#the choking thing is its own deal and AGAIN listening in context tells you what you need to know

[jlf23tumble]

Have you listened to the Zach Sang interview yet? Louis is protecting his closet yet some peeps are still annoyed that Louis mentioned Freddie but anyways good for him for not give an F. and WOW love the fact that he destroyed the theory that he was leaking stuff here, some peeps in the larr nation in Tumblr are baffled and mad LMAO. Not only that, he denied the choking allegations, just went in the barricade for the adrenaline. It's nice seeing people here fuming lmao. He was high af too

I *did* listen, and I love how high he was during it, too, geddit, Loueh! I truly TRULY hate it when I see edited pieces, or randos misinterpreting shit, so yeah, I checked it out in real time while I finished out my workday, and I might listen again while I'm walking tomorrow. I love to see him correcting shit in real time, like yeah, come on, tell me FOR REAL how Freddie is somehow not some kind of problem, j/k, you can't, nobody has, nobody CAN, lookin' at YOU, new sock with a mighty familiar flower blog connection

[staruplatinum]

Stay With Me

I co-wrote this with @risottostitties a while back, and I just got around to posting it now. She’s a god at writing Abbacchio btw, and this was written for my oc/Leone but I edited it so everyone can enjoy 🎉

summary: reader comforting drunk Abbacchio after he confesses his past.

It’s angsty but has a cute ending. (abbacchio says I love you for the first time!) enjoy!

3.2K words

Abbacchio was on the floor, surrounded by bottles of alcohol. Was he crying? “Jesus Christ.” You panicked, dropping your things on the floor and rushing to his side. What the hell happened? He must have been doing this for a while now because you could see how bloodshot his eyes were, even though they were only opened a little bit.

“Fuck! Leone ! What -“ you were so confused, and scared. You worried he might have gotten alcohol poisoning, but that was just your “worry-wart” mind and you knew you were just overreacting. You took deep breaths and calmed yourself down, taking a deep breath before laying down on the floor across from Abbacchio.

You understood it now, he obviously had some sort of unresolved trauma. If there was one thing you knew about trauma survivors.. it was to never touch them in a state like this because they may not want it. You had to respect that since you didn’t know what you were dealing with here. It broke your heart to see him cry, but he needed someone right now and you needed to approach this cautiously.

“I don’t know what happened, but when you want to talk, I’ll be right here. “ You said, smiling softly at him. You needed him to know that you were serious about.. helping him through whatever this was. You wanted to be there for him, to be the girlfriend he needed.

“I’ll lay here all night, if I have to.” Frankly, while this was something you didn’t expect, you were just happy to see him alive. You were so worried that he might have been dead. Your mind started going to the more logical side of things. He needed food and water or else he’d be puking soon if he hadn’t already. That, and he’d have an awful headache in the morning. You weren’t going to leave his side though. Instead, you reached your hand out across the cold floor, hoping he’d hold yours and ground himself, in a sense. You didn’t think he was sober enough for that, though.

It took Abbacchio a second to even register the fact that someone had come into his apartment. When did you get here? He must have made you worried... he could add that to the ever growing list of why Leone Abbacchio was a disgusting waste of oxygen.

"You shouldn't stay. I'm a filthy ex cop and a pathetic excuse of a man. I'll only drag you down and make you hate me if you stay. You deserve someone better, not someone who got a good man killed because he took a fucking bribe and ruined his life." Abbacchio choked out, the alcohol causing some slurring of his words and also removing his filter.

It took a minute before he realized exactly what he said to you. Fuck, he told you about it. He told you about his partner and now you were going to fucking hate him. Would it have been better to keep lying? Probably. He could have at least prolonged your relationship, instead of sabotaging it less than a month in. He really was a pathetic piece of work, wasn't he?

"You deserve better, you deserve so much better. Fuck I'm... I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. I don't deserve you, I don't deserve to be here while a good fucking man is dead. He had a wife and a kid! Fuck, its my fault that kid is growing up without his dad. I should have been the one shot, not him. Fuck!"

Abbacchio was starting to talk in circles, tears leaking from his eyes as he sobbed and curled in on himself. He didn't deserve your kindness. He didn't deserve you right now, laying on the floor with him and being so heart breakingly kind.

"I'm going to fail you too in the end. You'll get hurt if you stay, I know you will. I fuck up every good thing that's ever happened to me and I know that you'll hate me eventually. So just... please, don't let me do that to you. You deserve so much better-" Abbacchio's words were cut off by a heaving sob.

He wanted to beg you to stay though, beg you not to leave him and not to hate him but he couldn't do that. He didn't deserve to be happy and he knew that, and he didn't want to guilt you into staying with him by being an emotional pussy. You deserved better than someone who needed alcohol to work through anything like this. You deserved a good man who could give you a house and children like you wanted.

Anything Abbacchio gave you would be tainted by him. A house, a marriage, children, he'd somehow find a way to ruin all of that. Someone as kind and beautiful as you didn't deserve that. All he ever wanted to do was help people. Even joining the mafia he wanted to help people. But he managed to fuck everything up no matter what he did. He was a loser who couldn't even keep his one dream in life after he achieved it and you didn't deserve that.

"Fuck, I-... Fuck!" Abbacchio didn't know what else to say, having already made a fool of himself. "I'm sorry, I'm so sorry I fucking... dragged you into this. You shouldn't be here right now you should be having fun. Not fucking... laying on the floor with some alcoholic loser..."

Ah. So that’s what it was. You listened to him, and sat up, pulling his head into your lap as he cried.

“Shh. Shh. It’s okay. I have you.” You said, trying to help him control his sobs. You knew it was falling on deaf ears though, as he continued to go on about everything. You remained silent though, letting him vent it out. “Leone.” you said, your tone more serious than any other time you had spoken to him. “Leone listen to me. You aren’t a bad person and you aren’t a corrupt cop. What you did was not something that every other police man didn’t do in the past.” You began to say. While you didn’t know the context of what the bribe was for, you could tell that deep down Leone was reluctant about it. “Your friend getting shot was not your mistake. If he chose to take a bullet for you, then that’s on him. When you are in that line of work you should expect death at every corner - the same as you do now with being in the mafia.”

It honestly wasn’t your place to say any of this but the more he went on about it the more you realized that he didn’t need to feel as guilty. He wasn’t blowing it out of proportion and losing someone was never easy, but you didn’t want him to have to cry like this constantly when his partner chose to save him.

“I don’t know what exactly happened that day, and I’ll never know exactly how you feel either. I have my own traumas to deal with. But what I do know is that your friend wouldn’t have wanted you to be like this. He saved you for a reason. If that reason is for you to join the mafia and protect Bruno? Then so be it. But you have a purpose here, Leone. As much as you don’t think you deserve anything ‘good’ in your life - you do.”

You ran your fingers through his hair as you heard his sobs start to die down a little. That was a good sign, at least. It was quite honestly making you tear up a little, seeing him cry like this. You had loved him for a while now and you wanted to be... so much more doting. But what could you do? They had only dated a month, at that.

“And you can try your hardest but I promise you I am one stubborn girl. You make me happy, even at your worst so it’s gonna be hard to scare me off or make me leave.” It was true. You could be stubborn at the best of times. Maybe a lesser woman would have ran away after seeing Abbacchio like this. But not you. This only proved your love for him.

Frankly, if anyone left him in this state then they’d be the lowest scum of the earth. He needed someone right now, and you wanted to be here.

“I want to help you, Leone. I want to be your girlfriend. I don’t care what the future holds for us I just want us both to be happy. I’m not going to let anything get in the way of that. You deserve happiness. You aren’t dragging me down in the slightest ”

There was more you wanted to say, but what? What could you say? You loved him, - that she knew -but he probably didn’t want to hear that right now - and that was fair. You knew your words were coming out choppy anyways, but now that he was somewhat calm, your concerns were on something else.

Leaning down, you placed a kiss on the top of his head before brushing the hair out of his face. His sobs died down completely, only various sniffles echoing in the room.

Abbacchio reacted to you putting his head on your lap by turning over and immediately trying to hide his face by pressing it into your stomach as he clung to you. He didn't want you to see how pathetic he looked as he shook and sobbed. Your words were too kind, he knew he didn't deserve them. Couldn't you see how much of a fuck up he was? Or maybe you did, but then why were you being so heartbreakingly kind? You couldn't seriously be accepting of all this, could you? The thought made him choke out another sob, clinging tighter.

Did he want you to hate him? To leave him? Or to stay? He didn't know any more, but for right now all he wanted was just to be here with you. He felt your hands start to card tenderly through his hair and despite himself the tension began to fade from his body. Your soothing voice and gentle affection starting to coax the sadness from him, causing his sobbing to eventually wane into the occasional hiccup and sniffle. His tears dried too, but he knew his face would be red and puffy and ugly to look at so he still tried to hide as best he could. " 'M sorry..." He mumbled again, half muffled by your clothes. He didn't want to move, he didn't want to go anywhere. This felt too nice, too safe, to even consider getting up.

“I’m going to get up and get you some water, yeah? I don’t want you having an awful hangover tomorrow.” You said, gently moving his head up and standing from the floor. You tried your very hardest to lift him up. He was sluggish from all the booze he drank but he could still move around. That was a good sign, at least.

He could feel you carefully freeing yourself from his grip and standing up. "Wait! Where..?" Were you really going to get up and leave him like this? He still had no idea what he wanted but if you left he'd definitely break again. His breathing started to pick up again until you explained that you were just taking him to their room. Their room. He liked the sound of that. Their room, their apartment, it was all really nice. He allowed himself to be helped up, leaning on you heavily as you guided him to their room. It was difficult to walk right now, swimming in alcohol as he was, but he tried not to let himself become too much of a burden on you like this. You were so small compared to him.

“Come on, baby.” He was heavy, but you let him rest his weight on your shoulders as you heaved him over to the bedroom. Once he was on the bed, you laid him back, taking his pants off. You knew he didn’t really sleep in Pyjamas because he got hot easily. Hell - sometimes he didn’t even wear a shirt. It was little things like this that you remembered, and you wanted to make him as comfortable as possible. You covered him in the duvet, before heading to the kitchen for some water. You knew he should probably eat something too.. but what? You knew Abbacchio would crash soon, so you opted to make him something light and easy on the stomach - some toast. That was easy enough anyways.

He knew he should be the one helping and protecting YOU, not the other way around. But he didn't complain as you helped him out of his clothes and helped him get comfortable in the bed. It was cold without you there, but it was comfortable. He supposed he could handle this for a bit. He watched you get up again, opening his mouth to protest when you explained again that you were just getting him some water and something to eat. Right water. He hadn't had anything to drink except alcohol all day, and barely ate anything too. He needed to have something otherwise he'd be sick tomorrow. He knew this, and so did you. So he waited.

When the toast was ready you put some butter on it and tossed the knife in the sink, you’d clean it up afterwards. Walking to the bedroom you placed the toast on the nightstand, helping him sit up.

Abbacchio tried his very hardest not to sleep until you came back so he could make sure you stayed, and when you returned with toast and a glass of water he sat up. Abbacchio felt his head spinning at the sudden movement, but he tried his best not to get sick, leaning heavily on you for support while he nibbled on the toast and sipped at the water. He didn't have an appetite at all but he knew he needed to try and finish this otherwise you would be disappointed.

“You have to drink this okay?” you said. You felt a bit better when he drank some of the water. Good. “I un- I Made you toast. I don’t know what you like to eat on it but I just put some butter. You need something in your system or you’ll be puking everywhere - which I don’t mind, I’ll clean it all for you. I just.. want to make this easier on you, if I can.” you hummed, placing a stray strand of hair behind your ear.

You looked at him as you sat on the edge of the bed. Your heart hurt, genuinely. You loved this man and it bothered you that he was so hurt by this. You just wished there was more you could do.

"-re too good for me." He slurred, resting his head on your shoulder for a minute while he took a break from trying to eat.

"I love you so much. You're so... perfect. You're too nice. You deserve the world and I... I want to give it to you. I'm trying. I promise I'm trying I really-" Abbacchio felt himself choking up again as he took a drink from the water, coughing slightly before righting himself. He was trying. It might not look like it now but he really was trying. He'd been trying for a long time and he needed you to know that.

"I promise I'm... trying. To be better. So please don't leave." He repeated, vision growing hazy as he looked down at the half eaten toast. He felt... so tired after everything. Exhausted really. He just wanted to lay down and sleep it all off.

You tried to be as calm as you could, helping abbacchio drink the water and eat. He didn’t have to eat the whole thing, considering his stomach probably would hurt or it could cause him to puke, but you were still happy with what he ate. You almost dropped the plate when you heard Abbacchio utter the words I love you.

Fuck. You didn’t know what to think. Your heart was telling you to drop everything and kiss him passionately!! Tell him how you’ve loved him since you first laid eyes on him and how you want to marry him! But you stopped yourself.

Instead, you smiled and rubbed his arm gently before standing up.

“You’re drunk baby.” you said softly, pressing a kiss to his sweaty forehead. You tried not to “believe” what he said anyways. People say a lot of things when they’re drunk. Doesn’t mean they’re always true. Still, you wanted to believe.

“Hey hey.. it’s okay it’s okay. I know you’re trying Leone - that’s what matters.” you said, hugging him gently. “I’m not going to leave you, ever. Alright? I promise.” your hand brushed some stray hairs out of his face, and you smiled at him. He looked.. so sad.

It hurt you , to see him like this.

“I’m just going to put this dish away and turn the lights off, then I’ll come to bed. Okay?”

You needed to make sure that he understood you weren’t leaving ; but you couldn’t just drop here

When he nodded, You quickly disposed of the remaining toast and put the dish in the sink. There was a small pile up of dishes, and while that was a pet peeve of yours- you’d do it tomorrow. Right now abbacchio needed you. The dishes could wait.

You returned to the bed, quickly slipping on a t-shirt and taking your pants off before cuddling Abbacchio. You were the big spoon this time and that was fine, you really didn’t mind at all. As tired as he was, he still seemed somewhat agitated. Which was fair considering everything he went through. You paused for a moment - unsure of what else you could do, but then you had an idea. Leaning up on your elbow, you used your hand to gently caress his head while humming a soft lullaby to him.

When you were sure he was “almost” out, you pulled away and kissed his head once more.

“I love you too, Leone...” you whispered.

[vampiresuns]

Of Birthdays and Broken Music Boxes | For Valhallanrose

✴︎ OF BIRTHDAYS AND BROKEN MUSIC BOXES ✴︎

1.2k words. In which it’s Tamryn’s birthday and Anatole asks him out.

Tamryn, whose birthday is today, belongs to @valhallanrose​, as does his sister Zelda. Happy birthday to the boy and merry jemmaverse to us.

There’s some background mentions of Zelparo. Only potential cw is mentions of height.

The song from the music box is supposed to be Tchaikovsky’s Valse Sentimentale, Op. 5, n. 6.

“You do understand Tamryn is the one who’s blind, right?”

Anatole put down his cup of coffee a little too loudly. “What is that supposed to even mean, Zelda?”

“Means I’m the one who has to sit here and suffer while you do goo-goo eyes at him while he does that fucking soliloquy,” Zelda raised an eyebrow at him, taking a sip of tea with an abnormal amount of judgement in the action. “He’s oblivious but I’m sure not.”

“I’m just excited to meet people who are passionate about things they like! Everyone’s dramatic in my family, I just think it’s endearing!”

What he didn’t say was that Tamryn was funny, in his opinion. He was funny, interesting, he liked how he concentrated when he fixed something, and while Magnus freaked him out, the rise in his pulse wasn’t just because there was an entire peregrine falcon in his vicinity. It was also out of the way Tamryn put his hand on his shoulder and assured him it was alright.

He was awkwardly charming, making Anatole smile to himself, in spite of himself. Though he kept insisting he didn’t make goo-goo eyes and that Zelda was no better, given how things have gone down with Amparo.

Zelda had moved onto listening to the origins of his self-proclaimed ‘rehabilitation from considering his friends’ older brothers’. An arbitrary rule, he was aware, but he was in the mood to make excuses and be thankful Tamryn was not around. Or so he thought. He was proved wrong by him walking into the kitchen shirtless, without realising Zelda and himself were talking about him.

✴︎ ✴︎ ✴︎

The older he got, the older playing cat-and-mouse with his own feelings got. Not only has he gotten better at dealing with vulnerability with age and time, but he’s also bloomed into his self. As someone who cannot help being himself, and as someone who did not do things half-way, Anatole eventually grew tired of his own indecision and his own anxieties. 

Of course, he couldn’t just will them away, but he supposed branching out and just trying to test the waters couldn’t be that bad. Despite everything, he was sure of himself and he knew he had every right to be. He’s competent, intelligent, well-read, funny, a bit weird but nothing which didn’t add to the charm, passionate, dedicated, a good friend, stubborn beyond recognition, but wasn’t that the nature of both water and the Sun? He’ll be fine; whatever gut churning feeling which said otherwise could go take a walk. 

If he listened to those every time they decided to rear their heads he’d be nowhere. Is he nowhere? No. He’s come a long way, and he’d go even beyond just because he could. Trust Anatole to find something which acted as a way to tell him that perhaps he can’t do something for his spite to drive him to do that thing twice. 

 It’s always been a little harder for him when he discovered himself falling into someone in time, for who they were. He’s been at this same place before, however, so he thought he had learnt a thing or two about it.

Anatole knew Tamryn’s birthday would be soon enough. A birthday present was essential. Wanting to give him a gift with some thought behind it, he separated different blocks of time, on different days, so he’d have enough time to scavenge around for a gift. 

The lucky choice came from a music box store in Centre City. He had been looking for a kit to ensemble a music box, and if that failed, he’d ask Nadia with help to pick the pieces to do the same with a clock. Or a pocket watch, whichever was easier to get by as the last day of February and the first of March came by. 

The store had had no such kits, but it did have a broken music box which the owner had imported from a city on the northern side of the Clouded Mountains. 

“It came broken, and I haven’t gotten around to do the repairs, Consul. I apologise.” 

Anatole took the box in his hands. With his thumb he followed the hand-painted patterns on its front. “Which song does it play?” 

The purveyor told him, a light heat coming to Anatole’s cheeks upon discovering it was one of his favourites. A ¾ time signature slow piece from a composer from a Country beyond the Strait of Seals. 

“Lucky me,” Anatole said, “are the pieces to fix it hard to come by?” 

“No, at all. Despite how far away the little box comes, it doesn’t use very unorthodox methods — and, of course, needless to say I am more than willing to fix it for you, Consul Rad—“ 

“Oh, please. You are very generous, my friend, but you needn’t. I want it broken. It’s a gift for someone who likes to tinker around and repair things. It would have all the more meaning.” 

“I didn’t know you had tinkering fans in your family.” 

Anatole let the purveyor be wrong.

✴︎ ✴︎ ✴︎

He wrapped the gift himself in Mulberry paper. The bow was made with velvet ribbon and had a couple of loops. He did a second bow with an organza ribbon — Tamryn wasn’t going to be able to see it, but he would be able to touch it. 

The music box itself did not have any texture. The paint had been polished and lacquered over it, but Anatole didn’t mind having to describe it for Tamryn. Inside the box, he had located a pouch with the missing pieces. The music box shop owner had provided them for him. 

As he described it for Tamryn, told him where it came from, the music it was supposed to play and that it was broken, Anatole took in his face and the ways his hands moved over it. His joyful expression, the way his lips curved. His hitched breath and the amazement as he explored his gift. 

“The music piece is one of my favourites. I don’t have anything to play it for you, but I picked it because I would want to listen to it, if you’d want to… You can change the part that plays music for another one of course—“ 

Tamryn replied on impulse. “I could literally kiss you right now.” 

Anatole choked on air.

“Would you prefer a no-kissing thank you?” He shifted his weight between his feet.

“Actually… and I say this outside of the context of this gift and your birthday. Do you want to go on a date with me, Tamryn?” 

He turned to him, mouth slightly ajar. Silence settled for long seconds between them. When the shoe didn’t drop, Tamryn said: 

“Wait, seriously? Why?” 

Anatole would ease into finding his surprise funny if he wasn’t so nervous himself.

“Should I take that as a no?” 

“No, no!” Tamryn said, leaving the music box aside. “I respect your decision and I wholeheartedly accept, but are you sure?” 

“Yes— which is why I asked. Are you about saying yes?” 

“I just don’t get it.” 

“Why not?” Anatole asked with a smile in his voice. Tamryn was very cute when he flustered, and his enthusiasm had placated some of his nerves.

“I’m just always confused about why would anyone ask me out, let alone someone as interesting as you.” 

Silence fell between them again. Anatole let out a soft ‘oh’, followed by a heartfelt, bubbling laugh. 

“Tamryn, lean down a bit.” 

He obliged. Anatole tiptoed to kiss his cheek, lingering just a second longer than necessary.

“Happy birthday. Are you free next Friday? Around 5-ish? I think I have an idea.” 

[amatchforyourmadness]

as stars that wait to fall (in love)

Chapter: 1/?

Pairing: Geralt of Rivia × star!Jaskier | Dandelion

Words:2268

Summary:

“Here’s what Geralt was looking for: a space rock for one of Yennefer’s potions. Here’s what he finds: the girl Destiny-bound to him and a man dressed in flashy clothing that throws a handful of mud at his face.”

In which Yennefer asks for a favor that leads to Geralt getting stuck with a feral star, which just happens to be adored by a little girl in a blue cape and hunted for the youth-granting delicacy that is his heart.

Stardust AU

[ AO3 link ]

————

It is all Yennefer’s fault, really, as usual.

He had been listening, but not quite. It was a habit, really, because Yennefer could either talk at length about matters of most value and importance, worthy of the most deep and thoughtful inquiries, or complain about a person of a place that was either a bitch or an asshole and several offenses she had endured bravely and his mind would wonder to when was the last time he had given Roach an apple, because she was starting to act out on him. By the end of her lengthy talk, he had been nodding thoughtfully while thinking how likely was he to find apples on the kitchen of the — What had it been this time? An Earl? — whoever’s castle Yennefer now had influenced into her hold in his way out in the morning.

“So you’ll do it then?” She had asked, eagerly, and smiling bright and just this side of looking like she was about to drag him into shit.

He had blinked confusedly.

“Hm?”

“The star.” The mage says, smile dying immediately as she figures out he had not paid attention to most if not all of what she had said. He almost feels guilty, but she still looks like she’s about to drag him into shitl. “The one that fell. You’ll find it for me?”

“Hm…”

He tries to wither out of it, he really does. He asks her to consider one might have taken it, or animals might have brushed it away or simple things like rain and wind could have easily moved it and he had a child surprise to look for, by her own threat no least, whose life was very much endangered in the current context they find themselves in, two months from the fall of Cintra, and it’s stupid to think that a bit of stardust might be so powerful and dangerous that it needs to be stolen away before the Empire gets their hands on it, but Yennefer had given him no room to ask and no room to talk back, pressing the matter as of utmost urgency.

As always, no one has ever won a battle against Yennefer, not of wits and not of any other kind.

“Just go out there and get me the star or I’ll hire someone else that will!”

And that had been it.

———

Now it has been at least a week if not two since the star fell, and Geralt is not sure if he has any luck on finding a rock in the ground so long after it fell. He follows the directions in which Yennefer says the star might have fallen, and does so with no small amount of complaining to Roach. He certainly is not interested in space rock and the matter of urgency has rather led him away from the Path, from good coin and beast-slaying.

He finds a small village at the edge of Brugge creatively entitled Wall in honour of its one grandiose feature, and they say that not far from there, where the remains of their country meet Sodden and Temeria, there had been a great impact, so strong it had shook the small stone wall at the edge of the village and loosened a few of the stones from their places, and that the impact had been followed by a brilliant ball of fire that had been the end of a good deal of the forest there, trees reduced to smoking rests of logs.

That has him about ready to go, but then there’s the talk of silly horror stories told amongst the children — the unruly boys that had ran to quell their curiosity instead of listening to their parent’s warnings — about a monster inside a crater in the ground, that had shone at night as if he was made of light and groaned in pain, grunting ‘help me, help me’ until he lured a girl, equally as strange and disobedient for being out at the woods at that hour, until she slid into the crater, the glow had died down and she had not climbed out again.

Unruly boys were also cowardly boys, by nature, no matter how curious. They ran back home instead of being made the next snack.

Geralt lifts himself onto Roach’s saddle and rides to where the smell of burned wood still lingers.

———

As soon as he steps past the burned trees, Roach’s reigns in his hands and the mare close to his side, he can’t say he’s not impressed by the destruction. He walks around the crater, taking in the damage a bit of space rock can do. The earth nearer to the edge of the crater is still burned, and he looks for a way down as much as he looks for a hint of the stone inside it.

He stops, glancing to the trees and Roach’s ears twitch the same direction. He looks at her as if to ask for her opinion before following the sound of shuffling feet back into the woods, atent to the smallest sounds. He can hear whispering, an urgent discussion being spoken in half-voices, and he takes large steps towards them until he finally finds the origin of it.

He frowns at the girl, small and pale, with green eyes and ashen blond hair, wrapped around a deep blue cape staring at him, weaponless buy somehow still fierce. Geralt opens his mouth, ready to question who the fuck was her, and it’s in barely a second he regrets it, when he is hit with a clump of burned earth and tiny rocks on the face and some of the vile mixture hits him square in the face.

“Go, Fiona, run!” Hisses the voice of what no doubt is a man that probably had been hidden behind her.

“I’m not leaving you here with him!“

“I won’t hurt either of you.” Geralt says, raising his hand in front of him, trying to placate the wrath of whatever gremlin was sharing the woods with the blonde kid who had very much not been eaten by any sort of monster. 

“Don’t touch her!” The man hisses when he stumbles ever so closely to their chatter and before he knows it, someone is biting his arm.

“Fuck!” He curses, stepping back to get his arm free and hitting his back against Roach in the process, only to be hit by get another clod thrown at him and his mare. “Hey, don’t throw mud at my horse!”

“Just go away and leave us alone!”

“I’m looking for a star! Tell me where to find it and I’ll leave you alone, it must have fallen somewhere around here—” He blinks away the mud, wiping the remains of dirt to his eyes before he finally gets a good look at his attacker, sprawled on the ground with his left leg in a weird angle, heaving profusely. “Why are you sitting there like that?“

“He broke his leg.” The girl informs, trying to pull the man upright again. Maybe he’s her uncle, or her cousin. Maybe they’ve been attacked. That would explain the hostility.

“I am looking for a star.” He states again. “It fell around here.”

“Yes, and I broke my leg, you idiot.” Curses the man once more, and the little girl can’t help but give him a look that’s half annoyed and half wondering what of the situation he’s not getting. Geralt must say, he does not get most of it, and frowns. He can see his leg is broken, and he might be inclined to help if it doesn’t earn him another handful of earth to be thrown at him, but he doesn’t see what that has to do with the star. “I broke my leg when I fell. There, is that clear enough for you?”

It takes him yet a moment, before the pieces adjust themselves into his mind and he raises his brows.

“You’re the star?”

“And you’re a clodpoll.” That’s not an answer, but Geralt supposed that he did spell it out to what the star considers his own limit, and now there’s nothing to give voice to but enraged curses. “And a horse’s ass, a ninny, a numbskull, a lackwit and a coxcomb and a— what the fuck are you trying me for, you bastard?!” He says, laying a good kick to Geralt’s gut with his good leg as Geralt pulls his arm and binds his wrist with the light silver links Yennefer had provided him, backing away before he could get his shoulder bitten too — the man was like a wild animal. “What’s this?” The man says, shaking his wrist to take in the glittering silver chain at the same time his charge asks:

“What do you think you are doing?” The girl has been sparked into action once more by righteous fury, pushing Geralt away (and he lets her, even though she can’t do more than tickle him), but that doesn’t make him any more inclined to let go to the band of enchanted chain. She takes in the sight of his bound wrists and tries to tug it off.

“Taking him south with me. I made a promise I’m already starting to regret to a sorceress that would have my head if I don’t return with the star.” He says, first to the girl as matter of fact as usual before he turns his focus somewhat embarrassedly about the whole situation, before offering. “Nothing personal, I was looking for a diamond or a rock. I certainly wasn’t expecting a man.”

“And, having found a man, you have to drag him into your foolishness? And for what?” Geralt doesn’t answer as he ties the other end of the silver chain to his wrist, and it magically binds around it, securing that ten star won’t drag far from him. “Oh, I see.” The other says, narrowing his eyes at the magical spun link that now ties them both together, before he’s sneering. “Should have figured! A star’s heart, I bet your mage friend will enjoy it, maybe you will take a bite of it too, huh? Well, I hope you choke on it!”

“Your heart?” The blonde girl asks, panicked and confused, shooting worried looks to him and accusing ones to Geralt. He much thinks he misses the time things made chance. “No, he can’t! Please, sir, you can’t!”

What the hell does his heart even have to do with anything, a lost Geralt wonders. Yennefer better pay him for this. Pale hands hold onto the girl’s shoulders comfortingly and pull her against his side, but even curled against the man-star, her worry doesn’t seem to waver, nor does the anger to the blue eyes of the one holding her.

“Listen, I want you to know, that whoever you are, and whatever you intend with me, I won’t give you no aid of any kind, nor assist you, and I will do 

whatever is in my power to frustrate your plans, and your mage’s by the matter!”

There’s a heavy silence then, and the whole atmosphere is rather tense.

“Can you walk?”

“No. My leg is broken.” He enunciates it slowly, jingling the chain pointedly by the side of the clearly broken leg. “Are you deaf, as well as stupid?”

Geralt closes his eyes and takes a deep intake of air, as if that could give him any more patience than the little he already doesn’t have. Roach whinnies by his side, shaking her head, and he cracks golden eyes open only to glare at the mare. At least one of them is having fun. Or maybe it’s just her being happy that she will not be ridden back to Wall to try and find an in that will take the three of them. Either way he shoves her head away gently, and reaches for his bedroll.

“Do your kind sleep?” 

The star sputters in offense, throwing his head to the side to glance at the blonde girl sat by him, frown still in place even if she smiles ever so slightly as he shakes his head to her and mutters something about a dickehead and being able to believe, before turning to him with an offended glare.

“Of course, but not at night.” He finally manages, and it’s the same time of ‘are you dumb?’ he and the child have been using so far and Geralt’s good will is wearing thinner than it already is. He raises a pale hand to gesture to the night sky above, to prove a point. “At night, we shine.”

“Well, I can’t think of anything else to do. I’ll sleep. It’s been a long week. You should try to sleep, too. We’ve got a long way to go.”

The star scoffs again and the girl seems about ready to argue, but exhaustion is etched at her face, and when he builds a small fire from the few not burnt twigs he could find, he can hear the man talk her into laying back nearest to the fire, that they’ll figure out things in the morning, settling by her side reassuringly and doing his best to keep the chain out of her worried gaze.

Through the silence of the night, he can hear the silver chain forged with Yennefer’s magic being tugged at fruitlessly as the man settles on the ground and the girl near him. It doesn’t take long for the child’s breath to fall into a quiet, gentle pattern that can only mean she’s fallen asleep, but Geralt falls asleep without hearing the star do the same.

————

buy me a coffee?

[antihero-writings]

Blood and Mercury

Fandom: Pandora Hearts

Fic Summary: Symptoms of mercury poisoning may include: irritability, excitability, delirium, insomnia, vivid dreams, depression, and suicidal tendency.

There must have been a lot of mercury in Break's past for him to show so many symptoms.

|| A modern AU about Break's past struggle with drug abuse and suicidal thoughts, and his current struggle with the Mad Hatter's illness, and how much of that struggle he should tell Sharon about.

Character Focus: Break

Notes: 1. Warning! This fic deals with topics of suicide and drug abuse. Everything is described very subtly and poetically, and it's not explicit, but it is about that. However, although it's heavy for the first part, there's some definite comic relief at the end if you can get that far!!

2. This is a modern AU. Not the reincarnation AU, an actual modern AU, where the plot of the series happens in modern time. (I mean, I guess it could be a reincarnation AU if actual events repeat themselves...but I don't think they do). So, in case it's not clear, Break's sick from his second contract with the Mad Hatter, just like in the series. Although I do like the idea that it's actually mercury poisoning.... a) I didn't even think about that until I'd already written it, b) coughing up blood and stuff isn't a symptom of it, and c) that's a really cool idea that I'd rather focus on and do justice in another fic. (Let me know if you'd be interested in reading that!!) The time frame for this is meant to be towards the end of the series--around the time Break was teaching Oz sword fighting.

3. I've always headcanoned Break (or more Kevin) as being suicidal because of the "So...you wanna die?" line. I don't know if the line was actually supposed to mean he was directly suicidal, or if it just meant he was depressed and not doing well, and/or just didn't care about his life, but that's how I've viewed it. And even if he was suicidal, I don't know that he ever attempted it. It could just be that he was suicidal inside but never did anything with those thoughts. Regardless, I do think he wanted to die in some fashion, and to me it makes his story more impactful (especially when he ends up wanting to live at the end), and relatable if he was actually suicidal. So I really wanted to play with that idea in at least one fic (though I'd enjoy playing with it in the context of the actual series too).(You don't have to read this part if you don't want to XD I just wanted to put it up front)

This fic was inspired by the song "Colors" by Halsey!

If you enjoy this fic, I'd really really appreciate if you could leave a comment!! Even the shortest comments can truly make my week, and motivate me to keep writing!!

Chapter 1: The Candy Shop

Collapsing. Blackness. Scratches in his lungs. And the taste of blood.

He never complained but his blood tasted like ash, and regret, and the blackness that overtook his sight was far from empty; an abyss, the memory of one, engulfed his world before he even felt the ground.

The last thing he had heard was Sharon shouting his name, and at Oz to get the medicine—and do so quickly. She didn’t say why, but they all knew it was because every second they wasted was a second he no longer had to spend.

Sharon’s voice, doused with pain. All that hurt and care, and thinly veiled tears, crammed into a few words. He’d never tell her, but he could care less about the wasted seconds, if only she would promise never to cry like that again.

He had collapsed this time. That wasn’t exactly abnormal, still, little by little, line by line, every little sign, he was getting worse.

“Don’t push yourself, Xerx.”

Reim would scold him for not listening.

And maybe Break would laugh, say some quip about how he worried too much, how he needed to let loose. Or maybe he’d say nothing at all. But they both knew—words or no—at some point, this would be all that was left; a few laughs, a drink or two, and the words Xerxes, don’t throw your life away.

What a fool he was.

With Sharon it was different. Different because she was young, and she didn’t understand, not fully, not enough. Or because she understood too much, and everyone pretended she didn’t. He didn’t like to entertain the thought, but maybe that included herself; maybe when she told them to get the medicine, she was telling herself it would work.

Which was the scarier thought; that she didn’t understand? Or that she understood completely, and pretended not to?

What about before? When she was a child laced in light. Was it worse then, or better?

She was younger—so, so young…had they really known each other so long? Was he really so old?…little girls shouldn’t be forced to deal with the broken shards of someone like him.

They might get cut on the pieces.

She didn’t know. She didn’t need to pretend. Still, they tried to hide his pain from her young impressionable brain. And this was not easy, nor fun, but neither were the tears and the questions.

That all but went out the window when the little girl found him, collapsed on the bathroom floor, along with the desperate spill bottle of pills, meant to override the circuits in his brain. Salt thrown over his shoulder.

For good luck on the other side.

Shelly’s face. No anger. No disappointment. That kindness was in Sharon’s smile too, now—and did this kindness mean more if she knew the truth? If he’d known the capacity of their smiles, would he not have tried it?

Sharon had led her mother to him—her voice was desperate, shouting, crying, back then too…some things never change—laying there on the floor, on a date with death and a bottle whiskey and cyanide. As if toasting to the thought We are born drinking from bottles, why not die that way too? Instead of throwing them away he had tried to throw away his life instead.

Bottle up his life, slap a label on it, set it on the shelf. You can take it down on special occasions. Sell it, throw it away, it doesn’t matter. Throw away his life with the very thing that was meant to heal it. Not many murder weapons were once medicine. An overdose on ineffective salvation.

Hadn’t wrote a note either. Hadn’t given them a reason, hadn’t detailed his pain, or plan for revenge.

Just tried to leave without a trace, and left too many.

And when he woke up and, to his chagrin, was still alive—no heaven or hell, just here on an earth that was both—she hadn’t scolded him…well, not at first. She hadn’t demanded to know what he was thinking, or tried to ingrain within him him how much they cared, and how terrible it would all be if this plan of his had worked. She had just smiled, and spoke softly. And later, when she cleaned him up, she had said…

It was always the same. The same now. Black and white and red all over. Sharon’s cries, instead of choking down all the pain, forcing herself not to feel, like he did, she took that pain on her tongue and let it spill out into the open air.

Maybe that was all she could do. Shout his name, and pray her words would pull him from the beyond the veil, and try to discern if there was such a thing as medicine after all. Maybe she wanted to feel useful, because just sitting here, waiting for the end to come and grab him with teeth and claws, was more than she could bear. And in some way he was grateful, because he’d rather she pretend she could save him, than see the real pity, the hopelessness in her eyes when she realized she couldn’t. When she realized the Red Queen and the Black King had her Mad Hatter after all, and she couldn’t break him out of their dungeon.

One day, he was sure, it would all become too similar to a snowy night long ago—a night dressed in black; black cloak, black coffins, black sky, and black around those red eyes, which his own became indistinguishable from too quickly. Maybe Sharon would even say those words too: Break, please don’t leave me, because he’d never had the guts to tell her what his past was made of. And then…he would do just that.

He’d rather have her believe the lie he might live than say to her face I’m going to die and nothing can stop it.

He wasn’t afraid to die. We all die at some point. Some sooner than others. Why should he get more time when he wasted so much of it? Save your breaths. Save your tears. Save your lives, not mine. We all lose the fight eventually. He had spent his whole life fighting, maybe just once he could go quietly into that goodnight; meet death as a friend. He didn’t deserve more time than anyone else.

He just…wanted a few more minutes awake. A snooze button on life. Five more minutes. Ten. Twenty. A year or two? There were a few more things he needed to do. He wasn’t going to let death take him down easy.

All that talk, and not-talk, of medicine and death led him here, today, with a prescription container in his hand, and an ache in his head.

He swung open the lid to the cabinet, a mirror hanging limply out, glinting in the cold fluorescent light.

Why do they put mirrors on medicine cabinets? Like you need a second look to tell you—Yep, I’m crazy— before you pop the little capsules in your mouth, which promise This will make things better. And you tell yourself plastic and paperwork, lab coats whitewashed as their promises wouldn’t lie.

He lifted the container to put it back in its proper place in the cabinet, but paused, letting it rest on the tip his fingers, sliding into place in his palm. His arm dropped back down, eyes scanning over the label, darting to the rest of the contents of the cabinet, as if staring down an old foe.

White ones, and blue ones, red ones, yellow ones…like some candy store for the sick, the insane, and the empty. It wasn’t just pills either; powders, and needles, and glass that breathes fumes into your lungs and brain; a delusion’s kiss, that makes everything just a little bit better, just a little bit funnier. Needles that, needless to say, could take you a real wonderland if you shoved them in far enough.

He’d tried them all at some point in his life. And when they didn’t work, the stash sat dormant in his closet, his drawers, cabinets like this one, while new-fangled solutions took their place. He didn’t throw them away—you never know when one day you might need to fly—like he was keeping illegal souvenirs of a worse world.

There are worse things than bottled happiness. And ‘happiness’ can do more damage than a decent amount of sorrow sometimes.

They smelled like walls that someone puked on at one point, but they painted over rather than clean up, and you could still tell by the smell something was wrong, closer to the woodwork. But they were too easy to keep contained; to not smell, to not taste, too easy not to realize what they were really made of.

He wouldn’t be surprised if there was a few hundred, maybe thousand or more, dollars* here staring back at him in hollow color. The amount of money they cost only comparable to their unending ingredient lists—full of the names of chemicals he couldn’t pronounce, and titles that he could, but wouldn’t waste breath on. He didn’t care about the money, or what they were made of, or the warnings of how much more damage they would cause—asking you to decide between your brain and your liver. All promising happiness, and not-perfect-just-better, and a decent night’s sleep.

He tried not to care about much.

None of them worked. Not for him at least.

And, no, that wasn’t an exaggeration. Wasn’t just an excuse to get more, or him not trying hard enough. There came a point when his body just wouldn’t respond to their signals.

There came a point when too much of him was already too dead to respond to anything but mad scientists, calling upon lightning storms in old abandoned castles. Besides, the Mad Hatter’s malady wasn’t exactly something an ordinary doctor could fix, or even name.

In truth, he could handle the physical aspects of it; the blood in his lungs, the passing out, and the loss of vision—which would be more than a temporary side effect before long. But there was something else—what do they call it? The soul? The heart? Something like that. He’d forgotten long ago. Those parts, that pain, was harder to take, to tolerate, and rotted the longer he stuffed it down. Like he was barricading the door to the monster’s lair with the bodies of those monsters that had gone before, and he knew full well none of them were quite dead.

There was an old picture on the countertop. A woman with hazelnut hair and a sunflower smile, a man in turquoise with a begonia eye, tragedy woven into the petals. And a little girl who thought flowers were bandages.

He picked it up, brushing the dust off their faces, trying to smile, though it was stained as his eye back then.

People need hope. They need this thing to tell them to keep going, it’s not over yet, not to give up. It’s like the glue to the gingerbread house that is you. When you don’t have it, your life kind of…falls flat. Like soda that’s been left out; no longer bubbly, no longer worth drinking. When someone doesn’t have it, it doesn’t mean they can’t live anymore, that life is undrinkable, it just means this thing we called living, once, doesn’t have the same carbonation.

But hope is a funny thing, elusive, reclusive, and volatile. Picky about the things it can eat. Difficult to keep alive.

That’s why this candy store was so full, what its stockers promised to fix, to feed; that beast, hope. That’s what the dealers promised they could provide; something they all knew couldn’t be borrowed, or bartered, or manufactured.

Hope’s not something that can be bottled. We’re all like children, unaware fireflies, those pretty blinking lights, will die without air.

He set the picture back down, turning his gaze to the container still in his other hand.

The only reason he kept using them was for them. For Sharon, Sheryl, and Reim. For Oz and Gilbert, and the rest. As long as it didn’t hurt, or make it worse, if it gave them hope—(a hope he could never have)—for him to take the medicine, he’d do it.

Sheryl had been the one to suggest the medicinal path in the first place. It made sense; she had dealt with this sort of thing before. Shelly had been sickly all her life, and medicine helped—(Helped. Didn’t save her life. And Shelly would have argued she didn’t need it either, and had often refused them herself). But this wasn’t the same. This was deeper than skin or bone. Still, she was kind, and he respected her—or he came to…not to mention he didn’t want to cross her.

Reim had agreed; regiments and tangible, scientific solutions appealed to his personality. He liked when things were concrete, it was more promising to him than whimsy, and words.

They had yet to learn of the concrete things that were tea and sugar, which work a lot better at lifting the spirit than things you aren’t supposed to taste.

Life is about tasting. About watching, and listening, and really feeling. Life is about living. Not swallowing and trying not to taste. Not existing and trying not to live.

It was Shelley who had told him that. She had let them try out their methods, but she told him if he didn’t want them to work, that they wouldn’t. That he could try them, but they were useless without resolve to go with them. She told him that the ones the doctors give are from a factory, made of greed, and half-baked promises that rubbed too close to lies. Not belief, and real promises, and laughter—(which is, of course, the best medicine). And even the ones they don’t give you are too strong to grant you something you can call life. That maybe he oughtta just throw them away after all.

She told him a smile and a day in the sun was all he really needed. That they can’t bottle and sell hope and sunshine. That you can’t pull life out of death, and hope needs to come from something alive—from something free of charge, flickering in the air, that can’t be put in a jar, or tamed. She pointed to his chest and said that hope hails from there. The last thing in the box is always hope, you just have to really empty out the rest of the crap in the box first.

Shelly wasn’t someone you could hide these sorts of things from. She had this sixth sense; she could speak with the already-dead. One way or another, she’d find out—(even if she had to wring it out of you). But instead of sending you to the doctor, telling you that something was wrong with you, that you were crazy, she would smile. Like all you needed were a few kind words, and she’d send you back into the world, heart humming. She could be unbearably compassionate. When she talked about happiness, it was like she was speaking of an old friend of hers. She’d say that it doesn’t come in shots or smoke, it was more elusive, and can be found in a kind gesture, at amusement parks, and in sunsets, in a really good cup of tea, or a homemade cookie.

And when she’d cleaned him up, after finding him on the bathroom floor, she’d said:

“So, you want to die?”

Did he? Did he really want to die? Or was it something else? Something darker? something brighter?

He wanted to sleep. To rest. He knew that much. His sleep was always interrupted and irregular, and he had forgotten what real rest entailed.

Knives and blades rested comfortably in his hands, but he had broken the skin too often, of too many others, for it to provide any semblance of relief when used on himself. Besides, he didn’t want to die naked in a bathtub painted red. He didn’t want to lay in a coffin with stitches on his neck and flowers growing out of his wrists. He didn’t want the world to find him hanging from the ceiling like a criminal in town square. He didn’t want scars to tell his secrets, or his death to show him weak. Very little about his life had been elegant or dignified. So he wanted to die, at least, softly, with some measure of dignity. Make some music out of the cacophony. Without a scratch, or a word, or a second to spare. Something subtler would be his weapon of choice: the prick of needle, the taste of poison, the promise of happiness in a bottle—just enough happy to kill you.

Because that’s how it was, then—during that time when they had found him on the bathroom floor. That desire wasn’t flashy and boisterous. It wasn’t the rich smell of steel and iron, it was more insidious; the smallest pinprick of the soul, or something he may have swallowed at one time or another, that withered his insides slowly. It wasn’t something to parade around, or cry out to the town, and it wasn’t something he needed them to rescue him from. It was just there, nagging at the back of his heart, like a sore soul.

He didn’t cut, and he wouldn’t bruise or burn, and he wouldn’t ask for their help, or tell them a thing either.

His cries were veiled, veiled behind those times he shouted at them, or insulted them, even now still veiled behind his jokes. It wasn’t obvious. The pain was a shadow behind his words and actions, a demon behind him at all hours.

Back then, there had been days when he wouldn’t move from that windowsill, unless Shelly shoved him off.

Sometimes he felt like a shadow himself when he was around the living—like he wasn’t really there. Already dead, an imprint, a faded image of some past, some distant version of a self who may or may not have existed. He couldn’t share their happiness, or even their grief, because he wasn’t a real thing, here, now. He shouldn’t be here. Shouldn’t be here. He shouldn’t be here, with a new young mistress, a doll with his old mistress’s name, and a heart full of regrets. I mean, really, shouldn’t. Time had bent for him, and he feared the bends were becoming breaks.

“You wish to die…so you do not suffer anymore. You simply want to save yourself.”

Was that true? Was this not about death, or even rest, but about…salvation?

He wanted to live. And that’s why he tried so hard to die.

Sharon, Reim, Sheryl, Shelly, and…Oz.

He ran his hand through his hair, grimacing at the thought of Oz seeing all this. Sharon had assigned him the task of medicine-caddy after all. He imagined the boy saying to himself What does Break need all these for? Then backtracking in his mind Oh, right, which would either be followed by, Oh, right, he’s crazy or Oh, right, he said he wouldn’t last the year and take an extra few moments to find the right ones before running back.

Usually Reim was the one to do this. Reim knew about the whole not-working thing. He had told him to stop taking them, to tell Sharon that they didn’t work. To stop pretending they did, that he’d never know what more damage they were doing to his body by taking them. But he also didn’t force him to tell the truth. Perhaps protecting Sharon was for the best. They were like her older brothers—a little too protective at times. Neither of them wanted to see her cry.

He didn’t usually let anyone besides Reim look in this cabinet—best not let the world in on his little secret candy shop—but he hadn’t had his medicine on him at the moment he fell, and Reim had been busy running errands for the bird-brained duke at the time.

He tossed the still-full container into the trash, where it gave a satisfying swish and clang as it tumbled into bottom.

Such a simple action. Why had it taken him so long?

He should have listened to her earlier.

He rested his hands on the sink, closed his eyes again, blowing out a breath.

The yellow pills don’t contain happiness, in as much as the red ones don’t contain anger, or the blue ones sadness. The red pill and the blue pill don’t sit in the hands of the god of dreams, asking you if you want to wake up. We may be made out of dust, but some dust in a capsule can’t patch the rips in our souls.

Can’t fix the hole where his eye is meant to be. Can’t undo the brand on his chest.

Doctors can sew back the skin, but they don’t know how to stitch together a ripped mind. They try, they think they can plug the hole up. But you can’t come to them with the broken shards of your heart and say Hey doc, can I get a new one?. You can’t walk in with a messed-up mind and say Clean it for me, will ya?

There was nothing they could do about his eye, except give him one made of glass, and he had enough broken shards in his brain, and enough falsity in his smile. And they couldn’t rewind the clock burned on his chest. His time had already reached zero, so it made sense he was dying.

He could handle being broken, being Break. In fact, a little penance could do some good. He’d could handle pain.

It was the memories he wanted to tear to shreds and return to sender. But he was not granted the grace of amnesia, unlike little girls named Alice. Just bad dreams, and reminders on his broken body telling him he was less than worthless.

He didn’t want to go to the doctor, especially not a psychiatrist. And Shelly wouldn’t have made him go, until faced with Sharon’s eyes, blurred with tears, asking when he was going to get better.

He didn’t need a shrink to know he was crazy. What would he talk about anyway?

Well, let’s see here, I’ve killed a hundred and sixteen people, so that might be weighing on my conscience a bit.

Why? Because a demon told me I could change the past. To tell you the truth, I could, and I did, but you know what demons don’t tell you? You can change the past, but that change may mean the difference from bad to worse. I made it worse. And in my version of events; the changed past I sought so desperately, that one little girl who survived ended up feeding her family to another demon to save her sister, in the same way I wanted to save them.

I wasn’t there to stop her. And I know she failed. I am what success looks like.

And it’s my fault she’s dead. I killed her. I killed her. I killed that little girl—

Yeah, no diagnosis necessary.

Sometimes he wished he could be diagnosed with something normal. That they could say he had a disease, or a parasite that was slowly eating at his mind. But this wasn’t something that could be found in text books. It was closer to magic—things from the Abyss are not for doctors to diagnose. The blood he coughed up wasn’t from a disease, or pent up abuse or torture, it was something more mysterious; contracts, and scars, and mirrors. It’s not quite the same as an illness, not something they can just cure. They couldn’t explain the whole some of us-don’t-age-anymore thing, why would they be able to explain the blood, and the coughs and the dying just because it was more serious? There weren’t exactly Chain doctors. There are just doctors and either it’s in the books or it isn’t. And even if there were, it wasn’t exactly common for an illegal contractor to survive their trip the Abyss.

Besides, he didn’t ask for help, not even from those close to him, so why would he ask a doctor?

It was easier that way. It was easier to say it didn’t matter, easier to disappear, than to admit that he cared.

So the one time he did go to the whitewashed walls he told them something, some story that was only half based on a movie he’d seen, and they sent him away with a note to the one who bottled the happiness.

And that’s just the explanation for the prescribed ones.

The rest fit under the motto ‘Well, if you can’t beat the crazy, might as well join it.’ And those were the kind Shelly especially wanted him to throw away.

Crazy. Mad. Mad Hatter.

They say hatters used to go mad because their glue contained mercury, and the fumes polluted their brains. A mad hatter, with stitched up hands, ash-white skin, smoky eyes and a mercury turned brain…yeah, that sounded just about right.

If hope is life’s glue, then his contained mercury.

He looked up into the mirror, tilting his head to the side, and smiling wryly to himself at the thought;

There must have been a lot of mercury in his past for him to go this mad.

One day, they all stopped working. Like when he found out he couldn’t get drunk anymore. Two kinds of poisons, no longer effective, because he was already dying. No matter prescribed or uninscribed. Maybe that’s how it was with mercury poisoning; one day cures just stop curing, time stops ticking, hearts stop yearning.

Too crazy. Not crazy enough. And nothing works either way anymore. Maybe she was right, and he just throw them all away.

“Hey!”

Break started, turning to see Oz standing in the doorway.

“What’s up?” Oz leaned into the room, trying to catch a glimpse of the contents of the cabinet.

“That depends on if you’re sitting on the floor or the ceiling!” Emily sang.

Oz was used to his absurdity by now, and ignored it; “I was going to ask,”—he bounced on his tiptoes like a curious three-year-old—“what’s that green turd?”

Break tried not to laugh at his naiveté, and folded his arms over his chest, leaning against the cabinet, shutting it with his body.

“Sorry, Oz-kun,”—he smirked—“but there isn’t any children’s medicine in here, you’ll have to check elsewhere.”

Oz glared at him. He was known for being a pain in the ass…but Oz was known for being one too.

“Is it pot?” Oz continued his line of questioning, smiling like the cheeky brat he was…according to Break at least.

Break’s own smirk faltered, not realizing he was asking out of understanding rather than ignorance.

“I’ve always wanted to try it,” Oz mused out loud.

“Is that so?” The smirk was back on stage.

“Yeah!” He bounced on his toes again. “Seems like fun!”

“You know Gilbert-kun just might just kill you if he found out.” He said it like that would be a good show for a Saturday afternoon.

“You’re not gonna tell him, are you?” Oz pouted, his eyes narrowing.

“That depends.”

“On what?” Oz grunted.

“Maybe you and I could come to an agreement.” He inclined his head towards the cabinet.

“What’s there for me to tell? Are you upset I saw inside there?” He pointed with his thumb to the medicine cabinet. “It might be a little weird, but it’s not my place to judge…Honestly if you’re taking all that, it explains a lot.”

Break snickered. “You think too highly of yourself, Oz-kun; if I were upset, that would imply I care what you think.”

“Whatever.” Oz smiled; he had enough insanity of his own. “I know you love me.”

“Oh sure, the way a farmer loves the cute little rabbits eating his crops.”

Oz made to leave, but before he exited he spun in an attempt to get at the cabinet. In a flash, Break grabbed the broom from the corner, and tripped him with the end, sending him to the floor.

“Ow,” Oz rubbed at his head, which he had knocked against the doorframe.

Break didn’t apologize.

“You’ve been skimping on our lessons.” Break leaned on the broom.

“Why do I have to learn sword-fighting anyway? …It’s like you’re from another century”

“My, my.” He twirled it around so the end was at his pupil’s throat. “Just last week you were saying how excited you were to learn.”

“That was before I realized ‘go easy on him’ doesn’t register in your brain.”

“How else are you supposed to learn~?” Oz sat up, pushing the makeshift sword away from him.

He paused a moment before asking,

“They don’t work, do they?”

Break’s eye widened for a split second. He followed Oz’s emerald gaze to the medicine cabinet.

He gritted his teeth. “Cheeky little brat.”

Oz put on a sad but proud smile. “I knew it.”

“You really aren’t cute at all,” Break muttered under his breath.

“Does Sharon-chan know?”

Break looked away, pretending like he hadn’t heard the question.

“Why don’t you just tell her?”

Break laughed. “What kind of a gentleman would I be if I made my lady worry?”

“Come on, seriously. I mean, what good does letting her believe they work do?”

“There’s good to be found in even the strangest of situations.” Emily twittered.

“I’ll watch the twelve o’clock special later, thanks.”

“He doesn’t want to make her cry,” another voice broke in.

They looked up to see Reim in the doorway.

“Oh, Reim-san~! And we were just getting used to your absence!” Break joked.

Reim’s hand clenched into a fist.

“Spare me the pleasantries.”

Reim walked in to help Oz up, giving Break a reproachful look before saying, “I hope he isn’t causing you too much trouble.”

“Always. But I can handle myself. He’s just mad a saw inside his medicine cabinet.”

“Ah, yes, his little ‘candy shop.’ I have been telling him to just tell Sharon, and throw them out, for years.”

“Years? Break, you should really throw those out! Why don’t we help you?”

Break looked away. “Tch. You really think I need help from the likes of you?”

Oz got a mischievous look. “What if I tell her myself?”

“Then I’ll tell Gilbert-kun you want to take up smoking weed~?”

“Oz-sama!” Reim’s grabbed Oz by the shoulders. “You want to start smoking drugs?!” He shook him, before spinning him to Break as if presenting him. “Xerxes this is exactly the reason I tell you to throw them out! You’re polluting the young lord’s mind!” He shook Oz more.

“Eh.” Oz shrugged. “My mind was plenty polluted already.”

Before Reim could react to that, Break spoke,

“See?” Break put his hands behind his back and stepped up to Oz, leaning down so he was eye level. “That’s the mild version of the lecture Gilbert-kun would give you.”

Oz sighed managing to break free of Reim.

“Come on,” he spoke to Break, returning to the previous subject. “Do you really need to keep taking them if they don’t do anything? Seems like a waste of time and money if you ask me.”

“That’s what I keep telling him!”

“You should just tell Sharon-chan. She’s stronger than you think. I’m sure she’ll understand.”

“Well, boys,” Break patted them on the shoulders as he walked by, “not that this isn’t fun, but I have some serious work to catch up on.”

“You’re going to play video games again aren’t you?” Reim crossed his arms.

“Break!” Oz called.

Break sighed, eyes lidding, before turning to Oz.

“You don’t have to do this alone, you know.”

“He’s not alone!” Emily chittered, “he has me!”

Oz rolled his eyes, and Reim facepalmed.

******

Notes Cont.:

*I know this probably wouldn't be "dollars", but a) I don't remember them mentioning the name of their currency in the series, b) a more generic word like "money" didn't fit the sentence, and, c) as an American, something like "euros" (which, while probably closer to the correct term) didn't sound as natural to me.

I don't know if anyone will believe me, but I actually wrote this a VERY long time ago. I started it sometime around July 2018, before/right when I started posting my writing online. It was one of my very first PH fics, and has even informed some fics I've posted--(I got the name "Black and White and Red All Over" for my halloween fic last year from this fic. Well, I got it from the joke/expression, but this fic is what tied that phrase to Break in my mind). I would periodically work on it over the years, and I really enjoy the language, so it was fun to continually return to it.

The first part has been postable for a long time, the problem has always been the end. Lately I've been going through my old fics and making myself post them even if they're not perfect. Usually the way to do that is just to break them up earlier than I wanted to. I really wanted to add a heartfelt ending to this fic (still do!) but for some reason I had the toughest time transitioning to more of an actual scene at the end and actually writing it, so it ended up just getting stuck on my computer. The other issue is that I have zero experience with drug abuse, so I think I just felt like I was describing things wrong and got cold feet about posting it. If I got anything wrong, please kindly let me know!

Do you think I should write out the memory of Break’s suicide attempt in ch2? I kind of wanted to actually write it out but I wasn’t sure if it’d be too heavy...

Oz and Break's relationship is actually one of my favorites in the series, and I absolutely adore writing for it...but it seems I have trouble doing so. I have one more Break and Oz fic that I absolutely adore that's been stuck on my computer for about the same amount as time as this one, that I also got stuck on the middle/end. (I actually might have written it before this one, as I recognize some similarities XD) Hopefully I can break it up and post it soon too!

Thanks for reading!! Once again, if you could leave a comment, it would mean more to me than you know!!

[sadlyafanofotomegames]

A Road Paved with Bad Endings - Nameless ~The One Thing You Must Recall~

It’s been eighty years since my last one so to remind everyone this is a series about bad ends in otome games - currently I’m talking about the bad ends in Nameless and I already did Lance’s bad endings.  This one’s going to be about Yeonho’s.

Yeonho - Bought Used, Highly Damaged, Needs Proper Care

Oh Yeonho.  Sweet. sweet little Yeonho.  Made to instill mother instincts in young ladies.  Surely his route will just be ADORABLE right...right!?

Okay so Yeonho has some serious issues stemming from an extremely painful past (which is bad enough as a doll but then when translated to human terms YIKES) and most of his route is about confronting that past.  Sure there are cute moments here and there, but mainly its just about how to confront the things that were done to him and how to cope in a more healthy way.

One thing I’m not keen on is that with these kind of characters (I will elaborate on this when talking about the bad ends) I wish they just left out the romance aspect altogether.  So much of this route is about understanding Yeonho’s trauma and how it affects his view of the world, that its not until the last couple of chapters that the writers were like, “oh FUCK this is an otome game they’re supposed to date” and slapped on two or three romantic scenes.  It doesn’t help that in this route compared to the other routes it’s painfully clear that Eri favoring Yeonho can go real bad for both of them if not treated correctly.  I’m worried about them is what I’m saying.

If you are suffering from abandonment and/or other forms of abuse, this route might make you uncomfortable.  I say they do a not-bad job in confronting trauma, but that doesn’t mean it won’t be the same experience with you. 

Also two of these three ending go into the “WTF WTF WTF” end of the bad end spectrum, and they do include implied violence and assault so tread lightly.

Bad End 1 - Unforgiven Doll - Surprise!  YOU Are The First Yandere in the Game!

How to Get It

Eri.  Basic female protagonist in an otome game.  Most female protagonists in otome games range from “blank slate/silent” to “this is clearly a story about this particular gal.”  Eri falls closer to the latter half of this spectrum, but she still shows some of those tried and true female lead traits, mainly her naivete.  This isn’t just to show innocence in this route though: her naive and relaxed attitude toward Yeonho in the beginning becomes a detriment to Yeonho’s growth.  She doesn’t realize until around a quarter into the route that Yeonho’s devotion and to her isn’t just a phase, and she doesn’t know how to confront it at first.  Yeonho wakes her up every morning, makes the same rabbit-shaped eggs every morning, texts her every morning, noon and night, and it gets to the point where he refuses to leave her side.  

One rainy day, Eri’s friends finally have an opportunity to talk to her without Yeonho around.  They’re worried about both of them, and they decide to take the chance to separate them by taking Eri out while Yeonho’s on cleaning duty. Yeonho seems pretty dejected at the idea but still stays for cleaning duty.  But then...Eri gets worried and goes back.  And its a good thing she did, because Yeonho was waiting for her in the pouring rain.  

Now, you don’t have to go back right away though...you could choose to be dismissive and cold when it comes to Yeonho...its not like he’ll ever dislike you for it...

Once Yeonho’s taken inside he’s tending to by Eri.  Yeonho’s not looking so great after getting a rain shower.  He tells Eri he’s cold and doesn’t want Eri to leave but...its not a big deal right?  Leave Yeonho’s side to grab blankets.

Alternatively, you can also be dismissive of Yeonho in earlier parts as well.  At one point you can almost push Yeonho into riding big rides at a theme park  which you know Yeonho doesn’t like but refuses to admit he’s not having fun.  Because its all for Eri. 

What Happens

Seeing Yeonho shivering and sad...Yeonho who would do anything for her...Yeonho who would always be hers no matter how cruel she is...something in Eri snaps.  She WANTS to hurt Yeonho.  

Yeonho doesn’t mind right?  He’d never hate her.  When Yeonho wakes up and sees Eri...he knows what’s going to happen.  And he does let her hurt him.  And he cries.  All he wants is to be cherished.

How I Feel About This One

Honestly when it comes to otome games I expect there’s always going to be at least one route route where somebody goes yandere and/or the main girl gets killed.  But this is the first one I’ve encountered where the the main girl becomes the yandere character.  It was a real shock to me, because all of the sudden I wasn’t just causing Eri to be run over by the truck, I’m causing Eri to be cruel.  When we reach a bad end, our character’s the one who usually gets hurt the most, not the one who directly causes the hurt.  

As such while other endings are theoretically worse for Eri and some of the characters involved in their specific route, this one I just can’t stomach revisiting often.  Hearing Yeonho crying in pain and asking to be cherished makes me feel like my hearts being used as a needle ball...so as a bad end its pretty good!  7/10 stop making me feel bad please.

Bad End 2 - Competitor - Now Yeonho’s the Yandere!  But Wait!  A YANDERE CHALLENGER APPROACHES!!! (how many yanderes are in this game!?  the answer may shock you)

How to Get It

So after you stay by Yeonho’s side while he’s sick and assure him that you’re there for him and that you WON’T become a yandere things seem to start to improve.  Yeonho’s less clingy, and he’s no longer willing to be pushed around by his fans at school (btw all of the boys got fans because they’re all beautiful doll people so yeah.)  Eri’s a little concerned that Yeonho is now being too off-putting, but hey it feels like Yeonho is changing so...that’s something.

Then Eri has to go see her parents at a hotel for dinner (btw her parents travel a lot for work and are mainly based in the U.S. so she rarely sees them thus when they do come by they meet her at a hotel nearby where they usually go to for business.)  Yeonho begins to wonder if Eri’s parents, her family, matters more than him, who’s just a doll.  How can he assure himself that Eri won’t forget him?

Eri leaves promising that she won’t be long.  The visit goes fine, except uh...her parents pressure her into staying at their hotel room for way longer than she planned.  It’d be nice if you chose to say you have to go back, but choosing to stay isn’t what’ll cause the camel’s back to break in this one.  That happens when Eri returns home to see Yeonho, again, waiting for her outside.  It’s not raining, but its cold, and Yeonho looks cold both physically and emotionally.

Now I need to remind you fellows that these boys are not people first: they’re dolls first, people second.  Their world is limited by the very few experiences they had on top of a shelf.  In Yeonho’s case, his experience was being put on a literal pedestal, used essentially as a stress toy whenever his first owner got mad, left on the floor when his owner got bored of him, then left in a very badly put box for who knows how long to be sent to a new owner who, once again, puts him on a pedestal.  Eri takes great care of her dolls, but to Yeonho, this doesn’t mean she won’t abandon him like his previous owner did.  Because his previous owner seemingly treasured him too.

And with the previous bad end, we know Eri is capable of the same cruelty as the previous owner.  And even without that context what’s stopping Eri from abandoning him too?  How can he be permanent in Eri’s heart so that doesn’t happen?  Yeonho doesn’t have the means to see beyond his own experience, so he can’t see how he won’t be abandoned eventually, and even though he’s human now he still sees himself as needing to belong to someone.  What can he do?  He’s not being threatening at this point, he’s just begging for answers.

So what answer do you give?  Well, if you were listening to his plea, you tell him that no, he doesn’t need to do anything to earn love, because he’s already deserving of it.  Yeonho already holds a place in Eri’s heart, and she means that earnestly.  

...Buuuuut if you’re looking for a bad end, dismissively say “eh, just stay by my side like usual.”  This’ll calm him down right?  His deep-seated feelings aren’t that serious.  It’s fine.  It’ll be fine.  Really, it’s fine.

...So turns out it was not fine, because you didn’t give him a real answer.  He still doesn’t know how to be permanent in Eri’s heart.  So he’s going to find is own answers.  Spoilers: the answer he comes to is bad.  For both of them.  In more ways than expected.

What Happens

Oh wait, no he’s fine.  He was cool with that answer!  See, he’s smiling, although his smile is a little off, but that’s fine, because me and Eri are sure that he’ll just go back to his usual self by morning.  Time to go to bed.  

Fun Fact: There’s a diary entry in Eri’s journal that only appears in this ending.  Check it out before Eri closes her eyes.  It’ll be awkward to read it after Yeonho tries to choke Eri to de-oh-OH GAWD YEONHO’S CHOKING ERI TO DEATH!

Another Fun Fact: If you want to revisit this bad ending save right after you made the bad choice.  For some reason in the Memories (the menu that lets you revisit past events) it starts in the middle of the bad ending!  

So it turns out the answer Yeonho came to was, “I guess I need to be a yandere” and kill Eri.  BTW despite being advertised in the Crobidoll line as “babey” for some reason he was given the ability to see ghosts?  So I’m guessing his plan was to have Eri’s spirit tethered to him so she literally can never leave (and thus in his eyes abandon) him.

Funny thing about Yeonho: he’s referenced as similar to a chick a lot in this game.  He’s got corn yellow hair that’s feathery and he’s got big ol’ red eyes.  Except...when he’s chocking Eri, suddenly his eyes don’t look so cute.  His pupils literally shrink.  They’re no longer the eyes of a chick, but the eyes of a snake. 

So Yeonho kills Eri.  Bad End reached.  Pretty typical of a bad ending in an otome game, huh?

Well, JUST KIDDING Tei barges in and stops Yeonho from completing the task.  Phew Eri was saved.  That was close.  Good thing someone as kind and dependable as Tei arrived to help her out right...right?  

Ha...haha...HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAA!!!!

Surprise! Turns out Tei is the Alpha Yandere ‘round these parts.

Friends...may I introduce you to...Bad End Tei?  He’s going to be a regular on the series.  In fact he’s probably the main character in this Nameless Bad End Journey.  He’s a constant shadow that looms across almost all the bad paths we follow.  Just remember in this series we’re going to be talking only about Bad End Tei, not all of who Tei is.  If you want me to talk more about Tei as a whole character you’ll have to wait until we get to Tei’s bad endings, which, spoilers, have a lot of Bad End Tei in it too.  You cannot escape Bad End Tei.

Anyway back to what was SUPPOSED to be Yeonho’s Yandere moment.

After stopping Yeonho from killing Eri, Tei starts by saying he’s dissapointed...at Eri?  She really shouldn’t have let herself be hurt.  Kinda victim-blamey there Bad End Tei.  After all, I’M the one who almost got her choked to death here.  No need to blame her!

Secondly Tei wants nothing more than for Eri, his owner, to be safe.  But if she does get hurt...it should be him who does the hurting.  The reason for this is explained further in later bad endings and in Tei’s Route, but in this ending we discover that Tei is just as obsessed with his owner as Yeonho is.  Difference is Bad End Tei doesn’t need to be remembered by Eri, or even have a place in her heart.  What he wants is Eri herself, and to have that he wants control of her pain.  So when someone else tries to cause Eri pain...well that’s stealing his control of her pain, and that just won’t do.  

Unlike Yeonho, who ultimately just wants to belong to Eri and to never be abandoned by her, Bad End Tei wants Eri to belong to him the same way he belongs to her.   

It’s ironic that a doll wants ownership over the doll’s owner huh.  Feels like maybe bringing dolls to life wasn’t exactly what its cracked up to be.  

Anyway if Eri’s going to get hurt, then there was no reason for Tei to have held back for so long.  If this was going to happen, he should have hurt Eri when this all started.  He justifies that he can hurt Eri better than Yeonho can (weird flex but ok) and its getting late so could Yeonho like, leave?  And even Yeonho in yandere mode is taken aback.  But then he’s like, “No wait I’M the yandere in this bad ending!” and tries to attack Tei.

Tei doesn’t want to hurt or even touch anyone that’s not Eri, but since Yeonho won’t be good and go to bed he’ll just have to put him down.  Even though all the dolls are in human form now, their doll forms are still on Eri’s shelf.  And doing things to the doll forms affects their human forms.  So, instead of going after Yeonho the human...he grabs Yeonho the doll.  And squeezes.

Meanwhile Eri is, quite justifiably, shocked and disgusted by all this.  Yeonho’s a yandere?  Tei’s a yandere?  I could be a yandere!?  How many yandere’s are in this game!? 

While Tei is committing doll homicide he says since Eri’s good at keeping her hobbies (collecting dolls) a secret from her friends, it shouldn’t be hard to pretend that everything’s fine from now on.  Of course, she doesn’t have to pretend she loves him.  So long as Tei can have her, he doesn’t care.

After the deed is done, Tei approaches her.  Eri desperately wants this to all be a dream, but when Tei holds her face she knows its real.  Tei tells her to be quiet and asks if she’d ready.  The last thing we hear is a chime, and the scene fades out.

How I Feel About This One

So this has to be one of my favorite bad endings.  I mean what happens in it makes me go “WTF WTF AAAAAAGH” but in an interesting way, ya know?  The kind that makes my hair stand on end.  It’s a story in and of itself.  The set-up, the plot twist, the monologue, just...mwah.  Perfect.  It’s exactly what I want in my bad endings.

Plus if you’re doing the bad endings in order, this’ll be the first time you see Bad End Tei.  You don’t see Bad End Tei in the routes themselves (outside of his and Red’s, which is only unlocked after you complete all the other routes so at that point you had to have seen Bad End Tei) but suddenly there’s hints of Bad End Tei throughout all of his encounters.  I didn’t say this in Lance’s Bad End Post, but a part of me thinks that maybe Tei had something to do with what happened to Lance in one of his bad endings...there’s no proof, but still.  He was in the room with Lance by themselves when Eri left so...who knows.

This also hints at also aspects of the story.  Bad End Tei’s an obvious hint to who Tei is as a character, but there’s also the use of the doll bodies, and that chime at the end.

Anyway this Bad Ending sets up Bad End Tei’s character in the most dramatic and creepy of ways and if every otome game had bad endings as good (well, not good in that way but-you know what I mean!) as this one this series would never end.  I mean, it won’t if I post every four to five months.  

Also what makes me appreciate this one is that it cuts off before we see what happens to Eri, and it doesn’t go into detail on what Bad End Tei did to Yeonho either.  If we had detailed descriptions of whatever happened I might not have stomached it.  Implication are far more sinister than outright statements.  This is also one of the only Bad End Tei endings where Eri’s vocal about how messed up this is.

Bad End 3 - Disappeared Yeonho - That’s It.  Pretty Anticlimactic Compared to the Previous Endings

How to Get It

So Eri takes Yeonho’s worries seriously and no one turns yandere and Bad End Tei stays firmly in the back of Tei’s mind (btw after you make the good choice with Yeonho once they go back inside Tei gives Yeonho some comforting words.  At their worst they can be cruel to each other, but when they’re not at that breaking point they do have this solidarity with each other, both having previous owners before Eri.)  Things start to improve a lot.  Yeonho can now enjoy things outside of Eri, and is back to being willing to hang out with others.  He’s grown a great deal, and the people around him notice.  Things are looking up for Yeonho and Eri now.

Of course, then the writers realize, “wait romance” and Yeonho needs to like Eri now.  Not as a doll loves their owner, but as a person wanting to be with another person...okay I don’t hate it when its put that way, but I still feel like this wasn’t necessary.  Let me remind you, Yeonho tried to kill Eri in a bad ending because of his fear of her forgetting him.  He was so desperate to remain at her side, and then things get better, but even after all that he still wants to refer to her as “Master” while trying to pursue a romantic relationship with her.  All I’m saying is maybe give each other a little distance for a just a tiiiiiiny bit to figure things out before going into this yeah?

Still they’re pretty cute together in the end.  Things don’t get nearly as saucy as it did in Lance’s route, and its all very innocent and sweet.  I don’t hate it.  Now Tei on the other hand-

Alright alright back to how this bad end goes down.  Before Yeonho confesses to Eri there’s a school festival and he has a fortune reading stand.  (Also aside from seeing ghosts he can also read tarot cards and talk to animals.)  After he read your fortune he tries to make a move, but then a very haughty girl barges in to get her fortune read.  Suddenly Yeonho clams up and runs away.

Where did he go!?  Eri could check the rooftop, where he’s likely to be at...or she can just give up and see if he came home.  

...That’s it.  That’s all it takes.

What Happens

So Yeonho never came home.  They made missing photos and everything!  Where could he be...?

...Yeah that’s it.

How I Feel About This One

Honestly I don’t feel like this one needed to be there.  Maybe it’s because if they didn’t, then for the last few chapter there’d be no need for choices.  But they did that with Lance!  In Lance’s route after the play there’s no choice for the last few chapter, and while he has the shortest amount of bad endings, they both are still creepy and at least a little intense.  Why didn’t they do the same for Yeonho?

I don’t know.  I don’t hate it.  It’s like, nothing terrible happened to characters I love, which is nice, but that’s not what bad endings are for!  They’re supposed to make you feel bad and maybe give you the heebie jeebies!  Or they’re supposed to fulfill some fantasy in a safe way like they do sometimes in Mystic Messenger!  Or be a joke ending where you at least get a chuckle before having to restart!  I don’t know!  Give me Yeonho joining a ghost detective agency with a cat sidekick running away from his past!  Something!  ANYTHING!!!

Anyway overall I really do like Yeonho’s route in its emotionally heartfelt moments and really disturbed by the intensity of some of its bad endings (which make them pretty good in my book!)  Now we move on to Yuri’s route where I need to turn off Yuri’s voice in the options menu to pull through it!  WAHOOO!!!

[alwaysspeakshermind]

Top 5 Anti-Varchie Arguments & Why They Make No Sense

#3: “Varchie breaks up every other day/they’re so toxic.”

Yeah, so...to quote both Hamlet 3.3.87 and that one Bugs Bunny meme—NO. 

[Quick but serious question: is this whole “they break up all the time” thing a trying-to-be-cleverly-snarky exaggeration, or are people really just that unobservant? I want to believe it’s the first, but I see it so often now that I’m becoming horribly afraid it’s the latter.]

Over the course of three seasons and 57 episodes, Archie and Veronica break up three times—three!—and each of those times, the breakup is precipitated by outside events, no one is happy to be breaking up, and both parties make a concerted effort to remain friends while neither ever actually quits caring about the other.

Regarding the toxic argument: no they are quite obviously a safe and non-toxic ship. (Although they do appear to present the occasional choking hazard for children under the age of 13 who cannot seem to swallow Varchie’s happiness).  

“Toxic” is, however, a term I refuse to unpack and dissect at the length it deserves right now because I’m so incredibly sick of the misconceptions Tumblr and the rest of the internet perpetuates regarding toxic/abusive relationships that my exhausted frustration with this subject alone can fill pages and it’ll drag me off topic. So instead, I’m just going to point out that while none of Riverdale’s main ships is toxic (everyone’s just young; there is an actual difference), Varchie is the ship with the fewest elements the internet typically likes to designate as such (antagonism/aggression toward each other, childish/petty behavior designed to get under the other’s skin, resentment/bitterness directed at the other person following a breakup, etc.), so the frequency with which this argument is thrown around is extra-laughable. 

Especially considering how demonstrably willing both Archie and Veronica are to overcome their unfamiliarity with each other’s world, share each other’s concerns, support each other’s interests, and essentially serve as each other’s partner because they both consider all those things fundamental parts of being in a relationship (which they are).

**IMPORTANT NOTE: if you struggle to discern the difference between:

(1)  a healthy real-life relationship (which, sorry to be the bearer of bad news, will in fact include arguments because people are people and no human being who possesses a mind of their own agrees with another human being all the time)

(2)  a toxic real-life relationship (which can include arguments but doesn’t have to)

(3)  healthy and toxic fictional relationships (which are entirely different beasts, particularly in book or TV series as plot requirements frequently dictate that characters react in ways that no actual person would, because the narrative needs conflict or drama to function and publishers/networks still over-rely on relationships to provide that conflict or drama)

then you probably will believe Varchie is toxic, and you definitely need to do some research that goes a little deeper than Wikipedia/that one post with a bunch of notes that was written by a person who came out of their first college psychology class feeling like Sigmund Freud. Toxic relationships are no joke, and it’s a little frightening to see how many people on the internet are so confused as to what constitutes one in reality that they frequently interpret normal, healthy relationships portrayed in fiction as toxic, and borderline-toxic relationships in fiction as healthy. (Also, it doesn’t help that people who, for whatever reason, feel the need to paint their dislike of a certain pairing in homilectic terms, are in the habit of taking scenes that check off a few of the “toxic relationship” boxes and twisting them out of context so that they can pretend there’s an element of moral superiority to their prejudice.)

But, important reminder! Fiction and real life are not the same thing, so if you want to measure fiction by reality’s standards, you have to apply liberal amounts of common sense to your assessments of the goings-on in a fictional world and recognize that many developments are necessitated by things like plot advancement, network executives, deadlines, and your basic this-actor-got-sick or that-actor-is-going-leave-soon randomness. Playing judge, jury, and executioner on the toxicity of TV relationships is, if possible, even more complex than just judging the toxicity of real-life relationships because by arbitrary unwritten law, TV relationships must include some onscreen friction. 

In fact, one of the first things you’re taught about writing fiction is that no one wants to read/watch/hear about the thing that almost happened, so don’t waste valuable narrative time portraying that—yes, everyone likes to joke about how they would love to watch a show where the kids went to class everyday and everything happened normally, but it’s a joke. It’s not true. No one who’s done with high school really wants to go back again and listen to an hour of boring lectures week after week, and no one who’s still in school wants to come home and watch a show that’s a repeat of their entire day. TV shows (or books, or movies) expect you to understand that each episode/scene/chapter/whatever is a story they’re telling you about the time something did happen, and that expectation also extends to fictional relationships. Just because you happen to witness a couple’s every fight/argument/disagreement onscreen does not mean you’re expected to conclude that “OMG, this couple is so toxic! All they ever do is fight!” 

No.

That would be like concluding the only holidays in the town of Riverdale are Christmas and Labor Day because we haven’t seen them have Halloween or New Year’s yet. You’re expected to put two and two together and assume they’ve celebrated those holidays that logically must have preceded and followed Christmas, just like you’re expected to grasp the underlying implication that after weeks/months of happiness and fun and peace, these two characters who love each other are now squabbling/experiencing tension over something important that they disagree on. Archie and Veronica are shown working together, being happy, enjoying one another’s company etc. multiple times before conflict ever arises between them, and them figuring out how to navigate through that conflict is intended as a facet of the story’s plot and a developmental point in their character arcs, not a red flag denoting an unhealthy relationship.

But anyways.

Back to the “they break up all the time” argument and why its fallaciousness is so obvious that it needs to be retired with all possible speed. (And as a bonus, also back to its close relatives “they break up for stupid reasons and get back together in five minutes.”

The “Shouldn’t-Be-Necessary-But-Apparently-Is”Quick Guide To Varchie Breakups:

Breakup #1: The end of episode 2x08

Duration of breakup: Almost one whole episode (that spans the course of at least a couple days)

What leads to breakup: Archie, the comfortable-with-feelings person, drops the L-word and desperately wants to hear it back. Veronica, the uncomfortable-with-feelings person, isn’t sure she can say it back and doesn’t want to go on acting like it’s not a big deal when she can see how important it is to Archie.

The outcome: Neither Archie nor Veronica’s actual feelings change at all from the time of the breakup to the time of the reunion. (No, not even when Betty kisses Archie.) Veronica just finally realizes that what she feels for Archie is love, so she goes to see him and tells him face-to-face. Archie is happy to get back together right then and there, and they resume where they left off.

 “Breakup” #2: The end of episode 3x06

Duration of “breakup”: three +/- episodes (end of 3x06-beginning of 3x10)

What leads to “breakup”: Archie believes Hiram’s vendetta against him endangers everyone close to him, not just him, and decides running away is his only option.

The outcome: Once again, neither Archie nor Veronica’s actual feelings change. They both attempt to move on/forget (Archie with Farm Girl Whose Name Escapes Me, Veronica with Reggie), but don’t exactly succeed as evidenced by Veronica’s anger, Archie’s remorse, and how quickly they want to get back together when he returns to town. 

NOTE: This is the one I sarcastically refer to as “the breakup” because it was over the phone (which, as everyone who’s ever utilized this dodge knows, is the easiest way to keep yourself from going back on a hard decision you don’t want to make. It should be obvious to those with functioning sensibilities that Archie does it that way because he knows if he goes the in-person route he’ll have to see Veronica cry and won’t be able to handle it). Besides that, Archie tells Veronica that he loves her and she was “it” for him from the day he met her, and it clearly kills both them to say goodbye. So again, as any viewer with common sense can see, it’s a breakup in name only—their heads are forced to accept what their hearts can’t, and everything they think is resolved is really only postponed.

 Breakup #3: The end(ish) of episode 3x10

Duration of breakup: ALMOST TWELVE WHOLE EFFING EPISODES (end of 3x10-middleish of 3x22). COUNT THEM.

What leads to breakup: Archie has in no way recovered from his rough experiences over the past months, and is behaving erratically. Veronica observes his out-of-character behavior with a lot of concern, and Reggie (whether accidentally or on purpose) fuels the idea that Archie is no longer Archie, so when Hiram ends up shot the day of the PSATs, Veronica knee-jerk reacts due to all the stress, worries that Archie might be responsible for it, and doesn’t contradict Archie when he asks if they’re done.

The outcome: Once again (surprise, surprise!) neither Archie nor Veronica’s feelings for one another change. They again try to move on/forget each other by dating other people (Josie and Reggie), but it doesn’t work. They remain close, continue to look to each other for comfort/support, and as soon as they’re faced with a life-or-death scenario, they throw caution to the wind and tell each other the truth (“I love you. I don’t think I ever stopped loving you”/“My heart ached for you. Because I felt the same way.”)

 To recap: what do these breakups have in common?

(1) Each breakup is due to a legitimate concern involving the other person, i.e., they are breakups for mature reasons, not breakups for “How dare you not text me back within five minutes” or “I’m a free range pony that can’t be tamed” reasons (with all due respect to Fat Amy)

(2) Neither Archie nor Veronica wanted to break up

(3) Both Archie and Veronica continued to love each other

When you’re young, the un-fun truth is that you frequently make really bad decisions in love. (You also do it sometimes when you’re older, too.) Archie and Veronica breaking up because they mistakenly perceive certain issues as insurmountable, trying to move on with other people and then going back to each other to make things right and reaffirm the love they couldn’t pretend away the instant the opportunity arises isn’t them being fickle, or toxic—it’s just them being young and clueless and trying to recover from young and clueless mistakes as maturely as possible. 

And believe it or not, their relationship has been handled very well by Riverdale. There are few other TV couples who’ve been as steady as A&V, and none of them are teen couples (in fact, the only ones that even come to mind out of all the shows I’ve ever seen are married and/or background couples, not main couples, because main characters’ relationships are always put through more drama). It is basically unheard of for a teen show’s protagonist and their primary love interest (who, incidentally, is also another main character) to only go through three breakups in three seasons. It is rarer still for each of those breakups to have a justifiable concern at its core, and rarest of all for the characters to take the mature and difficult let’s-be-friends approach rather than the easy and childish let’s-personally-attack-the-other approach. 

That is not a back-and-forth and/or toxic relationship. That is a fictional teenage relationship handled more maturely than many a fictional adult relationship, and that is good. 

Postscript to the rant: 

Veronica does not break up with Archie in 1x01, because they are not yet together. 

Veronica does not break up with Archie in 1x11, because they are not yet together. 

Archie does not break up with Veronica in 2x01; he’s telling her he wants her to leave because he’s upset and lashing out. 

Archie does not break up with Veronica in 3x01, he just tries to soldier-heading-off-to-war her because he loves her too much to want her to waste her time waiting on him and Veronica refuses to agree to it because she loves him too much to back out because the going looks like it might get tough. 

I don’t know why all of these scenes are forever being cited as breakup scenes, but they are, and it’s so bafflingly incorrect that it makes me shudder. They’re not breakup scenes. End of story.

[u-l-i-a-n]

Long triggering story ahead

Make sure to check the tags before reading further to keep yourself safe, okay?

Anyways, here’s the story of my abusive friendship that lasted 8 years.

I can pretty confidently say 2017-2018 was the hardest year of my life so far, but it was also the one that set me free from HER (avoiding naming her bc you could definitely find her otherwise)

I’m very very bad at math, so bad that I ended up having to repeat my last year of middle school, and I’d decided to go to the other middle school in the area so i wouldn’t have the same teachers. I was pretty quickly adopted into a fairly large friend group that liked to hang out in the library, SHE was apart of that friend group. she also sat next to me in math class, and we very quickly became friends that were nearly inseparable. 

At this point in time i’d gone a few years without any real friends and my social skills were very poor, as well as my anxiety rendering me nearly mute (it still does this, but it was worse before) as i was the closest with HER, she became my “anchor” in most social situations, where i could be comfortable talking with everyone if she was talking too.

This, was where the abuse started. Where she would playfully hit me in the arm. HARD. every day, multiple times a day. I’d complain and rub my arm and she would dismiss me saying she “hadn’t hit me that hard” (I got it confirmed with another person she let one of her punches out on that it was hard as hell, and lord help you if you hit her back with the same strength)

This went on throughout high-school, along with more and more manipulation, and emotional abuse. If i did something without her approval she would be angry with me, she wanted me to keep my hair long and would get angry when i cut it, even if it looked better. If i was getting new glasses and decided on a style that she hadn’t picked out she’d be angry with me, if i wanted to see a movie she didn’t want it would take weeks of begging and making deals to watch things i had no interest in to appease her.

It was frustrating, and we argued CONSTANTLY on every little thing. She lied, pathologically, and would always try and prove herself right by yelling and hitting me in the arm until i backed down, even on things that were obviously incorrect (like: ”all raccoons are born with rabies, only gay men can get aids, japan is filthy and people shit in the streets, Spanish is the same thing and Mexican” i know, fucking crazy)

*There was one particular event that took place sometime between freshman and junior year, where on the multiple prompting of “she’ll stop hitting you if you hit her back and don’t back down” where I took that advice, and in my bedroom when she was staying over (as she did nearly every weekend, even if i didnt want her to) she’d hit me during an argument and I hit her back, this went back and forth until she got angry and angrier, until suddenly i was on my back with her hands wrapped around my throat. I remember staring at her in the eyes, until slowly she let me go. She said she didn’t know what happened, that she had “blacked out”. She didn’t apologize. I forgave her.

During this time, the friend group that we were apart of bisected and grew in different parts, some being the kids interested in theater and some being interested in other nerdy things, like video games and anime. A lot of the time, the few other friend that i had that weren’t HER often asked me “why are you still friends with her, she treats you like shit” and you may also be wondering at this point “Ulian what the hell why were you still around this person???”

Well, I’d convinced myself that she needed me, like i had once needed her as a buffer and anchor for social interaction, that i somehow owed her my patience and forgiveness for the things she did, and continued to do.

A certain event led to us breaking apart for a time, that event being her handing me a letter after several weeks of telling me how angry she was that i continued to interact with someone she didn’t like (even after she’s lied about the person being mean to her, but at this point i knew over half the things she said were lies) the letter, in briefest terms, was her blaming me and how i acted for her wanting to kill herself. She literally wrote the words “You make me want to kill myself”(hypocritical since her stance on self-harm was that people only did so for attention and people who committed suicide were weak) I couldn’t handle it, I couldn’t handle the idea that something i did would have made someone want to die, and couldn’t handle that she’d just slip me a letter about it while at school and expect me to be fine.

My depression got worse, i avoided her for a time and my mental health was bad enough that it had a physical effect on me that other people commented on. I thought i was sick, and missed about a week of school.

eventually, and unfortunately, we made up. With me conditioning that she needed to treat me better, specifically “hey stop hitting me maybe??” and for the most part she did, slowly she stopped hitting me and things were much better. for awhile at least.

skipping forward a bit, we graduated, and she convinced me to go with her to college (we lasted 2 semesters and then stopped). Eventually she convinced me to start working with her at our local grocery store (bad idea) She constantly pointed out that my home life was shit and I was eager to move out of the house, and after finding a third roommate, I was living in the same house as HER (horrible idea)

although her hitting me was now something that happened very rarely, her manipulative tendencies and emotional abuse increased. And also spread to the people around us. While living together, any small mistake i made was blown up out of proportion (like not doing the dishes when she said to even though she never ever did them) and she made it seem as if i was lazy, as if i was childish and needed her in order to function. she made it so the way she treated me made sense to other people, and that i deserved how she was acting towards me.

She even threw me a kiddie themed birthday party for my 21st birthday, with a bunch of baby decorations, like think winnie the pooh themed stuff.

She constantly undermined everything i said or did, made me out to be irresponsible, invaded my privacy by forcing me to let her use my phone and computer and give her access to it, told people my secrets that i told her in confidence and bad mouthed me behind my back (as i found out from our 3rd roommate and also my GRANDMOTHER)

She also made me feel as if I couldn’t return home, that my home life (which isnt great but no one is degrading or hitting me hmmm) was horrible and that i couldn’t go back there, which i later realized was her manipulating me into feeling as if i HAD to stay with her and had no where else to go.

Living with her made all the things she did and the horrible way she treated me pile up, and left me short tempered. I knew that something needed to change, and I thought that I could get through to her and have her change how she was behaving.

We argued again, after the time she had choked me i’d backed down quite a bit, and started hating arguing since i knew she’d never listen to me. This time, once again, i argued and didn’t back down when she yelled at me.

So she SCREAMED at me, loud enough to make the house shake and have my cat try to intervene, and she threw the closest object she could find at me full force (a penny, but still scary as hell in context)

I was quiet, and I waited for a time for her to calm down. i asked “Are we going to talk about this.” and she replied “No.” And i walked out the door.

Because when i get truly, viscerally angry or upset, my response is to remove myself from the problem. I walked out the door into the night to calm myself down, shaken from the realization of the situation i was in and knowing that I couldn’t stay with her.

I began telling our other roommate and her boyfriend about the things she would say to me about them when they weren’t around, I’m not very proud of going against someones trust but at this point i was desperate to have someone on my side and willing to help me get away from her when our lease was up.

During this time she had manipulated me into coming to conclusions that i would NEVER come to on my own, such as thinking our roommate who had clinical depression only wanted attention, which is something that someone who also has depressions and many friends with depression and actively learns and cares for people with mental health issues wouldn’t ever think on my own. its not in me to think badly of other people for no reason, while she (her words) hated everyone around her by default.

eventually our roommate confronted her, and she managed to twist things around and cause a lot of tension, leaving me feeling trapped and hopeless in a house with someone who had the potential to hurt me, and also my pet cat.

She threatened things i cared about and intentionally tried to upset me, specifically threatening my cat, who is a huge emotional support for me. It sounds funny, saying i was upset because she threatened my cat, she and her mom laughed about it. no one laughs when i tell them what she was saying.

Things like “I’m going to hold her down in the drive way and have (roommate) run her over” and “I’m going to shove her in the oven and cook her alive for you to find her when you come home”

Yea, not funny. you can see why i was upset about it. She apparently couldn't, and refused to stop even when i asked her to repeatedly.

She also fully knew that i was pansexual, hell i was the reason she was even slightly okay with people in the LGBT+ community. She wasn’t great about specifically me though, and when i told her about being nonbinary she made fun of my chose name (called me Uvula) and refused to call me by my preferred pronouns.

When I came out to our roommates she said she would never call me by that stupid name or by they/them because i don’t “act nonbinary” (get a load of this guy)

Her last day in the house, she was upset with me for going into her room to take back my heated blanket that she’d taken from my room without permission (my room was cold as hell, i wasn't going to wait for her to come home at 1 am and and she already had a heated mattress pad)

I took it back of course, and our roommate asked what she was upset about (roommate and her bf had bought some food they didn't want to share, which we already discussed was fine) I told her honestly and carefully didn't badmouth HER since she was already mad, and i wanted things to be less stressful.

She blew up at me while we were at work and came for her things that night to go back to her parents house. we took care of her cat until she could figure something out for it.

During this time and the time i last saw her, several things happened, since unfortunately we worked together

She cornered me in the bottle trailer (literally a semi-truck that has bottle returns in it in huge bins. she was standing at the door and could close it at any time) and called me a horrible friend, and also a huge bitch, while we were supposed to be working and she was in a position of power over me. I panicked and said nothing.

She often made me up to an hour late for my lunches, since she was promoted to manager, and liked to skip my breaks and all around treat me like shit compared to every one else.

Despite all of this. . . I still felt as if i could forgive her, if she somehow proved she could do better that i could be friends with her again. Until she ruined that for herself by telling me that my dead father would be dissapointed in the way i was acting.

 No. hell no. I was done, she didn’t deserve my forgiveness. And i finally realized that it wasn’t my job to “fix” her.

When the lease ended I moved back in with my parents, and I quit working at that job in September.

I haven’t seen her in over half a year and many of the people who knew me when she and I were close have commented on how much happier i am, and how much more confident i am in myself.

I’m sure i’ve missed a lot of things, and I know I didn’t really go over the positives of our relationship (There were some! i swear!) but if i did go over everything it would be the length of a novel.

I got away from someone who was hurting me, I decided my happiness was more important than catering to someones every whim, decided that i deserved happiness. And I learned to NEVER let someone treat me like that again, to surround myself with people who make me happy.

I hope, in whatever way, this story of my 8 year horrible friendship helped you.

And if SHE is reading this. . . Go fuck yourself.

[adhdvane]

what if i just post random bits from the science fantasy dragon knights au with no context

"…Soo…" Vane fidgets with his jacket zipper in the passenger seat of the car.

Percival ignores him, keeping his focus on the icy roads. That is, if you could really call them roads, they were more like trails. God, Percival hates his brother's taste for remote private properties. The nearest town was an hour and a half away. Oh but that's no problem when they've got everything they could possibly need already on site. Percival is starting to remember why thinking much about his privileged childhood (after the death of his mother) makes him feel sick to his stomach.

"You're brother's a satanist, huh?"

Percival chokes and slams his foot on the break causing the car to come to a slippery stop. He sharply turns his head, mouth agape, giving Vane a look as if, well, as if someone had just called his brother a satanist.

"Vane, what the fuck." It wasn't a question.

"Well—"

"He's not a satanist. He's a magic practitioner, it runs in the family."

"Okay… but… he literally tried to open a portal to like… hell…"

Percival pinches the bridge of his nose, shuts his eyes, and takes a deep breath.

"It's not—" Percival raises a finger. "The Otherworld—Look. The study of the Otherworld Key and it's power has been in our family for centuries. When our father passed he inherited it's sigil and—"

"Ohhhhh, so you're from a long line of satanists who were gifted magic and power from the dark lord himself. I gotcha."

Percival opens his eyes, ready to kill a man, and catches the sight of the smirk stretched across the freckled blond idiot sitting next to him. This fucker is doing this just to get a rise out of him. The expression on Percival's face drops and he turns back to the steering wheel, starting to drive again.

"I'm filing for a divorce."

----

[in the kitchen during which aglovale and vane aren’t entirely sober] vane: hey, so like aglovale i have a question. aglovale: hm? vane: so... like... if you were opening a portal because you wanted to see your mom... like... and she was a good person and stuff... why did you open a portal to hell??? don’t you think she’d be like... somewhere nicer???? aglovale: ... percival: (vane what the fuck?!) oh god please don’t listen to vane, he’s a fucking idiot. i’m so sorry. aglovale: ... vane: hey, it’s a legitimate question. why would your mom be in hell if-- percival: VANE aglovale: oh god... PERCY. MOM IS IN HELL AND WE HAVE TO SAVE HER. FUCK. I’LL GO GET THE THINGS TO MAKE A SUMMONING CIRCLE. YOU TWO CLEAR THE TABLE. percival: jfc is that wine bottle empty?have you been drinking straight from that--AGLOVALE COME BACK vane: aw come on; i wanna see him go to hell percival: NO ONE IS GOING TO HELL. DON’T YOU REMEMBER WHAT FATHER USED TO SAY, AGGY? DON’T DRINK AND DARK MAGIC. aglovale: god percy, when did you become such a bitch, if you’re not going to save mom i’ll just do it without you. vane: yeah, he’ll do it without you! percival: STOP ENCOURAGING HIM. AGLOVALE MOTHER IS NOT IN HELL. THE OTHERWORLD IS NOT HELL.

---

"Honestly Percy, look at him." Aglovale clumsily gestures at Vane, nearly spilling from his glass. "He's tall, he's handsome, he cooks—" he's counting on his fingers as he speaks. "he's got a heart of gold, he's strong, and he's got a great ass. Explain to me how you haven't put a ring on this man's finger, you're not going to be young and beautiful forever dear little brother. You've got to seal the deal while you still have something going for you."

Percival fucking chokes, sputtering back into his wine glass.

"Technically he already did." Vane sings into the empty glass in his hand.

"What?" Aglovale sets down his glass. Percival tries to muster a reply but he's still coughing, trying to regain his ability to breathe.

"Mmm, yup." Vane leans back, titling his chair recklessly on its back legs. "I think that was a few months ago."

"I hope you were planning on telling me soon. When is the ceremony? If you haven't decided on a location yet, we have an estate on the beach that's absolutely gorgeous. Oh, I should just give you [name]'s information. She planned my wedding with my ex and it was flawless." Aglovale slaps his hand on Percival's back maybe a little too roughly and pours Vane another glass.

"Huh?" Vane leans back forwards. "Oh, we already got married."

Vane smiles stupidly and Aglovale sits there in silence as the glass begins to overflow. He forcefully sets the bottle down and sharply turns to Percival.

"I'm offended you didn't invite your own brother to your wedding, Percy. Let alone even let me know you were getting married in the first place." Aglovale crosses his arms. "Well, at least show me the ring. I need to know how poor of a job this traitor did."

"I already ate mine." Vane giggles.

"…"

The room is silent.

Percival finally manage to catch his breath.

"It's not—"

"I think Percy lost his in the couch."

Aglovale looks at his brother absolutely stunned, trying to process what he's just been told.

"It was made of candy." Percival blurts out.

Aglovale is not sure how that even makes it better.

"I'm sorry, what?"

"It was a ring pop!" Vane chimes in trying to lean over and sip from the overfilled glass sitting on the table without spilling it.

"Percival."

"Look, Aggy. It's not what you think."

"Percival."

Vane scooches right up next to Percival and wraps and arm around him, grinning. "I married him for his health insurance."

It stays silent for a bit.

"Huh?"

Percival pinches the bridge of his nose and tries to push through the haze of alcohol.

"Vane's previous provider counted 'enmity gear' as a preexisting condition and use it as a loop-hole to refuse to cover a majority of medical bills. With the nature of the work Vane does, and unfortunate string of events, there were some medical bills that were piling up. So… we got married so he'd be covered by my health insurance. As long as he was being treated by the hospital I work at or one of it's partners, he'd be covered. That's why I didn't rush to the phone to call you I was marrying one of my boyfriends so he wouldn't continue to be buried in expensive medical bills."

Aglovale gently rests a hand on Percival's shoulder and smiles softly. And then it quickly fades.

"Did you say… one of… your boyfriends?"

It's quiet.

"Oh fuck Percy. I thought we weren't going to tell him about Lancey 'cause you thought coming out to your brother as gay and poly was too much at once." Vane whispers to Percival; except it's not exactly whispering so much as it is words loudly dribbling out of his mouth with the slight indication that Vane thinks he might be much quieter than he really is.

Percival puts his face in his hands. He's pretty sure even if Vane had been sober this mess would have still found a way to come spilling out.

[jackjames-exe]

How are you today? 💕

Okay lets do this. Trigger warnings are in the tags.

(I started writing this before the vid came out so I decided to keep the original first part)

Oh my gods today has been so awful and it‘s barely even 4 pm.

My sisters (older one) friend decided to tell my mom things my younger sister and I told her in confidence. For me it was that I’ve thought of suicide and I’ve researched it once or twice on a bad day. Instead of being sad and wanting to talk she decided to get mad and slap me (it didn’t hurt really but still) and she yelled at me about how I have no right to feel suicidal. Her reason was that I have a lot, a computer (and laptop) I payed for with my uni money and my phone I helped pay for. I will say she gives me a lot, she’s paying my phone bill (and my phone in increments) and I (this is where I stopped) feel awful about making her think I’m not grateful for it, I really am. But I’m still depressed.

She decided that the way to prove I’m not actually suicidal or to show me I’m conflicting (I’m not quite sure why or which one) she decided to rush me and grab my throat (not enough to hurt me, just enough to have her hands around my neck and to put pressure on my windpipe, so just enough to scare me) but yea I obviously jumped and got scared because my mother is about to like choke me or some shit. She let go explained that I want to kill myself but I get scared when my throat is grabbed or I’m grabbed in general? Like that means I’m not actually suicidal.

Then she started asking me why and I said I feel useless and worthless and she asked if anyone had ever told me that, I said she has (because shes said it when angry) she got pissed. She told me to think about whether she has ever actually told me I’m worthless and left the room, I followed and we continued our argument. (I added this part for context)

She seems to think that just because I don’t talk about my problems that they dont exist. Which is dumb. She started lecturing me about the fact shes done a lot for me and she thought she was doing great before she found out I was depressed and now that she knows I’m suicidal too she feels like a failure and told me that she will book herself into the hospital so yea. I really do love her and appreciate her and she wont let me talk or listen to what I’m saying because she thinks that there’s no way I appreciate her if I dont do anything.

I told her I feel like a waste of space and like I don’t do anything and she said thats cus its true and yea shes right but still. Anyway so yea I told her I have no motivation and she said that I obviously do because I go on my phone and my computer so I just don’t want to do things for her because I don’t appreciate or cherish her, so yea that was fun. It kept going like that, me trying to explain and then her yelling and telling me I’m wrong about my own emotions and that I feel nothing for her.I got mad and asked her in tears to just let me talk

(I was crying the whole time which she got mad about because I wouldn’t explain in detail why, like the conversation and situation wasn’t upsetting and cus she kept getting mad at me I would force myself to stop and then when she insulted or got annoyed angry or whatever at me I’d start crying again)

So anyway I asked her to let me talk and she rushed at me gripped my hair and started getting more pissed saying that me saying sorry doesn’t do or tell her shit. And it kept going like that. She wouldn’t listen. She learned nothing other than the fact that the reason I haven’t ended it all yet was because I believed it would be a burden for someone to find me and have to deal with the consequences of that situation.

She got mad about that and later in the argument told me that I cause a lot of shit already from not doing anything so there was no point in that being a reason.And she also told me that I could go to a friend of mine who has taken psych classes about my issues and if shes really my friend I should feel comfortable with that. That isn’t even how friends work first of all and when I tried to tell her that I didn’t wanna get Becca (the friend) into my life and vent to her, she got angry AGAIN. Like the whole argument was me trying to explain my feelings, her getting mad and telling me I only care about myself so I was wrong and me arguing back and then her getting mad and getting in my face or getting physical or saying she’s a failure and she’s gonna leave us to our own devices while she goes to the hospital. She has pain, a lot of physical pain and she’s depressed too and stuff so she said it’d be easier on her anyway because (and I know this but she wont let us learn, she just gets pissed and yells at us and throws things while explaining how to do it right when we mess things up, which according to her is only because we don’t want to try, we can do it we just choose not to) (fun fact I actually planned on cleaning my room completely but she yelled at me so that got rid of a lot of hours I could have been doing that and made my mood awful. I’m still going to but now I’m just extremely upset)

So yea. She also brought back my past mistakes. When I was a kid I was fucking stupid and I made dumb decisions. One of which was to be upset because some people my sisters and I were hanging with weren’t hanging out with me or letting me play so in a fit of anger and will to be payed attention to I said I’d kill myself. At the time I was actually an okay kid but I got bullied a lot and I had like no friends so I was lonely and I didn’t want the few people who spoke to me to leave and I over reacted obviously not knowing the consequences. She took me to a therapist who asked questions. I said I was fine and since my mom and sister (older) both said I wasn’t fine apparently (i had just been told this today) they had to go to therapy classes to deal with the fact they were wrong. When I tried to tell her that I was just a stupid 11 year old kid she told me I wasn’t because I convinced a doctor I was fine? But I really was fine. I only started not to be because of all the consequences of that decision and growing up with no friends and being yelled at or bullied by my sisters eventually made me believe everything they’d made me feel and I ended up as I have been the past like 6 years. Yep.

But she calmed down and now she’s in a good ish mood I guess so I’m not being yelled at anymore and I got to watch Jack’s video! Now I’m sitting on my couch trying to work through my anxiety to call up my doctor so I can make an appointment to get help of some sort.

The worst thing is she is a great person, she’s really kind and fun to be around. But she’s just so stressed and tired and in pain. We’re really poor so she has difficulty with paying bills and getting food and she’s given up a lot for us and it seems like we just don’t care but I really love her and I listen to her and I wish I didn’t have such bad anxiety and depression, I wish I had the motivation I need to get up and do things around the house like she needs but I just. I can’t. Things are a lot and I can barely get up as it is. I know I need help and I want to get help and stuff. It’s just hard when I think about the fact I need to call and tell a person that I want an appointment and then go to it, possibly alone or with my mom and talk about everything or why I need help. I’m just scared so much. I don’t want to just burst into tears or make things confusing/stressful for the nurse or doctor. My mind is a lot.

So yea that is my day so far. I finished this at 6:35 pm. And yea.

[miriyos]

chosen (wc: 1,208)

From a random prompt generator — Mad Max AU. Partly influenced by End of the Road by Aoidos (Inception Mad Max AU).

There’s no denying that the Immortan is a bad man.

At one point Geno might have been a Rock Rider. It’s been so long so he can’t remember clearly. Sometimes he barely remembers his name since the War Boys have reduced him to merely a letter.

G.

He has to remind himself who he is on his own.

Immortan has tried converting him. In his weakened state, G has given it thought. If becoming a War Boy would mean being released from his blood bag status, maybe being a War Boy wouldn’t be too bad after all. But he doesn’t become a War Boy. His blood is too valuable and Immortan has no shortage of ignorant and easily brainwashed boys to be his pawns.

The War Boy that usually comes round noon for his transfusion one day does not.

There’s quite a bit of yelling and smoke instead. He sees a flurry of bodies running past and a woman barking orders. The yelling becomes more high pitched, making G realize that it’s women that’s screaming. A voice much deeper, much calmer despite the situation, comes closer but never moves away.

“We’re just leaving them?” the male voice asks.

The woman, the one G thinks must be in charge, sighs. “We don’t have time! We have to leave now.”

“But—”

“No time, Sidney!” The woman pushes the man away until they’re merely just a distant sound.

Slowly, tiredly, G’s eyes begin to close. He’s tired. He’ll get some sleep now and later when the War Boy returns, surely the boy will wake him.

*

G wakes up able to roll his his shoulders and stretch out his legs and his body. His whole body feels warm. A wool blanket is draped over him although the length of the blanket barely reaches his knees.

He goes to close his eyes again, to savor the warmth and quite possibly the nicest dream he’s had in months, but an angel beside him won’t let him.

“You should eat,” the angel encourages, holding out a ration bar. It looks like it’s already had a bite taken out of it yet G takes it anyway. His mouth is so dry he can barely open it to say thanks. “You must be thirsty too.” Carefully, the angel presses a chipped cup into his hand.

The water is warm and perhaps a bit stale but G doesn’t care. He drinks it down in several long gulps and licks his lips to savor the rest of it all.

“Immortan—” the angel begins but decides against continuing. “Sleep,” the young man advises instead.

As if G had any other plans. He falls back asleep, the blanket tucked around his shoulders by the angel, instantly.

*

“We should let the Riders deal with him.”

“Or he could entertain us. We can do that now.”

“Please, you find that blood bag attractive?”

“It’s not as if we’ve seen many other man before now.”

“Well I wouldn’t, not without Sidney’s permission first.”

G barely registers the conversation, barely understanding the context, when he opens his eyes to see four women staring at him curiously. They’re all dressed in threadbare clothes looking even worse for wear than what G was given. All young and innocent looking.

“He’s awake!” one announces, holding onto her friend and hiding partly behind her.

G looks at the pair carefully. They have Immortan’s brand on them but he’s not sure who these women could possibly be. He sees that the bravest one, the one daring to prod at his face, is pregnant.

Immortan’s wives.

He can’t move away from them fast enough. There’s only so much room in the vehicle that must have served as their getaway that his back quickly comes to press against the seat.

“You’re scaring him,” another one says sympathetically.

“Maybe we should get Furiosa.”

G doesn’t want anyone. He only wants out. He makes a move for the door foolishly. He doesn’t know where he is, and certainly has no way of navigating through the desert wasteland outside of Immortan’s territory but he isn’t going to take this vehicle with Immortan’s brides inside. He’ll barely last a day running from Immortan and his head is pounding.

“He’s trying to escape,” the pregnant one points out blandly.

“He won’t get far.”

Sure enough, he can’t. G nearly chokes when he lunges for the door. The colar the women must have put on him in his sleep is old and rusted but clearly effective. When he yanks on the chain to find its source it goes beneath the bottom of the vehicle into a hidden compartment. A compartment which G’s dream angel is standing in.

“We’re on the same side,” the angel informs G. He hoists himself up into the main backseat of the tank. “We’re all trying to do the same thing. We’re all trying to get away from the Immortan.”

*

Sidney, G finds, is not a War Boy or an angel but another one of Immortan’s wives that escaped. Or from what at least G has pieced together from eavesdropping, Sidney is one of the Immortan’s prizes.

It’s dangerous but as Sidney curls up on the floor of the War Rig to examine G closely, G can’t bring himself to turn away or make another run for it. Furiosa tries to keep Sidney away but Sidney doesn’t seem to listen to orders well. Sidney keeps coming back and as long as they keep driving, G can’t do anything but let the pretty man continue to study him.

“You like?” he jokes after allowing Sidney to come closer.

“I do,” Sidney replies honestly.

Sidney’s lips are chapped when he kisses G for the first time. He kisses like he’s unsure and hesitant, allowing Geno to take the lead although he was the one that initiated the kiss. Desperate for the warmth of another, G pulls the young man closer until their bodies are pressed together. He thinks briefly as Sidney hooks a leg on top of G’s hips that Sidney means to be the one on top but he makes no move for it.

Instead, G presses Sidney softly into the War Rig’s floor, rolling their hips together. Sidney lets out a breathy moan, both his hands falling onto the thin mattress on either side of his head. His fingers twitch but he doesn’t try to touch Geno.

Geno doesn’t mind.

He kisses Sidney all along the side of his face to the crook of his neck. There he sucks away the fine layer of sweat away from the man’s skin. Sidney’s breath hitches and his legs come up to wrap firmly around G’s waist.

“Do you want to fuck me?” Sidney asks bluntly, a flush on his cheeks.

“I do,” Geno groans, squeezing Sidney’s hips tightly.

“Then fuck me,” Sidney says.

Geno thinks about it but doesn’t try too hard. His hands are already doing the answering for him.

*

With reluctance Furiosa lets G free of his chain. To celebrate, Sidney climbs on top of his lap and rides him until the Rig’s windows are fogged and his thighs are shaking.

“You chose me,” G tells him.

Sidney smiles wide although his chapped lips crack ever so slightly. “I chose you.”

[buttsonthebeach]

I'm not sure how to categorize this ask, maybe a prompt or for DWC? idk, but this is something we've talked about. In chapter 20 from your fic Awakened, I talked with you about what happens if Solas was so deeply withdrawn to the point where he shuts himself off, unresponsive, so drowned in guilt and self-loathe and I asked what would Ellana do? I was wondering if you could write it, like a comfort fic? A short, mini AU? I'm not sure but I hope you understand x) thank you in advance!!

Hi friend

This might not make much sense, context-wise, if you haven’t read Awakened, but you are of course free to give it a shot. That said, this is a sad one at first.

Pairing: Solavellan, post-Trespasser reunited

Solas woke that first morning back in Skyhold and felt it - his body had turned to lead. He took his first slow, deep breath of the morning. His lungs felt like they would only fill halfway. He’d slept long into morning and yet he still felt exhausted. Still felt like simply rolling over and going back to sleep, however long he’d already slept.

Our daughter almost died. My wife is still dying. I have failed them both. I am unworthy of them both.

He knew he needed to get up. He knew he needed to see how both of them were doing. They needed him. They needed him. He was failing them again already, lying here, unable to breathe, unable to move, drowning in his own guilt.

Idiot. Useless, worthless fool -

He sat up. He put his head in his hands. Everything felt distant except the memory of what happened to Ashara. Except the sound of Ellana in agony. He wanted to get up. He wanted to go and find them, help them - he knew, logically, that there was good he could do still - and yet his clothes on the dresser felt miles away, and yet when he tried to make a list of things to accomplish he could not hold it in his mind for longer than a moment, and yet he was, at the end of the day, an idiot, a useless, worthless -

“There you are.”

Ellana’s voice managed to cut through the fog a little. He sat up at the sound, aware suddenly of the pathetic picture he painted. Sitting in bed with the sun full in the sky, when she was the one who was dying, when his daughter was the one with haunted eyes and a racing mind -

“Are you alright, love?”

No.

“I am fine,” he said.

Ellana frowned but said nothing. “Breakfast is getting cold. You should come down.”

He got ready, probing his mind all the while. He had not gone to sleep feeling this way. He felt anxious, yes, still running on the terrifying high of everything that happened in the temple, and angry at himself, and worried - but this - this pressed down, skull-shrinking, stomach-turning emptiness -

He sat at breakfast and did his best to look polite, engaged. Everyone else was tired too. Ellana, Ashara, Claudia, Lucius. They did not expect him to play the host. So why, then, was it so exhausting, simply being, simply sitting there and focusing and not bending forward and putting his head on the table and letting the guilt and the anger and the numbness consume him -

“I am sorry,” he said finally. “I must attend to something upstairs.”

The words didn’t even seem to come from his mouth. When he went upstairs and went to their bed and laid down again, he didn’t find rest there. Just the ache so deep he couldn’t feel anything else. Weight and weightlessness, the crushing guilt and the sense that nothing mattered.

“Vhenan?”

Ellana again, grimacing on her way up the stairs, her eyebrows knit with confusion. Solas looked to her and wanted at once to go to her, to take her pain away, to tell her she didn’t have anything to worry about, that he would fix everything, and yet he found he could not move. Could not even speak.

I have failed them both.

“Solas, what’s wrong?”

I wish I had the words to say it.

“I am fine, vhenan.”

“Bullshit.”

He looked away from her. “I needed a moment.”

“Are you sure that’s all?”

“Yes. If you will only give me a moment - I will collect myself and I will go back downstairs. I am sure there are things that need to be done. If - I can only have a moment, I will attend to them.”

She crossed the room to him and reached out and took his hand.

You do not deserve her touch.

She pressed his hand.

“Rest. Take the time you need. Don’t worry about me. Claudia seems to have it under control. I’ll return later.”

It would only be a moment, he told himself.

He was just exhausted. If he only slept a little while he would wake up and this feeling would be gone.

It wasn’t.

He lay there most of the day lost in the labyrinth of his thoughts. Everything he’d done wrong. Every way he’d failed. He had come so close to losing everything that mattered, everything that ever could matter, and without them, who would he be -

Ellana’s weight on the bed startled him. When he opened his eyes he saw that it was nearing evening. She was lying behind him, spooned against his back. He’d spent all day lost in his own self-loathing, and that only made it grow the way a wave sucked water away from the shore in order to grow bigger, crash harder. They were the ones suffering and he was drowning in his own self-pity.

“Love,” she said. “Can you tell me what’s wrong?”

He wanted to. But how would it sound? How would it feel to admit everything he knew was true? That he was a failure, a beacon for disaster, someone who destroyed everything he touched?

“It’s fine if you can’t tell me. I just wanted to let you know that I would listen. I’ve been worried about you today. I haven’t seen you like this in so long.”

Not since the Inquisition. Not since his layers of secrets. He always pulled away then. Made sure she missed the days when he shut down so utterly he could not speak. But that meant he had no way of forming the words, of letting her in, even now when he so desperately wanted to.

He reached down and squeezed her hand where it rested on his chest. She returned the pressure, gently. Her thumb traced soothing circles on the back of his hands. She nuzzled against his ear and placed row after delicate row of kisses on the shell of it. He felt his heart slow. He hadn’t been aware it was racing.

When she was done kissing his ear she moved to his shoulder, and kissed more firmly there. A soft, incoherent sound escaped him at the pressure. She heard it and responded, curling tighter around him, holding him closer. The pressure grounded him in his body. Made everything more real. She held him tighter and tighter, and eventually his heart was racing again, only this time because he had to speak, had to tell her -

“I have been -”

He couldn’t even say the words.

Ellana slid her hand under his tunic and rested it over his heart. Skin to skin. He longed for every inch of her skin then. Not for sex but for connection. To feel real.

“You have been my heart,” she said. “You have been my home. You have been a father. You have been a friend. You have been a general, a rebel, a scholar. You have been so many things, love. I have loved every one of them.”

He shook his head once, hard. He tried to start again. She pushed up the back of his tunic and ran her nails gently down his back, over and over again.

“I don’t know why you’re feeling lost now. I don’t think I need to. All I know is that you won’t feel that way forever. You are not alone, Solas. No one is.”

He took a rattling breath. He knew he wouldn’t be able to say it now. Her words were filling him up instead. Not taking away the emptiness, the pain, not exactly. Instead she was sharpening everything. Making him feel again.

“I love you,” she said. “And you deserve every ounce of that love. Every day. Even on the days when you think you don’t.”

That choked him.

He wasn’t sure if he could believe it was true.

Not that day, anyway.

But that didn’t matter to her.

She stayed, kissing the back of his neck, running her nails up and down, up and down his back, until the tension started to ease from his muscles. She massaged his shoulders slowly and carefully, and then his arm. She asked now and then if there was anything he wanted to say. He couldn’t muster the words, but he could breathe again. She returned to kissing his shoulders, leaving perfect rows of kisses, determined not to leave a single part of him untouched. When he closed his eyes, it was truly to rest, and not just to lie there in the mire of his loathing. She loved him. That was not something that could save a person all on its own. Not really. But the knowledge that he was loved could guide him back to his own center, his own knowledge of himself.

And that was what she did, one careful caress at a time, each one followed by a kiss. She stayed there with him in the dark until he found his way back to himself, and she was there with a smile in the morning.

“Better?” She asked.

His chest still hurt. The thoughts still lurked in the back of his mind. But she was there. She would not leave. Her gray eyes were bright and her hand was warm on his chest.

“Better,” he said.

[frmartinshomiliesandreflections]

27th January >> Fr. Martin’s Gospel Reflections / Homilies on Mark 4:1-20 for Wednesday, Third Week in Ordinary Time: ‘Listen anyone who has ears to hear’.

Wednesday, Third Week in Ordinary Time

Gospel (Except USA)

Mark 4:1-20

The parable of the sower

Jesus began to teach by the lakeside, but such a huge crowd gathered round him that he got into a boat on the lake and sat there. The people were all along the shore, at the water’s edge. He taught them many things in parables, and in the course of his teaching he said to them, ‘Listen! Imagine a sower going out to sow. Now it happened that, as he sowed, some of the seed fell on the edge of the path, and the birds came and ate it up. Some seed fell on rocky ground where it found little soil and sprang up straightaway, because there was no depth of earth; and when the sun came up it was scorched and, not having any roots, it withered away. Some seed fell into thorns, and the thorns grew up and choked it, and it produced no crop. And some seeds fell into rich soil and, growing tall and strong, produced crop; and yielded thirty, sixty, even a hundredfold.’ And he said, ‘Listen, anyone who has ears to hear!’    When he was alone, the Twelve, together with the others who formed his company, asked what the parables meant. He told them, ‘The secret of the kingdom of God is given to you, but to those who are outside everything comes in parables, so that they may see and see again, but not perceive; may hear and hear again, but not understand; otherwise they might be converted and be forgiven.’    He said to them, ‘Do you not understand this parable? Then how will you understand any of the parables? What the sower is sowing is the word. Those on the edge of the path where the word is sown are people who have no sooner heard it than Satan comes and carries away the word that was sown in them. Similarly, those who receive the seed on patches of rock are people who, when first they hear the word, welcome it at once with joy. But they have no root in them, they do not last; should some trial come, or some persecution on account of the word, they fall away at once. Then there are others who receive the seed in thorns. These have heard the word, but the worries of this world, the lure of riches and all the other passions come in to choke the word, and so it produces nothing. And there are those who have received the seed in rich soil: they hear the word and accept it and yield a harvest, thirty and sixty and a hundredfold.’

Gospel (USA)

Mark 4:1-20

A sower went out to sow.

On another occasion, Jesus began to teach by the sea. A very large crowd gathered around him so that he got into a boat on the sea and sat down. And the whole crowd was beside the sea on land. And he taught them at length in parables, and in the course of his instruction he said to them, “Hear this!  A sower went out to sow. And as he sowed, some seed fell on the path, and the birds came and ate it up. Other seed fell on rocky ground where it had little soil. It sprang up at once because the soil was not deep. And when the sun rose, it was scorched and it withered for lack of roots. Some seed fell among thorns, and the thorns grew up and choked it and it produced no grain. And some seed fell on rich soil and produced fruit. It came up and grew and yielded thirty, sixty, and a hundredfold.” He added, “Whoever has ears to hear ought to hear.”    And when he was alone, those present along with the Twelve questioned him about the parables. He answered them, “The mystery of the Kingdom of God has been granted to you. But to those outside everything comes in parables, so that

they may look and see but not perceive,    and hear and listen but not understand, in order that they may not be converted and be forgiven.”

Jesus said to them, “Do you not understand this parable? Then how will you understand any of the parables? The sower sows the word. These are the ones on the path where the word is sown. As soon as they hear, Satan comes at once and takes away the word sown in them. And these are the ones sown on rocky ground who, when they hear the word, receive it at once with joy. But they have no roots; they last only for a time. Then when tribulation or persecution comes because of the word, they quickly fall away. Those sown among thorns are another sort. They are the people who hear the word, but worldly anxiety, the lure of riches, and the craving for other things intrude and choke the word, and it bears no fruit. But those sown on rich soil are the ones who hear the word and accept it and bear fruit thirty and sixty and a hundredfold.”

Reflections (3)

(i) Wednesday, Third Week in Ordinary Time

Speaking through the prophet Isaiah the Lord says, ‘the word be that goes out of my mouth… shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplished that which I purpose, and succeed in the thing for which I sent it’. To some extent the parable in today’s gospel reading reflects that declaration of the Lord that his word will accomplish God’s purpose in the end. Much of the farmer’s work in sowing the seed seems like a waste of time. Nature’s elements, like the birds of the air, rocky soil and thorns, inhibit the farmer’s work of sowing seed. However, in spite of the loss, some of the seed falls on good soil and the return from that seed far outweighs the failure of the other seed. If the seed is an image of the word of God, as the interpretation of the parable suggests, then, the Lord’s word accomplishes the Lord’s purposes, in spite of the many resistances in the human heart, be it a failure to allow the word to take root there, or an unwillingness to be faithful in times of trial, or allowing the attractions of the world to choke the word. Human resistance will not, in the end, undermine the power of the Lord’s word. Human failure will not have the last word. In the language of Paul, where sin abounds, grace abounds all the more. This realization does not make us complacent. However, it does keep us hopeful when we are faced with the various forms that our own failure can take. Our resistance to the Lord’s word does not weaken the life-giving power of that word. After failure, the word remains in all its nurturing efficacy. Even after all our various resistances to the Lord’s word, we can always keep returning him, saying with Peter, ‘Lord, to whom can we go? You have the words of eternal life’.

And/Or

(ii) Wednesday, Third Week in Ordinary Time

There are times when our efforts to do something worthwhile don’t appear to get very far. The opening lines of the parable of the sower in this morning’s gospel reading reflect that reality. Much of the seed that the sower scattered produced nothing; it was taken by the birds of the air, choked by thorns, scorched by the sun. Yet, some of what he sowed produced a wonderful harvest. In spite of much frustration and failure, there was a great crop at the end of the day. The Lord appears to be saying through that parable that his own efforts, his words and his deeds, would eventually bear great fruit, in spite of many setbacks, including misunderstanding, rejection and, eventually, crucifixion. The parable is a word of encouragement to those who might be tempted to loose faith in him. It is also a word of encouragement to all of us as we try to share in the Lord’s work and mission. It is as if Jesus is saying to us, ‘if the seed is good, the crop will be good, in spite of setbacks and failure’. We do have good seed, the good seed of the gospel. We can be confident that in scattering that seed, in witnessing to that gospel, the Lord will work powerfully through us.

 And/Or

(iii) Wednesday, Third Week in Ordinary Time

The parable of the sower was probably spoken by Jesus as an encouraging word to his disciples. As Mark has been telling the story of Jesus’ public ministry prior to Jesus speaking this parable, Jesus and his disciples have been encountering many difficulties and obstacles. The religious leaders have accused Jesus and his disciples of breaking the Sabbath; they have claimed that Jesus heals by the power of Satan. Jesus’ own relatives have tried to take him in hand because of the general impression that he had lost the run of himself. In that context Jesus draws the attention of the disciples to the farmer sowing seed in Galilee. The farmer has to deal with all kinds of obstacles, with the result that much of the seed that he sows never takes root, or if it does it never reaches maturity. Yet, in spite of obstacles and setbacks, the harvest is great. Jesus is saying, look beyond the obstacles, the set-backs, the disappointments; God is at work in my ministry and the harvest will be great in the end. We can all become absorbed by what is not going well, by the failures, the losses all around us. The parable encourages us to keep hopeful in the midst of loss and failure that our good efforts seem to yield, because the Lord is always at work in a life-giving way even when failure and loss seem to dominate the landscape.

Fr. Martin Hogan.

[faunusrights]

a small instance

just a little fic. ive seen/read a lot of instances in fic n stuff where velvet lets coco/friends make little jokes abt her heritage, but sometimes its just a little too much to bear.

Weiss knows better than to make even the most lighthearted Faunus jokes around Velvet.

Scratch that; she knows better than to make any sort of Faunus jokes around any Faunus at all, because it’s really not her place. Even though she’s dating Velvet, she understands that it’ll always be a step too far. Blake will shrug off nicknames like kitty-cat as easily as water off a raincoat, accept the pointed references to catnaps with a roll of their eyes, but Velvet’s… well, Velvet has less of a fuse and more of a pin, never a warning and more a sudden explosion. Which is fair. She’s always said her losing an ear is something she’s over, but Weiss knows better, can see the way she gets distinctly nervous at night. Can see how sometimes people move too fast and she flinches away.

She may be built like a brick wall, every inch of her curved with muscle, but fear is more insidious an attack. No amount of brute force can ever really defend her when the hurt comes from inside your own head.

Still, the point remains that Velvet hates any reference of her being a Faunus as some sort of cheap joke. She’s too prickly for it, and where she might make the odd sly pun towards Blake or another Faunus, every human who has ever attempted has been met with a violent boiling-over.

That’s why Weiss is sat on the sofa in the living room, listening to Velvet who’s locked in a call on her Scroll and giving Coco Adel the biggest dressing-down of her life. If it wasn’t so serious an event Weiss might find it somewhat amusing to hear Velvet’s friend be knocked down a few pegs, but then Velvet snarls in an ugly way and Weiss shrinks into herself.

“No- no, do not apologise to me. You know you’ve fucked up, you know you have-”

There’s a pause, a distant voice stammering out something in reply, and Velvet’s whole body tenses.

“It. Is. Not. Funny! Fuck off, I have to deal with enough fucking dickwads saying the same shit to me when I go outside to put out my fucking trash, Coco!”

The situation is as follows: Velvet was out with Coco and Fox and Yatsu, as ever, because she might be dating a couple of first years but they were the first group of friends Velvet made here at Beacon. Velvet’s lamented the way groups tend to drift apart when shit comes up and things get between people, but ‘CFVY’ (as was named by Coco herself) has stuck together. People always thought they got along like a house on fire, and they do. But sometimes someone fucks up and in this case Coco couldn’t help herself when they all went to nab a quick lunch and when asked what Velvet would like, Coco had made an upbeat joke about that carrot cake is looking real juicy, huh, Velv?, accompanied by a wink and a nudge.

Weiss has gathered from the call that Coco had meant it entirely as a jest between good friends, but Velvet had come home seething. Well, not at first, that is. Initially she’d been stiff with tension and oddly quiet, until she’d cursed out a colourful display of an old, tribal language and grabbed her Scroll. The call that followed is how Weiss gathered pretty much all of the context, and now she’s just watching it play out sentence by gritted sentence, the little room of their student home filled with a tension so taut it may as well have been a knifeblade pushed to the very edge of breaking in two.

“I am mad!” The ways the words crack makes a cool chill run down Weiss’s spine, because that only happens when Velvet’s really riled, every word trembling with emotion. “I am angry! And don’t fucking- don’t tell me I can’t be, because you know I’ve always hated that shit! You know that!”

There’s a long pause, and then Velvet leans over a touch to press against Weiss. She sniffs and it’s snotty, so Weiss reaches over to put an arm across wide shoulders as best she can. Coco’s voice tapers off on the other end, and Velvet sniffs again before the smallest choke of a sob escapes her and she covers her eyes. It hurts to see.

“I- I get this shit all the time and I can’t- I can’t handle my friends doing it too. I’m not an animal; I’m a real goddamn person!”

Distantly a voice says ‘I know that!’ before it fades off, and Velvet waits for almost ten seconds before she snaps again. “Then please just- I don’t care if you apologise. Thank you, but I’d rather you just- don’t do it again.”

Another moment passes. “Alright.” And another. “Okay. Bye.”

The Scroll goes dark against Velvet’s cheek and she pulls it away, staring at the greased screen blankly. Weiss squeezes Velvet’s shoulder in a gesture she hopes is vaguely comforting, and it causes a mumble of acknowledgement. She doesn’t really know what to say in this situation, especially since Velvet is very clearly not okay, but she musters up the confidence to try and offer something.

“I’m… sorry that happened, Velvet.” The words feel too formalised, her upbringing betraying her, and she winces internally.

But Velvet simply sighs, and then nods. “I’m already regretting saying all of that.”

“Don’t. You’re right to be frustrated.”

There’s no response to that, Velvet tossing the Scroll onto the coffee table with a sharp clack of glass on wood, and she drops her head into her hands. Weiss isn’t sure if she’s crying or just trying to collect her thoughts, and then she barks out a short, sharp, “fuck!”

Weiss thinks it sums everything up very neatly, really.

[aion-rsa]

The Haunting of Bly Manor: The Poignant Tale of Hannah Grose

https://ift.tt/3loTz7C

The following contains spoilers for every episode of THE HAUNTING OF BLY MANOR.

“I liked your story”, a grown-up Flora tells an older Jamie in The Haunting of Bly Manor’s finale. “But I think you set it up wrong just in the beginning. You said it was a ghost story. It isn’t. It’s a love story.” Almost right. The Haunting of Bly Manor is two love stories: the centre-stage romance between Bly’s au pair and gardener Dani and Jamie, and the unrealised romance between housekeeper and chef, Hannah and Owen. 

Both are tragic tales. Dani and Jamie’s marriage was unfairly – like too many lesbian love stories on screen – cut off in its prime, while Hannah and Owen’s relationship was stopped before it could even begin. Before the pair had confessed their true feelings to each other, Hannah was killed. Not that she realised.

“You went off a cliff and you just kept going”

That’s the thing about living in a haunted house: when you become a ghost, very little changes. The rules of Bly Manor show that until a ghost’s facial features fade away, they look just like the living, can make themselves seen by the living, and are able to physically touch objects and people – hence, for instance, Viola being able to choke Peter to death.

Viola’s story, in which her intractable resolve to remain at Bly keeps the spirit of anybody else who died there prisoner on the grounds, also shows how the personality of the living can bring to bear on the rules of their afterlife. Hannah’s denial of her own death not only made her continuously visible to the living, but also ‘dream’ different outfits and accessories, creating the illusion that she was still one of them. 

In truth, Hannah Grose died on the day that Dani arrived at Bly. Minutes before Flora brought the new au pair to meet Mrs Grose, Hannah was pushed into a well by a possessed Miles, broke her neck, and died. The person who greets Dani and takes her inside the house is Hannah’s ghost, who then lives alongside Dani, Jamie, Owen and the children for a week or more after her death, not accepting that she too is caught in Bly’s peculiar “glue trap”. Incidentally, Mrs Grose may have the same name as the illiterate, exposition-tool housekeeper from Henry James’ The Turn of the Screw, but she’s an entirely new take on the character. 

The Altar of the Dead

Hannah’s denial lays the ground for The Haunting of Bly Manor’s strongest instalment by far, episode five ‘The Altar of the Dead.’ In it, ghost-Hannah slips from year to year and memory to memory, not cognisant of her murder. Her subconscious gives her a series of clues to prod her to the realisation that she’s no longer alive, but Hannah, played with beautiful sensitivity by T’Nia Miller (recently seen in Russell T. Davies’ Years and Years), refuses to accept it and fails to grasp the significance of the repeated motifs and phrases connected to her final moments of life.  

Phrases such as “Honestly, Hannah,” which were the last words she heard spoken before being pushed into the well and dying. They were spoken by her killer, 10-year-old Miles possessed by the ghost of Peter Quint. In episode five, we hear the words spoken by Peter on four occasions: after seeing Hannah spying on him and Rebecca in the children’s schoolroom (“Honestly, Hannah. You should give the vacuum a rest.”), a possessed-by-Peter Miles says them while walking away after Hannah berates him for smoking, ghost-Peter says them once again when she sees him standing with Miles by the well, (“Honestly, Hannah, do you ever get tired of being such a bore?”), before Miles finally repeats them as he pushes Hannah to her death.

The repetition appears to be Hannah’s subconscious reminding her of what’s happened, just the same as the distinctive crack she keeps seeing on walls around the estate. Appearing in the kitchen, in the chapel, and in Bly’s closed-down wing, the crack is the final image Hannah sees before death, hence its recurrence in the days immediately afterwards as her mind tries to nudge her towards accepting what’s happened. 

“Live a little”

There are other hints too. Listen carefully to episode five’s dialogue and the number of references to life, living and being alive are almost comically frequent in light of what we come to learn about Hannah. Sitting next to Owen (iZombie‘s Rahul Kohli) at the bonfire, Hannah is told that “any of us could die at any moment” and implores her to come with him to Paris. When she mockingly asks what she’d do in Paris, he tells her “eat croissants, drink good wine… live.” Earlier, in one of the many iterations of Owen’s job interview scene, he (therefore: she) says he’s “learning a lot about being alive.” After Peter Quint chastises her for spying on him, he tells Hannah to “live a little.”

In the chapel, Rebecca (therefore: Hannah) says she’s never felt “so alive”, and is told “there’s a difference between feeling good and feeling alive.” After Hannah’s marriage breaks up, Charlotte offers her the housekeeper role as a live-in position, offering her the chance to stay at Bly “forever” if she needs to. Again in the chapel, Charlotte tells Hannah she lit a candle for her (in truth for her cheating husband Sam) and it’s remarked on that remembrance candles aren’t lit for the living. 

On a second watch, the dramatic irony is overwhelming. Even the characters can see it. When Hannah tells Peter-Miles off for smoking, she asks him “Do you want to die a horrible, choking death?” and Peter-Miles laughs, because thanks to Viola, that’s exactly how he did die. And, while this may simply be period texture, when Dani leaves a ‘tucked-away’ Flora sleeping in bed and walks into the kitchen, Owen is midway through trying to convince Hannah to go with him to a Patrick Swayze concert. Now, can you really bring up Swayze in the context of an alive person/dead person romance and not expect viewers’ minds to think of 1990’s Ghost? (Yeah, maybe you can. I’ll give you that one.)

It’s not just in episode five; there are clues throughout. When Dani meets Hannah in the chapel on the day of Owen’s mother’s funeral, Hannah explains away her absence by saying that Owen understands that funerals are for the living. Of course, due to Viola’s curse on the manor, no spirits who die there are able to pass beyond its grounds, so there’s no question of Hannah leaving to attend a funeral in the village. When Hannah revisits the memory of her telling the children to slow down and stop running or they’ll “break their bloody skulls,” can it be a coincidence that she’s speaking as somebody with a broken skull? Imagery of her death is everywhere.

Read more

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The Haunting of Bly Manor Review (Spoiler-Free)

By Nick Harley

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Hannah’s denial is partly caused by the person who broke that skull: young Miles, whom she loves and repeatedly insists to memory-Owen is, “a good boy” though (dramatic irony klaxon) he “hasn’t exactly been himself” of late. Ignorant of Bly Manor’s ghosts (who, until Dani arrives, bringing her own ghost and trauma-related sensitivity to the afterlife with her, had only been seen by Miles and Flora), Hannah doesn’t know the deal. Until she witnesses Peter being dragged away by Viola as part of her episode five psychic travels, Hannah hadn’t seen the ghosts, despite having spent years cleaning up Viola’s muddy footprints. Hannah therefore didn’t realise that Miles was possessed by Peter, and so allowed him to lead her into the woods for the “surprise” of seeing her own dead body. 

“You just need to look down, Hannah”

Why, when Peter Quint realised his situation within minutes of being murdered, did Hannah have such trouble accepting her fate? The easy answer is: because it’s a TV-show twist-reveal to provide a The Sixth Sense-style ‘aha’ moment. Character-wise, the explanation comes from what the role of Bly Manor housekeeper means to Hannah, and the show’s thematic concern with the search for peace. When Hannah’s husband left her for another woman, Bly Manor became her permanent home. When Peter cruelly threatened her with dismissal, she insisted that Bly was not just her job but her home. Jamie’s voiceover leading into episode five tells us that “The housekeeper would always find her way back to peace in her daily routine.” Hannah is happy at Bly, and tells Dani as much in the chapel. The sense of purpose and peace that Hannah found in her role at Bly was so fundamental that even death wouldn’t stop her from getting up, putting on her earrings, and going to work. That’s part of it at least.

Episode five, written by Angela LaManna and directed by Liam Gavin, is a beautiful hour of television. It’s puzzling and disorienting but with a strong mystery thread drawing us through the fog towards a solid conclusion. It’s T’Nia Miller’s detailed performance that really makes it great drama. Miller beams out Hannah’s trauma from under a thick layer of emotional restraint. On the surface, Hannah seems as controlled as her primly co-ordinated and accessorised outfits, but Miller reveals the pain and panic underneath. 

The pain and panic, and the love. In one of the many replays of Hannah’s first meeting with Owen at his interview for the job of Bly chef, she girlishly recalls finding him a curious and charming man. “I looked at you and I almost forgot myself for a moment.” Hannah’s love for Owen is the reason she keeps returning to that first meeting. “I prefer it here, this one, this day, with you … I loved you Owen. I should have told you. What a life we could have had” If Bly means home for Hannah Grose, so does Owen.

Let life happen to you

Hannah’s last words are a message to Owen. While Henry Wingrave is being resuscitated in the finale, Hannah leaves his ‘figment’ with an instruction. “When he checks the well, please tell Owen I’m sorry. Tell him I love him,” she says, before being cut off mid-sentence as the spell breaks and Bly’s trapped spirits are released. “And as for the rest…”  Then Hannah is gone. What would the remainder of her last words have been? We can’t know, though, in light of Owen’s taste for literary quotation (he quotes both Hamlet and Romeo & Juliet in the series), perhaps she was about to cite Rainer Maria Rilke in his Letters to a Young Poet: “And as for the rest, let life happen to you. Believe me: life is in the right, always.” 

After Hannah leaves Bly for good, we learn the depth of Owen’s feelings for her. While he’s lighting a candle to Hannah in the chapel, Jamie tells us that he helped to retrieve her body and prepared it for burial, never leaving her side. His Parisian bistro is dedicated to her memory, and his speech at Flora’s rehearsal dinner has a bittersweet message that applies to so many of The Haunting of Bly Manor’s relationships, cruelly cut off before their time: Viola and her daughter Isabelle, Henry and Charlotte, Flora and Miles and their parents, Dani and Jamie, Owen and Hannah: “To truly love another person is to accept that the work of loving them is worth the pain of losing them.”

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The Haunting of Bly Manor is streaming now on Netflix.

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[sallywiththeface]

Sal and Larry - Purity Ring Songfic

Songs: Lofticries and Fineshrine

Tags: hurt/comfort, angst, fluff, mutual pining, anxiety, dissociation

| Lofticries |

“Green, green thunder and the loud, loud rain Lead our woes asunder Neath the proud, proud veins Of trains let bleed the gunmen of our Pumping earthly hearts Wean our joys in plunder Peel our shining teeth Bid our hold on happiness”

Sal sighed and leaned against the window in the apartment living room. He was home alone again as his father was out doing who knows what, and so he peacefully watched the storm that raged outside, contradicting his own dissociative mood. He felt so distant from everything, as if even if he wanted to react to the things around him and on the sidewalk below he wouldn’t be able to.

“Beat weighty tests with lofty cries Lofty cries with trembling thighs Weepy chests with weepy sighs Weepy skin with trembling thighs

You must be hovering over yourself Watching us drip on each other’s sides Dear brother collect all the liquids off Of the floor Use your oily fingers Make a paste Let it form

Let it seep through your sockets and ears Into your precious ruptured skull Let it seep let it keep you from us Patiently heal you Patiently unreel you”

Larry jumped as his walkie crackled and Sal’s voice rang out from the other end. “Larry Face?” He jumped off of his bean chair and answered quickly, “Hey Sally Face.”

“Can you come up here?” He asked with a shaky voice.

“Of course. Be right there.”

“Green, green thunder and the loud, loud rain Lead our woes asunder Neath the proud, proud veins Of trains let bleed the gunmen of our Pumping earthly hearts Wean our joys in plunder Peel our shining teeth Bid our hold on happiness”

Sal wrapped his arms tightly around himself, fighting off a panic attack. Just minutes before he wished he could feel anything at all and now he regretted that. He hoped Larry would come soon. He always made him feel good things. He smiled ever so slightly beneath his prosthetic as Larry walked right into the apartment. Larry saw the way he was curled up and holding himself and immediately rushed over to comfort him. “What’s wrong?” Sal could only shake his head, fighting off tears. “I don’t even know-”

Larry frowned and draped an arm over Sal’s shoulders, leaning his head against him. “Take your time.” Sal turned his head into Larry’s chest, a soft sob escaping him. He wept quietly for several minutes before mustering the words to speak, “…there’s so much. It’s all too much I don’t even know where to begin-”

“Start with whatever you’re thinking right now and work your way back.”

Sal choked back another sob and shook his head, “I’m scared.”

“Scared?”

“Larry, I’ve been thinking about you so much…and not in the context someone thinks of a friend. I’m afraid of this, afraid it’ll ruin what we have.” Sal rambled, terrified to keep speaking but more scared of not finishing now that he’d begun saying it, “You make me so happy to be around, you ease my pain and you always know what to say. I don’t even know when it happened all I know is one day I stopped thinking of you as my friend. Pining hurts so much, especially when you’re afraid it will destroy your friendship. Half the time I can’t feel anything at all, it’s like I lose my ability to process the things happening around me and react to them but…when I’m around you I can feel things again and it’s so much that I feel I don’t know how to handle it all.” Larry stared down at him, mouth agape as he processed Sal’s words.

“Beat weighty tests with lofty cries Lofty cries with trembling thighs Weepy chests with weepy sighs Weepy skin with trembling thighs

You must be hovering over yourself Watching us drip on each other’s sides Dear brother collect all the liquids off Of the floor Use your oily fingers Make a paste Let it form

Let it seep through your sockets and ears Into your precious ruptured skull Let it seep let it keep you from us Patiently heal you Patiently unreel you”

“Sal…why haven’t you said anything? You don’t have to hold things in on my account. This has obviously been hurting you to keep in.” Sal bit his lip under his prosthetic and sighed, “I know…I should have said something I just-” Larry pulled him into another hug, resting his chin on Sal’s shoulder, “In the future you can always tell me things even if you think I might react badly, I swear I won’t hold things like this against you.” Sal nodded silently and then Larry cleared his throat, “Now as for what you said…it means a lot to me to hear that I’m so important to you, and I’ve also been having…strange thoughts about us. I wonder what we are sometimes. We don’t act like we’re just best friends you know? I mean look at us now, we’re holding each other and have been for the past ten minutes.”

“So what are you saying?”

“Sal…I haven’t thought of you as only my best friend for months, if I’m honest. I’ve been avoiding dealing with it because I have never liked a boy, or anyone for that matter, before but…I really like you.” | Fineshrine |

“Get a little closer, let fold Cut open my sternum, and pull My little ribs around you The rungs of me be under, under you

I’ll cut the soft pockets, let bleed Over the rocky cliffs that you leave To peer over and not forget what feet are Splitting threads of thunder over me

That I might see with my chest and sink Into the edges round you Into the lakes of quarry’s that brink On all the edges round you”

Sal and Larry both leaned back from their embrace and just watched each other for a long moment. Sal was the first to break the silence, “Can you…close your eyes for a minute?” Larry felt his face heat immediately as he assumed where Sal was taking this but he nodded and did as he asked. He heard rustling and two soft clicks as Sal’s prosthetic was removed. “Keep them closed for now-…” Sal’s voice was closer, centimeters away from his face as he whispered, “-can I…?” Larry answered by leaning in and closing the short gap that was left between their lips.

“Get a little closer, let fold Cut open my sternum, and pull My little ribs around you The lungs of me be crowns over you

Get a little closer, let fold Cut open my sternum, and pull My little ribs around you The rungs of me be under, under you

I’ll cut the soft pockets, let bleed Over the rocky cliffs that you leave To peer over and not forget what feet are Splitting threads of thunder over me

Listen closely, closely to the floor Emitting all its graces through the pores You make a fine shrine in me You build a fine shrine in me

That I might see with my chest and sink Into the edges round you Into the lakes of quarry’s that brink On all the edges round you”

They both pulled back for a moment, but found themselves leaning in again, and again, both of them smiling uncontrollably as they just innocently kissed each other over and over. Larry kept his eyes closed as promised, and gently placed a hand on the back of Sal’s neck. Sal slowly draped his arms over Larry’s neck and tangled his fingers in his hair ever so gently.

“Get a little closer, let fold Cut open my sternum, and pull My little ribs around you The lungs of me be crowns over you

Get a little closer, let fold Cut open my sternum, and pull My little ribs around you The rungs of me be under, under you”

He could feel Sal’s scarred lips and face as he showered him in soft kisses, no longer only kissing his lips. Sal placed his hands on his cheeks and smiled, touching their foreheads together. “You can open your eyes now…”

Larry did, and he nearly teared up seeing his face. He pressed another soft kiss to his forehead, “Let’s promise to not keep our feelings toward each other hidden anymore.” Sal smiled behind misty eyes, “I promise.”