#or at least being around when they were still active in middle earth

[elizzsush]

Future Child | Twisted Wonderland

Malleus Draconia X Reader

----It wasn’t everyday you’d find a three year old running around campus causing a ruckus. Usually students wouldn’t have to deal with this, but with Crowley you had to deal with everything. Now… why is it when you catch this small trouble maker it calls you “momma”?

AUs: None Rating: SFW

Note: Hi, hi! So, basically, I wasn't going to finish this and posted it as a WIP and people really liked it. So, then I had no other choice but to finish it! And I hope you like it.

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Crowley in-listed you to help with the child problem around school. No, wait that sounded bad. A young fae no older than five got into night raven campus and has been running amok. Some students say he appeared out of thin air. So, obviously, you: the defenseless, Magic-less human with no knowledge of fae or even how some of these basics of this world work, you were the schools best bet against this ‘threat.’ And so, your oh so kind instructor pushed this task onto you and left.

Not without you demanding an extra allowance, but still.

Thankfully, you were well equipped with a grumpy cat-weasel thing who is so glad to help and definitely did not try and run away. “Ehh? Why do I have to help ya??” Grim whined as he hung limply, your hand firmly grasping his scruff as you held him up. He was so generous and did not need to be bribed at all.

You sighed, “I’ll put some money aside from this to get you tuna.” Technically, that was a lie. No, you were going to fix the window Grim broke from practicing his magic in the house, again.

“I want two cans!” The motivated cat purred and jumped onto your shoulders. Now, you can finally begin your mission and take on this… threat...?

This threat was a real threat!

The sight of the frozen cafeteria did scare you. You had learnt that after you had stumbled upon the frozen dinning hall; all of this was from the baby fae! What on Earth were you suppose to even do once you caught the child?

How would you catch this kid without being frozen exactly? Why were you put on this task?

There was a mountain of ice and a many frozen students who were actively being saved by other students most of whom were made to help. They had gotten lucky in your option. They didn’t have to find the kid. “So much magic…" An awestruck student said, "it’s hard to believe a kid did this.” The nameless person mumbled as they helped thaw the room out. You couldn’t help but hum in agreement to yourself.

What kid could do this when Deuce struggled with making anything but cauldrons while he was somewhere new! It was… overwhelming magic for sure. Even for you to stand in the middle of it, magicless. And this was just the dining hall!

Apparently, you had three more places to check out.

“Not much to see here.” Grim grumbled from your shoulder, just then a ball of fire came hurtling towards the two of you! “Eek!!” Grim squealed jumping of your shoulder while you ducked.

“Sorry!” A no name student called out… He had been using the fire to dethaw some students.

“We should leave… and fast.” You said as you turned to leave in a hurry. You tripped on the ice almost tripped on the ice while you left.

.

.

.

The very next place you checked was the courtyard, where Mr. Vargas liked to make you run in the blistering heat. PE was horrible. Everyone else got to be on their dumb magic brooms while you were stuck doing laps.

Mr. Vargas did like to make the boys sweat afterwards though. You got to sit on the grass and laugh at them cheer them on! Especially Ace, who always lagged behind.

Anyway, in the place of the field of green grass that your peers used to practice flying on a broom, was a field of fire. Green fire no less. At least it was still green? You stayed a distance away while you watched a group of five students try and summon water magic to help fight these flames. “If you don’t do this right, it’ll be off with your heads!” Next to them, a familiar short, red-haired boy was shouting at them and telling them what they were doing wrong.

You liked to think it wouldn't actually be off with their heads, Riddle was above that... Now. You liked to think it was just motivation to make them work harder!

Because it was mostly Heartslabyul students, it worked. "Hey! Riddle?" You called out to the boy. The Housewarden looked at you and jogged up to meet you a way away from the green flames. Was Sebek here as well? You swore you heard his voice shouting...

"You shouldn't be here. This area is off-limits to anyone outside of the Equestrian club because of the danger." Riddle crossed his arms; his tone was pretty gentle though. You nodded along to what he was saying, because it made sense.

"Crowley wants us to find the Fae doing this, do you know anything about it?" You decided to get right to the point. Riddle was busy enough as it was. He seemed to appreciate it too.

The boy glanced back at the students trying to figure out how to calm the fire and shook his head. "I think I heard a few third years mention a blur of H/C going into the school." He mentioned, you mostly knew the kid was in the school. It was one of the places Crowley wanted you to check out, Mr. Trein's class, after that you didn't really know where the kid could be.

You smiled and thanked Riddle before turning to leave, the boy glanced back at the fire before stepping a bit closer to you, a slightly embarrassed look on his face. "Uh- Y/N, I was wondering if you wanted to have tea with me later I-"

"Dorm leader! it's spreading!" A student shouted out, a panicked look on their face as they rushed up to the two of you. Riddle muttered something under his breath, before jogging back to the fire. To step up to calm the flames even more than what the regular student could do so you left.

“This seemed handled enough…” You muttered, a bit disappointed that you didn't get to finish your conversation with Riddle, Grim simply rolled his eyes and you two turned to leave.

.

.

.

You went to Mr. Trein’s classroom next. Your most boring class of twisted wonderland, history, uh... you think. Truthfully you hadn’t stayed awake long enough to know what class he taught.

It was not for lack of trying either!

He just drew out his words and spoke in just a boring robotic tone, it could put anyone to sleep! I digress. The cat: Lucius liked you too, he tended to let you sleep more while waking up other students.

Anyway, in place of the classroom was… an overgrown forest? In the center of it, you noticed a tall, well groomed, teal haired male, squatting down to examine what appeared to be a mushroom….

Obviously. it was Jade. He was part of the Mountain Lovers Club. The sole member actually if you remember right. Crowley mentioned something about the clubs handling the situations. So...

This seemed… handled-ish….

You would be taking your leave now. You closed the door silently and Grim groaned. "This is so boring." He whined, "Why do we have to do this?!" You shrugged slightly.

"Crowley said he'll give an extra allowance this week if we do this." You mumbled, "We could really use it to fix that window you broke." You reminded the cat. He huffed and glared at you a bit childishly, crossing his furry arms silently on your shoulder.

"I thought you said I could have extra tuna?" He realized, jumping off your shoulder he pointed at you in an accusatory manner; you sighed a bit.

You didn’t have time to find him right now. "We can talk about this later." You walked past him but when he didn't follow you, you turned around.

Where did Grim go...? You looked around the halls for him, "Grim?!" Didn’t he know not to wonder off while there was a threat on campus!

Where did Grim go...? You looked around the halls for him, "Grim?!" Didn’t he know not to wonder off while there was a threat on campus!

This fae would eat him alive!

Feeling even more motivated and slightly panicked, you ran off to find the cat and disregard the threat that was getting killed by meeting this Fae kid unarmed. Uncated? Either way.

.

.

.

.

“Someone help me!” You finally heard Grims's voice after looking for him for... quite a while actually. Pushing the door to the classroom open, you found...

Nothing.

Every potion was on its self, the stirring sticks where the usually go, nothing burned, frozen, or overgrown nothing was… well anywhere. At least anywhere out of place. “Someone, help me!” A cried out a very familiar voice squeaked out. Hesitantly, you walked closer to where you heard Grim’s voice.

This felt like something out of a horror movie.

A cauldron, inside of it was the soft glow of blue flames. No doubt caused by Grins fire ears. “Grim…?” You spoke softly. Peeking inside the steel pot, you saw a young boy, a long tail curled up beside him and one horn on the side of his head. In his arms was Grim, held tightly like he was a stuffed animal. He sniffled and then looked up at you with the most striking green eyes you’ve ever seen…

“Y/n!” Grim cried out, relief flooding his voice and breaking you from the little boy's curse of cuteness.

You plucked Grim from the kid's arms and He crawled onto your shoulders.

“Momma!” The boy, still in the cauldron yelled out, stumbling to get up and jump into your arms, get hindered by the caldron he found himself stuck in. His face was red from tears, and he looked scared… his small hands shaking with fear. He sniffled more, his chubby hands rubbing away his tears as they fell. Your heart ached slightly seeing those tears.

This can't be the same boy running amok in the school's campus. He was just so... non-threatening?

So, without a second thought. You picked the small boy up and cooed at him. Grim stared at you bewildered, His experience far more intimidating them yours.

Didn't you know how tight that boy was holding him?! Poor Grim almost didn't make it. He whined and frowned at the attention you were giving the boy.

Now, you just had to take this sweetheart to Crowley.

Either way, the small boy was absolutely adorable! Sure, he may or may not have caused this week's class cancelations but really, Ace was thanking the boy for it, so all was fine! Back at ramshackle, you realized, he was just a kid.

He was using some crayons to draw. He screamed like a bit of a brat when you tried to make him eat some broccoli you got... You thought it would be good for you and grim and neither of you ate it.

His big electric green eyes that reminded you of… someone? But who was it again? Well, it didn’t matter. The boy had green eyes, H/ced hair and these two small slightly curled horns on top of his head.

His ears were pointed just like a fae’s but just slightly? They weren’t as long nor as sharp as a regular fae’s like Lilia. It was hard to explain. It was the oddest thing- he had a tail as well! A long blackish purple one at that. And he was excellent at magic, if the destroyed campus told you anything. “Are you mad at me?” He looked up at you with teary eyes after you informed Crowley you caught him.

“Why would I be mad at you?” You asked the small boy curiously, blinking at him a bit confused at the question. His large electric green puppy eyes weren’t exactly helping you stand strong and not coddle him either.

“Because I made the rooms a mess…” he rubbed his large cheeks free from stray tears. Not that he was any good at it either, you just shook your head and kneeled to the floor, wiping them away for him.

Something about this boy made you wanted to care for him and protect him- he was just do cute. “Nonsense, you were scared. A little mess is fine as long as you weren’t hurt.” When you looked at him you felt something akin to cuteness aggression. This little fae was adorable! If Crowley didn’t find his parents, you’d take him in!

Ignore how poorly you yourself lived in ramshackle! And how much of your food was canned tuna because Grim insisted on it over actual food.

And the window that you still needed to fix and were most likely going to spend this week's allowance on...

The boy nodded, cuddling into your side like a small cuddly cat.

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He was adorable but children were a handful.

Crowley, after assigning you to catch the kid, gave you the poor child to take care of. So, you had been living with the child for three whole days.

Not to say the kid- who’s name you learned was Casper- was a handful. In fact, he was a sweetheart. He tended to shy away from things a bit, and he was a bundle of nerves sometimes.

He definitely got overwhelmed when left by himself, often resorting to crying and when he cried his magic tended to...

Anyway, Despite the amount of magic he held at his fingertip, he’d rush to you at the slightest creak of the floorboards, held onto you tightly, and hide his face in your shirt.

When it was finally time to go to school you didn’t really know what to do with the kid…? We’re you suppose to just… bring a kid to class with you? I mean, you already bring a cat, and the kid would probably be more well behaved then Grim.

So you brought Casper with you. And it was fine He was very sweet, maybe a little to shy, the teachers did love him. He introduced himself to them from behind your leg.

That was two days ago, now you were in the cafeteria. You hadn't been here in two days because, well you weren't sure if Casper would be okay around the crowd of students. Some of whom were still bitter about the Ice things... and the green fire thing.

“Fufufu, what do we have here?” Lilia popped up out of absolutely nowhere. "I heard a rumor about a trouble make~" He smirked.

“Grandpa Lilia!” The kid for once didn’t shy away. You had expected him to start crying. (He had before after all, when Jade introduced himself to the boy.) Lilia simply smiled and accepted the boy's affections, nodding along as he babbled about his day. Meanwhile, you were staring bewildered at the boy.

And... That was your lunch.

With of course, Ace and Deuce coming to keep you company while Lilia entertained Casper.

Most of your lunch you'd glance at the two. 'Grandpa Lilia?' You wondered why he was unusually not shy? He was a talkative boy to you, but with a stranger, no way... “Where Papa?” He asked looking up at the older fae with his large sparkling eyes. Oh, maybe Lilia knew the boy's parents! He was an older fae himself, right?

“Yes, good question indeed where is your papa?” Lilia asked, before he looked at you, a small smirk on his face, he looked at you like you’d know! You didn’t. You had tried to correct the kid on you being his mom before two- he cried and sulked over it for a while after that. “Well, I best be Off now!” Lilia cheered and gave you the kid back before disappearing off somewhere.

That was weird right?

You day went on- Ace and Deuce were good around the kid. Casper was pretty decent around Ace and Deuce, not too shy but he wasn't rambling like he was around Lilia. "Is something on your mind?" Deuce asked curiously, a mild layer of unwarranted concern.

"It's fine..." You shrugged, "I just hope Crowley find Caspers parents soon." You sighed, and the boy in question looked at you confused. He called you Mom and you basically took care of him, so you figured he thought you were his mom.

Not that you really minded, it wasn't like he thought you were old, fae tended to not age and stay good looking forever basically. Case in point, Lilia.

You really didn't mind, you already took care of Grim, so what's another, milder tempered Grim who didn't run away? "Speaking of the kid- Where is he?" Ace asked, looking around.

Scratch that, the kid wondered off.

"Oh no." You sighed and looked at the Adeuce duo with an exhausted look they couldn't say no too. They'd help you find the kid.

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How on earth did Sebek of all people get Casper?

Sebek, a first year in your class. Some loud guy who you got partnered up with once.

Why didn't Casper run away! You most certainly would and have. Instead, you found Casper on Sebek Zigvolt of all people's shoulders. Now you and Ace were whispering about how to get the kid back. No way you were going to go up to Sebek of all people and have to listen to his "fae are superior" speech... again.

"We should... Lure Casper away with candy." You whispered, Ace gave you a look and shot down your idea.

"Do you want to give him the impression that you should follow random people with candy?" He said looking at you like you just had the worst idea ever. "I say we just grab him and run."

"No, Sebek is faster than us." You noted, "Especially you, he runs laps past you in PE." Ace bumped your shoulder with an eyeroll.

"Where's Deuce?" Ace frowned, you watched with wide eyes as you saw Deuce confidently walk up to Sebek... "oh no." Ace groaned and run up behind Deuce.

You cursed to yourself. "We don't have to follow right...?" you asked the cat who agreed with you, but you knew you kind of had to follow them.

"Hey- Sebek." You smiled awkwardly.

"Mama!" The kid called out to you and reached out towards you. he almost fell off Sebek's shoulders- thankfully you caught him. Sebek looked at you in confusion and maybe a bit judgmentally...?

"No- he isn't..." You sighed and gave up.

"A human couldn't mother a Fae of Caspers caliber!" And so... Sebek began his rant. He started with how Lilia informed him of the situation, and he was here to lift the burden of Casper from your human shoulders.

Really, it saved you the time of informing Sebek you were in fact, not a teen mom. Also, it was weirdly insulting? Like hey, come on, you’ve taken care of him for three days! Almost four, “Casper is pretty happy with me, right sweetie?” You asked the boy who nodded hesitatingly. Wait- hesitantly? “Huh?”

Sebek looked a bit disheartened the Fae kid rejected him, but he was also kind of confused as well. “It’s just… I miss Papa, Mama…” the boys lips quivered a bit.

“No, no! You're not in trouble.” You fell to your knees to comfort the boy.

Apparently Sebek was hanging out with the child because he thought he was Malleus but something went wrong. Perhaps someone used their unique magic in the future ruler of briar valley.

Um… who’s Malleus?

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Day four of having a child.

Today you were going to find this kid someone who looked close enough to his dad. I mean, you apparently looked like his mom enough, so… yeah!

Also, perhaps his brother went to this school and that was how he ended up here. Finding him a dad sounded fun though.

It was a solid plan… “Casper?” You woke the boy up. You put Casper in the guest bedroom ace usually occupied when he was collared. Which was often. Even with Riddle being looser on the rules Ace always pushed sadly. “Today we’re finding your father.” You informed the boy.

“Really!” His eyes lit up. Why didn’t you do this sooner?

“Mhm, just tell me what he looks like-“ and so began Caspers rant on how amazing his father was. How he always makes time for you two even though he’s so busy, how good he was at playing superhero’s- and so on.

You didn’t even realize superhero’s existed here. Crazy. “He has black horns like me!” He grinned up at you, “oh- and black hair and we have the same eyes!” He giggled before again going on about how awesome his dad was.

“Horns, black hair, green eyes…” you mumbled, “and you're a fae, so we should probably go to Diasomnia, they have the most fae of the dorms” you smiled brightly. “This Malleus guy seems promising- and if he doesn’t want to, I’ll just make him!” You cheered and with Casper on your shoulders you were out the door!

.

.

.

Was it just you or was Diasomnia slightly terrifying?

 Either way, with Casper on your shoulders like you were going to the zoo, you walked on the winding path with thorns around it and into the dorm. The halls were… very long and castle-like. 

Eventually you found the dorm's common room. Witch had three students, only one of which was a fae. With as much confidence you could muster, you approached them. “Hello! Good evening gentlemen… Um, do you happen to know someone whom this child looks like?” You smiled and proceeded to the kid. 

They very politely actually said that they think he looks like Malleus. You asked them to point you to this Malleus, and they again very politely refused. Apparently he was a busy man which was fair. But he was a father now! If casper deems him fit enough (By that you mean mistake him for his father like the boy did you.)

Still, throughout this process, you couldn't help but wonder if you were forgetting someone. 

You kept glancing at Caspers horns… who else did you know with horns? “Tsunotarou! That's who you look like!” You finally realized after an embarrassingly long time. In your defense you had only met the guy once or twice while you were dealing with Leona’s stupid plan, and didn’t Leona mention Malleus during his overblot?

“That's what you call Papa!” Casper cheered, his eyes widening in awe. Okay so, either that was a common name… which you doubt or Casper had a weird background. 

“Khee Khee what do we have here?” Lilia appeared out of nowhere! …again, still you jumped! 

“Mama is going to find Papa today!” Casper cheered in all his three year old glory. Picking the boy up and lifting him to sit on your hit you nodded. 

“Mhm! I’m going to meet this… Malleus demands he becomes Caspers father or pay child support!” You claim confidently because in reality, you were beginning to doubt the plan you came up with at 3am and woke up early for. “Tsunotarou would be a better bet but I really don’t know where that guy is… or his real name.” you muttered to yourself. 

Either way, Lilia clapped and with a large smile said this: “You're in luck! Malleus just finished his breakfast and should be heading over for his morning coffee.” So, without verbally questioning why he knew that you smiled and plopped down on the common room’s chairs watching a bit nervously as Lilia wandered off again. 

So… You were really dumb. Realistically this was a horrible plan bound to fail, but you already came this far. 

Didn’t all your friends always comment about how scary Malleus was? Wasn’t he like one of the top mages of this world? 

Okay, maybe if you didn’t come up with this plan at 3am last night you wouldn’t be so royally screwed! Hah, get it because Malleus is supposed to be some royal of… a whole nation right? Yeah, this was a bad idea. 

Getting up to leave, you heard Casper cheer for his father.

“Child Of Man?” 

“Tsunotarou?” You turned around, “Actually- no this is better than getting smited by some scary mage! Okay so I have been looking for… you, for a while!” You smiled, “This is our son: casper.” You introduced them. 

“Papa!” 

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“Mm, He does look like me.” Tsunotarou hummed; he knelt beside the child, titling his head curiously as he observed the child. “Your horns are coming in nicely aren't they?” He commented with a small smile, the boy nodded enthusiastically. 

“Mhm! They should be as big as yours soon!” Casper giggled. 

“Your speech is also advanced for a child of your age.” The older boy smiled, It was a very touching sight actually. 

“It is. Ace and Deuce have been helping me teach him some bigger stuff too.” you stated proudly as the younger boy nodded along. You sat beside where the boy stood in front of his new father. Your back against the armrest, you sat planted on the floor. “The headmage said he would be dealing with getting him back home but I have to take care of him till then.” You sighed. 

“I see, so you thought to find me as I am the child's father?” Malleus asked curiously, an eyebrow raised almost teasingly.

“If you’ll believe it, yup.” You nodded along, I mean if he believes that the kid is his, why not get him to take responsibility for that sweet child support money?

“I see, so Crowley is making the proper arrangement to get you back to us in the future.” 

“Wait, so he's actually my kid?” you couldn’t help but blurt out. Tsunotarou merely chuckles. “Am I dumb or are we actually like his parents?” You whispered a bit to Tsunotarou and stood up, he followed after you standing up as well. 

“Mm? Crowely didn’t inform you?” he said with an amused and sly smile. “I suppose it's time anyway we get properly introduced seeing as you are my future spouse” He smirked, his hand on his hips.

“I am Malleus draconia”

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Fun Fact:

The events of this takes place after Heartslabyul’s and Savanaclaw overblot. So y/n doesn’t know Tsunotarou is Malleus.

Also, Lilia knew all along.

Also, also, I'm sorry this sucked lol

NOTE: Sorry this slightly sucked I didn't really plan to actually finish the WIP I posted it as "Forever unfinished" and people liked it so I thought I'd do this anyway!

________________________ ________________________

Some of Ya'll wanted to be Tagged: @yu-night-raven @kelsyntam @reivelmin @thisisafish123 @cheshire-kitsune @dmiqueles @ranbutler-epicsans-moon @dontmindmelove @swivi @halseyhatter @barbatoss-bitch @itslucieen @bell7duck @whatever-fanfics @ziankenvirus @blcknebula @leilakaro @sarraisme

(I'm not quite sure if I did it right but thank you for liking the WIP enough to comment and want to see another! I hope it was good, I kind of think It wasn't that good but Thats why I made it somewhat long... To compensate!)

[gyubakeries]

❆ 𝐠𝐲𝐮𝐛𝐚𝐤𝐞𝐫𝐢𝐞𝐬 : 𝐰𝐢𝐧𝐭𝐞𝐫 𝐬𝐩𝐞𝐜𝐢𝐚𝐥𝐬! ❆ | 𝐟𝐮𝐥𝐥 𝐦𝐞𝐧𝐮 - 𝐡𝐞𝐫𝐞 <𝟑

❆ 𝑑𝑎𝑦 𝟷: buying ugly sweaters | c.sc

a/n: hi! welcome to day 1 of my christmas series! each day is going to be a christmas activity paired with a member of seventeen. you can read the fics in any order! hope you enjoy <3

p.s. im not sure if people go out buying matching sweaters like this, so i made up a lot of stuff just to make it fun! apologies if anything sounds unrealistic. (it is.)

word count: 870 contents: seungcheol x gn!reader , established couple , fluff , matching clothes , shopping , christmas fun

"babe, thirteen days to go!" you squeal excitedly, startling seungcheol, who was drinking his first cup of coffee after waking up. his face breaks out into a fond smile when he sees you hop into the kitchen, beaming with joy.

"thirteen days to what?" he asks you, wrapping an arm around your waist and nuzzling his face in the crook of your neck.

"christmas!" you explain. "we have so much to do. i made a checklist!"

seungcheol gazes at you with affection as you whip your phone out to show him the list of things that needed to be done before christmas.

"first on the agenda: buying ugly sweaters."

"ugly sweaters?" seungcheol stops you. "why not just normal ones?"

"cheol, ugly sweaters are what make christmas special," you say, eyes twinkling with excitement. "can we go shopping today? please?"

seungcheol can only nod and chuckle at the way you throw your fist in the air and rush to eat breakfast to get ready quickly.

you never had to ask for his permission for anything; anything you wanted from seungcheol was already yours.

—

after dressing up warmly for the cold weather, seungcheol and you drive to the mall to start your search for matching ugly sweaters.

once you reach the mall, you take seungcheol's hand in yours to lead him to the departmental store you were sure to find the best sweaters at.

(seungcheol pouts sulkily when you pass a small cafe and don't let him get some of the cute fruit tarts put up on display.

"it's gonna be a warzone in there if we don't get in quick enough," you reason, and seungcheol thinks you might be exaggerating a bit.)

you weren't exaggerating at all.

once you enter the store, seungcheol is a little terrified to see it teeming with people. apparently, every other person on earth (at least that's what it felt like) had decided to end up in this specific store on the exact same day you decided to visit.

("it's christmas!" you giggle at seungcheol when he complains of being poked in the ribs at least five times since entering the store.)

"the woollens section is in the back," you tell seungcheol. he grips your hand tightly and follows you through the crowd, muttering apologies as he pushes past people.

finally, you reach the woollens section, and thankfully, it's a little less crowded. both seungcheol and you look through the displays, till seungcheol spots the christmas section.

"baby, christmas stuff is over here!" he calls out, and you walk over to the aisle he's standing in.

"okay, game plan: i'll look through the racks on the left, and you take the right. if you like any of them, check if they have sizes for the both of us and pick them up. we can shortlist them later," you instruct seungcheol, and he can only laugh.

"what? what's so funny?" you pout, crossing your arms.

"you sound more serious than the coach of a football team that's playing the World Cup," seungcheol laughs, and you gasp jokingly. he's quick to pull you in for a hug and kiss your lips sweetly. "i still love you though. even if you turn into a middle-aged sports coach sometimes."

"i love you too, cheollie," you smile back, kissing the tip of his nose. you stay wrapped up in his embrace for a while, but the sound of someone clearing their throat makes you jump apart from each other.

it's an old lady who entered the same aisle, and you can tell from her displeased look that she doesn't quite like the idea of PDA. sharing matching mischievous grins, you and seungcheol resume your task of finding the perfect matching sweaters.

when seungcheol starts looking through the racks of sweaters, he realizes that there's a surprisingly large number of ugly sweaters. they range from normal designs of snowflakes, bells, candy canes and christmas trees, to some quite bizarre ones. (he thinks he saw a reindeer in a tuxedo on one sweater.)

"cheol!" you call out, and seungcheol looks away from another strange design to see you jumping up and down near a few sweaters.

"found something good?" he asks you, walking over to where you were holding a pair of matching sweaters.

"i think these are perfect," you say, barely holding back your laughter.

seungcheol takes a step back to read the words on the sweaters. they're both made of black wool with some red and green accents on them, but the main designs seem to be words.

the sweater on the left says, 'where my ho's at?', and the sweater on the left answers the question with a large 'ho' printed on it.

seungcheol raises an eyebrow at you after reading the words. "i distinctly remember you almost punching a guy back in college because he called you a ho, and you're okay with wearing these?"

"yeah!" you nod. "because you're wearing this one." you smirk, holding up the 'ho' sweater.

(seungcheol doesn't need a lot of convincing to wear the sweater. he'd do anything to make you happy, even if it meant wearing a ridiculous sweater.

it was worth it, because it meant that seungcheol could see you smile.)

- fin.

divider made by @bernardsbendystraws !

main taglist: @tychebaby @min-imum @sousydive @livelaughloveseventeen

@unlikelysublimekryptonite @theidontknowmehn @wonuwrites @baseball-dokyeom

@t-102 @gyuguys @aaa-sia @cixrosie

series taglist in comments!

comment on this post to be tagged on the upcoming fics!

head to the series masterlist - here <3

head to the masterlist for more!

[goodlucktai]

Uhuuh if you don't mind for the injury promo maybe 12 with splinter/lou and his boys, pls?

dialogue prompts

12. “Where are they? Where are they?!”

this one got away from me :') rise/2012 crossover babyyyyyyy

x

Splinter’s counterpart reacted to the news of their sons’ abduction with a level of dramatics that he would never ascribe to his own self. 

“What?” the shorter rat (“Call me Lou,” he had said, and then proceeded not to explain why) squawked at the disheveled humans still trying to collect their breath at the entrance of the lair. “When did this happen? How did this happen? There were TEN of you!”

Casey and April both winced in face of the not-unwarranted scolding. The children had had perhaps too much confidence as they left together earlier that evening. Donatello’s computer had alerted him in the middle of dinner to a new lead on the gang whose activity they had been following for the past weeks. Raphael had smashed his fists together, a wicked grin on his face, and said they should strike while their forces were doubled and make those ‘goons’ regret robbing every pharmacy in Manhattan north of The Battery. 

“Tiny feral Raph is hilarious,” Lou’s Purple had said in a deadpan. “And also alarmingly down to commit atrocities. I want to ride with him.”

And now, not even two full hours later, their human companions returned to report a resounding failure. 

Casey, scowling at the floor, said, “They got the drop on us. The door sealed as soon as we were in and the room started filling up with gas.”

“They said they were chemists,” April added. She couldn’t lift her head enough to look Splinter in the eye, staring hard somewhere near his shoulder instead. “One of their colleagues was mutated about a year ago and they’ve been studying the mutagen ever since. I don’t know what they want with the boys, but they made it sound like the gas was made with the turtle’s physiology in mind. That it would outright kill me and Casey, but shouldn’t harm them.”

Lou was bristling, tail lashing. “‘Shouldn’t’ is the word they used?” he gritted out. 

“Yeah. It hit them hard in seconds. But Blue—uh, your Leo—” Casey said, with an uncomfortable sideways look at Lou, “—he managed to get one of his swords out and portaled me and April away. We waited for like five minutes to see if he’d get anyone else out, but…”

But no one came goes unsaid. 

Splinter tapped his walking stick on the floor once to recall their focus, warm affection filling his chest for these little Hamato adoptees who fell haphazardly into his clan. 

“Lou is correct,” he said. “It is unfortunate that your team was so quickly overwhelmed. We will discuss how to better handle situations like this another time.” 

Both humans stood a little taller when it became clear that that conversation would be tabled for the time being, and April finally found it within herself to meet Splinter’s eyes. 

“For now—” he started, only for Lou to cut him off with a sound not unlike a cat whose tail had just been stepped on.

“Don’t put words in my mouth,” the shorter rat snapped. “I don’t care if they lost within two minutes, let alone two hours. I only meant,” he went on, with a hard look at the teenagers, “that you should have called the instant you were in danger! Why on earth would you run all the way home like this without letting us know what had happened, putting yourselves at unnecessary risk? This organization could have had additional members waiting to pick you off when you were alone! You could have at least made time to send a text!”

Casey and April looked absolutely bewildered. Their respect for Splinter was so deeply ingrained by now that it carried over to this odd likeness of him but they did not seem to know what to do with this manner of reprimand. 

“Uh,” Casey said eloquently. “Splinter doesn’t have a phone.”

“There was the cheese phone,” April interjected. “Sorry, I mean, he had a landline. But the wiring got messed up awhile ago and Donnie never got around to fixing it.”

“You have seven children,” Lou seethed, narrowing his eyes at Splinter, “and you don’t see the importance of having a working phone?”

Splinter frowned. He was taken aback by the number seven, but more so by this hostility that seemed to have sprung up from nowhere. 

“We have gotten along just fine. Donatello’s inclination towards technology was not inherited from me.”

“There’s no time to continue this conversation, and if we do I am liable to start screaming profanities anyway. Jones, O’Neil, take me to my boys.” 

Lou was still bristling with anger, only now that Splinter was looking closer, he saw that the shorter rat was actually bristling. His fur was standing up as though with electric static. 

“If even one scale on their shells has been harmed,” he added darkly, to no one in particular, “there will be hell to pay.”

April led the way to the garage at a sprint, hopping up without breaking stride to grab the keys from their hook on the wall just inside the door. She tossed the keys to Casey and claimed the front passenger seat for herself, leaving the two fathers to pile into the back of the van. 

It wasn’t until she was still that Splinter noticed her fingertips were red and raw from where she had bitten the nails down to the quick. As Casey started the engine, her thumbnail found its way back between her teeth, blue eyes feverish with worry as she stared into the middle distance. 

She was very anxious, for all that she seemed determined to keep it to herself in present company. Her sideways glance at Casey made it clear that she wanted to share her thoughts with him; a flick of her eyes toward the rearview mirror decided her continued silence.

On the bench seat beside him, Splinter watched Lou take out his own phone. It was a thin flat device, held in a protective case that looked like it would probably survive an apocalypse. The caller ID on the screen was a picture of that behemoth snapping turtle in a fuzzy pink hoodie, squeezed cheek-to-cheek with his tiny spotted brother so they both fit into the frame. 

“Red, this is no time to screen my calls!” Lou said when the tinny automated voice encouraged him to leave a message. “Contact me at once or you are grounded for a month! No, two months!”

“They are probably in no position to answer,” Splinter pointed out, Lou’s restlessness leaving him feeling ill-at-ease. “I am sure they are fine. My sons have been in situations like this countless times.”

Lou pinched the bridge of his nose. “Yoshi, I’m going to level with you. I don’t know how to explain that it’s weird you have become desensitized to the news that your children are in danger. My Baby Blue once locked himself inside a prison dimension with an evil killing machine, and less than a year after that he almost cracked his foolish head open on that ridiculous half-pipe mimicking some superstar skater, and my soul left my body in exactly the same manner both times. That never changes. It has never gone away.”

It was disingenuous of Lou to presume that Splinter did not worry after his sons. Of course he did. They were his greatest pride and it was a privilege he did not deserve to have raised them. 

But they were not the clumsy toddlers they once were; at some point, the parent must let go of the bicycle and step back, or the child will never learn to ride it. 

Splinter could not say he had ever taken the time to consider what it might have been like to meet another version of himself—one who had lived a similar life but had made different choices. He almost did not recognize himself at all in the fussy, short-tempered mutant sitting beside him. 

Lou checked his phone no less than eleven more times during the twenty-minute drive. By the time Casey finally announced, “This is it,” Lou was out of the van before it had even begun to slow. 

“The two of you must remain here,” Splinter told the teenagers in the front firmly. He couldn’t help but think of Lou’s scolding from earlier, and added, “If there is any sign of danger, escape at once and go to the Mutanimals. They will help.”

“I texted the group chat earlier and they haven’t seen it yet,” Casey said, flicking through his phone to double-check. 

“We can’t just leave you,” April added with enough stubborn loyalty that she could have been Raphael’s twin sister. 

“You absolutely can leave us, or you will be grounded, too,” Lou interjected from over by the door, his voice taking on that sharp no-nonsense tone Splinter had last heard directed at Blue over breakfast to curb his relentless teasing of Donatello. 

‘It is just how he and Purple show affection to each other,’ Lou had explained to Donatello, whose shoulders had begun to creep up towards his ears the longer Blue carried on. ‘That does not make it any less irritating for the rest of us though!’

‘Skill issue,’ his twins said in unison. 

‘I will cram all three of you into the get-along shirt! Do not test me!’ Lou had snapped in that particular tone that caused his children to grumble and sulk but ultimately obediently subside. 

Similarly, April scowled but did not seem willing to argue any further. Splinter would have expected her to give a Miwa-worthy retort that she was too old to be grounded and not Splinter’s daughter to discipline besides, but she only jerked her chin in a barely passable nod and said nothing more. An equally unhappy but unargumentative Casey turned off the headlights and twirled the steering wheel, backing the van up and parking it by the access road.

Lou had already kicked the reinforced door down by the time Splinter joined him, and he barely had a moment to think My seventeen-year-olds are stealthier than that before he realized Lou had not come with stealth in mind.

He had the first unfortunate human within his line of sight pinned to the ground with a knife in seconds, barking, “Where are they? Where are they?”

The human, caught unawares, coughed at the unforgiving pressure on her windpipe, and managed to wheeze out, “Wh-who do you—”

“You are a scientist, and therefore I know you are not an idiot,” Lou hissed, much like the animal he had been mutated with. “Do not waste my time acting like one.” 

The woman scrabbled at his arms, for what little good it did. Her eyes, behind the clear visor of the gas mask, were wide with fear. To her credit, she steeled herself enough to cling to whatever mission she and her associates seemed to have rallied behind, saying, “So many incredible things could be—be accomplished—if we had a chance to study the mutagen more closely, if we had test subjects with human-like intelligence. It’s closer to magic than science, and we could do so much—”

“You would experiment on children? My children? Turn them into lab rats?” The last he said with a very personal sort of dark anger. The scientist coughed again, and her renewed struggles were a desperate, animalistic thing as she lost the last of her air beneath the unrelenting press of Lou’s hand. “Is that what you think you should be saying to me? Is that what you think will save you—an appeal to the greater good?”

Splinter dispatched the handful of people who streamed into the room in a series of swift strikes. They were unconscious before they hit the ground.

“Lou,” he said, “that is enough. We are here for our sons.”

He was not unsettled by the shorter rat’s capacity for violence. He knew himself better than that. But he did not understand Lou’s hair-trigger temper, his turtle-shaped blind spot. He couldn’t speak for the other’s students, but Splinter’s own were experienced, and tempered, and incredibly skilled. After everything they survived and accomplished together up until now, he found it hard to believe that an organization of regular humans could pose much of a threat to their well-being. 

From the way Lou was acting, it was as if he was any ordinary parent whose ordinary children had been taken in the night. 

Splinter shifted to intervene when the woman Lou had pinned continued to choke. Finally, Lou released her enough that she could heave in desperate breaths. 

“You would not actually kill her,” Splinter chided him, no fan of theatrics. 

“Someone has not been paying attention,” Lou replied shortly. “If my boys are hurt, I will burn this building down with everyone inside it. Honor can go hang itself.”

With that, he removed the woman’s gas mask and informed her that she would lead them to the turtles without making a scene, or she would bleed to death on the floor and they would find the turtles on their own. White-faced, she wisely settled for the first option. 

Leading them toward the back of the building, where rooms that were once offices had since been repurposed into labs and testing areas, the woman said hoarsely, “I didn’t know they were kids.”

Like clockwork, Lou’s fur bristled with offense. “They are wearing matching Sanrio hoodies. They speak in memes. I am sure at least one of them called you a boomer to your face.”

“No, I meant,” she said, touching her bruised throat briefly before dropping her hand, “I meant I didn’t know they were someone’s kids. I’m—I wouldn’t have—sorry. We were trying to do good. I’m sorry.”

“Hmph. I will consider forgiving you in roughly one hundred years as long as my turtles are completely fine. This door here?”

He kicked it down before she could move her head more than one half-inch in a nod. There was a flurry of excitement inside, and then Blue’s voice rang out, “Daddy!”

He sounded ecstatic to see his father, but not at all shocked. His words were a little slurred as he went on, “I told them you’d be here any minute. Our cousins over there wanted to stage a break-out, and I was like. Just nap. You know? Just take five. See, Miguel’s got the right idea.”

“Hush, silly turtle,” Lou said, his tone now a complete departure from how he had sounded for the last half hour. “Come here, let me look at you all. I need to be absolutely certain no one in this building deserves to die before we leave.”

Splinter joined him inside the room in time to take in the sight of the shorter rat attempting to hold all four of his much larger sons in his arms. Orange was deeply asleep in Red’s lap, his smaller stature probably contributing to the higher concentration of the drug in his system. The twins were upright at a forty-five degree angle, and Red himself seemed groggy but alert for the most part. They were smiling as they absorbed their father's fussy attention, leaning into his hands.

Comparatively, Splinter’s own sons were swaying where they sat. Michelangelo’s eyes were open, but his head was resting on Donatello’s shoulder, Donatello’s cheek propped on the crown of his little brother’s head. Raphael was wired, digging fingers into his thighs to keep himself awake, while Leonardo seemed to have been startled out of a meditation by the door crashing down. 

They all lurched with surprise to see Splinter standing there. Leonardo in particular gazed up at him with wide eyes, as if he didn’t know what to do now that the task of rescuing the seven others was no longer his responsibility. As if he had no experience with a burden being lifted away once he had decided it was his to carry. 

For the first time all night, Splinter faltered. 

On the other side of the room, Blue said, “I’m, uh, sorry. I wanted to get us out, but I didn’t have time for more than one door.” 

“Dum-dum,” Purple said succinctly. “O’Neil and Jones would be dead if they were still here.”

“Dee’s right for once, Leon,” Red rumbled, “you made the only call you could.”

“But I should have been able to save everyone, right?” Blue said. “I’m the leader.”

“You,” Lou said sternly, holding Blue’s face in both hands, “are seventeen.” 

That’s right, Splinter found himself thinking, looking down at his eldest son. The brilliant boy he taught to read, the one he taught to fold origami flowers for his mother and sister’s shrine, the one he had stopped holding one day without even realizing it. He is. 

[twwings]

so I spent the last few months just marathoning The Magnus Archives??? I was curious and I have a long-ish commute that I need to fill with audio, so I went for it. I was somewhat spoiled by fanart I saw randomly over the years but not entirely spoiled, and I quite enjoyed it. Some thoughts (both positive and negative thoughts below) because I wanted to write them down as I chew over the show. Also my ramblings might be pleasurable to folks who are big fans and enjoy hearing about people listening to their thing for the first time?

Spoilers for all of TMA, but as I haven't listened to The Magnus Protocol yet (I'm sure I will) no spoilers for that.

thoughts in no particular order:

didn't know that my trypophobia could be activated aurally! thanks, season one. it's good to learn about yourself

because I had seen lots of fanarts around, I knew that Jon/Martin would eventually be a canon thing, so I just spent the early episodes making fun of Jon whenever he was mean about Martin. Jon would be like "ugh, Martin, amirite?" and I'd yell at the car speakers like "lol you're gonna MARRY that guy"

sometimes I found the show a little boring or too expositiony (like the episode where Leitner shows up) and it made me think a lot about the conditions of production, like, having fans who were super into the show and red stringing it up clearly made them want to explain things sometimes in a way not necessary to the story - or, at least, it didn't feel necessary to me as a casual listener who was coming in after the fact and not part of the fandom. maybe it felt necessary for other folks, or to the cast and crew at the time.

relatedly, oh god, I did not keep up with all the plotlines and stuff. like it took me a WHILE to realize that the show was not just gonna be standalone/anthology stuff and would have an overarching plot so I did not pay attention early on to repeated names or plots. and because I was listening on my commute I was like "welp, can't google it, gonna let it go" and I did. I'm here to tell you that the magnus archives is still enjoyable even if you don't care that much about what's going on

when I did really start to care was the end of season four/season five. absolutely love that they went there with the end of season four (I thought it'd just be a buffy-style "now we fight a BIGGER big bad at the end of this season" escalation forever, but no, they unleashed hell on earth, baller move, A+, loved it

so I was spoiled that Martin (and Jon? I wasn't sure) died at some point, though I didn't really know where or how. I also saw someone post something like "oh TMA, great show, too bad it ends after five minutes into episode 160" so from that I kind of extrapolated that Martin died in episode 160? so my experience of listening to that one was REALLY on tenterhooks because the first five minutes was Martin going for a nice walk! and then Jon getting taken over by the statement! so while listening to the middle bit of 160 I was convinced that when Martin came back from his walk Jon was gonna kill him (while possessed, obviously) as part of the ritual thing. so really the following 40 episodes of Martin being alive were pretty sweet to me. Every episode after that when Martin was alive I was like, score, bonus, love it, I'm glad Jon didn't stab him three seconds after they got into a relationship

kept listening for a physical description of Jon to match all the fanart and never got one? I guess the fanon of what Jon looks like is just super consistent for some reason?

hated Tim, I can't disguise it, I hated Tim and I was glad when he died and I was glad he didn't come back, sorry Tim fans, live your truth and I will live mine

wish there weren't so many cops on this show, tho the show did seem to recognize that a little in S5 and try to do some things about it

I'm just a huge sucker for every genre experiment in S5. omg I loved it. Terminus gets a coroner's report, The Unknowing gets slam poetry, The Flesh gets a gardening manual?????? mwah. it made me excited for the format of the statements again when they'd gotten stale. so many smart and interesting genre experiments in S5! and I, like Jon, don't even like poetry (just write some prose! I've never identified with a character more), so you know I'm impressed when I'm exclaiming about some poem

seriously! the genre experiments!!! so good

"queer couple navigate their new relationship and also The Hellscapes" = amazing, ty, also ty for doing it twice

somehow I managed not to notice the line about Jon being asexual at first and then I saw some tumblr post about it and I was like, wait what? my brain had gone pretty far down into some non-asexual fanfiction stories before I got that bit of canon and had to record-scratch freeze-frame. anyway I am pleased by the ace rep and hope to go read some non-sexual D/s for them in the future, please tell me if you know some good stuff

please also tell me if you know about fanfictions where Martin consensually feeds Jon his own memories and it's weird and intense

saw a cute fluffy domestic fanart where Jon was blind (ie had blinded himself to escape the eye) and I laughed and laughed that this is a fandom in which the happy fluffy AUs are the ones where the characters have violently blinded themselves. not to say I'm not gonna read the fluffy AUs where they've violently blinded themselves, I am, I'm sure they're lovely, it's just funny

don't think I wasn't thinking about Crowley and Aziraphale in the episode where Jon is like "what if we ran away together" in season four. When Jon is like "What if we ran away together, you and me, we could do it, what if we did" and he absolutely knows that Martin is not gonna say yes and maybe he doesn't want Martin to say yes but he wants to ask him anyway, he wants to try it anyway, because the fantasy of escape, together, is overpowering. anyway don't think I didn't think about Crowley

also laughed and laughed at the like four episodes at the end where Jon is like "maybe I should . . . . . . . . . . . become the Torment Nexus? From the classic scifi novel, Don't Become the Torment Nexus?" and first Martin and then everyone else is like "Jon, don't become the Torment Nexus" and it's really clear that you should not become the Torment Nexus but then later Jon says fuck it and becomes the Torment Nexus

I say it's really clear but the idea that you should strand and isolate and burn out the powers is not a bad one. I did like that the second to last episode was just a debate on morality with no clear resolution. that's a lovely way to send off your characters. tho it didn't matter a lot to the end plot? but still.

Jon "I think I'll just become the Torment Nexus" Simms, istg

THE TORMENT NEXUS

Sue Simms' voice is incredibly hot, Gertrude Robinson is absolutely deadass smokin, love how the Legend of Gertrude just built up over the seasons until by the end she was this like powerful callous avenging angel, no notes, might build a shrine in the woods with pictures of Gertrude in little jars

Gerry and Jurgen were both madly in love with her and she didn't notice or care because she was too busy kicking ass, no notes AT ALL

I really like the bit at the beginning of S5 where Jon is depression-listening to old archives tapes, like it's really effective to do the birthday party flashback just there when the world's just been apocalypsed, but I can't stop thinking about how Jon is listening to that tape and, in retrospect, being like "did Elias/Jonah use his all-powerful knowledge and vision to find out that there was cake in the office?" idk it really feels like Elias's motives in that flashback are like "eat cake" and no one else realizes that he's used his monstrous evil eye power to locate cake. anyway I imagine that Jon had all of these thoughts during his depression

Basira made me laugh ALL THE TIME, the voice acting was so good and she was so over everyone's shit. but at the same time there's this real softness to her at the end of S5 after she's killed Daisy, like she's still tough and grounded in her own perspective but suddenly more compassionate or sympathetic. she has such a good journey over the show

were Basira and Daisy a thing? I could not tell. maybe I should not ask. maybe I am not meant to know. maybe even asking shows how little I know, because their intense and murderous bond exceeds traditional relationship categories

I had a really nice time!!!

I will need to read fanfictions

I will need to watch animatics

I will need to seek out fanarts

the end

[crownedwithstars]

Why doesn't Thingol just give the Silmaril to Fëanorians?

One thing I find curious about the discourse around the Silmarils and their ownership issues is how it seems to often simplify the Sindarin and especially Thingol's perspective. I mean, Thingol giving the Silmaril Beren and Lúthien stole from Morgoth's crown to the Fëanorians is framed as somehow easy and obvious option. But I don't think it really is?

It's not even about whether Thingol is right or wrong to act as he does, it's about why his actions are justified from his point of view (and why it is more believable than him being compliant to Noldor).

1. Noldor disrespected and antagonised Thingol from the start. They have given him little reason to be nice or helpful.

When the Noldor arrive in Beleriand, they immediately start to do their own thing, and disregard Thingol, the local sovereign who is regarded as the overlord or at least respected and revered by the Elves native to this region. But Noldor (and Fëanorians) do not attempt to gain his friendship and alliance, they don't establish diplomatic relationships, they bring no gifts (which would be expected in this kinda medieval based society) and neither do they ask for help as Exiles, they don't let Thingol know where they are going to settle down or ask whether it's convenient but grab lands whether the locals like it or not, they don't recognise his position even as a friendly gesture, they don't disclose the nature of their expedition, withhold important information, and most of all, they bring violent trouble to his backyard. This must seem deeply and outrageously insulting to Thingol, especially because these princes are children and grandchildren of Finwë, Thingol's close friend - and yet they treat him without an ounce of respect.

Thingol is no less proud or particular about his position than Fëanor or Fingolfin is. He probably has not had it challenged or ignored by anyone except Morgoth's servants. Also he may see it as indicative of general Noldor prejudice/disdain against Sindar.

Whether Noldor had justified reasons for the way they act upon landing in Middle-earth, you can't deny that they don't do even the bare minimum to win the locals over. Yeah, you could argue that bringing reinforcements at the time when Morgoth returns and becomes active in Middle-earth again is something, but this is still not a way to treat potential friends and allies.

2. The Kinslaying of Thingol's people and kin at Alqualondë and the burning of their ships.

Obvious, really. He may see himself as standing in for Olwë, and regards the Silmaril as weregild for slain relatives and friends - people he himself probably knew before Teleri were sundered. Also why would he respect Fëanorian property rights when from his point of view, Noldor don't give a damn about Teleri or their rights?

Thingol may also judge that the Kinslaying and burning of the ships disputes the Fëanorians' right to the Silmarils and their moral high ground to a degree where anyone brave and cunning enough to reclaim even one of them becomes a rightful owner. Obviously he is biased in Beren and Lúthien's behalf but it would be weird if he was not? After B&L's efforts and their suffering, and quite literally achieving the impossible, he may be of the opinion that they have more right to the Silmaril than Fëanorians who seem more invested in competing Morgoth for land than for the Silmarils. Thingol may share the same attitude as Dior has in one of the drafts: there are two more Silmarils in the same place where the one in his possession came from, so why don't the Fëanorians go get them first?

3. Celegorm and Curufin.

I mean, after the way Lúthien was abused and attacked by the two brothers, Thingol could be holding on to the Silmaril out of pure spite. His daughter never gets any apology for how she was treated, and Thingol has no reason to believe that C&C's actions - and the attempt to force Thingol into an alliance - were not sanctioned and approved by the rest of the brothers. These people have been consistently terrible at everyone Thingol loves and cares about, so why should he help them in any way?

4. The Silmarils mess with your brain.

It's clear that the Silmarils have an unwholesome effect on almost everyone who possess them. Time and again Tolkien describes how characters fall prey to this greedy, possessive lust for the Silmarils. I mean, Fëanor and his sons are ready to spill blood again and again just to get them back. There is something about the jewels that, if you desire them for their own sake, kind of enslaves you to them. Thingol won't give up the Silmaril to Fëanorians because he can't.

5. The Doom of the Noldor compels him.

It's explicitly stated in the Doom that while the Oath will drive the Fëanorians, it will never yield its objective, and the Silmarils will elude them. As soon as Thingol names a Silmaril as a bride price for Lúthien, he becomes involved in the Doom and what it dictates, limiting his control of the situation. Because of the Doom (and the effect the Silmaril has on him), Thingol is not free to give it to the Fëanorians.

[rambleonwaywardson]

Clegan Astronaut AU - Part 9

Masterpost

AU Summary: the boys as modern day NASA astronauts. Taking place in 2025, Bucky is about to head to the moon as mission commander of Artemis III while Buck is CAPCOM at NASA. Established relationship (obnoxiously in love).

Author's Note: This one got away from me a bit so it's longer than usual. And I've finally started putting this on ao3, so you can also ready here.

Acronym and terminology definitions

---

November 15, mission day 9 Lunar Orbit

The crew wakes in a groggy panic to the sounds of an alarm going off in the cabin, a red warning light flashing over the console. Bucky, dressed in NASA-issue pajamas with his curls stuck up in ridiculous directions from the zero G and lack of product, struggles to unzip his floating sleeping bag, which is suspended in the middle of the Orion capsule and secured at both ends. Alex and Rosie’s seats had been stowed once they were en route to the moon in order to make more space in the capsule for sleeping, working, and generally existing without being right on top of each other, but it only helps so much. They’ve been stuck in this glorified minivan for going on 9 days now, and they are only very slightly sick and tired of each other.

As Bucky tries to drag himself over to the console, his foot catches on Curt’s arm, flipping the other astronaut upside down in his own sleeping bag. “What the fuck, Bucky,” Curt groans. With nothing within arms reach to push off of, there’s no hope of flipping himself back over, so he starts trying to free himself from where he is.

“Gotta see how we’re gonna die this time,” Bucky replies unapologetically, settling into his commander’s seat so he can see the console properly.

“What time is it?” Alex asks with a yawn.

“5:50.” Bucky silences the master alarm, bringing quiet to the cabin once again. They’re ten minutes short of their typical wake-up call.

From the other side of the capsule, Rosie rubs his eyes with one hand. “Jesus Christ, we’d be screwed in an emergency.” The unconcerned way with which they’ve reacted to this alarm is not unlike the way college students would react to their apartment building’s fire alarm going off in the middle of the night for the third time in a row. But that’s because that’s basically what this is. They’ve had a number of false alarms already in the days since leaving low earth orbit.

Bucky ignores him and switches on his coms. “Houston? How do you read?”

Benny’s voice comes back. “We read you Bucky, loud and clear.”

Curt slides into his seat as Bucky squints at the silenced alarm still flashing bright red in front of his face. CO2.

“Looks like we’re suffocating again, Benny,” Bucky informs him.

“Copy that.” There’s a pause as Benny checks with the Emergency, Environmental, and Consumables Officer. “Our readings look fine. Don’t see anything out of the ordinary. Can you confirm up there?”

Curt and Bucky glance at the carbon dioxide meters on the console, and Curt shrugs, sighing in exasperation. “Looks fine here,” Bucky agrees. “Another false alarm.” 

This is the third time the carbon dioxide alarm has gone off without cause, but at least this time it happened relatively close to their normal wake-up time. On mission day 4, the cabin pressure sensor had jolted them all awake around 2:00am GMT. They spent nearly two hours sorting that out with Helen on CAPCOM, checking every square inch of the capsule and every line of telemetry data for an explanation. Turns out it was just some bad wiring, and Houston had to walk Alex through the steps to repair it before it would stop going off.

Fortunately, Dr. Huston and Jack Kidd, as Flight Surgeon and Flight Activities Officer, found a way to work some extra sleep into their schedule that day. Unfortunately, instead of just having a faulty wire, the CO2 sensor itself is fucked.

“We’ll get those sensors checked out when you come back Earthside,” Benny promises. “Unfortunately, our electricians have not agreed to extend operations to the moon. At least, not without a hefty house call fee.”

Bucky laughs tiredly. “The audacity of some people. What has the trade industry come to?”

“I could just break the sensor,” Curt offers.

“That’s a negative, Curt,” Benny responds. “EECOM says no.”

“Maybe EECOM should try wakin’ up to this fuckin’ alarm at all hours of the night.”

Benny kindly reminds them, “EECOM is wide awake with you.” Mission Control operates on GMT, along with the crew, meaning that while it’s 5:50am mission time, it’s actually 12:50 AM in Houston. These flight controllers just started their shifts fifty minutes ago. During a mission, normal work schedules simply don’t exist for the team on the ground any more than they do for the crew in space.

Before either Bucky or Curt can say something snarky back, obnoxious pop music is blasting through the cabin from Bucky’s tablet, which is their designated alarm clock on board Orion. “There’s our wake-up call,” Bucky mutters.

“I got it,” Alex calls over to him, floating across the cabin to get the tablet, which is velcroed to the wall.

“Hey hold on!” Curt reaches his hand out. “Give it a minute!” He starts obnoxiously singing along, jamming out beside Bucky to the point that he loses his grip on his seat and starts floating away. 

“I’m a real tough kid, I can handle my shit, they said babe you gotta fake it ‘til you make it and I did.”

The other three join in despite their exhaustion, Bucky and Curt not even bothering to switch off their coms. “Lights, camera bitch, smile, even when you wanna die. He said he’d love me all his life.” Bucky is, admittedly, very pleased when he realizes he can hear many of the flight controllers singing along in the background. It’s a small thing, but their wake up music choices make everyone’s day just a little better. Alex shuts off the alarm.

“Hey Benny,” Bucky says. “Can you ask Gale if he’ll love me all his life?”

“Ask him yourself in… five to six hours.”

“But that’s too long,” Bucky whines. “I need to know now.”

“He’s asleep. Ask your wedding ring, you idiot.”

Bucky grabs at the wedding ring that’s dangling – or, rather, floating – on a chain around his neck. Astronauts often choose to wear rings on necklaces like this in space, since it’ll be easier to grab them if they float away. Bucky has only lost it once so far, which everyone is quite impressed with. He rubs his thumb over the silver band, and Curt makes a gagging noise beside him. 

“Astrofag,” he coughs.

Bucky gives him the middle finger.

With the false alarm and the morning shenanigans out of the way, Benny composes himself and gives the crew a proper morning greeting as Alex and Rosie put on their coms. “Alright, rise and shine boys, big day today!”

“We’re in space. Every day is a big day,” Rosie points out, unimpressed, before starting to fold up and stow the crew’s sleeping bags. He isn’t wrong. Every day in this space-traveling RV is something new. Every day is a little closer to something historic. Every day is something else that could kill them. But today is the day that Bucky and Curt say goodbye to their crewmates and descend to the lunar surface for a week-long all-inclusive stay. So yes, it is a big day. 

“How about a news update,” Benny offers.

“The news is too fucking depressing,” Alex complains.

Benny agrees. “How about a JSC news update, then? Let’s see…” The crew can hear him as he muffles his com and calls out to the other flight controllers in Mission Control, “Who has news?”

Then he speaks to the crew again. “Croz’s kid turned one year old yesterday. A very happy birthday to the little guy. I’m sure you’ll see pictures when you’re home, he smashed a huge piece of cake right into his face.” Bucky smiles and relays his birthday wishes. “Perhaps more importantly,” Benny continues. “Meatball turns five next week.”

“I know for a fact you don’t know Meatball’s birthday,” Bucky interjects.

“Well, the vets think he’s about five, and I just gave him a random birthday.”

“Naturally.” Bucky double checks their trajectory on the console, taking note of how long they have until Starship has to undock.

“Hey, don’t act like you wouldn’t do the same,” Benny says defensively.

“I know my dog’s birthday.”

“Not all of us are perfect pet parents, John. Some of us win our dogs gambling.”

Bucky snorts. “A great slogan for a pet food brand.”

Benny moves on. “We’re having good weather in Houston this week. Looks like we saw the last of hurricane season on launch day. Blue skies – well, not now. It’s midnight-”

Curt situates himself back in his seat and tries to rub the tiredness from his eyes. “Benny why do I give a shit what the weather is in Houston? Ain’t gonna be there for another 20 fuckin’ days.”

“Fine,” Benny says. “The weather at the lunar south pole looks… unremarkable. 24/7 sun except in the shadows. Hot as hell in the light and cold as hell in the dark. Landing conditions look as acceptable as can be expected.”

“Wait, is Hell hot or cold?” Curt asks. “You’re sendin’ me mixed messages here.”

“That’s it. No more news.”

Bucky chuckles and pushes up and away from his console, floating across the cabin to the food ration storage. “Thanks for the update, Benny.”

As usual, Benny tells them all to get some food in their systems before they reconvene to go over the day’s mission plan. Bucky pulls some silver rehydratable food packages out of storage and squints at the labels. Pickings are slim, but not all together awful. “Alright crew,” he says, holding one of the packages up. “We’ve got oatmeal, wheat chex, or scrambled eggs. Take your pick and eat up.”

—

Nassau Bay, TX

Gale wakes around 4:30am, not alone as would be expected, but instead with two cold, wet noses nudging at his face, attacking from all sides. He and Benny have once again gotten into a habit of co-parenting Pepper and Meatball so they’re not alone for too long during the chaos of Artemis 3. The dogs get to hang out together 24/7, moving from Gale’s house to Benny’s and back each day depending on who's on shift at Mission Control. With Benny on the early shift, Gale has them from about 8pm until he leaves in the morning. Benny will drop by to pick them up once he gets Gale updated on mission activities and leaves JSC. 

Nothing about human spaceflight is normal, not even for those on the ground. They work weird hours, sleep weird hours, and no one ever knows what’s about to happen at any given moment. Gale works the Red shift, from 8am CST until 4pm. This corresponds to 1pm to 9pm GMT, the time zone that the crew and Mission Control operate on. Helen then takes over and works the White shift from 4pm to 12am CST. Benny is on Blue shift from 12am to 8am. Even this is misleading, though. There’s up to an hour of overlap between each shift for one shift to get the next up to speed, resulting in a ten hour work day seven days a week.

Today, that’s all fucked up anyway. Gale has to go in two hours earlier than usual so that no shift change has to occur between Starship undocking and landing, giving the crew a constant Mission Control team through the entire process.

So he yawns as he looks out at the dark, pre-sunrise morning, and he shoves the huskies off the bed so he can get to his feet. After stretching out the sore muscles in his back, he rubs one hand, covered by his sweatshirt sleeve, over his face and pauses to inhale the scent still barely clinging to the fabric. He can imagine John going on and on, wondering how Gale doesn’t get hot at night all bundled up like that. But right now, Gale doesn’t have his space heater of a husband to keep him warm, so he needs to make up for it somehow. He’s been sleeping in the Yankees sweatshirt nearly every night since launch, and he’s dreading the day he can’t pick out John’s scent anymore. For the moment, he smiles softly to himself, assured that it’s still there, and he gets on with his morning.

Opting not to take a jog before it’s even 5am, Gale takes himself through a quick bodyweight workout in the bedroom. Squats, push-ups, sit-ups, planks, all while fending off two massive dogs insistent on shoving into his space. Then he takes what can only be described as a military shower, in and out, before scrambling to find a clean button-down shirt and tie. After starting the coffee maker, he turns the TV onto the news story he’d recorded last night. 

“Tomorrow, The Starship Human Landing System will undock from Orion to carry John Egan and Curtis Biddick to the lunar surface.” Marge, as Artemis PAO, is sitting across from an NBC reporter, explaining the details of the Artemis 3 mission plan.

“And how long will it take the lander to reach the lunar surface?” the reporter asks.

“About half a day,” Marge replies. Then she goes on to outline the landing process. 

“Our two astronauts will perform a controlled burn that will decelerate the lander enough to fall into the moon’s gravity well. This means that they will depart from the current Orion orbit and instead descend into low lunar orbit. From low lunar orbit, they will perform another burn that will slow them down enough to fall towards the lunar surface, where they will land near Shackleton crater.”

“And the remaining crew members in Orion will stay in their current orbit?”

“Yes, Orion will remain in NRHO, a near-rectilinear halo orbit. This means that their orbit is balanced between the moon’s gravity and the Earth’s gravity. It’s an elliptical orbit, taking about six and a half days to complete, where they fly very close to the moon at one end, and very far from it at the other. This period of time will correspond to the surface mission.” A window pops up on one side of the screen showing a simulation of Orion in NRHO, complete with Starship undocking and heading for LLO. 

“So when Orion next completes its orbit, Starship will dock with it again?”

Marge nods. “Yes. They’ll meet up again in about a week.”

“And Shackleton crater. That’s at the moon’s south pole?”

The display window on the screen switches to a map of the Shackleton landing site. “Artemis operations are focused on the lunar south pole, where there’s near constant daylight for mission activities and power generation, as well as craters and valleys that are in constant or near constant shadow. So there’s parts of the surface there that have never been exposed to sunlight. Our astronauts will be performing a lot of experiments on the surface, such as studying lunar geology and searching for water ice.”

Gale pulls out his phone and texts Marge. “Look at you on TV.”

A reply shoots back immediately. “Please bring caffeine.”

Gale rolls his eyes, and then heads back into the kitchen to make up two cups of coffee, one black and one with an unhealthy amount of sugar. When he arrives at JSC, Marge greets him at his car, as is their typical routine. She greedily grabs the coffee cup he proffers and takes a desperate sip.

“You’re welcome,” Gale deadpans.

Marge glares at him. “Thank you.”

“What’s up with you?”

Marge blinks rapidly and pinches the bridge of her nose. Makeup conceals the dark circles that are starting to appear under her eyes, and Gale knows he has them, too. “This mission will be the death of me,” she declares.

Gale doesn’t press, because yes. Yes, this mission will be the death of them all. He wonders if the stress level they feel, the inconsistent sleep and the constant demand to always be at their best, is reminiscent of the Apollo days, when nothing about a single mission was standard. In many ways, Artemis is just as novel, if not more so, to the current NASA team than the later Apollo missions were. Every single person involved has trained hard; every component of this mission has been tested. And yet there’s a vague sense nestled in the back of everyone’s mind that they’re kind of out here winging it.

For what it’s worth, Mission Control is calm this morning. Flight controllers diligently monitor their designated systems, updating or reworking things as needed, an idle chatter popping up in this or that corner of the room. The new shift is filing in, getting themselves up to speed. Gale pats Marge on the shoulder as they enter, and they part ways.

“Morning,” Gale mumbles as he stops beside Benny at the CAPCOM console. “Are they ready?”

—

Low Lunar Orbit

John Egan and Curtis Biddick have landed a lot of jets in their lifetimes. They’ve landed a lot of jets in very precarious circumstances, in all manner of environments. They’ve flown them high and low, fast and slow, day and night, with and without landing gears, and sometimes on fire. They’re good pilots. Some of the best NASA has to offer, many might say.

The Starship Human Landing System is about as opposite of a jet as you can get.

Starship is nothing like the Apollo lunar module that today’s astronauts grew up dreaming about, though in their own ways they may be equally unwieldy. Instead of being small and low to the surface, the Artemis HLS is a tall and narrow vehicle, more akin to what science fiction would describe as a spaceship, with the crew seated near the top. When it was first proposed, there was concern over landing such a tall vehicle, especially with no atmosphere and little gravity to help balance it. But the engineers, the testing, and even the sims claim that it gets the job done.

Commander and pilot spent months in the simulators, learning how to handle this awkward thing of a rocket-turned-space-habitat, and neither of them have enjoyed a single moment of it. “It’s like ridin’ one of those giant unicycles,” Curt said once. He’s never been on one himself, and there’s a damn good reason for that. “It’s too fuckin’ tall.”

“You’re a fuckin’ pilot, Curt,” Benny had admonished him. “Figure it out.”

So here he is, figuring it out. “I’m an Air Force test pilot and this is what I get for it, tryin’ to land in a fuckin’ pringles can.”

“Yeah, sure that’s one way to think about landing on the moon,” Rosie rebukes from Orion, which is still in NRHO now somewhere far away from Curt and Bucky.

Bucky sighs longingly. “I could go for some pringles,”

Curt scoffs. “We got wheat chex.”

Gale: “Curt, think of it this way, only the best pilot could land a pringles can in one-sixth G.”

Curt: “Tryin’ to butter me up, Gale?”

Gale: “Whatever gets you on the ground safely.”

Bucky: “No. No buttering.”

Curt: “5,000 feet.”

Bucky: “Trajectory good.”

Curt: “It better fuckin’ be.”

Curt takes a deep breath, eyes locked on the console in front of him. He hates this. Not being able to clearly see where he’s landing, even if it’s half computer automated, which he also hates. He didn’t become a pilot or an astronaut to be a passenger princess, and he sure as hell isn’t trusting his life to a computerized landing module.

From the windows at the top of their silver tower, Bucky watches the lunar surface grow bigger and bigger beneath them, its curvature disappearing entirely as they approach their landing site at the south pole. He sings quietly to himself. “For here, am I floating in a tin can, far above the moon.” 

Gale: “Starship, be advised, you seem to be on VOX.”

VOX meaning Bucky’s coms are currently voice activated, as opposed to Push to Talk, or PTT. Every time he says something loudly enough, his coms pick it up and transmit it to Houston. It’s been a minor (major) issue for the entirety of the mission so far, but if nothing else, amusing to the flight controllers.

Bucky: “Your point?”

Gale: “Our flight controllers here in Houston would like me to tell you you have a lovely singing voice.” 

Bucky can hear the sarcasm, and seriously? From his own husband? The man who is supposed to love and support him unconditionally? Bucky can almost always make Gale laugh, no matter how moody he’s being, by singing a little off-key and pulling him into a reluctant dance. 

Bucky: “They should be so honored.”

Gale: “Houston would also like me to remind you, once again, that everything you say is being transcribed.” He relays these words, but he sounds defeated and unconvinced. He’s right to be. If Houston hasn’t convinced the crew to stop being little shits by now, it won’t happen for the rest of the mission.

Curt: “Fuck Houston.”

Gale: “Still on VOX.”

Curt: “If I were on PPT I’d still say that over coms.”

Gale: “I know, and I’m starting to think we’ll need someone to go through and redact these transcripts cause of your language. Top brass isn’t pleased.”

Curt: “I live to displease.”

Curt squints at the console in front of him, running the numbers in his head before he points out the discrepancy he’s seeing to Bucky. Bucky glances out the window.

Bucky: “Houston, we seem to be entering a roll.”

Gale: “... Come again? Didn’t quite catch that.”

Bucky switches his coms to PPT to make the transmission clearer. “A roll. We aren’t supposed to be entering a roll, are we?” He waits as Gale discusses with Bubbles, GNC, and Croz, FIDO.

Gale: “That’s a negative. We’re working on sorting out why the control software authorized that. Can you course correct?”

Curt: “I’ll try.” He fires the thrusters and manages to stop the roll. “Fuckin’ computer.”

Bucky stifles a laugh as he reads out their coordinates. 1,500 feet to go, and he can see Shackleton Crater ahead. The part of Bucky that isn’t a highly qualified professional is buzzing with ‘are we there yet’ energy, trying to keep his heart rate from spiking in anticipation.

Curt: “What are the odds of this thing tipping over on us, Gale?”

There’s a mildly concerning pause.

Gale: “We don’t have exact numbers on that. Is ‘low’ a good enough answer?”

Curt: “I’ll take it.”

Bucky: “Coming up on Shackleton. I can see the site.”

Curt: “500 feet.”

Bucky: “Jesus, that’s something, isn’t it?” The vehicle flies right over the massive crater like it’s nothing more than a pothole in the road. A pothole that’s 13 miles across. Below the rim, it’s completely consumed by darkness. 

Gale finds himself holding his breath in Mission Control, something he’s been doing a lot this mission. He hasn’t yet sorted out if he’d be doing that no matter what, or if it’s because Bucky is on that lander. He twists the wedding ring around his finger as he listens to Croz calmly relay Starship’s altitude. The thrusters lining the top of the lander fire, controlling its descent at the top of a ridge near Shackleton.

Curt: “Easy, easy babe.” 

Starship sets down on the surface, barely any harder than a bird landing on a tree branch. Everyone, in Mission Control, on the lander, and on Orion, can breathe easy again. Bucky leans his head back in his helmet and pumps a fist.

Curt: “Houston, we have touchdown at Shackleton crater.”

—

Houston, TX

Later that night, Gale leans back against the bartop at the Hundred Proof, glass of soda in hand. On the TV behind the bar, there’s another news story playing about the upcoming moonwalk. By the end of Gale’s shift today, Bucky and Curt were settled on the lunar surface, preparing for the week ahead. They would take the night to eat, rest, and do some basic housekeeping. Tomorrow they will take their first steps on the moon.

Gale looks around the Hundred Proof, taking a sip of his drink. Much of Red Shift, as well as some of Benny’s Blue Shift, made the pilgrimage to the bar to decompress tonight. Croz, Bubbles, and Jack are playing pool in the back. Gale’s seen a few of his other team members milling about with drinks in hand, playing darts or watching sports on the other TVs. Even Clark has taken the time to join his team in letting a load off, laughing as Croz fails miserably to make an eight ball shot.

For just a few hours, no one would even know that these men and women have the weight of the world on their shoulders.

“It’s fuckin’ crazy, what we’re doing.” Benny joins Gale at the bar, leaning back against the counter as he sips a beer. 

“The two of us are just on the ground,” Gale replies. 

“Takes a village.” Benny crosses his arms over his chest, his beer resting against his bicep. He’s dressed in a dark lightweight sweater and jeans. Gale, on the other hand, is still wearing his button down and slacks, his tie loosened and his top button undone the way that always makes Bucky grin and grab onto the tie, dragging him in for a kiss. Bucky’s on the moon, though. And Gale’s just tired.

“It’ll be you next, anyways,” Benny adds, tilting his head to glance at Gale. “You know how jealous I am?”

Gale can’t help the way the corner of his mouth turns up in a little half smile, but he shrugs. “You were just on the station. Too soon to send you back. If you’re lucky, we’ll survive past Artemis 4 and you’ll get yourself on 5.”

Benny takes another swig of beer, and Gale mimics him, sipping his own drink. He rubs his thumb over the condensation gathered around the sides of his glass. “We’ll survive,” Benny asserts.

Gale really hopes so. Seeing Artemis end so soon would break his heart. But you never know what tomorrow will bring, and he wonders if Apollo-era astronauts felt the same way. He thinks they did. “What makes you so sure?”

“Sure is the only thing you can be around here, isn’t it?” Benny shrugs. “And if we’re not sure, we have to act like we are.”

Gale knows he’s right. If they don’t believe in a future here, then no one else will. He glances around the bar, at his coworkers and friends joking and drinking and having a good time. Every single one of them believes wholeheartedly in what they’re doing here, and every single one will fight to keep it going. Come what may.

The Hundred Proof has this transcendent, timeless quality. Classic rock plays through the speakers, and a vintage charm seeps from the walls, lined with NASA memorabilia like a time capsule over half a century old. It’s hardly changed a bit since its early days, with the exception of new televisions and perhaps new drinkware, although no one is really sure about that one. Just about every astronaut who has ever suited up for the United States space program since Apollo has walked on these floors and sat at this bar. Tonight, as it offers its comforts to weary flight controllers ahead of another history-making shift, it feels as if time has stood still. It could just as easily be 1969 or 1972 or 1995. It could just as easily be another era, another mission, and another unknown.

Gale wonders if flight controllers like him and his friends sought out this place in decades past, preparing themselves for the next shift, the next landing, the next moonwalk. If they had the same fears and the same hopes. He wonders if this place looked the exact same as it does right now, harkening back to a past that was too long ago, a hope for the future that NASA has dragged itself back to tooth and nail.

It’s possible that no space mission in this lifetime will ever compare to the way Apollo 11 captured the attention of an entire nation. Of the entire developed world. When Neil Armstrong stepped foot on the moon – “one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind” – nearly every household and every TV-owning establishment in the United States was tuned in. Everyone dropped what they were doing to stare at the fuzzy black and white video feed and watch a man walk on an extraterrestrial surface for the very first time. Everyone who remembers that day can tell you exactly where they were and what they were doing the moment those first footprints were pressed into the fine lunar soil. 

After that, though, moon landings were seen as routine. By the time Apollo 17 came around, the glimmer of futuristic hope and novelty was fading. Anyone who knew anything about it would tell you that there’s not a single thing that’s routine about landing on the moon. But it didn’t matter; for the public that would never be in that Mission Control room or on that space capsule, it lost its grandeur. 

The funding stopped. 

No one in power wanted to prioritize a lunar program anymore. America had made their point. They’d proved they could do it, proved their superiority in the space race. And dreams of landing on the moon were left to children with stars in their eyes and adventure in their hearts. 

Children like John Egan and Curtis Biddick. 

John Egan has wanted to be an astronaut for as long as he can remember. A little boy with unruly hair and an even more unruly spirit, climbing trees so he could be as close to the sky as the Earth would allow. He went to sleep with his ceiling covered in glow in the dark stars and built model rockets with his dad on the weekends. Almost every decision he’s ever made has been with this end goal in mind. 

He told Gale the first time they ever met that he intended to be an astronaut. He went to school for engineering even though he and mathematics didn’t get along, forcing him to forge through calculus and physics with a blind determination to get himself to where he needed to be. He joined the Air Force ROTC. He became a pilot. He took to the sky and never looked back, always more at home in the clouds than on the ground. Other than Gale Cleven, sitting in a cockpit was the only thing that could settle Bucky’s wayward energy. When the time was right, he applied to NASA, just like he always said he would. It took two tries, but they accepted him. He became an astronaut candidate. He flew on the international space station. He even did it all with Gale at his side. He did everything he’d always dreamed of doing, except one thing:

Step foot on the moon. 

But after tomorrow, he’ll have done that, too.  

Mission Control will be packed tomorrow morning; almost every flight controller on every shift will be there to watch the Artemis 3 crew leave the first footprints at the lunar south pole. Gale will be there, as a flight controller, as a NASA astronaut, and as a husband. He will watch his husband emerge from the Starship hatch and step down onto that lunar surface. He’ll be sitting in a front row seat to see the culmination of nearly two decades of watching John Egan work his ass off to accomplish his dreams. He’ll be right there, his voice guiding John through every step as his legacy is broadcast live to the entire world.

He couldn’t be more proud. Even if he has no fucking clue what will come out of John’s mouth when his boots hit the ground. He can only hope it’s nothing catastrophically embarrassing.

–

It was only weeks ago that Gale walked into their living room, Pepper trotting at his heels, to find Bucky laying on his back on the floor in front of the couch with his hands covering his eyes. A notebook and pen were haphazardly on the floor beside him. 

“What are you doing?” Gale had asked, as Pepper took over her role of protector and started licking Bucky’s face, trying to bring him back to the living.

Bucky had just groaned loudly, pulling his hands away from his face to stare up at Gale forlornly. So Gale bent down and picked up the notebook, which he wasn’t aware Bucky even owned. Flipping through pages of chicken scratch writing, he sat on the couch and tried not to laugh as he read through the brain-dump words. “Are these things to say when you land on the moon?”

Bucky sat up and crossed his legs, which Pepper took as an invitation to lay half in his lap. “Yep.”

There has been absolutely no shortage of people reminding Bucky that he will be the first person to set foot on the moon since 1972. It’s a big deal, and it will be broadcast live to the entire world. He’s been wracking his brain for things to say at such a significant moment in human history, knowing he has massive shoes to fill but not wanting to sound too cheesy, too outdated or philosophical, too… anything. How do you measure up to Neil Armstrong without sounding like you’re trying to be Neil Armstrong? Sometimes Bucky feels like nothing more than a little kid playing astronauts in the yard, pretending to be his childhood hero. 

No one ever expected him to get this far, and now the world is watching. Most of them adore him. Others hate him. If we’re lucky the fag will die up there. Planet Earth is a tumultuous place, but Bucky’s grit and determination have never faltered. He just never expected to be anyone else’s hero.

What words are there to bring a world together when every day it feels like it’s crumbling? Does it even matter what he says? Is it enough that he’s there? Do people actually care about what comes out of his mouth? Will his first words be stuck to him for the rest of his life – a legacy or a shackle? Will they print them in the history books, resound them for future generations? Or will they fade into obscurity like the words of every Apollo astronaut that came after Armstrong? Just a few more words said by another guy whose name most people won’t remember a few decades from now.

“‘With a single step, we return to the unknown for all mankind,’” Gale read from the notebook. “That’s… not bad?”

Bucky shrugged. “A little on the nose.”

“‘As we step onto the lunar surface once again, we bring with us all that we know, and all that we love, to move forward into a brighter future.’”

Bucky made a face as Pepper nudged at his hand with her wet nose. He stroked the top of her head gently, thinking that she had him trained and not the other way around. “Feels sappy.”

Gale glanced down at him. “You are sappy.”

“You’re the only one who knows that.”

Gale rolled his eyes and flipped a few more pages. Bucky closed his eyes as he waited for what was coming, knowing he’d been slowly devolving into madness. Gale choked on a laugh. “‘Hello world, I’m on the fucking moon.’ ‘To all the professors who tried to fail me, who’s laughing now.’ ‘I have the high ground.’ – God, you’re a nerd.” Bucky stuck his tongue out at him before he could continue. “‘Welcome to the shit show.’ ‘Hold on, let me take a selfie.’ ‘We’re here and we’re queer, fight me.’” Gale squinted at the page, running his thumb along some concoction of supposed letters. “I can’t read this one.”

Bucky leaned his head back against the couch so Gale could hold the notebook in front of his face, pointing to a barely legible scrawl across the top of the page. “We’re back, bitches.”

Gale nodded thoughtfully. “Alternatively, the bitch is back.”

“And then I’ll lower my visor like sunglasses,” Bucky nodded. “Stare off into the lunar sunrise. Make a moment of it.”

“Probably not the moment NASA wants,” Gale acquiesced, throwing the notebook to the couch cushion beside him. “You could sing Into the Unknown from Frozen.”

“Oh sure.” Bucky chuckled, scratching at Pepper’s ears. “I can see the headlines. ‘NASA Sends Crazy Queer to Space.’”

“We’re all mad here.”

“This ain’t Alice in Wonderland.”

“It’s true though.” Gale reached his hand down, making a grabbing motion until Bucky noticed and twined their fingers together, letting Gale tug him up onto the couch to Pepper’s dismay. Bucky settled against Gale’s side, mindlessly fiddling with Gale’s fingers like he often does. Gale smiled and leaned his head against Bucky’s, pressing his lips into soft, dark hair. “I’m a fan of welcome to the shit show.”

“Something tells me NASA won’t be.”

A few moments passed, and for those few moments, they weren’t anyone special. They were just a married couple curled up together on the couch. 

Then Gale said, “Maybe something about why it’s so important? Why we’re going back at all.”

Bucky thought for a moment, staring out the window at the night sky beyond. An entire universe that they’ve barely cracked the surface of, worlds and worlds that they may never get to explore. Both Bucky and Gale have always been endlessly fascinated by the infinite unknown. 

“We return to the moon not as a final frontier, but as a stepping stone on humanity’s expedition to explore the wider universe.”

“Mmm.” Gale tilted his head, considering. “That might be too optimistic. Don’t want to be making promises on NASA’s behalf.”

“In case we can’t get our shit together?” Bucky scoffed. Gale nodded, and Bucky had to agree. “Okay, how about, ‘this is the best fucking day of my life.’”

Gale frowned, pulling away to look at Bucky more directly. “I thought marrying me was the best day of your life.”

Bucky’s hair brushed against Gale’s cheek as he turned to look at him, too, letting himself drown in perfect blue eyes as he lifted his hand to cup the side of Gale’s face. “It was,” he breathed out. He kissed Gale then, with a gentle passion that carried with it a silent promise of you are my everything, you are my home. I will come back to you. When Bucky pulled away, he stroked his thumb over Gale’s jaw and let himself marvel at this life he’d made for himself. He’s doing everything he’s ever dreamed of, and he can’t ask for much more. But somewhere along the way, he’d gotten so damn lucky even on top of all of that. This man in front of Bucky, holding him in his arms with such love and warmth, has always been, and always will be, the best thing to ever happen to him. “Gale?” he whispered. 

“Yeah?” Gale’s voice came out in a puff of breath against Bucky’s cheek.

“I love you.”

–

So that’s what Gale thinks as he watches the screen at the front of Mission Control, which is showing video feed from the camera Curt is holding as he follows John to the hatch. It’s what he thinks as he watches the hatch open and John – not physically recognizable because of his bulky EVA suit and yet unequivocally John – stops at the top of the steps that are lowering to the surface. I love you. I love you I love you I love you. 

He can feel everyone in Mission Control holding their breath again. The whole world is holding their breath, crowded around TV screens and computers and phones, waiting. Waiting to see John Egan and Curtis Biddick step foot on the lunar surface. Waiting to hear what John will say to commemorate this moment.

Gale is pleasantly surprised, and admittedly relieved, to hear the words that Bucky has chosen to speak into the world. As the Artemis commander grips the side of the hatch, he looks out at the lunar surface beyond, at the untread terrain that they have the honor to explore. “It sure took us a long time, but we finally made it back,” he remarks. Then he takes a deep breath and hesitates, and Gale knows that, despite Bucky’s cocksure attitude and impulsive personality, he wants to get this right. 

“As we step foot into this beautiful unknown once again,” he says. “We do it not just for ourselves, but for the people of planet earth. We do it for everyone who dares to dream of a brighter future. Everyone who dares to step with us.”

Then he steps delicately onto the surface, and his boot sinks into the fine lunar soil below. One foot, and then the other. One step, and then another. 

He’s on the moon.

“How’s it look, John?” Gale asks.

Bucky turns slowly, open-mouthed, thinking that he feels like he’s on another world before his brain catches up and remembers that it is another world. They’re at the top of a massive ridge connecting two even more massive craters. The sun is just above the horizon, casting long, eerie shadows across the surface where it hits the crater rims. It’s silent. Peaceful. Like he just wants to sit right down on the ground and take it all in for a while.

“John?”

“Hi angel,” Bucky says, too in awe to realize he just called his CAPCOM “angel” on a globally televised broadcast. Neither of them will ever live it down.

But Gale only chuckles. “You okay up there?”

Curt, stepping down off the lander behind Bucky, adjusts the camera so he can record their surroundings. “I think we’re just a little in awe, Buck,” he says, since Bucky seems incapable.

But Bucky manages to find his words again as he steps further away from the lander, Curt recording him from behind as they both test out the gravity on the surface, taking a few bounding strides forward. “It’s incredible,” Bucky breathes, raising his arms out to the sides as if he can somehow absorb this experience into his mind and body. 

He motions to Curt, grabbing for the camera so he can get some airtime, too. He records as Curt bounds a few long and ungainly slow-motion steps away, trying to work out the best way to move in this new environment. Bucky follows behind clumsily.

“See that, world?” he says as he pans the camera around, giving visual of their lander stretching up to the dark sky, the beautifully foreboding crater some distance behind it, the rocky terrain on all sides streaked with long shadows, Curt dropping to his knees into the rough and sandy regolith. “You’re looking at the lunar south pole. No one has ever stepped foot on this part of the moon, but you’re seeing it right now. It’s incredible, isn’t it?”

“It sure is, Bucky,” Gale tells him, as their only link to the rest of the planet.

“Buck,” Curt interrupts as he lets a handful of the soil, fine and sharp like grains of glass, sift between his gloved fingers. “Can confirm the moon is not made of cheese.”

“Alright, Curt,” Gale replies, all too serious. “Thank you for that observation, we’ll note it down. Just please don’t taste it.”

“No promises.”

After a few more minutes of bounding around in wonder and narrating what they’re seeing, Curt and Bucky sign off from their live broadcast.

“O2 levels look good,” Gale informs them. “How’s the pressure feel?”

“It’s fine,” Bucky replies. “It’s dropped just a bit. A little easier to move. I expect it’ll keep improving as we get going here.”

A suit that decreases pressure in increments was NASA’s solution to their decompression sickness problem. When the body is too quickly exposed to low pressure environments, gases dissolved in bodily fluids, namely nitrogen, bubble out, causing a whole host of health issues called ‘the bends’ or decompression sickness. Designing a space suit that maintains the same pressure as the crew cabin – which is the same as mean sea level pressure on Earth – would result in a stiff suit that is impossible to move in. Typically, astronauts on the ISS spend many hours before an EVA pre-breathing – breathing pure oxygen to allow the body enough time to naturally purge the nitrogen – making it possible for them to safely wear EVA suits with a much lower pressure. To shorten this amount of time, astronauts may do physical activity while breathing pure O2, making the body rid itself of nitrogen even faster.

NASA wanted to reduce pre-breathing time as much as possible on Artemis. So on top of some time spent pre-breathing during exercise, the suits are equipped with oxygen regulators, which gradually decrease the suit pressure over time as the crew is out on the surface. Their suits are at a higher pressure when they first start the EVA, and as their nitrogen levels drop during the EVA, the suit pressure decreases, making it much easier to move around.

NASA didn’t come to the moon to play. They’re here for the future. To learn and to work and to push humanity to new heights. It’s a testing ground of sorts, to see how extended extraterrestrial missions may be feasible. The mission is designed for maximum productivity, and they have a lot to do here in the next week. Every single element has been designed with that in mind.

“Good to hear,” Gale says. “Now let’s get to work.”

…

…

Part 10

A3’s planned flight path for those interested:

(Image from NASA)

[alpaca-clouds]

About the historical apocalypses

A while ago I made a joke. "I do not believe in the Italian language. They should be honest and call it, what it is: Neo Latin." And because I made this joke on twitter and twitter is a fucking hellhole, people got really angry about it.

What got lost in the hellhole, that is twitter, was the point I was trying to make: While, yes, Latin and Italian are different languages, if we were to zoom in at any point in time, it would suddenly become harder to differenciate. With almost any language it becomes super hard to say, at which point it stopped being language A and became language B.

Now, originally my point was kinda more about how we humans tend to draw abitrary lines, because we deal better with clear categories than spectrums. You know, like we do with genders and such.

Buuuut... Let me talk about ancient languages and more the ancient world, because there is this mistake people make in thinking about history... they draw abitrary lines.

The Slow Apocalypse

When we learn about history in school, we also put history into neat little boxes. There is the Ancient times, then there is the middle ages, then the Renaissance and so on. And maybe (probably not) we will learn about the Bronze Age Collaps. All those things. And it kinda makes it easy to think about it as "this was one period and everything within this period worked like so and so". As in: "Oh, the Ancient Egyptians build pyramids." But... yeah, only during a period of those 3000 years that Ancient Egypt lasted, they actually built those.

And we think of the end of the Ancient empires as "and then they stopped to be Roman". But... of course the people didn't. There were Romans around - so people, who spoke Latin as an actual living language - for a long while. Long enough for that language to slowly turn into other languages. There were people around, who believed in the Roman pantheon or the Egyptian pantheon or the Greek pantheon for a long while. Heck, there are still people around who believe in it. And with those I do not mean neo-pagans, but people who for generations have kept traditions alive.

When we hear "Bronze Age Collaps", that also often gets called an apocalypse, we think of it kinda like "Day after Tomorrow and then the world ended", but historically speaking apocalypses rarely (outside of the context of colonialism) went like that. With the Bronze Age it went relatively quick - like 50 years - but... Even after that... The Bronze Age Collaps happened around 1500BC and as you might have noticed: Yeah, those cultures became smaller and less organized. But they did not vanish.

Those apocalypses took place over a century. Not just three months.

Not really Dead

And now we come back to the stupid twitter joke of Italian actually being Neo Latin. Because here is the thing: The old cultures... they didn't really die. At least those, that were not actively erased. And heck, even quite a few of those are still around.

You know. When Black Panther 2 came out, I saw so many people being very confused about Nakia going around and talking to Maya people. Because of that. They do not realize that the Maya are still around. Especially as we think about the Maya - another "advanced civilization" - as dead and destroyed. But it isn't. The Maya are still around.

And... that is true for a good few parts of the Ancient cultures as well. As I said, there are still people around who believe in that stuff. And there are languages, that came from those cultures as well. Things changed. A lot. But if you actually go to those places, you will find that there is stuff that is still around. Festivals, that are still celebrated. Types of music. And shifted languages.

Here is the thing: We should not idealize the past. But... I also think that it is wrong to just act as if everything from back then is gone forever. There are cultures for which this is true. Cultures, from which we only will find ruins buried in layers and layers of earth and dust. There might still be fragments of the Indus river civilization found in India. But we know too little about that civilization to say that they really are. And other cultures might really have vanished, without us even knowing about them today.

But... just think about the Indo-European religion and culture for a moment. We do not know where they lived exactly or how they lived for that matter. But there are still bits and pieces from them around to this day. Bits of their language, of their religion.

Things do not end. They change. And I find that... strangely hopeful.

[fandonnavyce]

Crossover Danuary Day 2

Day 1 - Ben 10 Xover

Day 4 - DpxDc Xover, Alice in Wonderland References, Dead on Main

Sokka looks over at the final one of the trio. A spirit. Obviously. He had snow white hair and glowing green eyes.

ATLA Crossover, Sokka POV

Don't forget to reblog to spread the post!😊

Read Fic Below

See Sokka was a sceptic, not stupid.

When a monstrous forest spirit drags you away from the reality you know and then you find yourself dry-heaving in a paranatural forest, where the air is buzzing with unnatural whispers, the ground and sky is host to freaky animals, and the tint of your skin is off-colour; it doesn’t take much to figure out that you’ve been Spirited Away.

Getting dragged by a monster forest spirit into the Spirit World was not exactly what Sokka thought would happen when travelling with the Avatar in order to defeat the Fire Nation, but maybe he should have seen it coming. Being around the Bridge to the Spirit World, clearly meant that the chances of travelling to the Spirit World have drastically gone up. Sokka, from the corner of his eye, still and wary, watched the monstrous raging spirit utterly ignore him and go away.

Pros: he’s no longer fighting an immortal spirit.

Cons: he’s now very alone. In The Spirit World.

“Hey are you feeling alright?”

Scratch that con, clearly Sokka was not alone.

Wiping the corner of his mouth, Sokka blearily looked up to see who had just spoken to him.

Sokka did a double take.

In front of him were the three strangest people he’s ever met in his entire life. And he’s including Aang at the bottom of that list. Aang may be the sole survivor of a nation dead for over a century but at least he was still from one of the Four Nations.

These three people obviously weren’t.

Two-thirds of them didn’t even dress in the right colours. And the one who did failed to even get close to getting anything further right.

The girl was dressed in black and purple, styled in fashions Sokka suspects might be vaguely similar to what a Fire Nation teenage girl might wear. Maybe. But her features, whilst still human, were unfamiliar. Although, fair skinned and dark haired like the richer natives of the Fire Nation or Earth Kingdom, the cut of cheekbones, the shape of her violet eyes, betrayed that she was anything but.

One of the guys, the one dressed in Earth Kingdom colours, was similarly unfamiliar. His colouring (the yellow of his top, the green bottoms, his warm dark skin) may be common in the Earth Kingdom, but everything else wasn’t. From the slant of nose, to the threads of his clothes.

Sokka looks over the final one of the trio. A spirit. Blatantly. He had snow white hair and glowing green eyes.

Sokka crossed his arms defensively, “Who are you?” he asked in suspicion.

The girl spirit answered very matter of factly, “We’re lost.”

The two boy spirits pulled a face at that response but ultimately didn’t correct her.

“We’re looking for the Bridge to the Spirit World?” the spirit guy further explained. “We’re here to be his Spiritual Guides, his Mentors, in his role as the Balance Between Worlds.”

“Oh, you’re looking for Aang,” Sokka brightened up in realisation. That made sense. Aang was the first active Avatar in one hundred years. The Spirits probably would be interested in helping out Aang so that he could restore balance to their world too, not just the human one.

“Is Aang the Bridge to the Spirit World, meant to bring forth Balance Between The Spirit World and the Human World?” the dark skinned one asked.

“Yeah that’s him. In fact Aang is currently in the middle of trying to do just that, and it’s not going so well. That's why I’m even here in the first place.”

“Oh?” all three chorus. It was a little freaky. Which is probably par on course for spirits.

“Yeah, I kinda got kidnapped by this angry monster spirit when I was trying to save Aang because it was attacking him.”

“It was attacking Aang, the Bridge to the Spirit World?” the girl clarified.

Sokka nodded, “Yeah that’s right. You can just call him Aang though, it’s way short-.”

“Ah we’re being moved” the white haired spirit interrupted in a blase tone.

“What?”

All of a sudden the landscape warped and one second Sokka was standing in a freaky forest and the next he was back in that village. His stomach twisted and groaned in protest at the displacement.

All around him, villagers were getting greeted and hugged by loved ones.

“SOKKA!” Katara came sprinting up to Sokka to give him a hug.

“Hey Katara, what’s going on?”

“You were trapped in the Spirit World for 24 hours! How are you feeling?”

Sokka put a hand on his queasy stomach, “Like I seriously need to use the bathroom.” He was just about to waddle away to do just that when he noticed his company.

The trio were standing behind him.

“Erm who are they, do you know them Sokka?” Katara looked at them in wild-eyed bewilderment. In fact all the villagers were starting to pay attention to the three.

“We’re here to be Spiritual Guides to the Avatar,”

“In order to help him on his Journey”

“And help bring back Balance between the Human and the Spirit Worlds.”

Omake

Danny@Aang: Apparently your mentor, the Air Monk, talked to my mentor, the Spirit of Time, about how you probably needed a mentor. So my mentor told me to mentor you in the ways of being the Balance to Both Worlds because I’m also a Bridge that Brings Balance Between Worlds.

Aang(Desperately trying to hold back the heartfelt waterworks of gratitude): Monk Gyatso got me an Avatar Spiritual Guru! (ಥ‿ಥ)

Sokka: Wait, hang on, if it’s just Danny who’s the Bridge Person then why are all three of you here.

Sam: Oh we’re a package deal.

Tucker: Yeah, we don't come separately, so you get three mentors for the price of one.

@crossoverdanuary

[aangarchy]

Do you know of any metas that disprove the argument of aang being a bad father? :/

I haven't seen any metas but i personally found the argument for Aang being a bad father weak at best

Aang wasn't a perfect father, that much is clear. But imo no Avatar can ever be a perfect parent (no one can be a perfect parent but i digress). The Avatar has a responsibility to the world. There are times where the Avatar isn't allowed to be selfish. For example, think of when Aang had to let go of Katara in order to access the Avatar State. How would Katara feel if he ever told her that this is necessary for him to activate it every time? I'm sure she wouldn't be fond of the idea.

The only thing we have to go on when it comes to Aang and Katara's parenting, is episodes 3 and 4 of Tlok book 2 (at least that i know of). Tenzin tries to recall his childhood memories that he thinks Kya and Bumi were a part of but turns out, they weren't. We don't know the reason for this, and we don't find out. I'm assuming these trips were perhaps intended as "airnomad lessons" or something like that, and that would be a reason for the other siblings to not be present. We do have to remember that Aang has a nation to rebuild. He's the only one in the world that was physically present during the time of the airnomads, and he only has so much time between his Avatar duties. He's the only one that can authentically pass on the customs. That's probably why these trips felt so frequent to Bumi and Kya, the few times Aang was present he was off with Tenzin for airnomad teachings. (Again this is my assumption. The writers never gave us a reason for the other siblings being absent or for the trips to even have occurred.)

(Personally i do feel like this is affected by bad writing. Why on earth would Kya and Bumi not also be considered part of the airnomads, as well as the watertribe? Why would they not learn everything there is to know about their heritage, even though they don't master the element? Instead bryke made Kya a mini Katara, Tenzin a mini Aang and Bumi just kind of floats lost in the middle, and is clearly supposed to be a mini Sokka. It's a very poor example of a mixed family.)

Kya and Bumi's version of the events are obviously going to be biased. They felt like their father was never there, and they're very angry with him for being absent (who wouldn't be). Tenzin's view is also biased, he was the youngest and spent the most time with Aang. It surprises me that throughout this episode, they never once mention what Katara was like as a mother. All of their anger is aimed at Aang (easy target, the mf is dead already) but Katara is also responsible here as the other parent. What were discussions like? Did the kids ever tell Katara how they felt? She was still married to Aang it's not like they had separated and started co parenting. They were a team. Did Katara spend a lot more time with Kya to teach her about the watertribe? Did she take Kya on girltrips? What was Bumi doing during all of this?

At the end of these episodes, when the siblings reconcile, Kya shows them a family photo. They all look back on it fondly. If Aang was truly such a horrible father (or even abusive like some people have claimed bc why not throw every term around) they would not look at this picture like that. They like their family, as flawed as it is. They clearly have good memories too, but because these particular episodes are about how parents aren't perfect (the conflict between Ikki and her siblings mimics that of the one Tenzin has with his) those memories aren't talked about.

Anyway to summarize this into a point: i don't think Aang was a bad or abusive father. I think he was unfortunately an pretty absent father as a byproduct of being the Avatar, and that he committed the ultimate parent sin: picking a favorite. I wonder what type of parent Roku was, or any past Avatars that had children.

[guessimabasicnerdgirlnow]

That age gap poll reminded me of a thing I was thinking a few days ago!

A long time ago something or another in the comics, or maybe in the wiki, made me think about Symby’s age. I think it was the wiki, that suggested or affirmed that Knull had directly created Symby, which would make them very old

Anyway the main point was that, the idea that Symby was directly created by Knull. For some reason I had always thought of Symby being younger than that, but I had no evidence to back this up

A few days ago I realized there is evidence! The whole thing with Toxin being the 100th of their lineage. I never understood if it meant they are the 100th individual, or 100th generation (I like this one more - this makes both Carnage and the Life Foundation symbiotes and even Sleeper and Dylan the 99th generation) but either way there are at least 97? 96? symbiotes between Symby and Knull

(Of course, with retcons and stuff, it’s entirely possible that some author or another did make Symby older in their comics ignoring this whole thing. But I remember not being convinced by whatever line they based this claim on)

(Also if I recall correctly, Knull was caged in a kinda recent past? I think he’s supposed to still be active when Grendel attacked Earth, which was around Middle Ages or something. Making it possible for Symby’s age to be on the 3 or 4 digits even if they were made by Knull.)

(I have at some point adopted the idea that Knull was actually caged a very long time ago, long before humans. I don’t care much about Grendel besides Rex. I like to think that Knull was locked for long enough that most of the universe had forgotten his existence, which retroactively explains why he was never mentioned before in the other versions of the symbiotes’ lore, and in fact stopped being relevant to them to the point they had their own internal conflicts (with corruption and all) to worry about and only reentered everyone’s minds when he escaped)

[growling]

For all the (mostly american) mutuals that were curious about the realm of Poland and its strange and unusual inhabitants:

Polish soldiers/armed forces etc salute with two fingers instead of the whole hand. Apparently some cub scouts also do that??

Mushroom picking season is like REALLY big here. Like. It's big. Poles love mushroom picking. When I was a young boy my mother, aunt and grandparents would drop me off into the wilderness to pick boletes for 4 hours straight then get lost and have to navigate back into the car via utilizing the earth's magnetic field to determine our position which took like 1 more hour and then once we got back I had to physically recover from that shit for like an entire week. We got like at least 4 huge baskets mushrooms after that that lasted for at least a few months if they're preserved well however I do not like mushrooms so I never even ate them. Except for cultivated mushrooms these are fine the soup bangs actually

I thought this was normal in most countries but turns out it's just us and a few others in eastern/middle Europe: most movies in Poland use voice-over translation/lektor filmowy instead of dubbing/subtitles. Multiple va dubbing is reserved mostly for children's movies and those real popular but mostly younger audience marvel type movies or something, while the subtitle type of translation is pretty rare and I honestly never even seen it on tv.

A FUCKTON of roadside/wayside shrines just being there, especially in smaller towns. Sometimes theres also a single shrine in the middle of nowhere in some woods with no civilization in sight and you just don't question it

those fuckibg white storks

We still got blasphemy laws ("offending religious feelings"/"obraza uczuć religijnych") by the way. Yes you can actually get arrested and fined and get sentenced to months of restriction of freedom for being mean to jesus

Not removing your shoes upon entering someone's place is considered rude. I feel physical pain whenever someone doesn't do that. Take them off kurwa jebana jego mać stop staining my beautiful surfaces I am going to kill you

Unlike the horror stories I've been hearing about the USA in Poland you're allowed to be rude to customers at your job🥰🥰 You can just not smile if you want🥰🥰🥰🥰 its so funny seeing tourists get so confused and offended over that and half the time we're not even being mean just. Literally servicing you with a neutral facial expression and minimal required effort sfdysrsfjewdggs

Yeah uhh related to above point kind of, there still seems to be a few remnants of a culture of distrust. 30-40 years ago neighbors snitched on each other for subversion and people sometimes just disappeared (PRL times). Fun fact during PRL my dipshit mega absent dead paternal grandfather used to beat people on the street with sticks as a job or perhaps a recreational activity in order to get goodboy points from the police. or the secret police. No idea all we know is that he didn't do that for free. Growling family lore drop

National eating donuts/pączki day. National water fight day

As far as I know, USAmericans (and honestly other english-speaking countries too?) really like to regard people they know only a little as a "friend" like I noticed its really really easy to get called a friend in there. Poles on the other hand are very scared of the word "friend" they really avoid saying it nearly all the time you won't hear a pole just say that. Most people are not our friends. That title is special sacred and reserved for only the worthy ones who you actually genuinely know and trust for a minimum of 10 years. In order to be considered someone's friend in Poland you have to max out all their meters complete all of their quests and defeat their father at the end. Most poles only have like 2-3 true "friends" lmao we really don't throw around that term lightly

Carpet hanger jumpscare

The "polish cow song" people love to meme not knowing the language/lyrics is actually about drug addiction lmao. Sorry. Lol

We also got raccoon dogs here👍👍👍

[wheeljack-boom]

I'm not really a blogger, but I figured I would dump some writing here. Also can be found on AO3 here for previous chapters.

This is a mixed alternate AU, where I'm kind of just pulling things from G1, TF: Prime, maybe Earthspark, other fandom headcanons.

Wheeljack x Human AFAB OC, fully platonic and SFW. Just a sappy, fluffy sweet relationship.

Chapter after the cut.

//

Evenings on this planet were the hours that the Autobot’s resident medical officer had come to appreciate the most. There was a darkened stillness in the atmosphere that wasn’t present on Cybertron, even before the war. Their homeworld had always been overdeveloped and loud, cities and infrastructure covering large swaths of the planet, leaving little room for growth. What Cybertron had left in the way of “frontier” wasn’t much more peaceful, especially after the chaos had begun. The magnetic winds were only background noise compared to the constant roar of battle in the air and on the ground. It had been a very long time since Ratchet had experienced peace and quiet. Every nanosecond was spent running from one end of an infirmary to another, constantly on the edge of collapse while having to focus on saving the lives of the catastrophically damaged and maimed; victims of a war that disgusted him. 

This planet, while not home by any means, had finally offered a desperately needed respite from all the horrors that they had fled. Their circumstances were not ideal; their situation was quite dire actually, but at least the evenings in their environment were quiet. 

Humanity, for all its faults, had at least managed not to destroy everything yet, though they were hurtling towards their own ruin at a breakneck pace. It just so happened that the Autobot’s fleeing ship had crashed in the middle of land their institutions were still making an effort to protect, so that meant it was wild and unpopulated—by humans at least. They were too deep in the dense growth of forest, buried nearly all the way into the base of a dormant volcano, for any human to really come near. Apparently Cybertronian construction was more resilient than the Earth’s geological constructs. There was local wildlife, but their presence tended to keep them out of the area.

That meant everything stayed quiet and, perhaps somewhat guiltily, Ratchet preferred this to what they had left behind. He missed home of course; was desperate to return to it because he knew what was at stake. Not everyone on board the Ark shared his feelings, which was understandable. This was not home. The only exception might have been Bumblebee who was more adaptive, but Ratchet knew he would get over it once he got older. Ratchet was far too old to harbor misguided notions of sentimentality about their temporary habitat, especially when there were still so many left on Cybertron that were dying and suffering. But, he had already sacrificed so much, so for the time being, the Autobot medic savored the opportunity to rest. 

It was why he tended to prefer watching the monitors in the evenings, having volunteered to do it when they were first abruptly woken from stasis by Teletraan-1 decades prior. The ship’s AI had detected increased geological activity in the area which had triggered the emergency systems. Core personnel had been woken first, with the rest of the Autobots still in stasis in the depths of the ship. Amazingly, they crashed with no casualties, though the ship suffered significant systems and hull damage. Repair was not an option, at least at the moment. Their resources were limited enough, which tended to happen when you were literally chased off your planet with no time to prepare.

So for now, Ratchet watched the perimeter at night. Teletraan-1’s security sensors and cameras were still functioning, and the AI was usually the only thing that kept him company. Thankfully, the algorithm was not very talkative. With Optimus Prime and Prowl offsite, he was technically the only authority around, and that meant the others spent time goofing off somewhere else in the parts of the ship that were still habitable.

That was except for Wheeljack, who along with Ratchet was one of the older Autobots in the primary squad of derelict ship custodians. The Autobot engineer was usually more focused on his scientific pursuits with the aim of keeping them alive, while also alternating smaller repair projects around the ship. He was generally in Ratchet’s vicinity more, considering his technical lab and personal quarters were right next to the infirmary, which also meant there was more opportunity for their engineer to get on his nerves. That said nothing about his ability to somehow land himself in the infirmary through sheer negligence alone, quite often. Wheeljack called it experimentation, while Ratchet called it stupidity. 

To his credit, Wheeljack had been taking less risks lately, considering how much energon it would require to put him back together after one of his projects went wrong. He could at least be responsible with his wonton damage when he needed to.  

Despite how much of a profound pain in the aft Wheeljack was, he was invaluable, and also a deeply close friend. Because they were practically attached at the hip during the war, Ratchet knew how Wheeljack’s processor worked better than anyone else. That was why when he found out where their meager supply of an energon equivalent was coming from, he hadn’t been quite as upset with Wheeljack as he probably should have been. Wheeljack thought he was doing the right thing, and truthfully, Ratchet had needed the energon—synthesized or not—more than he needed to take a moral stand against petty theft. 

Optimus Prime would not agree, but Optimus Prime didn’t need to know. Ratchet certainly wasn’t going to tell him. It would take a massive slip-up for him to find out.

There was a silent understanding between them, where he would let Wheeljack know that it was time. He wouldn’t need to be terribly specific, because the engineer seemed to always know what he meant anyway. So far, they had been lucky and hadn’t been caught by the humans, and none of the other Autobots really wondered specifically how Wheeljack was able to keep them supplied. They just trusted that he knew what he was doing, and he did, just not in the way that they thought when it came to their energon stores.

So when Ratchet saw Wheeljack’s signature returning on their monitors that night, he wasn’t surprised. He had been expecting it, because he had told Wheeljack himself—nonverbally—that they needed more energon, and he didn’t ask questions. Sideswipe had needed extensive repairs on a dislocated shoulder and pectoral plate rupture after finding out that rock slides generally didn’t appreciate an audience. It used up everything they had. 

However, as he watched Wheeljack’s approach, it suddenly became apparent that something was wrong. The Autobot was moving faster than normal—certainly faster than any normal human vehicle would be able to move, especially without drawing unwanted attention from authorities. Since the forest roads were secluded, and were largely defunct from Ratchet’s understanding of the area’s history, there weren't any humans patrolling it anyway. That didn’t make it any less suspicious however, and Ratchet’s anxiety immediately started to prickle at the back of his neck.

“Wheeljack, what are you doing!? Are you being chased?” Opening a com link, Ratchet was immediately met with a startled wall of emotion, almost as if the occupant on the other end wasn’t expecting to be contacted.

“No.” The reply was immediate, and abrupt. It was obvious something was wrong, but Wheeljack was hesitating. The tension apparent on their communication channel made Ratchet’s proverbial hackles raise. “But we have a problem.”

“Who’s we in this scenario?” Ratchet fired back, feeling the heat of his temper flare from just this simple back-and-forth. Wheeljack was being frustratingly cagey about why he was traveling at speeds he wasn’t even sure a Cybertronian would deem safe outside the race tracks. 

“I need your help,” Wheeljack clarified, and it was at this point Ratchet knew something was really wrong. His tone of voice, usually much more… manic, sounded wrong. So much for his quiet evening.

“What did you do? Are you hurt?” Ratchet wasn’t sure if he should be angry just yet, because it was entirely possible that Wheeljack was gravely injured and he just couldn’t tell on the scanners yet. He said he wasn’t being chased, so what could possibly have Wheeljack so rattled—wait— ”Wheeljack why is there an organic signature on you?!” It was hard to detect initially with Teletraan-1’s scanners, but it was there; faint, beneath Wheeljack’s own personalized spark trace, but now unmistakable. 

“Just wait—” Wheeljack was finally off the road, and had arrived through the Ark’s broken loading bay. Ratchet immediately left the monitors to meet him, and at first he wasn’t sure what to think as Wheeljack looked fine, except for the way he frantically transformed to his feet in a stunted, awkward manner that he had never seen before. The medic’s first assumption was that he was injured, possibly by a human, and the traces of an organic reading on him meant that the hapless creature had picked a fight they wouldn’t win. It was a short-lived thought as soon as he saw why Wheeljack had been so delicate in his transformation. Now he was just livid.

Livid, and for the first time completely out of his depth as he stared with cold fear at the human that Wheeljack currently held in his hands. From what he could tell with cursory scans, the human was alive, just unconscious, but there was something else that had Ratchet alarmed.

It was the active energon he could sense on it.

“What happened?” Ratchet quickly recovered from his disbelief and wasted no time motioning for Wheeljack to follow him to the infirmary. One of the perks of all the other Autobots tending to avoid being in his company meant that the infirmary would be empty. One didn’t tend to hang out with the medic, because that typically meant you were with him for a reason. They wouldn’t be bothered, and absolutely no one else could know about this. 

“I.. I don’t know…” Wheeljack faltered, and already Ratchet could hear the guilt in his words. “The energon cube…” He trailed off distantly as he followed closely behind Ratchet nearly at his heels. Wheeljack not knowing something wasn’t necessarily out of the ordinary, but it had never instilled such an oddly distant emotional response in him. He was usually excited about the prospect of finding some new obscure knowledge to fill his processor. This was different, and Ratchet had to know exactly what had happened to cause this. 

“Put the human here,” Ratchet said curtly in an attempt to redirect what he knew to be Wheeljack’s racing thoughts, rounding around a medical berth once they made it into the infirmary and motioning for him to put it down.

It was not unnoticed by Ratchet how carefully and delicately Wheeljack figured out how to lay the unresponsive human down on a surface generally reserved for much larger Cybertronians. The Autobot was practically wilting right before Ratchet’s optics, and for a microsecond the medic wondered if he was going to have to treat him too. He had never seen Wheeljack so completely slumped in defeat, armor panels hanging slack off his body as if he was going to fall apart right in front of him. While they had been able to keep petty theft from the humans a secret from Prime for this long… bringing an actual human into their midst—an injured human to be exact—posed a whole new set of problems that were going to be very hard to avoid.

Ratchet would have to think about that part later, because first there was the issue of the human’s injuries needing his attention. He had no idea where to begin, seeing as this was his first time even encountering a human in this type of setting. There was never a need to know how to treat a human, so he was pretty uncomfortably blind. When it became apparent that he was hesitating, Wheeljack said without even looking up.

“Internet.” He was staring down at the human with a concerning level of grief, arms hanging limp at his sides. “She hit her head when she went down.” What the Pit happened?!  

Right. That question remained on Ratchet’s thoughts as he quickly tapped into the planet’s Internet database through Teletraan-1’s remote connection, mining it for whatever he could on human anatomy and physiology.  The entire process took mere seconds, and he now had a basic grasp of what it meant to treat a human; something he had hoped it would never come to. Ratchet wished for a lot of things that he couldn’t have, but he wasn’t going to dwell on it. He wasted no time with initial scans to see what he was dealing with: Blunt force trauma to the head, which matched Wheeljack’s very vague retelling of what happened. Superficial bleeding at the site of impact where there was a large laceration that would need manual mending. There were no other signs of internalized cranial trauma above or below the skull, but the inflammation pattern and tissue damage suggested an impact at a fairly high velocity. That meant—

“Wheeljack, this human should be dead.” That significant of an impact to the skull, itself a meager protection for the squishy, organic brain beneath, should have meant instant termination. It was all so fragile and almost pointless from an evolutionary standpoint that it almost made Ratchet mad thinking about how inefficient it all was.

Wheeljack jolted at Ratchet’s analysis and immediately his optics snapped up to meet his. He looked nervous, now rubbing his hands together as if he desperately wanted to do something with them to keep his processor distracted from what was currently going on. 

“I didn’t...” The engineer started to say, and Ratchet frowned, realizing that Wheeljack probably thought it looked like he had intentionally caused this. That idea never even occurred to Ratchet, because it was unthinkable. Nevertheless, something happened and Wheeljack knew. 

“I know you didn’t, but you need to tell me what happened.” Ratchet said, reverting his attention back down to the human who was deteriorating. Its breathing was more rapid than he knew it should be, and its blood pressure kept dipping; it was an odd physiological combination that had no other explanation other than the energon. The energon would need to be dealt with somehow, but the injury was more urgent. Trying to lift the human’s comparatively small head was an exercise in restraint, but it was immediately apparent that Wheeljack, and his scans had been right. The back of its head was soaked with the red fluid that was human blood, matted and congealed within the organic hair fiber creating a mess. At first Ratchet considered shearing it all off to get it out of the way, but something told him that would be a mistake. This human’s hair was... long and unnatural to the extent that he had to assume it was intentional, which meant it was probably something of great significance. The last thing he needed was a human yelling at him; assuming it survived at all.

“She found me. Knew where I was somehow. I got careless and lingered too long and she confronted me and—” Wheeljack started to explain, and it was incredibly distracting.

“—Are you telling me that this human confronted you? It wasn’t terrified?” Ratchet clarified without looking up.

“She.” Wheeljack corrected. “Her name is Allison.” Ratchet winced in annoyance, wondering why the identity of the human was so important. How did he even know the human’s name? Wheeljack didn’t elaborate further and turned his back, appearing to want to change the subject. Ratchet could see him surveying the supply shelves in the periphery of his vision as if he was trying to formulate his own potential treatment solution for an organic creature that shared no physiological similarities to their own kind. “The energon…” Wheeljack trailed off, lost somewhere out in the cosmos and Ratchet knew he wasn’t going to get any more answers out of him right then and there. That wasn’t his priority anyways.

“This wound needs to be cleaned,” Ratchet muttered to himself, faintly realizing that he wasn’t sure if he had the right chemicals and materials to clean and close the wound. With delicate fingers, and an incredible amount of practiced precision, he was able to pull apart the clumps of fiber to reveal the chaotic damage pattern of a blunt-force wound through the human’s skin. It was still slowly oozing fluids, but there wasn't significant enough blood loss to be a threat. The skin was swelling around the tear, but any major bleeding had stopped. Concussion was still a likely possibility, but the human was already unconscious. Infection was a major risk, so it would need to be sanitized properly.

This was the moment that all of Wheeljack’s pent up terror finally exploded in a manic energy, directed at none other than Ratchet’s dwindling medical repair supplies. He was tearing things off the shelves, looking for what he assumed to be anything they could use as an antiseptic chemical. Finding this highly alarming and counterproductive, Ratchet stopped what he was doing and intervened.

“Wheeljack, stop tearing apart the infirmary! You aren’t going to find what you need by throwing everything around!” He was just fast enough to stop him from potentially destroying a very large containment vessel by dropping it in his haste—something which Ratchet very much needed.

“Hydrogen Peroxide!” Wheeljack blurted as he spun around. His optics had gone wide and he froze, waiting for Ratchet’s judgment. He sounded incredibly stressed, more so than usual. 

Hand still grasped firmly around the engineer’s wrist, hovering between them where Ratchet had stopped him as he was turning around—he could not trust Wheeljack wouldn’t impulsively throw said item in an effort to expedite the process—the medic finally understood what his outburst had meant. Hydrogen Peroxide, a disinfecting agent, and Wheeljack was holding it aloft between them.

“That’ll have to do,” Ratchet grunted, letting go of Wheeljack’s arm so that he could hand it over properly. It was possible that Ratchet ripped it out of his grasp a bit more forcefully than he should have. “You still haven’t answered my question,” the medic called over his shoulder as Wheeljack followed him back to the table, his prior outburst fizzled out and depleted. In the interim Ratchet subspaced an anti-static cloth, typically used to stem energon loss on wounded Cybertronians, and began to clean the human’s head. “What happened? ”

“...I told you. She found me.” Ratchet couldn’t tell if Wheeljack was now being intentionally obtuse, or he was really that oblivious under present circumstances. 

“Let me ask a better question then, who is this human, and how did this happen?” 

Wheeljack looked to the side, clearly avoiding Ratchet’s gaze. “Technically that’s two questions…” “Wheeljack.”

There was a very prolonged pause where the light behind Wheeljack’s optics dimmed, before shifting as the engineer looked at everything but Ratchet in the room. He was stalling, but rather than press him in that moment the medic was more concerned with the actual job he needed to do. 

Eventually Wheeljack faltered, air cycling through him as he formulated a response. 

“Eh—well—remember that time some cycles ago when you caught me stealing?” Wheeljack was still looking sideways, avoiding Ratchet’s withering glare as he looked up from his task. “The first time I mean.”

Ratchet leaned forward over the prone, unconscious human, hands braced against the berth as he looked at the other Autobot square in the optics. There was no way. “Wheeljack. You’re not telling me this is—” Of course Ratchet remembered what Wheeljack was referring to: the first of many times the irresponsible fool had snuck out behind everyone’s afts to steal energy from the humans. Something else had made that particular time different from the others.

“Yeah… it is.” Wheeljack practically caved in on himself, guilt and shame making him nearly fold over into a posture of submission and despite his utter annoyance, Ratchet hated to see him this way.

“This is the human that saw you.” Ratchet didn’t know how it was possible, so many years later that Wheeljack would just happen to blunder into the same human twice. And of course, it would be Wheeljack to do something so monumentally careless. What were the odds? Unless—

“She found me.” Wheeljack finally said, looking down at the floor in defeat. “I think… she figured out what I was up to because she… remembered; came looking for me.”

—Unless the human had the sense and knowledge to be able to find him on their own… but how?

Ratchet also distinctly remembered telling Wheeljack to deal with it when he’d revealed that a human had seen him. He hadn’t meant for him to terminate it of course, but Wheeljack had never shared exactly what went on that night. When he’d returned to the Ark, he’d certainly noticed that Wheeljack had been… bothered by something, and it was so out-of-character for the Autobot that Ratchet had actually asked him what he’d done. All he’d said was that he’d handled it—and it wouldn’t be a problem. Maybe, Ratchet should have pried a bit more, to ask him what exactly had transpired, but he’d trusted that Wheeljack would resolve the issue without compromising their safety, and his morals.

He’d certainly done one of those. Whether or not there was any reason to be concerned for their safety now was up for debate.

“What happened that night?” Now though, to get a better sense of why he was trying to figure out how he was going to stitch a human’s head wound—the very same human that had run into Wheeljack decades prior—Ratchet needed some answers. Specific answers.

It was suddenly as if a dam broke. Wheeljack unfolded from his slumped position and went completely stiff as he stood straight, armor panels flared in distress.  “She was just a child Ratchet. I wasn’t—I couldn’t just leave her there alone—” Wheeljack’s explosive defensiveness seemingly out of nowhere hinted at some repressed guilt the engineer had been hiding for some time. All Ratchet could do was raise a brow plate at him, silently allowing him to get out whatever it was he needed to. “—She… she wasn’t afraid of me… she was actually excited to talk to me, and Primus I just stayed and… talked to her for a little while and she was so happy, until I had to go because—” His voice had gotten incrementally quieter as he continued, the memories that it seemed he’d been holding in for some time quite literally taking him back to something that had clearly had a great deal of an effect.

“—That’s enough, Wheeljack.” If Ratchet hadn’t cut in, he ran the risk of sitting there listening to Wheeljack explain himself for an eternity. 

“Her father eventually came to retrieve her. Didn’t see me. But I didn’t talk to her again after that. Kept my distance.” He stopped, as if collecting himself for the moment, and as he continued to speak the words were slower and much more deliberate. “Eventually, stopped checking in on her to… make sure and figured I’d never see her again. I guess I underestimated human memory…” Wheeljack didn’t need to finish that thought, because it was clear what had happened.

A lot of things were starting to make sense now: Wheeljack’s withdrawal when he’d returned, lasting for some time where now something Ratchet had suspected was confirmed. He had been checking on the human, presumably to make sure she hadn’t put them all at risk and that it was safe to not escalate the situation. Eventually, satisfied or otherwise, Wheeljack had stopped disappearing for prolonged periods of time. 

Wheeljack hadn’t wanted to, because he had been lonely and wanted to feel like he had a connection, even if it remained from a distance and unseen. The short time he had talked with the human child had been meaningful enough to make him linger, and that confirmed a number of Ratchet’s fears all at once. 

“Until she found you.” All Ratchet could do was vent air, wincing as he realized he’d done so directly onto the human in front of him. The human… her body didn’t react, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t inadvertently do damage without really trying. For the first time Ratchet… hesitated, an uncomfortable pulse in his spark making him interpret some foreign code impulses that he knew he shouldn’t be feeling. He was annoyed; so annoyed, but also… scared.

“I was careless and the humans got a photo of me,” Wheeljack started, raising his hands to stave off the almost immediate expletives as it sunk in for Ratchet what that meant. “It was my alt-mode, no need to blow a gasket. But, I think she saw it and figured out where to find me. Smart.” Ratchet thought he detected a hint of admiration in that statement, but he was more upset with the fact that Wheeljack could have compromised their entire existence. If he had been caught in bipedal form instead…

That status quo hadn’t just been changed, it had been completely overthrown into disarray.

“So let me get this straight. The same human from all those years ago found you, and the energon cube caused this?” Ratchet evened his tone, now more focused on productive results rather than dwelling on things he couldn’t change.

Wheeljack shrugged before crossing his arms across his chassis, his optics scanning the ceiling as if to recall what had happened. “I got distracted and the cube overloaded. Couldn’t stop it in time and it fell. It bounced, and when it got close to her it reacted like it was reaching out. Never seen that before. The amount of energy it discharged was—”

“—More than enough to kill her. Or should have anyway.” Ratchet added, putting the final piece together himself. The implications were troubling but they would have to investigate that later.  

The statement hung between them in silence while Ratchet worked. Wheeljack’s silence meant that he was deep in contemplative thought, perhaps already trying to piece together the technicalities of what had happened and why. That wasn’t Ratchet’s area of expertise, though he was not completely ignorant to the physics behind energon storage and production. What Wheeljack was explaining should not have been possible, unless they’d simply never encountered the right conditions to actually test such a reaction. 

Ratchet didn’t really have the presence of mind to scold the Autobot, who was skillfully avoiding looking at him, intentionally or not. Wheeljack had put them all in so much danger, but for some reason he couldn’t bring himself to really blame him for what had happened. It seemed like he was doing enough of that himself already, because they both knew something like this was inevitably going to happen anyway. Ratchet supposed they were at least lucky in this case it had been the same human, as statistically improbable as that was. 

Wheeljack, unique as he was, was not an anomaly. Prime had noticed it too, and had spoken to Ratchet about it in passing out of concern. The other Autobots were… restless. Isolation and seclusion was not agreeing with any of them, and the younger amongst them in particular were showing the most severe signs of loneliness. They were growing curious, fascinated by the humans and yearning for some type of contact if only to satiate their increasing desire to know more. By nature, they were social creatures, so the escalating carelessness and diminishing fear of the planet’s native inhabitants meant that eventually… the fortified, secure bubble that had been carefully cultivated around them for decades was going to explode in a spectacular fashion. Someone was going to make contact first, intentional or not, and somehow, it was not all that surprising that it was the Autobot standing in front of him.

“I don’t have suture material,” Ratchet mumbled, and he sensed Wheeljack relax near him, perhaps with the possibility of setting on something more productive. “Might want to start stealing that too.” His sarcasm was not lost on Wheeljack who finally smiled then, the action quick but nonetheless obvious as his optical lids narrowed in companionable amusement. 

“I knew you’d thank me eventually.”

“Well right now we need to stop wasting time. Hand me the…” Ratchet’s processor cycled through hundreds of possibilities at once. He had a collection of different monofilament materials typically used to repair delicate energon tubing within a Cybertronian’s endoskeleton. “... Polypropylene-sterite thread spool over there,” he gestured in the general direction of a partially broken cabinet against the wall, knowing Wheeljack would know what to look for. It was a material that could be absorbed by a Cybertronian’s physiology and simply be cycled out as waste. For a human, while it was a material similar to something they would use for their own medical sutures, it was not something they could absorb. That meant eventually they would need to be removed, which also meant…

“The human will need to stay here.”

“Eh—what?”

“At least until I can remove the sutures—”

“—Pretty sure a human doctor can do that…”

“If this human walks into an infirmary with expertly applied sutures and no prior documentation to explain them, that is bound to raise questions. We can’t risk it, and furthermore we have no idea what the immediate effect of the energon exposure will be.” Ratchet could tell that Wheeljack had nothing to argue with, because he loved to argue with him. That meant one of two possibilities was happening: Wheeljack was far more interested in the data that could be collected regarding human exposure to energon to be worried about his blunder being exposed, or he wanted the human to stay. There was nothing stopping both from being true.

“About that energon…”

“Right. Do you have the energon cube that reacted to her, or did you leave that behind for all of humanity to find?” Ratchet had finished closing the wound with great care, having a number of needle options at his disposal and one just small enough to be useful. They were generally used for delicate internal Cybertronian physiology and electrical stimuli for therapeutic reasons, but he was able to manipulate one thin enough so as not to damage the skin further.  

“There’s no need to be rude, I got it right here.” Wheeljack subspaced the glowing energon cube and held it aloft. Ratchet could tell it wasn’t completely full, probably because it had expelled some of its stores when it… exploded. 

“I think we can use it to get the energon out of her. Hand me that EM absorption array, will you?” Pointing once again to a long, hand-held de-ionization module that was typically used to reverse electro-magnetic build-up. It was a long shot, but he thought that it might be able to pick up the energon—itself a highly charged energy—from the human’s body and convert it directly into the cube as something usable.

“You think—” Wheeljack started, the lights behind his optics glimmering as an idea began to fully form. Ratchet was admittedly surprised that Wheeljack hadn’t thought of it sooner. “I can modify the cube to interface with your little medical thingy—”

Ratchet scoffed. “—It’s not a thingy, it’s a very critical piece of equipment that I’ve had to use on you multiple times when—never mind, we need to move fast because the human’s blood pressure is dropping again.”

Without needing to be asked twice, Wheeljack placed two fingers on the facing edge of the cube and swiped sideways, revealing the command module where lines of glyphs rapidly filtered across the interface. He typed in several lines of code, the cube making a rather unpleasant squawk twice when he made mistakes, until finally he nodded at Ratchet to indicate that he was finished.  

“Is that thing going to work on a human?”

“Unclear,” Ratchet said, holding the module aloft by the handle and placing it over the human’s body. He sensed a spike in energy when the warm glow of the leading edge spread out over the small organic form, and taking that as a good sign he passed it down the length of her. It was working—slowly, but as he initiated a stabilized scan he could detect a release of sorts, not unlike a valve loosening pressure as the energon slowly siphoned out of her.

The operating word being slowly, Ratchet knew this was going to take a while. Wheeljack had been watching the cube itself, a manic glee passing over him as he shifted his stance excitedly. “It’s working… oh, this is going to take forever…”

“No kidding.” Ratchet grunted, noting that his joints were probably going to get sore after all this. “I hope you have nothing better to do, because you aren’t leaving my sight right now.”

There was the matter of what to do when the human actually woke up, so Ratchet supposed they had plenty of time to think about that.

///

[toughvaughn]

He Got Game 🎡🎪 Pt. 1

꧁ pairing: Earth-42!Miles! x Blk!Fem!Reader!

꧁ warnings: Vivid language! Whatever Else Is In Here, Figure It Out!

꧁ a/n: Miles (19)! Reader (18)! Reader pink! Miles purple! Others whatever color you see!

꧁ summary: You and your three friends; Cerhys, Xyles, and Davi decided to go hang out this weekend, going to the carnival. Xlyes and Davi running late, arriving with another boy you and Ceryhs don't know.

꧁ word count: Long asf!

It was finally the weekend; the last day of the week, Friday, you and your three friends Ceryhs, Xlyes, and Davi planned on going to the carnival over in Coney Island. Friday that evening you drove up from D.C., currently where you were attending school, and headed to your parent's house. With a little coldness in the air, and it being October, the amusement park was bound to be more entertaining and active, the best time to go to the park too.

You guys decided to meet up around 4:00-4:30; since the time is set back and it gets darker earlier now, you guys still needed some time to try out at least half of the rides at the park. And they always did that light show once it struck midnight, it’s been a while since you last went to Coney Island, the last time you went was when you were a kid. But you and your family never stayed long to see the light show, being that you and your siblings had a curfew and everything, not even on weekends would you guys be able to see it.

So, you were kind of semi-excited to see it. You were old enough to stay out, as long as you called your Mom every 30 minutes; to see if you were still alive and breathing. As annoying as it may sound; that was the deal between the two of you, you got to stay out as long as wanted as long as you called her every 30 minutes to update her about your whereabouts, making sure everything was alright.

But, this time your Mom said you didn't have to do it this time around; just as long as you behaved yourself. Your Mom and Dad weren't gonna be home, not until tomorrow morning, overseas, out traveling for work.

Your younger and middle siblings at y’alls grandparents' house; giving you and your other brother, Yamrai, who was the same age as you, the house all to yourselves. Yamrai did his own thing with the people he hung out with and you did yours, getting yourself ready to head out, slipping your Supreme x Air Max Plus TN 'Mean Green' on your feet.

˗ˏˋ ★ ˎˊ

You left the house around 4:38; not really in a rush. Knowing damn well Cerhys, Xyles, and Davi weren't actually gonna be there at the designated time you guys set. Taking your sweet time heading down.

Traffic going through the city; people coming about from work, ending up behind some slow-ass motorists, missing the green light cause of their lack of speed, and sometimes getting stuck at the light.

Should've left earlier…

After sitting in an annoying amount of traffic; you made it, finally. Driving over to the off-street parking, the sun was nearly setting over the horizon, and the vibrant colors gradient within the firmament. A cool whisper of the wind came rolling in once you shut your car off, the song on the radio going mute, same with the roar of the engine to your car going quiet.

The unreadable muffles of people walking and conversing with one another; from your left-side rearview mirror, the faint reflection of the glare of the sun leaving the sky.

The car is still slightly warm; it fading away as the cold approaches you. You started gathering the stuff you needed while you were out, stuffing it in the pockets of your lively unzipped green Nike ACG 800 Fill Down puffer jacket. The crease and ruffle of your circled-necked white tee fall to your tall and slim framed person, and the bottom of your flat underbelly a masquerade sometimes, before your shirt adjusts back over it. Throwing your car keys, house keys, phone, and AirPods in either pocket.

The swing and twirl of your multiple silver-chained, rhinestone double cross charm necklaces around your long neck. Picking up your hand and untangling your necklace from the top of one another, your long green iridescent and designed and charmed acrylics assisting you. The slightly bigger and smaller rhinestoned encrusted pendants glide smoothly along your clothed collarbone, adjusting it to your liking around your jugular, propped up by your clothed breasts.

You put down your sun visor and look at yourself in the mirror, making sure you ain't look a mess. I mean, not like anyone’s gonna be looking at you, but, at the same time, you never know.

Looking at your nicely pinned up, high bun, no piece of hair sticking out in sight, except for the back, where your kitchen resided, for creative purposes. Your neatly laid down curled edges, lay flat upon the crown of your hairline, twirling and curling the long curls that were also laid down to the sides of your face. A couple of long strand pieces of your hair in the back of your kitchen were left out, and the ends of some strands of your hair were snuggled up to your natural curl, and styled to look soft and classy.

The glimmer of your pierced-out ear; your studded diamond earrings trailing down the 'C' shaped hearing organ. On the top of your ear laid your silver sandy glitter Playboy Bunny Industrial Bar tailored to your ear; your two twin tragus piercings on the small piece of cartilage that covers the ear canal.

After checking yourself; you slapped up your sun visor, grabbed ahold of your door handle, pulled it forward, and pushed it out. Turning your body out of the car; jumping out, closing the door. Pulling down and fixing your baggy black Nike x Stussy SS23 Washed Sweatpants, as they got bunched up when you slipped out of your car. Digging through your jacket's pockets, grabbing ahold of your car key, locking your car, the sound of the car automatically locking.

˗ˏˋ ★ ˎˊ

Walking around your car; making your way off the street, over to the dock. The structures of the Ferris Wheel, Music Express, The Super Himalaya, The Delusion, and The Dream Catcher, were in the distance. Bitch; there was a lot to rides, and not gonna lie, you were excited to go on every one. The swift breeze of the wind tickles your nose, getting the aroma of the ocean.

The faint vibrant lights of the carnival, the colors knocking off other buildings within the vicinity of it, and the over-the-top welcome sign at the front entrance of the carnival. Reading: 'Coney Island Celestial Park', the bulbed rainbow lights that aligned perfectly within the giant letters of the sign giving everyone a light show as they go in and out.

As you step foot within the property, the smell of funnel cake, corn dogs, and cotton candy attacks one out of your four senses. Bringing a sense of nostalgia to your mind and soul.

Bundles and groups of people are scattered along the park, amusement conveyances are active with people, food, and game stands serving cooking, and taking people's money. It was a sight to see and something you also missed; dearly.

The creaking of the old wooden flooring of the pier makes its presence known from your body weight and many more. Ceryhs texted you prematurely; her already here, to your amazement, you scoured out for her person. There were litters of people left and right to your peripheral vision, everywhere you looked, seeing a couple of people your age walking around and from your school, who you've seen before, and made a quarter of a second eye contact with a couple of times before.

Ew.

You quickly evaded that; turning your attention elsewhere. Still looking out for Ceryhs, that girl wasn't hard to find, she was brown-skinned, short, slim-thick, and knew how to dress. Sound like every dreadhead dream.

When it came to looking for her, she wasn't hard to spot. Cerhys has been your best friend forever now, you knew to a point where you could at least spot her out from the public, and the stuff she wore was always visibly vibrant and a tad bit flashy.

She had her own style that I could elucidate to be her own; most plausible to stand out from the crowd of people that russel and scatter on the pier. You still couldn't pinpoint Cerhys anywhere, for a girl who dresses in vigorous colors, you’d think she’d be easy to spot.

At this point, you pull out your phone from your jacket’s pockets, unlocked it, and texted Ceryhs of her whereabouts. Cerhys was nonexplanatory with her grey responses, she was telling you where she was but didn't. Everywhere you turned about to glance at the place she claimed to be at, she wouldn't be there, like, girl, stop giving directions.

Out of nowhere; a light tap met your shoulder, causing you to turn around.

“Girl bye, talking bout I don't know how to give directions.”

Cerhys restated what you said to her in your text, giving you a stank face and rolling her eyes.

As you stated; priorly. Ceryhs popped out with her bright colors, in her rich hot pink cropped Ed Hardy Tiger Crown Zip-Up, with her matching Tiger Crown Fleece Sweatpants. Mini Platform Suede Ugg Booties on her feet, adding a couple of inches to her already short height, correspondingly wearin' her tan Palace Faux Fur Jacket.

The jacket is slightly open, with the hood of her cropped zip-up hoodie thrown out behind her, overlapping the furred collar of her jacket.

A solid gold necklace with her name plated, a star at the end of the name of her gold plated name, and a gold rose pendant hitting up against it. Same with her expressive small gold bamboo earrings that swung about from her ears, her gold piercings running up the sides of both her earlobes.

“And don't.” You pushed back.

“You just don’t put your mind down. But, I don't know how to give directions. Okay.

You scoffed and shook your head and smirked; grabbing Cerhys by her arm and pulling her in for a hug. Holding her tight and rocking her side to side, the height difference between the two of you making it all the better, your chin resting on her neatly braided back head, the purposefully left-out curls tickling your chilled skin.

“Girl, get off of me. Wanting to catch an attitude with me. Moovvveeeee.”

Ceryhs trailed off with a whine; trying to have an attitude with you. Both her hands are on both sides of your arms, while her Hello Kitty cased phone still in the threshold of her hand, still trying to get out of your suffocating affection. Her large, brown heart-shaped fur bag hanging over her right shoulder, swaying and hitting the side of her knee, as she struggled with you.

“Bitch, you love me. When did you get here anyway?” You questioned her; pulling her out of your unbreakable hug.

“The time we all agreed on; 4:00-4:30,” Ceryhs mentioned. “How come you got here late? You are always here before anybody.” She continued.

“Traffic coming down here. I left a little late, but I’m here now,” You informed her. “Where’s Davi and Xyles at?” You asked.

"You already know it’s gonna take those niggas a century to get here.” She reminded you; a cool breeze pushing itself by the both of you, making Ceryhs stuff her hands in the pockets of her jacket.

To your recollection; you knew what she was saying was true, those two are never somewhere or anywhere on time. It’s gonna take them a good minute before they come, leaving you and Cerhys to wait for them out in the October cold.

“I’m not waiting for those two bobble-headed ass niggas.” Ceryhs expressed firmly, the sound of her teeth chattering being emanated. “Not in this fucking weather, they got me fucked up.” She resumed; a sneer becoming of her lips, her body language, agitated. Looking left and right of her.

“It ain't that cold out here.” You opinionated; knowing your statement might piss Ceryhs off further.

“Girl bye. You never cold; like, why is your jacket not zipped up?” She questioned you; looking about your person. “Just looking at you is making me cold. Zip that shit up, bruh.” She reprimanded.

“I’m fine; you just whining, for real.” You teased.

Cerhys gave you a noticeable and heavy-ass eye roll; not before walking up to you and grabbing your zipper, zipping it up with one swift motion. The color of your white tee, no more, just the bright green, clouding Cerhys vision, quickly stuffing her hands back in her pockets.

“I know yo ass feel better, cause there’s no way you wasn't cold.” She mocked.

“I wasn't, though.”

“Girl don't lie to me, lie to your mother. I could see your nipples through your shirt.” She giggled

You rolled your eyes and chuckled. Yeah, it was a tad bit cold outside, nothing you’d admit to, though.

After that ya’lls little side show; Ceryh's head shifted to the right of you, as if she was trying to look at something behind you, blocking her view. Her face soon contorted into confusion and a faint squint of her eyes, why was she looking like that?

You soon turn your body in the direction of where Ceryhs was looking; to your view, it was Xyles and Davi at the front entrance of the park, chatting and laughing it up with each other. But, is that why Cerhys was looking all distraught and shit? You’d think she’d be in relief to see those two finally arrive, but the closer the boys came, you saw that she was starstruck about.

A tall man was trailing behind the two; he was huge, even from up close. Don't know how you didn't see him from afar or before, what is he doing behind them though, he looked like a bodyguard if asked me.

“Who’s that?” You finally questioned; still looking at the boy.

“Shit, ion know. You seen him before?” Cerhys uno reversed a question back to you, while still looking at the boy as well.

“No. Should we tell them that nigga stalking behind them?”

“I think they would've felt that niggas presence by now; cause ain't no way you missing him.”

The boys finally approached the both of you. The big boy in the back, the two individual braids on the side of his head, running down to his broad shoulders. Currently looking down at his phone, while still behind Xlyes and Davi; the two finally breaking the conversation with one another, looking at the two of you.

“SHAWTIES!” Xlyes shouted aloud; the skinny, tall, lanky light-skinned boy doing a funny walk the rest of the way over to the two of you.

“How are my two favorite bitches doing?” He asked with no hesitation. Throwing both arms over you and Ceyrh's shoulders, the drawstring to his hoodie hitting the both of you.

“Boy-” You and Cerhys both warned him; looking at him crazy.

“My bad; I meant, how are my two black, ratchet Nubian Queens doing?” He reworded himself; slightly no change in his words, still trying to be funny.

You and Cerhys both start hitting him with the front of y’alls hand; Xlyes quickly retreating back from the two of you, tip-toeing over to Davi, acting as if he’s gonna save him.

Davi playfully and forcefully pushed him back to you and Cerhys, Xlyes's scary ass dipping out every chance he got, all of you laughing and cursing him out. Davi walked over to you and Cerhys giving both of y’all a side hug, Xlyes trying to do the same thing, not before getting quickly smacked upside the head.

“Sorry we're late; we had to take care of something,” Davi explained.

“And that was?” Ceryhs asked.

“We had to pick up our nigga…MILES MORALES!” Xyles announced; walking over to the large boy who had put his phone away a while ago, probably just watching y’all interact this whole time.

Miles Morales? That name did click in your head; like you heard it before or someplace, but nothing came up.

“Say hi, Kilometer.” Xyles continued to joke.

Everyone turned their attention to the towering boy; his appearance was a bit off-putting, not to sound rude or anything, but, he looked mean in the face. You know how that one quiet person in class that just don't fuck with nobody and they got that real rough, mean look on they face. That’s what he looks like. That's why I say that; not to mention his imposing, prolonged height, and lithe, lean frame.

His hands were in the pockets of his black North Face Himalayan Down Parka puffer jacket; you examined him further, the open appearance of his light grey double-layered hood of his hoodie was up and out from the confinement of his puffer jacket, laying about on the puffed collar of his jacket, just waiting to be thrown over his crown.

From the subtleness of his thick clothing, you just knew he was ripped to shit under all those damn clothes. Your first thought when he first arrived; those clothes might be baggy on him, but, you knew for a fact that he probably looked crazy under all of them clothes. Everything about him seemed big, his shoulder, frame, hands, arms, something else that I won't conjure up right now, but, you get it.

Very ill-minded of you to think about…

I mean, you just met him and you wanna be dirty-minded right in front of him.

The jacket was not all the way zipped up; a push and shove with the front of his hoodie, the slight bag and sag of his matching light grey sweatpants, from his left pocket, something long and bulged was stuffed in it. It could be…anything. Right?

His phone, his wallet…his…anything.

But, looking further down; he had Jordan 11’s on 'Cool Greys', you had the same pair of shoes at home, but in a different color. They looked like they hadn't been worn, fresh out of the box, the sight of his ankle socks, the bottom of his sweats covering them. The laces that would tie the shoe together, were retreated back within their assigned holes, making the wear of his shoe cleaner.

Your eyes trailed back up to his face; and to your surprise and embarrassment, he was looking directly at you, his eyes hooded, the slight assault of his hazel/brown eyes on your eyes, his eyes darting up and down your small form.

Fuck.

How long was you staring at this nigga for? You probably look weird as shit. We're you being loud when you was partially undressing him?

It seems Big Boy was giving you the same treatment you were giving him, but he wasn't drooling while he was doing it.

“Nice to finally meet y’all…” Miles spoke; with a slight monotone in his voice. Even a little bit of an accent, if you weren't mistaken, the bob of his Adam’s Apple apparent.

“Ceryhs. Nice to meet you as well.” She introduced herself.

It was your turn, but you were kind of stuck, you kind of just stood there, not saying anything. Everyone looked at you, a bit worried.

“y/n…?” Xlyes, Davi, and Ceryhs called to you in unison.

With an elbow to the side of your stomach; you hissed in pain, a sharp pain now burning at your side, rubbing it to soothe it.

“Shit…what?” You whined.

You looked down at Ceryhs; she looked at you with a serious look, darting her eyes back over to Miles and the others. You quietly and mentally cursed yourself in your head, you turned your head to face Miles.

He kept his eyes on you; so did everyone else, but not the way he was staring at you. The indefatigable hues and shades of picturesque tones of pink, blue, red, purple, and yellow, every color, hit his brown melanated skin. A tiny studded diamond nose piercing that resided on the right side of his nose. Accompanied by the flashing glow show, his board, and his tall frame earned the same treatment.

“y/n…Likewise.” You finally introduced yourself.

Once you introduced yourself; he kept looking at you for a good second, not before nodding his head.

“Not to be rude, but doesn’t explain why he’s here.” Ceryhs pointed out.

“He here 'cause my boy here needs to get out more; so, I suggested he hang out with us. He doesn't get out much.” Xyles explaining his presence.

“He cool; let’s just show him a good time. A’ight?” Davi advised the both of you.

The five of y’all walked to the front; where all of you purchased your tickets. After one person paid for theirs, they went on to the side, out of line, and out of the way. Waiting for the others patiently; you were the last one.

“Okay, let's get on some rides, bruh.” You responded; wasting no time, grabbing Cerhys hand and pulling her beside you, walking further into the park.

The boys waste no time and follow behind y’all; as you and Ceryhs walk up ahead in front of the boys. Cerhys and your arms intertwined with one another, as y’all walked, you felt that Cerhys wanted to say something to you, without even looking at her, you just knew.

“What you wanna ask m-“ You spoke; no before being cut off by her.

“You like him don't you, bitch?” Cerhys teased; nudging you with her elbow.

“Like who?”

Cerhys side-eyed you as if you thought she was stupid or got 'Boo Boo The Fool' in bold letters on her forehead.

“Bitch, don't play with me. And it’s not like it’s a secret, the boy’s fine, you can tell me.” She informed you.

“He’s okay.”

“The way you was eye-fucking him, I don't think "okay" is the word you’d describe him to be. You can think of something betta than that.”

“Yeah, he fine. But, it’s not like he want me. He probably got a girl or something.” You assumed.

“Girl, really just shut the fuck up right now. Y’know that boy was feeling you and looking at you the same way you was looking at him.” Cerhys stated; sucking her teeth.

You didn't want your expectations to be high; not wanting to even be bothered by the idea.

"Bitch, don't make an intense staring contest something bigger than it already is.” You firmly stated.

“As fine as he is…ion think he was feeling me like that. So, drop all this other shit, and let’s go get on some motherfucking rides.”

You dismissed her and the conversation; finding yourself moving away from Ceryhs and walking over to the Music Express. It was currently active; the rapid circular speed train-like car ride moving clockwise, music from the contraption playing aloud. The backdrop, normally covered in artwork and lights, provides a mild head-chopper-like effect as there was an exit next to the entrance where the riders previously entered from to get on the ride, near the rear section.

People were already on the ride; screaming and laughing, going pretty fast as they circled around in an intense altercation. Everyone seemed to look like a blur as they went around and around, your vision a bit impaired as they went about. "Again" by Fetty Wap blared out, not before the ride went counter-clockwise, pushing everyone that was secured in their seats forward themselves.

“O! They playing old Fetty. Fetty Wap was my shit back then; it’s been a minute since I heard him.” You chuckled; watching the ride go on.

Cerhys catching up; eventually, standing beside you, looking at the ride as well.

“Mm-hm. They playing all the old shit.” Ceryhs chimed in, the boys are now behind both of you.

“♫♪Married to the money, I ain't never letting go. Baby, it’s ZooWap from the fucking bando! ♫♪” Xyles sang obnoxiously loud right in both you and Cerhy's ear. The slight crack and high pitch in his supposed-to-be baritone voice. Ugly ass tryna hold a high note.

“Xlyes bruh, let Fetty sing his shit,” Davi beseeched; rolling his eyes.

“Bitch, I can sing. Y’all just mad.” Xlyes sassed.

“Nigga….” You and Cerhys both interjected; the word trailing off the both y’all tongues in unison, not without laughing.

The ride for the Music Express finally came to an end; you quickly made your way over, the new wave of people making their way over to the mellifluous contrivance. Thankfully; your people were right behind you, so you didn't have to sit next to some random, you turned around to see who would be seated with you.

It had to be Ceryhs…

Why? Not because you felt uncomfortable with Davi and Xyles or anything; they were your boy bestfriends. It’s just because you have a bit of a… preference when it comes to people.

Xlyes; you love the boy, he was another brother you didn't ask for, but you got him. He can be funny and goofy at most times, matching your energy. But then that energy starts to be a bit too damn much, making your ass itch to a certain point where you wanna wrap your hands around his throat and choke him.

Davi; a stand-up comedian just like Xlyes, black ass always got a damn punchline. You love him to hell and back, another brother your are grateful for, you two click, but not like, click. Not like that. Like him and Xlyles do, so that's why it really has to be Cerhys, she gets you, she’s YOUR bestie, and your hers.

And it couldn't be Miles…

Plus. You barely knew the nigga, and it would've just been awkward. For you, anyway.

To your better judgment; it was Cherys. Looking behind your group, Miles obviously being last, would be paired up with some random. You felt somewhat bad; but, that's life.

With that, you quickly got over it, really excited to get on this ride. The ride operator now let y’all come and get seated into the two-passenger cart; you and Cerhys together, Xlyes and Davi together, and Miles…

With some lightskin chick, he was chatting it up with, the girl all up in his personal space, licking her lips and laughing real fucking hard at whatever his big black ass was saying. Couldn't have been that fucking funny…

You kind of glared from a distance; not before the two of them were seated two carts behind you and Ceyhs. You soon put your attention back, facing forward, while rolling your eyes and sneering your lip in annoyance and dislike.

Obviously; Cerhys caught it.

“What’s wrong with you?” She questioned; eyeing you up and down.

She turned around to look at what you were looking at; prior. And she saw the light-skin girl rubbing up against Miles, her arm entwined with Miles's muscled one, whispering to him and laughing. Ceryhs cocked her head back with confusion. The fuck did she come from? Was her first question; her second one, who the fuck did she think she was?

“And…who the fuck is that?” Ceryhs asked aloud; not one to keep her words and thoughts to herself. Xlyes and Davi both looked at her, then turned their heads around to see what she was yapping about.

“Shit, ion know where her ass came from. But, it look like she likes herself some Morales.” Xlyes voiced; to you and Cerhys annoyance.

Ceryhs just glared at him; not before facing back up front. Xlyes and Davi were both confused about both of y’alls attitudes, abruptly coming out of nowhere, were y’all both not just in a good mood? The fuck happen? Did they miss something? Did they do something they didn't know they did?

“The fuck wrong with y’all?” Davi questioned; not understanding why both of y’all acting a fool.

He turned himself back around to see what the problem was, not before looking upon what you two saw.

“Ohhhh…that’s what y’all upset about.” Davi expressed; coming to an understanding.

“What? What they pissy about?” Xlyes asked; curious to knew what got y’alls drawers in a bunch.

Davi then nodded his head to behind him; to where the light-skin girl and Miles were, he took a quick glance, not before smacking his teeth and speaking.

“I know you not mad about that?” Xlyes asked; sitting himself up, getting right in the middle between the open space behind you and Ceryhs.

You both stayed quiet; answering Xlye's inquiry.

“Why the fuck you upset about it, Ceryhs? Don'tchu got a nigga already?” He stated.

“Boy, I’m only mad 'cause my friend is. Pipe down.” Ceryhs shared; informing him.

“Then why you pressed?” He then asked you.

“I’m not; ion want to talk about it. Thank you.” You dismissed, ready for this ride to fucking go.

Subsequently, the last group of people was seated, and the operator of the ride went back behind the thing that operated the ride. Letting everyone make sure they're secured in their seats, not before flipping a switch, the ride started back up, and so did the music.

20 Minutes by Lil Uzi Vert, begin to play. Screams and laughter started to pick up from everyone on the ride, you couldn't help but smile and laugh yourself. The intense rock and shake of the contraption itself was a lot, moving you in your secured seat, Cerhys smile and laughing as well, holding tight onto your hand, your hair being blown back by the wind coming forward.

Your vision becomes impaired; the colorful lights that once stood still, are now a striked lines, a blurry and hazed line of color. Even people who walked around the active Carnival become all the more fuzzier, the smell of food running away from your nose, coming back every now and then before leaving once more. The feeling of coming up and going back down was abrupt and expected, your other hand holding tight onto the railing that was holding you into your seat.

Without a warning, the ride operator sent the ride to go backwards. Everyone screaming 10x times louder than they were before; sending you and everyone that once moved forward, jolting onward. Your hair blows forward as well, long pieces of your hair flying around; unaccordingly, everybody’s person rocking side to side; a high-pitched scream coming from behind you and Ceryhs.

The both of you couldn't help but turn around, seeing that it was Xlyes, of course. The both of you giggled, both of y’all bending slightly forward in your seat, your hand hovering over your mouth as you couldn't stop laughing. Cerhys threw her head back, the both of you still holding each other hand, after a couple of minutes, the ride finally came to an end, your legs feeling like jelly, your knees about ready to buckle on you at the worst of moments.

Once your feet finally touched land; it felt a bit weird and abnormal, your footing and everything were off. Having to depend on Ceryhs and Davi to keep you up; both of them at your sides, holding you up, people flowing out of the ride, the heavy sound of metal being walked on.

“Whoa, damn. Haven’t been on those in a minute.” You admitted; with a laugh.

“Yeah, we can see that. Can't stand up on your own for shit.” Ceyrhs joked; still holding you astray.

As all of you were conversing with each other, that light-skinned girl and Miles, still talking to one another. Mostly Little Miss 'I Haven’t Felt A Mans Touch, So I’ma Touch Up On Anybody' ass bitch kept up with her unneeded affection towards Miles, Miles was really just too unbothered to tell her to give him his personal space or was trying to get lucky.

They make their way over to you, Cerhys, Davi, and Xlyes. You and Ceryhs both smack your teeth and roll your eyes, the little scrumpt was parading herself out, only wanting for Miles's gaze to be on her, pulling and tugging on his muscled arm to come closer to her, not letting up. All of a sudden your way of balance comes back altogether, moving away from Ceryhs and Davi’s touch. Turning on your heel, walking away, your hands in the pockets of your puffer jacket, finding something better to do, then look at that.

Everyone looked at you as you walked away without warning; but, only Davi, Ceryhs, and Xlyes knew what was up. Ceryhs soon followed behind you, Davi looked at Ceryhs as she walked off as well, not before he turned his attention back over to where the light-skin and Miles stood, Miles talking to Xlyes.

“Uh, yeah, me and her gonna walk around. I’ll meet back up with y’all later, a’ight?” Miles informed Xlyes; the lightskin clinging onto Miles like her life depended on it.

“Oh, a’ight bruh. Will be around.” Xlyes acknowledged; soon dapping Miles up.

Miles dapped him back; saying a last "A’ight, imma see you", before nodding his head over to Davi. Davi gives him back the same gesture; he and the girl walk off, somewhere else around the carnival.

Davi asked Xlyes what was up with that; all he did was shrug his shoulders, walking away to go find you and Cerhys, Davi walking beside him. The two of you didn't go far, at the long arranged rowed lines of concession stands going down from the Ferris Wheel back over to the carnival games, the both of you standing to the side, talking to one another.

You and Ceryhs both saw Xlyes and Davi coming towards the two of you.

“So…what was that about?” Xlyes asked, his arm coming over and around your shoulders, pulling you into him. Looking at Davi and Ceryhs, before looking back over at you.

“Absolutely nothing.” You dismissed; rolling your eyes.

“It doesn’t look like nothing, it looks like something. So, what’s the matter?” Xlyes asked again.

You didn't want to say, because it was too embarrassing and stupid. You already told Cerhys that you weren't interested; but, you were also not, not interested, the boy was fine. You didn't take his intense and intimidating stares accountable or as his way of feeling you. Considering you were undressing him right to his face, god knows what he was thinking in that moment when you were that.

Disgusted? Confused? Annoyed? Anything; you couldn't read him even if you tried, from the first time you laid eyes on him, his expression was no more than stoic and cold. If he were to walk into a loud room full of people, he’d most likely be the reason they’d go quiet once he stepped foot inside, he just didn't look…approachable.

It sounded real hypocritical and deluded coming from you, but that was your opinion. Not like it was needed, it’s just what you saw, from his face, body, and demeanor, it was a challenge not to say you weren’t a bit overawed by his appearance. And you couldn't say you weren't attracted to him; you’d be lying to yourself.

“It’s honestly nothing.” You stated; more firmly.

“Girl, just take your L and just admit your jealous,” Ceryhs advised; knowing you too well and better than anyone else not to call you out.

“Shut up, Cey. Ain’t nobody jealous.” You becoming a bit defensive on the topic alone.

You got away from Xlyes and his long arm from around your shoulders, walking a couple of feet away from your group, looking about at the carnival.

“Bitch, there’s nothing to be defensive about. If you like the nigga you like him, acting like you committed a crime or sumin.” Ceryhs reassured, walking up beside you.

“The boy just gets a lot of female attention,” Ceryhs informed.

“Clearly.” You flatly gathered.

“My nigga Miles is a lady killer, my boy gets down, he don't play,” Xlyes spoke; clapping his hands together with every word he uttered out.

You and Ceryhs looked at Xlyes; Davi just shook his head, smiling while looking on somewhere else, trying not to laugh. He be just saying shit, especially at the worse of times, making the situation the more hysterical.

“Xlyes. Just stop talking, cause like why you gotta be you, like right now?” Ceryhs interjected; trying to wrap around Xlye's thought process, trying to understand why he thought that time to say that was okay.

“Cause it’s true; my boy got bitches coming after him left and right. I know y’all girlies don't like to hear it, but that’s just life.” Xlyes stated.

“Boy-” Ceryhs didn't finish before going over and hitting Xlyes; Xlyes putting his arms up over his face. Lifting his sweats up swiftly and ready to square up with Ceryhs heavy-handed ass.

“Come on, bitch. What’s up? What’s up?” Xlyes taunted, at this point, the two of them were play fighting with each other. Which they always did.

Xlyes would take a step back and step up everytime Ceryhs would get too close or distance herself from him. The both of them sometimes throw false hits at the other one, walking around in a circle while still cursing at each other.

You and Davi stood aside and watched the two go at it; it was the norm for them to be at each other's necks until the other got tired of the other, which was always Ceryhs. You couldn't blame her; Xlyes was a lot to take in, always going back with you.

“Okay, Dumb and Dumber, let's not get into a squabble. Let's just have a good time.” Davi interfered, looking at the both of them still at each other.

You snickered at Davi’s comment, Cerhys looking over at Davi like his crazy, rolling her eyes and bucking at Xlyes. Walking away from him and back beside you.

“And don't call me dumb, nigga.” Ceryhs informed Davi, with his smart-ass comment.

“Yeah, aight. Tussling around with a dumbass, Dummy.” Davi threw back.

Cerhys shot a hostile look at Davi and seemed about to physically attack him. However, you stepped in and intervened by placing your arm around Cey and hugging her tightly to your side. This prevented her from causing any further harm to the boys, and you placed her on the other side of you. You now stand where she previously stood beside Davi, with your arms locked around each other in a comforting embrace.

“A’ight y’all! Let's just tend to what we came here to do and enjoy our time.” You spoke freely; looking left and right of you, at your group.

The group unanimously agreed to the terms and conditions, breaking their silence with a chorus of teeth smacks and eye rolls.

“Yeah, a’ight,” Davi mumbled.

“Yeah, whatever.” Ceyrhs followed behind.

“Yeah, you better calm your ass down, always tryna start.” Xlyes voiced in tauntingly.

Cerhys was quickly about to lunge at Xlyes before you tightly kept her at your side, not wanting these white people to think y’all around crazy than y’all are.

“Xlyes!” You reprimanded, glaring at him.

“You is not helping. Please, let’s just have a good time.” You begged; trying to ease the uncertainty between everyone.

Everyone huffed and puffed; reluctantly agreeing with your words. Turning on y’all heels and walking back where you guys came from, heading down the alsie of where the many carnival game trailers arranged from the Water Gun Game, the High Striker, the Hangman Challenge, Balloon-A-Rama, Mid Range Basketball, Shoot Out The Star, and a lot more you’d like to name, but you just wanted to fuck around and find out.

It’s been a hot minute since you’ve seen these games, nostalgia overflowing within you, the intoxicating and hallucinogenic flashing of the colorful lights making you feel even more childish. Just want to run off and try out one of the games they had about as an option and there was a lot to go off of, too many to choose really.

But, you had all night, so did it really matter?

Then your eyes laid upon one of the games, the game that people would assume you’d be most experienced in, something you couldn't possibly be out niggaed in.

Hoop Shot.

“Oh shit! Y’all, we gotta do this one.” You wooed; stopping everyone abruptly, pointing and looking at the large game trailer, that took up half of the spot it occupied.

As you gestured towards the source of the commotion, everyone's gaze followed suit. A trailer contraption adorned with bright and dazzling LED lights that radiated a carnival-like aura, especially in the dark. You couldn't help but feel the excitement and thrill that filled the air.

As I looked around the bustling game area, I noticed a constant flow of people coming and going. The Hoop Shoots Game Trailer was particularly popular, with its impressive size that could accommodate four different hoops at once. A small group of individuals had already gathered around the trailer, eagerly waiting for their turn to compete. You could see a couple of people already shooting their shots at the mid-ranged hoops, their focus, and determination palpable in the air. It was clear that the game was not only a source of fun and entertainment but also a way to ignite healthy competition and camaraderie among its players.

If you remember; vividly, this game was a bitch to win, your not very good at basketball. Especially if your competing with other people, particularly, with people you know, you were very competitive, so there was gonna be a slick chance of you trying your hardest, even if you didn't make one damn shot.

You were leaving here with something.

“Ohhhhhhh! So, you wanna getcho ass beat? Oh a’ight, fuck it….we ballin'.” Xlyes taunted; feeling that it had to be announced to the whole damn world.

Niggas 🙄

“Nigga, you wanna fuckin' bet. I’ll lay yo ass out, right fuckin now, say I won't.” Ceryhs interjected; her faint, yet strong Louisiana accent approaching lightly in her voice.

“And fuckin' won’t, baby.” Xlyes mocked her and her accent, cocking his head with sass, a slight sneer on his lips, just as Ceryhs’s lip.

“Boy-” Ceryhs cut herself off, about to got of on the lightskin boy.

Before Ceryhs had a chance to try any of that; you, Ms. Captain Save A Nigga, interjected once more.

“Okay, okay, let’s just settle this. A’ight?” You joined in.

“Settle this? I’mma wipe the floor with all of y’all.” Xlyes continued to taunt.

“Nigga, your not LeBorn. So, calm your dick, boy.” Davi joined in, getting tired of Xlyes as well.

“Y’all wanna fucking bet? I can wipe the floor with y’all without even trying.” Xlyes challenged all of you.

“Bet.” You, Cerhys, and Davi together.

“Alright, if I win…y/n, Ceryhs. Y’all gotta hook me up with one of y’all’s friends.” Xlyes smirked with a smug smile, biting his bottom lip and rubbing his hands together, slowly. While slowly nodding his head.

“Like any of OUR friends wanna fuck withchu,” Ceryhs noted.

“Oh, so, y’all know I’ma gonna win?” Xlyes taunted.

“Nah, bruh. You just ugly little boy. But, we can do that if you win.” You jumped in.

“Girl bye. What do y’all want if y’all win?” Xlyes questioned.

Everyone was thinking about what they wanted if they were to win; obviously, Ceryhs was the one to speak out first about what she wanted.

“Nigga, if I win, you gotta buy me 60-inch Brazilian bundle, with yo money.” Ceryhs slyly told.

“Oh, so your little G.I. Jane cut got you cold? So, you need new horse hair to keep you warm? Yeah, a’ight. Next.” Xlyes mocked as Ceryhs, as he moved on without a care.

“Boy, fuck you. You gonna be eating those fuckin' words once I beat to ass in this game.” Cerhys expressed angrily, her anger pronounced with her vivid hand gestures.

Xlyes scoffed and rolled his eyes, his hand put out in front of her face, blocking her from his line of sight, waiting for Davi to talk.

“Aye, I don’t mind me getting me a girl myself. A nigga lonely, forreal.” Davi confessed.

“Alright, alright, so me and Davi after the same thing. Y/n…?” Xlyes pointed out before moving to you.

“Okay, I got it. If I win, you gotta buy us something all out. My choice. Deal?” You asked, holding your hand out, ready to lock in y’alls bet.

“Of course, it was gonna be food,” Xlyes mentioned.

“Alright, deal. Cause you ain't gonna win, so this is easy to agree to.” Xlyes expressed, taking your hand, and shaking it.

“Alright, everyone has their bets. Let’s go.”

★★★

I thought this would be a full one, but I changed my mind. So, this is part 1, part 2 is being done. After I’m done with part 2, I’ll link it down below.

Thanks for reading my shit, appreciate it 🤭.



[rharsh1213]

RELSHIE

Info below the cut

He's the descendant of Solomon. He tries his best to wield Solomons powers as much as he can to help the devils in battle. They often spend their free time writting letters to Minhyoek or observing the devils around them to fit in better

Profile

Full name: Relshie Alicia A. Bituin

Height: 6'5

Weight: 275 lb.

Birthday: August 27

Sex: female

Pronouns: he/they

Idiosyncrasy: Urophillia

Mental illness: Dependent Personality Disorder (DPD)

Occupation: Freelance artist and part time librarian

Character

Other than being HORNY (in all capitals) hes very blunt, quiet, gullible and caring

Their calm and unconfident, exept when it comes to leviathan. Only playful and energetic when around friends

Their a "this might as well happen" type of person, which sometimes makes people walk all over him

Pre-whb

His filipino parents met while they were both abroad in korea, they dint marry when they had kids and stayed in korea

Their family consists of his mom and dad, their older sister and their younger brother

Their crush on Minhyoek started at grade 1

He got picked on and excluded as a kid for alot of things (not being good at korean, having weird interests, being Filipino, being fat). It got to a point where his mom wanted to move to Philippines but he begged her to stay so that he can be with Minhyoek

At 4th grade though, they managed to be friends with the bullies and bullied other kids out of fear they'll be bullied again

Minhyoek tried to get them out of that toxic friendgroup but they only managed to leave when graduating elementary school

After his family died when they reached middle school. Minhyoeks family voluntarily took him in

They let him stay in the guest room

They burried themselves in school, extra curricular activities, and just overworking themselves in general to not think about their families death. They know its bad but they cant get themselves out of it either (or at least they think they cant)

It reached to the point where their room turned into a complete mess and their life has turned into a tiring routine that Relshie feels the need to stick too or else all hell will break lose

The only break they let themselves have is when they masturbate, sticking to it like a drug

Minhyoek sees this and tries to help them but it only lead to Relshie developing Dependent Personality Disorder (DPD)

Relshie feels like they have to ask Mihenyeok about every little step in their life because from their point of view all of their choices only lead to bad situations and only trusts Mihenyeoks judgment

At this point hes not sure about his feelings for Minhyoek

This behavior only leads to Minhyoek trying to keep Relshie alive and ignoring his own mental health

After 1 year of living like this, Relshie managed to become self aware of their behavior but was too afraid to talk to Minhyoek about in fear of him leaving

It took Minhyoeks family to make an intervention for the both of them to finally talk about their toxic relationship and agreed to equally fix it

Relshie managed to get treatment while Minhyoek got to work on himself

When they were both 18, Relshie expressed his feelings to Minhyoek but said they'll work on themselves first. To make sure Minhyoek knows his feelings ae reciprocated

When he reached adulthood, he mostly overcame DPD. He knows depending on others is ok but doing it too much can cause damage, he stills finds hard to balance it all but hes trying

Extra info

He likes observing everything around him so hes ussually quiet and just staring at something he finds cool, which could be anything now that their in hell.

Their pansexual and is unsure of their gender but is leaning on the masculine side

When others talk to him it catches him off guard for a moment before scrambling to think of an answer. Ussually they'd just let others talk and watch them like a podcast, but that sadly only works in earth. He just wish the others would just talk and he'd listen in in the background

They find it hard to control their emotions, except for sadness

The voice the devils usually hear is not their natural voice, they deepen their voice to sond like a guy. Their natural voice sounds like a girl, he only uses this for the devils he trusts alot

Their pretty informal in their speech, especially with friends and sometimes curse (not often enough to the point where people are shocked when they do.)

They try to make their vocabulary as big as possible (this includes slang to scientific terms) to mix all of it in a comedic way (like ahmadelyo at tiktok)

Ex: mutual in gene(related to u), breathing ig comment section(racist), friendling (friend), breathing ladder(tall person), small y-axis(short person), mukbangless(no food), type 10 babybetes (baby fever), plural people(in a relationship), goo goo ga ga doulingo(baby talk), ad break(pause), breathing embryo(newborn baby),

They also say things like "whoopsi daisy", "okie dokie artichoke", "see you later alligator', "after a while crocodile."

[themculibrary]

Guardians Of The Galaxy Centered Fics Masterlist 4

part one, part two, part three

5 times adam felt something for peter + 1 time peter felt something for adam… (ao3) - JustSomeFanGirling peter/adam N/R, 3k

Summary: As Adam Warlock adjust to his new life on Knowhere and as a member of the Guardians other new feelings out discovered and for a certain team’s captain.

a good idea at the time (ao3) - DaveCumstaine drax/peter E, 3k

Summary: Peter and Drax get separated from the other Guardians during a mission in a snow storm and take refugge in a cave, where keeping their body temperature up results in some physical activity.

alien dame (ao3) - roseylemon bucky/mantis G, 1k

Summary: Bucky meets a cute alien,

Steve mistakes Mantis for one of Thanos’ followers when he finds her in Bucky’s room, he didn’t realize just how much he misjudged the situation.

bad medicine (ao3) - Leenden M, 14k

Summary: Rocket and Drax get sent on a very important mission to take a very rare cure to a group of aliens who are in danger of certain death. Unfortunately, thanks to the Kree, it seems like the delivery might be a little bit delayed.

base of support (ao3) - interabang T, 3k

Summary: The Guardians discover that Yondu would do anything (when he feels like it) to give Peter help when he needs it.

change is never a waste of time (ao3) - Frankensteins_Monster mantis/nebula, gamora/peter T, 4k

Summary: “I still don’t know what this feeling is. But it is magical!”

dog days are over (ao3) - agoldengalaxy G, 3k

Summary: {Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 Spoiler alert!}

“It’s weird, dontcha think?” Rocket asked softly. “Can’t remember the last time it felt so good around here.”

“Yes.” Nebula paused, then looked down at her lap. “I hope…you are feeling it, too.”

gamora, you’re a fine girl (ao3) - Meraki_fics gamora/peter G, 4k

Summary: Gamora has never been good at emotions, being raised by a genocidal maniac does that to a person. Emotions are a weakness, at least that’s how Thanos raised his borrowed children. Emotions were not something she ever spent time on or paid any attention to. However, in her new home with her new family, emotions were something to be aware of.

ground control to major tom (ao3) - Ellen Fitzwilliam Brandybuck (AFixerMuse) yondu/ofc, drax/mantis M, 39k

Summary: Waking from a centuries-long cryogenic sleep, alternate Earth astronaut Major Tommiah Jones finds herself among space pirates, in a world and time apart from her reality. Now she must do what’s necessary to survive, find purpose, and perhaps avoid falling in love with trouble incarnate: Yondu Udonta. Song prompted one-shots. Humorous smut

just us, just maybe (ao3) - MysteryWriter2187 nebula/peter T, 2k

Summary: After waking up in bed with an unexpected - but not necessarily unwanted - companion, Nebula grapples with her complicated emotions about this intimate encounter, and the potential future it may hold. Post-GOTG3 one-shot. Quebula (Quill/Nebula) mostly fluff.

Kinetogenic (ao3) - interabang gamora/peter, mantis/nebula T, 3k

Summary: Gamora and the Guardians rush into enemy territory to save Nebula, only to discover that she doesn't quite need saving. At least, not at first.

last chance to forgive ourselves (ao3) - GloriousBlackout gamora/peter T, 8k

Summary: When all is said and done, Peter and Gamora find each other again in the Soul Stone and try to come to terms with the cost of their mistakes.

little slips (ao3) - trash_act drax/rocket E, 22k

Summary: Rocket falls head over heels for Drax, one little slip at a time.

She Knows (ao3) - JustSomeFanGirling N/R, 956

Summary: Mantis accidentally finds out about Adam’s super secret crush on her brother, Peter.

Supersonic Man (ao3) - interabang peter/rocket M, 4k

Summary: Rocket is rewarded after a successful mission by getting turned into a human. Much to Peter's surprise, Rocket is hot.

that is why (ao3) - TC_Stark drax/gamora M, 1k

Summary: Drax and Gamora meet in the middle of the night to forget their troubles the only way they know how.

the starkquill bunch (ao3) - jdrush peter/tony, drax/mantis, bruce/gamora M, 19k

Summary: The members of Team Cap return from their mission and meet The Guardians for the first time. It goes pretty much as you’d expect. Takes place two weeks after ‘Units From Heaven’ and ‘Close Encounters’.

this too shall last (ao3) - interabang T, 7k

Summary: Gamora through the years with each of her family members.

what’s left unspoken (ao3) - GloriousBlackout gamora/peter T, 13k

Summary: Gamora’s aware that Peter loves her. Though it scares her, she thinks she’s starting to love him too.

The hard part is admitting it.

zuneology (ao3) - interabang gamora/peter T, 13k

Summary: After the war, Gamora listens to Peter’s music player and reflects on her memories with him.

[emmy-dekarios-bg3]

Heart of the Weave - chapter 8 - back to Emmy’s POV

We decided to stay at Sharess’s Caress overnight so we have some comfortable beds to stay in before we head back home tomorrow. We hit up the Elfsong Tavern for some food and drinks before heading back to the Inn. It’s pretty late but luckily for us, we’re used to inconsistent times of activity. We sit at the table, waiting for our food to arrive, just simply enjoying each other’s company.

“Part of me really missed Baldur’s Gate,” Gale says. “When we were here last, all we did was…well, watch several unfortunate and catastrophic events occur one after the other, and smell the horrific odor of bloody corpses. Now, we can actually enjoy sitting at the tavern, or –”

“Watch other people get at it with a drow, get naked in the fountain in the middle of the city, drink alcohol from Hoots that will turn us into sheep. Ah, the fun stuff,” Astarion interrupts, looking content just thinking about these debaucherous acts.

“I at least want to do one really fun activity before we head back home,” I say. “Though, I know we don’t have time but one can only dream, right?”

“Name one thing that isn’t what I listed, I’ll wait.”

“My options are limited, friend.” He rolls his eyes but proceeds to smirk at me. I can tell that he secretly wants me to participate in some ‘extreme’ fun, which used to be me several tenday ago. I laugh as I take a drink of my ice-cold water. Refreshing.

“Speaking of which, I’m so PUMPED about being aunty Karlach. Just imagine all the adventures we will have!”

“Karlach, you’re not taking my baby to Avernus,” Gale retorts, fighting laughter. “I imagine it would not end well for any of us. Plus… I’m getting used to the thought of having a miniature version of yours truly.”

“Aw! Look at Gale getting all comfortable with being a dad, how cute! But can we at least pretend I’d be traveling through the cores of the Earth to the Hells with your spawn? ‘Auntie Karlach, can you please take me to Hell so I can slay some demons or giants or whatever?’ and I’d be all like ‘HELL YEAH, LET’S GO!’ I’m really great, Gale. I’ll be a wonderful influence.”

Gale turns his head, hiding it away so no one can see him laugh, though I hear it loud and clear.

“Oh damn! Speaking of which, we actually need to return to Avernus soon,” Wyll mentions.

“Well, more like a couple days. I just realized how much I was enjoying this little break.” Karlach leans her head on his shoulder, Wyll looking at her sweetly as he wraps his arm around her bulky shoulders. Spending time with my companions makes me almost wish we could adventure together regularly, or at least see each other more. While I don’t miss the gruesome violence and very close permanent death calls, I do miss the fun conversations, the people we’ve met, and building relationships with each other.

“I missed you guys,” I say, half-smiling as I reminisce. “Truly. I know this wasn’t an ideal situation for us to get together, but I’m glad it happened.” Shadowheart leans her head on my shoulder. It feels nice to be back with such a close friend; I haven’t seen her since the reunion camp half a year ago. Before that, it was my wedding day six months prior to that.

“You are the friend who helped me discover who I truly was,” she murmurs. “The friend who helped me overcome what I thought I couldn’t. Thank you.”

“Astarion, my guy! Are you looking forward to leaving this city after so long? I bet it’ll be quite the adjustment.” Karlach asks. He clears his throat, staring at the bar; it’s as if he’s desiring a glass of wine.

“Yes, and I missed all of you. It will be a strange yet exciting adjustment. At least there will be familiar faces and I don’t have to worry about what alley I’ll be hiding at. I miss a nice, cozy bed,” he says. “Half the people here still worship Gortash and he’s been dead for a year or so. Not exactly a pleasant scenery one wants to be around, especially being one of the ones that killed him.”

“God, I still want to punch him in the face.”

The rest of the evening contained several laughs, memories, some minor grieving, and wishing our other friends like Halsin and Lae’zel were in on the fun. Thinking about Lae’zel’s sass and strong-willed attitude, I begin to miss her more. It’s only fair she’s finally free from her toxic goddess and enjoying life in the Astral Plane, as she should. I wonder if the githyanki egg we gave her finally hatched? Is she mothering the child, different from most githyanki? I have so many questions I wish could get answered, but I guess that is set for when she comes back to visit eventually. I just hope she’s alive and well.

We finally head to our room at Sharess’s Caress so we can get some well-needed sleep for tomorrow’s adventure back home. We check in for our room and head up the stairs, walking in between several people who are just hanging around, drinking and having fun, and a weird feeling stirs within my stomach. Something tells me that an unwelcome visitor is about to approach us, and I’m usually right about these instincts.

“Are you ready for a comfortable bed and a good night’s sleep?” Gale asks, smiling as he opens the door. “Well, hopefully.”

Before I could answer, we noticed Raphael standing in the middle of our room, as if he had been waiting for us this entire time. It’s like he knew we were coming here. His eyes are filled with raging emotion, as if he’s after me with a thirsty vengeance. We thought we killed him. We thought he was dead. This just makes everything so much worse. And, of course, this only leads to more questions that I have, but I’ll stress myself out even more if I ask them.

Raphael stands there next to our bed in his human form with that evil smirk on his face, giving me a chill down my spine. In his eyes, I can see nothing but vengeance and desire for control, possibly trying to figure out a way to destroy me. I swallow nervously as silence fills the room, wondering what he plans on saying to us.

“Raphael?” I ask, not daring to take another step. He chuckles maniacally, clapping his hands together. What could he possibly want from us other than vengeance?

“Ah, you two. Such a lovely couple despite the fact you both thought you could destroy me, turn me into ash. You thought you could steal from me with no consequences. You’re strong, I’ll give you that. Determined. Motivated. Though, you lack intelligence thinking you could kill a devil,” he says with a deep, raspy voice that could soothe one to sleep. If it weren’t for his terrifying words, I definitely would be. “No matter. I’m willing to forgive and forget, should you be willing.”

“How…did you come back?” I ask, still in shock he’s standing right in front of us. His evil and cruel smile fills me with rage and I want nothing more than to destroy this horrible man right where he stands. Alas, we tried that before and he still came back. If we don’t die now, it’s guaranteed we will if we try to strike him down again.

“We always come back, dear. I wasn’t sure if you knew or not, but I have the Crown. The Crown you thought I couldn’t get, the one you wouldn’t deliver to me personally. I am The Absolute, or what it wishes it could’ve been. I own everyone: the damned souls, the other devils who were once above me, and…I own you.”

“Cut the crap, Raphael. How did you get the crown?”

“A devil is no different than a goddess, in a way. I talked her with my smooth words into giving it to me. She was squirming with the amount of power, she could not handle how overwhelmed she felt. She clearly did not know how to use it. Then again, she is not about power. She doesn’t know how to contain it. That’s the problem when all you know is the weave.”

“I knew Mystra was insufferable, but I didn’t think she was stupid enough to hand it to you!” Gale exclaims, then groans with irritability and frustration. We look at each other, pissed off but horrified at the same time. What does this mean for our future? For our baby?

“Also, congratulations on the new baby. Maybe your child won’t cross me once it’s born. It would be a shame if…” He pauses, giving us a dirty smirk that makes my skin crawl. “If I took it from you and used it as a thrall.”

“You better not, you sick fuck,” I growl under my teeth. “Don’t even think about it. Man, I liked you more when you weren’t such a cocky and self-centered psychopath. Well, you still were, but not nearly as intolerable as you are now, you delusional monster.”

“Maybe you shouldn’t have invaded my home and stolen from me, you inconsiderate meatsack.”

“Childish argument.”

“Besides, we needed to save Orpheus,” Gale chimes in. “We needed the hammer.”

“I would have given it to you in exchange for the crown, you ignorant fools. Either way, I get the crown no matter what, but in this case, you lose. Remember that.” Vapor lingers from the vapor of Raphael’s disappearance from the room. I can only feel anger and rage within me, trembling from the sight of Raphael in front of me, trembling at his words to antagonize me.

“We can’t let him do this,” I whisper, a single teardrop sliding down my cheek. “What do we do?”

“We have to make some sort of deal or compromise with him. It’s all devils want apparently. You and I both know this unfortunately. The problem is, what kind of deal can we make with him?” Gale is right but I have a feeling what he wants is the one possession I won’t part with.