#somebody clap for my brain for kinda working tonight

[glindaupland]

just gave yoon youngseok my art crying 😭

[tb5-heavenward]

talented amateurs (continued)

on we go.

continuing from here.

this one features a twist, but don’t worry, you’ll see it coming.

3 - moonlight and krav maga

She’s aware of the presence in her room well before he’s aware that she’s awake. The rhythm of her breathing doesn’t change, and she remains perfectly, convincingly still, waiting to see what will happen.

When a hand fumbles over her shoulder towards her face, even in spite of her razor sharp awareness, hardwired instinct kicks in, and Kayo seizes the wrist of the intruder, and performs some complicated feat of martial arts: weight versus leverage versus six years of krav maga—versus Gordon.

And she’s got Gordon pinned to the mattress with her knees bruising his biceps and her hand at her throat, before her brain catches up to her body and she recognizes the big brown eyes goggling up at her and realizes that he probably wasn’t looking for her.

Possibly she and Virgil shouldn’t have switched rooms, but the moonlight through the window of hers was going to keep her awake, she just knew it, and Virgil’s always so accommodating.

Possibly the first thing she says should be “Oops, sorry”, but it’s very late, and even if she’s wide awake, she’s still annoyed to have been woken up, as she peevishly informs her stunned and startled victim, “I’m pretty sure I’ve taught how to block that.”

“Not while I’m still half-drunk and looking for Virgil, you haven’t!”

Possibly that’s fair.

Kayo glances at the clock by her bedside and notes the time. “It’s quarter to three,” she scolds, and is aware that she’s still probably taking entirely the wrong tone for the situation. “What do you want with Virgil? Is something wrong?”

Gordon twists futilely against the expertly applied leverage of Kayo’s hundred and forty pounds of weight. “Yeah, you’re breaking my arms is what’s wrong!”

Kayo eases off and bounces a little as she sits back down on the opposite side of the bed, cross-legged in her proper set of cozy flannel pajamas, a wise choice in the drafty old manor. As an afterthought, she turns on the light. There are two doors into this particular guest room, one that leads out into the hallway, and the other adjoining another bedroom via a common bathroom. Gordon’s come through the bathroom door and left this open behind him, though he’s got to be chilly in a tank top and a pair of cropped yoga pants. With the light on, she notices that his hair is damp, freshly showered, its ends whorled into assorted curls and cowlicks, untamed by the usual palmful of hair gel. A little too late, she offers an apology, “Sorry. Get a bit twitchy sleeping in unfamiliar beds.”

“No kidding.” Gordon sits up and melodramatically massages his throat, glaring at her. “You are a maniac.”

“I’m head of security.”

“It’s Penelope’s house!”

Kayo shrugs. “And somebody snuck into my room and attempted to grab me. It’s a good thing I was prepared to deal with that.”

“It’s Virgil’s room!”

He’s got her there. She shrugs again, spreads her hands helplessly. “Well, I said I was sorry. What do you want with Virgil at a quarter to three in the morning?”

“None of your business,” Gordon mutters grumpily.

Possibly not, but he’s gone and got her curious now, and so she prods him in the ribs. “Head of security,” she reminds him. “Secrets are my business.”

Gordon glowers at her. “Not this secret.”

This is going to be entirely too easy. “Oh, so you do have a secret?”

There’s a moment of silence, to allow for the realization and he glares at her, as though it’s taken thumb screws and torture to get this out of him. He huffs indignantly. “So what if I do?”

“You’re terrible at keeping secrets.”

This is true, and Kayo can tell that Gordon knows it by the way his cheeks flush slightly, even as he protests, “I am not!”

Kayo’s nails aren’t manicured, but they’re neatly trimmed and filed and she makes a pointed show of examining them. “Well, presumably you were coming in here to tell it directly to Virgil, whatever it is.”

Gordon blinks at her. “…yeah, to Virgil. Everybody tells Virgil everything!”

Kayo shakes her head and offers some unsolicited advice, “I don’t tell Virgil anything, because everything I don’t hear from the rest of you, I hear secondhand from Virgil, because he’s a gossipy bastard.”

Gordon, by his own admission and by the eye Kayo had kept on the boys and the way they’d been drinking, is still fairly drunk. Kayo, being head of security and not particularly partial to alcohol anyway, is completely sober, hours away from the glass of champagne she’d had to toast Grandma Tracy’s birthday. As such, she can practically see the gears turning in Gordon’s head as he furrows his brow and narrows his eyes at her. “I don’t believe you,” he declares, eventually, either out of stubbornness or loyalty.

“Is there anyone else who would’ve been able to tell me that you were the one who left a bacon double cheeseburger to rot in the back of Scott’s car the summer before he left for college?”

There’s a scandalized gasp. “That was John!”

Kayo scoffs. “As though any bacon double cheeseburger in existence could possibly survive more than half a minute in John’s presence.”

This is relatively rudimentary detective work, and yet coming up on a decade since the offending incident occurred, apparently no one else had ever made that connection, John included. All the years he’s taken the blame for the incident are down to a remarkable degree of absentminded spaciness whenever he’s actually on Earth. Still, beyond that, there’s the fact that Gordon had told Virgil, and Virgil had told Kayo, and there’s no other way she could possibly know.

Defeated, Gordon scowls. “…that asshole.”

“Yeah, he can eat just about anything, it’s very unfair.”

“I meant Virgil.” He pauses. “John too, though, honestly. I hope he gets fat when he’s old. I’ll laugh.”

“Neither of them left a cheeseburger to rot for an entire semester in the back of Scott’s car.”

“Accidentally.”

Kayo waves a hand dismissively, because this is beside the point. “What I’m trying to say, though, is that you shouldn’t have told Virgil, because Virgil told me. If you had told me, I wouldn’t have told Virgil.”

Gordon cocks his head and squints at her. “Well, I didn’t know you, then.”

“Hypothetically, though. I’m just saying, Virgil’s not the place to go with secrets. That’d be me. Head of Security. I’m good with secrets. Kept my uncle a secret for nearly five whole years, didn’t I?”

“I guess.”

This is maybe not the best example to lead with, in terms of her trustworthiness, but Kayo presses doggedly on. It’s become a point of principle, now, that Gordon’s got a secret and she wants to know what it is. “So what happened?”

“I don’t wanna tell you.”

“What if I can guess?”

“You’re not gonna guess.”

“Bet I can.”

“Bet not.”

“If I can’t, how about I tell you a secret?”

Gordon scoffs. “What do I care about your dumb secrets?”

Kayo smiles, secure in the knowledge that she’s not going to be revealing anything of consequence to Gordon tonight. “Well, my last secret was that I’m a blood relative to a supervillain. And this one? You wouldn’t believe me even if I did tell you.”

Gordon shifts on the bed beside her, kicking the bedclothes down and burrowing beneath the blankets with a shiver. “How about if you can’t guess, then I get your bed? I’m freezing.”

“Virgil’s bed,” Kayo corrects primly. “…But okay. Yeah, sure. But if my nice warm bed is at stake, then you have to give me ten yes or no answers to ten relevant questions.”

“Three.”

“Five.”

“Sold.”

Kayo claps her hands together, brusque and businesslike. “Don’t get comfy,” she warns, and then starts in on her inquiry. “Is this a good secret?”

“Hell yeah.”

A very good secret. That’s a start.

“Is it something that happened recently?”

His enormous grin is a better and more immediate answer than his eventual, “Yup.”

Well, that one was a bit of a gimme, but Kayo’s feeling rather charitable. She narrows her eyes at Gordon, maintains the pretense of suspicion as she asks, “Is it a secret Virgil would’ve been surprised to hear?”

That one trips him up a bit and he seems to need to think about it for a minute. Even when he does start to answer, he still seems a little bit uncertain. “Y…hm. No, maybe n—hm. Well, but yea—hmm. Umm. Hm. Yes? Yes. Qualified yes.”

Kayo folds her arms. “You can’t have a qualified yes, unless you’re going to qualify it for me.”

Gordon, despite her warning not to do so, reclines against the heap of pillows mounded up against the headboard and rubs at his nose, as he clarifies, “He’d have been surprised about the how it happened, maybe, not so much that it did happen. I kinda. Uh. Kinda I told him it was gonna happen? Maybe. Sort of. Definitely he had a heads up. Tonight was gonna be, like, the night.”

“The night?” Kayo repeats, probing, and hoping he doesn’t notice that this is technically a question, and technically not of the yes or no variety.

Gordon gives her a pointed look to let her know she’s not getting away with it—but then answers anyway. “Yeah, like you know. The night. Yes or no. Do or die. I’m gonna be twenty-five in February, you know. Valentine’s day. That’s a whole quarter of a century. That’s a whole lotta Valentine’s Days.”

Kayo shrugs. Her twenty-fifth birthday is only two weeks after Gordon’s, and she hasn’t imbued it with nearly the same level of significance. Age is just a number. “So?”

“So, maybe I wanna spend the next quarter not being quite such a goddamn sucker, is what. Maybe I figured it’s time I grow the hell up, a bit, right?”

She shrugs again. “Sure, right.”

“Right.” Gordon pauses and squints at her, suddenly suspicious and admitting that he hasn’t really been keeping count, as he asks, “Is that five questions?”

Probably not technically. Kayo’s pretty sure she only needs one more, anyway. Really, everything else was just confirming an initial suspicion, based on the very particular way the bedside light hits Gordon’s jawline. “I think I have one more.”

“So hit me, Kay.”

“This big, quarter-century secret have anything in particular to do with the lipstick on your face?”

The smack is audible as Gordon’s hand flies to the side of his face, covering the mark of a shimmery pink lip print on his skin, glinting just-so in the light, bright and unsubtle and oh-so-obviously Penelope’s colour, when one knows what one’s looking at. Kayo doesn’t wear a lot of makeup, but she knows what she’s looking at. Slightly more telling is the way Gordon’s suddenly blushing, his brown eyes wide and still a little bright from the alcohol still in his system. “Is that still there?” he asks, a sort of vaguely startled whisper. He pulls his hand away from his face to check his palm, though he hasn’t even smeared the silvery little mark. “I did take a shower,” he tells her, almost apologetic.

“Yeah, well, you missed a spot.” But Kayo grins at him, reaches out to give his blanketed knees a shove. “But wait, though. So you kissed her?”

Gordon’s not usually shy about much, but there’s definitely something bashful about his smile, as he rubs at his jaw, glances at the palm of his hand again. “Yeah. Little bit. She started it, though.”

Kayo feels her grin widen slightly, in spite of herself, feels the ache of it in her cheeks. “Dude, nice.” She’s not entirely sure what Virgil would do in this situation, but for lack of anything better, she holds her hand up for a high five.

For the barest moment, Gordon seems taken aback—but he brightens immediately and sits up to return the gesture, a solid, exuberant smack of his palm against hers, and now he’s just absolutely beaming about it. “Yeah,” he says again, and Kayo can’t actually recall if she’s ever seen him quite this pleased. “Little bit.”

And she’s just as happy for him, too, and she pulls her knees up to her chest, wraps her arms around them. This is turning into a proper sleepover, though really she ought to be getting back to sleep, and so should Gordon. Still, she can’t quite help asking, “How was it?”

Gordon just drops himself back onto the pillows with a dreamy sigh. “Oh, man.”

Kayo permits herself a giggle, at that. “That good, huh?”

“Better.” He hums softly to himself, a tuneless little sound of absolute contentment, as his eyes fix on the coffered ceiling overhead. “I almost kinda don’t wanna go to sleep,” he says, though she can hear the yawn that wants to creep into his voice as he says it, “because what if I forget? What if I forget about how goddamn good it was—and it was goddamn perfect—or…or what if I forget about how it happened at all? Except it definitely happened, though. It’s just how I never would’ve figured that she’d kiss me. But she did! She totally did; she did that, that was her. Penny. Penelope.”

That must be the part that Virgil would’ve been surprised by, because even just by the way he says her name, it’s always been an open secret that Gordon might want to kiss Lady Penelope. That the reverse might be true—a tiny, wary little part of Kayo is made just slightly suspicious by the notion, something about it trips some hardwired “Head of Security” pathway, makes her worry about the thought of him being taken advantage of—but of course she’s not about to say anything. Not now, at least. “Well, if you want some more tangible proof, I’m pretty sure there’s a little bit of a lovebite on your collarbone, too.”

This is apparently not something Gordon had realized, though his fingertips go exactly and immediately to the slightly more permanent mark Penelope’s left on his skin, so apparently his prospective doubts about his memory are unfounded. If he was blushing before he’s absolutely crimson now. “Okay! Wow! Okay! Okay, so—so! That’s a thing. Guess that happened too! Oh man, I am never gonna get to sleep now. I’m just gonna lie awake all night.”

“Probably,” Kayo agrees solemnly, and then kicks Gordon’s knee gently from atop the blankets. “But as much as I’d like to braid hair and paint nails and talk about kissing, you should probably go lie awake all night in your own bed, Gordon.”

There’s a slightly embarrassed pause. “I think I accidentally locked myself out of my room when I had my shower.”

“Well, that certainly sounds like you.” Kayo kicks him again. “Good thing your room has two doors.” She points at the one that leads to the hallway. “Look, so does mine!”

Gordon whimpers melodramatically. “But it’s gonna be cold.”

Kayo smirks at him and gives him another solid kick. “Suck it up, loverboy.”

The blond groans in the way that other people groan, when he makes jokes, but he pushes back the blankets and heaves himself upright with a sigh. “I see what you did there.”

“Mmhm. Get out of my bed, or I’ll get you out myself, and if it comes to that, then the hickey will be the least of your bruises.”

“It’s not your bed, it’s Virgil’s bed,” Gordon grumbles, but he goes, though he rubs his hands up and down his arms as he does so, and lingers by the door out into the hallway. Kayo’s still sitting cross-legged on her bed, watching him, and she makes a little shooing motion as he hesitates. “Yeah, I’m going, I’m going…but…Kayo?”

“What, Gordon?”

“Thanks. For letting me tell somebody.” He flashes her another quick smile across the room, as his hand finds the door handle and he pushes it open a crack. “Don’t tell anybody else though, okay? I, um, I dunno how Penny would feel about that.”

Kayo smiles back and nods, mimics the action of locking her lips and throwing away the key. “I won’t repeat anything you’ve said,” she promises solemnly. “Head of security, remember. Very good at secrets. Cross my heart. Try and get some sleep. Long flight home after breakfast tomorrow.”

Gordon nods and mocks a little salute in response. “Thanks, Kay. G'night.”

“Good night, Gordon.”

The door—one of three, actually, in Virgil’s bedroom—closes softly behind him. Kayo remains sitting on her bed, cross-legged and listening intently, as his footsteps recede down the corridor. She strains her hearing against the sound of the wind outside and the creaks and moans of an old English house, but she doesn’t hear the sound of his door opening, further down the hallway.

The third door in her bedroom belongs to the closet, and there’s a soft knock from within. A moment later, Virgil pushes it open and steps out. Kayo tosses him the t-shirt he’d lost between the bed and the nightstand, before they’d been so rudely interrupted.

“Well!” he comments, tossing it over his shoulder as he makes his way back to bed. “That’s a development, hey?”

[captainexplody]

Alcohol

The party is in full swing, perhaps a little bit too far past full swing. The hands on the clock whir around seemingly quicker than usual, flying from twelve o’clock to two o’clock in the morning disastrously quickly, although alcohol will do that to the brain. It makes time seem to pass much quicker than usual. Time flies by when you are having fun, and the adults at this party are enjoying themselves immensely as the wine and liquor flows much more freely than any of them are used to, what with them being respectable adults and all. The days of them all going out and getting trashed are long behind them now, that was the kind of thing they got up to when they were all youngsters. Now they are all older and (supposedly) wiser, the only time they get to feel young and rebellious again is at occasional house parties like this.

The time is ticking onwards, all the people at the party are getting older, but they are enjoying themselves. Worries go out of the window. Harry and George are pretending to spar with each other, while their wives Sandra and Kimmy sit on a couch together, their bags at their feet, opposing Sam and Chloe who are sitting on wooden chairs pulled from the kitchen. Everybody is having a rollocking good time as the alcohol flows from bottle to cup to mouth to stomach.

Harry: I am the best at fighting, ha ha!

Harry takes another mock swing at George, who is easily able to avoid such an attack.

George: You are the worst. I’m the best fighter here because I’m the strongest.

Harry: How are you the strongest? I’m clearly the strongest person here!

The girls on the couch turn to each other and roll their eyes.

Sandra: Whenever Harry hits the alcohol he can become a bit of a braggart.

Kimmy: Oh I know, my George is the same. So sure of himself. You lift a couple of weights sometimes and suddenly you think you’re the king of the heap. 

The two men keep joshing around playfully, until Harry looks as if he has just had a fantastic idea.

Harry: Look, I know. I know how we can sort out which one of us is toughest.

George: I’m not wrestling you right now.

Harry: No no no. We can do push ups! Let’s see which one of us can do the most push ups!

The others in the room all roll their eyes at such a bullshit and unnecessary display of masculinity, but George seems to be entertaining the idea.

Kimmy: Oh don’t be ridiculous guys. C’mon, let’s just finish our drinks over here, we can put some music on if that’ll calm you two down.

Sam: Oh yeah, I’ve got some classic stuff I want y’all to hear. You guys have a cord I can use to hook my phone up to your speakers...?

Sam stands up and pulls his smart phone out, trying to figure out how to attach it to the stereo. George and Harry remain where they are, as George waggles a drunken finger at Harry.

George: Hey I bet I can do more pushups than you!

Harry: Alright so it’s on! Let’s do this...

The two men start to shove some of the furniture around so that they have a clear space to lie down and test their arms. Their wives both look uncomfortable about this stupid display.

Sandra: C’mon guys, stop being silly. Come sit over here with us, we’re having fun over here. 

Sam is still fiddling with the stereo.

Sam: Does it have wi fi? How new is this stereo..?

The two men get down onto the floor, hands pressed against the wooden boards. They both look at each other.

Harry: You ready?

George: Ok, go!

Both men start to do drunken push ups, a little wobbly but still relatively stable. They do one push up, then another, then another. By number four both men are starting to look a lot more wobbly, but that doesn’t stop them showboating. 

Harry: Ha, this is nothing. I’ve got way more in me.

George: Oh yeah? Watch this!

George does that push up where he claps his hands after pushing himself up, quickly putting his hands back onto the floor.

Harry: Oh I can so do that.

Harry now attempts to do a few push ups with the claps in between. Both men now look very wobbly and sweaty, just after a relatively small number of push ups.

George: Oh man, this was not a good idea.

Harry: Nope. Oh dear. I’m getting real tired.

George: Me too man, me too. I mean I’ll be honest with you I’ve only got a few left after this.

Harry: Oh jeez, abort. Abort this plan. This was a terrible idea.

Both men struggle through a few more push ups, and Harry looks up wearily towards his wife.

Harry: I’m dying here guy, seriously this is the worst pain ever. Oh man just shoot me in the head or something.

Sandra looks down at her husband, struggling to lift himself up with his little noodle arms, too drunk to listen to reason. She stares at him with a steely gaze and reaches into her bag.

Sandra: That can be arranged.

Sandra speaks these words very cooly, before pulling a gun out of her bag and points it point blank at her husbands head. He looks shocked, as one would if their significant other just pulled a gun on them. Everyone in the room realises that Sandra is pointing a gun at her husband, and it feels as if everybody sobers up at once. And then, as the two look deep into each others eyes, into their souls, Sandra pulls the trigger. Bam. Unflinching. Straight through Harry’s head. His body crumples to the ground and blood spills all over the wooden floorboards. George pulls himself up to a seated position, covered in blood and skull and other icky internal stuff. Everybody is shocked, staring at the dead body in stunned silence. They all turn to look at Sandra, who cooly puts the gun back in her bag and relaxes back on the couch.

Sandra: Anyway so like I was saying, I don’t even like pineapple...

Everyone in the room is staring at Sandra, mouths agape. She looks each one of them in the eye coldly, before she jumps to her feet with a big grin on her face.

Sandra: Ahahahaha! Oh we TOTALLY got you guys! We got you good! Oh man! Oh if only we were taping this so I could show you all your reactions, hilarious!

The other members of the group glance at each other nervously, save for George who cannot take his eyes off of the dead body of his friend, lying inches away from him.

Kimmy: Sandy...?

Chloe: What’s going on? What.. what just happened?

Sandra beams with pride at the group, her strange and sudden optimism in the face of having just shot her husband in the head is alarming.

Sandra: It was all a plan! A ruse! We came up with this little scheme a few days ago, where Harry would start acting like a dick and I’d pretend to shoot him in the head! Hahaha! Isn’t that a great prank?

Sam: Well honestly it’s really weird. I mean why would you ever think pretending to shoot somebody in the head is a funny thing?

Sandra: Because it’s so outrageous! You’d never see it coming! Ha!

Sandra continues to beam with pride, giggling to herself over the classic prank her husband and she had contrived. Everyone else looks really worried.

Kimmy: No Sandra, this is real. I mean there’s blood everywhere. My God, you’ve killed him...

Sandra: Nope! It was all a huge elaborate prank! Me and Harry spent ages putting it together, figuring it out, getting all the bits right. My gun had blanks in it, see! And we had it all gimmicked out and ready to go, we even gave it a test run earlier and it worked perfectly! That’s why we invited you guys over to our house for this party, to get you all in this exact spot and situation so we could spring our hilarious trap!

Sandra cannot contain her excitement, as the others all continue to look shocked.

Chloe: But Sandy, we’re all at my house tonight.

Sandra: Huh?

Sandra looks around the little living room, and notices that something is different about her living room. Soon it dawns on her that it isn’t her living room at all.

Sandra: Oh yeah. Right. We were going to have a party at our house NEXT week, weren’t we..? Oh whoops. I guess I had a bit too much to drink, kinda forgot where I was there...

Sandra looks around the room, at the horrified looks on her friends faces. She looks down at the bloody mess that used to be her husband. She looks at the chair next to him, and recalls how they had placed some fake blood packs behind a chair in her own house to make the prank seem effective. Instead, it turns out there’s nothing behind this chair here, besides a corpse with half a head and a lot of blood on the floor. She grabs her bag and ruffles around inside it, looking for the gun she just used, the one that is supposed to have blanks in it. She pulls out the gun and sets it on the table, and then sheepishly pulls out another, very similar looking gun and places that on the table too.

Sandra: .... Oh. Oh dear. I guess I put the gun with blanks in it in my bag, but I forgot about my other gun I have for protection. Y’know, just in case.

Sandra sits down quietly, trying not to look anybody in the eye.

Chloe: My floor is ruined...! Also I just witnessed a particularly brutal murder.

Kimmy: Why do you have two guns anyway?

Sandra shrugs nonchalantly.

Sandra: Hey I’m an American, if anything two guns isn’t enough.

After a second or two of mentally debating this, everybody in the room nods and murmurs in approval. Two guns just isn’t enough guns. And so, the whole gang continues to drink and enjoy their night, except for George, who is still frozen to the spot, glaring at the dead body lying on the floor in front of him, who died a needless death. If only they had more guns.