#my dash the past week has been so two sided its actually funny

[holocrone]

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[weeb-writor]

Bakugou Meets his Future Kids

Hiya! Long time no see! So I’ve been gone a while and today I was actually supposed to post the last part in the Aizawa mini series. That wont happen today because unfortunately even though me and my whole family have been super safe and only go to work and home I did test positive for Covid-19. I'm okay though just really drained and this was easier for me to finish. I'm hoping to have the Christmas fic up by the 28th at the latest, so sorry about that! For now I hope you can enjoy this! The kids do call reader mommy but there is no assigned gender! Anyone, any gender can be a mom!

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Bakugou Katsuki x Reader

He meets his kids from the future in a troubling way

Words: 1896

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It was supposed to be a normal day and it was for about 10 seconds. About 11 seconds in Bakugou had somehow been wrapped into a trip to the mall with most of the class. Bakugou prided himself on being a strong immovable boulder but when you asked could he come… lets say he had a temporary weakness. Now here he was at the food court as you all argued over what to eat.

“Is there a place that sells soba?” Todoroki asked.

“Even if there is, we aren't eating there! You always eat that!” Mina said, pointing at the boy who looked back a little deflated.

“I think we’ll be okay getting soba, his obsession with soba is super cute!” you said with a small laugh. This had Bakugou craning his neck. Only ever eating one thing was not cute, how could you think that!

“Like hell we are, Come on Y/n were getting a burger.” Bakugou said standing and pulling you away you didn't get far before you all heard someone crying and yelling. You and the rest of the class looked at each other once before you dashed in the direction of the cries. Arriving on the scene you see 3 kids surrounding a boy who was crying while one was holding back a girl who seemed to be crying in anger. 

“Hey what the hell is going on here?” Kirishima said in a scolding tone. The kids turn around and pale probably recognizing the group of soon to be Pro-Heroes.

“Nothing we should be going, later losers.” The kids said quickly scattering into the crowds at the mall. The girl quickly ran to the boy's side still crying.

“It's alright, you don't have to cry, I have a first aid kit if that helps.” You said trying to console the kids. At your voice both of the kids looked up at you before tackling you in a crushing hug, sobbing even more. You looked up at your class confused; they only shrugged at you.

“Mommy! I'm sorry, I took Hiroyuki from school and we followed you and then we got hit with that big scary guy's quirk and then we ended up here and we been here for like 2 days. I'm sorry!!” The girl cried, rubbing her eyes furiously.

“Uh um sweetheart, I'm sorry you got lost but my teachers will help you. We’ll find your parents I promise.” You said rubbing her checks.

“But you're our mommy.” The young girl sniffled.

“I'm not, you must be confused. I'm L/n.” You said, smiling at them as they seemed to tear up.

“That's not funny mommy, stop joking right now.” The girl said, shaking her head, more tears spilling from her eyes.

“Sorry kid they aren't joking, L/n doesn't have any kids.” Denki said, crouching to meet her eyes.

“Are you mad cause we didn't listen? Are you gonna send us away?” The girl said, beginning to cry even more.

“Stop making my sister cry!!” The boy said with tears in his eyes, the tears were short lived as explosion went off all around them. Everyone looked at Bakugou who was quietly watching

“It's not me, it's one of them.” He said with his teeth gritted. The class didn't have time to figure it out as the explosion stopped and they saw their teacher next to them.

“It’s always something with you guys. Hey kids I'm gonna need you to come with me so we can sort this out.” He said offering his hands to them which they didn't hesitate to take. The walk back to the school was relatively short and quiet. Now they were all sitting outside of recovery girls office waiting on some kind of news.

“I think i know what's happened. They kept calling you mom, right?” You nodded at her with a small smile.

“Well while I was trying to heal them I asked them some questions to make sure their heads were on straight. Their answers were very much incorrect to us but also not completely insane. For Example Dynamight, Deku, and Shoto are all top 10 heroes. The league of villains are no more and I'm dead. I examined their bodies and it seems they were hit with a time travel quirk from the looks of it. Not sure when it will wear off but my best recommendation is for them to remain under L/n and Easerheads care, I will check for any signs of it wearing off, every other day.”

“Huh? Is Easerhead their dad! Do you and L/n get married in the future?! That's kind of kinky…” Mineta said with a gross smile

“No, you creepy child. It seems they do like him though.” Recovery girl said with a sigh. You thanked her and went into the room.

“Hey, did recovery girl explain what happened to you guys?” You said as you approached them.

“Uh huh she said we went in the past to where you and papa were students. Like in the pictures on the walls.” The girl said.

“Mhm very good, so can you tell me your names? Then we can go hang out with my friends and eat something!” You said with a smile.

“Hiroyuki…” the boy mumbled.

“I’m Kaori!” The young girl cheered at you. You thanked them and guided you out the door and found your friends and teacher waiting. You led them to the dorm lunge where food was waiting on them.

“So which one of you have an explosion quirk?” Kirishima said as the kids were eating.

“We both do, kind of.” The girl said absentmindedly. “Mom says I make explosions from the heat of the food I eat, I like spicy stuff.” She said with a smile.

“Oh okay cool! But no spicy stuff for you.” Denki laughed at the girl who wasn't exactly happy.

“What about you, little guy?” Sero asked the younger one. The little boy looked at Sero before burying his face in his hands and shaking his head.

“Yuki, has a really cool quirk! Mom says he works like a gas stove! He leaks this stuff that's like propane! Then he can ignite it based on how he is feeling! Angry or emotional means bigger explosions! It comes from his pores or his hand.” The girl chimed in for her brother. He was upset at her words and ran to Aizawa.

“Sorry, we didn't mean to make you uncomfortable!” Mina said as she couched to the level of the boy who further hid his face into Aizawa legs.

“It's okay, kid, Bakugou has an explosive quirk, it's cool!” Denki said with his flashy smile.

“We don't care about that old man's quirk!” The girl said fresh tears on his face.

“What’d you say you little brat?! I’m not an old man!” Bakugou roared back to Kaori.

“You are a mean old man and I hate you! Its all your fault I'm stuck here without my real mom and papa! I hate you! I hate you so much Papa!” The little girl roared back before running back to you crying.

“Papa?” Kirishima echoed quietly.

“Kaori, you shouldn't yell at people or tell them you hate them it's a mean and strong word.” You said crouching down to her level and stroking her cheek.

“B-but it's all his fault. He said me and Hiroyuki were weak and and we couldn't do much because we're kids and it's best for us to stay out of Hero’s way! Like were burdens!” She said growing further agitated.

“And I was right, you followed your mom and you both got hurt when you shouldn't have been near the battle anyway.” He said with a frown.

“But that doesn't mean we are useless and can't do anything by ourselves! WE ARENT DUMB!” She yelled back at him.

“Future me didn't say you were dumb, he, I just want you to be safe. It's best for you and your brother to stay out of the way for now. However, that doesn't mean your a burden or dumb.” Bakugou said seriously. The little girl didn't say anything further and just threw herself into her your arms. Hiroyuki came from in between Aizawa’s legs and also threw himself at you.

“Okay enough mingling for today I guess, time for bed! I’ll be right back guys.” You said as you carried both kids off to your dorms with surprising grace. Once you were gone the group turned to Bakugou.

“Papa, huh Bakugou?!” Denki said with a chuckle.

“It's too surprising! I didn't even know you had a crush on L/N!” Mina said with a pout.

“Really? it was pretty obvious Bakubro had a crush though. Literal tiny explosions go whenever L/n is near.” Kirishima said with a cute head tilt.

“The hell they do.” Bakugou said angrily.

“No they do, I’ve had to stop them a few times now.” Aizawa said with his weird grin.

“I can't believe it though, they are so cute! Kaori is so much like you and I cant believe Hiroyuki’s quirk is so kickass!” Sero said rubbing the back of there necks.

“Well of course they got kickass quirks. With me and L/N as parents there’s no way they wouldn't!” Bakugou said flushed red.

“I'm just glad you cleared up everything with them. It would be pretty bad if they went back mad at the future you, or thinking something damaging like that.” Deku said with a sigh. Finally you were back with no kids, at least it looked like you didn’t have kids.

“So this parenting shit is pretty hard!!” You said as two figures came from behind your legs. They blushed before pointing to Bakugou and then back at your dorm.

“Use your words.” Bakugou said, cocking an eyebrow at the flustered kids.

“Story, Papa.” Hiroyuki slurred out.

“I'm sorry for saying I hate you… I didn't mean it.” The young girl said softly

“You better be, that's a strong word. Now let's go to bed.” Bakugou said nonchalantly as he picked up both kids and walked back to your dorm. The kids remained with you two for about a week and half. You learned lots like you and Bakugou have twins on the way and still want at least one more. Hiroyuki loves Aizawa because he is able to keep his quirk under control around him and they both have an addiction to cats. Bakugou is indeed amazing at everything except anger management. When they left it was during one of your cuddle sessions and boy did you cry like a baby.

BONUS:

“It’s been almost 2 weeks, where could they be?? What if they’re…” You said into Bakugou's chest.

“They’re fine, okay? Our brats are tough so wherever they ended up in time doesn't matter they’ll kick anyone's ass.” Bakugou said, trying to console you. You didn't get a chance to respond before you dogs went crazy at the knock at the door. You yelled for however it was to come in and you thought your mind was playing tricks on you.

“Don't worry they are just drowsy.” Aizawa said with the two kids in his capture weapon trailing behind him. Bakugou was the first to move and was on his knees, in tears in seconds.

“You idiots! Never, ever do that again.” He said hugging him like his life depended on it.

[hermannsthumb]

Town council Hermann vs Alien Conspiracy Newt please!!!

THIS WAS FUN!!! inspired both by this tweet and conversations abt a newt/herm AU of that tweet with @k-sci-janitor (who also thought of the funniest sign newt made in this fic, aka the cheekbones one, and what his tats should look like). this is long sorry :/ gets a little spicy towards the end but nothing worse than a high pg13/light M

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The evening of the weekly town council meeting, it pours like nothing else. Which Hermann figures is really quite appropriate. Loathe as he is to soak his trouser legs, trudge through the mud that used to be his front walk, and hold his umbrella for so long his arm aches (for the community center is a mere half-mile walk away that Hermann can't justify substituting with a bus), he can't imagine council meetings happening in any other sort of weather. In fact, they rarely tend to; their dreariness seems to be a necessity, part of the preparation, as if to put everyone in as miserable a mood as possible.

Hermann hates council meetings. He supposes he'd be more sympathetic towards the plights of his constituents—if one can call one's neighbors constituents—if he'd wanted the damned job in the first place. As it is, he feels a bit like he was conned into it. Hermann had been a lowly physics professor at the local community college, passionate about public education and funding for public education and all those proper sorts of things an educator ought to be concerned about, when he suddenly found himself seized with the idea of making a difference. So he ran for a head position on the council. And he won it. Only no one told him that the council deals a lot less with public education and a lot more with noise complaints, cul-de-sac bake sales, and raccoons in dustbins, which makes why he ran completely unopposed all the more obvious.

A fat raindrop explodes against the edge of Hermann's umbrella and splashes his glasses. Hermann grits his teeth and wipes them dry with the cuff of his sweater. Bloody meeting; bloody rain; Hermann just wants to go back home, and fix up a nice pot of herbal tea, and set a blanket in the dryer for ten minutes, and...

"Dr. Gottlieb! Hey, Dr. Gottlieb, wait—!"

A blur in an oversized yellow raincoat hurdles itself at Hermann from the stairs of the community center. Hermann considers pretending he is a different Dr. Gottlieb, one who certainly has no reason to know maniacs in raincoats, or maybe high-tailing it in the other direction. This is the other reason why Hermann loathes council meetings: Newton Geiszler.

The unfortunate thing is that Newton Geiszler was, at one point, a respectable academic type, and in fact one of Hermann's own colleagues at the community college. (Hermann only found this out after the fact—he does not make a habit of intermingling much with the biology department.) And Hermann does mean was. Around a year ago, Geiszler was asked to temporarily step down from his position after he suddenly and unexpectedly went off the deep end. He has not been asked to come back yet. And not without reason. "Dr. Geiszler," Hermann sighs. "I've asked you not to lurk about here like that. It's...unsettling."

"Sorry, man, sorry," Geiszler shouts. He stomps over and makes himself at home under Hermann's umbrella. Hermann's not sure how he's been managing to see anything, let alone Hermann approaching down the sidewalk: his glasses are completely fogged-up and rain-splattered. "Do you mind if—thanks, dude."

Geiszler flips his hood down. He’s short, only coming up to Hermann's nose, with stubble nearly overgrown to a full beard and a mess of wet brown hair. He shakes that hair now, like a dog, soaking Hermann in the process. Hermann growls. "I beg your pardon,” he says.

"Oops,” Geiszler says. “Sorry. Anyway, Dr. Gottlieb, I'm really glad I caught you, there are—there are some things I wanted to tell you about. Before the meeting. They're—hold on." He rummages around in the deep pockets of his raincoat and produces a damp notebook, which he begins to flip through frantically. "It's about—"

"I know what it's about," Hermann says. Geiszler fumbles to push his glasses back up his nose. "In fact, there are some things I need to speak with you about as well."

"You've seen them?" Geiszler says in a hushed tone.

Hermann scowls. "I certainly have.”

They first started cropping up in the forest around the little cabin Geiszler calls home. Then, like dandelions or bamboo, they spread fast and far—to the town commons, in the front lawn of the coffee shop Hermann frequents, in front of his house. Whenever Hermann dashes one down with his cane or hauls one off to a rubbish bin, two more only crop up in its place. It's annoying, frankly. As if Hermann doesn't have to deal with enough already.

3 ALIEN ABDUCTIONS IN ONE WEEK - WHEN IS THE COUNCIL GOING TO DO SOMETHING?, the new one sitting in front of the community center says.

It's better than last week's sign, Hermann supposes. THE TRUTH IS OUT THERE - AND HERMANN GOTTLIEB IS BLIND TO IT.

"You know you need a permit for those, Dr. Geiszler," Hermann says. "Or, at the very least, the council's permission. They're a public nuisance."

"My signs are a public nuisance?" Geiszler shouts. Hermann flinches back. Geiszler may be compact, but if he doesn't have the shrillest voice on the whole damned planet. "Open your eyes, dude! A dozen people went missing last month! The only public nuisance is whatever's coming from—" He bites his lip and jabs his finger at the sky, as if saying anything remotely akin to outer space would suddenly send fleets of UFOs pouring down from above. "And you're just letting them walk right fucking in."

“I thought they were flying in?" Hermann says. He raps Geiszler’s shin with the end of his cane. "Do get out of my way, Dr. Geiszler. The meeting starts in ten minutes, and you're welcome to air all of your grievances then."

Geiszler is silent as Hermann ducks around him and ascends the community center ramp. For a moment, Hermann thinks he may have won this small victory, and then he hears the wet slaps of Geiszler's rain boots against the pavement behind him. "Really funny," Newton says. "Real fucking funny, dude. I bet it'll be just as funny when they come for you next!"

Hermann unlocks the door. Geiszler waves a stack of black-and-white polaroids beneath his nose. "I took these last week," Geiszler says, and begins flipping through them as frantically as he had his notepad. Each one is blurry and indistinct, like Geiszler snapped them through a gauzy curtain with shaking hands. Hermann's not sure what he's meant to be looking at. "The day that waitress went missing from the bus stop. And two nights after that—your neighbor, the one who went outside to let his cat in and never came b—"

"Enough," Hermann says. He pushes the polaroids away, knocking two to the ground, and Geiszler scrambles to pick them up before they're ruined. "Dr. Geiszler, it is undoubtedly tragic that these people have—er—vanished, as they have, but continuously insisting extraterrestrials had something to do with it, and furthermore—" Geiszler opens his mouth as if to argue, but Hermann raises his voice and pushes on. "—furthermore, that I'm meant to do something about it, is completely—well, it's unhinged, frankly. I'm not law enforcement. Or the mayor. Or bloody—NASA. What do you want from me?"

Geiszler stares at him for a long time. He pockets his photographs. "They're gonna come for you," he says, ominously. "Just like they did for me."

The meeting goes off as expected, which is to say, badly. Hermann gets shouted at by nearly everyone in town, many of whom blame Hermann and his presumed negligence for the disappearances over the past year as well (blessedly, they don't also blame aliens), though many more of them blame him for more trivial things such as the broken water fountain in the commons or the library's slow wireless internet. Hermann can't decide which is worse.

As it is, when the clock strikes eight, he's more than ready to go home. "Right," he announces, standing up and making a show of tidying his meeting notes. They're already tidy: Hermann's notes are always meticulous. He continues—rather quickly, in case someone gets bold and attempts to interrupt him, "Thank you all very much for such a, er, productive meeting. I'll make sure to pass along everything you've said to the appropriate people. If there's nothing else..."

Geiszler jumps to his feet. A few people groan; Hermann has a feeling they're just about as sick of him as Hermann is. "Um, yeah, actually, I want to add something."

"No," Hermann says. “Dr. Geiszler, please, we can talk—”

"When we were outside," Geiszler continues anyway, raising his voice, "you asked me what I wanted you to do. Well, I just want you to listen to me! That's all! I have so much proof—so much I can show you—and you won't even—!"

"Proof?" Hermann says. "Your rubbish photographs?”

"It's not just the photographs! It's other stuff, too! Like—" Geiszler lets out a long, angry huff of air, and actually balls his fists up at his sides. Hermann has never seen him so incensed, not even when he accused Hermann of being an alien himself during a council meeting last summer. "Look, just come to my house and I'll fuckin' show you. Or are you that afraid of being—I don’t know, proven wrong?"

Part of Hermann is convinced that if he follows Geiszler out to his isolated cabin in the middle of the woods, it'll be the last thing he ever does. At the very least, he certainly has no desire to spend more time with Geiszler than he's already forced to. Yet—on the other hand—Hermann does not appreciate the challenge, nor does he appreciate being made to look like a fool by the man who chairs the local paranormal society. "Fine," he snaps, and Geiszler startles in obvious surprise. "Fine, you wretched little man. I’ll let you show me whatever proof you think you may have, so long as you take every single one of those signs down."

"Um," Geiszler squeaks. He clears his throat. "D—deal?"

Hermann seizes his cane and thrusts his chair back under his table roughly. "Well?" he says to the rest of the hall, none of whom have budged since Geiszler began shouting his head off. He scowls at the lot of them. "The meeting is over. You can leave."

It's Hermann's job to shut down the building each week, so he waits for the very last stragglers to toss out their paper water cups, shrug on their raincoats, and file outside before switching off the lights and locking up. He finds Geiszler lurking by a rather worse-for-wear green VW Beetle at the curb, the hood of his raincoat flipped back up over his hair. Hermann desperately hopes that the car isn't Geiszler’s. He is Hermann’s ride home tonight, after all. "I took the signs down," Geiszler says in a rush. "All of the ones around here, anyway. I'll have to do the rest tomorrow." He jerks his thumb at the backseat of the Beetle, where Hermann sees a haphazard pile of some of the 3 ALIEN ABDUCTIONS signs. His heart sinks. The X-Files bumper stickers should've been a dead giveaway, really.

"Thank you," Hermann sighs. "Well, let's get this over with."

"The heat is busted, so you might wanna leave your coat on," Geiszler says apologetically when Hermann manages to squish himself into the passenger's seat. The floor is a sea of empty Dunkin' Donuts cups, stacks of pulp science (or, if Hermann were to be less kind, pseudoscientific) magazines spanning back at least half a decade, and a pin-littered linen tote bag filled to the brim with boxed Annie's macaroni and cheese.

"Uh, sorry," Geiszler says. "I had to run some errands earlier. You can just—toss that in the back. Yeah."

The ride is short but bumpy, and though the removal of Geiszler's shopping bag offers Hermann more leg room, there is nothing that can make up for his tragically awful driving and his tragically awful CD collection. Hermann almost bolts from the car when they finally pull up at Geiszler's ivy-shrouded cabin, so relieved to have made it there in one piece that he's all but forgotten that he must now spend the rest of the evening with Geiszler, too. He remembers soon enough: another duo of aggressive signs have been pounded into Geiszler's mossy front path, TURN BACK NOW - ALIEN ABDUCTION ZONE, and a rather good sketch of Hermann beneath WHAT ARE THOSE CHEEKBONES HIDING? "That one's from the summer," Geiszler says sheepishly, kicking down the latter with the toe of his boot. "I keep forgetting to take it down. I don't still think you're an alien, by the way."

"Er, thank you," Hermann says. "I suppose?"

"They wouldn't be that obvious," Geiszler says, emphasizing the they with a meaningful glance up at the night sky.

"Of course not," Hermann says.

He's not quite sure what he expected Geiszler's house to look like. Some sort of—conspiracy nutter's den, perhaps, with aluminum foil hats and deconstructed radios and elaborate photoboards full of thumbtacks and red string. Or the interior of his car on a larger scale, with empty takeout containers and crumpled up papers on every surface. He's...sort of right. There's a noticeable lack of tinhats, but there are plenty of (modestly-sized) corkboards on the walls and multiple coffee cups peeking out of a recycling bin. The rest is merely precisely what Hermann would expect from an academic in his 30s: books, and mis-matching furniture, and a sink of dishes begging to be washed. It's...a bit disappointing, frankly. Though Hermann is rather impressed with the sleek telescope angled in front of the back slider door. Impressed, and envious. It's a very nice model.

"Make yourself at home," Geiszler says, unzipping his voluminous raincoat and tossing it, along with Hermann's, over the back of a worn armchair. He's wearing a pair of torn skinny jeans and a band t-shirt that reveals his heavily tattooed, and deceptively shapely, arms. Hermann tears his eyes away and forces himself to sit down at one end of Geiszler's couch. "I'm gonna make us some coffee. Do you want any sugar or non-dairy creamer?"

"No, thank you," Hermann says. "I don't drink coffee this late. It'll keep me up all night."

"Well, I hope so, that's kinda the plan,” Geiszler says. He rolls his eyes. “The aliens never come before at least midnight. Soy milk or almond milk?"

Hermann thinks, briefly and longingly, of his nice warm bed, the blanket he intended to toss in the dryer, and the herbal tea he won't be having after all. "Almond milk?" he hazards.

Geiszler stares at him in evident disgust. "Dude, I was kidding. You know how bad that shit is for the environment? It takes, like, a fuckin' thousand gallons of water or something like that for one carton of almond milk. It's insane. I mean, I guess it's still less water than what dairy needs, but there are plenty of better options."

"Oh," Hermann says. Hermann drinks skim milk. "I'm sorry. Er. Soy milk?"

As Geiszler fixes them mugs, Hermann begins to poke around some papers scattered across the coffee table. One is a list of names and dates, seemingly random, Hermann thinks, until he recognizes (scrawled in purple ink at the very bottom of the page) that of the gentleman who disappeared from his back porch just down Hermann's street. When he recognizes another—a teenager who worked as a barista at Hermann’s favorite coffee shop—he realizes it must be everyone who's vanished from town in the past year. Another paper has the same dates repeated, though not alongside any names—rather, bizarre little phrases like circling lights and that sound again. "You found my notes," Geiszler says cryptically, and then thrusts a mug out to Hermann.

Hermann takes the mug. A logo on the side tells Hermann it was from some academic conference in California ten years ago. "What are they supposed to mean?" he says.

Geiszler snorts. "Uh, I thought it was kind of obvious. Look—" He sits next to Hermann, far too close, and points at the column of numbers on the first page. "These are the dates when people have been reported missing," he says, and then scans his finger over to the second page, "and these are the dates when I've observed extraterrestrial—or at least, unexplainable—activity overhead. See how they match up almost perfectly?

"Mm," Hermann says. He does not. "So—if I am to understand you correctly—you believe that a, ah," he takes the page back from Geiszler, "a 'weird swoopy sound' from overhead had something to do with that poor young woman disappearing from a bus stop last week?”

"It wasn't just a weird noise!" Geiszler exclaims. "I showed you the pictures. I ran outside when I heard it, and thank fuck I had my camera, because I caught those lights just as they were leaving. And then what do I find out the next morning? There was another abduction, at almost the exact same time I saw the lights!"

"Ten miles from here," Hermann reminds him. "It would've had to have been a bloody fast ship."

"Yeah, no shit, Hermann," Geiszler says. "They're, like, fucking—mega-advanced lifeforms. They probably have the tech to vaporize the entire Earth if they wanted. Of course it was a fast ship.”

Geiszler is still sitting awfully close to Hermann. He runs very warm, unlike Hermann, warm enough to make Hermann warm too—like a scruffy, tattooed, freckled furnace. Yes, freckled, for Geiszler has the lightest dusting of freckles across his round chipmunk-like cheeks that Hermann finds inexplicably charming. He wonders if Geiszler would notice him loosen his collar a bit, perhaps take off his sweater. He really is getting quite warm. "So, I was saying," Geiszler continues, and though he speaks almost directly into Hermann's ear, he sounds as if he's a mile away from him. "Waitress at bus stop—weird lights over my cabin—waitress gone from bus stop. The proof is, like, undeniable!"

"Indeed," Hermann says.

He undoes the top button of his collar. He hasn't touched his coffee yet—he wonders if Geiszler even cares. The tattoo on Geiszler’s bicep, some sort of space tentacle monster, stares back at Hermann. "I'm telling you, man," Geiszler says, "this is no joke. They're taking people, maybe even for good."

They're gonna come for you, just like they did for me. When Geiszler began spouting nonsense about aliens last year, he was not booted from the biology department right away. Mostly everyone at the college, Hermann knows, tolerated his eccentricities on account of his admittedly brilliant mind and popularity among the students. The final straw came when Geiszler's extraterrestrial delusions (for what else could they be?) reached a new level: he showed up to campus in his pajamas one morning, raving that the aliens were not only zooming about over his house, but had actually abducted him the previous evening. "You seemed to fare alright, though, didn't you?" Hermann says. "When you were—ah—taken? They even dropped you back off in time for work. Quite courteous, I should think."

"That's—" Geiszler begins to shake his leg up and down, nervous energy radiating up his body and through Hermann's. He spills some of his coffee on the carpet. "That was—that was dumb. I got lucky. I think I was one of the first ones, you know? Because the disappearances didn't really get bad until, like, a month after that? I was in bed—and, and it wasn't like how it is in movies, I wasn't sucked up in a giant beam of light or anything like that, one minute I was there and then the next I wasn't, I was somewhere...else. And—uh. I don't really remember what they looked like. I tried to—sketch them out, but it was like trying to remember a dream, all the specific details about them just faded once it was over. But, um." He rubs the back of his neck, and Hermann is surprised to see him blushing. "Well, if I'm being honest, I think I kinda freaked them out."

Hermann can't help but snort. "You what?"

"I'm serious!" Geiszler shrieks. "I freaked them out. I was just really excited about it all. Like, dude, come on, I was abducted by aliens. How fucking cool is that? I just kept asking a bunch of questions, like, are you gonna probe me? are you gonna take me back to Mars or Jupiter or, like, I don't know, fucking Gallifrey? do you even understand what I'm saying, how do you communicate? and then the next thing I knew, I was landing on my ass in the school parking lot. They must've been observing me like I was observing them, like, they maybe knew I worked there? Anyway—" He shakes his head. "I tell you what, I'm real glad I decided to not just wear boxers like usual to bed that night. That would've been really embarrassing."

Bombarded with the sudden mental image of what Geiszler usually looks like in bed, Hermann (feeling rather warm again) tugs at his collar and clears his throat. He has certainly seen more than enough for the night, and if his mind is straying to something as prosaic as what does Dr. Geiszler look like half-naked?, it likely means it’s time for bed. "Er, right. Dr. Geiszler—"

"Just call me Newt, man," Geiszler says.

"Newton," Hermann concedes. It gives him a private little thrill. No one calls Newton Newton; it’s always either Newt or Dr. Geiszler. "Newton,” he says again, “this has been a very—illuminating—evening, but it's getting rather late, and I think you ought to drive me home before—"

And then Newton begins to take off his shirt.

Yes, a small part of Hermann's brain whispers traitorously, yes, yes, yes, even as Hermann recoils and stammers out, "Newton, what—?!"

"Oh, calm down, I'm not coming onto you," Newton says. He drops his t-shirt on the floor and jabs a thumb at his chest. His bare chest. "See, look. Proof."

Hermann's not sure what he's meant to be looking at. The giant Godzilla tattooed over Newton's pectorals? The flying saucer tattooed above Newton’s belly button? Newton’s nipple piercings? Hermann thinks he understands what an overheating computer feels like, an influx of too much information with processors unequipped to handle it. "I," he says. Newton’s belly button is not pierced. Hermann’s not sure why he thought it would be.

"Look at my chest, dude!" Newton says, tapping his skin insistently.

It takes Hermann a great deal of effort to pull his eyes away from the nipple piercings. In the dead center of Newton's chest, spaced perfectly between his pectorals and right over the nostrils of Godzilla, is a strange, almost luminescent glyph of a language Hermann can't begin to recognize. It's raised from Newton's skin, more like a brand than a tattoo. And...well, when Hermann says luminescent, he really means it. The squiggle seems to glow blue. "This was on me the next morning," Newton says. "I think they marked me. Like you'd tag a lab rat?”

Hermann can't help himself: he reaches out and touches the mark. "Strange," he murmurs. Compared to the heat of Newton’s body, the glyph is quite cool. Frigid, in fact, like metal, and yet as soft as the rest of his skin.

He's close enough to Newton to hear the hitch in his breath when they make contact, and as he traces his fingertips over the glyph, he can feel Newton's heart pounding beneath them. Strange, indeed; Newton has been such a thorn in his side for so many months, and yet all Hermann wants to do now is touch even more of him. He trails his hand lower, down to the flying saucer on Newton's soft abdomen. Newton inhales sharply. "Um," he says. "Should—should I put my shirt back on?"

"Do you want to?" Hermann says.

"Not really," Newton says.

He stares at Hermann, eyebrows knit together behind his glasses, like he can't seem to make sense of him. His confusion is very much warranted; Hermann can’t seem to make sense of himself right now, either. Then, to Hermann's supreme annoyance, the pieces seem to click into place in Newton's mind, and he grins. "Oh, duh," he says. "No wonder. You wanna fuck me, don't you? That’s why you’re so obsessed with me.”

That would certainly explain the strange warm feeling that comes over Hermann sometimes when he thinks about Newton in the dead of night that he has, up until this very moment, attributed to bouts of temporary insanity and/or a latent murderous desire. Nothing so dramatic as all that, then—just regular human biology. Urgh. How disgusting. And for Newton, of all people. “Obsessed with you?” Hermann sniffs, desperate to retain some element of propriety even while he begins to tug at Newton’s button fly. “Newton, you have spent thousands of dollars on yard signs just to invite me over for a coffee.”

“Uh, yeah, and it worked,” Newton says.

He curls his fingers in the front of Hermann's sweater, thumbing over one of the buttons.

“Even when I thought you were an alien,” Newton says, “I still kiiiiinda wanted to fuck you.”

Delusional or not, Newton looks terrifically good with a beard.

"Wait," Hermann gasps some time later. "Newton, stop a moment—"

Newton pulls away from him, frowning. He pushes his glasses back up on his nose. "What is it?" he says. "Did I hurt—?"

But Hermann pats at his shoulder frantically, pointing beyond him at the back slider and the dark of the forest beyond that. Newton cranes his neck around. "Only I'm sure I saw something. Lights, or…” Hermann feels a small twinge of embarrassment. The night is dead silent, and dead still. “Well, now I'm not sure."

“You probably imagined it," Newton says. He slips back down to press a kiss at Hermann's jaw. “It’s too early to be them.”

Not even ten yet. Newton kisses behind Hermann’s ear. It feels very nice. "Yes," Hermann agrees slowly, his eyelids flickering shut. He smooths his hand up and down Newton’s back. "Yes, I suppose you're right." Newton’s stories must have left him on edge. Which is of course ridiculous, because they’re all a load of rubbish—there may be extraterrestrials somewhere out there in the great wide universe, but they’re certainly not swooping down and plucking up hapless test subjects from Earth, let alone their small town, every other day. Hermann has much more important things to concern himself with right now, like how it feels when he threads his fingers in the soft strands of Newton’s hair, or the sound Newton makes when Hermann digs his nails into his skin, or how wonderful kissing Newton is...

And, unobserved by both of them, the three lights hovering above Newton's cabin blink away as quickly as they'd come.

[stephspurs]

A Family Affair | Euro 2020 Football Fanfiction

hi guys and gals! Part 7 sees friendship strengthened, decisions being made and love ultimately hurting. As always, please enjoy the next part and let me know what you think is going to happen in part eight! I actually love hearing from you all so please don't be too shy to reach out and message me - I love a good chat LOL Love always, Steph xx

Part 7 | settima parte

warnings; love sucks man. word count;  1850 writing tools; third person until dashed line, first person thereafter. next update; Monday 09/08 5pm AEST. Updates are three times/week (Monday, Wednesday & Friday)! Tags (as requested by users); @footballffbarbiex @obsesseds-world @abysshaven link to fic masterlist here

“bella amelia, cosa ho fatto per meritarmi questa telefonata?” (beautiful amelia, what did i do to deserve this phone call?) Jorginho spoke his second-native tongue down the line to the British girl, calling him way past her self-appointed bedtime of 9pm.

“Jorgi, ho bisogno del consiglio di un amico” (Jorgi, i need the advice of a friend). Amelia, almost desperately, pleaded down the line to the boy who became her therapist.

It had been a few days since Amelia & Jack’s facetime where they sat and listened to the countless offers the successful girl had waiting in her voice message inbox. Being the person that she is, Amelia needed to distract herself from obsessing over the messages so she threw herself into her job. Spending too many hours over her paid allocation at Juventus training ground, getting administrative work done for the season ahead.

Was this her way of nesting? Or empty-nesting? Was she subconsciously preparing the club and her boys for life without her? Getting them ready with a season's worth of set pieces and tactical plays that would secure them an outstanding 37th victory? On the flip side, was she preparing for her new role in England which she had yet to accept. There was no harm in her taking her intellectual property back over to the motherland. The two clubs did not compete in the same tournaments, perhaps only the Champions league - but who's to say that whatever club she does pick will make the Champions League? There was no doubt Juve would be there - all of her preparation would ensure they would be. Whoever took over her role simply just had to show up and keep the boys in line.

“ok tesoro, parlami.” (Ok darling, speak to me). The Italian settled onto his couch, espresso in hand, waiting to hear the younger girl's problem.

“So I've spoken with Kyle & Jack now, and have told them of my predicament. They both are very heavily favouring one side - but I need a voice of reason. If you happen to express the same sentiments that they both did, then maybe that's all of the reassurance I need to make this final decision.” Amelia switched back to her native tongue.

After spending the better part of an hour discussing in great depth the offers that she was receiving from the 5 english clubs, Amelia felt just as confused as she did before calling the Chelsea boy. No surprise that Jorgi was team Come to the Prem & Join Chelsea, but the italian midfield maestro had also brought her back down to earth from cloud nine and reminded her of what, or who, she was leaving behind.

“Now I don't like telling you what to do, but you need to discuss this with Fede, Amelia. He doesn’t deserve a lot of things, but this is something he does.”

So that's where Amelia found herself the next morning. Sunday’s in Italy were reserved for espresso and long walks in the sun. This particular Sunday must have been reflective of the internal turmoil she was facing, uncommon for the season, the sky above her was overcast and a light drizzle had started to set in on her walk to the charming Italian’s townhouse.

______________________________________________________________

“pensavo fosse un mito che gli inglesi portino con sé il tempo the” (i thought it was a myth that british people bring the weather with them) Fede said as he opened the door, and his arms, while looking down the two steps at me.

“Very funny” I said as I gave him a hug. He always was so good at hugs. I’m going to miss them. Snap out of it Amelia - you don’t even know if you’re going to go yet. Oh she knows she's going. She also knows what club she's going to. No she doesn't, you be quiet. I’m here rooting for her Italian romance. If I had an angel and devil on each shoulder, their conversation would speak my internal monologue as such.

Walking through to his kitchen, putting on a coffee and saying hello to his dogs, Fede stood in the doorway and watched me move around his kitchen as though it was my own.

“I’m convinced you got British bulldogs because you just can’t help but love the English” I cheekily smiled up at him from my crouched position in the middle of his kitchen, giving the two bullys the best head rubs.

“Sure, you keep thinking that Amelia” Oh, the way he says your name Amelia, so foreign, so romantic. He says it the same way any other Italian would say it, he’s nothing special. Be quiet, let them have their moment.

“Lets go and enjoy these out in the courtyard, is your sun shade still up? It should hold out the rain right?” Amelia spoke rushedly as she poured two espresso cups and walked towards his back door.

“Tesoro, why are you so unsteady today? Is something troubling you?” Fede spoke worriedly, noticing my little nervous habits coming out to play and speaking faster than my mind could comprehend. Better to just get this over with i think, for once we agree on something.

“Ok i need to tell you something, and i need you to let me get it all out before interrupting me. Can you do that? This is something i’ve been working up the courage to speak out loud, let alone speak it to you”

Fede took a sip of his espresso, holding my eye contact, before putting his cup back on its saucer and leaning forward, elbows on his knees. He thought he was ready for what i was about to say, expecting it to be yet another long winded speech as to why i want to put a label on our situationship. Oh boy, how wrong he was.

“After the success of the european tournament, i have received a lot of praise and recognition for my skills”

“And you deserve every bit of it amore, every bit and even more” Oh dear, could my heart hurt anymore?

“Fede, I asked you not to interrupt me…”

“Ok ok, sorry, continue”

“So, I have received a lot of recognition both here in Italy as well as from my home country of England. In saying that, I have received a few offers from clubs in the premier league that want me to bring my approach, the italian approach, to the english game. It's a real step up in my career and it's something I am seriously considering. I’ve spoken with some of the boys back home and also Jorgi, they all think that this is the next step for me. I’m far too comfortable here, I can't grow in my comfort zone. I think I'm ready for a new challenge.”

I held eye contact with the 27 year old, I wasn’t about to let him know just how vulnerable I was feeling here in front of him. Something Fede could always do was read me, and read my emotions. If he knew how exposed I felt, how easily I could be swayed over this decision, then he would make it his life's mission to do so. I had made my mind up that I was going, but there was also a part of me that decided if he was to give me what I was after I would be open to the possibility of staying.

“So it seems that you have asked for the opinion of everyone else in your life, and made your decision, before even considering mine.” He slumped back in his chair, and rubbed two fingers over his lips while looking off into the small courtyard garden.

“Fede, I have made my decision. But I wanted to talk to you about it, I owe that to you. You have made my time here so memorable, so fantastic, so filled with love that I wouldn't even consider not including you in this.”

“Is there anything I can do to make you stay? Do you want me to ask you to be my girlfriend? To tell you I love you? To move in with me? Let me know what you need from me to reconsider this decision” He began to get frustrated with me, pulling the cap off of his head and running his fingers through his hair.

“That’s exactly it Fede! I don’t want to ask you to do that, you should ask me to be your girlfriend on your own! I don't want you to tell me you love me if you think that's what I want to hear - I want you to feel like you love me! I don’t need anyone to tell me what I want to hear, what I want to hear is what you truly feel. And if there is something i have learnt about you in the last few years is that you can’t hold back your feelings with anything! If you were in love with me it would have burst from you a long time ago. I think that you do love me Fede, but as someone to come home to instead of no one at all.”

“You know Fede, i don’t have any regrets over this. You mean just as much to me now as you did the very first time we crossed that boundary and blurred the lines. You’re just my type, you only call me late at night, you can’t decide if you’ll be your own man or mine. I hate to say it, but you really are just my type. This decision has nothing to do with you, it’s something i have come to make all on my own.”

I had stood up now, looking down at the 27 year old. I needed him to understand exactly what I was saying, how serious I was. This was the moment I could get it all off my chest, instead of just letting the relationship play out on his terms.

“I leave on Friday, I let the club know this morning. There's nothing that can be done now Fede, this is my decision. Please respect it, and me”

He stood up, his almost 6’1” frame towering over me. Looking down, face of steel, I could see everything I needed behind his eyes.

“hai ragione ti amo Solo non nel modo in cui meriti di essere amato” (you're right, i do love you. Just not in the way you deserve to be loved). He pulled me into his chest, both arms wrapping around the back of my shoulders, left hand holding my head in the crook of his neck. My arms wrapped around his back from below his arms, holding him tight enough that they crossed over and I could grab the sides of his rib cage. This was the closure I needed.

“I’ll give Jorginho a call and make sure he looks out for you”

“How do you know what club I'm going to?”

“I saw the way your eyes sparkled when you mentioned its name, it was the same sparkle that used to come out when you said mine…”

Part 8. | parte otto

[joontier]

Subliminal in Scrubs | V2; report xiii

pairings: dr. jeon jungkook x female reader

chapter rating: NC-17 | genre: humor, workplace relationships

warnings: swearing 

word count: 1.8k

g/n: decided on a bit of a filler for this one as a sort of prelude to future scenes 👀👀 ((likewise manifesting my plan to post another chapter this week))

[taglist]:  @nottodayjjk @ditttiii @zeharilisharaban @btsbunny07 @turquoiseandplaidinautumn @aamxxrii @codeinebelle @btsmakesmehappy @stargukkie @moonchild1​

Subliminal in Scrubs (the records) |  navi. | m.list

Jungkook locks his apartment door behind him, jiggling the doorknob afterwards for ‘double security’ as one would usually call it. He grabs his backpack from the floor and places one of the straps on his shoulders and heads on his way. As he passes by two of his neighbors who live in the same floor, he nods at them, adding a brief hum in greeting. 

“Hey man!” One of the men, Jikwang (as what Jungkook believes this man’s name was), calls out just before Jungkook reaches the elevator. “There was this hot girl asking about you last night.” 

Jungkook raises a brow. He hadn’t really met anyone recently, besides that one cute law student who was looking for a new tenant - and eventually turned out to be your neighbor this whole time. She was cute and all, but she didn’t seem like the type that was ‘hot’ to these types of people. 

Jungkook racks his brain for anything, trying to remember the very few number of his one night stands.Surely,none of them would have gotten pregnant with protection on….surely? On top of that, he hadn’t really disclosed his address to a lot of people too, so there was no way someone would be looking for him, all the more a “hot” woman,as these two would claim. 

“Did she say what her name was?” 

The one beside Jikwang shakes his head, adjusting his beanie. He’d seen this dude a couple of times hanging around, but he never actually got his name.  “Nah bro, I don’t think you’re the commitment type of dude…” he comments, dark eyes looking at Jungkook from his head down to his toe. Who was this guy anyways and who was he to judge whether Jungkook was the type to enter a committed relationship or not? 

“She just...looked rich, rich. She had a driver... who helped her come down from a nice Benz.” 

Jungkook feels his heart drop to the ground. No way in hell. 

“I think her name was Hee something...Junghwa? I dunno man, I’m not good with names. But it sounds similar to that…” 

“Was it Junghee?” 

“Yeah I think that’s it…” bonnet-dude replies, tapping a finger against his chin as he approaches Jungkook. “You think maybe you can set me up? With you know…” 

Jikwang knocks the back of bonnet-man’s head. “I got dibs first, shithead. “If she’s not already yours though,” he adds, delivering a wink aimed at Jungkook. “Her friends will do.” 

Jungkook squints his eyes at the duo. “No. She’s my sister. And she doesn’t have any friends.” A chill courses through his spine as he replies, wondering how she managed to find out where he lived, and why would she even reach out? Why now, when she had so many years to do so? 

Beanie guy simply laughs at him - if it was even considered laughing, when he was practically splitting his sides with laughter - like the thought of having a sister was hilarious to him. “You’re real funny, man. There is no...way...in hell… that that lady was your sister.” 

Ah yes, this man is a health vice personified. Jungkook notes the discoloration of his teeth, the god-awful odor coming from his mouth, and they both reek of alcohol and drugs combined. From a safe distance, Jungkook watches their amusement over the subject that is his sister, thinking about why he even indulged these two in the first place. For all he knows, they might have been shitting on him the whole time. 

“Sorry man. I mean...she’s rich and hot… and you?” Jikwang shrugs his shoulders. 

‘And he?’ What about him? 

What the hell was that supposed to mean? 

Jungkook clicks his tongue silently, clearly taking full offense with Jikwang’s statement. Did they just imply he didn’t look rich and hot too? Well, compared to them though, they’ll obviously have way longer to go. 

Jungkook blinks before equally returning their level of disbelief. “For real, bro?” These men diss him, won’t believe he has a sister whose aura dwarfs his by a million percent, and now they want him to set up a date with her? He shakes his head. Only crooks like these would say insane shit like this. 

If only this wasn’t the cheapest and most convenient apartment he could find to accommodate his daily hustle, Jungkook would have moved out of this crap excuse of an apartment building a long time ago. 

“Keep dreaming man.” 

“Hey, this is what I get for selling you my bike for a good price?” Jikwang eyes Jungkook, taunting him. 

“I owe you nothing. I paid for it ages ago.” Jungkook turns on his heel, leaving the two in the crusty ass corridor of their apartment building. He needs to get a new place. Quickly. 

With a sigh, he pulls on his down jacket, keeping himself warm as he walks to the garage. 

‘King Auto’ 

There’s a certain warmth that envelops Jungkook whenever he sees the garage, a place he’d rather call home than his terrible apartment building. It sits right at the corner of two busy streets, just six blocks away from his apartment. 

Funnily enough, it wasn’t him who first found out about the garage but the other way around. Well, technically, the owner did. Lee Dongmin, owner and manager of ‘King Auto’ repairs and restores almost all types of cars and bikes alike, occasionally servicing high-end cars on lucky days. 

Dongmin would usually see Jungkook pass by the garage in the morning on his way to the university or his part-time job.Well, being located at a busy street in the city of Seoul, there would normally be a lot of passersby but Dongmin knew these people either worked or lived around the area; Jungkook, however, always lingered when he walks past the garage. 

It had come to Dongmin’s knowledge a few months later that Jungkook purposefully used a longer route on his way, walking two extra blocks just so that he could pass by the garage. Dongmin hadn’t initially done anything about it, as he thought Jungkook simply took interest in cars - especially when the shop had its fair share of servicing cars from the western market. 

There was this particular day though one summer, that their paths would finally cross. Jungkook’s bike, the same bike he bought from sketchy Jikwang, broke down. Coincidentally just in front of King Auto too. Funnily enough, no one in the garage was familiar with fixing up bikes, but Jungkook simply asked if he could borrow a few tools and he’d fix his bike himself. 

Ultimately, Jungkook became part of the King Auto family. He’d spend his spare time in the garage when he’s not busy with his part-time jobs and on occasion, Jungkook gets to keep a tiny commission whenever he helps out with the repairs. 

Jungkook goes through the front door greeting the new receptionist, Clark, a good morning before heading straight to the garage. Jungkook spots a familiar shade of blue peeking through the scissor lifts, just by the end row. He practically dashes to the car in excitement, too thrilled to greet his favorite car he had worked on previously. 

“My baby!” The boy exclaims as he rests his chin on the Porsche Panamera’s roof. “Kook! Get your hands off that! I just had it cleaned!” gruffs Mansik from the other side of the car, flinging his towel at Jungkook who mumbles a sorry but continues to cradle the car, a little more gently this time. 

“If you continue doing that, you know a towel isn’t the only thing Mansik is going to throw at you.” Lee Dongmin’s voice is low, careful that the man he’s referring to won’t hear his words. “I’m glad he hasn’t resorted to tools yet...just a couple of smelly socks and a t-shirt that smells like it hasn’t been washed for months... “ 

“Fuckers.” True to Jungkook’s foreboding, Mansik does throw a sock ball from out of nowhere, one which barely misses Jungkook’s face. Dongmin simply shakes his head at his workers, who he has considered family at this point, Jungkook included. “I’m just glad none of that fell into my first coffee of the day.” Dongmin observes, drawing himself father from the Porsche and any flying objects later on. 

“By the way, the owner is actually here to pick up the car. I may or may not have mentioned your infatuation with it.” 

Jungkook almost instantly jumps to his feet, searching for the owner inside the garage, but disappointingly ending up with all the familiar faces at the garage. “Chill, kid. He just grabbed some coffee down the street,” Dongmin mentions as he takes a sip of his own. “Ah, speaking of the devil,” the latter states, nodding his head towards someone behind Jungkook. 

“Seokjin-sunbaenim?” 

“Oh hey! Wasn’t expecting to see you here...Jungkook, right?” 

“Yes sir!” Jungkook’s pupils shake, animatedly looking back and forth between the garage owner and his upper-level resident. “So...you’re the one who owns this Porsche?” Seokjin raises his cup, adding a small nod in Jungkook’s direction. He internalizes his excitement, before confessing his love for Seokjin’s Panamera. 

“And so, Dongmin here mentioned. Also said you were the one who fixed her up. Thanks man!” 

Dongmin looks at the two of them, eyebrows creased in the middle. “You two know each other?” 

“Seokjin-sunbaenim is a senior of mine at Woocheon.” Seemingly shellshocked at the new piece of information, Dongmin turns to Seokjin, “You’re a doctor?” The owner of the Porsche rolls his eyes fondly, “Yes, Dongmin. We can have lives outside the hospital too, you know.” 

“Anyways, ‘Mera’s ready to go yeah?” 

“Of course. Kook fixed it up just fine.” 

“Alright. Got a shift today man? Need a ride to the hospital?” 

Jungkook is tempted to give in, but merely fixing Seokjin’s car is enough honor for him and he can’t take advantage of his generosity. “No thank you, sunbae. I’ve already got a ride to work today.” Jungkook points to his bike on the other side of the garage. 

Seokjin tuts his disbelief. “You’re kidding me right? In this weather?” The older doctor points outside, then rubs his palm against his down coat. “No way in hell, kid. Get in the car.” 

“Really?” Jungkook mumbles, dimple on display as his lips form a thin line. Seokjin makes a hum of approval as he takes off his jacket while Jungkook dashes back to where he’d left his backpack. “He’s a good kid, Jungkook. Can be a bit of a delinquent sometimes, but he’s good. Take care of him, yeah?” 

“Huh,” Seokjin smirks, “this handsome face got nothing he can’t handle.” Dongmin rolls his eyes this time, “Seriously doubt we’re the same age honestly.” 

Jungkook returns to where the Porsche is parked, and Seokjin gets a spur-of-the-moment idea. The surgical resident throws his keys to Jungkook before settling inside the passenger seat. Jungkook, surprised as ever, simply stands there in surprise. “Well?” Seokjin asks, ducking towards the dashboard so he could take a look at Jungkook, “We’re gonna be late!” 

© joontier 2021

[derekmorganscrocs]

Pictures: Ace x Reader

Pairing: Drew!Reader x Ace (Nancy Drew CW)

Word Count: 7, 632 words

Request for @ateliefloresdaprimavera

Summary: When Carson asks reader for an old photo, her and Ace go through their photos and reminisce on their years of memories. From how they met, to their first kiss, to when they moved in together, the pair enjoy remembering their past and talk about the future.

Notes: Reader is Nancy’s older sister and a nurse student. None of the timelines really add up, so just don’t think about that too much lol. This is my first request, so I hope I did alright! It took so long and I got majorly carried away (7k words whoop whoop!), but I’m so happy with it and I hope you enjoy!! Flashbacks are in italics!

You walk into the apartment you and Ace share, throwing your keys onto the little table in the entryway and placing your bag on the ground. It’s been a long day, and you really just want to see your boyfriend. A smile appears on your face as you breathe in the smell of your favourite dinner cooking and savour the sound of Ace humming along to some Bon Jovi song he and his dad listened to when Ace was a little kid.

A small laugh escapes your lips, and you make your way into the kitchen. Ace must not have heard you come in, because he jumps when you wrap your arms around his waist. He realizes it’s you by the old bracelet on your wrist, an old woven strip of leather that his dad gave you the  Christmas after you guys got together. It’s one of your most prized possessions. He turns, staying in your grip, and smiles down at you. 

“Hey,” he says softly, lifting your chin with his finger. Ace leans in and plants a sweet kiss against your lips. You smile into the kiss, and when he pulls away you lean your head against his chest. He wraps his arms snugly around your shoulders, and you melt into his embrace. 

“Today was like a thousand years long,” you groan, your voice muffled by his chest. “And its only like six o’clock!” Your comment makes him let out a small laugh and the sound makes you smile. It’s been all of a minute, and Ace is already turning your day around. Though that’s been his specialty for a long time. 

“Well, once we eat I thought we could go through old polaroids. Mr. D wants a copy of the one from Halloween two years ago.” Ace glances down at you, but you keep your face smushed against him. 

“Sounds great.” The sound is still muffled, but he can hear that you’re more than happy with the idea. He laughs slightly, he’s always found your exhausted antics funny. You tilt your face slightly, glancing at the food on the stove. 

Ace follows your gaze, reaching to stir the pasta so it won’t burn to the pot. Your eyes catch on his arm. The way he’s stretching is really just defining every single muscle. He’s concentrated on the food, trying to focus enough that he won’t mess up using a single hand. When he’s really focused, he bites his lip slightly, and he’s really focused right now. And if you weren’t so tired, oh boy-

“Hey, it’s done!” He’s still clueless. You’ve been dating for six years and sometimes he still doesn’t notice the way you just stare blankly for a minute, imagining his hands roaming your body or his lips pressed against yours as he- “Let’s eat on the couch, we can start looking at pictures now.”

“Okay.” You finally move out of his grip, feeling a lot less warm and fuzzy without his arm around you. “Hey, do we have a printed version of the one Nancy took the day we met?”

“I think so, they’re sorted by date, right?” 

“Yes. I still love your mom for that, by the way.” You grin at him, turning and heading toward the couch. He chuckles before following, and the two of you sit and eat, flipping through an album first. 

The album is older pictures, from before you met, but it’s so fun to look through. Little BoyScout Ace is such an adorable image, it never fails to make you laugh and make him blush. And your younger self playing doctor has the same effect, with reversed reactions of course. It only takes a little bit to finish dinner, and Ace returns the dishes to the kitchen to leave table space for photos. He comes back, this time sitting closer. You curl up against his side, and he drapes an arm over you. 

“Can we look through all of our pictures?”

“I was gonna ask the same thing,” he chuckles, picking up a smaller album. You recognize it right away, it’s the one from your first year of high school. When you started taking polaroids. It’s been a fascination of yours forever, and cameras have always been an interesting hobby for you. 

The first picture is actually of the school, and you notice the former Mr. G standing in the corner, looking shady as hell. That’s from the beginning of the year, when you and your sister, Nancy, got roped into the mysterious locker thief at school. 

The next is the ‘crime scene’ photos you took. They’re no professional photos, but they’re decent. Ace looks them over and gives you an impressed smirk. You chuckle and flip to the next photo. You and Ace in the back of a cop car. 

You pressed tape over the powder that Nancy had spread over the teacher’s desk, praying that some clear fingerprints will show up. The desk was cleaned only a few minutes before the theft, which meant that the fingerprints should be visible. 

A cough in the hallway tore you from your thoughts. You and your sister glance up, caught in the act. Fearing detention, the pair of you decided to hide behind the door and make a break for it once the teachers were inside of the room. Solid plan, if they were teachers. 

Instead, you were met with two very strong, very angry looking men, who were glaring at you and Nancy. In the heat of the moment, the two of you made a wordless decision to split up, and ran off in opposite directions. Dashing through the school, Thief One got on your heels, you had known that your only sanctuary would be the old janitor’s closet. 

It was easy to miss. Tucked just around a corner, outside the gym and hidden because of the angle of the wall, Thief One would totally not notice it if he didn’t know about it. And if he did know about it, you just hoped he would believe the stories about it being haunted. Which, in hindsight, were probably true. 

It came down to a split second decision, and you went for the closet. Choosing to go for the supply closet, willing to risk ghosts over crazy thieves who want your head on a stick, you flung the door open...

...And ran right into a mildly familiar fluffy-haired boy. Apologizing profusely at a whisper, you’d closed the door behind you and shushed him. The closet was smaller than you had remembered, and Ace basically had you pinned to the door. Holding a finger to your lips with a pleading look in your eye, you waited for the footsteps. 

They came soon enough, pounding on the floor by the door as he rushed past. You could hear the man open the back door, which was his fatal mistake. Never open the door. Security systems exist. The alarm started blaring, which meant that the cops got called. You let out a sigh of relief, tilting your head back against the door. 

“What’s going on?” Ace had watched your expression relax, and he’d noted how breathless you were when you burst in. He was impressed, to say the least, and really curious. 

“Tell you later,” you whispered hurriedly, bringing a hand to his mouth. “Don’t let him hear us.” Chest still rising and falling rapidly, you try and catch your breath. Ace nods and you remove your hand, focusing on your breathing. 

A few more silent minutes had passed and then the cops had arrested the man outside your closet. You and Ace had come out quietly, seeing Nancy with Chief McGinnis, and two officers watching the two men you and Nancy had accidentally caught. 

After seating you in the police car, shouting at Carson for letting you break into the school, McGinnis had to decide what to do. He ended up dragging you, Nancy, and Ace to the station, only to later send Ace home. Nancy got front seat privileges because she had more of an explanation than you. Which resulted in your dad snapping a picture of you and Ace in the backseat. 

Ace got sent home as soon as you all got to the station, but his interest had been piqued. 

“I remember that. You busted into that supply closet and nearly killed me with the door.”

“It’s not like I meant to, I was being chased by a criminal!” You give him a gentle smack on the back of the head, laughing. “And if I remember correctly, you were still flirting with me for weeks after that.”

“Well that was just uncalled for.” He pretends to be offended, which makes both of you laugh again. “But yes, when you broke into that closet, it was game over. No one else was ever going to compare to you.”

Your face burns at the compliment, and you try and hide your smile. A soft giggle escapes your lips despite your efforts to stop it, and Ace lifts your chin. 

“I mean it. You’re something else, Y/n Drew.” He glances down, distracted by a picture from May of your second year of high school. That’s when you and Ace first got together. It’s a picture of you and him, sitting on the hill out behind the school. 

It was over when Ace had taken his first look at you. He fell hard and he fell fast. He was so painfully obvious about it too. Not that it bugged you, ever since he’d had you pinned against that door, all you could think about were his piercing blue eyes and his sly smirk. The two of you started hanging out more, and the rest is history. 

By the end of your sophomore year, you were dating Ace. Not to mention head over heels for him. Same went for him about you. You guys were inseparable. Are inseparable. 

On the hill, you took out the camera. Ace grinned, knowing exactly what he should do. You flip the camera, pointing it to capture you and Ace, caught completely off guard when he kissed you. The timer ended and it snapped the photo, but you were too wrapped up in the moment to realize. 

You put the camera down and leaned in more, fully embracing the moment. Ace was, and still is, everything you could ask for. When the pair of you had pulled back, it was pretty clear that no one else would ever stand a chance. 

Both of you smile at each other, and you kiss Ace softly. Smiling happily, he  pulls back, still holding the album in his hand. He flips a few pages, and there’s a picture of when you went to prom. You’re sitting next to your mom, Ace standing behind you. Despite the sadness in the air, everyone was smiling. It brings tears to your eyes, and Ace glances over to see if you’re okay.

“I, uh, I forgot we had this one,” you whisper. He pulls you closer, and you lean against him for a second, remembering the night. 

After pictures, you and Ace had separated from Nancy. She wasn’t your biggest fan anymore, and she had never really gotten along with Ace in high school. Something about weed and the fact that he almost went to prison, who knows. Columbia was her priority. 

You and Ace had only spent a little while in the gym, you bailed about two hours in. The room was hot and sweaty, and you and Ace had other plans anyway. The plan was to make a quick stop at home and pick up some cash and a phone charger, then take off for a date night. If you guys had time, you’d pop back into prom for a while. 

When you got home, your mother was dying. Ace was there for you and your dad, and your mom, in a way. She saw him protecting you and Carson, and you know how much peace of mind that must’ve given her. She slipped away, and you sobbed into Ace’s arms. 

“Did I ever thank you? For... For that night?” You look up at Ace, wiping away a tear. 

“Thank me? Why would you thank me?”

“You were there for me.”

“I’d be there for you no matter what. No thanks necessary,” he says softly, brushing another teardrop off your cheek. 

“Well, thank you, Ace. For everything ever. Because I love you.”

“I love you.” He shifts slightly, rolling you over him. You laugh at the sudden movement, and before you can truly process, you’re snuggled against his side, both of you laying comfortably on the couch. 

He picks up the album again, flipping to the last photo. This one is beautiful. It’s yours and Ace’s hands, fingers interlocked. You can see the edge of the bluffs in the background, and the clouds lining the sky are a mix of deep and light greys. 

Neither of you say anything yet, both of you are wrapped up in remembering the moment. 

A few months into your senior year (Ace’s gap year), there was a rough patch. Ace had gotten this idea, that he was dragging you down. You were this perfect girl, Y/n Drew. Your father, Carson, the top lawyer in the district, and Kate has been just about the kindest woman in Horseshoe Bay. Not to mention that your sister was (is) some crime fighting genius. And when you had decided to be a nurse? He’d realized he was right. 

The rift had started, and you felt it. The idea of losing him scared you shitless, so you sat him down to talk about it. It was a nice moment actually, walking up the path to the bluffs. Literally all you did was remind him that he was good enough. That he’s some techno genius and that you weren’t going anywhere far, not with your Dad and Nancy in the place that they were. Not with the loss of your mom. Besides, you never wanted to leave Horseshoe Bay. The hospital needed more nurses. So it’s not like you’re gonna leave him, and it’s not like you think he’s not a good guy. Man, the look on his face when the words-

“I’m not going anywhere. I love you, Ace. Forever.” 

-had come out of your mouth were priceless. That night stays one of your most cherished memories. The night you and Ace dished it all out at sunset on the bluffs. You reminded him that he was good enough and that you needed him. He reminded you that he had your back. 

Each of you reminded the other that you loved them. That’s why that night is so important. 

“I remember that. I can’t believe I ever thought I was dragging you down.”

“Me neither. Honestly, you make everything so much better, all the time.” You shift your gaze to his face, smiling slightly. He smiles too, how could he not? “Ace, I need you to know how much you mean to me.”

“I know. You mean so much to me, too,” he whispers. You feel his grip on you tighten slightly, making you realize he’s nervous. 

“Why are you nervous?”

“I’m not.”

“Tell.”

He knows what that means. It was established a long time ago. Both of you know what a ‘tell’ is, mystery solving is common for you, so knowing when someone is lying is important. You and Ace say ‘tell’ whenever it’s obvious the truth is being avoided. 

“You’re not breaking up with me, are you?”

“You’re dumb,” you laugh. “Obviously not.”

“Thank god,” he sighs in relief. 

“I’ve thought about how to say this a lot and I really don’t want to freak you out, but the idea of seeing someone else makes me sick. I love you Ace, and I don’t see myself loving anyone else like this.”

“The idea of losing you hurts me more than anything else I can think of,” he replies. “You and me, that’s what makes all of this worth it.”

The room falls silent for a second, and you trace circles against his chest with your finger. He rubs your arm with his thumb, hand splayed over your upper arm, still from before. 

Ace shifts slightly, moving the album onto the table, but something falls from it. An extra photo. From when you moved in together. 

You and Ace moved in together after your first year of college. It was funny, finding an apartment between Horseshoe bay and your new school was so easy. No one else wanted to live in the middle, but it’s perfect for you. Ace could go to the Claw, you could go to school. 

“Ace, is this for real?” 

You’d looked around in awe. All of your belongings were in your new home, the one you shared with Ace. It was perfect. You wouldn’t change a thing. 

“This is for real,” he reassured you. 

The pair of you had spent the night organizing your cupboards and shelves, a task most people would call tedious, yet for the pair of you it had been one of the best nights ever. 

Now it’s your last year of college, and so much as the thought of losing Ace makes you sick to your stomach. He’s perfect. He’s the sunshine on your cloudy days, the left to your right, the anchor of your ship, the rock to your roll. The two of you have become two halves of a whole. You’re his and he’s yours, and neither of you want it any other way. 

Ace laughs, pulling you back to reality and away from your thoughts. He holds up a picture from after your first week of school. You’re absolutely knocked out on the couch, exhausted from school. 

You’d lived with Ace for two months. And it was fantastic. Your decision to be a nurse was finalized when you lost your mom, and the idea of staying nearby stemmed from the state of your family. Nancy’s downward spiral and your father drifting were signs for you to stay close. 

So you did. You went to (and still do go to) the university one town over from Horseshoe Bay, and your apartment is right smack in the middle. Ace could still get to the Claw, major props to the reliable Florence for that, and you could still get to school. 

It was perfect. Studying to be a nurse was exhausting, and trying to protect your sister was so hard. She never wanted any help, she was so focused on pushing everyone away. It was hard, but Ace was there for you. As he always was (and is). 

When you woke up the next morning, you were in your bed, snuggled up with Ace. Honestly, if you hadn’t already known he was the one, you did then. He’s caring and sweet, funny too. Not to mention he’s super attractive. 

And that year was one of the best you’d ever had. It had been relatively uneventful, aside from finally reconnecting with your father. And any day you spent with Ace, those were always an adventure. But it was amazing. And that was the year you and Ace really locked in your future together. 

Late night talks, dinner dates, lazy Sundays, even the silly arguments. All of it was irreplaceable. 

You smile at the thought, and Ace holds up the picture you’ve been searching for. Two Halloweens ago. You almost wonder why your dad, Carson, wants it, but when you really look at the photo, you know. You and Ace look so happy in your stupid costumes. 

“Tell me the two of you aren’t dressed up as those kids from that stupid fairy cartoon.”

“Why would we tell you that, George? We clearly are.” 

The pair of you had laughed. You had thought the pink hat on Ace’s head and your outfit made it obvious. Bess, on the other hand, was loving the outfits. The lot of you were hanging around in the Claw, waiting for Nick to show up so you could head to the party. The joys of carpooling. 

“Are you dressed as Timmy Turner?” Nick had walked through the door wearing a really fancy looking suit, and come over to join the group. 

An interesting combo: Ace and Y/n as Timmy and Trixie from the Fairly Odd Parents, Nancy as Sherlock Holmes, as usual, George as herself- which she was calling Kim Possible (but you all knew she just threw on a close enough outfit because didn’t really want to dress up), Bess as Cher from Clueless, and Nick as a magician. So yeah. Wacko. But now that Nick had shown, you could head out to the real party. 

“Hey, hold on!” You held up your camera that you’d been keeping in Ace’s car (Florence). “Come on guys, pictures before we go!”

You set up the timer and took a few different group shots, then decided to head out. You handed the camera to Nancy, who had a purse on her. Little did you know that she had taken a snapshot of you and Ace talking. 

The party was crazy fun, aside from a guest appearance from some girl with a surprisingly realistic sea ghost costume. No one ever really talked about that again, for some reason.

When you headed out, you and Ace had decided to spend the night in your childhood home. The drive was just too long for that night, since it was already so late. When you and Ace had curled up on the couch, Nancy handed you the photo.

It was perfect. You and Ace laughing about having the same favourite cartoon, your expressions were pure joy. 

“Are you really the kids from that stupid fairy show?!” You make fun of George’s comment. “Coming from the one who didn’t dress up,” you finish with a laugh. Ace laughs with you, shifting slightly so he can glance at your face. It’s a little awkward because of the way you’re laying, but cute nonetheless. 

“That night was crazy. Do you think sea-ghost-girl was Dead Lucy?”

“I never thought about it.” Your eyes widen, and you pause.  “You think?”

“Nah,” both of you say with a laugh, brushing off the idea. You sit up, setting the Halloween photo aside. 

“We’ll make a copy for Mr. D, yeah?” Ace props himself up on his elbows, half sitting up. He fully enjoys the view of you, fully immersed in looking over these photos. You’re so entranced with the memories that it’s like your in another world. He sits up all the way, pushing back your hair. 

“I’m sure my dad would love copies of all of these,” you say softly, eyes settling on some old photos of you and your mom, Nancy and your mom, or even you and Ace with mom. “Oh- Maybe not this one!” You laugh as you slip a more scandalous photo out of the album, handing it to Ace. 

He blushes profusely, running his hand through his hair with a chuckle. 

“Oh god!” Ace looks down quickly, probably imagining your dad seeing. “If he saw this he would kill me!” Both of you laugh, glancing at each other. 

Ace planted a kiss at the base of your neck, and you laughed as you tried to finish writing the answer to a question on your notes. 

“Ace,” you mumbled. He didn’t respond, he was wrapped up in the moment. You took his chin, pulling his face so that his eyes meet yours. “Can I finish this sheet?”

“No.”

He gave you that look, and you gave in instantly. 

“I mean, I don’t have class tomorrow.” You glanced at him, and he was smiling like an idiot. Without a second thought, you grabbed the camera off the coffee table and snap a photo of his stupid grin. Both of you laughed as the flash illuminated his face, and you went to put the camera down.

“Nah,” Ace had whispered softly, leaning in. “Bring it.”

Then he swung you into his arms and carried you toward your bedroom. 

When you manage to compose yourself and bring your thoughts to the present moment, you can feel the heat of your face. You just hope Ace doesn’t pick up on it, because he’ll tease you about this for days. 

“Hey, you better keep that somewhere that no one will see,” you laugh. 

“Oh I fully intend on doing that.” He tucks the small photo into the chest pocket of his shirt, giving it a pat once it’s hidden in the fabric. “Hey, it’s not that late yet. We may as well drive in tonight and hand deliver the photos.”

“That sounds so good,” you say with a smile, looking over at Ace. “We’ve still got like two hours of daylight left. Plus we could maybe stop at our spot for sunset. We haven’t done that in a while.”

“We should, it’s been like six months since we spent sunset on the bluffs.” He gazes over at you, watching as you stack up the photos. You glance over and he pretends he wasn’t just staring at you. Obviously you know he was, but you think it’s adorable that he still has his shy moments. 

“Can I drive?”

“No. You can take a nap in the front seat, because I know you’re tired.” He kisses your cheek, standing in front of you. 

“You just don’t want me to drive Florence,” you laugh. 

“Not true.”

“Is too!”

“Nah-uh.”

“Yuh-huh.”

“No-“ he cuts himself off by kissing you. You kiss back, of course. You weren’t seriously arguing with him, just playing. “You’re telling me you don’t want a nap?” He pulls back slightly, looking into your eyes. 

“Oh I definitely want a nap. I’m just being funny,” you tease. 

“Alright then, you’re hilarious.” He rolls his eyes playfully, and you pretend to be hurt by his faux-annoyance. “You wanna head out now?” He takes your hand, dragging you off the couch. You stand in front of him, glancing up slightly. 

“Yeah. Let’s go.”

After you get changed and Ace puts away the dishes, the pair of you make your way to the car- sorry, Florence, and put the box of photos in the backseat. Before long, you’re on the road, Ace’s playlist drifting through the speakers of the car. You try to stay awake, but you’re just so tired. As absurd as it sounds, you fall asleep to an AC/DC song that he likes. 

Ace wakes you up nearly an hour later, and as you wake up you realize where you are. 

“Dad’s place?”

“Yeah. I made a stop and copied the photos in town so you could sleep,” he tells you quickly. “Come on, he doesn’t know we’re here. I want to surprise him.”

It doesn’t take you long to fully wake up. There’s a sort of salty smell to the air, the water of the bay blowing in on the wind. It’s the energy of Horseshoe Bay that you’ve missed so dearly, and it has you awake in an instant. You stretch, looking around quickly. Nothing on the street has changed since you left, and that’s comforting. Ace leads the way, envelope full of the copies in his hand. 

The door is opened before you even reach the stairs. Carson Drew stands in the doorway, a bright smile written on his face. 

“What are you guys doing here?! I thought you were busy until the end of the month!” 

“We had some spare time tonight and our weekend plans fell through,” Ace says happily, walking up the stairs. You follow, only a step behind. “It’s great to see you, Mr. D!” 

Your father has the pair of you wrapped in a warm embrace before you can even greet him. He’s overjoyed that you’re home, especially with how busy your life has been lately. He’s happy that you’re taking a weekend off. 

“Hey dad,” you say softly. He lets you go, and Ace steps back so that you can enter the house first. “It’s good to be back.” You walk through the doorway, Ace and your dad following. 

In the house, you give your dad a proper hug before you spot your sister, Nancy, on the couch. Ace and your dad start talking behind you when you’ve let go of him, and you head into the living room. 

“Hey, Red.” You use your old nickname for your red-haired sister, a smile tugging at your lips. 

Nancy’s head jerks up at the sound of your voice. A grin spreads over her face and she removes her headphones. Standing quickly, she yanks you into a hug. 

“You’re back?!”

“Yeah. Weekend off,” you explain, hugging your sister tightly. It’s nice to actually hug her again. 

The last few times you were in Horseshoe Bay she was off trying to find some missing jewellery, or solve some sort of embezzlement mystery? You don’t really remember. Ever since things have been good with you and Nancy again, she’s been busy. Not that you’re complaining, you’re just glad she’s back to liking you. 

“Hey, what’s Ace got?” She glances over at the kitchen and you remove yourself from her embrace to follow her gaze. 

“The picture dad asked for. And some extras.”

“Right. Did you guys bring the Christmas one? Dad was looking for a duplicate of it the other day.” Nancy looks at you, watching you admiring Ace. 

“Uh, I think we keep the Christmas ones separate, we didn’t look at them today. Which one was he looking for?”

You glance over at Nancy, and she picks up her phone, flipping it over. There’s a Polaroid in her case. You can see because she has a clear case, the picture sits sandwiched between the phone and the plastic of the case. 

This photo is of you, Ace, Carson, and Nancy on Christmas. The four of you are standing in the front yard, which is covered in snow. Everyone’s bundled up and there’s a bunch of sleds around Ace. 

“Come on, please?!”

“Y/n, we’ll be late,” your dad chuckled, walking over to where you want everyone standing despite his remark. He never seriously objected to photos anyway. He likes having keepsakes. 

“Aw, come on Mr. D, we’ll add you to our Christmas card!”

“Ace, we don’t even have a Christmas card!” You set up the camera against the fence, laughing at your boyfriend as you set a timer. You turned, taking in the scene for a split second before you rushed to join them. 

Carson stood with an arm around Nancy, and Ace was beside them, four sleds leaning against him. You chuckled slightly, jogging over to join them. You’d have called it running, but the snow slows you down. You threw your arms around Ace, laughing as he dropped the sleds to catch you. The camera clicked, and everyone was smiling. 

When you fetched the camera, you ended up with a beautiful photo of you and Ace laughing with sleds on the ground in front of you, and Carson and Nancy laughing at you, leaning against each other. It was perfect. It was your family. 

Sledding at the local park is an annual tradition in Horseshoe Bay. There’s even a race on the 23rd, two days before Christmas. That’s where you were headed. 

The four of you were walking, the hill was attached to a park not far away from your Dad’s house. Ace and your dad were talking about your dad’s work, Ace always was genuinely interested in the whole lawyer thing. You’d just been watching contently, glad that Ace got along with Carson. 

“Y/n,” Nancy said quietly, bringing your attention to her. 

“Yeah?”

“I know you’ve only been out of our house for like a year, but I had a lot of time to think.”

“That’s never good,” you tease. She rolls her eyes but continues. 

“When mom died, I pushed you away. I forgot you were losing someone too, and I was horrible to you and dad. I’m sorry.”

“Nance, you never have to apologize to me. I’m your big sister. I’m here to protect you and forgive you no matter what. It was rough for all of us. I understand why you felt like that.”

“You’re not mad?”

“Nope. Of course not. I���m your sister. We’re good. We’ll always be good.”

“Thanks, Y/n.” 

“Love you, crapface.”

“Love you too.”

Nancy pretended to be exasperated with the nickname, but you both knew how happy she was that you weren’t upset. She’d let you back in, and you’d taken the opening that was offered. That Christmas was the first one since your mom died that you and Nancy were fully on good terms. 

“You still have that one?” You look at your sister, who nods. She doesn’t say anything, just watches your face. When she notices that you’re still thinking, she speaks up. 

“I, uh, keep it in my phone case so that I can have you and dad close. Whenever I’m stuck on a case, I ask what you’d tell me to do. It always helps.”

“Of course it helps, I am a genius, after all.”

“Shut up!” Nancy gently punches your arm. The two of you laugh, sitting on the couch to catch up. 

After maybe an hour of everyone talking and catching up, Ace stands. You check the time, realizing it’s eight o’clock. The sun is setting. 

“Oh, sorry guys. We actually have one more thing we need to do,” you tell your dad and sister, standing to join Ace. 

“We’ll be back before too long,” Ace reassures them, taking your hand. 

You find it odd that Ace is reassuring them, given that he seems nervous today. Especially right now. You shrug it off as stress, deciding to just enjoy the night. You can ask about it tomorrow. You almost don’t notice the nervous glance Ace throws at your dad before you go out the door. You still do notice, but choose to ignore that too. You will have a nice sunset date at the bluffs, and that’s that.

Apparently, you’re actually going to have a windy sunset date at the bluffs. It’s still beautiful, and the sunset is the clearest sky you’ve seen from the bluffs in years. It’s just a little windy. 

“Hey, smile.” Ace pulls his phone from his pocket and snaps a photo of you, smiling cheekily. You reach over and knock the hood off his head. He pretends to be offended as he sits back and scoots close to you. “You cold?” Ace puts an arm around you, feeling goosebumps on your skin from the wind. 

“It’s not that bad, just the wind.”

He doesn’t really listen though, he takes off his jacket and drapes it over you. Not that you’d complain. The dark jacket is comfortable and warm, and smells like Ace’s cologne. 

“You know, one of the things I love about you is that you’re an awful liar.” Ace watches as you slide your arms into the jacket. 

“Oh really? What about that time I lied us out of getting arrested?”

“Okay, That was different. And we were just breaking and entering. They weren’t actually gonna hold us.”

“Fair enough,” you say with a laugh. 

“Another thing I love about you is that you care about everyone. And you’re not selfish.”

“Neither are you.” You look over at him nervously, wondering why he’s telling you this. Your vision is slightly spotty from staring at the sunset, and you have to blink a few times to make sure you’re seeing correctly. 

Ace is kneeling beside you, in his hands. A gorgeous ring fills the spot in the velvet box, but honestly, that’s almost the last thing you care about right now. 

“Oh,” you gasp, genuinely so shocked that this is happening. Yeah, you and Ace have been together for years, but for some reason you’re still surprised. 

“Y/n Drew, you are the bravest, kindest, smartest, coolest, funniest, cutest person I know. You’re beautiful beyond words and I love everything about you. I love how you take pictures of everything, I love the way you see the world. I love that even after a long day you still come home happy.” Ace takes your hand in one of his, and you scoot closer. 

“Ace,” you whisper, a smile spreading on your face. 

“I love that whenever anyone mentions love I think of you and me. Y/n, I want to spend the rest of my life with you. Will you marry me?”

“Yes!” You launch yourself into his arms, kissing him passionately as the mist of the bay blows against your faces. 

When you pull away, he slides the ring onto your finger, before kissing you again. The pair of you watch the rest of the sunset, wrapped in each other’s arms. 

You were so glad to finish your third year of university. The stress was over and you could finally hang out in Horseshoe Bay for the summer. 

The first night you and Ace arrived was spent with your friends, and part of the night with your dad, telling him about everything that had happened in the last couple weeks of the school year. 

The second night was you and Ace on the bluffs, watching the sunset. The mist was blowing in slightly, dampening your faces. It was welcome though, the day had been so hot and you were both sweating.

As the night went on, the wind picked up slightly, leaving you shivering. Ace had of course offered up his jacket, and you ended up wrapped up in it. The pair of you watched the sunset together, like you had so many times before, snuggled up against each other. 

You take out your phone as it starts to really get dark and you turn on the flashlight. When you swipe back to the home screen, you see the photo of yours and Ace’s hands, intertwined with the cliff and sunset in the background. The photo from the moment you were just thinking of. 

“What are you smiling at?”

“My screen.”

“Should we head back? Everyone’s gonna go crazy.”

“Sounds fun,” you chuckle. “Ace. I love you.”

“I love you.” He kisses you for possibly the millionth time today (not that you mind), and helps you to your feet. 

“Hold on,” you tell him, pulling up the camera on your phone. You take his hand and replicate the pose on your lock screen, taking a photo with the flash on. 

Instead of the sunset, the night sky is in the background, but it’s just as beautiful. There are so many stars visible that it looks like the sky is glittering, and the flash makes the ring sparkle. You smile at the picture, more than happy with the results. More than happy with everything. You’ve got Ace, your family, your friends, and you’re well on your way to graduating nursing school. 

Soon enough you’re back in Florence, headed back to your childhood home. Your favourite song is playing over the radio and you and Ace are singing obnoxiously loudly and horribly. But it’s amazing. The pair of you have never been happier. 

When you get back to the house, you and Ace walk in the door, met with your sister and dad in the living room. Nancy and Carson watch you intently, and you extend your hand. 

“Did you do it?! You did it!” Your dad pulls you into a crushing hug, before doing the same to Ace. Your sister makes her way over, smiling widely. She glances proudly at Ace before taking your hand to admire the ring. 

“I thought he’d chicken out,” she laughs. “I’m impressed.” She pulls you into another hug, and you savour the embrace. It’s a feeling you’ve missed, the true warmth and happiness that you’re feeling right now. It’s good to have Nancy back. 

The night progresses, and Ace drags you all to the Claw so he can show off to his friends. And so everyone can celebrate. You suppose they’re your friends too, but they’re closer with him.

“Hey! They’re here guys!” Nick turns to the door as you and Ace walk in, and you see George and Bess standing at the bar. They smile when you come in, deciding to come over when you stop to visit with Nick. 

It’s hugs all around, even from George. It’s been a while, so even though she hates to admit it: she missed you. Bess is more than happy to admit she’s been missing you, and she nearly breaks a rib (your rib) when she hugs you. Nick’s hug is soft but secure, and when it’s Ace’s turn to embrace Nick, Nick goes for the bro hug. Ace isn’t having that and engulfs him in a full on bear hug, which results in laughter from everyone else. 

It’s good to really see everyone again. Time really gets away from you with school, so it’s hard to get out to Horseshoe Bay. But when you manage to get out here, it’s always great. 

The door swings open suddenly, getting everyone’s attention and in walk Ace’s parents. Your heart swells at the sight of Ace’s mom and Thom. They come over to where you sit and you embrace each of them before they take a seat. 

“I felt like it was only fitting to announce it here because so many of our best nights were here.” Ace takes your hand, pulling you against him and showing off the ring. 

“We’re getting married!” You grin widely, watching as everyone except Carson freaks out. He pretends to be surprised and he’s clearly truly happy, but it’s so obvious that he already knew. 

“Oh my god! We need to celebrate, let me go see if we have any good food!” Bess takes off, headed to the storeroom. 

“I’m gonna make sure she doesn’t break anything. It’s been awhile since she waitressed.” George heads the same way as Bess, and you turn back to your remaining family and friends. 

Ace’s mom is ecstatic and crushes you into a hug, sobbing about how happy you’re making her son. How you’re soulmates. Thom also hugs you, but he’s more gentle. Like he’s afraid to break you. He’s in disbelief, he didn’t think Ace would ask you so soon. 

“Welcome to the family,” he signs. You smile, nodding gratefully. Gently taking Ace’s hand, you move it away from yours. 

“Thank you, Thom,” you sign back, “I’m honoured.”

If Thom wasn’t crying before, he sure is now. Last he saw, your ASL was a work in progress... but like before it was really a work. It was rough. Baby steps. You’ve been practicing though, and Ace is mind blown. 

“When did you learn that?”

“I’ve been practicing.”

Ace watches you in awe for a second as you smile at his parents again. Thom pulls you in for another embrace, teary eyed. You chuckle gently, tears welling in your own eyes, before pulling away from Ace’s dad.  You look over to your dad and Nancy, who are smiling like idiots. Not that your face is any different. 

“Okay, bad news, there’s no good food.” Bess returns, George in tow. 

“Good news, we found a groupon for The Bay Bakery.” George holds up the ticket, displaying the bakery’s logo. 

“Sounds good,” Ace agrees with a laugh. 

“You kids have fun,” Carson says. “We’ll sit this one out.” He gestures to himself and Ace’s parents, a smile still on his face. Your dad pats your back slightly and you smile at him. 

“You sure?”

“Yeah.”

That’s that. You and Ace lead the group out the door, and the four remaining pile into their vehicles. It’s all smiles and laughter and it’s decided that you’ll all meet there in a bit. You and Ace climb into his car, sitting in a happy silence for a second. 

“Ace, there’s one more person I want to tell.”

Next thing you know, you’re kneeling in front of a slab of rock. Katherine Drew is carved gracefully into the stone. Ace kneels beside you, putting an arm over your shoulder. It’s peaceful. Chilling, but peaceful. Not what you expected, especially since it’s dark out. 

“Hey mom,” you whisper. “I, uh, still don’t know if you can hear me or not.” You pause, letting out a small chuckle and trying to blink away the tears brimming your eyes. “I mean at this point you’d think I’d stop leading with that. But nope. Old habits I guess.”

You pause, glancing up at Ace. He cups your face in his hand, brushing away a tear with his thumb. 

“Keep going, I’m sure she’ll want to hear.” He gives you a reassuring smile and presses a soft kiss to your temple. 

“Mom, Ace proposed to me. We’re going to get married.” It’s odd not hearing a response, but you put your hand against the stone for a second as if it will connect you to her energy once again. Strangely enough, it comforts you. “I miss you, mom.”

“I miss you too, Mrs. D,” Ace adds softly. You let out a small laugh at the nickname, leaning against Ace.

“I’ll visit again soon mom, okay? We’re going to go celebrate right now. I just wanted to tell you first.” You feel a little silly, explaining yourself to a rock, but you know that if your mom is out there somehow, if she could hear anything, this is where she’d hear it. 

A short drive later, you’re reconnected with Bess, Nick, George, and Nancy. They’ve already collected some delicious looking snacks and taken a seat on the patio. The employees inside are cleaning up for closing, and the patio is softly lit up by the fairy lights around the patio. 

You and Ace sit, joining them in their conversation. You laugh and sit back, a smile burned onto your lips. You’ve got your friends, your family, your Ace. You’re well on your way to finishing school. You’re ready to marry Ace and you’re more than happy. Everything is perfect. 

Life is good.

Tags: @ananad1 @remmysrecs @bookish-bucky @sahi-raa @peakyrogers

[mnemosyne-musing]

Double date (River/11)

(So this prompt link is very tenuous and has basically turned into pwp for which I at least partially blame sonic for encouraging me. This version is rated T but the link for the slightly smuttier version is here)

“So!” the Doctor leaps up the stairs to the console and grabs the monitor, spinning around on his heel before typing rapidly into the keyboard, “I was thinking, once River arrives, maybe, a trip to the Amazzi waterfalls. They have these wonderful pools filled with algae. Only, it’s not really algae, it’s this kind of-“

“Doctor,” Rory interrupts, somewhat tentatively, “We were thinking tonight. If you don’t mind that is. That we could just stay in? Maybe have dinner and, you know, just talk to River, and you of course?”

“Yes,” Amy pipes up quickly, “Only if you don’t mind of course,”

He looks up from the console at the two of them standing by the railing. Amy folding her hands slightly nervously in front of her and Rory biting his lip anxiously.

He beams at them. “Of course!”

Amy gives a sigh of relief. “Oh, thank you! It’s not that we don’t want to go anywhere, it’s just, it’s been a lot the last few weeks and we haven’t really had much of a chance to process or talk to River or-“

“Ooh, it can be like a double date!” he cuts in and claps his hands together, “We can cook dinner here. I’ve got this wonderful recipe from Escoffier. Fabulous chap. I worked in his restaurant once actually and-“

“Doctor, are you sure?”

He waves a hand at them as he types. “Pond, it’s fine. I’ll be fine. It doesn’t always have to be running and excitement. I can do an evening in. Now, off you pop and get your cooking clothes on! I’ll pick up River and we’ll meet you in the kitchen.”

Amy and Rory grin at each other before bounding towards the stairs and out of the console room.

“Thank you, Doctor!” Amy calls as they scarper down the corridor.

It had been just over a month since leaving River in the hospital after Berlin. They’d seen her once since then. He’d taken the Ponds to a planet with a fantastic seventeen hour meteor shower and they’d bumped into her on the viewing deck. They’d also run into a gang of high-end jewel smugglers whose presence there River swore was a complete coincidence to hers. He had his serious doubts about that but, honestly, he’d been quite distracted by all the running and excitement and then afterwards River had had to dash off very quickly. Well, not so quickly that she hadn’t grabbed him and snogged him against the door of the TARDIS but. Anyway.

He sighs and shakes his head to clear of it of those thoughts before returning to the monitor. He’s just about to pull the lever to let the TARDIS dematerialise when there’s a familiar noise of someone appearing by vortex manipulator behind him.

“Hello sweetie,”

He turns around, a grin already on his face and leans back against the console. River is standing a few feet away, wearing a dark trench coat that’s cinched in and tied at the waist, a pair of dazzlingly high blue heels on her feet that do funny things to his insides.

She begins to stalk towards him, a little bit like a predator approaching its prey.

“I thought I’d bring you a birthday present,” she practically purrs, stopping just out of arm’s reach.

He quirks an eyebrow. “But, it’s not my birthday?”

She simply smiles. A slow smirk that spreads across her face and now she really does look like she’s sizing him up for the kill. That thought really shouldn’t thrill him as much as it does he briefly ponders.

She brings a hand to the belt on her coat and slowly pulls it loose. “Care to reconsider?” she asks, her voice low and throaty as the coat falls open.

The Doctor opens his mouth but all words and possible replies immediately evaporate as he catches sight of what she’s wearing beneath the coat. Or rather, what she’s mostly not wearing beneath the coat. He hardly thinks that the plunging bra and skimpy pair of knickers, both made of flimsy lace in a deep blue colour to match her heels, really count as clothes. In fact, he can think of several planets on which that is most definitely not considered an outfit and would probably be illegal and really- hang on, why is he thinking about other planets when River is here and-

He licks his lips and swallows. “I think,” he manages to croak out, “I think it might be my birthday after all.”

River grins wickedly at him and lets the coat fall to the floor with a soft thud. She steps in towards him and grasps his shirt front, pulling him off the console and steering him backwards towards the jump seat. She pushes him down willingly into the seat and his hands automatically drift to grasp her hips, his fingers splaying across her back and stroking the soft skin there.

As she leans down to kiss him, there’s a small flicker of a thought at the back of his mind that there was something he was supposed to be doing. Something he was doing just before River arrived and-

A little while later, she levers herself off his lap as gracefully as she can before turning to look for her knickers. He watches unashamedly as she bends down to retrieve them, arse in the air and wearing nothing but those heels. She frowns down at them before shrugging, kicking her heels off and slipping her underwear back on. Turning back towards him she leans down and nabs his shirt, slipping it on before he can protest and carelessly doing up less than half the buttons.

She looks so utterly delectable, all beautifully dishevelled and ravished that he reaches for her again but she dances out of his reach.

“River!” he complains, as she sashays away from him and towards the corridor, “Where are you going?”

“We need to toast your birthday!” she calls over her shoulder as she disappears around the corner.

“But, it’s not really-,” he sighs and stops as he realises he’s talking to an empty room. He shakes his head and pulls up his boxers and trousers before sitting back in the jumpseat and waiting for River to reappear. He still hasn’t really caught his breath back since River first appeared in the console room.

He must’ve closed his eyes very briefly because he nearly jumps out of his skin a few minutes later when River’s voice suddenly crackles in the air.

“Sweetie, do we have any of the 1976 Krug? I’m sure we do but I can only find the ’77 and it just isn’t as good.”

He looks around wildly but he’s still alone in the console room.

“River?” he exclaims, “What? How are you doing- Where-“

“I’m in the kitchen, sweetie,” she says in that infinitely patient tone that she seems to reserve for when she’s telling him something extremely obvious, “I’m speaking over the intercom.”

“But. The TARDIS doesn’t have an intercom?” he objects, still looking frantically around the room as if River might suddenly pop up from behind the furniture somewhere. Her silence in response to his comment tells him she is probably rolling her eyes at him.

He’s about to come up with something very cutting and witty when over the intercom he suddenly hears a gasp and a very Scottish ‘Oh my god!’

The Ponds! Oh gods indeed! He had totally forgotten them and their date! He leaps up, spinning around to look for his shirt and then remembers River had purloined it just minutes ago. He swears in Gallifreyan under his breath, running a hand desperately through his hair before dashing out the door.

He sprints down the corridor which is rather longer than he remembers it being, cursing the TARDIS under his breath as he does do. He careens to a halt just before the kitchen and vainly tries to slow his breathing as he attempts to nonchalantly stroll inside.

He stops in the doorway and swallows nervously. River is leaning back against the kitchen counter, still clad in only his shirt and her knickers. She’s clutching a bottle of champagne in one hand and a couple of glasses in the other and looking exceptionally amused.

There’s another doorway into the kitchen on the opposite side to him and standing there are both Ponds. Amy is looking mildly embarrassed but still faintly amused whereas Rory has a shocked and slightly horrified expression on his face.

“Ah, there you are, sweetie!” River calls out cheerfully, “Did you want a glass of fizz?”

“Doctor?” Amy simply puts her hands on her hips and cocks her head at him expectantly.

“Ponds!” he exclaims as he looks wild-eyed between them, “River just arrived and- she- Well, we were going to celebrate because-“

“I think we know how you two were ‘celebrating’,” Amy snorts, folding her arms in front of her, “You’re only wearing one outfit between the two of you!”

“Ah, no, no,” the Doctor shakes his head frantically, “I know what this looks like but actually I had to give River my shirt as she only had a coat and some underwear that, well, really wasn’t much of an outfit to begin with and after-“

“Not. Helping, Doctor,” Rory mutters from between gritted teeth as he scrubs a hand over his eyes as if trying to erase that particular mental picture.

The Doctor gulps and attempts to salute the other man. “Sorry, centurion.”

“I suppose I should have asked earlier but when are we, Doctor?” River asks, still looking far too entertained with the whole situation.

“We’ve only just done Berlin a few weeks ago,” he mumbles as her eyes widen.

“Oh! Early days then,” River nods in understanding, a grin still playing around her lips, “So, this is the first time you’ve caught us like this?” she asks Amy and Rory as they nod.

“Hang on!” the Doctor says in a panicked voice, her words suddenly sinking in, “What do you mean ‘first time’?”

River simply gives him that knowing smirk again. “Believe me, none of you want to know about those times in advance.”

He puts that rather worrying thought to the back of his mind, ignoring the way Rory blanches and Amy gives a small shudder. Pasting a smile on his face, he claps his hands. “Well, we’re all here now! We can have that double date!”

“Double date?” River raises an eyebrow as she looks at him.

Amy shakes her head. “Sorry Raggedy-Man. Seeing you two half-dressed has kind of ruined my appetite.”

The Doctor glares at her and pulls his braces up self-consciously over his bare-chest, ignoring River’s soft snort of laughter. “Oi. Rude, Amelia.

“Don’t you Amelia me!” she retorts and wags a finger at him, “I know exactly what you’ve been doing with my daughter!” she adds as the Doctor blushes bright red and avoids her gaze. She turns on her heel and heads towards the door, dragging Rory along with her. “We’ll see you in the morning,” she calls over her shoulder, “If you could try and keep it out of the communal areas that would be lovely!”

The Doctor splutters in protest and turns an even deeper shade of red. He turns to River who is still leaning against the countertop. “You,” he points his finger accusingly at her, “This is all your fault.”

“My fault?”

“Yes,” he nods emphatically, crossing his arms across his bare chest and trying to look foreboding as it was possible to look when only half dressed, “We had a nice evening planned. The four of us. A double date. And then, you arrived with-,” he gestures vaguely at her, “Well. With all-. Looking like that and now here we are.”

River ignores his attempts at glaring and simply laughs. She puts the champagne and glasses down on the side and slinks towards him, her hips swaying. She runs her hands up his chest and winds them around his neck.

“I’m sorry, my love,” she coos in a tone that suggests she isn’t really very sorry at all. She leans in closer and whispers in his ear. “Shall I make it up you?”

He swallows heavily, his arms having already uncrossed themselves and somehow found themselves settling on her hips. “Well,” he mumbles, “It is my birthday after all.”

Her answering laugh is muffled as he kisses her once more.

--

[myblueeyedbuggers]

My Boys

Chapter 9

Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter 7 Chapter 8 Chapter 10 Chapter 11 Chapter 12 Chapter 13 Chapter 14

Pairings: Reader x Steve Rogers (best friend) Reader x Bucky Barnes

Word Count: 1851

Warnings: Slow Start, Language, Tiny bit of Fluff

Summary: After being abandoned by her parents in Brooklyn in 1929, y/n makes a living for herself by working for the Црни лабуд gang until she meets two boys in a back alley and her life slowing begins to change

So, hi again…I’m gonna be completely honest I’ve practically had no time to sit down and write for the past couple of weeks, college rained down tons of assignments and work kept asking me to do extra shifts. Hopefully you all understand the delay in updates, I’m determined to finish this book for you all, anyways I’ll shut up Enjoy 😊

Whoever decided to wake me up and drag me away from the glorious land of sleep will suffer my early morning wrath, slowly I opened my eyes and the outline of two very stupid and annoying boys filled my vision. “Have you two never heard the saying don’t tickle a sleeping dragon? I quite clearly need my beauty sleep!” why is it every time I threaten to murder these two they just start laughin’? what the hell is wrong with em?!, “ Well good mornin’ to you too doll face, as much as I’d like to stay here and trade threats mama wants you outta bed for breakfast so get ya butt moving” My eyes narrowed at Bucky as he started to follow Steve outta the room, the smirk on his face widening as I reluctantly moved out of bed.

I’ve only been here a week and I’ve nearly killed him at least 50 times, wait that’s not something I should be proud of is it? in my defence Barnes can be a right little shit when he wants to be! Two days ago, he thought it’d be funny to drench me with water in the middle of the day, it’s safe to say he didn’t climb down the tree for a fair few hours. The smell of bacon and pancakes made me completely forget whatever the hell I was talking about, I shouldn’t have rushed pulling my pants on cause my dumbass failed to see that the left leg got caught on the draw knob and I was once again hugging the floor with my bloody face. Great that didn’t hurt at all!

Right let’s check for damage, bruises? Nope scratches? Nope pride and dignity? That went a long time ago who am I kidding? “Y/N You comin down or what?!” Jesus Christ that boy has a voice like a flipping fog horn, I wouldn’t be surprised if they heard Steve in queens! “Yeah give me a minute will ya! No need to get your panties in a twist Stevie” I’m pretty sure I can hear Becca and Bucky laughin’ from up here. Okay enough time’s been spent getting dressed, at this rate the boys will have inhaled all the food…the thought alone is enough to terrifying!  

“Right you lads better of left me at least one pancake and 3 strips of bacon or they’ll be hell to pay later” as a rule most people say good morning but I like to start the day with a decent dashing of threats and insults, cause I’m a friendly person…okay nope that’s a big pile of bullc**p and I know it. “Well mornin to you too y/n, the pancakes are on the table and the bacons on Bucks plate feel free to take some” a muffled sound of protest could be heard over my laughter as Bucky shot Steve a look of utter disbelief. “I think I’ll skip on the bacon then Stevie, by the looks of it Bucks already drooled all over it” Steve and I shared a look before we burst out laughing, Buck was glaring at the both of us with syrup dribbling down his chin and I gotta be honest it looked hilarious. “You guys done laughin’ at me yet or would you like to gang up on me some more?” is this boy dumb or somethin’? “Buck, I’d be on my deathbed and my final words would be some form of insult towards you”.

And there I go signing my death sentence again, at this point Steve wasn’t even on his chair anymore, instead he was lying on the floor completely pissin’ himself laughing while Bucky slowly stood up and started walking round the table. “Oh would you look at the time! Gotta go guys my appointment with the grim reaper’s in a minute!” hey y/n maybe it’s time you start running?! With a small shriek I turned and bolted out the backdoor with a pretty pissed off Barnes boy on my tail. The sunlight blinded me for a couple of seconds, so I was kinda running without knowing what was around me…and as per usual life decided to firmly kick my ass using the form of a bloody tree. A sharp stinging sensation spread across my entire face, huh reminds me of when I ran into that door…only that didn’t hurt half as much and there wasn’t an annoying brunette prick absolutely creasing with laughter behind me. I’m pretty sure that in the process of the tree b**tch slappin’ me I cut the left side of my cheek…oh would you look at that there’s the blood that should have stayed inside me, I couldn’t stop the small groan of pain that slipped outta my mouth, the lower half of my back was more than likely battered to all hell and the stinging in my cheek wasn’t helping either.

Apparently, the sound of my suffering seemed to break the idiot outta his little laughin’ session, I raised my eyebrows at him when it finally dawned on him that I hurt myself and that was pretty funny, all the colour drained from Bucky’s face, his eye’s widened when he noticed the lovely new edition to my face and pretty soon he reached a hand out to help me up. Such a gentleman… that’s if you replace the gentle bit with idiotic. The second I was on my feet, he pulled me into a hug and began checking my face and head, I’m hoping to god he can’t see my flamin’ cheeks cause I know for a fact he would never let me live that down. To be completely honest all I could concentrate on was the gentle touch on his hands on my cheek and the look on Bucky’s face, his eyes were completely focused on my cut. How have I never noticed that his eyes have the smallest flecks of green in them? Or how his dimples show when he frowns?… more importantly why do I feel both excited and terrified but somehow warm at the same time?

My little daze was broken when I realised that his lips were movin’ and I had no idea what the hell he just said, but he must of asked me a question cause he was lookin’ at me waitin’ for his answer. Bollocks. “What’d you say Buck?” Jesus Christ could I have been anymore obvious?! Maybe I should make a giant banner and smack him in the face with it, oh for godsake am I blushin’ again?!, the small smirk on his face grew into a sh*t eating grin as he threw his arm around my shoulders and dragged me back to the house. “If I didn’t know any better I’d say that you y/n were completely blow away by the masterpiece that is my face” oh great I’ve managed to inflate his ego even more, “Actually I wasn’t gonna say anythin’ but you’ve got a little somethin’ stuck in your front teeth” and just like that all the cockiness drained outta his body.

The arm around my shoulder disappeared rather quickly, to my amusement the boy next to me did as well, I could feel the little smirk on my face as I carried on walkin’ forward as he stayed behind more than likely doin’ that cute stupid thing with his eyes. Wait what did I just say?! What the heck is wrong with me these days? Its like a flippin’ alien’s taken over me and made me into a normal girl! .It feels all kinds of wrong. A sudden cough disrupts my inner monologue, my eyes roll to the sky as the smirk reappears on my face, I can’t help the laugh that escapes me when my gaze meets Bucky’s. He was stood with his hands on his hips, his eyes narrowed as I continued to laugh and slowly his face formed a pout as he waited for me to finish completely wetting myself with laughter. “You done yet?” his brow was pulled in as he tried to fight off the smile, “Do I actually have somethin’ in my teeth or were you just being a bully?”.

“Nah, just needed to keep your ego in check before it inflated and carried you away into the wind” Buck looked like I’d just shot him in the chest, I had to bite my lip to stop myself from laughin’ at him as I turned and started walkin’ back to the house. “Ya know you can be a real piece of work when ya wanna be don’t ya?” thank you captain obvious! “I know I am, you know I do it out of love don’t ya?” I shot him a small smile as I wrapped an arm around his back and pulled him in for a side hug, Bucky shook his head with a small smile, but accepted the hug anyway. After that we stayed in a comfortable silence as we walked back towards the house, his arm never pulled away from me till we got inside, that was until Mrs Barnes walked into the kitchen and saw the cut on my cheek, to simply put it she completely freaked out.

I watched her quickly shoo everyone outta the kitchen, she somehow managed to pull a chair out and sit me down while grabbing a towel and bandages, question after question was fired at me while she gently started cleaning to cut. After a while the conversation died out, Mama B was completely fixated on cleaning the cut and if I’m honest the silence was peaceful, well it was for the 5 seconds it lasted.

Bucky burst through the door lookin’ like someone was trying to murder him, not that I could blame them, 2 seconds later Steve and Becca burst through the door armed with…wait is that eyeshadow and lipstick? I watched as Bucky backed into the corner, his eyes wide as he begged them both of them for mercy, whatever he did to piss the pair off clearly warranted this man hunt and there is no way in hell I wanted to stop it just before it got good. Soon enough Becca and Steve some how managed to pin down Buck, and despite the many protests, the pair managed to smear the lipstick all over his face and dump most of the eyeshadow in his hair.

I tried my hardest not to laugh I swear, but he looked like a very disturbed and demented fairy princess and I couldn’t hold it in anymore, soon enough we were all having a little laugh at the poor bloke, eventually Buck saw the funny side of it and he too joined in with the mess that was the Barnes family.

So, I’m gonna be honest here this is more of a filler chapter/character development hopefully it didn’t suck as much as I think it did XD Okay I’ll stop rambling, Thanks for reading!

Rose Xxx

[arcanescholar]

Hard To Find The Right Words

Omori Post True Good Ending Spoilers. 

Aubrey having a tough time, etc etc. Enjoy maybe??? Might get more chapters later if I feel like it???????????? FUCK????????????

Ch 2 

On the long, long list of “shit Aubrey’s had to put up with” for the past few days…

This special, insidious sort of dizziness has gotta be a new one. Seriously, give a girl a break right? Who the fuck is able to handle this many highs and lows at once? It’s enough to make her head spin, and the hospital taking her bat away wasn’t helping matters.

The words that tumbled from Sunny’s placid, stony expression, his singular eye barely betraying the shaky, unsteady difficulty in handling recounting the story, made her stomach turn.

Shit, what a time to be thinking about what she had for lunch. If it comes back up right now she might straight up die of embarrassment y’know?

She couldn’t even turn her attention to Kel or Hero but, with the way the younger had to take a step back and struggle to find any words, and how the elder seemed to freeze like a statue, she had a feeling they were in just as bad of a spot.

“… and, that’s what happened.”

Sunny finally finishes recounting his story, and before he can say another word, Hero is already lunging, Ken barely able to snag his less-in-shape brother before he gets the chance to do whatever he was about to.

Aubrey, though…?

Years of anger, years of hatred and fury and bottled up impatience, a near lifetime of bitterness bubbles in her gut and sends her vision swimming.

Huh.

She just remembered, it was pizza.

Weird, why is Sunny getting so much taller? Kel? Hero? How come her knees started hurting suddenly-

Oh.

Oh, her legs gave out. That makes sense. God, her hair’s getting in her eyes, was it already starting to lose its color? Why is it so hard to focus on anything right now? She should be pissed! She should be picking up hospital equipment and chucking it out a window right now! So why can’t she move?! Why?!

For once, Aubrey can’t summon up her anger. For the first time in who only knows how long, she feels like the scared little girl that had to hide away when holes got punched into walls, that covered her head in her room and squeezed herself into a corner with her rabbit when the arguing got too loud. Her breath catches in her throat and refuses to let up. Is she going to die?

She can’t handle this again. Not now. She’s not strong enough, she’s not tough enough to deal with this-

….

Pap

… A hand rests against her head. That brief touch is enough to peel back the veil and drag focus back kicking and screaming into reality. She almost reflexively goes to turn and smack the hand out of the way, only to realize part way through her turn that it was just Basil’s arm, flopping out from the mattress and accidentally brushing against her head for a moment. The boy was still asleep, still a mess of injuries that made her nearly throw up seeing him in that state.

She might have bullied him, fantasized about beating him to an inch of his life, thought about crushing that bat of hers against his skull more times than she could count. She might have turned that weapon on Kel and Sunny both at least once before, but…

Seeing him like this, seeing Sunny with that eye patch, having lost sight in one of his eyes for what might be the rest of his life?

…

She takes Basil’s hand in hers and carefully stands up. Hero and Kel had been shouting for at least a minute now, she’s not sure how long it’s been since they started processing what happened in their own way. A shove is all Hero needs to finally get out of Kel’s grip, giving him time to damn near sprint out of the room, tackling the door hard enough to almost knock it off of its hinges before dashing out of the room.

Almost without thinking, Kel dips out, rushing after his brother with words that only come across like muffled noises in Aubrey’s ears.

… … …

There was a time when she confided in Mari, a time when she spoke to her about what was happening back at home, she remembered the pain in the older girl’s face, and the words she told her as she let Aubrey rest her head in her lap one quiet afternoon, just between the two of them.

“It’s not my place to say, but… If I could, I’d adopt you right now and give you the biggest welcome to the family hug I could…! Family should never hurt family. No one should ever raise a hand to a loved one and mean it, and the fact that they’re scaring you like that just isn’t right…” The older sister murmured at the time. Aubrey remembers now, Mari brushed her fingers through her hair in a really specific and special way that she almost forgot about.

It was like tracing little circles into her skin with her fingers, like trying to massage the fear from her brain, reaching in deep and grasping the wellspring of her despair and coaxing it out to let her think clearly again…

“When you get older… When things seem tough and scary and you don’t know what to do, that you feel like you’ve got nowhere else you can turn to. You might want to get mad, you might get really furious at having to deal with so much as a kid, but… Promise me, you won’t turn that anger on your friends, okay? Take a breath-”

… Haaaaahhh…

“-center yourself-”

Aubrey gives Basil’s hand a light squeeze. She can hear the hum of medical equipment and the sound of Hero and Kel’s footsteps retreating again.

“-and remember all the precious people you have in your life.”

She wasn’t the sort to pay the most attention to school, but, in this moment, a line she read in a book she had to read a few weeks back crosses her mind again.

“They asked, ‘do you love her to death’? And I said ‘speak of her over my grave, and watch how she brings me back to life’.” (1)

Funny how things dredge up in your memory at the weirdest possible moments, she thinks. For the first time, she’s starting to understand at least some of what those words really mean. 

…

After a moment, she carefully tucks Basil’s hand back into the bed, before letting loose a light huff through her nose. He’s still sleeping, if a bit more fitfully from all the noise.

“… Kh. Don’t gotta remind me like that y’know? Puts a bad taste in my mouth…” She nearly spits, trying to mask herself with bitterness.

It wouldn’t be long before hospital security came to drag Sunny back to his bed and cut this conversation short, she had to act fast.

She steps forward, and without hesitation, reaches up… and presses her hand on Sunny’s head, rubbing her fingers through his hair, tracing circles and massaging with a silent, stony expression that matches his own. She was still sick to her stomach, her balance was still terrifically uneasy, but…

“… I’ll come talk to you again later, okay?”

She pulls her hand back, and gives him a light punch to his shoulder before stepping out of the room.

“For what it’s worth…” She says, pausing in the door frame as she hears the sounds of shoes squeaking against tile flooring as the hospital staff finally approaches to do their damn jobs.

“I kinda get it. I understand it. I’ve been there. I’m not good at talking about this kind of thing, but, if you need to talk, I can give listening a try... this time.”

Sunny was going to leave after he recovered enough for the hospital to let him loose with his frankly fucking negligent mom. There was nothing she could do that would change that, but…

At least for now, at least while he was still recovering in the hospital, she could finally, actually speak to him.

“… Thanks for opening up Sunny. Give Hero a bit. That guy’s so strung up trying to be the best of us that I guess even he’s gotta snap at some point right?”

Says the girl trying to play mom-friend to the most broken-ass friend group in the tristate area. Christ, trying to be a decent person sucks. How the fuck did Hero pull it off for so damn long?

“Aubrey…”

“Yeah Sunny?”

“… thank you. I’m sorry.”

“Kh, fuck that, I almost drowned both you and Basil. If I started whining about accidents that happened in fits of rage I’d be the worst hypocrite in history, y’know?”

“…”

“Talk to Basil and let him know what happened if he wakes up before the staff drag you back to your room or something. I’ll let ‘em know you need a sec.”

With that, she carefully shuts the door.

What she says to the staff, what kind of look she gives them is growled with enough force and tinged with enough protective violence that it gives them just enough pause for the young boys to exchange an all too important smile of mutual understanding. 

Even if Aubrey never saw it, that little moment of clarity between them saved both of their lives in a way she’d refuse to take credit for helping make happen, knowing her.

A busted, crappy, cracked-screen phone buzzes to life as she walks past the staff. God, she fucking hates it here. The way her shoes hit the tiles, the way the equipment sounds, the fact that every time she’s come here, she’s ended up crying for some reason or another-

Shit, here come the water works now. Damn it Aubrey, at least make it out the door first-

A trip and a tumble nearly sends her falling straight to the floor but, she snaps out her hand just in time to snatch onto a handrail on the side of one of the hallways, her head still spinning as she sags against the floor, her phone toppling out of her jacket’s pocket and landing on its back with a loud, spinning clatter, settling in upside down to her perspective. Tear drops spatter onto the screen, distorting the light and scattering rainbow patterns across its surface. Gah. Add that to the damage. This just isn’t her day. 

Behind a call notification, her background shows the cork board in her room with the pictures she yanked out of Basil’s album after saving them from their near ruined state, mixed in with pictures of her and her other friends she made in the time that passed since. A little bubble on the screen bounces about, showing a picture of Kim flashing a peace sign with a bright eyed wink that reflects in Aubrey’s tired eyes, refracting as it passes underneath her teardrops.  “… Hhfffhh…”

She eventually picks her phone up off the ground and answers it. A hospital staffer looks about ready to tell her off for using her phone in the hallway but, lets be honest.

The kind of glare Aubrey gives off as she very deliberately swipes her finger across the screen to accept the call is the sort that would give most adults pause.

“… Hey.”

“Aubrey!!!! You finally picked up!!!”

“…”

“I was so worried when I heard about what happened! Kh, stupid hospital not letting us in…!”

“…”

“… Aubrey? Are you there? I can kinda hear you breathing so you probably didn’t butt-accept the call or something!”

“Yeah. Yeah I’m here.”

“Jeez, how come you weren’t saying anything? Did those ner-”

An audible pause. Kim clears her throat after a second.

“Sorry, uh, did those guys get out of the woods okay…? I kinda only caught the cliffnotes of you going to the hospital from that text you sent me so…”

“They’re fine.”

Aubrey steps outside the hospital’s visiting center doors and finally breathes fresh air for the first time in what felt like days.

“Or… They’re as fine as they can be. Sort of. Kinda.” She continues, stepping over to one of the benches outside and taking a seat, drinking in the sounds of chirping birds, gentle breezes, swaying trees, and the sensation of warm sunlight… It was a beautiful day, and she didn’t feel nearly good enough to appreciate any of it.

“That’s good at least yeah? Uh… Hrmggh. I’m bad at this kinda thing but… Uh. If there’s anything you need to talk about, you can hit me and the others up at any time yeah?”

Kim’s voice was surprisingly tender, tender enough that it manages to draw a sniff out from Aubrey, forcing her to bring a hand up to her eyes and rub it across them to make sure she didn’t show any tears yet god damn it-

Ugh. Where’s Kel’s Taurine soaked brain anyway. He’s better about handling this kinda energy! Does- shit, does he even like energy drinks?

“Aubreeeeey, if you keep going silent I’m gonna think someone kidnapped you y’know. Gotta pull the whole gang together, beat up on the nearest creepos till we find you! The Maverick’s got a Style Meter App on his phone that does those shouts from that one game so we’ll even get t’ have our own hype-men-”

The thought of Michael in a parking lot with a buffer sword in one hand and a phone in the other trying to do combos for a video to put on his Way Too Many Social Media accounts hits Aubrey with a second hand cringe that nearly brings her to her knees.

“UGGGHHHH!” Aubrey finally cracks, a doofy grin hitting her lips despite her audible mental suffering, slumping back in the chair and nearly sliding out of it entirely, a few tears finally trickling down her eyes as her body releases its tension at last.

“I can’t believe that try hard seriously sprung for something like that. If he tries that shit in public in front of me I’m making’ his screen look like mine.” Aubrey finally grumbles, adjusting her bow. “… Right, I left my bat at home. Ugh.”

“There we go! Now you’re talking’ again. Jeez, way to make a girl worry… Charlene was getting ready to find some flowers to give to you too, the sweetheart.”

“She’s more of an angel than Angel is…”

“Right?! Maybe we should make Angel give up on his nickname-”

“Don’t bother, Charlene’d never let him do it.”

“You’re so right it’s actually kinda annoying.”

“She’s the best of us, y’know.”

“…”

“…”

“So, can you like, talk about what happened at all now or…?”

“… Hang out spot, by the lake, be there in 20.”

“Should I bring the rest of the group-”

“Not this time, Kim.”

The call ends without another word, another ping showing on her phone’s screen showing string of texts from Kel.

JrangeOoe: hey!!!!! ;v;

JrangeOoe: sorry i left you alone with sunny and basil there, hero was having a really bad freak out

JrangeOoe: mom and dad and i are workin with him now, gonna try to calm him down will be back at hospital to give basil and sunny another visit later

JrangeOoe: gonna be honest, this is giving me a little time to figure this stuff out too so, thanks hero for the panic i guess??????

JrangeOoe: ugh no that’s not fair

JrangeOoe: anyway, if you need to chill and get some ginos later i found 10 bucks in a visiting center couch and was trying to hide it but

JrangeOoe: today’s a “spread the wealth” sorta day

It took a couple of moments of hesitation, but…

headhooligan: dinner, maybe

headhooligan: fuck this whole dumbs week

headhooligan: i got some spare cash so i’ll chip in too to get hero something if it’ll help

headhooligan: also what the fuck how are you so calm about this are your parents not trying to work you through this too or something?!

JrangeOoe: uh

JrangeOoe: no but i think hero needs it more right now!!!

JrangeOoe: i dunno how i feel, i guess i’m just to worried about everyone else to think about it?

JrangeOoe: *too

JrangeOoe: i’ll catch you later for dinner tho, if i can get hero to calm down enough to feel safe leaving him be with mom and dad

JrangeOoe: get a feelings jam up in here

JrangeOoe: pizza and ice cream or whatever

JrangeOoe: not at your place tho tbh your mom kinda freaks me out like a lot

headhooligan: >:/

JrangeOoe: what? it’s the truth!

With a roll of her eyes, Aubrey stuffs her phone away, wrenching her bike out of its lock from the hospital’s parking lot bike rack and mounting up. She takes one, final, long look at the hospital’s monolithic facade, and thinks about just how high up that building goes before shaking her head, and pedaling off.

The whole ride home, all she can do is play back today’s events again, and again, and again. Hear the same story in Sunny’s stilted monotone, again, and again, and again.

Every instinct, every trained gut reaction, every beaten in urge and desire tells her she should hate him.

He stole her from everyone, he murdered her, broke her skull against the floor like some raging animal then strung her up like a horror show for everyone to see just to avoid consequences with Basil’s help-

… But…

That panic that gripped her chest when Basil fell in the water from her shove just a few days ago, the terror at taking not one life, but two when Sunny jumped in after him, still unable to swim.

“…”

Her pedaling gets harder, more forceful, making the aging, damaged frame of her hand me down, fourth hand bike creak and groan in protest, hair billowing behind her in a tangled mess of poorly kept locks…

What should be anger gives way to an oddly calm understanding, what should be hatred and fury and violence wraps itself so tightly in its own chaotic energy that all she can do is…

…

There’s not a cloud in the sky, but raindrops spatter on concrete and asphalt where she rides, leaving a trail of sorrow four years in the making, finally given “closure”, finally released.

—-

(1) Credit to Mahmoud Darwish for this legendary line.

[rsadelle]

The best books I read in 2020

I read 167 books in 2020, which is a little more than one and a half times as many as I read in 2019. (I had a crisis of counting at one point when I read a string of novellas, but ultimately came down on the side of if I can check out the ebook from the library as a single volume, then it counts as a book for the purposes of my list.) Only ten of those are books I reread, which is a fairly low reread number/percentage for me. The large number of books I read this year made it extra difficult to narrow down a small number of the best ones, which is why this list is longer than in previous years. It is, in fact, long enough that I have put it behind a cut to spare your dash.

Top 11 fiction books/series I read for the first time in 2020

Bread Alone trilogy (Bread Alone, The Baker's Apprentice, and Baker's Blues) by Judith Ryan Hendricks - I so enjoyed this trilogy about bread baking and figuring out your life and building a home/community and love. I read it at the beginning of the pandemic, when everyone was baking bread, and it was one of those things I was sad to finish because I didn't want to leave the characters.

Never Have I Ever by Joshilyn Jackson - I have read a lot of suburban housewife with a secret books over the last couple of years. This was an excellent example of the genre with the good use of a thematic motif and a second secret reveal after you learn what you think is the biggest secret. Content notes: I had to skim a few chapters because of the large amount of weight and disordered eating content (which is relevant to the character), and there is sexual abuse of a young teenager by an adult as part of the story.

The City We Became by N.K. Jemisin - This was such an interesting concept and done so well. It was one of the most popular books my sci fi book club read this year, and the New Yorker in our group said it was her favorite New York book ever. The most disappointing part of this book is that it's the first book in a trilogy and the other books haven't been published yet. Content notes: eldritch horror and realistic racism.

The Sci-Regency Series (My Fair Captain, The Englor Affair, My Regelence Rake, Diplomatic Relations, and My Highland Laird) by J.L. Langley - The delightfully ludicrous premise of this series is that there is a gay Regency society in space, which makes for some really fun romances. I've loved this series for over a decade, and I was thrilled to reread the first three books before reading the two new books that came out this summer. I recommend reading the novels in order, as there is an overarching plot involving the Intergalactic Navy that is interesting and ongoing without overshadowing the romances. Content note: these are on the erotica end of the romance spectrum, which means they have very explicit sex scenes. I wrote a lot more about this series in a Yuletide promo post comment.

The Most Fun We Ever Had by Claire Lombardo - I was so sad to finish this book! I have read a lot of commercial/literary fiction about families in the past few years, and this might be my favorite. I found the characters really compelling and enjoyed seeing their differing perspectives. I didn't want to leave this family.

Throne of Glass series (Throne of Glass, Crown of Midnight, Heir of Fire, Queen of Shadows, Empire of Storms, Tower of Dawn, and Kingdom of Ash) by Sarah J. Maas - This YA fantasy series shouldn't work given its constant escalation, and yet, somehow it does. I greatly enjoyed it, and I cried more than once at the last book. This is a series where I recommend not reading anything about future books until you've read all the books before them so you can enjoy the continual reveals. These are very much genre novels, and if you don't like the genre, these books will not be for you. Content note: there is a lot of genre-typical violence.

The Great Believers by Rebecca Makkai - I admit that I was mildly skeptical about this book given that what I knew about it was that it was a story about the AIDS epidemic where one of the two timelines is about a woman trying to reconnect with her daughter, but I ended up loving it. The two alternating timelines fit together beautifully, and I thought it did a good job of not eliding the horror of the AIDS epidemic experienced by the gay community in favor of the straight woman's experience. I do remain skeptical of how many awards it won; while it was a genuinely excellent book, I also know that awards bodies love dead queer people.

We Set the Dark on Fire and We Unleash the Merciless Storm by Tehlor Kay Mejia - I loved this YA dystopianish (more cultural class divide than apocalypse or singular villain in control) duology about queer women falling in love while working toward revolution. The world building was good, the plot was good, and the romance was good.

Sisters of the Vast Black by Lina Rather - This novella about an order of nuns who travel through space in an organic slug-like spaceship was absolutely wonderful. It deals with issues of faith, purpose, central control, and doing what you can to make the world a better place.

Sorcery of Thorns by Margaret Rogerson - I loved this YA novel in a sort of Regency-ish setting about a girl who grew up in a library full of magic books and her dealings with some sorcerers, complete with a romance. Content note: attempted mental coercion and institutionalization.

The Wren Hunt and The Wickerlight by Mary Watson - This is a YA duology about rival druid groups in modern day Ireland. I found both books totally compelling with interesting druid politics and magic. It was also really interesting how well we get to see the worst of both sides of the rival druid groups in the two different books.

Top 5 books/series I read and then thought about a lot in 2020

The Twisted Ones by T. Kingfisher - A friend recommended the author to me. This particularly book is a supernatural horror novel I don't necessarily recommend. However, I have continued to think about elements of it since I read it. (Before you @ me about the author's other work, this was the third of her books I read and the other two were in the more beloved fantasy novel genre.)

The Calculating Stars by Mary Robinette Kowal - I actually didn't like this book that much. We read it for a book club, and it had an interesting concept that wasn't super well executed. However, I have thought about elements of it a lot since then, particularly in comparison to some of the other sci fi I encountered this year.

Gideon the Ninth and Harrow the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir - I don't know how much "I actively thought about these a lot" describes my actual experience of having read these, but given their popularity and the number of conversations I had about them, I can't omit them from this post entirely. I liked the first one once I figured out what kind of story it actually was, had absolutely no idea what was happening at any point in the second one, and discovered with both of them that I have a much more limited vocabulary than I thought, at least when it comes to death-related words. I am invested enough that I will read the third book when it comes out, but probably won't read any more of the author's work beyond that. If you want to know more about what I thought, I wrote a very spoilery post about them.

The Sixth World (Trail of Lightning and Storm of Locusts) by Rebecca Roanhorse - This is a pair of novels set in a post-apocalyptic world where there's a magically/divinely-erected wall around Dinétah (the Navajo lands). The worldbuilding and characters are so interesting, and it's a series where some of the details stuck with me and I would randomly think of them. I'm looking forward to reading one of her other books in a few months for my sci fi book club.

Wild Mercy: Living the Fierce and Tender Wisdom of the Women Mystics by Mirabai Starr - This was one of two books about women mystics I read and disliked this year, and the more disappointing of the two as I'd heard an interview with the author that I found interesting. I continued to think about this one a lot in an angry, "and another thing!" way, which did help me articulate more of the things I dislike about new age-ish framing of "feminine" wisdom/divinity/knowledge.

Top 3 non-fiction books I read in 2020

The Vagina Bible: The vulva and the vagina - separating the myth from the medicine by Dr. Jen Gunter - This is probably better as a reference work than as a straight read-through, but it was interesting enough to read straight through. The book is deeply rooted in science and facts, and she has a whole chapter on "Vaginas and Vulvas in Transition" specifically about anatomy for trans people.

Here All Along: Finding Meaning, Spirituality, and a Deeper Connection to Life - in Judaism (After Finally Choosing to Look There) by Sarah Hurwitz - This is a useful, contemporary introduction to Judaism from someone who shares a lot of my values. The first half is an introduction to Jewish thought, while the second half focuses more on spirituality and practice. The book is part general introduction and part spiritual memoir. I found it deeply inspirational and I added it to a wish list of books I want to own copies of (I read it as a library ebook) because I would like to both reread it in hardcopy where I can easily flip back and forth and use it as a resource for further study and reading.

You Can Draw in 30 Days by Mark Kistler - You may remember that I wrote more about this when I originally finished reading the book. I found it a gentle, funny, helpful book to teach you the basics of drawing.

The 2 authors I read the most in 2020

Jennifer Lynne Barnes - I read fifteen of her books in three weeks in January, when I was still working full time, and a sixteenth after it was published later in the year. Her books are fast-read YA novels that are deeply engaging and generally have some sort of mystery element to them which may or may not involve family secrets. She has a tendency to write variations of the same characters, which meant that I enjoyed mentally mapping the characters from various books onto characters from other books. Also, her werewolf trilogy does one of my favorite werewolf story things that you almost never see (but it doesn't happen until the end of the first book, so I won't spoil it by telling you what it is). Many of her books involve violence, so heed the summaries or email/message me if you want some content notes.

Laura Lippman - I read nineteen of her books this year, eighteen novels and a non-fiction essay collection. She's an excellent mystery writer with a distinctive voice. The time I read four of her books in four days, I found myself thinking in her style. Even if I hadn't otherwise enjoyed My Life As A Villainess, her essay collection, it would have been worth reading just for the kicker on "The Thirty-First Stocking." Content note: her novels frequently involve violence or its aftermath.

[seagreen-meets-grey]

When Lightning Strikes Ch. 13

When your life is nothing but a cloudless sky, lightning can come and strike you so unexpectedly, you won’t even know what hit you.

Or: When Hiccup and Astrid meet, it is as if lightning strikes.

[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 14] [Chapter 15] [Chapter 16] [Chapter 17] [Chapter 18] [Chapter 19] [Chapter 20]

Crossposted on ao3 and ff.net

_______________

Astrid could hear the soft gurgling of the stream long before she saw it. Hiccup led her around several groups of trees, through dense thicket, over narrow footpaths so hidden, she wondered if he’d formed them himself or if he’d been here so often, he knew every single step by heart. Probably both.

Ducking underneath the low-hanging leaves of a beech and evading the thorned twigs of a blackberry bush, they arrived on a small meadow, blooming and buzzing in the warm sunlight. She breathed in deeply, filling her lungs with the sweet smell of late spring.

The stream was about ten feet wide, shallow water so clear she could count the pebbles at the bottom glistening in the light. She admired the way the current smoothly ran over and past the stones sticking out of the water, some big and round, some flat, serving as slippery step stones.

All around, leaves were rustling in the faint breeze, coming together with the humming and buzzing activity in the grass and the calming melody of the water in a soothing symphony.

The grass tickled her ankles as she slowly made her way to the bank of the stream, looking around and taking it all in. “This place is amazing.”

“It’s my favorite place in the forest.” Hiccup followed her and sat down on a small rock near the water. “Apart from the small cove my father used to take me to for fishing. It’s a bit further downstream, but last week I found a little fox family there and I don’t want to disturb them.”

She gently nudged him with her foot. “Scooch over.” When he moved to the side to make room on his rock, she settled down next to him. The surface of the rock was rather flat and not very big, just enough for two lean people to share without one butt cheek hanging over the side. It also meant that her entire side was pressed against his. He was warm and soft and comfortable. And maybe she leaned into him a bit, but only because she didn’t want to slide off the rock.

They sat in silence for a while. Astrid leaned back on her hands as far as she could on this surface and took in the scenery. Lining the meadow and the creek, knobby trees covered in ivy stood among straight trunks with white-gray pattern; overgrowing shrubbery, weeds and wildflowers nestled the ground close to their roots.

And there was green. Wherever she looked, everything was green, in different shades and shapes and sizes. When she breathed in through the nose, she could practically smell the luscious colors, along with the May bells and mayweed and the scent of fresh water in spring.

A gentle breeze brushed through her hair, harmonizing with the rustling of the leaves and the mellow mumbling and babbling of the water. Chirping and tweeting sounded from the trees, accompanied by the squeaking and cheeping of the baby birds hidden in the branches. A small, thin tree had grown low across the stream, its twigs hanging into the water, and she imagined the smaller animals using it as a bridge so they didn’t get wet feet or got carried away by the current.

Out of the corner of her eye, she caught sight of a tuft of red and white swiftly disappearing up the trunk of a tree. A vole scurried through the leaves on the other side of the stream. Occasionally, a sudden ripple on the water revealed a glimpse of the activity below the surface. She knew that the longer she waited, the more the life of the forest would reveal itself to her. There was no traffic, no people, just her and Hiccup and their promised nature quality time.

Also belonging to the scenery was one dashing young man with the kind of chiseled jaw covered in stubble that could kill a man – or woman. He was focused on something unspecific in the water. In the sunlight, his hair looked like it would catch on fire any moment. Even his eyelashes were glowing. Was it possible to be hot in a dorky way? Apparently. She took a deep breath and followed his gaze to the mesmerizing dance of light and tiny waves on the surface of the water.

After a few minutes of silence, she started plucking at a long blade of grass until she held half of it in her hand. Staring at the stream, she absentmindedly ripped the blade in tiny pieces. “I’m afraid Eret’s cheating on me.” She opened her palms and the grass landed on her shoes without a sound while she waited. She didn’t even know what she was waiting for, or why she’d admitted to that in the first place. She suspected the peacefulness of this place had gained her trust.

Hiccup regarded her thoughtfully. “Why do you think that?”

She crossed her arms with a sigh. “He keeps talking about this coworker of his. How much fun they have at work. How they always get stuck after their shift ends because of their infinite amount of conversation topics. It’s always ‘my coworker’ this and ‘my coworker’ that. And then last March, on their department’s spring party, I met Dana. She kept going on and on and on about how funny he is, how capable and handsome.” She tugged at a whole clump of grass, in desperate need to rip something apart. “She was practically throwing herself at him.”

“Hmm,” Hiccup made. “Have you talked to him about that?”

She huffed. “Oh, I have. I confronted him two weeks ago. He didn’t take the accusation that well.”

“You… blatantly accused him of cheating? I don’t think anyone would take that well.”

“How else was I supposed to talk to him about it? Ask him nicely if he has a mistress?”

He shrugged with one shoulder. “Yes. No? I don’t know. I guess there’s a more delicate way to approach that subject.”

“I’m a straight-forward person, I don’t like to beat around the bush. So when he started his next sentence with my coworker and I, I just snapped. I was so sick of it.”

“What happened?”

“It escalated. We yelled. Then while he packed for his work trip, I packed to go live with my parents for a while. Said I needed some distance. He said I didn’t even need to leave the house for that, because I was already acting distant. I said that the same would go for him. And the yelling started again and then we left and… Well.” She vaguely gestured around. “Here I am.”

“Sounds like a real mess.”

“It is.” She bit her lip. “What do you think I should do?”

He looked at her in earnest, sincerity deep in his eyes. “I think you should talk to him about how you feel. And maybe this time, leave out the blunt accusations.”

She groaned and threw her head back. “I don’t want to talk about my feelings.”

“At some point, you will have to. Take it from a guy who as a teenager ran away from every single confrontation because he was too afraid of failure and an outcome more negative than the actual situation.”

The boulder was back in her stomach. She wondered what would happen if she went into the water now. Why had she brought up the topic again? Because she’d felt comfortable enough to do so? And weirdly, despite her old friend the boulder, she wanted to get another thing off her chest. Desperately.

“I took a pregnancy test last night.” She felt his eyes bore into the side of her head.

“Are you…?”

She shook her head. “No.”

“Oh.” He opened and closed his mouth a few times, unsure of what to say. “Is that… I mean, did- did you… Are you- are you okay?”

Ripping out more grass, she scrunched up her face. “Yeah. I’m relieved, I guess. I mean, I always knew I wanted to have kids at some point, but…”

“But now’s not a good time,” he finished the sentence for her and she nodded. If she had been pregnant, then the whole situation would have been more complicated. She probably would have rushed back into a relationship that still needed more sorting out, ignoring any problems for the sake of the child. But that would have just made all parties involved more miserable.

She smiled at Hiccup. “Thanks. You’re good to talk to.” That was probably an understatement. It was somehow so easy to tell him about things she hadn’t even yet mentioned in passing around anyone else. They’d just started to really get to know each other, and she already trusted him completely. Her mother would call her naïve. But Astrid knew better, and so did he, judging by the meaningful look he gave her.

“Anytime.”

Before she could change her mind, she leaned her head on his shoulder. She could feel him freeze for a moment, but then he relaxed and slowly leaned his own head against hers. The boulder inside her dissolved.

A woodpecker joined them somewhere on their left, a cuckoo called faintly in the distance. She closed her eyes. The sun warming her face and the songs of nature were like a lullaby, luring her in for a nap. She’d almost drifted off when a gentle nudge brought her back. Looking up at Hiccup, she opened her mouth to say something, but he shook his head and pointed ahead.

There, on the other side of the stream, a deer poked its head out of the underbrush. It stood still for a moment, its nose quivering, before it slowly stalked towards the water. With one last check of its surroundings, it lowered its head and started drinking. Astrid didn’t dare to move a muscle or make the slightest sound.

However, a low gasp escaped her when a second deer came onto the meadow, then a third. One of them set its gaze onto the two humans on the other side, regarding them, and after a good twenty seconds of staring decided they were no threat. It was an incredible feeling. Her hand slowly reached for her phone, but before she could take it out of her pocket, Hiccup closed his hand over hers and shook his head. "Shh," he made, so quietly she almost didn't hear it. Her heart was pounding.

When the breeze suddenly picked up and carried their scent over, the deer tensed, holding their noses up in the air immediately. From one second to the other, all three of them leapt up and bolted, the snapping of twigs in the underbrush growing fainter by the second. The woodpecker, bumblebees and gurgling of the water slowly came back into focus. She and Hiccup looked at each other with a spark in their eyes.

“Thanks,” she whispered and he raised his eyebrows in question. “For taking me here.”

“Ah, you’re welc–” His voice died when she suddenly leaned forward and gave him a kiss on the cheek. With wide, green eyes he stared at her, and she assumed her expression mirrored his. Her lips tingled, warm and exciting. The sensation wandered down her arm into her hand and she managed to break away from his gaze to look down. He followed her eyes and when he realized his hand was still holding hers, he gulped and slowly pulled away, the nerves under her skin longing to chase his touch.

“We… We should probably get going,” she feebly suggested.

“Yeah,” he agreed, voice an octave higher than normal. “That’s exactly what I was gonna… Get going.” Looking anywhere but at her, he scrambled up from the rock and orientated himself. “There- let’s… Uh, let’s go there.”

For some reason, her knees needed a moment before they let her walk after him. Whatever that had just been, she should just forget about it. She followed Hiccup through the trees, no paths directing the way. All she could do was trust him that he knew where he was going, and she did. He led her up a small hill, leaves and twigs crunching under their steps.

“Hey, your shoe is untied,” she noted. He stopped to look down and a soft oh escaped him. It was cute.

While she readjusted her socks that were slowly slipping from her heel, he bent over to relace his shoes, giving her a good look at his backside. From her point of view – which was completely neutral, of course – he had a nice butt. When he stood again, she jogged past him and gave it a light slap.

“Astrid!” he exclaimed in surprise.

She just smirked at him. “Come on, slowpoke!” Then she sprinted down the other side of the hill.

“Oh, you!” she heard him call before he took after her, chasing her through the woods. She made it down the hill, past a group of birches and around a thick beech when he came around the other side of it, throwing his arms around her and lifting her up. “Gotcha!” He immediately let go of her after, walking further down the invisible path only he could see.

She had to catch her breath for a second before she fell back in step beside him. From the sprint. “Just so you know, I let you win.”

“No, no you didn’t!” he countered in a chipper tone.

“Because I was tired of playing catch.”

“Nope, you weren’t.” She stuck her tongue out at him, making him laugh. “You’re so mature, Ms. Hofferson.”

“That’s because I’m older than you.”

“By two months! Hey, watch your step, there’s a lot of vines here.” Naturally, he promptly stumbled over one, catching himself on a tree.

“Watch your step, there’s lots of vines here.”

He shook his head. “Well, aren’t you a little smartass.”

“Takes one to know one,” she shrugged.

“Eh, can’t argue with that.”

She brushed her fist along his arm again and caught his grin.

All too soon, she began to make out traffic and chatter in the distance again. It felt like leaving a different, peaceful universe, where the rest of the world and its problems didn’t exist. It was kind of disappointing. And if that wasn’t enough, on their way back to the cars, her phone started ringing with a very familiar name filling the screen. She sighed. She didn’t want to deal with that right now, but knew that ignoring his call wouldn’t make anything any better.

She threw Hiccup an apologetic look and held her phone against her ear. “Hi.”

“Hey.” There was an awkward beat of silence. “I’m on my way home and uh… I just wanted to know if you’re there.”

“No.”

“Are you… still in Berk? At your parents’ place?”

“Yes.”

“Do… Do you know when you’ll be coming back?”

“No.”

When her answers didn’t become more elaborate, Eret cleared his throat, and after years of being with him, she could tell he was about to say something he’d rather not say at all. “You, um. You were right, by the way. About Dana.” Bright red warning bells rang in her mind at that name. “She kissed me last night.” He cleared his throat and gulped audibly.

She stepped past the last line of trees and onto the gravel of the parking lot, and leaving the woods had never felt this sobering. “I fucking knew it,” she mumbled through clenched teeth.

“Astrid–”

“I knew it!”

“Hey, hold on, please let me finish!”

She walked a small distance away from Hiccup and any other people in the near vicinity. No need for them to overhear her personal drama. “Fine, I’m listening!”

“Like I said, you were right, she wanted–”

“Did you kiss her back?”

“No–”

“So there’s nothing going on between you and your coworker?”

He didn’t immediately answer and his hesitation stung. “Will you just let me explain?!”

“You didn’t answer my question!” She was yelling and she knew it. People were turning their heads so she glowered at them.

“And you didn’t let me speak in the first place! You know what, my mother’s right, sometimes you really do act like my personal dictator.”

Astrid’s jaw dropped to the floor. “WELL, FUCK YOU TOO!” she screamed and it took everything in her to not fling her phone across the parking lot. Instead, she hung up and forcefully kicked at a large pebble on the ground. It whirled up dust and gravel and hit a stranger’s car. She couldn’t care less. Everything inside her was fuming. How dare he? How dare they?!

With a frustrated growl, she turned around and walked back to Hiccup. He had given her some space and was leaning against his car.

“Everything alright?” he asked carefully at her aggressive body language.

“I was right! Eret just told me! He and his stupid fucking coworker!”

“So… He admitted to cheating on you?”

“Well, no, not in those words, but…”

“So he didn’t?”

“He was telling me the story of how he and Dana had fun last night, but I just...”

“You avoided the topic.”

She opened her mouth, closed it, then huffed. “I didn’t need to hear any details.”

“Hm,” he made, thoughts scurrying across his face. “Are you sure there isn’t more to the story than you think? Maybe you should talk–”

“Don’t tell me what to do!” she interrupted him, the words breaking out of her on their own.

He held up his hands in defense. “Geez, sorry. I’m just trying to help.”

Something churned inside her stomach, between all the raging knives, something akin to guilt. Seeing his expression, her shoulders untensed a little. “No, sorry for yelling at you. I’m just so– ugh!” Her fist punched the next best thing, which was the metal pole of a parking sign. A flash of pain shot through her knuckles and she shook her hand out with a hiss.

“Hey, can I say something?” Hiccup asked, caution coating his voice with his eyes set on her aching hand.

She shrugged. “As long as it doesn’t include the word overreaction.”

He shook his head, brows furrowed in contemplation. “I might be going out on a limb here, but… Do you think that, maybe, you want it to be true?”

“Why on Earth would I want that?!”

“Because… Because you’re not happy in your relationship and- and this way, you can put the blame on someone other than yourself.”

“EXCUSE ME?!” The blazing wall of fire burned every shred of guilt and sympathy she felt.

He held up his hands again. “I’m just saying, you accused him of cheating, kept yelling at him – I’m assuming offensively – and now you yelled at him again instead of hearing him out. Is that what happened or am I totally off-base here?”

“Are you taking his side?!”

“No! If it were up to me, I wouldn’t be involved in this at all!”

“Then why are we still having this conversation?” She crossed her arms tightly over her chest as he sighed.

“Because I care about you. And I hate seeing you digging yourself deeper into this mess, so I’m trying to help you realize what to do.”

“Really? Then what is it I should do?”

“Let him give you his side of the story. Without any yelling.”

She leaned against the pole, suddenly very tired. “I…”

“You know,” he said when she didn’t continue, avoiding his searching eyes, “for someone claiming to be so straightforward, you sure like to run from truthful conversations.”

“What is that supposed to mean?” she asked, voice rising again.

He looked at her for a moment, then shook is head. “Never mind.”

“No, if you have something to say, then say it!”

After a short contemplating glance, he stood up straight. “Fine. You say you don’t like to beat around the bush, but how come we’re not talking about what happened on your wedding day? Or at Dagur’s party? Are we just going to ignore all that until we die?”

“What- I don’t- We-” she stuttered, her stomach dropping further than the ground beneath her feet. At once, she felt exposed, vulnerable, and confused at the same time. Her mind decided on the next best defense mechanism. “What is there to talk about?” She could see the small change in his eyes, a gray curtain falling, tired, disappointed, sad.

“You’ll keep denying it, won’t you.” It was more of a statement than a question and that somehow hit even harder.

“What is there to deny?”

Suddenly, he took a large step towards her, until he was so close, their noses were almost touching. She could feel the heat of his body, smell his deodorant, make out every tiny hair on his face and the miniscule change of skin tissue at the edges of the long, white scar on his chin. Her breath hitched, heart pounding rapidly, her entire being longing to close the remaining gap between their bodies. Her knees weakened. It was hard to not get mesmerized by his eyes, a deep, green galaxy right before her. She tore her eyes away from them, only to latch onto his lips. She couldn’t breathe.

Like detaching himself from a magnet, he slowly stepped back and the air found its way back into her lungs. She could hear her heartbeat in every cell of her body, had trouble making sense of her surroundings, like waking up in a dark room with only a sliver of light coming from an unknown direction. By the time her feet touched solid ground again, mere seconds could have passed, or entire lifetimes.

“You’re right,” he said, strained voice cutting right through her chest, “there’s nothing to talk about. You dropped your phone, by the way.” With that, he got into his car, reversed out of the parking spot, and drove away. Even after he was long gone and the sound of his engine had faded in the distance, Astrid was still rooted to the spot, staring in the direction he had disappeared.

It took her a while to reassemble herself, clear the fog in her mind, will her heartbeat to finally slow down. On autopilot, she picked her phone up from the ground, wiped the gravel off the screen, saw the new variation of tiny scratches on the back but didn’t truly see anything. Her mind was still drowning in the sudden proximity to Hiccup Haddock, which shouldn’t have shaken her as much as it had, considering she’d sat close to him merely an hour ago.

Only when she was back in her own car, weaving her way through Berk’s rush hour traffic, her fingers stopped twitching at the memory of being almost skin to skin with him. As the fog was clearing, her confusion began settling, the puzzle pieces setting themselves back together, and a fist of steel closed around her still thumping heart.

It remained like that for the rest of the day. She managed to smile, make small talk, be present enough to get through the conversations with her parents, avoiding too much eye contact, especially with her mother. She probably noticed her mental absence but knew it would be futile to try and get anything out of her.

Astrid went to bed at ten; she tossed, turned, buried her face in her pillow until long past midnight. Now that she was alone with her thoughts, lying in the dark in her old bedroom, there was no place to hide from her mind. It insisted on replaying the whole day over and over, gnawing and nibbling away at her from the inside. When she closed her eyes, she saw green irises, a storm of freckles dancing across her retina, lips so close her fingers twitched to touch them, her own lips puckering. And even though it’s been several hours, she could still feel his hand on hers, warm and gentle and setting a blazing fire to her core.

He kept haunting her, occupying her every thought, every beat of her heart. Her ribs were aching from the steel inside her chest, pressing cold and heavy against her heart and lungs ever since her fight with Hiccup. She felt terrible. All he’d done was be honest, something she had not been with herself for a very long time, and she’d lashed out at him just like she had at Eret and her mother.

She grabbed her phone from the nightstand and squinted at the bright screen. Opening the right messenger app, she drafted an apology message, deleted it several times, all the time hoping he wasn’t looking at his side of the chat right now and saw her typing. Because in the end, she’d gone through at least ten versions of the same text and didn’t send any of them. None of them sounded right, didn’t fully convey the sincerity of her feelings. Instead, she got lost in her thoughts again, staring at the ceiling, phone forgotten beside her with the screen gone dark from long inactivity.

Gazing down at her was a pair of eyes. Lighter towards the middle, a dark green ring at the edges, and depending on how the light hit them, either forest green or a brilliant shade of emerald. It was so fascinating to watch him, to survey the everchanging expressions on his face, his emotions an open book most of the time. The way his eyebrows dipped, the corners of his mouth twitched or the crinkles around his eyes deepened, eyes always the most telling. How his features changed with every new thought, every new idea, and the way his shoulders and hands could carry half the conversation for him.

The sound of his laugh, sometimes dorky, sometimes sassy, sometimes charming, and always so uniquely Hiccup. That lopsided smile of his that could turn into a smirk when he thought of something witty to say. How he listened to her, even when all she was spouting was a bunch of mundane bullshit. How he showed interest in everything she said and did. His kind nature, his honesty, his spirit. The way he could turn her insides to mush and her soul to dangle freely a few thousand feet in the air by just a look or a simple touch. How he inspired her to be herself.

Never before had she been this intrigued by someone, never had she wanted to discover every little thing there was to know about another person. Wanted him to know her better than she did herself. Wanted to know him better than anyone else. Wanted him with her here, next to her, right now. Wanted to feel his warmth, his touch, his breath ghosting over her lips, over her skin, before tracing every line, every patch of skin on her body with his tongue. A deep, longing sigh escaped her as she imagined all the things she wanted him to do to her, everything she wanted to do with him. Craved him more than she ever had anyone else.

But above all, she couldn’t keep running from the truth any longer, especially since it was blaring in her face like a trumpet. As soon as she opened that gate, the steel in her chest melted, glowing and smoldering as it encased her heart. A giddy thrill coursed through her, as well as fatigue, as she finally gave in, let the wall crumble brick by brick. By the time the first choked sob rocked her body, the tears were already flooding down her face, hot and salty, paired with incredulous laughter.

Fuck. This was it, wasn’t it? She was undeniably and irrevocably screwed.

[skeletorific]

man i bet it's super odd for the ancestor trolls to be putting out pale feels on anyone, much less a human. I can just see the most frustrated lil ball of horns and teeth trying to figure out if theres, ya know, *room* in a human's life for moirailegence with this whole platonic structure called a family and the only-one-romance-a-hooman standard/stigma and. they need a pap just tryin to figure it out! If you wouldn't mind, i'd love to hear your take on how psiionic darkleer, n dualscar would do

Me skating the fuck in to answer Ancestors requests. (I’m assuming this is in reference to my Ancestors live on Earth C timeline, but the headcanons themselves will work for just a general human interaction, I promise)

So, a note about Earth C and quad: I really can’t imagine that troll, human, and carapacian concepts of romance wouldn’t start to mingle, at least to a certain extent. After all, the three species come up at the same time, right alongside each other.

Quadrants aren’t exactly the norms for humans even there. Our reproductive needs are different, for one-thing. Additionally, I have to imagine that even without the social coding of Earth-A, a good chunk of humans would probably still tend to be fairly monogamous, especially if one of the primary texts left behind was written by a human woman raised on human monogamy who took only one lover herself. However, there’s probably a healthy chunk of humans who go by quadrants, trolls who go by human romance, and some who mix and match (for instance, “This is Ben, my significant other, and this is Meryll, my kismesis”). Its something most people figure out as they get older.

However, that doesn’t necessarily mean that the ancestors have cottoned on to the nuances of it all. Getting the idea of human monogamy through their heads was hard enough, and once it happens, of course THEN they have to catch pale feelings for one of the squishy fucks!

The Psiionic: So, unlike the other two on this list, Captor has actually had some experience with relationships that are a little more....fluid. Vantas and Leijon’s relationship always fell squarely in the middle of the chart, borrowing elements from all and none. Hell, his OWN relationship with the two of them tiptoed pitch, pale, ashen, and flushed depending on the day of the week. So, while he does still broadly conceive of things like an Alternian, its not necessarily an insurmountable barrier for him.

How he proceeds depends a lot on whether or not the human already has an s/o. If you do, he ultimately just bites the bullet and asks to talk to both of you (bringing Vantas and Leijon along for emotional support). He doesn’t want to move in where he’s not welcome and he’s got no designs on your flushed relationship. He’s quiet and his voice is shaking a bit as he struggles to keep his nerves (and by extent, his psiionics) under controll. But he’s never seen the point in fucking around the pricklefrond. Either you feel the same, or you don’t.  

If you don’t have an s/o, though, he just sort of carefully allows himself to become a feature in your life. He’s a little shakey socially but he puts the effort in to be around you. Captor’s never gonna be the most effusive emotionally, but he does make a point to give the occasional genuine compliment as to how he appreciates who you are, and what you do. When you’re having trouble he has a tendency to just sort of materialize in the background to offer his help. Pale flirting is all about trust, both engendering it, and demonstrating it for each other. No matter how oblivious you are, its hard not to notice that his walls are usually so high for others, yet they seem to come down around you.

Despite aforementioned not-fucking-around-the-pricklefrond, its possible he won’t ever use the word moirail for you unless you ask him about it. You’re human, and he doesn’t see the need to regale you with the complexities of troll romance if you’re both happy with the current arrangement. One way or another, though, Vantas runs at the mouth and spills the beans to you, and you have a good long talk about it.

Executor Darkleer: This guy, on the other hand, is a staunch traditionalist, paired with the fact that he ultimately thinks he’s somehow unworthy of love in any form. 

Years of social conditioning don’t just fall away because you and your former empress shop for box wine at the same liquor store now. As an expatriate, Zahhak was literally forbidden from contributing to the filial slurry, and was far too isolated to acquire a moirail. The best he had was the occasional frustrated shoosh-pap from Mindfang just to snap him out of his moods for a bit. Now, the old empire may have fallen away, but he’s still to some extent punishing himself. As a result, as soon as he figures out he’s catching pale feelings for a human, he starts avoiding you at all costs. He can’t allow himself to fall into any kind of temptation. The very qualities that attract him to you are the same reason he’s convinced you deserve something better.

Fortunately, there was no way you were friends with Darkleer in the first place if you were the type to let social avoidance turn you off. After a couple of weeks of not hearing from him (and a few confusingly smug texts from Mindfang when you ask her if he’s doing alright and her only response was “Go find out. I’m sure he’ll 8e more than alr8 ;;;;)”), you show up at his hive and bang on the door until he finally lets you in.

If you were hoping for a big confession, you’ll probably be a little disappointed: he’s not the type. But he does let you chastise him for withdrawing like that, finally extracting a promise that he won’t do it again. All the while him thinking that this, too, could be part of his penance. To let the human stay with by your side....but not allow yourself the luxury of what you truly want....why its almost scandalous-

Yup. He’s pale edging himself, and will continue to do so until you finally break down and demand he explain why he’s being so weird. Or until Mindfang loses her patience and tells you herself, if only to get him to stop leaving soliloquies in her DMs. Either way.

Dualscar: Another traditionalist, but he’s never really been lucky enough in love to be that picky about the system he falls under. The last proper, long-lasting quadrant relationship he had was his kismesis with Mindfang, and well.....kind of a funny story how that one went, honestly.

Assuming you’re single, his way forward is pretty easy. He reads up on human romance for 48 hours straight and presumes he knows what the fuck is up. Honestly its not terribly different from moirallegiance in some respects. You’re supposed to uplift your partner, and plenty of sources recommend that your s/o should be your “best friend”. Conversations involving your feelings are a norm, and humans even have the concept of a “fated match”, something pretty integral to Alternian moirallegiance. As for the rest, well, he can lean into some of the redder aspects of his feelings, pull out the old Ampora charm, and leave the rest in Lady Luck’s hands, right?

Right?

Well....for the first few months it works fine. You’ve always been close with Dualscar, felt like you got each other on some level, and to some degree a romantic relationship felt like a natural extension of that. He can be sweet, showers you with gifts, and is good at listening to your problems and letting you bitch without making you feel like you’re burdening him. He’s funny, in a bitchy dad kind of way, and frankly kind of dashing. 

But something’s off. You notice he seems to shrink down a little bit when you try to get a bit more physical with him. Not like he dislikes it, necessarily, more like he’s...confused. While you feel closer with him than ever, there’s none of those flowery declarations you find tucked in his journal, dedicated to great loves in his past. Even on your end, you feel like you still just think of him as like.....a best friend, but more so somehow? Being romantic with him as you would be with a human feels...wrong, You reflect each other so well and so closely that its like you’re a piece of each other, and calling him your boyfriend feels like trying to call yourself your own boyfriend.

The truth comes out when you try to break up with him and in a panic he explains himself to you. Running through a long (and somewhat incoherent) crash course on troll romance, with a special focus on moirallegiance. He’s stumbling over his words (unusual when he’s sober), half waiting for your eyes to widen in shock and for you to end things forever.

So imagine his shock when you blink a few times and say “why the hell didn’t you just say so?”

As Peixes would say later, “L-Eave it to an Ampora to mak-E s)(it way mor-E glubbin complicat-Ed t)(an it n-E-Eds to b-E.”

[lexfritterwrites]

Let Lips Do What Hands Do - Part 11

Y’all, I haven’t posted in here since they updated it so everything might be terrible. Anyway, I’ll do my best. You can always catch me on AO3. 

previous

It's April, and Addie feels like crying most days. In fact, she actually has cried for the past eleven days — once in the shower, twice over her cup of tea and the other times where when she was in bed alone. Taron's been filming in Ireland for three weeks, and it's a glimpse at how life would be if they were to stay together in all the madness.

 "Sad again, huh?" Jack says, catching the gray look in her eyes. "I feel I should be offended you're not that upset about leaving me."

 Addie throws a sugar packet at him, hitting her mark on his cheek. "I know things between us won't change when I leave. You'll just be a phone call away."

 "Taron will too."

 "That's different. I don't think I like this ache, this pain." Addie absently stirs her tea. "In the words of Elphaba, 'If that's love, it comes at much too high a cost.'"

 "You know she ends up with the scarecrow at the end of that musical, right? I mean, we saw it together. I wrote a review which you edited."

 Addie rolls her eyes, too done to deal with Jack today.

 "I love him, you know. And to think we won't be together because of our location, I think I would rather not be with him at all."

 "Your call," Jack says. "I know you're scared but I think the two of you could make it work, and that's coming from a guy who stays away from relationships. You don't have to split because you're half a world away."

 "What if he meets the one but can't act on it because of me? Or what if he does act on it and I'm left devastated? It's a real poop chute."

 "It'll work out, Addie," Jack says, covering her hand with his own. "It'll work out."

 Addie slumps and rests her head on the table. "Why?"

 Jack gently musses her hair. "You didn't not date for years while you were here and the first guy you do consider turns out to be fuckin' perfect. You really know how to pick them."

 Addie laughs, feeling a little lighter at the thought.

   It's her whole year on display, the premiere of the students' films adapted from classic novels. Four fully written, produced and edited films will be turned in with her thesis, but the gala tonight will only feature twenty minutes from each with the students having a few moments to present before their film. It's an affair she's invited the whole school to as well as their family and friends, and even though Jack is by her side, the one person she wants to be there most isn't. Taron's caught filming in Ireland; Addie understands but still doesn't enjoy it.

 "Look at what you've done," Jack says, watching the rows of students talk excitedly amongst themselves, no doubtedly ready to display their hard work. "Not even a full teacher yet and you've got them inspired. That's a noble thing."

 Addie squeezes his hand. She takes the microphone and heads to the center of the stage. Pausing a moment before delivering the introduction she's prepared, she smiles. The kids eagerly sitting before her are a tribute to her and her hard work and creativity, and this life is about her just as much as it is Taron.

 She takes her seat next to Jack as the first group's film rolls across the screen, an updated retelling of Sense and Sensibility. It's funny, well thought and inclusive of the community, what with Edward Ferris having evolved into Edwina and Colonel Brandon an Indian man in the British navy. Everyone claps as the students presenting The Picture of Dorian Gray take the stage. Addie's phone buzzes in her pocket and she risks a quick chance to look at it.

 Can we watch the full-length versions this weekend? - T

 Sure, if you want. - A

 I do! At least that one. I'm dying to see how they did the marriage proposals. - T

 Addie whips her head around, looking to see him somewhere. There are faces illuminated by the screen but then she sees him, sitting on the edge of the row with his hood pulled up over his head; no doubt he didn't want to be recognized. He waves slightly when he sees her, and Addie smiles.

 He came after all.

 I'm so happy you're here! - A

 I'm really glad I could make it. Will sneak to bar at end so as not to detract. - T

 Sounds perfect. - A

 Thank you for coming. - A

 Addie is extremely proud of everything the students accomplished, and the cooking class made a giant cake for the ocassion. She sneaks a piece for Taron in her bag, poses for pictures with the kids, compliments the parents for raising some great hopes for the future, and then she's dashing out the door.

 "Adelaide, you're incredible!" Taron says, standing up from the table. He wraps his arms around her and kisses her cheek.

 "I can't believe you're here," she says, her face buried in his neck. "How'd you manage?"

 "Flew in this afternoon," he says. "Wanted to surprise you."

 "I'm very surprised," she says. "Very happy, too."

 Taron kisses the side of her head before pulling away to point her to a secluded booth. "I want to hear all about the rest of the videos. When can we watch them?" He holds her hand across the table, leaning towards her.

 Addie bites the inside of her lip, studying him. "What's wrong?"

 "What?" Taron asks, shifting backwards. Addie knows she was right to expect something.

 "Taron, I know you," she says quietly. "I know when something's up. What is it?"

 "No, Adelaide. I came here to celebrate you and the work you've done and I don't want it spoiled."

 "I feel like it's already spoiled if you don't tell me what's going on. Is everyone okay? Your mom and the girls? Your dad?"

 "Everyone's fine." He exhales loudly, looking at the table. "It's two more weeks."

 "Oh." Addie sags against the cushion. "Oh."

 Taron rubs her knuckles with his thumb. "I know it's really shitty, but it is what it is."

 "It's okay," Addie manages over the lump of emotion lodged in her throat. She feels like she's gagging but it's just the thought of his absence for another two weeks just a couple of months before she's supposed to move back to the United States. "You chase your dream and I'll chase mine."

 "Thus, though we cannot make our sun stand still, yet we will make him run."

 Addie snorts, swiping a tear off her cheek. "Marvell. Good choice."

 "Anyway," Taron says. "We've got tonight."

 "Bob Seger, a modern poet."

 It's Taron's turn to laugh now and he shakes his head. "Seriously though, can I take you out to dinner and then stay up with you all night watching the work of your students?"

 "Yes, I would like that."

 "Good," Taron says, moving quickly from the table. He drops a note on its surface and helps Addie back into her coat.

 "Can I make an amendment to the plan though?"

 "What's that?"

 "Can we just pick something up and take it home? I really don't need an audience to just want to be with you and I'm wearing Spanx so I'd really like to get out of them and into my pajamas."

 "Deal," he says. "You look bloody gorgeous but comfortable is something I also enjoy. Your place or mine?"

 "Mine is closer but you have a better TV so let's do that."

 "Sounds perfect," he says. He could offer to run back by hers so she can gather things, but he knows everything she needs is available at his. Tucking her beneath his arm, he kisses the side of her head — she'd taken the news of his delay better than he would have expected.

 They're curled up in his bed and halfway through the updated retelling of Frankenstein when Addie stretches her fingers across his chest.

 "What is it, cariad?" Taron asks, shifting his eyes. He can see the crown of her head and the tip of her nose, and he can see her fingers flex against his shirt.

 "I'm thinking about us."

 "Oh?"

 She pauses the video and sits up, and it's then he sees the tears in her eyes. "I think when I leave, that should be our end."

 "Adelaide." He bolts upright and reaches for her, but his fingers don't actually land anywhere. He can't touch her now.

 "Being apart from you these past few weeks has been hell. I never thought I would be someone to feel this way about anybody, but here we are. I'm exhausted. It feels like a piece of me is missing when you're gone, like smiles are less genuine and laughter does little for my soul. I can't imagine living my life for extended amounts of time without you, feeling this way. So if we just enjoy the time we have left and part as companions who once loved each other, I think that would be better."

 "Do I not get a say in this decision?" He asks softly, his chest tight and his jaw returning to a painful clench.

 "Of course you do," she sighs. "But what is the logical outcome of this?"

 "Fuck this. You can sleep in the guest room tonight." Taron moves in a flash, storms into the bathroom and slams the door shut.

 "Taron! Taron, no!" Addie frantically scrambles off the bed and futilely twists the doorknob. "Taron! Taron, please."

 She can hear the shower running and she sinks to the floor. She knew she shouldn't have said anything.

   Taron finds her half an hour later curled up on the floor with her cheeks red and eyes blotchy. He wants to be angry, he can feel the cold inside him wanting to push her away, but he can't.

 "Addie, come on," he says, gently collecting her in his arms and setting her upright. "I'm hurting too, you know."

 She nods blearily as he leads her back to bed. "I didn't mean to ruin what we have now. I feel like shit, and now I really feel like sh—"

 "Addie, I know," Taron says. "What you're saying makes sense, but it really fucking sucks when it's said out loud. You would rather be without me than be far away and with me, and I suppose that makes sense. Your chances of moving on are better if you're not thinking about some loyalty to me."

 "Me moving on?" She laughs. Taron thinks her crying must have left her too weary to think properly. "It's you. You'll move on long before I will and I don't want you to be stuck with me."

 "That doesn't matter," he says, taking her hand. "I think you're right though. We have a few good weeks left together and we should spend them as happily as we can. Let's not fight or what-if ourselves anymore. You're here, I'm here, and we should let that be enough for now. I can't think on it anymore."

 "Is it really okay?"

 "For now." He wipes a tear from her cheek, knowing his own should be joining it had he not just cried in the shower. "Let's go to sleep and sleep very late into the morning beside each other."

   Taron bites his nail, a habit he'd gotten into since ditching cigarettes; his teeth weren't thanking him but his lungs certainly were.

 "There he is," Jack says, pulling out the chair across from Taron and sinking into it. "Mr. Egerton."

 "Jack," Taron says, shaking his hand. "I wanted to talk to you about Addie."

 "I figured," Jack says. "She told me about her plans of departure."

 "Yeah, and it's not good. How do I get her to stay?"

 “You don’t."

 "Jack, please," Taron says, rubbing his forehead. "I can't have her leave."

 "And you can't have her stay either." Jack says softly. "I know you love her, Taron, as do I, but I also know she won't stay. She'll come to regret the decision as well as you if she stays. Going back to Washington has been her goal for six years. It's all she's worked for and all she's wanted. You need to let her go."

 "Can you?"

 Jack snorts his laugh. "I don't have a choice."

 "We could talk to her together."

 "That's not going to work."

 Taron drops his head to the table, his chest feeling unbelievably tight. "I don't know what to do."

 "Taron, there's an obvious solution here."

 "What's that?"

 "Go with her."

 Taron grunts. "You and I both know that's not logical."

 "So what? You can't do for her what you want her to do for you just because you're a famous actor who happens to make more money?" Jack leans back in his chair. He's really liked Taron, like him for Addie, and he needs Taron to see the sense in this before his like gives into loathing. "You're not giving up her dream so don't let her give up hers."

 "She's your best friend. How can you be so calm?" Taron crosses his arms in front of him, elbows still on the table, and he lets his chin fall to rest against them.

 "Addie is more than a best friend to me," Jack says. "I truly believe she is my person, even if there's no romance. Addie wasn't even supposed to be born, yet here she is. Incredibly determined, driven and happy."

 "I know that." Taron leans onto his cheek.

 "I know you do," Jack says patiently. "That's part of the reason you love her." He reaches across the table and squeezes Taron's shoulder. "You have to let her go."

 "Why is that the only option?" Taron moans, rhetorically putting the words into the universe.

 Jack chuckles as he leans back in his chair. "That's the only way she'll come back."

 "You think she'll come back?"

 "I hope so," Jack says. "For both our sakes."

 Taron laughs. He'll have to make time for Jack when Addie is gone.

 He finds her asleep on the couch when he returns home, and he gently brushes a hand across her face.

 She opens one eye to look and smiles when she sees him. “I must have dozed off.”

 “Yeah,” he says softly. It spreads through him, a calm peace. She is leaving to pursue her dreams, and there is nothing he can do to stop her, nor would he want to. He kisses her tenderly, finally accepting it. “You want to go take a nap upstairs?”

 “That sounds nice,” she says, sitting up next to him. “Hey, are you okay?”

 Taron smiles and kisses her again. “I’m totally fine. I just really love you.”

 Addie’s laugh warms him and she leans her head against his shoulder. “I love you, too.”

 Taron takes her hand and quietly leads her upstairs.

[kinglazrus]

i saw that post and thought of this yesterday but my brain was unreasonably shy but here it is now usdygbhjn: “It’s three in the morning.” danny @ dash

Milky Way

Sometimes Danny hates living in the city. Actually, most of the time he hates it. Not because of the noise, or all the people, or even the ghosts, but the stars. Or the lack of them, at least.

Danny was ten years old when he realized the sky he saw every night was a lie. He had seen plenty of pictures of the night sky taken from different parts of the world. At that age, he just assumed that’s how the sky worked. Some places had less stars than others, he was unfortunately born in a place with very few stars overhead.

Until his sister got him a big astronomy textbook for his tenth birthday and he learned the city was to blame. All the city lights polluted the sky and kept him from seeing the sky for what it truly was. For weeks, he tried to convince his parents to move, to pack up all their things in the RV and drive out far away into the middle of nowhere, where there was no people and no light pollution, and he could see the stars in all their glory every night.

He never got that wish, but nowadays Danny doesn’t mind it so much. Now, if he wants to see the night sky as it should be seen, all he has to do is fly up, up, up beyond the clouds, just past the edge of the mesosphere.

There, he floats along the Kármán line, the boundary between Earth’s atmosphere and space, and he can see everything. It’s beautiful. He can’t help but think of every childhood drawing he made of the stars and how wrong he was.

The sky isn’t an endless expanse of black peppered with bright white spots. It’s a gorgeous mix of blues and purples, and even some pink in the Milky Way itself. Every inch of the sky is covered in stars. There are so many he has trouble picking out the constellations he knows better than his hometown, but he manages.

The familiar cup of Ursa Minor, Draco’s lithe body winding past, Hercules’ crooked form by the dragon’s head.

Danny traces the familiar lines with his softly glowing eyes and feels as empty as the space between the stars. Even though that distance looks so small from here, he knows how vast it really is.

Tipping back his head, he stares back down toward Earth. Cities make their own constellations across the dark surface. The sixty-two miles between him and the ground right now is not enough. He wants to fly higher, way out into space, and get lost in its cold comfort. But he can’t, because he has a city to protect, friends who depend on him, and a family who loves him.

At least he thinks they love him.

Danny reaches for his phone and goes to check the time, but the screen doesn’t turn on. He frowns, tapping the screen, and even shakes the device a few times. And then he remembers how cold it’s supposed to be up here, something he can’t really feel anymore, and it probably killed the battery.

He’s just lucky it isn’t iced over. At this height, it should be, but he probably has the radiation from his ectoplasm to thank for that.

Grudgingly, Danny tells himself he should probably head home. He flips over, head to the ground, and starts flying.

He takes his time, it’s still barely more than hour before he’s back in Amity. Just before diving through Fenton Work’s roof, he looks back up at the sky. It’s empty and sad.

The first thing Danny does when he’s back in his room is plug in his phone. He considers transforming; it’s dangerous to stay in ghost form while his parents are home. But after staring at his blank phone for a few long seconds he decides against it. He doesn’t really want to be human right now.

Curled up on his bed, head against his pillow, knees pulled up to his chest, he waits for his phone to charge enough to turn on. Those five minutes feel infinitely longer than his flight back from space.

“Screw you, Clockwork,” Danny mutters. It’s not really Clockwork’s fault, but it feels good to have someone to blame, and the ghost of time is a ripe target.

The moment his screen lights up, Danny reaches out and snags it off his bedside table. He notes the time, quarter to three, then goes through his notifications. Some spam emails, a couple game notifications, but no texts or calls. Which makes sense, it’s the middle of the night, who the hell would be up right now besides him?

As soon as Danny thinks that, his phone buzzes and a message appears at the top of his screen.

From Dash: [image]

Another quickly follows.

From Dash: was that u?

Eyes heavy, Danny stares at the texts for a long moment before clicking them. The messaging app is bright and glaring compared to his dark home screen and he squints when it lights up his room. He clicks the image Dash send, feeling instant relief when his screen gets significantly darker.

It’s a shot of the sky from Dash’s bedroom window, the corner of the next building over cutting through the image. Just above that is a bright white speck. If Danny didn’t know better, he might have mistaken it for a star or a planet.

Closing out the image, Danny types back: yeah, it’s me.

He hits send, turns onto his back, and sets his phone down on his chest. He’s not expecting a reply, although he has no reason not to, so it startles him when his phone buzzes not even a second later.

From Dash: thought so. What were…

From Dash: Patrol?

Danny pulls himself up, opening his phone once again, and reads the full messages.

Dash: thought so. What were you doing so high up?

Dash: Patrol?

Hunched over his phone, Danny doesn’t so much stare at the screen as he does zone out in its general direction. He knows what he wants to type in response, but he can’t seem to get his fingers to move.

The phone sits cradled in his hand, his thumbs thick silhouettes against the white screen. The longer he looks, the more he thinks they aren’t his thumbs but just thumbs. Anyone’s thumbs. They didn’t belong to him. He was a hundred miles away, out in space.

Before he can decide if this is a good or bad idea, he hits the call button.

It gets through half a ring before Dash picks up.

“Hey, Danny.”

Dash’s is voice is rough and dry, but it isn’t thick with sleep, reassuring Danny he hasn’t dragged Dash out of partial slumber.

“Danny?”

The call time says it’s been going for over a minute.

Danny swallows. “Hey.”

“You okay?”

“Dash…” Danny trails off. He rolls his neck. It pops in a way that probably isn’t healthy, but is also so familiar he doesn’t think twice about it anymore. He licks his lips. “Why are we friends?”

That isn’t what he meant to say. He doesn’t know what he really wanted to say, but he knows that wasn’t it.

The call is at five minutes.

“Because Paulina and Sam are dating.” Dash chuckles.

Danny thinks he should be chuckling too, but the sound doesn’t come. It’s a joke they’ve made a hundred times, as familiar as the crick in Danny’s neck, but it’s not the answer he wants right now.

“I’m friends with Tucker because… because we’ve always been friends. I can’t imagine not being friends with him,” Danny says. He takes one the hands—his hands, he has to remind himself—away from the phone and turns it over. Is it really him doing that?

“Sam kind of made herself friends with us. But we always thought she was cool anyway, so, we wanted her.” Danny rubs his hand on his thigh, stopping to grip his knee. He can feel the pressure, but he can’t really feel it. “We hate each other.”

Ten minutes.

“We used to, I guess. I don’t know. I don’t think I ever really hated you. Just, stupid high school stuff.”

“Stupid high school stuff,” Danny repeats. He glances at the time at the top of his screen. “It’s three in the morning.”

“Yeah.”

“Why are you up at three in the morning?”

“Why are you?”

Danny sucks in a sharp breath. “Just. Couldn’t sleep. Yeah.”

“Yeah? Same.”

This time, Danny chuckles. He can’t figure out why it’s funny, but it is. Dash? Having trouble sleeping? People like him aren’t supposed to have Danny’s problems. They’re supposed to date the head cheerleader, and have tons of friends, and get some big football scholarship that carries them through college, and be famous. Or something.

But the head cheerleader is dating Sam. Dash only has a handful of people he talks to regularly. He told Danny last month that he doesn’t want to play football in college. He wants to be a social worker, like his mom, and not be famous.

Danny laughs again.

“What’s so funny?”

“S-Sam,” Danny says between giggles. “Sam stole your girlfriend.”

“She really didn’t.” Dash sounds amused, a humorous lilt in his voice.

Danny can’t figure out what he finds so funny. It’s Dash’s life that isn’t going how it’s supposed to. Sucks to be him, thrust into a set role the moment he became quarterback in freshman year, stuck with a path he doesn’t want, that he doesn’t quite seem to fit. What kind of high school king is he?

The next time Danny laughs, it sounds closer to a sob. He sniffs and rubs his nose on his sleeve, the thick, rubbery material of his jumpsuit irritating his nose. The suit smells vaguely of burnt flesh and sulfur. No matter what Danny does, he can’t seem to wash it out.

Twenty minutes.

“Danny, I think you should go to sleep now.”

“’M fine,” Danny insists.

“You’re really not.”

“That’s kind of rude.” Danny drags his hand through his hair. It never feels like normal hair in his ghost form. Too wispy and light, like a silk veil.

“I can call you in the morning if you want. Or I can get Paulina to text Sam, or Tucker. I think I still have Jazz’s number somewhere.”

“Don’t hang up,” Danny says softly. He fells forward, curling onto his side around the phone, sticking his feet under his pillow.

They’ve been on the phone for well over half an hour now. Danny’s pretty sure they haven’t talked enough to fill out all that time. He wonders how much of it Dash has spent just sitting there, waiting for Danny to answer. It makes him feel like a bit of a prick.

“Sorry.”

“It’s okay.”

Danny can tell Dash doesn’t know what the apology’s for, but he appreciates the acceptance nonetheless.

“You won’t hang up?” Danny asks.

“I won’t hang up.”

Danny nods, even though Dash can’t see it. He wishes he could. He wants someone here right now, but not Sam, or Tucker, or his sister, or his parents who maybe hate him, but he can never be too sure because they don’t know they hate him and he’s too afraid to tell them. Without all those other options, he supposes Dash will do.

He falls asleep, eventually, and wakes up human and cold, his phone still on beside him.

[thesteadydietofeverything]

Top 10 Games of 2019

This was an extremely good year for games. I don’t know if I played as many that will stick with me as I did last year, but the ones on the bottom half of this list in particular constitute some of my favorite games of the decade, and probably all-time. If I’ve got a gaming-related resolution for next year, it’s to put my playtime into supporting even smaller indie devs. My absolute favorite experiences in games this year came from seemingly out of nowhere games from teams I’ve previously never heard of before. That said, there are some big games coming up in spring I doubt I’ll be able to keep myself away from. Some quick notes/shoutouts before I get started:

-The game I put maybe the most time into this year was Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn. I finally made the plunge into neverending FF MMO content, and I’m as happy as I am overwhelmed. This was a big year for the game, between the release of the Shadowbringers expansion and the Nier: Automata raid, and it very well may have made it onto my list if I had managed to actually get to any of it. At the time of this writing, though, I’ve only just finished 2015’s Heavensward, so I’ve got...a long way to go. 

-One quick shoutout to the Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney Trilogy that came out on Switch this year, a remaster of some DS classics I never played. An absolutely delightful visual novel series that I fell in love with throughout this year.

-I originally included a couple games currently in early access that I’ve enjoyed immensely. I removed them not because of arbitrary rules about what technically “came out” this year, but just to make room for some other games I liked, out of the assumption that I’ll still love these games in their 1.0 formats when they’re released next year to include them on my 2020 list. So shoutout to Hades, probably the best rogue-like/lite/whatever I’ve ever played, and Spin Rhythm XD, which reignited my love for rhythm games.

-Disco Elysium isn’t on this list, because I’ve played about an hour of it and haven’t yet been hooked by it. But I’ve heard enough about it to be convinced that it is 1000% a game for me and something I need to get to immediately. They shouted out Marx and Engels at the Game Awards! They look so cool! I want to be their friend! And hopefully, a few weeks from now, I’ll desperately want to redact this list to squeeze this game somewhere in here.

Alright, he’s the actual list:

10. Amid Evil

The 90’s FPS renaissance continues! As opposed to last year’s Dusk, a game I adored, this one takes its cues less from Quake and more from Heretic/Hexen, placing a greater emphasis on melee combat and magic-fuelled projectiles than more traditional weapons. Also, rather than that game’s intentionally ugly aesthetic, this one opts for graphics that at times feel lush, detailed, and pretty, while still probably mostly fitting the description of lo-fi. In fact, they just added RTX to the game, something I’m extremely curious to check out. This game continued to fuel my excitement about the possibilities of embracing out-of-style gameplay mechanics to discover new and fresh possibilities from a genre I’ve never been able to stop yearning for more of.

9. Ape Out

If this were a “coolest games” list, Ape Out would win it, easily. It’s a simple game whose mechanics don’t particularly evolve throughout the course of its handful of hours, but it leaves a hell of an impression with its minimalist cut-out graphics, stylish title cards, and percussive soundtrack. Smashing guards into each other and walls and causing them to shoot each other in a mad-dash for the exit is a fun as hell take on Hotline Miami-esque top down hyper violence, even if it’s a thin enough concept that it starts to feel a bit old before the end of the game.

8. Fire Emblem: Three Houses

I had a lot of problems with this game, probably most stemming from just how damn long it is - I still haven’t finished my first, and likely only, playthrough. This length seems to have motivated the developers to make battles more simple and easy, and to be fair, I would get frustrated if I were getting stuck on individual battles if I couldn’t stop thinking about how much longer I have to go, but as it is, I’ve just found them to be mostly boring. This is particularly problematic for a game that seems to require you to play through it at least...three times to really get the full picture? I couldn’t help but admire everything this game got right, though, and that mostly comes down to building a massive cast of extremely well realized and likable characters whose complex relationships with each other and with the structures they pledge loyalty to fuels harrowing drama once the plot really sets into motion. There’s a reason no other game inspired such a deluge of memes and fan fiction and art into my Twitter feed this year. It’s an impressive feat to convince every player they’ve unquestionably picked the right house and defend their problem children till the bitter end. After the success of this game, I’d love to see what this team can do next with a narrower focus and a bigger budget.

7. Resident Evil 2

It’s been a long time since I played the original Resident Evil 2, but I still consider it to be one of my favorite games of all time. I was highly skeptical of this remake at first, holding my stubborn ground that changing the fixed camera to a RE4-style behind the back perspective would turn this game more into an action game and less of a survival horror game where feeling a lack of control is part of the experience. I was pleasantly surprised to find how much they were able to modernize this game while maintaining its original feel and atmosphere. The fumbly, drifting aim-down sights effectively sell the feeling of being a rookie scared out of your wits. Being chased by Mr. X is wildly anxiety-inducing. But even more surprisingly, perhaps the greatest upgrade this game received was its map, which does you the generous service of actually marking down automatically where puzzles and items are, which rooms you’ve yet to enter, which ones you’ve searched entirely, and which ones still have more to discover. Arguably, this disrupts the feeling of being lost in a labyrinthine space that the original inspired, but in practice, it’s a remarkably satisfying and addicting video game system to engage with.

6. Judgment

No big surprise here - Ryu ga Gotoku put out another Yakuza-style game set in Kamurocho, and once again, it’s sitting somewhere on my top 10. This time, they finally put Kazuma Kiryu’s story to bed and focused on a new protagonist, down on his luck lawyer-turned-detective Takayuki Yagami. The new direction doesn’t always pay off - the added mechanics of following and chasing suspects gets a bit tedious. The game makes up for it, though, by absolutely nailing a fun, engrossing J-Drama of a plot entirely divorced from the Yakuza lore. The narrative takes several head-spinning turns through its several dozen hours, and they all feel earned, with a fresh sense of focus. The side stories in this one do even more to make you feel connected to the community of Kamurocho by befriending people from across the neighborhood. I’d love to see this team take even bigger swings in the future - and from what I’ve seen from Yakuza 7, that seems exactly like what they’re doing - but even if this game shares maybe a bit too much DNA with its predecessors, it’s hard to complain when the writing and acting are this enjoyable.

5. Control

Control feels like the kind of game that almost never gets made anymore. It’s a AAA game that isn’t connected to any larger franchises and doesn’t demand your attention for longer than a dozen hours. It doesn’t shoehorn needless RPG or MMO mechanics into its third-person action game formula to hold your attention. It introduces a wildly clever idea, tells a concise story with it, and then its over. And there’s something so refreshing about all of that. The setting of The Oldest House has a lot to do with it. I think it stands toe-to-toe with Rapture or Black Mesa as an instantly iconic game world. Its aesthetic blend of paranormal horror and banal government bureaucracy gripped my inner X-Files fan instantly, and kept him satisfied not only with its central characters and mystery but with a generous bounty of redacted documents full of worldbuilding both spine-tingling and hilarious. More will undoubtedly come from this game, in the form of DLC and possibly even more, with the way it ties itself into other Remedy universes, and as much as I expect I will love it, the refreshing experience this base game offered me likely can’t be beat.

4. Anodyne 2

I awaited Sean Han Tani and Marina Kittaka’s new game more anxiously than almost any game that came out this year, despite never having played the first one, exclusively on my love for last year’s singular All Our Asias and the promise that this game would greatly expand on that one’s Saturn/PS1-esque early 3D graphics and personal, heartfelt storytelling. Not only was I not disappointed, I was regularly pleasantly surprised by the depth of narrative and themes the game navigates. This game takes the ‘legendary hero’ tropes of a Zelda game and flips them to tell a story about the importance of community and taking care of loved ones over duty to governments or organizations. The dungeons that similarly reflect a Link to the Past-era Zelda game reduce the maps to bite-sized, funny, clever designs that ask you to internalize unique mechanics that result in affecting conclusions. Plus, it’s gorgeously idiosyncratic in its blend of 3D and 2D environments and its pretty but off-kilter score. It’s hard to believe something this full and well realized came from two people. 

3. Eliza

Eliza is a work of dystopian fiction so closely resembling the state of the world in 2019 it’s hard to even want to call it sci-fi. As a proxy for the Eliza app, you speak the words of an AI therapist that offers meager, generic suggestions as a catch-all for desperate people facing any number of the nightmares of our time. The first session you get is a man reckoning with the state the world is in - we’ve only got a few more years left to save ourselves from impending climate crisis, destructive development is rendering cities unlivable for anyone but the super-rich, and the people who hold all the power are just making it all worse. The only thing you offer to him is to use a meditation app and take some medication. It doesn’t take long for you to realize that this whole structure is much less about helping struggling people and more about mining personal data.

There’s much more to this story than the grim state of mental health under late capitalism, though. It’s revealed that Evelyn, the character you play as, has a much closer history with Eliza than initially evident. Throughout the game, she’ll reacquaint herself with old coworkers, including her two former bosses who have recently split and run different companies over their differing frightening visions for the future. The game offers a biting critique of the kind of tech company optimism that brings rich, eccentric men to believe they can solve the world’s problems within the hyper-capitalist structure they’ve thrived under, and how quickly this mindset gives way to techno-fascism. There’s also Evelyn’s former team member, Nora, who has quit the tech world in favor of being a DJ “activist,” and her current lead Rae, a compassionate person who genuinely believes in the power of Eliza to better people’s lives. The writing does an excellent job of justifying everyone’s points of view and highlighting the limits of their ideology without simplifying their sense of morality.

Why this game works so well isn’t just its willingness to stare in the face of uncomfortably relevant subject matter, but its ultimately empathetic message. It offers no simple solutions to the world’s problems, but also avoids falling into utter despair. Instead, it places measured but inspiring faith in the power of making small, meaningful impacts on the people around you, and simply trying to put some good into your world. It’s a game both terrifying and comforting in its frank conclusions.

2. Death Stranding

For a game as willfully dumb as this one often is - that, for example, insists on giving all of its characters with self-explanatory names long monologues about how they got that name - Death Stranding was one of the most thought provoking games I’ve played in a while. Outside of its indulgent, awkwardly paced narrative, the game offers plenty of reflection on the impact the internet has had on our lives. As Sam Porter Bridges, you’re hiking across a post-apocalyptic America, reconnecting isolated cities by delivering supplies, building infrastructure, and, probably most importantly, connecting them to the Chiral Network, an internet of sorts constructed of supernatural material of nebulous origin. Through this structure, the game offers surprisingly insightful commentary about the necessity for communication, cooperation, and genuine love and care within a community.

The lonely world you’re tasked to explore, and the way you’re given blips of encouragement within the solitude through the structures and “likes” you give and receive through the game’s asynchronous multiplayer system, offers some striking parallels for those of us particularly “online” people who feel simultaneous desperation for human contact and aversion to social pressures. I’ve heard the themes of this game described as “incoherent” due to the way it seems to view the internet both as a powerful tool to connect people and a means by which people become isolated and alienated, but are both of these statements not completely true to reality? The game simplifies some of its conclusions - Kojima seems particularly ignorant of America’s deep structural inequities and abuses that lead to a culture of isolation and alienation. And yet, the questions it asks are provocative enough that they compelled me to keep thinking about them far longer than the answers it offers.

Beyond the surprisingly rich thematic content, this game is mostly just a joy to play. Death Stranding builds kinetic drama out of the typically rote parts of games. Moving from point A to point B has become an increasingly tedious chore in the majority of AAA open world games, but this is a game built almost entirely out of moving from point A to point B, and it makes it thrilling. The simple act of walking down a hill while trying to balance a heavy load on your back and avoiding rocks and other obstacles fulfills the promise of the term ‘walking simulator’ in a far more interesting way than most games given that descriptor. The game consistently doles out new ways to navigate terrain, which peaked for me about two thirds of the way through the game when, after spending hours setting up a network of zip lines, a delivery offered me the opportunity to utilize the entire thing in a wildly satisfying journey from one end of the map to another. It was the gaming moment of the year.

1. Outer Wilds

The first time the sun exploded in my Outer Wilds playthrough, I was probably about to die anyway. I had fallen through a black hole, and had yet to figure out how to recover from that, so I was drifting listlessly through space with diminishing oxygen as the synths started to pick up and I watched the sun fall in on itself and then expand throughout the solar system as my vision went went. The moment gave me chills, not because I wasn’t already doomed anyway, but because I couldn’t help but think about my neighbors that I had left behind to explore space. I hadn’t known that mere minutes after I left the atmosphere the solar system would be obliterated, but I was at least able to watch as it happened. They probably had no idea what happened. Suddenly their lives and their planet and everything they had known were just...gone. And then I woke up, with the campfire burning in front of me, and everyone looking just as I had left it. And I became obsessed with figuring out how to stop that from happening again. 

What surprised me is that every time the sun exploded, it never failed to produce those chills I felt the first time. This game is masterful in its art, sound, and music design that manages to produce feelings so intense from an aesthetic so quaint. Tracking down fellow explorers by following the sound of their harmonica or acoustic guitar. Exploring space in a rickety vessel held together by wood and tape. Translating logs of conversations of an ancient alien race and finding the subject matter of discussion to be about small interpersonal drama as often as it is revelatory secrets of the universe. All of the potentially twee aspects of the game are balanced out by an innate sense of danger and terror that comes from exploring space and strange worlds alone. At times, the game dips into pure horror, making other aspects of the presentation all the more charming by comparison. And then there’s the clockwork machinations of the 22-minute loop you explore within, rewarding exploration and experimentation with reveals that make you feel like a genius for figuring out the puzzle at the same time that you’re stunned by the divulgence of a new piece of information.

The last few hours of the game contained a couple puzzles so obfuscated that I had to consult a guide, which admittedly lessened the impact of those reveals, but it all led to one of the most equally devastating and satisfying endings I’ve experienced in a video game recently. I really can’t say enough good things about this game. It’s not only my favorite game this year, but easily one of my favorite games of the decade, and really, of all-time, when it comes down to it.

[timeagainreviews]

Reappraising Companions

Years after having watched every available episode of Doctor Who, I've had plenty of opportunities to rewatch episodes time and time again. As with most movies and television, I've found revisiting certain stories and eras has caused me to see them in a different light. A story I may have once reviled is suddenly more interesting. I even came to appreciate Peter Davison's performance as the Fifth Doctor for its subtle nature. But what about companions? Are there any companions I didn't care for at first, which I've softened toward over time? That is the question I wish to explore.

Below I've chosen a selection of companions of whom I had initially disliked for various reasons. They span across multiple eras and both the classic and modern versions of the show. With each companion, I have endeavoured to be fair in my reappraisal, but this doesn't mean I've changed my mind. I would also like to state that none of these appraisals are about the actors. My goal is to evaluate companions by the way they were written. The performance will come secondary.

1. Danny Pink

I chose Danny Pink to kick this list off because he is the reason I am writing this article in the first place. Recently, I took to rewatching a selection of Danny Pink episodes, in hopes that I may find something I didn't initially see. When Samuel Anderson was cast as Danny, I was excited. I've always been a big fan of male companions. They offer a different dynamic to the TARDIS that we don't often get to experience. However, in the wrong hands, they can be exhausting. Enter Steven Moffat.

When Steven Moffat took the reins of Doctor Who, he introduced us to Rory Williams. A smart, loyal, and combative male companion, not at all enamoured with the Doctor's mystique. At his worst, Rory was made to compete with the Doctor for Amy's affection. At his best, Rory held the Doctor accountable for the lives he brought aboard the TARDIS. With Danny, I felt like this is what Moffat was trying to do again, but this time, it wasn't as successful.

When we're introduced to Danny, we watch him and Clara fumble over their words like teenagers. It's meant to be cute, but their chemistry is non-existent. It feels like watching an episode of Coupling, in that it's painful and causes me to scan the room for exits. Their adorkable awkwardness is supposed to endear us to their relationship, but it seems forced. This is compounded when the Doctor enters the equation. Forcing Danny to fight for something very few of us in the audience believe in the first place.

Once again we find the male companion being forced to compete with the Doctor for the affection of a woman. But in this instance, instead of holding the Doctor accountable, Danny seems to hold the Doctor in contempt. Coming from his own history of military training and PTSD, Danny projects all of his inner struggles onto the Doctor. Which is unfortunate, as Danny's inner turmoil is his most humanistic trait. This wouldn't be the first time in Moffat's era where the Doctor's nature as a hero was called into play. The problem with Danny's appraisal of the Doctor as a general, barking orders, is that he's wrong. And we as an audience know it.

Not only do we know it, but so does the Doctor. The Doctor even gets a character arc over the identity crisis Danny gives him, wherein he realises Danny is wrong about him. Danny, however, never comes around to the Doctor's side. Even in his final moments on screen, he remains combative with the Doctor, in an exhausting refusal to grow as a character. We're supposed to believe he's come to some sort of character growth of self-acceptance by sacrificing his chance at a new life, for the life of a boy he mistakenly killed. Instead, he carries the same chip on his shoulder to his grave.

Danny is a companion wholly failed by writing. Even at his most heroic, it seems in service of making the Doctor look like a buffoon. His mimicking a soldier while yelling in the Doctor's face is embarrassing for everyone involved. Imagine this is your boyfriend meeting your friends. You would be mortified by his behaviour. Now imagine you have to lie about hanging out with your friends because it might make your boyfriend upset. Now imagine this friend is a very dashing person who constantly puts the lives of others before him. Danny and Clara's courtship is a romance by gaslight.

2. Clara Oswald

Clara is a whole other can of worms. I could probably dedicate an entire article to her character. I should clarify that my initial dislike for her character is somewhat mired in personal disappointment. By the time Clara was introduced, we had seen a string of modern human companions. We got the occasional tertiary companions from the future, such as Captain Jack or River Song. But we hadn't had a main companion from the past, future, or another planet. So when Jenna Coleman was introduced as Oswin Oswald, Junior Entertainment Manager of the starliner Alaska, I was very excited. Finally, a companion from the future! I was so ready for the Doctor to go on a quest to save Oswin from the cruel fate of becoming a Dalek. What an exciting storyline that was going to be.

And then we see her as governess Clara Oswin Oswald. Ok... Well at least she's still from a different era, right? Oh, she's dead now too? Oh. Much like Moffat's Dracula, all of this great promise was suddenly dashed against the rocks of a contemporary setting. Sigh. I was so excited. What we're given in “The Bells of St. John,” is a new character with less direction than either Oswin or the governess before her. So much that Moffat had taken to literally modulating her brain with an app. Maybe she's really good with computers now? Sorry friends, much like Rose Tyler's gymnastics and Peri Brown's botany, it's never going to come up again.

And this is the biggest issue I have had with Clara Oswald. She spends most of her screen time fluctuating between what character they're writing her as this week. The writers simply didn't know what to do with her while the Doctor tried to figure out why she's so "impossible." One week she's wacky, one week she's stern, another week she's bisexual queer bait. Her characterisation is all over the charts, which sadly, tracks with her entire storyline. She's a woman, fragmented across time, and so is her personality. And don't even get me started on that impossible girl nonsense.

Steven Moffat once said in an interview that one or two people usually guess his big reveal ahead of time, but that no one had guessed Clara's. Perhaps that's because nobody's fan theory was "It's going to be absolute shite." Instead of just being a woman who gets to be her own person, she has to become the most importantest companion. She has to save the Doctor by being planted throughout his timeline, saving him from the Great Intelligence. You know, by sometimes being born as herself, and other times being born as a Time Lord. Sometimes knowing who the Doctor is, other times having no idea whatsoever. Sometimes having a name that is a play on of Oswald, or Oswin, or Clara. And at no times did it make any kind of sense.

The funny thing is, that for me at least, Clara's character doesn't really become interesting until all of that nonsense is behind her. The Clara I find most compelling is the Clara in mourning. Clara post-Danny Pink is a Clara with focus. Her mood swings seem more from a place of destructive behaviour in the wake of great loss. Watching her hold the TARDIS keys hostage above a volcano was some seriously gripping stuff. Aside from the gross digs at her appearance, I found the Twelfth Doctor's relationship with Clara far more endearing than that of the Eleventh Doctor. It may have taken them until her final moments as a companion, but they did get her right, in the end.

3. Melanie Bush

Back in 2015, I had the opportunity to meet Louise Jameson, who played Leela, my all-time favourite Doctor Who companion. I also got to meet Colin Baker, who was all charm. Also in attendance was Bonnie Langford, aka, Doctor Who's Mel. After having gotten autographs from Louise and Colin, and having circled the convention hall a few times, I decided "Sure, why not. Let's meet Bonnie Langford. It's only 10 quid for an autograph." Upon meeting her, she was a very kind woman, and even still, I was racking my brain for something nice to say about Mel. To save face, I lied a very simple lie. I said, "I really liked you in Doctor Who." She smiled, said thank you, and signed my picture. And I walked away, taking my shitty liar mouth with me.

Because the fact is, I didn't like her in Doctor Who. I found every moment she was onscreen excruciating. From her poodle haircuts, to her 80's disaster attire, to her fat-shaming the Sixth Doctor, to her constant screaming at every little thing, she depressed me. I spoke in my review of "Terror of the Vervoids," just how weird it was that we're never actually introduced to her as a character. Instead, Peri is written off, and suddenly, Mel is there, already chummy with the Doctor. You guys know Mel, she's the Doctor's friend, because we told you she was! Instead of getting to know Mel slowly, we're thrown into the deep end, forced to sink or swim within the curls of red hair piled high. Mel doesn't just come out of nowhere, she comes on strong. Fitness expert Mel here to get your fat Doctor Who loving asses into shape. Drink this carrot juice you geek pig!

Not even in Big Finish audios was I finding myself warming up to Mel. When Ace was introduced, they couldn't have pushed Mel out quicker. I found everything about Ace immediately refreshing. Here was a calm and collected badass rebel that I could get behind. It's ironic then; that it was in the Seventh Doctor era that I have begun to find something likeable in Mel. Much like Clara Oswald,  a changing of Doctors enriched my appreciation for her character. This appreciation didn't come immediately, mind you, it came about around my third or fourth watch-through of "Paradise Towers."

Perhaps it's the influence of Andrew Cartmel, but with the Seventh Doctor, I have begun to appreciate Mel in the snarkiest manner. Mel is best utilised as a commentary on the Doctor/Companion relationship. She's precocious to a fault, she chews scenery, she screams at the drop of a hat, and she is oftentimes a naive idiot. Yet in "Paradise Towers," it becomes hilarious. Like much of the 80's era of Doctor Who, there is a very "2000 AD," atmosphere to the stories, and I could easily see this as a setting for Judge Dredd to drudge through, busting skulls and filling bodies with bullets. Setting the sunshiny persona of Mel against this backdrop is so brilliant that I can't imagine another companion in this story. Where she would usually grate against me, her sharp contrast from the things happening around her is exactly why I began to soften toward her.

Not even the ire from the Kangs could shake Mel's confidence, which is oddly what makes her cool. Or "ice-hot," as they would say. For the first time, Mel's headstrong sense of self makes her a rebel. She doesn't need to follow a crowd to feel accepted. Sadly, very few writers were able to find this core to Mel, but it was enough for me to be able to look at her in a different light. I could finally look at Mel and say I did like her in Doctor Who. Even if it was just for a moment, and even if it was somewhat at her expense. From a very cynical perspective, Mel can actually be pretty fun.

4. River Song

I know a lot of you are probably aghast to see River Song on this list, but I assure you, I have my reasons, and they are not without consideration. I should begin by saying some good things about River. She's smart, she's competent, she's got a healthy grasp on her sexuality, and she's cool. Why then did I not like her very much the first few times I watched her? Well, if you hadn't noticed, the bulk of this list are characters written by Steven Moffat, and once again, it all comes down to writing.

We're first introduced to River in the Tenth Doctor two-parter "Silence in the Library/Forest of the Dead." At first, she's just one of a team of forgettable space scientists on an expedition. However, as she finds out the Doctor is who he is, her entire demeanour changes. Like Mel on steroids, we're given a heaping dose of "Who does this bitch think she is, being all familiar with the Doctor?" Only, instead of it lasting one episode, it's every interaction we have with her character beyond this point. Instead of getting to watch River and the Doctor grow as a couple, we're forced to watch them meet in opposite directions. It is the antithesis of "show, don't tell." Everything about the Doctor and River's relationship is implied. "You're going to love me someday," she promises. Couldn't we just see it play out naturally? Spoilers.

This idea is one that can only really be done on a show like Doctor Who, where things are wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey. The problem is, this doesn't mean that the idea is worth exploring, or even successful. It's made even worse when the relationship implied is one deeper than friendship. The Doctor is famously chaste, married only to his TARDIS and what lies ahead. Because of this, the idea of a person the Doctor will someday trust enough to share his real name and eventually marry carries with it a sizeable amount of convincing. Such a huge shift in the show's dynamic requires a lot of character development. Sadly none of that is to be seen onscreen. Who is Jim the Fish? Who cares? Steven Moffat's joke of "I'll explain later," became painfully prophetic of his time as showrunner.

I've got no complaints about River being a Time Lord, or even her being the child of Amy and Rory. Those elements are fine, really. It's the way in which she is presented which I find most detrimental to her character. I never did buy into the idea that the Doctor loved her as a wife. Their wedding seemed necessary to save the universe, as opposed to a union made out of love. Any kind of enjoyment I've ever gotten out of River stems mostly out of my love for Alex Kingston's performance. Where the show fails to establish her, she more than makes up for in style and substance. I grew to like River Song, despite the show's failure to ground her properly. River grew on me as she always said she would, but by no effort on the part of the writers. River is cool because River is cool, not because it was inferred that she was.

5. Susan

If you’ve followed this blog long enough, you’ll know I’ve already mellowed on Susan. In my reviews of the First Doctor era, I’ve had mostly good things to say about her character. This doesn’t change the fact that I found her utterly irritating at first, and it feels appropriate to talk about it here.

My initial dislike for Susan is a lot like my intial dislike for Clara. A lot of it was wrapped up in my own expectations of the character. Susan is the Doctor’s granddaughter. She is a Time Lord, therefore she should also be brilliant. And we get a lot of that in her first episode. She is mysterious, she’s enigmatic, and she is brilliant. Even her teachers at school found her perplexing. But the show doesn’t continue down that line. In fact, there are times when they make Susan borderline stupid. But how much of this is clouded by my own preconceptions?

For starters, Susan wasn’t a Time Lord. At least, not then. She was just a young girl. She may have been smarter than her fellow students, but this played more into how she was raised. So when the show depicts Susan screaming at every little thing, grabbing her hair dramatically, it smashed apart my mental image of a Time Lord. I couldn’t appreciate that they had her act this way to help sell a bad effect. Oftentimes Susan, like many Doctor Who companions, had her character sacrificed to make the baddies scarier. It was a product of her time, and even still I feel her character suffers for it.

However, one of the things I have discovered through repeat viewings of the First Doctor era is the surprising amount of character development among the TARDIS crew. The Doctor, Ian, Barbara, and Susan all go through deep character development that was sadly often secondary in classic Doctor Who. Before the nature of the Doctor and companions was transient, there was a feeling of a family bond forming. Through this, I have come to find Susan to be a rather deep and sensitive person.

When it comes time to say goodbye to Susan, I can’t say I exactly agreed with the method. The Doctor locking her out and deciding she was mature enough to set out on her own felt hasty. But I would be lying if I didn’t agree that Susan had gone from a little girl to a young woman at that point. When you stop expecting Susan to be the Doctor, and allow her to be a kid, she grows on you instantly.

6. Adric

Let's be honest; it's not really original to hate on Adric. It's nothing new to point out what a bad companion he is, but here we are. Something I constantly endeavour to do on this blog is to be fair. One of my biggest complaints about the Doctor Who fandom is the proprietary attitude people take toward the fandom. The "I don't like it; therefore you shouldn't like it," attitude spat with such vitriol is one of the worst parts about being in the Doctor Who fandom. So when you say "Adric is my favourite companion," I'm not devising an argument for how wrong you are, it's fine. Like who you like. This doesn't mean I'm not also thinking in my head "What? Why?" Because I honestly, without malice, do not understand.

The most I ever enjoyed Adric, was in his introductory story "Full Circle." Setting him against a group of fellow Alzarians dilutes his lesser qualities. In fact, when paired with Varsh, he almost seems likeable. Sadly, we have to say goodbye to Varsh, and it's downhill from there. We're forced to watch a contrarian boy genius butt heads with the Doctor while he waddles around in a toddler's outfit while showing off his pound shop sheriffs badge for "mathematical excellence," to anyone who will listen. Adric is so obnoxious that he makes Wesley Crusher seem likeable in contrast.

However, it's not just his contrarian nature that makes me despise Adric, he's also disloyal to the Doctor and his friends. He's so susceptible to bad ideas as long as they a presented logically, that I've dubbed him the Ben Shapiro of the TARDIS. He's a smarmy little shit who believes himself superior to women, and he's really got no justification for his ill-placed self-confidence. Constantly demanding respect while giving very little reason to deserve it, he's like a poster child for incels. To make matters worse, he's oftentimes wrong and easily duped into taking the side of evil, turning him into more of a liability than an asset.

Recently, the idea that the Thirteenth Doctor could save someone from sacrificing themselves by using the TARDIS at the last moment to save them came under fire. "Why didn't the Doctor do this for Adric?" they said, forgetting conveniently when the Twelfth Doctor did the exact same thing in "Into the Dalek." But yes, why indeed? Why would the Doctor ever let a duplicitous, argumentative braggart die by their own stupid need to solve a math problem? My headcanon is that the Doctor got better at flying the TARDIS. The real reason is that people hated his character. The silence over the credits after Adric dies isn't out of respect for the character. The real reason is that the BBC couldn't secure the rights to Kool and the Gang's "Celebrate Good Times," before it aired.

Listen, I am not unsympathetic toward Matthew Waterhouse. He never should have been given such a big role, considering his utter lack of ability at the time. I imagine it was his own insecurity that fuelled his on-set antics. Giving unsolicited advice to veteran actors is cringey, but also the actions of a young and naive boy, in over his head. I know I said I was going to try and treat the performance as secondary, but in this case, it goes hand in hand. He has the stage presence of a fake. Every moment he's onscreen is disingenuous. The fact that he is present at the death of my favourite Doctor, stinking up the scene is genuine pain to me. If he has been made better in Big Finish, I've not yet heard it. As of now, there is nothing I've seen of Adric that has changed my opinion. But I'm glad if he makes you happy.