#she doesn’t realize that I’m nothing and that she showed up at a stupidly fragile time she can kill me with words alone

[ssajj]

Francis Forever

Five years ago, you ran away from Spencer. When a case brings him back into your life, you both realize how unfinished you left things. 

3.4k, fem!reader

Warnings for the past death of Y/N’s family, mental health struggles

It’s stupidly hard to breathe, even more difficult to not start cursing out your therapist, who had been the one to recommend this trip. Go home, she’d said. Tie up the loose ends that keep threatening to strangle you. Well, you’re here now and everything feels worse. But you’re sick of running, so you push your shoulders back and walk into the dingy check-in room at the motel you picked. Five minutes later, you walk back out, key digging into the palm of your hand. 

It’s been almost five years since the last time you were here. You’d held out as long as you could, hesitant to leave him, even if it was killing you. He’d noticed, of course he had. He was too smart and caring not to, and so he’d been the one to buy you the train ticket. 

You’d promised to call. 

You hadn’t. 

The last time you’d met up with her, your therapist had brought up the idea of calling him. You’d promptly gone into a panic attack, whimpering that you couldn’t see him, not after you’d run away from him, ignoring that his worst fear was abandonment, stomping on his fragile heart in an attempt to save yours. Once she’d settled you enough that the tears were drying, she agreed that you wouldn’t have to see him if you didn’t want to. 

You miss him, though. You do. You think about him more often than you want to admit, wondering how he’s doing, if he’s eating enough, if he’s still in the same job, if he thinks about you, if he’s happy, if he’s moved on in a way you haven’t managed yet. There isn’t a good point in wondering all of those things, especially considering you have no plans on seeing him while you’re here. In fact, you’re aiming to leave the motel room as little as you possibly can. 

In your sleep, you dream about him. 

“Y/N!” Spencer laughs, grabbing you at the waist and sweeping you off your feet. He spins you around like you’re a princess. This has quickly become a habit: he’s gone for a long case and then smothers you in affection when he comes back. You’ve already told him that he doesn’t need to feel guilty for being gone for so long. So far, he hasn’t been listening. 

Taking advantage of your sudden height, you kiss the top of his nose, liking the blush that spreads across his cheeks. He puts you down after another second. You stay close to him. Even if you don’t like it when he feels bad, you really did miss him. 

“How was the case?” You ask. 

Now that he isn’t touching you, he fiddles with the end of your scarf. Throughout your relationship, you’ve noticed that he likes being close. Some days he’s okay with physical touch and some days he isn’t; regardless, he’s always either hovering near you or playing with an item of your clothing when you’re together. It should be stifling, would be if it was anyone else, but it’s terribly endearing when it’s him. There’s a gentle air to everything he does, the love evident throughout his words and actions. You don’t know if you deserve it. Hell, one of your worst fights ever with him was about that exact topic. Even if you don’t deserve it though, it makes you feel safe. He makes you feel safe. 

He pulls a little at the scarf. “Good. We got him before he could kill his last victim.”

You don’t know how Spencer sees the things he does at work. Every once in awhile, you’ll watch the press conferences the team does, look up the cases they’re on or they solved previously. Bile always rises in your throat. You love him, you love his team, but you hate his job. You hate that he’s in danger, that he could end up like your family did, dead and alone. He knows this. He also knows that you’d never ask him to quit. 

He doesn’t seem to be aware that you’re thinking too hard, since he keeps talking. “Rossi’s having a family dinner at his house tomorrow night. He said I’m legally obligated to bring you.”

You snort. “Legally obligated?”

“The logic wasn’t very sound,” he agrees, letting go of your scarf to brush the hair that was falling into your face. “I agree with his premise, though. You should come. They all miss you.”

“Alright,” you say, burying your face in the crook of his shoulder. “I miss them too.”

Three days after you get to the city, you leave the motel room for the first time, bundled up in an oversized sweatshirt and jeans. Normally, you try to dress up a little more, although you weren’t one to make yourself uncomfortable to look cute. You respect the hell out of those girls, though. They always look bomb. 

Walking around the city was nicer than you thought it was going to be. The weather was just as you remembered, crisp but not cold enough to make you shiver. You end up at a park, feet swinging back and forth. The bench isn’t terribly comfortable. You don’t mind, though. It’s been near impossible for you to relax, so sitting here is the closest you’ve been able to get. It looks like it’ll start raining soon and other people start clearing out of the area. You don’t move, though. Once it falls, you let it hit your skin, let it cool the burning panic that’s been lying dormant since you arrived. 

The second week in, the person in the room next to you gets murdered. You wake up to a scream, can hear something banging around. An idiot would join in on the chaos, would get themselves killed. That isn’t you, though, so you wait quietly, grab the knife you keep at your nightstand. Five minutes after you hear a door slam, you figure you’re safe enough to make a phone call. Red and blue lights come not long after, making you kiss any opportunity of a good night’s sleep goodbye. 

After they interview you, you can hear whispers about this turning serial. You know where you used to live, you know the area, you know who they’re going to call. You bow your head and do your best to mentally prepare for this. 

The BAU is there within an hour. Hotch sees you first. His eyes widen, only for a second. He’s too much of a professional for your presence to throw him off your game, even if you do see him glance back. When he approaches you, only JJ is with him. She has a stronger reaction to seeing you. 

“Y/N?” She asks, frowning. “What are you doing here?”

“Reid isn’t here,” Hotch tells you before you can answer. “He’s at another crime scene.”

You don’t know how you feel about that. Every emotion within you is at war. You wring your hands together, looking down in your lap. “My therapist suggested that I visit,” you shrug. “Exposure therapy or something.” They ask you the same questions that the officers ask you. You’ve never seen them mid investigation before, but they’re nothing like how they were back when you were still dating Spencer. Or maybe this was just because they hated you now. 

Hotch walks off first, phone held tightly against his ear. That leaves you awkwardly hovering near JJ, who hasn’t taken her eyes off of you this entire time. 

“What do you want to say?” 

She flattens her lips, an expression Spencer told you a lot about. It was her angry face. “He’s going to find out that you’re back.”

“I know.”

“Were you going to tell him that you’re back?”

You shake your head. “I’m not staying, JJ. Like I said, this was my therapist’s idea.”

The disappointed look she gives you makes you want to rip your heart out and let her stomp on it. 

“You need to talk to me!” Spencer is trying not to shout. You can tell by his posture, the way his voice catches at the end. “I can’t help you if I don’t know what’s going on!”

You’re angry. You’re angrier than you have any right to be. You know he’s just doing the best he can. Instead of saying any of that, you just keep yelling. “It’s none of your business!”

“You’re my girlfriend. I love you.”

The words make you flinch. You see him go completely still, like he just lost against Medusa. He probably thought Medusa was preferable to you right now. He’s hurt, you know he is. You’d never flinched away from him before, never had a reason to. You still don’t. Not a good one, anyway. 

“I need to go,” you choke out. He lets you go without protest. 

It takes eight hours for Spencer to show up outside your hotel room. Either Hotch and JJ kept your return a secret until the team was done for the night, or he knew and wasn’t allowed to leave. 

He knocks on your door. You hesitate for a beat too long before answering, opening it just enough to let him inside. 

“Y/N,” he breathes. You don’t look at him. You can’t. Earlier, you’d promised yourself that you wouldn’t run from this or cry over it. Your therapist better be god damn proud of you for this one. “You’re here.”

“Yeah.“ 

Out of the corner of your eye, you can see him start to reach for you. He stops himself, his hand falling back to his side. “When did you get here?”

“The beginning of the month,” you tell him. “I don’t know if JJ or Hotch mentioned, but it’s a part of my therapy. Coming back for a little bit.”

He finally finds the nerve to touch you, tugging at your sleeve. “Why won’t you look at me?”

You take a deep breath before forcing your gaze up. He’s just as beautiful as you remember, almost angelic. It makes you want to crumble on the spot, especially once you register the heartbroken look on his face. 

“Why are you here?” You finally ask. 

When you were eight, your entire family was murdered. It’s something you wait months to tell Spencer, once he starts bringing up taking you to meet his mother. 

“Oh, god,” he says after a moment. He gathers you in his arms, holds you as you cry into him, wipes away your tears when you finally pull away, kisses your cheeks, shushes you when you try to apologize. 

“Thank you for trusting me.”

Spencer is sitting on your bed, legs curled underneath him. He tries to get you to sit with him, but you refuse. Something about standing during this makes you feel less like you’ve lost any and all control. 

“You never called.”

You close your eyes. “I know.”

“I wanted to let you have your space, I just didn’t-” he cuts himself off momentarily. “I didn’t think you were going to leave me.”

“I’m sorry.” It’s not enough. It isn’t close to enough. “I wasn’t strong enough to come back. I’m a coward. And selfish. I shouldn’t have run like that.”

When you open your eyes, he’s blurry. You belatedly realize that you’re starting to cry, notice that he is too. 

“It’s okay to run. I just wanted you to talk to me, or come back, or something. I don’t know what I did wrong.”

You start to say that he did nothing, but he shakes his head. 

“No,” he protests. “Not nothing. I didn’t help you. I knew you were struggling, I knew your PTSD was flaring up again, and I did the wrong things. I let you pull away, I didn’t fight hard enough for you to go back to therapy.” He takes a few deep breaths. “When the love of your life is struggling to stand upright, you let her lean against you. And I was too busy with work to be there for you.”

You sit down on the bed. 

It’s incredibly obvious how much Spencer loves his mother. He talks about her constantly, updates you on her life, and worries endlessly in the periods where she isn’t doing well. So before you ever meet her, you know that her opinion matters enough to him that it could end your relationship. 

“Y/N?” You hear him call for you, poking his head into the room. “Are you ready? Oh, you look really nice.”

It’s about time to leave. You’re in the hotel room, having just gotten ready to go meet Diana. It took you an embarrassingly long time to pick your outfit, since you really wanted to impress her. If she doesn’t like you, you’re fully prepared to start freaking out.

“I’m ready,” you say with almost no confidence. 

He must hear the nerves in your voice, since he comes fully into the room, approaching you and putting his arms around your waist. “She’ll love you.”

You’re not sure if you believe him. You go with him anyway, watching him chatting with all the nurses as you waved awkwardly at them. After a few minutes of this, you’re finally standing in front of Diana Reid. 

She pulls you into a hug before you can say anything. “Y/N!”

“Mom, don’t smother her,” Spencer chides gently, pulling you away from her. You smile a little when you can see a blush growing across his face. 

“Sorry, sorry,” Diana says, grinning. “It’s just so nice to finally meet you. He talks about you all the time, you know?”

You smirk, looking back at your boyfriend. “Oh, really?”

“Shut up,” he mutters, but there’s no heat behind it. 

Before long, Spencer has to leave the two of you alone so he can go talk to one of Diana’s doctors. You can tell he’s hesitant about it, but he kisses both of you on the top of your heads before he leaves. 

“He’s happy,” she tells you. “He’s really happy with you.” Now you’re the one blushing. “I really love him,” you confess. “I don’t know what I did to deserve someone as amazing as your son, but I feel incredibly lucky.”

She grabs your hand and squeezes it. “Thank you for looking after him.”

Spencer gets called back to work before you two can finish talking. 

“Please stay here until the case is over,” he takes your hand, squeezing it tight. “I’m not letting you slip away again, okay? If you don’t want me anymore, you’re going to have to say it to my face.”

You don’t say anything. A small smile tugs at Spencer’s lips. He kisses your forehead before he runs off. 

“You know, I never pictured Reid settling down,” Morgan tells you. 

You’re all at JJ’s house for Henry’s birthday. The two of you had snatched up a table early in the afternoon, lounging as you watch everyone. So far, you’ve seen Will give JJ a piggyback ride, Penelope down two jello shots before declaring that a life of crime and alcohol just wasn’t for her, Emily and Rossi fight over who has more money, Hotch finger painting with Jack, and Henry chase Spencer around the yard. Morgan’s drinking a beer, you’re drinking a juice box. 

You hum. “Do you think he’s happy?”

“Who?” Morgan looks over at you. “Reid? Duh. He’s happier than I’ve ever seen him.”

“We’ve been fighting lately.”

“It happens,” Morgan shrugs. “You should see Will and JJ go at it. That is not a woman I’d want to piss off. It’ll be fine, Y/N.”

You nod, even as this feels like the beginning of the end. 

The BAU doesn’t think you’re in any danger, although that doesn’t do much to soothe you. All you can picture is your family, how were all supposed to be safe, how you came home on a Thursday after school and found your entire world bleeding and lifeless on the floor. You think Spencer’s aware of this. He messages you constantly, sending updates on the case as well as cute animal pictures. The latter makes you laugh, even though it’s a little wet. He’s trying to be here for you.

You know the second the case ends. Twenty minutes later, Spencer is back at your door. 

“I didn’t know if you’d still be here,” he says breathlessly, and you realize he must have rushed over as fast as possible. 

“We have stuff to talk about,” you shrug. 

The two of you sit on the bed and face each other. It’s silent for a long beat before either of you speak. 

“I miss you.” Spencer talks first. “Y/N. I think- I think you’re it for me. And it’s okay if you don’t want to be with me. I’ll respect it. But I want to try again.”

You make yourself keep looking at him. “I hurt you.”

He nods. “We hurt each other, I think. I’m not saying we don’t have things to work on. We do. But I’m not ready to let you go again.”

The day after you leave Spencer, your phone never stops ringing. He’s usually the one calling, but there’s a few from Morgan and Garcia, too. You don’t answer any of them, choosing instead to sit alone and cry so hard you throw up. 

When he kisses you for the first time in years, it feels familiar in the best possible way. He always kisses with his entire body, pressing up against you and framing your face with his hands. He holds you like you’re something special, like you’re a priceless treasure he’s protecting with his life. Tonight, you aren’t going to do anymore more than kiss. You’re both feeling vulnerable and uncertain, your second chance at a relationship newly established. You don’t need it to go any further, though. You already feel happy enough to burst at the seems. 

Now that you’re back together, you promise each other to be better about working through bad days together. Needless to say, you’re both prone to bad days. 

You haven’t officially moved back to the area yet, but you’ve been spending a lot of time there, thankful that you’re able to do a large portion of your job on your computer. 

“Y/N!” You hear him shout when he comes into his apartment. You suck in a breath, taking note of the panic that’s laced through his voice. You put your computer down, rushing out into the living room. He practically slams into you, pulling you into a hug and picking you up. Instinctively, you wrap your legs around him to keep your balance.

“Hey, hey,” you soothe. “What’s going on?”

“Family annihilator. I couldn’t…I couldn’t stop thinking about you and I just-”

Your blood chills and you both hold onto each other a little tighter. “I know, sweetheart.”

He carries you to the bed, where he gently lays you down before settling his body on top of yours. You press kisses to the skin you can reach until he relaxes. 

You fall asleep in each other’s arms. 

“I’m having a bad day,” you whisper into the phone. It’s a weekend that you’re home, even if its been feeling less like home lately. 

“What’s wrong, love?”

It’s hard to keep your voice from rising to a wail. “I don’t know.”

He tries to comfort you over the phone, but it’s only somewhat effective. When you two hang up, you’re still feeling weird and empty. He texts you periodically, making sure that you aren’t spiriling again and calling you the time you don’t answer him. 

The next morning, he surprises you by showing up at your apartment. He sweeps you into a hug, closing the door behind him and resting his chin on the top of your head. You feel yourself melt into his arms. “What are you doing here?” “You needed me,” he says, like it’s that simple. Maybe it is. “So I’m here.”

Two months later, you wake up next to him, running your fingers through his hair. It’s a fluffy disaster, making it a bit of a task to not get your hand tangled up in it. You’d hardly want him to wake up because you were yanking his hair out accidentally. 

He wakes up not long after you do, a smile already playing on his lips. “Morning,” he mumbles. 

“Hey.”

“I love you,” he whispers, taking your hand out of his hair and holding it. 

“Love you more,” you tell him, smiling when he shakes his head. 

“Impossible.”

[libsterslobsters]

I'm Gonna Crawl: Post 2

Post 1

Summary: Five years. That's how long the reader and Bucky have been apart (although for him, it was only five minutes) Now with Thanos defeated and both of them taking up the mantle of Avengers, can their relationship return to what it was? Or will they have to discover a new normal?

Pairings: Bucky Barnes x fem! enhanced! super-soldier! Reader (Reader can see pieces of the future in visions as well as speak every language)

Warnings: Angst, fluff, language, smut (IF YOU ARE UNDER EIGHTEEN, DON'T READ!!!)

*************************************************

One of the perks of being “enhanced” or in this case, a super soldier, is that you heal quickly. Within seventy-two hours, the bullet wound in his leg (not to mention the cut and black eye he sustained from several sharp blows to the face) and her matching one in the shoulder are almost completely healed, only a vague pink mark to show they were ever injured. The downside is-

“Do you want to punch sandbags until they fly off the hook, or run thirty miles around the compound first? I’ll start with whichever you don’t pick.” -they’re back to training as well.

He almost answers that he really doesn’t want to do either, it’s Sunday morning, for fuck’s sake, but it’s not like this is her first choice for what she could be doing this morning either, so he goes with-

“Punching things first. Think I woke up on the wrong side of the bed, so I’d best get it out of my system.” She nods and, squeezing his arm, takes off at a jog.

“See you on the other side.”

His instinct is to tell her to take it easy, she lost a lot of blood the other day and who knows if there’s been some bone or muscular damage that hasn’t quite fixed itself yet, but again, he swallows it down and focuses on the task at hand. Namely, taking out his bad mood on a punching bag.

Usually, when his body is in motion, his mind is at least somewhat at rest, but this time around, the exertion is just adding fuel to the flames. He’s too pissed off to just zone out and concentrate on hitting the target, still too busy trying to process what the hell happened three nights ago.

It was their first mission together. She’s been on a few separate from him, and he and Sam get called out together on the regular. Stupidly, he assumed that, since her specialty is translating or gathering intel, maybe being the little voice in someone’s ear to direct them through a maze of assailants and twisting corridors her visions had allowed her a glimpse of ahead of time, she’d be out of the line of fire. At the very least, most of the attention would be on him and Sam. But no, she was the bogey. She drew fire while he waltzed through a military fortress, recapturing stolen tech. When Rhodey so much as mentioned that possibility, he should’ve told him no, hard no. If anyone’s drawing fire, it’s him. Still, in his arrogance, he assumed it wouldn’t come to that extreme. Sam’s good at his job, and as much as he hates the reason behind it, so is he. They should’ve been able to hold the line without her painting a target on her back.

That, of course leads to yet another issue. He’s also pissed at himself for instinctively seeing her as more fragile, something that needs to be protected. Even before the same chemicals running through his veins infected her, she’d proven that she’s a damn capable person. He knows that she’s smart, both strategically and academically. Add onto that the fact that she’s fast and strong, not to mention she has visions (less than helpful ones most of the time, but they have their moments), and she’s a powerful ally. He certainly wouldn’t want to be on her bad side. And yet, when he saw that she’d been hit, his mind completely emptied. He wouldn’t have been able to remember which end of a gun to use if his life depended on it, because all he could think was, “Oh god. She’s hurt.” It’s old-fashioned, outdated. He should be past this mindset, at least when it comes to work. Out there, she’s his fellow soldier, not the woman he lies awake next to in bed, sometimes for hours, just to listen to her breath and know he’s not alone. Did Steve ever put Peggy in that box, he wonders? No, of course not, because Steve’s a better man than he ever was or will ever be. So yeah, he’s pissed off at himself.

And finally, although he can barely admit it to his own mind, he’s pissed off at her. Logically he knows it’s mostly fear, some primal instinct to protect what’s his, but every time he imagines her being shot, having a bullet pass by her lungs and arteries by a very narrow margin, and then telling Sam not to let him know that she was hit, it irks him. Did she think he’d come unhinged? Screw up? Or is she stuck in the mindset she seems to have adopted as a response to the last five years of “Screw looking after myself. It doesn’t matter.” A small part of him realizes that he didn’t call in either when he took a bullet, but that’s him! And, now he’s circling back to guilt for treating her like she’s weak.

All in all, he’s so damn furious that he doesn’t realize he’s no longer alone until she grabs hold of his arm just as he goes to swing again.

“Jesus, Bucky. I know you’re grouchy, but don’t you think destroying five punching bags in thirty minutes is enough? Save some aggression for the run.”

He looks up to tell her something (I’m sorry? Damn right I’m grouchy? Let me take you home and wrap you in blankets so that nothing will ever hurt you again?) and catches sight of her sweat-soaked face. He hates how far she takes things with the running. It’s like she’s trying to see what the limits are, how much she can punish her body before it gives out and she drops. That’s what it was in the very beginning after the snap. She’s told him that. Now he wonders if she’s really as recovered from everything that’s happened as she claims.

“Have you had anything to drink? Water, or-” She groans and reaches to detach the punching bag (there’s a decent sized rip in it where he was hitting it over and over), making her shirt ride up. Her clothes were already so tight that just seeing her out of the corner of his eye was making it hard to think, but now they’re completely adhered to her in a way that’s nearly obscene thanks to all the sweat. Dammit. Think about something else. He needs to think about something else.

“Yes, I’m on my second water bottle, thank you Barnes. I’m not stupid, you know.”

“Just self-destructive.” It slips out before he can stuff it down. Her mouth falls open in shock momentarily, but then she squares her shoulders and looks him directly in the eyes.

“You’re one to talk. Always running straight towards the fire instead of putting it out first.”

“That’s my job.”

“It’s your hangup.” She laughs bitterly. “Bucky Barnes, the big, bad Winter Soldier. You’ve decided you’re so fucked up that the only way you can make amends is to run headlong towards whatever’s trying to kill you, without backup I might add, and keep to your mission no matter what your personal damage is.”

“Says the woman who took a bullet and stopped Sam from announcing that you’re hit.” They’re teetering closer and closer to a fight with every nearly snarled word, but he’s powerless to stop it. In fact, he’s ready to go. Have it out. But not right now, because-

“Hey.” He catches her arm just as she starts to hoist another punching bag onto the hook. “Be careful! You’re still healing.” -she’s hellbent on hurting herself. Again.

She whirls around as if he’s slapped her.

“Oh my god. You have to stop.”

“Stop what?”

“Stop treating me like I’m going to break!” Her voice is shrill, rising higher and higher with each syllable. “I love you, but you are driving me insane. I am not your child-”

“No, you’re the person I want to marry!” He takes a deep breath, preparing to follow up with, “-and you keep acting like you have a death wish”, but before he can-

“You won’t even fuck me anymore!” Immediately, her eyes go wide and she slaps a hand over her mouth.

If her declaration surprised her, it absolutely stunned him so, not quite sure what else to do, he takes a few steps back and sits down. A few seconds pass before she approaches and, with a heavy sigh, sinks down next to him.

“Bucky, I am so sorry. I don’t know where any of this is coming from-”

“I think you do, Doll.” Her eyes dart nervously between his face and the floor. On instinct, he reaches over and takes her hand. “And so do I.” He takes a few moments to rearrange his thoughts before pushing ahead. “A lot has changed since-”

“The world ended. We lost. And then we won.” He nods.

“Yeah, and I don’t think either of us have quite wrapped our heads around it. I know I haven’t.”

It’s silent for a moment, and then, voice trembling, she tells him,

“After you went away, I was completely lost. Didn’t know why I had to stay. What kind of cruel trick is it, just when everything was starting to go right-” He finally had the poison of HYDRA sucked out of him, she’d found a safe place where she didn’t have to run and hide because of something she was born with, he’d worked up the nerve to ask her if she’d maybe one day be his wife. “-and then it’s wiped out? You finally went somewhere I couldn’t follow.” He still can’t imagine what those five years must’ve been like, not just for her, but everyone else who survived the snap. “I didn’t want to keep going. But I had to.” She chuckles. “Steve wouldn’t let me throw in the towel.”

A smile forms on his own face. “Yeah, he had a habit of doing that.”

“I guess…” She sighs. “I don’t know. I got harder, rougher around the edges. I thought I could just go back to normal once everyone came back-”

“But old habits die hard.” It’s not a question, but she nods.

“Yeah, and as much as I chip away at it, I’m not sure I’ll ever get back to who I was before.”

“You won’t.” She peers up at him, eyes wide in shock, maybe a hint of sadness. “I can tell you that right now from experience. You won’t go back, but-” He’s had a lot of time to consider this, so he can say it and absolutely believe it. “-I love the girl that’s here now. She’s pretty amazing, rough edges and all.”

She’s sitting so close. He could pull her into his lap, just hold her for a minute. So, that’s what he does, and just like the first time, they fit together perfectly, like she was made to fit in his arms, or maybe he was made to hold her. Either way, it leaves no doubt in his mind that they belong together.

“You changed. Everyone does. You got stronger and tougher, because that’s who you had to be. And I wasn’t there to change with you.” He can feel her shoulders shake, and even though she’s facing away from him, he knows she’s fighting back tears. “But I’m gonna catch up. It’s just taking me a while to get it through my thick skull that my girl’s a badass, and I need to ease off the bodyguard routine a little.” There. That’s more like it. A laugh, even if it’s a small one. “I just worry about you, is all. I don’t know how to stop it, and I’m not sure I can, but I’m working on it.”

“I worry about you too, you know.” She sniffs, swiping at her nose with her hand. “I’m fucking terrified because, now that I’m like you, I know what your limits are. I’m scared you’ll forget them, or you’ll ignore them because you’re trying to be a good man.” She cranes her head, meeting his gaze. “But you are a good man, Bucky Barnes. You never stopped being one, no matter what you think.”

“I think your picture of me might be more flattering than who I really am.”

“Shut up.” She presses her palm over his mouth. “I have visions, so seeing is never my problem. And it’s not the way I’m picturing you. We’ve known each other long enough for the shine to wear off.” Never. It’ll never be possible for him to know her so long that she’s not absolutely golden from where he’s standing. “It’s who you’ve shown me you are. And if the rest of the world doesn’t see it, that’s their problem. Not yours.”

He’s not sure if he buys all that, but it’s enough that she does. She sees him as that man, so he’ll try every day of his life to be just that.

“Come on.” Gently pushing her off of him, he stands and offers her his hand. “That’s enough training for today. We’re still wounded.”

She chuckles. “Is that your excuse for calling it early?”

He nods, barely suppressing a grin. “That, and you’ve gotta change into something that doesn’t fit you like a second skin before my brain permanently short-circuits.”

“Showers, then?”

“Showers.”

___________________________________________________________________________________

The compound sustained heavy damage thanks to Thanos crashing a ship into it, but in the past few months (helped along by Pepper’s billions and the entire galaxy’s appreciation towards the Avengers in equal parts), enough repairs have been done to make it partially usable. In this case, the locker room. Just the one, though. Which, of course means co-ed showers.

She won’t admit it, but she’s particularly appreciative of that little detail today. As she circled the compound on her last lap, she saw that the only two cars there are hers and Barnes. They’re the only two people here, and she fully intends to use that to her advantage.

“Join me? I don’t want to overextend my shoulder trying to wash my hair or back.” It’s a blatant lie, and from his expression, she can tell that he knows it too. But, he nods.

“Yeah, doll. I can do that.” Part one of the plan has been executed beautifully. Onward to part two.

She purposely leaves the travel sized bottles of shampoo and body wash on the floor so that, after rinsing off for far longer than is really necessary, she has to bend over to retrieve them. If it weren’t for her enhanced hearing, she’d completely miss the sharp intake of breath in response to her little show, but she catches it and can’t help grinning to herself. Part two: get him as worked up as she is. So far, so good.

The feeling of his fingers massaging her scalp, working the shampoo through her hair, is almost enough to make her forget that she’s a woman on a mission. Almost. As soon as she’s rinsed the soap out of her face, she turns to him.

“Your turn. Bend.” It’s not the first time they’ve done this, and as always, she has to fight back a laugh as he inclines his head towards her, the entirety of his hair falling forward to cover his face. “This used to take a lot longer before you decided to chop it all off.” He chuckles, eyes closed against the soap.

“What can I say? Seventy-three years without a haircut is my limit.” She can’t blame him, and although it was a shock at first, she’s come to like this new look. It makes him look…younger, somehow. More boyish. Like his life hasn’t contained as many horrors as they both know full well it has.

“You checking for lice or something?”

“Huh?” That jerks her out of her sentimental daze. “Looks like you’re clear.”

There’s no way to put it politely. She’s straight up ogling him as he rinses off. Five damn years��

“Ready to get your back?” And, she just got caught staring.

“Sure.”

His hands are gentle, putting as little pressure on her injured shoulder as possible, growing firmer as they work down her back. She holds her breath as she feels his palms ghost over the swell of her ass, but then he’s back to safer territory. At least, that’s what she thinks until the metal arm snakes around her chest, just below her breasts, holding her in place. His free hand runs down from her sternum to her middle, stopping just above her hips, then- fuck. Nothing. He’s backing away.

“Do you need help with your legs?” No, what she needs help with is located between them. Suddenly, the shower feels far too hot, and she’s desperate to cool off.

“That’s okay.” Her voice is shaky, and she mentally berates herself as she steps under the spray, rinsing away the soap.

She’s not at all sure that her excuse for leaving the shower and going to towel off made any sense, but with a few feet between them, she’s able to breath again. Alright, scratch the whole “shower seduction” idea. It wasn’t that great to begin with. She gets him as hot and bothered as she is, and then what? Shower sex is a slippery affair, and plus there’s the height difference… in the steamed up mirror, she catches sight of him climbing out of the shower and toweling off. Fuck it. What does she have to lose?

“Come here.” As he turns around, she hops up on the counter top (thank fuck Stark went all out and got the sinks that can easily hold the weight of an adult), allowing her towel to slip further down her chest.

She doesn’t miss the way his eyes flit down to her cleavage before settling back on her face as he stands in front of her.

“Yeah, Doll?”

“Let me get your hair. You’ll never get it dry yourself.” She’s really running low on excuses, but if she plays her cards right, she won’t have to keep up this ruse for much longer.

“You know-” She murmurs against his ear as she starts working a towel over his tousled locks, “-if you don’t take me right now, I’m gonna be really offended.”

His head snaps up, and she nearly drops the towel.

“Well, I can’t let that happen, can I?”

She has a smart-ass remark all planned out, but then his lips are pressed against hers, hard, insistent, and her brain completely empties of anything other than pure need. She’s not completely sure how, but somehow the towel wrapped around her torso (it’s so short, it didn’t even cover her ass sitting down) disappears, leaving them chest to chest, both still slightly damp from the shower. On instinct, her legs wrap around his back, bringing them so close together she can feel his cock twitch against her thigh.

“The floor, or-” It’s murmured against her ear between nibbles.

“No. Here.” It’s all she can do to hold back a moan as his whole body rumbles with quiet laughter.

“Someone’s eager.”

She leans back far enough to peer into his eyes.

“And you’re not?” The response is a thumb against her clit, and she has to bite down hard on his shoulder to muffle a yelp.

“If I’d known you were ready, you wouldn’t have gotten any sleep for the past two months.” That would’ve been a very small price to pay.

Five years is a long time, and her body tenses up at the intrusion of his finger inside of her, but she immediately forces her muscles to relax, and within seconds, it’s all she can do not to writhe against him.

“That’s it. Relax. I’ll take care of you.” It’s a lost cause. This is going to be noisy. She hazily thinks to herself that it’s all his fault.

He’s always been one for foreplay, making sure she’ll be comfortable once they actually get around to the main event, but finally enough is enough and, reaching between them, she stills his wrist.

“Get inside me.”

“Are you sure? You’re still tight-” Disentangling one of her arms from around his neck, she gives his hair a sharp tug.

“I’m like you now, remember? You’re not going to break me.”

He pulls back from her, hesitating, eyes darting between her face and the door.

“What?”

“I don’t have-” Oh. She quickly runs the calculations in her head. Given which day of the month it is, the likelihood would be-

“It’ll be fine. Just pull out.” To her relief, he doesn’t argue.

Her breath catches as he pushes inside of her, and if the panting against her neck is anything to judge from, she’s not the only one affected.

“It’s been too damn long.” Despite the situation (or perhaps because of it), she laughs breathlessly.

“You think it’s been too long? Try five fucking years!” His laugh tickles her neck.

“You’re never gonna stop using that one, are you?”

“Nope. I think I’ve earned the right.” After all, he constantly reminds her that he had to wait 98 years to meet the love of his life, so fair is fair.

“Then I guess I’ll just have to make it up to you.”

“Sounds like you just set yourself a challenge.”

“Guess I’d better get to work then.” As he says it, he pulls nearly all the way out only to slam back in again.

It’s primal, the way their bodies move together, desperate for a connection that’s been missing for so long. There’s no room or need for words to be spoken; their gasped breaths and strangled moans say it all. His hand sneaks between them, toying with her nub, and that’s what sends her over the edge. It’s the tipping point for him too because, muffling his cries against her shoulder, he pulls out just in time.

“We shoulda done that before the shower.” She’s still gasping for breath, but it forces a laugh from her. He follows suit, offering her a spare towel to clean herself up.

“You’ve been holding out on me, Barnes.” He shoots her a questioning look as she hops down on shaky legs. “I thought it was good before, but damn.”

He laughs, pulling on his jeans. “I didn’t want to risk breaking the bed. I’m a gentleman like that.” She knows the real concern was her safety, but if she concentrates on that too hard, she’ll start going mushy, and in this instance, crying after sex seems like it would kill the mood.

“You know-” She pulls her t shirt over her head, not bothering with a bra. “-I never really liked the bed I have now anyway.” It’s also really too small for two full-grown adults to share comfortably.

Sliding his duffle bag over his shoulder, he takes her hand. “Then maybe we should go home? Give you an excuse to get a new one?” Before she can answer-

“Go home. Please, I’m begging you, for the love of god, go.” Her eyes dart towards the source of the noise. The door, or more specifically, the other side of it. “Hearing you and the bionic man fucking once was enough. I’m gonna shoot you both and then myself if I have to listen to round two.”

Bucky catches her eye and mouths “Oops!”, sending her into a fit of giggles.

“You know Sam, you could’ve just walked away. You didn’t have to wait outside the door like a creep.” She has to bite her fist to keep from laughing out loud.

“Yeah, trust me. I could hear you from all the way down the hall.”

“Sorry.” She gasps it out between bouts of laughter, and she must be pulling a funny face, because he snickers to.

“No, you’re not.” No, she really isn’t. Just that they got caught.

“We’re heading out. You’ve got the place to yourself.” Giving his hand a tug, she pulls open the door, revealing a flustered Sam.

“I hope you remembered to wipe down the counter, you nasties!”

As they make their way down the corridor, Bucky calls out,

“See you Monday?”

“Yeah. And you’d better be wearing pants!”

[jess-rewatches-prodigalson]

Face Value (S2, E7)

My time-stamped thoughts for this episode. As always I reference Malcolm’s mental health. A lot. So if that’s going to be a trigger for you, don’t keep reading.

SPOILERS AHEAD:

0:05 - Hold your horses. Malcolm taught at Quantico?!? I mean, I realize that he probably just did the occasional guest lecture (like most profilers?) but I’m still stupidly proud of him. <3 

0:50 - ngl Malcolm’s a good lecturer. Take it from a university student.

1:13 - “It’s okay. We don’t know what you did and it’s not that mu-....BREATHE” Holy shit. I’m torn between ranting about what a great actor Tom Payne is and losing my mind because this scene is heartbreaking. Look at Malcolm. I swear he’s reminding himself to breathe - not Ainsley. He’s completely panicking but he’s trying so hard to be strong for Ainsley. This boy is an absolute treasure. Brother of the CENTURY. 

1:41 - “You’re right Ainsley. I screwed up.” NO NO NO NO NO. Can you hear the sound of my heart shattering?!? This scene is so much more devastating the second time. When you know Ainsley is putting ON A SHOW HERE. Look at Malcolm’s face. He’s devastated. He blames himself for AINSLEY’S actions. He’s starting to genuinely believe that he’s no better than Martin Whitly. Malcolm’s depression/anxiety is through the roof in this episode. I honestly won’t be shocked if Malcolm has a complete mental breakdown in the next few episodes. Hell, I don’t think I’d be surprised if he tries to OD on his meds. This boy is in crisis and I’m terrified for him. 

1:44 - “I think I did too.”.....this line is interesting. Is this part of Ainsley’s act or is she showing some regret for putting Malcolm through this much emotional torment? She can clearly see that this whole situation is literally destroying her brother’s already fragile peace of mind. 

1:55 - “Today could be the day!”.....the day that everyone finds out about Endicott and Ainsley.....seriously, Malcolm’s daily affirmations this season have done nothing but feed his anxiety. 

2:04 - OF COURSE. A call from Martin. Malcolm is going to have a mental breakdown. It’s just everything. All at once. I’m getting secondhand anxiety FOR him. 

2:35 - hahaha Martin is a crazy, evil, pain in the ass but damn is he entertaining. 

2:55 - 1) Ainsley looks adorable in Malcolm’s hoodie. 2) Ainsley straight up leaves his loft later in this episode. Did she hid a change of clothes in the loft before Malcolm got home last night? Or does she actually leave her big brother’s apartment in his clothes? 

3:05 - “Getting hit by a train might be better.” Yep. Malcolm is entering a dangerous territory. I know depression is different for everyone but for me, when I start joking - out loud - to people I love about death in passing....things are bad. Like I’m getting suicidal bad. I know Malcolm has a morbid job and he talks about death all the time but this feels like Malcolm is starting to consider suicide as an option. 

3:34 - I can see Ainsley’s “You were trying to control me” perspective. BUT honestly? Take a step back and listen to the desperation and fear in Malcolm’s voice. Anyone with half a brain cell can HEAR how scared Malcolm is and how deeply he loves his sister. Ainsley has known Malcolm her entire life. If she was functioning on all cylinders - she would know that Malcolm is just being a protective big brother. He’s not trying to control her - just help her. But this has been a theme for Ainsley since season 1 when she brought up visiting Martin during family dinner. She seems to believe that Jessica and Malcolm think that she’s a “fragile flower” and that she can’t take care of herself. I understand how that could be frustrating but I also find it concerning that Ainsley doesn’t seem to understand that they aren’t treating her that way because they think she’s weak or stupid but rather out of love. Ainsley acts like a petulant child about this sort of thing (anger, whining, eye-rolling). Ainsley acts very entitled a lot, in the sense that if something doesn’t go her way she just throws a hissy fit (think reporting and/or any Whitly family squabble). Ainsley is messed up. Unlike Malcolm, she doesn’t seem to have any self-awareness when it comes to her behavioural eccentricities. Malcolm actively tries to improve his mental state. Ainsley just throws a hissy fit when the world doesn’t bend to her will.....and this stream of consciousness Ainsley rant just became wayyyyy longer than I had anticipated (sorry). 

3:41 - “Promise me.” See that look? Ainsley is pissed at Malcolm. This girl’s anger is concerning me.......what if (crazy thought) the season finale is Martin escaping Claremont to stop Ainsley from killing Malcolm? 

3:43 - I wish I could be happier about this hug. Malcolm is finally getting a hug but.....he instigated it and he’s not the one being comforted sooooooooo I’m still unsatisfied. 

3:49 - “Hey, you look...terrible.” SCREAM IT FROM THE ROOFTOPS DANI!! God. I love how concerned she is about Malcolm. IDC how you feel about Brightwell. If you don’t think they’re good friends - you’re a moron. 

4:05 - This is the moment when I went....oooohhhh yeah. LDP directed this episode. That’s probably why he’s not in this scene. 

4:10 - JT is a GOOD husband. Give him a medal. Seriously - last season he was going to watch the Taylor wedding live with Tally (who was going to wear a hat <3 ), this season Mr. Masculine casually throws out stats about the Housewives. hahaha I don’t even care if JT genuinely enjoys the Housewives or not. I’m just so utterly delighted at the idea of him watching it with his wife and having a good time with her. <3 JT is the definition of a good husband and I’m HERE FOR IT. 

4:34 - .......seriously? I thought Edrisa had realized that this crush is unrequited last season? I love Edrisa but her obsession with Malcolm is getting a little creepy. Like “13 year old in love with the 40 year old math teacher” creepy. It’s sort of cute but also like - gurl. No.

4:38 - Ok. Dani’s reaction to Edrisa hitting on Malcolm saves the scene for me. Lol.

4:51 - Ugh. That is a really creepy corpse.

4:56 - Look. We’ve all obsessed about it already but I have to bring it up: MALCOLM STILL HAS THE BRUISE FROM THE ELEVATOR. SOMEONE GIVE THE MAKEUP DEPARTMENT A MEDAL. THANK YOU. THANK YOU FOR REMEMBERING MALCOLM’S PHYSICAL TRAUMA.

5:21- ......ok maybe I’m projecting my cynicism here but anyone who has framed newspaper clippings about themselves in their office is seriously egocentric. Maybe it’s just me - but that’s a massive turn off and takes someone out of the running for “angel” status.

6:10 - I’m sorry for every time I thought Jessica was a crazy rich lady during season 1. Birdie is so so so much crazier.

6:36 - “Only the men you date.” Bitch. OMG. Who says something that backhanded and cruel to their sibling?!?!? ......oh wait. I remember how this episode ends :|

7:15 - THANK YOU. I’ve been wondering about the status of Martin’s medical certification since I watched the pilot. SO happy to find out that he couldn’t weasel his way into keeping it.

7:37 - Like most of you, I’ve been creeped out by this whole Martin/Capshaw interaction since it was released as a promo clip. Seriously - it’s creepy. There’s an upsetting amount of subtle flirting here. I’m not sure what it is about Capshaw but her whole energy is just really unnerving to me. I immediately hated her in the promo. Istg Capshaw is an undercover serial killer or something. AND IF SHE BECOMES A LOVE INTEREST FOR MARTIN I WILL LOSE MY SHIT.

8:06 - Oh yeah. She’s either romantically interested in Martin or she’s a psychopath on the DL and is playing him.

8:12 - YAY!!! The Yankee mug returns!!! <3

8:34 - “Sometimes the most monstrous people are the ones hiding in plain sight.” Ouch. I know the writers like to project Malcolm’s emotional turmoil on the case of the week but hearing those words come out of Gil’s mouth?!? Ouch. That hurt Malcolm. Bad. It wasn’t even directed at Malcolm but damn. This is not helping his mental health. At all.

8:41 - Gil. Is. Concerned. <3 :) .....pretty sure Gil also suspects about Endicott and Ainsley by now too. .....hmmmmm maybe that comment about monsters was Gil’s way of trying to get Malcolm to confess (or to gauge Malcolm’s reaction)?  

9:15 - I feel so bad for Malcolm here. He’s literally juggling everyone’s problems. Ainsley’s murder situation. Jessica’s personal drama. But is he dealing with his emotional problems? No. He’s too busy being a good son/brother. SOMEONE PAY ATTENTION TO MALCOLM. HE NEEDS A HUG.

9:35 - Deer. In. Headlights. Well....at least Dani knows Malcolm’s about to have a mental breakdown. This boy just got more information to help him crack a murder case and he looks confused, startled, and lost. He’s usually excited and motivated. This Endicott situation is slowly killing Malcolm. I don’t know how much longer he can struggle under the weight of the guilt.

9:48 - Look at this. Ainsley is pissed off that Malcolm isn’t paying attention to her. We know that this whole 2nd murder was a sham so WTF? Is she really just that hungry for attention? That sounds like Martin Whitly to me - the narcissistic psychopath who needs attention like an addict needs cocaine. Also AINSLEY’S acting here?!? We know that she’s lying to Malcolm but holy shit. She’s a really good actress/liar? What else has she lied about?!? 

10:05 - Ok. So just when did Ainsley remember? I honestly think she’s known since at least 2x01.

10:20 - Look. I understand that Ainsley is pissed that Malcolm is trying to ‘control her’. But did she even listen to the desperation and fear in his voice? This boy wants her to stay in the loft because he’s scared of who she might hurt if she’s out in public, unsupervised. He’s not trying to abuse or hurt her - just protect her. Is he misguided -maybe? Should he have called the cops on Ainsley right away - probably. But he didn’t out of love. Ainsley doesn’t even seem to realize how much this whole situation is hurting Malcolm and that’s the biggest problem. She doesn’t show any remorse at killing Endicott. She’s just pissed off that Malcolm lied about it. SHE KILLED SOMEONE an she (outwardly at least) feels no remorse. This girl is a psychopath (sociopath?) and this will NOT end well for Malcolm and Jessica.  

10:27 - This whole scene was awesome btw. Tom Payne flawlessly communicated Malcolm’s panic, fear, anger, and desperate attempts to stay calm. And Dani’s blatant concern (and suspicion) of Malcolm and his mental state.  AND Ainsley being a little brat. Ugh. So beautiful.

10:45 - I love this scene. I love the fact that they have the type of friendship where Dani’s not afraid to call Malcolm out on his crap (trying to hide things from the team). I love that Malcolm isn’t offended that Dani called him out. He doesn’t lie. Ainsley is lost at the moment. Malcolm is more honest with Dani about how the whole Ainsley thing is affecting him than he is with anyone else. I love that Dani still looks suspicious and concerned. I love watching Dani piece this whole thing together. I’m honestly at a point where I think Dani is going to know about Endicott before Gil. I love that Dani gives Malcolm honest, judgement-free advise. Because she doesn’t like seeing how much pain Malcolm is in. I love that Malcolm isn’t completely shutting her out. <3

11:00 - “What if she already has?”.....yep. Dani is totally piecing the Endicott situation together. 

11:09 - “I’m overthinking it.” THIS. There is a split second where you can see the betrayal on Dani’s face. She knows Malcolm is hiding something and she’s hurt that he doesn’t trust her enough to let her in. She’s also probably hurt because she views this as a lie - which brings back 1x20 memories. 

11:35 - “Even when they’re as beautiful as you.” Ugh. I love this so so so so much. Look at how Dani absolutely lights up at Malcolm’s unintentional compliment. I relate to Dani in the sense that I’m a woman in a male dominated field (engineering). I can’t tell you how often men that she works with have probably objectified her, belittled her, and sexualized her. Malcolm isn’t doing this. He doesn’t call her hot. He doesn’t comment on her body or how she dresses. He doesn’t even acknowledge that she’s a woman. He just calls her beautiful. But he does it in a way that you can tell he’s being genuine. He doesn’t expect anything in return for the compliment. He’s not trying to play the long game. He’s just thinks she’s beautiful. He doesn’t even realize that he said it. BECAUSE Malcolm is in profiler mode. He’s focused on the murder - not Dani. He mentioned that Dani’s beauty off-handedly because 1) he believes it and 2) it was relevant to his profiling train of thought. BUT LOOK AT HOW MUCH IT MEANT TO DANI. <3 <3 <3

12:00 - Why is Chabra exiled to the corner of the room?!?! Someone explain this tomfoolery. Is it literally to just get across that Chabra is not the alpha in this corrupt plastic surgery business?!?

12:16 - Ew. Please never say YOLO. Ever. It’s cringy when kids say it but it’s so so so much worse when someone over 25 says it. 

12:18 - hhahahahahahaha OMG. Dani’s face after he says “yolo”. 

12:31 - Yep. This dude is an asshole. DO NOT try to convince Malcolm to get plastic surgery. The dude has enough problems without adding dysmorphia to the mix. 

12:41 - Yep. Chabra is the little puppy that follows Donahue around and does the grunt work.

12:50 - LOOK AT THE NOD DONAHUE GIVES CHABRA when Chabra denies that stock has gone missing. Can you arrest someone for being a rich, corrupt, asshole?! Ugh. Hate him. 

13:20 - Ugh. I really want to know more about Dani’s past. Who in the NYPD tried to belittle, micromanage, or sexualize her just because she’s a woman?

13:30 - “I want Donahue to be the bad guy.” PREACH SISTER.

13:48 - “Easy. We just isolate him with our own alpha males.” hahaha OMG. LET”S GO. I was so pumped when this scene cut to JT and Gil. BUT I was also a little sad. Malcolm doesn’t consider himself to be an alpha male (I mean, he’s not) but it really just drove home to be that Malcolm sees himself as broken. Gil has been Malcolm’s positive male role model for years. But Malcolm doesn’t think he’s anything like Gil. Malcolm thinks he’s broken where Gil is whole, weak where Gil is strong, and bad when Gil is good. It just sort of broke my heart. 

14:00 - hahaha Chabra is just a wimp. Watching Gil and JT play angry cop, calm cop was so so so good though. <3 

14:05 - This was the moment that I remembered LDP was directing this episode. I’m not usually someone who notices camera work or anything but this was a really cool shot. 

15:00 - Oh c’mon. Seriously? Edrisa’s crush has gone too far. She knows he doesn’t like her romantically. Everyone knows it. Please stop this. I’m getting secondhand embarrassment. 

15:16 - Did Edrisa think they were going to do it in the morgue?!? Those flowers?!? Like wtf. I can’t. 

15:29 - I’ll give props to Malcolm here. He’s being really kind to Edrisa here. BUT HE NEEDS TO TELL HER HE’S NOT INTERESTED BECAUSE SHE’S CLEARLY NOT GETTING THE MESSAGE. 

15:33 - Ugh. Look at how uncomfortable Malcolm is. This is upsetting.

16:08 - “What?!? How do you -” Panic. Pure panic in Malcolm’s eyes. Damn. This boy is spiralling. Someone needs to find out about Endicott. Malcolm can’t keep trying to protect Ainsley and Jessica alone. It’s literally killing him. 

17:14 - “All she could see was the ugliness she felt inside.” “That’s a sad way to live.” .........the parallels between the plastic surgery, dysmorphia, and vengeful crime of the week to Malcolm’s current mental health and Ainsley’s crime is slowly killing me. I’m honestly getting annoyed that the other characters aren’t picking up on all the subtle references Malcolm’s making to the fact that he thinks he’s a monster. I JUST WANT SOMEONE TO COMFORT HIM. THAT’S ALL. WHY IS THAT SO MUCH TO ASK FEDAK!??! 

17:30 - Another point to the Dani/Malcolm friendship. She takes out the gun and pushes Malcolm back. Is she trying to protect him? Technically, yes. BUT she’s just doing her job. I love that Malcolm respects Dani enough to let her take charge and do her job. I love that he’s secure enough about his masculinity to let her. 

18:15 - Yikes. This woman is 90% plastic. Cosmetic plastic surgery is terrifying. 

20:16 - Another reminder of the woman’s ward. Either Sophie Sanders or Ainsley is going to end up in that ward soon (I’m still half-convinced that Sophie is going to appear out of the woodwork and take the fall for Endicott). 

21:49 - “...convinced her that she would never have a career unless she looked the part.” <3 Look at how disgusted Gil is when Dani tells him that. Gil is a good man and I love him forever. <3 

22:33 - I love this. Dani and Gil are both concerned about Malcolm and communicating it in looks. It won’t be long until there’s a team intervention for Malcolm’s mental health (or at least, that’s my headcanon - if someone wants to write me a fic about it I’ll love you forever).

22:44 - WTF GIL. WHY AREN’T YOU ASKING MALCOLM WHAT’S WRONG?!?! IS IT BECAUSE YOU ALREADY KNOW AND YOU DON’T KNOW HOW TO FEEL ABOUT IT YET?!?! 

22:49 -.....soooooo does this mean that Gil already knew that Birdie existed?!? How often did Birdie appear after Martin’s arrest?!?! I WANT DETAILS.

23:06 - Holy shit. Look at that little smirk Ainsley shoots Malcolm when he first walks in and sees her. Ainsley is maliciously toying with Malcolm and I DON”T LIKE IT.

23:14 - Jessica is concerned. I promise you Ainsley and Malcolm have rarely - if ever - fought like this in front of her. I was raised in single parent home after my abusive dad left. I know how that changes the sibling dynamic. No matter how genuinely pissed off you are - you don’t stress Mom out more. If you’re just annoyed with each other and doing regular ‘sibling squabbling’ - then you whine and argue in front of Mom. But if you’re seriously angry with each other - you deal with it when Mom isn’t home to see it because no matter what - you both appreciate how hard Mom is working to keep what’s left of your family together. 

23:28 - “Malcolm. Looking more like your father every day.” BITCH. Did she just say that because she watched Malcolm go off on Ainsley? Sure, Malcolm was a little controlling (probably similar to a situation Birdie witnessed between Jess and Martin back in the day) but HOLY SHIT. That is your nephew. Maybe he’s having a bad day. Maybe being told he resembles a serial killer is really damaging to his already fragile pysche. I don’t like Birdie. AND I DON”T LIKE THAT JESSICA DOESN”T STAND UP FOR MALCOLM HERE. 

24:00 - I don’t like this. These Martin+Capshaw scenes are really hard to watch. Martin is still acting like Martin - manipulative, egotistic, manicA. But he’s also acting like a professional doctor (an asshole doctor but still). It’s really disconcerting to watch Capshaw take his medical opinion seriously. Plus - there’s something about Capshaw that creeps me out. I just haven’t figured out what it is yet. But I’m pretty sure she’s a bad lady.  

24:16 - “What bit should I use?” - See this? No. Just...no. I don’t like how she’s taking Martin’s medical advise to heart so readily. 

25:04 - Why was Martin allowed to watch the procedure?!? He’s clearly getting a sick amount of pleasure from the blood and drilling. Look at the way Martin grins at Capshaw too. Martin is planning out an entire scheme to manipulate Capshaw into helping him escape. You can see the metaphoric lightbulb above his head. 

25:29 - This meal. Seriously. Was I the only one who got a glimpse of the meat in a red sauce and thought “human meat”?!? No wonder Malcolm’s main food group is liquorice. 

25:44 - Poor Jessica. She is not having a good time. Jessica’s behaviour in this scene is really interesting though. Jessica repeatedly shoots apologetic looks at Malcolm. She looks at Ainsley with fear. She looks super uncomfortable. She’s not saying much because she desperately wants a relationship with her sister but she also doesn’t want to belittle her son’s career. She’s proud of Malcolm - in her own way. 

26:00 - “The family trust fund would run dry.” hahahahaha YES MALCOLM. THROW THAT SHADE. hahahaha

26:23 - “Most of the time anyway” Wow. Uncalled for. I know Ainsley is mad but this isn’t cool. I have this nagging feeling in the back of my mind that Birdie has been approached by Europol about the Endicott murder. I have this terrifying notion that Birdie is trying to collect intel so she can sell the information to Europol. If I’m right (which I’m probably not) this comment will not help Malcolm’s case.

26:41 - hahaha look at how annoyed Jessica is. Is she annoyed because her children are openly fighting in front of their Aunt when Jessica wants to portray the “perfect, undamaged family”? Or is Jessica annoyed because what Ainsley just said was out of line and she’s scared of Ainsley right now?

27:02 - “Why would you do that? I told you I would handle everything.” This. This is why I will argue that Ainsley is way out of line. Yes, Malcolm is sort of trying to control her. BUT listen to his words, the desperation and fear in his voice. Malcolm is trying to protect Ainsley. Ainsley has every right to be annoyed with him but if she was functioning at an adult mental capacity she’d be able to see that he isn’t being malicious. 

27:35 - The fact that Birdie is a backstabbing, lying bitch is so frustrating to me. Look at how badly Jessica wants to have a healthy relationship with her little sister. Jessica just wants a girl-friend to confide in and drink with. I’m heartbroken that Martin stole that from her. 

28:05 - I know LDP was directing this episode but JT or Dani should’ve called Malcolm. Why? This conversation between Gil and Malcolm (WHEN GIL IS WEARING HIS COAT) just makes me wonder - where is Gil going? JT is at Donahue’s apartment. Dani and Malcolm are going to talk to Chabra. Where is Gil going?!? 

29:07 - ....how did Donahue get the coke into the cheetah? Was there a release thingy (like in a piggy bank) that Malcolm just elected not to use in the panic of the moment? 

29:14 - “What else would you hide in a cheetah?” hahahahahaha

29:40 - “No. No. Only if I got the dose wrong.” Yikes. Malcolm is operating in full panic mode here. This is not good for his mental health. 

30:08 - “This is the worst cooking show ever.” hahaha this was hilarious but cooking show? What? Do I not watch enough of those? Because I don’t see the link. 

30:38 - The moment when Malcolm looks at Dani with fear. He thinks he just killed Chabra and he’s terrified that Dani is looking at him with hatred. :( 

30:46 - The two seconds when Malcolm thinks he killed someone. Look at his face. That boy is broken. Again - if he doesn’t have a full on mental breakdown soon I’m going to be so annoyed with the writers because NO HUMAN CAN WITHSTAND THIS MUCH TRAUMA THIS QUICKLY - WITHOUT ANY EMOTIONAL SUPPORT - AND COME OUT FUNCTIONAL. 

31:03 - “I do not miss drugs.” :O Dani :( Sweetie <3 Ugh. This line was heartbreaking because it hurts to remember that Dani had a drug problem. But it’s also really great. She was just in front of 1 gram of cocaine. She didn’t grab for it. It didn’t reawaken the urge to use in her. She was strong enough to say “I don’t miss this life” and say it OUT LOUD in front of Malcolm. <3 Friendship. She’s starting to trust Malcolm more. This is good....until she finds out about Endicott. 

31:45 - Wait. If Birdie knew about Endicott and Jessica.....does she know about Gil?!?!

31:49 - “Trust but verify.” That’s such a heartbreaking way to live. I hate that she has to live in a world without trust because of what Martin did. I want Jessica to be happy. So so badly. 

32:06 - .....how did Jessica find out about the book?!!?! Seriously.

32:17 - “Mummy”. Mrs. Milton is alive?!?! What. OMG. So....but how? Jessica is living in the Milton family home. Jessica is rich. But Birdie has been cut off from the family money. However, it’s clear from this conversation that Jessica and her mother aren’t on speaking terms. So how did this work? When did Jessica move into the Milton family home and why? Where is Jessica’s money coming from? Did Jessica invest her trust fund money smartly and make a fortune? Does Jessica still have access to the Milton family bank accounts?!? AND WHERE IS JESSICA’S DAD?!!? I WANT MORE INFORMATION FEDAK. 

32:49 - Malcolm is his mother’s son. Look at this. Jessica is so hurt by what Birdie has done. However, Jessica sighs, takes a breath and helps her little sister out at the cost of causing herself pain. Malcolm would do the exact same for Ainsley. He has. 

33:40 - “And do we need to talk about last night?!?” Gil has been different this season. Less soft. More strict. 

33:51 - Look at how Gil stares at Dani here. He’s annoyed and concerned. Concerned because she was in close proximity to drugs last night. Annoyed because he created a monster. Gil put together is badass, sarcastic daughter with his unstable, awkward son and they are creating a headache for him.

34:41 - “even for consultants?” hahaha

36:50 - The irony that our killer of the week is a woman who is in pain, feels disfigured, and murders in revenge is so so thick. 

37:18 - “It’s enough to drive anyone insane”.....like the emotional pain that Malcolm is currently suffering from?

38:42 - “The best revenge is letting him live like this.” The moment Malcolm realized that Ainsley was manipulating him. Look at the hurt and fear on his little face. :( 

39:00 - Ugh. I can’t tell who’s manipulating who in this whole Capshaw+Martin relationship but it’s all gross. I swear if they become romantic I will puke. These two are a psychopathic match made in heaven. 

40:08 - I could write essays upon essays about this final scene but I need to sleep. So it’s going into point form without time stamps:

First off - Halston Sage and Tom Payne give us an AMAZING performance in this scene and they deserve an Emmy for it. Seriously. 

Look at how Ainsley walks into the room. She’s self-satisfied. She feels no remorse. She’s pleased that Malcolm has been suffering. 

Look at how utterly empty Malcolm is when he greets Ainsley. This boy is in shock. He’s so deeply hurt and he just had one of his greatest fears confirmed - Ainsley is like Martin. 

“Do you have any idea what you put me through?!?” This. Yes, Malcolm is upset and hurt but there’s a part of me that genuinely thinks this question isn’t rhetorical. There’s a part of me that thinks Malcolm is desperately trying to get Ainsley to admit to feeling remorse so that he can convince himself that his baby sister isn’t gone forever. 

“Do you?” Ainsley is mad. She has a right to be. Malcolm did lie to her. He probably should’ve told her the truth. HOWEVER, if Ainsley was a functional adult - she would’ve just confronted Malcolm about it. She has every right to be pissed but her behaviour has been downright petty, juvenile, and cruel. 

“Underestimated me. For months.” Is this the root of Ainsley’s anger? She mentioned something similar in 1x6 when Jessica and Malcolm tried to stop her from visiting Martin. She resents Jessica and Malcolm for treating her like a child. For trying to protect her from Martin. On one hand, I understand - that’s probably suffocating and frustrating. On the other hand, Ainsley’s acting like a child so....why wouldn’t they treat her like one?

“I have given up everything for you!! I don’t even know who I am anymore.” This breaks me. Malcolm is screaming through tears. He’s so utterly broken (this doesn’t count as a mental breakdown Fedak....you better give me more). Malcolm is rightfully frustrated that Ainsley doesn’t acknowledge that he literally threw out his moral code to protect her. That when this gets out - his relationship with his only real friends since he was 10 years old (JT and Dani) will probably want nothing to do with him. Malcolm probably thinks that Gil will abandon him WHEN the Endicott thing comes out. Malcolm has thrown his fragile mental health down the drain to protect Ainsley. He thinks he’s a monster. Yes. Malcolm made the choice to protect Ainsley. Ainsley doesn’t have to be grateful. She doesn’t have to respect his decision. But acknowledging that his decision was made out of love would sure help. Malcolm wanted to be a good big brother so badly that he threw away his sense of self.

“Protect me? Or control me?” Wow. Okay. I get it. Ainsley feels controlled which is bad for someone who likes being in control. But Malcolm was never trying to control Ainsley. Malcolm was trying to control a situation. Not a person. Is what Malcolm did right? No, lying to Ainsley wasn’t a great choice. But telling her the truth also wasn’t a great choice. He was damned either way. 

“For someone who spent the last few decades trying to recover from being gaslight; it’s ironic how quickly you resorted to it.” Uncalled for. Was Malcolm gaslighting Ainsley? Technically, yes. HOWEVER, one of the main criteria for gaslighting is that the gaslighter is aware that they’re gaslighting someone. I honestly don’t think Malcolm realized he was gaslighting Ainsley - look at his face when she mentions it: he looks heartbroken. BESIDES. How is AINSLEY NOT GASLIGHTING MALCOLM RIGHT NOW?!?! “That’s exactly what Dad would say.” She’s trying to convince Malcolm that he’s just like Martin. She’s made him believe that she murdered a second person. She made him an accomplice to her fake murder. She knowingly continued with this ruse after he came clean and told her the truth. And he was nothing but supportive and protective. Malcolm helped her hide a body. Why is Ainsley playing the victim?! 

Look at the torture on Malcolm’s face right before he apologizes to Ainsley for lying to her. This boy is being gaslight and he doesn’t even realize it. 

FURTHERMORE I DON’T RECALL AINSLEY APOLOGIZING TO MALCOLM FOR MAKING HIM 1) HIDE A BODY, 2) LIE TO THEIR MOM, 3) LIE TO GIL, 4) AN ACCOMPLICE TO A SECOND (FAKE) MURDER, 5) LYING TO MALCOLM ABOUT THE SECOND MURDER. She just says, “Maybe it was a little over the top.” Come on. No. 

“I appreciate that.” SERIOUSLY. Ainsley doesn’t even have the curtesy to say “I’m sorry too.” or “I know you did what you thought was best”?!? Her response feels bitter and angry. She doesn’t forgive Malcolm. She’s still livid despite the fact that her brother is literally breaking apart in front of her. There’s no questioning the genuineness of Malcolm’s apology. That’s sincere pain and remorse. 

This whole scene is super disturbing because Malcolm is on the verge of tears. He’s visibly upset. Yet - Ainsley is channeling a quiet, disassociating anger (similar to what she looked like right before she murdered Endicott). She’s completely consumed by anger. She’s not acting rationally and it’s really disconcerting to watch the contrast between the two siblings. 

“I had to make sure that you were never going to mess with my head again.” .....you know, a functional adult human (hell, even a half-functional adult human) would just verbally confront their sibling about it. They probably wouldn’t fully trust or forgive their sibling right away but they wouldn’t pull a stunt as cruel and malicious as Ainsley just pulled on Malcolm. The problem with Ainsley’s behaviour vs. Malcolm’s is this: Ainsley is intentionally hurting Malcolm out of anger. Ainsley wants revenge. Malcolm reacted out of fear and panic to protect Ainsley. Malcolm just wants to be a good big brother. Neither of them are perfectly in the right but Ainsley is so so so out of line. 

“You need to lighten up. We got away with it.” Ainsley is a serial killer. Say it from the rooftops. This is the first time she’s shown an emotion other than anger/disassociation all episode. Ainsley is happy that they got away with it. Malcolm is crumpling under the guilt and grief but Ainsley is happy. 

“No one does this murder stuff better than us.” Holy shit. I can’t. Malcolm looks so so so heartbroken here. He just realized that his sister is gone forever. AND AINSLEY damn. This girl needs some serious help. She’s going to kill again. She liked it the first time. I bet you she slaughtered the pig just to get her fix. She could’ve boughten the pig’s blood from a butcher shop or something but I bet you she killed the pig herself. And I bet you she liked it.

Hoxley is a flamboyant gay and a cocky profiler. That’s just a fact. 

I can’t. Alan Cummings will always be the villain from Spy Kids to me. I don’t know how I’m going to take Hoxley seriously. 

Yoooooo Endicott’s head is creepy af. 

Damn. This isn’t good. Hoxley is going to ruin Malcolm’s life. I can feel it. 

Okay. I loved this episode. I have a lot of feelings about it (obviously). I’m so bitter that we have to wait until April 13th for the next episode. See you guys next time. If you read this far - thanks for hanging out. 

[lune-hime]

Garden of Tulips (Levi/Reader) Tea Time #4

~Click me for more chapters~

“What did it look like?”

“Hmm?” Levi looked up from his place next to your sleeping form. “The titan that tried to snack on my darling granddaughter.” “Ugly as fuck.” “Aren’t they all?”

Levi recounts memories of the reader and their shared life together while she recovers from a serious injury.

!!WARNINGS!! - Violence, gore, smut, wholesome content ;)

So these little Tea Times were written as little filler-memory chapters to place in between the main story line.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Freckles

↞♞♘↠

Jean sucked up his scattered feelings upon seeing you sitting in one of the library’s plush armchairs.

“Hey.” He called with feigned confidence as he rounded the corner of the last bookshelf before your resting place. He faltered a bit when his eyes met the ever stoic gaze of Levi. He was reclining in the chair opposite of you with a stack of documents in his lap.  You looked up from your book in slight surprise.

“Hey, I thought you left already.” Your statement was more of a perplexion as you regarded him gently.

“Yeah-um.” Jean started and furrowed his brow. His eyes darted back over to Levi who had quietly resigned back to his paperwork. His gaze fell back to yours, a look of worry spreading on your face. He bit his lip to contain the fountain of baggage that threatened to spill.

“Don’t worry about it-it’s fine.” He cleared his throat and nodded, trying to look convincingly forgettable. Your eyes narrowed in suspicion.

“I’ll see you at the meeting later, Levi.” You said with a small smile in his direction. His head rose and he nodded once.

“Alright.” He replied curtly. Jean observed the faint blush on your cheeks and the delicateness of the captain’s features as he looked at you. Your crush had blossomed full force and it was sweetly sickening to Jean to watch you flutter secretly under Levi’s actions.

“I said it was nothing.” Jean grumbled as you slapped your book shut and came to his side.

“Bullshit.” You chided as you walked side by side out of the library. Once you were out in the hall you backed him against the wall. You stood in his personal space bubble. The way he towered over you didn’t threaten you at all. It never had.

“ Fine. I was wondering if you would come with me?” He asked, his voice shaking minutely as he tried to keep his weakness from seeping through the cracks of his pride. You tilted your head to the side in a fond grin.

“Of course.” You replied sweetly.

“Let me just drop my book off and change my shoes.” You said as you began walking again. Jean trailed behind you like a puppy, hands fidgeting behind his back accompanied by periodic sighs.

“Are the others coming too?” You asked as you slipped on your everyday sandals after having discarded your reading material. Jean didn’t answer for a moment and only the clap of the soles of your shoes against the wooden floor met your ears.

“No, I just wanted it to be the two of us. If that’s alright.” He confessed. When you stood up straight, the apprehension he had been feeling washed over you. You hummed in agreement.

“Okay.” You smiled knowingly. You gave his arm a few warm strokes as you both headed into the hall.

The walk through the village fields was lovely. The June sun was pleasant on your exposed skin and the lush flowers tickled your ankles along the stone path. The two of you stuck to the outskirts of the village until you reached a grove of trees that opened up into the eternal resting place for soldiers and villagers alike.

Jean was on autopilot as he deftly led you through the rows of graves to reach your destination. The modest stone may have represented a life no longer present, but it was teeming with life. Little daisies had sprouted in the soil where you and Jean had planted them earlier that year. Rollie pollies skittered from their hiding places within the crevasses of the engraved cadet’s name when the two of you leaned down to be closer to him.

“Hi Marco.” You greeted with the same warmth as the summer air.

“Hey Marco.” Jean echoed with a melancholy tenderness to his tone. You watched with a pang in your heart as his hands began shaking around the muffin in his hold. Eventually he placed it down in front of the stone and reached in his pocket for his matchbook. His fingers quivered when he failed to strike fire into the wooden stick. After another unsuccessful attempt, you grasped his hands.

“Let me.” You offered gently and he released his grip. You struck the match and lit the candle embedded in the plush top of the muffin.

“Happy birthday.” Jean spoke, finally giving into his bubbling grief and letting his voice crack.

“Happy birthday, Marco.” You said as your own voice began to falter. You scooched closer to Jean and embraced him from the side. Your arms wrapped around his shaking back. You were sure that if you hadn’t held him, he would have crumbled into particles as fine as the moss that grew along Marco’s grave.

It had been many months but to Jean the loss didn’t sting any less. It only grew as the grass greened and the days lengthened. He kept his profound grief bottled up compactly in a bottle closed tightly with a wax seal. But if he didn’t rip that seal off soon, it would implode and pierce his organs with glass.

“Y/N.” He called through choked sobs. You responded by rubbing a ginger hand along his back and shoulders.

“I-” He hiccuped, taking the hand you began to wrap around his.

“I loved him.” His wobbly confession was like Jean was standing on the precipice of a tidal wave. The reality of his feelings had always resided within him but felt cemented now that he had professed them to you and the earth. Every flutter he felt when Marco blessed him with his sheepish smile, every blush he hid when Marco went out of his way to help him out with the tiniest of tasks, every drop of happiness that boy had made Jean feel came crashing down on him and opened the floodgates he had so desperately tried to suppress.

“I know.” You said. Tears began cascading down your cheeks at the broken heart that bubbled from Jean’s chest. Jean never cried in front of you, it was shocking but not unwelcomed. You had known he had harbored an affection for the deceased cadet for as long as Jean had probably accepted it himself. You observed their obliviously magnetic interactions, supported him silently, and waited patiently for him to tell you about it. No matter how late he decided he was ready to.

“I really loved him.” He cried, reaching one hand out to run his fingers over Marco’s name with utter fragility.

“I was a fucking coward and couldn’t tell him how much I loved him. And now I never can.” He wailed.

“Shhh-Hey.” You released him for a brief moment to turn him towards you. You took his wet cheeks between your hands.

“You’re not a coward. It takes immense courage to realize you love someone, no matter who they are.” You consoled.

“I know he loved you too, Jean. So much.” You smiled sadly as you wiped the next wave of incoming tears from his face with your thumbs. “It was easy to see with the way his face lit up whenever you walked into the room, whenever you sat next to one another for meals, whenever you went into town together.”

“You both made each other’s lives better even without voicing your true feelings. Because your feelings were woven into every action you showed one another. Just because he is gone doesn’t mean what you felt for one another is. That will always be with you.” You said.

“Okay?” You affirmed and hiked the sleeve of your cardigan over your palm to rid his face of the salty sea as he sniffled. He held your comforting gaze for a moment before nodding and reaching out to hug you. You returned the gesture immediately, keeping him afloat as he swam through his grief. When you felt his shaking grow less intense you patted him on the back.

“Lie down.” You instructed and brought him to rest his head on your lap. You ran your fingers through his hair as he stretched out his legs in the long grass. Jean played with the strap of your sandals absentmindedly as he gazed at Marco’s grave. You sat in peaceful silence for a while.

“Jeanie?” You called to make sure he was listening. He hummed against your leg.

“Do you wanna know the moment I knew you were into Marco?” You asked tentatively, hoping the story would brighten his mood. Jean nodded silently.

“Remember when I accidentally walked into the boy’s shower room?” Your sentence caused you to giggle at the memory.

“How could I forget.” He said, a bit less sniffly than before. You smiled in nostalgia as you played with a randomly curly lock of Jean’s honey tresses.

“Well after you brought me out into the hall…and I stupidly turned back around, I saw you peeping at his package for longer than a guy normally would.” Your chuckle turned into a squeak when Jean pinched your leg. To your happiness he was smiling through reddened cheeks.

“Maybe you really are a pervert.” He snickered, damp eyes shining with teasing.

“I couldn’t help it, it was the literal heat of the moment.” You countered and poked his sides. He squirmed in your lap and let out a groan of annoyance.

“Does that mean you saw mine?” Jean asked and pinned your arms at your side.

“I’ve blocked that out of my memory.” You assured and wiggled your sides to free yourself from his grip.

Another gentle silence encased the two of you. Your eyes fell to one of the daisies as it waved its petals delicately along with the rhythm of the wind.

“Thank you, Y/N.” Jean suddenly said. His tone was laced with sincerity as you looked down to meet his gaze.

“For peeping at Marco?” You cracked a half smile which made Jean huff in amusement.

“No, dumbass. For coming here with me. For letting me get all of this out. And for listening.” He said with a sincerity that blanketed your chest in warmth. “I’m not good with emotional stuff, that’s always been more of a you thing.”

“Anything for you, Jean.” You replied with a fond pat of his cheek. “I’m happy that you felt like you could express yourself with me.”

Then, the breeze lovingly blew puffs of warm and fuzzy kisses against both of your skin. You swore you could hear a faint laugh framed by freckles.

Christmas Blizzard

↞♞♘↠

“Fucking shit .” The captain cursed as he whipped his hand back. Puddle’s ears were pinned starkly to the back of his neck as he refused to let Levi bring him into the lab. Your head whipped up at the commotion and you blanched.

“I’m so sorry! I forgot to tell you he bites…” You cried and scurried over to the entrance. Your face was blasted with incoming snowflakes as you took the reins from Levi.

“No kidding.” Levi mumbled in annoyance as he moved to make way for your horse.

“Stop being an asshole to the captain.” You chided. Puddle’s ears immediately perked at your presence and he nuzzled you softly as you led him into the loading bay of Hange’s laboratory. It was definitely not a place fit for horses, but you couldn’t have left them out to freeze in the bitter cold. This was just one of the many inconveniences the sudden snow storm had just created.

Your ears turned red to match your frost kissed cheeks as you realized your use of profanity. You really needed to stop swearing around your superiors. Your loose lips were one of the unfortunate side products of being raised by Oma. You tied Puddle to a nearby railing next to Levi’s horse.

“Sorry to drag you into all of this, Levi.” You exhaled, face stinging from the brutal winter chill. You glanced around the familiar laboratory that suddenly felt so vast and cold.

“Yeah well, neither of us knew it would get this shitty so quickly.” Levi commented. He grimaced at the pickled titan samples that were stored in the formaldehyde pods as he strolled to Hange’s office area.

“Still, I appreciate that you tried to come here and warn me.” You thanked him with a small smile.

“Thank Erwin. I had nothing else going on.” He said blandly and waved your gratuity off. That seemed like the closest thing to a ‘you’re welcome’ you were going to get. It was late into the night of Christmas Eve. After partaking in some festivities with your friends, Erwin had called you to his office in need of assistance. Apparently one of the scouts observed a strange smoke emanating from Hange’s laboratory and since the scientist herself was on a supply run in the city, the next point of contact was her pupil.

You had spent all evening trying to fix the damn incubator, knowing that if you let it smoke out it would devastate Hange to lose her precious samples. Unbeknownst to you a winter storm had been brewing; an intense blizzard that threatened to lock all inhabitants of the area indoors. Erwin had dispatched Levi to come collect you before the impending weather came, however the storm arrived a bit ahead of predictions and turned a couple hour job into a snowy expedition.

“How long do you think we’ll have to wait this out?” You asked apprehensively as you began to get back to work on your project. You heard Levi sigh as he plopped down at Hange’s desk. He reclined in her chair and propped his feet up on her workspace littered with journals.

“I don’t know. Looks like we might be here for a while, though. So take your time with whatever you need to fix, I guess.” He hummed and settled himself comfortably into the leather chair.

For a bit, you let the silence linger as you tinkered with the machine. Mechanic whirls and the sharp stabbing of snowflakes against the lab’s walls filled the lack of conversation.

“Why does four eyes have so many body parts lying around?” Levi piped up with a disgusted tone. You looked at him over his shoulder to see him lazily glancing around her experimental area.

“She likes to dissect them to see how close their anatomy is to humans.” You answered with a chuckle. “It looks a little bit like its out of a horror story, right?”

Levi hummed in agreement and met your eyes briefly. As you got to know him better, you realized the fear people harbored of him really was misplaced. Unless you were a titan, that is. You came to find he actually loved to talk, he would just let silence fill the space when he didn’t know what to talk about.  

“And?”

“...And?” You echoed unsure of his question.

“Are they close to humans?” He pressed with a slight interest laced in his nonchalant tone.

“Yeah, actually. Besides the absence of reproductive organs they are pretty much anatomically identical.” You explained as you flipped a couple switches unsuccessfully.

“So the fact they can’t shit or reproduce is significant right?” Levi wondered aloud as he peeped at one of Hange’s journals. Your giggle caught him by surprise and he felt a flutter in his chest.

“Yes, you could say that.” You agreed. The way he talked when he let himself crawl out of his shell never ceased to amuse you.

“It’s weird to believe it's Christmas Eve.” You commented, changing the subject casually.

Levi just hummed. Another icy silence filled the chamber as you made (hopefully) progress towards getting the incubator up and running again. One of the horses snorted and you were suddenly aware that you and the captain weren’t the only two living beings in the room.

“So what’s your horse’s name?” You asked in curiosity.

“Horse.” Levi’s reply was quick and curt.

“Really?” You asked in disbelief and looked back at him.

“It doesn’t have a name.”

“It?” You narrowed your eyes.

“She.” He corrected.

“Why would I name it when I just use it for transportation?” Levi shrugged dismissively. You pursed your lips.

“Because she’s just as alive and capable of feeling as you are, Captain.” You declared with a pointed glare.

“Maybe even more.” You mumbled playfully and Levi’s brow furrowed, questioning if he heard you right. When he didn’t quip back, you decided to take matters into your own hands.

“Dandelion.”

“Huh?”

“She looks like a Dandelion. So that’s her name now.” You grinned in satisfaction and got back to work. Levi regarded you in silent curiosity. The more time the two of you spent together, the more warm he felt by your sweet personality, quirks and all. Now every time he would regard the creature he would think of you and your dorky name for the animal.

The faint chiming of the HQ’s clocktower through the snow’s assault signaled it was midnight.

“Oh, a Christmas Miracle!” You called cheerily once the bells had ceased. The incubator hummed to life, the light and warmth from the engine buzzing brightly. You breathed a sigh of relief and placed your tools down. You got up and stretched your arms, turning to look at your companion.

“And Merry Christmas, Levi.” You grinned, the corners of your eyes crinkling.

“Yeah, Merry Christmas.” He nodded without much enthusiasm.

“Do...you usually celebrate?” You asked after sensing his lack of excitement.

“Not really, but my squad forces me to celebrate. At least the birthday part.” He explained and your eyes widened.

“Christmas is your birthday?” The innocence of your gasp made Levi want to smile. He nodded once more.

“Oh my-Happy Birthday then!” You said excitedly. Levi was consistently amazed by the eagerness of those he knew and strangers alike to celebrate his birthday. He never got the hype.

“Thanks.” He replied with a gentleness to his features. Your excitement towards him had melted away the ice that usually froze over his expressiveness.

“When we get back tomorrow I’ll make you and your squad some Noel tea I received from home to celebrate!” You mused as you came to sit down at an empty chair on the other side of the desk.

“I-if that is, you want to.” You added quickly, a faint blush creeping onto your cheeks after inviting yourself to something you weren’t even a part of. Oh, believe me, did Levi ever want to.

“I want to.” He replied as the corners of his mouth twitched upward.

[livsoulsecrets]

Incantava AU - Chapter 3: My soul is in the sky

Masterpost

Previous Chapter

Summary: Eleonora is in London for some days for her brother’s photograph exposition. In her last night in the city, she is convinced by her friends to go out by herself and have some fun. Unexpectedly, she meets other Italian there, a charming boy named Edoardo. Not knowing much else about him, she takes her friends’ advice and has a one night stand with him, not expecting to see the boy after that. Little did she know they were bound to meet each other again.

August 22nd

21:58

For some crazy reason, it was ridiculously easy for Eleonora to talk to Edoardo. She usually took a lot of time being comfortable with people until getting to the point she was okay with making a fool of herself.

Weirdly enough, Edoardo could manage to make her do that easily.

During their walk until the said square, they had started talking about the city and how different it felt. Edoardo had told her about his work with his dad and how it drove him crazy sometimes, making it very clear his father was a difficult person to deal with. Ele told him about Filo, his chaos and swetness, how he made her pick up a damn plane to come to his exposition even if she was just one week away from starting college.

They never ran out of things to talk about and that itself was more than enough to make Eleonora feel a bit dizzy. The way he was looking at her wasn’t helping, though.

— Okay, so you are either leading me to the place where you will murder my defenseless self or this square is in Narnia. — Eleonora joked, trying to keep herself together.

— What makes you think I’m the serial killer here? Maybe you are the physco who is playing the defenseless part to murder me. — Edo barely hid his smile and Ele felt pleased with herself for that.

— It is so nice of you to know women can be serial killers too, we totally appreciate the inclusion. — Their shoulders bumped while Ele sarcastically answered him.

— You are very welcome. — He replied, stopping to walk and pointing at the square in front of them. — Anyway, let’s drop our paranoias! We arrived. This place’s sky is not so polluted for some miracle, so we can actually look at the stars.

— And at those heavy clouds, huh? Do you think it is going to rain? — Ele looked up to the cloud, a bit worried about the weather.

— Honestly… When is it not raining here?

— You do have a point.

Edo kept walking and they finally sat down at the bench, side by side.

Ele felt peaceful while looking at the intensity of the sky above them.

— Okay, so the whole our souls being at the sky thing is done. — Ele spoke up after the two of them spent a couple of moments admiring the sky.

— You’re away too impatient, you know? — Edo joked, sending an electric pulse through Ele’s body when he jokingly shoved her, making the sides of their bodies touch completely. — To actually see something, you need to pay attention.

— You sound like a poorly written self help book.

— And you’re away too good at insulting me. — Edoardo laughed at the way Ele rolled her eyes at him, not being able to see the grin that formed in her face shortly after.

— Thank you, it has been years of practice.

— Guess you’ve been preparing for me.

— Guess you think the world revolves around you.

— I do get this a lot. — If Edo realizes Ele’s eyes keep being attracted to his lips, he doesn’t show so. His arms are spread in the bench and his hand is softly touching Ele’s shoulder. — Anyway, if you want to do something, we can just do our thing again.

— Our thing, huh? — Ele makes fun of him, despite the way her heart is racing with the suggestion.

— Yeah, the book thing. — Her grin gets wider and Edo rolls his eyes. — Just do it.

Eleonora doesn’t say a thing, but she reachs into her bag and takes the book out.

— Okay, this time I will just open in a random page and see what it says. — Ele offers and Edo bows closer to spy at the book, almost breathing down her neck, only the fragile light of the street lamps illuminating them.

— As you please. — He complies.

— “We will meet; and there we may rehearse most obscenely and courageously.” — Ele carefully reads every word out loud, feeling herself blush when Edo lets out a hoarse laugh.

She doesn’t know what she is supposed to do after that, but, luckly, Edo comes to her rescue.

— Well… We should be courageous then.

— What do you mean with that? — Ele’s voice gets weirdly high and she curses herself for that.

— I mean: we should play a game! — Edo suggests and Ele crooks an eyebrow at him, surprised.

— Don’t you dare trying to push “20 questions” down my throat!

— Too late, that is what we are doing. If you don’t answer the questions I make… Then I can post something on your social media.

— Same thing for me? — Edo nods. — Okay, then, I’m in. But, can we please go to somewhere safer than an empty square at night? — Ele demand and Edo nods, agreeing to her.

They walk for a bit in silence until finding a restaurant to hang out at.

— Okay, I’ll take it easy on you. Worst pain you ever felt? — Edo asks once they find a good table, away from everyone else.

— When I was 12, I had appendicitis. I thought I was going to die, it was horrible! Nothing ever came close to it ever since. — Ele lets out the part where she had to take a taxi to get to the hospital because she had nobody to go with her, but the thought wanders in her mind for a bit longer.

— It’s your turn now. — Edo says, seeming to notice she became distant for a bit.

— Alright… If you had to be trapped on a desert island, who would you take there with you?

— That’s easy. My best friend, Fede. He’s annoying as fuck, but that is good to fill all the silence, right? Who would you take?

— My brother… Probably for the same reason. Favorite cartoon growing up?

It is weird to think of Edo as a kid, but there’s a certain light in his eyes and a levity in his features that make him seem so young at certain moments despite his facade. Eleonora wonders what made him put that facade on in the first place.

— Okay, don’t laugh at me! — He asks and Ele gets pulled out of her thoughts.

— I won’t, come on, say it!

— It was Winx. — Ele almost gasps because of how unlike him it sounds. — My dad didn’t want me to watch it, he said it was a “girls’ show”, but I would do it anyway. Every time he entered the living room, I would just change it to Mickey Mouse or some shit.

— Are you kidding me? — Ele wonders again.

— What? Are you saying you agree with him? — Edo dramatically puts a hand on his chest, pretending to be disappointed.

— Of course not, that’s bullshit. But… Winx was my favorite show growing up too. — Ele says back and they both laugh at another coincidence bonding them.

— Flora was my favorite.

— Oh, darling, I was Flora! I would fight anyone that tried to be her when I was a kid while we played together.

— Oh, someone was taking it too seriously! — He looks delighted with the story, though.

— Look, she is the best one, okay? The guardian of the nature!

— The Fairy of Flowers! All of that! — Edoardo completes her without hesitating.

At that moment, Ele feels young. Maybe it is being out in the middle of the night in a beautiful city. Or perhaps it is the memories of the times where she was a easy going and happy kid that do it to her.

It could as well be Edo’s company.

— Hum… First kiss? — Edoardo asks this time and Ele freezes on the spot.

The memories that come back to her this time are not very pleasant. Ele thinks back to Francesco and her heart aches a bit. Everytime she thinks she’s over him, over what he did to her, life finds a way to bring all the pain right back to her.

— Guess I’ll take the challenge. — Ele says, quickly reaching for her phone to open her Twitter app.

— Oh, that bad?

— Just do it. — Ele faked a smile and handled him the phone. Edo typed fast, a mischievous smile never leaving his lips.

— And it’s done! — He seemed too excited for it to be a good thing, but Ele took a look at it anyway.

— Oh my god, you just ruined my life. For the next weeks, that’s all my brother will be talking about! Filo will never let it go. — Ele grunts, but Edo keeps laughing at how red her face got. — Asshole! — She curses over her breath when their eyes cross again. — Okay… I’ll end you now: worst lie you ever told your mom?

Edoardo bites his lip when he hears the question and Ele is sure he’s about to burst out some dumb joke, but he stays silent.

She is confused by his reaction, until he pulls his phone out just like she did before and handles it to her.

— Well, if I didn’t tell my mom about it, I certainly can’t tell a stranger. — Edo says, the stupidly gorgeous smile returning to his face, as if his previous silence meant nothing.

— Ow, you hurt me like this. You know my name, what my favorite show is and who I would take to a desert island with me. I went to high school with people I knew less about, do you know that? — Ele teases him just because she doesn’t like the worried bow that was in his face before.

Her idea works, because he immediately laughs in return, his head being thrown back during it.

— Alright, I will post something in your Instagram, but you gotta take the picture. — Ele says, telling Edo what he should do next. He gets oddly quiet while she posts the pic he took. — What? Was the picture not good?

— No. It was awesome. You’re awesome, I mean. — Edo said, swallowing nervously.

— Oh… Thanks. — She answers, an unexpected shyness taking over her when she posts the picture with a ironic caption on his Instagram.

— Here it is. — Their hands brush when she handles Edo his phone. If he takes notice of that, he doesn’t show.

— Alright. Your turn. — Edo says, his chair somehow getting closer to hers in the process.

— Fine… Do you have a secret?

— Oh… That’s deep. — Edo says, surprised.

— You act so mysteriously sometimes. Guess the question fits you. — Ele shakes her shoulder, her whole body aware of Edo’s arm resting in her chair.

— Alright, I suppose you’re right. You know… I do have a couple of secrets, but I can only think of one right now. — She was nervously aware of how close he was right now.

Surprisingly enough, Eleonora wouldn’t mind if he somehow managed to get closer.

That was the moment the waitress decided to come close to them, letting them know the bar was closing off.

Edo almost jumped away from her, given how unexpected the interruption was, but he managed to keep his voice normal while talking to the waitress. They paid the bill in an awkward silence.

Her stomach was turning and her hands were sweating. Ele was so nervous she didn’t realize it had started raining outside.

— Shit. Can’t believe it started raining already. — Edo said.

— It’s not too strong, if we hurry, I think we won’t catch the worst part of it. — Ele suggests, trying to focus on something other than the fact Edo was about to kiss her.

Or better: that she was about to let him.

— Yes, it’s better if we leave before it gets heavier.

— My hotel is over there. — She pointed to the upper street.

— So is my apartment. — With that, they both took some courage and left the bar behind, doing their best to avoid getting soaked with the rain.

At certain point, Ele wasn’t able to see a thing and her body collapsed in Edo’s arms. He catches her out of reflex, they both almost falling down.

They were standing in the middle of the pouring rain that had no signal of stopping.

Ele’s dress was getting tighter and tighter as she stood there, Edo’s hands still on her lap, hers on his shoulders.

— We should go. — Edo whispered, but he didn’t make any move.

— Yes, we should.

— Will we? — He asked cautiously.

— What was it the book was saying again? — She gives him another question instead of an answer, but he seems satisfied with it by the smile on his face.

— “We will meet; and there we may rehearse most obscenely and courageously.” — Edo quoted, his eyes not leaving hers.

— We met. Maybe it’s time for the rehearse. — Ele whispers, barely registering the confusion on Edo’s eyes.

She reaches out and pulls him into her, her hands moving to his neck as their lips crash against each other.

Ele only has a second of lucid thoughts to consider the insanity of what she’s going, but that moment is quickly gone, forgotten by the overlying sensation of being held so fiercely. The feeling of being lost and found all at once.

Maybe it’s insane. Maybe it’s stupid.

But when Edo takes her off her feet, Eleonora couldn’t care less about logic.

Previous Chapter

[ohblackdiamond]

little t&a (paul/gene, nc-17) (part 6 of 29)

part 1   part 2   part 3   part 4   part 5   part 6   part 7   part 8   part 9   part 10   part 11   part 12   part 13   part 14   part 15   part 16   part 17   part 18   part 19   part 20   part 21  part 22   part 23   part 24    part 25   part 26   part 27   part 28   part 29   

Four weeks before KISS gets back on tour, Gene discovers that Paul’s been cursed by a groupie. For the sake of KISS’ finances, Paul’s comfort levels, and Gene’s libido, this crisis must be resolved. Sexswap fic. In this chapter: Gene and Paul go to the legendary punk dump CBGB in search of the groupie.

Paul and Gene didn’t talk much for a long time after Peter left. Just sat in the living room half-watching T.V. Gene ordered a pizza about three or four hours later. Paul ate a single piece, drank two Tabs, then tried to head back to his room like a forlorn kid.

           “Hey,” Gene said, taking his arm as he got up to leave.

           “Gene, he didn’t know me. I’ve known him for five years and he didn’t have a clue.”

           “You couldn’t have expected him to.” Gene swallowed. “He was trying to stick up for you.”

           “I didn’t think he cared that much.”

           “Are you serious?”

           “Yeah, I’m serious.”

           “Paul…” Gene stared, shaking his head. “Paul, you two used to talk every damn night. It was obnoxious. You were like teenage girls.”

           Paul snorted.

           “Yeah, and I was the frontman of KISS, too, but look how that turned out.”

           “You’re still the frontman,” Gene rattled out, irritably. “What’s with you? Did you really think Peter didn’t give a shit about you?”

           “Right now, I wish he didn’t. He’s gonna be looking for me all over town.” Paul took a deep breath. “I blew it. I dunno why I even tried to tell him.”

“If we can get this reversed quickly enough, it won’t matter.”

“It will. Peter’ll be all hacked off and telling me about how my girlfriend was cheating, then I’ll have to figure out some lie—blow him off—”

“Don’t worry about that right now.”

“I’m tired of blowing Peter off. I can’t keep this up. If I run into anybody else I know while I’m like this, I’m gonna screw up.”

“Paul—”

“I won’t do it on purpose. But I’ll do it. And maybe nobody’ll figure out who I am, but they’ll know something’s wrong. And—”

“We’ll get you fixed before that’s an issue. I’ll—shit, I don’t know. I’ll make up an excuse for Peter.” What he could possibly tell him, well, Gene had no idea. With any luck in the world, Peter would get a few lines in him and forget all about this afternoon. With any luck. Right. “We might as well get ready for the club. You still want to go, right?”

           Despite himself, Gene didn’t think Paul looked like he was in the shape to go. He had that steeled-up look about him that Gene had seen before, after phone conversations with newly-minted exes and conniving execs and, sometimes, after talking to his parents. He’d keep going, after, but it’d be bitterly. And bitterly was not how he wanted Paul approaching the nightclub. Especially not in the form he was in right now.

           “Yeah.”

           “Yeah?”

           “I’ve been like this for six days. I don’t want it to be seven.”

“Paul, are you—”

“I’m sure. I’m positive. Aren’t you?” Paul’s mouth twitched, as though he were about to say something else, then his lips pursed and he turned on his heel. He didn’t slam the door into his bedroom, but Gene could hear the sound of him locking it. It stung.

Gene changed clothes in the guest bedroom. He hadn’t tried too hard at the punk bit himself, and he knew he wasn’t convincing in just a leather jacket and a black tee, and a pair of plaid pants. Nearly half his purchases. Hopefully, the rest wouldn’t see the light of day. Paul’s guest bedroom was furnished with a weird scattering of Paul’s stuff—on the nightstand were a few notepads filled with his standard dick drawings and caricatures, and the mirrored dresser was loaded with tour knickknacks. Gene picked up a small rag doll some fan had made of Paul in full Starchild regalia, finding tubes of mascara and eyeliner underneath where the doll had lain.

           Punk had started from glam, right? Might as well put on the eyeliner, at least. Paul could keep the mascara. Once Gene was satisfied, he stepped out and headed back to the living room, turning on the T.V. again while he waited. Fifteen minutes. Twenty minutes, and then Paul finally came out of the bedroom.

           He’d teased his curls mercilessly, to the point they probably added back some of the height he’d lost, and the stiff smell of Aquanet emanated off of him. Red lipstick, eyeliner, faint patters of blush, just enough to make his high cheekbones stand out. The jean shorts and fishnets showed off his long legs to much greater effect than the dresses from earlier. He was finally wearing a bra, the shirt was tight against his chest, the fabric straining. Shit. Shit. If Paul didn’t still have a bit of that tense look from earlier, Gene would’ve complimented him. Would’ve teased him. Might have even been tempted to say he was beautiful. Instead, he just stared.

           “Are you ready?” Paul asked tersely.

           “Yeah.”

           Once they got in the car, Paul turned on the radio, which surprised Gene. He hoped nothing of theirs would come on. Manfred Mann started up as Paul turned up the volume—that guy was like a groundhog, poking back in with another hit nearly ten years after his last—and Paul was tapping his fingers against the steering wheel. He’d painted his nails, too, Gene noticed, the black lacquer reminding him suddenly of vinyl. Paul was half-humming, half-singing along under his breath, getting half the rhymes wrong. There’d always been a certain unevenness to his voice that hadn’t helped him, especially as the songs he wrote relied more and more heavily on screamingly high notes. But right now, Gene could tell Paul could hit those notes easily, if he’d let himself.

           He wanted to tell him, stupidly, that he could still sing. He could still play guitar. But Gene stopped himself. Telling him that would be crappy. It would be like telling Paul to give up, that it wasn’t worth it to try to find the girl at all. And it would be selfish, too—selfish to Paul, to Peter, to Ace—everybody connected to KISS, even himself. And for what, so he could indulge himself like a teenage boy on a handful of glimpses? Stare at his best friend’s tits? Have a pretty little thing in bed he wasn’t even sleeping with, when he had hundreds of girls willing to give it up for him every night? It was a lousy trade-off. Anyway, he’d never have to consider it again after tonight. Paul would get the curse reversed and it would be done with.

           Gene looked over, and realized Paul had gone quiet again, after the Chopsticks solo. Half the song was still left.

           “Hey, keep going.”

           “What for?”

           “I like hearing you.”

           “C’mon, Gene, you’ve been hearing me for years, you can’t really—it doesn’t even sound right, like this—”

           “You sound just fine.”

           “I’d be better singing along to Olivia Newton-John at this point,” Paul mumbled, turning down the volume. “‘Maybe I hang around here a little more than I should…’ God, could you get any cheesier?”

           “Face of an angel, heart of a degenerate.”

           “Me or her?”

           In response, Gene poked a finger against one of Paul’s fishnet-clad thighs. Paul surprised him by not shifting his leg immediately. Just took his right hand off the steering wheel, letting it rest on Gene’s for a few seconds. Then he reached over to change the radio station and the moment dissolved.

           It wasn’t long before Paul pulled into a dingy lot not far from CBGB. A drizzle was starting up, the rain droplets like fat stars against the windshield. Paul didn’t bother to turn on the wipers.

           “You might wanna park the car somewhere else,” Gene said finally.

           The car’s interior was dim, but he could still catch Paul’s fragile grin.

           “Is a Spanish Harlem schoolteacher telling me I’m in a bad part of town?”

           “I don’t think punks like fancy cars.”

           Paul laughed just a little, tossing Gene his own Aviator sunglasses before turning off the engine and getting out. Gene put them on, grabbing Paul by the arm almost as soon as he’d locked up the car. Paul threw him a questioning look, but didn’t argue.

          They lined up around the block by the entrance, something Gene wasn’t used to doing. The rain was getting worse, Paul’s frothy curls giving way to pure frizz with every minute they stood out there. Gene’s wasn’t looking any better. The streetlamps and passing cars and buildings were all that lit up the line, but they didn’t seem to have been as far off-base with their outfits as Gene had figured. That, or latecomers like them were wannabes.

          “I thought you said this place wasn’t as crowded as Studio 54.”

          “It’s not. But I never had to wait outside to get in before. I just told Hilly and the bouncer I was—” Paul stopped short. The guy behind them was listening with interest. Paul leaned in against Gene’s arm abruptly. “Well, it doesn’t matter.”

          “Wait, she got into Studio 54?” The guy snorted. “Who’d you have to flash your tits to, huh?”

          Paul flinched but didn’t say anything.

          “I think you owe my girlfriend an apology,” Gene snapped. He didn’t even think about it; the words splattered out like all the lousy come-ons he’d ever bothered with, forthright and obvious as ever. Beside him, Paul let out a nervous breath.

          “Gene, c’mon, it’s fine.”

          “It isn’t fine.”

          “You’re not getting into a fight over this—”

          The guy just rolled his eyes and started to laugh. He was around Gene’s height, but not build. More wiry. Probably drunk.

          “You’re right, I’m not,” Gene said, and took off Paul’s sunglasses. The guy was still chuckling for a few seconds, before his eyes widened in hesitant recognition.

          “H…hey, you can’t be… you can’t be that Gene…”

          As a tight, frozen smile spread its way across Paul’s face, he sunk his elbow square into Gene’s ribcage, just as Gene had been about to demonstrate his tongue. The sharp ache radiated through his side, and he barely managed to keep from doubling over, his slightly-strangled hiss of “what the hell was that for” probably going unheard by Paul. The damage had already been done, anyway. The guy backed off—practically shrunk off, honestly, forfeiting his place in line, but not before screaming—

          “It’s Gene Simmons! He’s here!”

          It was like Moses had parted the Red Sea, if the Red Sea were comprised of scrubby-looking punks and hangers-on. Every eye was on them. Gene put the sunglasses on, more for the sake of disappointing anyone with a camera than really trying to slip back into hiding. No point now. The crowd shifted, crowded toward them, everyone forgetting their places in line as they craned and crammed in for a better view, tried to run up to him, the words scattering like glitter.

          “Is it really you?”

          “It’s him, it has to be Gene! Gene, Gene, oh my God, I love you! I love you!”

          “Can I have your autograph? I have a pen! I have a napkin, please, I—”

          The turmoil lasted five minutes or more, easily. People kept trying to push past Paul, who eventually ended up leaning against Gene, with Gene wrapping an arm around his waist, just to keep from getting trampled. The heel of one of Paul’s boots was on top of his own—digging in unnecessarily hard, Gene thought—for the duration of impromptu autographs and stammered-out praise, occasional begs for a kiss. For once, Gene didn’t go for it. Maybe it was just hard to get in the mood to fool around with Paul grinding his heel into his toes. Maybe it just would’ve been lousy publicity, flirting while he already had a girl he’d brought with him. A couple lousy one-armed hugs were all any of the chicks got. He didn’t have time to really think on it for long, as the crowd started to disperse again, like reluctant scattershot, in the face of someone of higher status. At least, to the club patrons. Hilly Kristal, the owner himself, had come out onto the sidewalk to meet them, with an umbrella and two bouncers in tow.

          “I haven’t heard this much noise out here since Paul Simon checked us out.” He stuck out his hand. Gene shook it. Hilly paused for a second, tilting his head, then offered his hand to Paul, too, who took it without a word. “Sorry I didn’t catch you sooner. C’mon back.”

          They followed Hilly and the bodyguards to the front entrance of the club. Paul was still simmering.

           “You asshole! That was so embarrassing!”

           “We skipped the line, didn’t we?”

           “I didn’t care about the line! They’ll be all over you now! How could you do that?”

           “He hurt you. You’ve had enough of that today.” Gene swallowed, realizing suddenly that despite Paul’s complaining, Paul hadn’t dropped his arm from his waist yet. It was a little unwieldy, but Gene appreciated the brief brushes of Paul’s chest against his side as they walked. He wouldn’t be getting that if Paul was just holding his hand. “And your hair was getting destroyed.”

           Paul’s free hand went to his scalp on irritated automatic. Hilly’s umbrella had come too late for him to resemble anything more punk than a waterlogged poodle.

           “You don’t look like a Prell commercial yourself,” he retorted. Gene just laughed. One of the bouncers held the door open, and they walked in, instantly encased in the deafening sound of electric guitars and raspy, screaming vocals. Whoever CBGB had headlining tonight had clearly dragged in more than enough amps. The clubgoers, whose attention had probably turned to the front entrance as soon as Hilly and the bodyguards had first walked out, were staring and talking to each other against the din, not approaching them yet. They would soon. Gene was sure of that. Paul must have sensed it, too, from the way his grip on Gene’s waist tightened. “C’mon, Gene, you only let yourself get recognized ’cause you wanted to get laid, right?”

           Gene didn’t answer. He didn’t know why he didn’t answer, any more than he knew why Paul kept pulling him in closer while yanking him away verbally. Maybe that wasn’t exclusive to Paul, either. Maybe.

           “I don’t think anyone else is going to bother you now,” he sidestepped instead. “Let’s find that groupie.”

[huphilpuffs]

flares

chapter: 27/? summary: Dan’s body has been broken for as long as he can remember, and he’s long since learned to deal with it. Sort of. But when his symptoms force him to leave uni and move into a new flat with a stranger named Phil, he finds that ignoring the pain isn’t the way to make himself happy. word count: 3944 rating: mature warnings: chronic illness, chronic pain, medicine a/n: My sincerest apologies for how late this chapter is; the last few months got busy between ending uni and starting my first full time job, and the emotions here were really hard to write. Hope it’s worth the wait! And hug thanks to @obsessivelymoody for beta’ing for me!

Ao3 link || read from beginning

Dan’s eyes are still burning when they get back to the flat.

Phil holds the door open for him, and he walks in with his arms wrapped tight around his middle. His blanket is still draped over the back of the sofa. There’s an open cereal box on the kitchen counter. The lounge is dark, TV screen black and windows covered.

It’s just how they left it, yet it feels stupidly, inexplicably wrong.

Phil’s hand lands on the small of his back, so gentle it’s like he thinks Dan’s fragile. Maybe he is. There’s still pressure behind his eyes, an ache between his ribs. Part of Dan feels like he could shatter under the pressure, fall back into a shaky heap of unwarranted tears.

His fingers press harsher against his sides. If he stops holding himself, he might fall apart.

Phil’s thumb drifts against the base of Dan’s spine. “What do you wanna do?” he asks.

Dan shrugs. They’re still standing in the doorway, backs to an empty corridor. He’s not sure what to do, where to go. It feels like the flat should have changed while they were gone, even though he hasn’t, not really. His back still hurts. There’s still a dull ache at his temples. The rub of his shirt against his chest still burns.

Nothing’s changed.

Yet Dan’s dizzy with how off-balance he feels.

“Wanna sit down?”

Phil’s voice is soft, careful, like he’s worried Dan will break down in sobs again, hurt himself as he does. His thumb rubs a circle against Dan’s back, low by his hips, as he presses forward gently.

Dan’s not sure if he does. It feels weird to just come home and do what he always does. But he nods anyway.

They settle onto the cushions side by side, a few awkward inches between them. The coarse fabric of Dan’s skinny jeans grates at his skin where it’s pulled tight around his knee. He should change, but now that he’s sat down, he can’t muster the energy to stand again. His whole body is tired.

His brain is tired.

Phil turns on the TV, pulls up the guide because whatever they were watching this morning has faded into a movie that seems dreadfully dull.

“Tell me if you see something you wanna watch, okay?” says Phil.

Dan nods. He watches the guide flick by to the too-steady beat of Phil’s thumb pressing the remote, and doesn’t say a word. A few movies he knows go by, a couple shows he knows he enjoys. Dan just lets his head fall back against the cushions, his eyes closed.

Phil sets the remote down. The dialogue of the dreadfully dull film drones on.

Neither one of them speaks over it.

---

“We should order pizza,” says Phil. “To celebrate, maybe?”

His hand is on Dan’s knee now, thumb drifting over it in little irregular patterns. At some point, he changed the channel to a sci-fi film that’s far more enjoyable. Dan even managed to muster some mental energy to pay attention to it, enough physical energy to lift his head from the sofa and open in his eyes.

It all fades now. His head lolls back and his eyes slam shut. Part of him thinks every little bit of energy he’s regained is trapped in his chest, bubbly and anxious and tight.

“Celebrate what?” he asks, voice tight, even though he knows the answer.

Phil squeezes his leg. “Your doctor actually listening to you?” he says. “It’s a step forward, isn’t it?”

“I guess,” says Dan. “Until–”

His voice chokes off. His throat hurts suddenly. Psychosomatic symptoms, probably, a distant voice in his head tells him. It sounds too much like his old doctor, back in Wokingham, who would order one test after he’d begged for months, only to roll his eyes when it was done.

Something warm presses against his cheek. It takes Dan’s foggy brain too long to realize it’s Phil’s thumb, wiping a stray tear from his skin.

“Until what?” he says.

Dan shrugs. “Until the tests come back fine,” he mumbles. “They always do.”

Part of him expects Phil to think that would be a good thing. Most people do. His mum would still wrap him in her arms and claim it was time to celebrate, even as Dan’s chest felt like it was caving in. She’d buy him a new video game the next day, once she gave up on punishing him into going to school.

He wonders, now, if she knew he was sad, if part of her was trying to give him something else to do than lock himself in his room and cry his ribs sore.

“Hey,” says Phil. He’s squeezing Dan’s leg again. “Then we don’t need to celebrate. Just, I don’t know, eat dinner?”

He smiles, crooked and concerned. Dan manages half a smile in return.

“Okay,” he says. “Just dinner.”

Phil nods, a little quick and jerky and definitely nervous. “Just dinner,” he repeats. “The usual?”

Dan hums, and rests a grateful hand over Phil’s as he makes the call to place their order.

---

They curl up in bed that night, tucked under layers of blankets.

The pressure almost eases some of the tightness in Dan’s chest, some of the worries racing around the back of his mind. The pillow under his head smells like home. It makes some of the lingering memories of the doctor’s office, the sterility of it, start to fade.

Phil’s arm drapes across his side, draws him in, and it almost feels normal again.

Except Dan’s heart still feels heavy, achy and anxious. His mind doesn’t want to shut off. When he closes his eyes he pictures the press of a needle into his vein, the cool press of ultrasound gel against his skin, the foreign tunnel of an MRI machine.

He’s heard they’re terrifying. It feels wrong that part of him is excited for it.

Phil’s arm tightens around him, a palm splaying across Dan’s ribs. He’s holding his breath, he realizes, and lets it out with a shudder as Phil’s head dips to dust a kiss to his shoulder.

“You’re thinking too much,” he mumbles.

Dan tries to shrug, one shoulder pressed to his pillow and the other tucked beneath Phil. “Can’t stop.”

Phil hums. He sounds tired, the sleepy kind that Dan can never quite find. “Do you wanna talk about it?”

He doesn’t bother shrugging again, just lays there, staring at the white wall across from the bed that looks almost black with the lights off. Probably like the inside of an MRI machine. Or maybe not. Maybe there’s lights in there. Dan has no idea.

Phil’s hand skims down his side to rest on his stomach instead. “Can I talk about it?”

Dan swallows. “Go ahead,” he says.

He waits. Phil’s chin digs into his shoulder as he nods. His hand ghosts over Dan’s skin, back up his side and over his ribs and down to his stomach again. He wedges one of his legs between Dan’s, wrapping himself around him as though he’s scared whatever he has to say will make Dan want to run away.

The thought flits through Dan’s mind. Any anxiety fades just as quickly.

“I don’t know how I’m supposed to feel about this,” mumbles Phil. “Because I don’t know how you feel about this.”

Dan’s chest goes tight.

“And I was thinking that maybe you should talk to someone who’s been here for more of your, I don’t know, journey?” His hand presses almost harshly against Dan’s middle. His voice is a whisper, soft and shy, when he says: “I’ve only known you for a little while.”

“Feels like longer,” says Dan.

Phil smiles, lips dusting across Dan’s skin. “It does.”

A moment passes. If not for the continuous sweep of Phil’s thumb across his stomach, Dan might think he fell asleep. He almost wishes he had, except Phil’s been his best support system and, even though it makes his stomach churn, Dan wants to hear what he has to say.

“So who do you think I should talk to?”

Phil hums. “Dunno,” he says. “I would talk to my mum.”

Just the thought makes Dan’s chest ache. “No way,” he says, definitely too loud. “I can’t talk to her about this. I can’t– what if the scans show nothing again and–”

“Hey.” Phil presses against his stomach, holding Dan even closer. “If you don’t want to, you don’t have to.”

“I don’t want to,” says Dan. “Like really don’t want to.”

“Okay,” says Phil. “Okay. What about someone else?”

Dan swallows. Suddenly, this doesn’t feel like a night time, cuddled up in bed type conversation. He wishes he could see Phil’s face, all the hints that he’s actually just trying to help Dan.

“Like who?” he says. “And if you say my dad I’ll–”

“Not your dad,” says Phil. “I was thinking Taylor. She just went through something similar, didn’t she?”

“Oh.” He blinks at the wall. It’s still dark. “Yeah, I guess she did.”

There’s a puff of air against the back of Dan’s neck, a chuckle he doesn’t care to analyze too much. “Do you think she could help?”

Dan shrugs.

Phil hums. “Think about it,” he says. His arms shift around him, settling deeper into the mattress, heavier against Dan’s side, as though he’s ready to go to sleep now.

Dan blinks at the wall and wishes he felt the same.

He slips his fingers into the gaps between Phil’s, drags his hand up his body so it’s resting over his chest again, where parts of him feel like they might fall apart without something holding him together. Phil must be able to tell, because he presses another kiss to Dan’s shoulder, splaying his hand wide over the unsteady beat of Dan’s heart.

“Can I tell you something else?” he whispers.

Dan’s not sure why, but he doesn’t quite trust his voice anymore, so he nods.

Phil’s responding smile is pressed against his skin. “I’m still here for you, too,” he says. “No matter what, ‘kay? Even if I don’t know how to respond, you can always talk to me.”

Dan’s throat goes tight. His eyes burn. He nods again, wishing Phil could see his smile, because he knows exactly what three words he’d say if he tried to speak.

---

The hospital calls in the morning.

Dan stares at the unfamiliar collection of digits for so long it Phil needs to remind him the phone will stop ringing if he doesn’t pick up. His hands shake as he holds the phone to his ear, listening to a too-chipper secretary tell him they got his referral from his GP.

The MRI is booked for late next week.

Dan didn’t expect it to be that quick. Even x-rays have never been that quick. He wonders what Dr. Kissel wrote on his forms to get him in so soon, what scary possibilities are suddenly written in his file.

His knees are drawn to his chest, face pressed between them, when he hangs up the call. Phil’s hand is resting on his shoulder. It feels too distant. Part of Dan wants to bury himself in Phil’s arms again, sob away feelings that don’t make sense until he’s left feeling like he did a week ago.

Sore and kind of helpless, but not like this.

He doesn’t hug Phil, just sits there as Phil squeezes his shoulder and whispers: “You okay?”

Dan swallows. “MRI’s on Thursday,” he says. It’s not an answer.

Phil shifts closer like it is one. His hand drifts down, fingers brushing between Dan’s shoulder blades. Dan wonders if the MRI machine will go that far. He’s not even sure what Dr Kissel’s looking for, where she’s looking for it. Will it be just his head? His whole spine? Something else?

“Hey, breathe.”

Phil’s voice is low, close to Dan’s ear. His hand has flattened against Dan’s back, rubbing small circles that make Dan feel so very small, like he wants to curl up against Phil’s side and forget the rest of the world exists.

He’s wanted a doctor to order an MRI for so long. The weight of all his anticipation feels crushing now.

Dan lets his head fall to rest against Phil’s shoulder, tucking himself into the crook there because it feels safe. Phil, in all his anxious uncertainty about how to behave in a post-doctor’s appointment universe, is still the one thing that feels right.

His hand wraps around the upper part of Dan’s arm, where nerves are sensitive and the pressure aches, and holds on tight.

“You’ve had tests done before.”

“Never an MRI,” says Dan.

“Okay.” Phil squeezes his arm. It hurts. Dan doesn’t pull away. “What makes an MRI so different?”

“I don’t know.” says Dan, quick and automatic. “It’s, like, what they do for actual sick people.”

Under his head, Dan can feel the slow rise and fall of Phil’s chest, can just barely hear the faint beat of his heart. He’s steady, not like the unsure version of him that had held Dan tight last night and told him he had no idea how to help anymore, no idea how to understand what was going on in Dan’s head.

He takes a deep breath, holds onto Dan even tighter. “And you’re not an actual sick person?”

Dan’s whole body goes tight at the words. His breath feels like it’s been punched out of him. Phil squeezes his arm one more time, eliciting an even deeper ache there, and pulls away just enough that he can probably see Dan’s face. His eyes feel wide. His jaw feels tight.

Phil opens his mouth as though he wants to speak, but he doesn’t say a word.

He doesn’t have to.

Dan knows he doesn’t mean it that way. He knows that, out of all the people in his life, Phil would probably be the first to declare him an actual sick person.

He’d probably say it before Dan, even. Maybe that’s the problem.

Dan’s wanted to be considered an actual sick person even since the pain first welled in his joints and decided to never really go away.

He’s never been considered one before.

Phil’s hand lands on his back again, another soft touch, another gentle circle, to fill in the silence.

After a moment too long, Dan finally manages to even his breathing, and mutter a quiet: “I don’t know.”

---

Taylor comes over in the afternoon.

She has a bad thrown over her shoulder and her hair thrown up in a high ponytail. It doesn’t feel like that long since he last saw her, but it must have been. She looks so much healthier. Her eyes look bright and her shoulders less heavy. If Dan was a more touchy person, he’d wrap her in his arms.

He almost does anyway, except he blurts: “I didn’t invite you,” instead.

Taylor rolls her eyes. “I know,” she says. “Your guy did.”

Dan feels his cheeks flush. He wonders, briefly, if Taylor always made comments like that and he was just too in his own struggles to notice, or if the help she’s gotten has brought it out in her.

Will getting help bring anything out him?

“He’s not my guy,” he says, gaze flicking to where Phil had lingered in the corner of the lounge after letting Taylor in. He’s not there anymore. “He’s my, like, flatmate. And friend.”

She hums, low and doubtful. “Yeah, sure, just a friend.”

The implication clear. It makes Dan’s stomach twist, his mind drawing up memories of Phil’s arms around him, his lips pressed against Dan’s skin. Taylor’s still grinning at him. It makes him squirm in his seat.

She must notice, because her smile softens. “Fine, if you don’t want to talk about Phil, why don’t we talk about why he invited me here?”

He swallows, shrugging one shoulder. His fingers drag against his thighs, nails stinging against his skin, as he watches Taylor set her bag down and drop onto the couch, legs crossed and back pressed to the armrest. She reaches out and snags one of Dan’s hands, drawing it into the empty space between them.

It’s still slightly warm from when Phil was sitting there.

“Phil said the doctor’s appointment went well,” says Taylor. Her voice has gone soft and sympathetic. “But you’re not handling it very well?”

Dan shrugs. “I’m fine,” he mumbles.

Her responding laugh is nothing but a silent puff of air. “You couldn’t convince me with that back when we first met,” she says. “What makes you think you can now?”

“I’m better now?”

“You are,” says Taylor. “Doesn’t mean you’re doing great though.” She squeezes his hand. “What’s going on?”

Her voice has gone even softer. It’s enough to make tears sting behind his eyes.

“I don’t know,” he whispers. “I don’t know, like, how to trust that it’ll actually work out this time. I’ve met some not shit doctors before and yet–”

His chest goes tight, throat burning. Taylor’s thumb sweeps across his knuckles. It’s too much like when Phil does it.

“Yet here you are,” she says. “Living in Manchester with a boy who cares about you, doing better than–”

“If you’re about to pull some ‘oh, maybe it was all meant to be’ bullshit on me I’ll actually kick you out of my flat.”

Taylor rolls her eyes, smiling. “I wasn’t going to say anything like that,” she says. “Just, like, what’s the worst that can happen? You get no answers and come back to live with Phil, who I’m pretty sure would help you with literally anything.”

“Oh.” Dan shrugs. Things would be like they were before the appointment. Part of him wishes they were, except– “What if I can’t handle being told it’s nothing again?”

Taylor shrugs. “You cross that bridge when it comes,” she says. “Phil said this doctor was really nice, and I know he hasn’t been through everything you have, but he’s had his own shit, and he really wants this for you.” She squeezes his hand again. “I don’t think he’d be happy for you if he didn’t actually think it was going to work out.”

“So you’re saying I should be an optimist?”

“I’m saying I didn’t think seeing a counsellor would help but someone told me I should, and I’m sure as hell doing better,” says Taylor. “Give it a shot. And if it goes wrong, you have Phil’s shoulder to cry on.”

She smiles. Dan manages half a smile back. “I guess.”

He lets it stay silent for a moment, gaze flicking across the Wii’s pause screen, then Phil’s closed bedroom door.

“Can I ask you something else?” he says.

“Go ahead.”

“You said Phil–”

She chuckles. “Oh, so now you want to talk about Phil?” Her fingers slip from his to pat the back of his hand. “You need to talk to him if you want to know. Mostly cause he’s hardly told me anything. Otherwise, I’d actually consider giving you information about the guy you like.”

“I don’t–” he tries to say, but he’s never been a good liar. He can feel his cheeks flaming red, can see the grin split across Taylor’s face before he says anything.

And then they both start laughing.

---

“How was talking to Taylor?”

Phil settles onto the sofa next to him, tucking his socked feet under his legs. His hand lands on Dan’s knee and a slight smile ghosts across his lips, like he knows what Dan’s gonna say.

It’s probably obvious, even though the tight anxiety in Dan’s chest is starting to return.

“It was nice,” he says.

Phil’s lips quirk. “She seems like she’s doing well.”

Dan hums his agreement, catching Phil’s gaze with his own. “Is that supposed to be a hint that I should follow in her footsteps and, like, get help?”

Phil’s response is a shrug, playful and happy and Dan missed spending time with him like this, missed the ease of being friends. He wills the worries in the back of his mind to stay there, where they were shoved by his conversation with Taylor, knowing full well they won’t.

He can already feel them coming back, faint memories of how he’d collapsed into bed sobbing last time a doctor had turned him away, a pressure in his chest that wants to ask how Phil is. But before he can say anything, Phil’s hand is drifting across the back of the sofa cushions, his fingers sliding into Dan’s hair.

“Still not feeling well, huh?” he says.

Dan shrugs. “Sorry.”

Phil hums. “Don’t apologize,” he says. “But I, uh, had another idea?”

A silent chuckle rumbles in Dan’s chest. It makes his ribs hurt. “I’m pretty sure I’m gonna be anxious no matter what, Phil,” he says. “At least until I know what the tests say.”

“I know,” says Phil. This fingers are massaging at Dan’s scalp. Dan’s not even sure it’s conscious anymore. “I just think it could help to get some things off your chest. The type of thing you’re not ready to tell anybody, you know?”

“Oh.”

Phil shrugs. “I used to do it when I needed to,” he says.

The questions well in Dan’s chest again, but instead of saying anything, he lets Phil’s hand slip from behind his head to take his hand instead. He helps Dan off the couch without an explanation, smiling like he really believes this will help.

He thought talking to Taylor would help, and, well, it mostly did.

Dan squeezes his hand and lets Phil lead him down the hall.

They slip into Dan’s bedroom, where his black checkered duvet has hardly been touched in weeks and unfolded clothes hang messily from his chest of drawers. His laptop is open in the middle of the bed, and the pillows that remain in his room pressed against the wall into a makeshift sofa.

Dan’s grows furrow, turning to catch Phil’s gaze.

“I, uh, think you should film yourself talking about your feelings,” says Phil. Before Dan can even try to respond, he continues: “I know it sounds crazy, but it makes you feel like you’re actually, uh, talking about things, but you don’t actually have to tell anyone.”

It does sound crazy. If Phil didn’t seem so genuinely convinced, Dan might laugh. “So I’m just supposed to sit here and talk to myself?”

“Don’t you talk to yourself anyway?” says Phil, quirking a smile. “But, I don’t know, pretend you’re screaming into the void. Oh! Or pretend you’re a YouTuber.”

His cheeks go pink at the end. Dan almost does ask this time, except his knees are starting to ache and he’s too lazy to stay standing through the pain today. He sits down on the bed, scootches back so he’s resting against the cushions, and stares at the black screen of his laptop.

Phil comes over, and presses a quick kiss to his head. “Just try,” he whispers. “And if it doesn’t work we can just play Mario until bedtime, okay?”

Dan nods. He watches Phil step out of his room, closing the door behind him, before leaning over to sign onto his computer. It takes him a moment to find the webcam app, and an even longer one to gather the courage to hit record.

The first few moments of the video end up a long, awkward silence, as Dan tries to comb through his thoughts to find something he can actually say out loud to himself without being absolutely mortified.

He settles on taking Phil’s advice, forces a smile and says: “Hello, internet.”

[nitroidwrites]

body switch

Relaunching my ancient drabble au on Aomine and Kise getting switched into each other’s bodies. I hope to make this into a complete fic soon!

Also had some amazing art drawn by the incredible amanduurr here. ❤

body switch I

Getting through the school day is hard.

Aomine cannot get over how slender Kise’s body is, the clean shape of his well cared for nails, the gentle curve of his waist before it meets his hips - all things the tanned teen is definitely not used to.

He shifts his feet under Kise’s desk, studying the flow of Kaijo’s school slacks around Kise’s long legs. The blond is so lanky; Aomine was surprised to discover that his shirt was a couple sizes larger than Kise’s.

In Kise’s notebook, the name Ryouta is scrawled in elegant cursive - in English letters, which surprises Aomine - on the first page. The second page is decorated with cute and slightly grotesque looking monsters that Kise had probably sketched out and then outlined later with a thin black marker. Aomine recognizes one of the monsters as a keychain on the blond’s bag.

Kise has a slim, barely there pencil case that unsurprisingly hosts two gel pens, a blunt 2B pencil, an eraser, a marker, and surprisingly, a slim, sleek and dangerous looking box cutter. Aomine ponders over why the blond would own something of the sort but decides that he is better off not knowing.

When the bell rings for lunch, Aomine moves Kise’s body out of class and into the sunshine. He’s even more surprised to note that Kise has really pale skin; so pale he can even see the greenish-bluish veins connecting at his wrist to his thumb, sprawling out all over his hand. The tips of his fingers are soft. The skin at Kise’s elbow is so white; Aomine decides this is a welcome change from his usual tan.

He locates a good spot behind Block C of Kaijo’s chemistry lab, and sits down on the grass, holding the small bento Kise’s mother had lovingly packed for the boy in her son’s body. She has no idea that he isn’t really her son.

Aomine cranks open the bento cover carefully to discover it is a thin onion soup with chopped carrots, potatoes, seaweed and a few spoons of rice. While Aomine usually sleeps through lunch, he knows that this is somehow much-needed nutrition for the blond, who almost never has time to eat or hang out due to rushed modeling gigs.

He drinks and eats every last bit for Kise.

And when the bell rings again to signify the continuity of lessons, Aomine curls Kise’s body into a ball and allows the blond some good old sleep.

body switch II

Kise trips, slips, and slides in Aomine’s basketball shoes. Although they fit well, he isn’t used to the larger teen’s body size at all and is having major trouble trying to wrap his mind around fitting into a couple sizes bigger than he usually wears. He trips over shoelaces he’d stupidly forgotten to tighten, and lands on his face. Well, Aomine’s face. It still hurts, for a bit.

He feels his cheeks burning hot as he tries to appear normal.

Nothing about this is normal, not even with his added bonus of modeling skills, and Kise is very certain that he can pull off almost anything and look good for the camera.

Except that there is no camera, but a multitude of eyeballs watching him participate in a practice match with awkward stunts only toddlers display. After landing a three-pointer, Kise slides down awkwardly in the middle of the court and covers his eyes and cheeks with both hands.

“Aomine?”

The rest of Touou’s teammates collectively gather around his trembling frame.

“Oi, Aomine!”

“Whoa…”

“You alright?”

Kise manages a nod and excuses himself politely. He doesn’t want to offend anyone by screaming that he needs some form of spiritual shift, preferably back into his own body, but by the looks on their faces, he must have done something wrong.

“You taking lessons on mannerisms from Momoi?” A bespectacled teen asks with a worried smile.

Kise recognizes him as the Touou team captain.

“I mean, you did come to practice today… that’s a first.”

He jerks back with the sudden realization that he is behaving in a way that is highly unlike Aomine and has absolutely no idea what the tanned teen does in his free time, but concludes that now is the perfect time for a getaway.

He stretches his arms as chill as he possibly can, and mumbles something about being tired as he fakes a yawn. He hauls Aomine’s ass out of the gym and bolts for the only place he is used to hiding from people - the school library. He ducks behind the farthest shelves from the entrance and slides down into a seated crouch as he breathes in the strong masculine scent of Aomine’s sweat, basketball jersey, and a spiced wood sort of smell, possibly from his aftershave.

Kise lets out a whimper.

He checks his phone when he receives a text - it’s Aomine, telling him to cheer up and that he’s given his body a good amount of sleep, mostly by skipping several classes. Actually, he skipped about five out of six classes. Also, there had been a test and his body had not been present.

Staring at tanned fingers, bathed in testosterone-soaked sweat, smelling like everything Aomine, Kise buries his face in his hands and inhales. He can’t help it.

He is so in love.

body switch III

Aomine is fairly certain Kise’s body is incredibly fragile.

He demonstrates a halfhearted dunk in Kaijo’s indoor gym and pushes Kise’s long fringe up over his damp forehead. Somehow, Aomine isn’t used to this light, nimble body. His mind is hyper-aware of the fact that using Kise’s body with his usual lackadaisical manner of which he normally treats his own body would somehow break the blond teen, much like a porcelain plate being thrown onto a hard surface. Aomine nurses the thought of Kise smashing into a million and one pieces in his mind, and shakes his head to clear his brain, which is on the verge of panicking at the sudden flood of images that consist of Kise’s naked body disintegrating into an abysmal void.

So far, the tanned ace has spent the entire night discovering the other teenage boy’s body, from his face to his torso, his armpits - such light colored, barely there hair! - to his well-manicured nails, slender legs, the strange curves of his hips, and most intriguingly, Kise’s cock.

Aomine smirks at the memory of a mole, a tiny, but still noticeable dot on the inside of Kise’s left thigh, barely a finger’s length away from his crotch.

The blond is so beautiful, Aomine feels a sense of protectiveness blanket the rest of his functioning nerves with vigor. The feeling intensifies whenever anyone lays a hand on Kise - be it anywhere on his person; shoulders, arms, hands - and Aomine’s tolerance level does a flip, a twist, and a leap into annoyance.

He barely notices when the ball rolls to his feet.

Kise’s captain, whom Aomine has come to like, gently drops a clean towel around his neck and guides him carefully to the bench beside the court.

“Is it your leg again?” Kasamatsu asks quietly, cautiously not making eye contact, but every fiber of his being shows Aomine he is very perceptive of Kise’s injury.

Feeling a wave of mixed emotions overcome him, Aomine sits Kise down as gently as he can manage without straining the blond’s knee and ankle - he winces as he feels a twinge accompanying the movement - and tries not to think about the pain Kise has been allowing himself to constantly endure since the last match against Seirin.

“I’m good.” He manages to make Kise say.

“Are you sure? You did skip practice yesterday. Did you have another gig on?”

Aomine, feeling his stomach churn slightly for having to lie to Kise’s kind captain, nods tersely and attempts an apologetic smile.

“Yeah, kinda.”

“Don’t strain yourself.”

“I won’t.”

Kise’s voice comes out thin. Aomine clears his throat.

Kasamatsu gives him a skeptical look, but jogs away to find some water for both of them.

Folding in on himself, Aomine wraps his arms around Kise’s legs, bringing his chin to rest on his knees. It is a pose he has often seen the blond do during Teiko days.

He is surprised that he can still remember.

Inwardly, he wonders how long he can pull this off, pretending to be Kise, and avoiding questions, concerned looks - and most of all, keeping away from random girl groups, women smiling at him in the streets, calls from talent hunters, and other humans in general. Aomine can feel exhaustion seeping through his bones, and wonders how Kise goes through life day by day in this manner.

A chilled Pocari touches his cheek, and a warm hand rests on his shoulder.

Kasamatsu and Kise’s other senpai, Moriyama, peer down at him.

“What do you need?” Kasamatsu places a hand against Aomine’s - nee Kise’s - forehead. “Tell me.”

“Let’s take a break. We could go to an onsen. Hit on girls. Get numbers.” Moriyama felt Kise’s neck for fever signs before looking at Kaijo’s worried captain. “Temp’s okay. Think he just needs some air.”

The other teammates crowd around whom they assumed was Kise, concern marking their features as they watch him quietly.

“Did anyone hear what I said, give the guy some space.” Moriyama is saying.

Kasamatsu places a cool damp towel on his forehead, almost lovingly. He offers Aomine a worried smile.

“Lie down for a bit, Kise.”

Beyond speechless, Aomine stares up at them and feels a genuine warmth spread through his chest and throughout Kise’s body. He decides that Kaijo’s team seems to consist of sunshine, glowing stars, and angels.

He thinks he knows why Kise wanted to win so much, back then. It was all for these guys.

[beet-rootesoupevodkabanya]

Post-apocalypse military AU.

The beginning of the end XD. Of course nobody died for real. As a true fairytale it’ll end up fine. Actually it’s still raw... FML. I never stayed up at night even for exames or anything... Snow King can be proud. For his bday I do. X3

Sound of shooting stops accidentally. But now tinkling silence isn't an evidence of the end of the battle or at least of a break. It means only that one more line is over. Nothing to hope on. They are locked here. Not so many. Less the 200 people. Last examples of experienced fighters. Of the 1st breed. Ones who still remember and realize the world before the catastrophe. Enemies could never do it by themselves. But... No connection to other Bases or Safe Zones. Blocked channels. Blocked information supports for using air armor. Emergency ways to escape locked from outside... It's too obvious. Safe Zone thrown them away. To die and let the piece agreement happen. Снежный Король sits on the windowsill. Video security system allows to watch what's going on on other floors. He clicks the lighter and inhales the smoke. The stream of death... General widens the picture. Koshey team. All dead. Through blurred monitor it's still rather obvious. They all did as decided on a short urgent meeting in the beginning of this fight. Killed as many attackers as they could until ran out of cartridges. And left 4 bullets. One for every teammate. Nobody here is going to get captured anyway. Red cloud on the floor. She tried to grow up her hair because her lover always had long and was curious. Now it's almost beautiful. They lay on the floor hugging each other. Bloody carpet is a continuation of Mila's locks. The 4 of them are tangled in her red cloak. The Black Shark could be enough to win even in this unpleasant situation. But it was found broken badly. Traitors weren't able to make it work. This weird thing was unspeakably moody. And could literally kill anyone but Sara who ever tried to drive it. So they simply torn away and took with them some parts. All vans and other heavy technique were out of patrol.

[Good work, fucking piecemakers. Now wait until they invade and ruin that fragile illusion that U call stable daily life.]

Yuuri rushes in. Stupidly giggling and shrugging the blood away from his sword. The ceremonial weapon that isn't supposed to be used in battles... Shere Khan smirks licking the blade of the knife. What are they so agitated about?.. It wasn't even necessary to get into this (meaningless according to the situation) close combat. Werewolf (actually werebear if to be exact) reads his usual cards on the table. No, not tactical. Tarot cards. He frowns and raises eyes on commander. In normally calm beastly depth burns silent panic. It's not a fear of things that happen here. It's about something he reads on the desk. - Sir... They can't say anything. Or better to admit - they can but... I'm unable to read it. I see... But don't understand. - And I don't understand this... - the voice of Snow King is quiet. He wipes the wall with a white bandage. The air around is gloomy because of terminal fire and explosions. The bandage stays clean. General's statement could seem inopportune. But his subordinate knows too well they both are talking about the same phenomenon. - Ask them... - General closes eyes for a moment in strange hopeless hope. - Is it possible we all are dead or something... And the world around us is an illusion. Lieutenant Altyin looks at cards and bitterly waves his head. - Then only one explanation... The physical characteristics of our world had changed. I mean globally. In planetary measures. Or even more... Well... I guess it's better to die without seeing what other gameplays the ecosystem prepared for us... - Victor shrugs shoulders, smiling with a kind of lost expression. He has not enough reasons for this theory. But he feels it, knows by blood and cells. Like he knew where to step and when to shoot in a battle. The knowledge that became sharper day by day. Yuuri leans to his Snow King from behind. His blood-stained hands sneak under the t-shirt. He doesn't ask questions but the black, half-blind abyss of his eyes radiates excitement. As if he is in hurry to share as much happiness with his Yuki no Kami as it's possible for the rest short time. - Sir... - Werewolf's intonations are almost begging. - Sir, promise me... Promise us. U will be...careful... - Eh?! Something funny about our old man there? - Major Plisetsky sits near, wrapping an arm on Beka's shoulders. He snorts but they all know he is worried. Capitan looks in green eyes, intertwining their fingers. Then turns to commander: - Cards say U are surrounded by the love. U're loved, admired... U're the chosen one always. And in our situation this is the last thing that is logical to appear in a prediction. But damn it... I don't even see the death in your future... I see the throne of the world. And I understand nothing... Yuuri sneaks under commander's arm, clinging to him with a puppy-like sound. He doesn't say anything but Snow King knows his sudden fear too well. He caresses boy's lips with a thumb: - We will die together. Today. Here. He explains it reassuringly and a bit tiredly. As an adult talking a child not to be scared of the thunderstorm. Yuuri nods and nuzzles Snow King's shoulder giggling.

The explosion chain is very close.

Снежный leaves the monitor. It's not important anymore. The four of them are the last experienced martials able to go on line. But whatever will happen to the Safe Zone isn't their problem now. He smiles at his teammates. Shortly and bitterly: - Time to go... General takes out the glock. The only one that keeps 4 sacred bullets. No right for a mistake. He nods to Angry Kitty. It's like a selfi. One click and a moment will be kept for the eternity. No time to say a lot to each other. And no need to. Deep inside they all know. Shere Khan grins and winks to Snow King while Beka is suddenly distracted with something on his cards left on the table. (Is it even important what's said there?) Grabs his collar and pulls his friend and partner for a kiss. First real one for them both. Оборотень falls into thin but unexpectedly strong arms staring in green ponds and trying to say something through the tight lean of warm lips.

Bang.

Bang.

Snow King drops the hand with the gun. - Always in vanguard... Шустрый засранец. / Fast little shit. - He mutters it with a short snort. These two had no time to fall on the floor. Yuuri catches them both and puts on the sofa. (He is fast. He became faster during years here.) They lay the way they often did. The way nobody would believe if to say or show a domestic picture. Beka laying on Yurio's shoulder. Kitty always was more a protective and Beka - a supportive one in their tandem. Snow King often laughed at Yurio that they're kicked out from an another fairytale - Beauty and the Beast. And the Beast here is of course Shere Khan. Kitty fizzed and hissed but obviously liked the idea until Оборотень began to mutter that he isn't a decent Beauty even if he is ready to wear a golden dress for his precious Beast. "But it will cause blood from your eyes, believe me..." And Yurio bit and kicked him and yelled: "U are beautiful, fuck my life! I fucking know better." Beka himself mostly laughed that they are more like a forest Witch and Ivan-tsarevich who was tamed by her. Victor often corrected: "Not just tsarevich. More like Иван-дурак/Ivan the dumb..." And Kitty yelled and sniffed until one day he finally resoluted: - Yes, tsarevich, because the son of the King. Yes, дурак, потому что весь в мать/ because like mother, like son." Yuuri fell on the floor laughing first. After some time Beka began to giggle. And only in the evening the realization hit their King too. And he set on the balcony with a cigarette muttering: - Сообразил бля, пизденыш... / What an idea, little shit...

Bullets went through heads but the blood streams down from the wounds, soaking the coach. It's not obvious yet. And seems as if they can wake up any moment. Снежный gets up, walks close and touches the pulse. It's not necessary, but he can't leave it unchecked. Even if everything is obvious. Yurio seems aggressively glad even in his death. He is still short and thin like a girl. He always cursed and promised to grow taller then his commander. He won't. They won't get to know if he would grow tall for real or would stay being this tiny grace. Yuuri cups General's face and smiles. Gently and possessively. Like noone but him ever could: - We'll keep up with them. Snow King sloppily nods pulling his boy closer. The unclear thought is tossing somewhere deep into the brain. But all that hurry, explosions and endless shit don't leave it a chance to be formed. Is it something Beka wanted to say? Anyway there's no time to think about it anymore. He caresses Yuuri's cheek, looks into black abyss and forgets everything. They have less then a couple of minutes. - I'm sorry, малыш... What else to say?... The boy clings to his General with a happy laugh. Rises head looking from beneath and smiles. Mischievously. And playfully. He wants to say he was happy for all these years with him. He was overwhelmed with love to this man since early childhood. Since the first time he saw this the most beautiful face ever. He admired the winter seeing him in every snowflake. Снежный Король filled his entire existence with the meaning and multiple colors even if for others it seemed to the monotonous white. Kay knows better than anyone: only the white keeps all other spectrums and shades. Only in arms of his King and in the middle of the winter desert he felt on the right place. Of course the boy has no time or even suitable words to express it. But Snow King will understand. He always reads it through touches. Yuuri hungrily leans to these soft and tender lips: - I love U. I always wanted to die with U and from your hand. What's more can I wish for? - Stupid kid... - sighs General. It's not obvious from the side but this patronizing tone is flirty. Yuuri, his shy, anxious, naive berserk always was weirdly protective. But not of that annoying type of countless fans who dreamed to see him broken to have a chance to pity him. No. It always was a different protectiveness. Reliable and loyal like walls of your own home. He became the Ivory Tower locking his Sow King in a trap he would rather die then leave. The boy clings closer and deepens the kiss, sneaking under the t-shirt. Sly sparkles in a black abyss become only brighter: - What I really regret - that we don't have time to make love now. I'd be happy to die like this. Victor smiles, digging fingers into dark silk and bites his lip. Yuuri moans, scratching his back under black fabric. Splinters of the northern sky are sad. But tender: - I love U, Kay. Cold steel touches boy's temple. Yuuri smiles leaning to it with that very euphoric expression he always had melting in Snow King's caress.

Frosted finger slowly presses the trigger.

So familiar, so loved body turns into a heavy doll falling into arms of it's master. Victor slowly lays his boy on the floor near the windowsill. They often set there in winter hugging each other and sharing one cigarette in a stupid hope the smoke will be blown away into the open window. Legs are heavy... Too heavy to go with Yuuri to the better place. And... It's fine like this. The entire world drowns into a crimson mist. It begins from boy's temple and wraps his King and everything around into the tightest embrace without a way to set yourself free. But he never ever wanted to get out of it anyway. General Snow King checks up the heartbeat in Yuuri's chest. Silent. He leans to still warm but motionless lips, blindly turns on the final countdown on a self-destruction system. And presses the trigger, aiming into silver locks. Snow King falls on the chest of his Kay. Blood stained lips of the boy still keep a shadow of a smile.

[thinkingaboutsanfrancisco]

Friday April 17th, 2015

If someone would've told me two hours ago that I'd be in the city tonight, much less standing in this fucking park again, I think I would've burned them with my cigarette. 

Now that I've been revived by the kinetic energy of lucrative prospects and perhaps a runner's high from racing through the Embarcadero, I can reflect with amusement on my situation's irony instead of wallowing in the curse of it. Obviously I'm here, it's Friday night. Where the fuck else would I be? Making ends meet with my measly retail job where I walk away with $40 at the end of the night? Please. The earnings I can accumulate for one night of transactions wipe out what I gross in a bi-weekly paycheck in that store, it'd be laughable to acquire that lousy shift...especially when I've picked up four there this week already. Shouldn't I be resting instead since I'm so fucking tired? Fuck that. Since being on the other side of the door, I've been blessed with the clarity to realize that genuine sound rest for anyone in our apartment on a Friday night is ultimately futile, and fuck was I finding myself miserable for trying. While my body might've been wasting away on a bed or a couch, there's no way I would constitute the only other thing I've done this week as "rest". Not with the perpetual nausea in my stomach that kept churning from my mind's rotten, embarrassing, reruns that recommenced to torture me without mercy despite how I thought that I'd charred their disgusting instigator to oblivion the last time I was here. It should've been over because it was over to me and it didn't go catastrophically as I'd feared, yet that awful remnant lingered within me like a bitter taste in my mouth and nothing I could conjure up to distract myself was able to fully abolish the feeling. She may be naive that I ruined our friendship but it doesn’t matter, because I ruined our friendship and the only thing that could ever heal my festering regret is time and all I'm left to do is live with my stupid fucking self while I wait it out, which I know I can do. I've carried the burden of  far worse guilt before. I'll live.

Five days of on running the worst fucking sleep I've had in two years, however, and whatever remained of my already fraying wit's end was deteriorating to its' last fragile fibers. I didn't want to do a single. goddamn. thing. Taking a couple of steps in our kitchen to open up the freezer, ripping open the bothersome box and pesky packaging, and putting a pepperoni Hot Pocket in the microwave so I could force myself to eat was as laborious as I wanted to get tonight and, while I slumped on the counter with my hand in my palm and waited for that unnecessary ding to inform me of what I was already anticipating, my exhausted frustration provoked me to make a spiel of decisions to ensure that: fuck studying, fuck avoiding texting Ray back, fuck waiting up for my dad, and, most unusual of them all, fuck Natalia. Most of the time I value her consistency, but I dreaded her then-impending text from the second I got back in from school because I was not in the mood to accommodate her pain in the ass schedule tonight, $300 be damned. She always wants an 8-ball before her shift and another when she gets off at one and there was no way in hell I could foresee myself having any ability to hang around Downtown for four fucking hours tonight. It was going to conflict with my Trazadone swiping plans, the enticement of which began to surge when I opened my burner and realized that I was going to have to deny my best customer. I hadn't received her usual request yet, but it was rapidly approaching nine and I was hoping that by intercepting her and initiating word of my very important schedule conflict, she'd be less pissed at my inability to show and not discredit and discard me like she did her other blow-off dealer. Yeah, the money always matters, but the price of my reputation is far more invaluable. 

The weight of that knowledge slowed my usual punctual thumbs as I evaluated the brief sentences and consolation with more acuity than I typically reserve for my English essays. If there's one principal lesson I've learned in the last week, it's not to text the first thing that's on my mind...especially when it wasn't in the right place to begin with. 

And thank the fucking Lord for that.

Because right when I was in the middle of selfishly setting us up for losing $300, fate buzzed me into my fucking senses and about gave me a heart attack in the process when I registered who the fuck was calling me.

S.

I don't think I've ever picked up the phone and put it up to my ear as rapidly as I did then and it wasn't because I was eager to talk to him. Fuck, if I would've been presented with the question via text that he wound up asking me, maintaining my assurance would've been the easiest thing I've ever done and there's no fucking way I would be standing here but he called me and he never has fucking called me. There's never been a reason for him to and I've never wanted him to because surely it was going to be serious and my mind raced through a white flash of fragmented worst-case scenarios. What the fuck did I fucking do? I stammered out the first word of that question twice before I realized that I was revealing the pure panic in my voice and I had to put a fucking end to it. He demands to know if I'm busy, which I wasn't anymore since everything suddenly got rendered irrelevant by his boisterous, jovial volume that thawed the ice of my fear into cautious curiosity as I started to perceive that this call was more irrelevant to the state of my existence than I thought... 

“I wanna go fucking clubbing, J. You wanna go clubbing?! Let’s go clubbing! I ONLY WANT TO GO IF YOU COME WITH.”

Or could've ever considered because what the fuck? No?!  Why the fuck would I go clubbing with him?! I don't fucking "club"! What in the everloving fuck possessed him to think that I do? Especially since he already convinced himself that I'm a teenage virgin who's never experienced delights or tragedies of love without me implicating anything explicit to give that impression away or indulge him in it being correct. Now five days later he’s deemed me suitable enough for his clubbing roster? Ridiculous.

So I started to express my disinterest...until he said something that made every part of my broken mind click back into the proper, functioning, place...  

“Come on, J…there’s money in it for you.”

Remembering how stunned I was upon hearing it sends me into a chuckle because it's so crystal clear to me now, but upon hearing it I had to work myself through the entire thought process as if I'd returned to Kindergarten and was introduced to the concept of the sum of one plus two equates to three.  Of course, that's why S he asked me to go with him. Night clubs and the loosened inhibitions of their clientele are rampant for an opportunity. Granted, it's one I've never considered to take up on because the loose lips of those fiending in the alleyways outside of them after hours were enough to sustain my immediate needs and, frankly, is more apt for my style. No matter what you're trying to sell, whether it be the commerce of cocaine or cars, your chances of successfully convincing a customer of purchasing it increase substantially when you locate one aspect of them to relate to and use it as a driving force. Developing a niche is the proper term for it and my niche is desperation. I'm always desperate. I'm desperate for cash, I'm desperate for success, I'm desperate for a future, I'm desperate for freedom, I'm desperate for safety, I'm desperate for love...fuck, I'm desperate for about everything besides for actual fucking cocaine. I understand what it's like to feel hopeless on these San Francisco streets, searching for that special someone who can swoop in and deliver that sweet salvation and can satisfy what their heart craves and I'm thrilled when, instead of another suffering martyr, I can be a savior. 

Like S was for me.

If it weren't for when he agreed to supply for me back in February, that might've been the most important sentence he's ever spoken to me because it's exactly the reminder I needed to hear. My entire move wasn't about making friends or an honest attempt at living or doing as perfectly as I can in school to keep up a GPA that isn't at all an accurate representation of my deteriorating intellect, it was about developing my own contacts and bringing in my own contributions—as legal or "unconventional" as they may be—for our survival and if I was that fucked up by some privileged British girl who would drop me so fucking quick if she found out how abhorrent my real reasons for being in this city are, then Lance Kelley should keep himself awake all night worrying about me because there is no way in hell I can afford to be that weak out here. 

And I'm not going to be. 

Certainly not when there's this thudding bass alerting me of that familiar black Altima's arrival. I never thought I'd be so relieved to see that car, but it's not so bad now that I don't have to display all of my personal belongings onto its roof. Now that I think of it, S hasn't entertained me with his little game in a while...

Taking a long drag of my Parliament because I'm sensing it's going to be the last one I'll be able to do silently for a while, I watch as S puts the car in park and proves me right when he jumps out and greets me with a name I haven't heard in a while.

“JAMES DEAN! How’s it going?!”

While I roll my eyes at it because I still don't get what he sees in that comparison, it's so stupidly cheerful that I can't resist a chuckle.

Damn, he's really happy to see me isn't he?

My rhetorical question resolves itself when I see color and animation thriving in his face as he exclaims how great I look and...surprisingly, he's not bullshitting me. I was fully prepared for S to call me out on being such a teenager that I had to rummage through my dad's closet and steal one of his button-up dress shirts, after all it is the honest-to-God truth since I didn't own one this nice looking myself, yet he refrained and I'm able to settle into a satisfied grin, "Well I’ve found that nice opportunities are more likely to present themselves to the presentable so... thanks. Glad to see you’re looking better too."

Seriously, he's in a refreshing return to form and it's obvious that the source of his rejuvenation has to be something far greater than merely my outfit. Pregaming, probably, but I don't care because he’s a far cry from the shattered soul I physically left sitting on that bench on Sunday night, yet who kept finding a way to agonize me mentally on the train ride back to Bayview. I wished I could’ve left him under a more imminently optimistic note but rushing his grieving process would’ve only delayed things for him in the long run and I’d truly delivered as much as I could for one night. Again, adequate time’s the only thing that could heal those wounds and watching him believe my compliment in this park only less than a week later is rewarding. The healing process can be a bitch and I’m happy it’s already starting to work out for him. 

I can't wait for it to start working out for me too.

Tired of standing in this same spot, I take a few steps forward to the passenger's side of his car and lean against the door, tucking one of my arms underneath the one staunchly propping up my Parliament. 

"Alright, so where is it? I’m not going anywhere until I see exactly what’s in store for me tonight.” 

[journeysintowebcomics]

Worm Liveblog #40

UPDATE 40: One-on-One Fight

Last time Leviathan had managed to injure or kill a lot of capes more. The losses in the parahumans’ side are notable, a few capes that have featured in this story before are now dead, and it’s not over yet. It’s time to try to protect the rest of the city and drive Leviathan away before he destroys everything. Let’s continue.

Well, it’s true Leviathan is going away and all, but that doesn’t mean they won’t try to do as much damage as possible to that thing before it goes away.  While Kaiser restrains Leviathan, Armsmaster sets up traps and Kid Win prepares to fire a cannon’s beam into the wound Narwhal had made earlier. It seems a handful of other capes will fight Leviathan directly, while others will stay back because they’re too fragile. I haven’t seen anything about Skitter’s role in the plan, but given her strictly support role so far – because she hasn’t been able to do anything else – I suppose she’ll have to continue being support.

Armsmaster gave her orders – orders that are still unsaid, I think – and she goes to the place she was told to go, a sector a couple blocks away from Leviathan. She looked at the place, trying to predict what routes Leviathan would take. Nothing Skitter can use to attack or defend herself, unfortunately.

I was scared. A huge part of me wanted to just close my eyes and hope Leviathan didn’t come, that I wouldn’t have to deal with him. It would be nice to join the three hundred and fifty thousand other Brockton Bay residents that were trusting the heroes to handle things, find a peace of sorts in surrender and helplessness. Except I couldn’t.  I’d seen firsthand how Leviathan had taken down some of the strongest capes.  I couldn’t find refuge in that kind of trust anymore.  My mental and emotional resources were better spent on figuring out how to help than they were on hope.

Yeah, I don’t think anyone in the city is blindly trusting the capes to defeat Leviathan. I mean, everybody in the world surely knows what an Endbringer is capable of. Even those who have steadfast beliefs on the capes’ work surely realize there’s a chance they’re outmatched. It has happened in the past; it may happen again. The most hopeful thought most people may have right now is ‘I hope the city won’t be a pile of rubble once I step out of this shelter’. Well, that and hoping the shelter doesn’t collapse over their heads, in the first place.

Skitter needs a place where she can hide and watch the situation from, a place she can run easily from in case everything turns pear-shaped. There aren’t that many options. The best she can find so far is a place where she can store bugs. I suppose that can come useful, although those still may be unlikely to be too useful against someone who can manipulate water.

I’d been acutely aware of my bugs since the battle started, and for the second time I could remember, I found my power was responding far more effectively as I called for them.  My reach extended further, my bugs were fractionally more responsive.  The last time this had been the case, it had been when I teamed up with Bitch, Sundancer and Newter and wound up fighting Oni Lee and Lung.  I couldn’t explain it, but I wasn’t going to complain.  I needed every small advantage I could get.

Maybe it’s adrenaline, having to fight a extremely dangerous enemy. Not that Bakuda and the such weren’t dangerous, but the stakes here and with Oni Lee and Lung were higher than in other fights. In these the villainous capes even had to join forces with each other and with the heroes. That much should give an idea of how dire the situation was.

Skitter does more or less what she had done against that guy from E88 who attacked Heckpuppy: make swarms of insects take a humanoid shape in order to deceive. If Leviathan attacks those decoys then great! I think that can work! Anything that means Skitter won’t be in danger is good in my books.

Eidolon was flying at the coast, focusing blue rays on the water around the shattered boardwalk and debris at the water’s edge, hardening the waves into irregular sheets and glacier-like formations of ice.

Dangerous. I could remember seeing on TV that they’d tried something like this a few years ago.  A Tinker using an ice engine, I think.  I didn’t know exactly how or why, but judging by the fact that they hadn’t used the tactic again, I got the impression It had turned out really badly.

No kidding, that is hella dangerous! It’s not for nothing that hail and icicles are something you need to watch out for! Ice can be very solid! For everyone’s sake I hope Eidolon is being careful!

As Armsmaster said before, the current plan is to cross their fingers and hope Scion realizes Brockton Bay is, you know, at risk of being completely obliterated. I have the feeling those in Newfoundland and in the other places Leviathan has destroyed hoped for the same thing, and Scion never came. Putting their hopes in him seems like the very, very, very last resort, I’d say.

The problem with waiting on Scion was that the guy wasn’t exactly in touch with the rest of us.

Scion spends his time wandering around the world and helping those who need it. I suppose he can feel the danger when it happens, or something like that, but given Earth is a very big place, there are several billion people and statistically there are bound to be several dozen disasters of varied severity at the same time, the odds of him noticing the trouble at Brockton Bay are...not very good. At least that’s what I think. Who knows, maybe I’m understanding that wrong or he’d give the Endbringers priority or something, but it’s not like he is omniscient, that’s the impression I have.

Skitter hides in one of the places she saw, and hopes Leviathan doesn’t crush her or throws any big wave in her direction. It sure must be nerve-wracking to wait, unsure of what will happen. To have some foresight and know when Leviathan comes towards where she is now, she sends cockroaches in that direction. Ah, of course! Those things manage to survive a lot of stuff, eh?

Manpower deceased, CD-6.  Aegis deceased, CD-6, my armband spoke, at the same moment my bugs reached the area around where Leviathan had been.

Dang it! Another one I recognize. So long, Aegis. This sucks. For the most part the Wards are faring well. Vista is still active, isn’t she? Clockblocker is injured and most likely out of commission. Kid Win is still around, Gallant is dead or very injured, and I don’t remember any others. All in all, they could be worse. Not that they’re doing awesomely, though, what with two deaths.

Fenja and Menja fight hand-to-hand with Leviathan, Fenja dies. Oh goddamnit.

Kid Win doesn’t last much longer either. He doesn’t die, but it seems he got knocked out by his own laser beam, Leviathan made a major impact and the force swiveled the cannon back. Ouch. All these capes are falling like flies. Makes one wonder who will be the next one.

From those Skitter mentioned, Hookwolf, Shadow Stalker, Browbeat, Lady Photon, Purity, Laserdream and Brandish are still around. Armsmaster and Kaiser are still around, of course. So there are eight capes I know. It’s hard to know which one will be the next one who will be unable to continue. With some luck, it won’t be a death. I’m not particularly wishing for anyone’s death, that’s for sure. Even those from E88 are interesting to read about.

You know who I haven’t heard mentioned? Grue and Regent. It doesn’t seem like they’re around. I suppose they must be looking for Tattletale, or taking their own decisions somewhere else. Would they leave the battle and go away? I suppose that’s a possibility too, but...eh, I don’t know, it’s not one that seems likely to me. It’s not impossible, but it’s not the very first one in the list.

Even though Leviathan is rather wounded, he’s not stopped at all, he continues as if nothing was wrong.

He held Kaiser’s upper torso in the one claw, tossed it casually to one side.  The man’s legs were nowhere to be seen.

Well, shucks. There goes Kaiser. Seven left. You know, if this wasn’t decided by luck, I’d have thought Kaiser wouldn’t have died, and that if he did, it was because Mr. Wildbow had no more use to him. I wonder what’ll happen to E88 now? Purity was the second in charge, wasn’t she? So will she take the helm? If she survives, that is.

Wait, what? I hadn’t heard the report on Kaiser’s death.  I checked my armband, where my arm hung immobile at my side.

It was dead, offline.  Black screen.

Not a good time for technology to fail, damn it! I didn’t think something Dragon programmed would go down like this. What happened? I know Skitter’s arm was injured, but I don’t remember anything about the bracelet breaking, and I doubt Dragon would be as stupidly negligent as to not make this stuff waterproof. Skitter was hiding, listening to the reports, and then the bracelet wasn’t working. What happened?

Water rushes down the street, dragging down a van Skitter had considered as a hiding place, and then the tide changes towards where Skitter is actually hiding. Welp! That’s unfortunate. She runs in a perpendicular direction to the wave because there’s no way she’s going to outrun the water, and barely manages to jump out of the way. Too late, though, the wave hits her legs and sends her sprawling away, falling onto her already injured arm. It takes her a while to return to her senses, when she can look up, she sees Armsmaster fighting Leviathan with two halberds. One is the halberd he had been working on the night before, I recognize the description of the blur. It’s actually quite good, carving Leviathan and making him feel pain. He’s even managing to protect himself against water! That’s a really good weapon!

...don’t waste your breath giving a monologue to the Endbringer, Armsmaster, jeez. It can’t even understand you. But hey, it’s giving the reader exposition and shows Armsmaster’s personality, so it’s all good.

“You don’t even speak English, do you?  Or you’d know what I was saying, you’d know I already won.  The others helped, slowing you down, stopping the waves.  But this victory, this killing blow?  It’s going to be mine.”

Pretty doubtful, pal. Is that why Armsmaster seemed to be excited about the Endbringer coming, back then in Miss Militia’s interlude? Because this was his chance to prove himself? If he killed the Endbringer, then it’d mean he wouldn’t be transferred? Because that’s my first thought here. He does have a pretty good halberd here, but if a kickass weapon was the only thing necessary to kill Leviathan, I think someone else would have been able to do it a long time ago.

“This cloud around my blade?  Nanotechnology.  Nano-structures engineered to slide between atoms, sever molecular bonds.  Cuts through anything.  Everything.  Like a sharp knife through air.”

So not even Leviathan’s dense as heck tissues will stop it. I see! That’s certainly an useful weapon! But will it be enough to kill Leviathan? Would cutting his head off or something be enough to kill him? I wouldn’t be surprised if that isn’t enough.

Armsmaster continues bragging, and mentions he is using temporal stasis trigger, no doubt based on Bakuda’s technology. It may not be the exact same thing, but I think that’d make it easier to study and replicate, especially to tinkers like Armsmaster or Dragon. It doesn’t really change anything, though, even though Leviathan is wounded, he continues fighting.

Or maybe he really is managing to do something, Leviathan is either stalling for time or hesitating.

“Delaying, buying time for a tsunami?” Armsmaster laughed, and Leviathan cocked his head at the display of emotion.  “No.  Three point four minutes before the next big wave breaks through the ice.  Dragon’s probes are giving me the data on that. This will be over before then.”

Three minutes is an excessive time for a fight! It likely will be over before then, one way or another.

Skitter decides to not interfere, since Armsmaster has calculations and she doesn’t want to turn into a hostage or anything like that.

Armsmaster isn’t doing half-bad, he actually manages to cut Leviathan over and over with his two halberds, swinging around with skill. Nothing Leviathan has done stops him. I doubt Armsmaster will defeat Leviathan, but at least he’ll be able to say he hit that thing over and over. That much is a feat, isn’t it?

Unfortunately, he didn’t take into account or underestimated the storm sewers. Given everything that has happened, those have to be filled with water right now. The street cracks, water comes gushing upwards. Armsmaster barely manages to freeze it, but Leviathan has newfound speed and catches with his claws Armsmaster’s nanomachine halberd, embedding into those impossibly dense tissues. At least I’m pretty sure that’s why Armsmaster can’t dislodge the halberd, because the molecular bonds there are too dense. This leaves him defenseless, the other claws press onto him, he’s pretty much in the verge of death, until he falls down.

The Endbringer stood, showing none of the frailty or pain it had been displaying seconds ago.  The injuries were there, to be sure, his head hung at an angle because of the way the weight of his head hung on the intact portions of his neck, but he wasn’t suffering, had no trouble putting his full weight on his more injured leg.  Had it been an act?

Apparently so! That thing is more cunning than I thought he’d be. I’m surprised! Now I wonder if it knew all the time what Armsmaster was saying. Maybe it really could understand everything and Armsmaster never realized it, underestimating Leviathan.

Leviathan ripped Armsmaster’s left arm off, Skitter throws one of the swarms and manages to stick some bugs inside a couple of the wounds, trying to bite from inside, but it’s like biting steel. Welp. Still, at least she managed to get bugs in close quarters, that much is much more than I thought she’d be capable to do with her insects.

At the first chance she hurries to get to Armsmaster, finding him conscious and bleeding.

“You,” he groaned.  His left arm was gone at the shoulder, torn out of the socket.  Blood poured from the wound.  “You’re dead.”

“Hey, you’re not making any sense.”

“He killed you.”

If each bracelet monitors the person’s vital functions, transmitting that information to a system placed in a safe place which in turn gives the information to everyone else alive, I can see how the bracelet not working anymore could be interpreted as Skitter being dead.

After Skitter recovers Armsmaster’s other arm, she informs through the bracelet what happened with Armsmaster.

“Armsmaster down!  CC-7! Leviathan is heading West…”

I felt the bugs I’d clustered in Leviathan’s wounds change direction.  The compass point between West and Northwest was what? More Wests than North.

“Cancel that! He’s going West-North-West from my location!”

Her bugs are going to be useful! Tracking Armsmaster is good, that should be of help. Is he going towards the sea? Is that wave Armsmaster talked about still coming? If so, there may not be more than two minutes left before it comes crashing down.

“Roger, sounds like he might be heading for one of the shelters, lots of people packed into a space where they can’t run, vulnerable,” someone replied.

Knowing Skitter’s luck, it’ll suck if it turns out her dad is in that shelter. I hope not, she’s too busy already to have to deal with one problem more. Skitter informs she can track Leviathan as long as she is in range, and it’s agreed a flier will help. That’s a good plan! I wonder who is left, among the other capes?

That may be found out next time, because it is over for today. Thank you for reading!

Next update: next time

[jeonwrit]

White Air, pt. 1

❈ jeongguk x reader ❈ genre: angst + college!au + friends with benefits!au ❈ word count: 6231 ❈ warnings: implicit sex + language ❈ résumé: she slept with the guy in the dorm next to her and she slept with the guy she made out with at that one party and she slept with the guy who she interned with. but then she slept with Jeongguk. and that made all the difference.

You shoot straight up in bed, the blanket falling so quickly off your naked body in your haste to get up that you forget to be embarrassed. The body tangled with yours and the heavy comforter that has found solace in between your legs enlightens you as to why you are perspiring so much. A cool breeze hits your breasts, and you shiver as the sweat on your brow rapidly cools.

You’re not unused to waking up in a stranger’s bed, stark naked, and with a heady feeling in between your legs, for hedonism does not exist without sex and sex cannot survive without two. This particular body, at least what can you see of this body that hides in the burrows of the bed, is muscular, strong lithe bones and veins that have wrapped themselves around your waist, protective at first glance, but perhaps also a little apprehensive in the way his body turns away from yours. You’ve never been against a little snuggling after sex, for the afterglow is truly the good part, a true paradoxical post–coital treatment to the erotic force of the actual thing.

You move soft hair away from a tan forehead, and there he is. Ah, the bane of your existence. Jeongguk.

Pushing an arm off your naked chest and a leg off your leg, you get up. The dazing smell of sex wafts up to you, recent and rancid, dulling your senses, making you want to get back in bed with the beautiful boy sleeping peacefully beside you. With a pang, you realize you have never seen him sleeping before, the gentle snores of rhinitis, utterly adorable. He looks softer like this, sleeping, with nothing troubling him, and with no need to put effort into looking sexy or masculine.

You find a sock in the corner and your bra, ripped to shreds from Jeongguk’s impatient hands, shaking and fumbling as they hurried to tear it off your body, and there, in front of the doorway to his disorderly room, sit your boots. Instead of trying to find your underwear, you go commando: the more time you spend here the harder it will be to leave.

“Y/N, where are you going?” Jeongguk’s voice is tired and soft, rough from groans and whines, soft honey melting your eardrums.

“I'm going home, Jeongguk. You know that.”

The first time you had sex with someone you knew you couldn't stay. You threw on a pair of jeans and an old jacket and left your own apartment at 2 or 3 AM, in those odd hours referred to as both early morning and late night, just as soon as the guy fell asleep. When you entered your apartment after lunch, only the smell of his Abercrombie cologne resided in the sheets of your bed, and you threw away the sock he left behind. He didn't show up again.

For some reason the idea of sitting down and adding breakable, flimsy, fragile emotions to something that should be purely pleasure, purely sex made you want to throw up. Still makes you want to throw up. Usually they happened to be one night stands, but you didn't even stay the night. Some times they lasted longer and the friends with benefits trope began. Jeongguk just happened to be the longest friend.

The first time you met Jeongguk was after a stupid party a stupid friend of a friend threw, one of those friends that couldn't be considered a friend, but also not an acquaintance, because you did trash their house as if it you owned the place until 1 AM. Obviously at these things, the short, entertaining game of Truth or Dare began. You were given the question of who was your longest boyfriend, which, for anyone else would’ve been easy to answer, a simple name, maybe someone might have to think about it for a second had the relationship been a long time ago, but you, never having stayed long enough to have a boyfriend, never having given your thoughts or emotions to anyone, had to give the answer of never had one. The answer didn’t terribly embarrass you, and those who knew you best knew that you weren't terribly embarrassed. But those who didn't know you saw a girl who wore black skinny jeans and high heeled leather boots to hide her poor virginity, who smoked with the rest of the big boys, but really, under the table, hid her innocence.

Jeongguk, an onlooker, a virgin himself, saw an opportunity to get laid, a chance that maybe you were embarrassed about your virginity, too. And he took that chance. In the back corner of a club, you laughed when he told you that he had never had sex before, and after with a body like yours? How have you never been fucked before? Well, I've never fucked a virgin, and I've never been a dom so don't expect me to be one now.

So Jeongguk got laid. You didn't expect much from Mr. Virgin but somehow he didn't even need help to fuck you well.

And the arrangement began, an exclusive friends with benefits relationship with Jeongguk, and for two months you had sex before feelings started to set in, those flying things of legend, that broke all the princesses’ hearts.

“You can stay the night, you know.” Jeongguk sits up in his bed, upright and sudden, and his muscular warm body is so damn inviting; you just want to take him up on his offer and curl up in his golden tan arms and wake him up in the morning by playing with his beautiful hair and getting lost in his coffee without milk but a little bit of sugar eyes as you have lazy morning sex where he fucks you into oblivion. You have had this unrealistic, unreasonable, unreachable dream many times.

And you want to. You want to give in. Goddamnit, you want to, so badly. A mess of emotions and words and I can’t’s consumes you, and you know that as soon as you leave here will find yourself at a bar trying to drink your addiction of him into the back of your head, but as soon as you sober up, he will be back, back in your bed, back in your heart.

It scares you a bit, how much you want him, the way your heartstrings pull at his. When you walk into the library and you see him, you want to pull back and reassess the over excessively fast beat of your heart before flirting with him. And then you approach him anyways because you can’t resist the temptation of seeing his tan cheeks fill with rouge color as you embarrass him in front of his friends. You notice the lust in his blown pupils as you leave fleeting touches on the inside of his thighs, as you admire the way his biceps curl around your waist when he pulls you close. And you don’t want to stop. But then you unwrap each of his fingers where they find space thumbing the veins of your wrist. And you feel your pulse once more, and look back. He definitely felt how fast it beats from the way he smirks at you. The walk out the library is painful, almost unfortunate when you realize you’re missing a good fuck in the stacks in the back.

And that situation is scary. That you want more than you can have. The way your heart beats wildly under his avid gaze, imploring you to stay.

“You know I can't.”

Still he pulls you back to his naked muscular chest by the wrist, and you, well you’re powerless to resist when he looks into your eyes like the only thing he wants to study at university is you, like the sun rises and sets in your eyes. It makes you feel wanted.

When he kisses you, just like the first time, you gasp at his skill of making you forget everything, of only thinking about him. And his lips gently massage yours, softly, ever so softly, teasing, testing your boundaries. He knows exactly what he’s doing, and so you pull him closer, wrapping your arms around the nape of his neck to pull at his hair. He moans as you bite his lip and then lick away the pain. So fucking responsive.

His hands find your waist, and this time he bites your lips, asking for entrance, which you happily give him. And kissing, kissing, kissing, breathing him in like oxygen, feeling him, taking him with you down onto the bed. Languid and flowing, that’s the way he kisses you, and you stupidly give in to his soft kisses. Your chest is still naked, and you press yourself against him to warm yourself, as if that is really what inspires you to run your fingers across his abs. And he kisses you like he can’t get enough, sloppy and starving, telling you to please, please stay. But you can’t. His tongue moves to the rhythm of yours, letting you to take the lead, even as he dominates you. You know what this is going to lead to.

Breathless, and a little bit in love, you pull away, “Jeongguk, stop, we can’t. I have to go.”

You are still naked in front of him but he only stares into your eyes as he says, maybe a little wistfully, “Yeah, I know.”

“Maybe next time,” but you both know it isn't going to happen.

“Maybe,” he repeats after you.

You put on of the rest your clothes and leave.

The people around you laugh and talk, drinking from their flashy red cups, lost in their shitty conversations with shitty people, lost in the alcohol brought from an unknown place, an unknown person. But you’re lost in something different; you’ve come for the dancing, for the music good enough to jump around to, and now all of that fades away. Again a stupid friend of a friend invited you. While the dancing helps, it doesn’t take the edge off the monotonous tone of your college life, of studying and attending the same parties, and drinking the same liquor, and smoking the same weed with the same people, who get stonefaced just the same every single night, before attending the same fucking classes in the morning.

For them, life is a haze, a drunken party that never ends, a rager that goes till 6 AM. There is no sobriety, no peace, no clean air to breath, just the smoke that they breath in and live in and shit in and die in. Sometimes it feels as if you live the same way.

It smells like marijuana and stale beer and sweat, like a bar in East End, filled with old drunks and pot-bellied middle-aged men. But here there remain only the able-bodied boys of shady origin and even shadier intentions, with wandering eyes hoping to catch any stray bit of skin.

Someone passes you a joint and you take a hit. Another presses their lips to yours, hard, not really a kiss, not anymore, when you have kissed so many people that kisses like this have lost all meaning, and consumes the smoke that steams into their mouth. Sometimes you get a wisp of pure oxygen, nothing tinted with the sickly sweet scent of marijuana, or the people at the parties, or roommates who drink for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, or the professors giving homework you know you will never complete. When you’re with him, that’s when you can finally live, when you can finally feel like the life you are surviving in, the one in which you are barely keeping your head afloat, is worth living.

Him, Jeongguk, Gukkie, Guk, JK, friend, friend with benefits, too many titles, not the one he wants, not the one you want, not the one you can have. Too much history he doesn’t know about, too many consequences, too many bruises, physical and emotional, and you can’t just give your heart away, and he can’t take it. You almost wish he was here, to temper the fire raging inside you. He would laugh and everything would be better; he would dance with you, usually so agile and lithe, but against you, awkward, fingers unsure whether to rest on your waist or your ass, and you would smirk up at him, and he would move closer to you with the grace of a butterfly; he would burgeon red in the face as you flirted with him, and you would feel almost sane again.

The music around you gets louder and before long, a cup full of a brown liquid that you identify as a beer is pushed into your hand. Quickly, you throw it back, the full glass of the stuff tastes like shit. And soon another, and another. You find vodka in the kitchen and a cherry chaser. It burns as it travels down your throat, like fire, and you skip the chaser. The white chiffon dress adorning your body, worn specifically for a prurient man’s wandering eyes, stains easily as the vodka streaming from your mouth drips onto it; you feel it seeping through the material, your dress becoming see through, sticking to the unblemished skin of your chest.

As the night gets darker, punctuated by the occasional strobe light that blinds you, and the people get friskier with their hands and riskier with their dances as others cease to see what happens around them. You feel a hand at your back. For a second, the big hang that almost covers the expanse of your waist feels like Jeongguk’s, but when you turn to see another man grinding on you, you scowl at his lewd gyrating hips. You push the hand off of your body and move away, lost in thought.

The bathroom is cool as you enter, and it smells like roses and bath salts, expensive bath salts, ones that stream with iridescent hues as you place within the water of a hot bath. No one resides inside and the crush of bodies dancing beside you subsides. The toilet seat feels like sweet relief as you throw up alcohol and whatever Chinese takeout you decided to eat before the party.

And the knock on the door tells you that your time is up, and after wrapping your shivering body in a coat left behind on the sink, you leave. A couple making out moves in past you, shoving you into the side of the door without stopping, their movements invasive and incipient of sex.

“What are you doing here?” calls Jeongguk’s voice, and suddenly the oxygen you crave pour into your nostrils and you try to savour it, to drink it in slowly, but your addiction doesn’t allow that, instead breathing in mouthfuls, taking it in, sucking it up like a vacuum; you want it all for yourself, you don’t want to give any to anyone else.

From your position leaning on the bathroom door, you notice his clenched jaw line, and the small red hickey that graces it, brazenly standing out against his tan skin. It’s not something you put there. The buttons of his shirt are haphazardly put together, and his hair looks as if he’s run his hands through it. You swallow hard. He’s beautiful like this, wantonly messed up.

“Are you okay?” he inquires. You pretend not to notice the hoarseness of his voice.

“I’m fine, just threw up a little, you know, it happens at these things,” you say, carefully, not wanting to alarm him, and throw on a bright smile.

Flatly, he says, “You’re shivering, you’re sick.”

You can’t deny the swaying of your feet, you can’t deny the way your vision swims.

“I’m not, I think I’m just super drunk,” you giggle a bit as you run your eyes down his body.

His jaw clenches, so hard that you’re sure he’ll break his teeth.

“Are you? You said you threw up.”

“That doesn’t get rid of all the alcohol, does it, the shit that’s already running through my veins?” You smile ludicrously, and say, “Hey, you know the best cure for a hangover? More beer! Let’s go get some more!”

You move towards the main living room where the party still goes full-swing. It is not likely to end soon, and you hear the shouts of chug! chug! chug! and soon your eyes find the source of such a competition: two boys have beer cans in their hands and are rapidly guzzling them down, all thoughts of some decency apparently gone. Jeongguk catches you in between his arms before you can run off to whatever hell has set forth for you, possibly to even join them; you feel his hard body on your back, the muscles tense and the arms around you firm. You shiver. You always thought he would be the one to bring you salvation.

“I don’t think that’s a good idea, Y/N.” He says your name ever so softly, like a dream come true. He’s said your name many times before, in bed, in class, at parties. But you’ll never get used to it, the way his mouth curls around the vowels, pronouncing them with utmost clarity, as if you’ll never be mistaken for someone else, as if his lips will never forget the tendrils of your name.

His hand trails down the length of your arm to take your hand, the rough calluses of his fingers run gently over your knuckles. Something of a chill settles over your heart.

A loud resounding moan suddenly rings from the restroom, where the couple that had pushed past you as if someone was going to take their turn in line for a porta-potty, resides with their hot mouths on each other and impatient hands. You can imagine the way the toothbrushes by the sink will fall to the ground with a clatter, neglected and unused by a couple way to aggressive for their own good.

“Let’s get out of here,” he sounds as if he’s ready to beg. You are not one to say no to him.

“Okay.”

Music and laughter, though entertaining, is nothing compared to the soft grip of Jeongguk’s hand. It feels as if your muscles are spasming, like each trail of his fingers across the back of your hand sends you into seizure.

Suddenly he squeezes your hand, tight. People are drinking and smoking and talking and beer-ponging. Many make out against the walls, and the couple next to you and Jeongguk is no different. The sounds of lips squelching and heavy panting is not unnoticeable. The girl breaks away from the guy to catch a breath, as he trails kisses and hickeys down the column of her neck. Her fluttering eyes, slit like a cat’s with a pleasure, glance at Jeongguk, and he stares right back with a miffed look on his face, eyes narrowed, mouth downturned. He’d look calm if you didn’t know him so well.

“Move your feet, lose your seat, Guk,” she says, growling as the guy bites her collarbone. “But looks like you have a new seat anyways.” She looks pointedly at your hands, tightly clasped together.

He only tightens his grasp, almost breaking the bones, as if he will never let go.

“Let’s go, Y/N,” he says. You’re too drunk to be jealous.

The 24 hour cafe he leads you to is only a short ten minutes walk from the frat house. It smells like burning candles and wax cleaner and loneliness. The lone waitress at the counter stands up straight with a jerk as you both walk in, like she had just been dozing off on the job. It is just about 12 AM, you suppose. The dead look in her eyes is sad, with tendrils of hurt surrounding the red rings of the white, more pink than white. She looks as if she had been beaten to death by the day, like customers had just walked all over her as if she were the WELCOME doormat.

“What would you like to drink,” she says to Jeongguk when he approaches the counter as you sit down. A perky smile graces her face, forced and ugly. She recognizes that he is attractive, but is seemingly to tired to do anything about it. You’re glad for her fatigue. Jealousy is not a good look on you.

“She wants a caramel macchiato, and I’ll just have an espresso. Also whipped cream on hers.”

It’s strange. You’ve never told him that.

When he sits down, he says, “It’s been a long time since we’ve gotten coffee together, hasn’t it? It was the first week of uni’ last time, wasn’t it?”

“Som’m like that, yeah,” you slur out, still drunk. “But I’m not sure I’d really consider that getting coffee together. I mean, it was more of a precursor to sex, yeah?” The thought of that day brings a suggestive smile to your lips.

“Well, then, I’m not sure that I’d consider this ‘getting coffee together’, either, since it’s more that we walked out of a party together.”

“Touche.”

You pick at the table’s chipped wood, the little bits of the varnish and wax finding a home beneath your fingernails. Your nail breaks and you bring your hand to your mouth.

Jeongguk takes a sip of his coffee, before saying, “What were you really doing by the bathroom?”

“I told you, I was throwing all the vodka up.” You laugh quietly. “I didn’t take a single chase tonight.”

Jeongguk grimaces. “But you hold alcohol pretty well, don’t you? You wouldn’t be throwing up.”

“You’re right,” you deadpan. “I was wallowing in my sadness and drowning in my tears.”

Jeongguk considers this, sipping his coffee, pursing his abused lips around the cup. “Were you?”

“No!”

His eyes narrow upon the dark jacket you picked up in the bathroom. “Whose coat are you wearing?”

“Why the hell are you asking so many damn questions? You’re fuckin’ interrogating me.”

“I just want to know whose coat that is.”

“I don’t fuckin’ know! I found it in the bathroom.”

He scowls. And you realize suddenly. “Wait, you think I was fucking someone in the bathroom, and then I took their coat,” you accuse. After nursing your broken nail, your fingers find that little chip in the wood again where you have already picked off the wax. “When you found me, people were already in there. Why would I be waiting outside the bathroom?”

“I don’t fuckin’ know.”

“Then stop making shit accusations!”

“Okay, okay, I’m sorry, calm down.”

His face is tense, sexy. He’s sexy, jealous. The little mole beneath his mouth is prominent, and you want to lean over and kiss it, tell him that there’s no one but him, no one but him that can make you feel the way you do. That can make you hate the way you feel.

Your head cocks to the side, like a bird’s, and drunk as you are, a filter escapes you. “Did you kiss that girl?”

Jeongguk’s eyes are narrow, just as black as the coffee he drinks, with no sparkling flecks of regret residing within them. Although you know such inquiries are filled with such desperation and degradation, you can’t possibly help the way the unretractable question fills your mouth.

“Who?”

“The one who told me I was your new seat.”

“How do you know?”

“There’s a hickey on your neck, and one of the buttons on your shirt is missing. I’m not stupid, you know.”

“I know.”

“So did you kiss her, or no?”

“You already know, so just let it go.”

“I want to hear it from your mouth.” The words are quiet. The waitress looks at you both inquisitively; she obviously can’t wait for you both to go home.

“Yes, I kissed her.”

“Okay.”

“Okay.”

You fall asleep on the taxi home, and he, with affection, you think, as the drowsy stupor fights to hold you in it���s clutches, carries you up to his apartment. The bed is all too comfortable and you hardly think of getting up and moving.

And as you truly find yourself in the definitive hold of your dreams, maybe you do think about being jealous. Maybe you aren’t too drunk to get jealous. But you have no right. You have no right. Though he is right in front of you, the oxygen to the fire you are, it’s almost as if he’s far away, too flighty to reach out and grab with your fingers, slipping away just as your eyes close.

The sweet fall of the sunlight wakes you gently, so that you are only half asleep as you sit up on the bed. It creaks with wear, and the lascivious memories of sex with Jeongguk on this very comforter has heat traveling down your spine to your core. You swallow before glancing beside you. Jeongguk sleeps soundly, not a single part of his body touching yours save for his hand, which he has wrapped comfortably around yours. You can’t bare to get up and let go, so you stay. He sleeps, ever so softly, ever so carefree, the fringe of his unstyled hair hanging down to the tips of his lashes. Your hand reaches up, almost unconsciously, to stroke the fine strands of hair, glowing gold in the sunlight. He’s gorgeous, ethereal and ephemeral. His button nose twitches in his sleep, like a bunny’s, and he truly looks adorable, all soft snores and relaxed jawline and cheekbones. You wonder where he is, in his dreams, whether he dreams of you, like you of him, with the meadows where you meet and the stars you wish upon. But he wouldn’t be the one wishing on stars; he’d be the angel, the one to save you from damnation and despair.

You fight to keep your eyes open, wanting to keep them on his face. You want to see if he’s just as gorgeous when he wakes up. You wonder if soft tendrils of sunlight illuminate his hair in the mornings as he wakes, if he makes breakfast with his shirt on or off (preferably off) or if he eats breakfast at all. But you guess you don’t deserve to know the more intimate part of Jeongguk because sleep comes again, and it clings to you, to the fine line that you have drawn between you and Jeongguk’s sleeping forms.

The next time you wake up, Jeongguk has gone. A small note is visible on the counter, handwriting a racoon’s scrawl easily identifiable as Jeongguk’s, stating that he’d be back from the grocery store within the hour. The time read 10 AM, and in it’s blocked lines you realized that you had spent more than six hours in these halls of white madness, more than you had ever spent at the home of another hook up’s. You can picture it perfectly, the domestic view of the sweet kiss he will leave as he comes in through the door. You can see the eggs frying on the stove, their yolks perfectly wholesome and funnily homely. He’ll step behind you to get the salt from the rack above and to the side of the stove, and rest his hands on your waist with no hesitation.

You shake your head. It will never work. All he wants is to hook up and that’s really all you want to. You have never done anything different before. All those one night stands and all those fwbs and all those fuckbuddies run through your head like the finest sand, sifting past you with the haste of rabbits. They’ll never stay, and neither will you.

The door slams behind you, and the note is left on the counter, almost unread.

A text blinks up at you in the darkness of the night. You don’t have to open it to know that Jeongguk is missing you in the early hours of the morning. Sleep has come few and far between these past weeks, and you’re finding it hard to slip out of bed like a cat to find your shoes and underwear. Your wallet would be helpful too; no train comes this far out of the way of the city. Quickly, you check on the boy that lays peacefully on the duvet next to you, just to make sure he’s lost in the dreams of his heart, that he won’t wake to your quick exit. You leave your number because he was just a beautiful fuck; bruises that grow azure and ebony lay stark against your skin, glowing in the moonlight that illuminates your asshole attempts to escape.

You can’t bring yourself to feel bad, remorse looks bad in the lustful eyes of a lover. And yet, there is just a nagging ache within your heart.

The cab feels sad, it smells of stale cigarette smoke and booze, and it’s almost like a music video, where the protagonist looks out the window in a classic imitation of melancholy. You can’t help but feel that you are in the wrong.

You think back to Jimin, with the the pouty smile and the fuckable body, the creased eyes that didn’t fail to attract your ever insatiable appetite for sex. He didn’t look any less happy at the thought of sleeping with you. Bars weren’t ideal for nights such as these, but he didn’t say no. The distance you have created with Jeongguk increased and increased, a diverging river.

You almost winced at the way his palms clutched at your waist with wanton abandon right in the dingy bathroom of that dirtied bar. You got used to it, the way a dog becomes accustomed to his abusive master. You were loath to think at what caused the brown stains on the door, so you insisted upon leaving, and eventually you found your way to his house.

He made you feel good for a night. He imprinted his own marks upon your body, completely ignoring those that had been left behind by others for him to find. You enjoyed that. But now, you are left reeling with the emotions he helped you forget for a few hours. And they claw at you, the way that dog claws the door long after his master has left him far behind.

“Y/N,” Jeongguk says, with all the fire of a thousand cold hells, calm and furious. His voice rushes into your ears like the sweetest memory. You don’t expect him to be here, in all his self-righteous glory. You want him to be fucking some girl in a room filled with toys of deplorable nature; you want him to be in a brothel getting a lapdance from a girl wearing faux chains and plastic jewelry. You need him to be far from you, down one of the long hallways of this frathouse, somewhere he could get lost and you would forget him like a childhood memory, beautiful while it lasted. You try to calm down your beating heart, echoing like a sledgehammer in beat with the pounding bass of the house. It’s much too loud and it vibrates the ceilings and the walls till you feel like you’re buzzed with the heat of the blood gushing through your ears. You hope he can’t hear it.

He smells of rapidly fading cologne and laundry detergent. Sweat makes the hair at his forehead stick to the skin adamantly though he pushes it back impatiently with fervor. The shirt that he wears also sticks to his body, like a wet cloth. You pretend not to notice the way people stare fanatically at his abdomen and chiseled chest, completely transparent through the moist fabric of his dress shirt. The burgundy red of dancing and rage graces his cheekbones and like glue you are too enamored to stay away.

“Jeongguk, hey, how have you been?” The sentence is too long, and it starts a conversation, the very last thing you want to do in this moment. You’re effortlessly nonchalant, sauntering away, letting your words become smooth, trying to ease his worry, trying to act like you don’t care about him, and they fill the air with the sickly sweet scent of burning sugar, they stick to the air and fill Jeongguk’s eyes with rage.

He walks towards you with the grace of a panther, and you’re almost entranced, just as you imagine any of his prey would be, too mystified by the beauty of his stalking. You walk towards him, too, not nearly as dignified, but with flirtatious intentions, like this is just another one of your casual hookups. He takes a step into you, and you startle back, for his proximal stance is much too aggressive for the licentious edge you were hoping to blow this meeting off as.

But he isn’t in the mood for pleasantries. “Don’t give me that bullshit. I’ve been texting you and calling you. I went to your motherfucking apartment, for god sake,” he said.

You’ve never seen him angry, and his tone of voice hits you like a truck. It’s sharp syllables that cut themselves off at the end as if he can’t bare to talk with you anymore than necessary. His teeth are choked together, stuck together with the sugar, and you barely see the way his lips move. He’s quiet as a mouse but angry as satan.

“Well, you know, I was busy–”

“Too busy to talk to me. Bullshit.” He doesn’t scoff, like you expect him to. “You could’ve answered a single text, to tell me where you were, what was going on, what happened.” His hand slams down on the wall, and you flinch. You almost don’t hear it over the noise. The drinks in the corner of the living room spill over as someone turns the volume up to intolerable heights. Jeongguk doesn’t look away.

You feel something like the remnants of remorse falling like bricks into the pit of your stomach, and you have to step away from Jeongguk, leaving something like a safe distance between you both. Jeongguk looks at his hand, once, with guilt and sudden sadness encompassing his ordinarily soft features. You take another step back, and gather the paranoia and the anger and the horrible feeling of wariness into a ball that centers you for the first time in months. You swallow hard, adding nostalgia and sadness to the mixture, trying to find yourself in the maze of his dizzying eyes. Your own eyes close, a single tear drips from the edge of your cornea.

“I don’t need to tell you where I am, or what’s going on with me. You–” you can only swallow your feeling so much “–You are not my boyfriend; I have sex with you once in awhile, when my mind delights in the possibility, but other than that, you remain to be the same in my heart. Just someone to fuck with.” Your words become a mere whisper, unyielding, a sharp knife that slips in quietly to deliver the killing stroke. Maybe he doesn’t hear it but you do, the quiver in your voice, the small indication that you care, that you lie with the passion of birds in flight, too high to let go of their wings. You are too despicable to let go of your heart, to place it in his hands and ask him to care for it. For if you do, you will never re-attain it.

And he flinches, hurt by your words, just like you hoped he would, but just as he hurt, you hurt, because you can feel his every infliction upon your own body. If someone whipped him once, then you felt the whip cracking down on your back seven times, and your own knives hurt him, and seeing him flinch made your heart crack into millions of pieces. But you would rather crack and break then see him crack and break because of your volatile, cursed love.

The anger and the rage and the sadness and the guilt feels satiable no longer, and you can’t help but think that you have imploded, and now nothing remains inside you. You are an empty shell of a human, and you have an empty shell of a heart.

“But–but I thought–I thought you–” He breaks off. When you had first met him, he had been a virgin freshman, but never incapable of speaking, never scared, always confident in his words, and now, because of your hurtful knives, he is reduced to a state so different from his usual persona.

“You thought wrong.”

His eyes seem wet, tearing up, coffee eyes without milk but just a little bit of sugar cracking, and you hate yourself for hurting him in this way, but it would be worth it, he would be okay without you. And his tears break free, streaming down his face, one teardrop at a time, mixing with the sweat that continues to drip down his neck in the humid room.

He’s still beautiful crying.

There’s a part of you that hopes, hopes that he would stay there with you, hopes that he sees the way your heart breaks, too.

You turn away from the torrent of tears and find yourself pushing through the crowd to find the doors. There’s no use in trying to comfort him when you can only bring him sadness.

[metawitches]

  When Joss Whedon’s dream came true and Natalia Alianovna Romanoff willingly flung herself to her death, I felt nothing. I knew from the moment she and Clint went off for the Soul Stone that she would die, but, stupidly, I didn’t quite get to the realization that she would be the one to kill herself – one of the few decisions she’s made for herself in her time in the MCU.

There aren’t a lot of options for women and girls to look up to as role models in media – not female ones, anyway. Growing up, I was always looking for female role models in media, and I frequently ended up in love with the ones who had agency, above all else. The “powerful or good” dichotomy that I wrote about in a post in response to the Frozen musical details the struggle I’ve always found in female characters. You can be powerful or good, have agency or compassion, intelligence or charm, be sexy or moral – whore or madonna.

I fell in love with Natasha slowly. Her emotional depth and complexity, her flirtatiousness, her dynamism and belief in herself, her desperation to fit in somewhere, with someone, her history of having been brainwashed into believing she was nothing and no one, taken from the only world she knew to a drastically different one, only to find that maybe the two weren’t so different… Her instant connection and trust with Steve that grew to a deep bond, only to quickly find him more concerned with another, arguably stronger bond from his past (with someone who may be her former lover, who now doesn’t recognize her, but does recognize her new partner), followed immediately by the discovery that the one person she thought of as family, Nick Fury, did not consider her part of his family after all… I fell in love with her strength, intelligence, vulnerability, past, relationships. To me, the quintessential Natasha is Winter Soldier Natasha, when she is an equal partner to Steve and has her own journey and her relationships are most intense and hopeful and devastating – she is the one I fell in love with.

But that woman was seriously undermined – or should I say, Whedonized – in Avengers: Age of Ultron. She feels she’s a monster for not being able to have babies, her relationship with Steve barely exists, she pathetically begs for the attention of a man who considers her about as despicable as he considers himself, and then somehow ends up suicidal. It was a logical progression from the fragile, childlike woman in The Avengers, save for her connection with Steve being less present than in the first movie.

The Natasha from Winter Soldier was mostly back in Captain America: Civil War, but as is bound to happen, her character was twisted and manipulated to fit the plot. She is the “wild card” Avenger, as the special features on the Civil War DVD call her. Having a character who could go either way because of complex calculations, goals, and values is interesting and compelling, and I believe that’s what they intended to do with Natasha. Instead, they twisted her character in ways that were only loosely defensible and used her as a convenient object in order to achieve the plot they wanted. More than the wild card Avenger, she is the spare Avenger.

She barely existed in Avengers: Infinity War, and in Avengers: Endgame, she was back to her Avengers persona as opposed to her Captain America persona. This is the Natasha that, frankly, doesn’t feel like my Natasha. I’m not going to argue which one is the “real” Natasha, but I know which one is mine, and she was not it. Endgame has so many problems when it comes to plot, mythology, science, character, logic, and morality that, as a fan, I have a very hard time taking the movie seriously as canon. And I haven’t forced myself to take it seriously – it’s all fiction, and I can hold in my head a version of events that is just as real as the version a bunch of men looking for profit came up with.

I never grieved Natasha because, to me, she isn’t dead. She isn’t suicidal. She is resilient as ever – she has her regrets and her insecurities, but she isn’t suicidal.

But I wasn’t nearly as well prepared for the death of Daenerys Targaryen – because I didn’t realize she was so important to me. I never expected to become a fan of an Avengers character, but even less than that, I never, ever expected to care in the slightest about a Game of Thrones character. I’d never seen a single minute of the show. I could name about two characters. I’d seen the talk of its treatment of female characters, the counts of rape per episode (warning: link contains triggering content) and the frequency at which women were shown full-on naked compared to men. I’d read many feminist analyses of the series and felt no need to put myself through a single episode to confirm what my fellow feminists said. In short, I had little respect for Game of Thrones, and even less now.

I don’t know how Daenerys came into my awareness initially. Cultural osmosis has led to me seeing her around for years, and, sometime during this latest season, I found myself searching for information on her history, her journey, and – my favorite – her relationship with her dragons. I think my gradually growing interest in her had a lot to do with the headlines I saw referring to her disappointing descent into a “mad queen.” This was vaguely surprising to me, though it shouldn’t have been. It’s a tried and true tradition in fiction that women with power go crazy – all that responsibility and capability melts their poor little brains.

The night of the series finale, I googled her name to see what her fate had been, already pretty sure what I would find. That suspicion was correct. She continued farther down the path of power melting her ladybrain and turning her into a vengeful goddess along the lines of Ishtar, Athena and Hera, continuing the long and still prevalent trope of vindictive women. Thus, she had to die.

I was sad upon seeing this, but it took a minute for it to really sink in. And then I was very, very sad. I couldn’t think about anything else. This was exactly what had happened to Natasha just a few weeks ago. We lost Natasha, then we lost Daenerys. One after another, two of our time’s most iconic female characters met lazy, demoralizing ends.

And it struck me how similar these two are. Natasha and Daenerys both spent years as examples of female characters who could be both powerful and good (though flawed), but in the end, they, too, were forced to choose. Natasha became good and weak. Daenerys became evil and powerful. Both died. Natasha is the Giving Tree and Daenerys is the Evil Queen. The Madonna and the Whore. Neither allowed to live or be full people.

Natasha and Daenerys were women with power who had to give up that power to pay for their sins. They couldn’t atone in ways other than death. In the eyes of the writers and the characters around them, Natasha was a monster because she couldn’t have babies, while Daenerys was the mother of monsters. (Though I object to the common notion that dragons are monsters in addition to Daenerys being coded as a monster by proxy – they’re animals living their lives, just like us.) Natasha is surrounded by men who have committed crimes at least as bad as what she’s done: Steve and Thor have killed many, many soldiers in war; Tony has killed countless innocent people, including Wanda’s whole family (which she conveniently forgets about after Ultron), through his numerous mistakes; Hulk has killed people in his hulk-rage; as of Endgame, Clint is not only a long-time assassin, but has spent years being a vigilante serial killer. But Natasha has “red in her ledger” because…she was an assassin for Russia before she was an assassin for the U.S.? Because she’s killed people in her job or for the greater good? Because she’s barren, as Joss 💩™ seems to think? (Never mind that the “red in my ledger” line, which people seem to take as the heart of her character, was said when she was tricking Loki into telling her his plan. She has no more red than any other Avenger. But she’s the only one who has to sacrifice her life in order to redeem all of that.)

Daenerys suffered from the same bizarre ideas of what’s an appropriate ending for a female character. I’ve seen fans of GoT say that the show ended the way it needed to, that it’s never been about happy endings or closure or justice – which is fine. But if that’s the case, why was it a happy ending for the Starks? Why couldn’t Daenerys live as an evil queen? Why couldn’t she kill Jon Snow, knowing that he might try to stop her evil plans? If she was so destroyed by all the loss she’d experienced, and was so afraid of further betrayal, couldn’t she have killed him before he could betray her, too? Why does the tragic ending have to be a tragedy for her, the show’s long-standing symbol of female empowerment? If she’s so evil, couldn’t the tragedy be for the people who’d loved her and the people who would have to suffer her rule for the foreseeable future? If she had to be either powerful or good, couldn’t she at least keep her power? And why did she go crazy from losing so many people/dragons, while so many (male) characters on GoT didn’t, despite having lost just as many?

There was also no particular way that the story “needed” to end. This story was not handed down from god. (No, George R. R. Martin is not god.) This was created by men. (Yes, men and not women.) Daenerys did not come to them as someone who was doomed to be power-mad. She is completely made up. They chose to make her story one of a woman turning out to be evil, out-of-control, and ultimately not even that powerful. Even if becoming crazy and killed by a man was the best end for the character they created, they created her this way. This story didn’t fall into their laps. Daenerys didn’t have to die; they killed her. And the same is true of Natasha.

Metacrone has done extensive analysis of the cultural fear of women’s power, so I won’t go in-depth on that here. What we haven’t analyzed as deeply on this blog is the cultural need for a woman to die when her story is over, or at least become suicidal. This trend is largely one and the same as writers getting to the end of a woman’s story, or the end of the overall story, and not bothering to write a proper ending for one or more female characters. Instead, they lazily dispose of their women by having them become suicidal or suddenly so horrible that they can’t be allowed to live. And let’s not ignore that the writers of Endgame said themselves that Natasha’s story had to end if she got the Avengers back together. Apparently, that really means the male Avengers. I guess Clint can live knowing a woman died for him, but she can’t live knowing a man died for her.

Daenerys’ death brought up the feelings in me that I’d managed to escape when Natasha died. There goes another one. Another woman who couldn’t maintain her own agency. Another one whose biggest contribution to the world and the plot was her death. Another one who couldn’t be a complex, whole person. Another one the (male) writers were too lazy to give a proper ending. Time to end the story – oh, we have this troublesome woman here. What do we do with her? Eh, easiest to just kill her. She’s just the spare. We don’t need her for the plot anymore.

These two are part of a very, very old tradition, one which influences and reflects the real world, and as a real live human woman, I can report how this feels, though I know that most male writers (and some female writers) aren’t terribly interested in how women feel as long as we continue to give them money. My point isn’t whether Daenerys was really crazy or the creators manipulated the audience to think she was (although that’s an analysis I would love to read), or whether she deserved to die. My point is that This. Keeps. Happening. Powerful woman has to die. Powerful woman who is known to be a source of inspiration for women and girls (hopefully not very young girls in Daenerys’ case, given the explicit on-camera sexual abuse/rape) is actually evil and the best option for her is death. If you’re a powerful woman, the best thing you can do for society (and yourself) is die.

I won’t go into the specifics of Daenerys’ story or character. But I think my reaction, which was largely the same that I saw from many Game of Thrones fans, to her fate of becoming “mad” and then being killed by a man is enough to showcase its cultural impact. (Metacrone texted me shortly after I’d read the story of Daenerys’ death, also upset – neither of us have ever seen a single minute of Game of Thrones.) Daenerys has a cultural meaning. Even those of us who know nothing about the show and next to nothing about Daenerys herself still know her as the queen, the woman who always has the dragons by her side and commands the men beneath her. We know her as the female face of the franchise, just as we know Natasha as the female face of hers.

So what message does it send that the female faces of two of the most popular franchises of our time died at the end of their franchises (well, to the extent that Endgame can be considered the end of the original Avengers group)? What does it say that neither of them could have an ending that involved them continuing their lives after the narrative was complete? As Metacrone has written elsewhere, the end of a man’s story usually means that it’s time to start the next chapter of his life. That’s what it meant for most of the Avengers (aside from Tony, who died because he’s a good person, as opposed to Natasha, who died because she didn’t deserve to live), and it’s what it meant for most of Daenerys’ male counterparts. The man Natasha died to save and the man who killed Daenerys both continued their lives after the end of the story.

Natasha’s death may not have felt real to me, but Daenerys’ death less than a month later made me realize that, in terms of cultural impact, it was real. These two iconic women are the latest in the time-honored tradition of killing a woman when her goal is accomplished or when it’s time to end the story. What do we do with this character? Have we given her enough of an identity to know what an appropriate ending for her would be? Does her fate have relevance to the overall story? How will it affect other characters? These questions seem to mostly be pesky inconveniences to many writers, so they just kill their women. Too much of a bother trying to write them as real characters.

It really isn’t hard to write about women – they’re people. They can do and say the same things as men. But these writers’ brains seem incapable of processing a character who is just a character but happens to be female. So they try to appease the Crazy Feminists™ by doing sh-t like this:

to say to us “girl power!! Look at all the women we have!! Progressive!!” while absolutely none of the women in that shot did a single thing remotely consequential to the story. Absolutely not a single one of them could have been in the movie and it would be the same movie. In fact, one fanboy edited out all the scenes that weren’t about straight white men, and the end result was a logical, substantial, full-length movie. (Plus, he changed the opening images to the Stan Lee version of the Marvel comics montage, which was seen at the beginning of Captain Marvel. We need the very beginning to be an ode to not only a straight white man, but a groper.) Luckily for me, this guy already did the work of seeing what would happen if you edited out all the pesky “representation” that the poor creators of the film were forced to add. And it changed nothing about the movie. It’s the same movie, just a little more streamlined. I’ve seen people mocking this guy for being pathetic in needing to edit all these things out, and he is, but the dominant culture of our society is on his side, or else this movie would have actually written non-straight-white-male characters who had real reasons to be there. This guy and I do have something in common regarding this – we both were quite annoyed by the use of the characters who were not straight white men.

I never want to write about it when a female character I’ve loved and drawn inspiration from for years is ruined this way. I didn’t want to write my Frozen piece, either. I had no intention of writing about Natasha’s death because, again, it didn’t feel real to me, and I was very happy living in that land. I didn’t want to face it enough to write about its significance. But then Daenerys turned out to be so evil and out-of-control that she had to die, too. Two of her dragons, the symbols of her power (and animals who are used as plot devices rather than real characters, as so often happens), died. Jon Snow’s pain in killing her is apparently just as bad as her being dead, according to the soft-boy-men’s-rights-activist who plays him. As the delightful Emilia Clarke said, “Um, he just doesn’t like women, does he? He keeps f–king killing them.” (A fitting statement for most male writers, too.) Oh, and he’s also the true heir to the throne, not her. (And also, let’s make this little boy king of the 6 realms instead of his two older and much more qualified sisters. Now if that doesn’t sound like real life….)

It should be clear from the subject matter of this site that we don’t agree with the argument “it’s just a TV show/movie,” but in case anyone wants proof, there are studies that show that film and tv affect our beliefs in gender roles and stereotypes.

As it stands now, I will continue to have my own ideas of how Natasha’s and Daenerys’ stories went. (Personally, I like to think that Daenerys continued to stop her husband’s men from raping enemy women and instead gained their trust, they all formed an elite group of warriors, spies, witches and assassins, and through this group as well as her strength and compassion, Daenerys gained enough power within Dothraki society that she eventually killed her rapist husband rather than falling in love with him [wtf???] and was then considered the real Dothraki leader. Some of the Dothraki men, of course, never took to this, and continued to challenge her or attempt to kill her, but between her, her dragons, and her team of deadly women, none of them could touch her. All her dragons lived out their long lives. She led her people and her dragons through the long, harsh winter and was all the more loved for having helped her people prosper so well throughout it. Also, she turns Dothraki society into a vegetarian one, except for her dragons because they’re carnivores. The end. [Natasha’s story is quite a bit more complicated, and I’m still working it out.])

But our culture, especially young girls, can’t disconnect from media in this way – and, clearly, I can’t quite do so either.

  Images courtesy of Marvel and HBO.

Daenerys & Natasha When Joss Whedon’s dream came true and Natalia Alianovna Romanoff willingly flung herself to her death, I felt nothing.

[briteboy]

What If? Sims OC Tag 💃🏻🌶

Chosen OC: rodrigo/ratboy because WHO ELSE 🙄 (actually that’s a lie i would totally love to do this with my other characters)

You can find the story here: a serious case of the novembers aka santi’s story heh (i really need to change the tag oops)

i was tagged by da bbys @wanderlust-sims​ @sim-bubble​ and @theartofqueenie​ THANK YOUUUUU i love this sh*t

under the cut because walls of text are ugly *fingers guns* 😉

oh yeah and i tag @essiesims @bananahut @ichosim @ciarasia @spellburstss4 @lunarian-sim @thelifeof-sadgyal @20-44-sims @riftpixel @stardust-sims and @desgoffes DO THISSSSssS

WHAT

What is your character’s favorite memory?: when his abuela used to come over and babysit him and his siblings ;-; they would make tamales together and she would buy them lottery scratch cards. he only won once and it was like $12 and he spent it on a jurassic park t-rex

Who and what would your character give their life for?: BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN lmao jerseyboy4lyfe um. his friends of course, and his family even though he jumps through hoops trying to avoid them. tbh he would probably die for anyone who showed him any amount of kindness because he’s foolhardy as hell and tends to see the good in everyone but himself. ...brb gotta go cry now LMAO

What is your character’s greatest fear? being a bad influence/being a burden on the lives of those he loves. :\ and dying alone lol *dabs* he also fears fire but is simultaneously mesmerized by it

What is your character’s proudest accomplishment?: um. staying alive for this long tbh. LMAO ummm he’s pretty proud of even the smallest things like the fact that he managed to hold down a job and move out on his own. he doesn’t know how to adult so he’ll brag about anything he did that made him feel responsible even if it’s just like doing his laundry on a semi-regular basis

What is your character’s #1 insecurity?: lol oh god what iSN’T his insecurity...but probably his childlike sense of naivety. he is way too trusting for someone who’s been burned too many times to count.

What will/can break your character completely?: um................being confronted head-on with his past, especially the mistakes he’s made...being forced to acknowledge the reality of everything. but it’s more like a slow burn.

What would your character make a scene in public about?: literally anything. he’s that annoying toddler sitting in the shopping cart in the grocery store who starts crying because his mom won’t buy him cookies. actually he and avey used to pretend to get into huge couple fights in the middle of restaurants just for shits n gigs to see what other people’s reactions would be...i hate them

What can drive your character to do criminal acts?: peer pressure, naivety, panic, love.

What Pet (mythical or not) would your character want to have?: A FAT ORANGE CAT NAMED MEATLOAF, a shiba inu, a snake or two or six, a really cool lizard, probably like some cool bug like a tarantula because he likes ugly things

What is the cutest thing your character has ever done?: eww nothing.............jk um. he has his moments. last mother’s day was the last time he spoke to his mom and she started singing “you are my sunshine” in spanish to him until he sang along with her ;-; that was pretty cute i’d say ;______;;;;;;;;;;;

HOW

How does your character feel about sexual intercourse?: 

whats that

How close is your character with family and friends?: friends are family to him, and he does love his actual family but he's worked too hard to distance himself from them because he feels like a bad son and a disappointment :{

How does your character react to pressure?: he accidentally set fire to a house under pressure once what do u think

How religious is your character (if they believe)?: 

How does your character’s personality change when someone gets uncomfortably close (relationship wise)?: i mean...i think you’ve all seen that happen over the course of time aheh. he rapidly switches from open and oversharing to closed off and and insecure once he realizes he’s said too much or is forced to acknowledge his past and/or faults.

How does your character’s living space correlate with their personality?: it’s uhhhhhh...eclectic. messy and disorderly. empty in strange places. 

How well does your character act around with unknown and different people?: he is forward and stupidly brazen and often doesn’t think before he speaks, especially with first impressions. needless to say he is...certainly memorable.

How much does your character value money?: he is quite frivolous but he also knows when to hold back. money itself doesn’t mean much to him but he understands its importance. handling money freaks him out and he avoids looking at his bank account balance at all costs lol

How would this character cope with losing someone extremely close to them? *looks into the camera like i’m on the office*

How long does it take for your character to trust others? if ur nice to him probably like 2 seconds lmao

SCENARIOS

If your character could change one thing about themselves, what would they want to change?: everything. literally everything lol he hates himself. but especially his past self.

If your character could go back in time at any point in their life, what would they do to change the present?: there’s........a lot of things he would’ve done differently, not just one thing. because everything was sort of a chain reaction. but deep down he knows there’s nothing he could’ve done because it was inevitable. 

If your character was given a chance at fulfilling their dream, can they drop everything they have now to go pursue it?: he doesn’t know what his dreams are tbh. he has no goals because his future is the last thing on his mind...he’s kind of always hoping he won’t make it that far in life.

If your character’s current spouse or partner cheated, would they try to make it work or leave forever?: lmao he would be like BYE because he would be offended on a personal level that he wasn’t his partner’s #1 romantic priority. he’s into the idea of poly relationships but he also knows there’s a distinction between that and straight up cheating.

If a zombie apocalypse begun in the town your character currently lives in, what would they act like?: he would be like “welp see ya” and just walk off a bridge probably. or take all the people he cares about into a basement to hide for like 12 years

What if your character suddenly woke up to an unfamiliar place, and realize the life they lived was all a dream. Their family, friends, home.. all gone but still crazily vivid in their head. How would they react?: he would probably just descend into madness lol like his mental state is fragile enough but that...that would really fuck him up. it would be like the crawlspace episode of breaking bad and he’d just start hysterically laughing because he finally went crazy lmao. like i’m just thinking about how vividly he’d remember both the good and bad things, the horribly damaging things, but they were never real...now my heart hurts lol bye

If your character was thrown in jail, what would they be guilty of?: arson lmfao. but at this point in his life probably just being belligerent or wasted in public because that’s who he is now 

Rewind 10 years from now, what is your character currently doing?: he’d be 15 so................having a crush on molly and fighting with her about her abusive boyfriend WOW...bye

Your character is in the movie SAW, facing their worst fear. What is that fear, and how does he/she react?: being faced with all his past mistakes tangibly personified...but um i don’t think SAW works that way so probably like...fire or the threat of drowning (polar opposites aheh) and he would probably try to stay calm but panic so much internally that it would lead to his demise because he couldn’t think straight.

We regret to inform you that your character is dead. Where do they end up? Heaven? Hell? And how the heck do they react?: SHUT THEUFKC UP..........SHUT UP I JUST HAD A HEART ATTACK he probably chillin in limbo with all the dead babies n shit...he’d probably be like “wow” and light a joint...can you smoke weed in purgatory? i don’t see why not

[tsukuyomi-chan]

Salvage Whatever’s Left after the Fire

Writing for the Trickster anime (the full name is actually Trickster: From Edogawa Ranpo’s “The Boy Detectives Club”) and while it isn’t the best show I do enjoy it a lot and I absolutely love Kobayashi.  It’s a Kobayashi character study, but it’s also Kobayashi/Hanasaki.  This was supposed to come out a lot earlier since a lot of it’s concurrent with episode 16 but I am a notoriously slow writer.

It’s basically just Kobayashi discovering Feelings.

Warnings: Suicidal thoughts, blood, mentioned animal death, serious spoilers up until ep 16

Summary:

“Hanasaki Kensuke.”

“… A big freaking idiot.”

Kobayashi closes his eyes and dreams of death.  When he opens them, Hanasaki is there.

(Fanfiction.net | AO3)

The lights of the city are nothing but specks compared to how vast the dark sky is above.  They twinkle and dim and brighten to their own rhythm, as if competing with stars in the sky.  Today had been nothing but useless cases and annoying commands from everyone around him.  Kobayashi spends a few more moments looking at the lights, before walking back across the roof to the broken Ferris wheel cabin laying in the middle.  He curls up on the seat, trying to get comfortable under his jacket.  It’s cold, but not unbearable.

It almost becomes a tradition.  Kobayashi would close his eyes every night, finally tired of fruitless attempts to get somewhere with losing his life, and wonder if maybe he could peacefully pass in his sleep, and in the morning he would awaken to the sound of a too cheery Hanasaki, yelling something like  "Wake up, sleepy-head!  We have a case to solve!“ or something else equally irritating.

That tradition is broken when that Twenty Faces messes with both Hanasaki and Akechi Kogorou with that annoying incident at the mall, and all the sudden Kobayashi is back to sleeping in until whenever he feels like it, or when Inoue comes by to update him about a case.

The extra sleep is welcomed, but when he wakes up for the fifteenth time that month with no one standing over him, giving him a stunningly bright smile and spouting bad jokes by the second, he clicks his tongue.

"If you want to die so badly, I’ll kill you!”

Hanasaki was the first person Kobayashi had talked to in over a year.  Up until then, he had spent most of his time either sleeping or searching for food.  It was painful.  Staying out of the sight of other people so that no one would get suspicious, stealing food without getting caught but also eating enough so that trash wouldn’t get shoved down his throat by whatever accursed thing was haunting him, spending nights in the cold curled up in abandoned buildings and alleyways.   

He couldn’t feel warmth, he couldn’t feel full, he couldn’t feel happy, he couldn’t feel pain, he couldn’t feel other humans.  Everything before living on the streets with his accursed ability is a blur, and his memory is nothing but a few messy images that he doesn’t want to focus on. He wasn’t sure he was even human.

He’s fine with that. He hates humans.

(He hates how they irritatingly cling to whatever’s around them.  He hates how loud and boisterous about their superiority they are.  He hates how easily they got depressed about little problems, instead of actually trying to anything about them.  He hates how lucky they are, how they could choose to die whenever they wanted and actually die, while he couldn’t even do that.  )

But Hanasaki had gone right up to him, talking as if nothing was wrong, following him around and calling him cool, smiling at him as if he was no different from anyone around him. Kobayashi got dragged into a Boy’s Detective Club of all things.  And Hanasaki just kept dragging him around, forcibly involving him in activities of normal people, as if Kobayashi was normal as well.

Hanasaki was the first person to reach out to him, despite his ability.  And because of Hanasaki, now he was in contact with multiple others who barely minded his ability, in comparison to what he himself could do.

Inoue seemed just like the type of adult to hate Kobayashi, despite not even being that old yet.  But Inoue is rational and grounded and his justice doesn’t waver, and despite his legs being somewhat useless, he easily makes up and compensates for it.  And Kobayashi realizes that he’s beginning to find it as reliable as everyone else does.

Noro seemed almost understandable for Kobayashi, but her personality just didn’t fit.  Kobayashi could understand why she would stay inside all the time, not interacting with anyone except through electronics.  But she was loud and nosy and made her presence known even when she was just talking through an owl.  And maybe because she mostly viewed him through lens, she never thought of him as anything more than a sad kid.

Masaharu Katsuda is Inoue’s friend from school, who was on and off depending on whether he was needed for cases.  Kobayashi isn’t blind.  He could see the way he and Inoue looked at each other.  They cared for each other to a point where it seemed ridiculous how the other didn’t realize.  But that didn’t make the man any bit disrespectful to Kobayashi just because he was so focused on Inoue all the time.

He honestly doesn’t even know the two science club members at the school that well.  The older eyes him and his ability with interest, but merely as something to have fun with, not some inhumane experiment.  The younger panics easily, and is innocent to the point where it’s almost irritating.  But neither of them hold any grudges against him, give him any insults, and always greet him with a smile.

The police lady scares him, honestly.  Police are a scary idea.  Authority and power, two things that work terribly with his ability.  The lady is smart and cunning, but she’s caring at the same time.  She actually treats him and the rest of the club members like children, and continually gives them second chances.

Akechi Kogorou is a mystery. He’s an adult, and Kobayashi hates adults.  But he looks at Kobayashi and treats him like he’s just as respectable as all the other Club members.  That isn’t even a lot of respect, but he trusts Kobayashi for some strange reason, in both his freakish ability and also his own capabilities.  And maybe Kobayashi enjoys having that trust in him just a little.

Sometimes Kobayashi wonders if fate is messing with him.  He never wanted this cursed ability, but it’s here with him anyways. Then he didn’t want to get involved with anyone again, but then Hanasaki gets thrown into his life.  He hadn’t wanted anyone to get hurt because of his ability, but now Hanasaki was depressed and tired, and the Club was on the edge of disbandment.

(He’s tired of people getting hurt because of him, but that’s the only thing he can ever do)

Hanasaki continually tried to keep him busy, to distract him from his ability.  He was never scared, never discouraged, never gave up on Kobayashi after anything he did.  He watched the dog die from Kobayashi’s ability, and tirelessly chased after him until he was dragged into the Boy’s Detective Club.  He invited Kobayashi to live with the rest of them at the tower. Hanasaki threw a birthday party for him, and wished him Happy Birthday along with all the others, as if he and all the rest of them were happy that Kobayashi had been born, so that they could share a moment like this with him.  

Kobayashi wonders if that happy Hanasaki ever existed to begin with.  After that member of his family was hospitalized, and that Twenty Faces convincing him to do stupidly selfish things, all of those barriers around Hanasaki just suddenly broke.  It’s irritating.

Hanasaki is a weak human. Humans are alive, and all living things are frail and fragile and easily broken apart like Hanasaki had been, crying at his knees in front of Twenty Faces and sobbing for Akechi Kogorou to kill him.  He was pleased with himself, then upset, then frustrated, and then wanted to die so no one else got hurt.  Kobayashi hated it.  Seeing something like that in Hanasaki just didn’t fit.  It resembled himself so much that the memory kept playing in Kobayashi’s mind even weeks after, of Hanasaki begging for the same things that Kobayashi always said like a mantra.

He remembers jumping off that balcony after Hanasaki, and had never wished before that he could actually touch another human until then, had never wanted anything so much before in his life until then, when he was desperately reaching forwards to save Hanasaki, to save a life for once instead of hurt it.

Kobayashi remembers tingling resonating through his very being.  The tingling from the very tip of his fingers, where he began bleeding for the first time in forever, and from watching Hanasaki smile like they had all the time in the world, and Kobayashi remembers thinking that maybe if he stuck around, he could finally recall how to feel something.

“If I’m with him…”

Kobayashi might finally be able to leave everything behind.

The new client is irritating.  He won’t stop talking, which seemed to be getting on the nerves of even Inoue and the police lady.  All they had to do was escort the man to his new jail alive, but some people seemed to be set on killing him, and the man seemed to have no problems with that. And on top of all that, Hanasaki wasn’t picking up any of his calls.

But Kobayashi is a member of the Boy’s Detective Club now.  And as Inoue was always saying, “we have a reputation to uphold.” So Kobayashi plays the man’s game.

“Bird.”

Flying freely above him. “Sky.”

“Female.”

Noro, the police lady. “Not male.”

“Tomorrow.”

More useless time for him. “Don’t care.”

“Life.”

Not death. “Don’t need it.”

“Embrace.”

Kobayashi stops.  He can’t recall.  He can’t recall the last time anyone actually physically touched him, let along embraced him.  But it reminds him of the spare images in his head that he never figured out, and it hurts to think about it but the man is determined to make him think of them.

It gives him a bad feeling.

“I forget.”

The man really is creepy.

“Gun.”

Useless things that couldn’t kill him.  "Noisy.“

"Detective.”

Hanasaki and Akechi making promises to him.  "A way to die.“

"Akechi Kogorou.”

Sitting at his desk shouting orders.  "Reeks of booze.“

"Red.”

Blood, blood, always blood. The images of bloodstains on a room somewhere, a person, himself?  Something completely unknown to him but way too familiar, and he’s scared, he doesn’t want to know what it is.  It’s splattered everywhere.  "Wall.“

"Wall.”

Breaking through everything in his path.  "Crashed into.“

"Tears.”

Tears dripping down Hanasaki’s face, shown on every damn screen in the mall. “Disgusting.”

“Hanasaki Kensuke.”

Kobayashi thinks of the boy chasing after him.  He thinks of the boy solving mysteries happily.  He thinks of the boy’s face broadcasted on every screen with tears in his eyes, clinging to ridiculous things like love.  He thinks of the boy, grinning like limits didn’t exist, as he exclaimed how he was going to help Kobayashi finally die, walking up to him and even having fun with his unholy ability.  He thinks of Hanasaki, smiling and telling him next time for sure, next time for sure he’ll grant Kobayashi salvation at last.

“A big freaking idiot.”  Kobayashi replies.  

They continue up the tower, avoiding the people in black, running around corners are throwing traps at them.  The man doesn’t show any signs of giving up though, even with his death so close and likely. 

“Family.”

A life he couldn’t remember. “A bunch of lies.���

“Prison.”

Where all the criminals they put away went.  "A pig sty.“

"Adults.”

Cold eyes, calling him a freak, unaccepting and cruel.  "All garbage.“ 

"Embrace.”

Again?  Kobayashi grits his teeth when images flash again. A hospital bed, strange liquids flowing somewhere.  "Strings… no, tubes.“

"Mother.”

The dull throbbing lights above, buzzing constant from the flies everywhere.  "Stinks.“

"Father.”

A Ferris Wheel?  His Ferris Wheel?  Blood?  A tooth?  His tooth, covered in blood?  He doesn’t understand.  He doesn’t know, he doesn’t know any of it but it’s there and he hates this.  He hates this he hates this he hates this he hates this.  He never asked for any of this, he never wanted any of this, but this is what he gets, and he doesn’t understand why.

“It’s not unusual for a psychologically unstable child to develop special abilities, but yours are a cut above.”

He doesn’t care.  He doesn’t care what this guy, or what anyone else says.  All he ever wanted was to die so that he could finally be left alone, so that he could finally drift away into nothing where there was no one to be cruel to him anymore.

Humans are cruel creatures. That’s why he wants to quit being one.

He wouldn’t regret anything if he died.  He has no interest in anyone, in anything, and all he wants is the pain in his head to stop, that’s all he wants and dying would solve that and it would be better for everyone then if that happened.

(But Hanasaki’s still frowning, still occasionally turning away and crying when no one’s looking like an idiot, and Kobayashi might, just maybe, miss seeing that smile of his every morning)

They reach the top, with the red staircase leading up to the statue where he first met Hanasaki.  It feels like something in his head is going to burst.  It’s frustrating.  Lately, every single little thing’s been frustrating.  Inoue keeps secrets and isn’t able to keep anything together. Noro doesn’t know a single thing about what’s happening.  The three at the school have little to no interest or knowledge in what’s going on. Akechi Kogorou left, to somewhere no one knows.

He doesn’t recognize this feeling, but he thinks it might be longing.

The statue looks no different.  The flowers from his last visit a week ago are still here.  It’s annoying how this scenery stayed the exact same, when nothing else would.  No one else would mourn the death of the dog except for him, and no one would ever learn of its existence.  It would completely fade out of this world once him and Hanasaki were dead, the only two who had known about it.  The dead wouldn’t change, not nearly as much as the living do.  

Kobayashi feels strangely exposed, standing here with Inoue, the police lady, and the creepy man who kept seeing through who he was better than he himself could.  It makes him uncomfortable.

He calls Hanasaki again.

No one answers.

He clicks his tongue. “Don’t ignore me…”

He’s a child.  He has a tiny and frail weak body, and having no memories just makes him even younger mentally.  And the police lady is always reminding them to be careful, even him, because despite his immortal ability, he still has the mind of a child, and children and stupid and impulsive and grow ridiculous desires and easy attachments to whatever is in their reach.

And Hanasaki had been there at every twist and turn, happily trying to reach him as well.

And Kobayashi finally puts it together, staring at the statue marking their first meeting dumbfounded, as if the world had just crashed into him.  

He wants Hanasaki.

He wants Hanasaki to stay by him more, lead him around on cases, eat food together, show him different places and tricks that he’s picked up, do anything.  And not just that.  He wants to be able to walk down crowded streets, take the train, maybe even go to school with him.  He wants to try the games in Noro’s room together.  He wants to both lead around and get led around by Inoue.  He wants Akechi Kogorou to pat his head and tell him good job like he tells the others.

He wants to embrace Hanasaki, and wants the boy to embrace back.  He wants to hug the other boy, wipe away those almost ridiculously constant tears, and finally get the boy to smile again.  He wants to be able to curl up by the boy’s side and just finally rest peacefully together.  He wants to be able to reach his hand out to Hanasaki, and for the other to be able to grab it back and grin, and to pull each other forwards together.

He wants to be able to touch Hanasaki.

Kobayashi has never before detested his ability for robbing him of the warmth of other humans.  He looks up at the statue in the room, and the creepy man smiles out of the corner of his eye.

The reinforcements of the people in black show up.  Kobayashi doesn’t understand well what the man did, or his bizarre reasons behind it, but Kobayashi wants to hang onto the Boys Detective Club as much as any of the other members did.

He doesn’t want to lose this.

He barely understands humans, but he doesn’t think any of the others want to lose this either.

And yet Hanasaki isn’t even here.

“He’s acting weird.  What should I do?”

“What do you want to do about him?”

“I… want… to do something for him.”

He still remembers the laughter on the other end of the phone call, as if he was a child giving his opinion to problems way out of his scope. “Then just do to him what he did to you.”

He really did hate adults. They all spoke in riddles.  They all looked at his ability and began calling him a monster, a freak, something that they couldn’t understand and therefore rejected.  But Akechi Kogorou had trusted him to realize the solution to this himself.  And Kobayashi now realizes that the answer had been in front of him the whole time.

 He wasn’t about to let go.

 The people attacking them have a bomb.  His ability wouldn’t be able to protect the others from a bomb.  But he wasn’t about to let anyone get hurt right now. Hanasaki would be sad if anyone got hurt, and he was always diving right in to help others.  And maybe Kobayashi’s starting to understand the sentiment.

The detonater gets knocked out of the lady’s hand, but instead of Hanasaki it’s Akechi Kogorou who’s saving the day.  They deliver the creepy man into the helicopter safely as requested, and Kobayashi wonders if it’s a sense of pride that’s filling his chest as he watches the helicopter fly away.  

And while sitting at the bottom of the staircase far away from the others, listening to the briefing on how the conclusion to the case went, Hanasaki finally runs into the room.

About time.

“Kobayashi… I’m sorry I ignored all your calls…”

Hanasaki really was an idiot.  "You came, didn’t you?“  Kobayashi says.  "So you didn’t ignore them.”

 He could learn. He could learn about himself and his past slowly, and he could learn more about what kind of person Hanasaki actually was.  He could learn how to feel human again, how to interact with others again, and even how to smile again.  They could both learn together.  Step by step.

This sucks.

There’s a tingling in his gut, right to the side of his stomach is burning, and a weird thick liquid is spilling past his fingers where he grabs at it, dripping onto the floor in ominous splats.  It’s hot and it’s burning, but Kobayashi hasn’t felt that feeling in years.

His side hurts.  He screams.

This really sucks.  He can barely breathe.  His vision’s blurry and everyone else’s voices are muffled. His head feels heavy and dizzy, like he’s about to faint, and he starts to try and cough to breathe, but every choking noise just makes his side hurt more, and it’s so frustrating he can barely think. This sucks, it all sucks, and everything feels so heavy he just wants to collapse and sleep.

But now would be a terrible time to fall asleep.  If he falls asleep, he won’t be able to tell Hanasaki how much of an idiot he is.  He needs to tell Hanasaki to pick up calls faster next time, and to show up on time if there’s a case, and ask if they could still get hamburgers after this.  He needs to tell Hanasaki that it’s fine, they’d hold off on trying to grant Kobayashi’s wish for a while, until Kobayashi could get Hanasaki smiling like he used to.  

But words don’t reach his mouth, and he realizes Hanasaki has rubbed off on him more than he ever expected, because he’s expecting and hoping for a tomorrow to come now. Kobayashi lets himself fall, with no more strength left in him, and thinks about tomorrow.

When he opens his eyes, he hopes Hanasaki will be there.

[kisuminight]

The first time they met, Evoluan was sprawled out against a cliff face, ears ringing and sight blurred by an explosion that had thrown him into solid rock. A figure, white and blue and sun gold, appeared like a vague break in the dismal, smoke-stained sky. Glacially, the ringing resolved into a bell-sweet voice. “Are you with me?”

Stupidly, he shuttered his eyes, but nothing focused. Aching fingers clenched and released clumsily. A low keen built in his throat, and half-remembered protocols operating more because they’d been drilled into his head than out of conscious thought sought to smother the noise before it ever left his throat. Never show your weakness.

“Shh, it’s okay. Hold on, I’m going to get this shrapnel out, and your healing should take care of the rest.” Soft flowers of pressure bloomed, tracing down towards his abdomen, gaining size the further down they trailed. For a moment they disappeared, then he world dropped out from under him with a sucking spin.

Something frosted and sweet pressed against Evoluan’s lips, and it took a little mental fumbling to realize that he needed to relax his lips from the vicious snarl he’d twisted them into if he wanted to drink.  With a shaky breath he began to sip, feeling the icy tingle sweep through his body to push off fever-hot pain and confusion. “There we go. Wait here, I’m going to search for other survivors.” Sky-and-sun-and white paused there for an instant to smooth a comforting hand down his arm, but left as said.

Bemused, Evoluan blinked up at the dirty sky, attempting to reconcile smears of color into something more closely resembling sight. Wingbeats, soft and sparse, thrummed over already-recovering hearing. By their occasional occurrence, his rescuer was using them to get around; quick burst of flight to cover short distances and cross the pits and scars and boulders left behind by the succession of bomb-blasts.

How strange to see a healer out here, so far from the main hot zones. Surely enough time hadn’t passed for one to have been sent from headquarters—and who’d been left to call for help anyway? Maybe a diverted healer from another site—but Hope’s Point needed theirs more, and everywhere else was further away than base.

There were no neutral healers left after the Will of Twilit Stars decreed that anyone not siding with the Empire would be treated as a member of the Commonwealth. Even if some survived until the Will of Moon’s Pull revoked the ruling, they’d surely have dug too deep a hole and pulled it in after themselves to be flitting about on forsaken, unimportant battlefields.

A shift of too-heavy weight on newly made gravel. A Commonwealth soldier? No. Blue-white-gold-red. Red? Blood. It left a sickly tang in the air, breaking past even the ever-present taste of ash. A broken body was propped beside him, trailing sticky smears over rock.

“Hey. You awake? Squeeze my hand for yes.” Fingers curled into his own, long and tacky. The red extended up to the elbows? Probably. But it was the only red on her body. No badge, but no hint of blue or black, either. Well, the right color blue, anyway. Not Imperial, then. But no obvious Commonwealth colors, either.

Choosing to take a risk, Evoluan closed his fingers. “‘m ‘wake.” The slurring speech rasped its way out, and he couldn’t shield the way his field flared out with an echo of pain.

“Good, that’s good. You’re going to be okay.” Fingers clasped more firmly together, promise tight. “Can you use your field deliberately?” Better than speaking. He conveyed agreement with an extended field, brushing it out to dance over… huh, four wings, not two.

“Wonderful.” Fingers eased out of his grasp, returning to lock them around a—a wrist. Pulse fluttered there, weak but steady. “If his pulse changes in any way, please flare your field to notify me. It doesn’t have to be too big, I can still teek you from the other side. Are you capable of this?”

The blood came from faint scales torn loose. Tsuné, he remembered, so excited to be going on his first mission. Assent. Gratitude. This healer didn’t have to keep going into the blast zone in search of more survivors. Standard procedure forbit it, with such a high risk of more traps and secondary explosions.

“Thank you.” A brush of feathers, and then he was alone. Almost.

Counting heartbeats hurt less than the dizzying swirl of the sky to blurred eyesight. Automatically, his own breathing and heartbeat began to fall into the same rhythm, and Evoluan almost laughed at the way he’d been redirected so carefully back onto training even his superiors didn’t know he had.

Carefully, trying to keep from alarming the healer, he ran his field over Tsuné as well. Tsuné felt subtly off compared to before. Most scalia missing, scorched off, and the few left charred until they cracked and bled, the kid probably wouldn’t last the night. That he’d lasted this long was a minor miracle. Still, the pulse never faltered, and Evoluan settled in to wait.

This time, he tried to find the movement of color amidst swirling gradients of settling dust and stone. Glimpses of pure white slid amidst them like a fish underwater, scattered and confusing. The world seemed to blend and warp around; rock floating and moving, mobiles in glimmering crystal and shading red to dusk-brown.

The rumble-grind of boulder against boulder, and suddenly bright white, like a cloud touched down to earth. For a moment it vanished, swallowed beneath the broken, shattered mess. It emerged and began making its way back towards them.

Another body found its way to Evoluan’s other side. “I’m sorry. The other two are dead.” Broken, quiet breathing. He couldn’t see the tears, but he recognized the sound of stifled sobs from nearly every stay in the Commonwealth’s prisons. Someone so shattered by a couple of deaths clearly didn’t belong in the war.

Whether or not they were involved anyway was something he’d have to check on when everything stopped being so fuzzy.

Cold brushes against hot skin, questing fingers pausing over his temples. “There’s some damage here. I can’t outright fix it, but I can make it so that your own healing recognizes how to fix it.” Well good; Evoluan didn’t even trust their own healers mucking around with his brain, let alone an unknown.

Flickers of light, blue and gold lines etched themselves across his vision. Fingers burned hot, needle points of fire stabbing behind his eyes. Abruptly the pain ceased, and this time, the blurriness blinked away had more to do with shed tears than something being wrong with him.

“How’s that? I know your healing is much more effective than—” faint breathing skipped to a stop. White fluttered, cloud-bright wings trembled, thrown back in anguish. The tremulous keen started up, and all attention immediately diverted to the faltering survivor. Bemused, Evoluan watched the movement flow in the complete opposite direction he expected.

Beneath his fingers, Tsuné’s pulse never wavered.

Power built and fell. He tracked each fluctuation with his field, and the way lines of light burned themselves over his steadily clearing vision. Still, smears sharpened into blurs, and then into vague lines. The resulting effect look a little like a child’s attempt to fill in a drawing, but finally Evoluan got a change to see his savior.

Long white hair streaked with blood where it’d been pushed out of the way. Skin of pure gold, gleaming like metal but rippling like living flesh as she plunged hands through the chest to attempt to stir the heart back to beating.

Two curving lines of four great wings bent over the patient, but the way they arched extended one side of the protection out to cover Evoluan and Tsuné as well. A declaration of defense as firm as fortress walls. So long as they recognized a healer, and checked their shots, no one under this woman’s care would be killed.

For a moment, it seemed like she would succeed. Lungs stretched for a shuddering gasp, coughing through the first pulse of an awakened heart. Light changed, shading from bright, aggressive green to a paler, muted white. She’d found the field commander, Evoluan realized belatedly.

Then all the vitals crashed, and the healer’s voice devolved into static tears as she dove again to try and save the failing life. “No! No! Don’t you dare die now!” Wings flared wide and up as the pleading shatter-stepped into another dialect all together and light flared like a fallen star.

Beneath desperate hands, life revived, fragile and tremulous. But the minute the healer attempted to lift her hands again everything took a nosedive and she had to place her hands immediately back down, keeping a steady circulation of power through him.

Most healers would’ve abandoned him for dead by now, saving the extra power for anyone, everyone who needed it more, who had the highest change of survival. The only exception was the command team, and field commander didn’t rank anywhere near general, or even a general’s direct subordinates.

Of course, then there was also the sheer amount of power she poured out with her very touch. He wouldn’t even have a scar, from her power and his healing. Without her help, he alone would have survived, and it wouldn’t have been pretty. The Empire could use her, and then they could see about teaching her triage, and saving your power for the bigger emergency.

There was always a bigger emergency.

“Can you hold out until backup arrives?” Evoluan’s rasp grated along his throat, but the majority of his other damage had been dealt with, so some of the power curled itself there, reaching out to keep himself from coughing up blood. He wondered how long that would take—this wasn’t an official mission or patrol, so it could be hours before base sent someone out to check on them.

The healer looked up, eyes clear and calm for someone holding another back from death’s door. “They’re already here.” Say what? The golden motes of dust in the slowly growing sunlight flushed a crazy violet-magenta, and Evoluan finally saw the glitter of silver, splintered by three slashes of red, blue, and deep umber, branded into the base of her throat.

The wrong color, maybe, but Evoluan knew those lines. Had traced them a thousand times over, with awl and knife and braided leather, because even the strongest of the Commonwealth would shiver and tremble to near-breaking, to be subject to such gentle respect after a hard session.

“Don’t worry,” the healer (seductress, tempter, blood witch) smiled, eyes gentle to mask their cruelty. Evoluan’s healing helped him fight, but he had no resistance to whatever drug had been pumped into the air. Lines began to blur again, swirling into a sucking vortex—that resolved itself into Logos, as perpetually annoyed as ever. Immediately, Evoluan checked his attack.

“What happened?” Shouldn’t he be waking up in a Commonwealth prison? Not that he minded not having to break back out, but the Commonwealth weren’t known for just letting their enemies go.

Logos stopped, eyes wary and worried for all that his body language was rough. “That’s what we need to ask you. Two of your team are dead, but their bodies were pulled from the rubble and laid out at rest, and yourself and the remaining members apparently sustained no injuries.” Normal for Evoluan, maybe, but no the others. It should be impossible that the field commander didn’t light up like a beacon.

“I remember a healer with the Commonwealth badge.” But they weren’t prisoners. Why were they just let here? “I suspect we’re compromised in some way.”

“I’ll be the judge of that.” Logos’ ability with diagnostics could be considered the best in the world, fitting for the best healer in the world and one of the Will of the Empire’s closest friends. But why had they pulled him for a routine check over of a not-mission gone wrong, no matter how strange the scene? Evoluan wasn’t that important.

Needles prickled over his skin as the diagnostic spell did its work, far more caustic than the less potent diagnostic charms usually handed out to the grunts. Which was another checkmark in the what-the-Pit box, because you’d think a Commonwealth healer out to sabotage the enemy would at least choose someone more important than a field commander and half a fire team.

“Just like the rest,” Logos confirmed. He sighed angrily, vicious annoyance clear in every sharp motion as he packed up his kit, careful to avoid shredding everything as his claws flexed with every sharp movement.

Evoluan’s tail twitched, curling up to rest on his lap, blade swaying in agitation. What does that mean he wanted to snarl, but Evoluan remained mindful of their respective positions. He didn’t have the rank to argue back. Not yet, anyway.

“Relax kid, there’s nothing wrong with you.” Logos paused in his sorting, eyeing the way Evoluan was moving. “That’s the problem. You were fixed up without even attempt at sabotage. Though I’m going to mandate you see Chime.”

The mental healer? Why? Sure, Evoluan had a run-in with the Commonwealth, but the healer apparently wasn’t a monster like the rest—

The rest. Propaganda at its finest, and Evoluan in possession of a story that could shatter the whole illusion, or at least put a dent in it. The ISO would be getting involved; in fact, had probably already issued orders if Evoluan judged by Logos’ current temper and rumors about his opinions on them.