#the house is established

[mantisgodsdomain]

the house is established vi and tsm2 vi play a board game together who do you think is winning

The House Is Established Vi has approximately fifty seven years of experience in cheating at games and approximately zero years of experience with board games but it's very good at catching on to new things and will be DELIGHTED to play something new after a century of almost nothing being new so it mostly depends on how quickly tsm2 Vi can catch on to its sleight of hand and start cheating back

[secret-bug-pain-blog]

Whumptober Day 4 - Forgotten (REPLACEMENT PROMPT)

Back at it again. For proper reading experience, please read this while being screamed at by one to five 3-4-week-old kittens. We're borrowing Jay from @zombiebugbites - she's from the Everlasting Primordia AU, and giving us a lovely opportunity to bring up fun aspects of The House Is Established's universe that won't come up organically in normal AU posting! Very exciting.

Ink smeared on the word count lettering a bit, but it's fine, nothing's perfect. We will now go try and finish the Day 2 fill so we can finally dedicate our Carousel pen to something else and/or work on Day 5. See you... soon.

[mantisgodsaus]

is that one post that goes like "i fixed a problem that i saw my manager do once and i did it faster so i get to take his skin i get to take his skin" an anyone post. we were thinking vi but we dont actually know

The House Vi does this every time that it does something it's seen Kjdrira do once and it is too small to actually, like, effectively do anything like skin-taking, and also doesn't have the dexterity for it, but it brags to the network about it and sometimes chews on Kjdrira for bragging rights and releasing the immense amounts of energy contained within it that it cannot properly release because the exact same rocks that let it store such massive stores of energy also prevent it from having a proper range of motion

[bloodraven55]

i think this is my fav lumity moment in the finale bc i love how you can tell they've been together a while by this point just from the way amity kisses her cheek without any hesitation and luz instinctively puts her arms around her even tho her attention's on the others

[egophiliac]

Serious question.

Do you think we’ll see the parents/family of each of the guys???

Like, We’ve been TEASED with Ace’s brother, that I’m starting to think it’s just a reference to that Alice in Wonderland park character in Japan and nothing else….

Jack’s family, Ruggie’s grandma, Falena, Maleficia, Ms.Rosehearts, Just now Vil’s dad is in the picture which I am really happy but now I’m wondering about his mom, and so Deuce’s mom.

I mean, some HAVE a silhouette!! It could mean they do have a design in the making/ready to show. They could’ve shown us Falena in the Tamashina (hope I said that correctly) event, but didn’t (prolly to make Leona not so σ(▼□▼メ) and it’s understandable)

Anyhow, any idea/headcannon about this? Who do you want to see first?

I'm wondering if everyone might eventually get a travel event? like they've now introduced with Vil's that it doesn't have to be specifically hometowns, so that opens things up a lot! (especially if they have to figure out how to do three separate Coral Sea visits) (how would that even work otherwise)

but yeah, I hope everyone gets a chance! there's a lot of backstory characters I would LOVE to meet. :D :D :D though I do think some of them don't really suit the more light-hearted tone of the events (pretty sure you're right about that being why Falena wasn't in Tamashina-Mina, that would've just been. too much for Leona.) so like...we're probably not ever going to meet the Rosehearts. or Maleficia (although I maintain that this would be THE funniest possible way to introduce her outside of the main story, and actually I would love this a lot, can we please Twst) (I need to see her to put Malleus in a froofy little outfit and tell him what a handsome boy he is). but they've sprung surprises like Kifaji on us, and honestly anyone who shows up and tells embarrassing stories about characters' childhoods is good in my book!

characters off the top of my head who I most want to meet: literally any of the Zigvolts, Azul's mom, Ace's brother, Che'nya's grandfather (<- I think he would be a good one for Riddle) (please just any non-terrible adult in his life), any member of Rook's family because I need to see how they managed to produce him, and...really just whoever they can come up with for Silver.

[backjustforberena]

The way this outfit is so "Dragonkeepers" leaning is everything.

She was in a Valyrian-inspired aesthetic before we even strictly-speaking knew what that was. We have the angular lines of the jacket, sharp shoulders, we have the kimono-like neckline!

It's obviously not as blatant as the S2 costumes, where we really lean into the silhouette that's sort of established by the robes that Rhaenyra and Daemon wear at their wedding but no one else wears a neckline like Rhaenys has on her blouse. No one else has a garment like she does with that jacket.

And the pattern has scales. So it's rich, it's got Westerosi influence as well, it's by no means a robe at all, but it clearly leans more towards the silhouette that visually speaks of a Valyrian heritage and specifically to do with dragons.

And just as a bonus, we got the triangular shape around her neck and the sharp shoulders in the first dress we see her in, after the Great Council.

Rhaenys's costumes are so contextualised. Colour, shape, length, whatever. It's contextual. Whether she's twinning with her husband, leaning into her Targaryen roots, repping a house or her own independence, or a mixture, it's there.

[sparsilees]

the blacks aren’t an incestuous family

you can say sirius is rather unhinged and depressed from prolonged dementor exposure and the violent tragedy of betrayal and loss. you can say he’s traumatised by his upbringing and the first wizarding war. or that the horrors™ have done a real number on him. that bellatrix lestrange was too brilliant, too enchanted with the dark arts, or too broken from azkaban.

don’t blame it on ‘black family madness’, it doesn’t exist in canon. don’t blame it on inbreeding.

the pureblood families generally intermarried between ‘suitable’ bloodlines (sometimes they brought in halfbloods, too). the blacks are no exception—why marry your silly cousin when there’s a wider pool of eligible pureblood contenders? because according to the back family tree *checks note* walburga and orion are the only cousins known to have married in canon—specifically, they’re second cousins.

the black family tree roots are far-reaching and expansive. there’s always a black daughter that’s married into every other notable family—the burkes, the crouches, the lestranges, the longbottoms, the malfoys, the prewetts, the potters, and the weasleys—the wizarding world is built on the black bloodline.

everyone’s related in some capacity to the blacks, with certain individuals more closely than others, like how sirius black and arthur weasley are second cousins once removed, with their closest common ancestor being former headmaster phineas black.

the black family members featured in the books descend from either arcturus (the main branch) or pollux. this means that, due to their parents’ union, sirius and regulus have black, macmillan, and crabbe ancestry. whereas the black sisters are entirely removed from the heir line and share black, crabbe, and rosier bloodlines. sirius and regulus, and bellatrix, andromeda, and narcissa share exactly one set of grandparents and one set of great-grandparents.

(also, if you subscribe to the alternate canon that james’ parents are dorea and charlus, it means sirius and james are first cousins once removed; james and arthur are second cousins; and harry and ron are third cousins, placing them in the same generation as the black quintet and closer to phineas black than draco or tonks.)

canonically, it’s the gaunts who were “a very ancient wizarding family noted for a vein of instability and violence that flourished through the generations due to their habit of marrying their own cousins”, and even nearly pulled off sibling marriage to continue their line.

unlike the gaunts, the blacks did not bring together first cousins into a union and added various bloodlines into the family, so the ‘black family madness due to incestuous practices’ theory doesn’t hold water, bye.

[fox-guardian]

I can't get over that last scene from this episode. that long pause where sam was quietly grabbing a drink and you could barely hear celia talking to jack as she put him to bed in the other room. nothing was happening in that moment that needed to be recorded. no terrible events no big revelations. just sam and celia quietly going about their lives, sharing a domestic moment.

as something watched and listened. and we don't know why it's listening.

[mrschwartz]

don't mind me, i'm just sitting here marinating in the fucking implication of that scene in the PILOT episode of house md where the patient is trying to understand a little better the doctor who's saving her life because he's cold and a jerk (and hasn't even bothered meeting her) but also works in an ultimately caring profession, and she picks up on the fact that wilson must be the closest thing house has to a friend the way he talks about him so confidently and asks him "is he your friend?" to which he answers "yeah" which is Already the opposite answer of which any of the other doctors in that hospital would give, and then she follows it up with "does he care about you?" to which wilson hesitates and goes with "eh i don't know. like he says, everybody lies" BUT THEN. she says, "well it's not what people say, it's what they do" and wilson thinks for a moment and fucking delivers the heaviest, most heartwarming answer that is "yeah. he cares about me" because fuck me if that doesn't establish not only the tone and the themes the entire fucking show would permiate for the next 8 seasons, but also what it would Culminate in 8 years down the road. shoot me

[cable-salamdr]

When the fandom normalizes characters swearing so much that it takes you a second to remember that the actual media has (little to) no swearing

[aroaceleovaldez]

It's honestly wild to me that ToA went through so much trouble to emphasize the fact that Will did not magically fix all of Nico's problems and was explicitly not Nico's only doctor.

Only for TSATS to have Will fix all of Nico's problems and have Nico be entirely reliant on him the entire book and literally helpless without him and LITERALLY have Nico's problems be magically removed.

[mantisgodsdomain]

Since we've got all three character chapters of The House Is Established posted, we can now talk about fun things like roach pronouns. Come, learn about the grammar toys for Roach we've been tinkering with.

There are, at current: 8* distinct pronouns in Roach. Three of these are the "original" pronouns, and five were later adapted during communication with social bugs in order to avoid paying deadly insults to the queen or her colony through either treating the queen as interchangeable with other colony members or referring to an entire gender of the colony as objects. The cordyceps of Snakemouth Den speak a dialect that uses the "object" pronouns far more heavily in personal speech, and adds another set of pronouns for specifically inanimate objects.

Roach, when used purely among other Roaches, has three gendered pronouns: Male, Female, and Object. These are used in all personal pronouns (i.e. "I" "me" and "myself" will be different depending on what gender the speaker is using for themself). Object is not generally used to refer to oneself in first person, but can also be used to refer to any non-roach you do not know the gender of, or people you do not respect.

Male and Female also have distinct "plural" variants, for when referring to oneself in first person while speaking for a group. This is similar in usage to the Royal We - it expresses some amount of authority on the speaker's part, and indicates that they are acting as the voice for a group, rather than only themself.

During initial diplomatic relations with the Ant Queen, the genders of Queen, Drone, and Worker. While Worker pronouns have both singular and plural variants, Queen and Drone are plural by default - it is assumed that the speaker is always speaking as the voice of the colony, as these were primarily used for diplomatic purposes, and thus would generally only be used by people actively engaging in diplomacy.

Roach pronouns would later merge into general diplomacy between kingdoms, which would stick around as loan words after the Roaches themselves declined. Two more would also come into formal use by present time. Queen-Alate pronouns refer to an alate that is not yet a queen, and have both singular and plural variants, as a queen-alate is not necessarily attached to a colony by default. King pronouns are plural by default and almost exclusively used by the current Termite King.

Roach pronouns in modern bugnish are considered excessively formal and almost exclusively used for kingdom diplomacy. As all major factions participating in diplomacy at the time of language exchange were social bugs except for Roaches, Male and Female pronouns fall into the category of "obscure enough that no one uses them anymore", as the only people using them were Roaches, and not the surviving Kingdoms. Object also technically falls into this category, but its dual meaning as an insult is somewhat retained, though it is extremely antiquated and would warrant a response similar to calling a real human person a "parasitaster" in the year 2024. Canon Leif, specifically, uses Drone (Plural) almost exclusively.

If this all seems very confusing: don't worry! We have a chart of what pronouns do or do not exist in these variants of roach for your viewing pleasure. Character pronouns are below the cut.

Vi: It/its. Object (Plural). Sometimes swaps to Inanimate Object (Plural) for a few months every decade or so. Will refer to self as Queen (Plural) exclusively when trying to piss people off. No one will call it by Queen (Plural) pronouns unless they are also trying to piss it off.

ZB-159: They/them. Worker (Plural). Occasionally Object (Plural) when referring to self when inactive or under maintenance but English doesn't gender its first-person pronouns in a way where we can get this across.

Leif: He/they/it. Varies between Drone (Plural), Object (Plural), Object (Singular), and Inanimate Object (Singular) based on current mental state. Occasionally will use Queen-Alate (Plural) when speaking as a figure of authority, but English still doesn't gender its first-person pronouns in a way where we can get this across.

Kjdrira: They/it. Either Object (Plural) or Queen (Plural). Situational.

ZB-162: It/its. Object (Plural), Object (Singular), or Inanimate Object (Plural). The conditions upon which ZB-162 will be referred to as any given pronoun roughly correspond to the conditions under which the hive network may be referred to as such. Most of the time, sentences that mention ZB-162 will also include the hive network either by mention or by implication. There is very little distance between ZB-162 and the system it maintains.

[hitlikehammers]

Early November, 1984 and all Eddie wanted was to light up behind the Byers' place in peace🚬

he went all that way and all he got for it was a maybe-dead💀-but-definitely-unconscious-king👑-slash-maybe-babysitter(?), plus some shithead children directing his van🚐 to those fucking abandoned labs that may as well be lit up in neon lights screaming 🚨THIS IS A FUCKING TRAP🚨

Eddie shouldn’t be here. Like, not in a it’s forbidden kinda way, but more in a, there’s no real reason for him to fucking be here.

Save for the obvious.

It’s just…after the whole dead-not-dead thing with the youngest kiddo, the property around the Byers house has kinda turned into no-man’s-land; easy place to get high when Eddie wants a change of scenery, basically, with no one trying to break his nose, or call the pigs.

Or snatch his supply.

But when he hears that fuckface Hargrove call out, the tone on him—and Eddie’s real sensitive to tones, he can guess between the lines for everything he can’t read—he perks up; listens in. Stays put out of sight.

(And no, he does not cream his pants when Harrington calls back, Jesus; taunts like the cocky prick that he is—

And no it is not a close thing or…whatever.)

Point being: he hears more than sees what happens. Up to and including a gaggle of literal fucking children dragging Harrington toward wha Eddie thinks is Hargrove’s eyesore of a car, one of the sheepies crossing around like they’re planning on driving it, and Eddie’s not one for the rule of law or anything—definitely not if it’s Hargrove’s property that’s on the line—and fuck yes Eddie’s driven without a license, and far below the age to get one, but, but—

He’s tripping over himself to turn the keys in his own ignition and swinging the van around quick enough to kick up dirt before he leans over and throws open the passenger door.

“Hey,” he hisses, low but not quiet, he needs them to hear but he doesn’t know if Hargrove’s gonna storm out any second, it’s a delicate balance; “hey, get in,” and he’s crawling over the seat to open the back, too, to push things to the side to mostly leave it flat, tossing blankets to the middle with no care for their cleanliness because there’s no time for that shit, there’s no time and then he’s grabbing the hinges of the doors and flinging his whole top half around to eye this hoard of strange ankle-biters and what’s revealed quickly to be their still-weirdly-attractive-when-beat-to-shit charge in Steve Motherfucking Harrington, trying to project some degree of meaningful trustworthiness, because he is trustworthy, here and now, but they’re kinda in the fucking clock of crazy-eyes-Mc-West-Coast stumbling out of the house, so Eddie’s kinda gotta urge these rugrats with real feeling, waving his hands to the point where his fucking wrists hurt:

“Get in.”

And of course these little urchins still and just, raise a fucking eyebrow at him. Like they’re not working on an inexact sort of fucking timeline—

“Who the fuck are you?”

Yeesh. He wasn’t off when he said they were ankle biters; the little lambies have teeth.

“I just wanna help,” Eddie tries to say it with as much of the genuine concern that he really and truly feels, and not get weighed down with the probably-suspicious-off-the-bat vibe of pulling up in a random van just to start the exchange out with waving some strange kids into the back of it.

Jesus, that sounds terrible, wow, okay.

He gets it.

“No,” oddly, not the ringleader girl who eyed him first but it’s the curly headed boy now who stands up, squares his shoulders, and stares Eddie down with an only-slightly-less-menacing glare. “No, you’re not gonna hurt Steve.”

“I don’t want to hurt him, I swear,” Eddie’s honestly surprised by how unmuddled his tone bleeds put as desperate, versus irritated by this motley crew of munchkins trying to fight him when he is risking his own neck to help them.

And…King Steve, but then: can he be that motionless, hanging awkward from the noodles limbs of a handful of preteens (at most)?

“I just want to get you out of here, somewhere safe,” Eddie bites his lip, wonders where the fuck he intends to go and realizes he was probably just going to drive toward his home and hope for the best; “Er, somewhere safer than here,” and they don’t fucking budge, little assholes, and Harrington doesn’t fucking twitch, and just, just…

Ugh.

“Come on,” he urges them again, just shy of begging; lets how fucking nervous he’s getting seep clear into his tone a little, but he honestly doesn’t think he’d have convinced them to move if not for the crashing of something in the house behind them, and—well.

Nothing like impending doom to speed shit along.

“I wanted to drive,” the redhead’s muttering with a scowl as they heft the body they’re barely keeping off the ground and awkwardly feed Harrington head-first up to Eddie where where he’s crawled properly into the back of the van to help, and Eddie thinks these little fuckers just might be more wild and feral and insane even than he originally would have guessed for how they make to scramble behind their Steve; only just manages to steady and lower the royal body as careful as he can before the hoard clamors in and denies Eddie so much as a moment to press his finger under Steve Harrington’s flop of bloody hair and touch below his jawline where those stupidly infuriating moles of his speckle his skin, marks that Eddie’s hasn’t ever really paid attention to ever, nope, Eddie only needs now to assess whether he’s just accepted a dead fucking body into his van but: no.

Maybe a little sluggish, but pulse’s strong. Which: Eddie doesn’t care about past the legality of it all. Beyond getting saddled with a murder charge or some other bullshit.

No other reason. Of course. Yeah.

The only thing that floors him more than the Hardy Boys-plus-Girl on steroids tearing onto the cushions around where their unconscious charge is laid out, as Eddie shifts into gear and makes to get the fuck out of dodge, like, yesterday, is the even-louder voice in his head that asks probably the most pressing question:

The fuck did the King do, and how, and why, to make these children this loyal?

What follows all that is quite arguably—actually more than that; definitely a strong contender for—the most surprising thing that’s ever happened to Eddie. That could maybe ever possibly happen to Eddie, in any circumstance for any reason within any universal construct or reality. And he’d been really marinating in his Munson Doctrine this year, too, having been forced to reevaluate some shit after the letter arrived to hammer the most disappointing nail in the coffin of Eddie’s first senior year, but then…fuck everything, then there were the stupid little sheepies and their stupid gorgeous goddamn babysitter—which still, still: what the fuck was that, who the fuck even was Steve Harrington?—and Eddie’d barely even put the ink down to dry before all of them banded secretly together and shredded that motherfucking document before it could even properly take root in Eddie’s brain.

All while something else entirely started to take root in his chest, in his hea—

Well. Something. Something that wasn’t even remotely recognizable inside his most recent—and most polished to date, if he does say so himself—draft of the Doctrine like, at all.

Which is the point.

Because Harrington was indeed alive, and did indeed wake up, and clocked Eddie quicker than expected, even by name—Munson? What the fuck?and hell if that hadn’t fluttered between Eddie’s ribs an indefensible amount that no one would ever know about ever, thank you very much, but still: Jesus H. Christ—

But all his own humiliating discombobulation at the not-even-hands-just-voice-and-presence-of-the-golden-boy aside: it’s a damn good fucking thing Harrington wakes up, and is definitely not dead, because Eddie knows where the King lives, and he knows he’s not driving in that direction but had instead been foolish enough to give these shitweasel munchkins the benefit of the doubt here, like that there maybe was a safe house or some shit, fucking sue him, he was a little prepccupied, yeah—by the threat of a chase with that Hargrove fucker and then by the absolutely spectacle of Harrington screeching at the wayward waifs like a harried mother at the stovetop, because fuck, but Eddie nearly crashes them into three ditches and at least five trees for for trying to watch and he can’t even pretend otherwise—but the end result is definitely not a fucking safe house, and these little asshats have directed him in the wholeass wrong direction, if the undeniable fact of the old abandoned labs at the edge of town looming big through his windshield, looking at least slightly less abandoned (as if that’s not goddamn terrifying in and of itself), what the fuck has he literally driven into, is he an accomplice, and to what, and just, just Jesus—

“Hey.”

Eddie is honestly wholly jolted out of his spiral for a lot of reasons, here. The low tenor exhale of a sound in a voice too kind and open and invested, to much like music given what it does to Eddie, what music means to Eddie and what this voice shouldn’t fucking mean too straight out the goddamn gate. The proximity of a body close enough to feel the warmth of each breath. The indefensible feeling of it being nearly erotic out of nowhere and with no justification at all—just the reality of Eddie’s world right now, to feel the barest brush of the side of a body alongside his, leaning forward where he’s still in the driver’s seat. All of that would tip his world at the very least into a different sort of spiral pattern, breathless in a completely other way.

But.

What knocks Eddie hardest and most effectively in one go is the hand on his shoulder, braced to comfort and steady, and the realization in the flesh of how fucking big it is, how the span of that palm, those fingers, because Eddie knew those hands looked big, not that he’d studied them with any real…attention or anything but feeling them was something entirely other, and the touch, the touch is…is—

“Hey,” and Harrington’s breath is close enough then to tickle Eddie’s hair, goddamn: “breathe.”

And where Eddie hadn’t been wholly aware that he wasn’t, y’know, doing the breathing thing so well, either for the absolute insanity of the evening or the ominous spread, all proper D&D-style foreshadowing of nope don’t go there not now not ever waiting where these menaces had directed him to drive; but whatever the reason, where Eddie now takes a gulp of air in now that fucking burns, there’s Harrington, leaning over a little more, a second hand on Eddie chest to steady him as he falls all while he’s fucking squeezing Eddie’s shoulder, only a second before he’s getting ready to jump out of the van like he wasn’t just beaten unconscious like, five fucking minutes ago.

What the actual flying fuck.

If Eddie weren’t a goddamn idiot, he’d put the van in reserve before anyone could get out the back, fuck the way they’ll be thrown against the sides, at least they won’t be walking—willingly—into whatever the fuck’s waiting, all angry red and kinda…pulsating in the distance in a way that may or may not be a trick of his own paranoid mind, and then spewing little glowing motes into the air like lightning bugs.

Which could be charming, if it weren’t way fucking past the season for that shit.

And in fairness, the whole experience of Steve Harrington touching him and leaning close and breathing near him and telling him to breathe? That shit does carry him through—mostly—the hours that will follow, cliche and genuinely fucking embarrassing as it is, as it will be, to acknowledge at all.

But in the now—

“Thanks, man.”

And…oh, well, fuck.

As in point number one: that hand—bothhands—really are distracting as all hell but then also, simultaneously, very much point number two:

What the actual fuck.

“What?”

Apparently sending Eddie-usually-eloquent-enough-to-spin-some-pretty-bullshit-on-demand-Munson reeling outta nowhere is this fucker’s MO. Probably for the best that Eddie’s been writing him off as a pretty airhead for years now—if for nothing more than his own sanity.

Or else, like…relatively speaking.

“You got us here,” Harrington gestures out the window and…yeah.

“Here?”

That’s the relative part. And the insane part to be thanked for. Because where they’ve ended up is definitely the DoE labs that were supposed to have shut down or whatever, after people disappeared and came back and disappeared again and also didn’t and were never gone and fake bodies and whatever.

No one thanks anyone for bringing them to a place like this.

“And it’s more than I could have asked someone to do,” Harrington’s going on like it’s a casual thing, a favor like walking his goddamn dog and not more like what’s actually staring them down inside the fencing, namely the building that doesn’t look as abandoned as advertised by half, and definitely doesn’t at all look like the only thing it’s missing is a big neon sign blinking TRAP! FREE TRAP! IN THE MARKET FOR A QUICK PAINFUL DEMISE AT THE HANDS OF THE WORLD’S SHITTIEST TAINT FACTORY EAST OF ARMPIT-IAPOLIS? STEP RIGHT UP! ALSO REMINDER: CLEARLY A TRAP!

“Harrington,” Eddie doesn’t love the way his voice trips over a bonafide gulp. “Steve.”

He also doesn’t love how much feeling sneaks into that part because one, where the fuck’d that even come from and two, he…

Eddie doesn’t think he’s ever said this guy’s first name out loud. As in…ever.

He doesn’t love how nice it feels, how scary but bubbly-warm it tingles at the base of his throat and the pit of his stomach.

So there’s all of that.

Still set inescapably under the threat of the non-existent-but-no-less-real-neon-sign-of-death and…stuff.

“We know what we’re doing,” Steve’s pats Eddie’s shoulder again, moves the hand from his chest like he’s pulling away, like he’s leaving to go toward the trap and Eddie whips his head around just in time to catch Steve shrug sheepishly and add:

“Like, mostly.”

It is not at all lost on Eddie, how Steve doesn’t even try to sidestep that he’s walking into the gaping maw of probably death, here.

That might be the most terrifying part of this yet.

“I could,” Eddie’s voice is a crackle, so he tries clearing his throat, licking his lips; “I could at least try to help.”

That comes out a little stronger, but not steadier, and he doesn’t really think he’s making his point very well at all.

But then there’s Steve, and his hand back full on Eddie’s shoulder, saying:

“You could,” like he believes that; “and we’d be grateful,” added in like he means that too.

And most unbelievable of all of it, what he tacks on last with a squeeze of his hand and a lower pitch for no reason Eddie can figure save to catch inside the clench of his pulse so it takes to jittering like fucking mad as the King himself exhales:

“I’d be grateful.”

And what the fuck does that mean, said with eyes so bright when the night’s so dark?

And what the fuck does it mean when Eddie’s heartbeat starts jittering, a butterfly between cupped hands, until:

“I need you to be safe though,” and the words have physical form, brush Eddie’s frizzled curls straight behind his ear like…tenderness, delicate.

What. The. Fuck.

Eddie blames the way his heart goes form butterfly to battering ram, ready to crack through his ribs for no reason save a feeling he can’t justify, but’s too real to pretend away as less when he half-fucking-moans:

“What about you?”

Because Steve’s shepherding the kiddos. He’s keeping Eddie on the sidelines, safe. He’s charging into battle with a handkerchief and a bat and a goddamn pair of rubber gloves found from somewhere, sticking out his back pocket like he’s flagging in day-glo, holy hell—

But who takes care of Steve?

“I’ll see you at school,” Steve winks, leans this time to bump one shoulder straight to Eddie’s and then he’s jumping out the back of the van, and he’s moving too fast and—

“Harrington,” Eddie calls, suddenly forgetting he’d ever been trying to keep quiet, to avoid attention of whatever they’re going out to face, Hargrove or harbingers of worker fates, or both at once; “fuck, fuck,” he hissed as he trips over shit that got shifted back in his way as he stumbles to the doors and yells:

“Steve!”

And it’s like maybe saying his name does something to Steve himself, too, because he pauses, and even for the distance, the little curve of his lips isn’t a smirk, it’s a smile.

It’s fucking beautiful.

And then he’s saluting cockily before he turns on his heel with just one last parting shot;

“See you on the other side, Munson.”

And the tunnels beyond only let him watch so long, see so far. The weird shit in the air, and the bandanas he can see a scuffle over, to make sure they’re tied over noses and mouths, lit by weird pulsing colors, obscene squelching noises he can hear the echoes of even this far back and just, just…

Typical eldritch fuckery from a monster manual.

That doesn’t belong in real life.

It’s a fucking trap, Admiral. Good fucking god.

And Jesus H. Christ, but Eddie hadn’t even had the chance to light up tonight as he’d planned, as he’d explicitly driven out to do.

For fuck’s sake.

>>>part two 💚

For @miraculousmultifan, who requested Post-S2; 'Now, I’m not going to deny that I was aware of your beauty. But the point is, this has nothing to do with your beauty. As I got to know you, I began to realise that beauty was the least of your qualities. I became fascinated by your goodness. I was drawn in by it' at my HOBBIT-STYLE BIRTHDAY MONTH PROMPT FEST—very late, obviously, and MID-S2, rather than post but it ENDS UP being post-S2, promise 🖤

✨permanent tag list: OPEN (lmk if you want to be added/removed): @ajeff855 @askitwithflours @awkwardgravity1 @bookworm0690 @bumblebeecuttlefishes @captain--low @depressed-freak13 @dragoon-ze-great @dreamercec @dreamwatch @estrellami-1 @finntheehumaneater @goodolefashionedloverboi @grtwdsmwhr @gunsknivesandplaid @hiei-harringtonmunson @hbyrde36 @imhereforthelolzdontyellatme @kimsnooks @live-laugh-love-dietrich @mensch-anthropos-human @nerdyglassescheeseychick @notaqueenakhaleesi @ollyxar @pearynice @perseus-notjackson @pretend-theres-a-name-here @pukner @ravenfrog @sadisticaltarts @samsoble @sanctumdemunson @shrimply-a-menace @slashify @stealthysteveharrington @swimmingbirdrunningrock @theheadlessphilosopher @theintrovertedintrovert @themoonagainstmers @theohohmoment @tillystealeaves @tinyloonyteacups @tinyplanet95 @warlordess @wheneverfeasible @wordynerdygurl @wxrmland @yesdangerpls @yourmom-isgay @1-tehe-1

divider credit here

[mantisgodsaus]

Normal Kabbu does dumb reckless shit and has Vi go "don't fucking DO that you could have died like FIFTEEN TIMES in the past ten minutes and for what??? some random termite guy???" and ZBT-159 does reckless shit and has Vi go "okay. we think something fucked up in your priorities and planning again. let's, uhh, rejig that again, buddy" and then they go along with that because they are well aware that is an expression of affection despite being equally aware it will probably never actually work.

[all-pacas]

wait i need to talk about this cut scene from the pilot.

I really love this scene. I get why it was cut — it's sort of random and doesn't fit in the episode pacing-wise — but it does such a good job introducing the team and their characters. It literally tells us everything we need to know about all three of them.

Foreman is a little haughty. He's gone to top schools, has top opportunities, is impatient and ambitious and smart. When Chase doesn't know a medical term, he does immediately. He's been here three days and is Unimpressed by House. He's completely dismissive of Chase, but takes more of an interest in Cameron, asking how long she's worked here and what her specialty is, and seems a little offended on her behalf at her secretarial work.

Chase is lazy. He likes not having work to do, he's a flirt, he comes off as a little dim and apathetic. He's unimpressed by Foreman's humble bragging, and rather sarcastic. (This scene alone also completely clarifies Foreman's much later "fire Chase, he doesn't appreciate the job" rant to House.) He makes fun of both Foreman and Cameron. Twice he jumps into the conversation uninvited, first to share his specialty and then to explain Cameron's secretarial work.

Cameron is helpful. She is nice. She is… a little anal. No one asked her to answer House's mail, she does it because she can't stand to see it piled up and deleted. While Foreman is being Visibly Bored and impatient, and Chase is doing his crossword puzzle, she's actually working. She's unoffended by Chase's teasing, and — as she does much of the rest of the pilot — gives Foreman some exposition about how long she and Chase have been here.

In the pilot proper, we get quite a lot of exposition about Foreman — we learn his education and history and he's sort of our viewpoint character for House; he has by far the most scenes and lines of the team — and a bit on Cameron (and almost nothing about Chase). But this scene introduces them so perfectly. I love it so much.

TRANSCRIPT:

FOREMAN: I’ve been here for three days and I haven’t seen an actual patient. This is all we do? CHASE: [doing a crossword] Until the checks start bouncing. FOREMAN: So glad I passed up that neurology job at Sloan. So glad I was able to parlay a chief residency position to this — CHASE: So glad you’ve filled us in on your vaunted past. FOREMAN: My point was it doesn’t matter how smart the guy is if he’s just wasting our time. CHASE: Yeah. See, uh, you completely discounted the possibility that I’m here because it’s boring. I get to tell women I’m a doctor and I have time to actually date them. [beat] Nine letters. Iodine deficiency in children. FOREMAN: Cretinism. [to Cameron:] So, uh, how long have you been here, Cameron? CAMERON: Six months. Chase has been here a year. FOREMAN: What’s your specialty? [simultaneously] CAMERON: Immun — CHASE: Intens — CAMERON: Immunology. CHASE: Intensive care. FOREMAN: Is House abusive? A misogynist? Or just can’t afford a secretary? CHASE: He doesn’t need a secretary. FOREMAN: He’s got her answering his mail. CHASE: No, he doesn’t. FOREMAN: What are you doing? CAMERON: Answering his mail. FOREMAN: She’s answering his mail. CHASE: But he didn’t ask her to. CAMERON: He throws all of the requests for consults in the trash. I get them out and apologize that he’s too busy. [Foreman sighs loudly.]

[whoopseydaisy]