#the life of a bored archaeologist

[evergone]

Lonely

Theodore Nott x Legilimens! reader

Warnings: Swearing.

Description: The reader has no friends until destiny (in the form of a boy named Theodore Nott) does everything to make her feel like she belongs.

In your first year, you were put in a dorm by yourself. You heard so many times that this was a gift — a sign of your good fortune, Professor Trelawney said — as everyone else in your year group had to share with someone else, but you, the introvert you were, were left to your own devices. Despite these assumptions, you quickly discovered that sharing a dorm was central to establishing friendships, and you spent the vast majority of your high school life friendless and alone.

At times, your boredom and your loneliness were so all-encompassing that you would read the minds of the first years who you knew wouldn’t be capable of sensing the imposition upon their thoughts. None of them thought of much. The boys were preoccupied with daydreams of girls and music (most of them were very into hip-hop as was the popular culture of the nineties), and the girls were nearly all stressing about parties and school work.

You were as much at ease with your situation as one could possibly be. You were of the mindset that if there was nothing you could do about it, why bother? Everyone had their cliques, their friends, and you were just the one to be left out. Your only goal was to get through the remaining year, then you would leave school, rent a house somewhere obscure, become a writer or an archaeologist or something else fun, and start your life over again. But it appeared that destiny had other plans.

Destiny, that supreme, omniscient, omnipotent concept that dwindled above and twisted within the interactions of all peoples, came to you in a free period you were spending in the library. The period before had been Charms, but that was of no consequence, neither was the fact that you had no more classes until later that night when you would make the journey to the Astronomy tower. You were sitting at a desk in the far left corner of the library, tucked between the pages of a number of books written by Z-named authors of some incredibly niche portion of history when Madam Pince’s high-pitched and troubled voice disturbed your rather unproductive attempts to finish your homework.

Ever bored, and hardly ever entertained, you leant to the side to see around the long bookcase. To your surprise, your eyes immediately met with a pair of blue ones. The irises were mere spots lost in the oceans of colour and they darted between you and Madam Pince, desperate for assistance. Behind those eyes, you could hear his mind asking for your help. If you was slightly smarter, you would’ve avoided this person’s gaze altogether and returned to your work.

“Madam Pince,” you said before allowing yourself a moment to think, and the frustrated librarian’s head turned to you in owl-like frustration, “Is everything okay?”

“Not at all,” she said, her voice an angry whisper, “Mr Nott should be in class, instead, he’s here violating my books!”

You glanced at the owner of the eyes. The green lining of his robe told you he was from your house, so you knew him even if only from afar. He hung out with the big group of your housemates most of the time, but you’d observed that he often sat by himself in the common room and the others intruded on his personal time. He was tall — probably six feet or so — and thin, with hair that was darker than blond, but most definitely not as dark as some of his friends’ hair. In the traditional sense, he was handsome, but you’d heard him speak in class before, and his voice bore an awkward intonation as if to speak was to curse which made him seem almost as nerdy as yourself. Despite this, every movement he made seemed elegant no matter his emotion, this was so inherent of a feature that even in that moment — when he was so clearly itching to turn and run — he was like a swan. His name was Theodore Nott, and you’d never spoken to him before.

“He’s supposed to be helping me with my homework,” you blurted out and Madam Pince quirked a pencilled-on eyebrow, “You know I’m terrible with, uh, Ancient Runes.” You both had that class together.

“Yeah,” nodded Theo as he stepped around her and stood by your side, “The professor said it was okay, I’m surprised she didn’t tell you.”

“As am I,” she frowned, “Tell her not to let this happen again.”

“Yes, Madam.”

With an irritated hum, she left the two of you alone. Theo turned to face you once she was out of earshot, and let out a sigh of relief before sitting down on the edge of the desk you were at.

“You’re in Slytherin,” he said obviously, “What year?”

You sucked in a breath of air, “Sixth. Yours.”

“Oh.”

His brain exploded with a million thoughts at once, his conscious and subconscious fighting for dominance. You could hear the embarrassment as he reprimanded himself for not knowing, and the confusion as he searched his memories for some sign that he had, in fact, seen you before.

“We have Potions together, and Astronomy, and Divination, and Ancient Runes, and… most of our classes, actually.” You shrugged without a care.

Theo cringed, “Sorry. I don’t think I’ve ever noticed you before.”

“I don’t really make my presence known,” you said, “So don’t worry about it.”

“I’m Theodore Nott,” he introduced himself, hand outstretched towards you, “What’s your name? I don’t want to make the same mistake next time.”

“Y/n L/n,” you said and shook his hand. It was soft and had no callouses at all.

“I best be off, I’m missing Arithmancy.”

“Boring.”

“You’re telling me,” he chuckled and left the library.

Over the course of that afternoon, you were unable to tear your mind away from Theo, and none of your homework was completed as a result. You didn’t go to dinner in the Great Hall. Your mind was much too preoccupied to eat.

At eleven-thirty, your alarm sounded, and you washed your face in preparation for Astronomy. Professor Sinistra demanded that all her students wore their uniforms for her classes, even if said classes were at midnight, but there wasn’t a single person who ever did that other than Hermione Granger. Everyone else tended to pull their robes overtop their pyjamas and call it a day, yourself included.

The lesson wasn’t all that interesting as Sinistra had the class chart some stars for the whole hour. However, you barely managed to get anything done because you were so distracted by Theo who was sitting peacefully at the opposite side of the tower amongst his friends. Including Theo, there were five of them (you didn’t include Crabbe and Goyle, who you always thought were less friends than goons, or Millicent Bulstrode or Tracey Davis, both of whom you knew were periodically hated by the others). Two girls, three boys.

Pansy Parkinson, Daphne Greengrass, Blaise Zabini, Draco Malfoy, and finally, Theo. At seventeen, his hair was a mostly consistent length of woody brown curls that sat fluffily on his head — if anything it was maybe a bit shorter on the sides. His eyebrows were thick as they always were, and in that particular Astronomy lesson, they were hard pressed against the tips of his long eyelashes that seemed almost too feminine to belong to him. By far the most intriguing and attractive aspect of Theo was, of course, the prominent mole on his left cheek that stole your attention away from a tight-lipped smile he had thrown your way.

Your immediate reaction was to blush and avert your eyes, but upon glancing back and noticing he was still staring, you offered him a short wave. He nodded in response before turning to Draco and saying something too far away for you to hear.

The next morning, or, perhaps, later that morning is the right expression, you went to breakfast in the Great Hall. Not having eaten dinner the night prior had left you so completely starving. You could’ve eaten a pegasus. You sat down on the edge of the Slytherin table by yourself, and loaded a plate with two eggs, about five slices of bacon (it very well could have been more, your memory isn’t perfect), a piece of toast, and a spoonful of baked beans.

“Where are all your friends?”

You looked up to see Theo standing over you chewing on the end of a breadstick.

“Why do you ask?” you questioned.

“Because you’re sitting here by yourself and it looks a bit pathetic, L/n,” laughed Theo teasingly.

“I don’t really have any friends.”

“Oh,” said Theo, “Sorry I asked.”

You shrugged, and as he glanced to the middle of the table you shoved as much of the baked beans into your mouth as possible, and quickly swallowed them. Merlin’s beard, you were so embarrassed.

“Give me a sec,” he said absentmindedly and you almost thought to use your Legilimency on him, “I’ll be right back.”

He placed his breadstick in front of you as if it were a deposit meant to reassure you that he’d be back, but you weren’t fazed either way. You watched as he jogged over to his group of friends and started chatting with them, but never sat down. With his right hand, he motioned back at you, and you glanced away as the rest of them turned to get a good look at you. Suddenly, you were concerned about how well your makeup was applied, and if your uniform looked good, and if there was still too much food on your plate. And then, all of them stood up with their plates, and followed Theo over to sit around you.

Most of them sat on the other side of the table, but Theo sat next to you, and Blaise by his other side. He introduced you to everyone: Goyle, Crabbe, Draco, Pansy, Daphne, Blaise, himself (“but you know me already,” he’d joked).

“It’s crazy to think we don’t know you despite being in the same house as you for the past six years,” said Daphne and Pansy elbowed her in the waist, sending her a death glare.

“Excuse her,” Pansy smiled awkwardly, “She’s a bitch.”

Your ears tickled at the word. You weren’t used to people calling those they were friends with such vulgar names… You weren’t used to the idea of friends at all.

Draco started rattling off about half-bloods and “that darn Potter,” spurring his friends into a rather heated conversation. They laughed and cackled loudly at each other, entirely easy around you as if it didn’t matter at all that they didn’t know you.

“Is this okay?” Theo asked you in a whisper once the group had moved on to another topic of conversation.

“Yes, this is nice,” you responded with a blush over your cheeks as you tried not to smile, “I don’t remember the last time I spoke to so many people.”

Theo’s eyes softened, glazed with a thin layer of water that informed you of his empathy. He felt your loneliness as if it was his own. The image of a young version of himself locked in his bedroom, wailing for his long deceased mother, flashed in his memories and seeped into your brain. An involuntary consequence of your extraordinary Legilimency talent.

When Saturday finally arrived, you slept in the whole morning. You only awoke at the sound of a knock on your door followed by a series of laughter at ten o’clock. You rolled out of bed, and for a moment stopped in horror of your hair in front of the mirror to quickly tie it up, and then opened the door.

You were surprised to see Pansy and Daphne there, but even more so when Daphne asked, “It’s Hogsmeade day, why aren’t you ready?”

“Huh?” You said, squinting at the light of the hallway.

“Theo sent us up to grab you, get some clothes on and let’s go,” said Pansy as she pushed past you and slipped into your room, Daphne hot on her heel, “Merlin’s beard, there’s absolutely nothing in here.”

“Yeah, uh, I’ve got it all to myself,” you muttered.

“Oh, that’s got to be terribly boring,” said Pansy.

Both of the girls made themselves at home as they rummaged through your drawers looking for something nice to wear. They were both dressed very well themselves, and it made you a little self-conscious to think they were going to see all your cheap clothes.

Pansy threw a sheer white shirt you didn’t know you had and a pair of bootleg jeans onto your bed while Daphne kicked over some matching joggers and a big white handbag you’d stolen from your mother.

“It is terribly boring,” you said.

As the three of you descended the stairs (after you got dressed, of course), you could already hear the sounds of masculine voices teetering on yelling at one another. One of them you knew to be Theo’s, and while you weren’t particularly familiar with them, you were inclined to assume the other two voices were Draco and Blaise. At the bottom step out of the girls’ dormitory hallway, you were proven correct when you saw them bickering like old men at a weekend golf tournament.

Draco was the first to notice the three of you, and his grey eyes lit up at the sight, “L/n, come settle an argument for us.”

You walked to join the small group and stood beside Theo, your handbag held meekly between your fingers, the nails of which had magenta paint flaking off them.

“Your mate Theo here—” Draco gestured to him with an uninterested hand, and you nearly laughed at the idea that Theo was your mate more than he was any of the others’— “Thinks that we ought to have a Legilimens registry like we have for Animagi. Frankly, I think it’s absolutely blasphemous that we even have one for Animagi; let them run wild, I say! What are your thoughts? Don’t mind the coincidental pun.”

“I’m afraid I’m a bit biased in this conversation,” you spoke quietly.

“How do you mean?”

The faces of the group stared at you with raised brows, and eyes that glistened with interest, and you were red from the attention.

“Well, I’m a Legilimens,” you admitted, “So, I’d have to disagree with you, Theo, for my own sake.”

“Are you really?” Theo asked to break the silence, and you nodded shyly.

“That’s so cool!” Daphne all but squealed, “What number am I thinking of?”

“Seven.”

She brightened with delight, and slapped Pansy’s arm, encouraging her to try your magic out like a little game. Pansy did just that, and you ended up going around the whole group, describing what they were thinking of. Eight. Twelve. Bakery. Seven. And Theo was questioning why you weren’t already on the way to Hogsmeade.

With that final thought, they grew disillusioned by the game, and you began the walk to Hogsmeade.

You’d never been into town with other people before, not that you went much at all. You usually stayed in your room, or wandered the halls, towering over the first and second years who weren’t allowed to go on weekend Hogsmeade trips yet. But there you were, forming one kink in a string of knots engaging in stimulating conversation about the current condition of the world, and even boring conversation about the homework for Defense Against the Dark Arts which, to you, seemed so thrilling even if only for the fact that it was verbal discourse in some form. You’d forgotten what it was to converse with others.

“Is there anywhere you need to go once we get there?” said Theo once you were nearing the end of the path and closing in on the town.

“I would have been awake before Daphne and Pansy got to my room if I planned to go anywhere today,” you joked and he smiled, “If you don’t mind, I might just go wherever you go.”

All he offered in response was a hum, and it left you thinking that you’d somehow made the air around you awkward. You’d later come to learn that he was just like that, never much of a talker if he thought the situation didn’t call for it.

Almost instantly after you passed sign that read ‘Welcome to Hogsmeade,’ the group dispersed, and Theo and yourself were left to do as you pleased.

Your companion, it seemed, didn’t have much he wanted to do either, so he led you to the Three Broomsticks. Kindly, he offered to pay for a butterbeer or two, but you didn’t think you were close enough for that, so you humbly told him it was alright. You sat in relative silence until our drinks arrived when Theo struck up some conversation.

“What have you been doing all these years by yourself, L/n?” He asked.

“I don’t know… Stuff…”

Theo laughed, and you laughed along with him. Your mind was frazzled by the alcohol, which kept refilling itself as you chatted on, and every so often you found thoughts that didn’t belong to you creeping into your mind, but you couldn’t place who they belonged to. It was just the odd word — sad, or pretty, or damned, or Y/n.

“Nott, are you and Malfoy good friends?” You asked.

“Yeah, why wouldn’t we be?”

“You seem to argue quite a bit.”

“He’s just like that,” said Theo, “Likes to start shit for no reason, that one.”

You giggled, and he grinned happily. Another person’s thoughts seeped into yours once again, that time a full sentence: ‘I love her laugh.’

The bell that hung over the entrance to the Three Broomsticks jingled, and though you couldn’t see it behind you, you watched as Theo’s expression morphed into one of guilt. You turned over your shoulder, and made out the figures of the four people who had come with you. Each of them were wearing a disappointed look on their faces.

“What in the name of Merlin are you two doing?” asked Pansy, her tone equal parts concerned and amused.

“Nothing,” said Theo.

“Yeah, if ‘nothing’ is code for drinking all day,” said Blaise, “Snape’s gonna have your asses for this.”

The others guided yourself and Theo back to the castle. Your hand was attached to Pansy’s forearm, Theo’s arm was slung over Draco’s shoulder. By the time you reached the Slytherin common room, You were sober enough to move on your own, and thus, started your way up to your dorm.

“Where are you going?” Theo asked curiously. He was far away enough that you couldn’t smell his breath which stunk like the vomit he’d expelled from his body halfway through the walk back.

“My room,” you said.

“No, no, no.” He shook his head and then closed his eyes from the dizziness. “It’s sleepover night. You have to come to our dorm, I made room for you on my bed.”

“I used to sleep there because he’s got the best mattress out of the three of them, but we figured you might prefer to sleep beside him than Blaise,” Daphne explained.

“Oh,” you breathed, “Do I need to contribute anything?”

You hadn’t had a sleepover before. You didn’t know the proper protocol. You assumed one would need to bring at least their pyjamas and a pillow, maybe some sweets of some kind to share. But Theo shook his head, and you were in the boys’ room before you knew what was happening.

The boys’ dorm room was the opposite of yours. So exquisitely full, and intricately messy. The three beds were all the same size as yours with dark green bed hangings, and each about a metre apart.

Closest to the door and to their small shared bathroom was Theo’s bed. On the right, beside the door to the bathroom, he had a tower of books that acted as a wall. His sheets were black, but his pillows and blanket cover were a dark oceanic blue-green. There wasn’t much room, but you spied a large mess under his bed which you assumed was what he’d removed from the bed to make space. On his bedside table sat a small lamp that provided the only light in the room before Daphne declared it was far too ‘dark and gloomy’ and turned on the central light.

On the floor, directly under the light, there was a large medieval-style rug that bore our house crest, and the others sat on it lazily, ushering you over.

“I need a smoke,” said Draco, and he walked over to the window where the ashtray was.

“Me too,” said Theo as he also moved to the window, “You want one, L/n?”

“I’ve never smoked before.”

“Then I shouldn’t get you in the habit,” he smiled, “It is such a terrible habit to have. Costs more than it’s worth.”

He pulled a box of cigarettes from his pocket and offered one to Draco, and they both lit them with their wands.

“Does it taste nice?” You asked.

“Not particularly,” said Theo.

“Why do you do it then?”

“You’re so curious, L/n,” Draco teased.

Theo playfully slapped him on the chest, “Leave her alone,” he said, and then turned to you, “I’m an addict.”

“That’s got to be bad for your lungs, Nott,” you frowned, suddenly concerned.

“Don’t you worry about him,” said Pansy, a knowing smirk on her lips that told you she was well aware you’d continue worrying.

The night went on much shorter than you wished for it to. You’d hoped, perhaps too eagerly, that none of you would ever sleep. Far too much did you enjoy being awake with those people who you’d met too late in yout life. You were truly happy to have met them because for all the simple joys you’d managed to discover in your time alone, none were half as happy as those grand joys you found with them

You all took turns getting changed in the small bathroom (Theo lent you a shirt to wear), then you all slid into our respective beds. You were nervous about sleeping beside Theo because, in truth, you didn’t really know him. But he placed a pillow between you, and only faced you for a moment — a moment in which there was a look in his eyes that you couldn’t decipher, a moment in which you attempted to read his mind all too late — and then he kissed his fingers, and he touched them to your head, and he turned the other way.

“Did you sleep well?” Theo said once he noticed you were awake the next morning.

“I’ve never slept beside someone before,” you explained nervously, “I think it was a decent experience. I hope I didn’t move around too much.”

“Not at all, L/n,” he said.

A hum escaped your mouth, and you were acutely aware that Theo was watching you as you stared up at the roof of his room. Painted on it, Sistine Chapel-style, was a beautiful lush green forest.

“L/n. It’s so formal to call you by your surname.” Theo let out a disapproving tut.

“I call you by yours?” You said as you looked at him from the corner of your eye.

“You’re the only one who does.”

“It’s your name!” You raised your voice slightly before lowering it again so as to not wake any of the others up. “What else am I supposed to call you?”

“Theo,” he said, “That’s what everyone calls me.”

“And what false-name shall I bear, then?”

He chuckled quietly as he finally sat up. He raised his long arms in a stretch that exposed the bottom of his stomach and his V-line, and you glanced away until he returned his arms down to a cross in front of his chest. You took notice of his hair, which was awfully messy in the morning, and you thought he should get his hands on a bonnet to take care of it, but then you thought he probably shouldn’t. A silk pillow would’ve done him wonders, though.

“A nickname for Y/n,” said Theo, “How about Y/n/n?”

“I suppose that will do,” you said as nonchalantly as possible, but inside you were screaming with excitement. A nickname! You’d never had a nickname before.

“Oh, you suppose, do you?” he teased.

Your amused smile betrayed your insincere attempt at a pout, “Don’t make fun of me.”

“Don’t let anyone else call you Y/n/n, alright?” said Theo, and you crossed your brows in question, “I want it to be just an us-thing. They can call you your full name at most.”

He was extraordinarily bossy. But it was sweet. Heartwarming, even.

“Wait, but if everyone calls you Theo, I want something just for us, too!” You blushed at how overly familiar that sounded, but Theo’s rosy cheeks filled you with conviction. “How about Teddy?”

Giddily, he smiled at you, “Say it to me in a sentence.”

You frowned, but obeyed, “I like being your friend, Teddy. — How was that?” He nodded happily, “You say one for mine, now.”

He thought for a moment, trying to decide on a sentence to say.

“Read my mind, Y/n/n.”

Always, he had to boss you around. But, again, you really didn’t care. It was just nice to have someone to boss you around. To think that only at the beginning of that week, you had no friends at all… Now you had so many, and all thanks to destiny. All thanks to your Teddy.

A breath, and then you forced your way into his mind. There was a picture there waiting for you, a memory from Monday. A memory of you, except, you seemed to glow. You’d seen yourself in a million mirrors and memories over the course of your life, but never had you looked so beautiful. And then, there were words.

“I’d like to go on a date with you, Y/n/n.”

Your eyes snapped open as you left his thoughts to belong to him alone.

“What?” You asked, your ears red.

“I think you’re absolutely brilliant, Y/n/n. Please, go on a date with me?” Theo smiled.

He inched closer until your noses touched and you could barely tell each others’ features apart. Each of you were just blurs of colour.

“I’d love to go on a date with you, Teddy.”

[durrtydawg]

The Sadir Inheritance

{Sam Drake x F!Reader} Chapter 10 | '999'

Sorry this isn't Sam-heavy but I like this chapter rehhhhh. Good things come to those who wait x

masterlist ✨

Other chapters : 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9

You thought being back in the UK would’ve been boring. Perhaps... you wish it was.

blood & injury mention

Word count: 4.6k-ish x

London feels different after being somewhere like Jordan.

It’s not just the weather - the biting, damp chill that lingers in your clothes, makes your hair ratty and frizzy all at once, no matter how much surface area your umbrella covers. It’s the pace of things. Slower in some ways, suffocatingly fast in others. The tube rattles, dawdling tourists and miserable commuters create a constant clamour, and cars blur through rain-slicked streets - it’s cold, but damp and sweaty all the same, and yet somehow, in the overstimulating midst of it all, you feel... removed.

Disconnected.

Like part of you is still standing on that sun-drenched plateau in Petra, sand lodged in your stupidly chosen mesh trainers, wind whipping through your hair, the sting of sunburn blooming on your nose.

The real world, much to your sorrow, doesn’t pause for dreamy treasure hunts. Bills still exist. Bosses still get pissy when you disappear for too long.

Sam and Scott have alternated between being holed up in the British Library, sifting through microfilm and archive reels, and travelling slightly further out of the city - Surrey, then Sussex, now across to Kent, tracking down stately homes once in William Campbell’s possession.

And you?

Between pouring pints and wiping down sticky tables, you’ve been scribbling notes in the gaps of your battered notebook - half-formed theories, snippets of leads, anything that might connect Emaan Sadir to a child lost to history.

Names are underlined, question marks scattered, but the pieces still don’t fit.

You flip the pen between your fingers behind the bar at any given moment of peace, scanning the latest page.

Emaan died 1893, Layla died 1872. Baby?  A smudge of green ink where you pressed too hard. Boy? Girl? Another scribbled out theory. A tap of the pen. Campbell - last ledger entry 1892, one year before Emaan kicked the bucket.  Four sketched bird outlines. Coincidence? Foul play?

You’re stuck somewhere in the middle.

But you’re grateful. Grateful that you even got to go in the first place. Sam didn’t have to bring you. It’s not like you’re some hotshot archaeologist. You’re an ad hoc research assistant at best; enthusiastic tech-slash-moral support with a useless history degree.

And yet, you were there.

And now you’re here, slipping back into normality like a coat that’s grown a tad too tight since you last wore it.

Still, it’s important to count your blessings. At least the weird… shit has stopped. No headaches. No nosebleeds. No ominous figures lurking just out of sight - Not that you ever saw anyone back in Jordan, but Sam and Scott had been paranoid enough about being followed.

Your shift ended twenty minutes ago, but it’s safe to say your sleep-deprived brain is still buzzing - all of this untangling history alongside bar orders and shitty tips? You’re doing enough thinking for two.

You duck out of the spit, climbing into your car.

It’s eight-thirty-something pm. Day shift over. You’re knackered, there’s what you hope is a sticky beer stain on your jeans and your bed is very much calling. You slide behind the wheel, keys jingling as you stick them in the ignition.

The engine sputters, coughs once, then reluctantly rumbles to life.

You give the dashboard a light pat, letting out a breath of relief as the car settles into a steady, if slightly unconvincing, idle.

She’s been cooped up in an airport car park for two weeks, gathering dust and sulking in the British drizzle. You fear she’s on her last legs. Wheels. Whatever. The weird rattling coming from the engine has made that clear enough.

You settle in, adjusting your seat belt, tossing your book onto the passenger seat. Your fingers drum absently on the steering wheel as you wait for the mist to clear from the windscreen.

Sam would have something to say about the green ink smudged along the side of your hand.

Something glib. Teasing, probably. Or maybe he’d just point out, with a lazy half-smirk, that normal people don’t walk around looking like they’ve just done ten rounds against a leaky biro.

You can almost hear it - his voice, dry with some sort of muted amusement. It’s not hard to picture the way his eyes would flick to your hand, then back to your face, with a distinctive kind of warmth you’ve grown to enjoy.

Like you’d done to him on the plane home.

You hadn’t meant to look at him for so long. But he’d fallen asleep on your shoulder, and in the dim hush of the cabin, with the drone of the ventilation lulling you into something close to contentment (despite just recovering from what might be one of the worst headaches you’ve ever had), it had felt impossible not to watch. His hand had twitched once against his thigh - dreaming, maybe - but otherwise, he’d been still. Peaceful, weirdly.

But that wouldn’t explain why you’d kept looking. Why you’d let your eyes stay glued to him past the point of casual observation, tracing the crease in his brow, the way his face softened in sleep, the ratio between how much salt versus how much pepper was stippled across his jaw.

And - God, weird, right? - that that was the second time he’d fallen asleep beside you in the past couple of days.

He’s always going on about his insomnia. That it’s a thing. That he doesn’t sleep well, doesn’t sleep often. And yet-

What is it they say about being around someone you like? Like… like like? Oxytocin? Dopamine? Some chemical thing?

Oh, for God’s sake.

You roll your shoulders back, crack your neck, shake the thought off like a dog would with water.

It wasn’t oxy-bloody-tocin. He was tired. Both times. That’s it.

It was just a long flight.

That’s all.

And you’re reading far too deeply into your own emotions, too, because it had been the same with Scott, hadn’t it?

A harmless, fleeting sort of pitching in your stomach. The kind of admiration that fizzles out before it can become anything invasive - just when his self-awareness of his looks and intelligence and general grade-A excellence in everything started to grate more than inspire.

This will fizzle out too. It has to. Not that you’d realistically get a second glance from either of them. Ha. 

Sam already doesn’t take you seriously, does he - and if he ever got the slightest inkling that-

You huff.

More futile overthinking to fill the void.

The windscreen is still fogged over, so you crank up the heat dial a notch, settling back into your seat as the day washes over you. You fold your arms against the cold, watching the mist clear in slow, uneven patches-

Then your phone buzzes violently from the cup holder.

You glance down, and-

What a coincidence.

You smile despite yourself, digging the phone out and swiping to answer.

“Did you know the British Library doesn’t actually let you check out books?”

You huff in amusement, “Every day's a school day, Samuel."

“Stupid, if you ask me.” A faint tut. “I mean, it’s a library.”

You snort, reaching for the gear stick as the mist on your windshield starts to clear enough to drive. “So, to what do I owe the pleasure?”

“Eh.” You can hear the shrug. “Just wanted to hear your voice.”

You pause.

Probably nothing more than one of his usual throwaway remarks, and you know better than to misconstrue something that’s purely his character. But still - something tightens in your chest before you can stop it.

You shake it off, scoffing lightly. “Oh, yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“Sweet-talker.”

“Guilty.”

You roll your eyes, easing out of the car park. “How’s your thrilling week of stately home trespassing?”

Sam groans. “If I see one more oil painting of some smug bastard with mutton chops, I’m gonna start growin’ 'em in my sleep.”

“Eurgh. That bad, then?”

“It’s like these guys never heard of redecorating. Campbell’s family really stuck to the whole ‘evil rich guy’ aesthetic. Scotty boy’s eatin’ it up. A bit too… put-together for my liking, though.”

“‘Course it is.”

A sigh.

“Anyway, I’m currently diggin' through microfilm like I’m some eighties movie extra, but Scott’s down near…” He pauses, exhaling, “Uh… Chatham. Can you, uh, do me a favour?”

You hum, slowing at a red light, brakes squeaking as you come to a stop. “Depends. Am I gonna get arrested?”

“Not if you drive safely.”

"Are you implying I drive unsafely?"

"Well," He says tightly before clearing his throat. "I'm still try'n'a work out why I've had a crick in my neck since you drove us back from the airp-"

“Sam.”

He makes a sort of low 'heh' sound that makes your mouth twist in a suppressed grin. “Alright, look, he just needs an extra pair of hands to make sure he doesn’t… I dunno, fall through some rotten floorboards, or get possessed, or anything, y’know? He’s onto somethin' - or so he says - and I can’t get down there yet.”

You sigh, tapping the wheel. “You really know how to sell an evening.”

“C’mon,” he draws it out, “You’ll love it. Derelict site, middle'a nowhere, definitely haunted. Plus,” he pauses for half a second, reducing volume, “Took me forever to score this chair and I sure as shit am not lettin' it go now.”

“I don’t know… I was going to throw a day-out-of-date korma in the microwave and catch up on Bake Off, but-” You sigh, drawing it out teasingly. “I suppose I could rearrange my schedule.”

“You goin' or what?” You can hear the smile in his voice.

You should play it cool. Shouldn’t need the validation nor feel the ridiculous, somewhat embarrassing rush of relief at the idea that, yeah, you are still part of this - that Sam wants you to be. But you do.

You shake your head, already flicking on your indicator. “Of course I’m going.”

A hum of approval, and then: “Atta girl.”

The phrase lands low in your stomach. You glance out at the empty road, mouth twisting in an effort to ignore the stupid little grin tugging at your lips. Pathetic form, really.

You flick the wipers on to clear the droplets from the windscreen as you trundle along a pot-hole-riddled tarmac. “Scott’s already there?”

“Yeah. Pokin’ around.” A rustle of paper. “I’ll get him to send you the details.”

“Sounds good.”

A pause.

Then-

“Hey,” he says.

You pause, too. “…Yes?”

There’s a shift on his end.

“Be careful, alright?”

Your grip tightens slightly around the wheel.

It’s a stupid thing to get stuck on. A normal thing, something anyone would say.

And yet, something in you bristles. You’re not a child. You don’t need to be treated like one.

Hiding an important piece of the Sadir puzzle, and odd physical symptoms of something you've given up trying to decipher aside, you’ve managed just fine so far, haven’t you?

But then, beneath that, there’s something else. A smidgen of warmth melting away the edges of your irritation, soft - insidious. Because he means it, doesn’t he? Because he wouldn’t say it if he didn’t.

You swallow. Push past it. “I’ll be fine.”

“…Yeah.” A pause. “I know.”

Neither of you say anything for a second.

Then-

“Alright,” he exhales. “Go forth, kick some doors down. I’ll tell Scott to give you a buzz.”

You let out a breath. “Thanks, Sam.”

A beat.

Then, quieter, “Yeah.”

And then the line clicks dead.

A text pings through minutes later,

The message is short, clipped. All function, no fluff - typical Scott. You stare at it for a second, thumb hovering over the keyboard before typing out a quick:

Me: On my way. Save any drama for my arrival.

Buzz.

Scottimus Prime: No promises ;)

You huff a quiet laugh, securing your phone in its holder, already turning the car toward the A2.

Address in tow, the hum of the engine and nighttime talk radio fills the quiet, and for a while, you let your mind drift - half-focused on the road, half on everything else. Sam’s voice still knocks around somewhere in the back of your skull, your thoughts curling around words he probably didn’t mean as much as you wanted him to.

You sigh, pressing a little harder on the accelerator and cranking up the radio. Not the time for that.

The satnav’s voice cuts through from time to time, guiding you turn by turn until the lights of the suburbs blur into open stretches of countryside. The road winds on, the sky turning a deeper shade of grey as you leave the familiar behind.

When you finally pull up to the site, the place looks about as inviting as you expected.

The crunch of gravel under your tires gives way to the unsettling silence of an overgrown driveway, the car rolling to a stop outside what was once - presumably - a grand country estate. You sit for a second, fingers still curled around the wheel, as your headlights let you take it in.

It’s exactly what you expected, but somehow worse; its decay isn’t just age, but abandonment. Half-eaten by time. Late Victorian - what remains of it, anyway. A hulking old thing, all crumbling brickwork and weather-stained stone, the kind of house that was probably in a stately homes guidebook once, before it got sold off to some lazy private buyer who left it to rot. Even the health and safety demolition site notices are discoloured from mere time.

You step out of the car, boots crunching against the dirt-streaked gravel, the air thick with the scent of wet earth and thick veins of ivy. The main house looms over you, its façade partially strangled by greenery, roots and vines pushing through the cracks like nature itself has tried reclaiming it by dragging it back down into the ground.

You pull out your phone, tapping out a quick message.

Me: Estoy aquí. Where r you?

No immediate response. You frown, shoving your phone back into your jacket as you step forward, pushing through the overgrown hedges toward the entrance.

The front doors are ajar, hanging slightly off their hinges, an uneven gap leading into the shadowed interior. The wind whistles softly through the broken windows, rattling the few remaining shards of glass still clinging to their frames.

You glance at your phone again.

Still nothing.

The air inside the house sort of reminds you of the men’s bathroom in the pub. Stale. Damp. Generally unpleasant with period features that have gone through decades of maltreatment. Luckily, this isn’t a place you’re expected to tackle hourly with a toilet brush and a bottle of bleach, though it doesn’t make it any less repellant.

You step forward cautiously, boot scuffing against debris. Dust motes swirl in your headlights’ dying glow before the automatic shut-off plunges everything into dimness. Your eyes adjust to the low light leaking in from outside, fingers tapping on your phone’s torch.

You move through what was probably a grand foyer, past the remains of a chandelier that’s lost most of its crystals - robbed, most likely - only a skeletal brass frame left to gather cobwebs. The walls, once probably covered in intricate paneling, are now peeling like old sunburn. Bits of plaster crunch underfoot.

Still no response from Scott. You check your phone again, the little read receipt stubbornly absent.

You grunt.

Your hand tightens around it as you turn a corner, pausing in front of a massive, dust-cloaked portrait, paint discoloured and peeling, laid lopsided on the floor. Another Victorian bastard stares back at you - some dead-eyed, moustachioed old fart with eyes that follow you.

You snap a photo and fire it off to Sam.

Me: Feeling those mutton chop follicles a’growing?

Samalam: 👴🏼❌.

Samalam: Did I use those correctly?

You smirk, but it fades fast. Scott still hasn’t replied. A thread of unease winds itself through your ribs as you pocket your phone and move deeper inside.

You pass a bookcase, most of its shelves emptied, a few yellowed tomes left to sag in their decay. 

Reaching out, you trail a finger through the dust, the disturbed particles swirling as you agitate it.

Then - a creak.

You freeze.

Another sound follows, a dull thud from upstairs.

Your stomach tightens.

“Scott?” You sing-song.

No answer. Just the wind wheezing through the shattered windows, rattling loose panes. You roll your shoulders, exhaling sharply.

Still, you move towards the staircase, the wooden steps groaning under your weight.

As you climb, a dull ache curls behind your temples - you pin it down to dehydration and wince, rubbing your forehead. Absent-mindedly, you reach back to wrestle in your bag for your water bottle - only to realise, with a tut, you’ve left it in the car.

You push through the headache and keep moving.

The second floor is worse than the first - colder, somehow. The air is thinner. Your hands graze the wall as you walk, the wallpaper beneath them cracked and dampened.

To no avail, you call out for Scott once more, before you pull out your phone and dial.

The ringing barely has time to connect before a tinny, distant chime of Marimba echoes through the silence.

Scott’s ringtone.

Your pulse kicks up. The sound is muffled, swallowed by the high ceilings, but you can tell - he’s nearby. You take a step forward, turning toward the source, and then you see a bookcase, toppled and broken, its warped shelves forming a splintered barricade between you and the next room.

The sound is coming from behind it.

You hesitate, then press a hand against the wood, pushing experimentally. It doesn’t budge so you try again, planting your feet, throwing your weight into it. Still nothing.

"I hope you’re enjoying this, knobhead." you mutter, breath coming short.

No answer. Just the shrill persistence of his ringtone.

Huffing, you drop to your knees and eye the gap underneath. Just wide enough.

You sling your bag through first.

With a sigh, you flatten yourself, forearms sinking into dust and debris as you inch forward, accidentally shining the torch into your eyes once or twice, which does little to quell your headache. The air tastes stale, thick with rot and something coppery. You swallow against the tightness in your throat, trying not to cough.

Pushing up onto your knees, you shuffle awkwardly through the last of the gap and brace a hand against the bookcase as you rise.

The moment you straighten up, a rush of dizziness blooms behind your eyes, a sudden, tilting sensation that sends the room pitching sideways. You blink hard, stumbling into the wood, exhaling slowly until the feeling ebbs, breathing through it.

Too fast. You got up too fast.

The phone is still buzzing, discarded in the middle of the floor. Odd.

“Alright,” you mutter, turning in a slow circle. “Aren't you bored yet?”

Your voice comes out steadier than you feel. Something’s off.

You reach down and pick it up. The screen is cracked, smeared with something dark along the edge. Your own call flashes across it for a second before cutting out, plunging the room into silence.

Your eyes sweep the room, searching for movement, a shadow, some sign of his usual cocky grin peeking around a corner.

But there’s nothing.

…Aside from a leg.

Sticking out from behind a battered chest of drawers.

Your stomach knots.

"Scott?"

Your voice feels thin. You take a step closer. Another. Your frown deepens.

You round the corner, then you see him. Slumped against the wall.

Your breath catches, and for a second your trainers remain firmly pinned to the ground.

His head is tilted at an unnatural angle, his face half-hidden in the dark. His hair, usually pushed back and hairsprayed to perfection, flops over his brows.

The cold light of your phone skims over his features, and your stomach turns.

A split lip. Bloody nose. Bruises, deep and splotchy along his jaw.

What the fuck?

He moves.

It’s barely anything - a twitch of the fingers, a tiny grunt of discomfort.

Regardless, you gasp, a pathetic, breathy little sound of sheer relief as your body slumps forward, nearly collapsing onto him. “Oh, my God,” you choke out. “What the hell?”

Your hands move automatically, checking his pulse even though you’ve already seen him breathe. You press your fingers to his throat, then his wrist, the way you’ve seen in films. You don’t really know what you’re doing. But the steady flutter is there. He’s okay.

Still, your panic doesn’t fade. Not entirely. It just mutates. Because who on earth has done this to him?

You stumble back onto your heels, trying to catch your breath. “Okay. Alright. Ambulance,” you mutter, grabbing for your phone with trembling hands. “You need an ambulance, we need - fuck.”

As you say it, your thumb hesitates over the screen.

999.

You glance over your shoulder. The broken, boarded windows. The rotted walls. The shattered floorboards and toppled furniture. You’re not supposed to be here.

You’re trespassing.

“Shit,” you mutter again, louder now. “Shit, shit, shit-”

You start pacing in a tight circle, trying not to trip on the wreckage of the room. Call Sam? He’d know what to do. He always does. But he’s an hour-and-a-half away at best - maybe more - and you’d rather not wait around.

You chew your thumbnail, trying to force clarity into the chaos. You could move Scott. Carry him? No chance. Drag him downstairs? You’ll make it worse.

The phone shakes in your hand.

You’re just about to hit Sam’s name in your recents when the floor creaks behind you.

You whirl around.

A man stands in the doorway. Early thirties. Average height. Jeans, canvas jacket, slightly mussed hair - unassuming, completely forgettable in any other context.

Except for the blood crusting his knuckles. And the calm, amused tilt of his head, like he’s walked in on a mildly entertaining surprise.

It doesn’t take a genius.

Your heart slams against your ribs.

You say nothing at first. You can’t. Your mouth opens, closes.

He just watches you.

A sickly silence stretches between you, broken only by the wind outside and the low, unconscious breaths of Scott slumped behind you.

You bolt.

You barely register the choice - your body just moves. Skimming past him, down the hallway, praying your feet don’t catch, and the door you’re going for doesn’t lead to a dead end.

You make it halfway to it before a second figure appears, rounding the corner.

Taller. Broader than the other. His face is hidden by the low light.

You skid to a stop so fast your breath punches out of you.

The second man unfolds from the shadows, arms crossing lazily over his chest. He’s been waiting. He cocks his head, expression unreadable, then lifts his shoulders in a slow, mocking shrug. Oops.

Your stomach drops.

You turn around, pulse hammering in your throat, but the first man hasn’t moved. He’s still in the doorway, still watching you, that same idle amusement playing at the edges of his face.

You take an instinctive step back from him as man number two takes a step forward, caging you in.

Shit.

Your pulse throbs away between your ears. You glance past his shoulder, looking for another way out, but it’s all just peeling wallpaper and splintered floorboards. No exit. Nowhere to go.

He takes another step as the first man dips back into the room where Scott’s incapacitated in a corner. The moment your eyes meet and you realise how close he actually is his, your headache spikes like a blunt nail’s been lodged into your skull.

“Ah-” You cry out and stumble backward, one hand shooting out instinctively - only to hit the wall.

You crash against it and double over, clutching your head. It worsens as he gets closer. You retch, borderline immobile as you try and fail to look up at him, eyes wide and stinging.

“No- no-” Your breath comes in broken, shallow gulps, your knees threatening to give as the pain crests again and again. The same pressure. Pure agony. You know this. You remember this. Jordan. The tomb. The heat. The blood.

Not again.

The man says nothing. He just walks calmly forward.

You don’t know what they want. Who they are - what they’ve done to Scott. Why they’re here. Why this is happening again.

Your legs won’t hold. You crumple to your knees, then to your side, hands clenched in your hair, screaming inside your head. The pain is making it impossible to breathe, impossible to think.

You can’t look up. You’re half-kneeling, half-fallen, your forehead nearly touching the floor, hands digging into your scalp like you can dig the pain out if you try hard enough.

You’re dimly aware of footsteps. The second man grabs your arm. You flinch, try to twist away, but your body won’t cooperate. He hauls you upright like you’re made of paper.

“No-” you manage to croak, your voice barely audible.

You’re dragged backwards, heels scraping over splintered wood, one arm flailing weakly, the other pinned to your side.

Something - your phone - slips from your fingers, landing with a clack. You barely register it, but the screen flashes as it hits the floor.

A burst of light.

Blue and white. The selfie you took at the Petra lookout point.

Your thumb must’ve-

You did call him?

You did.

He’s-

The call’s still-

Is it ringing? Connected? You can’t tell. Everything’s sideways, off-kilter, noise and pain and Scott-

The corridor lurches and tilts with each step, your vision doubling. You think you hear Scott’s name fall from your lips, slurred and broken, but it might just be in your head.

Fuck, it feels like every ounce of pain you’ve ever felt in your life is in your head, so you wouldn’t be surprised.

You’re thrown. Your back hits the floor of the other room hard, the breath knocked out of you in a hoarse oof. Pain ricochets through your ribs, your shoulder, your skull. You curl on your side, blinking furiously, trying to focus. Nothing stays still long enough to make sense.

You don’t even realise you’re crying until you taste salt.

You lie there, blinking over at Scott. You just about make out his face crumpling in discomfort, but not for long. Everything swims. The shapes of the men blur.

“Looks like you two have been busy, huh?” one of them says. Fuck knows who - it crawls through your head, waterlogged.

You blink slowly, unable to move your head, unable to turn toward the voice. Your chest heaves as you try to breathe around the ache - fast, shallow breaths that won’t do your lungs the satisfaction of being filled. Your vision jumps, fractured by tears and panic.

Somewhere behind you, there’s a rustle of paper, the wet shhfff of pages turning. You can’t see it, but you know what he’s handling - your notebook. Your fucking notebook - the one you’ve kept from day one.

The sketches, the translations, the maps stapled in, the snippets of Sam’s handwriting in the margins. The theories all three of you scrawled at 2AM under torchlight on your last night in Jordan. Every dead lead, every almost-clue - weeks of work splayed in the dirt under his bloodied fingers. You sob, another trembling ‘no’ spurting from your spit-slicked lips.

You’re still trying to suck in a full breath, your lungs fluttering shallowly.

“Boss’s gonna love this.”

You don’t know who Boss is.

You don’t want to know.

The second man drops to a crouch in front of you. His face hovers too close. You can smell sweat and something sweet, chemical, underneath it. A quick nudge at your arm and you’re flat on your back.

You can’t focus on his features.

Black spots pop behind your eyes, swimming in and out of the moonlight. You try to move. You can’t. You squeeze your eyes shut, breathing ragged, fists curled tight at your temples as the pain pulses and pulses and pulses.

A copper taste creeps up your throat.

The second man crouches in front of you, and you realise, through the fog, that his expression is enjoying this.

He reaches into his pocket.

“Took this from your buddy over there,” he says casually.

You force your eyes open, just barely.

Something small gleams between his fingers. At first you think it’s a coin. But no - it’s round, and filigree. He twists it, lets it dangle in just above your eyes. Gold. A locket?

The moment you register what it is, a shrill, unnatural sound builds behind your ears. You let out a strangled, involuntary whimper. The air tightens. Your muscles lock.

Tremors begin in your fingertips. Then your legs. Your whole body starts to shake, teeth chattering. You can’t stop it. You don’t understand it. It’s worse than Jordan - worse than the crypt, reading William’s name in the ledger, when Scott told you about Emaan’s lover - and their potential child.

"Just…wondering if you've got anything similar to hand, princess."

You try to answer. To move. To scream. Plea. Shake your head. You can’t do anything. Until, you splutter.

The man leans in, watching with a curious tilt of his head and a smirk. Like a boy prodding at roadkill.

Intrigued.

“Huh.” he hums softly, as if he’s watching you have a reaction to a cheap magic trick.

The copper taste hits tenfold.

Then the warmth.

You're shaking uncontrollably now, whole-body tremors. Your vision pulses in and out. Heat dribbles across your face, something wet dripping down to your chin-

Your vision collapses into stars. Everything becomes blotchy. You spit and grit your teeth, eyes rolling back in an attempt to offset the pain.

Blood pours down your lips, choking you. You gag, spluttering as it slicks your skin, drips down your throat, drowns you.

You meet the man’s eyes - just for a second. He smiles, eyes widening with excitement. Like he’s been expecting this to happen.

"Shit! He was right." He says, excitedly up towards the other man.

Before you can question who, what, or why, everything goes black.

[blueiscoool]

Royal Tomb, Greek-Language Writings Among Latest Discoveries in Egypt

Archaeologists have recently shed more light on what life was like thousands of years ago at Egypt’s Sohag province thanks to spectacular new findings spanning from 1700BC to the Byzantine era.

The Egyptian-American Archeological Mission of the University of Pennsylvania discovered a royal tomb in Abydos, while the Egyptian Archeological Commission of the Supreme Archaeological Council unearthed a complete Roman-era pottery workshop and 7th-century cemetery in the village of Benawit.

Among the findings is a collection of ostraca –potsherds used as a writing surface- with Greek-language writings on them.

Ancient Egyptian tomb discovery exposes Abydos kings Dynasty

The new royal tomb at Abydos was excavated at a depth of approximately 7 meters below ground level. It consists of a limestone burial chamber covered by mudbrick vaults that originally reached a height of approximately 5 meters.

Remains of inscriptions are found on either side of the entrance leading to the burial chamber of the goddesses Isis and Nephthys, along with yellow inscription bands that once bore the king’s name in hieroglyphs, according to Dr. Joseph Wagner, head of the mission.

Althought the name of the owner of the tomb has not been identified yet, Professor Mohamed Abdel Badie, head of the Egyptian Antiquities Sector at the Council, believes that it belonged to the kings previous to King Senebkay, whose tomb was discovered in Abydos by the mission in 2014.

He added that the newly discovered tomb is much larger than other previously known tombs attributed to the Abydos Dynasty, a series of kings who ruled Upper Egypt between 1700 and 1600 BC.

The discovery is expected to provide fresh scientific evidence on the development of royal tombs in the Mount Anubis necropolis and the kings of the Abydos Dynasty, offering a deeper understanding of the complex political history of Egypt’s Second Intermediate Period, according to Dr. Mohamed Ismail Khaled, Secretary General of Egypt’s Supreme Council of Archaeology.

Further research and study will be looking to determine the exact date of the tomb’s construction.

Site of the oldest decorated royal tomb in ancient Egypt

The Mount Anubis necropolis is considered one of the most important ones in the Abydos area.

It is a royal necropolis, and the mountain itself takes the shape of a pyramid.

King Senusret III (1874-1855 BC) chose the site to build his massive tomb beneath the natural pyramidal summit, a first in Egyptian civilization.

It was also chosen by a number of kings of the Thirteenth Dynasty, and later by the kings of the Abydos Dynasty, who built their tombs deep in the desert near the mountain.

The most famous of these is the tomb of King Senebkay, which is considered the oldest decorated royal tomb in ancient Egypt.

Roman-era pottery workshop discovered in Egypt

Also at Egypt’s Sohag province, where Abydos is located, a large pottery workshop of the Roman era and a 7th-century cemetery were discovered near the village of Banawit.

The site is believed to have been part of an industrial unit that supplied the region with pottery and glass. It includes a large group of kilns and extensive warehouses for storing vessels.

Among the discoveries is a group of 32 ostraca -pottery fragments with writings on them- featuring Demotic and Greek-language scripts.

The data was detailing commercial transactions at the time and the method of paying taxes.

Professor Mohamed Abdel Badie said that preliminary studies and evidence indicate that this site was used during the Byzantine era and was reused as a cemetery in the seventh century AD, possibly extending into the fourteenth century AD.

A number of burials were found at the site, including mudbrick tombs containing skeletons and mummies, likely representing family graves for men and women, the majority of whom were children.

Perhaps the most haunting burial discovery of the mission was the mummy of a child wearing a colorful fabric cap.

By Paula Tsoni.

[wishcamper]

happy @sjmromanceweek!

here is my entry for day three: First "I Love You

Under the Egg Moon

A modern Nessian AU ft archaeologist!Nesta and boat captain!Cassian

Read here or on ao3!

CW: explicit consensual sexual content

---

wishcamper lore: when i was a college student (re: lost as fuck, re: no long-term thinking) through a series of random events i ended up on an archaeological dig in Cyprus. much of this fic is inspired by that summer, including a lot of the details of dig life, schedules, antagonistic animals, and how it ping-pongs from utterly boring to genuinely life-changing. and while i was unfortunately too consumed with my shitty boyfriend to hook up with the hot boat captain, fiction has the power to right all wrongs. and now: her.

(See the end of the work for more notes!)

Nesta sends a curse to whatever god made the sun so fucking hot.

She hopes it isn’t the one the ancient peoples of this island once worshiped, because she really needs this dig to be productive. But six weeks in the Cesere summer and all they have to show for it are a few shards of pottery, a blank amulet, and a fuckton of dirt. Not enough to write anything publishable, and nowhere close to what she needs to get funded for another year.

Nesta makes another pass over her three-by-three section, pickax chipping away one centimeter-thick layer of red earth at a time.

The trappings of a productive site are all here—isolated island off the mainland, no way to reach it except by boat. The ruins even abut a protected wildlife area, some ancestral seagull nesting ground, though the birds haven’t gotten the memo about leaving their side of the island alone. Every surreptitious trip into the high grass to use the bathroom becomes a WWII style air raid, feathery Luftwaffe dive-bombing from above.

She sends a curse to them, too.

“Let’s break here,” Nesta pants, and Gwyn nods from where she squints over her theodolite. At least they’ll have a CG map of the building’s visible walls by the end of the summer, if nothing else.

“I can’t tell if my eyes are wobbling or there’s an impeding earthquake.” Gwyn swipes a freckled arm across her forehead.

“It would get us out of explaining this fucking fiasco.”

A sharp pull on the whistle around her neck and a relieved groan echoes across from every corner of the excavation pit. Sweat-soaked students pour the last of their water bottles over their heads before they begin to pack all their equipment into thick black tubs. Nesta makes her way over to their makeshift staging area under a tarp to survey the artifacts from the day: more random shards of pottery, and a rock vaguely shaped like a triangle.

“I thought it looked like an arrowhead,” a sandy-haired boy offers as he hovers behind her. She should really get better with names.

“It’s a rock,” Nesta assures him. “And no one used stone arrows in the era we’re studying, anyway.”

Whatshisname deflates. Then works himself back up again, clearly having practiced whatever speech comes next.

“Dr. Archeron, do you think we could have the day off tomorrow?” he asks.

Nesta feels the expression fall over her face—the one that sends students shuffling from her office mumbling apologies after she makes her stance on grade-grubbing very clear.

“No.”

“It’s just that there’s this concert in Greater Cesere tonight, and we've already figured out the carpool—”

“I don’t care how hungover you are. You’re expected at the dock at 5:45, just like every morning.”

“Yeah. Of course.” His eyes go shifty. “We’ll all be there.”

This is the part of the dig when the less-dedicated get squirrely, when they get tired of instant coffee and dirt in their teeth and lizards in their beds. Nesta knows it’s normal, but she feels the heat rise in her throat, their mission on the edge of a chasm of underfunded failure. It would feel good to tear into him, but there are course evals to think of, after all.

“Go help Dr. Berdara with the surveying equipment,” she grouses instead.

“Yes, Dr. Archeron.”

Whatshisname scurries off. Nesta can’t help but smirking to herself, knowing she’s just given him enough fodder to become the prince of whatever night out they’re about to have, enough sympathy to get laid, even.

As a woman among arrogant Indiana Jones cosplayers, the scary reputation is a necessary evil. As is the horrid plod down the side of the island where their boat awaits, laden with trowels and tarps and empty jugs of water.

The Ceserean Historical Bureau earns the curse for that one.

Everything in, everything out, every day.

What a fucking mess.

But nothing this summer compares to the utter disaster that waves from the bow of the modest motorboat. Every six-foot-four, tanned, tattooed bit of him.

“Find any treasure today?” Cassian asks, as always. Nesta ignores the hand he offers to help her onboard, brushing past to take her usual seat in the back.

She made the mistake the first morning of sitting on the bow of The Windhaven, wanting to be visible among her students, a guidepost. But it put her directly in the line of burning hazel eyes, ones that danced with all of the terrible things Nesta would let him do to her if she gave less of a shit.

She needs to ask Emerie about curse tablets after the next department meeting.

“There’s a legend about this island, you know.” Cassian hops up onto the side of the boat and braces against the center console, students streaming to and fro. “That it used to be the nest of a great bird. One day an egg appeared, only it never hatched. A wave came and swept it into the sky, where it became the moon.”

“Charming. Wish the birds up there now had a bit more reverence.”

“Are you using the trick I taught you?”

She boarded one afternoon with a nick on her ear from not dodging quickly enough. Cassian advised her to hold a metal dustpan over her head. Nesta felt like an idiot the first time, but even she had to admit that it worked.

What didn’t work was how flustered she got when he insisted on cleaning her cut, weathered hands so gentle when they brushed her skin.

“I see.” That idiotic smirk made her cheeks heat. “You are, but you’re mad about it.”

And as the boat bumps through the surf back to shore, Nesta tries to convince herself of anything but that.

After their first week on the dig, she and Gwyn shared a very drunken and giggly night when Nesta confessed her attraction to their roguish captain. It’s been a while since she’s really had her world rocked, and the breakneck pace of the semester left opportunities for dating thin on the ground. Gwyn decided he would manhandle her like the flowing-haired men on the covers of grocery store harlequin romances. They’d laughed and laughed as the bottle of brandy drained, quoting their favorite lines from the days they’d get stoned with Emerie and do dramatic readings to stave off grad school delirium.

His growls of pleasure filled the tent,  drowning out the screams of the wounded and dying.  

“But Cassian would definitely put those big-ass hands to good use,” Gwyn affirmed. “Respectfully. Like pulling up an anchor.”

What a horrible mistake. Now it’s all Nesta can think about as the big-ass hand in question closes around her upper arm once they disembark, once the students are busy grumbling in the apothiki.

“Go out with me tonight.”

Cassian is smiling crookedly, as if ready to protect his face with a dustpan if this doesn’t go well.

“No,” Nesta answers without thinking. It’s not worth the trouble, especially with her own crew on the verge of mutiny. It's not the first time he's asked, and it won't be the last. Cassian’s smile widens, undeterred.

“Stay in with me, then.”

A huff escapes her, and he’s still holding her arm, somehow hotter than the sun that's driving rivulets of sweat down her back.

“Your students will all be gone, I heard them talking about that show in Greater Cesere.”

Nesta swallows.

“No one has to know.” He’s inches from her now, so tall he casts a shadow over her face. “You should see the things we do in my dreams.”

Fantasies flash through her mind, that strong body pressing her back against a door. Cassian’s full lips on her neck, hands roaming lower.

Wanting, wanting so thick and sharp it almost hurts spears its way through her. The desires Nesta pushes away come roaring back, an angry sea kept at bay by the levees she’s built around her heart. The hard outer shell, the layers of dirt under which she’s buried the very idea of wanting.

It’s an escape for her, rifling through the lives of people long-dead. There are parts of the past she’d like to let go of. Childhood shit, disappointing men. Hurts too unwieldy to even think in words. Her sister Feyre says Nesta is an ice queen, but she feels more like a golem, a being of earth and stone piloted only by what’s expected of her.

Nesta doesn’t get to want this. Can’t stand the idea of it being used against her.

“Ignorance is my only refuge, then.”

His eyebrow quirks, and there’s a scar through it, she notices, a tiny slash where the hair no longer grows. Cassian is looking at her like she’s just revealed something, though she can’t imagine what. A lemon-scented wind blows through the docks, setting the boats to rocking. Setting her heart to galloping.

What a mess.

“See you in the morning, Dr. Archeron,” Cassian says before releasing her, sauntering back toward The Windhaven to prep it for the next day.

After clearing the bathroom of its resident lizards, Nesta spends the next hour letting a cool shower hit her in the face, trying to determine what on earth he’s just discovered.

At dawn, the dock at is deserted.

“Of course. Of fucking course!” Nesta grouses as she throws her hands in the air. “I’m failing all those little shits.”

“Cmon Nes,” Gwyn says blearily, rubbing at her eyes. “We’ve been going nonstop for weeks. They deserve to let off a little steam.”

Good professor showing up again to play her part. Gwyn has always been the more forgiving of the two of them. Nesta rips out the rubber band to redo her braid, hair already frizzing in the humid morning air.

“They can do that at the dig wrap party. At this rate there won’t be anything to celebrate.”

“What are we celebrating?”

As if summoned by her ire, Cassian appears then, swinging his boat keys on a long lanyard. Curly black hair flows down to his shoulders, hips loose in the swagger of a man who’s either been up for hours or never went to bed at all.

Gwyn beams. “The dig party next week! You’re invited! Everyone who’s helped out can come, not just us. We couldn’t have done this without you!”

“Which isn’t saying much. Can we get going?” Nesta says impatiently. “I’d like to get this day over with before I want to kill anyone else.”

Cassian grins and fall into step with Nesta as they trudge toward the storehouse, murmuring, “I thought I was the only one you wanted to kill, sweetheart.”

Nesta has to concentrate hard on the rocky path beneath them, to keep from tripping.

It takes a while to shuttle all the equipment from the apothiki with only three of them, and by the time the mainland starts to recede Nesta is sweaty, grouchy, and already plotting the anti-recommendation letters she’ll write when asked.

She doesn’t want to care this much, to be this hurt. Maybe that’s why she accepts Cassian’s offer to help them disembark after only two refusals. It’s definitely not because his biceps look delicious when he hefts a plastic tub full of Gwyn’s surveying equipment over his head, tanned thighs flexing under faded shorts as he climbs the steep slope.

And how is she supposed to refuse his curious questions after that, when he’s looking around the empty dirt pit like he’s never seen something so interesting? When he picks up a chisel and says, Put me to work, Doc, in that magical, wavy accent, how is she supposed to say no?

Nesta blames her students.

They go to work in the same corner where she was toiling yesterday. Nesta shows him how to read the earth for signs of disturbance, the right pressure to apply to his pickax. He’s a fast learner, thank god, and he tells her about his childhood on the mainland while they sift through layers of nothing, leading to a very unfortunate discovery.

Cassian is funny. And not like the men in Velaris she’s used to who think they’re funny, who took an improv class once and think that qualifies them to muse about taking up stand-up comedy for the next decade. He’s quick, unruffled by the heat and the boredom, perfectly content to narrate their work from the perspective of the seagulls like the two of them are subject of a nature documentary. Nesta thinks the day would be entirely wasted if not for the laughs he pulls from her creaky lungs, the ones no one outside her close friends have heard in years.

It's dangerous, to get so carried away. The earth blurs before her, panic igniting even as she never wants this to stop.

Until she chips away in one spot, and a pinkish shard of pottery emerges.

The piece is strange, disjointed. A seam runs through the middle as if it’s been repaired, three small holes drilled in a triangular pattern. She picks up another piece and finds the same just as Cassian brushes away at a grooved stone, a pair of praying hands etched into the surface.

“That’s the symbol for the Mother.” Bits of information whiz through her brain, snippets of lectures and articles. She’s seen a piece like this before at the National Museum of Velaris, in their room dedicated to the ancient Cesereans.

“It’s a hearthstone.” The kind that only sat in permanent dwellings, the heart of a house. Nesta can’t hold back the tremble in her voice when her eyes connect with Cassian’s and she says, “We’re in the kitchen.”

Excitement crackles.

As if traveling through time, Nesta sees in her imagination how it must’ve risen around them.

And the pottery shard she’s still holding starts to take shape too, the form of a bowl following the curves, layers of time peeling back. And despite what her undergrad Classics professor said, peering into the past is not at all like looking down into a well.

It’s like a hand reaching out and grabbing hers. Thrilling and terrifying, the long stretch of history condensed to a door that’s just been opened.

“Look at this,” she says, tracing the line as Cassian hovers over her shoulder. “It broke, and someone repaired it. Turned it into a strainer.” No visitor would’ve bothered. “Think about the last person who touched this.”

Nesta pictures a woman washing apricots, like the ones candied in sugar she eats from the fruit stall when they get off the dig site every day. Of the mug Emerie bought her on clearance in an airport that says I’m a pretty big deal in the spearfishing community, the one she glued the handle back onto because it makes her laugh so much. She pictures someone digging that mug from the wreckage of Velaris two thousand years from now, holding that mended handle and laughing, too.

Cassian’s eyes are bright when she steals a glance back at him, emotion shimmering.

“I could be related to them.”

“You could.”

He swipes at his face, arm coming away wet. Clears his throat. “Why would someone come all the way out here?”

“That’s the question. It must’ve been significant.”

Her theory is that some ritual activity occurred here, she tells him. Watches a quiet admiration creep across his face as she details her rationale. Whether he understands a word of it or not, she can feel the pull between their bodies, the dusty air charged between them.

“They had lives and feelings,��� Nesta finds herself saying. “They wanted things. I think that deserves to be remembered.”

Cassian keeps staring at her in that sun-bright way, and Nesta doesn’t know what they’re talking about anymore. Doesn’t know what to do when he reaches to take her hand, closing his own around it and the pottery shard she still holds.

“Thank you for this.” Gravel lines his voice, and she wants to run it through a sifter to find all the meaning inside. “I’m glad none of your students showed up today.”

“Why, so you can take credit?”

“No. I don’t want to share this with anyone else.” He’s blocking out the glare now, leaving her cool in his shadow. “You make me feel greedy, Nesta.”

A gull cries far-off, but Nesta can only hear the sound of her own heart racing. Cassian tips his head toward the sun and it shines down on his smiling face, warming down through the stone.

It’s only the beginning, more and more pieces unearthed from the ruins of the kitchen over the rest of the morning, a veritable treasure trove. He helps them load everything into apothiki once ashore, whistling as he carries out Nesta’s militant instructions. With an eye on the door for hungover students, Cassian pulls her in with sea-rough hands and kisses her like he wants to do much more.

His mouth tastes like earth.

Nesta doesn’t sleep that night. Instead she catalogs every piece as a high moon rises, a waxing gibbous near to hatching.

The dig wrap party is euphoric, and not just because everyone’s been over-served. There are bigwigs from the Historical Bureau here to marvel over their finds, a whole kitchen’s worth, and the students can see the dollars raining down like the leaves of the cypress trees strung with lights.

It should feel good. Better than this, anyway, because as Nesta nurses her lone glass of wine, she can’t help wondering why the place inside her that should be swollen with pride is empty.

An old feeling, one she’s never been able to make sense of.

“Is your boyfriend here yet?” Gwyn smirks when Nesta shoves at her friend’s shoulder. They don’t have to wait long before a crowd of students forms around one end of the bar, a familiar curly-haired head poking well above the rest.

“Can I steal you?” Cassian says once he finally makes his way over, after extricating himself from a gaggle of doe-eyed undergrads. Nesta feels like she’s swallowed a huge dirt clod, but Gwyn answers for her.

“Of course you can! Nesta hates these things, don’t you, Nes?”

“I do,” Nesta barely manages before his big-ass hand is closing around her own, pulling her out back of the restaurant they’ve rented to a small goat path that leads toward the sea.

The Windhaven bobs in the current, bumping gently against the dock. After many reassurances, Nesta lets him pilot them to a secluded cove, the hull cutting through the black water like a sharpened blade, the past and present dividing.

“The land speaks to you here,” Cassian says when he tosses down the anchor at last, pulling the extra line taut. “I thought you might like to hear what it has to say.”

“Why?”

The wind tugs at the hem of her sundress.

“It’s probably saying thank you. For not letting those people be forgotten.”

He says it so simply, like it’s nothing. Nesta braces her hands against the bow, trying to find some sense in the spaces between the stars.

It’s completely cloudless, and this far out there’s no light pollution, so she can see meteors cascading across the sky like rain. Cassian comes to stand beside her, shoulders brushing.

“Look look, it’s the space station!” he says after a moment, tracking a finger across the sky before he raises a hand and waves. Nesta snorts.

“You know there’s no way the astronauts can see you.”

“I know,” Cassian says, shrugging, and god she wants to kiss him. “But just in case, I don’t want to leave them hanging.”

“Who the fuck are you?” Nesta asks, more harshly than she means to. His answering smile is nervous, tight.

“Cassian.”

“No, I mean—never mind. It doesn't matter.”

It’s a very early mid-life crisis. It must be. Why else should she be so fixated on the way this weird-ass man’s mind works, how he seems to find wonder in the smallest things? And why is she jealous?

This is a mistake, undoubtedly. Nesta has ground herself down to the bone to get where she is. Fought her way through school, through the sludge of academia, been called difficult and prickly and a bitch in her quest to be taken seriously. Worn every label as a badge of bloody honor. Suffocated the part of her that just wants to let go and say fuck it all, to do something she wants instead of what she has to.

"Doesn't it?"

Cassian is backlit by the half moon glinting off the water, stray curls springing free from the bun atop his head.

And then he’s kissing her, and his mouth tastes like lemon and something else, something addictive. It’s the brandy sours that are as bizarre as they are popular here, that Nesta now doesn’t know how she’s gone so long without. Her fingers skate down skin so warm, like it’s drunk in the sunlight and trapped it inside him.

“Nes,” he breathes once they finally part, and she digs her nails into his shoulders, drawing a sharp inhale.

“Don’t call me that.”

“Yes, Dr. Archeron.”

Exhaustion collides with her better judgment, and Nesta pushes him back to sit on the bow, swings a leg over his hips so she’s straddling his lap. Plunges her hands into all that lush, dark hair, and says, “Fuck it.”

It all flows from somewhere deep within her, the brush of hands against skin, lips against lips. She stays so locked away, never allowed to feel the good things she works so hard to achieve. Locked up, locked out, looking into everything that feels like it should belong to her but she can never reach.

Nesta doesn’t know why this is the moment everything shifts for her, and even when she looks back years later it’ll never quite make sense. The alchemy of the island breeze, the deep black night between the stars, all greater than the sum of its parts.

And she lets herself have it. Each wicked, wild bit of her comes out of their dark corners and she’s laughing, head tipped back in euphoria and who the fuck cares that she has no idea where her bra is, whether or not she’ll get tenure. It doesn’t fucking matter. There’s value in being stupid, she thinks, wondering why she’s tried all this time to be so smart.

“You look like you’re swimming in a sea of stars,” Cassian says, looking up at her. Nesta smiles when he tucks a lock of hair behind her ear, fingers of his other hand tangling with hers.

“I wouldn’t have pegged you as a poet.”

The half moon hangs above them, cracked open.

“Every man can be a poet with the right inspiration.”

His hands are on her breasts then, pinching and squeezing, and she doesn’t have to force the moans that travel up her throat. They sound different like this, when they’re not for show.

It’s a kind of madness, being touched by Cassian. Like he’s weaving some spell through every cell in her body, enchanting them all to crave him, to want more more more even as she can barely take it.

“You have no idea how long I’ve wanted this,” he insists between nips at her throat, the sensitive spot behind her ear.

“No, but I’m feeling good about myself tonight so I’ll guess it was the first time you saw me.”

He laughs against her chest, hands squeezing her hips. “Close. It was the first time I watched you walk away.” Cassian squeezes her hips again for emphasis, roaming down to grab a handful of her ass.

“I should’ve left you on the island.”

“Good. Then you’d have to come back for me.”

Of course he has a condom in the boat’s center console, and he grins when she rolls her eyes.

“Sailors have to be prepared, I suppose?”

“I’m a poet, not a saint, sweetheart.”

The boat rocks them both as she sinks down onto his lap again. All velvety, warm softness in the night air, the breeze dancing, swirling upward, igniting.

They both want to go slow, want to savor it, but their discipline is beginning to tire. Nesta can’t help picking up her pace, fissures of pleasure splitting her apart. She tells herself there will be time to indulge later, hoping it’s not a lie.

It’s not.

Students trickle out over the next few days, flights home or to other far-flung destinations to decompress before fall semester. Nesta pushes her flight back once, and then again. It’s hard to remember why she wants to go back, when everything she’s been looking for is right here.

They swim in grottos, pick lemons from the tree outside his door and spritz them over fresh-caught fish, in the brandy sours she’s finally perfected. One night he licks the juice off her finger before hoisting her onto the counter, going to his knees between her spread thighs a moment later, his favorite place to be.

“I’ll visit you,” Cassian promises against her skin when they’re splayed out in his bed later, her temporary home the last two weeks. “I’ll do whatever it takes so this doesn’t end here.”

I love you, Nesta thinks as they stand outside his car at the Arrivals gate. Doesn’t say it, because this isn’t a fucking Hallmark movie. You haven’t been able to see someone off inside the airport in twenty years. No one is running past families and old ladies and men with briefcases, but they still kiss just as desperately amidst the smell of gasoline from idling cars, the unrelenting eye of the midday sun.

I love you.

She’s not ready to unearth it yet. It sits quietly beneath to soil of her mind, waiting to be dug up.

But the shape of the thought must reach him, for when he pulls back, Cassian smiles like he already knows.

Nesta smiles too, in case whoever’s strainer is packed in her carry-on can feel it travel down her arm through the handle, in case the astronauts are up there somewhere in the blue, smiling back.

Notes:

History fun facts: the amulet mentioned in the beginning is not always what we typically think of as a talisman or protective charm. some amulets during the Ptolemaic period served more like seals or signatures, where a carving would be done in the bottom of a small stone block. The amulet could then be dipped in ink and stamped on contracts, letters, and bills of sale. Many amulets have been found with holes drilled through the top, suggesting they may have been worn on strings around the neck or on a belt. Very helpful for lay people who didn’t know how to write. I also chose Cesere as the fictional location as a nod to the actual dig site I worked on, which was a temple of Apollo commissioned by Cleopatra. She commissioned a number of them across Cyprus to commemorate the birth of her son, Caesarion, whose father of course was Julius Caesar. Historical record tells us these temples were places where young boys (age 3-4) would go for the first time to spend the night away from their mothers. There they would engage in various rituals and ceremonies to symbolize their transition, kind of like Boy Scout camp. During the dig I found a blank amulet, which suggests people could’ve been carving them on the island, perhaps a token of the boys’ entry into the next phase of life. Caesarion himself was named co-ruler of the Egypt by Cleopatra in 44BC, at the age of 3. He unfortunately only lived to the age of 16/17, when he was captured by Julius Caesar’s successor, Octavion, in Alexandria (Caesar had already burned the library by this point). Upon Caesarion’s capture, Octavion is purported to have said “"Too many Caesars is not good”, a play on the famous Homeric idiom “too may rulers is not good”, aka too many cooks in the kitchen. After conquering Alexandria, Octavion likely had Caesarion executed to avoid challenges to his status as emperor, ending the once-powerful Ptolemaic dynasty and officially absorbing Egypt into the Roman Empire. Finally, the mug Nesta mentions is based on a real-life mug I thought of the first time I pulled a piece of Cypriot sigillata out of the ground. Only mine was a 2008 Sarah Palin mug my dad found at the airport in Anchorage. Yes, I still have it.

[stevetonyweekly]

SteveTony Weekly - Week 12 - No Powers AU

This week we have a grab bag of AUs but ALL of them are

NO POWERS AU. 

I know a lot of folks only read canon divergent or compliant fics, but I personally love the diversity in storytelling that a good no-powers AU affords. So here’s a handful of my favorite--enjoy! 

What Happens In Vegas by sabrecmc 

“What the hell, Tony?” Rhodey demanded brusquely. Tony winced and drew the phone away from his ear. “You’ve got cops and Feds all over the hotel. I’m watching you perp walk out of the police station on repeat on CNN. They’re saying you tried to bribe Stern? Fox News has you selling weapons on the black market, and God that picture they’re using is the one from Bali in ’09. You look like shit. They wheeled Stern out and put him in an ambulance, by the way. Got some paparazzi swearing you decked the guy. Now they’ve got ‘copters following it like he’s OJ.”

“Yeah, don’t worry, Sourpatch, I’ve got it covered. Uh, though, I should probably tell you that, purely in the interests of national security and the greater good, I kind of had to fake marry that stripper-gram you sent. Thanks for that, by the way,” Tony added quickly.

1-900-SOULMATE by SailorChibi

Later, Tony would maintain that it wasn’t his fault. He was drunk and bored (lonely) and it just… happened.

Pepper would look at him and, in the driest tone that Tony had ever heard, remark that he was the only person in the history of the world who would stumble across their soulmate while drunk dialing a phone sex line.

Unknown Caller (do not engage) by gottalovev 

Steve had one job: exchange a couple of texts with a guy who thought he had Natasha's number, and let him down gently. It ends up being a lot more complicated than that.

Buried by NotEvenCloseToStraight

When Howard Stark demands Tony work at a dig site in S.America one summer to "build character" and "learn about life", Tony is furious.

But then he meets soldier/archeologist Steve and falls in love with blue eyes and a perfect smile. Just as they are ready to move forward together, Steve leaves abruptly with no explanation and breaks Tonys heart.

Ten years later, Tony stumbles across the file for the old dig site. He's determined to visit and shut it down, but discovers that instead of a village, the dig has unconvered a temple and actually needs MORE money to stay open. A security team is hired to protect the staff and the artifacts they find, and Tony comes face to face with Steve Rogers all over again– except Steve is bearded and BIGGER and way more dangerous than he used to be...And Tony likes it.

When the camp is attacked, Steve jumps into action, snatching Tony and running into the jungle to escape and work their way towards safety.

But long days and nights together bring back old feelings, and one day Steve takes a risk and asks Tony to give them another chance.

Will Tony say yes? Or is his heart buried too far for the soldier-turned- archaeologist-turned-mercenary to find it?

Jink by FestiveFerret

When Steve agrees to dog sit for Colonel Rhodes, he doesn't expect Rhodes' unusual, intriguing, and painfully attractive whirlwind of a best friend to show up unannounced.

There's an App for That by Annie D (scaramouche) 

Thanks to the modern gig economy, Steve is the successful owner of a break-up service, i.e. people pay him to break up with their partners for them. One day, he gets the first break-up request for Tony Stark.

Dangerous Kitchen Tools by ladyshadowdrake 

Engineering prodigy, billionaire, and heir to the Stark Industries empire, Tony Stark turned the business world on its head by opening a restuarant and burying himself in the kitchen. Years later, he covers an informal evening cooking class for his friend and fellow molecular gastronomist, Bruce Banner, where he meets famously camera-shy comic artist Steve Rogers.

[vermiculated]

books, Q1 2025

It became very important to me to complete my local romance bookstore's bingo challenge. No other real excuses.

The Outskirter's Secret - Rosemary Kirstein Before I started this, I saw a comment that the romance had been inexpertly added, and I thought, Bel and Rowan have too beguiling a bond to convincingly date, there's so many overlapping loyalties and such honor to Rowan's self-possession and Bel's expertise. And then Rowan meets a guy with whom she shares easygoing intimacy and slowly, slowly, betrayal of the self for the possibility of the future? A guy?

The Language of Power - Rosemary Kirstein Why yes, some of book four made more sense after I read book three. Picking the wizard programming bombs and hand in glove sexual treachery was a nourishing throwback. I wish I had read these books two decades ago so I could re-read them now and say, dang that was as good as I remembered!

The Courtship of Princess Leia - Dave Wolverton SHE is the princess-general, HE is the prince-treasure, oh and HE is a third guy, a smuggler, regular type guy you know the drill, THEY could have gotten married and lived in fabulous plenty, real twist posed for the revanchists. One of the best things about tie-in novels is that a meaningful, but not broadly-applicable invention like the Witches of Dathomir will be created, and thereafter everyone either has to use the genius matriarchy who meld with another genius matriarchy or explain why the universe doesn't let witches appear in glorious raiment.

Tikka Chance on Me - Suleikha Snyder SHE is waitressing at her parents' restaurant, HE brings his motorcycle gang to dinner, THEY do convincingly have reasons not to meet in public, which is a difficult trick to pull off when writing about adults who can generally go places alone.

40-Love - Olivia Dade SHE is controlling, HE is controlling, THEY have an excruciating meet-cute. Unusually the first-half banter in this one reads as two people who enjoy telling jokes to one another as they glide over their certainty that if they unwind it, they can both get back to a point where they hadn't made any self-defining mistakes, that is: authentically.

Ravished - Amanda Quick SHE is an archaeologist who prioritizes her needs and interests (cool bones) over everything else, HE is not very good about expressing his feelings but he is going to need to learn if he wants to keep up with her. THEY get married to clear title to her plesiosaur fossil and also convince everyone else that despite their zesty sexual chemistry, they won't get bored of one another. Zany spin-up of a Beauty and the Beast premise, which despite slacking in the second half (no! stay angry at your father forever! sell his horses and hurt his feelings!) is consistently rescued by the dinosaurs.

Capturing the Silken Thief - Jeannie Lin SHE is an artist living hand to mouth, HE is a student doing the same, THEY find the missing erotic scroll together and perhaps … learn that there are greater forces than money? jk no there aren't, they still have a happy ending.

My Fair Concubine - Jeannie Lin SHE is a teagirl who needs to get away from her life & job situation, HE has an incredible offer, THEY cultivate her manners and her beauty in a series of enjoyable makeover montages. Interestingly, the Pygmalion premise is substantially complicated by tenuous diplomatic relations, ethical obligations, and the risk of financial catastrophe. Every book should have so many events and such a clear thematic arc, nonetheless complicated by love. AND she dresses as a boy so they can go to the theater.

An Illicit Temptation - Jeannie Lin SHE is a faux princess, HE is a temporary bodyguard, THEY share a night of passion on the steppes.

The Moon in the Palace - Weina Dai Randel SHE is Wu Zetian, HE is honestly I did not even care I was just waiting for him to die, which he signally failed to do because apparently that's in the sequel? The sequel? There is a good simile about the blackheads on the emperor's chin appearing as flies clustering around his mouth.

The Hidden Blade - Sherry Thomas SHE trains to be responsible for cultivating her chi and jumping up the sides of buildings, HE believes himself to be responsible for everything that happens in his vicinity and can't do that, THEY do not even meet on the page in this one, he only sees her from a distance, look up look up look up. Sherry Thomas is the BOMB. The alternating points-of-view pay off as devastatingly here as they do in Sarah Moss's Signs for Lost Children.

The Cowboy Christmas Glow-Up - Suzy Langevin SHE is a driven makeup executive, HE is is a driven cowboy, THEY are the spares from their exes' cozy Christmas romances, which is a great concept. We are creatures of the polis, beings of brick and stone, and we don't have cute jobs.

How to Find a Princess - Alyssa Cole SHE is a beleaguered people-pleaser, SHE is largely ignorant of the effects she has on others, THEY have sex on a lifeboat. My book club had a really insightful discussion about attachment styles.

My Beautiful Enemy - Sherry Thomas SHE is a spy, HE is a spy, THEY have to fight the Centipede who flies a black flag. Two former gifted kids who go for broke and realize their true potential: I found the sex passionate and the light backstabbing in Uzbekistan to be enormously gratifying. The interpersonal dynamics are intricate and while I would have enjoyed more politics, I can go re-read Wolf Hall on my own time.

Dark Season - Joanna Lowell SHE is, for complicated reasons, obliged to pretend to be psychic, HE must, for complicated reasons, pretend to have killed his ex, THEY nearly have sex al fresco. Ella's management of her epilepsy and Isisdore's total nightmare of any social situation provide them both with the important Gothic motivation to never reveal anything. This banged, the interlude where they recognize the self in the other and nearly have sex in the park was perhaps the highlight, but Lowell has a keen eye for shame and really makes hay of the panopticon of pain and parties.

Undead and Unwed - Mary Janice Davidson SHE is a vampire, HE is a vampire, THEY live in Burnsville. This aged not as well as I might have hoped.

Red Dragon - Thomas Harris My cousin's husband recommended this to me. The best scenes are all of Will Graham, alone with the dead, and passed through with insight that he does not wish to have and cannot reject. The diligence, of how to be a person in the world when the world is vast and uncaring, is as closely-observed as Zola looking up and down the stairs of a Parisian tenement. I did not care for the shift in perspective.

Never Trust a Dead Man - Vivian Vande Velde I established for the nineteenth time that I don't enjoy YA, so I tried a middle grade novel. Sure can do that!

Asterios Polyp - David Mazzucchelli SHE is Penelope, HE is Odysseus, THEY love one another. Hana observed at her mirror is a really masterful splash page. Always a delight to see an artist's wikipedia headshot and see that they're drawing people on the order of what they see in the mirror.

Trumpet - Jackie Kay SHE is a widow, HE is her dead husband, THEY loved one another. The unusually effective formal choice to break the isolation of grief with third-person observations from the doctor, registrar, and so on, breaking out of the forward chronology of the novel, elevated this.

Golden Kamuy vol 17 - Satoru Noda trans. John Werry HE is a veteran of the Russo-Japanese War, HE is a veteran of the Russo-Japanese War, HE is a veteran of the Russo-Japanese War, HE is a veteran of the Russo-Japanese War, HE is a veteran of the Russo-Japanese War, HE is a veteran of the Russo-Japanese War, HE is a veteran of the Russo-Japanese War, HE died in the Russo-Japanese War.

Golden Kamuy vol 18 - Satoru Noda trans. John Werry SHE looks within herself to find the sustenance of her own truth. Asirpa has taken command of her father's vision in these chapters, and the dialectic is now, consistently, if his plan for the future is one that she will animate.

A Masc for Purim - Roz Alexander SHE is getting back out there and organizing her synagogue's Purim masquerade, SHE broke her heart and shows back up, THEY have sex on a desk.

The Astronaut and the Star - Jen Comfort SHE is driven, unfriendly, and deeply lonely, HE is learning how to be an astronaut from her and keeps fantasizing about her breasts, THEY have sex on a solar panel.

Justice League United vol 1 - Jeff Lemire et al In this one, they're Canadian! I enjoyed an Adam Strange appearance that's not about how he ruins everything for his disastrous love and divided loyalty. LOOKING AT YOU, TOM AND PATRICK.

The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake - Aimee Bender The unusual premise -- that lemon cake does taste like sadness -- developed into a much stranger theory of the punishments of self-knowledge: perfect self-awareness is a trap. It's only ever a trap. Schone seele is not a compliment.

Ladder of Years - Anne Tyler SHE is extremely unappreciated by her family and lights out from, yes, Baltimore, to build her own life. One day I will read an Anne Tyler novel under circumstances other than "it's available in ebook, and it's 12:15 am," I only have five or six of them left.

The American Way of Death Revisited - Jessica Mitford I thought I would read some nonfiction. I used to volunteer for a group that started in the wake of this book, so like Mount Fuji, either you're looking at it or you're standing on it.

Ever Faithful - Karen Barnett SHE is getting ready for college, earning a little money housekeeping and teaching Civilian Conservation Corps high school classes at Yellowstone, HE is in the CCC and can't read, THEY don't make that much of this, yet. I have read this twist one hundred times and I will read it again.

The Juniper Tree - Barbara Comyns SHE is a fairytale stepmother; HE is a fairytale father, THEY are basically irrelevant as a duo. Is it true that the better class of fairytale retellings obliterate the narrative to tell a more complicated version of a different story?

A Simple Heart - Gustave Flaubert trans. Charlotte Mandrell Blows the doors off, this translation eddied around the original like a stream over a rocky riverbed, and the locus amoenus of the altar with the parrot looking down is superb.

Golden Kamuy vol 19 - Satoru Noda trans. John Werry HE dies. While the series is about coalescing groups of rivals who share a goal, the first two hundred chapters moved the characters into social configurations so that they were broadly in agreement with their comrades. With Kiroranke's death, the various disagreements deepen and darken.

Cold Hand in Mine - Robert Aickman Mostly spooky rather than effective, like a canal-obsessed Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark. "The Clock Watcher" was genuinely ugly, and there's some vivid nastiness throughout. Thanks to @mimaveil and @getlouder for the rec, this one dripped with vitriol.

A Dangerous Kind of Lady - Mia Vincy SHE feels thwarted and ignored, HE is responsible for some of that, THEY fix up a fake engagement. Oh are there real feelings involved? Is this gonna be the time that there aren't real feelings involved.

The Body in the Garden - Katherine Schellman SHE solves crime, HE tags along, THEY see a head roll. I wandered around my house objecting that she, a lady of means in Regency England, only has three servants in her house, -- and he has none at all! -- and I got so annoyed by this that I got to thinking about hiring fairs and patterns of modern employment, and then this book ended, more or less without my notice.

The Skin of Dreams - Raymond Queneau trans. Chris Clarke The word-making, in this novel about film-making, is absolutely on target. Really enjoyed the puns.

The Truth about Leo - Katie MacAlister SHE is self-serving, HE is inconsequential, THEY could have but did not have sex in the garden where she finds him without his memory. I did look up the 1807 Bombardment of Copenhagen, which serves as the background to these intensely unsympathetic characters, and thus I learned something about our world.

Loving a Lost Lord - Mary Jo Putney SHE needs a convenient excuse, HE has recently developed amnesia as a result of an industrial accident, THEY learn to love one another. This book set up appealing stakes -- she's a basically honest person who tells a huge lie! he believes he's living a lie by not regularly revealing his inmost self to strangers -- which it then carefully and comprehensively set to smolder until they collapsed.

Golden Kamuy vol 20 - Satoru Noda trans. John Werry HE is very handsome.

Golden Kamuy vol 21 - Satoru Noda trans. John Werry Asirpa's changing motivations, loyalty to bravery to honor and then back to loyalty, reach a novelistic pitch. The drama hinges on her willingness to do the right thing, and the extent to her understanding changes while her circumstance … also do, but in consistent ways, and so the change she wants really has to be within herself, it cannot be motivated by a useful outcome.

Golden Kamuy vol 22 - Satoru Noda trans. John Werry I, shuddering, begin to suspect that Asirpa and Sugimoto's relationship may evolve from "lone wolf and cub."

Golden Kamuy vol 23 - Satoru Noda trans. John Werry So too Botaro, so I am instantly relieved, as any time a concern is directly addressed in a work of hundreds of chapters, it is certain it will not be so easily resolved.

When the Sea Came Alive - Garrett Graff Your pal and mine Garrett has a very good ear for the quoteable and the lyrical. Exceptional coverage of pre-invasion, especially Exercise Tiger. I would have liked to read more about Juno.

The Phoenix Bride - Natasha Siegel SHE is grief-struck and not particularly seeking a way out of her depression, HE is too, THEY find a way out together. While I was personally hoping for more mouseskin beauty-marks and dresses so big a woman has to walk sideways when she goes through a door, I understand that the power of love is broadly more interesting. The telescope which enables the menage to go forward is an inspired bit of place-setting.

Bitter Spirits - Jenn Bennett SHE is actually a real psychic who can for-real talk to the dead, HE is a bootlegger who feels guilty about his dead, THEY fuck in a fancy hotel. That's what I like to see in a romance! Novel location & time period as well. I did enjoy, after Dark Season and the classic Unnatural Vice, that psychic abilities are real and true and this averts exactly zero of the forthcoming incidents.

Tycoon - Joanna Shupe SHE is a fix, HE is having problems, THEY have sex on a train, I am under the impression this bit is still funny.

The Crying Sisters - Mabel Seeley SHE gets stuck with his nonsense, HE has rather a lot of it, THEY have no idea how they have endangered themselves. Not as sparkling as The Listening House, but you have to go on vacation somewhere.

Golden Kamuy vol 24 - Satoru Noda trans. John Werry They meet Jack the Ripper.

Golden Kamuy vol 25 - Satoru Noda trans. John Werry As comics about Jack the Ripper go, I would say that this one addresses the "true" in "true crime" more honestly than the big dog, From Hell. There's no really tasteful coverage of murders so lurid they're effectively tropes for "something cosmically horrible happened here," and to endorse one theory or another about a murderer is only so interesting, and here, at least, it is surrounded by characters standing for other principles.

Golden Kamuy vol 26 - Satoru Noda trans. John Werry One of the parts of comics I enjoy most are schematics. Each volume begins with a recap, of course, and it is in these chapters that the specific ordering of who is standing where when becomes extraordinarily significant. Good maps.

Henry Henry - Allan Bratton HE is rich and troubled, HE is his boyfriend, HE is his cousin, HE is his father. Less reactionary St Aubyn, and tender in a diligent and quiet way, ultimately, as Hal simmers down the reactivity and improves (he could hardly get worse.) The most beautiful exchange in this book is Edward's revelation to Hal that, yes Richard was unkind, Henry is pitiable, and you cannot allow the dead to control you. Otherwise hot and mean. I enjoyed it hugely, vg.

Silence in the Library - Katharine Schellman SHE is a wealthy amateur detective; for a moment I thought HE was going to be a new character, the handsomest veteran of the late wars, instead HE is the same love interest from the previous book, a regular-handsome veteran of the late wars. Creepier about vulnerability than the first book in the series; the solution to the mystery is not well hidden, and like Richard Austin Freeman, the mechanics of how to talk to withholding witnesses and build usable evidence draw you on.

The Silence of the Lambs - Thomas Harris This was published in August 1988 and James Ellroy’s The Big Nowhere came out the next month, so due to the forward chronology of time, neither of these guys read the other guy’s book and thought: this would be great if Poor Doomed Danny Upshaw had a GAL PAL//man that wolverine was boss I wonder if it could retire and do word-finds. If you were not a particularly fast reader you could have spent all fall of '88 reading about the horrors of misogyny.

Fugitive Harbor - Cassie Miles SHE is a historian-architect-lighthouse keeper’s house restorer who is oppressed by small town mistrust and disfavor, HE stands wrongly accused of the death of his business partner, THEY go on a date to the total firetrap lighthouse and get to second base by the flaming light of the setting sun. 3/3 amnesia books, he doesn’t really even HAVE amnesia. In conclusion, a beloved fanfiction trope best left to fanfiction.

Hither Page - Cat Sebastian HE is a spy who is tiring without knowing of the skulking life yet does not have the capacity to explain that this is all he is and all he has ever seen for him, HE is a country doctor who agrees to help solve a murder due to what he believes is a personal weakness, THEY have a surprisingly warm and inventive discussion of their scars when they strip down. There is absolutely no ground for my fan theory that Leo is a secret German yet I cherish it.

The Missing Page - Cat Sebastian HE is still a spy who has less taste for the work than George Smiley ever did, HE is called for a reading of his grandfather’s will, THEY have to solve the question presented. Again zero evidence for, mounting evidence against my fan theory that Leo was born in Germany, sure, what am I some type of pushover.

Death at the Manor - Katharine Schellman SHE is investigating a suspicious death at a haunted house, HE is the new guy, THEY have a very-poorly concealed affair. The Gothic trimmings (hidden staircases, secret bequests) make this more successful than the previous entries in the series.

The Witness for the Dead - Katherine Addison HE is a beleaguered psychic facing severe interpersonal setbacks and suffering from the belief that he deserves the opprobrium he’s received, HE is a composer-librettist-manager whose opera company is just riven through by secrets, THEY provide solace to one another in a time of great trial. The ghosts (real live ghosts) are blinkered and frustrating, so too the clients: the interpretation of “what if Philip Marlowe got so low” is not altogether that dissimilar from anything Raymond Chandler wrote.

Green for Danger - Christianna Brand Like walking a French formal garden where the hedges are built of the introduction to the suspects, a premise embedded with clues, and interesting information about a world that vanished slightly later in the year this was published. I found this cute picture of a dog while I was looking up medical organization in the British Army.

The Kobayashi Maru - Julia Ecklar A choice framing device — Kirk, McCoy, Sulu, Chekov, and Scotty are all about to die in the silence of space, so they talk through their apparent failures in the no-win situation— for extensive backstory. Chekov’s FPS approach to command is an early work of video game thought, and Sulu’s solution to the titular problem has compelling thematic resonance as he grieves his great-grandfather’s death.

The Strangler Vine - MJ Carter Alex Wyndham read the audiobook and I got through two chapters before bagging that and reading it, but the part of this book which I most enjoyed was how he might be reading it to me. Bro kills at audiobooks, I’m sorry he hasn’t been on tv since HBO’s Rome, he kills at audiobooks.

Shutter - Ramona Emerson I’ll never grow weary of the device that while an investigator (in this, a crime scene photographer) can talk to the dead, the dead are not very reliable tellers of their own, or anyone’s, truths. In this, Rita has even less institutional support than Celehar in Witness for the Dead, and perseveres doggedly, even getting shot at one point and faking her death. I thought the reveal of the evil plan was less interesting than it could be so, in a partially-supported conclusion: she heard it from the dead. hey that guy could be dead.

Solomon’s Crown - Natasha Siegel HE is King of France, HE is Duke of Aquitaine, THEY never do have sex al fresco or in front of all of the mirrors at Poitiers, nevertheless I enjoyed this prequel to some of the events of The Lion in Winter. Anthony Hopkins Week, week three. Anthony Hopkins Month.

Death of Jezebel - Christianna Brand Almost pure form, except for the part I found most interesting. The romantic entanglements and double-crosses are very much enlivened by the participation of refugees from what is now Malaysia: many of the Crime Classics feature detective who served in France, very few are about the closed world of civilians who lived in the suddenly-former colonies. What if The Honorable Schoolboy had solved the crime instead of being about everything else in the world.

The Secret Lives of Country Gentlemen - KJ Charles HE is suddenly elevated to baronet and in figuring out what he wants to do with all his days lights upon continuing his father’s studies in nature, HE is the head of the smugglers around these parts and has to determine what he wants for himself, THEY have sex on a rotten log. Real return to form for Kimberly Jennifer, I enjoyed this much more having read the sequel and seen where many of the suggestions here develop into full-blown notions in the next book.

Golden Kamuy vol 27 - Satoru Noda trans. John Werry Oh THATS the Golden Kamuy??

Golden Kamuy vol 28 - Satoru Noda trans. John Werry Glad that Sugimoto was always like this. You wonder, in a story about colonialism, if the main character who had to get there on a boat, is recapitulating a desire for an undiminished world where he’s a moral arbiter. No he’s always been like this.

Golden Kamuy vol 29 - Satoru Noda trans. John Werry Star forts forever

Golden Kamuy vol 30 - Satoru Noda trans. John Werry No wait. COMBINED ARMS FOREVER.

Golden Kamuy vol 31 - Satoru Noda trans. John Werry Consistently the best part of this series have been the splash pages of scenery. I have loved marveling upon them. A great recommendation by @tautline-hitch thank you!

All the White Spaces - Ally Wilkes What if RF Scott had command of the Elephant Island boats, and also grief was a monster that wanted to kill kill kill. Do you think Roland Huntford has watched The Terror.

[aller-geez]

Get to know: Vaelyn (Vee) Hawthorne

29 // he/him // pangreysexual // Lion Shifter

Full name: Vaelyn Hawthorne

Nickname: Vee

Date Of Birth: August 9th

Big Three: Leo 🌞 Gemini 🌙 Taurus ↗️

Physical Appearance —

Age: 29

Eye Color: pale blue green

Hair Color: a dark green that’s almost black, with a yellow strip on the right side

Weight: 178 lbs

Height: 6’2

Race: Lion Shifter

Distinguishing Marks or Characteristics: His sharp facial features give him an air of effortless confidence, though they often betray his inner turmoil when his composure slips. The red markings under his eyes as well as his white pupils glow softly when he uses his Oblivion’s Grasp ability. Wears a red piece of medical tape across his nose.

Personality —

Greatest Strength: Vee’s ability to channel raw emotion and energy into his music is unparalleled. He has an innate knack for blending genres and creating compelling, evocative tracks that captivate his audience. His illusions are also a terrifyingly effective weapon, making him a formidable opponent in combat or manipulation.

Greatest Weakness: The early stages of Oblivion Madness are taking a toll on Vee’s psyche. His paranoia, hallucinations, and blackouts make it difficult for him to trust anyone, including himself. His fear of failure also drives him to push himself too hard, exacerbating his condition.

Soft Spot: Despite his outward arrogance, Vee has a surprising compassion for those who feel out of place or misunderstood. He gravitates toward people who remind him of himself before his life spiraled out of control.

Mannerisms:

-His allergies and weak immune system mean he’s almost always sniffling or rubbing at his nose, though he tries to hide it out of embarrassment.

-Vee frequently flips his hair out of his face, a subconscious habit that accentuates his theatrical flair.

-often taps his fingers rhythmically on any surface, whether he’s thinking, nervous, or simply bored—his musical instincts never seem to rest.

Miscellaneous Trivia —

Signature Eye Contact: Vee’s illusion ability relies on eye contact, which makes his intense azure gaze both captivating and intimidating. He unconsciously avoids prolonged eye contact in casual settings to avoid making people uneasy.

Morning Ritual: Despite his chaotic nature, Vee has a surprisingly consistent morning routine involving a cup of overly sweetened coffee and 20 minutes of aggressive guitar shredding.

Oblivion Tells: During moments of high stress, his abilities sometimes activate unintentionally, causing faint, smoke-like shadows to coil around him.

Nervous Habit: Vee often drums his fingers on surfaces or taps his foot when he's deep in thought or agitated, sometimes humming riffs under his breath.

Childhood Dream: Before pursuing music, Vee wanted to be an archaeologist, inspired by his love for history and stories of powerful artifacts

Sneeze Content —

ALLERGIES

Yes, Vee has allergies, and they are both a source of physical discomfort and deep personal embarrassment. He is particularly sensitive to dust, mold, and seasonal allergens like pollen, which can set off sneezing fits that are rapid, intense, and impossible to ignore. His photic sneeze reflex—sneezing triggered by bright light—makes things even worse, as looking at a light source to fight off a tickle often backfires spectacularly.

How severe are they?

Vee’s allergies range from moderate to severe depending on the trigger:

Dust and Mold: These are the most debilitating. If he’s exposed for too long, he’ll not only sneeze uncontrollably but also experience itchy, watery eyes and congestion that can last hours.

Pollen/Seasonal Allergies: They’re milder than dust and mold but still enough to make him miserable, especially during spring.

Do they get sick often?

Yes, Vee gets sick very often due to his poor immune system, which has plagued him since childhood. Even mild colds can hit him harder than they would most people.

How bad is it usually?

Vee’s illnesses are usually severe and drawn out, including symptoms like:

High fevers that leave him delirious or bedridden.

Persistent, racking coughs that last weeks.

Stuffy or runny nose so relentless that he keeps tissues within arm’s reach at all times.

Voice hoarseness from excessive sneezing or throat irritation.

Do they stifle?

Vee rarely stifles his sneezes. He finds the sensation uncomfortable and counterproductive, often leaving him unsatisfied or worsening the fit. Additionally, the sheer force of his sneezes makes stifling nearly impossible, especially by the time he reaches the final sneeze of a fit. He’s learned to let them out, accepting that his sneezes are dramatic and impossible to suppress. However, in formal situations where he feels pressured to be discreet, he may attempt to hold back the first sneeze—usually with limited success, as it only seems to make the subsequent ones more explosive.

How loud are their sneezes?

Vee’s sneezes are extremely loud and dramatic. They start out rapid-fire, becoming progressively weaker and higher-pitched, but the final sneeze in his fit always explodes out of him like a roar. Even in a crowded area, his sneezes draw attention, much to his embarrassment.

What do they sneeze into?

Vee almost always sneezes against his wrist or into his elbow, quickly bringing his arm up to stifle the force and avoid drawing too much attention. However, his sneezes are so rapid-fire and powerful that by the final sneeze of a fit, he often drops his arm, unable to maintain his composure, and sneezes freely toward the floor with sheer force.

How often do they sneeze?

Vee sneezes occasionally on most days, usually when exposed to specific triggers like dust, mold, or seasonal allergens. On a normal day, he might sneeze a couple of times in the morning and once or twice throughout the afternoon. However, if he's in a dusty venue, a moldy building, or during allergy season, the frequency increases significantly, and he might have sneezing fits every 10 to 15 minutes.

How many times do they sneeze in a fit?

Vee always sneezes in rapid-fire fits of at least 4 to 6 sneezes. These fits are almost rhythmic, with each sneeze becoming weaker and shorter until he runs out of breath, forcing him to gasp deeply before the final, thunderous sneeze.

Do they have build-ups or are they sudden?

Vee’s sneezes almost always have a dramatic build-up. His breath will hitch visibly, his nostrils twitching and flaring, as he fans a hand in front of his face or tilts his head toward a light source to coax the sneeze out.

Example:
“Hehh… hihh!... hehh-hehh!...” (pause, trembling) “Hh’ISH!-iSHh! ish!-shh! ……. HH’EISSHHhh’iew!”

Do they sneeze in public?

Yes, and he hates it. While he tries to suppress the volume by covering or turning away, the fits are too intense to completely mask. He avoids public places when his allergies are bad, but sometimes he can’t help it—especially in crowded, dusty venues like concert halls or old buildings.

Some examples of their sneezes?

eishh!-ishh!-ish!-’shh!... —hehhHH-EESSSHHHhhuh!

Sneeze Trivia:

Vee’s sneezes are as dramatic and intense as his personality. They always come in rapid, breathless bursts, leaving him visibly winded by the end. The sneezes start with sharp, rapid-fire expulsions—short, clipped sounds that grow progressively weaker and higher-pitched as his lungs run out of air. The final sneeze always erupts with a thunderous force, his entire body jerking forward as though the sneeze has physically knocked the air out of him. It's impossible to ignore and has a way of startling everyone nearby, including himself.

Vee has a habit of announcing when he’s about to sneeze, regardless of the situation. Whether in casual conversation or mid-performance, you can expect a rushed, “Ah, hang on—gonna sneeze—!” as his hand flutters dramatically in front of his face. His photic sneeze reflex kicks in almost instinctively, his blue green eyes darting to the nearest light source as his breath hitches and his head tilts back.

Vee’s stubborn personality often leads him to try and power through his sneezes in conversation, much to everyone’s amusement. His voice gets progressively more breathy and strained as the sneezes take over, words breaking apart until they’re nothing but unintelligible gasps before the fit finally erupts and silences him. He’ll pick up the conversation exactly where he left off, usually with a sheepish sniffle and a dry remark about how obnoxious his sneezes are.

Though he outwardly tries to appear unaffected, Vee secretly doesn’t mind being taken care of when he’s sick. Having someone fuss over him, bring him tea, or bless him after his sneezes makes him feel a little less like the universe is against him. Of course, he’ll never admit this—it’s far too vulnerable for someone like him—but his softened expression and quiet gratitude in those moments say it all.

Backstory —

Vaelyn Hawthorne was born into a family of immense wealth and influence, known across Hiraeth for their bloodline ability, Oblivion's Grasp. This dark power allowed them to trap others in nightmarish illusions, manipulating their perception of time and reality. It was a gift that brought both prestige and fear, as its overuse often led to a degenerative mental condition known as Oblivion Madness. Despite this grim legacy, Vee grew up carefree, scoffing at the "curse" that had consumed his ancestors. 
The Hawthornes were close allies of the Fangs, and Vaelyn's childhood was filled with family gatherings and lavish political events where the two families mingled. From the moment Rexar and Vaelyn met, they were inseparable. Whether they were causing mischief at Fang barbecues or sneaking off during formal dinners, the two became known for their chaotic camaraderie. Their shared love of music deepened their bond, and as teenagers, they decided to channel their energy into starting a band: Toad Biscuit.

The band began as a joke—a way for Rexar and Vee to escape their family legacies and just have fun. However, their charisma and musical talent quickly gained traction, and what started as a hobby turned into a full-fledged career. Vee’s stage presence was electric, and his charm drew fans in droves. With Rexar's infectious energy and Vee's intense magnetism, the duo became a sensation, rocketing Toad Biscuit into fame.
Despite their success, cracks began to form beneath the surface. Vee’s pride in his abilities and his dismissive attitude toward his family’s warnings about Oblivion Madness set him on a dangerous path. His insistence on pushing his limits caused tension between him and Rexar, leading to more frequent arguments.

By the time Vee reached his early 20s, he began experiencing the early symptoms of Oblivion Madness. It started small: whispers in the dark, shadowy figures in his peripheral vision. But as time went on, the auditory and visual hallucinations grew more vivid, and Vee’s paranoia began to consume him. Still, his cocky nature wouldn’t allow him to admit that he was spiraling. Instead, he doubled down on using his abilities, determined to prove that he was different from his ancestors.
Rexar noticed the change in his best friend, but every attempt to talk to him was met with defensiveness or outright hostility. The arguments between them became explosive, leaving both hurt and frustrated. Vee's paranoia made him believe that even Rexar was against him, and he started pulling away, isolating himself from everyone who cared about him.

On the day of Toad Biscuit’s ill-fated concert, Vee arrived late, disheveled and clearly not himself. He was lost in a deep state of psychosis, haunted by a guttural voice that hissed incessantly about the "end of days." Throughout the performance, his erratic behavior put Rexar on edge. When Vee dropped his guitar pick mid-song, Rexar covered for him, but the tension was palpable.

Unbeknownst to Rexar, Vee had planned a surprise pyrotechnic effect as an "ace in the hole" for their show. In his deteriorating mental state, he had failed to install the device correctly. Trying to save face after fumbling his performance, Vee activated the pyrotechnics to distract the audience. The result was catastrophic—a massive fire engulfed the venue, leading to the deaths of three people. 
Amid the smoke and chaos, Rexar saw Vee wandering aimlessly, trapped in a deep psychotic episode known as a Blight. In his mind, Vee was fleeing from Oblivion, the manifestation of his worst fears. Rexar tried to reach him, but Vee disappeared into the night.

When Vee snapped back to reality the next day, he was horrified to learn of the fire and its consequences. Reading Rexar's frantic text messages and piecing together the damage he had caused, the weight of his actions was unbearable. Rather than face Rexar or his family, Vee went into hiding, abandoning everything he had built with Toad Biscuit. 
Unable to completely leave his passion for music behind, Vee reentered the industry under the pseudonym VE-NUMB. As a faceless producer, he crafted beats and collaborated with artists anonymously, pouring his pain and regret into his work. Though he avoided the public eye, his influence in the music scene grew, and his hauntingly beautiful compositions earned him a cult following.


Vee’s betrayal and disappearance left a permanent scar on Rexar and the Fangs. For Vee, it marked the beginning of a life spent in the shadows, grappling with the remnants of his humanity and the curse of Oblivion Madness. Though he never reached out to Rexar again, his music serves as a quiet homage to their friendship and the dreams they once shared

Reference Sheet —

[pacificwaternymph]

Empires smp s2 Western AU

Lizzie is the town mayor who everyone knows is corrupt and definitely involved in some underhanded dealings, but nothing ever really gets done about it because her little brother Jimmy is the exasperated sheriff who keeps burning all the reports on her. He doesn't know how much longer he can keep doing this for her, but what is he going to do? That's his sister.

Most of the stuff Lizzie does under the table is really pretty harmless anyway, or at the very least doesn't affect the people of the town much, so they're mostly content to let her do whatever.

Sausage and Joel are couple who married for tax benefits, and accidentally adopted Hermes when they found him living under their porch like some kind of raccoon.

Lizzie takes great pride in being the fun "aunt" who teaches him swears and feeds him more sugar than he probably should have. She also won't stop flirting with Joel whenever she gets the chance.

"Aunt Lizzie taught me about tax fraud today!"

"Why does the mayor need to know how to commit tax fraud?"

Scott is the bartender with a really complicated, off and on relationship with Jimmy. It basically consists of flirting his way out of trouble because he's definitely a dealer in the black market and a lot of sketchy shit goes down at his bar.

Katherine is the daughter of the wealthiest man in town who moonlights as a vigilante, and Shelby is the town doctor who she keeps visiting in order to patch up the injuries she gets while out at night. Not so surprisingly, they are both crushing hard on one another.

Joey is a bandit whom Katherine regularly crosses paths with. He's a bit infatuated with her even though she is not interested in the slightest.

False is a reclusive engineer whose projects are... questionable at best. Everyone has just kind of learned to ignore the strange explosive sounds coming from her house.

Oli is a musician who plays at Scott's bar. Jimmy is convinced there is something up with that guy but he is in fact, not involved in the previously mentioned sketchy shit at all. He's shockingly oblivious to all of it, actually.

Fwhip is the town's deputy who really doesn't like Jimmy. They tolerate each other for the sake of their work but things tend to get complicated when you have to work with your ex-boyfriend on a daily basis. They try to avoid one another whenever possible.

Gem is a farmer who ran away from wealthy parents because she got bored with that life. She also works at a beekeeper. Basically the entire town's only food source.

Pixlriffs is an archaeologist who came out to study a new dig site and then realized that there were so many fossils out here he could spend the rest of his life here without running out. Whenever he's not out digging he's running the local library. Has the weirdest, most random collection of hyperspecific knowledge.

[quibbs126]

I’ve just been drawing this today because I’m bored

I don’t think I can have free days anymore, because I end up feeling brain dead during them and can’t work on the schoolwork I know I need to do, and by the end of the day I feel guilty about wasting the day despite literally not being able to do anything actually productive

But anyways, this. I mentioned Fantasy Life earlier today, and I have a save file where put Ceres from Evoland 2 in Fantasy Life. I actually originally made this save file some months ago, but I never really played it, leaving it once I found the first save point I could

I only realize now this is like that time I put Descole into Stardew Valley. Hm

I still haven’t gotten much of anywhere in the game, I only just started the Carpenter story. And to be honest, I’m not sure I want to continue because I kind of just want my own character in Fantasy Life, but also I don’t know how to make that. So maybe I’ll just continue with Ceres and see where it goes, or I’ll just delete it

But out of boredom, I wanted to draw her from the game regardless

So the design here is what she looks like in the game, or as close as I made it. For various reasons, including the fact that I can’t add horns or non-human skin tones to my character, or have bicolor hair, I made some changes. Her hair probably also isn’t the most accurate hair I could have given her to her original, but I think it looks good on her

Also as you may notice, I don’t entirely know how I should draw her, whether I should be closer to the game or my style

I’m debating whether in my drawings I should stick to the Fantasy Life skin tone or give her the blue she canonically has. I flip flop on which I prefer

I only realized when I was looking at my other Evoland 2 art how wildly different this color palette is, and it’s probably significantly brighter. I mean for this I was eyeballing the colors from my 3DS’s screen, while I color pick from the Evoland 2 sprites, so maybe that’s a factor

Edit: I am now seeing it on a computer screen, and it looks even more different. Like that hair straight up just looks blue, I can't see any purple

But yeah, I really didn’t know what Life to give her when I made her, I just picked Carpenter because I haven’t done that one in a while. Maybe Alchemist would have been best, but I really don’t know. It doesn’t help that Ceres doesn’t have much of a personality I can make a decision based on. Though in all fairness, I’m not entirely sure what I’d make the other characters either

I’d say Fina either Woodcutter or Hunter, Menos probably a Paladin? (Just not for Castele specifically) Kuro I’d say Mercenary or potentially Alchemist works (though in terms of weapons Menos and Kuro should probably switch), and for Velvet I don’t really know, maybe Miner, Alchemist or even Magician? I don’t know, as far as I can remember, nothing fits cleanly with “archaeologist”

But anyways, maybe if I continue with this, I can basically make up my own personality for Ceres, so I should continue, but I don’t know if I’m motivated enough to do so. We’ll see. Take this in the meantime I suppose. It isn’t much of anything, but it is a thing

Oh also one more thing I forgot but can’t fit elsewhere: I think the storyline idea for Ceres here is that she ended up here post-Evoland 2, but she doesn’t really remember getting here at all, thinking she’s just been in Castele her whole life, until she starts slowly realizing things don’t add up. She isn’t from this game though, especially since I don’t think demons exist to explain why she’s blue

[aetherdoesthings]

Hello! I'm diving into your posts and everything is so lovely!

So I'd like to know if you're interested in writing about a reader who isn't sure why they were recruited, since they don't participate in the battles and are an ordinary person; The reader is always trying to prove their worth to their romantic interest in some way and sees this opportunity when, alone on the boat, other pirates invade the vessel and deciding that this was the moment, the reader tries to fight all of them and gets very hurt.

It may sound a bit confusing but the main idea would be something like "I want it, I get it", giving the idea that the reader was simply recruited by the cliché of love at first sight.

It's okay if you turn down the idea, find it boring, or just don't respond at all! I just thought it would be a cool and very emotional idea, cute confession and with a unique touch of each character, you know?

Anyway, thanks for reading and have a great day/night! ♡

R~

(the characters in question would be Zoro, Luffy and Sanji)

hello R~! i chose to only write for zoro bc i've been writing sanji a lot and i haven't really done a lot of zoro fics, so yeah! apologies if you wanted luffy or sanji!

forethoughts: kinda rushed, it's 1am and i have to wake up at 7 tomorrow 😭. this req will be a mixture of headcanons (bullet points) and text. also just as a question has any of y'all listened to ado before?

notes: gn!reader, zoro that doesn't know how to show emotions but being blunt about it.

You really had no idea what your life would become when a scrawny boy walked up to you and asked you to join his pirate crew. No reason at all, just ‘hey join my crew’.

You were an ordinary person. That’s all. Can’t fight, can’t do anything, really. But you did so anyways, since maybe life on a ship would be much better.

You tried to get along with the crew and show your worth, but there wasn’t anything you could really do. There were already three very formidable fighters, a navigator, an archaeologist, a craftsman and snipe, a shipwright, all the jobs were already taken. So what could you do?

Thank God Luffy always called you to play tag with him and Usopp and Chopper, either having you chase them around, or find them in a game of hide and seek.

But one day, while the Straw Hats were exploring an island, you were tasked to guard the ship. You tried your best, hoping no pirates would come to attack you, but you had the worst luck in the world.

A band of pirates came towards the Sunny, and got on board. You had no experience in fighting at all, except for a couple of times Zoro would drag you into the gym to practice your punches and increase your strength. You never asked why, he just forced you to put on boxing gloves and begin hitting a punching bag. 

You knew that if you managed to hold them off, you could prove your worth to the Straw Hats, so you balled your fists and striked at a pirate.

You get knocked out and beaten into a blood pulp within an instance, 

Fortunately the Straw Hats came back early, and quickly subdued all the pirates and recovered anything stolen, as Chopper rushed to take you back to the infirmary.

When you gained consciousness, you saw a green haired man standing next to your bed, his arms folded.

There wasn’t anyone else in the room. Just you and the swordsman.

“Zoro?” You murmur.

“How do you feel?” He asked.

“My body hurts…” You try to sit up, before getting stopped by a blade.

“Move and I’ll slice your throat.” Zoro looked at you, his eyes narrowing. You lied back down on the bed, looking at the swordsman as he sheathed his sword.

“Where’s everyone else?”

“Fixing the ship and recovering everything.”

You felt guilt filling your heart, as you frowned. “I’m sorry… I really tried… I just can’t fight… I’m not good at fighting… I’m sorry…”

“You idiot, don’t be sorry. And don’t even think about moving.” The swordsman snapped. But underneath his words, you can tell his voice was shaking. You stay still, lying down on the bed.

“Why did Luffy recruit me? I’m just some ordinary person. I can’t even fight. I can’t even do anything…”

“That’s bullshit.”

“I’m sorry?”

“That’s bullshit. You’re not ordinary. You can do things.”

“But I can’t fight…”

“You don’t need to know how to fight to be on this crew.” Zoro looked at you intensely. “You’re already doing enough on this ship.”

“What could you possibly mean by that?”

“You’re doing enough on this ship by being on this ship.”

“You’re confusing me.”

“I like you, hear me? I love you a lot.” Zoro gripped onto your chin tightly, looking at you in the eyes. “I saw you on that island while back. It was like love at first sight. And when I want something, I’ll get it. So I got Luffy to let you join.”

“Wait, what?!  You like me?”

“Yes, I do.” Zoro looks at you. “So don’t ever dare call yourself useless. You have a use.”

“Being your girlfriend?”

“Mhm. Whatever I want, I always get it.”

Life was certainly going to get interesting for you now.

[that-gay-jedi]

Most of what I want to know about ancient history are the absolute minutiae of everyday life for all the most ordinary types of people but not only are there so many physical environments wherein mostly only the artifacts of wealth and prestige survived intact, but what historians and archaeologists and so on DO know seems to have more trouble finding its way into books for laypeople because it's considered either too boring or too advanced to bring to the masses. Which is frustrating to my special interested autistic ass but it's also kind of funny in a way bc if several thousand years from now there are people trying to study our asses they might be stuck with like only remnants of books from the bestseller lists and endless syndicated news about just a few hundred national leaders and celebrities doing the same old shit for decades and wading desperately through it hungry for the occasional insight when they somehow recover your grocery list you saved in Samsung Notes in 2028 or the rare archeological gem of some depressed bachelor's work-from-home bedroom-office that wasn't rendered largely un-study-able by hurricanes and flooding during the Fourth World War or someshit

[sincerely-sofie]

What happens to kip after the story of the present is a gift? Honestly wish for more Kip posts too

Kip, after the events of the TPiaG fanfic, goes on a number of expeditions with his archaeological team and eventually encounters a young orphaned yamask whom he takes in during one expedition. On the expedition after that, he unearths and unintentionally reactivates a sigilyph construct who swears to protect him and his daughter as payment for the life debt she garnered. He continues his research and proposals based on the research he did on the latter archaeological expedition, and takes a special interest in humans as a topic of study, eventually spearheading a project that researched the ruins of a human bunker. He eventually garners an injury during one expedition that results in him having a permanent limp and occasionally needing to use a cane, decides to pivot his career once again from a researcher who goes on digs and expeditions to a professor who teaches history to young scholars and is available as an intellectual resource / consultant and infrequent expedition partner for his fellow archaeologists.

He misses going on expeditions, but teaching is a lot better of a fit for his preferred lifestyle. Lucky thrives with the consistency of their routine whenever they’re home in Treasure Town, and so does he. Plus, he loves all of his students and helping them learn about the wonders (and horrors) of the past. His old archaeologist team members visit him often, and they have a heck of a good time catching up whenever they do. Acai especially keeps in touch, and always sends mountains of letters between in-person visits. Spearow is less of a frequent letter-writer, but sends Kip a lot of questions seeking his thoughts and advice whenever she does. Igni sends excerpts of recipe books he likes, and Kip has a cookbook of his own made up from the copied-down pages of recipes Igni thinks he, Lucky, and Sen would like and mails to him.

Kip pays Twig and her household frequent visits, and absolutely loves Opal, Spindle, and Ruby. He gets along really great with Spindle in particular, and Twig is super grateful that he’s helped the kid explore possibilities for his future with enthusiasm instead of anxiety. Spindle is scared there’s no options out there for him and is scared to commit to the wrong choice, but Kip, all too familiar with the feeling, helps him understand that he can always change his mind later.

Kip is probably the hardest character to script content for in TPiaG beyond occasional gags— he’s well-adjusted and has recovered from his trauma very well, which doesn’t make for especially interesting writing. Living a quiet, simple life he’s very content with and brings him a lot of satisfaction is a bit dull from a narrative perspective, after all! Sure, he hates leaving Lucky home alone and is very aware of the painfully faded memory of the last night he saw his parents whenever he does so, but ultimately he doesn’t let that stop him from being a normal person who has to go attend meetings on his own every so often. I love this guy, but he’s tricky to make interesting! He’s boring in all the happiest ways possible :>

[blueiscoool]

Terracotta Figurines Found During Excavations at Pompeii

Archaeologists have unearthed 13 terracotta figurines during excavations of a domus at Pompeii.

Pompeii was a Roman city, located in the modern commune of Pompeii near Naples, in the Campania region of Italy.

Pompeii, along with the Roman town of Herculaneum, were buried under 4 to 6 metres of volcanic ash and pumice during the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in AD 79.

The Vesuvian eruption spewed forth a deadly cloud of super-heated tephra and gases to a height of 33 km, ejecting molten rock, pulverised pumice, and hot ash at 1.5 million tons per second, ultimately releasing 100,000 times the thermal energy of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Recent excavations of a domus adjacent to the “House of Leda and the Swan” along the Via del Vesuvio have revealed 13 terracotta figurines measuring around 15 centimetres in height.

According to the researchers, the figurines may be associated with Cybele and Attis, a telling of the story of the Phrygian great mother goddess’s tragic love for a mortal.

Attis, was unaware of the love Cybele bore him, and in time fell in love with the daughter of the king of Pessinus. Consumed by jealousy, Cybele drove Attis to madness, leading him to castrate himself and tragically end his life at the base of a pine tree.

The figurines where found in what was likely the decorated atrium within the domus, where archaeologists also uncovered the head of a clay rooster and a glass pine cone.

Ongoing works at the House of Leda (first excavated between 2018 and 2019) have also revealed a finely frescoed room with roundels containing depictions of female faces, in addition to two further domus dwellings to the north and south of Leda’s house.

[scotianostra]

April 27th 1794 saw the death of James Bruce, the explorer at Larbert.

At six feet four inches in height, James Bruce was an impressive figure. An explorer, archaeologist and brilliant linguist, he travelled across North Africa, Crete, Syria, Egypt and Ethiopia He is best known for his exploration of the sources of the Nile, reaching the headstream of the Blue Nile in 1770.

Some historians believe that Bruce, while being recognised for finding the source of the Nile, he was actually in Africa on a secret personal mission to Ethiopia to locate a sacred religious relic, the Ark of the Covenant.

The explorer apparently charmed and gifted his way through a land usually hostile to foreigners. On his black horse Mizra, Persian for ‘scholar’, he trekked across treacherous terrain and Ethiopia’s flat-topped mountains. He brought a telescope so large it required six men to carry it.

Bruce arrived at Ethiopia’s imperial capital Gondar during a smallpox epidemic. His knowledge of medicine gained him entry to the court – where he would remain for almost a year.

James Bruce had relationships with many women in Ethiopia, including the Princess Esther. He later described this period as “one of the happiest moments of my life”.

At court, Bruce boasted of his own lineage, declaring:

“My ancestors were the kings of the country in which I was born, and to be ranked among the greatest and most glorious that ever bore the title of king.”

This was not just him boasting, his family were indeed descendants to King Robert.

On returning to London Bruce’s tales of Ethiopia, recounted at dinner parties and gossiped about in letters, were met with disbelief. He became a figure of ridicule, mocked by contemporaries such as Samuel Johnson and James Boswell. Ultimately, he would be laughed out of London.

There were, perhaps, ulterior motives for Bruce’s rejection by ‘polite’ society. In her book Plotting To Stop the British Slave Trade: James Bruce and His Secret Mission to Africa, Jane Aptekar Reeve reveals that Bruce belonged to a secret network of British slave trade abolitionists.

The Scottish cartoonist Issac Cruikshank made James Bruce a caricature, depicting his story of the “Abyssinian Breakfast”, in disbelief of Bruce’s claims that Ethiopians took live cuts of meat from cattle. This was later proven to be true, as indeed were his other stories that saw him ridiculed.

For a man who must have been in grave dangers during his adventures in Africa, he had an inglorious death, he fell down some stairs in 1793 and died at his home in Kinnaird, and is buried in a graveyard I visit now and them at Larbert Old churchyard near Falkirk.

Pics are of the cartoon I mentioned, and his rather unusual memorial at Larbert, which I read last year id due to be restored soon, hopefully.

Much more on the man here https://www.historic-uk.com/.../HistoryofSco.../James-Bruce/

[yandere-wishes]

With who would you ship yourself in MHA? 👀

@yandere-romanticaa

Omg, it's been a hot minute since I dabbled in MHA… But let me crack open the vault real quick.

So first off, and this should be obvious…

Dabi! The reason I started the show in the first place!! This boy's Frankenstein aesthetic had me swooning from the moment I saw a GIF of him!! And unconventional colored flames that probably symbolize a deep-seated trauma!! YES!! I honestly think we would make a good couple, kinda like Frankenstein and his bride (in a romanticized way), we'd have the Goth BF x Lolita GF vibes which are a bonus. I also get the inkling we'd share the same taste in music (Chase Atlantic, Neighborhood, Mr.Kitty)

Shigaraki is next and tbh I don't really know when I feel for him. Just that at one point he was all I could think about. I think it's something about his twisted legacy and conflicting nature that has rendered him into a decaying amalgamation of hate and misplaced ambitions, that really gets a girl's heart beating out of her chest, you know? He was always like an odd species that I came across in the backyard one day and had to analyze under a microscope. Desperate to learn his fundamentals, to unravel his soul. Understand him in the same way an archaeologist longs to understand the past.

I think our love is something like that of an obsessive scientist and her new discovery. Chaotic and all-consuming yet so frail and feeble to onlookers. A tame fire that leaves one utterly devoured, yet still longing for more. I think we'd be pretty good for each other.

NINE! He appeared in one movie and I was SO obsessed with him!! I had a countdown for when his movie would release. I remember for my 16th birthday we went to the fancy movie theater in town just to watch this guy on the big screen. And then all my friends burst out laughing when he died at the end. Ultimately my 2 month long craze over him died in that dark movie theater. TBH I don't really think we'd make a good couple, maybe just a casual fling or some hookups when life gets tough/boring. Nothing serious yet still a fundamental part of each other's lives.

Finally, we have Bakugo, the love-hate relationship I had with this guy was crazy. I was so madly in love with him one minute and the other I just wanted to suffocate him!! IDK what it was he was just so irritating and lovable at the same time. Another relationship that wouldn't work out. I don't even think he'd notice me in school and I'd just be in the corner secretly hating him because he has the perfect life. Popular, lots of friends, good grades. Even if we were in UA together I still don't think we'd end up together. Maybe a slight nod of acknowledgment in the halls one time when he's in a particularly good mood. But that's about it.

Now that I'm revisiting my tween crushes, I got a fun little au for Bakugo.

Imagine being Pro-Hero Bakugo's mistress. Just his girl on the side. For whatever reason you can't be together in public, you'd ruin each other's images. I think the reader kinda wants to ruin Bakugo's life just because she hated him in middle/high school. But Bakugo becomes too infatuated with her to let her leave him. Somehow they both end up destroying each other's lives. Yet ultimately Bakougou couldn't be happier.

This was such a long awnser🤣🤣

[mehbzz]

Lilies

A dream I had. Original Fiction

18+ Original M!Character, Original F!Character x F!reader. No names.

Abusive ExHusband, Past Noncon, incestuous vibes if you squint. Archaeologist couple? Nothing explicit. PWP

F!reader's new girlfriend give Lara Croft vibes, Probably inspired by the amount of Tomb Raider I've been playing!

-------------------------------------------------------

"Promise me."

She ignores you, fingers tapping against the steering wheel as she stares at the house.

"Baby, promise me."

"You shouldn't have come."

"We've been divorced over a year. I've moved on, he's-," you waver, suddenly uncertain. "Moved on."

"You still shouldn't have come. I shouldn't have let you come."

You hum, a little hurt but you don't exactly disagree with the sentiment, you probably shouldn’t have come. Either way you couldn't let her walk into his home without you. You're not even too sure why, a little fear for her safety, and maybe a little paranoia that he'd tell her something about you, that he'd slip some little lie into her brain that would fester and grow and he'd manage to ruin something  yet again for you.

She looks at you when you stay quiet and you give her weak smile in return.

"You need his research right? So we pretend he's nothing more than another history buff with much needed resources. It's a normal everyday activity for us. I always come with you on these trips." You think you over did the attempt at reassuring her with the way her frown deepens. 

"Not when it's your psychopathic ex-husband," she hisses and you are momentarily taken aback by the venom in her words. "You shouldn't be here, this was a stupid idea. We should have gone with our usual plan B."

"You need it, and your plan B is-," You trail off when her fingers twitch towards the keys still in the ignition. "Babe, breaking and entering my "psychopathic" ex husbands house is an even worse idea you know." You force some levity in to your voice and try to relax as she lets her hand drop. 

"How can you be so calm about this?"

You shrug, you're not. At all. Butterflies had been running rampant ever since she'd told you she needed to meet with him. Another horrid joke in a long list of running jokes that the universe insisted on playing on you. The one person she needed to help her with this expedition was the one person you never wanted to see again. 

"I should be reassuring you, not the other way around." Her fingers intertwine with yours. "Are you OK? Be honest."

"I'll be fine." Unsure if you are being honest or not. "This is important to you and he's no longer a part of my life is he?" you tighten your grip, fingers squeezing her own. "It's an unfortunate fleeting passing of orbits, nothing more."

"You're important to me. You can stay in the car?" She breaks the grip you have on her to shove the car keys into your hands. "Or further down the road? It'll be quick boring pleasantries, a trip to his office and then I'll be out."

The mention of his office sends a chill down your spine, a flicker of well locked away memories that you shove quickly back down, and although your brain is screaming at you to agree with her you shake your head. "I'll be fine, really." you glance at the front door again before leaning in to press a quick kiss to her mouth. "Let's go."

Not much had changed, the decor was mostly the same, even the sickly smell of lilies was the same. The familiarity leaving you clinging to her hand and feeling rather nauseous as you followed the butler into the living room. 

Although the sight of his mother sat on the sofa with a glass of wine in her hand was enough of shock for you to immediately drop Her hand, clasping your hands in front of you as old repeated apologies tried to force themselves out of your mouth.

"Welcome, the Adventurers I presume?" She barely looks at the two of you, using her wine glass to gesture towards the sofa opposite her. "Take a seat, He'll be down in a minute."

Her gaze flickers between the two of you, although she shows no sign of recognition or interest in you, her gaze resting on Her instead. You know what comes next from the way her lips go thin, eyes narrowing as she raises one eyebrow. She's not impressed with what she sees and your mind struggles to come up with something to say to interrupt the icy insult that was about to be thrown in your lovers direction. 

"Sorry to keep you waiting," 

Your heart feels like it's stopped dead and still beating at a hundred miles an hour at the same time. You thought you were prepared for this, you thought you could handle it, you were so so wrong. "Its a pleasure to meet you in person."

"Likewise," she stands, neatly sidestepping in front of you in an attempt to shield you. " although I regret this must be a quick visit, we have a flight to catch in an hour."

A lie, but he accepts it readily. "Of course." as much as you wanted to stay hiding behind her it was silly, childish but the brief moment granted to you while they briefly chat allows you to collect yourself. You could do this. You stood with a gentle touch to her elbow, his gaze flickering to you as your own automatically drops.

"It is wonderful to see you again, you are looking well."

There's nothing but bland politeness in his tone, but you still can't bring yourself to look him in the eye, one of his lessons you obviously haven't managed to force out of yourself yet.

"Thank you." Your tongue fails you then, unsure what to say next and unwilling to engage him in conversation.

There's a moment of awkward silence and you can feel his gaze on you. You know him well enough to know he's enjoying your discomfort even if he doesn't outwardly show it. The silence lingers long enough for her shoulders to tense, her head tilting slightly in that way she does when she senses a threat. "Shall we? We really are short on time."

You miss what he says in response, attention focused on her as she turn back to you with a whispered stay here. You're grateful but also don't want to, left in the silent room with his Mother of all people.

You sit back down slowly, ignoring her gaze and pretending to take in the various art work on the walls. Foolishly trying to sit so perfectly still that maybe she'd forget you were there, until you register what is hanging above the fireplace, a small hitch in your breath causing her to follow your gaze.

"Lovely piece isn't it?" She knocks back the rest of her wine in one swallow. "Shame about the artist though."

You can't help but look at her this time. It hadn't been that long really since you'd last seen her but she didn't look any different at all. "My sons ex-wife painted it. Hysterical type, unruly. Whorish." You flinch, and she smiles, too sharp and too cold. "told him he should have burnt it with the rest of your things but he wouldn't listen."

You stand up, trying not to react to her snort of hateful amusement and wander over to the French doors. You bite your lip as you look out over the garden, refusing to rise to her bait. 10 minutes more, maybe 15 if you were unlucky but you could do this.

You close your eyes, deep breaths and slow counting in your head.

"I always thought you had a thing for blondes," His voice again is like an ice cold shock to your nervous system. Flight fight and freeze warring. "But she's cute enough, or is the money?"

"Where is she?" You turn back around, the anger at his insulting tone giving you the confidence to look him straight in the eye this time. You don't like it, hate it even, the way his mismatched eyes seem to look straight through to the core of you.

"In my office, positively giddy over the sketches. I think she forgot I was there."

Shit. That was what youd been afraid of. "I'd best go hurry her along or we'll mis-"

"I have missed you."

"No." You don't know what you mean but it comes out your mouth before you can stop it.

You make a move to side step him but he copies you and you go still, fight or flight starting to give way to freeze.

"She's practically creaming herself over the chance to look at my research," He grins at your disgusted look, cutting you off before you have chance to defend her. "you don't want to ruin it for you do you?"

He's not wrong, you know how absorbed she can get when she's knee deep in research, when she gets close to solving something. "Fine, but maybe you should stay with her, she does tend to have sticky fingers."

You feel a little guilty about the lie but you just want him away from you. You force yourself to feign nonchalance at his presence, turning back towards the garden in an attempt to dismiss him. It was a foolish move, stupid, naive, turning your back on a predator in his own territory.

"What a horrible thing to say about your girlfriend," it's spoken in a mocking tone and too close, way too close. You try to turn and put some distance between you but he is as he's always been, too fast for you. His arm moves, gripping your wrist and pushing your palm up against the cool glass in a vice like grip. His body is warm against your back, not quite touching you. "All those manners I taught you already lost."

"Let go." The bones in your wrist threatening to snap as you try to pull away from his hold, biting the inside of your cheek to stop yourself from whimpering lest in encourage him.

"You know this is my favorite spot in the house?" He is unmoved against your attempts to push him away. "Want to know why?"

"Let me go or i'll scream." You arch your back in a teempt to get a little space enough to wiggle sideways out of his grip but he steps forward instead, pressing you more firmly against the glass.

"Do not let her scream," his mother's voice makes you jolt, you'd forgotten she was there, not that she'd help you now, she never did before. You can just make out her reflection in the window, lying across the sofa as she watches the two of you. "I've only just got rid of this migraine."

"Ask me why Bluebird."

"No. And don't call me that." You want to cry. You should have listened to her and stayed in the car. You feel like an idiot. Willingly putting yourself in this situation. Ypu knew you knew it would happen what he is like

"Ask me or I'll snap your fucking wrist."

"Get off."

He sighs. A deep disappointed sigh that has the instinctive need to apologise flickering back to life in your gut. You won't. You're not that person any more.

"Ask me why I like this spot so much or I'll go back into my office and I'll make sure your pretty little girlfriend cant go travelling again without a wheelchair and a fucking nurse to help her shit."

"Why is this your favorite spot?" The question is out your mouth before he finishes the threat. You can't let him hurt her.

"Disappointing." Its murmured into your hair, his nose running over your ear. The rage and violence in his voice gone in an instant.

"I like this spot because," he pauses, slotting a foot between yours to kick your legs a little further apart. "This is the spot where I fucked you in that tight pretty ass of yours for the very first time."

"You said you were going to take this slow," The tut of disapproval from behind the two of you awakens more locked away memories. His mother, always there, always complaining, disapproving but never helping or leaving. "You'll just break her."

He ignores her and she quietens, the pop of another bottle of wine being opened the only other sound from her that you hear.

"Do you remember bluebird? All those tears, the crying and begging?" He groans. "The memory of it still gets me hard." The hand on your waist slides forward, fingers brushing over the zip of your jeans before resting against your lower abdomen.