#the cropping is kinda scuffed but it is what it is

[pileofsnakes1]

This is the first thing I thought of after getting out of the cinema

[luvissues]

cold as a wagon tire

groundskeeper! ghost x reader, inspired by this post

cw: death, murder(?) kinda

His rugged boots have long since dug their soles into the mud of the sullied ground, treads worn and tired (somehow, the steel toes always shine spick-and-span, rain or shine).

He walked a familiar path each day, the hours lapping into one another- a rhythmic lull. Every day, for as long as he’d counted, he’d take the path that stretched miles and miles around the length of the graveyard.

And then, when he stopped counting, he kept walking it anyway.

It wasn’t just walking, though. Simon did *everything*. He did everything for the rotting bastards buried deep beneath the soil, because the families and friends and lovers who had rightfully left them to be forgotten wouldn’t.

Regrettably, it was his home. Tethered to him by the macabre work he’d found himself in. It wasn’t so much as tie to the job, as much as it was a metal chain anchoring him there.

There was no iron ball at the end. Only the weight of hundreds of gravestones, dirty and ugly and languishing, just like him.

He knows the name they all give him. It’s from the people who do come back; stupid sods who keep themselves indebted to remains long gone, to a soul that rests far lower than where the body was ever buried.

He doesn’t mind it. Doesn’t speak to them, anyway. In somewhere along his long haul, he’d started to associate with it, too. They’d done him a favor, ridding him of his name- because no person would ever work this job, would ever keep themselves so close to the dead that even something as human sleeping was reduced down to shortening the hours until he had to work again.

They called him Ghost, and the name rested well with that enigma of a man. But he did the job well.

The grounds are always clean. Not pretty, but oddly well cared for. He doesn’t respect the people who lie underneath his feet, no, but he was never one to half-ass a job.

The iron fence shines. The grass is always trimmed, weeded. The gravel path is a neat, straight line, the only out-of-order being the marks scuffed into it by one hefty pair of boots.

At the end of the day, there’s always a fire burning in the house that lies just behind the thick canopy of trees at the yard’s border. Because even though they call him Ghost, he hates the way his cold fingers tremble as if he’s just seen one when he tucks in for the night.

But of course, he never holds a spark to that kindle during the day. Perhaps that’s why maybe you presumed the home to be abandoned; for how orderly the graveyard was, the house seemed not to warrant the same type of care.

It wasn’t like you had ever seen anyone around the cemetery, anyway. And that kind of privacy is what you needed.

Naturally, Simon notices when there seems to be a second pair of footprints along his daily route. The grit was wet and muddy after the previous day’s rain, and it only made the marks more apparent.

If he didn’t know better, he might’ve guessed that it was a pair of heels tracing his walk. What was more concerning, though, was the long streak of mud that followed right beside it.

Not that the groundskeeper was deterred one bit. He followed the tracks in the same way a hunting dog would follow the spoor of it’s catch, attention unwavering. And when those prints veered off course and into the grass, he was sure to follow.

The rush had grown long and thick over weeks of rain, never seeming to dry enough for him to go in and crop it. Water caught on the rough fabric of his jeans as he waded through the overgrown blades, passing through the rows and columns of headstones, following the thick line of mud that had sprouted off the pathway.

Strangely, it stopped in front of his house.

Not that his home was very visible from here, not with the stocky blanket of forest that enveloped it. But you had lead him all the way to the end of the acres, past the fence and into the encompassing woods.

Simon wasn’t quite sure what he’d expected to be at the end of his hunt. Maybe a canine had dragged it’s sorry meal through the winding field, or a sorrowing lover had carried with them a wagon of sorts when coming to visit their spouse’s grave. But you?

No, he can’t say he expected you to be standing there; wet, cold body lying helplessly at your feet. Living up to his name, Ghost doesn’t say a word or move even an inch as he watches you bring up your shovel, only to use all your strength to haul it back down over the poor cadaver.

It’s admirable, really. He notices the blades of your shoulders flexing with each swing, muscles tensing and straining. If anything, you’ve piqued his interest.

But he knows that any successful chase lies in the wait. So, he watches on with sick interest, simply surveying the way that this corpse is becoming more mangled and unrecognizable with each blow you throw at it.

Eventually, your shoulders rise and fall in time with your chest. Deep, heavy lungfuls of putrid air he has long grown adapted to.

And like that, you’re walking. Waltzing off as if you hadn’t left a mutilated mess just practically on his front porch.

So he wastes no time closing distance. Before you can even register who it is, you’re turning around at the sound of bulky steps moving through the sod.

When you meet his eyes, you know that your shovel will be of no use against this man.

He doesn’t say anything, not at first. His masks conceals just about everything except for his eyes, deep and brown like the dirt beneath your feet. He makes no attempt to conceal the way they rove over you, though.

Truthfully, you look harmless. Not the same woman who’d maimed the body at the edge of his woods. In the back of his mind, a voice from years past stirs in his head, a click of a tongue and a murmur about what a wee lamb you appeared to be.

“Y’ve got no business leaving me such a mess to clean,” he gruffs. When his voice finally raises, it’s rough and low, and exactly what you’d expect from a man like him.

The only thing you can think to do in the moment is blink up at him owlishly. Clean up? This was a matter of court, of prison, of the worst crime, and he…

didn’t seem anything more than a bit agitated. His indifference to it all was enough to make the skin at the back of your neck prickle.

“Leave him.” Is all there is to say. You’d beaten that measly man for a reason- he didn’t deserve any more grace. You’d already given him a quick death, an easy regret, and this was making up for it.

Simon doesn’t reply. He’s still trying to figure you out, gears clicking and chugging along in his head.

Your stockings are absolutely filthy, shoes ruined and peeling with mud and grime. The shovel slung over your shoulder is damn near bent ninety degrees with how much you’d put it to work. Brows pinching together, he tsks.

“Leave ‘im?” He scoffs. “And let the ugly bastard sit t’ rot in my yard? You ‘ad a shovel, the least you could do was bury him.”

Like him, your mind is hard at work. He‘s just witnessed you drag a dead body for well over a mile, beat it senseless, and for what? He’s more concerned about digging a proper hole for the grubby remains. You’re half convinced he might pull a measuring tape from his pocket and start mapping out six feet beneath your feet right now.

Somehow, you’re voice doesn’t waver as much as you might’ve thought. You shake your head at his suggestion. “Doesn’t deserve it.”

The keeper’s gaze darkened a bit at that. He was plenty sure that the man didn’t deserve it- why else would a little dove like you have gotten herself into all this trouble? Still, he can’t let you go just like that.

“You thought you were gonna get away?” He hums quietly. You’re both painfully aware of how he’s shortened the space between you.

Once he’s close enough, he leans down to get a better look at your face. The rain that drips copiously from the trees has mingled with your sweat, leaked into the cotton of your clothes.

In any other circumstance, he might’ve passed you up as another ditzy bird. But all dirtied up, you couldn’t have looked any more appealing.

Simon had long grown tired of trying to break in whining little women all by himself. He hadn’t considered finding one who was already well worn to the rugged edges of the world.

“What if I turn you in?” He proposes, and the following silence hangs heavy. He’d have no issue slinging over your shoulder to march you off to the sheriff, and that’s a certainty.

“Then at least it’ll be for the right cause.”

He almost wants to laugh. God, no, you’re no precious lamb. You’re a damn wolf, an ugly little beast, and you’ve fallen right into his hands.

They always said that opposites attract, but Simon can’t help that his tattered soul is becoming determined to pin you down. Maybe they lied.

“Tell you what,” he murmurs, tone deep and steady as if mulling things over. “I’ll cut you a deal. You sit nice and pretty while I clean up yer mess, and we’ll go from there.”

When you don’t respond right away, a gloved hand comes up to pinch your cheeks, pulling your lips pursed together. He’s no fool to think that you’re powerless- no, not after this- but there was always something rewarding about getting those girls to settle in.

You’ll be different, that he’s sure of, but the thrill is familiar.

“Deal?” he presses, pulling you in until you’re near eye to eye. And when you do give him a stiff nod, he’s quick to let up, ushering you along with a big paw heavy on your back and promises of an ashy fire waiting to warm you up at home.

Your tongue is a bit too tied to correct him at the suggestion that it’s your home, not his. But that’s okay. He prefers it better like this anyway.

[zebee-nyx]

CalmWriMo Day 11

[11/11/2023]

Update!

Chill day (^.^). Did me some writing! See below for that! Enjoy (^v^).

Progress:

2 Hour Writing Goal: ✅ [woot woot!]

Blurb: [see below]

Self Care:

Food: ✅

Hydration: ✅

Sleep: ✅

Reading: ✅

Blurb: Scuffed

The image of a teen girl lights up the screen, leaned over the camera where her face takes up most of the view. She tilts her head and lightly bites her lip. "Is it working?" There is a hint of nervousness, or maybe anticipation, in her voice. She pushes a strand of pink hair from her face as she asks. Someone off the screen briefly answers, but was too distant to be picked up by the mic in any understandable way. The girl's face lights up. She briefly wipes a splotch of dirt from the lens with her thumb as she picks up the camera. It's hard to tell if the visual got any better than before with a smudge now left in the dirt's place.

She lifts the camera just above her head before the camera seems to suspend itself in the air where she releases it. There is a light buzzing noise as it does causing the view to lightly shake. Without moving her legs she glides backwards. The camera seems to follow to keep her centered in the frame as she comes fully into view.

She wears holey shorts and a generic pink t-shirt. Over the t-shirt she wears what appears to be a dusty brown duster that had been cropped about inline with her lower most ribs. There are some small scattered patches of silvery silicon skin visible just above the collar of her shirt and on the exposed parts of her thighs. Starting at her knees, her legs instantly transitions to sleek metal painted with a shinny metallic cyan paint. At the ends of these cybernetic legs are pink rollerblade wheels. Behind the odd character is what can only be described as a trash heap, only dimly visible in the background by some distant lights.

"Hey hey, dreamers! It's me, Ko-, er, 'Bandit', coming to you live from the- uh, well, the yards!" She seems to suddenly burst with energy that kinda awkwardly tappers off for a brief moment as she seems to visually cringe. She has a bright toothy smile despite it. "I'm out here delivering this box of, uh... oh shit..." She leans forward into a glide that takes her below the camera briefly. The camera bobs downwards to try to chase her for a second before she slides backwards to where she was standing, now with a completely unremarkable box in hand. "This, er, well it doesn't really matter what it is. What does matter is this place is ripe with exciting dangers! Out on the edge of the city where anything can happen and-"

As Bandit continues to ramble to the camera a figure wanders into view in the background. He has that look that can only really be described as 'crazed junkyard spore addict' who wears no shirt and has lightly graying skin. He nearly gets the full length of view before his head turns towards the camera and looks back where he was going before doing a double take back towards Bandit. The man immediately becomes more animated as he begins practically bouncing closer in a dramatic swaying motion while waving someone who is off the screen over.

"-well anyways, there's nothing out there that'll stop me from completing this gig!" She boldly proclaims just as a rock or some hefty piece of trash hits the camera immediately killing the buzzing noise. The camera hits the pavement below with a solid thud that causes the feed to go static for a second. As the feed returns there is a crack across the lens and the camera is now on the ground on it's side, but angled up enough to see most of Bandit's leg augs.

With a step motion Bandit spins around. The box that was just in her hands falls next to the camera, the corner falls just into view with an audible crunch as it hits the ground. "Sonuva- You dirty garbage rats!" Bandit furiously bellows, only immediately followed by a few flashes in the darkness emanating from roughly where she is standing and the deafening sounds of gunfire. A few people in the distance can be heard making a mix of hysterical laughter and panicked yelping as they presumably scatter.

The excitement seems to end just as soon as it starts as the noises die down. Bandit turns back around. "Well, now with that concluded! Wait, wha- Crap." She knees down and picks up the camera bringing the view back on her face. She seems to be pouting, but the view is too blurred between the crack, smudges, and newly applied dirt on the lens. "Damn it... Hey Nat, c'mere!" The feed suddenly cuts.

[Thank you for reading! Also Kori's first stream! ('^v^) A bit scuffed, but I'm sure she'll get herself sorted soon enough. Anyways and always, hope you are having a lovely day, peace (^v^)v]

[kumeko]

A/N: For the @sheramagazine! I wanted to do a spoof of MTV Cribs with three disasters trying their best to promote unity and peace. Key word: trying.…

…

…

…

“Hey, this is Bow.” Adjusting his bowtie, Bow smiled at the camera. Dressed in a white suit (with a crop-top pink shirt of course), he was every bit a professional MC. “I’m here at the Horde Headquarters! Now that we’re at peace, we thought it’d be a great time to learn about your enemies!”

Just out of sight, Sea-Hawk corrected, “Former enemies.”

“R-right!” Bow laughed sheepishly, rubbing his arm. “Former enemies! Because we’re at peace now and have to learn to live with them.” He bit his lip. “Because that’s what peace means. Right. Catra won’t try to end the world because we film this wrong.” Troubled, he scuffed his shoe.

“Should I stop filming?” Sea-Hawk asked concerned. The camera lowered slightly, cutting off part of Bow’s face.

“No, no, I’m good.” Bow’s smile was back on as the camera once more swung up to focus on his face. “Anyways, we’re here at the Horde Headquarters!” He turned slightly to gesture at the large, metal gates behind him. Just beyond them, there was an endless multitude of towering skyscrapers, all painted an ugly shade of yellow-green. Clouds covered the sky, blocking any light from filtering through.

Sea-Hawk whistled low and commented, “Isn’t it strange how it’s sunny on this side but cloudy on that? I thought only the sea was capable of such contradictions.”

“Yeah, this feels impossible.” Bow squinted at the sky, shielding his eyes. “Even the clouds look like they were just cut off. How does that happen?”

The camera pointed up abruptly, showing a bright blue sky directly above them. There was a carpet of grey clouds that had a clean, squarish ending, as though someone had just chopped off their sides. “Magic?”

“Maybe.” As the camera returned to Bow, he nodded solemnly. “Black magic, maybe. Anyways, we’re here for a tour. The people here are just like us. We might have fought and tried to kill each other, but they’re just like us.” Bow paused. Brow knitting, he frowned deeply and muttered, “This was Perfuma’s idea, why isn’t she here?”

“What was that?” Sea-Hawk asked, the camera shaking as he stepped closer.

“Nothing.” Bow cleared his throat again. “Anyways, we’re going to get a tour from Scorpia!”

As though summoned, a red speck appeared behind the gates. The camera zoomed in slightly to catch Scorpia as she ran toward them. Dressed similarly to Bow, she sported a black vest and purple tie. Unlike Bow, her outfit looked wrinkled from all that exertion. “Guys! Sorry I’m late!”

Bow smiled brightly as he waved back, his posture relaxing. “It’s fine! We just got to your part, actually.”

Stopping next to Bow, Scorpia hunched over slightly as she panted and regained her breath. Bow watched her patiently. Taking a last deep breath, she straightened up. “Alright! Are you ready?”

“Yes.” Bow slung an arm around her back, too short to reach her shoulders. “This Scorpia, our friend on the inside!”

“Oh!” Scorpia flushed slightly as she stared into the camera. Embarrassed, she rubbed the back of her head with a claw. “Oh gosh, I forgot about that. I’ve never been on a show before, what do I say?”

“Anything you want!” Bow squeezed her reassuringly, his expression still cheerful. “It’ll be fine.”

“Oh, then, uh…” Scorpia’s tail bobbed slightly as she puzzled over it. “Then, uh, well, hi Adora! And Catra!” She waved at the camera. “Oh, and of course Glimmer and Leonie and—”

-x-

The camera was shaky as it focused on Bow and Scorpia. They were walking between the skyscrapers, surrounded on all sides by looming, grim-looking buildings. Bow pulled out a cue-card, reading off it. “So, Scorpia, how big would you say this place is?”

“Uh…” Scorpia scrunched her nose as she thought about it. “Big? REALLY big?”

“How many bedrooms and bathrooms?” Bow continued, unfazed.

“A lot?” Scorpia chuckled awkwardly. “Do people really keep count of those things? They’re kinda, you know…”

“What about kitchens?” Bow asked instead.

“Oh golly, I don’t know.” Scorpia pushed her claws together, looking like a punished child. “Should I have found out before this? I guess I don’t know this place as well as I thought…maybe someone else should do this?”

Bow quickly pocketed his cue-card, shaking his head. “Of course not! I was just asking random questions—I mean, does it matter how many closets you have?” He gestured around them the sprawling campus. “The answer’s going to be a big number, we all know that!”

“You sure?” Scorpia asked, still looking worried.

Bow nodded. “Yeah, there’s more important things to know. Like—”

A loud screeching sound interrupted him and the camera fell to the ground, showing his ankles now. “What was that?” Sea-Hawk hissed, part of his hand appearing on the camera.

Bow crouched low, terrified. “I don’t know, but it sounded hungry.” He reached over his shoulder for his weapons and groaned when he realized he didn’t have any. “I shouldn’t have come unarmed!”

“Guys, what’re you doing?” Scorpia joined them, her bulky frame looking even bigger as she squatted. “Why’re we whispering?”

“Didn’t you hear that screeching?” Bow asked, twisting and turning furtively as he scanned their surroundings. Another sharp cry filled the air and he jumped. “What was that?”

“Oh, that?” Scorpia laughed, standing now. “That’s just a bird.”

“A bird?” Bow looked up at her, incredulous. “That’s a bird?”

The camera jolted as Sea-Hawk picked it up once more. He was still crouched, though, so it showed Bow’s head and Scorpia’s knees. “I have gone on many an adventure, and a creature like that only means it’s a monster.”

“It’s not a monster!” Scorpia defended. The camera tilted up in time to catch her shaking her head. “I mean, it doesn’t have the nicest voice, but it’s just a bird. You shouldn’t make fun of it for that, you’ll hurt its feelings. Don’t you guys also have birds?”

“Not like this.” Hesitantly, Bow straightened up. His shoulders were still tense. Sea-Hawk rose with him, the camera still glued to Bow. “That sounded like he was going to eat us.”

“He doesn’t eat people.” She laughed, utterly carefree.

In the distance, someone screamed. The camera cut away to zoom into the distance as a man fought the bird. Off-camera, Bow yelped. “It’s attacking him!”

“Nah, it’s just playing,” Scorpia replied cheerfully.

The camera zoomed in further, the picture growing a little grainy. However, two shapes were still clear—that of a person and that of a giant, horse-sized bird. The bird picked up the person, flying off into the distance.

-x-

A still-shocked Bow smiled shakily into the camera as he sat at a table next to Scorpia. In front of him was a tray containing a bowl filled with orange goop and two large, brown mysterious bricks. “Alright, we’re in the cafeteria now. A normal part of any place.” He swallowed, looking at the food. “And this is normal food.”

“Yep.” Scorpia was already chewing on one of the brown bricks. “My favourite dish is on Tuesday, actually, but this isn’t bad either.”

“Yep.” Bow picked up the other brown brick and stared at it. “So this is?”

“A protein bar,” Scorpia explained helpfully. “It’s actually part of those birds.”

Bow pursed his lips. “And those birds are edible.”

Even though it was a statement, not a question, Scorpia replied anyways. “They’re a little tough, but it’s tasty!” She scratched her cheek with a claw. “Well, not as tasty as your food; man, I don’t know how you make things so soft. I tried cooking here but I just keep getting chewy instead.”

Bow couldn’t explain; he wasn’t a cook. But he was hosting a show and he smiled bravely as he raised the brown brick to his mouth. “Alright, I’ll take a bite.” He bit down on one end. Immediately, he winced as he ground down on the bar. Unlike Scorpia’s easy bites, his first one took a lot of effort. After ten minutes of grinding, he managed to break off a tiny chunk.

“So?” Scorpia clasped her claws together, watching him curiously. “You like it?”

“It’s…” Bow groaned as he struggled to chew the tiny piece. “It’s…uh…tough. I don’t know how you bit that so easily.”

“Oh, I have strong teeth.” Scorpia winked as she pointed at her jaw. “Not as strong as my claws, but still really good. Catra says it cause I talk all the time.”

Bow rubbed his jaw. “It’s just so hard.”

“The soup helps with that.” Scorpia took a spoonful, showing it to the camera first. “This makes it a lot softer.” A drop spilled out of it and hit the table, leaving a hissing sound as it ate through the surface. She looked down and raised a brow. “Huh, that’s strange. Maybe someone mixed something up; I’ve done that before.”

“That shouldn’t do that, right?” Bow asked hesitantly, as though he was afraid of the answer.

“I don’t think so.” Scorpia shrugged. “I’ll get us another bowl. Want some, Sea-Hawk?”

The camera shook so quickly, it could give a person motion-sickness.

-x-

The camera slowly panned around a large, open-spaced room. It was an empty place, with metal walls and a metal floor. Stopping at Bow, the camera showed only his face and the nervous expression he bore. “Scorpia?” he asked.

“Yeah?” Her voice came over a set of speakers and echoed in the room.

“This is safe, right?” Bow asked, clutching his shirt nervously.

“Of course! It’s just the training room, we wouldn’t do anything lethal while you train.” Scorpia laughed. “Ready?”

“Not really,” Bow muttered before steeling himself. “Let’s go!”

“Alright!”

The room lit up, holograms filling up the space and revealing many obstacles—a crevice, a wall, a rope bridge. Bow glanced around and tentatively touched a nearby boulder. His finger hit the surface and wouldn’t go deeper. “That’s impressive!” He rapped it now. “Wow, that feels so real.”

“I know, right?” Scorpia sounded excited. “It’s amazing! I don’t know how they do it.”

“Yeah.” Bow turned back to the camera, looking surer of himself now. “We’re in the training room now! This is where they’d practice fighting us.” He chuckled. “Did you know they thought the princesses were monsters? Drama queens, sure, but monsters?”

Sea-Hawk gave a deep, throaty laugh. “If they saw how glorious Mermista was, they’d never say that.”

“We’re going to find out what one of their training simulations is like!” A soft buzzing sound filled the air and Bow looked around before pointing to his right. “First up, dodge the bullets.”

The camera turned to reveal a gun on the wall, pointed directly at them. It cocked before shooting with a loud bang. Bow dodged as the bullet whizzed through the air. “That must be—” The bullet just brushed past his hair, clipping it slightly and Bow’s eyes widened. “What?”

The camera zoomed in to get a closer look, reveal a small depression in Bow’s hair now. “You just narrowly dodged that,” Sea-Hawk informed him.

Nervously, Bow patted his hair, his eyes growing wider as he felt the depression. “It went through my hair.” He looked at Sea-Hawk. “That…that wasn’t real, you think?”

“N-n-no,” Sea-Hawk replied, his voice sounding the exact opposite. “That has to be fake, I’m sure.” He laughed nervously. “Not real.”

Another bullet buzzed through the air and the camera’s view lowered dramatically as Sea-Hawk crouched. Still low, Bow yelled, “Scorpia, those are fakes, right?”

“You can’t practice if they’re all fakes,” Scorpia replied cheerfully. “But don’t worry, the difficulty isn’t that high. You can do it!”

“Wait, Scorpia—” Sea-Hawk suddenly cut off and screamed. The camera abruptly pointed up, revealing that it was falling through a hole.  “AHHHHHHHHH!”

At the mouth, Bow leaned over, reaching down for Sea-Hawk desperately. “SEA-HAWK!”

-x-

“Hello!” Scorpia beamed at the camera, jumping excitedly as she pointed bright, pearly gates behind her. A bright, white castle welcomed them from beyond, every part of it gleaming in the sun. “We’re here at Bright Moon!”

“Y-yeah.” A worn-out Bow stepped into the scene next to her, waving weakly a the camera. Every part of him looked harried. “We decided to continue filming from a safer—I mean, to show the Horde what it’s like here. Yeah.”

“There’s no danger here,” Sea-Hawk added immediately, his voice sounding hoarse. “It’s all safe.”

“Yes, very, very safe,” Bow agreed.

“You guys are real big on safety, huh?” Not catching their drift, Scorpia tapped her chin. “What did you ask me before? Bedrooms and bathrooms?”

“Uh…” Rubbing his chin, Bow glanced at the castle. “There’s Glimmer’s…and Adora’s…and…How about a tour first?”

“Oh gosh, I can’t believe we’re actually doing this!” Scorpia bounced on her heels and pumped her claws. “I mean, I know that you said we would, but we’re actually doing it! Ohh, where do we go first?”

“Well, I was thinking the main castle.” The gates started to open, revealing a lush garden inside. Perfuma had done her magic on the castle and the place was almost overrun with flowers now. “We could start in the throne room—”

“Flowers!” Scorpia dashed inside before Bow could stop her, making a straight beeline to the closest flower. She pulled it closer and smelled it. “Ohh, this smells delicious.” She paused, looking back at them. “But don’t worry, I know it’s not for eating now.”

“That…you were going to eat them?” Bow asked incredulously, jogging after her.

The camera shook as Sea-Hawk followed. “An adventure of the palette!”

“They smell really tasty but they don’t taste it.” Scorpia flitted from flower to flower. “Oh wow, there are so many kinds here! Are they all different?”

“Yeah.” Bow trailed after her, his expression a cross between incredulous and pitying. “Now that I think about it, we didn’t see any plants when we visited.”

“Oh, that’s cause we don’t have some. I hear they need sun?” Scorpia looked up, shading her eyes. “Gosh, you get a lot of sun, you know? It’s so bright here. Is it always like that here?”

Bow wrung his hands as he nodded. “The one you’re holding is a lily. And—how about we just go to through the garden first?” Glancing over his shoulder, he made a throat slitting motion. When nothing happened, he hissed, “Cut the film, we’ll record later.”

-x-

“Alright, Bright Moon Palace is also really big and has a ton of bathrooms and bedrooms,” Bow said, standing in front of a door. He and Scorpia flanked the entrance, each of them looking excitedly at the camera. “I’ll just show Glimmer’s old room.”

“Guys, you’re in for a treat!” Scorpia pumped her fists energetically, looking more like a overgrown puppy than anything else. “This place is so amazing!”

“It is?” Sea-Hawk asked. The camera remained steady as he walked through the slowly opening door. Carefully, he scanned the room, making sure the shot took in every aspect of the room: the bright walls, the fluffy pillows, the long sheets.

Scorpia picked up a pillow, pinching it between two claws. “This pillow isn’t anything like ours. It’s so soft!” She cradled her cheek on it, closing her eyes as she sighed blissfully. “I could just sleep like this, it’s so comfortable.”

“It’s a nice pillow,” Bow agreed. Standing in the center of the room, he pointed above him at the hanging bed. “That’s where Glimmer sleeps, it’s a little hard to get there without teleporting but it’s doable.”

“That’s the best part of the room.” Letting go of the pillow, Scorpia gestured around her and spun around in the middle of the room as she spoke to the camera. “This whole place is just one person’s room! Only person sleeps here! Can you imagine? I couldn’t but can you?”

Hopping up the steps to the bed, Bow paused and shrugged. The camera swung from him to Scorpia and then back to him. “I mean, I guess that’s amazing too.”

“And her bed is so soft!” Scorpia started to clamber the steps after Bow. The camera followed her up, bouncing up and down with each step. “It’s not hard in the least.”

“That’s actually bad for your back,” Bow pointed out seriously, a grim expression on his face. “It can—” He froze, cutting himself off. His skin paled, blood draining from his face. “Oh no.”

“What?” Scorpia looked at him.

“A guard!” Bow hissed, crouching, and immediately the camera lowered as Sea-Hawk followed suite. “Glimmer will kill us if she finds out. Quick, hide!”

The camera fell to the ground and leaving a sideways view as three pairs of feet scrambled around for a safe spot.

-x-

“Since we saw the Horde’s kitchen, I thought it’d be a great to show you guys ours!” Bow entered a partially empty kitchen, rolling up his sleeves as he did. The camera followed him in, focusing on his hands as he started to pull out platters of chicken and salad from the fridge.

“Ohhhh!” Scorpia leaned against the kitchen counter, eyes wide as she took in everything. The camera lingered on the food before turning to her. “Wow, these look amazing! Even more amazing than the last time I was here.” Turning to the camera, she elaborated happily. “Guys, there’s so many different kinds of food here—fountains of chocolate, white things as soft as your pillow, and this food that’s so cold it freezes your brain.” She ticked off each item with her fingers. “You all have to try it.”

“Marshmellows and ice cream are great,” Bow agreed, looking for plates now.

“I personally like a good drink,” Sea-Hawk interjected, sighing happily. “Nothing like sitting on a boat, drinking away your sorrows as it burns.”

“You burn them down,” Bow pointed out, glancing over his shoulder. “You created that sorrow.”

“It’s still a sorrow,” Sea-Hawk argued, wiping a tea from his eye. “A true tragedy.”

“Hey, this is from those funny little birds, right?” Scorpia asked, picking up a slice of chicken. When Bow nodded, bemused, she asked, “Can they talk?”

“They’re birds, they don’t talk,” Sea-Hawk replied immediately. “At least not to us. And not on land.”

“They are just normal animals,” Bow added helpfully. “Though I guess they could talk, and oh my god, what if we’re destroying future Swift Winds? What if—”

The camera cuts off quickly.                                                 

-x-

The last of the footage faded to black. Glimmer felt her jaw drop as the credits rolled most of them thanking Sea-Hawk. This was supposed to be a promo video to encourage peace. This was supposed to be a little cheesy but decent.

Even her worst expectations were better than this. There were so many things she could say after watching that monstrosity, but none of them seemed right.

The only certain thing was that she couldn’t use any of it.

[omgsomeonesomewhereonearth]

your eyes look like coming home

The five times Patton asks Janus to marry him. 

Moceit, childhood best friends to lovers💙💛

Content Warnings: alcohol, light angst

Aaa this is my first fic in a million years or something. It’s kind of short and maybe not my best work, but I’m honestly just happy to have written something lol - hope you enjoy!

AO3 Link

The first time Patton asks Janus to marry him, it’s a dare.

“Hi! Do you wanna be married?”

Janus stares blankly at the nervous-looking kid in front of him, fiddling with the sleeves of his grubby school cardigan as he stared back at Janus, through large, almost owlish glasses.

He’s confused for a second, then he looks over the kid’s shoulder, and sees the familiarly smug faces in the background, smirking and whispering like they’ve just seen something very funny.

He looks back at the kid – he’s new, just joined last week. Named Patrick or something. He didn’t seem like he’d be involved with the mean kids, with his big, nervous brown eyes and fidgety behaviour. His soft, round face holds a nervous grin as he looks earnestly back at Janus, who’s now glaring exclusively back at the ones watching them

“Why?” he finds himself saying, instead of no.

The boy – Peter? – flushes a little, looking at his feet.

“Um – well -I it’s er, it’s the game.” He gives the explanation like he’s asking a question, prodding the playground floor with his scuffed trainers. “We’re playing, they said – er, I need to find someone to say yes and marry me – but it’s just pretend though – and um, so…”

Ah, so they were both being made fun of.

“They don’t want to play with me.”

The boy’s face falls instantly. “Why not?” he asks, tilting his head to one side. Janus glances at the group, still smirking superiorly at him and – Paul?

“Because.” He snaps, not entirely unkindly, “Go find someone else to ask, or they won’t want to play with you either.”

The boy looks crestfallen for a second, but a look of determination overtakes his face, small mouth forming into a thin, angry line.

“Then I don’t want to play with them.” He declares with a toss of his curly head, sitting himself down next to Janus on the playground floor.

The flock immediately stops smirking, muttering furiously to one another.

“That’s not a good idea…”

“Don’t care.” The boy thrusts a small, chubby hand out at him. “I’m Patton.”

 ---

 The second time, it’s a joke, but also a promise.

They’re sitting on opposite ends of Patton’s cramped twin bed, doing everything but the homework they wanted to meet up to solve, and Janus is pretending he’s not all too aware of their feet just barely touching each other.

“Hey, do you remember that time I asked if you would marry me?” Patton giggles, a sudden mischievous look taking over his face, dimples popping in and out as he looks back at Janus.

“Oh, you mean the first thing you ever said to me?” Janus replies airily, swelling with pride as Patton laughs even harder, scrunching his nose up in delight.

“You know, you never gave me an answer.”

Janus’s heart skips a beat. No it doesn’t, shut up .

His laugh is carefully nonchalant as he replies, “What do you mean?”

“Well, you never said! Would you marry me or not?” Patton laughs, “You’ve kinda left me hanging for years, if you think about it.”

He’s joking. This is a bit, Janus knows that. it doesn’t stop his traitorous heart from beating just that much faster as he smirks back.

“Sure, why not?”

“Oh, yeah?”

“Certainly, in like fifty years when we’re both old and lonely and we’re the only ones who can stand each other.”

He doesn’t believe it, obviously. He knows that he and Patton will always be together, but he doesn’t believe for a second that Patton won’t find someone, with his unbearable kind heart and his wide, honest eyes, and whoever it was would be damn lucky.

Patton laughs in delight at his response. “Ha! Sounds like a plan! Ooh – hold on!”

And then he’s jumping off the bed, going to rummage in his desk drawers.

“What the hell are you doing?”

“Celebrating our engagement properly! Be patient!”

And then he’s kneeling next to the bed, smiling cheekily up at Janus, a length of pale blue ribbon in his hand.

“What is that?”

“Shut up, I don’t have a ring.”

“You’re ridiculous.”

“Hand!”

So, Patton ties the ribbon in a neat bow on Janus’ ring finger and kisses it quick before leaning back to gaze at him in satisfaction.

“There. Now you’re stuck with me no matter what.”

Janus doesn’t tell him that was going to happen regardless.

  ---

 Neither of them likes to talk about the third time.

Janus shoves his way past the teeming crowd of drunk dancers, craning his neck to spot a crop of dark curls or a pastel jumper. Goddamnit .

He wasn’t supposed to leave Patton’s side, he had suggested coming out here tonight as a way of cheering Patton up, and it had been working, until he had walked in, complete with brand new attractive arm candy, and…

Fuck.

He finally finds him out in the empty garden, clutching a beer can that looks to be mostly empty, staring blankly at the sky. He’s not actively crying, but as Janus walks over, he can make out the tear tracks on his face even in the dark.

So he’s definitely seen them.

“Patton?”

“Hey, Janus.” His voice is subdued, and there’s a slight slur to the words.

“I’m so sorry, Pat,” He starts, “If I’d known he’d be here...”

“It’s ‘kay Jan, ‘m fine,” Patton reassures in a way that is not reassuring at all. His smile doesn’t reach his eyes and it’s painfully brittle, like it might shatter into a thousand pieces any minute. Recently, Janus has seen that smile a few too many times for his liking.

“Patton, no.” he replies firmly, but gently, “You’re drunk and heartbroken, and I’m at least partially responsible for that. I’m going to take you home.”

But drunk Patton is somehow even more stubborn than sober Patton can be at times, and he shakes his head resolutely.

“Janus, no.” he pouts, “ ‘m not that drunk, an’ ‘m not…not sad, an’ I don’t wanna go home.” He nods clumsily, having made his point, and then proceeds to stare blankly at the sky again.

Janus sighs.

“Well, then I’m drunk. And sad. And I need someone to take me home.”

Ever more attentive to other’s needs than his own, that gets Patton’s attention, the beautiful idiot that he is. Slowly, he nods and clambers to his feet, gripping Janus’ hand.

Neither of them drives, and Patton’s place is closer, so Janus walks them there, Patton clinging firmly to his side every step of the way. Janus can’t tell if it’s for balance or comfort.

When he gets them both inside the flat, Patton’s first words are, “Don’t leave.”

He gazes up at Janus with red-rimmed eyes, “I don’t like bein’ here alone.”

Janus’s heart aches at that, and he nods. He’d always found it hard to say know to Patton, especially when he’s like this, and especially when he asks for so little as it is.

Similarly, he can’t bring himself to refuse Patton’s beseeching gaze when he tucks him in and moves to sleep on the couch. So, a few moments later finds them in bed together, Janus staring at the ceiling and wondering how Patton can’t hear his heartbeat. They’ve shared a bed before, of course. But not in a long time. Certainly not since Patton started seeing him .

“I saw them, you know.”

He does know. “Really?”

“Mm. D’you think he loves him?”

Janus sighs, “I don’t know, Patton.”

“D’you think he loved me?” Patton’s voice is so soft, so resigned, so plaintive that Janus damn near breaks.

“You know I can’t answer that, Patton.”

“Sometimes I think he didn’t.” Patton admits matter-of-factly, “I tried so, so, hard, but he just didn’t. Ever. I wonder if anyone ever really will.”

There’s a scrap of faded blue ribbon tied on the end of Janus’ keyring that answers that question, but Janus doesn’t bring it up. He doesn’t have to.

“You know I know you’re not really drunk. Or sad.” Patton turns to look at him, his eyes gentle and frank.

“Yeah?”

“You’re jus’ lookin’ out for me. Like you always do. D’you remember that time I said we should get married when we’re all old an’ stuff?”

He doesn’t trust himself to speak. “Hmm.”

Patton smiles wanly. “I wish we could jus’ do that now. We’d jus’ have each other an’ it wouldn’ matter if no one loves me ‘cause I’ve got you.”

Their faces are inches apart and Janus has never wanted anything more than he wants to kiss Patton right now, to kiss his tears away and tell him he’d never be alone, because Janus wouldn’t let him – but he can’t. For a variety of reasons.

“Go to sleep, Patton.”

  ---

 The fourth time, it comes out of nowhere.

It’s two – three? Some godforsaken hour of the morning and Janus has work tomorrow.

And for some reason, his delightful boyfriend has decided that it is a perfect time to be awake and shuffling around to sit up in bed, and turn his bedside lamp on.

“Janus?” he whispers his name like he thinks it might break in his mouth, and God, Janus loves him, but he needs him to shut up and go to sleep right the hell now. He doesn’t move or open his eyes, lying with his face half buried in his pillow despite feeling Patton’s gaze on his back.

“Janus, sweetie?” he whispers again, “Are you awake?”

“… No. ”

“I’m sleeping. Can’t hear you. Zzzzz…”

Patton huffs out  a soft laugh. “I think we should get married.”

Janus stiffens. What? They’d barely been dating two months, they hadn’t even talked about marriage – at least, since they’d been dating. He had no idea it was on Patton’s mind, how long had he…

And more importantly, why was he bringing it up now?

Apparently taking his stunned silence to be outright rejection, Patton tries to backtrack quickly.

“I know, I know, it’s not been very long and I totally understand if you don’t want to because it’s too soon.” Janus feels a gentle hand rest itself on the blanket right above his shoulder, “I wasn’t really thinking of it either, but I couldn’t sleep just now and I couldn’t stop thinking, you know, about us, and you remember when we were kids, and all that stuff we always joked about, and how even though we’ve not been dating that long we’ve been together basically forever.”

He trails off, giggling self-consciously.

“And then you did something really cute in your sleep, you like, cuddled up to me and it hit me now I don’t think I ever want this to end.”

Janus finally sits up and faces the love of his life, who is looking back at him with a gaze that can only be described as besotted.

“I really love you, Janus. I want to be married to you.”

With a small, knowing smile, Janus leans forward and cups Patton’s face in his hands.

“Patton. Angel. Darling. Light of my life. I love you too.”

“I…”

“…And that is why I categorically refuse to let you propose to me while you’re wearing your Winnie the Pooh pyjamas. Please let me sleep now, and I promise I will say yes no matter how you ask me next.” And with that, Janus places a kiss on the end of his boyfriend’s nose, turns around, and falls asleep.

  ---

 The fifth time is more or less perfect.

Well, he says more or less. Patton is perfect, in a neatly pressed pastel button-down, his curls bouncing in the gentle spring breeze despite all his valiant efforts to tame it.

Janus has made an effort to look his best as well, having had a feeling something special was coming. He hadn’t mentioned it of course, but with the way Patton had been jumping up and down in his seat as he drove them here, the way he had insisted on planning every aspect of this date himself – well.

Suffice to say his future husband had never been the best at keeping secrets.

The location Patton’s picked had certainly been perfect, atop a lush green hill with the kind of majestic cherry blossom tree you only see in romantic movies, pink blossoms practically dripping off its branches as they swayed in the wind, and beautiful rolling hills all around.

What isn’t perfect is when the two of them finally get comfortable on the hilltop, and Janus leaning against the wide tree trunk while Patton gets to unpacking the picnic he’s put together so meticulously, and it starts raining, almost instantaneously.

“I checked the forecast like three times, it was supposed to be clear skies!” Patton whines back in the car once they’ve finished packing up their things and run to safety, watching the light drips of rain get slowly heavier.

“I’m sorry dearest, I suppose the universe just doesn’t want this date to be.” Janus chuckles wryly, as he hands Patton’s dried glasses back to him.

“Eff the universe,” Patton grumbles, glaring adorably at the raindrop speckled windshield.

So, they play old love songs on the car music player and drink champagne and tuck into entirely too cute bite-sized picnic foods and talk and laugh and playfully flirt and point out constellations formed by the raindrops on the glass, and eventually, Patton stops pouting.

The conversation has slowly wound down and they’re quietly enjoying each other's company when he turns to Janus, taking a deep breath.

“God knows I’ve never been able to keep anything from you.”

“Why, whatever could you be talking about, my dearest?”

“…So, this probably isn’t a surprise to you in the least.”

Patton reaches into the picnic basket and pulls out a small box. It’s a pale yellow, tied in in blue ribbon.

“You’re my best friend, Janus,” his hands are steady, but his voice is already wavering, “You’ve always been here, my whole life, whether I need someone to help, or to talk to, or even just to cry at. I’ve loved you in so many different ways.”

Janus feels tears pricking at his eyes and blinks them away quickly; he refuses to miss a second of this, he wants the image of Patton’s earnest, loving face to be clear as day in his mind when he looks back on this whenever.

“..And I don’t ever want us to stop loving each other, so, hopefully for the last time ever, will you marry me?”

He laughs breathlessly and takes the box, delicately undoing the ribbon. It’s a cupcake.

A tiny, perfect cupcake with frilly blue icing, a golden ring in the shape of the tiniest coiled snake in the world, embedded in the icing.

“Do you like it?” Patton asks hopefully.

Janus surges forward to kiss his fiancé for the very first time.

Taglist: @ent-is-undecisive @disney-princess-patton

[otakween]

Digimon Adventure (Blind watch) - Episode 1

Oh snap, my first long haul series! I've decided that when I get to these mega-franchises I will watch them simultaneously with other shows so I don't get stuck on one series for an eternity (lol). In other words, I'll still be working on I'm Standing on a Million Lives as my "main" series, but Digimon will be my secondary...probably for years considering how long it is (gulp).

I have never, ever seen/played/done anything with Digimon. My history with the series is that I watched one episode at a friend's house in elementary school and was totally lost. I remember there was a cocoon lol. Excited to dive in head first!

I watched this first episode twice, first in dub-format and then sub. The dub was very cringe and the whole time watching it I was hyper aware of the fact that a ton of the dialogue was not in the original script. I see the nostalgic appeal, but I'll be sticking with the sub. The sub has better music, a better script, better sound effects, etc. (I got really excited that there was an insert song already haha). Anyway, my thoughts about episode 1 below the cut!

Notes:

-This show only appears to be available legally as a dub, so I guess there's not a lot of demand for the sub? Either way, you gotta watch it in the 4:3 aspect ratio, which is totally fine, just a pain in the butt when I want nicely cropped screenshots.

-One thing I liked better about the dub is that they have MC dude narrating the episode, in the Japanese it's some random adult man, which just feels kinda like clumsy exposition. The narration in the dub also had more personality (although the line "she's pretty cool...for a GIRL" was pretty cringe).

-Very nice, although kinda low-budget watercolor backgrounds are fun to look at. I think the character designs of the humans are pretty good too, definitely memorable (although there's a ton of characters to learn at once, which I found overwhelming).

-Watched the opening twice and it still makes zero sense. The weather is wacky and then they get sucked into the digital world via a wave? What does weather have to do with anything and why is there a wave when they're in the snow?? I just don't see how weather phenomenon ties into the digital theme, but maybe they'll explain later.

-Joe/Jyo is totally 90s Iida loool. Calls everyone "kun" and just has Iida vibes in general.

-Despite all of the Americanization, it's interesting how they mostly kept everyone's Japanese names, especially the mons? Props for not dumbing it down, I guess. Definitely sets it apart from Pokemon a bit.

-Don't really like the cutaways to each mon's stats. It's like they're inserting a wiki page directly into the show and it kinda breaks immersion.

-The digimon are kinda stupid-looking as babies, but if you consider that like "level 0" of their evolution chart, it makes sense that they would look as simple as possible. I don't really like how the evolutions don't always make sense like they do in Pokemon though. Like Koromon looks like a bunny but Agumon looks like a dinosaur. What? Who came up with these random ass designs?

-If I had to pick a fave mon from this episode, I think Patamon is pretty cute. Tokomon was hideous though so I'm conflicted haha.

-In the dub Kuwagamon had this really obnoxious roar that was not in the original episode. In the sub he makes this clicky beetle noise which makes so much more sense. Reminds me of how they made the shark roar in one of the Jaws movies.

-Weirdest line in the dub was when Koromon said "we're not just Digimon we're also...kinda cute!" haha so scuffed.

-The fact that the kids are instantly emotionally bonded to these blobs that they met 2 seconds ago really annoyed me. Taichi is all like "Koromon! Don't be a hero!!" and I'm like, you should still be in the "WTF" stage not the "BFFs" stage.

-Weirdly nostalgic for the Japanese Digimon opening because it was in the Kumikyoku Nico Nico Douga song remix back in the day. Can't wait to finally learn the lyrics!

[soudam-appreciation]

Carousel (3)

Kazuichi further zipped his jacket from its current chest level to his chin. He shivered, taking long strides to keep up with Gundham. They had entered the event with no trouble whatsoever, and Gundham had received a congratulatory look from the man at the ticket booth. Gundham didn't want to answer why, but Kazuichi thought it was likely because he had witnessed Gundham waiting.

"What attraction would you like to visit first?"

"Hm? Oh- well, I've never really been to something like this before... what stuff is there to do?"

Gundham paused and made a wide sweeping motion, gesturing to the rows and rows of flashing lights and temporary structures that surrounded them. Kazuichi turned in a wide circle, eyes catching on nearly every sign. He had been so focused on not bothering Gundham that he hadn't paid any attention to the actual attractions. Turning back to the way they had come, he looked down the row of nothing but food trucks and booths.

Kazuichi inhaled deeply, a sweet scent drawing his attention. He stopped his odd rotation, turning to face the stand that seemed to be the source. Said source seemed to be yet another brightly flashing booth, advertising lemonade, hot dogs, and... funnel cake? His mouth watered, and he wondered what real carnival funnel cake tasted like.

Gundham noticed Kazuichi's draw. Turning the same way he was facing, he too noticed the stand. Glancing back and forth between Kazuichi and his focus, he tucked a hand into his pocket.

"Would you like one?"

"Huh?" His attention snapped back to Gundham, startled out of his deliciously scented trance.

"Would you like one?" Gundham fished for his wallet.

"Oh, well, I mean, y-you don't have to-"

"Would you?"

Kazuichi didn't quite know why, but he said, "I- I mean, yeah..."

. . .

Gundham nearly marched to the stand window, stomach in knots. He had no idea what his goal was, or why he essentially forced his "date"- no, no no no- his "friend" to agree to eat garbage carnival food. He simply had the uncontrollable feeling that he should be purchasing something for the mortal he was visiting with.

He held his place in line behind a tall woman with dark hair, shaved short on both sides, and a shorter, rounder girl with cropped red hair. Ignoring their lovestruck chatter and discussion of what to order, he turned his focus to the menu posted on the side of the construction. He selected a "fresh-squeezed" lemonade and Pespi Cola™, both for his companion. For himself, he decided upon a mere water.

Then the odd couple before them had moved on, and it was Gundham's turn to order. Preparing to express in his usual way whilst also coming across clearly and concisely, he stepped up to the window. The hot, sticky, syrupy air rolled over him from within the edifice, and he resisted the urge to gag.

"Hey, what can I get for ya?" The woman inside was a plump one, eyes shining with the fake luster of customer service. Her cornrowed braids were pulled to the crown of her head, and her large hooped earrings jingled softly.

"Ah, yes, pardon, but may I request one Lemonade, one Pespi Cola™, one water, and one... funnel cake?" His voice trembled, and he cursed his unreliable social anxieties.

The woman, however, was completely undisturbed. Her hands tapped away at a small tablet before her as she entered Gundham's total order. "And what  kinda topping on the funnel cake?"

Blinking, he took a quick moment to recover from the unexpected question. "Pardon?"

"What kinda topping on the funnel cake?" Noting Gundham's sheer confusion, she clarified further. "We have chocolate, caramel, cherry, and apple."

He stuttered a bit, stumbling on his words. Where is Souda? It's his dessert! He turned quickly, almost running headfirst into the boy standing directly behind him. On second glance, it seemed Souda had followed him to the vendor and was now cowering behind him. "Ah, Souda. Chocolate, caramel, cherry, or apple?"

"Huh?" Souda simply stared at him, eyes round with the same confusion.

"Topping on the confectionary. Which of the four would please you, chocolate, caramel, cherry, or apple?"

The mortal's face lit with understanding before wonderment took hold. Gundham briefly wondered if the boy had ever consumed the fried monstrosity they called 'funnel cake'. "Oh, um, could I maybe get caramel?"

Sighing, he nodded. "That would be precisely the reason I asked you." Then, mumbling, "Why would I offer it if it was simply out of the question?" Returning focus to the woman in the booth, he raised his tone again. "Caramel, then."

"Ok, gotcha!" She tapped a few final times, then offered his total. He paid quickly, as the heavy cloud of sickening sweetness that enveloped the cart was gnawing at his stomach. Taking his printed receipt, and thanking the woman with one final high-pitched squeak, he stepped back to wait.

. . .

Kazuichi's (clearly irradiated) taste buds met the sweet sticky caramel, and the deep-fried dough melted in his mouth. He hadn't expected it to taste as good as it smelled, but by the Gods, it delivered. The caramel sauce was rich and thick, drizzling softly across the twisted mess of pastry beneath it. The cake itself was crisp and, well... cakey.

He had difficulty walking while he experienced this new delicacy, and Gundham looked mildly annoyed at the slowness of their pace before suggesting they make their way to one of the many picnic-type seating areas scattered around nearby the food trucks.

Kazuichi also had difficulty taking small bites of this delicious treat and easily devoured around half the dish before instinctively offering Gundham a large bite as well. He waited a moment, plastic fork outstretched, as he slowly noticed Gundham's expression. When he finally did notice his look of obvious confusion, shock, and embarrassment, he quickly lowered the utensil, face reddening almost instantly.

"Ah- uhm- uh... s- sorry... I kinda..." He set the fork back on his plate, reflexively reaching up to fidget with his braid. "I kinda forgot we d-don't... we don't hang out th-that much..."

Gundham coughed quietly into his scarf, which he had tugged up over his nose. "I-It's alright..."

Kazuichi felt heat flooding his head and chest, mortification pooling near his heart like lead, making it hard to breathe. He just did something that stupid, huh?

. . .

Gundham found himself staring intensely at a grime spot on the picnic table, scarf softly scuffing against his cheeks. His mind was spinning a million miles a second, although he wasn't entirely sure why. His heart raced, and when he tried to focus on the feelings and rationalize them, he found he couldn't gather the correct words for it. It was as if the thought of eating after a mere mortal, specifically that mortal, was what was causing his confusion and embarrassment.

He tried to avoid looking too intensely at Souda as he finished consuming the fried thing. As he finished the grease-saturated confection, Gundham rose and offered to take the disposable tray. This offer came in the form of him holding out his unbandaged hand, waving it around a bit to get the boy's attention, and mumbling something incoherent into his scarf. Obliging, Soda handed him the tray, turning his attention to the lemonade and taking several large gulps.

Heading toward the nearest trash receptacle, he walked quickly, utilizing his long legs to the best of his ability. He still wasn't sure to what stimulus his emotions were responding, but it hardly mattered. He tossed the soiled cardboard into the trash, taking several steps back from the stench before taking a deep breath. He inhaled from his stomach, pushing all dizzying thoughts from his mind. Or, trying to, anyway. He was still a bit too close to the trash, and the strength of the smell invaded his lungs with every inhalation. Coughing a bit to clear his airways, he turned around and began to wander slowly back to the table.

However, it seemed Souda had begun to follow after him. Not expecting him to be so close behind, Gundham stumbled back the slightest bit.

"Ah! Sorry, didn't mean to startle you!"

"I- Pardon, it's no trouble." Gundham dismissed the apology with a wave, briefly hoping his face had ceased its embarrassing fluster. Hoping to direct them elsewhere, away from the stink of sugary carnival food and garbage, he said, "Perhaps we could wander elsewhere, to other possible attractions?"

Nodding vigorously, his tangled curls and braid bouncing, Souda displayed unsurmountable excitement. Zest for life. "Yeah! I wanna see what other cool things there are!"

As the two made strides towards the rest of the hundreds of structures, Souda turned to face Gundham once again. "I uh, I just wanna say thanks. For the food and stuff. It was super good, and also really nice of you to get stuff for me." He stumbled, having tripped while walking backward, and promptly turned around again. This was, of course, lucky for Gundham, as he was once again drawing his scarf towards the moon.

. . .

Kazuichi bounced from booth to booth, staring wide-eyed at all the bright colors and stuffed prizes. He wasn't sure he'd be good at any of the games, but he desperately wanted to win a prize. Preferably a big one. He didn't want it for himself as much as he felt like he needed to repay some insurmountable debt to Gundham, who had given him the real Funnel Cake Experience™.

He looked high and low, ping-ponging between the duck grabs to the ring toss to the dartboards and all else in the area. Gundham walked slowly behind him, allowing adequate time to jump back and forth as they moved through the fair. However, despite his searching, Gundham seemed to find the perfect gift before he did.

. . .

Gundham stalled before a silly racing game, the kind powered by water guns. He looked up, attention captured by the biggest prize available. It was an overly cute, very round hamster holding a strawberry half its size. It was absolutely ridiculous. And Gundham loved it.

Of course, he would never admit to loving it. He was a dark character. He chanted rituals and spells in the dark of night! He controlled entire worlds, and would soon conquer this one as well!

So obviously, he would never tell anyone about the way its large round eyes melted his heart, or how the soft, full cheeks reminded him of... that boy. How its tiny paws holding that ridiculously sized strawberry sparked so much joy. Or about how much he wanted to squeeze it to his chest and feel the plush fur against his face. No, he would never tell a soul.

Souda, however, had seemingly noticed the foolish god standing completely still before the booth. He must have tracked his gaze, which was very much focused on the large, round, soft plush hamster.

. . .

Kazuichi smiled, poking Gundham in the shoulder. "Whaddya think of that one?" He pointed directly at the round rodent that Gundham was fixated on.

Spluttering, Gundham took a step back. "I-It's-" He steeled his gaze, glaring at Kaz ferociously. "It's ridiculous." He crossed his arms over his chest, trapping his scarf against it. He shrugged his shoulders, wriggling a little bit to loosen the fabric.

"Really?" Kazuichi turned back to the booth. It seemed like just the kind of guilty pleasure a so-called "dark overlord" would like. he spun on his heels to face Gundham again. "I think it's kinda cute. Reminds me of you," he added, intended to be a completely separate statement.

Realizing the implications of his words far too late, Kazuichi watched in a blend of terror and embarrassment as that simple statement registered slowly on Gundham's face. His eyes widened, and he turned his attention to studying the rouge gravel on the ground. Hot blush raced to his cheeks, spilling across his nose and forehead. His hand once again flew to his scarf, and he yanked the front up almost past his eyes. He coughed, tension flowing thickly between them.

After a few more panicked seconds, Kazuichi scrambled to correct himself and promptly tumbled over his tongue. "I- I mean- not the cute part- reminds me- I mean... the- like, uh, I dunno- shit- I mean, j-just... I didn't mean- cute- I meant... the hamster stuff- cause, you know... you have- y-y'know... hamsters..." He ran his fingers through his hair, tangling it further as he desperately tried to correct himself. Tugging his hand from the mess, and wincing at the pains, he shoved his hands in his pockets.

"W-well, if you insist..." Kazuichi glanced back at Gundham as he inhaled, seemingly steadying his voice. "If you desire a factual answer... I do... 'like' it..."

Kazuichi smiled wide, feeling around for his wallet. "Oh, ok! If you like it, then gimme like 5 minutes!"

"Wait-" Gundham seemed confused, but Kazuichi was already gone. He wove through small clusters of other fairgoers, sliding to a halt in front of the game booth. It was a racing game, one where the player must aim a stream of water at the center of a target, thusly causing the car to move forward. He fished out his wallet, handing the money necessary for one play to the attendant.

He lost the first round, complained about being out of practice, and paid again. On the second go, however, he pulled ahead easily and won with almost no difficulty. When prompted for the prize, he looked back at Gundham, grinned, and pointed at the Very Round Hamster.

. . .

Gundham watched in confusion and awe as Souda won a Very Good, Very Round Hamster while playing one of the strangest, most confusing carnival games he had ever seen. Souda's smile was broad as he skipped back over to Gundham, and he held out the plush.

"So? Pretty cool, right?" He was breathing hard from bouncing around so much, and he nudged the fluffy toy into Gundham's chest. Gundham took it in his hands, astonished by the size of it.

It was as big as his entire torso and made of annoyingly soft Minky synthetic. He wrapped his arms around it and squeezed it softly. He had to resist the urge to bury his face in the silky fabric as the stuffed fiend gave way to the perfect amount of plush.

Realizing he had let his guard down, he snapped to attention. The soft smile that had unknowingly appeared on his face was quickly wiped away, and he fought the need to drop the hamster and hide the rose dusting on his face.

"Are you... presenting me an offering?"

Souda's grin fell a tad in confusion. "An offering...? Oh, like a gift. Yeah, it's for you." He slid his hands back into his pockets.

"Oh..." Gundham couldn't hide his smile this time. He ducked behind the plush, hiding his face to the best of his ability.

. . .

Kazuichi couldn't keep the grin from his face as walked with Gundham. Where he almost had to run to keep up with him before, now it seemed the boy had slowed considerably. He was still burying his face in the toy Kazuichi had won for him, and he took that as a sign Gundham really liked it.

They continued walking, seeming to wander toward the space occupied by the rollercoaster and other rides. Kaz had been so distracted by the lights and signs he hadn't realized that was precisely where they were heading. He felt the bottom of his stomach drop to his toes as he thought about going on the rollercoaster.

It was easily one of the most intense rides the little fair had. Even as they were about 300 feet from it, he could hear the screams of its riders. It was a simple coaster, but it had lots of dips, bends, and, worst of all, cameras. The thought of going on such a ride made him nauseous to no end. He unconsciously gripped Gundham's sleeve, just as he began to lower the plush.

"Would you be... interested... in riding one of the other attractions here?"

Kazuichi's attention snapped to Gundham's face, and despite the sinking feeling that overwhelmed him, he asked, "Which one are you thinking about?"

"Well, there aren't too many interesting ones... perhaps the main 'coaster'?" His voice tinged with a strange disgust as he spoke the words, and Kaz got the sense he wasn't the biggest fan of them.

"No- nonono I think I'm good on that one actually. Really, I don't think that one is the best or most interesting one here so maybe... we could just skip that one!" He rushed to get the words out of his mouth, without focusing nearly enough on keeping the rising panic out of his tone.

. . .

Gundham trained his mismatched eyes on Souda's. His voice had shaken as he denied the ride, and Gundham understood that to mean he was truly terrified of it.

Nodding, he conceded that it surely wasn't the best here. He turned around and around, looking from sign to sign for a ride suitable for the two of them. His gaze landed on the carousel.

"Perhaps that one?" He gestured vaguely in the direction of the attraction, and Souda followed.

"The Merry-Go-Round??" His tone was one of confusion, and he read the words off of the sign as if they were entirely foreign to him.

"Yes, that one. It is fairly simple, all it does is turn."

Gundham watched as Souda's tension eased, the fear dripping slowly from his face. He smiled and said, "Yeah, ok! Sounds easy enough!" He laughed, still sounding a bit tense, but not nearly as fearful as before.

They stood in the annoyingly long line for nearly 15 minutes, and they both became restless. Souda had removed the hair tie from his magenta almost-curls and began to unbraid and re-braid his hair over and over, and Gundham had simply fidgeted with the trinkets at the end of his bandage clip, rolling the smooth bead over and over between his fingertips.

When it was finally their turn, Souda had replaced his hair band and buried his hands in his pockets instead. They stepped to the very front of the line as the woman operating the ride said, "There's only one pony left. Are you two riding together?"

Gundham stuttered slightly, glancing at Souda. He also seemed unsure, however, as their eyes caught and they both stumbled.

"Of course-"

"We can wait-"

The words tumbled out in unison, and Gundham choked up more as he corrected his claim to fit Souda's.

"Er, yes, we're riding together."

"Alright, to the left."

They entered the space, placing the Very Soft Hamster in one of the 'personal belongings' bins before following the edge of the attraction to the left as they had been instructed.

They soon came upon a vacant horse, presumably the only one, and stepped up to take their seat. It was a chestnut bay, sporting a  cream-and-rose saddle for two with leather reigns. The pole through it was twisted and worn of its sheen at around hand height, and it was one of the animals that was firmly affixed- it would not rise or fall.

"So this is it, huh?" Souda's voice cut through Gundham's silent assessment of their steed, and he snapped to attention.

"Yes, that is correct." He stepped closer, unsure as to who would be seated in the front, before Souda made the decision for him.

"Can you help me up onto this thing?" He had one hand on the worn pole and the other on the cast saddle. "I dunno how I'm s'posed to..."

"Here, put this foot here." Gesturing to the stirrup, Gundham held out his arm as a support. Souda gladly took it, and lifted himself into the seat. He scooted forward, looking expectantly back at Gundham.

Taking a deep breath, he followed, placing his right foot in the stirrup and swinging his other leg over effortlessly. He had already begun to settle before realizing how close he was to Souda, and that there was nothing to grip to steady himself when the ride would begin.

Glancing over his shoulder, Souda noticed his lack of a handhold. "Hey, aren'tcha worried you'll fall off?" He faced center again, muttering, "I'm worried as it is, an' I've even got these." He wriggled the reigns half heartedly.

Gundham hesitated, then held his breath as he wrapped his arms around Souda's waist. The instant their bodies came into contact, he felt Souda tense as much as he had, before reclining slightly into Gundham's chest.

. . .

Kazuichi was unused to physical touch, but anything was better than falling off a kid's ride at roughly 10 PM. He was made painfully aware of his shoulders pressing into his companion, Gundham's hands resting dangerously near to his thighs as Kazuichi felt his stomach knotting itself into a fishtail braid. He tightened his grip on the leather reigns. He didn't have much time to think about it though, as the ride began seconds later.

It began rotating, very slowly, and the music dulled to accommodate the ride attendant's voice delivering the usual spiel about holding on, keeping hands and feet in the ride, and staying seated. He stayed focused on the horse in front of him, which was white with a gold gilded saddle. Its rider was a younger girl with long dark hair, and he chose to focus on the large crimson bow that pulled her bangs from her face. However, as the ride picked up speed, he found that his eyes began to wander, only recognizing his mistake when he caught the slight blur of the world sliding past...

Oh no.

Facing front yet again, he felt the twisting discomfort rising in his abdomen, curling around his organs like a snake. It wrapped around his ribcage and arms, turning his muscles to gelatin and breaths shallow, before reaching for his skull. Spots started to dance in his vision, the swirling unease constricting his sight and mind. He felt like patterns were tracing themselves beneath his skin, and he unconsciously tightened his grip on the reigns. Leaning back into Gundham, he tried to focus, but the steady and violent sickness rolled his world from side to side, and he made no feeble move to correct it. 

. . .

Feeling Souda go nearly limp in his arms, Gundham felt concern rising in his chest. He held him tightly, reaching one arm for the pole so they wouldn't fall, and leaned in next to Souda's ear to ask if he was alright. Even more worrisome, though not surprising, he shook his head no. His eyes were closed, knuckles white against the reigns, face pale, his usual blush entirely gone. Gundham wondered if there was anything he could do to make him feel better, but knowing the most likely environmental stimulus, there didn't seem to be anything that would help.

Luckily for both of them, the ride began to slow, horses and children together coming to a complete stop. Souda's eyes fluttered open halfway, and he whispered, "Is it over?"

Nodding and assuring him that yes, the ride was over, he began to dismount. When both boots had touched the ground, he held out a hand to Souda, offering the most support he could. Souda thankfully obliged, almost tumbling to the ground in his effort to stand again.

. . .

Kaz stumbled blindly, gripping Gundham's sleeve as he tried to right himself. He felt Gundham place his hands upon his shoulders, and the added support made it a bit easier to stand. Straightening his back the best he could, he allowed his partner to lead him carefully to the exit (but not before they retrieved the stuffed hamster).

As they exited the ride's grounds via the gate, he quietly searched for another attraction for them to visit. However, most of the rides nearby seemed to either be fast or a real coaster. He'd rather not die tonight.

"Do you feel alright?"

Halting, he saw that Gundham had stopped a foot or so in front of him, concern apparent on his features despite him seemingly attempting to hide it.

"Huh? Me?"

"Of course you, who else would I be speaking to?" Annoyance flashed in his eyes, and Kazuichi shrunk slightly.

"You're right, sorry... Yeah, I'm ok. Just got a little motion sick is all." He found himself toying with the end of his braid again.

"I would hardly say 'a little,'" he said, punctuated his words with air quotes around Kaz's. "You looked to be near death."

Kazuichi felt his face heat up again, and he pushed his hands deep into his pockets and scuffed his shoes in the dirt. "I guess so... sorry about that."

Gundham sighed deeply, then turned back to the rest of the fair, as if to drop the matter. Kazuichi took a few steps to stand beside him, and he once again set to surveying for the next event.

"Perhaps that should be next?" He waved his bandaged hand in the direction of the tallest ride by far, the one Kaz had only seen in movies. He was pretty sure it was called a ferret wheel.

"Uh, yeah, sure. Ok." Swallowing hard, he tried to keep the fear out of his voice again, this time very deliberately. He really did want to go on another ride with Gundham, but he wasn't sure he could handle it. The height, not the riding with Gundham.

[avengemebuckyy]

Be Careful

Summary: 

You tell Bucky to be careful with your heart. Too late he realizes you should have been careful with his.

or:

You’re awkward,odd, and not the most conventionally attractive yet you’re the only woman that Bucky sees

Warnings: manipulation 

Authors note: Back from the dead lmao. This is probably trash but I just needed to force myself to finish something it order to try to get back in the groove! Feedback is more than greatly appreciated, it’s what keeps me writing tbh...

PS. You ain’t shit in this lmao

---

You weren’t the most eye-catching. You didn’t look like the girls Bucky used to chase after in his younger years, or the girls on the internet he’d find himself staring at once he’d discovered Instagram, endlessly scrolling through picture after picture, lost in a sea of beautiful bodies and faces. You didn’t look like the tall slim blonde agent he’d always make a point to hold open the door for, or his neighbor’s daughter in Wakanda, who had had dark skin so smooth and a face so perfect he’d never managed to say more than two words to her.

You were slightly awkward, with a slightly odd sense of humor, always cracking jokes that sometimes no one laughed at but you. But you didn’t care, you would laugh at them all the same. You wore baggy clothes, and not the fashionable baggy kind either. Your favorite outfit was baggy camo print cargo pants and an old grey band t-shirt, logo so faded it was almost impossible to decipher.

At first Bucky didn’t pay you much attention. He wasn’t rude, but he treated you with the same gruff stoicism he treated everyone with. Well everyone besides Sam, Steve, and Natasha. Besides he only saw you rarely, you were a high level agent thanks to your skill, but you didn’t work closely with the team very often. Until you did.

One mission with Clint was all it took to have your name thrust forward when Fury was looking to fill a coordinator position. Suddenly you were everywhere. Coordinating their positions on missions, even going on missions with different members of the team. You fit in well with the team, your corny jokes and generally happy disposition make you easy to like. Your apartment was five minutes away, thanks to Tony, so you would often eat breakfast with the team and stay at the Tower well into the night, often crashing in a room designated for you, also thanks to Tony.

You were like a deceptively shallow river Bucky would think after. One minute he was wading through your shallows, next moment he was being taken under by your currents, realizing too late that he was in deeper than he thought possible.

It started slowly, you would make an effort to make conversation with Bucky, never seeming off put by his non answers. Bucky found himself coming to you with numerous questions on how to work social media, you would give such long winded explanations he wouldn’t have to embarrass himself with asking questions. Soon he found himself seeking you out for more than explanations. Funny thing is you were the one who introduced him to Instagram, to the  beautiful women on the app but eventually he found himself unable to see any woman but you.

Bucky found himself sitting with you at lunch, looking out the window in the mornings waiting to catch sight of your army green jacket. He’d sit with you in the afternoons as you did your paperwork, steal glances at you ,your forehead always shiny by midday with an almost ever-present patch of acne, eyebrows scrunched together as you filled out mission reports. He loved those quiet moments the most. Bucky wasn’t good with words, not anymore. But he would help carry the 10 pound boxes of paperwork, always bring an extra pen in case yours ran out of ink, and constantly would bring you your favorite Starbucks order. He secretly hoped that you would read the affection behind his actions.

You didn’t usually go to Stark’s parties, you’d rather go to bars and clubs with your friends.

“The crowd at Stark’s parties just aren’t my crowd,” you’d explained with a shrug, toeing the floor with your scuffed sneakers. Bucky had nodded in understanding. They usually weren’t his crowd either, but he’d always go to support Steve, who was pretty much expected to show face.

But for some reason you show up to this party. Four months into your blossoming friendship (and Bucky’s crush). Bucky wasn’t prepared for what you were wearing. When he heard the agents whispering about your unexpected appearance at the party he half expected to see you in jeans and a t- shirt. Or even your cargo pants. At the sound of your name Bucky zeros into the muttered conversation.

“Did you see her?”

“Yeah, damn.”

“Was not expecting that. Or her to even show up. Who knew?”

“She’s kinda hot, not gonna lie. In a weird way”

Bucky turns his head scanning the crowd, heart rate already picking up, fully expecting to see your sweat-pant clad form. He sees you alright. But not in sweatpants. A red dress barely covers your figure. Hemline way above the halfway mark of your thighs and twin slits in the skirt reaching up to your hips. A draping halter neck ties at your neck and completely exposes your back and gives a generous view of your tits. He catches flashes of the curve of your ass as you walk.

In hindsight the dress was totally in line with your character. You didn’t dress the way you did because you were ashamed of your body but rather because you didn’t give a fuck. Your hair is pinned up, one perfect curl escaping your updo and kissing your neck. Bucky feels his heart stop. He spies numerous heads turning as you languidly weave through the crowd in dangerously thin stilettos. You cozy up to one of your agent friends and the two of you drink, giggle, and dance. Bucky can’t take his eyes off of you.

When you head to the balcony he follows.

“Hey,” you say when you spy his shadow darkening the entrance to the balcony. 

“Hey,” he gruffs, in a tone he fears is too quiet. But looking at the curve of your exposed back suddenly has his voice dying in his throat. You turn back to looking at the city skyline. Bucky steps forward next to you. Close. Closer than he’s ever been to you, painfully aware of your arms brushing. He can’t fully feel your skin through the long sleeve button down he’s wearing but the touch sets him on fire all the same.

“Needed some air. “ He eventually grumbles. Trying not to stare at your profile. You look at him then, wearing a sly expression he had never seen on you.

“I’m sure you did,”

--

After that it doesn’t take long for Bucky to gather up the courage after that. Maybe it’s the way you had looked at him on the balcony or the way both male and female agents were sniffing around you at the party. All the same about a week later Bucky finds himself heading to your office in the afternoon as usual, but this time holding a bouquet of flowers.

Afterwards Bucky falls in love with you hard and fast. He finds himself doting on you, taking you out, bringing you flowers and other tokens of his affection. He hears the whispers, it’s almost impossible not to with his super soldier hearing.

“How’d she’d get him,”

“What an odd couple,”

“The Winter Soldier’s with cargo pants?”

But he still holds your hand in public all the same. Stops in the middle of training recruits to kiss you whenever you happen to cut across the gym all the same. Keeps a picture of you in his wallet all the same.

Bucky has never felt this amount of care and comfort from a person since...ever, even before, in his other life. You put his boots by the heater in the winter when he sleeps over so his feet won’t freeze when he walks to the compound. You listen to him, even when he’s angry, raging at nothing, or when he’s sad and sullen, taking minute long pauses in between sentences. Or even when he wants to do nothing but sit in silence and hold you. You especially listen when his words come fast, tinged with self hatred. You reassure him, holding him like he’s fine china. After many late night musings you give him with the best present he’s ever gotten, an impossibly soft kitten who’s uncharacteristically loud purr always grounds him. Bucky finds himself able to open up with you in a way he can’t with anyone else, even Steve. Bucky’s not good with words anymore, but with you he’s amazing. He can’t stop singing your praises, lavishing you with sweet words and adoration.

In hindsight it was a warning.

“Sweetheart, your wallet must be screamin’ for mercy, with you buying this cake nearly everyday,” Bucky says pinching off a piece of the lemon pound cake which is almost always at the corner of your desk. He recognizes the cake from a bakery across the street, and knows its nearly four dollars a slice. You stretch cracking your back, nipples poking through your shirt. Your ever present band shirt had breathed its last breath, and this new shirt is thinner and cropped, and hugs your body closer.

“Not really, I don’t buy it, Tommy hooks me up” you say, shooting him a smile and then returning back to your paperwork.

“Tommy?” Bucky says, and unbidden hot jealousy sears through his chest at the mention of your coworker “He’s always buying you these?”

“Yeah,” you answer, not looking up, and Bucky tells himself to remain calm, unbothered. 

He doesn’t.

Later after the subsequent fight and make up Bucky holds you as the two of you sit on his bed.

“I’m sorry,” He says again.

“It’s alright,” you say and somehow your simple words draw the truth out of him.

“I’m just...I- I’m afraid of losing you.”

“I’m afraid of losing you too,” you confess, then pause “Bucky, please be careful with me,”

Your relationship was easy, comforting. The two of you almost never fought, and never grew tired of being with each other. One blissful year turned into two and then five. It was like a dream and Bucky never wanted to wake up.

But reality eventually did.

How closely you guarded your phone should have tipped him off. How you’d constantly declined calls while the two of you were together. The way you almost always got ‘too drunk’ on girls night and would end up crashing at your friend’s place.

The first time it’s sixth months into your relationship on a lazy Saturday. The two of you had ordered pizza and planned to cuddle on the couch and have a movie marathon. You were in the bathroom when your phone had vibrated. Knowing that you would get a notification when the pizza arrived Bucky had looked at your phone. Bucky had felt surprised to see the name Dominos instead of an unsaved number pop up on your screen. Your phone didn’t show the preview of the text like his did. Your phone was still unlocked since you had headed to the bathroom but a few seconds ago, so Bucky tapped to open  the text.

Dominos: [Can’t wait to see you again, beautiful]

Bucky’s blood had run cold. He froze, only unfreezing when he realized you were standing next to him.

“We aren’t exclusive!” you had defended.

“What the hell do you mean?” Bucky had growled. At that your face had crumbled, eyes filling with tears.

“You never asked me to be your girl.” you had looked away “We never talked about what we are,”

“Whaddya think we’ve been doing these past months?!” Bucky had yelled back,

“ I don't know. I don’t assume Bucky. Because guys always seem to want to date me, treat me like their girlfriend and then turn around and throw it in my face that they never said I was.” your voice breaks and so does Bucky's anger.  He hadn’t been very verbal with you so far. It’s true he never asked you to be his girl, or even verbally on a date. He just thought you both knew. Guilt fills him at the sight of your tear stained face.

“I’m sorry I was just preparing for the inevitable,” you say and turn away. Bucky grabs your arm and pulls you towards him.

“Well, let me make it clear. I want you to be my girl. I want you to be mine and mine alone.”

Your expression is unfathomable as you wind your arms around his neck.

“I am yours.”

That night you stand in front of Bucky and  wordlessly slip out of your sweatpants and t shirt, rendering him speechless. With reverence Bucky’s hands trace your frame and his mouth follows. That night he worships you.

Later, you wrap your arms around him and whisper 

“I love you,”

 And Bucky knows that he’s done for.

“I love you too sweetheart.” he says, and later still when you’ve fallen asleep Bucky lies awake, stroking the soft contours of your back. He’s done for. And he knows it.

“I’ll be careful,” he whispers.

--

Reality had tried to wake Bucky gently. Through warning signs that should have been loud and clear especially to an ex assassin. But Bucky had accepted your half baked truths and excuses. He was too far gone off of the drug that was your love to heed the warning signs until reality slapped him- no choked him, awake.

His awakening came in the form of the sight of you on your kitchen counter, a man kneeling in between your spread thighs. The flowers he had bought you on his way back from his mission that had ended early drop to the floor. Bucky freezes. But at the sight of Tommy’s face, cheeks slick with you he loses it. Next thing he realizes that he has his hands around your coworkers throat. But your hand on his shoulder drains the fight out of him, and as Tommy scrambles out of the apartment Bucky crumples to the floor and sobs. 

“Why?” He asks and he realizes he’s not just asking about now, but about all the times he’s caught you cheating but didn’t have the strength to leave you. 

“Baby” you say and gather him into your arms. He wants to pull away, thrash, yell, but he doesn’t. He just melts into your touch. You make him weak. And at night when he thinks about your excuses and half truths he hates himself for it.

“Why do you keep doing this to me?” he says, sobs wracking his frame “Five years-did they mean nothing to you?”

“I’m sorry,” you say “I love you,” 

At this Bucky pulls away, standing. “Don’t fucking lie to me.” he hisses.

“I’m not,” you say standing “I might lie all the time but I’m not lying about this.” your eyes go soft at the corners, and start to water.

“No. I love you. I adore you. I’d give you anything-everything and you treat me like shit” Bucky spits, there’s a pain in his chest, his heart is breaking “And I just fucking take it, because you make me so fucking weak- and I hate it” another sob ribs from his chest. A part of him thinks  that this is his punishment. For all of the terrible things he’s done. Cursed to be in love with someone who will never truly love him back. He looks at you, your hair is in disarray, baggy t shirt, those fucking cargo pants around your ankles. He gives a bitter laugh “Who woulda thought that you would’ve been the one to make me weak.”

“Why? Because I’m not pretty?” hurt flashes across your face then your eyes go hard. Usually Bucky would have been quick to refute any self deprecating words, reassuring you how beautiful he found you, how gorgeous you were. But now he just lifts his chin and looks back at you with the same hard eyes.

“Well I know I’m not pretty.” you shrug, face going strangely expressionless “But you still fell for me all the same. More fool you.” you say, and after a moment continue. “We should break up.”

At this Bucky shatters. Because he knows deep down that even after all of this he still would have taken you back. He still wants to grovel at your feet and plead to try to fix your relationship. But instead he decides to finally choose himself and turns and walks out of the door and out of your life.

Year later he still finds himself looking at your picture in his wallet, the one remnant  of you he has left, that he can’t bear to get rid of. On lonely nights where he can’t sleep and can’t stand the coldness of his bed  he’ll trace the curve of your smile and wish that you had cared enough to have been careful with him.

Tags:@stephie-senpai@ayeputita@pixierox101@iamwarrenspeace@ dreamgirljere  @ufffg@pietrotheavenger @trinityjadec@abbytagg@wastedsummerss@turdblossommm@jimmyisfab@sev7en@hottrashformarvel @superbuckytrash@waidewilson@abbytagg @awkwardfangirl2014 @desir-ae

Bucky only @chamongangae@callmebucky-doll

[bawkrya]

ok so im just gonna pick at fr from a web designer pov because looking at this site on mobile will drive me into madness if they don’t fix it at some point. The rest of this post will go under a read more because it’s both super long and image heavy.

before i hit mobile though, I’m going to point out some things i just don’t personally like in general with the site design (and yes i am conscious that they are slowly updating to a new look)

this will come as a shock to no one, if you’ve seen previous web design related posts by others anyways, but i cant. stand this menu

[ID: A cropped screenshot of Flight Rising’s Main Menu]

fr, understandably, has a shit ton of links. it’s a petsite with lore and all that, whatever. The thing that bothers me specifically is the length of links and where some are placed.

1. i BELIEVE this counts as an accessibility issue where longer links kinda trap shorter links, goes into misclicks to other pages in the site, etc. etc.  2. i don’t think. the search link should be under library personally ? Maybe make it its own category. 

Dev Tracker & Media could go under this category, possibly add separate links to forum, player, and dragon searches with updated formatting

Dressing Room and Scrying Workshop could go under the “Play” category 

Forums can be it’s own category with possible subcategories being: Announcements & News, Help Center, and Flight specific discussion forum, maybe more 

Library category could then just be: Which Waystone, World Map, Game Database, and Encyclopedia.

Support should be it’s own category.

One thing on the shop category, and i hesitate to say this because im not CONFIDENT on this one, but I’m not sure Custom Skins exactly fits? or at least, it should be Purchase Gems -> Marketplace -> Custom Skins, not between crossroads and festive favors

Merch should probably go under purchase gems, and they should maybe uhh..... i guess change the name for it overall? because 1. “merch” alone does NOT look good with its placement, 2. its another actual money purchase thing and I think those should go on the same page

Along with that, in putting merch under that page, they could put previews of the merch with a button to go purchase instead of immediately going to their merch site (which to begin with it should open in a new tab if its going to a separate site?!!)

then this is a mix of both not liking it on laptop OR mobile, 

[ID: A cropped image of Flight Rising’s Clan Home page. The Bestiary link has a bright red box highlighting it]

Obviously these pages are old, but the graphics need to be updated, and there needs to be graphics for every link in the category-- seeing with this category alone there isn’t a graphic for the Bestiary already. On top of this they need to be in link order preferably. if they had a normal dropdown menu for mobile, mobile users wouldn’t be able to access the bestiary unless FR wanted to be STUPID and do further dropdown menus w their 200 links which would be STUPID and CLUTTERED

also in my opinion the Messages link isn’t necessary since we have the button at the top. If they put it there as an excuse for accessibility, they can just. add text to the buttons. like here’s a scuffed mockup but. 

[ID: Screenshot of Flight Rising’s Messages, Friend Requests, and Alerts icons edited to have Messages, Friends, and Alerts written next to the icons]

for the friends tab, they could prolly add friend requests at the top like they do for baldwin alerts, then have an online status thing for friends below with buttons to PM, trade, delete friend, etc. I think you’re already able to disable the online status thing with page visibility? but like, make those options separate if you dont wanna block off your entire page, but dont want to be seen online.

For mobile, they can just make the icons bigger.

then. i THINK. last thing on laptop site. 

[ID: A screenshot of Flight Rising’s Social Media links with old Logos to YouTube, Tumblr, Reddit, Twitter, Facebook, and DeviantArt]

update these fucking icons they are personally killing me, none of these logos are in use anymore (ALSO UPDATE THE TUMBLR THEME JESUS CHRIST)

ok now for mobile. what this post was originally for.

-

as you all know, if you visit this site on mobile, there is literally no form of a mobile version for it. It is just a condensed version of the computer version of the site which is...Very Bad! 

Most of a sites visitors are going to be through mobile, i forget the exact percentage, but like it’s almost a given that people more readily have their phones with them than their laptop or tablet (which. im not going to bother with the tablet version, you can apply both computer and mobile criticisms to the site). in fact a lot of my time on FR is through mobile since I’m not at home 24/7 and I don’t tote my laptop around. Playing this game through it’s mobile site is Not Fun! 

I like, won’t be too pissy or anything bc like. it’s a petsite and I’m making this post for fun. but also like it was made in 2014? 2013? so I’m not going to be u kno. angry. but it nearing the point of ten years with this site and there still isn’t a mobile friendly version. that is lazy. If anything, if they wanted a site update to be the anniversary thing, they should’ve made that update be

Mobile update as primary thing, because designing the site for mobile is a shit ton of work with the amt of pages they have to work through.

Dragon Profile page update (*LOUD SIGH*)

Clan page update

Hoard update (i have thoughts on this too but i wont dive into it this post)

Purchase Gems page update

Dev Tracker update

Forums update

“but that’s a lot to update” well. that wouldve made the anniversary being a website update considerably more worth it, because in my opinion having the dragon profile pages be the ONLY thing to happen during the anniversary was a waste and a bad decision, because other website updates are just. normal whatever updates. it made the anniversary SUPER underwhelming especially bc the past ones (to my knowledge) have only been major game mechanic updates like the eye & ancients update and i believe? the color wheel expansion was an anniversary thing? someone can correct me on that I haven’t played this game as long as most LMAO

as for how i personally would situate the mobile site. shitty graphic time, bc im not putting too much effort into this (warning this will be LONG)

[ID: Image 1. A crudely put together screenshot of the top half of a Mobile View of Flight Rising with comments on either side. It ends with the Latest News segments “Riot of Rot” and “Hoard & Vault Revamp”

Comment 1, Left side: “no banner make it a solid color that matches the burger menu. size the logo correctly etc. Comment 2, Right side: “burger menu w ONLY the categories, goes to the homepages of the categories” Comment 3, Right side: “TWO latest news posts, maybe a button to go see earlier news (which may b something to add to comp too)” Comment 4, Right side: “center dates and comments maybe idfk”

At the bottom of the image there is an added “button” that says “more updates button”]

[ID: Image 2. The bottom half of the mobile view with comments on the left side. There is a put together white box that has the Plague Flight Logo and “plage dom !” written in it. Below it are the Site Status, Random Dragon, and Exalt Bonuses boxes from the site. Underneath that is a red box with “ad space” in the center, with a red footer at the bottom.

The footer contains, “social media! (specifally made icons for site)”, “better formatted links”, and “copyright”.

Comment 1: “idk what they would caption it but the flashy can go here.” Comment 2: “ONE site status update if they keep this format” Comment 3: “probably center these links. i dont know what they use to build the site but im sure you can make icons for social media on just about anything unless this is all handcoded. just. make small icons it takes two seconds and you can copy+paste”]

i dont even want to THINK about how the lair and all that would look on mobile, it was a chore doing the home page alone SOBS

anyways, in ref to these images though--

this is just slapped together and definitely wouldn’t be a final draft, it could use some tweaking

the flashy i refer to is the box that’s above the user box that says what flight is in dom, what festival is going on, etc.

when i mention building the site and “you can make icons for social media on just about anything” im referring to wordpress, wix, whatever is used to format the site. I really only have experience with wordpress thru elementor and divi (so far) so im not CERTAIN about other places but I feel it would be pretty common to have that tool. if not, making icons (or snatching some) is rlly not that hard, probably only costly depending on what their webdesigner(s) charge for icons

I’m not like certain on who does what, how the webdesigner(s) work with/price this site, etc. etc. this is just. going off of my own knowledge. and in general this whole post is my own knowledge abt shit i did no further research to FRs team specifically 

i think this is basically it, i’ll reblog with more if i think of anything, but feel free to add things yourself or in general discuss things. again this post was made for fun so im not taking it seriously or demanding for these changes to be made, just personal annoyances and preferences.

This is also my first time doing picture IDs for a post so if I need to correct anything or the like let me know and I’ll edit it in the post!

[ikenbar]

Mr. Love: Ike’s Choice Ch2 Pt 7

Warnings: I say the word “hell” as a curse so... cursing?, angst, likely some grammar mistakes, and cliffhangers

AS A HEADS UP: All of the characters in this part, Except Gavin of course, are ones that I’ve made up. Just in case you go looking for them in the game or accuse me of anything. These characters are all made up by me. Except Gavin. But that’s kinda a give in lol

(Chapter two’s prologue, parts one, two, three, four, five, and six here :))

((Please read the author’s note (and the beginning of the story) on chapter one part one if you’re new here :D))

Chapter two:

Part seven:

It had been a couple of days since I had heard from Gavin. After that night I had sent him off with the remaining soup, even though he tried to refuse, and we exchanged numbers. He promised me that he would call and let me know what the next move would be. He hadn’t called. I didn’t even hear him come back from work the next night. I had knocked on his door but no one answered. Gavin could just be doing this to mess with me. Or he got all the information he needed from me and he left me behind… or something was up and Gavin was in trouble. No matter what it was, I had promised myself that if I hadn’t heard from him by the end of the day, I would stop by the station after work. So I did just that. 

I walked up to the front desk and addressed the receptionist, “I’m here to see Officer Gavin. We are working a case together and I haven’t heard from him in a bit. Is he in today?”

“I haven’t seen him come in today.” She answered vaguely, “But I will tell Captain Michaels you are here. He might give you an answer.” I huffed, annoyance growing in my chest, “You are welcome to wait by Gavin’s desk.” The receptionist added with a patient smile, “I’ll let the chief know that he can meet you there.” I sighed and nodded.

I stood at Gavin’s desk anxiously, looking around the room. I had been there for quite a while.  He had to be there. It was a work day. I put my rising nerves to work as I looked through the miscellaneous folders he had there. There wasn’t even a trace of him. No mug of coffee or note. Not even the files on his desk looked recent. There had to be something that would tell me where he was.

“Ike!” A familiar voice pulled my head away from Gavin’s desk. Captain Michaels approached me with open arms. I folded my arms, cutting off any chance of a hug.

“Captain.” I addressed him, masking the worry in my chest with my infamous poker face.

“You’re back so soon!” Captain Michaels dropped his arms but still held a pleasant smile, “How was the mission?” A pit formed in my stomach.

“Mission?” I asked quickly, dropping my arms, “What mission?”

“The undercover mission?” the captain asked slowly, “The one that Gavin asked permission to go on.”

“Undercover?!” I couldn’t believe my ears. Gavin left to the bar without me? What was he thinking? He knew I had the Intel he needed for it! How could he just leave me behind like that?!... How could I have believed that he wouldn’t have done any less?

“He told me he would bring you.” Captain Michaels’ voice became serious, “Did he not tell you?” I felt anger rising in my chest. With no other way to exert it, I punched Gavin’s desk, leaving a large dent in the wood. “...I’ll take that as a no.” Captain Michaels said quietly, “I’ll call the phone I gave him. Maybe he can give us a straight-”

“Don’t bother.” I growled. Self deprecating thoughts crowded my mind. How could I have thought that he had changed? How could I have thought he wanted to change? I was right. He just wanted to use me for my information. He never wanted to be partners. I never should have dropped my guard like that. None of that mattered though. 

“What are you planning to do?” The captain asked. 

“If Gavin doesn’t want me as a partner then so be it.” I moved some files to cover the dent in the desk, “But no one leaves Ikamara Bikira behind and gets away with it. No one.” I brushed past Captain Michaels and marched to the exit.

“Be careful, Ike!” The captain called back, “You might throw the mission!”

“The only thing I’m throwing is Gavin off the roof!!” I called back, slamming the door behind me.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Night had fallen by the time I had driven to the warehouse. The area was abandoned except for a large, familiar figure leaning against the wall in the alley. “Well well well.” The figure’s voice was gruff and deep, “If it isn’t the Ikamara Bikira.” 

“Hey, Richy.” I shoved my hands in my pockets as I approached the voice. The figure was a thirty something year old man, dressed in a black zip up hoodie with a white shirt and black tie underneath it. He had black jeans and worn down high tops. He was the gatekeeper for The Wall, Richy.

“It’s been a while!” Richy’s voice was low as he straightened himself against the wall, “Why don’t you visit anymore?!”

“Believe it or not, Richy, I’ve got a life. And a business. And a family. Spending my free time with criminals at the dead of night isn’t the best way to maintain all of that.”

“D’aw, are you saying you don’t trust us?”

“I’m saying that if I spend too much time with you, I’m going to lose it all. And with nothing to hold me back, there would be no stopping me.” I hit each syllable hard to make my point clear to the gatekeeper. The look on his face told me he got the message, “Can I go in? I need a drink.”

“You know the drill.”

I rolled my eyes. “Is this really necessary? You know me by name.”

“No exceptions.” Richy folded his arms and stood powerfully before me, “Password.”

“Open sesame.” I sarcastically answered.

“Password.” Richy insisted.

 "Ugh, fine.” I sighed, “'You can't cuff what you can't catch.'” Richy nodded and knocked the wall behind him. “You know, the term 'password' suggests that it is just one word. Maybe you should say passphrase instead." Richy ignored me as the wall behind him made a loud clicking noise. A large section of the wall was forced backwards, revealing a hallway behind it. Fog flowed dramatically from it as a purple light shone through the alley. "You added fog since I've been gone." I said as I watched the mist swirl around my legs, "Nice touch."

"It was Madison's idea." Richy sounded disgruntled. Chuckles Madison was the owner of The Wall. His father owned the place before him but, after his arrest, it was passed down to his son. Madison tended to be on the more dramatic side and added an edge to the pub that made the atmosphere all the more attractive. He even introduced entertainment to the pub and asked me to perform. Normally I would say no but he offered free drinks. How could I refuse a free drink?

 "I think it brings the place together." I walked closer to the door.

"Are you performing tonight?" Richy asked, stopping me from going in.

"Not tonight. I'm just here for a drink and a conversation with Madison."

"Bummer. It's been awhile since you've been on stage. People have been asking where you have been."

"Maybe next time." I waved Richy off as I walked through the hole in The Wall.

"You'd better do it soon!" Richy called back to me before the doors shut, "Someone might take your title as Champion!"

I rolled my eyes as I walked into the dark room. I pushed past a large veil of beads and was immediately hit with the pungent smell of booze and sweat. Strobe lights flashed past my eyes and loud techno music blasted from every corner of the room. The room was crowded with dancing and intoxicated people. Most were screaming with the music. Others were screaming at each other. Chairs and tables were scattered about the room but none of them were occupied. Everyone was moving. The amount of action that was happening was almost disorienting. It really had been awhile since I had been there.

I pushed past the crowd of people aggressively.  Some looked as if they wanted to protest, but after taking one look at who I was, they wimped out. I approached the bar and waved the bartender over to me. "Well would you look at that!" The bartender said, grabbing a glass as he confronted me, "The Champion returns! You performing tonight?"

"No, I need to talk to Madison." I began to grow impatient, "Have you seen-"

"LADIES AND GENTLEMEN!" A loud voice boomed from over the speakers, cutting me off and only aggravating me further. The music and the lights shut off entirely and excited chattering moved throughout the crowd, "I KNOW YOU ALL HAVE BEEN TIRED AND BUSY TAKING THE WORLD BY STORM, BUT IT IS TIME TO RELAX! IT IS TIME TO PUT YOUR LEGS UP AND LET US DO THE WORK! IT IS TIME TO BE ENTERTAINED!!"

Spotlights flashed on and lit up the back of the room. A wrestling rink stood glistening under its light. Red ropes outlined the outside of the stage. The floor of the stage was scuffed and dented from the performances that had been made there. In the middle of a stage stood a man sporting a large flamboyant pose while holding a hanging microphone. He was a lean man, dressed in a long fur coat that was dyed bright purple. Under it was a black crop top that matched with tight black tights and huge combat boots. His ears were pulled apart by dramatic gauges and various piercings. His hair was buzzed and bleached blond. His face looked as if it could be porcelain from his flawless makeup. With dark eyeliner and colorful eye shadow that surrounded his bright blue eyes and a glittery dark lip gloss made his lips look like an oil spill, he looked fake. Like a cartoon character who had escaped the television.

"Found him." The bartender leaned close to me and whispered in my ear. He handed me a drink. I glared at him and took the drink as Madison continued his speech.

“Criminals and criminettes, we have a very special surprise for you! Coming all the way from his life sentence in prison, our has-been champion, the towering colossus, Legon!!” The crowd cheered wildly. Something large moved in the dark by the stage. With a few steps into the light, he revealed himself. He towered over most of the patrons at the bar and was able to get onto the stage with one step. This man’s arms and face were covered in scars from past fights but he covered most of them with dark tattoos. He was bald but in the most intimidating way possible.  This man was Legon. He was the bar’s reigning champion until I came along. He was supposed to be in jail for a large list of serious offences. The worst of which being murder. The thought of putting him back in jail teased my mind. Maybe I could show up Gavin one last... 

Gavin. 

The twisted feeling in my stomach returned. He wasn’t anywhere in the bar. Where was he? Did I misjudge him after all? 

“And his unfortunate competitor is our latest addition to the team!” Madison continued and snapped me out of my troublesome thoughts, “On a winning streak, hot from the streets, standing at five nine and holding a punch that could knock out a lion, Solomon!!” Boos swept from every corner of the bar as a man jumped on to the stage. I choked on my drink.

It was Gavin.

He stood proudly on the stage. He wore a tank top, revealing old and fresh scars. His hands were wrapped but I could tell from the way he was holding them that they were tender. His determined expression unsuccessfully masked the exhaustion in his eyes.  Did he really fight all those people? And did he stay all day yesterday to do it? The Wall had fights every five hours. If Gavin had left yesterday morning…

A wave of pure anger flushed over my body. Unable to control it, I broke the glass in my hand. “Woah!” The bartender protested, “Someone’s unwilling to lose their title of champion.” I ignored the bartender and quickly left the bar. “Hey!” The bartender called, “You’ve gotta to pay for that!”

“Put it on my tab!” I shouted back through bared teeth. The bartender visibly recoiled and shut up. I marched to the stage where the warriors were stretching, preparing for battle. A hot feeling burned in my chest as I neared Gavin but it wasn’t the same hot feeling that I had that night we flew together. It didn’t melt my heart the way it did that night. 

It burned it.

 I could feel it shrivel and harden the longer I looked at that stranger standing on the stage. I felt my hands shake slightly under the anger I was holding. I needed to relax. If I didn’t, I would rip off his head. Breathe Ike, breathe. I found myself thinking, It’s probably not what you think it is. I took a long deep breath before tapping on Gavin’s leg. He looked down at me. Our eyes met and the anger I had started repressing rekindled. A glare escaped my poker face.

“Ike?” Gavin was genuinely shocked to see me there. Meaning he really didn’t want me to find him. The burning in my chest slowly started creeping through my body.

“Solomon, was it?” I asked through bared teeth. Gavin looked taken-aback. As if me being angry was alarming to him. Soon the look of surprise melted into an undercernable emotion. He opened his mouth but his voice didn’t leave it.

“What’s this?!” A booming voice came over the loudspeakers, “A surprise competitor?!” Madison skipped over to us with a wide, gapped tooth smile, “Lads and Lasses, our champion has returned!!” A loud cheer swept over the crowd. Madison approached me and held out his hand, ushering me to come on stage. I waved him off.

“I’m not here to fight.” I spoke with determination, “I came to talk to you.”

“You know how it is, darling.” Madison covered the mic so only I could hear him, “You want something from me, you fight.”

“Really?” I rolled my eyes, “Come on, Madison. It’s important!”

“No exceptions!” He grinned wildly, “Pick your competitor!”

I shook my head, “This is serious, Madison. Lives are at stake.”

“She just doesn’t want to compete against me.” Gavin spoke up and put on a phony smile. The way he held himself had changed too. He stood proudly and with his hips at his sides. His grin was cocky and out of place compared to the rest of him. He wasn’t Gavin anymore, he was this supposed Solomon, “She heard about my streak and is afraid of me.”

“Oh ho!” Madison cackled, “Someone’s feeling lucky tonight!”

“Not now, prick.” I said seriously, avoiding his eyes.

“Come on! Why are you being so selfish?” Solomon’s words, though playful, felt like a knife to my back. How could Gavin, of all people, call me selfish?! Does he have any idea what he put at risk by coming here?! By leaving me behind!? He could have died! But he had to leave. He had to abandon me because he was done with me. Because he hated me. Because he was a good for nothing cop. Well, I was done with being left behind. This time, I was going to do something about it.

“Him.” I thrust my finger at Solomon, “I’ll fight him.”

“Wonderful!” Madison sang happily as I jumped onto the stage, avoiding his outstretched hand. Madison turned back to the crowd and brought the mic to his mouth, “There will be a change of plans, folks! Instead of Legon, we have a new competitor! Someone who needs no introduction, The Wall’s reigning champion, Cicatrix!!” The crowd roared with applause as I faced them. 

“Cicatrix?” Solomon held his playful grin as he made eye contact with me. “A bit cheesy, isn’t it?” 

“I’m not going to justify the name that was given to me.” I snapped. I couldn’t seem to stop my jaw from clenching. Solomon seemed to finally catch on to my serious tone.

“You’re... really angry at me, aren’t you?” Gavin returned as he let his guard down. Rage pulsed through my body once again. I closed my eyes and turned away from him as I pushed the rage back in my chest. He didn’t know what he did. He didn’t know how badly he hurt me…

No. 

He didn’t care enough to notice.

 “No more talking.” I could feel the heat of the anger in my heart spilling from my mouth and into my words, “The only thing I want to hear from you is your pleads for mercy.” I pulled my eyes away from him and walked to the corner Legon was in. One look was all Legon needed to hurry out of the ring.

 I stretched as I stood in the vacant corner, hoping that was enough to mask my shaking hands. I tried to keep my eyes from Gavin before the fight but I couldn’t help myself. I snuck a peak at him from across the stage. Gavin was stretching as well but he wasn’t putting much effort into it. He was staring at the floor blankly and… painfully. I rolled my eyes. If he had regret then he shouldn’t have left me behind. I signaled to Madison that I was ready. I finally got the chance to teach someone a lesson about leaving Ikamara Bakira behind and there was no chance in hell that I was going to waste it. 

(Next)

[bitchassbackup]

Take It Off

Word Count: 838 words

Warning/s: 18+, Reader being a tease, swearing, sir kink?, sorry for giving y’all blue balls.

A/N: First smut (kinda)! I hope you guys enjoy :) Requests are open.

Masterlist

“See me in my office after,” Your professor said when he passed through your seat.

“Oh, shit.” You thought. Your mind is racing, did you fail a test? Didn’t pass any requirements? Maybe you did something to pissed him off. Nervous, you complied with his request. Once you’re in the office, you saw Mr. Barnes leaning on his office table. His crisp white shirt tucked into his black pants. Sleeves rolled up to his forearms. You took a deep breath before meekly murmuring a greeting.

“Lock the door and come here.” You did it as you were told, your previous moments ran through your head.

“Did you know that kind of top is not allowed in my class?” He studies your face for a reaction, you mistakenly looked into his eyes, the blue is almost gone, his pupils are dilated. You gulped as you look down to your crop top, it has a slit exposing your chest, and if you chose to, it can expose a bit of cleavage too. You told him no and you apologized.

“Take it off.” He said sternly. His hands gripped the edge of the table, waiting for you.

“Excuse me? I- uh,” you stammered. Your heart beating loudly in your chest.

‘Is he being serious? Are you really going to do it in his office?’ you thought you just misheard him and that flash of uncertainty on your face irritated him; his brows furrowed, he licked his lips and he moved closer to you and repeated his words.

Reluctantly, you took off your top. He looks at you with lust in his eyes. Eyes roaming like a predator, your cheeks are flaming as he scanned your heaving chest. For a moment, you got the courage to ask him what to do next while you move closer to him. “Well, are you just gonna stand there?” You taunted, you knew in the back of your mind that you’ll regret that later. You bit your lip, trying to contain any more sarcastic remarks. You dared to walk into his welcoming legs, his thighs straining against the material, he pulls you in closer and captured your lips. His lips tasted like coffee and mint, his scent is intoxicating. His hands are traveling your body, mapping and groping. He broke the kiss, looking into your eyes he said, “Don’t you have classes to attend to?” You shook your head no and said, “apparently my top is not allowed. I don’t want to get in more trouble, Mr. Barnes,” his breath hitched in his throat, his name sounds so sinful when it falls down your lips. “Or I could just go home and change.” You shrugged. You stood there, between his legs, just wearing your bra and skirt. You can see him struggling to keep his composure. Bucky was still fixated on you, he’s memorizing every detail, every curve, every dip of your body, his breath fans your cheek as you kissed his neck, leaving a lipstick mark. “Do you want me to beg and bend over that table as you take me and wreck in ways only you can think of?” You whispered, your hands traveling down, teasing him.

“Do you want to see me on my knees as I put you-” You gasp as you felt his hand grip your waist tightly, clawing at the flesh. You smirked as you felt him twitching in your delicate hands, the mere thought of you on your knees, being such a good slut for him made him almost come right then and there. “Don’t do that,” he warned. His hand pulling your hair, exposing your neck, “I want the campus to know that you and I are fucking inside this office.” His beard scuffing the skin on your neck, his lips plating wet kisses on your collar, “You are gonna walk out here looking freshly fucked and without any panties,” he slipped his other hand down your inner thigh, dangerously close to the part where you needed him the most, “because you know how much I like souvenirs.” Your knees nearly gave out with his words but you’re not letting him win. Not this time.

Stroking with light touches, “but you won’t do that, would you, sir?” You smirked against his neck, “I’m gonna get expelled and you’re gonna get fired. And we don’t want that, do we?” You looked up to him as innocent as possible as your hands trace his outline making him groan. You felt him harden even more, you had him straining in his pants. His breathing is uneven, and there’s a sheen of sweat forming on his forehead. His lower lip is between his teeth, enjoying the light touches you are giving him through his tight pants. Craving for more.

You pulled away, smiling sweetly. You pulled your top over your head, his eyes never leaving you as he tries to compose himself. With a mischievous grin, you took off your panties and stuffed them in his pocket,

“I’ll see you tomorrow, sir.”

[seven-oomen]

Hi, Ben!  I’m glad your day went well and you’ve had good luck with your therapists so far!  Thankfully today was not as bad as they’d feared (hence why they had me come in early), so it was mostly just a very long day, but not an especially stressful one.  I spent most of it channeling my somewhat dormant Tetris skills to redo aisles to fit out all the new crap they’ve been sending for the holidays, actually.  Which I generally tend to enjoy, as long as customers stay out of my way (sadly this is not often the case.)  Hopefully since we’re past the traditionally worst days, and one of the managers is back from vacation, my schedule should go back to normal for a little while.

The new preview is adorable, even if my entire knowledge of Phineas and Ferb has been gleaned from Tumblr posts (I was always more of a Cartoon Network girl.)  I look forward to learning along with Peter.  XD  And I look forward to all of the cuteness, even if they are being idiots.  XD  (Poor Mel - “I think this is worse than high school.  How the hell is this actually WORSE than when we were in high school?  Jfc.”)

And I’m pretty proud of the mountain ash thing, too, even though I’m sure I’m far from the first to think of it.  XD  And may I offer the suggestion of back-seam fishnet thigh highs?  That way they could leave them on, and also offers the option of a garter belt.  And because I’ve accepted that I’m absolutely shameless for clothes sharing, I feel like their tops are some ratty old college ones of Peter’s that they found in the vault/Noah’s attic/Chris’ storage unit, that didn’t make it into any of the memory quilts.  They’re 90s tees, so they’re already kinda short and boxy, but they cut them off even shorter, trim the sleeves and remove the collar and open up the neckline until it reveals most of their neck and collarbone area.

Peter just comes home one day and Chris is bent over the island top making notes in a cookbook, the toe of one leather boot occasionally scuffing the floor, hips idly swaying as he works.  Peter’s eyes just lock onto him like a laser, fervently following a line from the pointed tips of his heels, up the seams of his stockings and the straps of the garters that hug and highlight every line of toned muscle, to the blatant invitation printed across the graceful curve of his ass, like it’s his own personal treasure map.  A herd of elephants stampeding through their living room couldn’t distract him from a view like that, so he sure as hell doesn’t notice the half-circle of mountain ash just inside the doorway to the kitchen until he quite literally faceplants against it.  Chris hears his noise of pain and confusion, and just nonchalantly glances over one shoulder like “oh, are you finally home?”

Desperately attempting to play off his reaction, Peter finally manages “It’s not nice to tease, Christopher.”

“Why am I getting full-named?  You don’t think I laid that line myself, do you?”

 That’s when Noah comes sashaying past in a matching outfit, closing the circle of the ash line before Peter can react, heels clicking gently against the wooden flooring.  He spins and hops up to sit on the island next to Chris, leaning back on his hands and crossing one knee coquettishly over the other, his cropped sleeves just barely clinging to those sturdy shoulders and doing absolutely nothing to conceal the flex of his arms, thigh highs cradling nearly every inch of those long, long legs, one heel tapping lightly against the island, smirk equal parts mischief and pure, unadulterated sass.

“What can I say?  We thought it was only fair that you get to at least look at your gifts.  We just weren’t entirely sure you deserved to touch."  He turns his smirk down to Chris, who’s got a nearly matching expression at this point, and Chris tosses his book off towards the far counter as he climbs up onto the island with Noah, and they proceed to make Peter both very, very glad that the island is more than big enough to fit two grown adults, and very, very irritated with himself for his own distractablility (though really, who could blame him?  he’s just grateful that Noah included a dining chair in the circle so he has something to collapse into.)  (…so I perhaps should have included a warning that I’ve had wine.  Sorry, not sorry?)

Uhhh…*clears throat* moving on…  I saw the post with those littering clips, and that would be hysterical to see.  Like, Chris doesn’t even have any cleaning products with him, he just tugs down his sleeve over his hand and starts polishing the guy’s side-view mirror and the driver’s side windshield while giving his not-threatening-you-but-I’m-definitely-threatening-you speech, while Noah just casually pulls out a ticket book and starts filling one out.  And oh god, that lady is lucky Peter didn’t put his entire foot through the door.  XD  It would be absolutely impossible to tell if Ben was being sassy or completely serious.  Peter would be so proud.  And why can I hear Julio screaming out "GOOOOOOAAAALLLL!!!” at the top of his lungs because they used to do shit like that as kids and he just can’t help himself?

And I love the idea of them watching stuff together (shows, movies, whatever.)  In the case of The Witcher, I feel like Derek would be part of the super into it group with Stiles and Allison, and they’d all be sitting there having intense discussions about it after each episode and somewhat wishing everyone else would be quieter.  XD  Anytime Chris or Noah tries to get up because someone needs a refill or a snack, Peter tightens his grip and sends one of the kids to get it instead, flashing his eyes and backing it up with a bit of alpha command if he needs to.  He rarely has to though, whoever he calls on mostly just rolls their eyes and mutters under their breath about how embarrassing the three of them are, but does it anyway.  The other two always make sure to profusely thank whoever it was, rolling their eyes with grudging acceptance at Peter’s antics.

Since this got unexpectedly long, and it is now later than I thought, I’m gonna try and wrap up.  XD  I hope that today is another good day, and that you have a good experience with the other therapist on Wednesday, too, no matter who you end up going with.  And I’m glad you’re enjoying what you’ve written so far, because everything I’ve seen of the next chapter I’ve loved.  Take care!  *Hugs!*

I’m really glad to hear your day was not as hectic as it could have been. Though I hope things further calm down and that the relief of your manager coming back will set things back to normal. Because it sounds like things have been brutal.

honestly, I’m loving every single second of your wine induced babble and kept giggling while reading it, so apology accepted but very much not needed please keep going XD.

Now it is kinda late here and I have my other therapy appointment in 12 hours so I’m gonna keep it short. But there’s another little preview and I wanted to share this gem. (I hope it comes across as cute.)

Peter’s face was currently torn between a look of disgust at said vegetables and pure adoration for both him and Chris and it was honestly one of the funniest tormented faces he’d ever seen on their mate. Far funnier then that time they’d locked him out of a make out session while at the mall. Back when they were teenagers and horny and sassy all the time and when they didn’t have children or responsibilities.

Hope work’s okay and you’re doing okay, me and Mo are giving you lots of hugs and encouragement at least. <3

[blerbdrops]

New Kid (Billy Hargrove X F!Reader)

Howdy folks, sorry I am late! I started school and I am also sorting out my work schedule. Here is part 4 of new kid, thank you for reading/liking/reblogging/following etc! I appreciate you all so so much.

Summary: You’re new in Hawkins, hailing from the big city on the east coast. As a city kid, you think you’ve been stuck here to suffer in a small town, but there’s a certain someone who shakes it all up. 

Warnings: Swearing, mentions of smoking cigarettes, underage drinking 

Taglist: @salemlysi​ @asheseiler

You sat at your mirror putting on your makeup and getting ready for tonight’s party. You swiped on a tube of red lipstick and pressed your lips together, spreading out the color. Tonight’s outfit consisted of a white cropped tank top with a slightly oversized black cardigan knotted in the front. You had on high waisted black pleather pants, and a black belt with a shiny silver belt buckle. You laced up your old red Doc Martens, they were well-worn and you wouldn’t be too upset if they got scuffed or dirty. Your hair was curled to the nines, sprayed in place so that nothing frizzed out. 

“Damn, I look good.” You said to yourself in your mirror. You threw on your denim jacket and pocketed your lipstick and your flask full of whiskey. Moments later, you heard loud beeps coming from outside.

“(y/n)! I think Steve is here to come get you!” Your dad shouts from downstairs. You come downstairs to find your dad is dressed up, with a suitcase at the door. 

“Uh. Dad? What’s with the suitcase?” 

“I have to go on a road trip, see Uncle Willy about some things.”

Your brows furrowed. “What kind of things?”

“Adult things, kiddo. I’ll be gone for the weekend. I’ll be back sometime on Monday.” He kisses your forehead and heads out for his car. You snag your keys and head out of the house, locking the door behind you. Nancy and Steve greet you right as you slide into the backseat of his BMW.

Nancy lets out a whistle, “You look fantastic (y/n)! Ready to have the best night ever?” She says to you enthusiastically.

“What are we waiting for? Let’s roll!”

--

You, Nancy and Steve enter the party house. You can feel the bass thumping in the house and your chest. The living room is full of teens with red plastic cups in their hands, dancing drunkenly and laughing. You navigate your way to the kitchen, where the rest of the booze was. 

“Hey! You’re that new girl! Come, come get a drink!” It was that kid in your chemistry class, the one that sat next to Billy.

“What’s your name again?” You shout over the music to ask him.

“Oh yeah, I’m Tommy!” He replies cheerfully. “Hey, come on, you look sober!” 

You laugh, “It’s because I am. Give me something to drink!” 

He hands you a beer, but before you can crack it open he stops you. “I bet you can’t shotgun that!” 

“What? Tommy, I could drink you under the table. Stop playin’.” You scoff. This gets the attention of the kids in the kitchen, with some of them ‘ooooh’-ing like owls. Just as this happens, you spot a mop of blond curls make its way to the kitchen where you and Tommy were. Billy eyed you up, taking a look at your outfit before turning his attention to Tommy. 

“What’s going on?” He asks Tommy. 

“Oh you know, (y/n) over here thinks she can ‘drink me under the table’, her words exact.” He laughs. 

Billy slaps five dollars down on the table. “My bets on her. Tommy, you’re a lightweight!”

You laugh out loud. “We’re placing bets now?” You pick up the five and examine it. “Who else is ready to see Tommy lose to the new girl, huh?” You were met with roars of excitement as teens were tossing cash on the table, your pile only slightly bigger than his. Billy watched you, taking a swig out of his can of beer.

“All bets are final, and winner takes all. Let the games begin!” Billy shouts, as you stab the side of your beer can, crack the lid and shotgun it. It empties fast, and you crush it underneath your boot. You continue on to your second one, choosing to chug it. The kids in the kitchen were cheering you on, hearing chants of “Chug! Chug! Chug!” over the Bon Jovi song that was booming throughout the house. 

You had finished way too many beers, the beer cans underneath your feet. You were still upright, while Tommy had half a can left. People in the kitchen were chanting your name, but all you did was let out a loud belch. You were met with cheers and claps on your back. 

“You give up yet? Ready to throw down the white flag?” You guffawed at Tommy. 

“Alright, alright! You win. Fair and square.” He shoves his bet money into your pile and you throw your hands up, inciting more cheers from your crowd of “fans”. 

“That’s how you drink Hawkins! That’s how you fuckin’ do it!” You open your flask and take a large swig, feeling its warmth trickle down your throat, feeling some drip down your lips and neck. You close your flask and feel a hard stare on you. 

Billy walks over to you and leans up against the counter while you count up and pocket your cash. 

“That was pretty impressive, (y/n). Didn’t know you had that kind of fire in you.” He smirks. 

You turn to him, uncapping your flask and drinking more out of it. “I’m a woman of many mysteries, Billy.” You laugh, tucking your hair behind your ear. 

“And I’m really digging this outfit. Completely different from that goody-two-shoes getup you had on at school today.” 

You raised an eyebrow and smiled at him, posing. “Oh? You like what you see?” You do a spin, almost tumbling over. 

He laughs at you, helping regain your balance. “Careful. Don’t need you busting your ass because you wanna show off.”

A hearty laugh emits from your belly, then a burp. “Excuse me! Jesus christ.” Your head snapped to the dance floor. You Spin Me Round (Like A Record) by Dead or Alive played through the speakers.

“Are you alright (y/n)?” Billy asks, a bit concerned. 

“I’m fantastic! This is my favorite song like, ever! Come dance!” 

“(y/n) I can’t dan-” You yanked him by the wrist and dragged him to the dance floor, completely ignoring what he had to say.

You got on the dance floor, and started to bob your head to the synth in the song, getting ready to dance and shout your heart out. 

All I know is that to me

You look like you're lots of fun

Open up your lovin' arms

I want some, want some

You spun around, dancing near Billy and trying to get him to loosen up and enjoy the song. You then grabbed his hand and yanked him closer so you two could actually dance. He began to relax and laugh along at you dancing. He didn’t know what it was exactly, but something about seeing you smile and have fun made his heart flutter. 

I set my sights on you

(And no one else will do)

And I, I've got to have my way now, baby

All I know is that to me

You look like you're havin' fun

Open up your lovin' arms

Watch out, here I come

You sang the second verse and pre-chorus, looked at Billy and shot him a wink. He laughed, a slow smirk spreading across his face. 

You spin me right 'round, baby, right 'round

Like a record, baby, right 'round, 'round, 'round

You spin me right 'round, baby, right 'round

Like a record, baby, right 'round, 'round, 'round

He grabbed you by your hand and spun you around like you were in a ballroom. He pulled you back into him, your back pressed against his chest. You were twirled out again, only this time you were dipped low, his face close to yours. It took all of your willpower to not kiss him right then and there. You came back up and danced for the rest of the night, laughing and taking the occasional sip from your flask. 

--

As the music died down, you had left the dance floor panting and sweaty, a dewy sheen spread across your face. You stumbled over to the kitchen and grabbed your jean jacket from the counter, making sure your keys were still there and they were. You put on your jacket and walk outside, only to see that Steve’s car was gone. 

“Goddamn Steve… and Nancy. Damn ‘em! Damn em to hell.” You spat, staring at the porch. “Now I have to walk and, and I don’t even know where I’m at. And its LATE! Goddamn it!” 

“Who are you talking to sweetheart?” Billy asked you. He was leaned against the banister, smoking a cigarette. 

“I’m talking to me, genius.” You slurred. “Now I’m talking to you. I wanna go home but I got ditched!” You sulked. You walked over next to the banister where Billy was and plucked the cigarette from his lips. You took a drag and exhaled, letting it escape through your nose and lips. Billy watched your lips wrap around the cigarette, wishing it was him. 

“Like what you see?” You shoot him a wink, blowing the smoke away from his face and stubbing out the cigarette. 

“Yeah. I kinda do.” He licks his lips, smirking. “Now, tell me (y/n), how exactly are you getting home?”

You sigh frustratedly, “I guess I’m just gonna walk and figure it out.” You took out your flask and opened it to drink, but there was no more whiskey left. You pouted. 

“You’re not walking. I’ll take you home.” Billy stands up and offers his hand to you. You slowly push yourself up and gather yourself. You take a look at Billy’s hand and high five it. He looks at you puzzled. 

“Fix your face! Is that not why your hand was out?” You asked, words slurring here and there. 

“No, smartass. Give me your hand so I can walk you to my car.” He states, the slightest pink flush spread across his face. Giggling, you take his hand into yours and you make your way to his car. He unlocks the passenger side door and opens it for you. You lower yourself in, his hand pressed gently on the small of your back keeping you steady. Billy closes your door and makes his way to the drivers side.

“Where to, gorgeous?” He turns towards you. 

“332 Oak Lane.” 

He nods, starting up his car. As the drive begins, you notice him slip a glance at you every now and then.

“Hey Hargrove, take a picture. It’ll last longer.” You chuckle at him.

He laughs back, “No picture could capture all that beauty you got.” 

Your eyebrows flew up, painting a shocked look on your face. “Oh! Smooth talker over here. Didn’t know you could flirt like that. Color me impressed!”

The ride was peacefully quiet, right up until he pulled up to your house. 

“Nice neighborhood.” He says, then continues, turning to look at you. “How will your folks feel about you coming in piss drunk after a successful night out?” 

You laugh at his sentiment, catching his gaze. “My dads gone for the weekend. Went outta state to see my uncle. I have the whole place to myself!” 

“You.. you’re real cute ya know. Real good lookin’.” You say to him with a dopey smile on your face.

He flushes the softest shade of pink, smiles for a second and licks his lips. “Ah stop it. You’re only saying that because you’re drunk.”

“I am not! It’s true. I might be a little tipsy but.. I am right, you know.” You smile at him. 

“Tipsy? You passed that stage after your third beer. (y/n), it’s time you head inside.” He pats your thigh. 

You playfully roll your eyes, smiling. You place your hand on top of his and give it a squeeze. “Okay, I guess so. Can you walk me in? My room is up some stairs.”

“And?”

“And I’m scared I’m gonna fall! Please?” 

He removes his hand from your thigh. “Alright, I’ll walk you in. Don’t go tellin’ anyone either. I have a reputation to keep.”

You let out a thunderous laugh. “Yeah, okay buddy.” He comes over to your side of the car and opens the door. You shakily get up, feeling the dizziness get to you. 

“Easy now. Here, I got you.” He puts your arm over his shoulder and scoops you up, carrying you bridal style to your front porch. 

“Oh wow. You’re so strong! I feel like a princess.” You giggle. 

“You are. And I work out.” He continues, “Where are your keys?” 

You pull out the key that unlocks your front door and pushed it in his hands. He unlocks your front door and uses his back to shut it. 

“Alright princess. Where to?” He asks, looking down at you. Your makeup is smudged, your hair frizzed out, your eyes glazed over, flushed pink from all the drinking you had done that night. Even in your disheveled state, he still thought you were gorgeous. 

“Up the stairs. You’ll know my room when you see it.” You mumble, the tiredness setting in. Billy walks up the stairs and to your room. He could tell it was your room because of the giant Bon Jovi poster stuck to your door. 

“Okay put me down.” You ask, and he lowers you down. You slap the light switch on, illuminating your room. Billy gazes around your room, looking at all the band posters hung up on your wall. You also had christmas lights strung around your room. You had a big bed to yourself, a vanity, a small dresser and a decent sized closet. He noticed one wall void of posters. Instead of posters, you had two guitars mounted on the wall instead. One acoustic, one electric. Underneath the guitars were some amps and other guitar tech. 

“You play guitar?” He asks, looking at the guitars, his back turned. You were changing out of your party clothes, leaving you in your tank top and black boyshort underwear. You took a nearby scrunchie and pulled your hair up into a ponytail. 

“Oh yeah. Back home I was in a band. Lead guitarist you know. I still got it. Maybe I’ll play for you one day.” You say to him. “I wasn’t blessed with good vocals, my dear, but these hands? God must have took extra time with ‘em.”

“You really are a woman of many mysteries, (y/n).” He turns back around to you, but you had slipped out of the room and into the bathroom next door. He walks out of your room and finds you hunched over the porcelain throne, emptying out your insides.

Billy kneels down next to you, feeling his large warm hand on your back. 

“I HATE throwing up!” You say, face still in the toilet. “Shit is so gross.”

He chuckles. “Maybe you shouldn’t have started that drinking contest with Tommy then.” 

You lift your head up, wiping your tears away and reaching to flush the toilet. “What was I supposed to do? Let him think he could get away with shit-talking me? Just let him test me?” You and Billy laugh on your bathroom floor. “I’ll have you know, Hargrove, I come from a line of strong drinkers.”

He laughs, “Yeah, and I’m next in line to be the King of England.” He stands up, and holds his hand out to you. He helps you up, and you turn to the sink to wash whats left of your makeup off. You’re both looking at each other in the mirror. 

“I look so gross right now.” You mutter, taking out your jar of Noxzema face wash. You ran the water until it was warm and bent down to the sinks level to wet your face.

“I’ve seen worse.” Billy says, looking down at your butt. You popped up from the sink and so did his eyes. You unscrewed your jar of face wash and began rubbing it in. Billy took a seat on top of the toilet, watching you. 

“You know, you didn’t have to stay.” You state to him.

“You kickin’ me out (y/n)?” 

“No. Just saying you didn’t have to stay. I appreciate it, though.” 

He hesitated with his response. Nobody’s ever appreciated me. Or said it out loud, at least, he thought. 

“Thanks.” 

“Mhm!” You rinse the soap off your face, pat it dry and moisturize with some face cream. You turn to Billy, smiling. 

“How do I look?” You say, posing. Some of your hair had stuck to your face while you were washing it, you were in a tank top and underwear. You thought you looked like a mess. 

“Like a million bucks, doll.” He chuckles, smiling at you. You turn away and brush your teeth. Here you are, in your home, with local bad boy turned softie Billy Hargrove in your house. You catch his eye, and he just doesn’t stop looking at you, lips slightly parted. 

You rinse and spit. “Hey, Hargrove. Close your mouth or you’ll catch flies.” 

That snaps him out of his gaze, and his mouth closes. You yawn and stretch, feeling fatigue and the slight pounding of a headache lingering in the back of your head. You shut your eyes and pinch the bridge of your nose. 

“It’s time for you to get some rest.” Billy looks up and says to you. You nod your head, and you walk over to your room. 

“Hey could you like.. turn around or something? I want to change tops.”

“Sure.” He turns his back to you and you grab a large sleepshirt out of your dresser drawer. You peel off the tank top and throw it across your room, allowing you to slip on your big shirt. “Okay, I’m done.”

“You look like a dork.” He says.

“Yeah? It takes one to know one. Dork.” You both chuckle. You crawl into bed and your head sinks into your pillow. You sigh happily. 

“Thanks for taking care of me.” 

“Not a problem doll.” He shuts off the light and begins to walk out. 

Before you fall asleep, you say one last thing to Billy. 

“Hey, Billy?”

“Yeah?” 

“You’re not as bad as they say you are, you know.” 

Billy becomes bashful at this statement. He’s lucky the lights are out or else she’d see just how red in the face he was. Those words would continue to ring throughout his head for the rest of the night. 

Before he had his chance to respond, you had already succumbed to the sweet embrace of slumber. Billy slowly approached your bed, lowered himself down and kissed your forehead. He watched the smallest smile form on your face before you turned over, enveloping yourself in your blankets.

He backed out of the room and went into the bathroom looking for medicine. He takes out two pills of Advil and places them on your nightstand, along with a handwritten note. He leaves your house, locking the door behind him. 

There was something about you that struck a chord within Billy somewhere. And it unnerved him to his core. 

---

A/N: AW YALL! I LOVE WRITING SOFT BILLY. thanks for reading! as always, i will keep writing as long as you keep reading. feedback is always appreciated. my requests are open for you all. come chat! see u in part 5 

[whiskeyworen]

Miriya’s Pad

(Art commissioned from CheruSake) Author’s Note: This was my first attempt at a Guild Wars 2 fic, just as an experiment. I was very satisfied with the outcome, but chronologically it predates ALL the other GW2 stories I’ve put out here. In fact, if you read any of my Danae sister fics, there’s references to THIS one. If it sounds kind of clunky in terms of dialogue and descriptions, I apologize; I was still getting my feet back under me in terms of writing. It’s a bit cliche, and pretty corny, but I felt it was a cute fic. I’m actually really nervous about sharing it here, cuz I don’t know if people will like it at all. In terms of in-game chronology, this would be Pre-Scarlet by only a few months. Lion’s Arch was still the ramshackle version we all miss. That said, please enjoy. ***** "...And our final stop on our tour of Rata Sum is my personal quarters!" Miriya announced brightly, as the magitek cubes that formed the doorway slid in the cardinal directions. The internal barrier field dropped immediately once the cubes had slid into the ceiling, walls and floor. She stepped proudly inside, hands on her hips and smiled. "It's...Wow! Surprisingly spacious!" Kaleb blinked as he stepped inside. The barrier popped back up behind him and the door-cubes shifted shut once more, cutting out the natural noise of the Maguuma Jungle outside. He looked around in amazement at the personal dwelling of his teammate. "From outside it looks so...small." Miriya smirked and crossed her arms. "That's because I had it carved into the side of the mountain and disguised that way." She scuffed her sharp nails on her coat, smugly admiring them. "That and a little bit of fifth dimensional pocket-space manipulation make it nice and big." The home was open-concept in the Asuran style, a cube turned on its corner and hollowed out, easily thirty meters on a side, which gave it an amazingly high ceiling and a strangely deep and terraced floor. Looking up, Kaleb could see a Mystic Stone the size of his entire body hovering just below the top corner of the ceiling, providing a soft, diffuse blue light.  There were hard-light paths starting around the perimeter of the room, leading up to solid stone platforms held in place by mechanisms Kaleb could barely wrap his mind around. Each one had some kind of device or piece of furniture on it, though the purpose of some of them eluded him. To be honest, it looked less like a home and more like yet another Asuran laboratory. Turning his gaze from the ceiling to the floor,  he counted fourteen terrace steps down to what appeared to be a pool of water in the centre of the room, occupying the 'bottom-most' corner of the building's turned cube design.  Around the circumference of the room ran continuous Asura-design windows; high density force fields with a distortion added so those looking in or out can not see precisely what is there.

"It's um... very nice." He finally replied a bit hesitantly, stepping carefully in the room; each terrace was Asura-step scale, not human standard. If he tripped he'd no doubt fall all the way down into that pool of water in the bottom of the room. "So-o... this is where you keep your stuff? Kinda looks like another lab." "Well it IS a lab, silly." Miriya chuckled, crossing the room to a particular section of wall. A portion of the panels making up the wall and floor rotated at her approach, recombining to form a table and sink. Beside that, a cupboard slid into place from where the gaps were left by the panels, as well as a larger cube-shaped artifact half again as large as the diminutive Asura. "But it's also my home. I paid top-gold to get the constructor golem krewes to come out this far from Rata Sum and build it for me. All to my very demanding specifications." Kaleb nodded, exploring the room. He stepped up to one of the hardlight paths and experimentally tested it with an armoured toe. When it didn't give under his weight or the weight of his armour, he shook his head. Fancy Asuran gizmos. This was one of the reasons he was a soldier and not an engineer or inventor. "I see. So, why are we here now?" Miriya washed her hands in the sink, drying them in a device that clicked out of the side of the sink unit, and turned to face him. "We're here to relax and have a drink, and to be refreshed. Naturally." "Uh-huh?..." He crossed his arms, raising an eyebrow at her, a disbelieving look on his unshaven face. "If that's so then why's the rest of the group not here? Doesn't seem rightly fair to enjoy..luxury...without our friends." She made an exasperated sound, running her fingers back through her slicked back, molten lava-colored dreadlocks. With a flick of a wrist she sent the sink back into the wall, as well as the cupboard, but the larger artifact remained present in the room. Counting off on her little fingers, she explained. "One: Dhangalor is more interested in learning how to make his turrets and flame-thrower more efficient and effective. I wouldn't be surprised if we found him in three days, down in one of the weapons labs.  Hopefully he won't learn how to make mass-conversion generation devices; The idea that he could make a device that spawns grenades for him or unlimited turrets scares me more than your god Grenth." Tick: "Second. The moment we walked into the city, Slane disappearred. I wouldn't know where him or his...ugh.... partner... are even if I put a tracker on him. Which I don't have, incidentally." She stepped over to the large artifact, touching a blue power gem on it. The panels on the artifact slid open to either side, revealling a chilly, frosty interior, from which she drew a large, dark green bottle. "Third. Corvus is Priory. He's all about knowledge and technology. If he's not aiding Dhangalor, he's buried up to his nose -- a feat at that! -- in computer files and parchments and datapads." The little Asuran necromancer spun on her heel, presenting her treasure to the still suspicious human. The bottle looked old, and had a label that bore a very particular seal on it. The label was torn slightly near the base, and very, VERY worn... but there was enough to recognize the maker. ---SCALO- V-NERY. est. ---- "...and finally Fourth: I've been saving this bottle to drink with a human some day, and I feel it's the right time now. I trust you enough to enjoy this bottle and not squander it, nor to act inappropriately with it. I know how rare it is, and I think you know how rare it is." His jaw dropped, as did his arms. "Ascalon Vinery?! Did that come from the ruins of Ascalon??" He laughed nervously, facepalming. "Second most rare wine in all of Tyria, and it's just sitting in her...her...whatever. That cold thing..." "It's called a ReFridgerator. Prototype design." She looked at the device with a bit of concern. "Most of the time it keeps things chilled. Though there was one time I left a panel open and....well.. I had to defrost the place. Like, 'Claw of Jormag' kinda defrost." Still shaking his head, Kaleb smiled, and ran a hand through his close-cropped red-black hair. "Alright. You got my attention. Ascalonian wine, and a relaxing evening with a friend. I can do that, easily." Miriya grinned, and put the bottle on the top of the fridge before walking across the room to a green square on one of the terraces. "Do you mind if I get comfortable? This armor is nice, but compared to my own clothes, I always find it confining and itchy." She stepped on the square and a series of panels slid up around her, covering her to the neckline. She continued talking as she changed, the sound of shifting cloth coming from behind the barriers. "It's such a relief to get off the road too. Sometimes I just want to come home, relax for a while, before my next project." "I understand the sentiment completely." Kaleb nodded, turning his back to her changing; even though she was completely hidden, he was still a gentleman. Even to Asura. He rubbed the back of his neck, feeling the muscles and bones creak a bit with tension. "Been a while since I've been home too. Or out of this gear." He stretched and shrugged. "Ah well. What can ya do?" The panels around her sliding down, Miriya stepped out of the 'booth' and straightened her tunic. "Well, what I CAN do is offer you the use of one of my guest booths to change. I'm sure I can cobble some basic clothing together from the info-net if you give me a few minutes." "You can do that?" He blinked, raising an eyebrow. Kaleb had no idea what an info-net was, but if he could just take his armour off for a few hours... "What do I need to do?" She pointed at the green square, tapping a nearby toe-button with her toe. The green square turned blue, and resumed flashing. "Just step on the square. I just turned the dimensions to 'human', so it'll cover more of you than it would have a moment ago." Kaleb stepped onto the square and waited for a second. The panels slid up again, this time up to HIS neck. There was just enough space inside for him to flex a bit. "Hey, this is neat, but... uh... can't exactly take my gear off in a space this small." "Don't worry about that. The booth does the dressing and undressing." She replied, a hard-light display open in front of her on the front of the booth. She flicked through diagrams and designs until she found a suitable one. "Ah here we go. Aaaannnndd..... ordered. Seven seconds delivery? What is this, the stone age??" "What?" "Oh, nothing. System seems slow, that's all." She shrugged and moved a new screen up in front of her. "Just one last thing; full body scan for fit accuracy. Otherwise when it goes to remove your gear, it might...uh...remove body parts instead. Not exactly a smart system." "WHAT?!" Kaleb started to fidget, staring around at the panels in horror. "Take it easy! I only have one scar from a mis-scan! I don't want you to lose anything important!" That was enough to get him to freeze solid, staring straight ahead. His adam's apple bobbed in fear as he swallowed heavily. Inside the booth, a panel flipped open on all four walls, revealling a golem-eye. Flat green light played out from these eyes, scanning Kaleb up to his neck, and down to the soles of his boots. There was a quiet 'ding' and the eyes flipped shut. Next, a set of waldo arms rose out of the floor, sliding along a series of control crystals built into the seams of the chamber, and unfolding when they reached certain predefined points. Magitechnical fingers and drivers unfolded from these waldoes, and set about removing his armour, piece by piece, carefully drawing each piece back into the floor. "Miriya.... This is weird..." Kaleb muttered uneasily as his armour appeared to be disintegrating around him. "Am I going to get my stuff back in one piece? This...thing won't like, mash it into a scrap cube or something will it?" "Oh don't be a big baby." She replied, watching the readouts. Everything was going as planned. The monitors indicated a rapidly increasing percentage of armour removal, leaving a rather bare looking Kaleb underneath. A smile quirked her mouth, and without saying a word, she flicked a toggle switch visibly with her right hand, while her left hand hooked under the display and pressed a small red button. For....posterity. Yeah, that's it. For study. She told herself, as a flash blinded Kaleb in the booth from all sides. "What was that?!" He asked worriedly, down to his boxer shorts within the booth. "Hmm? Oh nothing. Sensor glitch." She replied almost distractedly, as she copied the scan file into another section of her database, under heaviest quantum encoding that she could get, and then proceeded to delete the original. "Nothing to worry about. It should be done now. If you reach out in front of you, you'll find some clothes on a little shelf. They were just transported from Rata Sum via micro-gate, so...uh...they might feel a little fuzzy. Residual dimensional static and all that." Kaleb indeed did find the clothing, folded neatly on a small shelf. As he picked it up, the walls of the booth slid back on all sides, extending planes as they did so to keep his privacy intact. Clearly the machine somehow intuited his need for movement space. A moment later and he had slid on the Asuran-designed human-size clothing. "Hmm...very nice material. This isn't wool, is it? I've not felt anything this soft before." "It's Jungle silk. We harvest it from the spiders and wurms. They might be dangerous monsters, but they can be quite useful for natural materials." She smiled, as the walls of the booth finally slid back into the floor. Seeing him fully dressed again, she tipped her head to the side, crossing her arms, and considered him. "Hmmm....Well, they don't look too bad on you. Perhaps I should have gotten the shorts too, so you could replace those human ones you have on." "Huh?" Kaleb was checking out his new duds in a reflection, when he realized what she'd just said. "You didn't see me in my shorts, did you?" "What? Oh no...no no!" Miriya flushed, shaking her head rapidly and holding up her hands in denial. "No no... That's not what I meant! I just meant I should have completed the set! That's all! Really!" His raised eyebrow made her flush even pinker, and she quickly turned away, running up one of the hard-light paths to her cupboard for glasses. Once she was certain he couldn't see her, she let herself exhale heavily. All that work, and she nearly flubbed it up! Returning with the glasses, she called up a table and hovering chairs out of another wall, placing the glasses on the table and pouring them a glass of wine each. "Now that you are... comfortable...Hehe, about that wine I mentioned?" **** "...And that's when I told him, I told him 'How could I have possibly have punched out your son, when he was already unconscious from the booze?'” Kaleb pointed out, and mimed an unconscious man, slumping on his chair and lolling his tongue out of his mouth. Miriya was doubled over laughing, slapping the table top in mock surrender and nearly knocking her wineglass off it. “Oh, by the Alchemy! How in Tyria did you ever get out of that situation?” She asked when she gained enough composure back, tears of laughter still streaming from her large green eyes. She continued to laugh and snicker as she tried to control it. The last two hours after they started to drink had been a blur. The lovely Ascalonian Wine had gone from a full bottle... to the dregs, which were swiftly being drained by a half-toasted Kaleb. He slammed the bottle onto the tabletop, and grinned. “Well you see, this big ol’ Norn, he thinks he’s defending his son’s honor or something, so he’s all puffed up and about to go Bear on me or somethin’... and then he looks over at his son, sees him facedown in his own drool, a shiner on his face that I claim came from the table as he fell... and he just deflates like a balloon. He shakes that big top-knotted head of his and hauls his son up by his backstraps, and just says ‘Yeah. Yeah, I can definitely see that. Boy hasn’t learned to hold his lager yet. Sorry if he bothered you.’ “ “No... No WAY.” Miriya’s jaw dropped. “You got to be kidding me.” Kaleb shook his head, sitting back and looking smug. “Nope. That’s what he said. He actually apologized for his son’s behaviour. Didn’t realize I had slugged that freakin’ twerp for his talk about how wussy--” He slurred it wuzzy “--humans are, and laid that kid out. I’m just glad it turns out he was drinkin’ age. Couldn’t use that bluff if he wasn’t.” “Cog’s gears, Kaleb, you definitely got guts. Standing up to a Norn in his hometown bar like that.” Miriya shook her head, and rubbed her eyes a bit. “I’d have had to call in my minions if that’d happened to me.” “And you woulda been squished for it.” Kaleb replied somberly, staring at her. “The moment they see your eyes and hands do that glow-thing, they would have flattened you with a damned boot. Not many like Necros these days.” “True, true...” Miriya nodded, levity completely gone. She traced the rim of her glass with a dark green-painted nail. “What about you? Do you like Necros?” He pondered for a moment. “Well, I don’t mind them... I don’t mind most anyone. But if they’re undead, I kinda mind them. Orrian and all that crap. But I don’t mind Necros that use Grenth’s gift for good.” She nodded, still circling the glass, an odd expression on her face. “That’s good, that’s good. Um,” She paused, flicking her eyes up to him for a moment to read his face before looking aside. “So....what about me? Do you like me? I mean, uh, I’m a Necromancer, after all.” He nodded, and thought about it for a second. “Well, duh, of course I like you. We’re teammates! I might not know how the Whispers operate, but if the Pact teamed us together, they must see something there, in our dossiers! And we work really well in combat together, as well as in info-gathering. Yeah, I like you. Of course I do, Miriya!” Miriya forced a smile at him, laughing along with him for a moment, before whispering off to the side, almost to herself. “That’s not what I meant...” "I hate to ask, but, do you have anything more like this wine?" Kaleb asked, tipping the dregs into his glass. He made a face, somewhere between concerned and goofy. "I mean, if we're going to keep drinking that is. I'm finally buzzed enough that I feel comfortable without my armour!" She laughed in spite of herself, in spite of the disappointment of his previous answer, but she steeled herself, hopping off her floating seat and heading for the refrigerator unit again. Looking inside she hemmed and hawed, listing things off. "Let's see, we've got that vile concoction that Colacokaia, that Hylek potionmaster forced upon me, we have indigo formula, and Sunny D....AH, here we go." With a triumphant, if a little unbalanced swing, she held the bottle up for his view. "It's... uh... says something about champagne. I forget where I got this from." He took the bottle from her, raising an eyebrow appreciatively as he considered it. "Not bad, but we can't just go chugging a bottle of champagne. That's more of a sipping kind of thing, in a relaxed situation. It's why nobles drink it at their 'parties' or whatever." He made a little, foppish, flippant gesture with his fingers and stuck out his tongue that made her grin. "You mean we should relax more? I thought we were pretty relaxed already!" Miriya laughed, hands on her short hips. "Any more relaxed and I'd probably be asleep!" Kaleb laughed and shook his head, putting the bottle on the table. "Nah, nah. I mean it wouldn't be good for sitting here at this table, trading dirty stories and reliving old fights. It's more...civilized a drink, I guess." The diminutive Asura pondered for a moment, before an idea struck her. "I got it! Come over here." She led him down the terraced interior of her home to the square shaped pool of water occupying the 'bottom' corner of the cube, and with a flourish indicated the gently lapping blue water. "Ta-da!" "What?... it's a pool of water." He replied, nonplussed. He crossed his arms and looked at her, confused. "Is there supposed to be something in it?" "Yes!" Miriya grinned, tugging at his pantleg. "Us!" She caught herself, and released his pantleg, coughing a bit. "I mean, it's not just a pool of water. I configured this corner to be either a hot spring or a cool bath, depending on what I felt like." "Really? You can do that?" He blinked, and considered the square of water. It was roughly his height on all sides, and he couldn't tell how deep it was based on the terracing and false-depth illusion of the shifting waters. "So....what, we should sit in it while we drink the champagne?" "Well, yeah?" Miriya shrugged and smiled, before running around the square to a panel on the edge of one of the stairs. After fiddling around with the controls, she pushed a red blinking square, and, much to her delight, the pool suddenly erupted into gentle bubbles. "Ah ha! There we go. Jaccuzzi." "Ja-whatzee?" "Nothing." She tested the water with a toe, smiling at the temperature, before turning and hopping up a few steps on the terrace. "Just one problem though; Our clothes. Shouldn't get them wet. Those'd get very itchy and kinda ruin my pool to boot." "So...what?" Kaleb knelt down and dipped his fingers into the water. "We'll strip down to our skivvies? This is as warm as that Norn hot spring...you know the one, in Lornar's Pass?" "You mean Wayfarer Foothills. Zelechor Hot Springs." Miriya frowned, shaking her head. "You are always so bad with locations. I'm surprised you get anywhere." "Hey, my hammer takes me wherever I need to go." He smiled, standing up. "Now, is there another booth, or where should I put this stuff?" "Oh! Anywhere!" She grinned, waving a hand at the terraces around them. "Just leave it high enough to not get wet." He nodded, and started shedding clothes, tossing them onto a higher step. Miriya stared for a moment, feeling the blood rush to her face, before she realized she WAS staring, and quickly looked aside. "Uh, I suppose I better...um...get ready too!" It took her almost no time to get rid of her simple tunic top and light pants, leaving her bathing suit-like bodysuit as the only remaining piece of clothing. It was hot pink and white; not her usual colors, and for a moment, she was horrified and embarrassed by the dichotomy between her normal dress and her bodysuit. Please don't let him say anything about the bodysuit. Please don't let him say anything about... "Nice bodysuit you got there. Didn't figure you for the color pink." He smirked, settling into the warmed water. SCRAP! Miriya swore internally, flushing almost as pink as her suit. She immediately leapt into the pool, covering herself to her neck in water while keeping her arms wrapped around herself. "I-I..er... I forgot about the color...You wear a body suit most of your life as an Asura, and you kinda forget about it!" He shrugged, taking the champagne bottle and looking around. "Uh, do you have any wine glasses or champagne glasses down here? The others we left up on your table up there." "Oh! Yeah... Um... Hang on, I'll go get them." She hopped out of the water, moving as fast as her little legs could carry her; the faster she moved, the less he'd see the pink suit. A few moments later, she slid into the water beside him, and placed the glasses on the exposed step behind them. "Here." "Thank you muchly." Kaleb smiled, and poured them each a generous portion of champagne. That done, he handed one of the champagne flutes to her, and saluted her with it. "To good friends, good drinks, and faking it like high society fops!" Miriya giggled, and tipped her glass so it dinged against his lightly, the pure crystal note a pleasant sound. "To one of the best teammates I've ever had, and possibly my best friend in all of Tyria." They both sipped. "Aw, that was sweet, Miriya." Kaleb smiled, scratching the back of his head after he finished his sip. "I knew we were friends, but I didn't know you thought of me as a best friend." "Well, I do, you big lug." She smirked and gave his arm a playful punch. She put her glass behind her, one step up on the shelf, and rubbed an ear in thought. "You never judge me based on my size, even when we first were introduced, never thought of me as weak or cowardly for being a magic user...never turned away when you learned what kind of magic I used, or what it sometimes does to me..." She shivered a bit, wrapping her arms around herself. "Using the Death Shroud is so intoxicating but... There are times I worry that I'll lose myself to it. And that I might end up no better than an Orrian." Miriya rubbed a tear away from her eye with a finger. Damn the alchohol... it was making her resolve fall away. Already she could feel the depression sinking in again. Soon she'd have to retreat to her room and spend the rest of the night getting herself under contro-- Her thoughts were interrupted by Kaleb wrapping an arm around her and drawing her up into his lap into a hug. It wasn't a comradely hug, like he might have done outside in the cities, or a brotherly hug as he'd done to her before in celebration of things. It was just a hug, but it was much more than just a hug, in a way she couldn't define. It took her a moment of stunned shock to respond, but she finally relaxed, wrapping her smaller arms as best she could around him and hiding her face in his chest. After a few moments, Kaleb spoke. "Miriya, don't ever doubt yourself. Don't ever doubt your skills; I know I don't. You mastered a fantastically powerful magic few dare to. I read the story about how you came to the attention of the Whispers: You made those Inquest pay for what they did. I think you might be one of the most powerful people I've ever had the pleasure of knowing." Miriya listened, and smiled sadly, closing her eyes as she realized he was only seeing her skills and abilities, and not her. So close...so very close... she lamented, still fighting the urge to cry. He just doesn't see... "I've never been scared of you or your skills, Miriya. Not even when you used the Death Shroud. Because I know you'd never harm anyone you cared about." He gently stroked her braids and ears with one hand, not letting her draw away with the other. "You're an amazing person, Miriya, and I think that no matter what, you'll accomplish anything you set your mind to." Miriya's eyes snapped open at that compliment. She quickly mulled it over in her head, and slowly withdrew her arms from the embrace. "Miriya?...are you okay?" Kaleb asked, concerned at her silence and her retreat from the hug. She had her head turned down, so he couldn't see the expression on her face at all. "....I can accomplish anything eh?" She whispered, half to him, half to herself, staring at her hands where they braced against his bare chest. To Kaleb's ear, he could hear the quiet wavering in those few words. "There's just one thing I can't seem...to do..." "What would that be?" He asked softly, wondering about his friend. He could see her shaking quietly, as if she were cold, though the water was quite warm. Her small digits reflexively twitched where she had them on his chest. "Is it something I can help with?" She half-laughed, half-sobbed, shoulders rocking with the effort to resist. Would she take the chance? Would it do anything, mean anything? What do I even have to lose? "Yeah....it's...something you could help me with." She whispered in a shaky voice. "What is it? You can tell me." NOW. "This." She replied, and quickly tilted her head up to catch him in a kiss. Her arms flew around his neck, half to support herself, half to keep him from snapping his head back in surprise as her lips found his. Miriya kept her eyes tightly shut to avoid looking him in the face, seeing the shocked, perhaps betrayed expression on his face as she broke through the friend-barrier to get what she wanted. At contact, she felt that electric charge that she always felt directed at him. In other situations, it had been when he'd touched her shoulder, or playfully flicked her ear with a finger. Or when he hauled her up to sit on his shoulder while they travelled. Little moments of contact, each with an electric pulse, at least to her. They were all friendly gestures, so she put off how they felt, guilty for feeling more. This moment though...the electric shock was so many magnitudes greater...but so was the accompanying guilt. I just tricked my best friend...she cried inside as she kissed him. I just tricked him, got him drunk, and now I'm stealing a kiss that wasn't mine to have...he's going to stay so far away now... her thoughts then fell apart into unrequited sorrow. Slowly, Miriya broke the kiss, letting her hands slip from his neck, and settling down into the warm water of the pool. She never looked him in the eyes; she just turned to the side and curled up on herself, arms around her knees, looking away. Looking ashamed. "I-I'm sorry." She whispered, sniffling. "I-I'm sorry I did that...I just... I wanted t-to..." "Hey. Hey Miriya." Kaleb's soft voice made her ear twitch. With her eyes clenched closed, she almost jumped when she felt his finger under her chin, turning her face up to look at him. Her green, almond-shaped eyes opened in terrified surprise, and she stared at him, pleadingly, but so badly scared of what the question might be. "...For how long, Miriya?" He asked. Her eyes searched his for any sign of anger or betrayal...or disgust. It wasn't long ago historically that humans thought they were the center of all things and that all were below them. Nothing like that was in his eyes. Only warmth and concern. "For how long have you been holding yourself back like that?" There was a moment of silence as she processed his question. Her face alternately lit up with happiness, but seemed so ready to break into full on tears at the very same moment. Her mouth almost stretched into a smile, though it was a shaky one, and a tear escaped her eye, sliding down her smooth cheek. She let out a half-chuckle, half-cry, before shaking her head. "....since...almost since the first time we met." "You entered the room, smiled, and introduced yourself...you and that big dumb iron hammer of yours. " She laughed a little, staring up at him. "I didn't know what to think. I was told there'd be a human on the team, but I expected some dour soldier...instead, you walked in and made me laugh." Miriya reached up and gently touched his hand where it cupped her cheek. "You didn't bat an eye at my Necromancy...you joked with me and made me feel welcome when we camped out on missions...I'm not sure, but I think you even snapped me out of the Death Shroud that one time, by...just being there." She turned her head in towards the palm of his hand and gave it a soft kiss. "I never thought I'd be attracted to a non-Asura. Never even entered my mind...till you. Once I realized that, I had to get your attention some how. Even if for a moment." A sigh escaped her. "When I learned we had business in Rata Sum, I contrived a way for us to be alone. I introduced Dhangalor to a weaponsmith friend, and I lent Corvus my card to the datablocks in the archives." "And Slane?" Kaleb asked. "Didn't have to do a thing. He just disappeared." She chuckled ruefully. "For all I know he's in this room and cloaked, watching my humiliation." The Asura turned her head to look him in the face. "I tricked you, to get you to come here. To get you alone... to get you drunk..." Another tear fell. "I-I'll understand if you want to leave, or if you never want to talk to me again...I just, I just..." Miriya was interrupted once again by Kaleb. This time however, he cut her off by giving her mouth something else to do. Eyes wide in surprise, it took her a moment to realize he was kissing her this time, and when that registered, she all but melted into his arms. "My poor Miriya..." Kaleb sighed after the kiss was broken. He stroked her cheek, rubbing a tear away. "I didn't see the signs...didn't know how you felt. I honestly thought you thought I was a... what's the term?" "...Bookah?" She chuckled feebly. He smiled. "A Bookah. That's it. I know, and I knew, that I could never match you mentally in damned near anything. But I didn't see all the times, all the little things you said and did...till now." "....and now?" "I'm not going to send you away, or ignore you, for starters." He smirked, raising an eyebrow. "And I'm not going to stop being your best friend either. So you don't need to worry your pretty little head about that." Miriya couldn't repress the giggle, which earned a broad grin from Kaleb. "That being said, I gotta admire your little plan. You did catch me off guard with that kiss...but...honestly it wasn't that bad." Her jaw dropped, and she stared at him as he winked. "It was actually pretty good. I had no idea you were that good a kisser." "I...I-ya...wha..." "You know, I think in the back of my head, I always wondered what it'd be like to kiss you. You had those lovely lips, and that black lipstick..." He grinned. "I never would have thought you'd have had a crush on a simple human." That earned him a smack to the shoulder. "You! I... I ARGH!..." She reached up and grabbed his cheeks so that he was looking her straight in the eyes. "Simple human?! Says the guy who goes and rips the scrappin' ARM off a Destroyer troll and beats it to death with it?! And then has the club at the end of that arm turned into a new hammer head?" She glared at him, teeth grinding, a low growl in her throat, before kissing him again. "You're just damned lucky I think you're cute, big Bookah." She purred, stroking his cheek, feeling the stubble under her nail. "Oh, now we're name-calling?" Kaleb chuckled, wrapping his arms around her waist. "Or is that supposed to be my pet name now?" "Mm, no...not a pet name." She frowned a bit, before smirking. "How about a code name for in public? Others might think I'm insulting your intelligence, but you'd know I'm not?" "Works for me...Bookah never really insulted me anyway." He shrugged. "Always made me think 'Book-reader' or something. So coming from an Asura, it doesn't actually sound like an insult." "Good...Then that's what I'll nickname you in public; Big Bookah. MY Big Bookah." She licked her lips playfully, her emerald eyes examining him so close up. "Mm... That does sound good."

[lenalovesjasper]

In Which He Does Not

https://archiveofourown.org/works/16330010

https://www.fanfiction.net/s/13095746/1/In-Which-He-Does-Not-Want

Summary: A door, a slightly less ass-holey Edward, and a whole new set of rules. Twilight, where Alice sees Bella coming, and tells Edward to Get His Shit Together. Where Vampires are ugly as their souls when they walk in the sun. Where Charlie's late nights and long hours lead to a friendship of opposites. Where Bella and Edward fall in love, without that first mess-up.

Chapter One

           If Bella had been in Phoenix, she’d be paced the halls. Pacing like she meant it too—scuffing her toes on the hard tile floors and wishing she could walk back out the school doors undetected. There were lots of locks though, keypads and heavy metal doors that only lead down a series of halls back into the front office. Metal detectors. A security guard or two, thoroughly out of place in the relatively cushy neighbourhood. Not that there weren’t fights in Phoenix Central. But there were no fights here, there was nothing here. It seemed to her that the green simply stretched forever into the world, surrounded by the heavy grey skies and dotted with black raincoats and houses alike. She thought they must look alike, from above. Genderless black raincoats and houses with slate roofs, so wet they didn’t even grow green moss.

           She missed the sun.

           Perhaps moreso than that, she missed the feeling of the sun on her back, dragging highlights out of her dark hair like rays of gold in a sea of deep mahogany

           In her truck, rumbling down the road, she felt as far from the sunny haven of Arizona as she’d ever felt. The tallest house around was three stories, if you generously counted the attic. She only hoped that her feet were carrying her into the correct building, because the school looked like an amalgamation of early 20th century houses in a museum. It looked like that, the only difference being that, despite being early for school, there was already limited space in the parking lot.

           Her truck stuck out like a big, rusty, thumb. All the teachers drove reasonable little cars, Toyotas and Hondas, with all-wheel drive and carefully cleaned windshields and headlights. The students drove mostly mini-vans and trucks. None quite as old as hers. They all had either chains on their tires or dents.

           The lot was mostly empty of students, she observed, people seemed to congregate closer to the buildings. That was what the school was made up of, maybe just under a dozen brick buildings in a loose grouping. The snow had mostly been cleared, snaking little paths of stone and ice melt that ran between buildings and small cleared circles where people chattered in groups. From above, it probably looked like drunken crop circles cut into snow by some lost alien.

           She felt like a lost alien

           Nonetheless, she toddled her way across the ice. It was in that moment Bella realized she wasn’t meant for carrying stylish shoulder bags—all it’d done for her was tip her further off balance and sent her grasping for the hoods of cars to stead herself. But, all in all, she made it to class and that was one hell of an accomplishment for her.

           She’d gathered some papers from the “office building” as they called it, and she clutched them in nervous hands. It felt like a lifeline. Her mittens were on the table in Charlie’s house, and she wished for them, to hide the nervous jittering of her fingers. Actually, when she looked harder at the blue tint to her hands, it might’ve been cold making them shake.

           Bella hated the cold.

           She hated the papers she was holding. She hated lots of things.

           Had she been less consumed by her hatred of things, she might’ve looked up before being pounced upon by the boy behind her.

           “Hi!” Cried a voice, and Bella startled, dropping half of her papers on the floor. She imagined they made a ‘whoosh’ noise as they fell. “You’re Isabella Swan, right?” The boy was Asian, with dark hair that fell over his forehead and excessive acne. He smiled, and she added another adjective: over-eager.

           The papers had scattered all over the linoleum floor. Damnit! She stooped to gather them, but they were already soaked in ice melt and dingy snow-water. They ended up in a nearby bin, which the boy doggedly followed her to.

           “Sooo..” He began, eyes crinkled with a barely contained smirk. “you’re Isabella, right? Chief’s daughter?”

           “Um, just Bella.” She brushed a chunk of hair up behind her ear. It fell immediately.

           “I couldn’t help but notice you looked lost—” was it the map topping her pile of papers, or was it the look of hopelessness in her eyes that gave it away? “—and I’m Eric, your unofficial tour guide.”

           Eric. Great. “Unofficial?” She questioned.

           He flipped the fringe that brushed his forehead, and smiled even wider. “Newspaper duty. You’re front page news!”

           Her heart gave a small palpitation. “Oh, no, no.” She rushed to explain, tripping over her words, “I’m not really, uh, news. Please.”

           Instantly he raised his arms, losing the smirking edge to his grin. It was now soft, and slightly comforting. “Hey, hey, don’t worry about it!” he pulled out a black phone and typed rapidly for a second across the dimmed screen. It was a wonder he could see it at all. “No feature. Done, nada, never even happened!”

           Bella let out a small puff of air. She could see the vapour, warm in the icy air.

           “Well, paper or no paper, I have to show you the school! Welcome to Forks High, the finest collection of school buildings in the Olympic Peninsula. What do you have first?”

           “Building four?” There was a big ‘4’ next to her listing for Precalc.

           “Me too! Wow, that’s convenient. Walk with me?” He talked so fast she didn’t notice that she was walking until she was tripping, chasing after him as words spilled from his mouth like water. “Precalc is super hard, but don’t let it get you down. I think everybody who goes through this school fails it once, you know. Just part of the school life here, like, you gotta fail one class in the math department…” After that, she shut her dazed mind off to his talking. Also, hearing “fail” on her first day here didn’t exactly make her want to listen.

           They walked into the building, and he held the door open; catching it with the edge of his hands so she could walk through behind him. They went up a flight of stairs and down a hall, and when they reached a blue door with a large window he marched through, once again holding the door for her to enter behind. She smiled at him, but he had twisted around to greet someone in the class—and that was the mistake. Eric’s fingers slipped from the edge of the door, the moment she paused to look in.

           Sometimes, time slowed down when she was about to be met with some new horrible bruise. Not very often, because not every bump could be special, but when the collision was bound to be painful, the world slowed so she had time to dread the impact. Like now; she could see the mechanism above the door pulling it closed, she could see Eric’s clammy fingers sliding one-by-one off the door edge. She could feel herself tense, and her eyes clench shut. There was a faint breeze behind her, cold and close to her back.

           Wow, time really had slowed down. Shouldn’t her nose have been mushed by now?

           Maybe this hit would be the one to finally disfigure her. It’d be kinda lame, to have fallen down stairs and out of cars (been hit by cars, but only lightly) and fall to a damn door. Charlie’d be mad. She’d have to call her mother. If she wasn’t frozen, she’d tap her foot impatiently—might as well get it over with. On her first day, and she was already getting involved in collisions with doors.

           But the collision… didn’t come?

           Bella hesitantly opened one eye, then blinked. The door window was not even two inches from her face. A strong looking arm, pale as snow, was pressed to the glass, just to the left of her face.

           Bella froze. That was no cold breeze she’d felt, and she was suddenly very aware of the cold, tall person behind her—so close they were almost touching. A cool breath blew across the top of her head. It was like the first hint of snow in November.

           She sensed the person shift behind her, and there was a moment before the words, spoken almost hesitantly, brushed her ear. “Be careful, Isabella.”

           She whirled around at that, and there he was, leaning above her, hand still firmly planted on the window. He was so tall. The kind of tall that she had to crane her neck to see, until he tilted his head towards to. Hair fell to cover his forehead, and caught the fluorescent light. His hair was… like sunlight flashing on a bronze sculpture. If a hunk of bronze had perfectly mused bedhead, the kind that no amount of fussing could ever fake. It was a little long, a little curly, and a lot attractive. The face matched her statue theory, only made of marble. Every feature seemed chiselled from stone and made directly to cut into the softest parts of her heart; the high cheek bones, the full and rosy lips, the long black lashes that nearly brushed his heavy dark brows, creased in the centre of his forehead. She wanted to smooth that crease, reach up and rub it away with her thumb. But his skin, the impossibly beautiful and white skin, looked like marble. Even the slight suggestion of blue veins seemed merely lines in the silky stone of his being. And his eyes—oh god, those eyes. Gold. Golden, like two shining coins in the brightest eyes she’d ever seen.

           Oh.

           So this was what love at first sight felt like.

           Dimly, her inner voice of reason chimed that she should ask the stranger his name. Instead, she watched a single curl, just a wisp of his tumble of bronze, slide into his forehead. He huffed a breath and tossed his head.

           The moment broke.

           “Watch the door.” He said, voice soft. Not deep, yet low. Clear inflection.

           Bella sighed. “Oh, yeah.” Then, afraid to move too much, she reached up and pushed an errant chunk of brown hair behind her ear. Her eyes closed for the briefest of moments, and she gathered her mind together from the millions of fragments his brilliant eyes had shattered it to. When the pieces did come back together, they seemed all the brighter for having been broken by his beauty. “Thanks, for, um, the door.”

           The corners of his mouth lifted. She remembered to breathe, but only with sincere effort on her part. “No trouble, Isabella.”

           “Bella.”

           “My apologies.”

           The bell sounded, and she heard someone huff angrily. Breaking away from the glory of his face, she spared a moment for the window, where Eric looked at her. Irritably.

           “I’ll let you get to class,” he smirked. “Bella.”

           His arm withdrew from over her head slowly, and she missed its presence before it even moved. She didn’t move when he moved, instead she watched his form retreat down the hall. He was tall and a little lanky—but the way he moved, tall and purposefully, made him seem all the more different from the shuffling, hunched masses. Dressed in a button up, the softest shade of green, like the colour of a slightly scuffed emerald. A centre stone on a wedding ring, worn from decades of loving use. The dark trousers lovingly caressed his slender but defined legs. Warm brown lace up shoes, and a black backpack. He disappeared around the corner, taking her heart with him.

           Bella sighed, and sank back into the door. Only she leaned too far back, and tipped through. The thud hit her before the pain did and—oh, there it was. It shuddered up her back and her palms stung from their harsh slap to the tile.

           The floor and her were destined to meet, it seemed. Even as she sat up and rubbed her abused tailbone, she was glad that she hadn’t fallen when that handsome stranger was here. A bruised butt was worse than a bruised ego, in her opinion. (They often went hand-in-hand.) When she looked up, Eric was helpfully holding the door now, staring at her with raised eyebrows and an open mouth.

           “Thanks for holding the door, Eric.” A blond called from the back of the classroom, snickering.

           Eric’s already ruddy face flamed at the words. He began to stutter out an apology.

           “Don’t worry about it,” Bella said, shrugging her shoulders. “at least I didn’t hit my face.” Face. Thinking about her face made her think of high cheekbones and haunting honey coloured irises. She picked herself off the floor gingerly, noting idly the blue and grey tiles. Eric didn’t offer her a hand up.

           “Yeah, Eric—don’t worry about, Cullen’s got it!” Yelled the same blond from before. He hopped his seat on the desk of a brunette with heavy foundation, and strolled over. “Mike Newton.” He smiled warmly, dimpling his face. He was youthful, like a broad-shouldered cherub. Someone from elementary school that never quite outgrew the face. Eric’s cheery demeanour soured rapidly. He’d smiled when she walked behind him, shocked when she escaped her brush with the door, upset when she fell and Cullen was mentioned, and lastly outright bitter, when Mike introduced himself. Was it her? The girl with the heavy foundation looked upset that she’d lost Mike to her.

           “Bella.” She nodded. He looked at her for a moment, a furrow between his brows but the same grin on his face. She shuffled her feet a little, trudging to the far side of the room, where she spied an empty desk. He watched her the whole way there—she knew, because she darted glances at him as she picked her way between the desks.

           The teacher walked to the front of the room and began to speak, ignoring her and her newness completely. Bella thought she felt gold eyes on her every time she turned around, but it was only her mind. He’d walked off anyway. It didn’t stop her subconscious, that useless reasoning of hers.

           It was a great day, so far.

[marypsue]

Kings Among Runaways

So there's this Stanchez Summer Sizzle thing going on, and I've been meaning to write something for this ship for forever, so it was a good excuse to actually make the thing. This is partly inspired by the Decemberists' "On The Bus Mall" (I know, so punk) and partly by Joel Schumacher's The Lost Boys and ended up being sort of absolutely nothing like either of them. 

Sort of falls under the prompt for alternate universes. Contains a little bit of non-graphic NSFW - they get their hands down each other's pants but that's about as far as it goes - and Rick-typical casual homophobia and use of slurs. Any errors, inaccuracies, or just plain unbelievabilities about the lives and habits of a couple of shithead teenage boys are entirely due to my being the kind of person who listens to the Decemberists.

I'm also on AO3 as MaryPSue, if you'd rather read there!

...

The poster is crisp and bright, sticking out against the ones plastered over the wall behind it, greyed and faded and weather-worn practically into tissue paper. It leaps out at Stan's eye, grabs him by the shoulders and spins him around without warning. The picture under the bold-face all-caps MISSING is dark, the image grainy, like something clipped from a newspaper. The face that emerges out of it is pale and defiant, eyes staring sullenly out from under a single furrowed eyebrow, one lip curling upwards in something that bears only the faintest, grimmest resemblance to a smile.

It's not the face, Stan catches himself thinking, of someone who wants to be found.

He can't decide if he's disappointed or relieved not to see his own face next to it.

"Eugh, they used that old yearbook photo?" Rick laughs, lurching to a stop when he notices Stan isn't beside him. "Shit, was I - was I ever that ugly?"

"Still are," Stan says, but his heart's not in it.

Rick elbows him in the ribs and then slings an arm around his shoulders, easy, like it doesn't mean anything. "Good thing we're heading out tonight, then," he says, steering Stan away from the wall of posters and flyers, from his own face. "Don't wanna make this - this - this town look at my ugly mug for too long."

"Shouldn't we take it down or something?" Stan asks, glancing back over his shoulder. He's not sure why. He doesn't look back, much, these days.

Rick doesn't bother with a backwards glance. "Nahhhh," he says, after a beat. There's a hint of snarl in his voice, a sarcastic curl that's a little tighter than usual, when he says, "It's - it's not me they’re looking for. C'mon."

The poster's gaze follows them down the street, accusing.

...

Glass Shard Beach High School was beyond the ability of the most skilled shit-talker to come up with an appropriate insult. The place was a hole, a dump, a wreck, a flaming shitpile. A quitting English teacher, school legend held, had once described it as 'like Lord of the Flies but less inspiring of hope for the future of humanity'. 

Ford loved it. Stan didn't have any idea why.

The only redeeming features of Glass Shard Beach High, as far as Stan was concerned, were the (badly outdated, but still-functional) weight room and Carla 'Hotpants' McCorkle, who'd once let Stan talk her into going to a movie with him and making out in the alley afterwards. He didn't remember which movie. He'd been too busy trying to cop a feel through Carla's crop top and accidentally dunking his entire hand into her ice-cold Coke instead.

Since the weight room'd been closed down (because of 'black mold'; Stan would believe Glass Shard Beach High would close down an otherwise-functional room because of black mold when they finally cordoned off the east wing math room) and Carla'd hooked up with some mopey long-haired loser who wore ratty flannel and looked like he'd just wandered in off a construction site, there wasn't really anything keeping Stan hanging around. Oh, sure, Ford complained about Stan 'playing hooky', but he wasn't gonna be the one to rat Stan out to their pa, and it wasn't like Stan's grades were good enough for it to actually matter if he missed a couple classes here and there. Wasn't like he was going anywhere fast anyway.

That was how he'd met Rick.

...

The Stanleymobile's been running a little rough lately, taking too long to start. Stan has to wrench the key three times in the ignition before her whine turns into a throaty rumble, the floor buzzing and rattling under his feet.

"You could -" he starts, and Rick reaches over, turns the radio up until it drowns Stan out, kicks his feet up on the dash and cranks his seat all the way back.

"Wake me up when we get to California," his voice echoes up from somewhere near the backseat.

Stan reaches over, yanks the knob until he can hear his own voice over the blare of guitar. "You asshole, you coulda just said you don't wanna science my baby's engine instead of makin' me deaf."

"Last time I touched your - your 'baby's' engine you decked me."

"Because I didn't ask you to try to turn it into a bong!"

Stan's not sure how Rick manages to shrug while lying down with both arms folded behind his head. "You just said, 'Go nuts'."

"Yeah, well, my mistake," Stan grumbles. "From now on I'll tell you exactly what to do and how to do it. Bet you'll just love that."

"Depends," Rick's voice floats up from the backseat. "Are - are - are we naked in this hypothetical future?"

Stan ignores him.

"Next stop, California," he says, and kicks the Stanleymobile into gear.

...

If Stan wasn't flunking English, maybe he'd be tempted to get poetic about Rick. He could probably go on and on, about how the guy seemed to be made out of elbows and broken bottles, thin as a knifeblade and just as sharp-edged. He could probably make up some flowery bullshit about Rick's spindly fingers and how - elegant, there was no other word for it, they looked holding a stolen cigarette, like some silent film starlet decked out in velvet and diamonds, glowing silver through the celluloid. He could spew some purple prose about the way Rick was always either in constant, frantic motion or absolutely still, like he was the fixed point the entire universe turned around. He might even be able to string together words to talk about the wrench in his gut when Rick gave him that rare, knife-edge smile, the one that meant trouble, the one that meant, good or bad, that Stan was about to get a particularly heart-thumping reminder that he was still alive.

Maybe. If Stan wasn't flunking English.

They never did much more than dick around, smoking when they could bum or steal cigarettes, breaking into the old cannery plant or the pool to hang out, getting stoned, lighting the occasional fire, running away from people who didn't want them hanging around wherever they were hanging around. It was still the best time Stan had ever had. Rick expected nothing from him, but it didn't feel - crushing, like it did coming from his dad and Ford.

It felt kinda like freedom.

...

Ford was waiting outside of the classroom when Stan came running down the hall, his arms crossed over his chest, fingers drumming impatiently against his arm and a scowl on his face.

"Where have you been?" he snapped, as Stan slowed to a halt, trying to get his breathing under control. "The exam's been over for twenty minutes. I was just about to start walking home."

"Class," Stan gasped, sucking in a breath. He'd really just run in from the smoke pit behind the machine shop, and he knew Ford knew that, knew Ford could smell the smoke and engine grease on him. He wasn't lying to Ford. He was lying for Ford. That way when their dad caught Stan, Ford could say that he didn't know, that Stan told him he'd been in class, and he wouldn't have to lie. Ford always had been a lousy liar.

Besides, it wasn't like anybody cared where Stan was anyway.

Ford's eyes slid closed, and he exhaled a long-suffering sigh. "Let's go," he said, stepping away from the wall and brushing past Stan as he started down the hallway. "I've already wasted enough time, the science fair is coming up fast and I should've started studying a quarter of an hour ago."

"Sorry," Stan muttered. "Woulda been here sooner, but -"

"Save it," Ford said, and Stan snapped his mouth shut, glaring at the back of Ford's head. He really would've been back sooner, but for some reason Rick hadn't been at any of their usual haunts, not in the scrubby patch of trees at the park or the alley behind the gas station on Main or even the pool, though Stan hadn't actually expected to find him there, now it was summer and the pool actually had water - and people - in it. Stan hadn't realised how much time had passed until he'd stopped by the machine shop to see if he could at least score any swag for the Stanleymobile so the afternoon wasn't a complete waste, and the bell for the end of class had gone off.

"Sheesh, Sixer, get a life," Stan muttered, to the back of Ford's head, scuffing the heel of his sneaker along the hallway linoleum. The rubber made an awful squeal and left a long, black mark, just like Stan had secretly, viciously hoped it would. "You waste every waking moment studying, one day you're gonna wake up and there'll be nothing left of you but books."

Ford sniffed, dismissively. “Maybe then you’d bother to actually get acquainted with one.”

Stan opened his mouth to snipe back, but then shook his head and bit it back. “Whatever. Let’s just go home.”

...

They don’t make it to California that night, of course. Stan pulls in at a shitty motel off the freeway just on the edge of Columbus, Ohio, just about smack-dab under a huge cloverleaf exchange. The roar of traffic bleeds through the sickly salmon-coloured cinderblock walls as though they’re paper.

Rick starts stripping almost the instant that Stan slams the flimsy door behind them, shucking his leather jacket and tugging off his tank top almost aggressively, like he’s daring Stan to make something of it. Usually, Stan would take him up on the dare, but he’s burnt out exhausted and can’t bring himself to do anything but flop, flat on his back, on top of the weird plasticky cover on one of the beds. There's a big, long crack in the ceiling, stretching out from the window that looks out over the parking lot and the scrub of dead, yellowed grass that fills the ditch between the motel and the highway. The paint around the crack has bubbled and warped, stained yellow and brown. Stan wonders if that's where the faint musty smell under all the stale cigarette smoke is coming from.

The crack runs right overtop of the bed where Stan's lying. He considers it for a moment, decides they're probably gonna want to sleep in the other bed.

“You know they don’t uhhhhwash those, right?” Rick points out, eyeing the cover Stan’s lying on without any particular venom. “You're lying in basically a petri dish.”

Stan manages a grunt in response. He never would’ve guessed that sitting for eight solid hours could make his back hurt so much.

Rick vanishes into the bathroom, emerges about ten minutes later after a chorus scored for rattling pipes and off-key voice. “We’re ordering a, a pizza.”

Stan grunts again. It worked so well last time.

Rick doesn't go for the phone right away, though. Instead, he drops his bony ass down on the bed beside Stan, his little weight still making the mattress dip, and starts unzipping Stan's fly.

"Whoa, wh-" Stan starts, and Rick reaches over to grab the phone out of its cradle.

"Trust me, this is gonna be hiluuuuuurparious," he says, dialing with one hand while he eases Stan's dick out of his pants with the other. He passes the phone over to Stan, who has a sudden, vivid, technicolour vision of exactly where this is going.

“No way,” Stan says, reaching over to slam the phone back into its cradle, but a tinny voice speaks into his ear just as Rick wraps a warm, slick (Stan’s mind does a brief detour into wondering just when the hell he’d had a chance to lube up, and how long he’d been planning this) hand around Stan’s traitorously interested cock, and starts stroking it into hardness with a vicious grin.

“Hello, Tony’s Pizza Planet, what can I get you?”

“Hhhhhhhi,” Stan manages. “Can - uh, can I get - ah! - aw, shit, Rick -" He has to stop, biting down on his lip and desperately trying to swallow down the moan that bubbles up his throat when Rick twists his wrist just so. "Ummm, two, ah, two pepperoni pies?”

The kid on the other end of the line just sighs.

...

The other thing about Rick was that he was easy to talk to. Sure, he’d act like he didn’t give a shit about most of Stan’s problems, but most of the time he’d actually sit there and let Stan talk, instead of just telling him to shut up and stop bothering him or trying to give him sanctimonious ‘advice’ to straighten up and fly right. When Stan admitted he didn’t have any plans beyond high school and wasn’t even sure he’d make it that far, Rick didn’t get on his case about pulling up his grades and applying to community colleges or trade schools that he’d never be able to afford anyway, didn’t tell Stan to start looking for barnacle-scraping jobs down the docks because he was gonna be doing it for a long time, might as well get some experience under his belt. Rick just took a long drag on the joint and passed it back to Stan with a curt “All of human history’ll be obliterated when this planet spirals into the sun in a couuuuhhhhhhuple hundred million years anyway, who gives a shit.”

“Right?” Stan said, taking a puff himself and settling back on the beat-up sofa they’d rescued from somebody’s curb and dragged back to the old cannery plant. Well, Stan had dragged, until Rick had thrown together some kind of gravity modifier thing that made the couch light enough for him to lift with one hand. “Wish everybody else’d get the memo.”

Rick nodded once, slow and languid.

“Like Ford,” Stan went on, taking another drag off the joint before handing it back. He couldn’t understand why anybody would’ve ever wanted to throw this couch away, it had to be the most comfortable piece of furniture ever made. “We got all these plans to fix up a boat and go treasure hunting together after high school, but now he’s so hung up on this stupid science fair, this stupid scholarship, this stupid...fucking...school -”

“West Coast Tech,” Rick interrupted, not looking at Stan. He had this look on his face, like he’d just bitten into something unexpectedly sour.

“West Coast fuckin’ Tech,” Stan repeated. He considered the rough edges of the piece of plywood propped on two milk crates that was serving as a coffee table for a moment, before deciding, “Fuck ‘em.”

“Fuck ‘em,” Rick agreed, monotone. He stared, blank, at a spot in the air in front of Stan for a long moment before giving himself a sharp shake, kicking his feet up onto the plywood and leaning back on the sofa. “Your - your brother’s a real asshole.”

“Hey, fuck you,” Stan said, without any real heat. “He’s my brother, I’m the only one who gets to call him an asshole.”

Rick shrugged. “He is, though.”

Stan tilted his head back and forth until his neck cracked. “Yeah, whatever. You gonna smoke that, or just stare at it?”

Rick looked down at the joint he’d seemingly forgotten he was holding, and then met Stan’s gaze challengingly as he took what had to be the longest drag in history, the tip flaring cherry-red with embers.

“If - if your bitch-ass twin ditches, I’ll go treasure hunting with you,” he said, carelessly, into a cloud of exhaled smoke. “Gotta beat sitting in - in a shitty classroom for another four years.”

Stan had to swallow, hard, before he could make words. “Yeah?”

“Yeah.” Rick passed over the joint. “We still got any wafer cookies in here?”

...

"Where were you?"

Stan dropped his duffel bag on the floor of the room he shared with his twin, studiously avoiding Ford's eyes. "Boxing practice. You know that."

"What I know is that you haven't been to a single practice since September." Ford shut the textbook he'd been poring over with a snap, staring at Stan from the upper bunk. "Your coach didn't even know you're still enrolled."

Stan shrugged. "Is it so bad I want a little time to myself without Dad gettin' on my case about how lazy and useless I am?"

Ford's expression wavered, but only for an instant. "Except that I know you're not taking 'time to yourself'. You've been hanging around with Sanchez, haven't you?"

Stan didn't answer right away, ripping open the duffel bag and pulling out his gym clothes, furiously avoiding looking up at the sanctimonious expression he knew Ford would be wearing.

"So what?" he finally said, pulling out his boxing gloves and tossing them aside.

"So what? So I know you've been skipping classes too! And at this rate, you'll be held back -"

Stan shrugged, and Ford sputtered.

“Stanley, how can you be so cavalier about this? This is your future we’re talking about -”

“Yeah? What future?”

The long breath Ford sucked in could have been exasperated or exhausted. Stan couldn’t tell, without looking at him, which it was.

“You see? This is exactly what I’m talking about. This - this character is obviously a bad influence on you. Stanley, you don’t really believe - I mean, I know school’s been difficult for you, but if you just buckled down and applied yourself -”

Stan clenched a hand around the laces of his trainers, tossing them out of his duffel bag with what might’ve been too much force. “What are you, my mom?”

“No, you idiot! I’m your brother, and I’m worried about you.” Stan couldn’t tell if the sudden sincerity in Ford’s voice was better or worse than the judgmental anger. Worse, he decided.

“Yeah? Well, sounds to me more like you’re worried about me getting held back and you having to watch your own back for once.” He dumped the rest of the contents of his bag out on the floor, giving it a shake for good measure. “At least I have friends.” One friend, his traitor brain reminded him, and Stan gave the bag one last, vicious shake. “Do you know where my deodorant went?”

Ford didn’t answer. The silence from over by the bunk beds went beyond simple ‘not talking’ into the chilly slopes of ‘not talking To You’. Stan realised, too late, that he’d taken it too far.

“Okay, I’m gonna go look in the bathroom,” he said, straightening up and heading for the door. He’d been expecting Ford to bluster about the mess he’d left on the floor, but there was still no sound from Ford’s side of the room.

Stan glanced back over his shoulder before he left the room, but Ford had buried his head back in his textbook.

...

The pizza guy, when he shows up, has the dead-eyed disappointed stare of someone who's seen the full range of human weirdness and is no longer surprised by any of it. He takes the handful of crumpled bills Stan hands him without a single shift in his expression, handing over the pizzas and walking away without a word. 

"Did - did you see his face?" Rick gasps, barely stifling laughter.

"Yeah, yeah, you're real fuckin' funny," Stan mutters. He can feel how red his face must be, cheeks burning.

"Hey, don't blame me for how - how loud you get when you're just getting a handjob."

“Yeah, well, when it’s your hand,” Stan manages, despite the way his ears are burning. Rick snorts, snagging the top pizza off the stack of boxes Stan’s holding.

“Gaaaaaay.”

“Says the guy who had his hand down my pants half an hour ago.”

“Okay, just for that you don’t get any -” Rick cracks open the pizza box he’s holding, takes a sniff. “Pineapple? What - what - what kind of troglodyte puts pineapple on a pizza?”

“Maybe you shoulda been the one to make that order, huh?” Stan says, and he can’t resist a smug grin. 

He instantly regrets it at the smile that creeps across Rick’s face.

“Maybe next time I will,” Rick says, and drops the ham and pineapple pizza back on top of the boxes in Stan’s hands. “Now give 'em here. One - one of these better be edible.”

...

The first time they'd kissed, they'd been hiding under the boardwalk from the owner of the pizza parlour they’d just swiped a pie from, laughing so hard Stan’s sides had started to hurt, sand and surf working their way through the butt of his jeans, leaving him itching and soggy. They’d been cramped and aching, curled up against one of the pilings, trying not to laugh too loud and give themselves away, dripping with grease and melted cheese as they’d stuffed their faces with their ill-gotten goods. It was the hottest day of the year so far, the impending summer hanging around like a promise, making the ex-marine life washed up under the pier stink and Stan sweat in his letterman’s jacket.

He’d been happier than he could remember having been in years.

They’d both held their breath for a moment as the pizza parlour owner had stomped past overhead yelling impossible threats, tension hunching Stan’s shoulders and making his last bite of three-cheese stick in his throat. He’d been all too aware of Rick’s wiry body pressed close against him, wound like a spring, his knee digging into the fleshy part of Stan’s leg. They'd sat like that a long moment after the threats to tie their ears together and then drop them both on opposite sides of a girder had faded into the distance, just sitting and listening to the bustle overhead and the gulls screeching over the midway and out above the water, Stan holding his breath and trying not to think about the heat radiating from Rick's leg where it was pressed against his own.

Then Rick had burst out laughing, yelling something defiant and triumphant and sprinkled with swears after the retreating pizza parlour owner, and Stan had looked over at the look on his face and the boney fist he was shaking at the long streaks of sunlight that slipped down between the boards of the boardwalk and the little string of melted cheese hanging off of his bottom lip and before he could stop himself Stan had leaned over and kissed him. Full on the lips.

Kissing Rick tasted like licking the proverbial ashtray, with a nice garnish of tomato sauce. He didn't move, going still and rigid beside Stan, and Stan realised too late what he'd just done.

"Shit," he muttered, pulling back and rubbing the back of one hand across his mouth, trying not to meet Rick's eyes. "Shit, I -"

"What - what the hell was that, Pines?"

Stan made some noncommittal noise, trying to turn it into a laugh, painfully aware that it wasn't working. His entire head felt like an oversized pimple, hot and red and just begging to be popped. But he could laugh this off, right? Rick pulled crazy stunts all the time to get a rise out of Stan, it wasn't - wasn't like this was any different -

"This is how you kiss a dude," Rick sneered, and Stan didn't have time to process what was happening before Rick grabbed him by the lapels of his jacket and mashed their faces together and oh. Oh. Okay.

They didn't come out from under the boardwalk until the sun was almost all the way down. No matter how hard, later, he brushed his teeth, Stan couldn't get the taste of cigarette ash out of his mouth.

...

“The science fair is today?”

Ford’s voice was clipped with impatience, cold and irritable. “Yes, Stanley. You’d know this if you ever bothered to be around for more than five minutes.”

For once, Stan didn’t rise to the obvious bait. “It’s really today?”

“That’s what I just said.”

“I know, I know!” Stan protested, raising both hands to stop Ford before he could launch into another tirade. “I just...kinda thought there was more time.”

Ford fixed him with a strange look, like he’d just been told something he’d always assumed was an apple was actually an orange. “I didn’t know you’d entered.”

“No, that’s not -” Stan shook his head. “Forget it. So, what, you need a ride?”

Ford looked like he wanted to push it, but instead, he just readjusted his glasses on the bridge of his nose. “Yes, please.”

Stan was just easing the Stanleymobile’s long nose into a parking spot by the gym doors when Ford spoke again. “Stan,” he said, like he was trying to get Stan’s attention, though he didn’t turn away from the window he’d been staring out of the whole drive. “You - you do remember that the scouts from West Coast Tech are going to be here today?”

Stan tucked the Stanleymobile in against the curb and killed the engine, staring out the windshield for a moment. 

“Yeah,” he said, finally. “Yeah, I remember.”

The engine ticked softly as it cooled. Somewhere to Stan’s right, Ford let out a breath that was almost a sigh.

“We’d better go in,” he said, the door handle creaking as he pushed it open.

Stan huffed, yanking the keys out of the ignition.

...

It’s a few misspent hours later that Stan finally forces himself to roll off the bed with the crack over it. 

“We’re gonna be sleeping in the car tomorrow night at this rate,” he grumbles, pawing through his wallet. The wad of bills they’d left Atlantic City with seems a lot thinner now.

From over on the bed, Rick shrugs one shoulder, glancing over at Stan for a moment before turning his attention back to the ceiling. “Maybe there’ll be fewer bedbugs.”

“Wait, what?” Stan whips back the tacky fake-Mexican-print cover and the bedspread on the bed nearest the door, stares hard at the slightly yellowed sheets, looking for black dots bouncing. “If you get bedbugs in my baby -”

He’s cut off by the sound of Rick’s laughter, awful and grating, and huffs out a breath of relief. “You asshole.”

“You - you love me,” Rick says, with a leering wink in Stan’s direction, and Stan huffs, rolling his eyes before turning abruptly back to their wad of cash.

“We’re gonna have to fill up before we hit the road again, and I think we got about enough for two more tanks of gas.” He riffles the bills with his thumb, tapping it against the palm of his opposite hand before tucking it back inside the back pocket of his jeans, draped over the chair by the desk. “That’s not gonna get us all the way to the Sunshine State.”

“We’ll think of something,” Rick says. Stan can feel his eyes on his back. “By which I mean I’ll think of something, being the - the genius in this relationship.”

“Yeah, well, don’t count me out just yet,” Stan retorts, spinning around with his best huckster’s smile. “Still got a couple tricks up these sleeves.”

“What sleeves,” Rick says. It isn’t a question, more of a challenge.

“Oh, shut up,” Stan mutters, before crossing the room to make Rick do exactly that. With his mouth. 

...

Rick didn’t go up to the front of the gym to accept the giant, ugly purple ribbon and the trophy that the beaming science fair judge held up. In fact, when Stan looked around the gym, he didn’t see Rick’s telltale shock of blue hair anywhere at all. Probably why he hadn’t realised the guy was even entered. It wasn’t like he’d bothered to actually look at any of the other projects, anyway, beyond a derisive glance. Ford’s was the best of the lot, hands down. And Stan was only here for Ford anyway.

He kept looking, though. Anything was better than seeing the look on Ford’s face.

“Of course it would be Sanchez,” Ford muttered, on the way out to the car, the first words he’d spoken since the winner of the science fair had been announced. Stan risked a glance over at him, to see his fists clenched, jaw jutting in the way Stan knew meant Ford was grinding his back teeth together, and knew that the light over Ford’s desk was going to be on all night again. “No one else in this school could have put together a project that would have outstripped mine, no one else in this school could have stolen that scholarship out from under me - I thought you said your little friend wasn’t entering!” he snapped, and Stan realised it was the first part of Ford’s tirade that he’d actually been meant to hear.

“I thought he wasn’t!” Stan shot back. There was something simmering low in his stomach, sick and hot and aching, and he threw the Stanleymobile’s door open with more force than he meant to.

Ford just plopped himself down in the passenger seat like he wanted to personally punish the leather upholstery with his butt, crossing his arms with a huff and staring out the window. Stan rolled his eyes, but sat down in the driver’s seat himself, slamming the door behind him.

“You don’t know he got the scholarship too,” he tried, as he started to ease the Stanleymobile out of his parking spot, and Ford whirled, his eyes blazing behind his glasses.

“Oh, don’t be such an idiot, Stanley,” he snapped, and Stan stomped on the brakes to keep from ploughing the Stanleymobile’s nose straight into the rear bumper of the car ahead of him. “Why would West Coast Tech ever settle for second best? Not to mention that Sanchez’ project is right in line with their major research fields, they’re the number one institution in the world right now working on multi-dimensional paradigm theory...” He let out a hollow laugh, slumping back against his seat. “I’ll be lucky if they even bother to send me a rejection letter.”

Stan took a deep breath, checking over his shoulder before carefully inching the Stanleymobile out into the road. “Well, at least it’s not like you don’t got a backup plan, right? You and me, sun, sand, and surf, treasure and babes and really wild adventures...” He managed a grin from somewhere deep down just as Ford let out a deep, heartfelt groan.

“Stanley, I really don’t want to talk about this right now,” he muttered, pressing both hands against his forehead and dragging them up and through his hair. “I have to start working on finding a backup school, writing scholarship essays, finding a summer job, applying for loans...I don’t have time for childish daydreams right now.” He dropped his left hand into his lap, leaning the elbow of his right against the window. 

Stan didn’t think he was meant to hear Ford’s mumble of, “What is Dad going to think?”

Stan rolled through the four-way stop, trying hard to swallow around the lump that had grown in his throat.

...

“What the fuck.”

Rick looked up, and a brief flash of annoyance crossed his face before he flicked his cigarette butt to the asphalt, grinding it out with his toe. “Wh -”

Stan didn’t give him a chance to get the word out, grabbing him by the shoulders and slamming him against the rough brick of the wall. “You didn’t tell me you were entering the science fair!” Rick started to say something, his skinny noodle arms pushing at Stan’s chest, but Stan gave him another slam against the wall. “You didn’t tell me you were some kind of super genius!”

Rick gave his head a little shake before answering, like he was trying to knock a few cogs back into position. "What, you - you didn't actually think I was a dumbass like you?"

Stan barely resisted the urge to plant a fist right in the middle of Rick’s smug asshole face. "No! But I didn’t think you cared. I bet you just threw something together for the science fair the morning of for shits and giggles, right? Just for a laugh? Oh, let’s ruin that nerdy asshole Pines’ life, bet it’ll be hilarious?"

“Would you shut up? I didn’t enter the - the - the fucking science fair,” Rick sneered.

“Oh, yeah, my mistake, that’s how you won it, by not entering,” Stan snapped back. 

“Won -” Rick’s face went dark, and a flash of something sharp and cold shot through Stan, a sudden stab of fear despite the fact he easily weighed the same as two of Rick and had been taking boxing lessons since he was old enough to stand upright. “Fucking - Brewster - thinks he’s doing me some kind of fucking favour putting my name in for all this school shit -”

“Oh, yeah, the AP Physics teacher whose class you don’t even take put your project into the fair, not you. That sounds real convincing.” Stan gave Rick another shove, but it was halfhearted, halfassed. Rick’s expression didn’t even shift. “Maybe next time you oughta leave the lying to me.”

“Stan, I’m in - I’m in AP Physics,” Rick sighed. “I just - just went for the tests, it’s not like I don’t know it all already.” He shook his head, glaring at a patch of back-alley scrub bush just to Stan’s left. “Of course fucking Brewster’s fucking impressed.”

Stan bit down on his bottom lip. “Whatever. Maybe I’d buy that if your project wasn’t a goddamn portal to other dimensions. I don’t know what ‘multi-dimensional paradigm theory’ is, but -”

“- but West Coast Tech is the big name in it,” Rick finished for him, rolling his eyes. “Even though they’re - they’re at least two decades behind the times - ” He gave his head a shake. “How the fuck did Brewster even get his hands on my portal gun plans anyway? That - that thing’s nowhere near the prototype stage - unless my dad -”

“Save it,” Stan interrupted. “I dunno how stupid you think I am, but I’m not this thick. I’m out. Find some other dumbass to be your sidekick."

He gave Rick one more shove, before letting him go and walking away.

“Fine,” Rick called after him, like he was trying to sound casual but failing, his voice rising the longer Stan failed to turn around. “Like - like I need some stupid fag hanging around getting his - his - his stupid feelings in my way anyway. Maybe I’ll take that West Coast Tech scholarship and you can stay here and - and suck Stanford Pines’ dick instead! Does - does it matter whose it is, so long as you’ve got one in your - in your - in your stupid fat mouth?”

Stan didn’t look back, just flipped Rick off and kept walking.

...

Stan doesn’t snore. He doesn’t care what Rick says. The guy’s only actually spent the night with him, what, twice before their little road trip? He doesn’t get to talk.

Rick, though. Rick definitely snores. Rick snores like it’s a competition and he’s determined he’s gonna win. 

The glowing red display on the clock on the nightstand is blinking 07:38. It’s been blinking that, Stan realises, the whole time they’ve been here. He has no idea what time it is, and he’s not getting up now to find his watch. Rick might snore like he’s trying to wake the dead, but he’s also impossible to actually get to sleep and wakes up at the sound of a pin dropping. If Stan tries to work his arm out from under Rick’s five whole pounds of body weight, Rick’s gonna be up for the rest of the night and probably be the crankiest asshole this side of Texas all day tomorrow. Stan can’t deal with that shit while he’s driving.

So he lies, in the slightly-too-warm cocoon of the covers, distinctly aware of the sweat pooled under his arms and in the small of his back, of the press of Rick’s ribs against the fleshy underside of his left arm, of the sound of his breathing in the motel quiet, of the occasional flash of light and speeding shadow puppetry on the wall in front of him when the headlights of some passing car on the freeway filter through the skimpy curtains. Stan tries to take deep, slow, even breaths. He wishes he could turn the TV on without waking Rick. If he doesn’t sleep tonight, he’s gonna be useless to drive tomorrow.

It’s weird, though, trying to sleep without the soft sounds of breathing from the bunk overhead.

Stan squeezes his eyes shut, presses his face into the back of Rick’s neck, and tries, again, to take slow, deep, even breaths.

...

The worst part was the quiet.

Life above Pines Pawns was never quiet, of course, with Stan and Ford’s ma always on the phone with the rubes, but even she seemed to be toning it down. Stan and Ford’s pa, never all that talkative at the best of times, was acting like none of the rest of the family were even there. And Ford - 

Ford looked up from the books strewn across his desk exactly once, when Stan opened the door to their room, scowled, and then turned abruptly back to the page he’d been staring at. Stan noticed that the pile of hardcover, brick-thick textbooks around him looked like it’d doubled.

He didn’t ask if Ford’s eyes had got so red from staring so hard at the textbook or from crying. 

“Dad seems...quiet,” he said, instead, lamely, dropping onto his bed. “What, did I just miss all the fireworks?”

Ford didn’t respond, didn’t even turn around.

Stan glanced off to his right, puffing out a breath. He didn’t really know what he’d expected. “Look, Rick’s an asshole.”

“Do you think I don’t know that, Stanley?” The words came out tight and controlled, like Ford was making them as quiet as he could to keep from yelling. 

Stan shuffled back further onto the bed, kicking off his sneakers before he kicked both feet up onto the bedspread. “If there’s anything I can do to help -”

“You’ve done more than enough already.” The words came out like bullets, each one hurled at the wall Ford was facing. Stan didn’t even have time to open his mouth to snap back before Ford was heaving out a sigh. “Honestly, Stanley, I need to work twice as hard to prove myself if I’m going to impress any other schools into taking me, now that I already have a rejection from West Coast Tech under my belt. And for that, I need to be able to concentrate.” 

He finally turned to face Stan, and Stan felt something sink into the pit of his stomach like a bowling ball even before Ford opened his mouth and said, “The best thing you can do for me right now is leave me alone.”

...

Carla wasn’t around when Stan stopped by the skate park. Her long-haired boyfriend glared him down, so he kept walking, hands in his pockets, whistling a little like he didn’t give a shit anyway.

Rick wasn’t up at the cannery plant. Which was good. It wasn’t like Stan even wanted to see his bitch ass.

None of the guys were hanging around the machine shop, and it was too early for the boardwalk to be any fun, all little kids high on too much grease and sugar running around screaming and their parents desperately running after them. Stan bought a bag of fries from one of the food stands and went and sat on one of the benches anyway. He ended up feeding most of his fries to a seagull that kept hanging around. By the time the bag was finished off, the seagull was practically sitting in his lap.

“Maybe I could be a seagull trainer,” Stan said, to its beady eye. “Think anybody’s ever put together a seagull circus before?”

The seagull didn’t answer. It pecked curiously at the empty paper bag in Stan’s hand, translucent with grease, and then, finding no more fries, grabbed the bag and took off with a flap of its wings that nearly hit Stan in the face.

...

It was nearly a week before Stan heard from Rick again.

The first pebble hit the window of Stan and Ford’s room with a dull, faintly melodious thwonk, startling Stan out of a dream he’d been having about some kind of British dog-man and a duck that was somehow the dog-man’s brother? And a detective? Some kinda nonsense, anyway.

He thought for a moment that the noise had just been part of the dream, until another pebble rattled against the window and Stan was instantly wide awake.

It took two more pebbles before he stuck his head out the window to see Rick standing down on the street, one hand shoved in his pocket like he was daring anybody who might pass by to think he was anything but totally relaxed and casual, the other winding up to throw another pebble. Stan opened up the window just in time for Rick to let it fly. The pebble bounced off Stan’s forehead and fell back towards the street, making Stan’s head twinge.

“What the hell?” he whisper-yelled down at Rick, before spinning to check if Ford had heard him. Thankfully, Ford was passed out across his textbooks at his desk, where he’d been sitting studying when Stan had gone to bed. His desk lamp was still on.

“I told West Coast Tech to go fuck themselves,” Rick called softly up from the street, and Stan’s attention was wrenched back down to the street. “Bunch of - of - of boring old cocksuckers. Like they can teach me anything.”

“What?” Stan asked.

“I - I - I told ‘em to take their stupid scholarship and shove it right up their collective ass!” Rick said, and Stan shushed him, looking back over his shoulder in Ford’s direction. “Fuck ‘em. Who - who actually wants to spend all of their formative years in - in - in some kind of human cattle pen? School is for - for dweebs like your asshole brother.”

“Rick,” Stan started, but Rick interrupted with another pebble to Stan’s face. “Ow! What the fuck?”

“Get your ass down here, we’re leaving,” Rick called up. “If - if you’re not down here with all your shit in ten minutes, I’ll find some other lovesick idiot with a car.” 

“What?”

Ford made some soft noise from behind Stan, and Stan froze, holding his own breath until he heard Ford start breathing the slow and steady breaths of a sleeper again.

“You - you huuuurpeard me,” Rick shouted. “Fuck ‘em! Fuck your shitty schools, fuck your shitty family, fuck ‘potential’, fuck what everybody else wants! Treasure hunting, Pines! Some of your ideas don’t - don’t totally suck balls. You’re not getting me out on the ocean on - on - on a fucking boat that your dumb ass repaired, though.”

Stan couldn’t speak, for a long moment. 

“Rick,” he started, around the lump sitting hot and inconvenient somewhere around his lungs.

“Yeah, yeah. Move it or lose it,” Rick called back up, then turned and vanished around the side of the pawn shop.

It didn’t take Stan any time to throw a bag together. It wasn’t like he owned all that much worth taking, anyway. He threw in a few pairs of jeans, t-shirts, a jacket, his wallet and the contents of the little jar he’d been saving change in for dates, another pair of sneakers, his boxing gloves. He debated a moment, then slipped the family photo on the nightstand out of its frame, folding it carefully and sliding it into his wallet.

He paused, a moment, watching Ford’s back rise and fall, the rhythm steady, peaceful. 

Then Stan grabbed the blanket off the top bunk and draped it carefully around Ford’s shoulders, before hoisting his duffel bag over one shoulder and slipping carefully out of their shared room. 

He made sure to shut the door silently behind him.

...

Stan must’ve gotten to sleep somehow, because the next thing he knows, he’s waking up to sunlight streaming yellow through the open window and Rick throwing their shit back into their bags.

Twenty minutes later, they’re back on the road, speeding up and over the cloverleaf. Stan’s pretty sure they’re never going to be allowed to stay at that motel again, considering they left the room full of pizza garbage and skipped out on the bill. He can’t bring himself to care much. He really, really hopes he’s stayed overnight in Ohio for the last time.

“We’re gonna have to stop somewhere for gas,” he says, peering at the green sign hanging over the roadway, trying to pick out the sign for their exit. “Maybe we can make it over the border first, though.”

“And we’re - we’re stopping at the next Shoney’s we see,” Rick says. “I’m not going anywhere today without waffles. Hey, dipshit, our - our exit’s on the right.”

“I knew that,” Stan says, swerving into the right lane.

“Put on your fucking glasses,” Rick grumbles. Stan flips him off.

The sun pours hot through the Stanleymobile’s windows, air conditioning rattling as it gamely spits odd blasts of freezing air out the vents in the dash, until Stan can barely feel his fingers on the steering wheel even though there’s sweat dripping down his neck. Some shitty rock song is playing softly on the radio, and Rick cranks the volume up, kicking one foot up on the dash and playing air guitar as he sings nasally along to the guitar solo. The sky ahead is a perfect, crystal blue, stretching from horizon to horizon.

There’s only thirty-two hours of driving between them and California.