#look i promise you i have other sh fic ideas that do not involve just river getting kidnapped

[whumpdoyoumean]

Whumptober #28

A/N: This is set post-season 4 and so has vague references/spoilers for that.

xxx cctv

Lamb stares out at the team from behind his desk, a blank but somehow still deadly expression on his face. They've all been standing here, crowded in Lamb's office, for a silent and uncomfortable minute while they wait for him to explain why they've been summoned.

"Where the fuck is Cartwright?" he finally says.

Louisa has to fight the urge to roll her eyes. "He's probably just running late."

Lamb's lip curls. "Hmm. It's as though he doesn't value his employment here."

"I can try calling him," Louisa says, already pulling out her mobile. Lamb tsks.

"Don't bother. It's not that important, and if it were, it may be for the best that he's not here, anyway."

"So..." Roddy ventures after another length of silence, "if it's not that important then why've you called us all in here?"

Lamb snorts. "I don't fucking know anymore." He gestures lazily toward the door. "You can go. I'm sick of looking at all your faces."

"Fuck's sake," Shirley mutters under her breath as they all shuffle out into the hall, and it's hard to blame her.

Ever since, well, everything – with Frank, Coe and Patrice, Bad Sam, Cartwright Senior, Marcus...The mood in Slough is grimmer than ever. She'd never say it, but Louisa thinks she probably wouldn't be surprised if River just decided to stop coming to work.

They've just gotten out of Lamb's office, Shirley slamming the door behind her, when Louisa's mobile buzzes in her hand, at the same time that Shirley's chimes. Roddy's goes off too – a high, breathy moan emanating from his back pocket. Louisa and Shirley both make faces.

"Grow up," Louisa says at the same time that Shirley says, "You're foul!"

Roddy shrugs. "You're both just jealous that I've got a girlfriend."

Louisa sighs, shaking her head, and pulls up the email that just came in. The subject line reads, in all caps, YOU'RE NOT GOING TO WANT TO MISS THIS.

"What the fuck? 'You're not going to want to miss this'?" Shirley says, and Louisa's gaze snaps up to her.

"Is that what your message says?"

Shirley makes a face, turning slightly and holding her phone closer as if Louisa were trying to spy on her. "Yeah?"

"I got the same one," Louisa says.

Coe holds his phone up, the screen facing out. "Me too."

"It's a phishing scheme," Roddy sighs, sounding bored.

Louisa ignores him and opens the message. "All there is is a link."

"Definitely phishing," Roddy says. "You don't click on strange email links. Everyone knows that; this is basic stuff, babes."

"The same phishing link to all of us at the exact same time?" Louisa raises an eyebrow. "You don't think that's a little bit weird?"

"Fuck it, I'm opening it," Shirley says and then, a few seconds later, "Oh, shit."

Louisa thinks, for a second, that she's joking, pulling Roddy's leg, but then she looks over and sees the pale, wide-eyed expression on Shirley's face. Whatever she just opened, it's serious.

"See?" Roddy is saying, the smirk evident in his voice. "I told you, you stupid--"

"Roddy, shut the fuck up!" Shirley snaps, then looks at Louisa. "You'd better open it."

Louisa is already clicking the link.

The video is the slightly grainy black-and-white of CCTV footage. She recognizes the place; it's only a few streets from Slough. River is there, standing on the corner waiting for the light to change.

"What is th--" she begins, but the question dies in her throat and she nearly drops her phone.

The footage shows River crossing the street, making it halfway through the crosswalk before a car speeds into frame and collides with him. He goes up onto the hood, his body cracking the windshield, before rolling back onto the ground. And then it gets worse, because three people get out and it's immediately obvious, by the masks and gloves, that they aren't getting out to help. They drag River into the car before it takes off again.

"Oh, my god."

Someone had targeted River specifically, had known his route to work and timed it so that they would be nearby when he used that particular crosswalk. They'd hit him deliberately, knowing that the cameras would catch all of it. The fact that they'd been able to get a hold of the footage and send it to the Horses' emails speaks to a level of planning and access that makes Louisa feel sick to her stomach; whatever they've got in store for River, it can't be good.

She turns, is about to yell for Lamb, when his office door bursts open. Louisa can tell by the look on his face that he's seen the footage, too. Likely anything that's crossed her mind has crossed his, too. He looks ready to bust heads.

"Ho, get down to your office, now. Find me that car."

Roddy blinks. "What--" He looks over Louisa's shoulder at her mobile, where the video is playing on loop. "Oh, shit."

"Move!" Lamb barks.

Roddy nods, hurrying toward the stairs. "On it, boss."

"There are other people in that video, which means witnesses. Someone will've talked to the police. Guy, Dander, go down to the station and get whatever information you can from them. I wanna know everything they know. As soon as you two are finished, come straight back here."

"Right," Shirley says with a wide-eyed nod, heading for the door. "Louisa, you coming?"

Louisa forces herself to look away from her mobile, darkening the screen and shoving it into her back pocket. Even though she's not watching it anymore, the video keeps playing in her mind, the image of River being hit by the car and then dragged away stuck on repeat.

"Yeah."

"Guy," Lamb says, and Louisa turns. He fixes her with a serious stare. "I'm trusting that you can stay focused. That footage was sent with the intent to rattle."

Of course I'm fucking rattled, Louisa doesn't scream. She thinks it, though, and it's obvious that Lamb can tell.

"If I get the sense that your head's not on straight, I'll bench you without a second thought," he says.

"I've got it," Louisa says. It takes everything she has not to hiss it through grit teeth.

Lamb doesn't look fully convinced, but nods. "Go on, then."

xxx

River doesn't know what's going on. He doesn't know where he is, or who brought him here or why. He doesn't know how long he's been here, either, since he's been unconscious for bits of it. What he does know is that his right leg is fucked. There are other aches and pains throughout his body – bruising and scrapes from where the car had hit him, and where he'd hit the pavement. But his leg is by far the worst, a sharp, sickening throbbing from his knee down that makes him want to crawl out of his body. He hasn't broken a bone since that time he fell out of a tree as a boy, but he remembers the incident well enough to be able to recognize this particular kind of hurt.

He also knows, from the tiny red light blinking high on the wall across from him, that he's on camera. And whenever there's an especially nasty jolt of pain, he remembers that someone is watching, and he grits his teeth and doesn't make a sound.

xxx to be continued...

[glimmerglanger]

And There Was Only One Bed Bingo (3)

I have returned with another fic for my bingo board! This one is for a prompt from @adiduck​ (hope you enjoy!). Written for the “and when A had a nightmare, B was there to comfort them” square.

This is Codywan. It’s a post-war, everyone lives, nobody dies (except Palps) au. Brief mention of intimate activities, but nothing spicy in the fic. Hurt/comfort because Cody’s nightmare is pretty bad. 

Here’s my board and the fic!

Cody left Kamino with no real concept of impossible things. Everything had seemed so straightforward. Clearcut.

It had taken roughly one campaign for the idea of impossibility to settle into his head. Some things just couldn’t be done. Some battles couldn’t be won. Some people couldn’t be saved. Some things just went wrong, no matter what. They were impossible.

It had taken roughly the same amount of time for him to realize that, sometimes, the universe ignored all sense and made the impossible happen, anyway.

Often, his General was involved in making the impossible occur, in pulling off victories that shouldn’t happen, in saving lives that should have been lost. And so Cody wasn’t completely shocked when several impossible things happened in quick succession, almost four years into the war.

It was impossible that the war would end in a room in the Senate, on Coruscant, but it did, Obi-Wan and Anakin cutting down a Sith lord there, together.

It was impossible that the Senate would grant him and his brothers full rights, but it did, the bill passing while the Order went through what promised to be a painful split from the Senate.

It was impossible that Obi-Wan would ever return the warm ache of want Cody felt, looking at him, but he did, leaning into Cody’s touch when he dared to steal a kiss, once they were no longer General and Commander, no longer in a war, no longer--

It all felt impossible, Cody considered, even with the proof of it drying on his stomach and with Obi-Wan curled close to him in Obi-Wan’s bed at the Temple. Sometimes, impossible things happened, and he was so fucking grateful for that, pulling Obi-Wan a little closer, nuzzling against the hair at the back of his neck, and letting exhaustion pull him down into dreams, feeling buoyant inside.

It felt impossible that he should sleep anything but deliciously well, after such a day as he’d had, but, well.

The impossible happened all the time. 

Cody dreamed of blood and screams, very distant and muted. He dreamed of legions of his brothers, all around him, each of them dead in some different and horrific way, but still up and fighting, looking to him for orders with their blank, empty eyes.

He looked down at himself in the dream, so he wouldn’t have to look at them anymore, and it was not a surprise to find wounds across his body. All the injuries he’d taken over the course of the war, reopened and untreated, leaving him one of the walking wounded, as well.

Someone called his name, from a great distance. He looked up and the dream shifted, impossible and awful, to the nightmare that had followed him from the first day of the war, recurring no matter how he tried to stop it.

The details of the nightmare changed, often. But the core of it was always the same. His brothers were gone. His injuries were gone. In this nightmare, it was always just him. And Obi-Wan.

Sometimes, they were in the field. Sometimes, on the bridge of the Negotiator. Sometimes, in Obi-Wan’s quarters.

He looked up, hearing his name from far away, and he was in Obi-Wan’s quarters. In Obi-Wan’s bed. Obi-Wan slept, curled close to him, expression peaceful and content. And Cody tried to scream, tried to thrash, but his hand was around his blaster. The barrel was snugged against Obi-Wan’s skull, by the soft strands of hair at the back of his head, and his finger tightened and--

“Cody! Wake up!” 

He jerked, eyes snapping open, hearing a fading cry even as he snapped his jaw shut. There was a soft light coming in through the window in the room, and for a jarring moment, Cody wasn’t sure if he were awake or asleep. 

Obi-Wan leaned over him, pushed up on one arm, alive, and said, “Darling, sh, it’s--”

Cody grabbed him while sitting up, gripped his jaw, and tilted Obi-Wan’s head to the side, running fingers up the back of his neck. He was horrified by the way his hands were shaking. He heard a sound - ragged, it certainly couldn’t have come from him - and flattened his palm there, over undamaged skin, panting out, “Sorry.”

“You don’t have anything to be sorry for,” Obi-Wan told him, reaching up slowly and sliding a touch over Cody’s arm, not trying to squirm away, though Cody was vaguely aware he was holding on too tight.

“Woke you up,” Cody managed to say, forcing his voice to be even. He’d had private quarters on the Negotiator. He’d gotten used to having nightmares in relative peace, not worrying about disturbing his brothers, or--

“Oh, I’d have been up soon anyway,” Obi-Wan said, impossibly unbothered, rubbing his hand back and forth on Cody’s arm, and the touch was...nice. Grounding. Pulling Cody further and further away from the nightmare. He said, quietly, “It sounded...like it was a very upsetting dream.”

Cody swallowed. He tasted vomit in the back of his throat. He looked to the side, marshalling himself, and said, “It’s--I’m fine. Nothing serious.”

Obi-Wan was quiet for a moment, and then shifted a little; Cody tightened his grip without thinking, and Obi-Wan stilled again. He said, soft, “It’s alright if it was serious, you know. Do you want to...talk about it?”

Cody made a harsh little sound in reply. He’d hoped that, with the end of the war, the dreams would have stopped, as well. But perhaps that had been hoping for an impossible thing, and--and he’d gotten so many impossible things. He’d gotten to sleep alongside Obi-Wan’s bright warmth and still dreamed such nightmares, and it hurt, it cut up into him.

He rasped out, because perhaps Obi-Wan deserved to know that there was something so - so wrong with him, “I dreamed of killing you.”

Obi-Wan tensed under his hands, but only for a moment, before he said, “Oh. That’s--”

“I dreamed it again. I’ve dreamed it--for almost four years. Since the - the day we met. It keeps coming back. Over and over. I don’t know why. I’ve tried to make it stop. I just--” he tried to take a breath and found his chest gone tight and strange “--can’t, I can’t, Obi-Wan--”

“Sh, sh,” Obi-Wan murmured, and, somehow, Cody had ended up pressed close, had ended up with his face mashed against Obi-Wan’s shoulder. Obi-Wan had curled around him, arms strong and sure, solid and alive. “I’m fine, Cody. You’d never hurt me.”

Cody wanted to believe that. Tried to hold onto the words as Obi-Wan leaned against the headboard, pulling him along and just...holding him. “It’s alright,” Obi-Wan said, rubbing a hand up and down his back. “Just breathe, I’ve got you.”

And--and Cody was not supposed to need someone to hold him like this. He knew that, well enough. It wasn’t what he’d been made for. He should have been steady and sure and--

And Obi-Wan held him more tightly when strange, strangled sounds escaped Cody’s throat, just kept holding him, murmuring soft words until the tightness surrounding Cody’s ribs finally eased. Cody should have moved. Should have let Obi-Wan get up or go back to sleep.

But he stayed where he was, instead. And, impossibly, he felt his heart rate slowing, felt the edges of horror and disgust with himself fading away. Exhaustion rushed in to take their places. “Thank you,” he rasped out, because it was...the best he’d ever felt after such a nightmare. The fastest he’d ever been able to recover.

He almost imagined he could sleep again, somehow.

Obi-Wan hummed, readjusting his grip. It felt like his cheek was pressed to the top of Cody’s head. He said, “I love you,” impossibly and easily and freely and-- “Just rest, for a bit longer. I’ll keep any other nightmares away.”

And Cody’s throat felt too tight to reply, the way he ought to, to free the words he should have said. He could only nod, in the moment, held close and tight, trusting Obi-Wan to do one more impossible thing.

[bcbdrums]

What Happens In Vegas

A/N: A silly little gift fic for split-n-splice, partially inspired by this amazing art and also inspired by my imaginings of things she's teased are to come in her outstanding fanfiction, The Company You Keep.

Do view her art, do read her fic... Laugh at my nonsense if you so choose.

Read on:  FFn     AO3

Mature rated fic, you have been warned.

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

Drakken was lying on his back when he woke up to a severe throbbing at the front of his skull. As he opened his eyes to a powerful light, the pain spread like claws out across the rest of his head, and after covering his face with both forearms to block out the blinding brilliance, he realized its source was a ceiling light.

The next thing he became aware of was a very soft yet definitely solid something under his knees, keeping them elevated. And then a tight pain in his feet.

A guttural groan escaped his lips as he pushed himself upright, and he almost fell again as he wiped the drool from the side of his face.

'What happened...?'

His vision was swimming, and through the fog he saw waves of pale green on either side of his knees, surrounded by white and pale pink. His fingers gripped the fabric of what he realized were bed sheets, and before his vision cleared, as he stared at his bare blue legs and came to the realization that the rest of him was bare too, he suddenly knew just what—or rather, who—the soft green mass beneath him was.

"Shego?" he whispered fearfully.

He didn't want to jump to conclusions about what had happened, as his clearing vision began to reveal a spartan motel room surrounding them, but it seemed...like it was a fair assumption to make.

He shifted and felt the tight pain in his feet again, and his brow furrowed as he looked down and saw a familiar pair of black high heels on his feet that most definitely were not his. As he reached to pull them off with a grimace, a glinting of gold caught his eye and his eyes widened as he thrust his hand up to only inches from his nose, squinting at the metal band on the fourth finger of his left hand.

'How...?'

"Ungh..."

The groan from the figure face down on the bed showed his whisper hadn't been soft enough. But he was glad she was waking up, in hopes she might be able to provide answers, and not the ones his mind was insistent on hammering into his aching skull, now with images. A panicked confusion arrested his mind as he realized the images weren't mere groggy fantasies, but memories.

"Shego?" he said a bit more loudly.

Her hands flew to cover her ears as her body began to twist beneath his legs, and then she held her head as if in pain as another groan escaped her.

"What...? My head..."

She started to push upright and Drakken hurriedly removed his legs from her back. This action seemed to startle her to attention, and she sat bolt upright, eyes wide and blinking around them in confusion and fright.

"What? What hap— Dr. D.?"

He watched as she took in the room in mere moments, his nude form afterward, and then herself. Drakken snatched the only pillow left on the bed to cover himself, and then felt guilty as his eyes strayed lower than her face. It was all coming back to him. And he knew that every possible repercussion from what they had done involved him experiencing pain in some way.

What he hadn't expected, however, was for Shego to burst into tears.

"Sh...Shego?" he asked in confusion and concern as she buried her face in her hands, not even bothering to cover herself. His vision clearing at last, he glanced past her at the small purple pharmacy-type box on the nightstand with its colorful promises, and then at the mess on the floor.

The other pillows were everywhere, along with a blanket, their clothes, numerous empty and still sealed bottles of alcohol, and...a scattering of too many wrappers and used condoms.

Drakken swallowed as more and more images flooded back to his mind and tried desperately to calm his panic. He shifted closer to her and felt the tight pain again, and with a scowl he pulled her high heeled shoes off his feet and pushed them aside.

"Shego..." Drakken said again, this time his voice coming out choked and pained. He realized then his throat was hoarse. "Shego I'm sorry..."

Shego wiped her nose twice with the back of her hands, but her eyes remained closed as her bawling grew louder. Drakken glanced at where they sat and after a moment, tentatively tossed the sheet over her lap for a hint of modesty.

"I don't...I don't remember exactly how it started..." he continued, desperation beginning to take over as she wouldn't even acknowledge him. "I remember we were at the casino, and we were drinking... You ordered us two more shots after I'd said it was enough... But Shego please, please know...if I had thought for one instant you didn't want... That this wasn't... I know we were drunk, but you...you took us to the gift shop, and bought that box... You said you couldn't wait and so we got this room... I know I wasn't thinking straight but...but you wanted..."

Drakken trailed off as he wondered if Shego was even hearing him, her sobs continuing unfettered.

"I...I thought you... I know I was very drunk, but I'm...v-very...positive...that this was all your idea... And Shego it would have never, ever entered my mind to... Had I been sober I would have never dreamed of... Shego? Wh-Why aren't you saying anything?"

Drakken had expected rage, green flames, and a verbal assault at the very least. Not the endless streams of crocodile tears that kept falling down her face. Her hands remained uselessly in her lap as her shoulders shook with sobs, and glancing around, Drakken spotted a tissue box that had just avoiding falling off the nightstand—the lamp hadn't.

He leaned over and grabbed a few, and when he pushed them into her hands it startled her. She blinked down at them, and then up at him, her expression unreadable. Drakken bit his lip then as he cautiously reached over her shoulders and pulled her hair to her front to give her more modesty. Shego looked down at this, sniffled once, and then exploded into further sobs.

The panicked confusion continued to race across Drakken's nerves as he watched her cry, a response like nothing he'd ever seen out of his partner in crime save when under the influence of the Moodulator. And even that hadn't been this bad.

"Shego, I... I..."

Drakken finally hung his head with a heavy sigh. If she was so upset to not even...unleash her fury, he knew it was far too great a crime to forgive.

"I'm sorry, Shego," he said quietly, fidgeting lightly with the edge of the pillowcase. "You can...consider your contract fulfilled, and...you can have anything you want in severance. I... I'm so sorry."

He started to shift away from her, thinking to give her some privacy until she was ready to either unleash her fury or apparently leave him without so much as that. He wasn't prepared for her suddenly seizing his arm, and his breath caught. It was about to happen.

"I can't remember any of it," were the words that came from Shego's lips, choked and thick.

Drakken blinked in confusion. "What?"

"I've been trying..." Shego forced out through sobs, "to get you into bed...for two years... And it finally happened—"

Her eyes opened at last and glanced sideways into the room.

"Several times..."

Drakken followed her gaze and he bit his cheek in nervous confusion as he looked at the used condoms.

"And I can't remember any of it!"

Drakken relaxed, shifting nearer to her as she continued to cry, albeit less loudly, finally making use of the tissues he had offered. Once they were spent he hurriedly placed the box in front of her, and she took out another.

"Wait, Shego, you...you...wanted...to get me into bed?" Drakken finally asked, shaking his head in confusion—which he regretted instantly for the hangover.

"Mr. Can't Read Signals when they're literally right in front of his face," Shego grumbled.

"What signals?" he asked, still reeling from the idea that Shego was actually interested.

"All the flirting," Shego said plainly, her tears beginning to still.

"What flirting...?"

Shego looked up and narrowed her reddened eyes on him. "Are you really that dense?"

"Shego, what flirting!?" Drakken said, racking his brain for any time outside of her absurd behavior while under the influence of the Moodulator, either before or after given the time frame she indicated, that could have been considered flirting.

Shego scoffed. "You mean you didn't notice me leaning up into your space, getting so close I could blow on your ear, or putting my chest right at your eye level while you worked?"

Drakken had a flash of memory of times when Shego would suddenly be in front of him, blocking his view of what he was working on, or leaning between him and his tools, or whispering about nothing so close to him that he couldn't concentrate.

He blinked at her several times in succession as he realized...she was serious.

"...What?" Shego said, wiping her nose again and then hugging herself.

"I thought you were trying to annoy me," Drakken said.

"...What!?"

"I didn't know you were flirting! It...didn't come across that way," Drakken said, trailing off at the end as he saw the flashing of green eyes across from him.

Shego screamed. She threw her hands up in the air for a moment and then let them fall at her sides, seemingly finally spent of tears as she blinked at nothing on the bed sheets.

"Shego...why?" Drakken asked.

Shego began gathering the sheet up around herself to wear as a toga.

"Well if it isn't obvious now, blue bonehead, I have a major crush on you. But since the feeling isn't mutual I guess I'll just stop making a fool of myself and—"

Drakken's hand on her arm halted her words at the same time a gasped 'no' left his lips.

"Let me go!"

"Shego."

"This is humiliating enough," she said, struggling against his grip.

"Shego. Look at what happened."

Drakken gestured broadly to the mess of the room, and Shego followed his gaze. She blinked several times as she took in what to him was a very embarrassing scene, the room looking as if it had been trashed by a group of rowdy party-goers and not just defiled by a drunken couple in lust. Or...could it be more?

"Wh-What on earth made you think it wasn't mutual?" Drakken continued, his voice a mixture of nervous, embarrassed, and annoyed. "I've spent four years trying to hide my feelings for you."

"What?" Shego asked, her eyes snapping back to his.

Drakken looked down. "Yes, well... It wouldn't be appropriate, a boss and an employee..."

"Four years?" she said incredulously.

"Sorry," Drakken said, keeping his eyes on his slightly swollen feet.

It was quiet. And then, "Hmmm..."

Drakken looked up at Shego's thoughtful, almost playful tone.

"What?"

"Wouldn't be appropriate, you say?" Her tell-tale smirk was starting to return.

"No..." Drakken said, finding his mouth suddenly dry.

Shego grinned. "I quit."

"What!?"

"How many rubbers came in that box?"

Drakken blinked rapidly, his mind processing her intent so fast that he'd pounced on the purple box on the nightstand and was yanking its contents out onto the bed before he could realize he'd nearly knocked her down in the process.

"There's three left," he said, peering into the empty box as if more would somehow materialize at his will.

"Then put some clothes on and go buy some more," Shego said decisively.

"What, why?" Drakken asked in annoyance.

"Well I count nine all over this room," Shego said. Drakken's face flushed. "Since I can't remember any of that, we're going to have to make up for it all before we leave."

Shego scooped up Drakken's boxers from the floor by the bedside and tossed them at him.

Drakken grinned as he shimmied into them. As he did so, the light glinted off the gold of his ring, and he glanced over at Shego as she began tossing more of his clothes at him. A matching band adorned her slimmer finger. Drakken looked around, and for the first time he noticed the half-folded piece of paper stuck out of the drawer of the nightstand. His brow twisted with nerves but it couldn't stop his smile growing.

"I guess...this is a good time to point out we got married?" Drakken said.

[darkdevasofdestruction]

My Clarity ~ Shikamaru x Kitsune

A little fic in which Shikamaru isn’t the only kid who gets advice from his dad through Shogi.

Honestly tho, I’m in my exam session, 9 exams, thankfully, only 2 more to go next week, and I have a burning urge to re-watch all of Naruto for some reason, and my love for this beautiful Deer boy resurfaced very VERY powerfully.

Oops.

Little fox, little fox, what are you hiding behind that sly, cheerful smile of yours?

Little fox, little fox, why are you all alone?

Little fox, little fox, what's going on through your mind?

Little fox, little fox...Do you wanna play?

---

Shikamaru always knew there was something off with the red haired girl in his class -

She just seemed too perfect. 

She was beautiful, she was smart, she was talented, she was kind, she was helpful, she was selfless..

And his parents were best friends with her parents, so they would often meet up for play dates and whatever.

No matter how much he tried to avoid her like the plague, she didn’t give up, and whenever he asked her why the hell she wanted to hang out with him so bad, she’d just say

“Because I like you, little fawn.”

That stupid nickname, that soon turned into “Deer boy” irked him big time...But in a way...

He was the only one to whom she gave nicknames, so he felt kinda special.

Actually, he was the only one with whom she actually seemed completely genuine...So maybe he should actually enjoy it?

Yeah, why not, right? 

She’s not so bad, after all, and if he gets to learn something form her, all the better!

----

“Scrub it off. Clean it off. Take it off. Claw it off. Rip it off. Saw it off. Carve it off. Rinse it off. Wash it off. Cut it off –“ the obsessive mutterings went on and on like grating. She was trembling, not even realizing her cheeks were soaked, not from the rain, but from the tears her beautiful green eyes that now resembled a rainforest, were producing.

 What was going on? This can’t be happening…This was supposed to be a simple mission with her dad and her dad’s best friend…It was just a B mission at most…How could things escalate this much?

 Being a ninja, she knew things are dangerous and would put you in impossible situations…That you can even lose your life or your friends and comrades…But…

Why now…? Why so soon…?

She’s barely 10 years old…She wanted to go on this mission to see how beautiful the world outside the Country of Fire is…But this…?

 “Scrub it off. Clean it off. Take it off. Claw it off. Rip it off. Saw it off. Carve it off. Rinse it off. Wash it off. Cut it off –“ she continued rambling, standing there, on her knees, on the wet grass, all muddy, all bloody, not having moved from there for at least a whole hour, so much that she almost thought she started growing roots into the ground.

 “Scrub it off. Clean it off. Take it off. Claw it off. Rip it off. Saw it off. Carve it off. Rinse it off. Wash it off. Cut it off –“ she went on and on and on with no stopping, with no equivalent of time and space, of self, of body, of identity. She was lost. She was not only broken, but completely shattered. She was blank.

 “Kitsune, that’s enough. Snap out of it. He’s dead. We have to get out of here before the enemies find us. We’ve been here enough.” the man who was her dad’s best friend went on his knees in front of her and grasped her wrists, pulling her hands away from her eye sight so she will stop looking at her father’s blood. “He’s not…He’s not…He can’t be…He can’t…He won’t…He wouldn’t…Leave me…No…He’s just…R-Resting…Don’t mess around with me…” instead of focusing on her hands that were painted with clotted blood, her eyes were now in the vision of the body laying in a pool of its own blood, its chest being cut to access the heart. “I know it’s impossible to accept this, but your parents wouldn’t want you to die here because you froze up. Let’s go home. We’ll get his body in a scroll and I’ll arrange for a funeral.” the man tried to reason with the child, who, in turn, moved for the first time since the incident. “HE’S NOT FUCKING DEAD! STOP LYING TO ME, SHIKAKU, HE’S NOT DEAD!!! HE CAN’T BE DEAD! HE’S NOT! I HEALED HIM! I RESTARTED HIS HEART! HE’S NOT DEAD! I DIDN’T LET HIM DIE! HE’S TOO STRONG TO DIE! HE WOULDN’T LEAVE ME AND MUM! I’M TELLING YOU, HE’LL GET UP ANY MINUTE NOW! I DID EVERYTHING BY THE BOOK! JUST AS THE MEDICAL NINS TAUGHT ME! I DID NO MISTAKE! I DID NOTHING WRONG! I’M SURE!” the red haired girl lashed out at the man, shrieking so loud that her throat felt raw, almost bleeding, her emotions pouring down harder than the rain as she shook hit the man’s chest and shoulder, but he could only look at her with pity in his dark eyes, almost imagining his own son, should that have been him on the ground. “It’s not your fault, Kitsune. You did everything you could, but sometimes, there is nothing anyone can do. Some injuries are so severe that they can’t be healed, even if you are the most skilled healer. It wasn’t your fault, it was the enemies’ fault.  I promise you.” the Nara put the ANBU captain’s corpse in a scroll and picked the girl up, running back to the village and reporting to the Hokage.

 The girl was lost, had no idea what to say, what to do, what to feel – Not when Shikaku was explaining what happened to the Hokage, not when he broke the news to her mum, hell, not even when she was staring at a beautiful picture of the three of them together, at his funeral.

 No children were allowed at the funeral, as per her request – She didn’t want any pity, and she wanted to give no explanations.

She wanted nobody involved. Things were bad enough as they were.

So the only people from the school who knew were the teachers.

Not Shikamaru, not Hinata, not Sasuke, not Shino…

Nobody.

Definitely nobody.

 Her dad wasn’t dead, after all.

She didn’t kill him.

She did everything she was taught to do.

She did the cardiac massage, she was sure she felt his heart pumping again, she definitely saw him breathing…

…Right?

She did, didn’t she?

She didn’t imagine it, right?

She didn’t try to get his heart to pump again when he was already irreversibly dead…

…Right?

  ----

The little red haired girl smiled dazzlingly at the children in her class, who were also her friends. She knew she was the most popular girl in the whole Academy, but she didn't let it bother her, or change the way she behaved with everyone - Everyone was equal in her eyes, even if they were obnoxious or annoying - And in turn, she got invited to everyone's birthday parties or hang outs, and so on.

But most of the time, she couldn't go to those hang outs because she was constantly training with her parents to become an excellent ninja, and in the future, a member of the ANBU - It wasn't only her dream, but her parents jobs too.

ANBU captains

What greater honour could there be?

While other 10 year olds were playing around, she was hanging around adults, learning how to perfect her fighting styles, ninjutsu and genjutsu, but not only -

She wanted to learn medical ninjutsu, she wanted to help people, to save them, for all the times she heard all those scary stories from her parents and their friends...How they lost people, comrades, partners, friends...Because in the Great War, there was barely any medical ninja around to save them...

She couldn't allow that to happen - Not on her watch.

"Okay, class. Today, we are going to do a team activity, and we need 2 captains. Who wants that position?" Iruka-sensei asked his class, and, as expected, most of the kids nominated Kitsune, while Sasuke, Naruto and Kiba wanted to be captains themselves, and Sakura and Ino nomitated the Uchiha. This class' dynamic was always the same, and in a way, this exhausting routine was sort of comforting for the red haired fox-like girl. "Kitsune, Sasuke, step forward. As Kitsune was nominated by the most of you, she will choose first."

"I choose Shika!" in front of the class, the girl with sparkling green eyes grinned enthusiastically as she extended her arms in front of her, as a way of cordially inviting the friend she cherished the most, despite all the gasps of shock she received.

"Sh-Shikamaru? Kitsune, why not choose me first?! I'm so much stronger than that guy who just sleeps all day and is too lazy to move!" Naruto yelled at her, but she merely sweat dropped and chuckled awkwardly.

"But Shikamaru is the smartest in this class and I believe we get along very well. When forming a team, you don't have to always get the ones who are more energetic or physically stronger, but the best strategists and those with whom you can create a perfect synergy and your abilities and skills compliment each other. Having Shika on my team means that we're definitely going to win against Sasuke's team!" the girl shrugged casually, ending her explanation with a sly, incredibly fox-like smirk - One that screamed 'Victory'.

"Uh...Thanks for picking me, I guess." Shikamaru awkwardly scratched the back of his neck, before muttering his usual catch phrase "What a drag..."

Sasuke glared at the girl, despite knowing very well there was barely anyone with any kind of potential in this class, but he got around to choosing Kiba. Then, Kitsune chose Shino, while Sasuke got Choji. Kitsune got Hinata and Sasuke could barely stop himself from facepalming, but chose Sakura. Grinning at the brunet captain, Kitsune chose Ino, so Naruto was stuck with Sasuke - It was the perfect plan.

The two groups went out in the forest, in the opposite parts, and had 15 minutes to come up with a plan to steal the Captain's bandana.

"First of all, I'd like to apologise to Shika for not being able to get Choji as well. I know that the Ino-Shika-Cho formation is incredibly powerful, and that the three of you would have had an amazing synergy, but there's that. However, I'm happy that we have Shino with us, I'm sure the insects are going to scare off both Sakura and Naruto...Which reminds me, Naruto an Sasuke are going to work against each other most of the time. With Shikamaru and I as the strategist, Hinata’s Byakugan and the maturity and knowledge of Shino and Ino, we are going to make the perfect team. Besides…Ino, if you show off how strong you are, and you beat Sakura in the process, I’m sure you’re going to impress Sasuke!” Kitsune clapped her hands together, charming all of her team mates, as per usual. “Oh, but Sakura doesn’t stand a chance! She will swoon over Sasuke-kun all the time and will be completely useless! That Naruto will screw everything up for Sasuke-kun and will be loud enough to give away their position, and I’m sure he’ll argue with everyone, especially Kiba. And Choji eats all the time, I doubt he’ll do much, especially if he sees how everyone argues among themselves and does nothing good. He’s a pacifist, y’know.” Ino grinned condescendingly as she berated almost everyone in the enemy team. “Very well, then I will tell you my plan, and when I’m done, I’d like you to tell me your insight and how to perfect it, if you have any ideas. The main idea is to distract Sasuke while Shika uses his shadow to immobilize Sasuke, so I can steal away the bandana. Ino, you have to stay away from Sakura, so you won’t bicker. I need your Mind Transfer jutsu. Hinata, your Byakugan will be detrimental in finding out everyone’s location, and I have faith in your fighting abilities. Shino, of course, apart from the fact that I’m sure your insects are going to scare away some of those guys, you are a very strong fighter and very intelligent as well.” Kitsune explained simply, and everyone seemed to nod in agreement. “Actually, I think Ino, Hinata and Shino should stay together, at least in the beginning. Ino can incapacitate one person for a short amount of time, so if she stops Sasuke, I can catch him in my shadows, and you can steal away the bandana, while Shino and Hinata fight the others. Those two are sensory types, so they can find out everyone’s positions and the bugs can guide us to them.” Shika pointed out, which made the red haired girl widen her eyes at him in shock for a few seconds, only to grin widely and almost literally glow in happiness. “You’re the best, Shika! It’s always so great hanging out with you! Come on, 15 minutes passed, let’s go and win this!” she cheered to hype the others up, and it worked well enough, and it seemed to give them a little boost of confidence.

 And so, they went to the middle of the forest while Hinata and Shino searched for the enemies – Who they easily found – And Kitsune and Shikamaru split up around Sasuke in a pincer formation. Just as planned, Naruto easily gave away his position, so Shino and Hinata went to fight or scare away Sakura and the others who went down faster than expected, considering they were all split up, not in groups.

When Sasuke was the last one standing, Ino used her Mind Transfer jutsu on him, Sasuke immobilized him and the fox girl stole away the bandana.

 However, just as they were making their escape, Sasuke got out of his immobilized state and went to attack the group – The fox girl gave shadow boy the token of victory and told him to take the team away and make their escape, while she quickly beat the Uchiha and went back to them, only to see the Nara didn’t actually go with the others, but returned to make sure she was okay.

 “Very well played, everyone. Now, the 2 captains, shake hands, and you can all go home for today.” Their teacher smiled at them, while also pointing out the obvious problems in the other team. “Hey, about about we go to the BBQ place to celebrate our win?” Ino asked, smiling triumphantly. “We can invite Sasuke too, since he tried his best, but he didn’t have a team.” Was her plan, and everyone seemed to agree – Of course, the other team wanted to join as well, so there was that, but…

“Oh, uh-uhm…S-Sorry, but I can’t come. I, uh…My parents and I are pretty busy today, haha. But I hope you have fun for me as well! Take care, guys, see ya tomorrow!” Kitsune chuckled awkwardly, rushing to go home and train with her parents.

 However, she didn’t come to school the next day. Or the one after…Or the whole week, for the matter.

She was absent for almost 2 whole weeks, for the matter.

Until she wasn’t anymore.

But when she returned, she was as radiant as always.

For those who weren’t as observant as Shikamaru, that is…

What was he supposed to do, anyway? Go and confront her? No way, that would be a drag…And besides, if she wanted to talk, she’d come to him…Or someone, right?

 The biggest shock of his life was, however, to come home one day from school and finding a certain red haired girl playing Shogi with his own father, and they seemed to be very comfortable with each other? And they were smiling?

“Hey, Shika! Welcome home! Oh, you got here just in time, I and your mum managed to finish cooking earlier! Go and eat something, you don’t want the food to get cold, right?” Kitsune waved at him, smiling sweetly, but the boy could only stare at both of them, incredibly confused, his eyebrows raised so far up that they almost got into his hairline. “Wh-What are you doing here? Dad, what’s going on? Why are you playing Shogi with Kitsune?” the poor boy asked, his head almost snapping from going back and forth. “Oh, w-well…I was pleasantly impressed with your intelligence and strategy, so I came here to praise you to your dad! Also, my mum said she always enjoyed learning and playing Shogi with him, so I thought I’d give it a shot too! You should have heard her, honestly, Shikaku beat me again at Shogi, you should have seen the new stunt he pulled today! It was completely revolutionary, we could totally use it in our next mission!” Kitsune laughed lightly, trying to calm the boy down a bit. “You have to be careful, son, she might just win against you if you slack off too much.” Shikaku teased his son, who could only groan and leave to eat. “Tsk…What a drag…Troublesome woman…” the boy muttered, leaving the place that got immediately much darker. “You can stay for dinner, Kitsune. We can call your mother as well, if you want. I doubt she’d have been up to cooking anything after what happened.” the Nara sighed deeply, crossing his arms and looking attentively at the frail girl in front of him, who may as well be close to shattering. “N-No…I-I…I couldn’t…Do this to her…I’m afraid…Something’s coming…Something incredibly bad…If I’m not there, who knows what will happen…Uhm…Thanks for today, Shikaku. I appreciate it. And he would have as well. See you tomorrow.” She got up and left the place in a hurry, going back home.

However, as soon as she opened the door, she called out to tell her mother…Who didn’t answer. Worried, the red haired girl went to the kitchen, hoping to do some cooking for her mother, who may have been still resting in her room…

But the sight in front of her shook her to the core, for the rest of her life… And since then, the last thing Shikamaru saw of her was her fox necklace that she left over to Shikaku the next day she went for a Shogi play.

He hated to admit it, but this woman…This woman, he actually missed, but no matter how much he pestered his father for an answer, he would only say  “Soon”.

What was such an enigmatic and vague answer supposed to do to reassure and inform him in any way that he will meet her ever again?

He never even had the time to play Shogi with her, or chat properly, hang out by the field to watch the clouds go by…And graduate together, maybe even get put in the same team…

He couldn’t believe this was really happening, and for a while, he actually hated the girl for just leaving like that, without even saying goodbye to him.

Oh, if only the poor boy knew the truth…

  ----

Years passed, Shikamaru was already the first Chunin from his class, they already went in enough missions as teams, and were old enough to see the world in new eyes…Yet nothing could compare to what their parents saw in the Great War, so they were still green ninjas, unaware of the true horrors of this world.

 He was already 16…He couldn’t believe 6 years passed since he last saw that little firecracker named after a cute fox that he used to call “friend” in his Academy days. Every year, when the day of her departure came by, he’d take the day off and go to the spot they would both spend time, watching the clouds – And for some reason, he would always see a fox shaped cloud.

 It was such a drag.

 However, on the 6th year, his father stopped him from going to the field, instead, asking to play Shogi, something that confused the boy greatly, but he decided he should listen to what his father had to say.

 But never, in his life, would he have expected that his father finally saw him as old enough to tell him what happened to that mysterious girl who disappeared so suddenly.

He told Shikamaru everything that happened on that mission gone wrong – The Kirigakure ninjas attacking them, Kitsune’s father saving her and dying in the process, and the little girl snapping, going on a rampage, and when returning to her father’s side, she tried to revive him for so long, that he thought he wasn’t going to be able to pry her away from his body. The shock that completely stunned her, seeing herself in the reflection of the cold water, trying to scrub away the blood from her hands – Blood that wasn’t there anymore, but she kept seeing it – She tried and tried and tried to wash it off – To even claw it off – aggressively scrubbing away with her nails, leaving trails all over her arms.

 And that day, when Shikamaru caught them playing Shogi – When she got home, she saw her mother hanging in the kitchen – She couldn’t take it anymore. Her mother loved her husband so much, that she couldn’t handle being without him anymore, nor could she handle staying in the same house with the daughter who looked so much like him.

 Her mother committed suicide.

 It was a clear sign to Kitsune that she should get the hell out of Konoha, before she would lose herself completely.

But even then, she held Shikamaru in her heart, which is why she asked Shikaku to give him her necklace before she left.

 She had no idea where she wanted to go, but she had to.

 And that day, when she played Shogi, the strategies she took, influenced by Shikaku’s aggressiveness in the game, made the both of them realize that the deer boy was too precious to her to sacrifice, as a mere Shogi piece.

So she left to get better and protect the last person she loved who was still alive.

And Shikamaru felt guilty for resenting her for 6 years.

 ---

“I wonder who’s our other team mate. Lady Tsunade didn’t say much about this person.” Ino asked, dangling her feet, bored, staying on a tree branch. “I heard it’s a girl!” Choji munched on his crisps, not really caring much. “Dad said it’s some ANBU captain or something. What a drag, that means this mission’s going to be more difficult than before…” Shikamaru groaned, slouching down. “As usual, you come up with the best strategies. It’s weirdly nice working with you again, and –“ the angelic voice of a woman was heard by the trio, who immediately perked up in curiosity, as in their field of vision, Shikamaru’s father walked by, wearing a relaxed and joking smile on his face, side by side with a much shorter individual, with long hair, kissed by fire, dressed in the usual ANBU outfit, with a fox mask covering her face, and a few weapons strapped to her back. “Is…Is this our team  mate?” Ino gasped at the beauty in front of her. “I sure hope so.” Choji chuckled, nudging Shikamaru, but the boy could only stare at her, frowning, unable to utter any word. “Here’s your team, Kitsune. I’m sure you missed being around your friends –“ but Shikaku couldn’t finish his sentence, for as soon as the girl saw the brunet boy, she got rooted to the spot for a few seconds, before squealing and throwing herself in his arms, hugging him as tight as possible. “Shika!!!”  she cried out, twirling around with him, not wanting to let him go. “I missed you so much, Shika~!” “K-Kitsune…? Is that really you…?” poor Shikamaru couldn’t even hug the girl back because of the extreme shock he was in, but his father’s chuckle snapped him back to reality. “Yes, silly, it’s me! I’m back.” The girl quickly took off her mask, putting it to her waist belt, flashing the same dazzling white smile of hers – The same one that completely stole his heart many years ago. “Remember me?” “Y-Yeah, ‘course I do, uhmm…” he tried to stumble over his words, despite the blush creeping on his face. “My…! You grew up so much! And you’re absolutely gorgeous! …Eh…~? Look at you, you’re so cute with red cheeks! And you’re even wearing my necklace! I’m so happy, Shika…! Your parents must be so proud to have the smartest and prettiest child in the whole Country of Fire, right Shikaku~?” the red haired girl giggled teasingly, making the poor deer boy so flustered that he had to fry her off and look away, while his friends and dad were laughing at him. “What a troublesome woman…! Tsk…Stop being so familiar with me, you’re annoying.” Shika tried to fend off, but the girl feigned that annoying puppy dog eyes that she always did when she was little and she wanted to spend time with him. “Th-Then…You didn’t miss me, Shika? At all? Not even a tiny bit?” she asked in the most pitiful voice, pouting and getting closer to his face, which in turn, killed him instantly. “…Fine, yeah, maybe, whatever. Let’s go on our mission.” The poor boy grumbled, walking ahead of everyone, not even bothering to say goodbye to his dad, as his friends were already teasing him and laughing. “He’s so cute~!” the girl grinned, carefree, following his lead.

 The road to the mission’s point was filled with light chatting and some catching up, but for Shikamaru, the situation was different – Every word she uttered, he analysed and scanned, as if looking for any string of white lie that sewed together a perfectly made up story.

 She wanted to learn a more diverse range of skills so she went to learn from other Ninja villages and random renowned rouge ninjas and samurais…

And, allegedly, 2 years prior, she returned and joined the ANBU, and chose only the longest missions that led farthest away from the Country of Fire.

 How dubious…

  “Shh, stop, here we are.” Kitsune stopped abruptly, crouching down on the branch carefully, squinting and watching like a hawk every one of the grouped up ninjas, almost as if she was peering at them under a microscope – Every micronic detail, she sketched in her mind and carefully created a plan to take them down, before snapping her fingers once to draw her team’s attention towards her. “See that guy with blue hair, tied up, and black eyes? That’s our guy. We capture him, and kill everyone else. Easy enough?” despite muttering in a low voice, her piercing gaze didn’t move for not even a single pico-second. “But…Kitsune…? I don’t mean to sound doubting…But there must be at least 50 ninjas out there, and they seem to be at least Chuunin level. And weren’t Kirigakure ninjas supposed to be bloodthirsty and to be using poison?” Ino asked, obviously very worried. “They aren’t Kirigakure ninjas, but yeah, you are right about those guys. These ones are in disguise, but not great ones, I’d have to say. See that guy with orange hair? His sleeve is raised up, and a brown tattoo can be seen, which indicates they are from Iwa. Very annoying and strong. Those stupid guys have an Iwakage who can eradicate everything in sight with that stupid particle-something jutsu of his…And they have an explosion department…Thank God I didn’t remain in Konoha…” Kitsune muttered, the corner of her mouth raising into a triumphant smirk that meant she was going to create a blood bath. “Explosions?! How can we protect ourselves against that?” Choji was almost comically trembling, eating crisps even more rapidly than before. “Unfortunately for you, neither has a Lightning chakra nature, so we can’t actively deactivate them…However…I trained with the best puppet master in the world, who so happens to have as a partner the most fanatic, yet talented bomb artist, so I know how to go against these guys. Shika, Ino, I want you to make sure you get the leader away from the group. Since you can get in his body, just say you need to pee or something, and that you’ll be back, which is when Shikamaru will use his shadows to get him towards us, and then three of you will protect him, while I kill this lot, got it?” she asked, finally snapping from her hawk-like self and taking out her weapons, soaking them in poison with a wet cloth. “That’s not the best strategy, I’d say. We do nothing, while you do all the work. I am more than one-man hit, y’know? I grew up and trained too. I can get at least 20 of those guys.” Shikamaru’s annoyed voice perked up, surprising the girl, who could only blink and look at him with big, almost fawn-like eyes. “I never doubted any of you for a second, and if it seemed that way, I apologise sincerely. Thing is, I’m an ANBU, and out of all of you, only you, Shikamaru, promoted to Chuunin. Now, I’m not saying that these grades matter, because they don’t, but at the same time, I’m responsible for you, and I don’t want to go home with one of you dead in my arms, and having to hold your funeral. I told Tsunade to let me do this alone, but she insisted I pair up with you. I want you all to promise you won’t get in my way and attack, unless necessary, got it? As I said, I absolutely REFUSE to get your blood on my hands, capiche?” Kitsune’s voice became very dry, dark and poisonous very fast, which made the blonde and chestnut haired ninjas gulp and nod fiercely, while the brunet only frowned in anger. “We aren’t 10 year old anymore, Kitsune, and neither are you. This ain’t the mission you went to 6 years ago, and nobody will die on your watch, got it? If you keep being afraid of taking risks, you’ll fail.” Shikamaru got closer to her face, arguing her plan. “Shikaku told you what happened, didn’t he? Well, I should have known, it was bound to happen. Nonetheless, as I said, I’m the leader of the team. You do as I say, or you go home. I will have NOBODY’S blood on my hands. Now go do your jobs and do NOT put yourselves in danger unless I say so.” Kitsune, for the last time, warned the trio, then got up, took off her konoha forehead protector and switched it to a rogue-one, then put back her fox mask and raising her arms up, she attached chakra string to each and every ninja, except the target. “Now, Ino, Shikamaru, go get him.” She commanded in such a dark and monotone voice, almost as if she suddenly transformed into the villain of the series.

 Despite disagreeing with the plan, the two did as were told, and very easily, lured their victim into the perfectly placed trap, and now, the trio were his guard.

Further, Kitsune grinne widely behind her mask, chuckling and jumping down from the tall tree, as she used her fire chakra to burn the string, and in turn, the victims they were attached to. With incredible speed and agility, she jumped in the middle of the group and started slicing left and right mercilessly, losing herself in the bloodlust that was surging through her veins, her mind completely away from reality, but in a whole new universe – Of killing strategy.

 …That is, until familiar voices – Screams, rather – Resounded through the forest, which completely snapped her away from her concentration, and in turn, getting cut and scratched in various places.

 Her eyes saw it easily – The leader escaped their grasp and ran to attempt to kill her, but Shikamaru tried to fight him, and failed, and now Ino was trying heal him. But she was crying. She wasn’t a good enough medical ninja yet. Kitsune knew that feeling all too well.

  “Scrub it off. Clean it off. Take it off. Claw it off. Rip it off. Saw it off. Carve it off. Rinse it off. Wash it off. Cut it off –“ kept going into her mind, unusually loud, almost throwing her off her game.

With a raw growl, close to animalistic, she saw red in front of her, and burnt everything in her paths, slashing, dashing, cutting and ripping apart every living being there, sans the leader, whom she managed to immobilize and knock out with the help of Choji. Without sparing any second, she ran to Shikamaru’s side and fell to her knees, roughly pushing Ino aside.

It was an impulsive rush of rage, for she snatched away her mask and forehead protector and threw them as far away as possible, before shrieking at the deer boy for being so stupid.

“Scrub it off. Clean it off. Take it off. Claw it off. Rip it off. Saw it off. Carve it off. Rinse it off. Wash it off. Cut it off –“ those words just wouldn’t stop screeching at her.

“YOU FUCKING IDIOT, SHIKAMARU, I TOLD YOU TO BE CAREFUL, DAMN IT! I TOLD YOU! I TOLD YOU! I TOLD YOU!” she gripped so tightly at her hair that Ino thought she was going to rip it all off. “If you dare die…I will never forgive you. Never, you get it? Never. Not you. Of all people…You’re the last one alive…So you can’t. I refuse to allow you that. You don’t have the permission to leave me. Ever. Got it?” the red head growled lowly, getting one of her hands inside his chest, performing cardiac massage, and cursed herself for remembering that mission long ago, when she had to do the same thing with her father – But this time, Shikamaru was still alive, and she was sure this time around – No more lies or delusions.

  “Scrub it off. Clean it off. Take it off. Claw it off. Rip it off. Saw it off. Carve it off. Rinse it off. Wash it off. Cut it off –“ she needed bloody therapy, she knew that, otherwise those words were going to be the death of her.

With her other hand, she used her other hand to prop up his head and give him CPR, once again, cursing herself for having to do something like this, when she hoped everyone would remain safe and she would, one day, share a sweet kiss with him – Not have to save his life like that.

  “Scrub it off. Clean it off. Take it off. Claw it off. Rip it off. Saw it off. Carve it off. Rinse it off. Wash it off. Cut it off –“ they were louder and louder, causing almost a physical discomfort, as if someone was grating her brain.

Once, twice, thrice, and more, so much more – Sasori taught her healing ninjutsu well, and she was confident in her abilities, but there was always that speck of fear and PTSD that was creeping in the back of her mind, reminding her of her past failure.

But the puppet master was an excellent teacher, and she, in turn, was a hard-working and diligent student, so there was no way she was going to put the man she loved on the list of people she let die.

  “Scrub it off. Clean it off. Take it off. Claw it off. Rip it off. Saw it off. Carve it off. Rinse it off. Wash it off. Cut it off –“ SHUTUPSHUTUPSHUTUPSHUTUPSHUTUPSHUTUPSHUTUP

“Argh…Too close…” a hand suddenly pushed her aside weakly, and a cough snapped her out of her focused mindset – And blinking away to reality, she realized that the Nara boy was sitting in front of her, breathing normally, and coughing a bit, wearing a scowl on his face.

  “Scrub it off. Clean it off. Take it off. Claw it off. Rip it off. Saw it off. Carve it off. Rinse it off. Wash it off. Cut it off –“ the threat is over now, you can stop already, he’s not dead...Like your parents.

“…Oh thank goodness…” Kitsune groaned, letting herself fall on her back, looking up at the sky, her nails digging into her arms now, trying to snap herself back to reality completely. “I won’t forgive you for the stunt you pulled.” She muttered absent-minded, not caring about anyone around her anymore. “…What a troublesome woman. She’s gonna scold me all the way back home. Great.” Shika tried to chuckle, lighting up the mood, but the red haired girl was already on her feet, tying up the target and carrying it, walking in the direction of the village, without saying another word – Her face now again, covered with her mask, showing that she didn’t want to be approached in any way. “Shikamaru, you insensitive idiot! You, jerk! Is that how you treat the woman you love?! She was just worried about you, and you throw away words like that?! Go and apologise right now!” Ino shouted at him, nagging him like she was his mum, so much that the boy could only sigh and drag his hands down his face in annoyance and resentment.

And he actually tried, for once, to reconcile properly, but the only words that she told him were “You have to rest properly when you get home.” And then she just rushed farther and farther ahead.

And that’s just what he did, as the girl guided him home, let the others go to theirs as well, while she went to the Hokage to report to the mission.

After taking a nap and resting, as advised, he left his bedroom and went to the kitchen, seeing his mother frowning, which confused him.

“What happened?” he asked, knowing something was up. “Well…Nothing, really. Your dad is playing Shogi with Kitsune…And I just remembered her mother and the good times when we were friends. Too bad the good ones always die first.” Yoshino sighed, sweeping absent-minded. “Uhm…Y-Yeah…I guess.” He muttered, not having a clue what to say in such a situation. “Won’t you be a dear and tell her to remain for dinner? Poor girl, she’s been all alone since she was 10…I can’t imagine how horrible it must have been…” but she stopped herself before saying anything more that would have upset her, so Shikamaru left the room, believing that letting her just be would have been better.

 However, instead of making his presence known, he decided to just open the door ever so slightly, enough to peep from behind and watch the interaction going –

Kitsune was sitting in front of the Shogi table, her head slightly hung, her outfit still unchanged – And she said no word, but it wasn’t clear if she was listening to his father either.

  “You can take off your mask now, Kitsune. The mission is over. You can get dressed in Shikamaru’s clothes. Why don’t you sleep over?” Shikaku tried to get a response out of her, even beginning the match, but she seemed to be in her own mind. “No.” she finally muttered after a while, yet she made her move as well, almost robotically. “Kitsune. The mission is over. You can relax now. You are allowed to. You did well and nobody got hurt. Get out of your mission-mind,  you’re home now.” The man tried again, but it was clear the aura around the girl became more and more agitated. “Shikamaru almost died.” She pointed out bitterly. “As far as I’m concerned, my son is sleeping in his room as usual. He didn’t complain about his team leader, nor of any injury or danger. If he is fine, so should you be. You can’t take anyone’s pain.” His father spoke again, and with each word, he found himself nodding in agreement. “I ALMOST KILLED YOUR FUCKING SON, SHIKAKU! ARE YOU DEAD? ARE YOU BRAIN-DEAD?! GET ANGRY! YELL AT ME! BEAT ME UP! SCOWL, CURSE ME, INSULT ME…FUCKING DO SOMETHING! YOU ALMOST HELD YOUR SON’S FUNERAL BECAUSE OF ME! I am the one who killed your 2 best friends, and now I almost killed your son too! Why aren’t you reacting in any way?!” the fire outburst of the girl scared the boy out of his wits, flinching when she slammed her fist on the Shogi  table, breaking it in two, all pieces getting propelled in different directions, as she shouted at the irritatingly-calm man in front of her. “I will do no such thing, Kitsune, because, first of all, I am not mad at you. It was not your fault, I tell you now, the same as I told you before. It wasn’t you who killed your parents, nor was it you who endangered my son. We are all ninjas, and we serve with our lives on the line. Unexpected surprises always happen, and we can’t predict everything, but we can do our best to avoid them.” Shikamaru’s heart was close to bursting with emotions and words that he wanted to let out, as he felt his fingers digging deep into the wood of the sliding door. “I. Almost. Killed. Shikamaru.” The girl hung her head down, prying away her mask and throwing it away in disgust, her long, fire-red hair completely hiding her tear-stained face. “I argued with him. I insulted him. I cursed him. I yelled at him. In the end, he almost died…Because of me. And…It was just like back then. Almost perfectly like back then. They weren’t paying attention, the enemy escaped, he tried to protect me and got hurt…And I got soaked in his blood. My hands was grasping his heart, and I was helping it pump more and more blood…I was helping him breathe…And all I could do was pray…And pray…And pray again…That he won’t end up like them…But I’m selfish, Shikaku. I didn’t think of you, nor that I almost killed your son. I was only thinking about my own self.  I’m selfish and I don’t deserve him.” Her voice become so soft, so broken, as she trembled and sobbed in her hands, not being able to stop the flow of tears and emotions from running astray. “Kitsune…Shikamaru doesn’t hate you, nor is he blaming you for what happened. Stop blaming yourself for things that were inevitable. The most important thing is that you were able to save him and bring him back home safely.” His father sighed, yet his eyes were looking with understanding at the pitiful girl – He knew very well the heartbreak of loss and he didn’t wish it upon anyone, especially such a sensitive young girl. “Scrub it off. Clean it off. Take it off. Claw it off. Rip it off. Saw it off. Carve it off. Rinse it off. Wash it off. Cut it off...That’s the only thing that kept going through my mind, over and over and over again, and I couldn’t stop it! Just like back then...I couldn’t control it. I swore I was going crazy. I was sure he was going to die, and I would remain with his blood on my hands for ages, no matter how hard I’d try to wash it off or even burn away the skin on my hands.” she was shaking so much now, digging her claw-like nails deep into her arms, dragging down and scratching her skin, almost giving herself a sort of comfort, knowing she was still alive, and so was Shikamaru. ”You have nobody’s blood on your hands, Kitsune, understand that. It wasn’t you who killed your parents, no matter how you put it. You tried to save them, but they were beyond saving from anyone. There was nothing you could have done.” Shikaku tried to remind the catatonic girl once again. “…If Shikamaru dies, all the people I ever loved won’t be on this Earth anymore…So there is no reason to live anymore…No matter what, Shikamaru, out of all the people in the world, MUST live. If he gets in danger again, I think I’ll go insane.” She gritted her teeth as her hands made her way into her hair, gripping at it painfully, until the whole world stopped – And once again, time and space were absent from this house –

“I think he feels the same about you.” Shikaku smiled, seeing his son frowning at the girl from behind the door, and motioning to him to get out of there and take the reigns properly, like a man. “What would you know?!” she sneered at him, snapping her head up, only to see the man getting up to leave, and, to her surprise, a pair of arms sneaking around her, pulling her into a tight hug from behind. It was the deer boy, nuzzling his face into the crook of her neck.

“You’re such a troublesome woman, you know that, right? When I said you were going to scold me, I was hoping you’d do that. I hoped it would help you relax and vent away your frustrations. I never imagined you’d get so upset over it. Sorry I screwed up your plan, neither of us were paying attention to our target…We were worried about you so we were looking at you…I’m sorry.” He spoke in the most sincere voice she ever heard him speaking, and she couldn’t help but start crying again, turning around and letting herself melt in his embrace, burying her face into his chest and gripping tightly at his shirt. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I screwed up everything – From 6 years ago, to even now, I’m so sorry, Shika. I should have told you everything, but I couldn’t and I screwed up everything.” She kept apologizing over and over, but the boy couldn’t understand why, so instead of saying anything, he cupped her face and placed a short, yet very soft and sweet kiss on her lips, hoping to snap her out of it. “Stop blaming yourself for nothing. I won’t die, and you won’t die, okay? We’re the smartest people around, I’m sure we can screw with everyone. Just the two of us, together. Now, come on, get up, fox girl. It’s getting late, and mum’s gonna yell at me if we don’t go eat dinner while it’s still hot. Let’s find you some comfy clothes.” He helped her get up and guided her to his room, giving her a loose white Tshirt and some comfy pants. “Well…I guess I make even leisure clothes look fashion.” She admired herself in the mirror, posing and grinning in amusement, making the boy chuckle. “Yeah, ‘course you do. But, before that…Here. It just wouldn’t be fair if I was the only one wearing one.” Saying that, Shikamaru took out a deer necklace from his pocket and put it around her slender neck, before taking his own fox necklace from under his shirt, and letting it dangle out to compliment hers. “…Haha, you kept it. How nice. I don’t know about you, but if you ask me, we can’t get more soulmate-y than that.” She chuckled, squishing his cheeks and pulling him into a deep kiss that was more playful than anything, yet still dazed him a bit, as he let himself get dragged to the kitchen where his parents were waiting for them. They smiled at each other seeing the two teenagers smiling so carefree, so happy at each other – And those symbolic animal necklaces, almost dangling towards each other, like Yin tried to get closer to Yang, and vice versa. “Tomorrow, we are SO going to go and make fun of Ino and Sakura for being obsessed over Sasuke, when we have the perfect relationship right here! Ha! They’re gonna be so jealous!” she smirked mischievously, and the boy could only shake his head, but chuckle at her nonetheless. “What did I get myself into…You troublesome woman.” He nudged her playfully, and it was one of the first times that anyone around saw him not so lazy. “Fine, fine, we can go to BBQ after with Choji, if you want. Sounds fair enough, doesn’t it? My treat.” She flashed him a charming smile, and he could only shrug in agreement. “You’ll get broke, but you said it, can’t take it back now. You clearly forgot how much Choji eats.” Shikamaru teased her, but she only smirked wider. “I lived as a bounty hunter for years before I got back, Shikamaru. I could buy a villa right now. I’m sure I can afford a meal for my friends.” She flipped her hair and winked playfully at the boy next to her.

The next day, just as promised, she dragged her new boyfriend around to brag about him and how awesome he is, and all that, all while he would just blush and grumble in the background, but at least the BBQ hang out was fun and they had a good laugh, as all friends do.

When all was over, she had him go by to her home to get a neatly wrapped, big gift from her living room, and then went back to his home, before handing him the present.

“Here, open it. It’s not the best…But I’m sorry for my outburst. It was uncalled for, and I’m really, really sorry for destroying it. This…This was my parents’ Shogi table and…You should have it. And my parents were best friends with your parents…So yeah. Please take it. And I’m sorry again.” She urged him to open it already, and inside, as she mentione, a beautiful Shogi table, on the back of it, her parents names being carved, inside a heart. “O-Oh, yeah, I forgot about that. You can have your dad shave it off, cover it, or something, I don’t mind. It’s yours now.” She awkwardly scratched the back of her head,  but the boy merely shook his head. “No, it’s perfect as it is. Come on, why don’t we go out in the forest? I’m sure you want to see the deer.” He carefully placed the Shogi table on his futon and guided her out. “And we can watch the stars in your garden tonight?” she smiled at him sweetly. “Yeah, sure, we can do that. Sounds nice.”

[beerecordings]

Umm is it possible to ask for different ipliers/septic egos accidently walking in on a Jim Jim religion meeting?

hahaha okay okay a goofy piece for a funny prompt. credit to the anon who suggested that the Jim twins would think JJ stood for Jim Jim, an idea which then progressed into us all joking about the twins starting a JJ-based religion (posts about it are tagged Jim Jim Jameson lol). so here’s a slightly crack fic but still a funny and sometimes cute look at the way the Jims interact with the others. a quick piece, slightly ridiculous hahaha <3

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“Burgers? Who wants burgers and who wants hot dogs? Cheese? Who wants cheese? You know what, Derekson, just get me a list of everybody and what they want.”

“Wilford, sir, that’s not a spatula.”

“No? Then what is it, my dear boy?”

“Looks like somebody’s Wall-E DVD, Wil.”

Chase chokes on his soda and tries not to laugh aloud, though all he ends up doing is spitting Dr. Pepper out of his nose.

“Chase!” gripes Marvin, shoving his lawn chair away. “Gross!”

“He’s out of his fucking mind,” wheezes Chase, trying to keep it down.

“They all are,” hisses back Marvin, but he’s laughing too. Chase can see it in the shine in his eyes.

“Hey, shut up, man,” laughs Bing.

“You shut up,” shoots back Marvin.

“No, you.”

“You are two to one here, Bing-a-ling,” teases Chase, grinning.

“Aw, come off it,” chuckles the robot, sitting back. “Pass me a beer, will you?”

“You can’t drink liquids, Bing.”

“I like the aesthetic!”

“Wilford!” Edward is boxing Wilford away from the grill, trying to keep him from using Eric’s glasses as his second impromptu spatula. “I am grilling, you are absolutely one hundred percent banned from anything involving fire.”

“Now, see here, Bim,” growls Wilford.

“I’m Edward, Wilford. Google, tell Wilford he’s not allowed on the grill!”

On the other side of the space between the three houses, a head with shining black hair turns only slightly, and a smooth voice sounds.

“Wilford,” calls Google. “I have yet to see the darkness. Do you think he is in pain, stuck in his room?”

Wilford’s eyes flicker, distracted, even a little unnerved. He puffs himself up after a moment, dropping Eric’s glasses into the grass as if they were never in his hand to begin with. “What, my blackbird, stuck in his bedroom? I shall carry him if I have to. And we will sit on the grass and drink this cocaine soda everyone is always raving about!”

“For the last time,” groans Edward. “There’s no cocaine in Coca-Cola anymore!”

But Wilford is already hurrying off towards the house behind the peach trees, whistling to himself as he goes.

“Thank you, Google,” calls Ippy, sighing deeply, and across the yard the android raises a hand in silent acquiescence, his attention still on Jameson’s rapid signing. Something about American tea, as far as Chase can tell. He laughs and sits back against Bing’s legs, sprawling his own boots out in front of him and finishing his soda with a quiet sigh. There’s beer for his brothers but, like the residents of these three houses, he won’t have any. He’s supposed to be happy while they’re visiting this mess of a – would you call it a family? – and he won’t let old habits get in the way. He casts his eyes quietly around the yard, almost sleepy with the comforting laziness of the little vacation. Jackie is the center of Shep and Host’s attention, telling an enthusiastic story about a burning building that turned out to be a drug front he busted back in Brighton, Henrik is exchanging a birdie back and forth with Bim as they wait for Ippy and Eric to come back for doubles, and Marvin is right here, kicking Chase’s foot for fun while Google discusses Earl Grey in a monotone behind them.

“This is weird,” says Chase.

“Yeah,” says Bing.

“But not so much in a bad way,” adds Marvin, and they exchange grins over sodas and beers, warm in the sun and the scratchy California grass.

“Okay, I got everybody’s order, right?” calls Ippy, flipping a burger. “Host, you – oh, no, here you are. The twins, where are the twins? Hey, who knows what the twins want? Where are they?”

“I saw them going down into that little, uh, door?” says Chase, pointing at a pair of wooden doors sticking out of the earth by the third house.

“Oh, yeah, an old shelter,” sighs Ippy. “They hang out down there sometimes. I should get them, maybe, uh – ”

“Aw, no sweat, doc,” says Chase, clambering to his feet. “I’ll see what they want. You focus on getting the meat just right.”

“Thanks, Brody.”

Chase tweaks Marvin’s ear teasingly as he passes and steps towards the doors across the way, setting his feet and pulling them gently open. He steps down into the concrete basement and finds that it’s actually been decorated quite nicely for an underground bomb shelter – thick rugs are layered across the floor, leaving a little patch of space in the corner for a heater, and a pair of electric camping lanterns surround the twins where they’re sitting in the middle of the shelter, working on –

“Um,” says Chase. “Is that Jamie?”

Both twins let out shrieks of surprise and the first leans hurriedly down to blow out the candle of his lantern. It is, however, still electric. He groans in despair and flops down onto the rug, hiding the papers and pictures that litter the floor in his arms.

“Intruder!” wails the second, covering his eyes with his hands. “Jim’s fortress is breached!”

Chase is too distracted to reply by the pictures of his brother, which he now sees are not just littering the floor, but also covering the walls. Some of them are hand-drawn, hurried stick figures with mustaches and black hats, while others have been printed off from the internet, showing Jamie’s smiling face in sepia brown or grey and white.

“Uhhhhhh,” says Chase. “I, uh. What is this?”

“Nothing,” promise both twins, grabbing each other for support.

“Chase! Chase!” Feet patter down the stairs, bringing wild laughter with them, and Jackie and Shep appear with Jackie’s hands wrapped around the biggest toad Chase has ever seen, struggling in his hands. “Look at this fucking toad!”

“He just snatched it right off the ground,” howls Shep, who has always found anything Jackie did to be hilariously funny.

“I thought you’d appreciate more than Henrik, who slapped me for trying to make him pet it,” giggles Jackie, shoving it into Chase’s face. “He’s perfect and he – what the hell is all this?”

Shep and Jackie go just as quiet as Chase did, staring around the walls.

“Did you marker a mustache onto your puppy?” asks Shep, pointing at the stuffed animal in one of the Jims’ arms.

“Why does your computer have a livefeed of Jamie eating a hot dog?” asks Jackie a little more dangerously.

“Okay, fine, you have caught Jim!” cries the first one. “Jim is celebrating the great Jim Jim with knick-knacks and cute pictures.”

“His name – ” Shep pauses to sigh and smack his own forehead. “Boys. We have talked about some of these obsessions. The last thing you ‘celebrated’ was that three toed-sloth you saw on Planet Earth.”

“She was perfect!” howl both twins in sync. “Perfect, she was perfect! She just wanted a mate, Silver Jim, she just wanted a husband! She could swim, Silver Jim! She was a sloth with three toes!”

“Are they going to like, uh. Hurt and/or kidnap Jameson?” asks Jackie, touching Shep’s arm.

“What, the twins? No. They’re harmless. Wouldn’t hurt a fly. Well, not on purpose. They once tied a string around one and then it died because they didn’t know how to feed it and they cried until Eric brought them popsicles, but that’s just the twins.”

Jackie steps politely over the babbling twins and carefully turns off the livefeed of Jamie.

“Jim likes JimJim!”

“Why is he leaving tomorrow?”

“Freedom of worship, Silver Jim! America!”

“Okay, okay,” cries Silver, waving his hands to quiet them. “Sh, boys, it’s okay, hey. Don’t fuss. Look, Jackie found a toad!”

The twins sniffle and turn their attention to the toad, instantly excited again.

“Oh! Like in Frog and Toad!”

“Like in Rango!”

“Like in the Princess and the Frog! But a toad! Can Jim have it, Mr. not-quite Jim Jim, please?”

Jackie shrugs and hands them the toad. “What are you going to call it?”

“Jameson!” cry both twins at once, happily petting the toad’s head as it croaks.

Jackie, Chase, and Shep exchange glances.

“Well, we’re heading out tomorrow,” says Chase.

“And I’m driving back to my apartment in the city,” adds Shep.

“Pretend we never saw this?” Jackie suggests.

“Yep,” answer Shep and Chase together, and the three of them turn and head right back up the stairs, passing a confused Ippy with two plates of hot dogs, who gives them one odd look and then continues down.

“Boys!” he hollers a moment later, and Chase, Jackie, and Silver all burst into laughter and hurry away, sitting down around Jameson, who wants to know what exactly is so funny?

“Nothing,” they all promise, ignoring Google’s eyeroll and Jamie’s indulgent smile. “Just another obsession of the Jims, haha.”

“Well, they go through three of those a week,” sighs Google. “Don’t get too excited. Whatever it is, they’ll be over it in a couple days.”

Perhaps that is usually true.

But not this time.

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

“Okay,” says Ippy, surveying the room besides the kitchen, blinking slowly. “This has officially gone too far.”

Host laughs rich and low, covering his mouth and leaning against the doorway, apparently endlessly amused by this newest interest of the cameramen’s. Eric giggles weakly, glancing around, but there’s a light of alarm in his eyes too, and it only makes Host laugh harder when he senses it, halfway collapsing against the doorway.

“Why is typewriter Jim laughing?” complains the second Jim, pasting another picture in a scrapbook labeled ‘the greatness of JimJim.’

“Is this a fucking cult?” asks Host. “I’ve seen worse but this one is certainly the cutest.”

“Jim is not cute!” protests the second Jim, while the first asks, “Oh, Jim, would you like to join Jim?”

“No, honey,” laughs Host, striding away. “I leave more patient men than I to deal with this.”

“Host,” grumbles Ippy, before sighing and turning his attention back to the Jims. “Boys, this isn’t a cult, right?”

“What’s a cult?” asks the second.

“Jim thinks the word doctor Jim is looking for is religion,” pipes up the first helpfully.

Edward turns around so he can swear without them hearing. Eric laughs again, relaxing the more he looks around and stepping over to sit down with the twins.

“Come on, Ippy. They’re just having fun.”

“Worshipping Jameson is not an appropriate way to have fun,” protests Edward.

“They’re scrap-booking.” Eric holds up the little book, which is, admittedly, rather well-made for a Jim project.

“And making a documentary!” exclaims Jim, holding his computer out to Eric, where iMovie is open to several very shaky shots of Jameson sitting on the couch or talking with the others or, on one screen, cooking omelets and turning occasionally to smile at the eagerly narrating twins.

“And making a documentary,” repeats Eric fondly, ruffling his hair. “It’s just arts and crafts.”

“There’s a poster of Jameson made out of sticky notes on the wall!”

“And look how good they did at putting the notes together!”

“Thank you, sweater Jim,” say both the twins politely, smiling.

“Eric, it’s creepy. They don’t need to learn to be obsessing over other people.”

“You let them stalk Mark for two months.”

“Oh, yeah, cause that was hilarious,” laughs Ippy, throwing his head back. “He was so confused. Fuck Mark!”

“Fuck Mark,” repeat the twins eagerly.

“No! Don’t swear, guys, I know you’ll start doing it at work if I let you do it at home,” sighs Ippy.

“Jim would never swear in front of the petting zoo animals!” cries the first Jim.

“And Jim would never swear while helping with the news!” adds the second, indignant.

“See how responsible they are! Ip, let them be. I’ll make sure it doesn’t get too creepy. Like, uh. The hairs in this scrapbook aren’t actually Jameson’s, are they?”

“Yes, from Jim Jim’s mustache,” answer both twins, beaming.

“Well, why don’t you let me have that,” suggests Eric, carefully unstapling the plastic bag with a few stray dark hairs at the bottom.

“You two will be the death of me,” says Ippy, shaking his head.

But they do look damn sweet when they’re smiling that big.

“Okay, but no filming Jameson when he’s not looking anymore.”

“Okay, doctor Jim,” promise the twins.

“Jim will do it when Jim Jim and doctor Jim are both not looking,” whispers the second.

“They’ll never suspect it,” agrees the first in a hush. Eric laughs, tidying their scrapbook materials a little.

“You could even learn BSL like Jamie, maybe,” he suggests.

The twins light up like fireworks.

“BSL!” repeats the first one, clapping his hands together.

“JIM CAN SPEAK AS THE GREAT JIM SPEAKS,” screams the second at the top of his lungs, and this is enough to startle Bing, who was about to ride his skateboard down the stairs. He yelps in alarm as his board slips beneath him, and a moment later he comes crashing hard down the stairs and lands in a heap of sparking parts at Ippy’s feet.

“The death of me!” repeats the doctor furiously, waving his finger around accusingly. “All of you! This whole house! This whole clearing! I’ll die at thirty-four! You’ll have to bury me! Have fun with my funeral expenses, you complete bastards.”

“Bastards!” repeat the twins.

“Look bastards up in BSL!”

“Look Jim up in BSL!”

“Look everything up in BSL!”

Ippy has the distinct feeling he’s being made fun of, just a little, but even Bing is laughing, and all he can do is try not to smile as he heads back out the door.

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

“Can’t you move a body a little more quietly?”

Wilford hauls the heavy tarp across the pathway and grunts, flicking a little blood off his fingers. “Well, you could help!”

“Why would I do that when I have you to do it for me?” purrs back Dark, following him down the pathway towards the car.

“You just like to feel like you’re manipulating something,” scolds Wilford, pausing just to boop Dark’s nose. In protest, Dark vanishes back into the void and leaves Wilford with nothing but a sulking shadow drifting around his feet.

“And now you’re a smoke kitty,” coos Wilford, dragging the body farther down the path.

“Just hurry,” says Dark, re-appearing in a masculine form this time. “You know I prefer for the twins to stay sheltered and I don’t want them catching us again.”

“Catching what?” asks Jim, standing in the trees with his camera.

Wilford swears colorfully and Dark dissipates back into shadow on instinct, spitting out curses of his own.

“Now, see here, Iplier,” says Wilford. “It’s quite rude to be sneaking up on a fellow.”

“That’s Jim, Wil.”

“Oh. What in the name of Burt Reynolds are you two doing out here so late at night?”

“Oh! We’re filming for a documentary for Jim Jim.”

“They mean Jameson,” Dark tells Wil.

“Who’s Jameson?” whispers Wilford.

Dark sighs very deeply.

“He is the great Jim!” cries the second Jim, rising from the bushes like a Peanuts character on Halloween.

“The great Jim,” repeats the first Jim solemnly.

“He’s that little old-fashioned…” Dark waves his hand, trying to find the right word. “Jackson. You’ve met him.”

“Oh, I know who you mean. The British chap with the truly excellent mustache. But he’s not even out here, what are you filming?”

“Well, he is not here. But Jim has heard is very fond of hedgehogs. So Jim is trying to find some!”

“Are there hedgehogs in America?” whispers Wilford.

“Fuck if I know,” answers Dark irritably.

“Would you like to join Jim in the search for hedgehogs and ultimately the eternal worship of the great Jim Jim?”

“Don’t look so hopeful, you little miscreant, you know I avoid engaging with you at all costs,” growls Dark, but the twins just giggle.

“They used to be afraid of you,” teases Wilford.

“Shut up,” snipes Dark. “I could make them afraid in about two seconds.”

“Oh, yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“But you won’t.”

“The real question,” interrupts one of them – Dark can’t tell them apart. “Is what are Dark and pink Jim doing out in the forest late at night? Jim is a very good reporter, you know. Jim uncovers mysteriousnesses.”

“I think you mean mysteries,” says Dark. “And we’re, uh.”

Wil and Dark glance at the body in between them.

“Returning a lamp to the store,” finishes Wil.

Dark closes his eyes. His exasperation has set in so deep he can feel it in his broken spine. He’s going to kill Wilford. But then again, he thinks that about three times a day and never seems to make good on his threat.

“A lamp,” says Jim.

“A lamp,” repeats his brother.

They stare down at the wrapped corpse.

“That checks out,” says the first.

“Jim is an investigative journalist so Jim can tell,” agrees the second.

“Just get out of my sight,” snaps Dark, advancing on them with shadow cloaking his set shoulders, and the twins shriek in equal parts fear and excitement and go darting back into the underbrush.

“You’re it, Mr. Dark!”

“Run, Jim! Run!”

Dark crosses his arms over his chest and turns to glare at Wilford.

“I could scare them if I wanted to.”

Wilford just smiles and picks up the body again, pausing only to give Dark a quick kiss on the cheek.

“I know you could, little ghost. Hey, should we be worried they appear to be worshipping Jacksepticeye?”

“Should I be concerned you told me you worshipped the Pillsbury dough boy while you were drunk last week?”

“Oh, no, the body is slipping! Let me just – ” He picks it up and slings it over his shoulder, sprinting towards the car and away from any further questions. Dark rolls his eyes and drifts back into the shadows, following peaceably after him.

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

Google blinks awake to a pair of eyes staring back at him.

Check that. Two pairs of eyes.

“Boys,” he says levelly. “I’m charging. This had better be an emergency.”

Jim and Jim exchange looks.

Carefully, they push a crumpled pamphlet with Jameson’s face drawn on it in crayon beneath his nose.

“Join our religion?”

Google gets out of bed in one swooping motion, drags them both out of the house, and, ignoring the shrill cries of “why, cruel computer Jim?” and “persecution! Persecution! Persecution!” dumps them both bodily into the lake.

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

Everybody gets to hear about it at one point or another. The Jims’ amicability for JJ, taken a little too far, is occasionally annoying, but nevertheless remains largely harmless. In the name of the great JJ, they pick up more than one of his hobbies – taking care of injured animals, painting with watercolors, dressing in black and white – and develop rudimentary BSL that actually turns out to be really helpful on the days when the twins are distressed and won’t talk out loud. Most of them learn to tolerate it with amusement, though Host never stops thinking it’s one of the funniest things they’ve ever done and Google makes sure they learn the consequences of being too irritating. Bing and Eric bring them craft supplies and trinkets from the store that remind them of JJ, while Ippy entices them to eat their vegetables and sit still through examinations with made-up stories about how tough and healthy Jameson is. On Christmas Eve, as a reward for being good all year, Ippy asks Jameson to Skype with them for a little while, and he’d never seen the twins so excited and yet so well-mannered at the same time, even managing to use first-person pronouns for themselves once or twice, eager to impress JJ.

“Good signing,” he congratulates them, looking soft and snuggly in the Christmas Eve pajamas he and his brothers all exchanged for the night.

“Thank you thank you thank you!” sign the twins eagerly, and Ippy chuckles, blowing on their hot chocolate to cool it before he brings it to them.

“You must have been dedicated,” says Jameson, and when they don’t understand, he substitutes the word “good.”

“Good!” chirps Jim, clapping his hands together. “Good! We have! We have!”

“You will tell Santa to bring us gifts, then?” asks his brother eagerly. Ippy smiles and takes a sip of the chocolate, checking the temperature carefully.

JJ laughs. “How will I tell him? Did you write letters?”

“Yes, we did. But I bet he will believe it if Jim Jim puts in a good word for us!”

“That’s sweet,” chuckles JJ, keeping his hands slow. “But I think he will listen to you too! I’m just little old me.”

“Yeah,” says Jim cheerfully. “God.”

Ippy spits the hot chocolate out and races over to slam shut the computer before he can see Jameson’s reaction.

“Boys!” he hollers. “Too far!”

Iplier hears a thud as, up the stairs and narrating this story to himself, Host laughs so hard he tumbles right out of his bed.

[ikeservant]

Hi!! Ive has this HC in my head for a while- what if mc says another warlords name in bed during action..? Maybe like Masamune, Shingen, yukimura or someone else if you prefer?:3

Thank u for the hc idea! ^.^ I had to channel my inner library of all the NSFW headcanons and fics cuz this is the first NSFW-ish hc I’ve done so I’m sorry if it ain’t good in that department or if this isn’t exactly what you’re asking for but I tried my best. All of these are accidental scenarios of slipping another warlord’s name for whatever reason cuz I can’t bring myself to do the boys dirty and have MC cheating on them :’( . HCs under cut:

Masamune: MC and Masamune were in the middle of gettin wild, his hands pinning MC’s arms above her head as he was ramming into her. In the moment of ecstasy, however, MC for some reason remembered that Mitsuhide asked her to ask Masamune about the food ration stock. Afraid she was going to forget, she decided to tell him right away. Unfortunately, she couldn’t say anything more than “M-Mitsuhide” before she got hit with a huge wave of pleasure. Masamune had to do a double take pulling back. His heart stopped, almost enraged that MC would say another man’s name in bed? Before he could run off with his imagination to behead a kitsune, he wanted to clarify what MC said. “What did you just say, lass?” “Oh shit! I was trying to say that Mitsuhide wanted me to ask you about the food supply for the battle prepartations! I didn’t get to finish asking cuz, well, you know…”. Masa couldn’t help but release the breath he was holding in. “You gave me quite the scare there, lass. I think a punishment is in order for my kitten mewing another man’s name in bed.” Before MC could react, Masamune grazed his teeth on her skin before biting on her neck, leaving a nice lil mark and a flushed look on MC’s face. The next day he’d probably wedge himself between MC and Mitsuhide, still a lil bothered by his name being moaned unintentionally in his ear. “Little mouse it looks like you had a little run in with a tiger on your neck.” “My kitten got herself in a little accident that she won’t soon forget.”

Shingen: Shingen’s head was between MC’s legs, eating her out like a true KING. Toes curled, panting with a flushed face, MC suddenly remembered that Kenshin was supposed to stop by soon to drop off a document. Thinking she heard footsteps approaching, she tried to warn Shingen but she was only able to mutter “K-Kenshin.” Shingen immediately stopped. ‘Why did any other name other than his own come out of his goddess’ lips?’. MC sighed in relief, “Phew I thought Kenshin was coming this way. He said he was going to drop off a document soon and I didn’t want him to walk in. S-Shingen? Why do you look like you got shot in the chest?” “I know you were warning me, but saying another’s name in the heat of passion would shoot any man in the chest. Looks like I have no choice but to pleasure you so much you forget to say even your own name.” He immediately dove his head again between MC’s legs once more, keeping his promise to the point that MC couldn’t even speak a cohesive word. The next day he’d probably be a bit grumpy towards Kenshin. “How dare you intrude my angel’s thoughts during our lovemaking. Next time you want to deliver a document, deliver it during the day.” (cue very confused and disgusted Kenshin)

Yukimura: (I’m going to involve terrible wordplay in this I am ashamed of myself). Yukimura was getting extra heated with MC, however when he hit a hot spot, MC stretched out her leg as a reflex, pulling a muscle at her shin. Unfortunately the pain only made her moan “Sh-Shin-gah”, making it sound like a certain lord of Yukimura’s. He immediately pulled away, flabberghasted, suddenly feeling insecure and in the back of his mind thinking that MC was going after his womanizing lord. His thoughts suddenly halted when MC was rubbing her shin. “Sorry for alarming you and yelling in your ear that I pulled my shin. Hehe.” Before MC could even blink, Yuki leapt right on top of her, pouting with a blush on his face. “Don’t scare me like that again.” “Sorry? I’ll try not pulling my leg during rough sex?” “N-Not that, dummy. It’s nothing to worry about.” MC pushed him under her, straddling him. “Even though I don’t know what made you upset, I think I know how to make it up to you.” Yukimura died and went to heaven that night. The next day he probably glared at his lord a few times. “What makes you glum, my boy? You have a beautiful angel by your side!” “Oh go stuff your face with sweet buns, old man.”

[nonsensicalobsessions]

Tom & the Cookie Monster Take 2

Author’s note: @villainousshakespeare , this idea came and hit me like a brick. Hopefully it did not leave any lasting damage, nor will it give you any by reading it. Anyway, you requested: “May I please have a Tom himself fic (since you are so good at those!) maybe something set during the Broadway run of Betrayal?“ I do not know if this will live up to your praise, as this is but a shortie, but I hope you enjoy, here is your promised prompt, my dearest friend:

Two male Hiddlestons made their way through the hallway towards their apartment door. One was prancing, sprightly and happy. The other was proceeding at a trudge.

Tom was tired, and he had every reason to be. It was Saturday night, which meant there had been the matinee production, as well as the evening show of Betrayal. And while the show was going extremely well, the pace was still grueling some days.

Like today. And yesterday’s. And last week’s...

He rifled through his keys, snickering as he remembered how one fan he spoke to was under the assumption he was living in a penthouse apartment on Fifth Avenue. Erm, no. He had quite a nice furnished flat, in a secure building where he did not have to be concerned any random fan could interrupt his rare moments of private life, but it was simply a nice flat. And at the moment, one of his neighbors was evidently baking biscuits, and his stomach growled.

And not just any biscuits, but chocolate chip biscuits. Damn it. Now he was hungry, and even though he knew of at least half a dozen places that would deliver even at this hour, he was tired, and didn’t feel like interacting with anyone. He wished to take his public face off, just as he had removed his stage make up a couple of hours ago, but then went and spent the time afterwards doing stage door appearances for his fans. Which he loved doing. But now, he just felt drained.

As he found the right key, Bobby was sitting at the door obediently, but Tom could see the dog was all but vibrating to be let in. “Bob, what is it, man?” As Tom unlocked the door, Bobby let out a joyous bark and sped in so rapidly Tom was grateful he had dropped the lead, or his shoulder would have suffered a hell of a jerk.

Tom walked in, his eyes bouncing quickly, dropping his bag and pulling out his phone in a reflexive action. While he had never had a fan break into any of his digs, it had happened to several of his friends, and his fingers were already preparing to call security, even as he recognized the smell of biscuits was even stronger now.

Apparently whomever Bobby had run to greet had baked for him. Which was a pretty decent thing to do, stalker-behavior aside.

“You forgot I was coming tonight, didn’t you?” The familiar female voice was amused, as her yet-to-be-seen form was bent over in the kitchen, acknowledging Bobby’s slavish adoration.

Oh, shit. He had.

He dropped his keys in the small dish she had given him to keep his keys when she learned he kept misplacing them.

“How much trouble am I in?” Even his voice was dull.

“Oh, honestly, Tom.” An arm came up from behind him, hugging his waist and brandishing a freshly baked treat, so fresh it was being held in a napkin. “If you’re so tired that you can’t even remember having given your extra key to someone for just this purpose, I think that speaks more to exhaustion than culpability. Have a cookie, Cookie. I made them just like the recipe printed on the bag, so I can’t have messed it up too badly...”

Then another hand snaked around his waist, this one bearing the body and face of none other than the Cookie Monster, who proceeded to menace the other hand’s bounty. “Delayed gratification, Hiddleston!!” Now the female voice behind him was growly and raspy. “No cookies for you, you must practice the art of...”

“Oh, fuck that,” quoth Tom, grabbing the napkin and spinning around to the laughing face of his baker-cum-stalker. “Get the hell away from my biscuits, Cookie Monster, and take your delayed gratification and get stuffed...”

“It’s a puppet, darling, I don’t think they can get stuffed...”

“No, but they can get a fist right up their...”

“Shut up, Tom, and eat your cookie! I am shocked, shocked and appalled by your uncouth behavior...” laughed Sabrina Wright, who was clearly neither shocked nor appalled.

Tom met Sabrina three months ago, when he did an impromptu visit at a children’s hospital as Loki, complete with costume. The entire event was kept under wraps and unpublicized, as it wasn’t sponsored by anyone. Chris Evans had come to the area to visit a friend who was facing surgery, and between him, Charlie Cox, and Tom, they hatched the idea. Then at the last minute, Brie Larson found out about the plan and came along as well.

The children were ecstatic and a “Marvelous time was had by all” as Tom kept saying later, much to everyone’s general disgust as they kept throwing things at him at his apartment...but Tom had noticed that while everyone, children, parents, siblings, and staff were excited and clamoring to be involved in the fun, there were a few patients that were just too ill to participate, and he and his friends made a point to leave some things aside for those kids to have, and to see if there was anything they could do for them once the furor calmed down.

There was one nurse that never joined in the carefully controlled chaos, but went about caring for, and ultimately consoling, the ones who wished to play but couldn’t, or were too ill to notice, or care. Tom saw her picking one child up, and simply rocking him in her arms in a rocking chair for awhile, rubbing his back, and apparently singing to him. He made a mental note to say hello to her as well. He knew there was always someone that had to stay behind and work when everyone was enjoying these kinds of parties, and he wanted to let her know he saw and was touched by the work she was doing with so much heart.

Once the brouhaha and the dust settled, Loki stepped aside, found Nurse Sabrina, and asked if the other children would be interested in seeing the Marvel crew, and she grimaced.

“It’s very kind of you to inquire, uh, Loki, if you and your...cohort would like to perhaps wave at the children from the doorway if they are awake, that would be fine, but that is the most I can allow. They really are quite sick.”

Chris stepped up. “Is it all right if we leave them some signed posters and things like that?”

“Cap, I know that would make them very happy, even if we have to put them up outside of their rooms, looking in...!”

Loki looked into the room where he had seen the little boy Sabrina had rocked. He seemed so frail... “Erm, that little boy...will he be alright?”

Sabrina’s face buttoned up. “I’m afraid I cannot comment on his prognosis, Loki. I will say...I wish you had healing powers. For all of these children, obviously...but especially for him. He was so distressed he could not come out and see you, in particular. He thinks you are, ah, badass. I do not bother correcting his more colorful speech. It’s not relevant.”

“I see. Is he awake?”

“Yes, he is, but I cannot allow you to go in...”

“I understand...tell this young Midgardian to expect a visit in a few minutes...”

One of the giveaway items they had was a small t shirt, which Tom had signed by both characters and actors, and then proceeded to his room.

Small Tim Curran was wondering why Nurse Sabrina had come in, and insisted that she comb his hair, and wash his face...and then...

“Midgardian.”

“Holy sh...smokes,” the little boy breathed. Standing in the doorway was none other than the OG, the badass himself... “Loki?”

“I understand you are unwell and as such I am not to enter your presence. I would not wish to undermine your recovery. However, I come bearing gifts.”

Sabrina entered, grinning from ear to ear, and showed him the T-shirt. Loki had even doodled his face next to his name. “I have embued it with as much healing seidr as possible. I do not know if it will be effective against your Midgardian illness, but I do know it will aid your prodigious courage and strength, provided you heed the instructions of Healer Sabrina, and all others who are working in your aid.”

Captain Marvel, Captain America, and Daredevil also spoke to him personally, adding what qualities they added to his shirt.

Tim was in heaven, and as Sabrina was looking at his vitals, saw he was getting over excited, and thought she would have to cut the visit short, but seeing as she was getting concerned, the actors all proclaimed they needed to depart to return to their duties.

Tim fell asleep that night clutching his shirt, and would not be parted from it. Loki would be pleased to know it did impart healing powers, because it brought the little boy so much happiness...

Tom called Sabrina the next day, and asked if there was anything else he could do for the children in the wing, and Sabrina replied they were still very excited, and he had done more than enough. She was very grateful. She was also very thankful he called to speak with her personally, not because she was flattered on a personal standpoint (although she was) but because her superiors in administration would be quick to turn it into a publicity request or worse, a financial one).

Tom shyly admitted he did have an ulterior motive for asking to speak with her personally...he wanted to know if he could see her sometime.

Something about the small nurse had gotten under his skin. Maybe it was the way she stuck to the background the entire afternoon, even when everyone was getting into the big group photo. Maybe it was the way she never asked for a thing herself, even when they were all speaking casually and privately at the end, when she easily could have. No one would have minded, and even Evans and Larson commented on it over pizza and beer later that evening, how she didn’t ask for a selfie, an autograph, nothing, even though she was as friendly and pleasant as old be...

Cox noticed how Tom blushed when Evans joked about he couldn’t get over someone didn’t want to get a photo with the man who saved New York, or the bastard that almost destroyed it. Cox noticed everything...as he was leaving for the night, he asked Tom, “Are you going to try to get Nurse Ratched’s phone number?”

Tom had flared, “Don’t do that. Don’t make fun of her.”

Cox grinned. “Ah hah. So that’s the way the wind is blowing...” and walked away, whistling.

Coffee became an exchange of What’s App phone numbers. Both of them worked long hours, so texting was a godsend. Texts became marathon phone calls at odd hours of the day, which became meetings in strange places to avoid the paparazzi, until they stumbled into each other’s arms, and each other’s beds.

Sabrina was like no one Tom had ever met: calm, compassionate, cheerful, and not giving a tinker’s damn about the industry, gossip columns, and all the rest of it. When he hesitantly pointed this aspect of her personality out to her she looked at him as though he was something of interest under a microscope.

“Sweet man, I act like I don’t care because I truly don’t. It’s completely irrelevant. Unimportant. Trifling. I have held children’s beating hearts in my hands while doctors have desperately tried to sew them back together in operating rooms because bullets ripped through their little bodies and their bedrooms in housing projects. I’ve held hysterical parents back as they’ve tried to somehow willtheir dying children back to life as they take their last breaths. I’ve held newborns in my hands as they have been only seconds old, and I have held children in my arms as they’ve breathed their last. That, to me, is real. That is life. And it comes wrapped up in tears and laughter and vomit and shit and blood and love and love and love. If some paparazzi, interviewer, man on the street, or tabloid tried to give me shit for loving you, ask me how much I’d care? The answer is not at all. It’s not going to change my mind, or my life.”

Tom knew, then, he had found his one, the one he wanted to spend the rest of his life with, and grow old with, maybe even have a family of his own with...the question was, would she want the same...?

“...Tom? Tom?...Earth to Major...oh, you know what? Forget about it, Major Tom has crashed, Houston, we have a problem,” sighed Sabrina looking at her lover who had fallen asleep on the sofa still clutching part of a cookie he had yet to finish.

“Well, Bobby, it looks like another night of delayed gratification for me...good thing he’s so cute, and I happen to love the charming beanpole,” she commented wryly, only to see that Bobby was also lying on the floor asleep...and farting.

“Good God, what is it with the Hiddleston men tonight, I wonder?” Laughing quietly, Sabrina got up and made sure the bed was ready (and not in the hapless disarray of clothing tossed all around, which was not usual but happened enough to be worthy of a check). She turned down the covers and made sure there was a bottle of water on Tom’s nightstand.

As she was doing this, Tom woke up with a jerk, and he looked around for Sabrina. He wasn’t quite awake, wasn’t asleep, and Sabrina wasn’t there...she wasn’t there, she had finally done it, come to her senses and left him, he had forgotten she was coming to spend the weekend with him, one the rare occurrences she had the entire weekend off, and then he goes and falls asleep on her, no, noton her, but next to her like a right pillock, as if she wasn’t even there...no, no...he knew it was going to happen eventually, she was too lovely a person to put up with him and his bullshit, the way he was so self-absorbed and caught up in his own problems and life, she was right, she dealt in the real world, and...

He put his head in his hands. “I’m sorry, Sabrina...so sorry. You deserved better, but I loved you the best I could,” he whispered. “I gave you all the heart I have...”

“What’s this then?” A soft voice, sweet like melted chocolate, soothing as a warm kiss...

“Sabrina!” His head shot up so quickly she winced at the cracking sound from his neck, and then saw his reddened, swollen eyes.

“Ah, love, what is it? Nightmare?” She came and extended her hand to him. “Come with me, you’re exhausted, and we’ll cuddle.”

“You’re still here.”

She looked at him tolerantly. “Yes, Tom. Still here. Complete with my Cookie Monster puppet, just to drive you mad. Come to bed. I’ll snuggle with you and chase the bads away, I promise. The only monster here is the blue one eyeing your cookies, and I’ve put him away.”

He took her small hand, and smiled. “There will be no delayed gratification in this house. We will enjoy the things we love, and live the one life we have to its fullest...no longer am I going to delay giving my heart what it desires most...I shall be bold, and decisive...Bobby, you have my express permission, nay, encouragement, to destroy the Cookie Monster, and anything else that dares come between myself and my love...”

Yes. He would be bold. Tomorrow, he would ask her if she would consider becoming a permanent star in his sky, he would stop living in fear of her disappearing the moment he closed his eyes, he would throw caution to the four winds, and belay any idea of delaying his happiness, and hopefully, hers, for any reason, a moment longer. There would be declarations made, and promises, and...

He tripped over his shoes.

“Careful! Harsh, Tom, very harsh...and Bobby, don’t you dare.” They turned off the lights and made their way to bed, Tom sleepily stripping along the way, making Sabrina laugh. “Ah, what the world to pay to see this strip show...”

“Quiet, Woman. This is not a strip show, this is a ritual divestiture of armor.”

“Uh huh,” she skeptically agreed, looking at the trail of clothes behind him. “So, if I was to get undressed like that...”

“Ah, now that would be a strip show, and a lovely one, indeed...”

“Sexist double standards...here, sit down, I will tuck you in...”

“Promise?”

“Tom!”

The naughty little boy expression he gave her was ruined by his yawn he could barely cover. Sabrina laughed as she quickly undressed and put on her sleep clothes, only to be greeted by Tom’s gentle snore the moment she turned out the light. He was so very tired. She was glad he could relax, and find some rest.

And while yes, it was definitely a night for delayed gratification, they had the whole weekend to look forward to sharing. She, for one, was so looking forward to bringing out the Cookie Monster puppet in the morning...maybe as part of a wake up call...

Tagging @villainousshakespeare , @winterisakiller , @vodka-and-some-sass , @lotus-eyedindiangoddess , @just-the-hiddles , @yespolkadotkitty , @hopelessromanticspoonie , @theheartofpenelope , @sabine-leo , @wegingerangelica , @ciaodarknessmyheart , @wrathkitty , @rhemasky , @catsladen​ @sourpatchkidsandacokecan​ , @redfoxwritesstuff​ , @the-insomniac-cat2​ , @alexakeyloveloki​ , @myoxisbroken​ , @ladyfluff​ , @toomanystoriessolittletime​

[unlockthelore]

Fair is Fair

Yuusuke doesn’t mind cooking for his family although he does get wrapped up in it — and tends to lose sight of what’s important. Chapter 2 of 2 of the Helping Hand fic, part of the Smile Bomb series on Ao3. For more updates, follow smile bomb tag on this blog.

Contrary to popular belief, domestic life suits Yuusuke just fine. Sure there were a few hiccups with balancing an actual job and his duties as a Spirit Detective “on retainer”, but he’d gone through worse. Like hell was he going to let Reikai, Makai or Ningenkai rules keep him from living his life — especially one that involved Keiko.

He was lucky that he came back just in time. She really seemed at her wits end and he felt guilty for pushing her that far. Promising her things would be different wasn’t good enough this time, she deserved nothing but the best, and while Yuusuke still doubted he was close to that — he’d try for Keiko’s sake.

If that meant learning about the “tools of the trade” from her old man and enduring all the stare downs from people who thought she was wasting her time on him, so be it. His friends came by often to try out new dishes. Really making it feel like home with all the yelling and carrying on. And it wasn’t like they all didn’t go on cases now and again when life allowed it. Keiko understood. Spirits, it confused Yuusuke how much she understood.

He couldn’t turn his back on the realms. As tentative as the balance was, without him and the others, it would crumble long before the fruits of their labor could be seen. And there were no small amount of challenges. Insurgent groups hellbent on killing them, testing their resolve, and the defense of this “peace” they created.

Hiei warned him that this was temporary, lowering their guard and falling complacent would only invite their enemies to do them in — and he was right. But Yuusuke had Keiko on his side and if she didn’t inspire him to work hard every day, nothing else would.

The number of people relying on him had grown throughout the years along with his fear.

“Complacency,” Kurama told him in hushed tones amidst a crowded hospital corridor. “Is much different from moving on.”

And Yuusuke had.

Moved on from all of the self-doubt and anger. Worries he wasn’t good enough for her. Astonishment by her devotion to him. Stumbling in his efforts to be strong and untouchable over kind and vulnerable.

All so he could have a family with her — a life with her — and even if Keiko died before he did, Yuusuke would appreciate every moment. From the breath of life she’d given him to the small children who clamored at his legs vying for his attention. Reminding him of her in their smiles and their words, tiny hands grasping his own as hers fitted in the crook of his elbow. Grounding him to reality.

That they were his family, his legacy, who and what he fought for.

And he prayed none of them let go.

─── 幽☆遊☆白書

Listening to the boiling pot of soup, Yuusuke wandered about the kitchen with one arm outstretched to clean off the counter, and the other around the napping form of his son. Mako slept with his cheek pressed to his father’s shoulder and an impressive trail of drool pooling at his lips. Occasionally, he shuffled in his sleep and burrowed his face against Yuusuke’s neck until the tickle of his growing beard grew to be too much for his comfort. Yuusuke chuckled heartily when Mako elbowed his jaw away after he tried giving the boy a little kiss on his cheek.

Just like Keiko, Mako would never miss out on a cuddle but he hated being uncomfortable while trying to sleep. A hard person to wake up — he didn’t mind the noises Yuusuke made as he set to the task of making dinner, comfortable as long as he was held securely and able to cuddle as close as he wanted. It’s hard to remember that he was this small once upon a time. Someone looked at him, seemingly deciding he wasn’t worth the trouble, and refused to care for him.

His mother, always trying in her own way, ushering him close to her side just as he did his own children. Assuring that she’d never give up on him no matter how much of a pain he was. During the dawn of his adolescence, Yuusuke doubted those words ferociously. Until he died. Her world falling apart around her ears. And he understood her better then he did before — becoming aware that he knew little about her at all.

With as much of Keiko as he sees in Mako, Yuusuke figured he would turn out alright. But a traitorous part of him worries over what his son inherited from him. The idea that just like his old man, Mako would come to resent him someday. Dismiss him out of hand. Eyes cold and unforgiving because of something Yuusuke had done. It chills him to the bone. Ideas of his son hating him, being unable to make up for where he fell short and having to live with his discontent.

Unconsciously, Yuusuke rested his cheek against Mako’s head. Listened to his quiet grumbling as he adjusted to the added weight. His discontent easing, sigh so heartrendingly fond that Yuusuke closes his eyes to savor it. Unwilling to take a breath until he heard a light thump against the wall, cracking his eyes open enough to see the flutter of sable black hair and a brief flash of green.

“Shiki?” Yuusuke called out, hiking Mako up on his hip. His daughter’s answering hum is lilting, similar to his own. “What’re you up to, kiddo?”

When had she gotten up, Yuusuke asked himself, turning back to the pot to ensure it wasn’t boiling over. The lid lifted with one hand, steam rising up to fan across his face as he heard shuffling in the hall.

“Carrying mama!”

“Oh…” Yuusuke drawled, adjusting his grip on the pot as he moved to set it aside. The words not sinking in until a beat passes. Mystified, his voice a touch quieter as he whispered, “Carrying mama…?”

Keiko was asleep on the couch in the living room. He remembered because he pressed a kiss to her head, drawing a blanket over her shoulders before picking up Mako who was sleeping sprawled out on her front. What color was that blanket again?

Yuusuke’s eyes widened.

Green.

“W—“ Yuusuke startled, nearly dropping the pot lid and banging his knee against the cabinet in his haste. “Keiko?! Shiki! Sh— ah damn!”

Jostling Mako enough to where he groaned and kicked his legs, catching Yuusuke in the sides. Hastily putting the lid down, Yuusuke pressed one hand to his son’s back and hurried out to the hall in time to see his daughter literally carrying Keiko’s sleeping form wrapped up in that same green blanket. If he wasn’t worried about Shiki dropping Keiko or hurting herself, he might’ve found it hilarious.

“Shiki,” Yuusuke hissed in a whisper, hurrying after her as much as socked feet and a dozing five-year-old could allow. His daughter staring up at him with curious honey-brown eyes, adorably wide and confused. “Kiddo, what’re you…”

As if luck couldn’t have been worse for either of them, it was then that Keiko started to rouse from sleep. Her eyes slowly opening and head lifting with sleep-glazed eyes trailing over the walls and inspecting the faces of those closest to her.

“Mm,” Keiko hummed sleepily. A long pause following as she regarded the two of them with confusion, gradually shifting as she startled. “Wh- What?!”

The spike in her energy startled Yuusuke and Shiki both, father and daughter meeting one another’s gaze then turning back to Keiko.

Smiling widely, Shiki giggled seemingly all too pleased with herself. “Hi mama!”

“Hey…” Yuusuke trailed off when Keiko’s frantic searching gaze met his own. Adding weakly and with a bit of warning, a quick glance stolen toward their beaming daughter. “…Keiko.”

Testament to Keiko’s ever-growing patience, the corners of her lips tilted upward into a gentle smile solely for Shiki’s sake. “Hello dumpling…” she cooed softly, pulling one hand free and brushing her fingers over Shiki’s cheeks. Their daughter giggling at the touch and leaning against her hand. With the distraction, Keiko stole a glance at Yuusuke with a look that asked for him to explain what was happening.

Yuusuke opened his mouth then closed it. Years of putting his foot in his mouth telling him to think this over before he spoke. A wall of youki was built up near Shiki’s hands, helping suspend the length of Keiko’s body which would’ve been too long for their daughter to hold in her arms even with them outstretched. As mortified he should’ve been — Genkai’s training was really paying off. Shiki and Mako’s energy manipulation was getting better day after day, although he sincerely hoped carrying them and lifting couches wasn’t part of Genkai’s plans.

If so, he might’ve to worry about being dropped on his head randomly.

Clearing his throat, Yuusuke shifted his hold on Mako. “Uh… I guess… you fell asleep on the couch and Shiki…” He glanced side-long as his daughter who stared up at him confusedly. “… Why are you carrying mama?”

Shiki had a way of looking at him that reminded him painfully of Keiko. The flat stare, unimpressed and wholly bored with the conversation at hand, as if the answer should’ve been clear enough. It’s both endearing and strange. Sighing, Shiki explained in a matter-of-fact tone reserved for children her age.

“Mama carries me and Mako when we’re sleepy. And sometimes you carry her when she’s sleepy. You were cooking, so I did it.”

Ah, so that’s what this was. Sharing an utterly fond look with Keiko that went entirely over Shiki’s head, Yuusuke shrugged and shook his head.

“Thank you, Shiki,” Keiko said, resting her hand against Shiki’s cheek.

Practically beaming at the praise, Shiki grinned. “You’re welcome,” she said, though her lips twitched to a pout. “But you’re up now, do you want me to put you down?”

Yuusuke could hear the resignation in Keiko’s sigh, and no small amount of fondness laced into it.

“Why don’t you finish carrying me to bed?”

Shiki perked up immediately, all traces of the pout gone and her eyes bright with the prospect of helping. Yuusuke snorted, shaking his head.

“Sure you got this, kid?”

With a quick bobbing of the head and a look of determination scrunching up her nose and thinning her lips, Shiki huffed. “Uh-huh.”

Pride swelled in Yuusuke’s chest as he watched his daughter carry Keiko down the hall. His wife calling out words of praise and encouragement as they went.

Yuusuke grinned. He wouldn’t have traded this for anything in the world.

[here4theheartbreak]

2019 Writing Wrap Up

Under a cut because long, long, long.

Fandom(s): BTS and SH

Fics that you wrote in 2019:

💔🔥 Nice Things - Namjoon is clumsy, even with others’ hearts. (smut, angst, bottom!Namjoon)

🔥 Detention (Jimin/Namjoon/Taehyung) - Jimin and Taehyung are stuck in detention for a very particular reason. (smut, top!Namjoon, switch!Jimin, switch!Taehyung, teacher/student roleplay)

🔥 Euphoria - Jungkook has had a crush on the leader of BTS since forever. Now that Namjoon is helping write his solo for the upcoming album, this could be his perfect chance. (smut, dirty talk, bottom!Jungkook)

🍭 Lost & Found (Hoseok/Jin/Namjoon) - Hoseok and Namjoon get caught in a flash flood while hiking. A mysterious man saves them, claiming to be a supernatural creature. He’s crazy, right? (no sex, first kiss, faerie AU, fae!Jin)

🔥 Sentience (Halsey/Jin/Namjoon) - It’s Namjoon’s birthday and his girlfriend surprises him with an android. It’ll just be a single, fun night, right? (android!Jin, bottom!Namjoon, top!Jin, cyberpunk, MMF, smut, AU)

💔 forever rain (Hoseok/Namjoon/Yoongi) - Namjoon made a big mistake six months ago and has been hiding from the confrontation he knew would result. The rain can’t hide him forever. (fluff and angst, no smut, AU)

🔥 Silent Love (Jimin/Jin/Namjoon) - Namjoon got new toys for his boyfriends. He can’t wait to hear their silence. (smut, gags, dirty talk, bottom!Jin, switch!Jimin, bdsm)

🔥 Surprise Visit (Jin/Jungkook/Namjoon) - Jin surprises Namjoon with a visit while he’s working in the studio late one night. But they’re not as alone as they thought. (smut, voyeurism, bottom!Jin)

🔥💔Run to Me (Jin/Namjoon/Taehyung) - Taehyung has a crush on Namjoon. Not like he stands a chance with Jin there though. (smut, HYYH verse, AU, virgin!Taehyung, switch!Taehyung, switch!Jin, switch!Namjoon)

🔥 Ready (Jimin/Namjoon/Yoongi) - Jimin is finally ready to give a special part of himself to his boyfriends. They do their best to make it special. (first time, smut, bottom!Jimin, top!Namjoon, top!Yoongi)

🔥 Detention (Jimin/Namjoon/Taehyung) - Jimin and Taehyung are stuck in detention for a very particular reason. (smut, top!Namjoon, switch!Jimin, switch!Taehyung, teacher/student roleplay)

🔥 Trying New Things (Hoseok/Jungkook/Namjoon/Yoongi) - Jungkook loves trying new things. He also loves being tested. So his boyfriends find a great way to do both at the same time. (sex toys, bottom!Jungkook, triple penetration, top!Hoseok, top!Namjoon, top!Yoongi, bondage)

🔥 Red - Jin agrees to try a new form of play for his Dom, and things don’t go as planned. (smut, safewording, bottom!Jin, bdsm)

🔥💔 Camshows and Camera Lenses (Jin/Taehyung) - Jin knew it was a bad idea to get so involved with the camboy he knew as TaeTae95. But the young man was charming, beautiful, smart, and everything Jin could ever want in a man. Now only if those around him could see that too. (Multichapter, AU) 🔥 Stuck - Jungkook gets himself a little stuck. Good thing Jin is there to help. (smut, under-negotiated kink, bottom!Jungkook)

🔥 Sensitive (Hoseok/Jin/Taehyung) - Jin has a sensitive neck. His boyfriends can’t help but tease. (non penetrative sex, dirty talk)

🔥 Paper Beats Rock (Jin/Jungkook/Yoongi) - Jin and Yoongi didn’t really know how things would turn out with the cute stranger who played rock, paper, scissors with them. Neither expected this. (smut, meet weird, bottom!Jin, top!Yoongi, aro!Yoongi, ace!Jungkook, AU, poly V)

🍭 Love Is Not Over (Jimin/Jin/Yoongi) - Yoongi has decided that love isn’t worth it after a particularly nasty divorce. Even if his daughter’s kindergarten teacher is fucking adorable. He’s married anyway, and Yoongi sure as hell isn’t a home wrecker. (fluff, no smut, divorced!Yoongi, single dad!Yoongi, AU)

🔥 Mouthy (Jimin/Jin/Taehyung/Yoongi) - Jin’s been mouthy this week. His boyfriends wanna fix that. (smut, rough sex, bottom!Taehyung, sub!Jin, Dom!Taehyung, top!Jin, switch!Jimin, top!Yoongi)

🔥 Three Times as Much (Jimin/Jin/Jungkook/Taehyung) - Jin needs a little punishment. His boyfriends are happy to oblige. (smut, rough sex, triple penetration, all 4 are switches)

🔥 Best of Me (Hoseok/Jin/Jungkook/Yoongi) - The rap line has been working hard on their first American collaboration. Unfortunately, their hard work has caused their boyfriends to feel a little neglected. (webcam/video chat sex, dirty talk, bottom!Yoongi, top!Hoseok, switch!Jin, switch!Jungkook)

💔 Promise - Jimin has some trouble dealing with things in his life. Yoongi is there to support him. (no sex, angst, self harm, eating disorders) 

🔥 Gotta Go (Hoseok/Jimin/Jungkook/Yoongi) - Jimin has never had to go so bad in his life. Unfortunately his boyfriends have other plans. (watersports, no penetrative sex, urophagia) 🔥 Properly Chastised (Hoseok/Jimin/Taehyung) - Taehyung realizes that he really likes to be spanked. No way can his boyfriends find out. They would most definitely use it against him. (spanking, bottom!Taehyung, top!Jimin, top!Hoseok)

🔥 💔 Paint the Roses White (Jimin/Taehyung) - Jimin’s life sucks. He’s miserable, beat down, and tired. That is, until a mysterious boy with purple hair and a dangerous smile slides into his life and turns it upside down. The White Queen is ruling and drinks are on the house in the Hat Trick Lounge. Caterpillar is missing and the Prince of Hearts is ready for a war, if only he could figure out where his damn rabbit ran off to again… (AU, Multichapter) - collaboration with @i-live-so-i-love​

🔥Naked Yoga (Jimin/Jungkook/Taehyung)  - Jungkook is just trying to do his yoga and relax a little. But it’s his birthday and Jimin and Taehyung have other ideas. (smut, bottom!Jungkook, top!Jimin, top!Taehyung)

🔥Mile High and Mildly Bored - Jungkook is insufferable and horny when he’s bored. Especially on a thirteen hour flight. (smut, bathroom sex, bottom!Taehyung)

🔥 Taking the Challenge - Jin can’t handle his new toy, but Jungkook is up for the challenge. (smut, sex toys, bottom!Jungkook)

🍭💔 Family - Jin gets injured during a performance. He just wants to mope in solitude. (fluff, sick fic, slice of life)

🔥 Vacation Heat - Jin is in heat and needs a little help. Unfortunately his heat triggers those of his lovers, requiring a little more help than planned. (AU, Alpha/Omega verse, smut, knotting, omega/bottom!Jin, omega/bottom!Taehyung, omega/switch!Jungkook, omega/top!Jimin, alpha/top!Hoseok, alpha/top!Yoongi, alpha/switch!Namjoon)

🔥 Sleeping Beauty - Taehyung has a secret fantasy that he can’t wait to have his boyfriends fulfill. (consensual somnophilia, bottom!Taehyung, switch!Jungkook, switch!Jimin)

🍭 Bitter Revenge - Jungkook’s pranks have gone too far. The others will go to any lengths to get their revenge. (no sex, fluff, prank wars)

😈 Spooky Stories with Bangtan - A series of Halloween shorts. Some will have ships, some will not, but they are all based on the kid’s book series Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark. They may or may not all be connected… You’ll have to stay until the end to find out. Some will have character death, others are more funny, none are X rated gore (though some borders on M if you don’t like body horror or bugs - still read the warnings for each fic). Hope y’all enjoy and have a happy Halloween! (kiddie horror, no smut, light gore, varies, implied ships throughout including ot7)

🍭💔 Stretched to the Breaking Point - Jin’s exhausted after 4 years solid of picking up after/for the absolute loves of his life. He wants to prove he’s useful, but is this really how he’s going to have to do it? (fluff, light angst, no smut, slice of life)

🔥 Give Your All to Me (I’ll Give My All to You) - Malec - Alec really needs to learn to relax. Magnus has just the thing. (Alec x Magnus, smut, D/s elements, bottom!Alec, sub!Alec, sensory deprivation, sensation play, bondage)

🔥 As Equals - Malec - Alec insists, but Magnus isn’t sure he’s ready. (Alec x Magnus, smut, virgin!Alec, canon compliant, missing scene, sorta fix it, s02e07, s02e18, bottom!Alec, top!Magnus)

🍭 Season of Love  - Malec - Magnus takes Madzie and Alec to make some new memories.

Total Fics: 33 + 3 = 36 fics

Total Words: 179,065 + 21,827 = 200,892

~Ship/Character Breakdown~

Ships (if applicable): (I’m only doing main focus ships for my fics)

Halsey x Jin x Namjoon

Hoseok x Jimin x Jungkook x Yoongi

Hoseok x Jimin x Taehyung

Hoseok x Jin x Jungkook x Yoongi

Hoseok x Jin x Namjoon

Hoseok x Jin x Taehyung

Hoseok x Jungkook x Namjoon x Yoongi

Hoseok x Namjoon x Yoongi

Jimin x Jin x Jungkook x Taehyung

Jimin x Jin x Namjoon

Jimin x Jin x Taehyung x Yoongi

Jimin x Jin x Yoongi

Jimin x Jungkook x Taehyung

Jimin x Namjoon x Taehyung

Jimin x Namjoon x Yoongi

Jimin x Taehyung

Jimin x Yoongi

Jin x Jungkook

Jin x Jungkook x Namjoon

Jin x Jungkook x Yoongi

Jin x Namjoon x Taehyung

Jin x Taehyung

Jin x Yoongi

Jungkook x Namjoon

Jungkook x Taehyung

Namjoon x Yoongi

OT7 (7)

Malec (3)

Character Frequency (minus ot7):

Namjoon Ships: 11

Jin Ships: 14

Yoongi Ships: 11

Hoseok Ships: 7

Jimin Ships: 11

Taehyung Ships: 10

Jungkook Ships: 10

Halsey Ships: 1

Character POVs:

Namjoon – 6

Jin – 11

Yoongi – 2

Hoseok – 1

Jimin – 3

Taehyung – 3

Jungkook – 5

Alec Lightwood – 2

Magnus Bane – 1

Omnipotent 3rd Person – 1 (Sleeping Beauty)

Varying POV – 1 (Spooky Stories w/ Bangtan)

~Specifics~

Best and Worst Title?

Best: Camshows and Camera Lenses

Worst: Season of Love

Best and Worst first line?

Best: There were a few moments in Jungkook’s life that made him stop and think, how did he end up here. (Stuck)

Worst: “I don’t get it?” (Ready)

Best and Worst ending line?

Best: “See, Namjoon? This is why we can’t have nice things.” (Nice Things)

Worst: Jin smiled softly, his heart feeling full and happy between his two new boyfriends. (Paper Beats Rock)

~General Questions~

Looking back, did you write more fics than you thought you would this year, less than, or about what was expected? – Actually, a lot more. It didn’t feel like I was writing near as much, but when I crunched the numbers over the past few years it’s actually more words on average per month than even when I was writing for SPN – and anyone that is a holdover from that time in my life will recall I was incredibly prolific and pressured myself to constantly put out new work. I got burnt out so bad too, which was why when I saw how much I wrote this year I was surprised – I felt literally no burn out.

What pairing/genre/fandom did you write that you would never have predicted last year? – Hmm, I mean SH, for one, I never thought I’d get into that show. But for BTS related stuff, a ship with Halsey in it. 100% did not see that coming.

What’s your favorite story this year? Not the most popular, but the one that makes you the happiest. – Three-way tie. Paint the Roses White, Stretched to the Breaking Point, and Give Your All to Me. Paint the Roses because it was my first collab with my best friend, and I had so, so much fun plotting it out and working with her to put this world together. I can’t wait to dive into our next universe and get it started. Stretched to the Breaking Point because it felt so raw while I was writing it. It stung but it helped me work through some stuff going on in my life and I just really felt like it came together in a clean and good way. And Give Your All to Me because it was my first SH fic and it felt like coming home. Normally I struggle with new fandoms but when I finally got a handle on the guys, it flowed like I’d been writing them for ages.

Okay, your most popular story? – By hits, it’s definitely Stuck. Kudos it’s Euphoria, comments it’s Camshows and Camera Lenses, bookmarks – Euphoria. So to me, I think Kudos and comments weigh more than hits and bookmarks – so Euphoria and Camshows and Camera Lenses are the most popular of mine on AO3.

Story most underappreciated by the universe? – Ugh. Sentience. I feel like it’s shunned because of the ship and it’s just an out there prompt but I worked hard on that thing and I’m proud of it.

Story that could have been better? – Paper Beats Rock. I wanted to do a lot more with it but I just ran out of inspiration for it and kinda rushed to the ending.

Sexiest story? – Give Your All to Me. While just a generic smut fic, I feel like I captured the feeling a bit better than I do sometimes, and it evokes more of a response in me than some of my other smut.

Saddest story? – Promise. I mean it ends on a hopeful note, but anything involving self-harm or other self-destructive behaviors always hurts.

Fluffiest story? – Love is Not Over – I never in my life imagined I’d be writing a kid fic for BTS but here we are.

Most fun story? – Sentience, again. It was a challenge but it was so fun to try and work out all the kinks and figure out how to make this AU work.

Hardest story to write? - Sleeping Beauty. I’m still not entirely happy with how it turned out. I had a grand plan in my head for how I wanted it to play out, but I ran into a lot of writing issues in terms of POV and just feeling rushed or not into it since it was so heavily smut. It gave me more trouble than I expected it to.

Easiest/most fun story to write? – Paint the Roses White. It was easier of course because I had help, with it being a collab, but I think that just the overall plot and idea and world itself was so fun. Things came easily and even when we had to stop and discuss it didn’t feel like things were being forced. It was just something that was meant to be written.

What story took the longest? – I feel like I was writing Paper Beats Rock for a century. This was likely due to the timing – I was writing it right over a busy time in the real world – school, work, kiddo, friends – and this distracted me and made me write slower.

Did you take any writing risks this year? What did you learn from them? – I wrote things that I previously may have considered ‘risky’ in the sense of like… I wrote for me. Rather than spending a ton of time worrying about how others would perceive the story I was writing, I wrote what I felt helped the story and worked for it. It was really satisfying to do that, to be honest. I feel like it made writing so much more enjoyable overall and less stressful. And, it was nice to see that the response wasn’t near as horrible as I worried it would be, or it would have been in other fandoms.

What are your fic writing goals for next year? – Nothing serious or big, really. I would really like to finish up a couple of chapter fics that I have had sitting on my to-do list for almost a full year now. There’s also a collab or two I’d like to work on and publish next year, in addition to my own solo stuff. And I’d like to keep writing for SH and posting those – I’m doing a writing bingo for the first half of 2020 and I think If I can do at least half of the squares (so like 12-13 out of 25) I’d be totally satisfied with that. As for word count or things of that nature – I don’t think I have anything set in stone. It would be nice to keep the same or higher for total word count, around the 200k mark, but if I don’t reach that I’m not going to fret about it. Writing should be enjoyable and relaxing, not stress me out to the point I no longer enjoy it. So, I guess my goal is to just keep writing what makes me happy.

Tagging: @btsaudge @i-live-so-i-love @lucibae-is-dancing-in-hell @compo67 @flora-jimin @chimknj @softjeon @zzzett And any other writing friends! I am 100% sure i forgot people here. 

[becky-helene]

It’s really difficult/weird/funny to have two fics from two different fandoms that both happen to have a character with the same name.

Fandoms in question: Shadowhunters, and Detroit Become Human.

Name in question: Simon.

I was just now glancing over the (seriously I will go back to working on it, I promise!) WIP final chapter of Take Me to Church (dbh) and at the point where other characters aside from current focus of Connara+Alice+Markus finally reappear in the story, first of which being Simon and my head instinctively went like “wait, Simon? What are you doing here? Oh.....wait, wait, wrong Simon....okay, moving on.”

Technically where I’m at in Almost Never Again (Shadowhunters), *that* Simon is not in the story, it’s all Malec fluff smut and all that good stuff. But those lovely lovely muses that have made me incapable of sticking to initial one-shot plans for both of these two fandoms, have already been cooking up ideas/scenes for future installments of this thing that’s now going to be becoming a whole damn series lol. One such idea/scene heavily involves SH Simon. So I’ve got that Simon in my head while looking over something mentioning dbh Simon. Tis very confusing lol.

Anyway just thought I’d share funny fandomy moment *shrug*

[365daysofsasuhina]

[ 365 Days of SasuHina || Day Thirty-Six: An Issue You Care About ] [ Uchiha Sasuke, Hyūga Hinata ] [ SasuHina ] [ Verse: A Light Amongst Shadows ] [ AO3 Link ]

“How did you even come to care about all of this in the first place?”

Startled out of her thoughts as Sasuke’s question intrudes on the silence, Hinata blinks pale eyes a few times as her mind plays catch-up. “I...sorry, w-what?”

A single dark eye stares at her - somehow, he doesn’t look annoyed despite her fumbling. “The Uchiha. Why is this an issue you care about? Your clan wasn’t affected.”

...oh. “...no, but...we could have been.”

“You didn’t have ancestors that fought the Senju or tried to kill a Hokage.”

That earns a slight flinch. “...no, I...I don’t. Though...your and my bloodlines were the start of...well, all of this. The sons of the sage, and...all of that.” Hinata is still a bit unclear about history that far back, but she’s eager to learn. Hearing that the woman that nearly devoured their world sired her bloodline, well...made her curious.

“And...that’s n-not the point. The point is...that the council acted against an entire clan, w-without due process. It set a dangerous precedent. Would any other groups or clans that ever felt dissent be wiped out the same way? It was a horrible imbalance of power that had to be addressed and...and ensured to never be repeated.”

A dark brow perks. “...but you were already involved before all this. Itachi’s…” A pause, considering the right word. “...his, er...wife already knew you’d help keep the clans in line when we went to confront the council and reveal their actions. And she revived Neji. Are you two...friends?”

“...oh!” That earns a small laugh - had he really not heard? “Yes, she - she is. It, um...it started back during our first chūnin exams. She was the one that operated on me, and...saved my life. And took care of Lee-kun and I during our recoveries.”

“...I guess I remember her being there…”

“So, um...we just became friends after that. She’s very...mothering. I think she was worried about me like Kurenai-sensei was. But, um...when she found out she was with child, she...she asked me for help. And told me what she knew. A-about Itachi.”

“...she told you…?”

“She didn’t want to,” Hinata admits quietly. “...but it would have come out sooner or later, and...well, I was the closest person she had left, that she felt she could trust. And after, well...a-after you found out, there wasn’t as much point in hiding it. Especially since, if there was going to be any peace for you, and Itachi’s child - well, children as it turned out - then...it had to be addressed. And I just...wanted to help.”

“And then your whole clan got involved,” Sasuke can’t help but deadpan.

Hinata chuckles softly into a sleeve cuff. “Yes...I know that hasn’t been easy for you - any of you. But I promise, Hanabi is trying to temper them, and...herself. Neji-nīsan is helping, too. He, um...he has his own biases, but he’s better than he was. I think all of the changes in the clan are helping him change, too. And...it’s good we’re addressing our own issues, as well...”

“Yeah, I never understood the Hyūga branch system. Did anyone ever actually believe it was about protecting the Byakugan? That seal of yours? Because if it was...why didn’t the main branch get it, too? If anything, the ‘purer’ eyes should have been more adamantly protected, right?”

“They were,” Hinata murmurs, tone suddenly laced with something darker. “The branch clansmen were like cannon fodder...a main house clansmen was never supposed to fall, because we had dozens and dozens of branch house shinobi to d-defend us...whether they wanted to, or not.”

Sasuke can’t help but go quiet at that.

“...so, I’m glad we’re taking care of it,” she goes on. “Otōsama is working with my cousin to bring an end to new applications of the seal.”

“...is Neji ever going to get it back?”

“No. That was one of the medic’s conditions. She wouldn’t have attempted to revive him without knowing he wouldn’t ever be s-subjected to it again. Thankfully, otōsama agreed. After Neji gave his life to save mine...just like my uncle did for my father...he knew it had to stop. And it started with Neji, as it should have long a-ago.”

“...guess both our families have their problems.”

“Mhm...I suppose it c-comes with being in a big clan. I never hear Kiba-kun or Shino-kun complain about their clans or their policies, though.”

“Maybe ours just have flares for drama.”

In spite of herself, Hinata snorts...and then goes pink as Sasuke perks a brow at the sound. “S-sorry. That...that wasn’t funny. ‘Drama’ is a bit of an...understatement.”

“A bit, yeah.”

Silence falls between them.

“M...may I ask you something?”

“Sure.”

“Well, now that - now that Itachi-san is pardoned, and the council has been...replaced, what do you plan to do?”

“...do?”

“Are you going to stay in Konoha, Sasuke-kun?”

That prompts another silence, the Uchiha looking aside, clearly thoughtful. “...I am. If nothing else, then for my family. And...I had rather grandiose ideas of traveling the world and handling all of its problems on my own. But it’s been made more than clear that Konoha still has its share. So, I’ll stay...and try to rid it of a few.”

“Oh…?”

“Itachi has plans to rejoin the ANBU once he’s fully recovered. I...don’t know what I’ll do yet. But just because we rooted out some of the bad apples in the village doesn’t mean they’re all gone.” His gaze hardens slightly. “...and we haven’t exactly been welcomed back with open arms. There’s plenty of villagers who still distrust - if not hate - my brother and I. We’re going to have to work hard to bring the Uchiha name back into honor...and trust.”

A tinge of awe overcomes Hinata’s expression.

“...what about you?”

“M-me?”

“Yeah. You gave up being heiress, right?”

...oh. Her posture wilts a hair. “...I did. I realized that...I’m done chasing after other people’s expectations. I worked so hard for...my title. And Naruto-kun’s recognition. But in the end...I got neither. So, instead...I’ve decided to become strong for myself. And I’ll set my own goals.”

“Like what?”

“I...w-well, I...haven’t gotten that far yet. For now, I just...want to help my clan settle into their new system, and...keep working for Konoha. Beyond that...I guess I haven’t found a new long-term goal yet. I just...want to help people. Be of use. If being a shinobi until the end of my days is the right path, then I’ll walk it. If something else c-comes along, then...I’ll make a turn. But for now...I guess I’m fine where I am. I have time to...look around. See what I might want to do. When the right choice comes around...I’ll make it.”

That prompts another thoughtful look, this time in the form of a stare right at her. Hinata has to force herself not to fidget nervously.

“...I guess we’re both in the same boat, then. Wanting to help improve things, just...not sure how yet. But...we know what we care about. We know what issues need to be addressed. We just need a method.”

“And...we’ll find one. Soon.”

“...soon.”

     Another day down, and another day very late - someday I'll manage to have a better schedule, eh heh. But for now, I suppose we'll just have to make due with me uploading at all wee hours of the morning, ahaha!      This is just a theoretical conversation these two could have sometime after the Uchiha and Hyūga (and the rest of the clans, actually) come together in ALAS to expose the massacre, pardon Itachi, and oust the prior council for their crimes. But also before the pair of them become an item, Sasuke makes the new police force, and Hinata joins it.      Also apologies for the heavy OC referencing in this one - I primarily base my SH plotting on a very long (unfinished) fic that includes a handful of original faces, based on many many RPs I've done over the years, ahaha. But it DOES help tie all of this together, I promise!      Anywho, I'm bushed, so time to call it a night - thanks so much for reading!

[phanlight]

The Boy on the Blue Moon Dreams of Sun

prompt: dan is a theatre kid who hasn't had his first kiss but has to kiss someone for a show. he doesn't want his first kiss to be wasted so he tries to get it done properly beforehand & he meets phil and w/e you can take it from there!!!

““Tell you what,” Phil leans into him, and Dan can smell his cologne. “We’re gonna come back up here again, okay? And you’re gonna tell me about yourself. Properly, this time.

Dan frowns. “Isn’t that what we’ve spent the past ten minutes doing?”

“Yeah,” Phil says. “The only difference being next time we do this, I’m going to ban you from saying the word ‘acting’. So I can hear about you, the real you, and not whoever you pretend to be for a living.”

-

GUESS WHICH BITCH IS BACK AND WRITING AGAIN (spoiler: IT ME)

I thought it was about time I branched out a bit and tried my hand at a theatre au. This was so much fun to write (albeit kinda hard as despite being a literature student my Romeo and Juliet knowledge is a little subpar lmao lets hope I at least sort of did it justice tho) and deffo has more than ur daily dosage of angsty teenage actor!dan so look forward to that. thank u to the lovely anon who prompted me with this! (also yes i’m still relying on ptv lyrics for my song titles after 3 years sh)

Also I’m sorry if the writing in this is a lil inconsistent. I started this fic literally over a year ago and abandoned it for ages before finding and continuing it again. The first half was written in literally like mid 2016 (from which point my writing has obv improved a lot) and since then I’ve been working on it sporadically so if it feels like halfway through my writing style suddenly changes then that’s why OOPS soz

This was not supposed to be this long im so sorry wtf 13k ??? fuks sake

It’s the first time Dan’s ever been pissed off with being cast a lead role in a play.

He usually loves it – he loves the attention, loves having a ripped up script full of highlighted lines and more soliloquies to memorise than he can even keep count of. He shines under the warmth of the spotlight, lapping up the attention like a hungry cat, and when the applause ripples throughout the audience at the end, he can’t get enough of the sound.

It’s just- well, there’s one problem with his part.

It’s nothing he has against Romeo, not necessarily, and the piece itself is okay – Dan’s copy of the popular play in question is already crumpled with annotations; small post-it notes spilling fluorescent colours out of every crease (studying English literature alongside Drama always comes in handy as far as Shakespeare is concerned) and Romeo has a decent amount to say.

The problem is, he’s going to have to kiss someone.

Dan Howell, the one who snaps up almost every single role he auditions for, the one with a clay personality that can be moulded perfectly into whatever role he’s going for next, the one who lives the stage and breathes the lights, who was once described as ‘the heart and soul’ of the local theatre, is going to have to kiss someone.

And believe it or not, Dan Howell, the same seventeen-year-old who breezes through auditions leaving a flutter of girls at his feet, the same guy who was once rumoured to have made out with three people at the Les Miserables afterparty and the same guy who once had to reject two people in one night, has never actually kissed anyone before. Not properly, anyway.

Granted, he’s been extremely close to it a fair few times – having been in and out of auditions and callbacks since the age of about five, he’s come into contact with a considerable number of roles that involve love interests; only last month was his character Eddie supposed to kiss the love of his life, Alexandra, in the back of a car at a drive-in cinema. It was a play that one of the drama students had written; set in the fifties, all red-and-white ice cream parlours and hand jives and high school dances and Marilyn Monroe posters. Dan had enjoyed playing his part, and not just because it was the only opportunity he’d get to sport a black leather jacket (though he did decide leather looked really quite hot on him after that play. It’s almost a shame he’s vegetarian), but because the minor obstacle could, like every single other time, be solved with a stage kiss. Just a few seconds of his back to the audience, being agonisingly close to someone else’s lips, before pulling away and raking though his mind to try and remember the next line. It’s always worked for him, every time.

Except for this. Because the director, a Lucy Howcroft with a loud voice and a bossy personality, has only gone and booked them the Round at the Old Vic theatre. Which would be fine, of course it would; it’s one of the most popular theatres in the city and the theatre group is going to get a huge reputation for this afterwards, but it’s not so handy as far as stage-kissing is concerned. When you’re being stared at from every angle three-hundred-and-sixty degrees around, there’s no way you can get away with only partially leaning in to kiss.

“Are you sure there’s no way around this?” Dan had insisted when he’d stolen a moment after rehearsal to talk to Lucy. She’d been clearing her desk – a papery mountain range, and had looked a bit too busy to talk, but Dan would rather discuss this with her one-on-one instead of having to voice his feelings with twenty other pairs of eyes staring at him.

“For someone who just bagged yet another lead role, I would’ve thought you’d be a little more gracious than this,” Lucy had muttered, snapping a file shut. “I didn’t have to cast you, y’know.”

“It’s not- I am grateful, you know I am, it’s just-“

“Is there a problem with the casting of Juliet?” she’d offered, raising an eyebrow.

“No,” Dan had insisted. “She’s fine.”

“The costume, then?” she’d tried. “I’m not a bloody mind reader, Dan. Help me out a bit here.”

Dan had shut his eyes and taken a deep breath, trying to comb the tangle of words in his head into some kind of coherent sentence.

“I mean- I just- the venue,” he gulped. “It’s- there’s a bit of a problem.”

“What about it?” Lucy sighed, irritation tracing the edges of her tone. “I fail to see what’s so problematic about getting a slot at the Old Vic of all places, but if you have any objections, then do enlighten me.”

“It’s not that, it’s just-“ Dan gulped, not really too sure how far he’s going to get with this. The bitterness already in her tone didn’t sound at all promising. “I don’t know. Do we have to perform in the round?”

“Christ, is performing in one of the most popular theatres in London that much of a chore?”

“No, no, I just-“ he gulped, trying to work out how the hell he’d word this without sounding like a twat. “I’ve never really… you know. Performed in an environment like that before.”

“You’ve been acting for twelve years,” she said bluntly. “I’m sure you have enough experience to be able to deal with a round stage instead of a rectangular one.”

“But- like, isn’t the round meant for- like… you know, Greek plays and shit?”

“It used to be,” she’d said, taking care to apply extra emphasis on the past tense. “Since when were you so hung up on the traditions of theatre, anyway?” she’d added after a pause. “Only last week were you totally in favour of the idea of having a rap battle in the middle of Othello.”

Dan had frowned, because that wasn’t really fair – sure, a rap battle isn’t exactly a common feature of Shakespeare’s plays, but no one could deny that Louis, playing Iago, was pretty good at freestyling whenever a mic was thrown in his direction. Despite not adhering to the conventions of traditional English theatre, it certainly made the play more entertaining.

“It’s just gonna be- you know. It’s gonna take some getting used to,” he’d mumbled instead.

“You have three months to get used to it,” she’d pointed out. “I’m sure you and the rest of the cast will have familiarised yourself with it by the time the production comes around.”

“But- the round is traditionally meant for-“

“Look, if you’re going to get so archaic about it, I can always build a time machine, book the open-air Globe for, like, sometime four-hundred years ago, and you can spend the next three days picking rotten tomatoes out of your hair,” she said. “Does that sound better?”

“They only did that to bad actors,” Dan had pointed out. Lucy rolled her eyes.

“And you know what makes a good actor, Dan?” she retorted. “Flexibility. The willingness to branch out of your comfort zone.”

Dan had sighed. He’s not going to get anywhere with this, is he?

“You know what?” he’d finally shaken his head, defeated. “Forget it.”

She watched him turn on his heel with a raised eyebrow. “See you Tuesday, then? First read-through of the script is at eleven in the morning.”

“See you then,” Dan muttered, not even bothering to turn around.

He let the door slam behind him.

It’s not that Dan doesn’t want to kiss anyone – (quite the contrary, really. He loves the idea of it, loves the thought of someone’s lips pressed up against his, the world slowing down around them and his heart feeling like fire. He’s always tried to incorporate that feeling into his acting, letting his passion leak into every character he’s cast, but when the stage lights are off and the curtain is down, his attraction to his colleagues ends there) – it’s just- well, he doesn’t really think he’s found the right person to share the real experience with, yet. His fellow actors and actresses aren’t unattractive by any means, but he doesn’t look at any of them and find himself struck by the desire to taste their lips and whisper incoherence into their ears like Eddie was supposed to do in the back of that car.

Seventeen, and still hasn’t had his first kiss. Still doesn’t want to waste it, at that.

Pathetic.

-

Technicians don’t get paid enough, Phil thinks.

He’s spent the day holed up in the trap room, devouring what was left in the back of the fridge (including a half-opened pack of Doritos that tasted like they expired about five years ago) and puzzling over this fucking broken light board that everyone had very kindly left him to take care of. It had already taken him over half an hour to get one of the chunky old Mac laptops up and running again (seriously, who in this day and age is still using an iBook?) and even then it only really half-functions – a handful of keys are missing, the trackpad only ever seems to work when it feels like it, and there’s a huge hairline crack right across the screen. Phil’s spent so long cursing through gritted teeth and smacking the table in frustration every time the damn thing freezes that it wouldn’t come as a surprise if he ended up contributing to those cracks by the end of the day. Maybe that’s how they ended up there in the first place.

“You alright?” the door suddenly opens and a voice – Nick, Phil presumes, breaks the aching silence that the room has been blanketed in for the past four hours. Finally, Phil sighs, feeling a pinch of anger melt away. Human company.

“Been better,” Phil mumbles, popping a couple of grapes into his mouth. Been better, he scoffs to himself. He’s pretty sure he hasn’t been worse.

“Chuck me a coke, will you?” he pulls up a chair and puts his feet on it, perching on the edge of the table. Phil heaves out a sigh – that involves getting up – but musters up enough energy to lean over and yank the fridge open. He tosses him a can, and Nick catches it expertly.

“Nice of you to show up,” Phil rolls his eyes. “Only four hours late this time. That’s an hour and a half off your personal best.”

“They said they didn’t need me here ‘till three,” he protests, popping the can open and taking a few gulps. “They said you had it all under control.”

His sentence is punctuated by a burp. Phil grimaces.

“Under control,” Phil snorts. That’ll be the fucking day.

“What did they leave you here to do?” he frowns.

“Only fix this entire fucking thing,” Phil nods over to the stupid light board. God, he’s sick of the sight of it. “Beats me what’s wrong with it. I’ve only just managed to get this dinosaur up and running,” he gestures to the corpse of a laptop in front of him, “let alone look at that.”

“Fuck me, man,” Nick sighs out a heavy breath. “If I knew, I could have come in earlier to help you out a bit. You should have texted me.”

“It’s fine,” Phil sighs even though- well, it’s not, really. There’s only so many hours of broken technology and out-of-date food one can take. “It’s not your fault,” he adds truthfully.

“They’re twats sometimes, aren’t they?” Nick lowers his voice, despite the fact they’re literally underground here, beneath the earshot of everyone.

“I’ll say,” Phil widens his eyes, trying to click something and- nope, it’s fucking frozen again. “For fuck’s sake. They’re all bloody loaded, too. You would have thought with the money they have, they could fork out a little for equipment that at least half-functions, right?”

“Yup,” Nick sighs. “Guess bookings for overpriced fancy-ass theatres are higher up on their agenda, though.”

Phil can’t argue with that. Apparently they’re going to have to wire up something in the Old Vic, of all places, next week. Phil dreads to think how much hiring that place out for even a few hours is going to cost, let alone booking it for three nights.

Probably more than enough to buy a better fucking laptop.

-

“But soft! What light through yonder window breaks?

It is the east, and Juliet is the sun.

Arise, fair sun, and kill the envious moon,

Who is already sick and pale with grief,

That thou, her maid, art far more fair than she.

Be not her maid since she is envious.

Her vestal livery is but sick and green,

And none but-“

“No- no,” Lucy holds up her hand. “Come on, Dan. More emotion than that. You’re telling the love of your life that even the moon is envious of her beauty. At least pretend to put some passion into it.”

Dan rolls his eyes – only the fourth time he’s had to repeat this fucking soliloquy in the past fifteen minutes. He’s pretty sure he’s only one “no, no, it’s too (insert adjective here)” away from giving up with this whole thing altogether. He’d rather have played Benvolio anyway.

“Come on,” Lucy continues. “We’ll take it from Be not her maid…”

Dan shuts his eyes, scrapes up the remaining traces of his sanity, and takes another breath.

“Be not her maid since she is envious.

Her vestal livery is but sick and green,

And none but fools do wear it. Cast it off!

It is my lady. Oh, it is my love.

Oh, that she knew she were!

She speaks, yet she says nothing. What of that?

Her eye discourses. I will answer it.—

I am too bold. 'Tis not to me she speaks.

Two of the fairest stars in all the heaven,

Having some business, do entreat her eyes

To twinkle in their spheres till they retur-“

“No, no-“ she interrupts him again and for fuck’s sake, at this rate, Dan won’t even need to spend any time in his bedroom going over his lines. He’s pretty sure he’s memorised half of the monologues already just from recapping in rehearsals alone.

“Come on, really feel it,” she pleads. “You can’t say something as romantic as that with a face like yours – you’re literally saying that two stars in the sky have gone away and they’re asking Juliet’s eyes to shine in their place until they return.”

Dan balls his fists, ready to snap back that yes, he’s fully fucking aware of what’s going on in the play thank you very much, in case she hadn’t forgotten he did actually study it for three separate exams and subsequent exposure to the text in question has made him rather familiar with the occurrences currently taking place, but they’re all interrupted by a knock at the door.

“Come in,” Lucy huffs, mildly irritated.

The door knob jitters, then twists.

“Hiya,” a black-haired boy nods tiredly, pushing through the crack in the door. Dan immediately recognises him – one of the tech guys, he thinks, but he isn’t entirely certain. He’s never really spoken to any of the crew before; they tend to keep well out of the limelight (they’d rather control it instead).

“Everything okay?” Lucy asks, before turning to Dan and Alexandra (his Juliet). “You two, take five. Be ready to take it from the top.”

They both relax and take a seat on one of the upturned wooden boxes. It isn’t until Dan takes the weight off of his legs he realises how much they’ve been aching – fuck, he really needs to get back to that gym.

“Any luck?” she says to Mr. Black-Hair. He’s holding a laptop that looks as if it’s seen better years, never mind days, and a long cord of wire that snakes around his fist.

“Nothing at all,” he sighs, flicking a strand of his fringe out of his eyes. His hair looks as if it hasn’t seen a hairbrush for days, but there’s something about the way it sits shaggily on his head that kind-of suits him (Dan wishes he could pull off messy hair – he only attempted ditching the straighteners once and spent the rest of the day wondering if any birds had mistaken his head for a nest).

He doesn’t realise he’s been staring until he catches the tail end of Alexandra’s sentence and realises he hasn’t actually been listening for the past minute or so.

“What was that, sorry?”

“I asked you how you were finding Romeo so far,” she repeats.

“Hm? Oh yeah, yeah- he’s fine,” Dan says, not taking his eyes off of Mr. Black-Hair. He’s lost the thread of their conversation (he’s no lip reader) but by the looks of it, it seems as if there’s a problem with one of the laptops.

“Are you sure?” Alexandra frowns. Dan looks at her, but his glance is soon pulled back to the technician.

“Why wouldn’t I be?”

She shrugs. “You don’t really- I don’t know, you just don’t seem to be… you know. That into it, y’know?”

“Wait-“ Dan shakes his head, trying to focus on their conversation instead of the one a few metres away from. “Hang on- what? What makes you say that?”

She raises her eyebrows, as if to say ‘really?’. Dan’s expression remains carefully blank.

“Come on, Dan. We wouldn’t have had to repeat this stupid scene like, five times if you were actually into it. I’ve seen you do way better than this.”

“Oh, not you as well,” Dan groans, deflating. He’s pretty sure that exact sentence had fallen from Lucy’s lips not so long ago. He’s sick of hearing it, sick of having to sit and listen to people tell him that he ‘can do way better’ and ask ‘is everything all right, Dan? Nothing bothering you, is there?’ because he’s just ‘not himself’ at the moment.

That’s the most ridiculous one, he thinks, because for Christ’s sake, he’s an actor. He’s never himself.

“No, I don’t mean it like that,” Alexandra says, backtracking. “You know I don’t. I just- I think I overheard Lucy say you had a problem with something or other last week?”

“Did you,” Dan mumbles, unable to keep the bitter sarcasm out of his town. Alexandra remains unfazed.

“What was that about, though?” she remains unfazed. “Nothing to do with the casting, is it?”

“You really think it’s to do with the casting?” Dan stares at her in disbelief, before scoffing. “Yeah, like, I’m gutted to have bagged the lead role alongside you at one of the best theatres in the country. How am I going to cope?”

Not entirely truthful, but not a complete lie either.

“Just making sure,” a grin tugs at her lips, and she flicks a curl of red hair behind her shoulders. “I don’t have much of a problem with it myself, to be honest.”

“That’s reassuring,” Dan smirks sarcastically, but his tone is fairly benign. There’s certainly no denying she’s fucking gorgeous and it’s really no wonder she’s Juliet – she has hair the colour of a sunset falling down her back in ruby curls, emerald eyes framed by a curl of long eyelashes and cherry red lips that stretch into a wide smile whenever Dan cracks a joke, giving way to a small dimple on the side of her cheek. Her skin is pale, the colour of moonlight, almost, and he idly thinks, just for a fleeting second, that the moon probably would be jealous of her. She’s beautiful.

“Certainly don’t have a problem with getting to snog you in front of a thousand people, I must be honest,” she adds, and Dan’s stomach drops and his grin vanishes. Shit.

He wrings out a laugh, internally wincing at how false it sounds. “Yeah, I- um-“

“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” someone mutters a few footsteps away from them. He snaps his head up, and Lucy plus Mr. Black-Hair are hunched over the desk, clearly getting nowhere with the absolute disaster they call an iBook.

“Wait- what’s the problem?” Dan suddenly gets up. He feels a little bad for leaving Alexandra so abruptly so he throws her a little apologetic ‘be right back’ glance, but he can’t help it – he might actually be able to help, here.

He shoves down the other voice in the back of his mind, the ‘or rather you’re just grabbing at any opportunity to avoid any potential conversation about the kiss you fucking wimp’

“It’s okay, Dan, sit back down. I’ll be with you both in a second,” Lucy calls over her shoulder.

“No, really,” Dan insists. “I know a thing or two about Macs. I have one myself, and-“ he catches Lucy drawing in a breath, ready to protest, and he regrets the spill of words almost as soon as they come out – fuck, why can’t he just keep his mouth shut? – but Mr. Black-Hair turns around, an eyebrow quirked upwards.

“Really?” his stare is the colour of ice, the sky on a December morning, but it’s weirdly warm at the same time.

“I- uh, yeah,” Dan stutters when he remembers how to talk again. “I’ve always had Macs. They’re great when they decide to work, but they can be a bitch when they begin to act up, and-“ he cuts himself off with an awkward shrug, “yeah.”

“Tell me about it,” the technician smirks. “This bastard-” he nods to the chunky white rectangle in his arms, “took me like, half an hour to boot up alone. And now it’s been frozen for like- twice as long as that. I’ve only had chance to type in my password so far.”

Lucy’s still standing in the middle of them and it’s getting a bit difficult to ignore the stony glare burning into Dan’s peripheral vision right now and even harder to avoid eye contact with her, but it doesn’t stop him from offering some help, albeit rather inappropriately timed.

“I- um, have my MacBook with me if that helps?” Dan offers, trying not to feel the heat of his blush when Mr. Black-Hair looks straight at him. “I mean- if you don’t need it that’s fine, but like- it’ll function a bit better than that thing,” he shrugs. “I dunno. It would probably save you a lot of time.”

“Really?” he raises an eyebrow. “Like, with you right now?”

“Yeah,” Dan says. “I mean – I haven’t got my charger on me, but it’s on, like, eighty percent. Should be fine.”

“I mean-“ he throws a permission-seeking glance, towards Lucy, who Dan is pretty sure would be having steam coming out of her ears would it be humanly possible. She fixes Dan with a hard stare, a real ‘go on; be my guest’ look that’s always comes across as more of a dare than permission, a challenge for his conscience, but he can’t help an apologetic smile tugging at his lips.

“It’s cool with you, right?” his lips say before his mind catches up.

Lucy rolls her eyes in defeat. “If you absolutely must. But only- only because I could do with the extra time to independently go over one of Alexandra’s soliloquy.”

His face breaks out into a grin, and he’s not that sure why. “Thanks, Luce. I owe you one.”

“Don’t you make a habit of this, though. Remember; this is your own rehearsal time you’re sacrificing.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Dan calls over his shoulder, trailing off. Mr. Black-Hair holds the door open behind him, and suddenly they’re out of the rehearsal studio and walking in a weird mutual silence sitting in a strange middle ground between comfortable and uncomfortable, across the car park and over to the actual theatre.

“Are you alright to do this, yeah?” Mr. Black-Hair (Dan seriously needs to come up with more imaginative mental nicknames for people) breaks the silence on their walk down to the trap room.

“It’s no problem at all,” he smirks as another wooden step groans under his foot. “Anything to get out of rehearsal.”

Dan’s never really been here before, never touched the underground territory where the technicians lurked, but there’s something about the atmosphere of this place that grips him.

-

Half an hour passes, and Dan couldn’t really tell you why he’s still sitting down here, still sitting on a revolving chair with a rip in the upholstery, under half-broken beams, tables that look like they’re seconds away from collapsing, and a lot of weird technology that he’d never even attempt to get his head around (seriously – do they even need this many buttons?). He’d given his laptop to Black Hair to receive a very emphatic ‘thank you, like seriously you’re a fucking lifesaver if I spent a second longer with that piece of shit I really don’t know what I would have done’ and the job had been done in seconds. Since then, a casual conversation had been struck up and Dan finds he doesn’t actually want to go back upstairs just yet.

“You two sounded really good in there,” Black Hair comments. They’d been talking about the play. “From what I heard, anyway.”

“Thanks,” Dan says, trying to ignore the quiet blush that warms his cheeks. There’s nothing quite like someone complimenting his acting. “Clearly not good enough for Lucy, though.”

“Few things are, Dan,” he sighs, and Dan only finds it half-weird that this guy knows his name, but Dan doesn’t actually know his. It’s unnerving, sure, but nothing he’s a stranger to. “She’s been on at you all morning.”

“Yeah,” Dan pauses, before adding an apologetic “sorry, I- um, I don’t think I caught your name?”

“It’s fine. I’m Phil,” he grins, and Dan thanks his lucky stars there’s finally a name to put to the face.

Dan studies him briefly, and frowns. “You do look familiar, actually.”

“Yeah – I do all the donkey work downstairs,” he grins. “You may have seen me emerge from the cave every now and then.”

Dan chuckles, deciding there and then that he likes Phil.

“Doesn’t it get lonely?” Dan asks, studying the square lights looming above them, one of which he notices is stuttering slightly, flickering on and off every now and then.

Phil shrugs, not taking his eyes off of the screen. “Kinda. But I mean – I have my little crew down here, y’know? There’s five of us. We just like- keep each other company. Help each other whenever we need to,” he glances at Dan. “Oh, and sneak up to the theatre and watch you guys every now and then.”

Dan giggles. “Brilliant. Must be a nice little community, though.”

“Yeah, it is,” Phil hesitates. “Or perhaps ‘support group’ might be a more appropriate term. For the poor sods who have to put up with shitty laptops and gross food.”

Dan laughs, and helps himself to another Dorito.

-

“Okay, right- Dan, sorry if this sounds a bit weird because- like, we’ve pretty much only just met, but like- um- I was wondering if you wanted to-“

“Phil,” Dan cuts him off. As an actor, there’s something about hearing people stutter and ramble without really saying anything that tends to grate on him. “I’d love to.”

“Really? Well, I-“ Phil stops and frowns. “Hang on a second. How did you know I was gonna ask you to hang out?”

Dan shrugs like he hasn’t spent the last thirteen years mastering the sciences of body language and speech and how they can be applied to the acting world. “Lucky guess, I suppose.”

Phil smiles. “I mean- would you? Like, really?”

“Of course,” Dan says.

“Well yeah, like- I don’t have to be home for a while yet, and I have a car so we could just like- drive around for a bit? Go to town if you want?”

Dan smiles, and repeats what he said before he even knew what Phil was going to say.

“Yeah. I’d love to.”

-                                          

It’s a bit of a weird result to come out of lending his laptop to a stranger for a while, but it’s how Dan finds himself spending the evening sat in the passenger seat on the top of a car park roof, blasting some weird indie song from the depth of Phil’s Spotify and watching the sun sink further behind the buildings, painting the sky warmer with every slow minute that passes on the dashboard clock.

They’d had a drive around the city together, sometimes talking, sometimes letting lulls in the conversation give way to thoughtful silences, both of them tapping away to Phil’s music taste, but Dan thinks it’s been about fifteen minutes since either of them last said anything.

“So,” Phil is the first to break the silence. He flicks the last of his cigarette out of the window (Dan had insisted on rolling down the windows before he did that – there’s no way he’s going home stinking of an ashtray). “Tell me about yourself.”

Dan looks up from his phone at that, his heart thudding.

“You what?”

“You know,” Phil’s gaze doesn’t move, his eyes fixed on the view in front of the windscreen. They’d picked a spot at the very top of a multi-storey car park overlooking everything, leaving the city a pool of lights and colours and life far beneath them. “I don’t really know you. So tell me about yourself.”

“I- um-“ Dan gulps. This wasn’t really a question he came prepared for. He shrugs. “I don’t really know what there is to tell, if I’m honest.”

“Oh, now come on,” Phil presses. “Just- anything. Your hobbies. Your life. Your dreams. What you want to be when you’re older.”

“I feel like I’m in a bloody job interview,” Dan chuckles. Phil’s lips quirk upwards in response.

“You are. I’m interviewing you to see if you’re fit for the job of being mates with me.”

“The ‘job’?” Dan frowns. “Like it’s a chore?”

“That’s for you to decide,” Phil grins. “Now, come on. I wanna hear about you.”

Dan gulps, silence falling for the first time in a while.

“I- um, well I think my hobby is probably pretty obvious, for a start,” Dan begins. Phil rolls his eyes. “And what I wanna be when I’m older, too. I’m gonna do a degree in Drama, I reckon.”

“What else are you into, then?”

Dan stops for a second. “What do you mean?”

“Oh, come on,” Phil presses, flicking his lighter and sparking up another cigarette. “You must have other interests besides acting. You got a girlfriend?”

Dan clams up. “Um- no.”

“Oh. Boyfriend, then?” he quirks his eyebrows, and Dan shakes his head miserably.

“Afraid not.”

“Glad we established that,” Phil smirks, but Dan doesn’t really smile back.

He chews on the inside of his lip, having a staring contest with a pair of headlights sliding across one of the roads beneath them.

“What music are you into, then?”

Dan swallows, trying to think. It’s like someone’s scraped over his mind with an eraser, rubbing out his interests and his life and his personality, all pencilled in with weak lines.

“Oh, you know,” he shrugs. “This and that. I like whatever this is,” he nods to the Spotify track on Phil’s phone. “Bit of Indie, it’s good. Oh, and I love- what are they called? Pink Floyd?”

“Floyd’s good,” Phil agrees. “And Nirvana.”

“Yeah,” Dan gulps, feeling another silence probe the conversation.

“You into the Smashing Pumpkins?”

Dan shakes his head.

“Oh, okay. Slaves?”

Dan shakes his head again.

“Genesis?”

“Never even heard of them.”

“Cobalt Night?”

Dan shakes his head again

Phil cackles. “Oh Christ. You do realise I made that last band up?”

“Oh god,” Dan can feel his cheeks burn peony. “I’m not doing myself any favours here, am I?”

“Don’t worry, I’m only messing with you,” Phil says. “I think it would be more embarrassing if you said yes, to be honest.”

“True,” Dan shrugs, feeling Phil’s stare burn into his side profile. He sits back further in his seat, keeping his stare.

“You’re not really into much, are you?

Dan shrugs.

“I’m more into Musical Theatre, really. Ever since we did a production of Hamilton I haven’t really been able to get that rap out of my head,” he chuckles.

“Right,” Phil sits up a little bit and clears his throat. “Well we’ve established your music taste and your hobby. Who are your favourite actors, then?”

It’s like someone’s flicked a switch inside Dan. His eyes light up.

“-and Leonardo DiCaprio, oh my God, don’t even get me started on him. I mean- who wouldn’t fuck young Leo? Have you even seen him in Titanic? And Romeo and Juliet too, Jesus Christ he’s gorgeous. He’s so fucking gorgeous. I’m not gonna do Romeo’s role any justice when he’s my competition, am I?”

Phil just nods and says the odd ‘hm’, listening to Dan’s stream of consciousness.

“-and Helena Bonham-Carter, what a fucking legend, man. She’s just- her character is just so versatile, you know? I mean- there’s a good reason she’s in literally everything, and that’s because she’s fucking amazing- have you seen Fight Club? You must have seen it, it’s incredible. She’s incredible. It’s a bit of a mind fuck if I’m honest, what with the split personality thing and everything, but- oh God, Brad Pitt is so good in it too. And he’s pretty hot, I’m not gonna lie. Well, until he grew out his hair and looked a bit like a farmer. But- where was I? Oh yeah, Helena Bonham Carter-”

“She was good in Sweeney Todd, too,” Phil comments, and he’s off again.

“-like, that was the first time I ever saw Johnny Depp act, and by Christ that film creeped me out. I mean- I was only like, seven when I watched it so of course it was gross, like, what seven year old watches people do- you know, that, to paying customers? I feel sorry for the poor sods who just went in there wanting to give their beards a trim. But- yeah, they were both really good in Sweeney Todd. I had a bit of a crush on Helena- and Johnny too, for that matter, I mean come on, who didn’t? But then I found out Johnny Depp is a bit of a dick in real life so I went off him after that. But Helena’s still cool, obviously.”

“She’s good, yeah,” Phil nibbles at a protruding hangnail on his thumb.

“And- oh god, who’s another good actor? Oh, don’t even get me started on Morgan Freeman. Absolute fucking legend. Like, oh my god. Him and that other one- god, what’s his name? The guy from Donnie Darko?”

Dan’s brain is moving far too quickly for Phil to keep up and he has no idea what the correlation between Morgan Freeman and Donnie Darko is, but he gives it a shot anyway.

“Jake Gyllenhaal?”

“Yes. Yes, oh my god, that’s the one,” Dan’s face breaks out into a grin. “Fuck, Donnie Darko. What a film, man. My friend has a tattoo of it, and-“

It continues like this, Dan chatting nineteen-to-the-dozen and Phil counting the glitters of passion in his eyes, before they’re both interrupted by a buzzing on Dan’s lap.

“Oh shit,” he grabs his phone. “It’s my mum.”

Phil doesn’t know what she’s saying on the other end of the line, but judging by Dan’s apologies it sounds like he’s stayed out here for a little too long.

“Sorry,” Dan mumbles, tugging on his seatbelt. “Lost track of time a bit, there.”

“Clearly,” Phil grins.

“This was good, though,” Dan says. “Like, really good. Thanks for, you know. Suggesting this.”

“Tell you what,” Phil leans into him, and Dan can smell his cologne. “We’re gonna come back up here again soon, okay? And you’re gonna tell me about yourself. Properly, this time.

Dan frowns. “Isn’t that what I’ve spent the past like- hour doing?” he glances at the clock and shit, has it really been that long? It’s pitch black outside, the only light coming from the glitter of the city beneath them (shit, it really is beautiful from up here) and he was supposed to be home forty-five minutes ago.

“Yeah,” Phil says, starting up the engine. “The only difference being next time we do this, I’m going to ban you from saying the word ‘acting’. So I can hear about you, the real you, and not whoever you pretend to be for a living.”

-

The next few days pass in a blur of line-learning, enduring Lucy’s lectures about how he just ‘isn’t putting enough ‘oomph’ into it, come on now, we’ll take it from the top one more time’ and Dan has to act like he actually gives more of a shit about what Romeo’s saying right now than what Phil had said in that car a few days ago. He has to act like it isn’t what he’d been reciting over and over in his mind, the words digging grooves into the back of his mind and making themselves at home.

He has to act like there’s more to his fucking life than acting.

-

The next time Dan sees Phil, they’re both cooped up in a control room eating lunch in a companionable silence; Dan going over his lines and Phil puzzling over these two wires that are, according to him, sly bastards that won’t fucking go in these holes Jesus Christ, to which Dan had shut his eyes and prayed to god no-one outside the room had caught that out of context. There’s a huge control panel, rows and rows of buttons and sound mixers and, as Dan had very accurately christened them, “slidey-things” in front of them. He has no idea what any of this stuff is, no idea what a “cross-fader” is or what the hell a “submaster” is supposed to do, but every now and then Phil will casually lean over and flick a switch or press a button and a stage light beneath them will change.

“What’s up?”

Dan looks up from his script. He’s been poring over his lines for so long he’s pretty sure stripes of yellow highlighter are now permanently inked into the back of his mind, now.

“What? Nothing.”

Phil swings his legs off of the bar they’d been resting against. They’re halfway through sharing a KitKat (Dan had taken a trip down to the Co-op at the beginning of the lunch break and returned with a bag so heavy with food it had left a dent in his hand, insisting Phil can’t be living on stale crisps his entire life) and watching a rehearsal, one Dan doesn’t have to be in for once, through a pane of glass.

“You’re going to have to do better if you want to convince me, Mr. Theatre Kid,” Phil reaches over to the bowl in front of them and plucks a grape from the stem. “I thought you were good at acting.”

“What do you want me to do; leap up and perform a jig?” Dan turns a page, the paper rustling a bit too loudly. “I’m fine, Phil. Stop reading into things too much.”

Phil stares at him. “You’re sat there with a face as long as my leg, and I’m reading into things?” he quirks an eyebrow. “Be careful. If you stare at that page any longer it’ll probably burst into flames.”

“Shut up,” Dan mutters, the edge in his voice a little too sharp for it to slip by as a joke.

Phil does.

Dan sighs. “Sorry, I just-“

“Rehearsals getting to you?” he suggests softly. Dan doesn’t plan on letting the real problem slip; Christ, he can only imagine the havoc that would ensue if it got around that as well as obsessing over acting he’s also never actually kissed anyone, so he quickly takes Phil up on that.

“Yeah,” he sighs. “I mean- Romeo’s a good character to play, I guess, but he does have an awful lot to say.”

“You’ll be okay,” Phil reassures him. “You still have months of time left to memorise your lines. When’s the play?”

“Seventh of February,” Dan says. Two months from now.

“There we go,” Phil says. “You have plenty of time yet.”

“I guess so,” Dan shrugs. “I don’t know.”

“You’ve done this millions of times before,” Phil says. “You’ll be fine; I know you will. You’re a natural.”

Dan wishes he knew the half, he really does, but there’s just something about Phil’s smile that makes him almost want to believe him.

-

Dan manages to tell Phil a little bit more about himself next time they’re on the roof together, and in return, he learns a bit about Phil too.

“Well, when I was acti-“

“Nuh-uh,” Phil interrupts him. “No acting talk, remember?”

Dan rolls his eyes. “It’s relevant to what I was gonna say. It’s an important part of the story.”

“Wherever the hell you can fit acting into a story about you and your friends getting drunk and stealing a supermarket trolley because you couldn’t afford a taxi, I’d be very impressed.”

“You’d be surprised,” Dan grins, and that was the only time acting came into conversation that night.

-

Dan learns Phil is eighteen, that he’d failed his driving test three times before passing because he was driving on the wrong side of the dual carriageway, and swears he’s going to give up smoking next year, he promises. He learns that his favourite colour is blue because he likes the way the colour skates across the ocean water in the summer, and that he used to be scared of dogs before his parents got him a puppy for Christmas, a bouncy Labrador called Daisy with a love for the sun and walks down to the beach.

“I fucking love dogs,” Dan beams.

“So do I, now. Took me long enough,” Phil agrees, taking a drag of his cigarette. “Daisy’s so cute, oh my god. You will love her.”

Dan doesn’t say anything, but there’s something about the definite use of ‘you will’ that he likes.

He, in turn, finds that he does have some thoughts and feelings and dreams hidden away in there, beneath the façade of scripts and stage lights and acting. He finds he does have stuff to say, stuff that isn’t always attached to a web stringing back to the theatre. He tells Phil all about his cat, Ozzy (a little shit who takes great pleasure in knocking all his belongings off of his desk and sleeping on his laptop, but he loves him anyway) his annoying next-door neighbours who don’t seem to see any problem with blasting ABBA at three in the morning, and they manage to find common bands they both like. Oasis is playing when the sun sinks, the sky darkens, and the city lights up beneath them.

“God, I love this one,” Phil mumbles, his speech obscured by the cigarette hanging out of his mouth. “Don’t Look Back In Anger. It’s one of their best.”

“Oh god, yeah,” Dan agrees, tapping along to the chorus. “That and Stand By Me. Oh god, and Champagne Supernova, too.”

Phil grins at that, and leans forward, picking his phone up from the dashboard. Before Dan has a chance to question him, the chorus stops dead in its tracks, and an acoustic softness follows the sudden silence, a series of guitar chords that are just that bit too familiar. He grins.

“I always think the intro sounds a bit like Wonderwall,” Phil comments, putting his phone down and leaning back in the seat.

“Yeah,” Dan sighs, leaning back in his own seat and turning his gaze to the city beneath them, staring at lights and roads and buildings until they pool into a hazy amber blur in his vision.

How many special people change,

How many lives are living strange,

Where were you while we were getting high?

Slowly walking down the hall,

Faster than a cannonball

Where were you while we were getting high?

 Someday you will find me,

Caught beneath the landslide,

In a champagne supernova in the sky.

Someday you will find me,

Caught beneath the landslide,

In a champagne supernova;

A champagne supernova in the sky.

They don’t say anything, instead letting Liam Gallagher do the talking, but sly glances are exchanged from under brown fringes and black eyelashes.

-

“Nice up here, isn’t it?”

It’s only until Phil breaks the silence they’ve lapsed into that Dan realises the song has drawn to a close. He slides his gaze from the city and over to Phil, over to his thoughtful stare skating along the skyline, the ruffled sweep of black hair coating his fringe, and the orange glow of a cigarette tip poking out of the corner of his mouth. His eyes flicker over to Dan’s.

Dan looks back over to the city.

“Yeah.”

“I always come up here.”

“I can see why.”

“Yeah, well. Sometimes a little look over the city is just what you need to clear your head. It just puts everything in perspective, doesn’t it?”

“Yeah,” Dan swallows. “It really does.”

There’s a litter of thoughts and worries in his mind, buried deep and multiplying with every day that drags past, every day that pulls him closer and closer to the production, to the hundreds of burning stares in the audience seats, to his colleague’s lips. He’s been longing for a break from it. Just a few hours of silence, a few quiet moments that don’t have to be spent combing over every single thought in his head, thinking and thinking until it inflates into anxiety, spilling into the pit of his stomach and clawing at the edges as it goes.

And the more he counts the city lights, the more he feels the cold night air stroke his cheeks and the engines reverberating around the car park levels beneath them, the more he reckons a more few nights up here. It’s the remedy he needs; just him, Phil and the lights.

Their eyes meet seconds after, and Dan can feel the question he’s vowed to ask Phil before the end of the night already beginning to rest on his lips, on the cusp of speech.

“When can we do this again?”

-

The late nights begin to pass more frequently in a spinning blur of city nights, passenger seats and conversations, all whispers and cold air and stolen glances. Dan can feel himself unravelling like a threadbare blanket, his carefully constructed personas and characters fraying at the edges with every hour spent up on the top of the city with a boy whose lips spill truths like water, and it isn’t long until Dan finds cracks in his paper personalities and begins to feel more and more honesty begin to seep through. He finds that no, he doesn’t have to spin false anecdotes like cotton and lie about his interests and find a way of linking everything back to acting, hooking every little quirk and element to his personality back to the stage. He doesn’t have to impress Phil with his knowledge of Hollywood throughout the years and he doesn’t have to act like he loves things he’s never actually heard of and he doesn’t have to lock his feelings away and throw away the key.

He doesn’t have to pretend.

-

It’s all okay until they fall onto the topic of previous relationships.

It’s been a good night. They’d visited the car park again, but this time without the car (it was warm enough to leave it in the driveway and make their own way up the concrete staircases, glass bottles in plastic bags clinking around their legs). They’d situated themselves in the very same parking space, the one second to the right and next to a beacon, but they’d traded car seats for a picnic blanket, headlights for phone torches and gear sticks for bottle openers.

“Yeah, like- fuck, she wasn’t a good kisser at all, was Mary. I mean- we were in year nine and she tried, bless her, and God knows so did I. But you know, with that as my first impression of kissing, when it was over I was like ‘what the fuck is all the fuss about?’” Phil chuckles, and Dan pretends to grin.

“Yeah, I mean-“ he shrugs, staring down at his lap. “I’ve had my fair share of bad kisses in my time.”

The ease with which the lie rolls off of his tongue almost takes him by surprise. It’s been a while since he’s lied about himself to Phil, and it feels strange.

“I can imagine,” Phil says, before frowning. “But you’re an actor. So you must be an excellent kisser, right? What with all the practice you guys have.”

Dan frowns, looking up from his bottle. “You what?”

“Oh come on. I saw what went on in the back of that car last term. Eddie and Alexandra. That play involved more lip-on-lip action than the fucking Notebook.”

Dan smiles at that, remembering the play adaptation they actually did of that when he was in year ten. He doesn’t quite know whether to laugh or cry over the sheer amount of starring roles he’s had that are heavily eloped in some kind of romantic storyline.

“Us actors have our techniques,” he says carefully.

Phil’s eyes widen at that. “You do? Like what?”

Dan shrugs, taking another sip of beer. “Oh, you know.”

“No, I don’t know,” Phil shuffles closer, a flicker of eagerness in his cerulean stare and shit, Dan’s beginning to regret opening his mouth now. “Come on. What techniques do you have? I could use a few tips myself.”

Dan raises an eyebrow, his eyes firmly locked onto the spread of amber lights in front of them.

“I doubt you’d ever want to use these kinds of techniques on anyone,” he says, a hint of humour drying his speech. “I imagine stage-kissing on a real date would be quite a deal-breaker.”

“Stage kissing, huh?” Phil widens his eyes. “How does that differentiate from a real kiss, then?”

“Well,” Dan takes another sip of his drink, his vision beginning to slow down. “First of all, it’s not really a kiss at all.”

“Huh?” Phil frowns.

“I mean- not usually. There are different kinds of stage-kisses, but most of them don’t involve, you know,” he smirks, reusing Phil’s rather vulgar term of “lip-on-lip action”.

“So you guys don’t actually kiss?” Phil asks.

Dan shakes his head. “Nope.”

“But-… how does that work?”

Alcoholic courage swims through Dan’s veins at that. He glances at Phil.

The words are a whisper, a dare almost, and it isn’t until Phil nods that Dan realises he’s actually said it out loud.

“Want me to show you?”

“Yeah, go on,” Phil’s tone is casual, soft almost, but his eyes are glittering.

“Okay, well- come over here,” he beckons.

Phil does as he’s told, shuffling up on his knees until he’s facing Dan.

“One of the actors needs to have their back to the audience,” Dan says. “So, let’s say the wall over there is the audience,” he nods over Phil’s shoulder to the stretch of concrete watching them.

“Alright. The wall’s the audience. Now what?”

“Now,” Dan gulps, feeling his heart begin to pick up the pace because shit, this is really happening now. “So, what you do is, like, just lean in normally for a kiss, but stop just as your lips are about to touch.”

Phil scoffs. “Where’s the fun in that?”

“Look, do you want me to show you or not?”

“Nah, nah, I’m kidding,” Phil says. “C’mon, then. Show me how it’s done in Hollywood.”

“You dick,” Dan mumbles, but he’s leaning in.

Phil gets closer, his face begins to crawl up to Dan’s until their noses are brushing and his fringe is a tickle on Dan’s cheek and his breath mixes with Dan’s own, warm and languid through parted lips and fuck, Dan’s heart is really thudding now. His legs feel like jelly and his lungs feel like fire and there’s something warm and fiery swirling in the pit of his stomach, something alien, something that he’s certainly never felt before with any other colleague he’s come this agonisingly close to kissing.

They stay there for what feels like minutes, lips hovering, warmth tingling and the city still thundering beneath them, and it’s Phil who pulls away first.

“Impressive,” he smiles, eyes glittering with nonchalance. “Frustrating, but impressive. Is that your go-to one, then?”

It takes three swigs of beer to calm Dan down before he can speak again.

“I mean- um, yeah. Though sometimes if you’re, like, sitting really far over to the side in the audience you might be able to tell that they’re not actually kissing, so,” he shrugs. “It just depends on the stage, I guess.”

“Right,” Phil nods, swigging from his own bottle. “You, er- you mentioned a few other types, right?”

The thought of coming that close to Phil’s lips again sends the strange flame of warmth flooding back into Dan’s stomach. He all but chokes on his mouthful of drink.

“Er- yeah,” he stutters. “There are a few others,” he gulps again and shit, what’s up with him?

Dan doesn’t really know what’s happening, doesn’t know why being within a metre radius of this guy is already making him feel far more than he’d ever felt with any colleague, kissing or not, but it doesn’t stop him from beckoning the older boy over and showing him kiss number two, their lips locked together with nothing except Dan’s thumb in between them. He can feel the warmth of Phil’s mouth against his skin, the hot movement of Phil’s breath through his nose and the tickle of his hair against his cheek again. When he parts his mouth, Dan feels the tiniest touch of lip against his. It’s only the very corner and can’t have lasted for longer than a millisecond, but the feeling comes back like a spark to a flame and he’s beginning to find it difficult to balance and oh, shit.

They break apart, eyes searching each other’s, and it’s the first time Dan’s feeling like this post-‘kiss’ without having to throw on a character like an old shirt. He doesn’t have to follow anything up with someone else’s speech, with a fake accent and a stupid costume and a mannerism that doesn’t quite fit.

For once, he doesn’t feel like he has to act.

Phil narrows his eyes after a few silent seconds, fighting back a smirk.

Dan frowns, the post-stage kiss high beginning to melt away.

“What?”

“Is that seriously it?” Phil says.

“Yeah,” Dan moves away, trying to ignore the surge of electricity he had felt upon edging within a few millimetres of the other boy’s lips, the city a roar beneath them.

“I don’t know why I feel so disappointed,” Phil smirks. “From where I sit, looking at you lot doing all your stuff down on the stage, it looks a whole sight more realistic than that.”

Dan looks back out to the city.

“Yeah, well,” he says, feeling his heart slow down. “Acting isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.”

-

“So. You and Alexandra, eh?”

Dan glares at him. Dawn is beginning to throw pastel colours into the blackness of the sky. It’s still dark enough to see the stars, fainter twinkles against the sweep of indigo above them, but it’s light enough for them to see each other, to make out feint outlines of faces in the low pre-sunrise light, eyes half-lidded and shadowed from the sleepless hours. It must be pushing four in the morning, and they’ve been here since eleven o’clock, leaving their parents with promises that they’re spending the night round each other’s houses to make a few preparations for the play.

(If reciting Romeo’s Balcony Scene soliloquy through giggles and slightly drunken slurs counts as preparation, then at least half of that promise is true).

“We’re not an item,” Dan mumbles, taking a drag from his cigarette. It tastes strange, kind-of like dirt and ash and tar and he’s not a smoker and probably never will be, but Phil had offered him one and- well, fuck it.

“I know,” Phil says. “But you guys are performing in the round, aren’t you?” Phil narrows his eyes, and Dan swears he leans an inch or two closer before whispering, “your stage kisses won’t work from that angle, I’m telling you.”

“Don’t remind me,” Dan shuts his eyes. So far he’d been doing quite a grand job of pushing that worry to the back of his mind, burying it deep into his consciousness. The whole reason he’s up here altogether is to escape it.

Phil hesitates.

“What?” he asks. “Don’t you want to kiss Alexandra?”

Dan gulps, the taste of alcohol souring on his tongue a little.

“It’s not that,” he says. “I mean- a kiss is a kiss, right? It’s all part of the job, and-“

“But you don’t fancy her,” Phil says.

Dan frowns. “Well- no, of course not. She’s a colleague.”

“I know,” Phil says. “It makes a difference though, doesn’t it?”

“What does?”

“Kissing someone you don’t fancy. It’s weird.”

“Tell me about it,” Dan mumbles. It’s getting harder and harder to maintain this lie. “I- er, yeah. I usually stick to stage-kissing on the job, to be honest,” he shrugs. “It’s just easier than kissing someone you don’t really have feelings for.”

“Have you never, you know, properly kissed anyone before, then?”

Dan takes a deep breath. Lies can flow like water when he wants them to; he’s a master at concealing the truth behind a blanket of fabrication and deception, but there’s something about talking to Phil that makes falsehood sour on his tongue.

He lets it out in a deep sigh, feeling his chest deflate and his heart thud. Fuck it.

“You know what?,” he begins. “No. I haven’t. I don’t know if you can tell, but- yeah. I dunno, I guess that’s why I’m so stressed about this shit with Alexandra. And like- I know that probably makes me a fucking loser for never having kissed anyone at the age I am now, and probably even more of a loser that I want my first one to be with someone special, but- fuck, I don’t know,” he swallows, feeling the knot of anxiety in his chest loosen a little. “No. I haven’t. Okay?”

Phil doesn’t say anything. He bites his lip and averts his eyes down to the neck of his bottle. He fiddles with the loose cap, letting it fall through the spaces between his fingers with a sharp clink.

Dan doesn’t like that, doesn’t like the silence. The knot returns.

“What?”

“I- er- that wasn’t really what I meant,” Phil finally says.

The knot tightens.

“What do you mean it’s not what you meant?”

“I meant have you properly kissed anyone on stage before,” Phil glances up. “Not in general.”

Dan’s stomach drops. Oh fuck.

He open his mouth, but no speech follows. No amount of words can haul himself out of his hole now. Shit.

“I mean-“ he finally speaks again after a silence, and there’s a tremor in his voice that he desperately tries to smooth over. “Oh, shit,” he deflates, feeling the pit of his stomach begin to churn due to the abundance of the night’s alcohol. There’s no point trying to clamber out of the hole he’s just dug himself. He’ll only deepen it.

“Have you really never kissed anyone?” Phil asks in a quieter voice, but he doesn’t sound surprised. Or humoured. Or any other emotion Dan had feared. Just… curious. “Like, at all?”

Dan gulps, the beer a sour swirl in the pit of his stomach. Maybe the sixth bottle was a mistake.

“Well there’s no point denying it now, is there?” Dan finally mumbles, his eyes fixed on a dent in the concrete not far from where they’re sitting. “No. I haven’t.”

The gentle thrum of city engines fills the silence between them, and the three seconds Phil doesn’t say anything for might as well have been days.

“Yep,” Dan breaks the quietness once it borders on unbearable. “There you go. You think I’m a fucking weirdo now, don’t you?”

“Not at all,” Phil replies, and his voice is unusually calm. Dan looks up, his eyes meeting a soft expression, and for some reason he really didn’t expect Phil to react like this.

“So-“ Dan shakes his head. “What? You’re not gonna take the piss? Laugh at me? Say I’m a fucking weirdo that only lied to you to try and look cool?”

The truth scratches his heart, but it needs to be said.

“Why the fuck would I laugh at you?” Phil frowns, and there’s something about the sincerity in his voice that, beneath the turmoil, Dan finds weirdly comforting.

“I mean,” Phil begins. “I’m surprised, don’t get me wrong. Only because you’re an actor and- well, let’s face it, you’re fucking gorgeous too, but-“ he shakes his head. “It’s nothing to be ashamed of. I’m the first to say I’d much rather make sure my first kiss means something. If anything, I agree with you on that.”

“You’re not pissed off that I lied to you?” Dan gulps down another mouthful of lukewarm alcohol.

“Of course not, you twat,” Phil says. “I mean, I get why you did, but there was no need to. Really.”

“I know,” Dan sighs, picking at the label on his glass bottle until the paper frays at the edges.

“Wanna know something?” Phil says, his eyes not moving from the soft sweep of stars above them, dimmed by the early morning light.

Dan takes his eyes away from the sky. “What?”

“If you’re a liar, then so am I,” Phil tells the stars.

Dan frowns. “You what?”

Phil’s eyes flick back down to earth, meeting Dan’s gaze. “I lied too.”

Dan gulps, his heart thudding. “About what?”

Phil forces a chuckle, but it’s drained of humour. “Do I have to spell it out to you? I haven’t kissed anyone either.”

The words ring in Dan’s ears moments after, Phil’s voice an echo above the roar of the city below.

“Wait-…” is the only word that passes Dan’s lips in the next passing minute or so. “But-…”

“Yeah,” Phil shrugs. “Turns out you’re not the only one, are you?”

“But-…” Dan shakes his head. “Why did you lie about it too?”

Phil just shrugs and says, “same reasons you did.”

Dan tries, he really tries, to comb through the tangle of confusion in his mind right now, but the best response he can come up with after a moment or two of silence isn’t the most articulate.

“Shit.”

“Yeah,” Phil agrees, and they descend into quietness again.

“Shame, isn’t it?” Phil is the first to break the silence. “That we feel the need to lie about that.”

“It’s society’s fault for making us feel as if being over the age of about fifteen without having shoved a tongue down anyone’s throat is a failure.”

Phil grimaces. “I’ve never understood the attraction of that, you know. Like, I get making out and stuff, but why would you want to literally devour the person next to you? When I saw kissing scenes as a kid I thought they were actually trying to eat each other.”

“I know,” Dan takes a sip of beer, the alcohol slipping down with a little more ease now. “It sounds grim. I don’t know how people do it. At least with acting on stage you don’t have that problem.”

“True,” Phil mirrors his actions, pulling his drink away from his lips and tracing the rim of the bottle with the tip of his thumb, staring down the tube-shaped glass into the remains of the flat beer, swimming lukewarm and flat at the bottom of the bottle. Only when he glances up a few seconds later does Dan realise he’s been staring.

Dan smirks.

“What are you grinning at?”

“Just-…” he shakes his head and shit, he’s definitely had enough to drink tonight. He can feel the alcohol-induced honesty begin leaking through his parted lips and he knows he’ll probably end up saying something he’ll regret tomorrow morning but- oh, fuck it. “The thought of you having never kissed anyone. It just- doesn’t make sense to me like- look at you. How?”

He’s not really sure where the line between a compliment and a very sorry attempt at flirting is drawn but he’s pretty sure he’s fallen somewhere in the middle.

Phil’s gaze lingers a few seconds too long. “I could ask you the same thing. I mean- come on, look at you. A guy like you must have been drowned in opportunities.”

They’re both a bit too drunk, a bit too cold and there’s something about the atmosphere of an empty car park at fuck-knows-o’clock that warps reality just a little. Dan blinks and the city lights don’t unblur and he feels a bit like he’s in a dream.

“Yeah, I-…” he shrugs. “I’ve had my fair share of offers, I won’t lie.”

“I’ll bet,” Phil interjects, and Dan rolls his eyes.

“Oh, don’t act like you haven’t either,” Dan rolls his eyes, but he’s smirking. “I just-… yeah, I dunno. I didn’t really wanna waste it, but I never really found someone I liked enough.”

“That’s nice, that is,” Phil says, and though Dan scours his tone of voice for a trace of sarcasm or mockery, but Phil’s eyes glitter earnestly. “No, like, really. Most teenagers just, you know, dive straight into it. Slam their face against anything with a pulse that crosses their path. But the fact you care enough to wait,” he glances up, eyeing the boy beside him carefully. “That’s rare. Kinda admirable in a way.”

“Were you the same, then?”

Phil nods without any hesitation. “A hundred percent.”

Dan nods understandingly, taking another sip of beer, and the two of them watch the town sleep for a quiet moment before Phil speaks up again.

“Oh, come here,” he stretches out his arms. “You look like you’re seconds away from hypothermia, for Christ’s sake.”

Dan leans into his chest, closing his eyes and snuggling into the Topman denim of Phil’s jacket. “I don’t really think a car park roof is the most suitable drinking spot,” he mumbles, his speech slightly obscured by his rattling jaw.

“Not at five a.m. in December at least,” Phil says. “It’s a lot nicer in summer, I promise.”

“I’ll hold you to that,” Dan says, and the indirect promise that they’ll come out here and do this again makes Phil smile.

It’s quiet, serene and blue, and Dan loses count of the minutes that drip by until he hears Phil’s voice again, shattering his trance dancing on the fragile edge of drunken consciousness.

“Dan?” it’s only a half-whisper, but it still makes him jump.

The younger boy turns his head, his brown hair tousling against Phil’s denim chest until they’re eye-to-eye.

Phil lowers his gaze, but this time his eyes don’t flicker back up to Dan’s. Dan parts his mouth in response, but before he can say anything, there’s a surge forward and a soft pair of lips on his.

A jolt of adrenaline, shock, and a general ‘holy-fucking-shit-this-can’t-be-happening’ feeling shimmers through his body as he kisses back, and despite his embarrassing inexperience when it comes to anything remotely romantic, his lips move perfectly in time with Phil’s, their mouths melting together in flawless harmony.

Phil’s the one to break away, and Dan misses his lips the second the cold morning air touches his mouth. He frowns, studying Phil’s expression half-hidden by his mop of black hair, but the older boy refuses eye contact.

“Shit, I’m sorry, I don’t know what came ov-“

“Don’t apologise,” Dan cuts him off immediately, his hand hovering over Phil’s arm in quiet protest. “Just-…” he gulps. “Do it again,”

Phil’s head snaps up, his eyes boring into the brown stare in mild confusion.

“Please,” Dan mouths, and Phil doesn’t need to be told twice.

They kiss for longer, deeper, slightly parted lips and slow breathing and the teal glow of 5am light and shit, this was certainly worth a seventeen year wait. Phil’s lips feel like warmth and taste like tobacco and he feels a gentle comb of shy fingertips through his hair and yep, he can definitely see what all the fuss is about now.

When they break apart for the second time, all blushes and broken breaths, they’re both grinning. Phil drops his gaze with a bashful chuckle.

“Well,” Dan breathes. He’s still sitting close, their upper arms touching but neither of them really wanting to move away.

“Well,” Phil says, almost in agreement. They’re bathed in silence once again, but this time it’s comfortable.

“I’m not gonna lie,” Dan begins, looking out over the city. “That was definitely worth the wait.”

Phil tilts his head down, their noses almost touching. “Yeah?”

“For sure,” Dan cranes his neck up a little and pecks Phil’s lips again. The other boy grins, pulling his jacket further over Dan’s shoulders.

“We’ll have to do this again sometime then, won’t we?” Phil’s eyes glitter.

Dan grins, glancing at the view spread in front of them. The sun is beginning to awaken and there are fewer streetlights illuminating the land below and it’s cold and wow, they should really think about heading home soon. Dan hasn’t checked his phone in hours and he’s sure it can’t be running on anything much more than a measly four percent.

“Definitely,” he says, then hesitates. “Although, well.”

“Well what?”

Dan flicks his eyes up at the boy above him, tired brown against weary blue.

“Perhaps next time we should choose somewhere a little warmer than a car park,” he says in a soft voice, before adding, “I can barely feel my arse right now.”

Phil bursts out laughing, and then a pair of lips are on his for the third time.

-

The next couple of weeks rush by in a flurry of rehearsals, meetings, crumpled scripts and weird costumes that itch around the collar. Dan and Phil spend most of their time three storeys apart, meaning secret rendezvous up in the control room or down in the trap room are often necessary. The closer the big day creeps, the hotter the atmosphere becomes with stress, so it’s nice to leave the tension with the stage and the equally tense co-workers and escape for a bit.

“For fear of that, I still will stay with thee, and never from this palace of dim night depart aga- oh for fuck’s sake, you’re not even listening.”

Phil looks up from his phone, a giggling smirk still lingering on his face. “Huh?”

“Come on, Phil. You said you’d go through this with me and you’re sat there playing around with bloody Snapchat filters.”

“Sorry, sorry – I am listening, it’s just-“ his eyes flicker back down to the screen in front of him. “That’s hideous. Who even makes these filters? I look like a toe.”

“Can unflattering photos of you not wait five minutes until I’ve finished this? We’re literally nearly done anyway. We only have, like, one more paragraph to g-” Phil interrupts him by flipping the phone around to face the other boy. A bald, rather unsightly version of Phil with weird eyes stares back. Dan’s eyes widen in horror. “Fuck, that really is hideous.”

“I know,” Phil shudders. “I didn’t even know my face could do that,” he glances back at the screen and pulls a couple of experimental faces. “Would you still be with me if I looked like that?”

“Nope,” Dan replies semi-seriously, rolling his eyes when Phil pouts.

“What about if I looked like this?” Phil turns the phone around. He looks a lot better this time, but a little bit too much like an animal. Dan’s never really understood the national attraction towards ‘dog filters’.

“Probably. The ears might get in the way a bit, though,” he chuckles, before urging, “now come on. We haven’t got long left now.”

Phil agrees, albeit reluctantly. He swings his legs off the table, grabs Dan’s battered highlighted mess of a script sitting in front of him and they pick up from where they left off, something about ‘worms that are thy chamber maids’, ‘everlasting rest’ and ‘inauspicious stars’ (whatever the fuck that adjective means). They last a grand total of fifteen seconds before Dan’s voice is interrupted by a shriek of laughter.

“Oh, fucking hell that’s bad!” Phil cackles. Dan groans, wondering for a fleeting second where the best place to launch Phil’s phone might be.

“That’s it,” he loses it, suddenly leaping across the table and swiping the irritating rectangle of interest straight from Phil’s hand. His smile vanishes in seconds.

“Aw, what?!”

“You have five seconds to put this stupid fucking thing away, or else it’s going out there,” he points to the window behind them. Phil follows his gaze, his eyes widening. They can see the majority of the town from up here. That’s a long drop.

He turns his head back around. They’re nose-to-nose, eye-to-eye.

“Fine,” Phil smiles, the tips of their noses brushing together. “But just so you know, seeing you angry just makes me want to kiss you more.”

Dan rolls his eyes, but he can’t hide his smirk. “Are you still gonna want to kiss me when your phone ends up on the ground?”

“What do you mean ‘when’? I’ve put it away now,” he points to the bulge in his back pocket.

Dan fixes him with a glare.

“Come on,” Phil leans forward as Dan leans back. “Just one?” he pleads, his eyes big and blue.

He shakes his head and pulls away, a grin curling at his lips. His eyes flicker back to Phil, a brown gaze that lingers too long.

“Afterwards,” he says in a voice like velvet.

Phil rolls his eyes, flopping back onto the chair. “Fine. Bloody hell, it’s like being back at school.”

Dan pretends not to hear that last comment. “Come on, we’ll take it from “world-wearied flesh…”

Phil’s phone doesn’t move once from his pocket after that. The promise of Dan’s lips after rehearsal is more tempting than any filter some dumb app has to offer.

-

“How do I look?”

Phil eyes him up and down, a smirk playing at his lips. “Hot.”

The comment receives a soft punch to his upper arm.

“Behave,” Dan turns back to the mirror, twining a lock of perfectly sprayed hair that he was specifically instructed not to touch around his fingers. “Are you sure? I feel like I look like a-“

He’s interrupted by a pair of soft lips for a few seconds.

“That’s really not helping the nerves,” Dan breathes once they break away.

Phil grins. “You look fine. You know you do. Now quit playing with your hair before Alexa sees.”

Dan doesn’t think Alexa, the make-up artist, is capable of seeing anything that isn’t within a thirty-centimetre radius of her own face right now. She’s been hurrying around backstage all evening; powdering this, curling that, flitting from actor-to-actor so quickly it makes Dan out of breath to even watch her. She certainly hasn’t done a bad job though, he thinks, as he inspects his reflection. A slightly dishevelled, 15th-century version of himself stares back, all weird leather and burgundy velvet and wow, perhaps he should sport an Elizabethan tunic more often.

“Suits you,” Phil smiles as if he’d read his mind. Dan adjusts the collar accordingly.

“D’you reckon?”  

“Yeah,” Phil eyes him up and down again. “Most people here kinda look like twats in their costume, but you really actually pull that off.”

“Um- thanks? I think?” Dan smirks, frowning at his reflection. He doesn’t mention it has anything to do with his long-standing ability to morph into literally anyone he likes (he’d often been described by many make-up artists as having a “chameleon face” which he hopes is a reference to his adaptability to blend into multiple characters as opposed to resembling a lizard), and instead accepts the ever-so-slightly backhanded compliment.

“What are you doing down here?” someone with an updo the size of Jupiter asks Phil, sauntering past in something that really rather resembles a cupcake. Phil was right, Dan thinks. They do look a bit ridiculous. “They need you upstairs in five minutes.”

“Oh shit,” Phil glances at his watch. “Okay. Gotta go before Nick kills me.”

“Alright,” Dan smiles, pulling him in for a quick hug.

“Good luck,” he whispers into his shoulder. “You’ll fucking kill it.”

Dan tightens his grip around his arms. “Thank you.”

The word has multiple other meanings, and judging by the glitter in Phil’s eye when he pulls away, he thinks he understands every single one.

-

That night, Dan lavishes in warm spotlights and painted wooden sets resembling palaces and balconies, and he feels alive.

That night, the finest Elizabethan literature spills from his lips, flowing as easily as water, his voice shaping every monologue, soliloquy and duologue perfectly.

That night, there are another pair of lips on his; only this time painted red and totally professional. It feels strange, alien, and not a single trace of the spark in his heart that Phil’s lips ignite can be found, but it’s work. It’s courage.

And that night, someone up in the control booth watches through the pane of glass over all the light boards and buttons and wires, and smiles.

As if it’s been almost a year since my last oneshot??? Wtf this must CHANGE I’m getting back into writing (properly this time I swear) so there’s a lot more where this came from. Feedback is always appreciated whether it be good or bad so pls let me know how you found this! Feels so good to be doing this again u have nooo idea holy shit <3

[decembercamiecherries]

Continue to Fall

Ao3 link

Word Count: 3842

Summary:

Gon smirked. “It’s supposed to snow tomorrow.”

“…so?”

“So, they’re going to cancel school! And if you stay over tonight…”

“We can spend all day together tomorrow,” Killua finished, clarity washing over him at the realization, and Gon bobbed his head vigorously.

“Exactly! Plus, you know.” His smile turned shy, and Killua’s heart stuttered at the light blush forming on Gon’s freckled cheeks. “Aunt Mito’s out of town this week.”

Killua’s pulse started to climb, heartbeat loud and thumbing in his ears. “Oh.”

Gon wiggled his eyebrows. “Yeah. Oh.”

This fic is a bday gift for @sketchxhunter who I love very dearly <3 I could write a gazillion pages on everything I love about her but I’ll shut up now and let you all read the fic instead haha. 

The plot for this fic was inspired by @ohlookitscazz; she gave me this as one of the three prompts from our art trade a few months back and I liked it so much I decided to write this prompt too! And finally, @crowsintheforest (aka @xyliane) beta-d this fic for me so a huge thank you goes out to her, this fic wouldn’t be half as grammar-ly correct without her help!!!!

The snow was already up to the patio railing, and it was only nine-twenty-four in the morning.

Killua stared out the window, jaw agape as he watched layer after layer of fresh snow fall from the sky. There seemed to be no end of it. The snow just kept piling up while new, fat, and clumpy snowflakes continued to spiral through the winter air.

A pair of warm, strong arms wrapped around Killua’s waist. He didn’t react at all the sudden touch, or the familiar voice that whispered into his ear, “See? I told you.”

Killua let out a long sigh and leaned back instinctively into a broad chest. “Yeah. You did.”

Gon giggled and Killua’s lips twitched upwards. He had to admit, he had been skeptical when Gon had approached him yesterday. He had good reason for that though; the sight of Gon stomping through the middle of their crowded high school hallway, brows furrowed and lips set into a stubborn frown, would have put anyone on edge.

Killua had simply raised both eyebrows as Gon marched his way. He was no stranger to that determined look on Gon’s face. Gon wanted something, clearly, and he wanted it now. Killua raised his voice to ask Gon over the hallway chatter, “What’s up with you?”

Gon completely ignored his question, of course. “You’re coming home with me today,” he demanded and Killua’s eyebrows jumped up even higher.

“Any reason why?”

Gon smirked. “It’s supposed to snow tomorrow.”

“…so?”

“So, they’re going to cancel school!”

Killua scoffed. “Don’t be stupid. They never cancel school, Gon.”

“They will this time! I’m sure of it! And if you stay over tonight…”

“We can spend all day together tomorrow,” Killua finished, clarity washing over him at the realization, and Gon bobbed his head vigorously.

“Exactly! Plus, you know.” His smile turned shy, and Killua’s heart stuttered at the light blush forming on Gon’s freckled cheeks. “Aunt Mito’s out of town this week. She’s visiting Grandma back on Whale Island.”

Killua’s pulse started to climb, heartbeat loud and thumbing in his ears. “Oh.”

Gon wiggled his eyebrows. “Yeah. Oh.”

“That’s…” Killua coughed, trying and failing to fight down the heat crawling up his neck. “Good. Uh. R-Really good.”

“Mhm.” Gon reached out and grabbed Killua’s sweaty hand. He immediately interlaced their fingers, squeezing tight. “So. What do you say, Killua?”

And that was how Killua ended up here, at Gon’s house, wearing lightning-bolt pajamas that Gon’s aunt had bought for him at Christmas over a month ago, watching in awe as a blanket of crystalline white covered everything in sight.

“I can’t believe you were right,” Killua said, dumbfounded, and felt the vibrations of Gon’s hum through his back. “They never cancel school. How did you know they were gonna do it this time?”

“Dunno.” Gon rested his chin on Killua shoulder. “Maybe I’m a secret weather genius.”

Killua snorted, rolling his eyes. “Maybe you’re just lucky.”

“Maybe I just wanted to have you all to myself,” Gon teased back and warmth rushed to Killua’s cheeks.

“Sh-Shut up.” He weakly hit Gon’s arm while Gon burst into laughter. Killua could feel Gon shaking through their embrace and he had to lightly pinch the skin at Gon’s wrist to get his attention back. “You already have me, doofus. You don’t need a snow day for that.”

“Mmm, yeah. I know. But like this—” Gon squeezed Killua in his arms, nuzzling his face in Killua’s tussled silver curls, “—I don’t have to share. I get to spend all day with you and no one else.”

Killua bit the inside of his cheek at the swell of pure love rising inside him. He loved it when Gon held him like this: tightly, their bodies pressed so close that Killua could feel Gon breathing and the strong, rapid heartbeat in his chest.  It was impossible for the cold radiating from the window to touch Killua while Gon was here with him, reminding him how he was adored and cherished. Gon’s love warmed him from the inside out.

“Well, you got your wish,” Killua murmured and let his head tip backwards to rest against Gon’s shoulder. “What do you wanna do about it?”

“I was going to ask you that. Do you want to go outside? We could make a snowman or have a snowball fight or go sledding….”

Killua frowned, thinking. He imagined having to get out of his pajamas and putting on layer upon layer of thick sweaters and heavy coats. He imagined snow inevitably getting into his boots and soaking through his socks as his toes slowly turned numb. He imagined the wind—chilling, icy, freezing—on his cheeks and nose until his skin started to ache and flush pink.

“No,” he said loudly and Gon laughed in his ear. “Definitely not. You can go outside and die of frostbite if you want, but I’m staying in here.”

“You sound adamant, you know.”

“I am,” Killua growled.

“Too cold out there for you? Hmm?”

The house groaned as a gust of wind suddenly picked up. Snow whirled around in mini tornadoes, the glass of the window shrieking from the pressure, and for a moment all Killua could see was white.

Within seconds the flurry died down again, giving way to the peaceful snowfall that Killua and Gon had been admiring previously. But those few seconds but were more than enough to convince Killua that he was right—wasn’t setting a single foot outside for the rest of the day.

He shivered. “Yes. There’s no way in hell you can make me go out there.”

“I wasn’t going to make you do anything,” Gon said and Killua didn’t need to turn around to see his smile. Still, he didn’t like the tone of Gon’s voice—it was teasing, sly. He was obviously planning something, and knowing Gon, that something probably involved Killua.

Killua started suspiciously, “What are you—?”

Gon’s arms disappeared from around his waist. Killua cut himself in with a sharp gasp as Gon swept his feet out from under him, catching him around his waist and lifting his legs up into the air to carry Killua in his arms bridal style.

“GON!” Killua flailed, scrambling at Gon’s shoulders to grasp onto something solid. He didn’t get the chance to right himself before Gon began walking confidently away from the window and back into the living room. Killua was jolted with every step and he clung to Gon even tighter, wanting nothing less than to accidently topple out of Gon’s arms and onto the hard floor.

“It’s okay, Killua.”

Killua’s eyes snapped up to find Gon grinning down at him broadly. His boyfriend chirped, “I got you, I promise!”

Killua’s stomach lurched as Gon bounced slightly. “Th-That’s not what I—”

Gon released him abruptly and Killua let out a small shriek as he tumbled down onto the Freccss’s couch. He let out a small oof when he landed, face shoved against the bottom cushion. With an irritated grow he rolled over onto his back and tried to sit up. Gon, however, seemed to have other ideas. He firmly pushed on Killua’s shoulders and Killua collapsed onto his back once more.

Killua snarled up at the ceiling, starting to get genuinely annoyed now. “Gon, dammit, let me up! What are you trying to do—”

A blanket landed on top of him. Killua blinked at the fuzzy green cloth, mouth still hanging open. He didn’t have the time to think before Gon was tugging the blanket off his head. He smiled brightly at Killua.

“Stay still for a second, okay?” he asked while Killua continued to gape at him. “You’ll love this, I just know it!”

“I don’t—” Killua grunted as Gon started to tuck the blanket under his body, pinning his arms and legs to his sides with the blanket, “—know about tha-at, ow! Hey, watch your hands! What are you doing to me?!”

“I’m tucking you in!” Gon said seriously and Killua made a sputtering sound.

“I don’t need tucking in! This isn’t even you tucking me in, okay, I look like a burrito!”

“You do need tucking in! You get cold easily and I need to keep you warm while I go make hot chocolate!”

Killua sat up at the word ‘chocolate.’ Excitement coursed through his veins and his heart sped up. “You’re making me hot chocolate?” he blurted out

Gon huffed. “Yes, but you’ll stay here.” He grabbed some pillows from the side and stacked them up before pushing Killua’s head back down again. “Okay? I’ll only be gone a couple of minutes.”

He pressed a kiss to Killua’s forehead and Killua pouted. “Why can’t I just come with you?” he whined.

Gon smiled, amusement lighting up those golden eyes. “Because you’ll eat all the marshmallows out of the packet before I can boil the water. And the hot chocolate won’t taste as good then.”

Killua felt his expression sour. “Meanie.”

Gon laughed, patting his flop of white hair. “If you say so. Stay here, okay? I’ll be back before you know it.”

He got up and left. Killua scowled at the ceiling for a minute, listening to clinks and clatters as Gon messed around in the kitchen to his right. He knew it wouldn’t take Gon that long to fill the teapot with water and set it on the stove for it to boil. That’s not what he was mad about. No, more than anything he was just pissed that Gon wasn’t letting Killua indulge his sweet tooth like usual.

Even worse: he felt the need to trap Killua here just to prove his point.

“Dammit, Gon,” Killua growled and dropped his head back onto the pillows Gon had oh-so-thoughtfully propped up for him.

Gon just knew him too well at this point, plain and simple. That wasn’t surprising, considering the fact that he and Gon had known each other for nearly three years now ever since their initial meeting on their first ever day of high school. Being with Gon had been a breathless whirlwind of activity from day one- from trying to cram calculus into Gon’s thick skull hours before their final exam, to riding their bikes to the Freecss’s home in pouring rain and blistering sun alike, between racing each other in Bisky’s gym class and stealing bites of each other’s snacks—

To shyly brushing each other’s fingers at the lunchroom table. Holding each other’s stares for a second too long across the classroom. The heavy blushes and pounding heartbeats whenever they accidentally got a little too close, even for best friends. Neither of them asking anyone out for Homecoming until Gon finally showed up the day of the dance at Killua’s house, dressed in a tux and wearing a determined expression on his red face.

And they’d never turned back since.

“Killua!”

The cushion under him was jostled and Killua blinked as Gon suddenly reappeared by his head, elbows pressed into the couch edge. The other teen was beaming brightly with eyes that sparkled as if they contained rays from the sun itself.

“What’s with that look, huh?” Killua asked, feeling his cheeks start to prickle and burn. The way Gon was looking at him…

“Nothing!” Gon chirped. He crossed his arms and rested his chin on them. He tilted his head, still watching Killua with that content, soft smile gracing his lips “I’m just happy is all.”

Killua huffed. “You’re always happy.”

“Only ‘cause I’m always with you.”

Killua scrunched up his nose and turned away to hide the horrible, mortifying blush that was slowly making its way across his face. “Sap,” he muttered, but the insult had no bite. How could it, when Gon had so easily rendered him helpless with a few choice words?

Gon giggled and reached out to poke Killua’s warming cheek. “You okay, Killua? Your voice sounds kind of squeaky there.”

And just like that, the melting sensation evaporated. Killua grit his teeth to keep himself from snapping. Gon really did know exactly how to push all his buttons. That bastard.

“I’m fine, Gon,” he growled. “You just like to imagine things.”

“You sure?”

“Yes, Gon.”

“You’re not too cold or anything? I wouldn’t want you to freeze with that blizzard raging outside.”

Killua tried—and failed—to resist the temptation to roll his eyes. “Gon. You’ve literally tucked this blanket under me to the point where I can barely even move. I think I’m warm enough.”

“I dunno…you still look kind of cold to me.”

“You must be losing your eyesight, then,” Killua retorted.

“Hm.” Gon, disappointingly, didn’t rise to the bait. He untucked his arms, extending one hand to reach out and play with one of Killua’s stray silver curls. Something inside Killua melted a little at the gentle move and he almost missed it when Gon asked, “Maybe I should put the fireplace on? That would drive out the cold a bit.”

Killua blinked distractedly. “I-I guess? You really don’t have to, though—”

“The only other real option would be to get you more clothes to warm you up. More socks and sweaters and even gloves, maybe.”

“Gon,” Killua said, exasperated. Seriously, this was getting a bit out of hand now. “I don’t need to wear gloves inside, or anything else for that matter! What I have on is fine, really.”

Gon sighed heavily. But the sound was fake, overexaggerated. Suspiciously so.

“Well. If you don’t like either those options, there’s always a third…”

Killua really did not need to be warmed up at this point. He could hear the water starting to boil and whistle in the opposite room, and the cushion underneath him was starting to warm to his body temperature. Neither the wind nor the snow could reach him here, wrapped securely in Gon’s blanket.

Still, though. He was curious. He wanted to see where this little game of Gon’s led.

“Oh, yeah?” Killua asked, narrowing his eyes, and Gon grinned back.

“Yeah.”

“And what is it? This third, other option? I assume it’s better than the other two you’ve offered me.”

Gon laughed slightly. “I think it’s better. I think you will too, but who knows.”

“Tell me what it is then and we’ll find out.”

The corner of Gon’s lips twitched upwards into a smirk and Killua’s heart stuttered at the sight.

“Well.” Gon leaned forward, until all Killua could see were two burning pools of gold. He felt Gon’s fingers move from his hair to his forehead, to carefully trail down his cheek and leave sparks of electricity dancing under his skin…

Gon moved even closer and murmured into Killua’s scarlet-tipped ears. “I could always warm you up, you know.”

Killua’s eyes bulged and he inhaled so quickly he nearly choked. A wave of heat crashed over him and his face burst into flames. “G-Gon!” he squeaked, jerking upwards into a sitting position, and Gon pulled back with a cackle. He lunged for Gon but missed; the other teen had already jumped away and out of reach.

“You bastard, you did that on purpose!” Killua hissed but Gon simply grinned. “Why do you always tease me like that?!

Gon raised his eyebrows. “Who said anything about teasing you?” he asked and Killua’s jaw dropped. “I meant what I said; I have no problems warming you up. I would prefer to be your method of choice, actually.”

Killua’s breathing hitched, his pulse starting to race with anticipation at Gon’s words. He didn’t know exactly what Gon was implying. But, if Gon was saying what Killua thought he was saying—

“But,” Gon continued with a sigh. “I also promised you hot chocolate. So I gotta do that first.”

Of course he had to do that first.

Killua glared at him through tousled silver bangs. “You’re still a tease.”

“And you’re still as fun to tease as ever,” Gon chirped and gave Killua a wink. “Now don’t miss me too much, Killua! I’ll be right back!”

He was gone again before Killua could say anything else, leaving Killua to stew in his own shock and embarrassment. He let out a long, shaky sigh and pushed his hand through his hair with a scowl. He hated how easy it was for Gon to poke fun at him. Gon was the only one who could do that, besides Alluka, and the stupid gremlin knew it too.

Killua looked back towards the window. The snow was piling up even higher now, fat snowflakes still falling down at a steady pace. If anything, they were falling down even faster than when he’d first woken up. It made him wonder just how much snow their area would receive before the storm was over. His parents would be furious with him for going over Gon’s and being trapped here instead of coming home right away, but that was the whole point—

“Okayyyyy, here you go!”

Killua tore his gaze away from the winter wonderland outside. Gon was slowly padding his way back into the living room, carefully holding two steaming cups of hot chocolate in both hands. Killua couldn’t help but smile as he spotted the mugs’ patterns: one had a fishing rod with the line for the cup handle, and the other was covered in skateboards.

“You still have these?” Killua asked as Gon gently placed the mugs on the edge of the coffee table.

Gon puffed out his freckled cheeks. “Of course! We won them for each other freshman year during the Autumn Festival!”

“Yeah, but—” Killua grunted while Gon climbed onto the couch besides him, jostling him in the process, “—that was, ow, Gon! That was, ugh, a while ago…”

“Mmm. Not really? Two years isn’t that long of a time.” Gon tugged at Killua’s arms and Killua let himself be pulled sideways into Gon’s lap.  He didn’t resist it when Gon’s arms wrapped around his waist, nor the way Gon to held him gently to his broad chest before draping the blanket from earlier over them both.

“Besides,” Gon continued and Killua felt the vibration of his deep voice all the way down to his toes. “There’s no way your mom and dad would’ve let you keep the mug I won for you, so that meant I had to keep both of ours here for safety!”

Killua hummed his agreement. His cheeks and were starting to warm again, slowly turning red like a sunset sky. He could hear the faint thrum of Gon’s heartbeat like this, strong and sturdy and true. He sighed quietly, content, and curled himself into Gon’s never-ending warmth.

“Are you warm enough yet, Killua?” Gon asked quietly, a small smile tucked into each word.

“Yeah,” Killua whispered into Gon’s collarbone. Killua heard Gon’s breathing hitch the slightest bit, felt his arms tightening around Killua’s waist.

“Killua?”

“Mmm?”

Tan fingers grasped at his chin and Killua was gently forced to look upwards into Gon’s face. Gon’s expression softened when their eyes met, solid gold locking on blue. “I was just thinking, you know, that the hot chocolate is supposed to warm up your lips but it’s too hot to drink right now…”

It took Killua a few seconds to process what Gon had just said. And when he did, he burst into laughter.

“Are you—” He snickered and wheezed, unable to hold back his giggles while Gon’s smile slid into a frown, “—is that seriously your way of trying to say you want to kiss me?! Seriously? All that smooth talk from before and then you use that?”

Gon was full out pouting now. Killua might have teased him about how cute he looked if the situation wasn’t so freaking funny.

“Killua!” Gon whined, shaking Killua slightly. “Hey, stop laughing! I was just trying to set the mood—”

“Yeah, well, you ruined any mood that might have been there in the first place!” Killua gasped and wiped the tears from the corner of his eyes. God, he would never let Gon live that one down. Trying to warm up his lips, c’mon, really?

Gon scrunched up his nose. “At least I was trying to do something! You didn’t even—”

Killua didn’t wait to hear the rest of Gon’s sentence. He grabbed Gon’s cheeks with both hands and smashed their mouths together, cutting off whatever the hell else Gon was planning to say.

Gon didn’t seem to mind the interruption, though. He pulled Killua closer by his hips, angling his head at the same time so that their noses weren’t awkwardly pressed together anymore. He kissed Killua with the eagerness of someone who’d been waiting hours to do this very thing. Gon’s mouth was insistent on Killua’s, not letting Killua breathe for more than a half second or two before diving back in for more.

“G-Gon!” Killua yanked his head back, caught between gasping and laughing. His head spun dizzily and he almost tipped over the side of the couch before Gon pulled him back upright.

“You okay, Killua?” Gon asked, grin dazzling and cheeks flushed bright red.

“Yeah,” Killua said breathlessly. “I’m more than okay, I’m…”

He reached out to cup Gon’s jaw, rubbed his thumbs over burning freckled skin, let his gaze meet golden eyes that practically shone from Gon’s giddiness, before finally leaning in to press a chaste kiss to those lips. Gon’s arms wound around his torso once again, crushing him and chasing the air out of his lungs, but Killua didn’t mind.

Finally, Killua pulled back. He rested their foreheads together, taking in unsteady gulps of air. His chest was full and light and bursting with emotion and as much as he hated talking about feelings, he knew he had to, or else he really would explode.

“Gon, I-I’m really happy right now, here, with you,” he admitted, face aflame, and Gon glowed.

“Awww, Killua.” Gon ran a gentle hand through Killua’s tousled hair, smile wider than Killua could have ever remembered seeing it. “There’s no need to be embarrassed, silly. I’m happy with you, too.”

“Really?” he whispered. His skin was still radiating heat like he was the center of a sun, but Gon didn’t seem to care about that.

“Mhm. Why do you think I asked you to come over if that wasn’t the case? Do you really think I would spend all day with someone who didn’t make me happy? That I would date someone who didn’t make me happy?”

Okay, now Gon was just teasing him.

“Yeah, yeah, I get it,” Killua grumbled and Gon giggled. He let out a low whine of protest as Gon leaned forward to plaster his face in feather-light kisses, covering all available space. “Gon, hey!”

“No take backs,” Gon murmured against the corner of Killua’s right eye. “You decided to come over, you gotta deal with my eternal love now.”

Killua laughed—a real, chest-deep and heart soaring kind of laugh—and wound his arms around Gon’s neck to hold him close to his pounding heart.

And outside, the snow continued to fall.

[ishipeveryship]

The utter and criminal lack of Dabba (because I can’t in good conscience call it anything else)

Disclaimer : This post is going to be just a miasma  of unresolved rage, venting, run-on sentences and quite a bit of unnecessary analysis of the newly merged hour-long torturous experience called Ishqbaaaz… yes it does actually have 3 As, for no damn reason. Read on at your own risk.

I’ve been a pseudo-regular on IF for the last couple of months where I post some fics (what a discreet plug?! Go find me on IF - writergenie17) and infrequently indulge in some discussions. I was mostly active on the DBO forum cuz you know… its the only show I watched and I like to torture myself, to say nothing of the fact that KJ is yummy beyond belief. 

Of course, I did get my crash course in IB history and lore, (though I was never part of the faithful ShivIka bandwagon) before following DBO quite faithfully through all the mind-bending villainous chemistry adventures, eye-melting, utterly disastrous costume choices and of course, the dabbas that have given the show its iconic name (courtesy of our very own @vishwaspur ). 

For a show with no story line and absolutely no idea where it was going, KJ, Shrenu and the behind camera team deserve a whole lot of kudos for making us come back to it every night for another dose of WTF?! Casting is probably the only thing about this show that kept me coming back the numerous times I told myself I had to quit for the sake of my own mental health. Rahul Dev as KT was beyond perfection. KJ and Shrenu were setting screens on fire from the first episode on and we were all hooked. 

Then came the Svetlana storyline,which was at that point of time still quite tame… the track gave us ChulKara, something I look back at fondly, even now. I know a lot of us were frustrated with the lack of progress and the amount of crazy crap they were flinging at us every night with the devolving of the Multilana story line into a series of Ripley’s believe it or not videos. But even that was acceptable considering the minuscule amount of attention our two leads get now. But that’s something for later…

Then with the Fakelana’s famous freezer dabba gone, we got one more dabba in the form of crazy Bua Maa’s Ratan ka dabba. 

Another inferior story line which was however enormously bolstered by Sushmitaji’s amazing portrayal of creepy Bua Maa. I think I was more scared of her than even KT and that’s an accomplishment on its own.

But to our relief, even that came to an abrupt but sort of satisfying end. The team managed to give us starved viewers a week’s worth of solid RiKara and even though there were gaping plot holes and stuff that just didn’t make sense, we knew by now, that to expect anything even remotely associated with logic from these people is like wishing for pigs to fly. But we got beautifully set and shot RiKara scenes and we were happy. Things were finally starting to move in the right direction. Even if misunderstandings hadn’t been cleared, at least our Omki looked ready to look past his usual ‘giri hui aurat’ rhetoric. 

Then came the merger like a tsunami and swept away all our hopes and dreams of a story line for our RiKara. Now, they’re being used as props… like seriously, KJ aur Shrenu ki jagah unke cutouts rakh do to bhi chal jaayega. 

I honestly can’t believe that the Rudra-Bhavya relationship, which doesn’t technically exist, is being given the same, if not better billing than RiKara, who’re actually married and have been for about six months now. How can the problems facing these two entirely different relationships (if one can even be called that) be treated the same? That too, why is this becoming a project for ShivIka, jinki khud ki relationship skills itni amazing hain ki wo dono ek doosre ko divorce de chuke hain because of course, they can’t resolve anything worth sh*t between themselves. But aa gaye hain duniya ko sudhaarne. 

And one can’t even express themselves now on the IF forums cuz the ShivIka bandwagon just steamrolls over anyone who doesn’t believe in their ‘ShivIka is the main couple’ rhetoric. Since the merger, the DBO forum has been informed that they’re closing down and that all the forum members should move to IB as its the parent show. RiKara fans have no place there cuz that is the one relationship that IB has been entirely blanked out on and now, no one wants to give them the time of day… not the creatives and certainly not the IB fans who could care less about anything that doesn’t involve Shivaay and Anika fighting like six year-old’s. 

The people who used to watch DBO and are now forced to sit through 40 minutes of unnecessary juvenile drama to watch KJ and Shrenu stand around in the background and agree with everything Bhaiya and Bhabhi are saying, are soon going to have had enough. We have been hanging on with the promise of one little scene between Omkara and Gauri… one scene and I’m sure we’ll be happy once we get it but why should we settle for crumbs when this relationship should be getting equal attention? RiKara at the moment have more of a chance to develop into something real and beautiful than either of the other couples. If RiKara isn’t given a decent attempt at a story soon, most DBO viewers that the CVs tried to rope in using the merger tactic to increase their TRP, are going to stop and as a result, the show will be forced to end. 

We already know Gul and Harneet have no concept of using an actual story line and with the third edition of IPK taking up most of their non-existent creative abilities, I have a feeling their current pride and joy, Ishqbaaaz is going to face the situation of being the less favored step-child soon. We RiKarans are used to that and we’ll survive… par tumhara kya hoga IB fans? 

[bylethstimewheel]

Skyscraper Labyrinth

“Promise you’ll never leave us… not without warning me first,” Alfonse plead. He had promised he would never become close with anyone, especially if they were summoned, yet here he was again. “I won’t!” the summoner promised, though deep in her heart she knew she would have to do it eventually. Shave gave him a warm smile and fought the urge to give him a hug, she didn’t want to become too attached either, but she was almost certain she had failed at that.

“Stop being so gloomy all the time Alfonse!” Sharena, who had missed the conversation spoke loudly as she came into the large room. “I was talking to some of the other Heroes and we want to have a huge party tonight!” the princess beamed. “Oh?” Alfonse ignored her remark, “what’s the occasion?” he asked. “We wanted to thank our wonderful Summoner for everything she’s done since she came here!” Sharena hugged the summoner tightly. “We love you Mae!” “Thank you!” Mae chuckled, “It’s been a lot of fun!” “Hasn’t it?” Sharena giggled, “And I’m sure we’ll have a lot more fun together! this is only the beginning!”

Ana stepped outside to get fresh air when she caught a glimpse of Alfonse who seemed to be lost in his own thoughts. “Alfonse?” Anna tapped his shoulder. “Yes?” “Why aren’t you inside with Sharena and the Heroes?” Anna took a sip of the drink she was holding. “I needed some quiet,” he answered. “Ah yes it can get pretty loud in there sometimes,” the commander laughed, “but I’ve see that face before.” she added, “what’s troubling you?” The prince took a deep breath and adjusted his posture so he could look at her. “When you summoned Mae,” he paused. “What of it?” Anna asked causally. “Did you open a portal to her world?” he asked. Anna looked at her drink then back at Alfonse, “to be honest, I have no idea how that happened.” “What?” “I told you this before on the day I introduced her. I held out Breidablik and she just kinda showed up!” Anna chuckled, “it was magnificent!” “I heard you say that yes but…” he looked down at his own feet for a moment. “How is she going back to her world if she….wanted to?” the words stung him, though he fought hard to conceal this. “Oh details details…” Anna waived her hand, “I have no idea and she hasn’t asked so…” Anna took another sip of her drink and smiled. “Don’t trouble yourself with that stuff Alfonse, she won’t be going away any time soon.” the red head went back inside.

Shortly afterwards Sharena came looking for him. “There you are!” she wrapped her arms around him, “What’s wrong brother?” “Nothing,” he lied, “just getting some fresh air, you know i’m not one for-” “You know, Mae was asking me where you were so i came looking for you!” she giggled, “she’s so popular! all the Heroes just want to dance and talk with her! I’m convinced if she went looking for you, it would turn into an expedition involving all the heroes!” Both of them laughed at this. “You know, I’ve been worried,” Sharena confessed. “About what?” “Well I’m afraid a day will come when Mae wants to go home,” Sharena said, “I mean yeah, she’s been of great help to us, but she had a life too, What if there is someone in her world who is desperately looking for her?” “…Yeah i know.” Alfonse turned around and gave his sister a hug. “This is why I kept telling you not to get attached.” “Yes i know but it’s so hard not to! she’s amazing and so are the Heroes!” “Ok now there are two of you out here? Let’s go inside!” Anna was yelling from the door to the balcony, The siblings broke the hug and walked silently towards the commander who could already tell what they had been talking about. “This is not going to turn into another thing like Zacharias, the two of you need to be responsible royals of Askr and go tend to this gathering! I won’t do it for you! no more sulking!” “Yes commander,” they replied in unison.

“Anna you really are lucky!” Mae chuckled as she put a hand on the woman’s shoulder. “Why’s that?” “If i was either Alfonse or Sharena I would never let you speak to me that way.” Mae admitted. “I don’t do it because I want to abuse my power or anything, it’s just that they have been sad about Zachareias for a very long time and i am worried it’s bad for them.” “So that’s why they were outside?” Mae asked. “Yes, but you shouldn’t worry, this is your night!” Anna smiled and went to dance with one of the heroes. Mae sat staring into her drink and wondered what Alfonse and Sharena had been talking about. The sudden disappearance from the party, the fact that Zaharias’s name had been mentioned again, and Alfonse’s request were all clear signs to her. They were afraid of her leaving, just as she was afraid of leaving them.

“I would like to one day open the portal to your world. Maybe we could visit together.” Alfonse had said this to her not that long ago. This had only made her daydream about visiting all sorts of places with him. Driving him around, going on the ferry, and maybe a plane if sh could get the cash for it. She chuckled at the thought of seeing his reaction to an airplane. The closest thing she could describe it as was a flying shark, but she wasn’t sure if he had even seen a shark. In all her time in Askr, she hadn’t seen a beach.She felt embarrassed when she realized that none of her fantasies included Sharena or Anna and she suddenly felt her cheeks redden. She chugged her entire drink and looked nearby for a distraction, she found Corrin(M) sitting nearby with a bowl of fruit and a liquor in front of him, he had a puzzled look on his face. “What;s up?” Mae sat down and grabbed an orange slice. “Whys there fruit and liquor here?” “Some people in my world say it helps!” Mae smiled. “So was this set up your idea?” Corrin asked. “Yes it was, when Sharena told me we were having a party i couldn’t help myself, i had to give some input.” Mae spoke to Corrin casually but Alfonse was still in the back of her mind. She began to talk slower and more carefully in order to make sure she wouldn’t say his name by mistake. “Are you ok? you seem distracted,” Corrin commented as she took note of her sudden silence. “Yup, just thinking of how amazing it is to be here with all of you!” she smiled, “we should dance!” “Oh Ok, but I’m not that good,” he admitted. “That’s ok! neither am i!” Mae pulled him out of the seat and in to the designated dance floor leaving her thoughts on the table with the fruit and the liquor.

So this is part 1 of the fic I promised earlier. a few things

I’m Stil not sure i want to keep that name for the summoner.

title is subject to change

I was originally planning for a short drabble but it turned into this thing that is going to have to be divided into several posts so you guys don’t die reading it. 

I hate the verb “to plea” because it’s weak and its past tense crap is all over the place. pled, plead and pleaded are all correct, where pled is more used  in legal terms, plead is American and pleaded is English. so… read that first sentence however you want… :/

I had to stop because my computer is freaking out and i don’t want to lose this, so it was a rushed post.