#superstitions don’t actually do anything. and yet!!!

[kitnita]

i am going to have So Much fun watching the rockies game i am physically at. however i am going to have so much fun while also having the stars game pulled up on my phone the whole time because i cannot chill.

[heliads]

soulmate! kaz brekker x reader please! names on the wrist (kaz r not kaz b). reader is a childhood friend and is a grisha under contract of servitude (tailor). they meet secretly and one night kaz says he is going on a mission to fjerda and when he returns he will buy his contract. at the end of CK he actually does this and takes her to the slat and they have a hand holding/light kiss on the forehead moment where they finally say they accept each other as soulmateI love your work, darling! ♡

ty! and excellent request, man does soulmates!kaz always hit a little different

masterlist

Soulmates were not meant for a place like this. Honestly, sometimes it seems more like some sort of cosmic accident, that of all the places to experience a meant to be, a soul universally joined to you and you alone, Ketterdam should not be it. Fjerda, now, that makes sense for soulmates. They already cling to enough traditions that magical superstition just makes sense. Even Ravka, Ravka the war-torn legend, that works. 

But your home? Yours is a city of broken boys and lonely girls, blood running in the streets and skin worn too thin from all the times people pretended it was too thick. Kerch is not a country that prides itself on anything but profit. The Barrel, then– scum of the earth, forgotten by the Saints, blind to anything but greed– this is not a place that love lasts. Yet everyone here has a soulmate, the same as everyone else on every corner of the world. Make that make sense to anyone with a working brain.

Sometimes you almost think that the soulmates trend should have skipped over your city. Maybe that would be some sort of divine penance for all the wrongdoing your fellow citizens commit with glee. It would take a sign that big to convince anyone to lay down their guns and knives and try to even think about peace.

It doesn’t come, though, that divine intervention. Instead, you all have soulmates, and you all wager their lives like another round at Makker’s Wheel. You will go through your life trying to find the one person who makes you whole, and regardless of whether you find them or not, it will never be enough. The Barrel always wants more, and if it’s your city, then you do, too.

You don’t have far to look, though. Truth be told, you already found your soulmate quite a long time ago. That’s what you think, at least. In reality, your sainted aspirations are just that– dreams, hopes, an estimation that you made when you were young and have never dared to actually challenge or prove correct.

In your defense, it is almost impossible for you to tell for certain. Soulmates are identified one way and one way only:  a name written across your wrist in the print of your soulmate. You’ve stared at your own wrist enough to commit the inked black to memory:  Kaz Rietveld, scrawled in hurried print that still took the time to be solid and secure. There is no room for additional flourishes nor swooping script, just the name and nothing else.

That’s just like Kaz, too. Ruthless, determined Kaz. He runs through this life just like his name wraps around your veins. He’ll do what he pleases and take what he wants. If what he wants is for you to live the rest of your life in mystery, then, well, that’s just fine by him.

Maybe Kaz doesn’t know at all. The problem with the Kaz on your wrist versus the Kaz you know in real life is the issue of his last name. Kaz Brekker is the boy who runs the Barrel. Kaz Rietveld is the one who is damned to you forever. There is no guarantee that they are the same, but oh, how you wish they were.

You’ve known Kaz for half as long as you’ve known yourself. You met Kaz about a year or so after the flareup of the Queen’s Lady Plague. By then, he’d already started the process of breaking down his fragile pieces and rebuilding them back up to become Dirtyhands, the killer of this city.

You were newly arrived in Ketterdam, having the misfortune to walk into one of the gilded traps of the many pleasure houses of the West Stave. You weren’t indentured for your body, thank Ghezen, only for your hands. You’re a Tailor, one of the rare Grisha with a knack for changing the appearances of others rather than conjuring up swarms of fire or water. 

You have a room in the House of the Blue Iris, and customers are sent up to you on the regular. They want darker hair, then lighter; bigger eyes, then smaller; shrinking skeletons and blooming skin. All this you can do with some effort, but it’s gotten easier over the years, your gift. It had to improve, of course. If it didn’t, your employers would start wanting you for other purposes, and that you would avoid more than anything.

As if you have a choice, though, when it really comes down to it. Your contract of servitude seems to stretch on until forever, and increases by the day. The Blue Iris uses every single excuse to lengthen your contract that they can. No matter how much money you earn, how many clients walk away happy, you’ll never be done. Not really.

Kaz met you when you were first roped into the Iris. He was scrounging around for someone to con, and first tried his tricks on you. It didn’t work, but instead of getting violent, he was just curious. Nobody saw through him like that, he said. That means he should try harder, you claimed.

It was as good as an insult to any self-respecting thief in the Barrel, which was why the two of you became immediate allies. Even after Kaz grew into Dirtyhands, broken-crowned king incarnate of this godless city and you stayed just you, still in that room in the Iris, he never let you go. Not really.

Some part of you wonders if it’s because he knew all along. See, you can never confirm whether or not he’s your soulmate because Kaz will never let anyone know at all. His gloves cover his wrists with a good few inches of black leather to spare, so there’s no chance of catching a glimpse of your name written there on his skin. He’s certainly never told you that you would ever be his soulmate.

Then again, it would be just like Kaz to keep it from you. He doesn’t like weaknesses, the Brekker boy, even when everyone claims to the stars and back that soulmates only help you find fulfillment in your life, not drag you away from it. Kaz likes being alone. His friends are exceptions, not proof, that he would ever conform to such a traitorous belief that he would need people in his life.

Likewise, he’ll never know for certain that you’re his soulmate unless you gave up the charade and asked him outright. Anyone with a decent bottle of concealer and smudgeproof black pen can pretend to be someone’s soulmate, and workers of the West Stave’s pleasure houses are often unfairly targeted in the hopes of gaining some free sessions. You’ve been tailoring your soulmate’s name off of your wrist for years now, longer than you’ve ever known Kaz.

Thus, the two of you are at an impossible stalemate. Neither of you will risk asking, because the cost of being wrong is far too high. Kaz would never surrender his guard long enough to include a soulmate in his life as more than a friend. You certainly have no space in your contract to include someone made for you. Neither of you can see the name of the other’s soulmate, so you’ll go on dancing around the issue for the rest of your lives.

It bothers you sometimes to think that Kaz would rather die than tell you. If he was your soulmate, then he’d have your full name there, first and last correct. Maybe the rumors are true and he never takes off his gloves even to speak, maybe his arms are so burned that the skin has melted away and he never saw the name in his life. Regardless of his innocence, true or not, he keeps his silence. You respect him enough to do the same.

Yet when Kaz shows up at your room in the middle of the night, you can’t shake the feeling that he knows something. He’s certainly nervous enough to indicate such a truth; he shifts from leg to leg, constantly moving as if he’s ready to run at any moment. Your clients are done for the present moment, and you were in the middle of trying to regain at least some energy for the next one. You love being a Grisha and using your gifts, but Saints, if it doesn’t kill you to be so drained day in and day out. Everyone wants more than you have, but if you let them down, the consequences are unthinkable.

Kaz knocks on your window; you know it’s him before you turn. Kaz has a way of making himself known, from anything to the distinctive sound of his cane accompanying his footsteps to the very pattern of his breathing from across the room. You’d know him anywhere, in death, in life, in hapless, never-ending purgatory.

You rise to unlock your window, but he lingers there still on the other side of the sash. Cocking one brow, you ask him why he hasn’t yet come in. “Last time I checked, you’ve never had a problem with invading my personal space. What’s changed?”

Kaz exhales sharply, but stays there on the fire escape, as if scared to give himself too much room. “I’m leaving. Tomorrow, early. No one can know.”

You frown. “Then why are you telling me? Anyone could be listening.”

Kaz seems to have reached that same conclusion several times before, but he stays regardless. “It’s a job. A good one. Thirty million kruge.”

You blow out a low breath. “Ghezen’s hand, that’s a lot of money. Still doesn’t explain why you’re breaking your typical pre-job oath of secrecy and telling me, though.”

Kaz makes an irritated sound in the back of his throat. “You’re infuriating.”

“Of course I am,” you smile, “that’s why you spend time with me, isn’t it?”

There’s a pause, and then Kaz continues. “I’ll buy your contract when we’re done.”

This you weren’t expecting. “What?” You gasp, almost thinking that you heard him wrong.

Kaz isn’t one to joke around on serious matters, though, and he repeats himself again. “I’ll buy your contract from the Blue Iris. Once we finish the job and we get our money. You can be one of my Dregs.” His expression softens, eyes growing wide with the slightest tint of disbelief. “That is, if you’d want to.”

You laugh quietly. “Kaz, it would be an honor to join your gang.”

Something almost like a smile touches his lips. “There’s no honor among thieves, Y/N.”

“With you, there would be,” you answer.

Kaz shakes his head. “I’m certainly not honorable. I would have thought all this time would have taught you that.”

You ponder that for a moment. “If you’re not honorable, why would you go to the trouble of buying me out?”

Kaz looks away, and has to all but drag his eyes back to you again. Even still, it seems to take everything in him to hold your gaze. “I am selfish, actually. Very. I’m doing this because– because–” 

His voice breaks off, and it takes at least a minute for him to recover. When he speaks at last, the syllables are choked out with great force. “Is it true? The name on your wrist, is it mine?”

Your eyes widen. “Yes,” you say at last, although you hadn’t been expecting this. Part of you thought the two of you would avoid the soulmates topic forever. Maybe it would be better that way.

Kaz’s brow furrows. “Are you sure? The last name, it says Brekker?”

It’s a trick. You’d know it even if it weren’t for the fact that Brekker isn’t the name on your wrist, that Kaz has always needed to protect himself first and trust anyone second. His brow furrows the way it does when he tries to pull a con over someone. You’ve been with him long enough to learn his ticks, and you know them now by heart.

So, you shake your head and lay your heart bare. “No,” you whisper, “it says Kaz Rietveld.”

Hearing that name seems to shake Kaz to the core. “How did you know it was me?”

You chuckle. “There are only so many boys named Kaz in this city. I mean, there are thousands of Jacks and Toms and Asbjørns, but I’ve only met one Kaz. You.”

Kaz nods slowly, accepting this. “I’ve never told anyone Rietveld was my last name,” he murmurs, half to himself, “not even you.”

His eyes seem to fix on your wrist, so you will the Tailoring away, revealing his name inked on your wrist in his same spider-block font. Kaz nods once, accepting this, then pulls off one glove on his hand. He holds it close to his chest for a moment, daring himself to do this, then gives in and shows it to you. There, written so perfectly below his hand that you almost believe you had written it yourself that very moment:  Y/N L/N.

Kaz nods mechanically. “We can’t tell anyone, of course. My enemies would go mad if they knew. Still, maybe after this–”

His voice trails off, but you know what he meant. “Maybe we can explore what that means for us,” you reply softly.

Kaz’s head jerks up and down once in a marionette’s version of a nod. “We’ll see.”

A sound in the hall outside makes him startle, and he’s tugging the glove back on in a second. “Wait for me,” he says, then disappears down the fire escape again.

Your wrist is tailored over in a second, but that doesn’t stop your head from churning, your heart from pounding. After all this time, it’s true. Kaz is your soulmate, and you are his. What a world.

After that, waiting feels like agony. You hear about the disaster with the Ferolind in Ketterdam’s docks, but from the scant news you can pick up, Kaz and his crew managed to make it to the water without getting caught by rivals. All you can do is hope that they’ll manage to complete whatever impossible task waits for them during this job. Thirty million kruge is no small fee, to be sure. If it was so serious that Kaz would come to you first, even risk telling you about the job to know if you were his soulmate, the odds of dying must be high.

You know that rebellions to shake the world rarely come about quickly, but Saints, if you didn’t wish Fate would hurry itself up. You want to see Kaz again, you want to be sure that you weren’t imagining all of that moonlit conversation.

And, in time, he comes back. It takes longer than you expected. There was a terrible period of a week or two in which you knew he was back in town but he still wasn’t at your door. There were rumors that he had to take down a certain Jan van Eck as well as Pekka Rollins. Still, you refuse to give up hope, and your aspirations are rewarded.

Your employer knocks on your door, an angry sound. When you open the door, they hold up a contract, newly signed over to one Kaz Brekker. You’re told to gather your things in a far shorter period of time than anyone could ever manage, but you do so with great joy. For once, you’re living on your own terms, and it is fantastic.

Kaz is waiting for you in the streets outside. He seems changed somehow; a little older, a little more tired. Along with the stories of what he did to take down van Eck, you also heard that he lost a few friends along the way. You offer him a quiet smile, and he does his best to return it. Maybe in time, it will come easier. You can always hope. There is no cost to that.

Kaz saved a room in the Slat, the closest to his office other than his own. You place your bags in the corner and stand there, breathing in the smoky air. The Slat is creaking, half doused in rebel blood, utterly shameless and impractical. You love it to death already.

Kaz closes the door, then slowly walks over to you. An oil lamp burns overhead, giving his dark hair the appearance of a gentle golden halo. That might be the best joke you’ve seen yet. Kaz is no angel, to be sure, nothing near a Saint, but you think you quite like that about him.

He leans over slowly, carefully, and places a kiss on your forehead. It is so light you hardly feel it, but it seems to move both of you like a raging storm.

“Welcome home,” he says at last. For once, Dirtyhands is speaking the truth, and a kind truth at that. You think it might suit him.

grishaverse tag list: @rogueanschel, @deadreaderssociety, @cameronsails, @mxltifxnd0m, @story-scribbler, @retvenkos, @thatfangirl42, @amortensie, @gods-fools-heroes, @bl606dy, @auggie2000

[yenqa]

the line in between

synopsis — in which it’s new year’s eve, 1999. and jay finds you on his doorstep right before midnight.

warnings — lots of mentions of dying (no one actually is but they think they’re going to + no violence), i think that’s it lmk

pairing — jay x gn!reader (i think)

wordcount — 1053

a/n — this is kind of like apple cider au + that one scene of 25/21 combined but also ignore how this is lowkey my fic “smart” in a different font erm

“What are you doing here?”

“Can I come in?”

You let out a nervous smile trying to convince him to let you in. Though he has no idea what you’re doing at his house on New Year's and minutes to midnight, he lets you in. Deciding to push aside the question looking at your anxious expression.

He moves aside, inviting you in. You thank him, hastily taking your shoes off and taking off your jacket. Jay notice’s the matching sweaters you’re wearing, both navy blue though yours looks much more warm than his.

You sit down on the couch, tapping on the cushion next for him to sit down. He takes the seat happily, you sit in silence, both awkwardly watching the new year’s show playing on the tv.

He decides that he’s prolonged the question enough, asking again with a slightly quieter voice, “What are you doing here?”

Chuckling, you answer. “My parents aren’t back from their vacation yet, their plane got delayed. And I got kinda scared for the new year.”

“Scared? You’ve been through it hundreds of times.”

You nod, the situation almost feels too vulnerable. As if you moved a single inch the room would crumble in pieces.

“I heard someone say the world was going to end or go into chaos, I didn’t want to be alone if it was.”

He laughs. And you crack a smile hearing yourself.

You’re not usually one to believe superstitions or conspiracy theories. But so many were freaking out for the end of the century and you can’t say you weren’t either. The silly theories had gone to your head this time, leading you to where you were five minutes earlier, knocking on Jay’s door.

“You believe that?”

Shrugging, you say, “Anything could happen.”

Jay isn’t the kind to believe in that stuff, he finds it interesting but never enough to be scared of anything. Though he finds your gullibleness funny, he finds it cute how you balance eachother out, You’re usually energetic, and he’s always calm and laid back. You like romance books, he likes thriller and horror books. Even though you’re much better at not being nervous when reading those kinds of things—except for situations like now.

To put it simply, you perfectly balance eachother out, like yin and yang. You’re the perfect pair. The perfect pair of friends.

Though you wouldn’t say you’re friends. If anything your relationship is closer to a couple than anything. He’s never mentioned it, and you were still wondering about it yourself.

Is the line between friends and lovers supposed to be harsh? Should it be clear as day in the end or should it sneak up to you before you even know it? The line seems to blur every time your hands linger near each other, or the stares from afar seem to be too frequent to be an accident.

You find it stupid how a stupid line can define your relationship. But it really does. The blurred line makes it impossible for you two to be anything. On top of the line is fear. You don’t want to lose him because you were being too quick to do anything. You don’t want to lose him because he might not be the same way if anything did happen. You just didn’t want to lose the bond you had.

He snaps you out of your thoughts, asking, “Do you want something to drink, apple? I think we have apple cider, your favorite.”

His nickname for you had been there for years. Since he first saw you chug down a cup of apple cider on the New year’s you met, when you were both ten. You’re still surprised when he pulls that nickname out for you, sometimes it’s every day, sometimes you don’t hear it for weeks.

“No it’s okay, I’m too tired to have any.”

He raises an eyebrow, “It could wake you up?”

You stop to think about it for a few seconds, I mean nothing bad could happen while he’s away right? “Fine, but only if you have some. Be quick though! I don’t want to be alone when midnight strikes.”

He salutes, rushing to his kitchen. You sit in silence, zoning out you stare at the plant right next to his tv. Snapping out of it when fans start cheering on the tv. you’re quick to look around when the thirty second timer starts ticking down.

“Jay, hurry up! You’re going to miss it and die alone!” You call, he rushed back, stomping on the floor loudly to get back to the living room.

Just in time he hands you your drink, sitting down just where he was earlier. Taking a few sips and turning to him, you smile, “You made it.”

He grins, “Of course I did.”

You turn away, watching as the timer ticks down somehow so slowly but too fast for you. Your heart starts racing and you’re not sure whether it’s for the new year or the eyes next to you staring at you with a soft smile.

The timer gets to ten and your heart starts beating out of your chest, trying to calm down you turn to Jay, asking , “Can I hold onto your arm? I’m nervous.”

Jay laughs quietly, gently pushing your head on his shoulder so you can comfortably wrap your arm around his, squeezing it gently. You watch as the numbers sum down to 5, quietly counting down the numbers just so the other can hear.

You look back up with him, letting out a breathy laugh, “Happy New Year, Jay”

“Happy New Year, Y/n.”

You try to stay awake with all your might, hoping that if the night ends now you’ll at least have some last words, but your drowsiness takes over, and you’re asleep before you know it.

Jay looks down at your calm state, the squeeze you once had on his arm had been completely abandoned, leaving his arm cold and lonely. He watches as your chest rises and falls with every breath, he lets out a lovesick smile. One he would never let anyone see.

Though tonight everyone he knows and loves—including himself, might die or go into chaos just as you said. He decides he wouldn’t mind this being his last view before it all ends.

taglist : @jwnghyuns @ja4hyvn @trsrina @redm4ri @badmuni @yeokii @enhastolemyheart @softpia @s00buwu @ox1-lovesick @boyfhee

yenqa © please do not copy, steal or translate.

[utilitycaster]

RE: Ruidusborn superstition - It's weird because Matt has had several opportunities to make it about persecution and hasn't. Laura could've made it a stronger point in her backstory with Gelvaan and didn't. This rounding up Ruidusborn and throwing them in jail is a theoretical crime that a bad guy in a cult told them might happen. 

Dealing with the unfair persecution of non Vanguard Ruidusborn in the fallout of this could be interesting to explore, but a) it hasn’t happened yet and b) still entirely the fault of the Vanguard for, ya know, all the crime. I just don’t get why some folks aren’t exploring the actual interesting conflict in front of them (i.e. being tied to something inherently destructive, your parent using you as a justification for her crimes, etc.) and instead make it about some secret twist coming that will totally make Liliana and the Vanguard “correct” actually in order to (I assume?) justify Imogen’s brief consideration of them and dunk on Orym for having the audacity to not be objective about the organization that killed his family.

Hey anon,

This is a very good point re: the actual conflicts present. I know I've been guilty of going hard on Liliana and the thing is I do find her a profoundly compelling and sympathetic villain. I think she was placed in an impossible position by Predathos imbuing her with troubling and at times painful powers; that despite having good intentions with regards to the nature of Ruidus (there is a lot of value in both studying it and in concealing its nature, depending on your perspective) people other than Ludinus were unable to give her answers and so she was easy prey for his cult; and she has since been driven by these motivations so far down the road of the Ruby Vanguard that even when the daughter she has believed herself for so long to be protecting tries to give her an out and asks her why she's doing this, she can't answer but is terrified of leaving. She is very sympathetic. She is very much a villain. And yes, I'll cover Orym in a second.

The following is, by necessity due to the nature of what I want to discuss, going to touch on some real-world politics though mostly in the sense of abstract strategy with very few specific actual positions. I want to note that we are talking about a fictional work here, and while I do have some presumptions regarding the people advocating for the Vanguard, they are just that - presumptions. I will only say that if this is how the people advocating for the Vanguard engage with people in real-world activism (if they partake in that in the first place), this may be a revealing insight into why they are perhaps less than successful.

Every argument in favor of killing the gods ultimately presupposes killing the gods is correct. They are all, ultimately, either tautological (we should kill the gods because they are deserving of death) and assume that the only objective conclusion is "we should kill the gods", therefore anything other than "we should kill the gods" cannot be objective.

I may be repeating myself since I've said this a lot since the last episode but: there as a truly bone-chilling lack of empathy in thestatement that Orym needs to stop bringing up his dead family and get over it and be objective (read: agree with the premise that the gods should be killed). Actually, if you are a person capable of perceiving others as people, you will likely realize that it is cruel and absurd to expect someone to say "this group murdered my family, but because they did so with the correct motivations, I shall stop mentioning it." As you indicated, it's bizarre that Orym is expected to set the wholesale murder - deliberately set up with no hope of resurrection, just to twist the knife - aside, but Imogen is never expected to set aside the (let's face it, extremely tenuous, given that Liliana's been absent for over a quarter-century) feelings about her mother, a person who recruits child soldiers, turned Vax into an orb, and is a general in the death cult that murdered Orym's husband and father. Like, in a real-world scenario, someone in Orym's position very well might have just left over this. Your friends keep failing to consider your trauma? Perhaps it's time to, painful as it may be, find friends who will be sensitive. [I don't want to focus on the shipping or character dynamic aspects with that particularly argument against Orym, but this is a fictional work and I do think another running theme in all sorts of discourse is that you do not need to justify your ships as logical, and when you do, you really do sound like "why doesn't Ross, the largest friend, simply eat all the other friends." There are logical reasons why Orym might not want to talk with, for example, Fearne or Ashton; but also the heart wants what it wants, and again, if you aren't truly ignorant about the way human psychology works you have to acknowledge that.]

Before I move on to other items I want to note I've as of late seen attempts not just to discredit Orym but to pathologize his behavior as self-harming or moral OCD or a failure to get fully over grief (again, an expectation that is not just devoid of empathy but also sets the standard of 'get over grief' as "agrees with me") and not just "hey, this group killed my husband and father in front of me and I understandably will not budge on this particular front. So there's also a growing ableist push, here, because someone doesn't agree with you and will not agree with you and also might want to kiss someone different than whom you want them to kiss.

As of late, the banner of those wronged by the gods has shifted from any of Bells Hells to those of Aeor, and that is a bad sign in a D&D campaign. If you need to set aside the PCs in order to rely on NPCs who have not shown up in the current narrative? You are clinging to a melting iceberg, my man. (More so after invoking FCG as one of the victims of Aeor's demise, rather than someone created to be used for malicious purposes by Aeor; and even more so after they destroyed themself specifically in heroic sacrifice to save the rest of the party from a Vanguard general.). But more seriously, the focus on Aeor feels reminiscent of advocacy for the unborn; or, to take a page from my own personal experiences and move this back into a fandom realm, the way people will frequently more loudly decry antisemitism for depictions of goblins than for, say, the fact that I don't know of an American synagogue that hasn't experienced a bomb threat in the past 10 years. It's very easy to advocate for corpses or fetuses over the living, or for fictional characters over real people who might be less than perfect. Much easier to ensure they never do such inconvenient things as disagree with you or have their own suggestions or be complicated. It hearkens back to some of the conversations I and others had earlier this campaign about a denial of agency because by making characters victims "stripped of choice," (always that phrasing) suddenly they can't do wrong. They make for a shit story, but at least you can feel morally pure about your flavorless cardboard that ultimately means nothing in-world or out. (And if they don't have agency, that means your morality pet can't run away. Or blow themselves up in a stunning rejection of your argument.)

Returning to the Vanguard: an ongoing discussion in activist spaces (and internet ones as well) is that there's a weird ignorance of optics as an important factor in activism. I know it seems frustrating - why can't people just see that this cause is just - but optics have always been a crucial part of any successful movement. I mean, even if you do believe that we need to do more to combat climate change - and I do - my, and most people's response to the environmental activists who keep throwing soup or paint on artwork is "ugh, this again?" I mean, functionally, while the cause is far more just, it's not terribly distinct from the weird-ass He Gets Us ad campaign; most people are going to say "and you're doing this instead of anything helpful...why?" The Vanguard's optics SUCK. Sure, they've fomented some unrest, but it is an unfortunate truth that the vast majority of people will prefer the inherent violence of a stable system that they are used to over violent unrest. For a successful coup or radical change, either you need to strike at the seat of power extremely quickly or you need to show that you are the more, for lack of a better term, civilized option, and the Vanguard has failed utterly in both these. You're going to get a few places like Hearthdell (though, really, how long will that last given that they got rid of the temple without a scrap of help from Ludinus) but you're going to get a lot of places where city dwellers say "ugh, these stupid crystals are so fucking loud, could this motherfucker shut up" and you're also going to get no shortage of places that say "my family member was taken in by this cult" or "these guys murdered my professor". The rightness or wrongness of the Vanguard's politics aside, a lot of people in-world are likely to side with Orym - these people are murderers who disturb the peace and we should stop them. The cause is lost. Is it, in some absolute sense, fair that people will judge you more for how you convey a message than what the message is? No, although if you convey it in rivers of blood, then, perhaps, yes. But it is, fair or not, often true.

Which brings me back to Orym. I think the reason people are stooping so low specifically to malign and discredit Orym is because he brings all of the above uncomfortably to light. He's aligned with Keyleth, who quite frankly until pretty recently was, within the fandom, partly as (understandable) backlash to the hate she received, and partly because she was, if nothing else, always portrayed as someone deeply attuned to the human costs, treated as a morally infallible authority; and she is no friend to the gods yet still believes their demise is far too great a risk to take. Again, thinking of yourself as Exandria's equivalent of the man on the street (Imahara Joe the Plumber?), are you going to listen to "those people killed my husband and father to prove a hypothesis so that they could tether the moon?" or "my mom, who left me when I was two years old and never came back or sent a letter, is one of those people?" And that's assuming Imogen's even going to make that argument, which, as her actions indicate, she's probably not going to. But most of all I think they really don't like that Orym isn't backing down from "That is the blade that killed my father and husband. She is not right." He's kept to this story the entire time, while the positions of others have evolved. And he's telling the truth. Every time he says this, I think anyone who isn't actually a complete black hole of empathy must confront how much of their humanity they are supressing just to make a poorly-argued point about a D&D show and I'd imagine that can't make one feel very good.

I think people are terrified of Orym's conviction, because he has shown, time and time again, that he is not going to be swayed. I don't think, in fact, that he's going to be swayed by seeing Aeor, should that happen, since Aeor was destroyed a thousand years before he, Will, or Derrig were born, and their murders failed to undo that harm in any way. A really good way to turn people away from your cause, even if it's a good one, is killing those they love. And again, it's fine if you see that position as unfair, or ignorant, or even amoral. It's also extremely true. And I think people realize it's true, given that the only defenses I've seen for Liliana have been "well, but she's Imogen's mother" and "well, it's shockingly easy for people to fall into a cult, because this has happened to my family members." Clearly, we agree that people will place personal connections and the pain of those close to them over ideology. Orym's is just really inconvenient for some people, and so he must be discredited.

In the end: the people in the story who at every turn choose manipulation, indoctrination, violence, subjugation, and conquest are saying "This is the way; you just have to trust me." Is it any surprise most people watching the show are saying "No, I don't think I will"?

[niqhtlord01]

Humans are weird: Ghosts

( Don’t forget to come see my on my new patreon and support me for early access to stories and personal story requests :D https://www.patreon.com/NiqhtLord )    

Human: *Walks into room* I think we need to move. Alien: We just moved in, why do we need to move? Human: I am 95% sure this place is haunted. Alien: What does that mean? Human: It means there’s something else in this home alongside us. Alien: Now I’m pissed. Human: Because we’re being haunted? Alien: No. Alien: Because they’re not helping with the mortgage. --------------

*Lights flicker on and off randomly* Human: This is getting scary. Alien: Really? Alien: Poor electrical wiring is scary? Alien: *Flips off lights and lights candles* Alien: Use these instead. Human: *Reaches out for lit candle when light is suddenly blown out* Alien: Okay, now I’m getting upset. -----------

Human: *Steps out of shower and wipes mist off mirror* *Horrible reflection looks back at him* Human: Hey sweetie get in here! Alien: *Walks in and sees horrible reflection* Human: What do you say about that?!?! Alien: *Causally leaves room and returns with hammer* *Smashes mirror into tiny pieces* Alien: You need more conditioner. ---------------

Human: *Walks into dining* *Sees furniture stacked in a pyramid formation* Human: *Looks up to see Alien partner sitting on top of it all sipping morning tea and reading paper* Human: How are you so okay with all of this? Alien: You know I don’t believe in your wild superstitions. *Suddenly chair floats above alien and slams against the back of their head, shattering into a million pieces and sending the alien tumbling to the floor* Human: How about now? Alien: I am *coughs up blood* starting to have my suspicions. --------------

*Doors open and exorcist walks in* Exorcist: You were wise to call me; I can sense the evil of this house already. Alien: Bit early to judge. Exorcist: My church has taught me well of such sensations. Alien: I bet it did. Exorcist: Pardon me? Alien: Does “Ratlines” mean anything to you? Exorcist: *Coughs into hand* Human: *Turns to Alien* I’ve seen you struggle to open a car door and yet somehow you are well versed in world war two histories. --------------------

Exorcist: *Walks around house* Exorcist: Where is the evil centered? Human: Basement. Exorcist: Then let’s go down there. Alien: We don’t go into the basement. Exorcist: Why? Human: They don’t like it when we go down there. Exorcist: *Holds up symbol of faith* have faith my child, for our lord shall protect us. Alien: I don’t have a lord so I doubt they’ll protect me. Human: Yeah, and I’m an atheist so- Exorcist: Wait, you’re an atheist? Human: Yeah, why? Exorcist: *Packs up things and leave* Good luck with your ghosts you heathen fuckers. *As they’re walking away another floating chair comes up behind them and smashes it against their head, sending them to the grassy lawn* Human: I’m not even mad at that one. -----------------------

*Several humans walk in* Lead human: We’re the ghost hunters and we’re here to help. Alien: Question. Lead Human: Shoot. Alien: How many ghosts have you actually slain? Lead Human: We don’t actually kill ghosts. Alien: Then why are you hunters? -----------------------

*After several cameras installed and night falls* Lead Human: If there is a spirit amongst us, we wish to speak with you. *House groans* Lead Human: Give us a sign if you are here. *Vase goes flying off the wall and hits them in the head* Alien: *Watching from van outside* Should have been more specific. --------------------------

Lead human: Why didn’t you tell me it threw things? Alien: We have been telling you this entire time. Lead Human: You said it only used chairs. Human: Chairs are just vases for humans. Alien: That’s a debate for another time.

[imagineitdearies]

~ A Flawed Eternity ~

(AKA drabbles set in the Perfect Slaughter universe. 🩵 Special thanks to @themoonatmingitaw for the ko-fi request! 🩵)

In which Astarion and Tyrus use the hot springs.

~

“I don’t trust the druid,” Astarion declared two weeks after the alliance had been struck.

They were attempting to rest again following one of Tyrus’s tranced memories-turned-panics. He frowned down at Astarion now, hand pausing in the midst of playing with those silvery curls. “What’s happened?”

“Oh nothing—yet. But all his blathering on about that forest spirit child, waylaying our mission with superstition . . . more distressing, I couldn’t see past his gigantic hairy arse during that surprise attack,” Astarion grumbled.

Tyrus relaxed a bit. “You don’t like him,” he translated.

“I like his dedication to your sister—those arms are nice to look at on occasion—but outside that?” Astarion huffed. “His prying ‘helpfulness’ certainly wears on the nerves.”

Tyrus sat up a bit, nodding at the nearby spring. “Would a soak help calm them?”

Astarion narrowed his eyes up at him. “Have you tranced a full four hours yet?”

“. . . maybe this could help me trance easier, too,” Tyrus shrugged in lieu of an answer.

“Give you a handful more memories to choose from, at least,” Astarion sighed.

They both still struggled to rest, Tyrus especially. It felt worse falling into a terrible memory these days—like his freedom was being stolen over and over again.

Quiet moments like these felt much more restful.

Later, while leaning back against Tyrus’s chest in the bubbling little pool, Astarion murmured, “Halsin gave me a pat on the back, after we flank-killed the last cultist. And, well, you know—of course I reacted a bit,” he said with an annoyed sniff. “But he couldn’t just leave it alone after. Had to apologize over and over; even approached me today and offered himself if I needed a ‘neutral outsider to talk to about anything.’”

Tyrus contemplated this for a moment. “Might that not be . . . potentially beneficial?”

Astarion sat up from his recline to turn and face him. “What I need is to be strong right now, love,” he said, reaching to cup Tyrus’s cheek with his brows pulled low over his eyes. “I need to keep you safe. I need to stay on high alert, not wallow in pains best left forgotten.”

Can they be forgotten? Tyrus almost asked.

Pain and fear seemed like the only things his mind cared to hold onto, whether vivid or deeply rooted in his subconscious.

But an hour later, after they’d dried off and redressed, the soak seemed to have done its work—Astarion’s irritation melting away into something a bit more vulnerable.

“I . . . well, I told him I’d think about it, actually,” he spoke in a very small, hesitant voice after he’d pulled Tyrus in.

Tyrus offered a small smile up at Astarion and then tucked his head into his partner’s chest.

“I hope you do,” he whispered back.

[see-arcane]

Blood of My Blood: The Law's Delay

Shout out to @ibrithir-was-here for putting up with my never-ending goal of overfilling the glorious Blood of My Blood AU with my ramblings and extra shout out to @everchangingfungusthoughts and @animate-mush for tripping me down the slope of Writing Another Text Brick. Specifically via this whole thing.

Summary: Jonathan Harker, now fifteen years deep into his life at Castle Dracula, finds himself the unwilling guest of yet another frightful host and his company. Talk and violence and time tick by.

The sun sinks low.

The dead travel fast.

And a vital Lesson is taught regarding the Law of the land.

Warnings for graphic violence, suicide, and murder.

Jonathan’s head ached.

Partly from the agonized spot at the back of his skull where the cudgel had struck. Mostly from the state of his current company.

They were nomads, he knew, but not Dracula’s men. This lot were too fresh for that. In fact, some wore tailoring that the locals weren’t accustomed to apart from tourists and the occasional city dweller passing through. He wouldn’t bet money on how many were ‘donated’ from past victims and how many were afforded through helping themselves to said victims’ purses and personal cheques. They were a dapper group, whichever the case.

From what he picked up while feigning unconsciousness, there was someone missing from their assembly. Someone’s…paramour? Wife? A young woman close to the presumed leader. Some grousing about superstitious idiots. Counter-grousing about precaution and history and how somebody’s cousin’s friend was slaughtered by the ‘superstitions.’ A third sect was grumbling about how thin Jonathan’s pockets were for a supposed noble, monster or not.

“A half-full purse and a few strips of dried pork don’t particularly line up with your theory, Jacob.”

“Props, idiot. Would some common huntsman be wearing what he wears? Would he have these?”

Jonathan heard the heavy jingle of his set of the castle’s keys. They had taken the ring of them from its chain among a handful of other lightweight treasures. All that and his wedding ring. That would cost them.

“Oh, yes. Of course. Because all the revenants who run a swatch of the Carpathians’ government are surely wandering around with frightful things like jerky and house keys.”

“Are you blind? Do these look like house keys? Half of them look older than the mountains!”

“Well, perhaps that is the ‘prop’ of his property, eh? A fancy set of keys made to look old. They certainly haven’t any rust. It wouldn’t be a terrible gimmick these days. Everyone is a fiend for the local bogeyman or a good haunting. I would do tours with my own castle, dribble a little red sauce on my lip, charge a fee for the thrill and the courtesy of not killing anyone on the way out.”

“You talk like it’s a joke. This, when I was raised in these godforsaken crags, and my own neighbor lost their newborn and its mother in the same night! The father blew his brains out when he found what was left of them in the forest. His forest.” The words were hissed in Jonathan’s direction. “God! If we had known how easy it was to take him by daylight!”

There was a snort. The leader’s voice. Sour.

“You say ‘we’ like you weren’t still in nappies, Jake. Like the castle in question isn’t a fortress on a cliff in the dead center of the mountains, all covered with wolves and your frightful bloodsuckers. What would Mama and Papa do if they knew better back then? March all the way up with the neighborhood and hope they made it in time before sunset? That’s assuming the advised tools of the trade actually mean anything against the bastard in question. If he’s as old as legends claim, throwing himself through a hundred wars’ meat grinders with his head and heart and all his other giblets getting minced, with him still standing after it, who’s to say an axe and stake are enough?”

A kick was delivered to the chair Jonathan sat bound to.

“Assuming this piece of work is said bastard.” Spoken with equal parts resignation and frustration. “I’ll grant he looked a bit off in broad daylight. Sure as hell would pass for a cadaver. But if this is the man who had your slovenly little villages soiling themselves after dark, I’m not impressed.”

Snickers from most of the room. A few grimmer sounds from the believers.

“If you don’t believe us, then—,”

“I believe in precaution, Jake. There are strange things in the world. If we want to believe that talking pile of dust, Vordenberg, who I’ll admit was a museum exhibit in his own right, we had us a near miss back in Gratz. So, fine. We finish this in the fashion of the locals. We can even set the pieces on fire if it makes you happy. Not the point. The point is—,”

A hand caught in Jonathan’s hair and wrenched his bowed head up, making the back of his skull throb anew.

“—we know Katrina was seen with you last, you ghoul.”

Jonathan opened his eyes. It had a noticeably sobering effect on much of the room. His host even eased his hold enough to stop trying to rip Jonathan’s hair out. A glance was spared for the assembled party. Easier now that he wasn’t doing it through his lashes. They really were a well-dressed bunch. One of them even wore the silver watch taken from Jonathan’s pocket quite well, though it clashed somewhat with the dagger he was fiddling with. He’d sprung for a handle with a gold hilt.

“Well?” He received a last yank before the man flung his head against the back of the chair. “Where is she?”

“I’m afraid I don’t know anyone by that name. Could you describe her?”

“Oh, I doubt if she would give her real one out to anyone. But we know you know her, Count.”

Jonathan felt the headache blossoming into a migraine.

“Count?”

“Dracula,” the one called Jacob grated out. He stood close to the table with his hand near the aforementioned tools of the trade. A wood axe. A sharpened garden stake and a sledgehammer. Matches. But he, like the rest of his friends, was content to leave his other hand resting on the pistol at his hip. “Don’t think you can throw your word games around here, you leech. You are not boyar here. You are not even a monster by daylight. Just a man—,”

“A man I am talking to, Jake,” from the leader. He turned back to Jonathan. “You see we have some bias in the retinue. Now, Jake and his cadre believe you are, in fact, the same awful old man who likely played out his Báthory fantasies by killing off a few local rustics for kicks once upon a time. Same white hair, same carcass complexion, and some properly unhealthy-looking windows of the soul. As an aside, you have the same body heat as a slab from the butcher. If you had a chance of living beyond today, I might have recommended you see a doctor about your circulation.

“Because I, like the bulk of the room, am of the belief that you are Count Dracula in the sense that the original Count and some Countess loved each other very much and managed to squat your malformed self out into the world before croaking. And, before departing, father dearest passed on the family tradition of idly killing off whoever was convenient as a little hobby. Am I near enough?”

Jonathan said nothing. Chiefly because he was fighting a wave of nausea, but also because it allowed him to keep his gaze steady. The westward window was visible over his host’s shoulder.

“I asked you a question.”

“I will answer if you tell me how you possibly concluded that a middle-aged man walking in the woods was a nobleman.”

To his surprise, the man revealed his evidence: the tarnished gold clasp of a dragon sitting against a garnet setting. This would also cost them.

“Hard to imagine the average hiker idling around in that corner of the wilds with this particular emblem on his coat.”

“That’s true,” Jonathan nodded. “I am not a hiker or a hunter any more than I’m a count. I am only the castle’s retainer.”

“Ah, well. That’s different. We are men of the people, sir, and we take pride in doing our fellow servile class the courtesy of a quick death. It’s only the aristos and nouveau riche who get the extra effort. Them and bleached out old bastards who go around taking what’s ours. What’s mine.” Jonathan watched the man slide a handsome pearl-handled blade from his pocket. It had a very fine edge. “Case in point, a certain young lady, of the flaxen and doe-eyed variety, being spotted in town with an older man of very unique description, not two days ago. Who she left with in his goddamn caleche.”

The blade came down in a gleaming arc. It sank cleanly into Jonathan’s left shoulder. Jonathan screamed at this and at the blade being flicked out. The steel was wiped clean on his sleeve.

“It should go without saying,” the leader said over Jonathan’s noise, steadily dwindling into hard breaths behind his teeth, “that the locals have a few choice theories about just who and what the man driving those horses is. Human? Dead? Dracula or one of his cohorts? Anyone who’d know for certain is either underground or a living antique themselves. Oh. But they did point out you seemed polite enough, according to most. Not someone anyone is eager to shake hands with, but fair. If you are the old devil of before, the younger generation are relieved you’ve gone mellow with the new century. Well done on the new leaf.”

“They were lying,” Jacob intoned, the picture of exasperation. “We all used to lie about him! He had eyes and ears everywhere! You didn’t mention him aloud unless you wanted to wake up to your child missing or you yourself being drunk dry or taken apart! I’m telling you, Katrina is already gone or worse!” His hand clutched eagerly at the whittled garden stake. “Let us be done with this, Anthony.” 

Anthony gave his blade another cleaning swipe. He opened his mouth—

“The stake is wrong.”

—and closed it. He and the others peered down at Jonathan as he righted himself against the chair. The migraine was marching in circles around his head now, lighting fireworks and banging pans. At least his shoulder was a small distraction.

“Say again?”

“The stake. You haven’t finished the end of it. If you don’t burn the point down, harden it, the wood will just splinter if you don’t get it in one blow. One of you took the flint lighter from my coat, yes? Use that and save yourself the matches.”

The room looked owlishly at him. Jacob and his small band especially. Awkwardly, one of the latter fished out the stolen lighter and began cooking the point with its steady flame.

“See that? He’s already feeling accommodating.” Anthony clapped his palm with heavy chumminess against the wounded shoulder. Jonathan winced appropriately, stealing another squinting glance at the window. “Care to keep in this giving mood, or would you like me to even things out?” The blade pointed airily at Jonathan’s right shoulder.

“No need. I said before, I do not know anyone named Katrina. But I did give a ride to a young woman two days ago. Not ‘flaxen,’ though. Her hair was red.”

Anthony abruptly straightened. The blade twisted and fidgeted in his fingers.

“Red,” under Anthony’s breath. His brow furrowed. “She took the wig too?” There was a low murmur from the less vampirically-invested portion of the group, of that specific tone that declares ‘I told you so’ by vowels alone. Anthony whirled on these members like a viper. Several mouths snapped shut. “Did you lot have something you wished to share? Hmm? I’m all ears.”

Interest increased in the state of each other’s shoes, the floor, the lovely view of the mountains, and the progress of the stake. It was now neatly blackened and free of loose slivers. Jacob stood by with it, toying with it as Anthony had his knife. He kept trying and failing to meet Jonathan’s gaze.

“Ah,” Anthony grinned mirthlessly, “that’s what I thought you said.” The blade flashed. “Now, Count, Retainer, Whoever or Whatever, while you are being forthcoming, is she alive or dead? I confess I might be just as happy with one or the other at this point, so no need to fret over a lie.”

“She was alive the last time I saw her. I dropped her off outside Bistritz,” Jonathan said, clearly recalling turning the horses toward Bukovina. He winced again as Anthony laid a hand on the bleeding shoulder, driving his thumb against the wound as he leaned.

“And? How did the bitch pay for her ride? Did you introduce her to necrophilia or did she just throw my money at you?”

“Neither. I am a married man and you can tell I had no bank vault in my pockets. In any case, I must assume whatever she took from you was fair recompense.” Jonathan felt a shift come through him. The old cold tilt that made him lean three-quarters of the way out of humanity and into something else. Whatever it was that lit his eyes and froze the air around him. That made the entire room shift an unconscious inch back. “Considering the state of her face.”

Anthony’s own countenance squirmed between aggravation, anger, and a surreal flash of embarrassment. As if leaving the girl’s face mottled with patches in shades of plum and charcoal was the equivalent of friends overhearing a marital spat in the next room. The man’s lip curled, making the well-trimmed whiskers twitch.

“Do forgive me if my decorum isn’t up to your standards, sir. I tend to get a touch irate when the thankless sow I’ve been bedding not only comes within inches of blowing our cover over some brat who went and poked his head out at the wrong time, but has the gall to try and resign after a few threadbare months. As if I didn’t scrape the little strumpet out of the gutter with my own hands.” A storm roiled in the man’s face. “Had a whole life of gold ahead of her, getting to play out her idiot actress dreams, and she thanks us by taking off with three hotels’ worth of work. Over a goddamn toddler. But that is the way with women, isn’t it? Always falling apart over a babe.”

“Men as well, in my experience,” Jonathan hummed. His line of sight drifted back to Jacob, whose attention was now firmly split between Jonathan and the view from the west window. Even halfway through spring, the sunsets did still tend to rush in the mountains. Shadows were already starting to stretch.

“Personal experience?” Anthony asked with an appraising glance that saw value in the negatives with Jonathan’s mien. “Is there a little Dracula pup crawling around nursing on the countryside?”

“Oh, no. He’s grown out of crawling. Apart from roaming along the castle walls, when he wants to surprise me. There’s no getting away with it with his mother.” Jonathan swallowed a bitter lump, knowing it had to be heard aloud, “Or his father.” Jacob was looking at him now. This time Jonathan held his eyes as they grew an increment wider. A slight dew of sweat had formed on the young man’s brow. “I only know where they are half the time. But they can always find me.”

Anthony barked an acidic note that tried to be a laugh.

“Is this the part where you tell us you’ll be missed? That there’s some cavalry who will come seeking vengeance? Please spare yourself the storytelling. If you were anything other than a relic living off a skeleton staff you wouldn’t be driving your own horses or puttering around by your lonesome. Really, what we’re doing here is a public good. What’s the loss of one more parasite riding into the twilight of peerage’s relevance?”

“Regrettably, he has thought ahead on that,” Jonathan admitted. “The gold he’s already sitting on is kept partly for emergency seed money, but mostly as a memento. He’s been on top of the capitalistic pulse since 1652 going by the oldest records. Given another decade, I believe he’ll be a magnate in a dozen industries from here to the United Kingdom.” A genuine moue puckered his face. “He calls it investing in the live-stock. No, I didn’t think it was funny either.”

This he addressed to Jacob.

Jacob, who had to set the stake down because his hand was shaking.

Jacob, who had been keeping watch of him and the window and seen how blandly Jonathan greeted the approaching dusk.

Jacob, who had finally taken a closer look at what Jonathan wore under his coat. His coat, worn because he was always cold—a chill that he truly felt. Covering an ensemble of boots, long sleeves, and a high collar. In mid-April. 

“…You still have time,” Jonathan told him gently. “If you had your childhood here, you know there’s time. You still wear your crucifix, yes?” Jacob flicked his gaze up to Jonathan’s. His whole face seemed to shine with perspiration. He did not know what was wrong yet, what piece was missing, but he scented something. “Do you? Any of you?”

Jacob nodded jerkily. The men behind him did likewise. Some fidgeted at their shirts.

“That’s good. It sickens them, did you know? Stings them away from the throat.” Jonathan smiled for him. A sad curl. “Hold it out before you if you like.” He tipped up his chin. Just above the shirt collar was a glimpse of sickish color against the maggot-white skin. Something worse than a bruise. “You can check. Or ask one of your friends. But it does help to know for certain. To have it confirmed.” The smile grew worse in its apology. “There have been no vampire attacks in Transylvania for the past fifteen years. The youngest around here take it all as local legends. Parents’ and grandparents’ fairy tales. Because they grew up without knowing what you do. Without realizing why people stopped disappearing after dark when Count Dracula still rules here. When there are still sharp mouths to feed up in his mountains.”

Jacob gawped openly now. He looked strangely like the boy he might have been fifteen years ago, hearing his neighbors whisper and moan about the latest loss in the night. Fifteen years ago, when a foolish young Englishman had come to Castle Dracula, and everyone had known. No one had seen him again…supposing one belonged to a family who had moved away at last, daring their monstrous master’s ire to save their son.

“Oh, for God’s sake, what is this? Are we playing theatre now?” Anthony and his handful of fellow eye-rollers looked between Jonathan and Jacob as if expecting to spot some invisible party holding up script cards for them. “Jake, if you want to play at slaying the vampire, you are welcome to it. Get your stick and your hammer and have at it. Erik, take the axe.” He waved his blade like an impatient conductor with his baton. “Well?”

Jacob moved forward without the stake. His crucifix was held out as far as the cord would allow.

Then he hooked Jonathan’s shirt collar and pulled it open.

Jonathan hadn’t been able to get a good look at the full state of himself in some while. Occasionally he might steal a glance in a mirror for sale or a clean shop window in town. There was rarely anything good to see as far as his development went. Age was not weathering him the way it would an ordinary man. What should have become the easy creasing of crow’s feet and smile lines had given way to something sunken and grey. More than a few children had come to nickname him ‘Herr Geist’ when he passed through. On one occasion, he’d been approached by an American claiming to be a talent scout for a circus who thought Jonathan could easily bill as, The Walking Corpse.

But that was all just the effect of his face. He hadn’t seen his throat or a clear view of his shoulders in years; the real estate with the greatest number of visits for fifteen years. It had to be at least twice as unpleasant a sight as his forearms, pocked by only one hungry mouth’s nursing. To judge by the shudder of revulsion that jolted the entire room back on its heels, his neck was apparently quite the visual.

To judge by Jacob’s expression, the discolored map of ruined skin and old punctures was his own obituary in all capitals. Nor was it a very peaceful end it spelled out. His eyes rolled up to Jonathan’s like wet marbles. Jonathan could no longer maintain his smile, however somber. There was only condolence in the look.

“I told you. I am Castle Dracula’s retainer. At least, in the sense of a retaining wall. I have played the role of its inhabitants’ personal bloodletting pantry for a quarter of a century. Which would be cause enough to worry. But I am also a married man and that is worse.”

Jacob wobbled on his feet like a sapling in a high breeze. He almost fell over with a cry when the first thunderclap boomed over the cabin’s roof. A horrified look shot to the westward window. Sunset was less than a jagged slit across the mountaintops, already erased in the smear of a rushing storm. Lightning drew livid eyes in the clouds.

“I am sorry. You might have had a chance if you hadn’t been cautious,” Jonathan went on. “There would have been a coin toss if you had simply shot me dead in the forest. I fear I am testing everyone’s patience in that household by keeping to my contract against turning until the twenty-year mark. Special occasion and all that. But if you had gone with a bullet or a slit throat, that would mean that I would be undead by sundown. You would still be slain for trespassing on private property,” he gestured to himself as best he could with his bound hands, “but it would have been tidier. They might even be grateful for ripping off the plaster and booting me over the threshold. A mere snapped neck apiece.  

“Unfortunately, I saw your tools of the trade. I heard your plans for ‘destroying the vampire,’ or the madman playing pretend as such. Heart staked, head removed, burn the body. All very thorough. But because I saw and heard these things, they saw and heard these things. Just as they know your faces now.”

Thunder snarled again. An explosive sound joined with a noon-bright flicker of lightning. Wolves sang a violent song. Close.

Jacob’s friends within the gang were talking in frantic tones to each other. The rationalists of Anthony’s side of the room seemed a touch less comfortable where they stood, grasping at their holsters. Anthony himself looked as if he was waiting to wake from a particularly confusing dream.

Jacob’s eyes were running. Pleading. A man only five short years past being a boy.

Jonathan still could not hold a smile for him, but he spoke in the tone he had for Quincey the time he’d came across a bat with a half-broken neck in the forest. Wings smashed, head cracked open, it had been alive in the worst way. Quincey had been thirteen then, considering himself practically a skip away from adulthood. He had still gone to his Papa, eyes dewy with blood trying not to spill, asking please…please…

Jonathan thought back to how his son had hidden in his coat sleeve while he ended the creature’s pain with a brisk twist.

It was quick, you see? It won’t hurt anymore now, shh, it’s alright, son.

“It’s alright,” he said in the present. “You still have time.” Not much. A few minutes at most. But still, “You’ll be safe from it. From all of it.”

Jacob nodded with a twitch. A puppet on a caught string. His hand trembled as it held up the crucifix again.

“…May I keep this? After?” Jonathan nodded. “Thank you.”

Jacob kissed the Cross and tucked it under his shirt.

“Jake, I swear to God, if you don’t drop this act, I will—,”

Bang.

The sound was almost lost in another thunderclap. Not so for the sound of Jacob’s corpse hitting the floor, the new tunnel in his head oozing a scarlet pond out from under his skull. There was a moment of quiet.

Then the wolves bayed again.

The men bayed too. Curses and questions of equal inanity whirled around the room.

Bang.

The sound of Anthony’s own pistol firing a hole through the ceiling.

“Shut. Up. Every one of you, bite your idiot tongues.” The barrel swung to point at Jonathan’s temple. “He says he has people on the way? He says they’re vampires or werewolves or the Four Horsemen a-riding? Then it would perhaps behoove us to think rather than squeal like women over this,” his shoe struck Jacob’s corpse, “fool’s choice of exit. Coward.” He snapped his fingers at the room. “Come on! Block the windows, set up arms! Move!”

And so they moved. Some men scrambled and shouldered into each other trying to cover the windows. Chairs were broken into pieces for stakes. Guns were unpacked and loaded. Erik held the axe as if his hands were welded to it. Anthony, meanwhile, took one of the unbroken chairs for himself and perched at Jonathan’s side. Something between supreme irritation and a baffled sort of wonder shaped his face.

“I do have to give you credit if this is all improvisation on your part. You should have been booked at the Grand Guignol instead of rotting up here.”

Jonathan watched Erik begin to pace, gripping the axe as though it doubled for a shield.

“That or one of those hypnotist acts. Jake was always a nervous one. An easy mark, ironically enough.”

Jonathan’s peripheral caught on Erik’s figure as he came to a stop by the door. There was no peephole to spy through, yet he inclined his head toward it. His ear was cocked as if listening for something under the thunder and wolves.

“But supposing this amounts to something more than an act, I admit I’m curious to see what these things are supposed to be like outside the pulp on the bookshelves or clogging up the stage. Everyone has their opinion on them these days.”

Erik first frowned, then nodded at the bolted door. The anxious creases of his face began to smooth. A smile tugged his lips up as the axe lowered.

“Are they the same kind of horror show as you?”

“Usually quite the opposite,” Jonathan allowed. “But that is by choice. They make some rather impressive exceptions when the occasion calls for it.”

Erik set the axe down. His freed hands moved the wooden bolt aside and reached for the key on its hook. This didn’t go unnoticed. The nearest man, one of Jacob’s friends, jolted toward him.

“Erik, what the hell are you doing?”

“Didn’t you hear her?” Erik spoke over him in a dreaming lilt. “The girl outside. Lovely voice.” He turned the key in the lock. “She and her brother got lost in the storm.” He turned the knob. “Wouldn’t be right to leave them out th—,”

Bang.

Erik dropped like a felled tree. Jacob’s friend whirled on the rest of the room, his gun and free hand up. He had his crucifix worn outside his shirt now.

“I had to! You know I had to! Jacob and old Vordenberg laid it out, didn’t they? You invite the things in and it’s all over!” He pointed at the door with the new stain on its timber. “One of them is out there right now, trying to worm into our heads, so we’ll let it over the threshold.”

As every eye nailed itself to the man and the door and the second corpse within five minutes, no one paid attention to the fireplace. They had not lit it, having opted solely for lamps. Chimney smoke would give away their location to anyone happening by the area.

Only Jonathan stared at the open stone mouth of the hearth. Watching what crawled out. Watching it watch him.

Anthony swatted Jonathan in his bad shoulder. He looked up and realized he’d been asked a question.

“Pardon?”

“Is he. Telling. The truth. Or did Erik lose his brains over nothing?”

“A vampire cannot cross the threshold of someone’s home without invitation. I think, at a stretch, you could call this temporary base of yours ‘home.’ Strict definition is tricky for travelers. But if you declare this place yours—,”

“We do,” insisted half the room in unison.

“We do,” Anthony echoed, somewhat dryly. “Our lovely domicile, this. And we are strictly against welcoming any visitors tonight.”

“Understandable. But there’s still the trouble of this afternoon. It’s hard to be more insistent about an invitation than resorting to abduction.”

“And? What of it?”

The fireplace continued to purge its contents out and out and out. Cooling the room like a thin and steady gust. Heads finally began to turn as gooseflesh spread and the sight became unignorable: A thick mist had been pouring into the room since Erik’s brains splattered on the door.

“You thought I was Count Dracula. Whether I was him or not, he was the man you wanted here.” Jonathan looked Anthony in the eye. He was not surprised at what he found there as it squirmed and sweated. “I’m afraid you invited him in two hours ago.”

The lamps guttered. One snuffed. Then its neighbor. A third, a fourth. Voices raised in tandem with the weapons.

“Light them!” came the universal cry. “Turn them back up, come on!”

But the room blackened and blackened until it came down to one canny fellow who’d dived for a lantern. The same man who’d pocketed the flint lighter. He lit the lantern and set it shakily on the table, its glow seemingly safer than the lamps’. The lighter was almost as bright in his hand, making a spotlight for himself in the ruddy gloom.

“What? What is it?”

Every head was turned to face him. Every eye wide enough to show its whites, like the stares of startled horses. The man opened his mouth to utter a third query—and stopped.

There was a hand on his shoulder. Cold. Far colder than the man he’d taken the lighter from. Its fingers ended in claws.

Above his head, the firelight caught on what might charitably be called a grin. It was, in fact, the default state of Count Dracula’s jaw in this shape. A medley of the wolf and the bat and the nightmares that are born when children’s imaginations first start to sketch the things that will eat them in the dark.

Jonathan wished he could have closed his eyes for all that followed. He did try. But there was an implicit order sunk into his mind that demanded he watch. Had this been a decade ago, this may have been for the sake of an object lesson.

This is what I can do. This is what I would have done to your little hunting party at the right hour, with your guard down for an instant. This is what I will do to any sheltering cattle you try to run away to with wife and child. Watch, my friend. Watch.

But that was practically a lifetime past. They were coming up on a mere five years until the wait was over and his free will and the final fig leaf of humanity was forfeit. Which suggested that he was a captive audience solely for the fact that an audience was desired. There was some artistry to it all, in a medieval sense. Some of the acts performed with the makeshift stakes and the barrels of guns and certain repurposed bones reminded Jonathan of old woodcuts left out for him to see once upon a time, back in that first summer alone with the castle’s Master.  

By the time one of the men died choking on his own severed arm, the rest of the lot stopped shooting and herded themselves to the door, desperate. To their relief, there was no vampire at the threshold. They fled.

A heartbeat passed before the screaming began anew. Gunfire mingled with it. The screaming dwindled down and down, the choir thinning to a single shriek that ended on a terrible sound. Wet and crunching. Wolves were heard soon after.

Anthony had not moved from his position behind Jonathan’s chair. He’d resumed his grip on his hair, this time holding his blade just below the Adam’s apple.

“If you don’t have a head,” Anthony panted at the Count, now busy picking gristle from the spades of his nails, “you can’t be undead. The plays make a lot of fuss about staking the heart, but this?” He tugged Jonathan’s head back another inch and pressed the blade’s edge until the skin broke. “I figure it’s a fair bit more vital. I am a practiced man at my profession and quick when I need to be. You want him in one piece instead of two, you leak yourself out the door, call off your pets, and I’ll send him on his way come sunrise.” Though he couldn’t see him, Jonathan was certain the man was trying to smile. “If you’re amenable, perhaps we can even get a silver lining out of this whole thing.”

Dracula sucked a piece of sinew out of his thumbnail.

“I am accustomed to getting my hands dirty. While I’ve been in the habit of leading assorted hapless dregs around, I can easily see myself following someone worth respect. Your friend here indicated he’s on the edge of retirement anyway, and I imagine you could do with someone to step into the role. Or add to the ranks.”

Dracula busied himself with scanning the floor. He plucked up the silver watch still chained to a torso that was twisted like a wrung washcloth. A scowl was spared upon retrieving the key ring from a puddle of a head. Then the pouch containing Jonathan’s allowance. He deposited each bit of treasure found on the table. The last thing he discovered was Jonathan’s wedding ring. He seemed to ponder flicking it aside, but saw Jonathan watching. The ring was dropped in the pile the way one might discard a clump of dirt.

“Well?” from Anthony. “Do you talk or not?”

“I do,” from the Count. “Though not usually to vermin. Especially ones who raid my pantry.”

“Honest mistake on our part. I hadn’t realized you were the one-in-a-thousand legend that isn’t just the fumes of an invented ghost story.”

“I see.” Dracula bent and retrieved the stake that had its point burned. It left the holster of a man’s sternum with a damp sound. “And this too was a mistake?”

“Just trying to placate the skittish sorts in the party. You saw how Jake was.”

“I did.” The Count tapped the stake’s point against his chin, pondering. “In fact, I think I recall a face like his. A sailor I met once. He took to the sea, having no bullet in reach.” He leveled the stake at Anthony’s head. “You called him a coward for this, yes?”

“Am I wrong?”

“There is a fine line between cowardice and wisdom,” Dracula shrugged. “It moves more than you would think. Little Jacob was wise tonight, if sadly mistaken in his target. He was not the first of his type. Likely not the last. The same goes for you, vermin. You, who squeak and chitter about preying upon the predator, and then try to sell yourself to the cat.” Though much of his face had reset to a human shape, the Count’s teeth remained a bristling forest of white needles when he grinned. “I have had this land in my jaws for half a millennium. I have not gone a single century without your like slinking underfoot, thinking to kiss my cape and offer a tithe of others’ throats to win my favor. My power.”

“Way of the world, isn’t it? Strong bows to stronger. What makes this cadaver,” another jerk on Jonathan’s hair, another throb in his skull, “so special? Better resumé? Seasoned arteries?”

“A number of things.” Another shrug, a twirl of the stake like a toy. “He does so hate to hear it anymore. It has been so long since any kind of praise heartened him and age has made him shy. But he cannot shush me, so I can say he does far more than bleed, be it himself or his victims of old. He certainly has a more impressive history than robbing and gutting tourists for a living, and so is far more attuned to the Law of this land than any other. Not the yapping dogs of mortal authorities. Not your jailor or judge or bureaucrat. Not even those of the sciences, such as they are.”

Thunder cracked and lightning danced. The Count’s eyes burned brighter than the lantern.

“He knows that I am Law in these mountains. That my will, my word, and my want order all that is here. He knows that there is no escaping consequence for trespassing upon what is mine. But.” The Count clapped the stake into his open palm with the joviality of a cruel teacher with his yardstick. “Beyond all this, he is something which guarantees his value over yours or any other’s. He warned you himself.” The jagged grin turned almost saccharine. “He is a married man. And you have kept him out far too late for his spouses’ liking.”  

Anthony shifted behind the chair. The grip on Jonathan’s hair shuddered a moment as if suddenly repulsed to be touching it.

“God. Even the monsters are in on that depravity up here?”

“Depravity is a pastime of mine. But I am not so low as to debase myself by touching filth like yours.” So saying, the Count raised both hands in mock surrender. “I shall not waste my time or teeth on you.”

“Fine. Fine, you say that and I can believe you. Once you’re out the door.”  

The door, still open.

The door, which Anthony had not dared to look at for fear of taking eyes off the Count.

The door, full of mist.

“Ah, but I cannot go yet. There is a show I have been so looking forward to. You mentioned the Grand Guignol. Such a promising establishment! I plan to see it in person some night. But for now, we must content ourselves with your meager scene.”

Anthony opened his mouth to ask something. Say something. Maybe he was just drawing breath. Whatever the reason, his mouth froze in a voiceless O of epiphany.

There was a hand on his shoulder. Cold.

It distracted him from the other, decorated with its simple gold band, locking around the man’s forearm; the one responsible for holding the blade.

Snap.

Anthony’s mouth dropped open wider, belting a screech that left Jonathan’s ears ringing. Then the man was torn away from the back of the chair and all the noise of him was pinned and shrilling on the floor. Laced over the ensuing sounds of his dismantling, both vocal and visceral, was a voice that threaded through the mind more than the ear:

He cut you. Twice he cut you.

“I’ll be fine, Mina.” Said because there was concern in the statement. There was. But, more pertinently, there was the accusation. The condemnation. The citing of the crime.

He cut you. He meant to kill you. He meant to unmake you out of reach forever.

Anthony made a new and piercing noise. The kind just an octave short of a dog whistle. Jonathan winced.

“And he failed to. It’s alright, Darling.”

“Hardly,” from the Count, now turning Anthony’s abandoned seat around to face the slaughter. “You are too soft as always, my friend. Even when it comes to a rightful culling. Or do you think they deserved to live after their crimes?”

“I think this was excessive.” Jonathan withheld a sigh as Dracula hooked the back of his chair, hoisting and turning it so that his back was no longer to Mina’s work. She seemed to have an innate understanding of what could be taken apart and to what degree, the better to leave Anthony still clinging miserably to a thread of life. “And I also think I’m ready to have these off.”

He flexed his hands and feet as far as they could go against the ropes.

“Have what off?” Dracula asked as he swiped a finger into the shoulder wound. A child stealing cake icing. He clicked his tongue. “This would happen just after a feeding. All this guilt-free cuisine and your knights-errant are too full to enjoy the banquet. A pity. Have you eaten?”

“If I had my hands free, I could get my—,” Jonathan pursed his lips as Dracula brandished a bouquet of the retrieved dried pork. Deciding against waiting for the mesmer to prod him into it, he opened his mouth a crack. Bit. Chewed.

“Do you suppose the Grand Guignol has concessions? Any actual blood used in place of the stage swill?”

Jonathan swallowed. A nauseous feat, considering the piece Mina removed from Anthony in the same moment. 

“I doubt any director is so dedicated, Sir.” Anthony was growing quieter now. There wasn’t enough air in him. Jonathan could tell by the glimpse of lung through his ribs. “Does Quincey know about this?”

No. It was blocked from him. He believes we are out on business.

Crunch. Twist. Rip.

Anthony went silent and still at last. Dracula afforded this a light round of applause.

“Not wholly a lie, you will grant. Though I suspect the boy thinks it was code for a more,” the Count made a face caught between glee and disdain, “intimate excursion. Which should be an easy enough ward against any prying you fear from him. You may have made a sickening romantic of the boy, but there is never a child alive or undead who wishes to know what his parents get up to out of his sight.” The Count craned his head, squinting at what was left of Anthony. “Did you come across it?”

That depends. Where’s mine?

Mina stood with the dragon clasp in one red hand and her other held out and open. Dracula idled a moment or three longer than was necessary before the stolen wedding band was produced. Clasp and ring were thrown rather than exchanged. Jonathan had each reattached to him. Though the Count spared a curse in three different languages at finding the coat not only mangled at the shoulder, but torn where the clasp had been ripped away.

“As if they could not understand the mechanics of a brooch? You should have pinned this in his eye.”

You should have fed him the stake. Look at this.

Mina touched the nick on Jonathan’s throat.

I know you count my wound as a blessing, but I would think you’d not risk losing his voice.

“I had to stall while you cleared up the leftovers outside. I may as well have left you with the boy.”

And lost your show and your diversion.

“You—,”

“I cannot feel my feet anymore,” Jonathan announced. “And I would like to stitch and plaster myself before we head out. Whatever Quincey may think we’re up to, it will be easier to lie without me looking like I just left,” he gestured as best he could at the room, “this.”

A minor miracle came and went as there was no suggestion made that they simply lay a new bite apiece over the wounds. The ropes were cut, what was filched was returned to its owner, give or take a little scavenging of their own. Jacob and the others were left with their tokens of the Son. Outside, the wolves went on enjoying the meal Mina had left for them. Up until a titanic thunderbolt struck the cabin and sent them scrambling. The building went up like a great bonfire.

“I know, my friend, you were clearly looking forward to digging more graves. But you must admit my method is quicker and far more thorough in erasing evidence.” The nettling cadence waned. “I suggest you avoid wandering away from the castle for some time. Considering your state.”

Not while dressed in this, at the very least. It’s clear this insignia draws as much ire as it deters.

“A fluke,” the Count huffed. “Such degenerates as those are rare. The chattel know better. Besides, the folly was in drawing attention by playing Good Samaritan to the wrong victim and her maudlin pleading. Something else to keep in mind.” Jonathan tried and failed to keep his head down as the hook landed in his mind and turned his eyes up. Dead blue against burning red. “At least for as long you insist on holding to your last few years as…this.”

Jonathan bit into his last strip of the dried pork. Loudly.

“Five years. That’s all.”

“Four and a half.”

“Four and a half I mean to savor. In-between being waylaid.” The careful placidity fractured as his free hand drifted up to the back of his skull. Still aching. “I think I shall finish off the Golden Mediasch tonight.” His hand was plucked away by Mina’s own, her chilled fingers seeking out the tender place under his hair. Her fingertips felt the scabbing patch.

I should have skinned him.

“You are welcome to stroll through the fire and do so,” the Count hummed. But his smile stopped short of his eyes and his own hand swept Mina’s away to thumb at the ache. “The Mediasch is barely more than fruit juice. You will want something stronger.”

Jonathan didn’t argue. Nor did he protest when the horses of his ex-hosts were commandeered for the return to the castle. Quincey thrilled at the sight of them almost as if they had arrived riding wolves. Was this the business they went on? Tunet and Pretekár were quite new—and solid obsidian as the horses before had been—but it was good to see them gain more company. And they’d picked piebald this time!

“They’re beautiful. Do they have names yet?”

“Thought we’d leave that to you,” Jonathan managed lightly enough. Or nearly so. Quincey frowned at him, nose pricking at the smell of dried blood.

“Papa, are you alright? You—,” his eyes landed on the coat, “—what happened?”

 “Just a quick lesson from our new friends about minding their moods. I was tossed and landed in a less than opportune pile of rocks.”

Quincey scowled at that and scrutinized the stallions.

“Which one? I’m not riding him. Or petting him, even.” He considered. “At least for a month.”

“Seems a cruelty too far. I suppose I just won’t reveal the guilty party.”

“And what if I get on the wrong horse and I get tossed and land on a rock somewhere? What then?”

“Then you will get back up and be perfectly alright. Or am I misremembering the night you fell asleep on the side of the north turret and fell through half a tree on your way down?”

“Yes, well. They were fairly soft branches.” Quincey fought and lost the attempt to keep his smile up. “Papa?”

“Yes?”

“The horses weren’t the actual business, were they? You could have gotten them yourself.”

“That’s true. The horses were only picked up afterward. Quite a bargain, not counting the lumps.”

“Then what happened?”

Jonathan looked at his son. His Sweetheart, though the boy had finally started to bud into that stage that visits all adolescents, demanding a shedding of childhood names. There was a dusting of stubble barely fringing his jaw and his mother’s own whorls outgrowing the edges of his last haircut. But the eyes were still a child’s. Bright and molten as the sun at dusk.

“…There was some trouble two days ago. I aided a girl trying to leave behind some people who hurt others. Who hurt her. They had some less than scrupulous plans for the future and had already bypassed local authorities to get where they were by the time I crossed them. So I reached out for some assistance.” And, because he felt the air prickling with observation, “Your Father was very keen to educate them on the difference between the laws of other lands versus the Law of his land. And your Mum has always been of a rescuer’s bent as a rule. So.”

“So Mum and Father caught them? Together?” The sunset eyes gleamed at the prospect.  

“They did,” Jonathan nodded.

“Were they bandits?”

“Of a sort. But they won’t hurt anyone now.” Jonathan watched from the corner of his eye how the boy, so near to a young man, glowed over the notion of being a son to heroes.

He got to the tower before he felt his eyes begin to sting as sharply as his head.

[renecdote]

blue enough to bruise

For @evanbucxley my love 💛

Two things happen at once:

Buck overbalances, arm slipping from around the bridge.

The rope snaps.

They lock eyes for a second, half a second, Buck’s wide and afraid, Eddie’s probably a match with the way his heart is pounding hard enough to hurt, nothing either of them can do, knowing that there is nothing either of them can do, and then—Buck is falling.

For BTHB: falling from a great height

[Read on AO3]

Eddie has just poured himself a cup of coffee when the call comes in. They’re all in the truck seconds later, headsets on, half the crew still wiping sleep from their eyes. Adrenaline hasn’t kicked in yet, but Eddie can already feel the anticipation building. The thing about early morning calls is that they always seem to be easy or awful, rarely anything in-between. Sometimes they can tell as soon as they arrive at a scene, but Eddie can’t pinpoint which way this one is going to go when they pull up, jumping out of the engine in the middle of a looming, six-lane bridge that police have already cordoned off on one side.

“Jumper?” Chimney asks.

Bobby frowns. “Doesn’t sound like it, he called 911 himself.”

Eddie cranes his head, squinting into the sunlight to see the figure clinging like a monkey two thirds of the way up a towering support beam.

“How did he even get up there?” Buck wonders aloud.

“Let’s focus on how we’re getting him down,” Bobby answers. “Buck, Eddie, I want you both in harnesses. We’ll send you up on the ladder, but it won’t reach all the way so you’ll have to climb.”

They harness up quickly. Eddie was worried when he came back to the 118 that he might have lost the easy familiarity of things like this—putting on a harness, reaching for the right item in a med kit, knowing exactly what Buck is going to say before he says it—but he’s been back for almost six months now and most days it feels like he never left. He checks Buck’s harness, tugging on the straps to make sure they’re secured properly, and Buck checks his in turn. Easy, familiar.

“Ready?” Eddie asks.

Buck nods. “Ready.”

They knock wrists: easy, familiar. Chimney called it a superstition once, which kicked off another jinx-esque debate that lasted all through one twenty-four shift and into the next. It had only been surpassed by the great ‘is a hotdog a sandwich?’ debate, which was rehashed with increasing intensity through a whole cycle of shifts until Bobby banned it ever being mentioned in the firehouse again.

(Eddie maintains, though, a hotdog is definitely a sandwich.)

Despite the bright day overhead, the water looks cold and angry below. Eddie has never been afraid of heights—can’t be afraid of heights in this job—but he tries not to look down. Better not to think about how far it would be to fall. The girders are slick with early morning condensation, cold metal and hot morning sun a deadly slip hazard. It forces them to go slow, every handhold carefully tested even with the harnesses to catch them if they fall. They work their way up, then across to where their caller is straddling a crossbeam. Slowly. Carefully. Up close, Eddie can see that he’s wearing climbing gear—or an amateur’s idea of climbing gear, at least—and he can’t be older than twenty-five.

“Oh thank god,” he sobs when they reach him. “I don’t want to die.”

Buck and Eddie exchange looks.

“Just stay still,” Eddie tells the kid. “My partner and I are going to put this harness on you and then lower you down to our team. Don’t try to help unless we tell you to.”

He keeps expecting it to go wrong. Eight out of ten times, the person you tell to stay still when they’re in a dangerous situation doesn’t listen, their mind too clouded with panic for rational thought. But this guy’s fear response must be freeze, not flight or fight, because even once he’s in the harness, it takes several minutes of coaxing to get him to actually let go. They lower him slowly and Eddie feels like he’s holding his breath until Chimney and Ravi get a hold of the man and pull him down the ladder.

“Good work boys,” Bobby tells them. “Now get yourselves down—carefully.”

Buck looks at him, grinning, and Eddie can’t help but grin back.

“Copy that, Cap,” he answers. “See you on the ground.”

They get halfway there.

Eddie is ahead, trying not to think about creaking ferris wheels, when he hears Buck’s bitten off curse. He looks up, something like dread itching at the back of his neck. He knew this call was going too smoothly.

“What’s wrong?”

“My line is stuck on something.” Buck tugs at it, then grabs quickly at the girders when he almost slips. “I can’t get it loose.”

He adjusts his grip, hugging the bridge with one arm, then tugs again, harder. Eddie follows the line of his rope up, up, up, trying to pinpoint where it has been snared. He doesn’t like what he sees: the rope isn’t just caught, it’s fraying, probably has been the whole time.

“Buck, wait—”

Two things happen at once:

Buck overbalances, arm slipping from around the bridge.

The rope snaps.

They lock eyes for a second, half a second, Buck’s wide and afraid, Eddie’s probably a match with the way his heart is pounding hard enough to hurt, nothing either of them can do, knowing that there is nothing either of them can do, and then—Buck is falling.

It doesn’t happen in slow motion. It’s all too fast, even with the way Eddie’s world narrows, the cacophony of voices on the radio nothing more than static in his ears. By the time he has reached uselessly into the air, Buck is tumbling six feet down, ten, twenty, then the shadow of the bridge swallows him whole. Eddie doesn’t see him hit the water, but he swears he feels it, fear and adrenaline like a lightning strike through his body, a Lichtenburg figure of grief already forming in its wake.

Buck told him once that he read about a guy who survived a fall from the Sydney Harbour Bridge. He was working on the construction when he fell 180 feet into the harbour below, coming out of it with nothing more than a few fractured ribs, bruises, and one hell of a story to tell.

“He wasn’t the only one who fell during construction,” Buck told him. “But he was lucky, he was a diver and he managed to turn in the air so he hit the water feet first. It’s probably the only reason he survived.”

Buck probably knows all the statistics, too, about people who have survived falls from bridges. About people who haven’t. Eddie doesn’t know the numbers, all he knows is that the higher the fall, the more likely you are to die, and this bridge is really fucking tall.

“Eddie.” Bobby’s voice is sharp through the radio. Focus. “Are you secure?”

Is he secure? Is he secure? Buck just fell of a bridge—a fucking bridge—and Bobby is worried about him?

Eddie grits his teeth. “I’m fine. Buck—”

“I know.” Calm. Somehow calm. “We’ve called in reinforcements, we’re going to get him.”

Bobby doesn’t say whether he thinks it will be rescue or recovery and Eddie feels too sick to ask. He’s sure his knuckles are white beneath his gloves with how hard he’s holding the girders, but he feels dizzying light. He needs to get down, but he has the strange, irrational feeling that as long as he doesn’t move, it’s not real. As long as he’s up here, he doesn’t have to face what might meet him on the ground.

“Eddie,” Bobby says again, gentler, and Eddie’s throat aches when he swallows.

“I know,” he replies, and he’s not sure if his voice trembles or if it just sounds that way because of how hard he’s fighting not to shake. He knows that if he starts, it’s not going to stop until he can get his hands on Buck, whole and warm and alive. (It might never stop.)

Eddie takes a deep breath. Closes his eyes for one second, two, three. Then he makes himself start climbing again.

***

It takes fifty-two minutes. Eddie keeps it together because he has to, because Bobby will sideline him if he doesn’t, because he needs to be doing something to help or the black hole growing in his chest is going to suck him in completely.

The Coast Guard have taken over the water, which leaves Eddie and the rest of the 118 spreading along the waterfront. Down here, the current is stronger than it looked from the towering height of the bridge. Buck is a strong swimmer, probably the strongest on the team, but he can’t swim if all his bones are broken. And as much as Eddie doesn’t want to think about it, he can’t stop running through every possible outcome in his mind, each worse than the last. He’s making himself dizzy. Lightheaded. He’s going through the motions of search and rescue (rescue, not recovery, rescue), but he feels—adrift. Like it was his own line that snapped when Buck fell, leaving him untethered in a growing storm, battered by wind and rain, cut through with every crack of thunder and blinding flash of lightning.

Eddie rubs at his chest, feeling like he can’t breathe even though he knows, logically, that he can. He can breathe, and they’re going to find Buck, and everything will be fine. It has to be fine.

He talked about it with Frank, once. What it was like to come home and tell Christopher that his mom had died. What it might have been like for Buck to tell Christopher that Eddie had been hurt. All the times Eddie worried that he might have to go home and tell his son that Buck did something reckless on a call, but this time luck wasn’t on his side.

“And what about you?” Frank asked, mild the way he always was when he was about to make Eddie feel like a piñata, turned upside down and beaten until all his feelings poured out.

“What about me?”

“You’ve told me how hard it would be for Christopher, having that conversation, helping him through his grief,” Frank answered. “But what about your own feelings? Your own grief?“

Eddie still doesn’t like to think about that question. Losing Buck won’t kill him because it can’t, not as long as he still has Christopher to think about, but he knows already that some part of him will break in a way that he’s not sure he’ll ever recover from. Not sure he would want to recover from.

He shivers. The wind is picking up, cold despite the sun glaring overhead, and the long sleeves of his LAFD shirt have none of the warmth of old-fashioned metal armour. Or maybe it’s just Eddie that is cold. The rest of the team look serious but unaffected as they move along the waterfront, searching for any sign that Buck might have pulled himself out of the water.

If he could have pulled himself out of the water.

If he could have swam at all.

If he’s not—

“We’ve got him.”

That lightning again, fear and adrenaline and grief, his heart in his throat until the confirmation comes almost a full minute later: “He’s alive.”

Eddie isn’t aware that his knees are giving out until Chimney and Hen are catching him and the three of them are sinking to the ground together.

“Thank god,” Hen manages.

“Kid has about nine dozen lives,” Chimney adds, and Eddie chokes on something that is more relief than laugh. His mind is a feedback loop of he’s alive he’s alive he’s alive, so vivid he swears he can taste it.

“Come on,” Bobby says, gathering them all. “They’re taking Buck in, we can meet him at the hospital.”

***

It takes ninety-six minutes.

Buck has been wheeled back by the time they all get to the hospital, and all the triage nurse will tell them is that the doctor will let them know when there’s news. They’ve done this more than a few times now—the vigil, the agonising waiting—but years of practice does nothing to ease the crawling under Eddie’s skin.

“Maddie is on her way,” Chimney tells them, and Eddie doesn’t even know when he had time to call her.

He doesn’t know when Hen and Ravi slipped away to buy coffees either, but his fingers wrap automatically around a paper cup when it is pressed into his hand. He doesn’t cry, even though he feels like he’s breathing through the hot press of tears every second that they wait, scattered in an all-too-familiar pattern around another all-too-familiar waiting room. Maddie and Chimney holding hands, Bobby bent forward in something like prayer, Hen a steady calm two seats down from Eddie, Ravi’s knee bouncing across from them.

And Eddie—Eddie still can’t breathe. There’s this part of him that thinks: Buck is with the doctors now, he’ll be okay. There’s a bigger part that thinks: Buck is with the doctors now, but what if he’s not okay?

He’s the first one on his feet when the doctor steps out and calls, “family for Evan Buckley?”

It’s good news. Mostly. Monitor and hope things don’t go downhill news. Two broken fingers, fractured ribs, cuts and bruises, the threat of pneumonia or some other nasty infection from the water he swallowed. But—Buck is gong to be okay. Is okay. Eddie has to pinch himself, hidden in the sensitive underside of his wrist, right over his stuttering pulse, just to make sure that this is real. That he’s not going to blink and find himself still suspended from that bridge, watching his best friend fall to his death without even a hope of stopping it.

His arm stings.

Bobby squeezes his shoulder.

Eddie blinks and the hospital doesn’t blur around him.

“Can we see him?” Maddie asks, still hand in tightly held hand with Chimney.

Eddie lets the others go ahead of him. He just—needs a minute. And he’s selfish, maybe, because he wants Buck all to hisself—needs Buck to himself—but. He thinks this is the kind of thing he’s allowed to be a little selfish about.

(He knows, somewhere just beneath the surface, hidden from everyone else but always itching, itching, itching, that Buck is the one thing he’s never been able to stop himself from being selfish about.)

***

“Hey.”

Buck looks up quickly, then winces at whatever hurt it aggravates. But he’s smiling, tired and wilting at the edges but genuine, when he answers, “Hey, Eds.”

Eddie grabs the chair beside the bed, sinking into it before his legs can give out under him. Exhaustion is following thick and fast on the heels of the relief that is spreading through him, putting down its tenuous roots along all the jagged Lichtenburg lines.

“You scared the hell out of me,” he says, and he’s trying to make it light, more relief than trembling, but he’s not sure he succeeds. The whole thing doesn’t feel like past tense quite yet.

“Sorry,” Buck says, guilty. “If it helps, I scared myself too.”

It helps more than it should, honestly, because the last time Eddie was in a hospital room like this with his best friend, he told Buck that he wasn’t expendable and saw in his eyes that he didn’t really believe it. It’s hard to believe that was eighteen months ago now. And at the same time, hard to believe it was only eighteen months ago.

This is the point where Eddie is supposed to make a joke, a flippant comment. But he can’t make his voice work around the ache in his throat because this was—it was close. Shot on a street in broad daylight kind of close. Trapped at the bottom of a well, crushed under a firetruck, forced into the back of an ambulance with a gun to their heads kind of close. He thinks… he knows, after months upon months of therapy, that he’s allowed to not be okay about that.

“Hey.” Gentle. Almost as gentle as the way Buck threads their fingers together and squeezes Eddie’s hand. “I’m here.”

Eddie doesn’t know if there is a right time to kiss your best friend. Three hours ago, maybe, or three years ago. It doesn’t feel right to do it now, with Buck in a hospital bed and the adrenaline still fizzling under his skin, but it feels wrong to wait a second longer too. What did he tell Chimney all those years ago? Tomorrow isn’t promised to anyone.

The kiss is soft and gentle, Buck’s lips dry against his own. Buck makes a sound in the back of his throat, starts to open his mouth like it’s instinct, hand fisting in Eddie’s shirt, but Eddie pulls away. Forehead against forehead for a second, three seconds, breathing together, then he forces himself to sit back. He—doesn’t regret it. Maybe he should, but. He doesn’t.

“Eds…”

Buck’s voice is weak, his eyes suddenly watery.

Eddie shakes his head because he’s a coward; he knows what Buck is going to say and he’s not strong enough to hear it.

“When you’re ready,” he says, squeezing Buck’s hand. “I’m here, okay? Whenever you’re ready.”

Tomorrow isn’t promised to anyone, but Eddie would promise Buck a thousand tomorrows—a hundred thousand of them—anyway.  

Buck’s eyes search his before he asks, “What if I’m never ready?”

Eddie smiles, even though the thought makes him ache. “That’s okay too.”

There was a part of him that was expecting to be rejected entirely, even though… Even though it’s Buck, and most days he feels like he knows Buck better than he knows himself. The way he smiles when he’s hurting, the way his eyes light up when he’s excited, the absurd combinations of condiments he likes on sandwiches. The way he craves reassurance but would never ask for it, the fact that he scrubs his favourite white sneakers with a toothbrush to keep them clean, the stories behind all the scars he doesn’t like to talk about. There are secrets in Buck’s skin, behind his smiles, breathed into the way he speaks and feels and loves, and Eddie know—not all of them, probably, but most.

He knows Buck and he knows that he loves him. That he’ll always love him. That one day Buck might show up on his doorstep and say he loves Eddie too.

“Will you stay?’ Buck asks.

I’ll stay forever, you don’t even have to ask.

“Of course,” Eddie answers. “Nowhere else I’d rather be.”

Christopher is at school, the rest of their team is headed home to sleep off the twenty-four, and Buck—Buck is here. Eddie settles more comfortably in his chair and pulls out his phone, ready to wait for as long as it takes. Buck smiles, soft and hidden in the way he ducks his head, and Eddie feels it like lightning through through his veins: love, love, love.

He doesn’t let go of Buck’s hand.

Buck doesn’t ask him to.

[bad-fucking-omens]

The Witch Twin (Alec V. x OC) - Chapter 2 - Volterra

Summary: When I thought about my future, I was sure that I had the rest of my life vaguely planned out.

Then, my older sister moved up from Arizona to stay with us — and turned my entire life upside down.

I had no idea just how bad it had gotten until I was standing in a castle in Italy, convinced that I was about to die.

Length: 2.9K words (Complete fic 71.8K words)

Fic warnings: Graphic depictions of violence, death, explicit smut (M/F), referenced/implied past child abuse, emotional manipulation by sibling

Chapter warnings: None

Read on AO3 or read below

2. VOLTERRA

Bella couldn’t sit still in her seat on the flight from Seattle to New York. She fidgeted constantly while she and Alice whispered to each other, but honestly, I wasn’t paying much attention to them.

I was still trying to wrap my mind around the fact that vampires were actually real, and that the Cullens were vampires. Were all the legends about vampires true? Did they drink human blood? Could they go out in sunlight or would they burn and crumble to ash? Were they immortal?

It all sounded absurd, and yet here I was, on a plane and headed halfway across the world to save my sister’s ex-boyfriend from killing himself because he thought she had died.

I was pulled out of my thoughts when the plane finally landed in New York. We had to run through the airport to make our connecting flight to Florence, Italy. On that flight, my mind wandered away from the Cullens and vampires to Charlie.

I had made a rash decision in coming with Bella and Alice. What if Bella and I both died? Charlie would be absolutely destroyed if he lost both of us. But I knew that as risky as my decision to come with Alice and Bella was, I had to be here. I knew that Bella had to try to save Edward, but if he died, Bella would try to follow him into the grave as soon as possible. She had to save him, or Charlie and I would lose her. I couldn’t just sit at home, waiting and hoping my sister would come back rather than disappearing suddenly from the world. I could only pray that we all made it out of here alive.

When the plane landed in Italy, Alice rushed us out of the plane and airport. She led us down to the parking garage, where she stole a bright yellow Porsche. Bella and I climbed into the sportscar.

I stared out of the car window as Alice sped down the winding Italian roads. She and Bella were focused only on Edward. I forced myself to tune out their conversation, just watching the Tuscan landscape as it blurred past us. Beautiful, rolling, green hills that were studded with gorgeous Italian villas surrounded us for miles.

“It’s Saint Marcus Day.”

“Which means?” Bella asked.

Reluctantly, I tore my eyes away from the window to look at Alice in the front seat.

Alice laughed darkly and answered, “The city holds a celebration every year. As the legend goes, a Christian missionary, a Father Marcus — Marcus of the Volturi, in fact — drove all the vampires from Volterra fifteen hundred years ago. The story claims he was martyred in Romania, still trying to drive away the vampire scourge. Of course that’s nonsense — he’s never left the city. But that’s where some of the superstitions about things like crosses and garlic come from. Father Marcus used them so successfully. And vampires don’t trouble Volterra, so they must work. It’s become more of a celebration of the city and recognition for the police force — after all, Volterra is an amazingly safe city. The police get the credit.”

“They’re not going to be very happy if Edward messes things up for them on St. Marcus Day, are they?”

Alice shook her head at Bella’s question. “No. They’ll act very quickly.”

Bella glanced away from her, looking as if she might burst into tears. She looked out of the window and up at the sun.

“He’s still planning on noon?” she asked.

“Yes. He’s decided to wait. And they’re waiting for him.”

“Tell me what I have to do.”

Alice said, “You don’t have to do anything. He just has to see you before he moves into the light. And he has to see you before he sees me.”

“How are we going to work that?” Bella asked.

“I’m going to get you as close as possible, and then you’re going to run in the direction I point you. Your sister will stay with me,” she added, glancing at me through the rearview mirror.

I just nodded. I knew that this wasn’t the time for me to argue — if Bella was going to save Edward, I couldn’t be in the way.

“There,” Alice said suddenly. She pointed to a castle city that crowned the nearest hill. “Volterra.”

The street Alice was driving through was very narrow. The red flags that seemed to cover every inch of this city were draped along the walls that nearly scraped the car, flapping in the wind. Even this tiny side street was crowded with people.

“Just a little further,” Alice murmured.

Bella was gripping the handle of her door so tightly that her knuckles were white. She was ready to push it open and run out into the street as soon as Alice told her to.

The people around us were clearly annoyed with Alice’s aggressive driving. She squeezed through narrow alleyways, making the passersby press against the walls and into doorways as we forced our way past them. The buildings were taller now — so tall that no sunlight was able to reach the pavement.

As soon as Alice stopped the car, Bella threw the door open. The pixie-like girl — no, vampire — pointed towards where the street widened into the sunlight.

“There — we’re at the southern end of the square. Run straight across, to the right of the clock tower. I’ll find a way around–”

She broke off suddenly and hissed, “They’re everywhere!”

My heart stuttered in my chest and Bella froze, but Alice pushed my sister out of the car.

“Forget about them! You have two minutes. Go, Bella, go!”

Bella began sprinting away, roughly shoving people out of her way. I climbed out of the car with Alice. I kept my eyes on Bella for as long as I could until Alice pulled me away with a gloved hand on my arm and my sister disappeared from my view.

“Come on,” Alice said to me.

I followed her as she maneuvered through the streets, around people dressed entirely in red. Alice pulled me through the narrow streets and alleys, pointedly keeping herself hidden in the shadows. I followed her silently. I was barely paying any attention to Alice or where she was leading me — my mind was focused entirely on Bella.

Would she be fast enough to stop Edward from doing whatever he thought would get the Volturi to kill him? What if she was too late? What if she saw him being taken away, or worse, executed? What would happen after she stopped him if she could reach him in time?

Alice pulled me from my thoughts when she grabbed my hand and tugged me into a dark alley. She said softly, “Let’s behave ourselves, shall we? There are ladies present.”

She brought me closer to the others, though she kept me right by her side. I let out a small, relieved breath when I saw Bella clinging to Edward, though my stomach twisted when I saw the two men in front of them. Alice pulled me along with her as she moved to stand beside her brother, her hand still gripping mine tightly.

The two others straightened up to their full height. The tall, bulky one looked annoyed, while the shorter, slender one eyed me curiously. I pressed closer to Alice’s side as my racing heart jumped up to my throat.

He had red eyes.

“We’re not alone,” Alice warned.

The vampire who had been studying me glanced over his shoulder. I followed his gaze. A few yards behind him, a small family was watching us from the square. The mother was speaking urgently to a man who was probably her husband, her eyes locked on the six of us in the alley. She looked away when the vampire met her eyes. The man walked a few steps away and tapped the shoulder of another man in a red blazer.

The shorter, red-eyed vampire turned back towards us, shaking his head. “Please, Edward. Let’s be reasonable.”

“Let’s,” Edward replied. “And we’ll leave quietly now, with no one the wiser.”

He sighed frustratedly. “At least let us discuss this more privately.”

Behind him, six more people had joined the family now, and all of them were watching us anxiously. I could feel my heartbeat in my throat as goosebumps erupted on my skin. Every part of my mind and body screamed that I was in danger. I tried to focus on taking slow, steady breaths to prevent myself from hyperventilating.

“No,” Edward said and the tall vampire smiled.

“Enough.”

The high-pitched, English-accented voice came from behind us. Alice pulled me almost entirely behind her body, so that I could only barely see the other figure moving towards us.

The girl was younger than either of the male vampires, and I guessed that she might be around my age — seventeen. She was as small as Alice and, although her body was mostly hidden under a dark, nearly black cloak, it was clear that she was slim. Her face was beautiful, angelic in a way that reminded me of Renaissance paintings of young maidens, but she was even prettier. Her blonde hair was pulled back into a tight bun and her eyes were crimson red.

The two other red-eyed vampires instantly relaxed in her presence. Even the tension in Edward’s body disappeared, though he seemed more defeated than relieved.

“Jane,” he sighed.

Alice folded her arms across her chest, a sour look on her face. Bella looked about as confused and terrified as I felt.

“Follow me,” the girl, Jane, told us.

She turned around and began to silently walk back towards where she had come from. The tall vampire gestured for us to follow her. The smug smirk that curled on his lips turned my stomach.

Alice was the first to follow Jane. Edward’s touch was gentle as he pushed me forward to talk in front of him, so that I was between him and Alice. He kept Bella tucked tightly against his side. When I glanced at her over my shoulder, she didn’t seem nearly as anxious as I felt, but for some reason, that didn’t put me at ease. I turned back around quickly, curling my arms around my stomach as my anxiety grew.

“Well, Alice,” Edward began, “I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised to see you here.”

“It was my mistake,” she said. “It was my job to set it right.”

“What happened?” Edward’s voice was casual, as if he was barely interested in her answer.

“It’s a long story. . . . In summary, she did jump off a cliff, but she wasn’t trying to kill herself. Bella’s all about the extreme sports these days.”

I glanced back at Bella again, my lips parted in shock and horror. She had jumped off a cliff? Alice gently took my arm to keep me moving and I turned back around, shaking my head.

“Hm,” Edward hummed.

We reached a dead end at the end of the alley. I gasped lightly and took a step back in shock when Alice dropped down into the open hole in the street. They wanted me to do that?

“It’s all right,” Edward said, making me look at him. “Alice will catch you.”

I clenched my hands into fists to stop them from shaking. I took a breath as I turned back around, taking a step closer to the drain that was sunk into the lowest part of the street. The grate had been pushed halfway aside, but the hole was big enough for me to swing my legs into the narrow gap. I took another deep, steadying breath, then pushed myself off the ledge and into the darkness.

I grunted when I landed in Alice’s rock-hard arms. She set me on my feet and I bent over, pressing a hand to my chest and gasping quietly as I tried to regain the breath that had been knocked out of me. A few moments later, Bella fell into Alice’s arms.

It was dark, but not completely pitch-black at the bottom of the drain. The stones under my feet reflected wetly in the bright light from the street above us. The light vanished for a split second each time the other three vampires dropped through the hole to the ground. They all landed lightly on their feet, so quietly that I could just barely hear them.

Edward pulled Bella against his side as we began to walk forward. Once again, I was stuck between the Cullens, with Alice in front of me and Edward and Bella trailing behind me. I tried not to stumble on the uneven, slick stones that lined the floor, especially when the dim light finally faded into total darkness. Our footsteps echoed in my ears — along with my own frantic heartbeat.

What the hell had I gotten myself into? What had Bella gotten us into? Was I walking to my death? My throat tightened when I thought about how they would kill me. It wasn’t hard to imagine how one of the red-eyed vampires would grab me and pull me close enough to sink their teeth into my neck. Would I bleed out before I could realize what was happening to me, before I could even process the pain? Or would my last few moments in this world be filled with terror and agony?

We stepped through a door, out of the dark, stone sewer and into a brightly lit hallway. The walls were off-white, the floor covered in an industrial grey carpet. Fluorescent lights shone down on us from the ceiling.

I followed Alice towards the elevator at the end of the hallway. Jane waited for all of us, her small, delicate hand holding the doors open for us.

Once we were inside the elevator, the vampires from the Volturi relaxed, which only made me tense up even more in response. They let the hoods of their dark cloaks fall back onto their shoulders. The two males both had an olive complexion, though it was slightly ashen. The bulky one had shortly cropped black hair, while the shorter one’s dark blonde hair fell across his forehead in gentle waves. Under their dark grey cloaks, they wore clothes that were modern and pale.

I looked at my older sister. Bella was clinging to Edward’s side, who had his eyes locked on Jane. Suddenly, I was surprisingly grateful to be stuck between Alice and Edward now, rather than being forced to stay close to the other vampires. My heart was still racing in my chest, though, and I was half-worried that I would have a heart attack before the vampires could kill me. I wondered which death I would prefer.

The elevator ride was short. When the doors opened, we stepped out into a posh office reception area. The walls were paneled wood and the floor was covered with a thick, dark green carpet. There were no windows, but the walls were covered in large, brightly lit paintings of the Tuscan countryside. They were so realistic that I could almost believe that they were windows to the outside. Pale leather couches were arranged in small groupings around glossy tables that held crystal vases full of brightly colored flowers.

A tall, polished mahogany counter stood in the middle of the room. The woman sitting behind it was very pretty, but here, surrounded by so many aesthetically perfect vampires, she looked plain by comparison. She seemed completely at ease around them, though. She didn’t even bat an eye at our large group, just politely smiled and greeted, “Good afternoon, Jane.”

“Gianna,” the blonde vampire replied as she led us towards a set of double doors in the back of the room.

A boy was waiting on the other side. He was wearing a well-fitted, white dress shirt, along with a pair of tailored dark grey dress pants. He looked similar to Jane in both looks and age, though his features were slightly more angular and masculine, and somehow even more perfect than the blonde girl’s. His brown hair was so dark that it was almost black, wavy, and just barely long enough for the very ends of his hair to curl over his forehead.

The sight of him very nearly took my breath away as my heart stuttered in my chest. He was gorgeous — more beautiful than anyone I had ever seen before.

The boy walked forward to greet us. He smiled as he reached for Jane, greeting her with her name.

“Alec,” she replied as she hugged him. A strange feeling twisted in my stomach as they kissed each other’s cheeks on both sides. The boy looked over at the group of us, his red eyes trailing over Edward and Bella first.

“They send you out for one and you come back with two . . . and two halves,” he noted. “Nice work.”

Jane laughed. I noticed that, just like her, Alec had a strange accent that seemed to be a beautiful mix of English and Italian.

Alec said, “Welcome back, Edward. You seem in a better mood.”

“Marginally,” Edward agreed.

Alec chuckled, his eyes moving to look at Bella. “And this is the cause of all the trouble?”

Edward smiled thinly. He froze and a moment later, one of the vampires behind us said, “Dibs.” Edward turned, a low snarl building in his chest that made me flinch, which drew Alec’s gaze to me.

[waitmyturtles]

Okay! On the eve of the premiere of Our Skyy 2 x Bad Buddy, we finish out another Ohm Pawat series: Double Savage, episode 12 (finale) and series thoughts. 

I was afraid of it happening, and I knew it was bound to happen. The contradiction held me in expected suspense, and I didn’t know how exactly it’d go down, with Korn’s dad/Dad Beng wanting Korn back into the dad’s life. 

All week last week, I really felt like I was gonna tear New Siwaj apart if he let a redemption scene take place, but -- LIKELY because I have Bad Buddy so on the mind -- I’m actually feeling a little more complicated about this than I expected.

First: Dad Beng told Korn to stop apologizing. Dad Beng then APOLOGIZED. He saw how Korn had internalized all the superstition bullshit of being a jinx his entire life. I know a bunch of us wondered wtf Korn was apologizing for (cc @miscellar) but I think that I need to view this all from my understanding of what’s going on with this as an Asian, and how New Siwaj may have written this with Asian-ness/Asian culture in mind.

I wrote yesterday in a totally separate post about Bad Buddy, that I just don’t know as much as I should about patriarchy in Thai-Chinese culture. It’s clearly a thing. These dads are domineering and powerful AF. 

What I DO know about is filial piety, and how filial piety dominates/haunts us Asian kids all our lives. I know at least for myself, despite my very best efforts to live an independent, Westernized, individualistic life, that the guilt I bear towards my birth/nuclear family, for not “being there” for them (like, literally living with them, as Korn’s family refers to “moving back home”), even while I have my own family and kids -- that guilt is always there. You are wanted there, in the birth home, to “be there” for the folks as much as you possibly can, because you were born in part to provide for the folks. I noted that in particular in the jail setting, when Dad/Mom/Li ask Korn to provide the money and supplies for the incarcerated Win. That would be Korn’s natural role as the middle/older brother.

I would really have liked to see Korn’s dad seriously get his, and to have Korn NOT forgive the dad. I would have really liked to see Pran’s and Pat’s families forgive each other and accept the boys as partners in the finale of Bad Buddy.

And I get that each of these finales touches upon a reality that’s more real for the Asian audiences watching these shows than for us in Western/Euro-centric societies. Dad Beng arguably already got his karma by getting sick and seeing his golden child in jail. One might say, maybe an auntie on WhatsApp -- hasn’t the man already gone through enough.

Because I hold all emotions as a human, and I get what’s going on in the Asian mindset of the writing of this show, I almost feel like it’s unfortunate that I GET WHAT’S HAPPENING in a show like this, because the angry part of my inner child DOESN’T WANT TO GET IT. And yet, I totally understood the relief that Korn showed when he finally got hugged by his dad. Damn it.  

This whole show was about how families can get ripped apart at the seams (like in 10 Years Ticket) by superstitions, by pride and hubris, and also, literally, by fucking misplaced patriarchy in the culture unto which one is born. The ending of this show HAD to be the family being made whole again, even with Rung joining and not necessarily being clearly romantically linked with either brother -- because that linkage would have broken up the brotherly bond. 

And the last thing I’ll say about Dad Beng is this: I bet that many in the Thai/Asian audiences would have actually felt that the dad ACTUALLY GOT HIS, besides the karma I mentioned before -- BECAUSE HE APOLOGIZED. I’m going to take a bet that many Asian viewers would have actually seen THE ACTUAL APOLOGY as a taking-down-a-notch of Dad Beng, a reduction of his patriarchal power.

BECAUSE. Well. Did we ever see Ming apologize for anything in Bad Buddy? No -- he was a stubborn fuck who only SLIGHTLY BEGAN to MAYBE soften a little as he sipped some scotch from his unaccepted son-in-law in Pran. But Ming wasn’t fucking gonna back down anytime soon, and Pat and Pran knew that, so they kept their relationship secret.

At least Dad Beng admitted he was a jackass and he was wrong. Now THAT’S FANTASY. For Asian audiences -- maybe THAT’S acceptable as a happy ending. 

I did not expect this wrap-up to be so focused on Dad Beng, but you know me and family trauma, heh. Some quick other thoughts.

1) I’m glad Rung came back. And what up to Pea/Satang, MVP. 

2) I am in LOVE with Toei. She nailed it this entire series.

3) I agree with @miscellar, I missed Korn’s ratty fits, but he DID clean up well. 

4) I LOVE KIDS IN THESE SHOWS, LITTLE CUTIE 😭

5) Ohm and Perth. For real. That rooftop scene. These bros need to do more series together. I’m glad Double Savage performed well in the ratings, because they NEED to get cast together again. It was really good to see two actual homies throw down together on screen. 

I know friends (@bengiyo, @shortpplfedup, hi hi) were so-so on this show, but I would surprisingly and probably recommend this to folks IF they were open to the interpretation that the ending is essentially a fantasy commentary against Thai-Chinese superstition and patriarchy. I know that I really need to learn a lot more about this culture, and I believe, from what I’m seeing on Thai Twitter, that Thai audiences was quite happy with what went down -- because the wholeness of the family unit ends up being a more important storytelling device than maybe what Western viewers (myself included, even as a kid of immigrants) would otherwise want to see. I think New Siwaj didn’t do us as dirty as I thought he would, because I think he ultimately honored that Asian lens. 

[godraet]

what is a superstition in my muse’s culture?

is there a widely held religion in my muse’s culture? 

what are the views on hospitality in my muse’s culture? 

what is the view of money / wealth in my muse’s culture?

are there any beliefs held in my muse’s culture they don’t agree with? 

culture metas :)

ok we are going to try to not make this a million pages long but uhhh no promises.

what is a superstition in my muse’s culture?

uHHHH is it superstition if it actually is a real thing? let's talk about the omens that lead to someone being named padishah- as in "whats that 100 years kingship thing" all about!

so, the overarching idea that most cultures (not counting the gerudo) grasp is that every 100 years "a male is born into the gerudo and he is crowned king", well that's actually bullshit because gerudo genders are punch muscle and melon crushing thighs. their views of gender aren't about a binary at all- notably, the terms vai and voe aren't actually used when gerudo talk with each other about other gerudo- they use the term "vayam" which has the same energy as how "farsi" derives from pars, which is persia in middle persian, and in the same vein, other people call the gerudo "the gerudo people" (if theyr'e being polite, which for some reason they have trouble with??? yikes), but the gerudo term for that is, you guessed, it, vayam.

anyway, so every 100 years it's said that the old gods breathe life to a new padishah, and the person born under these most auspicious conditions is to be "sun and lion" and "victorious boar". notably, each padishah has been born at night on a solstice (any solstice works) and the skies of the day are always clear, yet charged as if lightning could strike at any moment. in the morning, a flock of oddly colored sand sparrows will fly through the valley, in the afternoon, the winds blow and "sing" but move not a single grain of sand. as the sun sets that day, a group of lynel are always seen crossing the dunes.

oh, and there's also the fact that after all of these omens happen all together, the elders visit the newborn child and will light candles and if the flame burns a brilliant blue then bam this is the padishah.

"and this only ever happens every 100 years? and this is ALWAYS how it is every goddamn time?" yeah it sure is, which is why considering how WEIRD all of those things are ... none of that can just be by chance.

notably, the lynel are said to be warriors loyal to the old gods, and for people who actually pay attention and don't just assume shit, they are associated with an old god called din-vārtra. din-vārtra in other texts is called vārtra the fire-blessed, vārtra kingmaker, vārtra of the heavenly depths, and later, this god is known as demise. notably, din is one of the three golden goddesses and she is represented by fire- which is what her name means (although it can also mean power in certain contexts)

that in itself leads into the Next part of this

is there a widely held religion in my muse’s culture? ( also asked by @gerudospiriit )

ok so as above, i mentioned din-vārtra, the old god who later gets labeled demise (do not Ask how that happened, there were so many mistakes made), and of the gods worshipped by the gerudo, it's din-vārtra and the goddess of the sands (tiamat), and the padishah is said to also be the vessel of din-vārtra, so that's that.

since the padishah [mighty king] (and then in the future, bānbishnān bānbishn [queen of queens, the title used by urbosa and riju, this title is also used to refer to the twinrova and is the secondary title that gan uses for himself]) already serves as leader of the people, most temples are dedicated to the lady of the sands, leaving offerings for her is something that the people believe helps bring the rains.

"but why isn't there anything like temples for din-vārtra?" well it's because din-vārtra is never said to have asked for the worship of the people of the valley, instead it has been passed down that "din-vārtra came with heaven's fire and brought warmth in the chilled desert nights and was welcomed as vayam, and among vayam he has remained"

there are plenty of festivals dedicated to the gods, and of course the golden goddesses are also quite popular, but the lady of the sands and din-vārtra are unique to the gerudo.

what are the views on hospitality in my muse’s culture? 

well, generational trauma made the gerudo say "yikes" about outsiders, but before all of that went down, they were a warm and welcoming people. there's no real rule about not allowing men in, mostly because the gerudo don't see gender like that! it's not about what's in your pants! there are plenty of gerudo born with primary male sex characteristics, that doesn't mean a goddamn thing to them???

they became more and more closed off as they faced greater struggles due to the border war with hyrule, where many other peoples had sided with the hylians, the gerudo valued their freedom and autonomy, and with the padishah out of the picture (they didn't really know what happened) tensions only rose. no one who knew padishah dragmire would ever think he had any fondness for rauru, but it was rather clear that the two kings had fought and when ganondorf didn't return, they assumed rauru had killed him ... and they waited for the omens ... that never came.

but life had to go on, they did what they had to do to protect themselves, even when the great kingdom was burned to the ground (which is why the valley looks so much like the ruins of persepolis, basically the same thing happened), but yeah they closed off because they are protecting what they have left!!! and who could blame them???

what is the view of money / wealth in my muse’s culture?

"wealth is of the soul, of the strength of mind and body." is a nice way to start this.

under padishah dragmire, trade was the way to go, there weren't things like rupees or whatnot, people would trade things. similarly this is how things worked with other kingdoms. common exports of the gerudo were silks and precious gems and spices. the term "wealth" referred to a philosophical thing rather than physical. not to say that by standard definition that ganondorf wasn't exceptionally wealthy, the monetary value of the gems and precious metals he wore on his body alone is ... a LOT, but that's just not how things were seen there?

with the introduction of the rupee, monetary value became "standardized" like the euro in a sense, but that was a fair amount of time after ganondorf was sealed away (so he has so much culture shock??? when he wakes up lmao)

are there any beliefs held in my muse’s culture they don’t agree with? 

uhhh well, considering that ganondorf is the entire ass leader of the gerudo, the culture he was raised with is the one he follows. granted, he would want his people to be more inviting again- cautiously so, but to be closed off is something he feels is unwise; it stifles the growth of a kingdom and its people, but also he Gets it, everything has sucked for the gerudo for a LONG TIME. but, the people are also in the good care of bānbishnān bānbishn urbosa (or riju, depending on the time) and even though times have changed, the strength of the people has endured and so he??? doesn't ??? feel a huge need to argue with it???

[starryevermore]

do not chastise the dove (20) ✧ steven grant, marc spector, jake lockley

do not chastise the dove ✧ a royal moon knight au | ao3 | pinterest board

pairing: knight!steven grant x fem!princess!reader x knight!marc spector x knight!jake lockley

series summary: you were a princess who would rather be anything but a royal; he was the knight her father forced her to marry—a true match made in hell if there ever was one. but, as the wedding inches closer and closer, it seems that, perhaps, your father had finally done something right by you. 

chapter summary: things get better. 

word count: 4,029

warnings?: benjamin, pet name (dove), not proofread

After the threat made its way into your hands, security at the palace increased tenfold. Well, actually, that was a bit of an exaggeration. Security had increased, sure. But not enough that it would draw attention from the public. The threat needed to be taken seriously, but you, Yelena, and Layla had agreed that word could not spread that you were taking the threat seriously. To do so would give credence to the people who wished to hurt you. They may do bigger, more dangerous things. You couldn’t afford to take such a chance. So, you did things quietly. Layla increased the training security personnel would go through. A few more guards were added to the rounds. More thorough logs were made of who came in and who went out of the palace, of who got very close to the palace. And you…You had decided that it was time to add two more personal bodyguards to your team. 

You had kept just who you were hiring close to your chest. You knew immediately who you wished to hire, and you had extended them the job offer as soon as you made the decision to expand your team. But they hadn’t yet accepted. You didn’t want to go blabbing about who you wished to hire until you were sure it was a done deal. Which, of course, meant that you hadn’t told your fiancés who specifically you had your eye on. They were miffed, and you understood. You had no real reason to not to tell them beyond superstition. But this superstition had a strong hold on you, and you couldn’t figure out any way to loosen it. 

“I worry that there’s no amount of personal guards you can hire that would keep you completely safe,” Marc said.

You looked at him. Marc was sat on the corner of your desk, his back to the door, fully facing you. You reached up, placed your hand on his knee. You rubbed your thumb back and forth. “I can’t deny that. But I also cannot deny that just having Layla by my side will suffice. I’m in a far more public position. There are more eyes on me and, where there are more eyes, there are more targets.”

“Then I’ll go everywhere you go,” Marc said. “Yelena, too. That’s already three people. How’s that any worse than you hiring two complete strangers?”

“Because you and Yelena can’t always be with me. A personal bodyguard is hired for the explicit purpose of being by my side at any and all public engagements. I would be remiss if I thought it appropriate to shoehorn my fiancés into such a position.” You reached for Marc’s hand, bringing it to your mouth. You pressed one, two, three kisses to his knuckles. “Besides, who said I would be hiring two strangers? You should know I only hire people are, first and foremost, qualified, but second, people who I can trust. I can’t afford anything else.”

Marc’s brows furrowed together. His head tilted to the side, an almost confused puppy look on his face. “I don’t understand.”

Knock! Knock!

Instead of answering Marc, you called out, “Come in!” Marc rose to his feet, turning towards the door as the two men you’d offered the job to walked inside your office. “My love, I believe you’re familiar with Jean-Paul DuChamp and Xu Shang-Chi.”

Shang-Chi took a step forward. “You can just call me Shang, Your Majesty.”

“Only if you agree to not use the formalities, Shang,” you said. You looked back to Marc. “See? I wouldn’t be so foolish as to hire complete strangers.”

Marc let out a laugh. “And what I don’t think they’re suitable for the job?”

“Oh, so we’re suitable for a rescue mission but not the full-time position?” Frenchie teased. He threw an arm around Marc’s shoulders, giving him a squeeze. “Come, now. You have no reason to be so bitter.”

“I’m not bitter!”

“If you were ground up and turned into coffee, you would be a dark roast,” Shang said. 

Marc turned to you, his eyes narrowing into a playful glare. “You only hired them so you would have more people to gang up on me.”

“Hmm, that was only a bonus,” you said. “Besides, they haven’t formally accepted the job yet. So you might just get off scot-free.”

“Woah, woah, woah—” Frenchie said. “I’m definitely accepting the job. Have to take every opportunity to get on his nerves, yeah?”

A smile stretched across your face. You stood and walked around your desk, wrapping your arms around Frenchie. “I’m so glad! When you get the chance, you’re going to have to tell me all of the embarrassing stories I know you’re holding on to.”

“What? No!” Marc protested. 

Shang took a step forward. “I might not have any embarrassing stories to exchange, but I’d also be more than happy to be one of your bodyguards.”

Marc narrowed his eyes at Shang. “Well, I’m going to be sure not to do anything embarrassing in front of you then.”

“You should avoid him outright then, my love.”

“You’re lucky I love you too much to pretend to be mad at you.”

You let out a laugh before clapping your hands together. “Well, now that that’s taken care of, your training starts tomorrow morning. I’ll send over information on where to report to and when my this evening.”

“Shouldn’t you have a secretary for that?” Shang asked. 

You let out a groan. “I don’t want to talk about that right now.”

Shang held up his hands in defense, but laughed before bidding farewell. Frenchie hung around for another moment, teasing Marc a little more, before he left, too. With them gone, you turned to Marc, wrapping your arms around his neck, nuzzling your nose against his. A contented sigh escaped your lips. 

Could you stay like this forever? Forget everything and just be? Just be with Marc and Steven and Jake? You were grateful to be Queen, to be able to use your position to do good. You felt an obligation to make up for all of Benjamin’s wrongdoings. But…Well, you couldn’t lie. This wasn’t something you exactly wanted. You had often dreamed of getting out of this whole mess. Of living far, far away from the palace. Of having a simpler life. 

“Do you want this?” you asked Marc. 

His brows pinched together. “Dove, we’ve talked about this. We want to be with you—”

“No, no, not that. Just…Do you want to be Prince Consort? Was this something you wanted? I-I know that you had probably expected living far away from here. Not having all of these responsibilities and obligations and duties. I just…I just want to know this is something you want.”

“I want to be with you.”

“I know that—”

“And if that means we have to take on a few more roles than just husband and father of our children…Well, we don’t mind. We just want to be with you, dove. It doesn’t matter what else comes along.”

But you weren’t satisfied with that. Doubts still tickled in the back of your mind. You couldn’t stop yourself from worrying about a hypothetical future where they would finally get sick and tired of this life and leave you. It was ridiculous, you knew that. But…when the one family member who loved you was dead and the only two family members you had left spent years treating you like the scum of the Earth, it was hard to believe that someone genuinely cared enough to stay. 

Marc leaned in, pressing a kiss to your lips. “We’re here for the long haul, dove. I mean that. Steven means it. Jake means it. You’re going to have to throw us out yourself if you want us to go, and even then, we’ll still want to be by your side.”

“I just worry.”

“I know. But I can promise you, we want to to be with you no matter what.” Marc kissed the tip of your nose. “Now, c’mon. Let’s look at those secretary applications. Who’ve you got it narrowed down to?”

“Well, I was looking at this one guy. He doesn’t have a ton of qualifications, if I’m being honest. But he’s gotten out of prison a few years ago—hey, don’t give me that look! If you looked at his file, you would know that it was more of a Robin Hood sort of thing. You know, steal from the rich, give to the poor. And it was warranted! The company he worked for was scamming its customers, and he was trying to do something right. Besides, he’s a divorced father and he needs to support his daughter—”

“Sounds like you’ve already made your decision, dove,” Marc teased. 

“Oh, just look at his application, would you?”

You nearly laughed when the letter wound up on your desk. Of course, you understood why he might have thought that a letter was more appropriate than perhaps a text or call (or even an email!). But, still, it seemed almost silly in this day and age to write a letter than to use something more technologically advanced. Though, you supposed that might have been more Benjamin’s doing than anything else. Benjamin preferred the more traditional things life had to offer. And Kieran was a sponge, soaking up everything Benjamin gave him. 

Still, you appreciated the letter for all of its silliness. It read:

Y/N, 

I am not entirely sure where we stand, so I apologize if I am out of line in sending this to you. After your testimony at Benjamin’s hearing, I didn’t know if you wanted to speak to me again or not. While I am still unsure, I know that I cannot go on without at least asking if you would like to reconnect. We’ve lost many years of a potentially good relationship because of Benjamin. I would hate if he continued to divide us from behind bars. However, if you would rather rip this letter to shreds and forget I was ever a part of your life, I understand. If you would like to reconnect, please let me know.

Best, 

Kieran

The letter remained unanswered on your desk for two days after its receipt. You had, of course, known what you wished to say, but you struggled with putting the pen to the paper. Kieran had aided in Benjamin’s horrible treatment towards you for so many years. It was a difficult thing to forgive. At the same time, Kieran had shown that he wanted to make up for his wrongdoings. You believed him to be genuine. You wanted him to be genuine. While you had found a new family, you still craved a relationship with the only blood relative you had left. Like Kieran, you wanted to at least try.

So you did. 

You sat on a bench in the garden, Cleo curled up in your lap, purring contentedly as you pet her. Kieran was to arrive at any moment. You fought the urge to bite at your nails. The nerves were getting the best of you. A bit of paranoia was beginning to set in. You life, after all, was still being threatened. How were you to know if Kieran didn’t play a role in that? Could you trust him? How were you to know that this wasn’t some elaborate scheme to finish what Benjamin couldn’t?

“I’m surprised you responded to my letter.”

You lifted your head, watching as Frenchie walked with Kieran.

“If I’m honest, so am I,” you said. Cleo jumped off your lap, so you took the opportunity to stand. “Things are still…tense.”

“Have the threats begun?” Kieran asked. 

You sucked in a breath. Well, at least that suggested he, too, had been threatened while he was the heir apparent. “More than started. Most had been intercepted, but one made its way into the palace. Yelena and Layla think its tied to Benjamin. Yelena has been investigating Benjamin, and she thinks that he’s trying to send out a warning.”

Kieran’s brows furrowed together. “Investigating him? He’s already locked up.”

“He has other crimes to pay for. I’m not the only person he’s hurt. He needs to answer for his wrongdoings.” You turned, starting to walk down the path. Cleo padded alongside you. After watching you for a moment, Kieran jogged to catch up before walking in step with you. “We plan to make an announcement of the investigation this week. Get more eyes on it all, you know. If people know that he’s done more wrong, they’ll be looking out for things. It’ll make it more difficult for his co-conspirators to operate in secret. Or, at least, that’s the intent.”

“So that’s why you hired more guards, I suppose.”

You hummed. “That, and it doesn’t make sense for me to only have one personal guard with as public a position as this. Even without the threats, there’s no reason for me to be naïve about all of this. People will hate me just because they think I stole the Crown from you. Some of them may be bold enough to act on their hatred.”

“I understand. Well, perhaps not to the same extent. Your situation is far more complicated than mine would have been,” Kieran said. “I know that you didn’t really get any guidance on how to do all of this, but…Well, if you have any questions, I can try to help. I don’t know how helpful it would be, since my training was all tainted with Benjamin’s hidden agendas, but I would do my best to aid you.”

“I appreciate that. Thank you,” you said. “How have you been holding up? With everything happening here, I hadn’t considered that you were effectively homeless after I moved back into the palace.”

“It hasn’t been easy. I moved in with a friend from college who had a spare room, and I’ve been trying to find a job. It’s gone as well as you might have expected. People don’t want to hire an ex-prince who, whether he wanted to or not, inadvertently aided in the attempted murder of the Queen. But I did manage to get a few interviews coming up, so I hope it goes well.”

“If it doesn’t, I might be able to find you something to do in the palace.”

“There is a secretary position still open,” Frenchie teased. 

“Oh, I sent out an offer!” you protested. 

“Color me surprised.” Frenchie sent you a playful wink and laughed. 

Kieran said, “I appreciate that. While we’re on the topic of adjusting, how have your fiancés been holding up?”

You let out a sigh. “I think it’s been difficult for them, but they insist that it’s fine. I just know that none of this was what they had bargained for in terms of responsibilities, and then you add in the public opinion of us being together…It’s just a lot. We did an interview with Karen that’s supposed to come out soon. You know, to make it clear that I love them and the naysayers aren’t going to change that. I worry, though, about it being taken out of context. There’s nothing I can do about that, of course. But I just don’t want to make it harder for them.”

Kieran reached out and squeezed your shoulder. “I’m sure it will turn out fine. I think you underestimate how much the public adores you.”

“How long with that last? I don’t want to rely on that and then something happen and it all come crashing down. We’ve seen how the tides can change so easily.”

“You’re also a lot different than past Monarchs. I don’t think you can rely so heavily on past precedent.”

“I suppose not,” you conceded. “Thank you. I get so wrapped up in my head that I lose sight of it all.”

“Mother was the same way. But she always managed to see things through to the end, and so will you.”

You smiled, reaching up to where Kieran’s hand still rested on your shoulder and squeezed. 

“…and, speaking of mothers…If I’m out of line, tell me. Mother will always be my mother, you know. I can’t change the fact that she was the one to raise me. But, I still wonder what it would have been like if Charlotte had been allowed to stay. How things may have been different. But I know nothing about her, so I have nothing to base it off of.”

“Would you like me to introduce the two of you? I had been hoping to have a family dinner soon. You know, if this meeting had worked out, of course. It wouldn’t be any trouble for me to invite Charlotte.”

Kieran smiled. It struck you that you hadn’t ever really seen him smile before. Not really, anyways. Not genuinely. It looked nice on him. “I would appreciate that.”

The two of you continued walking. You looked straight ahead, avoiding Kieran’s gaze, and said, “In the spirit of…having conversations, I was thinking that a big one is still needed.”

“With me?”

You shook your head. 

It dawned on Kieran what you meant. “Oh.” 

“I just thought I would give you the chance to talk me out of it. I know I’ll be hearing a lot of that, and I didn’t want to deny you your fair opportunity.”

“I don’t think anyone could talk you out of anything,” Kieran said. 

“I suppose you’re right.”

“As your advisor, I advise you not to do this.”

You looked over at Yelena. Her face was unreadable, but you could hear the concern laced in her voice. She was good at concealing her emotions, though sometimes it still bled through. “I need to do this for my own peace. Besides, consider it an opportunity to inspect his cell while I’m talking with him.”

Yelena hummed. “I still don’t like it.”

You knew she didn’t. You knew that no one was really keen on you coming here. Well, no. That wasn’t true. You looked over at Marc, who was sitting beside you, his hand resting on your thigh, rubbing small circles with his thumb. Your fiancés understood. Marc, perhaps, most of all. When you told him of what you wanted to do, he gave you his full support. He would want to confront his mother, too, if he was given the chance. Even if it completely ended in disaster, at least you could say you faced your fears and came out the other side. 

“I need to do this. There is no safer way to do this than how I am now.”

“You trust the government officers? After all that’s happened?”

You raised a brow. That was a low blow. She didn’t need to sink so far. You kept your tone even, didn’t reveal the hurt you felt, as you said, “Of course not. But I also have my fiancés, you, Layla, Shang, and Frenchie all by my side. The only way I would be safer is if Matt and Jessica were here, too.”

“Perhaps we should give them a call and see if they’re available.” At your annoyed look, Yelena said, “I just don’t you to be put in a position where you could be hurt. He’s unpredictable. We can’t trust that he won’t find some way to act out.”

“I’m aware, and it is a risk I’m willing to take. I appreciate your advice—it is why I hired you, after all—but I need you to trust me to exercise my best judgment. If there was a single inkling of doubt in my mind that this would be more bad than good, I wouldn’t be here right now.”

Yelena didn’t say anything more. You appreciated that. You knew that she still didn’t agree—the look on her face was evidence enough of that. But at least she knew that you weren’t budging on your position any more than she was. You had bigger things to deal with than arguing with your advisor when neither you nor her was willing to concede. 

Arriving at the jail was a bit of a blur, if you were being honest. You only paid half attention to the entire process. You didn’t exactly want to remember all of this, so you couldn’t find it in yourself to be attentive to every little detail. 

You and your entourage were led into a near-empty room. A couple of the jail’s guards stood by the doors, watching Benjamin closely. He was sat alone at a table, looking oddly smug for a man in an orange jumpsuit. You reached out, grabbing Marc’s hand, as you approached the table. You sank into the seat. Marc sat beside you. 

“Benjamin,” you said. You looked him over. He looked as horrible as he was. His skin had lost some of its color. You supposed that happened when someone’s only allowed an hour of outside time a day. He’d seemed to have lost some weight, too, with the way his jumpsuit seemed to hang off his body. But worst of all, you think, was the look in his eyes. He looked almost like a mad man. “I hope jail life has been treating you as well as you deserve.”

“It’s been better now that the little dove has flown right back into the cage,” Benjamin sneered. 

Marc tensed. You squeezed his hand once, twice, three times. He squeezed your hand back and kept his tone measured as he said, “You have no right to call her that.”

“No one was talking to you, boy.”

“Don’t you dare,” you said. You struggled to keep your anger at bay. You knew why he was doing this. He was trying to get a rise out of you. You refused to give him the satisfaction. “You do not get to act like this anymore. You don’t get to push me and the people I love around anymore. Okay?”

“And you don’t get to come in here, acting high and mighty like a little priss just because you wear the Crown. You have no idea what I’m capable of.” Spit flew from his mouth as he spoke. You fought the urge to cringe.

The corner of your lip twitched. “No, I don’t suppose I know what you’re capable of. But you don’t know what I’m capable of, either. You’ve spent my entire life with a very specific image of me in your mind. You’re too simple-minded to understand that I’m not the little brat you think I am. There is a reason you failed. There is a reason you’ll continue to fail. You’re going to be locked up for a long, long time, and you’ll have to live with the knowledge that I am going to be everything you prevented me from being.”

“We’ll see. There are very bad people in this world. I would…hate to see what would happen if one of those bad people acted on their whims.”

“I’m sure you would. We all know your true feelings. We all know your true motives. You can’t behind this façade anymore.”

Ding!

You pulled your phone from your pocket. It was jail policy that visitors weren’t allowed to bring their phones in, but you were granted an exception. You couldn’t be more grateful, because now you got to deliver the news to him personally.

“Well, would you look at that! Looks like the kingdom is learning just how rotten to the core you really are,” you mused, flipping your phone around for Benjamin to read. “Involvement with sex trafficking? Benjamin, really, that’s no way for a King to act.”

“You little—” Benjamin lunged for you.

Frenchie surged forward, grabbing Benjamin by the collar of his jumpsuit. “If you think this will go over well with the sentencing hearing, you are sorely mistaken.”

Benjamin nearly growled as he looked at you, his eyes even madder. “If you think this is over, you’re mistaken.”

“No, I think I would be right. There is nothing you can do to hurt me anymore. You will never get that satisfaction again. I won’t let you.”

[nalyra-dreaming]

Alright one more, and I’m done for the day 😅 and shout out to @reloha for reminding me of them in her post about primitive vampires. Not sure if this is what she was referring to, I’m sorry if it isn’t 😆 But do you remember the mindless vampires Louis and Claudia encounter in Eastern Europe in the book IWTV? When you read them, did you yell out ZOMBIES VAMPIRES as I did?? The combination was so perfect; I hate how briefly AR talked about them. I think she probably wrote them in only to let Louis sees that this could be him if he keeps depriving himself of blood, and makes Louis thinks of Lestat, but! I wanted more details when I read it. I don’t remember much anymore. Do you remember anything else about them? I’m hesitant to go back and reread it because IWTV is such a sad book. I just can’t…

Hey dear!

I went and reread that part of this, and it is indeed very interesting to see the difference in how Louis and Claudia are treated by the villagers, as intelligent beings, and they even try to protect them, while being in terror of those... beings.

And Louis very jaded realization when he is fighting that ... revenant:

I was battling a mindless, animated corpse. But no more.

I think you may be right, that she put them in to show Louis and Claudia the other side of the coin, but she also put them in imho to connect to the myths and stories of the old world there, and Dracula. Louis and Claudia echo some of Jonathan Harker's journey there, complete with getting a crucifix thrust upon them. I remember thinking that very clever, because it connects them while also make it immediately clear that her vampires, or, at least the vampires that do not fall to superstition, are not mindless beasts. They're monsters, yes, but not beasts, which I always thought was an interesting distinction.

Interestingly enough Lestat talks about them in TVL, too, while traveling with Gabrielle:

Infinitely more interesting were the occasional rogues we glimpsed in the middle of society, lone and secretive vampires pretending to be mortal just as skillfully as we could pretend. But we never got close to these creatures. They ran from us as they must have from the old covens. And seeing nothing more than fear in their eyes, I wasn't tempted to give chase. Yet it was strangely reassuring to know that I hadn't been the first aristocratic fiend to move through the ballrooms of the world in search of my victims-the deadly gentleman who would soon surface in stories and poetry and penny dreadful novels as the very epitome of our tribe. There were others appearing all the time. But we were to encounter stranger creatures of darkness as we moved on. In Greece we found demons who did not know how they had been made, and sometimes even mad creatures without reason or language who attacked us as if we were mortal, and ran screaming from the prayers we said to drive them away. The vampires in Istanbul actually dwelt in houses, safe behind high wall and gates, their graves in their gardens, and dressed as all humans do in that part of the world, in flowing robes, to hunt the nighttime streets. Yet even they were quite horrified to see me living amongst the French and the Venetians, riding in carriages, joining the gatherings at the European embassies and homes. They menaced us, shouting incantations at us, and then ran in panic when we turned on them, only to come back and devil us again. The revenants who haunted the Mameluke tombs in Cairo were beastly wraiths, held to the old laws by hollow-eyed masters who lived in the ruins of a Coptic monastery, their rituals full of Eastern magic and the evocation of many demons and evil spirits whom they called by strange names.

Going by Lestat's recount these revenants as he calls them are not even rare... given IWTV was the first book it's not surprising that it was expanded later, but within canon context it raises the question whether Louis and Claudia maybe only expected these kind of vampires there, you know?

I found it very clever of the show to hint at the blood being connected to a vampire's mental health very early on, when the criminal biscuit event happens. Lestat says:

Eat before your reason or his heart fails us.

Lestat has seen the revenants of Les Innocents, and later even becomes something similar:

And what Louis could not describe in his story is what happened to me after, how for years I hunted on the edge of the human herd, a hideous and crippled monster, who could strike down only the very young or infirm. In constant danger from my victims, I became the very antithesis of the romantic demon, bringing terror rather than rapture, resembling nothing so much as the old revenants of les Innocents in their filth and rags. The wounds I'd suffered affected my very spirit, my capacity to reason.

Now, Lestat doesn't lose all his reason. He has "enough" reason to go to earth eventually, to heal.

But it is indeed interesting that her vampires are actually in constant danger of degenerating if not... "taking care of themselves" properly, and in the context of the show... it must have been hell to watch Louis weaken himself to the point where he almost couldn't hold a book.

Because Lestat knows what starvation does to vampires.

But yes, after this - Louis does, too.

(In the later books there are some references to still roaming vampires, but though those may be rogue they are probably not revenants, since the burnings errr.... cleaned those up. And only the strong ones survived. It also sheds an interesting light imho on Armand's habit of cleaning up wherever he's at. He didn't just kill revenants, but all the vampires he could find, true, but it makes you wonder if he maybe couldn't stand the reminder of those... "revenants of les Innocents in their filth and rags". And as the coven master...)

[starryoak]

Making this into its own post rather than a reblog and expanding on it, not to be an edgy Reddit atheist, but I’m extremely biased against anything that purports to explain the inner workings of the universe but can’t explain it scientifically, because I don’t believe in anything that can’t be scientifically proved and I can’t respect anyone who claims to be able to predict things and then can’t explain how their pet belief actually works in reality.

I’m sort of ok with religion because generally it’s nowadays restricted itself to explaining things that science doesn’t have the answer to yet, or can’t have the answer to, like what happens after death, and even if I’d argue the fact that many religions used to claim that factually inaccurate information about our world was true says things about its accuracy in the rest of its claims, I also understand religion is and has been an important part of humanity’s history and development and isn’t going to go away soon nor should we try to force it to go away given how important it is to people’s lives (and more importantly, all the human rights abuses getting rid of it would have to entail to be even mildly successful). But any belief system that says that it can predict things about our world definitively and provably accurately, should be able to prove it scientifically, and if it can’t it should be ignored for decision making purposes, because if it isn’t provably true, it should be considered false. Making decisions about things based on your whims is fine, but you shouldn’t pretend it’s anything other than your own opinions that are guiding the choices you’re making.

The fact is, if something is true, it is also by necessity provable to exist. That is just what I believe, that if something is a factual truth, it can be proven to be one. And astrology just has not been proven to accurately predict anything whatsoever and more importantly has failed replication in every reputable and reliable scientific study ever attempted.

Astrology has no mechanism of action that could even possibly explain what it purports to be true about the universe, no logical consistency in anything it claims to be true, no reliable central body of information, no falsifiability, it is almost the textbook definition of a pseudoscience. It is exclusively able to make predictions that ‘feel’ true based on the Barnum effect, and then allows one to think they have a reliable method of telling the ‘good’ people from the ‘bad’ based on whatever reasoning feels right at the time.

And the thing is, it’s easy to say “oh, it’s just for harmless fun”, and I get it! Silly tests and sorting categories are fun, it’s why people love doing it. But I don’t think making judgments about people based on things they can’t control is ever a good thing to regularly be doing, even for yourself. It’s just opening yourself up to all sorts of nasty biases to be reading about how all people born in the month of may or whatever are demons sent from hell that ruin every life they touch, and it opens you up to other forms of pseudoscience to be willing to believe in things without evidence.

Because even if you don’t believe it, lots of people do! Like, for real believe in it enough to make major life decisions on! In China people get told not to apply to jobs if they’re a certain astrological sign! There’s a superstition in Japan about women born in the year of the fire horse being husband-killers that was so fiercely believed in that the last year of the fire horse, 1966, the birth rate dropped 25%! In India, they have services for arranging marriages that use astrology to decide who they should marry, and I don’t think it takes much to guess how that could go wrong.

There’s just no reason that in 2022 we should be endorsing judgement of other people based on immutable circumstances of their birth because it’s ‘fun’, honestly.

[jariyala-string]

QUESTIONS ANSWERED.

Has anyone asked me any questions about Jariyala? Actually, yes… But only family and some friends. Most of these questions are ones that I think would be asked, so, I’ll just answer them here.

Read tags before reading this if you’re here for Saku content! This post doesn’t actually have anything to do with Sakuverse, I just mentioned him lol

What is ‘The String Of Jariyala’?

It’s complicated. Years, millennias ago, the Gods of Dochke created the first planet ever (to be known by them), Crenat. This planet was beautiful. Trees covered the lands, pools of water peppered across the plains and mountains. It was luxury, paradise. It was so beautiful, they wanted more planets like this. 27 total planets were created over the course of 900 years, each one having different people, cultures, landscapes, yet all of them were gorgeous. The greenery, the clear water, the birds that flew overhead. It was perfection.

But, of course, bad people must revoke others pleasure. Unknown beings came and attempted to colonise these planes, unaware of the almighty God, Callitri. Her power was like no other, she was the creator of Jariyala and majority of its contents. She created the other Gods using matter of space. She was the ultimate creator. It seemed like they wanted to challenge that, though.

Liviam, the person leading the attack on Jariyala taunted Callitri — leading to a battle. It was lengthy and tense, though the people on Crenat (where the battle took place) did not worry as they knew Callitri always came out victorious. And that she did, yet her power was stripped from her being. No more planets or supernatural life could be created, leaving the 27 planets to stand as they were.

There was another problem though. With the arrival of Liviam and her ‘minions’ from a different time line and dimension, it broke the time string in Jariyala. Time splits and threads connecting and straying from the planets were now visible. Although it created a fine piece of art, the time gaps were presumptuously dangerous.

What’s Vaularan and why is it important?

Vaularan is not technically anymore important than the other planets, though it’s the planet I’ve been putting the most care into. I don’t know why I’m so attached to it, I just am…

Who is Callitri?

A star. One singular star in an epitome of darkness. The only source of hope, the only light, the only life. This star developed for billions of years, until it finally exploded and a being was born. A woman. Long, white hair, pale skin, rose tinted cheeks. A radiating complexion, delicate features. She was Callitri.

Who are the Gods of Dochke?

Ah~ I couldn’t possibly answer this all in one post. Their lore and stories are so incredibly lengthy, I’d have to make a post for each individual God! In short, they are all ‘humans’ born from Solar matter. All of them contributed to the making of Jariyala, and each God has at lease one planet to their name. There are 11 Gods total. There is also a superstition with the people that the reason Jariyala was invaded was because they didn’t have an even number of Gods.

Why are you making a fantasy world?

To occupy myself for the next decade.

How long have you been doing it for?

Around 4-5 months. Not super long, although, I feel as if my progress in that time is quite commendable.

Do they speak English in Jariyala?

No. I am working on a universal language for them called ‘Faytir’.

How do you come up with names for planets, languages, people, etc.?

I’ll be honest… I just put a bunch of letters on a page and combine them together LOL. It usually comes out with a good name, though I should’ve really started the language first as I’ve made it harder for myself.

Are you going to turn the story of Jariyala into a book?

Hm. I have thought about it, yet I’m still not so sure. I think I’d have to really think about it. But, the chances of me doing so are low.

What made you want to start a fantasy world?

*Sigh*. I listen to a lot of ASMR boyfriend type audios on YouTube… yes, I know. It’s strange. But, if I didn’t, I wouldn’t of started doing this. There’s this one VA called @/zsakuva, his story audios are INSANELY good btw. He focuses more on lore and not gushy mushy romance, so I’d recommend checking him out! But, yes, Saku has been making his own world for 10 years I believe? And the amount of progress he’s made and the WORLD he’s made is fascinating. I was so unbelievably impressed with what he has done, and my mind was like ‘woahhh I wanna do that!’. So, here I am! Thank you, Saku! (If he for some reason sees this plsplspls I need another Xanthus audio… his story is so interesting!)

Do they have holidays like Earth do?

Yes! But, not like Christmas and Halloween and all the other corny, expensive holidays.

Each year, in June (I haven’t thought of names for months yet), they have the ‘Soldena Xyomen’ [pronounced sul•den•uh uhks•yo•men]. The Soldena Xyomen translates to ‘Summer Starting’ and the event is literally that. The Jariyalan’s LOVE soldena. The food, the dancing, the performances. Everything about soldena is exciting for them. So, the seventh Dochken God (Ywoei) decided to make it a holiday.

Another large holiday is the opposite of Soldena Xyomen, it’s Kaopana Xyomen (Winter Starting). Again, they love kaopana for the same reasons they love soldena. There are more holidays, but they’re still a WIP.

So, that’s all the questions I can think of for now! If anymore get asked, then I will add them to this list.

[redgoldblue]

[@itwoodbeprefect submitted:] showing up late with starbucks etc for the wip tag game: can i. can i say 1, 2 AND 7 for h50? because i was going to say 1 and 2 from the things that hadn’t been picked yet and then i saw 7. (and also. if you want to. i’d love to hear anything at all about huggy & pete!)

-

me? turn down an opportunity to talk about my wips? it’s even less likely than you’d think (also tbf i very much did also send you four so. fair turnaround)

Spinning Faster Than The Plane That Took You (I Don’t Want To Miss You Like This)

You’d expect this to be post-Aloha, wouldn’t you? but ha! it’s not! tricked and fooled! it’s intra-Ka I'o, which is a far more depressing place to be. Basically there’s this one very very brief shot of Danny, when he first hears Steve’s voice over the phone after he’s been dark in Mexico for months - this one - and the sheer emotion Scott Caan conveyed in those three seconds pushed me into writing an entire ficlet of Danny’s POV on those months. it’s. well let’s be honest it’s sad and one of those fics that comes out of the woodwork to challenge my assertion that I don’t write angst. But we all know that plotline ends in hotel-bed sharing h/c (…as I’ve already written) so it’s okay. also i know i said they were all / in the heading but there’s actually a decent chance this will be one of my trademark ‘could be & or / shrug emoji up to you’ specials.

Danny usually changes his phone background pretty regularly, cycling through new and old photos of his kids with occasional cameos from other family and/or ohana members. When Steve left, it had been a shot of Grace teaching Charlie to balance on a surfboard at the edge of Steve’s beach, with Steve in his stupid low-slung swim shorts hovering just out of arm’s reach watching them. It stays as that for one week, two weeks, a month, two months and more. Until Danny’s pushing down the feeling that it might be an ‘in memoriam’ photo every time his phone lights up, and still can’t bring himself to change it, because what if the next time it lights up with news that Steve’s safe? What if keeping this moment of Steve at his most antithetical to whatever it is he’s doing right now – soft and happy and paternal, with sandburn the greatest danger in mind; but simultaneously with a stance borne from exactly the same instinct that drove him to Mexico in the first place – concern for and protection of his family, whether necessary or deserved or neither –  what if that’s somehow the only thing reaching across the miles between them and tying Steve to life? It’s a stupid thought, and Danny should know better by now than to tie his anxiety to stupid superstitions, but any time he’s clicked into his photos he’s just been presented with the absence of Steve from the last months. The absence of any photos from the last months, really, apart from a couple of Charlie, because when you spend your days working and your nights trying to stop yourself from falling back into a bottle and from there into a pattern of alcoholism you thought you’d left behind ten years ago, there’s not a lot of photo opportunities.

(Four) Seasons of Love

Okay, this one is a lot more usual fare. I haven’t worked on it for a while bc state of disrepair’s been taking up the longh50fic portion of my brain but I will go back to it eventually bc. undercover as honeymooners! they’re undercover as honeymooners! at a resort! to catch a husband-wife jewel thief team! Steve comes into it going 'oh, this is the perfect opportunity to push one of us (Danny) into some kind of action on the thing we both obviously know about but won’t admit (that we’re in love with each other)’ while Danny, who’s POV, spends the entire time going 'why is Steve being so absolutely painful in aggravating my definitely unrequited love/lust that he definitely doesn’t know about’ until Steve finally breaks and calls him an idiot. There’s a creepy fish lamp (which is a real thing in the actual Four Seasons Lanai suites, where they are) that Danny instantly develops a grudge against.

“The point is-” Danny said, and was about to hit Steve in the chest with the back of his hand to emphasise said point when, in rapid succession, three things happened: the boat hit an outlandishly large wave, Danny lost his footing and almost his champagne, and Steve’s quick reflexes and occasional chivalrous instincts kicked in. The combined result of which was that all of a sudden Steve was holding two champagne flutes with one hand and Danny with the other.

Well, that was a slightly unfair description. Steve’s hand was on Danny, specifically on his lower back, but he was also using his entire arm and somehow most of his torso to hold him.

Meaning Danny was essentially plastered against Steve.

And, this being a reciprocal relationship, Steve was plastered against Danny.

And if anything, the hand on his back seemed to be pressing him even closer.

 Behind them, someone let out an ‘aww’, and Steve’s expression twisted up into something that was half-smirk and half-fond grin. He held the champagne flutes out to Danny, and Danny took them numbly and without protest, because his brain was spending all its focus telling his body not to react to having Steve pressed against him through what he was rapidly realising had to be the world’s thinnest t-shirt.

Doing anything without protest was a mistake when it came to Steve. Danny was reminded of this fact when the next thing Steve did with his now-free hand was raise it to Danny’s face, lean down, and kiss him.

The Irritating, Annoying, Infuriating, (Effective) Seduction Techniques of One Steven J. McGarrett

Okay, so this one was directly inspired by Deus Ex Girlfriend sending me round the bend, and doesn’t currently have much other than the title and what-will-end-up-as-the-blurb actually written down, but it’s on the back burner of my mind as a Fun Easy one to fill up one of my Fun Easy slots next year. it starts out with Danny accidentally getting Steve to taste pasta sauce off Danny’s fingers and ends up with Steve hand-feeding Danny Indian takeaway because like I said Deus Ex Girlfriend drove me insane. the aforementioned blurb:

Danny manages to gather enough breath to ask, “How…?”

“Oh, it’s good, Danny,” Steve husks, low in the back of his throat, maintaining steady eye contact.

[…]

He definitely wasn’t talking about the sauce.

Steve didn’t actually get nicknamed 'Smooth Dog’ for nothing.

Huggy & Pete

my best friends Huggy and Pete…. Pete starts fairly unobtrusively hanging around the Pits every afternoon, and Huggy’s like… okay. sure. guess I’m babysitting now. and then notices that Pete seems to be taking specifically a lot of interest in the queer denizens of the Pits, and goes 'ah. okay. I’m queersitting’. Eventually Pete comes out as nb to Huggy before anyone else. Basically this is just an excuse for me to write a) genderqueer Pete and b) Aunty Huggy Bear and his Known Queer Safe Space The Pits

“Who’s that?”

Huggy follows her gaze to the corner booth, where a stocky woman in straight jeans and a collared shirt with an open-to-closed button ratio to rival any of Starsky’s is sitting. She’s got one arm flung out along the back of the seat and the other around the curvaceous, dark-haired lady sitting close enough to in her lap that her flared skirt is draping over both their legs. “That’s Bertha,” he tells Pete with a deliberate blandness. “And her girlfriend, Andi.” He doesn’t really expect a bad reaction from a kid with Pete’s fashion - and nickname - tastes, who spends half their time around Starsky and Hutch and who clearly came to the Pits with some kinda crisis of her own, but Hug hadn’t got where he’d got by not being careful. He didn’t get where he’d got with bad instincts, neither, which was backed up well enough when Pete’s response was a breathy, “She’s so cool.”

(also, just for you:)

“Ugh. My guinea pig never has to think about this stuff.”

Huggy still wasn’t sure precisely what the stuff in question was, but that’d play out eventually. Meantimes, “You have a guinea pig?”

Pete looked up at him, brightening slightly. “Yeah. Uncle Starsky gave her to me. He’d called her Louise, but that was a stupid name. She’s called Flamer now.”