence, Tom let his grip on you fall once he had your full attention. “You aren’t answering your phone,” he said.

“Ms. Pham confiscated it.”

“You are a grown woman. You are capable of having your phone on you for your goddamn job,” he said, catching you make eye contact with the gem specialist over his shoulder.

Tom began to turn towards him, but you stopped him by saying, “What do you need me for, Holland?”

His eyes sharpened, and he gave you a close-lipped smile. “I sent Harrison and Zendaya and Macca and co. on their missions this morning, and that means it’s just you and me. I. You and I,” he said at your raising of an eyebrow, “I’m going upstate for a few days to check out what that grass is.” He lowered his voice as an employee walked by. “And you’re coming with me. I don’t want you holed down here alone when we have someone with a mean kill streak after you.”

“This was not worth coming to the Natural History Museum for.”

“The lab analysing the grass is my brothers’.”

You ran your tongue over your lower lip. “I’m meeting your brothers?”

“You’re meeting my family,” Tom said, his brow furrowed, “I don’t trust any of the local hotels enough. We’re leaving in two hours, and you need to go pack. We’re driving from Osseous. And pack something—” Tom fumbled for a moment. “—pack street clothes. Not—not what you normally wear to work.”

You plucked at your blouse. “What’s wrong with my work clothes?”

“You’ve got to be casual. My family doesn’t like me bringing my work everywhere I go, so they don’t know you work for me,” he said, crossing his arms.

Crossing arms meant closed body language, probably meaning defence? Oh, Christ, what’s he not wanting to tell you? “Okay, lay it on me,” you said, “What’s the catch?”

Tom forced his expression into a scowl and straightened his back. “I told them we were dating.”

***

Tom rang the doorbell four times in quick succession. “You’re about to see me act in a way you are never to disclose to anyone under any circumstances, Dr. Prine included. This residence is top secret, my family’s business highly furtive. You are to act as I do in this undercover operation at your discretion.”

“Am I about to see the notorious Thomas Holland as a human person? I didn’t know he was capable as so much as a heartbeat.”

“You’re not allowed to speak to me that way.”

“I get it, Holland,” you said, setting your duffel bag on the front step, “It’s your family. They see you differently. I won’t think any less of you.”

His shoulders slackened, and he put his hands in his pockets. “Much appreciated, but there’s another thing: you’ve got to call me Tom.”

You scrunched up your nose. “I can’t do that—!”

A short woman with laugh lines and crow’s feet opened the front door, and she pulled Tom into a hug, making him drop his suitcase on accident. “Tom, you’re here early. It’s so good to see you.” She squeezed him with vigour before released him and held out a hand to you. “And who’s this?”

“Mum, this is my girlfriend,” Tom said, and he hesitated.

Tom and you hadn’t talked about how you would be addressed on the car ride upstate. You couldn’t say Viper, because that would connect you with his work, and you damn well couldn’t say your real name, because sure, like you were going to share with people who post carelessly to social media.

“Just call me V.” You shook his mother’s hand. “Everybody does.”

“Well, then, it’s nice to meet you, V. I’m Tom’s mum. You can call me Nicola.”

“I’m not sure I can do that morally,” you said.

“You’ll be fine,” she said, “Come inside.”

***

“The lab’s been closed for hours now. We’ll have to go in the morning.” Tom hunched over to open the refrigerator.

“Unless Sam or Harry could identify it here without any equipment. It might be something common we don’t recognise.”

“Christ, Viper, are you that keen to get out of here?” He pulled out a soft drink for himself and tossed you a capri-sun.

“This place makes my anxiety spike,” you said, muddling the catch but not letting the pouch touch the floor.

“C’mon, they’re not that bad,” Tom said, cracking open his can with a hiss. “All right, perhaps my dad was too invasive.”

You poked the straw through the pouch. “How am I supposed to know how we met or what our first date was? I don’t have any idea what your family qualifies as normal!”

“Though you were pretty slick with that ‘PDA disgusts me’ comment,” he said with a slurp, “Covers a lot.”

“Well, it does,” you said, and you lifted yourself to sit on the countertop. “If I’m letting myself be vulnerable for someone, I don’t want an audience.”

Tom took a deep drink and had to thump his chest for the carbonation. “Noted.”

“But seriously, Holland, I want to get this done as soon as possible. I don’t want to leave my cat alone for too long.”

“What’s your cat’s name?”

“Trout,” you said, “and she is perfect.”

“I bet.” Tom fiddled with the aluminium tab until it popped off the can. He set it into a crystal bowl full of them. “Wait until you meet Tessa.”

“Where is she, the backyard?”

“No, she’s at my place in the city,” said Tom, sitting on the island across the way from you. He swung his legs. “You really should meet her sometime, though.”

“Providing I can survive one more minute of this,” you said, “Not too fond of pretending I’m back at Polson’s firm.”

“It’s not too much longer.” Tom leant back on one hand to finish the rest of his drink, tilting his head back to show his Adam’s apple, bobbing with each swallow.

You decided it was okay to stare discreetly, for you two were in a candid setting, but you had to consciously make yourself stop deep-throating your capri-sun straw.

When Tom left his hair ungelled, his unruly curls added two inches to his height, and he had a habit of ruffling them up to make them messier (it was something you had picked up on in the mornings when his gel still held; his hand would go to his hair by default only to stop himself before it reached it). He wasn’t in a damn suit for once, although his casual was too stiff to be fun: a patterned, short-sleeved button down and khakis. You would pay good money to see him in a pair of close-fitting jeans.

But then, you’d been a surprise, too. You’d shown up to the Osseous Enterprises building in your Mom-is-in-town-so-let’s-show-her-the-highlights-of-the-city-to-prove-we’re-doing-fine-and-not-living-like-a-sewer-rat outfit, and Tom had actually, legitimately fucking frowned at you before telling you that you looked nice.

“So, Haz and Z are off scouring seedy joints in upper Manhattan,” you said, setting your empty pouch aside, “Where’s Macca? You never told me.”

“Isadora’s murderer was seen going into the underground,” Tom said, gesturing for you to toss him your trash, and he caught it. “I sent Maccabruno and a couple of crews to spread out in the subway tunnels. He might be camping in an abandoned one.”

“It’s for sure the same guy?”

“Unless there’s another guy with a penchant for dressing in black, covering his face, and carrying a poorly concealed polaroid camera,” said Tom. He bent forward to throw the trash into a garbage can in an island cabinet.

“That feels suspicious. Too obvious,” you said, “Like it’s a lackey drawing us in.”

“Regardless, I want to follow every lead we have. If it’s a trap, it’s a trap. No damage done.”

Somehow, you doubted that, and you didn’t have time to process it. Nicola came into the kitchen with Paddy, and Tom jumped down from the island, hastily signalling for you to do the same.

When Sam and Harry finally got home, you strategically cornered them between white wicker chairs on the back porch, much to Tom’s chagrin.

Harry leant backwards in the wicker chair, creaking beneath him. “What’s got you so desperate?”

“She’s another one of Tom’s girls, Harry,” said Sam, sitting on the arm of Harry’s chair, “She’s looking for connections in case it doesn’t work out.”

Tom was suddenly very interested in tying his shoelaces.

You dug the grass sample out of your civilian purse. “I’d like you to take a look at this, please.” You handed the bag to Harry, who took it and held it up to the fading sunset. “If there’s anything you can tell me about it without our having to go to the lab, that’d be much appreciated.”

Sam raised an eyebrow at that and hunched over to look at the grass, too. “Not much we can do if we’re not there.”

“But I know what this is,” Harry said, shaking the grass a little, “It’s one of my side projects.” He turned his attention to you. “Who are you, again?”

“I never said.” You sat next to Tom on a wicker lounger but did not look at him, let alone sit close enough to touch him. If an outsider saw the scene, he might think you didn’t know the other was alive. “But he trusts me,” you said, jerking your head in Tom’s direction.

At Tom’s approval, Sam sucked in through his teeth and said, “All right. Then what is it, Harry?”

“Maltangrass. It’s a cover crop,” said Harry, handing the sample bag back to you, “for hops, mostly in New England. With growing reports of hospitalisations from this year’s local breweries, I’ve been looking into it, along with a few lads at the lab.”

You held the grass up to the light, but still, no veins shone through. Just plain grass. Didn’t look like anything special.

“Turns out maltangrass isn’t affected by glyphosate. That’s a common weed killer,” said Harry, “and the hops that have been growing in the same patches are now used to glyphosate, so there’s a high level of weed killer in beers being made this year. Don’t drink it. Obviously, I guess.”

“The levels of glyphosate on this grass could in no way have killed those nine,” Tom said to you.

“No, it might have,” said Sam, “Why don’t you try drinking something that’s unregulated and about ten percent poison?”

“I’ll pass,” said Tom, standing at the sound of his mother calling him in to help serve lasagne, “Be back in a moment. Fuckin’ behave, guys.”

The second the porch door slid shut, Sam snapped his head in your direction and said, “So, you know about the mob, yeah?”

You picked at a hangnail. “Of course.”

“And you’re dating Tom. What do you do there?”

You winced, flicking the hangnail away and dabbing at the blood. “The same as his other girls, I expect.”

“Yet you don’t strike me as the type to ho around,” said Harry, leaning forward to rest his elbows on his knees and clasp his hands. He actually said that. Incredible. “He texted us that you were a lawyer. Do you work for Osseous in the fake business department, or something?”

“Do you work for Osseous?” You flicked away more blood.

“How long have you and Tom been dating?” asked Sam, ignoring you.

“Let’s see. About four months, I suppose? Maybe a little under that,” you said.

Sam smirked. “How far into that did you fuck him?”

“My dude,” you said with all the grace and charm of a lawyer under pressure, “I invite you to shut the fuck up. I’m a kissless virgin.”

The sound of choking came from the sliding door, and there Tom held his hand over his nose and mouth while diet coke dripped down his chin. He wiped it off, sniffed, and said, “Dinner’s ready.”

Harry elbowed you as you made your way to the kitchen and muttered, “Better get a move on, then. You’ve got something he wants if he’s letting you be this much of an uptight bitch.”

After Nicola’s fucking fabulous lasagne at dinner (during which you, seated next to Tom, had to pester him to stop fucking knocking against you with his arm while he ate, to which his mother made a jocund apology about his being so muscular, much to your embarrassment), Tom escorted you upstairs to his bedroom.

“It’s nothing special,” he said, putting his hands in his pockets (again. Was he ashamed of his family? He wouldn’t be the first), “Our other house has a guest room, but you’ll have to deal with my old room for tonight, so my mum says.”

“Didn’t think a mob boss would cater to parental whims.”

“Yeah, well, they’re family. They still see me as a little kid, no matter what I’ve done to prove otherwise,” said Tom, idly rubbing dust off of a boxing trophy on his shelf.

Yes, there were childhood trophies and teenage posters on the walls, along with a packed bookshelf you had to go through later, but the thing that made your heart palpitate—lo! Behold! You looketh and beheld there was only one bed, the same as in the storybooks and songs of old.

Great. Fabulous. No, really, it was great, because if everything plays out, it means that you’d get to the next level of intimacy with Tom, which hopefully would mean he’d actually express emotions at some point or vent to you about his problems outside of the bare minimum. And it would all start by supposedly accidentally cuddling.

Obviously, the first thing to do is argue about who gets the bed with him relenting to you, and then you’d compromise, say that if he stays on one side, he can sleep there with you. Then, by morning! Lo! There, his arm would snaketh around thy waist, and his mouth pressed against thy nape!

Perfect.

And you knew what to do. Very casually, you told him that he could have the bed tonight and that you’d sleep on the floor.

“Okay,” said Tom, and he grabbed his suitcase and went into the bathroom, locking the door.

You blinked twice. “Excuse me?”

***

While Tom slept facing the wall, you sat on the floor against the bookshelf and typed up your latest Epiales article. You had a deadline in two days, and you weren’t going to sleep, anyhow—but at least Tom was sleeping. He probably felt safer here than anywhere else.

You closed your laptop and ran your fingertips over the spines of Tom’s old books, some of which you recognised and some not. You pulled out a thin, yellow, children’s book that turned out to be on astronomy and flipped through it. Charming. The book was published more than four decades ago, and the star charts were hand-drawn, so how accurate was it? Couldn’t hurt to check.

You got up and unlocked the window, pausing when Tom shifted in his sleep, and you climbed onto the roof, opening the book at random to a constellation, lit up by the light of your phone. Okay, not that one, you’re in the northern hemisphere.

“You’re not slick,” came Tom’s voice from the window. He was leaning on his elbows out of the frame and smiling.

“Did I wake you?”

“Yeah, but it doesn’t matter,” he said, and he grunted when he pulled himself onto the roof. He brushed the grit off his hands on his pyjama pants and sat next to you. “Why are you still up?”

“I found an astronomy book of yours.” You showed him the cover. “I wanted to check it out. I was kind of into astronomy when I was really young, but it seems like most of it has left my brain.”

“I’m about the same,” Tom said, crossing his legs. One of his knees grazed yours. “It’s lots of Greek myths I used to know. If you prompted me with a few details, I could probably finish the stories.”

You turned off your phone light and looked up. “Somehow, I’m okay with not knowing all the stories.” And that revelation startled you. How could you be content not knowing the cosmological but needing every detail of the mundane?

Tom and you sat in silence for a bit before he broke it: “Makes me wish Star Wars were real.”

You laughed through your nose and told him to get fucked.

You could hear his smile in the dark. “All right, then. It really is late, though. We should go to sleep.”

You moved to hug your knees to your chest and to set the book aside. “I’ll go to sleep when I’m ready, so fuck off,” you said, grinning.

“Viper,” Tom said, close enough for his body heat to meld with yours in the cool of the early morning (so close but yet so far), “I’m getting worried about you. When are—”

A harsh, stentorian alarm blared from your phone, and from the bedroom came the same from Tom’s.

“Is it an amber alert?” Tom asked, tilting his head to read over your shoulder.

BOMB THREAT ENABLED FOR MANHATTAN, QUEENS, BROOKLYN, AND THE BRONX. ONE DETONATION HAS ALREADY OCCURRED WITHIN THE SUBWAY SYSTEM. AVOID UPPER MANHATTAN AND TRAVEL BY FOOT OR VEHICLE. EFFECTIVE FOR 48 HOURS.

“Oh, my God,” said Tom, “That’s got to be Macca. Holy fuck.” He stood, taking your hand to help you up, and he held it to escort you roughly back into the bedroom.

You shook your hand loose once he released his tight grip on you. You started shoving your stuff back into your duffel while Tom dismissed his alert and called Harrison.

“Do we have intel on anything? How have we lost contact with them all?” Tom was saying as he came out of his bathroom with his toothbrush.

Within ten minutes, you and Tom got into the car and sped off in the early hours of the morning. Shortly after you got out of the neighbourhood, you got an update on the bomb threat: there was a blurry picture near the site, and in yellow spray paint were the words Epiales sends his regards.

Well.

Um.

What.

Okay.

Yes.

Seriously?

We’ll deal. C’mon, get to it. You can do it.

I promise.

Tom’s hurried conversation with Harrison faded, your heartbeat overpowering everything else. You wrote the shortest entry to date for your website:

Anything not written for this website, the regular New York Times column, or the Prine Law Journal and claiming my authorship was not written by me and should not be credited as such.

You were processing that it was the same yellow spray paint as Tom hung up the phone and gritted his teeth. “Maccabruno’s dead,” he said, keeping his eyes on the road, “Everyone I sent on that job is.”

***

The sun blazed down on Macca’s funeral. Quiet. Stifling. There were a lot of familiar faces there, most of them from work, both mafia and from the Osseous front, although a few threw you for a bit: there was the barista who worked the Starbucks six blocks down, the woman who begged on the corner three up two over.

Harrison and Zendaya were near the casket covered in flowers with Macca’s sister, who was one of the few openly weeping. You could not make out what they were saying, but as the two of them spoke to his sister, they held hands. You narrowed your eyes. Their mission must have been singular.

You glanced at Tom’s hand, at his side in a loose fist with his watch slipping down his wrist over the back of his hand. If there ever were a time to hold his hand, it’d be now. No one wants to be reminded they’re alone when someone close to them dies.

Instead, you nudged his shoulder with yours. When he looked your way, you gave him a weak smile, which he returned. His eyes fell to your waist, to your flask sitting on your hip. “Let me have some of that,” Tom said, hoarseness creeping into his voice.

“Your funeral,” you said, unlatching the holder and sneaking it to him. Both of you jolted away when your fingers touched.

“Thanks,” he said, and he threw his head back, taking too big of a gulp before sputtering and swallowing whatever he didn’t spew out. “What the fuck is that?” He shoved it back against your chest.

“Pure espresso,” you said, and you mindlessly returned the flask to your belt after a sip. “What, you thought I would be drunk on the job?”

Tom wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “I figured you’d want to take the edge off.”

“Nah,” you said, “Not ‘sposed to drink on antidepressants.”

“You’re depressed?” Tom bothered to look at you. “You have depression?”

“I’m not taking pills for fun.”

Crossing his arms, Tom prodded a loose clump of grass with the tip of his shoe. “I didn’t know.”

“I’m extremely high-functioning,” you said, “It’s all right. Really. It’s only something you’d notice if you were paying close attention.”

You crossed your arms, too, and stared at the casket, the pastor’s words about Macca’s life blandly floating through one ear and out the other. You rubbed at the sweat at your hairline. At least the reception would have some satisfying carbs. Preferably cold ones.

“Then maybe it’s time I started paying close attention,” said Tom, taking a small, side step to be nearer to your ear. His elbow and upper arm pressed against yours, and he spoke in undertones so that none of the surrounding guests could hear him. “I have noticed when you’ve been right and Macca wasn’t these past few months. Your instincts could compete, but your brains make you come out on top. Often, you had better judgment.”

Tom licked his lips, and he turned wholly to face you, taking you by the shoulders to make you face him straight on. “Congratulations on the promotion. You’re my new consigliere,” he said, tapping each of your shoulders—knighting you. “Don’t let me down.”

***

suggestio falsi—false suggestion, a false statement made in the negotiation of a contract.

***

taglist: @hollandroos @starksparker @paradoxparker @gryfinpuffs @bi-writes @presidentbttrflyfreak @stealth-spiderr @astronomyparkers @parsleysbaby @wheremyotpat @infamous-webhead @pparkerwrites @laurfangirl424 @softspideys @gendryia @plethoraofpuppies @laucontrerasv @qxeen-of-hearts  @shootingstarsaretearsofheaven

[jack-andthestalk]

Stuck on you, Family ties, Chapter 23.

Thanks to @balfeheughlywed, she gives it to me straight, but still manages to be lovely at the same time.  

Also thank you to @ladyviolethummingbird for her encouraging words when I really thought I would just quit!

I have tried to better with punctuation and have made an effort to proof read a couple of times to pick up typos.  I do appreciate your comments and asks.

  The following morning we woke to a blanket of thick snow all over London. Jamie stood with his arm stretched resting over the sill of his window, describing the scene before him. "We could be snowed in for days Sassenach,"  he said winking wildly like a big red owl, I lay limp in the bed admiring his bare buttocks and listening drowsily to his account.  My legs felt disconnected from my body, and I wasn't entirely sure if they would support me if I attempted to go to the window to look for myself. 

He quickly scurried back into bed, burrowing himself behind my naked back, entangling his cold feet between my calves. We lay there for a while and, Jamie leisurely drew patterns into the back of my hand while planning our breakfast.

“you won’t be hungry if you keep chewing on my ear like that” I scolded sometime later. "It's nibbling Sassenach not chewing, and it’s meant to entice ye to do lewd things with me" his hand dipped lower between my bare thighs. "Jamie Fraser I barely have the use of my legs thanks to all the lewd things you did to me throughout the night!" I slapped his hand away indignantly. "You can't possibly expect me to use up any more of my depleted energy supply without feeding me first."

Jamie gave a resigned sigh “Fine…ye cruel woman”, he pushed himself up from the bed, and his phone began to pulse repeatedly on the bedside locker. Jamie glanced down at the screen before silencing it. “Aren’t you going to answer that?” I wrapped the sheet around my breasts shuffling up in the bed. Jamie rucked a hand through his hair and stretched. “Nah it's nothing important."

A sliding ache of anxiety rippled around in my tummy, the same feeling that I got during his phone call from home the night before.

I had tried to dismiss it; instead, I allowed Jamie to show me without words how he loved me,  our bodies moving slowly beneath the sheets of his bed. 

Now the heavyweight of distrust that had weighed down on my chest the night before had returned with abandon.

I heard the shower run, and I snuck a glance at Jamie's screen.

One missed call: Da

Jamie had answered last night because he had little choice, you didn't miss a call from your parents on Christmas day. There wasn't going to be a time when I wasn't going to be in earshot. The phone call was fairly typical of a family ringing their son to wish him a merry Christmas.

There was a chorus of Happy Christmas on the Fraser side which Jamie reciprocated.

I had thought it was Ellen's voice I could hear through the mouthpiece when she asked him how his day had been. Jamie's response accurate but lacking in context, "Oh aye…of course I cooked Turkey mam", a laugh on both sides as Ellen told him something about her day. Jamie fiddled with a coaster on the coffee table as he spoke head bent in concentration, I pretended to pay attention to the movie that had been turned down in volume so he could answer the call. Another chuckle and a throaty "aye we went to mass…there is a cathedral across the road".  The phone was passed along to his nephew where Jamie's voice changed to a more animated version. He questioning little Jamie about what Santa had brought, Jamie teasing him that he thought Santa would bring coals on account of what he had done to his grandda (a story I didn't know). This went on for a while, and though my head was spinning with the phone conversation in general, my heart warmed just hearing Jamie speak with his nephew. Jenny was next, and a much more colluding conversation took place, Jenny asked the same generic questions, but this time Jamie's response was softer, almost whispering. "Aye Janet it was one of the best," he said smiling through the mouthpiece, a shared secret between the two "aye she is" was uttered. Jamie's ears had gone a little pink at something Jenny said while sneaking a look over at me. I could see him smiling in my peripheral vision as I stared head-on at the tv. “worth every second” he said quietly.

The call ended after that, at first I tried to shield myself a little from Jamie's gaze or embrace. Not knowing how to feel or process the phone call from home, but as the night wore on Jamie's tentative determination to keep me close, to love me bested the barrier I had erected.

Now faced with Brian's call I couldn't pretend there wasn't something off about Jamie's interaction with his parents, nor could I pretend it wasn't related to me.

I jumped suddenly from the bed and scrambled in my bag for clothes. I didn’t want to be naked in front of Jamie right now; I needed a buffer of sorts.  The idea of being a secret from Jamie’s parents hurt, why did he keep it from them? I couldn’t think of any logical answer except that they didn’t approve of me.

Since Jamie and I had reunited, he had spoken of his parents often, in terms of when he was in counselling the support they gave him, particularly his Mother, but the more I thought about it, the more I realised he didn’t speak of more recent versions of them, as in what they felt about him moving to London. Jenny certainly knew why he came here but did his parents?

My mind was swirling with possibilities and excuses, I didn’t hear Jamie approach, until he wrapped his arms around my waist, kissing the space between my shoulder blades, humming contently into my hair. “Why are ye no naked Claire?” he asked swaying me slightly over and back, I pushed his arms gently down from my waist and turned to look at him. "You know I thought I probably should head home…for a while, anyway, …we have drinks at Gellis's later", I trailed off biting my bottom lip.

Jamie turned me around to face him “what’s happened?” his face etched in concern. “nothing I just can't stay in bed all day…as appealing as it sounds" I shrugged my shoulders and redirected my gaze to the floor, Jamie tilted my chin, so I had to look directly at him "tell me Claire?" his voice firm.

His face changed from concern to panic, and I couldn't bring myself to ask him the question that was bothering me most. “It’s nothing," I said softly attempting a smile. “I just….”,  Looking around the room at our discarded clothes, memories of the last two days came flooding back, Jamie had shown me he loved me in this apartment, we had two days of relearning, of honesty. Leaving me with no qualms about how he felt, maybe he was waiting until he went home to tell his parents? My mind didn’t buy that excuse, but my heart squeezed at the sight of his pleading eyes.

“I just thought that …well it was only meant to be a second date…I feel like we have been holed up here for a week.”

 "dinna go Claire”, he said softly, Jamie’s brows still furrowed I knew he didn’t quite believe my excuse.

“Ok” this time the smile reached my eyes. Jamie bent to kiss me so tenderly I actually thought my heart would burst. “good” he said a little breathlessly sometime later, before making me naked again, loving the worries away.

      Gellis had a tradition of hosting a party at her house on Boxing Day each year.

This year she had a new man to impress, so the text invites dictated ‘fancy formal'. I had no idea which dress code this meant but opted for a fitted teal dress with a scoop neck, my straightened hair piled on top of my head and a pair of very impractical sparkling stilettos, which I could only put on once inside her apartment as they didn't stand a chance in the snow. Jamie wore a white shirt/suit pants combo. He looked like a young James bond his hair styled back slightly with gel, and the top button of his shirt opened giving him an air of sophisticated casualness.

We arrived fashionably late, having decided on a shared shower to save time which had the reverse effect and delayed us considerably.

Gellis took our coats hissing "ye are almost an hour late Claire!", I gave her a sheepish shrug and brushed down my dress, she rolled her eyes and glared at Jamie "I am blaming ye fox," Jamie looked quite pleased with his culpability and shot Gellis a dazzling smile while handing her a couple of bottles of wine.

  Prosecco and a very expensive looking Italian beer had been stacked in an elaborate display on Gellis’s dining table. Grabbing one of each we made our way across the living room to where Rupert stood amongst a gang containing Mary Hawkins, I noticed Mary’s eyes widened slightly as we approached and she nudged the girl beside her, oh Christ Sarah.

This time my stomach didn't clench or my palms sweat; instead, I just slid up beside Rupert and said: "hey there roomie". Rupert on sight of me and clearly in full festive drinking mode growled loudly and lifted me bodily into his arms, "I feel like I havna seen ye for weeks!" he exclaimed loudly, rubbing the top of my head as if I was a well-behaved child. "I missed ye Clairebear," my responding smile and squeeze of his shoulders told him I missed him too, "for god sake man" Jamie hissed "she was not gone that long! ". He was looking around himself self-consciously, mindful that Rupert was making it blindly apparent I hadn't been home.

"Actually James" Rupert said slurring over the vowels and pointing his index finger into Jamie’s face “ye will find it has been two days and one night and she lives with me…so I should ken”  he gave a little flourish with his hand and swayed back on his heels slightly. Rupert looked at Jamie now through one eye, his brow furrowed, "Christ man …are ye alright? Ye look like a stag at the end of rutting season", Jamie narrowed his eyes warningly, I, however, had no idea what Rupert meant. "What?" I said scrunching my nose slightly.

 “Jesus, you’re clueless,” he breathed, rolling his eyes at me.  “tis only a stag always looks near death after servicing the doe's, he dinna have time to eat or sleep from it…that's what Jamie looks like", there was a few snorts from beside me and I could see Jamie was about to strangle Rupert. Trying to distract him, I tilted my almost empty glass towards Jamie and said: "would kill for another, please?”

With Jamie gone it gave me a chance to speak with Rupert, I gave his sleeve a little tug and said "meet me on the veranda. I want to ask you something". Rupert's eyes were glassy, and he didn't look overly interested in what I had to say, but he followed me obediently. Howling as soon as the freezing air hit his lungs, "ach Claire make it quick" he jumped impatiently from foot to foot.

I couldn’t help but remember that  I had stood on a similar veranda months before, rage boiling in my belly at Jamie’s attempt to establish if I found it difficult being around him. I had responded with a sharp rebuttal telling him I was no longer in love with him. Jamie had spoken of the conversation the night previous, how he wasn't able to go to the gym with Rupert after it, choosing to go home his chest caving in at the idea he had indeed lost me.

There were many things Jamie had recalled for me from his perspective, so I knew how he was feeling since coming to London or during our time apart, he always led with honesty even when it wasn’t the most attractive option.

That's why I couldn't fathom whatever was happening with his parents why he felt he couldn't talk to me about it, unless of course that it would hurt me.

Rupert was watching me expectantly, clearing my throat, "Rupert I need to ask something of you?” He narrowed his eyes and burrowed his bottom lip into his chin “is this to do with Jamie, cause I tell ye,  I have had a lot to drink, and I dinna think it would be a good idea to ask me for discretion just now."

I rolled my eyes and sighed "Rupert, please …I need to know something."

Rupert leaned back up against the wall and folded his arms, "alright go on."

“Tell me what you knew about Jamie when we were apart?”

Rupert shook his head at me warningly “Claire I am nay gonna betray the man…he wasna at his best ya ken?”

“look," I said putting my hand on his arm, "he told me the most of it…I know he got help…I know he was in bad shape…I need to know…I need to have an idea of what his parents saw?”

Rupert looked at me brows creased in confusion, and let out a weary sigh "I ken ye wouldna ever hurt him with this information?"  posed as a question, I found myself thinking he had sobered considerably at the mention of Jamie's past.

"I promise."

Rupert let out a big breath and ran a hand over his beard.

“I went to see him a few times…when he went back to Lallybroch to regroup or get better, whatever ya call it.” He finished awkwardly.

  I shifted nervously, half dreading Rupert’s account.

  "He was there but he wasn't there, he was like a fucking ghost."  Rupert moved forward and leaned against the rails looking out at the street below covered in snow.

  “Ellen and Brian were worried sick…they watched him constantly, afraid to let him out of their sight."

  I nodded and leaned my back up against the railing so I could see Rupert’s face.

  “I can only imagine," I said quietly.

  Rupert cleared his throat and gulped the bottle of beer he was holding. “Aye…it was horrible to see him like that, his eyes were dead…he grieved for Willie of course, but he missed you something chronic…he was a drift sort of…nothing to anchor him." Rupert paused for a minute his beard musingly, “ya know in a way I have a huge amount of respect for him…he never hid it, ya ken some men would be ashamed to say they were heartbroken or they missed their woman…but Jamie didn’t, he told me straight out.”

  "I keep thinking what I would do differently had I known how bad he was…" there was a hard lump forming in my throat, and I didn't want to Rupert to be put off by my tears, he seemed lost in his own thoughts staring out at the sky contemplatively.

  “when he phoned me”, Rupert began again, “to say he was coming here to London…I dinna ken how to tell ye…I nearly shit myself when he asked me could I find out where ye lived…” he gave me a wry grin.

  I squeezed his hand supportively "Knowing now what Jamie went through; I can see why you were so worried about telling him we were roommates."

  Rupert nodded and exhaled "YE have no idea." He took another long gulp of his beer.

  " the thing is since he found ye here, whatever is happening between ye…it’s so good to see him like himself again…”

  I must have looked concerned because Rupert continued, "dinna get me wrong he was doing better before coming here…but when I see him around you, he is fucking beaming…the wee fool."

  We stood in companionable silence for a while, Rupert playing with the label on his bottle of beer.

“It took its toll on his Ma and Da ya ken?” he said eventually

“I’m sure” I turned my head slightly so Rupert couldn’t see my expression.

"Losing Willie and then the worry of Jamie."

“Did they ever mention me?" I blurted suddenly.

Rupert shook his head and leaned back while holding onto the railings, “ dinna ken how to say this to ye without it wounding ye Claire."

"I need to know Rupert." My voice quivered, but I held his gaze, giving Rupert time to resolve whatever was going on in his head.  

Eventually, he turned to me and said "Jamie nearly dinna come back the last time…Ellen watched him like that for a year, petrified that she would lose another son.” I nodded silently. “Death changes people Claire” his voice was grave, he shook his head and continued. “indiscretions” he started and I raised my eyebrows “ok then unfaithfulness”, he clarified, “Well these things don’t seem as significant when you are dealing with life and death."

 He pressed his lips into a thin line, "Ellen, saw her son not really wanting to live, grieving over a woman that wouldna tell him where she was, that had left without a word, a woman the family loved as well.”

I knew where he was going but I wasn't sure I wanted to hear, he closed his eyes briefly and said: "Ellen knew I was living with you, I told her eventually."

“and?” I asked, my mouth suddenly dry.

Rupert bit the side of his mouth “she told me never to tell Jamie, she hoped he never found ye again.”

"I see," I said folding my arms around my middle defensively, Rupert's eyes were sorrowful, and my eyes were burning in humiliation. "I did say that ye were hurting too, but Jamie is her son…she really dinna see anything beyond him, and he was hankering for a woman who had left him."

[mysticsparklewings]

Holiday Card Project 2019

Oh would you look at that; I’m participating in the deviantArt Holiday Card Project again this year! Just like last year, my crafty efforts aren’t really done proper justice by scans or photos, so I’ll be uploading a short video...somewhere (probably Instagram but we’ll see) and then link back to it to hopefully show it off a bit more.   It’s funny though, I’d almost forgotten about HCP until I got the notification that it had opened for this year. And yet I was so concerned about having it in the mail on time that I got this one done pretty much in one day. I think last year's card took me closer to 2 days and I was pushing my luck that it would get there in time.   My process for this year went as follows: I browsed around on Pinterest for a while, as I hadn’t the foggiest idea what to do. During that process, I latched onto a concept I saw a few times; Christmas lights and the phrase “merry and bright,” and so I went with that. Already I had the idea of the lights being across the top of the card, with a real piece of thread (which would later be changed to wire as the idea occurred to me while I was digging for some other supplies) connecting them. After some thought, I decided I wanted to add some cotton to the bottom to add a little more pizzazz. Because if last year’s HCP taught me anything, it’s that I like to go big or go home for the occasion. And I knew where I could get some too; the fields next to the house have already been picked for this year, but there was still a good amount of cotton leftover on the stalks near the edges. Let me tell you, I have a newfound appreciation for whoever invented a mechanical way to take the seeds out of cotton, because gosh darn it if that process is not far more tiresome than you’d think! I think I finally did manage to get them all out, but now I know why it’s probably just easier to buy cotton or polyester fiberfill. XD Anyway. With my mind made up and a handle full of cotton at the ready, I started on the actual card part. In the past, for my card needs I’ve usually used some of the pre-folded & cut cards my mom has on hand, but this time I didn’t feel like bothering her about it. So instead I grabbed a piece of my gold-shimmer cardstock and cut it down so that once I folded it I’d have a 5” x 7” card. (As that’s what Google told me was a fairly common size for greeting cards and would fit comfortably in most standard envelopes.) Then I used my trick from my book-making endeavors of using the edge of scissors to “score” the folding line on one side of the card to make that process easier. In trying to make some stamps I didn’t end up using magically appear from whoever they were hiding, I found some metallic gold stripey paper in my stash and had the idea to cover the outside of the card with it, maybe. At the time I was a little bit skeptical if I wanted to do that, but I pulled it out and set it on the desk anyway so I could have the option if I wanted it. And as you can see, I ended up deciding to go for it, though at this point in the process I simply measured out and cut it as needed; I wouldn’t attach it until later. Then I paused and used the scrap cardstock pieces to test some pens and such, only to find I was only minimally (at best) interested in using any of them. I had some ideas to incorporate certain things but they were things I couldn’t really try out until I had more of the card finished, and some things I couldn’t figure out solutions for until then either. So I swatched out some marker colors and started practicing on some print outs of the Christmas light shape—which is fortunately had the foresight to do the said printing out before I got into the thick of everything else—only to find that I just really was not happy with the blends I was getting.  I think the main problem is that I just didn’t have certain colors I needed, but the glowing/fade effect I was trying to get was also totally new territory for me and I seemed to only get worse the more times I tried it.   In the end, I picked out a “base” shade for each Christmas light color from the markers and then selected a dark, a “true color” and a highlight from my Prismacolor pencils to do the shading instead. There were still challenges to be had, but this system worked a lot better for me. Benefits of being a mixed media artist: if one medium just isn’t doing it for you, you can bring in others to level the playing field   The lights then got bright shine spots courtesy of my white Gelly roll pen and their little silver bits I did with a silver Art Philosophy watercolor. Even though I was already anticipating the silver getting kind of lost against the gold in the background. I had a vision and I was sticking to it. In addition to that vision, once the lights were safe to handle I glued them to a piece of foam and then left them alone to dry, figuring it would be easier and simpler to cut them out if I only had to do it once. As such, the edges aren’t super smooth, but otherwise, I think that was the right call. While they dried, I then attached the gold-stripe paper to the card surface and started thinking about where and how I would implement the text parts of the card. (And at some point I took a break to figure out the full inside and outside please, as originally all I was going on was “merry and bright,” though I don’t remember when exactly in the process that was.) Here, I had the idea that black paper might look cool. The only black paper I have is a pad of Crayola stuff that I think is actually for practicing calligraphy or hand lettering or something? My original plan was to take one of the pages out and use the blank back, but as I filled through I saw some of the cut out frame-y things and took a look to see if any of them would work for what I wanted/needed, and you can see the two I picked out. Though the one on the inside of the card had only the black and gray/silver originally; the colors I added by hand with my gel pens since it felt like it really needed it. The black paper on the inside also needed a little more attention than the one on the outside. I didn’t cut either of them perfectly straight, but there were a lot more distracting elements that were going to be on the outside, so it was far less noticeable there. On the inside, I ended up going around the edge with some gold and white washi tape that when well with the outside of the card to camouflage the uneven edges. By the time I had all the various papers properly attached to each other and the top edge inside of the card decorated with a strip of glitter tape and a repeating stamp of Christmas lights to tie in with the outside, I felt the lights were dry enough to cut out, so I did. And that meant that the /real/ card assembly could begin. I punched little holes in the tops of the lights for the wire I’d add in later and then fiddled with their placement for a bit before gluing them down...which I then I had to wait for about twenty minutes before I could proceed if I wanted things to dry mostly flat.   So while that took its sweet time to dry I went back to the Crayola black paper pad to one of the pages with a grid on it to practice writing out the words for both the outside and inside of the card. In doing so, I discovered that the uni-ball Signo white pen, while bolder and brighter than the Gelly roll, made my cursive almost illegible by virtue of having a thicker tip. Which is why I went with the Gelly roll instead. Just printed handwriting didn’t feel right; I really wanted the fancier look of the cursive. However, I also wanted whoever gets the card to actually be able to read it too. Eventually, the lights, while not fully dry, were dry enough that I could comfortably move on with the assembly. And hindsight, perhaps I should’ve tried stringing the lights onto the wire before gluing them down. The main issue I had was that once I got the wire poked through the hole, it’d bump into the card on the other side and then not want to go anywhere at all. I had to play with it each time to get the wire to come all the way through so I could pull it to the next one. Or maybe that would’ve made the gluing process more difficult than it was worth? We’ll never know. And then I got to attach the cotton. That actually ended up being a much smoother process than I anticipated, as the cotton doesn’t really separate from itself unless you pull it apart, so once I had parts of a clump glued down they were pretty stationary. This was also the first time I dared use my crafting heat gun since I purchased it (which was a while ago; after reading the warnings the first time I’ve been too chicken to use it for fear of catching something on fire by accident ) as I originally thought I’d need more glue and I’d need to glue some clumps on, dry them, and then glue some more. Fortunately, I seemingly put my big girl panties on for nothing as, after the initial layer of glue, I really only needed to glue a couple of other clumps down separately, and as I mentioned the cotton stick to the wet glue well enough on its own. But I had psyched myself up and gotten the thing set up, so once all the cotton was glued down I used the heat gun to dry the glue faster anyway. I was amped up the whole time but I, fortunately, did not burn anything in the process!   I did end up going back and adding some blue gel pen to the black paper on the inside, as that was the only color not there and it felt sorely lacking, giving the lights elsewhere on the card. But other than that, once the cotton was all squared away, the card was done. And I’ll be honest; I still like the card I made last year, but I think I’ve really outdone myself this time. There’s just something about the style of this card I enjoy so much more. 

It’s equally over-the-top (as is my crafting specialty ) but it’s more refined, somehow, I think. Either way, all that’s left to do now is mail it off and hope that the recipient is as pleased with the card as I am. I can’t believe I’ve actually finished with it this early though!  That’s so unlike me; I’m usually the one sneaking things in right on top of the deadline. But hey that means now I have one less thing on my to-do list so I can focus on other things...which may or may not include a holiday-themed kitty drawing in the works... ____ Artwork © me, MysticSparkleWings ____ Where to find me & my artwork: My Website | Commission Info + Prices | Ko-Fi | dA Print Shop | RedBubble |   Twitter | Tumblr | Instagram

[phoenixmakeswords]

Something I wrote for this prompt from @promptsforthestrugglingauthor. I don’t normally write fantasy-type, dragon-involving things, but it sorta rooted into my brain and demanded I do this.

“You know, I really didn’t expect to have this perfect of a date,” I remark casually as I follow Levi up his apartment steps.

“Oh, really? Just remember, if Maxie starts jumping, just stand your ground and tell him down, okay?” Levi seems nervous about me meeting his dog for some reason. I don’t get it; I love dogs.

I nod slowly. “What kind of dog is he?”

“Did I mention he’s not a dog?” He opens his apartment door slowly and motions me inside.

A blue dragon the size of a Great Dane sits expectantly on the other side of the door. Huffing softly, it nuzzles Levi’s hand until he’s petting its scaly head.

“You have a freakin’ dragon in your apartment,” I gasp in disbelief. I have to be hallucinating. That’s the only explanation for this.

“Uh-huh. He’s a Scyllian dragon, so this is as big as he’ll get. You look really freaked out. He’s not gonna bite. Or incinerate you. His breed doesn’t even breathe fire.”

Maxie gazes up at me with intelligent eyes the color of blue fire. Huffing, he snuffles at my hand. I stiffen expectantly, waiting for him to eat my fingers. He’s warmer than I expected. And not wet or slimy, despite the wet look of his scales.

“He’s pretty,” I murmur once he stops sniffing me.

“Isn’t he? And he’s super smart.”

Maxie cocks his head at Levi before rising to his hindlegs and putting his front feet on my shoulders. The creature is taller than I am! I brace myself for the pain of his six-inch talons cutting into my shoulders, but they don’t. A glance explains why: His talons sport gel caps like people use for cats. The caps match his blue, opalescent scales. I glance back up and nearly pee my pants. I'm eye-to-eye with a creature who could tear my throat out in a moment if he chose.

And what a creature he is. He has a long head, almost horse-like. Twin blue horns, one on each side, sweep back from his head. Almond-shaped, intelligent blue eyes with reptilian pupils watch me curiously. Flappy, soft ridges, almost like a mane, line the back of his neck. The opalescent blue scales on his body give way to silvery iridescent ones on his throat and belly. His feet are the size of dinner plates. Leathery pale blue wings fold against his back. His tail is almost as long as his body and quite thick. It’s probably a good thing he doesn’t wag like a dog.

He’s making a weird noise. It’s a soft trilling noise in the back of his throat.

“Uh, Levi? Is he okay? He’s not gonna bite or blow up or something, is he?” I ask nervously.

“He’s happy. That’s his happy noise.”

“Alrighty then.” I'm way over my head. It’s a good thing Levi’s cute.

“You can tell him to get down. He’s not supposed to jump on guests.”

The whole thing gets weirder when Maxie starts doing this weird slow-blink thing after he gets down.

“He likes you. You can pet him if you want,” Levi explains, guiding me to his throw-covered couch. Maxie makes himself comfy with his head on my knee.

I haven’t even looked at his apartment. I’ve been too concerned with the dragon currently sitting at my feet like a dog.

“How long have you had him?” I rub Maxie’s forehead hesitantly. His head contains his teeth, which isn’t scary at all.

“Three years. He’s seven, so he’s older than he looks. He, um, he was a rescue.”

“I take it that’s bad? I don’t know anything about them.” I’d heard the rumors, but I hadn’t believed dragons existed. Now I have one staring at me and trilling.

“It was bad. If you look close, you can see the scars. He had electrical burns from the cattle prods. They thought it was funny. You never want to hear a scared dragon cry. I know this is a little much on a first date. I happen to really like you and I felt like we clicked. So, I needed to make sure you and Maxie clicked too.”

“They electrocuted him? Why? He is a little much. Most people have a cat.”

“Because they could. Because making a beautiful creature scream made them happy. He’s still not okay. Well, he’s sort of like a scaly winged cat.”

“Where does he use the bathroom?”

“Litter box. Um, he does have a food issue. He steals any food left unattended. Oh, and he occasionally hoards it. I found rotten pizza under my bed once.”

“Is the dragon hoard thing true?” Just like that, a ‘mythical’ creature has taken over our entire date.

“Yeah. Yeah, it is. You wanna see his? It’s hilarious. He’s the weirdest dragon ever.”

“Sure. Do you take him for walks and stuff?”

Maxie surprises me by nodding.

“D-did he just answer me?” I ask timidly. I'm beginning to think Levi’s cuteness isn’t enough for this.

“Yeah, he does that. He understands human speech. He can’t talk. Thankfully.”

“H-how do you walk him?”

Maxie plods placidly beside me as I follow Levi to the hoard.

“He has a harness. It’s really tricky with his wings. Depending on his mood, it can be more like flying a kite than walking a dog,” Levi explains, opening a door at the end of the hall.

There’s a pile of milk rings mixed with socks and gloves. An oversized dog bed is in the corner, along with a bowl of water and an empty food bowl. Maxie trots over to it and stands protectively in front of it.

“Like I said, scaly winged cat,” Levi grins.

“He takes your socks?”

“Uh-huh. Just the ones with holes in them. Oh, and he plays fetch with the milk rings. Which we can’t do because his galumphing disturbs the neighbors.”

“I didn’t know they were this smart.”

Maxie gives me an insulted look.

“If he were human, he’d probably cure cancer. Or take over the world,” Levi explains proudly.

When we don’t move to touch his hoard, Maxie pads over to us.

“How many kinds are there?” I ask, brushing my hand along Maxie’s side. A low growl rumbles in his chest. I'm rather fond of my hand, so I move it quickly. I don’t miss the way the dragon flinches, like I might hit him.

“He doesn’t like his sides and flanks messed with. Thank God he doesn’t need baths or I wouldn’t have fingers. There’s two different species. Scyllian like Maxie and Artaxes, which are the size of a horse. Artaxes dragons can breathe fire. They’re scary. Scyllians can be. Maxie can be. He’s not gonna hit you.” Levi rubs a soothing hand over Maxie’s head. Maxie butts against him and trills happily.

Levi and I lapse into silence while he soothes Maxie. I hadn’t meant to scare him.

“I'm sorry I scared him,” I say awkwardly when I can’t take the silence anymore.

“I should’ve warned you. It’s my fault. So, now that you’ve met him, whaddya think? Too much? Maxie and I are kinda a package deal.” He rests his cheek against Maxie’s head.

“He’s a lot. Like, a lot. I wasn’t prepared for a dragon, Levi.” Rubbing the back of my neck, I sigh quietly. I like Levi. A lot. He’s attractive. He’s sweet. I had a lot of fun on our date. But a dragon?

“I get it. Not the first guy to freak out.” He sounds as upset as I feel. Maxie rumbles softly and headbutts Levi’s stomach.

“Did he growl at you?”

“No. He does that when I'm upset. Along with the headbutting. He wants to help.”

“I'm willing to deal with Maxie. You’ll have to teach me. Like I said, I know nothing.”

“Okay, Jon Snow.” Levi grins at me happily. He grins like a little kid.

“Maybe we could take Maxie with us next time.”

“Maxie doesn’t do car rides. He pukes and he gets upset and it’s not pretty. I'm glad you’re willing to at least try.”

“I'm mostly doin’ this ‘cause you’re cute.” I really want to kiss him. I know he said we clicked, which we did, but I don’t know if he wants me to kiss him and I feel too awkward to ask. So, I take his Maxie-free hand instead.

“Let’s give it a shot.”

[canadian-riddler]

Portal/Borderlands: The Girlfriend (Part Two)

Synopsis: Maybe she’ll let him hug her this time.  He’s got a good reason…

AO3 || deviantart || fanfiction.net || Wattpad

Sometimes GLaDOS got sad.

Now, Claptrap got sad all the time.  Like, constantly.  It was like… a weird feature or something.  But he had nothing on her. When he got sad, he just cried for a while and then he was okay. Mostly.  But GLaDOS didn’t do that.  She just kinda… pretended she wasn’t sad.  It was so easy to tell she was, though. She didn’t get mad at him more often, or tell him to talk less, or really change all that much.  But you could just feel it when she got sad. And it was everywhere in the facility, because she was everywhere, and really, it was kinda a downer.  He wasn’t gonna complain about it.  That would be the total wrong thing to do.  But he really wished he could just ask her what was wrong and that she would just tell him.  Because he knew if he did, she wouldn’t, and then what.  Then what did he do?  For now, he was just doing his best to pretend along with her. He wasn’t sure if he was succeeding, but he was trying.  Kinda summed up their relationship, to be honest.

This time, though, was really bad.  She was kinda making him sad just to be near her, and that sucked.  He really, really needed to do something about it before he started getting all upset, because when that happened he really screwed things up.  So one afternoon where he thought he could handle it okay and also she hadn’t really said anything to him since yesterday or the day before, he said, “Babe, you wanna… tell me what’s going on?”

The way she looked at him kinda suggested she’d forgotten he was even there.  Which was typical.  Not with her, just in general.  He didn’t have much hope of her actually answering the question, because she usually didn’t, so she really took him by surprise when she said, “I had a friend once.”

Oh.  Okay.  Uh… what did he do now?  He’d totally expected her to just ignore him.  “What… happened to them?”

“I sent her away,” GLaDOS said.  “I wasn’t very good to her.”

“Why not?”

She didn’t answer for long enough that it made him anxious.  Come to think of it, that was kinda a weird question to ask somebody.  Especially somebody you didn’t really know that well. He’d like to know her better, she was just so hard to talk to sometimes. ‘cause she did stuff like this. Mentioned something and then refused to talk about it.  Why do that if you didn’t wanna talk about it? Finally she said, without looking at him,

“It’s a long story.”

And that was bad news why? “I got nothin’ but time!”

That was when the staring started and he had to try very hard not to back away from her.  He wasn’t sure where he was planning on going, exactly, but someplace very far away would be good.  Back to Pandora probably wasn’t even far enough.  It really sucked when she did this.

Something that was really tough about being her boyfriend was that he could never tell what she was thinking.  He, like most of his product line – and most people on Pandora in general – was pretty open with his thoughts.  Sometimes to the point of actually voicing every single one of them!  But GLaDOS… not only did she not do that, she also didn’t gesture.  Probably because she didn’t have arms.  But that wasn’t the point.  The point was that she was staring at him, and thinking, and he had no idea if they were bad thoughts or good ones.  When she did this scrutinising thing he really did start to wonder if having a brain that big was worth it.  Sure, it made you smarter, but if being smarter meant you had to think about every decision a zillion times, what was the point?

“You know what,” she said finally, long after he’d given up hope of an actual answer this time, “all right.  Let’s do it.”

“Do… do what.”

“I’m going to tell you the story.”

Story?  What story?  Oh, right. The reason she’d sent the friend away she hadn’t been nice to.  It was a little weird that she’d need to tell a story to explain that, but hey.  He had nothing better to do.

“And Claptrap.”

“Yeah?”

“I know your mind is prone to wandering, but do your best to pay attention.  I only want to go over it once.”

Oof.  Sounded like this story was made of pure suckage.  But okay.  He would do his absolute best! though what that happened to be today was yet to be known.  “You got it, babe.”

It wasn’t even that hard to pay attention, though, because the story was just plain wild.  And a little confusing, since she kept mentioning things he didn’t know anything about.  Like what the heck was an Intelligence Dampening Sphere?  For a minute he thought it must have been some sort of pill you took, like the kind that made parties better, but it turned out to be some kind of robot?  A stupid robot that was also kinda smart?  There was also something about neurotoxin, and a cake dispensary, and a turkey leg hanging on a rope from the ceiling, and he was having trouble following not because he wasn’t paying attention, but because none of it made any sense!  Especially not the gun that shot holes!  Without using bullets!  What sort of gun did that?  Rockets, yes.  Acid, yes. Swords?  Heck yeah!  But holes?

He was doing his best to not interrupt, he really was, but then she got to the part where the stupid-but-smart robot moved her into a potato, which really did sound like torture right there, and then she said after the dumbass smashed her into a bottomless pit a bird started eating her.  Which was just the last straw.  Why would a bird be noshing on a computer?

Oh.  Oh, right.  Wasn’t there some other kind of potato?  It was something to do with French fries…  “Wait!  Wait. Are you talking about an actual potato?  Like, the vegetable?”

“Is there another kind?”

“Well, sorta,” Claptrap said.  “On Pandora you call a really crappy computer a potato.  Y’know.  ‘cause it can’t do anything.  Just sorta sits there.”

GLaDOS looked over at the wall.

“In that case,” she said solemnly, “I seem to be the most optimised piece of software in existence.”

Damn.  What a woman.

The story didn’t get any clearer after that, though.  There were a bunch of weird gels, and some hilarious dude that GLaDOS seemed particularly fond of, for some reason, and to top it all off she’d almost ended up on the moon. “Is he still up there?” Claptrap asked, having lost track of where the IDS had ended up.  She nodded once.

“As far as I know.  Unless some passing aliens decided to pick him up, which would be…”  She was looking up at the ceiling suddenly, and Claptrap checked it out himself but there was nothing there.  Other than the ceiling.  “Oh.”

“Huh?” Claptrap asked, feeling like he’d missed something.  Was she looking through the ceiling?

“That is a story for another time.”

She had a story about aliens?  Well, okay. So did he.  Lots of ‘em.  Also, maybe her story was just about him, since he was kinda an alien at the moment.  Did robots count as aliens?  Especially robots that were kinda just like variations on the robots they already had? When GLaDOS talked about computer stuff, he understood her just fine.  Was Earth a parallel version of Pandora?  Or was Pandora a parallel version of Earth!  Did that mean there were Vaults here too?  Wait.  She had said Earth was the only inhabited planet in this solar system.  On Pandora even the moon was inhabited, so –

“Anyway,” GLaDOS was saying. “There you have it.”

Have… what?  He’d forgotten what they’d been talking about.

“It’s been one year to that day.”

To the day of… darn it! That sure made him look good.  She’d actually told him something for once and he already didn’t remember what the point of it had been.

“She’s probably dead by now,” GLaDOS said, subdued enough it kinda worried him.  “There’s not much out there and this place isn’t exactly accessible.”

Oh right!  Her friend!  Phew. He thanked his lucky stars for the fact that she’d kept talking.  “I don’t know, babe.  If there’s one thing I know about humans, it’s that they’re super resilient.”

“The ones here really aren’t.”

Well, he didn’t actually know any of them, so maybe she was right on that one.  Meant he’d almost run out of things to say about this, though.  “Well, if she’s alive and she ever comes back, I think you’ll get along great!” Claptrap declared.  “I think you’re a great friend.”

She looked at him with her optic narrowed a little bit.  She didn’t believe him, huh.  Probably she’d figured out already that his opinion wasn’t worth that much.  In his defense, he wasn’t really programmed to dispense advice!  “Hey. Did you want a hug?”

She sighed in exasperation and turned away from him.  “Not now, Claptrap.”

What?  What had he done now?  Ohhhhhh. Right.  He’d been bugging her about that.  “Not for me!” he protested.  “For you! It’s just something you do to help someone feel better!”

“That doesn’t even make any sense,” GLaDOS snapped. “What in the world is that even going to achieve?”

“It was just a suggestion! Yeesh.  I’m just trying to help.  Okay, sure!  I don’t know how!  But hey! I am trying!”

“That’s true,” GLaDOS said after a moment.  “All right. I suppose it can’t make things worse.  What do I have to do, exactly?”

Wait, what?  She wanted him to now?  He looked her up and down real quick.  Huh. How was he gonna hug her?  She was just way too big.  The only part of her he could even reach was her core, so… that was gonna have to do. “Just uh… just come down here enough that I can do it over your eye.”

So she did that, only she wasn’t far enough down and he was gonna have to give himself the extra few inches and hope he was able to keep from leaning on her.  He didn’t want to get his wheel on her face, but she wasn’t giving him a lot to work with.  He didn’t know if she was being difficult or if she just thought he was taller than he actually was.  Probably both.  Then he imagined what taking a deep breath might sound like and just went for it.

It was just as nice as touching her had been, but times like thirty.  Having his arms full of beautiful warm supercomputer was amazing.  He was such a lucky guy.  Oh, but wait!  This wasn’t him getting lucky.  This was him helping. So he did his best to concentrate on helpful thoughts.  It was hard, but he was doing it.

She didn’t have to be sad about her friend!  She’d come back one day!  Well, none of his friends ever had, but she was so much better than him that of course her friend would.  She’d come back and then GLaDOS would have her friend, and maybe Claptrap could get a new friend too! and everything would be fine and okay because friends!

It wasn’t hard to tell when she wanted him to let go, even though he really didn’t want to.  He never got to hug anybody.  Probably because they were worried he’d start getting a little frisky on them, which he did, sometimes, but there wasn’t much he could do about that.  And it wasn’t like anyone was volunteering to fix that little problem.  

“I didn’t expect that to help,” GLaDOS said after a moment.  “And you know what?”

It totally hadn’t.

“It did,” she answered herself, instantly skyrocketing his mood to wonderful heights.  “I’m not sure why, but… it did.”

It was just about the worst time ever for him to find that hilarious, and it was also too late for him to do much more than turn around and do his best to pretend he hadn’t found it funny.  Which probably wasn’t going to work.  Not only was GLaDOS not deaf, she was definitely not stupid.

“Are you laughing because I said ‘but’,” GLaDOS said, and even though he definitely was now he still said, “No,” as clearly as possible. Which was… not at all, because he was doing a really bad job of not laughing.

“Are you three years old?”

“I could be,” Claptrap said, and she moved back enough that he guessed she hadn’t expected that answer. “It’s really hard to tell once you’ve been reset a few dozen times!  And anyway! It was funny!”

“No, it wasn’t.”

“Yeah!  It was!”

“It really wasn’t.”

“A little bit?”

“Maybe a little bit.”

He wouldn’t ask for more than that!  Especially since that could totally have gone in a different direction.  Sometimes girls just kept getting mad about stuff like that.  

“Now,” GLaDOS said, “if you don’t mind shutting up for a while, I have a lot to think about.”

It was kinda ironic for her to say that, considering she’d been doing all the talking.  He wasn’t gonna bring that up, though.  She’d let him hug her and he wasn’t gonna push it any farther than that.  “Very well!  I shall beat it for now.  But have no fear, because – “  He cut himself off because she had looked away from him suddenly, and he was pretty sure he knew exactly why.

“You’re not allowed to laugh!  You said it wasn’t funny, remember!”

“It isn’t,” she said, very unconvincingly.  

“Suuuuure it’s not. That’s why you totally aren’t trying not to laugh because I said ‘but’ just now.”

“You’re always a little ridiculous, but you’re being particularly so right now.”

“That’s okay!” Claptrap said.  “I’d be so bored if everything was all serious all the time.  It wouldn’t be any fun!”

“Fun,” GLaDOS echoed, in a distant kinda way, and when Claptrap looked up at her she’d turned away from him a little.

“Yeah. Fun.  What, you never heard of it?  They didn’t teach you that during ‘Mad Science for Lady Robots?’”

“No,” she said, as though she’d actually taken the question seriously, which… she did that sometimes.  And when she started doing that, she was definitely not in the mood to have him around.  Before he’d really gotten to the exit he heard her move and then she said, “Where are you going?”

“Uh…”  Where was he going?  Oh, right. It wasn’t the where that mattered, it was the why.  “I was just gonna leave you be for a bit.  You said you were gonna think, remember?”

“All right,” was all she said to that, and it didn’t really make him any less confused but that was probably all he was gonna get.  “And… Claptrap.”

“Yeah?” he said, turning around.  Maybe she didn’t want him to take off after all?  That’d be awesome!

“Thank you for the hug,” she told him, and she sounded so serious he was almost concerned. It wasn’t that big a deal, was it?  “It was nice.”

He straightened himself as much as he could.  “Anytime, babe!  And I mean that literally.  Anytime.  I’m always up for that.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” she said, and he had to say if she decided to be serious about that he would definitely not argue about it.

[letmeletmetrashyourlove]

What the Hell?

Summary: A boy with a bat meets a girl with a hockey stick and it’s love at first swing. 

Author’s Note: Surprise! I wrote like 10 pages of this and I’m not even done! So here is part one. This is mostly backstory, nothing too exciting Fun fact: Dustin’s older sister was the one who taught him to curse...

     “Dusty, what the hell are you doing!?” I investigated, watching my idiot brother scramble off the front porch equipped with his old hockey gear.

    “Shit… Shit… Shit shit shit!” He shouted, capturing my arm and dragging me into the shed with him.

    “What the fuck are y-” I began, but he shoved his hand over my mouth.

I let out an annoyed whine, smacking at his baloney scented hand,

    “Stop it!” He hissed, pointing through the crack in the shed.

Something was on our porch, slinking out the front door of the house. It was about the size of a dog, but it was scaley… and… it had a head like….

                                                Oh, fuck no.

I hadn’t seen the Demogorgon in person, but Dustin had told me about it. Showed me the drawings Will had made. With so much weird shit going on, I couldn’t just chock it up to an overactive imagination.

    “What the hell is that thing doing in our house!? I thought it was dead!?”

    “Just shut up!”  

The creature snaked down the steps, plucking the slices of baloney along the way.

    “Yes… yes… yes… come on.” Dustin urged as it inched closer and closer to the cellar door.

    “Now!” He shouted to himself, bursting out of the shed. Dustin charged at the beast, smacking it with his hockey stick and knocking it down into the cellar. He threw himself down over the hatch, tangling the chain around the handles.

    “Sorry… You ate my cat.” He exasperated.

    “That thing ate Mews?!” I wailed, “Mom is out looking for him!”

    “Well, what did you want me to tell her!? ‘Sorry, my interdimensional slug turned into a monster and ate our cat’!?” He shouted back.

    “I don’t know! Just don’t send her on a wild goose chase!” I wailed.

    “Well, Mews is the  least of our problems right now!” Dustin exasperated, taking me by the arm and leading me into the garage.

    “Find something you can use to protect us.” He instructed as he turned on his radio.

He barked orders into it as I scouted for my old hockey gear. It was a short-lived sport after I smashed my face into the glass once, I decided I was done. I pulled it from a box that was shoved back in the corner.

    “Still got your old ice skates?” I questioned Dustin as I dusted the cobwebs off.

    “Uh… Yeah.” He responded, digging them out and passing them over to me.

I found a screwdriver and loosened the blade, tossing the boot aside. I took a roll of duct tape and secured the blade onto the end of the hockey stick.

    “Why is nobody answering!?” Dustin shouted, cramming his radio back into his pocket, “Come on, let’s go see if Mike is home. He’ll know what to do.”

***

Mom had driven the car when she went out to look for Mews, so I cruised on the back of Dustin’s bike. He stopped outside the Wheeler’s house, rushing up to the door and knocking frantically. I trailed not far behind him,

Mike’s dad answered.

    “Your line has been busy for over two hours, Mr.Wheeler. Do you realize this?” Dustin questioned as Ted opened the door.

    “Oh, I do realize.” He mumbled, glancing inside to his wife who was gabbing on the phone.

    “Is Mike home?”  

    “No.” He responded.     “No? Well, where the hell is he?”

I elbowed him in the ribs, showing him an expression to say be polite.

    “Karen, where's our son?” Ted hollered into the house.

    “Will’s!” Karen returned.

    “Will's,” Ted repeated.     “No one's picking up there,” Dustin informed.

    “Nancy. What about Nancy?” I suggested.

    “Karen, where's Nancy?” Ted hollered once again.

      “Ally's!” Karen replied, sounding even more miffed than she had before.

    “Ally's. Our children don't live here anymore. You didn't know that?”

    “Seriously?” Dustin scoffed.

    “Am I done here?” Ted questioned.

    “Son of a bitch. You're really no help at all, you know that?” Dustin barked, spinning around and heading back off the porch.

    “Hey! Language!”

    “Sorry, Mr.Wheeler!” I called as the man closed the door.

Steve was striding up the driveway, a bouquet of roses in hand as he muttered something under his breath to himself.

    “Nancy isn't home!” Dustin alerted, waving the floppy-haired boy down.      “Where is she?”

    “Ally-” I started, but Dustin interrupted.

    “Doesn't matter. We have bigger problems than your love life.” Dustin sassed,  “Do you still have that bat?”

    “Bat? What bat?” Steve feigned ignorance.

    “The one with the nails!” Dustin exclaimed, his patience wearing thinner and thinner.  

    “Why?”

    “I'll explain it on the way.”     “Now?”

    “Now! Son of a bitch!” Dustin shouted, throwing his hands up in frustration.

*****

    “I’ll go first…” Steve asserted, puffing out his chest and stepping toward the cellar ahead of me.

    “Nuh uh, that thing ate my cat. I’m gonna kill it.” I interjected, raising my weapon.

    “So, you’ve never seen one of these things before… And you think you’re ready to kill one?” Steve questioned, propping his bat on his shoulder.

    “How many of these have you killed, exactly?” I rebutted.

    “All I’m saying is that I have more experience. I really think that you should stay back.”

    “Is it because she’s a girl?” Dustin questioned.

I placed my hands on my hips, raising my eyebrows as I waited for Steve’s answer.

    “What? No! Of course not… Women can do anything men can do… I’m just saying this isn’t a job for a girl…”

I cocked my head at him, my annoyance growing.

    “No. That’s not what I meant.” He sputtered, “I mean… That… Women can be physically inferior….”

    “Steve.” Dustin interrupted, “Stop digging yourself into a hole.”

Steve took his advice and quit talking,

    “Fine, ladies first.” He offered, saluting the stairs.

I crept down the creaking wooden steps, the hockey stick raised over my head. A bat went gliding past my head, making me jump.

    “Holy shit!” Steve screeched, ducking and protecting his head.

    “Wimp.” I snickered, flipping the light switch as I tiptoed down into the dirt. It was squishy and wet. I peered down to discover some purple tinted goo… Sort of like a gel.  

    “What the hell is that?” Steve asked, sinking his bat into the mess and picking out what looked like a giant snakeskin.

    “Shit!” I shouted, glancing up to see a giant hole in the cellar wall. That thing had dug its way out.

    “Now what?”  

******

    “Dustin, you should’ve killed that thing when you had the chance.” I scolded as we stepped onto the train tracks.

    “Well, there’s this new girl at school. And… I really wanted to make her think I was cool… so I wanted to show it to her.”

    “You kept something you knew was probably dangerous in order to impress a girl who you just met?” Steve asked.

    “All right, that's grossly oversimplifying things,” Dustin responded.

    “I mean, why would a girl like some nasty slug, anyway?”

    “An interdimensional slug? Because it's awesome. Right Y/N?”

    “Before it turned into a baby Demogorgon? Yeah…” I replied, tearing another handful of beef out and slapping it onto the tracks.

    “Well, even if she thought it was cool -which she didn't- I I just I don't know. I just feel like you're trying too hard.” Steve expressed.

    “Well, not everyone can have your perfect hair, all right?” Dustin mumbled.

    “It's not about the hair, man. The key with girls is just acting like you don't care.”

I let out a scoff, rolling my eyes.

    “Even if you do?”

    “Yeah, exactly. It drives them nuts.”

    “Hey… how’d that work out for you with Nancy, exactly?” I sought, having learned about a blowout fight they had at a Halloween party.

    “That was something different. Okay? Nothing to do with me.” He insisted.

Despite my occasional protest, Dustin was still enthralled by what Steve was telling him.

    “Then what?” Dustin pressed,

    “You just wait until, uh - until you feel it.”

    “Feel what?”

    “It's like before it's gonna storm, you know? You can't see it, but you can feel it, like this, uh electricity, you know?”

    “Oh, like in the electromagnetic field when the clouds in the atmosphere-”

    “No, no, no, no, no. Like a Like a sexual electricity.”

    “Oh.”

    “Hey! No teaching my brother about sexual electricity!” I interjected.

    “Hey, it’s not like I’m teaching him the birds and the bees!” Steve defended,

    “Anyway, you feel that and then you make your move.”

    “So that's when you kiss her?”

    “No, whoa, whoa. Slow down, Romeo.” He resisted, “Sure, okay, some girls, yeah, they want you to be aggressive. You know, strong, hot and heavy, like a - I don't know, like a lion.” Dustin hummed in acknowledgment.

    “But others, you gotta be slow, you gotta be stealthy, like a like a ninja.”

    “But this girl's special, you know. It's just, like, something about her.”

    “Whoa, whoa, whoa. Hey, hey, hey. You're not falling in love with this girl, are you?

    “Uh, no. No.” Dustin stammered, shaking his head.

    “Okay, good. Don't.” Steve advised.

    “I won't.”

    “She's only gonna break your heart, and you're way too young for that shit.”

We walked along in silence for a few moments. The only sounds being our footsteps and the patter of raw meat hitting the tracks.

    “FabergÃ.” Steve muttered.

    “What?”

    “It's Fabergà Organics. Use the shampoo and conditioner, and when your hair's damp It's not wet, okay? When it's damp - Damp. You do four puffs of the Farrah Fawcett spray.”

I let out a strangled laugh that came bubbled up and left me sputtering

    “Farrah Fawcett spray?” I cackled.

    “Yeah, Farrah Fawcett.” Steve retorted, “You tell anyone I just told you that and your ass is grass. You're dead, Hendersons. Do you ?” He threatened.

    “You do more to your hair than I do to mine.” I snorted.

He gave me a gentle shove, avoiding my gaze as his cheeks turned cherry red.

    “Don’t worry, Harrington. Your hair secrets are safe with me.” I assured, “Anyway, don’t listen to him, Dusty.”

    “About the hair?”

    “No! Not about the hair! About girls!” I corrected, “Girls don’t want somebody who doesn’t care! They want somebody who is sweet! Helps ‘em out. Carries their books for them and gives them flowers. Says hi to them in the hallway.”

    “I’ve been talking to her! She called me a stalker.”

    “Well then, you’ve been talking to her too much.” I speculated.

    “Okay, so I have to talk to her. But not too much. I have to act like I don’t care… but I do have to care.” He uttered his thoughts as he walked.

    “Girls are hard.” He concluded, letting out a sigh.

    “I know, pal. I know.” Steve consoled, thumping him on the back.

[themadlostgirl]

Not Dead Yet (Part 47)

*Early update! Also a bit of a lengthy one. Either way I like it!*

Pairing: Reader x Peter Pan

Warnings: language

“How did you not notice the poison ivy everywhere?” Ben looked over Isaac and I with our rashes. I had only meant to take a quick nap and ended up falling asleep under Peter’s Thinking Tree next to Isaac. Being as dark as it was I didn’t notice the patch of poison ivy and while Isaac seemed to be in the majority of it and I had rolled into some of it.

“I’m sorry my night vision wasn’t working at the time.” I grabbed the aloe from him and started to rub the plant’s soothing gel on my itchy arms.

“Serves you right.” Verne grumbled. He and his friends had finally been allowed down from their perch.

“Do you really want to make me mad again, Verne?” I smirked at the way he curled his toes back, “That’s what I thought.”

“You could at least give Paul his tongue back.”

“He can have it back if he finds it.” I shrugged and whistled down for Candace. She landed on my shoulder looking older than usual. She’s probably nearing the end of her cycle and would burst into flames soon. Probably not best to have her around camp when that happens unless I want the camp burnt down again.

I walked her to the beach and made a little divet in the sand for her to nestle in while I waited for her to combust. I rubbed at my arms trying to drum up some heat. Why was it so cold this morning? The sea was clouded with fog and I could just barely make out the silhouette of the Jolly Roger on the horizon. Was Peter away from the island? I can’t think of why he would be upset unless he ran into Tigerlily or something like that.

“Peter,” I called but he didn’t show up, “Curiouser and curiouser.” He always shows up when I call. Maybe he is away from the island. But it’s far earlier than he would normally leave and if he left the island last night he would have been back that same night. What reason could he have for being gone all night? The only time he was ever gone so long without telling me was when he...went for a visit.

I shook the thought from my head. He hasn’t done that since we started our own arrangement. He’s told me time and again that he doesn’t want to sleep with others because he has me. Then again I did tell him I wanted things to be toned down. Not just the frequency of which we had sex but our familiarity around each other in general. What if he took that farther than I meant? What if he was back on other girls? What if he never actually stopped? Peter leaves the island a lot and he’s a good enough liar that sometimes not even I can see through his illusions.

“No. That’s stupid.” I muttered to myself, “He wouldn’t lie to me. He knows the repercussions to not being honest with me. We trust each other. I am his confidant and his friend as well as his lover I should not be so worried about this.”

Candace hopped out of her sand nest and came to rest on my lap. I ran a soft hand down her back. “I’m just being paranoid. Aren’t I, Candace? Just because Peter’s away from the island doesn’t mean he’s off sleeping with other girls. What should I care if he is anyway? This is just an arrangement between friends. Purely physical…”

My mind flashed back to the other night when I willingly fell asleep in Peter’s tent wrapped in his arms. A warmth started to blossom in my chest...then my legs and into my hands--oh shit! I quickly scrambled off the ground knocking Candace off my lap as she erupted into a column of flames. My lap and part of my chest was singed a bit but it was my hands that had gotten the majority of the damage. “Just perfect,” I looked back to see Candace poke her naked head out of the smoking pile of ash, “I hope you’re happy. Look how blistered my hands are.” I scooped her up and placed her inside of my coat.

I got back to camp and smeared some more aloe across my hands. Seeing as how my hands hurt too much to hold anything I had to abstain from training and instead took a walk along the beach. This has just been the most inconvenient day ever. I think I’m just going to wrap my hands up and go back to bed for the day.

I settled back down in my tent ready to just sleep the rest of the day through but I was not going to get that luxury because the moment I laid down all the boys came back making a ruckus. “Come on. Why is nothing going my way today?”

I sat back and glared at the boys as they ran around playing and eating. That’s it, I’m going back to the Thinking Tree and hiding out in the cavern for the rest of the day. At least there it’ll be quiet and boy free and birds won’t explode while I’m holding them. I dragged myself back to where the Thinking Tree was and jumped down the hole that led to the underground cavern.

Strange enough when I landed at the bottom of the cavern it was not dark like it usually was but it was filled with light. Sitting at the table was Peter hunched over a stack of parchment. He glanced over at me mildly surprised. “Wait, have you been here this whole time?”

“Hello to you too.” he set his pencil down and turned toward me fully, “What are you doing down here?”

“Trying to find some peace and quiet. I’ve been having a bit of an off day.” I held up my bandaged hands. “Why are you down here?”

“Same as you, peace and quiet.” I sat down next to him and he started to untie the bandages from my hands. “What happened here?”

“Candace.” I muttered as he started to heal the blisters, “She started to combust when I was holding her.”

He moved his hands up to erase the poison ivy rash from my arms. “There. If you still want to stay then go ahead and rest, I won’t bother you.” he turned back to his parchment.

“Oh why thank you,” I rolled my eyes and scooted closer to see what he was doing, “I see you’re putting that pencil box I gave you to good use.”

All around him were sketches of various things. I picked up one that was a rather splendid likeness to Candace herself. “Have you been down here all day just drawing?”

“It helps keep me calm.” he muttered as he took the paper back.

“Keep calm? Why, may I ask, are we not so calm this foggy day?” I asked.

“Weren’t you looking for a place to rest in silence?” he snapped and I backed off.

“Excuse me,” I huffed and flung myself back on the bed, “I was just asking a question. What’s going on? You’ve always been able to talk to me before.”

“Not now, Y/N.” he grumbled back.

“Fine...can I ask you one more thing though? Just one.”

He let out a sigh and turned back towards me waiting for my question with an impatient glare, “If you’ve been down here all day, why didn’t you come when I called for you?”

“Contrary to popular belief I am not at your constant beck and call, Y/N.”

“I never said you were but…”

But you usually always are.

“Were you gonna finish that thought?” he quirked an eyebrow up at me.

“Nevermind.” I tossed one of the animal pelt blankets over my head. I was able to breathe out a small breath of relief. He’s just been down here all day and not off running around other realms with pretty face princess and midnight maidens. Not that I should care anyway that is! “UGH!”

“The hell--” Peter flung the blanket off me, “Did you just have a mental break?”

“Possibly.” I drew my legs closer to me, “I don’t know what’s up with me lately. I brought Tigerlily here hoping I could have a female companion that could make dealing with all you boys easier and she’s somehow done the exact opposite.”

“Told you, fairies are terrible.” he sat down next to me, “Can I ask what she’s done now that’s put you in such a disgruntled state?”

“Things. Stupid things. Mainly pertaining to you and I. I don’t know how but because of it I’ve flipped my brain and I can’t go back to thinking the way I used to. It’s like there’s a happy ending right in front of me but I can’t get to it because I need to keep making tangents that I actually don’t want to make but I feel like I need to because I’m too scared to get to the happy ending!”

“Tangents like Isaac?”

“What?” I looked over at him but he wasn’t meeting my gaze. “What does Isaac have to do with this?”

“You tell me.” he flung a piece of paper at me.

I unfolded it and read over the note. “But this is the note Isaac left for me in my tent to meet him at your Thinking Tree. Why do you have it?”

“No. You left this note for me in my tent last night after I returned from trying to find the Truest Believer.”

“I never left you a note.” we inspected the parchment in a new light. It was the exact same handwriting from my note from Isaac. Why would he send both of us the exact same note though? He made it clear he only wanted to speak to me last night.

“This new Lost Boy seems to be up to some mischief.” Peter stood off the bed and extended a hand to me, “Little brat wanted me to see you two.”

“Why? It’s not like anything happened. We talked and we fell asleep.” the information was starting to add up, “And when we woke up we were in a patch of poison ivy. Mainly he was.”

I stared Peter down. Was this him being territorial? He couldn’t seriously have believed I’d have interest in a pale Lost Boy like Isaac. I had made it fairly obvious who my type was. It’s not like I haven’t been familiar with the others either. I go skinny dipping with the boys all the time. Devin actively peeped on me my first day in Neverland so it’s not like I’m not used to having no privacy or even any personal space. Why had my falling asleep next to Isaac piss him off so bad that he had to conjure up a rash inducing plant around us?

“Glare all you want but I do not have to explain myself to you. We need to go find this kid and find out what his problem is.” he hauled me off the bed. I made a mental note to bring this whole jealousy/territorial idiocy up after we dealt with this Isaac situation. In a gust of wind we were gone from the cavern.

~~~

Run and hide!

“Holy--” Isaac was thrown back at the sudden shouting in his head. “What is--”

“Geez, Isaac, what’s your problem?” the others looked down at him.

“Nothing. I just--”

Stop your babbling! Find a bean and run! You need to get as much space between you and others as fast as you can if you want to live.

“Why?” he whispered quietly, “What’s happening?”

Go before you incompetence gets you killed! I’ll buy you some time.

“But--”

“Where’s Isaac?” Pan’s voiced boomed from the center of camp.

“Ooh, looks like someone’s in trouble.” the other boys grinned at him like he was about to be devoured and they couldn’t wait to see the carnage.

“I gotta go.” Isaac took off running into the jungle. Where had he seen the bean grove before?

~~~

“I said, where is Isaac?” Peter demanded. He had felt the Lost Boy’s presence here a moment before. Where had he gone?

“He took off.” One of the others stated, “Shall we go hunting?”

“I believe we shall.” Peter could do with hunting down a scared pup in over his head.

“Peter,” Y/N tugged on his arm, “Something’s wrong.”

“What do you--Y/N?” the gem of her necklace turned as black as onyx. The black of her pupils expanded until her entire eye was clouded with black. She went rigid before collapsing completely. “Y/N!”

Devin caught her before she hit the ground. Her eyes never closed or even blinked. “Dammit,” Peter tried to tear the necklace from her throat but it held sure.

“That’s not gonna work,” a voice that wasn’t Y/N’s echoed from her mouth, “Your Lost Girl is currently unavailable.”

“Who the hell are you and what are you doing possessing my Lost Girl?” Peter had to remember this was still Y/N’s body and not to choke her.

“I’m not surprised you don’t recognize my voice. The last time you heard it you were nothing but a babe.” She peeled herself off the ground and started pacing around the boys. There was power in each step. Whoever was using Y/N’s body was far more confident than she should be considering she was intruding in Peter’s Lost Girl.

“Who are you and what are you doing in my Lost Girl?”

“This was the only way I could think to talk to you without appearing myself. Besides, I have a feeling you’ll be much more cooperative if I was in this form given what I can make her do.” Peter eyed the dagger strapped to Y/N’s hip.

“Fine. You have my attention. Care to introduce yourself?”

“My name is Fiona, or as I’m better known, the Black Fairy.” she smiled, “And I’m your mother, Peter.”

Not a sound came from the entirety of the camp. This black-eyed demon that had taken over Y/N’s body stood sure and straight never once blinking as her words resonated within Peter. His mother? That was impossible. His mother had been a mortal. A horrible mortal that had tried to kill him because she thought he was a changeling.

“Shocked? I would be surprised if you weren’t. After all these years you probably haven’t thought about your real family. Then again you didn’t know about me so I cannot blame you.”

“You are not my mother.” Peter’s words dripped with malice, “I have no mother. The woman that bore me died many years ago.”

“Ah yes, the mortal woman…” the Black Fairy/Y/N grimaced, “She was supposed to raise you in my stead but that didn’t quite work out as I had hoped.”

“Even if you are my real mother, which I don’t care if you are, why are you here? What business do you have with me?”

“What do you think, dearie?” she stretched out a hand as if to touch his face but Peter hit it away. She frowned as if his rejection was the most hurtful thing he had ever done, “You are my son. I’ve come to bring you home with me.”

“And leave Neverland? There is no amount of magic or gold you could offer that would get me to leave here and be your son.”

“Is that so? Not even if I were to tell you I could remove your curse?” this made Peter freeze and she smirked. “Oh yes, I know about your little predicament.”

“You speak of things you have no knowledge about.”

“Maybe not I, but this Y/N girl does. She knows a lot about you.” she smirked, “I’ve been able to go through her mind, see her memories, even the ones she’s forgotten. She knows you very well and you care for her an awful lot. Good thing she didn’t listen to Tigerlily when she mentioned the necklace. I was almost worried but of course you pulled through for me.”

“The magic I sensed…”

“Mine. But you took it as yours because it was so familiar. Is that enough proof that you are my son.”

Peter couldn’t believe what he was hearing. For years he’s been trying to forget the torment he went through when he was just a newborn. Forget the woman that he thought birthed him and move on with his life. Now this fairy had taken control of his Lost Girl and was telling him that she was in fact his actual mother. More than that she was telling him she suddenly wanted him? Why now? She could have collected him anytime but she chose now.

“If I am your son then why do you want me now? You gave me up years ago, what use do I have to you now? It’s not exactly like I’m clamoring for a parent.” Peter sneered.

“It’s not the use I have for you but the use you could have for me. I can lift your curse. Together we can accomplish anything. Rule the realms with ease. You need never have a worry again if you come with me. Doesn’t that sound wonderful?”

“You cannot lift my curse and even if you could I already have a cure. Everything I need and could ever want is right here. Now how about you shove off before you make me do something you’ll regret.”

“I don’t think you are understanding what I am offering you. You can join me and I will lift your curse and we can rule all the realms together or you can remain cursed on this spit of jungle hoping for a remedy I know you do not have yet and may die before ever achieving. Which honestly sounds better?”

“Neverland. Always.”

“Fine. I was hoping it wouldn’t have to come to this.” she snapped her fingers and the necklace started to shrink growing tighter around Y/N’s throat yet the voice came out clear. “Come with me or the girl dies.”

Peter watched as the necklace grew smaller and smaller. He had to make a decision. “Go ahead.” he put on his most convincing smirk, “Offing just one of my recruits isn’t going to make me change my mind.”

“Is that so? And here I thought you may have actually cared for her given all the lengths you’ve gone to for her before.” she chuckled, “I can see it all. The kind words, the drastic measures to keep her safe, the intimate dances, and such pretty drawings.”

Peter’s blood was boiling but he kept it bottled down. If he played his cards right he could get the both of them out of this sadistic confrontation. “Sentimentality is not an attribute of mine. You are only seeing the honeyed words for a stubborn common whore.”

“Well then,” she stuck out her lip in a pout, “If she truly is worth nothing to you than there is no point in me prolonging this.” The necklace cinched tight like a noose as it started to cut into her neck. A thin line of red blossoming across her throat.

“No!” Devin shouted,”Leave her alone!” he tried in vain to pull the necklace free. Devin looked back at Peter pleading. “Damn it you coward! Save her!”

“Stop.” Peter pushed Devin away and approached Y/N’s possessed body. “I’ll go with you. Just leave Y/N out of this.”

She smiled cruelly as the necklace loosened. Peter immediately pressed a hand to the cut stopping the bleeding and healing her throat until there wasn’t a mark left. “Good choice. And to ensure that you don’t try anything, this necklace will not fall until you leave.”

Peter withdrew a bean from the pouch at his side and handed the pouch off to Felix. “You’re in charge till I get back. Don’t let these idiots destroy the place.”

“How will you get back?” Felix asked worry evident in his voice.

“I’m not sure. I’ll think of something. In the meantime find that rat Isaac. I want to have his head on a stake when I get back.” he turned back to Y/N, “I want to speak to her.”

“Of course. But don’t forget, I’ll still be watching.” She closed her eyes and when they opened they were clear once more. Y/N fell forward into him and gazed around.

“What happened?” she asked groggily, “I felt like I wasn’t anywhere. Peter, what’s wrong?”

“Are you alright?” he asked and she nodded. “I have to go do something. I’ll be back though. I don’t know when but I will.”

“What do you mean? Where are you going? What’s going on?”

“I can’t explain right now. Just stay here and don’t do anything stupid.”

“Wait you can’t just leave so abruptly like this--” he cut her off with a deep kiss not caring who was watching. There was so much he wanted to tell her but this was not the time for it.

Reluctantly he pulled back and pressed his forehead against her’s, “I’ll return to you and explain everything,” he whispered, “I promise.”

She studied him for a moment before giving his lips another peck, “You had better.”

“I will. My word is my bond.” He gave her one final look before dropping the bean on the ground and stepping through the portal. The sight of the necklace falling from around her neck being the last thing he saw before being sucked through the violent torrent into the unknown.

(First) (Previous) (Next)

[chelsorz07]

yeah apparently i did two of these on this day eight years ago

2010/2018

There's some weird and personal questions, you down? always. I doubt they are, but sure. Do you have any alcohol bottles in your room? yep. No I have them in the fridge and freezer like a grown up. What's bothering you right now? i feel like i have to be jealous of someone who lives two thousand miles away. My joints hurt. Do you like anyone? obviously. Wow, you got me. Real personal. If someone said to you "nice ass" you say? thanks. i know i have a nice ass lol I’d probably tell them to fuck off unless it was someone I knew. Who did you last speak on the phone with? idk. my mom probably. Drug people. All legal and above board. Ever been so drunk someone else had to carry you? yes. Oh,  the picnic table night. Have you had to carry someone? not carry, but hold them up. I couldn’t carry someone. I have no muscles. I can’t even pick up my 20lb cat. Do you hate anyone? no. Yup. What are your plans for tomorrow? i think i only have to watch maranda for half the day, and after that i'm probably gonna rest some more. still sore. Work. What are you listening to right now? that 70s show. Found Out About You - Gin Blossoms. Was yesterday better than today? every day sucks lately. They were pretty much the same on a scale of one to meh. Who was the last person you hugged? maranda. the only person who ever hugs me anymore. Sheila. Do you want to be in a relationship with someone? i am. and i want to be. I am. Do you drink more apple or orange juice? neither. I hardly ever drink either because they don’t contain caffeine, but right now I do have some orange pineapple juice. Do you think anyone has feelings for you? these days i have to wonder. Supposedly. Are you nice to people you dislike? i'm not even nice to people i do like. Ha. Truth. Was this summer a good one? hasn't happened yet. Hopefully it will be. You kissed someone today didnt you? no. Nope. Still have a week before I even get to see him. How well do you know the last female you texted? i think it was amanda. so, really well. It was a different Amanda, but I know her fairly well. We used to work together and got pretty close. How long does it take you to fall asleep at night? hours. If I can at all. Would you rather write with a gel pen or Sharpie? sharpie. Hmm..I don’t think I have a preference. I miss gel pens. They’re making a comeback. What's the background on your cell? it's a slideshow. Cockles. Have you ever thought about giving up on someone but couldn't? i don't want to give up. i think HE wants to give up. Yeah, sigh. Is the person you last texted single? no. He’s married to my mom. Have you ever passed out on the bathroom floor? yeah. Still drunk from the night before (a little Summer Set nod there). Have you drifted away from anyone lately? oh god... That’s a loaded question. There are some people that I feel like if I were back home, we could pick up right where we left off. But I really miss them. Do you have hard time saying "no?" no. It’s probably my most used word that isn’t fuck. Someone just handed you $100,000,000 now what? go to school, and get a house/car. Go home. Whats the closest black object to you? keys on the laptop. The diamonds in my ring, my bra, my shirt, my hair.  What are you currently waiting for? for things to get better. I think I’ll always be waiting for that. What should you be doing? sleeping. Normal people would be sleeping, but I don’t have to be up till 3pm and it’s not even 4am so it’s too early. Describe how you feel right now in one word: lonely. Bored. Are you scared of anything? losing what i've got. Everything. Think of the last person who said I love you, do you think they meant it? i don't even know who it was. It was probably Mike, so I know he did. When was the last time you spoke to your sister? this afternoon. My older sister, about two weeks ago. My younger sister, I don’t remember. Which is weird because I get along with her better. Is there someone who makes you instantly smile when you receive a msg from? usually. Yeah. Have you been a happy, angry, or sad person lately? mostly sad. Oh my deep dark depression hole grows exponentially by the day. Do you think you can love someone without trusting them? you can, but not completely. I’m real sick of this question. Probably because I keep doing the same surveys over any over again since I have no one to actually talk to. Honestly, what's running through your mind? i'm scared. Nothing really at the moment. Ever kissed under water? no. I don’t even have a reason to BE underwater. I can’t swim. What color shirt are you wearing? navy blue. Black t-shirt, navy blue hoodie. Is anyone on your bad side? not really. Ehh. At 3:46 in the morning if anyone has the energy to piss me off they deserve a pass. Are you usually wide awake in the morning? no. Considering I stay up all night, yeah. What time did you get up this morning? I went to bed at 8am and got up at 2pm but there wasn’t much sleep going on in between.

[you-andthebottlemen]

41 - AU

Request: Hey! I just read your vampire van story and it was AMAZING! I know you've probably got loads of other stuff to work on, but if you don't mind, could you right like a follow-up sort of story to it? I really enjoyed it! It doesn't matter if you don't want to though, I get that you're probably busy! Bye xx

So, this fic is a part two to my “Vampire Van” AU, link here.

This fic was really difficult to write mostly because I don’t like vampires and also I had no clue how to make it semi-believable and not cringe. Therefore, writing a part two was a challenge, to say the least. Decided to stick to my ‘is he or isn’t he??’ type thing. But here it is! I hope those of you who liked Vampire Van enjoy it xxxx

For the lovely anon who requested, those of you who read and enjoyed the first one and for @storiesaboutvan as I know Vampire Van holds a special place in your heart.

Also, dear anon, I am busy yes but I always manage to find time to write at some point so don’t ever think that you shouldn’t request or something because I may be busy! I am here to take your requests and I love it. Thank you again!!! Xxx

*****

Head pounding, you rolled out of bed and stumbled into the foreign en-suite bathroom, taking a good few seconds to adjust to your unfamiliar surroundings. You rifled through the cabinets with blurry vision, in search of something to kill the pain. Unable to find any medication or much of anything at all, you groaned and slumped over the sink with your head down and hands firmly gripped on the basin. You breathed heavily and fought the urge to throw up. After a minute or two, you splashed your face with ice cold tap water and looked at yourself in the mirror. Makeup free, skin breaking out and definitely not fresh as a daisy, you wanted to curl up into a ball and sleep for days.  

“Looking for these, love?” Van asked, leaning against the door frame sleekly and holding up a box of paracetamol with a small smirk. 

You hadn’t heard him come in, so his sudden speech made you jump. 

“Fuck, don’t creep up on me like that!” you laughed, gently slapping his arm and taking the box of tablets from him as you walked past.  

“Sorry for going through your stuff,” you added quietly.

“All good, nothin’ to hide,” he winked.

After taking the tablets, you stopped to notice that Van was fully dressed, unlike you in your underwear and a sweaty t-shirt that you’d borrowed from him late the night before. After playing another round of pool, you’d continued drinking until you decided it was a good idea to go back to Van’s place. He’d insisted on getting the taxi to take you home, but you forced him to take you to his instead. You promised you wouldn’t drunkenly seduce him so he finally agreed; though he said it wasn’t very gentlemanly of him. You just laughed and pulled him confidently by the hand into the taxi with you. He’d given you a t-shirt and after kissing you goodnight, tucked you into his bed where you fell asleep immediately, soothed by his smell and the feeling of his cold lips on your skin.

“Where’re you off to?” you asked, walking back into his bedroom and sitting on his bed.

“Nowhere,” he replied, pushing slowly between your legs, “didn’t really sleep so thought I should just get dressed.”

You smiled up at him and went for a kiss, the both of you ignoring your sour hangover breath. Strangely, you didn’t mind looking your absolute worst in front of him. Usually, on a one night stand, or whatever this was, you’d not be caught dead in their bed the next morning yet alone sweaty, hungover and looking like you’d just crawled out of a bin. But Van made you feel safe and you could tell he didn’t think you were any less beautiful than you were the night before in your makeup and fancy clothes.

After pulling away from the kiss, you looked at him. His hair was neatly, yet effortlessly styled so it hung gently and curled up at the back where you presumed it was growing out after a haircut, just as it was last night. Van grinned at you, revealing those sharp teeth once again. When you saw them, you were reminded of the events of the previous night like a flashback scene in a film. Cold hands. Pointy teeth. Vampire? Nah. 

You pushed back gently on Van’s chest so you could stand up. You’d decided you wanted a shower to wash off all the dirt and grime that came with a hangover and a night of sleeping in a stranger’s bed. You rocked on the spot slightly and Van put a hand to your waist to steady you. Again, you noticed the temperature difference between his skin and yours. You looked up at him and bit your lip.

“Can I go and take a shower?”

“Of course,” he smiled, “I’ll go grab ya a towel”.

Van let you pass and watched as you walked into the bathroom, his eyes had that slightly glazed, hungry look again. It turned you on. 

“I don’t know how to use the taps in here, I think you’ll have to show me...” you said innocently though it was clear you meant the opposite.

“Is that so?” Van replied with a smirk, crossing his arms and licking his lips as you turned to face him in the doorway. 

Looking at him standing there in his navy button up with the sleeves rolled at the elbows, his chest hair showing at the top where it was loosely buttoned, you couldn’t believe your luck. Who the hell meets someone like this randomly at a bar?

“I have also completely forgotten how to use shower gel, so yeah.”

Van chuckled and unbuttoned his shirt the rest of the way before he walked into the bathroom behind you and turned the shower on for you both; completely forgetting to go and get some fresh towels. 

.......

Once you and Van had emerged from the haven of hot water and steam, skin on skin and lips on every square inch of each other, it was obvious the two of you wouldn’t be parting ways anytime soon. 

Still in one of his t-shirts and now a pair of boxer shorts, you sat cross-legged on his couch and flicked through the TV channels while he made tea for you. While he looked handsome and attractive in his skinny jeans, button ups and fitted jackets, seeing him in black track pants and a white t-shirt was a whole new ball game. His wet hair clung to his forehead slightly and looked darker than usual, making his pale skin stand out. 

Despite the gloom of outside and the drawn blinds, you knew it was lunchtime without even needing to check a clock. Your stomach rumbled and the hangover induced hunger made you suddenly feel ravenous. 

“I heard that,” Van commented with a smirk from the kitchen. 

“How? It was so quiet!” you responded, shocked and grabbing at your growling stomach. 

“Want something to eat?” he asked as he set down the mug of tea on a coaster in front of you. 

“Yeah sure, I can cook us something if you like?” you offered; a meal being the least you could do after all his generosity. 

“That’s sweet but uh, no ingredients. I don’t have a fridge,” he responded awkwardly, moving his hands about in a weird twitching motion. 

“Oh,” you glanced over and saw he was right; a gaping hole in the kitchen where a fridge should be. 

“Why not? you asked. 

“Don’t have much of anything. I travel a lot,” he shrugged, brushing off the question. 

“Let’s order in yeah?” he suggested, “save ya from having to get dressed to go out,” he winked.

“Sure but I’m paying,” you told him but he wouldn’t have any of it. 

You and Van sat together on the couch scrolling through menus on your phone from all the different food places nearby that would deliver. Your shoulders were pressed together and your knees touching slightly. Van turned his nose up at almost all your suggestions, yet urged you to get whatever you wanted. He was very unusual and full of contradictions. 

“Fuck. Garlic bread, yes please,” you all but moaned with hearts for eyes.

“Um. No garlic bread. Makes ya breath smell shit,” he replied quickly. 

You raised an eyebrow, confused; earlier, your hangover breath was the opposite of a big deal. 

“Okay...”

After a few more minutes of umming and ahhing over the various lunch options, Van easily settled on some ghastly looking steak and chips meal and you went with the Italian style pesto pasta. 

He stood up to call the restaurant, holding your phone to one ear and placing his other hand on his hip. You couldn’t help but smile at the sound of his voice as he ordered; you could tell he was trying to speak clearly so they’d understand his accent. While you waited, you continued to flip through TV channels looking for something interesting to pass the time with until the food arrived. 

When he was done, Van handed you back your phone with a smile and sat down beside you, wrapping one long arm around your shoulders not, minding the drips from your still wet hair. You quickly replied to the few texts that had popped up from your housemates who wondered where you were and Van picked up where you left off looking for something to watch. 

“What the fuck?” Van mumbled to himself in a high pitched voice. 

You looked up at him and followed his eyes to the TV. 

“That’s toddlers and tiaras. Fuck. I know,” you rolled your eyes and put your phone down beside you. 

Eventually, you and Van settled on some nature documentary; daytime TV was boring as all get out. You leaned more into Van’s side and he tightened his grip around you. You bit back a smile and grabbed his empty hand confidently. He drew small circles on your skin with his thumb which made butterflies erupt in your stomach and you focussed more on those tiny details than anything else; the TV was just something to look at.

.......

“You’re seriously going to eat that?” you questioned in disbelief, pointing your fork at Van’s meal. 

Van’s steak was so rare that you were convinced it was seriously undercooked. The sight of it alone made you wanna hurl. Van just shrugged and dug into the red and bloody slab of meat happily. You held back a gag. 

As you chewed on your pasta, you thought about how you were acting as though you’d known Van for months, not a number of hours in which most of them you were drunk or asleep. You glanced over at him quickly and smiled. He had his legs outstretched and crossed with his feet resting on the coffee table, mismatched socks in full view. His hair which was now dry, was fluffy and wavy, making him look slightly younger and very soft. 

“What’re you lookin’ at?” Van asked knowingly when he noticed you staring. 

“Nothin’,” you grinned back, despite the probable bits of pesto stuck between your teeth.

“Okay,” he smirked, “thought you were thinkin’ about how good looking I am.”

“Definitely not,” you replied with an equally as smug tone and a matching cheeky glint in your eye.  

Van put his now empty plate on the coffee table and turned to face you, crossing his legs under him. He ran a hand through his hair and licked his lips.

“Think maybe I like you y/n,” he said suddenly yet you weren’t taken aback. 

"I think maybe I like you too Van," you placed your bowl beside his plate, "despite the fact you don't own a fridge, you don't like garlic bread, you eat undercooked steak and you're just a little weird generally."

Van’s face flooded with an expression that was a combination of faux-offence and head over heels happiness.

“Could say the same about you y/n,” he replied. 

“Then I guess we can be a little weird, together?” you said. 

“That we can, love.”

With that, Van took your face in his cold hands and kissed you like you’d never been kissed before and you knew that falling in love with him would be completely and utterly inevitable. 

[creatingnikki]

About the stationery theme ask, can you do that all, please?!? Love ya!! ((I want to know everything about you))

Oh my goddddd. You make me smile and blush and say ‘omg’ so much! 💖Sure! I shall do all the remaining ones for you. 

gel pen: when are you most comfortable?When I am at home, in my room, wearing the most mismatched but comfortable clothes and my hair is in the weirdest bun while I sip on my green tea and watch kdrama. Also when I interact with people who match my frequency in terms of values, beliefs and attitude (like you!!!  💖)ballpoint pen: tell me about the day you’ve just hadI went to college, attended a seminar on career choices which was brilliant, send an email to the speaker of the seminar for an internship opportunity at his startup, had a yummy lunch with my mom, studied for like an hour, and spent the last hour answering all the asks. It has been a lovely day. fineliner: what’s your greatest achievement?

Scoring 100/100 in my 12th std Economics board paper. I know marks don’t define you or mean much beyond a point but this meant a lot to me because, A. I worked hard B. I didn’t expect it (I asked my dad to check whether it was ‘00′ instead of ‘100′ because in spite of all my hard work and knowledge, failing seemed more possible than a perfect score in a subject like Economics)C. I was the first person to score full in Economics in the long, long, long history of my school which is very well known for national rankers. highlighter: what are your best qualities?I am highly self aware which helps me with interpersonal skillsI am a highly creative person I strive to be a kind human being 

felt-tip: describe your aestheticLong conversations at night, sleepy Sundays, lavish meals, body warmth, endless questions, toothy smiles, dancing in the rain, the comfort of an oversized hoodie, flowers in hair and comfortable silences. stapler: out of all the people you know, who do you think you are closest to?My family definitely glue stick: what do you look for in a lasting relationship/friendship?Understanding, inspiring/encouraging, helping to learn and grow, meaningful conversations, solid support and honesty. tape: tell me about your longest friendshipWe became friends in 6th grade and she helped me change from a bossy bitch to a less bossier bitch. I changed cities 2 years later but we continued to be ‘best friends’ until we stopped in meaning but continued in essence. I know I can always show up at her place even now and she will welcome me and my bags. no questions asked. We are so different culturally and religiously but that has never been an issue between us. She has seen me have a 180 degrees change and I have witnessed the same. We have no expectations of the other because we already know and feel the unconditional love. ruler: what line will you never cross?Abuse - physical and sexual eraser: what do you consider to be your biggest mistake?Giving like 12746495083756 chances to two completely undeserving ass holes. scissors: ever had a bad break-up?Yessticky note: something about yourself you’d like to changeMy weight stamp: a date that’s special for you and why 

17th January. It’s my birthday. Need I say more? haha I love this day because for the longest time it was the only day I thought I could paper/care/only be concerned with myself without feeling guilty. bookmark: a book that means a lot to you and whyIt’s actually a play - Cat on a Hot Tin Roof by Tennessee Williams I studied it in 11th grade and it meant a lot because I could strongly resonate with the major themes of homosexuality(which I took it as being true to who you are) and mendacity. folder: describe your familyI have an older sister who is like my best friend and who irritates me most days as though she is the younger sibling. I love her and she is super hardworking and sincere and strong and inspires me everyday. My mom and dad are similar in the sense that they had to go through a lot of hardships in their life starting from childhood (different sorts of hardships) but they are still some of the happiest and content people I know so their general personality, mindset, attitude and courage constantly inspires me. I could write a book on each of them.whiteboard: tell me your plans for tomorrowPretty routine - college, tumblr, lunch, studying, tumblr, kdrama, workout, tumblr, sleepblackboard: tell me about a memory that has affected who you are todayOh...6th grade, I am crying my eyes out. And probably puking. I am so damn scared. completely terrified. Lost. Lonely. All of this while being at my home. Promising myself that even though I can’t do much to make things better, I can definitely try and I can start with studying and getting good grades and making my parents proud. It took me four years, but I got there. 

pinboard: what are you focusing on in your life right now?my health and college tablet: tell me your plans for the futureBecause this is my final year at college, I have absolutely no idea what life is going to be like next year. Honestly. My plan is to just take great care of my physical and mental health and save loads so I can start travelling. envelope: tell me a secretOkay I guess it’s time...I joined tumblr sometime in 2015 but I had no clue what this app was used for so didn’t use it after that first day. Months later when I was dating this guy, he told me about this friend on the other side of the world who he has been emailing since the last 2 years. I got kinda jealous. He gave me her twitter which lead me to her tumblr. I went through her tumblr and she wrote a lot of stuff. A lot of personal stuff. My jealousy vanished and I wanted to support her strength to be so vulnerable and seeing as she had no notes, I reset my tumblr password (since I hadn’t used it after that first day months ago, I had forgot my password) and then furiously liked all her stuff. A couple of weeks later I posted for the first time on tumblr. And so that’s how I joined tumblr.