#mouthpiece is off to the side knitting

[cogs-incorporated]

Toon of Salem

[toonsurvival]

I was Inspired by Pibby and the MLP Infection AU Trend, so I wanted to make my own version of it as well but Toontown Theme.

I'm gonna call this AU....

Toontown: Currupt Infect

And I'll draw the Characters later when I have time but here's some Details.

Description

The Cogs and Toons we're doing their usual Daily Tasks, Cogs try to take over Buildings and do things that are not Toony for the Toons.

The Toons fighting for their Homes 🏡 and Protecting their Family Members while being Silly as always.

But one day, Flippy made an emergency announcement, and Warned the Toons and Cogs to have a Temporary Truce and needed to Work together right know.

They we're Both surprised, what got Flippy so Serious and Scared for the Toons and Cogs Safety?

Why do they need to grab as many resources as much as Possible and evacuate to "The Brrrgh" for the Toons and Cogs to move in?

[What they didn't know that Flippy is from the Future and went back in time with their Memories and Stuff including their own Experiences, Couch Z and Professor Pete is the only 2 that came with him.]

Some of the Toons took his Warning Seriously while the Cogs are a little skeptical but some of them follow suit.

The ones who didn't take it seriously will regret later, and the ones who did will be safe and relieved. But both Sides will be Horrified once the Infected finally appear.

And suddenly realized why Flippy was Warning ⚠️ them Multiple Times... this thing... was something they could never forget...

This Infect... Killed so many Cogs and Toons in a very Brutal way.

Couch Z trains people how to Protect themselves and Avoid getting Infected while Professor Pete teaches about them and make Blue Prints 🖨 of a Flying Magical Ship 🚢

The Brrrgh had been a Safe Zone for both Party's, even though there are some outpost in other Playground and Streets. It's still very Dangerous living outside of Brrrgh.

Over time people Agree to change the name of Brrrgh to "SAFE ZONE" so it will be easier for people to Recognize the Symbol and Logo of the Bored once they are trying to Retreat or found Survivors to bring back to the Base.

Here's some examples of Characters that Survived the Infection or Died, and what they are Currently Currently Doing.

The one who Survived

Bellringer - Helps Spread Information and News

Prethinker - Learning and Studying about the Infected Monsters Behavior and working with a Team of Scientists to find a Cure.

Multislacker - Has Cameras 📷 every on every Street and Playground and has a Team to help him Get Information and fix any Broken Cameras. Helps Bellringer with more Information and Savings Toons and Cogs since they also put random Speakers around the Places they can see.

Pacesetter - Helps with Rescue Tasks and Deliverying Mail, and sometimes Protroll the Area to find Survivals running away from the Infected Monsters.

Duck Shuffler - Really Good at Avoiding Attacks and not getting Infected while Saving Toons and Cogs and Brutally trys to Fight of the Monsters or Distract them.

Treekiller - Makes Sharp Weapons and Build Stuff out of Wood 🪵 work in a Team of Lumberjacks and Smiths.

Plutocrat - He turn his Pizza Restaurant 🍕 into a Tavern, were he sells all kinds of Consumable Goods and Beverages, it also helps Keeps Toons and Cogs morality up and desperate times.

Satellite Investors - Helps with Rebuilding Stuff including Projects.

Mouthpiece - Keeps an Eye of the Young Children and Runs a Knitting Club to make new Clothing and Plushies with other people.

Rainmaker - Sometimes help Mouthpiece with Babysitting but she mostly helps with Rescue Tasks as well but most of the time Helps in a Distance use their Weather Abilities to Fight Off the Monsters and slowly taking over other Streets and Playground with Cold Snowy 🌨 Weathers to make another Safe Zone.

Judy - She has no Idea how she manage to Survive but is very Greatful that she did, and she get to see her BFF again 💗 Mouthpiece! She works alongside her and keeps an eye on the kids as well. But she also helps Organize Schedules and Task for Toons and Cogs and Strict with People to be carful.

Litigator - He is Greatful that he and his Friends survived but is sad that Chief Legal Officer died Protecting them while they we're Running to the Safe Zone. Helps Judy so they won't overwork themselves and his friends joined in as well since there's so many Toons and Cogs that does Tasks for people.

Stenographer - THANK GOODNESS! She is good with ORGANIZING! Including being good at dealing with Stubborn 😣 People.

Case Manager - He Helps Labels Stuff so Toons and Cogs won't get Confuse and it will cause less accidents from happening.

Scapegoat - He still sometimes help people by Covering For Others but he also Works at a Cafeteria to make sure Toons and Cogs will have a Staple Diet, plus he discovered that he likes Cooking and wants to Learn more.

Derrick Man - He Does Delivery Stuff including Transferring goods into the Safe Zone, he sometimes does Health Check Ups for the Cogs when they come back from a Task, Has a Healthier and better Relationship with Rain. And slowly started to Understand Toon Culture while Toons slowly started to Understand Cog Culture as well.

Firestarter - In Charge of Keeping the Camp Warm with Unlimited Fire 🔥 of different Sizes for Toons and Cogs can use including handing out Heating Pads whenever they are going out to do Tasks in the Snow. Sometimes help Pacesetter with Tasks and gets someone else to Cover for him.

Featherbedder - He has a Side Job working at a Children's Library and sometimes read Bed Time Stories at the Safe Zone for Toons and Cogs, while at Night Shifts he does Tasks that need skilled people to be very Quit and Soundless, he's Perfect for that type of Job since the Infected Monsters will most likely not Detect him as long their carful.

Major Player - Makes a Entertainment Zone for Toons and Cogs to go to have Fun, it also helps give people a Temporary Distractions of the Harsh Reality they are in. They can watch Movies 🎬 Play Bored Games 🎮 Listen to Music 🎶 Dance 🕺 etc.

Chainsaw Consultant - Does the same thing like Major Player but instead of a Loud Entertainment Place, he works at a Quite Entertainment Zone we're Toons and Cogs who likes peace and Quite can go to. They got Books, Quite Bored Games, Realizing Music, A place to lay down under a nice Breezy Shade, freezing Fishes, etc.

Land Acquisition Architect - He works along side Multislacker and Bellringer when he's Guarding the Entrance from Monsters and Patrolling places that are too Dangerous for untrained people.

Deep Diver - Has a Deep Conversations with the Scientists and Prethinker on how the Monsters have different Weaknesses and Strengths, but her mane Job is working at a Fish Hotel we're people drop off their pet Fish's.

Gatekeeper - She literally Guards the entrance from Infected Monsters and help Survivals to Run to the Safe Zone, she has Key Workers of Toons and Cogs with Tasks she's unable to do since she's busy Guarding all the Entrance or doing something else.

Jennifer - After that Awful incident of The Chairman getting Brutally killed to Death telling them to Run to the Safe Zone while Bobby screamed in Fear and Cried in Thomas Saggs arms. Well... instead of being Lazy at her Job, she became really serious at her New Secretary Job, Fearing that the Infected Monster will try to get in the Safe Zone. Luckily Cogs and Toons who are associate with her made sure that she does take Breaks and reminds her to take care of herself.

Chief Operating Officer - While he was Running to the Safe Zone in Fear while Carrying Bubby JR in his Arms, he never forget his Brother Screams with his other Coworkers panicking beside him... it took a while for him to be able to be Active for Bubby and his other Coworkers who we're worried for him. But after recovery for a while a Toon offer him a Job at the very good Polite Department we're other Cogs and Toons Work at, and he became a Manager as well, he's also glad that Bubby found friends in his age Group.

Bobby JR - He's Scared... and they missed their Dad... He's very scared of those monsters... Luckily there's a lot of Activities in the Safe Zone for Children to not be bored and he made friends as well including a Bear Toon.

Public Relations Representative - Well... he's still very Unstable, but slowly recovering and getting help from both Toons and Cogs. And he gets to see his old Friends again, Pacesetter is surprised that he is Faster Runner than him, kinda had a weird friendship because of that while Derrick is glad to see he didn't get Corrupted by the Infected Monsters, and others who new him.

The one who Died

Chief Legal Officer - She has no regrets of helping her Coworkers escape from those Monsters but is terrified of becoming one of them while slowly loosing themselves...

Redd 'Heir' Wing - It took some time for him to get along with Toons and the Idea 💡 of working with them but after getting saved from a Certain Toon... he's more cooperation and friendly.

Jason -

Chief Executive Officer -

Director of Land Acquisition -

The one who became the Infected Monsters

Witch Hunter -

Count Erclaim -

Derrick Hand -

Director of Land Development -

The Chairman -

Survival Rate of Each Cogs and Toons

Higher Chance of Survival

Horse

Bear

Fox

Bat

Turkey

Cold Caller

Short Change

Big Fish

Medium Chance of Survival

Cat

Deer

Armadillo

Kangaroo

Mingler

Spin Doctor

Shyster

Legal Eagle

Flunky

Micromanager

Average Chance of Survival

Pets: Basically Doodles, Fishes, Jungle Spider, Bats, etc. Most Pets will be Average Change of Survival but they can go Higher or Lower depending on their Skills and Traits and who is their Owner or they a Wild Animal.

Dog

Duck

Monkey

Pig

Raccoon

Two-Face

Number Cruncher

Double Talker

Back Stabber

Connoisseur

OK Chance of Survival

Mouse

Rabbit

Kiwi

Koala

Telemarketer

Mover & Shaker

Factory Foreman

Loan Shark

Needlenose

Conveyancer

Advocate

Big Cheese

Magnate

Low Chance of Survival

Name Dropper

Glad Hander

Mr. Hollywood

Penny Pincher

Robber Baron

Ambulance Chaser

Middleman

Oh Damb! Hard chance of Survival

Tightwad

Bean Counter

Money Bags

Pencil Pusher

Yesman

Swindler

Toxic Manager

Magnate

Completely Doomed Unless your in Safe Zone before the Outbreak Happened or you Survived because someone Help you or gotten Lucky.

Bottom Feeder

Bloodsucker

Pettifogger

Barrister

Big Wig

Downsizer

Head Hunter

Corporate Raider

Con Artist

Head Honcho

Since you can't have a Funeral for every single Person that Died, Flippy turned the Kudos Bored into a Community Touch Screen.

Were there's a List of People who Survived or Died and Regular News on Stuff what's Happening.

[amatchinwater]

Did a little thing for Day 2 of Stackson Week 2021!

Day 2: Trapped together

Pairing: Stackson

Warnings: underage drinking

Word count: 2709

Rating: teen and up

Ao3 link

Stiles knew it was a bad idea to have a party at Lydia’s lake house in the middle of hurricane lever rain and a goddamn flood warning. What’s even worse is he’s the first person to show up! Lydia herself isn’t even here yet. The banshee was kind enough to tell him where they put the hide-a-key so he could get in and out of the storm. Scott and Isaac aren’t picking up or answering his texts. If they’re not here because they’re too busy fucking and Stiles has to be here soaked and alone, he’s going to kill them.

When Stiles gets in the house, he stomps his shoes on the mat to not track in any mud. Lyds would castrate him for that, so he takes them off just to be safe. Slipping out of his jacket, Stiles hangs it on the hook, careful not to let it drip anywhere other than the little rug underneath it. The house is empty and eerily dark. Then again, why wouldn’t it be? He’s the only fucking one here. Making his way into the kitchen, Stiles’ preturbrance only grows. 

It doesn’t even look like the place is meant to house a party in the next twenty minutes. Nothing is set up. There isn't a single bag of chips or other snacks on the counter. No pizzas and sandwich platters like her birthday. A keg is not beside the island either. Just two bottles of wine with a sticky note that reads-

“Have fun?” 

Oh my god! Stiles jumps and flails, nearly knocking the bottles over on the counter. 

“What kind of fucking game is she playing?” Jackson snatches the note, rereading it before flicking it back towards the island. 

Still clutching his wildly beating heart, Stiles gasps, “could you maybe announce yourself next time?” He collects himself- mostly. “Not all of us have your little wolf senses. You almost gave me a heart attack, you fuck.” 

Jackson snorts and almost playfully bumps him with his shoulder. “Not my fault you left the front door unlocked, Stilinski.” 

Fuck this. “I’m leaving.” Stiles stalks back towards the front door, yanking his jacket off the hook and grabbing his shoes. Whipping the open the door, the teen groans loudly, dropping his head back, “you’ve got to be kidding me!” 

“What are you bitching about now?” The wolf steps beside him and looks outside, his eyes widen drastically. “Holy shit!”

The lake has officially overflown since they’ve shown up and the driveway is at least three inches deep with water. Jackson’s care looks like it’s barely  capable of surviving if it gets too high. Stiles almost cares enough to wonder if they should move it. This fucking storm! Now he’s stuck here with nowhere to go. Yes, he has a jeep, but the road out is no doubt a muddy mess that even Roscoe can’t navigate. 

Closing the door and putting his clothes back where they were, Stiles whines, “why would she pick today to do this?” Thinking about the weather his dad forced him to watch this morning. Most cities were calling in downed power lines and massive branches flying through the streets. 

She knew this storm was coming. So much so that Lydia even reminded him to wear his boots rather than his sneakers. “I guess I better call Scott, tell him not to come. No use in him getting stuck in the woods like this.” Sures, having his best friend here would make this exceptionally better. But Stiles doesn’t want to break up any fights between a stir crazy Jackson and Isaac. Fishing in his pocket, Stiles pulls out his phone and smashes the call button in annoyance. 

“Stiles, hey. I’m sorry I did-” Scott answers on the second ring only to be cut off by Stiles.

“I don’t care if you and Isaac were fucking,” Jackson chuckles at his jab. “Don’t come to Lydia’s. The lake flooded and now Jackson and I can’t leave.” 

“Okay,” Scott draws out the word and if Stiles wasn’t mistaken sounds a little confused. Jackson’s brows knit together at the response too. Okay, so it did sound weird then. “I’m sorry you’re stuck there, dude. But maybe this will be a good thing?”

Is he serious? “How the fuck is it supposed to be a good thing to be stuck in a goddamn house with someone who hates my guts?” Stiles’ hand slaps his thigh in exasperation. Not to mention the asshole in question was hotter than hell fire and makes it incredibly hard to be in the same room with him. Not thinking about that when Jackson can smell his chemosignals. 

“Well,” Scott drawls, “you did say you had a crush on him.” Stiles blanches and goes stalk still, forgetting how to fucking breathe. Jackson snorts beside him. Stiles is going to kill Scott. “Oh my god! He’s right next to you, isn’t he?”

“I hate you so much right now.” Stiles makes a point to stare at the floor and not at the shuffling wolf beside him. “Well, thanks for getting me killed. Great best friend job, truly. See ya probably never, Scotty.” He promptly hangs up before Scott can answer. 

“So,” Jackson purrs and Stiles can’t help but turn and face the wolf. His arms are crossed from where he leans against the wall, one foot propped behind him. Jackson’s face holds that stupid, sexy, douchbag smirk, “you like me?”

He’s not even going to entertain that. Stiles squints at him with his mouth slightly parted. It only makes Jackson chuckle. “I need a drink,” Stiles uses every ounce of self control not to literally run away and back into the kitchen. Sifting through the drawers until he finds the corkscrew, Stiles grabs a bottle. Once the cork is out- that actually had already been opened- Stiles could give fuck all about a glass. He takes a sip directly from the bottle, regretting it at the extensive bitter taste of wolfsbane.

Clearly that one’s for Jackson. He’s courteous enough to slide the wine across the island when Jackson is back in the room. The wolf stares at him as his lips wrap around the mouthpiece and drinks from it, not giving a damn to wipe it after Stiles’ drank first. The other boy just watches before his brain recovers and he opens his own bottle. Setting the cork and opener aside, Stiles grabs the wine and leaves the wolf in the kitchen to go sit in the living room where Lydia keeps the playstation. 

Plopping on the couch, Stiles lets himself sink into the cushion and takes several swigs. Actually rather enjoying the slight burn and the warmth that quickly settles in his belly. He can very easily just sit here and watch tv like Jackson doesn’t even exist. Stiles can go to literally anywhere else to be away from the wolf if need be. He cannot believe that Jackson found out he likes him. 

Fucking Scott.

It takes a few minutes for Jackson to join him. Stiles already has Supernatural playing and has killed a good third of his wine before the wolf is sitting next to him. Like right next to him. One nervous leg bounce and their thighs or knees will touch. Seriously? Lydia has two couches, a chaise lounge, and two armchairs in her living room. So why is he so close?

Scratch that initial thought. There’s like six other rooms in this big ass house that Jackson could’ve gone to. Why here? Stiles drinks more. 

Jackson takes another small sip, looking like he’s barely drank anything from his own bottle before saying, “I have a secret to tell you.” 

He fights the eyeroll only just, “what information could you possibly have that I would care about?” Amber eyes stay glued to the flat screen.

“I don’t hate you, Stiles.”

“Oh?” He asks with mock interest. Even though there’s something tickling at his heart that Jackson didn’t call him ‘idiot’ or ‘Stilinski’. He can’t allow himself to fall for the wolf’s tricks. He won’t let the rug get yanked out from under him. 

“Quite the opposite actually.” 

Stiles snorts and turns to make some smart ass retort. But his ‘yeah right’ gets stuck on his tongue finding Jackson’s face mere inches from his own. He gulps. Clearing his throat, Stiles takes a big sip before putting his bottle on the small table beside him. Too fuzzy and warm to process this, Stiles scooches until he’s pressing against the armrest. 

Jackson also places his bottle on the coffee table before sliding closer. Forcing Stiles to half turn into the couch while the wolf puts an arm on either side of him, completely encasing Stiles. “I like you,” he presses further, “a lot.” Jackson leans in until their noses brush, “tell me if you want me to stop.” 

Blame the wine. Blame his hormones for not wanting him to stop. Hell, blame everyone and everything, Stiles included. But he does have a massive crush on Jackson. Even though he knows damn well that he shouldn’t. The guy’s a prick. He has no problem letting people know that he’s better than them. Making damn sure to flaunt his money too. As if that makes him hotter or something. It doesn’t. 

No, it’s the icy blue eyes that make Stiles want to learn their secrets and harvest the knowledge. The wolf’s stupid jaw that’s perfect and Stiles just wants to bite it. He;s seen Jackson naked numerous times- thank you locker room shower’s forgotten concept of privacy. But god damn, when Jackson smiles- not his asshole smirk, but genuine smile- Stiles’ lungs and knees forget how to function. Despite his actions earlier, the teen is actually pretty happy to be stuck here. 

Only acting as though he hates Jackson because he was simply following the wolf’s lead. His eyes flick to Jackson’s bottle of wine- its contents too hard to see in the dark green glass from this distance- and back to hooded baby blues. There’s only two reasons Stiles can believe that this is actually happening right now.

Jackson’s drunk. Because Stiles doesn’t understand the extent in which wolfsbane affects werewolf's tolerance. Which would mean the ex-kanima has no idea what he’s doing and should go sleep it off. Stiles hopes it’s this because the latter is just too painful. 

Jackson’s fucking with him. Surely he doesn’t have actual feelings for Stiles. Maybe the wolf found out he’s bi and wanted to tease him about it. Although, something tells him that Danny would murder Jackson if he ever found out. Still. This is Stiles. Lowest on the lacrosse totem pole and not the wolf’s best friend. Is Jackson that cruel though?

Beautiful, parted pink lips get closer, so Stiles whispers, “you’re just drunk,” and turns his head away, hoping that’s the case here. Waiting for the joke to play out.

“I’m really not.” Jackson reaches over to grab his drink. There’s maybe three sips missing when he dangles the bottle for proof. “See?” The wolf puts it back, returning with a smirk and a cocked brow, “now will you let me kiss you?” Jackson chuckles, it’s a breathy sound, but doesn’t make to move closer. Leaving it to Stiles.

He’s not falling for that trap. The prove-to-me-you-want-it-so-I-can-kick-you-down trap by making Stiles lean in. “So you’re fucking with me then?” He should’ve known better. 

The other boy looks confused and a little offended. Jackson leans back farther, still sitting close, but no longer in Stiles’ personal space. He actually wants him to come back, but how could he ever tell the wolf that when this is just a game? “Why would I fuck with you about this?” Jackson’s voice is soft and full of so much emotion that Stiles almost believes him. 

“Uh, because that’s what you do?” Stiles gestures wildly like it should have been obvious. “You’ve made it perfectly clear that we’re not even friends. You were literally my bully when we were kids. I don’t- and i-it only got worse when I developed a crush on Lydia. Which I get, she was your girlfr-”

“What’s not why I was a dick.” The wolf cuts him off with a shake of his head. Stiles squints an eye at him, mouth still hanging open from the word that didn’t finish. “I was jealous.” 

“Why the fuck would you be jealous of me?” Stiles scoffs and Jackson ducks his head with a chuckle. “Lydia never even looked at me while you were together.” 

Jackson flashes a bemused grin when he looks back, “I was jealous of Lydia, you idiot.” The name usually bitten out comes with a tone that suggests it’s meant to be a term of endearment. 

“Oh, I’m so sorry that I wasn’t fawning over you like your little fan club, okay? My bad. You’re right, you’re incredibly hot and I should’ve stroked your ego by putting you some fucking pedestal-” Jackson swallows whatever other words and the surprised squeak from Stiles’ lips. He stares bug eyed at the wolf’s closed eyes. Jackson presses closer, his hand cupping the other boy’s cheeks while his tongue slides against Stiles’ bottom lip. Entrance isn’t given, he can’t really, Stiles is too shocked to do so. 

The wolf pulls away, still holding Stiles’ face, “I didn’t care that you thought she was attractive.” Jackson drops a hand and lifts his hips, pulling one of Stiles’ legs until the human gets the massage and- for some fucking reason- lays on the couch. The wolf’s hips immediately settle into the space created and Stiles can feel just how much Jackson wants this. Him. “I wanted to be the one you had a crush on because of the massive one I have on you.”

That’s a lot to process. If Jackson liked him then- “why did you make my life hell?” 

Jackson’s free hand falls to Stiles’ hip, rubbing softly and the other props himself on the armrest behind Stiles’ head. “I didn’t know how to handle the fact that I suddenly like guys. Well, a guy.” The wolf sighs, “Lydia knew and agreed to keep my secret as long as I needed her to. I’m sorry I treated you like that.”

Stiles has never seen him act so soft. Having Derek as an Alpha and a proper back must really be working for Jackson. It makes him charming in a way that his jerk persona never could. Being emotionally balanced and all that. 

“I’m going to ask you one more time. And I’ll know if you’re lying. So don’t do me any favors and don’t hide from me either.” The warning is evident. Don’t say it and not mean it. And don’t mean it but not day it. Otherwise he’ll walk. “Will you please, let me fucking kiss you?” 

Stiles fists his fingers in the wolf’s shirt- half expecting Jackson to snap at wrinkling his expensive clothes- to push him away or pull him closer, the other boy really doesn’t know. Until his arm moves of its own volition and Jackson’s mouth gets drawn to him. 

The wolf chuckles against his lips, “finally.” The hand on his hip grips tighter and the other comes back to his jaw. Jackson tilts his head up to deepen the kiss. Jackson kisses like he wants to swallow Stiles whole. Maybe he does. Maybe Stiles would let him. Panting he pulls away again, and the other teen bites back a whine. “I have one more question and then I promise I’ll shut up.”

The human playfully rolls his eyes, “what is it?”

“Be with me.” Jackson states. Stiles cocks his head to the side with a chuckle, that wasn’t really a question. But his heart skips a beat nonetheless at the implication of the wolf’s words. “Will you be my boyfriend?” 

Stiles is nodding before the request is completely out of Jackson’s beautiful face. “Fuck yeah, dude.” The wolf breathes out a laugh at the ridiculousness. “Now just kiss me. Please?” 

“Whatever you want,” Jackson grins and presses his body in further, claiming Stiles’ lips as his own. 

Stiles is now stupidly happy about this storm locking them in Lydia’s lake house. He got a boyfriend out if. 

[ithinkofnealcassady]

Chapters: 1/1 Fandom: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling Rating: General Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Sirius Black/Remus Lupin/James Potter Characters: Remus Lupin, Sirius Black, James Potter, Marlene McKinnon Additional Tags: a quick little tumblr drabble xoxo posting here for those of u who dont have tumblr, Marauders Era (Harry Potter), theyre in love!!! and adorable!!! Summary:

Remus sticks his finger right through the wall of James’s pot. “Glory hole,” he says.

James looks up at Remus, wounded. Sitting on the short wooden stool as he is, his knees are bent up by his ears. He has wet clay smeared to his elbows, on the lenses of his glasses, at the tip of his nose. “Dude,” he says.

“I think we’re doing quite well, really,” Sirius says. He lifts his own pot, currently the least lopsided of the bunch, but the too-wet base sticks to the table. Sirius peers at them through the open bottom like using a telescope. “Here I am, eating my words.”

drabble commissioned by @gilflupin carter mlove... genius big brain carter... best commission idea ever... i hope this satisfies your prompt, which was (for the sake of everyone else) sirius, james, and remus making pottery together!! xoxoxo wolfstarbucks nation wake up!!

FULL TEXT UNDER CUT!

Remus sticks his finger right through the wall of James’s pot. “Glory hole,” he says.

James looks up at Remus, wounded. Sitting on the short wooden stool as he is, his knees are bent up by his ears. He has wet clay smeared to his elbows, on the lenses of his glasses, at the tip of his nose. “Dude,” he says.

“I think we’re doing quite well, really,” Sirius says. He lifts his own pot, currently the least lopsided of the bunch, but the too-wet base sticks to the table. Sirius peers at them through the open bottom like using a telescope. “Here I am, eating my words.”

“This was going to be a nice pot,” James says, watching his damaged piece buckle on its weak side like Pisa.

“It’s still a nice pot,” Remus says.

“What, are you guiltless?” James says. “You destroy the fruits of my oh so earnest labor and then you sit there like doing so didn’t snag a single thread of your luscious moral tapestry, fuck you, Remus.”

Remus offers a big, bright grin that catches on his eyeteeth. “It’s funny. That’s more important than whether or not it hurts your pride.”

“This—this is my pride,” James says. “Understand, Remus, that there is a subliminal metaphor within everything. You single-handedly—single-fingeredly, even—just eviscerated everything I have worked to create in my seventeen years of life.”

There’s a rap on the edge of their desk. James startles about a foot into the air.

Sirius, beside him, looks lazily up through his lashes, then offers Professor Burbage a charming smile. “Hello, dear.”

“I should’ve known better than to propose a creative assignment,” she says, pinching the bridge of her nose. “Make art like muggles do! Get into the cultural mindset! It’s hands-on, a break from the readings, the kids will love it! Am I an idiot?”

“It wasn’t your best idea,” Remus says.

“Just don’t make… a mess,” Burbage says, slumping away like they carve years off her life.

Sirius pinches a piece of clay off his fallen pot and hucks it at Burbage’s retreating back. It sticks in her hair.

Remus huffs. “Boring, Padfoot,” he says. He holds his palm out expectantly. Sirius delightedly hands over another wad of clay, which Remus places on the neat stretch of the second phalanx of his middle finger, then flicks it at Marlene one table over. It hits her ear, a glancing blow, before dropping to the floor. Marlene swats a hand mindlessly, like she assumes a fly or a loose strand of hair is the culprit. Remus waits a moment, then flicks a second piece of clay with the skill of a trained marksman; it hits the same spot. A third piece, and Marlene scowls into the air, looking for the origin. She finds, of course, nothing telling, as Remus is hunched over and carving zig-zagged stripes into his pot with singular focus, Sirius is forming a generous clay phallus, and James has dropped his head onto his folded arms, staring despondently at his ruined pot.

“I’ll kill you all with one blow,” Marlene says anyway.

“Good afternoon to you too, Miss Presumptuous,” Remus says.

“Mar, Remus ruined my pot,” James says, holding it tenderly aloft, the corpse of a child. So new to life. So naive yet. “Look at this.”

“Ha, glory hole,” she says.

“Ha!” says Remus while James scowls.

“Unbelievable,” James says. “You all prefer it when I’m miserable.”

“Oh, I’m sure he’ll make it up to you in droves later, you wet fucking fart,” Marlene says. “Now stop throwing stuff at me, I’m trying to finish this drawing and frankly I think it’s going spectacularly well.”

“I hope someone pokes a glory hole in it,” James says.

Marlene flips him the bird, then turns back to her desk, where she finds Dorcas doodling stars and hearts on her paper. “Well, fuck. This was going to be art, Dorcas. The fruit of my labor, Dorcas.”

“Karma,” James says. He reaches out a hand and Sirius gives him a bit of clay. James smushes it against Sirius’s cheek, which has Sirius snapping his teeth at James’s fingers. James withdraws sharply, tucking his hand to his chest with reproach. “Stay away. I haven’t had my tetanus potion recently.”

Remus presses his knee to James’s under the table. “If you add a little mouthpiece to that abomination of a pot, I reckon we could smoke out of it.”

James’s mouth falls open. “I forgive you. I forgive you, I forgive you—” he leans forward to smack a kiss onto Remus’s lips, grabs a fresh hunk of clay from the wet pile at the center of their table, then gets about rolling it.

Remus, meanwhile, has lost his aloof veneer; he’s bright red from forehead to collarbones, lurid enough to hide his freckles. Sirius looks between the two of them consideringly, then leans forward, presenting his cheek to James, who drops a kiss there to keep things even.

“We are going to figure this out,” James says, grinning with his bright madman eyes and his tie askew, “and we are going to get absolutely snockered. Lily taught me how to smoke out of an apple, you know, and this has got to be easier than that. It’s just got to be.” He rolls the now flattened piece of clay around his pinky finger, then presses the bottom of that cylinder to his pot’s glory hole. Sirius gives a fake, high-pitched, sexual whine that has half the class shooting them looks, but James doesn’t notice. He inches his pinky out of the clay tube. It promptly collapses. He stares at it, crestfallen. “Aw, pot,” he says. Then, affronted, to Remus, “Well, yours is good!”

Remus pokes his pot. It had better be good; his mother is a ceramicist by trade. “Yeah,” he says. James stares at it, brows knit. “Jamie, you can have mine,” Remus says. “Alright? Does that make you feel better.”

James��s scowl softens at the edges. “Yeah,” he says.

“What about me?” Sirius says, fringe falling in his eyes as he violently chucks another clump of clay at Mary MacDonald across the room. She hurls one back, hitting Sirius on the forehead, then pumps her fist proudly. Sirius is wiping splatters of wet clay out of his eyebrows as he clarifies, “What do I get, then?”

James holds his failed pot out, spout hanging elephant-trunk limp. “Glory hole,” he says.

[preciseprose]

Kiki!

SOMEBODY ASKED ME ABOUT KIKI, YESSSSSSSSSSSS.

In response to this ask meme.

My favorite thing about her

She's a sassy little bitch. Softly telling off Lilith at every opportunity while casually inspecting her talons? Such a power move. Kiki's living her best life and I am here for it.

My least favorite thing about her

Kiki's no fool. She probably knows Belos' doctrine is complete bullshit and she's entirely complicit regardless. She's both Belos' mouthpiece and executioner. And she doesn't care because she loves the power, fame, and access to knowledge it provides her. She's a vile, despicable person.

Fantastic villain though.

My favorite quote from her

While giving Lilith a biting casual side eye:

"Yes, and if I'm not mistaken, she's on her way to see the emperor himself. Let's all wish her good luck!"

BrOTP

Belos! There's a mutual respect between them for sure! He calls her 'Kiki'! I love it. They're both monsters (Belos maybe literally) and deserve each other.

OTP

I see Kiki as a career woman who doesn't have and doesn't want a partner. She lives for herself. She probably has a pet lizard or something that she feeds rats.

nOTP

Everyone, especially Belos. 1. Gross. 2. The girl is busy. She ain't got time to suffer a fool.

Random headcanon

I think Kiki knits in her spare time. She probably makes her own little sweaters and scarves. Idk, I like to imagine Kiki is the queen of winter wear when she's off duty.

Song I associate with her

This was difficult, but probably Burn the Witch. She's a zealot after all.

Stay in the shadows / cheer at the gallows / this is a round up / this is a low flying panic attack

My favorite picture of her

FUCK EM' UP, KIKI!

[honeylikewords]

efforts (pietro maximoff)

(Pietro tries his best to celebrate his girlfriend’s birthday like a Good, Adult Boyfriend(TM). Content warnings only for language and Pietro making slightly inappropriate jokes that lead to nothing more. 8k.)

“Are you sure about this?”

Pietro cradles the receiver between his chin and his shoulder, holding up shirts in front of his chest as he glowers at the mirror, unhappy with his choices. His girlfriend’s voice rings in his ear and he frowns deeper, brows knit with frustrated consternation.

“Of course I’m sure,” he replies. “I wouldn’t have made the reservation if I wasn’t sure, babe.”

“I know, but, well…”

She trails off and Pietro quirks one brown eyebrow, chewing his bottom lip as he tosses his shirt selections over his shoulder and turns back towards the closet. Maybe he had an actual button-up shoved in there somewhere, he muses.

“You can tell me, hon,” he says, shuffling aside the piles of unfolded t-shirts and jackets he’d shoved deep into the bowels of his closet. “What’s up?”

“It’s just that, you know, you’ve been a little tight for money these past few months, and I don’t want you to--”

“Okay, gonna stop you there for a second,” he interrupts, swatting a wad of dirty socks out of his way as he continues his search for a half-decent shirt. “I’m not gonna go into debt taking my girl out to dinner for her birthday, alright? It’s all covered. I’ve been setting aside a little bit for this, alright? You don’t have to sweat it.”

“Are you absolutely sure?”

“You keep asking that,” he chuckles. “If you don’t wanna go, that’s okay-- I didn’t have to put a deposit down or anything for the reservation-- but I think you’d have a good time. It’s a nice place. Like you deserve.”

There’s a little space of dead air where Pietro feels his stomach drop slightly, wondering what will come next.

“All I want is for you to have a good time, too, Pete,” she says softly, and he can hear her doing that nervous tic where she picks her nails against the plastic casing of the phone receiver. 

At that, Pietro snorts through his nose and continues rifling through his pile of laundry, shaking his head. 

“You know, you’re always so worried about that,” Pietro murmurs, lovingly exasperated, “But I always have a good time with you, and for once in your life, please, my little schnookum bear, I beg of you: stop worrying about me.”

Tossing an old pair of now smooth-soled sneakers out into the swamp of his bedroom, Pietro continues, his voice firm but affectionate.

“Like, seriously, it’s your birthday! Of all the days of the year, this should be the one where you give yourself an excuse to be even just a little bit selfish and do exactly what you enjoy, and I’ll be there to watch you enjoying yourself, you know?”

“Pete--”

“Sorry, yeah, that sounded kinda dirty, I know.”

He can hear her let out a little snort of laughter through the phone and he grins, pressing on.

“I mean, unless that’s what you wanna do instead of going out for dinner: totally cool with me if you wanna do that. I’m totally happy to watch. I prefer active participation, but--”

“Pietro!”

“Fine, fine, message received. But, seriously, I’m on my hands and knees, begging you, babe,” he interjects, having knelt down to search deeper in the back of the closet. “If you really, truly think that you, personally, as an individual, would not have a good time there, we’ll go wherever you want. But I know you’ve always wanted to go to a place like this: you know, with real fabric napkins and no table bread and food that needs a translation under it. And I’ve always wanted to see you, you pretty little thing, in a place like that.”

He can hear her shyly giggle on her end and his heart melts, cheeks flushing pink as he imagines that adorable smile she makes whenever he flatters her. Sighing dreamily, he sits back on his knees and stops his hunt, reveling in the ambient sounds of her on the phone; her breaths, her contemplative tapping, her fading laughter, the scratch of her sleeve brushing the mouthpiece of the phone.

“I know you really wanna go. And I want to be the guy to take you. So please, for me, enjoy yourself, okay?”

“Okay, okay,” she relents, her voice light with restrained laughter. “Thank you, honey.”

“Of course. Now, you just go and get yourself all dressed up and I’ll be over in an hour to get you, alright?”

“I’ll see you then.” He can hear the sound of her smile, and Pietro breathes out a deep sigh of endearment. “Bye!”

“Bye, babe.”

After a moment’s hesitation, he hears her hang up the phone with a final click, and Pietro returns his receiver to its cradle on the nearby table, then turns his attention back to the closet. A large pile of refuse has formed behind where he was kneeling-- the result of tossing every unappealing item over his shoulders-- and he squints at it disapprovingly before kicking into a higher gear. The clock stops ticking as Pietro rushes through every item of clothing in his closet, breezing through the lumps of wayward shorts and tees and leather jackets until he finds exactly what he’s looking for: the crisp, bright blue shirt he wore a few years ago to Lorna’s bat mitzvah. 

He returns to the mirror and admires it against his complexion, nodding: it will do nicely. He finds his one pair of good slacks and his best leather jacket (having torn his only formal jacket during the horah at Lorna’s aforementioned bat mitzvah) and assembles the outfit, changing into it rapidly before slowing to take stock of how he looks.

Snapping his fingers, he realizes he’s missing a pair of acceptable shoes-- his usual silver sneakers just won’t cut the mustard this time around-- and rushes to find that tightly-pinching pair of patent-leather dress shoes he used to wear to school events and the occasional visit to temple, finding them shoved into a dusty corner under his bed and cramming his feet into them rather unceremoniously. As he remembers, they do pinch a little (he grouses that there’s no way he’d be able to speed wearing these), but a touch of pain is worth it to look presentable for his beloved.

Thinking of her, Pietro takes a pause, making eye contact with his reflection. He sees his own pitch-dark pupils staring back at him, then glances at his bedside table through the mirror. Turning, he opens the drawer of it and pulls out the elegant black velvet case within, its long, lean frame sitting comfortably in his equally long, lean hands. He tosses it lightly, feeling its weight, then remembers himself and sets it down gingerly on the bed, returning to the mirror with a sheepish energy about him as he reaches for his comb.

He passes it through his shock-silver locks and watches them fluff out, the dark roots standing up a little taller. He’d considered letting his hair fall as it naturally wants to in its waves and slight curls, but embarrassment had gotten the better of him and he’d brushed it flat after his morning shower, more accustomed to going out in public with straightened hair than with his curls intact. 

As the comb brushes his scalp, he shivers a little, reminded of how it feels when he lays his head on her lap and she gently cards her fingers through his hair, teasingly dragging her nails down the nape of his neck. She always prefers when he lets his curls shine through, he remembers, smiling to himself at the memory of staring up at her while she plays with his winding rivers of silver and black waves. 

Floating on a cloud made of memories of her, Pietro glides through his room, unsure how he’ll manage to wait a whole hour to see be at her side and take her to dinner. He busies himself with laying out everything he intends to bring-- wallet, car keys, gifts, comb, breath mints, flowers-- and then with cleaning his room. 

Normally, he doesn’t mind a little mess, but if all goes well, he’s hoping to bring his sweetheart back into his room tonight and he’d hate to spoil the atmosphere by letting her step in a pile of his unfolded laundry or catch an eyeful of his food wrappers spilling out of the wastebasket. He speeds as best he can in his cramped dress shoes (before finally kicking them off, deciding he’ll put them back on closer to the time when he has to go and pick her up) and whirlwinds his laundry up and away into the closet and drawers, tornadoes his trash out into the bins, and dervishes all the dust away from his furniture. Taking a cursory glance at his room, he realizes that once the sun sets, he’ll need some softer mood lighting, and takes a jaunt out to the garage to find some of the holiday decorations, cycloning up a few loose cords of warm white fairy lights. 

Bringing them back to his room, Pietro strings them in loose garlands around his bed, forming a sort of square canopy of pale yellow light when plugged in that follows the boundaries of his mattress. He likes it; it’s warm and bright, like the low glow of a fireplace down to its last embers. The room was as close to perfect as he was going to get it, he concludes.

Checking his watch, Pietro groans: only five minutes had passed since she’d hung up. 

He is in for a long, long hour.

Laying on his bed, Pietro stares blankly at an episode of “The Six Million Dollar Man”. As Steve Austin slow-motion punches the bad guy du jour, Pietro idly lifts his wrist and checks the time.

6:45, reads the watch face. Close enough for him.

He grins and hops up from bed, straightening his shirt and tucking it into his pants as neatly as he can before once again squeezing his feet into his shiny, stiff shoes, giving his hair a final tousle in the mirror, and slipping into his jacket. 

His pockets are hastily shoved with his keys and wallet and mints and comb, but he shows more delicacy when lifting up the flowers and gifts meant for her. He doesn’t want to crush her bundle of roses, lilies and daisies in his sweaty hands, nor drop her precious presents and risk damaging them, and so makes a careful beeline up out of his basement bedroom and out the front door, gingerly placing her intended favors on the passenger seat before scrambling into the driver’s seat and kicking things into gear.

It takes all the self-restraint he can muster not to run red lights or abuse the speed limits when getting to her house, and busies himself with fiddling with the radio when being stuck behind some lollygagging minivan is starting to eat away at his nerves. A distant guitar wails through tinny speakers as he chews his lip and peels past the idling cars, just on the quick side of the 55 mph signage, unable to wait a moment longer to see her. Pietro turns into the familiar suburban streets of her neighborhood and feels his heart jump into his throat, his pale face flushed with excitement and the jitters, his fingers drumming restlessly against the steering wheel as he begins to pull into her driveway.

He glances up at the window he knows leads to her bedroom-- he’d clambered up the tree in her front yard and in through those panes many a time in the past-- and sees the curtains pulled back, and the instantaneously recognizable silhouette of his girl darts from the window, making him beam widely: she had been waiting for him, and was now rushing to see him.

With a lightness in his step, Pietro equally rushes to the front door, flowers in hand, accidentally kicking in some of his blurring speed in his hastiness to get to her. He stops short at the welcome mat, causing the heels of his shoes to squeal against the porch beneath, and an embarrassed energy overcomes him, his ears flushing hot as he goes to ring the doorbell. The moment he does, the door peels open and there she is, in all her heartstopping glory.

His words leave him for a moment as he admires her; her hair is swept up and away from her neck, exposing its graceful curvature, and her face is radiant, glowing with a coy smile and bright, enthusiastic eyes. Her lips are parted slightly in anticipation of speech, but Pietro can’t help but notice how full and soft they look, begging to be kissed and never let go of. 

She’s arrayed in an elegant cocktail dress he’s never seen her in before, and his eyes fall to the shape of her figure, a breathless smile overtaking his face as he drinks her in. The color of her dress brings out the warmth of her skin and she seems to positively shine as she twinkles another smile at him, lips tinted red as if just to tease him.

“These are for you,” he manages, jutting the bouquet forward and breaking the silent awe he’d accidentally built up around her. 

“Oh, sweetheart,” she preens, tracing one neatly manicured finger along the wide petal of one of the sunny yellow lilies, “They’re lovely!”

She presses them up to her face and takes a deep breath, inhaling their scent as Pietro finds himself deliriously envious of a bundle of flowers. As she pulls back, he notices a smear of golden-brown powder that had definitely not been on her cheek prior to her stopping to smell the roses in the most literal sense. 

He reaches out a hand and cups her cheek, brushing it along the soft swell of her smile and managing to wipe off the accumulated pollen that had no doubt come off of the stamen of the lily closest to her face. She leans into his touch and he finds himself knock-kneed, trembling at the mere sight of her gazing up at him with affectionate eyes and chasing after his hand on her face. Pietro can barely find it within himself to breathe, but draws in deeply and stands up straighter, putting on his most suave smile and taking her free hand in his.

“You ready to go, miss?,” he lilts, raising her hand to his lips to press a feather-light kiss to her knuckles. He can’t help but marvel at how unbelievably soft her hands are and how headily they smell of sweet vanilla lotion. “Your chariot awaits.”

She laughs and rolls her eyes as he waggles his brows suggestively at her-- she knows full well that his car is a beater handed down to him after his mom ran it up on a curb and got her license rescinded-- but nods, holding up one finger from her grip on the bouquet to indicate to him that he’ll have to wait a moment.

“Just let me put these in a vase and grab my purse and I’ll meet you at the car, okay?”

“Anything you say, birthday girl,” he coos back, giving her a second kiss before relinquishing her hand and watching her step back into her house, off to look for a vessel for her flowers.

As he waits, he heads back down to the car and glances through the window, his chest clenching as he realizes he nearly made an enormous blunder. Frantic, he snags open the passenger side door and grabs her presents, shoving the velvet box in his jacket pocket and stuffing the wrapped ones under a blanket in the back seat. If she’d seen those immediately, she’d have given him such a scolding all the way to the restaurant-- he can practically hear her stern voice and the tut-tutting of “Pietro Django Maximoff, you said you wouldn’t!”-- and he doesn’t want to sully their evening. No, the gifts would be given at the right time, once she was comfortable and in the mood for receiving them, and not a moment sooner.

He hears the front door click shut and turns around to face his beloved, eyeing her salaciously as she walks with a sway in her step. Her hips swing pleasantly from side to side, sashaying the skirts of the dress deliciously, and Pietro wants nothing more than to rush over to her, lift her up in his arms like the princess she is and devour her with kisses. Instead, he extends a hand to her and opens the car door for her, ever the gentleman as he helps her lower herself into the seat, watching her brush her skirts under her thighs and smile up at him from her seat.

“Thank you,” she repeats, pressing up a little in her seat to try and reach his face.

Instinctively, he lowers his head to meet her and rubs the tip of his nose to hers, an ooey-gooey affectionate gesture that he used to gag at when he saw couples at the mall doing it, but now can’t resist indulging in. He nuzzles her and sighs, pleased, then pulls away to join her in the car, head stuffed with the cotton-fluff of love.

Once in his seat, Pietro meets her eye and breaks into a nervous smile, his stomach alight with flutterings and tremors. He turns the key to the car and the radio blares to life, obnoxiously loud, and he makes a series of embarrassed half-noises, a combination of grunts, swears, and apologies. After he’s slammed the off button hard enough to issue a return to silence in the car, he sheepishly looks over at the object of his affections. She meets his eye, then immediately bursts into a fit of laughter, relaxing Pietro: nothing makes him happier than the sound of her laugh. He laughs too, and presses lightly on the accelerator, urging the car back onto the streets and headed off towards their destination.

He’s acting strangely.

She noticed it from the moment she opened the door to him: Pietro seems more tense, his gaze skittish and his mannerisms tight and jumpy. It’s not unusual for him to be flighty-- his speedster nature makes him more than a little deficit in his ability to focus on any one thing for a prolonged period-- but it is unusual for him to seem so uptight and easily flustered.

Pietro wasn’t too hard to tease into blushing, affection-starved as he was, but every time she went to hold his hand or lay her head on his shoulder during the drive, she could see his shoulders draw back and his ears start to burn that tell-tale red, his posture more stiff than she was accustomed to seeing. 

He kept his usual puckish attitude, all jokes, both ribald and tame, but seemed a little distant, as if he was trying to keep something from her, and there is nothing she hates more between them than secrets. 

Now, waiting in the foyer of the restaurant, she assesses her beau, who is currently chattering away at the receptionist about the reservation. She watches him-- how he leans in on the podium to point at the reservation document and presumably find the listing for ‘Maximoff’-- and he looks so wildly out of place in this establishment.

Not only does his starlight-silver hair make him stand out like a sore thumb, but his tall, wiry frame and carrying voice draw eyes, especially when compared to the buttoned-up and dour-faced older men and women populating the tables around them. 

The restaurant is certainly more upscale in appearance than any other she’s ever been into; the walls lined with deep mahogany and the lights are low and atmospheric, the tables distantly separated and private, the waitstaff all tightly uniformed in formal vests and bow ties, chandeliers hanging from the wooden-paneled ceilings with dangerously glinting glass droplets. The staff walk by with balletically balanced trays of bubbling champagne and wheeled carts of entrees and hors d'oeuvres, bar flights and charcuterie boards. Some patrons have their meals brought to them in silver domed cloches, their lids pulled back to reveal the sumptuous dishes beneath. The ladies are dressed in pearls and diamonds and plunging necklines, and the gentlemen in fitted suits with sharp black lapels, pocket squares folded in crisp, harsh lines. 

And there, in the middle of it all, is her Pietro, still loudly haggling with the host.

“And you got the right table?”

“Yes, Mister Maximoff,” she hears the host sigh. “Just as you requested, you have an upper-level table in the far corner.”

“And the request I made about the, uh, the dessert stuff?”

“Already taken care of,” drones the host, clearly at the end of her rope with Pietro. “Now, are you and your wife ready to go upstairs and be seated?”

He lets out an almighty stutter, half spittle and half choked words, and she decides it’s time for her to take the initiative. Coming up behind him and rubbing the small of his back, Pietro’s beloved squeezes his shoulder affectionately and nods at the host, trying to give her most placating smile.

“You’ll have to forgive him,” she murmurs conspiratorially with the host. “We’re ready to go up anytime. Isn’t that right, honey?”

Pietro manages an embarrassed series of nods and clutches onto his girlfriend’s waist with pale, nervous fingers, fidgeting with the seams of her dress as the two of them follow the host up the plush-carpeted stairs towards their table. 

If the first floor felt luxurious, the second floor feels even more so: it has wide, lead-lined windows peering out over a view of the city, the last dredges of the setting sun’s light leaking in and giving the room an opulent glow. The golden-red sunlight catches on the polished surfaces of the even more widely spaced out tables, decorated with candles and foliage, and the room is filled with the sounds of gentle piano strings and the soft clink of dinnerware and fine crystal glasses. 

The host leads the couple to a comfortably distanced and rather private corner of the restaurant, far enough from the other patrons that their voices were virtually undetectable but close enough to the pianist that the music was at a pleasant volume, and with an unbeatable view of the city’s uneven patchwork quilt of a skyline. 

Dashing ahead, Pietro pulls out a chair for her and gestures to it with a sweeping motion, and as she sits down, patting her skirt so it won’t wrinkle, she feels his lithe hand give her shoulder a deep squeeze, working the pad of his thumb into the taut muscle there. Once she is situated, he rounds the table and seats himself across from her, and gives the host a wan smile, which prompts the individual to mention that a server would be by shortly to bring them their menus.

As the host leaves, Pietro leans across the table, flashing his nervous smile with a little more confidence now that they are alone. He extends his hand across the top of the table and leaves it with its palm facing skyward; a clear invitation for her to place her hand atop his. Naturally, she does so, and see his expression soften visibly as he feels the comfortable warmth of her skin against his.

“I made kind of a scene, didn’t I?,” Pietro balks, a self-conscious air overtaking his usual cocksure savoir-faire. “I’m so sorry--”

“Petey-sweety,” she teases, using the pet name he detests, watching him roll his eyes, “It’s alright. I’ll just tip extra.”

“No, no, no, no way! I’ll get it, I promise; see, I brought extra for tips, uh, in here--”

He fumbles aimlessly in his jacket pocket, accidentally spilling out a tin of Altoids, a plastic comb, and a slender, black something onto the carpeted floor below. Pietro lets out a panicked yelp and dives down in his chair to hastily gather his odds and ends, shoving them fruitlessly back into his jacket, his face burning a scarlet hue.

“Oh my god, Jesus Christ,” he whispers to himself, “Oh my god.”

“Honey, it’s okay, people drop their wallets all the time--” “I’m sweating like a hog,” Pietro groans, irrespective of the previous topic. 

“Do you want to go to the bathroom?” “What? No!” 

Turning his black-brown eyes towards her, Pietro’s gaze becomes intense, the flush of his face only serving to accent the fervor of his attitude.

“I’m fine, I’ll behave, I’m goody-goody. All golden.”

He flashes a broad, sweaty, and entirely unconvincing smile as she reaches over the table to brush a wayward silver lock out of his eyes, stroking down the shape of his round, slightly dimpled cheeks. He blinks slowly and allows her to cup his face, rubbing her thumb against his rosy skin, feeling the searing heat.

“I think I see what’s happening here,” she murmurs, causing Pietro to glance up at her with fearful exposure. 

She watches him start to anxiously start to chew his lips, eyes flitting across her face with a frantic speed and muses that even when he’s all in knots, he’s still such an unbelievably handsome man; those button-black eyes, his strong, pointed nose catching the sun and casting a sharp shadow across the boyish planes of his face: she can’t help but be enamored of him, even as he’s nothing but a ball of nerves.

“You’re not used to ritzy dining, right?”

Pietro raises his pale brows in surprise at her observation, then nods emphatically, shrugging his shoulders up and down as if to shake off the weight of his prior disconcertion.

“Yeah, yeah, it’s just totally alien to me,” he grumbles, rubbing at the back of his neck and scratching the dark grey hair at the nape. “I dunno how to behave in a place like this.”

“It’s fine, Pete. Just be polite and enjoy yourself. You know how to be polite, don’t you?,” she needles genially.

“I mean, I’ve got the generals down pat.”

He holds up his hand and extends one long pinkie, as if cartoonishly elevating a tea cup.

“Thou ought not to raise thine voice,” he lilts in a truly horrific attempt at an English accent, “And one ought not burp nor become flatulent at the table.”

“Oh, eugh, leave it to you to bring something like that up during dinner,” she laughs.

At the sound of her giggles, Pietro seems to unwind some more, slipping back into his natural, humorous state of being. He again takes her hand and gives it several loving pulses, running the smooth crests of his nails against the heel of her palm, tickling her slightly.

Just as he opens his lips to say something, a well-dressed waiter arrives at their tableside with a wine list and the leather bound menus, and he speaks to them in firm but hushed tones about the cuisine of the day, something about fresh-caught this and farm-delivered that. She tries her best to listen to him, but instead finds her eyes fixed on Pietro, who is nodding like a scolded schoolboy trying to get out of detention early.

When the waiter leaves them with their menus and silence returns, he lets out a tightly held sigh of relief and unclenches his shoulders, rolling them as if he was warming up for a boxing match. He cracked the spine of his menu and gave it a cursory glance before flitting his gaze up to meet hers, flashing her a familiar flicker of his usual pixielike smile.

“You go ahead and you get anything you want, Princess,” he drolls as he winks at her over the top of his menu. “My treat.”

“Oh, I will,” she jokes, screwing up her nose at him. “I’m gonna eat you out of house and home. I’m going to get this fresh caught lobster, ahi tuna, Kobe beef, and, hmm…”

She pretends to pause, tapping her finger against her chin in faux thought.

“The gold-leaf embossed ganache torte seems awfully tempting.”

“Very funny,” Pietro huffs, though he’s clearly smiling through his pretend indignation. “I’m really regretting coming to a place with no table bread, now, though. Coulda had you fill up on that and polished the night off splitting a salad.”

“Mmm,” she tones. “And yet, here we are. Not a scrap of it in sight.”

“Hindsight and all,” he grumbles, obviously more than a little amused.

As they settle into a more comfortable rhythm, Pietro begins to ease into himself again. His laughter becomes brighter, his posture less rigid, and his eyes fleet less from her, though he remains jumpy when the waiter comes back to take their orders; still, there’s visible improvement in his disposition, and her beloved seems to be coming back to her, joke by joke and touch by touch.

When their dishes are brought to them, Pietro shrinks back in disgust at how tiny the portions are: his steak is absolutely miniscule by his own standards, and he grouses when the staff leaves the table that it should be illegal to serve food so small.

“I mean, look at it!,” he pouts, tilting his plate towards her as the decorative pansy blooms on the dish become soaked in au jus. “It’s, like, proportional to a Ken doll, not a hunk of man like me!”

“Eat your dinner, hunk of man,” she taunts jovially. “It’s about the experience, not the size.”

Pietro glances up from his plate with a flirtatious air, wiggling his eyebrows at her.

“Oh, but you can get the best of both with me--”

She hisses at him and kicks at his shin under the table, which only prompts him to laugh and lean across the table, planting a kiss on her cheek with impish glee. As she raises her fork to begin her meal, Pietro puts a hand up to pause her, and she quirks a brow at him, lowering her utensil again and watching him curiously.

“Before we tuck in,” Pietro murmurs, his face now beginning to become reddened once again, “There’s something I want to give you.”

“Oh?”

“I know you told me no gifts,” he says, “But I just had to.”

“Pietro--”

“I know! But… here.”

He produces his hand from inside the pocket of his leather jacket and lays something on the table, hidden under his palm as he builds suspense. After a moment’s hesitation, he lifts his hand, revealing-

“...Your comb?”

“My co-- No, wait, fuck!”

The obscenity leaves his mouth in a tone much louder than he intended, as he turns an even deeper shade of firetruck red, and he scrambles to grab his comb from off the table and push it back into his pocket. Once it’s there, he clamps his hands over his eyes and groans loudly into his palms, prompting his beloved to reach across and try to grip his wrists, caught between sympathetic hushes and barely suppressed giggles.

“P-Petey, come on,” she bubbles, voice jumping with her hardly hidden laughter, “It’s alright, come on!”

“Gah,” he grunts. “They’re gonna kick me out. Oh god, what if they kick you out for being with me?” “We’re not going to get kicked out,” she lulls softly. “No one even heard you!”

“Guhhhhh.”

“Please, baby? Won’t you just show me what you brought?”

A pause passes and Pietro peeks out from between two of his fingers, eyeing her before finally peeling his hands away and reaching down, scorned, into his pocket again. He takes his time, checks his hand, and then extends it to her: in his long palm, a black velvet case is housed, soaking up the low light with its decadent fabric.

“For you,” he all but whispers.

She lifts it delicately, opening the case on its small, golden hinge, to reveal a strand of glistening silver that culminates in a dainty opal droplet, glowing like a multicolored flame in the candlelight. Without any words, her thoughts muddled, she gingerly takes hold of the necklace and lays it flat across the span of her palms, watching the gem shift and glimmer in the light; it was set in silver, with a tiny diamond sitting just above the head of the droplet shape, reflecting back beaming points of light.

Agape, she looks up at Pietro, who is smiling tentatively at her, his eyes as bright as the jewels set before her.

“Before you get on me,” he interjects, taking her hand and squeezing it, “It was my grandmother’s, so I didn’t technically break the rules.”

He flashes her a rueful grin and pulses her hand again.

“Didn’t spend a dime more than I promised.”

“Oh, honey,” she breathes. “I don’t know what to say.”

“You don’t have to say anything,” he rushes, stepping up out of his seat to come around to her side and take the necklace in his hands. “Just, you know, try it on? For me?”

Once again lost for words and swimming through a haze of emotions, she nods at Pietro, who beams, unclasping the necklace and tracing it tenderly along the curves of her throat. He takes his time, seeming to revel in the proximity, and carefully closes the clasp at the base of her neck, allowing his fingers to trail behind, all along the column of her neck, down the skin of her collarbones, where he lifts the gem up and admires it in the light before setting it back down gently against her sternum, the jewel coming to rest in the crevice of her breastbone.

“There,” he says, his tone final and almost somewhat relieved. “Just as pretty as I’d imagined.”

Unable to find anything at all salient to say, Pietro’s beloved takes hold of his cheeks and tilts his face to hers, breaking his line of sight from her clavicle. She leans in and hovers her lips over his, hearing him draw in a sharp, excited breath, his dark eyes fluttering shut in anticipation.

“Thank you,” she manages. “I love it.”

“You’re welcome,” he breathes back, clearly anxious to get to the best part. 

“I love you.”

His eyes flash open, and for a moment, he looks as stunned as a deer caught in the headlights. He freezes under her hands, every muscle fixed in place. Then, as quickly as it had come about, he loosens, and, without a word, presses up and kisses her, his hand naturally seeking the back of her head to pull her in as deeply as he can.

The kiss lasts a breath longer than is perhaps polite for such an establishment, but Pietro’s enthusiasm was never something to be quickly curbed. When he finally breaks away from her with a satisfied hum, his eyes bore into hers, half-hungry and half-satiated, and he manages to control himself enough to return to his side of the table and sit down, though a pleased grin is plastered to his face; the cat had gotten the cream and knew it better than anyone in the world ever could.

“You know,” he begins, a chagrined tone entering his conversation, “I was a little worried you weren’t going to like it.”

“Oh, you,” she tuts. “I’d love anything you gave me.”

“Well, sure, but, it’s like… I want to make tonight perfect,” he admits. “For you. You deserve a perfect day.”

“Every day with you is a perfect day!”

Pietro snorts indignantly, rolling his eyes at her attempt at placation.

“Of course, baby. But you know what I mean, don’t you?”

She nods; he’s a sweetheart, always trying to give her his own kind of affection, his own brand of love, but she knows it can be hard for him to be traditionally affectionate or conventionally loving, and this must be his attempt to give her what he thinks she’s missing out on.

Reaching out, she takes his hand in hers and kisses it on the heel, then cups his palm to her face, leaning into it with a smile that she can feel reaches all the way up to her eyes.

“I would have had a wonderful day with you, with or without the gifts,” she reminds him.

“Oh, shit, that reminds me,” he chirps, sitting up a little straighter. “I… may or may not have a few more of them in the car for later.”

“Pietro!”

“But, again, didn’t spend a dime! They’re all well within the boundaries you gave me! So, come on,” he grins, pointing at her dish with gusto. “Let’s dig in before it gets cold.”

The meal was delicious, just as she’d hoped, though its enjoyment was more than partially due to the company kept during its consumption. 

Pietro had kept his promise and behaved himself all night long, showing himself to be a perfect gentleman when the mood suited him; he’d even called ahead and asked that her dessert be delivered quietly, with a candle burning atop it for them to wish over in their own private little celebratory silence. When she’d blown it out, she’d wished for one thing only: to always be by this strange, wonderful man’s side.

Finally headed home for the night, she held Pietro’s hand as they drove the darkened streets of the city, his thumb rubbing routine patterns over the cresting hill of her knuckles. The radio was turned low for them to talk to one another, and as they followed the winding corners of roads leading back towards his house, Pietro began to crack his usual tongue-in-cheek comments.

“Saucy, isn’t it,” he teases, “You stayin’ over at my place all night long. People might think we’re up to something.”

“You wish,” she bites back.

“More than anything!,” laughs the boy at her side. “But a gentleman would never propose such indecencies to a lady like you.”

“Mm,” she hums. “A gentleman indeed.”

“Oh, speaking of staying the night,” Pietro adds, casting a glance back over his shoulder, “Would you be a doll and feel around under that blanket in the back seat? There should be a couple mystery packages in there for you.”

She reaches back through the gap between the seats to lift the corner of the sloppily thrown blanket and sees the dim outline of two boxes. Managing to pick them both up, she plants them firmly on her lap and turns back to Pietro, whose eyes flit between the road and her face at a speed most would find unsettling, but she is more than accustomed to.

“Open the big one,” he grins. 

Acquiescing, she unwinds the blue ribbon off the top of the wide, flat box and lifts its lid, revealing a layer of folded fabrics. She reaches into the box and takes it out: a massive, grey-green flannel, clearly much too large for her.

“This is--”

“My old one, yeah,” Pietro smirks, rotating the steering wheel left. “You kept sneaking off with it every time you’d come over, and it looks cuter on you, anyhow, so that’s part one.”

He juts his chin towards the box, indicating for her to look into it once more.

“Go find part two.”

Underneath where the flannel had lain was a layer of pink tissue paper, and she lifts that away to find a neatly folded tee, which she holds up to admire as the flannel lays across her shoulder.

It, too, is much larger than her size, and registers as a dark grey shirt printed with something across the chest, though the car is a bit too dim for her to make out the symbol with any clarity. Pietro notices her squinting and squeezes her thigh, tapping the front of the shirt quickly.

“‘S the RUSH one. You wore it that one time--”

“When I fell in the pool!,” she recalls excitedly.

“Yep! And, again, way cuter on you. Now, for part three.”

Once again, a divider of pink tissue obscures the next installment from her, and when she peels it back, there, beneath:

“...Oh, god, these aren’t used are they?”

Pietro laughs merrily as she warily holds up a pair of check-printed boxers by their elastic waistband and shakes his head, making the final turn into his neighborhood and pulling into his spot.

“Nah. I got a pack new and this was one of, like, five pairs in there. And it doesn’t count as spending, you know, because I was already buying them for myself and the extra pair for you is just an added bonus.”

“...So they are clean, yes?”

“Yep!”

“And why did you give me boxers?” “So you can have a full set of PJ’s, babe,” he says, voice reflecting some perception that this conclusion should have been obvious. “For staying over.”

“Oh!”

Parking the car, Pietro pops the brake on and reaches into the box, producing the final layer within: a pair of crisp white gym socks.

“Same deal as the boxers,” he explains. “Packed ‘em ‘cause I know your feet get cold at night.”

His recollection of that detail melts her heart, and she forgets all about the shock of unveiling a pair of men’s boxers in her birthday gift; she leans across the console between the seats and plants a warm kiss on Pietro’s dimpled cheek, hearing him chuckle airily to himself as she does so.

“That’s too sweet of you, bunny,” she says, stroking the flyaway streaks of silver that brush her nose as she hovers near his face. “I’ll be all comfy-cozy for our little sleepover!”

“Aw, God, don’t say it like that,” he groans. “‘Our little sleepover’ makes it sound like we’re eleven year old girls about to paint each other’s nails and gossip about what boys we like!”

“Are you saying you don’t want me to paint your nails tonight?”

“...No,” he smiles.

“Correct.”

“Well, anyway,” he concludes, pecking her on the tip of the nose before unbuckling his seatbelt and moving to get out of the car, “Let’s get a move on. Basement’s waitin’.”

“Always in such a hurry,” she bemoans, trying to collect all her garments and unbuckle herself, only to hear the all-too-familiar whistle of Pietro kicking in his speed to flit around the car, rush open her door, unclick her belt, lift her into his arms, and jog up to the front door with her pressed to his chest.

She reels for a moment after he stops his breakneck speed, but quickly regains her bearings: she’d sped around with him enough times to be mostly, somewhat, almost over the motion sickness by now, and steadies herself against the wall of his house as he Cheshire grins at her. 

“You got your last present there, pumpkin?,” he asks, surveying her.

She holds up the unopened, slightly smaller box and wiggles it at him.

“Perfect.”

Pietro lifts her again and before she can blink, they’re down in the basement, the door shut behind them, and she’s sent reeling this time not by the sensation of his speed, but by the state of his room.

“Oh, wow,” she mumbles, gazing how clean and orderly and attractive his room was, doused in warm light as the stereo played softly tinkling music, completely unlike his usual psychedelia or ear-splitting rock. “You cleaned up?”

“Yeah,” Pietro admits, futzing with a throw blanket that now covered the majority of the couch (and its stains). “I wanted to make it… nice.”

“Well, you did a hell of a job,” she beams. “It’s so… pretty! I never thought your room could be pretty!”

“Hey, it’s not that bad, normally!”

“Sweetie, you leave Pringles cans under furniture. I’ve found Twinkie wrappers under your pillows. You stack your electronics like Jenga bricks.”

“...Okay, well, there’s no Pringles cans or Twinkie wrappers in sight, tonight, all for the sake of the lady,” he boasts, putting his hand on the small of her back and guiding her to the beaded partition that divides his makeshift bedroom from the boiler room. “Go get changed.”

“Promise not to peek?”

Pietro holds up his hand in the Boy Scout’s salute.

“On my life.”

“Show me the other hand.”

From behind his back, he extends his other hand; crossed fingers.

“If I so much as hear a breeze,” she chides, “I’ll know it’s you.”

“I won’t, I won’t, I’m only playing! Look!”

He places both hands over his eyes and turns away from her, facing the wall and dutifully walking towards it.

“I’ll behave!”

With that, she takes advantage of the momentary silence to duck behind the curtain and get changed. True to his word, she detects no hint that he’d speeded into the room to get a look while she was changing; no gust of wind, no hissing zip, no blur of silver. When she re-enters the room, garbed in his flannel and boxer gifts, which, she has to admit, are deeply comfortable, he’s still facing the wall, though tapping his foot impatiently.

“Thank god,” he groans, hearing the beaded curtain part for her, “You took forever!”

“It was, at best, two minutes.”

“That’s a long time for me!,” he whines as he turns back around and rushes to her side, cupping her waist and drinking in the sight of her. “You know that!”

“I do, I do,” she relents, patting his cheek. “Now, c’mon. I’m tired.”

“Wait, you gotta open your last present,” Pietro says, speeding off and returning with the box in hand. “It’s a good one!”

She smiles at him and nods, sitting down on the edge of his bed, where he joins her. He watches her hawkishly as she tears off the paper, revealing a small book with a hard plastic cover. Unsure of what it is, she turns it over in her hands a few times, then lifts the front cover to discover that it’s a miniature photo album.

Upon seeing what the first photo is, she snorts so hard she covers her mouth, ashamed of the noise she’d let out: Pietro just laughs and laughs.

“You know how you always bug me about my baby pictures?”

“You take them down every time I come over!,” she interjects. 

“Comme ci, comme ça,” Pietro says, flicking his hand dismissively. “Anyway. These are all of ‘em. Or, at least, all the ones I could get copies of at the print shop.”

There, in her hands, is photographic proof of Pietro as a baby: silver haired and tiny, wearing a miniscule pair of overalls and holding a pot over his head, banging it with a spoon, or laying in his crib, jet black eyes beaming out from under teensy grey eyebrows.

“I know it’s kind of a mood killer,” Pietro mumbles, “But I thought, you know, they’d make you laugh…”

“They’re adorable!,” she giggles joyously, flicking through page after page of the glorious images. “Oh my god. You used to suck your thumb?”

“Okay, that’s it, I’m taking them back--”

“No, no, babe!”

“You’re gonna think of me as a baby!”

“No, Pietro, come on!” 

She lets out a bright peal of laughter as Pietro tries to wrestle the book away from her, only to knock her over on her back and pin her down, still grabbing for the book as she shoves it under her back. He glowers down at her but, upon realization of his current position, the expression quickly shifts to one of devilish delight, and he cranes his neck to bury his face in the crook of hers, biting lightly on the sensitive skin there and making comically bad growling noises, halfway between cute and embarrassing.

They wrestle around for a moment, laughing over one another, until his bites turn more affectionate and soft and his energy lulls into a more calming, attentive kind; he strokes her arms and rubs his pointed nose along her skin, humming lightly to himself as they both enjoy the comfort of being in one another’s arms. As he kisses her neck, light and loving, his hand wanders there and traces the thread of the necklace, fidgeting the the bauble at the end, his fingers brushing against her collarbone as he burrows in close.

“I was worried,” Pietro mumbles into her neck.

“About the restaurant?”

“I guess,” he continues, voice muffled by her hair and flesh. “But more that… that you wouldn’t like any of this. Any of me. That I’d fuck up at the restaurant or come on too strong with the gifts or seem like a creep--”

“Pete…”

“But I kinda like coming on strong,” he continues, rambling in his bout of nerves. “I like giving it all, one hundred percent, all for you, you know? I like treating you like a princess and like my best friend, and, you know, I liked it when that lady thought you were my wife; sorry, does that sound like a lot?”

“No, honey,” she giggles, “I liked it too!”

“Good,” he sighs. “I just… get scared that you won’t, you know, like me, because I can be so fucking difficult--”

He cuts himself short and takes a deep breath, pressing his face harder into her neck.

“But you do, right? You do like me?”

His voice quavers softly as he seeks her validation, and she squeezes him tightly in a hug, raking her fingers through his hair and hearing him shudder serenely into her. The tension in his spine leaks away and he rests his surprisingly hefty weight against her, pressing down on her as she manages a soft “of course I do.”

“You know I love you,” she adds, stroking his hair soothingly.

There is a silence between them as she feels Pietro adjust himself to be even closer, hooking himself so that he is clinging to her tightly and his head is pressed into the warm nook between her jaw and her shoulder. His breaths rise and fall and puff out against her skin, familiar and stirring all at the same time. After a moment, he speaks again.

“I love you,” he manages. “So much.”

“I know.”

“Happy birthday, babe.”

“Thank you for making it one.”

They lay in the blissful calm of their love, holding onto one another in quiet peace before Pietro breaks the silence once again.

“You ever gonna give me those pictures back?”

“Nope.”

“Shit!”

[red-doll-face]

That last one about Michael was perfect!! I loved the new idea of the reader stumbling into the killer campground! Could I request an expanded idea on that scenario, but more so just a reader interacting with Anna, Michael, Danny, Evan, etc.? If that makes sense

I had to say, this was fun to write but I suck at characterization, I made everyone a little too nice but what else do we need in these trying times? I wasn’t sure if you meant like altogether, I might save something like that for a special event so I made little drabbles for each one I hope you like them!! Thanks @prophxtslash for the food fight idea 😂🥣

Warnings: nothing really bad. Just some food fights and palling around with the killers. 

Dead by Daylight Killers x gn Reader

Anna ‘The Huntress’

In the rare instances that survivors came across killers, sometimes, the killers couldn't break old habits. Mostly, the killers like The clown or even Freddy liked to bully survivors, only doing what felt natural, they claimed. But Doctor or Dr. Carter took a liking to tormenting survivors in and out of trials. Though, what he did could be classified as annoying rather than life-threatening, thus staying within the entity’s rule of being unable to harm survivors outside of the trial.

“Stop it!” You slapped at the man’s hand, touching along your arm and sending tingles that made it feel like your arm fell asleep. The little slap caused more pain than anything, accidentally brushing one of the live wires embedded in his skin. He giggles and grins around the mouthpiece that gaped his lips showing bloodied teeth. You were surprised he didn't drool all over everything.

“Leave me alone.” You whined, trying to walk away from him. You only came to see the Huntress, as she requested you make her a doll after seeing your interest in her mother's old craft supplies when you were in a trial against her. You observed the little balls of yarn and the needles tucked against a cabinet as she came in toting her ax. You turned, as she tilted her head at your curiosity. Afterward, she approached you with the items, handing them to you. Watching with glee as you began to weave the old fading yarn together.

Now, the Doctor, seeing the little doll in your hands, tried to take it from you. Unfortunately, for you, there was no else at the campfire today besides The Doctor who was here to see Evan who was not here, much like Anna. As the fog cleared up ahead, revealing the person you were waiting for, Dr. Carter took advantage of your distraction. He made for the doll sitting in your palms. A hatchet whizzed by and nearly clipped him, causing him to look up at her. She pushed him back with her mere presence, The Doctor unhappily leaving you alone, disappearing into the trees. She turned to you and you handed her her gift. Her lips pulled into a smile, squeezing at your hand and the present alike.

Michael ‘The Shape’ Myers

The only reason you liked him, he rationalized, was because you liked everyone. Perhaps, not everyone, but you could tolerate killers. When they acted decent enough. You liked the killers enough to come to visit him at this campsite, to catch anytime he lingered around with the rest of the killers. He didn’t like them but he couldn’t chance any of the killers becoming fascinated with you as he had. He sat rigidly on the log, breathing evenly, facing the fire. If you didn’t come, he’d recede into the fog again more than eager to leave the rest of the killers behind.

Like he had invoked you himself, you drifted in from the darkness, eyes settling on him. You shared a strange intrigue with each other, content to sit in silence with one another. You knew others thought it creepy or weird but no one had the courage to say it to Michael's face.

He should have known your friendliness exceeded just him. The man wearing the face of someone else approached you and you recognized him, letting him hold your hands and shake you around in something resembling a dance. You laughed and tried to calm him down, lest Michael become angered. He tilted his head as other killers gravitated around you, watching as you become uncomfortable around the burnt small one. He came close, unnoticed, listening as he uttered vulgar words to frighten you. You looked more uncomfortable than afraid.

The cannibal tugged you away from the pest in the sweater. Michael, having had enough of seeing you get tugged around like a coveted toy, shoved the burnt one out of his way, pulling you from the grip of the man with the yellow apron. You wrapped your arms around him, finding comfort in the midnight blue of his coveralls and the smell of autumn that clung to him. Michael took the key to his house from his pocket and threw it in the campfire, burning in the cold flames. The mist swallowed you both. He’d have you to himself. Michael was never the type to share.

Danny ‘The Ghostface’ Johnson

“Eat it!” You shoved a spoon at Danny, maskless today so you could try the fabled survivor pudding. You heard it was salty and gross. You didn’t really know who exactly made it and what it was for. Well, there was only one way to find out. Make Danny eat it. He refused, obviously. Keeping his mouth closed would not deter you.

“No way! Get that shit out of here.” He pushed it out of your hands and you choked on your own laughter watching half spill out of the bowl. You put some on the spoon and bent the weak plastic thing back. It sailed in the air only to splatter all over Danny’s face. He closed his eyes and raised his eyebrows as you covered your mouth in shock.

“I meant to miss that, I swear.” You tried to stop the laughter from coming out but it wasn't working. Your snickers turned into full-blown bellyaching guffaws as it dripped down his face. He spit out whatever made it into his mouth. He gagged and you shook and cried at his expression. He glared and threw some at you, watching as it oozed down the side of your cheek. You gasped and it was his turn to laugh in your face.

“So, you can dish it but you can’t handle a little pudding?” He mocked, taking a finger and scraping some off your cheek. He motioned to put it in your mouth and you slapped his hand away. You wiped it off and caught him by the sleeve, forcing him to stay still. You smeared it across his forehead, his hands trying to grab your wrists. He dumped some onto your lap and in retaliation you dumped the rest over his head, trickling onto the black leather of his Ghostface outfit.

“Oh my fucking god.” You said, your head hurting from the sheer hysterics you were in. Tears leaked from your eyes as the yellowish paste seeped into his hair. He got up and tried to catch you, slipping out of his arms and into the trees, giggling as the paste shook out of his hair.

Evan ‘The Trapper’ Macmillan

A man his age and size shouldn’t be doing this. He could almost hear his father’s condescending voice. It was a feminine pursuit, at best for emasculated men who were afraid of work. But here, no one cared what the methodical Trapper did in his spare time. Especially not the entity who only concerned itself with his ability to sacrifice the survivors. In his offtime, he liked to draw on the thin, brittle paper that was left on the estate and charcoal. He’d smudge lines this way and that until it looked at least a little like what was in his head. And if it didn't then he'd try again.

Currently, his favorite muse was sat on a rock, whispering to the Pig. Friends it seemed, talking quietly between themselves. You tilted your head and cracked a smile as she made a motion with her hand. He tried his best to capture the gleam of the fire in your eyes. The slope of your neck. The position of your legs. He went back to his drawing, unaware of Amanda's words in your ear.

“Yup. Look at him. He’s staring at you.” You smiled and leaned to hear her words, “Evan’s had his eye on you for what has it been? Is time a thing anymore?” You looked at him, his huge form hunched over a flat surface, fingers tinged black. “I think he’s drawing you. Let’s go see.” She hopped off the rock, dropping into a crouch. She motioned for you to follow and you both crept, following her lead. Amanda's specialty being her ambush, she was much quieter. When you both arrived unnoticed behind him, she pointed down at his drawing and nodded excitedly. It was you. Sitting on the rock you and Amanda were conversing on.

“Hey, that’s really good!” You said without thinking and Amanda facepalmed as you observed the drawing. The thin charcoal in Evans' hand snapped in two at the disruption. He turned slowly to see your warm face, eyes wide with admiration for his talent. He wished he had drawn that expression instead.

“Thanks.”

Sorry if u can’t actually crotchet or knit. If it makes u feel better, I can’t either. Thanks for reading and I hope u enjoyed it! 😳

[edupunkn00b]

Happily Ever After Chapter 4: The Sun Did Not Shine

[AO3] - Chapter 1 - Chapter 2 - Chapter 3 - Chapter 4 - Chapter 5 - Chapter 6 - Chapter 7 - 

Human AU, Teen Rating, CW: Divorce, past abuse, internalized homophobia, mention of self-harm, non-graphic description of hospital, non-graphic description of suicidal ideation

"The sun did not shine. It was too wet to play. So we sat in the house All that cold, cold wet day." - Dr. Seuss, The Cat in the Hat (1957)

----

Remus was walking back from a rainy lunch with his team when he felt his phone buzz. "Pardon me, folks, it's an actual phone call! Maybe it's the Pope!" he joked with his customary shoulder shimmy. His smile deepened when he saw Logan's contact information appear on the screen. "Hmmm, hello there, Lo! What's cookin'?"

"Remus? It's ... Logan," Something in Logan's voice stopped Remus from responding with a joke. Remus' brows knit together and he frowned at quietness of the tone. He held down the volume up button, stopped walking, and covered his other ear with his free hand.

"Logan, what's wrong?," Remus felt his heart pound. "Are you safe?"

Logan's voice sounded muffled for a moment, like he was covering the mouthpiece and speaking to someone else. "I'm - I'm back, I'm sorry. Remus, I'm sorry to call you, but ... " Remus held his breath, not wanting to interrupt, and desperately fighting an instinct to just run to wherever he thought Logan might be. "Remus, I'm at Children's Hospital. Can you - I'm sorry to ask this, but you can meet me here? It's Virg-" Logan covered the mouthpiece again.

"Logan, Logan, can you hear me?," Remus near-shouted into the phone. He heard Logan hum in acknowledgement. "I'm Downtown, and I'm heading to Children's right now. Which building are you in?"

"We're still in the Emergency Room in observation. I don't ... I - Remus, thank you." The phone disconnected and Remus looked up at his team. They had frozen when they saw their ordinarily joyfully chaotic boss suddenly turn so serious.

"What's the fastest way to get to Children's Hospital from here?"

...

"I'm very sorry, sir," the nurse at the admitting desk said in a tone that was anything but sorry. "But I don't have any patients named Virgil Sanders here. Please understand, I can't help you." The nurse at the admitting desk pressed her lips together firmly in what Remus thought was a fair imitation of Nurse Ratched.

Remus stretched a smile across his face, one so broad that his molars nearly showed. He pressed both hands down onto the edge of the admitting desk and then leaned just slightly over it. He tilted his head to one side just a bit too far to look comfortable. "Of course, I understand." He stared into her eyes, and somehow stretched his smile even further. He spoke slowly and precisely. "I would suggest that you find someone who will help me." The nurse did not step away from the desk, nor did she break eye contact with Remus - under different circumstances he'd hire her in an instant - but she did pick up a phone and page for a resident. Remus dropped the smile completely, taking half a step back away from the desk and crossed his arms. "Thank you."

A few minutes later, a resident appeared, eyes locked on Remus' green hair. He narrowed his eyes, "What's your name, please, sir?"

"Remus Prince," he drew out his first name in an attempt to siphon off some of the residual anger he still felt at the nurse' initial dismissiveness.

The resident nodded, "Follow me, please, Mr. Prince." Remus followed the resident through the double doors, resisting the urge to look back and sneer at the admitting nurse.

They turned a corner into another hallway with a blue and red stripe halfway between ceiling and floor. "Remus!," the crack in Logan's voice shot through Remus' chest. He turned and saw Logan standing outside a room with glass doors and a staffed nursing station just outside, with an unobstructed view into the room. Oh, Remus thought, that kind of observation. In two long strides, Remus stood in front of Logan and gripped his upper arms. Logan pulled Remus closer, clinging to his chest. Remus wrapped his arms around Logan's back. "You came, I told them you'd come ..."

"Of course," Remus closed his eyes, shaken at the broken tone in Logan's voice. "How's Virgil?," Remus whispered into his hair.

Logan took a shuddering breath. "He's asleep right now. He hadn't slept in three days. He - " Remus could feel Logan's jaw move against his shoulder as he ground his teeth.

Remus looked up and around the hallway where they stood. He noticed an empty consultation room opposite Virgil's room and caught the eye of the resident who was still standing just a few feet away. "I would like to take my friend in there, if you don't mind." The resident nodded once. "Lo," Remus said in a softer tone. "Come with me. Let's get out of this hallway." Logan looked where Remus was gesturing. "Let's sit down. We'll be able to see Virgil's room from there." Logan silently nodded and let go of Remus, walking toward the room. Remus looked at the resident again, bright green eyes locked on the resident's. "Thank you - " Remus read the man's name ID badge, then looked up to meet his eyes again. "Thank you, Dr. Nale, for helping me take care of my friend." The resident swallowed and nodded, acknowledging both the gratitude and the promise-threat that Remus would remember him.

Remus entered the small room and closed the door so their voices wouldn't carry. The room had a glass wall that looked out and across the hallway into Virgil's room. They could see him curled on his side in the hospital bed. He was rather tall for the little beds in the children's wing, but appeared to be sleeping comfortably. Logan stood against the glass, expression blank, staring at his son. Remus arranged two chairs so they could both face Virgil's room and steered Logan toward the softer chair.

Remus pulled out his phone and started making some notes.

    Dr. Nale - helpful resident. Nurse Pendling - Nurse Ratched at the front desk.  

"Logan, do you have a parent hospital bracelet or maybe a badge?" Logan looked down at his wrists and shook his head. "Ok, so Virgil's not officially admitted yet." Remus looked closer at Logan's face. His eyes were a little sunken and his lips were chapped. He wasn't really speaking and seemed slow to respond even non-verbally. "Lo? Lo, look at me," Remus coaxed. Logan slowly turned to look toward Remus. "Logan, how long have you been here?"

Logan shook his head slightly and shrugged a little but then seemed to consider the question. "We got here ... " Logan took a deep breath. "We got here early this morning. Before school."

Remus nodded, "Ok. Ok, good." He tapped 8 AM? into his phone. "Logan, what about Patton? Did he go to school today?"

"Yes, yes, Roman took him," Logan slowly nodded. "He was off today. It's the cabaret's dark night." Thinking about his sons seemed to be helping Logan center himself.

"That's lucky," Remus murmured carefully. And if Roman knew that Virgil was in the hospital, then so did Janus. Remus trusted that Janus would handle whatever was needed with Logan's cases. "And Remy's still on campus for the fall quarter, right?" Logan nodded again.

    Patton - spending the night at Ro's? will need pick up tomorrow after school Call Remy later  

Remus looked around the room again. There was a small water cooler in the corner. He filled a paper cup and pressed it into Logan's hand. "Here, take a sip." Logan looked down at the cup in his hand like he didn't know what it was but he followed Remus' instruction. When Logan finished that cup, Remus refilled it and took one for himself, as well.

Logan sipped at the second cup, and Remus watched him carefully as his eyes gradually started to regain their usual focus. After several minutes, Logan turned and looked at Remus and it felt like he finally really saw him for the first time that day. "Remus - " Logan sighed and closed his eyes for a moment before placing one hand over Remus' free hand. "You're here."

Remus flipped his hand over and gently squeezed Logan's. "Always."

...

Virgil slept for several more hours, during which Logan alternated between pacing, crying, and describing for Remus how they'd ended up in the emergency room. The day had started with an early morning call from Virgil's therapist. Remus had already heard from Logan - and Remy - that the whole family had started therapy after the 4th of July and everything felt like it was going well. However, that morning, Virgil's therapist was reviewing the answers in his CBT workbook and noticed that lots of letters were colored purple, scattered across the pages without an obvious pattern. She was experienced, though, and knew it was likely anything but random. She checked and the letters spelled out a note saying goodbye. She had immediately called Logan and recommended that they head straight to the ER at Children's for an evaluation and, likely, admission.

After Virgil woke, Logan joined him in the room. Remus worked the floor, finding an unlocked linen closet so that Virgil could have an extra blanket, and hunting down someone to bring Virgil - and Logan - food. The two had left for the hospital before breakfast and it was now past dinner time. Remus had spent enough time in similar observation wards with friends' families to know that if he walked around like he belonged there, people would likely leave him alone, grateful that perhaps it would mean one fewer nurse's bell being rung. Remus also stepped out a few times to call and check in with Roman and Janus and confirmed that Patton could spend the night at their house and that they would get him to school in the morning.

Eventually, it became clear to all that Virgil would need to be admitted. The nurse searched Virgil's pockets and bagged up his phone, shoes, belt, hoodie, and jewelry, handing the bag to Logan. Logan and Virgil walked through the byzantine hallways toward the inner corridors of the behavioral health ward while Remus sat in the small waiting room. He looked looked around the room, noting the faded posters, emergency public address code chart, and a schedule of mandatory parent classes on safety plans and de-escalation techniques. He sat a little closer to the desk where a tired-looking administrative-type sat, typing at a keyboard. Remus checked the time - 10:40 PM. Past regular visiting hours. He smiled at the admin and stage whispered, "Is it always this quiet this time of night?"

The admin looked up, first seeing the neon green hair, but then settled on the kind eyes and smile. She returned his smile. "Usually even quieter." Remus winked. She tilted her head, "You're here with Virgil Croft, aren't you?" Remus groaned internally, careful to keep a gentle grin on his face. Croft. Right - Virgil's under 18 and hasn't changed his name to Sanders yet. Perhaps he owed Ratched an apology.

Remus nodded slowly. "His dad is helping him get settled now." He gestured at the sign on the desk, "Visiting hours start at 10 AM tomorrow?"

She nodded and hummed. "Yes. Parents are allowed to visit a minor child's room at any time, though, as long as the child is willing, of course."

"Hence Virge's dad can be with him right now," Remus said, maintaining eye contact, nodding with her.

"Hence Virge's dad can be with him right now," she confirmed. Remus smiled.

"I'm Remus," he said, reaching close enough to shake her hand.

"Barbara," she shook his hand, a small smile on her face.

"So, Barbara," Remus pulled his chair next to her desk and rested an elbow on the back edge, pulling up his notes app on his phone. "What should we really know about Virge's time here?"

...

More than two hours later, the door to the inner ward buzzed and Logan slowly walked through. Remus leapt to his feet and gently tugged the bag of Virgil's belongings out of Logan's shaking hands, leading him over to a chair. "Here, Lo. Sit down. It's ok." Remus had watched how carefully Logan had maintained his steely grip on his composure every time he was in the room with Virgil. The façade had begun to crack.

Barbara had stepped around the desk and held a small can of orange juice out to Remus. "This will help," she said, looking at Logan in concern.

"Thanks, Barbara." Remus opened the can and turned back to Logan, "Lo, drink this. You'll feel a little better. Then I'm going to take you home."

Logan slowly sipped at the juice, nodding. "Thank you." He looked up in Barbara's direction, but wasn't focusing on her. "Thank you, both." Barbara smiled and went back to her desk. "I'm parked in the Blue lot," he finally said to Remus.

"Finish that juice," Remus said, nodding, "And I'll drive you home."

...

Once they arrived at Logan's house, Remus helped Logan inside, pushed another glass of water at him and made sure he laid down in his bed. Remus noticed a phone charger on his nightstand and he retrieved Logan's phone from the - now - sleeping man's jacket and plugged it in.

He went back downstairs and checked the time. A little after 2 AM. Remus looked around the living room and shrugged. The couch looked comfy enough. He'd definitely slept on worse. Remus sent off a quick text to Roman and Janus to let them know Logan was home and that he would be staying there for the night. He dug around in the kitchen until he found another charging cable to power his own phone and collapsed on the couch.

Remus' watch buzzed him awake a few hours later. A little bleary eyed, he needed a moment to remember where he is and why he was in Logan's living room. With a pang, he remembered the previous night and jumped up and headed to the coffee maker. 7:34. Remus fished his own morning medication out of his jacket pocket and washed it down with a glass of water. He considered waking Logan, but ultimately he decided to let him sleep just a little longer - at least until he can figure out how Logan's coffee maker works. After a few frustrating minutes, Remus heard a knocking at the front door.

Remus walked over and opened the door a crack before swinging it wide open. "Janus! What are you doing here?"

"I bring coffee, clothes, and company," he said with a small smile. "I make no promises about what Roman selected for you -," Janus handed Remus the larger of the two bags he carried. "But I can guarantee that the coffee is top notch."

"Well thank you and thank Cthulu, because I can't figure out Logan's coffee maker to save my life. Literally. I'm dying for some caffeine," he sighed happily when Janus pressed a hot cup from Downpour into his hands and took a sip. "Hmmm. Better. What kind of product designer decided to turn a coffee maker into a pre-caffeination intelligence and dexterity test?" Remus took another sip and raked his hand through his curls, massaging his scalp. "I know, a sadist ... and not the fun kind."

Floorboards creaked and Logan's voice sounded from halfway down the stairs. "Have we reached the sadism portion of the morning already?"

"Lo, you're up - oh," Remus slapped a hand over his mouth as though he could retroactively lower his voice. "Did we wake you?" Remus looked chagrined as his eyes followed Logan's path into the kitchen.

"Thanks," Logan muttered to Janus as he handed him the third cup of coffee. "No, do not worry, you didn't wake me, Remus." he said carefully. "I am accustomed to waking by seven every morning. " He looked at his friends, caffeine finally turning the last gear into place. He blinked in confusion. "What are you two doing here so early?"

Remus felt his face flush and Janus saved him from having to answer. "I just arrived, bearing caffeinated gifts, and Remus ... Remus has been here since he drove you home last night."

Logan turned back to Remus, mouth falling open a bit as he calculated when they must have arrived last night. "You drove my car ... " Logan's face contorted in a mess of feelings for a moment but then he caught Remus' bright smile and relaxed. He let out his breath with a quick sigh. "Thank you, Remus." Logan looked like he wanted to say more but, but instead he pressed his lips together, adjusted his glasses, and nodded. "Thank you."

"No problema, man," Remus drawled, nudging Logan's shoulder with his own. "Oh! I've got something for you." Remus pulled out his phone and texted Logan the list he'd been populating throughout the night at the hospital. Logan's phone whistled softly and he pulled it out to see a list of ... everything he would need to know, do, or procure to take care of Virgil while he was in the hospital.

Logan scrolled through the list. He started to read some of the notes aloud. "Receptionists names, Virgil's attending doctor's cell number ... parent and patient class times ... the hours for the 'good Starbucks'? ... Remus, where did you get all of this information?" He looked up at Remus' soft expression, noticed Janus watching the two of them through narrowed eyes and quickly lowered his gaze, feeling his cheeks warm. He adjusted his glasses and cleared his throat. "This will be most helpful. But, how?"

Remus grinned and shrugged. "I kept a list of tidbits I came across while I was waiting for you. Oh, and Barbara was very helpful ... "

"Barbara ... ?" Logan's voice trailed off, scrolling back through the list. "Oh, the night admin on Virgil's ward." Logan opened and closed his mouth. He swallowed carefully and looked back at Remus. "Thank you," he repeated.

Janus looked at the two of them for a moment, shaking his head slowly, a small smile playing at his lips. Leave it to Remus ... "Well, time waits for no man," he said at last. "I'm due at the office in an hour - Logan, your cases are covered and I have a FMLA request ready for you to sign if you need it - however, in the meantime, how about I make breakfast while you two finish getting ready. Visiting hours start at ... ?" Janus raised his eyebrows in a question.

"Ten o'clock," Remus and Logan answered together.

"A quick study, as usual, Logan," Janus made a shooing gesture at the two men. "Off you go ..." Janus poked his head in the refrigerator. "Eggs are fine, I assume?"

"Yes, mom ... Eggs are great! Raw's fine, just no shells!" Remus called over his shoulder as he took the bag of clothes into the bathroom. Janus rolled his eyes.

Logan started back up the stairs but turned to Janus one more time. "Thanks, Jan."

Janus smiled back and then mock-scowled, "I don't see you getting ready ..." Logan huffed out half a laugh and jogged up the stairs.

...

After Janus left and the two ate a quick breakfast, Remus drove Logan back over to Children's. Logan sat quietly in the passenger seat for several minutes, staring at the Parent Badge hanging on the lanyard around his neck. It felt official. Formal.

 Permanent.

Remus glanced over, noticing what had completely absorbed the other's attention. "Penis - I mean penny for your thoughts?" Remus was pleased to get the tiniest of chuckles out of Logan.

"The psychiatrist last night wouldn't even give me an idea of when Virgil might be released. What if ...," Logan began.

"What if nothing," Remus quickly released one hand from the steering wheel, reached over and squeezed Logan's knee before bringing his right hand back to the wheel. "Focus on what's the next step. You're going to go see Virgil, and bring him his favorite drink from Starbucks, and sit together. Remind him what's happening on the outside and just listen to him. Here," At the red light, Remus fished in one of his many jacket pockets and pulled out a small deck of playing cards. "Bring these, too. When all else fails, you've got Go Fish."

Logan stared at the cards in his hand. "How - ," he began, unsure what exactly he was asking. "How do you just know how to handle all of this? What book did you read that told you how to help your friend whose child is suddenly - " Logan looked like he ate something sour " - hospitalized like this?"

Remus considered the question for a moment. "I had a lot of friends who struggled in college. The Game Design program wasn't all fun and games ... " Remus waggled his eyebrows at Logan to lampshade the bad pun. "It was a double major, very competitive, very high pressure." Remus spared a quick glance at Logan to see that the was watching him carefully. Remus quickly brought his eyes back to the road. "More than a few of my friends spent some time in one inpatient program or another, for varying amounts of time. At least half of my friends self-harmed in one way or another." Remus could see Logan rubbing a spot under his watchband again out of the corner of his eye and he felt his heart crack.

"It's just a lot of time spent in hospitals," Remus said once he could trust his voice.

"What helped you?," Logan asked at last. The penny dropped.

Remus sighed. "Time. Therapy. Some medication," Remus nodded slowly, turning his head for a moment to catch Logan's eyes. "More time and therapy. Still medication." He let out a long breath through puffed cheeks. "It's less like treating a broken leg and much more like diabetes ... You don't ever really heal. It doesn't just go away. You ... learn how to manage it."

Remus knew how hard this must be to hear, but what Logan needed right now was truth and facts. And hope. "Virgil will learn, too. He's a good kid and he's got a father who ...," They had arrived. Remus pulled into a spot near an emergency phone, turning off the engine. He turned to face Logan full-on. Remus saw tears trailing down Logan's cheeks. "He's got an incredible father who'll do anything for him. Virgil's gonna be alright."

Logan forced himself to stop crying, and looked at Remus, in shock and surprise and gratitude for the wisdom and the help. "I don't know how to thank you for ... everything here. I couldn't have managed this without you. I - " He swallowed back a sob. "I don't how to thank you."

Remus carefully wiped tears from Logan's cheek. "You just did, man." They smiled at each other, and Logan was the first break eye contact, looking down at his hands. Remus caught himself staring at the way Logan's eyelashes had caught his tears and quickly joked, "Oh, let me think ..." Remus slowly shimmied his shoulders as he stroked his mustache in mocked thoughtfulness. "I know. You could get Roman to stop trying to convince me to buy a house on Mercer Island. He's the one who wants a boat slip, not me."

Remus noticed how Logan laughed far harder than the joke warranted, but he was happy to hear Logan's laugh just the same. They got out of the car and Remus took a picture of the parked car, including the lot color, level, and stall number in the frame. "I'll text this to you," he said to Logan. "Let me know how this visit goes. Please ask Virgil if he would like other visitors, as well. I'd be happy to come by."

"Thank you again, Remus." Remus put a soft hand on his arm and Logan's throat went dry at the warmth he felt coming off of Remus' gentle grip.

Remus grinned softly, "Anytime, Lo," and walked toward a bus stop headed for Downtown. Logan watched him go for a moment and then quickly ducked into the entrance to the Hospital.

[frangipanidownunder]

Could you write a story where Mulder comforts Scully after a panic attack or nightmare?

Same Old: fic

Angsty, longish, with a trigger warning for panic attacks/mentions of depression. This is also for @kega-umi and @baronessblixen who both requested “Don’t you dare touch her!” from the angst dialogue prompt list. Thank you, guys.

It’s the biggest irony that she put her all into trying to improve Mulder’s mental health, yet she failed to see her own emotional wellbeing withering away. From the gentle exercise program they did together (“I’m only doing this because you’ll be wearing yoga pants, Scully”), the soft therapies he didn’t outright dismiss (“I used to like colouring in when I was seven, and I still can’t keep my pencils between the lines.”), the midnight conversations on the deck as silver moths flitted under the lights (“I don’t think either of us has ever truly gotten over William, Mulder.” “We shouldn’t, Scully. If we do, all hope is lost.”), to the medication (“Please, Mulder, there’s no shame in taking anti-depressants; you wouldn’t think twice if I prescribed you Ventolin for asthma, would you?”), she pushed him uphill towards wellness, never considering the damage to own her physical and mental shape.

After all, she left him.

But he’s still the same old Mulder. Believing in anything except the truth in front of his very eyes.

Now, as sweat trickles down the back of her neck, she is paralysed with fear. Her heart bursts against her ribcage, temples throb with bruising pain, skin prickles with gooseflesh. This is the third night in a row where a nightmare has ripped her from the numb comfort of sleep. Her fingers scratch at her throat, as though to open up her airways.

All she wants is to breathe. To simply breathe.

She turns her neck and it creaks slowly. Her vision hasn’t quite adjusted in the dim of her bedroom. Red numbers drip from her alarm clock, an absurdly chilling reminder of her waiting responsibilities. Surgeries, ward rounds, paperwork, Mulder. These are the compass points of her days. There have been times when she’s forgotten to eat, where she’s woken in bed with the dull ache of dehydration tugging at her limbs, where she’s driven through an intersection on autopilot.

Physician, heal thyself, Mulder regularly teased her with the saying during their tougher cases, ones where he might have received a blow to the head (that man has the skull of an ox) and she tended to him or other victims or did a string of autopsies or chased alleged mutants into foggy forests and would end up on the verge of physical or mental exhaustion. To allay her exhaustion, he might draw her a bath, order the pepperoni pizza special, plump up a pillow and pat the mattress next to him while finding a black and white Hollywood classic to fall asleep to. Physician, and Mulder, often healed themselves that way.

But that was before she left him.

She’s still the same old Scully. Denying everything except the truth in front of her very eyes.

Getting out of bed is Herculean. Every cell is screaming at her to retreat back to the safe, anaesthetic nest of covers. She feels as fragile and hollow as bird’s bones. Her feet plant on the carpet but she is graceless and uncoordinated as she moves to the bathroom. A shower will provide temporary respite, the stinging water will open her pores, and close her mind.

There’s a missed call from Mulder when she gets out. He never leaves messages, instead she is left to run through the gamut of possibilities as she dials his number – has he forgotten his house keys and can he drop by to borrow hers, has he got himself arrested for stalking a supposed shapeshifter who’s haunting children, or is he on the verge of a breakdown? She doesn’t even try to guess any more.

“I need you to witness some papers, Scully.” His voice is distant, cagey. Years ago, he might have created a slideshow to support his evasive baiting. Teased her with the promise of a nice little trip somewhere. Asked her point blank why she doesn’t believe him when he’s right most of the time.

Now he just expects her to be where he wants her to be with little warning.

Still the same old Mulder.

On the drive to the café he’s chosen for their meeting, she tries to think what papers they could be, what has necessitated the sudden need for her assistance. She doesn’t see him for weeks. He goes for days without returning her calls, spends hours away from the house on ‘expeditions’ or ‘assignments’, and she’s found him, more than once, in bed at 2 o’clock in the afternoon, wearing stubble bordering on a beard, and smelling like a laundry basket.

There was a time when they couldn’t afford secrets. It was a matter of life and death. Those days on the run, every shadow under the motel door, every lingering look from a cashier, every click on the phone line had them hastily stuffing their holdalls into the trunk of whatever rusty sedan they’d picked up along the way, and finding a back road to a new town.

As she waits in the traffic lane to turn into the car park, with a headache binding itself over the middle of her head like a steel band, she couldn’t care less if she were to sign him up to a dodgy pyramid scheme or help him cash in his father’s stocks. She sits, indicating to pull into a spot being vacated by an overly large SUV driven by an old man wearing a wide-brimmed hat. Without warning, his car lurches backwards at speed. She braces both hands on the steering wheel as metal crunches against metal and her car jolts back. Her head whips forward, then rights itself, tendons groaning at the sudden movement. She’s stunned. Unable to think, let alone move. The old man is out of the car, looking at the back of his vehicle, then up at her, fear written across his face.

There’s a cold blast across her body as her door opens. “Scully? Scully, are you all right? Don’t move. I’ll call the paramedics.” From the corner of her vision, she sees Mulder tapping at his phone with his thumbs before barking something into the mouthpiece.

“I’m fine. Don’t…” she says, but there’s no energy in her voice and he doesn’t hear her.

The old man is holding the brim of his hat, mouthing something about the gas pedal, and Mulder swings round to confront him. She recognises the dark glint in his eye and tries to get his attention but she calls out too late and he’s already lashing out at the man.

The buckle of her seatbelt is jammed into the slot and it won’t release. Her finger presses the orange button over and over but nothing happens. The old man is cowering under Mulder’s interrogation and in the distance, a siren wails. A gaggle of people have gathered around the vehicles. The blink of her indicator is percussive background pollution. Rain begins to batter the windscreen. The pressure in her skull builds. Her fingers crawl up the sides of her head to cover her ears.

“You didn’t even look!” She can hear Mulder’s accusations even through her hands. The same tone he employed every time he burned her about giving up William or about her trust in him or about the value of her weekend conferences.

Not the same old Mulder, but the cruellest version of him.

Finally free, and stumbling from the car, she slides along its side. In the frigid air, steam rises like fog from the hood. Her shoulders are tight, her legs heavy. She takes a breath in but the air is sharp, and it tastes metallic. She pads at her mouth with trembling fingers. Did she bite her lip, her tongue in the impact? She can’t remember. Perhaps the seatbelt caused an injury. Looking down at herself, she sees only her feet, enclosed in black pointed boots, her charcoal wool pants, her sleek belted jacket, all designer wear, all for show. Vanity. Fulfilling a need in her to prove her worth since she left him. Not just to the new people in her new life, but to the old ones too. Her mother. To Mulder.

Mulder is still ranting at the old man. Arguing over semantics instead of trying to get his details. The siren is louder. Her chest aches and with every inhalation, it burns, as though her lungs are on fire. She can’t find her voice. It’s stuck in her throat along with the breath she desperately needs. Her knees soften but she locks them, stubbornly clinging to the mirror of the car. Rain soaks her hair, sticking it to her face, her shoulders. Stupidly, she thinks about cutting it off, clipping it so that it swings about her chin, freely.

So she could be the same old Scully.

A thousand images rush through her mind. Blood. Albert Hosteen. Ice. Lightning. Her distended stomach. Lasers drilling. Cassandra Spender. William’s downy head. The scars on Mulder’s face. His coffin. Emily’s sweaty forehead. The brooding ocean. Melissa. Mulder’s scratchy beard. His wild eyes. His bitter silence at her goodbye.

She hears herself cry out. Pitiful.

Each breath stabs at her. Her heart sprints then slows. Sprints then slows. She clutches at her chest as though it might even the keel. Sweat mingles with rain on her face. The pavement is cold, wet, unforgiving. Mulder kneels at her side, taking her arm into his hand. Fear knits his brows together. The old man appears next to him and goes to bend over her.

“Don't you dare touch her!” Mulder’s voice cuts through the fog in her mind and the old man startles back. His hat falls and she’s struck by how absurd it looks, floating on a puddle that’s formed. Mulder’s hands are everywhere, her brow, her arm, her cheek, her chest, her thigh. He is panicking, yelling for paramedics. Bellowing her name. But she keeps watching the hat listing as it's pelted by rain.

Same old Mulder.

She can’t calm him because she can’t summon her voice. Her chest rises and falls rapidly, nausea pools in her stomach, bitter, churning. Her neck stiffens as she turns her face away from the staring eyes, then she vomits. This sends Mulder into overdrive and he tugs at her chin, twisting her face painfully around, eliciting a moan from her that shocks him into pulling his hand away.

“Scully? What’s going on? Are you hurt?”

She is. She’s hurting. Everywhere. But how can she tell him it’s not from the collision. “I’m fine,” she says in the end. Closes her eyes to his dismissive headshake. “I’m fine, Mulder.”

Same old Scully.

The paramedics arrive and check her over. They declare her unresponsive in their radio missives and load her onto a stretcher, despite her weak protests. Mulder is effusive in his thanks and squeezes her hand, promising to follow. Inside the ambulance, she closes her eyes against the hazy faces, concentrates on her breathing, lets other people carry the burden.

When she wakes, Mulder is on a chair pulled up so close to her that his legs are slotted under her bed, his head pressed into his crossed arms, at her ribcage. She can see a few greys and she strokes his hair, tenderly. Turning his face, he grins at her.

Same old Mulder.

“You scared me, Scully.”

She nods, still not sure if she can speak.

“They said you had an elevated heart rate. High blood pressure. We thought you were having a stroke.” Her hand finds his. “But then the doc said it could be a panic attack.” He waits a beat, for confirmation. “Scully?”

He shakes his head at her silence, stretches, scratches at his chin. She tries to move but it’s such an effort, she slumps back against the pillow. Her hair feels tangled and she rakes her fingers through it. He takes her hand, crushes it in his.

“Scully? What’s going on? Talk to me.”

This is the man who spent days holed up in his office, poring over the same ridiculous, paranoid conspiracies, who left the house without telling her, disappearing for days on the flimsy pretext that she ‘didn’t need to know for her own safety’, who would spend more time nursing a glass of whisky than their relationship.

“It’s nothing,” she manages to say. “Nothing for you to be concerned about.”

His eyes roll to the heavens. There’s nothing up there that she hasn’t already beseeched, yelled at and dismissed out of hand, she thinks to herself.

“Scully, you drove into a car. You collapsed. You haven’t…” His hand withdraws from hers and he grabs a fist of the thin woollen blanket.

“He backed into me. I’ve…I’ve been…I haven’t slept well. I’m just tired, Mulder. That’s all.” Speaking is exhausting. Her words sound pathetic. He knows it, she knows it.

Same old Mulder.

Same old Scully.

A nurse enters, eyes Mulder to move his chair. He stands, loiters in the shadowy corner as she goes about her business. When she’s gone, the air in the room is dry. Mulder scrapes the chair back to her bedside and plays with the plastic band on her wrist. Laying his forehead on her arm, she feels more than the weight of him as he begins to sob quietly. His shoulders move, his chest rocks the bed. She twists and caresses his hair with her free hand. Her tears drip down her face, gathering at her chin, falling as one onto his head. His tears flow around her wrist, burning his sadness at her pulse point.

“I’m sorry,” she says gently.

He half-chuckles, a strangled sound. “For what?”

“For scaring you.”

His watery eyes find hers. “You being sick is the thing that scares me the most, Scully.”

“I know,” she says.

He sits up, brings his arm around her shoulder to pull her into a fierce embrace, squeezing the breath out of her lungs. “Don’t do that again. Don’t…please.”

She can’t promise. She won’t promise. 

“What were the papers?” she asks.

“What?”

“You wanted me to witness something. What was it?”

“Oh,” he says, his body reverberating as tears turn to laughter. “I needed a new passport. I was going to ask if you wanted to go on vacation.” He chuckles, still clinging to her.

“On vacation?” 

“It was going to be a surprise.”

“I’ll say,” she murmurs, letting out a small laugh too, and burrows her chin into the dip between his neck and shoulder.  

She lets him soften into her and pats the plane between his shoulder blades. His heart pumps next to hers. In perfect synchrony.

Same old Mulder.

Same old Scully.

[bbq-hawks-wings]

Series Review Pt. 2/3

Part One

Part Three

Continuing the trend, lots to read under the cut.

In part one we established that the central conflict of the series as a whole is not so much a black and white “good guys side vs bad guys side” but of a much more complex societal problem stemming from individual choices and series of choices made by individual people and the impact those choices have on others. This is the heart of the current conflict between Hawks and Twice.

Twice and Hawks share many things in common and have been shown to develop a genuine friendship in their shared time in the PLF. This, however, has not changed the fact that they are still functioning from opposite sides of the central conflict - at least the institutional facet of it. Each of them has taken up a position fundamentally opposed to the other in attempts to bring about their prospective “big picture” futures, but that comes with the added emotional baggage each carries from the events that have happened to them in their respective pasts.

The visual direction of the scene enforces this concept. Each one is seeing the other literally from a different angle and in a different light. Twice is on the ground prone in a room where the only exit is blocked while Hawks stands alert and at attention over him, obscuring the only source of light entering the room. 

From Twice’s perspective Hawks’ face is obscured- the harsh light from behind casting a dark shadow across any features that would clue him into what Hawks is feeling - and he has to use the context clues he has available (posture, words, immediate events) through tears and adrenaline to interpret how to respond to Hawks. He’s been so suddenly thrust into this situation he literally and metaphorically can’t properly tell which way is up from where he lies. (Note how Hawks’ silhouette is sideways and looming over him in the same direction as Twice would be seeing from his place on the ground on page 13.)

From Hawks’ perspective Twice is knocked off balance and panicking like a cornered animal, completely unaware of the larger situation at hand and how they arrived here. When the perspective of the camera shifts and we can see his face again for the first time we get a completely different picture of what’s going on. Importantly, we can see in the change in perspective a closeup (usually used to highlight the key emotion) of Hawks’ face, complete with a somber and compassionate gaze that Twice is incapable of discerning right now.

Read this section through again twice. The first time use only the frame from Twice’s perspective and the second time read it with Hawks’. This is something I’m actually intrigued to see the anime handle because depending how deep the divergence in perspective goes, even the vocal performance may be different depending on the camera angle.

Twice sees a sociopathic, unempathetic monster who has used, abused, and thrown away his sincere offer of friendship to get what he wants and then has the audacity to try to convince him to play the fool again to get Twice to betray his friends for an easy way out. Hawks sees a person who feels betrayed and scared so Hawks is trying sincerely to explain to him what has been going on in order to be transparent because that’s the only way he can think to communicate the fact that he still values Twice, ending on the note that he believes that while Twice has crimes to answer for, he is still a good person who deserves to have a real shot at a happy life and that Hawks is personally invested in making that a reality if he’s willing to take the offer and trust him.

Hawks is operating as an enforcing tool of the law, but while he believes that law is set in place for general stability and safety it takes a human to human connection and cooperation to save someone to whom the law is blind. On page 16 when he says, “I don’t want to fight you, Bubaigawara!” he’s identifying with him not as the villain Twice, but as a person with an identity and will separate from the personae he’s crafted for himself over the years. Hawks would probably use his own real name to try to hammer this point home if there was a way to naturally do it. If Bubaigawara continues to resist and fight Hawks cannot make the case to others that he deserves a second chance. 

The exact memory that comes to Hawks’ mind is Twice’s words, “Anyone who helps his friends can’t be all bad.” Hawks is trying to say in this scene, “I’m your friend! I’m trying to help you! I know you see me as the bad guy, but I want to be your hero so please let me save you the only way I know how! Please trust me!”

He needs the cooperation, but Twice resists and Hawks has no other choice but to operate as law enforcement for the sake of the greater good. Twice has chosen to be a “villain,” so Hawks has to be a “hero.” All those feathers were for Twice in the case Hawks needed them, and now Hawks has to subdue the Sad Man’s Parade alone as well as Dabi whom neither knows is on the way.

That’s the bad news, but the good news is that hope is not lost. 

This is where I repeat my mantra of “we won’t know specific, individual fates until they happen." However, I think there are notable observations to keep in mind as we watch these final battles unfold.

Coming off of the discussion with Twice and Hawks, many including myself (and arguably even Twice) have gotten hung up on whether Hawks will choose to join the League eventually. Where we are now, I think it’s become a moot point almost not worth discussion anymore. If he does, we’ll see it soon; but Hawks seems to recognize that as long as the core complaints of the individual League members - and any of their sympathizers, for that matter - are not directly addressed, some other criminal force will come alongside and clash with them continuing the cycle of bloodshed and violence as influential leaders focus on gaining power until they are absorbed or achieve their end goal of complete anarchy and societal destruction. (Remember, he’s been following the League and their movements at least as far back as Kamino.) We saw it with the MLA, we saw it with the Shie Hassaikai, and even with Stain - along with the League of Villains, it began with a guerrilla group of revolutionists seeking to right a societal injustice; but if and when a separate opposing force of revolutionist outsiders cannot agree with them a battle ensues until one is subjugated and the strength of the loser is granted to the victor. Until the underlying issues are addressed, this cycle will only continue.

This is also to bring up the fact that the League of Villains is genuinely strong in terms of interpersonal loyalty but as an organization with foundational core values and a unified end goal has been fractured and shaky since the beginning. We saw those particular cracks most prominently just before the fight with Gigantomachia when lack of outer conflict began to highlight the inherent lack of unity in the LoV, only to be interrupted once again when some outside force stirred up a reason for them to work together for survival. Remember, all of the current members of the League of Villains were initially attracted and recruited because Shigaraki falsely appropriated Stain’s ideology. Dabi has stated he wants a world where heroes are obligated to their families first and that thinking of the misery he’s left the survivors of killed heroes “drives him crazy.” Toga wants a world where she has a network of unconditional support without feeling repressed. Twice wants a world in which he can trust others and be trusted and useful despite his bad luck and occasional mistakes. Spinner has clarified he needs a cause to believe in and fight for that supports outcasts like him, and Mr. Compress’s reasons for joining the League are simply to challenge the current status quo instead of mindlessly embracing it.

Shigaraki’s nihilistic dystopia of “burn everything to the ground” is not necessary to achieve any of these goals, and if enough confidence in alternative solutions and doubts in Shiguraki’s loyalty grows in the minds of each member of the League it could genuinely fall apart at the seams, though that isn’t to say that the League isn’t an incredibly tight knit and loyal group - quite the opposite, they’ve constantly shown to be willing to risk life and limb for each others’ sake - just that they’re more concerned with tearing down the current order than restructuring a cohesive new one. However, if the context around their unity has genuinely shifted to center around Shigaraki himself as a symbolic leader as it's been implied since the fight with Gigantomachia and the MLA, this will be clarified very quickly.

Even for most other villains we’ve encountered through the series this violence-first upheaval of society is not necessary to realize most of their goals. Gentle Criminal sought to shake up heroes’ apathy and overconfidence in their strength - La Brava following him closely because of her unwavering loyalty to him as a person - and even Stain was not opposed to the concept of heroes, just an institution of heroism that breeds greed and apathy instead of elevating the ideals of heroism. 

There have been exceptions like the Shie Hassaikai (who sought a complete erasure of quirks from the human genome) and the initial ideology of the Meta Liberation Army (a world ruled by the strong with completely unimpeded use of quirks) that would have required an entire shift in society on a cultural, governmental, legislative, and economic level; but for most the heart of their issues with society is an issue of the heart - that is, a cultural shift is necessary first and foremost to alleviate the problems each of these criticisms address.

This drastic but necessary change has been difficult to achieve up until this point because most of the mouthpieces for these cultural criticisms are either not weighty enough to carry traction without the threat of violence or are held by those motivated by personal vengeance who are not guaranteed to sit and talk  about peaceful options even if the opportunity was presented to them. The “outsiders” are so deeply ostracized in the current social and political climate that they can’t get a word in edgewise to those “inside” who go mostly unaffected by the shortcomings the outcasts are attempting to bring to light. This is where the series’ proposed solution enters the stage.

[the-foxes-fangs]

I Wish I was The Moon Part XII

Tagging the wonderful @louveau, @you-mass-effect-my-dragon-age and @otomediary

Warnings: Fiery speeches, angst

                         ｡･:*:･ﾟ★,｡･:*:･ﾟ☆　　 ｡･:*:･ﾟ★,｡･:*:･ﾟ☆

“I asked for information, ninja, not your opinion.” Mitsuhide said, drumming his fingers irritably on the butt of his matchlock, staring testily at Sasuke across the sputtering fire he had built in a slightly less burned out corner of the temple.  

“And I asked you to give me back my glasses, but here we are.” Sasuke replied wryly, the indignation in his usually impassive expression wasted on the tattered curtain that was receiving it. “I am absolutely never providing EMT services for any warlord going forward. You make lord Kenshin look incredibly polite.” He muttered to himself. 

“I don’t suppose I make anything look like much of anything to you at the moment.” Mitshude retorted acerbically. He had lost consciousness, and still felt damnably weak and unsteady despite his racing mind. 

“Taking a man’s glasses, that’s unconscionable. I don’t know what I expected from the Akechi Mitsuhide, but still, that’s a dirty trick.” 

“Oh, so my reputation precedes me, even into the future.” 

Mitsuhide banked the fire, waving away the smoke that flared up from the damp wood as it drifted into his face. 

“It’s not like I’d leave the man my bff– for reasons known only to herself and whichever star guides people toward terrible choices– loves.” 

“Your what now?” Mitsuhide asked, sharply, eyes narrowed at Sasuke as he considered the revelation of frequent ceiling and floor assisted visits. 

“Best friend forever.” Sasuke said reaching up to the blank space where his glasses normally sat as if to push them up the bridge of his nose disapprovingly. “And you have no cause for jealousy, she’s like a sister to me.”

“Yes, I suppose if you’d had designs you could’ve just gone back to your own time together.” Mitsuhide replied. “You said that the fissure would open again, so tell me where and when and I’ll just fetch her myself.” 

“I also just told you that that course of action is extremely ill advised, if it’s even possible at all. The potential distortion of space-time–” Sasuke replied, cutting himself off with a sigh. 

“Alright, so that’s the least feasible option. We’ll just put that aside for now. What other course of action can we take?” 

“I’m afraid I’m otherwise employed and must inform you that I have an extremely binding contractual obligation which regretfully prevents me from joining you in any ill-advised ventures likely to result in dismemberment, severe emotional trauma, beheading or otherwise unspecified bodily harm.” Sasuke countered flatly, reaching for his phantom glasses again and dropping his hand with a noise of displeasure. 

“Were you under the impression that you had a choice? I’m afraid not. Keeping you hostage is an absolute necessity.” 

“I could take you in a fight right now.” Sasuke said to a patch of white ash on a scorched pillar. 

“Oh I have no doubt, but you won’t. I might die, and you’re just ever so slightly more devoted to your bff than Kenshin.” Mitsuhide replied knowingly. 

“Dear god, it’s like someone desaturated Shingen and surgically removed his conscience.” Sasuke whispered in horrified awe. 

“And If you’re thinking ‘surely lord Kenshin will come for me!’ you should know that I know he doesn’t know you came here, and that I can keep you hidden for years.” Mitsuhide added. 

“You really just added a new and disturbing dimension to my relationship with Kenshin right off the cuff there, didn’t you?”

“Spare me the inane chatter, give me options. How do we get her to the wormhole at the right time?” He asked with a gesture that was wasted on Sasuke.  

“Leaving aside that we’re well beyond my known timeline, there’s no fail-safe way to ensure that any message you send will survive.” 

“If I could just get her back to Tanba…” Mitsuhide said, stroking his chin thoughtfully, thinking of the myriad hiding places he had built into the castle and the ways he could draw her attention to them without alerting five centuries worth of residents.

“You should know that Tanba was a ruin in our time, and my calculations suggest that an incredibly dramatic causal variance would be required to change that outcome.” 

They sat in contemplative silence for awhile, until Mitsuhide dropped his fist into the palm of his other hand triumphantly. “I’ve been thinking about this all wrong. It’s the people!” He said enthusiastically. 

“Are you feeling dizzy again, by any chance?” Sasuke asked with a note of alarm. 

“I feel like I’ve been trampled by several horses, but that’s not important.” He answered dismissively, his mind on fire with plans. 

He had been nearly paralyzed with leaden misery at his own helplessness, feeling only the overwhelming distance between them and the implacable rule of time around him like water closing over his head. 

Even if she didn’t return to him, even if they never met again, he had to make certain that she knew that she had been loved, would be loved, always. He only needed a problem to solve to find his feet. 

“We have two issues– how to physically secure a message, and how to draw her attention to the correct place.” 

“In extremely simplified terms, yes.” 

“She won’t be too keen to look me up, if I know her. She’ll be trying to carry on and let go of me, which precludes some kind of monument. But the people– they can protect Tanba and convey my message all at the same time.” 

“I don’t follow…” Sasuke replied curiously. 

“Of course you don’t, but all you need to do is follow along.” 

He had driven himself to the brink of collapse the rest of that winter, exhausting every moment that he could conceivably be away from Azuchi without rousing more then the usual levels of suspicion. He returned on a soft spring day just in the nick of time for a war council. 

Hideyoshi strode toward him with a mixture of anger and concern, grabbing his collar to growl “where the the hell have you been?” 

“Starving himself half to death, by the look of it.” Ieyasu interjected dourly. 

“Are we sure he hasn’t got the plague or something? He has a look in his eyes– and where’s the lass? Why isn’t she with you?” Masamune added, studying him closely. 

Nobunaga studied him impassively, and waited for the tumult to die down. Only the inner circle was present, as Mitsuhide had requested. He strode forward, but did not sit. 

“What I’m about to tell you doesn’t leave this room.” He began, and explained her absence. 

Masamune offered a low whistle, with an amused look in his eye, while Hideyoshi stared blankly and Nobunaga tapped his fan on his knee thoughtfully. Ieyasu snorted derisively, and Mitsunari knit his brow in concentration. 

“That was several months ago. What have you been doing since then?” Hideyoshi asked, finally shifting out of his reverie. 

Mitsuhide smiled perhaps the first entirely honest smile he had ever offered them, knowing that it was probably ghastly on his gaunt face. “Why, scheming to bring her home, of course.” 

“You’ve finally lost that tangled excuse for a mind.” Ieyasu said harshly. 

“Oh quite possibly.” Mitushide answered, sweeping his gaze across the room as he made his great gamble. “But then again, none of you have ever known me when I truly wanted something.” 

Nobunaga narrowed his eyes with a taut smile. “And just how do you intend to accomplish such a feat?” He asked, coldly. 

Mitsuhide cocked his head and looked out the window at the soft blue sky, picturing her under the cherry blossoms for half a moment. “With the closing of this rotten age, my lords. The time for peace and unification has come, one way–” he dropped his hand to his gun, “or another.” 

“You crazy bastard.” Masamune said with a wild laugh. “I like this side of you.” 

The blood had drained from Hideyoshi’s face, and his voice shook as his hand drifted toward his sword, hissing “what have you done?” 

“I wouldn’t, Hideyoshi. If I don’t leave this council with my head on my shoulders all hell will break loose.” Mitsuhide answered, lightly. 

“Speak your piece.” Nobunaga said darkly. 

“With Kenshin and Shingen alive and dragging the last of the Imagawa in tow, we could be at war for who knows how long, and with unpredictable results. But I need a rough sequence of events to unfold, and it doesn’t include endless war. The remnants of monks of Heiei and the Mori are problems all their own, and then there’s your puppet Shogun.” He said, gesturing at Nobunaga. 

“We’re all aware of the current situation.” Hideyoshi spat through gritted teeth. “What’s your point?” 

“There are too many personal vendettas and ambitions at play for this to ever be settled under only our volition, unless it’s by battle royale with only one left alive. Given her affection for all of you, that’s not a particularly desirable outcome either.” 

“All this for a woman.”  Masamune said with amusement.

“Lord Mitsuhide…” Mitsunari cut in at last, with quiet dread in his voice, “you’re talking as if you’ve brought in an outside army.” 

The air was electric as Nobunaga leaned forward with a hard glitter in his eyes. 

“Not so much an outside army as evening the odds for the people we have no business trampling over on our way to glory. I’ve armed the women in every fief, and given the farmers instructions to stop working the fields if our demands for peace aren’t met. They may choose to rise up and kill me, of course, but as long as I’m a convenient mouthpiece, I’m reasonably safe.” 

Hideyoshi struck him hard across the face, leaving him with the taste of blood in his mouth. “You’re going to– no, you’ve already thrown the country into chaos and famine!” He thundered, red faced with fury. 

“It sounds quite peaceful outside to me. More peaceful than it has in my memory. No thundering cavalry, no armies marching at the pleasure of men who are, in the end, only men no better or worse than they.” Mitsuhide replied, dabbing the blood from the corner of his mouth with his sleeve. 

“What hope could peasant women and farmers have against trained armies?” Nobunaga asked contemptuously. 

“Not much, it’s true, but how long do you think your foot soldiers would heed the order to attack their mothers, sisters, daughters and wives? You’d order them to destroy the future, and for what–” his voice rose, hoarse and strident, “to say that you ruled the world?” 

He made a sweeping gesture, hoping that his words, always his favorite weapon, would secure a bloodless victory. 

“Every throne casts the shadow of its own destruction, my lords. We clamber to the heavens and live in dread of those we leave below, driven to greater and greater cruelty to avoid being dragged to the hell that we ourselves have made.” 

He dropped his hands and and his voice, and looked each of them in the eye in turn. 

“Isn’t it better to dig graves for our pride than our people?” 

The silence was louder than any sound could ever have been. 

It was finally broken by a ringing, rolling laugh from Nobunaga, who finally sat back and cleared his throat with a wide, wild smile, and the tiniest flash of relief somewhere far, far back in his dark eyes. 

“I knew you were going to revolt eventually, but holding a gun to all of our heads, from the Imperial court to the local magistrates–” he shook his head and chuckled again, “and not even with the ambition to rule! Ingenious.”

“My lord–” Hideyoshi said, his expression tense. 

“Enough. We’ve been outplayed.” Nobunaga said with a wave of his fan. “It’s almost poetic– in the end, the people unified themselves.” 

…

How many years ago had that day been? His mind was still sharp, even as his body had begun to fail him, heart growing weaker by the day. He had wrung out every bit of his strength taking aim at the distant future.  

The years had been full of mountains of correspondence, leagues of riding from one end of the country to the other to keep the peace, to pluck out the seeds of war before they could be well and truly sown. 

And always in the dark, the memory of her, and the hope that every step forward and every day would build a shrine that could carry his heart to her. 

He whispered to her in the night, when the fear that it wasn’t enough chilled him, knowing that the odds were astronomically stacked against them, he whispered every sweet and longing word into quiet space where she should have been. Dreams of her carried him through, of the warmth of her body, the feel of her skin, every exquisite shudder and sigh, even the painful aching fire of unfulfilled lust he carried like a penitent barbarian in their horsehair shirt. 

He had spent the first half of his life trusting no-one, and spent the latter half holding his trust like a weapon– trust in her, in himself, in whatever capricious force had brought them together in the first place. 

The irony of dying in hopes of giving himself a second chance at life was never lost on him, who had never so much as believed in the immaterial soul. Time was an enemy and his dearest ally. 

With the final preparations made, with nothing left but to leave his faith in the children and grandchildren of his friends and one time enemies, he was helped into the saddle for one last ride. The old scar on his arm ached as the early winter snow drifted down. 

The ruins of Honno-ji had become an overgrown mass over the years, but he had built a small cozy hut there, the place where he had begun to live, the place where he intended to die. 

“Thank you, Kyubei.” He said as took the proffered cup of sake gratefully, watching the snowfall in the quiet night. 

“I’m Kyubei’s  grandson,” the young man said, and gave him a conciliatory pat on the shoulder. 

“Ah. Forgive an old man for losing track of time.” He said, quietly. 

The quiet snowfall had lulled him into a deep, peaceful sleep, a dream where she was curled against him, so warm, a dream of a long ago kiss upon the back of his neck, of her cradled in his arms, of her beautiful body tangled with his, of her precious voice telling him 

You do not have to be good

but you are

Somewhere in the deep blue dawn he heard the calling. He struggled up, half staggering, half crawling, toward the door. 

“Wait– where are you going?” The boy cried out, trying to take hold of his sleeve, but he felt lighter than he had in years, felt as light as the flakes of falling snow. 

“The wild geese are calling me to my place by her side…” he said, bare feet in the soft snow, strangely warm as he walked toward the place where the balcony had been and folded his legs neatly beneath him, hands in his lap, heart in his hands to give to her as he closed his eyes. 

…

She had had one day and 7 hours to dispose as best she could of her life, but nothing had ever been easier. She had already been living as if she were dead, and dropped her letters of farewell into the post without a single regret. 

It felt as if she were floating a little above the ground as she carefully wrapped up four sets of glasses for Sasuke, and went to the monument to wait with one more poem on her lips like a prayer

A kiss on the forehead—erases misery. I kiss your forehead. A kiss on the eyes—lifts sleeplessness. I kiss your eyes. A kiss on the lips—is a drink of water. I kiss your lips. 

How many lives were folded between the two of them like ink dropped into water, and why, she didn’t ask. Just one, even if it hurt sometimes, if it frightened them both, if it was struggle, just one would be so much more than enough. 

The pressure and the crackle in the air brought grateful tears to her eyes when they arrived, and she stood fearlessly and walked into the wormhole, eyes wide open. 

It was the same dark haze but she felt as if she were being dragged every which way, buffeted first toward one blurred landscape and then another, searching frantically for him. 

She saw the diverging paths of his life, the violent heartbreaking ends, the loneliness, and shards of incohate moments. 

Snow. He was there in the snow, seated as if in silent meditation, beauty still apparent under the marks of age. 

He didn’t stir as she cried out his name, again and again, telling him she had returned as the sight of his serene face faded. She felt a familiar cool hand brush her tears away with a touch so soft and light, felt guided toward a faint light, and began to run. 

…

“Are you ill?” Nobunaga asked as Mitsuhide pitched forward onto his knees, and clutched his head. 

“I– I just had the odd sensation of having… died.” He mumbled, faintly. 

Sasuke cocked his head thoughtfully, watching the storm as it descended. 

“You called these peace talks under threat of revolution you’re not allowed to die of a broken heart, you insufferable snake.” Hideyoshi said angrily.

The four of them had ridden up to Honno-ji as the storm came on, and he felt as if his head were full of intense flashes of something he couldn’t name– other selves, other lives. 

“I did warn you that the timeline reasserting itself might be unpleasant.” Sasuke said dryly, and adjusted his battered glasses. 

“Shouldn’t she be here by now?” Hideyoshi asked as he hoisted Mitsuhide to his feet. 

“There’s no guarantee–” Sasuke began, and was cut off by Nobunaga gesturing toward the balcony. 

He scrambled across the sleet slicked ground, feeling that same desperate fear and hope as he stumbled up the stairs, overcome with the sensation that it had been so much longer than a single year, weak in the knees as he slid down, straining to see into the twisting cloud. 

She toppled into him, snow in her hair and on her lashes, and they fell together onto the cold and sooty wood of the balcony. She was so warm in his trembling arms, her pounding heart pressed to his. 

***

WHEW, WE MADE IT THROUGH THE ANGST

This chapter’s poem is “A Kiss on the Forehead” by Marina Tsvetaeva

[soyforramen]

They all wanted her to be something she wasn’t.

It wasn’t hard to see, not when the entire institute was in the national spotlight, and her thrust into the middle of it.  After the bad publicity surrounding The Brotherhood and Apocalypse, Ororo needed some way to show the world that mutants weren’t a threat on their own.  She needed to prove that not all mutants wanted to take over the world.

But with Scott and Jean gone, she was left standing in the spotlight alone.  She needed someone to show how normal mutants could be.  And who was more wholesome than a couple who stayed together, who loved each other without being able to communicate it through touch?

Rogue and Bobby were the natural successors to Scott and Jean’s public image.  From all outward appearances they were deeply in love, partners in public and private.  They’d found love in a hopeless world.  And it wasn’t long before they were being groomed for leadership, him in the field, her in a public-facing role. 

After all, his mutation was useful in a fight and in recon.  Hers was defensive, plain and simple.  And who had a need for a mutation such as hers with all the side effects that came with it?

Ororo had done the math and discovered that Rogue was better suited to stand strong against the public onslaught.  They’d gain more sympathy for the cause if Rogue was at the front.  A girl with a mutation no one want for themselves or their children.  She was a girl who couldn’t touch.  A girl who could kill just by touching someone.  A tragedy that would break Shakespeare’s heart.

That was why after she’d graduated high school along with her peers, she’d been the one ushered into an administrative role.  Enrollment, contact with donors, invitations to private fundraisers.  She was no longer allowed into the field, her training sessions ending with Logan’s disappearance. It was expected that she juggle this full time job along with her class load at NYU, her major chosen for her in furtherance of the school’s mission.

Meanwhile, Bobby was traveling the world to put out fires in the name of mutant equality.  The only expectation put upon him was to be Ororo’s second in command in the field.

It was enough to make a girl scream.  She’d dreamed of more than this.  More than being a secretary, more than being someone else’s mouthpiece, more than being someone’s girlfriend, more than having to force a smile when all she wanted to do was scream.

She still hadn’t seen the Grand Canyon, or the Eiffel Tower, or the Rocky Mountains.  

Everyday she played her part.  She stood in front of cameras, microphones, and plead for peace and equality.  She kept up her grades, joined extracurriculars, and stood by Bobby’s side.  Because despite their mutations, they were still able to live a semi-normal life.  They’d stood together against homicidal maniacs, narcissists, and politicians.  He was willing to stay together despite her mutation and she… well that was the problem, wasn’t it?

Why was she even still here?  Together, with him?  

There’d always been rumors.  She’d ignored them at first, ignored John’s warnings, ignored Jubilee’s pointed looks.  He’d been discreet enough the rumors dissolved on their own.  Hangouts, and hugging, and talking, and long glances had been dismissed as paranoia, jealousy.  And besides, they’d said under their breath when they thought they were alone, could you blame him if he had?

It was all swept under the rug as easily as her own feelings about it.  Even when he and Kitty stopped speaking one day.  Even when he’d go out late at night and come home two days later.  Even when…

Before he at least loved her enough to hide it.  Now he didn’t seem to care.  And the longer they were together, neither did she.

That didn’t mean it didn’t hurt.  To be thrown over so easy hurt her pride.  Her ego.  Her sense of self.  He’d done what she’d always feared, sought solace and comfort in someone else because she couldn’t give him what he wanted.  Because he was too afraid to try.

Behind closed doors he didn’t try to act like her boyfriend anymore.  They were still friends, but only that.

The flame between them had long ago died out between his cold lips and her cold heart.

It would have been easy enough to have kept on like this forever.  Bobby chasing other girls while she lied to herself.  It was a contented life, even if it wasn’t a happy one.

Then he had to destroy it all by proposing to her in front of the whole institute.

He knew she hated this type of public confrontation.  They’d never talked about marriage.  They’d never broached the subject of the future.  

And yet.  Perhaps she should have seen this coming.  They’d been together six, almost seven years now.

It was silent in the foyer as they watched for her response.  No one blinked an eye when Kitty stormed out of the room.

It wasn’t the first time Rogue wished they could switch places.

She’d said the only thing she could with that many people watching.  And now Bobby was pushing for a spring wedding.  He wanted the symbolic renewal of hope, a tribute to those who’d died.  The wedding was supposed to stand for everything but their relationship.  He and Ororo had already begun the planning long before he’d asked.  

The only input she was asked for was what type of flowers should be on the alter.  When her response didn’t come quick enough, they’d chosen peace lilies and irises.  Peace and hope for the future.

Rogue had always wanted oleander and magnolias.

That day wasn’t the first time she’d wanted to up and run from this ‘perfect’ life.  And it wasn’t the first time she’d run away.  Because that was what she did when she was unsettled.  Anxious.  Lonely.  It was what she was good at.

Running.

Just like she had when Bobby wanted to take a ‘break’ from their relationship.  He’d found Betsy, she’d found Montana.  Just like when Logan disappeared and nobody could speak his name, she disappeared to Mexico and spoke the name of everyone she’d met.  Just like when Bobby had asked for her hand in marriage, she’d run to the boot of Italy,

And when it became public knowledge that Bobby was stepping out on her with a teacher from a sister institute, Rogue ran to Escape.

For the first time she ran towards the problem.  To find Bobby.  She knew he was here.  He’d left his phone on the bed while he went to work out, unlocked and open to her message.  All it took was a glance for Rogue to see who, when and where he was supposed to be that night.

Maybe Bobby wanted to escape too.

It didn’t take long to pack what little she owned.  Her mother’s ring, Logan’s dog tags, and the clothes she’d brought to the institute where barely enough to fill her purse.  Everything else she’d left behind.  The rest of it wasn’t hers anyway.  Not really.  It was either a gift from someone now dead or gone, or purchased with the institute’s money.  

She’d left a note and Bobby’s ring behind.  He wouldn’t need a reason, but Ororo would.  She owed her that much at least.

No one noticed as she left through the front door.  Everyone knew her by name, but no one cared to know her.  Those who did were long gone, graduated and out living their own lives away from this place.  

On the way to the club, she keyed in John’s number, desperate to hear from him.  An apology was on the tip of her tongue, a need to tell him how badly she’d missed him.  He’d never pick up, though.  Not with her number attached to the call.  She wondered for the thousandth time whether she’d made the right choice with Bobby.

When she arrived, she found Escape to be a club like any other.  Loud music, bright strobe light, dark corners, and free-flowing liquor.  It’s only distinguishing feature was a sign on the door that said ‘Mutants Welcome.’  Money was still money in places like this, no matter who spent it.

A couple jostled her on their way to the dance floor, and she moved around the edges of the room.  Her eyes scanned the floor, sweat beaded between her shoulders.  

She used to love clubbing.  The driving bass, the churn of strangers, the limbo where life outside meant nothing.  It was so easy to lose herself to the music.  

Bobby never wanted to go.  He claimed to hate the crowds and the loud music.

Turned out he just hated going to clubs with her.

There, on the dance floor.  Strong, sweet, tender, cheating Bobby.  His arms were wrapped around a lithe blonde woman who barely wore much besides snow white stilettos.  Hands on bare skin, arms pulled her tights, lips traced the curve of her collarbone. 

His movements held all the unspoken promises he’d never given Rogue.  

Her heart broke and mended all over again.

A man suddenly at her side broke her reverie.  She ignored his proffered drink.

“Hey, sweetheart, I’m Benny.  What’s you name?”

“Not interested,” she snapped, her eyes never leaving Bobby and the woman he was wound around.

The man cursed at her and wandered off to his next target.  

The sound must have caught Bobby’s attention because he turned and caught her eye.  It took a moment for his confusion to turn to panic.  He whispered something to the blonde and fought against the crowd to reach her.  

Rogue shook her head, a signal that he shouldn’t bother, and left through a side door.

She should be feeling pain, betrayal, heartbreak.  Something to show she cared.  Instead, she felt light enough to fly.  The future, her future, without Bobby, without the institute, without the X-Men lay ahead of her. 

Nerves drove her to run towards the street, exuberance kept her from standing still.

“Lookin’ for somethin’, cher?”

She turned to find a man smoking at the entrance of the club, leaned up against the brick wall.  He looked like something out of a bad 80’s film.  Long tousled hair that draped his face, held back by a knitted cap.  Dark shades and a leather jacket.

‘Freedom,’ she thought.

“I’m a mutant,” she said.  It was the first thing she’d learned would fend off any unwanted attention.  And if that didn’t, an explanation of her mutation would.

The man only tipped his head forward to look at her over his glass.  Coals of ember against infinity.  

“S’funny.  So am I.”

“Rogue,” Bobby’s voice echoed through the alley behind her.  “Rogue!”

“Do you want to get out of her?” she asked, breathless and wound up and ready to run.  

She’d taken a cab here, and there was none to be found.  By the time she ran to the end of the street, Bobby would find her.  She chewed on her lip and silently begged him to answer.

The man raised an eyebrow as Bobby’s voice grew closer.  

Just when she was ready to turn tail and run, the man reached towards her, a snake quick enough to bite, and tucker her under his arm.  The world went black around her and she reached up to find he’d tugged his cap over her hair.

She ducked her head into his jacket when Bobby came around the corner.  He passed them, still calling her name.  Whether the ruse worked or whether Bobby ignored her didn’t matter.  What mattered now was that she was free for the first time in her life.

Gravity couldn’t hold her down, not with this bubble rising in her chest ready to burst her into a million pieces.  Giddiness brought with it it’s own high, one that even that reality of her situation couldn’t touch.  All that could be sorted out later, for now she was her own woman for the first time in years.

Wrapped up in her own joy, she’d forgotten the man next to her.  

“Guessin’ you changed your mind,” the man asked.

She turned, expecting to find disappointment that she’d asked as a cover, anger she didn’t really want him.  Instead she only found a smile.  Laughter danced at the edge of his lips.

It was contagious, his smile, so she returned it ten-fold.  She shook her head.  Tonight, she didn’t want to go anywhere with anyone.  Tonight was hers and hers alone.  

Rogue handed him his cap back and slipped back into the club.  The music threaded through her blood, thrummed through her veins. She’d didn’t know where she’d go from here, but tonight she’d keep dancing on her own.

[monikafilefan]

In the middle of the night

Mulder shivers, rousing him from his fitful sleep. His eyes roll and immediately his head pounds, sending a wave of nausea through his stomach. He felt like shit all day and finally passed out on the couch shirtless after downing a dose of NyQuil and Motrin. Wincing at the red numbers on the desk clock, he sees it’s 11:20 pm and realizes he’s slept for four hours straight.

Slowly, he rises from the couch and scuffles to the bathroom, his gut clenching the whole way. He barely makes it before he loses all content of his stomach, including the medication. He wipes his mouth, quicky brushes his teeth, and on his way back to the living room, dizziness strikes and his body crumbles to the floor.

“I feel terrible,” he whines, frustrated and shaky. He is so damn weak but manages to get up and make his way back to the couch and flop down, snagging the phone on the way. Minutes later, his breathing slows and darkness consumes him.

---

A car alarm blaring outside of Mulder’s apartment window wakes him with a jolt. He hisses in discomfort while attempting to toss his arms and legs off the side of the couch. But when he lifts his head and strains his muscles, shooting pains throb in his skull and an ache sings deep in his joints. “Ugh...” Mulder grips the table to his right and gingerly pulls himself into a sitting position, causing a loud suctioning sound of his sticky skin along the couch to echo in his head.

It’s now 2:05 am and Man-Flu or not, he’s man enough to admit when he needs a doctor. His doctor. He grabs the phone and shivers again as the chill of the air hits the layer of sweat on his back and head.

Three rings later a sleepy Scully answers. “Mulder?”

“Scully… I’m sick,” he whispers. Mulder knew her well enough to know she would immediately look at the time and sense it was him before answering. Her voice comforts him. And it’s the weekend, he misses her.

“I’m on my way,” she breathes heavily into the mouthpiece and ends the call.

He tries to nod but ends up watching the light of from his fish tank whirl around him and feels his face hit leather before falling asleep again.

---

Scully observes attentively as Mulder sighs, laying his feverish head on his pillow and stills his restless legs. She finally breathes a sigh of relief that the medication she had to force feed him when she arrived is starting to kick in. She tucked the blanket around him snugly and took the time to study his face from above. Trying to memorize every new line, every curve and slope of his nose and scruffy jawline just in case he’s changed in the last couple of days spent apart.

As soon as she tore her way through those elevator doors and into Mulder’s apartment to see him curled up, damp with sweat on his couch, her professional doctor persona took precedence. But now as her hip rests along his rhythmically rising and falling chest, Scully herself can breathe again. Any middle of the night phone call from Mulder set her heart racing, but the moment she heard his weak desperate voice on the other end, she was out of bed and tearing at her silk pajamas before she’d uttered another word.

She ran the backs of her fingers over his forehead and down his cheek tenderly. Her brows furrow at the thought of him needing all of her so much. He needs her not just as his partner, but as his friend, his doctor, and his… well that part, as much as she would like to, just can’t be defined at this point in their relationship.

Emboldened, Scully leans down and brushes her lips to his sweltering temple. Just a touch to ease her underlying ache to taste him. He startles and shivers. Scully slowly moves her body away from his to stand when Mulder’s hand suddenly grasps onto hers and squeezes tight, grunting with his eyes still closed.

“Scully?”

She leans down over him with one hand on the arm of the couch and the other squeezing his hot hand in return. “Hey, it’s me. You have a 104 degree fever.” With her nose a hair's breadth away from his, she tries to soothe his pained expression by circling her thumb across the back of his hand. But his brows knit together as his breath hitches, and his mouth twitches into a grimace. She feels a strong pull of affection deep inside her. “What hurts, Mulder?”

He squeezes her hand harder now and whispers, “my heart.” Scully freezes and instantly lays a hand over his partially exposed chest.

“Your chest hurts?” Her own heart pounds, fearing she may have missed something in her assessment. Scully immediately falls to her knees and feels his body heat radiate into her while she hovers her face over his. His closed eyes seep tears at the corners and they roll down his cheeks. “Mulder?”

“My heart hurts when you’re gone, Scully. Please, don’t leave,” he whimpers.

Oh, God! Her heart hurts now, too.

“Okay, shh... It’s okay, Mulder. I’m not going anywhere,” she entwines their fingers and caresses her other hand along his ribcage in reassurance. For her comfort just as much as his.

She watches while his face relaxes under her touch as he begins to drift back to sleep. “Love you,” he murmurs.

She swallows a gasp and her eyelids flutter shut. Mulder told her that he loves her just two months ago. She couldn’t trust it then—couldn’t believe Mulder’s words and it left her reeling. But this time, she does.

Scully believes.

She wonders if he’ll remember any of this amongst his feverous delirium in the middle of the night. And in that very moment, Scully realizes she hopes that he does.

“Love you, too.”

[wykart]

Delilah’s Masterwork

It’s here, the AU that no one was waiting for... it’s the one where Delilah succeeds in the DLC and is now empress (yay) 

Summary: When Daud falls to Billie Lurk after the Overseers storm the flooded district, there is no one left to stop Delilah from finishing her masterwork and stepping into Emily Kaldwin's skin. Forced to flee, Corvo tries to uncover the ritual that has taken his daughter, along with a few remaining Whalers still loyal to Daud. Meanwhile, in the capital, Delilah rules her empire with Breanna and Billie by her side, uniting the Whalers and her coven into an unstoppable occult force. But, Delilah has her eyes set on a greater prize; to be worshiped throughout the isles, and to take the throne of the Outsider himself.

read chapter 1 under the cut or here on ao3 

When Pretty Emily woke one day,

She saw the world a different way,

Her eyes now looked with a stranger's guile,

Her dainty mouth smiled a stranger's smile,

Her hands now worked the stranger's wrath,

Her feet now walked a stranger's path,

Emily fed, another grew stronger,

The stranger's cravings drove her onward,

And no one who looked on Emily's face,

Ever guessed who ruled in Emily's place.

- Delilah Copperspoon, 1837

...

“Corvo, are you there? It’s dark. It’s so dark, and I don’t know where I am.”

Corvo wrestled the key into the lock, the blood of Farley Havelock still wet and glistening on his blade. The old Admiral lay dead on the newly laid carpet of King-sparrow Lighthouse, his betrayed comrades Martin and Pendleton slumped over their poisoned glasses at the banquet table. The killing was over, though he feared that the worst was yet to come. The guards patrolling the fortress still wanted him dead, and his head carried a thirty-thousand coin bounty across the isles. Convincing the public of his innocence was going to be difficult, even with the evidence of journals and audio graphs that Havelock had so carelessly left behind. That was, if there was a public to convince at all. The plague didn’t care who was empress, no matter what Teague Martin preached at the Abbey. Noble blood couldn’t save them from the doom of Pandyssia.

The lock clicked, and he pushed on the gold-ornamented wood tentatively – bracing for some new threat to spring forth at him. Instead, he found Emily, just as Havelock had said, standing patiently in the centre of the room. Emily wasn’t patient.

“Royal Protector,” she said, voice cold and clear. He tried not to appear hurt, usually the girl would jump joyously at the sight of him, or at the very least call him by name. He cursed the loyalists once more, wondering what they had done to her to change her manner so. He took it in his stride, as he did so many things, and pulled off his mask – hopefully for the last time.

“Emily,” he said, offering her a hand. She ignored him and continued past, brown eyes indifferent – moving up the stairs towards Havelock’s commanding office. She didn’t even comment on the body of the Admiral growing cold by the door. “Emily!” He tried again, as her footsteps echoed sharp and tinny on the metal stairs. No response. He was making to follow her when she switched on the Admiral’s microphone – a broadcasting station to the whole island.

“City watch, this is your Empress, Emily Kaldwin.” She didn’t sound like herself. A regal, ancient tone resonated in her young voice. "Guards to the inner chambers immediately! Corvo Attano has broken through our defences.” At that he sprung up steps with the heightened speed and agility that drew from the void between the world. In less than a moment he was by her side, reluctantly pulling the mouthpiece from her hands. “The Admiral is dead,” he muffled voice still rang through. “Protect me!” That was the moment when his hand closed over hers, and he saw the truth plainly. “Protect your empress!” She cried, this time in a woman’s voice – deep, clear, and sharp as his sword. She turned to him in alarm, and there were her eyes – icy blue and uncaring. In his shock, he almost missed the first shot as it rang out through the lighthouse foyer – an elite guardsman firing a sturdy pistol up towards the landing.

He grasped the fabric of time and pulled it to a stop. The world was grey and swimming before him, that awful drumming and buzzing in his ears as if he were being dragged down deeper and deeper. Emily’s hand was frozen and ghostly white in his own, but something moved and shimmered around her. Concentrating, the being came into focus, and the smoke formed a face, jaunted and pale. It smiled.

“What have you done to Emily?” He demanded.

Its grin only grew wider as it spoke, that same tone of voice that Emily now spoke with. “I’m afraid that precious Emily is gone, Lord Protector. Only I am here now.”

“Who –“ the slowed, droning cry of one of the guards sounded as Corvo’s grip over reality faltered. He couldn’t hold it in place much longer.

“I’d hurry if I were you, dear Corvo,” she teased, “time is running out.” He had no choice. Once again, he had no choice but to run. It seemed innocence was a lot farther off than he’d hoped. He let time slip through his fingers and the rogue bullet smashed one of the crystals hanging from the chandelier. The watch rushed in, brandishing blades and hot pistols, crying out in the name of the empress and the fallen lord reagent. He dashed towards the stairs, covering two flights in a second and a wash of bluish mist. The mark on his hand burned with power, craving blood. There was no way he was getting back down to the base of the structure without carving a bloody path to do so. An exploit like that was tempting – now that he finally had nothing left to lose. His hope of restoring Emily stayed his hand. He was no expert in the occult – he hadn’t even believed in such things until the Outsider had paid him a visit – but he knew that rituals, no matter how powerful they seemed, were the deeds of men on earth, and they could be undone. The guards clambered up the stairs behind him, as clumsy as he was swift. The stinging salty hair whipped at his unmasked face. It felt good as the cold tossed through his hair, billowed his cloak. He’d been so close to getting it all back – a life in a palace, with his daughter… now someone had taken it all from him yet again. That ghostly figure of a woman wrapped like a snake around his daughter’s throat. Those days spent in the flooded district winding his way back to the Hound Pits through streets and sewer tunnels. That long trip along the water to the island at the edge of Dunwall… they had left Emily unguarded, and now she was gone. He leapt his way to the highest point of the tower, where the wind was at its fiercest and metal beneath him its coldest. A tin bridge to nowhere, overlooking the vast murky ocean. The guards rounded the corner. The younger ones where terrified, but determined – their lower guard caps swept off on the wind. One of them stepped forwards, braving the creaking, soaked metal. Corvo simply sighed, not wishing to make a spectacle of himself yet knowing that this would make for a daring and popular tavern tale. He leapt off the edge of the lighthouse.

He pulled himself down into a streamlined position, head locked between his arms in hope that his skull would remain relatively un-rattled, repeatedly dashing and re-materialising closer to the water to lessen the impact, as many times as his power would allow. He tried to imagine himself back on the Southern ridges of Serkonos, diving off the sandy cliffs and into clear tropical waters in the summers of his boyhood. It was a difficult image to conjure up, especially given the wailing winds and bitter cold sea-spray battering his body as he fell.

“I’m here,” he tried to say, but he couldn’t speak. It was as if he were drowning, his lungs heaving under the weight of crashing waves, screams muffled into inculminatous bubbles of air.

The void was dark, as if its sunless sky were setting. The bright blue haze was fading to a richer, royal shade, and the grey cobbles stretching out before him crumbled under his weight. She was there – a slight figure on the horizon, clothed in creamy white lace and frills, calling his name.

“Corvo?” She cried, that energetic, child-like tone restored. But only in his dreams. He reached out to her as the void fell away, the hazy blue deepening to dusky sea green.

His eyes began to sting and blur, and his chest burned as his lungs drew in water. The greying sun was a distant wave on the surface of the water, far away. Too far. Emily.

...

“Corvo?” She asked, one final attempt. She knew he wasn’t here. Whales floated by in the blue mists – bloodied and moaning. Upturned stones were suspended in spiralling paths, and trees stood upside-down, reaching down towards the endless void. She’d heard tales of this place. This was a place for the dead and the unfaithful. She was terrified. A coil of dark smoke erupted, spitting fragments of black stone – knitting themselves into the shape of a man. He floated a few inches off the ground, arms crossed, looking down a pointed nose through pitch black eyes. She’d seen him before. A figure of her nightmares. He cocked his head to one side, surveying her without saying a word.

“Who are you?” She demanded, “am I dreaming?” She added, suddenly uncertain. Surely a place like this couldn’t be real, despite the Abbey’s teachings.

“In a way, your majesty, I suppose you are,” his voice was cold, layered as if echoing throughout a great chamber, muffled as if sounding from beneath the surface of a pond. It was eerie, the way his outline shifted and swayed like gas dancing in the air. “Except, this isn’t just any old dream, this, I think you know.” She nodded, and he continued, “this is a dream from which you will never wake, not if the new empress has her way.”

Emily furrowed her brow and put her hands on her hips, indignant at the thought. “But I am the empress, there’s no one else!”

“No, there isn’t," he agreed. “It’s a tricky matter that you will soon understand.” She wished he’d speak plainly. She reminded her of one of her mother’s advisors – so many pretty words that said nothing at all. The late empress had warned her of such people. “As for who I am,” he said, looking past her with those terrible eyes, “I think you know, Lady Emily.”

Of course she did, those pompous overseers always talked of him; an evil being that brought corruption and sin to all it touched. “Y-you’re the Outsider.” She tried to keep her voice from stumbling, an Empress should not fear anything. He didn’t confirm the fact, just smiled thinly. “Am I really going to be here forever?”

“Forever is an impossibly long time, your majesty. Whether here in the void, or looking out of your own eyes, a prisoner. You will be here until someone can undo what has been done. I, however, will be gone much sooner, if the empress has her way.” Before she could ask what he meant, he was gone as he’d appeared; in a swirl of smoke and black stone.

“Wait! –“ she cried out to the empty air. She didn’t want to be alone here. She couldn’t be alone again.

[tabletoptrinketsbyjj]

Trinkets, Worthless, 8: These trinket are garbage plain and simple. They would be termed vendor trash or junk loot in video games. They aren’t touched by stray magic or mystery as with regular trinkets, aren’t made from valuable materials and aren’t particularly useful even if they aren’t damaged.

A box of odd beads that bear no resemblance to eyes, yet always seem to watch the nearest creature.

A wanted poster that bears the face of a terrified elf. The reward is not listed.

A bright orange, ceramic throwing star that will always miss its target.

A small pair of scissors that only cut eyebrow hair.

A glass bottle filled with multiple layers of differently-colored sand.

A dried leaf that is entirely unaffected by any sort of natural wind or breeze.

A shirt button that changes shape every day.

A map with vague directions to an abandoned gnome's house.

A small wooden box that contains a single, worn thimble.

A 1’ x 2’ sheet of white canvas upon which the words “SUFFERING IS NOT ART!” are written and underlined in blood.

—Keep reading for 90 more trinkets.

—Note: The previous 10 items are repeated for easier rolling on a d100.

A box of odd beads that bear no resemblance to eyes, yet always seem to watch the nearest creature.

A wanted poster that bears the face of a terrified elf. The reward is not listed.

A bright orange, ceramic throwing star that will always miss its target.

A small pair of scissors that only cut eyebrow hair.

A glass bottle filled with multiple layers of differently-colored sand.

A dried leaf that is entirely unaffected by any sort of natural wind or breeze.

A shirt button that changes shape every day.

A map with vague directions to an abandoned gnome's house.

A small wooden box that contains a single, worn thimble.

A 1’ x 2’ sheet of white canvas upon which the words “SUFFERING IS NOT ART!” are written and underlined in blood.

A mouthpiece for an unknown musical instrument.

A single newt's eye in a glass jar.

A small jar of nails that can only be driven by a glass hammerhead.

A small jar of glass nails that can only be driven by a cold iron hammerhead.

A sword scabbard that's filled to the brim with tiny wooden swords.

A fine, leather pouch that contains exactly 248 smooth stone pebbles.

A thin sheet of cooking paper that's been folded into a swan.

A decaying wooden knife inscribed by a child that reads "The Ultimate Blade of Destruction".

An old doll wooden doll in rotting knit clothing. The doll's eyes seem to follow the creature closest to it and people who sleep near it regularly suffer from nightmares

A sickly green humanoid bone.

An odd metal cog that spins on its own every so often.

A small wooden carving that depicts a naked goblin scratching his hindquarters.

A small dull dagger that refuses to sharpen.

A rusted coin that slowly absorbs oil it comes into contact with.

A long letter of complaint addressed to a school teacher criticizing his methods and general personality.

A glass jar containing a dozen folded paper frogs.

A small jar of hard candies that taste of sour apples and never seems to go bad.

A small doll with a cloak and toy dagger attached. On the back of the doll, the letters "TDG" are written.

A drinking horn with an odd rune carved on it.

A tiny pink bottle that smells of roses when it is empty.

A wooden carving of an orc doing a handstand.

A small twig that doubles as the perfect toothpick, no matter who uses it.

A gnome's hair brush.

A small painting of a horse's rear end.

A cork for an old wine bottle that won't fit in any other bottle.

A small pot of horse glue that says “NOT FOOD, SERIOUSLY” on the side.

A bamboo scroll tube containing a legal and notarized deed for a house whose address doesn't exist.

A dagger made of folded parchment, that could at best give someone a paper cut.

A wooden box containing twelve matching pieces of broccoli that have somehow remained fresh.

A bar of soap that smells like rotten meat.

A key that breaks the first time it’s used in a lock. To add insult to injury, it doesn't open the lock.

A tin of makeup that's just the most absurd shade of orange.

A magically preserved apple that tastes like an orange.

A letter from an unknown sender that simply reads, “I told you so!”. The return address is plainly labeled “Feywild”.

An undersized wooden backscratcher, for use by gnomes.

A tattered blacksmith cap full of red dwarf hair.

A small roll of leather that's been cured with giant urine.

The hollowed-out shell of a large hermit crab.

A crudely made treasure map that leads to a beggar's dandelion garden.

A small blue stone that feels like silk to the touch.

A pocket multitool with only one tool remaining in it. The remaining tool is a magnifying glass that has the words "Find the rest of me." inscribed on it.

A wooden scroll case filled with fine ash. The top of the lid sports a tiny iron spike that may have triggered some sort of combustable trap.

A fist sized bar of harsh lye soap

A homemade pan flute consisting of a dozen reeds of gradually increasing length held together by vines and dried grasses. Despite its crude origins it plays quite nicely

A dog muzzle made out of leather and steel with adjustable straps that allow it to fit most medium and large canines.

A brown leather hawk's hood that's used to keep the birds docile during periods when they are not hunting or resting.

A ceremonial headdress of similar make to one of the local barbarian tribes, with the exception that it is made entirely out of steel wiring and tin spoons. You’re not sure if this is some sort of artistic interpretation, strange inside joke or weird form of insult.

A preserved, hollowed out corpse of a Flumphling stuffed with sage.

A metal flask containing a thick concoction that smells dark and musty, like a forest after heavy rains.

An unremarkable spoon fashioned from horn.

A thick, heavily padded leather and burlap sleeve made to fit over the bearer's arm and serves as a target for animals being trained to attack.

A sealed one gallon cask of Bufo, a favorite drink of goblins, boggards, and other primitive humanoids. It is made by soaking a poisonous toad or frog (Or its eggs) in weak beer or by “milking” these animals for their poison and mixing it with the beer (Allows the animal to be used repeatedly). Some tribes use wide-mouthed jugs and leave the dead animal inside as a crunchy treat for eating once the drink is gone.

A sealed one gallon cask of luglurch ale. This pale frothy beer is found by most races to be too salty to swallow, with the exception of halfings who find it an acquired taste

A clockwork blue bird that emits a horrendous screeching sound when it is wound up.

A musty smelling, threadbare, grey towel that never completely dries. If someone attempts to dry themselves with it, they will develop a mildewy smell exactly like the towel until the creature takes bathes and dries off with a proper towel. 

A purple ring box that croaks like a frog when opened. It is lined with lime green satin on the inside and smells of a swamp.

An old black cord with three matching light blue buttons, strung on it, all about the size of a gold piece.

A large piece of parchment with a tea stain in the shape of a kitten.

A rolled up parchment with a sketching of the ugliest Dwarven baby the bearer has ever laid eyes on. 

A beat up, wooden compass that always points towards the bearer, never north.

A plain, wooden footstool about six inches high, with a round top about 18 inches across.

A crude, 500 piece puzzle that appears to be a treasure map, but 100 of pieces in the middle that show the specific coordinates and details of the treasure are missing

A thick braided cord made of dark leather, hanging from which is a giant's toenail reeking of cheese.

A voodoo doll of a young man that's missing it's head.

A small jar of chocolate cookies that cannot be opened or broken.

A set of crooked and yellowed dentures with teeth missing.

A dictionary with over half of the words spelled wrong and out of alphabetical order.

A brass chamber pot that was not thoroughly cleaned since its last use.

A wooden scroll tube containing the blueprints of a church that has long since collapsed.

A faux-distressed piece of parchment that is a crude map of the local area, with red circles and arcane gibberish scrawled on it. Intentionally made to look old and worn, it’s actually a simple piece of parchment that’s been singed, crumpled, and rolled in the dirt. It's obviously meant as bait to lure creatures into an ambush it appears that whatever dimwitted humanoid authored this had a very poor knowledge of spelling and grammar. Any literate creature who so much as glances at it can identify the map as a fake.

A plain thimble, with absolutely nothing particularly interesting about it.

A crude earring made from a tiny tooth, wrapped in thin twine.

A formal letter that is badly seared and charred. It’s impossible to decipher because of the damage.

A small blue candle that smells of fruit. It’s fragrance is weak and barely noticeable.

An assortment of pieces from cracked eggshells. Most are a pale creamy color, like the egg of a chicken. Some larger pieces are a deep purple.

A porcelain doll about the length of a human’s index finger. The face is chipped away.

A black flask with a gaping hole in its side. It’s covered in punctures that look like bite marks.

A silky cloth fraying quite badly around its edges. It’s almost reflective in its lustrous sheen.

A smooth, round stone about the size of a human fist. It feels oddly heavy.

A set of three clay dice, painted with black pips.

A chunk of rusted metal covered in dents.

A somewhat oval-shaped… thing. You think it might be really, really, really stale bread.

A pair of glasses whose frames look as good as new, but the lenses are stained, cloudy, and cracked.

A trio of matching bracelets, made from knotted thread. You’re almost certain there’s supposed to be four of them.

A hollow reed that creates a low, soft whistle when blown.

A hand sized figurine of a cat, perpetually coated in a layer of dust.

A waterskin filled with a slick, greasy oil. Patterns of snakes cover its sides.

A single tile that appears like it was from some type of mosaic mural. It’s a dull green in color.

A pouch of bitter tea leaves. Their aftertaste is unsatisfying and almost sour.

A jagged arrowhead, cracked into a shape reminiscent of a fox’s head.

[scarletraven1001]

Impasse - Chapter 6

Chapter Summary: Bulma receives a phone call that causes another huge shift in her relationship with Vegeta, and a confrontation leads to events that neither of them would have ever expected.

Chapter warning: Sexual content.

All Chapters:  1 / 2 / 3 / 4 / 5 / 6 / 7 / 8 / 9

Also on Ao3.

M-rated version on ff.net.

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Hi everyone! Here’s Chapter 6! Before you read this, please know that I love you all and pleasedontkillme.

And as always, your feedback will be greatly appreciated!

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Chapter 6: Crash

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Monday mornings are typically hell.

Yet, even as Bulma waded through what appeared to be a raging river of paperwork and a deluge of emails, she couldn’t keep the brilliant smile off her face while a cheerful whistle damn near broke through her lips.

She was in a ridiculously good mood, and she knew exactly why.

She had just spent the most magical weekend with Vegeta, and she strongly believed that there was nothing on earth that could ruin her day.

She was still floating wistfully on a happy little cloud as she kept replaying her cabin-getaway with Vegeta in her head.

Vegeta had woken her up, bright and early on the second day of their weekend, with his sinfully nimble fingers tracing the curves of her body.

He had kissed her lazily, the movements of his lips against hers gentle and achingly sweet, his hands languidly touching her until she was so aroused and sensitive that even the feel of the smooth sheets against her skin felt too rough.

Laying on their sides, he’d spooned against her, raised her leg to sling it over his arm as he entered her from behind…

The tantalizing way he’d made love to her that morning brought tears to her eyes as she gasped, moaned and sobbed his name, pressing her hips against his until they came, groaning their pleasure against each other’s lips.

The rest of the day was spent mostly in each other’s arms; eating, cooking and laughing together; stealing kisses that led them back to bed, where they had sex several more times that day.

Just before sunset, they showered and packed up, and Vegeta drove them back to the city, holding her hand between the seats any chance he could.

He had dropped her off at her apartment, leaving her with a heart-stopping kiss before he himself headed home.

The thought of the previous day made a wide grin spread wide across her lips, even as she realized that she was actually still a bit sore from all their activities. She didn’t care.

Bulma was in love.

She was madly in love.

She finally understood the sentiments of all the romance novels she had ever read, of how time seems to stop when lovers look into each other’s eyes.

Her cellphone chiming beside her pulled her from her thoughts.

She had completely forgotten about the poor thing, stuck in her handbag since Saturday evening, and by the time she checked it late Sunday night, it was completely out of batteries.

She had plugged it into her computer’s USB port at work to charge it, and upon hearing the chime signaling a full charge, she unplugged it to turn it back on.

She placed her cellphone down beside her keyboard as it booted up, while she turned back to her monitor to read over another new email.

She replied to three emails before she glanced back at the cellphone, and her eyes widened as she saw the notification on her lock screen.

Two missed calls from Tights, from very late last Saturday night.

Worry filled her as she reached for the small phone, and she quickly called her sister back.

The call went straight to voicemail, and Bulma felt the concern well up in her chest.

She mentally scolded herself for stupidly letting her phone stay unattended for so long.

Nobody, other than Tights and the people she worked with, knew her number, and Bulma and Tights had promised to only call each other when it was absolutely important.

The paranoia gnawed at her insides as she stared at her phone screen. She was so focused on the small gadget that she nearly missed the ringing of her desk phone.

The choppy tone let her know that it was ringing from an outside line, and Bulma knitted her brows as she picked up.

“Ouji Enterprises, CEO Office, good morning,” she greeted.

Silence answered her from the other line.

“Hello?” she tried again. “Ouji Enterprises, who is on the line please?”

Static sounded from the other line, before she heard someone, a woman, clear her throat.

“Hello, Bulma,” the caller answered, and Bulma’s skin prickled in denial even as she immediately recognized the voice.

“Who is this?” she demanded, voice stern even though she was shaking on the inside.

“Come now dear,” the caller answered. “Don’t tell me you don’t know your own mother’s voice?”

Bulma’s blood went cold.

She had not spoken to either of her parents for the past seven months, and she was filled with dread as her worst fears scratched their way to the fore of her mind.

Perhaps… this was why Tights had tried to call her.

Her family had found her.

“Oh, I know. But I was hoping I was wrong,” she said coldly, fingers white as she clutched the phone tightly.

“You wound me, dear.”

“What do you want mom, and how did you find me here?” she asked, desperately wanting to put the phone down, to run as far away from this threat as possible and seek shelter within the only place she really felt safe and protected.

She needed Vegeta.

Her heart pounded, everything within her screaming for Vegeta, for him to come and save her from what was happening, even as her mother kept talking.

“It wasn’t hard dear. Your name isn’t very common, and your father is connected to several people linked to Ouji,” she said, and Bulma could just see the usual placid smile on her mother’s face, framed by her deceivingly innocent blonde curls.

“Why are you calling me?”

Panchy paused. “Oh my. You really are still angry, aren’t you?”

“Of course!” Bulma cried, cupping her hand around the mouthpiece to keep her voice down.

“Well do you want me to apologize? Because you know we were right. Your best course is to manage Capsule Corp.”

Bulma was strangling her mother in her mind.

“No, I do not need your apology. I also know now, that I really don’t need the family to make a name for myself. I am doing very well here at Ouji.”

Her mother sighed. “You are living in an apartment complex that is smaller than our living room. Your whole flat is probably smaller than my bathroom. You are driving a car that is older than you are. How could you say that you are doing well?”

“Is there a point to this call?” she asked sharply. She was really losing her patience.

“I just want you to come home, Bulma,” Panchy said. “Honey, I know you are still miffed but your father and I miss you.”

“I’m not going back, mom,” she spat. Vegeta’s stern face - lowered brows, pursed lips and all - appeared in her mind’s eye as she continued. “I am having fun here in Ouji. I am needed here, and here, they understand my worth.”

“How long are you going to keep this up? You’ve made your point. Now come back home.”

“I am not doing this just to prove a point to you and dad,” Bulma seethed. “I like it here. I like my job.”

“Is it really your job that you like, Bulma?”

Bulma froze, her mind already supplying the upcoming insinuation.

“Please don’t say what I think you’re going to say…” she thought, as the words she had been dreading fell into her ears from her mother’s careless mouth.

“Or is it that very handsome young CEO?”

“Mother, you dare suggest-”

“Oh, please Bulma,” Panchy continued. “I am your mother. I know you, so don’t even deny it. Besides, I’ve seen the photos.”

Bulma’s breath left her, leaving her nearly gasping with shock.

“Photos?” she asked, her whole body numb.

“You’re the genius, sweetie. Did you really not realize that the paparazzi would have photos of you by now?” her mother asked calmly. “How do you think we finally ascertained where you were?”

Panchy pushed on. “I really liked the one where you were standing outside a coffee shop and he was holding your drink for you while you were fixing his tie. You both looked so relaxed. I haven’t seen you smile that widely since you finished your Business degree.”

Bulma couldn’t speak. She was flabbergasted, stunned by the realization that she hadn’t been careful enough.

“But,” the elder woman was still speaking, and her every word was creating a bigger and bigger chasm in Bulma’s chest. “You know which one was my favorite? My favorite was the one that a paparazzo tried to sell to me yesterday, in return for his silence. It is quite controversial, after all… You, and your boss, outside a gas station store near the city border, holding hands and looking so sweet together!”

The world could have ceased spinning, and Bulma wouldn’t have noticed.

“Gosh Bulma, you really are just like Tights, after all!”

Bulma finally snapped out of her stupor, and with a furious cry, slammed her phone back into its cradle.

She stared at the phone, horror gripping her as she breathed hard, tears of fury and frustration gathering in her eyes.

Her mother knew.

She knew about her and Vegeta, and now the thing that she feared most was unfolding before her.

Her mother saw her as cheap.

She could hear it in the sarcastic tones of her voice, could remember the insulting words the blonde matron had used to talk about Tights after they found out that she was pregnant by her publisher.

Now, her mother, and possibly her father, probably knew for sure that she was cozy with her boss.

All of her insecurities, her reservations about being with Vegeta, were rising to the fore of her mind, clawing at her chest until the malicious miasma of guilt and shame overwhelmed her once again.

She had made a mistake.

She had forgotten what she came to Ouji for, lost in the caresses and the soft pleasure of Vegeta’s hands and lips…

She had let herself fall in love with the man who she knew she had only come to work for since she needed a leg up in the corporate world.

Stupidly, she had become complacent and let herself come to him, welcoming him into her arms and surrendering her body and soul to the mesmerizing darkness of his eyes.

The past few days, previously a beautiful memory, became tainted to her, and she held a hand to her chest as the pain of loss and denial pounded through her, clawing at her and leaving her bleeding.

She had let herself become so enamored with a man who had never once really told her what he truly wanted from her, and excruciating pain ripped her apart as she realized that, though she loved him, he had never said that he loved her, as well.

She had risked her career and reputation for someone who possibly didn’t even feel for her as deeply as she did for him.

This cannot go on.

Her desk phone rang again, and visceral terror held her immobile, her fingers seizing and refusing to pick it up. It took her several moments before she realized that the tone was the regular ringer, meaning that the call was coming from within the office.

“Hello?” she answered, voice shaking slightly.

“Bulma?” the cheery voice of a young man answered.

“Yes, Goku?”

“I just wanted to invite you coz it’s Launch’s birthday today, and big bro Raditz prepared a surprise party in the dining area here in HR,” he said. “Can you and Vegeta come?”

She smiled. Goku was always a ray of sunshine and she had no doubt that he was the one who pushed his elder brother into organizing a party for Launch.

“I’m not sure, Goku. Vege-,” she cleared her throat as she caught herself. “Ouji-san is very busy right now.”

“Oh. That’s too bad. I was hoping you could come because,” Goku lowered his voice into a conspiratorial whisper. “I think my brother is gonna ask Launch to be his girlfriend today!”

Her smile turned watery as unbidden envy flooded her.

Launch was a normal woman who did office work for a living. She didn’t grow up with a huge trust fund, and wasn’t smart enough to be accelerated a grade every two years. She wasn’t lucky or gifted like Bulma.

However, her life was normal.

She had a normal love life. She had dated Tien, had recently begun dating Raditz, and now Raditz was officially asking her to be his girlfriend.

Why is it that women like Launch could have it so easy, while Bulma, who was supposed to be lucky and gifted, was agonizing over the circumstances surrounding the first man she had ever loved?

“I’m… I’m sorry, Goku. I really don’t think I can come,” she said, choking back a bitter sob that rose in the back of her throat.

“Oh, that sucks. I'll just save you some cake and I’ll bring it up to you, alright?” he said. “You sound a little sad, maybe the sweets could cheer you up!”

Sometimes, Goku surprised Bulma by how perceptive he could be.

“That would be nice, Goku,” she answered before she put the phone down.

She sighed, before she leaned down, placed her head in her hands, and held back the tears that wanted to stream down her face.

Her heart felt hollow, bleeding at the thought of what she now knew she had to do.

She shook her head as she remembered how happy she had been just a few minutes ago, and how she realized that a part of her also felt like it was all too good to be true.

She knew it.

The peaceful past few days had truly been too wonderful to last.

As impossibly painful as it would be for her, she had to stay away from Vegeta.

.

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She knew that staying away from him was not going to be easy.

However… she had still underestimated how hard it would actually be.

On Monday afternoon, she had avoided him by leaving her post five minutes too early, keeping her cellphone off until she reached home.

He had texted her twice.

> “Hey are you alright? Have you left? I can’t find you.”

> “Will you text me when you get home? Just let me know that you are alright.”

She had replied with a simple, “Yes, I am at home and I am alright. See you at work tomorrow.”

She had booked him full with meetings and appointments all day on Tuesday and Wednesday, only coming into his office to get his signature on papers, taking his calls respectfully and avoiding coming into his office when she knew they would be alone.

The whole time, she dodged his questioning glances and his increasingly agitated state. She made sure to leave work early so as to avoid confrontations with him.

She knew he was worried and was puzzled as to why, after they had made such amazing progress in their relationship – whatever relationship ­it was – she was suddenly pulling away from him, yet again.

She thought she saw his car parked outside her apartment when she looked out the window, late Thursday night.

On the last day of the work week, it appeared that he had finally had enough.

He was a boss from hell all of Friday, terrorizing their staff and making one of the call center employees burst into tears.

He tore savagely into Nappa regarding a small budgeting issue, and the large bald man looked so red from humiliation and distress that Bulma thought he would burst.

Not even Tarble was safe from his misplaced ire, as Vegeta had harshly criticized his younger brother’s proposals and went so far as to call him “unacceptably incompetent”.

Bulma winced every single time a forlorn face slumped sadly out of his office, as she knew that she was the reason for Vegeta’s aggression.

She had to put an end to this.

She had been a coward, hiding and running from him, when what she needed to do was just talk to him…

Just tell him…

That they were done.

Her chest constricted painfully at the thought.

Because for all of Bulma’s false bravado and her supposedly final decision to let go of whatever it was they had between them, she knew that she didn’t really want to do it.

She was such a fucking coward that she was even running away from the thought of running away from him.

Since when had she been so weak?

Nearly an hour before the end of the work day, her desk phone rings, and she stills as she sees the caller ID.

Vegeta was calling her.

“Yes, Ouji-san?” she answers as she picks up, wincing at the crack she hears in her voice.

“Come into my office, now,” he commands, before he slams the phone on her.

Bulma takes several deep breaths, trying to clear her chaotic thoughts for a few precious seconds before she stands up and begins to make her way to Vegeta’s office.

The usual walk to his office seemed to take forever, as Bulma’s feet felt heavier than lead, each step becoming almost physically agonizing until she finally reached the door. She pressed the door lock, and the soft beep that went with the unlocking mechanism sounded like trumpets in her ears.

She pushed the door open, and she was surprised to find that Vegeta was not at his desk like usual. Her eyes panned around until she found him, standing near the glass walls, his back to her as he stood unmoving.

It reminded her of the first time she had ever seen him, standing regal and intimidating, attuned to her every movement even as his body language shouted indifference.

However, something was strangely different about his stance now, and it only took Bulma a moment to realize why.

He was standing slightly hunched forward, his arms hanging limply from his side. He wasn’t looking out the glass wall, but blindly staring at it, with his jaw clenched hard as he visibly ground his teeth.

He looked so angry and yet, so utterly defeated, that Bulma wanted to rush to him and hold him… everything else be damned.

But even as she wished it, her own stubborn resolve bubbled forth, pushing her to stick with her plan to stay away from him.

She wanted him. She needed him. But she needed to be strong, as well.

When he finally turned away from the wall, he simply watched her out of the corner of his eyes, not fully facing her as he began to speak, a low, dejected monotone that broke her heart as thoroughly as any insult or angry tirade ever could.

“I don’t understand you, Bulma. I don’t understand any of this-” he broke off as he shook his head, gesturing vaguely between them. “I need to know why you keep doing this to me.”

“Vegeta,” she began, but he raised a hand, halting her words.

“I don’t want any shallow ramblings,” he said, a tremulous note edging his voice, before he finally turned around, his gaze stabbing through her in its intensity.

His voice was hoarse as he stared at her accusingly, fists clenching convulsively at his sides. “I need to understand. Why it’s like this… Why you always… I… I want an answer, god dammit!”

She trembled, opening her mouth to answer, but no words would come out.

“Are you toying with me?”

That broke her of her silence, and she answered in a choked half-shout, her voice breaking, “No!”

“Are you with anyone else?”

“No…”

He advanced towards her, and she flinched away from him as he approached. He reached up, hands grabbing at her upper arms, forcing her to look at him.

His eyes were blazing now, mouth twisted up in a scowl. He looked ready to scream at her, strangle her even, but he suddenly deflated, his hands holding her gently even in his apparent rage.

Bulma choked back a sob at the conflicted look in his eyes.

“Then, why?” he asked, his voice so uncharacteristically meek that Bulma wanted to go and fling herself into his arms and smooth his pain away.

“I…” she started, eyes filling with tears as even she questioned herself. “I’m sorry, Vegeta.”

“Don’t just tell me you’re sorry, Bulma,” he whispered. “Tell me why. I need to know why. Why can’t you be with me?”

“I just… I just can’t!” Bulma sobbed, the tears finally falling, rushing down her cheeks in a torrent of emotion that left her dizzy with sorrow.

“You can’t, or you won’t?”

She closed her eyes, unable to stand the anguish that she could see swimming in his eyes.

“I can’t. I can’t!” she cried, trying unsuccessfully to pull herself from his grasp.

“Then why won’t you tell me why? Is it… is it just because you don’t want me?” he asked, pulling her, shaking her gently in a silent plea for her to look back at him. “Have I… have I just been alone in thinking there was something here, Bulma? Have I… Have I forced myself on you?”

Her eyes shot open at his question, her tears ceasing. “No! No, you… you have never forced yourself on me. I… I let you hold me… because I wanted it, too.”

“Then I will never understand,” he hissed, finally letting her go, turning back to face the glass wall.

He stared blankly out the scenery, and Bulma heard his deep, harsh breaths, echoing in the silence of the room.

“I want you to know,” he said, his voice edged in ice, “that you have made me absolutely miserable. I am so confused and dismal. I don’t like feeling this way. This… distress that I am going through… I’m not used to this. And frankly, I hate it. And I blame you for this.”

Her hackles rose at his words. “You think this is easy for me? I’m confused, too! I’ve never experienced this before. I don’t understand you either! I don’t know what you want from me-”

“What have I ever done to make this confusing for you, Bulma?” he demanded, turning to face her again, face contorted in rage. “What do you want me to say? I have told you. I want you… I want you with me always! I need you to be with me. You’re the only woman I want! What part of that is so hard to understand?!”

“The part where you never said what I need you to say!” she shouted, her hands flying to her chest, clutching herself as if her holding on to her chest would keep her heart from breaking. “The part where you don’t feel for me the way I feel for you.”

She felt disconnected from her own mind, and the words tumbled from her lips without thought. “You swept me up like a fucking hurricane and I can’t believe how I have lost so much control, given you my everything, and turned myself into such a wanton harlot for you!”

She stilled as those words left her lips, and she watched as he too froze, pain and disbelief mingling in his eyes.

All the fight left him right then, as he slouched forward, hands going into the pockets of his pants before he turned around, leaving her to stare after his back once again.

She swallowed, “Vegeta… Vegeta, I’m sorry, I-”

“Just go, Bulma,” he said softly, defeated. “If that’s how you feel, then there is nothing more to discuss.”

“Vegeta, I…”

“Leave, woman,” he said forcefully, but Bulma swore that his voice was choked up.

Unable to take any more, she turned around, and fled the room as fast as she could.

She grabbed her bag from her desk as she ran, ignoring the worried glances from her co-workers as the tears fell from her eyes again, staining her cheeks and falling into her lips.

She could still taste the salt of her grief as she drove home, knuckles white as she gripped her steering wheel with unnecessary force.

She was heartbroken… She felt like she was dying.

It was over.

It was over between them now.

Her heart twisted into knots in her chest, and she raised a hand to her breast as she felt a very distinct pinch where she knew her heart was supposed to be.

She loved him. And now she had given him up.

She would always hate herself for what she had done.

.

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On Saturday, Bulma woke near noon, and didn’t get up until three hours later.

She didn’t bother with a shower. Didn’t have the strength or will to eat.

In her abject misery, she had gone to her jewelry box and lifted out the beautiful crescent-shaped necklace that Vegeta had given her, seemingly an eternity ago.

She put it on, watching it sway cheerfully across her throat, as she resolved to quit her job first thing on Monday morning.

She couldn’t bear to work with him, couldn’t endure being around him, while knowing that she had lost him.

The necklace was the only thing she had.

If he asked her to return it, she would.

Thus, she would wear it now, so she would never have to forget the feel of the cool metal around her neck.

The same way she would never wish to forget to feel of his hands on her, the touch of his lips on her own.

The way his voice softened slightly whenever he said her name.

She had only one picture with him, a blurry selfie she took beside him after they were done fishing in the river outside his cabin, and she scrambled to pull her phone out of her bag so she could pull it up and stare at it.

Her lips trembled as she took in his pouting face and her wide smile as she held up the large fish she had caught. It was such a happy day, and she dearly wished that it had never ended.

It would have been wonderful if they had just stayed in that cabin forever.

Late that night, she was sitting dejectedly in front of her television, staring listlessly at the rerun of a terrible TV movie that she had once laughed at with Vegeta.

She was huddled beneath a blanket on the couch, eyes puffy from crying, and desperately yearning to run back to Vegeta and beg him to forgive her and take her back.

Bulma was startled from her misery when her cellphone began to ring.

She stared at the blasted thing in trepidation, not knowing if she should pick up or just let it ring.

It was very late at night, and the phone was slightly out of her reach, so Bulma decides to ignore it.

The phone rings incessantly until the line finally cuts off.

She goes back to her movie, staring numbly at it as she hoped that the unbelievably stupid plot could melt her brain enough to let her fall asleep.

The phone rings again.

Now curious, Bulma reaches over and peers into it.

“What the…?” she mutters as she sees the name of the caller. “Why would Goku be calling me at this time?”

She picks up the phone, and swipes on the screen to answer it.

“Hello?” she answers.

The line was noisy, with garbled voices and short alarms in the background. She brought the phone closer to her ear as she spoke into it again. “Goku? Hello?”

“Bulma!” Goku nearly shouted into the phone, surprising her with the sense of urgency in his tone.

“Goku, what is it?” she asked.

“Bulma! Please, you gotta come! I was visiting my girlfriend during her shift when I saw them bring him in! Please you gotta come to South-West!”

“Wait, what?” Bulma knew that Goku’s girlfriend, Chichi, was a night shift receptionist at South-West Medical Center. “Goku, I don’t understand. What’s happening?”

“He’s here! They wheeled him in just now and I think it’s bad, Bulma!”

A sudden, inexplicable tendril of terror crawled through her spine, and trepidation choked her as she spoke again. “Goku, please, you’re not making sense!”

“He got into an accident, Bulma! Vegeta was in an accident and he’s bleeding hard and it looks bad!”

Bulma gasped.

The cellphone clattered onto the floor as it slipped from her trembling fingers.

.

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To be continued…

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