#the house is just long enough for it to be impossible to rotate in the other direction

[softerhaze]

[schrodingerscougar]

Part two for this one. I'm sorry for the cliffhanger in the first part. The illustration is from the amazing @ave661 .

--

Four months. That’s how much time it took Simon to get out of that hazy fugue state. He didn’t really remember what he had gone through during that time, his brain switched to autopilot after the breakup. He often wondered why it affected him this much when he didn’t even love you. You were just someone he spent time with, someone he tried to play house with for a short while to feel normal.

Still, now as he lay on his bed, watching the ceiling fan rotate to stir up the hot air in the room, he couldn’t stop thinking about you. He even found himself opening a social media app to search for your name from a fake account he had set up a long time ago, and he was shocked to see the most recent photo of you. It was impossible to miss the unmistakable shape of a baby bump under your shirt, and based on its size, you got pregnant long months ago.

When he was finally allowed to go home for a short while, Simon went to see you. He knew he had hurt you, he knew you were probably still mad at him, but he had to know if it was his child. It only happened one time. One night when he tried to fix things by giving you what you wanted, hoping sex could make him see you in another light. Maybe he would finally want you the way you always wanted him to want you. But it didn’t work, and it was after that night he made the final decision to end things with you.

“What do you want?” you asked him when you opened the door.

Simon nodded as he bit the inside of his cheek. This cold welcome was fair enough, he deserved this kind of treatment. Normally, he would have left you alone. But normally, you would have told him you were pregnant.

So he silently pointed at your belly and waited for you to realize what he wanted. He knew you weren't dumb, the pieces would fall into place in a second. And sure enough, you let out a sigh then opened the door wider to let him in.

“Why didn't you tell me?” he asked you as he stood in the kitchen next to you with his arms crossed.

You were busy making him a cup of tea, but you took the time to silently shrug. When he let out a heavy sigh, you looked over at him and said, “I didn't think you'd care, Si. Simple as that.”

You were right. He didn't care. Even now that he was looking at you, his eyes occasionally moving to the bump that hid his own blood, his mind was somewhere else. He was a soldier, he knew how to take responsibility for his actions. You getting pregnant was his fault too. He couldn't just ignore the problem.

“I’ll pay child support,” he assured you.

“No need.”

Simon reached out to put a hand on the base of your neck, but you quickly pushed his hand away before he could touch your skin. “You don’t have to do this alone.”

You inhaled through your nose and held your breath in for a few seconds before finally exhaling. “So what? You’re gonna be around and help us? Take her to a doctor’s appointment or for a stroll around the block?” When you saw him looking down at his shoes, you couldn’t help but snort. “Thought so,” you said.

“I’ll better get going. If you change your mind, you know where to find me.”

Months flew by, but Simon barely noticed. He was on a mission again far from home, risking his life as usual. You never called and he didn’t force it. He accepted that he would have to live with the guilt of making this happen. Since you didn’t want to accept child support, he opened a bank account where he stored that money, hoping that one day he could give it to you or his daughter when she became old enough.

One day he checked your social media accounts like he had done a few times before, just to see how you were. This is when he saw the post in which you announced the arrival of your baby girl. He didn’t make a big deal out of it at first. She was born and she would probably ask about her father one day. If he was still alive then, he would gladly give her a toned down explanation. If not… Well, he left everything to her in his will.

Eventually he began to save the photos of his daughter and he often found himself looking at them. She was adorable, some of her features resembling his own. Her big brown eyes were definitely his; the color and the shape were both so familiar to him.

No one from the team knew about this part of his life. He had never told anyone, because why would he? They were close, they were his brothers, but you and your daughter were carefully guarded secrets in his life. Simon knew the real reason why he never talked about you; he was afraid of the judgmental looks and words.

Two months later, when he entered his apartment again after another round of deployment, Simon didn't really know what to do with himself. He ended up looking at his daughter's photos more and more often and eventually he made up his mind to give her a visit. It had absolutely nothing to do with you. He was doing this for the little girl.

You weren't welcoming but, once again, he couldn't blame you. “I just want to see my daughter,” he said softly, hoping the two of you could avoid fighting.

For long moments you were cautiously watching him, as if you were trying to decide if he could be trusted or not. But then your eyes fell on the big teddy bear he was holding with one hand and you let out a sigh of defeat.

On the way to the nursery, you didn't talk at all. The silence didn't bother him, but still he would have appreciated some words about the little girl he was about to meet. Was he allowed to pick her up? Did she like to be held? How was she? Did she have stomach ache often? Were she teething?

“Be quick,” you warned him when you stopped by her crib.

Simon let out a sigh. “Come on, don't be like that.”

You just rolled your eyes at him before taking a step back to lean your shoulder against the doorframe, arms folded over your chest, eyes watching his every move like a hawk. He found it a little too much, he hated that you didn't trust him. Sure, he hadn't given you many reasons to trust him, but for the sake of your daughter you should have tried.

With a sigh, he rested an elbow on the side of the crib and reached out to touch the baby as gently as he could with his other hand. His own flesh and blood. It was amazing, really. Without asking for permission, he picked her up and couldn't help but smile when the baby smiled at him.

Now that he was holding her close to his body, placing soft kisses on her head every so often, Simon couldn't deny that he already loved his daughter. There was an invisible string between them, something that brought her closer to him that anyone has ever been.

The baby giggled suddenly and it brought an even wider smile to Simon’s face. He could only hope you would let him see her as often as he could visit, but something told him it wouldn't be easy to convince you.

“She likes you,” you suddenly noted.

He put down the little girl then turned to you. “The feeling's mutual.” A faint smile appeared on your lips. “Can I see her some other time?” You nodded. “Thank you. If I can help with anything, just give me a call or send a message. I'll get back to you as soon as I can,” he offered.

You been to walk out of the room and he quietly followed you, waiting for you to say something. He didn't really know what he was expecting to hear, but he had a feeling you were holding back something. And sure enough, after a few minutes of silence you began to talk, scolding him for not even bothering to send at least a text to ask about her before suddenly showing up.

“I'm sorry. I didn't think you'd read them.”

“I'm mad at you, that's true,” you agreed.

Simon leaned against the doorframe as he watched you pace in the living room like a caged animal. He remembered those nights he had spent thinking about on deployment, the moment he saw that photo of you, and he realized that maybe he was missing you.

But how could he miss someone he didn't even love? Or had he developed feelings for you, feelings he tried to hide even from himself? It was way too confusing for him, and he didn't like to be confused. It was a weakness on the field and in his civilian life.

“I should go. If you need anything–”

You came to a halt, turned to him and nodded. “I know where to find you. But can I ask you something?” Simon motioned you to go on. “Why now? Why did you become interested in her all of a sudden?”

He let out a thoughtful hum as he put his hand on the back of his neck. “I saw the photos, how much she looks like me, and… I don't know.” You took a few steps closer to him, but you still kept a comfortable distance. “I've been saving money for her. I want to give you access to that bank account.”

“I don't need your money,” you were quick to say.

“It's for her. Please, accept it.”

You became mad at him, accusing him of assuming you couldn't take care of your daughter you'd been raising on your own from day one. He knew there was no point in defending himself, you were too lost in the hate you felt for him. So he just waited there in silence, letting you finish your speech.

Then, the moment you seemingly finished, he closed the gap between the two of you. He didn't know what he was doing, he just followed his instinct when he leaned down and kissed you. This was probably the first time he truly enjoyed kissing you, and it helped a lot that you were quick to return it.

Maybe this was why he wanted to come here today. To fix things. To try to get a family he'd been craving ever since he lost his own.

(part three)

[lovebugism]

ok what about virgin!eddie x reader -- "when he wears THAT flannel" i just want to see him getting showered in compliments and fawning over the attention, he deserves it !!

thanks for ur request angel :D — eddie tries to wear something new and you can't stop ogling at him (established relationship, fluff, part of the tcar universe, 0.8k)

fictober (㇏(•̀ᵥᵥ•́)ノ)

Eddie attempts to hang ghost lights on the ceiling of the living room. It’s made only slightly difficult by the rickety step stool he stands on. It’s damn near impossible with the thick flannel constricting his arms.

“Fuck…” he grumbles like a storm cloud, face scrunched in a subtle pout.

You squint up at him from where you untangle the string lights. You watch him rotate his shoulders in distant discomfort, still trying to get used to the new shirt Uncle Wayne bought him.

“You okay, Eds?”

“Yeah, it just… fits weird.”

He squirms in his skin again, and you bite back a laugh. 

Your gaze falls to his pale tummy when his arms raise to pin the lights to the wall. His skin is milky white, powder-soft. A tuft of chestnut hair peeks out from the hem of his sweatpants. It suddenly becomes dreadfully difficult to look away from his happy trail.

“I don’t know…” you hum, shrugging as your fingers work a knot from the tangled wire. “I think it fits perfect.”

His chocolate eyes narrow down at you. He playfully jerks at the inch of string lights you give him, tugging down the bottom of his flannel with his free hand. “Keep it in your pants, freak,” he mumbles, a crooked smile hinting at his lips.

You pull yours between your teeth to conceal its brightness.

Eddie keeps working but grows bitterly aware of the fabric weighing on his torso. He’s not used to wearing something so heavy, so dreadfully un-lived in. It’s thick and itchy, so overwhelmingly overstimulating that it’s almost impossible to move in.

Then he feels your eyes on him, and there’s nothing he loves more than your attention, but he still feels a bit like a teenage boy. He’s lanky and clumsy and insecure in just about every aspect, but especially in his body.

It’s weird to have someone who loves him and thinks he’s pretty. It’s good, amazing even, but weird nonetheless. It should make him feel better about himself, and it does a lot of the time, but it also makes him extremely hyperaware of what he looks like and how you must see him.

So when he lifts his arms too high and his pale, pudgy midriff flashes for a second, he huffs all dramatic and stomps down the ladder. “Alright, I’m gonna go change—”

“What? No,” you whine instantaneously, pouting more sincerely than he’s ever seen you. “You look so cute, Eds. Don’t take it off.”

“I look like a lumberjack,” the boy scoffs.

“A very sexy lumberjack,” you correct with a pretty smile.

Eddie grins back, all wide and rosy. He cups your face with warm, calloused palms. “You’re real cute when you lie to me, you know that?” he teases with a scrunched nose.

“I’m not lying! I wouldn’t tell you that if it wasn’t true!”

“No?”

“Nope,” you answer, popping the ‘p’ and shaking your head in his hands. “I’m obsessed with you, and I’m a terrible liar. So you’d definitely know if I wasn’t telling the truth.”

Eddie hopes his cheeks aren’t as red as they feel. “Fair enough,” he mumbles with a curt shrug.

“I, for one, think you look very, very handsome.” You grin and lean forward to kiss the very tip of his nose. It’s warm and pink like the rest of his crumbled-up face. 

“Thanks, mom…”

“And I think you look super cozy, too,” you confess, spreading your palms along his covered stomach.

“Cozy?”

“Yeah. You know, like soft— nostalgic. Like a house—”

His chin falls to his chest as he flashes you an incredulous, deadpanned look. “You’re saying I look like a house?”

“No, dummy! You don’t look like a house! You… I don’t know, you feel like a house,” you stammer, then inevitably start to ramble. “Like, you look like where I wanna come home after a long day at work and throw down my keys and take a nap, you know?”

You feel safe, is what you’re really telling him. You feel like where I wanna spend the rest of my life.

Eddie grins so brightly his blushed cheeks start to ache. He can’t help but tease you, anyway. “You got… all that… from a flannel?” he jokes slowly.

“No!” you scoff with the roll of your eyes, perhaps too quickly to be true. “…Not totally. But I do love the easy access, though.”

A tingle rushes up Eddie’s spine when your fingers migrate beneath his flannel. Your touch is soft and cold compared to the warmth of his belly. Your nails scratch at the sparse tuft of hair of his happy trail. He swears his vision goes white for a blink.

He doesn’t get the obsession you have — with his stomach or with him at all — but he revels in it, anyway. He feels like he should. Most people don’t get to find their soulmate, and he gets an entire lifetime with his.

“You’re crazy,” he says, shaking his head and beaming wide.

“For you,” you croon, lovesick and honeyed.

He laughs. “And cheesy."

You shrug and smile, his hands on your cheeks. “What can I say? You bring out the worst in me.”

And if this is the worst, Eddie can’t fucking wait for a lifetime of evil.

[ak-vintage]

Sweet As

Pairing: Francisco Morales/f! babysitter reader

Summary: Frankie comes home after a long day at work and learns how you have been keeping cool in the midst of a heat wave.

Prompt: Frankie Morales x Grapes

Tags & Warnings: 18+ MDNI, 6 years post-Triple Frontier, single dad Frankie, flight instructor Frankie, babysitter reader, dual POV, age gap (not specified, but reader is a grad student), minimal descriptors of reader character, no use of y/n, domestic, sweet, mutual pining, food as foreplay, frottage, pussy pronouns, vaginal fingering, oral sex (f! receiving), trying to keep quiet, trying not to get caught, undefined but hopeful ending

Word Count: 7.5K

Written for the @happypedrohours Charcuterie Board Challenge.

Dividers by @saradika-graphics <3

Read on AO3

You had always been a summer girl, but even you had your limits.

It was week three of the most severe heatwave the south had seen in a decade, and even with the Morales’s air conditioner running at full capacity, you still couldn’t help but park yourself directly under the ceiling fan with a sweating glass of iced tea. Mila, thankfully, hadn’t fought you during bedtime tonight, the six-year-old nearly dead on her feet after a full day of summer activities – a bike ride around the block before the heat of the day had set in, a dance party after lunch, hours in her swimsuit weaving in and out of the sprinkler in the back yard. You had done your best to keep up with her sunscreen, but she still sported a little flush on her round, tan cheeks as she crawled into bed, making little snuffling snores before you had even finished telling her goodnight.

There was a part of you that envied it, the way she could just collapse into sleep, not a care in the world, while you were stuck at the kitchen table late into the night, your laptop and textbooks strewn across its surface. The perils of holding down a full-time babysitting gig while also taking summer classes, you supposed.

It was worth it, though. Mila was a sweet girl, a total social butterfly, full of giggles and sweetness, easily the most fun kid you had ever cared for. And Frankie, her father…

Mr. Morales, you reminded yourself with a quick shake of your head.

Mr. Morales was a dream to work for. Respectful, pleasant, communicative, fair. A great parent to his daughter – a single dad, the only one in your regular client rotation. He paid you well for your time, and he was generous with his recreation budget, always making sure to leave cash in the top kitchen drawer for ice cream treats, trips to the pool, matinee movies. You really couldn’t have asked for a better job for the summer.

It didn’t hurt that he was absurdly handsome, in a rugged, lived-in sort of way. Not that it mattered, of course; he was your boss, more than a decade your senior, and you were, above all else, a professional. Hitting on the kids’ dads? The biggest babysitting faux pas. You liked to think you had more class than that.

However, class or not, you were still just a woman, and Francisco Morales? He was all man.

A blue-collar, ex-military guy in his mid-forties, he was tall and impossibly broad in the shoulders with long, muscular arms, a soft tummy that peaked out over the waistband of his jeans, and a head full of dark brown curls that were constantly just a little squished by a dark, well-worn ballcap bearing the Standard Oil logo. He started out a bit reserved in the beginning, not at all unfriendly but certainly someone who took some time to open up to new people, but in the months since you had started working for him, the two of you had developed a comfortable rapport.

So, if you dragged yourself out of bed an hour early just so you could get to his house in time enough to share a cup of coffee with him before he left for work, well…that was just relationship building with a client, wasn’t it? If you found yourself lingering in the driveway every time he walked you out to your car at the end of the day, extending the conversation more and more, delaying your departure as long as you could manage, that was just…friendship, right? Comradery.

And if, on nights like tonight, you received a series of clunky, unpunctuated texts asking you to stay late on short notice and you agreed without question, that was just going above and beyond. That was you being a good employee.

It definitely wasn’t you genuinely wanting to help out the struggling single father, not because you were being paid to do so, but because he deserved it. And you definitely didn’t take a deep, personal satisfaction in knowing that he trusted you, knowing that he relied on you.

It was all above board. All friendly. All completely and totally normal.

These were the things you told yourself, anyway. It helped you to keep your traitorous heart in check.

It was nearing 10:00 PM by the time Frankie finally pulled into his driveway, his eyelids heavy, his limbs leaden and slicked with sweat. One of the ‘copters at the flight school where he worked had required some major repairs after a clumsy takeoff by one of the students earlier that afternoon had resulted in damage to the rotor blades, and he had volunteered to stay behind after hours and help with the effort so the thing wouldn’t have to spend the entire next day grounded. He was an instructor these days, but his assistance had still been welcomed. In the years he had spent attempting to earn back his pilot’s license after his…indiscretions, he had spent a fair amount of time working as an aviation mechanic to make ends meet.

Even then, at the lowest point of his life, he hadn’t been able to keep himself away from a hangar.

It had been back-breaking work, and Frankie hated having to ask you to stay late when he knew you had your own life, your own friends, your own dreams outside of babysitting his kid, but the repairs were complete now, which meant that none of the instructors would need to cancel any of their lessons for the following day. And when the flight school’s students were, more often than not, rich old men and their trust fund sons who didn’t take well to being told “no,” the extra effort would not go unnoticed.

Now, however, as he shifted his pickup truck into park next to your beat-up old Ford Focus, all he could think about was getting into the air conditioning, taking off his boots, and sitting down at the kitchen table under the ceiling fan with you.

It was the only advantage, really, of these late nights. Infrequent though they were, Frankie couldn’t deny that there was something special about coming home to find his daughter tucked up in bed, happy and tired and well-fed, and you at the table with your schoolwork strewn out in front of you. There was something peaceful and almost painfully domestic about it, something that had his chest swelling with a feeling that he couldn’t quite identify but that he knew for certain was not something one was meant to feel for one’s babysitter.

It was the same feeling he got when you started accepting his offers of coffee in the mornings before he left for work, or when you noticed that he had started purchasing the sugary-sweet creamer you preferred when he had only ever drunk his coffee black. It was the same feeling he got when he came home on one of the first nights of this fucking wretched heatwave to find you chasing his daughter around the back yard with an armful of water balloons, the both of you soaked to the skin and giggling as you pelted each other relentlessly.

It was the same feeling he got when he walked you out to your car and he watched you grip the driver’s door handle so tight your knuckles turned pale, watched you glance down at his lips one too many times to be proper. Soft mouth parted, long lashes casting shadows across your sun-kissed cheeks, perfect breasts rising and falling with your quickened breath –

Frankie brought the heels of his hands up to his eyes, pressing hard, scrubbing across his face to banish the thought. He had no business thinking of you like that, noticing you like that, and he needed to get it together before he walked through the front door and found you precisely where he had imagined you. This might have been his home, but it was your place of work, and he refused to be one of those skeevy dads who made the babysitter uncomfortable.

Gathering himself, Frankie hopped down out of the truck and jogged up the front porch steps. Slipping his keyring from his front pocket, he opened the door as quietly as he could manage and kicked his well-worn boots off onto the mat inside the entryway.

Before he could announce his arrival, however, your voice called out to him, hushed and warm.

“Welcome home, Mr. Morales,” you said sweetly, glancing up at him from your favorite chair at his table. He could see you there through the kitchen doorway, hair piled haphazardly on top of your head, eyes tired but soft, happy. You had gotten even more sun today, your cheeks, nose, and forehead tinged with pink, and you wore an oversized T-shirt and a pair of almost sinfully short shorts, the kind with the elastic waist that looked soft to the touch. Frankie tried and failed not to trace the length of your legs with his eyes, not to imagine the plush softness of your thighs, the suppleness of your calves.

Dragging his gaze back up to your face, praying that you hadn’t caught the trajectory of his traitor eyes, he was somewhat surprised to find you studying him, as well. Rather intently, as a matter of fact. He squinted down at himself, puzzled, and noticed for the first time what you must be staring at: he was a mess.

He was smudged with grease from head to toe, dark streaks of the oily substance arcing across his jeans, his uniform polo, his bare forearms, the backs of his hands. His skin, where it was visible, shone with sweat in the dim entryway light, and his shirt clung to his upper body like a second skin from the heat (moisture-wicking fabric, his ass). The weather would have been enough to have him in a state, but the late night combined with the manual labor had clearly taken its toll.

He watched the long column of your throat bob as you swallowed thickly.

“Rough day?” you asked after a beat of tense silence, keeping your voice low so as not to wake Mila.

Frankie felt his lips lift at the corner, offering you a fatigued half-smile. “A bit, yeah. But better now.”

You pressed your mouth into a thin line as though smothering a grin. “Glad to hear it.” Gesturing at the chair opposite you, you added, “Why don’t you come have a seat, and I’ll heat up some leftovers for you? You have to be starving.”

Fuck, now that you mentioned it, he was starving. He and the small crew of mechanics had taken a brief snack break while they worked, partaking of whatever hodgepodge of junk they had been able to liberate from the vending machine in the office, but that bag of chips and stale granola bar had left his system hours ago now. Still, even as his stomach growled with hunger, he couldn’t help but protest, “You don’t need to do that, cariño. It’s not your job to cook for me on top of everything else you do around here.”

You waved his words away with a flippant flick of your wrist, already on your feet and heading for the refrigerator. “I’ve told you, it’s not a problem. I cook anyway for me and Mila. Why wouldn’t I make a little extra for you while I’m at it?” You glanced over your shoulder at him. “Now sit down. I’ve got this.”

As the container of leftover pasta rotated in the pale yellow light of the microwave, you took a moment to gather yourself, to reign in the surge of want that had pulsed through you at the sight of your employer hovering in the entryway.

Miles of golden tan skin shining with sweat, pooling in the little hollow at the base of his neck. His uniform polo unbuttoned as far down as it would go, showing a sliver of gray ribbed undershirt. Grease smudged across one high cheekbone, streaked across his hands. You needed those hands on you, needed him to transfer those dark marks onto your skin, your clothes, to leave a trail across your body so you could remember everywhere he had touched you, so you could see it when you looked in the mirror.

“How was Mila today? She behave herself all right?”

You startled at the sound of his voice, quickly schooling your face into what you hoped was a pleasantly neutral expression before turning back around to face him. “Oh, yeah, she was great. We had a good day today.”

Frankie – Mr. Morales – smiled fondly at that. “Good, that’s good. No more, uh, meltdowns in the afternoon?”

“No, things have been pretty smooth since we started digging through that article I found. ‘30 Activities to Keep Kids Cool in the Summer’ or whatever. It’s been a huge help.” You chuckled wryly. “Once I figured out a way to let her be outside in the afternoons without running the risk of heatstroke, she’s been great.”

“Right, right.” He settled himself in the chair across from yours, running the side of his fingers across his patchy stubble in thought. “That’s what gave you the idea for the water balloons that one day, right?”

The microwave beeped twice, the golden light inside flickering off, and you grabbed the steaming leftover container as you spoke. “Yeah, exactly. And the sprinkler, and turning paint into ice cubes and using it like chalk.” Snagging a fork from the silverware drawer, you handed both to the exhausted man and slid back into your seat.

He tossed you a grateful smile and dug into the meal with gusto, loosing a quiet groan at the first bite. “Shit, that’s good,” he sighed, dark eyes fluttering closed in a way that had your heartrate spiking. “Thank you for this, cariño. You’re a lifesaver.”

Warmth blossomed in your chest, and you fought the urge to reach out and squeeze his shoulder comfortingly. “Of course, it’s my pleasure.”

Shoving a few more bites into his mouth, he asked, “Didn’t you freeze her Barbies one day, too?”

“Yeah, I did!” It had been one of Mila’s favorites so far of the heatwave-proof activities you had planned for her, and the memory of it had you chuckling. “I took a couple of her dolls and a bunch of their accessories, put them in a few of those sand buckets you guys have in the garage, filled those with water, and then froze them overnight. It took her hours to dig them all out, but hey. It kept her busy, and she didn’t overheat in the process, so I’ll take it.”

Mr. Morales grinned at that, plucking a napkin from the holder in the center of the table, scrubbing it across his sauce-stained moustache. “Incredible. You know, I can’t tell you how much I appreciate all the extra effort you’ve been going to with her lately. I know it’s a lot, just looking after her eight hours a day, every day. But with this heat, I know she’s going stir-crazy.” He glanced down at his meal, something almost bashful creeping into his expression. “Pretty sure she gets that from me. Never been real good at sitting still, being stuck indoors.”

“It’s really nothing, Mr. Morales,” you insisted, brushing away the praise with a swipe of your hand.

“No. S’not nothing.” His low voice had gone serious now, and when he glanced back up at you, his eyes were wide, dark, and earnest. “The way you take care of her? The way you always seem to just…know what she needs? That’s everything.” You swore you saw his cheeks darken, swore you saw his Adam’s apple bob as he swallowed hard. “And I told you. S’okay if you call me Frankie. That Mr. Morales stuff makes me feel old.”

You drew your lower lip between your teeth, gaze flicking down to your hands as the intensity of the eye contact became too much to handle. “If you’re sure,” you agreed after a moment. “I don’t want to…presume.”

“Not presuming,” he disagreed, shaking his head. “We’re…friends, right, cariño? Friends can call each other by their first names.”

Something in your stomach ached at his words, but he sounded so genuine, so hopeful that you couldn’t bring yourself to deny him. “Suppose that’s true… Frankie.”

Fucking Christ.

Maybe that hadn’t been the right call, Frankie thought. Maybe he shouldn’t have suggested you call him that, not when your voice sounded so sweet wrapped around his name, not when the hour was so late, the house so silent, like you were the only two people awake in the world. That kind of intimacy, it was going to give him…ideas.

Eager to distract himself from the moment, he plowed onward. “Well, what was the activity today?” he asked, stabbing another selection of pasta and vegetables with his fork.

You appeared to consider the question for a moment before replying, “Actually, it’s more of ‘show’ thing than a ‘tell’ thing, so if you don’t mind holding that thought for a minute, I’ll show you after you’re finished eating.”

Frankie arched an eyebrow at you, intrigued. “Okay, sure. I can wait. Why don’t you tell me what you’re working on then instead? Something for school, I assume?” He gestured at the impressive spread of textbooks, printed articles, and your open laptop taking up most of the surface of the kitchen table.

Immediately, you launched into a detailed explanation of your current project, a research proposal for your graduate program that would serve as the capstone of this session of summer classes. He would freely admit that he only understood bits and pieces of it, his formal education having ended with his high school graduation, but he always enjoyed asking you about your schoolwork. The way you lit up when you talked about the subjects you were passionate about, your animated gestures, your wide, sparkling eyes, all of it was deeply endearing to him. He loved how passionate you were, the way you chased after your goals with fire and focus. It was one of his favorite things about you, and he felt as though that list might be growing longer by the day.

Your monologue about your research proposal gave him the perfect opportunity to finish his meal, so that by the time you had come to the end of your explanation, Frankie was dropping his fork into the now-empty container and leaning back in his chair, pleasantly full and satisfied.

“Oh,” you gasped, seeming to come back to yourself as you took in his relaxed posture, the little smile on his face. “Wow, I really just went on and on there, huh? Sorry about that, I guess I get a little overexcited about my research.”

“Don’t apologize. I like how fired up about it you get, it’s cute.”

The words were out of his mouth before he could stop them, a little too honest, a little too real, and Frankie braced himself for the shift in your demeanor that was sure to follow. The awkwardness, the clear discomfort at the too-personal words from your employer. But it never came. Instead, your cheeks darkened under his gaze, a flush spreading down your neck and disappearing into the neckline of your oversized T-shirt.

“You…you think I’m cute?” you stammered, voice a bit breathless in a way that had him shifting in his seat, and he felt a fresh flush of sweat bead up on his forehead, just under the brim of his ballcap, at the sound.

He needed to blow you off, he knew. He needed to make an excuse for the comment, turn it into something mindless, something shallow and impersonal, if he wanted to point this conversation back in the right direction.

“‘Course, cariño,” he said instead. “Who wouldn’t? Might be an old man these days, but I’m not dead yet.”

What was wrong with him?

You blinked back at him for a moment, eyes wide and glossy, lips parted in surprise at the confession, but then you were smiling, something almost…flirtatious in the curve of your lip as you said, “You’re not an old man, Frankie. You’re…experienced.”

Oh, fuck him.

This was a dangerous path the two of you were walking, and in that moment, Frankie wasn’t sure what frightened him more: the eventual destination or the fact that you seemed more than willing to travel it with him.

If he was ever going to make it back to safety, he needed to switch gears. Now.

“How about that activity?” he said quickly. “You gonna show me what you and Mila got up to all day?”

Drawing back from where you had started to lean toward him across the table, you shook your head a bit, as though the question had brought you back to yourself. He watched as the softness and the want in your eyes dissipated, and though he mourned it, he knew it was for the best. The two of you had come too close to crossing that line tonight. You both needed to regain your footing a bit.

“Sure. Actually, it should make for a good dessert.” Getting to your feet once more, you crossed to the refrigerator and opened the freezer door, pulling three medium-sized plastic containers from its depths. The clear plastic fogged up the moment it hit the outside air, obscuring their contents, but Frankie didn’t have to wait for long to see what was inside. A moment later, you spread the three containers out on the kitchen table in front of him and began removing their lids.

Inside the containers was a selection of perfectly chopped, completely frozen fruit. The two of you had clearly used some creatively-shaped cutters to prepare the fruit, as some of the chunks were shaped like little hearts, others looked like tiny stars, and still others looked as though a cutter in the shape of a bunny head had been used. One container held little hunks of bright red watermelon in a full assortment of unique shapes, another boasted chunks of pineapple, also uniquely prepared, and in the last container, a medley of green and red grapes had been halved down the center for easy eating.

“What tastes better on a hot day than fresh fruit?” you asked cheerily. “We cut it up together out on the patio first thing this morning so it would have time to freeze. Mila wanted me to tell you that she did the watermelon because it’s pink and that’s her favorite.”

Frankie glanced up at you, meeting your eyes over the frosty containers. “That sounds about right,” he chuckled.

“I ended up having to hose down the concrete by the time we were done, but it made a great snack when it got miserable out. She was going back and forth between the sprinkler and her bowl on the patio all afternoon.”

He grinned at the image you painted, thinking of his little girl in her pink bathing suit, wild brown ringlets wet and clinging to her scalp, grass sticking to her feet as she danced through the spray of the sprinkler, darting back to grab a hunk of watermelon or a frozen grape, the juice dripping from her little fingers.

“Help yourself,” you encouraged, sitting back down across from him. “I’ll have some with you.”

He quirked an eyebrow at you. “Shouldn’t I…grab us some forks?”

You shrugged, that fucking grin making its way back onto your face. “I won’t tell if you won’t.”

And with that, you fluttered your fingertips over the container of frozen grapes, plucked one from the pile, and slipped it into your mouth with a satisfied sigh. You might have started chatting then, might have begun asking him if he had any fun plans for the upcoming weekend and offered a summary of yours in return, but Frankie hardly heard a word of it. He was too preoccupied with your…snacking.

The plushness of your lips, the little peek of your slick, pink tongue each time you opened them, the way you seemed to allow the fruit to linger in your mouth as it defrosted. Heart-shaped watermelon had pale pink juice spilling out of the corner of your mouth, making it halfway down your chin before you delicately swiped it away with the tip of your middle finger. A pineapple star had you smiling softly as you enjoyed the burst of tartness over your tastebuds.

And those grapes.

Those goddamn fucking grapes, with their slick, frosty skin and their subtle, gentle sweetness – those you softly, almost absently traced over the seam of your lips before slipping them inside. Like you were savoring the sensation unconsciously, like the cool wetness of them quenched something in you that you weren’t even aware required attention. They made your mouth glisten in the low light, the shine of it so tempting he was certain that he hadn’t looked away from it in several minutes now.

In the back of his mind, he knew he needed to get ahold of himself. There was no way you hadn’t noticed; he had to be making you uncomfortable by now. But he just…couldn’t. God, you looked good enough to eat, with your messy hair and your sun-pinked cheeks and your bright eyes and your soft, bare legs.

A droplet of sweat traveled down the side of his face, streaking down his temple, his jaw, his neck.

Your mouth looked cool, and it looked sweet.

“…Frankie?”

Frankie startled at the sound of his name on your tongue, and his gaze snapped back up to your eyes instantly, a wicked flush blazing up the back of his neck and over his skull in mortification. Shit, you had noticed him staring, this was such a major fuck-up –

“Hm? What’s that, cariño?” His voice came out weak and raspy, like his throat had gone dry, and he cleared it loudly.

“I was saying, you don’t want any of the fruit?” You looked him over with wide, innocent eyes, and for the first time, Frankie realized that he hadn’t taken a single bite.

“Uh. A-Actually, I think I might be too full at the moment,” he stammered, bringing a hand up to pat himself across the belly in excuse.

The little confused quirk of your head told him immediately that you didn’t believe him. Scooting your chair across the hardwood floor, you came to sit directly next to him and gently scolded, “Frankie, you’ve been out working in this heat all night. You need to rehydrate. Here, you have room for a few pieces. Open up, okay?”

One of those slick, dewy grape halves appeared between your thumb and forefinger then, and the next thing he knew, you were holding it out to him. Not to take with his own hand, but to eat. It was a mere hairsbreadth away from his mouth.

Unable to formulate a suitable protest, his brain suddenly feeling rather detached from his body, all Frankie could do was drop his jaw and allow you to slip the fruit inside.

The pads of your fingers touched the soft, sensitive skin of his lower lip, and that was when he was certain that not only had his brain seemingly walked away on its own, it had turned fully off. That was the only explanation he could come up with for why the moment he registered the delicate touch, he immediately seized your wrist in one of his fists, dragging your fingers fully into his mouth.

A loud, feminine gasp met his ears as he swiped his tongue between your fingertips, stealing the frozen fruit from your grasp, pressing it firmly against the roof of his mouth to squash it, and quickly swallowing it down. His tongue returned to your skin, lapping at the frost and the condensation and the delicate, sweet juices coating your fingertips, and he watched as your eyes glazed over at the sensation. Your wrist went limp in his grasp, your fingers pliant, never once attempting to withdraw, and the ball of heat that had been brewing in his gut all night suddenly reached a fever pitch as he realized that you liked this.

Cock twitching in his jeans, he drew your fingers from his mouth. Both his eyes and yours followed the fine trail of saliva that stretched from his lip to the tip of your index finger, and he heard your swallow heavily at the sight.

“Frankie,” you whispered weakly.

And then his restraint abandoned him just as his mind had, and before he could think better of it, his hands were cupping your face and dragging you bodily to meet him in a hard, messy kiss.

Francisco Morales kissed like he did everything else – with intention, with competence, and with a raw, simmering fire that lingered just below the surface just waiting to be unveiled. To be stoked. To be nurtured.

The presence of that fire had your squirming in your seat, had your neck bending back on your shoulders in submission to the intensity of his assault. His thumbs, long and thick, pressed into your jaw from either side, wrenching you open, and his tongue slipped inside, immediately seeking your own with a desperation that drew a soft, muffled moan from your throat. Your own hands flew to the sweat-damp collar of his polo, and you dug your fingers into the fabric, holding him, keeping him just as fiercely as he kept you. Your heartbeat thundered in your ears, pulsed between your thighs, growing sensitive and tender there when wetness bloomed.

With a low, rasping groan, Frankie broke the kiss and began tracing his prominent nose across your cheek, along the edge of your jaw, down your bare neck.

“You taste so fucking sweet, querida. Cold and…delicious and…perfect.”

Punctuating his words with hot, open-mouthed kisses across your skin, his voice rough and raw and sounding like the confession had been dragged from his chest against his will, it was enough to have sweat breaking out on the back of your neck, behind your knees, at the base of your spine.

“Frankie,” you breathed, threading your grip into his hair, curling his dark brown locks around your fingers, scraping along his scalp. “Please – ”

His hands dropped from your jaw then, sweeping around the width of your hips and hauling you into his lap. Instinctually, your thighs spread to bracket his waist, the weight of you coming to rest on his spread-legged lap, and you couldn’t help but moan at the thick, hard press of him against the softness of your cunt.

“This okay, baby?” he murmured against your skin, nuzzling against the neckline of your shirt, broad palms dragging down over your ass to hold you down, press you to him.

You whimpered and felt your body going soft, warm, and pliant beneath his touch. “Mm hm!” Hips hitching, grinding against him of their own accord, you pulled his face back up to meet yours, smothering your own gasps and whines in his mouth.

It didn’t last long, however. After a few quick licks against your tongue, Frankie pulled away, pressing his forehead against yours and knocking his Standard Oil cap to the floor.

“Uh uh, need to hear the words, cariño. Won’t do anything you don’t want me doing.” Wrapping his fingers around your messy bun, he angled your face down so that your heavy-lidded eyes met his. “I’ll ask you again. You want me touching you? You want me to make you feel good?”

Your eyes drifted shut, your mind gone warm and hazy. God, the things this man did to you. Did he know how long you had wanted this? How hard you had fought against it? He couldn’t know. If he did, he would never ask such a question.

“Yes, please, Frankie,” you gasped, nodding against his hold, brushing the tip of your nose against his.

“Yes, please, what, bebita?” You could hear a smirk in his voice now, and the sound had you flushing down to the tips of your toes, a fresh rush of wetness soaking your panties as you squirmed against him.

Tucking your face against his sweaty neck, you whispered, “Please…please make me feel good.”

Frankie was on his feet in an instant, boosting you into his arms in a move that had your stomach dropping down through your abdomen both in shock and in arousal. He backed you into the table, your hips bumping into the wooden edge, and the snap of pain had a brief flash of clarity flying through your lust-filled brain fog.

“Frankie, my books – ”

The older man swore under his breath – “fuck, right” – before changing course, bringing you instead over to the arm of the peninsula that extended out into the room from the edge of the kitchen. Kicking one of the two barstools out of the way, he dropped you unceremoniously onto the countertop before dragging you down for another kiss.

He ate at your mouth like a man starved, sucking on your lips, dragging his teeth across your skin, licking against the roof of your mouth. It was wet, sloppy, and so hot, his desperation contagious, encouraging you to match him caress for caress. No one had ever kissed you like this, like the kissing was the main event rather than a means to an end. Frankie kissed like that was the entire point, and it had you melting against the counter. You were dripping through your shorts now, you were sure of it.

“Can taste all that fruit on your tongue. Sweetest thing I ever tasted,” he growled, keeping his voice low. “But I can think of at least one other thing that might be even sweeter.”

Jesus fucking Christ. Your boss was going to eat you out on his kitchen counter.

“Lean back, bebita.” The words were spoken against your cheeks, brushed into your skin by the suddenly tender touch of his lips, the rasp of his whiskers, the press of his chin. “Let me take care of you.”

You did as he asked, releasing your hold on his broad shoulders and sinking back onto your elbows. The granite was cool to the touch, sending goosebumps along your arms and down your spine, but the sensation was a welcome one after the oppressive heat of the day, the heat of his body on yours.

His palms snaked beneath the hem of your T-shirt, bunching it up onto your belly to reveal the waistband of your shorts. Hooking his thumbs into the elastic without preamble, he murmured, “Lift your hips a bit for me, baby.” Again, you obeyed without question, and with a few short tugs, Frankie pulled both your shorts and your slick-stained panties down your legs to drop to the hardwood floor.

You felt a fierce blush flare in your cheeks, spreading down your neck and chest with a speed that had you gasping for air. The ceiling fan over the kitchen table – you could feel its breeze from here, the cool rush of air instantly pulling a shiver from you as it hit your wet, swollen pussy. You kept yourself bare in the summer, finding it easier and less stressful whenever you wanted to wear a swimsuit, and laid out like this on display, thighs spread around Frankie’s broad body, the cold fan hitting your most vulnerable skin, you couldn’t help but feel a bit…overexposed. The reality of your situation hit you like a freight train, and you found yourself fighting the urge to snap your legs closed against the eyes of your boss.

It was as though Frankie could read your mind. Not a moment after the thought occurred to you, you felt his big hands clamp onto your thighs and pull them apart even wider.

“Don’t you dare try to hide from me. She’s so fucking beautiful,” he tutted, and you risked a glance at his face only to find him staring intently down at your cunt. “You been walking around my house with a naked pussy like this all summer, baby? Dirty girl.” His dark brown eyes had gone almost black with lust, his irises only a faint ring around his wide pupils, and in a gesture that seemed entirely unconscious, he darted the tip of his tongue out to wet his bottom lip. He looked utterly fascinated. Entranced. Hungry. The sight had your walls clenching around nothing, and you watched him watch that happen with an eagerness that had you moaning aloud.

When he spoke again, he was a man in thrall. “‘M gonna eat this pretty pussy now, querida. Gotta be quiet for me, okay? Don’t wanna wake Mila.”

You nodded, bringing one of your hands up to cover your mouth preemptively. This man was going to have you screaming, you just knew it. Flicking his gaze up to yours for just a moment, he grinned wickedly at the sight.

“That’s a good girl, baby,” he whispered, and then his face was in your cunt, and you felt your every coherent thought fly out the window.

If Frankie had thought that your mouth tasted sweet, your tongue like candy, then your pussy was fruit on the vine, straight from the vineyard, drenched in sunshine. It was hot, deep, and rich, earthy and tangy and drugging, like a late summer afternoon, like a hazy day in August. This had always been one of his favorite things to do with women, one of his favorite ways to please them, and never – not once – had it ever been like this. From the moment his tongue touched your delicate, dripping folds, he knew – there would be no going back from this. Not for him. He couldn’t experience something like this and not crave it every day for the rest of his life.

He started with soft, light strokes with tip of his tongue, tracing just the very edges of your lips from down near your entrance all the way to the top of your mound. Then again, slowly pressing deeper but never with any more than the faintest pressure. Even so, you responded instantly, a panting, high-pitched whine sounding behind the press of your palm over your mouth. Your hips bucked against his mouth, trying to increase the pressure, to draw him further into you, but he had one of his arms bracketing the span of your hips before you could make much progress.

Driving you firmly into the countertop, he held your knees open with the breadth of his shoulders and boldly dragged the flat of his tongue through your folds. “Keep quiet, now, bebita. I’m gonna take care of you.”

With that, Frankie felt himself begin to disappear, to melt into you from his position between your legs. Your soft thighs bracketing his shoulders, your heels digging into his back, your pussy, so soft, so hot, so sweet as you dissolved beneath his tongue. You were drooling for him, your clenching, grasping hole fluttering against his tongue every time he passed over it, your clit swollen and throbbing under the suction of his lips. You had collapsed back against the countertop now, one hand still pressed firmly over your mouth, the other burying itself in his hair, anchoring him to your body with a strength he found both surprising and wildly attractive. And with every lick, every suck, every vibration of a moan that spilled from his mouth into your flesh, he could feel you drawing higher, tighter, deeper.

He knew what you needed. He knew what would get you there.

Tucking his free hand beneath his chin, Frankie slipped one, then two thick fingers into the tight, velvety clutch of your cunt.

You shot up off the counter, your torso curling around his head, your hand in his hair fisting the strands roughly in your overwhelm. Sharp bolts of pain erupted across his scalp, but it was a welcome sensation, somehow grounding in its intensity. He smirked against your folds, sealing his lips around your puffy clit and rolling the little nub around with his tongue. At the same time, he pressed gently, insistently against the front wall of your cunt, applying steady friction and pressure with both fingertips.

A faint whimper slipped from you at that, muffled by your palm but not silent, and Frankie felt himself preen. God, he loved this. It wouldn’t be long now.

“You gonna come for me? Gonna let me feel her gush around my fingers? On my tongue? Hm?”

The hand on your mouth fell away, joining the one in his hair as you began to tremble beneath him. “Frankie,” you whined. “‘M gonna – you’re gonna make me – ”

“I know, baby, I know.” He kept his fingers right where they were, shallow thrusts, firm pressure right where you needed it most. “Just let it happen. I’ve got you.” Ducking his head back down to your clit, he resumed the combination of gentle suction and firm, long strokes that had driven you wild.

And just like clockwork, your thighs began to shake against his shoulders. Your abdomen clenched beneath his forearm. Your slick, soft walls clamped down around his fingers. A weak, breathless sound – “ah” – burst from your throat, and then you were coming. A rush of your wetness dripped down his fingers, coating his hand, pooling in the cup of his palm as you pulsed and fluttered around him, and Frankie could feel your poor, abused little clit twitching against his tongue. He worked you through it, slowing down a bit but not stopping, prolonging the torment just a bit longer. Only when your two hands buried in his hair started to shove against him, pushing him away, did he relent, and even then, it took him an extra few seconds to be willing to slip his fingers from your body.

Looking up into your face, Frankie felt a wash of joy and contentment pass over him. You were positively glowing – your skin flushed and ever-so-slightly sweaty, your hair wild and mussed, your T-shirt bunched up above your belly button, so much of your perfect softness on display. And you were grinning like a fool, your eyes showing your fatigue but your smile brighter than he had ever seen. You looked at him with a gentleness, an affection that had his heart clenching in his chest, and he was certain that his expression was much the same.

It had been years since he had felt this way about anyone, and even then, he wasn’t certain it could compare.

When you sat up and slipped from the counter, it was a slow and lazy affair, assisted by his firm grip and his steady arms to help keep you upright. The moment your feet hit the floor, you reached for his belt with a question in your eyes, to which Frankie responded, “Not tonight, querida. Tonight was about you.” You seemed somewhat disappointed by that response, but you didn’t push it. Instead, you simply pulled his head down for a kiss, which he gladly obliged. You sighed into his mouth at the taste of yourself on his tongue, and it took every ounce of strength he had in him not to take back what he had just said, to drag your hands back down to his belt buckle and allow you to proceed as you wished.

But no.

It was late. You needed to get home and get to sleep, and he needed to wash off the heat of the day before passing out in his own bed. There would be a little girl busting down his door at 7:00 AM tomorrow whether he was ready for her or not, and you would be back in this very kitchen by 8:00 eager to share a cup of coffee with too-sweet creamer before he left for work.

So, like the gentleman that he wasn’t certain that he was, Frankie helped you slip back into your little shorts, pack your overflowing bookbag, and carry your things out to your car.

You turned to him one last time before you slipped into the driver’s seat, a soft if uncertain smile playing at the corners of your lips. “Mr. Morales – Frankie, I…” You drew your lower lip between your teeth. “Thank you. For tonight.”

His heart melted at your words, the quiet, hesitating way you said them. It was a vulnerability he wasn’t accustomed to from you, you who always seemed to have it all together, you who matched his advances beat for beat, never wavering. “Don’t need to thank me, baby. I wanted to. You take such good care of me, of Mila. You deserved it.” Releasing a deep, trembling breath, he added, “And…I’d like to do it again sometime. If you’ll let me.”

“That depends,” you replied.

“Yeah? On what?”

Your soft, sweet smile morphed into something sharper then, something with more intent. “On if you’ll let me return the favor. It’s like you said…I want to.”

Frankie couldn’t have reigned in the grin that split his face then if he tried. Dropping a kiss to your forehead, he said, “‘Course, cariño. I’m not done with your sweetness just yet.”

[eqt-95]

Hi hello! I found the ask game related to the hearts finally so I’ll ask for 🤎 for supercorp if it sparks joy?

oh it does, it does spark joy! many thanks for the ask from both of you.

🤎 multiple kisses / kisses all over / kiss after kiss

- - - - - - -

“We’re playing Doctor!” Kara shouted excitedly when Alex, Kelly, and Lena walked in to find the apartment in absolute disarray, Kara mummified with ace bandages, covered in stickers, and talking past a thermometer sticking out of her mouth, and Esme unraveling a ball of yarn.

“During an apocalypse?” Alex asked, bypassing the pile of forgotten pillows and cushions, over the stacks of books, and through the disaster zone of puzzle pieces and legos. 

“I’m a warrior injured from battle,” Kara scoffed, annoyance on her scrunched face. “See the armor?”

It was nearly impossible to see the cardboard cutouts from under all of the gauze.

“Yea, and I am her princess and the world’s best nurse,” Esme added. She reached for Kara’s hand and began tying the yarn around her wrist. “We just need to lift your arm to rest,” Esma continued, trying gallantly to hoist Kara’s arm.

“Is that my emergency med pack?” Alex asked, eyeing the black canvas bag wearily and the equipment scattered around it. 

“We ran out of band-aids,” Esme explained. “But don’t worry, we didn’t use yours. They were too boring.”

“You should get the colorful kind like the Bluey ones,” Kara added.

Before Alex could get a word, or sigh of resignation in, Esme extended her hand toward her: “Can you hold this, please?”

And that’s how Alex got roped into holding the length of rainbow yarn to elevate Kara’s very unbroken arm while Esme removed the thermometer from Kara’s mouth.

“Uh-oh,” she scowled.

“Uh-oh?” Kara asked with exaggerated worry. “What’s wrong nurse?”

“Just what I susepted.”

“Suspected, babe,” Kelly offered from the kitchen where she and Lena exchanged smirks at Alex’s expense.

“Right, suspested,” Esme said. “It’s bad news.”

“How bad, Nurse?”

“We need to cut off your arm.”

“What? Isn’t there anything else? A disgusting herb? A powerful potion?” Kara rambled. “I really need my arm to hold a sword.”

“Hmm,” Esme pondered. “There is one thing. But it’s magic” “Anything,” Kara said without missing a beat. “Please, Nurse, please!”

“Ok. Are you ready?”

Kara grimaced, clenched her eyes shut and nodded. 

In turn, Esme gave Kara’s elbow a quick kiss. “You’re healed!”

Kara opened one eye and peered toward her arm still held up by Alex and yarn. She cautiously flexed her fingers then rolled her wrist and rotated her elbow. “I’m healed!”

“Yes, you’re healed. Now please leave my house,” Alex mumbled.

------

“Hey,” Lena said when Kara stirred. 

“Hey, back,” Kara mumbled, reaching for Lena’s hand to squeeze. She hummed then opened her eyes, finding Lena then offering a dopey grin. A sign Lena could sigh with relief. “Was I out long?”

“A couple hours. You didn’t completely blow your powers, so you should recover quickly.”

Kara nodded then winced as she sat up. “And the others?”

“J’onn and Dreamer handled the rest,” Lena explained, helping adjust a pillow. “You provided enough distraction that no one else was injured.”

“Tell that to my face,” Kara huffed, lifting a hand to rub her jaw. “I think I need Nurse Esme to make me all better.”

“I think Nurse Esme is in the middle of show-and-tell,” Lena replied. “But I’ll see if Alex has a Bluey band-aid for you.”

“Or,” Kara said, then blushed beet red. “Or we could try magic.”

“I am not about to…” Lena squinted then rolled her eyes. “Oh, I see. You don’t mean my magic.”

“Well, it-it would kind of be your magic,” Kara replied, fingers worrying at the blanket in her lap. “Just, a different kind.”

Lena refrained from rolling her eyes again when Kara offered the biggest, sappiest look. 

“If you think it’ll work,” Lena answered, and she pretended not to see the glee in Kara’s face.

“It would. It really would.”

And that’s how Lena found herself pressing a kiss to Kara’s eagerly lifted cheek.

“There. Better?” Lena chuckled, leaning back into her chair and missing the way Kara’s face chased after Lena’s retreated lips.

“Um…” Kara answered, a bit downtrodden with her lower lip beginning to protrude outward.

“Um?”

“It’s just that, actually I’m pretty sure it was my left side.”

Lena tried containing a smile and resisted letting a disbelieving eyebrow arc. “Is that right?”

“I guess I forgot?”

“Maybe I should get Alex in here to check for brain damage,” Lena teased.

“No, no, it’s ok. I just… I’m still groggy and sleepy, but I just need a little more, um…”

“Magic?”

“Exactly. Then I’ll be all better.”

A kiss landed on Kara’s other temple. “Was it here?” Lena asked, lips still pressed against warm skin.

“A-a bit lower,” Kara answered, face flushing red.

“How about here?” Lena asked, offering another kiss an inch lower.

“Getting uhm,” Kara coughed. “Getting closer?”

Lena continued trailing kisses down the length of Kara’s jawline, no longer waiting for Kara’s fibs to guide her. 

“How’s that, darling?” Lena asked when the final one landed at the edge of Kara’s mouth.

“Just one more,” Kara answered, tugging a laughing Lena onto the bed and pressing a final kiss to her lips. “There,” she sighed. “All healed.”

[punkypiscesell-writes]

chapter 5

Joel Miller x gn!/f!reader

series masterlist - chapter 4

summary: After a few weeks since you last saw Joel, you end up bumping into Ellie. What you don’t expect is to finally reach your breaking point.

rating: mature

chapter warnings: angst, hurt and comfort, anxiety, panic attack, grief, descriptions of violence typical for the TLOU world, no use of y/n, Ellie and Joel are the kindest and caring, everyone needs therapy.

word count: 7.6k

notes: Here we are, at the end of part 1. Thank you everyone who has read so far <3 Like with the last chapter, this is heavily angsty but I promise, it’s only uphill from here! The next chapter will be out in two weeks, as I’m taking a writing break to finish part 2.

divider by cafekitsune

It has been raining for a couple of days. You’re holed up in your house and the walls feel like they’re starting to fall on you. You haven’t seen anyone or heard from anyone and the longer you’re alone, the more you want to just disappear.

Dan released you from stable duty because some teenagers wanted to come take care of the horses for a while and your rotation says that you’re supposed to be working at the community garden next anyway. But that was two weeks ago. And you haven’t been able to leave your home.

You’re not sure how long it has been since you were at the cliffs. You just know that since then you haven’t been able to sleep, being afraid of the nightmares and new panic attacks. You’re afraid of them all the time, bracing yourself for the fall and loss of control. You can feel it simmering somewhere inside, ready to slap you across the face and make you lose yourself. You relive the moment at the cliffs every day and just the thought of the panic you felt is enough to make you hide in your house, behind closed curtains and darkness.

And if communication wasn’t hard enough already, it has now become almost impossible. You don’t like to look people in the eyes and being in crowded places makes your skin crawl. You can’t even imagine opening your mouth and hearing your own voice. The more afraid of your own reactions you’ve become, the easier it has been to just stay at home and not keep in touch with anyone.

You’ve had panic attacks for a long time and you’ve always been able to somehow make sense of them. You’re almost used to the intense fear by now even though it’s not pleasant. The trick was to always reason with the irrational side of your brain.

After being holed up in your house alone, they’ve gotten so much worse. And it’s not even the attack itself, it’s the shame surrounding it. It gnaws in your head, making you think things that you’ve thought to be untrue. Or at least you hope to not be true. And when you’ve tried to calm yourself down, your head has just filled with more chaos, drowning all of your attempts at finding quietness.

This panic attack at the cliffs managed to surprise you, and how different it was from the ones you’re used to. For a long time you just felt your body tensing up, your breathing getting harder that made you light headed and your head spewing fear into your whole body, making it shake.

This new episode wasn’t like the ones when you weren’t able to move and you’re glad that you haven’t had those after getting to Jackson.

But this one panic attack was like going through a night terror and realising that it’s not ending. It just kept on going, it keeps on resurfacing and you can’t let go of it. You’re dreading to experience it again.

The scariest part?

You can’t feel a thing.

It’s like you don’t have a body anymore, just a shell that somehow keeps you alive.

You don’t feel the wind whipping in from the open window. You don’t feel the heat when you keep your hand too close to the stove. You don’t feel water on your skin or if it’s cold or warm when you take a shower.

You don’t feel your feelings like you used to either.

They seem distant and strange because you know how you should be feeling, but those emotions just don’t become reality. You just are, floating through days without really existing in your life right now.

Your thoughts are spiralling once again. You’re certain that you’re not a good member of the community. People must hate you. No one is going to want to share a house with you, no one knows you and even if they did, they’re not going to like living with you and your… problems.

And Joel? He must loathe you. The way you poured your panic attack on him was unacceptable. How could you let him see it, how could you let yourself be so weak?

The town doctor hasn’t been able to help you, how could anything or anyone else help you either? You’re so sure that you’re broken that nothing can change your mind. Maybe they’ll just kick you out and your head will shut up.

Maybe you should just be out of this town so no one has to wonder what is really going on with you.

At least you haven’t been spending their food or supplies since you’ve just been living on water and porridge. Your cupboards and fridge emptied of everything else almost a few days ago.

You’re not sure how long you stare out the window but the night turns into a dull, grey morning. And then even greyer day.

You listen to the drumming of the rain against the roof and it’s almost hypnotising. Something in you makes you want to go out and get your clothes wet. At least you’d do something else than just listen to the incessant sound of your brain beating you up.

You wrap a flannel jacket over the t-shirt that you’ve worn for the past four days and don’t bother changing out of your sweatpants that you’ve had on night and day since you realised all your other pants had to be washed.

It’s almost funny that no one has checked up on you and when you think about it, your brain almost short circuits from the possibilities your negative thoughts throw your way.

You wrote to your doctor that you’re better, that you’ve gotten friends like he wanted you to and that all meetings with him would be unnecessary. You left the note into his post box and since he hasn’t contacted you, it probably worked.

At the same time you left a note to a worker from the community garden. You told her you’re not feeling well and need to take a little time off. Back then you thought it’d be just a couple of days and then you’d show up. But the more time has passed, the harder it is to let them know that you still need time to recover.

Maybe they don’t care about you and your help, maybe that’s why no one has checked up on you.

You press your hands into tight fists until your nails make half-moon shapes against your palms. Once outside you’re met with the freshness of the mountain air. It fills your chest and you cough as your lungs get  used to the cold.

You see no one which comforts you to start walking. You’re going to avoid the town centre just in case, but it seems like you’ll be left alone.

You don’t mean to walk for more than a few minutes, but you end up walking to the other side of the town. Your head has been light and dizzy and you don’t know if you can trust your unsteady legs but here you still are, further than you had imagined going.

Your clothes are completely soaked through but you don’t really mind. You can’t feel it anyway, not the cold or the wetness clinging to your skin. And at least now your brain is thinking why the hell you can’t feel a thing anymore instead of all the negative, fictional scenarios it so enjoys creating.

You’re already on your way back home when you hear a grunt and someone cursing under their breath. Your first instinct is to run away, hide, not make any contact. But when you see a girl wet from the rain, pulling on a small wagon filled paint canisters, that’s gotten stuck in the mud, you decide against it.

Ellie.

You approach her slowly, not really knowing what to expect. What’s she doing with all the paint? When she hears your wet footsteps, she looks up and her face lights up.

“Hey!” She looks genuinely happy to see you standing right in front of her. “Can you help me with this? The wheels are shit and I can’t get this fucking thing to move.” Her cursing takes you aback even though it shouldn’t surprise you.

It just seems like other people in town don’t use as much curse words and she is making sure to use all of them to fill that void. You move to push the wagon while she pulls and together you manage to free it from the mud. Ellie wipes some lose, wet strands of her hair from her forehead and she beams at you.

“Thanks! Will you help me take these home as well? I know there are some puddles that I’m not really looking forward to pass,” she waves her hand towards the street and pulls the wagon with her, making you follow her.

She just smiles at you and almost on instinct you walk next to her. You get winded from the faster pace but try to hide it from her. You look at the paint canisters and then at her, who is eyeing you with curiosity.

You hope you lift your brows at her in question but you’re not sure if that actually happens. She seems to understand your question through your expression though. 

“I’m renovating a garage for myself,” she tells you and you can hear the hints of pride in her voice. “Yeah, Joel and Tommy have been doing the building, but they’re both out on patrol and I got bored at home. Maria has been around as well, but she wants to be careful with the baby and all, so it’s just me today.” She explains it all slowly, like she’s trying to fill a quiet space between the two of you.

You’re kind of grateful she’s doing all the talking and isn’t pressuring you to speak. You do catch her watching you a few times though when the silence falls on you both and your panting comes through the sound of the rain.

She doesn’t say anything about it, or anything else for that matter, and you keep on going in the heavy rain towards her house. Maybe Joel hasn’t told her about your weak moment at the cliff which you’d be grateful for. That way there’d really only be one person who knows what a mess you are and others wouldn’t know about any of it.

You could just quietly slip away from this place and no one would miss you.

It's weird to notice that you’d like to talk with her, ask her things and hear how she’s been settling into Jackson, but you can’t make yourself talk. Your throat feels tight and your mood isn’t helping. Ellie leads you through a side gate into a garden and you help her pull the wagon to a run-down looking garage.

“Come inside, you can warm up there,” she offers when you look around and take in the backyard of a two-storey house.

It has seen better days, but it also looks inviting, like someone’s making a home of it. There’s a single light in one of the windows, beaming out warmly like a light from a lighthouse. Ellie leads you to a back porch and inside through a mudroom that now works as a laundry room as well. Ellie pulls her shoes off and you follow her example. Your wet socks squelch against the floor.

“I’ll get you something to change into.” You try to huff a no in response but she’s already on her way through the house and you’re left alone to catch your breath.

With your wet feet you make your way into the kitchen. It’s clean except for the few items on counters. There’s a mug and a plate next to the sink and a bowl turned upside down on a towel next to them. A basket full of fresh carrots wait next to the stove. And a pile of clean towels are sitting closest to the door, probably waiting to be put away.

You run your numb hand against the island counter and walk slowly further into the house. The wood floors creak softly and you hear Ellie rummaging somewhere upstairs, her footsteps thudding against the floor. The house looks comfortable and warm, even in this gray and cold lighting.

You look into the living room and see a soft, worn couch, an armchair and a bookshelf. Even your house doesn’t have a bookshelf but this house does and it’s full of books.

You get closer to the titles and recognise a few. You’ve never been much of a reader, but your bro—

Your breathing catches in your throat and you squeeze your eyes shut when your head starts swimming. You grab the shelf with your hands and try to stay up, but your legs seem to buckle at their own accord.

“Hey,” you hear Ellie’s soft voice call you and you whip around, tears making everything around you blurry.

She looks at you with wide eyes, her hands full of clothes. She has already changed out her own wet outfit into a more comfortable one, a hoodie and a new pair of jeans. She comes closer and you clutch your chest, catching your breath.

You try to make yourself calm down but it’s even harder now that your head is laughing at your and you don’t feel any physical feelings happening in your body. She stops and leaves space between the two of you, her face softening even more until a small smile crinkles her eyes.

“I had to raid Joel’s dresser, I hope these are at least a bit more comfortable than those,” she nods at you and you follow her gaze to look at the drenched clothes on you. She’s clearly trying to distract you from your uneasy thoughts.

“You can change in the bathroom over there,” she gives you the clothes before she swings her arm towards a closed door. You walk past her with wobbly legs and make your way to the downstairs toilet.

You wipe at your face furiously once the door closes behind you and you force yourself to think of other things. How the mirror is stained but clearly kept clean. The stacked toilet paper rolls in the corner. Next to the sink there’s a small plant in a clay pot that is cracked and barely holding the soil in. But the plant looks like it’s thriving.

You eye at the dark blue t-shirt and a pair of sweatpants she had given you and start to peel your clothes from your body. They stick to your skin and there’s actual water dripping to the floor when you pull everything off.

You intentionally breathe very slowly, in through your nose, holding it for a few seconds before pushing all air from your lungs through your mouth. Your heart seems to calm down until there’s only that dull, numb nothingness left.

The shirt seems to swallow you and the pants hang loosely on you, but they’re not wet and that’s everything that matters.

Even though you can’t feel the cold, you can still get ill. And that’s the last thing you want at this point. There are a pair of socks as well and you put them on, even though they’re definitely too big on your feet.

This doesn’t seem right, wearing Joel’s clothes when he’s not even here telling you that you can. You don’t know where you stand with him, but he probably doesn’t want to have anything to do with you.

He hasn’t checked up on you either.

In a way it hurts, but you don’t even know the man. It would be best to just forget about him, if it wasn’t for the embarrassment that prickles your skin. You look at yourself in the mirror and don’t recognise the person looking at you through the reflection. Your eyes, your skin, your face, they all belong to someone you don’t know. The clothes definitely hang on your frame loosely and it only adds to your discomfort.

“Well don’t you look pretty!” Ellie smiles when you open the door and carry your wet clothes in your arms. You don’t know what to do with her words, stopping right in your tracks while her smile only grows.

“Let’s hang them up to dry,” she points at the bundle against your chest and leads you to the mudroom where she takes your clothes one piece at a time to hang them on hangers.

“You hungry? Thirsty?” She asks when she’s done and you shake your head lightly.

“Okay, are you ready to paint then?” Her face lights up and you can’t say no to her even though you’d like to.

You should’ve just turned around when Ellie got home and you definitely should’ve been somehow more insistent on not letting her give you dry clothes. You should’ve just left and gone back home. Now it looks like you’re stuck here with Ellie, who wants your help.

She must see the inner battle going on in your head from your face because her smile drops just the slightest.

“You don’t have to do anything if you don’t want to, just keep me company,” she tells you. She bends to put on her wellies and you move to put on your wet shoes when she throws you another pair of boots. They’re way too big for you, must be Joel’s, but you don’t seem to find any other option either.

When you get into the garage, you’re met with a worksite.

Ellie walks you through it all, introducing you to the unfinished kitchenette, with uninstalled cabinets and sink. She opens the minifridge door and you both look inside like there’s something to see, even though it’s just a couple of empty shelves and an old, yellowed stain at the bottom. She insists she has washed the fridge already. She just needs to figure out how to get the stain out.

She leads you to the bathroom, that now has walls at least. Apparently Tommy and Joel got them up last weekend, even though there’s still work to be done with the plumbing and they also need to find a door and finish the floor.

She walks you to the middle of the room and points where a couch and her desk for drawing and little tinkering are going to go. “I also want a bed in here, if some day I’d actually live here, on my own.”

She paints such a picture with her words, how there’s going to be hanging lights, a few bookshelves, bedside tables, posters, her art stuff. She wants to make this her own space and she’s clearly excited.

You stand still and imagine it all around you, even though now the space seems incomplete and kind of cold. Ellie moves around and pulls the wagon inside, bringing in mud at the same time.

“Maria showed me what to do with the paint when we finished the back wall of the kitchenette.” She points at the fresh white wall behind the waiting cabinets.

“My plan is to paint that wall, where my bed is eventually gonna go. The grey drywall is damn boring.” You look at her unloading the four paint canisters from the wagon to the floor, grunting at the heavy weight.

“Dark green,” she says proudly and takes out her painting equipment. You follow her movements as she opens the canister like she has done it hundreds of times. She pours a small amount into a bowl and takes out a wide brush. When she stands up, she faces you and you see the question on her face immediately.

“It doesn’t have to look perfect, we’re gonna paint it a couple of times. The paint is fucking old anyway, who knows what it’s gonna look like.” Her hands reach out to you with the paint and brush. You hesitate, but when she nudges them towards you, you take them into your weak hands.

“Just start from the corner, if you don’t like it, you don’t have to continue,” she tells you and you look at the darkest corner in the whole room.

You drag your feet against the cement floor to the wall and toe the boots off your feet before you sit down and face the corner. With delicate hands you dip the brush into the rich, deep paint and do a stroke against the drywall.

You spread the colour with a slow drag, carefully painting the wall right above the floor. You lose yourself in the process, watching the wall in front of you turn dark green.

Ellie takes her own brush and bowl and moves to the other end of the wall. She watches you sitting cross legged on the carboard that’s been set on the floor and paint in slow motion.

It’s quiet in the garage except for the rain hitting the roof and her own brushstrokes. Ellie is definitely faster at painting, but it doesn’t surprise her.

Something has happened to you and she can see it a mile away. There’s a dullness in your eyes, dark shadows on your face, you try to avoid looking at her and your trembling body all tell her that you’re not okay.

The fact that she hasn’t seen you since you first got into Jackson and now you look even worse than then makes her worry, but she doesn’t know how to approach that with you. She doesn’t know you and she’s not sure if you even want to talk with her about whatever’s on your mind. You don’t seem to want to talk at all, like back all those months ago.

It's like a puzzle she starts to piece in her brain. Last week she heard Joel talking with Dan from the stables when they went to see Shimmer. He had asked if Dan had heard from you, but he hadn’t. Apparently you’re doing a rotation at the garden but he hadn’t seen you there either when he had gone there to pick up vegetables.

Joel had only nodded at that but Ellie recognised the deep crease between his brows and the way his lips pursed together to be telltale signs of him being worried.

Then there was the time they were here in the garage and Joel had asked how people are housed here, if they have a say in who moves in with whom. Maria had been confused about the question, until Joel mentioned a friend who is going to be moving in with strangers at some point.

Ellie knows Joel doesn’t have close friends here, so him mentioning someone made her look at him in question. He only shook his head to make her not say a word.

Maria eyed him for a long while before she told him that people who come here alone have a say in who they’re going to be living with. Sometimes you got to move in with strangers because living on your own in a big house doesn’t make sense in this community, especially when the housing is limited. So, you have to make friends with people, or at least get to know some of the people in town so it’s easier to integrate into your new life.

And then there was the time when he got home that one evening a few weeks ago, didn’t say a word and  went straight to his bedroom. She knocked on his door to offer him some of the leftovers she had gotten from Maria earlier that day.

Ellie remembers that day specifically because Maria had visited Joel that day and asked him to go help at the stables. It felt like there was some hope between Maria and Joel to have a friendly relationship, based at least on the way Maria kind of thought he was coming over for dinner. When he didn’t arrive, she offered Ellie to take dinner home.

Ellie had opened the door of Joel’s bedroom that evening to find him sitting on the edge of his bed, wringing his hands together with a pained look in his eyes. She had never seen him like that. She sat next to him and listened to his laboured breathing, while he tried to calm himself down.

They had stayed like that for a long while until Joel just closed his eyes, cleared his throat, and rubbed his palm over his face. Finally his hand came to rest over his chest, like he was making sure his feelings were staying inside. To make sure his heart was beating normally again. He didn’t mention it and she didn’t dare bring it up. But she did hear him staying up that night, the whole night, walking first around his bedroom and then downstairs.

He clearly couldn’t sleep and she wasn’t able to chase her sleep either when she knew he was in distress. He didn’t say that he had seen you or been in contact with you, but somehow seeing you like this now makes it seem like maybe something had happened to you and Joel knows about it.

Ellie knows she’s staring at you while you work slowly, lost in your own head. You don’t even notice that Ellie isn’t doing anything, just keeping an eye on you.

When your bowl of paint starts to run out, Ellie hands you her own paint bowl and takes your empty one before filling it. She doesn’t use it though. She just waits for you to finish the paint so she can hand you more. You work meticulously, not missing a spot and being careful not to drop any paint on the floor.

“I first said I wanted to paint the wall to look like space, but Maria wasn’t so sure about it,” Ellie tells you, waiting for you to react. But you don’t.

“Maybe someone else is going to move in here at some point…” Ellie copies Maria’s voice and way of speaking. “Who would move here, we live here,” Ellie rolls her eyes.

“I know Joel wouldn’t have said no to anything, he would’ve given me the paint and the brush and watched happily,” Ellie smiles and sadness tugs at her chest. Of course, Joel would let her paint the wall, he would let her do almost anything. The implication is there, but she doesn’t want to admit it to herself.

I swear.

“Except there was this magazine that I found in Bill’s car. Joel knew Bill, he’s dead now though, so is Frank. Anyway, the magazine, it was a dirty one, with pictures of naked men in there… I bet Joel wouldn’t let me paint something like that on my walls,” Ellie chuckles at even the thought of that.

She still remembers the face he made when he realised what she was reading. He was clearly out of his element and the vein in his forehead looked like it was going to pop when she asked why the pages were stuck together. It was such a long time ago. Back then things were so simple.

“I wouldn’t want to either…” Ellie almost whispers to herself before she looks at you and sees that you might’ve not even heard her talking. Your brushstrokes haven’t paused and your face doesn’t look like you’ve registered any of Ellie’s words.

She sighs and stands up, stretching her arms behind her back before setting the full bowl of paint right next to the old one. You don’t notice her or when she leaves to go back into the house.

The clock on the kitchen wall tells Ellie that Joel should be coming home soon. It feels even darker now that it’s raining and Ellie knows Joel went to a longer trail today with someone he hasn’t gone on patrol with before.

Before she can start wondering if the other person is good at killing infected, she hears heavy footsteps on the front porch.

Joel sighs long and deep when he closes the front door after him, taking his coat off and pulling his boots off his feet. She waits for him in the kitchen, sitting on the counter behind the corner. He doesn’t see her at first.

He combs his fingers through his wet hair before he blinks under the warm kitchen light.

“How was it?” Her voice makes him jump. Maybe she should’ve let him know she was there, but she couldn’t resist the opportunity.

“Did I scare you?” She raises her brows and lets out a short laugh.

“No, of course not,” Joel huffs. He washes his hands in the sink and sees the dishes he left next to it.

“Have you had dinner yet?” He asks while he slowly washes the dishes clean and sets them on the towel where Ellie’s now dry breakfast bowl is.

“No, I was kinda waiting for you.” Her voice makes him look over his shoulder. Somehow he has learnt to understand her like he would’ve known her her whole life and instantly he knows that something’s up. It’s also past their usual dinner time, she would’ve taken the leftovers from yesterday if there wasn’t anything on her mind.

“What’s happened?” He leans against the sink, but he doesn’t have time to question her more when she already jumps down from the counter and moves to put on her shoes and go out back into the garage.

Joel follows her but stops when his older boots aren’t there. Instead there is a pair of other, unfamiliar shoes on the floor and when he looks up, he sees a flannel, a t-shirt, pair of socks and sweatpants drying on hangers.

“Who’s here?” His face hardens but Ellie looks so unsure that it only makes him confused. Clearly there’s no danger, otherwise Ellie wouldn’t be this calm either.

“I saw them when I was getting the paint from Tommy and Maria’s house and they helped me get the fucking busted wagon back home. But Joel, something’s not right with them.” Ellie’s voice turns into a whisper like someone else could hear her.

He leans forward and fear creeps into his body. He can feel his skin prickling, cold sweat pushing out on his back, his heart stammering to beat a little faster and his hands clench before he wiggles his fingers in anticipation.

He goes to get his muddy boots from the front door while Ellie waits for him. Her uncertainty is something that he hasn’t seen in a while. It sometimes peeks through, but while they’ve been in Jackson it has only become rarer. She’s finding her footing here, becoming more confident every day.

She leads him into the garage and the rain is finally starting to ease up. Joel was looking forward to taking a shower, having dinner, and sitting on the couch, maybe watch a movie from the DVD stack he borrowed from Tommy last week, finally winding down from the day.

The rain and the cold were one thing but coming across a group of infected at an old suburb that no one had checked in a while was another. Him and Jade had cleared them out, but the few clickers in the mix did make the task harder.

Jade had gone to make an official report about the incident and how the area should be checked over more regularly even though it’s not on any official routes. Still, it was too close to the town and it would be better if areas like that stayed clear rather than someone stumbling across a pack like that by accident.

The last thing they’d want is the group of infected getting bigger until they’re too hard to handle.

He was so ready to relax. He has started having a routine to get himself calm in the evenings, but whatever is in the garage is not helping him. The back of his neck is tight as he expects to see something disturbing.

The funny thing is that he doesn’t know what he’s supposed to expect. A friend of Ellie’s, maybe drunk? Someone from town who wants to snoop around his house? An infected? That wouldn’t surprise him.

Ellie opens the door to the garage and it’s extremely quiet in there. She steps in and lets Joel follow her and right away he sees you. He stops dead in his tracks and even though the door isn’t the quietest (he makes a mental note to check the hinges and oil them) when it shuts, you’re not moving. You’re deeply hunched, painting the wall deep green, like Ellie wanted, and your head is almost leaning against it.

“Should I – “ Ellie starts, but Joel cuts her off by lifting his hand.

“Stay here,” he tells her quietly as he starts to approach you slowly. He says your name quietly but doesn’t get a reaction. It’s like you can’t even hear anything that’s happening around you.

“Hey,” Joel speaks gently and crouches next to you, touching your shoulder with the lightest of fingers. You flinch and draw in a deep breath, the paint brush clattering on the floor.

It’s completely dry and the two bowls in front of you look like they haven’t been touched in a while. There’s no fresh paint dripping from the side back into the bowls and the paint on the wall has already started to dry up.

Joel looks back at Ellie who sways on her tiptoes, waiting to spring into action. Joel takes the bowls and hands them to Ellie, who scoops the unused paint back into the canister.

Joel directs his attention back to you.

“Painting, huh?” He keeps his voice low when he moves the paint brush from the floor and hands that to Ellie as well so she can clean it.

“These look familiar,” he chuckles lowly, recognising his t-shirt and sweatpants on you. The t-shirt hangs from your shoulders and the pants are way too long for you.

“It’s getting late, we should go inside,” Joel tries to direct you, but you don’t look at him. You barely register he’s right next to you.

When he first touched your shoulder, it was like an electric shock. Now you don’t feel it anymore. But he is touching you, gently adding more pressure. You breathe through the numbness, afraid to look up and face him. You’ve been afraid of seeing him because you thought he’d only bring up that shame you’ve felt. The same fear that you felt at the cliffs is squeezing your lungs, your head swimming in memories you don’t want to remember. There’s something else as well, something surprising. You don’t feel shame around him, you feel calmer than you’ve felt in weeks.

He only reminds you of breaking apart.

And here he is now, trying to coax you into action. You can’t, it’s so much worse now than it has ever been. The feeling inside you. Your eyes sting and your head feels heavy, your lungs trying to gasp for air, but it seems impossible. You feel like you’re coming back alive, wires connecting and your own being washing through you in overwhelming waves.

“Ellie,” Joel lets go of your arm and stands up. This is something he doesn’t know how to handle. Ellie is on his side and the look on her face turns more grievous the harder you’re breathing.

“Go talk with Maria, she said there was someone new here, a doctor, who might be able to help. This is too much for us.” Ellie nods and takes off without a second look.

Joel stays with you and feels at a loss. He knows people get broken in this world, he has seen it time and time again. Hell, even he was that person at some point. Maybe he still is.

But he didn’t see himself from the outside. And he directed that pain into voluntary violence, not knowing how to deal with his wounds inside.

He has been the one to turn his back when someone was on their breaking point for so long because there was no way to survive if you lost your control. But then came along Ellie who is one of the strongest people he knows, even at such a young age. She opened something in him, and he doesn’t want to turn his back anymore.

He looks around and tries to find something that could possibly soothe you. There are a couple of boxes that Tommy and Maria brought in and he opens them, finding sheets and towels. They have to do.

He picks up a towel that is soft and worn, but when he holds it in his hands, it feels thick and warm. He approaches you calmly and squats next to you. He wraps the towel around your shoulders and you bend forward with a flinch, your breathing coming out in ragged, painful gasps.

He keeps his large hands on your shoulders and moves them slowly up and down to warm you up but also to let you know you’re not alone. After a while you do calm down, but you’re shaking and he recognises the way your shoulders shudder.

You’re crying, hard.

His knees start to ache and he sits down while he tries not to jostle you. He stays next to you, his other leg bent behind you while the other is crossed in front of him. He keeps on gently rubbing your back while listening you take wet breaths between your tears.

There’s an air of sadness around you. It’s so thick that he feels like it’s being forced down his throat with every sob you let out.

He sees tears dropping in heavy beads onto your lap. He feels like he’s physically trying to keep you here and he tries so hard, but he also feels at a loss. The last time he saw you he was thoroughly broken.

The panic attack only tore open his own wounds. The face that you made when you looked at him afterwards was something he knew he couldn’t wipe away. Like you were embarrassed to show that part of yourself.

He knew he had to get away from there. From you. He knew he wasn’t able to deal with his own emotions after seeing you in such distress. The screams you had let out reminded him of the night when the outbreak happened. What his own daughter sounded like when she took her last gasping breaths.

Why you were hiding your panic attack confused him though. He had already seen you at your lowest, behind the rock and by the campfire. That time at the cliff was somehow different though.

Your breathing suddenly becomes faster. There’s a fear in him that something’s happening to you, that you’re going to pass out or that you’re having some sort of a medical emergency.

He’s ready to pull away and he’s already moving his hand from your back and arm, but you suddenly grasp onto his wrist. Your hands are cold and clammy and your nails dig into his skin. You look up and he sees the terror on your face. The dark circles under your eyes and the hollows of your cheeks trouble him.

“I- I saw h-him,” you gasp out and a fresh wave of tears fall onto your cheeks. Deep creases form between his brows.

“You saw who?” He whispers back, afraid he’s going to provoke your panic even more.

“Him, my b-brother,” you say and your voice breaks.

“Where did you see him?” He tries to stay as calm as he can but his heart hammers in his chest. Where did you see your brother, here? Why hasn’t your brother been with you if he’s here?

“When his head had been cut off,” your voice is shrill through your pained cries. The confession makes him recoil back and he’s staring at your face, unable to form words.

“A-and my sis-sister, I remember. Sh-she got s-shot in the h-head right i-in front of m-me,” you gasp out between your sobs. His throat tightens at your words and he tries to swallow his own panic down.

You keep whispering something under your breath over and over, and he leans forward, holding his hand against your back just a little firmer while you squeeze his wrist in your own.

Not long after the garage door opens and when he turns around, the first one through the door is Ellie. Her cheeks are red and her hair and clothes are damp from the drizzling rain. Tommy follows her and then there’s an older black woman he hasn’t seen before. She looks at the scene in front of her while she’s catching her breath. They all are, clearly after running here.

“She can help them. Diana, she can help,” Tommy speaks with a low voice, but frantically, nodding his head towards the unknown woman. Joel looks at her when she nods her head in agreement and fixes her eyes on you.

“I can carry them,” Tommy tells Joel and he gets closer. Joel feels his skin crawling, like he’s supposed to protect you.

He looks at Tommy with wide eyes and he’s afraid what’s going to happen when Tommy approaches you. He’s afraid you’re going to start screaming, that you’re going to go into shock if he lets go of you.

“It’s okay, we can take it from here,” Diana says from the door and her soothing voice is like honey to the soul.

Suddenly Ellie is on Joel’s side, helping him up from the floor. She keeps holding his hand and he’s not sure why. He’d like to help Tommy or at least stay with you. You need someone you’re familiar with.

But it looks like you don’t even notice who is holding you. You don’t start thrashing and kicking when Tommy picks you up from the floor, still wrapped in the towel. You have your eyes closed; your lashes are wet from your tears. You hold onto the corner of the thick terry cloth and cry with no end in sight.

“I will need to talk with you at some point as well,” Diana points her words at Joel and he’s confused why she’d say that. He’s not the one who needs help, it’s you, you’re in distress.

Tommy is already at the door, ready to carry you out when Joel sees your socks, his socks, on your feet. They look like they’re about to fall off and he takes a step forward, ready to fix them. But Diana notices it as well and pulls them up over the legs of the sweatpants. Joel’s pants. They leave fast and when the door closes with a loud groan, silence envelopes Joel and Ellie.

“Are you okay?” Ellie sounds concerned and he looks at her in the eyes. He has never seen such deep sadness in her gaze before. Just pure grief that radiates in waves.

He must look confused because Ellie reaches up and touches something on his cheek. She strokes it with her thumb and then moves to the other side, her fingers gently wiping his skin. He follows her movements and touches his own face, his fingers brushing something wet.

He looks at his hand, seeing the water on it. Ellie drops her hand and the empathic look she gives him says it all. He lets out a single laugh, almost surprised, when he realises he had been crying. He hadn’t even noticed. He was so focused on you.

“Is this why she wants to talk to me?” Joel’s voice seems to get stuck in his throat, deep and confused.  

“Diana?” Ellie’s voice is so quiet that Joel has to strain his hearing. She squeezes his hand once. He nods slowly, wiping his hand on his damp jeans.

“Maybe… She said she’s been dealing with a lot of people who have gone through trauma, maybe this is one of those things as well.” She talks like she’s trying to make sense of the situation for herself too.

Joel doesn’t answer her but lets her pull him back into the house. After a small cough and dropping his old boots on the mudroom floor he promises to warm up dinner for them both. He moves automatically, constantly having to swallow down the lump in his throat, and tells Ellie to busy herself with something while he takes a shower.

“I’m gonna be right down,” he promises her and his feet feel like they weigh a ton when he walks up the stairs.

He leans his hands against the tiles and the warm water falls on his head. His chest feels tight as he looks at the slowly fading imprints from your nails on his wrist.

He closes his eyes as he finally puts together what you were saying to yourself before you were taken away while wearing his clothes.

“I’m alone, I have no one, it was my fault, I’m alone…”

It’s the middle of the night when he walks downstairs to the mudroom. The rain has finally stopped. He takes your clothes and puts them all into the wash bucket. He wasn’t able to sleep, he couldn’t stop thinking about what you had told him.

He washes your clothes carefully. He’s thorough and makes sure that he gets every inch of fabric clean. He hangs them up to dry back on the hangers, listening to them drip on the tiled floors while wringing his own hands together while anxiety swells through his body.

The next update, the prologue for part two, will be up on the first of October! See you then <3

[all-these-ghosts]

better late than never

for @txf-fic-chicks-blog, on their anniversary! see the rest of the anniversary fics here

Just as Scully is finishing her second cup of coffee, Mulder stomps through the front door. She hears his boots hit the floor and then watches him stride into the kitchen to grab a glass of water. He adds a bouquet of rather carelessly picked wildflowers — rhododendrons, mostly, probably from the bit of their property near the road, where they’ve run riot all week.

“Happy anniversary, Scully,” he says, depositing the makeshift vase next to her coffee mug.

She drinks the rest of it in one gulp. Scully appreciates, at least, that he is still full of surprises. “Okay,” she says. “The anniversary of what, exactly?”

He sits down next to her and props his feet up on the dining room table. She hates that, she loves him; she’s made an art form of ignoring his bad behavior. At least he took his boots off first.

“Thirty years ago today, you walked into my office.”

That feels impossible, but she can’t argue with the math, so she picks something else to fight about. “We’re calling that an anniversary?”

His grin is slow, easy. “Well, we never got married.”

“Still.” She purses her lips. “Thirty years.”

When she looks at him, she still sees the man who sat in that basement office thirty years ago. No one tells you this: that in your eyes, the people you love will never really age. In every moment he is every version of himself she’s ever known.

What a gift, to know someone so well.

“There’s something else,” he says. He stands up and heads toward the stairs.

As always, she follows him. “If it’s a cow slideshow, I’m leaving.”

But he stops outside the door to the spare room, which was Mulder’s writing room for a while, and which these days hosts the very occasional human guest and a rotating assortment of rodents that she can’t quite bring herself to kill. It feels unsporting to build a house in the middle of nowhere and then complain about the animals who were there first.

“Close your eyes,” he says, and she obliges.

The door creaks, and his heavy footsteps move away from her. She hears the lamp click on.

“Open,” he says.

Scully takes a few steps into the room. The spare bed’s made up more neatly than usual. There’s a new rug, and an armchair that she thought had been relegated to the basement.

And underneath the open window, with a view out to the horizon, there’s a desk. Parsons-style, practical and unshowy, with a lovely grain. There are framed pictures of her mother, of her nieces and nephews, even Bill. And there’s a standard-issue nameplate that says DR. DANA SCULLY in that standard-issue font.

He’s still smiling but he looks a little nervous, too, and it’s impossible to overstate how endearing she finds that, after all this time. “I heard you wanted one of these.”

“Took you long enough,” she deadpans, because even after all this time, sincerity doesn’t come easily to either of them.

Mulder looks over his handiwork, clearly pleased. “Better late than never.”

She crosses to him and wraps her arms around his waist. Better late than never should be emblazoned on their family crest.

It’s still the earliest part of spring, but the breeze that comes in through the window is warm and fragrant. He rests his chin on top of her head. “Thirty years,” he says, and she feels his voice down to her toes.

Scully smiles against his chest. “It’s not the worst way to spend a life.”

“We’ll see how you feel about that in another thirty.”

And she pulls him just a little closer. “I’ll be there.”

[just-some-trans-nobody]

December Christmas Monster Stories

Dec 21.) Robots first Christmas (platonic)

Some short fluff about the robot living with you experiencing christmas for the first time.

Minors don't interact.

-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-

They looked at the snow in utter confusion the first time it had snowed. It was a foreign concept to them.

Water freezing and falling to the earth? It was a little scary to them when you first explained it to them. Probably should wait on telling them about hail…

If their eyes could twinkle they would as they watched the trees get covered in sparkling snow. They want to go out and experience the snow but their not waterproof, they would get hurt.

They sit on the couch with crossed arms obviously sulking about not being able to go outside.

This changes when you start explaining Christmas and how it usually is celebrated inside. Staying inside doesn't seem as bad now in their wired brain.

They'll want to do absolutely anything Christmas themed inside. Making cards though they have no one to send them to, making garland, and roasting chestnuts even though they have no sense of smell or any means to eat said chestnuts. They'll want to make eggnog too and demand to know if you like it or not. Tell them you like it please, even if you don't. They'll be so happy they might skip around the place for a bit.

It's hard getting a sweater in their size, you have to get it custom made but once they get it oh boy they'll never take it off. They'll wear it all year round. Being made of metal they don't sweat in the heat so it doesn't get all gross smelling, though it might get spilled on. Getting them to take it off to wash will be tricky, not impossible, just tricky. You might have to buy multiple so they can rotate what sweater they're wearing. 

They love christmas music, they can listen to it all day long without getting tired of it. You on the other hand go a little crazy hearing Maria Carrie five times a day every day for a week. At some point you have to limit the christmas music for the sake of your mental health.

Getting a gift for you is a little hard, they don’t work, or leave the house if there's snow out. They draw you a bunch of drawings for you, they were trying to save them all for christmas day but they kept getting excited each time they finished a drawing for you that they couldn’t help but give them to you the moment you walked through the door.

The fridge doesn’t have enough room for all the drawings.

[liesmyth]

Your theory about Harrow's note being from Coronabeth is making my brain rotate backwards... what's your idea for how the note got there, given that the notes are written after Canaan House when Coronabeth is in BoE custody?

My hunch that Corona, not Ianthe, was the second hand on the letter is because 1) the tone of the letter is very flirty and strikes me more as Corona than Ianthe (xoxoxoxo), and 2) the narration says that the writing is "in different handwriting." If it's Ianthe's handwriting, why not say that? By this point, Harrow has spent a lot of time watching Ianthe write notes and scribble on her journals around her. There's no reason why she wouldn't recognise Ianthe's writing.

Anyway, as with all my TLT theories I wouldn't stake that much on it, but here are some thoughts on Harrow at the end of GtN:

I think Harrow planned on the lobotomy right after Cytherea died, before waking up on the Erebos, even if it was in a very vague way and she wasn't sure how (or even if) she'd implement it. I think she decided to go through with it when she asked John to relive Gideon, and when he said he couldn't retrieve a soul that had been absorbed, but she had already been considering it.

The GtN epilogue begins with Harrow waking up on the Erebos, but by the end of Chapter 37 she's still awake—she didn't pass out. She just "sat there for a long time." iirc, we don't actually know whether the Cohort or BoE arrived first, but it's implied it was BoE. Still, I find it deeply weird that Harrow would manage to lose track of Gideon's body by the Epilogue when she literally laid down next to it. Even if she passed out and didn't realise it, who would think of taking away a dead body? Definitely not BoE, who react very weirdly to Camilla carrying around pieces of Palamedes's skull, don't think very highly of House people, and are very pragmatic + have very limited resources. Why carry around a dead body? Especially when they left many other bodies behind.

I think Harrow definitely interacted with Camilla after Cytherea's death; I think she may have been the one to tell Camilla to take away Gideon's body, maybe after a conversation that made Harrow decide it was the best course of action. Camilla would have known about the break clause (because Palamedes tells Camilla everything) and while I don't think she'd tell Harrow about the Clause, I think they might have discussed why a Lyctor would want to kill the Emperor and what that implies.

Note also that Harrow in the Epilogue seems a lot more objective and less "starstruck" by John than she is in HtN (even the POV calls him 'the Emperor', while in HtN he is 'God' to her). The POV in the Epilogue is a lot more detached, narratively, from what Harrow is thinking and feeling; it describes her dialogue but not much of her internal monologue. She says "What?" when she finds out Camilla is gone, she pays extra attention when she's told Gideon's body is also gone; but at no point does it actually SAY in the narration that she is surprised by any of these things.

Compared to HtN, epilogue!Harrow seems wary enough of the Lyctors and of the Emperor that she may very well have already been planning Something on her own. She definitely didn't sit down and write 24 letters in Canaan House, but I think it's not completely impossible she might have written Letter #5 next to Coronabeth. Even if I'm wrong about the handwriting on the letter (and I probably am!) I think it's likely that Corona and Harrow interacted. It's a bit less likely that Ianthe and Corona interacted, because Ianthe was wounded and out of it, but it's still possible that they did.

[somnia-project]

5 - Freesia

[Previous Chapter] - [Next Chapter] Words: 4,139 Rated [M-S] - Here is an explanation of my rating system. Pairing: ChiLumi Summary: Childe tries his best to have a decent time at the wine-tasting event despite the tension in the air. Read on Ao3, Read on Wattpad, or continue to read here on Tumblr below. Just ignore the fact that it's been over a year since chapter 4, ok? Please enjoy this chapter and let me know what you think! I take constructive criticism, btw. 😏

When Tartaglia awoke the sun was hanging low in the sky, very nearly sunset. He rolled over with a groan and rubbed the sleep out of his eyes, squinting to see through the rays of sunlight beaming in from the window. The light wrapped around Lumine as she sat at the table in the center of the room, writing something.

“Well it took you long enough,” she huffed.

Tartaglia hummed in response, unable to take his eyes off of her in his tired state. The darker gold strands of her hair particularly stood out in the evening light. She was so focused on whatever she was writing that she didn’t notice him staring. He was snapped out of his daze by the mumbling coming from behind him. Paimon was sleeping on her back with her hands raised in the air, grabbing at something she was seeing in her dream.

“No…sticky honey roast…AH!” Suddenly she sat straight up, slurping the excess drool from the inside of her mouth before it fell onto the bedspread. She turned and screamed again, launching herself into the air where she stayed floating above the bed. “AH!! IT’S CHILDE!”

“Yes, comrade,” he chuckled and propped himself up on his elbow. “That is my name.”

“No it’s not,” Lumine grumbled.

Funny, he thought to himself, that you would know that when I’ve never heard you say my real name to my face.

He reached into the drawer on the nightstand and pulled his belt bag out and retrieved the mysterious pyro vision. He rolled onto his back and stared up at it between his fingers, the flame pattern staying in place as he rotated the orb. It was so odd to see a vision without its metal housing; it was impossible to even determine what nation it came from. His first guess was Mondstat, since that’s where he’d found it, but it also seemed to have been deliberately placed inside that ruin guard. He couldn’t make any sense of it, and it reeked of foul play. The more he thought about it, the warmer it became in his hand, and the more he could feel the rage welling up inside of him.

The fucking Fatui…

“Well what are we having for dinner? Paimon’s hungry!” Her sudden outburst ripped him out of his thoughts, and he fumbled the vision in his hand before dropping it directly onto his face.

“Ow, shit!”

“Stop messing around!” Paimon scolded him. “What if you break it?!”

“Not before it breaks my face. Ow…” He rubbed the bridge of his nose as he sat up and put the vision back inside of his belt bag.

“They should be just about finished setting up everything downstairs,” Lumine said. “I’m almost done with my report for the Knights.”

“Is that your way of asking us to wait up for you?” Tartaglia teased. She huffed in response, which all but confirmed his accusation. He stood up to find his boots and directed his attention back to Paimon. “As far as what to eat, I would say sticky honey roast since that’s what you were mumbling about in your sleep, but that might be off the table since we’re in Liyue.”

“Pops at Stone Gate said that the carts from Mondstat were carrying food, so it could still be a possibility,” Lumine corrected him and set down her pen.

“You mean we could have food from both Mondstat and Liyue at the same time?!” Paimon shot up from the bed and flew through the air erratically. “Oh man we’ve really hit the jackpot after last night’s disaster! It’s a dream come true!”

“Oh, so my cooking isn’t enough for you now? I see how it is.” Lumine shook her head as she finished sealing her report and stood, while Paimon frantically tried to argue that wasn’t the case. Tartaglia laughed as he fastened his jacket over his chest, and he nearly tripped as he rushed to put on his boots while Lumine was already making her way out the door.

“It isn’t funny! Hey, wait for Paimon!” she shrieked as she followed the two of them out onto the breezeway. Lively voices of the patrons downstairs were carried up on the chilled night breeze, growing louder as they approached the ground level. Normally Tartaglia would be on high alert, but for once it was a party that had nothing to do with his work. Besides, with Lumine around the two of them could take on any kind of freak occurrence they were confronted with. 

“Ah, I was wondering when you would show up.”

Tartaglia’s eye twitched when he looked forward to see the Master of the Dawn Winery greeting them, or rather greeting Lumine and Paimon as he took her report.

“This is quite hefty, what in the world happened while I was gone?”

“A bunch of monsters showed up out of nowhere last night and - mmph!!” Lumine slapped her hand over Paimon’s mouth.

“It was nothing that the Knights of Favonius and I couldn’t handle,” she told him. “It’s been resolved, so try not to worry about it too much. You can even go over my report if that would make you feel better.”

“I’ll…take your word for it,” he sighed. “This is why I don’t like to leave the city for too long. Who knows what could have happened if you hadn’t been there to reel in…that.”

“How rude,” Tartaglia scoffed and stepped up next to Lumine. “You’re seriously going to blame it on me? For your information I was the one doing most of the work to protect the city!”

“You’ll fight anything for any reason!” Paimon interjected before she turned back to Diluc. “Childe is telling the truth though, he was really laying into those monsters before they could even get to the bridge.”

“See? I’ve got more witnesses if you still don’t believe me.” Tartaglia grinned and threw one hand in the air in a half-shrug, the other planted on his hip.

Diluc grumbled, clearly discontented with being unable to argue with Paimon for siding with a Fatuus, a Harbinger no less. He looked to Tartaglia, then to Lumine and sighed.

“I’ll deliver your full report personally when I return to the city tomorrow. Lumine, Paimon, please enjoy the party.” Diluc narrowed his eyes at Tartaglia, then he walked briskly past the group, nearly knocking shoulders with him. It was meant to be intentional, a warning, sizing him up. Tartaglia’s hand twitched, and he cracked his knuckles to try and abate the itch he had to do something about Diluc’s attitude.

The party itself was pleasant in the moments that Tartaglia couldn’t spot Diluc out of the corner of his eye. Plenty of food, somehow enough to sate both Paimon and Lumine while still leaving enough for the other guests, as well as plenty of drink. He found himself hovering near the wine sampling table and scanning the area for far too long. Breaking the habit of behavior he had at events where he had to work for the Fatui proved to be difficult, and he found himself drinking more and more just to try to relax despite the occasional flashes of red hair in his peripheral vision.

What caught his attention even more though, was the fact that Lumine seemed to have made a new friend: a woman with warm mauve hair and smiling brown eyes. The two of them were chatting excitedly about something, though he couldn’t hear what they were saying over the band playing nearby. Despite her outward attitude, he noticed that Lumine was actually quite popular with everyone. Even if it looked like she was just going with the flow, she really just clicked with all sorts of people. Though as far as he knew he had to be the one who was closest with her…right?

“-ilde. Childe!”

“Huh?” He whipped his head around to see Paimon floating next to him and trying to get his attention.

“What the heck are you so focused on? Paimon’s been calling you for a whole minute!”

“I was just looking at- Lumine, you’re back.” As he turned forward he saw her approaching him. “Where’s your friend?”

“She had to go home. Sounded like she’s not supposed to be out late,” she explained. “The music is really starting to pick up though! Hurry, before they shift the mood again!” Lumine suddenly grabbed his hand and pulled him away from the wine table and into the clearing in the center of the room, leading him into an upbeat dance.

She was smiling. Lumine was smiling as they danced together, and when he dipped her low he could see her cheeks flushed pink and the small beads of sweat forming on her throat. It was such a different dance than what they’d experienced before.

This…this is nice too…

When the music reached its crescendo it was as if nothing else existed but the two of them on that dance floor, hand-in-hand, smiling at each other and spinning in perfect sync. The rest of the world felt so far away, Tartaglia forgot about where they were and everyone else around them. The only thing that mattered was that she was smiling, and that she was smiling at him. He was holding her close when the music ended, stuck in a moment that he wished would last forever.

"The song is over," Lumine huffed and gave his chest a light slap.

"Let's just wait for the next one."

"No. I need a break." She pushed harder, and he conceded and let her go. As soon as he did she took off and disappeared into the crowd, leaving him alone on the dance floor. The world came back into view, people staring at him, probably wondering why he was standing there by himself, what he'd done to upset his partner. If he had known then he would go after her and try to fix it.

Instead, Tartaglia made his way over to the drink table and browsed the samples of Mondstat's wines once again. He picked one with a light color and threw it back, not bothering with bouquet or taste. All he knew was that if he wanted to stay relaxed he needed to keep drinking.

He reached for a second glass, but it was obstructed from his reach by a gloved hand.

“I’m cutting you off.”

“Excuse me?” Tartaglia looked up to see Diluc with his eyes narrowed and an aura of fury radiating from him.

“Unless you want me to personally remove you, walk away right now,” Diluc threatened. Tartaglia’s hand twitched. He was itching for something, so he may as well give into provocation and fight him already. He had done a good job avoiding Diluc all evening up until that point, and now he was ready to punch the sorry grimace right off his face.

“How about we take this outside, away from the crowd?” 

“We are outside, Childe,” Diluc nagged. “It’s an open-air deck.”

“I’m taking you outside before you do something stupid,” Lumine suddenly strode up behind him and wrapped both of her arms around his own. He stumbled back a bit, pulled by her weight. Diluc turned his nose up at him and crossed his arms.

“Next time, then.” Tartaglia grinned and pulled his arm free before turning his back and quickly darting ahead of Lumine onto the main road in front of the inn. As much as he would have enjoyed a fight with the Master of the Dawn Winery, it wasn't an appropriate time or place for it.

The cool night air stuck to his skin as he and Lumine walked down the uneven road, making him more aware of how much he had been sweating. He would definitely need to take a shower when they got back to the room. 

"I can't believe you actually managed to drink this much," Lumine sighed. Tartaglia figured that being a steady hold for an overly intoxicated Harbinger was not in her plans for the night. He hadn't meant to drink that much; the alcohol from Dawn Winery was much stronger than he had expected. It didn't look good for him. Lumine tensed up more every time he bumped into her or grabbed her shoulder to regain his balance. If he didn't cut it out soon, he thought she might go back to the room without him, or even worse, leave.

"Let's take a break here," Tartaglia suggested, leaning forward onto the side of the large bridge that overlooked Dihua Marsh. The Millileth officer that had been there earlier was gone, probably to sneak some wine for themself. Everything was dimly lit by the moon, and the orange lights from the inn were dancing on the calm water below. Faint music and laughter could be heard in the distance. Tartaglia felt oddly relaxed, still thinking about their dance from before.

Lumine leaned down next to him to look him in the eyes. She was close. His heartbeat sped up. He found himself wanting that night to never end so that he could spend as much time with her as possible, so he could stop thinking about work and politics and…

Shit, he just wanted to relax.

"So, have I made my Lumi’s night yet?" He smiled. Her eyes widened and her cheeks grew red. Tartaglia could see her visibly tense away from him as her breath hitched in her throat. The redness from her cheeks was spreading to her ears as she averted her gaze to the water below.

"You're wasted," she muttered under her breath. Perhaps she was right about that. He thought it was about time they headed back to the inn. He turned around, now precariously leaning onto the side of the bridge with his back to the water. Lumine walked out in front of him with her head down. She stopped in the center of the bridge and mumbled again. He only caught her saying her own name.

"What was that?" Tartaglia asked her. "I couldn't quite hear you."

"What…" she lifted her head up to face him, her cheeks still flushed, "what do you really mean when you say ‘my Lumi?’" She grabbed her own arms in a sort of self hug. She looked adorable. He felt his face heat up, the blood rushing around in his head made him dizzy. The way she looked at him was so enticing, a mix of happiness and despair that made him ache and he wanted to do something about it. If she kept making that face at him he felt like he could lose all control of himself. He wanted her to make more new expressions for him at his beck and call. He was ready to run to her and shape her face to his will when he felt all gravity leave his body. He was so dizzy.

He could hear her call for him. His name sounded wrong somehow. Was she far away? Something slammed into his back, then a second and more solid impact, and suddenly he couldn't breathe as water overtook his face and body.

Ah, so that's what happened, he though to himself. This certainly is not a good look for me.

He felt even more weight on top of him before the feeling of being dragged ashore. Peering upward he could see Lumine's golden blonde hair hovering over his face. Drops of brackish water fell from her hair directly into his eyes. He rolled onto his side, gasping. The air had been knocked out of his lungs when he hit the bottom of the shallow marsh. It must have been unsightly, but at least he wasn't vomiting.

“Are you hurt?!" Lumine put one hand on his back and another on his chest. He grabbed the hand she'd put on his chest with his own, squeezing tight so she wouldn't pull away.

"No," he wheezed, "just a little rattled." He felt her pulse racing through her fingers.

"Let's go back to the inn. We'll get sick if we stay out here in these wet clothes," she asserted while pulling upward to signal him to stand.

"Right," Tartaglia stood up with shaking legs, Lumine's hand still tight in his grasp against his chest.

"Your heart is beating so fast," she wriggled her fingers underneath his hand. He loosened his grip to allow her to flatten her palm against his chest to feel.

"That's what happens when you're close to me," he breathed.

"So it's definitely from the fall then," she sighed. Before he could grab her hand again she whisked it away and began walking back to the inn through the grass. Of course she would be frustrated with him after that; he was frustrated with himself. Falling off of a bridge was definitely a new thing to add to the list of stupid things he had done in his life. Tartaglia glanced around to make sure nobody else saw what had happened. The marsh looked empty enough, but he couldn’t be sure unless he swept the area. His hand twitched.

“Let’s go, Comrade Cretin!” Lumine called back to him. He trailed behind her, watching as she occasionally looked back to make sure he hadn't collapsed.

The crowds were beginning to disperse as they reached the inn. Enough people were stumbling that it didn't look too strange when Tartaglia wrapped an arm around Lumine's shoulder, though she did sigh with disapproval. They were almost to their suite anyway, but they did have to wait for the elevator. The stairs’ guard rail wasn't high enough to trust, considering how easily he'd fallen off a bridge.

“Too much to drink, Childe?” Tartaglia turned his head to see Diluc had followed them to the waiting area for the elevator. He had a smug look on his face and sipped from the glass he was holding.

“No,” Lumine had already tightened her grip on his waist and growled at him. “Do not fight each other.”

"Where the heck did you two run off to?!" Paimon rushed out from behind Diluc. "Paimon thought you ran off together and might never come back!" she cried.

"Aw, of course we wouldn't leave you." Tartaglia reached out to pat her head.

"No! You don’t get to pat Paimon!" She reeled back and crossed her arms.

Tartaglia sighed. What had started out as a fun night had spiraled into a disaster beyond his control. Maybe he shouldn't be holding back. Maybe he should just attack Diluc and turn the entire inn upside-down. That was more his style. That was what he normally would have done, and he would have engaged Lumine in another battle for the ages under the moonlight of Wangshu Inn...

...if he didn't want to keep her around, but he wanted her to stay. He controlled himself to stay by her side, if only for just a little bit longer before he would be inevitably called back to Snezhnaya.

"Actually, Paimon," Diluc spoke up. "I was hoping you could help me with something food-related."

What? What's happening?

In his shock, Tartaglia let himself be led to the elevator by Lumine, and Paimon's excited voice faded into background noise as they got further and further away. He wasn't sure what had just occurred, but it seemed like Diluc had intentionally held Paimon back. But why would he do that? It just didn't make any sense to him, unless...

Had Lumine asked him to distract Paimon so that she could be alone with him?

No, she couldn't have. When would she have done that?

Tartaglia tried not to get too excited about it as they entered the room they had rented, thinking instead of the shower he so desperately needed. He was thankful that it was a full suite, which meant there was hot water on demand. Being a Fatui Harbinger with a lot of mora had its perks at times, like when he wanted to slack off and embarrass himself in front of the girl he liked.

"You go first," said Lumine. "I'll wait for you to finish." He frowned at her suggestion.

"Shouldn't you be keeping an eye on your favorite Harbinger? What if this is all a ruse to get you alone?"

"Of course it is!" She put her hands on her hips. "That's why I'm not going into the bathroom with you!" He swayed and fell to his knees in front of her as if a dizzy spell had overtaken him. "H-Hey!" she gasped, bending down to put her hands on his shoulders.

"I'm not sure I can be trusted to take care of myself right now," he lied. The fall into the marsh had actually sobered him up a little, but he knew that if he continued to act inebriated he could play it off better in the morning should the situation turn sour.

"All right," Lumine conceded. "Give me your shirt." Tartaglia removed his jacket, tossing it to the floor. He then peeled off his wet shirt and handed it to her. "Go ahead into the bathroom ahead of me."

"Why? I don't mind watching you undress." He smirked.

"Well I do!"

“How is this any different from when we got here?”

“Just shut up and get in there!” Lumine shooed him into the bathroom and shut the door. He could hear her unbuckle her dress and the thump the damp fabric made as it hit the floor. He wanted to see her pale skin sparkling under the thin layer of salt water from the marsh. Tartaglia removed his pants and threw them to the side. He left his underwear on, though. He knew that all bets were off if those came off this early in his battle for her affection. He sat on a wooden stool near the faucet and waited for a moment before the door opened in front of him.

Lumine's face was heavily flushed, because she knew what she looked like in those damp clothes. His red undershirt had much more length on her, down past her hips. The dampness caused it to cling to her chest, creating an outline of her shape underneath. Her white bloomers, too, clung to her body and were nearly transparent. Tartaglia felt his face heat up and he closed his legs together. She quickly made her way to the faucet and twisted it on, grabbing a nearby metal basin to fill.

"No more foolery. We're just gonna rinse off, change into dry robes, and then go to bed, okay?" She checked the temperature and then began pouring the first basin of water over his head before he could reply. The water was comfortably warm running through his hair and down his back. He didn't dare interrupt her while she did this for fear she'd drop the basin on him. He patiently sat while she filled it a second time to pour over each of his shoulders. The next refill she poured over his chest, the feeling of which made his mind go to static for a moment before she spoke.

"There, that should get most of the salt off." Lumine put the basin down and pushed her hair behind her ear. When she lifted her arm to do so he could see purple discoloration from her wrist halfway up to her elbow. Did she jump off of the bridge after him? He reached out and ran his fingertips over her skin, causing her to flinch away.

"You shouldn't be jumping from such high places," he scolded. "You're lucky it's just a bruise."

"Well you shouldn't be getting piss drunk and falling off of bridges, but we can't all control our actions now can we?" she huffed.

"Ooh, fighting words," Tartaglia sang while moving forward to kneel on the floor in front of Lumine. "Is that what you're in the mood for tonight, Lumine? A fight?" He pushed the other side of her hair behind her ear, weaving his fingers through her short blonde locks. Her breathing sped up as he pressed his forehead to hers, the tips of their noses tapping against one another. She moved her hands to his chest.

“Please,” he breathed, “don’t push me away, Lumine.” He moved even closer and wrapped his other hand around her back, pinning her body to his. He could feel her heart beating fast, relieved to know that he wasn't the only one. Their lips were so close to one another. One tiny motion from either of them could ignite the flames burning within him. He had to tread carefully.

"Lumi," he swallowed, "I really want to kiss you right now." He could hear her breath hitching in her throat, followed by a small whimper as she parted her lips. "Please...can we..." Tartaglia's words trailed off.

"Yes."

[anxiouspregnantlady]

27+3

Hi! Things are going well - life feels rich, full, just enough. I'm very grateful. I sometimes imagine that I'm still not pregnant at this point in 2024 and how depressed I would feel. Instead, we have less than three months to go before Mei Mei is here, and will likely start Labor Watch in two months' time.

I am inching closer and closer to the third trimester. In the past week, I've noticed a sharp change in my overall level of function - suddenly, standing up from a sitting position is difficult, lying on my side feels bad, putting on a shoe is impossible. Still having tailbone pain. Walking is slow, but still okay. I've started to be able to articulate various body parts! I think Mei Mei is head down, with her spine running along my right belly, butt up against my right ribcage, and legs extending to my left. Will be fun to confirm at my appointment next week. She does move a ton, but it isn't usually painful...except when she hits some kind of nerve in my abdomen and it feels like an electric shock. P is as engaged and loving as ever (if a little possessive), wanting to give and feed and teach her sister the whole world.

Have started using magnesium spray - I get a bit of RLS at night. Climbing feels impossible. I went for what will probably the last time in a while this week, and ended up mostly just watching the Olympics, which was not a bad use of time. I finally bought another piece of maternity clothing - jean shorts - because the H&M at cherry hill mall miraculously had a few heavily discounted maternity pieces in their store. They're a tad big, but they have the adjustable waistband and no funny looking elastic or belly panel, and I feel quite confident I'll be able to wear them for a while. All my other shorts/pants options are slowly being put away. An elastic waist can only stretch so far. The only exception is skirts, because there is no rise to restrict how far up the skirt can sit, and thankfully I have two summer skirts and one fall skirt that I think will be on heavy rotation. I'm pleased that a pair of crossover aerie leggings I got at a thrift store is still very comfortable. The fabled lululemon align leggings (from goodwill, lol) are wearable, but to be brutally honest, not very comfortable. Heck, even my maternity bike shorts from amazon are feeling very tight! I'm only in the second trimester!

Sewing-wise, I'm full of ideas but short on time and also am loathe to be on the third floor for very long - it is the HOTTEST place in the house, and also happens to be my sewing room. Maybe this will be better in October. I would love to sew up a sleeveless nikko dress (turtleneck dress) in a veryyyyyy stretchy rib. I'm trying to gain confidence sewing knits. Also in a groove making XL boxy tshirts (free pattern, true bias jesse tee), the kind of shirts I want to labor in and sleep in because they're so roomy but still look feminine and cute. Also dreaming of making a bunch of sweats for postpartum, maybe some robe-type things, I have a lot of sweater rib knit from fabscrap. I think my plan for breastfeeding-friendly clothing is cropped tshirts and sweaters. Easy. This sounds a little silly, but I'm excited to be able to wear a bunch of my clothes again postpartum. Dressing has felt hard.

Onto less trivial matters...

I think we're set with our name. !!!! But still undecided with chinese name (though we have made progress in the past week).

Very tired, so that's all.

[snuggles-and-struggles]

"Index" of my spicyhoney ideas and AUs, in no particular order

11-15/???

✮ Long Distance

Another twofer. The first was about Edge and Stretch being childhood friends who wind up separated when Stretch's family moves. They stay in touch, though gradually not as frequently as they get older, until they finally meet again as adults, and boy, if they thought their crushes on each other were bad before... lmao

The other one I'd actually started for a month prompt thing either last year or the year before. Edge and Stretch meet in an online chat room (or similar). They wind up unlikely friends, growing closer over the years until they finally meet in person and...yeah, there's no denying the sparks that fly.

~

✮ Swap > Fell

A bit of a weird one. It's like, half spicyhoney, half spicybbq? After Edge and Red move to the house in Snowdin, they're about 11 and 16, respectively. While Red is setting up the machine in the basement, something goes wrong and there's an explosion, of sorts. As he’s coming to, he realizes there are now two strangers, other skeleton monsters, in their basement with him.

Stretch and Blue get yeeted into Fell at young ages. They're only a little older than the uf brothers, so they wind up staying with Edge and Red until they can manage to fix the machine and go home. That doesn't happen. As time drags on, they begin incorporating more, and...it's not pleasant, but honestly it's easier on all of them having each other.

Eventually Stretch and Blue change their nicknames to Slim and Viper, (though in the privacy of their home, Edge and Red still call them their old nicknames usually), and of course, Edge and "Slim" wind up together, how could they not?

I was thinking of incorporating some cherryberry (/whatever the uf sans/sf sans ship name is) but for some reason I also got the idea of Viper winding up with Blaze (uf Grillby)??

I honestly can't remember if they'd surface or not, but I do know I've thought about mv scenarios where Slim meets a more proper us Papyrus and gets a little bent out of shape about it, feels guilty, like Edge should be with him instead, etc etc, similar to Rust's sentiments in the horrorswap ideas where he feels like he’s not good enough but Edge is so obviously crazy about him and they make each other happy but eh, that's menthol illness babey!

~

✮ Missed Connections

This one is like au minesweeper. There's seven million different versions, but the overarching theme is that Edge and Stretch had met underground thanks to the machine. Either they didn't get along at all or briefly dated, ending on a relatively sour note.

Many years later, after they've all surfaced, Stretch has made a decent life for himself, but Edge, well. He'd (usually) gradually become disconnected from all the others. No ones heard from him (usually) for years, until a chance meeting with Stretch.

The reason I say seven million is because I've rotated this one a lot, sometimes it's just like. Angst on top of angst with more angst sprinkled to taste. Other times it's just kinda sad and about the many ways life can kind of lead you down paths you'd never expect, sometimes for the better, sometimes for the worse. I've never been able to settle on one concrete version I like, but frankly it's usually difficult to reach any sort of fitting happy ending in these ones.

~

✮ Movie star

Similar to the college one, I have a massive note for this that I. May or may not have posted somewhere on this blog?? Stretch is a famous actor. Has been since he was a teen, so he’s pretty used to it all by now. And he’s tired of it. He feels like almost impossible to build solid, new relationships without people either wanting to use him or be with him just for appearances. So. He tries anonymously online dating. Surprisingly, he actually meets someone, going a bit anonymous themself.

Over months, Stretch and Shade talk and become closer and closer, until eventually, Stretch asks if they could go out on a proper date. Shade is hesitant, but ultimately accepts, so long as Stretch is comfortable coming to his home for something casual, like a dinner date.

It goes incredibly well, but there's something odd about it all. Shade lives in an isolated cabin in the middle of the woods, and was much more anxious and shy in person. For the most part, Stretch shrugs it off as Shade just being a bit of a hermit, but eventually, he comes to find the rabbit hole goes a little deeper than expected...

~

✮ Mutant

Another one not too dissimilar to Missed Connections in that, I actually have a number of different versions of this bad boy, though they're usually more separate and self contained, just sort of based off similar concepts.

One of the first though starts similarly to the long distance au/fic idea. Edge and Stretch were childhood friends...but Edge had a lot of health problems, and his father didn't like him going out to play or people coming over very often, so as Edge got older, Stretch saw him less. He was a strange little kid, always had to wear a mask and never spoke, but he was sweet and him and Stretch got along fantastically.

Until one day, Edge's family disappeared. Stretch went to visit only to see a new family moving in to their (previous) house.

Many years passed, when, much to Stretch's shock, he got a call from Edge's brother, Red. Over the many years, Edge had become a terrible homebody, and Red was desperate to find something that might help him relax into being social again.

Stretch agrees, of course, and is actually quite looking forward to seeing Edge again, only...once he finally arrives after the trip halfway across the country, Red has some...extra info, for Stretch to keep in mind. It's then he learns about what Edge's father had done to him, turning him into a lab rat, the effects it's had on his body, and that's why he’s so closed off and shut in. And actually meeting him, yeah, Stretch could understand why...

Of course that doesn't change the way he feels. And even though Edge is resistant at first, it's not long before they've started rebuilding the close friendship they'd had before. Which of course becomes more, eventually.

[sickjamb]

The sky that evening, I could see. No matter what the facts tell me, it was all darkness, then the most beautiful blue absurdities mixing with bright orange, lilac, and pink. They say that it was overcast. They say, “your brain made it up, Lily.”

My mom cried the entire summer after my accident. I couldn’t see the tears fall, but I could hear her weeping. I could feel the wetness on her face when she would grab my hand and rest it on her cheek. I think she wanted to include me in her suffering because mine wasn’t loud enough.

I was 23, driving home from USC. I was exceptional.

Dr. Moran, the doctor who I was supposed to do rotations with in a few months, gave the bad news. “The corneas in both eyes are damaged beyond repair, only the left eye is even eligible for a transplant. We will…”

I’m 25 now. I am blind. I am lost.

I go to sleep at night and dream. In those moments, I can see. I will touch Sai’s face. I can see him smile. I can see the fan blow the hair off of his forehead, the strands not stuck on with sweat in the heat.

In the mornings, he’ll kiss my wrist. He’ll whisper, “As'alu Allah al’azim rabbil'arshil azim an yashifika. I ask the all-powerful God, the Lord of the great throne, to cure you.”

I’ll only feel his breath on my face. The prayers never worked in the daytime.

There was a long time where I never allowed the house to be silent. Sai would go to work, and I would play classical music on the house speakers and some mindless reality show on the living room television. I would have fans constantly blowing, even in the almost-chill California winters.

I sit in the quiet more now. Sometimes I even seek it out. I wear large, expensive, noise-canceling headphones. I’d sit outside and feel the wind brush my arms, feel it blow my uncovered hair into knots.

Yesterday, I could feel the wind was unsettled. The dewy promise of rain was sharp in my nose, but I stayed. For some reason, a tear made its way down my face. I felt a small tap on my shoulder. I thought it was the first drop of rain until it turned into a gentle grip, shaking me slightly. I felt the noise of the world come back to me all at once, the delicious moment of sensory overload I did this for. “Lily, my surgeries were all rescheduled, let's go on a walk,” Sai said with the same undertone of sadness he always spoke with now.

I said, “Isn’t it about to rain?”

He said, “No, Lily, it's a beautiful day. I should describe it to you more, how beautiful everything is.”

I could feel his breath on my face again.

“The sun is setting now, the red of it is just burning on the horizon.” He grabbed my cheek, wiping away the stains of sadness. “There isn’t a cloud in the sky, the colors all blend together impossibly. The moon-”

My gasp stopped his words. “I can see it, Sai.” And I could.

I could see the sunset, the garden’s flowers half in bloom, all boring and unimportant. “Sai, I can see your smile.”

I touched his cheek, the vision disappeared when a drop of rain landed on the hand I held there.

[la-appel-du-vide]

10•22•23

We had quite possibly the most perfect day at Frightmares ever. The weather could not have been better. It was warm enough to feel completely comfortable, even when it got dark, and I loved feeling the sun all day but not getting too hot.

We got there early so we could jump in line for the newly opened ride, Primordial. They've been constructing it for years, so we were excited to try it! The line was still pretty long, even that early, and it took us like an hour and a half or so to get through it. It's a mix of a roller coaster and a VR shooting game. I thought the roller coaster portion was fun, and the unexpected drop and the backwards part was great, but the shooting experience was only so-so, and I blame Disney for that. Theirs are top notch. The story was impossible for me to follow, but I enjoyed it. Not worth a long wait though.

We rode Samurai after, which is my number one favorite, and our first ride through was SO boring. No one was screaming or having any fun. It was just slowly rotating us through the air, and I was so mad. Luckily, after they brought us down, the employees came around to check if we'd want to go again for a better experience, and absolutely we did. The second time through was an insane ride, and I loved it. Back on top!

Jason had never ridden Cannibal, so we had to do that, and then all the normal favorites. Since Beach doesn't like roller coasters, she mostly waited for us while we went on the rides, and having only three on the Spider was so fun. The off-balanced weight made it so we never stopped spinning! And since everyone was trying to get on Primordial, the rest of the lines weren't bad at all. Beach did want to ride Wild Mouse, so we did that all together and that was super fun.

One of my main motivations for wanting to go this year was to get a friend picture at the Pioneer Photo Gallery. I haven't done it since I was a kid, but Mikayla's group always goes and it looks like a blast. Kena and Glen were supposed to be there, but decided not to come, so it was just the four of us, but it was still a good time and I love the pictures. I was a Saloon girl, and everyone else was an outlaw. I love the one where we are all serious and Beach is sticking her tongue out hahah, she kills me. They are a very efficient machine in there, getting people in, dressed, and out so quickly! It was a highlight of the day for sure.

I got mint Oreo dippin dots and a churro, so we were clearly living our best lives. And of course, we ended the day with some haunted house walk-throughs, and a final ride on the Colossus, since Beach figured she could just go home and rest if it made her sick.

We had just the best time, and I'm so glad we got to all go together!

Beach Quote of the Day: "The Mouse giveth and The Mouse taketh away." Hahahah, this was said after we got off the ride and my pants got caught on the turnstile and ripped.

[jonathankatwhatever]

In the next few hours looks like a bad outcome on the house. Either a pass or a price cut is more probable. It’s 18 Oct 2023 and I want to work so I don’t think about my actual life in this actual D3-4 existence crumbling. Or rather, so I can at least think about it in mathematical terms.

I need to get this out. I’m being haunted, like right now, by an image from Storyline of Joana underwater in a swimming pool in various dance poses. I cannot stop them from occurring. But I don’t quite understand them either. It’s like being mermaided. And that’s the female me as the mermaid, so that would be a transfer or transitive point, a literal station where you can switch lines because the permutations generate stories which are threads and thus the associated spaces, including areas and volumes in standard space, as this progresses through D-structure.

Oh wow, so the distance in D-structure is why we see the count in time as behind and forward, and can draw traces and inferences, but otherwise those are the Irreducibles over the representation of the moment in D-structure. And that’s the third I’ve been trying to remember long enough to get out. It’s also the old image of the fan opening and closing as say 3bT as half of a Hexagon can fold or rotate to the midline. Note that this establishes the Boundary again: it’s a bubble, a hole, an Object which can be identified and thus valued through the various threads connected by how it appears and disappears in the shift from D6 to D4. Note how that then does the same for the other 3bT. So you can imagine those 2HG folding over so the 1-0Segments at either double End form a grid square, meaning they make a pyramid that locates the central End above or below. So the switch from D6 to D4 includes the matching of two strings of D3, a Triangular of D3 and a representation of SBE3, one attaching to the other.

Visualize that as making the top and bottom of a grid square, oriented so the content of count varies in yK over xK above the xK (and …). So 2 bubbles, 2T. Meeting at the End when the 2 far Ends draw through the Bip, which is their projection into the space, which is the magic I was looking for. The Bip is where D-structure translates and is transitive into grid squares and thus into D4-3 Space. Think how basic that is: this is how structure is transitive. That finally solves my issue with the sporadic simple groups: not the transitivity but the mechanism of that to enter the analysis. I see it now comes in at the Bip, which is where the motivation and energy of gs Injects.

This means we just put together a far more comprehensive conception of time, one that’s inherently mathematical. You can even see at least some of the mechanics: the sK and zK are labels for whichever locates to the count that is pure immutable zK and the same in sK, meaning devoid of all content because all content is built on this, like the construction of sets from empty. The 0 here is clear: you can draw sK and zK and there they are. Behind them being there is every possible shift and rotation, and in between are the stories of what has and what might or will happen. That translates to D4 as the edge of the Dimensional Enclosure, and thus at scales of D4, meaning of gs, and the in between is D3-4//4-3 and D4-3//3-4, meaning the Emanation and Inmanation of permutational potential.

That becomes a basic argument: there are 2 distant Ends and they need to match. You thus have a choice: you can match them 1 and 0, meaning the 1 destroys the other, leaving only the memory and lost potential as the other I in the I//I, or you can match them 1 and 0 and 0 and 1 so they cooperate to make a better whole. The former is obviously set disjunction: inherent to the ZF definitions of sets is that there be a 1 of set and a 0 of not set, either not this set or not a set at all.

I really am having trouble believing how easily this rolls off her tongue. I’ve been playacting her giving a lecture and have found it’s impossible at this level of understanding to identify papers which don’t require fundamental advances. That means dropping that pretence and having her actually give the lectures I’ve been experiencing like a movie, like her voice and she sometimes draws on a screen and she shuffles images in and out by selecting them from a roll across the top, and she pins some to the bottom in orders she wants.

Take a D5 space, like a 5th degree polynomial. See the problem? One of the fans has been collapsed and the other is open. Which is it? You now have double the ambiguity, and that is the extra gs process we previously identified as the reason. Now we can see there’s a basic counting issue: we have not fixed the choice at the level of 1 + 1 make 2.

Keep going. That’s treating this as 1+1 and that maps to a 2Square, so this means there is no fixed 2Square to inject into the Bip of the gs frame.

I literally just heard congratulations you solved that puzzle. Need to post. No, hold out.

This is as I see it on a slide in a presentation. Easy to animate. Easy to present the branching. Remember, which is her big phrase, every grid square tensions ordinal and cardinal in sK and zK, and these must come to root2 because that’s the root of the 2Square which enables H/D. Without the 2Square, we have no mechanism for Recombinance within a count. That would eliminate logarithms, which as we’ve seen is another way to count to 2.

Now that I’ve reached this level of Understanding I can see where I need guidance and help. Here is how I imagine D-structure. Start with a point, make it an End by attaching a flail, build until it’s CR, then go back to D6, show the Hexagon, collapse one bT and then open that and collapse the other in the HG. You can do that for each pair and see how they have states. Like all open, all not. Like 2 open and 1 not, up to 5. Or they can group over the visible and the Irreducible axis. So behind that more stable situation is the more chaotic anything possible level.

Let’s say we close 2, then we’ve hit D4. What happens if you close more? Like what if we have that line of bT’s. And it’s always an inversion like up down up, so it’s always 1-0-1 represented that way. That’s not new. So what this says is that you can read across or even skip to the middle and you get SBE identification of D3 because it’s rather obviously a count over bT’s. That, I have to say, is a great result. It is a fundamental statement about existence.

So, transitive in water, as the female Storyline embodiment of me as the physical side, not of course as just me because this is cooperatively twisted. Funny: that explains feuds and civil conflict as uncooperatively twisting to bind. Bind yourself tighter with atrocity.

Don’t want to leave this on that appropriate note. They really get it wrong: Jews are kicked out of places because they get along so well. They get along with anyone who gets along with them.

That includes your enemy. It really is as simple as Hitler pointing out there are French and British Jews and thus they must talk with the German Jews. Jews are the victims of hatreds not of them but of the fact that they get along with your enemies. That’s the displacement of hate. That’s the transitive. You can see the set construction once it’s obvious how the mechanism works. Jewish banking, after all, consisted of connecting various Christians with money who would otherwise not speak to each other, at least not without intermediaries. The actual point of Jews is to try to knit the world together by assisting each group we get along to improve itself. It’s good for them. It’s good for us. It’s good for everyone.

You can even see the mechanics of hate. In days not long ago, when your deal went bad - like your ships were lost in a storm or a disease ruined your crops - there was no mechanism to make that better. We don’t have well developed aid mechanisms now, but we had none before. As is, we barely provide aid and we certainly don’t take steps to prevent disasters.

Transitive in water. So with that image, which G takes - and there are pictures of him and them but the ones that play in my head are the ones that I experience as my movements as they come to life. It gets a little nervy because I’m trying to tension underwater and I’m not a good swimmer. I see a bunch of repeats and he’s deeper than me attached to something so he can lift me as needed. The problem with sideways is you hit the bottom and it doesn’t look suspended unless the background is just right.

I see how detailed your visions can become for implementation. They really do storyboard themselves.

Mermaid is transitive because animal human fantasy real play acting gender mer man Ethel different words Lorali crosses names constructs over space. And says HI because that connects G to J.

hi and 22 round.

[ammg-old2]

What if modern civilisation were to collapse tomorrow? What could you do to provide for yourself – what could any of us do – if food no longer magically appeared in the supermarket, or clothes on shop hangers, or the power-grid and gas and water supplies vanished? If you were to wake up after a global catastrophe that toppled civilisation, with the vast majority of humanity gone, what would you be able to do to help the post-apocalyptic community recover? What knowledge would you need not only to avert another dark age, but accelerate the rebooting of a technological civilisation from scratch?

1. Survive the immediate aftermath

Food will remain preserved for decades in tin cans on the shelves of deserted supermarkets, so your primary concern will not be sustenance. The one piece of information that will help you more than any other in the immediate aftermath is germ theory – the idea that contagious diseases are spread by invisibly small organisms invading your body. As with any disaster, disease will be a particular concern – given the unrecovered corpses and contaminated water supplies. Drinking water can be sterilised by boiling, of course, but this takes a lot of time and fuel. Water can be disinfected with iodine tablets foraged from any camping store, or even household bleach or swimming pool chlorine, greatly diluted. Filter murky water through a drum filled with layers of charcoal and sand before you disinfect it. Just washing your hands can prevent a huge number of gastrointestinal and pulmonary diseases, and in the longer term, as you settle down again, you must ensure that your water supply is not contaminated upstream by your own, or anyone else's, excrement. It seems simple enough, but even this wasn't appreciated as late as the mid-19th century.

2. Leave the cities

Aside from the stench of corruption and risk of disease, modern urbanised areas simply won't be habitable once the technological bubble that supports them bursts with the apocalypse. With the failure of the power grid and gas supplies, modern apartment blocks would be nigh-on impossible to heat and cook in. And where would you go for fresh water? You will need to make scavenging forays into the cities, but post-apocalyptic life would be much easier after moving to the countryside, in a traditional house with fireplaces. A coastal region near a large wood will offer you access to a wide range of natural resources.

3. Reinstate agriculture

The "grace period" offered by the left-overs of our civilisation will only last so long, and by the time the packaged food starts running out you need to have rebooted agriculture for yourself. The Millennium Seed Bank, located in Wakehurst, West Sussex, is the largest plant conservation project in the world and would offer the perfect backup file for civilisation. Simple tools such as ploughs and harrows could be scavenged, or created by repurposing steel items with a simple forge, but the essential trick, one that evaded medieval farmers, is how to maintain the fertility of your fields over the years. Without industrially synthesised fertilisers, your best option for replenishing nitrates in the soil is by rotating leguminous plants – peas, lentils, clover, alfalfa – with your cereal crops. Dissolving bones in acid will provide phosphates, and spreading crushed chalk or limestone will counter rising soil acidity.

4. Food surplus

The vital enabler since the dawn of civilisation has been the ability not just to grow food, but to preserve it for consumption later, to see you through the winter, accumulate reserves and support whole settlements. The key principle behind all food preservation is to modify its internal environment to hinder the growth of spoilage micro-organisms such as bacteria or moulds. Drying, salting and saccharine jams all work by limiting the availability of moisture. Increasing the acidity (pickling) prevents much microbial growth, but the opposite approach of using highly alkaline conditions should be avoided as it turns fats in food into foul-tasting soapy compounds. You can also preserve food with extremes of temperature – heat-inactivation for pasteurising milk, or exploiting the gas laws to construct a refrigerator or freezer.

5. A shirt on your back

Until the recent invention of synthetic polymers, domesticated species have provided us with not only a reliable food source but the means to clothe ourselves and avoid dying of exposure. Hide is treated to produce leather and natural animal and plant fibres are twisted into thread and then woven into fabrics. Plant sources include the pithy stem of flax (for linen) and the fluffy fibres surrounding the seeds of cotton. Animal fibres can be gathered from the hair of pretty much any furry mammal, although sheep or alpaca wool is most common, and one prevalent insect source is the cocoon of the Bombyx mori moth: silk. If needs be, a clump of fibres can be teased out and rolled into a thin thread with your fingertips. The crucial technology for weaving is the loom, and can be as rudimentary as a rectangular framework. Look at the weave of the top or jumper you are wearing. Two sets of fibres, at right angles, are interlaced over and under each other: the thicker warp threads give structural strength and are filled in with the weft. Spinning and weaving also gives you strong ropes and canvas for sails or windmills.

6. Reboot the chemical industry

The progress of civilisation is often thought of in terms of advances in mechanical prowess – waterwheels and windmills then steam engines, turbines and internal combustion engines. But establishing a capable civilisation is just as much about proficiency in providing the necessary substances and materials for the functioning of society. Before the late 19th century and the exploitation of coal and then crude oil, the source of chemical feedstocks – acids, alcohols, solvents, tars – was by dry distillation of wood; baking timber in an airtight container and collecting the vapours released as it was converted into charcoal. One of the most vital classes of substances throughout history has been the alkalis, such as potash (potassium carbonate) soaked out of wood ashes or soda (sodium carbonate) soaked out of seaweed ashes. These are critical for reacting with fats and oils to make soap, disassembling plant matter to make paper, and in the production of glass.

7. Transport

As with food and other substances and materials, there will be a huge amount of petrol and diesel left behind after the apocalypse: vast underground lakes beneath every service station and in petrochemical storage tanks. But this reserve will not last forever, and will deteriorate over time. You'll be able to cannibalise spare parts to keep cars, trucks, and other mechanisation going, but you'll need to produce your own biofuels. Rendered animal fat or plant oil reacted with methanol (wood alcohol, distilled from heated timber) and lye (made by reacting soda with quicklime from roasted chalk or limestone) produces biodiesel. You can even fuel a car directly with wood, using a procedure called "gasification" that was common in the second world war. Timber is partially combusted in a closed metal canister, the heat breaking down the wood to release combustible gases like hydrogen and methane, which can be filtered and piped directly into the engine cylinders.

8. The Greatest Invention

Selected tips on how to keep yourself alive and begin rebuilding civilisation will only get you so far. The greatest invention of them all, the piece of the modern world that must above all else be preserved through the cataclysm, is the scientific method. It is only by thinking rationally, closely observing the world around you, and asking carefully constrained questions of nature – running experiments – that you will be able to decide which explanatory story (or hypothesis) is more likely to be correct. This knowledge-generating machinery of science is phenomenally successful and will enable the post-apocalyptic society to reconstitute all that is known today. It is science that built our modern world, and it is science that you will need to rebuild again.