#my curiosity for these is winning over my ire for them

[freaky-flawless]

I just called my local-ish comic store to ask if they could order the first issue of the New Scaremester comic and the Pride issue, because when I went in a couple weeks ago they only had the second one.

I still bought it, but I've been holding off on reading it. The guy on the phone didn't seem sure they'd be able to get them though, so fingers crossed.

[asterkiss]

Hello!

I have a request for a Mabill one shot; Bill and Mabel are watching a cheesy romance movie and a kissing scene comes on. Ofc Mabel is swooning but Bill is gagging. Lots of teasing and fluff ensues and maybe some smooches too ;)

Also, just want to let you know that I think all your fics are really good! They are well written and the plots are always exciting. The way you write the Gravity Falls characters is so fitting!

Thank you!!

I just recently watched 10 Things I Hate About You so have a oneshot about Mabel and Bill watching that. Also, thank you for the kind comments ^^ Glad you like!

-MOVIE NIGHT

'Why do I have to watch this again?'

'Because you lost the bet.'

Bill pressed his lips into a thin line. 'In my defence, no ordinary human should be possible of fitting that many gummy worms in their mouth without asphyxiating.' 

‘Thank you!’

‘That wasn’t a compliment, brat!’

Mabel ignored him, plucking out a DVD from the shelf and spinning on her heel to display it towards him with a bright grin. ‘Tah dah!’ 

The demon remained seated on the large sofa chair, expression one of clear disinterest. When his eyes fell on her movie pick, his expression soured even more. 

‘It’s 10 Things I Hate About You,’ Mabel gushed, shoving it into the DVD player before rushing over towards the sofa chair. She shoved him by the arm, forcing him to grumble and shift aside to make room for herself as they sat side by side in the living room of the Shack. 

‘I can list ten things I hate,’ Bill replied flatly, folding his arms like a sulking child. ‘This movie is one of them.’

The teenager rolled her eyes, used to his antics by now. ‘You’re not gonna get out of this from being snarky.’ Nope, no way. She’d won the bet fair and square.

‘Meh.’

‘This movie has a young Heath Ledger in it, he’s soooo hot!’

‘I don’t follow the same beauty standards as humans.’

Mabel raised her eyebrows, peeking curiously at him as the movie began. ‘What are your standards, then?’

The demon glanced at her, remaining silent for a moment. And as the silence stretched on under his intense scrutiny, her curiosity began to be eclipsed by self-consciousness. ‘What?’ Was he about to point out a zit on her face or something? She was sure she didn’t have any this morning…

‘Eh, let’s just get this over with.’

‘Okay!’ Mabel settled into her seat, grinning ear to ear as the movie began, enjoying it despite Bill’s sarcastic comments every five minutes.

Time passed by and one of the characters proceeded to pull out a pair of black panties from a drawer

“You don't buy black lingerie unless you want someone to see it!” Bianca the character proclaimed on screen.

‘Guess that’s why yours are flower print,’ Bill remarked dryly out of the blue.

‘Wha-’ Mabel snapped her head around so fast she almost got whiplash, face flushing red in impressive speed. ‘How the hell do you know that!?’

‘You threw them at me once with the rest of your laundry when I drew on your pig with a permanent marker,’ Bill replied. He kept his eyes on the screen but it was hard to miss the smirk on his lips as he wound her up.

Mabel felt embarrassment swelling up inside her as she glared at him. ‘You can’t-!’

‘Shhh, I’m trying to watch the movie,’ he whispered, placing a hand over her mouth.

Ooh, she wanted to hit him so bad. She shoved his arm away from her, folding her arms as she tried to refocus on the movie and reign in her anger. Calm down, Mabel. He was trying to rile you up on purpose so you’d end Movie Night and he could escape. It’s what he wanted.

She would persevere, dammit!

Gradually, her ire waned as the movie proceeded. It was one of her favourite movies after all and she enjoyed it. Bill still kept trying to ruin it though.

‘It’s so sweet how far Patrick goes to win over Kat,’ Mabel sighed blissfully, watching as Heath Ledger serenaded her on screen with a beautiful rendition of ‘I Love You Baby’. 

‘Yeah, but only because he’s getting paid to do it.’

‘In the beginning, sure, he comes off as this intimidating and scary guy who is fine getting paid to show fake interest, but then he begins to really fall for her and changes for real. It’s such a romantic story.’

Bill hummed in response but didn’t say anything further. When she cast him a peek, he was staring at the screen with his lips tugged down slightly. Jeez, was he still sulking that he was watching this?

The next scene showed the main pair going on a date and eventually making ou with one another on screen. Mabel swooned happily, clasping her hands together as she watched in delight. She heard Bill making a displeased grunt and she elbowed him in the side. ‘Shut up, this part’s good.’

‘I find no joy in watching strangers make out. Not unless he’s about to pull a spider out of her mouth.’

Mabel’s smile vanished, making a face as she pinned him with a sharp stare. ‘Ew gross, why would you say that? Kissing is nice, it’s a way for you and the person you like to be close and show you like each other! It makes you feel all giddy and happy inside.’

‘Uh huh, and how many people have you kissed?’

She closed her mouth quickly. 

‘That’s what I thought.’

‘H-Hey, I’ve kissed at least two guys!’

‘Kissing your brother on the cheek doesn’t count.’

‘I wasn’t counting him!’ she cried, face red. ‘I kissed Mermando when I was twelve, and then there was a Spin the Bottle game when we were fifteen…’

‘That’s not really an impressive record.’

‘Oh yeah? How many people have you kissed?’ she shot back, feeling defensive.

Bill blinked. ‘I dunno, a handful?’

‘Wait, what? How? You’re a demon! You just said so yourself that you don’t like kissing!’

‘Sometimes I had to play pretend when possessing someone, or there were a few times it worked to charm a human into doing what I wanted. Heh, that was fun. The manipulation, not the kissing.’

Mabel lowered her eyes, grasping at her head with both hands. ‘Oh God.’ Bill Cipher had a more luscious love life than her, this was appalling. Not even the movie playing on screen could distract her.

‘Seriously, this is what gets you down?’ Bill asked in disbelief.

‘All the girls in my class have kissed loads of boys, or have boyfriends,’ Mabel muttered dejectedly. ‘I tried to make a guy up when they asked me, but that kinda fell apart when I panicked and said his name was Elmo.’

Bill snorted.

Mabel raised her head back up, watching as the characters got ready for prom. ‘Urgh, my prom is in two months and I won’t even have a date. Where’s my Heath Ledger to sweep me off my feet?’

A few seconds later, Bill spoke.

‘I’ll take ya.’

She turned her head to find him watching her. She frowned suspiciously. ‘You will?’

‘Sure, unless you wanna go with your brother?’

Her face screwed up at that. ‘No way.’ A pause. ‘But why you? You’re not planning to like, spike the punch, are you?’

‘Oh, I definitely will. But I’ll keep it restrained to alcohol only, no illegal drugs. Scouts honour.’ He smiled, placing a hand over his chest.

Mabel’s eyes narrowed. ‘That’s it? You don’t want anything else?’ 

‘Ya want me to ask for more?’

‘No. But… it’s weird.’ She straightened up, focusing on his face as she looked for any sign of lying. ‘You don’t do nice things.’ Sure he’d been more laid back as of late compared to his original self, but this was still pretty far out of the ballpark for him. 

He blinked. ‘I can be nice.’

‘Why?’

His expression grew annoyed. ‘I already said why.’

‘I want a better answer,’ she insisted, leaning closer. 

Bill scowled. ‘You’re being a brat.’

‘You’re being difficult.’

He clenched his jaw, gaze flaring with irritation before something inside him seemed to snap. A second later both his hands grabbed her arms as he leaned down, nose inches from her own as he pinned her beneath his gaze. She tensed up, her earlier gusto faltering in the wake of his abrupt actions.

‘I’m offering to do one nice thing for you because out of all the morons in this hick town, you’re the only one I can slightly tolerate in a way that doesn’t leave me nauseous and wanting to leap off a cliff.’

Mabel blinked. But before she could reply, he tightened his grip on her biceps and spoke on. ‘You’re aggravating, exasperating, and irritating. I find your hobbies ridiculous and your food tastes questionable. I think you’re annoying and loud and troublesome, and yet despite all that I still find myself craving your company and smiles and I hate it.’

He finished off his tirade with a deep breath, eyes drilling into her. ‘Is that a good enough reason?’ he snapped, face flushed red with anger. Or was that embarrassment?

Mabel wanted to reply but wasn’t really sure what to say. Huh. When she continued to stare at him speechless, he eventually growled and released her, turning his head to look away.

Wowzah.

It wasn’t exactly him listing ten things he hated about her, but it was close enough and oh wow her face felt hot. She placed both hands on her cheeks, feeling the heat practically radiating from her face.

‘Soooo,’ she began, also averting her gaze. ‘You like me?’ She wouldn’t have thought that was possible. Sure they’d been hanging out a lot but she’d always thought he hated their time together.

He grunted, not saying anything.

Mabel raised her head, finding him leaning far away in the chair as he looked at the movie with a sudden intensity she doubted came from his interest in the movie. She shuffled closer, noting how his eyebrow twitched as their legs brushed against one another. Peering at him keenly, she could see him growing more and more antsy beneath her burning stare. Eventually, his eyes snapped towards her, their gazes locked.

‘What?’ he asked, gruffly.

Mabel smiled. ‘I also like hanging out with you.’

He frowned, eyes wandering over her face. Neither of them had explicitly said they liked each other but it was good enough.

Eventually, his expression relaxed, and he raised a hand towards her. She tried not to flinch away in nervousness as he pushed a lock of hair behind her ear. Ooooh, there went the giddy feeling in her chest. 

His gaze darkened and he began to move his head towards her and oh god, oh god, was this happening?

Heart swelling inside her chest, her eyes begin to flutter close as he drew nearer, and she prepared for her third ever kiss. (Third time the charm, folks!)

But then, just as their lips were about to meet, they were interrupted.

By a scream.

A piercing loud feminine one that went through the Shack and cut through her ear drums. Both of them flinched, almost knocking heads as Mabel felt her heart leap into her throat. She looked towards the television, eyes widening in horror as she watched a woman getting chainsawed in half as blood and guts splattered across the screen.

Mabel was the one to scream this time.

So much for her third kiss.

>

‘My bad, I forgot I did that.’

Mabel glared at him, their Movie Night having been brought to an abrupt halt after that. Bill shrugged sheepishly.

‘I saw the movie on the shelf, and thought it would be funny to record over the end with a slasher film. Seemed pretty funny at the time. In my defence, I thought it belonged to your brother since he watches all the cheesy romance films and then lies about it.’

Ooh, she wanted to hit him again. 

‘Cm’on, it was a mistake,’ he said, nudging her on the shoulder. ‘No biggie. All done.’

‘You haven’t even apologised!’ she cried.

He stopped at that. ‘Apologise?’

‘Yes!’

‘Okay, fine.’ He smiled. ‘I’m sss…..’ He paused, clearing his throat. ‘I’m sssssss….. sooooooo…. soooooo….’ After several seconds of struggling, he groaned and threw his hands up in exasperation. ‘You know what I’m trying to say, right? That’s good enough.’

‘No, it’s not!’ she snapped, annoyed with him. ‘And I’m not gonna forgive you until you say it.’

When he continued to stand there awkwardly, not saying anything, she groaned and turned to walk away. ‘Forget it.’ She was going to go eat some ice-cream in a tub and hole up in her room by herself.

But then:

‘I’m sorry.’

She stopped. Turning back around, her eyes fell upon Bill as he stood there in the middle of the room looking queasy.

‘You said it,’ she mumbled, surprised.

‘Yeah, first time saying that and genuinely meaning it in a trillion years. So I’m forgiven now, right?’ he asked, folding his arms gruffly.

‘...Yeah, I forgive you,’ she said. ‘But, I’m still mad at you. You have to make it up to me!’

‘How?’

She considered it for a moment. ‘There’s a movie at the cinema that’s out. Another scheesy romance one. I want to go see it. You can take me.’ He wouldn’t be able to mess with the movie then.

Bill blinked. ‘So, like a date?’

Mabel’s heart skipped a beat. Oh. ‘Um… sure, like a date.’ 

They both stared at one another.

‘Alright, ready to go then?’ he asked.

‘Uh… No, wait, I need to get changed.’ She couldn’t wear old sweats to a date! And make-up, she needed make-up! ‘Gimme twenty minutes!’ she blurted out before quickly rushing away and up the stairs with a flushed face. She needed to ring Candy and Grenda, stat!

Meanwhile, Bill was left behind on his own.

But not for long.

As a tall shadow loomed over him from behind, the demon slowly turned around to come against a familiar face.

‘So, I heard you’re taking Mabel on a date,’ Stanley Pines said, voice slow and calculated.

Bill smiled brightly. ‘Yup! Don’t worry Fez, I’ll have her back by eleven.’ Wink.

The older man’s face darkened, and maybe making a joke wasn’t the right thing to do but he couldn’t resist! A large hand suddenly came down on his shoulder, the man’s grip like that of a grizzly bear.

‘I think you and I should have a chat, hm?’

‘Haha, Shooting Star’s expecting us to leave in twenty minutes. Don’t wanna leave her waiting, she'd get upset!' he replied, smiling back even as he internally began to panic. 

‘Oh really?’ Another hand grabbed his other shoulder, leaving no room for escape. ‘No worries then, that’s plenty of time for me to finish up.'

Finish up? Finish up what!?

'Why don’t we go down to the lab, eh?’

Oh boy. If he was late to the date, someone call the cops!

[prawns-are-cannibals]

Taskmaster S10

I honestly love this series so much, and I'm glad this was the first series I watched as it went to air. I know it gets some hate which I can actually understand, but I feel its exactly what I needed when it was broadcast. The contestants seemed so giddy to be out of the house, and to be around other people after the lockdown. I loved how incapable all 5 of them were, especially Daisy and her prize tasks. How she didn't go into labour half way through the series just from laughing so hard is beyond me. I'm so glad Richard won too, and I loved how you could hear him giggling away in the studio after every task. They were the biggest group of dorks that have ever appeared, and will probably ever appear on Taskmaster UK. Mawaan and Kathrine both gave off such pure vibes, and Johnny was the exact degree of chaos I was expecting him to be. Let's face it though, Richard and Daisy were probably the best matched team for tasks ever, with the accidental/unofficial team of Kathrine I Alex coming in second. Daisy's attempts at saying 'phenomenon' in the last series was endearing.

Top 3 tasks

I had about nine or ten tasks I could have included on this list, it was so hard to narrow them down.

Eat the most watermelon

Jesus. Fucking. Christ. This one was horrific but will always make me laugh. I do love the contrast between the teams on a socially distanced perspective as using those grabbers must have been so tricky. The amount of coordination you would have to have to both eat and feed someone. Highlight quote for this team is Johnny saying “I want daddy’s watermelon”.

Daisy sounding like some kind of angry, rabid animal when eating it topped any of the food related tasks for me, as I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. As Richard described it “its like the walking dead". He eats so little if it compared to Daisy, it’s hilarious. I'm so glad that they paired those two up.

Quietly make a cocktail

Yet another one which consists of Alex consuming weird stuff. I’m so glad that this task was included in this series, as Daisy has to be one of the loudest, angriest contestants in TM history, and this wound her up so much. The name she came up with for hers had to be the best ‘the fucks sake'. I honestly think that Kathrine would have done so well if she hadn’t insisted on using ice for it. That’s where most of the noise came from, but she stuck with it. Johnny drinking straight from the champagne bottle was such a mood, as was him testing how loud a sparkler was just out of curiosity. This task did confirm one thing for me though, Richard is seemingly incapable of shouting properly, and I love it. I don’t know whether Mawaan was deliberately sabotaging himself with the idea of the bin juice in mind, or he genuinely didn’t realise how loud he was being. The question “do you think wine and milk go together?” will forever haunt my dreams.

Knock over the coconut/move the drinks

I was not surprised ir disappointed by Johnny being the one who knocked the coconut over the slowest. He gave so much in this task, but “me and Teddy are going on a bender" will live on in my mind forever. It gave me so much joy watching Richard carrying a Teddy that was roughly the same size as him or bigger. How he failed to notice the tray, I have no idea. I momentarily felt bad for Daisy when her tray went over taking a full pint with her, but she’s far too angry during tasks for anything she does not to be funny. I like to think that I would have done the same as Mawaan and somehow attached the bear to me.

Obvious shoutout to the best live task ever; the drawing task in E6 that gave us Hippo!Gate. Poor Richard having to feel the pure rage of Daisy but Jesus christ my body hurt from laughing even rewatching it. It was made even better by Daisy not guessing the very obvious kangaroo Rich drew. And to the last live task of the series where Daisy had a bit of a breakdown, and narrowly missed out winning the series.

Contestants

Richard

Daisy

Mawaan

Johnny

Kathrine

(It was so hard to rank this bunch, I love them all dearly, any of them would have been my favourite on any other series)

Series 9

Series 11

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Dead, broke

Of all the moving, wrenching accounts of death during the pandemic, Molly McGhee’s “America’s Dead Souls,” for The Paris Review stands out: haunting, furious and sad, an rude awakening of the status quo that denies any possibility of inaction.

https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2021/05/17/americas-dead-souls/

I’ve known McGhee a long time, since she worked on my book INFORMATION DOESN’T WANT TO BE FREE from McSweeneys, a professional association we renewed when she landed at Tor.

During the pandemic crisis, I’ve had two different connections to her: on the one hand, the consummate professionalism of her emails as we published my novel ATTACK SURFACE in the middle of the lockdown.

On the other hand, I knew her through her wrenching and deeply personal Twitter account of the personal tragedies she’s endured over the same period. Her Paris Review essay brings those tragedies into sharp focus and uses them to pin a huge and heretofore ill-defined feeling.

McGhee’s mother died during the crisis, but the death was the culmination of years of hardship: “[earning] less than $10,000 a year. Suffering from debilitating depression while caring for her aging parents…chronically unemployed, undermedicated, and overstressed.”

Her mother’s debts were on public display through searchable databases, and her life was haunted by both con artists and bill collectors who carpet-bombed her with calls, letters and emails.

She was too poor to fight back: her wages were garnished by the IRS “for back taxes calculated from a years-old misfiling they refused to correct.” McGhee sent her months of her salary, but it wasn’t enough.

She had no answer for her mother’s rhetorical questions, “Why are these people harassing me? What good does it do them?”

Because the answer is obvious and insufficient: “The people in power don’t care if we live or die, as long as they get paid.”

It only took two days after McGhee’s mother died for her creditors to begin harassing her for her mother’s debts. The state of Tennessee seized the house, but Wells Fargo expected her to make good on the mortgage.

The hospital where McGhee’s mother died wanted a quarter of a million dollars. McGhee, not even 26, was staring down the barrel of the weapon that had been trained on her mother, the inheritor of nothing but debt.

The debt-machine is efficient. Bill collectors found out about McGhee’s mother’s death before McGhee’s own family got word. And they’re remorseless, immune to McGhee’s “pleading, bargaining, reasoning, denying, uploading, scanning, begging, faxing, and crying.”

McGhee compares it to Gogol’s “Dead Souls,” a surreal tale of a grifter named Chichikov who buys dead serfs’ souls to sell for profit.

It’s only surreal if you’ve never been in the debt system’s crosshairs, “where one day of lost wages can compound into houselessness.”

We live in a system of winners and losers. The winners’ winnings come from debt, shielded from the system’s cruelty by “professionalism and bureaucracy” that insulate them — and their functionaries — from “feelings of culpability, not to mention empathy or curiosity.”

Poor people have less money, but the system is firmly focused poor people, because people with money can defend themselves. When McGhee went into debt to hire a lawyer, a single letter on official letterhead instantly reduced all that debt by 90% — more than $250k, poof.

It’s expensive to be poor. Take Community Health Systems, one of the largest hospital chains in America. It sues the shit out of poor people. When those people can afford lawyers, CHS loses, because it is chasing debts it is not entitled to collect.

https://pluralistic.net/2021/05/18/unhealthy-balance-sheet/#health-usury

CHS itself owes $7.6 billion. It turned its first profit in 2020, thanks to hundreds of millions of dollars in state and federal subsidies, and its executives pocketed millions in “performance bonuses” for a performance that consisted of getting bailed out by the public.

The Trump stimulus handed trillions to the richest people and biggest companies in America. Those companies “leveraged up” their handouts to raise trillions more and went on spending sprees, buying up struggling businesses.

https://pluralistic.net/2020/09/17/divi-recaps/#graebers-ghost

They loaded these companies up with debt, declared “divi recaps” (where you take out a loan on a company you bought on credit and put that money in your own pocket as a “special dividend”) and crashed the companies, destroying jobs and communities.

Plutes know there are three kinds of debt: workers’ debts (which must be repaid), owners’ debts (to be “restructured” away) and government debt (not debt at all, but still handy for terrifying normies with stories of “mortgaging our kids’ futures”).

https://pluralistic.net/2021/05/17/disgracenote/#false-consciousness

Forty years of this approach has turned the economy into a shambling zombie, dependent on the fiction that “consumer” debts — repackaged as bonds through financialization — will be repaid, somehow.

https://pluralistic.net/2021/04/02/innovation-unlocks-markets/#digital-arm-breakers

As an ever-larger share of the world’s wealth has shifted from the workers’ side of the balance sheet to the owners’, the ability of workers to buy things to keep businesses afloat as vehicles for debt-leveraging has only declined.

Wage-theft and stagnation, unions in retreat, monopoly, monopsony, tax-preferencing for home-owners over renters, for capital gains over wages, spiraling housing, health and education costs, worker misclassification — wages are annihilated before they’re even deposited.

With no wages left over to fund consumption, there’s only debt, and as Michael Hudson says, “Debts that can’t be repaid, won’t be repaid.” CHS can comfortably carry billions in debts, but the sick people it sues for $201 have to choose between rent and medical debt.

Every loan-shark knows how this works. The chump with $500 who owes you $500 and owes the bank $500 needs an incentive to pay you ahead of the bank. To assert the primacy of your claims, you need an arm-breaker.

The digital world has given us all kinds of fantastic new arm-breakers: digital repo men who can brick your car or your phone. It’s automated the once rare practice of evictions, creating eviction mills that run with devastating efficiency.

https://pluralistic.net/2021/04/02/innovation-unlocks-markets/#digital-arm-breakers

Creating a debt-instrument — a bond grounded in the payments from other peoples’ debts — requires that you convince investors and bond-rating agencies that your arm-breaker will terrorize the debtors into paying you instead of child-support or grocery bills.

“The cruelty is the point” isn’t ideology, it’s pure description. The system — an artificial life-form constituted as immortal colony organism that uses us as gut flora — runs on competing claims to your debt, and victory consists of terrorizing you more than any rival.

The financiers who practice leveraged buyouts destroy real businesses, ruin lives and hollow out communities. They are feted as “job creators.” The workers who must borrow to close the gap they leave are “deadbeats.” Leveraged buyouts are back, baby.

https://pluralistic.net/2021/05/14/billionaire-class-solidarity/#club-deals

If you fret that forgiving student loans and making college free will “saddle our kids with debt,” then you’ve been suckered.

Look. Replacing a system that starts all but the richest children with unserviceable debt with one that doesn’t is liberation, not bondage.

Since Reagan, we’ve been hiking tuition, killing deductions for interest, and shielding student debt from bankruptcy.That’s how you can borrow $79k, pay $190k, still owe $236k, and have 25% taken from every paycheck AND Social Security until you die.

https://pluralistic.net/2020/12/04/kawaski-trawick/#strike-debt

Debts that can’t be paid, won’t be paid. Student debts do get forgiven, but only for those highly educated, (potentially) highly productive people who can prove that they have been so thoroughly destroyed by debt that they have no future.

https://pluralistic.net/2020/11/20/sovkitsch/#student-debt

And as McGhee reminds us, the tragedy isn’t merely that we educate people on the pretense of betting on America’s future, but really, the principle use that the system makes of the educated is as collateral for securitized loans.

If the arm-breakers who chased her mother wanted to understand that woman’s humanity, McGhee says they should start here:

“Her humor and her rage were unmatched. In the evenings, against the setting Tennessee sun, she liked to drink red can Cokes in the garden while snuffing cigarettes out against the yard’s ant colonies. She could reckon with anyone just by looking them in the eye. Men were terrified of her, rightfully so. She was sweet. In the last week of her life, when she couldn’t understand where she was or who she was talking to, she greeted everyone the same: ‘Hi, pal. Hope you’re doing okay. When can you come pick me up?’”

Take a second. Re-read that.

[ryosei-hime]

Harvest Moon Hoe-Down

Before the Pain Games comes the Harvest Moon Hoe-Down and Blitz gets into a self-imposed dance off with STolas as both give line-dancing a shot for the first time. I'm not the best at writing dancing but this is as good an excuse to give it a shot as any! The idea for the two dancing at a Harvest Moon Festival goes to my friend @ernmark. Also available on AO3.

“Okay, Boss, remember you gotta start with your weight on your left foot,” Millie was instructing. “And pay attention to the caller. You don’t wanna go down at a Harvest Moon Hoe-Down. Ain’t nobody worried about getting their boots bloody around here.” 

“Yeah, I got it, Millie. I think I can handle this honky tonk bullshit.” 

“You’ve already got the boots for it,” Moxxie replied with a smug look. 

“Hey, whattya know, you’re right!” Blitz exclaimed, holding a foot up. “Never even thought about that.” 

Moxxie looked disappointed at his insult’s failure to land, joining Millie as the band started warming up. 

“You sure you don’t wanna go over the calls again, Blitz?” 

Blitz waved Millie away. 

“I got it already. Go have fun and try to keep Moxxie out of trouble.” 

He winked at her as she moved away, Moxxie pulling her along faster.

“Isn’t this just thrilling, Blitzy?”

Blitz groaned at the sound of Stolas’ voice as he took up the spot next to him. 

“You come here every year. How is this new to you?”

“Well, I’ve never danced before. I’m usually presiding.”

Imps were staring at Stolas in surprise as they moved around him, giving him a wide berth. 

“Don’t like mingling with the peasants?”

“It’s not appropriate, but, well, I’ve had a tendency to do a lot of inappropriate things lately.” 

He put a hand to his chest as he leaned down to smirk directly in Blitz’s face. He rolled his eyes and turned to face the front as people started taking their formations. 

“You have someone give you the rundown or am I gonna end up tangled in those daddy long legs as usual?” 

Stolas hid a small laugh behind his hand.

“I attend balls with far more complex dance steps. I believe I’m quite capable of taking simple direction.” 

Blitz shrugged with a look of amusement. 

“Suit yourself. Good luck.” 

As the dance started, Blitz tried to keep his focus on his feet. It wasn’t as easy as Stolas made it out to be and part of him wanted to see the royal fail at this redneck shit. He spared a glance or two in Stolas’ direction to make sure he didn’t actually end up getting taken down with him if he tripped. 

Much to his ire, Stolas performed the steps he did get much smoother than he was himself. There were a few less direct calls that were lost on him, but he seemed to pick them up once he’d seen the rest of dancers do it once. Blitz felt the competitive buzz already worked up from hearing about the Pain Games take hold of him. 

He upped his game, trying to add some more flair to the moves, drawing from the kind of dancing he did at clubs in the city. That seemed to have caught Stolas’ eye and he grinned, doing a bit of the same. He added in more elegant motions as he stepped and slid. Every turn seemed to bring him just close enough to brush his tail across Blitz’s legs.

Trying to throw him off, huh? Blitz wouldn’t back down that easy. He slid closer if anything until they were almost right on top of each other as they moved, Blitz in front of Stolas just enough to keep them from tripping. For a while. 

Eventually, Blitz managed to trip over his own toe and almost went down. Stolas caught him by the hand and spun him like a top before pulling him in close. His other hand went around his waist as he used it to guide him back into the steps. After a bit of stumbling along, Blitz managed to get into the flow of this impromptu partnered version of a line dance. 

He felt a little light on his feet as Stolas took the lead, guiding him with gentle pressure here and there, never pulling or dragging. He made it so they flowed together like water. Blitz was so impressed that he forgot to be pissed off that he’d effectively lost this dance off for the moment.

When they came to a stop, Stolas turning Blitz on his toes one more time, there was a strange roar in his ears. It took him a moment to realize it was the whooping and cheering of wrath imps all around them. Oh, right, the rest of the whole fuckin ring. 

“All right, you win,” Blitz huffed, pushing at Stolas’s arms and extracting himself.

“Were we competing?” Stolas asked innocently.

Blitz fumed. He wouldn’t even acknowledge him as competition? Pompous ass. Had to be good at everything. Stolas looked confused now. He reached out to touch his shoulder, but he jerked away. 

“I gotta get ready for the Pain Games,” he stated, puffing up a bit. “Why don’t you get back to your presiding?” 

He stomped off as Millie and Moxxie approached, watching in curiosity as he pushed by them. Stolas just watched him go, looking lost as imps milled about him.

[scapegrace74-blog]

No Light, No Light (Claire’s Anthem)

A/N  To recap where we’re at in the Metric Universe, Jamie and Claire are living separately while their building gets repaired after a fire.  Jamie has confessed to loving Claire, and she hesitantly agreed to give a romantic relationship between them a chance.  The dates have gone well.  Really well.  Maybe a bit too well...  Rated M, because they deserve it after all I’ve put them through.

All other parts of the Metric Universe are available on my AO3 page.

The amazing song by Florence + The Machine (another guest artist!) that inspired the title and features in a few lines can be heard here: https://youtu.be/HGH-4jQZRcc

August 24, 2018, Scottish Highlands, Scotland

Outside the train, the landscape slid by in an emerald smear.  It had been raining earlier, but as the sun dipped westward it broke from beneath the clouds, setting the greens afire.  The view was violently beautiful, but Claire stared instead at her face, pensive and wan, reflected in the smudgy window.  There was an almost laughable lack of connection between herself and the taciturn man to her left.

It hadn’t started out that way.  After a near-idyllic summer dedicated to their mutual enjoyment of each other’s company, this trip to Scotland was meant a culmination of sorts.  A validation that they were moving towards something momentous.  A delineation between their past as friends and their future as... something more.   

Jamie had first mentioned the idea in passing while they waited in line for a gelato in the shadow of the Gherkin on a hot July day.

“T’would be braw tae introduce ye to Lallybroch before ye return tae yer studies, Sassenach,” had been his exact words.  Claire had learned to appreciate Jamie’s deft navigation of the shoals of her caution.  An invitation to meet his family would have garnered an immediate negative response, but an invitation to his family home received an ambiguous hum.

Several weeks later, they were searching Netflix for a movie they could agree on while cat-sitting for Joe and Gayle.  Said cat was lounging on the sofa cushions between them when Jamie casually raised the ante.

“Tomorrow I’ll be buyin’ my ticket home for the August bank holiday.  The trains north will be packed, so I was thinkin’ I’d grab a second seat.  Just in case, ye ken.  T'is refundable, sae there’s no harm.”

By the end of the evening, the cat had fled the room, Claire’s shirt was down to its last button, Jamie’s summer tan couldn’t mask the flush of blood that raced beneath his skin, and the idea of spending a weekend away together sat like an unopened present on the closet shelf of their minds.

Last Monday, between her day shift and his graveyard, they had met for coffee to discuss the details of moving back into their flat.

“Jamie, my name is on this lease.”  Claire set down her cup rather abruptly on the table, spilling a few hot drops over her fingers.

“Aye, tis.  I asked the landlord tae include us both.  Considering all the delays an’ the nuisance, tis the least they could do.”  Pausing to hand her a napkin, he balanced his fingertips over her scalded knuckles.  It’s yer flat too, Sassenach.  No matter what.”

The gravity of the moment hung heavy in the air.  Neither spoke for a while, letting the hum of ambient conversation dull the edges of their nerves.  Claire slid an unsigned copy of the lease into her satchel.

“I, uh, I ken this mayna be the best time tae be bringing this up, but I’ll be away home come Thursday, back on Monday.  There’s still a ticket in yer name, should ye wish tae come wi’ me.”

She looked at him then, so earnest and open and hopeful, the sunlight from the street burnishing his hair coppery-gold.  He’d crept in like a thief, disturbing the tidy boxes of her life and leaving traces of his passage on her heart.  A thief who gave instead of took, and whose only crime was to love without recompense.

“What would it mean, if I went to Scotland with you?” she asked quietly.

“It would mean everything to me,” he admitted.

That hadn’t been what she was asking, but it was her answer all the same.

The day before they were due to depart, Claire had been eating a late afternoon snack in the hospital cafeteria when a familiar tall form in running gear caught her eye.  She couldn’t suppress the frisson of delight she felt as he made his way towards her table, a whiplash of appreciative female gazes following in his wake.

His infectious smile of greeting faltered and then disappeared as he caught sight of what she was reading.

Oh.

The monthly rental property magazine had been left behind on her table, but she’d be lying to say she was browsing it purely out of idle curiosity.  The weight of seeing her name next to Jamie’s on their new lease had been pressing down on her since Monday.  

On the one hand, it was a tremendous relief - no longer could the outcome of their courtship render her homeless - not that she could imagine Jamie ever being as cruel as Frank.  But it also implied a commitment, a state of permanence between them, that quite frankly scared the shit out of her.  And so she had been perusing her options, not with any serious intent, but because it gave her comfort to know they existed.   Jamie had dropped by unannounced at the worst possible time.

A crowded cafeteria wasn’t the place to start making excuses, so after a stilted exchange about meeting the next day at Euston Station, Jamie departed, a small storm cloud of ire floating above his head.  

By the time they met the following morning, that cloud had darkened to a gale, blowing all hope of casual conversation before it.  Jamie’s disposition was generally sanguine, but when he put his mind to it he could glower like the Viking gods he resembled.  It made for a silent journey.

“Ye can just go ahead and say it, Claire.”  When it came, his voice was diminished by resignation.

“I’m curious what it is you want me to say,” she replied.

“That ye willna be moving back inta the flat next month.  If that means we willna be seeing each other at all, well, I’d rather ye tell me before I go introducing ye tae my family as my girlfriend like a fool.”

When she turned to face this accusation, the first thing she noticed was the absence of light behind his typically radiant blue eyes.  It neutralized the acid on her tongue.

“Those are awfully dire conclusions to be drawing from some rental adverts, my lad,” she quipped.  Then, almost begging.  “You promised to be patient with me.”

“Aye, I did.  But ye also promised tae try, Claire.  I canna help but feel that ye’re just marking time, waiting for me to fuck up badly enough that ye can say, well, that’s that then, another disappointment, and retreat tae yer solitude.”

It wasn’t far from the truth, although she’d never have stated it so baldly.  As with every emotional conversation she had with Jamie, his words left her feeling naked and exposed.  He saw her so well.  She didn’t doubt the sincerity of his love for her, because what else kept a man coming back once all the ugliness was on display?

“I hear what you’re saying, Jamie.  I think you know this isn’t easy for me.  Just being here with you on this train, Christ.  I almost called you twice this morning to say I wouldn’t be coming.”

“But ye didna.  Why?”

“Because the only thing that scares me more than being with you,” her voice rose in pitch, “is being without you.  I’m here, but it’s taking bloody everything I have.  So please do not ask me for more,” she pleaded.

A strong arm wrapped around her shoulder and she came to nestle against him willingly.

“I would never ask ye for that, a ghraidh.  I only want ye tae learn tae let go of yer fear, as it serves for nought.  I learned that the hard way with my accident.  T’wasn’t anything I earned nor deserved, but it happened nonetheless.  We canna chose if we win or lose.  We can only chose how we fight.”

She listened to his heart, steadily thumping beneath the muscles of his chest.  To think, he could have been taken away before she came to know the dimensions of its strength.  It sent a chill down her spine.

“I ne’er told ye, that first night we met a’ the pub, how ye reminded me of a fierce lioness.  All golden eyed and imperious.  An’ when I saw those same eyes, peering at me o’er a surgical mask the night of the blast, I understood I would live, because ye did.  Ye’re a fighter, Sassenach.  I kent it from the start.”

“God, Jamie, I was an utter shambles at the time,” she confessed.  His faith in her was overwhelming.

“Aye.  But ye were goin’ down swinging.”

***

Ian Murray, Jamie’s best friend and brother-in-law, met them at the train station in Inverness.  As they navigated the country roads, his conversation with Jamie had the ease and teasing short-hand of timeworn friendship. Claire was content to sit quietly and listen, the inconclusive discussion on the train looming large in her peripheral vision.

It was well past dark as they arrived at Lallybroch, giving the structure an air of timelessness as yellow light bathed the courtyard from windows high above.  The battered wooden entrance swung open to the welcoming chaos of barking dogs, children’s laughter and lilting Gaelic voices spilling into the night.  

Claire hung back, pretending to help Ian with their bags as Jamie jogged forward to embrace a dark-haired woman who barely reached his shoulders, lifting a giggling toddler from her hip and high into the air.  The dogs spun around his legs, practically tripping him as he tried to climb the stairs and answer his sister’s rapid fire questions all at once.  Halting before the door, he handed his nephew over before Jenny disappeared inside, the dogs at her heels.

Feeling absurdly nervous, Claire mounted the stairs and accepted his outstretched hand.

“So, this is it?” she asked inanely.

“Aye, this is it.  Welcome to my home, Sassenach.”

***

They’d eaten on the train, so after a hasty introduction to the rest of the family and a promise to become better acquainted over breakfast, Jamie and Claire headed upstairs.  It occurred to her on the second landing that she had no idea where he expected her to sleep.   Their status as temporary lodgers in other people’s homes back in London had made the question moot.  

Visceral memories of their increasingly heated goodnight kisses caused Claire to trip on braided rug.  Jamie turned as she was righting herself.

“Aye, well, here we are.  The lavatory is jest across the hall.  If ye need anything, the laird’s room is up these stairs.”

“The laird’s room?  Wait, who’s the laird in this story?” she was momentarily distracted from her agitation by this unforeseen detail. 

“Well, me.  But dinna get any grand illusions.  Tis only a leftover title from when Clan Fraser ruled o’er these parts before the Rising.”

Her mouth was moving before she fully considered her next words.

“And does that make me your lady?”

Instead of laughing off her glib comment as she hoped he would, Jamie’s face grew somber.

“Nah.  Tha’ position is presently unfilled.  In this house, the laird sleeps next tae his lady, always.  G’night tae ye, Sassenach.”  And with a soft kiss that barely ghosted her lips, Jamie retired to bed.  Alone.

***

The next two days were a glimpse into a way of living whose existence Claire had previously discredited.  Communal mealtimes, where each family member had an assigned role, from buttering the bread (Jamie’s three-year old nephew and namesake) to clearing the table (Ian, and by their second meal, Claire).  Morning and evening chores that left the adults drowsy and smelling slightly of the chicken coop.  Siblings bickering, slamming doors and then laughing about it by suppertime.  Outings to local landmarks in the rain, a cheerful row of matching Wellingtons and wax cotton jackets tramping along well-worn paths.  Visits to neighbours, carrying a Pyrex dish of some culinary offering and returning four hours later, stuffed to the gills and carrying a different Pyrex dish loaded with leftovers.

Seeing Jamie take his place at the centre of this family dynamic was a shock.  She’d only ever known him in an urban setting, where he was one man among millions; noteworthy for his decency, his peculiar fondness for blood pudding, and because he was hers.  At Lallybroch, he grew before her eyes, taking on new dimensions that challenged and teased her understanding of him.

This was his concept of home.

This was his template for love.

***

On Sunday afternoon, the clouds had lifted to reveal a robin’s egg sky.  Claire accompanied Ian on a circuit of the upper pasture.  A border collie named Jem bounded down the hill ahead of them.  Ian was an easy companion, and they were mid-conversation about the impact of the Scots in the history of medicine when Claire pulled up short, words evaporating in her throat.

There in the hay field just below stood Jamie.  Long rows of golden sheaves that had been cut the past week were now drying in the late summer sun.  Armed with nothing but a pitchfork, Jamie had obviously been working for some time.  He wore boots and loose trousers, but his shirt was long abandoned.  Sweat glistened in the fine russet curls that covered his breastbone and over the sun-kissed curves of his shoulders.  He was so beautiful, it hurt to breathe.

“He’s himself again,” Ian remarked.  “It lightens my heart tae see it.”

Claire tore her eyes away from Jamie.  Ian was watching her with a knowing twinkle in his eye.

“Well, he obviously loves being here, with his family...” she dodged.

Ian shook his head.

“Nah, t’isn’t that.  Since his accident, he’s been... altered.  Jamie was always the golden one, ye ken?  Smart, strong, funny, kind.  He wore it well, but it gives ye a sense of... invincibility, maybe?  Tha’ blast ripped apart more than his back.  I think it made him doubt who he is on the inside.  Ye’ve helped him find tha’ man again, Claire, and for that we are in yer debt.”

She couldn’t look at Ian then, for fear that he would see just how much she wanted what he was saying to be the truth.  To be essential to someone who meant so much to her, to be enough purely by being herself, it was more than her feelings could contain.

It was what Jamie had been trying to tell her all along.

***

The third stair between the guest room and the laird’s bedroom creaked, and Claire froze, eyes darting guiltily down the corridor to where Ian, Jenny and their children slept.   Nothing stirred beyond the drumming of her heartbeat, so she crept the rest of the way, tapping quietly on the solid wood door.

Jamie’s voice was alert as he beckoned, “Come in, Jenny.”  She clutched a thin sheaf of papers to her chest and entered the room.  The only illumination came from the hearth, where a low fire still blazed.  It cast its light on a large, masculine room, with deep blue wallpaper, heavy damask drapes and an immense four poster bed.  Jamie sat up against the headboard, the glow from his iPad echoing in his downcast eyes.

“It’s not Jenny.  It’s me,” she whispered.

With a visible flinch, the iPad fell to his lap.

“Claire...”

He stretched her name out like honey from a jar, trickling sweetly from his mouth.

She wanted to run.  From this plush room, this welcoming home, this uninvited sanctuary of tenderness.  Her legs quivered with the impulse.  Instead, she plunged forward into the room, right to the edge of the bed, and thrust her offering towards Jamie, who followed her movements as though she was defusing a bomb.

“Whas’ this then?” he asked, peering down at the document.

“It’s our lease.  I signed it.  And faxed a copy to the landlord.”

There, she had done it.  The pebble that would start the landslide.  There was no turning back now, and it was pure relief.

Jamie was silent for so long, staring down at her signature, that she began to wonder if he’d fallen asleep.  When he looked up again, his eyes were glassy.

“Are ye sure, Sassenach?”

A drunken encounter in a pub.  Agony radiating from his bright blue eyes on a hospital gurney.  Her rain-soaked salvation.  A roommate.  A friend.  His steady patience as they tentatively grew closer. And now something more, something bigger than she knew how to articulate, sneaking around the margins of her fear.  

She wasn’t sure of much, but she was certain that Jamie’s love could never hurt.  The rest, the panic that she could lose him or disappoint him, that was just the price of paradise.

Instead of answering the question directly, she walked around to the opposite side of the bed and gestured to the empty mattress beside Jamie’s long body.

“Is this place still vacant?”

His smile was radiant.

“For ye, Sassenach, always.”

***

It was like no other sex she’d ever experienced.  Intimacy, up until then, had been a transaction, an exchange of debits.  This was a cancellation of accounts, an obliteration of any mutual debt.  They loved each other with the pure, mindless joy of a wave meeting the shore.

Which isn’t to say that it was perfect.  It felt strange to touch Jamie in more than a friendly way.   Not at all unpleasant, but strange.  Like going to the theatre to see a well-loved play, and suddenly being thrust onto the stage.  The hesitance behind Jamie’s touch told her he felt something similar.  

In a particularly awkward moment, they were jostling and bumping to remove each other’s pajamas when her hair got caught in the buckle of his watch.

“Ouch!” she yelped.  He pulled away, stammering apologies, which only made things worse.  After a few failed attempts on Jamie’s part, she reached up and unclasped the watch band, giving him two hands to work with.  By this point they were both giggling, the gravitas of the moment lost.

“Ye’ve a great deal of hair, mo nighean donn,” Jamie groused as he lay the offending watch on his nightstand.

“Complaining already, Fraser?”

“God, no. Ye’re... would it be sentimental tae say ye’re the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen?”

She was lying naked, but for a pair of skimpy knickers, the firelight caressing her limbs where they were splayed against the dark sheets.  Jamie’s visual perusal of her body held a potent combination of lust and reverence that warmed her blood.

“I suppose I can tolerate a bit of sentimentality,” she conceded, rolling towards the bulwark of his naked chest.  Her fingers played down the corduroy ripples of his flank.

“You’re beautiful too, Jamie.”

The mood in the room shifted again.  Soon they pitching across the mattress, trying to touch in as many ways possible.  Their skin grew slippery with sweat.  At some point, underwear must have been removed, because she could feel the coarse abrasion of his pubic hair against her thigh, alongside the tensile ridge of his erection.

“Claire,” he gasped as their hips ground together in frenzied pulses. “If ye dinna want me tae go any further, I need ye tae tell me now.”

She reached between them, taking the heft of him in her palm, feeling a spasm of need shudder through his frame.

“There’s nothing about you that I do not want, James Fraser.”

A cavernous groan, a frantic search for a condom in the bedside drawer, the tearing of a foil wrapper, and then a breathless hesitation.  She opened her eyes to see Jamie looking down as though she was the morning sun.  There was nothing left inside her but dazzling hunger, filling the spaces where her fear once resided.

Here was the start.

[mikasaessucasaa]

Four Spiders and a Lawyer

PART 1

Michelle is a lawyer for superheroes. She’s the first one to admit that she was definitely inspired by her ex-boyfriend, but she thinks it’s meaningful work and she’s really damn good at it.

She’s been scouted by the Avengers, S.H.I.E.L.D., and her proudest achievement — Pepper Potts, and she rejected all of them to represent underprivileged super-heroes.

She represents those who are just starting out in their superheroing careers, or those discriminated against even if they literally save lives everyday. Cause turns out the world still sucks even if you’re super powered.

She doesn’t mind her tiny office in the middle of Chinatown. She enjoys the crowds of tourists mixed in with locals, the interesting delicious and pungent smells. She doesn’t even mind The Hand and Chinese Triads, in a twisted way they keep the peace, and provide rent control for some of her favorite restaurants. She’d never tell her superhero clientele of course.

She loves it all. And if she happened to pick the furthest point from Queens in the city without going to Staten Island, well, no one was supposed to ever know it was because she was done breaking up and getting back together with Peter for the better part of a decade and a half.

So why the hell were there all of a sudden three Spider-People in her office?

“Spider-Man,” she says at them with pretend disinterest, though they must hear how her heart pounds and her body tells her she needs to get out of this situation lest it snowballs into everything she’s been avoiding for years.

“Yes?” Two of the three Spider-People turned to look at her, startling her.

“Okaaay,” she draws out. “OG Spider-Man,” referring directly to Peter, “what the hell is going on?”

“Well, you see, Mrs. Jones-Osborne—“

“Just Jones.”

She can tell his eyes light up from behind his mask from the way that he says, “Wow that’s great!”

And she couldn’t stop rolling her eyes. She’s not going to go into how her marriage basically fell apart because of her job, to her ex-boyfriend. Fundamentally, it just wasn’t going to work out when her ex-father-in-law was a super-villain. And she definitely wasn’t going to tell him that maybe he had been right to object at her wedding.

It’s the most traumatizing experience she’s ever had in the last ten years, and that included some of her drunken shenanigans in college when she thought she was going to die without him.

“Look Em, I just want you to be happy, and I don’t think Harry makes you happy like you say he does” he had said in front of all of her family and friends. And how dare he, how fucking dare he tell her what was best for her like he always did.

Her face burned, and a scream was building in her throat.

But she had said with all the calmness and hatred that she could muster, “I’m just as happy as I always said I was, and if you can’t see that, then I don’t think we’re the friends you thought we were. Maybe we shouldn’t even be friends at all.”

And now to see him in front of her again, knowing that he was right all along. God she could die from the humiliation.

She gestures for him to continue.

“I’m kind of mentoring the next generation of Spider-People, and we may or may not have gotten into some legal trouble,” Peter answers awkwardly, and she knows him well enough to know that he’s a splotchy red under the mask because he hates admitting that he messed up and needs help.

“Miles is getting sued for reckless endangerment,” Young Spider-Woman jumps in.

“Gwen!” Young Spider-Man cries out.

“Miles! We’re not supposed to say names!” Peter follows.

Oh my god, she thinks. She feels a headache coming on. “Alright. If everyone could just please follow the number one rule of this office, that would be great,” she says pointing to the large sign behind her saying:

ABSOLUTELY NO IDENTITY REVEALS

Now she’s going to have to get her brain scrubbed by Dr. Strange again, but maybe if she’s lucky he’ll scrub her memories of Peter too.

Before she can say anything else, Silk crashes into the room, and Michelle is pretty sure she broke her door. Dammit.

“Woah, MJ! You’re our new lawyer? Sick! Do you remember me? It’s me Cindy!” Silk says, going further than everyone else and removing her mask.

And what the hell — “Cindy? I haven’t seen you in ten years since you —“

“Bailed on our date —“

Peter interjects, “Wait what, you two were dating?”

“Not that it’s any of your business,” Michelle mumbles.

And Cindy continues, “— yeah well you know how hard it is to be in a relationship when you’ve been trapped in a bunker for ten years. Peter actually got me out! Isn’t that great?”

“Super.”

“So, you think we could pick it back up?”

“Cindy!” Peter yells.

Michelle coughs. “Uh sorry, I don’t date my clients.”

Cindy pouts. “Oh, well we can just find another lawyer can’t we?”

“We can’t afford another lawyer,” Peter hisses. “Now sit down!”

They settle in, or Gwen and Miles do but Peter and Cindy are standing in the opposite corners of the room, and Michelle asks, “So uh is Cindy another one of the next generation?”

“Uh y-yeah,” Peter stutters before being cut off by Cindy.

“Actually, we have this weird spider attraction where we can barely keep ourselves from having sex so we don’t really ever work with each other. But I really need a lawyer sooo,” Cindy says.

She shouldn’t have asked if she didn’t want to know, but her curiosity wins out, and she continues, “So how are you not just trying to rip each other’s clothes off right now?”

Cindy tilts her head, thinking through it. “I actually kind of want to rip off your clothes more?”

Peter looks like he wants to say something, though it’s hard to tell cause his mask is still on and she’s guessing by the way his head tilts, but he holds it in. It’s probably for the best, he would have ended up agreeing with Cindy anyways.

"And do you also need a lawyer for reckless endangerment?" Michelle asks.

Cindy shook her head. "Actually, the IRS is suing me for unpaid taxes over the last ten years I was in the bunker."

Michelle sighs. She hates tax law.

"Alright, lay it on me."

[bipadme]

the thrill of proximity

pairing: female detective (leila) x ava du mortain

prompt: wayhaven week day 4 - thrill

word count: 2213

warnings: none

tagging: @likemoonlights 💜, @otomefandomevents

read on ao3

The key to lying to a vampire is to be comfortable with telling only part of the truth.

Leila had discovered this the hard way, when she’d told Morgan that of course she didn’t know Felix had snuck his laundry into hers again, and then proceeded to spend the next week waving smoke out of her face and out of her office. Felix had cackled pitilessly at her plight, and asked how she hadn’t known better.

A great question.

Well, she’d learned eventually. She’d learned that telling the part of the truth and being okay with it was key to lying successfully. Or, rather, simply omitting uncomfortable truths for the good of the overprotective vampires of Unit Bravo. This was the mindset she went into when she agreed to have a “girl’s night” with Tina, and then told Ava she planned on having a “nice night watching a movie and listening to this new group Tina wants me to check out.”

All technically the truth.

Leila slings her bag over her shoulder and then gives the team leader a warm smile. The stiffness in Ava’s shoulders seems to have dissipated a bit and she nods curtly, “Acceptable. Considering the recent trapper threat--”

Leila scoffs, “Overgrown teenagers with the poor sense to try and accost me outside of the station?” The incident itself had been more annoying than anything else. A sidestep and a quick kick to the rear had sent one straight into a wall, the other downed by the taser she’d jammed into his gut. They hadn’t so much as landed a hit, that time, but it had been enough to make Ava scowl and demand full-time Leila-sitting duty for the better part of a week.

“Trappers are a credible threat, just because this group wasn’t prepared doesn’t mean the next won’t be,” the vampire pauses.

Then she takes a step closer, fear flashing in her eyes, “More and more people are finding out and I…” Her hand reaches out, hovering so close to the detective’s skin that Leila feels a thrill race straight to her heart until it pounds like she’s just been shocked. All she wants is to close that infinitesimal distance, to stop wondering whether Ava runs warm or cool, whether her hands are calloused from training or if she heals too quickly and her hands are soft, or whether her hands will clench a hair too tight in concern or be achingly gentle. She wants to close that distance, but she feels arrested by the intensity of Ava’s full attention. Instead of pushing forward she’s frozen and struck dumb.

Then the tension breaks like a rubber band stretched to its limit. 

The vampire seems to notice how close she is and jerks backwards a good three feet until the distance leaves Leila feeling cold and slightly shattered. She rocks back onto her heels, trying to find her equilibrium in the midst of a moment she is sure the other woman is feeling as well. She swallows past the tightness of her throat, clogged with disappointment.

God, I’m pathetic, she can’t help but think.

What had she expected? Why did she continuously let these moments haunt and torment her like she lived in a romance novel instead of reality? It was as if their orbits had destined them to pull close, but never touch. So instead they spent their days vacillating between being tantalizingly near and terribly far. How long could she be expected to keep this up? Why did she allow it?

With that thought, she releases the breath she’d been holding and tries for a smile. It feels brittle on her face, and it must look as much too, judging from the crease forming between Ava’s brows. A crease that soon smooths out into her usual stoic non-expression (or as the detective had privately taken to calling it, her repression face.)

The vampire opens her mouth, but she cuts her off before she can say anything that will sink her heart any further, “Have a nice evening, Ava.”

She turns on her heel and determinedly walks away with the weight of Ava’s stare on her shoulders. But she knows better than to let her posture droop so soon. She knows how to walk away and smile at the passing familiar faces with something approaching nonchalance, but she also knows that she hasn’t fooled the people she wants to fool the most.

Or herself.

Once she leaves the warehouse and is safely in her car, that’s when she lets her shoulders drop and passes a hand over her face in sheer exhaustion. That’s when she makes her decision.

I’m going to have a nice time with Tina, she swears to herself as she jerks her car into gear, and for one fucking night I’m not going to dwell Ava fucking du Mortain.

That, she hoped, was the truth.

(It wasn’t.)

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

By three in the morning, she has a distinctly pleasant buzz, a lighter wallet, a happily drunk Tina deposited safely at her apartment, and feet sore from dancing all attesting to a night well (and safely) spent. She and Tina had watched a movie, danced, drank, eaten greasy and cheap pizza, and allowed themselves to relax into the comfortable anonymity of the city. For an hour or two, Leila had even allowed herself to forget the team that thought she was safely ensconced in her living room.

Until the texts, and the calls, and the inevitable need to silence her phone to buy a little peace. Beyond all the remnants of a fun night, she has one text conversation reassuring Felix that she hasn’t been brutally murdered and/or kidnapped by ne’er-do-wells, sixteen missed calls from Unit Bravo, and what she’s sure is one furious team leader waiting for her at the apartment.

Leila steps out of the car with a shiver at the cool air on her skin and the near freezing asphalt under her bare feet. Immediately, her gaze is drawn upward to the silhouette in her apartment window, broad shoulders painting a severe figure against the warm light of her living room lamp.

It’s either a particularly stupid trapper, or Ava lying in wait with the lecture of a lifetime, and no matter what she would admit to out loud, Leila knows what she’s secretly hoping for.

Ava, even angry and lecturing, is always far more delightful to see than Leila is ever prepared for.

She takes her time meandering into the building, heels dangling from her fingers as she quietly makes her way through the dark hallways. Her front door isn’t even locked, and she takes a moment to drop her shoes next to the mat before dragging her gaze to the ice-cold fury of Ava’s eyes. 

She forces herself to look away and walk to the kitchen for a glass of water. She can feel Ava’s eyes on the unusual looseness of her stride, and Leila hopes she isn’t so tipsy that she looks foolish. 

Glass in hand, she takes a small sip before leaning forward onto the island and tilting her head in faux curiosity, “I told Felix I made it home safely. What brings you here?”

“I came in,” she says stiffly, “When I was on patrol and discovered that you weren’t in your apartment as you’d told me you would be. Where were you?”

It’s stated more as a demand than a question, and Leila purses her lips before speaking. “I did watch a movie and I did check out some new music,” she hesitates and bites the inside of her cheek, “While I was in the city with Tina.”

At that moment, the buzz notification of Leila’s phone fills the silence following her question, and Ava scoffs.

“Ah, so your phone does work. I was starting to wonder if it was unable to take calls,” the blonde sneers, the aristocratic lines of her face still unfairly beautiful. “Or is it simply my calls you can’t take?”

“I don’t take calls when I’m out with a friend, and I’ve been texting the group and Felix all night to check in,” Leila argues, her ire rising despite her intentions to stay calm. “Just because I didn’t deign to answer your questions--”

“I should not have bothered with texting at all! I should have tracked you down the moment you--”

Leila slaps her palms onto the counter with a glare, “For what? I was careful! I took an Uber there and back, I only had a few drinks, I stayed in sight of a group of people at all times--”

Ava pushes onward and circles the island to stand directly in front of the brunette as if proximity will win her the argument, “You come home, drunk--”

Leila scoffs, “I’m barely even tipsy—“

“In an Uber—“

“Oh, the horror!”

Ava’s scowl deepens, “Uber’s safety policies are far from—“

“Ava,” Leila raises a hand to stop her and rolls her eyes, “If you cite Uber’s safety policies, the most dangerous thing about this evening will be me jumping out of my window.”

Ava sucks in a breath on a hiss, her eyes narrowed, “Someone has to prioritize your safety, since you seem thoroughly determined to take every risk that crosses your path! Do you have any idea how easy it would be for someone to make you disappear from a crowded room?” 

Leila takes a step forward, and it’s a testament to Ava’s stubbornness and irritation that she refuses to back up despite how close they now stand. “Ava, I’m human. I could trip on Douglas’s stupid charging cable and crack my head wide open, tomorrow!” She scoffs and crosses her arms, “So excuse me if I’m not impressed by how easy it is for some ridiculously strong supernatural to kill me! Why should I be more scared of you or anyone else than I am of sharks and car crashes? Or even particularly aggressive geese?” She flings her arms into the air, “Are you going to nail down every vending machine in Wayhaven in fear that I’ll shake one and it’ll crush me? Where do you draw the line?” 

She crosses her arms again and watches with irritation as Ava takes a shaky breath and pinches her nose before speaking,  “You are the most impossibly infuriating human I have met in 900 years,” she seethes. 

“Well I’m not much impressed by you either,” Leila lies, her idiotic brain choosing this moment to notice how close their shared anger has brought them. How, in her pique, Ava had put a hand on the island next to her and drawn close until she loomed over Leila in a shiveringly satisfying way. She’s still irritated, sure, but it takes a backseat to the desire rushing through her and making her warmer than any alcohol could manage.

Determined to maintain her stance, she tilts her face up, jaw set stubbornly even though she only wants to kiss the sharpness out of Ava’s glare.

It’s just for show, she thinks bleakly. She can glare and bluster all night, but she can’t deny what she wants more than anything else. She can’t deny how frightened she is that admitting her feelings would drive Ava so far away from her that this closeness, even if antagonistic and charged with irritation, would be nothing but a distant dream. And fuck if she isn’t pathetic as hell, but she has no plans on giving this up any time soon.

Yes, she feels guilty for making Ava worry. Despite that, now the vampire is closer than she usually ever dares, her full attention pinned on the shorter woman in front of her until Leila’s every nerve sings with energy. Her warmth is magnetizing, and she feels sober in a way that is nothing short of electrifying. So, yes, she chases this feeling harder than any adrenaline junkie looking for a thrill, and damn if aggravating Ava didn’t always always manage to deliver it.

Her heart pounds, and Ava’s eyes flick a quick glance to her chest, before meeting the detective’s eyes once more, this time with a noticeable flush in her cheeks. And Leila… she can’t help herself. She’s sure she’s visibly trembling at this point, and still she can’t stop herself from swaying forward until her chest is barely brushing the other woman’s. If Ava won’t lean down and meet her halfway, that’s fine, she’ll just--

As her hand drifts forward to brace itself against the vampire’s hip, Ava whips away in a cold rush of air. Leila stumbles hard and catches herself on the counter with a curse. When she looks up, Ava is halfway out of the door, trying to school her stricken expression into something resembling neutrality. 

Good for her, Leila’s shoulders droop even as she straightens from her near fall, at least one of us can pretend this is okay.

“Next time,” Ava croaks, her voice betraying her, “You’ll take one of us.” She takes a breath that seems to steady her, and glares, “And you’ll answer your phone.” 

Then she’s out of reach once more.

The momentary thrill long gone, Leila sinks to the floor and drops her head into her hands.

And she plans on doing it all over again, if that’s what it takes.

[amessageonthewind]

The Difference Between Strength and Power

Word Count: 3308

Pairing: Naga!Connor x Rachel

Content Warnings: Mentions of verbal and emotional abuse, coarse language, mentions of killing and consumptions of souls, general unpleasant attitude from Connor.

Based on a dropped rp thread with one of my partners on my rp blog and inspired by Netflix Castlevania Season 4.

            It had been a few days since the elderly gorgon woman made their situation direr. That she laid the true stakes before them, stipulating that without the other, disaster would befall the village. If the detective were to be slain by outside forces, the naga would be captured and the village pillaged and exterminated and everything plundered and looted. If Connor killed her or incited her wrath that would lead her to try to fight him in a battle she couldn’t win, the curse would claim her as a host and would destroy everything in the village and the naga’s own mind. Or at least what was left of it. And if Connor was taken from the village, they would not be able to stop the onslaught from the invaders that encroached on that territory.

            So, Connor was forced to be more patient with her. Kinder. She knew it was false. She knew that he was just behaving, but it was better than the constant verbal and emotional abuse he would unfairly barrage her with. And she, in-turn, would still be patient and empathetic towards him. Even if he was still rather unpleasant and she made that fact very clear. She wasn’t having his nonsense, especially with their being forced to work together.

            While he initially rejected her offer to attend to the large sapphire snake god, the marble-white gorgon reminded him that they had to work together and that that meant they needed to begin actually spending time together. When he pointed out that it was the breeding season, which meant he was particularly volatile, she retorted that that was none of her concern. After all, it was his fault that it was so volatile, since he insisted on rejecting his base naga needs to lounge around for three days at a time and drink himself into a slumbering stupor.

            So, Rachel tended to him every day since. She performed tasks for him around his cenote, with the irritable god keeping a close eye on her.

            And, naturally, her curiosity got the better of her. “Why do you consume souls?” She asked him one day, whilst shining some of the weapons he had collected in his hoard. His long tail cascaded on practically every crevice it could, the iridescent scales making it look like the cave opening was filled with auroras. He looked rather bored watching her work, swirling a glass of wine in his hand as his amber eyes glittered with annoyance. “You’ve already got enough power and strength to last for lifetimes. What’s the point of continuously doing it, especially if you know that the more souls you consume, the worse your mental state will be?”

            Glaring at her, his tail tip began to lash quietly. “I don’t have to answer such insolent questions, you witless maggot.”

            “You should if you actually care about preventing your own worst aspects from destroying the things you value.” Rachel pointed out, clearly unfazed by his foul attitude at this point. “People can accommodate much better if you make it clear what actually needs to be accommodated and why. And at least if people are properly informed, it doesn’t invite further questions. Also, withholding that information is extremely irresponsible on your part.”

            Scoffing, Connor continued to scowl at the small human. “You still know nothing, foolish human.”

            “And whose fault is that?” Rachel asked, his insults having no effect on her.

            “Yours.” He retorted, his anger billowing off him like an angry storm cloud as his tail began coiling closer to him, retracting into himself. “You constantly speak as though you have something of value to say, yet when you are told something, you fail to listen to it. You hear only to respond. You don’t actually listen to learn.”

            “Then give me something actually helpful to learn instead of berating me for not knowing.” The detective hissed, getting fed up with his immature and entitled behaviour. “It’s not fair that you blame me for not knowing things when you’re the one who withholds that information from me. If I didn’t know any better, I’d say that you’re doing that on purpose just so you can have an excuse to be angry. Which, speaking of, you should probably go hunt, soon.”

            Connor still couldn’t believe the audacity of this woman. She was doing him a service and she still acted as though she was in a position to tell him what to do. To give him, the god and guardian deity of this place for centuries, orders as though he were stupid. “Stop telling me what to do, foolish human.”

            “I will when you stop making the worst decisions possible for your self-care when you’re not in a position where it’s wise for you to neglect them.” Rachel deflected easily. She just as much had no patience for his nonsense when there was much more at stake here than his easily bruised ego. “The entire village is in danger because of your insistence on maintaining self-destructive habits. You make a big deal out of me pushing you to such points and putting the village in danger, but it is not my responsibility to coddle your bad habits. It’s yours to fix them. You’re the one in the position of power and it’s unfair to place the responsibility in the hands of those without that power. And the thing is, your problems have very easy fixes.”

            Every response only made him angrier, but even when shouting at her, she showed no fear. And while that did not help his ire, he quickly learned that responding to the woman with anger would not yield the results he ultimately wanted. So, begrudgingly and with what felt like a searing hot knife cutting through his pride, he relented. “Such as…?”

            “Hunting.” Rachel replied easily with a cocked brow, putting away a sword and moving on to what looked like some sort of spiked club. “I know you’ve got plenty of good food prepared so lovingly for you, but hunting is more than just for food. It’s also for enrichment. It’s mentally and physically stimulating and engaging. Even housecats, who don’t need to hunt for their food, need their hunting instincts stimulated through play or they become violent and destructive to their environment and the people around them. I suspect that a lot of your pent-up anger is made worse when you drink yourself into lethargy. You’re not properly stimulating yourself in the way you actually need. There’s a reason creatures of all kinds get angry and irritable when left alone for long periods of time with nothing to do and nothing to stimulate them. Enrichment is vitally important for one’s mental health.”

            Looking at Connor, she fixed him with a stern look. “I know you hate being compared to humans, but there is an irony in that the more you abstain from the aspects of yourself that make you inhuman, the more of your humanity you sacrifice. And the worse you end up becoming. Do you see my point?”

            He didn’t want to. The naga didn’t want to admit that the days when he’d spend laying around in the sun, there was an unbearable prickle under his scales. Impatience and boredom eating away at him like beetles and termites to wood. It was both his body’s need for a mate and the growing bristling that would just build and build until he emerged from his cenote. And as much as he didn’t want to take pleasure in it, devouring the assassin that entered their village was as close to relief as he’d been able to get.

            Perhaps…she had a point. Not that he would admit it verbally.

            Instead, he decided to answer her earlier question. Just to make her stop questioning him, though Connor was certain she would still find something to criticize him over. “Each soul grants me strength.” He answered, garnering Rachel’s full attention as she regarded him, pausing her task to take in his words. “My powers grow stronger the more I consume. Which allows me to maintain the safety of the village and its strength.”

            Tilting her head at him, she had about a dozen more questions. “How many souls have you consumed?”

            “Countless.” Connor replied. “By the hundreds of thousands, if I were to make an educated guess.”

            That…was a lot. “Surely that’s more than enough.” She figured. “Especially if each soul just makes your mental health worse. Surely you can just…kill people without eating their souls. It doesn’t really sound worth doing, at this point. Does your power diminish if you don’t?”

            Once again, the sapphire naga found himself irritated by her questioning. The fact that she would dare question him at all was a disrespect most vile. But, as the Pool of Truth most blatantly showed him, he needed to keep himself from just killing her on the spot. But if it would get her to drop the topic, he’d comply. For now. “I’m not keen on finding out.”

            Seemed this wasn’t a good enough answer for her. “You could always pay the gorgon a visit and ask the Pool of Truth for the answer to that.”

            That made him bristle once more. “I don’t need to have the answer for how my own body and mind works. I’m only tolerating you and that hag because she has powers I cannot compete with in my own fucking territory and if I kill you, then you will destroy everything I have ever worked to build.” He leaned in close, leering down at her with his bright eyes that held much contempt for her. Not that she cared. Like he said, there was little he could do to her now that he knew what was at stake. “Do you have any idea how it feels to be made powerless where you should feel strong?”

            “Yes.” Rachel responded without a second’s hesitation. “I do know how that feels. And if you actually care, then you should stop trying to make others feel that same way if you hate how it feels, yourself.”

            Again with giving him orders. But at this point, he was too tired to argue further with her. With a huff, he slithered away from her and slumped over another rock as he watched her continue to clean and polish his weapons. He wouldn’t give her the satisfaction of victory over him.

            After a moment’s silence, the woman’s voice broke through it once more to ask him another question. “Is that why you do it?” She asked him, glancing over at him with her dark eyes. “So you can feel strong when the world around you tries to make you feel weak? Is that it?”

            “I am strong.” Connor retorted, insulted that she would dare insinuate that he was weak. “Others who try to dethrone or slay me learn very quickly of that. That I am strength itself. That I embody strength that they cannot hope to achieve.”

            “Then why are you so quick to anger if you’re so secure in that?” Rachel asked him. “Anger comes from a place of caring a lot about something. It’s passion derived from feeling slighted because it comes from a place that’s personal. It’s something you care about deeply and that’s why it makes you angry. That’s where slight comes from. If you’re really so secure in your strength that has no equal, then why do you care so much about who knows it? Why do you care so much about the paltry opinions of humans who, at least in your view, can never be your equals? If that’s really what you believe, then in theory, none of it should matter. It shouldn’t even be worth anything other than simple dismissal, if it means that little.”

            Once again, Rachel really had no concern for holding her tongue. If she wasn’t in the position she was in, he would’ve gladly cut out her own tongue before flaying her alive and leaving her to rot where the animals could devour her. But he was not willing to condemn his people to a fate worse than death because of an angry spiteful gorgon his father once battled and defiled.

            So, through gritted teeth as his pride was wounded more and more, he answered. “Nagas are…prideful. We have every reason to be.” He explained, though the venom behind his words did not go unnoticed. It was clear how much being forced to practice humility was taking out of him. “We are powerful gods who inspire fear and wisdom in humans. There’s a reason we are worshipped as much as we are. We naturally want to be treated with that reverence and don’t react well when it isn’t given to us.”

            “Ah, I see.” Rachel said, though her tone was bored. “So, you’re used to being treated with utmost reverence in awe of your strength. And when you don’t get it, you feel wronged and thus you’re angry. And in your mind, those who can’t show you the respect you deserve shouldn’t get to exist at all. After all, for you it’s natural to be revered and worshipped. So, if someone doesn’t give you that, it must be their fault and not yours because that’s the natural order of things. That there’s something wrong with them and not you because that goes against the way things should be. Is that it?”

            Her phrasing and tone was not appreciated. While she seemed to understand the nucleus as to his ideology and nature as a naga, she said it with derision. As though she were speaking to a spoiled brat who needed to be knocked down from their pedestal. Something Connor hated more than anything.

            But even if she did not like that, she seemed to understand. “In a sense, yes…” He relented, growing more and more tired of this exhausting and unsavoury conversation. “We are immortal. There is nothing that can kill us. We also don’t feel fear and the only way to kill a naga is to strike their heart at the moment when they do feel fear. Otherwise, we live forever.” Of course, there was another way, but that wasn’t relevant information for the human to know at this point. Or ever, realistically speaking. “As such, we strive to maintain the natural order of things. While we understand that the world around us changes in chaotic ways, we do not. And so, we maintain this in everything that we govern. A natural order that must not be disturbed. Therefore, we don’t react well when that order is threatened.” For a moment, he paused to think, letting out a breath as he tried to think of a way to put all these ideologies into a simple expression. “It’s…the naga’s virtue. We want everything to remain the same. To remain stable.”

            At that, Rachel scoffed and rolled her eyes. “Ah, ‘the naga’s virtue,’ fucking Hell…” She grumbled, clearly not taking that notion very seriously. “There’s an act of philosophical acrobatics for the ages.”

            “Oh, would you silence with your incessant need to be clever for once, you foolish human?” Connor snapped, though the volume in his voice did not change. More irritated than angry as he was putting more effort into trying to explain himself than in maintaining his anger. “You humans spend decades wandering and bumbling around and you call that a life. We have to take a longer view. So, we want stability.”

            As per usual, the detective was unaffected by his poor attitude. Raising an eyebrow, she paused while she was polishing the weapon she was currently working on. “And you’re saying you have that? That you have had that?”

            Blinking at her for a moment, the scaled deity shifted positions idly as he continued to speak. “I do.” He replied, easily. Of course he had stability. His village has had stability separated from the rest of the world’s chaos thanks to him. The fact that she would even question that was ludicrous, but for now, he let it go. “As this land’s protector, I have strength and I have always had strength. The strength to enforce a stable environment.” He paused, searching for the right way to explain his position. “Strength can fight wars, yes. But it can also build a shelter.” He then fixed her with an inquisitive look in his reptile-like eyes. “Are you following me?”

            “Just wandering and bumbling around.” Rachel replied, with a little bit of good humour to lighten the mood just the slightest bit. “Smaller shapes are better than big ones, Connor. And from what I understand about nagas, they typically want more than just weatherproof shelters.”

            “But it all comes from that virtue, don’t you see?” The naga replied back with, tilting his head at her with narrowed eyes.

            At that, Rachel shook her head. Seemed she had a much different take on things than he did. “Strength and power are different.” She deflected once more. “You claim to want strength. To maintain strength. To embody strength. But what you seek and consume is power. You consolidate and hold power. You embody power.”

            And there she went, assuming things about him once more. But he was honestly too tired to be angry with her. This entire exchange had exhausted him and he just wanted it to be over. “That was what my father did. What my father wanted.” He said, looking down at the stray bits of gold, armour, and weaponry strewn about on the ground before him. The naga reached down to fiddle at one of his coins, turning it over with his claws and more or less just moving it around out of boredom. “Which is…what ultimately ruined my life.”

            Looking down at his unfinished wine glass, Connor took another sip from it, looking at his own reflection. A mirror opposite from his father. His father, pearlescent evil and himself iridescent midnight that struck him down and took his place and made a home out of what was once Hell on Earth. And it all came from the desire for power. It never seemed to be enough for his father. He never seemed satisfied. “Power…” The sapphire naga hissed, bitterness coating the syllables. “Big, all-encompassing, projected power…is something else. It lends you more might, but it doesn’t have the utilities of strength. It lays eggs in you and it becomes a parasite you have to feed. Power does nothing but eat.”

            Connor continued to stare down into his glass of wine, but Rachel stared at the naga wide-eyed. A realization was forming in her mind as she stared absolutely speechless, putting a hand to her mouth as pieces started to put themselves together. Conclusions were being drawn, and the next sentence she would speak would have the weight of worlds behind them.

            “Like a naga…?”

            Only then did Connor look her directly in the eye. For a moment, and a moment alone, they were perfect mirrors of each other as the realization of his very nature, his very sense of self, was upended and recontextualized. Put in a new light that neither of them had been previously able to put to words. Both in the short time that the detective had known him and the centuries that Connor had been alive.

            Looking back down at his glass of wine, the scowl on Connor’s face was evident. He wasn’t just angry. Not at her. He was just…angry. In the cold, bitter, and heavy way that one was angry when their worldview was pulled out from beneath them.

            “Like…a naga.” He repeated, taking one last drink from his wine glass before his grip tightened on it and the glass shattered against the cave wall. He didn’t raise his voice.

            In fact, the detective was certain that that was the quietest she’d ever heard him speak.

[ffxiv-ariavitali]

VIII: Pleasure

On the topic of adventure: Aria Vitali, Aymeric de Borel, Edmont de Fortemps, Stryder Vitali and Rayne ‘Echoes’ Cowen

1060 words

AO3 ver.

❅ ❅ ❅

"I have returned successful!"

Aymeric peered up from where he was sitting in the den of the Fortemps manor. Not only he, but Lord Edmont, Lord Stryder and Master Echoes besides. They all stared at the woman curiously as she entered the room to join them. She was outfitted with her lance and in her Ishgardian wear, though it was slightly dirtied to indicate a struggle.

Despite this, the smile that she had on her face was triumphant, a face of pride in whatever it was that she accomplished.

"Welcome home, Ia," her brother, Stryder, greeted her as he sipped from his coffee. His cheerful nonchalance caught the lord commander off-guard, but he supposed it couldn't be helped. After all, he had grown up with the woman and was exposed to her eccentric nature her entire life.

The pair of amethyst eyes met and Aria's brow raised in mild surprise. "Oh, dear brother, you are here!"

"Indeed, I am," he answered with a laugh. "You seem to be in an awfully good mood. I take it that you had a good outing?"

With the way her lips curled into a grin, the answer to the question was obvious. Like a child that had emerged victorious in a game, she had placed her hands on either side of her waist and began laughing theatrically.

"Aye, dear brother!" she exclaimed then peered over her shoulder towards the manservants that were on standby near the wall.

In response, they had nodded and left the room for but a moment before returning with rather large sacks in their arms of varying sizes. Though, with the largest ones, the sound of jingles could be heard akin to the sound of coins ringing against each other. Soon enough, there was a pile of around twenty large sacks bunched together and five medium sacks that didn't appear to be nearly as heavy to carry.

"What is all this then?" Lord Edmont asked.

Echoes was the first to step forward to inspect the sacks, glancing towards his charge for permission beforehand. Once he peered inside one of the large sacks, he saw an exorbitant amount of gil piled on top of each other.

"Ah, it would seem my lady has returned from a treasure hunt," the man explained, revealing the contents to everyone else.

As the gentlemen expressed their complete shock, the woman cheered loudly with approval, raising her hands to the ceiling as if she was the ring leader in a circus presenting the next act.

"Ta-da! That is correct! This is the haul from my latest excursion with my raiding party!"

While Aymeric and Lord Edmont could only gape at the woman, Stryder inclined his head in curiosity.

"What is the total, Sister?" he asked. Aria tilted her head innocently. "Around seven hundred and fifty thousand, if you are to include the leather, powder, materia and clusters in the smaller bags." Stryder hummed in response, markedly impressed as he crossed his arms over his chest. "And what would you like for me to do with the contents? Put it in your account?" Aria waggled her finger in front of her brother before she pointed at Aymeric. "I want to donate the resources to the Restoration effort!"

Aymeric almost fainted at the woman's words and immediately stood to cross the space between the two. He placed his hands on her shoulders and she only continued to smile pleasantly towards him.

"My love, are you sure about this?" he asked. "'Tis quite generous of you and by no means am I undermining your efforts whatsoever, but the amount you are wishing to donate is almost too generous! Would you not wish to withhold some in the case of a financial crisis?"

Aria blinked, tilting her head in confusion. "...But I have enough money." Aria's brows crinkled worriedly before her gaze drifted to Stryder's. "That is...I do have enough money, correct?"

Stryder nodded reassuringly. "Indeed, Sister. Your account remains healthy, the sum of your assets totaling around twenty-three million gil."

From the corner of his eye, Stryder was able to see Aymeric and Lord Edmont almost double over at the number, but his sister looked rather unsatisfied.

"Oh, I knew I forgot to mention something," she stated as she crossed her arms over her chest. "I had withdrawn around five hundred thousand gil the other night so I may give some additional funding to the Doman Enclave. Kozakura was worried that they would be under the budget this month, so I sent an anonymous donation."

Echoes shrugged his shoulders helplessly. "Were you, at least, present to see her reaction, my lady?"

Aria only winked in his direction before they laughed merrily and began organizing the haul. Aymeric, in turn, gave up at how laid back his love was as he returned to his original seat across from Stryder. The elder Vitali only chuckled softly as he took another sip of his coffee.

"How do you handle such a wily sister, Lord Stryder?" Aymeric grumbled in an uncharacteristically childish way that was still rather endearing. Stryder hummed. "Simple—I do not." Lord Edmont raised his brows. "But, Stryder—" Stryder smiled in his direction and shook his head. "I do not wish to deny her the experience, Father. She takes utmost pleasure in the adventure, oft dragging her raiding party along when she is of the mood. The treasures themselves obtained afterwards mean rather little."

Aymeric couldn't help, but pinch the bridge of his nose as a result of the oncoming headache he seemed to be obtaining.

"I had heard stories of Adventurers gaining riches beyond the fondest of dreams," he mused. "I never knew that such a thing was actually true of Ia." "The reason for that is also simple," Stryder commented, a placid smile on his face though his eyes hinted something akin to haunted exhaustion. "And that is?" Stryder glanced towards Aymeric with a helpless shrug. "...She is blessed by the gods of fortune when it comes to drawing lots."

Echoes laughed as he approached them to return by the elder Vitali's side.

"Indeed, she is," the man chimed in. "After all, she had managed to win your heart, Ser Aymeric." "What is THAT supposed to mean?!" the woman shouted from where she was.

Despite the ire of the Warrior of Light, the room was filled with pleasant warmth.

[soybeantree]

a baby changes everything

pairing: do kyungsoo x (reader)

genre/warning: artificial insemination, drama

word count: 2.3k+

description:  when you decided to have a baby, you knew everything would change, but this is not what you expected...

a/n: november installment of our ‘trying to write a kyungsoo story for every month that he is gone’ series.

parts: o1 | o2

Cars splash through puddles as they whiz down the streets. Rain continues to patter down on the bus stops awning. Resting your hand on your stomach you attempt to quell your little one’s movements with a soft whisper. He continues to push against his boundaries, ready to enter the world or perhaps eager to protect his mother. Your nerves have much to do with his unease. Your internal whispering have had the same affect on you as it did on him. There is no calming your nerves.

Your bus arrives, and with a deep breath, you push yourself up and board. A thirty minute commute stretches between you and the upcoming encounter. It drags on, while simultaneously rushing ahead. You’re not ready for the meeting, but neither would you be given more time. They gave you a week to come to a decision, even though you knew your answer the day they asked. Your son is your son, and you will fight to keep him.

The first day you met your son’s father was the day his family requested you relinquish to them your rights to your unborn son. He sat silently at the end of a long boardroom table, his eyes fixed on something beyond the room’s windows. His lawyers and secretary were anything but. They chattered incessantly and at a speed which left you confused and irritated. Eventually, you tuned them out as your focus rested on your sperm donor. He was rich, presumably well-educated, and based on the current diatribe due to become the CEO of his family’s company. The question which circulated most through your head was “why?”. 

Why would someone like him go to a sperm bank? Clearly not for money. Perhaps treatment for an illness. Was he saving it for some future spouse? Were you given his sperm by accident?

In the end, why didn’t matter. What mattered was that your son was his son, and his family wanted his son. Your son was to be his heir and the heir to their company. You would become his surrogate, relinquishing all legal rights to him.

At the end of the meeting, they offered you a contract which outlined your duties for the remainder of your pregnancy and beyond. It included a gag order and the information regarding your compensation. They gave you a week to decide. As you prepared to leave, they delicately advised what would happen should you reject the offer. They had the means and the legal team to ensure your son ended up where he belonged, and when they succeeded you would end up desolate and destitute. The world passes by in a blur of gray. Water droplets race down the bus windows, and you watch them, betting on which will win. The distraction fails, so you stop. Your hand returns to your stomach, and this time you hum instead of whisper.

Telling your family you were going to undergo artificial insemination had released chaos. Your mother went silent, but her judgment was tangible. Your sisters vocalized their disapproval. You were still so young. You had plenty of time to find a guy and get married.

Telling your co-workers had started the gossip mill. Their disapproval stemmed from the opposite direction. You were a successful career woman, steadily climbing the corporate ladder. A child would complicate your life, and a woman didn’t need to have a baby to be complete.

You smiled politely and thanked everyone for their concern. On the day of your insemination appointment, you arrived early and prayed for success. A month later you received the wonderful news.

The comments petered out after you shared the news. The disapproval remained in their eyes though. You continued to smile politely as you planned for your new life.

Everything was going to plan which should have been a red flag that something would go wrong. Early in your third trimester after all your baby-showers and after you had completed your baby’s room, you received a visitor at work. His business card identified him as a legal representative of EXO Corporation, a corporation known the whole world over. You doubted the validity of his claim. Your employer had no connection with EXO Corporation, and your only personal connection came via the products you buy from their subsidiaries.

The man assured you he was indeed a part of their legal team and requested to arrange a meeting with you and the corporations president. You had snorted, the reaction involuntary but accurate. With a clipped smile, he informed you that they would send a car to pick you up the coming Saturday.

A car had arrived that Saturday, a week ago. It took you to the meeting which has haunted you and robbed you of sleep. This Saturday, you left before a car arrived.

The bus pulls up to your stop. You whisper a thank you to the driver as you descend the stairs. The EXO building looms over you, leaving you in its shadow. A chill shakes your shoulders. Raising your umbrella, you square the and march forward.

“Ms. Y/L/N.” You skitter to a stop and glance around for the source of your name. Do Kyungsoo stands beside a sleek black car, reminiscent of the one which came for you. From beneath his umbrella, he raises a hand in greeting, and you unconsciously mimic the gesture. Snapping your hand to your side, you politely nod before resuming your march. Ire burns in your stomach, but you smother it with reason. You need to be clear headed for the coming battle.

Arriving at the elevator, you tuck your umbrella in your purse and wait in vain for the doors to open before he comes. Kyungsoo takes the spot next to you, but the crowd of workers inhibits conversation. You board and ensure the crowd separates you. As the elevator ascends, the workers exit on their floors until only you two remain.

“I had hoped to speak with you before today’s meeting.” And he had tried. Every day at exactly 5PM, he would call, and after going to voice mail, he would send the same text. If you are available today, I would like to speak with you. “We still have a few minutes before the meeting. I intend to grab some coffee. We have water and juice.”

“I’m fine.” You decline with a polite smile. “I’d prefer to keep my time here brief.” The elevator dings, and the doors open. Kyungsoo motions for you to exit. He falls into step beside you and opens the door to the boardroom. Your upbringing forces a ‘thank you’ from your lips.

While you and Kyungsoo may be early, the legal team is earlier. They already sit around the table, vultures ready to pounce. When Kyungsoo enters, they stand and show their respect. He returns the greeting and situates himself at the head of the table. The legal team sits and motions for you to do the same.

You remain standing and meet their eyes. “Thank you, but there’s no need. I’m not selling you my baby.” Anger burns in your chest as you utter the vulgar response.

The head of the legal team smiles with all the sincerity of a fox. “Ms. Y/L/N, that’s a rather crude way of looking at this situation. We are merely compensating you for your services.”

“I don’t need compensation because I haven’t provided any services to your president or this company. I chose to have a baby. I chose the sperm from the options given to me. I chose to be inseminated. This baby,” you rest your hand on your womb, “is my baby. As we have no further business, I will be going. Goodbye.” You nod to them before exiting the boardroom. Indignation and threats fly at your back, but as the door closes behind you, they fade into silence.

Once more setting your hand on your belly, you feel peace. Your son has finally settled down to sleep.

In the nursery, you sit in the rocking chair you spent weeks agonizing over. Relaxing into its plush cushions, you commend yourself for your good decision. You have no regrets regarding your son, but certain decisions weigh heavier on your mind. The EXO corporation has maintained silence since you gave your decision, but their threats linger. If they decide to pursue legal action, you may lose your son.

The door buzzer breaks you from your revere. The rocking chair cushions are easy to sink into but difficult to climb out of. After much struggle, you free yourself. Eying the chair, you second guess your decision. The buzzer sounds again, and you table that thought for later.

Staring at the door cam screen sends fear winding through your veins. Kyungsoo’s face stares at you. He reaches for the buzzer again, but you open the door before he can push it. Body blocking entrance, you meet his eyes. He offers a smile which you refuse to return. With a nod, he pulls his hand from behind his back to reveal a take-away bag from your favorite restaurant. Your eyes narrow as you inch the door closed.

Clearing his throat, he lowers the bag. “I probably should have gotten something generic and not from the background check we did.”

“Probably.”

“It’s a peace offering. I was hoping we could talk. If not, the food is still yours.” He extends the bag, the smell of the food wafting forward. Your stomach growls, and your son nudges you. With a sigh, you grab the bag, keeping your fingers far from his. His arm returns to his side as he awaits your decision. Curiosity and fear mingle in your mind. Stepping back, you open the door wide.

You leave him in the entryway as you head to the kitchen. He enters as you finish transitioning the food from the container to a plate. The bag only contained one portion of your favorite dish. You settle at the table with your food. He takes up position in the kitchen’s center, hands clasped behind his back.

“I wanted to let you know that my corporation will not be suing you for custody. I have told them that we will respect your decision.” He begins as you chew on your first bite. Relief floods you as tears prick your eyes. Swallowing, you nod in acknowledgment but keep your attention on your food. “I also wanted to apologize.” Your next bite lodges in your throat as your knuckles whiten around your fork. Kyungsoo silences.

“Continue.” You offer before standing up and heading to the cupboard to grab a glass.

“I’m sorry for the way my company and my family treated you.” You pull a water pitcher from the fridge. “I’m also sorry for allowing them to harass you, my reasons for doing so were cruel.”

“Because you wanted to steal my son.” Your voice remains steady despite the roiling in your stomach. You set the pitcher beside your glass. Your hands are shaking too badly to pour.

“Because I didn’t trust you.”

“Trust me?!” Your eyes flash to him, your hands balling into fists on the counter top

He maintains your gaze. “I had concerns that you had chosen my sperm on purpose and intended to use the baby to exhort money from me. After meeting you and seeing your love for your son, I put my concerns to rest.”

Anger still burns inside, but you release your fists and pick the pitcher back up. You guzzle the first glass and pour yourself another. This one you hold in your hand, swirling it and watching the ripples. “Is that all?”

"No." You glance back up. He continues to stand in the middle of your kitchen, his attention fully on you. "I also came to ask you to consider allowing me to be a part of my son's life."

“Why?” The word snaps out.

“Because he is my son, and the only child I will have.”

“What?” You breath the question as you set your glass back on the counter.

“Last year, I was in an accident.” The tabloids had covered it ad nauseam. “What was left out of the news report was that the accident left me infertile. Information which could be detrimental to the corporation.”

“Did they have you save your sperm in case of something like this?” The “whys” you pondered resurface as you take your glass and return to the table.

A smile cracks his face, and he chuckles. “No. That was a lucky happenstance.” Curiosity tingles the tip of your tongue, but you seal your lips. The smile continues to play on Kyungsoo’s lips. He motions to the chair across from you, and you nod. As he sits, he continues. “After high school, I went through what my parents call my rebellious stage.” You snort around a bite, pieces of food flying to the table. Covering your mouth, you clear your throat and attempt to regain your composure. With him sitting across from you in a perfectly tailored three piece suit, you find it hard to imagine him going through a rebellious stage. He shakes off your reaction. “I ran away from home, lived on friend’s couches, worked odd jobs. At one point, I became desperate for cash, and my friend suggested selling my sperm. Any option was better than swallowing my pride and crawling back to my parents.

“After the accident when my parents and the board began to worry about the future of the company, I told them about the sperm. They went to the bank, but-” He shrugs. You know the rest of the story.

Running your thumb through the condensation on the glass, you contemplate his story and his request. “If I say, ‘no’?”

“I will respect your decision, but will request that if my son ever wants a relationship with me, you will allow it.”

“If I say, ‘yes’?”

“I will respect the boundaries you put in place.” You settle your hands in your lap and meet his gaze once again. You search beneath his calm demeanor and find the flicker of hope. 

“You know a lot about me.” He swallows but nods. “May I get to know you better before I decide?” The hope brightens, and he nods again.

[exoarcturus9]

Indebted 3/?

Slow-burn mirage/caustic fic.

Warning: Mentions of blood and gore

(Part One | Part Two)

—– 

Mirage didn’t learn whether or not Caustic had survived long enough to get retrieved until hours after he’d been loaded onto the dropship himself, his own injuries treated, suffering through the celebrations of the victors. Much more obnoxious when you weren’t the one celebrating. Oh well. Heading back to his own room to nurse his bruised ego – and berate his short-comings as per routine – he spotted the trapper hunched over his workbench once more. There was no glass vessels or instruments this time, just a scattering of notebooks, sheets of paper, and pens. He was serious about taking notes... He was dressed more casually too – no heavy protective gear – just a loose t-shirt and slacks. Bandages crossed his arms and dotted his neck and what little of his chest was visible. Undoubtedly, there were more than a few stitches hiding under there as well.

This time Mirage couldn’t help but dip into the quiet room, lingering in the doorway with poorly veiled curiosity. Seeing the man alive chased the thoughts of self-deprecation from his mind. He could feel a flutter of nerves in his stomach, but he wasn’t about to let the trapper scare him. Not now. It was a rare sight to see the scientist in ‘civilian’ clothes – even his gas mask was stacked neatly atop the rest of his equipment. Caustic seemed more... vulnerable now. As Mirage entered the room, the trapper had glanced up from his work, his eyes shining with a curiosity of his own.

“Well, well, well, someone looks like they’re on the mend,” Mirage noted with an easy smile, giving Caustic an appraising once-over. The man looked pretty good – considering the condition he’d last seen him in. Looks good in other ways too... In his more relaxed attire, it was easier to see just how the trapper managed to be such a force to be reckoned with in the ring. “What can I say, I am a miracle-worker.”

Without his mask, Caustic’s expression was easier to read, but still not easy to decipher. His eyes narrowed, but his mouth twitched into a faint, suppressed smile. Was he happy to see him? Putting down his pen, he rose to his feet stiffly, giving out a little hiss as he moved his bandaged limbs. Passing under the dim light of the lab, Mirage could see the mosaic of purple-blue bruises spreading out from beneath the white cloth. The medical crew on the massive carrier were some of the best, but some things would always take time to heal.

“Elliott Witt, I could count on one hand the number of competitors I’ve met as foolish – as wantonly reckless – as you,” The trapper approached slowly, his hand jerking up to touch gingerly at his abdomen. His words were sharp – angry. Mirage felt his stomach sink, but as Caustic stepped closer, his expression softened and he let out a defeated sigh. There – again – was the ghost of a smile on his lips. “But here we are, your gamble paid off. I find myself in your debt again.”

“Now that’s what I like to hear,” Mirage joked with a chuckle, resting a hand gently on the trapper’s less bandaged shoulder. Caustic glanced at the offending arm, but did not shrug it off, his eyes returning to Mirage’s face after a beat. His cheeks hurt from the grin that had spread across his face. Probably look like an idiot... “I’ll have to keep that in mind.”

“I hope you don’t expect me to start breaking rules for you in future matches,” Caustic explained, folding his arms across his chest and eyeing Mirage suspiciously. “Your help was appreciated, but I’m not going to risk drawing the Syndicate’s ire for your sake.”

“Whaaat? No no no, that’s not what I’m getting at. Come on, I can win these matches blindfolded or with a hand tied behind my back or... uh maybe just ignore the fact I just lost...” The thought of cheating hadn’t even crossed his mind. Mirage felt his cheeks flush slightly – that was a little naive. “Look I like this comar-... camra-... camaraderie...? Y’know this little team-up we got going here. And – aha – anything that makes you less likely to stab me in the back is just really, really great – for me... you know...”

Caustic had to stifle a laugh at that. The smile that broke his usually grim expression almost made Mirage do a double-take. It felt like seeing a solar eclipse. From his experience, when the trapper smiled it meant someone was getting eviscerated or someone set off one of his traps or some other disastrous event. This... was different.

“Why would I bother with such pointless subterfuge? The belly of an animal is where it is most vulnerable,” Caustic’s eyes flashed with amusement as he mimed plunging a knife into Mirage’s stomach, making the younger man flinch instinctively. “But you were correct, we do make a pretty good team.”

“See and here I was thinking this was going so well. Almost got through a whole conversation without an implicit threat... That would have been just really... peachy,” Mirage put his hands on his hips, pouting jokingly. His heart had skipped a beat when the injured man had thrust his arm forward. Careful, right? But the trapper was still smiling slightly and he couldn’t help but smile back. Caustic’s joke reminded him of another reason he had poked his head into the lab in the first place. “Speaking of our squishy underbellies, how’re you uh, holding up? Must have been a lot of stitches, y’know, for your guts.”

“The medical team did their best to clean it up and fix my admittedly sloppy work, but it may be some time before the scar fades,” Caustic replied almost sheepishly, lifting his shirt to reveal the echo of his grisly experience in the arena. The wound – now closed with heavy surgical stitches – had split his abdomen just below his ribs. A thick layer of slightly stained gauze covered most of it, but in the gaps Mirage could see the raised and discoloured skin of the partially healed tear.

“Wow – I mean, yeah it looks better than it did, but... Geez, you’re not the only one getting sloppy. Maybe you should hit up Ajay for a second opinion...” He mused as he leaned forward slightly, one hand on his chin. He could feel bile rise in his throat as he recalled the sight of Caustic’s organs spilling out onto the brilliant yellow vinyl of his protective suit. Along one side of his abdomen – several inches from the mass of bandages – bruises formed faint tessellations of blue and purple and maroon. Without thinking, Mirage reached out, fingers just barely grazing the delicate patterns. His skin felt hot, burning even, under his touch.

“Don’t.” Caustic barked as he snatched Mirage’s hand away, reacting in a fraction of a second. Startled, the younger man glanced up at the trapper’s face, his stomach already knotted with embarrassment. What was he thinking? Caustic’s eyes were wide, his expression a mix of surprise and anger, his cheeks flushed beat red. When their eyes met, he glanced away and dropped Mirage’s hand, taking a step back. “It’s... still sore. I should return to the med bay to get the gauze changed actually...”

“I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have-” Mirage stuttered, trying to apologize. Caustic interrupted him with a gesture of his hand, shaking his head as he slipped past him, taking a few steps toward the doorway. In the light streaming into the room from the hall, his silhouette was imposing. The younger man felt his heart drop to his stomach. He’d fucked this up again. But as the trapper turned back toward him, he could still see the faint hint of pink in his cheeks and a softer expression on his face.

“Thank you for stopping by Elliott, but I should get this redressed,” The anger in his voice had cooled and as he said his name Mirage felt his heart give a little jump. “Don’t worry, even without the visual reminder of a scar, I’ll remember: I owe you.”

With that, Caustic slipped out of the room and disappeared down the hallway, leaving Mirage alone in the tiny lab. For a few moments, he stood – slightly bewildered – in the dim room. A heavy quiet settled into the ship in the scientist’s absence. Then, somewhere down the metal hallways, he could hear someone laughing. Appropriate.

“I think that went well.” Mirage said meekly to no one. Right?

Stepping into the dim foyer of the bar, Mirage felt like he was letting out a breath he didn’t realize he was holding. Not quite as fancy as the Paradise Lounge where he’d used to work, Purgatory was smaller, dustier, and a little bit grimier, tucked away in the outskirts of Solace City’s entertainment district. But it felt like home. It was empty at the moment – temporarily shuttered as its proprietor went off to charm fans and sow chaos, but over the next couple days the regulars would filter back through, people would hear he was back in town and the place would be bustling again. Throwing a switch, the dim overhead lights flickered to life, illuminating the vacant canteen with a hazy blue glow. Cobwebs had gathered on the bottles behind the bar and as Mirage ran his hands along its smooth surface, he could see a film of dust on his fingertips. He would probably spend half of his first day back cleaning and getting it ready for patrons, but taking in the familiar sights – his bar, the cluttered tables, the ancient dartboard in the back – brought a smile to his face. Home sweet home.

—–

A set of narrow stairs at the far side of the room led up to a soft and sunny loft, nearly as small as his room on the Games’ dropship. Like its counterpart, this room was also cluttered – every surface covered with blueprints, electronic scraps, prototypes, and photographs. But not photographs like the ones in his other room. Almost none of the pictures filling the frames on his shelves or pinned to his workbench had Mirage in them at all. His mother, his brothers, the friends he’d made during his time at the Games – Ajay, Octavio, Makoa, and the rest – their smiling faces stared back at him as stepped through the doorway.

Tossing his duffle bag of clothes onto the floor next to his bed, Mirage let himself fall limply onto the mattress. The warmth of the setting sun filtered through the slotted windows of the loft, casting golden stripes across the bed. Lying tangled in his blankets in his own bed, the faint smell of alcohol, oil, and soot filling his lungs, Mirage felt his heart swell with the feeling of relief. He’d made it home yet again. Rolling over, he stared up at the ceiling, watching particles of dust drift listlessly through the still air until his eyelids grew heavy. His work could wait till tomorrow...

Sitting on his bedside table was a small notebook, well-worn and filled with scrawled notes. Sticking out of it like a bookmark was a photo of Mirage, an enigmatic hunter, and a grumpy, but faintly smiling scientist.

Saying goodnight to the last smiling, stumbling patrons, Mirage closed and locked Purgatory’s front door and set to work cleaning up for the night. Music that was once pounding was softened to a low and sombre melody as cups were washed, tables wiped down, and the floors swept. There was always a dreamlike feeling to the atmosphere of the bar, the coloured lights casting a mottled mess of shadows across the floor and catching the dusty air like thin and fragile ghosts. The ethereal quality was even starker after close. In the after-image of the raucous crowd, the empty bar felt that much quieter, that much colder.

—–

One of Mirage’s decoys stood against the bar, juggling phantom glasses and grinning mischievously, its silvery eyes scanning the room blankly. In a few minutes, it would wink out of existence and Mirage would be all alone again. That was fine, right? Tomorrow, everyone would be back and they’d all get drunk together and have a great time... Just a few more days and he’d be back on the dropship again. A different kind of good time, a different kind of crowd.

The warmth of his secluded hide-away beckoned Mirage upstairs. Humming quietly to himself, he leaned carefully around the bar to help himself to a glass of shimmering liqueur. Somehow, he doubted the owner would mind. As he collected a clean glass, he noticed that someone had left a small package underneath the end of the bar, tucked carefully behind a stack of clean cloths. Momentarily forgetting his drink, Mirage pulled the box from its hiding place and examined it cautiously. In the dim light of the main floor, it was difficult to see, but the package appeared featureless. No name, no postage, nothing. Not suspicious at all. Leaving the bottle of alcohol abandoned on the bar, Mirage carried the curious box upstairs to his workbench.

Under the bright lights of his work area, he carefully slit the seal on the box with a penknife. It had to be for him, right? It was his bar... But there had been no courier, no delivery MRVN – if it was from a fan surely they would have wanted to give it to him in person... Mirage swallowed stiffly, his shirt slightly damp now from sweat. Still holding the knife in one hand, he carefully slid open the package. Despite his growing fears, nothing leapt from the box.  No poison gas, no spring-loaded switchblade – nothing. Sitting on top of a bundle of bubble-wrap was a small note, folded in half. Finally setting down his knife, Mirage took the piece of paper and unfolded it carefully. In small neat print at the top of the page, it read: “Don’t worry, I didn’t include anything dangerous. This time.” The rest of the small page was taken up by the letters “I.O.U.” in comically large block letters. Mirage felt his stomach do a little flip. Had he been there tonight? He definitely would have noticed him...

Putting aside the note, he fished the bubble-wrapped object out of the bottom of the box. Whatever it was, it was fairly small and light, wrapped in several layers of protective film. Peeling away the plastic, Mirage was surprised to find an absolutely pint-sized Wingman model heavy pistol. Now free of the plastic wrap, it fit neatly in the palm of his hand. He cradled it carefully, like a fragile glass figurine, although he knew it was sturdier than that. Finely detailed, the miniature gun had an oddly familiar gold, black, and red colour scheme and a small chain attached to the grip. Etched onto the cylinder of the tiny model was the word Mirage.

Sitting back in his chair, Mirage marvelled over the small gun – turning it over in his hands, running his fingers along the grooves and divots of the tiny details. With the note, there was no mistaking who it was from. If he had a mirror in his room, Mirage would have been able to see the way his face had flushed red as he examined the gift. Instead, he ignored the way his cheeks felt uncomfortably warm, his eyes flicking over to where his uniform lay sprawled on his bed, awaiting last minute repairs.

He could squirrel it away into one of the many drawers of his workbench, where he kept other items he’d collected during his time at the games – including broken knives, a flyer’s tooth, and one small black gas mask. However, that hardly seemed fitting for a genuine gift. Pulling his belt from the mess on his bed, he fastened the chain of the miniature revolver to a metal loop on one of his pouches and carefully tucked it inside. What’s one more good luck charm? It wasn’t any different from his pins and other decorations... right?

[kinetic-elaboration]

September 25: 1x16 The Galileo Seven

I took a half day off today and had a three hour nap in the afternoon. Now I’m feeling, I think, better?? Perhaps?

Anyway, today’s ep is The Galileo Seven, aka capitalizing on Spock’s popularity time.

Hmm, a vague and undefined phenomenon perfect for scientific study--Spock will love this. (Aka Kirk’s real reason for investigating the quasar. Just a little gift for the bf.)

Yeah Shuttlecraft Galileo! I love the shuttlecrafts; I think they’re adorable.

New Paris Colony.

The Commissioner isn’t wrong, though, like this probably isn’t the time to go on a random exploratory mission. Ah, yes, this weird space anomaly full of unknown dangers--let’s launch our most important officers right into the center of it while we have time sensitive supplies onboard. I mean come on, there’s a plague going on!

Love the shaky movements of the shuttle as it flies through space.

Hmm they’re exploring an unknown weird space thing and something goes wrong? Who could have predicted that? Other than Boma, who’s like ‘this is actually really normal though?’

Kirk’s sigh right before the credits lol.

Uhura taking over for Spock.

Those doors looked awfully, um... not metal when they opened. But I still like the design.

This is a good episode for understanding what ‘logic’ means to Spock. Like people, including people in this ep, talk about it as if it were just being emotionless and not caring about others but it’s a whole philosophy/value system and he adheres to it pretty well.

Shuttlecraft Columbus.

Kirk has such a big headache right now. He hates having someone step on his command toes.

I love this Bones and Spock conversation. “This is your chance for command.” “I am a logical man.”

Those pants really are terrible. Everyone always on about the skirts but no one ever talks shit about those horrendous pants.

Spock gets to show off his legs standing in a V like that though lol.

Philosophy 101: The Trolley Problem.

“My choice [of who to leave behind] will be a logical one.” Stop bullshitting, Spock lol. “Idk man... logic?”

Well his decision just got easier by about 1/3.

It’s Pauna! Oh wait wrong show. Thank God.

Spock is talking about how this spear looks like something Native American but lbr it looks like a Vulcan spear and he should know. He’s the bitch with the ancient weaponry hanging on the walls of his quarters.

Spock could move the body way more efficiently, I mean he’s 3x stronger than these other fools. Look at the way he throws the spear as if it were made of cardboard. Which it is definitely, definitely not lol.

That quadrant name would make a good wifi password.

The commissioner truly has NO purpose here other than to be a human clock.

I understand Spock not wanting to waste time with the ceremonial duties of command or with burying a person while he could be working to save the people who are still alive...but I don’t believe for one moment he doesn’t know elaborate funeral services. The Vulcans love their rituals.

“We have no fuel! What alternatives?” Yeah lol that is pretty bad.

“Sensitive Vulcan ears.”

He literally just said they’re not tribal, Boma, are you not listening at all?

“I’m frequently appalled by the low regard you Earthmen have for life.”

Like Kirk always says, this isn’t a democracy.

Honestly this insubordination kinda seems like xenophobia to me in that I feel like everyone thinks it’s okay to be disrespectful to Spock because he’s an alien, because their human morality and philosophy is inherently right and Spock not following it is deserving of ire, even though he’s in command.

They’re on Spock’s back when he doesn’t seem to respect life enough and when he respects life too much like he cannot win.

Our duties to other life forms.

At least the reboots got Spock’s sass right.

I feel like Spock’s logical and emotionless responses are helpful though because I would be a straight up anxious mess. It just seems so clear to me, all the places where being unemotional is allowing him to act and keep control where a scared and confused person ruled by emotions would not be. I mean they’re all Officers and it’s not like McCoy and Boma are wandering around weeping or anything but still. Not all of Spock’s decisions are right but I’d be soothed by his attitude.

“Luck may be the only tool we have that works” reminds me of “Captain, you almost make me believe in luck.”

Kirk also makes a lot of command decisions here and it’s interesting to compare his style with Spock’s.

Loving the creature design and this is not a sarcastic comment.

“Certain scientific curiosity” about whether the crewman is dead. Sure okay.

See, I was right, he can lift and carry a grown man by himself.

That spear very much hit him lol.

Spock is upset. He lost a crewman. And logic isn’t working like it’s supposed to. I love that “They should have respected us” bit. He is a little arrogant, and for someone who’s spent most of his adult life around aliens, rather set in his idea that rational responses are the only responses.

He’s really having some revelations here. I bet he can’t wait to discuss all this with Jim.

I’ve seen that shot of Scotty just shoving a wrench in the wall and making sparks fly used in memes. Out of context it is quite hilarious.

Ugh, this is such a tightly constructed narrative. Love it.

Yeah, Boma, back off. This is just crossing a line.

“You will have your burial, provided the creatures permit it.”

Poor creatures honestly. These weird aliens keep showing up and bothering them.

This Captain’s chair is pretty wide too but Kirk manages to sit in it and look cool @ cpine.

Noooo you can’t leave them behind!

Uhura posing behind the Captain’s chair and looking at the screen like google earth always taking pictures.

Lol, space normal speed. (You’d think the Commissioner would show up at this point to be like bUt ThE pLaGuE but actually we never see him again.)

Those creatures aren’t even AIMING the spears they’re literally just throwing them parallel.

“Get us off, Scott.”

“Yes.... my first command.” Oh, Spock. I love him.

Love that Scotty’s really, genuinely proud of him. Scotty’s so Unproblematic. He really is just here to do his job and he’s never mean or causing trouble of any sort.

Jim will see the flares because he loves you!!

This poor actress playing the Yeoman has nothing to do. “Oh, it’s hot!”

Really living for Kirk’s face journey as he thinks all hope is lost and then realizes they’re (mostly) okay.

I want to hear what Kirk and McCoy are saying at the beginning of the last scene. I bet they’re talking about Spock.

Everyone gently making fun of Spock but in a ‘we love you buddy way.’ And Kirk using this, their one scene together all ep, to lay on the flirting extra thick. “Mr. Spock, you’re a stubborn man” is really pushing the flirtation meter off the charts.

They’re mocking him for making an impulsive decision but he was totally right AND he was totally logical imo? Like “you reasoned that it was time for an emotional outburst” is certainly one way to put it but another way is “the only possible chance we have of being detected AT ALL is to make a big scene and if it doesn’t work we’ll just die faster than we would have anyway” which is logical, and in fact, I think someone too caught up in their emotions might hesitate to do it. I mean, I’d probably hesitate--I think the emotional response to the situation is to want to stay alive as long as possible, even if you know--logically--that the difference between living another 6 minutes and another 26 minutes is nothing. You’d be better off giving away the chance for 20 extra minutes in exchange for a better chance of not dying at all. That’s logic bitches!

Kirk sees some hope for himself here. “Oh, Spock can follow his heart??? Perhaps... to me??”

I am not a fan of these fake laughter endings. They are so overdone lol. Uhura is literally pointing and laughing in the background. It’s not THAT funny guys.

That said if Beyond had ended with some fake laughter it probably would have improved the film substantially.

And that’s it! An excellently plotted episode, really well done on the level of craft. I really get off on that kind of thing. I know a lot of shows that can write entertaining episodes/seasons/multi-season plots but don’t have any, well, real logic to them and that’s not necessarily the worst but then when you see something that’s really just well made, it... well for me it triggers a very certain satisfaction.

Also this is easily a top 3 Spock episode. Great character stuff.

Next up is the Squire of Gothos, which I think is one of the weaker S1 episodes. Not bad, just not Classic level like almost every other ep.

[sarah-writes-stories]

Prologue: The Well

A Post-Canon Inuyasha Romance/Adventure Epic

Also find it on: Fanfiction.net / AO3 / Wattpad

Words: 2,961

Full Chapter List & Description is here.

Prologue  •  Chapter 1  •  Chapter 2  •  Chapter 3  •  Chapter 4  •  Chapter 5  •  Chapter 6  •  Chapter 7  •  Chapter 8  •  Chapter 9  •  Chapter 10  •  Chapter 11 •  Chapter 12  •  Chapter 13

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It was late. He should've been at his castle, in his bed, if not sleeping then at the very least meditating to prepare for what was to come tomorrow.

But he could not. He was simply too restless.

And what better way for an Inu-daiyoukai to relieve his restlessness than to let his demon loose to hunt and relish in a kill?

Decision made, Tōga had flown for hours seeking a suitably powerful opponent to vent his frustrations upon. Until finally, he'd been drawn here to the meadow he now found himself in. He could sense that whatever power it was that had drawn him here was close...

Yet even as he moved towards it, his thoughts turned back to the source of his restlessness.

He did not really want to take that female as his mate tomorrow. But if he did not, he could not guarantee the security of his position in the West. The Inu-daiyoukai Kingdom of the Sky was too powerful. Their armies too unreachable, fortified from above as they were. It was their undeniable advantage, which meant that if he wanted his new Kingdom in the West to remain on good term with the Sky Pack he now called allies, then he had to cement their treaty by taking the female as his mate.

He thought again about her prideful eyes and the derisive way she'd looked down her nose at him all those years ago when they'd first been presented to one another during the public announcement of their betrothal. The memory of it made his eyes flash with fury once again.

Who did that woman think she was?! Did she not know who he was?! He was Tōga! The great Inu no Taishō! He had carved a bloody swath through Japan in a mere few centuries, claiming a vast territory in the West for himself and his Pack. He would NOT be looked down upon by some crescent-moon bitch!

And yet still he had to take the Sky hime to mate.

Hence his current restlessness. The situation was unpleasant, to say the least, but by all the Kami, he was determined to beget an heir upon her as soon as possible, cementing his undisputed position of power.

These were the thoughts that plagued him as he made his way across the meadow. Whatever this strange power was, it was even closer now, yet he couldn't quite pinpoint its source.

He stopped. Silver-white hair blew gently in the midnight breeze as the landscape glowed under the light of an almost-full moon. Tōga closed his eyes, allowing his demonic senses to reach out. It did not feel like the youki of a demon and yet…

He lifted off the ground, floating up into the air to better survey his surroundings. In the distance, across the nearby river, he could see a small human settlement. It was nothing more than a few scattered huts. He took no notice. It was beneath one such as he to take notice of things like anthills, or beehives, or human settlements.

Instead, he focused his senses on the hum of power that he could feel emanating from somewhere nearby.

And then he spotted it. A faint glow coming from further across the meadow, closer to the river. He swooped lower, hovering above the glow for a moment, before landing in the grass beside what appeared to be a well of some kind.

He could hear the faint trickling sound of water coming from within. Stepping forward, he looked down inside. The water at the bottom of the well was glowing a curiously phosphorescent blue-green.

He blinked a few times. The well appeared to be empty, and yet he could not deny the thrumming power that emanated from its depths. Curiosity piqued, he jumped lithely over the edge, seeking out the source of this strange power that called to him.

But Tōga's body hadn't even entered the well before a flash of light blinded him and a pulse of power sent him flying out of the square wooden frame and into the sky.

He hovered there for a moment, growling low to himself, allowing his eyes to readjust to the darkness after the light subsided.

Still, Tōga was not prepared for what he saw next.

Rising up out of the well, standing on a sparkling column of blue-green water, was a woman.

She was dressed in an iridescent shift-like gown, the fabric clinging to her as though it dripped with water. Her hair was a soft silver-blue colour that cascaded down her back and over her shoulders like waves on the ocean. Pointed ears were decorated with gems of different colours and thin strands of silver and gold chain adorned her neck and chest.

The woman looked up from her perch upon the column of water, locking eyes with Tōga. He unsheathed his sword, So'unga, and hovered, prepared to strike but waiting to see what would happen next.

He did not have to wait long.

"Come, come now, Tōga, Lord of the Western Lands. There is no need for that."

Tōga's eyes widened a fraction at her use of his name. "Who are you?" He asked.

"Me? In many lands I have many names… Amphitrite, Nephthys, some simply call me the Lady of the Lake… But you, Tōga, may call me Lady Nimue. I am the Kami of this well."

Tōga's eyes widened further still. "Kami?"

As powerful as he was, Tōga knew not to challenge a Kami in her own domain. To trifle in such matters was to court the unknown, and no ruler worth his steel would jump into a fray without first assessing his opponent.

Nimue did not answer his question. Instead, she said, "Come down here, Tōga. I would give you a gift on the eve of your mating."

Unwilling just yet to discount her claims of godhood, Tōga slowly lowered himself to the grass of the meadow, settling a few feet away from the well. He didn't yet sheath his sword, though. Instead, his stance remained predatory.

"Come now, puppy," Nimue said. "Put that thing away! What I have come to give you is too important for such nonsense."

Tōga felt the growl forming in his chest. How dare this woman call him a puppy! He didn't get the chance to voice his displeasure, however, because suddenly there was another blinding flash of light.

Blinking away the momentary blindness, he found himself seated on a plush stack of furs and cushions, So'unga sheathed and laying in the grass beside him.

Nearby, Nimue sat on her own plush pile, and a small fire now crackled just to his left, illuminating the slight greenish cast of her skin.

Tōga could not understand what had just happened. "How—?"

She cut him off. "For one such as I, time has no meaning. And yet, we haven't the time to waste."

From the corner of his eye, Tōga looked the Kami over with a wariness akin to respect. "What do you want of me?"

"Tōga, Tōga. Always so direct. Your question is not a difficult one, though you may not like my answer." She paused. "What I ask from you is no less than your life."

Tōga stiffened at her words, instinctively reaching out his hand toward So'unga.

"Stop, Inu no Taishō. I mean you no harm. Moreover, the war to come is not one that you can win by blade alone."

"A war? What mean you by these words? Is the Kingdom of the West under threat?" His voice rose with the repercussions of her words, eyes narrowing to dangerous slits at the idea.

Nimue laughed then. A lilting sound, like water trickling over the pebbles of a creek.

"No, no, my darling pup. The West is quite safe... For now at least."

Tōga was quickly losing patience. He felt the restless ire that had brought him to this meadow returning in full force.

"For now? What does that mean? You speak in riddles!"

Nimue did not answer. Instead, she cocked her head to the side, peering at him. "You dislike the path you are set to embark upon tomorrow."

It was a statement, not a question. Tōga said nothing, but his silence was confirmation enough.

She continued, "Would it soothe your soul then? To know that, for the safety of your kingdom, what will be MUST come to pass?"

Again, Tōga did not like the hidden meaning he felt hung in her words. The idea that his kingdom was under threat while he lounged beside a fire did not sit well with him.

"If you know of a threat to my power you must tell me!" It was a steely command, spoken in a tone that brooked no dissent.

She laughed again. "But of course, my Lord. Did I not tell you that I had a gift to give you?"

He merely glared at this woman who claimed to be a Kami. Kami or not, he did not like being toyed with.

Seeing the fire in his eyes, Nimue's face turned subtly contrite. She sighed. "Tōga, the gift I would give you bares a heavy burden, but for the sake of your kingdom… of your Pack… of so much more… I would see it given to you. It is not a gift I can force upon you, though. You must accept it of your own free will, knowing that from this day until your last, nothing will be the same for you again."

If Tōga had been anyone other than the Inu no Taishō, he may have squirmed uncomfortably at those words. Instead, he turned to look her fully in the face before asking, "And if I refuse your gift?"

"Then your sons, and the sons of your sons, and all youkai from now until the end of all days will perish."

Tōga inhaled sharply, his eyes widening in shock. After a moment he exhaled slowly, disbelief warring in his mind with the magnitude of the words this woman had spoken.

"How do you know this?"

"Puppy…" Nimue's eyes meet his. In a sad but firm tone, she continued. "Have I not just shown you that for one such as I, time has no meaning?"

Tōga's gold eyes shifted between the liquid blue of each of hers. Staring into them, he tried to assess the truthfulness of her words. Finally, as if in acceptance, he spoke again. "And this gift you wish to give me, it will protect my heirs from destruction?"

Nimue clarified, "It will set them upon the path. There are limits to even my power. What you do with the gift I give you – what they then do after that – will determine the inevitability of their fate."

Tōga turned his head back towards the fire, staring into the flames for a long moment. Calmly, he finally spoke. "I care NOT for lesser youkai, nor anyone else for that matter, but if your gift will ensure that my line will continue on… then I accept."

This time her laugh was a rueful one. "Very well, my Lord. Regardless of your reasons, you have accepted and so I will give you what it is I have come here to bestow."

Tōga glanced back at her then, looking from her hands to the furs and cushions around her. "I see nothing. Where is this gift you speak of?"

A soft smile pulled at the corners of Nimue's mouth. "The gift I would give you is two-fold. Come, sit closer by me. I will need to place my fingers upon your brow."

Reluctantly, Tōga shifted himself closer to the Kami. He watched her hand as it rose toward his forehead, stiffening slightly as her fingers crept closer.

Nimue paused just before touching him. In a voice barely above a whisper, she spoke again. "Remember, Tōga, you have accepted this two-fold gift of your own free will. And, as I said before, naught will be the same for you after this."

Tōga blinked once, then gave a slight nod. "I still accept."

Her cool fingers touched his brow and his body was instantly paralyzed. Unable to process what was happening, Nimue's blinding light enveloped him again as his mind tumbled over the edge of itself.

Everything that Tōga was and everything that he would be – his very soul – was suddenly filled with flashing images of things to come.

Memories he had yet to experience. Faces he had yet to know. He saw his life… and his death.

Yet still, the flashes continued as he witnessed the battles that would be fought long after he was nothing more than a towering pile of bones.

Amongst it all… He saw his sons.

In waves, emotions rose up and crashed over the daiyoukai's unused heart. They stole his breath as the visions unfolded further and further into the future, showing him the utter destruction and devastation that would come should his gift not be heeded.

It felt like a lifetime – ten lifetimes – had passed while he watched the flashing images play across his mind… And yet, he knew it was over in an instant.

When the Kami's fingers left his forehead, Tōga fell forward on his knees, hands in the grass, bracing his panting body.

Somewhere in the back of his awareness, he registered that the furs and cushions, even the small fire, were all gone. And from his position on the ground, he could see Nimue's bare feet walking away towards the well.

"Wait…" He whispered on a jagged breath.

Her small feet stopped their forward motion. He looked up at her then and saw that she was looking back at him from over her shoulder.

Tōga tried to find words to make sense of what he had just seen. The horrible gift he had been given. "If I… Can they... Can we be saved?" He found his breath again, composing himself enough to sit back on his heels and look up at her.

She was quiet for a moment as if pondering his question. Finally, she spoke. "As I said before, I can merely set you on the path. What happens next…" She let her words trail off before whispering "I will do what I can to be of aid, as I know there will be… others… who would wish to see our efforts fail."

It was all she was willing to offer him, he knew, and she turned away once more, continuing her slow pace back to the well.

Tōga felt weak and lightheaded. The emotions that had erupted within him during his powerful vision had not subsided. It was as though his chest had been cleaved in two… and yet what she'd originally promised him bubbled back up to the top of his mind then.

"Lady Nimue," he called her out by name for the first time. She paused as she reached the edge of the well, waiting for him to continue.

"You said this gift was two-fold. Yet, beyond these visions, I know not what else you have given me."

Nimue stepped up onto the wooden edge of the well and then up again onto her luminescent column of water. Only then did she turn around, the same blue-green glow of the water now emanating from around her, as well.

Finally, she opened her mouth to speak, and the reverberating tone of her words made Tōga feel weak all over again. He finally comprehended the full power of the being whose presence he was in.

"Great Inu no Taishō, strongest of all daiyoukai, Lord of the West. To you I have granted that which you will need most, to ensure that your steps do not falter on this path that you will walk."

"What...?" He could not finish his words.

She spoke again, softer then, yet still full of power.

"I have granted you the gift of compassion."

And with a final flash of blinding light, she was gone.

Tōga knelt in the grass for a long time. He wondered if it had all been a dream, but the visions in his mind did not fade, and the well too remained where it was in the meadow near him.

Finally, he rose from his knees and walked carefully over to the edge of the well. Peering in, he saw that it was now empty. No trickling noise. No glow. No water at all, in fact. Nothing but a bare patch of dirt remained at the bottom.

Dawn was beginning to lighten the eastern horizon. He scrubbed his hands over his face and went to retrieve So'unga from where it still lay in the grass.

The Kami had been correct. Nothing after this night would ever be the same. The mighty Inu no Taishō allowed himself a rueful smile then. He had accepted this fate and walk this path he would.

Knowing that his mating ceremony was scheduled to begin with the rise of the full moon this coming evening, Tōga lifted himself into the air.

But he did not head west.

Instead, he raced towards the barren wasteland that the weapons-master, Tōtōsai, called home. He needed to commission the creation of two new swords first.

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A/N: I do not own Inuyasha nor any of the characters created by Rumiko Takahashi.

This is my first ever fiction – let alone fan-fiction – and it's going to be long and epic. So strap in, enjoy, and leave me a comment to let me know what you think!

[bitchwhoreofastorm]

boethiah/trinimac lol

He's growing on me, Trinimac thinks miserably, stroking back Boethiah's hair. The notion has a few meanings. For one, Boethiah loves to lay on him as of late, climbing about him like a creeping vine until they're all entangled with one another; for two, Boethiah's greatly increased in power since they first met, no doubt due to Trinimac's patient tutoring; for three, Trinimac's just grown damnably fond of the Padomaic. They're supposed to be training at swords, but after spending so long pummeling each other into dust Trinimac's fallen to the ground and Boethiah's made himself quite comfortable atop him, chin resting on his chest, peering up at him with the most frustrating mockery of a grin.

For the most part their little affair is a secret, but out here, somewhere in a half-formed meadow on the edges of the Grey Maybe, they're lonely enough that they can be affectionate. It's a pleasant change of pace-- here, in this company, Trinimac doesn't have to care about appearance or stature. He needs not stand tall and proud, because Boethiah will only try to swat him down if he does. He need not wear Auri-el's gildings like an albatross, or take pains to make sure he looks proper, and indeed, his skin is pale grey today, ashy beneath Boethiah's roaming bruise-covered hands. Even his demeanour is relaxed, his words casual and unpretentious, and he does not fear to use words such as want or desire or whatever coarse, crude, Padomaic turns-of-phrase would get him laughed at in court.

Behind Boethiah's head, concepts-not-yet-sentient blossom in stunning auroras, forming a breathtaking backdrop for the dark spirit. "You should smile more often," Trinimac murmurs.

Boethiah cocks his head to the side, leaning his face into Trinimac's hand there. "You should give me more things to smile about."

"Have I given you something to smile about now?"

Boethiah's grin broadens, and he turns his head, kissing Trinimac's palm. Trinimac is without his armour today, and Boethiah takes advantage of the vulnerability by touching him all over.

They are not always lovers. They argue sometimes, bitterly, and Trinimac loves Auri-el too dearly to ever be devoted to another, and Boethiah has an awful tendency to grow bored. They understand this in each other, however. Trinimac is not jealous when he sees Boethiah trying to woo Azura. He's sure Boethiah isn't jealous when he himself dances with the other Anuics. The only exception to this is Lorkhan, but it is not jealousy that pains them over Lorkhan, for jealousy is too small and frivolous for someone like Lorkhan; at any rate, they never mention Lorkhan, unless their arguments grew bitter indeed. Nonetheless, Trinimac appreciates these moments when they can agree to abide each other, and highly appreciates when that abiding takes this form. He likes how Boethiah touches him, as if captivated by the differences between them. He likes it most when Boethiah can't seem to find those differences. When he and Boethiah spend hours together, searching in vain for those differences, he likes it very, very much.

"So?" Trinimac presses, "What did I give you to smile about?"

Today is one such day of few differences, he thinks, for his ashy skin is nearly the same shade as Boethiah's dusky hands, one of which is now splayed across his chest, the other wrapped around the hand he holds to Boethiah's face.

"You think I'm going to tell you?" Boethiah teases him, smiling still. "No, let's make a game of it. You tell me why I smile."

"A game? You're spending too much time with that scion of Lorkhan's."

"Don't blame Clavicus for your being boring. That's Auri-El's doing."

Trinimac tugs at Boethiah's long hair. He wears it loose today, against the brilliance of the birthing spirits above them it's dark as ink. "I didn't say I won't play," Trinimac points out.

Boethiah's smile broadens and he kisses Trinimac's palm once again. "So guess. Why do I smile, Auri-el's champion?"

Trinimac arches his head back, staring hard at the sky as if deep in thought. "Hmmm," he says, drawing it out.

"Well?" Boethiah creeps fowards. Trinimac can see the red glint of his eyes near the base of his vision.

"What makes you smile, Boethiah? You like violence. Perhaps you smile because you got to duel me today, and you nearly won."

"I did win."

"The rules of Honour state--"

"The rules of Honour only exist because you hate losing to me. I had you on the ground crying mercy. I won. Anyway," Boethiah leans forwards, pressing his forehead to Trinimac's, and that inky hair of his falls around them like a shroud, "That's not why I'm smiling."

"Perhaps you're smiling because it is a beautiful day," Trinimac offers. "And this is a pleasant moment in the Grey Maybe."

Boethiah pulls an exaggerated face. "How simple do you think I am? I'm no lover of Kyne's, I don't grow giddy for the weather."

"I don't think you're simple at all," Trinimac says, and he means it.

"I'm not smiling about the weather."

"I know."

It's just the two of them in here, blocked off from the world by Boethiah's hair, as if he's created a tiny realm for only them. Trinimac, reaches up and takes a handful of those inky locks, creating a breach through which a cool wind blows.

"You never mentioned my prize," Trinimac points out.

"Hm?"

"A game needs a prize. What do I get if I win?"

Boethiah blinks, considering that. "What do you want?"

"I do not want--"

"Oh, shut up, Trinimac. You do want! You desire more strongly than anyone I know." Boethiah says it with ire, but he's grinning still, and he presses his nose to Trinimac's cheek. "Tell me what you want as a prize."

"Hmmm."

"Accursed stubborn beast! Fine," Boethiah nuzzles his cheek, "If you cannot guess why I smile, I win the game, and I deserve a prize. Since I am not repressed as you, I can say there's a great many things I desire."

"What do you desire, Boethiah?"

"Oh, you'll find out soon enough, because you're doing terribly so far, and I'm sure to win."

Trinimac guides Boethiah's gaze back to his own and looks at him seriously. Boethiah's body is hot and heavy on his, heavy as guilt, because Boethiah has a point: Trinimac desires far too much for someone in Auri-el's court, and at no point is it more obvious than when Boethiah touches him. Boethiah has this damnable propensity to awaken in him feelings he'd discarded in the dawn of the dawn era: greed, a want of praise, a need for glory, a craving for triumph and a desire to win. This latter desire to win, burning hot in his chest beneath Boethiah's palm that lays between their bodies, prompts him to participate in this silly game a little longer-- his brow creases and he gives it real thought.

"You're smiling because I look foolish," Trinimac supposes, "Lying on the grass like-- what do you always call me?"

Boethiah laughs. "A bearskin rug. And you do look foolish, but you always look foolish, and I am not always smiling. That's not the reason."

"You're smiling because you're under the impression you won our duel."

"I did win our duel, and I've already said it's not that."

"You're smiling because something pleasant happened to you lately?"

"Hmm, not quite."

"You're smiling because you had a nice breakfast."

Boethiah laughs again, and it's a terribly beautiful sound, such that Trinimac wouldn't mind losing this game if only to hear it again. "You're bad at this!" And he kisses Trinimac's cheek.

"Yes, probably." Trinimac tangles a hand in Boethiah's hair, and considers for a long moment.

Boethiah kisses his cheek again. "Well?"

"I've got it!" Trinimac uses his grip on Boethiah's hair to guide their gazes together again. "I know why you smile."

Boethiah tilts his head into Trinimac's palm. "Why is it?"

"You smile because you're happy."

An expression of incredulity crosses Boethiah's face, and he stares at Trinimac for so long that Trinimac is convinced he must have won, and that Boethiah is utterly surprised by that.

Glowing with triumph, he taps Boethiah's cheek. "That's it, isn't it?"

"That..." Boethiah's brow furrows, "Technically, yes, I smile because I'm happy, but-- that doesn't count!"

"Yet it's the reason you're smiling! I win."

"But you haven't determined the reason I'm happy, which was the whole point of the game!"

"The game was to say why you're smiling. Those were the rules. See? I hang out with Clavicus too."

"You're terrible!" Boethiah goes to get up, but Trinimac pulls him down, and he doesn't resist; despite the feigned ire, Boethiah is smiling still, and when he hides his face in Trinimac's shoulder, Trinimac fancies he even hears laughter, and feels a hot glowing mirth wash over him like a pleasant wave.

"I win, I win," Trinimac sings out. "I get the prize!"

"You won on a technicality! Again!"

"A win is a win is a win, Boethiah! You must be mindful of the rules."

"The rules are made for idiots like you, who cannot succeed without them!"

"Who's the idiot, vanquished foe?"

Boethiah nips him on the neck, only to kiss the spot apologetically, and then he props himself up so that he's looking into Trinimac's face again; there's a certain softness there, between the two of them, and when Trinimac cups Boethiah's face any pretense of competition melts away.

They are the same in this-- they both crave victories, but a life of fighting grows hard and painful. This tenderness makes better warriors of them both, Trinimac reasons. Though it's a secret, and though Auri-el would hate to know of it, the secret-keeping is in itself a game, a game with as sweet a prize as any.

"So," Boethiah murmurs, pressing their foreheads together. "What reward do you want, cheat?"

"I'll think of something in a minute," Trinimac replies. Truthfully, he'll probably drag it out as long as he can, spend hours trying to come up with something, knowing fully well that Boethiah will stay with him until he does.

He pauses, and then looks at Boethiah with a genuine curiosity. "Actually, I want to know the answer you sought. Why are you smiling?"

He had expected resistence, but Boethiah's expression softens, and he slips a hand up, resting a finger beneath Trinimac's chin.

 "Because you've been smiling this whole time,” says Boethiah, “And it's beautiful to look upon."

"Oh. I have?"

Boethiah kisses him, and he finds that, for once, the Padomaic has told the truth: with his lover's mouth on his, Trinimac feels clearly that his face is stretched so wide in a grin that he can hardly return the kiss, and the aching in his cheeks tell him that he's been beaming all this time.

"See?" Boethiah whispers against Trinimac's ear when they break away, "You were smiling. You should smile more often."

[turkleader]

Drinks and Old Rumors

Part 1 of 7 Written for FFVII Halloween Week 2019.

Prompt: October 26th - Scary Stories [ghost stories, old legends, tales of the supernatural, creepypasta]

Summary: It's Halloween week and the Turks are shooting the shit at 7th Heaven when an old rumor about Tseng rises from its uneasy grave.

Description: This is the first piece in a multi-part story that follows Tseng (and those he encounters) over the course of seven days. I took inspiration mostly from the "old legends" and "tales of the supernatural" parts of this prompt, but tried to make it a more lighthearted experience to start the week off with. I hope you enjoy this little piece, and happy Samhain and Halloween to all who celebrate!

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A note before we begin: In case anyone is unfamiliar with the official names given to the Before Crisis Turks, I’ve included them here at the beginning of the story for reference. I hope this helps!

Rod (Male) - Alvis Crisis Gun (Female) - Emma (Elena’s older sister) Two Guns (Male) - Ruluf Shotgun (Female) - Freyra Martial Arts (Male) - Maur

Enjoy the story!

“I bet you Elena could take your ass three out of five times, at least, easy.”

The redhead scoffed, laughing. “Yo, I ain't about t'take a bet like that.”

“Come on!” the light-haired brunette goaded. Her thick ponytail almost fell into her drink as she leaned forward across the counter of the 7th Heaven bar, grinning past comrades new and old. “Why not?”

“Yeah,” Elena chimed in, a cunning smirk spreading across her face as she repositioned to face Reno. “Why not?”

“Rigged,” a dark-haired man with sharp bangs muttered.

The bald man beside him nodded.

“Oh, you're absolutely no fun, Ruluf!” the ponytailed woman pouted. “And neither are you, Rude!”

“I mean, it doesn't make sense for him to take an unfair bet, Freyra,” a large, well-built man with short brown hair spoke up.

“There it is,” Ruluf said, pointing at Maur.

“Since when does the Reno of the Turks turn down a challenge?!” Freyra exclaimed, jaw slack and brow raised in an attractive taunt.

“Oh, it's a challenge now?” Reno shot back. “An' who's footing the bill if I win?”

“If...” Rude emphasized quietly.

Ruluf sighed and laid his face down on the bar.

“Sounds like Reno's buying me my next drink if he knows what's good for him,” Elena said, her expression smug.

“And he shouldn't be the only one,” Freyra declared with a giggle, tossing back her drink.

“I'm beginnin' t'remember why I don't make bets with you, yo,” Reno said, flipping off Elena and Freyra as he turned away to flag down the bartender.

“Don't put your mouth where you're not ready to put your gil,” Freyra winked.

“Wait, you guys are serious?” the bartender interrupted, setting down another drink for the ladies. Her intense ruby eyes flickered between Freyra and Elena as she hurriedly lifted a hand in apology. “No offense meant, Elena, but I didn't know you had that kind of reputation in the Turks.”

Elena opened her mouth to respond but a new arrival cut her off.

“Are we discussing our win-loss records?”

A blonde woman with a stunning resemblance to Elena took a seat at the bar, giving Tifa a knowing smile as she motioned for her regular.

“Emma!” a scattered chorus rang out from the gathered Turks.

“Big sis!” Elena exclaimed with warmer surprise than she used to bear her elder sibling.

“Hey guys. Hey sis,” Emma greeted as Tifa playfully rolled her eyes and went to grab her drink. “So? What mischief are we getting up to tonight?”

“Trading drinks for bets,” Maur supplied with a wave, a shrug, and a smile.

“So is Ruluf winning or losing?” Emma asked with a slight smile, thanking Tifa for her drink and using the fresh glass to indicate the dual gunner with his face planted against the countertop.

“Losing,” Tifa put in with a half-amused, half-exasperated smile.

“How was I supposed to know the rookie had a black belt or whatever and was hand-raised by Tseng?!”

“Really?!” Tifa exclaimed, looking at Elena with a new respect.

“An' this is why our slumdog lost almost every bet he took,” Reno declared and stole Ruluf's drink, tossing back a swig.

“You really should know better than to underestimate a Turk,” Freyra chipped in as Rude nodded.

“Especially my sister,” Emma joined the discussion, shaking her head.

“You'd think he'd get the hint after betting against me five times.” Elena shot a withering glare at Ruluf.

“...wait,” Emma began.

“Yep!” Reno added brightly, finishing off Ruluf's drink. “He finally made the right choice the sixth time!”

Ruluf lifted his head, forehead and nose red from where they'd pressed against the counter. “Again, how was I supposed to know?!” he demanded, irritated.

“Tseng wasn't the only one looking out for her,” Rude said.

“She had our undivided attention after you all went dark.” Reno puffed out his chest, looking proud.

“Hey, I aced all my intro and advanced training, and all my exams but one, and that was without your help!” Elena reminded, flushing at the attention despite her best efforts.

“Yeah, well— I don't think anyone'll question yer commitment to seeing the mission through t'the end these days,” Reno said. His voice sounded strange, but every member of the Turks—retired and active—knew what he meant.

A thick silence settled upon the group.

Concerned stares glanced their way. Hushed voices began to brew between the patrons. They didn't need to hear the conversations to know what was being said— 'Hellhounds of Shinra. Death dealers. Murderers.'

Some people had begun to forgive them.

...but it was all too soon to forget.

“Alright Em,” Freyra spoke up at last, pushing past the heaviness that had pulled them each into their own familiar hell. “Who's the one Turk you wouldn't want to go up against?”

Emma didn't hesitate.

“Tseng,” she said.

“Aw, c'mon Em!” Reno groaned.

“What!” she said, raising her voice slightly to be heard above the sudden influx of bar patrons coming in after the dinner hour. “Would any of you want to fight him?”

“It's no fun choosing the immortal,” Ruluf said, nodding his thanks to Barret's daughter as she brought him a refill on his drink while Tifa was busy with the new crowd.

“Immortal?” Marlene asked, brown eyes sparkling with curiosity as she paused in the middle of taking away the Turks' empty glasses.

“Don't tease Marlene like that,” Elena chastised.

“It's not that much of a stretch,” Reno said, shrugging. “He should've been dead how many times?”

“For all we knew... he was dead—dead more times than any person has the right to come back from,” Ruluf stated, ire lost from his voice.

“Maybe it's true then,” Freyra confided, eyes shining.

“Oh boy,” Elena sighed.

“Not this again, Frey,” Maur protested gently.

The hunter folded her arms and leaned across the bar counter, a mischievous curve to her lips as she beckoned Marlene into her confidence.

“There's an old, old rumor that Tseng made a deal with Death—a deal Death couldn't refuse,” Freyra whispered ominously.

“Yeah, the same one Veld did,” Reno scoffed.

“I heard it happened before he joined Shinra,” Emma remarked. “That he swore an oath to one of Wutai's deities so he could cross the ocean to get to Midgar.”

“And that's why he can't die?” Marlene inquired, brows furrowed as she puzzled over each suggestion, empty glasses forgotten.

“It's all just rumors and supposition,” Maur assured the young girl, but even he sounded doubtful.

“Isn't he able to pull that shit off 'cause of the Full Cure materia Veld gave him back when he was a rookie?” Ruluf questioned.

“Nah, there were times he didn't get the chance to use it and still survived,” Reno dismissed.

“The Temple,” Rude clarified, tone solemn.

“Shit,” Ruluf cursed under his breath. “Forgot about that.”

Elena bit her lip and suddenly grew very interested in her drink.

“It's not all that unusual for the Turks to have those experiences though,” Emma noted, trying to steer the conversation away from the sensitive topic. “Remember when Alvis fell into a coma only to wake up three years later?”

“Yeah, and Freyra almost put him back into it when she nearly hugged him to death,” Reno taunted.

“You're just mad 'cause I got to mess with him before you did,” she retorted, sticking out her tongue at him.

“I think it was the one-two punch of Cissnei and then you right afterwards that really got him,” Emma observed, trying to suppress a smile.

“What about Vincent?” Marlene suggested, catching the group's attention. “He used to be a Turk. My dad told me when they found him he had been asleep for decades. And Cloud says because of the experiments that were done to him that he might never grow old or die.”

“Shit,” Ruluf laughed, more out of surprise than humor.

Rude cracked a small smile. “Someone's got us all figured out.”

Marlene wasn't deterred.

“Did they do experiments on Tseng, too?” she asked. “Is that why you guys keep coming up with stories to cover up the truth?”

“S'far as I know, he's a hundred percent real human being, untampered,” Reno said.

“Tseng was out for a while too after what happened in the Temple,” Elena said, finally finding her voice again.

“That wouldn't explain everything that he'd miraculously survived before then,” Maur said.

“A'ight, Rude,” Reno interrupted, turning to his partner. “This might be a long shot, but d'ya think it might be his other materia that's gotten him through all that shit?”

“What materia?” Maur asked, confused but curious.

“Ohhh we're getting into those goodies now?!” Freyra exclaimed. “I thought that was just talk!”

“Nah, it's real,” Reno confirmed. “At least, the materia is. I dunno if what they say about it and Tseng's true though.”

“What materia?” Maur repeated. “This is the first I've heard of it.”

“Tseng wields an Enemy Skill materia,” Rude said.

“Mastered,” Reno revealed.

“Holy...!” Maur uttered.

“Yep, there it is!” Freyra exclaimed.

“What the shit?” Ruluf scoffed. “First of all, how is that possible? Don't some of the enemy abilities you need to learn to master that materia kill the person upon casting?”

“Yep,” Reno said.

“Then it's not possible,” Ruluf decided.

“...unless he's ~immortal~,” Freyra sang from her end of the bar, grinning.

“Actually, there is an enemy skill that can be gained through use of the Manipulate materia that prevents Death magic from having any effect on the user,” Maur informed. “Perhaps this is how he's been able to master the materia and escape from so many fatal situations?”

“Maur!” Freyra shouted. “You are seriously the worst! Stop ruining my fun with your facts!”

“A mastered Enemy Skill would go a long way in helping someone to stay alive,” Emma considered.

“Maybe the bastard's just lucky,” Ruluf declared and took a long swig from his glass.

“Is this someone I should know about?” a new voice suddenly broke through the group's discussion.

Turning, they found the devil himself had arrived, amusement warming his grey gaze as he joined them. But before anyone could respond, Marlene planted a hand on the counter and stared the Turk down.

“Are you an immortal?” she asked him matter-of-factly.

Tseng raised a brow as his Turks looked between him and his interrogator.

“Not that I'm aware of,” he answered, approaching the bar.

“So you didn't make any blood oaths to any demons or gods?” Marlene pressed.

The warmth in his eyes flickered. The beginnings of a smile edged across the corner of his lips, but there was no joy in it.

“No, though sometimes it feels that way,” he confessed.

Marlene nodded, considering his answers. She lifted a finger.

“One more question,” she said.

The gathered Turks held their breaths, waiting.

“Do you guys wanna join our Halloween movie marathon night tomorrow?”

The disappointment was explosive.

Tseng laughed as his coworkers fell into grumbled and mirthful exclamations.

Marlene threw them a look, and then continued as though nothing had interrupted her. “We're hosting one all day tomorrow here in 7th Heaven, and I think you guys should come. It'll be fun!”

Tseng inclined his head in gratitude, a true smile crossing his features.

“I have a few things to handle for work tomorrow, but I will try to be there,” he said.

“I'm sure you'll make it,” Marlene said and promptly headed into the kitchen.

Tseng looked after her before turning away, shaking his head softly.

“Yo, bossman! You're late so you're buying the next round!” Reno shouted.

“Whoohoo! Drinks on Tseng!” Freyra cheered.

“To the immortal, lying bastard!” Ruluf joined in.

“Cheers!” the Turks toasted him.

[End]