#reposting this one

[incendiorum]

azzy waits until he hears prolonged silence behind the door, and then elects to shove his way in. col doesn’t even look up from behind his desk, unbothered or distracted or both. the man in one of the other chairs, however, jolts in surprise. “ sir - ”

“ you’re done, ” azzy tells him, picking up the back of the chair and dumping him out of it. “I need the room.”

“ sir, ” the man tries again, flustered.

“ my associate told you to leave, ” col says, toneless, as he flips a pen between ink-smudged fingers. distracted, it is.

brows furrowed and mouth thin, the man leaves. azzy doesn’t bother watching him go. instead, he slams himself down into the empty chair (still warm. gross) and drapes his arms over his bouncing knees.

“ stop that, ” col tells him, finally looking up. he blinks, as if realizing who it is, and then promptly hands over a yellow legal pad with a list of names. “ they’re building a new ship. some of your handlers would like to retire permanently from the field. ”

azzy takes the pad, leans forward to grab the pen out of col’s other hand, and immediately crosses out three names. “ none of them have experience in venator, ” he explains. col just hums.

“ why are you here? ” he asks, turning his attention instead to a pair of computer monitors. azzy sits back, knee starting to bounce again. he’s gathering his thoughts, and he knows that col knows this. the sound of a mouse clicking fills the room.

“ four of my hunters are dead. ”

the clicking stops. “ four? ”

“ dead, ” azzy snaps back. a cool blue gaze slides towards him, and azzy doesn’t shy away from it, even if he really, really wants to. col has a stare that could stop a bear in its tracks. “ what the fuck is with your parent lately? ”

“ io, ” col corrects. “ we aren’t related. ”

azzy rolls his eyes towards the ceiling. “ uh-huh. ”

col leans back in his chair. “ what happened? ”

leaning forward, azzy sets the notepad down, abandoning his current side-project of trying to remember everything that samwell morris currently does for the hounds (everything…? and a frowny face is scribbled in sloppy handwriting in the margin). “ I wasn’t even there. I couldn’t help them or save them or anything. ”

“ azzy, ” col says, softer.

azzy takes a deep breath and looks away, staring around the room, instead. it’s a cluttered old office, which always surprised him. col always seemed like the kind of guy to have a clean, white office with nothing in it. instead, there’s bookshelves laden with books stacked right-side up and sideways both. the cherry-wood desk is banged up and scratched and the leather cushions of the seats are so old and well-used that they seem to have permanent dips in them. there’s a ship-in-a-bottle on the desk, too. supposedly, it’s a replica of the first ship col ever bought for venator. the full-sized version still exists, somewhere, but azzy has never seen it. he stares at it now, following the curves of the gold name painted on the side with his eyes.

“ rose called me, ” azzy starts. “ she said she had iovita practically in their hands. that they were really going to do it this time. I made her go over the plan with me five times. she said it the same way every damn time. ” she had laughed the third time he had said run me through it again. and sighed heavily on the fifth. “ it sounded solid to me. I told her to go ahead. ” he looks up at col for this, and sees no change in expression. “ I tried to call her later and she answered, but I didn’t hear anything on the other side except for… noises. ”

“ what kind of noises? ”

“ I don’t know! noises! shuffling and groaning, I think. a word or two, but I couldn’t make them out. ”

col nods. “ and then? ”

azzy takes a breath. “ she called me again ten minutes later, and said she’d lost damian and nathan. throats burned out. both of them. so, iovita picked them off at some point. ”

“ evidently, ” col agrees.

azzy squints at him. col doesn’t look surprised. instead, he looks resigned, as if he already knows where this story is going. pulling the legal pad back to his side of the desk, col rips off the top page and sets it aside. in careful print, he writes the fulls names of both damian and nathan. “ was it an ‘i’ or a ‘y’ for damian’s last name? ”

“ ‘y,’ ” azzy replies. his voice sounds far away.

“ his mother is catarina. ”

“ yeah. ”

“ I’ll be in colorado next week. I’ll visit her, personally. ”

“ thank you. ”

col sets his pen down. “ alright. continue, please. ”

“ I didn’t get a call back until the next day, ” azzy says, lacing his fingers together and squeezing them so hard it hurts. “ rose was in the hospital and barely coherent. I told her I’d fly out immediately - and I did. but by the time I got there she had already died. burn wounds, of course. ” his voice feels stuck in his throat. he swallows, but it doesn’t help. “ fuck - you should’ve seen how bad they were. I don’t know how she made it away. ”

col’s gaze is carefully blank. “ and the other three? ”

azzy gestures, vaguely, his own gaze sliding away to fix onto the corner of the desk. “ scattered across the city. found in two different alleyways. best I can tell is that iovita led them on a chase. or… chased them, I guess. ”

he hears col lean forward, pen to paper again. “ rose, damian, nathan…? ”

azzy finishes the list for him, “ TJ. ”

col sucks air through his teeth. “ I was hoping to promote TJ. ”

“ he would have made a good handler, ” azzy agrees, voice heavy. silence falls for a moment, but he’s quick to break it. “ what the fuck was their problem this time? usually they don’t tussle with four hunters at once. my hunters, at that. ”

col gives him a look. “ and what would you do, if four witches were coming after you? ”

azzy sits back. “ I’d do my goddamn job. this isn’t iovita’s fucking job. ”

the withering glance col gives him is enough to make azzy blood boil. his voice rises.“ four of my hunters are dead, col! four! and you know who gets to tell their friends and families? do you know who gets to bury them? do you know who gets to be at every single one of their funerals? ”

col puts a hand out. “ do you really think they would have taken out io? ”

io. col always calls them io. it’s annoying. azzy grits his teeth. “ this time? yeah. yeah, they would have. ”

“ stop that, ” col’s voice carries an edge this time, “ and tell me the truth. ”

“ I’m not delusional! I really think they would have. ”

col lifts an eyebrow. when azzy doesn’t back down, he nods. “ alright. I believe you. ” he taps his fingers against the desk. call it a gut feeling, but azzy knows he doesn’t actually believe him.

and why should he? four of azzy subordinates are dead. he knows that when he closes his eyes tonight, the police reports are going to flash behind his eyelids. every burned corpse and every unseeing pair of eyes.

azzy takes a long, slow breath. it doesn’t help. “ you’re… busy with that superpack in the states, right? ”

“ mmhm. ” col’s gaze slides towards his monitors. “ two-thirds should be gone by december, if everything moves smoothly. will you make an amendment to io’s file? make the entire thing on hold. I don’t want to lose more hunters right now. ”

“ you know some will still try, ” azzy points out.

“ I don’t want to lose more of our good hunters. ”

“ oh. ”

col doesn’t say anything else. azzy shifts in his seat, but he knows col’s dismissal when he sees it. standing up, he goes to leave.

“ azzy? ”

turning around, he sees that col has leaned sideways to fix him with a hard look. “ that means you, too. I need you. ”

“ I won’t do anything stupid, ” azzy promises. col raises an eyebrow, but says nothing else.

as he closes the door behind him, azzy pulls out his phone, scrolls through his contacts list, and taps on a name.

[ sms sent , 16:15 ] newest location for iov s?

[ sms received , 16:18 ] pending.

[ sms received , 17:21 ] one lead. will know tomorrow if good or not.

[frenchublog]

kosovo miku

[mikayesha]

I like to think i'm funny:,)

[krysmcscience]

I have some questions about karaoke night, Alex Hirsch. Very Important Questions. Which I will happily scream at a poor hapless baby triangle who can have no answers for me, and possibly also does not have object permanence yet.

Follow-up that is I guess suggestive, but let's be real here, Bill's a fucking triangle:

Dude slipped right into his birthday suit, lmao

this is so stupid :D

Anyway, I don't care what anyone says, this brilliant individual knows what's up - Bill is absolutely way more of a monsterfucker than Ford could or ever will be, full stop.

[uglygirlstatus]

babe get out the yaoi dinner settings we’ve got company

[santapau]

One from the archives.

[syrupbitee]

sanji's first days in the crew

[microwavingfranky]

Punching and chewing on the walls of my enclosure

[bunnykyu]

they are not really drunk

[arcane-gold]

hello rookanis nation. can i present rel and lucanis’s dynamic. sun and moon trope, one with boundless energy and one who gets 2 hours of sleep a night, guy i pulled by being an idiot, etc. they’re special to me

[brotato-chibs]

they go flying 💨🍃

[crow-person]

save a horse ride a cowboy !!!!

[mellliow]

[anixolt]

old stylised art of the bros

[littlelilikoi]

🍊