#so weird flipping my own icons around too

[halfdent]

I may as well now make separate verse section for animated universe Batman I mean I have BTAS of course and I'd love to include The Long Halloween Film mayhaps as separate from my comic verse for it and then by extension two game verses being Telltale and Arkham too. Also quite literally this was an AU where in Harvey's case everything's the same aside from he's a massive asshole , which is why I would be particular as fuck about Caped Crusader as a verse but I enjoyed it so it's here !

[suethesocks]

Egyptian Ben 10 AU!!

A long while ago i got the idea of making an au where ben is an Egyptian Orthodox Christian (the idea entirely spawned off a joke my friend made about a hypothetical ben like that having to explain his fasting to rook)

At first the idea was gonna be that his parents are Egyptian immigrants and he was born and raised in Bellwood, but last second before finishing his character bio i decided to flip everything over and make this AU *in* Egypt

The timeline i have in mind for these bios are all at around right after the highbreed arc, but also before season 3 straight up starts. I feel like thats a good jumping-on point

In terms of aliens mostly i just get to explore what the aliens would look like as teenagers since uaf and ov didnt really do much with that (they didnt even bother giving wildmutt a tail) and have fun trying to make his flannel into outfits for the aliens. Hoever if i get any cool ideas for entirely revamping aliens id definitely do it

I tried to make fourarms darker skinned not sure if its showing. Id have done the same with stinkfly but the uniforms colorscheme wouldve crashed. I wanted to try giving wildmutt black fur because this ben has darker hair but nothing really quite worked hsjhds wildmutts obnoxious orange is just too iconic

Prep school is mostly an american thing, here the closest equivalent for the early 2000s would be an international school. Also i changed lawyer to doctor as thats the sort of "go-to" job that makes a lot of money, lawyers in egypt arent usually as fortunate

Here she doesnt wear her uniform this is just how she dresses. I tried to fit the cat motif like OS but i couldnt really think of something that fit. If i were drawing UAF or OV gwen in my own take id have given her cat imagery but i think for Jwanas personality it actually makes more sense for her to be boring and lose the cat

Jwanas also a lot more angsty about her magic (and it is magic) since her parents and basically entire surrounding community both Muslim and Christian are very against magic and consider it sin. Shes also a lot more angsty in general because like the bio says shes under alot of stress and is very jealous of ben, which is conflicting because ben is also her best friend and she doesnt wanna feel this sort of animosity to him. She also doesnt realize how much he looks up to her as someone who is a lot more intelligent and disciplined than he'll ever be (for example the concept of jwana having the spark isnt here, ben just can never learn magic because he doesnt have what it takes)

Kevin much like ben is more or less the same as he is in the show. With jwana i went with my own take but Ben and Kevin are more of, culminations of what i think are their best parts in the series and then just fleshing that out more

I felt like the outfit he has in earth-prime works best with a few touchups. Prime kevin has consistently had that rugged guy-who-lives-in-a-garage look so despite being the most basic outfit it works the best with a few touchups

I did change his anatomy, i wanted to make him look like a mutant freak. I gave him this sort of frankenstine's monster posture (a small reference to him being an amalgamation in os). He also has these stretch marks all over his body since his material absorption doesnt just create a coat around him but also alters his skin itself (so these markings arent there for os-era kevin) He also has a lot of weird bumps over his body

This kevin is 100% mutant no alien shenanigans. If i do aggregor i'll uhhh think of something else for him to be. His transition to the lightside is a lot longer and for the majority of the highbreed arc hes not even there hes more of an occasional ally if he feels like helping

Was his dad a plumber or not im not sure tbh, im leaning towards not though

Next post is gonna be a bunch of villains for funsies

[ansbobcar]

My thoughts on the mashle stage play becuz I'm sad I didn't record the whole thing

Only thing I didn't record but I did watch once was the Abel vs Mash part so I think I'm okay enough.

So, overall it was fun. Reminds me of how much fun I had while watching one of the mha stage plays (think the 3rd).

I love the details they added in this medium:

1. Mash NEVER sings showing just how unmagic he is (really looking forward to what the Divine Visionaries will sound like) it reminded me of Shrek and why the Shrek musical felt weird when I watched it. Like everybody sings and dances—except for Mash which really shows just how out of place he is. It makes you focus on the other characters too ngl.

2. Mash's muscles wearing creampuffs for headgear AND having nametags was just *chef's kiss*. I found it extra funny and they really help emphasise the absurdity of Mash's physical powers AND have their own personalities? They're like Mash's minions—the Duello moment where they score a bunch of goals—iconic.

3. Just the stagehands/prop ppl in general working with the projector to make the magic—magic itself in reality was extra cool. Like Abyss' Secondth Spell set up was kinda wild as if his own magic wasn't with the people waving around arrow flags. Using fabric for Wirth's Mud stuff. HECK THEY ONLY HAD 3 PARTISAN PROPS AND STILL MADE IT LOOK COOL.

Alright, so any highlights?

Let me go in order if I can.

The first door prop was wild. I think they used magnets in order to make it work. Pls use it againnnn in the next stage play.

The way Lemon and Love are the only two who use the rewind function is really funny, becuz Lemon's is for her introduction solo song and also semi-glosses over what happened during the entrance exam just like the rest of it was in song while also establishing her delulu love for Mash, honestly she's so real for it. Meanwhile, Love's isn't a musical number and is just the one where she explains how they got duped a coin. The use of practical magic tricks is really cool (I think they used one for the coin itself, those flipping blinds things to make the illusion of a diff object yk.)

The Magia Lupus choir-y ensemble songs were prolly one of my favourites, although I think it's just becuz I really liked Love Cute's presence as a whole since they only focused on Love, Wirth, Abyss and Abel as like the lead singers and Shuen is nowhere in sight? (I forgot if he was Magia Lupus in the first place) alongside the Finn-Lemon duet about like "ganbare Mash" (istg they made FinnMash so much more possible with this one song) and they're like definitely bestie coded 100%.

Anything with Mash's muscles is super funny too.

Lance's solos are emo, Dot had such a main character entrance but I dunno how to feel about the fact he doesn't tuck in his shirt (for context: the tea and the grades) but the fact I can't tell when his actor changes his fucking wig for the Ira Kreuz reveal is crazy.

RAYNE'S ENTRANCE GUYS. Bro has like my favourite musical solo entrance out of all of them. AND HE ALSO DANCES. HE FUCKING DANCES GUYS. KPOP IDOL RAYNE IS SO CLOSE TO BEING REALITY GUYS. They triple killed me in less than 10 minutes for that one.

Also the way they manage to put on the puppet masks without ruining the pacing makes me lose my mind becuz like... HOW???

I forgot to mention Wahlberg but honestly, him and Regro weren't my favourite favourite parts—I think it's becuz they have a lot of exposition dumps and more of a comedy out of the plot element since him and the cop interact with the audience quite a bit—oh but the acting that Regro does to make it look like he's squeezing from the neck makes you as the audience feel and believe his pain (when tehre isn't any). Like it was convincing. Plus they were funny during the entrance exam, they were dancing too.

Also Wahlberg pulled off the flash-paper thing. It was cool. I'm hoping for the thirds magic they make it look really cool in the next stage play.

The best part I looked forward too... was the Shu Cream Funk dance the main 5 did. They also made the others do it on the 2nd and 3rd time. Including Rayne. I recorded this in low-res. It was great.

Overall, highly entertaining. I think considering how they had to cut down 4 hours down to 2 hours with song, choreo (fight and dance numbers) they were pretty successful. I just think as someone who cannot understand japanese that the first 20 minutes was really REAAALLLY plot dump exposition a bit like the funny stuff from Ep 2 and Ep 3 with the entrance exam doesn't exist.

But they made up for it enough.

There's a lot that I skipped like the bullying thing and Bamboo guy. I don't remember his name but that's kinda covered with the rest. I'm really wondering how they're gonna pull off the next arc... I forgot who they cast...

[arecipeforfeels]

Got high and decided I’m watching ca:tws so be ready for incoherence:

Marvel movies used to MEAN SOMETHING

They did however always live in the pocket of the military

I don’t care I would eat this movie if I could

They were so insane for it and they had to do civil war as the worlds worst no homo ever

HE DOESNT HAVE ANYONE AROUND THAT SHARES HIS EXPERIENCE COS HES LOST IN TIME

THE WHOLE MOVIE IS HIM BEING UNSUCCESSFULLY SET UP ON DATES

I hate everything

I also am not immune to an action sequence and some fun music….

Also it is very impressive how violent they can make these movies and completely get away with it if there’s no blood splatter

Bad guys r French, more at 10

I took a kickboxing class in like 2013 bc I thought black widow was hot and wanted to also be hot

(Sidenote, I also played basketball for five years bc of high school musical. I have never had an original thought in my life)

FIGHT SCENE NUMBER TWOOOOO

This is an iconic one cos it’s the one where he puts his shield on his back to fight for Even Footing (and also ON VA VOIR U WILL ALWAYS B FAMOUS)

people went so bonkers for that

Tag urself Im the giant harddrive

Okay goofiest admission ever: in this movie there’s a bunch of time spent in this one big building that’s supposedly located in dc. But it’s got this big giant atrium with a huge high steel and glass ceiling, and at some point during this movie someone hits it or crashes through it or shoots it. And every time I hear the words “glass ceiling” I think of this fuckin movie

CHEKHOVS ELEVATOR

“Wow yayyyyyyy war machiiiiiiime!! For sEcUriTy”

US Army wet dream while still trying to keep Cap there as a voice of reason

It’s a fascinating dichotomy

Air and spase! Museum (great night at the museum 3 reference)

Also I cannot believe he goes to his own fuckin exhibit

...actually upon reflection I too would go to my own exhibit

The endgame revisionism of him going back in time is soooooo stupid she does not exist to me

It’s such character assassination of everyone involved

(I don’t care, I say caringly, as I care deeply)

I also had (had??) a massive crush on Hailey atwell

Robert Redford is here

Weird joke about Algerians and the French

THERE IS AN ACTUAL COMPELLING CONVERSATION ABOUT PTSD

This movie is also a Chevy ad

Also I remember seeing the big SUVs in this movie and being like “damn those are tanks” they are also nothing compared to what’s out there now

This movie also feels so much more grounded in actual life

Like we talk abt all the CGI coming in later movies, this one feels gritty in comparison, on simply a mechanical level

Speed tour of dc

We have reached the civilian casualty stage of the movie

I can’t imagine how much money Samuel L Jackson has made off these movies

THE CAR FLIP SHOT W BUCKY IIIIIIIIII (editors note: this is where the coherence begins to go downhill. You can sense the trend)

god this movie

THE SHIELD CATCH IM EATING MY SHOES

Elevator scene lets fuckin goooooooooo

Let’s GOOOOOOOO

the tension build is so good

Everyone say thank u Steve rogers for breaking the glass ceiling

This movie is also an apple ad…2014

GUY WHO FULLY HITS ON STEVE AT THE APPLE STORE

Look the fuckin Natasha Steve bromance in this is lovely

Buddy comedy

I will say this was such a moment for the MCU, the hydra reveal

Esp cos like agents of shield was in its heyday etc etc

2014 sure was a time

This man [Toby Jones] has been so comically typecast forever

OPERATION PAPERCLIP CASUAL NAMEDROP

god

This is so fascinating to me Bc it’s like “Here is how we revisionize the United States’ history of interfering in coups etc etc it was bad guys in the government doing it etc etc”

“What we need to to is get back to the good government”

Sam Wilson the man that you are

Bucky shows up at any time in this fucking movie and I start barking

I am also always thinking of the “we shot him in ze legs” vine

This is my Roman Empire

“I knew him” oooouuuuugggHHHH

RIP Stan Lee

Bucky yeets a guy into a jet engine and by god does he look good doing it

This stupid movie (editors’s note: caught in a miasma of 2014)

[starlit-mansion]

okokok. i am not entirely sure i have ever seen you talk about this and how dividing the books all are is fascinating to me so... what's the opinion on the novel trilogy, or even frights/tales if you're willing to touch that w/ a ten foot pole --scrappedbaby

I feel like this is a pretty controversial take but I think the Silver Eyes itself is… fine. Okay, I tried to actually read it once and I couldn't get more than a couple pages in, because it read like when someone posts their homework assignment that was secretly fanfiction on fanfiction dot net. I have a little bit of a soft spot for the graphic novel, actually, due to it being bad in an interesting way rather than blandly decent like the other 2, which I've only flipped through. (Also the shitty saturated coloring fucked over the inks. Setting aside any opinions of the artist as a person, i think her style has character and added something to the series that is still present in other parts I like much better, like the glamrock concepts. And the muted test pages that someone scrounged up from a trade show copy or whatever would have probably done wonders for the atmosphere.)

As for the story of TSE itself… Idk, I think it's kind of funny that it's Stephen King's IT for fourth graders. Also, because it's aimed at that demographic, they had to conjure a young protagonist from somewhere, and I think the concept is pretty solid, and Charlie's a good character, and I'm also fond of what a little freak Dave-era William is. That's really my favorite concept of the villain motivation in the series, actually: creating this twisted little dollhouse to go sit in and pretend to be a robot. The immortality/mad science/lich/trancendance from the flesh thing is… it's fine. I made my peace with it. But it's a little too Herbert West for my tastes. (Also like… this is why I like Glitchtrap. He's kind of doing the same thing, making is little diorama and reliving his glory days.) All in all, for what it is, a solid 7/10, imo.

As for the rest of the trilogy……. ah, it's not for me. Like I said, I've flipped through the graphic novels a bit, and own them secondhand as curiosity pieces/weird little relics, but it seems like it gets up its own ass to cater to people who like lore (a separate but related demographic as people who like the horror part of the games, in my 100% honest opinion). I hear about the illusion disks and I am austin walker's iconic "do you ever see a take so bad you immediately have to go to sleep?' tweet.

As for Fazbear Frights: I'm not gonna lie, i think it's pretty good. I feel so fondly about the ghostwritten chapterbooks of my youth (I was a Babysitter's Club and Animorphs girlie, and weirdly… not an inaccurate cross-section for Fazbear's Frights), and I think it's perfectly fine to play around in the universe and create a bunch of AUs and related concepts. Is there criticism to be had of the stories themselves? SURE. They're very weak on diversity, QUITE fatphobic at times, and some of them are unnecessarily ghoulish, though there's only so much disgust I can muster for undeserved child death in the child death series… NONE of them deserve it, even the ones that are mean to their siblings or too vain or whatever, and the fact that it's equally likely for any given story to end in brutal death or "wow I really learned my lesson!" is actually pretty fun. Reminds me of Goosebumps a bit (though I was never a huge fan. Too easily creeped. That was my brother's preferred ghostwritten series though, so I sampled here and there. I also somehow had my hands on a novelization of one of the Tales from the Crypt movies too, and that made a big impression).

I don't love that FF takes every fan theory and milks it, and I'm sure the process for actual production has some ethical problems based on everything I know about the industry. But I do firmly believe that a little body horror is good for the youths, and just making it a multiverse rather than sticking to any one canonical thread lets you have your animatronic rabbit and wear it too, as it were. I also kind of like the lower middle class vibe that the series has… There's very frequently a sense of economic desperation and cheap escapism that resonates so well with the games, and reminds me of how going to Chuck E Cheese truly was the marquee birthday activity of my youth (though I liked the arcade more than the animatronics as a wee millenial).

Part of my fondness for FF is just that I had 2 months during late quarantine where I would buy a copy of the next one I hadn't read while I was doing my weekly grocery/target run and ABSOLUTELY NOTHING ELSE OUTSIDE OF MY HOME, and I would read these very unchallenging short stories and be like "I liked that one! …I did NOT care for that one" and it was a little pumpkin full of meat to chew on in my cage. I stopped it pretty abruptly when the proof of Scott's Republican political donations came out (I mostly do not buy any new fnaf items now, though I have ended up doing it here and there, and I mostly class it on the scale of like, buying Overwatch microtransactions even though activision blizzard is a shitty abusive company or smth. Not a moral good, but not on a "funding a person actively involved in politically crushing trans people" level of problematic).

As for the stories themselves, I liked Into The Pit (it really reads like a reused movie script, but in a good way), Count The Ways (a friend of mine, iirc, did NOT like the two non-title stories in vol 1, but I have a soft spot for Funtime Freddy's villain era in that one, and Millie's safe and self-inflicted teenage self pity reads as an affectionate self-callout to me), Out of Stock (this one's just so CLASSIC kiddie horror and also a really good use of an otherwise forgettable part of canon), Room for One More (another good use of forgettable parts of canon, i think the series really shines when it clicks into stuff like that), Coming Home (the jewel of the series, and gets me in the Sixth Sense nostalgia too), Bunny Call (mostly forgettable obvious moral lesson story with a surprising twist of poignency in the middle and an iconic antagonist), The Man in Room 1280 (I wish this was better utilized in the game series, it feels like Security Breach juked around this concept for a much worse and dumber version, and also Andrew is my special little bastard child), and The Real Jake (a sweet, if maybe a bit maudlin, exporation of the deeper concepts in the lore that is solidly a cut above the average FF story, and i like the stitchwraith parts of the books too).

There's none that I have a huge hate-on for, though I thought 1:35 am in particular was VERY bad (I skimmed the last half). While it's notorious, to me, In The Flesh is just dorky, particularly fatphobic and I don't know how everyone is getting MatPat from it. Mat's persona is kind of smug, but not cruel and hateful towards women or a shitty friend (if anything, his peers speak SO warmly of him that makes me give him more credit than he deserves as a cc), and you'd think a real hit piece on him would involve... a theory. A G A M E theory. Okay, I did it the legally required time.

I stopped at Book #6 and i'm not sure if i'll ever go back. I just got a library card so maybe I'll get around to it the next time i'm sucked into the franchise, but for the most part, I'm dormant except for things I really adore about the series (Springtrap, the Funtimes, Afton Family Drama in general, nostalgia for the first few games, etc), so I can't muster up too many more opinions on middle reader books as a 34-year-old. Tales has no appeal to me even as a future "maybe if the fixation hits hard" option, because a bunch of satellite stories around a setting that couldn't muster a third act in the tentpole game is just. Sad.

[prettyentertaining]

Look I don't generally YGO-post on this blog but I CANNOT stand by and watch my beloved cringe angel Mai Kujaku, a character I imprinted on irrevocably at age 12, lose this poll without throwing in some propaganda.

Mai is such a weird lonely girl icon. Most of her arc revolves around her attempts to make friends with a bunch of card game nerds, and all the ways in which she's too terrified of her own vulnerability to ever allow herself to belong.

At the beginning of the series she has decided to repress her deep loneliness by being a Ruthless Manipulator who will happily cheat and trample her way to the top, but her own integrity prevents her from getting anywhere with this. Her method of cheating is completely insane, involves memorising the smells of 30-40 perfumes (and then presumably hauling them around in a rucksack for days), and crucially doesn't help make her card draws better at all, and therefore still requires her to be legitimately good at Duel Monsters.

Like every other Yu-Gi-Oh good guy, she's ride or die by nature. She has countless opportunities to pull the ladder up and never does: when she meets Téa she immediately offers her use of her shower in an act of solidarity, and spends most of the rest of Duelist Kingdom stubbornly winning double the duels she needs to because she feels emotionally weird about the fact that Yugi did her a favour. Also meets Serenity and immediately decides that she will protect her with her life. Terrible at girlbossing. Absolutely useless.

Aside from all this she's just an incredibly funny character within DM. Almost everything she does is a girl what are you doing moment. Zero concept of cause and effect. Some of my favourite baffling Mai moments include:

Despite all this earnest desire to be good and loved and wanted, she's so scared of the mortifying ordeal of being known that she constantly self-sabotages, constantly cuts off her own nose to spite her face, and then has to power through the avoidable consequences of her own terrible decisions. As somebody who has believed in my time that turning up your nose and saying well I didn't want you anyway is a good and dignified way to deal with feeling rejected, it is a joy to watch Mai attempt this and immediately eat shit. Solidarity with my girl.

Her whole approach to tournament preparation. In Duelist Kingdom we see her pull an all-nighter refining her deck. Girl what are you doing! Get some sleep! Then in Battle City we see her sit down - and I must stress that she is at her happiest and best-adjusted here - with her cards and an entire bottle of wine. At least Bakura's raw steak won't give him a hangover.

When she gets petty revenge on Joey for minorly socially embarrassing her - an event that happened, from her perspective, several eternities in shadow realm torture hell ago - by playing a cruel prank and pretending to be dead, after, er, spending hours in a coma. The long shot of absolutely nobody finding this funny except her is so chef's kiss. Cringe icon. What are you doing.

More petty revenge, this time on Valon: stealing his motorbike to ride home, which presumably inconveniences her about as much as it inconveniences him, since she left her own motorbike there, and now has to ride a bike she isn't used to. Girl!!!

The entire trainwreck that is the DOMA team meeting with Dartz, in which she goes in asking for something, immediately fucks it up and insults Dartz to his face, beats a hasty retreat before he can reply either way, then does a cunty little hair flip on her way out as if the situation went entirely as planned (reader: it didn't)

She is a stubborn, independent Scorpio icon. Despite all the ways in which she gets done dirty by the narrative, she has a legitimately tragic arc in which she allows herself to be emotionally honest and is immediately betrayed and landed with deep, terrible trauma that she then has to grapple with all alone. She is in some ways like Beth Harmon if Beth Harmon was obsessed with Magic: The Gathering. I love her, and I am so sorry this is so long, and I could definitely write three times more. YGO best girl of my heart! Weird girls rise up!

BEST YGO GIRL: Round 3, Group D

Match 1

please use this as an opportunity to say why you like a character, not why you don't.

Propaganda under the cut!

Serena

The epitome of "kitten dreams of nothing but murder all day" Ppl talk about wanting morally gray women, but can't handle a child soldier who doesn't immediately roll over for the first person who tells her to. But she isn't heartless and clearly cares about ppl, seeing her get to actually have fun in her duel against Yugo was the best, and now with her in Duel Links we can see that in a casual environment, she is also the funniest silly little guy She's awesome and kicks ass for 90% of the show. Lunalights are so cool and one of my absolute favorite archetypes. She is such a badass opposing the Fusion Dimension. She also deserved better and more screentime.

Mai Kujaku

She basically walk so YGO can have bad bitches ultimate conwoman who can tell the difference between at least 40 different perfume smells. her first arc is learning how to connect to other people. like, when you think about, mai is literally similar to seto in the sense that she lost her parents when she was young and grew hardened to the world around her - except she didn't kill anyone (that we know of). battle city sees her lean into a damsel in distress, sure, but her oricalchos arc actually attempts to her trauma (something we don't get in the manga). she's literally a careless man's careful daughter idk what to tell y'all. vote for mai.

[dangercocktail]

Late Night Television

Tossing and turning for the better part of the night, Isaac glanced at his phone with the dryness of an insomniac’s eyes. Somewhere after 3 am and he was failing miserably to fall asleep. Sighing in annoyance mostly at himself for not taking edibles or something stronger before bed, he roused himself and threw a pair of basketball shorts over his underwear. Isaac wandered out of his bedroom to the rest of the house. 

Stopping briefly to grab a glass of water from the kitchen, Isaac scratched his relatively flat stomach as he made his way to the couch, scrolling through images on his phone. Flipping on the TV, he began highlighting his favorite streaming service when the screen distorted and the input changed. The television had switched to basic cable channels.

“These still exist?” Isaac thought as he took a sip of water. The flashing lights of the television illuminated the room in brightness that almost hurt Isaac’s eyes. On screen, a workout video demonstration was in progress as an extremely fit man insisted viewers call as soon as possible to order the program. 

“No thanks,” Isaac said out loud, pressing the input button on his remote. The flashing lights disappeared and the cool black of streaming channel icons returned. Guiding the remote’s button through them, he began to select one when the screen distorted again. The fitness instructor was back and the volume on his TV began climbing up on its own.

“You there at home!” the man bellowed. “You’re thinking to yourself, how did I get like this?”

Isaac looked at the remote in growing frustration and muttered, “No, I’m thinking what the fuck is wrong with my TV?”

“Well I’ll tell you, it’s because you’re always on that couch,” the television fitness instructor said. “Lazy, feet up, never going for the goals you know you should be!”

As the man said ‘feet up’, the recliner in Isaac’s couch sprang open, leaning Isaac back into the couch and suspending his feet in the air with such speed that it made him audibly gasp.

“The fuck?” Isaac uttered, slightly unnerved. He chalked most of the weirdness he was feeling to being exhausted. As he started to lean forward to push the leg rest down, he heard the man on screen continue.

“And that’s why you’re soft, you’re practically glued to that couch. You lack the discipline that my program can provide. Sure, sure, it started with a few pounds, some extra cookies here, another slice of pizza there, and you started getting soft in the stomach,”’ the man said as other fitness models behind him began doing pushups. Isaac stopped attempting to close the foot rest and immediately leaned back into the couch. It physically felt impossible to not do so. As he sank into the cushions under protest, his stomach began slowly swelling, starting with his lower belly pushing out then wrapping around his belly button like a doughnut. In the span of about ten seconds, he had gained fifteen pounds of belly fat. 

“What the hell?!” Isaac panicked, grabbing at the small ball of fat in his lap. The man on the screen continued.

“But it didn’t stop there, did it? Bad habits breed more bad habits, they’re like rabbits that way,” the man said, his onscreen fitness models moving into sit ups. “Those extra cookies and slices of pizza turn into daily routines; you found yourself seeking out the worst kinds of food that turned that initial fifteen pounds into fifty.”

While Isaac still marveled in shock at the small belly doughnut of fat in his hands, it began swelling through his fingers. The doughnut blossomed and spread around his sides as it moved like a bag filling with pudding. Love handles wobbled into existence and began inflating as the fat moved up his ribcage laying a foundation of frosting-like fat across his torso. It reached his chest where his nipples, tingling with the movement, widened slightly and became puffy. His chest itself developed a slight pudgy layer but then the growth stopped. 

“How is this happening…” Isaac murmured in mounting disbelief, looking down at his larger body. His legs and arms were slightly thicker and his belly now rested like an overinflated basketball in his lap. He grabbed his belly and shook it, the jiggle and wobble of it shaking his love handles and sending slight vibrations through his chest. He tried scooting forward with force to escape the couch but couldn’t get the momentum, his tubby belly making it harder than before to lean forward.

“And ladies and gentlemen, I know it didn’t stop there for you. It’s all too common. Once you’ve gotten a little weight on, you feel like the game is over. That you’ve lost. And that’s when you really binge, because why not? That’s when you become one of those sad people at the buffet, plate after plate after plate, because you’ve given up completely…”

“No…” Isaac uttered as he heard his stomach gurgle again. With a strain and then tear, he felt his ass inflate rapidly, ripping through his underwear and then his oversized basketball shorts. Isaac felt his body rise on the couch several inches as his butt grew, expanding beyond the expanse of the one cushion he was on and starting to lap onto either side, one cheek wedging up against the armrest. As he felt the growth of his behind begin to slow, the mammoth momentum picked up in other areas. 

Isaac’s belly began inflating again, his lower belly stretching and swelling as it began overlapping his crotch, deepening his belly button as it rounded further from Isaac’s view. As his midsection grew to the size of a bean bag chair, Isaac’s chest also began inflating, his nipples puffing up further and widening in a circular motion as his chest jiggled into their own bags of teardrop shaped pudding, rising in the air atop his belly and wrapping around under his armpits. Isaac frantically grabbed at all parts of his body in some vain attempt to hold the fat back but everything was growing unrestrained. As he grabbed and prodded, his own fingers swelled up, the knuckles and individual portions of his fingers disappearing into swollen hot dog like appendages. With a final glance before his belly swelled too big, he saw his feet begin taking on a bee stung appearance as they filled with fat as well.

As all the rest of his body settled into its now obese proportions, Isaac felt a heaviness enter his neck. 

“No no no…” he exclaimed, putting two fat hands on either side of his face. Isaac’s cheeks inflated with fat, merging with a roll that had already started on his neck. As he moved his hands all over his face, he could feel his jawline slowly disappearing as it officially merged with his still rounding neck roll.

The man on the TV continued.

“Now I don’t want to alarm anyone right now. But I seriously believe that if you don’t call this number right now and start this program, there’s no telling what your future may hold. You might end up one of these people so lazy and big they can’t get off their couch, a huge caricature of the potential they once had, a literal ball of fat,” the man said as Isaac looked on in horror. The man seemed to be staring directly at him through the TV screen.

Isaac scrambled to grab his cell phone and call the number. Casting about wildly with his eyes for his phone, he saw the edge of it wedged between his thigh and belly, almost completely obscured. With a heavy huff and a push of effort, Isaac leaned forward to grab it.

His hand fell over a foot short. Issac couldn’t reach the edge of his now massive belly nor touch his own belly button, much less the phone resting on his thigh. And that was when what the man had said fully sunk in. With another gurgling in his stomach, Isaac’s eyes went wide as his body began expanding again, the couch creaking under his massive form as he felt himself expanding in all directions, the fat of his neck melding into his shoulders as he began to grow into a human sphere. His thoughts turned quickly though, as his brain underwent its own change as his body inflated. The horror of his bodily change slowly drained from his mind as a new thought began to take over...‘I’m hungry.”

“So act fast folks, this offer won’t last….”. 

With that final statement, the TV clicked off.

[river-bottom-nightmare]

Nightwing #80 Review

woot woot i’ve kept it up for three issues lets gooo. i liked this issue more than the last one. there’s a lot of fanon dick characterization peppered in, but not so much that it puts me off entirely. also, i’m getting increasingly concerned about bitewing. but i did like tim in this one, very nice

look at all the blue and purple and pink. honestly at this point, i’m a broken record but come on come on come onnnnnnn. the blue and pink is very pretty though. this cover’s a bit offputting at first, and a bit spiraly, which i’m sure was the intended effect.

this is a genuine concern of mine. dick’s a vigilante, and he doesn’t have the same sprawling network and resources that bruce does. (even if he is a billionaire now, he hasn’t amassed the same collection of crime-fighting equipment that bruce has.) 

i’m not sure if he’ll be able to take care of bitewing. damian’s got plenty of pets, but alfred used to take care of them, and now bruce plus the rest of the batfam is taking care of them. as far as we know, babs only drops by occasionally, and the same goes for dick’s family and friends. will dick be able to give bitewing the love and time and affection that a traumatized puppy like her needs? i really hope so.

she does look adorable in this panel tho.

dick. richard. richie. baby. why are you shirtless.

you have scars upon scars. probably chemical burns. bullet wounds. weird fucking squiggly lines from knives that only psychos with blade fetishes use. no normal person has the body that you do. and you don’t think that showing up shirtless in front of the police is going to raise suspicion? you don’t think that the people accusing you of murder are going to look at someone who looks like they’re a fucking mob enforcer and go hmm that’s a bit suspicious?

put on a SHIRT jesus CHRIST it’s like you’re not even trying to hide your identity.

look at this pompous little princess demanding only the highest quality head pets i’d burn down latvia for her. (no offense latvians it was the first country that popped into my head.)

pretty boy pretty boy pretty boy pretty boy-

no seriously kudos to the artist here. his expression is so human i wanna cry. dick, right now, is sheepishly asking a question. he knows he’s not going to get into any real trouble, he knows that he’ll be able to talk his way out of or somehow maneuver his way off this mess. but he’ll play nice for the police, so he’s asking a friend for a favour, part self-condescendingly and part oh-well-what-can-you-do.

and his expression reflects that. rather than a stoic expressionless face most male comic characters have when asking someone for something (or all the time really), rather than the weird desperate supposedly “seductive” face that most female comic characters plus dick grayson have when asking someone for something (or all the time really), he’s making a face that i pulled like yesterday. or the day before that. it’s kind of silly, kind of casual, very much human. i like it.

thank god. proper (in character) acknowledgement for officer grayson. yea, fuck cops in general, but i like that they included this line.

obviously, he’s not talking about the actual criminals, he’s talking about the police force itself. the bpd was too corrupt, and dick realized that he wasn’t helping. not only does one clean cop not make a dent in an overall dirty force, but dick was putting his allies in danger too. not only that, but it wasn’t good for dick’s mental health either. he was spreading himself too thin, and surrounding himself with some of the worst of crime 24/7 did a number on him. dick’s got a history of self-sacrificing tendencies, and i’m just glad he’s not a cop anymore.

dick has a gotham rogues mug. they make gotham rogue mugs, and dick has one.

what kinda city looks at it’s frankly horrible crime history and long list of certifiably insane serial killers who are all still alive and actively committing war crimes and goes “oooooh yea imma put that on a coffee mug!” gotham, that’s who.

this isn’t important i just like how all of bitewing’s barks are blue

back straight, hand on his hip, cheerful smile on his face as he says he’s being accused for murder. love that for him.

they couldn’t have said “yea it’s complicated” in a better way even if they put the words “yea it’s complicated” right there on the page in bold red letters. literally all the love to the artists.

dick please. you’re KILLING ME what the actual fuck IS THAT???? WHY DO YOU HAVE A MUG OF THAT???

anyway nightwing collects novelty mugs confirmed.

this paneling is so beautiful. 

tim’s the focus, but he’s not the first thing you see. he’s placed in a way that forces the reader to drag their eyes all the way up the page in order to reach him. it us know just how high up tim is carelessly crouching, especially close to the ledge of the building too. i cannot think of a single better way to introduce a character, and this character in particular: you instantly know this is a version of tim with plenty of experience and training, is comfortable in his body and knows his limits, but still hangs onto that civilian awe of being in a high place and overlooking a brightly lit city.

absolute classic robin. i love it. 

this isn’t even that important but it made me happy. this is how you train surf.

you don’t crouch or bend over when you get to a tunnel, which is oddly enough what most people think (at least from my experience). you bend backward. that not only 100% ensures that you’ll make sure you’re low enough to make it through the tunnel (because you can see the top of the tunnel, unlike when you crouch or bend), but it also makes it easier to get up: all you have to do is push up with your arms into a bent stance, and you’ll be in a ready, moving position. from a bend or a crouch, getting up is more awkward and more slow.

on a meta level, i like that this creative team knows what they’re doing when it comes to the small, almost unimportant stuff like that, because it makes the action more real. (as real as you can get with a guy running around stealing hearts.)

on a in-universe level, it once again drives home both dick and tim’s experience and professional level skill.

regardless of who you side with in the “should tim drake be robin again?” debate, you gotta admit that tim’s rebirth robin suit is r a d as fuck. if i’m not mistaken, this is the same one he was wearing in 2019 young justice for a little bit? it’s cute and hella cool i like it.

remember what i said about human expressions? doesn’t happen as often to tim bc he’s a Child, but it’s still nice to note when someone humanizes him, too. (that’s why i love the duckboy panel so much lol.)

me, at first: that’s not a “good call” dick that’s just common sense

me, now: sprinkled throughout the entire comic we can see dick bending to tim’s instructions if only briefly, joking with him to keep the mood light while still maintaining a serious mood and retaining control over this particular outing. this implies that dick’s doing it intentionally, purposefully leaving places in his sentences blank and offering affirmations, in order to encourage tim and train him in things bruce might not necessarily touch on, such as social chameleoning and misdirection techniques and love/affirmation from a family member. dick is not only a loving and supportive big brother, but he never stops training his younger brother in better vigilante tecnhiques because he wants tim to be better than him. in this essay i will-

d o g g o

also bitewing is getting so many head pats today i’m living for it

look at him, standing on a telephone wire with ease. nice flex, dick.

also look at how he’s silhouetted. the moon’s full bright, bright enough that the sky around dick is light, too. (at least. i’m like 99% sure that’s the moon.) not like most batman comics, where it’s sometimes hard to distinguish bruce from the background, which is entirely on purpose.

gotham is a dark gritty city, and so is bruce. the two of them are one. bludhaven may be a bit of a mess, but it’s being portrayed in all these different shades of blue and purple and pink, that are all light enough that dick stands out from the background. he hasn’t been swallowed up by the city, and chances are that he won’t ever be. also, the colouring helps establish bludhaven as a city too. there’s still hope for it. the light colouring means that it’s not going to sink into a pit as deep as the one bruce wove gotham into. the whole point of this nightwing arc in particular is to turn bludhaven into a better place, and it’s (most likely) letting us know early on that dick is going to accomplish that. he’ll struggle, but he’ll do it.

so dick??? dick designed his escrima sticks with a situation like this in mind? he created his signature and most iconic weapon (other than his chatty mouth), with a built in feature that turns his escrima sticks into tim’s signature and most iconic weapon???? just so that if he and tim ever got into a situation where tim didn’t have his staff, dick could make sure tim had the thing that would give him an edge over anyone he was fighting??? he’s such a big brother oh my goddd.

also tim’s smirk in this is just *chef kiss.* a staff is something he can work with, a staff is something he wields like an extension of his arm, a staff is means that someone’s about to get their ass kicked because tim’s about to beat the shit outta them.

this is my new phone background.

they really made sure we remembered that hey, those first few months when bruce was grieving too much to be any sort of a mentor to tim and was still unwilling to properly train him to be robin out of fear that he would end up like jason, dick was the one who stepped up (once he got over himself and his own fears and hangups with bruce) and trained tim to be robin, trained him how to fight and flip and fuckin fly out there, all while changing his own style a bit to be the more experienced one in the partnership while still trusting said partner to hold their own, so dick and tim have a very unique and cohesive fighting style that makes it hell for anyone who fights them together, didn’t they?

[dottielovegood]

ASMR - chapter 3

Elriel fanfiction

About this fic:

Azriel can’t sleep Elain has an ASMR channel Match made in heaven (or you know, on youtube..)

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You can find chapter 1 here and chapter 2 here Read this fic on AO3

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Chapter 3

Luckily for Azriel, the next day was a Saturday, which meant that he didn’t have to go to work. The only plan he had that day was his gym appointment at 7.00 in the morning, just like every other day. Cassian and Rhys often gave him shit for going to the gym that early in the morning on weekends, but they had partners to enjoy the days with. Azriel did not, which meant that working out was a good way to pass time. Especially for someone like Azriel who didn’t sleep and seemed to have more hours to his days than most regular people did.

However, today he woke up to the sun shining in through his window. He picked up his phone to check the time and was surprised to see that it said 9.23. He never slept that late. And he never slept that well.

She made me miss my gym appointment, Azriel thought to himself and couldn’t help but smile. And then it hit him. It was 9.23. That meant that Flower Girl ASMR would call him in exactly 37 minutes, and he hadn’t even had coffee yet. Azriel quickly got out of bed and hurried to the kitchen. While the coffee was brewing he jumped into the shower. He didn’t know why, but it felt wrong to be on the phone with her without having a shower first. Just like it would feel wrong to show up to a date without showering.

This is not a date, he told himself as he tied the towel around his hips and walked back into his kitchen. Azriel lived in a studio apartment, which meant that his ‘kitchen’ was actually a corner of his living room/bedroom. It was quite big for a studio apartment and he could easily fit his bed, a big sectional, and a dining room table in the room. There were exposed bricks on one wall which gave it a rustic feeling, and the white sleek details everywhere else made it feel modern and minimalistic - just like Azriel preferred.

Azriel leaned against his counter and sipped his coffee. He glanced at the clock on the wall which told him that he had 15 minutes left before the phone call. His hands were sweating. Was it because the coffee was so warm? Azriel tried to tell himself that the coffee was the reason for his warm hands, but it was more difficult to find an explanation for the butterflies in his stomach.

He was nervous. Not because of what they were going to talk about - he could probably guide someone through this in his sleep. But because she made him nervous. It’s one thing to see someone in a video and talk via DMs and an entirely different thing to facetime that person. What if she thought that he was ugly?

As the thought entered his mind, he shook his head as if trying to shake the thought away. Why did he care? He was just helping her with a problem. It didn’t matter if she found him ugly because this was a one-time thing. He would never see her again.

The butterflies turned into a tight knot in his stomach.

Azriel let out a low groan and went to his wardrobe to get dressed. He put on a black T-shirt and black jeans - his standard uniform. He dried his hair hastily with the towel before throwing it in the hamper.

At 10.00 on the dot, Azriel’s phone started ringing on the kitchen island. Or vibrating actually, since he always kept the sound off.

Unknown number is calling

Azriel stared at his phone, suddenly feeling very shy and questioning everything he knew about computers. He checked his reflection in the microwave and let out a deep breath before answering.

“Hello, this is Azriel.” His voice was hoarse, sounding deeper than usual.

“Oh, hi!” A cheery voice said and he was a bit taken aback. In his stupid brain, he had imagined her answering in her whispering voice. “Is this… is this Shadowsinger?”

Azriel decided that her normal voice was just as wonderful as her whispering voice.

“Yeah, this is Shadowsinger. Or well, that’s not my name. I’m obviously not called that. That would be weird…” Azriel babbled, growing more and more self-conscious by the second. He took a deep breath. “I’m Azriel.”

“Hi, Azriel. I’m Elain.” He could hear the smile in her voice and it made him think of sunshine and flowers.

Elain. The name suited her. It was a welsh name that meant fawn. Or at least that’s what Feyre told him one night when she had spent three hours going over possible baby names with their entire friend group (After three hours, Azriel, Cassian, Mor and Nesta had been very drunk and started suggesting weird names from TV such as Khaleesi, Anakin and Buffy which led to Rhys kicking them out.) But Elain wasn’t a weird name. It was pretty. Just like the person that the name belonged to.

“Hello, Elain,” Azriel said quickly when he realized that he had been quiet for a short while.

“Azriel is… an interesting name.” He couldn’t tell from her tone if it was good interesting or bad interesting.

He chuckled. “Yeah, try growing up with the nickname ‘Ass’ in school. Not Az. Ass.”

He could hear Elain laugh and it warmed his heart. “Oh no,” she giggled.

There was a stretch of silence then, both of them unsure of how to begin this.

“So...” Elain started after a few moments. “How do I block words on Youtube, Azriel?”

As soon as the words traveled through the phone, he wanted to ask her to say his name again, but that would be weird. So instead he cleared his throat and got himself into work mode.

“Well, I didn’t know if you were a visual learner, but I created a Youtube account yesterday so I could show you what to do, and you could just follow along if you like?”

God, was he doing too much? Would she find this creepy? Maybe he should just tell her what to do without video.

But to his surprise, Elain did not sound creeped out. “Really? That would be so helpful! How...How can I see your screen though?”

Azriel huffed a laugh. It was kind of cute that she was so oblivious when it came to technology even though she had 250k followers on Youtube.”Well, we’ll change to FaceTime and I will be able to flip the screen and just show you what I’m doing. Is that okay with you?”

He was met with silence.

“Elain?”

“Oh, sorry. I was nodding,” she laughed. “Yes, that’s fine.”

Azriel clicked the icon for FaceTime on his screen and within seconds, her face filled his screen. Her brown hair was in a high ponytail and she wore a mint green hoodie. She wasn’t wearing any makeup and Azriel had to catch his breath. God, why did she have to be so beautiful? He realized that he was staring at her through the screen but his brain wouldn’t form words.

“Hi,” Elain smiled, her cheeks turning pink. “I kind of forgot that we would see each other and not just a screen. Sorry that I look like a mess. I’m going to the gym after this...” She gestured to her hair and Azriel had no idea what mess she was referring to.

“What? You look wonderful,” he said and as soon as the words registered in his brain he wished to be swallowed up by a hole in the ground. He winced. “I mean... I just–” he was making it worse. Lovely. “I just meant that you don’t look like a mess.”

She gave him the sweetest smile. “Well, You don’t look too bad yourself.” She was blushing even more now. Was he blushing too? He had never blushed in his life, so he didn’t even know what that would feel like, but he did feel a bit hot.

Azriel cleared his throat. “So,” he started. “I’m going to flip my screen and film my laptop now. Tell me if you can see what I’m doing.”

“Okay!”

Azriel logged into Youtube and held his phone in front of the screen. “Can you see?” He held the phone in front of his computer, and even though she couldn’t see him anymore, he could still see her.

“Just a second,” she said and held up a finger. She was moving and so was her camera. When she reappeared, Azriel was very happy that she couldn’t see him. She was wearing glasses and they made her, if possible, even more attractive. Her beautiful golden eyes looked even bigger. Like a fawn, Azriel thought to himself.

“Yes, I can see when you have the phone so close to the screen,” she answered.

“Okay, good. Are you near your own computer?”

“Yes! And I’m already logged into my Youtube account.”

Azriel nodded, even though she couldn’t see him. “Great. Then you should see your profile picture here in the corner.” He showed her where to look.

“Mhm, I see it.”

She was focusing so hard on the screen, she had probably forgotten that he could see her. She was leaning in close enough for Azriel to see her freckles.

I want to kiss every single freckle on her body.

The thought entered his brain before he could even react and he was very happy that she wasn’t a mind reader. He tried to ignore her face on his screen and focus on his task.

“You will click the photo, and that should display a menu,” he explained. “Like this. You are going to click ‘Youtube Studio’ here.”

Elain scrunched up her nose in concentration and Azriel thought that he might die from the cuteness.

“Done! What next?”

“Okay, then you click ‘Settings’ at the bottom here,” he showed her where to look. “And then you choose ‘Community’”

“Community?” She asked and bit her lip.

Azriel wanted to bite that lip too.

“Yeah,” he answered, happy that he didn’t have to come up with more advanced words.

“And then you scroll down to ‘blocked words’ here,” he instructed. “Are you there?”

“Yes, I found it,” she answered with a smile.

“Well, aren’t you a gold star student?” Azriel joked and Elain’s face went from smiling to blushing in a nano-second.

“Thank you,” she mumbled.

There was a beat of silence again. Azriel wanted to kick himself.

“What now?” Elain asked in a low voice, still determined to get this over with.

“Well, now you just fill in the words you want to block. Make sure that you separate each word or phrase with a comma. And then you just press save and that’s it.”

“Oh, okay. That was easier than I imagined.”

Silence again.

“Can you manage from here?”

Elain bit her lip again. She was staring somewhere behind her phone; probably at her computer. “Ehm, I’m not sure what words to block.”

Azriel thought back to the awful comments he had seen and could think of a handful of words.

“Well, just block the words that these commenters often use, and maybe block bad words in general? You can review your comments later, so if nice comments are being filtered, you can choose to restore them while deleting the bad ones.”

Elain nodded and Azriel didn’t know if he should hang up or stay. So he stayed. His camera was still facing his computer, and Elain was still filming herself. She looked lost in thought.

“Are you okay, Elain?” Azriel asked cautiously, afraid to startle her.

“Hmm?” She looked straight at the camera now, eyes still glossy.

“Are you okay?”

“Yeah, I’m just… tired. I really like doing ASMR, but this sucks. I just want to make people happy and spread positivity, you know? And still, I have to deal with this.”

“Yeah, that must suck.”

Azriel had a question that he had been burning to ask, but he didn’t know if it was too personal. However, as he told himself before, they were never going to see each other again. He could always ask, and the worst thing he could get was a ‘no, I don’t want to talk about it’.

So he asked.

“Elain, can I ask you something?”

She nodded absentmindedly.

“Yesterday you wrote that you had blocked those trolls multiple times. Are you certain that they’re the same people?”

She nodded again. “Yes. In the beginning, they were a bit more creative with the usernames which threw me for a loop. But I realized that it was the same IP addresses every single time, so yeah. I know. I mean, I get hate from complete strangers too, but these people are a bit more persistent .” The last word was spoken through her teeth. She looked upset, but she also looked like she wanted to hide it. Azriel decided to switch his camera back to his face so she wouldn’t feel as vulnerable. And so he wouldn’t feel like a creep for staring at her.

Elain looked a bit startled. “Oh, hi again,” she smiled, but it wasn’t as genuine anymore.

“Do you know these people?” Azriel asked through gritted teeth. He didn’t know why, but he felt very protective all of a sudden.

“Yes, I do. At least the three people that commented yesterday…” she bit her lip again, probably contemplating if she should tell him more. “It’s my ex.”

Azriel tried his hardest to not look surprised and pissed off at the same time. “All three of them?”

With a surprised look on her face, she shook her head quickly. “Oh, god no. No. Just one. His name is Graysen.”

MortalGraysen. Azriel remembered the username because it had sounded so stupid.

“And the other two?”

She let out a long breath. “His stupid best friends, Amarantha and Hybern. Stupid names, right?”

Azriel could only agree. “Very. Why is he bothering you like this, if you don’t mind me asking?”

Elain took off her glasses and massaged her temple lightly. “I dumped him after he slept with Amarantha and then…” she chewed the inside of her cheek. “Then he told all of our friends that he only slept with her because I was so boring in…'' her cheeks flushed again and she didn’t finish that sentence. She didn’t have to. Azriel understood perfectly.

“Okay, so he really is an asshole then.”

“The biggest.”

“Well, I don’t think you can block IP addresses on Youtube, but you could always try to block their names. It might work for a while at least?” Azriel suggested. He needed to help her.

“That’s smart!” she exclaimed and sat her phone down to type. He was very happy that she had leaned it against something so he could still see her.

“What other words should I add?”

Azriel thought back to the comments he had seen. Boobs, nudes, cock, jerk off and tits were all words that she should block, but they were also words he didn’t feel like saying in front of her.

“Just check their old comments and block the words they have used.”

“I’ve deleted the comments, but I remember a few words.” She typed again and Azriel could tell that she was uncomfortable.

“Hey, just block all sexual words and maybe swear words? That should probably work for a while?”

“Okay.” She typed again while Azriel waited patiently. Honestly, he would probably wait forever if it meant that he could watch her on his screen like this.

He felt like a teenager with a crush on the coolest girl in school. He knew that she was out of his league, but his body had not gotten the memo…

“I think I’m done,” she announced and smiled at her phone. At him.

Azriel smiled back. “Which words did you write?” he asked out of curiosity.

Elain picked up her phone and switched the camera so he could see her computer. In the box for ‘blocked words’ she had indeed written a few words.

Blocked words Graysen, Hybern, Amarantha, Boring, Dumb, Stupid, Weird, Ugly, Penis, Vagina, Sex, Sexy, Breasts, Feet, Ejaculation, Nipple, Damn, Fuck, Darn it, Hell,

“Do you think that’s enough?” She asked him in a low voice as if she was ashamed of what she was showing him.

Azriel had to bite his lip in order to keep himself from grinning. It was kind of sweet that she had written down the more technical terms, and not any words that would actually be used on the internet.

“Well, I think it’s a good start,” Azriel answered. “But I think there are a few more words that you should add. And maybe some you can remove from the list.”

“Which ones can I remove?” She leaned closer to her computer, probably trying to find the redundant words.

“I don’t think that trolls will use Darn it, for example.”

Elain pressed the backspace key a few times.

“And which words should I add?” she asked the screen. Her glasses had slid down her nose a bit and Azriel had an urge to reach through the screen and push them back into place.

Azriel scratched his chin, thinking about the best way to phrase it. “Maybe a few synonyms for the words you have written down?”

“Such as?”

Azriel held his breath. “Well…” Azriel hesitated. Was she serious or was she just trying to get him to say dirty words? “I don’t think that internet trolls will use the word vagina.”

“Oh,” her ears turned a lovely pink color. “So I should just add synonyms for that word then?”

“Sure.”

Elain looked lost in thought for a moment before typing again, this time a bit more aggressively. “There are quite a lot,” she muttered.

“Really?” Azriel could only think of two; pussy and cunt.

“Yes. I googled it.”

Of course, she googled a list of synonyms for vagina. Azriel couldn’t hold back his grin this time. She gave him a look he couldn’t decipher. “What’s so funny?”

“Oh, nothing,” he said, still grinning. “Can you read me this list of synonyms?” he teased, thinking that she would tell him to fuck off.

He was wrong.

“Well, there’s pussy, cunt, vajayjay, punani, ho-ha, flower…” she drifted off and Azriel could tell the exact moment it hit her that she was reading these words to a man she didn’t know. “Oh, god,” she groaned and hid her face in her hand. “Please ignore everything that just happened.”

Azriel chuckled. “I rather not. What’s the weirdest word on the list?”

He was invested now.

Elain looked at him through the screen again, but this time he could tell that she was suppressing a smile. “The weirdest one must be fish taco, or bald man in a boat. One just sounds disgusting, and the other one is just… weird? Like, I don’t get it.”

“I think that the ‘bald man’ is supposed to be the...uh,” Azriel could not finish that sentence. He knew that he was blushing now, too.

“Oh,” she said looking surprised, and then disgusted. “Oh, that just makes it worse.”

The laugh that followed was contagious.

As she laughed, Azriel thought back to the day before. To when he had watched her video to fall asleep. In her videos, she was so calm and collected - the complete opposite from this bubbly, laughing person on his screen. Both sides of her were equally fascinating to Azriel and he wished that he could get to know her better. She was so easy to talk to. Azriel never found anyone easy to talk to. At parties, you could find him in the corner with a drink and a good book. He was not a talkative man. But with Elain, he wanted to talk. And he wanted to listen. He wanted her to tell him about her day and her life, which was absurd. They had been talking for like 30 minutes. They didn’t know each other. They would never get to know each other.

“Thank you for helping me with this, Azriel,” Elain said when the laughter had died down. “I really appreciate it. I’m sorry for being a bit weird and reading you that list. I hope that I didn’t cross a line or…”

Azriel held up a hand to show her that he didn’t mind. “It’s no problem, honestly. I can’t remember the last time I laughed this much.”

Elain shifted in her seat and picked up her phone again, moving it closer to her face again. “Just like you couldn’t remember the last time you had slept well?”

For a second, Azriel was truly afraid that she was a mind reader because that meant that she had heard him think that he wanted to kiss all her freckles. And then, he remembered the comment he had left on her video a few days earlier.

“Yeah, just like that.”

She leaned her head to the side and regarded him through the phone. “Is that true? You can’t remember having a good night’s sleep?”

Azriel shook his head. “I have suffered from insomnia since I was a child. Sleep has never been a positive experience for me.”

He had never opened up like this to anyone. His former girlfriend never understood why he was awake and why he hated sleepovers. The insomnia had definitely destroyed a few relationships over the years. He could tell that Elain wanted to ask about it, but she didn’t. He really appreciated that.

“Well, I’m happy that I can help you with that anyway. It makes me feel less horrible for making you help me with this on a Saturday morning,” she said and gestured to her computer.

“You didn’t make me do anything. I offered. I was happy to help.”

She gave him the sweetest smile yet and Azriel was surprised when he didn’t melt into a puddle. “Well, thank you. Can I pay you for your trouble?”

Before she had even finished the sentence Azriel shook his head. “No, Elain. I really don’t want you to pay me.”

“Okay,” she bit one side of her lip again. Those damn lips. “Can I give you something else then?”

Did her tone sound flirty? Azriel didn’t know. He might just be hopeful because he started imagining all kinds of things she could give him.

“Like, maybe you could tell me your favorite trigger and I’ll make sure that my next video includes it?”

Azriel swallowed, his throat suddenly feeling very thick. “You don’t have to do that, I...”

“But I want to,” she interrupted. “What’s your favorite trigger?”

Azriel was trying to figure out a way to tell her that she was his favorite trigger without sounding like a serial killer. “Well, I don’t really know. I like when you whisper,” he tried, and when she smiled and nodded encouragingly, he continued. “Honestly Elain, I have tried to watch other ASMR videos but they don’t make me fall asleep. Your videos make me fall asleep within minutes. Whatever magic you put into your videos, that’s probably my trigger,” he half-joked.

“Hmm,” Elain regarded him. “I’ll figure something out.” She winked at him teasingly and Azriel hated that this was the first and last time he would ever get to talk to her.

“Well, I really have to go,” Elain declared. “I’m meeting a friend at the gym.”

“Yeah, I have to go too,” Azriel lied. He would have canceled any plan he ever had if he could continue this conversation.

“Well, thank you again for your help, Azriel.”

“Don’t mention it.”

She removed her glasses and looked straight into her camera. It felt as if she was staring into his soul.

“Goodbye, Shadowsinger.”

“Goodbye, Flower Girl.”

The call disconnected and he was left staring at his apps. Not a single one interested him.

With a heavy sigh, Azriel walked to his bed. He was planning to lay down and scream into a pillow when he received a text from a number he didn’t recognize.

New message I searched for a few more synonyms, and this one for penis is horrendous. Just listen to this: Meat banjo. Isn’t that just horrible? I’m definitely blocking that word.

Azriel couldn’t help the laugh that bubbled up from his chest. It really was a horrendous synonym and he could imagine her sitting in front of her computer, making disgusted faces at the various words on her screen.

New message Oh, this is Elain, by the way.

And that’s when it hit him.

She had texted him and he could see her number. That meant that he could save her number on his phone. It also meant…

Well, he honestly didn’t know what it meant, but he didn’t feel like screaming into his pillow anymore.

[unorthodoxsavvy]

The X-Philes: Chapter 5

Phil is a psychic. Dan is a detective. When Phil is visited by the ghost of his brother, he knows something isn't right. Can he and Dan solve the case, or will they become the next victims?

Rating: M

For Moe, who always believed I was a writer at heart. May 1941-May 2022

“We’ll check out as early as we can in the morning, so start packing your stuff tonight,” Dan ordered. He couldn’t believe he was following this stupid plan.

“Breakfast?”

Phil was laying on Dan’s motel bed while Dan packed his clothes around him.

“We’ll get something on the way. We don’t have a moment to waste.”

“Finally, something we can agree on,” Phil announced dramatically.

Dan rolled his eyes.

“I don’t know why you even followed me back in here. You have your own motel room.”

“I’m bored,” Phil whined.

“So turn on the tv and watch something,” Dan dismissed.

Phil reached over to the nightstand and grabbed the remote.

“I meant in your room!”

“Too late,” Phil smiled.

Dan paused his packing to wrestle the remote away from Phil.

“I’m bored,” Phil whined again. Dan took a deep breath in and out, just like he’d learned in therapy.

“Fine. Go pack your things, and you can come back and we can watch something,” Dan sighed.

“Okay!” Phil hopped off the bed and pulled his room key out of his pocket as he left Dan’s room.

Dan finished packing his things and sat on the bed waiting to see if Phil would indeed come around knocking again. Unfortunately, he did.

Dan opened the motel door.

“You can sit in the desk chair,” he instructed firmly.

Dan walked in front of Phil stopping at the desk and removing his leather jacket from the back and took it with him to the bed.

Phil pulled the chair up next to th bed so he’d have a good view of the television screen.

“What are we watching?” Phil asked.

“I don’t know,” Dan retorted.

“Can we make popcorn?”

“What on earth would lead you to believe I have unpopped popcorn in my room?” Dan asked.

Phil squinted.

“Unpopped?” he asked, suspicious.

Dan sighed. “Fine. Kitchen.”

Phil eagerly jumped up from the chair and ran into the motel room’s kitchen area, where he spotted a folded bag of smart food.

“Movie night!” he cheered.

Dan groaned.

Phil crossed in front of Dan’s line of sight to sit back in the desk chair while Dan flipped through the channels.

“Yes!”  Dan cheered under his breath.

Phil looked over at him, surprised. “I’m not used to you showing this much positive emotion,” he mentioned with a wry smile.

“It’s the X-Files,” Dan gestured towards the tv with the remote.

“I see that,” Phil smiled, eyes still on Dan.

“Iconic,” Dan’s whole body moved with the word.

Phil let out a quiet snort, eyeing Dan sitting criss-cross apple-sauce on the bed before turning to the tv screen.

“Do you think I’m like Mulder?” Phil asked after a while.

Dan snorted. “No.”

“He believes in weird stuff too,” Phil insisted. “Why don’t you give me the time of day, but you like Mulder?”

“Because you’re no David Duchovny.”

“Yeah, well, you’re no Gillian Anderson either!”

Dan rolled his eyes. “It’s not the same.”

Phil’s eyes widened and he gasped. 

“Oh, you’re gay,” Phil chuckled.

“What? No that’s not what I meant-”

“Oh you are so not straight-”

“No!”

“Yeah, no one heterosexual dismisses Gillian Anderson that quickly, ha ha,” Phil enuncuated. 

Dan ripped the bag of smart food away from Phil. “Shut up.”

Phil looked up at him.

“I’m sorry, Dan,” he said, suddenly serious.”

“Why, that I’m gay? Yeah, I’m sorry too.”

“No, I shouldn’t have sprung that on you like I did, even as a joke. I forget, sometimes, that not everyone is as comfortable as me.”

Dan nodded, conceding Phil’s point.

They sat in silence and continued to watch the rerun.

“I should go,” Phil said, getting up from the desk chair.

“Why?” Dan asked. “The episode isn’t over yet.”

“Yeah, well, I, uh, didn’t actually finish packing,” Phil stuttered, brushing crumbs off his person. 

“Alright, well, I’ll come knock tomorrow and we can go,” Dan pretended to believe Phil’s excuse.

“Thanks, see you then.” Phil gave an awkward wave.

“See you then.”

Phil walked towards the door, obscured from Dan’s sight by a wall.

“Dan?”

Dan turned to the sound of Phil’s voice.

“Yeah?”

“Are we friends?”

Dan pursed his lips. “Yeah, Phil, we’re friends.”

Dan heard the door open and shut.

*-*-*-*-*

Phil rubbed his eyes as the sound of knocking pervaded his consciousness and steadily woke him up.

“Coming!” he called.

Phil tossed the corner of the sheets and comforter up and rolled out of bed, stumbling sleepily to answer the door.

“Ready?” Dan asked, standing outside Phil’s door fulled dressed and bags by his side.

“No?” Phil groaned, clearly still in his pajamas.

“Alright, well, hurry up.”

Phil was starting to rethink his position on Dan not being a morning person.

*-*-*-*-*

Dan waited by the check-out counter in the lobby.

“Pay for your room and let’s go.” He nodded towards the door.

“What about you?” 

“I already paid for my room, and besides, it’s on the office’s dime anyway.”

Phil squinted at Dan, still sleepy.

“But I gave you money for gas!”

“Uh-huh.”

“Then what did you do with my twenty bucks?”

“I bought pizza with it.”

“You said you were paying for the pizza!”

“I did,” Dan insisted.

“With my money.”

“Yeah, that you gave me, now come on.”

Phil handed his card to the receptionist and grumbled about him paying for the pizza.

They threw their bags in the trunk and placed a backpack filled with snacks and drinks in the back seat on the floor within easy reach of the front of the car.

They climbed in and shut the doors, buckling up.

“Have you ever been to Texas?” Phil asked as Dan backed out of the parking space.

“No, you?”

“No.”

Phil reached into his pockets for his earbuds.

“Uh, hey, did you want to pick the music?” Dan asked awkwardly.

Phil could tell Dan was trying to extend an olive brach from the night before.

“Sure,” Phil shrugged, and played with the dial on the car’s ancient dashboard, listening to the frequencies come and go. Finally he settled on a 90s rock station.

“Where have you been?” Phil asked, trying to keep the conversation going.

“Well, obviously West Virginia and Connecticut. Massachusetts too.”

“Why move to Connecticut?” Phil asked.

Dan shrugged. “My dad always talked about how nice it was up north. He failed to mention hoe expensive it was though.” 

Phil chuckled. “You’re telling me.” He gazed out the window.

“What about you?” Dan asked.

“Born and raised,” Phil answered.

They sat in silence listening to the radio for a few minutes.

“When are you going to turn on the GPS?” Phil asked.

“When we stop for breakfast. I know how to get out of this town perfectly fine on my own. Been doing it for years.”

Phil nodded.

“You said you had a brother?” Phil prompted.

“If I recall, it was you, actually, who said I had a brother. But yes, I do.”

“Where is he now?”

“Florida.”

Phil grinned. “I see why you don’t visit him.”

“Damn straight.”

Phil glanced over at Dan and Dan glanced back at him chuckling.

*-*-*-*-*

“I’m sorry,” Phil said after a while of driving. The GPS still said 18 hours to go. It was an unspoken agreement they’d be stopping somewhere for the night.

“For what?” Dan asked.

“Dragging you into this,” Phil said.

“You didn’t drag me into this. I was already involved, it seems.”

“Yeah, but you didn’t know that until I showed up.”

“Well, I’m glad you did. You gave me the first real lead I’ve had since my father went missing.”

“And you really want to find out what happened to him?” Phil asked.

“Of course,” Dan replied.

“No matter what the truth is?”

“Of course,” Dan replied again. “Don’t you?”

Somehow Phil knew Dan wasn’t referring to his dad anymore.

“Yeah.”

“What makes you think that I would want anything different?” Dan asked.

Phil shrugged.

“I don’t know. You left and made a life for yourself. You have a career, a future, and I’m afraid I just uprooted you from all of it.”

Dan shrugged back. “Not really. Sure, I put myself through the academy and worked my way up to being a detective. I’m still young though. I have my whole life ahead of me, and so do you. We both have unanswered questions that we want the answers too. Isn’t that the most we could ask for in life? The answers to the questions that haunt us?”

Phil thought about himself and his past. About his strange powers and the life he’d built around them, while somehow still waiting for a sign or something about what he was supposed to be really doing with them, with the rest of his life.

“Yeah, I suppose you’re right.”

“This is a hero’s journey, and we’re going on it together to find ourselves,” Dan insisted.

Phil smiled. “Alright, if you really see it that way, then I don’t feel so bad about dragging you into it anymore.”

“You didn’t drag me into anything,” Dan reassured him again. “I came along willingly.”

*-*-*-*-*

They saw a sign on the highway advertising food and lodging nearby around the time it was 9pm. Well, 9pm back in West Virginia. Unknowingly they’d crossed over the line from Eastern Standard Time to Central Standard Time. They only noticed when Phil pulled out his phone to look up hotel room prices for the night and the time on Phil’s phone didn’t match the time on Dan’s car’s dashboard.

“This place seems good,” Phil mumbled, and popped the address into his phone’s GPS app and replacing Dan’s phone, which was still on a line to arrive to Texas, with it.

“What are we going to do when we get there?” Phil asked as Dan navigated around the Tennessee city traffic.

“I’m not quite sure,” Dan admitted, “but we’ll figure it out on the road tomorrow, alright? First we gotta get a good night’s sleep because we still have a little over ten hours left.”

Phil nodded and turned to face back out the passenger side window.

“Ever been to Tennessee?” Phil asked, making a callback to their conversation earlier that day.

“Nope,” Dan smiled. “Never really was a big Elvis fan.”

Phil grinned back at him.

“Yeah, me either.”

Together while Dan drove they pointed out familiar restaurants, hotels, and other businesses all lit up by neon signs beckoning them to come inside. They also pointed out unfamiliar things, things that maybe were a representation of Tennessee culture, the likes of which they’d never experienced. The hotel Phil had picked out wasn’t far down the road from the highway exit and entrance ramps, and they were there within a few minutes.

Phil grabbed his phone from where he’d placed it upright in the little tray in front of the cupholders so both could see the screen and ended the navigation.

Opening the door and getting out felt like a butterfly bursting from its cocoon when it’s whole life thus far it had been a caterpillar. It was sore and stiff and really awkward, and Phil felt like his legs were going to shut off at any moment.

“Do you want to check in and I’ll start unpacking the car?” Dan asked after they’d spent a few minutes stretching and walking around, mostly in circles over near-by empty parking spaces. “You trust me enough to handle that?” Phil joked. “More than I trust you to carry the luggage, wimp,” Dan smirked.

*-*-*-*-*

“I regret trusting you enough to handle checking in.”

Dan set his suitcase down on the bed nearest to the door.

“This isn’t my fault!” Phil staunchly objected. “How was I supposed to know there was only one room left?”

“Because you’re the one who looked at the website!”

“Well excuse me if the website doesn’t provide that kind of information for it’s perspective guests.”

“It should,” Dan grumbled, sitting on his bed and undoing the laces to his boots.

“Well I’m sure they have a little suggestion box on the check in counter downstairs you can submit your idea to,” Phil replied sarcastically, mirroring Dan by sitting on his own bed and untying his sneakers.

They’d eaten dinner on the road, much like they had eaten lunch and breakfast on the road, as well as other various unnamed meals. It was a long trip and Dan had been really serious about making as minimal stops as possible. Luckily, though, one of those stops had only been two hours ago, because Phil wasn’t sure he could have made it all the way up here to their room from the parking lot with a full bladder and not make a scene.

“I’m showering first,” Dan announced, hopping off the bed.

“Okay?” Phil answered.

“Okay?” Dan repeated, confused.

“I’ll just shower in the morning,” Phil shrugged.

“We’re leaving at seven.”

“Okay so I’ll get up at six, just go,” Phil shooed Dan into the bathroom with his hands from his seat on the bed near the windows.

When the bathroom door was closed Phil got up and pulled the blinds open so he could look out over the sprawling city. All of the different lights were beautiful in his opinion, and so high up behind a double sheet of glass where he couldn’t hear the hustle and bustle of the city, it was peaceful.

Phil had grown up in the countryside with Martyn and their parents, and even though his apartment in Connecticut was in a much more urban area than he was used to, it was still a small, quaint, rich farm town with wholesale grocery stores and fresh bakeries using locally grown ingredients.

His parents had never taken him to the city as a child, it was only as he and Martyn grew older and were able to share a car that they’d ride together to concerts and other various events in the city. That was before Martyn started law school down in West Virginia and before their eventual falling-out. Looking down at the city lights from the 8th floor of a hotel now, Phil was reminded of those long drives and fun nights spent with the person he’d looked up to and who he knew always had his back. 

The way Phil saw it was of course his parents would love and accept him, no matter what- weird abilities to talk to ghosts or coming out as gay- but Martyn hadn’t been under any obligation to love Phil unconditionally, but he had, and even in their worst of moments or moments where they just didn’t give each other another thought, Phil had always been grateful to his brother for it.

Phil placed a hand against the inner layer of glass. 

“I miss you,” he smiled, hoping that wherever he was, Martyn could hear him. He pulled his hand away and watched as the foggy imprint his warm skin had left behind on the cool glass slowly faded away.

Phil heard the shower head turn off and the water stop running so he took one last look out the window before turning to face his bed and moving his dufflebag to the side.

Phil pulled out a pair of comfortable pants and a larger t-shirt and started to change. He was just pulling his shirt down his chest when Dan emerged from the bathroom in a cloud of steam.

“Steamy,” Phil commented.

“I could say the same for you,” Dan joked, “except not really.”

Phil shrugged. Being in top physical shape wasn’t near the top of his personal goals list. 

“It’s warm in there, you should shower now so your muscles can relax while you sleep, and you’ll be able to sleep better without all that tension in your body.”

Phil shook his head and flicked his hand. 

“I’ll sleep like a rock, thanks, I’m exhausted, and I’d rather have loose muscles in the morning to delay the onset of being sore for sitting in a car the entire day.”

Dan shrugged. “Suit yourself.”

“I am,” Phil replied under his breath.

Dan was organizing his clothes and toiletries while Phil dug around his bag for his toothbrush and toothpaste before heading into the bathroom.

Dan was right, it was warm in here. The humid air was like a hug to Phil’s whole body. Phil closed his eyes and breathed in. He missed hugs. He missed being with people who were softer than Dan. Dan was nice and all, but he was so stern and “go, go go!” Phil missed relaxing with friends instead of sitting in a car tense and sore for hours on end.

Phil had just started brushing his teeth when out of the corner of his eye he spotted Dan enter the doorway.

Phil paused.

“Do you eed somefing?” Phil asked, mouth full of toothbrush and toothpaste.

“I was wondering what your plans were for the night,” Dan asked as Phil leaned over the sink and spit.

Phil stood back upright, this time removing the toothbrush from his mouth.

“And you couldn’t wait three minutes to ask me?” Phil checked.

“I need to plan accordingly,” Dan replied.

Phil sighed, staring at Dan’s chest.

“Fine, uh, I guess maybe watch something on my phone and then go to sleep?” Phil suggested. They’d taken turns charging their phones in the car, and while neither of them had full battery, there was enough to use before plugging it in and leaving it to charge on the nightstand the beds shared overnight.

“Okay,” Dan nodded and left.

Phil finished brushing his teeth and shut off the bathroom light as he exited.

Dan was scrolling on his own personal phone when Phil sat in his bed criss-cross applesauce and plugged in his earbuds, booting up the YouTube app and hunching over himself.

Phil scrolled through the Buzzfeed Unsolved Network’s video list before finally settling on a video. He had just reached the part where Shane and Ryan were entering some abandoned building when Dan asked “What are you watching?”

Phil paused the video and pulled out the earbud on the side Dan was.

“Buzzfeed Unsolved.”

Dan shrugged. “Never heard of it.”

“You’ve never seen Buzzfeed Unsolved?” Phil asked incredulously, placing a hand down on the bed and turning to face Dan for emphasis.

Dan shrugged again and Phil scooted over to the far side of his bed and rewound the video.

“You have to watch an episode,” Phil pointed at the empty space next to him.

Dan frowned but climbed off of his bed and on to Phil’s.

Phil scooted back over until they were touching and took the earbud he had in his ear and gave it to Dan. Dan, resigned, put it in his own ear. Phil placed the one he’d taken out before back in his ear and started the video again.

“I think there’s directional audio so sorry if you don’t hear everything, but you’ll pick up more with earbuds in than without them,” Phil explained nervously.

Dan glanced over at him and nodded before looking back down at the screen.

“Can you hold this side?” Phil asked.

Dan crossed his arm over his chest and centered the phone between them, each one with a hand to hold it up.

Phil could smell the hotel shampoo and conditioner in Dan’s still-wet hair. He was still warm from the shower too, and Phil tried his best not to lean into it.

Together they sat and watched the video, Phil laughing along with Ryan and Shane and Dan sitting stoically by his side.

When the video was over Dan pulled the earbud out of his ear and handed it back to Phil.

“Did you like it?” Phil asked, a big smile on his face.

“It was alright,” Dan responded. He could almost feel Phil deflate next to him. 

“It reminds me of The X Files,” Dan elaborated. “Another skeptic and believer dynamic.”

“Like us?” Phil asked.

“Yeah, like us,” Dan agreed, rolling off the side of Phil’s bed to climb back into his own.

“So how do I compare to Ryan?” Phil asked, scooting back over and plugging his phone into the charger he’d plugged into the nightstand.

“You’re no David Duchovny or Ryan Begara, but you’re you, and I think that you don’t need to compare us to other skeptic/believer duos because we’re our own.”

Phil was grateful Dan couldn’t see him blushing by the faint moonlight that spilled into the room through the window overlooking the city.

“Is it alright if I keep that open?” Phil asked, gesturing towards it.

“Yeah, it’s nice.”

Phil stood up and pulled the covers back before climbing into the hotel bed.

“I agree. Anyway, night Dan.”

“Goodnight believer.”

Phil smiled, facing towards Dan in the moonlight.

“Goodnight skeptic.”

*-*-*-*-*

Dan woke to sunlight streaming into the window. He picked up his phone and checked the time. It was a little past seven. Neither of them had remembered to set an alarm. 

Dan sighed and sat up in the hotel bed, looking over at Phil curled up in his own bed, hands wrapped around the comforter and sheets, tucked up just under his chin. His legs were tucked up under him leaving him resting peacefully in the embryo position.

Dan didn’t want to wake him up, not because he was sleeping deeply or anything, but simply because waking up someone is awkward enough when you’re close, and even more awkward when you aren’t.

Phil didn’t stir, however, so Dan slid off his bed and stood over him.

A lock of Phil’s black hair had fallen from where he’s gelled his hair back into a quiff and Dan had an instinct to brush it back up, but he suppressed it. Instead, he reached down and placed his hand over the comforter on Phil’s shoulder and gently shook him.

Phil blinked his eyes open slowly and looked up at Dan, smiling instinctively before realizing what he was doing and pulling the comforter up over his face.

Dan looked towards Phil’s legs and saw there was space to sit down, so he did.

“I’ll run down and get us breakfast while you shower. What kind of muffin do you want if they have any?” Dan asked.

Phil pulled down the comforter from his mouth.

“Blueberry please.”

“Alright, and what else do you want? Cereal? Bagel? Waffles? Eggs and bacon?”

“You can surprise me,” Phil smiled quietly. 

Dan reached down and mussed Phil’s hair.

“I’m going to poison your food,” he smiled sweetly, getting up and leaving the room.

Phil pulled the comforter up over his head as Dan walked out, waiting for the door the close before getting up.

“Am baby,” Phil said to himself as he walked around the bed to get to his duffle bag.

He started digging through his clothes. Quite a few pairs of shirts and jeans were dirty; they hadn’t done laundry since leaving from Connecticut.

Phil picked out a t-shirt he’d packed and a clean pair of light denim jeans. He had no idea what the weather in Texas was going to be like. 

Phil pulled out his sweatshirt from where he’d left it in the bag from the day before and laid it out on the bed for after he was done getting dressed.

Phil carried the rest to his clothes to the bathroom and shut the door behind him.

He smiled to his reflection in the mirror before getting into the shower.

*-*-*-*-*

Phil heard the door of their hotel room unlock and open as he was getting dressed in the bathroom. Phil was anticipating seeing what Dan had gotten them for breakfast, so he pulled his shirt and jeans on as quickly as he could, leaving his hair to dry a bit while he ate before going back into the bathroom to style it.

Phil opened the bathroom door and peaked out. Dan was sitting on his bed with plates full of what seemed like every single option they’d had at the continental breakfast down in the lobby. Dan must had stacked the plates in a balancing act to get them all the way to and from the elevator up to their room on the eight floor.

“Wow,” Phil smiled.

“I’m not good at surprising people,” Dan admitted, “so I figured we could just share.”

“Thanks.” Phil sat down across from Dan on his bed while Dan held the food steady.

“I didn’t get anything to drink though,” Dan gestured.

“That’s fine, I don’t blame you. That would have been too much to carry. We have water up here anyway, and we can get something on the way out.”

“Or we could stop for coffee at a Starbucks,” Dan suggested.

Phil chuckled as he started to pick at the food. “Fancy.”

“Indeed. That, and I’m just tired of hotel coffee.”

“I hear that,” Phil raised a bagel covered in cream cheese with a bite taken out of it as a toast to being tired of hotel and motel coffee.

They talked softly as they ate their breakfast. Dan cleaned up the mess while Phil went to style his hair in the bathroom. Dan made fun of him for it, and Phil yelled something back. 

It didn’t take long for Dan to pack up his things, and thankfully for him Phil was right behind him.

Dan stood by the door waiting while Phil tied his second shoe, and once he was done and he’d picked up his duffle bag and slung it over his shoulder they were on their way.

Phil rubbed his face sleepily in the elevator as Dan stared back at their reflections in the golden walls.

“Elevators are sketchy,” Dan commented.

“What are you going to do, arrest them?” Phil joked.

“I would if I could.”

Phil didn’t know where Dan’s good mood was coming from, but he certainly wasn’t complaining. It was nice, he reflected to himself as Dan checked out at the desk and they made their way through the lobby doors out to Dan’s car in the parking lot. It was nice to not be fighting, or even just have tension between them. Phil wondered if spending the night together watching a YouTube video like friends was what would had finally convinced Dan to loosen up. Whatever the reason, it was just… nice.

Phil buckled his seat belt and leaned his head against the headrest behind him.

“Going back to sleep?” Dan asked, pulling slowly out of he parking lot.

“Yeah,” Phil answered seriously.

“Did you want coffee?”

“Yeah,” Phil repeated.

“Are you staying up for coffee or should I wake you when we get it?”

“How far away is the nearest Starbucks?” he asked.

“I can’t imagine it being that far.”

“Yeah, I’ll stay up for coffee and then go back to sleep.”

“Okay, sounds good.”

Within the next three minutes they’d come upon a Starbucks. Dan ordered a plain dark roast while Phil got cream and sugar and flavor additives.

Phil took a few sips of his coffee as Dan pulled out from the drive through window then placed his coffee cup into the cup holder next to him. He leaned his head back once more and closed his eyes.

Dan adjusted the volume dial for the radio.

“Is this okay?” he asked.

Phil nodded.

“Alright, goodnight.”

“Goodnight.”

*-*-*-*-*

When Phil woke up they were in Arkansas.

Phil didn’t know that when he woke up, but once Dan noticed him stirring he’d informed Phil of them crossing over state lines.

There wasn’t much for Phil to do with this information, so he responded “cool” and picked his coffee cup back up, taking a sip. By now it had cooled off considerably, but the last hints of warmth still remained.

Dan turned the radio up a little louder as Phil looked around assessing their surroundings. The land was flat and devoid of much greenery on either side of them. What looked like fields that would be used for crops soon spread for miles and miles as they drove onward further and further south.

“You said we’d figure out what to do when we get there on the way here,” Phil mentioned.

“I did,” Dan agreed.

“Are we going to do that then?”

“Why don’t we wait a little longer until you’re a bit more alert and then talk about it,” Dan suggested.

“Alright.”

Phil looked at the clock on the dashboard, realizing he hadn’t checked it when he woke up.

It said it was ten in the morning. Phil looked at his phone. According to his phone, it was nine in the morning, so he’d slept for roughly two hours.

Phil placed his phone back in his pocket and stretched.

Dan had been right about a hot shower easing his muscles, that was for sure. He felt much better today than he had yesterday- although they were only two hours into their trip with roughly another eight to go, and he’d been asleep for those two hours. But still, Phil felt good.

“Do you have any pets?” Phil asked.

“No,” Dan replied. “Do you?”

“No. I guess that’s working out well for us now, huh?”

“Yeah, it is,” Dan agreed.

“Do you want any pets?” Phil asked.

Dan shrugged.

“I don’t think my apartment is conducive to a larger dog.”

“So you want a big dog? What kind?”

Dan shrugged again.

“I don’t know. Big. German Shepherd maybe.”

“German Shepherds are great dogs,” Phil agreed.

“You ever have one?”

“No.”

Dan nodded, wondering where exactly Phil had drawn that conclusion from. Phil had actually drawn his conclusion from the fact that all dogs were good dogs.

“So you want to move in a house someday and have a large dog you can let out in your yard?” Phil asked.

“That’s the dream,” Dan replied in a slightly mocking tone.

“Well, I hope you get that some day,” Phil said, turning to face out the passenger side window.

“Yeah, it’s be nice someday to share a house with a partner and have a dog together,” Dan imagined. “Thanks.”

Phil wondered about his own future. He’d never really imagined himself with anyone in a romantic sense. He’d never really been one to date, something Martyn would get on his case about jokingly from time to time. Martyn respected Phil’s decision though.

“It’s not like you’re settling down to raise a family,” Phil would say. Martyn did, however, live for a few years with a woman and her kids during the time they weren’t in contact. They’d broken up before Phil had had the chance to meet her or the kids, and now Martyn was dead. 

Phil realized that Martyn would never see what Phil made of himself first-hand. There would always be a divide of some kind between the living and the dead, if Martyn was even still around at all. If anyone had unfinished business though, it was certainly Martyn.

“We’re going to find your dad and my brother,” Phil said aloud.

Dan glanced over at him.

“I’m sorry your brother didn’t make it, and that I never got to meet him,” Dan told Phil. Phil nodded. 

“Well, it sounds like your parents knew Martyn pretty well, and it’s been an honor to meet your mom, and it will be an honor to meet your dad when we find him.”

“If we find him.”

Phil looked back at Dan.

“No, when we find him.”

Phil turned to face out the passenger side window. He tilted his head up as a hawk flew over the car.

“How are we going to find him?” Dan asked some time later. They’d gone through a drive-through for lunch and now they were back on the road. Dan had a wrap in one hand and the other on the wheel.

“We can grab a map of Texas and scry again using your blood to narrow down an area, then see if we can find a smaller map of that area and scry again. That’s only going to narrow it down so much though. I doubt they put these kinds of facilities on tourist maps.”

“It’s a start.”

*-*-*-*-*

Eight hours later the sun was setting and they’d crossed the boarder into Texas. 

“We’ll get another hotel room and settle down for the night and try to get as much sleep as we can before setting off again tomorrow,” Dan planned.

Phil noticed Dan specifically said “another hotel room”, singular, implying they would be sharing a room again, this time on purpose, but he didn’t say anything. It made more sense to stay in the same room, he figured, but he still didn’t bring it up in case Dan suddenly changed his mind. Not that he cared if Dan suddenly changed his mind. It just made more sense, was all.

Dan tasked Phil with looking up nearby hotel and motels again as he drove towards the nearest city. It would still be a few hours before they reached any major city, but Dan was hoping Phil could find some sort of accommodations before then.

Phil did, in fact, manage to find a smaller city about half an hour out from their current position, and the website even had the option to book a room online.

Phil hesitated. He was planning to go along with whatever Dan chose, single room or two rooms- but now the decision was in his hands.

He glanced down at the phone. It would make more sense for them to stay in the same room he thought to himself again. And it would be cheaper. It made more sense and was cheaper. If it was a problem they could get an additional room when they got there. It was fine, everything was fine. Shaking slightly, Phil ordered them a room for the night.

“I got us a room,” Phil said, voice trembling.

“Okay, thanks.” Dan didn’t seem to notice the sheer panic in Phil’s words.

Phil let out a sigh of relief and turned to face back out the passenger window. He hoped the tension in his body and the anxiety in his mind would ease before they got there. He’d found that people didn’t understand that just because everything was “better” or a problem had been “solved” doesn’t mean the anxiety leaves right away. He’d taken to calling it “residual anxiety”. It wasn’t something he’d talked about in the years he was in therapy because it didn’t seem like a big enough deal to bring up. 

Phil glanced over at Dan.

He wondered if Dan had residual anxiety sometimes, especially considering the line of work he was in. Phil hadn’t asked about Dan’s work as a police officer. He’d thought about it, in the early days of their trip, but that was before they’d gotten to know one another more.

Phil never knew what subjects were okay and not okay to bring up to Dan. It was hard to adjust to being thrown into a confined space with someone you just met who was so very different from you and expected to be able to work together. He was glad Dan didn’t hate him, because sometimes when his mind drifted as he stared out the window or just before he fell asleep his mind would tell him that Dan did hate him. Sometimes not even Dan’s word to the contrary would convince him otherwise.

Phil didn’t know what would come after all of this. He had uprooted his entire life in a hero’s journey, a quest to find his brother’s killer, and his body. His brother wasn’t at peace, and Phil was going to do everything in his power to make sure that Martyn would be some day.

But what comes after a hero’s journey?

He thought back to one of his favorite movie series, The Lord Of The Rings. In the last film Frodo talks about how after going through so much he simply can’t return back to his life before, not with all he had seen and endured, good and bad. In the end he left his friends. Would Frodo ever be able to speak to them again?

Phil glanced over at Dan.

And what about them? Was this the kind of friendship that lasted beyond necessity and tragedy? Why did the thought of going back to a life before Dan fill him with sadness? They couldn’t be more different and yet Phil felt as if he belonged by Dan’s side, as if all the good he’d done through being a psychic and helping families and friends reunite with their loved ones on the other side was nothing compared to the good he could do working side by side with Dan… but to what end?

It was clear Dan didn’t need him. Dan was doing fine on his own. It was Phil that was the one looking for something more in life. It was Phil that felt like his life had been turned upside down and that there was no going back to a life before Martyn’s murder- not one of satisfaction at least.

But Dan’s life was thrown out of orbit as well, too, he reminded himself. How would Dan’s life change if his father was found, rescued- would he move back to West Virgina to be with his parents? Would Phil want to follow him? Would Dan want him to follow him?

Phil leaned his head against the car window, letting the steady rhythm of Dan’s driving reverberate through his skull.

“What are you thinking about?”

Phil laughed.

“Wouldn’t you like to know.”

Dan glanced over at him.

“Um, yeah, that’s why I asked.”

Phil’s chest tightened and he decided to take the plunge.

“Us,” he replied.

“What about us?” Dan asked.

“What our lives are going to look like after this. How finding your dad is going to change your life and how I’m supposed to go back to my life before when I feel like it would be so unfulfilling looking at all the things I’m accomplishing now.”

“You mean going back to being a psychic? What are you accomplishing now?”

“I’m making a meaningful difference. I’m helping you solve my brother’s murder and find your father.”

Dan paused.

“I think that your life before was meaningful too. People believed that you were helping them, and in a sense you were, whether it was real or not. But I understand what you mean.”

Dan could tell there was more to what Phil was thinking but he didn’t press him on the matter. Instead, he handed his phone to Phil and asked him to type the address of the motel into the GPS system. They should be close now, he thought. Somewhere around ten minutes or so.

Phil tugged at his sweatshirt sleeves and folded them over his hands, gathering the material in his palms. He tried his best to stop his mind from wandering to serious topics like the future and their mission and the death of his only sibling. Phil wanted a break from the stress and the worry. He reflected back to watching Buzzfeed Unsolved with Dan and how normal it had felt. Like they were friends. Like they hadn’t met under such unfortunate circumstances. 

Phil placed his head back against the window which rattled the teeth in his jaw before the GPS ordered them to turn right, announcing that they had arrived at their destination.

Another night, another motel room, and hopefully another day closer to finding the answers they so desperately seeked.

Dan pulled into a parking space right by the main entrance.

“I booked the room under your name,” Phil informed him. Dan had been so particular about being the one in charge that it was a natural instinct for Phil to do such. 

“Why?” Dan asked.

“Because you’re the one in charge, and you have a company credit card.”

Dan smiled proudly. “Alright then, let’s go.”

Phil followed Dan into the lobby, bags slung over shoulders.

“Hi I have a reservation for a room,” Dan informed the front desk worker.

She typed a few quick keystrokes on her computer keyboard.

“Name?”

“Howell.”

Another few quick keystrokes.

“Alright you’ll be in room one thirteen.” She reached under the desk and grabbed a key card for them.

“Thank you, and have a nice night,” Phil smiled at the clerk before they headed off to their room.

“Always so polite,” Dan remarked in a mocking tone of voice.

“Yeah, maybe you should try it some time,” Phil retorted.

“Nah, I’m good.”

“You’d probably get a lot farther in your detective work if you were,” Phil rolled his eyes.

“Kindness is weakness.”

“People need to know they can trust you,” Phil insisted.

Dan glanced behind him making eye contact with Phil.

“They can’t. Everyone has something to hide, and if it interferes with my work, then I’m going to find out what it is.”

Dan turned back around.

Phil frowned.

“I don’t have anything to hide,” he insisted.

“Sure you do. You just don’t know it yet.”

Phil didn’t understand what Dan meant, but he didn’t ask about it.

Soon enough they reached their room and Dan unlocked it with the keycard. Phil wasn’t so sure about sharing a room with Dan for the night again, but he knew he didn’t have any other choice. The hard Dan had come back, the one who played “bad cop” and seemed to dwell on negative emotions. Phil knew he’d only gotten a little taste of Dan’s anger, and he was scared of what actions the man might do and what words he might say in a full rage. Phil hoped he never had to find out.

Once again Dan set his stuff on the bed closest to the door and unpacked some clothes, entering the bathroom without a word.

Phil could feel the tension in the air even with Dan in the shower, so he grabbed the key card and started walking towards the door. He paused. Phil backed up a few steps and reached into the pocket of Dan’s leather jacket sprawled out on the bed. His hand touched the key ring and quietly Phil slipped it out of Dan’s pocket and headed out the door.

Phil walked down the hallway, alert, fearing somehow Dan would catch him and trap him in that room again that felt boiling hot not from the warm shower steam but from the deep-seated anger that was buried down below. It was like how life grew on volcanoes, how it could sustain such beautiful flora even when you know deep down inside it has the power to wipe it all out in an instant. So many years for life to grow and bloom, and yet it could be taken away so suddenly. Once it happens it takes a long time to rebuild. Relationships aren’t repaired that easily.

Phil pushed the motel’s main door open and stepped out into the parking lot. He had his phone in one pocket, wrapped up with earbuds, of course, and his wallet in the other. 

Phil climbed into the driver’s seat and adjusted it. He placed the keys in the ignition but didn’t turn the car on. Instead he sat, alone, in a familiar car in an unfamiliar place when not so long ago this same car had also been unfamiliar to him. 

He ran his hands down the steering wheel, wondering what Dan thought about every time they hit the open road. Phil placed his hands back up on the steering wheel and gripped it, closing his eyes.

Confusion. There was a lot of confusion. A longing for home and a time long before, memories brought back to the surface at the thought that his father might really be out there. Missing the ignorance and blissful serenity of childhood, the bittersweet knowing that you had such happy memories but would never feel that way again. There was nothing, nothing, that compared to the happiness one feels as a child, only for it to be sapped away over the years and replaced with something else, something harder, more mature. Even if they did find Dan’s father, it wouldn’t bring back or change the past. Things would always be different. You can’t get back something after having it been lost for so long and expect it to be the same as it once was.

Phil let go of the steering wheel.

Dan was angry, Dan was confused, and Dan was in pain. Dan was in pain and dealing with it the best he could, which, quite frankly, was hardly dealing with it at all. It had never occured to Phil just how on edge Dan might be- for such a large presence it felt as if one swift gust of wind would send him toppling over the edge. That’s what happens when you hold everything in. The pressure builds, until finally it erupts, and all the plants you’ve tended and nurtured in your life burn in an instant. It’s why you let steam off slowly. It’s why a few small earthquakes are better than one big one. It’s why you can’t hold your emotions in forever. Eventually they’re going to catch up to you, spill out, and you’re not going to be able to control the aftermath.

Phil pulled the keys out of the ignition and climbed out of the car.

He needed to be there for Dan. He doubted Dan would open up to him about anything, but he realized that he could easily make the situation worse, and driving off in Dan’s car who-knows-where in search of something deeper wasn’t going to help.

Phil stepped back into the motel room just as the water in the bathroom’s shower shut off.

Quietly Phil slipped Dan’s keys back into his pocket and quickly changed into his sleeping clothes.

Phil was laying in bed on his phone by the time Dan emerged from the bathroom.

“Did you leave?” Dan asked.

Phil looked up at him.

“Yeah I just went to see where the dining area was so that we wouldn’t waste time in the morning trying to find it.”

“Good thinking,” Dan nodded.

“Thanks.” Phil smiled tightly and turned his gaze back to his phone.

“Do you want to watch another Buzzfeed Unsolved?” Phil asked Dan.

“Sure.”

Phil scooted over and once more Dan climbed into his bed.

“I’m glad you like these,” Phil mentioned.

There was still tension between the two, but it was a different kind of tension. 

Gone was the anger, replaced with a hesitancy as they danced around each other, walking on egg shells, never knowing where the line was and unsure if they should cross it.

“I’m glad I like them too,” Dan replied. “Thank you for showing them to me.”

When the video was over Phil shut his phone off and Dan reached over to ruffle his hair before rolling out of Phil’s bed. Phil felt a buzzing sensation from where Dan’s hand had run through his hair, too distracting to pick up anything else from the simple affectionate gesture.

“You’re right,” Dan told him, laying face-up on his back in his own bed.

“About what?” Phil asked.

“Being a little nicer sometimes.”

Phil smiled to himself, rolled over so he was facing Dan, closed his eyes and fell asleep.

*-*-*-*-*

Phil hadn’t realized Dan had remembered to set an alarm until it slowly pulled him from whatever dream he’d been having. 

He was warm under the puffy comforter, and his pillows were oh-so-soft, and he didn’t want to get up. The sun had already risen outside and it looked like it was going to be a warm Texas day. 

“Morning.” 

Dan’s voice was husky from waking up and being dehydrated.

Phil rolled over to face Dan. Neither of them had left their beds yet.

“It’s your turn to go get breakfast,” Dan reminded him. Phil sighed. He really didn’t want to get up.

“What about a shower?” he asked.

“Maybe you should have thought of that before you did me the favor of scouting out the dining room,” Dan joked.

Phil sighed.

“I see you don’t plan on getting up any time soon. Why don’t you rest some more while I take a shower and we’ll go down together?” Phil bargained.

“I don’t need more rest,” Dan insisted.

Phil threw off his covers.

“Alright, well I’m getting in the shower, and you can do whatever you’d like while I do that.”

“You’re supposed to be getting breakfast,” Dan insisted as Phil got his clothes for the day together.

“So make me,” Phil called from the bathroom, shutting the door.

He waited for a response but didn’t receive one. Satisfied, he turned the water on in the shower and kept his hand under it, gauging the subtle changes in temperature.

While Phil was in the shower Dan got up and got dressed then headed down towards the lobby. He rifled through a stand of brochures looking for a Texas map. Luckily, it was easy enough to find maps of the entire state, as large as it was. Finding more local maps might be a challenge, but Dan hoped their good luck would continue on in the next motel.

And then what? Dan wondered to himself.

And then what? They would find his father, probably being held captive by this “MedLife” company, forced to help them… what? Find a cure for cancer? The more he went over it in his head the more ridiculous it sounded. What if… what if he was on their side now? Or what if this was just a big misunderstanding? They still had no idea how Martyn died: he could have died in a car crash for all they really knew. Dan was a beat-cop-turned-rookie-detective from goddamn Connecticut. Conspiracy theories? He was starting to feel like he was in an episode of the X-Files. 

“Sir, do you need any help?”

Startled from his thoughts, Dan looked up at the receptionist. Clearly he’s drawn attention from other patrons and staff by starting lifelessly at a brochure rack for an extended and unreasonable amount of time.

“Uh, where’s your dining hall?”

*-*-*-*-*

“What do we do when we find him?”

Phil looked up from his bagel. His hair was styled and dried, his clothes rumpled from being shoved into a duffle bag for a few days since last being washed and dried at Dan’s childhood home, and Dan could smell the hotel soap on Phil’s still-warm skin.

“Why are you asking me?” Phil asked.

“I was hoping you would have an answer.”

Phil set his bagel down on his plate, sighing. “It doesn’t work like that,” he smiled sadly, wishing beyond belief that it did, that he somehow had the answer.

“What if he works for them now? Like for real?” Dan asked.

“Don’t think like that,” Phil reminded him, echoing the same sentiment Dan had said to him before. 

“We have to think like this. We have to be prepared for whatever happens. I mean, are you even sure this is right? How do you know Martyn didn’t die in a car crash somewhere and this is all some big, sick joke?”

Phil bristled. “I don’t know if Martyn is dead in a ditch somewhere, but I can assure you this is no joke. Martyn would never do something like that. Martyn put his career and evidently his life on the line for this. Maybe he did die in a car crash. And maybe someone cut his brake lines on purpose so he would. I’m sorry that I don’t have all the answers, but I’m trying my best here, we’re trying our best here, I’m trying not to think about how out of our depth we are here, because I don’t care to start drowning.”

Phil picked his bagel up again and tore into it with his teeth angrily.

“We’re going to blood scry again so we can get on the road and heading closer towards him. Then we’re going to find another motel and we’re going to find another map and we’re going to blood scry again to narrow it down even further. Then we’re going to figure out where to go from there. We’re going to take things as they come, and we’re not going to worry about what lies ahead because we have enough going on right now already.”

Phil finished his bagel and stood up to throw his plate in the nearby garbage. He grabbed his cup of coffee off the table they had been sharing on his way out of the dining room and made his way back towards their room.

Dan followed behind shortly after, bringing the map with him.

Once again they spread it out on the motel’s desk. Dan peeled the bandaid off his finger and squeezed it over the map. The cut opened up and Dan let two drops of blood spill onto the map before pulling his hand away and putting the soiled bandaid back around his fingertip.

This time he stayed in the room and watched as Phil placed his hands over the map, shut his eyes, and concentrated. To his amazement, Dan watched his two drops of blood converge onto one another and glide slowly across the folded sheet of paper towards the desert.

“That really looks like it’s in the middle of nowhere,” he commented.

“So to the middle of nowhere it is.”

*-*-*-*-*

“I hope the middle of nowhere has a laundry service,” Phil remarked, pulling his bag over his shoulder as they exited their motel room. “I’m running out of clean clothes.”

“You can’t rewear a shirt or a pair of pants?” Dan scoffed.

“I have been. That’s not the problem.”

“Oh,” Dan remarked.

They walked in silence the rest of the way to the receptionist desk where they checked out.

In the parking lot, Phil asked “Is there anything you miss from home?” They’d been on the road for almost a week now, hardly resting.

“Not really,” Dan replied.

“I miss my baked goods,” Phil replied. “I’m going to bake so much when we get home.

Dan didn’t say anything as he climbed into the car, but a strange part of him wondered if they’d even make it back home. It’s not like he was expecting to die, but… things felt off.

Phil pulled the map out of his back pocket before buckling his seatbelt. For once he didn’t have his sweatshirt on in the car: he felt like the heat of Texas would balance out the wind constantly blowing on him with the windows open. Dan himself had ditched wearing his leather jacket everywhere a few states ago. His loose-fitting shirts ruffled in the wind as they drove.

Phil realized holding the map open might be a difficult task with the windows open, but he didn’t dare ask to shut them. No, he liked the wind on his face, especially when it was warm. Such a change from the frigid winters in New England. Sure, the summers there were warm too, but it just wasn’t the same.

Phil had circled the blood drops on the map and then used a napkin from the room’s coffee making station to wipe it off. Pulling out the map now, he took a glance at it. He estimated a two hour drive, which felt strange considering the long travel days they have been pulling. Two hours was still a lot though, especially when you live in a state as small as Connecticut. If you drive two hours you’ll end up in New York City or Boston. Or you’ll just drive into Long Island Sound.

The map did indeed flutter in the wind, but unlike Dan’s shirt it was stiff and noisy instead of soft. 

“Are we there yet?” Dan joked from the driver’s seat.

“Almost,” Phil smiled, but it was a tight smile.

Neither of them knew what to expect when they got there.

*-*-*-*-*

What they got was a dead end.

Dan pulled up the dirt driveway, if it could be called even that, slowly, before placing his beloved car in park and turning off the ignition.

The got out of the car and moved around to the hood.

A large fence stood in front of them with an equally large gate.

Dan surveyed the fence. It was heavy duty, with nasty looking barbed wire curled on top of a slope in the fence. “No Trespassing” signs hung every hundred of feet. The fence went on as far as the eye could see in either direction, which considering they were in the desert, meant miles. And yet behind the fence was… nothing.

“They can’t let the sand escape,” Phil joked, gesturing to the fence.

“What about the sand that’s already on the outside?” Dan asked, keeping his eyes fixed upon the massive fence.

“Criminals.”

The two stood in front of the fence under the desert sun staring straight ahead.

“Now what?” Dan asked.

“Why are you asking me?”

“You’re the one who is supposed to have psychic powers or something,” Dan reminded him.

Phil tossed a glance at Dan and shrugged.

He walked up to the fence and placed his hands on the rungs.

Phil closed his eyes, not expecting anything to happen. Something did happen, though. Phil could feel the vibrations of the fence, and somehow it translated in his mind an understanding of an ariel view of whatever this complex was. 

Phil let go and opened his eyes.

“What did you see?” Dan asked.

“Nothing. Just a run-down garage.”

Dan kicked the fence in frustration.

As if on cue, dust in the distance started to kick up. A beat up blue chevy that looked older than both of them approached.

The car stopped a few feet short of the fence, dust swirling around the car as the tires stopped.

A man in overalls and a farmer’s hat got out.

“Whatchya’ll doin’ here?” He asked in a thick southern accent.

Thinking quick, Phil stuck his hand through the fence to shake.

“Howdy! We were just going on a drive and we got lost! Can you point us to the nearest road?”

The man awkwardly took Phil’s hand and Phil squeezed.

Nervousness. Secretive. Facade.

Phil ended the shake with a large smile.

“Just head back East the way you came a few miles and you should be back on the road,” he guided.

Dan opened his mouth like he had more questions but Phil reached over and grabbed his hand, leading him away.

“Thank you so much, sir! Have a nice day! God Bless You!”

The man nodded, tipping his hat towards the pair with a confused look on his face and got back into his beat up blue chevy.

“How did he know which direction we came from?” Dan asked under his breath as the two stood facing the windshield of Dan’s car.

“Because they’re watching us,” Phil said, still holding up his own facade. “Let’s get back in the car, shall we?”

Upon climbing back in the car and buckling up Phil dropped his smiling act.

“This is the place,” Phil told Dan as they sped back down the so-called dirt driveway in the opposite direction.

“But I thought you said-”

“I did,” Phil interrupted. “I did say there was nothing here. But that man, he knew something. He was hiding something. He got nervous when we didn’t leave right away which is why he drove out to meet us. To see what we were doing here. He was worried that the cover had been blown, that the secret was compromised.”

“I thought this place was legit on the surface,” Dan mentioned.

“They are legit on the surface. That’s why this place- whatever it is- is underground.”

*-*-*-*-*

They rented another motel room for the night nearby. The set-up for this one was the kind that had doors leading directly to the parking lot, reminding Phil a bit of the Psycho remake. The only thing that was missing was a gloomy house overlooking the area, and, Phil hoped, a murderer.

They were in the room they were sharing, Dan sitting at the desk illuminated by a soft yellow glow from the desk’s lamp and Phil standing beside him, leaning over the desk. The room smelled faintly of cigarette smoke. It was quite unpleasant. They had the map spread out again, but it wasn’t useful in anyway. 

“Just how tight of security are we talking?” Dan asked.

“I don’t know. I’ll only be able to tell you when we’re in there.”

Dan leaned back in the desk chair.

“We need to get in there and get my dad out,” he said pointedly.

“I know,” Phil agreed, “but it’s not going to be easy. We need a plan.”

“How can we make a plan when we don’t know what we’re walking into?” Dan asked.

“I don’t know,” Phil repeated, softly clenching his fist and placing it down on the table in a non-violent act of frustration.

“We should go in at night,” Dan offered as a start to their plan. “We need a way to go over, under, around, or through that fence.”

“Over is probably the best option.” Phil glanced at Dan’s leather jacket. “We can use that to get over,” he gestured.

Dan glanced behind him at his leather jacket resting upon the chair he was sitting in. “Fine.”

“The entrance has to be that building I saw. I mean think about it: people traveling to and from an empty desert has got to seem suspicious, but if there’s an old garage they can reasonably say they work there.”

“This is insane,” Dan replied. “Like really insane. Like, not even James Bond movies feel this fake.”

Phil couldn’t help but chuckle. He leaned back so he was standing up straight and moved to sit on the edge of the nearest bed. The mattress curled around him.

“You’re right. Next, we’ll have to find out how the facility is entered and where that entrance is. I’m assuming it’s some sort of key card or hand print, a digital key, if you will.” Phil shuffled back on the bed so he could bring his legs up and cross them underneath him.

Dan looked overwhelmed.

“Forget you’re a cop right now,” Phil suggested, waving a hand in the air, “you’re just a guy who needs to break in and break out. Sure, your training as a cop will come in handy, but we can do this.”

Dan nodded, trying his best to steel his nerves.

“We can do this,” Phil repeated.

“Alright,” Dan agreed. “Let’s go now.”

“What about the rest of the plan?” Phil asked incredulously. That, and he had just finally gotten comfortable.

“Plan be damned. They never go right anyway. We’ll just fake it til we make it. Isn’t that what you were getting at anyway?”

“No!”

Dan stood up and grabbed his jacket. “Well? Let’s go!”

*-*-*-*-*

The ride over was quiet save for the sound of the tires humming along the road and the faint sound of the radio playing a song they were sure they recognized but simply couldn’t place.

Dan turned his headlights off before pulling down the dirt road. It was only by the light of the moon that Phil could see the dust swirling up outside the window.

They rumbled slowly to a stop quite a ways away from the gate.

“We walk from here.”

Phil nodded and opened the passenger side door to climb out, shutting the door as carefully and quietly as he could.

Dan locked the car manually, throwing the keys over the roof for Phil to do the same. When he was done, Phil tossed them back and Dan looked around on the ground. He picked up a nearby rock and used it to dig a bit into the dirt, placing his keys in the hole and covering them back up with the rock. 

Dan and Phil locked eyes and started walking.

After a few minutes Dan pulled off his leather jacket and swung it over his shoulder, looping a finger in the tag on the nape of the neck to carry it. To Phil he looked like some 80s James Dean character strolling without a care in the world down the street, as if he owned the place. Nary was a hint of fright or doubt on his face, not like the fright and doubt Phil felt tight in his chest.

They were going to make it.

They had to.

Because if they didn’t, this was going to be the end of the road for them. No answers for Martyn’s death.

When they reached the fence Dan handed Phil his leather jacket and started to climb. When he neared the top, he let go with one hand and held it out towards Phil. Phil placed the leather jacket back in it’s rightful hand, and Dan swung the jacket over the barbed wire. Phil started up behind him as Dan used his jacket as a shield to climb over the fence. Dan waited on the other side to hold the jacket steady for Phil before he made his way down to the bottom on the other side. His boots kicked up a cloud of dust as they landed softly.

Phil tossed down the jacket, which Dan caught and put on in one swift motion while Phil gently placed his feet back on solid ground.

They could see the garage lit up in the distance, a distance disturbingly deceptive under the pale moon light. Phil watched Dan turn his face towards the sky and scowl.

“We might need the moonlight to see ourselves later,” Phil commented quietly, knowing that any additional vision the moon gifted them was also a gift to anyone who might be hunting them, and therefore a possible hinderance as well. Oh how many things were both gifts and curses in life.

They kept on walking towards the garage fully aware that any guard worth their salt would spot them coming from a mile away.

They stopped, clouds of sand settling at their feet.

“There’s a cloud about to pass over the moon,” Phil pointed out, reaching with a finger towards the stars. “When it hits we’ll make a run for it as quick as we can.”

Dan nodded and the two of them crouched down, attempting to make themselves as small as possible without sacrificing precious time to get up and running.

Together they stared at the stars until slowly but surely the night around them started to take over and cast out the moon.

“Now,” Dan mumbled, and the two started to run.

Phil turned his head up towards the sky continuously as they ran, keeping an eye on the cloud. He cursed the dessert wind, sending the cloud gusting at what felt like such a high speed. They only had a few hundred yards left until they made it to the garage, but they were still out in the wide open save for a few scrub bushes here and there. It was one of these scrub bushes they ducked behind just as the moon finished peaking out from the other side of that cloud.

They glanced through the scrub, watching the guards. They sat for what felt like forever, simply watching and waiting. And it was a while. They couldn’t just go rushing in- though, that was exactly what they were doing. 

After what was around half an hour had passed of the both of them simply watching the guards and learning their movements and habits Dan nudged Phil with an elbow.

“See those guys over there?”

Dan pointed to a group of three men dressed in garage overalls with grease stains in their skin and clothes seated at a table with chairs, all of which had seen better days, playing a game of cards.

Phil nodded.

“Those are going to be the ones hard to get by. It’s that one over there-” Dan pointed to the one guard who was patrolling the rest of the perimeter, making rounds that sometimes took him out back of the garage- “that’s going to be the easy one to get around. And we still don’t even know where the entrance is.”

“There’s a door behind them,” Phil offered up.

“I know,” Dan said. “But we don’t know for sure what’s behind it.”

“So how do we move them and find out?” Phil asked.

“I’m still working on that,” Dan grumbled.

Phil looked back at the situation. Half an hour spent kneeling behind a bush and they hadn’t really gotten any closer. Phil’s knees were starting to hurt.

“Alright, well let’s start by eliminating ideas,” Phil suggested.

“Alright,” Dan agreed. “Well first of all, we can’t create a distraction to move them. They won’t open the door that way and we don’t want them to know we’re here. We want to get in and out as quietly as possible and that means not raising any suspicion-”

As Dan was speaking the guards sitting at the table threw their cards down. The one sat farthest from the pair swept the cards up into his hand, tapping them against the table to straighten them out. He pulled the deck’s box from his overall’s pocket and placed the cards back in the box. One of the guards opened the door and started descending down a set of stairs.

“I’d hazard a guess that leads to where we want to go,” Phil pointed out. Dan nodded.

“I’d say it’s a fifty-fifty shot, but it’s the only shot we have. It’s this or nothing at all. We’ve come too far to give up now.”

Phil nodded in agreement.

“We still need to find a way to move those guards.”

Dan sighed in frustration. “We’re going to need a distraction. I simply can’t think of anything else.”

They looked around them for something to use.

“Just like playing the playstation as a kid, eh?” Phil joked.

“I was more of an Xbox guy myself,” Dan admitted.

Phil picked up a nearby rock.

“Hope these assholes are as dumb as they are in the games,” Phil smiled nervously before hucking the rock off over Dan’s head as far as he could. It made a little cloud of dirt where it landed. Phil turned back towards the guards. They hadn’t noticed.

“Okay, new plan,” Phil suggested, “what if we go around and knock that one guy out, and the commotion will bring the other two around back, and then we knock them out?” Dan glanced Phil up and down.

“You want to take three guys at once, just us?” he scoffed.

“Technically, hopefully, it would be one and then two.”

“We’d still be outmatched.”

“Why? There would be two of us and one we take out before the other two.”

“I said outmatched, not outnumbered.”

“I’m sure you can handle it.”

Dan let out a dry laugh. “It’s not me I’m worried about.”

Phil shrugged. “Do you have a better plan?”

“No,” Dan conceited.

“Alright then,” Phil got up off his aching knees. “Let’s go.”

*-*-*-*-*

Phil hadn't ever pictured himself in a situation like this (crawling on hands and knees through the desert to break into a garage hiding a top secret medical facility, to be clear) growing up. Phil knew he was a bit of an oddball as one might say, and having psychic powers didn’t help, but still, this was a bit out in left field, even for him. Or perhaps out in left Texas desert.

They settled behind another scrub bush, this one much closer to the backside of the garage. Dan had his gun drawn, planning to start by stunning the guard with a pistol whip to the head before choking him into unconsciousness. He just had to be quick enough to make it to the garage guard before the man drew the gun Dan knew he’d be packing from wherever he was hiding it.

Bouncing on the balls of his feet, Dan watched the guard circle the corner of the garage around to the back. As soon as the guard had completely rounded the corner Dan sprung up and ran as fast as he could, gun in hand. The guard turned and reached for his gun but it was too late: Dan was upon him and Phil could hear the crack of the gun’s metal colliding with the guard’s skull. The guard stumbled back, hands to his bleeding head, and Dan wrapped his arms around the guard’s neck, gun still in hand, and squeezed.

The guard struggled with Dan on his back and Phil crawled quickly out from where he’d been hiding. The guard managed to let out a yell before Dan retightened his grip and Phil prepared for the other two guards to come running. They didn’t though.

It took several minutes for Dan to choke out the guard into unconsciousness and by the time the guard slumped at his feet Dan was out of breath and shaking from the strain of keeping up the chokehold.

“That’s one guard down, but who knows if that other guard came back,” Dan whispered under his breath, panting.

Phil balled his hand into a fist and banged on the metal siding of the garage.

“What are you doing?!” Dan exclaimed.

“The plan didn’t work, so we need a new one!” Phil whispered.

One guard each rounded the corner, and Dan and Phil sprang into action. Phil grappled with his guard, managing to wrap his arm around the man’s throat. The man was much larger than he was, however, and Phil was holding on for dear life at this point, let alone applying the proper amount of pressure it would take to knock him out. Phil closed his eyes and focused on what he was doing, breathing as calmly as he could and tightened his grip. He put all his energy into trying to knock this man unconscious. Strained, Phil held on as best as he could. Soon the guard was slumped at his feet.

Dan was trying to wrestle a gun, either his or the guard’s, from the other guard’s grip. Phil ran over and approached the guard from behind, trying his best once again to place the guard in a chokehold. He succeeded, and once again there was a guard slumped at both their feet.

“How did you do that?” Dan asked, huffing and puffing and shaking from the exertion and rush of adrenaline.

“What do you mean?” Phil asked.

“It takes minutes to choke someone out, especially a grown man like that. You had him down in a few seconds.

Phil shook his head. “I just did what you did,” he explained, confused.

Dan shook his head back at Phil. “Whatever, let’s just go.”

They headed together around the front of the garage.

“Let’s see what’s behind door number one,” Phil quoted with a smirk, and pulled open the door behind the card table.

In front of them was a staircase dimly lit with a string of lights.

“Think the facility is a bit nicer than this?” Dan asked.

“Guess we’ll see.”

Phil started down the steps with Dan in tow, closing the door behind them and cutting off most of the light that had been coming from the garage itself. Phil didn’t wait for his eyes to adjust before reaching the bottom of the steps to the next door in their path.

“Shit. It needs a card,” Phil mentioned. In all the commotion they’d forgot to even check for a key card.

“I’ll go back up,” Dan suggested, turning to head back up the steps.

“Dan?”

Dan looked over his shoulder.

“What happens if those guards wake up and we’re still down here?”

Dan paused.

“Come back up, I’m sure there’s something we can find in the garage to tie them up with.”

Phil followed Dan back up the stairs.

“You know, for a while there, I thought we were going crazy,” Phil admitted jokingly as they rounded the garage corner to the back where they’d left the bodies of the unconscious guards. Dan walked around the closest one and grabbed his hands, lifting to drag. Phil ran over and grabbed the man’s feet so they could carry him together up off the ground.

“What do you mean?” Dan asked.

They walked back around the side of the garage carrying the unconscious guard over to the card table. Together, they propped him up in the closest chair.

“I mean a secret medical facility? Under a garage? You’re right, not even the movies are this fake and cheesy. I was so afraid that when we opened that door we were just going to find a closet or something. I mean, how is any of this real? It’s like we’re in the goddamn X-files,” he exclaimed, unknowingly echoing Dan’s earlier thoughts. “No, even that’s more believable than any of this shit!”

Dan stood leaning with his hands against the back of the chair.

“Yeah, I know what you’re saying. I guess sometimes there are just secret medical facilities under garages in the desert, just like sometimes there’s people who have psychic abilities.”

Phil looked up in surprise. “So you’re admitting you believe?” 

“No, I’m just saying,” Dan said, pushing himself off the back of the chair. “C’mon, we got more dead weight to carry.”

“Yeah, well, that’s what happens when you plan a heist shittily.”

“This is a heist?” Dan asked as they walked around back again.

“I don’t know, you tell me, you’re the cop. Isn’t breaking in and stealing something a heist?”

“Well, yeah, but it’s usually not a person. I was thinking more along the lines of a rescue.” Dan leaned his shoulders back and put his hands on his hips in a Superman pose.

Phil scoffed as he bent down to pick up the next guard. “You cops, always thinking you’re such heroes.”

“What do you have against cops?” Dan asked, slightly begrudged, bending down as well.

“Not all cops are like you,” Phil pointed out.

“What do you mean, like me? You mean a good person?”

Phil bit his lip. “Yeah, I guess.”

They carried the next guard back in silence, the air between them (over the guard’s unconscious body, to be exact) was thick with tension once again.

“I’ll handle this,” Dan barked, referring to putting the last guard in the chair. “You go look for something to tie them up with.”

Phil didn’t say anything as he walked away and looked for a cord or something. He was able to find some jumper cables in one of those large toolboxes on wheels, which he brought over.

“I’m sorry, I just meant-”

“We can talk about what you meant later,” Dan quipped, grabbing the cables from Phil. “We have a job to do now. Let’s just get in and get out and get it done.”

Phil grabbed a keycard he found on the guard he’d frisked down while Dan was tying up the other two. Phil also found walkies on all three of them and took those out to the desert to smash with rocks. He also took all their guns and handed one to Dan while placing the other two in his sweatshirt pockets.

“No, take those out,” Dan gestured to where Phil had stores his guns.

“Where am I supposed to keep them?” Phil asked.

“Like this,” Dan turned around and showed Phil how he’d tucked them into the waistband of his jeans.

“That’s so uncomfortable looking,” Phil whined.

“They’re loaded guns. Either carry them safely or throw them out in the desert.”

Phil sighed and pulled the guns out of his pockets, tucking them in the waistband of his jeans like Dan had showed him.

“Good. Now let’s go.”

Together they made their way back towards the door. This time Dan went first and Phil closed the door to the garage behind them. Phil handed Dan the security key and he swiped it on the key pad. The keypad blinked green and with a mechanical whir the door clicked open.

“Down into the belly of the beast.”

[ambivartence]

Hi i really love your artstyle! Idk if you have a faq or anything but i was wondering if you have any tips for drawing faces, you're really good at recreating expressions im jealous

omg thank u 💕 honestly i still struggle w expressions which is why a lot of my drawings veer towards neutral-expression references LOL. I can try explaining my thought process when I drew Haechan a few weeks ago, and hopefully you might find something interesting from that.^^ (it's lowkey the only drawing that i have a sketch screenshot of) Also, weird advice but you should totally do those quizzes of guess X kpop member by their eyes / nose / lips (I added some links below the cut) because you'll learn a lot as u get better at them. You'll start to pay attention to what makes people distinctive even if they're not kpop idols!

Here's a preview of what's under the cut:

So, here's the reference and my final drawing of Haechan:

I usually start my sketch with basic placement of features and get the face outline similar. I always start with an oval which helps put down the initial cross lines.

Sorry, my sketch just reminds me of jaemin making that iconic "PYONG" sound effect haha. Anyways, I just want a rough idea of where things are so I can start drawing on features, but you can see that it isn't that far off.

There's also a lot of things that make people look distinctive that have nothing to do with getting placement correct. A lot of idols have distinctive moles (Haechan, Jeno, Mark, V, DK, Seungkwan, etc.). Even if they're covered by makeup, I just google the person's name + "moles" or + "no makeup" and add them on so it more looks like them :) For eyes, lips, etc... just find a quiz and you will learn more than anything I can explain AND/OR you will go insane lmfao. Some examples:

- NCT: lips (2017), eyes (2018), eyes (2021)

- BTS: lips, lips, eyes, there's literally a million more

- Seventeen: lips, eyes + nose + lips, eyes, eyes, eyes

Once I draw the features in, I use the lasso tool or liquify on Photoshop to move stuff around until it just looks more like them. (I spend the vast majority of my time doing this LOL.) If it doesn't look like them, I flip the canvas horizontally (and the reference picture) so I'll have "fresh eyes" for a bit to find mistakes and discrepancies.

Here you can see that I ended up shifting the eyes and nose, as well as correcting the jawline angle (the original sketch jawline was too steep/sharp and haechan has a pretty soft jawline bc of his baby face).

Of course my drawings aren't completely identical. Some stuff I change a little on purpose, like here I exaggerated how curved his neck and chin were, but I tried to balance all the roundness with straight lines like the one on his cheekbone and along his jawline. And there's always a good smattering of small mistakes I can learn from :) Here, I made the right ear too high up, which is such an easy thing to spot if I remember to look for it, since the ears are supposed to be level across the face. Also I lowkey just put his neck mole randomly, so it also should've been to the right of his nose-lips vertical and not directly below.

Anyways I hope that was like at least 1% helpful lol if you have questions on how to draw specific people or features or something just ask!! My struggle to try to achieve a good likeness in my drawing is always ongoing, so thank y'all for being patient as I keep learning.^^ And good luck w ur own drawings everyone! Fighting 😂

[fairykukla]

My pixies are back together again!

Absinthe is the one in my icon, and she's been in a box for months now.

Here she's wearing a too-big wig snatched from a porcelain doll, and a "Gone with the wind" gown, also stolen from a porcelain doll. It's her Halloween outfit; Scare-lett O'Hairy.

My lovely Sambuca, who had another name from an original character of mine. She decided that she is "someone different" and wanted a name like her sister. So yeah; most of the fantasy color kids are named after booze.

I'm playing around with lighting, without any actual proper lighting gear.

I love the Bobobie Pixie sculpt. I kinda want one in every color. The body isn't as possible as more recent double jointed bodies, but I love how curvy they are and I'm really into their weird alien hands.

Sambuca was Lavender, originally. She has faded to a warm grey, but I still think of her as my purple girl. She was my first non-Goodreau BJD, and maybe my first resin doll, too. (Lucy might have arrived before she did.)

My mom and I went to a little fan run anime con together, partly for the doll programming. There was a wonderful woman there who was selling off her starter dolls, and she had a green pixie, a sprite, and this purple girl. I saw my mom lose her mind over the pointy ears, and noticed that she was eyeing the green one. So I whispered I her ear, "Mommy? I think I need a purple dolly..."

Mom flipped out and said "I need a green one!"

So I sauntered over and asked the seller if she would make me a deal on both pixies. We goth them with their gorgeous, expensive wigs (which were not originally included.)

I wrote the check, mom paid me half, and we called it each other's Christmas present.

But I had to have a green girl ofy own, so I caught Absinthe on ebay when Junkyspot was dumping a bunch of colorful Bobobie dolls right at the end of the year.

Absinthe's green has stayed very vibrant and true. I've customized her with face up, body blushing, and a spectacular set of green glitter pupiless eyes.

[musclesandhammering]

Loki (2021) Positivity from an Anti

Ok so all of my mutuals know I’m extremely anti-Loki (2021), anti-sylki, and anti-sylvie. But at a certain point, even we antis get tired of all the negativity. So! Here’s some Loki series commentary in the opposite direction! This is a list of all the things about the show that I loved :)

Also adding a disclaimer that all of this is just my opinion and some of my fellow antis (or even people who liked the show) might disagree, and that’s fine! I’ve been planning this post for awhile. I always say in my other posts that I don’t entirely hate the show and I wanted to be a little more specific about what I think are its good aspects. Feel free to leave your thoughts!

• Mobius is a gem (Owen Wilson owns my whole heart) and his relationship with Loki is so so great. He’s not one-dimensional at all, he has conflicted loyalty and is morally complex, and he has the tragic backstory- which makes him a perfect choice for eventually becoming Loki’s first genuine friend.

• The casting was really really great. Lots of women and people of color. Most of the female actresses (as well as the males) are over 30, which isn’t very common and is fantastic!

• Superb acting all around. I can’t think of a single scene where the actors under or oversold it.

• Beautiful set design, incredible cgi, and gorgeous cinematography overall. It looked more like a movie than a tv show, which is really good.

• Kang being the big bad was a huge plus for me. Johnathan Majors was perfect in the role, his vibes were immaculate, and I was honestly pretty worried that the man behind the curtain would end up being another Loki variant, which imo would’ve been boring and predictable and counter-productive, so it was a big relief when that didn’t happen.

• I like that it sets up a bunch of future marvel movies, rather than being contained to its own little world. It gives it more importance and (hopefully) will encourage writers to not just toss Loki’s character aside in future projects.

• All the Loki variants were delightful. All of them except Sylvie. Kid Loki has my heart. Boastful Loki is a fashion icon. Alligator Loki is a savage. President Loki is the superior variant. Classic Loki became my fav character in less than half an episode.

• It showed some more variety in Loki’s magic. A lot of his powers we’ve seen before, but it feels like they were portrayed a bit more blatantly in the show. The energy blasts, the telekinesis, the teleportation… Outstanding.

• It also implied that Loki has the potential to be waaaay more powerful than he knows he is right now, which? Yes.

• Some of the quotes- and the themes behind them- are just profound as hell. Such as:

“I think we’re stronger than we realise.”

“It’s never too late to change.”

“You can be whoever you wanna be, even someone good.”

“We’re Lokis. We survive. It’s what we do.”

“Loki, God of Outcasts.”

“The universe wants to break free, that’s why it manifests chaos.”

• Technically Loki was Marvel’s first canon lgbt (bi) character, which is a win. His genderfluidity is also technically canon, even if it wasn’t really acknowledged on-screen.

• There were a lot of throwback references to Thor 1, Avengers, and Thor The Dark World. Which I loved.

• Sylvie’s so pretty. Her hair and makeup and costume were all perfect.

• Big fan of Loki finally getting Laevateinn.

• Sufficiently slutty imagery, courtesy of a female director (Loki in a collar, kneeling to Sif, President Loki looking down into the bunker, the hair flips)

• The music was Excellent Wonderful and Superb.

• I love that Loki being a good singer is now canon.

• I love that Asgardians having their own language is now canon (even if it’s basically just Icelandic).

• I also love that they disproved all of those “Loki was a shy nerdy wallflower pre-canon” theories in Episode 3. The drinking/eating/singing scene was fun, if a bit wacky.

• There’s a million different reasons why Loki does what he does, especially in regards to the New York attack (I’m literally writing a huge meta on them), but somehow I never considered that Loki being desperate for control was one of them. It makes a lot of sense, and I always love getting new insights into his motivations.

• I love that Loki finally outright acknowledged that he doesn’t enjoy hurting people. We Been Knew™️ but it’s still nice to hear it out loud from his own mouth.

• The TVA outfit wasn’t as hideous as some people make it out to be. It could’ve been A Look, even. You know, if he’d just accessorised a little better. And kept the jacket on. And not gotten sweaty. And not gotten dirty. And maybe had at least one other costume change… But it had potential, though!!

• Even though I despise the Obvious One, I did actually like some of the other romance crumbs they tossed us (sifki, Loki x the flight attendant).

• The whole DB Cooper thing was iconic idc idc.

• Loki’s hyper sort of overly excited puppy attitude in episode 2 was actually pretty refreshing and funny (for awhile). And now I can headcanon him as adhd, yeehaw.

• “We’re all villains here.” That quote was iconic, my favourite one in the show. And the entire theme that it summarised was really great as well. When you think about it, every single main character in this series has been the villain at one point or another. I mean, I know all marvel characters do bad things etc, but none of the Heroes are ever narratively categorised as Bad. This show did just that with all of them, though. . Loki was framed as the psychopath that attacked New York. Sylvie was framed as the murderous fugitive. The TVA/Ravonna/Mobius were framed as the murderous fascists. Kang was framed as the crazy totalitarian. It’s made clear that all the Loki variants were the villains of their stories.

However, every single main character in the series is also framed as the Hero at a certain point. Loki is framed as the main protagonist who throws a wrench in the TVA’s dastardly plans. Sylvie is framed as the persevering freedom fighter who wants to take down the fascists. The TVA/Mobius/Ravonna are framed as the ones who maintain order for the greater good. Kang is framed as the weird but ultimately benevolent wise man who’s just trying to prevent something worse from happening. The Loki variants are framed as generous allies who befriend the main character and help him on his journey.

Everyone in this equation is openly acknowledged by the narrative to be morally corrupt, but not entirely morally bankrupt. There are no Straightforward Hero Figures (like the Avengers) in this entire scenario at all, and that makes for a super interesting dynamic that marvel has never done before. So yes: “We’re all villains here.” But also: “No one bad is ever truly bad, and no one good is ever truly good.” I loved that.

• Even if it wasn’t really enough imo, I still treasure the crumbs we got of Loki being competent and capable (him putting the collar on B-15, him figuring out Sylvie’s hiding place, him teaching himself to enchant on the fly while fighting a giant cloud beast of eldritch proportions).

• I love that B-15 was the one who stepped in and saved the day in Episode 4, when we all thought it was gonna be Mobius. What a queen.

• Marvel usually has a bit of a problem with creating compelling and memorable side characters. But aside from Sylvie, I genuinely got attached to every single character in this show. Like Casey, C-20? I was seriously emotionally invested in them and they were only in like 2 episodes. Wtf.

• Introducing the TVA storyline in the Loki series specifically was a really good move. I’m not saying they executed it well, just that it had a ton of potential. A lot of people have wondered why marvel even thought to put those two (the TVA and Loki) together, when they had literally nothing to do with each other, nothing in common, and essentially no connection at all. But when you think about it, it’s a really interesting twist on both of those stories. Forcing the embodiment of destructive chaos and the pillar of rigid order to interact could make for some seriously entertaining and compelling television. And as far as meshing these two completely unrelated entities together goes, I thought they did it pretty well- at least just the bare bones of the story (loki being arrested by the TVA and being one of their most common variants).

So that’s it! If you guys (fellow antis) wanna add stuff you liked, feel free. If anyone wants to discuss (or debate) my list, feel free to do that too!

[love-takes-work]

Korean Street Food for the Universes!

In this post, I'll teach you to make an obscure food from Steven Universe! Let's go to Korea!

In this blink-and-you-miss-it screenshot, we see that Greg and Steven enjoyed some random food while walking around doing tourist things in Korea during “Steven’s Dream.” With help from others, I eventually came to the conclusion that Steven is eating hotteok (a filled fried bread) and Greg is drinking a fruit milk!

Check out the info below to see how to make your own fruit milk (though I also show commercial fruit milk, which I bought at the Asian food market to compare) and how to make your own hotteok at home!

See more SU food tutorials!

First, the banana milk.

Because of the iconic shape of the container, the beverage Greg is drinking definitely looks like a fruit milk from a popular brand, though there are also other kinds of fruit milks. Banana’s the most popular so I’m making that.

Banana Milk

This is an easy recipe. The measurements I'm giving you here will make ONE serving of banana milk, so gather as many bananas as you have people wanting to try it, and do this for each.

Ingredients:

1 ripe banana

1/2 cup milk

1/2 cup water

1 tablespoon maple syrup

1-2 drops of vanilla extract

Cut off the very ends of the banana. Cut it in half, slice the peel down the length, and hold it in your hand while slicing the half into pieces.

Put the pieces in the blender pitcher and do the other half too. This is a convenient way to prepare bananas to go in drinks without handling the banana itself or getting messy. I learned it when I worked at an ice cream shop.

After the banana is in, you add the water, the milk, the syrup, and the vanilla.

Put the lid on and mix. Use a setting that will create a milky texture; we drink this like milk, so it should be more liquid than smoothie.

When done, it's a bit frothy and smells sweet and delicious (if you like banana).

Pour it into a tall glass, add a thick straw, and enjoy!

It is much sweeter than I expected with just the syrup as sweetener. Very delicious!

But I wondered how it might compare to its commercial Korean counterpart, so I shopped for some at the Asian market. They had the brand I recognized--Binggrae--but it was a juice box package and not the weird pseudo-cone (it has a picture of that packaging on it though!) and the store only had melon milk--out of banana. I bought that AND a banana milk SODA for fun.

Verdict? The melon milk was VERY VERY SWEET, like drinking ice cream! Very good, glad it's small. The soda was a fakey banana flavoring with fizz, soda-sweet, not terrible but I wasn't a huge fan either. I liked my banana milk best.

Shall we move on to stuffed pancakes?

Hotteok

Not your traditional Western pancake!

Ingredients:

1 package active dry yeast (2-1/4 teaspoons)

1/4 cup warm water

1 teaspoon sugar

2 cups all-purpose flour

1/2 cup sweet rice flour, aka glutinous rice flour or powder

1 teaspoon salt

1 tablespoon sugar

1 tablespoon vegetable oil

About 1 and 1/4 cups milk

1/4 cup sugar

1/4 cup brown sugar

1 teaspoon cinnamon powder

9 to 10 tablespoons of any seeds and nuts

Suggestions for seeds and nuts to use could be sunflower seeds, sesame seeds, walnuts, almonds, peanuts, pumpkin seeds, pine nuts, most seeds or nuts can work if they are small or can be chopped smaller.

Directions:

First, prepare your yeast. This is standard if you're experienced with yeast dough. Warm your water to between 100° and 110° F / 37° 43° C. (Measure to be sure.) Put the 1 teaspoon of sugar in, then stir in the yeast. Wait about 10 minutes for the yeast to foam.

When it's ready, combine your dry ingredients (flour, rice powder, sugar, salt) and add the yeast mixture. 

Mix that, add your tablespoon of oil, and then heat the milk to the same temperature you used for the yeast. DON'T add it yet.

Pour about a cup of the milk in and work it in with your hands.

Add more milk in tiny splashes until it's solid but a tad sticky. You have to experiment because flour and rice powder are different depending on many factors, so you have to guess at the amount of liquid. Once it is kneaded and holding together and STICKY but still comes off your hands, it's ready. 

Put plastic on it and let it RISE in a warm place for an hour.

While you wait, you can make filling. Mix the 1/4 cup quantities of sugar together, add cinnamon, and then chop nuts if needed. Get everything combined evenly in a bowl and wait.

Sorry, but before we can cook we have one more rise! After the dough has risen, gently pat it down into a round and let it rise uncovered for another 20 minutes. It's gonna be stringy, sticky. When that's over, you're ready!

Pour a couple tablespoons cooking oil into a big skillet and turn to medium heat. Then get a place where you can press your pancakes out into discs.

Oil your hands and pull off a piece of dough in a 2-inch ball. Press the ball onto your surface and get a little well going for the filling to go in! It's a lil dough cup!

Now add filling! Put about 2 tablespoons of filling in the well. Press it down with the back of your spoon. 

Then, with your fingers, gently squeeze the rims together into a dumpling shape. The dough is pretty hardy and resistant. If it's tearing on you, you've made your disc too thin.

Now we cook! Press the blob seam-side down into the pan, on the oil. Squish it down a bit with a spatula or flat squishing implement and get started on the next one! Fun!

They cook 1 to 2 minutes before they become golden brown. You should flip them carefully when that happens and squish them even flatter. Lift them out and put them on a plate! Paper towels can soak up the extra oil.

You can make 9 or 10 filled cakes with this dough. I recommend refreshing your cooking oil halfway through. You can even choose different fillings if you want!

Prepare for eating by folding over, securing with a toothpick, and sliding into a paper cup.

If you can't eat all your hotteok at once, they do freeze well. You can pop them in a toaster oven to warm them up.

I hope you enjoyed this how-to for my inauthentic but tasty version of Korean street food! Let's look at the spread!

See more SU food tutorials!

[lilydalexf]

Old School X is a project interviewing X-Files fanfic authors who were posting fic during the original run of the show. New interviews are posted every Tuesday.

Interview with Tabula Rasa

Tabula Rasa has 8 stories at Gossamer, but there are even more X-Files fics at AO3 and her website. She writes Mulder and Scully in a very lovely way. I've recced 3 of my favorites of her fics here before: Bird in Snow, Fall: East on M St, and Skuamorph. Big thanks to Tabula Rasa for doing this interview.

Does it surprise you that people are still interested in reading your X-Files fanfics and others that were posted during the original run of the show (1993-2002)?

I'm always extremely pleasantly surprised to get kudos (or, very rarely, a comment) on my old fic, but I'm always happy to see it! I did post them all (I think) to AO3. I'm not surprised people are still reading fic, though. It's an iconic show and now with streaming, it's really easy to watch older shows and natural to want fic about them!

What do you think of when you think about your X-Files fandom experience? What did you take away from it?

XF was my first fandom, definitely my first online fandom, and so it will always have a special place in my heart. Also... I had a great time! I stumbled upon and joined the Scullyfic email list by accident, but it was the best thing I could have done. I learned a lot about how to be a writer and how to be in fandom, and those lessons are still important to me. Foundational. Also, in terms of modern fandom drama, XF was more low-key on the drama (although it didn't seem like it at the time!). But I learned something that's always served me well: find like-minded people, and hang out with them. Don't worry about the rest.

Also... you can't control the show, but you kind of can control the canon.

Because of Scully, I ended up taking a forensic anthropology class in university-- and now I have a Master's in a forensic science! Part of the Scully Effect, and proud of it!

Social media didn't really exist during the show's original run. How were you most involved with the X-Files online (atxc, message board, email mailing list, etc.)?

Definitely mostly email list! I never really got the hang of message boards. Posting fic was exhausting, and tbh I never figured out how to work Ephemeral. I checked it every day, though! I loved, after a new episode, everyone sending in their thoughts and reading everyone's experiences together. Fandom was a lot more work back then, tbh!

What did you take away from your experience with X-Files fic or with the fandom in general?

That fic can be just as good, or better, than traditionally published works. There are works of XF fic that have stuck with me for years now, far more than some books I've read. That fan writers can know the characters better than the show writers. The fandom in general was really smart, and mostly more adult than me (I joined fandom when I went away to college, so I always felt at the younger end of the scale. That was good though!).

Also, my first time reading and writing porn. Not gonna lie, I was shocked the first time I accidentally read smut. But I adjusted fast. lol

What was it that got you hooked on the X-Files as a show?

I was still a kid (now we would say preteen) when the show premiered- I think in middle school. But I was already into ghosts, aliens, monsters, solving mysteries, and I'd already imprinted on the dynamic thanks to Square One (really)! I was also just old enough to start developing celebrity crushes. Hilariously, I did not twig to the fact that I'm bisexual the entire time I was in XF fandom, despite having enormous crushes on BOTH Mulder and Scully. Ahhhh!

Also, my whole family was into the show, but I was definitely the one with the hyperfixation. I used to take notes and record the episodes as I watched. It just had the right stuff and hit at the right time. And I've always been obsessive.

What got you involved with X-Files fanfic?

As a kid I also really liked Star Trek, and someone had given my dad a book about the history of Star Trek, which I read. This included mentions of fandom and fanfic. As soon as I had a private-- and perhaps more importantly fast-- internet connection (in college), I went looking for XF fanfic, and that was that. Hooked immediately. Also I shipped them A LOT so that's what I went looking for.

What is your relationship like now to X-Files fandom?

I tend to not go back to a fandom once I have a new fandom, so I wouldn't say I'm in it. I did hang around the edges for the revival, of course, because I wanted to experience that with the same people, but since the revival was mostly not that great (with a few exceptions), I didn't get pulled back into it. But I still think of the people I knew in the fandom a lot, and always hope they're doing well.

Were you involved with any fandoms after the X-Files? If so, what was it like compared to X-Files?

I've never left fandom, and I've been in a BUNCH: Harry Potter, Doctor Who, Bandom, Supernatural, now CQL/The Untamed and other Chinese-media fandoms, with many smaller ones in between or on the side. I feel like at their core fandoms tend to be similar, although where you host the fandom makes a big difference: Livejournal, tumblr, twitter. I think that because fandoms now tend to be bigger and more diverse (which is good) there tends to be more wank (which is bad). In some of them I was close to a group of people, some of them not. Honestly the best thing is when someone you know from an old fandom is in your new fandom. It's so much fun. I have really good friends thanks to fandom, and I've had them for YEARS. Like. 15 years.

Who are some of your favorite fictional characters? Why?

I tend to focus more on ships than characters, but some of my all-time favs: Scully, Hermione, Sirius Black, Castiel, Lan Wangji, Xie Lian. That's just fandom-oriented ones, otherwise we'd be here all day. :D

Do you ever still watch The X-Files or think about Mulder and Scully?

I don't often rewatch episodes any more, although if I come across an ep on tv I might. I definitely still think about them though! For example, I'm a teacher now, and just a couple weeks ago one of my colleagues mentioned he'd heard the students saying they shipped two of their classmates, and he was like "Ship? I don't get it" and I was like "HOO BOY, do I have a story for you!" And I explained how shipping came from XF fandom, and why. That was fun. I definitely still think about Mulder and Scully too-- I mean, they're cultural touchstones, so they do come up sometimes in greater pop culture. Also, I was in Hannibal fandom for a while, and Gillian Anderson is still The Best.

Do you ever still read X-Files fic? Fic in another fandom?

I haven't read XF fic in years, even the ones I remember as being really significant/important to me. I still have my all-time favs saved on an external HD though! Fic in another fandom- every day lol.

Do you have any favorite X-Files fanfic stories or authors?

Blinded by White Light by DashaK has stuck with me. Mr. and Mrs. Smith and the Ruby-Throated Warbler by I forget I'm so sorry -- that's lasted as my ideal post-canon MSR and as an interesting and different way to tell a story.  [Lilydale note: It’s by rah.] I was always thrilled to see fic by Brandon, JET, MaybeAmanda, Syntax6... and, frankly, everyone on the Scullyfic/ Emuse list. So many talented people in that fandom!

What is your favorite of your own fics, X-Files and/or otherwise?

Things Outside, which is the only thing I've ever written based on a dream, and I'm really satisfied with it. It was hard to write but so much fun to revel in the weirdness. I always kind of wanted to write more because I know a lot more about the situation, but otoh, I like the open, ambiguous ending (usually I am very HEA).

In other fandoms, King & Country in bandom (MCR) and in Supernatural I'm very proud of Hope and Clay. I struggle to write casefics even though I love to read them, but that one really worked out.

Do you think you'll ever write another X-Files story? Or dust off and post an oldie that for whatever reason never made it online?

I don't think I'll ever write something new. There is an old fic that may be done but it was smut so I was too shy to post it at the time. In theory if I find it and it's decent, I could post it!

Do you still write fic now? Or other creative work?

I do! I write fic very slowly, but I do write still! I have a million ideas for stories, but I'm so slow at the actual writing part.

Where do you get ideas for stories?

I usually take a jumping-off point from canon, or of course, something I need to fix or expand on. Or sometimes I start telling myself a story as I fall asleep and the idea grabs me long enough I can manage to write it.

What's the story behind your pen name?

I was getting into fandom and realized people didn't use their real names. I flipped through my history book looking for inspiration, and decided tabula rasa was a great name for a writer. I tend to add an X because it's rare to get "tabularasa" as a username, and the X is indeed for X-Files (so I'm something like tabulaxrasa most places). I usually go by Tabula Rasa or Tab, though. And I still use it because 1) it IS a great name for a writer; and 2) it's not fandom-specific so I can keep it in every fandom.

I identify with it so much I have answered to this name in class (oops). I have a "Tab" t-shirt (as in the soda, but I have worn it to Comic-Con for ease of ID-- better than a nametag!). And my mom got me a necklace with a "tab" typewriter key as a charm, which I adore. Yes, I have accidental merch of myself.

Do your friends and family know about your fic and, if so, what have been their reactions?

As you can tell from the above, my family knows (my family being my parents and sister). They are supportive! I think my mom read a couple stories? But obviously she has to know the fandom to get it... I got my sister into fic, and we even wrote a couple fics together (in Gundam Wing). She's a lot more selective about fandoms, but she's joined fandoms on her own, too. She's just not in one constantly, like me. :p

I tend not to tell not-online friends unless I have felt them out and know they're super fannish, or they bring it up first.

Is there a place online (tumblr, twitter, AO3, etc.) where people can find you and/or your stories now?

Most of my old fic is now on AO3 and I hang out on twitter a lot, @tabula_x_rasa

Is there anything else you'd like to share with fans of X-Files fic?

I'm really glad people are still in this fandom! It will always be so important to me. Thank you Lilydale, for this nostalgia trip!

(Posted by Lilydale on March 30, 2021)

[saturnznct]

attack on titan!au, mark lee x reader

word count: 3.4k words

warnings: head injury, physical fighting (for training purposes), descriptions of death, mention of knives and cult

note: will be working through this series slowly! hope u all like this xx

nct dream aot au masterlist

The first time you laid eyes on Mark Lee was in that iconic dusty courtyard. Bearing in mind he was being ripped into by Commander Shadis.

‘And what about you, Lee?’

A twelve year old Mark Lee’s eyes shone with tears of fear. He was clearly somewhat sheltered from the horrors of this world; hailing from the town of Jinae, southern Wall Maria alongside fellow cadet Marco Bott. The two of them were the image of innocence, although they barely knew each other, both round-faced and freckly.

Mark had cowered beneath Shadis’ gaze, likely having never been spoken to in such a way, especially not by his loving family. You felt drawn to him. What was he doing here?

That night he barely said much, nibbling on stale bread. You could tell he did not want to eat, but food was scarce, so he kind of had to. He listened intently to the words of Eren Yaeger who spoke about his experiences with the Colossal Titan on that infamous day two years ago.

Days faded into weeks. You passed your own balance test with flying colours, as did Mark, who’s face would become screwed up whenever his feet left the ground.

While you formed a casual alliance with Sasha, promising to go easy on each other during combat training, Mark swapped anecdotes with Marco and sharpened his wooden knife with Reiner.

One day Commander Shadis had demanded you pair up with Mikasa (likely because he was sick of you and Sasha throwing fake punches) and you were so distracted by Mark that she easily flipped you over, an ‘oof’ escaping your mouth as you hit the ground. When your back makes contact with the sand, your head snaps back, hitting the ground hard.

‘Wait, I didn’t mean that,’ Mikasa mumbles, seemingly unsure as to what to do.

Everything goes pitch black for a split second. When your eyes do open, your head is spinning, black spots dotting the sky above you like stars. You hear Commander Shadis yelling for the first-aid specialist cadets.

Admittedly in that moment you had absolutely no clue who was part of that squad. At this point in your training years, you were especially focused on yourself, working on your own skills and specialities. But when Mark Lee comes barrelling across the training yard your heart nearly leaps out of your chest.

‘Are you alright?’ He asks you as soon as he kneels down beside you, ‘can you see?’

Mark sounds far more concerned and more urgent than you feel, which you find somewhat charming, but your head is still spinning.

‘Mark, remember the procedures,’ Thomas Wagner seems to be somewhat supervising him.

‘Oh, uh,’ Mark holds up three fingers and waves them around as if to confuse you a little, ‘how many fingers am I holding up?’

He’s peering over you, almost like a pet trying to get your attention. You feel your chest swell at how cute he looks.

You blink, trying to decide whether or not you should play up your injury for his attention or get up so you can continue training.

‘Three,’ you mutter, deciding that returning to combat training was worth more than gaining the sympathy of a cute boy.

Mark and Thomas exchange a look.

‘Do you think you can sit up?’ Mark asks, eyebrows furrowed together in concern.

‘I don’t know,’ you mumbled, ‘I’ll try…’

You prepare yourself to have to lift yourself off the dirty ground, but you jump about a mile in the air when he holds the back of your head in his hand, slowly supporting your head as you sat up.

‘I’m sorry, Y/N,’ Mikasa apologises quietly.

‘It’s okay,’ you croak, ‘it’s my fault.’

‘Come on Y/N, we’ll have to take you back to your dorm room to lay down,’ Thomas has a sharp tone of authority, so you don’t even try to argue.

‘Dude, she can’t even stand,’ Mark points out.

‘How about you carry her then,’ Thomas huffs, turning on his heel to deal with some other cadet’s grazed arm.

‘I-I-Is that okay?’ Mark stutters, hand still on the small of your back as he held you up.

You nod groggily, ‘it’s okay.’

And so he scoops you up in his arms, and you automatically cling onto his neck. Mark is incredibly gentle, hand under your leg splayed out as to not touch your thigh.

You’re sleepy at this point, so the walk back to your dorm house is slow.

Mark tilts you to the side to twist the doorknob, the door loudly creaking open.

‘Which bunk is yours?’

‘Right beside the window,’ you mumble, ‘bottom bunk.’

He walks you over slowly, almost as though you were a baby in his arms, before gently lowering you down into your bed.

‘Are you comfortable?’

You nod, shifting around under the duvet to try and get comfortable.

‘Good. I’ll send one of the girls in occasionally to check on you,’ he says, ‘I hope you feel better soon.’

And then he shuffles out, clicking the door shut as quietly as possible.

‘How’s your head?’

‘Huh?’

The cafeteria is relatively empty, it being late than the normal scheduled eating time. You had finished up with your cleaning duties a bit later than usual, hence why you were eating bread at nearly 10pm.

You had been interrupted by a certain Jinae resident.

‘Your head… have you been feeling better? I’ve been worried.’

‘You have?’ Your heart nearly skips a beat at the thought of him worrying about you, hoping that you’re alright, ‘I’m just fine Mark, all thanks to you.’

You don’t miss the way a pink blush creeps up his neck, and he avoids your gaze.

‘It’s what I’m trained to do,’ he brushes it off, ‘what kind of medic would I be if I couldn’t help?’

‘You’re incredibly selfless.’

‘Not really,’ Mark shrugs, ‘it’s the right thing to do.’

’Still selfless.’

He looks up at you then, trying to read your emotions.

‘I just mean that, in this world, people are selfish. People always care more about saving themselves than saving others. So you’re different, in that way.’

‘You think people care more about themselves than others?’

‘I-I saw a lot of things during the fall of Maria.. When my town was under attack, the titans had destroyed some of the houses, and there were people inside, who couldn’t get out. And they were shouting- screaming for someone to help them move the wood or the rubble but nobody listened. I told my dad to help them, obviously I couldn’t myself because I was only nine, but he didn’t. He told me that we had to leave ourselves, that we were responsible for ourselves. Now I know that those people died. They died because my father refused to help, because I was too weak. That’s most of the reason why I’m here, to help people if that were to happen again.’

‘I think your dad just cared about his family.’

‘In the refugee camps, I saw people steal food from other families, have knife fights over money and blankets. We were all in the same position, displaced and traumatised. I don’t know why people were so unwilling to help each other.’

‘Where are your family now?’ Mark asks innocently enough, but you feel your heart sink a bit.

‘My dad was sent out on the recapture mission, you know, when they tried to retake Wall Maria. He died.’

‘Oh I’m-‘ Mark looks at you with wide eyes, as if he had no idea how to react.

‘I don’t really feel any way about it,’ you admit, interrupting him, ‘he was comfortable letting those people trapped in the houses die terrified. I’m sure he had enough time to prepare himself for death before he left, and as he rode his horse out of Trost. I knew he was going to die when he said goodbye to me, and I was quite numb to it then too. My mother left me and my siblings alone in that camp and went to work in the interior to actually make money. I imagine she’s a prostitute or something. I don’t know. I don’t hear from her.’

‘Does she know you’re here?’

‘Maybe. My siblings may have told her. Anyway. Enough about me, what about you?’

‘My older brother is in the Military Police,’ Mark explains, ’the grand jewel of our family… I think my parents want me to follow in his footsteps. But I have no idea what I want to do yet.’

‘Do you think you’ll get in the top ten?’

‘Probably not. I’m not as fit or strong as Reiner, or even Annie. And I don’t have Armin’s brains or intellect. I’m kind of just in the middle.’

‘You have Eren’s will,’ you point out, ‘you care about helping people.’

‘You’re really comparing me to Eren?’ Mark chuckles.

‘I’m not saying you’re arrogant, just that you have the passion.’

‘I know. I just don’t think I have the passion for being a member of the Military Police. I don’t think they really help people as much as I want to.’

‘They’re very culty,’ you grimace, ‘so weird.’

Mark chuckles, ‘you’re not wrong. Every time I see my brother he’s walking around the interior with a huge gun, probably bullying some random kids.’

‘Do you know what regiment you want to go into?’ You ask.

‘I’m still weighing my options,’ he shrugs, ‘the Garrison always seemed like the easy route, just patrolling the streets and sitting around all day. But now they’re basically partners with the Survey Corps. If the walls get broken, they have to fight alongside each other. Either way, I’m fighting titans. It’s mainly just a decision of how often I want to.’

’Wall Rose hasn’t fallen,’ you point out, ‘it’s been nearly three years.’

‘As time goes on, it gets more likely,’ he remarks darkly, eyes fixed on the table, ‘by the sounds of it, this colossal titan seems intelligent. Who knows when it will decide to strike next. Our lecturer said that titan behaviour is incredibly unpredictable.’

‘Don’t you think we’ll be prepared enough to fight by then?’

‘It’s the Royal Government that comes up with the evacuation and fighting strategies. They care more about the preservation of the interior than those in the outer walls. They probably half-arsed the whole plan. As for our training, remember what Commander Shadis said on our first day. Most of us will just be titan feed in the end.’

‘You’re strong though, Mark,’ you state gently, as if he were sobbing and you were trying to console him.

‘You think so?’

‘I know you are. I watch you fight for future every single day.’

Mark stays silent, mulling over your words.

‘You really inspire me to try harder myself. And you’ll be an incredible soldier.’

When Mark continues to be silent, your eyes dart around the room. You catch the gaze of Sasha, who is stuffing her face with the tiny amount of leftovers.

She wiggles her eyebrows at you teasingly, before getting up and walking out of the cafeteria.

‘Nice one Y/N!’ Mark yells as you land a kick on Sasha’s shin, prompting her to fall to the floor clutching her leg.

‘Ow, Y/N!’ She shrieks, ‘I thought you said you would go easy on me!’

‘No titan will go easy on you, Braus,’ you hear Annie comment flatly.

Sasha huffs while Mark comes up behind you, gently turning you around by your elbow and giving you a high ten.

‘You’ve gotten so much better recently,’ Mark compliments, ‘I’m so proud of you!’

’Thanks Mark,’ you grin, trying to ignore the way your heart skips a beat by his words.

‘Yeah, nice going,’ Sasha grumbles, wiping down her now dusty thighs and shins, before turning on her heel and walking off to find Connie.

‘I still feel as though my fighting skills are a bit lacking to be honest,’ he confesses, rubbing the back of his neck sheepishly.

‘Really? Who have you been practicing with?’

‘…Armin.’

‘Ah.’

‘Not to say that he’s weak or anything- he’s definitely not. There’s just a certain level you can get to where you just can’t improve anymore.’

No, I know what you mean,’ you try to empathise.

‘Maybe we can practice together? I-I mean, your usual partner is kind of… limping away, and I just think that you’re really great at this kind of stuff-‘

‘Mark,’ you giggle, reaching out and touching his shoulder, ‘it’s okay. We can fight. But just know, I’ll win.’

You take a few steps back as he laughs nervously. You drop your smile for a much more intimidating glare, raising your arms up.

‘Ready, Lee?’

Mark nods, awkwardly holding his own arms up to mirror your own.

You both stare at each other for a few seconds before either one of you strikes. You lunge forwards at him, swinging your right arm around his neck, to trap him in a headlock. He splutters in your ear, flailing his own limbs around in an attempt to wriggle out of your grip, but fails to do so when you throw out your leg and clip the side of his ankle with your foot, sending both of you to the ground.

He lands first, back impacting against the ground with a thud and a grunt from Mark.

You had imagined that he would let you go as he tumbled to the ground, but he doesn’t, clinging onto your arms and bringing you down with him.

A split second later, you’re also making contact with something, but not the ground. Your abdomens clash together, causing you to make an automatic ‘oof’ sound.

It takes you a while to adjust to the situation. You’re face to face, legs tangled together. There’s orange dust in Mark’s hair, sweat glistening on his forehead, eyes squinting while trying to get used to the sun, cheeks and nose red with the heat, lips-

There’s a few moments of silence, the two of you studying each others faces.

‘Ar-are you ok?’ You stammer, and for a few seconds he does not respond, still just staring at you.

‘Oh! I’ll get off,’ you shake your head, unraveling your twisted legs and clambering off of him, much to Mark’s silent disappointment.

‘Uh, you did good!’ You murmur, ‘just, um, try not to be caught off guard, next time.’

When you turn to walk away, you don’t fail to notice the way Krista and Mina are sitting on the steps of the watchtower, whispering frantically to each other.

You don’t see Mark for a few days after that. Training becomes infinitely more rigorous, since you were split into four groups and sent to different parts of the forest for field training.

You had spent several days trekking through the rain and snow with your backpack on, and afterwards spending a few days recuperating.

Mark was in a different group than you, hence why you did not see him. It feels weird that he’s not there, like there’s a part of you missing, but overall you somewhat enjoy your few days away.

It also gives you the perfect opportunity to completely forget about your weird moment during your fight, and focus on building relationships with other cadets.

‘You don’t think Marco is cute?’ Mina exclaims with wide eyes.

‘No, I mean he’s ok-‘

‘Just okay?’ Hannah Diamant replies, absolutely stunned at your indifference.

‘She only says so because she has her eyes on Lee,’ Sasha teases, sticking her tongue out when you turn to glare at her.

‘Do not!’ You argue.

‘Do too!’ Sasha is in fits of giggles, ‘and he clearly likes you too.’

‘I doubt it,’ you mumble, suddenly feeling quite embarrassed.

’Nah, he definitely likes you,’ Mina chimes in.

Unbeknownst to you, a certain blonde had been paying a bit of extra attention to your conversation.

Hence why you were here now, violently stabbing at your dinner with a fork, glaring holes into Krista Lenz’s back while she whispered to Mark Lee.

‘I thought she was going out with that Ymir girl?’ You don’t have a clue who’s speaking to you. Your brain is swimming with anger, so fuzzy you can hardly think straight.

When Krista goes to whisper in Mark’s ear again, she places a hand on his shoulder, after which you’re plotting ways in which you could cut her fingers off.

’I wouldn’t worry,’ Sasha shrugs, ‘we know, and I mean we all know he’s in love with you.’

‘Even if you’re right, which you are not, I’m not her.’

‘Don’t be so worried you idiot,’ Mina half snaps half chuckles, ‘you’re gorgeous. And a total catch, obviously. Mark Lee would be dumb to not want you.’

Tap tap tap. Tap tap tap. Tap tap tap tap tap tap tap.

‘What the actual fuck,’ you mutter, sitting straight up in your bottom bunk bed, coming centimetres from smacking your head.

You whip your head in the direction of the source of the noise.

And there he stands, Mark Lee, in the purple night at your window.

‘What the hell?’ You mouth.

He beckons, asking you to come outside.

You give him an incredulous look, trying to be as quiet as physically possible while getting out of bed and putting on your jacket and boots.

‘What sort of time do you call this?’ You exclaim, exasperated.

‘The best time to go to the lake.’

You can’t help but notice the smirk on his face as he turns on his heel, walking down the gravel path.

You quickly look around for possible bystanders, before following him.

His lantern lights the way as you walk down the hill in a comfortable silence, arms swinging at every bump and skip in your step.

The lake is glittering at this time of night, especially because of how high and bright the moon is in the sky.

‘I like to sit and have picnics in the moon rather than the sun. The food doesn’t melt and I don’t get sunburned.’

‘We’re having a picnic?’ You practically squeak, eyes widening to basically the same size as the moon above.

‘Well, uh, no, we are in a food shortage,’ Mark stammers, ‘but I did swipe some bread from Armin. Well I mean, he gave it to me, said he would take one for the team or whatever…’

’Thank you Mark,’ you interrupt him, grinning uncontrollably, ‘this is really sweet.’

‘But if it’s any constellation, I would’ve loved to have made you a picnic. When they take back the wall I promise I’ll make up a nice spread of food.’

‘Where’s all this come from, Mark?’ You wonder aloud.

‘I’ve just had a realisation recently,’ he admits, gulping.

‘What is it?’

‘I really like you, Y/N,’ he confesses, taking both of your hands in his and rubbing them with his thumbs, ‘and I know that you probably don’t feel the same, and that we definitely have much bigger things to focus on, but-‘

You cut him off by practically launching yourself at him, kissing him.

For a moment he is stiff as a board underneath you with his surprise, before relaxing and reciprocating your kiss.

For a while you sit there, under the watchful eye of the moon, eventually peeling away from each other when you become breathless.

‘I like you too, Mark. Being with you takes me away from this horrible reality. And I don’t know what the future will be like, but I know that I want you in it.’

‘I feel exactly the same way,’ he whispers, still holding your hands.

‘We have to pick our regiments really soon. I think that I might join the survey corps,’ you say, staring out into the lake.

‘I’ll go wherever you go,’ Mark murmurs, rubbing your cheek with his hand, which you lean into.

You sit in comfortable silence for a few minutes, your head resting on his shoulder, Mark occasionally turning his head to kiss your hair.

‘What made you decide to tell me this now?’ You ask.

‘Well, let’s just say I got some encouragement from Krista and Sasha.’

’I should’ve known,’ you chuckle, ‘I’ll get them back later.’

Mark laughs, perking up slightly as though he had remembered something.

‘Ready to crack open the bread, baby?’

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