#she says she’d happily go to jail? fucking good. send her there

[tom-bakers-scarf]

Then she fucking should

[ghostmartyr]

how a life can move from the darkness [6/?]

| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 |

Summary:  Two drug addicts (Eren and Historia) meet in group and decide to be roommates to make their  living situation slightly less weird. From there we do the slow burn  found family dance mixed in with the struggles and agonies of recovery. Heavy on friendship feels, especially EMA. Eventual yumikuri.

“What the fuck did you do to this thing?”

Eren was in Reiner’s house for breakfast.

He’d been in Reiner’s house earlier, before they left, to drop off Ymir’s book on the dining table. It had felt like the safest way to handle it. He didn’t see how sharing either of the experiences of Ymir’s latest readers with her would do anything good. Ymir was socially aware enough to get what a silent return meant. She didn’t spend hours staring at her phone to send off a, “did you get home ok?” text that arrived when every possible recipient was asleep. She could read between the lines.

The only lines Ymir looked to be caring about were the gouges marking the formerly neatly divided pages. Where they had collided with a door.

There were a few other suggestive wrinkles Eren had not asked about.

Ymir wasn’t interested in that kind of tact.

“It ran into a door,” Eren said, reaching around Bertolt for the orange juice.

“If you were going to use that excuse, you should have spent it on your face. Let the tennis ball take the fall for this.” Ymir was flipping the pages back and forth in disgust. She hadn’t looked at him once after confirming that he had made it inside complaining range.

Reiner had snatched some bacon off the frying pan, and was munching on it happily by the sink. He hadn’t seen anything wrong with the book. Eren didn’t, either. He was surprised she’d noticed. After a day in his backpack, most of his borrowed books from Armin looked about the same.

“It isn’t an excuse,” Eren said around his glass, “it’s what happened.”

Ymir turned the book over and inspected some less explainable marks, about the size of a very tiny human’s fingernail, on the cover. “I suppose this time it’s also your roommate’s fault.”

Eren chose not to answer that.

Ymir chose to use her seventh or eighth sense of mind reading and finally took her eyes off her book long enough to run a scan on Eren.

“You’ve got to be kidding me.”

Eren put his glass down with more force than he intended to, drawing a pointed look from Bertolt. “There are only a few marks on it,” he said. “Everything’s still legible.”

Ymir went on pretending Eren wasn’t in the room while aiming conversation at him. “Has she considered an anger management class? Or sticking to throwing things at you?” Ymir mimed taking aim at him with enough irritation that Eren had to stop himself from ducking. “Why’d she even have it?” she asked. “I thought Reiner gave it to you to stave off your raving curiosity about the wild world of fuzzy hand-holding feelings.”

“I was trying to keep busy,” Eren said.

Ymir flopped the book down on her lap. “Then how did Lady Throws-a-Lot end up with it?”

Eren retrieved a plate of toast for himself, and set to work buttering it.

“…You didn’t read it, did you?”

Bertolt, in some misguided attempt at help or more misguided attempt to make Ymir feel some sort of guilt for forcing her work on people, said, “That’s allowed.”

Ymir ignored him the way none of the rest of them managed with her. “So you tossed it off on your roommate, and she threw it into a door.” She draped herself over the back of the couch, a very deep scowl etched in her face. “Nothing like knowing your art’s appreciated.”

Eren might have felt bad. Only the book had reminded him and everyone who lived with him of some of the worst moments of their lives. Ymir could figure out how to suck up two people not liking her book. Bertolt didn’t exactly keep how he felt about her writing a secret, and they got on fine.

“Wait,” Ymir said suddenly, “is she the one who left that bitchy review on Goodreads?”

Eren didn’t know what Goodreads was. He also didn’t think any of Historia’s thoughts on Ymir’s book were printable.

“She is.”

Eren swallowed his toast. “I have no idea. Is it that weird for you to get a bad review?”

“It’s weird for her to care several days later,” Bertolt muttered.

“It was a pretty bad one,” Reiner interjected. “Most of the people who don’t like her stuff drop her star average and leave it at that. This one went on for paragraphs about where the book went wrong. Being bothered by that isn’t so weird.”

“I’m not bothered,” Ymir said loudly. “Except by Eren’s bad taste existing in a second person on this bitch of an earth. Is that how you ended up living together? ‘Help, keeper wanted. Must have no standards.’”

There was something wrong in the world that in all their time knowing each other, Eren was the only one who’d had something thrown at him. “…That isn’t what happened.”

“Say that again, but in your believable tone of voice.”

Eren crammed the rest of his toast in his mouth and chewed as slowly as he could, keeping his only eye contact with the stove and Bertolt’s tiny, oddly encouraging smile.

Out of the corner of his eye, he could see Ymir slide the book over the coffee table and yank out her phone from her pocket, tapping faster than Eren did when he was successfully holding back from throwing his at something.

Reiner, dipping his head in the sink, looked over at her. “What are you doing?”

“A public service,” Ymir said mildly.

“The last one of those you did put you in jail,” Bertolt said.

Ymir’s fingers stopped moving, and the cloud of irritation surrounding her took a dip into something Eren didn’t think he’d want to handle after a full three meals, forget the middle of the first one. The house suddenly felt too quiet for four people. It was the kind of quiet that fell at meetings after someone opened up more than anyone was ready for.

Reiner had turned the water off, but didn’t grab a towel for his head. He stared down the drain, dangerously pale after the heated flush his workout had treated him to.

“Juvie,” Ymir corrected, tapping a full word out. “Court says I’m a delinquent, not a felon.”

Reiner let out a loud laugh they could all hear the panic in as Eren silently handed him a towel. Bertolt didn’t turn around from his place at the stove.

Eren finished his toast.

He’d never be able to tell Armin, and it wasn’t a good idea to bring it up, anyway.

But like he was about everything else in the known universe, Armin had been right. Moving out was the right call. He had too many ghosts in his head to keep sharing rent with the others.

He didn’t envy Reiner.

----

The thing about Mikasa, the thing that had driven him up the wall for years and years and still could kick off a good sulk if it happened at the wrong moment, was that she was the most amazing athlete Eren had ever met. There wasn’t a sport she couldn’t star in. There wasn’t a race she couldn’t win. There wasn’t a tournament she’d been in that hadn’t handed her some kind of trophy.

Zeke wasn’t going to just pass up on that.

Which was fine. Zeke cutting contact with Mikasa because Eren did had always been an unexpected help, so having it ripped away just as unexpectedly was fine. Zeke hadn’t exactly promised to help pace out Eren’s return to his friendships. Or ever brought it up at all.

All that meant was they were a trio today. Eren, Mikasa, and Historia. Playing catch until the inevitable moment where batting practice started and Mikasa would look at him wondering why his favorite part of practice had turned into something he didn’t make an attempt at.

Eren had done too many pathetic things for lurking behind the park bathrooms on his cellphone to rank anymore. That didn’t mean he was impressed with himself over it.

“You sure you can’t make it?” he asked, pressing his palms into the coarse cinder block wall. “Zeke runs his practices pretty long.”

“The test’s tomorrow,” Armin was saying, sighing. “I don’t want to spend all this time tutoring her only for nerves to ruin it. Sasha thinks she focuses better when I’m here, and…”

He trailed off, guilt and embarrassment saying what he wouldn’t. “She does?” Eren finished for him.

“I’m really sorry.”

“No—don’t—” Eren bit down on his hand to keep from shouting in frustration. He didn’t think he’d ever be able to take Armin apologizing normally again. “No one’s going to drag you out of tutoring to make you watch some boring practice. You’re where you should be.”

The other line stayed quiet for a stretch, catching the hum of the bus Armin was on. Eren made himself not think about that, and didn’t fail completely. That was basically a success.

“Eren, if you need me to be there… for whatever reason, you know I’ll be there.”

Eren’s heart clenched. “I’m fine, Armin.”

Wait, crap, he’d said that before.

“For real, this time.”

Phones were okay, sometimes. He couldn’t see all the memories darkening Armin’s face before he took his breath and changed the topic.

“Maybe we can see a movie to make up for it. If Mikasa gets you to herself, I should too. There’s a new zombie one that just came out. We could go?”

“You hate zombie movies,” Eren said flatly. “You don’t need to baby me, Armin.”

“…I know. Part of me…” Eren braced himself for the hit, but it still hurt. “Part of me is still scared you won’t pick up when I call. I just…” Armin sighed again. “I wish Sasha didn’t have a test tomorrow,” he said. “I don’t want to miss being with you.”

Eren had his forehead against the wall, and his heart hurt better than anything had in a long time. Even when Armin’s embarrassment caught up with him and he started stumbling through his words instead of reciting them off the script in his head.

“So I mean it on the movie. Any time I’m not in class. Or, well, if you wanted, Thursday’s professor isn’t very engaged with the material, so I wouldn’t mind—”

“A movie sounds great,” Eren said.

“…It does?”

“Yeah. It does.” Eren swapped hands. “Only I probably don’t want to watch zombie flicks either. Blood is…” Too much like the images flying through his head whenever he tried to pick up a baseball bat. He pressed harder against the wall, probably scraping his forehead and creating more questions for Mikasa to ask.

“We needed to update our movie list anyway,” Armin said.

Eren frowned sourly. “There’s nothing wrong with our list.”

“There’s a lot wrong with our list.”

He said that every movie night. “Bad special effects are fun, Armin.”

“They’re bad, Eren. Every time we rent one we’re encouraging them to be lazy.”

“Name one movie that’s come out in the last five years you approve of.”

“High standards aren’t a bad thing!”

“If we followed all of them we wouldn’t have a list.”

Eren could hear Armin’s near-silent sigh, and his mouth hurt from smiling.

“You’re sure you don’t need me?”

“Yeah,” Eren said. “Not with this, anyway. You’re still good to have around.”

“Do you want to—” Armin audibly cut himself off.

Talk about it?

This it?

No. Never.

Eren wasn’t looking forward to finding out when that absolute turned out to be just as wrong as all the other ones he’d snapped off during recovery.

Armin would always be Armin, but Eren was only now coming back to being Eren. He couldn’t float on that expectation. He closed his eyes and bit out the truth. “I’m not sure I’ll handle Mikasa worrying about it. It’s nothing huge, but it… it’s a change from before.”

A change he didn’t want to go over with just one of them around. Armin wouldn’t say anything. Eren wasn’t sure Mikasa could resist. Then if she could, it would only be because Eren had lost it on her the last time she’d tried to be good to him, and he wanted that even less than he wanted the questions.

He wasn’t a fan of baseball. Batting practice had always been the thing that made up for it. He couldn’t just hide that falling apart.

He couldn’t come up with a polite way to ask Mikasa to stay out of his problems. That sounded like half their normal arguments from the first note, and they were too far from normal to survive bringing that fight back into the ring now.

Armin’s voice brought him back from his brooding. “I think you know more about change than we do, Eren. Just… try not to yell at her. It will be okay.”

“You think?”

“…Try really hard not to yell at her.”

“Right.”

----

Eren didn’t yell.

He didn’t even get a chance.

Mikasa’s eyes, fragile and dangerous like broken glass, followed him on his way to put his glove in the dugout. Historia, trying to be a good friend and not having any more of a clue than Eren did, had briefly attempted to walk between them, but she seemed even weaker to Mikasa’s aura than Eren was, and broke off on her own before any real difference was accomplished.

She’d stopped pulling down her sleeves. Shadows of track marks slid open with every throw she’d lobbed his or Mikasa’s way, and nothing fell to pieces. Better yet, off in their own triad in the outfield, no one asked invasive questions about it.

After the conversation with Armin, he’d been more jealous than happy for her, but that had to be some kind of good sign.

Then Yelena had signaled them for batting practice, and Eren hadn’t hid his furtive look at Mikasa well enough, and that had snapped Historia’s worried eyes to both of them, and there was something fucked about wanting the people he lived for to just go away and be gone for a second, but he didn’t yell.

Leaving Mikasa watching him in silence, weighing her worry against all of the horrible wrongs he’d put her through once and could easily drag both of them back into if they didn’t keep their mouths shut around each other.

Worry was winning out. It was written all over her face, worse than with Armin. Because worry always won because she was the responsible, good one, and Eren wasn’t going to yell but his head was screaming, wanting his pills like he hadn’t in weeks—when Zeke walked over and lobbed a helmet Mikasa’s way.

“Eren’s out for batting practice. You’re up first, Mikasa.”

Worry turned to annoyance like only Zeke could bring out in her, and Eren’s fists relaxed enough for him to feel his hands again.

She put the helmet on and took up a bat, looking back at him one last time on her way out, but not broaching the unspoken topic further.

“She reminds me of Frieda,” Historia said, technically sitting next to him, but leaving enough space that anyone else who wanted to sit next to Eren still could.

“Wow,” Eren said. “High praise from you.”

Zeke started with a fastball. Mikasa fouled it off. The crack of the bat hurt Eren’s ears.

“She worried too much. I could never make it go away.”

Another fastball, another foul. Zeke didn’t usually throw that hard for the first batter.

“I still can’t.”

Zeke was going to go for a curveball after he worked Mikasa into a rhythm with her swings. Zeke liked the game part of the sport, and he’d liked winding Mikasa up ever since her cousin had punched him in the face. Mikasa would get the hit in the end, though. Batting practice, not pitching practice. Zeke took his baseball seriously.

“Armin told me to try not to yell at her,” Eren said.

Historia didn’t comment. Her fingers were digging silently into her scarred arms.

“It was never just that,” he said, “but trying not to yell at her used to take a lot of pills.”

Zeke finally threw his curveball, and Mikasa sent it flying back over his head. Colt sprinted back to the center field fence, but he’d need to be several yards taller for that to matter any.

She ripped off her helmet so fast she probably ripped out some of her hair, and she didn’t spare Zeke any attention on her way back to the dugout, Eren being personally rewarded all of it. She slipped into the space Historia had left her without question and stared at him. He stared over her shoulder and thought about a life where it didn’t make him think of orange bottles that didn’t belong to him.

Historia leaned back against the splintery planks walling them all together, a tiny—sympathetic when she noticed Eren’s irritated scowl—twitch that could have really been a smile on her face.

Mikasa spoke, and it wasn’t what he expected.

“Are you still okay?”

It was the highest mark of Mikasa’s approval that she didn’t lower her voice out of Historia’s range to go with the rest of the dugout’s, and Eren would love her for that if he ever stopped feeling like an inadequate idiot whenever Mikasa unveiled herself in all her steady perfection. Eren kept his mouth shut because all he could think of was ways to hurt her, and she opened hers up and actually found a thing that could keep him from wanting to yell.

He would never deserve these people.

He could still try.

“It’s a Dad thing,” he said, the truth making his mouth itch and the lightning bolt of surprise Mikasa couldn’t hide making his heart and knuckles ache. “Not a drug thing.”

They all quietly watched Yelena step up to the plate, not-so-casually looking back at their shadowed corner before she hefted the bat over her shoulder. Eren thought about glaring, but Historia hadn’t noticed anything about Yelena’s overt curiosity, and Historia not noticing was fine for their stabilizing sanity.

“Does Zeke know?” Mikasa asked.

“I don’t think he’d want to.” The funeral was one of the clearer memories Eren had from afterwards. Zeke was a blur in it. He’d asked once how Eren was feeling. Then he’d left. Then he’d taken him to rehab.

Historia caught his eye sharply.

Eren shrugged at her and watched Yelena hit a clean line drive. There wasn’t much to say about it. Historia had been right. That wasn’t what she’d been getting at, but it was what was there. Mikasa was his Frieda. Zeke was just his brother.

His big brother, who watched bad movies with him when he had a lousy day and never talked about feelings. Not his, not Eren’s, not…

Not their dad’s.

Zeke wouldn’t want to hear about why his death took away pitching for his little brother.

----

“Frieda never wanted to talk about it either.”

Eren was eating his cheerios with what Armin used to call his morning glower when Historia plopped across from him with her bowl. Neither of them was having a cooking morning. Eren had stayed in his room the whole night, but Historia had already been up when he walked out, texting someone under Benjamin’s tank. He would have assumed Frieda, but Frieda kept some strange hours that didn’t include sunrise.

“I didn’t know you had friends,” he’d said, waving good morning to Benjamin.

Historia had stopped typing mid-sentence, stared at him long enough for Eren to wonder if maybe the reason she was up was because she’d never gotten any sleep, and said, “I don’t.”

It wasn’t a talking morning, either. He’d thought.

Historia, stirring milk into the cereal she wasn’t eating, had maybe changed her mind about that.

“Talk about what?” Eren asked.

“How I killed our father.”

The crunch of the cheerios in Eren’s mouth sounding like steel grinding on steel. He swallowed and dropped his spoon back in the bowl.

He sometimes thought the reason Historia didn’t talk during group was because her head couldn’t figure out when it’d been given the okay to talk about things, so she just took random guesses that landed these conversations wherever there was space for them. With some weird definition of space that included the other person being in an entirely different ballpark when she started swinging.

He was spending too much time near Zeke.

“She saw the police report, and everyone told her,” Historia said, “but I think she wants me to forget so badly she pretends she doesn’t know.” She poured more cereal out of the box on top of what she already had, not taking a bite. “I never wanted to talk about it with her, so I didn’t mind.”

“I don’t want to talk about it with anyone,” Eren said, morning glower in full bloom.

Historia closed the box. “You want Zeke to want you to.”

“Zeke had a bad relationship with our dad.” Eren jammed another spoonful of breakfast in his mouth and crunched through it on sheer will. “He doesn’t want to hear about it.”

“If he thought it would make you join batting practice he might.”

Armin used to flick cheerios at him in the morning when he thought Eren was starting the day with too much gloom. Eren thought about dumping his entire bowl on Historia’s head. He couldn’t do that, because she’d retaliate, and he had work. There wasn’t time for a second shower.

Following the spirit of belligerent aggravation anyway, he asked, “How’d you do it?”

“I stabbed him in the neck with a syringe of morphine.”

Eren stopped eating.

“Father had a drug problem,” Historia said. “He was an alcoholic, too, but none of the bottles would have worked unless I broke them ahead of time. The morphine was already set up.”

This was the problem with throwing his fists at one of Historia’s walls. There was always something ready to climb on through the crack and sink its teeth in. Eren let his hands rest on the counter. It made him feel less like he’d eaten an icicle instead of cheap cereal.

The marks on her arms were like tractor beams. Historia could glare at him all she wanted for it, she was the one who had death tattooed all over and kept talking about it. “…So you decided to kill yourself the same way?”

Historia contemplated her first spoonful of breakfast. “Petra says avoidance is only one coping technique.”

The snort that brought out wasn’t what Eren expected from himself. The icicle cracked, melting into something like the soup all of Historia’s stirring had turned her bowl into. He looked away from her scars and out the oversized windows that walled their apartment off from the rest of the world. Light was creeping in through the curtains, and they both should have finished eating by now.

He shoveled in another mouthful of cheerios. “Zeke gave it to me.” He swallowed and thought of blood drowning his hands and lost heartbeats and ticking anniversary watches and pills. “He’s the older one. I get all his hand-me-downs.”

Eren took another bite.

“I don’t want to talk about it, and he doesn’t want to hear about it,” he said. “We’re finally synched up.”

Historia’s phone buzzed across the counter with whatever notification it had from the person who wasn’t her friend. She snatched it up with a spark of annoyance so profound Eren was pretty sure she forgot all about him for a second. But she remembered to look up and give the conversation an option of ending.

“Okay,” she said.

Eren took it. Before he actually ended up late for work.

----

Ymir did not text Eren. She mocked him, she prodded every hole his t-shirts had and several they didn’t, she stole his jacket and wore it for a week when he accidentally left it at Reiner’s, she routinely told him how he was running his business wrong—but she didn’t text him.

Eren wouldn’t have guessed that she had his number.

Until he thought about what he knew of her as a person, which he tried not to do when she wasn’t in the room making him.

Ymir had texted Eren. In the middle of the night. With all of one sentence, followed by a series of tweets that Eren could feel a migraine building over.

Ur roommate’s a dick

Crystal Wick @Crys_Wickiland34 Replying to @distrustfund500 It’s a grand romantic gesture, sorry it went over your head.

distrustfund500 @distrustfund500 Replying to @Crys_Wickiland34 It’s idiotic.

Crystal Wick @Crys_Wickiland34 Replying to @distrustfund500 This from the person who throws tennis balls at people?

The last attachment was just a screencap of what Eren had to assume was Historia’s username.

tennisbomber500 @distrustfund500

No one had ever given Historia the Ymir 101 advice of ignoring Ymir. Because Historia had never been under any threat of meeting Ymir, and that should have been enough to save her.

Constructive emotional expression had come up at the last meeting. Petra probably wouldn’t call yelling at Ymir over a romance novel constructive or productive or healthy, but she’d never met Ymir either. Or watched Historia fall to pieces over things she never talked about. Unless the black eye counted, but that had been Eren on the ground.

Eren blinked at his phone for a second. The words were starting to blur. With a soft click, he gave up, closed his messages, and rolled over to go back to sleep, smiling a bit at the afterimage of the last text Armin had sent, demanding a blood oath promise to not name Benjamin’s new eel friend (if they got him one) Murray.

Ymir could stand to have someone annoy her for once in her life.

[next]

[chaoticspacefam]

(lovely art was done for me by @moonlitalien​ <3 you should totally go check out the rest of her stuff owo)

GENERAL

name : Aria Saal-Shenly | Darth Canis, Commander Canis

gender : Female

age : 38 as of 3629 BBY (physically looks about 24, thank you Force powers!)

place of birth : Onderon, Japrael system. But was only there for 2 years, spent the rest of her early years on Korriban and Dromund Kaas after her father took her from her mother to begin her apprenticeship.

spoken languages : Basic, High Sith, Twi’leki, Huttese, Mirialan, also understands but can’t speak fluently in Selkatha and Droid speak

sexual orientation : Demiromantic Pansexual

occupation : Sith Acolyte/Apprentice → Sith Inquisitor → Jedi Padawan (Sith Assassin) → Spice smuggler → Jedi Padawan again/Barsen’thor of the Jedi Order (Sith Assassin again)   →  co-Commander/High Council Member of the Eternal Alliance

APPEARANCE

eye color : Dark side amber, very bright. Naturally, her eyes are heterochromic;

hair color : Raven black, with a blonde streak dyed into her fringe on the left side.

height : 5 ft 1 in, she’s tiiiiinyyy (but don’t say that to her face)

scars and burns : Quite a few. Most notably, she has a large puncture/bite mark scar (lining up pretty good with the average-sized Tuk’ata’s teeth ;)) on her throat, various smaller blaster marks and/or saber burns, particularly on her shoulders and collarbone. And finally, a very large cluster of through-and-through scar tissue stretching across almost her entire torso, and mirrored on her back.

overweight : Not really, but she is very stocky in build, so she doesn’t have an hourglass figure at all.

underweight : No

FAVORITE

color : Gunmetal grey

music genre : Doesn’t tend to listen to music much, pretty much just chills and listens to whatever Vano likes.

tv show : mostly documentaries on Sith Archaeology and artefacts, occasionally a holodrama, though she mostly watches those because her wife likes them and she just wants to spend time with her, as opposed to actually caring about the storyline.

food : hearty, warming food like stews, curries etc.

drink : alcoholic: Arkanian Sweet Milk, anything strong enough to knock you onto your ass, she likes heavy liqueour and holds hers well. Though she will drink just about anything. Non-alcoholic: partial to bantha or nerf milk, especially slightly warmed.

book : not much of a reader, but will sometimes go over ancient Sith scripts with Ni’kasi, or read through some of her father’s old archive files when she’s missing him.

HAVE THEY:

passed university : if graduating from the Sith Academy/Jedi Order counts as university, then yes.

had sex : Yes. 

had sex in public : A public place, yes. In front of other people, though? nope.

gotten pregnant/gotten someone pregnant : Nope. Aria is sterile due to side effects from a blunt trauma injury in her youth (she crashed a TIE fighter and was impaled by the bulkhead. A longass soak in a kolto tank and several months of treatment and physical therapy restored most of her other physical abilities, but they couldn’t undo the damage to her reproductive system - she doesn’t mind, she never wanted kids anyways and now it just means she doesn’t have to faff with...things when she’d rather be doing the other thing ;))

kissed a boy : Yep!

kissed a girl : Yep!

gotten tattoos : Yes. Aria has red Sith tattoos along her jawline, on her chin, and around her left eye (see image above for reference!). she covers these up with a TON of makeup while she’s undercover with the Jedi, but finally stops putting the concealers on once they get to Yavin and she can confidently be herself again.

had a broken heart : Nnnnnooopeee. She’s the one that does the heartbreaking ;’)

been in love : yes! only with Vano, though. and it took her YEARS to finally admit it to herself, nevermind poor Va sjuhsgyudg XD

stayed up for longer than 24 hours : on a few occasions yes. More often during the KOTFE/ET timeline, when Valkorion starts terrorising Vano in her dreams. Aria stays up to shake her awake and bring her back down when it gets really bad :(

ARE THEY:

a virgin : Lol, no. (she’s a whore and she’s not even sorry)

a cuddler : If your name is Vano, yes. With everyone else, not so much.

a kisser : Absolutely! Especially with Vano, of course, but is known to be quite kissy with just about anyone, sometimes purposefully just to make them flustered and/or for a laugh, because she’s a troll like that :’D

scared easily : Ahahahahahahahahhahahahaha. No. Definitely not, this woman has nerves of steel. She’ll stare down a beast ten times her size and scream back at it and not even flinch once. That’s not to say she’s entirely fearless, she does have fears, but they’re incredibly specific and chances are you have to actually know what they are before you’ll actually be able to frighten this tiny gremlin.

jealous easily : not particularly. she can be somewhat possessive at times, but usually only with a fairly good reason (watch out, Quinn)

trustworthy : If you’re someone who has earned her genuine trust and respect, absolutely. Otherwise...don’t trust her as far as you could throw her. She’ll stab you in the back as soon as is convenient for her, especially to save her own ass (or someone she does care about)

dominant : Can be, depending on the mood (an anashamed switch *wiggles eyebrows*)

submissive : Can be, depending on the mood (an anashamed switch *wiggles eyebrows*)

in love : yes! even she was surprised by that one, but she and Vano are inseparable now.

single : Nope! Happily married and even though she might flirt sometimes (especially if it makes the recipient uncomfortable), she has no intention of following through with any of it.

RANDOM QUESTIONS

have they harmed themselves : Not on purpose, but had a glitterstim habit for a good five years when she first fled from the Sith and Jedi and has some problems with her long-term memory as a result, as well as a binge-drinking problem. She’s still a heavy drinker, but nowhere near what it used to be.

thought of suicide : surprisingly, no. she’s too stubborn for that. Aria will keep chugging on out of sheer spite.

attempted suicide : nope, even though she’s been through some bad, bad stuff and had a lot of trauma to work through, even at the worst moments of her life she was determined to poke the entire world in the eye and tell it to “go fuck itself” :’)

wanted to kill someone : Bwahahahahah absolutely. It’s...I mean it’s basically her entire job. The person in charge points at something/one and says “that one” and she’ll go do it (: She calms down a bit once she follows Vano into the Alliance and starts taking orders from her and Saarai (but only because they are more chill. If they leave her unattended and/or don’t explicitly say "DO NOT kill the thing!!” then she’s a loose cannon *whistles*)

rode a (space) horse : yes! she’s ridden various things from Uxibeasts to Tauntauns and Icetrompers, and even a Hssiss once, but her usual go-to mount is a Varactyl.

have / had a job : Yes. She was, for a time, the Barsen’thor of the Jedi, but secretly a Sith Assassin/sleeper agent who weakened the Order from the inside, until the tail end of the battle(s) on Ilum when Satele finally caught her out and threw her ass in Time Out (a.k.a jail/a Force cage) before Vano and Ni’kasi could get to her. She was eventually - somewhat begrudgingly - released and ordered to accompany Theron on his mission, as Theron didn’t trust Lana or the other Sith they were sending enough to go alone and no other Jedi would volunteer to go with him without further details. When that Sith turns out to be Vano, Aria joins up with the proto-Alliance they begin to form on Yavin and stays at Vano’s side to become a co-Commander/member of the Alliance’s High Council once it’s formed for real.

fears : she has PTSD associated with the people she killed in her younger years (most notably her mother and a certain someone else I cannot yet mention because spoilers), but her biggest fear is actually death/dying. Aria is terrified of the day the Force finally takes her and she has to face all the people she’s harmed while she was a puppet to Vitiate’s Empire.

FAMILY

sibling(s) : none in official canon, though in the Zephyrverse AU she does have quite a few half-siblings on her father’s side.

parents : Myala Thulie | (Former) Cipher Nine (non canon) (Mother, deceased), Roanan Saal | Darth Noctis (Father, deceased as of end of Sith Warrior storyline)

children : Ahahahahahahahahahaha no.  Do not leave her around children, she’s an awful babysitter and would be an even worse mother. Aria will teach them to cuss like a Corellian pilot in all five languages that she knows and just generally be a very awful influence on them.

pets : the former Tuk’ata Mother, Chwûq, and her mate Taral. Once bonded to her father, but chose to attach themselves to Aria instead after his death; and a Woodland Varactyl (female) named Maeiv (pronounced “may-eev”),

I’m not gonna tag anybody cause I’m literally doing this one again because I’m bored/I needed stuff to throw into the queue for this weekend while I’m afk. If you’re reading this and you want to do it, tho, go for it!! :DD

[artemiswinnick]

Kiss the Cook

AN: So TNT’s Animal Kingdom is another one of my obsessions and here’s the first chapter to a fic I’m working on. I don’t think it will be finished any time soon, but I just loooove Pope and I wanted to put this out there. The Peaky Blinders fic I promised with Michael Gray as the protagonist is in the works as well, and I’ll drop a sample of the first chapter as soon as I make a few changes to the opening chapter. This isn’t a final draft of this and once it’s done I’ll be posting the completed work over on my wattpad and on my new AO3 account :) 

J’s new girlfriend weirded Pope out immediately. 

She looked totally normal, just like all the other giggling girls he brought by the house. Except she didn’t giggle-- she smiled, big and bright and genuine. Admittedly, that wasn’t particularly weird either. Except she gave him a once over first, her eyes traveling up from the tips of his toes, up past the apron he was wearing, the casserole he was holding, and finally up to his frozen expression. This was supposed to be a family only dinner. Even Craig hadn’t brought any of his groupies--

“Kiss the cook, huh?” She asked, flitting from J’s side to give Pope a quick kiss on the cheek. The contact of her lips on his skin, brief as it was, burned him. Kiss the cook? He looked down-- that’s what it said on the apron he was wearing. Right. “I’m Dawn, it’s nice to meet you.”

He stared at her. J stared at him staring at her, obviously wondering if his dinner date was going to cause a classic Pope meltdown. Noticing the sudden tension, a quizzical little frown settled over her features and she looked to J and then back at Pope. 

“This is usually where you say, ‘Hi, Dawn, nice to meet you to my name is so and so,’” She prompted him. He knew that if he spoke his voice would break and embarrass him like it always did around attractive women-- attractive? When had he registered that she was attractive?-- so he stayed silent and just made the stare more menacing. She squinted at him. 

“This is my uncle, Pope,” J attempted to salvage the situation, approaching in that stupid, quietly confident way of his. Pope saw a little flicker of recognition in her eyes. This was it. This was usually when recognition was followed by a flash of fear-- he’d built quite a bit of a reputation in Oceanside-- but, instead, the bright smile made a reappearance. 

“Oh? Well it’s nice to meet you, Pope,” The only thing that changed about the expression was a little quirk in her brow, like she found his hostile stare amusing. J was at her elbow now, greetings somewhat successfully exchanged, to tug her away towards the patio. Pope thought he was free of her gaze but she looked back at him, grin widening. “We’ll continue the staring contest later!”

And with that she was out on the patio with everyone else. As Pope continued his meal prep in the kitchen, he decided he didn’t like her. He didn’t like her one bit. What was with the smiling? And the kiss? And the childish comment about staring contests? She was obviously just using J as an in, but what she really wanted was a Cody. Any Cody. If she wanted drugs, she’d go after Craig next. If she wanted money or power though, maybe she figured she could try for Pope. That wasn’t usually a popular strategy because of… obvious reasons, but maybe Dawn didn’t realize that J was Smurf’s current favorite and not him. He realized, even as he thought through all the possible conniving machinations this new girl was trying to pull, that he was probably making a bigger deal of this than necessary, but he hadn’t made it this far by not putting his paranoia to good use. 

He watched through the large, sliding glass doors as she said hi to Craig and Deran. Deran, being Deran, hardly looked up from his phone. Craig, on the other hand gave her a bear hug, lifting and squeezing. Pope rolled his eyes. He’d only done that so he could feel her boobs. So stupid.

 Dawn smiled at Craig when he put her down, but it was different this time. Tight, uncomfortable, it didn’t reach her eyes… Pope kept his eyes fixed on her, studying that expression. He wasn’t particularly good at identifying emotions besides fear, anger and general shadiness. But even with his gut instincts and never-ending supply of suspicion, she didn’t look like she was trying to seduce Craig as she quickly got away from him. Well, too early to tell anyway.

Lena was sitting on the stairs in the pool, right in Pope’s line of sight with her floaties on. He ruffled as the girl didn’t move to say hello to her, going to one of the lawn chairs and putting down her purse. Not saying hello to Lena… even Craig’s groupies did that! He chopped the carrots a little more aggressively while J got close to her, putting his hands on her hips. They whispered together for a moment. He kissed her. Pope annihilated the vegetables under his blade. J wandered off and Dawn pulled her t-shirt over her head. His knife paused, hovering over the cutting board as she unzipped her shorts. He quickly looked away as she pulled them down and continued with his task.

His head snapped back up when there was a sudden splash.

-------------

So… Pope already hated her, Deran was a dick, and Craig was probably going to try and grab her ass before the night was done. Awesome. Like she hadn’t already been uncomfortable being at the Cody household. She wasn’t sure why J had invited her over here in the first place, it wasn’t like she’d been insisting on meeting his family. They’d been hooking up on and off for a few months, but she hadn’t thought it was anything serious. Come on, he was a Cody-- everyone knew they didn’t do serious relationships. 

Now that their grandmother was in jail indefinitely though, it seemed like he wanted to take advantage of his newfound freedom and fuck her in his own bed-- AKA, his grandmother’s bed. Or so she’d extrapolated. J was a man of few words. 

After Craig felt her up, she was already thinking of excuses for getting the fuck out of Dodge.

“I think I’m probably going to dip before dinner,” She whispered to J. “I don’t think your uncles want me here.”

J smirked a little, a subtle expression just like all the other ones he had in his repertoire.

“Ignore them,” he told her. “I thought you wanted to use the pool, anyway? And, if you stick around, maybe later…”

He put his hands on her hips and her mouth twisted up in a half-smile. He knew the sex was good and that it was the main reason she was here, observant little bastard. He leaned down slow and gave her a kiss, just the tip of his tongue reaching out to hers for one brief moment before he pulled back. It was enough to send a shiver down her spine. She snorted and shook her head when he pulled away.

“What?” He smiled at her response.

“Fine!” She exclaimed good naturedly, before leaning to his ear and whispering. “I’ll stay so you can fuck the shit out of me later, but if things get too awkward I’m leaving, okay?”

“Fair enough,” He acceded before kissing her again. “Beer?”

“Yes, please,” She replied. He walked away in search of alcohol and she looked around for something to occupy herself. Scanning the patio, she realized there was a little girl sitting on the stairs, playing with some toy boats. She’d been so quiet she hadn’t even noticed she was there. Dawn couldn’t help but frown a little, watching her play by herself. J should have said something instead of letting her ignore her like an asshole.

She stripped down to her bikini quickly-- ignoring Craig’s eyes on her rack as she bent over-- and approached the little girl. 

“Hi,” She smiled at her, sitting at the edge of the pool next to her. “Whatcha up to?”

The little girl looked up at her with huge brown eyes. 

“...Who are you?”

Ah, she had all of her uncles’ social skills. 

“I’m Dawn… what’s your name?”

“Lena… are you here with uncle Craig?” The girl turned those big eyes back to her boats.

“Nope,” She popped the P. “J invited me over so I could use the pool… do you swim?”

The little girl glanced up at her and showed her the floaties on her arms.

“A little but uncle Pope says I’m not allowed in the pool without my floaties,” She sighed.

“You’re uncle is a smart guy, this pool is pretty deep… It’s perfect for cannon balls, actually,” Dawn observed casually.

“Cannon balls?” Lena looked at her dubiously.

“Yeah, cannon balls.  You know how to cannon ball, don’t you?”

Lena shook her head. Dawn’s mouth dropped open with an excited little gasp. 

“It’s super easy, Lena. You want me to show you?”

“Okay,” She nodded, a tentative smile finally appearing on her face. Dawn got up and extended a hand to her. 

“Alright, so,” She lead her around to the deep end of the pool. “What you do is you stand running distance away from the edge… like… right here?”

She backed up about five feet from the edge and Lena followed suit.

“And when you’re ready you run to the edge and jump in, putting your knees to your chest,” She crouched down so she could tuck her knees as described. Lena imitated her. “And then put your arms around your knees so you become a little ball. See?”

“I’m a cannon ball!” Lena exclaimed. Dawn laughed.

“Now you’re getting it! Alright, you wanna try?” 

She nodded enthusiastically. J had returned to the patio with two beers and smiled a little at her before taking a seat to wait for her.

“Okay, on the count of three. 1… 2… 3!” With a shout and laughter they rushed towards the edge and jumped in together. Dawn resurfaced to find Lena already bobbing at the surface, shrieking happily.

“Again! Again! Again!”

----------------

J’s girlfriend didn’t leave Lena’s side for the next half hour while Pope cooked, splashing around in the pool. There were a couple times when Lena started running on the wet pavement that he almost had to come outside, but Dawn was faster than he was.

“Hold your horses, kid!” He could hear her exclaim, coming to her side quickly and taking hold of her hand. “Remember, you don’t run by the pool unless you want to fall on your butt!”

That made Lena laugh. She hadn’t stopped laughing, actually, since that girl had started talking to her. Pope watched her from the corner of his eye as he began setting the patio table for dinner. Spotting him, she immediately walked straight to him, Lena in tow. He kept his head down, hoping she would walk right past. Of course, she didn’t.

“Would you like some help?” She asked tilting her head a little to catch his gaze. “Lena and I can put the dishes out, if you want?”

Pope just looked at her a second and then cleared his throat. His voice was not going to break.

“Okay,” he agreed. Lena was already holding out her hands, so he handed her the cutlery. For her, his favorite and only niece, he cracked a smile. “But you’ve got to be careful and not drop anything!”

“Duh!” She was already gone to start arranging the knives and forks. Which left Dawn, smiling at him expectantly.

“Uh… Plates are inside,” He said, avoiding eye contact as he turned heel and went back inside. She followed him. He handed them to her silently, but she lingered.

“Hey, I… I wanted to apologize for earlier. I shouldn’t have just, uh, kissed you without knowing if it was okay first. I know some people don’t like being touched and it was rude of me. It’s just you were wearing the apron and I was nervous and I thought it would be funny for some reason, but it obviously wasn’t…” She rambled, but stopped herself with a shake of the head and a shy little smile. “Anyway, sorry for being all up in your space.”

As though she knew he wasn’t going to respond, she immediately went back outside after her apology, leaving Pope staring after her. He didn’t like being touched by strangers, that was true. But no one had ever apologized for that before, they’d just eventually learned to back the fuck off after a couple of glares thrown in their direction. Or being punched a couple of times, depending on how insistent they were being about invading his personal space. He continued what he was doing, gathering plates of food and bringing them to the table, Dawn lithely stepping out of his way so he could set them down without bumping into her as he came in and out of the house. He could hear her talking to Lena through the open door.

“Finished!” Lena informed her as she set down the last knife. 

“Ooh, good job! That was really fast,” Dawn told her, putting down the last of the plates. “Let’s ask your uncle if there’s anything else we can do to help, huh?”

Pope came back outside, and, making eye contact only with Lena, said:

“That’s about it, why don’t you go tell the boys dinner is ready?” 

“Okay,” She ran off to do as she was told, rallying the lounging men up from their lawn chairs. Dawn smiled after her.

“She’s a great kid,” She commented to Pope. He grunted his assent. She looked at the spread with her hands on her hips. “Christ, this looks good! Did you cook all of this?”

He grunted again in response but couldn’t help his eyes from flickering over to her this time. He found her looking back at him waiting for him to actually say something. A little startled, he went back inside to grab a beer instead. Under the guise of doing this, he watched as the boys gathered around the table. Lena dragged Dawn to the chair next to her, talking animatedly. 

What was this girl’s deal? He continued his surreptitious observation of her as dinner rolled along. She was completely ignoring Craig and even J, not that they weren’t trying to talk to her. For once, the conversation was centered around Lena, who was telling Dawn about school. Dawn looked at her while she spoke, laughing and nodding like this was the most interesting conversation she’d ever had. Like the girl had reminded them their niece existed, Craig, J and even Deran started asking her questions. 

Pope saw how they watched Dawn’s reactions, how she helped Lena articulate was she was thinking and found the humor in it. Lena was smart and funny, just like her mom had been. Pope knew that, but it wasn’t usual for her other uncles to spend so much time talking to her. Dawn was still in her bikini, which explained Craig’s sudden interest, at least, but J just kept smiling softly in her direction throughout the meal. Weird.

It was already odd enough that he’d brought her to dinner at all-- since Mia and Nicky, he hadn’t had a steady girlfriend. Dawn was one in a long line of female visitors, but they never sat down with the family, preferring to sneak in and out under the cover of night. J was a quiet dude, probably to cover up the ulterior motives Pope knew he had, but she was actually making him... laugh. And a genuine laugh, too, not just that fake flirtatious crap he pulled to convince girls he wasn’t devoid of personality. Weird. Very weird.

“They’ve been teaching us guitar at school,” Lena continued telling Dawn.

“Really?” She asked. “That’s so cool! I used to take lessons for a long time before, too.”

“Do you play?” Craig asked, blue eyes crinkling with an interested smile. She flashed him a polite version of her own—not half as nice as the one she’d been using earlier, Pope noted.

“I do, actually,” She replied before turning her attention to Lena again. “Maybe you and I can do a duet.”

Lena giggled but shook her head. “Guitar is hard… I’m not good at it.”

“What?” Dawn exclaimed. “I don’t believe that! Here, give me your hand for a second?”

Lena put down her fork and Dawn took her small hand in both of hers, inspecting her palm and fingers with exaggerated care.

“Ah, just as I suspected,” She said, nodding to herself as she released Lena’s digits.

“What?” She asked, staring down at her hands for signs of whatever Dawn had been looking for.

“She’s got guitar-playing hands,” Dawn informed the table sagely. Even Deran had to crack a smile at that. Pope thought he saw J’s hand move to her leg under the table, but she didn’t seem to notice, smiling as Lena cracked up. “You have to practice more, but you’re talented. I can tell by the shape of your fingers.”

She gave Lena a wink.

“You know, I play guitar too,” Craig spoke up. Pope rolled his eyes. Of course, he just had to be the center of attention. 

“Oh? Maybe we can all play together, then,” She smiled a little more genuinely at him now. There it was, the flirtation Pope had been waiting for-- but then she looked over at him shyly. “If your uncles don’t mind me stopping by again, of course.”

“Can she?” Lena asked him, pulling on his sleeve. 

No! He wanted to yell it from the rooftop. He wasn’t sure what she was up to, but whatever it was he was certain it would be no good and he had every intention of just grunting vaguely as a response until Lena gave him her patented puppy dog look, ripped straight from her mother’s old playbook. 

“Please?” She stuck out her lower lip. Pope squinted at her. 

“Fine,” He finally exhaled. A huge smile spread across Dawn’s face.

“You owe me a staring contest anyway,” She reminded him. Craig and Deran looked over at Pope who shifted uncomfortably under their puzzled gazes.

“I wouldn’t get your hopes up,” He muttered at his plate.

“Well, if you’re scared I’m going to win, I’ll just play against Lena,” She shrugged nonchalantly. Lena laughed.

“You have to play now, uncle Pope! Unless you’re scared…” She reached over to tickle him. Pope couldn’t help but chuckle.

“Maybe, we’ll see,” He told her, purposefully keeping his eyes away from Dawn until the conversation had moved on. Only then did he sneak a glance back at her. J was looking at him now, though, hard. He held his eyes unwaveringly until his nephew broke eye contact. Hm. Maybe he was good at staring contests.

[heisthq]

you all certainly didn’t make this easy on me — it was an incredibly tough decision for many of the roles. there were THIRTY-EIGHT applications for only ELEVEN roles, which is insane, and please know that every single one was incredible. i’m only one person on the internet, and this decision is in no way a reflection of the quality of your writing ( seriously, i know i just said it, but i’m kind of shocked by how good every single app was ). i’m so grateful for all the love heist has gotten, and i couldn’t be happier with the beautiful submissions i received ! from the bottom of my heart, thank you.

for those of you who were accepted, please follow the checklist, familiarize yourself with your fellow members, & review the triggers list. once your blog is set up, please send it in to the main within 24 hours so i can send you a link to the discord server. 

but enough talking — the newest members of HEISTHQ can be found under the cut !

welcome, DEDE ! you have been accepted as THE BLEEDING HEART, otherwise known as JUDY FAULKNER PRYCE ( ELIZABETH OLSEN ).

good god. what a way to start off acceptances — judy reached into my heart and took it for herself, and i’m not upset about it in the slightest. her gruff outer shell, still with that instinctive need to help, to do something, is so bleeding heart, and i ached at every step of the way through her journey. i knew i was really in for it when i dedicated a skeleton to loss itself, but you spun that concept into a living, breathing person and shot her back at me. i’ll happily let her knock me down any day, and i know she certainly will as soon as she makes her way onto the dash.

welcome, CHERRY ! you have been accepted as THE CAREER CRIMINAL, otherwise known as MISCHA DOSTOYEVSKY ( NATASHA LIU BORDIZZO ).

though you made my decision very difficult with that eleventh hour app, i couldn’t stop coming back to mischa. from the beginning of her childhood crimes to her current position as the head of the motherfucking bratva, she pulled me in and got me hook, line, and sinker. you painted such a brilliant picture of her that i felt she was going to jump off the page at any moment — and that last line of her bio ? chills. literal chills. finally, i have now decided their next heist is going to be stealing lip gloss from claire’s, shoutout to mischa for that hot idea. all in all, she’s an absolute delight, and i cannot wait to have her here. 

welcome, REED ! you have been accepted as THE EYE IN THE SKY, otherwise known as INDIANA “INDIE” ASCENCIO ( ANA DE ARMAS, BUT ONLY WITH PINK HAIR ).

okay, first of all, are you kidding me with that bio structure ? that was the coolest shit i’ve ever seen. what a way to kick it off for the eye in the sky — i said break the stereotype and you said bet. indie is an absolute gem of a character, as stunning as she is valuable, and damn if she doesn’t know it. she’s so vibrant that i could practically hear her voice when i read your answers to the prompts; i’m still howling at thirty five pages of criminal offenses. the eye in the sky needed to take me by the throat to show me who they are; you broke down the door and said here she is. i couldn’t be more honored to have her.

welcome, NOAH ! you have been accepted as THE GETAWAY DRIVER, otherwise known as CARLISLE “JACE” JACOBI HARRISON-SHEA ( CYRUS AMINI ).

the getaway driver was, arguably, the toughest choice i had to make — but i couldn’t help myself. jace drew me back in every single time like a moth to a flame, and i know he’d read that fact with that same, secret little smirk. every moment of reading your app is exciting, like i’m white-knuckled in jace’s passenger seat, along for whatever twists and turns his psyche brings, which was exactly what i was looking for. there are too many incredible quotes to put in one acceptance post, but one such example is stunningly simple: you weren’t just running. you were chasing. i posed a question in the getaway driver’s skeleton, and with one quick pivot, you took my breath away. just... wow. that’s all.

welcome, MARS ! you have been accepted as THE HIRED GUN, otherwise known as ASLAN “MAZZIE” YILMAZ ( ALPEREN DUYMAZ ).

mars, i’m gonna be honest, i hate you a little bit ( but not really. i love you ). i’m pretty sure forcing me to choose between two stunning apps should count as some sort of personal attack, but after much agonizing, i’m delighted to settle with the absolute tragedy that is my newest son mazzie. there’s a quiet power, a quiet ( but no less imposing ) threat threaded throughout his story, and somehow you managed to weave my own heartstrings into the picture alongside it all. you sent me tumbling head over heels for this man who, in his own words, is death himself. you gave me my hired gun, and he’s everything i dreamed. thank you.

welcome, LUCY ! you have been accepted as THE INSIDE MAN, otherwise known as IVY WANG ( GEMMA CHAN ).

lucy. lucy !!! you didn’t make it easy on me, but man, i couldn’t be more wrapped around ivy’s finger, which is probably just how she’d like it. the structure of your app was so interesting & unique ( that arrest report ?? HOT ). she encapsulates the inside man so perfectly — from her mannerisms to her motivations, everything was so spot on that i’m pretty sure you reached inside my brain to pull out my exact vision. she feels so real, so human and so powerful all at once, and i would personally let her arrest me and write her a thank you note for putting me in jail. i’m obsessed. obsessed !

welcome, BEE ! you have been accepted as THE MASTERMIND, otherwise known as BISHOP LEE ( CHOI MINHO ).

my beautiful mastermind is no longer mine — he’s yours, bee, every inch, and i couldn’t be happier about it. from his recruitment log ( which was !!! you wove his voice into it so perfectly ) to his reasoning for creating the group in the first place, bishop is someone i didn’t expect, but i adore him, shaping his little family & leaving behind a legacy he can be proud of ( “so bishop acts like they’re immortal, because he truly believes they are. it’s just his version of immortality is in the history books rather than an eternally beating heart.” are you KIDDING ??? ). please don’t take him from me — i don’t want to let him go. 

welcome, MIA ! you have been accepted as THE NEW KID ON THE BLOCK, otherwise known as MARTY CHOI ( KANG MINA ).

listen, i’m pretty relieved i didn’t get another app for this character, because i didn’t need one — marty is the new kid, through and through. she has that hunger that is so quintessential for this role, the drive and ambition for something more in this grand universe of ours. it’s so perfectly exemplified by marty’s own words: let me be excellent at something again. let me be proud of my own capabilities again. let me be part of something so i'll stop feeling so alone. this !! this is so perfect i almost jumped out of my skin reading it. thank you for bringing me our perfectly imperfect new kid — i can’t wait to see her in action.

welcome, LEXI ! you have been accepted as THE SECOND IN COMMAND, otherwise known as PERCY BANKS ( BRENTON THWAITES ).

holy shit, lexi. holy shit !! from the moment i saw “STATUS: deceased” at the beginning of your app, i knew i was in for a wild ride — but i had no idea what truly awaited me. from percy’s humble beginnings through his ambitious rise to hotshot fbi agent ( speaking of, can you say hot fucking take to have him as ex-fbi ? i’m floored ), i was hooked into the twists and turns of his story, my jaw dropping when i realized who jupiter was after all. the highs and lows of his first foray into the world of heists had me on the edge of my seat, and i truly cannot wait to see what percy does next — because at this rate, who knows where he’ll end up ? i’m excited to find out !

welcome, HANNAH ! you have been accepted as THE STAR OF THE SHOW, otherwise known as STRIKER KIM ( CHARLES MELTON ).

god, hannah — break my heart, why don’t you ? as each tidbit of striker’s past fell into place, that’s what you did, and i’m aching for this boy who’s just trying to stay alive ( and live as much as he can while he still is ). though the star could be played in so many different ways, you took this role an entirely different direction, and suffice to say it blew me away. literally, your mind. exhibit a — you didn’t go running to high society for fame or fortune, no. it was your insurance policy — god, striker !! he’s such a complex, heartbreaking character, and i can’t wait to see him on the dash. he may have a hand in two different worlds of crime, but he’s also got a place in my heart, and god knows he could use the love. also, making me crack a code just to understand your bio headings ? touché. i deserved that.

welcome, ELLIE ! you have been accepted as THE WATCHDOG, otherwise known as THEA JAIN ( NAOMI SCOTT ).

the watchdog requires a delicate balance: soft edges bathed in steel, a gentle person capable of terrible things. it can be a tough image to capture, but i shouldn’t have worried. your entire app painted a picture of this exact person, tugging at my heartstrings until the very end: remember that you are thea jain, and that you are a good person. you are kind. you are loved. and you are in control. that was it — just like thea’s fifth rule to round out the reminders of her morality, you completely sealed the deal. the way she cares for the team, baking for them and occasionally mothering them, exposes that soft underbelly guarded by her quiet yet surprising strength and power. you’ve made a beautiful character, ellie. i can’t thank you enough for bringing her to me.

[eddieeatsass]

Turned evil/dark AU + sneaking people out/in for reddie pls😭

Turned Evil/Dark AU + Sneaking People In/Out from this prompt list

I now have a Dark AU series inspired by the first ask about this, so I set this one in the same universe, I hope that’s okay!

Read On AO3

Ben Hanscom, or as they so accurately called him, Ben Handsome, was the key to their plan. If he failed, the whole thing would go up in flames. Despite the fact that they’d been planning for months, meticulously going over every detail, the plan still relied on Ben being about to charm the pants off their target.

Ben, of course, had had no problem doing just that. He’d arrived at the bar at 8:49, ‘ran into’ the subject at 9:14, and was strolling out of the bar with her on his arm by 10:45. It had taken a little convincing, and a few rounds of drinks, but finally the woman warmed up to the idea of taking Ben home with her.

Ben couldn’t help but scoff at how easily she’d put herself in harms way without a second thought. She should be lucky the only thing they planned on doing that night was rob her, others may not have been so kind.

It was easy for the rest of the group to spot Ben walking through the parking lot, his eyes locking with theirs as a signal to start their engine. Slowly, they pulled out of the lot behind a bright red convertible, top down to make it that much easier to follow; just keep their eyes on the blonde mop of hair beside the ostentatious black up-do.

It took them under ten minutes to reach was was presumably their destination. They parked just a few doors down after watching the crimson car pull into the driveway of a house that was just one step below a mansion. Even with the windows rolled up, they could all hear the slow whistle that Ben let out as he observed the house before him, before disappearing inside.

They were quick to move into action once the front door shut. Eddie and Richie vaulted over their seats into the back, grabbing the large, sturdy bags they’d used on countless heists. Beverly switched on the radio to a low station and eased back in her seat, relaxing until her get-away skills were needing. Mike and Bill began pushing the back seats down to make more room for any larger items they may get their hands on. And finally, Stan hopped out of the van, lifting a cigarette to his lips and preparing to look as inconspicuous as possible. He was to be their look-out, their first signal if anyone started to get suspicious. Stan looked the most wealthy out of all of them, so he would be the last one to arise suspicion from the neighbors; just a young boy out for a smoke at night.

Inside, Ben was being as endearing as he possibly could. His warm smile and calculated winks would probably fool anyone. They were good enough to hide the way his jaw clenched or his fingers twitched every time the woman would say something particularly nasty. Ben wasn’t a saint, but at least he wasn’t an old racist lady who made jokes about ‘the blacks’ like it was still the 1940′s.

When they’d been hunting for targets a few months ago and had come across this woman, they’d known right away she was the one. She ticked off all their boxes; rich, estranged from most of her family, a bit of a loner, and desperate, oh so desperate. They knew then that they could send Ben in there, and with a few bats of his eyelashes, she’d be unknowingly leading him right to her stash.

They waited with baited breaths for the text from Ben, and once it arrived, they were moving into action without a second thought.

Eddie and Richie snuck around to the back of the house, keeping their footfalls light and ducking low enough that their heads couldn’t be seen from any open windows. When they rounded the corner, they saw Ben already standing at the open door, a quick wave of his hand ushering them to hurry.

“She’s in the downstairs bathroom but it’s already been a few minutes.” Ben supplied in a hushed tone as Richie and Eddie slipped past him. “She’s insufferable, by the way. You guys owe me big time.”

“Sure big guy. Did you get the layout?” Richie whispered.

“Yeah, she gave me the tour as soon as we got here. Last room at the end of the hall is hers, that’s probably where she keeps most things stored.”

“Benjamin!?” The woman’s shrill voice carried through the living room as her heels clacked against the floor.

“Good luck.” Eddie smirked before him and Richie both disappeared up the stairs, out of sight just in time.

“What are you doing in here?” The woman asked as she walked into the kitchen.

“Oh, I just wanted a glass of water.” Ben lied smoothly.

“Right, hydration is very important before a midnight ruckus.” The woman winked in a way that made her face contort unattractively, and Ben had to clear his throat to hide the laugh that bubbled up.

The floor of the upstairs was entirely carpeted, making it easier for Richie and Eddie to sneak around. They found the target’s room quickly, slipping in without a sound and shutting the door behind them. They could heard Ben’s voice filtering up through the floor, and made a note to keep an ear to the ground to make sure Ben keeps her distracted.

Searching a room for valuables is pretty easy, people almost always store things in the same places. Inside a pillow, beneath a floorboard, behind picture frames; people were predictable. It made Eddie and Richie’s job easier, but it also took the fun out of a heist.

“Wow, uh... Richie?” Eddie whispered from across the room.

Richie turned around from where he’d been looting through the woman’s jewelry box, attention turning to what Eddie held in his hand.

“Holy shit!” Richie exclaimed a little too loudly. A moment later they heard Ben having a coughing fit downstairs, no doubt trying to conceal Richie’s outburst.

“You’re going to get us caught you fucking idiot!” Eddie chastised quietly.

Richie abandoned his post to rush over to Eddie, grabbing the zip lock out of his hands and holding it up to the light.

“Holy shit...” Richie repeated. “How much do you think is in here?”

“Maybe 10 thousand?” Eddie suggested, eyeing the package. “But this...” Eddie pushed the dresser out of the way, revealing another 4 zip lock bags taped to the back. “Is at least half a million.”

Richie’s jaw dropped along with the bag he was holding, causing a clunk. Their eyes fell to the floor, as if the money had committed a crime worse than the one they were committing. Their eyes flitted up and locked in horror as they waited with baited breaths. They couldn’t hear Ben’s voice anymore; a sign that they might have been caught.

They waited... and waited... and waited... until a sharp giggling shriek was heard. They both let out the breath they’d been holding, laughing as they heard a few “Oh Benjamin!”s.

They were quick to get back to work then, filling their bags with all the cash they’d found, as well as all the jewelry on the vanity, and a few larger items they thought they might be able to sell for a good buck.

Their baggage was heavy by the end of it, heavy enough to make Eddie teeter a bit on his feet. Richie muffled a laugh behind his hand as Eddie struggled to hike the bag higher over his shoulder.

“Why the fuck did they send us in here and not Bill and Mike? They’re the strongest.” Eddie complained.

“Because we’re the sneakiest.” Richie bragged. “Now shut up before you get that title taken away from us by getting us caught.”

As if jinxing it, Ben’s voice was suddenly booming.

“OKAY, IF YOU INSIST, I SUPPOSE WE CAN GO TO YOUR ROOM.”

“Shit shit shit shit shit-” Eddie was frozen in place.

“WOW, THIS PAINTING IS ABSOLUTELY BEAUTIFUL, WHO PAINTED IT?”

“Eddie move your weak little ass!” Richie shout-whispered as he headed for the window across the room.

Eddie’s feet kicked into gear before his brain did, carrying him over to Richie.

“Richie we’re on the second floor, you’re gonna break your legs you idiot.” Eddie hissed.

“Better to break my legs now than to break out of jail later.” Richie slid the window open as far as it would go, giving them just enough room to jump out.

“WOW THESE STAIRS ARE REALLY STURDY. YOU KNOW, IN MY HOUSE, THE STAIRS CREAK EVERY TIME YOU CLIMB THEM. GOTTA ADMIRE A GOOD SET OF STAIRS.”

“Eddie, it’s now or never.” Richie’s eyes were pleading but ringed with an air of indifference, as if he might leave Eddie behind if the time came, but he didn’t really want to.

“Fuck it.” Eddie peered out the window, noticing a row of bushes directly below them and a pool not too far ahead. From where they were, they could probably make the jump into the water.

With no time to calculate the distance, Eddie let his bag drop into the bushes, both cushioning its fall and softening the sound of its landing. Then, before he could overthink it, he threw both legs out the window, sitting on the ledge, and pushed off with as much strength as he could.

He hit the water pretty hard, hard enough to leave some bruising and probably fuck up his back, but with nothing broken he happily swam to the edge and hauled himself out of the pool, running over to the bushes where both his and Richie’s bags lied.

The splash from behind him happened just seconds later, and before he knew it Richie was rushing to his side.

“IT’S PROBABLY JUST A RACCOON.” Ben’s voice was now clear, loud enough to drift through the open window above them.

They pressed themselves against the wall immediately, hoping that the darkness would shield them.

“We don’t get raccoons around here...” The woman said skeptically, peering out the window and down at her pool. The water was still moving, not yet having settled from their fall.

“Well, whatever it was, it’s gone.” And with that, they heard the window snap shut.

Richie and Eddie took off running, their wet clothes hard to move in and their bags weighing them down. They passed Stan, who’s head snapped at the movement before he realized it was them. He quickly joined them, jogging  towards the van and helping Eddie to haul his bag into the back once Bill had popped the trunk.

“Why are you two wet?” Mike asked, amused.

“Eat a cock, Mike.” Richie clipped back.

After their loot was securely in the back, all three of them rounded the van, climbing in as quickly and ungracefully as they could. Once they were inside and the doors were closed, Beverly took out her cell phone, pulling up Ben’s number and putting the next phase of the plan into action.

They all waited quietly as the dial tone rang, until Ben picked up and Beverly shifted into character.

“Honey, where are you? You said you’d be home by one. Are you cheating on me again?” She drawled in a fake accent.

Ben recited his lines, clean and convincing, as Beverly started talking over him, raising her voice so it would undoubtedly be heard by the woman sitting beside him.

The phone call ended in record time, and three minutes later Ben was tripping out the front door as the woman threw his jacket on the lawn, slamming the door behind him.

Ben picked up his jacket, slinging it over his shoulder before he sauntered down the driveway and headed for their van, a nearly imperceptible pep in his step.

The door slid open as soon as he was in front of it, a pair of arms pulling him into the car swiftly.

They started moving immediately, throwing Ben backwards into someone’s lap.

“Woah, slow down Bev, we’re good. She doesn’t suspect a thing, well, other than suspecting I’m cheating on my wife.” Ben winked at Bev in the rear-view mirror. “She was not too keen on that.”

“Good job on keeping her downstairs, fuckwit.” Richie bit out, crossing his sopping wet arms over his chest.

“I’m sorry! She was a woman on a mission! I stalled for as long as I could; even went as far as to kiss the old broad.” Ben made a fake gagging noise.

“Don’t worry love-bug, we’ll make it up to you.” Bev flirted from the front seat.

“Hey! I risked breaking my legs so we could make it out of there without getting caught, are you gonna make it up to me too?” Richie asked stubbornly.

Eddie punched Richie’s arm hard enough to leave a bruise, causing a hiss in response.

“Hey, it’s not my fault Bev has a better mouth than you do.” Richie grumbled towards Eddie.

The two began to bicker, filling the car with the familiar sound of chaos.

They drove back to their shared building, choosing Bill’s apartment to congregate and look over their haul.

And if Eddie and Richie fell asleep in a pile of hundred dollar bills that night, well that’s neither here nor there.

[chyrstis]

Rest (and try to relax a little)

Adelaide is a challenge to write, but absolutely priceless to run around with in-game. Between her comments and Sharky’s I’m dying about 70-80% of the time, and wanted to write something light before finally reaching Jacob’s region.

Rating: T Word Count: 3.6K

Link to AO3!

___

Adelaide is not what the Deputy is expecting, not at all. And with the Whitetail Mountains within reach, she decides it’s better to kick back and rest for once.

She just doesn’t realize how much she’s going to need it.

______________

When Sharky mentioned having an Aunt Addie, Hana had to admit that she had a picture in her mind of your stereotypical TV or movie aunt. Liked wine, tried to get real with the kids while remaining cool as hell, and loved their fair share of gossip. This was the case for most of her friends, at least from what they’d tell her.

Her only aunt had been none of those things, engaging little with her until her mother had died, and only through support checks in the mail. So, when stories came up, she went with the movies instead. Built her up that way. It was a sillier, kinder picture, and one that stuck.

So, she went into this building up just what she thought an Aunty Addie could shape up to me, not expecting much different from that.

But then she met Adelaide, and while a few of those boxes did seem like the kind she’d tick, she blew most of the others out of the water when she grabbed an extra rifle and threatened to rip every last dick off of the Peggies left on her property.

It was a stance that was pretty tough to argue against, and once they cleared them out, Adelaide told them both that she would gladly put extra foot to ass for any other task that they needed her for.

That is, until she brought up Tulip.

Tulip, as it happened, was her helicopter. Her missing helicopter. Hana tried not to break out in a sweat as Adelaide covered the basics of what had happened, how she was precious, and how she wanted her back in one solid, functional piece.

The key words being one, solid, and functional. The odds were not looking good.

Prayer was not her thing. Not even remotely, but she did make a few pleas for mercy as she and Sharky proceeded to shoot down two helicopters in the pursuit of the third. And when she climbed into Adelaide’s pride and joy and stared at the controls, she muttered every reassurance in the book before taking to the air.

The true test came when they were coming in for a landing.

The last chopper she landed she broke the landing gear of. Somehow found a way to bust it while landing it outside of the jail with minimal effort.

The thumbs up Sharky gave her on the descent almost felt like a cruel joke, but she held her breath as they touched down. Squeezed her eyes shut when she really shouldn’t have.

But no alarms went off, Sharky didn’t start yelling for them to bail, and when she opened an eye to check, saw in the distance only the pleased face of one Adelaide Drubman.

The older woman rushed up to meet them, her style cues making Hana think of a saucier Rosie the Riveter, and loved her for it.

“My Tulip! Oh, my beautiful girl, tell me they didn’t hurt you.”

She rested her hands against the helicopter’s frame as the two hopped out, still cooing over it, and Hana tried not to sweat it out at the fact that she could’ve easily pitched the poor vehicle into the side of a mountain. Or could’ve flown in scratched to hell and smoking. Either would’ve been a recipe for hurt feelings all around.

Eventually Adelaide did step back, sighing happily as she took her in recovered ride. “I can’t thank you enough for doing this, and I hope you gave every last one of those goddamn Peggies hell.”

“Fo sho. We lit them up!”

Hana returned the fist-bump Sharky gave her, and found herself grinning like he was. “That, I can totally confirm, and then some.”

“Good. It’s less than what they deserve after royally fucking us after we played nice for the last few years, but it’ll do.” Adelaide set her hands on her hips, and sighed. “It’ll have to.”

The Marina had been shot to hell and back, though most of the buildings had held up to their assault, even with the smoking gunboat left burning by the pier.

“Holy hell. Good thing I was planning on remodeling the place, but…not this early. And not like this.”

She started dragging one of the pallets towards the garage, and Hana tailed Sharky as they ran over to help. Between the three of them, plus Xander and the others Adelaide had working on the marina, they were able to put most of the fires out, and set up watch rotations just in case any retaliation was incoming.

The Drubman Marina was right on the edge of Silver Lake, the largest body of water in the area.  If you wanted to take advantage of that, you could use that docking point to transport goods, people, and bliss to any of the Heralds’ chosen territories, and when Faith felt that loss, Adelaide was going to pay for it.

Hell, maybe she could make a call over to the Jail to see if the Sheriff could get a group of people up here. A proper squad for rotations with more firepower to back this up.

She’d still have to get Adelaide’s okay first, but the extra guns wouldn’t hurt, and if the Resistance could get a patrol going here or nearby, the added pushback could be the start to taking the Henbane back. It was an option, and one they badly needed.

“Where are you two headed now?” Adelaide asked, adjusting the dark pink bandana she’d tied around her hair. It’d been rough going earlier, but the older woman hardly showed it. “I wasn’t expecting a visit to begin with, and didn’t think this was going to turn into some kind of a whirlwind two-week holiday. I mean, I’ve got the supplies for it, but…”

“Up north to grab Hurkie.” Sharky jabbed a thumb over his shoulder, aiming towards the mountains in the distance. “Dep here wants to do something pretty damn great, and she wants us along for the ride.”

“Hurk? She wants you two teaming up?” She turned to Hana. “Honey, you do know what these boys are known for, right?”

Hana gave a small shrug, hooking her fingers in her beltloops. “I may have heard a few stories here and there.”

“I’m tempted to ask which, considering you still showed up here with my nephew in tow.”

“Mostly the Testy Festy, and I still can’t believe that’s an actual thing here, but that’s beside the point. I do need their expertise. Not to light giant flaming dicks in fields, per se, but they know their way around explosives, and we do need to light a pretty huge target up.”

“So, spill it. What’s getting blasted, and not in the fun, alcohol-fueled way?”

“Broseph.” Adelaide gave Sharky a look, and he spoke up to clarify. “Stone cold statue Broseph though. Cause if we had a shot at the real him, not gonna lie, I’d go for it. Use the same kind of stuff too.”

Adelaide started to chuckle, looking between the two, and shook her head. “Fucking directly with the Father himself. That sounds almost too good to be true. I thought you were thinking of weeding a few of those goals out, though?”

“Uh, yeah, Aunty Addie, I’ve been doing some more thinking about that.” Sharky made a face, but straightened his posture. “Now, stuff’s still tangled, and I know you said to get on being more proactive in how I want things to go in my life. Planning, short-term, and some long. Mostly short, but a goal’s a goal, man. And not all of them to do with blowing shit up, believe it or not.”

The smile Adelaide gave him, while genuine, had a wry tilt to it. “That’s sounding pretty damn promising.”

“It’s still about fifty-fifty,” he said, waving his hand back and forth. “Er, sixty-forty, if you count the stuff that’ll enable more of that, and if we’re talking Peggies, you really can’t do it halfway without taking a shot at them…”

“Now, hon, you don’t want to be too much trouble.” Adelaide aimed a curious glance at Hana, but her next words were entirely meant for Sharky. “I can respect the fact that you’re trying, but the deputy here might not like being that close to a walking roman candle, let alone one always on the verge of going off.”

“I’ve seen his file,” Hana blurted out, “and he’s already saved my ass a bunch, so it’s all water under the bridge, really.”

Both of Adelaide’s eyebrows shot up. “Well, hell’s bells!” she exclaimed with a laugh. “That’s something I never thought I’d hear from one of Earl’s. Water under the bridge? I’ll have to mention that to him the next time I see him.”

Because you totally have the power of handwavium, Han. That’s just what he hired you for.  

“Now, the Sheriff, he did give me some authority, but that’s not…I’m not here to-“ She stopped when she noticed both Adelaide’s amusement and Sharky’s hopeful glance, and groaned. “Shit.”

“I’m just teasing. You keep doing you, and long as you’re helping us, Earl’ll keep on loving the hell you’re raising. Mostly,” Adelaide conceded. “If he complains at you too much, though, just send him my way and I’ll set him straight.”

She had been staring at her feet as her face burned, but when Adelaide gave her shoulder a reassuring squeeze, Hana gave her a small smile.

“Now, I meant it earlier. Rest up and get your energy back, because you’re looking more than a little peaked, hon.  Like you’ve been running nonstop for three days straight. Tomorrow’s another day. You two can head out then, and hopefully those mountains’ll still be standing.  But I can’t say the same for the dickless wonder waiting up north,” she spat. “You see any sign of my ex-husband looking for Hurk, just dodge him. He’ll try to rope you into his run for Senate, and won’t take no for an answer.”

Noted. Double-noted, at that.

Hana looked down at herself, seeing the rumpled mess she’d been rolling around in, and was glad she didn’t have a mirror. “I look that good, huh?”

“You do, and I’m not buttering you up for nothing, but a shower always works wonders, so you let me know if and when you might want to borrow it. Though you might want to wait until…” She raised her eyes to the sky as she thought it over. “Oh, one to two hours from now before heading over. All of this adrenaline’s going to need a wonderful, limber outlet, and lucky for me I have one.”

Adelaide gave her a wink before walking away, her hips swaying all the while as she approached her house. Xander followed soon after once he caught both her direction – and the motion she used to beckon him to follow her -  leaving both Hana and Sharky staring after them.

“Wow,” she said, trying to hide a grin. “I was not prepared.”

Sharky cleared his throat, the sound a little strangled. “Yeah. She’s the kind of person that inspires poetry and shit. Lots of it.”

“Poetry, eh? I can see that. Well, what do you say we take her advice and actually stop for a bit after we move the last of this shit back?” She tapped a nearby crate with the heel of her boot. “Though if I stop, there’s a good chance I’m just going to keel over where I’m standing, leaving me with my ass up in the air. Promise to drag me over to a less embarrassing spot if I do?”

“Drag, carry, either way the offer’s still open,” he said, helping her to lift the crate up to take to the garage. “Just gotta warn me first.”

“I did. And consider the offer open on both ends.”

That got a laugh. “Seriously, Dep?”

“I will drag your ass wherever, whenever, if it needs dragging. Don’t laugh, but there was a small period of time when I was thinking about being a firefighter too, and did the test, so…I could lug you around,” she said, giving him a playful grin. “Or just sweep you right off of your feet. I’d be gentle, promise.”

The crate slipped, both of them swearing heavily as she was left to juggle it while Sharky grabbed for it, and it fell right on the toe of Hana’s right boot. She shot right back, holding her foot up as she clenched her arms in front of her, and if she did let out an embarrassing sound, she wasn’t about to admit to it.

“Aw, oh fuck!” Sharky’s hands flew up, reaching for her. “Sorry Dep, I just-“

Hana held up a finger, her lips pinched shut as she hopped in place.

“But-“

“Nope,” she choked out, her foot now moving to the throbbing stage. “Just, give me a sec. I’ll just…walk over there, sit down, and we won’t talk about this.”

“You sure you don’t..?”

“No go, bud,” she said, grimacing. “Just let it go.”

His face fell as she limped away, and she tried not to think about the kick to the feelings that was as well.

Finding a spot in the back, she sat herself down onto a pallet by a set of stacked crates, and closed her eyes as she rested her back against one of them. She flexed her foot, testing it as she propped it up, and was glad that nothing felt broken. It was going to smart for a while, but she could deal with it. 

If only she could just kick back for a few. And just…

Something touched her shoulder, giving her a gentle nudge. “Psst.”

“Hmm.”

It nudged her again, and this time she heard a voice. “Hey, chica? You still out?”

“Not out if I’m talking,” she grumbled. “Or actually understanding most of what you’re saying, Shark.”

She shifted, her hands reaching down to adjust how she was sitting only to feel something soft covering her legs.  She opened her eyes, taking in the flowery throw covering her, and looked up at Sharky. He had two beers with him. One that he was currently taking a long drink from, and the other he held out when he noticed her eying it.

“God, what time is it?” Everything was dark, short of the fluorescent lights still on in the garage.

“Moon’s up, sun’s down, and we’re all still sober, so there’s plenty of night left to go.”

Hana’s whole body ached when she shifted, moving to get up. The place and the position she’d picked hadn’t done her any favors, but her foot wasn’t hurting, and the spotty sleep did leave her feeling more alert. She was also starting to eyeball the beer dangling from Sharky’s hand. Judging by the way he was waving it in front of her, she wasn’t being subtle about it either.  

She took the beer, but didn’t open it. “You should’ve woken me up, man. I wanted to help clear more junk out, get in that shower, or do watch. Whichever.”

“Nah, you wanted to be left alone, and I didn’t wanna wake you up for nothing.” He shrugged and took another drink. “Beer-thirty, though? That’s something.”

“Hey, now. If you’re waking me up to get stuff done and then give me this,” she joked half-heartedly, “I don’t know how good of a help I’ll be mildly soused.”

“You can shoot a Peggie buzzed. I’ve shot a dozen while skating down one shithouse high after torching a bunch of their flowers. It was kinda cool, kinda weird watching three versions of myself kick ass like a movie within a movie, but semi-recommended, cause while there’s a chance it’ll kill you, you really can’t beat that shit.”

“So, I should be cool then?”

“Real fucking frosty.” His eyes lingered on her, before dropping down to her hands. “Uh, so you want help with that?”

Sharky pointed at her beer, the one she’d all but neglected.

“Sure,” she said, handing it over. He popped it open in record time, and Hana made sure to give him a small toast once he handed it back. “Cheers, and here’s to one hell of a long-ass day. Let it finally end.”

He snapped his fingers mid-drink, and swallowed the rest of the beer down with a cough. “Shit, almost forgot. Aunt Addie’s got food indoors, and I wanted to tell you about it before it disappears. She told me not to eat all of the chicken, but it’s been a while since I’ve had food that hasn’t come out of a wrapper or been three days past, and…you might wanna grab it while you can cause leftovers ain’t happening.”

Her stomach reacted accordingly, reminding her that like most people, she needed something solid to run on. Not just coffee, the occasional cigarette, and adrenaline spikes.

“You don’t have to tell me twice,” she said, pushing off to sprint towards the main house.

Sharky ran off with her, sticking close even with her head-start. She barely managed to beat him through the door to Adelaide’s, slipping through the doorway only to crash into Xander once inside.

He did beat her to the punch on the last drumstick, however. And seeing as that was a solid trade for what went down earlier, she didn’t complain about it one bit.

---

“Reports are stating that due to drought-like conditions hitting the eastern side of the state, farmers are yielding a third less of their wheat crop, leading to concerns about making ends meet. Costs to improve these conditions through increased irrigation may be too high for them to afford-“

Hana fiddled with the radio in her lap, counting to five before switching it to the other channel.

The music that drifted through was somber and without words, and she could only stand to listen to it for close to a minute before switching back.

“Hospitals are unable to meet the needs of patients, having to turn them away due to being understaffed-“

“Jesus.” She sighed, and set the radio down.

Sitting outside alone on the docks, she’d been unable to sleep after all, opting for watch instead. It’d been quiet – too quiet, and she’d tried not to feel guilty about it – and found herself looking for a distraction before long. Something other than staring down at the dark water below, any skipped stones she’d chucked sinking after two hops.

It was easier to keep her mind blank that way, but it drifted like it always did. Started asking questions about tomorrow that she still didn’t know the answers to, and wasn’t sure she wanted asked to begin with. The news only fed on that, reminding her that outside of this place the world was still running. Still struggling, and though there was a chance they could all manage to save this, it was a drop in the bucket to the rest of the world.

But this was her world now. Had been the moment she took the job. It needed her to pull through this. To care. To keep on pushing, like the others were.

But damn, if the bruises and aches weren’t adding up. She’d scored plenty of new ones after picking up Sharky at the trailer park, joining the others dotting her upper arms. They hadn’t even fully faded yet, and earlier she’d taken the time to count each and every one while staring into the mirror in Adelaide’s bathroom.

Eight. Nine, if she counted the odd mark on her lower back. That was a new record, not that her old one had been hard to break.

She rubbed the back of her neck, idly trying to ease more of the tension out that had settled there, and eventually gave up. Rest really was a luxury, and yet here she was. Taking five on the cusp of heading north straight towards another Seed.

Jacob she could only recall from what she’d read in Dutch’s bunker, and the little she’d seen of him that night at the compound. The blurred photograph and the short breakdown covered only the basics, much like with John and Faith.

He was the one that armed and trained the soldiers of Eden’s Gate, pushed people to turn on each other on a dime, and up in the Whitetail Mountains there were an infinite number of trails to use. Places to hide, and wait, and bide your time if he happened to be the patient kind.

What would he do once she managed to piss him off?

She was going to find out either way, but the uncertainty chafed. Made her hair want to stand on end. It hadn’t taken much effort to get John to step in. Faith had taken a more subtle route, though maybe that had just been the bliss talking. Not her, just a projection that the drug had fed her.

She’d call Dutch in the morning. He always had an ear to the ground, and had to have heard more. Maybe even heard something from up north that she wasn’t privy to yet. What would it hurt?

The rest was up to her. Well, Sharky and her…and Hurk, once they managed to get to him. It was going to turn into a proper party after that, and Jacob would surely come calling then.

The news ended after two more reports, switching to a tune that felt better suited to an old black and white romance flick. One where the two leads were so swept up in each other that little else mattered. It was fun to think about for a few seconds as she listened, trying to picture it.

Hana chucked one last rock far out across the water, watching as it skipped across the surface once, before disappearing.

And as the song went on, she couldn’t help humming along to it.

And I do, and I do.

There is no one else, only you.

Only you, bring me joy, my sweet lover boy.

[messykarma]

11.12.20

Tensions had been rising about my unwillingness to help with the dishes after dinner without being called to do it. The unwillingness is years in the making, stemming from originally a combination of laziness and an annoyance at being expected and told to do chores where my brother in comparison was barely told/asked to do so (at first the excuses from her were that he had exams and I didn’t but then we both had exams and nothing changed). One day mum finally said because I’m female I’m expected (more like should) to do the cooking and cleaning because otherwise my husband won’t want me. I’ve been called calculative so many times because I point out he never has to do (or is expected to do) stuff I am. And yeah maybe I am calculative but I’m so frustrated at this inequality. Once brother gets annoyed at me and says I should just do it, it’s just a chore etc. but what do people say about the privileged again...? Another example, the bucket we fill with water - it doesn’t get taken to the bathroom from the shower if I don’t do it and we’re apparently both expected to do it, but I’m the only one who ever gets in trouble for it. And yeah it’s a combination of laziness and forgetfulness because after a shower the last thing I’m thinking about is the bucket of water. Eventually today mum says he waits for me and I wait for him (true) but she expects me to do it (again why?).

The way I had to beg to be let to play soccer while he got encouraged? The way I was literally top of my age group despite my gender when we were younger and he got ‘most improved’ from doing air kicks and he got all the praise and she was so proud? The way he got praised and supported for finally making the first team in rugby and my captainship of BOTH the junior and senior soccer teams meant shit all? The way I was selected for a premier team in a competitive state/Uni and then also got selected to represent the Uni at an interstate tournament and it meant shit all? The way I got a scholarship for soccer through my own efforts and it was not given one shit for? The way I was offered money and a car to join a team and it was not given one shit for? The way he was praised for his internship so I went and got a better one and it was not given one shit for? The way he’s now excused from doing any and all chores because he ‘must be tired’ well bitch I was doing the exact thing but even more before I had to come back because of COVID and you just say I’m complaining when I say that I had to do that and all my chores etc because I lived alone. I’ve never had to have a friend call them because I’ve gotten so incredibly trashed at a party they had to get me and shower me etc.

This combination expanded into having only unpleasant memories with mum in the kitchen, years of insults, yelling, death threats with a knife in hand, being told she’s not scared of going to jail etc. Being in the kitchen with her only ever ends with me being sad and upset. Is it any wonder why I hate being in the kitchen with her?

In a way it’s lucky that she hasn’t blown off the handle this completely since I’ve been here for a couple months shy of a year - most of it can be attributed to me being busy and caring about my Uni studies, but now it’s the summer holiday. 

There is also some tension with my grade announcements. I’m with dad in the car on the way to pick up some altered clothes and I see a certain grade has been released and I check and surprisingly and happily I see I got first class honours (top of the cohort) and I’m ecstatic, so ecstatic I yell and then explain to dad what it was. And for once he’s proud I think? He’s happy and telling me stuff about how it’s good etc. So when I get back home I don’t have dinner as I’m full and I can hear him telling mum about it and she’s angry and he’s explaining on my behalf. I then get a text of him telling me to send my results to the parents group chat I have with them. She doesn’t respond, I know something is wrong.

At this point I’m heading back interstate for an internship soon and my lease is ending and I want to upgrade to a place that isn’t a dungeon with a proper fridge that doesn’t give me food poisoning. Because of COVID the rates have decreased and for a little bit less than I’m currently paying I could get a bigger place with an actual living room etc. I do a lot of searching and eventually text dad about my top pick to run the idea by him because I know the person I’ll have to convince is her and if it doesn’t pass him, it won’t get to her. I’ve been slowly prodding him about changing apartments. She then finds out I approached him and not her and gets furious that I never tell her anything - but I can’t tell her why I’ve done what I’ve done because it’ll just make her more mad/she won’t accept it as a truth (cut back to a year or two back when I’m applying for youth allowance and there’s a section on whether I’ve been hit/abused and I say to her “Oh I should tick yes” and she says “No, you can’t lie” as if she’s never beaten me etc). Eventually she calms down after we put up the Christmas tree and I’m literally sobbing because I’ve once again caused her to get angry and I feel really shit about it but she eventually comes around and wants to see the places.

The event of the blow up starts off small, she wants me to collect dinner but I don’t feel like going alone. After some back and forth in the end it riles her up and it’s settled that dad will go collect the food after I order (but I intended on leaving with him). However, before I’m done ordering he’s out the door and locked it leaving me anxious and confused. I don’t want to be in the house and want to leave with him but I don’t even have my bra on (it’s way too hot to just chuck a jumper on like usual), so I go put it on and hope to catch him before he leaves and mum comes and sees me not going with him and immediately hits a peak. Luckily I’ve put on my bra and a non pyjama shirt, but still with my pyjama bottoms.

She’s screaming about me not going with him and I’m too scared to say anything, it’s like nothing has changed - I’m 16 again and wishing I didn’t exist, feeling guilty, scared and hurt with no hope for the future. Then she’s screaming about me gaming lately (during my holiday), screaming about how I’m not going to go out to the beach with one of my best friends tomorrow, screaming about me wanting to change apartments only to bring boys back (as if I can’t already do that with my current place?? I choose NOT TO), screaming about how she’s no longer going to help with my rent (as I go to Uni interstate) etc. and screaming for me to get out... it’s all a blur through my tears and sobs which according to her are fake (crocodile tears). She hits another, high peak. She’s so furious she bashes me with her phone in her hand and I instinctively shield myself (later I’ll see the line her nail drew down my arm which unfortunately or fortunately doesn’t leave much evidence after a shower) and finally decides her phone is too new to ruin and puts it down and screams about finding the cane (hehe good thing I hid it when I found it in my room when I got back).

Eventually I get a key and open the door and she stops me screaming something about dad waiting for me or not, or something? I’m pretty sure by this point he’s already left, I mean he locked the door behind him so he’s definitely not expecting me. I go out anyway and check, and sure enough the car is gone. At this point in time in all my 20 years I have never, ever actually followed whenever she screamed at me to get out, but I’m older now and scared of being alone with her even more so than usual and I’ve never actually been outside when she’s screamed at me to get out so I linger near the front gate. Eventually, I decide to go and just walk in the direction I know my dad drove in. Me in my half pyjamas and slides with just my phone and a set of keys just sobbing while walking. Eventually I just sit down to the side of the current path I’m walking on and think - I come to the conclusion of just walking to my Aunt’s place which I know is close by but I have no idea if anyone is home, but it’s ok because there’s a little courtyard I can chill in regardless. 

I get a text from her telling me my brother’s order (I’ve already ordered) and at this point I’m sure she thinks I’m in the car with my dad even though if she checked the cameras she’d probably see something quite different. So I text dad about it and he says it’s too late so I text my brother we already ordered. So I’m crying a little more than a tad but I eventually make it to my Aunt’s house with minimal people staring at me and a car letting me cross the road when it’s their right of way. When I get there I call my Aunt, I try to ask if she’s home with a normal voice but it doesn’t really work and she’s at work and she’s concerned now which is the last thing I want. I ask her if it’s ok if I just stay in her little courtyard and she hurriedly tells me to wait and she’ll call my cousin to check if she’s at the house, which she ends up not being there (she’s 30 mins away) and the cousin texts me and we have an exchange, I beg both of them to not tell my mum anything and they agree. I tell my cousin it’s all my fault but don’t explain and she tells me she’s always going to be here for me etc. which is nice and all. Later that day my Aunt tells me she’s getting a new place and she can get me a key and says nice things like how she wishes she was there for me etc. but god damnit I only had to last a month more - JUST ANOTHER FUCKING MONTH - and I couldn’t do it. I know my Aunt wants me to stay with her (my friends have offered too and others have suggested renting a place), she’s offered before especially when I wasn’t sure if I could get to interstate but I know what will happen. I don’t want to hurt my mum’s feelings, I feel guilty and I care and don’t want to hurt her feelings which I know it will. Also I’m like kinda broke lmao (I have some savings but they won’t last terribly long). Eventually I feel so bad I just transfer dad $500.

I end up texting my dad that I’m at Aunt’s and if he could pick me up on the way back home (as he passes the house) and to pretend like I went with him. He says mum will know I didn’t but inwardly I’m fairly certain she doesn’t because of the earlier text. When he arrives I choke out a ‘I’m sorry’. Eventually he gives me a lecture on not testing her or something, needing to know when to stop, like when I hit resistance I should stop etc. 

Bit of a blur but I think he starts talking about my efforts or something and I go, “I’m trying. I’m trying.”

Which he replies with, “Trying isn’t good enough.”

Says I can’t expect much support next year anymore and that I need to do, not try or something. Says that I’m lazy (which yeah I know) etc. So now as I’m sitting here typing this I’m truly wondering if I can afford to support myself fully. I’m already planning on working 2 jobs (actually for 4 weeks if I get the second job I’ll have 3 jobs at once including the internship) but I’m not quite sure if it’ll be enough. Probably try for youth allowance again.

In the end he says once I get to Melbourne to stay there and to not come back. If they want to come see me they will go. 

When we return it is very awkward and finally mum announces she is no longer going on the trip down south planned for the next week (and says something about now being more room?) so yet again I’ve caused more problems for everyone. Now it’s time to turn all the hurt into jokes to cope and also because making things funny is kinda cool and helps ignore the problems. 

And now I’m remembering my eldest brother says I should talk to him about this shit but how can I trust him after both he and my sister in law backed mum the last time there was a problem come to light without considering my side, ganging up on me (granted my furious and hurt texts to him after is what prompted him to tell me I should be talking about this stuff with him). And all my friends think I’m not in the wrong, supporting me but it doesn’t feel that way. They’re being good friends but the situation is so complicated and years in the making. 

[nebulawriter]

The Christmas Prince: Blind Review

Okay. So this has been in my recommendations on Netflix for a while and it always looks so strange to me. I thought I’d put it on and see what it was about for a night in. 

It started out with some classic pictures of new york with the MUSIC from Jingle Bell Rock, but with weird different lyrics pulled from other christmas songs. 

Strap in folks. We’re in for a ride.

Well this is starting out like every romantic comedy ever. But kudos to ‘Ugly Christmas Sweaters of the Stars’

Aldovia is definitely just Not-Genovia. My goodness. 

Why...is...is this junior editor at a fashion thing covering an international scandal thing? Why aren’t...you know what, nope. nope we’re just gonna ride this out. 

I mean I can already see the formula played out for this rom-com but lets see if there are any surprises

Oh my god. 

This guy is the ultimate gay friend stereotype

Okay I like the dad. 

OH MY GOD the exposition in this movie is just...so on the nose. Just. 

That was the prince, wasn’t it

Like I get that this foreign wedding isn’t the sexiest thing for an american paper...whatever this paper is...but like. I feel like they would either depend on another paper for the news or like. not send a writer at all if they didn’t have one. 

THE ACTING IN THIS MOVIE MY GOD. “More like he’s avoiding the press” *head bob*

THE EXPOSITION IN THIS MOVIE

wow this is. I mean, it’s not like ridiculously laughably bad but its just...not good. 

What are the stakes for why she can’t go home empty handed? I’d have thought she’d WANT to go home, seeing its christmas and she was reluctant to come. But its not like this is her LAST chance at the big break. And him not showing up is still news like, write about that???

THIS ENTIRE PLOT IS BASED OFF OF PURE COINCIDENCE

AAAAAAAA

Aww cute lil girl. 

OH MY GOD SHE BROKE A VASE 

IS THIS ABOUT TO TURN INTO OURAN HIGH SCHOOL HOST CLUB

That castle is definitely a model. 

THE STAKES HERE ARE SO LOW. And why does this level of infiltration need to be necessary for such a low level story?

This acting is going to kill me. 

This is either disability representation or disability porn and I’m leaning towards the porn. 

was that supposed to be her finding him attractive?

This is either bad acting, bad writing or both. I’m inclined to think both.

DICK JOKE

oh god. this is every goddamn romance movie except with so little romance. 

What’s the story they’re investigating? The guy said they’d be having the coronation. Like. Thats the story.

Let me guess. The evil dick cousin takes the throne if the prince abdicates oh my GOD this movie is painful. 

Alright, they’re leaning away from the porn part and moving more into the representation for disability. 

ANOTHER DICK JOKE

YOU COULDN’T HAVE FOUND OUT ABOUT THIS LINE OF SUCCESSION THING OFF GOOGLE OR SOMETHING??

Oh my god a cocky vulnerable asshole he’s literally EVERY Rom com hero oh my GOD

SHE HAS NOT SHOWN ANY SIGNS OF ATTRACTION

and how much does gay bff know about royalty?

I get it. Simon’s an asshole. 

This acting. 

New woman. The rival lover?

This movie is every rom com. Every. Single. One. I’ve never seen them so thoroughly condensed. 

BROOKLYN NINE NINES UP! MOVIE BREAK

okay back to hell

Ah yes, the love rival whom the mother approves of, but the boyfriend doesn’t love anymore. 

she’s...writing...those notes are terrible

I....do like the little girl. Still trying to figure out if they’re just using the disability for sympathy points. But like. She does have a character and I do like her, so I’ll go with it. 

Either way its still the best part of this movie. 

im so bored.

this prince. is so. boring. 

WHAT THE HELL KINDA CHRISTMAS GAME IS THAT

How did THAT reporter get so close to the princess?

Like doesn’t she have guards?

you know, come to think of it, there are probably no guards in all of Aldovia

Richard ain’t gonna show. 

Called it. 

Oh my god why are they surprised Prince Flake disappeared?

yup, he’s ACTUALLY cute and charming. Of course. 

What I want: They change the laws for Emily to inherit the throne, but the Queen rules until she turns 18. 

Yup. There is 0 security in Aldovia

Sledding is cute. 

Literally just...cut the prince out of this movie. Just completely. 

Just make it about the sister, and how there’s no direct male heir. 

I’ve seen plenty movies where the women is just a sexy lamp but honestly the guy here is so easy to remove from this romance. 

This could be such a sweet platonic sister-y movies. 

This is....cute but doesn’t provide any dramatic tension really. Like, at all. 

I hate her notes so much. Partially cause they’re like mine, but she’s a reporter she should know better. 

I mean, they’re friends now, right? Why not just ask prince (Or Emily, honestly) why he doesn’t want the throne. 

ARE THERE NO STABLE BOYS HERE IN ALDOVIA EITHER????

YOURE TRUSTING THE HORSE TO KNOW WHERE ITS GOING????

Have you ever even ridden before?

what...what is happening.

Does the prince come to her rescue.

Alright, that shot was stolen STRAIGHT from Beauty and the Beast. 

THIS WHOLE SEQUENCE IS LITERALLY JUST A SCENE LIFTED FROM BEAUTY AND THE BEAST!

Did they just forget to write a scene and so inserted one from another movie and then write around that?

oh my god this was so boring I almost missed the heart to heart. 

oh, emotional truths in movies are never good when it starts with “You’ll just think I’m a spoiled rich kid anyway”

well, I mean, if your father wrote your mother a riddle that you can’t figure out....I’m assuming SHE can. Right?

that almost-kiss was so forced.

We’re nearing the part where ‘everything goes wrong’

Wait a sec, this is deviating a bit

HO CRAP

How’d she get all this. 

Why tell your best friends about this whole thing? Prince was adopted. Huh. 

Again, stakes. Why do we care that her ‘career’ will be made. 

oh my god. of course. The accidental ‘saw the other girl kiss him’ moment

oh my god.I eye rolled so hard it hurt

“If you like the way you look that much, then baby you should go and love yourself”

YOUR GOING. TO EXPOSE THE STORY. THAT HE WAS ADOPTED. BECAUSE HE KISSED ANOTHER GIRL?????

I give up. 

Thank you, dispensary of fatherly advice. 

well. one thing taken care of. 

What happened to the horse who bucked her off anyway?

Ah yes. The good ole romcom trope. “There’s something that I need to tell you” Man swoops in for kiss. 

my god

Sigh. The rival and the skeevy cousin team up. 

oh no they’re going to find the adoption papers. Dickholes. 

Dammit they successfully made me hate them for hurting the good guys. Fuck. 

Him being adopted explains the GIANT AGE difference between him and his sister, though

What did he say? What...what’s happening?

yeah yeah, the son is afraid of not living up to his dad

OH MY GOD THE PALACE IS TOTALLY A MODEL

.....I do like the little girl. 

Seriously why isn’t this story just about the little girl? 

Get rid of the Prince he’s unnecessary

Make it all about ableism and sexism and blah blah and people trying to deny Emily the throne. Maybe even make HER the adopted one and talk about not-blood families and their importance.

Ah, the makeover section of the romcom has started. 

oh look, its her in an updo and a fancier dress. 

Oooh, smokey eye too. nice. 

Honestly I didn’t think the love rival was so bad at the start. but I think they just didn’t know what to do with her so decided to make her a stereotype. 

Call him Dick.

(his name is prince richard. they should call him a dick.)

I enjoy that she’s wearing sneakers under her dress, I admit. 

Does she even know how to dance?

I guess so

Or not, they clearly choreographed this right before shooting. 

everyone else in the scene is clearly professional dancers, and there the main characters are. Swaying. 

Seriously? One song in and they go to the main event?

The cousin and the rival are going to do something dramatic, aren’t they?

Is this like a marriage? I don’t think people dispute coronations during the ceremony.

Okay, but they need time to like. Verify things right? 

Like. Why does everyone suddenly believe them? and...I just...what?

WHY WOULD SHE ADMIT THAT RIGHT NOW IN FRONT OF EVERYBODY?! COME ON THIS SHOULD GO SOMEWHERE PRIVATE RIGHT? WITH LIKE? 

Oh god this is so...artificial and junk. 

‘things just got so out of hand’

i admit, it’s a PRETTY model of a palace. 

this whole thing is just. so contrived. 

Really? ‘why didn’t you tell me?’ 

Wasn’t a royal birth like....news? in this country?

Aw, mother/son seen. good. 

They got married before the coronation?

What happens if the time runs out? Like. Will they just. Not have a king anymore?

Like what kind of stupid rule?

Seriously, the dad character, his entire dialogue is just fatherly advice. 

Okay. So what I’m getting here is the king hid something in the acorn ornament he made? but. Why did he hide it?

Oh wow, there actually ARE guard in the country.

they might not have a dungeon, but they have jails, surely?

WHY DID HE PLAY WITH RIDDLES!! THE DEAD KING IS AN ASSHAT!!!

hey, there looks like some equality with gender in the quorum of kings council. but like. Its really white. 

See, Emily continues to be the only good thing in this movie. 

This whole thing is so arbitrary, why not. 

Oh look and now he can be king. Why didn’t he want to be king before? Anyway?

Seriously Sophia, make sure he’s King BEFORE you marry of him, geez. 

And he’s king. Cool. 

But where’s the girl? :O

now he has to chase after her and they kiss and then happily ever after. Right?

okay, so she made it to New York. Cool. 

Do they not like puff pieces? This is the obvious blah thing. 

Girl that is a dream job for a wanna be journalist in your 20s. Good lord. 

AHHH I HATE THIS

She has a date? oh. Setup. got it. 

These side characters have no depth at all. They are black best friend and gay best friend. 

Where is he. There he is.

THEY LET THE KING OF A COUNTRY WANDER THE STREETS OF NEW YORK WITH NO GUARDS????

oh, just skippin straight to the proposal. mkay. 

THEY MET TWO WEEKS AGO

hehehhehe my brain had a dirty thought. 

there it is

I can feel Elsa shouting “YOU CANT MARRY A MAN YOU JUST MET”

I could have sworn that ring was purple a second ago. now its blue, 

K

3 minutes left. please let most of those be credits. 

ah yes. Circle cam around this OBVIOUS STAGE SET

No new york street looks like that.

AND WE DIDNT EVEN GET TO SEE EMILY AGAIN.

Welp. Can’t say I didn’t know what I was getting into. 

[toukaisbetterthanyou]

The one where anon fumes in rage for the second half of the chapter

After chapter 143, I never thought I would read this looking for some lightheartedness.

I just found out I have a tag on your blog and I screamed to my fiancée happily about it. Once he made sure I wasn’t going into early labor, he told me to stop being a fucking weeb. He doesn’t understand I just made it! This is awesome!

On to the review then, the title does not bode well given the story’s content.

I hope the read more trick works.

He looks over to where she’s pointing, and sure enough there seemed to be a family of squirrels resting on a branch parallel to their window.

Squirrels mean preparation and resourcefulness. I see the symbolism. ;P

“You look like you’re happy,” She murmurs. “What’s the occasion?”

…

He hasn’t seen her look this happy in a long time.

Just how bad were the last 5 months if a simple smile and flush is something he hasn’t seen in a long time? Bitch, your relationship hasn’t reached the 6 months mark yet!

he rarely kissed like this these days.

Hatefucking is now the norm in their sex life. Can’t say I blame them. When your relationship is so fucked up, your only option is to drown out your thoughts in vigorous thrusting and serial orgasms.

She gives him a mockingly surprised look. “You can do that?”

Own him, Touka!

For a moment, he wonders if he would need to speed up his timeline.

Can he even do that? He can’t change the Rushima operation date and it would be stupid to fight Arima with the entire CCG still in Tokyo.

 and transferring a large amount of the money in his bank account into a private account that he had opened earlier that week in his free time.

I swear I need an act of congress signed by Jesus himself to move more than $1000 from my account and this guy is transferring large amounts with a phone app? Into a recently made account? Makes sense since Japan doesn’t have the Patriot Act but still, it looks suspicious and can be traced. He should know better than that.

He frowns, wondering if he would need to hide them. Lock her away, so that no one would be able to find her.

Why not put her in Cochlea with Hinami? At least she will help her with the baby when your ass is dead and gone. The fact that these thoughts are even occurring to him is scary since he can do it if he wants and Touka would be helpless to stop him

Though, that wouldn’t make her happy. 

But this wasn’t just about her happiness, was it?

No, it’s about your selfishness and tragic dark hero complex you moron!

He looks around the space of the living room and can hardly recognize the change from a few months ago when he got the place. 

What had happened?

A woman’s touch.

It felt like home. God, he wanted to laugh at how struck he was by all of this. Would it even matter when he went through with his plans? His child would grow up without him and Touka 

I hate that you are making me sympathize with this fuckboy.

She peers from the kitchen, her hair, falling below her shoulders. She kept it clipped up with a hair claw he had gotten her.

Long hair Touka is a BIG MOOD! Thank you for the image.

but Yoriko had went on and on about how simple it was to make

OMG did my trick with wiping Furuta’s name work and now Yoriko is part of the story? (I know this is from school memories but let me dream I have superpowers)

His fingers twitch, longing to feel the movement of their child. 

Do I even deserve it?

No. You plan to abandon this kid in a world that despises it so you can keep those fingers to yourself.

The baby doesn’t kick when he tries to feel it though. He’s tried, it’s like his child already knew him well enough.

I like this kid. Carlos making me proud.

He didn’t deserve happiness at the expense of her life. 

He didn’t deserve it at all, in fact.

 I hate that you are making me sympathize with this fuckboy.

There hadn’t been any arguments,

I wish we could have gotten a glimpse to one of these arguments.

“Isn’t Papa handsome, Touka-chan?” She’d ask, and then she’d hug him tightly, drawing both herself and Ayato into the hug as well. It’s the last time she remembers ever feeling so safe.

/UGLY CRYING/

– Right down to the tragic ending.

Is that why you picked a guy who has Tragedy as his middle name? Recreating childhood trauma?

“I do,” he insists. “Trust me.”

If someone insists that you should trust them, you probably shouldn’t.

and lets her pick out the cake she would be having after dinner tonight.

I don’t know if this is intentional or not but it’s an odd choice of phrase “let her pick” as if he is controlling every aspect of her life. Oh fuck, he kinda is, isn’t he?

Ken lets himself in,

Still with that nasty habit of his.

ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME YOU RUDE ASS BITCH?!!!!! DO YOU HAVE ANY IDEA HOW LONG YOU HAVE TO WAIT FOR YOUR APPOINTMENT AND YOU JUST BARGE IN YOU PATHETIC EXCUSE OF A NOT EVEN A HUMAN BEING?!!!! LET ME SEE HOW WELL THAT KAGUNE WORKS FOR YOU WHEN YOU HAVE 20 CRANKY PREGNANT WOMEN TACKLING YOU TO THE GROUND!!!!

All my sympathy for this fuckboy just flew out the window.

And clearly terrified.

Doctors can kill you, Ken. Why the fuck are you putting the fear of Ishida into this man? That’s like being rude to your waiter and being surprised when you find out they spat in your food.

What a dick.

There’s a crack.

 WTF?!

He had popped his shoulder right out of place.

Whaaaat the fuuuuck?!

“Do you have any idea the kind of things that this man has done?” He asks, directing his question to her, then. “To ghouls? Specifically to ghoul women?” 

YOU SHOULD BE ONE TO TALK YOU HYPOCRITICAL FUCK! Are you telling me the award winning ghoul killer is now showing concern for his victims?

Ken continues, clearly getting a thrill out all of this

/Insert gif of Selina Meyer’s nervous WTF/

“Are you really in a position to talk? You kill ghouls everyday.”

THANK YOU TOUKA!

No, it didn’t. She likes to pretend most of the times. The last three months had been nothing but a happy dream. Ken isn’t the same anymore, even if he pretended to be meek and gentle with her now, that isn’t him at all. This was him. She just had to accept it.

This just made me depressed. Why does it have to be like this?

He tests her blood and the urine, not waiting for any lab work, knowing that Sasaki would not take that well, he does it himself.

I am fuming right now because I know those need at least an hour so that appointment took at least an hour and all those poor women are waiting outside till they finish.

Fuck you Kaneki.

One of his gloved hands intertwined with hers. She was so warm to the touch.

What kind of flimsy ass gloves are those if you can feel her temperature through them?

 even Yomo-san was excited about the new child, asking her about it, and constantly asking to touch her belly in his shy and quiet way.

Gruncle Yomo hype!

He was more than excited to rush the two of them out of his office.

He’ll be more than excited to rat the two of you out as soon as chance permits.

She doesn’t notice the dark, amused look that Ken casts back on the doctor.

Plot twist: Ken has an affair with the doctor and the whole scene before was part of their kinky SM scenes. (Ignore that)

“I love you,” Ken rasps against her mouth.

Fuck you.

(Well, Touka is doing that but I mean that metaphorically you line-cutting bastard)

just like the ones that make her eyes blank and roll behind her lids.

That’s probably because you shouldn’t be lying flat on your back once you enter the second trimester. The good doctor would have told you that if your boyfriend didn’t terrify the fuck out of him.

The sight of her completely tired and sated because of him, sends a thrill up his spine.

I hate to say this but same, Kaneki, same.

The baby seems to kick him right on his cheek as Ken leans in to nuzzle her belly. As if to tell his father that he was being ridiculous.

At least now we know both Ken and Touka have a recessive gene for common sense since the baby seems to have more of it than they do.

“I hope – that you’re like your mama. I hope I can make you both happy and proud.”

/Insert Kristen Wiig’s Bridesmaids are you fucking kidding me gif/

look over the email he had drafted to his good friend, another Associate Class investigator.

I KNEW IT! THIS IS KARMA! THAT BEAUTIFUL BITCH!

But why didn’t the doctor contact his investigator friend when Ken first threatened him though? His terror means they met before but he needed a dislocated shoulder to ask for his friend’s help?

He would look over the contents in his car and send the email.

What is in his car? Why is it important to check before the email? Does this have anything to do with Kanou’s experiments?

He’s too busy shoving his files inside his briefcase to notice the glint of metal glass frames and a fringe of dark hair.

This is such a well-written line, thrilling.

A smile comes across her lips as she thinks about that.

You’re keeping your expectations pretty low if that is what makes you smile.

of the S ranked ghoul Yotsume

SS ghoul! Put some respeck on her rank!

Touka grips the letter, hard enough to shred the paper. Stupid – she had been so fucking stupid.

Guess who is coming home to a vase thrown at their face? I want Touka to pack her stuff and call Nishiki to come pick her up! Put her stuff in the car and wait to punch Ken in the face then leave. Does he think some baby clothes and cushions will make her ignore her baby sister being thrown in jail? Fuck no, you got a big storm coming, Kaneki.

SO MUCH HYPE FOR NEXT CHAPTER!

By the way, I started writing a review for Aphrodisia but my fiancée heard “impregnation kink” and decided to join me in reading and we uh, got distracted. Future hubby is now a huge fan of yours though despite not knowing anything about the manga besides chapter 125. He says he related a lot to Kaneki in the second chapter (big surprise, huh?) despite not being a king or having any murder tentacles sprouting from his back so great job on that one.

[cosmicmadwoman]

Adam and Eve Chapter 11: Visitation Rights

The next installemtn is here! To read from the beginning: http://archiveofourown.org/works/11360046/chapters/26973768

Summary: Polly, Betty and Jughead meet Scott and our sleuths do some more digging.

Rated: M

Word Count: 4301

Betty gave Jughead the cold shoulder the rest of the night until they were in their pajamas and laying on the deflated air mattress. The blonde teen was on her back and arms crossed with her slitted into a leer.

“Are you ready to turn the light off?” Jughead asked, clearly not knowing what to say or do. He assured her that he believed her and would not make her see RJ again, but his girlfriend was still reeling and denying kisses and touches. That was the worst part.

“I don’t care,” Betty shrugged, her arms still crossed tightly.

Jughead paused. Maybe this was more than RJ and more than his momentary insensitivity (which he hates himself for doing, like that night in Archie’s garage) and about a big day they were having tomorrow; meeting their brother. They hadn’t talked about it at all really, and that was rare for them as they share everything with each other. Betty hadn’t spoken to Polly much either since she left her home, so all her thoughts and fears weren’t explored yet, they were just sitting and festering inside her brain.

“Do you wanna talk about tomorrow?” Jughead asked gently.

Betty noticeably relaxed her shoulders, but her arms were still crossed. Jughead turned on his side, propping his head up on his hand and observed her quivering lip.

“Was is there to talk about?” Betty declared half-heartedly.

The raven haired boy smoothed the hair on her forehead lovingly and Betty didn’t flinch like he thought she would, further proving his theory that she wasn’t upset with him specifically, but in general and was taking out on him. She knew in her heart that she was safe doing that with him.

“We are meeting our brother, tomorrow, Betty. It’s a lot to process,” Jughead said.

She shook her head slightly and a stray tear slid down the side of her face and into her hair and the pillow. She rolled over away from Jughead, but he wouldn’t give up. He usually was the one to push people away when he needed them most, and Betty seemed to have taken a page from his novel. He put an around around her waist and pressed his front to her back lightly, kissing the back of her neck that was bare because of her high ponytail.

“I love you,” Jughead murmured into her hair, “Talk to me. Don’t shut down.”

Betty took a deep breath and turned face to face with her boyfriend. His blue eyes were so forgiving and her heart hurt with love for him. What other teenage boy could support her like he does? Archie never could have been the rock that Jughead was consistently. A curl fell into his eyes and Betty moved it back gently.

“We share a brother. What other couples have that? How can it not change things between us?” Betty questioned urgently.

This felt like it was coming out of nowhere to Jughead. “I thought you didn’t care.”

“Do you?”

Jughead shrugged and kissed her forehead quickly, “Honestly, no. Sure it’s complicated, but you and me, together, that’s not complicated. We love each other.”

“You have to admit it’s weird,” Betty giggled.

“Fucking weird,” Jughead laughed too, and before they knew it, they were laughing in each other’s arms at the absurdity of life.

Polly called around 8:30 the next morning. Betty and Jughead were already awake, dressed and in the kitchen making eggs and hot chocolate.

“Hey, Pol,” Betty greeted.

“I miss you,” Polly said sadly.

Betty didn't want her to do this. Play the victim like she did so well; of course she’d been through so much, but Betty had to take care of herself too, and self-care was being away from that house.

“Miss you too!” Betty said shortly.

There was a brief silence before Polly continued, “Can you give me Jughead’s address so I can meet you guys? The cafe where we are meeting him is about an hour away, I looked it up.”

Betty recited the address, which reminded her that Polly had never actually been to the Southside, and compared it to how much that part of town began to mean to her. Unlike her mother, who felt trapped in the chain link fence, Betty found freedom from the weighted expectations of the Northside.

The sisters hung up after goodbyes and Betty sighed inwardly. She was so nervous, her heart was heavy and felt like it was barely able to stay in her chest without falling to her stomach, crumbling under its own weight.

“When exactly is Polly coming?” Jughead asked suddenly.

“Um, 9:30. Why?”

“I think I’m going to see my dad quickly. Just let him know where I am going,” Jughead explained, “Do you think that’s a good idea?”

“If that’s what you want to do, Juggie, then it’s a good idea,” Betty smiled and brought him in close for a strong hug.

He nodded wearily and grabbed his jacket, putting his shoes on and grabbing the keys. “I’ll be back soon.”

Jughead wasn’t sure what had come over him to see his dad. He hadn’t visited since they were in deep with the case, since FP told him to leave things alone for his own safety. Which of course is the opposite of what he had done. He contemplated telling his dad about the Serpents on the ride over, but decided against it quickly, knowing how furious he would be. This visit isn’t about me, he thought, it’s about my brother. God, the words my brother felt foreign in his head.

Once he arrived, the attendant there ushered him in after signing paperwork, seemed surprised to see him. FP must not get many visitors.

When the older man rose his head to see whose footsteps were clunking down the hallway, he rushed to bars and smiled brightly, contrasting the heaviness and hardness of the bars surrounding him.

“My boy!” He cried happily.

Jughead just nodded in response and stood in front of him. FP was always an emotional man, and so Jughead wasn’t alarmed when he saw soft tears stain his father’s cheeks.

“I know I told you never to come back, but I really did miss you. What brings you here?”

“I wanted to tell you I’m meeting Scott today. Scott as in--”

FP interrupted, “I know who he is.”

“Crazy, huh?” Jughead awkwardly laughed after a loaded pause.

“If I had known, I would’ve stepped up, I want you to be aware of that. I was a shit father, I’ve had plenty of time here to think about that, but I would've tried to make it work. I wonder if you two would get along. Or if he’s like me… or her. If he looks like me, even,” FP rambled, then let out a breath when he was finally finished.

“He looks like you,” Jughead answered.

FP smiled briefly and went to his desk to grab something. He handed a piece of paper to Jughead through the bars, looking around to make sure the loittering guards had their backs turned.

“This is a letter I wrote to him. I haven’t had the guts to send it yet, but since you’re seeing him, well, maybe you could give it to him,” FP said, his voice small and hopeful like a child’s asking to stay up past their bedtime.

“Of course, Dad,” Jughead said. The man could be so pitiful sometimes. That’s probably why Gladys stayed as long as she did. Every time he fucked up he would pout and look like a broken winged bird, and she just had to piece him back together because, look, he was so helpless. And that’s also why Jughead still loved his father, despite leaving him homeless and taking up with a gang that he himself had gotten tangled into.

“Uh, thanks.”

“I should get going,” Jughead finally said, not knowing what else to do. He did what he came here to do.

“Of course, of course,” FP said, but Jughead could tell he was disappointed.

Jughead started to wave goodbye, but FP grabbed him through the bars and brought their forehead together as close as he could, the edges of their heads crushing into the cool metal.

“I love you, kid,” the older man whispered.

The son nodded and squished his face to keep back tears. FP released him when a guard rounded the corner and rubbed his nose on his hand. The men parted and Jughead went back to the truck, sitting in the seat, feeling the cool air fill his lungs, and didn’t start the engine. He pulled the crisp letter from his pocket and unfolded it. He shouldn’t be doing this, the letter was private between his dad and Scott, but he was a detective after all, and snooping into private things was like second nature.

Dear Scott,

I’m going to start off by saying I didn’t know I had a third kid but I already love you. And also start by warning you I’m not a good Dad, I try, but things are always a little fucked up when it comes to me. I don’t act like a good father to the kids I do have, so I don’t know what gives me the right to say this, but I would love to meet you. I can’t really comes see you, cuz I’m in jail, which is further evidence that I’m a total fuck up, but everything I do comes from a place of trying to take care of the broken semblance of family I do have. The people who will still have me, I like to think. Couple of guys from work and Jughead. I have done nothing good for him and he still forgives. He’s the best thing I’ve ever done and I’d like you to meet him sometime too. Maybe Jellybean, your sister, would meet you too. She’s a spitfire. Haven’t heard from her in a while though. Don’t blame her, really. I’ve always been better at being a ghost.

Maybe we can connect. On your terms, I don’t want to push anything. I would be honored to get to know you. My son.

FP.

Jughead wanted to smash the steering wheel and he had no idea why. Nothing was ever easy for any member of the Jones family, they were all sad and useless and broken. He hated being like this, hated that all he had to offer was a sad grimace and poetry about falling apart. He was done falling apart, done playing poor Jones boy. He felt like a fucking coward. Betty was a lion, she could take anyone down but… he still had a darkness that wouldn’t take over. He needed it to fuel a power. Power over his life that he never had before.

A text from Betty interrupted his thoughts and asked him he was almost done, not to rush him, but the clock was ticking. He started the car and bombed out of the parking lot.

When he got back to the trailer, Polly was waiting, leaning up against her car. She was 15 minutes early, obviously hyped up and nervous. There really wasn’t a way to prepare for meeting your secret long lost brother. Betty came outside shortly and hugged him fiercely.

“How did it go?” Betty asked sincerely.

“He gave me a letter for Scott,” Jughead said.

“That’s sweet,” Betty replied, reaching on her tiptoes and kissing his forehead.

“Okay enough PDA!” Polly shouted from her car, which she insisted on taking because Jughead’s looked to her like a death mobile, “let’s get on the road, lovers!”

Polly was talkative the whole hour ride. Betty drove, Polly was in the passenger seat, and Jughead lounged in the back seat. He didn’t get much sleep last night, they really needed to buy a new air mattress or something.

The cafe was almost identical to the one in Riverdale, but with more hipster inspired decor. Greendale was a mixture of NYC and Riverdale, if there ever could be one. It had actually mainstream stores, not just mom and pop shops, had a music and comedy scene, great food, but still managed to hold onto a small town appeal through unique shops and clean neighborhoods.

The three entered and the door hangings jingled loudly. It caused Betty to jump a little; she was already on edge. She scanned the seats at the coffee bar and the ones scattered around the shop, but a Cooper-Jones hybrid was nowhere to be found. They were about twenty minutes early, but it was because they were anxious, and they hoped he was too. The three found two couches in the corner with low lighting and sat there silently, all watching the door intently. When they finally let their eyes wander, the jingles sounded again and a tall handsome young adult with slicked back black hair entered, a more cleaned up version of FP Jones, really. He scanned the shop just as they did, and Polly waved jovially when his eyes landed on them. He quirked his eyebrows slightly, but smiled in returned and walked to them. He was wearing an expensive looking gray peacoat and he unbuttoned it when he sat down.

“Well, hi!” He greeted, laughing a little at the situation.

“Oh, give me a hug,” Polly smiled and got up slowly, embracing him when he stood as well. Her belly got in the way and she felt she had to address it. “I’m due in mid January. Twins. Yeah, it’s kind of a dark spot for the Cooper family.”

Scott shook his head and admired her stomach. “A child is always a miracle. That’s what my mom always told me. Well, children in your case.”

Betty got up to hug him too and Jughead shook his hand. He wasn’t much of a hugger, unless it came from Betty.

“This is my boyfriend, Jughead,” Betty introduced. “And… also your brother.”

The older boy’s head shivered like he was taking a double take. “Um?”

Betty laughed awkwardly, “Oh not, that came out wrong, he’s not my brother. Our mom had an affair with his dad in high school, and well… you came along.”

“This is a lot to process,” Scott said seriously, “Can we get coffee first?”

Scott moved to get up, not waiting for an answer and Jughead stood up with him. He handed him the letter from his back pocket, and the green eyed man took it slowly.

“It’s from my dad. Or ours. Or whatever,” Jughead shrugged and sat back down with a thud. The couch rocked underneath him. Scott just nodded and headed to make a drink order.

“Do you think we are too much for him?” Polly murmured to her sister and Jughead.

“We definitely come with a lot of baggage,” Jughead replied snidely.

Betty knocked him with her knee. They were still family, even though they had just met, they were still bonded by blood. He wouldn’t toss them aside because they’re like tarnished silver. She observed him read the letter by the bar where he waited for his coffee. Betty hadn’t asked Jughead what was in it, that was personal, but by the look on Scott’s face, he was very surprised but also unimpressed. The barista handed him his coffee and returned to the couch and sat down on the edge of his cushion.

“So, this FP guy is in jail?” Scott asked Jughead directly.

“Yeah. I don’t know if you heard about Jason Blossom, but he was a teen that went to Riverdale High and his father killed him over some argument about the family drug ring. My dad didn’t kill him but, he helped cover it up. He’s not a really bad guy, he just got mixed up,” Jughead explained.

“I think I heard about that in New York, actually. Pretty small towns with big secrets is always a popular story,” Scott said flatly.

“Riverdale is more than that,” Jughead began to protest, but Scott didn’t seem like he was in the mood for philosophical discussions. After reading the letter his demeanor had quickly shifted from welcoming to skeptical.

“Jason Blossom is actually the father of my children,” Polly divulged rubbing her stomach affectionately, “I didn’t know he was my cousin at the time.”

Scott sat up abruptly and clenched his fists like a cartoon character who was angry. His fist were flushed from clenching so hard, just like Betty would, but she didn’t see any blood trailing his palms.

“You’re kidding, right? This feels like a practical joke! Are you even my siblings? Like the things you’re saying are… they’re crazy!” Scott cried. People throughout the cafe started to attempt craning their neck discreetly.

“I don’t like that word,” Betty murmured, and Jughead held onto her hand.

Polly stood up along with him and put her hands on her hips like she was about to reprimand her future children. “I’m sorry we aren’t perfect and cheery but this is our life and I am offended that you would suggest that we are lying! Who could make this stuff up!”

“I expected we would sit have coffee, have light surface conversation, get to know each other a little but this… this is too much. This is crazy!” Scott continued, flailing his arms.

Betty shot up and got in between Polly and Scott, “Stop saying that word. We aren’t crazy.”

“This,” making a pointing gesture at all three of the Riverdale kids, “isn’t normal, I hope you know. This is crazy!”

Before anyone in the entire cafe had time to blink, Betty wound up and slapped him clear across the face. He held it and stared at her, her own intense green eyes now mirroring back at her with horror. He left the cafe immediately after that, not saying a word to anyone. They were promptly escorted out of the building and got back in the car, Betty in the driver’s seat again. Her mind was completely numb, she couldn’t believe she had slapped her own brother, but she warned him not to call her crazy. Crazy and perfect were like swears to her, she cringed at them the same way an old lady would cringe at fuck and shit. Both words were things she faked she was and wasn’t.

“I don’t think that went well,” Jughead murmured.

“No shit,” Polly said and rested her head on her hand as she gazed out the window.

“I’m sorry I fucked it up for you guys,” Betty said.

“You didn’t, Betty. He was an ass. I would’ve slapped him too, eventually,” Polly smiled affectionately when she turned to her sister and Betty smiled back. They held hands the rest of the way home. The Cooper girls always had each other.

They got back to the trailer around 12:45pm. Polly said her goodbyes, kissed her sister on the cheek, and went back to Betty’s childhood home. Betty turned to go back inside bit Jughead stopped her.

“Betty, I’m genuinely sorry it turned out like that. Maybe he’ll come around when he gets off his high horse,” Jughead offered.

“You know, I thought we abandoned him as a family, that we robbed him of a good life. Looks like he got a better one than we did,” Betty said.

Jughead chuckled at the irony and kissed her lips slowly. He hadn’t expected much from Scott really, he learned to not expect much from anybody, but Betty did. He imagined she concocted this fairytale ever after family with Scott, always seeing the best of everything.

“You know what would make you feel better?” Jughead said when he pulled away.

“What?”

“Some good old fashioned sleuthing,” Jughead said in sing song voice.

“It’ll take my mind off things,” Betty conceded, “So what’s the plan?”

“We hit up where Hiram Lodge was in jail and see if we can get someone to tell us who visited him,” Jughead explained excitedly.

“Seems far fetched, but we might as well try,” Betty said sadly.

Jughead hated seeing her like this. He opened the truck door for her and they went off.

Hiram Lodge stayed in a low security prison, so Jughead hoped they would be lenient with their records. The drive was only a half an hour and in the middle of nowhere. The judge wanted Hiram away from the city and away from his contacts, but that didn’t seem to make a difference, he still operated things from his steel box.

Betty reached for Jughead’s hand and kissed his fingertips lightly, just wanting to show him how much she loved him in the face of rejection. Her own brother thought they were nuts. She thought briefly about the labeling theory from her sociology class; if enough people tell you you’re something, even when you’re not, you’re bound to become that way. She thought she fit into that.

There was a parking space near the front, but Jughead opted for a further parking spot, the brightly colored old school truck was conspicuous.

“Are you going to tell your mom about Scott?” Jughead asked after he turned off the car.

“No. She’ll just say I’ll told you so or something like that. I doubt Polly will spill either,” Betty sighed.

Jughead rubbed her knee, “Hey, Betts. You already have all the family you need. And it seems like he does too. If he can’t see what honest, resilient and totally awesome we all are, that’s his deal.”

“I know, I know, but to have your blood think you’re not worth it--”

“You are Betty. Sure, blood is thicker than water or whatever old people say, but he doesn’t know you. How loving, passionate, driven and smart you are. And he doesn’t deserve to either.”

Betty smiled through emerging tears and hugged him over the center console.

“I love you,” she murmured. “I wish I could have sex with you right now.”

Jughead laughed and kissed her hair, “Me too.”

Betty leaned back and smirked, “We have some detective work to do, Mister.”

The raven haired boy returned the smirk and they walked inside. The reception area looked suspiciously cozy for a prison, with cream colored walls and a green striped rug in the center. Chairs were set up in different corners, one set surrounded a TV, likely used for visitors waiting to be called in. It was on and playing Judge Judy, which made Jughead giggle. Betty knocked him with her elbow and made him focus on the task ahead. The attendant at the desk was a robustly shaped blond woman and she opened her window when she saw them approach.

“What can I do for ya?” she asked the two in a thick, old timey brooklyn accent.

“We would like to see Hiram Lodge’s visitation log please,” Jughead asked with faux confidence.

The woman scoffed and looked between the two, “You jokin’, right?”

Betty stepped in, “Uh, no ma'am. My name is Betty Blossom, I am Penelope Blossom’s niece. Perhaps you’ve heard of her?”

Jughead cut her a look that screamed what are you doing!

“Oh, Mrs. Blossom, yes I’ve met her,” the attendant answered incredulously.

“The Lodges and the Blossoms know each other quite well,” Betty continued, “and my aunt sent me to keep tabs on him, to make sure he’s… on the right track, so to speak. She would’ve come herself, but you know how she is.”

This idea came to Betty while Jughead was talking to the guard and she couldn’t believe it hadn’t connected before, P. Penelope Blossom. P could have been Polly, but that was completely out of the realm of possibility. It could have been a random person she didn’t know, but the Blossom pen in his desk suggested otherwise. They were silly for coming here, the truth was in their faces, but she needed conformation.

“I do, Ms. Betty Blossom, she’s quite the woman. She was very nice one time, giving me a big tip once when I helped her spruce up after a visit. Sorry, you probably don’t want to hear that about your aunt. Here, just a quick peek,” The woman said and she shuffled away to a cabinet in the back of the little room.

“So that answers our question,” Jughead whispered to her. “You didn’t tell me you had a hunch it was Penelope.”

“It just came to me. We should still check out the log though. Having an affair doesn’t necessarily connect to murder,” Betty replied quietly.

The large woman returned and held out a file with a few pages in it. “Just a little lookin’. I’m not really supposed to do this, Ms. Blossom.”

Betty cringed inwardly at being called Ms. Blossom. The pair scanned the pages and saw Penelope’s name, that was confirmed, along with a lot of other fancy sounding names like William Montgomery and Harold Van der Pol. Betty refrained from taking pictures in front of the woman, so they had to try to commit the names to memory. Nothing else screamed out at them, like a name like Hacksaw, so they thanked the woman and went back outside.

“Them having an affair doesn’t make them guilty,” Betty reiterated in the car.

“I know. It even makes less sense, because now what would be Hiram’s motive? He doesn’t love Hermione, so he wouldn't kill Fred for being her lover, right? Then it would have to be because Fred wouldn’t sell Andrews’ construction like Archie said, but killing Fred wouldn’t give Hiram the business, Archie inherits it,” Jughead thought aloud.

“Hiram would have to put the pressure Archie,” Betty continued. “Which I don’t think he has.”

“Things just don’t add up,” Jughead said.

“There are still things to discover, but we are close. I can feel it.”

[fuqjasmine]

Dear father of the year:

I tried to call you the day before my mom died. I was hoping and praying for some kind of redemption from you. Somehow, someway. I was hoping that maybe you’d be there. Even for the temporary relief of knowing, for my sake, that my last living parent gave just enough of a fuck about me to wanna be there for me through that really tough time.

When I was little, you used to only talk to me when you were in jail. You’d send letters and call. Mostly to ask my mother to put money on your commissary. You used to say that you and my mom didn’t get along anymore and that’s why you stopped coming around but that you loved me and wanted to be in my life. Well, this year will make it 5 years that my mom has left this earth and you still haven’t made any kind of attempt to be in or apart of my life.

I used to constantly question myself. What’s so wrong with me that my own flesh and blood, someone who I am literally half of, wants absolutely nothing to do with me. What’s wrong with me? Was it something I said? Was it something I did? Was I a terrible baby or child? Did I cry a lot? Why was my sister more important to you than I was? Why were you in her life more than you were EVER in mine? Did you not have enough love for the both of us, so you had to choose between us? I resented her for so long because of that.

Turns out, it’s not me. It’s you. The drugs were more important. You had other priorities. You have 4 fucking children and you’re no longer in any of our lives. The last time I saw you, I walked into the basement to you smoking a crack pipe with your new girlfriend and then you proceeded to throw my mother down a flight of steps and then that was it. That was your way out. That was what you’ve used to stay away from me and my life.

Well, I hope you got what you wanted. I hope you’re happy with your decisions. I still like to think how different my life would be if you never left. If you and my mom stayed together and I grew up with a father.... how different my thought process would be about men. I wonder if my choice in boyfriends would be any different and if I would have a better and healthier idea of love. I wonder if my mom would still be alive. I constantly question these things. And all you had to do was fucking be there for the baby you helped make.

Why Jessie? Why not me? Why not Jeremy? Why not the brother that I’ve never even had the chance to meet? Now that Jessie is all grown up and doing great for herself, you’re no longer around to see it. Sometimes all a girl needs is to know that their father or their parent is proud of them. It hurts her, too. Why the fuck am I constantly looking for some kind of validation from you? I don’t even know you. You never gave me that opportunity and I hate you for it. I won’t have anyone to walk me down the isle when I get married. My future kids will have no grandparents in their life.

I just can’t fathom how a human being can completely write off their own child. And you don’t just have one child. You have multiple. What did we do to not deserve the love of our father? Why wasn’t our love for you, not enough for you to stay? I just don’t fucking get it. I’m trying my hardest to be okay with the idea of this. But I know that the next time I see you, will be at your funeral. At this point, I’m just kinda waiting for the call that you’ve overdosed and died or you’ve killed yourself. But what if I’m expected to get up and talk? What am I supposed to say? You’re just my father. That’s all you are. You are not my dad. You’re not even an acquaintance. You’re a stranger. If you called me right now, I would not even recognize the sound of your voice.

And I think that’s what hurts the most. Is knowing that you know all of these things as well but choose not to do anything about it. I will never get the chance to get to know my own father. Or ask you questions about my family that I will also never get to know. My mom constantly said how I reminded her of you. Little stupid shit I’d say or do, she’d just be like “damn, you just reminded me so much of your father just now”. I would never know that. When I was a kid, people constantly said how much I looked like you and I’d get so upset and sad because I didn’t even know what you looked like. And then I turned 7 and my aunt gave me a picture of you. It was old. Right around the time you and my mom first started dating but that’s all I had of you. At least I knew what you looked like. I now know where I got the blonde hair and blue eyes from.

But I’ll never know why I do certain things or say certain things or why I dislike certain foods or anything that is the opposite of my mom and that drives me crazy. I feel like I don’t even know half of myself most of the time. I feel like my mom would have been better off just going to an actual sperm bank. At least they give you medical backgrounds and details about the man physically and mentally. She would have known that she was going to have a baby without the help of the other person. I think it’s worse to know that you guys were in love once and you wanted me at one point but then made the active decision to not want me anymore.

Now that I’m getting older, I can see more of my mom in me. She was kind and caring and compassionate and loving. She was all of the things you aren’t. Maybe you were at one point in your life, but I guess I’ll never know.

2 years ago, Jessie called me and said that you were on the news because you were on Sollers Point road holding a gun to your temple and were trying to kill yourself because the police pulled you over and you were driving a stolen car with suspended tags on a suspended license. That, I didn’t expect. I expected that call. Hey, dad died. Not hey, turn on the news and look at who it is. Now I suppose you’re in jail or some kind of psych ward. I want to hate you so bad. I want to say I hope you rot and die in a cell. But honestly, I hope you get the help that you need. I hope you have time to think about your life and your decisions and I hope you regret all the shitty things you ever did to your children. Jeremy is so much like you it’s disgusting. Maybe if he grew up with a father or a male role model, he wouldn’t be in and out of jail like you were/are. He’s also like you’re twin. You’d know that if you answered the door when he came to Maryland to visit. You wouldn’t even talk to him on the phone. What the fuck is wrong with you?

You know what, fuck this. I’m trying to let all this hate and resentment go. It’s not doing me any good. Too many people already have too much hate in their heart and I absolutely do not want to be that person. So this is me saying, I hope you find peace with yourself and your demons. I hope you can move on and die happily. But I’m done caring or reaching out. I got this far without you and even without a father, I think I’m a decent human being. My mom raised me well. Maybe I’m a stronger person for knowing that I didn’t NEED you. Even after I lost my mom.

But I do wanna say thank you. Thank you for showing me everything I don’t want in a guy. Everything I don’t want for my future kids. Thank you for making me realize that a woman does not absolutely need a man to raise decent children although I’m hoping this gives me a better perspective on who I would or wouldn’t want to have children with. I hope and pray that I can give my kids everything that I never had. Including the love of their own father. Here’s to hoping I have a better choice in men than my mother ever did.

Happy Father’s Day. Have a nice life.

[wordgirl80]

Chapter 21: We’re All Crazy

Chapter 21 of my ongoing Bughead fanfic is up of AO3

Chapter 21

: We're All CrazyChapter Text

“What!?” Jughead asked, sitting up fast, almost knocking Betty off of the bed and onto the floor.

She sat up, too, pulled on her robe, and tied it around herself. She stood up and went over to her dresser and picked up an old photo album from Alice’s senior year and handed it to him. “After my mom gave birth to my secret brother, she and my dad broke up briefly, and she fell in love with Snake.”

“So was your mom a Serpent?” Jughead asked. He got up, got dressed, and put his beanie back on. He sat on the window seat and rested his elbows on his knees, a stance she knew usually meant he was thinking, piecing together information into a story that made sense.

“Not exactly. Turns out my mom was from the Southside-just one of the many secrets she kept from me. Remember when we were in kindergarten and had to write a report on our mothers? She told me she was born and raised here in Riverdale, even showed me the house where she said she grew up.”

“That was the first time you had to read something out loud in class,” Jughead said. “Reggie Mantle laughed at you when you accidentally said your mom was the homecoming king instead of queen. He made you cry.”

She smiled, recalling the memory. “And I ran into the girls’ bathroom. You found me and sat with me while I cried. You told me my article was the best thing ever written. And then you punched Reggie in the mouth during recess.” She had forgotten until now, but Jughead remembered. He remembered everything. “You were the first kindergartner at Riverdale Elementary to ever get suspended.” She sat down next to him on the window seat.

“First and only,” he said. “I told you that I've loved you my entire life.”

She grabbed the front of his shirt and pulled him in for a kiss. “I love you,” she said.

He grinned at her before going back to the topic at hand. “So Alice and Hal were Riverdale High’s retro Romeo and Juliet? Rich boy falls for a girl from the wrong side of the tracks.”

Betty flipped the photo album open and showed him a few more pictures of Alice and Snake. “They didn't last long, she said. Just a little rebellion before Alice fully committed to my dad.”

“So that Romeo and Juliet end up together,” Jughead said.

“But my parents aren't happy. They pretend to be, but they aren't. You make me happy, Jug.”

“Ditto,” he said. “So what is Goldhead? What did your mom say?”

“As far as she knows, it really was a dance club where they all used to hang out, but it was beneath the Whyte Wyrm. Kinda a speak-easy of the 90s. High school kids could drink. Some did drugs. The owner looked the other way and let the kids engage in whatever debauchery they wanted. They only let Keller come because his dad was the original Sheriff Keller, and they thought if young Keller was with them that the Riverdale Police Department wouldn’t bother them.”

“In the basement,” Jughead said. “What happened there twenty-five years ago?”

Betty shrugged. “She swears she has no idea. After she and Snake broke up, she slipped into a depression. With having to put my brother up for adoption and losing who she said was the love of her life, it was too much for her. She finished up her senior year at the Sisters of Quiet Mercy.”

“So she has no idea what the secret is that got Fred shot?” he asked.

Betty shook her head. “No idea. We need to find out who else was in that picture that Eric has. Should we go talk to Fred?” Betty suggested. “I mean, he's the one who was shot, after all. Maybe he'll tell us why.”

“Yeah. Let's do that. But there's something I want to show you first.” He pulled out his phone and showed her a screenshot of the article he’d found in Fred’s files.

She read it and then said, “So? What does an obituary about an old man have to do with anything?”

“I found it in a file labeled Goldhead,” Jughead said. “I think this guy used to own the Whyte Wyrm.”

“So we have a shooting, this old, dead man, a 90’s dance club, and a secret shared by seven people, and we still don't know who two of those people are. We don't know much anything. It's just a few random clues. What if they don't mean anything or aren’t even related?”

“That's never stopped us before. You'll figure it out.”

“We will. Together.”

He stood up and offered her his hand. “Let’s make a trip to the hospital.”

They found Fred asleep in his hospital bed, hooked up to machines regulating his vitals, his breathing rough and shallow. The hollows of his cheeks sunken in, his skin yellowish in tint. His usual stubble was a full beard now. His wheeled serving tray was pulled up to his bed, over his lap. The warming lid still covered Fred's uneaten food, and surrounding it was small folded up pieces of paper with cramped, unreadable lettering the serving tray.

Jughead eased into the seat next Fred's bed, and took the man's hand in his. Betty stood back and watched them--Jughead and his stand-in father, the man who had loved and protected him when his real family had written him off. Jughead didn't let people in easily, but when he did, it was for life. If Fred didn't pull through, and if with FP locked up in a federal prison, Jughead stood to lose both his fathers, the only family he had left. She squeezed his shoulder, kissed him on his temple. He'd always have her.

“I love you,” she whispered.

He rested his hand on hers, his fingers tightening around hers. “I love you, Betts.” His head tilted as he kissed her.

He loved her. Everything was good between them. Then why was it still there, looming over her like a thick black cloud, blocking out the light, weighing her down. Her emotions went slack, her vision tunneled. She grabbed ahold of the back of his chair. How long would it be before he stopped loving her? Until he no longer wanted her as a part of his family? How long until he saw her for the fucked up girl she really was. Jughead Jones had enough to deal with in his life. Why would he want to deal with the mess that was Betty Cooper? She had been such an idiot. Why did she leave herself so vulnerable? Why was she like this? She was worthless, stupid, unable to control her own mind.

She glanced at the sink next to Fred's bed, to the drawers and cabinets, and wondered if there was a hidden scalpel, maybe Fred's shaving kit. She didn't deserve Jughead. She did deserve anything. Her fingers curled into her palm, sinking into her flesh. The biting pain was grounding, euphoric. She squeezed harder, felt her skin sliced, break open, and she signed.

“Betts? Betty?”

Her eyes focused and Jughead was standing right in front of her, hands on her shoulders, leaning his head down. His eyes were the blue of a summer sky after a storm. He was her anchor, a reason to step back into the light. Wanting to hide the shame of her self-harm, Betty shoved her hands into the pocket of her coat. But Jughead knew. He knew her. He pulled her hands out and uncurled her fingers.

“Betty. . .” he said gently, his mouth turned down. “What’s wrong?” He kissed the fresh wounds on her palms.

She didn't want to tell him. There was nothing wrong, not really, just her own irrational fears plaguing her. She could trust him. He wouldn't judge her. She could tell him anything. She opened her mouth, but before she could speak, the hospital room door swung open.

But it wasn't a nurse who interrupted them. “Visiting hours are over,” said a man dressed in a silvery blue suit that looked like it cost more than her mother's station wagon. He was probably in his mid-forties, tanned skin, black hair slicked back from his face, and dark brown eyes that were unlined with wrinkles. She'd seen those eyes before.

In protective mode, he stepped in front of Betty. She still held onto his hand, but everything was steady now.“Who are you?” Jughead asked, squinting at the man.

“Hiram Lodge,” Betty said. She'd seen his framed pictures in Veronica's bedroom.

“I thought you were in jail,” Jughead said.

Hiram flashed his straight, pearly whites at them. “Out for good behavior,” he replied. He unbuttoned his suit jacket and sat down in the chair Jughead had just vacated. “Maybe I should send my lawyer your father's way. Pro Bono, of course. I know the Joneses haven't been as financially blessed as the Lodges have.”

Jughead’s body stiffened, and he took a step forward, so Betty clutched his hand, keeping him next to her, keeping him from a fight he should not get involved in right now.

“Does Veronica know your home?” Betty asked. This time, she stepped in front of Jughead, shielding him.

“Oh, yes,” Hiram chuckled. “Meet her jock, red-headed boyfriend, too. I got to know him a little too well, if you know what I mean. Betty, you must tell your best friend to lock her bedroom door when she has a male friend over. You know, like you do with FP’s kid.” He cocked his head towards Jughead. “Some things are best kept a secret, like your white trash boyfriend here.”

“Who the hell do you think you are?” Betty asked. She reached behind herself and held Jughead back. What was wrong with people in this town? If Riverdale was full of snobs who judged a teenager boy on who his parents were and how much money they had, she would happily move to the Southside with him and never look back.

“I’m Hiram Lodge. I own this town and I think it’s time to take out the trash.”

Betty didn’t remember making the move, but she was suddenly attacking Hiram, her hands wrapped around his throat, her fingers pressing in, his tendons popping. She had pushed him against the wall next to Fred’s bed. Her ears rang, almost drowning out Jughead yelling her name, clawing at her, trying to get her to let go of Hiram. His dark brown eyes were wide, bugging out of his head, bloodshot and red.

“Oh my god,” Betty said, her hands dropping at her side as she realized what she’d done. Jughead grabbed her around the waist and hauled her out of the room as a nurse rushed in. Jughead dropped her to her feet, but kept her upright by holding on to both of her elbows.

“Betty! Betty!” Jughead repeated until she looked at him. “Are you okay?” She nodded, and he guided her down the corridor, to the back stairway, and out of the hospital exit. Her hands shook as she fastened her seat belt while Jughead cranked over the truck’s engine.

“Where are we going?” Betty asked.

“I don’t know. Away from here.”

“I choked him,” Betty said, looking down at her balled up fists. Her fingernails were digging into her skin again, cutting into the fresh wounds. “I . . . I don’t know how. . . He was saying horrible things to you, Jughead. I couldn’t let him hurt you.”

“It’s okay,” he said. He reached across the seat and placed his hand over her fist. “It’s okay. You just need some time to calm down, a place where we can be alone for a little while.”

As they drove, Betty concentrated on the clock radio in the dashboard, watching the green analog numbers, the seconds clicking past. It wasn’t even seven in the morning and already she was so exhausted. Why had she reacted that way to what Hiram had said? Yes, Mr. Lodge was rude and out of line, but that didn’t make what she had done okay. Shit, what if he pressed charges? What if he called her mom and told her what she’d done? She was crazy. Just like her mother, just like her sister, just like every other person in her family. Betty Cooper was the queen of the crazies. Betty sighed in relief when Jughead passed her neighborhood and went over the railroad tracks to the Southside. He parked the truck in front of the trailer and helped her out.

“I’m so tired, Juggie,” she said as they walked in the door. Hot Dog came up to greet her. He licked her hand, and then she rubbed his head.

“Go lay down,” Jughead said. “I’ll make some breakfast.” He kissed her forehead and scooted her off down the hall. Hot Dog followed him into the kitchen.

He didn’t ask her why she’d done what she did. Or if she was nuts. As always, he was kind and gave her space when she needed it. She laid down on the bed, pulled the thin covers up over her face, and closed her eyes. But sleep didn’t come. Instead flashes of Hiram Lodge, gasping for air jolted her awake. It was no use. She couldn’t quiet her mind enough to allow her to rest.

Jughead was in the kitchen, but he wasn’t standing in front of the stove frying bacon. Instead he sat at the kitchen table, looking over small folded up pieces of paper. The ones that had been sitting on the tray next to Fred’s uneaten dinner in the hospital room.

“When did you take those?” she asked. Jughead jolted when he heard her voice, but relaxed when he looked up at saw her leaning against the doorjamb.

“Right before Hiram came in,” he said. “I told you about it, but you didn't register that I was talking. You were staring off into nothingness.”

“I'm sorry,” she said. “I’m sorry that your girlfriend is crazy.”

He turned his face up to her and he took her hands in his. “No, Betty, you’re not crazy.” She opened her mouth to argue, but he wouldn’t let her. “You’re not.”

“I just choked my best friend’s dad. I throw birthday parties that no one wants. I gouged my fingernails into my palms so hard that I have scars. I cut myself last night. And there are times that I’m so weighed down by it, by the darkness or whatever you want to call it, that I can’t move, can’t speak, can’t breathe.”

“We’re all crazy,” he said, smiling, trying to lighten the mood. It was what he’d said to her the first time he kissed her. Back then, he didn’t realize just how serious she was about worrying over her sanity. When he could tell she wanted to keep this conversation serious, his demeanor changed. He palmed her cheek, his eyes wide and loving. “Elizabeth Cooper, you are not crazy. I love you just the way you are. There is nothing wrong with you.”

“But there is,” she replied. As much as Jughead wanted to looked past her mental illness, to only see the good, she knew she couldn’t. There was danger in ignoring the signs she knew were there. “I think my mom is right. I need to be back on my medication.”

“Then start taking it again. There’s nothing wrong with it.”

“I can’t get control of this on my own and it makes me feel weak. I don’t like the stigma attached. I know I hate the word perfect, but that’s still how I want most of the world to see me. I don’t want people to know.”

“But no one will know. And medication doesn’t make you weak. If you had a broken arm, and your doctor said you needed to wear a cast to repair the bone, you wouldn’t say nah, it’ll heal up on its own. You can’t will a broken limb to set itself. Getting help isn’t weakness, but a strength."

Everything he said made sense, but she still didn’t like the idea of medication. While it helped regulate her moods, sometimes it made her feel nothing at all. But wasn’t numbness better than overwhelming sadness, better than choking Hiram Lodge or trying to drown Riverdale’s football captain in a hot tub? She nodded in agreement with him. “I’ll refill my prescription.” She opened the drug store app on her phone and did just that. The pills would be ready in about half an hour.

She looked back to Jughead and the papers he was studying. She turned one over in her hand, trying to make out the chicken scratch. “What does it mean?”

He shrugged. “Dunno. I needed you to help make sense of it.”

She sat down next to him and spread all the pieces out on the table. Nothing stood out. She shuffled the papers, moving them around in a different order. Nothing. She tried again and stared down at them for a few minutes while Jughead went to the stove and started pulling out frying pans. As he bumped around in the kitchen, the papers started to make sense. Each paper had one word written on it, but only one letter on each was really legible. She rearranged the pieces once more, and finally the letters formed a word.

“S-W-E-E-T-W-A-T-E-R. Sweetwater,” she said.

“Sweetwater River?” Jughead asked. He turned down the burner and came over to look over her shoulder.

“Only one letter on each paper stands out. It spells Sweetwater.”

“You’re so smart, Betts.” But then he pointed to the five extra papers she hadn’t added in. “What about those?” he asked. He placed all the pieces beneath the others and they both stood back. “Cabin! Those spell cabin.”

Betty touched each lettered piece of paper. “So Fred wanted us to know something about a cabin in Sweetwater?” she asked. “What about it?”

Jughead snapped his fingers, pulled out his phone, and then he showed her a picture of the article he’d told her about. “This obituary I found in Fred’s files said that Michael James died in a cabin on Sweetwater River. And he owned properties on the Southside.” Jughead went over to the hook where his messenger bag hung and took out his laptop. He brought up the public records search page online and looked up Michael James. He had several properties listed. “Look! He owns a piece of unincorporated land on Sweetwater. That has to be the cabin.”

Betty read the list, too. “And that’s the address for the Whyte Wyrm. All properties were in his name until 1992. Then they were sold to Hector Lodge at Lodge Industries. That has to be Veronica’s grandfather.”

“Hiram was right. The Lodges do own this whole damn town. They’ve spent generations buying up land. I’m sure they saw that Michael James didn’t have any living relatives at the time of his death and bought the Whyte Wyrm on the cheap.”

“Do the Lodges still own the Whyte Wyrm?” Betty asked.

With a few strokes on his keyboard, Jughead had the answer. “No. Public record says that some comowns it now. FAL, LLC.”

Betty took that info in, but it didn’t mean anything to her. “So maybe Goldhead, aka the Whyte Wyrm, has nothing to do with anything. Maybe Goldhead is just code for something else. We don’t really know anything.” “There has to be a connection. What does this old guy, the Whyte Wyrm, and seven pesky teenagers have in common?” Jughead asked.

“I have no idea,” Betty replied. Her brain was so foggy from exhaustion that she was having trouble thinking. “We need to get in touch with your dad.”

“Or go to the cabin where Michael James was killed.”

“But it burned down,” Betty said.

“Doesn’t mean there isn’t anything there for us to find.”

“I guess you’re right.” She caught the smell of something charing on the stovetop. “Your pancakes are burning.”

“Oh, shit!” he said, getting up and going over to the stove. He scraped the blackened pancake into the trash. “I guess we know who the real cook is in this family.”

He turned back to the bowl of pancake mix and stirred it. He hadn’t even realized he’d called her family, and maybe that meant more than if he’d said it intentionally. She knew they were way too young, but she couldn’t see her future without him. One day after college, they’d have their own kitchen to make breakfast in. Their own house, children, a life together that would never be separated. She came up behind him and wrapped her arms around his waist and kissed his shoulder. But then she caught sight of the lumpy disaster that was the pancake mix. She took the bowl and whisk out of his hands.

“Let me help you,” she said and went to work. Within a few minutes, she had fluffy pancakes stacked on a plate for him, and she joined him at the table.

Knife and fork in hand, he grinned at her. “Sorry to sound antiquated and a little masochistic, but damn, woman, you can cook!” He took a bite and sighed. “I would have loved you even if you couldn’t, but I’m happy you can.” He ate the entire dish without taking a break, and then leaned back in his chair. She stood up and took his plate, but he stopped her. “I’ll do the dishes,” he said.

“Shall we go look around a creepy, deserted forest for the remains of a dead man?” Betty asked.

“I couldn’t think of a better way to spend a Saturday,” he said. “Or maybe I could.” He tugged gently on her hand until she landed on his lap. He nuzzled against her neck, kissed her thin skin and then drew it between his teeth. “You taste good.” He worked his hand in between their bodies, up the skirt she was wearing. His fingers slipped up her thigh and ducked underneath the elastic of her panties. “You know what else tastes good.” He stood up and set her on the table, knocking off her plate of unfinished pancakes onto the floor. He spread her thighs apart, but before he reached his knees, her phone rang. They both froze.

“It could be my mom,” she said. “She probably is wondering why I’m not home. I didn’t tell her where I was going.” She picked up her phone, but it wasn’t her mother. “It’s the pharmacy.”

Even though Jughead knew what the call was about, she stepped into the hallway to listen to the recording tell her that her prescription was filled and ready. She leaned against the wall. She knew that taking the medication again was in her best interest, but it felt like a failure, a loss of control.

Jughead came into the hallway with her, his jacket was on and he handed her the Serpent leather one. “We’ll stop at the pharmacy on the way to Sweetwater River,” Jughead said. He put the leather jacket around her shoulders and kissed her forehead. “It’ll be okay, Betts.”

A sob hitched in her throat. She curled herself into him as his arms went around her. He kissed her hair as he whispered words of reassurance to her, and after a moment, she felt balanced, and steady. She nodded against his chest and then took his hand and lead him outside to the truck.

On the way through town, the morning sky began to blacken, dark clouds rolling in from the east. Jughead pulled into the drug store and went in with Betty. Once they were back in the truck, she unscrewed the pill bottle and washed a pill down with the bottle of water she’d purchased. As they drove to the outskirts of Riverdale, Betty closed her eyes and tried to figure out if she felt any different. But she didn't. Maybe the medicine wouldn't work anymore, the dose wrong.

But everything around Betty went hazy as they drove toward Sweetwater River. Her emotions dulled, her limbs felt like they were packed with sand. Don’t do this, Betty. You’re fine. You are stronger than this. She repeated the words over and over again in her head, but nothing changed. Her feelings didn’t return. She was numb.

The sky rumbled with thunder, lightning crackled, sending electric ribbons through the sky. The clouds cracked open and released the rain they'd been holding as the truck jostled and jolted drove down a tree-line path toward the property address they’d found for where the cabin once was. The windshield wipers struggled to clear the rainwater from the glass. The sky had darkened so much that Jughead had to turn on the headlights to guide them. After about three miles, the trail opened up into a clearing. Address numbers were nailed to one of the trees.

“3856 Deertail Rd,” Jughead said, reading the address. “This is it.” He hung a right and proceeded down a narrow driveway. The headlights flashed across a cabin. The structure hadn’t been well maintained. Shingles were falling off the roof, the wooden logs had splintered, but the cabin was in-tact. Jughead huffed out a breath. “It’s not burned down at all.”

Betty wanted to reply, to say something, but the words did not come. The darkness had closed her throat. She stared at the forgotten cabin. When Betty didn’t move, Jughead came around to her side, unbuckled her, and with his hand on hers, she came out of the truck. The downpour fell on them as they rushed through the front yard, the raindrops coming down with such force that they stung her skin when they hit. And it felt good, a sharp reminder that she could feel something.

The stairs that lead up to the cabin were missing, so Jughead jumped onto the porch and pulled her up with him. Weeds had grown through the slats of the wooden porch, and a porch swing dangled from one chain. The front door wasn’t locked, but swung open when Jughead pushed on it. By some miracle, the electricity still worked. Inside the cabin consisted of a main room and was both a living room and a kitchen. Nothing had been touched in years, the cabin frozen in time, somewhere in the 80’s. Everything was a little dusty, but nothing was out of place. Jughead pulled off a sheet from the couch, dust clouding through the air for a moment. He fluffed the pillows and then set Betty down there. He must have sensed that his girlfriend was out of it. He kissed her forehead and went about searching the cabin. As lightning flashed, Betty stared at the stuffed deer head on the wall. Its fur was a golden brown, but its eyes were black, unseeing, dead. Is that how she looked to Jughead right now?

“I can’t feel anything, Juggie.” Her voice was just a whisper, but he heard her.

He turned from the bookshelf he had been going through and sat next to her. “What do you mean? Is numbness a side-effect of you medication?” He squeezed her hand. “Can you feel that?” he asked.

“That’s not what I meant,” she said.

She rose up and swung her leg over him, her knees resting on either side of his hips. Her lips moved against his neck as she pushed his jacket off his shoulders and unbuttoned his shirt. Bending herself down, she kissed his stomach, the middle of his chest as she pushed his shirt up and over his head. She tossed it behind the back of the couch.

Jughead’s hands moved to the back of her neck and kissed her throat. She could feel the hardness of his arousal pressing against her inner thigh. That’s what she needed from him right now. He clawed at her shirt, struggling with the buttons until she impatiently brushed his fumbling fingers aside and removed the shirt herself. She unhooked her bra and threw it in the same direction as she’d thrown his shirt and jacket. He sat back and just looked at her for a moment, drinking her in. With both hands he reached out and cupped her breasts, squeezing and molding them. He leaned down and took one pink nipple into his mouth, sucking hard. His other hand snaked between them, his fingers slipping into the front of her panties, finding her wet and wanting, ready for him, alive with need. His fingertips circled her bud of nerve endings, sending a jolt of passion through her, making her hips buck forward.

He surprised her when he lifted her up and plopped her to sit down on the couch. He spread her knees apart as he knelt in front of her. He pushed her skirt all the way up to her hips. His hand brushed up her thighs as he reached up and pulled her panties down until he removed them. He kissed his way up, from her calf to her inner thigh. But then he waited, stayed where he was, his mouth against the softness of her leg. She felt the rush of his breath, the slight tickle of his hair, but his lips did not touch her. Not yet. The anticipation made her impatient, alert, bustling with need. Alive.

He smiled against her inner thigh, grabbed onto her hips, and tilted her forward. His tongue was tentative at first, but not because he was shy, but because he was teasing her, building everything up inside her. His lips drew in the bud of flesh, causing her to rise up off the couch cushions a little, wanting to be closer, wanting more. His tongue darted, stocked her up and down, around in beautiful circles that made her cry out. She combed her fingers through his hair, keeping him fix against her.

And then every fiber of her being buzzed to life. She felt more than she thought she was capable of feeling as she quivered. As she lay on the couch replete, she heard Jughead stand and readjust his clothing, and then he was inside her, filling her up.

He thrust into her. “Can you feel that?” he asked. She shuddered and nodded her head. He slipped out and drove himself into her again, harder this time. “Can you feel that?” he repeated.

“Yes,” she replied. “Yes.”

This was what she needed. This. Him. She felt everything now. Every inch of her was buzzing with love, with life. Her inner walls clenched around him as he pumped faster. The release was blinding, bright, light bursting into her soul.

He lay there, his weight resting on top of her, but this was a weigh she did not mind. It was comfort, steady, a firm body and love against her, keeping her grounded. After a little while, he rose off of her. Even though the rain outside was freezing, her clothes were damp with perspiration, twisted around her body.

Jughead kissed her and the rolled off the couch and onto his feet. She watched him as he stretched his lean body. God, she was so lucky to call him hers. Jughead pulled on his shirt, but stopped when he was halfway finished with the buttons. He leaned in to look at something on the dusty bookshelf. He picked up a 3x5 framed photo, studied it for a moment, and then handed it off to Betty.

Seven teenagers were posed together, some looking at the camera, some at each other, all smiling. This was the first time Betty had seen it, but she knew this had to be the picture Eric had found. They were all there, standing in front of a gold lettered sign that said Goldhead, the five people they knew about--Fred, Mary, Snake, FP Jones, Sheriff Keller--and the two they didn’t.

To get a better look, Betty grabbed the frame from Jughead. She recognized the two people on the ride side of the photo. “That’s Hermione and Hiram Lodge!” Betty exclaimed. “And they both are wearing Southside Serpent jackets.”

http://archiveofourown.org/works/10213313/chapters/22666340

[canaryatlaw]

So today was all around pretty good. I have to start with last night though, because falling asleep pretty much turned into a trainwreck. I had slept in till noon so it wasn't too odd for me not to be super tired, but when it's going on 2:30 and I'm feeling very distinctly awake and I remember taking my melatonin, I'm wondering what the fuck is going on, and then it hits me- when I was setting up my pill box for the week I neglected to put the 1 Xanax I've been taking a day in the box, and we all know the apparent sedative powers Xanax can have on me. I realized this at exactly 2:30 am, so of course at that point I got up and took a Xanax. Unfortunately it did not take effect as soon as I hoped, and I wound up staying up some time after 4 o clock, meaning with my 7 o clock wake up time I got somewhere less than 3 hours of sleep, probably closer to 2 1/2. Yikes. But I swore I would get out of bed because I fucking have to, I can't afford to be a slacker for another day when it's only a four day week anyway, so when my alarm rang at 7 I dragged myself out of bed and thankfully for the most part I didn't feel too exhausted during the day, though I felt slightly sleepy during the afternoon, but that was probably due to my relatively boring task, but more on that later. So I get ready and get to work, my direct boss is out for the morning on a visit or something like it, and somewhere around 9:30 I remembered I had the phone interview scheduled for 10 am, but I had a sinking feeling they wouldn't be calling me. Nevertheless, I went through the interview packet and came up with a list of questions adapted to his situation being that he was being released from juvenile detention. As predicted, they didn't call, I gave them until 10:30 before calling them, and they claimed they never got our paperwork, even though I have the confirmation that the fax went through, they said it must've gotten lost somewhere along the way and I'd have to resend it, and they need 48 hours to schedule any phone interview. I asked if they could make it work for Thursday and they said to fax the request and they'd see if they could fit it in the schedule. *sigh* so I type up a new request and used my recently acquired faxing skills to send it to them, asking that they call me to actually schedule the time. The fax went through, but I didn't hear from them today. If I get to tomorrow afternoon without hearing from them I'll call again and bug them. Ugh, I was not pleased with this situation. So after that I run a few things around and call some caseworkers to get some info on cases and got to run through permanency hearing questions for the other one I'm doing on Thursday, so that was good. At that point I was out of work, so I announced this to all the attorneys on my calendar, and the one that sits across from me said she had some prison phone calls I could listen to. Oh goody! At least they're interesting sometimes. So she gives me the basic breakdown of the situation, basically they're calls between mom and her supposed boyfriend through mom's incarceration from October to January waiting to get bailed out. Boyfriend had testified in January that he dumped mom in August and she's just been following him around, but then of course we have a record of 100 calls between the two of them, so we just had to find the content to disprove his testimony. Well, as expected, they were very much together and very frequently exchanged I love yous and such. 90% of it was mom bitching that nobody has bailed her out yet (she had a $1500 bond) and just hounding this guy about it meanwhile literally nobody around her has a job or any money and get all their money from public assistance. But then she'd say shit like "(daughter) says there's no groceries at the house" and the guy would start listing food he spent money on, but then mom turned around and was like "that was money you could've been sending me." Like, wtf? And of course she was just constantly hounding him to send her money for any and everything. Then there was the half hour call between her and her daughter where they laughed and reminisced about the shoplifting incident that got mom arrested, and she's now facing 5 years in prison because this is her 8th fucking time getting arrested for it. And I kid you not, they were joking about it and having a great old time. Other highlights include when she told her boyfriend he couldn't come pick her up from jail "in case DCFS finds out" well, we ain't DCFS exactly, but believe me, we're gonna find out (and as far as court is concerned, you should be more scared of us than them). Then there was when she was like "my grandpa sells his pills on Mondays, he gets $400 for them and offered me $100 but I said I'd only take $50" and I'm just like ohhh boy. But yeah, it was full of little gems like that, and I was only like my 18th page green sheeting it, so there's definitely plenty there. I just don't fucking understand people when literally the entire time the call is like "this is being recorded and monitored" and then people still say the dumbest fucking things. Amazing. So that actually took up most of the rest of my afternoon, and time passed pretty quickly because of it. Sometime after 4 one of the other attorneys came in and asked if I could do some emergency motions for her and argue two on Friday, so I put the calls aside and started working on those, cuz we'd have to serve them on everybody by the end of the day tomorrow (of course it won't take me nearly that long to complete them). So I worked on those until about 4:50. I was planning on taking the 5:13 bus and not rushing for the 5:03 because I had no particular reason to, but then I checked my app and the 5:13 bus said it was "delayed" and of course I'm like aw hell no I ain't doing this shit again so I ran out of the office and just made it to the bus in time. Got home by 6:20 and had a little bit of time to relax and eat before going to PT at 7, which was nice. PT was good, we ended up doing more of the dry needling because some of my muscles are still super tight and my PT guy was like we should be making more progress at this point, so hopefully that will help. I got home around 8:24 and of course turned on the prison break finale, I hadn't realized they moved it back an hour so I was happy to find out I wasn't as far behind as I thought I'd be, and the episode did not disappoint. I know they said they could potentially do more seasons, but I almost want them to just leave it here because FINALLY everyone is just happy and any other problems are just gonna screw that up and I just want my bbys to be happy forever after everything they've been through. It was honestly such a great episode though, classic prison break, kept you in suspense until the very end and full of so many twists and turns you never knew what was gonna end up being part of the plan and what wasn't. I was sad that we lost Whip, but I knew they were gonna kill off someone we liked, and in all honestly he was probably the least painful one to go (I do not count T-Bag among those we liked) so as sad as it is better him than one of the others. And of course I'm just so happy for my Scofields to finally have happiness and to be able to live happy lives together and I really don't want anything to interrupt my (fictional) babes in their happily ever after and I don't care if that means not getting any more episodes, I'm honestly fine leaving it here for their sakes (I know, they're fictional, but still). So overall I was really quite pleased with it, probably the best season/series finale I've seen in quite a while. I'm so used to the rug being pulled out from under us at the last moment it was FINALLY so nice to just see them go happily ever after with no last minute devastating twist. So when I finished with that I switched over to the keepers, and watched the 7th, and what I did not realize was the final until I was done with it, episode. I kept meaning to look up how many episodes there were but I just figured it's a Netflix show so there's 13, so when the credits rolled and there was no next episode to start I was definitely surprised. I have to say though, episode 7 was a bombshell episode, probably the best in the series IMO. To me it was just so disturbing to hear just how much the Catholic Church shielded pedophile priests and enabled them to abuse more and more victims, and to this day their actions continue to be those that are simply to cover their own asses. I know of course not the entire church is bad, I'm quite the fan of the current pope actually, but I was really disgusted to see the church sending lawyers to argue against extending the statute of limitations for civil suits on child sex abuse, and for their arguments to consist of "well we have to pressure the victims to come forward before more people get victimized" which is such an incredibly awful statement I can't even understand how anyone would think that's an okay thing to say, to put the blame on the victim like that is appalling, and any idea that a shorter statute of limitations will result in victims coming forward sooner is pure fantasy. This was about nothing other than getting the church out of liability, and that's disgusting to me. Their continued denial of knowing about Father Maskell's abuse when there's clear evidence they did is just baffling to me, I can't possibly see what they have to gain by making these claims other than a sorry attempt to cover their asses that in all reality royally backfired on them. As for the whole murder situation, after seeing all of it, I definitely found Jean (Jane Doe) to be credible and I believe her account of being taken to see the body where it was later found and being told sister Cathy died because she was going to confront the priests about the abuse. As far as the players involved that actually could've carried it out, the Edgar guy seemed odd to me but I'm not sure he was definitely involved, the Bill guy however, especially given the recorded interview of his (unfortunately now deceased) nephew who describes being there while they buried the body was pretty dang convincing to me, especially given he has literally no motive whatsoever to make something like that up. I think it's very possible both men were involved, but we sadly don't really have enough evidence (at this point, anyway) to piece together what actually happened that night, and sadly many of the key players who would potentially be at fault are dead, so justice will never be served as far as they are concerned, which is very frustrating. I'm glad at least father Maskell had to watch numerous claims of abuse by him come to light before he died. And yeah, that was pretty much my night. I have a slight headache and I am very tired now, so I think I'm gonna take that as a sign that now is a good time to call it quits here and go to sleep. I've clearly ranted about my day enough. So goodnight dollfaces. Stay beautiful.