#the fuck you mean those buildings could have collapsed on us

[thetimelordbatgirl]

How it feels finding out your former college is among the schools found to have the bad concrete in their buildings:

[runninriot]

Damn You, Capitalism!

inspired by and written for @sidekick-hero , hope that helps getting through the day 🖤 because work sucks (i know!) - but eddie sucks harder 😏

1.231 words | cw: contains smut, nsfw, mdni

also on ao3

Steve has been drowning in work lately, it's a nightmare.

Eddie tries his best to support him, to make things as little stressful for him at home as it can possibly be.

He keeps the guitar unplugged when he's working on new music, to keep the noise at a minimum.

Always makes sure there's some meal ready for Steve to grab and microwave when and if he remembers to eat.

He reminds himself to do the dishes as soon as he's done with them because he knows how much Steve hates when the sink is full of dirty plates and forks and mugs.

Eddie even finally figured out how to use their new washing machine - he's not stupid, just lazy, and- why does that damn thing need so many buttons?

So, yeah. He's trying, really, because it breaks his heart every night when Steve comes home from work, looking one moment away from collapsing. Always tired, always moody, just- miserable.

Eddie wishes he could do more. Wishes he could take some of Steve's stress away, help him relax. Ease his mind just for a while.

And- look, he knows what would probably, most definitely help, that's not the thing. The problem is, Steve can barely even stay up long enough to kiss Eddie goodnight as soon as they're in bed. So any attempts of trying to have some one-on-one quality time with his husband aren't really up for debate right now.

Right?

Right.

He'll just have to wait for this massive project to be over and done with.

---

As Eddie crawls into bed shortly after Steve, he finds him quietly snoring, already fast asleep with his face mushed uncomfortably against his pillow.

Even in his sleep, he looks exhausted and it makes Eddie mad how much that job is demanding of Steve.

He pictures himself in front of the corporate building that holds his husband's soul captive, angrily stomping up and down the pavement while waving a sign that reads Damn You, Capitalism! and the thought makes him laugh.

He realises too late that he's been making an awful lot of noise, instantly shuts himself up with a hand over his mouth when Steve stirs awake and looks at him through bleary eyes.

   "Is everything okay?"

Steve sounds knackered (he learned that word from his British co-worker) and Eddie hates himself for ripping him out of his well-deserved sleep.

   "I'm sorry, baby. Everything's good. I didn't mean to wake you up. Just go back to sleep, okay? I'll see you in the morning."

Eddie leans down to kiss his forehead before he turns off the light and lays down next to him, trying to be as still as he can to let Steve drift off peacefully again.

But the damage is already done. Even without looking he can sense that Steve has trouble falling back asleep and it’s confirmed by the heavy sigh Steve lets out.

   "Can you-" His voice flitters quietly through the room, "Can you suck my dick?”

    Oookay, what?

Eddie can’t help but snort at those words.

Steve must be dreaming. Maybe he did fall back asleep after all.

   “I’m being serious, Eds!” Steve sounds almost offended.

He then rolls to the side and even in the dark, Eddie can see his big eyes staring straight at him.

So, not sleeping, then.

   “Babe, are you sure? I’m just asking because- well, we haven’t done anything for weeks and I miss it. God, do I miss it. But you’ve been completely out of it not even 5 minutes ago and-“

What the hell is he even going on about?

His perfect, beautiful husband wants him to suck him off. Why the fuck is he still babbling instead of using his mouth to do exactly that?

   “I just think it’d help me sleep?”

Steve uses that honeysweet voice of his, the one he knows Eddie can never say no to, the one he always uses to get what he wants. And- like, what is Eddie if not a very devoted, very helpful, very loving husband that would quite literally do anything for his man?

---

Steve’s boxers are gone as quickly as the blanket before Eddie makes himself comfortable between his husband’s spread legs.

It’s almost embarrassing how much he’s already drooling just thinking about the perfect weight of Steve’s glorious cock on his tongue but- excuse him for not keeping his excitement in check when he’s literally been suffering from Steve-withdrawal for weeks now!

Still, he tries to take his time, not wanting it to be over too quickly. He can hear in Steve’s pleading moans that he won’t last long, can taste Steve’s desperation in each drop of precum that hits his tongue as he licks the tip.

It’s heaven.

It’s so good Eddie wants to cry.

    Fuck, he missed this. Missed the familiar stretch of his lips when he takes Steve in, the familiar sound of Steve’s husky voice, the scent of freshly showered skin, the feeling of sinking deeper and deeper on his lover’s cock as he swallows him down like he’s starving for it.

His hips can’t seem to keep still, wiggling and rubbing against the sheets where his own cock is searching for friction. But his focus is on Steve, he can take care of himself later. This is just for the beautiful man that is the light of his life – he deserves it. Deserves to be worshipped like the divine creature he is.

   “Ed- Eddie, oh God! Oh fuck!”

Steve’s words spur him on. He finds the perfect rhythm, uses one hand to pump Steve’s cock while his tongue curls around the tip. His other hand strokes the sensitive skin on his inner thigh, dragging his nails up and down, knowing too well that it drives Steve just a little insane.

   “Babe, I’m- I- fuck! Don’t stop. Please, don’t stop. I’m so close!”

Eddie wouldn’t dream of it.

Not when it makes him so happy to hear and taste and feel his husband slowly falling to pieces. When, with every staggering breath, Steve crawls a little closer to the edge.

Until finally, Eddie is rewarded with a mouthful of Steve’s love; a sweet gift, despite the bitter taste, he swallows with pride, not wasting a single drop of it, taking it all in.

Beneath him, Steve’s trembling through his orgasm, legs shaking and breath uneven. He stops Eddie with a hand in his hair, tugging just lightly to make him look up.

   “Com’ere, baby. Wanna kiss you.”

A little reluctantly, Eddie leaves the perfect place between Steve’s thighs and crawls on top of him to comply.

They kiss slow and soft, no hurry, just their lips finding each other in the dark with gentle pressure.

   “Love you so much, baby,” Eddie whispers against Steve’s lips as he feels his movements slow down.

And as he kisses his way from Steve’s mouth to his cheek, to the tip of his nose, his closed lids and his forehead, Steve’s breathing eases into a steady, calm rhythm.

He’s asleep again, hopefully dreaming of beautiful things as he sinks deeper into Eddie’s embrace, lets his husband's warmth envelope him where they’re lying side by side.

Steve deserves it.

Because tomorrow, he has to fight his way through the constricting clutches of capitalism again.

Man, capitalism really sucks.

But, Eddie laughs to himself, he can suck harder.

[lilacskyly]

Honored Ones: Yandere Satoru Gojo x Reader

(This might be bad idk :,> not that proud of it)

Throughout Heaven and the Earth, he  is the honored one. 

Then what does that make you?

“Oh goddess~ You aren’t hiding from me, are you?” you heard Satoru Gojo coo as his steps echoed throughout the abandoned building. You covered your mouth, trying your best to cover your shaky breath. “You can’t hide from me forever~ You know we’re bound… right goddess?” You heard him laugh and then a chain rattled. You froze, staring at your wrist to see the spirit bind chain that was shackled to your wrist. “Stop fighting me. You already know I can sense you… right?” he questioned. Tears fell out of your eyes just as Gojo teleported in front of you. “Found you~”

You jumped before he covered your mouth. He put a finger to his lips, “Sssshhh my dear…. Ssshh… I’m here… those special grade curses are gone… there’s no need to cry!” He smiled for you before planting a small kiss on your forehead. If you didn’t know better, he would’ve just been his normal self. But, after you saw him kill those curses and some of his fellow jujutsu sorcerers for ‘getting in the way’, you knew you couldn’t trust his smile.

“S-satoru…”

His smile only grew upon hearing his name come from your lips. God.. those perfect lips of yours. He was practically salivating.

He snapped himself out of his thoughts. “Yes my goddess?”

“W-where are the others?” you asked.

“The others? Oh… you mean the pests. They're gone now. They can't bother us now~” he whispered in your ear. “You cryin’? It's okay my goddess… you're safe now.” 

He took your hand in his and lifted you off the ground. Despite your fear of him, you hugged him and started crying even more. He engulfed you in a hug as well. “Never do that again.” he said, getting scarily serious for once.

“I-I won’t! I swear I won’t!” you cried. He knew better than to take your word for that.

He sighed, “Let’s go home goddess. You’ve had a long day..”

You couldn’t track how long it took you to get to his place. Time always seemed to mush together when you were with him. You couldn’t tell if that was a good thing or not. Gojo locked the door behind you two when you entered his place. He collapsed on the sofa, pulling on the spirit bind chain to get you to come over. 

“Y’know goddess, I never imagined being this close to you…” he started. “After all, you’re barely a jujutsu sorcerer my dear… it’s a miracle we even met.”

“... y-yeah… I-I’m sorry, I’m really weak..” you said, looking down at his hands. 

He shook his head. “Stop lying to yourself. You may not be as strong as you want… but soon enough you will be.”

“H-how?”

“I’ve been hinting at a surprise haven’t I? I think it’s about time I finally reveal it.” he smiled softly at you.

You tilted your head, confusion spread across your face. “W-what do you mean?”

“You’re almost entirely mine, my precious goddess~ Did you figure out what I’ve been doing yet?” he asked innocently. 

Wait. He didn’t.. He fucking wouldn’t.

He smiled after seeing your expression. “You’ve figured it haven’t you? You’re so smart my goddess! I’ve been putting drops of my blood into your food I’ve prepared for you… and you know how your cursed technique works.. Right?”

Of course you did! You weren’t stupid.. Were you?

“Your cursed technique isn’t very practical… at least for you. You have to quite literally consume a part of a person to gain their strength. But but but! If you ingest too much, your life becomes officially theirs to control. It’s funny really.. You get stronger but you become less and less you the more you do so!”

“G-gojo… w-what..?”

“Look my goddess… I know someone as holy as you could never be mine… so, I’m taking fate into my own hands. We will be together now, forever. No matter what you do, you won’t be able to die as long as I’m alive. You can’t even escape me in death. We’re bound, remember goddess? You’ve sealed your fate the very moment you agreed to this.” He grabbed your wrist, showing the spirit bind you two established. You both had to ingest some of each other's blood to even establish it. You just wanted to be stronger… to be protected by someone…

You should’ve died to those curses in that building earlier.

Before you knew it, Gojo tore at his wrist till it bled heavily. He held it up for you to drink his blood. He chuckled as you looked at him in horror. “H-how… how long have you..”

“Oh, since we made the pact. I’ve had my sight on you for quite a while my dear.” he said nonchalantly. “Now, drink up. Haven’t got all night.”

You shook your head causing him to laugh loudly. “Seriously? You’re still being stubborn? You really don’t get it dear… you’re mine.” His blue eyes pierced your own, seeming to tear into your brain. “Now, drink.”

Your body moved without you as you downed his blood. The taste was repulsive, you hated doing this. Gojo however seemed to be enjoying it as he petted your hair muttering ‘good girl’ every now and again. He pushed you away after some time. “Now now dear, we don’t want to suck me completely dry, do we?” he teased.

“Mhm…” was all you managed to say.

“Y’know… the pact is fully made now, right? Ha! How funny! I can literally control you now!” he laughed lightly. “We can claim this world as ours… and ours alone. After all, we’re gods… together we are the honored one…”

He pulled on the now fully materialized chain around both your wrists and hummed cheerfully. 

“Let’s go have some fun, shall we?” 

[alovesongtheywrote]

Nightmare Academia P.5 | Spencer Reid x Reader

♥ Summary:  the prank war continues- you steal spencer's mugs, he uses one of your worst fears against you, and you're both dicks to each other [Prof!Spencer Reid x GN-Prof!Reader]

♥ Warnings: reader makes a mean comment about spencer being fatherless, spencer picks at the reader's insecurities- y'know, normal fare. also, spiders. ALSO, MENTIONS OF THAT RABIES EPISODE FROM SEASON 9.

♥ A/N: i know this has been mindless shenanigans so far, but the next few chapters will contain hints of plot, i promise

♥ Word Count: 1525

Series Masterlist

You didn’t have to send the typewriter in again.  For the most part, this was a good thing- it meant that Reid was no longer torturing his students by making them write their notes and assignments by hand.  It meant that your students were no longer lingering on the edge of collapse.  It meant that the student body was dealing with healthy levels of stress.

It also meant you’d lost your main method for bothering Reid.

While you wouldn’t complain about Reid going pro-tech (or at least tech-neutral) it did mean that you couldn’t send the typewriter to Reid’s classes without being a massive bitch.  Before, when he had been tormenting his students, the annoying click of the typewriter had been a punishment.  It was all fair game.  

Now, you would have to find something more creative.  You would have to get crafty- punishing Reid for his various slights against you whilst being annoying, but not disruptive.  

So.  You decided to steal his mugs.

The idea crept over you like a bug, wiggling into you until you just had to do it.  So, you did.  You waited until he was teaching, and you snuck into his office.  The lock on the door was university regulation- and therefore, it was easy enough to bypass with a lockpick and the tiniest bit of skill.

Like that, you were in- and you were overcome with the realization that this was the first time you had ever really been in Reid’s office.  He’d been to yours plenty of times, he was the one who dropped off the typewriter after every class, but you never had a reason to come to his office.

At least, you hadn’t had a reason until now.

You were surprised by how familiar the space was.  It was warmly lit, filled with books and various trinkets.  The walls were covered with his doctorates and degrees.  Mathematics, Chemistry, Engineering, Psychology, Sociology- fuck that guy for being smarter than you.

You didn’t have time to dwell on that, though.  You were on a mission.  A mug-related mission.  

You searched the office, looking through drawers and swinging open cabinets until you found what you were looking for.  Behind Spencer’s desk inside a small cabinet, they sat- mugs.  Honestly, the sheer number of mugs tucked into such a small space was kind of impressive.  You certainly had options.

Eventually, you selected a dark blue mug designed to look like the TARDIS.  That was cute.  You did your best not to find it too endearing.  You promised yourself that you wouldn’t find anything in that office endearing.

And then, upon standing, you immediately broke that promise.

On top of the cabinet that stored all his mugs was a copy of Pride and Prejudice.  Your fingers brushed across the cover.  That alone was enough to charm you, but then you noticed, beneath the book- an article.  An analysis of Pride and Prejudice.  You would know the words on those pages anywhere.  You wrote that article.  

You felt heat building beneath your skin as a blush crawled up to your face.  You pulled away from the book as if it had burned you.  Kicking the cabinet door closed, you collected the mug in your hands, and you raced from the room as fast as you possibly could.

-

Reid enacted his vengeance swiftly.

Clearly, he was still in contact with that FBI tech girl of his- and CLEARLY, she was less of a tech girl and more of a mind reader, because she somehow found out about your phobia of spiders, and then she told Reid about it.

You knew all of this because one morning, you walked into your office to find a mug sitting innocently on your desk.  Inside of it, a rubber spider.  You, however, didn’t know it was rubber.  

You had spent the night before grading assignments, helping your GED students edit their papers, and crying over a really cute baby goat.  Needless to say, you were sleep-deprived- and it was in this sleep-deprived state that you flung the mug at the wall on instinct because you thought there was a spider inside of it.

Luckily, Reid, in his infinite wisdom, had predicted that this would be a possibility- or you assumed he had.  The mug was a tough thing, and flinging it at the wall hadn’t even put a chip in it.  The fake spider was also fine (which was good, because if it had been alive, and you had killed it, you probably would’ve cried again).

Once your racing heartbeat had returned to normal, you tried to calm down by grabbing one of your actual mugs from its actual place in a large drawer beneath your desk.

A fake spider sprung out at you the second you opened the thing.

You screamed, slapping the fake creature right off of its mechanism and across the room.  Once you were done having a teeny tiny panic attack over that, you took a closer look at your mug drawer.  Reid had put his engineering degree to good use, rigging up a mechanism that would let the fake arachnid jump at you once you’d triggered it by opening the door.  You were pissed- and a little bit impressed- but mostly pissed.

The last straw was the actual spider on your ceiling.  It wasn’t put there by Reid, but you still blamed him for it.  Once the little critter was gently placed outside, you stormed off to Reid’s office.  You didn’t care that it was the first thing in the morning, nor did you care that you had a class starting in a few minutes.  The only thing on your mind was Spencer Reid, and the many ways you could insult him.

You practically kicked open his office door, hitting maximum rage as you stormed inside “You DEEPLy UNFABULOUS POOL NOODLE.”

“Good morning, Dr. (L/N).  Sleep well?”

“No.  Fuck you for asking.  Fuck you even more for the SPIDER in the MUG.”

Spencer didn’t even look up from the paperwork on his desk, “At least it was fake.  The bacteria colonies that are currently gathering in my mug are very real.”

“Oh, come on, Reid.  I’m not using it.  I have some decorum.”

He flipped a page, “I find that hard to believe.  So, what kept you up, (L/N)?  Crippling self-doubt?  The crushing weight of reality and your inability to find a place in it?”

You brushed off the self-doubt comment.  He couldn’t know that was half of what kept you up grading papers so late.  

“Oh, baby, I know my place in it- it’s twofold.  I’m here to be dumb and annoy your terrible self,” you walked over and pushed all his papers to the side just enough for you to take a seat, “And I’m all out of dumb to be.”

Finally, Spencer looked up at you, “So here you are.  Y’know, insecurity doesn’t look good on you.”

“And fatherless behaviour doesn’t look good on you, yet here we are.  ANYWAY, my special little science boy, I am here to inform you that you’re gonna need to get more mugs.  Why?  Because I’m going to take everything you have, and I will leave you with nothing.  It won’t be today, nor will it be tomorrow, but one day you’ll come into work to face the most terrifying of all the Earth’s horrors- a lack of mugs.”

He paused, lips parted slightly as his eyes danced up and down your face.  Honestly, he probably would’ve been more upset about the fatherless comment if you hadn’t followed it up with such a monologue.  Now he just felt the need to one-up you.

He’d heard somewhere that less is more.

“Actually, the most terrifying of all Earth’s horrors is probably rabies.  Y’know, the BAU once had a case where a serial killer forcibly infected his victims with the disease in order to kill them.”

“Excuse me?”

The pure horror in your voice was delightful.  Spencer looked down to his wrist where his watch lay over his cardigan.  Of course, he already knew the time- he just didn’t want you to see the massive grin on his face, “Oh, shoot.  I have a class to teach.  Help yourself to the mugs, Doctor.  I hope you like arachnids in yours.”  

You sat in shock as Spencer grabbed his bag and threw it over his shoulder.

“Wait, Reid, I’m still on the rabies thing-”

“Bye, (Y/N).”

“‘Bye?’  The fuck do you mean ‘bye?’  Get back here and explain the rabies thing!”

He did not get back there and explain the rabies thing.  He just left you in his office with the terror of rabies hanging over your head.  Moving quickly, you stole your mug of the day and left.  That evening, while Reid was revelling in his temporary victory, you made a call that you never thought you would make.

“Hi, is this Derek Morgan?  Yeah, I’m a criminal justice student,” you lied, “I just had some questions about a case of yours involving rabies?”

Reid would rue the day he brought up the rabies thing- on that, you and SSA Morgan agreed.

♥ Tags: @icarusignite

[bestworstcase]

@cryptidblues tumblr ate this one too, maybe drop tumblr support a line to check if you’ve been erroneously shadowbanned 

Oscar is dying! He’s dying! We’re getting the full weight and crisis of the merge in volume 10 I NEED IT. The image of him collapsed on the sand as the sunrises with his back to the long memory OOUGH just like Ruby and crescent rose after she drank the tea, before the tree took her. The reversal on “I don’t want to be me anymore” / please let me stay myself. The lad is being eaten alive! From the inside out! By an unstoppable brain parasite that will kill him! And Replace Him! I Need the slow build up of horror from Oscar and everyone involved. “And Oscar…just isn’t himself” they’re place setting. Getting the table ready. Ooh yknow he’s hiding those merge episodes/attacks from his friends. I NEED the existential terror and dread! BUT I NEED THE CATHARSIS OF OSCAR BEING KNOWN, SEEN & SAVED TOO ;-;

NOT to make a post oscar about ozma instead but the thing that is really, really pulling the hinges off for me is the implication that this is happening because oz started actively fighting the merge. as long as oscar resisted and oz kept up the drumbeat of “this is inevitable, there is nothing either of us can do,” the curse kept on quietly eroding oscar as the boundary became thinner and thinner between them. it was, for lack of a better term, stable. 

the moment oz tries to resist, the curse starts trying to rip him forward. to force him to take over, inflicting what seems to be torturous amounts of pain on both of them. the subtle, silent, invisible violence that was inflicted on oscar before explodes outward to attack both of them. 

how many times have i said this curse is specifically designed to make it impossible for ozma to change? that the whole point is to prevent ozma from ever changing his mind or defying the god of light? never doubt me. the literal fucking instant ozma tries to break free, the curse becomes YOU DO NOT HAVE A CHOICE. 

the curse had a failsafe the whole time.

/ozma tangent

oscar though. this poor kid. like the greatest burden on his shoulders in the last four volumes has always been that no one wants to openly acknowledge what’s happening to him and the nature of the merge’s violence being so completely internal means that no one has to look at it except him. and he’s been so isolated in that existential dread but he’s also grown so accustomed to being treated like just. the next ozpin. that when the violence abruptly becomes externalized in reaction to oz’s resistance, oscar… hides it. keeps it to himself. somewhere deep down the idea that it doesn’t matter to anyone what happens to him got lodged in his brain so deeply that he keeps it hidden!!

and i’m obsessed with the emotional complexity the layers of what he’s feeling with regard to ruby, because it’s not as simple as that he misses her and aspires to her optimism; there’s also some underlying resentment there (“you were always so sure that everything would work out…right up until the moment it didn’t” <- paraphrasing) because she was wrong and he wishes he could borrow her certainty but she was wrong. she fell. she was wrong. 

BUT AT THE SAME TIME, everyone else believes that they’re gone forever. that they’re dead. oscar doesn’t. he’s thinking about it in terms of where they might have gone, what might have happened to them, he’s doing research because deep down, there’s a teeny tiny spark of hope that hasn’t been extinguished yet. so there’s this subtext of i wish i had your certainty. even though you were wrong. i’m still trying to find you. we’re still fighting this. you always saw me for who i really was. i don’t know who i am anymore.—there’s this tension throughout the monologue between bitterness and hope, and i don’t know if oscar is even capable of seeing that he is still hopeful or that he does have, if not ruby’s kind of certainty, something of his own that rhymes. he’s feeling this bleak about everything and still trying to figure out where they are because he doesn’t believe they’re dead. 

it was oscar’s idea to put the memorial where the portal had been. it’s taller than a person and shaped like a door. it’s a memorial but it’s also a symbol; the portal is gone, but they were inside it still, we should build our own door so they can find their way home. and then they do, according to the context given. the blacksmith gave them a doorway that went right through their memorial.  ETA: never mind, misremembered

ruby confronting and facing his mortality after running away from it for three volumes to galvanize her to really try to save him vs oscar doing whatever he can think of to somehow save her while roiling in all these complicated painful feelings about how no one cares to know how he’s suffering because it isn’t like there’s any real hope for him. tasty!

[matan4il]

Daily update post:

The IDF estimates, maybe based on a baby bottle that was found where hostages are known to have been held, in the basement of the Rantisi hospital in Gaza, that a woman who was kidnapped while pregnant, has given birth in captivity. That makes her child the youngest hostage, at the age of a few days at most.

While our kids and babies are being held hostage in dark basements and tunnels, Israel is offering Gazans medical assistance for their kids. At this link you can listen to a subtitled conversation (the article is in Hebrew, just scroll to the first embedded vid), where an IDF officer is offering the Shifa hospital manager to place at the entrance to the building 37 incubators and 4 respirators for the kids and babies. The officer also vows to the manager to help protect as much as possible the patients, wards and staff in the hospital. During the conversation, the offer is accepted, but the IDF says later it was rejected. As I can't see who would outrank the hospital manager, I'm guessing the "No" came from Hamas.

Rockets continue to be fired into Israel. Today, a rocket barrage at Tel Aviv, at a kids playground, left one person seriously wounded, and two moderately.

Thank you so much to the Israeli Nonnie who sent me this vid. Yes, that is exactly what I was talking about when I mentioned in my update yesterday, this is Hamas attacking Palestinians in order to take over this aid truck and get all of the food for themselves (the relevant footage starts 11 seconds in):

Jeremy Corbyn, the man who could have been the British Prime Minister, and who British Jews called out on antisemitism, was interviewed by Piers Morgan. He was asked 15 (arguably 16) times to answer the question whether Hamas is a terrorist group, but refused to give a reply.

I was listening to this interview with Ella Keinan (it's in Hebrew), an Israeli travel vlogger, who has started posting about the Israeli POV since Oct 8. She didn't say anything I didn't know, but I thought the way she phrased things was powerful, so allow me to translate:

They created a brand called Free Palestine, which is not actually freeing the Palestinians and giving them what they want, but under this brand it's possible to do anything nowadays, it's possible to rape, it's possible to slaughter, it's possible to kidnap, it's possible to abuse, to kill, it's possible to hurt and kill Jews in LA, it's possible to attack them at universities, and you'll still be applauded. Meaning, you'll still be popular. That's how powerful this brand is.

Meanwhile, Israel's foreign diplomacy has officially been shut down due to a lack of budget. A lot of government offices are being shut down, and their budget is being re-directed to help the evacuated, the families of the murdered, the injured, financially supporting people whose businesses have collapsed, compensating those whose homes were destroyed by Palestinian rockets. So when you hear people dismissing regular Israelis' posts as paid propaganda by the Israeli government... what a fucking joke, Israel can't even currently pay professionals in this field, let alone regular people.

This is 19 years old Noa Marziano.

Yesterday, Hamas published a vid of her as a hostage. The Israeli media refused to cooperate with the psychological warfare, no one published it. Today, the IDF was able to confirm that Noa was murdered in captivity.

This is 12 years old Liel Hetzroni.

Her mother Shira, after gaving birth to her and her twin brother, suffered brain damage, and couldn't take care of her kids, so they were raised by their grandparents. Liel's grandfather and brother's bodies were already found. Today, after having been missing for 38 days, Liel's death was also pronounced.

This is 75 years old Vivien Silver.

She was a peace activists. Among other things, she used to volunteer her time driving Gazans to medical treatments in Israel. She was thought to be kidnapped in Gaza, but today her body was identified.

May their memories be a blessing.

(for all of my updates and ask replies regarding Israel, click here)

[deusvervewrites]

Thoughts and opinions on the current state of the MHA manga?

That's hard to say given the cliffhanger elements of the most recent chapter.

Now that the Final War Arc is over I can give my thoughts on that. It's interesting that each member of the League vanishes after their defeat. We haven't seen Spinner, Toga, and we only got a glimpse of Dabi this chapter. That feels like it's building to something.

I liked Toga and Dabi both collapsing at the end of a confrontation where their counterpart(s) reached out to them, but Toga sacrificed herself for someone else for the first time in her life while Dabi had to have his ass kicked like eight times before he stayed down, and his fight ends with him finally getting his father to listen to him.

I think "Decay used to be Overhaul" is a bit overly complicated when it could have easily been its own Quirk that AFO gave him. As it stands it raises some questions, like, "Can Overhaul do this shit?" Or, "Since it was confirmed that Overhaul's orphanage was run by AFO, why didn't AFO use Overhual himself ever?" Okay we know that last one is because AFO sucks and hates learning Quirks, but you know what I mean.

I liked how the Final War brought out the best in people who had been shown in not-great light before, like Death Arms and The President of the United States.

Midnight's death has only gotten worse. It was fridging before and it's fridging now, but now it has the added bonus of pretending that it was going somewhere and then not going there. That scene with Ashido and Midnight's killer really added a whole lot when... we cut back to it and nothing happened and the killer was gone and didn't matter. Her death did not matter and has continued to not matter and I don't understand why she was killed in the first place.

All For One's final defeat is oddly similar to the end of Demon Slayer, complete with him having a baby form that fades away to nothing and then making a last stand in a stolen body that rejects him.

I don't like that Midoriya is losing One For All. Congratulations on your lifelong health issues in your arms, you have literally nothing to show for it. Everything you learned in your first year no longer fucking matters because you need an entirely different fighting style. Who knows, I might come around on this depending on how things play out.

(Bakugou losing his Quirk is something I've alluded to before as something I think would be cool. I'm less impressed by him hearing that Midoriya is losing his Quirk and breaking down in tears because now they won't be "competing" as if Midoriya could only compete with a Quirk. I'm sure it's not the intended reading but Bakugou's character development backslides so often for 'comedy' that I've lost faith in it during serious moments.)

I know some people don't like Midoriya reaching a hand out to save Shigaraki when he's killed so many people, but, like, that's kind of the whole theme of the work and I'm never going to advocate for any media which promotes killing the enemy as the best solution to the problem, especially because Shigaraki not only has a point, but he's like 20 years old and spent all 20 of those years being groomed and manipulated. I'm glad Midoriya reached his hand out. And, yes, while I dislike the loss of OFA, giving it away piece by piece to end AFO forever was symbolically cool.

The MLA War Arc still fucking sucked.

[coyotetatertot]

CW addiction, family breakup discussion, with a side of ranting about Emma-May and bi erasure. I'm a little drunk right now and so I'm not being kind in this one. 💧 Not tagging this under the fidds tag because the average fiddleford fan fucking terrifies me.

Thinking about the implications of the pterodactyl in combination with the stated purpose of the gobblewonker. The gobblewonker being made "to catch (Tate's) fancy" implies that murderous robots are Fidds' best attempt at reaching out. A twisted, broken combination of his love language of gift giving and his need to build & be constructive for his own self-worth.

As a side note, do you know how much trouble and extra work that would have caused for a LAKE RANGER LMFAO. It's Tate's literal job to keep people from killing themselves out there and now there's a robot constructed for that purpose. Probably taking a few cracks at him, too, given he's a fisherman.

This .. ties into how McGucket is coded as a late stage meth addict. Not just with the physical symptoms (hair and teeth falling out, injuries that won't heal, etc) but with the mental symptoms, too. Mania and delusions — the latter being the key one, here. If you've ever listened to the families of late stage meth addicts, you might know about the thought patterns addicts tend to get stuck in. Many of them become convinced of falsehoods, think they're doing something good, and don't realize they're crossing boundaries and hurting those closest to them.

So to me, it tracks that for Fiddleford, delusions can manifest as a killer robot for a gift. As he's stated HIMSELF, he's convinced that it's a good thing. A sign of love. A plea for his son to visit him, again. Unable to process that it's actively endangering Tate, instead.

This is pertinent because Fidds loved his family above all else. Keeping their picture on his desk, fawning over them to Ford and going on about how they're the only people that keep him grounded. Foreshadowing for when they WERE the only thing that kept him grounded: he threw away every part of himself, including his own fucking name ("look! It's them words people call me!") but he NEVER forgot his wife and kid. The way his brain was collapsing in on itself "LIKE A NEUTRON STAR" and yet he held on to the memories of his wife and child. Fiddleford's mind was so fucking broken he thought his own reflection was a separate person with whom he could have a territory war. Literally failing a mirror self-recognition test, one of the cornerstones of how we classify cognition, and yet he STILL recognized his adult son, and remembers the date he last visited. Even when he forgot to get them Christmas gifts (bad, and an example of how addiction can fuck with your deeply-held values), he was devastated with how he'd hurt them and immediately locked himself away. Imagining the dread and guilt festering in him as he processed what he'd done — might have even been the moment he realized he had a problem (?)

The amount of love this man had for his family is one of the most compelling and gut-wrenching things about this tragedy. Because all this pain came from good intentions. It came from a place of love. It inadvertently turned him against the people he loved most — and for the latter stages, he probably didn't realize just how much he was hurting them. That is what addiction can do. It can and will FUCK you and turn you into a bomb that devastates everyone around you. And in the words of an addict, "The hardest part about recovery isn't keeping yourself from using. It's coping with the things you did back when you were using."

And that aspect of storytelling gets slept upon by fandom because we'd prefer to erase Emma-May as a problem character and rewrite Fiddleford's canon relationship as comphet despite it being one of his biggest motivators. And it ain't enough for him to be bisexual because then that'd imbue the marriage and family with too much meaning; for him to be maximally shippable, we have to nullify how he felt about his marriage, thereby rewriting his priorities, and making the full, ugly, devastating brunt of the consequences of addiction fall to the wayside. Because it's fucking hard to delve into the realities of waking up, realizing that your wife gave up on you, your son grew up fatherless and has watched you at your lowest point for years, you endangered both their lives with terrible machines, and YOU destroyed THEIR futures as well as your own, when we don't want to admit just how much these people meant to Fiddleford to begin with.

Which brings me back to the pterodactyl. I can't help but wonder if, like the gobblewonker, it was supposed to be a gift. A cry for help. Perhaps even begging to take him back, because he was circling the drain and losing his family — again, the thing he clung to the hardest — was one of the last milestones on the way down.

And I can't help but think that would be more compelling — and consistent with what we know about Fiddleford's attitude while addicted. "Some desperate part of him seemed to be trying to heal himself, hoping to weld his memories back together like one of his robots." Fiddleford isn't the kind of guy to sit idly by; he tries to fix shit. If his last ditch attempt to win his family back ended up traumatizing them instead?? What a poetic and thematically brilliant way that would be for the end of their family breakup.

And what a heartbreaking, bleak reality he would have to confront whenever he regains his mind.

[thedreadvampy]

So, wow, ok, it doesn't grant them voting rights or a seat on the Security Council but the UN has successfully voted to move Palestine from an observer state to a member state, which means it can put forwards motions and join debates.

this is. fucking miraculous. as a sign that the US is wavering in its support of Israel.

Of course they're bitching about it and the US right are already trying to pull all funding from the UN (frankly I'm in favour of this if it was unilateral can we be honest cause if the US actually shot its load and withdrew from the UN maybe the UN could be something other than an arm of US control) but this has never been allowed to happen.

(threatening to pull funding is America's favourite pasttime when it comes to Israel, and is also the only reason Israel exists at all, because America threatened to pull funding and aid if there was a single-state solution in 1947)

As long as the US puts its full weight behind Israel, as it has for over 75 years, the popular movement for Palestine will not find any expression at an international state level. Nobody who is not already in America's bad books will intervene without support, and even those who are already disliked by the US, like Iran, are afraid to risk kicking off all out war with the US.

This is all true while America backs Israel.

But I think, or at least I hope, that it's becoming less and less tenable for them to put all their eggs in the Israel basket. They're being increasingly condemned and cold-shouldered from outside, and facing a popular uprising inside to a degree they haven't seen since the 60s which they're so far unable to quash through propaganda or violence. Popular support for Israel is collapsing fast.

Now to you or I - normal fucking guys - this is a moral issue first and foremost. People are being killed in their thousands and That's Bad. But governments don't believe in people, they believe in numbers - profit margins, approval ratings, debts, how many potential enemies vs how many potential allies.

A moral cost won't change things but an economic and political one will, and when the costs of supporting Israel outweigh the benefits, America will shuffle away from it and pretend they were against Israel all along.

If you believe, as I do, that Palestine will be free, then America still has time to do the thing it loves to do - come in blazing in defence of the underdog at the end of a genocide it sponsored and nurtured, claim the title of Great Liberator, and rely on everyone remembering that more than they remember the preceding decades.

the downside there is that the US has rarely been SO publicly, loudly in support of a second party state as it is with Israel. it has LOUDLY invested a lot - money, time, political capital - into Israel and the Zionist cause for over 100 years, and it's devoted a huge amount of its internal propaganda machine to a) the Goodness of Israel and b) the Arab world being the ultimate evil. I don't know if they can pull off the America Classic here. I don't know if anyone's buying it.

as well, the global incentives that made the US back the formation of Israel are still there - which is to say, there's a lot of Middle Eastern states with a lot of (reasonable) beef against the US, and Israel presents a powerful barrier to Arab unity. Could they transfer that power over to Saudi Arabia? Maybe, but that's still Arab. I think they're very afraid of losing a foothold in the Middle East. But also they're building hostility there again by continuing to support Israel, so they might be better advised to jump ship while they still can.

(the other fear I guess is that if they pull out and Israel survives and completes its genocide, they will also have lost the foothold, and will have burned all their bridges on both sides)

like my hope is that at this point the US state's relationship with Israel is a game of chicken and I hope they're coming towards a point where the internal division, the international condemnation, the rebellion of the UN, and the weakening of the Israeli state make it more threatening to US interests to stay allied to Israel than to withdraw.

And the US is the linchpin. The only thing allowing Israel to act with impunity is that the US is standing behind it holding a big stick.

When the US caves on Israel - and it will, sooner or later - the world will scramble to follow. So we have to keep making support for Israel politically inconvenient. Keep fighting US support for the occupation because the movement isn't visible much of the time but Palestine becoming a member state of the UN without US sanctions is a jolt of movement. It shows we're moving this huge thing off course, and we can't let up - the more it moves, the easier it will become to move.

[mandareeboo]

Really like your Arcane fanfic idea. Feels like a good mix of bitter and sweet: nothing is perfect for anyone but they’re slowly rebuilding, and even if it’s restoring something similar to the Vander-Grayson status quo, it’s still growth and gives all those involved a chance to grow and perhaps avoid repeating the mistakes of their predecessors and past selves.

Honestly, after how much Vi has suffered (like almost non-stop for 7ish years) and how since she got out of prison she’s been focus on fixing her mistakes or supporting Caitlyn, I really like the concept of Vi just pulling her shit together (re)building something for herself. Restoring the Last Drop to what it was meant to be; letting her both fix the past and make a new home for herself at the same time.

Vi would still have plenty of demons to deal with, but having a stable place and a purpose could help.

Also imagine local rich pretty boy man of progress Councillor Jayce Talis semi-frequenting a seedy Undercity bar, even helping out with repairs (because he wants to feel useful after his best friend left him to go be Jesus) which somehow keep resulting in wacky hijinks cause Vi and Jayce can’t have anything go to plan when working together. One minute they're replacing the lightbulbs and half an hour later they’ve collapsed half a Chem-Baron hideout

Oh Jayce ABSOLUTELY frequents the Last Drop. Vi and him share beers on the roof after a long day of kicking ass and Jayce infodumps about science and Hextech and politics and Vi nods along with half an ear and watches the crowd.

I'm thinking the inciting incident'll be Babette asking for her favor one day. Vi doesn't even question going, and Babette tells her there's a real rough asshole who keeps stiffing her people after beating them up and it's bad for morale, business, etc. Vi is like. Oh fuck yeah. She kicks the shit out of this guy and as he crawls away she realizes that she made a difference. She helped these people and it didn't cost her anything but time-- and Vi has nothing but time anymore.

As a concept scene, have Jinx confronting Vi on her taking over the Last Drop:

.

Vi knows what a gun barrel to the skull feels like by now, but it still makes her tense, fingers clenching into fists. She barely has the presence of mind to set the pitcher down on the table, wrenching her fingers free one at a time.

"Give me one good reason not to do this," Jinx whispers behind her. The gun jams into her harder and she knows, deep inside, that she's actually asking. She wants a reason not to do this.

Unfortunately, "I don't really have one."

"You became an Enforcer. You tried to choke me out!" She sounds near tears. The gun is shaking, rattling against her skin. "You're a monster."

"I am," Vi agrees easily, because yeah. She's made two monsters now, one right after the other, and she understands math enough to understand common denominators. She wonders how much math Jinx knows. Probably a lot. Silco seemed like the kind of bastard to get smart people in his business. "For what it's worth, I got fired."

A shrill wheeze escapes Jinx's throat. "You were always too stupid to keep a job."

"Yeah. I'm a real thickheaded bitch."

"Why do you even want this place, anyway?"

"The same reason Vander wanted it," she admits. "We both know he woulda wanted me to have this place. I'm the only one who can pour the drinks right."

"Vander," Jinx spits, conflicted on the word. "What does he matter, anyway? He's dead."

She can't really help herself. "Is he?"

There's a lengthy pause before the gun disappears from one side of her head to the other; Jinx whipping around in a flash to grab her cheeks and pull her close. Her eyes are blazing. "What the fuck does that mean?"

"Nothing, I-"

"No. You don't get to say shit like that and not tell me what the fuck it means."

And that's fair, kind of, so Vi says; "I'm hearing voices, Jinx. His voice. And he's real mean."

Jinx's fingers slowly unclench around her jaw. She twists her face left and right, pulling open an eyelid, then checking inside her mouth. As if she was a studious scientist and she were a new species.

"You're not shitting me," she utters finally, tinged with disbelief. "You're crazy."

A smile slowly creeps across her face, and then Jinx is cackling, shaking hard with laughter as she stumbles away, gun falling to the floor. Vi rubs her jaw and watches her sister's shoulders tremble.

"Holy shit," Jinx says. "You're fucking crazy. Insane. Demented. Fucked up."

Vi works her jaw some more and doesn't answer.

"That is just so us of us!" Jinx points at herself, then at Vi. "We share mental illnesses instead of hugs!"

"Hey," Vi pouts. "I give great hugs."

[cookiesupplier]

Hell Ain't So Bad - Part Two

pairing: Noah Sebastian x ofc (Ellie) 

warnings/tropes: slow burn, smut (eventually), angst, fluff, mentions of death, mentions of torture, thoughts of religious ideology, and swearing. – potential more to be added at stories progression

summary: Ellie is lost in the world, homeless and has been out of the world for so long in her mind she has no idea what to do and nowhere to go.. When the perfect opportunity falls into her lap, she doesn’t want to pass it up.. Turns out though, it might be a little bit stranger than she ever expected. Who would have thought that one day, she’d end up working in hell itself.. And what does this even mean?

author’s note: Unbetaed, readers beware.. if you want to chat with me about ideas for this story I'm open to it, my asks are always open as well. I threw you a bone, Noah is there.. but not with Ellie lol

ALL COMMENTS ARE WELCOME. (my replies are broken I will reply via reblog to yours)

tags: Tags are open if anyone is interested.

Ellie offered Steven a smile in thanks before she moved past the door into the small office that he’d pointed her towards. It wasn’t anything special, not that she’d expected it to be. Places like this either went one of two ways. They were either simple down to earth, got the job done, or tried to show their accolades for every person and success story they’d had, and every person they’d managed to save. 

She didn’t trust those people.

The office was empty though. Too Empty. It was Eerie.

Nicholas Ruffilo, he’d said. Okay.

Ellie glanced around, the office was pretty much the barest of bones, not even a photo to show anything other than a computer on his desk, a notepad and pen.. It gave the impression he’d walked in this morning, plonked it down this morning and said, this was good, let's work from here today, and yet.. Right there was a name plate.. But anyone could get one of those made, cheap. It was weird.

It made her nervous. How did she never notice this place before, right across from the clinic. Today had been so strange, so unnerving all around, and she couldn’t shake the feeling that something wasn’t right.

A feeling she’d had since she’d yesterday.

Just when she was thinking that maybe she should listen to that feeling, when she turned to go, a coughing fit hit her, and she almost doubled over. She almost collapsed to the floor before a pair of arms caught her decent and guided her to sit in the chair across from the barely used desk. While she was hunched over trying to breathe, he moved to the side of the room, doing something, she was too focused on attempting to get air into her lungs to pay any mind until he was coming back to her, and gently pressing a cup of hot tea into her hand.

“Here, sip this tea, it should help with that cough, it’s a special blend. Just don’t ask me what's in it, my mother swore me to secrecy.”

Ellie lifted the mug to her lips grateful for the kindness, sipping at the warm liquid, and letting the tiny, tiny sips soothe her throat. She knew better than to take more, especially at first. She could barely swallow with how sore her throat was with the coughing was right now, and, oh, that warning he gave her for not asking, fuck, whatever was in it, his mother was a miracle worker. All it took was a few sips, whether from the warmth, or the herbs of the tea mix, but the irritation calmed down and soothed her throat something blissfully.

It felt like she could actually take in a breath for a moment.

“Better?”

Lifting the mug back to her lips to take another life saving sip, that’s what it felt like, how it felt with each sip of the tea right then easing her throat just for a moment. Part of her considered how long she could draw out this cup, wondering if the effects would allow her to get a decent sleep tonight. She knew better though, she knew better than to wonder, because even if she walked out of this building with a new job, she would still be going back to the overpass. She would still be wearing these overworn threadbare clothes that didn’t keep her warm. She still wouldn’t be able to breathe properly tonight.

Ellie would still be back tomorrow morning to go to the clinic again, this time, hopefully, she’d get in.

“Yes, thank you.”

She smiled at the man as she took his appearance. Instead of moving around the desk to sit behind it with his notepad and computer, he pulled up the other random chair in the room and sat this side with her. His hair was long, dark, but it wasn’t down, he had it piled up on his head, in a sort of messy knot, gauges in his ears, and he was covered in tattoos.

Ellie couldn’t help but think of all the stories he might have to go along with them. She had a few herself, back from before she’d had to drop out of college.. When she could afford to rub a couple of pennies together. Then again, maybe he had no stories, maybe he was one of those guys that just wanted to look cool naked, nothing wrong with aesthetics, she loved seeing beautiful artwork. Ellie also just loved how it made her feel though, and that in itself was a story for her.

“Alright, so, before we get started, I’m going to need you to sign this waiver allowing me access to your records so we can find you the best placement possible.”

Reaching across his desk, he plucked up his notebook, and sure enough, underneath there was the waver, and he snagged the pen from his notebook that he held out from her,

“Just sign away at the bottom and we can get started.”

He said best placement, but really, she just needed any placement, she’d take any job, she needed a job to fill her belly, to get somewhere to live. Ellie was tired of merely existing, she wanted to live again.

Setting the waiver down so she could sign it without giving up her mug of tea, she handed the pen back with a sigh.

“Alright then.”

Standing from his chair, he moved back around the desk with the pen and waiver, and started to click away at his laptop,

“We actually have a prime entry level position opened up just this morning that might be perfect for you Ellis if-”

“Ellie.”

Nicholas looked up from the screen when her quiet voice interrupted him, and to her surprise, it was almost as soft as it used to be. It wasn’t the rough wheezing hack she’d felt like she’d had ever since the cough had started coming and abusing her throat back and forth.

“I prefer to be called Ellie.”

Nicholas just smiled softly, nodding lightly, and glanced back to his screen.

“Well, there is a particular position that seems to have come up that looks to be perfect for you, its entry level, a postal worker placement, making sure goods get from A to B. It will involve a bit of relocation on your part, but the company in question will provide you with travel and lodging entirely free of charge for the entirety of your employment with them.”

He listed off information for the job details as he clicked away at the computer. Her eyes went wide, oh, that sounded both like a gift and a horror. Going somewhere she had never been, but also they would just be giving her a place to live as long as she was working for them. Where was it though?

“Nice warm climate too, so it’ll help take care of that cough, I might even throw in some tea for you, we won’t tell my mom, Ruffilo secret.”

Winking to her, Ellie couldn’t help but smile.. Was this.. Was this just too good to be true? After everything feeling so strange all day, and everything just slotting into place, why did this feel so… odd?

“Now one caveat listed here, is that you must note that you will need to be capable of handling the packages with care.”

She was curious how he said that, with care, because how he said it sounded quite specific, but at the same time, she really didn’t want to ruin this chance, even if there was something screaming that this might be too good.. She needed this. Ellie needed this.

“Oh, thats not problem for me at all.”

Smiling, it really wasn’t.

“I ah, I used to volunteer as an ‘Angel’ at my local hospital in the children’s oncology wing. Unfortunately I started college, and..”

She sighed.. Her boyfriend and classes had taken up a lot of her time. She had a lot of regrets.

Swallowing, the smile Nicholas got though as he nodded, with a knowing look in his eye as if he heard it all before.. Sighing, she knew that look. He probably thought she was just trying to talk herself up, make herself sound good, because she used to volunteer to look after sick kids. Didn’t matter, she just regretted that she stopped.

“Alright, well then, in that case, I have a few more forms I need you to sign once I have printed them out for you.”

Nicholas watched Ellie walk out from his office with Steven with the promise of some more sandwiches, and a place to sleep tonight. They were not going to let her go back to the overpass where Steven had found her yesterday, and her transport wouldn’t arrive until the morning, he was sending word for it now. Clicking away at his computer, it wouldn’t take long, but even for them sometimes paperwork could be tedious.. Everyone had to dot their I’s and cross their T’s though. Got to make the world go around.

All the world.

Just as he was hitting send on the email to Folio letting him know the time to pick her up in the morning, his phone started to ring, and sure enough, a familiar name flashed across his screen, coupled with a familiar pair of dark eyes that flashed with fire when annoyed.

Swiping the green circle to accept the call,

“What do you want, asshole?”

The chuckle from the voice on the other end had Nicholas shaking his head with a knowing smile,

“Is that anyway to greet your best friend Nicholas Ruffilo, what will your mother say?”

“My mother knows you Noah Sebastian, as much as she’d clip me around the ear, but still ask me what her sweet darling angel did to annoy me this time. She knows.”

The answering laughter on the other end of the line as Nicholas rolled his eyes said it all. Still, he just continued to click away at the laptop on his desk, looking over at the information on Ellie’s file, this was so much easier now that they could download information rather than just use paper hardcopies all the time, it could be so tedious.

“You want me to say hello like a normal person asshole, don’t eat all my fucking food.. like always.”

You’d think he’d learn, you really did, but he didn’t, Nicholas always had left overs that just disappeared whenever Noah came over to his apartment to hangout, which was, always. The man practically lived there more than he did at his own place. Not that he was complaining.

“We have a new one by the way, this one might take some time though, she’s going to be an interesting transition. Not sure how she’ll take it.”

A rumble of a humm was all he got from his best friend on the other end of the line.. And Nicholas paused at his typing as he looked suspiciously at his phone sitting on the desk. His best friends goofy face looking up at him from the screen, back from when they were younger, still kids and Noah was nothing but a fucking giant string bean. The noises in the background of the call made his eyes narrow..

“Oh you fucker, you’re at my place right now aren't you?! Step away from the pizza right now you jackass!”

All he got in response was cackle in response before the call cut off.

Noah ‘Fucking’ Sebastian, the food thief, his days were numbered.

Dividers by @saradika-graphics

[stalkedbytrains]

Reckonfall Writing Marathon Part Two and Three

Part One||Part Four

part two

"Alright, whatever you do, do it," Melthana said.

"Whatever could you mean?"

"I need to be able to do my job, which includes magic, so give it back, stop eating it."

"Oh, fine. You're not going to like it," Zerinnell responded.

"I'll be the decider on what I do or do not like."

They shrugged and booped Melthana on the nose with one of their long fingers.

"Oh, fuck, why are your hands so sticky, fuck off back into the sea," Melthana complained. "You're not supposed to rub the sucker on your hands."

"I told you that you weren't going to like it."

Melthana continued to groan and rub her now sticky nose as she walked to her desk.

"I love your decoration," Zerinnell commented. "Did you do this all yourself?"

"My citations?" Melthana asked.

"Oh yeah. Do these all by hand?" Zerinnell asked as they once again sat down and put their feet up.

Melthana didn't respond, she just grabbed the case file before they put their boots all over them.

"The letterhead is all wrong and there's no way that you can even be working here if you used a person's liver as a spellcasting component, which you don't even use by the way."

She continued to not respond and to just read through the casefile.

"You're no fun."

"You claim you're here to watch me solve this thing, or not, so do you want me to get to it or what?" Melthana finally snapped.

Zerinnell looked appropriately chastened and went quiet, letting Melthana read.

The crime seemed, well, particularly bad. Three bodies, clear evidence of prolonged and brutal torture, along with suggestions that the trio had tried to claw through the solid rock walls of the basement where they found.

part three

Melthana was quiet for a long moment as she diligently read through the entire file.

When she stood up, Zerinnell stood up with her. "What?"

"I'm going to the scene. I have to actually, you know, detect."

"Oh, exciting! I get to see you work."

Melthana shook her head and made a prayer to some Dead God of Reckonfall that she recieved the strength to not beat the hell out of Zerinnell.

Once again, Melthana drove like a bat escaping hell, and made it all the way across town in less time than it should have.

The house was large, made of stone, which was already a bad sign.

"Oh nice, stone house. Don't see those too often."

"Yeah because anything dug up in Reckonfall returns to Reckonfall eventually. It's the nature of the Dead Lands and therefore very unadvisible to build a house of this material."

"I did not know that."

Melthana shoved her hands in her pockets as she walked into the sealed off crime scene. A uniformed police officer held the door open for her.

"Hmm, good," she muttered.

"What?" Zerinnell asked.

"Don't eat the magic here," she called out as she worked her way towards the basement. "They warded the house so that it won't collapse in on our heads."

"Oh, right. Yeah."

The basement was a horror.

Three men had been eviscerated. There was blood all over the stone work and dirt floor. But even just looking at it, Melthana could tell that it all happened at different times.

"That's not good," Melthana said.

"Fucking waves of hell," Zerinnell muttered as they entered behind her. "I can feel your magic growing Felix. Should I be concerned?"

"Probably, but not for the reasons you think," Melthana said as she carefully walked through the horrific crime scene, observing. "I wasn't here before, my magic doesn't work that way. It's literally green fire, I have to take in or use the fear when I encounter it. I can't just save it for later. So count that as part of my alibi, I guess."

"Then why am I concerned?"

"Because I've seen something like this before."

"Oh really."

"Not like that. There was a fear cult that was operating under part of the west side about two years back. There's files and reports and everything on it. You might remember it. Everyone got super paranoid and crazy for about 48 hours. The problem was that this cult was basically operating under my apartment, and it made me stupidly power, basically drunk on magic. So arresting them was actually super easy."

"So you're suggesting that this is going to be easy?"

"Oh no, not even a little bit. There's still risidual fear here. There's... fear etched on the walls. That's bad. And the paranoia demon summoners were idiots with bad luck. This... this is something much more... professional. Thorough. Evil."

"That doesn't make me feel good."

"It shouldn't. This is going to be bad."

For the next few hours Melthana investigated the crime scene. There was a lot to look at, to go over, to discover, and none of it was pleasant or easy.

But by the time she was done looking over the crime scene she had a few theories, and the uniformed officers managed to get identities for the dead.

"What are you thinking?" Zerinnell asked after being almost entirely silent the whole time.

Melthana didn't say anything but walked out of the house and into the fresh air.

"I think that we're going to have a problem. It seems that this cult kidnapped and tortured three adult men to drink in their fear. They did this as part of some kind of summoning ritual. I can't tell what they were trying to summon, they did too good of a job of obscuring it. So this is likely going to continue. And I don't really have any ideas of who might be doing this."

"I mean I've got an idea."

"Fuck you too."

"Where are you going now?" Zerinnell asked.

"I'm going to have some officers go to the families to do the next of kin notifications. And try to get some information."

"You're not going to do it?"

"I have fear magic, I'm literally the worst person to do next of kin notifications. Fear and grief are pretty close. Especially in that moment before the information is officially relayed. I don't want to be sitting there like a satiated bear."

"Fair enough. Doesn't not prove that you're not the one responsible."

"What?"

"Nevermind."

"No. I'm going to see a friend of mine. See if he can't relay something helpful."

"You have friends?"

"I thought you knew everything about me."

"I'm allowed to still be surprised."

Melthana rolled her eyes and took out her phone. "Hey, Luke, you got some time to see me? Yeah. Work related problem. I'm bringing a work related annoyance with me, so this time have your shirt on."

Zerinnell gave Melthana a look.

"What now?"

"Nothing. Just can't help but notice you're warning and informing your friend what was going on without really saying."

"Yeah, absolutely that. And not because I don't want to walk in on him fucking his girlfriend again."

"It can be two things at once."

"We can meet him in an hour. He's got a 'client' thing."

"Fucking his girlfriend?"

"I mean... probably, but you can never really tell. Might actually be a client thing."

i have a kofi if you like these things

[farity]

In the Red of Night, part 8

"They're fighting."

Alys looked up from her desk, her two monitors displaying various surveillance cameras, but her focus had been on her laptop, where she was arranging for a new ally to bend the proverbial knee and swear fealty to her.

"Who is fighting?"

"Aemond and that girl."

One corner of Alys's mouth lifted, but then she narrowed her eyes at her lackey. "How do you know this?"

"They had an argument at a restaurant. Some other friend of theirs threw water in Aemond's face, then the girls left together and Aemond and some guy went bar hopping."

Alys gave him a look. "Aemond Targaryen having a lovers' spat in public. I don't think so."

"I have video."

"I'm sure you do. That will be all."

The man left dejected, having hoped for some reward for bringing such a juicy morsel to his boss, but Alys glanced at the monitors. She had two cameras aimed at Aemond's building - one aimed at the door and the other aimed at his loft, although no matter what camera she used she couldn't see through the damn windows.

The Aemond she had met, all pent up rage and resentment might have entertained, even enjoyed, an argument in public, but the man he had become was much different. Colder, more unfeeling. He was like an iceberg, and was far more likely to walk out of someone's life than to allow a scene to be made.

Alys tapped her long red nails on the desk. She had spent centuries trying to get Aemond back. If he was so unsettled by this human girl that he didn't care about a public argument, maybe his emotional mood was back to where she could manipulate him.

Or, it was some sort of trap. He knew she was always circling, because she would never really let him go. He had been her prized trophy, the jewel in her cache that made all the others dim in comparison. If she could have him back, they would be invincible.

Or maybe he had in fact gotten tired of the stupid girl. Gods knew what he saw in her. Alys was far more beautiful, far more clever, and she knew Aemond far better.

She rubbed her hands up and down her thighs. She missed him. The vitality in him, the feel of his long limbs against hers. The times she angered him and he'd wrap those fingers of his around her throat and fuck her until she passed out. She missed his mind, too. Always searching, always seeking.

No human girl, certainly not this boring little basic bitch of a girl, could ever be deserving of him. He was a king, and he deserved no less than a queen.

* * * * *

Two weeks later

"Arya, I-," you collapsed onto the ground, your every muscle screaming.

"Get up."

You wanted to cry. Even with your newfound strength, Arya had been brutal in her training.

"You want that fucking witch to stab your ass while you lay around moaning? Get the fuck up."

Taking a deep breath, you rolled onto your knees and hands and got up.

"Run to the top of the hill and come back."

"Arya!"

"Go before I make you do it twice."

You started moving, not sure if it could be called running, but it was one foot in front of the other.

"By all means, move at a glacial pace, you know how that thrills me."

You threw your arm back, flipping her off, as you began to gain some speed.

These had been the hardest two weeks of your life. Physically speaking. From having Aemond turn you, and the agony of the physical transformation, to realizing that yeah, you were stronger, but you couldn't break a boulder in half or anything like that.

"This ain't Twilight," Arya had said when you smashed your hand into an unrecognizable shape after attempting to punch the trunk of a tree. "You're not the strongest, it's the ones who have been around the longest who are the most powerful."

And if you were stronger than you had ever been, then Arya's training course was designed to take you to those very limits.

After the restaurant scene, you'd left with Arya, who was still shouting curses toward Aemond and Gendry as she shoved you into the car while you pretended to sob hysterically.

Once you were a few blocks away you'd lost the car that had been tailing you and gone back to Aemond's place, going in via the subterranean service entrance. Gendry had kept Arya informed of how many of Alys's goons were following him and Aemond, and then you had gone into the loft and readied yourself for the turning.

* * * * *

His flight was on time, which he appreciated, but he had felt the distinct stench of two fairly new vamps trailing him so obviously a child could have figured it out.

He walked around the concourse three times until they figured out they'd been made and left, and then we went into the first class lounge.

The moment he had seen the property in Scotland he had wanted it. It was rugged and wild, and he'd have acres of land at his disposal.

He scented her the moment he walked inside the lounge, the combination of copper and pine that was hers alone. It took him but a second to locate her, without turning his gaze, and when he sat at the opposite end of the lounge, he knew it was only a matter of time before she approached him.

He scrolled through his phone as she stood, reveling in the attention she got. She had a magnetism about her, Aemond couldn't deny that, but the rest of the men and women that turned to stare at the woman clad in black as she walked through could not know how bitter the lure would be if they dared bite.

"Aemond." Her voice was silk and sex, and he fought the urge to recoil. "I know you know I'm here."

He looked up, met her gaze. He blinked, and after a couple of seconds, turned back to his phone. "Oh. Hey Alys."

She flicked at her nails, as she always did when impatient, and sat next to him. "How I've missed you."

"Can't say the same," he replied without looking at her, and stood.

Alys followed him as he went to the lounge bar. "Aemond. Why don't we have dinner, like in the old days?"

"Whiskey, neat, please."

"Got bored of your little barista slut?"

"Who?"

He paid the bartender for his drink, tipping him well, and took his drink over to the windows.

"You and I know she could never give you what I can."

"What's that, regrets?" he snapped.

Her hand touched his arm and he wanted, oh so badly, to grab that hand with the red nails and bend it backwards until it snapped off of her wrist.

"Be glad she wasn't in the building when I burned it down. Although, you never know," she said sweetly, "anything can happen to a boring little human."

"Leave her alone, Alys. She's nothing to you."

He felt her fingers tighten on his arm. "But she's something to you. And I cannot have that." She followed him again as he paced up and down the wall of windows. "I know where she lives."

He turned, "don't bother. It's over."

"So I hear. How very unlike you to have a public fight," she grabbed his arm again. "Remember when we used to fight? And make up? Those are some of my favorite memories." She smiled coyly up at him. "I think you wanted me to know you were done with your little pastry puff," she placed the tip of her finger in her mouth, undoubtedly thinking it made her look irresistible. "Come back to me, Aemond, you know there is no one else for you."

He stared out at the aircraft being readied for boarding, telling himself every second he had to endure of her presence would be worth it in the end.

"You owe me."

At that, he smiled, and turned to her. "Is that what you want. An obligation fuck? 'Thanks for saving my eye, Alys, I'll put my dick in your sub zero temperature hovel of a cunt?'" He laughed, startling her. "You know, you should have just said that. It might be entertaining to finally pay my bill when it comes to you."

She looked at him, wide eyed, "no, Aemond. Not like that. We're not like that. You and I," she leaned in and he ground his heels into the floor to keep from leaping back, "we're better than the rest. There is no one else like you, my Aemond. And there's certainly no one else like me."

The announcement was made for boarding, and Aemond stared at the woman who had, once, meant something to him.

"I'm back in a week."

He turned away and went through the ticket check while Alys smiled to herself, and slowly sashayed out of the lounge.

* * * * *

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My Ko-fi

[hirkyy]

Ok since last posting I’ve fallen prey to getting foaming at the mouth angry at my phone screen again but I want everyone to fucking shut it about the dehumanization of Russians.

Are those Russians apparently suffering real world systemic oppression in the room with us right now? Are they in air raid shelters underground? Are they maybe in the basement of their apartment buildings instead, praying this won’t become their grave if the building gets striked and collapses above their head? Are they already dumped in an unmarked mass grave, hands tied behind their back and body charred after the enemy soldiers attempted to burn the evidence of their crimes? Or does their heart still beat and does it sink every time their loved ones don’t answer the phone?

You are so quick to jump to the defense of poor Russians being a little sad :( when those evil Eastern Europeans are being mean to them online, but you don’t give a shit about the dehumanization of Ukrainians. None of you will even attempt to grasp the utter horror of Russian government (!) media outlets publishing articles and broadcasting TV reports openly calling for genocide, denying the existence of Ukrainians as people and Ukraine as a state, equating Ukrainians to parasites and vermin and completely reducing our lives to nothing; even blatantly using such terms as “De-Ukrainization”. 

Westerners can at least claim ignorance even if it’s a pitiful excuse but this is what Russians are exposed to daily and they choose to avert their gaze and dont look at entire cities being leveled to the ground, people forced to survive in conditions your mind would not be able to conjure up, spending sleepless nights listening to explosions and artillery fire in basements, risking their lives to go outside to find dead animals to eat or to bury the bodies of their deceased loved ones outside because they have started to decompose. Instead of listening to Russians crying about how they’re being victimized look up stories of people who were lucky to survive and escape Mariupol and every time you feel a sense of nausea at the utter horror these people have seen you better keep fucking looking. Look up the official United Nations independent investigation report describing cases of rape of children as young as 4. Read about the abduction and mass deportations of thousands (!) of Ukrainian children, either orphaned or taken forcibly from their parents, whose living family is heartbroken and inconsolable, holding on to what little hope they have of getting them back home from God fucking knows where in Russia. Look up filtration camps and torture chambers set up by Russian soldiers. This is what dehumanization does, it convinces you no human life was lost because those weren’t even humans. And it is working in Russia right now because most Russian people feel perfectly fine and cozy at home and to them being dehumanized means people being mean to them on Tumblr apparently. Or forcing them to confront the reality of how their inaction is what allows for all this inconceivable suffering to continue.

Be thankful you and your family are certain to see the light of day tomorrow and you have not spent the past year having to cope with your home being devastated by a genocidal war while knowing this could have just as easily been you every time you see another person mercilessly tortured, raped and killed for simply being Ukrainian, and shut the fuck up

[roonyxx]

The Raven: Part 4

Summary: A new threat to the world brings the boys back in action. She is big and bad, very bad. But is everything as it seems or is there more to her story?

Pairing: Dean x reader

Trope: enemies to lovers

Word count: 2417

Chapter warnings: some violence, language

A/N:  I know it has been AGES since I wrote, i'm trying to get back into it. I know nothing really exiting happens in this chapter but it is one of the most complicated stories I have done and it needs some building. I really hope you like it!

The Raven Masterlist

My Masterlist

Buy me a coffee

“The truth, Dean.”

Those words keep coming back to me. What truth? About what she did or does Heaven know more than they let on?

We kept researching but it’s useless, aside from the codex we have nothing on her. But something about her bugs me. Not only that her smells seem to linger everywhere I go, but I think that I have been sleeping better because of her, how? I have no idea...

“I think we need to go to Heaven and see what is up there.” Sam interrupts my thoughts.

“I asked Cas to look into it. He’s been gone for days. You think he’s alright?” I start, “What if Heaven doesn’t want Cas to tell us and they kept him?”

“Wouldn’t be surprised if they did that.” Sam sighs, “We can summon him.”

“Let’s do that.”

While Sam and I prepare the summoning my mind keeps wandering to my dreams.

Tonight was different, normally it’s just me on my back floating and these phantom hands that gently touch my face and chest.

Tonight I could have sworn I felt lips too, gently pressing against my cheeks and neck, and there was this soft rain, I felt gentle drops falling on my face.

“Dean?” Sam pulls my head from the clouds.

“Huh what?” I look at him.

“Are you okay? You seem out of it.”

“I’m good, I was just thinking, do you…” I look up at him and wait for him to stop messing with the sigils for the summoning, “Do you smell jasmine too?”

“What? No I smell chalk.” He says while holding up the white piece of chalk.

“I don’t mean now, but just in general.”

“No? Why?”

“Nothing, just forget it and let’s get our angel back.” I sigh.

We do the summoning and Cas appears right in the circle we have drawn.

“Cas!” My eyes widen and I run to him when I see the state he is in.

He collapses to the floor just when I reach him, his nose is bleeding, his lip is split, he has numerous cuts on his cheek and his entire face is bruised.

“What the hell happened!” I demand when Sam and I help him sit up on a chair.

“H-Heaven” He grunts out, “I found out what happened and they didn’t want you to know, so they kept me. Until your summoning forced me out.”

“Why wouldn’t they want us to know! We’re trying to help them.” Sam grunts out while getting a first aid kit for Cas.

“They don’t want humans like you to interfere with their business.” Cas says.

“Assholes” I groan, “What did she do?”

“She created an anomaly in the time line.”

“What?”

“She went back in time and did something, I don’t know what. And Heaven wants to fix what she did but she is not letting them do it.”

“Do you know what she did?” I ask him.

He shakes his head, “I’m not even sure Heaven knows what happened. But it explains the world wide blast, messing with time line has a worldwide effect.”

I fall back in my chair, “can’t we ever catch a fucking break?”

“What now?” Sam starts “We can’t fix it, what are the consequences of what she did?”

“Heaven doesn’t want to wait and find out the consequences.” He grunts and stands up “I need to go back in time and see for myself.” He hoists himself up but he’s barely able to stand on his own.

“Woah woah take it easy.” I say as I help him sit back down, “You can barely stand, let alone time travel. Come just” I push him back in the chair and he lets himself sit with a rough exhaled breath “Rest for now. I’m sure her army isn’t ready yet.”

“We don’t know that.” Sam says.

“I think we would notice if an army of the death was walking the Earth.” I remark.

Sam is giving me a look, a dirty one. Like when we were younger and I was hiding an injury and got a heavy infection, he’s giving me that same look. Angry but worried.

“What.” I snap at him.

“Why do act like this when it comes to her?” he asks.

“What?” I frown “What the hell are you talking about!”

“I’m talking about how you tried  to stop a freaking bullet for her!”

I knew this was coming, ever since I did that Sam had been giving me wary glances.

“It was just instinct! I reacted to the sound!” I walk closer to him and throw my hands up in frustration, “You’re being ridiculous.”

“You’ve been around guns your whole life! You have never had this instinct before so it’s bullshit, and what about your dreams? You really expect me to believe she miraculously backed off?” Sam half yelled.

“Yes! I have no control over them and I’m sure you would notice when I have nightmares again. Get off my back, Sam. We’re supposed to fight her. Not each other.” I quip back.

“I… yeah I’m sorry, nothing here just makes sense” Sam starts, “We need to know what she did in the past.”

“Once I regain my strength, I can find out.” Cas says from the chair he is slumped in.

I nod and go sit next to him and pat him on the shoulder “Rest first.”

“Why help us?” I wonder to Rowena.

“Because I care for Earth, you nimwit” Rowena says to me.

“And you’re sure this will work?” Sam is holding the list of ingredients with the spell to capture The Raven on it.

“I guess, you’ll have to just trust me, Samuel”

“What about ‘not risking’ your neck. This sounds exactly like that.” I look at Rowena.

She’s become an ally to us. Knowing the Queen of Hell definitely has it’s perks. Funny how she used to be our enemy. She and Sam get along well, despite the fact that Sam killed her.

“Raising an army of the dead will stop the souls from entering Hell, my kingdom is on the line here. I wouldn’t earn to be Queen if I didn’t protect it. And I will hide when she arrives.” She smirks, “She might be the Queen of Death but I am the Queen of Hell, I have some tricks up my sleeve.”

“Cas has enough power to find some of these ingredients, I will give him the list” Sam says, he leaves to bring the list to Cas’s room.

Rowena is looking at me, actually she’s been looking at me since she arrived.

“What?” I ask her.

“Are you feeling well, Winchester?” she comes closer and looks me over, frowning a little while doing so.

“Yes? Why?”

“I don’t know… there’s something different about you, something feels off.”

“Different? Like what? Am I dying? Is it my soul?” I get worried, I have felt a little off recently, nothing bad, actually, it felt even good, very good. The ‘too good to be true’ kind of thing.

“I can’t put my finger on it… it started when you met the Raven? How do you feel?” she asks me.

“Yes, around that time, I feel… good. Really good.” I answer.

“Well, if it is good, there is nothing to worry about.” She shrugs.

Sam and Cas come back, carrying all the ingredients. Boxes and bottles of weird fluids and dust and even some bones.

Man, I hate withes.

“Oh you have everything already?” I say.

“Yes, so let’s do this.” Sam starts, “I don’t want to wait any longer, she needs to be dealt with, now.”

He sounds so determined to end her. I don’t think trapping her here is the smartest idea. She could bring this whole place down. Our home… I don’t want to lose it.

And the warning she gave me keeps haunting me, what truth, what is she hiding?

“Everyone ready?” Sam announces.

“I guess” I say a little unsure.

Rowena preforms the spell and disappears, the whole bunker starts shaking. The circle made of German forest herbs starts to burn wildly.

“Sam! End it!” I scream over the chaos.

“No! she’s almost here!” Cas yells back.

With a big blast, she arrives. Hunched in the middle of the circle. Her sleek long black hair is shielding her face. Her pale skin looks even more white against the concrete floor of the bunker.

I hear Sam draw in a sharp breath, and I realize, he never saw her in the flesh. He takes a step back when she rises and aims her empty eye sockets at us.

“You fools” her seethes at us, her voice sounds like a thousand voices in one. My entire body shivers at the sound of it.

“I am done warning you” she walks, no floats, to the edge of the circle, easily going over the herbs and going straight towards Sam.

Sam staggers back and he’s paler than I have ever seen him before. She reaches for him, but I push her sideways before she can.

“Don’t touch him, bitch” I stand in front of my little brother.

“Always protecting Sammy, daddy really beat that into your head, huh?” she mocks.

How does she know that… I told no one about the abusive behavior of my dad, not even Sam.

“Get the fuck back” I warn her, no one touches Sammy, especially not witches.

“Or what? You’re powerless against me, so is your angel and don’t think I can’t smell that Hell bitch Rowena.” She looks behind me at Sam “besides, Sam’s the only one I haven’t met yet. The vessel of Satan, how does it feel to be made for evil, Sammy?”

I push her, she doesn’t move one inch, but she does step back, in shock.

“DON’T touch me!” she spits at me.

“Don’t get near my brother and I won’t have to. Now can we act like adults or are you going to keep acting like a bitch?” I cross my arms over my chest and try to look not intimidated, but I am. She’s terrifying as fuck.

She straightens fully and looks me in the eyes with her empty sockets. Shivers spread over every inch of my skin. Where is her other body? The pretty one.

“Why summon me, knowing you have no way of protecting yourself.” she begins, “I warned you enough, feel my consequences.”

She clenches her fist and all three of us, even Cas, fall on our knees. The pain is like nothing I’ve felt before, it’s burning and stabbing at the same time.

“Stop!” Rowena appears with her hands raised, purple magic lifting the pain in our intestines slightly. But it is still unbearable.

“Let them go.” Rowena says, “Stop this now.”

“Or what?” she tilts her head at Rowena while dropping her fist. The pain evaporates and I can breathe again.

“You’ll hurt me? You’re no match for me Rowena. Stay out of this or I’ll take Hell down too.”

“What did you do to the timeline” Cas grunts out.

Her head snaps towards Cas, she briskly walks over to him and lifts him up in the air by his shirt. She’s extremely strong.

“How do you know that.” She snaps at him.

“Because you did a sloppy job, bitch.” I say. “What did you do? Made yourself powerful? Stole something or killed someone?”

She drops Cas and looks at all of us. “The smart move is to back off,” she looks at me, “You won’t like what you find.”

“The truth? And what is that exactly?” I say.

She’s looking at me, but I can’t read her expression. The eyes tell so much about a person. I often use the eyes of people to read them, to see if they’re lying or afraid. But with her, It is impossible.

“None of you wants to know. Trust me”

“Trust you?” Sam scoffs “You’re raising an army of the dead to march against Heaven. How is that in our interest?”

“Heaven is a liar and evil. You all have enough experience to know that!” she screams in frustration, “I am wasting my time here.”

“If Heaven is the bad guy here, why not let us help you?” maybe allying with her could prevent a war.

From the look Sam is giving me he thinks I am crazy, and maybe I am a little. She could be speaking the truth, Heaven has betrayed us many times. What makes it different this time?

“You help me?” she starts laughing “You hunters are nothing but ants underneath my feet.”

She looks each of us down, ending on me “I hate all of you.”

“Then why not kill us? You keep warning us, all bark but no bite.” I step closer to her, because I noticed that in fact, she doesn’t kill us. Hurt, yes. But never kill.

Her mask of horror witch slips and I see her clenching her jaw in frustration. A first sight of real emotion on her side. Meaning, she won’t kill us.

“You need us witch bitch?” I lean closer to her and that jasmine smell is wrapping around my body, making me smile.

“I do not.”

“But you can’t kill us.” I grin “So your threats are empty.”

My first mistake was laughing at her, my second was standing so close to her.

Her hand snaps out and grips my neck, her nails digging into my skin, drawing blood. She lifts me up in the air. My hands grasp her hand, trying to lessen the pressure and pulling myself up so I can breathe. In the corner of my eye I see Sam and Cas moving towards me.

“One more move and I snap his neck like a twig, I’ll deal with the consequences” she says to them but keeps her face on me.

She brings my face so close that her nose is touching mine, and I have a feeling she wants to pull me even closer.

Probably to feel me choke and see the fear in my eyes better.

“You are not stopping me from ripping that place out of the sky and burning it down. I don’t care who gets caught in the crossfire. They deserve to burn for what they took from me.” Her eyebrows lift up a little at that last sentence, as if she didn’t mean to let that information slip.

She drops me to the floor and when I catch my breath to look at her, she’s gone.

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[sesamestreep]

New Taylor Swift prompts! 16, Matt/Foggy

16. I’ve missed you all this time (from this prompt list) I don't know what this is, but it's technically set in the 60s, even though I did not make that explicitly clear anywhere in the text and it serves no purpose beyond just...vibes. I mostly just wanted to write silly new year’s fic, don’t worry about historical accuracy or world-building, everyone be cool! happy 2024, you silly and sultry geese! on ao3 here 🥂✨

Matt can still hear the noise of the party, barely dampened even when he's several rooms removed. He’d be able to hear it from the lobby of the building, truth be told, but here he can still make out conversations without having to focus that hard. He tries to direct his senses somewhere else—somewhere with less overlapping chatter and clinking glasses and shuffling feet over plush carpets—and breathe deep, so that maybe he can regain some equilibrium and hopefully go back to the party in a few minutes and act normal. It’s almost midnight, after all, and who goes to a New Year’s Eve party just to ditch out before midnight?

“Matthew Augustus Murdock,” a voice calls out from the far end of the paneled hallway.

“Not my middle name,” Matt says, smiling, “as you already know.”

“But wouldn’t it be better if it was?” Foggy asks, as he slides down to sit next to Matt. 

“Yes, I imagine I’d have lived a much easier and more successful life, if only my middle name was…what was it again?”

“Albert,” Foggy says, “or something. Who cares?”

“Good point,” Matt says, pressing his shoulder into Foggy’s happily. “How’d you find me?”

“I used the one and only superpower God graced me with: I’m like a homing pigeon for you specifically. I always know where to find you. It’s eerie, frankly, and damned useless, but—“

“Not to me,” Matt interjects, too readily. “I mean, for what it’s worth.”

Foggy nods, his overly long hair that he keeps meaning to get cut rasping over his shirt's stiff collar as he does. “That’s a good point.”

“I make those occasionally.”

“Occasionally,” Foggy repeats in a comically shrill, tiny voice, like he’s doing an impression of a cartoon mouse, for whatever reason. He’s a little drunk, clearly, which Matt could tell from the way he’s talking and the way he’s moving and the way he smells and, well, that’s probably enough evidence. 

“If I’m ever in trouble, I know who to call,” Matt says, which is maybe too honest, but Foggy doesn’t have to know that.

“You wouldn’t even have to call, Matt,” Foggy replies, solemnly grasping his shoulder. “If you’re ever in trouble, I’ll know and I’ll come running.”

“I would pay real money to see you actually run anywhere.”

“You’d have to, my man. I imagine it would take a massive breakthrough in science for you to see anything at all, and those things tend to cost a pretty penny,” Foggy says, grandly. “And also, on a much more serious note, go fuck yourself.”

Matt laughs and collapses against Foggy’s shoulder. “I’m sorry, I just know how much you hate running.”

“Which means you’ve entirely missed the inherent capital-R romanticism of me offering to do it for you! Classic Murdock. Absolute philistine behavior. I should expect it by now.”

“Your gallantry is wasted on me,” Matt agrees, still doing that thing of being too honest.

“I know,” Foggy sighs, theatrically, “and yet, here I am.”

“Why are you here, anyway?”

“Missed you, came looking. Same as ever.”

“Aw,” Matt says, leaning into his side even more. “You’re right, I really don’t deserve you.”

“I never said that. You said that,” Foggy says, poking him. “But anyway, I lied and the real answer to your question is that I got tired of girls coming up to me and asking where my handsome friend had got to.”

Matt knows two things with a decent degree of certainty: Foggy hadn’t been lying when he gave his first answer (Matt would have heard it in his heartbeat and likely noticed any other number of tells that Foggy has when he does lie, besides) and that no one would have had to ask him to go looking for Matt after he disappeared. His joke about homing pigeon-like tendencies is more truthful than either of them would like to acknowledge. When Matt goes missing—as he very frequently does at these types of things—Foggy always comes to find him. Matt’s been doing this since way before he met Foggy—having overly heightened senses does not make crowded social functions more manageable in general—but he can probably admit that he does it more now that he knows someone will come looking for him.

He also knows that girls like Foggy a lot more than Foggy thinks they do. He’s always talking about how girls seek him out to get in with Matt, but Matt doesn’t really believe that. There have been a few girls, here and there, certainly enough that Foggy’s right to be a little paranoid about it, who have turned their sights from Foggy to Matt, which on top of being unkind is just bad business sense. Anyone with a brain in their head would see that Foggy’s the better option of the two of them. And Matt’s got plenty of flaws, but he’d certainly never take up with anyone who hurt his best friend, so it doesn’t work out the way anyone hopes it will, anyway, when they do. Still, he's sure Foggy could have found a nice girl to keep him entertained until Matt got back to the party, if he put his mind to it, and that maybe he'd just been looking for an excuse to duck out himself when someone asked about Matt.

“This is where I got to,” Matt says, with a slightly pathetic shrug.

“Who says I meant you?” Foggy asks, absently. “I have other friends that are handsomer than you!”

“Not only do you not have a single handsomer friend in all the world,” Matt says, belatedly unsure if ‘handsomer’ is even a word, but otherwise too confident to turn back, “you don’t even have another friend at this party.”

“I’m exceedingly charming, Matthew,” Foggy over-enunciates. “Everyone at this party is my new best friend.”

Matt loops his arm through Foggy’s and leans his head back against the wall. “Sounds like I’ve got a lot of competition.”

“You’re not having fun?” Foggy asks, the change of topic so sudden and his tone so unexpectedly serious that Matt has a brief moment of confusion that he means with this joke they’ve got going. It takes a second to realize he means at the party in general.

“It’s fancy.”

“Too fancy, you mean…”

“You know I don’t go in for all this stuff,” Matt says, shrugging. 

“Like I do, you mean?” Foggy asks, lightly, even though Matt can feel him warming with embarrassment. 

“Like I used to,” Matt clarifies, and trusts his meaning to be clear.

“Right,” Foggy says, and the tone in his voice is the one he uses exclusively when he refers to Matt’s ex-girlfriend from junior year who almost caused him to drop out. “Fair enough, I suppose.”

“You can head back. Really, I don’t mind. I just need a few more minutes.”

“No, you’re right. It’s…a bit stuffy, isn’t it?” Foggy muses. “I mean, I didn’t even know people still had apartments like this, outside of, well, the Rockefellers.” 

The apartment belongs to the parents of one of their friends from law school and the only reason they have free rein over the place is because the parents are vacationing in Aspen with friends. Even without being able to see it, Matt can tell it’s a swanky place. The rug he’s currently sitting on is so plush that he can basically sink his entire hand into it. Every table he passed on his way to this hiding place smelled so strongly of Pine-Sol that there has to be a maid on staff, if not a team of them. He’s fairly certain this random hallway he discovered is actually a back passage to the kitchens, so the servants don’t have to be seen coming and going. He's not sure if he asked their host about it that they'd even know it existed. And Matt’s shoes, as well as most of his clothes, are secondhand.

“You were having fun until I made you feel bad,” Matt says, tucking his chin onto Foggy’s shoulder and trying to look contrite.

“No, I mean—I like having you around, Matt. You keep me honest,” Foggy laughs. “Two and a half years of law school, four years at an Ivy before that, I think I’ve just made peace with having to go to parties in uncomfortable clothes and to make conversation with people I don’t really like. I don’t think I’d call it fun, but it’s a social life of some kind, I suppose.”

“We should have gone to Josie’s,” Matt says, holding onto him too tightly, even with the excuse of a few drinks.

Foggy snorts, thinking of the beloved dive bar they sneak off to in Hell’s Kitchen whenever they can, whenever they’re home. It’s only a matter of blocks to get there, but sometimes, at school, it feels farther away than all that.

“I don’t dare imagine the caliber of our prospects for a kiss at midnight there,” Foggy says, with an exaggerated shudder.

“Can’t be any worse than our prospects here,” Matt replies. 

Foggy whistles, low, under his breath. “You’re going to be disappointing a lot of nice girls with that kind of talk, Murdock!”

“Better to disappoint them now than later,” Matt says, fully burying his face in Foggy’s shoulder now. He gets like this when he drinks. Foggy's used to it.

“Oh, that’s right. You don’t do the whole ‘going steady’ thing anymore,” Foggy says, leaning in conspiratorially. “You’re too damaged and that means you’re never going to get married, so you’d rather not lead anyone on.”

“You say that like it’s not true,” Matt whispers back.

“It isn’t true, you moron!” Foggy laughs. “One day, some beautiful girl is going to turn your head so quick, you’ll have neck problems for the rest of your life!”

“Sounds uncomfortable,” Matt says.

“And I’ll be there,” Foggy continues, like Matt didn’t even speak, “laughing.”

“Well, as long as you’ll be there, Foggy.”

“Did I mention you’re a moron?”

“Yes. A few times now, in fact.”

“Then, I’ve done my duty.”

“And what about you?” Matt asks. “When’s somebody going to turn your head?”

“Somebody turns my head every goddamn day, it feels like,” Foggy grumbles. “The problem isn’t my head. It’s everybody else’s.”

“There’s plenty of girls who’d be more than happy to trap you in matrimony.”

“Hmm, well, I’m sure that’s true enough,” Foggy replies, thoughtfully. “I guess it’s more about finding someone you wouldn’t mind being trapped with.”

“And you haven’t found her yet, I take it?”

“No,” Foggy says, sadly. The girl he dated for most of their sophomore year—the one everyone had been certain Foggy was going to end up marrying—had just gotten engaged last month. Foggy still wasn’t entirely over it, Matt was pretty sure.

“And you’re certain she’s not here?” Matt asks, encouragingly.

“Unlikely,” Foggy says. “None of the girls here would be caught dead with me in the daylight. One of them might be unscrupulous enough to let me kiss her at midnight, though.”

“So, go back,” Matt replies. “Find the girl in that room with the lowest standards and lay one on her!”

“I will if you will.”

“I don’t know this for sure, but I do have serious doubts that any girl in the room will let the both of us kiss her at midnight.”

“I meant, you should—you know what I meant!” Foggy exclaims, embarrassed again. 

“I was trying to be funny!”

“‘Trying’ being the operative word there…”

Matt sighs. “What’s the point of kissing someone at midnight when there’s almost no chance of seeing them ever again after tonight?”

“You’ve just described the point yourself! It’s just for fun, to start the year off right! There’s no pressure!” Foggy says, disbelieving. "What’s gotten into you? I thought zero expectations romance was your specialty!”

“Maybe I’m just not a New Year's kind of guy.”

Foggy hums thoughtfully. “Can I tell you my theory?”

“Your theory? About what?”

“About you, and New Year's, and all of that.”

“Oh. Sure. Go ahead.”

“I think you’re afraid,” Foggy says.

“Afraid?” Matt asks. “Of…New Year’s Eve?”

“You don’t want to participate in these silly little rituals, like kissing someone at midnight, because you’re secretly terrified that something good is going to happen to you, and then you won’t know what to do with yourself.”

“Really, Foggy. Be serious!”

“I am serious,” Foggy replies, casually. “You’re scared of being hit over the head with it again.”

“Hit over the head with what?”

“Love,” Foggy says, simply. “You felt it once and it nearly derailed your whole life, so now you avoid any situation where you might accidentally meet someone interesting or have more feelings than you’ve carefully rationed out for yourself for that particular day.”

Matt swallows, feeling utterly exposed. It’s not something he would have been able to say for himself an hour ago, but the words feel true to him coming from someone else. He doesn’t like anybody knowing him well enough to know all of that, though, and if it wouldn’t be so utterly obvious, he’d pull away from Foggy right now just to be safe. Like that would even help, he thinks reluctantly.

“You missed your calling not going into psychiatry, Foggy,” he says, stiffly, once he’s gathered his wits enough to form sentences.

Foggy’s hand, warm and a little damp, closes over Matt’s where it’s still resting on his arm. Matt wants nothing more than to flinch away from it, but he controls the urge in the interest of saving face.

“Don’t be mad at me,” Foggy says, quietly, like there’s a chance they might be overheard somehow and he wants Matt to be the only one who hears this. “I’m just trying to tell you that, in avoiding fun and frivolous things, you are not sparing yourself from being hit over the head. If you’re meant to get hit over the head, it’ll happen whenever and wherever Cupid so chooses. It’ll happen at the deli or the bank or while you’re waiting for the bus. Which means that the only thing you’re ultimately sparing yourself from is fun and frivolity, and that’s a stupid way to live your life. That’s all.”

“I think you just called me a moron again,” Matt says, weakly. He doesn’t know what else to say. The rest of it is...too much to consider.

“I called you stupid, actually, but I see your point.”

In the distance, Matt hears the noise of a crowd of people all simultaneously trying to shush each other, with limited success. He imagines even Foggy can hear it too a moment later when they all begin counting aloud.

“Last chance…” Matt says, tipping his head backwards in the direction of the room where everyone’s gathered.

“It doesn’t matter,” Foggy says, apropos of nothing, as far as Matt can tell. He’s about to ask what he means when Foggy continues, anyway. “I have someone who meets your criteria.”

“My criteria?”

“Yeah. You’ll only accept a kiss from someone you’ll see again after tonight, right?”

“Uh, I don’t think I said ‘only’, I just meant—”

“Too bad,” Foggy says, as the countdown reaches its conclusion. “Happy New Year.”

Matt’s halfway through formulating a question or an objection of some kind, which is the only reason he turns in Foggy’s direction at that moment. It’s clear from the noise of surprise Foggy makes that he absolutely had no intention of kissing Matt right on the mouth and was probably, in fact, aiming for his cheek, trying to be funny and charming after Matt was such a spoilsport about the whole kissing at midnight thing. If Matt hadn’t moved, there’s no doubt in his mind that that’s what Foggy would have done and then it would have been over and they’d already be laughing about it and moving on. But Matt did move and, even awkwardly off center, Foggy is kissing him on the mouth right now and they’re both just frozen like that, shocked and useless.

Matt doesn’t give himself much credit for genius. He’s reasonably smart, and can be even smarter if he applies himself to a subject and really studies up on it, but there’s plenty of people in any given room smarter than he is, most of the time. He has his moments, though, and this is one of them. He sees very clearly the two paths available to them. Down one, this moment stretches awkwardly and they allow it to become a source of discomfort and then outright pain that they'll avoid talking about for years, or maybe possibly forever. Regardless, it has the power to ruin their friendship and Matt simply can't abide that. Down the other, they don’t flinch from it and they don’t make it any stranger than it has to be and it becomes one weird but not fully objectionable moment in their long and storied relationship. They’re not going to trot it out as an anecdote at parties, sure, but they’re not going to become crazy about denying it happened either. If Matt can steer them in the direction of the latter, he thinks maybe it will all be okay, but it’s going to require him not to make matters worse. For whatever reason, the only way he can think to not do that is by kissing Foggy back.

It’s immediately apparent that, momentary genius or no, while it does not technically make things worse, it also does not make them better. Then again, Foggy makes a sort of interested noise as he feels Matt return the kiss, which Matt is infinitely better off for knowing about and having heard and being able to think about some other time when he’s alone preferably. 

They don’t take it any farther than just that. They’re not necking in some random person’s hallway or doing anything truly objectionable. They just stay there, mouths pressed together so that Matt can smell (and sort of taste) the champagne Foggy’s had and the last cigarette he smoked and a hint of that sugary gum he always chews, even though he hasn’t had a piece since before they came to the party. It mostly feels, more than anything else, like they’re breathing together and it’s not sexy the way wild, passionate groping in the dark can be, but it’s intimate in its own unique way. Matt, against his own better judgment, puts a hand on Foggy’s cheek, and he doesn't really know why beyond just really wanting to and that seems to be reason enough.

Foggy doesn’t try to slip his tongue into Matt’s mouth—despite the alarming reality that the moment Matt realizes that’s not what he’s doing, he also realizes he’d let him—or try to escalate matters one bit. His hand is still grasping Matt’s collar from when he first pulled him in, but his other one doesn’t roam. His lips, still pressed to Matt’s, only move to exert a little more pressure and to alter the angle at which they meet slightly. He takes precisely zero liberties and makes no effort to get fresh with him at all. It’s very gentlemanly, and Matt doesn’t know what to do with himself because it doesn’t feel awkward or fumbling at all. It feels like restraint, and once he knows that, everything is different.

The tune of ‘Auld Lang Syne’ reaches him from the other room, but it’s drowned out almost entirely by the sound of Foggy’s heartbeat in Matt’s ears. Foggy must hear it too, though, because he breaks their kiss with the worst sort of gentleness, pulling back only enough for them both to have space to breathe but not far enough that Matt can’t feel that breath on his face.

Matt traces his thumb over the curve of Foggy’s cheek before dropping his hand back down into his own lap and licks his lips as he slowly turns away. 

“Happy New Year,” he says, aiming for calm and unaffected and likely missing it by a lot.

“You too,” Foggy says, even though he already said it first. His heart is still beating too fast and too close and too loud for Matt to read his tone, which is too bad, because he’d really like to know how Foggy feels right now and if he feels anything like Matt does.

Because Matt feels like he’s been hit over the head.

✨