#literally stopped dead in my tracks in the middle of the station to run back and take a pic... kaochan...

[justnotkrikkit]

Spotted at Kobe-Sannomiya station (Hanshin line, west gate).

[rebelwrites]

OPERATION: Find The Kids!

Bravo Team x Reader

A/N okay so I saw a TikTok yesterday and this gave me the idea for the chaotic fic you are about to read. Seven tier one navy seals looking after four kids. What could go wrong? So I give you nearly 2k words of utter chaos. Trying to keep track of what 11 people are doing is stressful 😂

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SEAL Team Masterlist

This Months Writing

Sipping on your coffee, you ran your hand over your face as you try to finish off the paperwork from the last deployment. You tried to get this done in your home office but it was no good when your house was used as base when the boys were home. Or as Metal kept putting it “the home of Bravo” but it did make your life easier meaning you didn’t have to worry about finding a sitter at short notice as you had at least one of the boys crashing at yours for whatever reason.

And at the moment it was a godsend, especially as you were looking after your Brother’s triplets whilst he was going through the divorce. But having four kids under the age of 7 in the house was chaos, but you lived around big kids all the time so you could just about cope.

“Guys, someone has to take the boss some coffee,” Clay said, as he placed the plate of toast in the middle of the kitchen table. “And to swipe the walkies.”

Everyone fell silent. That silent you could hear a pin drop.

“Oh hell no,” Sonny said, breaking the silence. “You know how she gets when she’s doing the reports. And it was your idea Blondielocks, so you should do it.”

“No way,” Clay exclaimed, “I value my life thank you. “

“Guys let’s settle this like adults,” Metal said, with a serious look on his face. “Rock, paper, scissors. We go around the group and do it as a knock out style thing and whoever is left standing has to take the boss some coffee and swipe the walkies.”

So that's how it was decided that Sonny was the one to go into the lion's den, armed with coffee and breakfast to hopefully make things go smoothly.

“Quinn, I see you.” You said not looking away from your screen.

“How the fuck?” He muttered, “I swear you have eyes in the back of your head.”

“You have to when you look after children,” you laughed, “now I’m busy so what do you want?”

“We know you left without breakfast so I thought I’d bring you some,” he shrugged, placing the food and coffee on the table.

“I don’t buy it,” you said, raising your brow at him. “You are up to something.”

“Nope, just bringing the boss coffee.” He grinned, he had already swiped the walkies and needed to get out of here. “You have a good day, and don’t worry about anything, we have it all under control.”

“That’s what makes me worry Quinn,” you glared. “Just don’t burn my house down and don’t lose a child. That’s all I ask.”

“Hard copy, boss.” He nodded before leaving the room.

“Mission success boys,” Sonny shouted walking back into the house, “Oh and final words from the boss were don't set the house on fire and don’t lose a child but she had no idea I swiped the walkies.”

“Well then, time to gear up boys,” Jase said, slapping his legs as he stood up. “Kids have requested we wear our camo bottoms so hurry up we head out at 0900.”

Twenty minutes had passed and everyone was gathered in the living room.

“Right, let's just run through this one more time,” Clay said looking at the list on his phone.

“First aid kit”

“Check”

“Snacks”

“Check”

“Drinks”

“Check”

“Sun cream”

“Check”

“Kids dressed”

“Check”

“All walkies on the same station”

“Check”

“Well boys I think we are ready,” Trent nodded, “So Brock has Cerb and Pepper, I’ve got the bag, so the rest of you get to keep an eye on the kids.”

Your daughter, Riley instantly clung onto Clay like a koala bear, your nephew Joey gravitated to Metal, Sonny scooped up your niece, Amber and Ray took your other Niece, Lola.

“Let’s hit the park,” Jase nodded, leading everyone out the house.

“What could go wrong,” Sonny laughed. “It’s not like we are gonna lose any of them. There’s four of them and seven of us.”

“Don’t say that, you idiot,” Metal said, hitting Sonny around the back of the head. “Don't jinx things, now If things go south it’s your fault.”

“Anyone got have eyes on HVT one?” Jase asked down the walkie, as he scanned the park.

“HVT one is south moving toward the tyre swing,” Metal replied, “I’ve lost eyes on HVT two.”

“I’ve got eyes on HVT two, she is in need of refilling. Lure her back to base Three,” Clay said, as he squinted from the sun.

“Copy six,” Sonny called, as he calmly headed for Amber, who thought this was the best game in the world as her Uncle Sonny chased her. “HVT two inbound,”

“My eyes are peeled,” Jase laughed, as he spotted Amber running towards him.

“For the love of god don’t forget the suncream.” Ray responded.

“Copy that,” Jase said, routing around the bag for supplies. He literally only took his eyes off her for two seconds but by the time he looked up she was gone. “All call signs I have lost eyes on HVT two. I repeat I have lost eyes on HVT two.”

“I don’t have HVT three or four,” Brock sighed “They just vanished.”

“Is HVT one still at the tyre swing?” Ray asked.

“Fuck, she’s gone to.” Metal cursed.

“Guys we fucked up, boss is gonna kill us if we don’t come home with a full head count.” Ray breathed, pinching the bridge of his nose.

“Three you know this is your fault,” Metal growled.

“How is it my fault?” Sonny snapped. “You're the one meant to be watching HVT One.”

“You jinxed things, idiot,” Metal huffed, “Told you this would happen.”

“Guys, stop fighting,” Jase sighed, “Look just everyone reconvene at base and we put a plan together, they can’t have gone far.”

You couldn’t believe what you were hearing, you knew Sonny was up to something when he came in this morning but the big idiot forgot to pick up all the walkies meaning you could hear everything.

Pinching the bridge of your nose, you messed with the station trying to get a clearer sound. You wanted to see how this would play out, they all sounded pretty panicked but they should be. One of the rules was they could do whatever, go wherever but just don’t lose anyone.

“You okay Y/L/N?” Eric asked coming into the briefing room with some fresh coffee.

“Define okay when the boys are looking after the tribe today, Sonny managed to swipe the walkies and now somehow they have managed to lose all four kids at the park,” you sighed, pinching the bridge of your nose.

“Well at least they had the sense to get the walkies I suppose,” Eric laughed, “you know they will have a full head count by the end of the day, they won’t leave until they do.”

“I know,” you laughed, “but I’m gonna get them back.”

“How the fuck have we managed to lose four kids,” Clay said running his hand over his face. “I don’t get it,”

“Because children like to fucking run off,” Jase snapped. “Look, we don’t need to go into how it happened, it happened. Let’s just work the problem and get these kids back before we all get brutally killed. Operation find the kids is a go.”

“Riley likes water right?” Trent asked.

“Yeah, she’s a proper water baby, why do you ask?” Clay questioned.

“She might have gone towards the lake.” Trent nodded.

“Right, Clay and Brock head to the lake and try to get Riley. We all know you are her favourite Uncle Clay so she might actually come back to you.” Ray said, making a call. “We divide and conquer boys.”

“Copy,” Brock and Clay nodded, before running off in the direction of the lake.

“What about Joey?” Trent asked.

“The woods definitely,” Jase nodded.

“I’m on it,” Metal nodded before disappearing.

“Okay so that leaves Amber and Lola.” Jase said.

“Fuck I have no idea,” Ray sighed. “They are both so quiet.”

“We are just gonna have to split up.” Sonny said, “we will find them.”

Two hours had passed and everyone apart from Brock and Clay were back at base. Three out of the four kids had been located and now sitting on the grass with Metal eatting some cookies.

“I’m gonna need a medic,” Clay said, his voice full of panic and cry’s could be heard in the background.

“How far out are you?” Jase replied.

“About 5 mikes,” Brock replied.

Clay looked down at Riley in his arms, she was screaming and the tears kept coming.

“Hey Riley-roo, it’s okay, Uncle Clay has got you. You are gonna be okay.” Clay cooed trying to calm down his god daughter.

“What’s the sitrep?” Trent asked.

“Not sure if it’s a broken wrist or just a sprain. She fell pretty hard on it whilst running.” Clay sighed down the walkie. “It’s official boys, we are dead meat when the boss gets home.”

The house was quiet when you got home, far too quiet. The only sound was the hum from the TV but even that was on low volume. Quickly glancing in the kitchen you rolled your eyes at the state of it. It looked like a bomb had gone off. There were plates and mugs everywhere along with McDonald’s discarded wrappers.

Quietly you walked into the living room to see all the kids awake and all the boys fast asleep on the sofas. Riley was tucked under Clay’s arms, Joey was laying across Metal and Brock, Amber was sat in between Jase’s legs and Lola was tucked under Ray’s arms.

“Mummy” Riley grinned as she saw you. “Look what I got,” she giggled, waving her casted wrist in the air.

“What happened baby?” You asked, crouching down to her level.

“I tripped and broke my wrist.” She pouted, “But Uncle Clay took me to the hospital.”

“Well it looks like you all wore your Uncles out today,” you laughed, “but just cover your ears for me kiddos.”

Once they all covered their ears with their hands, you pushed yourself to your feet.

“Wake up you lazy shits!” You shouted, startling them all awake. “Did we have a good day?” You asked playing dumb.

“Yeah it was amazing,” Jase nodded. “We went to the park.”

“So you did lose any of the kids?” You asked, placing your hand on your hip.

“Nope,” Clay said, with a sheepish smile on his face.

“Well can someone explain this?” You said, pressing play on the recording.

The whole room fell quiet as they heard the conversation playback from early.

“So wanna change your answer boys?” You glared. “I only have two rules and you fucking broke one of them. And my daughter has a bloody broken arm!”

“Sorry, boss.” Sonny mumbled, not making eye contact.

“You better be you idiots,” you laughed, “At least you came home with a full head count. Now Clay move, you are in my seat.”

Once Clay had moved, you settled down in your spot.

“Oh and another thing, I’ve had a long ass day typing up all the incident reports from J-Bad, I swear your band list gets longer each deployment,” you laughed, “but I’m not happy about the state of my kitchen so you can all get in there and sort it out.”

“Yes, boss.” They all said, making you smirk. Not many people could make Bravo team sulk off with their tail between their legs but you could and it always made you laugh.

“And someone make me a bloody coffee, because I am not moving off this sofa for the rest of the night”

@chibsytelford @mrsmarvelous1995 @supervalcsi @talicat713 @disasterfandoms @bravo-four-seal-team @jasonbabymama @jayhalsteadfan-2417 @lotsoflovefromlea @seik-o @velvetcardiganbucky @phoenixhalliwell @pancakeisreading @itsonautopilot @pinkrockstar19 @galaxysanduniversesinmymind @softi92 @abby-splace @theysayitscrazy @thelovelyleo23 @innerpaperexpertcloud

[forasecondtherewedwon]

Stare Enough

Fandom: The Falcon and the Winter Soldier Pairing: Sam Wilson/Bucky Barnes Rating: T Word Count: 4034

Summary: Bucky's got a new stare. Sam spends all afternoon and most of the evening working up the courage to meet it.

Both Sam and the food are the main attraction at this party and the problem with that situation is that it takes so damn long for one main attraction to get a second to enjoy the other.

He’s grateful—god, is he grateful—for the turnout. Friends, neighbours, the kind of people he and Sarah call family without there being any actual relation by blood, they’ve all shown up. Since the Blip, Sam’s felt like he’s always around, but this feels like a real homecoming. No sadness, nothing bittersweet. It’s a celebration and he’s at the center of it. Him and the food.

At last, Sam’s done the circuit with his plate, spooning creamy salads and grilled vegetables, stacking shellfish pink as a sunrise. There’s a fresh-baked roll perched atop a scoop of sweet potatoes and caramelized onions that smells so fucking warm and mouth-watering he has to resist walking with his nose buried in it. He collects a set of utensils furled in the middle of a paper napkin (courtesy of an efficient assembly line of old ladies, chatting and twisting neat rolls of cutlery), plate bowing into the palm of his other hand, and that’s when his damn phone vibrates in his pocket.

Sam halts and makes a sound of frustration. Nobody’s come to this thing empty-handed, so there are dishes crowding the surface of the tables, no place to set his plate down. His phone vibrates again. A teenager comes up to peruse the spread in front of him and Sam sighs, knowing what he’s about to do.

“Here,” he says heavily, offering up his beautifully arranged and wonderfully fragrant meal. The cob of corn shining with the butter he lovingly smeared over it nearly rolls over the edge. “You’re the luckiest kid in the world.”

Quickly, Sam turns away, sliding out his phone and bringing it to his ear. He doesn’t want to witness the boy digging in. His stomach growls as he greets Joaquin Torres.

“Sam,” Torres says. “Uh, I mean, sir. Mr. Captain Am… Captain Wil—”

“Take it easy,” Sam laughs. “You know me, Torres. Don’t get starstruck now.”

“Honestly, I never really got over you being the Falcon. Now that you’re Captain America… Apologies if it takes me a little while to be cool about it.” After a pause—taken while Torres attempts to become cool with Sam being Captain America, Sam assumes—he asks, “You celebrating?”

Not far from where Sam’s standing, there are two little girls singing along to their clapping game. At a table behind them, a trio of elderly gentlemen are arguing over which one of them it was that caught that 50-pound snapper off the dock back in 1978. There’s a sear of meat and fish being rotated onto and off of the grill and, bouncing over everything, music from a speaker someplace.

“Yeah,” Sam says with a broad grin. “Yeah, we are. I’d save you a plate, but I can’t even manage to hang onto my own.”

He doesn’t mention that Torres is responsible for that situation; he’s aware that, besides being a fan, the Lieutenant is a little bit infatuated with him. Sam’s trying to be gentle until the day he can respond to Torres with friendly smack-talk, the way he would Steve or Scott or Bucky. Maybe not exactly like he does with Bucky.

“Don’t worry about it,” Torres cheerfully insists. “I wasn’t calling for that, I just wanted to give you a heads up about something.”

“Alright. Let me just…”

Sam strides away from the heart of the party towards the water, seeking quiet. Kids dart in front of him and that’s nothing unusual, but when he follows them with his gaze, he sees they’re running towards Bucky. Bucky, who has his Vibranium arm extended and two kids dangling off it already, one of whom might be Sam’s nephew. Of course, Mr. Casual, Mr. Smiles, Mr. Social Butterfly, is carrying on a conversation like his arm isn’t being used as a jungle gym. A conversation with Sarah.

For just a moment, Sam stops in his tracks, considering whether he should go over there and break up any potential flirting. But then he watches them. Bucky’s just talking to her, not flicking his gaze up and down while he checks her out. And Sarah, she’s relaxed and smiling, totally at ease, like Bucky’s another member of their community. That makes him a friend. Family.

That’s one thought too far and Sam jerks himself into motion again, walking until he’d be swimming with another step.

“What’ve you got for me?”

“Well, I’ve been trying to watch as much of the coverage of the fight outside the GRC vote as I can, trying to get a sense of how they’re spinning Walker’s reappearance, the legacy of the Flag-Smashers now that Karli and her inner circle are gone… Anyway, there’s a lot of footage and you’re at the center of most of it.”

“Guess the new suit draws the eye. And the cameras.” It’s no surprise to Sam. Part of the job of being Captain America.

“Yeah, but…”

“What is it, Torres?”

“Bucky’s in the background a lot,” he explains in a voice that tells Sam there’s more Torres isn’t saying.

“Makes sense. He was in the thick of it as much as I was.”

“He’s there at the end too. When you were talking to the Senator about power and the common struggle. Man, that was a great speech. Do you think—”

“Torres. Please. The point.”

“Right, for sure, man. Bucky never takes his eyes off you.”

That flusters Sam for a second. He wasn’t expecting the blunt delivery, especially of those words. He squints down at the water where it’s lapping the side of the dock. He knew Bucky was there; they spoke right after, when Bucky tried to feed him that bullshit (and he knew it was bullshit at the time) about texting and missing the exact speech Torres is apparently still hung up on.

“So Bucky was actually listening to me,” Sam says carefully. “That’s a surprise, but it isn’t really the kind of thing that’s significant enough for you to bother notifying me about, is it?”

“I’d say that depends on what you consider significant.”

“Torres.”

“I know, but he’s not just listening! It’s how he’s looking at you!”

“Like he’s wishing I would wrap it up?” Oh, Sam remembers Bucky’s miracle from their session with Dr. Raynor.

“Like he’s totally into you! Major heart eyes. Sir,” Torres hastily adds.

And Sam should reprimand him for this. Calling with a trivial piece of information when he must know Sam’s already being very selective about which of the hundreds of recent calls (and it’d be more if more people had this number) he chooses to pick up. Calling to speculate on how Bucky was staring at Sam that night in New York.

“I don’t need to tell you this is gonna be one of those investigations we keep between you and me,” Sam states.

“For sure. I just thought maybe you’d wanna know.”

“Uh huh. You get any real news, you pass it along.”

“I will.”

Sam ends the call and turns. He looks to his right: the sparkling river. His left: his people, all the way down to the squirt with the glasses who’s hanging off a metal arm, and the man that arm belongs to.

He’s felt it, the way that Bucky stares. It’s not like it used to be though, when it irked Dr. Raynor at the police station in Baltimore, or confused Walker and Hoskins in the back of that jeep in Germany. This new stare of Bucky’s isn’t one Sam’s ever caught him doing. Bucky hasn’t quite let him. That’s actually how Sam noticed it was happening—Bucky would immediately glance away instead of leaving that dead expression on his face when Sam met his eye. Now that he has proof of it, proof he’s certain Torres would send him footage of in an instant if he asked, he’s scared to look.

Instead, he watches Bucky look at other people. Like Sarah. Like kids from the neighbourhood. His literal hangers-on disperse as Sam observes, scattered after Bucky leans towards them to say something. Sam sees half his smile and even that much has his heart swelling up in his chest. Bucky weaves through the tables and standing groups, the dancers and the kids who’ve broken out a skipping rope. (After eating from that buffet? Kids are crazy. Gonna make themselves sick.)

Without thinking too hard about it, Sam returns to the noise and the smells, trailing Bucky with a stealthy eye on his ass in those jeans. There’s no friction here between him and everybody else Sam cares about, he can see that in every short, friendly exchange someone engages Bucky in as he walks. Things flow as smoothly as the butter oozing off the corn Sam reluctantly gave up. Clearly, they remember Bucky from when he was here helping with the boat. They respect him. They like him. They’ve gotten to that last thing faster than Sam has, which makes Sam feel a little embarrassed as well as a little overwhelmed by how much the two of them have actually been through. He’s seen Bucky as a mindless killer and it almost brings a genuine tear to his eye—here on this glorious day in front of all these folks—to see the dork who rushed out to get his hands on a copy of The Hobbit in 1937 return in his current form as the dork who’ll take a fake punch from AJ and blush over brazen old women telling him how handsome he is.

Bucky stares different? Well. Sam feels different about the staring.

Sam keeps his distance until Bucky reaches the food, then his stomach gurgles a reminder than he hasn’t eaten yet. No ass is nice enough to distract him from his meal. He sidles up beside him and Bucky seems unsurprised, not even glancing over.

“Anything important?” he asks.

“What?”

“Your phone call,” Bucky clarifies, adding a heap of glossy green beans to his plate. Damn, those are some of Sam’s favourite. Bucky better not take all of them. “They need us somewhere?”

“Oh. No.”

Bucky shoots him a suspicious look after this stilted response, but he doesn’t say anything until Sam grabs a plate of his own, hungry eyes roving the feast that’s diminishing now that people have started coming back for second helpings.

“Put that down,” Bucky instructs. He doesn’t wait; he takes the plate out of Sam’s hand and tosses it back towards the pile. Thankfully, the plates are made of paper.

“Buzz off, man,” Sam tells him, reaching for the plate again. “I’m starving.”

“I figured.”

Wait.

“That’s for me?” he guesses, gazing longingly at the plate Bucky’s preparing.

“Yep.”

When Sam doesn’t reply, Bucky pauses with the plate in one hand and a serving spoon in the other and sighs.

“I didn’t want you to miss the good stuff. This party’s for you.”

“I think it might be for both of us.”

Bucky seems too self-conscious to say anything to that. He goes back to loading up Sam’s plate while Sam quietly feels his throat close up with emotion as he watches. He clears it gruffly.

“I woulda had to eat the cake you brought,” he jokes. “Pretty sure only the really little kids have eaten any. You know, people who don’t know better.”

“I was tryin’ to be a good guest.”

“I can’t believe you brought a store-bought cake,” Sam says, laughing as he grabs a set of cutlery for the second time and continuing to shuffle along next to Bucky.

“Have you ever seen me cook?”

“…No.”

“Exactly. Trust me, what I did was kinder.”

“If you say so.”

“You know what, Sam?” Bucky demands challengingly, turning to face him. “I do say so.”

Sam’s eyes go from the plate Bucky’s holding between them up to Bucky’s face. He’s close. And he’s got this look, this dancing look in his eyes that undercuts the shit out of the hard line of his eyebrows. Trying to seem all stern. All Sam can think for several seconds is that, if he just grabbed Bucky by the chain around his neck and hauled him forward, they’d never get the food stains out of their clothes. But their laundry would smell delicious.

He clears his throat.

“Then you better stay for a while.”

The corner of Bucky’s mouth twitches up and he hands Sam the plate he’s prepared for him.

“I plan to.”

When Sam picks a table to sit at, he makes sure there’s enough room for Bucky too. When Bucky sits next to him, he sits so close that their thighs press together and claims that’s all the space there is. Bucky talks and laughs when other people at the table talk to him. He’s easily drawn into conversation now and Sam feels weirdly proud of having brought this great guy home to meet everybody, even if he’s not here like that. People tells stories about last week and last century interchangeably, one old smartass making Bucky howl with laughter when they toss out a memory of Little Sam Wilson streaking from his house to the river for a naked swim. This is the danger of welcoming Bucky into the community. Sam, suppressing a smile, doesn’t really mind.

Elbows up on the table so he can eat, talk, and gesture emphatically with his fork, Sam feels Bucky’s stare creeping up on him. Slow, like the sun slides across the landscape when the clouds blow past. Bucky didn’t make this food, but Sam can feel his satisfaction as he watches Sam accept what he provided. Feels like there are grasshoppers springing around in his stomach. He still has a roll on his plate, one side soaked in family-secret barbecue sauce, and he tears it in half. While the rest of their table are caught up in some story being boisterously told by overlapping voices, Sam turns to Bucky and wordlessly offers the bread, edges dimpled where he gripped to split it. They watch each other chew and Sam’s closed mouth is smiling.

Inevitably, somebody pulls Sam back into the conversation and he does his best to laugh and heckle, covering the fact that he wasn’t listening, that he dropped the thread. The voices rise and rise and fall like water slopping over the side of a bucket.

In the next quiet moment, Bucky inclines toward him slightly and says, “You wanna talk later?”

And Sam says, “Sure.”

The day feels long, long, long, and Sam’s face gets sore from smiling, tired from talking. He does not confess that to Bucky, who’s almost always at his side. Lights go on overhead and beers come out of coolers, leftover food packed up and redistributed among neighbours, small children with drooping eyelids toted home. At first, Sam thinks Bucky’s leaning into his side because he’s drained from so much socializing too, but when he meets his eye, he just sees an invitation.

“Where are you two goin’?” Sarah asks when they slink past her carrying a too-big Cass in her arms.

“Just walkin’,” Sam tells her.

“Gotta stretch our legs,” Bucky contributes.

She looks from Sam to Bucky and back, smiling knowingly.

“Uh huh,” Sarah says.

Sam grabs Bucky by the shoulder to turn him forcibly away from his sister’s insinuations and just… forgets to let his hand fall as they wander along the water. Bucky’s steps angle towards his until his arm’s bumping Sam’s side, Sam’s arm slung around his shoulders. Is this still the body language of a couple buddies on a warm Delacroix night? Is it now, when Sam drops his arm and brushes the back of his hand across Bucky’s?

They leave the party lights on the horizon with the lazily setting sun, scrabbling off the end of the dock and onto the riverbank. Sam reaches up to give Bucky a hand down, so he won’t step in the soft mud and sink to his ankles. Bucky clasps his hand firmly and jumps.

The sound of people drops off down here and the sound of wind in grass, frogs hiding between reeds, rises.

“Are there alligators in here?” Bucky wonders, scanning the river’s edge.

Sam laughs.

“For sure.”

“And you swam here when you were a kid?”

“Even then,” Sam boasts, puffing his chest out, “my courage was legendary.”

“Yeah, and your nudity. Is there anyone within a mile of here who hasn’t seen your bare ass?”

Their eye contact holds. Oh right. Sam breaks away with an awkward, hiccupping laugh, directing his gaze at the dirt.

“The gators haven’t gathered too close to the dock in decades,” he promises Bucky. He stares out at the undisturbed water, enjoying the sun on his face. “Got skittish of the boats. Most of ’em, anyway.”

“Consider me not entirely reassured.”

“You scared of a little Louisiana lizard, man? Didn’t you grow up with Creature from the Black Lagoon?”

“Nah, that was after my time.”

“Damn, you’re old.”

Bucky snorts a laugh, refusing to look at him.

“You wanna take a dip?” Sam goads.

“No.”

But by the time Sam’s pulling his shirt over his head, Bucky’s peeling off his socks. Sam spares him a smile and keeps going, the ground soft underfoot. It could be like the few times they’ve changed in proximity to one another before, but it’s not. He senses Bucky’s eyes on him the whole time. Face hot, he takes a quick look in Bucky’s direction as he’s unzipping his jeans. His heart feels like his new suit—wings just waiting to unfurl.

When they’re down to their underwear, they wade in.

God, it feels nice. The water’s cool and the sun’s clinging to the horizon.

“Just don’t get any water in your mouth,” Sam instructs, then dunks his face and comes up squirting water at Bucky from between the gap in his front teeth, a trick he perfected as a kid. “That arm ain’t gonna rust, right?”

“You asked for this,” Bucky warns. He points a menacing finger and plunges below the surface.

Sam twists as he treads water, trying to see what’s going on down there, searching for a ripple or bubbles of released air. His legs move in twitchy kicks because that’s where he’s expecting Bucky to grab him. But the idiot is playing some kind of psychological game first, making Sam wait a full minute. Two minutes. Three.

He’s opening his mouth to call out Bucky’s name when he breaks the surface. Sam’s ready to swap the concern he was about to form into words into a taunt instead—did Bucky get down there and decide the scariest thing he could do was let Sam’s imagination take over?—until Bucky shakes his head and slicks his hair back. Then the words get caught in Sam’s throat and he just kinda stares.

“There was a really gross fish down there,” Bucky informs him. “Do you guys have eels there? Mighta been an eel. Maybe we should get out.”

“Alrighty, scaredy-cat, let’s get you to shore.”

Bucky propels himself out in front, arms moving in powerful strokes, and Sam’s hand darts out on instinct, fingers closing around Bucky’s hard calf muscle. Bucky jerks and Sam burst into loud laughter.

“Did you think that was an eel? Did you?”

“You’re lucky I…”

I’m lucky you what? Sam wants to ask when Bucky trails off, but he just swims after him.

During their game/possible eel panic (there’s no way it was an eel), they weren’t always fighting the current, so they’ve drifted downstream some. Bucky takes sloppy, sloshing steps out of the water, underwear that might’ve been light grey now dark and plastered to his ass. Sam feels like he’s choked on river water, though his mouth is dry. He lumbers out too and they begin the march back in the direction of the dock and their clothes. The water tickles as it runs down Sam’s legs; must be bugging Bucky too because he plucks his waistband away from his skin before letting it snap back. Clenching his jaw, Sam stops himself from trying to see too much.

This end of the dock is made of old boards before it transitions to pavement farther down, wood smooth on Sam’s feet when he and Bucky haul themselves up, dropping their collected clothes and shoes into a single pile. No point getting dressed until they’re dry, so they sit on the edge of the dock, feet swinging. Feels good. Feels home. They don’t speak until the sun’s set, the sky orange, then grey, then rich, velvety blue.

“You know, don’t you?” Bucky asks softly.

“Know?”

“Yeah, you know. Whenever you don’t know something, you talk and talk—”

“Sometimes I can work through a problem better if I vocalize,” Sam explains.

“But when you do know,” Bucky goes on, ignoring Sam’s input, “you’re quiet.” He looks at Sam. “You’re quiet.”

What else is Sam? Nervous. His skin’s prickling with it, and because even the warm air feels cold when he’s just climbed out of the river. There’s a wet patch spreading around him that he can barely see with evening rapidly deepening into night. He lifts a hand from the dock and sweeps it up his neck, brushing water droplets away.

Without glancing over, he says, “You’re doing that thing you do.”

“What?”

“Staring. That new stare you do.”

“Maybe,” Bucky acknowledges. A bird starts calling, the sound drifting in and away like the sway of a hypnotist’s watch and Bucky’s silent until it’s over. “Maybe I’m staring for the same reason you’re quiet.”

Sam waits. Bucky doesn’t add anything, so Sam turns to look at his face, hung with cool shadows.

“You’re not gonna say it, are you?”

“I thought you would say it,” Bucky argues defensively.

“You’re the one who’s been staring at me like that for a week. You should go first!”

“Please, you don’t even know how I’m staring at you, I only do it when you’re not looking.”

“Do it now then and see what happens,” Sam dares him.

“Fine.”

Just like that, Bucky locks in like Sam’s attention is the only handhold on a sheer cliffside. Vital and stable, a last chance, the one thing around him that wants to help him higher instead of watching him fall. A lot of that’s familiar from his regular hard stare, but then something opens up behind his eyes. Some fragile thing (that might be Bucky’s sense of caution) breaks. Suddenly, Sam’s seeing what Joaquin saw in the news footage and amateur cell phone video. Except he’s seeing it two feet in front of him. It’s intense. It makes the air a little harder to breathe.

Bucky’s lips curve into a smile, then part as he says, “I love—”

Hopefully, he wasn’t going to end that sentence with ‘store-bought cake,’ because Sam can’t really take back his reaction. The finger slipping behind Bucky’s ear as he cradles his face, the mouth sealed to his. Especially that. Thankfully, Bucky kisses him back, just as hard, and then harder.

“Thank god,” Sam pants when they break apart.

“You interrupted me.”

“I got you to stop talking? Guess we’re in my miracle.”

“I’d complain…” Bucky shrugs. “…but your miracle is pretty nice.”

“Not bad, right?”

He sighs and looks out over the water. Bucky pushes up on his fists and sits closer, offering his hand for Sam to interlace their fingers.

“Hey,” Sam prompts when it hits him that it’s super dark outside and they aren’t gonna dry much more like this, “did you book a hotel room again?”

“You kiddin’ me? I spent all my money on that cake.”

Sam laughs.

“Right, well, I guess you need a place to stay tonight then.”

“You know anything nearby?” Bucky asks with a soft smile.

Getting to his feet and bracing to pull Bucky up after him, Sam uses his free hand to motion towards their clothing pile.

“Put your pants on,” he says, “and I’ll see what I can do.”

[thedeadnotesofficial]

CRUSHED BY THE WEIGHT OF THE TOUR - TOP 10 FAILS & FUCK-UPS ON TOUR WITH THE DEADNOTES

-> ORDER YOUR ZINE HERE!

UK, 2022

7 days before our first longer tour in the UK after two-and a half (!!!) years of not playing shows and being able to travel due to the pandemic. Euphoria peaks. / 4 days before the tour is supposed to start: Members of our crew test positive and we decide to cancel the first three shows. Frustration peaks. / Day 1: Out of quarantine and straight back into the tour. Euphoria peaks. / Day 2: We get a call from tonight‘s promoter. The show is cancelled since the support band dropped out at the very last minute (????). Frustration peaks. So what.... / Day 3: It surely can't get any worse than this so let‘s finally get this thing rollin‘. Euphoria spreads among the travel party. / Day 4 – The Morning: We leave the hotel to find our van with all the windows smashed in. Someone had nicked all (!!!) our gear, worth almost 25k, overnight. I‘m crying. / Day 4 – Noon: Without windows in the car we head off to London and play a killer show borrowing instruments, pedals and backline from the other bands on the bill. I start to feel hope and euphoria kicks back in again. / Day 4 – The Night: Straight overnight we drive from London to Paris but get stopped at the border for over five hours and get charged an additional 6000€ of punitive tariffs from the customs department since our gear (the gear that got stolen) is not leaving the country with us. It surely can't be any worse than this. Frustration peaks. / Day 5: After 15 hours and no sleep at all we arrive in Paris. We‘ve made it and euphoria begins to spread. / Day 5 – The Noon: Incoming call from tonight‘s promoter. The show is cancelled due to a water damage in the venue. Frustration peaks. / Day 5 – The Evening: We arrange a last minute acoustic show with the help of our friend Tom and I feel the pressure slowly lift off my shoulders...I could go on like this forever!

Ostend, Belgium, 2015

I speak from experience when I say that there are certain things you really shouldn't - no! - mustn't lose on a three week tour all over Europe. Among the most important are ID's and van keys. In the morning after the show the ID of our old drummer Yannic is nowhere to be found. No chance to travel on to England and carry on with the tour if we don't find the document or get a temporary replacement at least. After stops at various embassies and police stations without any progress and prospect of success we decide to play all upcoming UK shows as a two-piece and as improvised acoustic sets only. The only problem is that our guitarist and singer Darius only passed his driving test two days ago and now has to find his way as the only driver on the left side of the road without any experience or driving practice. It works out surprisingly well though except smaller issues such as a hill start on the insanely steep ferry ramp (the port pilot loses his mind and patience and takes over the steering wheel). After a terribly long day of ups and downs and 16 hours in the car we arrive in Derby (UK) where we find out that no one at the pub we are supposed to play knows about our show since the in-house promoter fell into a coma weeks ago after a tragic motorcycle accident.

Russia, 2015

It‘s 4 am on a country road somewhere between Volgograd and Voronesch, far away from any civilization and infrastructure. We're all dead tired, slowly and carefully driving through the heavy Russian rain when suddenly our satnav, for no obvious reason, leads us off the street onto a small dirt track opposite to the main road. Since we have no idea where we are we trust blindly. Only two minutes later the car is stuck in the mud parallel to the regular street where we were driving on before. We have gotten ourselves into a desperate situation once and for all. We can‘t believe it when we realize that there‘s a small and run down police station right around the corner. We‘re literally in the middle of nowhere, how is that even possible? We try to explain our situation to the two senior officers using a 'German-Russian / Russian-German' dictionary that we got as a present from a super drunk and annoying fan at the merch table the night before and in the end get towed-off with a tow rope in Russian national colors. The two officers leave the unusual scenario in their Lada Jeep quietly without saying a single word. Lady luck is smiling.

South Germany, 2014

I reckon that the first and last time this band had coverage from all big German radio stations all at once was when on the first day of our tour the roof box on our car opened up because of heavy winds, our whole luggage including laptops spread across the motorway and we caused several rear end collisions and a traffic jam 8 km long.

Various Locations, 2014-2019

Various ‚remarkable‘ accommodations, e.g. a high rise porn building in the Czech Republic (don‘t ask!) already and officially cleared for demolition, a kebab shop in France where we got kicked out early in the morning when the sullen owner wants to turn on the fryer. One time we simply crashed in the center of a football pitch after a festival in Bavaria and at 4 am the sprinkler system abruptly wakes Jakob and Darius from a deep sleep.

Istanbul, Turkey 2016

Show cancellation -> reason: a military coup

Vienna, AT 2017

Our drummer Felix is by far the sweetest and and most good-natured if not to say best-natured person you could ever imagine. He‘s always seeing the good in people sometimes to a certain level where he accidentally maneuvers himself into very uncomfortable or even dangerous situation. This one time on tour a very nice but fully unknown person wanted him to join in on smoking a joint and Felix followed them to an outlying urban park, then locked himself into a public restroom together with this person ("we have to do this, there are cops everywhere"). Not until the weird stranger started watching porn on his smartphone as if it was a nothing, Felix noticed that something is wrong here and ran away while everyone else in the travel party was extremely concerned and already looking for him for hours.

Bilbao, Spain 2015

Sentences you really don‘t wanna hear after an exhausting 7 hours in the car driving all through Spain: "You‘re a band? A concert? Tonight? At this place? Hahahaha! The promoter here is a real 'speedhead' and on drugs most of the time. He frequently keeps forgetting about shows he  booked. I don‘t think that anyone is going to show up here tonight."

UK Tours 2017/2019

We‘re leaving for our UK Tour. The van we‘re traveling in is a rental from Europcar with roughly 400 km on the display. Technically a brand new car, fresh from the factory. After only half an hour it breaks down and turns out to be a total loss. One year later: In the meantime we bought our very first and very own van and can‘t wait to leave for the very first tour with it. On our way to the UK and after only 30 min the car breaks down and the motor turns out to be a total loss.

Kyiv, Ukraine 2016

After a 15 hours nightdrive and after ALL the bands got to play their sets the festivals is shut down by the Ukrainian police during our changeover. When at 4 am in the morning we carefully mention that we would like to drive to the accomodation to catch up on some sleep and to be prepared for the next 7 hours drive to be in time for get-in in Odessa the next day, we get insulted by the promoter who is far from sober at this point. "I have all the experience in the music business. If you‘re set time tomorrow is at 8 pm, a get-in at 7.50 pm is totally sufficient. We‘re not going home now!"

Well...I‘m pretty sure he knew what he was doing.

Photo by Paul Ambrusch

[rein-ette]

A cleaner version of my previous ask 😅

Engport, babysitting (catsitting, plantsitting etc) or fire, please?

Oooookayyyy, so. I wrote...something. It's for the engport + fire prompt, but if I'm going to be completely honest it doesn't have anything that much to do with fire, though I swear I did come up with it because I was thinking about things related to fire. And this first part of it doesn't have much engport either, though there's certainly a lot of Port. It does have a cute small animal in it, if that's any consolation.

I do also have another idea for plantsitting, so I might write that at some point, but I didn't want to keep you waiting much longer so -- please accept my apologies and this fic that I can almost guarantee is not what you thought it was going to be.

Warnings: abuse of Greek mythology and one scene from Spirited Away. Also skulls. One skull. And I guess, death? But not really.

The realm of the dead was turning out to be a lot less crowded than Gabriel had expected. Since many mortals died every day, he had imagined that the banks of the river Styx would be crowded with souls, screaming or writhing or whatever spirits did in agony as they waited for their passage to the Underworld. Instead, Gabriel stood alone on what appeared to be a train platform, in the middle of a river so still he could easily see his own reflection in it, and so wide it might as well have been an ocean. Gabriel only knew it was a river because he could sense that the water was drawn to him like a curious child to pretty flower, responding to his immortal parentage. Unconsciously, Gabriel flexed his fingers and wondered if the steaming waters of the Styx would listen to him if he tried to command it. Probably not, and seeing as he was going to be knocking on the door of her master momentarily, Gabriel did not want to be introduced as that nephew who had angered the Goddess of Hatred the moment he had woken up in the Underworld.

Fat lot of good his powers had done him anyways, since he had died at sea.

Hadn't mother always told him the Oceanids were bad shit?

Sighing, Gabriel looked around again at his surroundings. He realized with no small amount of surprise that, while he had just been alone, now several shadowy figures stood with him on the platform, the edges of their figures melting in and out in the thick fog that rose from the waters around them. He tried to examine their faces to see if any of them were the spirits of his crewmates, but whenever he thought he could make out a feature their faces dissolved back into the fog. Exasperated, Gabriel glanced back at the river, noting with another jolt of surprise that now he could see the dark outline of a set of train tracks beside the platform, about half a meter underwater and stretching away into the blackness. Not long after he registered that, he heard the rumble of a train in the distance.

I suppose that's my ride, he thought to himself. The old myths said that Chiron ferried people on a boat across the Styx, but apparently the Industrial Revolution had come to the Underworld as well. Snorting at the thought, he dug in his pocket for his gold coin, which any good sailor always kept in case the ever-capricious ocean claimed them — even semi-immortal sons of river goddesses. Clearly, this was a good habit, because being semi-immortal had not saved Gabriel from that torpedo, which had reduced his poor ship to a lump of floating scrap metal before Gabriel could call up enough power to fill a water bottle, and, oh, all those poor soldier boys who would now never get a chance to die in a gruesome war and fulfill their heroic fates —

Gabriel could not find his coin. Frowning, he searched the front pockets of his admiral's tunic as well, even though he knew he had not kept it there. When that yielded nothing, he moved on to his back pant pockets, then his boots. For the first time since he had drowned in the icy cold Atlantic (which, admittedly, was not that long ago), Gabriel felt a shiver of true panic run through him. How would he board the train without his coin? How would he enter the Underworld? How would he join the ranks of the heroes in the Elysian Fields, where he belonged? Had he perhaps lost his coin when he had rushed to the railings to survey the damage on deck and was promptly dropped into the roaring Atlantic when a stray bit of flak from the exploding engine room tore clean through his right leg?

Now that he thought about it, that seemed likely.

At least he’d gotten his leg back.

The train slid to a rippling stop into front of him. With a soft swoosh, the doors opened, and Gabriel found himself staring at a man who, despite his smart train conductors uniform, could not have been anyone but Chiron, given that his face was a gleaming skull and his eyes literally balls of hellfire. It seemed the god had tried to update his aesthetic for the 20th century as well.

Chiron proffered to him a small wooden box, in which Gabriel could see several gold coins. Desperately digging through his pockets one last time, he finally shook his head. "I’m sorry, I don’t have the fare, I —"

The doors slid closed in his face, and immediately the train began to pull away.

Muttering a few choice curses, Gabriel stumbled a step away from the edge of the platform and watched as the train picked up speed and swooped away into the darkness.

Somehow, he doubted it would be returning to this station.

In the ensueing silence, Gabriel weighed his options. He could sit on this platform and mope, possibly for eternity. He could jump in the river and hope that his aunt either saved him or tore his soul into shreds from the agony. He could try walking along the rails in the direction the train had left, also possibly for the rest of eternity, in the hopes of reaching the entrance to the Underworld eventually.

Gabriel took off his shoes and chose the last option, despite feeling that sulking for the rest of eternity held a certain amount of appeal. He was very good at sulking. Nevertheless, he waded into the water at the end of the platform and found immediately that Hatred was lukewarm, not freezing cold like he had imagined — a nasty, suffocating lukewarm which swirled thickly around his thighs with the collected resentment, broken promises, lurid thoughts and heavens knew what else of millions of miserable souls.

He had feared the water might send him immediately into convulsions of unbearable pain or suck his consciousness right out of him, but as he continued along the track nothing remarkable occured. Perhaps the Styx had sensed his godly parentage and was protecting its kin. Or perhaps Gabriel had collected so much resentment in his long life that the river didn't even recognize him as a foreign body. Whatever the case, Gabriel held his shoes gingerly in one hand and sloshed on.

Quickly, he lost all sense of time, distance, or direction. It felt like he had barely taken two steps before the platform he left was swallowed by the fog, and the tracks underneath his feet curved and meandered like a small stream itself, without rhyme or reason. Gabriel realized that even if the water had not immediately destroyed him, he could not walk forever, and when he finally collapsed from exhaustion he would either be eaten by whatever dwelled in this wretched river or drown over and over in its depths until it dissolved him like a piece of wet toilet paper.

Still, he could not turn back. There was no hope even if he managed to return to the platform, and while a lesser man might have cowered in fear on dry land anyways, Gabriel had spent most of his twenty one centuries of life fighting and wandering across the oceans anyways. Wading through an infernal river until even his immortal soul crumbled into the waves — it seemed somehow like a fitting end.

To distract himself from his happy thoughts, he began to sing. At times it was just a wordless tune, but when he felt inspiration hit he added lyrics. He sang of his birth on the sun-kissed banks of the Douro, the eldest son of its beautiful immortal gaurdian and a local Roman nobleman. He sang of his siblings, not all of whom had inherited his mother's immortality, and he sang in particular of the one brother who did and accompanied him through the aching, bittersweet years that followed. He sang of the lands he had travelled, some bursting with life and colour, others stunning in their harsh, barren beauty. He sang of his lovers, the princes and the ladies, the soldiers and the nymphs and the humble farmhands whom he had courted, bed, and occasionally wed — but never to last, for mortal lives were but a flicker in the endless night and even the immortal ones could not tether down his heart for long. The stars called him, the waves called him, and Gabriel always, always answered.

He suppposed now, though, he had finally found his last resting place.

This thought was immediately followed by a less melancholic one: I didn't know polecats could swim.

Gabriel stopped singing and instead stood and watched as the little furry animal approached, paws paddling furiously as it slipped through the water. It stopped when it neared him and splashed around for a bit, before lifting its snout and looking pointedly at Gabriel, its dark eyes gleaming and intelligent.

Gabriel hadn't known that polecats could give pointed looks, either.

He cupped his hands and extended them to the animal, which immediately scrambled on and promptly snuggled up in his palms, curling into a little content ball. Unable to hold back a smile, he stroked its slick, midnight fur with a thumb, marvelling at how soft and warm it was and how docile it seemed.

Well, he thought, at least I still sing well enough to seduce a polecat.

"You've seduced more than just a polecat, that's for sure," someone muttered.

-- part 2 is here --

[sebbybooks]

Never Mine

Sebastian Stan x Fanfiction

Part One

"With my dog as my witness, to whoever was riding my ass if they didn't back off my bumper I was going to stop in the middle of the road and rip their windshield wipers completely off!"

That type of anger coiled around me like a snake, because there was nothing that bugged me more than someone driving bumper to bumper. The long and exasperated breath I just released helped ease the tension out of my body temporarily. Just in time for reason to settle in. Though in reality it wasn't like I was actually going to jump out of my car and confront this road demon. Who clearly needed to take a course on etiquettes of the road. What I did know was that whoever was behind the wheel of the car had headlights that were so blinding I am sure extraterrestrials in space could spot them.

Trying to find the calm in the situation I focused on the road ahead of me. What little road I could see for that matter. Which wasn't exactly much. I had checked the forecast earlier in the day with the report of it showing that there was to be only clear and blue skies. By the amount of downpour before me you would think there was a tear in the sky if that was how rain fell. I just needed to hang tight for a few more miles until I reached my exit to stop for the night.

I had been driving for nine consecutive hours and it wasn't until the third hour I realized I was not cut out for long distance driving. The plane ticket I turned down from my father was starting to look like a missed opportunity. I opted out for Cooper's sake. I just rescued the little guy a few short weeks ago and I didn't have the heart to leave him alone so soon.

Despite having only six more hours of this painful drive I needed out of my car. A hot shower and a bed was calling my name like a siren's call was to a dazed sailor at sea. I was fervidly drawn to it. Granted, I wasn't exactly going the speed limit in my own defense. Simply because I chose to be a cautious driver not a careless one unlike the dip shit behind me. Cooper and I were going to get to Sonoma, California in one piece if I had anything to do with it! I had no intention to speed in the rain even if it annoyed the person behind me. After all I was driving down a one lane road there was literally nothing else I could do but drive forward.

Taking a glance up at my trusty Garmin my gps projected that at this rate I wouldn't make it to my hotel for another hour and a half. Ahead of me the sky was starting to look like a terrifying shade of gray and to top it off the dismal weather was becoming more and more hard to drive in. I could barely see the paint on the pavement. My defrosters seemed to have given up on me as I began to notice that my rearview mirror fogged up as though it was twilight hour.

I needed to pull over to try to wait out the heavy rainfall. The only problem was that I did not know where I was nor could I see where the road even had an end. The cheap gas station coffee was starting to wear off and the pep talks could no longer motivate me. The words of encouragement quickly transitioned into self deprecating quips of "I can not fucking do this!"

I was too far from home to turn back now and hearing a lecture from my dad despite being well beyond the ages of even receiving one, certainly would not stop him from scolding at my absence. I am more than certain that fiancée number three would not mind if I missed their prenuptial celebration. Especially if arriving on time meant I would be showing up dismembered. It was official I was going to die in this storm.

All of sudden like I called upon a bad omen my tiny Kia Forte jerked forward. I thought I accidentally stomped on the gas pedal too hard without realizing it. When it happened again I knew exactly what it was. Clearly the driver had mistaken this for a game of bumper cars. I laid the palm of my hand on the center of my steering wheel and relentlessly pressed my horn. Not sure what that was going to necessarily ward off , but I had to try something in the efforts that they would leave me alone.

Cooper's head shot up from his bed in the backseat. He looked just as displeased and annoyed as I felt. Why wouldn't they slow down? Is the question I could not figure out. I don't know if it was all the Stephen King that I read, but my paranoia was increasing as I started to settle on the possibility that they were now following me.

Maybe I was tired?

Maybe my imagination truly was getting the best of me?

Or maybe whoever that person was also suddenly decided to take the same random exit as I was taking.

I didn't think. I veered my car off to the right and got on the first breakaway from this seemingly endless road. I had no idea where I was headed at this point and neither did my Garmin. It made multiple attempts to reroute itself, but even that could not locate where I was. I took an unexpected detour by driving off into the middle of nowhere with a now stalker in my midsts.

Adrenaline now filling up my bloodstream. I gave my steering wheel the death grip and drove as fast as the tire tracks of my car would guide me. On a midsize billboard to my left I saw a logo for a gas station and a non franchised bed & breakfast saying it was right up the road. I was taking a chance by trusting that the establishment was clean and safe. I just needed to go where a crowd of people would be. The battery on my phone was likely dead and yes this was now becoming the opening sequence for a King novel. I'd laugh if my heart wasn't fluttering as fast a hummingbird's wing.

I managed to make out lights ahead as I neared the petrol station first. However, it just about looked abandoned. The dim white lights flickered around the desolate parking lot. I saw only two freight trucks parked side by side and I immediately thought

. . .hell no.

I kept driving forward in the hopes that the bed and breakfast sign wasn't last updated in the early nineties. I nearly combusted from relief when I finally saw it. Several cars and mini vans lined up with people inside of them probably doing the same thing that I was. I didn't plan on staying the night I just planned on staying long enough to hide out from the rain and from the trouble that still followed my trails.

Luckily there were free parking spaces close to the entrance. It was still hard to make out what the place truly looked like. From my view in the car the rain made it look like it was a melting oil painting. In a swift motion I put my car in park, turned my ignition off, reached in the back to grab Cooper and grabbed ahold of my purse in the other arm. I bolted out of my car for the door.

It felt as though I was running through a hurricane. I was completely drenched. I could barely keep my eyes from closing as I ran up the slippery steps in my worn Toms praying that I wouldn't eat concrete. There was an awning over the door that offered relief from the storm's cruel embrace . Looking down at the fuzzy brown welcome mat I noticed a quote was scribbled out on it.

"some beautiful paths

can't be discovered without getting lost."

As I reached for the doorknob I couldn't help but notice the intricate design. I'm aware of how wrong the timing was to fawn over something so utterly mundane. I just could not conceal the fact that I was a sucker for antiques roadshow and architectural designing. Growing up with a dad that built and reconstructed vintage furniture one might pick up on the interest. It was a white privacy doorknob with hand painted roses, with a Victorian long plated silver keyhole. The sound of distant car door slamming snapped me out of my daze. I turned my head in the direction of the sound low and behold it was that same car. Crazy thing is I didn't see anyone by it.

Instinct guided me forward considering my brain was scrambling with worry. I ushered myself inside and it was as though I fell into a pink wonderland. From the pink carpet to the multicolored pink pinstripe wallpaper. Hot pink roses seemed to have been the main theme for the lobby. There were various black and silver picture frames with photos of pink roses hanging on every wall. On every surface my eyes could catch, red and pink plastic roses sat in circular olive green vases. It was certainly....something. I thought I was doing the most logical thing by coming inside, but it quickly dawned on me that I saw no one around.

"Hello?" I cautiously called out.

I paced myself as I walked up to the front desk, simultaneously looking around for any potential red flags. My right arm was going numb, my little guy was tiny but felt like I was lugging around a sack of potatoes. I wandered away from the desk to poke my head around the place. There was a entry way that led to a dinning area with a handful of seats adorned with of course pink table settings. I was standing next to a spiral staircase to what I assumed led to the rooms. There was only one door that held a sign for a bathroom. Perhaps there was a power outlet I could use long enough to charge my phone to call my dad.

The same door I walked in swung open and droplets of rain was blown in by the wind. A shiver rolled down my spine, sending a myriad of sparks that shot through my body. Turning around a strange sensation filled the pits of my stomach. It felt like butterflies and moths had taken up space there. Excitement and fear. I just stood completely mute like I had never seen a man before. Well to my defense I hadn't seen ones that look like him in my town. Without even seeing my reflection I had an inkling as to the state of my appearance. I was utterly perplexed by how he pulled off the kissed by an ocean look. To embarrass myself further of course my dog chose that moment to shake water off of his fur on to me.

"Really Coop?" I tried to hide my disgust, but he got it around the corner of my mouth! The good looking stranger offered a half smile that probably pitied my overall state.

"Is the black Kia parked out yours?" Even his voiced oozed sex appeal. He angled his frame so he could face me. There was about an arm length of distance between us. His eyes practically bore into my face I suppose waiting for me to say something. Must have been the buzzcut, the facial scuff, or the fact that some creep was still parked outside waiting to do who knows what. But my thoughts were not where they should have been.

I blinked and straightened up my posture. "Yeah why?" I finally answered.

It was a causal question, yet it felt completely random like there was something else to it.Neither of us spoke for a few seconds.The silence was so thick it would take a hacksaw to cut through.

"Well I'll be damned! I didn't think I would get to see you until after you got back from your trip in California." A woman most likely in her late sixties came rushing down the stairs for him. She draped her arms around his body clearly taking him by surprise. Her cotton candy colored pink bouffant made up for most of her height. Sebastian returned her embrace. Although it looked extremely awkward considering he stared at me the whole time and I stood there watching.

"Moe's old truck didn't give you too much trouble did it?" She asked.

"No it still got some life left in it." Sebastian's jaw went slack and he looked from her to me once more. Only this time he was looking at me with a cold glare. Realization suddenly crashed into me like a wild horse.

[duhragonball]

Battle Tendency Liveblog: JJBA Ch. 65-66

This is the start of the “Ultimate Warriors from Ancient Times” arc, but I want to focus on these two chapters because they feature Mark.   I’ve got a lot to say about Mark under the cut, but the short version is that he’s a lousy Nazi and he deserves everything that happens to him.

A large chunk of Chapter 65 is just Caesar hanging out in Joseph and Speedwagon’s hotel room.   They try to play cards, but they’re both cheats.  This wouldn’t bother me at all until Speedwagon points out that he’s been here for eight hours, and never bothered to explain why.   You’d think Joseph would have demanded an answer a long time ago, since he’s not known for patience.  

As it turns out, Caesar’s been waiting for Mark, a buddy of his in the German Army.   Stroheim was in the German Army too, and he told Joseph that the Nazis had discovered three other Pillar Men in Rome.   That’s why he and Speedwagon came here, after all.    Well, Caesar’s an Italian, and Italy and Germany are allies, so Caesar managed to persuade the Germans (through Mark) to let him take a look at the Pillar Men.    So in this chapter, Mark rolls up in a car and drives them over to the site. 

But we already know what happened at the site in Chapter 64.   The Pillar Men have already reawakened, and all the Nazi soldiers stationed there have been slaughtered.   When Mark leads our heroes into the catacombs, they find the remains of the Germans, while Mark bumps into the Pillar Men themselves.  (Note: the above image is not to scale).

The thing is, bumping into the Pillar Men is hazardous to your health.    We saw that vampire grab Santana and large chunks of his body were completely absorbed.   The same thing happens to Mark, only faster, because Wamuu doesn’t even slow down as he walks past him.    He just walks right through Mark and half of his body is gone.  

So when I first watched the JoJo anime, it was right after I watched the Hellsing Ultimate anime, and I got a kick out of seeing two completely different anime takes on vampire lore.   Let’s face it, the Pillar Men are presented as something beyond mere vampires, but they’re basically just super-vampires, not so different from Alucard in Hellsing.    And both make use of the Nazis, except in Hellsing, the Nazis are the villains, while in Battle Tendency, they’re kinda sorta allies.  Stroheim is clearly a bad guy, because he killed his prisoners and tormented Speedwagon, but Mark is presented as a completely sympathetic person.   He’s got a sweetheart back home, Caesar’s the one who introduced them, and he’s planning to get married the next time he goes back to Germany.   And for his very brief appearance in JJBA, he’s completely friendly and helpful to the heroes.   We’re supposed to feel very sorry for him when he gets killed here.  

Part 2 is my favorite, but I think this stands out as it’s biggest flaw.   I get the idea.    Hellsing was dealing with a lot of dark themes, and the protagonists were horrifying in their own right.   So Kouta Hirano used the Nazis as villains to humanize his vampire characters.    By contrast, Hirohiko Araki seems to be using the Nazis to dehumanize the Pillar Men.   They’re so evil that even the Nazis look halfway decent by comparison.   At least the Nazis are human, with human loves and fears and honor.    The Pillar Men kill Mark without even noticing him, and Speedwagon likens this to a human stepping on an ant.     I get what Araki is trying to do here, but it rings hollow.    Fuck Mark, and fuck his Nazi fiance.  The first time we see him, we get a close up of his Iron Cross medal, with the damn swastika in the middle of it.    We’re supposed to buy into the idea that he’s “one of the good Germans”, and it’s 1938, so World War II hasn’t officially started yet, so somehow Mark is supposed to be cool.   But no, I don’t buy it.

Let me go off on a little sidebar and try to explain how we got here.   Battle Tendency was published in 1988.   Back then, Hitler had been dead for decades, and Germany had been partitioned into two countries, East and West Germany.   The Nazis seemed to have been consigned to the dustbin of history, and as time passed, pop culture grew more comfortable using the Nazis as historical villains in stories like this one.    There was a sense that yeah, the Nazis were really bad, but they were gone now, and they would never come back.   I think there was a similar mentality surrounding the Soviet Union after the U.S.S.R. dissolved.    By the 2000′s there were all sorts of internet memes about Nazi stuff and Soviet stuff and it was rationalized as harmless envelope-pushing. 

The problem is, it doesn’t seem so harmless in 2021, when Russia is a autocracy that meddles in U.S. elections, emboldening white nationalists in the process.   The “alt-right” fanatics who marched in Charlottesville in 2017?   The rioters who stormed the Capitol building this past January?   Those assholes probably wouldn’t call themselves Nazis, but neither did the Nazis.   They called themselves “National Socialists”, because they were trying to make their ugly policies sound more legitimate.   The same holds true for “alt-right”, “economic nationalist”, “Qanon”, “truther”, and so on.   They’re just new labels for the same old horseshit.  

I don’t want to judge Battle Tendency too harshly, because it’s the product of a different time, an era when people could at least pretend that Nazism was one of the few problems that we didn’t have to worry about any more.   The same mentality can be found in Hellsing.   The Nazis in Hellsing are definitely villains, but the conceit is that they’re all immortal vampires or werewolves, because that’s the only way the Nazi menace could possibly exist in 1999.    Otherwise, they’d all be dead of old age.   Battle Tendency is set in 1938, so it takes the liberty of presenting sympathetic Nazis, because we already know they’ll be defeated in the end, right?   We might as well see what makes them tick.  

Araki may have thought that using Nazis in a story set in the 1930s would be no different than using Napoleonic French soldiers in a story set in the 1800s.  And in the long run, that might be true, but I don’t think we’re there yet.   In the here and now, it’s aged rather poorly.  

Of course, just because Caesar and Joseph feel bad for Mark doesn’t mean I have to.   And Araki may have been more self-aware than I’m giving him credit for.    Nazi Germany wanted to set itself up as the Master Race, and in this fictional world, the Pillar Men have come to do the same thing, only they’re much, much further ahead of the game.   I think part of the point of Stroheim and Mark was to contrast the Nazis’ supreamcist attitudes with Kars’ ambitions.   For all of Stroheim’s boasting, he’s helpless against Kars’ might.   But at the same time, for all of Kars’ power and brilliance, he’s ultimately chasing the same pipe dream as Hilter and his followers.  

Let’s get back on track.    While the good guys react in horror at what happened to Mark, the Pillar Men just stand around nearby and discuss their situation.   They completely ignore our heroes, just like they ignored Mark.   Kars wants to locate the Red Stone of Aja, because it’s the secret ingredient to the mask he designed that will make them immune to sunlight.   Esidisi doesn’t understand how the stone helps their plan, but he’s totally on board.    But as they head out, Wamuu suddenly attacks Kars, because Kars stepped in his shadow, and apparently Wamuu just lashes out at anyone who does this, friend or foe.   

Wamuu is deeply sorry for this, and begs to be punished, but Kars apologizes instead, because he knows about Wamuu’s whole shadow thing and he feels that he’s the one who made the mistake here.  I really love this exchange, because it defines the Pillar Men so well.    As indifferent as they are to human lives, they respect one another a great deal.   Kars is the leader, but he still treats the other two guys like close associates.    He needs Wamuu’s sharp senses and keen warrior instincts.   Meanwhile, Wamuu and Eisidisi practically worship Kars like a god.   They’ve literally followed him around the world and across thousands of years in pursuit of his vision. 

So yeah, if the goal here was to use Mark’s suffering to make me hate the Pillar Men, it doesn’t work.  The Pillar Men are evil, sure, but they’re pretty cool bad guys.   On the other hand, Mark looks ridiculous here, with Caesar holding and talking to half of his body.   This looks like something out of a Tex Avery cartoon.   

I mean, let’s set aside the whole Nazi thing for a moment.   Why should I feel sorry for Mark?  Because he’s in pain?   He got cut in half!   He should have died instantly!    Because he was going to get married?   We only met this guy one chapter ago!   Because he’s Caesar’s friend?  Well Caesar’s kind of a jerk too.  

Anyway, Mark begs Caesar to kill him and end his suffering, so Caesar uses the Ripple to stop his heart.    Or the half of it that’s still there, I guess.   

Okay, so the whole point of Mark’s death is to really get the good guys fired up to battle the Pillar Men, right?    Okay, Caesar tries to take them on, and he opens with the Bubble Launcher, the same move he talked about earlier.   It didn’t beat Joseph, but Caesar’s Hamon power does hurt Wamuu’s skin, which is more than Joseph managed to do against Santana.  

The Bubble Launcher is supposed to surround the opponent with dozens of soap bubbles charged with Hamon energy.  Wamuu can’t escape without touching them and getting hurt.   But Wamuu just sprouts all these long braids from his head and clothes, and swings them around with superhuman precision to know the bubbles away without hurting himself.  

As it turns out, these Pillar Men are familiar with Hamon.   Santana was surprised to encounter Joseph Joestar’s powers, but Wamuu and the others have fought Ripple users in the past.    And Wamuu’s more intrigued than worried...

Oh, as one final aside, on the car ride to the catacombs, Speedwagon asked Caesar if he tried to use the Ripple to destroy the Pillar Men before they woke up, and Caesar explains that it didn’t work while they were in their dormant state.   Remember, at the very start of this story, Speedwagon called Straizo because he wanted someone to use the Ripple to destroy Santana before he could wake up.   Now we see that even if Straizo had agreed to his request, it wouldn’t have done any good.   Sunlight doesn’t seem to kill the Pillar Men so much as it makes them turn to stone, and the Ripple only hurts them while they’re flesh and blood.   So the only way to kill them seems to be by using Hamon in a direct confrontation, and that’s a tall order...

[rainofaugustsith]

Rain Plays SWTOR: Veteran Star Fortresses, Revisited

I thought it would be fun to take a more in-depth look at how to solo the Veteran Star Fortresses. As you know, these give you six different companions, some titles, cartel coins, armor and decos.

I posted this before with videos of the solo battles with the Exarchs, and the post was hidden for some reason. So I’ll try again. Let's talk about some basics and then focus on the Reactor Core, the last set of rooms.

Voss and Nar Shaddaa are notorious for being the most challenging VSF to clear solo. If you can beat these Exarchs, the others might feel simple to you. That is my experience anyway!

How to choose which Veteran Star Fortresses to do? If you want…

The companion who influences main story: Voss. Rokkuss is a good all around companion, so from a gameplay standpoint you’ve chosen a good one. However, he’s also the only SF companion to figure at all into the main story. If you’ve completed his SF missions and earned him as a companion, he’s mentioned briefly in chapter one of KOTET and a bonus mission will auto complete for you.

The companion who subjectively is the best in combat/healing: Nar Shaddaa. Veeroa Denz is a dual saber wielder and she’s very, very good, especially if you get her to influence level 50. Even if you have her on heals she can destroy mobs.

The chest piece for the Star Fortress armor: Alderaan. Choza Raabat is IMHO the least effective SF companion. He swats things with his lightsaber once and then stands there with that incredibly annoying Jedi hand signal. But - Alderaan is the SF to complete if you want the Exarch armor chest piece.

Another caveat: some of the random armor drops on Ossus look a lot like the Exarch armor - but it's no guarantee at all that you will come across one. A good all around companion: Belsavis. K’khrol holds his own and has some cool healing skills, and the Belsavis Exarch isn’t nearly as challenging as the ones for Voss or Nar Shaddaa.

The achievement for doing the VSF without specialists’ help: Belsavis.

The achievement for defeating all the different Paladins: Don’t even go into VSF. You can clear the Paladin achievement in the SOLO/STORY Star Fortresses, which are far easier. If you defeat every single Paladin on every single SF you get a very cool title (Fallen Knight) and some decos, so this one is worth it, but again, you really don’t have to put yourself through a VSF for that.

Decorations: If you want the ones that are given out by the specialists/completion of all the VSF, you’ll have to do all six, with specialists’ influence over 10. However if you are talking about the other decos that drop from Paladins and bosses, like the Zakuulan floor lamps, shiny gold panels and computers, those drop in STORY/SOLO too. Again, you don’t need to do the VSF fir that.

SF companions:

These companions are really good: Veeroa Denz, followed by Rokuss, K’khrol.

These companions are so-so: Hemdil Tre

These companions are honestly not going to help you much in battle in my experience: Leyta, Choza Raabat

General advice:

1. 306 level gear, or as close to it as possible. Some people like various set bonus armors, like The Victor. I prefer to put armor on my characters that gives them three small set bonuses for Mastery, Endurance and Alacrity.

2. Level 50 influence companion, or as close to it as possible. People have varied preferences for ranged vs. melee, but I typically go in with either Lana, Kira or Veeroa, all of whom are melee.

3. Life Warden tactical. This will heal you in a pinch. Since there are no kolto stations in the SF take all the help you can get.

4. Raise your Alliance specialists’ influence to at least 10 and interact with the blue clickable console in the first room to receive buffs to Mastery, Endurance, Presence, etc. that are substantial. Each of the Specialists will also leave you a special ability in a ‘cache’ in the bonus rooms (two on each level. Two have Paladins. One just has a mob. One has a bonus mission that will raise influence with the SF companions).

If you only raise one specialists’ influence: Oggurobb (Medical cache). Oggurobb gives you a kolto probe. There are no kolto stations in the Star Fortresses so you will need this.

Two: Oggurobb and Bey'wan Aygo (Military cache). Aygo gives you a small turret that can be set up in a room to fire on the enemy. It can be a game changer with mobs or gold level NPCs and it can also distract the enemy NPCs. On several occasions I’ve seen Exarchs completely ignore my character and just wail on the turret.

Three: Oggurobb, Aygo and Sana-Rae (Zakuulan Knight cache). Sana-Rae gives you a groundquake ability. This can come in really handy during the mobs in the sun rooms, but I’d get the other two first.

I don’t find the cache from Hylo Visz to be useful and will bypass obtaining it if I have the other three. By all means, raise her influence to 10 to get the buff, but I wouldn’t waste time fighting a Paladin to get her cache.

There’s an achievement for getting through the VSF without the specialists’ assistance. I honestly feel if you’re just going through this once to get the companion and finish the mission, you should make it as easy as you can for yourself, and forget about this achievement. If you decide you want it, you can always repeat the VSF.

I’m going to assume that you already have the basics of how to get through the Star Fortress itself and will concentrate on the final set of rooms. After defeating the mobs in the EMPHERMIS room, you get on an elevator and rise to a circular structure, the Reactor Core.

The goal in these rooms is to end the fights as quickly as you possibly can.

Room 1: Several skytrooper mobs. They should hopefully drop some dampening shields to protect you as you venture forth. Note: The medical droid at the beginning of this section also sells the shields for 1000 credits each. After a run where I literally got two in total from the mobs, I started buying a few from the droid as insurance.

Use your dampening shield by clicking on it. Look for the grapple hook on the top of the next platform, click it and grapple across. Do NOT try to grapple across without the shield, you will probably get zapped, fall and die. Also: be careful when you land on the platform. In a few cases Viri has landed facing the wrong direction, started running and tumbled right over the edge. Don’t be like Viri at that moment.

Room 2: The Exarch (who you will not be able to kill) and two gold NPCs. Run DIRECTLY to the blue, clickable console and click it as fast as you can. That ends the battle and sends the Exarch fleeing.

Another grapple, and there will be some mobs on the platforms to defeat.

Rooms 3 and 4: The Exarch, two gold NPCs and a lot of mobs. The Exarch will periodically wake up one of the two photoconduction droids in the corners. As soon as the droid wakes up and the nameplate turns red, beat them down as fast as you possibly can. They will drop a yellow power cell. It will show up on your ability bar or in your mission inventory tab. Target the Exarch and click that yellow cell to drain their power. You may have to do this twice. The large console will light up and turn blue and clickable. Get your butt there ASAP and click it. Keep clicking it even if you are interrupted. That’s the only way to end the fight.

If you are unsuccessful the cycle begins again - kill the droid, get the cell, drain the Exarch, click the console.

While you’re doing this, the mobs of skytroopers and the two gold NPCs will be attacking you and your companion. This is the time to pull out any and all stops you have that can stop a lot of enemies in their tracks. Put up Bey'wan’s turret. Use Sana-Rae’s groundquake. Orbital Strike. Vengeful Smash. Whatever you possibly have that will kill or stun the mobs.

My order of attack in this room is:

1. Set up Bey’wan Aygo’s turret in a corner of the room.

2. Go after gold NPCs

3. Go after the photocondution droids, even if the golds aren’t dead yet, while throwing AOEs or Sana-Rae’s groundquake at the mob

4. Drain the Exarch’s power

5. Click the console

After this, you’re going to grapple up to the Exarch!

When you grapple up to the edge of the platform, the Exarch will not see you. You do not have to start the fight right away. I personally prefer to call the repair droid and wait until every single skill, heroic moment, unity and the specialists’ abilities have cooled down. Take a minute or two to get ready.

Overall:

1. Start with a turret right by the entrance to the platform. It may distract the Exarch long enough for you to do some significant damage.

2.You’re going to do best with the Exarchs if you keep moving. The only exception to this is if the Exarch is completely distracted. In the Alderaan and Belsavis videos you can see the Exarch isn’t even looking at Viri and Lana, and isn’t reacting much when Viri and Lana keep attacking.

3. Any skill that requires you to stand still to channel is not the one you want to throw here.

4. Use ranged and AOE skills instead of getting up close and personal.

5. Try to keep your back to the doorway and away from the edges of the platform so you don’t get flung over the edge of the platform by a knockback.

All the Exarchs have a few skills in common:

1. A very wicked knockback. Remember your character is technically on a platform, and you can get flung over the edge, so be mindful about where you stand. I try to keep my characters in the middle or closer to the back of the platform by the door, so when they get thrown they are not going over the edge.

2. Orange exploding circles that deal substantial damage.

3. The ability to disappear during the fight and reappear with a very damaging attack.

4. The windows. As the fight goes along, the Exarch can shatter the windows on the platform. If you stand in the radiation pools, they will deplete your HP. There’s an achievement for killing the Exarch with this radiation, but again, if you’re just going through once for the companion, you might not want to get fancy and try this on your first attempt.

Beyond that, each of the Exarchs is a slightly different flavor of poison.

Voss: Andur Melor

Melor is subjectively the most difficult Exarch to defeat. They have self-heals and attacks that can take your HP down to about 60% in one blow.

Nar Shaddaa: Lesin Tyn

Tyn also has a self-heal, Aviela’s Avarice, but you can interrupt it. They can also be distracted. In Viri’s runthrough, she put down a turret and the Exarch spent half the fight attacking it.

Alderaan: Zar Draya

Once again, the turret was an effective shiny to completely distract the Exarch. Draya calls these “Mental Apparition” ghosts to help, but from what I’ve experienced, they mostly hover around and don’t really do very much. You can one shot them if you’re nearby or completely ignore them. You can see this is a far easier fight than the Voss or Nar Shaddaa battles.

Belsavis: Forta Gair

Again, able to be completely distracted by the shiny turret and Viri and Lana were able to get them down to about 50% HP before they even turned around.

Tatooine: Tarso Gren

Not as much of a pushover as Belsavis, and a great fan of the knockback, but still easier than Voss or Nar Shaddaa.

Hoth: Jom Vanten

More or less on par with Tatooine.

[keelywolfe]

FIC: Welcome To Backwater (spicyhoney standalone)

Summary: Stretch isn't running away, not really.

He took the bus.

Only to end up in a little town in the middle of nowhere, meeting unusual people, dealing with unexpected happenings, what the hell is going on in this place?

Tags:  Spicyhoney, Midwest Gothic

~~*~~

Read Chapter One on AO3

or

Read it here!

~~*~~

Stretch honestly wasn’t sure what state he was in anymore. Not philosophically, but literally, as in United States of etcetera. He’d drowsed off with his skull leaning against the cool glass of the bus window somewhere around three am, the drone of the wheels on asphalt lulling him and the darkness outside broken only by the brief, glaring flash of the occasional car passing by.

When he woke again the sun was high in the sky and the view outside was a blur of endless green. Fields of it as far as the eye could see, corn, maybe, he wasn’t up on all the traditional crops of the Aboveground or at least not enough to know them by sight.

His legs were cramped from being curled up on the seat next to him all night and Stretch shifted with a grimace to put his sneakers back on the floor. Didn’t exactly uncramp him, he was too tall for that, but it did change the angle so, hey, at least a small favor.

The rest of the bus was more empty than not, the other passengers mostly sitting on their own, sleeping or reading or playing on their phones. None of them gave him even a passing glance and that was fine by him. Probably got all their stares in last night when they first got on the bus. There’d been plenty of side-eyes and outright stares as Stretch made his way down the aisle to an empty seat. No surprise there, Monsters had been on the surface for a couple of years now, but it wasn’t like there was enough of them to make a sighting anything less than exotic for Humans. He was more grateful that no one tried to talk to him, eager to make a Monster Friend like they were a fucking Pokémon to add to their collection.

He’d met plenty of Humans like that over the years; put them off politely and they only tried harder, put them off rudely and they got loudly pissed. Couldn’t win that game and eventually Stretch got tired of trying.

He let his head fall back on the padded headrest with a sigh, closing his sockets. Not much point in thinking about that right now, that was the sort of shit that landed him on this bus.

His grungy backpack was on the floor, overstuffed to the point of the zipper straining and the sleeve of a spare hoodie trailing out of the side like an extra arm. Stretch managed to contort himself enough to reach down and dig his headphones out of the side pocket, relieved to find them charged for once. He poked the earbuds into his audial canals, heh, earbuds with no ears, it sounded like the start of a bad joke, and turned on a playlist. Soothing eighties, that seemed to fit in with the scenery outside. Or maybe not; from the occasional run-down barn the bus sped past, their peeling paint still advertising Mail Pouch chewing tobacco, this place didn’t seem to have crawled out of the sixties yet.

He was barely through the first song when the sorrowful refrain about the boys of summer was cut off by his phone letting out a persistent buzz. His brother’s picture popped up on the lock screen and it was probably his imagination making that sweet, smiling face look so judgmental.

Probably.

His thumb hesitated over the answer button before decisively settling on decline and he’d barely settled back into his seat with the melodious voice of Don Henley when it started up again. He let it go this time, every short burst of buzzing echoing through his skull until it stopped. It didn’t ring again.

By then the song had changed to ‘No One Is To Blame’, Stretch went ahead and skipped it. He didn’t really need to chew on any irony right now, it would kill his appetite for breakfast.

~~*~~

It was a few more hours before the bus pulled off for a pit stop and by then, Stretch was ready to start chewing on his chair arm. Might’ve if he thought the seats had been cleaned anytime in the past decade. He didn’t have a stomach, exactly, but they still needed to eat to replenish their magic and the hollow gnawing of his hunger was making him lightheaded.

Come to think about it, he wasn’t even sure when he’d last eaten. Sometime before yesterday morning, maybe even the night before when he’d sat picking at the meal his brother spent so much time making, trying not to see the worry in those starry-eye lights, silently hoping Blue didn’t say anything past ‘good night’. Shouldn’t have wasted the wish, not like they ever came true, anyway. The stars he’d wanted so much to see lived up to the ‘twinkle twinkle’ advertisement, the ‘wish upon a star’ part, not so much.

When he’d stuffed his backpack before heading off to the station, he hadn’t thought far enough ahead to even grab a granola bar or a bag of chisps. All he’d been thinking about was getting it done, getting out, down to the station to hop the first bus going anywhere.

That bus rolled to a stop with a loud hiss of compressed air, the bored-looking driver yanking the door lever open. Stretch let all the Humans get off the bus first, shuffling their sleepy, dead-eyed way down the aisle as they groaned and stretched, many of them already reaching for cigarettes. The last thing he needed was a rough elbow from some impatient jackass who couldn’t wait another minute to load up on gas station chili dogs for the trip. He waited until the last Human was almost off before making his own way down, the laces of his untied sneakers trailing behind him as he shuffled his way out.

After hours in the air conditioning, the humid air was almost stifling, the smell of gasoline thick along with the smog of exhaust.

The gas station was about as unimpressive as the barns they’d passed. No shiny neon signs here advertising regular and premium below a well-lit emblem of a Shell or a BP. Not even a bright red ‘Kum and Go’ to make adults snicker quietly above confused children’s heads. The ancient pumps looked as if their first service was to the Model T and every time the door opened it was heralded by the loud, rickety clang of a cow bell.

He was itching for a cigarette of his own, but not on an empty stomach. Might be out of luck for chili dogs after all in a place like this, but there was still hope. According to the travel guide he’d filched from the bus depot back in Ebott, this was the exact sort of place that might carry such exotic foods as pasties or whoopie pies. The guide didn’t have any pictures, but Stretch was hungry enough to take a chance.

He made his way across broken asphalt studded with cigarette butts and old chewing gum, already hungrily ready for at least a Snickers bar. Maybe that hunger was why Stretch didn’t see the short guy coming out the door, completely oblivious to the clanging warning of the cowbell as he rammed right into him and nearly knocked the overflowing paper sack right out of his hands. Both of them grabbed for it automatically, fumbling to keep from dropping it and instead the brown paper tore from top to bottom and sent a shower of cans tumbling down to the sidewalk.

“fuck!” Loudly said in two voices, very nearly in unison. Stretch was already on his hands and knees collecting silver cans with ‘Coors’ scrawled across their condensation-dewed sides. The shorter guy took a minute longer, bracing himself on a cane as he slowly reached for a can that’d rolled over to an overflowing pedestal ashtray.

“man, i’m sorry,” Stretch panted, snatching up the last can that was attempting to set a world record escape to the gas pumps.

“ain’t your fault,” the short guy grunted as he struggled back to his feet. “bag was damp from the beers.”

Now that Stretch wasn’t trying to herd cans, he got a better look and what he saw froze him in his tracks. He couldn’t not stare, not when his beer bumper was another Monster and more than that, another skeleton. Which was bizarre, Stretch only knew two other skeleton Monsters aside from his own brother and this was absolutely not one of them. None of them had jagged, sharky teeth and blood-red eye lights, a nasty looking crack running narrowly through one socket.

Nor did they need a cane to help them along on beer runs and the other skeleton was struggling to gather the cans up in his arms. He tucked two into his jacket pockets and tried jimmying the others into the crook of his elbow, but one of them squirting free and launched into the air.

Stretch caught it before it got too accustomed to flight, barely managing not to drop the already dented can back on the pavement. “here, let me help,” Stretch said.

The other skeleton was already shaking his head, reaching for the can, “nah, i live right around the corner, i’ll stack ‘em by the curb and make another trip.”

Yeah, because half the people from the bus wouldn’t wander out of the station and take advantage of the offering of free beer, that wasn’t gonna work. “at least let me get another bag from the clerk.”

The skeleton snorted aloud, “mitch don’t hand out bags, brought that one myself from my store.” He hesitated and added, reluctantly, “but if you really wanna give me a hand, the two of us can carry ‘em pretty easy.”

The bus was only on a fifteen-minute stop, gas, grub, and go. Anyone not in their seat got left behind according to his ticket stub, stated boldly in oversized text, and there probably wasn’t another bus station where he could catch a ride for fifty miles.

Stretch gave the street they were on a glance. They were in the middle of a shaggy, rundown sort of town, this gas station was probably the only one around. Barely he could see a plain, unlit sign on the building on the other corner that said starkly, ‘Groceries’. The local restaurant was probably called ‘Eats’, everything was fried up in the same bacon grease poured out from an old coffee can, even the pie. It was a screaming advertisement for the kind of Podunk town where everybody knew everyone, and outsiders were looked at with jaundiced suspicion.

And a Monster lived here.

Stretch took a couple more beers that were threatening to make another escape from the other skeleton’s arm and shrugged. “lead the way.”

It was slow going, not only because Stretch’s legs were about as long as the other guy was tall, but the other skeleton had a pretty bad limp, grunting with each step he took. Stretch hoped guiltily he hadn’t made anything worse by nearly knocking him on his ass, but if he had, the guy didn’t complain.

True to his word, they didn’t have far to go. The skeleton led the way towards that grocery sign, unlocking the door with a heavy, old-fashioned key that looked like it would be more at home in a castle rather than a grocery store in midwestern Cornsville. He pulled the door open enough for Stretch to grab it, another cowbell jangling overhead like an epidemic, and he held it open while both of them shuffled inside into a renewed rush of blissful air conditioning.

The grocery store didn’t exactly live up to its name. Maybe it was more a grocery shop or even ‘market’ with no ‘super’ tacked in front. The groceries consisted pretty much of a few rows of tall racks and a couple coolers, the shelves lined with cans, toilet paper, and other random dry goods. There was a wide counter by the door with a register sitting on it that’d probably been there for a hundred years and an incongruous credit card scanner nestled against its side.

The skeleton dropped his beers on the counter with a clatter of aluminum. He hopped up on a tall stool and popped open the cash drawer, shoving a couple bills into it as he waved a hand at the scarred wood of the bare countertop. “you c’n set the beers here. help yourself ta one.”

Beer wasn’t exactly what he’d been thinking about for breakfast but Stretch popped the tab anyway and took a long drink, unable to help a grimace at the bitter taste. The other skeleton let out a chuckle that deteriorated into a phlegmy cough, grabbing his own can and gulping down half of it in one swig.

Stretch looked around the shop, at the cans of beans and pickle jars with a fine layer of dust, out the front window where the view of the town was obscured by a couple years’ worth of blurry fingerprints. “you know any place i can get a room around here?”

The skeleton raised both brow bones. He finished off his beer and let out a mellow belch as he popped the tab on another. “planning on hanging around for a while?”

“maybe,” Stretch said, then shrugged. “probably. if i can find a job.”

The other skeleton considered that. His phalanges were sharp at the tips, chipping new little pits into the countertop as he drummed his fingers on it. He came to some sort of conclusion, his toothy grin widening, “tell ya what, i might be able to help ya out with both. you mind the store in the mornings,” he patted the countertop and ran his fingers lovingly over the ancient register, “and ya can stay in the spare room over the shop. ain’t much, but there’s a bed an’ a window. might be enough for a while.”

It sounded like a pretty good deal. A little too good and Stretch squinted suspiciously. “why?”

That grin soured. “let’s say ya got a trustworthy face. looks a lot more like mine than anyone else around these parts, too.”

That made Stretch wince a little, confirming what he already expected. They were the only Monsters in town and from the unkempt look of the store, the locals weren’t that keen about having them around. Be stupid to stay in a place where he knew he wasn’t wanted, even stupider than letting the bus go on without him.

In his pocket his phone buzzed loudly, making him jump. It buzzed once, twice, then Stretch reached in and pressed the silence button. Then he held out a hand to the other skeleton. “deal.”

To his surprise, the skeleton gave his hand a long look, studying it. Nothing to see but plain bone, his own fingertips blunted, and with a yellowish nicotine stain between the first and second knuckles. Stretch almost pulled it awkwardly back but before he could, the skeleton reached out and took it, shaking it almost painfully hard. “deal. guess now that i’m your boss, you’ll need my name. you can call me red.”

“stretch.”

The other skeleton, Red, laughed loudly and slapped his good knee, “yeah, that suits ya.” He hopped off the stool and limped around the countertop. “c’mon upstairs, there’s a shower, too. might want to put it to good use. welcome to backwater, kid, hope you stay a while.”

~~*~~

Red’s dour description of the room wasn’t quite accurate. For one, the room was larger than Stretch pictured, nearly the size of the shop beneath it. There was a bed, yeah, but also a card table and a couple chairs. In one corner there was a television so ancient there was a set of elderly rabbit ear antenna on top. But the whole setup was less dusty than the store downstairs, like maybe the previous tenant wasn’t that long gone.

Stretch didn’t ask. Sometimes not knowing made it easier to sleep at night.

The promised shower was in a bathroom only slighter larger than a closet, the hot water heater groaning audibly and pouring out a grudging trickle through the showerhead that spent alternating minutes as lava hot and icy cold. Despite that, it felt good to rinse away the layer of road dust he’d accumulated, soaping up with a leftover sliver of soap he found.

When he got out of the shower, a threadbare towel around his pelvis offering limited protection to his modesty, there was a steaming bowl on the table. Filled with a thick stew, blobs of meat floating in a greasy gravy, and a hunk of bread with it, along with another beer.

Stretch wolfed it all down hungrily, easing the last of his physical discomforts, then flopped down on the narrow bed. Red had told him to take the day to settle in and he could start work tomorrow. That sounded like advice well worth taking. He had a place, he had a job, and he had his phone on silent. He could text his bro tomorrow.

Yeah.

He turned on the television, but no matter how he moved the antenna, the only show that came in was static. He switched it back off, contemplated Netflix on his phone, and then decided that sleep was probably the number one choice for entertainment today.

The mattress was thin, the springs threatening to poke through the worn layers of cushion, but right now it might as well be stuffed with angel wings. Stretch closed his sockets and let sleep claim him.

~~*~~

Stretch wasn’t sure of the time when he woke, the former sunshine streaming in turned to a darkness deeper than he’d seen since they came out from under the mountain. No hint of bitter moonlight crept in through the curtainless window.

He leaned up on an elbow and tried to kick the tangled blanket around his legs loose, his sleep-tainted thoughts slow in coming back online.

When his mind finally booted up, Stretch flopped back on the sagging mattress with a groan. He was in the little town of Backwater, that was right, in the room above Red’s shop. An unfamiliar place, that was all, the only ghosts around here were his own memories, the only sound his own breathing. He wondered sleepily what had woken him, giving the picture window that took up half of the side wall a glance, and went utterly still.

Eyes. A deep, unrelenting gleam of crimson coals staring in at him from the other side of the glass. Rus couldn’t move, terror welling up thick and rancid, a primordial fear rising into his throat from his soul, shivering its way like a sin down his spine.

That crimson gaze flickered in a blink and Stretch let out a hoarse cry, his paralysis broken enough for him to scramble back, heels kicking at the covers as he cowered against the wall, waiting for the crash of breaking glass. Long minutes of nothing ticked by, his panic slowly fading, and when Stretch opened his sockets again, there was nothing outside the window but blackness, not so much as the yellowish aura of a streetlamp peeking in.

“fuck.” Stretch rubbed his forearm over his sockets, blinking hard, and looked again. Nothing, exactly as it should be outside a second-story window. He sank back against the mattress, swallowing down the hysterical little laugh that tried to bubble its way out.

“jus’ a dream,” he mumbled aloud and hearing his own voice was steadying. A dream, yeah, an eerie little hallucination brought on by too much beer and too little food, all wrapped up in this strange place. Stretch dragged the thin blanket back over him and rolled to his side, defiantly giving the window his back as he settled in to sleep. Tomorrow was gonna be a busy day and he was gonna need all the rest he could get.

He fell easily back into a weary, dreamless sleep and never noticed that crimson stare returning, gazing through the glass like deep red lamplight cutting through the darkness.

-tbc

[themadauthorshatter]

Toppat!Charles Part 13(Final)

This is it. The big 13.

What a ride.

I'm not holding back on this.

Dramatic recap: Triple Threat has spent time reunited, though Charles has some trouble relaxing before their mission. Speaking of which, all goes well at firs, but Charles is recaptured by Right and Ellie is found by Toppats and Reginald, leaving Henry alone in the vents.

To catch up before this finale, here are all the previous parts:

Part 1

Part 2

Part 2 Deleted/Extended Scene

Part 3

Part 4

Part 5

Part 6

Part 7

Part 8 Preview

Part 8

Part 9

Part 10

Part 11

Part 12

I just really want to say thank you all for enjoying this series since it started. It means a lot to me. I never knew how 'big' this would get and I'm honestly really glad you all liked this. And for putting up with my nonsense 😅😂

Anyway, onto the finale!!!

If this was a tv special, the camera would do a glidey thing from the side of a vent to an open path, which Henry crawls through.

He's hot, very uncomfortable, and really hopes that Charles gets back to him and Ellie.

It probably doesn't help that he can't hear Ellie anymore. At all.

Alone, Henry sighs as he is left to follow a humming sound that he KNOWS has to be the core.

He's ditched a lot of his space gear and tied his hoodue around his hips, but he presses on, because he's really starting to hate the Toppat Clan right now.

CUT TO CHARLES!!!

Charles panics as he tries to break free from his binds, in a cell very much like the one Henry was locked in in the Free Man Ending. He's in pure panic mode and only knows that Right is leaning against the wall and he needs to get the hell out.

Charles is trying as much as he can, kicking up, trying to throw off the balance, even trying to go for the remote, which is where Right intervenes, taking it just as Charles is about to kick it.

After a few more minutes of kicking and flailing, Charles lets out a very loud scream.

"Are you done, kid?"

Charles breaks down and stops his struggling, keeping his gaze on the floor as he asks, "Why are you doing this? You already have your friend back."

"You're the one who came back, not me. Let me guess: the government didn't want you back?"

Charles keeps his head down, even as Right stops leaning on the wall and approaches him.

"Why're you really here?"

With a rush of adrenaline, Charles kicks Right, smirking at the fact that he'd managed to send him into the wall.

Right scowls and punches him in the face.

"Don't get cocky, or I'll send out into space," Right snarls as he points to a button on the remote. He keeps his thumb on this button, making sure Charles doesn't get any ideas. "Tell me why you're here, kid. What're you up to?"

Charles gulps and opens his mouth to explain, but is cut off by either Burt or Sven or any other toppat clan member.

"Sir, we've found someone in the ventilation system. He's heading to the core, now."

Charles freezes and Right turns to him, a 'gotcha' smile growing on his face.

CUT TO HENRY!

Henry has found the core and climbs out of the vent, bomb in hand; it has enough power to cause critical damage to the core and should give him and Ellie enough time to get back to Charles, and give the toppats time to evacuate and return to Earth, where they'll be arrested.

He walks along a ramp and gets ready to toss the bomb onto the core, near the middle where a lot of the power is.

His aim is heavily disrupted when he hears footsteps racing toward him.

As toppats approach, Henry runs to the other side of the core, tapping Morse into his earpiece to alert Ellie and Charles that he's been spotted.

He stops dead in his tracks when he sees two toppats holding Ellie back by her arms as she struggles, a little bruised and beaten, and sees Right holding Charles, who has his hands bound behind his back, by his hair.

"'Ello. 'Ere for something?"

Henry, after a quick glance to both Ellie and Charles, lowers the bomb and quickly draws his gun.

Which is shot out of his hand by from behind Reginald, who gives him a dainty wave.

Henry sneers at him before turning to Right.

"Seem familiar to you, 'Enry? One friend injured by toppats and the otjerneeding you to rescue 'im?"

The memory itself is like salt on a wound. Almost a year ago, they'd been trying to stop the rocket feom getting into orbit.

Now they're trying to blow the station to high Heaven, high water, Hell and back again.

"Don't listen to him," Charles hisses out, but Right slams his head on the railing and holds him on the other side of the railing by his neck.

Henry panics and sets down the bomb, much to the objection of Ellie, and holds his hands up.

Right merely scoffs at this. "You're good at making history repeat itself."

Charles is conscious enough to see this and feels his stomach drop, as Henry is possibly breaking his promise.

That's until he sees Henry sort of making a slight scissor motion with his middle and index fingers as subtly as he can, Morsing the following messages to Charles and Ellie:

'Bite their wrists. Kick someone's ahin and they're useless for a few minutes.

'Kick him. Kick him. Kick him. Kick him. Kick him.'

With a deep breath, Henry quickly drops for his gun as Ellie sort of reverse axe kicks one the toppat guard's shins and bites the other, making both let go of her.

Henry shoots Reginald in the foot, which gets Right to instinctively take a step forward and pull Charles closer, which leads to him getting in a really good kick to Right's jaw before he falls onto the platform.

Ellie headbutts one guard and punches the other before running to the bomb.

Charles covers himself as Right kicks him before the cyborg charges to Henry, who shoots him in the shoulder and goes to do it again, but is tackled by Reginald.

There's a lot of kicking and punching, but Ellie eventually knocks out one guard, only to be slammed into the wall by her hair and thrown down.

Before he can get any other hits in, he is shot and falls to the platform, clutching between his neck and shoulder.

Ellie looks to see Charles holdimg Henry's gun before he turns it on Henry, Reginald, and Right, using a couple shots to scare away Reginald.

Right, mad as all hell, beats the ever loving heebie jeebies out of Henry, smashing him into the platforming and daring, "You think you're some kind of hero, kid? You think just by taking us out, you're helping yourself!? All over some damned pilot and a rat you found!?"

Henry, very much offended and sick of all the salt, strikes Right with Reginald's gun, hitting the metal side of his head and even getting in an uppercut before Charles delivers a phenomenal kick that shatters Right's cybernetic eye.

Right falls back, knocked out cold from the hit.

Charles holds a hand out for Henry, who takes it with a clap and lets himself get picked up by Charles, though he does help.

"Good shot," Charles sighs. "And... thanks."

Henry hugs him, and Charles tenses before hugging back, crying as relief floods him. Relief that his friend actually kept his promise, which he totally knew he'd do, 100% without a doubt.

"Um, guys?" Ellie asks. "Shouldn't we...?"

Henry pats Charles and the two pull away, ready to blow this pop stand.

Without the detonator, they'll have to do this the risky-but-badass-if-this-works way.

Ellie throws the bomb onto the core and both Henry and Charles shoot it, making the bomb go off.

It knocks all three of them down, but don't worry they all come to.

They decide to take Right and Reginald, who got knocked out by the blast, and race to the escape pods, with guidance from Charles.

Henry fights a flashback of Valiant Hero before realizing Charles isn't leading them to the normal escape pods.

"You guys might not believe this, but this isn't just the room for the clan leader," Charles admits ehen they get to what used to be his room, which became Reginald's for a short time.

They load in and lock Right and Reginald in handcuffs, but Charles decides to pull one more card out of his sleeve: an 'override' feature that guides the escape pods to a certain location.

"Where dhould they go? The base or...?"

Henry and Ellie trade glances before Henry smirks and nods.

"The Wall," Ellie replies.

"You sure?"

'They gave us enough trouble, and they'll keep Dmitri off my back,' Henry signs as quickly as he can.

Charles sets the location and they leave just as the orbital station explodes.

All three take a sigh of relief, especially Charles.

"It's... It's over. We did it."

Ellie nods and puts a hand on his shoulder as Henry holds his hand on his other side and gives him a smile.

'It's all over.'

Charles rests his head on Henry's shoulder as Ellie moves to hold his hand as well, and lean on him as he lets himself cry.

CUT TO EARTH!!!!!

Galeforce paces back and forth at the base, waiting to hear a word from Henry, Ellie, and Charles.

Rupert has informed him that they have lost contact with the destroyer, which has been destroyed with the Toppat station.

Escape pods have been landing in The Wall, but there hasn't been a single report on Triple Threat.

Terrence sits in a chair with one leg folded over and doing that foot shake thing, because he's stressed.

Bill Bullet is also waiting, though he's keeping his eyes on the ground, and he's not talking about anything because Galeforce will kill him.

All three jump when they hear the sound of some sort of space craft landing near the base and rush to investigate with a lot of the soldiers.

They have to fight their way through as the door opens and Reginald and Right are thrown out.

Henry, Charles, and Ellie stumble out, their injuries having caught up to them, leaving them tired and needing some medical attention.

The soldiers are literally elated to see these three, even though Henry's shady, Ellie's also shady, and Charles is the youngest and best pilot. Some take Right and Reginald away to a cell before they're sent to The Wall, but the rest somewhat dogpile the trio, patting their backs, ruffling their hair, shaking their hands, and just celebrating the fact that they're all back on Earth and alright.

They make way for Galeforce, Terrence, and Bill, the corporal standing back as Terrence reunites with Henry and Ellie and Galeforce throws his arms around Charles.

After so much excitement, Charles passes out and is carried to the infirmary.

Through the crowd, Henry spots Bill, who gestures for him to follow, which he does.

Ellie sees this and also starts following, but Terrence stops her.

"Let's leave them be. Corporal kept saying he needed to talk to him alone."

Henry and Bill walk until they're a really good distance away and just stand in a clearing, watching the now clear sky that is missing the orbital station.

"Looks kinda empty without it, doesn't it?" Bill asks.

Henry shrugs, but nods all the same. 'When do I leave?' he signs instead.

Bill fights an eye roll and he pockets his sunglasses. "You know, I've seen a lot of crminals, but never ones that were selfish enough to do the right thing. Hell, I think I know a couple that would take over that orbital station instead of destroy it for someone they care about."

'They had it coming, after what happened.'

"If you say so." Bill passes the chaos readings to Henry, who reads them over as much as he can because he doesn't get a lot of it.

"You'd be surprised how much numbers matter. They go up when you're on your own, but they go down when you're surrounded by people to keep you in check, whether you know it or not. Call it whatever you want, strange, lucky, interesting."

Henry takes one more look at the readings before turning back to Bill, a smile growing on his face. 'You changed your mind?'

"As much of a good study you'd really be, yes, I have," Bill sighs. "Just do me a favor and don't make a habit of losing your friends, okay?"

Henry nods and returns the readings as he sprints bak to the base, almost running into Ellie.

"What'd he say?"

Henry smiles her and the message is clear:

He's not going anywhere.

The two hug and highfive, though they stop because they're sore and still a little injured.

They walk to the infirmary and are put in beds next to Charles, who's resting a little easier than they've seen him in a while.

"Fine work you three," Galeforce says as he joins them. "Just about every member of the Toppat Clan was sent to The Wall." He notices Charles stirring a little before resting again and gives a small smlie. "You three rest up now. You've earned it."

Galeforce leaves and both lie down, Charles opening his eyes and staring up at the ceiling.

"They're... really gone. We did it."

Neither speak as he continues.

"In my cell and when they made me the leader, I used to imagine destroying it myself. Just shooting it as much as I could before it all went up into smoke. I never thought we'd actually do it. I can't believe we did it."

From where they all lay, the three hold hands and fall asleep, the endeavor of the past year slipping away.

Henry in particular lets out a sigh as he drifts off, glad that all three of his friends are back and safe.

Outside the base, Terrence leans against the hood of a car and watches the sunset, and Reginald and a one armed Right be loaded into a van headed toward The Wall.

The two toppat leaders are not looking forward to their incarceration, but Reginald holds Right's human hand, which seems to at least simmer his temper a little bit.

"They make a cute couple, don't you think?"

"I'd say," Bill sighs as he types on a laptop on the ground; just an email to his workers and to Dmitri. "I'd be surprised if I heard there was a Wall wedding for the two of them."

"A wedding? WITHOUT me? And you call my son a criminal," Terrence gasps as he holds a hand on his chest.

Bill snickers and finishes up those emails. "Come on. We need to head back."

Terrence rolls his eye as Bill sets his laptop in the backseat.

"Do I have to stay in that same room all the time? Or can I have Henry's?"

Bill scowls at him.

"I like the idea of having a window, watching some sitcoms, and just keeping up a good appearance, sue me."

"Depends on how well we get along on the ride back."

Terrence watches Bill get in his seat and start the car and takes one last look at the base before he climbs into the passenger seat. "Hope you like country."

"Don't touch my damn car, Suave."

Terrence laughs as Bill fights a smirk, driving back to the CCC headquarters and leaving Triple Threat to rest and heal for future shenanigans and missions for the government.

[snowdice]

Road Trips and Missing Persons (Part 10)

Fandom: Sanders Sides

Relationships: Patton & Virgil, Virgil & Deceit, Logan & Patton, Emile & Remy, Roman & Remus & Janus

Characters: Patton, Virgil, Deceit, Remus, Roman, Logan, Emile, Remy

Summary: Patton was just getting groceries. The next thing he knew, there was a knife at his throat and he was an unwilling uber driver. Virgil’s on the run after the murder of his dad, and it’s not just his paranoia that’s telling him he’s being chased down. He has to get somewhere safe, somewhere he can trust, and all he has is a couple of stories from his dad and a name: “Green Bellow Foods and Dispensary.”

Notes: Secret Agents AU, knives, carjacking, kidnapping, murder mentioned, guns mentioned, pepper spray, blood mentioned, drugs mentioned, explosions (more to be added)

This is a fic I’ve been writing on study breaks that you have probably all already seen at this point. I’ve affectionately named it the Goblin Brain Fic because it’s helping my brain actually get motivated for studying. I’ve slightly edited it for wording and grammar, but not for content from my previous posts. Feel free to send in asks to direct it because I’m not 100% sure where this is going and you can help decide if you feel so inclined! You can see the process I went through to build this at this link.

Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6 Part 7 Part 8 Part 9 My Master Post

Janus could feel his heartbeat speed up at he looked at his phone, but he didn’t dare let that show on his face even though she couldn’t see him. He calmly clicked the talk button on his phone. “Hello, mother. How can I help you?” he asked.

“I’d like an update on the situation with the Gates boy,” she said.

“I’m currently on his trail,” Janus informed her. “He had an unfortunate head start because of Kinsley, but I have managed to figure out he went to the nearby grocery store and saw him on security footage. I should be making more progress soon.”

“I see,” she replied. “The boy used his phone.”

Janus took a half second to pause at that. “Well, that’s good for our aims,” Janus replied levelly. “I assume you were able to track the call.”

“Yes,” she said. “He was attempting to call his uncle. He has managed to get impressively far. I will send you the details of his location.” She paused. “Wait, it seems he’s currently attempting another call to an unknown number. Strange, there doesn’t seem to be a record of it in any database. You wouldn’t possibly know the number 499-555-0721.” Fuck. That was his other phone number… the phone number of the phone he broke earlier.

“No, I don’t,” Janus lied. God dammit. Why did he break that phone?

She hummed, seeming to accept that. “I see you are still at the grocery store. I’m sending people to meet up with you at that location.”

Oh fuck.

“Is that really necessary?” Janus asked, sounding bored. “Surely I can handle it myself.”

“It will be more efficient to have multiple people working together especially with a drive that far,” she said. He could tell by her tone that there was no room for argument.

“Of course,” Janus replied.

“Good. I have already sent them your location.” She hung up without another word.

Janus looked down at his phone. “Well,” he said. “I’m dead.”

“That bad, huh?” Remus asked.

“She’s sending people to ‘help’ me.”

“Shit.”

“You said the security cameras upload straight to the cloud, right?” Janus asked.

“Yep,” Remus confirmed.

“Well. No way out of it then.” His phone beeped with details about Virgil’s location. Calmly, Janus walked around the car and opened the door to get the atlas Remy had gotten him when he’d turned 16. He’d scoffed at it because of GPS, but he’d kept it even when he’d gotten rid of the car mother had given him for the same occasion. He opened the map of the state and circled the location Virgil was at on the map.

Just as he finished that, he was also forwarded the names and locations of the two goons coming for him. “Convenient,” he said glancing at their current positions. “Remus, remember all the times you’ve talked about wanting to blow this car to hell?”

“Yes!!” he said excitedly. “To be fair it’s any car, but yes!!!”

“Wait!” Roman said. “Why are we blowing up the car?”

“Distraction,” Janus replied. “The path they’re on should take them over Washington Bridge, so if we blow it up on that, it should delay them by quite a bit. Plus, mom can track the car and they’ll probably loop back trying to find me.”

“Isn’t there, like, a better idea, maybe?” Roman asked.

Remus reached over and put his hand over Roman’s mouth. “Shh, Roman, let me have this.” Roman shoved him away.

“We’ll go get one of your cars, drive mine to the bridge, and Remus can do his,” he waved his hand at him, “thing.”

“…I still don’t think.”

“Trust us, Ro-Ro.” Remus threw an arm around his shoulder.

“See, that makes me think this is even worse of an idea.”

“Look,” Janus bit out. “I know my mother and as soon as she figures out I’m fucking her over, they’ll be literally gunning for us. Blowing up the car will delay them as well as destroy the tracker and any information they can get from the car.

“Okay,” Roman agreed, though he still didn’t seem comfortable with it. Apparently, he’d gotten all of the responsibility in the womb.

Speaking of… Remus had already taken the laptop and packed it back up before throwing it none to gently into the trunk. Roman winced, but Janus shrugged. It was going to get destroyed anyway. In fact, Janus tossed his phone into the trunk with it.

Janus couldn’t resist smiling at the excitement in Remus’s eyes as he slammed the trunk closed and made his way to the passenger seat.

“We’re taking my car though,” Roman insisted. “I’m not getting in his death trap.”

Having seen the car for himself, Janus nodded. “Agreed.”

 They drove back to get Roman’s car and then Remus requested grabbing something from his own car.

“Why do you even have that in your car?!” Roman shouted from his car’s window as Remus unpacked explosives from his trunk.

“In case of emergencies!”

“What type of emergen-”

“This type!”

Janus just shook his head, and Remus packed the explosives into the trunk of Janus’s car and then himself into the passenger seat. Then they drove off towards the bridge only about 10 minutes away. Remus wiggled in excitement in his seat.

“Calm down,” Janus attempted to snap, but it just came out fond. Disgusting.

Remus just gave him a dopey smile.

Janus turned back to the road. “I hope you know this means your cover is blown as well.”

“Yeah, ah well, it was only a matter of time anyway,” he said, shrugging. “I will have to move though. That’s going to suck.”

Janus hummed noncommittally.

“Ooo, we should go in on an apartment together!”

Janus glanced over at him in surprise. “What?”

“And we can get a cat!” Remus said instead of answering him. “I love cats, but my current apartment won’t let me have one. That’ll be on the list of things to look for: an apartment that allows pets.”

“Why would we be moving in with each other?” Janus asked.

“Well, you’re not going to be living with mommy dearest after today and we’re best friends.”

“We’re partners,” Janus replied blankly.

“And best friends!”

“I… you… we’ll discuss this later. I have too much to think about right now.”

Remus shrugged and startled rambling about how ‘big the bomb is going to be.’ Meanwhile, Janus did his best to firmly shoved the words “best friends” as far down into his subconscious as possible.

They arrived at the bridge quickly and Janus parked his car in the middle of it; Roman parked at the other end of the bridge.

 “Well, don’t leave anything in the car,” Janus said. Remus nodded, back to bouncing up and down in his seat at the prospect of the imminent explosion.

Janus trusted Remus to know what he was doing with the explosives and simply walked away from his car towards Roman’s. There was a loud explosion when they were about 200 feet away from the car. Janus suppressed a flinch.

“You could have waited until we were completely off the bridge,” Janus commented mildly.

“But we look cooler like this,” Remus argued with a manic grin. “Plus, I saw a car coming towards the bridge on the other side and didn’t want them to get on the bridge before the explosion.”

Roman had his window rolled down when they approached. “Remus is in back.”

Remus put a hand over his heart like he’d been wounded. “I’m your brother. I should get shot-gun.”

“I am not allowing you access to the radio. I’ve been on too many road trips with you.”

“Dad’s the one who insists on playing a mix of geek rock and explicit rap music which he completely doesn’t understanding the lyrics of,” Remus pointed out with a pout.

“And I should have disowned the both of you years ago. Get in the back seat.”

“But…”

Janus ended the sibling dispute by getting in the passenger seat himself.

Remus grumbled as he got in the back seat. Janus opened the atlas and found their current location on the map. “Get on the interstate heading East,” he instructed Roman.

The question of how on Earth they were going to find Virgil when he was moving rather quickly crossed Janus’s mind, but he smothered it. They’d stop and do some investigation once they were closer to his current location. It would be fine.

Roman glanced over at him as he started to drive and sighed. “You may have control of the radio as passenger,” he offered. “Just, please do not betray me.”

Janus sent him a wry smile and let himself get distracted messing with the radio. He flipped through a few stations before landing on one that seemed to be devoted mostly to Latin pop.

“Yes,” Roman said. “A great decision.”

“No,” Remus whined when he stopped on that station and leaned back. “You’re supposed to find the one that annoys Roman the most. It’s in the spirit of the road trip.”

“That seems ridiculous,” Janus commented.

“It is,” Roman agreed.

“Noooo. Embrace the spirit of the road trip.”

“Well finding a station that Roman likes seems to annoy you the most. So, I guess I am ‘embracing the spirit of the road trip.’”

Remus made a mournful sound and Roman chortled. “You’re my new favorite person,” Roman said.

Janus found himself smiling despite himself.

“Just for that, I get naming rights for our cat,” Remus informed him seriously.

“What cat?” Roman asked.

“Janus and I are going to get an apartment together since his mom’s going to try to murder us both, and we’re going to get a cat.”

“Ah,” Roman said as though that made total sense to him. Janus guessed growing up with Remus made it easy to accept such statements. “Don’t let him name it. He’ll name it something stupid.”

“I will not!”

“You tried to name our hamster Sexy Dorito!” Roman exclaimed and then looked at Janus. “Who names a hamster… who names anything Sexy Dorito??” he asked.

“The same person who accidently died his hair neon pink on a covert mission,” Janus answered.

“Hey!” Remus said, leaning forward to insert his face between the driver and passenger seats. “No!”

“Put your seatbelt on, Remus,” Janus ordered.

“Oh, you’ve got to tell me about that one,” Roman said.

“No! Don’t betray me, Janus!”

Janus did, in fact, betray him.

Want to read more? Click below!

AO3 Part 11

[ryttu3k]

could you post the ending where you side with the SI and Julian gets pissed off by your decision? I also noticed that Julian never really introduces himself to anyone or says a simple goodbye to the courier, like, ever. I mean even after ten years or so he just resumes the conversation as if nothing happened. Not even the courier calls him out on this. I wonder why that is lol

Heh, regarding Julian’s conversational patterns, there’s a really interesting post here on friendship degradation mechanisms with ADHD! And Julian absolutely has ADHD.

And for the SI ending, ooh, I haven't got that one written down. I do want it handy for reference, so time for a speedrun with my SI-affiliated Toreador! Here's all the dialogue from the SI attack onwards.

Before you can speak, Lettow jumps up.

"What?" Julian says.

Your phone chimes. You run, throwing yourself out the door just as the missile hits.

Fragments of stone and metal fly over your head. You get clear, reaching your Escalade, and look back at the blown-apart warehouse.

Flames are everywhere. Your Beast screams in wild terror and only the greatest exercise of Willpower keeps you under control, but your body shakes uncontrollably. You have only one clear thought—run! Still, you grit your teeth and force yourself to look around.

Only the vampires survived the blast, and they look badly hurt. Prince Lettow took a direct hit; his clothes hang in tatters, like a shroud, and his skin is blackened. Julian and his helmeted assistant, Z, are burned and stunned. Julian's servants are gone.

Hunters are inbound. You see Bearcats and Humvees, police cruisers and Buick Avenirs. The floodlights turn on, illuminating the burning warehouse and hiding almost a hundred hunters in the glare as they advance.

A bullet zips past your head as a hunter in militia gear opens fire. An FBI agent waves for him to stop—it looks like there are orders for you not to be harmed—but that's hardly a perfect defense. You duck behind the Sprinter van. It might be time to get out of here.

There's just one problem: Julian is standing between you and your Escalade, a karambit in both hands. He spins the little blades.

"You did this," he says. "You betrayed us all."

[The sight of so much fire means that you are now in a fear frenzy and cannot think clearly unless you focus your Willpower or escape.]

> "I tried to warn you! I told you we were monsters, and I told you I would stop you."

Another explosion obliterates the computer shop. Bricks and pieces of rebar rain down.

Julian screams and rushes you, quick as the wind. Then he breaks away before he gets into karambit range. Even as he moves, his silhouette breaks up, becoming a pixelated gray blur as he fades from sight and circles you, looking for a chance to strike.

> I need to talk him down. "You can still escape, Julian. Don't let them kill you here." [CHA/MAN+Persuasion]

"How could you do this?" Julian cries.

"To save people!" you say. "And I'm trying to save you. Run, before it's too late!"

He looks at the raging inferno all around him, the ruins of his project, then back at you. Then he fades away.

That's the last time you see him.

More gunfire arcs around you and hammers the Sprinter van. You duck, then get into your Escalade and get away from the burning warehouse.

So I thought that was it, but hey! Apparently Lettow wanted his say, too!

You slide into heavy traffic, scanning the late-night vehicles for signs of pursuit. No hunters, no cops. Good. You have a moment to think as you scan the streets.

Front, back, left, right. Nothing. If you breathed, you'd be breathing a little easier. You're just turning your thoughts to the next step of this desperate plan when a shadow passes over you.

You look up. Riga.

Then you crane your head out of your window.

Something like Riga, but with a wingspan like a light aircraft.

Lettow is following you, and it looks like he cares more about revenge for your "betrayal" than about preserving the Masquerade.

And here come the hunters: Buick SUVs close in on your location. Others are on a nearby bridge. They're tracking Lettow, trying to get close enough to open fire with rifles or even heavier munitions. You're not sure Donati cares about collateral damage anymore. The SI will blow holes in Tucson to take down its Prince.

This is it, you realize. The Eagle Prince plans to destroy you here and now. But with so many hunters around him, he'll only have one shot at you. If you can buy yourself a few seconds and slip out of his sight, he won't be able to try again.

But how?

> My supernaturally keen eyes will let me spot alleys, vacant lots, and other places where I can hide my SUV from Lettow. [Auspex]

You drive slowly, looking for little-used routes that Lettow won't be able to track from above.

Tucson is a low, flat city, but finally you spot a messy construction site next to a parking garage.

You turn hard, cutting off oncoming traffic and racing into the construction site as Lettow dives for you.

But just as you planned, he has to back off. Tarps cover most of the site, and he'd get tangled if he dove. You keep moving, weaving through narrow alleys, then blowing through a Chevron station—the covering over the pumps prevents Lettow from reaching you easily.

Then you reverse right into an unfinished apartment complex that you saw last week, going straight through the building itself.

And he's lost you.

You roll out with your lights off and look up. Lettow is on a nearby building, scanning the darkness with his golden eyes.

That's when the SI lights him up. Heedless that they're operating in the middle of Tucson, dozens of agents and soldiers open fire with rifles and truck-mounted weapons.

Lettow lurches in midair. But he's still an elder vampire. The huge eagle dives, scythes through a truck full of agents, killing five in a single pass, and then rises into the air, higher, higher, until he and Riga disappear into the clouds.

The last you see of Prince Lettow, he's flying east, away from Tucson, out of his fallen domain.

You disappear into traffic, getting away from the SI as quickly as you can.

An inescapable element of existing as a vampire is ignorance. The Masquerade is a shadow that swallows clarity and understanding. People suspect and imply, but they rarely know for certain.

Your final nights in Tucson are frightening but uninteresting. You check the news, divest from your real estate holdings, and listen to word on the street.

Over the next few nights, during which time the news reports a few strange acts of violence, a terrorist attack, and a zoo escape, you learn that Prince Lettow was almost certainly destroyed. Dove perished in a midday raid on her haven, and nothing remains of the Viper but a gutted heap.

The city's Kindred are scattered and leaderless, easy pickings for hunters that are now free to operate during the day, dragging vampires out of their havens and destroying them.

Despite the chaos in the shadow-world you inhabit, Tucson looks the same. The city's downtown is not ablaze, the national guard hasn't been mobilized. It's just another shadow-war for vampires to fight.

And it's time to leave.

Your plans to escape Tucson run into surprisingly little red tape as you sell your bungalow and liquidate your other assets.

You got what you could out of your deal with the SI, but now it's time to go.

Go where? Tucson never felt like home, but it was, at least, a base of operations. You can't just stick to the road forever; the highways are too dangerous right now, with the SI active and your bridges with the Camarilla burned. You see a few possible futures.

From what you hear, Seattle is a key city for the Camarilla's blood trade. You could head up north and, if you have enough venture capital, try to strike it rich, really establish yourself.

But maybe money isn't everything. Could you work with hunters to stop more Cainite depredations? From what you hear, Dallas/Fort Worth is now completely out of control, with open fighting in the streets among different vampire factions. If the SI trusts you enough, you could return there and try to protect humanity from the predators in their midst.

But you still feel the alien vitae inside of you: the 2100 Formula. You've heard that a scholar of the Blood dwells in Denver, someone who could answer a lot of your questions. With the briefcase full of Julian's Program research, you should be able to make inroads there. The only difficulty will be finding this scholar, and avoiding the hunters who suspect what kind of power you carry in your Blood. If you head for Denver, you'll have to hope that you've left the Masquerade intact enough here that you can reach Colorado without an army of hunters following you.

Finally…maybe you could just try to live a life. You're dead, of course, but you could try existing as a person, if only for a few years. You've heard that San Francisco is a good place for that sort of thing ever since the old Prince left for LA. Maybe you could cultivate your Humanity and try to live, instead of simply exist.

> I drive east to Dallas/Fort Worth. I'll use my Inquisition contacts to fight the vampires there. [Second Inquisition Hostility]

One month later...

Dallas is burning.

Not literally, not really. From your vantage atop this parking garage, you can't see any fires. But you know that the Inquisition has torn through the city, scattered its warring factions, dragged predators screaming into sunlight every day for the past two weeks. You know all this because you've commanded them from the shadows.

You finish your work tonight.

"We're the masters of this city," one of D'Espine's beautiful ghouls says through bloody teeth. "Even if you kill me, we'll always be here. Feeding and taking and ruling from the shadows. We are immortal! We—"

The other hunters have heard enough. They toss him off the roof and head to their van.

You get back in your SUV because your final target is on the move. D'Espine—the last Cainite of any real power in Dallas—has left the Cinderblock.

This is how you've succeeded in Dallas: not just through your network of hunters, but because you know how to move through a city. As the Cainites have crawled into their holes, believing themselves safe, you've never stopped moving, never stopped striking. And now you're almost done.

You roll out of the parking garage and point your Escalade at the Cinderblock. By tomorrow night you'll be done here, and you'll hit the road.

RIP Lettow and Dove. Julian did get out, though!

[sunnybeas]

saints in chains

Chapter One of Saints In Chains- wait out the plastic weather

summary:  Gavin meets Connor's little brother and finds out love at first sight is real  

cross posted on ao3

The first time Gavin Reed sees the RK900 he doesn’t have time to really look at him. It is an active crime scene that’s taking up the entire street and Gavin holes himself behind the barricade with Chen at his side. Teeth grit and hand sweating as he gripped his handgun, he only sees a white blur stride by and hoist itself over the barricade.

A curse is halfway out of his mouth because of course a civilian would get cocky and bolt but no- the damn thing rips the door off the hinges of a car and surges forward. And Gavin is sitting there, mouth open, in full view of the shooter. He drops down beside Chen again, who is equally as fucking gob smacked.

“Did you fucking see that?” Gavin demanded.

“Of course, I did! Did Fowler hire a fucking Terminator? What was that?” she asked back, rolling to her knees to peek over the car again.

Gavin scooted in next to her, eyes squinted. He felt like an idiot, gawking at the figure in white sprinting forward, car door acting as a shield and taking all the spray. It takes a leap and absolutely bodies the shooter, tossing the car door aside like a dinner plate. Its hand crunches the AK in its hand, and it misfires in the shooter’s hand. The fucker screams as the figure lifts him and slams him onto the concrete, knee on his back, hands pinned there securely.

“Holy shit, holy shit, holy shit- “Gavin chanted, because the figure looks up and he’s half fucking sure he recognizes Connor’s smug little face. It’s different, though, and Gavin can’t quite pinpoint how because of the distance.

“Well done, see, I knew he’d do well.”

And that- that’s Connor’s peppy voice from behind him. Frowning, Gavin spins on his heel.

“What the fuck is happening here?” He asked, sharply.

Connor and Anderson were dressed all up in their vests. Gavin snorted at the sight of Connor in his. He had seen the android take more bullets than he could count. Had almost put one in him more than a few times.

The LED in Connor’s temple spins yellow briefly. “He has minor abrasions. Otherwise a near perfect introduction.” He smiled, too fucking bright and cheerful for Gavin, who was getting sick just looking at him.

“Con, dear, sweetheart, love, please make sense. What was that?” Chen finally cut in.

“My brother.” Connor replied simply, punctuating it with that dopey smile of his. His big ole doe eyes lifted past them and he rocked on his heels before starting forward.

Gavin turned to follow when he caught sight of their blur. And holy fuck. Holy shit, Gavin didn’t think they built androids like that. Connor’s ‘brother’ was a massive specimen, towering over the shooter, eyeing the suspect wearily with eyes so pale they may as well have been white.

It takes Gavin about five seconds to deduce that this thing, this android, was basically Connor on steroids. If that were something they could do, anyway. He was taller, a good foot or so, and he was fucking jacked, his arms thicker, shoulders broader. He looked scary as shit, his jaw sharper, wider, his eyes set in deeper and looking down at them all with those dead looking eyes.

He was hot. Like really, insanely, one of the hottest things Gavin had ever seen. And he hadn’t even looked his way yet. But he couldn’t tear his eyes away from him. It. Whatever.

“Holy shit, just take a picture for your spank bank, creep.” Tina scoffed, elbowing him sharply.

“Chen, shut the fuck up.” Gavin hissed, his neck and ears burning at being caught checking out a fucking android. One with Connor’s face too.

The statement seemed to gain the android’s attention, though, because he looked up from Connor and stared directly at Gavin. Gavin couldn’t get a read on him, couldn’t eek the slightest bit of emotion from the thing’s blank ass face. His pale eyes flickered briefly over Gavin, almost sizing him up. Head tilted, eyes half lidded, the android regarded him for more than a few seconds. It was deliberate. Was it trying to intimidate him?

“RK?” Connor’s voice broke through and the android looked away from Gavin, finally, to return his attention to Connor.

“Shit, shit, shit.” Gavin cursed, turning on his heel to Chen. “Come on, we don’t need to be here anymore. Thing one n’ two got it.”

They started back to Chen’s patrol car. She widened her stride to keep up with how fast Gavin was walking.

Chen tossed her head back to laugh. “Look at you, lil’ Gavin Reed running scared from some sexy robot. Gav, did you see his pecs? Or his arms? Why did they give an android an ass that- “?

Gavin groaned. “I fucking saw! Cyberlife’s a bunch of fucking perverts. Holy shit, Tina.” He scrubbed his face with his hand.

Tina clambered into the driver’s seat, grinning. “He better be at the station.”

And fuck- Gavin hadn’t even considered that.

-

As luck would have it, God fucking hated Gavin Reed. He had just settled into his desk when Connor came striding in, Anderson at his side and leading their perp and the fucking Iron Giant trailing behind. Immediately Gavin looked towards Chen, who was practically vibrating in her seat. She shot him a grin and a wink before standing up from her seat.

Anderson spoke lowly to Connor before nodding and taking the perp to the back. Which left Connor standing there with his grumpy looking twin. Chen chose this moment to strike.

“Hey, Connor, who’s this?” She asked.

Connor beamed, clearly tickled fucking pink that someone was taking an interest in his little pet project. He lifted a hand and gestured to the android beside him. “This is RK, my little brother. He moved here and Fowler offered him a position. Today was his trial. I’m fairly sure he exceeded Fowler’s expectations.” Connor reported, absolutely glowing with pride.

Gavin snorted at his desk. Little? Little wasn’t a word to describe that ‘droid.

“I’m Tina Chen, nice to meet you.” Chen offered her hand, smiling politely in that way of hers. Tina brought out the good in everyone.

The android hesitated, studying her hand before taking it and shaking it carefully. “Nice to meet you, Officer Chen.” And oh- his voice was Connor’s but pitched lower.

It sounded surprisingly good. Fuck. Gavin hated him. Hated his pretty, stupid face.

“Gav, come say hi to the new guy!” Chen called, turning to face him with a wide, smug smile on her face.

Gavin decided he hated her too. No more coffee runs or donuts for her. She was dead to him.

“I’m good.” He said, instead.

Connor frowned. The big guy didn’t do anything, just stared. Shit.

“RK and Hank are going to be interrogating the shooter. I’ll be reviewing the footage if anyone has any need for me.” Connor informed Tina.

“Gavin and I can help with that!” Tina blurted out.

Connor blinked, clearly surprised. “You want to help me?” His eyes flickered uncertainly to Gavin, who was making a face, his middle finger up and pointed to Connor.

“I want to see that asshole getting his up close and personal.” Tina said. “Reed won’t admit it, but he does too.”

Gavin again held his middle finger up, though neither Connor or Tina were looking his way. He, instead, caught the attention of RK. And Gavin swore, he fucking swore, he saw the flicker of a smile on his face.

“Okay, that’s fine then.” Connor was still uncertain, but Tina was insistent.

He wasn’t sure why until they were seated all together, huddled up in front of the screen.

Seeing it from afar had been one thing but holy shit, seeing RK900 in action up close was a whole different experience.

“Holy shit.” Gavin rasped out, watching as he ripped the car door with his bar hands from the hinges. He sat tall in his seat.

RK hadn’t stopped, hadn’t faltered once as the shooter had let loose a barrage. He had just driven forward, expression drawn, brow furrowed. And then he had crushed the barrel of the gun like it were made of cheap plastic, ignoring the blast of the misfire and splatter of thirium on his open palm. He lifted the perp up by the coat.

“God, I wish that were me.” Gavin murmured, sinking into his seat. His eyes tracked how fluidly RK moved.

Tina choked out a laugh from beside him. “You’re a fucking mess.”

Connor frowned, so severely that his stupid forehead dented in from the faux wrinkles.

“Please don’t objectify RK in front of me.” He requested, weakly.

“Connor, where the fuck have you been hiding my teenage wet dream from?” Gavin demanded, emboldened by RK’s absence.

Connor’s head bowed and he rubbed at his temples needlessly.

“Gavin, that’s his baby brother!” Tina chided, smacking at his arm, though she wore a broad grin on her lips. She loved Gavin when he was in a mood like this.

“Baby brother my fucking ass, look at him- “

“You wish he were fucking- “

“I am literally begging you to stop.” Connor interjected.

“Listen, I’m trying to do some begging myself here, Connor, so help me out here.” Gavin continued.

Connor let out a pained groan and dropped his head completely into his palms in the same moment Tina let out a cackling laugh, her head tossed back.

“You’re intolerable.” Connor accused, shaking his head as he stood up. “I brought this for research purposes, and you’ve ruined it.”

“Wish your brother would ruin me.” Gavin mumbled.

Connor paused, his LED blipping red before he promptly turned on his heel and strode quickly out of the room. In his absence, the two dissolved into laughter.

“I think you broke him this time. Anderson is gonna be on your ass for traumatizing his boyfriend.” Tina snorted, wiping tears from her eyes.

Gavin reached forward and rolled the vid back, taking extra care to watch how RK had lifted the man with absolutely no effort. Oh. This might become a problem.

“If you’re done, Fowler wants to speak to you.” Connor poked his head around through the door again, frowning sourly at the screen and where it had paused.

Gavin sighed and forced himself to his feet. He tossed the remote Chen’s way.

“It’s not going to be as much fun without you.” She complained.

“Just enjoy the eye candy, Chen.” Gavin shrugged, following Connor down the hall.

Just looking at Connor, the differences between he and his younger counterpart were drastic. Their faces were eerily similar but RK’s had a sharpness where Connor’s was soft. Connor was clearly meant to assimilate where RK looked the complete opposite. Like he was meant to be identified as an android. What had he been made for that he was built that mean looking?

Hands shoved into his pockets; Gavin turned to the door of Fowler’s office. Knocking twice, he stepped in. Directly into the personal space of RK, who did not budge even as Gavin knocked his shoulder clumsily into his mid arm. And Christ on a fucking cracker, Gavin’s head barely measured to his shoulder. He swallowed hard.

“Reed, you meet RK yet?” Fowler asked, shifting in his seat just slightly to face him.

“Uh, sort of.” He took a long step back, hands curling to fists in his jacket pocket.

“Well, better get the introductions out now. He’s your new partner.” He paused, eyes squinting up at Gavin, waiting for the explosion.

RK looked down, extended his hand which was going to swallow Gavin’s in it. Even his hands were built big. Vaguely, Gavin wondered how they would feel-

“It’s nice to formally meet you. I’m RK.”

Gavin had been right before. This was going to be a big fucking problem.

[atlas-of-a-human-soul]

The catch (E.D. AU)

Summary: Being a CIA agent and getting tasked with taking down a notorious assassin, Ethan’s life gets a lot more complicated when a web of lies reveals just how clueless he’s been.

Warnings: swearing, sexual innuendos 

Ethan has a complicated life. One would say he chose his life as it is, to keep his job hidden from everyone he loves while being a part of one of the most secretive, successful CIA teams in history. That’s right! He’s an agent with a hundred percent success rate and he’s not shy about flaunting it either. It’s his pride, the ultimate proof of his superiority.

Though he loves his job, it comes with a lot of bad as well. For instance, his success rate means nothing to the world because to the world, Ethan is a businessman with a growing company that requires him to travel a lot. His family believes the lie too, let alone the world. The agency made sure of it.

Agent Doomsday is what the criminals call him. A ghost in the system, an anomaly they can’t trace, almost as if he doesn’t exist outside his job. It’s also the only name they have - to them, Ethan Dolan doesn’t exactly put the fear of death in the bones. Oh, if they only knew.

However, Ethan Dolan certainly had a nice little life outside his duties. Lucky enough to charm the dress of a very ravenous woman, Ethan was happily in love and eager to come home to her unscathed. He could always count on her lips to seal every ache, every wound and while she did ask questions before kissing it better, Ethan wasn’t a top agent for nothing, giving her a believable excuse each time.

On his way to his last briefing meeting, prepared to receive his next target, Ethan picked up his vibrating phone with a gleeful smile.

“Hey there pretty lady.” Playful and romantic as ever, his lips pursed as he awaited the sound of her voice on the other end of the call, missing her after almost a week of not seeing her. Had he not decided to speed things up, he’d still be in the field with his mind in the gutter. He had big plans for their reunion, that much he could promise.

“Handsome! Was that message real or are you teasing me senselessly without a cause?” She bit her lower lip, trying to restrain a wide smile dangerously spreading across her face, hoping her boyfriend truly intended to come home that night and she wouldn’t have to hug his pillow until his lingering scent calmed her enough to fall into a deep slumber.

“I’ll be home in time for dinner. And I plan on being a sinner.” He whispered the last bit, looking around to make sure no one heard his flirtation though he wouldn’t really mind it. His girl is gorgeous and he didn’t care what people thought about them or how he chose to talk to her after yet another successful mission that really made him horny as hell. The adrenaline rush still didn’t stop raging through his body and he was itching to release it all in bed, to have her quake under his touch and scream with every thrust. But he didn’t want her involved with the agency, so he hid his happiness as much as he could. For her safety. It was always for her. If it were up to him, he’d flaunt her just as much as his supremacy in the agency.

“I’m counting on that.” She chuckled. “I’ll make your favorite.” And that’s when he chuckled.

“Well, I’m counting on that! I just gotta get through this meeting and I’ll be home before you know it.” And while it was hard, both parties put their phones down and got to work - Y/N with cooking among other things and Ethan with the meeting where he got a chance to flaunt like a peacock.

“Agent, we have a new target prepared for you.”

“Already?” Ethan raised an eyebrow, wondering why he can’t get a damn week to spoil his girl rotten. She definitely deserves it.

“I’m afraid it’s of utmost importance. A group of assassins we’ve been investigating finally slipped up. We caught one out of 3 and we have some information.” Eyebrows furrowed in concentration, Ethan tapped his chin with the tip of his index finger as he imagined this scum. An ugly, middle aged man with buck teeth and beady eyes. That’s what he saw in his mind.

“The deadliest of all, Blackbird, is stationed in our city and we need you to take this assassin down. We know an alias, but it’s up to you to track them down and get the job done before we have more dead on our hands.” Slipping the folder in front of Ethan, his boss adds:“Good luck agent.”

As the doorbell rings, Y/N was quick to run to the door, opening it with elation and she didn’t wait for Ethan to enter before throwing herself at him, her arms firmly around him as he tries to steady himself. His suit would wrinkle, but she didn’t care.

“Whoa! You really missed me, didn’t you?” A nervous chuckle escapes him as he hold her waist and picks her up gently, keeping her close, closer than he could in his dreams and imagination.

“I’d say you feel the same.” She smirked, pulling back to press her forehead against his, not rebelling when he puts her feet back on the ground but his hands remain at her sides.

A heavy sigh escapes him, his eyes closed as she opens her own, looking up at him with worry etched onto her face. “Tired?” She questions, her voice small and sweet, enveloping him in a comforting haze he could never have enough of.

“Very.” Ethan mumbles, leaning down to peck her lips lightly before walking toward the dining room, the smell of his favorite food making him hypersalivate. Glancing back at her over his shoulder, Ethan feels his heart pick up pace.

“You look beautiful and this smells…amazing.” Pulling out her chair, Ethan seats his wonderful girlfriend before sitting himself, but not before sending her a quick smile.

Clearing his throat, he dug into his food, wondering how his next mission will go for he never had more to lose than in this particular moment where everything was so perfect, his life peaceful and in harmony.

“Did something happen?” Y/N speaks up, breaking the veil of silence that befell them, unsure what to say or do ti make the weight on his shoulders just a little lighter.

“No. It’s fine. Just had a long week of missing you.” Smooth. Charming. That’s what she loves about him. He’s always been a perfect gentleman but very vague about his job. And it didn’t bother her before, but unless he had unexplained bruises or wounds he usually blamed boxing or gym training with hiw twin brother. She liked giving him the benefit of doubt, but his excuses weren’t as believable as he wanted them to be.

She wanted to try and talk to him, to get the truth for once in their relationship, but her cellphone rang and she decided to try after she has him unraveled in her bed.

“It could be work. I’ll be just a second.” Excusing herself, Y/N left Ethan alone with his thoughts - possibly the worst thing she could do to a man who is facing a dilemma of a lifetime. Questioning what’s right and what’s not, looking for meaning and clues on what he should do and to what extent had left him sick to his stomach even next to the very tasty meal Y/N prepared for him.

“You were quick.” Ethan speaks up as Y/N comes back to the table, her eyes set on her food as she remained motionless. Staring silently, her lips parted ever so slightly, Y/N wasn’t sure how to proceed.

“Penny for your thoughts?” Ethan’s attempt to spark up conversation had caused her to look up at him, her gaze fixed on him like he’s the only thing that matters in the world.

“I was thinking about how you’ll die.” She stated plainly, her voice light and sweet as ever but her yes are cold and unforgiving.

“Oh? That’s an odd thing to think about.” Ethan swallowed thickly, praying not to choke on his own spit as he stared back at the woman he loved dearly.

“Is it? You never think about death? How it will stop your heart when you least expect it? Or how that happens to other people with or without your interference? Or do you think about my death?” She all but snarled the last but, her left hand resting on the table as the right one remained under, hidden from sight.

“You know.” Ethan breaths out, his eyes widening as he took notice of her death glare and even more so of the loss of innocence she had about her.

“That you’re an agent tasked to kill me? Yeah, no shit!” She raised her voice slightly, her heart beating out her chest, trying to break the bony confines.

“And you’re an assassin tasked with killing me.” Ethan leans back, raising his left eyebrow as he smirks. “Guess we both lied.”

“Were you about to slit my throat during sex? In the bed we bought together?” She narrows her eyes at him, her lips set in a scowl as Ethan snickers.

“Seriously? I literally just found out you’re a fucking murderer and you’re accusing me of being the one that’s plotting your demise? How were you going to do it?” Y/N’s lips twitch as she glances down at the dinner Ethan half finished, smirking once he realizes what she’s insinuating.

“You wouldn’t.” He says quietly in disbelief, voice just above a whisper and her smirk grows into a smile.

“Are you sure about that? Agent Doomsday?” Quirking an eyebrow, she stood up, revealing her hidden left hand and the gun she held so tightly, as tightly as she held on for her life. One she wasn’t ready to quit just yet.

“I will allow you to go to the hospital and get your stomach pumped and I expect you not to come looking for me. That’s a one time offer. The next time I see you, you might find out why I’m the deadliest assassin of the decade.”

Slipping out the back, Y/N ran for her life, very much aware the story isn’t finished yet and Ethan wouldn’t give up until she’s two feet under. And despite her better judgement, she sent him a letter the same night before skipping town and laying low until she forms a proper plan. A letter she knew would make him want to play.

When Ethan came home with his stomach pumped for no reason because after the food went through extensive toxicology testing, it came back clean, he was pissed and heartbroken, angry and hurt. But when he found the letter, the paper scented with her perfume, he found himself in the game of a lifetime.

“Catch me if you can.”

PART 2

Tags: @beinscorpio​ @godlydolans​ @dolanstwintuesday​ @ethanhes​ @peacedolantwins​ @heyits-claire​ @dolandolll​

[its-always-the-witching-hour]

Chapter 5 of Apocalyptic Au - Sanders Sides

Word count - 1422

Pairings - Some platonic stuff, but nothing major

Warnings - (spoilers) panic attacks, zombies, blood, a bit of self doubt

Characters - Virgil Tempest, Roman Regalis, Logan Thesis, Patton Chastity

Previous chapter - Next chapter

“Pat, you are one of the best and sweetest beings in existence, but for the love of all things Disney, could you please hurry up!?”

“Sorry kiddo,” Paton giggled as he stuffed his possessions into a rucksack, “but I’m going as fast as I can.”

“Roman, please do as some people say, and ‘chill’” Logan looked over at the person in question, who was bouncing up and down with unrestraint energy.

“No can do, pocket calculator, I am going to see my brother today, and I literally can’t wait, so can we go already?”

“…and done! Let’s go!” Patton slung the bag over his shoulder and joined the others.

“Yes!” Roman took off, sprinting ahead of the others.

“Does he know where we’re going?” Virgil, who was slightly alarmed at Roman’s eagerness, asked the others, “because I’m pretty sure I came from over there,” he pointed in the opposite direction of where Roman was currently running at top speed, which was slightly faster than the average dog.

“You are correct that you came from over there, Anxiety. I am not entirely sure that Roman knows that either.”

“I’ll go get him.” Patton started to jog after the overly enthusiastic teen, when Virgil grabbed his arm and pulled him gently back.

“Not yet, I – uh, it’s just,” Virgil sighed and looked away, “what if Remus is actually dead, and Roman will think that it’s my fault because I ran away, and it’s actually probably my fault because I left them and Roman will hate me and you guys will hate me and I’ll have no where to go so I will probably die of starvation or get eaten by the zombies, or, or,” he realized he was hyperventilating, and Patton and Logan were looking at him with concern.

“Anxiety, even if the worst did happen, we wouldn’t kick you out. You’re our friend, even if we haven’t known you for very long.” Patton tried to hug Virgil, but he flinched away at the first touch of Patton’s hands. “Please kiddo…”

Virgil started to rake his hands through his hair, pulling at it harshly. “You don’t understand; it ALWAYS ends up like this, with me running away from the things that matter.”

Logan gently took Virgil’s hands, and held them in front of him to prevent him from pulling at his hair.

“Anxiety, look at me.” Virgil slowly raised his head up to meet Logan’s calm gaze. “We are not mad at you, and we will never force you to try and survive on your own. You will always be welcome with us. Now, could you please hug Patton while I go get Roman.”

Virgil nodded mutely, and allowed himself to be pulled into an embrace by Patton, his shoulders shaking as silent tears ran down his face. It seemed like they stood there for eternity, with Patton rubbing soothing circles on Virgil’s back as he sucked in heaving breaths, attempting to get his breathing under control.

“What did I miss?” Roman, who was slightly out of breath stood next to them, watching with a mix of confusion and concern.

“Uh, nothing.” Virgil backed out of the hug, wiping furiously at his eyes. Patton looked slightly disappointed that the hug had ended, but gave Virgil his respective space.

“We were just waiting for you, Roman.” Patton smiled brightly at him, but he still didn’t look convinced.

“Okay? Well, can we go now? This time Anxiety can lead, because he knows where Remus is.”

Virgil, who was still feeling the effects of the panic attack, tried to gather his emotions and put on a calm look. “Sure, if I remember the way, that is.”

“Let’s go!”

 ------

“Where are we?”

“For the last time, I don’t know!”

“Kiddo, try to calm down.”

“No Patton, you don’t understand; Dee and Remus could be in serious trouble right now!”

“Anxiety, it would be highly unlikely that in this short amount of time something as bad as you are thinking of has happened.”

Virgil stopped in his tracks and spun around to face Logan. “Have you forgotten that the last time I saw them we were being chased by zombies!? Or do you just not care?”

“Kiddo, breathe.” Patton placed a hand on Virgil’s arm, “Logan didn’t mean it that way. He was just saying to think of positive outcomes instead of just negative ones.”

“Sorry Logan.”

“It’s okay, Anxiety, I know that you are just worried.”

“That’s an understatement.” Virgil muttered under his breath as they all started walking again.

“Hey, Anxiety, do you recognize any of the buildings around here?” Roman, who had been walking in silent determination up until that point gestured at the houses surrounding them.

“Well, this building style does look kind of familiar, I think I have been around here once.” Virgil tried to remember when he had seen the type of architecture that surrounded him, but the memory eluded him.

“Guys? I don’t think we’re alone…” Patton whispered, causing everyone to freeze.

“Are you sure?” Roman hissed back, “It might have just been a bird.”

“No!” Patton insisted quietly, “I saw human shaped shadows down an ally back there, and I heard something that definitely wasn’t an animal.”

A heavy knot of fear had now formed in Virgil’s stomach, and he was finding it hard to breathe. “Patton? I-I think I’m having a panic attack.” Patton’s head whipped around and locked eyes with Virgil, who was starting to shake violently.

“Roman, could you, carefully, look around to see if anything dangerous is watching us? If there is anything, do not try and fight it. You know how well that ended up last time. Logan, help me get Anxiety out of here to a safer place.”

“Got it.” Roman snuck off with a sheepish expression, which in a different situation would have caused Virgil to actually crack a smile.

Patton stood protectively on one side of Virgil and Logan on the other as they slowly continued their way down the open street, glancing at every area something zombie-sized could potentially hide. They were barely halfway down the road when Roman came sprinting up to them at top speed, his eyes wild with fear and a little excitement.

“Guys! I found a sword!” He brandished it in front of him, causing the others to back away in order to not get stabbed.

“Why was there a random sword lying in the street?” Logan asked, disbelief written all over his face.

“I found it in an ally. There were also a lot of zombies there, which is why I was running, did I mention that?”

“Why didn’t you tell us that first!”

“I thought the sword would be more interesting…”

“Roman, we are literally in the middle of a zombie apocalypse, and you thought that mentioning the fact we were being stalked by some wasn’t interesting!” Virgil yelled, causing Roman to look guilty.

“Now that you mention it-”

“Oh NOW you see the danger we are in! It hadn’t occurred to you before?”

“Please stop fighting! If Roman is right, we need to get out of here fast! You can continue this argument another time if it is that important to you, but right now we need to run!” Patton grabbed Virgil’s arm and started half dragging him down the street, forcing him to run. Logan did the same with Roman, and soon they were running as fast as they could, with a now growing horde of zombies following.

“Over here! Let’s hide in this gas station!” Roman, who had broken free from Logan was gesturing wildly at the others as they ran over to him. Patton and Virgil wove through the aisles towards the middle of the store while Roman and Logan used fallen shelves and bits of timber from the crumbling roof to barricade every entryway to the store.

“I-I recognize this place.” Virgil realized, standing up suddenly, “This is where I hid yesterday with Remus and Devan! They might still be here!”

Roman quickly turned around at the mention of his brother, and jogged over to Virgil. “We should start looking for them immediately!” he grabbed Virgil’s arm in excited hope, who shook him off just as fast.

“… no need.” Logan’s voice, heavy with disappoint and sadness came from the cash register. “I think I may have found them.”

The others rushed over to where Logan was standing. On the floor in front of him were two people, their clothes ripped and covered in blood, but still unmistakably Remus and Devan.

Tag list!

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[arigatouiris]

Catching Feelings — Connor [00]

Pairing: Deviant! Connor x Reader

Word Count: 1990

Warnings: None so far, more to come.

Author’s Note: I fell in love with Connor the moment I first laid my eyes on him. He’s such an interesting character to know and play as, and through his development, I started to question the same things he probably was too. And I guess some of that questioning will surface in this fic! Do tell me what you think about this, it’d mean a lot to me. 

Also, those who want to be on the taglist, just send me an ask~

Summary: His name is Connor.

Prologue: Coffee

○

Deviancy.

It was the first choice that Connor had ever made for his own benefit. Sure, solving that case mattered to him, and even if it was something integrated into his programme, Connor gave all his time and effort into figuring out where Jericho was and where the deviants were.

However, what he didn't understand was how a community began. 

Connor’s entire perception was fuelled from the inputs Amanda had registered in his programming, and when it all changed, he barely had enough time to get accustomed to this new version of himself. Freeing the androids mattered more to him all of a sudden, he felt like he was one of them, he felt like there was a reason to his growing empathy, to his confusion; to every question he had ever been seeking, he had finally understood that there were answers. 

He didn’t know what the answers were, but he had finally allowed himself to finally acknowledge those questions.

Deviancy worked on each android differently. Some androids developed a different personality from how they used to be when they were owned by humans. Some androids took a lot more time trying to figure out what freedom to them actually meant. Some androids sought family, and shelter, yearned for the feeling of love and wanted to spread it amongst themselves. Some androids wanted to see the world, to explore it and learn of its mysteries, things that the internet could not tell them. 

And then there was him. 

Stuck in what seemed like an endless reverie with no way out; it was as if he was thrown in the middle of a path that he could not navigate from. Everything seemed new and it was because Amanda had been such a big part of his programming, Connor found it hard to still disobey orders. 

Now, his reach changed. 

Now, because of his new job, if anyone had asked Connor for something, he had to do it. Wasn’t this what freedom of choice meant? Not listening to just one person?

Connor found himself terrified mostly when he said no. It was something he wasn’t too used to, he was a walking amalgamation of all the things he believed he had to stop at one point, and here he was, trying to thrive.

     “Hey Connor,” Hank’s voice alerted his thoughts, and he realized he was just blankly staring at the monitor screen. “Can you grab me a cup of coffee?”

He stood up instinctively, although Hank did not mean it like an order. Hank merely asked, and he would have understood a ‘no’ for an answer; yet, it was impossible, Connor believed, to say no. 

     “I’ll be back with your coffee, Lieutenant.” 

Connor rushed to the coffee machine, trying to avoid conversation in the way. He didn’t have to, but he did; his job now was to get Hank a cup of coffee. He knew exactly how Hank wanted his coffee, dark and one sugar. In his hurry, he blanked out on everything else. 

Now, perhaps, it is because Connor hadn’t the slightest clue on what freedom actually meant did he try and find it everywhere. Perhaps, he believed, following through on the orders inside his head meant slavery, but outside was fine. Maybe, he believed, deviancy worked this way on him, and what he had to focus on was his job and identity. 

Ｗｈａｔ ａｒｅ ｙｏｕ ｒｅａｌｌｙ， Ｃｏｎｎｏｒ？

My name is Connor. I’m the android sent by—

Ｒｅａｌｌｙ？

He stopped dead in his tracks, halfway near the coffee shop. His abrupt pause did not alert anyone around him; the police station was bustling with cops minding their own business. Even Gavin had somewhere he had to be, people he needed to meet, job that he needed to do. Connor couldn’t categorise within his head the ideology behind his pause right then, all he was thinking about was who he was.

He could ponder all day and night and yet not arrive on an answer. It had been fourteen days in specific since Jericho rose as an individual organisation, taking pride in freeing androids from being slaves. They were now recognised as a new intelligent life form, a new race among one of the oldest races on earth. 

He could ponder all the time and yet, Connor had no clue.

My name is Connor. I’m a deviant.

He could make the perfect cup of coffee for anyone who needed one. He was programmed to do what the humans asked him to, he was going to do it. If there were other androids who were much more comfortable being themselves, falling in love, figuring out their identities differently, running mafias and businesses, exploring the world, here was Connor—just simply doing his job.

As if he had figured it out, a cheeky smile appeared on his features. He was catching along, he was learning now—he would give Hank his coffee because he wanted to. Human beings do this to each other, they give each other favours, an interesting exchange that resembled an unofficial transaction. He turned on his toe, with the perfect cup of coffee in his hand, and took three steps forward.

An instant arrived a second later that created all the difference in Connor’s life as a free android. He believed giving Hank this cup of coffee was him finding closure in becoming his own version of deviant. He believed by doing something that he was told to do, because he wanted to do it, would give his life purpose and meaning.

He did not, for even a second, consider the possibility of dropping the perfect cup of coffee.

It magically spilled all over him, the heat of which could have caused third degree burns on a human being. But, he was not human, and he was spared the burning that the coffee could have caused him. Connor felt an emotion he had deciphered the other day when Sumo walked away from him after he called after the dog. 

Disappointment.

     “Oh, no.” Connor said, his hands falling to his side.

     “I am so sorry!” A shrieking voice apologised to him. 

He took a double take. Connor’s gaze lifted to the small person in front of him, who had fallen down after having bumped into him. Considering the speed with which the person was walking, and their gaze having been shifted elsewhere and not ahead of them, they had bumped into Connor blindly and fell backwards. 

But, he took another take.

This woman had apologised to him?

     “You just apologised to me.” 

The woman looked up at him as if he was covered in muck. She was wearing a white blouse with black trousers, her hair was neatly kept behind her, and she had strangely bright (e/c) eyes. She was now frowning at him, and Connor did himself the favour and scanned her for any injuries.

     “Your vitals display elevated levels of cortisol. You’re stressed.”

     “D-Did… Did it not burn you?” She asked him, still on the ground.

Connor had learned this from a kind lady near one of Hank’s regular bars. There was something called courtesy. He leaned forward and gave her a hand, shocking her seemingly, and helped her to her feet.

     “Thank you.” She mumbled, brushing her clothes.

     “The surface of my skin is set to endure far stronger circumstances. A coffee spill causes literally no damage,” She looked at him like he was retarded. “You thankfully do not have any coffee stains on your clothing.” Connor said, smiling.

She looked up at him sadly for a moment, and then her gaze shifted to the cup that was on the ground.

     “I am really sorry about your coffee.”

Connor shook his head, “This wasn’t for me. I don’t drink coffee. It was for Lieutenant Anderson. I can make another—”

     “No, no. Let me. I owe you this.”

Connor was confused. He watched her walk ahead of him and begin making the coffee. Instead of pressing the function for ‘Espresso’, she pressed ‘Water’. Connor blinked before heading near her and standing behind her. Maybe she was making something else for herself first.

But then she stopped. She picked the warm cup of water and held it in her hands, staring at it. Connor blinked and continued to watch her, wondering if all her movements, despite seeming like utter cluelessness, had a reason behind them.

     “Shit.” 

Her vitals were increasing again. There was a sudden increase in capillary blood flow in her skin, especially around the ear and cheek region; Connor had learned of this just the other day. It was called—

     “You’re blushing.”

Her eyes widened and she turned to him as if she was surprised. Connor could read that her heart rate was increasing, and cautiously stepped back two steps, not wanting to scare her or stress her out more. 

     “Are you alright? Your heart rate has elevated—”

     “I… I don’t know how to make coffee.”

Connor blinked. Then why had she offered to make it?

     “You offered to make coffee. I don’t understand why you would do that if you didn’t know how to make coffee.”

She pressed her lips together and was now playing with her fingers. Connor observed her every movement, intrigued with what she was doing and why she was doing them. What intrigued him more was how she had no clue why she was doing them either.

     “It’s my first day here, detective.”

No one had called him detective before. He felt warm, all of a sudden, and felt the need to thank her. But, she was not done.

     “I-I’m so nervous! I’m usually called butterfingers, but t-this is a whole new level!”

Connor merely blinked at her. A whole new level of what?

     “I am having difficulty comprehending your words, Miss?”

Hank had advised him not to scan people for their names without their permission. He told Connor that it was taking away from the whole introducing each other aspect of being human. Connor wanted to respect that level of intimacy that strangers would often exchange in.

     “(l/n). (y/n). (y/n) (l/n).” She fumbled, and her face was turning red again.

Connor gulped. He felt like whatever he had seen her doing, he wanted to see more of. She was intriguing in a way that Sumo was.

     “Nice to meet you, Miss (l/n). My name is Connor. I’m—”

                                  S ᴏ ғ ᴛ ᴡ ᴀ ʀ ᴇ ○ I ɴ s ᴛ ᴀ ʙ ɪ ʟ ɪ ᴛ ʏ ▲

To him, he hadn’t made a sound. But what he let out right then resembled a very human sound. A gasp.

My name is Connor. I’m the android sent by Cyberlife.

He shook his head, feeling like everything he had understood up until now was a lie. Who was he? What was he? What does it mean being free?

He felt a pair of hands on his shoulder that woke him up. Androids don’t even sleep, so this was a first for him. His eyes were wide and he stared at (l/n), who looked at him worriedly.

     “Are you okay, Connor?”

He heard nothing. Everything around him was merely white noise now, all he could see and focus on was this person in front of him, who had called him by his name.

She had called him by his name and had answered a very important question.

     “I’m sorry about that. My name is Connor. I work with Lieutenant Anderson. It’s a pleasure to meet you.”

(y/n) smiled up at him and nodded once, and extended her hand forward, offering to shake Connor’s hand. However, what she hadn’t noticed was that she was holding a cup of water in her hands that she had now dropped all over Connor. He now had coffee stains and a cup of warm water on his shirt.

     “I am so sorry!”

Androids were not allowed to be dysfunctional. Connor had always understood that this aspect of nature was a flaw, it was something productivity could do without. And yet, as a soft chuckle broke out of him unawares, Connor had found something magnificent in her dysfunctionality.

○

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