#she just had other priorities like fucking saving the world she was doing instead

[frogsandmagic]

Hey Kristen??? Please stop actively retraumatizing yourself for your friends??? I’m sure you can figure out what you need to without going back to church. I’m sure you could have talked to your friends about options so that you don’t have to have a biased and bigoted priest from your old religion be your teacher. You could have let your friends be in that room with you to support you. You told them you wanted to have that convo alone, and they stayed outside the room anyways!! Because they know how hard this must be for you, and they want to take care of you!! Let them, please.

This is why kipperlilly saying that Kristen doesn’t care was so out of line. She does care. She cares about everyone around her so much that she’s making decisions all on her own that are harmful to her. The only person Kristen needs to care about more is herself.

[veryace-ficrecs]

Supernatural Outsider POV Fic Recs

This list will include all ratings and tags, so read at your own discretion! :)

God Killer by h0lm3stuck - Rated G

“There’s no way,” Austell says. “That’s——he looks like someone’s dad.” Someone’s criminally hot dad, but still. He’s not splattered with blood with a haunted look in his eyes, not itching for a fight, not toting a bloodthirsty angel along on a leash. Jeanie has to be wrong, there’s no other way around it. “No fucking way is that Sam Winchester,” Austell mutters. “That’s Dean,” Jeanie unhelpfully corrects. “Why do you look so scared?” She laughs. “He doesn’t bite.”

Attached to His Hip by sabarah23 - Rated G

The first time Jeremy saw the green-eyed boy, he had an infant attached to his hip. - or 5 times Dean was a dad in spirit only, and 1 time it was in name, too.

Story Time by Ltleflrt - Rated G

I like to imagine that someday when Dean and Sam and Castiel have finally saved the world, and are able to settle down, that Dean and Cas will get married and settle in a little town and Dean will make friends with all the neighborhood kids. He’ll keep an eye on them, and keep them out of trouble. And he’ll tell them stories….

Devil's in the House by glorious_spoon - Rated G

In which Sam hustles pool to pay for his textbooks, and an unexpected opponent turns up. Pre-series, outside POV.

Superheroes by aeli_kindara - Rated T

"I fuckin' hate group projects." Dylan gives Dean a wary glance. He gets it — he’s not the biggest fan of these things himself. But when you’re a group of two, “I fuckin’ hate group projects” is awful close to “I fuckin’ hate working with you.” In which a teenage Dean Winchester makes a friend and leaves something behind, and Sammy doesn't know when to shut up.

Crossovers

Criminal Minds

Monsters in Your Closet by AlbusCorvus - Rated G

When Castiel goes on a hunt alone and is caught by a particular FBI team, the brothers do something they never thought they’d have to. They kidnap SSA Spencer Reid to make an exchange. But being kidnapped by delusional serial killers is nothing like Spencer thought it would be.

Monsters are Real by WhiskyBoys - Rated T

'Monsters are real, and ghosts are real too. They live inside us, and sometimes, they win.' Stephen King. The kid sitting in the interview room swings on the rear legs of his chair, throws back his head, and at the top of his lungs, sings a painfully off-key version of 'Wanted Dead or Alive'. Hotch looks at Morgan with one eye-brow arched in question. "You think he's your unsub?"

No Difference by The_Bookkeeper - Rated T

Derek has been in a lot of bad situations. This one easily makes the top five. Or would, if Dean and Sam Winchester were actually acting like the sadistic psychopaths he expected them to be. Instead, Dean is referencing Star Trek, Sam is comforting Reid, and Derek has never been more confused.

Buzzfeed Unsolved

The Bizarre Winchester Murder Spree by Origamidragons - Rated T

“This week on Buzzfeed Unsolved we are discussing two of the most prolific and strangest serial killers in recent history: Sam and Dean Winchester.”

Percy Jackson

We Hitch an Awesome Ride by ariadnes_string - Rated G

Percy and his friends get a lift from some guys who might know as much about monsters as they do.

There's Nothing Weirder Than Teenagers by Calculatrice - Rated G

The kid is blinking startled, sea-green eyes at him, and Sam distractedly thinks that he looks a bit like a lost baby seal. "Who are you?" He asks, as if Sam's identity takes priority over the fact that his friend just threw his body into a lake. ___________________ In which a goth kid attempts to drown his friend, and Sam is suitably concerned.

Empousai and Demigods by Eternally_Sidequesting - Rated T

A hunt gone sideways gives Sam and Dean an idea of just how much they don't know about the supernatural.

Indiana Jones

Remnants by oneiriad - Rated G

It's not always easy to find the thing that's keeping a ghost around - bullwhips doesn't exactly make it any easier.

[ginoeh]

Dream’s Coat (TM), pretty please??

@chaosheadspace asked for the same! Here you go, lovelies...

This is probably not what you think it is. Or, idk, maybe it's exactly what you think it is? Because both of you know that I'm actually a little dark angst writer at heart lol. 

Okay, so this started a long time ago (read: in March last year) in a wild and hilarious brainstorming session that I saved the transcript of. So far, this is more of an intriguing concept to make Hob suffer and Dream repent - eventually at least. I haven't touched it in a while; I'd have to really dig into Dream's fucking ugly side - the 10000 years in hell side - to get this going.

It all started with a 'what-if' variation of @messmonte 's Saddest Wank (1889 instead of 1989!) because in that drawing, Dream didn't just leave his gloves, he also left his Cloak. Here, this has pretty severe consequences. In SoM, the story gets told of how Dream takes Nada into the Cloak where they have sex unbothered by anyone's gaze. So there we have a ‘magical cloak’ with space-time special features… 

~~~

Now here is Hob, in 1889, drunk and sad and wearing Dream's gloves to get himself off in a seedy room above the White Horse. He took the garments his Stranger left behind in a mixture of spite and pathetic hope that he might come back for them. He doesn't, of course. 

(Snippets and more details under the cut)

(Hob doesn't know that Jessamy *has* actually come back to get them and gets to witness what is going on. This, as well, has consequences)

After, he rolls over onto the cloak he has been gripping, disgusted with himself but still unable to let go of the pathetic need to be close to the Stranger. But instead of falling asleep, he falls into the star-studded folds of the cloak. 

And falls and falls and falls. 

He  barely manages to keep a grip on the strangely wispy fabric. It's what saves him, at first. Because Hob has just managed to accidentally yeet himself into outer space. The cloak is the only thing that's keeping him whole and sustained as a living being, as it were. 

(Jessamy is unfortunate bystander to this. She takes off to the Dreaming immediately and informs Dream of his ‘acquaintance's’ mishap. She's worried - she actually likes Hob and knows that Dream does so, as well. Dream though, is still furious. 

“Let him enjoy this new experience then”, he says and Jessamy recognizes the stubborn curl to her Lord's mouth. “May he experience the meaning of true loneliness for a while.”

Jessamy rather thinks that Lord Morpheus is really tipping his hand there about *who* had it right at their meeting but she'd never dare to point that out. 

She has a really really bad feeling about what this might mean for Hob Gadling, though. Since her Lord is so intent on forgetting that the immortal is, above all else, human and as such not made to sustain himself outside of his own world.

And besides, he is a Dreamer. Lord Morpheus will surely reconsider soon and bring him back.

But as time passes, he does not. 

Hob Gadling is not one of Dream's priorities, after all. In the face of the Universe nearly unravelling, the Corinthian's disobediance and its fallout, Hob Gadling gets forgotten for the better part of a century.)

On the other end of the universe, Hob's life is an unending and undying nightmare. He is neither starving, freezing nor suffocating - not that he knows that he should do the last two - but there is nothing around him but the vastness of space. No sound, no smell, no touch but that of the cloak around his shoulders. He is truly alone for the first time in his existence. 

Until, suddenly, he isn't.

“Oh my what do we have here,” a voice resounds inside his head. His perception slides sideways, something breaks somewhere in his mind and then there is the form of a voluptuous, incandescently beautiful woman that takes over everything around him. 

“A human - here! Covered in my Dream's regard!”

She stretches a hand towards him and Hob thinks that space has decided to cease existing. Maybe he's going mad.

“If I keep you, do you think my son will visit?”

***

Dream does, of course, remember Hob eventually. The horror that rises in Dream, still caught in Burgess’ basement, over what he has allowed a Dreamer to suffer for his own mistake, is as dark and deep and cold as the black hole he has once been cast into. 

After he escapes and has gathered his tools, he searches out his sister.

“Hob Gadling? No, he hasn't asked for me.” 

She falls silent for a moment before leveling a longsuffering and suspicious look at him.

“Is there a particular reason you're asking me this?”

Dream closes his eyes and shreds the rest of the mauled baguette between his fingers.

“He may have. Fallen though an actualized piece of my power. Into space. And I may have been. Too angry to care. At the time.”

There is the rustle of clothes and he feels Death kneeling before him. Her voice, when she speaks, is very soft and very serious.

“Dream? When, exactly, has this happened.”

He opens his eyes. 

“Hob Gadling has suffered my wrath since 1889, sister. I hurt a Dreamer, unprovoked.”

“Oh, Dream.” 

He cannot bear the horrified pity on his sister's face. 

“How shall I -” His words fail him.

“Go and get him back, Dream. Now. Hob Gadling hasn't called for me - yet. If that will help you, though, I don't know.”

~~~

Or: A pathetic wank and Dream's canonically bad decision making skills meets the 'meeting the parents trope' but make it eldritch horror. Then add a magical healing journey afterwards an voilá - you get this.

Yeah I can still make this Dreamling despite their horrifically bad start. Watch me lol.

[danielfuckingricciardo]

16 + Charles and 26 + Pierre please ❤️

Hi!

Sorry this took so long, I’ve been in such a writing slump lately and this has sat unfinished in my drafts for weeks! But I finally did it and I hope you like it!

The Charles one is also in progress, I’ll make sure to tag you in that one when I post it :)

Song 26 - Creep//Radiohead

Pairing - Pierre Gasly x Reader

Word Count - 3.8k

Content Warnings - swearing, discussion of mental health issues

When you were here before Couldn't look you in the eye You're just like an angel Your skin makes me cry You float like a feather In a beautiful world I wish I was special You're so fuckin' special

Your therapist called it impostor syndrome. She mentioned it a lot during your weekly online meetings, and you usually laughed it off with some cringy internet joke about being ‘sus’ and tried to change the subject as quickly as possible. You’d receive a concerned glance, as you always did when you apparently ‘used humour as a coping mechanism’, but she would eventually move on to another topic, usually something about taking care of yourself physically as well as mentally.

Taking care of yourself physically was never a problem. You had nutritionists and personal trainers, physiotherapists and masseuses available whenever and wherever. The team made sure of that. To Alpha Tauri F1 team, your physical health was their top priority. Your mental health? Not so much. It was easy to lie to them and say that everything was fine, so that’s exactly what you did. You didn’t want to risk losing your seat because you told the truth about how you actually felt inside, so instead you saved that for the therapist you hired for yourself, and every Wednesday at 2pm you unloaded a week’s worth of thoughts and feelings you couldn’t share with anyone else.

“It’s nothing to be ashamed of, (y/n), we all feel like we don’t belong to some degree. And the bigger you make it in this world, the stronger those feelings will be.” She says, and you scoff.

“I’m not sure about that. The rest of the guys on the grid all seem so confident in themselves, and it’s definitely not a facade. They believe that they are the best of the best. I wish I could feel the same.” You say, and your therapist gives you a small smile before scribbling something in her notepad.

“You can’t know that for sure. Everyone experiences self doubt at some point in their lives, but they beat it, they get through it. Look at you, (y/n), against all odds you made it to where you are now, and you can’t tell me that the powers that be would have you there if they didn’t believe in you. You just need to learn how to believe in yourself as much as they do, and as much as your fans do.” She says, and you nod.

You know she’s right, but you wish that she wasn’t. You wish that your feelings would be vindicated so that you didn’t feel like such much of an idiot for having them.

“Is there anything else you’d like to talk about today?” She asks, and you open your mouth to ask a question, but are immediately interrupted as your phone begins to ring.

You look over at the screen and check the name - Pierre. What the fuck does he want? He never calls you, hell, he hardly ever talks to you unless he’s obligated to. This was definitely weird, something was definitely wrong.

“Sorry, I’ve gotta take this. Work stuff.” You say, and your therapist nods.

“Okay, let’s end the session early this week. Please do text me if you have any concerns you’d like to discuss.” She says, before ending the call and sending your computer screen back to her website.

You take a deep breath in and out before pressing the green icon on your phone screen.

“Hi?” You say, to no reply.

“Hello?” You repeat, and you receive no reply once again.

After a few moments of nothing but shuffling and breathing on the end of the line, you hear a quiet voice in the distance and strain your ears to hear. It’s clear Pierre didn’t mean to call you, it was probably a butt dial or some other similar fuck up, but you couldn’t help but want to listen in to whatever conversation he was having.

It was probably wrong, a total invasion of privacy, but your curiosity got the better of you, and you turn your phone’s volume to maximum.

“The fact of the matter is that Pierre feels as though he isn’t getting anywhere with Alpha Tauri, and therefore, as a team, we have made the decision to make the move to Alpine for the 2023 season.” You hear a familiar voice you cannot place say on the other end of the phone.

You let out a gasp and immediately clap your hand over your mouth, hoping that your shock had not be heard in the silence that had descended across the room.

Pierre was… leaving? After all this time? It was no secret that the two of you had never really bonded following your ascension to Alpha Tauri’s second seat, but you depended on him a great deal. He was great with the media, the fans, and the other drivers, and you felt comfortable following him around the paddock like a lost puppy, laughing and smiling along with everything he said and did.

You probably annoyed the hell out of him, and that was probably part of the reason he was eager to get away, to find a team mate he could actually have some meaningful banter with. Sure, you knew that he hadn’t always seen eye-to-eye with Esteban, but they had grown up together, and had an awful lot in common with one another. It seemed like a solid ground for a relationship, one that would definitely be more popular with the fans than your own.

You hear shuffling through the phone handset, and a whispered ‘fuck’ before the call is ended and the line goes dead.

“Fuck.” You echo, and you throw your phone down on your couch and pull your legs up to your chest, burying your head in your knees as you let out a single tear.

You didn’t think that you were crying for the loss of Pierre, that didn’t make sense, after all, the two of you hardly spoke outside of work. But at the same time, you couldn’t imagine being without him? You hadn’t realised until now just how much you had relied on him, and how much he had helped you over the years. He was the only friend you really had, though he probably regarded you as an acquaintance at best. All of your other friends had been left behind the day you moved your life to Faenza to be closer to the team, and you spent so much time travelling here, there and everywhere, that you hadn’t really had the chance to make any closer to your new home.

You hated to say it, but Pierre was your rock, and you had grown to care for him deeply, and now, losing him, what would it mean? You hoped they would call up some other, more experienced driver, like Daniel perhaps, to take the first seat. He could more than make up for your lack of confidence with his outgoing, loveable persona. But the alternative? The alternative scared you. If they were to call on some rookie to take his place, suddenly you would be the experienced one, the one to teach the newbie what to do and what to say. You barely knew yourself just how to play the game, you wouldn’t exactly make the best mentor.

You suddenly become aware of your breathing becoming faster, and more erratic, as your mind races, and employ one of the techniques your therapist had taught you to slowly regulate and steady yourself. God you regretted ending your session early, you could really do with someone to talk to right now.

Shakily, you reach for your phone and begin to draft out a text to your therapist. She had said to text if you had any concerns, and this was a real fucking big one.

Your phone begins to vibrate in your hands, and it almost slips out of your unsteady grasp as you read the contact name at the top of the screen - Pierre.

Fuck.

You take a shaky deep breath in and count in your mind, 1,2,3,4. You squeeze your eyes shut and squeeze your lips together tightly, 1,2,3,4,5,6,7. Finally, you exhale, 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8, and you accept the call.

“Hey! Did I call you just now?” Pierre asks, and you hesitate.

“Umm…” You say, unsure whether to lie, or to tell the truth.

“How much did you hear?” He asks, and you chuckle awkwardly.

“You still live at the same place? I’m coming over, I think we need to talk, yeah?” He says.

“Yeah, same place.” You say, and he hangs up.

You stare at your phone for a moment, your mind racing as you wonder exactly what Pierre wants to say to you. Was he angry at you for eavesdropping? You knew you should have hung up, but you just couldn’t bring yourself to do it. You were always taught that knowledge is power, and you just couldn’t pass up the opportunity to discover something new, even if it came from a blatant disregard for your team mate’s privacy. Hell, you’d be angry too if someone eavesdropped on a private conversation of yours, it’s only natural, so you wouldn’t blame him if he wanted to come over to yell at you.

Why else would he be coming to visit? It’s not like he owes you an explanation, or an apology. You meant nothing to him, you were just some overgrown rookie hanging off of his coat-tails, nothing but a burden.

Lucky for you, you weren’t left waiting long, as your apartment was only a few blocks away from Alpha Tauri’s headquarters, and you soon heard a rhythmic knock on your front door.

You take a second to breathe once again; in for four seconds, hold for seven seconds, out for eight seconds, before getting up to answer the door.

“Hi.” You say quietly, opening the door for Pierre to enter, your eyes not leaving the ground for a second.

Pierre follows you inside and takes a seat on the chair opposite the sofa where your things were spread out; a blanket, your phone, your laptop, a hoodie, and your favourite stuffed animal.

“Before you yell at me, let me bring my tissues. I always cry when I get yelled at, it’s not a guilt trip thing, so don’t feel bad, it’s just this thing I do, I can’t control it, I…” You say, walking over to your side table where you kept your tissues ready for a particularly sad movie or dog video.

“Who says I’m going to yell at you?” Pierre interrupts, and you turn to look him in the eyes for the first time.

“You’re not?” You ask, blinking away the tears that already threatened to breach your waterlines.

“No, why would I… That’s not why I’m here, I just wanted to make sure you were okay after hearing all of that.” He says, and you let out a shaky breath of relief.

“Me? Okay? You don’t have to worry about me, I’m fine.” You say, throwing yourself down on the sofa and closing your laptop, which still happened to be open on your therapist’s website, which Pierre had, no doubt, already seen.

“Oh, thank you! I expected a little more from my long time team mate after finding out I was leaving! Maybe not tears, but, something?” Pierre says with a chuckle, and you shake your head.

“No, no, don’t get me wrong, I’m absolutely devastated that you’re leaving, and I’m going to be completely tragic and sad next year without you because I’m a total loser with no fans, but I’m happy for you, really.” You say, and Pierre gives you a warm smile.

“You’re not a total loser, (y/n).” Pierre says, and you give him a small smile.

“But you do think I have no fans?” You chuckle, letting out a small sniffle.

“You know I don’t think that. I’ve seen it myself, how many fans you have out there.” Pierre says, and you scoff.

“They’re all your fans, Pierre, and they’ll be leaving with you. We all know they only tolerate me because of you.” You say, and Pierre shakes his head.

“Bullshit.”

“It’s true! I mean, I have practically no personality when it comes to media stuff, I freeze at the slightest interaction with the media, I post like twice a month on Instagram because my life is just that boring, and, not to mention, I spend my free time talking to my therapist in the company of my fucking stuffed animals.” You rant, and you feel tears running down your cheeks as you speak.

“You really don’t see it, do you? How much they like you because of those things. You’re relatable, (y/n), you’re normal. You’re here to race, not to be a celebrity. You’re not an attention whore posting shirtless selfies for likes and saying stupid shit to keep your name in people’s mouths. And people like that.” Pierre says, and you scoff.

“Yeah, as if.” You sniff.

“If you don’t believe me, then just look online.”

“My therapist said googling myself was a bad idea. Besides, I don’t just wanna be normal and boring. I want people to know me, but I just get so… scared, I guess? Scared they won’t actually like me the way they like you.”

“Well, the little of you that I know, I like.” He says with a smile, and you feel your cheeks heat up. This was the first time you’d heard Pierre compliment you before, and you couldn’t deny the fuzzy feeling it gave you.

“I just wish I was more like you. You’re so popular, with the fans, the media, the other drivers. I see how everyone crowds around you, you were made to be the centre of attention and you’re so fucking good at being in the middle of everything. You have this winning personality, everyone wants to either be you, or fuck you. Or both. If I could just have one tenth of that charisma, that personality, that vibe, then maybe, just maybe, I’d be able to do this thing properly. But I don’t. I’m just (y/n). A loser.” You say, and Pierre shakes his head again.

“But you don’t need to be me, (y/n). You don’t need to pretend to be something you’re not for people to like you. The other guys like you just fine, they just wish you would talk to them more so that they can get to know you. Fuck, (y/n), I don’t think I even know you properly yet. I’d like to, and so would Charles, and Lewis, and Lando. You know, they ask me about you, a lot. I think they would talk to you more, but they don’t want to scare you.” Pierre says, and you chuckle.

“Ha, they know me well enough to know I’m terrified of social interaction, so there’s a start.” You say.

“You know that me leaving doesn’t mean I’m abandoning you, right? I’ll still be there for you.” Pierre says, and you look up at him, sniffing away your tears.

“Really?” You say, and Pierre smiles.

“Hey, I wouldn’t do it for my other team mates, but I guess you’re special.” He says with a chuckle.

“Well, that genuinely means a lot, really. Thank you.” You say, looking up at Pierre to briefly glance into his eyes.

He smiles at you, not breaking eye contact for a moment, and you feel the warmth of a blush creeping up your cheeks.

“I have to go, I have so much shit to do today, but don’t be a stranger, yeah?” Pierre says, standing from your chair and heading for the door of the apartment.

“I won’t.” You respond, and he winks at you before disappearing behind the door, closing it gently with a click.

Once you were sure he was out of earshot, you grab your phone again and immediately dial your therapist.

Ring. Ring. Ring. The call connects.

“Hey, um, I know this isn’t strictly therapy stuff but I need some advice.” You say, and she chuckles down the phone.

“I’ll help as much as I can.” She responds.

“So, I think I have a crush on my team mate, well, and don’t tell anyone this, he’s technically gonna be my former team mate. But yeah, I need help.” You say, and she laughs again.

“Oh, well that’s interesting. Let’s see how I can help then, yeah?” She says, and you exhale a shaky breath.

———

One Year Later…

You look out at the sea of fans, cheering and screaming for you and your team mate as you walk out onto the stage. You give them a wave, a smile, and a wink, and notice just how many of them are wearing your number on their shirts and caps. It gives you a fuzzy feeling on the inside, knowing that Pierre was right, losing him as your team mate wouldn’t mean you’d lose their support.

If anything, losing Pierre helped you. You did take his advice, and with the help of your trusty therapist, who was no longer your therapist at all but your closest friend, you had managed to come out of your shell more and show the world your true personality. And it felt good.

You take your seat beside Nyck on the stage, and turn your attention to the interviewer, who was waiting for the fans to stop their cheering to ask you the first question.

“Okay, okay, any more cheering and we’re gonna run out of time! Let’s get to questions, hm?” The interviewer asks, and you smile.

“Actually, I don’t mind the cheering! Keep going guys, let me hear you!” You say, your voice dripping with enthusiasm and excitement as the crowd goes wild once again.

“First question then, who are you and what have you done with (y/n)? You were so quiet and reserved these past few seasons, but now you seem to have really grown in confidence, and I’m sure I speak for everyone here when I say that we love it!” She says, and you chuckle.

“Well, it’s true I struggled a lot during my first few seasons. I honestly didn’t feel all too confident in myself and my abilities, and that really made it hard for me to be so outgoing. But, things have changed, and I owe it all to my former team mate Pierre. He’s really helped me to grow as a driver and as a person, and given me confidence that I wasn’t sure I’d ever be able to have. Even now we’re not team mates, I’m still his biggest fan and just so grateful for his support. So yeah, I really really owe it to him.” You say, and the audience cheers and whoops at your mention of Pierre.

Since Pierre’s move to Alpine, the two of you hadn’t been able to spend as much time together at work, but that didn’t stop you from spending time together at all. You had both made an agreement with one another to go out together at least once a month, and you had even taken a trip together during the winter break at the end of the previous season. Naturally, this meant that speculation was wild with fans over the nature of your relationship, with some insisting that you just had to be a couple.

But the truth was, you weren’t really sure what your relationship with Pierre even was. Sure, a few drunk kisses had been exchanged, and there were hugs aplenty, but as far as Pierre was concerned, you were just friends, even if you did desire something more.

“You mentioned Pierre there, and I’m sure everyone in the audience has seen the photos of your little dates and that ski trip you took back in December, so, are you really just friends?” The interviewer asks, and you blush.

“Yes, yes, we are just friends, really.” You chuckle.

“But if he asked you out, what would you say?” She asks, and you shake your head, a smile playing on your lips.

“Put it this way, I wouldn’t say no.” You laugh, and the audience erupts into loud cheers at your response.

Once the crowd’s shouts and whoops had quietened, the interviewer directs her attention to Nyck and you sit and listen intently until you are ushered backstage with a smile and a wave.

“You wouldn’t say no, huh?” You hear a familiar voice say, and your cheeks immediately heat up.

“I mean, I’d be a fool to say no right?” You say, trying to play it cool despite the anxiety rising within you.

“Then I’m taking you out Wednesday. Properly. Wear that black dress, you look sexy in it.” Pierre says, and you can’t help but stare at him, your eyes wide and your mouth dropping open in shock.

You try to search your brain for a response, but it seemed to have become completely blank the moment Pierre called you sexy. You can’t quite believe he actually said it, and for a moment you wonder if you were hallucinating, or dreaming, and pinch yourself on your arm. It stings, like a bitch, and you realise you most certainly weren’t dreaming. It was real.

“Okay. See you in practise tomorrow, yeah?” You finally manage to say, and Pierre smirks at you.

“I’ll be looking forward to it.” He says, winking at you before joining Esteban who was waiting in the wings ready to step out on stage.

The pair step on stage to roars and cheers from the fans, and you chuckle in disbelief, taking one more glance out to the sea of hats and shirts that bore your number. You were finally able to be you, unapologetically so, and the fans loved it, Pierre loved it too, but most importantly, you loved it.

[ramikotorchwick]

I'd say just to Anna, but I really like to put images and videos in things that I essay, so here I go...

Metal Gear Solid V and the importance of languages

Context of metal gear in general: you are a "good mercenary" that is paid by countries to take down threats, but you choose more of those that will stop the wars instead of starting them, and also in the most silent and non-lethal way you can (Snake signature weapon is a tranquilizing pistol, and you lose point in missions or can even fail if you kill someone)

He found a sniper women named Quiet that seems to be some kind of monster/alien because she's mute, super agile and breath by the skin, rescuing his old friend that's so fucked up that's angry for vengeance against the corporation that start and manipulate most of the wars in the world, with the leader being Skullface.

(Just for context, you can put balloons on knocked out enemies to convince them to be part of your initiative of ending wars. Yeah, balloons!)

After some time, people in your tripulation start getting sick, with some kind of tuberculosis, and even end up dying. You start doing some quarantines in the ill people trying to figure out what is causing them to die. TW: torture, terror

With some investigations in enemy territory, you find an improvised lab with lots of dead patients, all with the lungs black and blue, like the disease do. But instead of blood bags, they had an walkman, with headphones leading to their throats.

You discover, so, that Skullface is working with a Shaman that he kidnapped, and when trying to rescue him, he explains what is happening: a curse is killing people. But the logical explanation of how it works is that, there is a parasite that stays on throats, but they only multiply themselves largely with specific vibrations of sounds. It was used in the past to decimate villages, like a chemical weapon.

Skullface changed this parasite to work with specific vibrations that have only in the english language. With this known and with the Shaman by your side, people stop talking english in your tripulation while working on a cure, saving their lives.

But why decimate everyone that speaks english? it'd lead to the death of so many people, and english would eventually become a dead language with this done, but why specifically english?

Trying to capture Skullface and end all this war and biological genocide, Snake get caught by Skullface, that leads him for his Metal Gear. In the bath to it, they have an amazing conversation about why he is doing all of this, and here's the point that I get surprised by how much he spit out a truth (ends in 5 minutes)

And here is where goes my thoughts and opinion regards this: the language is what defines our priorities, our way to think, act, perceive the world and interact, is a base of who we are and our culture.

In a study of past languages, we discovered that we couldn't see some colors, or at least it was what we thought. It seemed that in the past we couldn't see the color blue, but actually is because in nature almost nothing is blue, only the sky. So, if by some reason they find a blue thing, they'd tell that it's sky-colored. The same for things that usually weren't done or wasn't habitual.

It still happens until today, there is still lots of things that don't have clear translations for other languages, because is a culture-specific thing, or even the way to manipulate the words to create other when needed, the order of priorities in phrases dictating the order of priority to do things...

In english, we use subject, verb and adjective/object: I-eat-bread

in japanese for example, generally what is happening is more important than you: eat-bread-I

This can also reflects on their culture and behavior, thinking first in the others before themselves. The vastness of kanjis to learn being needed to communicate, perfectionism to study, and so be part of the society. Kanas are modern simplifications to write words with syllabes, reflecting on the maturity of trying to have less pressure onto themselves.

A big difference between portuguese and brazilian, for example, is that brazilian have a lot more of rules and grammatical details, as well as a lot more words. This happens because we are a much bigger country, that evolved by the mix of lots of different cultures, languages, and even trying to survive at the colonialism. Because of this, we are so complex with all those concepts because we want to embrace all the diversity of expressions that different cultures may want, and by having so many rules, even if you don't find the word you want, it's simple and even common to create new words.

Lots of brazilian poets and writers have created tons of words in the sec.XX, with the writer José Guimarães Rosa being at the top, creating more than 8.000 words.

I've made this because I wanted to express how much I love to see other people speaking other languages, specially when speaking with accent, because I see that the person have one past, put opted to know more about the other's culture and side too. I don't like english that much because, even if it's good to have a common language to be talking with you all, it's sad to see how much people are preferring to just stay at this lingua franca and forgetting that there's a whole culture right in front of you to explore.

In the past, here in Brasil, it was pretty common to everyone to know both brazilian and spanish, because all of our neighbors are spanish-speakers, and with borders and travels, we needed to try to communicate with each other, and our languages are already simmilar, and we even "invented" the portunhol, a mix of brazilian with spanish, where everyone was trying to talk in free style don't knowing exactly what they were doing, but the talk were still fluid

Nowadays, I've gone into an event of card games here in Brasil that was being regional and half of people were spanish-speakers. EVERYONE was preferring to talk in english instead of trying to speak in the other's language, or even the strange portunhol. We literally live side-by-side, with simmilar languages, even more simmilar past, but this was erased by the comfort of a worldly common language...

I may not go to every country in the world, but I want to learn much more languages than just the spanish that I'm doing nowadays: french, ukranian, japanese, dutch... I may not travel physically to these places, buy by knowing their language I'm exploring also their story, the way they think and live, how they see the world, and this is something that none travel or food could bring, the little vision of how and why other people are like they are.

[theskyexists]

The golden enclaves

Ok so i like how this starts with: Orion has been unutterably stupid

Please tell me that we will find out why

This was devastating.

But also WHY IS ORION SUCH A PIECE OF SHIT HE PROMISED TO GO WITH HER AND INSTEAD HE MADE HER LOSE HIM FOR NO REASON TO A FUCKING MAWMOUTH LIKE HER DAD WAS FUCKING LOST BUT NOT KILLED BECAUSE THE VICTIMS DONT DIE THEYRE DIGESTED FOREVER IN ETERNAL PAIN Jezus Naomi god it really is horrific what is up with this

Also, and I say this with absolute extreme disdain, El seriously only just now realised that she has perfect combat synergy with Orion and she COULD have destroyed Patience and freed her father from the eternal torment of being digested? Like......seriously? Did Liesel not even realise this, who is the only one with any brains? (I realise that Liesel at least had different priorities)

Also I am going to explain Orion's craziness and personality change in book 2 as such: he didn't have any mals to eat and so he went mad. He decided, like the piece of shit that he is, that he'd prefer to do months of battle against mals because at least he wouldn't be hungry.

The funny thing is that book 2 ESTABLISHED that El has ZERO absolutely ZERO idea of what goes on in Orion's head. Like. She doesn't get him AT ALL. So her prevaricating on how he's so misunderstood and pushed to be what everybody sees in him - he ALREADY TOLD YOU HE JUST LOVES EATING MALS HE DOESNT CARE ABOUT ANYONE OR ANYTHING HE JUST LOVES EATING MALS EL STOP BEING AN IDIOT AND PROJECTING YOUR OWN SHIT ON THIS POOR BOY

She's literally comparing herself to him again. Look he was a hero and I was an evil witch. Everybody thought that and wanted that from us. EL HE DIDNT FUCKING CARE OK????? Worse, (and it makes sense in this moment), she somehow threads her mum's direct look at his soul into this narrative as some kind of reinforcement of it. He didn't care El. He didn't care. He's just a hungry boy.....

In fact, I cannot remember her classmates ever hating El. Because....they didn't even know she was fated to be an evil witch archetype? They just avoided her bc she wasn't an asset to their survival they thought which was so absurdly idiotic since EL IS A GODDAMN MAL EXTERMINATOR and she never told anyone because of her stupid fucking hangups she could have been a fucking prep and made everybody's lives so much better so much earlier

'because he thought it was his job to make a way out for everybody but him'

This is why I didn't like the second book so much. El is so obviously delusional about this guy.

I cannot STAND IT!!!! HE LITERALLY TOLD YOU HE HAS NO HERO COMPLEX EL!!!! YOU WERE HAVING YOUR LOVELY FIRST TRY AT SEX WITH THIS COOL GUY AND HE SAID: NAH EL. I JUST LIKE TO EAT!!! MALS!!!!!

And the weird thing is she GOT it. When she was getting his mana as he was zipping around pulverising them she was like: OH he loves this. I guess I was wrong. So why are we back here??? Or do I remember that wrong??

I've forgotten how the magic system works. Shit. Malia? Oh yeah.... There was some sort of prophecy. She was gonna bring the enclaves down and kill lots of people or soemthing. so why the fuck did they leave the payment open???

Oh yeaaaahhh the enclaves got hit

"She really did an excellent job of making it seem perfectly ludicrous for me to be living quietly in my own home instead of keeping close tabs on the latest news from international wizarding circles."

LOL

Can seriously nothing kill a mawmouth but El? How is that even POSSIBLE. How did enclaves ever work then? The moment a mawmouth gets in its over

How the fuck is Liesel THIS good at manipulating El. Oh my god.

Her saying: hey bitch, stop feeling sorry for yourself, your boyfriend being dead, no thank you by the way for saving all of ours lives, I don't care about your other problems, or that you might want a break from the horrors with your mum, also come help me out with the worst most insanely horrible creature in the world AGAIN because I know only you can do it. Bitch. Your house sucks

That worked....

She's going to London to fight another fucking Mawmouth - something her mother doesn't even KNOW SHES DONE YET - and leaves her behind without even a hug of goodbye. AFTER FOR YEARS OF TERROR. I honestly....I'm speechless. I started to suspect El was insanely dumb in book 2 but damn, she really is perhaps the dumbest protag I have ever known barring Korra

I love Liesel. Liesel saw El, FOR WHAT SHE WAS, and she CALLED HER OUT,, and said: you are such a stupid fucking idiot. In book 2. Thank god she's around. She's the only good thing out of book 2 really in my opinion. She says to El: you are insanely powerful. You could change the whole world. Now DO IT! Stop sniveling in the fucking dirt!

Ok there we go. There's my El. 'i eyed him in enormous irritation' her fucking disdain for the preps is my endless delight. Even to her enormous personal disadvantage.

Oh I see. It's like Naomi novik read my harry potter post about the wizards being the Fae.

I remember reinterpreting els prophecy into its super obvious good meaning but can't remember what it was.

How the fuck can Enclaves be based in Malia if that's not allowed (murder? But that's illegal.)

Oh what??? There's still working wizards out there working on keeping the enclave running??? Oh damn. Ok so the class hierarchy becomes explicitly about adult production.

Liesel made her angry again. Made El who she is again.

Why isn't everybody fucking fleeing dude??? Why are there still even people there? Grt the fuck out! The enclave is compromised! Get out with your damn lives you preps!

Oh my god. Go after it! It's fucking going after someone else!!! Oh my god go after it guys!!! IT WAS RUNNING AWAY FROM EL???? CAN MAWMOUTHS KNOW SUCH THINGS?

I have to say. Naomi made a deeply op protag and is now taking a more powerful hammer to the self-delusion that El mysteriously developed about her own power.

Liesel, impervious to El's natural intimidation vibes.

Oof i love all the delicate injustices and horrors in Liesel's life. Ok no. I no longer do. It's too painful

'“So it’s better to have power, and it’s stupid not to take it when you have the chance.'

Yeah. In fact. If I was Liesel I'd be beyond furious at El. Somebody so gifted, SO powerful, and she's just pissing it all away.

Jezus christ. Jezus christ! Liesel! A sensible person of intelligence????

Oh right. The prophecy. Killing thousands doom destruction. WHO IS GETTING KILLED EL COME ON THINK!!! THINK FOR ONCE IN YOUR GODSDAMNED LIFE!!!!! or tell Liesel about the stupid prophecy and she'll do it for you -_-

It was a nice thought though, letting the commuters into the garden but damn, yeah they're gonna obviously only be enthralled.

A TERTIARY ORDER ENTITY.

LIESEL WAS TRYING TO SNAG EL THE ELDRITCH WHATEVER THE FUCK SHE IS FOR HER HIGHLY EFFECTIVE POWER THROUPLE?

And I mean. Alfie is literally bound to El too. Wait. Is Orion actually not coming back...? Are we never getting answers? El's gonna fall for Alfie and Liesel? No....

Love how Liesel and Alfie protectively jump up and go: OUR entity. Lol

Oh ok so the compulsions off. She doesn't think he'd help her after she saved his dad, his home, oh yeah saved the whole school that he felt responsible for, and didn't even insist on keeping him as a slave.

I must admit, I did not at all expect El to be hanging out with Alfie and Liesel after all that. I thought, more like her team, but yeah they're not exactly in England. Isn't there travelling magic. Also I expect that Claire or whatever had a family member eaten by the mawmouth.

I was thinking that: won't commute from an enclave be really dangerous? So. Yes. But like. Why then even work for them. Oh ok so you could just go live in a villages with a few other wizards in a circle

Sometimes novik is not consistent about the vulnerability of adult wizards. But this description seems more apt.

Liesel coming in to say 'stop it!' to eldritch monster entity El like she isn't going over the deep end suddenly and very badly. And succeeding. And then getting Yancy to say what El wants to know. Wow they're a good team. I propose Orion/El/Liesel/Alfie super extreme power ..... Thing? Uh. Bridge structure?

El seriously is like: hm. Why is Liesel helping me now? Already turned her down....

El. You saved the whole school. You made that possible. You killed three MAWMOUTHS. You treat Liesel like a person you respect. You are a fucking entity who could do incredible things with a whole lot of help on the bits you suck so terribly at. Liesel owes you, thinks you're a good person, and is probably genuinely into you, also you need HELP. In so many damn ways. Being sensible, getting around in the world, being smart, getting it together.

Liesel has the most practical magic in the world. Wait. Holy fuck. Is Liesel like...Hermione???? Like powerful power top Hermione???

Wow. Damn. Amazing sex scene here. It makes me laugh in delight almost. Wow Liesel is an insanely stabilising influence. Literally kissing the trauma out of her head for a bit. (Edit: uh is there a fanfic version of this out there...?)

There was something so absolutely wrong with Orion and everybody kept trying to tell El and she never saw it because he became a person FOR HER. And she keeps trying to blame his family but his family probably endlessly tried to connect with him but he was just hunting mals. His father responding like this- just absolutely devastated over Orion finally having acted like a human being with somebody is enormous proof. Uh yeah and the rest of the chapter confirms this explicitly.

It really is harry potter but cooler and grittier and more horrifying and more interesting. Our dark'ness dementia ravenway.... The bit about how really witches when caught up in the witch hunt really can't get themselves out because the 'mundanes' negate it by the disbelief.... A direct reference to Rowling's note about witches making the fire tickle and going in for multiple rounds. Also the whimsical magic. But it doesn't have that magic to the magic. It's uneasy.

Man. So that's why novik repeated el's misconceptions of Orion in her time of grief. To finally disembowel them conclusively later in this book.

Yeah. The big question is. Why did Orion become a human being for El?

I love how aadhya and Chloe and Liesel are all instantly INSTANTLY like oh fuck El sees evil she's evil. They are still an extremely well oiled team

Ok but like, El could just grab new York's mana pool right. But yeah she'd become like ophelia

Lol right. By destroying so many mals ( i really didn't think the estimation had been 92 percent but ok) the enclaves lose their power. That's how El has already smashed them....

Oh wow. I forgot about that malia is stealing life force.... And mals come from Malia....

Which means.....that Ophelia is a huge maleficar and Orion is a big old mal. But she certainly is smart enough to say: we should look into reproducing what you did

Damn.ophelia is smart. She's really doing some magic economics

I really didn't know enclaves were built on malia. I think that's a retcon actually. Not just that El didn't know though also that naturally. It's to make this numbers game fit - to say - there's another numbers game beneath the numbers game - to make the mana and malia interactions fit. And well done novik for that

Because the golden enclave really does become the better solution.

I'm not sure how El going in to kill patience is going to help her recover the scholomance though. I mean. Turns out El could have just cleaned the whole place up all along but yknow. I already knew that.

Why did they ever even send Orion away. They could have just unleashed him endlessly on the enclave's mals. Probably infinitely safer and more pleasant for the enclaves children.

Is El really going forward with this? His mum is a maleficer oh poor poor hero boy Orion.... He was never loved. HE LOVED THE SCHOLOMANCE FOR THE MALS EL NOT BECAUSE HIS MOM HIS AN ETHICAL EVIL MAGIC HACKER

Oh no...please tell me that isn't Chloe's only role. She came late to the team but she was fourth!

Aadhya??? WHAT is Liesel's deal? Uhhhh she ran the whole thing? She made everything possible? Do you think she did that because she's a steely selfish bitch? No.

It was a moment of both weakness and total insanity in the literal senses of the word. So maybe you can thank Liesel for sexing El back into a somewhat functional state Aad

'Liesel made an impatient dismissive gesture. “Yes! You have a hook in her yourself. And why will we yank on these hooks? To make her protect us, save our lives? She will do that for strangers, for nothing. What else? You are her ally. Have you asked her to do anything for you? To make someone give you an enclave place, or an artificer contract? Why not?Because you are also a great martyr, who does not want these things?” She snorted as Aadhya scowled at her. “No! You don’t ask because you know she would say no. I tried asking myself. But she will do nothing selfish for herself, much less anyone else. And she is not wrong,” she added, in a grudging tone of having been unwillingly persuaded. “She is too powerful. Once she started, there would be nowhere to stop. So there is only one use of our hooks: to help her stop. You had better be glad that I have one, and hold tight to yours, too.”'

I fucking love Liesel. What the fuck

Lololololol

Oh my god. El angry at Liesel AGAIN for....offering exactly what she needs and wants and doing so perfectly. Lolololololloll

Oh my god is this the garden in sintra with all its fun fake-magic masonry caves and structures???

IT IS!!! I LOVE THAT GARDEN!!! If you're just out to chill and stroll and tramp around lovely fake natural structures that still look cool!

Sad the characters are experiencing such frustration in such a lovely place.

Adult Disneyland....you're killing me novik. It really was a nice place. I mean I was there when there weren't many other people. It was just nice gardens with caves.

Novik describes the portalling system for the scholomance. Yes. It still doesn't make any sense.

Ok but like the gardens are closed at night. Mals can get in no problem.

What im getting from this is that i had incredible timing and normally that garden is packed with horrible tourists

So....how is it that El has a direct link to New York's mana pool THROUGH the pool right into the scholomance?? Because all the wards are down? Ok but uhhhhh it's out in the void??? That's the whole point

UHHHH actually El I don't think you felt Patience scrying for Orion you just felt Orion

How the fuck is Liesel like, exactly the sharp cold sense that El actually WANTS every time?

Ohh ok so Ophelia somehow did make Orion as he is. Somehow.

Well OBVIOUSLY the Malia source is fucking horrible if it can bring an enclave into being. Like come on. Probably produces a mawmouth or something. And you gotta feed it 50 people or whateve

Damn. They're gonna turn Liu into a mawmouth. Its a sacrifice. Uh Novik. You better not go there.

Wow they were gonna make Liu a mawmouth and make her eat her closest full grown wizard family? I think so. Lets see. Go El!

I KNEW IT!!!!!!! WHAT IS THE WORST AND MOST POWERFUL MAL? WHAT IS THE GREATEST PIECE OF MAGIC AND MALIA? AN ENCLAVE

fucking hell. They're squeezing Liu into a mawmouth. Fuck.

No..her hand...

When I am very moved by a scene, i read it out, the first time. This was the scene.

Oof. Orion just ate some wizards. Surely he has less deadly weapons???? He really is a mal

Uh

Oh he actually really is a maw mouth mal? He's a fucking maw mouth? Her dads now inside fortitude inside patience inside Orion, still getting endlessly tortured. Uh...

'for all I knew' NO. DEFINITELY YOUR DAD

Well idk he's had pretty good control so far. Just unfortunate those damn Beijing council guys tried to kill El

Aadhya and Liesel going into negotiations as proxies for El who'd absolutely fuck them up lol

What a coincidence! You wanted to go to India. Now youve been invited to India! She gets angry

OH. MY. GOD. El actually learned a lesson. Asking for help. And of the right person. Liesel.

Wait a minute. She's been destroying the enclaves. By destroying the maw mouths. The maw mouths REMAIN the foundation. So those 'random' attacks. They were her destroying the enclave foundations while still on scholomance. They're lined up.

So if she kills this maw mouth - but still, why wouldn't her new foundation hold up. Oh she realises it completely too. Shit. I forgot that Salta and Bangkok simply died. She did that

Well honestly, Orion isn't such a bad solution, except the mawmouths in him don't die and also apparently he can't help himself eat people now....

LIESEL KNEW???????? WHAT THE FUCK?!!!!! SHES EVEN SMARTER THAN ME??????

Then surely there must be a foundation in the scholomance. And perhaps Orion is now carrying the mawmouth that pins it.

What the fuck do you mean this ain't a trolley problem. Just start in on propping up all the damn foundations with some real ones El. Then go on a lil maw mouth hunt

Ok but she doesn't even call her mother. Right. She can't. Forgot. She doesn't even DREAM AT HER MOTHER. Or some other magical communication. Not even about the family welcoming her after all or the true meaning of the prophecy

Actually since when is El capable of just catching others spells. And get mana from them?? Like some sort of scholomance? Oh yeah she s just so horrridly op

She's....catching bullets out of the air. And...turning people into stone temporarily with them. Fucking absolute lol

I get the sense that novik got lost in the Sintra garden... Like multiple times. Which is very hilarious because my god. It is very easy.

So weird to have fond and vague memories of this precise settting

Ok so i was right. And Naomi novik is a little bit of a genius for this. Real Orion, the realest Orion, was the Orion of book 1. The genuine hero. When there were fewer and fewer mals to eat in book 2, he became more and more maw mouth, started behaving strangely.

Oof. Better run El. He's about to start..... Eating.

What a fucking BASTARD. COULD HAVE AT LEAST HELD ON ONTO EL WAS NOT AT LEAST S HUNDRED STEPS AWAY

Damn El people are getting EATEN OVER THERE HELLO STOP FUCKING STALLING

The thing is all this time I've been thinking CANT YOU KILL THE BITS AND NOT THE BOY. KILL THE MAW MOUTH BITS BUT NOT THE BOY? THE BOY ISNT SOME ORGAN THAT CANT BE AUTONOMOUS. YOU COULD SURELY EXTRACT HIM WHOLE BECAUSE HE IS. YOU HAVE TO KILL THEM ALL INDIVIDUALLY REALLY ANYWAY

Oh my god. No

She did something much more

Damn. I remember wishing el would become child guardian in the scholomance but it's true that Orion would also do very well

But he's not getting mana out ...wait. he can still extract mana out of mals he snaps into the void? Uh ok.

That book made a lot of sense. And was very very very good.

[teecupangel]

Submitted by @saberamane

Another plot bunny that has infiltrated my head that I will never write, but would love to read.

The eye doesn’t kill Desmond when he uses it, and it doesn’t exactly ‘free’ Juno either. For the time that Desmond is using the eyes to create the shield, he is one with the Grand Temple and everything it connects to.

This includes Juno. Who decides she is sick of being stuck in the Grand Temple. So she decides to…swap with Desmond.

She pulls Desmond’s soul from his body, and anchors it to the Grand Temple like her own had been. And then she just 'moves in’ to the body that is now available to her.

The solar flare finishes, the shield dissipates, and Juno, in Desmond’s body, is free to walk the earth once more.

By the time Desmond 'wakes up’ in the Grand Temple and realizes what’s happened, Juno has already taken his body and left. He’s stuck, with no idea what to do.

Juno, while free, is not exactly thrilled with having a human body. Even though it has more Isu genes than any other, it’s not and Isu body and greatly limits what Juno is capable of. She needs to find a way to 'build’ an Isu body to transfer her soul into.

A couple days later, Juno gets a nasty surprise. She’s not alone in Desmond’s body. And now has to fight to continue to control said body.

While Animus Island is being deleted, Desmond made a choice. He chose to help Clay.

Clay was in Desmond’s body, and while the Flare and the Eye had knocked him 'offline’, he wakes up again to find that not only is Desmond not in his own body, but that Juno is and he is not pleased. Desmond would help him get a body again, Juno is only concerned with herself.

Seeing as Clay is a fully human soul, and Juno is not, Clay is able to wrangle control from her. But he doesn’t know how to boot her out of Desmond’s body, and he’s not 100% sure where Desmond is, if he’s even still 'alive’.

He contacts the Assassin’s, even though he doesn’t exactly want to.

Shaun and Rebecca pull a miracle, trapping Juno in an Animus island (which gets deleted with her trapped on it, lol), and going back to the Grand Temple they find Desmond, who has figured out how to project himself. And with the time spent there, Desmond has figured how to build Clay a new body. (Why didn’t Juno do that before? Maybe she was locked out of that feature?? Who knows.)

Clay gets a new body (though it looks like his old one, for the most part) and Desmond is able to get back to his body. Though he now has some Isu abilities he didn’t before, from the eye and being connected to the Grand Temple.

==========================

Additions from teecup:

How about instead of the Flare and the Eye being the reason why Clay was knocked out, the Flare and Desmond using the device to save the world are what woke him up? Like, he was just sleeping, waiting for Desmond’s mind to be able to take another personality and set of memory like he’s some kind of ‘foreign Bleed’ with the help of the Synch Nexus but Desmond started reliving Haytham and, later on, Ratonhnhaké:ton’s memories so he was pushed aside because Desmond’s ancestors are automatically given priority by Desmond’s brain when it concerns the Bleeding Effect.

So, in this case, Clay starts out more as something similar to a Bleed that Juno is experiencing. His memories start invading Juno randomly. She starts hearing his voice. She starts seeing him from the corner of her eye. This would give the story some time to fuck with Juno as well as prolong Desmond’s suffering back in the Grand Temple XD

Of course, the end result is still Clay being able to wrangle complete control from Juno but, at that point, Juno had modified it a bit so that it was more Isu than human but Clay is able to deal with that and contact the Assassins.

On the other side, Desmond is still stuck in the Grand Temple but the Grand Temple recognized him as ‘not Juno’ and noted him as Desmond Miles so he gets to have the full package (as a digital prisoner, of course) and that includes complete access to the calculations. It’s while he’s watching the calculations (like some sick (alternate) reality tv show) that he learns of Abstergo’s Phoenix Project. He learns of how, in an alternate universe, Juno would have used it to create herself a body of her own.

It’s useless to Desmond at the moment since it’s not like he can hijack Abstergo from here but that will become the basis of how Clay would get his own body.

Also...

May I suggest… instead of trapping Juno in an Animus island, she gets trapped into a specific Animus that is replaying the same thing over and over again. To be more specific… it’s replaying this:

[professorspork]

the big 'Faunus worldbuilding in Newsbees' post

as requested by EVER SO MANY OF YOU (!!), I now embark upon a post to talk much more about the Shallow Sea Verses and about the Faunus culture and worldbuilding I did for Newsbees. I've talked about them a little bit before, and I'll try not to repeat myself too much there but there's gonna be some overlap.

I imagine when some of you asked me to say more about this, what you were hoping for was like a "here's all this great stuff I came up with for other traditions that I never got to use in the fic!" and that is--not what this post is, sorry. by virtue of the fact that this was, ultimately, a literary device very much devised to move this story forward, I didn't spend a lot of time thinking about in in ways that weren't plot-relevant. if you have prompts for, like, "how would they do/think about X" I'm delighted to give it a think, but it's not something I have just lying around.

instead I'm gonna talk about how it came about, why I did it, and what my priorities were

okay so I'm gonna take this in... I guess chronological order is the best way to make sense of it

from the outset of the fic's conception, I knew that I wanted it to be a reflection of my values. like. it's about unionizing a workforce, it's about socially-conscious community-building and class struggle and FUCK COPS. to disregard the minority oppression of the Faunus (which you'll note is something I always capitalize, for what I should think are now-obvious parallel reasons) in a world and a story like that just felt... not just insulting, but downright stupid. a missed opportunity. and I've always felt like this subject deserved much greater forethought and much better execution than canon provided, which I think can be described most charitably as "mostly serviceable" but is mealy-mouthed, inconsistent, and both-sidesy-whattaboutist at way too many points for me to feel like it merits any credit. like. if you're gonna do catgirl racism and intra-community disagreements over praxis, you gotta actually do catgirl racism and intra-community disagreements over praxis, you know?

(gee, I'm sure you're shocked Sienna is very much alive in Newsbees, wonder why that is)

ANYHOO

so that was thing one.

thing two is that this is perhaps the GREATEST ARGUMENT I HAVE for why I prefer writing everything in advance and then posting on a schedule, because I knew it was something I could then find my way into and then retcon back in, if needed, and that I therefore had the entire canvas available to paint on. and it's a good thing, too, because it saved my ass multiple times plot-wise and not just in this worldbuilding way.

to combine those two thoughts, the first time ANY of this actually came up in the drafting process was when I hit the Ilia scene in chapter 6. I knew what I wanted Blake to say to Ilia in that moment, which she absolutely couldn't say, which was: "I said the Mourner's Kaddish."

which: that's already a lot to unpack, so let's do that a bit! the first thing that drew me towards formulating my conception of Faunus culture around parallels to the diasporic Jewish experience is, of course, "write what you know." I'm not a racial or ethnic minority but I am Jewish, and so it was something I could use the 'draw from wellspring of personal knowledge and emotion' part of my brain for, rather than the 'radically and empathetically imagine the other' part of my brain. I've seen all sorts of fanon Faunus ideas where people drew on different and likely personal interpretations-- including things like the Faunus having their own language, Faunus interpolations of the Maiden myths and other Remnant lore having different values or being scaled more towards the God of Animals, Faunus having their own foods... if someone not-me had written this fic, this could have manifested in any number of ways. because the Faunus don't fit neatly into my (very American) notions of race, religion, or even X-men style "maybe we should regulate the people who have nukes for hands" minority/majority frameworks, I had the freedom to use the one that had the most personal meaning to me... and to deviate from that when it suited and felt appropriate. Neon's rightfully combative stance about Faunus mistreatment and how she reacts to it, for example, is far more aligned with the experiences of my friends and loved ones who are POC than it is anything I've personally gone through as a Jew.

so!

knowing, then, what my destination was (a Faunus cultural framework that would have specific death rites and rituals), I worked backwards from there. what makes a culture FEEL lived in is that people LIVE in it, that it relates to their everyday lives as well as its most significant moments-- what do we eat? how do we treat guests in our home? how do we handle life cycle events (birth/marriage/death)? without a country of origin, as the Faunus have none-- they made Menagerie, not the other way around-- and not wanting to go TOO explicitly religious by having there actually be some sort of dogmatic (har har DOG-matic) text about the God of Animals, I instead lit upon the idea of old poems whose metaphors have been transformed into material gifts. this felt intuitive to me probably largely because I'm Jewish (we're called the People of the Book for a reason lmao, we're all about interpretation and re-interpretation of text) but also, honestly, because the written word is WILDLY IMPORTANT in newsbees. they work at a newspaper! there's a reason the very last words of the story are Blake saying "for the record," which is a reporting pun. in hindsight, however, this is also sort of Sappho-y, which is also neat and, again, shows that ALL the ways I've experienced my own Otherness show up here.

having a text then gave me a scale of orthodoxy to work from, as in "very traditional people still recite these texts in a ceremonial way," but also a background radiation-level casual level of interaction, which is "yeah I leave shells at graves because that's what my parents taught me and I don't even really know why." this also means that all Faunus have the same sort of playbook to work from, regardless of where they're from geographically or what kind of Faunus they are.

once I had that in place, I immediately realized that whatever traditional Mourner's Verse there would be probably would feel kind of insulting re: what happened to the Amitolas, which is why I came up with the Traveler's Verse workaround. and the second I came up with that, I knew I could use it to connect Ghira and Kali back into the text at the end-- I'd been wanting to find a way to do that and hadn't come up with a method.

the first draft of that scene then promptly infodumped every thought I could possibly have about the Verses, immediately. @theseerasures teased me that it read like a Codex entry from Mass Effect, and she was 100% right-- and it totally interrupted the flow of the VERY EMOTIONAL scene with Ilia, which wouldn't do at all.

and that's where the 'writing it all before posting it' thing comes in. that infodumping then became the scene at Doc's in chapter 3. this also solved another problem I had, which was that in the VERY first draft chapters 3 and 4 were one very long chapter. I'd subsequently split them, which left chapter 3 quite short-- but at that point, the moment where Blake is upstairs getting her snack was only a brief explanatory paragraph. moving the Verses stuff back made the chapter a chapter, so it did a lot of heavy lifting for me. wanting the Verses to feel integrated, I also at that point went back and added the engraving on Tukson's door to the prologue, so that it would be seeded in from the start.

which is kind of to say that ALL WRITING IS CHEATING. we get to manipulate circumstances to best suit our needs! callbacks feel elegant and cerebral, but they're actually a very blunt and easy tool to use-- you get tons of mileage out of just establishing something and then bringing it up all the time. I'd already written the thing about Tukson being picky about book damage, and so I let that become a part of the Verses lore by saying it was a Faunus thing, and then doubled down on it with the "throwing the book at Ghira" anecdote.

as for what things mean what, the basic rule I gave for myself is that everything had to be common and easily-obtainable for a community often left impoverished and on the margins. that's why so many of them are food-based, because that's a very "even if we have nothing else, we have THIS" sort of thing. when coming up with the thing that would represent love, I lit upon honey BEFORE i realized "oh duh, lmao, bees" because... I'm an idiot, but luckily I figured it out after a bit. I was very enamored of the idea of it representing not just sweetness, but industry (as in "busy bees"), that love takes steady and determined work. the second I did think it up, the Velvet gag gift ("they're making fun of me") sprang to mind, though ironically it wasn't necessarily tied to the Mantle Bee yet, though that was also already a concept on the page.

probably the hardest thing to come up with was the NOT-honey gift for the epilogue (which ended up being nuts for growth), because I was like... is it a pen and paper for a first job? Is that too bougie? maybe a cute little desk succulent? but what would it represent?

and yeah, that's pretty much how I got there. it was a question of making something specific enough that it would feel authentic, but open-ended enough that I could make up whatever I wanted to suit the moment and have it all feel of a piece. from there, it was just about USING it-- keeping it in the back of my mind in Faunus-related scenes to see if there were ways I could weave it in somehow.

phew! okay I think that's pretty much everything. if anyone is so very enamored of the Verses that they'd like to use them for their own fics, you certainly have my permission to do so (with a link back to Newsbees for credit, please). I'm intrigued to see what you'd do with them! but also, like-- I love how multi-faceted and varied different interpretations of Faunus lore can be, and I'd love to see what y'all come up with for your own systems!

CONSIDER THE GAUNTLET THROWN. HAVE FUN OUT THERE.

<3

[raayllum]

hello what are your thoughts on a rayllum situation a la percy and annabeth in which either or both give up a great power/opportunity to be with each other?

while I’m not really sure we’d ever see this in canon I love the idea of it

So Rayllum has had PJO / Percabeth energy to me for a long time

And I am deeply intrigued by what lengths Rayla and Callum will be willing to go to save each other, as keeping one another safe has always been one of their biggest priorities and brought out their most batshit sides. We already know what Test of Love Rayla is going to have (leaning towards next season but could also see S6) in terms of her being willing to risk the world when Callum is possessed again ("You let him live but you killed us all / You have two choices: you all die, or just the evil wretched human dies") in favour of fighting to break him free and save him. It's already been textually confirmed, symbolically, as well that she will successfully save him.

“Wow. So they look identical, but they might kill you or they might save you,” Callum said.

“Exactly. Just like me…” Rayla smiled. (Book One novelization)

This will of course play a big hand in restoring their relationship, as well as herself, to what they/she used to be. A complete inverse of her "We can't save everyone, there's too much at stake" dismissal in 4x05 that shows how jaded her time alone had made her, traumatizing her to a point nothing else she'd ever been through (almost losing her hand, losing her family, her village, etc) had pushed her to. But of course to Callum, "Rayla is a hero" and that's what makes her who she is, and it's the positive side of her self sacrificial / selfless nature (as the self sacrifice is still alive and kicking in S4 with going after Viren, being the first to give Rex a gift, etc etc as well as the self loathing). Her saving him is the perfect "wrap it up in a bow" of setup and pay off for all of it, and her arc in general from a S1-S5 type deal.

I think there's a lot of layers to Percy's choice to give up immortality in the books (not only for Annabeth, although yes, definitely for her) but also taking into account for what he asks for in its stead: for the gods to be accountable, to pay their dues, in the ways heroes and mortals too often have instead. It shows his maturity, his series long disgust at injustice and unfairness, his beloved impertinence to say what he thinks regardless of the consequences. To honour Luke and all the other fallen demigods, but also himself.

On that level TDP doesn't have quite the same set up (although we'll see about holding humans and Xadia more accountable for the deep history / the Startouch elves as gods) but if Rayla is going to risk the world to save him, then he also has to accordingly risk the world to save her. This is particularly true as Rayla's heroic nature ad deep love for Callum is emphasized in all prior seasons, as well as the latter majorly in S4. We'll have an easy time believing she'd made that kind of decision for him. With S4, it throws a little bit of a wrench into Callum's side of things, but that's all the more reason for him to do it; to reaffirm his massive, life altering, world changing love for her (she, who desperately needs to know she is loved, too, after all this time). After all on his side of things, her absence has to affect him more than shutting down and more than just being obsessed with magic; a "I lost her once, I won't lose her again" justification if he does something batshit for her would give retroactive narrative reasoning on his end, and it'd be very earned, I think (since we see how messed up he is over her absence in 4x01, even after all that time). And again, Rayla cannot only save him - she also has to mess up, to need to be bailed out - in order for her to actually learn her lesson about self worth and sacrifice and why she needs to fucking stay or at the very least, fully accept that Callum will always be coming with her.

After all, they both need the opportunity to choose each other, to save one another, and as always, I think Callum giving up the Key of Aaravos to the villains (whether the Key is just for the prison, or Aaravos' heart, or whatever) if Rayla had gotten captured and her life was on the line makes a lot of sense. Big tag about it here, & masterposts (pre s4 and post s4). So I'd say that's my big percabeth "giving something up majorly for the one you love" schtick.

Either way I can't wait for S5 to make me cry

[undead-moth]

76% of Americans travel abroad at some point in their lives:

“Roughly three-quarters of Americans (76%) have visited at least one other country, including 26% who have been to five or more."

Given that USians will readily drive for entire days, it is extremely possible to visit both Canada and Mexico as a USian. It might not be extremely possible for them to stay at a high-end resort for a month in Mexico or Canada, but they can easily go there for even a day-trip.

My brother makes less than 50k annually and he travels overseas once a year, and travels to Canada once a year on top of that. He does this by renting a trailer and buying all his food from grocery stores and sleeping on the side of the road, but you know what he does it and he’s been more places overseas than most people overseas have.

While most Americans don’t get significant vacation time, or even any vacation time, they nonetheless currently can, at some point in their lives, take a few days off and go somewhere. Yes, most would need to save. Yes, most wouldn’t get paid for their time off. Yes, it is something most can’t do as easily as Europeans. But it is not anywhere near as implausible as OP makes it out to be and I can’t stress this enough, if OP makes 100,000 USD a year and still can’t travel it is because they are grossly incompetent with money and I'm also frankly amazed so many people read a post in which OP admits to making that kind of money and didn't for a second consider that this might not be the most reliable source on how poverty affects USians.

There are also many other contributing factors to why some USians never travel abroad, including having no desire to, or more likely, having bought into our own country’s negative portrayals about other places. My mom wouldn’t travel overseas for years because she was afraid of getting thrown in a foreign prison for literally no fucking reason, all while residing in a country with the most prisoners and life sentences in the entire world. The only reason she finally visited Europe was because I was living there at the time, and while there she realized she had nothing to worry about.

A significant amount of USians who will never travel abroad will never travel abroad for other reasons besides affordability - illness, having no one to go with, not knowing how to plan a trip, having no one to watch their pets, and many other things. Some will never travel abroad entirely because they will never make it a priority. They'll prefer to spend any disposable income they have on a new car, or plastic surgery, or any other expensive luxury instead.

And out of the people who truly can’t ever hope to afford to travel elsewhere, that’s extremely unfortunate, and not how it should be, and ALSO not even close to “most” USians.

Anyone who is one of those people who will never be able to afford it reblogging this, is greatly overestimating how many people in the US are as impoverished as they are.

The only thing anyone could actually say about the affordability of travel to most USians right now is that younger generations can’t afford to as much as older generations, and that it’s way more expensive right now than it was even ten years ago, let alone longer ago. In ten to twenty years, that statistic is going to be worse than it is now, and fewer USians will have traveled, but it is not going to flip to “most” USians having never left the US any time soon, and this is also just because of everything in the world becoming more expensive right now, which is not exclusive to the US. I’m guessing other countries will see less travel by their citizens in the future too.

Don't make excuses for USian tourists who go to other countries and say or do offensive or insensitive things. Many of them are rich, and that probably plays a role in their ignorance, but plenty of them are not rich and the reason they’re being offensive or insensitive isn’t because they just haven’t traveled enough, or never thought they’d be able to. It’s because the US acts like it’s the main character of the planet and most USians have been thoroughly brainwashed by American Exceptionalism propaganda.

You can't just blame all USian entitlement and ignorance on the wealthy. You are not immune to being one of these USians even if you can't afford to travel and in fact, according to the article above, the same study on how many USians travel abroad found this:

"Americans who have traveled internationally are more interested in and knowledgeable about foreign affairs, feel closer to others around the world, and favor a more active foreign policy."

So yeah. USians travel other places, and they're entitled and ignorant and they do offensive and insensitive things, and in the process they end up unlearning some of the American exceptionalism and propaganda that made them like that, and they become less shitty USians because of it.

since moving here ive noticed europeans have no concept of how few americans ever leave USA. every american tourist youve met is of an economic crust that is vastly unobtainable to the other like. 85% generously. no matter what you have believed i can guarantee this. even getting to canada isnt really a possibility and the mexico-US border is highly controlled and militarized.

to put it into perspective. a ~2 hour flight from london to warsaw is like. 30 to 45 USD?

and a 2 hour flight from one US city to another would be about 130 USD

it was very cheap to fly here. i make over 100k USD now and i dont know if ill ever be able to afford leaving. if that gives you an idea of how prohibitive travel is here. i havent even touched on how the US has Zero guaranteed holidays by the govt. many people here go years without ever having an entire week off of work

this has had a like. massive impact on American Brain and they dont even know it because travel isnt even a consideration economically. they dont even know how much more vacation time european countries have guaranteed

[vaulttecexec]

↳ @defrostedhoward →“Let us show them how it's done.”- JJ

barb eyes her daughter, brow flexing upward. they didn't really have a choice, did they? jj went head first into a shitstorm, and barb, well, barb's been through them since she made her way back east. lucky for them, momma was a damned good shot; even better shot when it came to her baby.

did they always get along? no, and barb could admit when she was wrong. they'd had that fight what felt like years ago, and the resolution to it was- well, something else she just won't talk about. leave it to her kid to have the heart of her father and the logic of her mother. what makes it worse is knowing for all she did to save the world, she couldn't save her baby's hero. an audible click of a shotgun being readied cuts the silence.

so, the two howard women were a little testy with each other. weren't all families filled with drama? for what feels like the millionth time she wishes cooper was there to see the woman their janeybug grew up to be. and, nope. better shut that down. they've got less time to prepare for the incoming raiders if she spends all the prep time they do have reminiscing about her biggest regret in life: not being able to save him.

"this once i'm going to pretend you aren't giving orders, janey howard, and i'm going to ignore the shit-eating grin on your face. if you get hurt, even if you twist your fucking ankle, you get behind me and you stay there. the important part of a stand off is walking away from it." she breathes, armed to the teeth and very much the mama bear they'd warned her she'd become before janey was born. "i know you love this place, and i'll do fuck all to help you defend it, but i love you, and you're my priority."

there's not much time to say anything else, so barb doesn't. instead, she kisses her not-so-little-anymore daughter's forehead, swings the barrel of a shotgun over her shoulder and opens fire.

the things you do for your damned kids.

[jackrrabbit]

Adversary /// Overhaul x f!Reader (18+)

Summary: You make a deal with the devil to save your life, but it turns out Overhaul’s not interested in your soul.

A/N: Remember when I said I was going to do a fantasy collab and then dipped for like 9 months? Hahaha…anyway…

@pleasantanathema @ present-mel @shadowworks—if it’s not too late, here’s my part for the Pleasant & Strider Fantasy AU Writing Collab from a million years ago. Go check out the masterlist and gorge yourself on these amazing pieces!!

Tags/Warnings: dubcon, demon fuckery & occult things, big heresy/sacrilege/perversion of religion, sex in a church ft. Catholic sex guilt, other than that it’s not that bad lol, inexperienced reader, mild degradation, shameless camp and demon-fucking clichés, Overhaul calls you “little girl” 👉👈

He doesn’t look like a demon.

Not that you really know what demons are supposed to look like. But…red skin, right? Fangs and claws and swirling masses of bad energy. Maybe cloven hooves for feet. Yes, that’s the Disney version—but even if you didn’t expect a cartoon personification of evil, you didn’t expect this.

He looks like a doctor, you think. Lab coat hanging open, surgery mask pushed down under his jaw, stethoscope draped over his shoulders. No, he’s a little young to really look like a doctor…an intern, you amend, shifting back in your hospital bed. He looks like he fits right in here, not a hair out of place. Except for, you know, the polished black horns curling out of the sides of his skull.

Overhaul. It was written in the book. That’s the only thing you have to call him in your head.

He’s standing in the center of the sigil you drew at the foot of your bed before midnight, surveying the room critically without meeting your gaze. He looks annoyed—that’s not a good sign, is it?—but then again, of course he’s annoyed. You’d be annoyed too if you got summoned out of your cozy hell dimension in the middle of the night. According to the book, you’re lucky he even showed up…although ‘lucky’ isn’t really how you’d describe yourself most days.

“So,” Overhaul says after a long moment of silence in which you question every choice you’ve made in your relatively short life. “You’re dying.”

You nod.

“And you don’t want to be.”

You nod again, wondering if you’re supposed to be contributing more to this conversation. It’s a bit difficult when your mouth is so dry it feels like you’ve been eating dirt, but you suppose being in the presence of an unholy servant of Satan will do that to a person.

“Fine.” He sighs, frowns, and then finally lowers his gaze onto yours—and you shiver.

Those eyes. No human has eyes like that.

“Make me an offer,” Overhaul tells you, and through his open mouth you catch a flash of sharp white teeth.

Okay. Okay. The chirping of the heart monitor speeds up (as if it weren’t obvious enough that you’re terrified) and you fold your knees up to your chest and fidget with your ring and think. He’s giving you a chance to establish parameters. You’re supposed to start with his end of the deal, the thing you want from him. That’s what it said to do in the grimoire, aka the 19th century demonology volume your creepy cousin brought back from her pagan anthropology research trip in rural France. The one you keep hidden under your bed because your mother would burn it if she knew you were reading about summoning demons.

Offer nothing to a hell creature without first telling him your price. You know the words by heart, both the winding calligraphy of the original French from the grimoire and the rushed scrawl of the English translation your cousin left for you in sheets of lined paper layered between the pages of the book for you to read. Really, this is her fault. She was the one who slipped you the book, who told you that it worked, who snuck you the ingredients for the summoning. She was the one who left a bookmark at the chapter on this particular demon, one that specializes in ‘Contrat pour Remédier au Déséquilibre des Quatre Humeurs’, which she said meant a contract to cure any illness. Even his ‘name’ is translated in her hand, practically an afterthought in the margins of the page.

‘Le Malin qui Ravage et Rebâtit’— Overhaul?

You looked up the literal meaning of this phrase on your own. It did not reassure you.

“Girl.” His voice is cold, irate. Your eyes snap back up to his and it feels like that burning gaze is laser-beaming into your skull. “Do not test me. My time is limited…as is yours.”

You swallow. “How long do I have left?”

“Less than a single human year,” he tells you without a trace of sympathy. “Seven months, twelve days, three hours. Or so. You’ll be too exhausted to leave this bed in four months, and the pain will become intolerable in six… By the end, you’ll wish—“

“Stop,” you breathe out. The heart monitor is beeping wildly and you squeeze your knees into your chest, trying to calm down your breathing. “Stop, I—I want to live.”

“Of course you do.” Overhaul’s lip curls. “How very predictable.”

Be specific, you remind yourself, doing your best to ignore the stifling disapproval from the man—the demon—in front of you. Something about him (maybe how clean-cut he looks, maybe the indisputable authority in his demeanor) makes you want to impress him. But you didn’t turn your back on your religion—you didn’t draw pagan symbols on the floor in chalk, fill silver cups with various questionable substances (including your own virgin blood), and turn the crucifix your mother hung over your bed upside-down so you could let a demon make you feel guilty for wanting to survive. “I want to be cured. I’m okay with whatever natural death I have instead when I’m older, I just don’t want to die of this illness. I want you to make me healthy.”

“Simple enough. What else?”

‘Simple’? Your heart surges with something you’ve felt very little of since your initial diagnosis—hope. “T-That’s it. Just the cure.”

Overhaul glares at you. “Humans… Every vice in the world available to you, and you limit yourselves to the basest priority of survival.”

“But you can do it? You can cure me?” you persist.

Overhaul steps forward (quiet, so quiet you wonder if he really moved) and holds a hand out to you past the foot of your bed—you hesitate, and a second later you can see the muscles in his hand flex, stretching the latex of his plastic gloves tight over his knuckles.

Just do it. You give him your hand. Carefully. Like you’re scared the contact will burn you. It doesn’t (although his skin feels warmer than yours), but after a moment his grip tightens, sliding down past your hand to circle the fragile bones of your wrist and squeeze.

“Ow?” You wince.

The demon’s eyes flicker closed for a second, lips moving silently like he’s talking to himself—and then he drops your hand unceremoniously back onto your lap. “You could be cured before the sun rises this morning. I doubt your stay in the hospital will extend past the end of the week.”

He sounds bored, voice as flat and passionless as it was earlier, but your heart is soaring. Cured. You’ve lived with this illness for so many years, you can’t remember the last time someone told you you could be cured. And getting out of the hospital that soon? You can just imagine taking down all the decorations from the walls of your room here and setting them up in your old bedroom at home. You could see friends on the weekend and not take an oxygen bag, you could get a job or—or apply to college, you could have a life—

“That is…assuming you have something to offer me in exchange for the cure.”

Your stomach drops. You’d almost forgotten about the other half of the deal.

“Don’t tell me I came all this way for nothing.” Overhaul steps back, and the orange light of the candles you set sends strange shadows over his arrogant face. The fires look brighter now, and you find yourself tracing the lines of those shining black horns. In an odd way, they look natural—so organically framing his temples that you can’t imagine him without them.

“N-No, of course not. I have some money—I mean, my mom has some, and I can get it for you…” Which is half the truth. If you know anything, it’s that your mother’s spent most of her savings on your treatment and care. You probably have more debt than you have money in the bank right now—you’d try to get rid of that, too, if you hadn’t read in the book how important it is to keep your request as simple and straightforward as possible.

…Although it’s apparently not enough. Overhaul’s eyes narrow, molten gold irises carved into slits. “Even if I had a use for human money, do you really believe your life is worth so little?”

“No—no,” you say quickly. “I just thought—in case you were interested—”

The air crackles with energy, the candle flames spark bright blood-red, and the hair on your arms stands straight up. “I am not.”

“Okay! I get it.” You wave your hands back and forth, pulling your IV line from side to side with the motion. The book was very clear about staying calm and rational while you work out the terms of the deal, but that’s easier said than done when you have a real live (live?) hell creature in front of you. You always knew this was going to be the hard part—all the stories say there’s only one thing that a demon would be interested in, and no matter how inviting the prospect of living past this illness is, you know you’d rather die than sell your immortal soul to the devil. “I’ll give you anything except my soul! And—and don’t hurt anyone I care about, or— just don’t hurt anyone, okay? Other than that, if there’s anything I can give you, I will.”

Overhaul’s lip curls, baring a thin strip of those unnaturally sharp canines. “And is your soul really so valuable?”

This throws you for a loop. Isn’t that the standard deal? A soul for a wish? That’s how it’s supposed to work—at least in this twisted version of reality where you can summon a demon to perform unholy miracles for you. But if you think about it, it doesn’t really make sense, does it? Why would your soul be valuable to him? You can’t form an argument, especially since you’re not willing to barter it away in the first place.

Your mouth is pursed open as you search for a response, but Overhaul doesn’t seem willing to wait. A gloved hand wraps its way around the railing at the side of your bed, and he leans in closer. “Little girl…what makes you think you possess anything I desire?”

Little girl. You’re not a little girl, you’re a grown woman—and yet there’s no untruth in the statement. In front of him you feel insignificant, immature, weak. You have nothing real to offer, and something tells you that you’re not going to get rid of the demon you summoned without a sacrifice you’re not willing to make.

You twist your ring around your finger—the nervous habit you haven’t bothered to break because you’ve always had more important things to worry about—and the glint of silver in the candlelight must catch Overhaul’s eye because before you even notice him moving, your delicate hand is trapped in his larger one to give him a better view of the tiny piece of jewelry. “What is this?”

“It’s—um, a ring. A purity ring.” Has he never seen one before? Well…actually, that makes sense.

Overhaul turns your hand over in his without touching the band of silver. He’s looking at it closely, inspecting the lovingly engraved cross in the design and the inscription on the other side. “Matthew 5:8,” he reads out.

“…Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God,” you recite cautiously. It feels wrong to speak the words in front of him, but somehow you can’t help yourself.

Overhaul’s hand doesn’t leave yours. “This ring is important to you.”

“It’s a symbol of a—a promise I made to God. To save myself for my future husband.”

“To ‘save yourself’? To save what?”

You can’t believe you’re explaining this to a literal demon. You close your eyes and inhale slowly and taste smoke. “My…virginity. It’s a promise that I won’t have sex until I enter into a biblical marriage.”

At this, Overhaul is quiet. You give him a moment to answer, half expecting him to question why you think God cares about your sexual status (honestly, you’d be lying if you said you haven’t wondered this yourself), but he stays quiet until you peek up at him to try and gauge the look on his coldly handsome face.

He’s still staring at the ring. He hasn’t touched it—maybe he can’t, because of the cross?—and through the latex, his skin feels hotter than a human’s is supposed to be.

“Is there…” you start, but you trail off when you realize you have nothing to ask. You give a little tug to try and take your hand away and you’re surprised when your wrist actually slides out of his grip to fall back on the nest of sheets in your lap. You didn’t think he’d let you go so easily.

Overhaul turns his head to the side, eyes drilling into you so you feel like you should lower your gaze. The candlelight flickers in strange shadows over his horns. “This will do,” he says quietly.

“What?”

“In exchange for your cure.” The demon taps his own left ring finger, the place where the purity ring sits on your hand, and your heart soars. He actually wants that? It’s just a simple silver band, not worth much, but you’re not going to look a gift horse in the mouth. Maybe it has some special significance because of the religious connotation. Your mother will be angry you’ve lost it, but you’re happy to cope with that if it means living to actually get married!

“Yes!” you blurt out before he has a chance to rethink his offer. Sure, you’ll miss the purity ring—you’ve had it since you were a kid, after all—but there’s no question you’re getting the better end of this deal. At least in your opinion.

Something flashes through his yellow eyes, something you don’t even want to try and identify. “The contract, then.”

You barely have time to notice that his voice has gentled, that it’s practically silken in comparison to before, when the candlelight flickers again and suddenly the contract is everywhere. Everywhere. Writing appears on every surface in the room, covering the walls, stretching over the ceiling, coiling around the sides of the hospital equipment and decorating your bedsheets until you and Overhaul are the only untouched surfaces in sight. The characters are inscribed in red, dark red like—don’t think about that, you tell yourself squeamishly. You can make out some of the letters, even a word here or there—French, you recognize, mixed with what looks like Latin and interspersed with what you can only guess are runes.

“I can’t read this,” you tell him, fidgeting with your ring for what you now realize will be the last time.

“I only need your name,” he purrs, and then you feel a fragile weight in your hand: a feather, pearl-black and glossy and too large to belong to any bird you can think of, its angled tip glistening with wet ink. There’s an empty space in the writing before you, and Overhaul’s gloved hand comes to yours again to guide you into place.

This feels wrong…then again, of course it does. Even if you’re getting off relatively easy and just losing your ring rather than your soul, you’re still making a deal with a demon. You sign your name, forcing yourself to think about the future you have ahead of you rather than a disapproving white-bearded caricature of The Man Upstairs wagging his finger at you for haggling with a literal servant of Satan. People have done worse things to survive, haven’t they? It’s just a ring.

You set the feather down and Overhaul sighs, thick black eyelashes obscuring his intense gaze for a moment—and then the contract is gone, leaving your hospital room as blank and sterile as it’s supposed to be (well, aside from the candles and all the other ritual stuff you threw together to summon a demon in the first place).

“Are you going to cure—heal me now?” you ask.

“…Patience, little girl.” He’s pulling his glove off, peeling it down his fingers to bare the pale skin of his hand. You catch your breath and wonder what this is going to feel like, and then the tips of his fingers meet your cheek and—

you stop breathing.

It doesn’t hurt.

Or if it does, you don’t remember the pain a second later when breath floods back into your lungs. What you do feel is energy. Strength in your muscles, blood pumping through your veins, every inhale and exhale as light as a bird and freer. You feel healthy. You’re surprised you even remember what health feels like but you do: it’s like you’ve only been half alive, and now life is surging into you and through you and around you, bubbling up in your core like a spring overflowing. You blink rapidly, thinking you might cry from the sheer pleasure of it, but when you open your mouth it’s laughter that comes out. You’re healthy. You’re alive. You barely notice the IV line literally falling off of your skin because the hole where it entered your vein is sealed shut and healed perfectly.

No more needles. No more hospitals. Even without all the monitors beeping out your heart rate and measuring your vitals, there’s not a shred of doubt in your mind that you’re cured.

“Thank you!” you laugh, looking up at Overhaul and for the first time, not caring that he’s evil incarnate. “I feel—I’m okay! It worked!”

“Of course it did.” His expression is inscrutable, but he lets you have a few moments to enjoy your newfound health.

You roll your shoulders back, flex each muscle you can isolate one by one to test, make fists with your fingers and then run them over your hair, which is already thicker and shinier than it was a moment ago. Your body thrums with energy—you want to run, to feel the ground against your bare feet and the cold night air on your face, and you think you could do it! Your legs are already swinging over the side of your cot, ready to run barefoot out of the hospital if that’s what it takes, but before you can stand up Overhaul’s pushing you back down onto the bed.

“Have you forgotten your end of the bargain already?”

Honestly you did forget, but only for a second, only because you were so excited to just be outside again. “Oh, yeah. Of course.” Your hand goes to your left ring finger, ready to slip the ring off and hand it over, but Overhaul shakes his head.

“Not here.”

“What—?”

You’re falling. Your hospital room is disappearing, the image of your walls and your window and your bed disintegrating into yawning black, and you’re falling through it into nothing, into emptiness, and Overhaul’s still-bare hand in yours is the only anchor you have so you clutch onto it and squeeze your eyes shut. You want to scream—that’s the sane thing to do when you’re falling through miles and miles of empty space, right?—but when you open your throat the sound is swallowed up just like the light was…

Overhaul’s hand burns into yours, an improbable lifeline that you pull closer more out of terror than conscious thought. The slick, empty air rushes around you and you think I am going to die like this and then, incredibly, as soon as you’ve accepted your imminent demise, you feel your back mold onto a chilled, flat surface, vertebra by vertebra up to the back of your head, as if you’ve been lain down onto it.

Your heart thuds in your ears and you brace for an impact because your body hasn’t quite accepted yet that it’s not falling anymore—but at the same time, you know you’re lying down on something. You pry your fingers away from their vice-grip on Overhaul’s arm and feel around blindly for what’s underneath you, and when it seems reasonably tangible you let yourself open your eyes.

Way above, vaulted dozens of feet over your head, is a ceiling studded with gilt-edged frescoes and stained glass. It’s raining (even though it wasn’t in the hospital, you think) but through the massive panes of colored glass there’s enough oily blue light to make out that you’re in a church.

You’re in a church, with a demon. Isn’t that against the rules?

You sit up stiffly and look over at Overhaul, who’s standing at your side and looking down at you…which is how you realize the soft, cold surface you’ve been deposited onto is the blanket on top of the altar in the sanctuary. “Where...did you take me?”

“You should know this place.”

And you do, when you look around. It’s empty now and you’ve never been here at night, but this is a church your mother would bring you to when you were little, back before the disease got so bad you couldn’t risk traveling to it anymore. This is where you took your purity vow…the ring feels heavy on your hand. “Why—why—“

“I can’t stand human hospitals. Filthy places… How that reek of illness and death doesn’t bother your kind, I’ll never understand.” Overhaul pulls his latex glove back on. He’s dressed differently now, no longer impersonating a doctor—black shirt, black pants, and a…bird mask in red leather and gold. So are you, as a matter of fact. Instead of your hospital gown, you’re in a gauzy white dress that’s already been pushed up to pool around the tops of your thighs.

The slip is too thin for the cold, and you can feel your nipples standing up under the cloth so you fold your arms over your chest and hug yourself. “Why did you take me here?” The sound of your voice echoes off the walls eerily and you wish you hadn’t spoken so loudly. The reflection of your words sounds girlish, nervous.

“I told you. Your side of our contract.” Even in this dark, the angular features of his face are clearly concentrating—on you. “Are you already having second thoughts? Such a fickle little thing…”

“You mean the ring?” You reach for it again, ready to tear it off and throw it at him if that’s what it takes to see your deal through, but Overhaul snatches your hand away, pinning it above you.

“Not the ring,” he says. “The promise.”

The…promise?

A chill makes its way down your spine despite the heat radiating off the demon’s body and onto yours. “I don’t understand.”

“The promise,” Overhaul repeats—and you hear a sound almost like wings flapping and then he’s on the altar with you, knees straddling your hips as a single hand holds both your wrists above your head. “To remain a virgin until marriage. Your promise to God.”

A streak of lightning cracks down on the other side of the stained glass window behind the altar, illuminating the room briefly in spectacular pits of red and orange and yellow…and then it’s dark again, and the only color you can make out is the gold in Overhaul’s eyes.

“I’m going to break it,” he murmurs, lowering his head toward your ear right as the answering thunder rolls through the sanctuary, up through the altar, up into you.

///

Méfiez-vous de son piège, the grimoire said. Beware of the catch.

Of course it wasn’t just a ring.

Overhaul’s fingers are in—inside you, his middle and ring finger pumping through the length of your cunt like they belong there, like you were made to be touched this way. A mixture of your juices and your own spit cling to the latex because he made you suck his fingers before he put them in you and he hasn’t bothered to take his gloves off—not that you asked. You’ve been too busy biting your lip to try and muffle the moans that he keeps forcing out of you. He’s bracing himself on top of you with one hand and fingering you with the other, so your own hands are free to push into your eyes and hide your face…until he yanks your arm back and stops.

“Look at me.”

Your eyes are screwed shut and you shake your head back and forth, the movement shuddering your whole body right down to your pussy wrapped around Overhaul’s fingers. He slows the movement and kneels back, pushing one of your thighs up into your chest as he does it.

“Look at me.”

And you’re not sure whether it’s some unearthly power he has over you or the plain old deterioration of your willpower, but you can’t refuse him. You crack your eyes open and he’s glaring down at you, skin pale as ice in the blue light. Once he’s satisfied that you’re watching, the demon leans back in to fuck your cunt with his fingers, slowly at first and then quicker when he hits something inside of you—a spot, a place on the inner wall of your pussy that makes you feel like you’ve been shocked— heat blooms through you like blood in water and you gasp and he curls his fingers up to pet over that spot again.

“Wait—wait, that’s—it feels—weird!” You’ve never felt like this before. You’re not supposed to feel like this, it’s wrong.

“I understand you’ve never touched yourself, but don’t pretend you don’t like it.” Overhaul says, voice as indifferent and calm as ever even though your cunt is dripping clear sticky liquid over the plastic of his glove.

He pushes back in and grinds his palm over the little button on the top of your pussy—your clit?—and you want to scream. “No, I—I don’t—nnhh...”

Do you like it? The demon’s body is so hot next to yours, like he’s running a fever except you’re the one going out of your mind… You’ve heard metaphors for sexual pleasure before (that it’s like having something to drink when you’re dying of thirst; or that it’s the ultimate act of intimacy, love in physical form) but all of that’s a fucking lie. There’s nothing to compare it to, no reference that makes sense, because it doesn’t make sense—you don’t even want him to keep going, do you? You’re only doing this because you signed your name on a devil’s contract, because you don’t want to die and there’s no alternative…but that doesn’t explain why you feel so warm from the inside out, why you’re squirming and your hips are rocking involuntarily no matter how much you try to keep still. This isn’t right. You feel like you’ve been lied to.

A good girl wouldn’t like this.

Overhaul isn’t going to let you close your eyes, so you don’t—but the sounds coming out of your mouth are so…indecent (and how can you think these things about yourself? the word feels like someone else is saying it when you hear it in your head) that your hand is drifting up to your mouth before you can stop yourself, trying to stifle all of it…

“Let your voice out. I want you to hear yourself moan.”

Long fingers slide their way out of your pussy and then move up to rub quick little circles around your clit and you moan, like a whore, like a girl getting her cunt rubbed by a demon— “Oh, uhhhn—something, it’s—coming—“ There’s something building up in your core—a peak, a climax, something that makes you fist your hands in the nightgown he put you in (so tight you’re surprised the thin fabric hasn’t torn) and tilt your hips up into him, begging without words because you don’t have any to express what your body is asking for…

But he doesn’t give it to you. Overhaul takes his hand away from your pussy and the shock of the cool air after his too-hot touch is almost enough to send you over that edge—almost. Not quite. And without it, you’re left shivering and quaking, thighs twitching as your baser instincts beg you to just put your hand between your legs for once and hump your fingers to completion if the demon won’t do it.

You’re not going to risk that, though. Not when Overhaul’s dragging your body closer, bunching up the blanket on the altar under your spine, so your pelvis is angled to his… He’s already shirtless and you hear him unzipping his pants but you can’t bring yourself to actually look at him, even when you feel something hard and hot nudging up against your inner thigh and then aligning to your sticky wet slit.

“This will hurt a bit, but I want you to look,” he says, and you don’t even understand at first until you make yourself feel it—his cock, pushing up against your tight cunt to finish this, this perversion of what your first time was supposed to be…

And what was it supposed to be? Roses and candles and soft kisses? A nameless, faceless husband unzipping your wedding dress and making love to you with the lights off? The way the demon touches you should be cruel in comparison but it isn’t, it’s lighting fires under your skin and turning your brains to mush, so how is your body supposed to tell the difference?

It’ll hurt, you know that, you’ve heard enough about sex to know that it always hurts the first time for girls…women. It was already a stretch to fit his fingers in your virgin pussy, so of course his cock is going to hurt. You turn your head toward the window at your side and try on look out at the rain drawing rivulets like veins over the glass, something to focus on instead of him.

“I said look,” the demon hisses, and his hips push forward a bit and you bite off a whimper of pain. “Watch me take your virginity…look at your tight little cunt swallowing me up just like it was made to.”

“N-No—“ you whine, even though it’s not like you can ignore it. “Don’t make me, don’t make me look, I can’t—“

“Then look at me.”

It’s what he wants, some kind of wicked satisfaction he gets off on, but you’re lucky enough to even get an option so you choose that one, shifting your gaze up into his face instead of the place where his cock is pressing deeper and deeper inside you. Overhaul’s eyes are half-lidded and it’s hard to tell from behind the mask but the look on his face is…pleasure? No, that would be too human. Restraint, at least. He could just thrust up into your body in one stroke, but he wants you to feel it for some reason.

Maybe because it’s a worse betrayal of your chastity if you want to get fucked.

Lucky for you, though, you can barely feel anything aside from the pain. The heat you felt building earlier is draining out of you even as Overhaul tilts deeper, layering his chest over yours. You’re almost grateful for the modest barrier the dress provides between your torso and the solid muscle of his abdomen. His cock in your pussy feels like it’s too big too deep too much and it’s the first time you’ve felt like your body wasn’t created specifically for this purpose so you hold it tight.

“Does it hurt?”

A second of clarity makes you want to snarl (of course it fucking hurts, I’m losing my virginity to a demon I summoned from hell) and you dig your fingernails into your palms to stop yourself from saying it out loud. Overhaul pulls out a fraction of an inch and then pushes back in and you feel like the breath’s being pushed out of your lungs. “Yes! Yes, it—it hurts—“

“I can make you enjoy it…for a price,” he sighs, settling into a slow rocking motion of his hips pushing into yours.

And you want to, every sore muscle in your cunt is telling you to give in and give up, give him what he wants so you can enjoy it like he says—but you’d rather hate every second of this than make another deal. You shake your head quickly and because you’re still too afraid to look away from him, you don’t miss the look of surprise that flits across his face before he tamps it down. “I don’t—I don’t want to—like it,” you gasp out between thrusts. “It’s better if—if it h-hurts…”

This time it’s obvious—his eyes really do widen, and you feel some petty triumph at having caught him off guard like this. Who’s predictable now? you think—and then he’s lifting one hand off the altar at the side of your head and tugging his glove off with his teeth, and you don’t even have time to be afraid of what he’s going to do to you because it’s too late, his bare fingers are already stroking over your mound and onto your core, massaging into the flesh of your stomach so he can feel his own cock sliding in and out of you—

and it doesn’t hurt anymore?

You only have a second to try and understand—he cured you, he healed the pain from your first time just like he healed your illness?—before he hooks his grip under your thigh and folds your legs into your chest so he can fuck into you harder than before. His cock slaps into your pussy and you can hear it, hear how wet your filthy little cunt is, smeared through with your juices. It’s sick—the sound of skin against skin, and the moaning you can’t hold back, you sound like a woman in a porno and you wish the pain would come back just so you could keep hating what he’s doing to you. “What—what did you do—“

The demon ignores you. “It feels good, doesn’t it.”

“Nn—“ It’s deeper like this…deeper and rougher and you can feel it. Now that the pain’s been reduced to the dull ache of a stretched muscle, you can feel everything—his cock sliding against that same spot in your cunt that makes you want to squeal, the friction of his body moving against your clit, all of it, everything you wanted to block out— he pumps into you and you hear your breath sobbing out a moan a second out of rhythm, the sounds of you bouncing on demon cock echoing over the walls. “Please—ah, ahhh…”

“‘Please?’ Are you begging—me, little girl?” Overhaul pushes your thigh up and drags his cock through you, excruciatingly slow, forcing you to feel the thick head slide over every gummy wall in your slick pussy.

You shake your head, mewl, try to force your hips to stop rocking back into his and grinding your clit against him. But you can’t. You’re a—you were a virgin, for fuck’s sake! Overhaul’s immortal. Probably thousands of years of experience on how to make you feel like you want this, like you’re only alive in the places he touches you… You’re at his mercy, if he has any. You never stood a chance.

“Then are you begging your god?” His body lowers directly onto yours and like you’re being controlled by puppet strings your arms fold around him and rake your fingernails uselessly into the smooth skin of his back. You can feel the vibration of his mirthless laughter through his chest. “It must hurt terribly…to know he isn’t listening.”

“Don’t—stop, please,” you sob. “Don’t say—don’t stop—please!”

“Listen to yourself, girl—“ Overhaul’s breath is faster now, but you don’t have time to question it because you feel your peak coming again, the tension rising up through your cunt and your abdomen, harsher and crueler than when his fingers were in you but you want it just as much. More. “Has he ever answered your prayers? Has he...ahh, fuck—who’s the one giving you what you need?”

“No— please, please just let me let me, please—“ You’re talking nonsense now, begging for the release—at least then it’ll be over, and you need it, you need it so badly you feel your muscles locking up, cramping, your ankles crossing each other behind Overhaul’s back.

“Good girl,” the demon breathes, and then he lifts off you so he’s kneeling upright with the two of you still connected, his thick, heavy cock still speared in your pussy, and his fingers come down again to rub at your clit. Everything’s so wet you can hear the motion of his fingers slicking themselves through your juices, sliding up and down the little button over and over and it feels so good that a tiny part of you almost wants to drag it out, to savor it, but the rest of your body is going to die, is going to go crazy if the demon doesn’t let you cum right now, right now, right now!

And he does. Praise the Lord. The pads of Overhaul’s fingers pass over your clit one last time and your head rolls back, your throat moves but you can’t even make a sound, your legs shake and you cum.

You didn’t know it was like this.

Your cunt squeezes down on his cock, throbbing and pulsing and your toes literally curl (you didn’t think that was a real thing!) and your vision goes black for a moment and—oh fuck oh fuck i want this i want more how is it possible that i’ve never felt like this—you understand, more intimately than ever, why sex is wrong:

because nothing that makes you feel this good could possibly come without a cost, could it?

///

It must take longer than you thought for you to come back to your senses, because when you regain awareness of your body you’re in your hospital bed. You’re clean, too, and you wonder for a second if Overhaul bothered to clean you up? Or no…he probably just snapped his fingers and transported you back to your room. You’re not really sure how it works.

What you are sure of, however, is that you just got fucked by a demon. You’re sore in places that you didn’t know it was possible to be sore, and there are already bruises forming on the flesh of your thighs from how tight he was holding you. You don’t really have time to inspect these, though, because apparently your…ordeal (if you can call it that) isn’t over.

Overhaul’s still here.

He’s facing the hints of sunrise through the east window, dressed again in the immaculate lab coat and surgeon’s mask. “You’re awake,” he says without looking at you.

You nod hesitantly. You’re not really sure what the protocol is in this situation, but at least you’ve finally held up your side of the contract, right? And so has he. Despite having been up all night doing sinful things, you’re still itching to get out of this bed and test the limits of your healthy body. “You’re…going to leave, right?”

“Yes—”

At that, you sigh in relief and settle back into your starched bedsheets.

“But there’s one more thing you owe me.”

“Goddamnit,” you swear for the very first time in your life. After what you just did, taking the Lord’s name in vain seems like a relatively minor sin.

Overhaul’s mildly irritated expression doesn’t change, but he holds his hand out to you, palm up, the way you imagine someone would if they were helping you out of a car or requesting a dance at an old-fashioned ball. And really, you want all of this to be over—you want to get out of this hospital, you want to taste what the air outside is like, you want to distract yourself from what you just gave up in exchange for a future. At this point you’re just going to have to hope God isn’t as picky about the whole premarital sex thing as you grew up believing.

So you put your hand in Overhaul’s.

Slowly, carefully, like he’s afraid it’ll burn him, he slides your purity ring down your finger and balances it in the palm of his bare hand. It sizzles when he touches it, glowing orange until it eventually burns down into a ash-black circle in the center of his palm. Once he’s satisfied that your pretty little ring has been reduced to nothing more than a scorch mark, he closes his hand around yours and you feel something sharp, painfully hot, etching onto your finger.

It’s over in a second, but you still yelp and yank your hand away from him as soon as he lets you. “Ah—ow, what was that?”

He burned you, he literally burned you! He’s already healed it, but there’s still a thin, pale scar, an intentional one left wrapping around the skin at the base of your left ring finger. Like a wedding ring.

When you look close, you can make out a symbol on the back of your finger where the cross used to sit—and even though your conscious mind doesn’t recognize it, the sight of it rings out something inside your ribcage, deeper and truer than flesh and blood. It’s the devil’s mark, you think. It’s his.

“…A promise,” Overhaul says softly, and even though it’s a chilly morning, you can feel the heat of his hands on yours a long time after he vanishes back into the dark.

[ptergwen]

smoke and mirrors

⇢ richkid!tom x richkid!reader ⇠

w/c: 4.1k

warnings: swearing, drinking, light angst, and implied smut

summary: because of your mother’s insistence on a pristine family image and tom’s messy one, you deny your true feelings for him

a/n: ok ok ok the pics of tom in monaco really made me think and i had to get everything out of my system so here we are! thank you and enjoy x

-

your living room is engulfed by a hushed chatter that comes from far too many guests. half the people, you hardly know. it’s overcrowded, superficial, and the last place you want to be. it’s one of your mother’s get-togethers, as she likes to call them. these things are always far from the casual affairs they sound like.

weeks go into planning, caterers and decorators making themselves at home in yours. the family’s image is everything to your mom, so being a good hostess is her top priority. ironically, she’s more concerned with throwing her gatherings than raising you. so much for family, huh?

the only reason you agreed to make an appearance tonight is that tom might do the same. he’s a really good friend, someone you’ve been able to count on through all the mess that is your lives. you met in high school, when he moved from london to the states. his dad was offered a job promotion he couldn’t pass up. plus, tom and his brothers would be receiving a stellar private education here in america.

it was a win for everyone, especially you. the freckle faced boy who got lost on his way to english class became your closest confidant. tom’s company is such a sweet escape. he’s not interested in opera or the stock market like most people you meet are. he sneaks you out to go on walks at dawn and does shots with you until you can’t stand straight.

as you two continue to grow together, revelations about yourselves have come to light. what you want beyond your inheritances, who you want beyond friendship. you figured out the second part on a faithful night recently. tom showed up to your place with a bottle of tequila. after you drank it down through lots of lime chasers and giggles, he kissed you. you didn’t kiss back.

your heart said to go for it, but your mind pulled you back in. you were so shocked and overcome with new feelings, you froze up. that, and you’d infuriate your mother. although she cares about tom a great deal, she loathes his public figure. he’s always getting papped in places and with people he shouldn’t be. the two of you together would just destroy her.

you still want to please your mom at the end of the day, no matter how deep under your skin she gets.

tom immediately apologized and tried play it off as him being drunk. you grew up with him, became part of each other’s families, which means you know him well enough to know he was lying. he meant every second his lips were on yours.

what you need to do now is something you’ve meant to for a while. the only problem is that you’re stuck at your mother’s party, and tom hasn’t shown up yet.

“y/n, darling,” your mom calls for your attention. she’s dragged you into a conversation with some bloggers, but you haven’t spoken a word. “why don’t you tell us about your trip to spain last summer?” she plasters on her award winning grin and squeezes your shoulder. it’s time to play along.

“oh, it was beautiful,” you halfheartedly reply, more to the bloggers than her. they nod in clear interest. one jots down notes. “we went for a few weeks and visited a bunch of different cities. i’d love to go back sometime.” the typical press formatted answer earns your mom’s approval. you’re off the hook. your eyes start to wander around the room, hoping to set on tom.

“we?” the woman taking notes asks. must everyone pry? “my friend and i,” you shortly reply. you’re standing up on your tiptoes to see over the crowd. you’d think six inch heels would do the trick. “i’m actually looking for him right now, so if you’ll excuse me,” you offer a polite smile and silently pray they won’t ask who. unfortunately, your wishes don’t come true.

the other blogger, a short and stubborn man, speaks up. “just a friend you say? come on, tell us. who’s the lucky fella?” he inquires. your mother raises a firm eyebrow, signaling for you not to.

tom has a reputation for his reckless behavior. it’s your mom’s worst nightmare when the media associates your names under most circumstances. you’re representing her, so she does whatever she can to control how you’re seen. you’re constantly in the papers, being a young socialite and all. it sucks.

“he’d like to stay out of the tabloids, sorry,” you cover for tom, on your mom’s behalf. “i should really go. it was nice meeting you.” the bloggers don’t bother to hide their disappointment as you shake their hands. your mother rubs your back in approval. “thank you for doing that. we’ll talk later,” she speaks lowly. “bye, mom!” you practically make a run for it. 

weaving through the sea of people, you end up by the main entrance. it’s hard not to get lost even though it’s your house. the place is packed with girls just a couple years older than you, wearing pearls around their necks. men’s strong colognes flow through the air. you’re in a form fitting red slip dress and louboutins yourself.

smoke and mirrors is what they call it. you show the pretty parts to distract from your ugly ones.

harrison suddenly comes waltzing in with a lady on either of his arms. you’d expect nothing less. he’s tom’s best friend besides you, considering the failed kiss attempt didn’t change that. their parents worked at the london branch of the same company. they each came to the states and met you. you happily introduced them to your world, helping to make it theirs as well.

“haz!” you meet him at the front door. he’s smirking while he leads the women inside. “fancy seeing you here, isn’t it?” he jokes. “very funny. i died laughing,” you deadpan, curiously eyeing harrison’s plus two. they merely giggle. “listen, have you seen tom anywhere? if he’s coming.” you’re fighting back a frown. “why wouldn’t he be?” harrison questions in a more serious tone this time.

“long story. you have guests to entertain, so i won’t get into it now,” you decide and manage a small smile instead. he perks up. “right. i’ll let you know if i see him?” nodding, you give him a wave goodbye. “enjoy yourself.” “you too, love. cheers!” the girls lean into him, harrison wiggling his eyebrows at you. he’s ridiculous.

hours pass by without word of tom. it isn’t like him to miss an event, especially if you’re in attendance. you despise these exhausting nights, and he’s supposed to be your rock during them. he should have his arm draped around your shoulders, whispering silly remarks to you while you hide out somewhere. you miss him more than you thought possible.

you’re just about to give up when you spot nikki ushering her husband inside. behind them follows tom, clad in a grey checkered suit with his locks perfectly tousled. he’s here. you waited the whole night, and he finally came.

tom kisses his mom on the cheek before strutting over to the drink table, not without a few reporters hassling him. they’re probably looking for another holland scandal to break. he declines their requests for comments on this and opinions on that, instead pulling up a chair next to harrison. the two exchange hugs and fix themselves glasses of champagne, you watching their encounter.

harrison fills tom in on the drama he’s missed tonight while they sip their drinks. tom keeps forcing smiles that don’t reach his eyes. he’s fiddling with his fingers, leg bouncing up and down steadily. those are the telltale signs he needs saving. however awkward it may be, you’re going to have to break your silence. it was bound to happen eventually.

“mate, i’m telling you. she fit her entire first right up her-“ “boys,” you cut into harrison’s story, greeting him and tom. his face tints deep pink upon your arrival. “don’t let me stop you. finish your charming anecdote,” you encourage him and subtly glance over at tom. he’s biting back a grin as he sets his elbows on the table.

“not with a lady present. let’s just… pretend you didn’t hear that,” harrison chuckles nervously and hops to his feet. “i’m gonna leave you two to chat.” humming, you move to take his chair. tom sucks in a breath. “what happened to the girls you brought?” you wonder. “they left. said they got bored,” harrison admits, tom stifling laughter. he elbows his friend for that.

“oh, fuck off. i’ll see you later,” he mopes, flicking your arm for good measure. tom salutes him and grabs his nearly empty champagne. “so long, bruv.”

it’s just you and tom now, seated side by side, silently so. he has no intentions of speaking first. he’s too embarrassed, and you don’t blame him. this is on you. you clear your throat before starting the conversation.

“can i top you off?” you tap the bottom of his glass with a tiny smile. tom shakes his head. “i’m alright, thanks.” he finishes the last sip and sets it down, turning to face you. your smile has vanished. “wasn’t sure you were gonna make it. i’m glad you did,” you change the subject. as if he’s considering the sincerity behind your words, tom furrows his eyebrows.

“mum wanted us to. she dragged me and dad straight off the golf course,” he explains and clasps his hands in his lap. his fingers interlock with each other. you fight off the urge to replace them with yours. “we would’ve been here sooner, but the paps are camped outside.” the hint of a smile forms on his lips, at last. “guess it’s not often you get the town’s finest under one roof.”

“you think i’m one of the town’s finest?” you tease, resting your chin in your palm. something flashes behind tom’s eyes. he looks right into yours, scooting closer. “absolutely. you’re the most eligible bachelorette in this whole building.” you allow a toothy grin to spread across your face. “tommy, stop it. you’re too nice to me.”

the nickname is music to his ears. tom looks you up and down, licking his lips simultaneously. “no, seriously. you look gorgeous,” he muses, you pushing at his chest. he exhales a breathy laugh, and you giggle yourself. “red’s definitely your color.” “reverse card. you wear it way better than i do,” you insist. your fingers tug at the collar of his suit. “too bad you didn’t match me.”

you’re relieved you two can talk like you usually do, light flirting and good vibes. it might not be so hard to put the kiss behind you. well, you can’t go on pretending it didn’t happen. you have to at least discuss the fiasco. tom should know why you didn’t reciprocate, then you can take it from there. whether he still has feelings for you, assuming he ever did, will depend on how that turns out.

“not to ruin the fun, but we still have to talk,” you murmur, tom’s body stiffening across from yours. he’s not sure he’s ready to discuss that. “can it wait? we’re at a party,” tom reminds you, running a hand through his styled locks. “yeah, my mother’s. don’t tell me you’re having a good time,” you playfully chastise him. he simply shrugs. “hardly. you’re the best part.”

you ignore the butterflies roaming about your body.

“you won’t mind a quick convo, then. it is with me,” you attempt to persuade him and place a hand on his knee. tom coughs a bit too loudly, the contact surprising him. “you know what? i think i’ll take you up on that drink first,” he decides with a mustered up smile. “coming right up.” you pat his leg before taking his glass. he chews on his lower lip while you poor the bubbling liquid. that was certainly… odd.

you slide tom his champagne back with an exaggerated wink. tom scoffs at this. “mm, thanks. care to join me?” he brings the alcohol to his lips, eyes never leaving yours. your mother specifically said no drinking tonight, since the press would be here. screw your mother, though. “please. could you hand me a glass?” you eagerly grab the champagne bottle. tom searches for an empty cup next to him.

you two are unspoken drinking buddies at this point.

“here you are, darling,” tom drawls, holding out the glass for you. every time he calls you that, you completely melt. “thanks, tommy,” you purr in response. you’re finally pouring your own drink when someone taps you on the shoulder, and hard. you look behind you to find your mother standing with her hands on her hips, less than thrilled. speak of the devil.

“hello, mother. can i help you?” you make sure to ask rudely. she responds with a smile that’s obviously fake. if tom weren’t here, you’d be getting scolded. “yes, my darling. those bloggers from earlier were hoping you’d finish your interview.” your mom shakes your shoulder in a motherly way. you squint up at her. “didn’t they leave hours ago-“ “they’re back,” she sharply informs you.

she’s lying, and you have a hunch as to why.

frowning, you hold tom’s hand in both of yours. “sorry, this won’t take long. why don’t you go find tuwaine?” you suggest instead. “he’s around here somewhere.” tom gives you an understanding nod and laces your fingers together, even if it’s only for a moment. “must be chatting up some producers or whatnot. i’ll see if i can help.” he’s such an incredible friend to everyone. he deserves the same from you.

“thomas, so lovely to see you,” your mom interrupts. tom stands up, kissing both her cheeks out of courtesy. “you, too. what a wonderful party. thank you for having us.” despite what the rest of the world believes, his manners are impeccable. “of course. give nikki my best, will you?” your mom puts her hands on his shoulders. he grins at her. “definitely. take care, mrs. y/l/n.” “always a pleasure,” she states, nudging you to come along with her.

you shoot tom one last apologetic look as your mother pulls you along and towards the crowd.

tom is no idiot. he’s well aware how she really feels about him.

when a swarm of guests is surrounding you, your mom lets go. you scowl, crossing your arms over your chest. “why would you do that? i haven’t seen tom in days.” she sighs without a care. “isn’t it time you branch out? expand your social circle?” her manicured fingers ruffle your hair. you push away her touch. “i’m social enough. we were in the middle of something really important.”

you begin to walk away, but your mother takes your arm. “whatever you’re about to do, it’s a mistake. he’ll make a fool of you,” she practically spits. yanking your arm from her grasp, you laugh bitterly. “of me, or of the family name? look around, mom.” you gesture to the spot beside her where your dad should be. “as far as i’m concerned, i have no family except tom. i’m gonna go check on him.”

you’re gone before your mom can stop you. she simply stands there, utterly mortified by what you said.

you run around the house to find tom, stumbling in your heels and not giving a fuck. you’d truly meant the part about him being your family. all the holland’s, honestly. they’re the most genuine and caring souls, and you don’t want to lose the one you’re closest to because of your mother’s delusions. 

tom is in a circle with harrison and tuwaine, the three of them chuckling amongst themselves. you’d hate to bug him, but this can’t wait anymore.

“uh, tom?” you mumble his name, appearing behind him. he steps away with another quiet laugh. “hey, y/n/n. that was quick, hm?” your face gives away your distress. his whole demeanor shifting, tom reaches for your hands. “what is it, love? is something the matter?” “just… come with me,” you croak out.

you manage to smile at harrison and tuwaine, dropping one of tom’s hands so you can lead him upstairs. they each return the smile and share curious looks.

following behind you, tom keeps your hand tight in his own. he’d thought you were going to grill him about the kiss that barely happened. it seems like this is a much more pressing matter. his outburst of emotions can be discussed another time. now, it’s time to deal with yours.

you drag tom into the first room on the second floor, which is your dad’s study. he’s away on business this weekend, so he luckily couldn’t make the party. tom sits down in the office chair. you sit up on the desk, in front of him. your lip quivers the second his worried features come into view.

“y/n/n, what’s going on? why are we in here?” tom wonders, his tone soft. your heart clenches. “i- i wanted us to have some privacy when i told you this,” you sniffle out and blink back the tears forming. you’re sort of shaken from the conversation with your mother, and mostly because you have no idea how tom will react to your confession.

his hands come to stay on your thighs, right below your dress. they feel warm against your bare skin.

“tell me what? i’m listening, yeah?” tom gazes up at you with so much love. “lay it all out for me.” god, he’s fucking amazing. if only you knew where to start. “do you, um…” you trail off, letting your tears subside and words settle. “do you remember when your family made your big debut in town?”

a grin replaces tom’s frown, painting his beautiful face. “how could i forget? you made it quite memorable.” he traces circles on your thigh and elicits a giggle from you. “i spilled a whole thing of soda on your white fucking button down,” you recount with a lighthearted sigh. “right before your dad was supposed to introduce you to everyone, too.”

tom presses his tongue into his cheek to hold back another grin. “took ages to get it out. dad went mad when i didn’t show.” he cocks his head to the side, you leaning back on your hands. “you held me hostage in the laundry room so you could do that bloody stain stick.” your mouth drops open in mock offense. “i had to clean up my mess! i wasn’t gonna let the world meet you covered in pepsi.”

that was one of your earliest memories together. the holland’s threw a party and invited everyone who was willing to attend. they had been hoping to properly introduce themselves to the town, and this was their way of doing so. although yours and tom’s friendship was fairly new, you spent all night together because you had experience with such events.

tom’s dad was making a speech to thank the guests for coming. you and him listened from the snack table, until his name was called. he rushed to go up there while you were pouring yourself a drink. he’d bumped into you, and the bottle ended up all over him. you snuck tom right off to his laundry room.

you’d felt terrible as he stood there shirtless and blushing, you aggressively swiping his button down with a stain stick.

“why do you bring that up?” tom questions and continues circling your skin. you purse your lips. “i dunno. it was the last party i actually enjoyed,” you admit, putting your hand over his that rests on your thigh. “like to reminisce when i’m suffering through one of my mother’s.” his eyes shift to where your hands are laced. “i see,” he affirms. “so, is that… all you wanted to talk about?” “not even close,” you laugh out.

a burst of courage coursing through your body, you say it. “when you kissed me the other night-“ “i won’t do it again,” tom cuts in, trying to avoid the rejection he thinks you’ll give him. “it was a mistake, and i’m so sorry. our friendship is more important than my feelings.” you seem excited to hear that, though it’s not for the reason tom expects. “you do have feelings for me?”

he’d forgotten about his i was drunk excuse.

“um, yeah. i do,” he admits, cheeks rosy and lip caught in his teeth. “but, i’ll learn to put them aside, if that’s what’s best.” “no, no. it isn’t,” you dismiss him and put your free hand on his chest. “i love you, tom. that’s what i was really trying to tell you.” your words bring an instant grin to his face. he chuckles in disbelief, standing from the chair.

“fuck, thank god. that’s all i’ve ever wanted to hear.” he’s between your legs now, his hands moving up to your hips. you’re beaming at him as your arms snake around his neck. a burning question comes to tom’s mind. “hang on. why didn’t you kiss me back, then?” he almost whispers, thumb brushing over your hipbone. “this is gonna sound weird, but… my mom,” you reluctantly let out.

“you’re gonna have to elaborate,” tom prompts you and raises an eyebrow. you can’t hold back your eye roll. “she’s never been a fan of the person you are in the media.” his lips form a line. “i gathered.” your fingers tangle in his curls at the nape of his neck reassuringly. “i was subconsciously scared i would be letting her down in some way, if we were together.”

tom allows your hands to work their way up to his scalp. he exhales contentedly as you play with his ever so soft hair. “i understand, she’s intimidating. what’s changed that brilliant mind of yours about coming clean?” your nose scrunches up when he pokes one of your temples. “oh, yeah. i yelled at her earlier ‘cuz she stole me away from you.” his face lights up. “sexy.” “shut up,” you groan. “someone had to tell her off.”

“good thing it got to be you,” tom agrees with a squeeze at your hip. “‘m proud of you, y/n/n. it’s not easy, standing up to mummy dearest.” you tug on his hair. “like you’d know. nikki is a saint.” “that’s what she’ll have you believe,” he says under his breath, you gasping. his lips turn up in a smirk. “on that note… i love you, too.”

“would’ve been embarrassing if you didn’t say it back,” you acknowledge with a cheesy smile. tom dips his head down to rest his forehead against yours. “yeah, yeah. save the attitude for your mum.” your legs easily wrap around his waist, tom’s breath hot as it hits your face. “let’s give that kiss another go,” you mewl. he doesn’t hesitate to reply. “with pleasure.”

tom’s lips land on yours, you kissing back right away. he smiles into it as your lips gently move together. “about fucking time,” he grumbles, your hands situating in his chocolate curls once again. he’s savoring every second you touch him, kiss him, love him. the taste of your mouth is one he’s craved for longer than you could imagine.

it doesn’t take long for things to heat up, you messing with tom’s hair and tom rubbing your hips. you lay back on the desk as his tongue enters your mouth. holding you by your waist, tom hovers over you. his tongue tangles with yours in a deep kiss. between that and his fingers beginning to massage your thigh, you’re done for. you’re ready to take this a step further by the time he’s kissing down your neck.

“tommy?” you grab onto his shoulders, your head back. his lips detach from your skin with a grin. “yeah, love? ‘s everything okay?” he coos, pressing a final kiss to your collarbone. “more than.” you tilt his chin up to peck his lips. “you wouldn’t happen to have a condom, would you? just thinking ahead.” he laughs breathlessly, reaching into his suit pocket.

“conveniently enough, i do. not sure your dad would like me fucking you on his desk, though.” tom sets his hand on your leg that’s still hooked around his waist. “my room’s always available. carry me?” you make grabby hands and bat your lashes. he hoists you up by your waist, not lifting you just yet. “that would break the news of us, no? your mum’s gonna go apeshit.” he keeps his arms around you, chuckling.

“let her. besides, i know a couple of bloggers that would love to announce our status update.” you peck tom’s lips, grinning as you do. you’re suddenly in the air and being picked up by tom. the surprise of it makes you squeal, clutching onto his broad shoulders instinctively. he gives you the look of adoration that’s reserved for you only.

“we’ll go pop a few bottles with everyone, then we’re celebrating on our own.”

[abluescarfonwaston]

Trucy and Maya sign Phoenix up for Queer eye after his name is cleared. By the time filming starts he’s decided to study for the bar again and is honestly excited to have some help putting his life back together.

They tear apart his house and drag him for the fact he is wearing socks with sandles and his closet is nothing but sweatshirts and beach clothes. He Does have an old like shakespeare costume in the depths of his closet that Johnathan puts on as well as the Furio Tigre shirt. They check out the magic equipment and Phoenix goes on his proud dad rant about how she’s the light of his life and so talented and he loves her-

Jonathan takes him to the salon for a hair cutting. Under the Beanie his hair got kinda long and gnarly. He didn’t want people to recognize him and even know the idea of it’s still a little anxiety provoking. But he also Wants to look good again and feel confident. Jonathan gives him a scruff trim too and they stop at a goatee. They laugh and Phoenix sends a picture to someone. Oooh your boyfriend? Haha not exactly. They end up going clean shaven tho. As they’re walking out Phoenix stares at his phone and goes. Huh. Maybe we should have kept the goatee.

Antoni asks him what he can cook. He proudly announces he makes the best pancakes. And that he can make a few other things that aren’t blatant depression meals. That what he knows he learned cause he wanted to take care of Trucy but he’s a little ashamed at how often the priority was ‘just make sure she eats something’ because he was too exhausted for more. That he Wants to have this big family dinner with all the people who helped and supported him while he was disbarred. Antoni teaches him how to make a big roast for special occasions and some easier healthy meals for normal days.

Bobby helps him reestablish his house, reducing the clutter that Phoenix has been too tired to clean himself along with making the space more usable to the big groups of family Phoenix wants to be able to host here without embarrassment. 

Tan takes him out to get new clothes. Before he does Trucy actually pulls Tan aside and says her uncle already got Daddy a new suit and can we arrange it so Daddy finds it because it’s perfect but Uncle Miles is worried he’s putting the pressure on too hard since Daddy’s already taking the bar exam for him again (again?) and-

Tan gets him a wardrobe that is more presentable and upscale for court/everyday. They ‘find’ a blue suit with a red tie. Phoenix breaks down crying and Tan is Very concerned but - No... I just... I know who made this suit. That jerk. Of course he already had a suit made for me. I love it. It’s perfect.

And Karamo and him talk about how he has all these people he owes so much to now because he couldn’t have done this without them and he doesn’t know how to even start paying them all back and honestly he was such a bastard these last few years and he’s not even sure how to stop being that person sometimes even though he Wants to. He wants to be that trusting person that Believes in people again. And maybe they all expect him to go back to being that person and he doesn’t want to disappoint them because he loves them so fucking much especially after they went and did this for him too-

And Karamo stops him and asks him if he saw the video that his family submitted asking them to come help Phoenix. Which he hasn’t.

Daddy gave up everything for me. To make sure I grew up happy and loved and he did. He’s the best Daddy in the world. And I want him to be happy. Just as happy as he’s made me.

Nick’s been there for me, when no one else was. Just. Over and over again. Believed in me when no one else did. Pearl give Trucy the camera and come tell everyone how awesome Nick is. He just needs a little help remembering that. Cause he’s a idiot sometimes.

Wright is... he’s my oldest and dearest friend. He’s brilliant and kind and he saved me. And if there is anything I can do to help him reclaim his proper place in the courtroom I would do it, without hesitation. Once you see him in court you’ll understand exactly why I- Kay. Kay why do you have a camera?!

You said you’d do anything Mr. Edgeworth!

I- what is this about?!

“You know you’re friends better than we do but I don’t think they’re keeping score. And if you really want to show your gratitude, beating yourself up over it isn’t the way to do it. You could start by saying thank you instead.”

“Heh. I told Edgeworth that same thing.”

And they invite the whole Wright family over to the big thank you feast. He’s cleaned up and wearing a nice Dad sweater. He gets dog piled in hugs and then Maya yells at him for not making hamburgers instead. Edgeworth shows up a hour late with a bottle of wine and a faint smile.

“Wright I was lead to believe you purchased a suit recently? If you’re done covering yourself in flour,” I’m gonna cover you in flour. “Would you like to show us.”

“Don’t expose the kids to your suit fetish Edgeworth.”

“That’s not! Wright just-. Put the damn suit on Wright.”

“Hahah yeah okay.”

He does and everyone tells him how great he looks and damn is that a waistcoat? Someone’s grown up. And not just out. 

And Edgeworth just watches him with quiet tender eyes as everyone else talks.

“Wright?” Hm? “You’re missing a part.”

“Huh? I got everything! I double- no - Triple checked!”

“You forgot this.” He opens his palm. A shiny golden badge in it. “Congrats on passing the bar exam.”

The episode is a fan favorite.

[utilitycaster]

Wizard Breakdown Tracker, #135

Each week I think “man it would have been cool if I had thought of this idea, in which I make jokes about how stressed out the wizard NPCs are, during, you know, the Vergesson heist or something when we were interacting with more than one wizard NPC instead of during a dungeon crawl with only one wizard NPC, emphasis on crawl” but you know what, I persevere, because where else am I going to put song parodies about the death of Vess Derogna that are literally only funny to me? Twitter?

Anyway while I am personally team Jester, in that the faster Lucien is simultaneously disintegrated, run through in the chest with both a vestige and a holy avenger, shot through the heart (and Veth’s to blame), beheaded with a hand axe, banished, punched in the face, and sent into a black hole the better, the party has other plans. Thanks to the long rest though it has been about 12 hours, plus the 4-ish from last week, so I guess we’ll check in with a few of our other wizard friends as well.

As a reminder Caleb Widogast is a PC and thus excluded from this list.

Currently sidelined

Presumably having a good day: Pumat Sol (blissfully unaware of all of this); Allura Vyesoren (saint-like patience and a wealth of experience with disaster adventuring parties; at least this one has a cleric at more than 0.33 FTE, a wizard, and some lesbians), Ludinus Da’leth (this miserable pile of power plays wakes up every morning and is like Isn’t it Grand to be head of the evil wizard council and no one realizes I probably destroyed the first non-drow elven civilization on the continent to arise after the calamity! Fetch me more pastries!).

No idea but here’s hoping he found the cat portion of ScryTube: Oremid Hass

Lady DeRogna, taken off the scene, sorry that your murder happened while off-screen.

Trent Ikithon: I’ve established that I think the only real things that can damage Trent emotionally are Caleb paying too much attention to him so as to destroy his standing within the empire, or else Caleb ignoring him. Honestly if Trent would not continue to torture students and spread propaganda if left unchecked I think he could be slowly murdered solely through Caleb expressing apathy. So despite the amulets of nondetection I like to imagine that somehow, somewhere, Trent felt Caleb reaffirm to Essek that his top priority is still stopping the city from returning, not Trent, and it necrotized just a little bit more of his liver.

Conclusion: 7/10. I went to the OG evil mageocracy and no one knew who you were.

Essek Thelyss: Well on the one hand he’s still flirting but on the other imagine spending a literal century being like “what if we’re wrong about how we approach the fundamental basis for our society” and he just got proved right. I have to imagine he’s got that kind of stress where suddenly everything becomes dead calm and also this explains why he unnecessarily cast a 3rd level spell, which he knows could in theory cause him to lose all his hair, to impress a boy. I didn’t even get into the conversations he had with Caleb, the bad dreams and eyeballs, Fjord teasing him, Yasha being like “ALRIGHT ALREADY”, the horrible Aeorian creatures, the fact that robots might be back(?) or his ongoing terror that the Assembly is after him!

Conclusion: 8/10 but he’s like, kind of having a good time. Essek is in all ways but physical in a Hawaiian shirt right now drinking a Mai Tai and going Nothing Matters; I presume he will have a full breakdown following the boss battle and honestly he deserves it.

Astrid Beck: Others have already established the parallels between Essek and Astrid but honestly I want to highlight it because really, on the one hand we have Essek, whose world is crashing around him because he was right all along and is in terrible immediate danger but surrounded by friends, and on the other we have Astrid, whose world is crashing around her because she was wrong all along and she’s probably not in immediate danger but Eadwulf is the only person she can trust and we don’t know all the details about that either.

Conclusion: 8/10 but in the bad way, not Essek’s kind of fun way.

Wulfpupy:

Conclusion: 3/10. You know that tiktok with the blonde woman with glasses who has a lot of highlighter on her nose who talks about how sometimes if you have guy friends they will say something deeply fucked up and you’ll be like “oh my god do we unpack this right now” and then you look over at them and the only thing in their mind are the lyrics to Kokomo? That’s Wulf. He will activate the second Caleb comes back in town or Astrid actually falls apart but until then he is on Island Time.

Yussa Errenis: I wonder if there’s a small part of Yussa that is part of the city’s awareness and, moreover, can see what Beau and Caleb at least are doing, and he’s like “I’m so simultaneously proud and impatient, also we live in a world that does not have IV fluids so like, hopefully my body still exists in some kind of functioning state when I am rescued” (note: did I google “how were coma patients kept alive in olden times” for this? Perhaps.) Anyway if he is aware he’s also just like, watching all this like “I WILL GET YOU SO MUCH PAPER OH MY GOD CAN YOU JUST KISS THE OTHER WIZARD SAVE ME FROM THE EVIL HIVEMIND CITY.”

Conclusion: I mean still infinity/10, he is still trapped in the city of madness and also if he does have a small part of his mind that is sane and able to observe the material plane he also is aware that Trent and the Volstruckers broke into his tower.

Known Gem Wizard Hotsauce Lutefisk: I know, I know, weird that I brought him up. However consider: Yussa’s wizard tower now contains two wizards in suspended animation, their consciousnesses trapped in eldritch astral sea-related spaces. This is incredibly funny to me. We’re in a real Old Lady who swallowed a fly scenario except it’s centuries-old wizards getting sucked into traps because of their own hubris. The reason why mageocracies no longer exist isn’t the lack of magical knowledge or even because power corrupts absolutely, it’s because literally just put some lightly fried forbidden knowledge under a box with a stick propping it up, add your parody of Long-Term Nuclear Waste Warnings above it, and a wizard will be like “that sign won’t stop me because I CAN read and what’s more I’m better at reading than you are!” And then they get trapped in a box.

Conclusion: what is a breakdown tracker to a man whose mind has been stuck in a gem for, from his perspective, at minimum about 35 years?

[lululawrence]

Can u please be nicer on ao3? Maybe you should try answering people's comments

when i read the first line i was honestly flabbergasted and wracking my brain trying to figure out when in the world i wasn't nice on ao3 ever. because i honestly truly try to be nice to everyone always, even when i'm angry or frustrated or people are going after those i love and want to protect. if there was a time i WASN'T nice on ao3, i wondered if it was maybe because my comment had been misunderstood or someone saw me razzing an author i'm good friends with and they didn't get that we are close and i said what i did with so much love and appreciation, you know? like what??? did i do???

but then i read your second line. and please forgive me if i come off as rude in my response to this, because honestly i'm in a pretty bad spot mentally and emotionally in general right now, but PARTICULARLY today, and this ask triggered an anxiety response in me. so. i'm trying really hard to word this in a way to educate without being condescending or mean, but i might not succeed.

firstly, thank you for your comments i'm assuming you've left. i'm also assuming they were nice comments, in which case extra thanks. i'm sure i'll send you effusive responses on ao3 when the time comes.

secondly, please understand that sending an ask like this, on anonymous no less, is incredibly entitled. writing is not my profession, i receive no compensation for my works that i post for free online, and as a part of that it is not required of me to respond. i do my very best to reply to every comment i receive, but it is not always in a timely manner, because i have other priorities in my life. all of which leads us to my third point, which is:

writers do not owe you a reply to your comments. end of. there are no other qualifications or quantifying modifiers to be added to the statement. is it nice to be acknowledged and know your comment was seen? sure. but do they OWE you one? hell no.

in fact, i'd like to offer you a suggestion. a way of tweaking your thinking about the comments you leave on fics. instead of looking at comments you leave as being something that deserves a reply from the author, think of your comments as your way of paying the author for the gift of their time and talents that they have shared with you by posting their fic. that's how i think of the comments i leave for authors. i'm giving them my thanks for the words they've shared! i want to help THEM feel as amazing as they have made ME feel when i read their fic. in fact, my hope isn't necessarily a response from them, but instead my hope is THE GIFT OF THEM SHARING MORE FIC WITH ME. i'm a selfish bitch in that way and i always want all the fic to read. i never want that well to go dry. one way i can ensure that doesn't happen is by supporting authors and being kind to them and spreading all the love and excitement i can about their writing in the hopes that my words will inspire them to share more.

because whether they reply or not, i GUARANTEE they are seeing your comments. i PROMISE they are. and for all you know, your comment might be the one that keeps them writing even when their words aren't coming easily or when they are tempted to give up.

but, again, please remember that no matter what, these authors (including me) don't actually owe you anything.

the rest of this is going under a cut, because honestly my reply is already far too long and i have a LOT more to say now that you've gotten me started.

now, all of this in mind, i'll explain to you why i'm not great with keeping up with comments made on my fics the last couple of years. i don't owe you this explanation any more than i owe you a response to your comments, and i'm honestly not sure you deserve this explanation either, but i'll still offer it anyway. it'll help me feel better knowing i at least put this out there, whether you care or not, mainly because if i don't do that it will cause me greater anxiety having you possibly think i am not responding to people because i feel all high and mighty or that i think i'm better than the comments or whatever the fuck kind of motivation you're attributing to me to see my lack of a response as something "not nice" towards the commenters.

i'm not sure if you've noticed, but i put out a lot of fic. like a lot. a lot of words and shit. i love writing, it's often my therapy and a way for me to help keep my anxiety and depression and ptsd at bay.

now, more personal shit for you, i've got three kids ages 9 and under. the oldest has adhd which we have yet to find a med for that helps to the extent she needs without side effects that aren't healthy for her to continue with, she also has anxiety, AND she's extremely gifted and starting a new program at a new school, all in the midst of a pandemic. and all of those situations exacerbate her anxiety! huzzah! she's also dealing with the beginning of her tween growing up shit, which is great fun because it means where she used to be pretty damn understanding of her younger brother, she is finding it much more difficult to. because the second oldest? he's autistic with some pretty significant gross motor, speech, and socialization delays that have only been exacerbated because of the previously mentioned pandemic. PLUS he transitioned from his special needs preschool to a fully integrated elementary school for kindergarten last year and then had to deal with all the ups and downs of the switch from e-learning to hybrid to all in schooling when everything in him screams for a normal schedule he can rely on to keep his own anxieties and fears and struggles at their minimum. and that youngest child? he was born in january of last year. he STILL barely leaves the house and has only met other children in close range a couple of times because, once again, pandemic!

add onto all of this my own mental health issues, the fact that my husband ALSO battles major clinical depression, adhd, and anxiety, AND we live with my parents who have their own health issues, both mental and physical. i run the home for our house of seven. i keep this place functioning, fed, clothed, clean, and everywhere we need to be for all of our five million appointments every. fucking. day. there is a REASON i've been borderline burnt out for the last fucking year and a half.

now, for fun, i have fandom shit. i love it here, even if it is a dumpster fire on the best of days, and getting to be a part of the writing community is so very lovely. i adore it. honestly, it's because of those friendships i've built with other writers that i have been able to keep writing and have found just how helpful it can be for my mental health. but i'm REALLY. INCREDIBLY. BUSY. i hardly have time to get on tumblr for just a quick swipe through my dash most days. i put off asks so long i forget i have them. i don't have the mental and emotional capacity to talk to people on here or interact fully a lot of the time. but i do my best to do so and be kind while i'm at it even when i don't want to be.

then, on top of that? i also run fic fests like @wordplayfics and help friends run their own. because not only am i a writer, i'm a reader. i LOVE fic. fic has saved me soooooo many times over the past seven years that i've been here. i want to do what i can to support other writers the best way i can, which is to provide a space for them to create their works that welcomes and helps promote them, but also by doing my monthly fic lists and pocast highlighting what i've been able to read, reblogging their fic posts, and then commenting and kudosing their fics too.

sometimes i get really fucking down on myself because i'm so behind on replying to comments, but my brain is very much a "if you start this, you have to finish it" kind of a brain, and i feel even WORSE sometimes if i reply to comments on some fics and not all of them. but i do my best and reply when i can. i was actually really fucking proud of myself because i had a couple days to myself in june, and i spent hours replying to comments on 20 of my fics. when you have almost 150 fics (i think? i don't even know how many fics i've posted by now), that is only scratching the surface. but i tried and i was so so happy i did that many fics at once. it's exhausting, though, and takes a lot of spoons for me to reply to them in mass like that plus time consuming. so i tried to be happy with those 20 fics and the comments i responded to there and told myself that when i ha a moment to breathe, i'd go and work on replying to some more.

but see, that again causes anxiety and guilt. because i haven't replied to all of them. and that anxiety and guilt can cause me to put it off further OR to put off important things like feeding my children or getting sleep in order to finish it, so i have to make myself put things into perspective and ensure i'm doing the important things, like taking care of myself and my family, first.

and then, i have a moment where i CAN go ahead and reply to comments... but i also have MANY fics that are on deadline and i actually have a schedule. a SCHEDULE. for when i'm going to focus on which fics. i can spell it out for you if you really want. i made it back in APRIL to make sure i didn't sign up for too many fic fests because there are so many going on right now that i want to participate in, but i know i can't do all of them so i had to pick and choose. and when you are SO overscheduled and busy that back in APRIL you had to figure out what fics you would focus on at what time to ensure you got everything written when you wanted to through THE END OF THE YEAR, more choices have to be made.

for example. my writing time and time for myself came down to only one evening a week for ALL fandom things i'm doing and a part of right now once the kids were out of school for the summer. it quickly became apparent that for my own self care i needed more time, so i worked with my husband to find two other days i could carve out at least 30-60 minutes to myself to write every week. and i did. but if i'm already only getting that much time and have committed to those fics and fests and things that you're running etc, you have to choose am i going to use this time to try to squeeze in some comment replies? or am i going to write? and i choose to write. simple as that.

so yeah. see it as selfish if you want. see it as mean. you can honestly see it as whatever the fuck you want, but for me? i know that as soon as i possibly can and i can breathe freely for once and not feel like i am constantly drowning in my day to day life and am doing pretty well when it comes to my fic deadlines and getting started on those christmas cards i'm once again going to be making by hand for everyone on tumblr who chooses to sign up for one this year out of the KINDNESS of my heart and the love i really do feel for so many of you, then i promise i'll be on ao3 catching up and commenting. my friends laugh and make fun of me for it sometimes, because they will sometimes get 10-12 replies to their comments in a single day. they know that's how i work. i WILL reply to every single comment i get, no matter how old it is. but for the love of all that is holy, do NOT add to the anxiety and guilt i already feel over it. the only place that will get you is the ask/comment getting deleted if it's a good day, a fucking long rant like this one if it's not, and a block if it's a REALLY bad day.

if you're asking me to be nice on ao3, then i ask in return that you also be nice by not demanding things of people that they are not in any way obligated to give.