#like come on imagine the drama of making an RO fall for you

[burning-academia-if]

Hey, I just remembered something!

I think you said ???'s romance is not possible on the Day path? I'm not interested in them (well, that way, I mean) anyway, so it won't be an issue to me romance wise, but is it actually possible to have a good or at least decent relationship with them on the Day path, or not even that? And well, that applies to any RO if the MC is on a path incompatible with their romance I guess (though I don't remember if others were in that case).

Of course, feel free to ignore this one if it's too spoilery to answer though!

On a (I think) less spoilery note about the paths and ROs, will the paths impact how the possible romances pan out? Or not so much? Or will it depend on the character?

Anyway, thank you for entertaining my multiple questions on that matter. It seems it's endlessly fascinating to me!

Yep! So basically you can "romance" ??? on Day path but it's more a doomed romance/tragedy then an actual romance. The only other character this happens with is Rhea on Night path. I think I mentioned before but this is more a 'theme-driven' story then anything else and the characters represent the exact opposite themes of those paths, essentially. (Also again, I'm not promising anything in regards to poly routes, but on the off-chance I do, they'll be path specific for this very reason. Beck x MC x Rook would be locked to Dawn and Day for example). ALSO quick edit forgot to mention, but even outside of romance, it will still play out like a tragedy if you have a high friendship stat with them.

As for the paths, they will play like completely separate routes/story lines that splinter off after a certain point. Basically, you'll hit a key plot point and whatever your path is set on at that point locks you into that arc. Because the plot/events will be unique to each path (save for a few key ones), the romances for each path will play out differently as well! Romancing say ??? in the Dawn Arc vs the Night Arc is a completely different experience for example, it also lets me (and the player) explore different faucets of their personality.

Most of the details I'm still figuring out and I know a lot of what I have written down may change, but everything stated above is officially set!

[whitecreekvalley-if]

[ Demo TBA ] • Character descriptions • Pinterest •

Genres: Slice of life, drama, mystery, romance

WCV is rated 18+ for explicit language, violence, alcohol and drug use, and explicit sexual content.

Life's taken a nosedive—no apartment, no job, no friends. Desperation pushes you to cling to a chance from a kindly stranger offering a ticket to a town hidden beyond mountains and plains, a place people don't seek but always seem to need.

Welcome to Whitecreek Valley, where the Brass Pine Ranch needs your unique skills to mend a crumbling homestead, and a crumbling family. As you tackle the decay of the ranch and the town alongside the rancher's son, deeper troubles emerge—livestock falling ill sparks fears of a town on the brink of extinction. Can you navigate this community, help them rejuvenate, or will it become another link in the list of ghost towns of America's Wikipedia page?

FEATURES

Customization: Appearance, personality, gender & sexuality, what job they had before, their hobbies, etc. Choose how they feel about being a farmhand, how they're adjusting to the rural life, and - with your choices - how the town as a whole sees them. Are they part of the community or an perpetual outsider?

Skills: Depending on your previous job, you'll have a unique set of skills to help the community. Choose to learn new skills, like woodworking, bronc riding, or sheep shearing, to mention a few.

Animal husbandry: The distances around Whitecreek Valley are hefty, so it's necessary to have at least a horse to get around. Choose your favorite out of a cast of individual equines, each with their own personalities. Also, help a calf into this world and realize how fun it is to raise a baby cow! As long as you're in good standing with the rest of the herd, of course.

Rebuilding: Try your best to rebuild the Brass Pine ranch, and the town adjacent. The better job you manage, the more opportunities (and challenges) come your way.

Community outreach: A dying town is still home, and there are stories to be heard, problems to solve. Lend a helping hand to your new community and see how one kindness can pay itself back.

Romance: Not everyone in town is adverse to strangers, and if your heart yearns romance, there is a chance for a spark along the way. Just be careful as to who you're trying to woo in front of whom. Small town gossips, we've all seen it.

Mystery: There's something hanging over the valley, like a rot in the air. Why are people moving out? Why are exports not moving out? And who's behind the animals getting sick? Don you detective hat and lend a hand to the entire four local police officers working the bizarre case.

THE LOCALS (RO'S)

THE RANCHER'S SON

Mason "Mace" Gannon - 27 - he/him

He used to be so much fun. I miss hanging out with him, out by the bonfires. He'd always make everyone feel so included and happy, and oh, that homemade cider he'd bring? Warmed us up on those chilly late fall nights, when we had nothing else to do. Did I tell you about the time he got us all to go skinny dipping? He was such a charmer, I wonder --

Imagine Mace as your human golden retriever – the guy who's a blast to be around, a bit mischievous, and the first to rush to your aid whenever you need it. After being gone for five years to live his rodeo dreams, he's back, now the sole caretaker of the family ranch in his hometown. He goes to great lengths to keep his personal issues personal, and it's the butt of many jokes how he's always there to help others but has the worst time asking for help himself.

He's you boss, and probably one of the best you'll ever get. Just don't pay mind to the spats between him and his dad.

THE BARTENDER

Alice Marks - 25 - she/her

Alice, she's a feisty one! Like her poppa, rest his soul. How I love the drinks she comes up with at the bar, and that horse of hers! She could go into rodeo, but I don't think after what happened with her pa... Oh, but she's a wonder! Always there with a quip, how they drive her suitors mad. Good thing she stopped with the talk about moving away, the town would be so dull without her!

Alice is the town's most known inhabitant, running the show from the only bar in town, which she just happens to own. Her mind is like a machine for fun, and she's the brain behind all the pop-up events and happenings around town. Sure, she can be a bit like a hurricane of enthusiasm, but hey, that's Alice for you. If the town had a social heartbeat, it'd be Alice – the vibrant, smartass soul making everyday life feel like a blessing.

THE DEPUTY

Word of the wise: Never challenge Alice to a drinking game. You will lose, spectacularly, and it'll all be on film.

Judge Gannon - 34 - he/him

Judge is a bit strange, don't you think? He just vanished as soon as he turned eighteen and popped back out of nowhere! That must've been, let's see... Five years ago? He doesn't spend much time with us commoners though, but I think I've seen him at the bar once or twice. I don't actually think he knows how to make nice with people, he always has that glower on. Gets it from his dad, let me tell you --

Bold and straight to the point, Judge isn't out here trying to be intimidating – it just kinda happens. If his brother is a golden retriever, he's definitely the doberman of the family. He's got this brash, no-nonsense vibe that some folks mistake for arrogance, especially when they try laying on the charm and he's not having it. He steers clear of small talk unless it involves his job, and when duty calls, he's more than ready to throw down to protect his town and county.

There's this local urban legend that he cracked a smile once, but it's like spotting a unicorn – not everyone's buying it.

THE LAWYER

Mercedes "Sadie" Diáz - 32 - she/her

The new girl, yes! Oh, a beauty! And so curious. I do love sitting down with her though, oh the stories she brings from the big city, so intriguing! I hear she finds our town intriguing too, the mayor once - don't tell anyone I told you this - the mayor once said he caught her breaking into the city hall archives! I know, scandalous, but good on her, maybe now someone will argue that my neighbors fence post --

Sadie, the big-shot lawyer from the city, doing her solo act in town. When she's not in court, folks are lining up just to get a piece of the urban tales she's got. A trailblazer and truth-seeker, she's got this knack for poking her nose where it probably shouldn't be, and surprise, she knows more local secrets than the town gossip. Sure, she's all passionate and calculated, a bit out of sync with the town's warmth, but hey, that logical mind of hers might just shake things up and get the town back on track.

It's a well known fact that she could get access to places with the right documents, but she herself has said it's more fun to pick locks. Go figure.

LIST OF MAJOR NPCs

LIST OF MINOR NPCs

[luvrodite]

sweet angel ro, I was reading my poetry books the other night and couldn’t help but wonder…do you think jason’s the type to share poetry with you that reminds him of you- relying on other people’s words to convey the things he knows he feels but can’t bring himself to say- or do you think he writes his own poetry? 👀 as a poetry lover who enjoys to read others and write my own, I need to know where he falls on this spectrum, and I know that you’re the only person imo qualified to answer this! (-@pluvialpoet)

oh my gosh….i want to say that i think he shares it with you. maybe online, like links in your messages to poems that speak to him and might help him speak to you? i feel like he definitely has marked pages in his poetry collections where his favourites are.

i also like the idea of him murmuring it out loud, maybe a line or two, maybe while you’re sleeping and the feelings get to be too much to contain. other times i can imagine him slipping it into conversation, like as a reference, or saying a few lines of it where he finds his own words fall short.

i think he’s definitely a drama king in canon and i can’t be sure but i think he’s probably slipped it into conversation (confrontation, really) with bruce. it’s probably paraphrased but i feel like it’s that thing of speaking in double meanings? like using a literary reference when you’re communicating to both: 1) get your point across and 2) have a point of reference that whoever you’re speaking to could potentially follow up on to understand further. does this make sense? like when you’re angry but you’re a writer/reader/artists so you use the art you know so well to both communicate but also disguise your emotions. i don’t know if this makes sense i’m so sorry.

but also in that, i think it influences him to be able to express himself in his own words too. this is me being a little romantic but i do like the idea of him having a notebook where he just scribbles down a few lines. it rarely goes beyond that and he doesn’t really show it to you but i don’t think he hides it either so it’s up to you if you want to snoop.

i think though sometimes he would sit down if he’s got a lot on his mind (and has the time) and just turn it into art. i don’t think it would be obvious on the surface what he’s talking about, for security reasons, but i think if you look a little deeper you’d get where he’s coming from and what it’s actually about.

aaaa this has given me so much to think about raen thank you for asking me this!!

[thesamoanqueen]

I was brainstorming before I go to sleep and I was just thinking that if bloodline is say not able to sort out their buisness till SummerSlam who does Roman face then?

Tbh I want Seth to be back in the fray, he was and is Roman's original problem and as much as I love Ro I want him to suffer Seth's antics. With the bloodline obviously falling apart Mr. visionary's mind games is the last thing he needs and I want it to be the only constant he has.

Like come on make it happen hunter I want Roman to suffer a Seth Rollins.

Another interesting thing would be how Solo deals with it, when Seth plays he plays well and knowing that Roman is having control issues he is definetly try to get under Solo's skin too which he can succeed in bcz its what he does best, get under people's skin.

Another thing I though abt is what is Solo is drafted off? Which is a very minor possibility but it can happen and it can leave Roman with the usos and once again another opening for Seth to invite himself to the family drama.

Or if Usos do get drafted to RAW and fall under Seth's games cutting them off Roman which will piss the big guy off.

too many possibilities if you think abt it.

I like the idea of ​​Seth and Roman facing each other again because kind of like with the rivalry between Roman and Brock, Seth has always been his rival. No matter how different their paths have been or where they are now, there has always been rivalry between them. They call out each other even when there's no possibility of them being face to face, it's something they naturally have because they started their careers together and many of the steps that made them who they are now, have done with each other. So yeah, I love the idea of ​​them.

Seth's mind games are on another level and i've never ventured into imagining them, so the theories for me could all be probable with him. Solo, however, would certainly be a target of Seth in a feud with Roman, whether easy or not... Idk ... Im convinced that he has more to give than meets the eye, that guy is strange and even if I obviously really like him, I dont trust him.

And the Draft? An... Idk what will happen but im 100% sure someone of The Bloodline will be drafted on the other roster.

[choco-cherry-chunk]

Okay that other anon with the sweets part is just-AUGAHAUG!! SO CUTE!!

It's very adorable for the entire crew to share and eat their favorite foods for others to try out, well that's what others think but not Stede, he's just very hungry, has a sweet tooth and is fucking hungry as fuck because he's having multiple children haha!

But on a much depressing route, what if Stede didn't want this to happen? What if he thinks he'd be a horrible father and tries ways to...er...get rid of them? (I'm sorry for this but I need drama and I don't want ro be blocked pls I love your account)

Eventually Ed and Izzy find out about this and confront him about it, at first they were mad but once they hear Stede's side of the story about how last time went, Izzy and Ed try to comfort him and help him the best way they can during Stede's pregnancy

-Gentlebeard anon

You’re totally fine! No blocking for that, all good! I like dark narrative posts as much as I do cute ones or kink ones!

Stede doesn’t know how to handle everyone’s apparent delight over the pregnancy. When he figures it out and informs Ed and Izzy, he figures the pair will think similarly to him, only for both to be surprisingly excited. They’re both eager to have a child and look forward to the baby (as they presume at the time), to be born. They even tell the crew before Stede can ask them not to and all of them are excited too, so he feels lost in his own feelings.

As he gets bigger, he begins to look into alternative options. He thinks about throwing himself overboard and making it look accidental, about falling from the crow’s nest, about just not eating despite how fucking starving he always feels. But he knows all of these options will be stopped before they could happen. Ultimately, he procures a specific mixture of herbs the next time they’re ashore and tries to sneak them back onto the ship, only for Ed and Izzy to run into him. They see the herbs and Izzy is quick to figure out what they are.

E: “Whatcha got there?”

S: “Oh, er— nothing. Well, tea. Tea. Just tea.”

E: “That’ll be good for ya’.”

S: “Yes, I’d imagine so—“

I: “Let me see that.” He quickly takes it from Stede before he can stop him. “Marjoram, thyme, parsley, lavender…” He stares at Stede with a look of concern only he and Ed have started to pick up on.

E: “Good smelling tea.”

I: “Dangerous tea.”

S: *feigning disbelief * “Wha-dangerous?”

I: “These herbs are abortifacient.”

E: “What!? That sounds—“ He snatched the tea from Izzy and tosses it away. “Stede, that’s bad! It could make you sick, make the baby sick!”

I: “I suspect he knows that.”

The two quickly put together the truth as Stede struggles not to fall apart right in front of them. They bring him back to the ship and talk everything out, ultimately finding that Stede does want the pregnancy, but he fears how he will be as a father again. They reassure him and, with time, Stede becomes comfortable with the coming future 💕

[thesecrimsonstrings-if]

🌹 for all the ros ^^

🌹 ROSE - do they like valentines day? have they been confessed to before? have they confessed to anyone before?

* all of these are for when the ROs haven't met the MC yet! *

ronan bennett: he loves it! finds the whole concept of dedicating a day to couples all around the world pretty romantic (and he is a big soft romantic).

ronan has been confessed to before and he has also tried dating the particular person because he felt really bad that they went all out despite the threat of being rejected 😭

hmm, well ronan hasn't really had a crush strong enough that would drive him to confess to someone on the spot so the answer to the third question is a negative.

célia dupont: she's very indifferent about the day, as long as she can work in peace and there aren't random makeout sessions happening in the office.

célia has been confessed to before, many times, and each time she rejects them with a sequinned smile as sharp as the edge of a knife 💀 the heiress has no time to waste on romantic rendezvous.

she has never confessed to anyone nor had feelings that went deeper than a mild crush stemmed from admiration. can you imagine? célia dupont, swayed to actually being in love with someone? never in a million years 😤

s bakkoush: they like it, but just because they find the ensuing romance and drama during the day so delightful! S is not as much of a romantic that ronan is but they appreciate the day, nevertheless.

yep, they've also been confessed to before too many times and they've always felt bad about rejecting them. but S believes in telling people the painful truth instead of leading them on (looking at you, ronan).

they can be overly flirty sometimes but they haven't actually confessed to anyone in real time. there's always a gaping hole in their heart that no one on earth could fill, not yet at least.

i tachibana: they hate the day. why do couples get a whole day for the romantic sort of ‘love’, anyway? ugh, it's honestly nauseating and they would very much like to be excused from the narrative.

tachibana has been confessed to twice in high school, both times they told the person that they're not interested and walked away 💀 you wouldn't believe how their honest brutality kicks someone while they're down, even if tachibana doesn't mean to 😭

nope, never ever. they've come to far to have a crush on someone, and falling in love is a whole other topic to scratch. they're not interested, they've learned to wall up their feelings until they barely have enough room to make a peep

[willgrahymn]

Strangely Estranged

this is my gift to @romansandersprotectionsquad for the @sanderssidesgiftxchange!! I really hope you like it :]

Description: Remus just wants to make his art, but Roman is still distressed by the events of SvS Redux/POF and it's affecting both of their abilities to create. When Remus goes to confront him about it, he gets a little more than he bargained for. Content warnings: Some Remus being Remus-y type lines, blood mentions (again, Remus), a good amount of swearing, and throwing some shade at Janus. Word count: 2747 I’ll rb with the ao3 link :]

- ’Honestly,’ Remus thought, ‘this painting could use more blood.’

He stared at the incomplete project. It was at least the 7th time he started on something today, but no matter what he always came to a pause.

Roman, that motherfucker, he probably had a creative block. Remus didn’t care much about only being half of Creativity, hell, it was fun coming up with the most gory stories he could imagine, but it seemed like whenever Roman hit a block he just had to drag him down with him.

He leaned back against his wall, tossing his paintbrush and catching it again. He stuck the brush in his mouth. Blue paint didn’t taste as good as green, but maybe he was just biased.

Remus glared at the painting. If it had eyes, he was sure they would be staring back, mocking him. Maybe he’d scrap the thing and use it as a target next time he played with his throwing stars.

He ground his foot into the stained carpet. Whether it was paint or blood didn’t matter. Come to think of it, he’d been at a pause for some time now. Roman hadn’t left his room nearly as much either. The only people he’d seen Roman hang out with recently were Virgil, Logan, and (inescapably) Thomas. Then there was Patton and Janus who hardly spent time together before. Now they never left each other's sides. Remus would be a liar if he said it wasn’t somewhat upsetting.

Remus loved drama. He loved watching people fight and be seconds from either murdering each other or making out right then and there. It was exciting to see people so close to their limit. Roman’s drama wasn’t fun though, it was just fucking sad.

He was pretty sure it would stay that way unless he took matters into his own hands. He grabbed his morningstar. He didn’t think he’d actually use it, but if he had to literally knock some sense into his dear brother, then so be it.

Walking down the hall of the mind palace the lighting got brighter. Silently, he wondered how the hell Virgil had managed to live with the other three for so long. With Roman’s obnoxiously loud personality and old villain accusations, he doubted the rogue raccoon could’ve slept the day away like he did when he tried to avoid him.

He stood in front of a tall, white door. It looked like something you’d find in a children’s movie or fairy tale that told the protagonist there was some sort of grand adventure on the other side… 

How boring.

Without bothering to knock, Remus opened the door to his brother's room. Maybe for Janus, he would have knocked. There was hardly anything that could truly shock him anymore with all the fun little fantasies that ran through his head, but Janus’ wrath was something he would save for a day when he needed that extra kick.

Then again, maybe he was wrong to say that he couldn't be shocked. Not when Prince Perfect’s room was such a mess. Not when one of his mirrors had been knocked to the floor. And certainly not when he took in the sight of the other half of Creativity, sitting there at the side of his bed in his black undershirt and dress pants.

Something in Remus’ guts told him there was something wrong here, and this time it wasn’t because he had been impaled or ate something Logan and Janus insisted he shouldn’t have. No, this was something else. Something he hadn’t been allowed to see since the two split up. One brother deciding he needed to be pure as white, and the other allowing himself to be the darkest black imaginable.

He stepped closer. Roman hadn’t made a sound, not yet, but it felt like approaching a lion. A lion that stood for courage yet fell to shattered pieces of what it once was.

And maybe if he hadn’t been feeling real, genuine concern for something other than Thomas’ lack of flare in his art, he would have laughed when his mind went to Scar and Mufasa.

It wasn’t like he cared though. Concern, maybe. But he couldn’t be bothered to care for his brother who he hardly ever spoke to for purposes other than making him uncomfortable with his ideas.

Roman shifted on his bed, still not bothering to look to see who entered. “I already told you I don’t want to talk about it.”

Remus rolled his eyes. Of course his brother would choose to be a little bitch about this.

“First off, you didn’t tell me shit.” He said. Roman sat up, looking at him. A mix of defense and curiosity in his glare. “Second, I’m not the one making your life any harder than I normally would.” His brother scoffed. “Aren’t you though?”

“You’re the one affecting my work!”

Roman huffed, pulling his legs up to his chest and hugging them closely. He liked the pressure. Logan would probably be able to tell him why if he asked. He remembered hearing a conversation between him and Virgil when the darker first showed up. Something about pressure was a stress reliever.

At the same time, Remus crossed his arms, tapping his boots and rubbing his fingers against his sleeves. Whatever response he had been waiting for didn’t come. Maybe he should leave. Pretend whatever this was wasn’t happening and go focus on something else until the other half got his shit together. That would be a lot easier than standing here, the air of the room suffocating him into silence.

Either way, neither brother knew what to say. It would be easy for the pensive prince to turn around, to tell the other not to speak to him and to go back to wherever he came from. At least it should have been.

Remus bit down on his lip not minding the pain. It wouldn’t do any good to try to beat at what was already broken. “I can go find someone else.” It was more of a statement than an offer.

His twin tensed. “Please don’t.”

Remus just nodded. He didn’t know what to do or what to say. Normally he didn’t have to think this hard. He didn’t want to care about his brother and his problems. He knew at least part of the reason behind the other’s mood was because of him because Roman hated him and being compared to him. Yet still, despite being twins he couldn’t help but feel like he had to care for his baby brother.

‘What the fuck am I supposed to do now?’

He was Dark Creativity, the embodiment of intrusive thoughts and other so-called disturbing ideas and imagery. It wasn’t something that ever upset him, and hell it was fun making the other Sides and Thomas uncomfortable. It was fun telling Patton things that would make him shift in his seat and try to change the topic as if nothing had happened. It was fun to create thoughts that would fuel anxiety and haunt the sad little Side who harbored them. It was more than amusing to sit beside Roman, watching as he tried to do his work and ignore his bothersome brother’s constant suggestions that ruined his fairytale fantasies.

If Thomas didn’t want to use all the available ingredients he gave him to create that was fine. He could manage just fine! Really, the repression only made him stronger.

But Roman knew how to make people feel those warm fuzzy feelings that were like caterpillars in your ribs. Something that looking at it now, maybe Remus regretted not trying to pick up on the wholesome little messages that his brother always cared about. At least maybe then he’d have a better idea how to deal with all of these emotions going on. Even Logan would have done better in this situation.

His brother sighed, sitting up and turning to finally face him. He looked worse than expected. No wonder he didn’t want to see anyone else. Remus couldn’t tell what he was feeling, taking in the sight of this mess. Roman’s brow furrowed, his jaw clenched. He leaned against the wall with his arms crossed, his nails digging into his skin.

“Why are you still here?” He asked.

Remus bit his lip and chose to ignore the question. “I know you’re pissed about Jan being accepted.”

“Yeah duh,” Roman scoffed. He sounded like a dam ready to break. “Excuse me for not being absolutely overjoyed at this… Manipulative Malefactor being accepted by our very own Moralidad.”

The Duke nodded. Sure, you could call him friends with Double D, but he wasn’t going to be like him and lie and deny that Janus certainly had… a way… of getting what he wanted, whether it meant using others as a stepping stone or not.

“I never should have trusted him.” Roman continued. “I mean, I never even liked him. Hell, right after he revealed himself to Thomas I said I hated him… I only went along with what he wanted because he pretended to be someone I’m supposed to be able to trust, and then he used me again by flattering me with fake love and bringing up Thomas’ dreams. And I just– I just keep falling for it because I’m an idiot and I keep fucking everything u—”

He hadn’t noticed Remus approaching him or pulling him into a hug until it happened.

It was tense at first. Roman froze at contact. Slowly, he sunk into his brother's arms, not caring about the way the material scratched against his face. He just wanted to feel safe.

“What’s happening?” He asked.

Remus wasn’t sure he had an answer.

“I think Patton would refer to it as brotherly bonding, but I really don’t know.” Remus laughed lightly.

Eventually, Remus slowly pushed his brother off of him, still holding onto his shoulders and smiling in a way he could only hope came off as sympathetic. On any other occasion, Roman would despise the fact that his brother was just the tiniest bit taller than him, but right now he didn’t care. He wouldn’t tell him it was good for hugs though, he hadn’t lost all of his dignity.

“Listen, Ro-bro, we’re twins. What affects you affects me too. I know it might not change much, and you might still not want to be around me. That’s fine. Just… remember that we’re two Sides in a trenchcoat trying to make up for one, got it?” Roman nodded, rubbing at his eyes and smiling slightly. “I would have expected a darker way of phrasing that from you.”

Remus shook his head. “I may not think much, but I do know enough to understand it’s probably not the best timing for it.”

He smiled, watching as his brother lightened up a bit.

The room was still a mess. They’d have to fix it up later. Not right now though, he didn’t think his brother was ready enough to face his own destruction.

“C’mon, get your outfit on.” “Huh?” “You weren’t planning to stay locked up in here like Rapunzel all day, were you?” “I mean… kind of, yeah?” Remus shook his head. “Not happening,” He said. “We gotta do some dumb shit to make you feel better.” “Ree, I’m fine now, really.”

He ignored him, grabbing Roman’s stupidly bright white shirt off the floor and throwing it at him. Checking around for his sash afterwards.

“You at least gotta put yourself together! I know how you are about your looks– even if mine are better.”

Roman rolled his eyes before pulling his shirt on, grabbing his sash from under his pillow. “I can’t stand you.” They both knew it wasn’t the truth. Not right now at least.

“I’m going to fix… this.” Roman said as he waved his hand in front of his face.

The prince left to his bathroom, grabbing some of his makeup from his desk as he went. Remus flopped onto his brother's bed. This wasn’t exactly where he expected his day to go. It was fine though. Actually, it probably went a lot better than whatever he originally planned. Bitching at Roman could be fun, but he doubted it would have made anything better. Hopefully getting rid of some emotional block would stop the art block too. It sounded like something Logic would approve of.

Remus stared up at the glow in the dark stars that littered his brother’s ceiling. Roman’s room was less loud than usual. More quiet. Like a heartbeat that once echoed so loudly had suddenly stopped, or a fire which finally died out leaving nothing but smoke and ash behind.

He heard it when the faucet turned on, when a hairbrush hit the floor, and when Roman cursed at his eyeliner.

‘His hands must be shaky.’ They’d have to fix that.

Remus got up again, half-assedly making his brother’s bed and tidying up the place. He didn’t know where everything went, so he could only hope he was putting stuff where it shouldn’t have ever been. Even if he was trying to cheer up his brother now didn’t mean he couldn’t work in advance to cause trouble for him later.

When Roman came out he looked as if nothing had happened. Like nobody would be able to look at him and think twice of if he was okay. It was an art in itself to be a raging storm and to settle down to the tranquility of dewdrops on flower petals within a matter of minutes.

When had he learned to do that?

Or maybe it was just that he didn’t spend enough time around the other to know. Maybe if one of the other Sides saw Roman now, they wouldn’t even have to study his movements or expression to know he had been upset. It would be as easy as looking at  him and recognizing the scripted smiles and rehearsed words for what they were. Was he really that bad at being a brother to fall for his own twins’ tricks?

Roman shifted on his feet. “So… What are we doing?”

“Oh!” Remus bounced, the beads on his shirt clicking together. “Well I was thinking about it earlier and since Papa Patton and Daddy Dee are spending so much time together–” “Never call them that ever again.” “You never let me have fun! But fine. You know how those two have been hanging out more.”

“I can’t let you do anything mean to Patton, he’s off limits.”

Remus pouted. “I thought you were mad at him!” “He’s Patton!” Remus glared, and Roman glared back.

Remus sighed. “You’re so lame, but I guess we can just focus on the snake. Oh! And don’t worry, I can take the fault. Besides, I haven’t fucked around with him in a while and have been waiting for a good day to do it.” He grinned. Roman would have considered it evil, but this, this was pure sibling mischief. “I was thinking we could start subtle like moving his shit 2 inches to the left and work our way up from there. I was thinking about leaving my pet rats in his room and letting them go wild, but he is a snake and I don’t trust like that…”

Roman tried to stifle a laugh. Remus tried not to smile. Remus turned away, heading to his room to put his abandoned work away before anything else. Roman, he noticed, hadn’t followed. Slowly, he turned to him. “Are you coming?” “Oh, yeah I just...“ Roman paused, taking a deep breath and smiling softly. A real smile, not the mask he had given before. “Thank you. For doing all this.” Remus’ eyes softened, nodding as he spoke again. “Don’t go getting too soft on me, Ro-bro. I’m still going to attack your side of the Imagination.”

“I wouldn’t expect anything less.” The two brothers stood there, an awkward yet comfortable quiet moment of understanding neither wanted to interrupt. “C’mon,” Remus said, waving his brother along. “We have vengeance in our hearts and glitter in our pockets. Let’s fuck shit up.”

The prince glanced to himself in the mirror. Now wasn’t the time to focus on his shattered world view, or how his brother may not be as horrible as he thought. Now was the time to have fun messing with the one who had messed with him.

He looked to his brother, eyes sparkling. “Let’s do it.”

[margridarnauds]

a@fallenidol-453 and @any59

YOU ASKED FOR IT. 

So, first off: Let’s start off with a story. I’m in my flat in Ireland, doing....Celtic Studies things. Namely, looking at Quinn’s workbook, flipping between it and Strachan’s paradigms, crying. Okay, not really crying, more “knitting my brows and scribbling furiously, because WHY is this language like this?” 

My housemate comes in with a friend of hers. We have the usual smalltalk, you know “What do you do here?”  “Oh, Celtic Studies.”  “Celtic Studies!” *I tense as I prepare for the inevitable “So, do you have any family.........” question* “Well, we just so happen to be fluent in Irish!”

Now, this is much rarer than a lot of people would think in Ireland, because the Irish education system is.........shit when it comes to teaching Irish. I literally never had someone in Ireland tell me, “Oh, I LOVED studying Irish! It was my favorite class!” And the more someone loves the Irish language, the more that they generally hate how it’s taught. So, I’m like “Oh, cool! Here’s what it looked like a thousand years ago!” and I show off my paradigms, going to the first page, which is the section on definite articles. 

There’s this moment of silence as she looks at it, HER eyebrows knitting just like mine were a few minutes ago. “Is that....Latin? It looks like Latin.” 

Now, there are two options with this story: One is that she was lying through her teeth about knowing Irish fluently in order to impress the naive American. Problem with that is that, of course, you risk being called on it. BUT the second is what I’m going with, namely that the language has changed a lot more than people generally think it has. (There’s about the same period of time between Old Irish and Modern Irish as there is between the creation of Beowulf and the present day. Imagine trying to read Beowulf without knowing ANY Old English and you’ll see the problem straight away.) This is actually a problem, because a lot of the time, people will see foreign-born Celticists writing in Old Irish/Middle Welsh/etc. and instead of thinking of us as professional scholars who are taking advantage of a dead language in order to send what are essentially very niche memes (not necessarily even “meme” in the sense of joke), they think “Oh! The dumb foreigner’s mangling the language! So funny!” 

...and yes. This has happened to multiple people I know, including myself. It’s annoying. 

So, how much has the language changed? There are essentially five stages of the language that we are able to trace: Primitive Irish, Old Irish, Middle Irish, Early Modern Irish, and Gaeilge/Modern Irish + Proto-Celtic which is the sort of shared ancestor between all the Celtic languages and the reason why some of these words are confusingly familiar and my brain needs about twenty minutes to reboot when I’m going in-between Middle Welsh and Old Irish. 

Going back to our friend, the definite article: In the modern language, there are two forms of the definite article, as you’ll learn in your very first lesson on Duolingo: An (singular) and Na (plural). You can see this reflected all over the place, probably most obviously in the names for instutions like “An Post” (the post office) and An Garda Síochána (The Guard of the Peace, the police force). 

In Old Irish? There were multiple forms of the definite article, and they had to agree with the gender, person, and case. In the Middle Irish period, those distinctions gradually fall away, becoming even pronouned in the Early Modern Irish period, leading to the language as we have it in the modern day. 

Some other changes: 

- Loss of deponents. Old Irish used to have a system that was like the deponent verbs of Latin, where you had words that LOOKED passive, but were active in meaning. As time went on, they totally dropped those, taking different approaches to how to deal with the old deponent verbs. (Sometimes they’d use, say, the verbal noun form AS the verb, sometimes they’d apply deponent endings to verbs that hadn’t been deponents before.....it’s a mess.)

-Loss of the neuter gender. Gone entirely, save for a few fossilized examples, though with some efforts to bring it back in some form in the interest of non-binary people. In the time of Old Irish, however, there was a full neuter gender, complete with a neuter article. 

- The loss of declensions. “BUT,” you might say, if you’ve studied Modern Irish, “Modern Irish HAS declensions!” And you’d be right! It does! Five, in fact.  .......Old Irish had thirteen. 

What happens over time is that people look at all those declensions and are like “That is an ASSLOAD of declensions, let’s simplify!” And so they start treating some declensions like they’re another declension, so the number of declensions goes down over time as the others all get sorted into new categories. 

Also, the categorization is different. In the modern language, you just hear that the declensions are decided by the endings, which.....is probably one of the reasons why so many people hate learning Irish, because it seems arbitrary, when, in reality, it isn’t. In Old Irish, we actually go back even FURTHER in time, to Primitive Irish (which ended around the 7th century) and, even further back in time, Proto-Celtic, because that is where the declensions actually come from. Irish used to look quite like Gaulish or Latin, with similar endings - “Fer” was “viros”, which became “viras”, “ingen” was “enigenā”, which became “inigena”, “rígain” was “rígainí” in the Proto-Celtic, “athair” was “ɸatīr” in the PC, “túath” was “toutā”, “Día” was “Dewos”........etc.

That’s why “fer” and “Día” are both o-stems, despite looking almost nothing alike, it’s why they behave the same way - They shared the same endings back in the day. That’s why we call them o-stems in the first place, it isn’t because of what’s IN them, it’s what used to be in them. 

“Ingen” is an a-stem for the same reason. 

“Rígain” is an i-stem. 

“Athair” is a r-stem. 

There’s METHOD to the madness, I promise. 

- There’s a loss of distinction of sounds - Old Irish was very strict on “This is spelled with an A and THIS is spelled with an O and those are TWO DIFFERENT SOUNDS.” Middle Irish was like “Eh? Let’s make it a general “schwa” sound.” So the spellings vary a lot starting in that period, Early Modern Irish only adds to the confusion (a favorite Celticist Hobby is pointing out the sometimes flat-out *weird* Early Modern Irish spellings of Old Irish names because *oh, boy*), and by the time you get to the modern language, a lot of things are spelled quite differently from what you’d think. Some consonants also soften in their sounds - the preposition “Co”, for example, becomes “Go”, “ocus” becomes “agus”, etc. 

- Univerbation. Essentially, Old Irish had a LOT of compound verbs like do-beir, do-gni, at-tá, ad-cí, ro-cluineathar etc. And, in the modern language, “do-beir” becomes “tabhair”, “do´gní” becomes -“á dhéanamh”, etc. Essentially, they took what’s known as the protonic form of the verb, which is the version we would use following a conjunct particle like “ní”, which expresses a negative form of an action, and they made that the regular form of the verb. They were like “Nope, don’t want to handle it, not today, Satan.” And sometimes, those forms would evolve as well, so I could be looking at a verb in Early Modern Irish, go “that looks vaguely familiar” and then realize that it’s a VERY mutated form of an Old Irish word. 

- The ~copula~. So, the copula is....an alternative to the substantive verb used in certain circumstances, indicating a state of being. Which seems really....grammar-y, but all that really means is that it translates out to “is, am, are” in English. If you ever read any medieval Irish texts, you’ll notice a lot of syntax that’s like “Cold is the wind from Norway”, “It is not a good thing you have done”, etc. The reason is because, in the actual Irish, all this would have begun with a form of the copula. It was a VERY popular way of starting off a sentence, instead of the usual Verb-Subject-Object form. In the Old Irish period, the copula was inflected, meaning that, like the definite article, it changed depending on certain factors, namely person, number, and tense. “Am” would be “I am” (”Am rí” - “I am a king”) “At” would be you (sing.) are (“At gataige” - “You are a thief), “Is” would be “he/she/it is” (”Is lóech” - “He/She/It is a warrior”), “ammi” would be “we are” (”Ammi druíd” - “We are druids/magicians”).....etc. Now, once again, starting in the Middle Irish period, you have people going “............that is an ass-load of work, let’s just use the third singular and call it a day.” This is why, in Duolingo, you have to say “Is cailín mé” a thousand times. In the Old Irish period, you would just say “Am ingen”, but, with that loss of distinction of the copula, pronouns become increasingly important to the Irish language. Some of this was already present in Old Irish, with the 3rd sing. copula being used for the sake of emphasis, “It is I who takes Bres to the trash fire, where he belongs”, sometimes with an emphasizing pronoun for added drama, but it eventually gets to the point where the others are consumed entirely. 

- Independent pronouns also come into their own, being uniformly used after the copula, with the infixed pronouns that had been uniform going away. So, for example, if I wanted to say “I kill him” in Modern Irish, I would say “Maráim é” - if I wanted to say it in Old Irish, I would say “Nan-Marbu”, with the no being what’s known as a meaningless conjunct particle (it’s there to say “LOOK! AN INFIXED PARTICLE!”).

- A lot of the verb forms, like the nouns, get smushed together - There were at least three different forms of the preterite (in Modern Irish, known as the “Simple Past”) in Old Irish, in Middle Irish, the S-preterite gradually grows to dominate, to the point where now, there is only the simple past, with endings varying depending on if you’re talking first or second conjugation verbs. Likewise, the future tense goes from having five different categories of future tenses to being divided into first or second conjugation verbs in the present day. 

Overall, there’s more, there’s a lot more, but I think that you can get the gist. When I see primitive Irish, I’m like “Okay, it’s Old Irish - The Latin edition”. It looks WEIRD, but it looks OLD and, for the most part, fairly recognizable. We don’t see it that often, outside of an ogham stone, that’s why we make such a big deal when we do. Old Irish, I’m like “FRIEND....who sometimes scares me”, Middle Irish, I’m like “Okay, this is a bit weird, but I can understand most of it, especially if I’m reading an edition where the editor explains things”, Early Modern Irish looks, to me, like everything’s been tossed into a blender. I KNOW that some of the words look familiar, but it’s HARD and it kind of hurts my brain to stare at it for too long. Modern Irish actually looks better, because it’s streamlined, the spellings are consistent, etc., but it still looks......almost eerie, actually. It also shows in how these things are taught - If you’re in an Old Irish program, you’re taught Old Irish and Middle Irish; if you’re in a Modern Irish program, you’re taught Early Modern Irish and Gaeilge (or you’re expected to know Gaeilge off the bat.) And what should probably be mentioned is that, actually, there was likely only ever a brief period where “Old Irish” was actually spoken or written - Kim McCone pointed out in an article that, actually, in some of our oldest, most sanctified sources for Old Irish, the Wurtzburg Gospels, we’re already seeing traces of Middle Irishicisms. It’s likely that, among the general populace, they were already simplifying their speech, but that the scribes who wrote this stuff down, that literary elite, took a conservative approach to the language, essentially a medieval Irish Academie Francaise, and they tried to preserve the “pure” form, only to lose the battle as time went on and even they started using these forms of the language. It’s also why we put SUCH a massive emphasis on dating....(besides the fact that it’s the closest thing we can come to dating anything, *badum tss*): Scribes, along with copying old texts, would actually sometimes put older forms of the words in newer texts in the hopes of it looking older or more authoritative. There are some bardic poems in the 16th century that are actually EERILY good. Likewise, you have some scribes looking at an older text and being like “Oh, that doesn’t look how it should! I should fix it!”, only to drop a Middle Irishicism on an Old Irish verb. And sometimes a scribe will try to correct the correction and makes it even worse. We have to analyze the whole text, weighing all of it together to see when a text might have actually been composed. 

We talk a lot about how Irish has survived over the years in spite of everything, and that’s IMPORTANT, but I feel like it’s also important to say that it’s changed, it’s reinvented itself. It isn’t static and it’s never really BEEN static, and I think, my ongoing confusion aside, that that’s really important. I can’t translate an 18th century Irish text, at least not EASILY (even though I want to do my PhD on an Early Modern text so RIP me), but someone who got their PhD in 19th century Gaelic Literature also can’t translate Old Irish (and yes.....it has happened where people act like studying Irish literature = being able to “explain” Old Irish materials to me. Because, again, Dumb Foreigners Can’t Know What We’re Talking About) We’ve got to work together to get the fullest possible picture. The language had a past, it has a future. 

[jupitermelichios]

What I’d change about Rise of Skywalker

To be clear, these are changes I’d make to the existing script, not what I would have written instead. We can all agree Sheev coming back was, at best, a bit dumb, I’m also fully aware that a lot of people disliked TLJ for a variety of reasons and wanted ros to retconn more stuff, but this is not an attempt to change any of that. I’m taking the basic structure of the movie and shifting stuff around to create something I think is tonally and thematically more in line with the overall trillogy.

Also i’m aware the extended universe is sort of canon-until-proven-otherwise at the moment but as far as i’m concered there was a DC style crisis and it’s now open season on worldbuilding elements

- Starting right at the very beginning, our opening crawl is now just about immortality being one of the secret sith powers Sheev kept hinting about in the prequels

- Our very first sequence in the movie is now a (short) montage of Sheev sending psychic messages to members of the First Order, telling them to join his secret sith club. It’s not just Kylo, this is a thing he’s just generally doing, Hux, Pryde, Kylo, random Storm Trooper number 7, they’re all getting this same message.

- Kylo buggers off to go murder Sheev, because Snoke never actually let him graduate (or whatever modern sith do) so he’s not actually a sith lord, but he’s like ah, new/old sith lord is in town, I go kill him and I get to take his title by right of conquest rule of one styley, and also take out a threat to my power base. Also in the one scene we see of him interacting with the first order it’s pretty clear he actually really fucking hates being in charge, so a mission to kill Sheev is looking super win-win

- The reason Exigor is sacred to the Sith now, the reason Palpatine’s able to communicate accross planets, and the reason he’s still alive (ish) are all the same - the planet “has a heart... oF KAIIIBURRRRRR!” (yes the line should be delivered exactly like that) that amplified force powers

- Instead of just being Ian McDermott in white facepaint, Sheev’s design draws heavily on Darth Nihilus or Darth Sion, his body is dead or maybe nonexistant depending on how gross they’re prepared to go. The point is, the answer to the question ‘how the fuck did he survive?’ should be essentially ‘he didn’t’; he’s a consiousness and a fuckton of willpower and not much else

- We establish a temple/cult in this universe that worships twin gods and are generally all about balance and shit coming in twos and they think force diads are sacred. I’m thinking someone at the temple has resistance information, and when Rey and Poe visit, Poe goes to talk to the contact while Rey meditates and sees Luke’s ghost who tells her how he and Leia came here together and about their belief system and how there are different ways of connecting to the force than just being a jedi, setting up the plot point of the diad, our theme of ‘the people we love are never really gone’, and also laying the groundwork for what’s going to be a second theme of building something new rather than repeating the mistakes of the past, by establishing the sith/jedi dichotomy isn’t the only possible path to take.

- Rose and Finn are bored and stuck on base while their friends are on this mission, so when they get a distress call from a minor First Order base they go off to investigate. They find Hux, who’s been ousted in a coup in favour of the First Order just straight up following Sheev after Kylo wondered off, who promises them information. At this base, Finn also sees some young storm trooper cadets.

- Back at the rebel base they all meet up and Hux (who they’ve taken prisoner) tells them about Sheev being back, which they didn’t know about because he’s only been speaking to bad guys.

- Leia is already dying, Rey is super upset about it and during an accidental mind share, Kylo finds out and tells her Sidious knows how to heal people by transferring life energy from one person to another. The healing thing is specifically a Sith power this go around. We get a moment pretty soon after during a mission where someone gets injured, probably Finn, and she figures out how to heal them based on the hints Kylo gave her

- Also this time Leia still isn’t a jedi but not because of a prophesy, it’s because she disagrees with their philosophy, which is going to be relevant later. We get a line to the effect that ‘Luke didn’t grow up surrounded by the legacy of the Jedi’s failings, I did’

- The weird knife thing isnt anymore, it’s just a hollicron now, and the whole bit with both Lando and Rey’s parents and the bonty hunter are removed to give us breathing room elsewhere, it’s just a more tradtional fetch quest now.

- In order to get the holicron translated, Poe’s like “you’re not going to like this, but I maybe know a guy from doing undercover missions”, and takes them to Black Sun to speak to Darth Maul, that’s right, Darth Maul is here now, and he helps them because his prosthetics are breaking down and Rose fixes them and saves his life. Also he’s pretty pissed at Sheev for getting him killed so he’s totally chill with them killing the guy.

- The Hollicron tells them that the last known map to Exigor was stored in the archives of the temple of Corisant.

- They go to the ruins of the temple, a place that is both nostaligic and also has actual character significance to kylo and ties into our theme of how the jedi and the sith are both a bit shit, and even though it makes more sense for it to have been cleaned up, it’s full of little baby skeletons from Anakin’s massacre, just for the drama of it

- Rey and Kylo fight, he taunts her again with the promise of healing Leia, but this time Rey uses their bond and her knowledge of how to talk to force ghosts to basically force Kylo’s third eye wide open so he’s hearing a hundred force ghosts all at one, stabs him while he’s distracted, heals him, and then she fucks off, leaving him to talk to the force ghost of Anakin, who tells him he’s a moron who’s falling for the same bullshit Sheev used on him

- Rey joins up with the others, but at the Rebel base Hux has managed to escape and shoots Leia (it’s dramatic and she dies saving someone but it’s not actually particularly plot relevant so imagine your own death scene of choice here), and obviously Rey feels it

- At this point the gang split up, Poe and Rose go back the the Rebels because they know they’ll be needed, Finn goes off to rescue the storm trooper kids he saw earlier (yeah I’m adding a subplot what’re you going to do about it), and Rey goes off to fight Palpatine

- In the temple, Leia appears to Kylo as a force ghost while he’s doing dramatic ‘i can’t go on’ kneeling pose and gives him a little pep talk and name drops the title

- Finn goes to the first order base, finds the kids, and the little ones are on board with escaping but then they run into some teenagers who actually have guns and it cuts away on a ‘will they turn him in?” cliffhanger

- Rey arrives in Sheev’s big cave thing, tries to fight him but he’s all ‘the jedi could not defeat me before, what makes you think they can now when you’re barely more than a padawan’ and force lightnings her a bit. They’re not related in this universe, he just wants to steal her lifeforce to heal himself more because she’s powerful

- Turns out that the First Order have been tracking Hux, so they know where the Rebel base is so there’s a big space battle going on, and the First Order don’t even have any fancy secret weapon but there’s a lot of them and there’s not enough Rebel ships left after TLJ. Poe’s up in the air flying even though he’s the boss now, and Rose is on the comms trying to contact allies

"This is the Rebellion, please. In the name of Leia Organa, we're calling you. Please, if there's anyone out there. For Leia Organa, for Luke Skywalker, for Amilyn Holdo, please…" and then when there's no response, in tears, she whispers, "For Rose Tico, please!"

There's a beat of silence, and then the radio crackles to life.

"Rose Tico calls for aid, and Black Sun will answer."

A moment later another, "Leia Organa calls for aid and Cloud City will answer."

and then a moment later, “The Rebellion calls for Aid and the Free Troopers will answer” and we cut to Finn in a stolen First Order ship full of the trooper cadets of all ages.

A makeshift amada joins the fight, same as in the original version, and rose and circular briad crown girl who’s also been trying to call for back up hug in celebration and have a very brief ‘oh wait maybe i’m into you’ moment

- Back on Exigor, Kylo arrives to find Rey on the floor, dying. He takes her hand and we see them as spirits, surrounded by the flickering memories of their lives, they’re seeing one another properly for the first time, and they ackoledge one another as twins via the force (personally i’d make them explicitly siblings, by force if not blood, here to carry on the proud star wars tradition of ambiguously incestuous twins, but that might not fly with disney execs in the the 21st century), and then he gives her his life force to heal her and his last words are a title drop again, mirroring what Leia said to him, because this movie is cheesy as hell

- "The power of the Jedi could have lived in you, as the power of the sith lives in me. But instead you threw it away, for what? For that pathetic little boy? He was no more a true sith than you are a true Jedi!"

"I don't need to be a Jedi. The force is with me, and I am with the force. You have the sith. I have all that was and is and will be!"

Behind her force ghosts begin to appear, but not just jedi. There is as many of the Skywalker clan as we can get (including some reused green screen footage of Carrie Fisher), and Rose's sister, and Han, and people visually implied to be Poe and Finn’s parents, and Holdo, and behind them hundreds of others. Basically if we can afford them, they’re cameoing here, alongside a load of extras. And last of all, standing beside her is Ben.They exchange a look, and then Rey strikes. Palatine tries to force lightning her but it doesn't work, and she presses her hands to his cloak, pulls the life force out if him. Thes a terrible screaming and we see glimpses of the other sith, before they dissipate and the robe falls to the ground.

And obviously the space battle also gets definitively won at the same time, this is movieland, I’m thinking Finn and Poe have to coordinate an attack that relies on Finn using the force is that vague ‘jedi’s are all amazing pilots’ way episodes 1 and 4 both used

Oh and then at the end they’re all celebrating back on the Rebel base, and Finn starts to hit on Rose and she’s like “I’m not the one you want to say that too, also you’re not my type” and smooches circular braid-crown girl who’s been in the background of all these movies with nothing to so

Finn joins Poe and Rey and they all hug in the same ambigiously-poly way they did in the original, and then Poe’s like “I’m sorry about Kylo” kind of awkward because he still hates the guy but he knows Rey doesn’t, and Rey’s like ‘I’m not, the people we love never really leave us’

and then the final scene, Rey is carrying Kylo’s lightsabre and lays Luke’s and Leia’s on the altar of the temple of the twins, and goes to ask the priests to tell her about their religion, with the implication that she’s starting to build her own new version of the jedi

(and if I was disney this would totally be the set up for a new animated series about Rey travelling around the galaxy meeting new weird alien cultures and learning about what cool force powers they have, and the knights of Ren can be the bad guys, and sometimes she’ll come and help Finn and Poe and Rose with trying to rebuild the galaxy. And then they have to take out Black Sun in season 2 and it’s all super dramatic because they were allies sort of and had cameos, and now rey and maul are forced to have super cool spider-legs lightsabre battles instead)

[wispandwhispers]

Am I high or are you really, really pretty right now?

Paring(s):Romantic Demus, Background Prinxiety, Platonic/ pre- logicality

Tw(S): Remus being Remus, cursing, sex innuendos, mentioned one night stand, making poor decision while drunk mentioned, torture mentioned

Word Count: 980

Note:  Finally finished the Wip :this is a weird Au, like really weird, like its a soulmate au combined with an angel au and this weird au and if you don’t know what Rare Americans is and you don’t understand how much of a Demus fusion it is , google it now.

Janus was just trying to enjoy a day by himself. School had just broken up and he and brother were just planning to bitch about all the teachers they survived in the year of our fuckery ( not lord; this year was cursed) 2020.

He didn’t plan on his little brother dragging him out of the house to play with his friend.

“Pat, I have to do stuff today... “ He glanced over to the the lighter on the desk next to the test papers him and Virgil were going to burn.

(What, it’s therapeutic to see your shitty grades turn into ashes, don’t judge them.)

“Ma said you weren’t allowed to burn stuff any more and mom agrees with her, “ Dammit why did his brother have to be so cute and morally conscious all the time. “And I want to go to Logan’s house and Ma says you have to come with me...”

Fuck those adorable eyes. Those fucking eyes that held so much innocence and naivety. Fuck that stupid pout that made him feel guilt for the first time in seven years. Fuck it. Fuck it. Fuck it. Fuck it. Fuck it. Fuck it. Fuck it .Fuck it-

“Fine, I succumb.” And that’s how Janus and Patton ended up at Logan’s place They say place because it was about four houses stuck together . It was probably a mansion but Janus didn’t care to be honest, he was just here because Ma had threatened asked for him to take Pat to see his friend.

Pressing the door bell because Pat couldn’t, he thought about how it seems awfully familiar, too familiar, the golden painted crowns, the themes of fanciness surrounding the place-

“Patton, what is Logan’s full name again?”

“Logan King-”

“Shiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii-”

The door opened to reveal none other than Remus King, the proud fuck-up of his family, neighbourhood hell spawn of Sanderstown and the person Janus once loved lost his virginity to on a one night stand and swore never to speak to again.

“Dee, finally here for a round two, I see.” He made an expression wiggling his eyebrows that only could be described as the lenny face.

“I’m not here for that, you horny bastard, I’m here because my brother-”

“LOGIE-"  The six year old ran over to who Janus assumed must be Logan, a kid who was wearing a black shirt button up shirt with a tie and was currently distracted my a book that looked twice his body weight. He seemed like the anti-social type but Janus scratched that assumption when he hugged Patton and then proceeded to carry him bridal style out of his vision.

"Yeah, Lo told me his husband"

"They're only seven-"

"Future boyfriend, was coming over to talk about something and my dear brother-"

"The one you almost killed with a prop mace in drama-"

"Is out of the house with his emo fuck buddy, so which room do you wanna strip in."

As he stepped into the house ,Janus was sure that he was going to arrested for 1st degree murder if he had to stay for about more than five minutes.

******

“Do you think we got it right?”

“Of course, you can literally see the red string connecting them...”

******

Janus tried to avoid the walking no reason boner to the best of his ability but there almost seemed to almost be a invisible force that was gently tugging and guiding him back to him and kind of making him attractive . 

He felt the pull at his hand but when he looked down he saw nothing so he thought nothing of it. 

******

“These two are just gliding around each, so close but still so far way!”

“Look we could always tie the string around a banister-”

“Roman’s finger almost broke the last time we did that, so no!”

“We could tie it around their ...”

******

To this day Janus would not understand why he left his beanie at home instead bring a hoodie to Remus’ house because somehow the piece of shit had rigged a fucking wire to his cloth and now its slowly pulling him back and he was just gonna ignore the fact that there was no physical wire pulling him.

He let the sensation drag him back to eventually see Remus lying on his bed so peacefully, just seeming to listen to music while bobbing his head back and fourth.

He looks kind of cute like this.

Remus lifted his head. “Wanna listen snits-”

I made that joke one time, one fucking time when I was drunk off my ass and now it haunts me like a ghost.

Janus still took an ear bud and wasn’t actually shocked at this point that Sex Pistols filled his eardrums but was surprised when Rare Americans played next.

A good kind of surprised.

He might not be that bad.

******

“Lo, they are actually doing it, falling in love, oh my god they are falling in love!”

��Pat calm down, of course they were , you’re better at stringing then I am, I don’t even know how I got Ro and Vi to kiss.”

“But you did and now you have your wings... How does it feel to get wings?”

“Basically imagine all the pain in the world condensed into a small ball in your back and it only takes a second but that pain seems to explode and you will be willing to sell your soul for it to end but it settles and you regret nothing.”

“...That’s scary...”

Logan hugged Patton.

“It is but remember I’ll be here.” 

Patton was a little less scared.

******

Janus turned his face to Remus.

“Am I high or are you really, really pretty right now?”

“Kiss me and find out, snakeboy...”  

Needless to say Patton started crying in pain in Logan’s arms.

[full-of-roman-angst-trash]

Safe And Sound

Last Part of Blind and Naive. Also, I promise that this chapter has fluff just to balance out the angst in the previous chapters.

(Part 1) (Part 2) (You Are Here)

TW: Unsympathetic Virgil, Abusive Virgil, Unsympathetic Patton, Abusive Patton, Abused Roman, Abused Logan, Toxic Prinxiety, Toxic Logicality, Anorexia, PTSD symptoms, Fighting, Cursing, Small Panic Attack, Logan Angst, and Roman Angst

If I missed any, please tell me and I will add it.

Pairings: Toxic Prinxiety, Toxic Logicality, Intrulogical, Roceit

Word count: 2142

............Roman’s P.O.V............

I slowly wake up and sit up, rubbing my eyes to adjust to the sunlight lighting up the room. After a few minutes of my eyes adjusting and me stretching, I stand up. 

Once I make my way to the kitchen I am greeted by Remus and Janus.

“Good morning Roman.”

“Good morning Romy!!!”

“Good morning guys. And, don’t call me that Waluigi reject,” I smack him on the head gently, which only makes him snicker.

I playfully roll my eyes before turning my attention to Janus, who seems to be making breakfast, “Hey, Snakey McSnakerson.”

Janus looks back at me, “Yesss?”

His small slither makes me blush, though I’m not sure how heavily, which results in me silently hoping he doesn’t notice.

Wait, is he blushing!? N-No... Don’t be ridiculous, you’re just seeing things... Why would he ever like you... Especially considering the fact that you guys have only really mended ways 3 days ago...

“May you please do me the honor of handing me a cup?”

This time, the blush on his face is very clearly there.

He’s blushing? Why? D-Does he actually like me back!?

“Sure, drama queen,” He gets a cup and hands it to me.

I giggle and take it, “Thank you.”

He gives me a warm smile that makes butterflies fill my stomach. I return the smile and for a second we just stare at each other, smiling and blushing.

“Eww! I’m trying to eat, go eye fuck each other somewhere else!” A certain rat breaks the moment.

We both flush red and look away. I clear my throat, “Oh hush.”

I walk over to the water dispenser and fill up my cup. Once it’s full I start walking out of the kitchen, “I’ll be in the living room if you guys need anything.” 

Before I can fully walk out, I feel someone grab my free hand. I turn around and see Remus staring at me worryingly.

I raise a brow, “Yes?”

He bites his lip and quietly mumbles, “Ro... You need to eat breakfast...”

The sentence nearly knocks my breath away, I’m not sure when but I some point I started staring down at my cup. The water inside moving thanks to the shaky hand holding it,

A small, “No...” Makes its ways out of my mouth as I pull my hand free of Remus’ grasp.

I was just about to walk to the living room when Logan blocks the doorway. 

“Roman. You need to eat, especially considering that your Anorexia has been going on for quite a while...”

His voice is soft and sympathetic, one you would imagine coming from Morality instead of Logan.

I sigh heavily, “Fine...” I grumble and sit down.

It feels wrong to eat breakfast... Is this how it’s going to be every morning...? I don't know if I can handle that... I guess one step at the time for now...

............

For the past 7 weeks, Remus and Janus have worked on helping me and Lo. They made sure I ate small meals 5 times a day. They made sure to clear every room of any item I can use to self-harm. They helped me control my perfectionism and the voices in my head. They woke me up and calmed me down from nightmares.

As for Logan, they made sure he didn’t overwork himself. They made sure that he got out of his room to talk and hang out with us ever so often. They helped him be more open about his feeling and ask for help.

It’s been a lot. We’ve been through many highs and low and had to overcome a lot of struggles but things have been looking up.

Virgil and Patton have left us relatively alone, the only time they bother us is during videos or while we’re doing fan service. Patton does it more passive-aggressively while Virgil just outright harasses us. Of course, none of the fandom or Thomas has called them out on their behavior but it doesn’t matter, cause we still have Remus and Janus.

During the 7 weeks, I’ve gotten closer to Remus. We go on missions in the imagination together. We brainstorm and work together during projects. We have movie and game nights together.

My crush for Janus has grown during that time as well. Everything he does make butterfly fill my stomach. His laugh and giggles are like music to my ears. His occasional hisses and snarky smirks make my heart skip a bit. 

Of course, I haven’t confessed to him yet. I just don’t feel ready to get into another relationship, especially since I’m still technically in a relationship with Anxiety.

Logan and Remus also seem to be getting close. I’ve caught both of them exchanging looks and blushing around each other. Both of them deny it anytime Janus or I bring it up though, but I’m certain they’ll get together eventually.

............

“Are you sure you want to do this?” Remus looks at the two of us with a concerned and unsure expression.

Logan is the first to nod, “Yes. We want to completely cut off our connections with Morality and Anxiety.”

“Yeah...” I hug my arm tighter.

Logan and I both agree that we would go to the Lightside and official break up with Patton and Virgil. Originally Logan had suggested we did so after a month of being with the Darksides, however, I disagreed in fear of the fandom’s reaction to our relationships breaking up. Yesterday though, I got fed up with constantly having to do fan service.

“Alright... Just be careful, okay? We’ll be right here for you guys once y’all come back.” Janus says softly.

A small smile appears on my face and I quietly mumble, “Alright. We’ll be right back. 

With that, we both sink down.

............Logan’s P.O.V............

I sink down to the living room of the Lightside, Patton is sitting there on the couch working on some papers. When he notices me, he immediately puts his work down and stands up.

“What are you doing here...?” He sounds nervous and on edge as if I was the abusive one in the relationship.

I take a deep breath, “We’re breaking up,” I get straight to the point, not wanting to be here longer than I have to.

His eyes widen and he doesn’t speak for a while.

“W-what...?” Is all he manages to mutter out

“I said we’re done,” I repeat in a bland voice, “Goodbye Morality.”

I sink down before he can say anything else.

............ 

The second I raise up in my room I crumble to the floor.  

W-why am I so shaken up....? Nothing bad even happened... He didn’t even do anything to me...

I curl up on myself, getting lost in my thoughts. Suddenly, I feel a comforting hand on my back and I turn to my side, coming face-to-face with Remus.

“Hey... You okay...?” His voice is heavy with worry, yet he makes sure it’s soft and soothing.

Before I can even think, I hug him tightly and to my surprise, he immediately holds me close.

He begins whispering reassurance in my ear as he rubs my back. His actions and presence make a lot of my worries quickly start to fade away. 

Soon, I fully calm down, yet I don’t pull away from him. I can feel myself blushing but I don’t care. I just want to be held by him. 

“Hey Lo...?”

I look up at him, “Yes?”

His face is flushed red and uncertain which makes me concerned, but before I can say anything he speaks up again.

“I like you, like a lot!” He quickly blurts out

This catches me off guard and it takes me a while to compose myself.

“I feel the same way, Remus.”

He looks up with a shocked and hopeful face., “Really!?”

I nod and he kisses my cheek, making me blush harder.

“Yay!”

I chuckle softly before letting out a soft yawn, suddenly feeling very exhausted.

He smiles softly and softly says, “Get some rest, Lo.”

I curl up closer to him, nodding a little before quickly falling asleep.

............Roman’s P.O.V............

My heart is basically beating out of my chest as I raise up in the kitchen of the Lightside. Anxiety is there sitting on the counter with his legs crossed, the second his eyes lay on me his face drops and he stands up.

“Oh? So you’ve come crawling back?” He speaks in a condescending voice that makes me immediately look down and lose any confidence I had.

“N-no...” I quickly mutter out.

He glares at me, “What!? Then why are you here!?” His voice raises.

I flinch and take a step back feeling myself begin to shake.

No, remember why you are here. You are done letting him treat you like this. You don’t have to take it.

I take a deep breath before looking up and bluntly saying, “I’m breaking up with you.”

He seems taken aback by this but he quickly recovers.

“No, the fuck you’re not!”

“Yes, I am. I’m not staying with an abusive asshole any longer...”

I go to sink down but before I can do he manages to hit my arm.

“YOU’LL FUCKING REGRET THIS ROMAN! JUST YOU WAIT!” He screams

I quickly sink out before he can do anything more.

............

I raise up in my room crying and shaking, holding my arm that was stinging so badly from the smack Virgil gave me. My breathing quickly becomes short and uneven.

No... No... Not again...!

However, before it can get any worse, Janus’ voice hits my ears.

“Roman, it’s okay,  I’m here. Is it okay if I touch you?”

I nod desperately and I feel him quickly hug me tightly. I hug him back immediately and break down in his arms. 

He holds me close and gently sways us. He starts softly walking me through a breathing exercise. 

After a bit of time, I fully calm down and slowly pull away from the hug.

“Thank you so much, Jan,” I quietly mumble.

He nods, “Hey, Ro, I need to tell you something...”

I raise a brow, a bit on edge from hearing the nervousness in his voice, “Okay, what’s up...?

He takes a deep breath before softly saying, “I’ve had a crush on you for a while now and well I was wondering if you felt the same way?” 

He looks down nervously, blushing heavily and I can’t help but let a fond smile plaster my face.

I gently kiss his cheek, “Well, lucky for you, I do feel the same way.”

For a few seconds, he’s completely frozen. Once he collects himself he hugs me tightly.

“Oh, thank god! I was so nervous you were going to say you didn’t like me at all!”

I giggle softly and hug him back.

A few seconds later though I let out a soft sigh, “But Jan...”

He looks at me, worryingly, “Yeah..?”

“I-I’m not ready to get back into a relationship just yet... I-Is it okay if we wait for a little...?”

He visibly relaxes and holds me closer. 

“It’s okay, Ro. I understand we can wait for as long as we need to.”

I gently nuzzle him and smile brightly, “Thanks Jan.” 

............Janus’ P.O.V...........

I look down at the sleeping prince next to me, gently running a hand through his hair. Remus and I were both in my room. Remus was on my bean bag with a sleeping Logan on his lap while I was on the bed with Roman.

“Jan?” 

I look up and Remus, who’s holding Logan as close as he could to his chest. His face is strange. It’s warm and soft yet there’s a hint of concern and anxiousness in it. His voice was hushed and somewhat sad.

“Yes?”I keep my voice soft and calming.

He takes a small deep breath, “What now...?”

Remus and I have been friends ever since Creativity split. We’ve been through everything together. We were both banished to the Darkside together. We both welcomed and raised Paranoia. We dealt with Paranoia’s short temper and screams. We both had to learn to heal after he abandoned and betrayed us.

Yet, in all does years of being with him. I’ve never heard his voice be so unsure and lost when he asked that simple question.

A put a reassuring hand on his shoulder and speak in the same voice as before, “Hey, it will be okay. All we can do now is continue to help and protect Logan and Roman to the best of our abilities.

He visibly relaxes and smiles softly. He glances down at Logan for a few seconds before answering me.

“Yeah. You’re right. Thanks, Double D.”

I smile and nod, “No problem. Now, let’s get some rest.

He nods and we both go to sleep shortly after.

............

Finally finished this! So, yeah, this is the final part of this small trilogy. I’m planning on writing a Roloceit fanfic next. Who knows? If you have any suggestions on what I should write next, feel free to tell me, I’ll do anything except for a Virgil centered fanfic or Unsympathetic Roman.

Tell me if you want to be tagged or removed.

@anti-virgil  @romanvirgil  @yeet-ceit  @nachosforfree  @unsympathetic-virgil @sanders-sides-soap-box   @virgil-negativity  @a-gay-angel @potatsanderssides  @sapphire-knight  @a-small-snidget  @easterpop-reblogs @nostarsinthedark  @itriedandimtired @anti-patton  

[rosesisupposes]

Other Half

hi i was haunted with the idea of subverting a soulmate trope after a chat with @potestessemagishomosexualitatis and it evolved in like a day on discord so here y’all go!

relationships: brotherly prinxiety, QPR moceit, romantic royality, implied/eventual anxceit

content tags: musician roman, techie/sound-guy Virgil, deaf Patton, QPRs, amatonormativity, soulmates & lack thereof, happy ending

word count: 2,847

read on ao3

Roman has half a soulmark, waiting to make skin contact with his Soulmate to finally be completed.

His brother, not so much.

Context: In this world, soulmates have half a symbol somewhere on their skin, each with one half. When soulmates have skin contact for the first time, both marks complete. The amatonormativity (prioritizing romantic love) is very strong, despite the fact that soulmates have frequently been platonic, not just romantic. It’s still a rather progressive idea, similar to gay marriage, and the traditions and stories are all centered around that romantic ideal. In that vein, some people have thirds or fourth of a mark would need to contact all their soulmates to have a complete mark. Marks are very much for One Person (or, occasionally, Two or Three Specific People), and so not everyone meets their mate. Not everyone has the means. They could be anywhere in the world! But unfortunately, there's still an idea that even if you're with a partner, you'd leave them if you met your soulmate, and that other relationship are just settling.

⁂

Enter two brothers.

Roman goes starry-eyed over stories of meet-cutes and surprise soulmates. He wants to know if he'll feel it, as his mark completes. Someday, when he meets his Someone™️!!!

And then his brother, Virgil.

Virgil... doesn't have a mark. He's not sure he's heard of that before. He has some freckles, but those fade with the seasons. Soulmarks don't fade.

Roman has half a circle, and it either has petals or rays around it. A flower or a sun, he thinks. It's right on his bicep, so he frequently goes sleeveless, and greets new people by taking both their hands in his every time. Just in case.

Lots of people do that- but it makes Virgil uncomfortable. Even if he knows he'll never be the one to trigger someone's mark, he hates knowing that's what everyone expects. He'd rather keep his hands to himself. He wears his big baggy hoodie to avoid the expectant stares of people looking for his mark, and avoids skin contact as much as he can.

They grow up in a family without a ton of resources, so neither can afford to take the 'Soul Year' some teens do where they travel before going into higher education. But Roman's determined that his career will help him meet hundreds, no, thousands of people, and he will find his soulmate!

Virgil really doesn't love the whole soulmate thing, the obsession with it, the constant reminder that he doesn’t have one and will never have one. But he does love his brother.

He tries, sometimes, to temper Roman's excitement just to make sure it doesn't hurt too much if he never finds The One. But mostly he just listens as Roman waxes poetic about his hypothetical love.

Roman, for several years, went silent, assuming Virgil wouldn't want to hear it. But Virgil has just kinda accepted it, you know? He's basically like everyone who never ends up meeting their mate, except he gets to skip the years of doubt and worry that their mate might suddenly appear at any time. He knows from the get-go. He’ll never have to look back with regret or sorrow, never have to worry about disrupted relationships, never need to mourn that his hypothetical mate might have died before he could meet them. It’s fine, really.

Roman becomes a singer and songwriter, and acts on the side. Virgil does his cover art and helps him with the sound-mixing. They're a great team - and they always have been.

Virgil makes friends with the roadies and techies, happy to leave Roman in the spotlight. He dates, sometimes. It's easier when they go on tour- a short international stay means no promises, no uncomfortable conversations about the future, no intrusive knowledge of a partner's Someone™️ out there.

After years of touring, Roman is internationally known and recognized. But he's also starting to lose hope.

He's lost count of all the meet-and-greets he's been to, how many hands he's grabbed from the stage into the crowd. He makes sure to at least high-five every roadie and tech, every opening act or announcer. His songs range from fantastical to domestic, from sweet and bubbly to sorrowful and yearning, and he loves creating, he does. But he knows there's someone out there for him, and he wants to meet them so, so badly.

They're in Paris for a show, and Virgil and Roman are strolling along the Seine. It's Spring, Roman's favorite time of year, and all the trees are in bloom. It looks like something out of a Hallmark movie.

Roman sighs heavily.

Virgil bumps him with an elbow. "Hey, no moping. That's my aesthetic, no stealing."

"Vee, what if I don't ever meet them?"

"Ro-"

"I know I should keep hoping, but- I've touched so many people and still haven't found them, what if I never will?"

"Then you'll be like most of us, Ro. Find love & companionship the new way: with hard work and dating apps."

Roman nods, but sighs again. "I just... really wanna, Vee." His voice is small, like a pouting kid. 

"I know. I hope you do."

They keep walking, but Roman's practically shuffling. On the one hand, he is a fucking drama queen.

On the other hand, Virgil wants him to feel better. 

Rolling his eyes, Virgil orders ice cream from a vendor in clumsy but serviceable French and presents Roman with his sprinkle-covered cone. Just like he knew it would, it perks him up immediately.

"Chocolate! My favorite!!"

"How are you possibly older than me. You are five."

"I just have childlike wonder, not a well of ennui!"

"Fuckin' dork."

"Edgy poser."

"Prima donna."

"Nerd."

Distracted, Roman walks straight into a man looking off at the river. He stumbles and trips and they both fall.

"Oh goodness gracious, forgive me, excusez moi, je suis desole! Pardonnez-moi!" he rattles off.

The man smiles, and his hands dance. Virgil realizes he's signing. Sorry, I didn't see you there!

 Luckily, Virgil understands it - he’s taken classes in ASL, just for kicks.

Roman knows very little sign, but he learned a couple of phrases. Sorry!

Virgil adds, It was our fault, we weren't watching.

Virgil recognizes the starry-eyed look on his brother's face. It's yet another Infatuation At First Sight, where he throws his whole heart into hoping. 

"Vee, Vee, ask him his name please?" he says, smiling for all he's worth at the curly-haired man in front of him.

Before Virgil gets a chance, he sees the man's eyes flick up and past them, and he breaks into a sunny smile. (Virgil might actually understand his brother's infatuation, for once)

Another person comes over, holding two ice creams. Virgil does a slight double-take. Like him, this newcomer chooses not to show very much skin. But they've covered even their hands. Ice cream somehow looks funny in a gloved hand.

Handing one to the first man, they start signing with one hand, far faster than he can follow. He catches a couple of signs he recognizes - gestures to himself & Roman, are you okay, something that either is we're late or shoo.

The first man is still smiling, though, and whatever he says must be okay, because the newcomer turns to them. They speak with a lilting accent, something not quite Parisian. "Please forgive my barging in- I can't exactly call for Patton from across the walkway.  My name is Dante. And you are?"

"I'm Roman, and this is Virgil, and it is wonderful to meet you!"

Virgil signs along with his brother's words, and sees Patton's eyes crinkle happily as he greets them both.

Roman has clearly also noticed Dante's gloves, but turns to Patton. With a slight bit of hesitation, he speaks and signs at once, "May I shake your hand?"

Virgil is sure he's not imagining the minute pursing of Dante's lips, but Patton's nodding and reaching out and so is Roman.

Roman is clearly holding his breath, and Virgil is too, both braced for opposite outcomes. But Patton's small, tan hand is wrapped in Roman's larger one and both sets of eyes are huge. 

Virgil's eyes flick to Roman's bicep, exposed as always, the white mark a stark contrast to his dark skin, looking like a sun or maybe a flower and-

"Holy shit-" Virgil breathes.

Roman, however, is not looking at his arm. He's staring directly into Patton's dark eyes with a smile that looks confused and elated all at once, and their hands haven't parted. 

Patton's eyes are just a huge, even huger thanks to his glasses.

"It's you," Roman says, wonder in his voice. Patton seems to read his lips, because he smiles somehow even bigger than before and signs It's you! back.

And sure enough, the mark on Roman's arm is a full circle, a full sun or flower, and Virgil's head is reeling.

Virgil's not sure what to say- the two soulmates seem content to keep staring and smiling and holding hands. But Virgil's just... nervous. Soulmate or not, this ‘Patton’ is a stranger, but Roman looks like he might never move from his side. Fuck, they can't even communicate both ways, Roman knows practically no sign and he just used up the only full sentence he’s ever learned.

He looks nervously at Patton's companion. Dante is staring too, seemingly unaware of the ice cream dripping down their glove.

Dante starts to sign something, realizes Patton can't see them, reaches out to tap Patton on the shoulder, then stops before they can touch, hand falling to their side. They look down and finally notice their ice cream, and blanch, pulling out napkins to clean their glove before it stains.

Virgil digs into his knapsack and pulls out a wet wipe and offers it. "This might help more."

Dante looks up, staring at Virgil without a shred of comprehension until Virgil waves the wipe once more. They take it with a quiet, "Merci."

They turn away, wiping off their glove and tossing the rest of their ice cream into the trash. They wiggle their fingers, clearly uncomfortable with the damp fabric. 

Virgil shifts awkwardly. He should say something, but what do you even say in this situation? He has no idea what their relation is to Pat- oh fuck, what if they were dating and Roman's just swooped in and ruined it?

In his tried-and-true method of awkward small talk with new roadies in new cities, he says, in French, "So, Paris, yeah? Know any good cafes near here?"

Dante shakes themself a bit and turns to look at Virgil. "Ah, yes. There's a patisserie just on the next block. Shall we relocate them and stop blocking the tourists?"

Virgil nods and looks over at his brother. He weighs his options of interruption, and decides on flicking Roman in the temple.

"Ow! Fuck! Vee!?!"

"You're blocking traffic, dumbass."

"I'm having a moment."

"Well come have a mocha. You can keep having your moment and I can have coffee. C'mon." 

He sees Dante signing to Patton too, explaining the plan but much more politely. Roman and Patton continue holding hands, but follow them down the block.

They get Roman and Patton sitting at a table in a picturesque cafe, and walk to the bar to order. Virgil orders his go-to of a double shot and gets Roman his mocha. Dante orders themself a latte and a vanilla cappuccino for Patton. Sitting at the bar waiting, Virgil looks over.

"So. That lunkhead over there is my brother."

Dante nods. "And Patton is my. Well. You might not know what it means, so don't immediately freak out, okay? But it's called a queerplatonic partner."

Virgil can feel the nervousness melt away. "Oh, phew. Yeah, I know what it means. So Roman's not homewrecking by being a discovered soulmate?"

"Well. I certainly hope not. But I know not everyone really, uh. Gets it. Especially with the soulmate sh- stuff. Things."

Virgil grins. "You were about to say soulmate shit, weren't you."

"...No."

"You're a terrible liar."

Dante winks. "I might surprise you."

Virgil raises an eyebrow. "Oh that's how we're gonna play it?"

"I don't play, monsieur. I just win."

"Okay then, here's a test. Why the gloves?"

Dante automatically goes to adjust them, and looks up at Virgil. Their eyes drift down to his hoodie and back up. "I think you know exactly why."

"You don't have-?"

"Nope. I don't have one either."

"I thought I was-"

"The only one?"

"Apparently not."

Virgil looks over at Patton, sitting with Roman. They don't seem to be even attempting to talk still, just staring and holding hands.

"With the QPP- are you aromantic? Do you think that's why?" He gestures vaguely at their whole body, but he’s never been quite as elegant in his gestures as Roman is.

Dante opens their mouth to speak, but stops, and sighs. "That's what I've been saying. It was easier, to say maybe this was for a purpose. And I do love Patton with all my platonic heart and I will kill your brother if he hurts him."

"The feeling’s mutual."

"But, no. I'm not fully aro. I still have romantic attraction and all that, I've just been guaranteed that even if I want it, I'll always be someone's secondary love so. Might as well lean in, right? Make the system work somewhat in my favor?"

Virgil opens his mouth to respond, to object, when the barista calls out their drinks, and then they're carefully carrying full mugs across the cafe and finding a table next to the couple.

Patton appears to be teaching Roman how to sign his name. Roman is even managing to pay attention.

"I get that, uh, reluctance. The playing-it-safe thing," Virgil says quietly, so only Dante can hear. "We travel a lot. That's a good excuse to avoid the whole fucking system. No conversations about who'll leave who when the mark shows up, because I'll be leaving in a month, tops. And people looking for hookups barely poke you to check for the mark before just... getting on with life. No expectations, no holding their breath or unrealistic disappointment."

Dante smiles weakly. "Well, good to know for when I need to start dating. I think I'm about to have a lot more free time."

"Until Roman needs to travel on again. We're here for three full weeks, but-"

"What is it you do, that you both travel so much?"

"You know Sun Prince, the singer?"

"Yeah?"

"You're looking at him," Virgil says wryly, tipping his head in Roman's direction.

Dante's eyes go wide. "Oh, that's why he looks familiar."

"So Patton probably didn’t recognize him either?"

"Nah, he tends to like EDM and electronic things the most, for the bassline. Clubbing with a deaf partner is great - the priority is just feeling the music, and we don't have to yell to hear each other."

Virgil and Dante continue to chat quietly on casual topics, but Virgil's leg is bouncing. He wants to ask the bigger questions, but it feel like prying. It's none of his business, really, right? 

But it's Roman's happiness on the line. And Virgil will do anything and everything to protect his brother. Even if it means awkwardness.

"So, uh. Did y'all have the Conversation™️ before now?"

Dante raises a questioning eyebrow in response.

"The 'what happens if he meets his soulmate' conversation. Don't tell me Pat's the only one you've ever dated?"

Dante blinks in a way that implies that were they a lesser being, they might have blushed. "Actually, he is. But yes, we've had that conversation. I'll never get in the way of Pat's romantic love and his soulmate… destiny, ou comme tu veux. I just want to still have a part in his life."

They're tugging at their gloves again, even though their face remains smooth. Virgil recognizes a nervous tic when he sees one. And god does he recognize the sentiment.

Not that any of his past partners had ever wanted to stick around in return. Why would they? He wasn't their soulmate. They hadn't decided to "settle" yet.

"I can't speak for him, but- I think Roman will be open to that," Virgil offers. "He loves performing, so we'll probably still be traveling a fair amount. But I mean. I think he'd understand that you two are a unit the same way me and him are. Like, yeah, we're brothers, but we've been each other's lifeline our whole lives, and that's not about to change. Even if he's finally found his Other Half."

Dante looks up gratefully. "I can tell you love him. And- I hope you're right."

"I should be. If Roman's a dick about it, I'll smack him upside the head."

That surprises a laugh out of Dante. They finally pull off their glove entirely, shaking it out and letting it dry on the table. "I won't interfere with them, you'll encourage Roman to not interfere with us. Do we have a deal, then?"

They offer their bare hand to shake. For once, Virgil doesn't hesitate, but takes it immediately.

Skin hits skin. Virgil finds an agreeable little shudder running down his spine as he appreciates for the first time how attractive this person is. Elegant chestnut curls, heterochromatic eyes that are dancing with delight, and disarming smile. 

Dante winks as they withdraw their hand. "What, not going to check for your completed mark now, just in case?"

Virgil grins back. "No, but I can help you look for yours later, if you want."

"Is that a proposition? Monsieur, goodness, you move fast," Dante replies, fluttering their eyelashes.

Virgil shrugs. "It could be one. You know, we're clearly gonna be around each other a lot. They found each other the old fashioned way. Maybe we could try something a bit... less traditional."

Dante smiles. "I'd like that a lot, Virgil. Should we break into cloud nine over there and ask them about the future now?"

Virgil nods. Soulmark or not, the future's looking pretty good.

tag list: @residentanchor @royally-anxious @jemthebookworm @arandompasserby  @sparkly-rainbow-salt ​@thelowlysatsuma @adorably-angsty @max-is-tired @almostoveranalyzed @hawthornshadow @mariniacipher and obligatory royality tag @notveryglittery and anxceit tag @vintage-squid

[a-totally-creative-username]

Are you kitten me?

Patton finds a tiny, black kitten in an alleyway during a rainstorm. He just can’t let that poor thing suffer and ends up taking it home. His roommates aren’t really happy about the new, temporary, addition towards the household, even if Patton’s allergies have yet to act up and they all start to fall in love with it.

Words: 2127

Ships: None

Patton is in the middle of walking home from work when he hears it. A small, sad noise that he manages to just about hear over the pouring rain. He immediately stops and listens for it to come again. He waits for a few seconds and is just about to give up and write it up to his imagination when he hears it again. He locates the noise quickly and starts running towards that direction without hesitation.

Once arrived, in a very small and dirty alley way, he looks around wildly. It doesn’t take him long to find the source of the sound. A small, adorable, very wet and sad looking kitten that is trying to hide from the rain under a nearly soaked through cardboard box.

Patton feels his heart melt while observing the tiny cat. It doesn’t seem to have noticed him yet as it is too pre occupied from trying to stay dry. It doesn’t succeed and soon the cardboard is soaked through and leaves the cat in a wet puddle.

Patton just can’t watch another second of those sounds and takes off his jacket, holds it over his head and starts nearing the cat. As soon as it notices him it starts trying to look intimidating and hissing at him.

It accomplishes nothing except make Patton fall even more in love with it. Mentally he is already going through an adoption and naming process for his new friend when he finally starts talking to it.

“Hey there kitty! Sorry to scare you like this but you seemed for me a little wet on your luck! Would you let me dry you up a little and help you get back onto your feet?”

The kitty stares at him for a few seconds as if trying to figure out how genuine he is before meowing loudly and slowly walking towards him and underneath the dry jacket.

Patton is just star stuck over the fact that he managed to get this cat to come with him and can’t even attempt to stop smiling as he takes the kitten, that he calls Anx according to it’s collar (well actually Anxiety but he refuses to call this baby a disorder), towards his home. The fact that Anx started cuddling and rubbing at him almost immediately doesn’t help his growing love towards it.

Now he can do nothing but hope that his roommates won’t mind a new addition!

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

Alright, so they did mind the new addition a little bit. Or maybe more than a little bit. Patton doesn’t even get their issue! Anx is adorable and didn’t do anything but be the cutest cat he ever met anyway! He, Logan explained that it is a male cat, flipping fell asleep in the middle of the argument and started softly snoring into Roman’s coffee!

Even Logan had to take a second to regain himself from this beautiful sight before being able to argue against them again. Roman had issues with the situation but it was cute! He kept claiming that the cat had actually drunk from his mug until he noticed that he was caught and acted as if he fell asleep, but that’s just ridiculous!

There is no real reason to not allow his new friend to stay! Patton agreed to cover the costs, his allergies doesn’t seem to react towards Anx (and isn’t that just a sign from the universe to keep the little puffball?!) and they have more than enough space left in their apartment for the new roommate.

In the end it’s Patton’s and Anx’s combined puppy dog eyes and adorableness that gets them the win.

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

It’s been three days. Three days off looking after Patton’s new companion that he brought surprisingly into their lives and that he, as the most mature person, had to look after for that same amount of time.

Logan, surprisingly, doesn’t dislike the cat. Anx is an interesting and thoughtful addiction to their lives. Yes, he meows loudly when ignored and in need of attention, a way out of the apartment or food, but otherwise he remains mostly quiet and generally just seems to hover in the general direction of whomever he feels in need of attention of.

He does get closer and sometimes tries to climb into a person’s lap, but leaves as soon as he gets a negative reaction as if he could understand them. At least, that is the normal reaction towards avoidance of his affections.

His momentary actions stand in direct contrast towards his past behavior and are nearly enough to get Logan to reevaluate his results. Because the cat is laying right on top of his laptop and his research papers.

Logan left for exactly twelve minutes and thirty-nine seconds to help Patton with a spider related issue before coming back into his room. Before he left, he made sure that everything was at its place on top of his desk. Now that he returned the objects still remain in place, but with the addition of a cat on top of it.

He and Anx stare at each other for several minutes before he breaks it off and moves towards the cat. He tries to get his laptop out from underneath Anx but only gets a hiss in response as well as a half-hearted swipe for his fingers. Curious. Anx had yet to show signs of aggression towards anyone until this moment.

They continue this game for a few more minutes before Logan starts to fell his exhaustion, that naturally comes after over sixty hours of being awake. He can’t seem to stifle a yawn that Anx seems to notice, if his narrowed eyes are anything to go by. He is just about to try working again when he finds himself in his bed and underneath Anx who is curling up on top of him.

His attempts to free himself only earn him a few hisses as well as slight claw marks in warning. Well, it seems like he will remain there for a while. He reaches over and manages to grab his astronomy book. Might as well read a little bit to pass the time. Might as well read aloud for Anx, he has responded positively in the past after all.

Ten minutes later, they are both fast asleep.

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

“Nothing better to start the day than a nice coffee and a new play to memorize- what the?! You! Patton, come and get your hell beast!”

“What’s the problem Ro? Awww, Anx is sleeping on your script! How adorable! Let me get my camera, this is one for the scrapbook!”

“NO! This is absolutely NOT adorable! You might as well name him Cerberus because I’m as likely to get my script back before he finishes napping as the undead are to escape hades and walk the earth again!”

“Well now you are exaggerating. If you really wanted to you could just lift him up and grab your little script, kiddo. He weighs less than a sack of flour!”

“It doesn’t matter what he weighs as long as he has those daggers that you dare call claws! If he really wanted to he could kill all of us easily, but you would probably call even that cute and let him do as he pleases!”

“Well in that case you should really be clawful around him! At least he only wants that script and not you!”

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

Roman looks carefully around the apartment. He searched through every room that wasn’t locked in search of his roommates. They of course said that they both would be occupied until well after noon and not back in the shared apartment until dark but one could never be too careful.

After finding no one but the little furball in the living room Roman relaxes and goes into the kitchen to make himself his special sandwich.

He knows of course that neither of his roommates would say anything against him eating his world-famous double meat loathe sandwich, except for Logans remarks that he was going against his died, but they really didn’t need to know about that. So what I he cheated with his died? It’s his body! He can do as he wants!

He sits in the living room and is just about to bite into the deliciousness that he created when the damn cat appears in front of him to stare into his soul and judge his every action like he always does! Or maybe he just wants to beg for meat...

They engage in a fierce staring contest for a few endless seconds before he gives in and sacrifices a few precious scraps.

“Fine, but only this once! It’s not like I like you or anything! This is only so you don’t rat me out to Patton you cat in the hat, understood?!” He stares him into the eyes until he feels judged enough that he feels the need to add something, “Alright, it is also a thank you for preventing me from reading that script in time for auditions. I would NOT have wanted to play that role! I do not know how you knew that the play was that homophobic but you did.”

They fall into a comfortable silence afterwards were they both enjoy their meal until there is nothing left and they can do nothing but lean back and rest. Anx comes to curl up on his lap and he is so satisfied that he completely forgets his dislike for his hairy roommate and starts to scratch him.

Soon he starts pouring his soul out to the little devil and feels the relief from unpacking all his problems onto a safe source.

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

They are all in the apartment on a lazy Saturday when they hear the knock on the front door. Patton and Logan don’t move from their position with Anx, who is lying on Patton’s lap and getting scratches and attentions from them both, so Roman goes.

He opens the door to a tall, lean man that is dressed as if he just stepped out of a eighteenth century drama in black and yellow. He is just about to ask his intentions when the man begins talking.

“I am incredibly sorry for my intrusion upon your peaceful day off, but I fear you have something that belongs to me.” He doesn’t sound sorry at all and Roman is just about to ask what he means when the man nudges him aside with his shoulder to get inside of his apartment and continues talking, “Or rather, someone.”

He doesn’t stop until he is in front of a very confused Patton with a now hissing Anx underneath his hoodie. The stranger kneels down in front of them and begins talking to the cat of all people.

“I totally don’t know why you are angry with me” a hiss, he pauses and begins nodding knowingly, “You are right, lies have no place here at the moment. My apologies.” Roman and Logan start exchanging looks over the weirdo talking to their cat, Patton continues watching the conversation interested, while Anx comes out of his hiding place enough to stare at the man.

“I am sorry for what happened, I shouldn’t have yelled at you over something so insignificant and I really shouldn’t have sent you out into the pouring rain. You deserve better than that. I overreacted and shouldn’t have let my bad mood out on you.” An indignant meow is to hear from the cat that is now sitting on Patton’s knees. The man just nods as if contemplating the answer.

“Yes, that too. I promise to not do so again and treat you as more of an equal from now on. I already talked with the landlord and you will be written into the lease for the apartment.” The stranger and Anx stare at each other before the former deflates.

“Please come back, these past few weeks have been truly horrendous without you. I am not sure how long I could stand to keep this up. I miss you.” That, surprisingly, seems to do the trick as Anx looks up at Patton and upon receiving a nod, climbs into the stranger’s hat that had been laid out for him to be escorted out of the apartment without further notice.

What?

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

It is two weeks later that Patton sees the stranger again, followed by a shorter, dark haired man with a familiar collar around his neck.

He catches his gazes and starts smiling and waving at him. The man seems surprised for a moment before starting a shy smile of his own and waving back.

Patton is just happy to know that Anx is happy and healthy. Maybe they will meet again someday in human form and become friends again.

[imaginedhaven]

Btw, If Aedion suspects what I think he suspects about rowaelin, he probably won't be in Ro's way and let him take care of his 'not-yet-mate' secretly beloved Fireheart, he'll just come by and ask how she feel once or twice a day.

Rowan better lock the door and they better have some bonding time. Rowan will fuss over Aelin, and she'll acted annoyed but she will actually really appericiate it and it would part of why she falls in love with him.

Meanwhile in the court of Adarlan the courtier and/or Georgina will complain to the king about, "What is the princess of Terrasen doing with a blood-sworn warrior of Queen Maeve in that locked room of hers?? That is highly inappropriate!" They'll send a guard or a servant to check on them and he'll return so scared he would probably quit after Rowan's snarling face appears in the doorway

Okay, confession time. This fic didn’t start out anything like what it has become, and was going to be much more of a romantic comedy when I first conceived of it! It hit me at about two in the morning one day not long after finishing the series that it would be hilarious to put Rowan and Aelin through the plot of The Princess Diaries 2: Royal Engagement, and I laughed about it and wrote the prologue then and there.

But then I started thinking about it, and wondering how the characters would have gotten to that point, and tweaking the canon universe juuuuuust enough to make it plausible for Rowan to get sent over to Terrasen to cause drama. And before I knew it, I had incorporated so many canon details that the original silly plotline I had imagined was unrecognizable! So instead I turned my focus to solving the problems I had now written Aelin into, and how I could incorporate some of the major canon turning points. Because they have not been through identical traumas, I don’t conceive of these as the exact same Aelin and Rowan as canon, and so sometimes they’ll respond differently because their life experiences to this point are different (especially Aelin). So a big question I kept asking myself as I plotted was “how would the Aelin I’ve conceived with this different life path respond to this scenario?” rather than “how can I get my cute romantic comedy back?”

(I think that’s why I started Reluctantly Rooming as a prompt fic tbh, I was dying to write some romantic comedy since I had sort of killed my original idea for Rules of Engagement.)

The scene you described, with Rowaelin in a locked room and the courtiers of Adarlan generally Not Having It, was one of the things I originally envisioned that was the hardest to let go! Of course, I’m not saying it definitely won’t happen in some way or another, but it won’t happen as I originally thought about it happening for sure.

So there you go! That’s this little canon divergence AU’s dirty little secret, out in the open!

[inagetawaycarxo]

Lethal Lust {FINALE} | Dean Ambrose

⚠ THIS IMAGINE CONTAINS SMUT & OTHER MATURE THEMES! READ AT YOUR OWN RISK!! ⚠

Pairing: Dean Ambrose x Reader

Featuring: Seth Rollins, Roman Reigns, Finn Balor, Baron Corbin, Oc’s.

Fandom: WWE

Summary: the plot thickens as you go down for a murder you did not commit, Dean gets rid of Seth, and you finally find out who killed your best friend, with dire consequences.

WARNINGS: angst, fluff {I guess if you squint}, character death, blood, violence, torture, kidnapping, crying, hospitals, one-sided love, smut, sex, car sex, oral (male receiving), a whole lot of drama, not for the faint-hearted, bad smut writing, guns. Prob bad plotting. Editing {iPads are really annoying to edit on or maybe I just need glasses}

Word Count: 6.6K +

A/N: Thank you, all for reading this. It means a-lot. Unfortunately every story has to end. ❤️✨💖 I was going to post these separately since there is only really two parts left after this, but I decided to merge them all together this is part three, four and five all in one part.

 PARTS; ONE | TWO  | FINALE (YOU ARE HERE)

THEN

Seth parked the car in the parking lot to your apartment complex.

Before he could even say anything, you unbuckled your seat belt. Climbing over the console, and straddling his lap. Pressing your lips against his passionately. Seth let out a moan. As his hand gripped your waist. Pulling you onto his lap. Your lips still locked with his…

NOW

Seth’s hands wandered down towards your ass. Squeezing it roughly. Making you moan into his mouth.

You pulled away. Breathing heavily. Your eyes gazing into his eyes intently. Seth licked his lower lip. Giving your ass another squeeze. A moan escaped your mouth. Moving your hips a bit, trying to create friction.

Seth let out a moan. Throwing his head back. Your hands wandered down his chest. Stopping at the waistband of his jeans.

Your lips attaching to his neck. Sucking harshly on the skin. While your fingers grabbed the back of his shirt. Tugging it up, and over his head. Tossing it somewhere in the car. Your lips quickly made their way to his throat. Trailing hot wet kisses down towards his chest. While your hands made quick work of undoing his jeans. Tugging them down to his thighs. Your mouth then moved down to his navel. Sucking harshly. Your mouth then moved down to his happy trail. Gliding your tongue down his happy trail. All the while looking up at him, through hooded eyes. That made Seth moan some more.

Your fingers looped underneath the waistband of his boxers. Peeling them off of him. Freeing his erection. Making Seth let out a stutter.

You quickly grabbed his shaft. Your tongue gliding up towards his tip. Seth’s fingers raked through your hair. As you swirl your tongue around his tip. Collecting some pre-cum. Seth’s head was thrown back as far as it could go. His moans filling the car, as you started to leave soft kisses up his shaft, before taking him fully in your mouth. Your gaze flickering up towards his face, as you started to bob your head up and down while sucking. Occasionally nibbling. Using your saliva as lubricant. While your hands stroked his shaft, while you sucked.

“Fuck, babe.” Seth moaned out.

Thrusting into your mouth. You stopped sucking and started to swirl your tongue around his tip, before going back to sucking his cock. Moaning slightly. His body trembling.

Seth grabbed a handful of your hair. Pulling you up. Making his cock slip from your mouth with a pop. He quickly hiked your dress up and moved your panties to the side. Lowering you down on his shaft.

Both of you letting out a satisfied moan. Your hands grabbing his shoulders for support. Your nails digging into his shoulder blades. As you start to rock your hips. Bouncing up and down on his cock. Throwing your head back. Seth’s head went straight to the crook of your neck. Sucking harshly. While his hands grabbed your boobs. Massaging them as you ride him. The both of you in pure bliss. Moans filling the car.

The familiar sensation forming in the pit of your stomach. Your nails digging into his skin.

“Come for me, babe.” Seth moaned out. Coaxing you closer to your orgasm. Tightening your eyes closed, as your orgasm washed over you. Seth bucked his hips up, as soon as you stopped moving. Thrusting them up a few more times, before spilling his seed inside of you. Your head falling into the crook of his neck. As the both of you breathed heavily.

Unbeknownst to the both of you, someone was watching. That person who happened to be lurking was Dean. He clenched the glass cup tightly. His face pressed against the glass window. Scowling at Seth’s car. Dean glared when he saw Seth kissing you. He felt relief wash over him when you stepped out of the car alone. Fixing your dress. Before going into the apartment complex. Dean’s mouth went into a thin line, as Seth took off.

Dean only moved away from the window when he heard the door to the apartment open.

“Your home late.” Dean grumbled out. Making you let out a tiny scream.

You put your hand on your chest. While your heart beat faster.

“Dean, you scared me.” You gasped out.

“He is a bad influence on you, y/n. You have to work tomorrow.” Dean scolded you. While you grabbed a bottle of water from the fridge. Closing the fridge door. You looked at the clock on the wall. Raising your eyebrows. As you opened the lid to the water.

“It’s eleven.” You spoke. Taking a sip of the water.

“Exactly, it is late.” Dean grumbled. Crossing his arms over his chest.

“Okay, dad. I am going to have a shower, then go to bed. Night night.” You spoke. Turning around, and walking out of the kitchen. Leaving Dean alone in the kitchen.

Dean turned back around to face the window. Glaring at the parking spot, where Seth’s car had been.

He had to get rid of Seth and fast. Before Seth stole you from him…

__________________________________________

Dean was up before you were. Actually, he didn’t even go to sleep. He was to busy planning on killing Seth.

“Morning, Dean.” You greeted him. Startling Dean a bit.

“Hey.” He mumbled.

“Want some coffee?” You asked. Pouring yourself a cup of coffee.

“Nah. I have to get to work. See you later.” Dean spoke. Getting up, and leaving the kitchen.

“More for me then.” You mumbled to yourself. Bringing the cup up to your lips, and taking a sip.

Dean stopped near the door. Hand hovering above the doorknob. Turning his head to look at you. As you sipped on coffee.

“You will be mine. All mine, very soon.” Dean mumbled to himself. Turning the knob, and opening the door. Then exiting.

You grabbed an apple out of the bowl that was in the middle of the table. Taking a bite out of it. You then walked over towards the dish rack. Picking up your thermos mug, and the lid. You quickly poured the coffee into the thermos mug. Then put the lid on. Screwing it on. Then exiting the kitchen, and going over to the front door. Grabbing your car keys, and a bag. Opening the door, and locking it. You then closed the door and walked out of the apartment. Going over towards your car. Once you got into the car, you quickly placed your thermos mug into the cup holder. Then put the keys into the ignition. Turning them, making the engine of the car turn on.  You quickly put your seat belt on. You then put the car out of park and into drive. Pressing your foot onto the accelerator. Driving off to Alexa’s house.

When you made it to Alexa’s place. You parked in front of her house. Turning off the engine, and taking out the keys. Getting out of the car, and walking over to her door.

You stopped in your tracks as you saw that her screen door was the only one closed. You got an unsettling feeling forming in the pit of your stomach. Paranoia started to set in. Horrible images filled your thoughts, as you slowly walked to the front door. Like it was a wounded wild animal, you were trying to coax out.

“Alexa.” You called out. Hand hovering above the door handle. You waited a second before opening the door.

“Alexa.” You called out again. Not getting a response back. Your heart thumping against your chest rapidly.

A strong metallic smell hit your nose. Making you cringe. You knew it was blood.

“Alexa.” You called out. Gulping when she didn’t answer you. You quickly made your way to where the smell was coming from. Which happened to be in the kitchen.

Your heart felt like it was stuck in your throat. As you stared at the horrid scene in front of you.

“Lexi…” You barely gasped out. Tears brimming in your eyes. Rushing over to her, as fast as you could.

“Please.” You whimpered out. Putting a hand over her wound. You knew it was too late to save her. She was dead. But that didn’t stop you from doing all you can to save her. This point you were full-on sobbing.

“We will find who did this to you, Lexi.” You sobbed out.

In the midst of trying to save her, even though you knew she was dead, you must have called the emergency services. Because you felt strong arms wrap around your waist, pulling you away from your best friends body, and out of the house, towards a waiting ambulance…

Roman wrapped a blanket around you. Sitting down next to you. Wrapping his arm around you. Pulling you closer to his side.

“She’s dead.” You sobbed out. Tears burning your eyes.

“There was nothing I could do Ro. There was so much blood. A lot of blood.” You cried out. Roman rubbed soothing circles up and down on your shoulder.

“Y/n…” Roman started to say, only for you to cut him off.

“So, much blood.” You mumbled. Looking down at your blood-stained hands. The blood that was Alexa’s.

Roman took notice of you staring at your hands, that were coated in crimson. He quickly reached out towards the side. Grabbing a water bottle. He unscrewed the lid. Taking the lid off, and putting it down beside him. Roman unwrapped his arm from around you. Grabbing your hands. He tipped the water on your hands. Washing the blood off your hands. Though you just stared numbly at your hands.

Roman used all the water. Putting the empty water bottle beside him. He grabbed a towel. Wiping your hands dry. Once Roman was finished drying your hands, he put the towel down beside him. His fingers hooking underneath your chin, turning your head to face him.

“It’s not your fault, y/n. None of this was. The police will get the person who did this.” Roman reassured you.

“Why? Why her?” You sobbed.

“I don’t know.” Roman sighed. Wiping your fallen tears away.

“Who would do this to her? How could they?” You sobbed out.

“Someone unstable. It is going to be okay. They will get this person.” Roman reassured you.

Roman wrapped his arms around you. Bringing you close to him. Hugging you tightly. As you sobbed into his chest…

･ﾟ✧ MEANWHILE   ✧ﾟ･

Dean glared at Seth. As Seth made his way into the gym. Dean’s hand gripped onto the handle of his knife.

Dean tapped his feet impatiently. His jaw clenching, as he watched Seth. Eyes squinting into slits.

Dean watched Seth like a predator watching its prey. Waiting for an opportunity to get Seth alone. And when it came, he pounced.

Dean smirked, as he plunged the knife into Seth’s back. Seth let out a groan of pain. Hand reaching behind his back. But failing to get it out. Dean let out a chuckle. Pushing Seth into the dumpster. Seth let out a moan of pain.

“She is mine. Not yours.” Dean growled out. Sending daggers to the back of Seth’s head.

“Dude. Take a hint, she ain’t into you.” Seth grumbled out.

Dean sneered at Seth. Grabbing his hair, and slamming his face onto the concrete. Seth let out another groan of pain.

“You’re a bad influence on her. You don’t deserve her.” Dean snarled out. Yanking the knife out of Seth’s back.

Seth let out a groan of pain. Then a chuckle.

“And you think you deserve her?” Seth asked. Laughing at Dean. Turning his head to look at Dean.

“That’s pathetic. You are pathetic. She will never fall for a lunatic like you, Dean. You’re a psychotic son of a bitch.” Seth growled out, through gritted teeth.

Dean glared at Seth. Shoving him down roughly. Nostrils flared. Mouth set in a thin line. Dean grabbed a handful of Seth’s hair. Yanking it back, as he squatted over Seth.

Dean pressed the knife against Seth’s throat.

“Funny… The last person who said that exact same thing to me, ended up dead.” Dean growled out.

Dean slit Seth’s throat. Smiling wickedly as he watched the blood pool around Seth’s body.

“Now nothing will get in my way of being with, y/n.” Dean smirked wickedly. Dean then picked up Seth’s limp body, hauling it into the dumpster bin. He quickly put the trash bags over Seth’s body. Then walked off…

__________________________________________

You wrapped your arms around you letting out a sigh. Your eyes darting across the room, where the police conducted the interviews in. You just wanted to go home. You were so tired.

Detective Corbin glared at you through the glass window. Detective Balor rolled his eyes in annoyance, as he walked up to him.

“She obviously did it.” Detective Corbin growled.

“Just because her fingerprints are on the doorknob doesn’t mean she did it.” Detective Balor grumbled in annoyance.

“I don’t care. The evidence leads to her. Her fingerprints are all over the place.” Detective Corbin snapped. Clenching his jaw.

“Baron…” Detective Balor started to say, but Detective Corbin cut him off. Turning his head to face Detective Balor. Glaring at him.

“No, zip it before I take you off the case. I’m the lead detective in charge of this case. I’m charging her for murdering Alexa Bliss.” Detective Corbin grumbled. Walking off, and going into the room where you were in.

Finn watched the whole thing. Getting a sinking feeling of them being wrong. That the real killer was out there. Detective Balor looked away as he watched tears falling from your eyes, as Detective Corbin put the handcuffs on your wrist.

“I’ll get the real killer, y/n.” Detective Balor mumbled to himself…

__________________________________________

You stared numbly at the cell wall. Gulping rapidly. Your eyes were red from crying. The rim of your eyes red. Your throat dry. It felt like the walls were closing in on you. Your tears all dried out.

How could they wrongly accuse you of murdering your best friend? You kept thinking to yourself.

A guard walked up to your cell. Making hope flicker in your eyes.

“You got a visitor.” The guard grumbled out. Opening your cell door. You quickly stood up. The guard walked in. Placing their hand on your lower back. Pushing you out of the cell, and towards the visiting room.

Your eyes light up with happiness, as you saw Dean.

Dean stood up. Rushing over towards you. Dean ignored the stare he got from the guard, as he wrapped his arms around you. Pulling you tightly into his chest. Dean resting his chin on top of your head. As you nestle your face into his chest. Hugging him the best you could with handcuffs on.

Dean pulled away after the guard told both of you to sit down.

Dean reached out and took your hand in his. As soon as both of you sat down. Dean squeezed your hand tight. Looking deeply into your eyes.

“I’ll get you out of here.” Dean reassured you.

“Dean…” you sighed.

“I know you didn’t kill her.” Dean spoke. Making you bite your lip.

“They think I did.” You mumbled. You felt like crying again. But there were no tears left to cry. Your eyes just ended up hurting.

Dean squeezed your hand tighter.

“I will do anything to get you out of here. You are innocent. Don’t worry, I will get you out of here.” Dean spoke.

“My lawyer says I should plead guilty, and I think I should do it.” You confessed to him.

“Fuck, what he says. He is a shitty lawyer.” Dean snapped.

“She.” You corrected him. Taking a deep breath, before continuing again.

“Dean, look, I don’t know what evidence they have on me. Other than the fingerprints. My lawyer said if I plead guilty then they might be lenient, and give me a shorter sentence. Dean, the police are hell-bent on believing I murdered my best friend.” You sighed. Squeezing Dean’s hand, as you spoke.

“You didn’t kill her. You are innocent.” Dean argued. A sigh left your mouth. You squeezed Dean’s hand even tighter. Giving him a pained look.

“I know that Dean, but the police will twist it to make people believe I am guilty. That I did it.” You spoke.

“Then those people are brainless idiots for believing lies from those corporate cops.” Dean growled out. Looking at the guard in disdain. Then at you with a painful look.

“Dean… I have to it is my only choice. My court date is in two days.” you sighed. Giving him a sad smile.

Dean shook his head in disagreement. He quickly leaned over to you. His lips pressing against the shell of your ear. Making you gulp. While the guard that stood by the doorway gave him a dirty look.

“But you do have a choice. A choice to fight. You may have given up on fighting this, but I haven’t. I am going to help you. I am going to get you out of here. Even if it kills me. Because, I know you didn’t do it, I know you are innocent.” Den spoke. your mouth went a gap. Eyes widen in shock.

The guard’s hand wrapped around Dean’s forearm, pulling him up, and away from you. Though Dean kept eye contact with you. Mouthing the words “I’ll get you out of here.”. Another guard grabbed you. Pulling you up, and out of the visiting room, and towards your cell. Making you wonder how he was going to prove your innocence. How he was going to get you out of there…

__________________________________________

Dean paced up and down the living room. Muttering incoherent words to himself. His hair was dishevelled from running his fingers through it. Eyes bloodshot.

Dean suddenly stopped in his tracks. A huge smile gracing his lips.

“They can’t charge her for a crime she didn’t commit if she doesn’t show up to court.” Dean smirked.

“They can’t take away my love. I won’t let them take her away from me.” Dean growled.

__________________________________________

Detective Balor tapped his pen rapidly on the desk. Running his hand over his head. It’s one day left to your trail. Detective Balor was trying to find something he missed in the files.

 Detective Balor scanned the evidence in frustration. Nothing added up to it being you. Other then your fingerprints being on the door, and in her house. There was still not enough evidence to pin it on you. Plus there were bloodstains on a piece of clothing they found in your apartment. That matched Alexa’s blood type. However, it wasn’t your clothing, it was your roommates Dean.

His eyebrows furrowing, as he looked through the statements. A name kept catching his attention. That name being Dean Ambrose. Your roommate. Finn opened his notepad. Writing Dean’s name down. Finn then jotted down the things that made Dean suspicious. One of them being jealousy, and the other one being that a piece of his clothing was covered in Alexa’s blood.

Detective Balor looked up, as he heard a shuffling sound, then a scoff. Detective Balor rolled his eyes, as he saw Detective Corbin standing by the office door.

“You still trying to look for clues to prove she is innocent?” Detective Corbin laughed. Making Detective Balor grip his pen tightly. His jaw clenching.

“That’s because she is innocent, Baron. Nothing proves she did it.” Detective Balor grumbled.

“Her co-worker’s statements do.” Detective Corbin replied.

Detective Balor rolled his eyes. Bringing his hand up to pinch the bridge of his nose.

“So, what she had a small argument about her friend setting her up on too many dates. That is no reason to accuse her of killing her best friend.” Detective Balor grunted. Looking at detective Corbin with a disdained look.

“It is to me, especially when we found a piece of bloody clothes in her apartment.” Detective Corbin shot back.

Detective Balor let out a dark chuckle. Standing up abruptly. Giving him a death glare.

“They were her roommates. If anything you should be investigating him. He is as shady as they come. He was the one with the problem with Alexa. You are accusing an innocent person of a crime she didn’t commit.” Detective Balor snapped. Shooting daggers at Detective Corbin.

Detective Corbin let out a dark chuckle.

“I’m the lead investigator, and I say she is the killer. I know it.” Detective Corbin snapped.

“The evidence you have on her is insufficient. Your integrity will be questioned. But hey, by all means, believe the lies you tell yourself. I’m going to find out who really killed Alexa.” Detective Balor huffed out. Packing up the files he had on his desk, and putting them in an archive box. Before leaving the office.

“Have fun trying to prove, y/n’s innocence.” Detective Corbin called out…

__________________________________________

You stared numbly at the photo of Alexa and you. That was lit by the moonlight. Tears falling from your eyes. Curling into a ball. Sniffling as you continued to stare at the photo…

__________________________________________

Detective Balor let out a sigh, as he entered the warm cozy café. Making his way over to the booth, that was occupied by one person.

“I’m glad you came.” Detective Balor spoke. As he sat down in front of the person. Who happened to be Roman.

“Anything to help free, y/n.” Roman spoke. Taking a sip out of his cup of coffee.

Detective Balor took out his notepad and pen. Flipping his notepad open to a blank page.

“So, what can you tell me about, y/n’s roommate, Dean Ambrose?” Detective Balor asked. One eyebrow arched, as he looked at Roman.

Roman felt taken aback. But composed himself.

“I don’t know him personally but have met him a couple of times. I do know that y/n has gotten him out of a lot of trouble.” Roman replied.

“What kind of trouble?” Detective Balor asked. Looking up from the notepad.

“Well…I…” Roman started then stopped. Sucking in a deep breath before starting over again.

“He got involved with some heavy stuff. Drugs mostly he stole some drugs from the ambo van, and y/n covered for him.” Roman spoke.

“Would you say she covers for him all the time? Perhaps even if he committed a murder?” Detective Balor asked. Observing Roman’s behaviour.

Romans eyebrows furrowed in confusion.

“Doubt it, she has morals. She felt guilty for covering for him with those drugs he stole. Dean on the other hand, well, he would probably kill for her. He is overprotective of her. So, it wouldn’t surprise me if he killed someone for her or someone in general.” Roman replied.

“How so?” Detective Balor asked.

“I think he is in love with her.” Roman responded.

“You think?” Detective Balor questioned Roman. Giving him an unimpressed look. Roman sighed.

“I don’t know him personally...” Roman started to say, only for Detective Balor to cut him off.

“So, you say.” Detective Balor interrupted him.

“But, I do know the look of love. And he looks at her like she puts the stars in the sky.” Roman spoke again. Making Detective Balor hum. As he wrote in his notepad.

“Interesting.” Detective Balor hummed out. He got up suddenly. Grabbing his notepad, and pen.

“Thank you, Roman. It’s been a pleasure.” Detective Balor spoke. Giving  Roman a friendly smile before spinning around, and walking out of the café…

His mind piecing things together. Detective Balor pulled out his mobile phone. Dialling the precinct.

“Hey, love, I want you to run a background check on Dean Ambrose, text me the details. Thanks, love.” Detective Balor ordered. Ending the call.

__________________________________________

It was the day of your trail. The day that sealed your fate. Dean hadn’t slept a wink in a week. When he did close his eyes, he snapped them open again. Dean was nervous that his plan would fail, and you would end up in jail for a crime he committed.

Dean quickly grabbed a gun he brought illegally. Stashing it in the waistband of his jeans. He then walked out of his room, and out of the apartment. Making his way down the stairs, and out of the apartment complex. Dean put his hoodie over his head. His hands in his pockets. Dean walked into a sketchy area of the town. Looking down at the footpath. He then entered a sketchy garage. Dean took the hood of his hoodie off.

“Hey.” Dean greeted a sketchy looking guy. The guy turned around smirking at Dean.

“Hey man.” The guy spoke. Holding his hand out. The both of them did a handshake. Before the guy pulled away and went over to a cover that covered a car. He pulled it off, revealing a mustang.

Dean’s eyes lit up with excitement.

“Thanks for this, man.” Dean spoke. Running his finger along the door panel. Admiring the car.

“No, problem, go get your girl.” The man spoke. Taking out the keys. Then tossing the keys at Dean. Dean quickly caught them.

“Make sure you don’t forget your part of the deal.” The man spoke. As Dean opened the driver’s door.

Dean smirked as he hopped in. His hand going into his hoodie pocket, grabbing two bags of drugs, and handing it over to the guy.

The guy smirked and took it from Dean.

“Thanks, man, a pleasure doing business with you. I’m going to miss you.” The guy spoke. Then walked away.

Dean put the keys in the ignition. Turning it on. Dean smirked as the engine revved to life. He then reversed out of the garage. Then drove away. Not aware of a car trailing behind him…

__________________________________________

Detective Balor clutched the files close to his chest, as he walked up the stairs to the precinct. Stopping mid-step as he heard his mobile ring. Detective Balor fished out his phone. Pulling it out, and accepting the call. He held it up to his ear.

“Hello.” Detective Balor answered.

“Yo, Balor, I got some intel on Ambrose. Saw him get a car illegally. Also, he handed bags of ice to the person who gave him the car.

“Interesting, thank you.” Detective Balor responded. Ending the call.

Detective Balor walked up the stairs, and towards the sergeant’s office. Detective Balor opened the door. Rolling his eyes, as he saw Detective Corbin. Detective Corbin turned around at the sound of the door creaking opened. Smirking at Detective Balor.

“Found another body. The body of Seth Rollins. Found at the dump. You still think y/n, is innocent.” Detective Corbin smirked. Detective Balor felt his stomach drop.

“I say she did it out of jealousy. Maybe, Seth and Alexa were hooking up behind her back, and she found out, and bam, she kills him the day after she kills Alexa.” Detective Corbin explained. Though Detective Balor’s eyebrows furrowed, as he looked at the autopsy done on Seth.

“Well… That makes no sense since she was at Alexa’s house at the time of his demise.” Detective Balor spoke. Still looking at the autopsy file on Seth Rollins.

“Yeah…Well… She could have done it.” Detective Corbin grunted. Detective Balor scoffed.

“Unless she ran to Alexa’s then no, it’s not possible. Oh, that’s right her car was in front of Alexa’s house. I think you are letting your tunnel vision get the better of you.” Detective Balor snapped.

“Whatever. I am the lead detective on this case.” Detective Corbin shot back.

“Baron, your dismissed. I need to talk to Finn.” The Sergeant ordered.

“But… Fine…” Detective Corbin huffed out. Walking out of the room. Slamming the door on his way out.

“You wanted to see me.” The Sergeant spoke.

“Yeah, I think you have the wrong person.” Detective Balor replied. Handing over a file he made about Dean Ambrose to the sergeant.

The sergeant was looking through the contents of the file. A scowl on his face.

“Hmm…” The sergeant hummed out.

“I think Dean did it.” Detective Balor accused.

“Possibly, but, y/n, is on trial for the murder of Alexa Bliss.” The sergeant spoke.

“Sergeant….” Detective Balor started to say, only to get cut off.

“I will look into it.” The sergeant cut him off. Making detective Balor scoff.

Detective Balor stood up abruptly.

“Look into it? You are putting an innocent woman on trail. Have you ever found the murder weapon yet? I bet you, you haven’t. All you have on her is her fingerprints at the scene of the crime, and Alexa’s blood on a hoodie, that happens to be her roommates. I’m not going to sit in that courtroom, and watch an innocent women go to trial for a crime she didn’t commit.” Detective Balor snapped.

“Finn…” The sergeant spoke, only to get cut off.

“If you won’t put the right person away I will.” Detective Balor growled out. Before spinning around. His hand gripping the doorknob tightly and yanking it open. Exiting the room. Bolting out of the precinct.

Detective Balor got into his SUV. Fishing the keys out of his pocket. He hastily put them into the ignition. Turning them, and starting the engine. He then put his foot on the accelerator. Speeding off. Driving through every red light.

He quickly dialled the guy who rang him before. The dial tone ringing through the speakers of the car.

“Hey, Balor. I’m glad you called.” The guy spoke.

“Where is he now?” Detective Balor asked. Pressing his foot down harder on the accelerator.

“Coming closer to the transport van.” The guy spoke. As detective Balor sped some more.

“Keep an eye on him.” Detective Balor ordered.

“Oh, no.” The guy muttered out.

“What?” Detective Balor asked. Hearing a loud crash on the other end.

“Shit.” The guy spoke. Before the phone call ended.

Detective Balor cursed underneath his breath. Driving as fast as he could. Pressing the precinct contact number.

“Hello.” A women’s voice answered.

“I need you to give me the coordinates of the van, y/n l/n is in. Also, send back up..” Detective Balor ordered. The women typed away on the keyboard. Then gave him an answer. He quickly hanged up. Speeding as fast as the car would go…

__________________________________________

Light entered the back of the van where you were in. You lifted your head. Squinting at a figure at the doorway of the back of the van.

“Y/n.” Dean spoke. Coming into the back of the van, and pulling you out.

“Dean.” You muttered. Dean looked at you with sad eyes.

“Your bleeding.” Dean spoke. Wrapping your arms around his shoulder. Dean looked at the cut on your forehead before looking forward.

“We have to help them.” You gasped out. Looking behind you. As Dean lead you away.

“No. I am getting you out of here.” Dean grumbled. Leading you over to a mustang.

“Dean, they are injured, and taking me away makes me look guilty, Dean.” You spoke.

“You are not guilty.” Dean snapped.

“Dean, me skipping town makes me look guilty. And also, you could get in trouble, Dean… Please…Don’t do this.” You begged. Dean turned around to face you. Looking at you with wild eyes.

“I have to, y/n. Because I did it.” Dean confessed. Making you give him a confused look.

“What?” You gasped out.

Before Dean could respond a voice cut him off.

“Stay right there. Hands up.” A male voice ordered.

Dean clenched his jaw. He turned around glaring at the guy. Withdrawing something from out of his waistband. Your eyes widen in fear, as you saw a gun in Dean’s hand. Dean quickly aimed the barrel of the gun at the guy, then pulled the trigger.

You let out a whimper. Dean lowered the gun. Turning to face you. Making you whimper.

“I killed Alexa, y/n.” Dean confessed.

“W-what…?” You gasped out. Gulping. Hoping you heard him wrong. You felt dread settle in your stomach. You felt like you were going to throw up.

“I killed her, because, she was trying to tear us apart. She never wanted us together. I love you, y/n, so much.” Dean spoke.

“You…killed…Alexa…” You stuttered out. Taking a step back. Looking at him with a mixture of shock and hatred. Tears fell from your eyes. Your heart sinking down to the pit of your stomach. Dread set in.

“Stay away from me.” You snapped. Taking a few more steps back.

“Y/n.” Dean cried out. Tears filling his eyes

“I can never forgive you, Dean.” You hissed out. As tears blurred your vision. You’re heartbreaking.

“Please, she was trying to keep us from being together. I love you…” Dean cried out. Making you shake your head from side to side rapidly.

“If you loved me, then you wouldn’t have killed my best friend. You would have been a man, and told me face to face that you love me, instead of killing my best friend.” You snapped out. Giving him a cold look.

“Y/n, you don’t understand…” Dean started to say only to get cut off.

“Oh, I understand fully, you are insane. I don’t even know who you are anymore. I can’t even look at you. You know I should have let you die that night when you came to me on the brink of death after you got yourself into some shady mess.” You hissed out.

Dean opened his mouth but was cut off by the sound of tyres screeching, and a door opening. Dean turned around to see an officer. Gun raised in front of him aiming it at Dean.

“Put down the weapon, Ambrose. It’s over. I know you murdered Alexa Bliss, as well as Seth Rollins.” Detective Balor shouted. Still pointing his gun at Dean. Eyes trailing towards you. To see if you were okay. Then back at Dean.

Both Dean and Detective Balor were having a stare-down. While you tried to process what detective Balor said about Seth. He’s dead too…

“No. It is not over. Not until I am with her.” Dean shouted.

Detective Balor clenched his jaw. His finger hovering over the trigger.

“Your times up, Dean.” Detective Balor shouted.

“No.” Dean shouted. His hand going behind him. He quickly grabbed a hold of your bicep. Pulling you in front of him. His arm wrapped around your neck. Pulling you close to him. You have been in this situation before. You know that it was so the cop didn’t shot them in the chest. You were a human shield.

You felt your heart thump faster. It felt like your heart was in your throat. Tears stinging your eyes. You gave detective Balor a pleading look.

“I’m not going anywhere.” Dean growled out. Through clenched teeth.

“Oh, but you are.” Detective Balor spoke. Gun still trained on Dean.

“No… after every threat I eliminated, just for her to be with me. To notice me. No… you’re going to have to shot us both. Because I’m not going to rot in jail if I can’t have her.” Dean shouted. His grip tightening around you.

Detective Balor glared at Dean. Lowering his gun down. Letting out a sigh.

“Then I guess that leaves me no other choice.” Detective Balor sighed.

Dean loosened his grip on you. Though he still held you in front of him. Detective Balor quickly raised his gun. Not thinking twice about pulling the trigger. He felt bad for aiming it at you. But it was the only option he had to get Dean to let go of you. The bullet lodged in your shoulder. Making your heart feel like it was in your throat. You looked at your shoulder in shock. Deans arm loosened, as you dropped to the ground.

Dean turned his attention to detective Balor. Glaring at him. But detective Balor didn’t think twice about pulling the trigger. The bullet going into his chest. Detective Balor shot again, shooting Dean in the shoulder. Dean fell to the ground in shock and pain.

Detective Balor put his gun in his thigh holster. Taking off his shirt. Leaving him in a tank top. Detective Balor pressed his shirt hard against your wound. Then called for two ambulances. Before focusing back on you.

“Hold on, y/n. It’s over. You are going to be okay.” Detective Balor spoke. As your eyes were wide with shock. Gasping for air.

You looked over to the side to see Dean clutching his chest. You then looked back at detective Balor.

“You should have aimed for his head.” You gasped out. Coughing as you talked. Detective Balor let out a tiny chuckle. Your eyes fluttering closed. Breathing slowing down.

“Hey, y/n. Stay with me okay.” Detective Balor panicked.

“Thank you….” You wheezed out. Slipping into the darkness.

Detective Balor panicked. Trying to coax you awake. Dean looked over to see you laying limp on the ground. Dread washing over him. He tried to push himself up but failed. Dean stared at you with pain-filled eyes…

About ten minutes later two ambulances and backup arrived. They helped you before they helped Dean. Detective Balor followed Dean into the back of the ambulance. Giving him the Miranda warning. But all Dean could ask was “How as y/n?”, “Is she okay?”. Detective Balor gripped his shoulder harshly.

“You did this to her.” Detective Balor sneered. Tightening his grip on the wound. Before letting go. Leaving Dean in more pain, and mumbling how sorry he was. But detective Balor didn’t listen…

__________________________________________

Your eyes slowly fluttered open. Only to be blinded by a bright light. You quickly shut them. Letting out a groan. The sound of machines beeping made your eyes snap open.

You tried to sit up. Only for a hand to push you down. You looked at the hand on your shoulder. Your eyes trailing up the persons arm to see their face. You let out a sigh of relief when you saw Roman. Staring at you.

“How long have I been out?” You asked. Your voice was hoarse.

“How are you feeling?” Roman asked. Ignoring your question, by asking another question. Roman grabbed a jug of water on the side table. Pouring it into the cup. Then handing it to you.

You took a sip of water, before answering.

“Fine.” You answered him.

“Dean’s locked up.” Roman spoke. Making your jaw clench.

“Good. I hope he never gets out.” You growled. Jaw clenching as you speak.

“Y/n…” Roman sighed.

“He killed my best friend, Ro, all because he couldn’t tell me he loves me more than a friend. Not to mention he killed one of my dates. I can never forgive him, Roman.” You growled. Tears forming in your eyes.

“I understand. Least your off the hook now. You can come back to work, and save lives.” Roman spoke softly. Taking your hand. You smiled at Roman softly.

“Yeah, it’s going to take time, before I’m okay.” You mumbled.

“But you are going to be okay.” Roman spoke. Squeezing your hand. Giving you a reassuring smile.

“You’re a great friend, Ro. Thank you.” You spoke. Giving him a soft smile…

_________________________________________

Dean laid on his back, on the uncomfortable chaise lounge.

“I can’t stop thinking about her.” Dean confessed. Making the therapist look up from the notepad.

“Mr Ambrose, we have talked about this. It is time to move on from her. And start focusing on your self. Focus on rehabilitation.” The therapist spoke. Making Dean clench his jaw.

“She will be mine.” Dean declared. Sitting up.

“Dean..” The therapist spoke. Then suddenly stopped, as Dean’s hands closed around their neck.

“She will be mine.” He growled out. Choking them to death.

Once they fell limp, Dean let go. Dusting himself off, and walking out of the room. He was going to escape this place, and get you one way or another if it was the last thing he did….

[logansanderslove]

Changeling Logan (1/?)

Sanders Sides: Logan, Roman, Patton, Virgil, Remy, Deceit (Damien)

Summary: Logan Marsh isn’t exactly all that he seems. He is, in fact, a changeling, being able to morph into whatever he wants. He has kept that fact hidden from his friends for years, but while on vacation, a single slip up breaks it free, and starts something he never could have imagined.

Fic type: Drama, Romantic, Fun

Ships: Logince, Moxiety, Receit (Remy/Deceit)

Warnings: Language

MASTERLIST

Logan walked out to the pool, tossing his towel on the chair as he stripped off his shirt and removed his glasses. Glancing around to see if any of his three roommates or their friends were anywhere near, he sighed, then walked to the deep end of the pool, taking a deep breath. He stood on the edge, closed his eyes, then dove in.

Immediately he felt the odd sensation in his neck, the prickling that travelled over his skin, and he opened his eyes to see his skin had turned a light teal with darker blue spots, smooth and sleek. He took a deep breath with a smile, rubbing his neck, his fingers running over the three breaks in his skin where air and water flowed through together. 

“I missed this…” He murmured, his voice clear as day even under the water. He began to swim around, relaxing in the cool water, finally able to think clearly.

When he had learned that the house he, his roommates and their friends were staying in during their vacation had a pool, he had been overjoyed. The others, of course, didn’t know why, but Logan had missed being able to swim. He had missed the quiet serenity, the relaxing cool touch the water held, and he also couldn’t help but like the beautiful colours that turned his skin when he let out his changeling side. Even though he could really be anything he wanted, able to stay in the water as long as he wanted was his favourite by far. For years, as long as he could remember, Logan had hidden his gift away from all the eyes of his friends, fearful of what they might think. But when he had the chance, he would take it to be who he really was.

Taking another deep breath as he sank to the bottom, he sat on the floor of the pool, looking up at the light blue sky, blurred by the water but still beautiful. He ran a hand over his head through his hair, the webbings between his fingers that had appeared catching the softness of the strands. He looked at his watch, waterproof and nearly indestructible, as well as some of the latest technology, and he smirked. Nearly an hour had passed, but it had felt like fifteen minutes. He let out a sigh, kicked off the bottom to breach the surface, gasping, then he swam to the ladder. Climbing out, he shook his head, pushing his bangs away from his eyes so he could put his glasses on when he walked over to his stuff. He closed his eyes as he felt the blue hue starting to fade away, the gills on the side of his neck disappearing. He had just grabbed his towel when he heard a small noise and he wheeled around to see Roman staring at him with his mouth hanging open, his towel falling from his hand.

Logan immediately felt his heart stop, panic rising in him as the different tint of his skin finally went away, making Roman’s eyes widen even more. Logan slowly put his hands up, shaking his head.

“R-Roman…just stay calm...I-I can explain…” He started, but Roman just made a little weak squealing noise, bringing his hands up to his head as his fingers raked through his hair. 

“I..wha-what...wha...you...AAAA!!!” He cried out, and Logan waved his hands quickly. 

“NO! No, Roman, shut up!” He hissed through gritted teeth, but soon Roman’s friend Remy walked out the door, sipping on his eighteenth cup of coffee that day.

“Hey, baby, what’s up? Why are you screaming?” He asked, and Roman tried to say something, but all that came out was gibberish as he pointed at Logan. Remy’s eyes turned to the intellectual, who tensed up, then Remy chuckled.

“It’s just Logan, Ro. I know you’re not that fond of knowledge or using your brain, so I can understand why he scares you. Ciao, baby.” He patted Roman’s shoulder and walked back inside, letting Logan breathe a huge sigh of relief. Roman still stood completely panicked, and Logan frowned. He walked over, grabbed Roman by the wrist and sat him down, sitting next to him. He narrowed his eyes, meeting Roman’s gaze seriously.

“Look, stop freaking out, I need you to be quiet, got it?!” Logan hissed, and Roman immediately nodded, finally seeming to come out of his daze.

“But...Logan...what, what was that you did?! What are you?!” He wondered frantically, to which Logan just put his head in his hands.

“Roman, I’m going to need you to promise me you won’t flip out.” He said deadpan, and Roman hesitated, then nodded slowly. Logan sighed. “Roman, I’m part of what you might call, well, ‘changeling’ seems to be the common term. In short, I can change into whatever I want, or of the like. My skin turns a different colour depending on what it is, but...as you saw, my skin was blue when I came from swimming, and I additionally...had...gills. That is what happens when I change to-”

“You basically become a merman,” Roman said flatly, and Logan raised his eyebrow, then nodded. 

“I guess that is a valid assessment. You seem to have calmed down a bit. Are you okay?” He asked, and Roman shrugged slowly, biting his lip.

“I mean, I just found out my roommate can turn into different things, I’m freaking out on the inside, but...for your own sake...I’ll keep quiet about it,” Roman said, shocking Logan.

“You’ve never seemed to care about what I have to say in the past, why are you keeping my secret?” he wondered, and Roman sighed.

“Because I saw how scared you got when I found out. You looked terrified. And...I don’t want you to be scared.” He said heartfully, and Logan’s eyes grew.

“I...I don’t exactly know how to react to that, Roman. I always felt that our connection tended to fall on the more negative end of things and that you didn’t much like me.” He said slowly, but Roman just shrugged with a sigh.

“I guess...I just want to sort of mend that, y’ know? We’ve always basically hated each other, and Virgil and Patton are always saying that we should try to understand one another better, so...I want to try to understand you, Lo.” He said with a small smile.

Logan sat staring at Roman with wide eyes, then a smile crept onto his face as well. “Then I, too, will work to be more understanding of you, Roman. I would like to have a better friendship between the two of us.” He said, and Roman grinned, then he glanced at the pool.

“Uh...do you wanna go for a swim with me? I know you were already in, but, if you want…”

Logan chuckled. “Of course.”

Roman smiled a toothy grin, following Logan as they both walked to the deep end. Logan stood on the edge, about to dive when he felt two hands shove him forward and he cried out in surprise as he fell into the pool, surfacing moments later to hear Roman’s laughter. Logan brushed his hair from his eyes just in time to see Roman jump towards him with a wide grin.

“CANNONBALL!!” He yelled, and Logan just barely moved out of the way in time as Roman landed with a large splash beside him. He groaned when Roman popped back up to the surface, laughing, then he stared at Logan with a smile, his eyebrow rising as he tilted his head. Logan held an expression of confusion.

“Why are you looking at me like that?” He asked, and Roman shrugged. 

“Now that it’s not exactly a freaky shock, seeing you like that is pretty cool.” He said, and Logan looked down at himself, biting his lip as he considered what Roman meant. He had once again turned into his aquatic form, his skin blue and almost sparkling in the sun. He looked back up at Roman.

“So, you don’t find it odd in the slightest?” He asked warily, but Roman scoffed.

“Logan, I find you odd just as your normal self, this just ups it a lot. But no, I think it’s cool. Seriously.” He swam closer to him, treading water in front of him. “So, you like, have gills, Mr Fish?” He said slowly with a slight smirk and Logan frowned, then splashed water at Roman.

“Shut up. Yes, I do, but please do not call me a fish, Roman. It’s not exactly a glamorous comparison.” He said with a hint of embarrassment, and Roman’s eyes went wide.

“Oh, I’m sorry, Logan. I didn’t mean to make you feel that way.” It was quiet between the two for a moment, then Roman’s smile returned. “Okay, so you can breathe like a merman. What else can you do?” He asked with great interest, and Logan smirked.

“Well, as you know, when you open your eyes underwater, all you see is blurred, correct? I can see crystal clear, and ironically, I see better underwater than I do with my glasses.” He said with a small chuckle. “I can also hear perfectly underwater, as in words are not broken or muted, but instead sound as if they were spoken right into my ear.” He said, and Roman’s eyes were wide, a bright smile on his face. 

“That is so cool!” He exclaimed, and Logan felt his cheeks flush, glad that it was far harder to detect due to his blue pigment. Roman kicked under the water, still treading water tiringly while Logan seemed to move effortlessly. “So, what’s the longest you’ve held your breath?” He asked, and Logan raised his eyebrow.

“Roman, have you any idea how gills even work? I can breathe underwater. I don’t have to hold my breath, and there’s no limit. It’s just as simple as how you breathe on land.” He stated, and Roman frowned.

“Sorry.” He said sheepishly, and Logan sighed, then rubbed the back of his head. He started to turn when Roman suddenly gasped. “Logan, you have a tattoo?!” He exclaimed, and Logan looked over his shoulder with a raised eyebrow, then his face turned to realisation.

“Oh, ah, yes, well, it’s not exactly a ‘tattoo’, it’s more so a mark that appears when I change form. It varies depending on which form I take.” He said and Roman swam over, then Logan flinched slightly as Roman’s fingers brushed the back of his neck.

“It’s really cool…” He murmured, and Logan’s eyes widened. Roman smirked. “It’s simple, but also elegant. And it’s a beautiful dark blue, too.” He traced the circle with his finger, gently running over the small wave that was centred in the tattoo, a circle that wasn’t perfectly round and had a strike from the top and the bottom leading out.

Logan smiled slightly, glancing to meet Roman’s eye, then a smirk formed and he dove under the water, swimming down a bit then turning to look up, seeing that Roman had also dived under the water, his long hair floating around him as he moved towards his friend. Logan could see the smile on Roman’s face, and he couldn’t help but smile back, even though he knew the other couldn’t see it. In a flash, he turned, kicked off the bottom of the pool, then rocketed up at Roman, his hands hitting his chest and shoving him to the surface. Roman jolted, his eyes going wide, gasping as they both breached the surface. Logan laughed, glancing at Roman, then his laugh died when he saw the confused look on Roman’s face.

“Roman? Are you okay-”

“Logan, go underwater again, I want to see something.” He said, and Logan raised his eyebrow then nodded slowly.

“Uh, okay…” He dove back down, turning to look at Roman, who had drifted down maybe a foot below the surface, his eyes wider than Logan had seen, or at least since he had found out about Logan’s secret. Roman pointed to the surface, and both men swam up, then Logan turned to him when he topped.

“Roman, what is it?” He asked, but Roman just had the most bewildered look on his face. “Roman?”

The other suddenly snapped out of his daze, meeting Logan’s eyes. “Lo...I could see perfectly clearly underwater...like you said you could. One minute I couldn’t, the next I could.” he said slowly, and Logan’s own eyes went wide. 

“What?” He asked quietly, and Roman nodded. 

“Right before you hit me, I was seeing exactly how I would usually see underwater. Blurry. But the second your hands touched me, it was as if someone had wiped the glass and I could see clearly. It’s…” He looked up, shaking his head, then a smile formed on his face. “It’s so cool!” He exclaimed, but Logan merited no response. He appeared to be trying to calculate something but was unable to. Roman swam closer to him, putting his hand on his shoulder. “Lo? You...you okay?” He asked worriedly, snapping Logan back, and when he met the other’s eyes, Roman could see a number of strong emotions hidden in the deep blue, but the most prominent was...uncertainty?

Logan shook his head as he swam to a part of the pool where Roman could stand so he wouldn’t have to tire himself treading water, then he bit his lip.

“I...I never would have thought...not in a million years…” He started muttering, and Roman tilted his head. 

“Logan?” He said quietly, but the other just kept talking to himself.

“I mean, the odds are so incredibly infinitesimal...could it really be- no, it has to be, it’s never wrong, but-”

“LOGAN.” 

The intellectual jumped, looking up at Roman’s concerned eyes.

“What are you saying? What happened?” He wondered, and Logan bit his lip, then took a deep breath.

“Roman, one thing about what I am is that I can only ever have a special connection with one person, one that binds them together. It’s basically...in a sense…” He stumbled on words, then he shook his head with a long exhale. “There is only ever one way that I would be able to find that someone, and it’s by them sharing my powers.” He slowly looked up at Roman. “You were able to share my sight, Roman. A part of my power. That means...we…” He couldn’t find the words, but he knew by Roman’s face that he understood. The man slowly grew a smile, then he snickered. Logan’s face turned to confusion. “What do you find amusing?” He asked, and Roman shrugged with a wide grin.

“I just think it’s kind of funny that the two people who everyone thought were going to hate each other forever turn out to be soulmates. Just kinda ironic, that’s all,” he said with a smile, to which Logan’s eyes shot open.

“Wait, hold on. You...you’re not scared by this fact at all?” He wondered, but Roman just shook his head. 

“Nope. I mean, sure, it’s not exactly what I expected to happen, but, who knows? This might be the greatest thing that ever happens to us. I mean, I already thought you were pretty cute, now look where I am.” He tilted his head at Logan with a grin, the other stiffening.

“I...what?” He questioned as Roman swam over to him, stopping directly in front of him.

“I said, Logan, that you’re cute and this might actually be fun.” He reached up and brushed Logan’s cheek with his hand, making the other freeze. “Personally, now that I think about it, this could be very fun.”

He leaned forward and before Logan could react Roman’s lips were on his own. His eyes shot open, then they slowly closed as a tingling sensation travelled through his body. He relaxed, and he felt Roman smile in the kiss. The more romantic of the two drew back and Logan opened his eyes to see the wide smirk on Roman’s face. He felt his cheeks flushing and his ears turning hot, rubbing the back of his neck.

“Roman, I-” He tried to form words, and as much as he was trying not to, he couldn’t help but smile. A wave of emotions had washed through him, and suddenly he was calmer and more at ease with his feelings than he had ever been before. He met Roman’s gaze, who crossed his arms and flicked his eyebrows up.

“Like I said. Could be fun.”

Logan laughed slightly, then he nodded. "Maybe it can." He brushed Roman's cheek, the other smiling as a twinkle shone in Logan's eyes, then the changeling pulled Roman towards him, embracing him in a kiss. Roman immediately smiled, holding Logan closer, then he raised his eyebrow as he felt a tingling, and he pulled back to see Logan smirking at him, his skin back to normal and his eyes more loving than Roman had ever seen.

Then again, Roman had hardly ever seen Logan even portray emotions. But he was glad he now did.

Logan tilted his head. "That's interesting. I don't think I've ever turned back subconsciously before. Must be you." He said, and Roman raised his eyebrow.

"Y'know, for a guy who was a bit concerned at first, you've certainly accepted us quickly. Heck, it seems like you're actually enjoying it now." He said, then Logan shrugged, brushing a few strands of Roman's hair away from his eyes.

"And why wouldn't I? I just found my soulmate, and he understands me and cares about me. I cannot ask for anything more than that." He said sweetly, then Roman snickered. 

"You're adorable." He grabbed Logan around the waist and lifted him up, Logan letting out a small squeak of surprise. He held him in his arms princess style, then pressed his lips against Logan's in another kiss. Logan hooked his arms around Roman's neck, then a gasp made both of their heads snap up with wide eyes to see Virgil and Patton standing at the doorway in their swimsuits, Virgil clearly holding back a laugh and Patton smiling beyond belief.

Roman dropped Logan who fell with a splash, surfacing with a frown. “Hey!” He shouted to which Roman just awkwardly shrugged.

Patton stuck his tongue out as he squealed. “OH MY GOD, YES!!! YOU TWO ARE SO CUTE!!” He exclaimed, but Logan shook his head.

“No, this isn’t what it looks like-”

Virgil snorted. “Nice try, Lo, but I think that this is exactly what it looks like.” He then waved his hand. “No worries, it’s chill. You deserve to have someone in your life. After all, you take care of all of us, it’s about time you have someone to take care of you.” He said kindly, making Logan’s eyes widen, glancing at Roman, who stared back at him, then a smile formed on each of their faces. Patton clapped his hands together as he practically jumped up and down in excitement.

“Oh, this is perfect!!!” he said, and Roman raised his eyebrow. 

“How is it perfect? What does that even mean-”

“I mean, now we each have our own boyfriends!!” He shouted, bringing a confused look from both the men in the pool.

Logan tilted his head. “What?”

Virgil scoffed. “For someone so intelligent, I’m surprised you didn’t notice sooner.” He said, kissing Patton’s cheek, who giggled, then he smiled back at the intellectual with a smug grin. Logan’s eyes went wide along with Roman’s, then Roman cracked a grin.

“That’s adorable. The emo and the goofball. What a combo.” He said, then Virgil flicked his eyebrows up.

“And the nerd and the fanciful dork is so normal?” He remarked, to which Roman sighed, heavily agreeing with Virgil. 

Then the curly-haired enthusiastic young man dropped his towel and grinned. “Well, what are we waiting for?!” Patton ran towards the pool, then jumped in the air. “CANNONBALL!!” 

Virgil followed quickly with a laugh, and Logan grinned with Roman, swimming over to the others to have fun in the pool, more quality fun time than they had had together in a long time.

~

An hour later, the group finally retired from the pool, laughing and joking together, exhausted. All except Logan. He still was fit as could be, and Virgil glanced his way as he dried his hair with his towel.

“Hey Lo, I never knew you were such a good swimmer. You’re not even tired. You seem to really enjoy it. Were you like, on the swim team or something?” He asked, and Logan hesitated, then shook his head. 

“Ah, no. I just went swimming very often when I was a child. My brother and I would go swimming together fairly frequently.” He said, to which everyone looked up.

Patton raised his eyebrow. “I didn’t know you have a brother, Logan.” He said, and Logan bit his lip, rubbing his arm.

“Y-yeah. Oliver and I haven’t talked in a while. We had a bit of a falling out a few years ago.” He said quietly, and Roman put his arm around Logan’s shoulder.

“You still have us, Lo.” He said, and Logan chuckled.

“Yes, I do. And I could honestly not be more grateful.” His eyes swept over his friends, then his eyebrow rose when Remy walked outside.

“Hey dorks. Whatcha talkin’ ‘bout?” He asked, and Roman tilted his head. 

“Remy, how many cups of coffee have you had?” He asked, pointing to the mug in his hand. Remy looked down, then shrugged lazily.

“I dunno, baby. I think this might be, like, number twenty-three or six. NO clue. I lost track.” He smiled. “Bet all of you guys had a nice time. Anyway, Damien wanted me to ask what you all want for dinner.”

Virgil’s eyes went wide. “Damien is going to cook for us? Since when?” He questioned, but Remy just shrugged.

“I dunno. As long as I get food, I don’t care. Whatcha all want?” 

Virgil rolled his eyes, but Patton chimed in happily. “PASTA!” He suggested, and Roman nodded.

“That works.”

Logan crossed his arms in a second nod. “That is adequate.”

Virgil sighed. “Whatever.”

Remy took a sip of his coffee, then snapped his fingers. “Pasta. Got it. Thanks, dorks.” He walked back inside then Virgil let out a long breath.

“Since when does Damien cook?” He scoffed, then Patton bit his lip and took a breath.

“Um...I might...might...have been trying to tell him that he should help out around a bit more? And he said he’d start doing the cooking?” He said slowly, to which everyone’s eyes fell on him. Virgil then shook his head.

“New question. Since when does Damien listen to what other people have to say?” He remarked, then Logan clicked his tongue. 

“Now, Virgil, don’t be so demeaning just because you and Damien are not as well connected as the rest of us. It is fine if you don’t like him. Just don’t let that be an excuse to put him down.” He said, and Virgil frowned, then sighed in agreement. Patton took his hand with a smile. 

“C’ mon, Virge. Let’s go change then we can maybe catch some cartoons before dinner!” He said, pulling him towards the door. Once they were gone, Roman turned to Logan. 

“So, you had a falling out with your brother? What do you mean-”

Logan shook his head, sitting down in one of the chairs beside the pool. “Roman, it’s not just that we had a falling out. Oliver...is just like me.” He said, and Roman slowly sat down next to him. 

“As in...he can change like you?” He asked quietly, and Logan nodded, then leaned forward, putting his head in his hand.

“Yes, but to a much larger extent. As I said, Oliver and I would go swimming when we were younger. He took care of me, and I spent most of my time with him. He’s the one who taught me how to control what I can do. But…” He let out a long breath. “After a while, something about him changed. I learned he was abusing his powers, and….it had changed him. A darker tone began to surround him, and he grew more angered, more unstable. I tried to reason with him to stop using his powers so much, to try to break free, but he wouldn’t listen. We got into a fight, he shot me down, and we haven’t spoken since. I...I often feel guilty that I haven’t tried to contact him, but I know he wouldn’t want to see me. It’s better for us to be apart.” He said and Roman’s eyes went wide when he heard the oncoming tears in Logan’s voice. He pulled him close, wrapping his arms around him.

“You don’t have to feel guilty, Logan. Never. And if you’re ever in need of someone to listen, you have me. I promise. No matter what.” He kissed Logan’s forehead, stroking his cheek. “Remember,” he leaned his forehead against Logan’s. “We were meant for each other.” He whispered, and Logan smiled as he closed his eyes.

“You’re right. Thank you.” He said softly, then he turned around and leaned against Roman, looking up at him with a turn of his head. “What do you say, a little while more of just laying here then we get changed for dinner?” He suggested, and Roman nodded.

“Sounds perfect.”

~

Half an hour later, Damien walked outside to find Roman and Logan still talking, and he crossed his arms. “Guys, dinner is ready, get your asses inside.” He said, and Logan spun around with a frown, Roman just flicking his eyebrows.

“You didn’t say the magic word.” He remarked snarkily, to which Damien’s frown grew.

“NOW, dipshit.”

Roman drew back, and Logan sighed, shaking his head, then he stood up and took Roman’s hand. “Come on.” He said, and Roman followed with a smile. Damien raised his eyebrow upon seeing the two holding hands, but he set it aside, not really caring enough to ask.

“Pasta is on the table, everyone is sat down, go put on a shirt and then we can eat.” He said, and both men nodded, hurrying to their rooms, somehow intimidated by Damien’s strict tone. After each grabbed a shirt, walking into the dining room and sitting down, Logan and Roman were both shocked at the amazing display of food before them. Pasta alfredo, spaghetti and meatballs, even primavera was set upon the table, a plate of garlic bread in the middle. Everyone else seemed just as surprised, and Damien looked around.

“What the hell are you all waiting for? The food is gonna get cold if you just stare at it.” He said, upon which all dug in. Patton smiled as he shoved a forkful of spaghetti into his mouth, then turned his head to Damien.

“Wow! I didn’t know you were this great of a cook, Damien! This tastes fantastic!” He mumbled through his full mouth, Virgil rubbing his face with his hand at his boyfriend’s childishness. 

Logan nodded, his eyes wide. “Patton is correct. I am thoroughly impressed, Damien. This food is incredibly satisfying.” He complimented, to which Damien finally smiled. A compliment from Logan was one to be taken with the highest regard.

It was quiet after that, the only sound being the clinks of forks on plates as the meal ensued. When everyone was finished, each having tried every one of the plates that Damien had cooked, they were stuffed. There was still a fair amount of food, and Patton agreed to help Damien package it all up so that they might have it tomorrow. They were all still stunned by Damien’s cooking, and when they had complimented him more after dinner, the typically rude and snarky man had blushed, trying not to smile. However, when Roman tried to praise him, he just stared at him flat-faced.

“What do you want?” He asked plainly, and Roman raised his eyebrow. 

“I...I just told you I was impressed with what you did. It was really good.” He said, but Damien just huffed out a breath, crossing his arms. 

“Yeah, whatever.” He muttered, spiking Roman’s annoyance. 

“Hey, what is with you? I try to be nice, and while you accept everyone else’s praise, you turn mine away. Why?” He demanded, but Damien just shrugged.

“Because you piss me off. That’s why. Plain and simple.” He spoke, and Roman looked taken aback, then another voice joined in.

“Dude, just take the compliment and stop acting like a jerk,” Virgil said, walking over. Damien rolled his eyes.

“Oh great. Now emo nightmare has something to say.” He groaned, then Virgil shoved him back.

“Hey! If you don’t like Roman that much, fine. I get it, he’s annoying sometimes,” he stated, bringing an offended sound from the princely man. “But don’t talk shit about him.”

“Why? You talk shit about me all the time, Virgil.”

“Yeah, well at least I don’t say it to your face, and at least I pretend to be nice. You’re just a jerk. Apologise to Roman.” He said, but Damien turned to face him.

“Make me.”

Virgil’s eyes narrowed, and Roman sighed. “Guys, come on. I don’t even care anymore. You’re both being-”

“SHUT IT.” Both Virgil and Damien said at the same time, shocking Roman, his breath hitching in his throat. For some reason, hearing Virgil’s harsh tone against him hurt, and he hung his head defeatedly. Damien scoffed.

“See? He can’t even take scrutiny well-”

“BOTH OF YOU SHUT YOUR UNCHARITABLE MOUTHS RIGHT NOW.” 

Everyone froze, spinning around to see Logan glaring at them with his arms crossed, his face incredibly unamused.

“That’s enough out of you both. DROP THE ISSUE. Got it?” He ordered, and Virgil nodded quickly, along with Damien. They both knew not to fuck with Logan if he was mad. No one had ever seen him truly, truly angry, but when he was pissed off, they wouldn’t even touch him with a ten-foot pole. Both men scurried off to their respective rooms as Logan walked over to Roman. He sighed, then put his hand on Roman’s cheek.

“Damien hates everyone, Ro, don’t take it personally. He just chooses a new person each day to pick on.” He comforted, and Roman snickered, then stepped forward to pull Logan into a hug.

“I’m glad that I’m yours, Lo. I really am.” He said quietly, and Logan held him close, smiling.

“I’m honoured, Roman. As odd as it was to find out that the two of us, who never truly got along in the past, were destined to be together, now I can’t imagine it being any other way.” He said, and Roman snickered again.

“After just two hours you’ve come to that decision?” He asked, and Logan pulled back with a fake annoyance.

“Yes. I have. Shut up.” His cheeks turned red, then he closed his eyes with a grin. “You’re impossible…” He said, and Roman raised his eyebrow, squeezing Logan’s hand.

“How so?”

Logan felt his ears get hot, and he bit his lip. “You’re impossible not to…” His voice trailed into a soft mumble, and Roman grew a face of curious amusement. 

“What was that? Didn’t quite catch it.” He teased, and Logan groaned.

“You are impossible not to love, you beautiful idiot.” He grabbed the front of Roman’s shirt and pulled him into a kiss, startling the other, then Roman wrapped his arms around Logan with a smile, pressing his forehead against Logan’s when they released the kiss.

“Y’know, I think I’m okay with that.”

To be continued...

Chapter 2   Chapter 3   Chapter 4   Chapter 5   Chapter 6

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