#the only time im gonna count word of god as canon is like

[sil-te-plait-tue-moi]

My heart is a bloodhound!

PART 1 ★ PART 2

Quick summary: It happens again, when the year festers into August again and leaves the two of you raw and vulnerable like open wounds.

Word count: 15K… 🤓

Warnings: canon-typical mentions of death, violence and injury (there is mention of like eating people but idk); grief; misogyny; Rust's personality; semi-public SMUTT T-T (MINORS DNI); same level of pretentiousness, maybe a little more, as the first part.

A/N: Holy fuck this sucked the soul out of me (wish Rust Cohle would suck the soul out of I MEAN WHAT), i am super proud of this though!! Went through many iterations and this was the least shit! 🎀🎀🎀 This is technically part two to The idler wheel but can be read by itself too. May or may not write other things for this guy but for the time being, I need a cleanse 😭 BUT please please enjoy and please please interact, i love reading comments and so many lovely people commented on the first part, im gonna do my best to respond to any/all this time 🤘MWAH MWAH

***

It’s difficult to differentiate between the thrill of being left alone here with him and the slow-sinking dread of the implications of that.

With the return of the musk of the summer, those three ruthless, windless, unrelenting months that would seem to drag on for several lifetimes when I was a kid, the memory of where I was last year—and the year before that, and the one before that—hangs brightly in my mind. Stale, not quite dead – so bright. Crawling with mildew.

Stepping into the bar had felt like entering another dimension. Maybe it was the suits that gave it away – every single God-haunted patron—the truckers, the farmers, even the old dog lying at a man’s feet—had turned, sensing foreigners as acutely as the immune system registers a bodily threat. I knew Johansson felt it: that dark pull over the back of the neck. But under Marty’s overconfident, swaggering lead, that winning smile, we soon assimilated. Skin swallowing a bullet.

God forbid you ever leave the town you grew up in. Shame on you if you don’t, though. How sanctimonious of me to change my mind and return after earning a spot amongst the lucky few escapees.

Something in this place still irks me.

At least, in Brooklyn, there was always noise: cries of a baby in the apartment over, the discord of traffic bursting through the streets below, the rush of a crowd, the overlap and slur of private conversations. At least the badness would stare you right in the face; at least people were evil to be evil. At least there were corners where things could hide, where it made sense for shadows to exist: all to explain the paranoia that stalked me.

But here?—it seems so open. Like, if a rare, hot wind would blow through a Louisiana town, it could do so in one straight path, through walls, through people, without ever getting disrupted. Everything is so light in the blazing sun, you can practically hear it: the hum of rays passing over every surface. Nothing should be able to hide. And, at night, with no sun, no rays, there is no noise. Maybe a dog. And ghosts. But perhaps it’s just the area in which I live. 

When Marty started drinking, flirting with the twenty-one-year-old barkeep, Johansson’s face had stiffened. He himself had never even touched a bottle of beer – devil stuff. We shared a look once the blond detective started gabbin’ like an idiot.

“Know what Maggie thinks?” he had laughed, slumping over the sticky table of the booth, big, sweaty palm choking out his drink. “She thinks you might be pissed at me.”

Johansson blinked hard to keep his nose from wrinkling, but, even then, he couldn’t keep from physically cringing away. “Who?” he asked, confused by those hazy, unfocused eyes.

Marty cracked a toothy grin – there was that slight gap between those front two, which had been charming at first and only managed to thoroughly disgust me now in moments like these – and pointed his finger right at me, accusing. “You.”

My stomach churned dangerously at the sight of him.

“Marty,” his partner had drawled, a low warning.

Waved away like a fly.

“Naw, it’s like—you’re on your high fuckin’ horse or somethin’.”

The words were spoken through a laugh, but I knew there was meat behind that so-called good mood. He was one of those people that tended to overcompensate. A mistake, an ill feeling. He liked to point out how I was alone, and often, too, poorly disguised as a passing joke, complete with one of those shit-eating grins that seemed to come so easy to him.

Shouldn’t he have been happy? Not only had he gotten our case, by then, but we’d handed it over with smiles on our damn faces. Nice enough to walk them through the original crime scene, introduce them to the key witnesses. Complicated. We didn’t have to do shit for ‘em, but we did. Hell, even that beer he was clutching to his chest was paid for out of the goodness of my own fuckin’ heart. Who was he to moan about the situation? He was the one who insisted on staying in the middle of butt-fuck nowhere, brushing off any and all pointed questions on whether his family would be missing him at dinner.

“You know, I’d rather you were pissed,” he continued, where, really, I should have just smothered him into silence.

Rust was staring into the side of his flushed face, iron-grey eyes like a drill, like he was thinking the same thing.

“Look, you’re smilin’ at me now, but I sure as hell don’t trust it, buck. You wanna bite my head off, don’t ye?”

Like I ever could have done that.

Though the familiar weight of rage curdled in my chest, I would never admit it to the likes of Martin Hart. When he got like this—jealous, insecure, whiny—I wondered whether it was just a temporary lapse, or if this him, this true him, just lay under the surface all the time.

It wasn’t that fucking hard to plaster on a smile and take what you fucking got – I did it all the time. He could dream of a different life, but this was the one we were dealt. Fact that his grown ass hadn’t accepted that by now twisted violently in my gut. Between the two of us, I was the one that knew this – so why did he get myfucking case?

In my head, I’d let Salter have it, too. How could I ever admit I had an ego? How could I ever admit I had a mind to wrench the teeth out of the sheriff’s fucking gums? 

But I have plenty of practice acting like things don’t bother me, which is why it was so easy to plaster on my amiable smile and laugh, “C’mon, man, you know it’s only ‘cause o’ the workload.” Not that you could comprehend that, lazy fuck. To Marty, my kind’s natural state was amiable—anything otherwise would be a defect—so I’d expected to convince him. “You’ll do right by it, ‘m sure.” 

If he were sober, I know he would’ve bought it – he could convince himself that the way of the world was right and I was only being sweet to be sweet, because he deserved it. 

But Marty was drunk. Piss-drunk, loud drunk. His mind was clumsier than usual, unable to muster the energy to jump points, ignore the evidence, like he did daily. I hoped I had the power—if I had to let the case go, I wanted to at least retain an into its goings-on—but there was only one way to really have power over men like Marty when they were drunk, and I had had no interest in being one of his girls. 

My partner twitched beside me, picking at some spongy, yellow fluff protruding from a thin split in the chocolate-brown fake leather of the booth. He was just as furious as I was beneath his fort of calm.

Marty took a swig of his beer. “She wants you over soon. Maggie. Barbecue or some shit.”

“Maybe you should go home,” Johansson interjected, sharper than intended. If I were him, with his body, with his life, I’d have hit the fucker—long time ago, too. I couldn’t, but Johansson wouldn’t. He didn’t lack the temperament for brutality—I’m not sure anybody does—but, rather, couldn’t justify it to a necessary degree in his head. “I’m going home,” he’d reasoned kindly – he made it sound so easy. “Just let me take you. It’s on my way.”

Itching to leave, to return to the comfort of his wife and his little daughter. Marty had always found Johansson’s fondness of them disingenuous, had disliked my partner as long as they’d worked in the same office. He complained to me once that none of his stories seemed complete. When I asked him what he meant by that, he couldn’t answer—but I knew.

Breath short in my chest, I had half-expected Marty to lunge over the table, scratch Johansson’s eyes out. Only, Rust leaned over, dipping his head down to mutter something quietly into his partner’s ear, which was all flushed red. 

And then he went willingly into Johansson’s car, stumbling through the still, open night into the backseat.

My partner had squeezed my shoulder goodbye – I’m not sure why I didn’t leave with him. Now, I was doomed to leave with Rust. 

There, he sits across from me, smearing the ashy tar of his half-smoked, flaking cigarette over the mottled glass ashtray dragged over to his side of the table, little circles, waves, absent-minded art. Has me transfixed, some hypnotist.

If I look down like this, if I sacrifice the opportunity to look at him, I earn his careful attention: this sits in the back of my idle mind. I’ve been taking advantage of it more and more since summer broke through the sweetness of spring, which has since curdled like milk, sour. His stare drags over my face like fingers – I can almost feel his touch pressing into the softness of my cheek, dragging over the ridge of the orbital bone. 

“You’re okay?” he asks after a couple slowed heartbeats, pulling me out of the honey-pit of my thoughts.

I dart my eyes up, breaking the spell – his observation retreats, clouds, and drifts away to fix on the broken clock on the wall, the one that reads one forty-five at eleven o’ clock.

Primarily, his question irritates me. Nobody asks “are you alright?” imploringly, not unless it concerns themselves and their own wants. Salter had asked me that, right after telling me he was pulling me from my case, and, then, I had thought about crying, just to unsettle him. But what good would that have done? He’d only asked “are you alright?” to test the waters, to see if there was a future possibility of letting him pull the rug out from under me with zero consequences. Again. I couldn’t win. 

But Rust doesn’t want much from me. He doesn’t even want the case, really, which just twists the knife even further. 

“You—you know I’m good in there, right? In the box.” I carve a jagged thumbnail into this message in the table, twisting the characters wider, or taller, risking splinters.

Why should I have to give it up? And to a fucking idiot? Marty wasn’t the one who stayed all those late nights alone at the office, wasn’t the one scoured over heaps of files under low light, wasn’t the one who took the fucking beating when the suspect fought against arrest. Marty was not the one who conducted an interview like that.

My mouth thins into a hard line, but I know the words will come out whether I let them voluntarily or not. Around Rust, it’s that way. I should’ve left when I could. 

“It’s just that—it was so weird,” I continue, my head pulsing with the unwanted memory of that cabin. Marty didn’t have to experience it, Rust didn’t have to experience it—but I did. “Not jus’ wrong, or sad. Makes me feel strange, thinking about it.” 

Often, the suspects underestimate me. Johansson’s broad shoulders and tough-set jaw come off as offensive—nothing like my voice, low and gentle, and my eyes, sympathetic and warm. I’m the mother who will never judge, who is spilling over with unconditional love.

Beneath this, though, I am good at the maths of the job, the connections. Though all detectives technically develop the same constituent skills—close attention to body language tells and other biological betrayals—I ain’t sure most understand the sensitivity and strength required to confront shit like this head-on. To not avert your eyes at the mutilated woman on the bed. To inspect her eunuched boyfriend’s severed appendage, to have steady hands when photographing the scene—with flash, of course, to highlight every detail with sufficient clarity—for evidence, which must be returned to and examined again and again, each time with greater fervour still. 

I could name a few who’d joke about a thing like that, to ease the burn of that image in their heads, to sleep better at night, to leave behind the uninvited, vicarious sensation of a knife teasing over the meat of their dick. 

But the boyfriend’s corpse, we eventually located separately in a cabin in the woods, laid into the basement freezer, so peaceful, such a brutal image. Pretty parts of him preserved for mauling.

And Salter has the fucking audacity to take it away. He wasn’t the one to see something like that, to feel sick to his very stomach, to gag and have to turn away, to cringe and writhe like his skin suddenly wasn’t his, like he ought to pick himself out. I’ve been reeling with that image for weeks, living with motion sickness, and have been denied the relief of vomiting. 

“So, you need me to get that confession.”

Rust comes back into focus, perfectly still.

I nod, the back of my neck prickling with mean goosebumps. “Campbell, his DNA was all over the bodies. He was proud of it, even.” My ribs still glow with the phantom-sensation of his brutal kick there when we located him. Stomach clenching, I struggle to remain level. “But there ain’t no way in hell she wasn’t involved. He denies it, but the house is registered under her name. Maiden name, Phelps.”

“I read,” he confirms. 

I tremble in frustration – I almost wish he hadn’t. 

“It’s just—this lady’s tough.”

Eyes darting over to the dim-lit bar, scouring the scuffed hardwood floor, I can feel my face growing hot with indignation. Christ, it sounds pathetic, like a whiny kid insisting on continuing a task all wrong in order to protect their damaged pride. 

“You know Johansson: once she starts with the tears, he can’t see past ‘em. Southern manners ‘n’ all: a crying woman is a delicate thing not for a man to understand but to comfort. But, with me, it ain’t the same. She doesn’t respect me.”

“What d’you mean ‘respect ’? Don’t need respect in this game.”

I scoff, which would’ve been a dire mistake with anyone else. “Y’wouldn’t know what I’m on about,” I tease through an easy smile, though I’m not feeling so funny at the moment.

He inclines his head down to me, an invitation to elaborate.

My boot feverishly taps against the floor, thrumming light like a jackrabbit on the run. 

I sigh, mouth twisting. “She keeps asking me if I’ve slept,” I confess. “Says I look like her daughter.”

For all my mothering, here comes a perp who’s desperate to play me at my own game.

I can see how intelligent she is: some hollow glint in her eyes with nothing behind; past that gleaming screen of kindness, something black, like a cherry pit.

Sitting across from her, it felt like looking into a mirror. Not just physically—though her skin is a similar shade to mine, her nails bitten and splitting like mine, and she looks close to what I imagine my own mother could’ve grown into. It was in the way that, when I smiled, she smiled. When I took a sip of my coffee, she would drink some tea. At times, it would even seem like she would speak in my voice: the pitch, the intonations, the phrasing all far too similar. I was reluctant to tell her my name. It reminded me of this folk tale, of these tall, dark creatures who only required your name to speak like you, to look like you, to replace you in your own life. Its victim would die—in some way or another. Wander the woods, eaten alive.

A harrowing feeling had crept over me, winter pressing against the two-way mirror – I was sure Johansson, on the other side, would pick up on it. Only, when I confessed my worries to him, he’d given me this doubtful look, and I really wasalone then.

“She’s playin’ you,” Rust states simply, tracing his fingers over his mouth like some pseudo-cigarette. 

“Yeah.” I grind my teeth together. Under the table, where he cannot see, my fingers curl into a tight fist, trembling with my secret violence. “And now Salter wants Marty to have it? Bull.” 

I should’ve socked him right in his dumb, slack fuckin’ jaw. One day, I will. 

“He don’t want Marty to have it,” Rust retorts smartly, a half-smile tugging at the corner of his mouth. His eyes are warm in the dark – I should’ve taken my chances, raced to meet ‘em, but I’m too late. “He wants me to have it.” 

Yeah, well, I wish what was mine would stay mine.

Even if I’m inclined to be pissed off at Rust by proxy, I just can’t be. The difference between him and Marty is that he actually pays attention, real attention, not the selfish kind. Just by watching, I can tell he knows exactly what he could say, how he could act, in order to appeal to somebody—which is why I find it so odd that he chooses not to. I sacrifice my damn dignity to keep myself palatable. He does not. As a result, he is not well-liked at the office – people tend to feel caught out by him; they don’t like to feel observed, known.

When did being seen become a threat? I thought it was intimate. Though, I suppose, a piece of shit never wants to believe they’re a piece of shit.

Everyone’s the hero of their own story. 

Rust slides Marty’s half-empty beer across the table to me, which I receive with a crooked smile and a quick hand.

“Sure I won’t catch whatever he had?” 

He shrugs. “Y’ain’t as deadbeat as the rest of ’em. Oughta drag you down to their level.” 

I snort. “What, you don’t think you’re deadbeat?”

He huffs. “I’m worse.” 

Bitter, the beer washes over my tongue, leaves that funny aftertaste I never really liked, not the first time, not the last. I don’t suppose I’ll ever turn one down though, not if it was offered to me: I’d accept it if only to win points with whoever it was, points I could spend at a later date. 

“Maybe,” I start, “if you were a little more deadbeat, you’d be popular. Go out with the boys.”

When he meets my eyes momentarily, smirking, I have to grip my hand over my knee, fingertips digging into bone, and consciously remind myself via mantra not to let my face freeze. He hums, voice smooth and low like liquor, “What, like youdo?”

I should be pissed off, really. Maybe I will be. Instead, though, I choke on the smart retort I had meticulously configured in my head, some quip that would’ve maybe interested him based on what caught him before. 

I don’t know whether it would have been worse pretending like it never happened. That’s my strong point: pretending. It’s his, too, when he wants it to be. Maybe we could’ve outlasted it – all we needed was stamina.

But, instead, it’s this. Looking across at each other and knowing exactly what’s going on in the other’s head. I can see exactly how he thinks of me, what he wants to do. When he tilts his head ever so slightly, my neck glows with a promise, like the movement was mine in the first place. When I would bite at the pendant of my necklace, he used to narrow his eyes, like he ought to yank the chain off my neck. But now, he looks on softly, so unlike him, his own fingers at his own lips. I know what it feels like – I’ve kissed him there, too. 

“Don’t give me that. At least Geraci would stop shit-talkin’ ye,” I manage, tearing myself away. “Swear he’s stuck at sixteen or somethin’. But—you don’t mind it, do you?”

He shakes his head. “‘f he was smarter, maybe I would. Jus’ likes the sound of his own voice.” 

The clock has replaced me as his focal point – I can’t help but feel jealous. 

“S’why I like you,” I mumble from behind my beer. “First time I met you, I thought you’d make me feel stupid.

That seems to get him. 

He blinks, a barely noticeable twitch. “Do I? I don’t mean to.”

Can I spin this? I’m sure, if I were a little more awake, I’d be able to spin this. 

Some evil part of me hopes to make him feel guilty, to trick him into feeling tenderness for me, though I know the pursuit of that would be in vain. The type of men I know how to work—creatures of habit that take the exact path you want them to, to believe that they’re the real seducers—Rust seems entirely separate from that. He can sniff out rehearsal and practice, that robotism, like a dog – he sees it enough in criminals, doesn’t he? That’s why he’s called in for favours across state police departments.

When I met him the first time, I shook his hand, smiled, friendly-like, only to be met with rigidity and stoicism. No trouble, of course: some people just are that way. Wild horses on the highway. But his quietness?—now, that had set alarm bells off in my head. Boys at the precinct were loud – you couldn’t pay ‘em to shut up about their weekends, their football, their college years, their fuckin’ yards. When I was first exposed to it, I thought I’d gain a lot of friends. But then I realised they weren’t so much talking with me as they were talking at me. It’s why they’re so easy to read: they just tell you everything you want to know right off the bat. Even their secrets are bursting at the seams of their fat mouths, begging to be released. 

But Rust?—doesn’t talk until he finds it necessary. It’s impressive. Before that, though, the trait was enviable. I had—have—no comparable method. Even though, at first, it can seem blunt, even cold, his eloquence is refreshing. Never running in circles – only determinedly forward. So intimidating, almost like a freight train – I have to consciously keep myself from jerking back and out of the way. 

How low he must really think of me then, to see me like this. And I know he does: he sees. Everything I might have done to prevent it perhaps even had the opposite effect. I hate, I burn, I curse: it’s ugly. I cry over cases I would’ve left behind in two months tops, anyways, onto the next. I obsess over just another woman in the box. I think about him almost constantly. 

“You don’t,” I mumble, wondering if I ought to be wishing myself far away. “Make me feel dumb, that is. Not me. Others, I can’t speak for.”

We’ll have to leave soon – no doubt, this local bar is used to slow days and early nights, a blissful routine rudely disrupted by two outsiders who haven’t even really shown them good business. I glance over at the barkeep, slumped over the scuffed wooden counter and flatly watching the football up on the boxy TV set, and I recall my first job. Then, too, I’d let men twice my age buy me drinks, flirted with them. Was worth the tip money. 

Rust hums, though I really wish he wouldn’t speak at all. “Don’t pay mind to what Marty said.”

My neck prickles. 

He’s not trying to console me, is he? No, that’s not like him. Besides, it’s not like any amount of coddling could reverse the merciless truths I’m constantly reminded of in this line of work – if I’ve learned anything about sympathy, it’s that it doesn’t fix shit. If anything, it’s just another complication. It can seem beautiful, but, really, it isn’t. I can miss it, miss its warmth, miss the kind, sweet nothings my husband would whisper into my hair on the hardest nights, but it never changed the fact that I would have to get up in the morning and do it again. Rust knows this, has maybe lived this, so he’s not trying to console me. 

Maybe he’s trying to defend Marty.

Sharp and sure, that anger comes lurching up in my throat, slashing and snarling. 

The sensible part of me—what I hope is the larger part of me—knows this is not possible. Rust understands Marty’s faults better than anyone, even himself, even his wife. 

“Thing is,” I mumble bitterly, “he really means it, don’t he? He just don’t show it.” I trace the warm, smooth rim of the bottle with a light finger, though my mind is currently toying with the idea of jamming it violently down the opening. “Maybe it means more that he does keep it hidden – at least some part of him knows it’s wrong.”

Placid in the periphery of my vision, Rust shrugs. “‘s what separates us from our killers. Feelin’ it ain’t the problem. Resistance is where strength is tested.” 

“Ego,” I chuckle darkly. 

He hums. “Fragile ego.”

Underneath my smile lies an uneasiness stirred by his criticism.

Rust is not gentle with his opinions – I don’t suppose that’ll ever change. Resistance is a losing game – not even he is immune to the impermanence of these things. I’m sure he said that to me once, on a night like this. 

I’ve never been very good at refraining from things. Even from an early age, I just couldn’t say no. Teenage years: alcohol, drugs, sex. If it was tossed my way, I’d take it, anything I could get, hungry to experience something. 

Ha!—maybe I actually am more like Marty Hart than I’d like to admit. He’s trying to be an adult, albeit really, really poorly. As long as he believes he’s a good, family man, then his reality is protected. But I know I’m rotten, really. One of the boys at the precinct will call me pretty—in that sick way somewhere between the unchecked lust of a man and his paternal right to claim—but, below, I know I’ve got sickness swimming through my veins. Not blood. Something accumulated over the years, maybe from pretending all the time. 

I feel like I want to cut things, break them. Told myself to hang on until I retire, but I don’t see that happening any time soon. I’ll break. What will Rust think of me then? 

Maybe I was his low point: that fault in resistance. 

Some awful, gnawing feeling collects at the pit of my stomach, like black tar. Must be all those cigarettes. 

“Wha’s in that head?” he probes suddenly, stealing razor-sharp, fleeting glances.

I shrug, swallowing down a bout of nausea. “I dunno.” And I really don’t. Behind the surface tension, I don’t know what I feel, only that I do, and it’s so, so much. “It kinda—makes me happy to see him like that: jealous. ‘Cause he knows I’m good, and he’s wondering why he’s finishing what I started. He knows he don’t deserve it. Not like I do.” 

My confession lingers in the air like smoke – I have mind to reach a hand up and wave it all away, or suck it down, deep, erasing reality. Fuck. I’ve always been a little off when reading into Rust’s quiet – with that tightrope he seems to have mastered, I know I should avoid any step at all—it could just as easily miss its mark—but I can never seem to help myself. 

I stare at him—and I think it makes him uncomfortable, though there’s nothing there, not any normal human reaction, in his face for me to draw from. That’s fine. In my gut, I’m pretty sure I’ve got it down.

“You want to be seen as competent,” he finally says, a simple-enough statement. 

I scrunch my nose up distastefully. “No, I want to be competent.”

“Well, what good is bein’ somethin’ if there’s no-one there to witness it?” 

Unable to press down an exasperated sigh, I close my eyes, roll them with all the subtlety I can manage.

Foul words push under my tongue, like vomit. 

I don’t know if I’m in the mood for this tonight: smart conversation. What feels like debate. Maybe if he hadn’t been given my case, I’d take him up on the challenge, but I’ve already lost. 

I eye him, try to figure out his game. 

“I dunno, Rust,” I tell him flatly. “I think that’s called having an identity issue.”

He cocks an eyebrow. “Most people do.”

My chest burns. “This isn’t a go at me, is it?”

Slow, he draws the ashtray towards him from across the table, as if the grind of the glass against the wood is a noise that ought to be savoured. 

I could be deaf, but reading his lips would be easy: “And how’d this be about you exactly?” 

I’m able to fight off the initial instinct to wince, the way in which he delivers the words, calm and deliberate, stinging like a slap to the face. What’s worse is the growing impression that he’s as bored of me as I am. 

With a furrowed brow, I watch him, heartbeat thrumming in my ears. 

“I ain’t out to get you, s’you can quit lookin’ at me like I kicked you or somethin’.”

Frowning shallowly and trying to pretend like I’m not, I glance away and commit to rearranging my face—but at the glimpse of that twitch at the corner of his mouth in my periphery, I know I’m only digging a deeper grave for myself. The noticeable heat of my embarrassment must please him.

Playing with the food. 

And I’ve got nothing to say to him—not a single word or phrase up to par, nothing to measure up to Rust’s clinical detachment, let alone destabilise him. He might’ve been reciting the coroner’s report. There’s nothing I can say to scathe him—and fuck, I want to leave a mark, prove to him that I can. I scan him for weakness, but either I’m still too stunned to see it or there is none. I have no plan of attack and no line of defence. 

Rust seems to soften in the knowledge of this. 

“I mean,” he begins, knowing now that I’m really listening, “identity ain’t fixed – it’s not permanent. I don’t scrutinise my appearance. I don’t mind my body, and my body don’t mind me. My personality hardly feels under my control – ‘s just somethin’ that is and will be—‘n’, I guess, will change, but only against my will, never because of it. Feels pointless to feel insecure about that.”

Is this supposed to be some fucked-up attempt at advice?

My priorities changed, but this place never has, never does, never will. So, it’s all dumb and the people are dumb and this bar is dumb and the boys at the precinct are dumb and, fuck, I wish Rust were dumb, too. I feel pathetic, and he does not alleviate that feeling at all. If he were dumb, I could laugh at him and make myself feel better. I could laugh at myself for sleeping with a dumb man. Instead, I think of him religiously and crave his approval. Afflicted with the knowledge that he needs to be corrupted to want me, that I’m awful enough to want it enough to corrupt him again. Tainted waters. It would be so much more comfortable if I could look down on him.

My skin writhes and ripples, and I know the only thing that would soothe it is if he touched me. Jesus and the sick man—or some polluted version of that.

My world swings under a bout of nausea as it begins to spiral – the beer does not help. 

Maybe he’s waiting it out, like I’m trying to. Forgetting is the wisest decision anyone could make, the most fortunate outcome. Though, my efforts are paradoxical: I think so, so much about not thinking about it all. 

“Sure seems like y’think about yourself a good deal, too, s’don’t you criticise me,” I mumble, clumsy. It’s a mistake to even open my mouth again – he’ll use it all against me eventually. 

Rust hums again, low, some muscle twitching in his jaw, like his body has no clue what to do when not blindly occupied with a cigarette. “Never said I don’t think about myself,” he rectifies, staring at the sweaty palms I’m wringing together tightly against the lip of the table. 

I allow my mouth to pool with saliva, trying to combat the increasing dryness of my mouth. 

“Guess the thinkin’ part is where insecurity comes from in the first place,” I add after swallowing.

When my eyes dart up to look at him, his are on my throat.

Immediately, I look away.

Maybe this is the bad kind of intimacy.

The intensity of his attention is looming, sifting through my thoughts like sand.

Sometimes, I think he has me figured out but just couldn’t care less about what he’s found. He’s feeling the power of my burning desire for him – maybe it amuses him. Maybe he’s waiting to mechanise it, letting me sit idle while a use for me finds him (if ever). Maybe I know things. Maybe I can break things open. Maybe he can take my cases from me. Maybe I can tire him out, put him to sleep. 

It’s almost worse that he hasn’t put me to work yet. 

Maybe it really was just something in the water. Maybe all I need is to visit somebody close to me. 

“Ever heard o’ that theory? ‘bout internal monologue?” Rust asks softly, leaning in and tipping his head down like only I’m worthy of hearing this here. 

My leg jerks and I can’t place why. I nod, face hot. 

“I think ‘s bullshit—‘bout some not having one. Think everybody’s got that voice in their heads.” He pauses, squints. “Mm, maybe that’s a little generous.” 

I laugh – I hope it makes him feel good. In truth, I know he couldn’t care less. 

“What d’you think it’d be like? No voice.”

The world seems so close right now, wrapping its fuzzy arms tight around us, buzzing in my ears, shadows fur-soft over my face. What does he want me to say? I wish he’d tell me, offer me respite. 

I shrug, and it’s honest, my resignation. “No voice don’t mean no thought.”

“Alrigh’. Then, what about no thought?”

I shrug again. “I like thinking.”

He huffs, angling himself back away from me. Have I disappointed him? Somewhere deep in the pit of my tummy, there’s that fleck of worry, something that tastes an awful lot like vomit. 

I expect him to finally stop talking. 

But “I get tired of it,” is what he says instead. “In between cases, or these—moments where I feel like I could burn a hole through myself ‘f I spent ’nough thought on it. ‘s heavy, like they weigh me down.” He pushes the ashtray away, his fingers the only part of him moving. 

Swept up in the rising tide of your own life, hurting around you in some never-ending circle or spiral of which you happen to be the centre. Swimming with black-eyed angels. I know how he feels – I used to feel that way. Maybe I still do, sometimes. Clinging on to the tenderness my husband used to have for me like it could save me from the guilt I would feel when I moved on. No-one would pull me out: that much was true enough. That memory of stability, of the good times, only depressed me, moving from Brooklyn back to Louisiana. Feeling small in my own life, like a piece on a chessboard, with no semblance of control, only duty, chasing this idea of who I used to be. Hunting down the bad men, wondering what upper hand is driving them across the squares, contemplating the carpenter that fashioned the pieces. Too big of a big picture can be detrimental. The fact that I know this to be true doesn’t make me an exception. 

“I think you’re tired of the things you think about,” I muse, a headache beginning to expand between my temples – perhaps the heat has finally gotten to my head. “Space better occupied by other shit.” 

I’m careful not to pay attention to Rust’s reaction, if there even is one, since the weight of his interest is pressing over my face where I really wish his lips would.

“Like what?” he challenges. 

His eyes glint with curiosity, a blade’s sharp edge. 

I bite my tongue. 

“You think you know me?” It’s more a statement than a question.

I shrug. “You think you know me, don’t ye?”

Though, he kinda does. I think he’s proud that he can read me, but maybe that’s me overcomplicating things. Maybe I’m just another person to him. I wonder if he thinks I’m predictable. Boring, negligible, painfully average. Good for one thing, and that one thing was a mistake, anyway. 

Look at him, now: his eyes have dropped to elsewhere, but there’s a soft smirk that curls up on his face, the hint of a pink tongue that traces lightly over his teeth. 

Geraci always talks shit about that look whenever Rust closes yet another case, securing a tough confession. “So fuckin’ up ‘imself, ain’t he? Jesus.” Sure, he pisses me off—for different reasons. I’ve long since come to the conclusion that he’s worthy of admiration. 

He smiles to himself – I don’t trust it. “You’re calling me arrogant.”

“Are you?” I press, gnawing at the inside of my cheek. I’m surprised at the tepidity of my voice, considering how I’m covered in boils and burns in my head. 

He doesn’t have anything to say to that, only hums in response, seemingly amused. 

“Doesn’t have to be a bad thing,” I murmur. “People are scared of bein’ known, so nobody really tries no more.”

“I don’t observe people for intimacy purposes.”

Then why does he fucking look at me like that? 

A year ago, I’d have put it down to my own desires warping my perception of reality. Really, he wasn’t interested; he was only paying me my due amount of scrutiny in order to keep his mental file of me up to date. Really, he didn’t want to touch me; really, he was just someone who fiddled with his own hands, maybe to remind himself that he could be his own from time to time. Lust is such a dangerous thing – any deeper than surface level, and it has the very strong potential to kill you. If you want something against your better judgement, do you really even want it? The haze of having Rust come so close to me is dampened by such doubts.

But at this point, he either wants me, or I’m crazy. Shit, maybe I’d rather be just that. I’ve seen his eyes like this—dark and bottomless—when hands were unzipping my skirt, or dragging over my skin. To deny intimacy? Now that’s arrogance. Anddelusion. Shit, and I thought he was so above all that stuff. Does he think I can’t figure him out?

Surely his opinion of me can’t be that poor. 

My hand cramps up as I punch down the instinct to pinch the bridge of my nose. 

“Sure you do,” I press. And I’m right. I hope I’m right. 

His stare thickens into something different, what I think might be a black, molten form of gratification. Then, it hardens, cools in a split second into these tough, jaw-breaker pellets. I’d say it was confrontational, but then his eyes flutter just as he happens to swallow thickly. Is that his pulse in his throat? 

I rub at my puffy eyes with a stiff set of fingers.

Rust drops his eyes, brushes his hand over the side of his blazer where his cigarettes are sitting warm and ready beneath. 

“What, you—lonely again or some shit?” he asks. 

I almost recoil at the sudden bitterness of his tone. 

I snort good-heartedly, but, really, the comment stings just right—he knows where to press—all the breath knocked out of my chest. “O-kay, Rust. That an accusation?”

“No. ’S an observation. Thought you jus’ loved those,” he combats flatly.

Chest burning, I have to save myself, jump ship, and look away. My mouth tastes like grainy bile. 

“You were lonely last summer. That’s why you came to me.”

The dim light above us flickers, his face phasing in and out of shadow before me like a candle in the wind. 

I roll my jaw. 

Does he look back on it with disdain? 

“No,” I snap instinctively, instantly burned by the satisfaction that crosses his eyes. 

My breath hitches plaintively. Every fibre of my body trembles and burns to defend myself. There’s not a single word that could repair his opinion of me.

“Or—yeah.” Shut up. 

I rub at my temple, desperate for relief – do they have pills for this shit? – which does not come. If he feels any pity for me, it certainly doesn’t show. 

The harsh line of my mouth trembles. “I just thought you understood me. Or made an attempt to, at least, but maybe that part was self-projection. ‘Cause nobody ‘round here’s like you. I know you think that’s stupid and I was being naïve or—” I swallow though my throat is dry as ever, “—or dumb, or somethin’, but that’s what I felt. At the time.”

His gaze is fixed on my neck.

“At the time,” he echoes. It’s a question, I realise after a couple moments.

“Yeah. Fuck y'want me to say, asshole? 'm not—I’m not gonna embarrass myself with you, Rust. That what you want me to do? Show you just how dumb I can get—?”

“Sure like to speak for me, hm?” he bites back quietly, making it so damn easy to run right over him, to feverishly stamp out that insufferable fucking softness to his voice. Shit, I wish he’d just raise it and yell at me already.

“—Yeah, whatever. You like this shit, don’t you? Y’think you deserve a fight?—well, I’ll give you one. That what you want? ‘Cause what?—what, you get to ignore me, pretend I don’t exist, act like you’re above fuckin’ me—” his eyes flit away, bringing my roiling frustration to a crest, “—No, don’t you fuckin’ look away,” I scold, a bite, jutting a crooked finger into his space. 

He obeys, but that look in his pale eyes is so hollow, it almost makes me feel bad for saying anything at all. Almost. 

I try to press down my anger, but it’s spilling over, now, far beyond things so trivial as control. I clasp my hands together in a prayer that they will finally listen to me and not move again. 

“Fact that you feel anything at all makes you feel like shit, huh?”

His expression has glazed over, cool and smooth.

Half-expecting him to walk out and rightfully abandon me here, I stare hard at him, like I might chip into that exterior. If I managed it, I’d slip it in my pockets as proof. Silently, I beg him to prove me right. 

“Sorry,” I snap. No, I’m not. I hope it cuts at him. “You do what you want, I don’t fuckin’ care. But, please, do not patronise me like that again, Rust.” 

God offers no help with the silent plea I send Him. He does not care, so I shouldn’t care, and that’s the end of things. I’ve survived worse natural disasters than him. He’s just a man, and this is just what happens with them. Still, the disappointment floods like poison under my skin. I’m a stupid girl, really. 

“I understand if you regret things, but you don’t have to say it out loud. It’s mean. But, fuck, I dunno, maybe you mean to be.” 

I take a moment to untangle the knot in my throat. He watches it all, quiet again, his eyeline sitting heavy over where the skin shifts and stretches over my neck. 

I adjust the collar of my shirt, fiddle with the gold necklace that sits hot over the contour of bone. Rust stares as I wedge the small pendant tightly in the vice of my thumb and forefinger. 

“Feels like you don’t even fuckin’ like me half the time. All the time.”

Christ, I should’ve left with Johansson. 

My heart is racing like a wild mustang – it’s a surprise, really, that that old hunting dog lying over by the bar hasn’t noticed, singled me out as something to chase, to kill. My belly’s exposed, soft and ripe and asking for it. I forget, sometimes, that there are things out there that kill things that kill, too. 

He doesn’t plan on giving me a break; I wouldn’t deserve it, anyway. “Wha's it matter to you if I like you or not?”

My cheeks burn furiously. 

I stare at that bone-bird tattoo that fledges from the nest of his sleeve. With the way my head’s spinning, it almost looks like its skeleton wings are actually moving, unfurling and ready for pilgrimage. 

“It don’t.” It’s a disgrace to myself to answer that god-awful question, but what’s more pathetic is the way I shrink into myself when Rust’s attention crowds in over my face. “I jus’ thought you knew me almost as well as I did.” 

“And currently?” he asks.

The moment hangs. 

“Just answer. I already know – just wanna see if you’ll lie again.” 

I close my eyes a second—mistake—and breathe, breathe in and then breathe out, shaky but slow. It’s no use. 

“Same.”

He nods. “Not better?”

I shake my head. “No, never better.”

Furrowing his brow, Rust tilts his head down slightly, a soft curl falling gentle over his tense forehead. “But you wanted intimacy.”

So it is intimacy to him? 

Maybe this should count as a win for me, but it certainly don’t feel like it. This isn’t the slow slip and slide of last summer’s end – though the heat had swallowed whole everything from here to the other side of the Mississippi, there was something so clipped about the words that left me, left him. I’m sure I was more drunk then than now, but, even so, my mind had been so level, like I’d done it all in my sleep. Now, here, I have done it in my sleep. I’ve revisited him a hundred times in my daydreams, but all that practice has left me for dead. I would’ve killed for an opportunity like this a month ago – it’s like he’s taunting me. It should be easy. 

Rust is smart enough to make me wonder if he wants me to feel this way. 

Intimacy is planned and eventual, whether that’s due to his power or some cosmic fate. Everyone knows the decision they’re going to make, somewhere in their brains, deep inside. People only ask for advice to condone their decisions, to spread out the responsibility, which, at the end of the day, still remains solely with them. Shit, he’s rubbing off on me: I sound like a fuckin’ asshole. 

No, all this thinking won’t save him from the sensation of human feeling, emotions. No amount of planning prepares you for skin-to-skin touch. No time spent evaluating can undo it either, and I’ve tried so hard. His way doesn’t work. 

“Everyone wants intimacy,” I end up rambling, voice thin and dry and brittle. “Even folks that don’t want intimacy want intimacy. ’s not love or sex, really, I don’t think, though those are good, too. It’s not a way to find yourself. It’s jus’ trust. Or companionship—”

“And that’s what you want?”

Carefully, I rake my eyes over his face. Does he ever flush from the heat? 

Hopeless and too muddled to bother with concealing it, I try to assess whether he’s displeased with me. I try to memorise this moment, so I’ll be able to turn it over in my head later, just another one of my crime scene photographs. 

“Dunno yet,” I confess quietly. “I’ve had partners. And partners. When I was younger, I thought I’d have this life packed chock full of amazing relationships, and these—connections.”

The soft, disappointed eyes of my husband come to mind, which haunt all my relationships. I’m so hungry for another body, for connection. Why does it seem so easy for other people? 

“Truth is, it don’t happen all that much. To me, at least. You?”

Surly and bone-tired, Rust shakes his head. “Didn’t have much hope for it growin’ up,” he admits. 

“But you wanted it,” I press, clumsy and clinging to the sag of his voice. Of course, he’ll pick up on the trace of hopeful, aimless, false victory that undercuts my words; he’s the only one who ever could. 

For a moment, though, I second-guess myself. 

It’s pathetic, really: I’d give almost anything to walk as him for a day, though, even then, I’m not sure I’d understand him any better.

Sometimes, my imagination runs away from me: in my dreams, I do. I wake under the impression that we’re one and the same, that, just maybe, he, similarly, is dreaming as me. It’s a pulsing obsession, difficult to conceal. Whenever a moment becomes still, I think about it: at night, he is transported; in his dreams, he touches with my hands, sighs with my voice, tastes with my mouth. Then, at least, that would explain these funny sensations I get in the morning: so weathered and worn, a strange ache in my muscles, like I’ve been sleepwalking.

How else could he know me so well? 

Or maybe I’ve really fucking lost it. Somewhere along the way – maybe after seeing that half-eaten body swaddled in thin cotton in its freezer cradle – I think something else took the wheel. Why that thing is racing towards him, I have no idea. It’s laughable, really.

Rust blinks calmly down at his hands. “Reckon the deniers are dumb?” he murmurs. 

Squeezing the bridge of my nose, I do my best to press back against the foul memory of dismembered limbs. Whoever had eaten the man—who was now beyond recognition—did they feel satisfied? Comforted with how forever close he was to them now? When I was small, I used to think sex was crawling into another person's body, like a cave, and letting all of their insides warm you, love you, wrap you tight. 

I swallow thickly. 

“Your words, not mine,” I reply through a tight smile. “Reckon it’s easy to find a distraction.”

"Have you given up?" he asks. “Finding a distraction?”

I don’t entertain him with a proper answer to that – I merely shrug and scratch at my scalp, tucking loose strands of sweaty hair back into the loops of my braid. Rust must be frustrated with me. To want a companion, to want the good life. Rivalling Marty in my delusion. 

He slides his hands into his lap, continuing: “Distraction is the way to peace?”

I shrug again – I think it’s starting to piss him off. “For a time, I guess.” 

“So, ‘s that how you’re takin’ quittin’? Think about other stuff whenever you want a smoke? Occupy yourself?”

Once I realise my leg is going dead, fuzzy from sitting still so long in this dark booth, I flex my thigh, flex my hands under the table, wide-open and then tight-shut, processing the blank slate of his gaunt face. I press my fingers into the sticky vinyl, delight in the interrupted drag of them up, up, up as they curl to fists, my shoulders up to my ears. 

When he says things like that, it makes it so hard to dislike him. I almost wish he’d ignore me, like he did the first couple weeks before it became clear to the both of us that it couldn’t be undone: his back constantly to me, sending messages only through Marty, refusing to look in my direction, like I might tempt him again into being a version of him he hated. At least, before, his coldness hadn’t been directed at me specifically. Then, it was a retaliation, a wall meant to keep me out. Where were his books on philosophy then?—to tell him that attachment leads to desire leads to suffering? That kind of suffering would be better than this kind. 

This is worse. This is so much worse. I’d rather not have something at all than have it toy with me like this. 

It takes a considerable amount of co-ordination to fabricate the apathy in my posture, my eyes, my expression, to compensate for the unease that pulses like a new artery in my throat – though, at the silvery glint that flickers in his eyes, I know it’s all for nothing. He’s already seen the hurt that, really, I can’t pin on anyone but myself. He’s raking his eyes slowly over my face. It’s fucking mean. Do me the favour of a mercy-killing, God.

I never even told him I was trying to quit.

“What,” I begin, concentrating very hard on keeping myself from stammering and from slurring, from crying and from grasping at his hand, “like that association thing?” 

I’ve heard of it, obviously. I know every trick at this point: old wives’ tales to the latest research papers at the state university library. It’s psychological: whenever you want something, instead, think of awful, gross, repulsive things, and make yourself hate it. I’ve tried it before, but it doesn’t always work. How can you convince yourself that one thing is disgusting when it’s undeniable how good it really was?

Rust nods.

“I mean, I tried it,” I tell him lowly. 

Overstatement: I tried it for approximately three days and two nights before I caved, unlocking the drawer in my study with shaky, desperate hands, hungry.

“But I’m always thinkin’ about it.”

Shit. He seems to have regained a nerve: Rust stares calmly ahead at me—not through me or just past me; at me. This is what I wanted, isn’t it?

He leans his weight over his forearms upon the table, on offence. Is this how he works his suspects? Well, shit, I’ve studied his methods from the privacy of the other side of the false mirror enough times to be able to answer that, actually: this is how he works his suspects. Initially, at least, to gauge their personality, their wants, their fears, what they need him to be. 

Thing is, I can’t pin down his intention with me. Is it just the satisfaction of the kill? Or maybe revenge for what I did to him last August. I broke down his walls: an unforgivable sin. I condemned him to the effort of building them back up, of shoving me out—if I ever managed to intrude in the first place. Maybe I deserve this. 

With his sleeves folded back, the dark lines of Rust’s tattoo jut out, growing along his tawny, leather-tan skin like lichen. I try not to stare.

His eyes complete a pre-emptive scan of my face, and, really, I know I should not let him see any change there in my expression, though my mouth twitches to frown. I try to gather my forces. I try to prepare myself for it, for that inevitable intrusion.

“‘f you’re so desperate for it, why’re you fightin’ back?” he asks, unblinking and cruel. 

My mouth twists, and I let it fall into the frown it wants. “‘Cause I wanted to feel better.”

It sounds dumb because it is dumb, even though it’s true. 

Low, he hums. He straightens, softens, and finally leans away. It’s like the vacuum around me leaves with him, and, there, now, it’s easier to breathe. 

He must note the way my chest rises and falls so stiffly, like there’s a weight resting over my heart. 

“Withdrawal’s a breeze, ain’t it?”

“You’re not fuckin’ funny,” I scoff, digging my nails punishingly into my palm. He smokes and drinks like he welcomes cancer, or hopes for it, so I don’t think we’re on a level playing field.

He quirks his head. “Well, do you?”

“Do I what, Rusty?” 

Amused, he rolls his jaw. Good – I hope I’ve provoked him. 

“Do you feel better?” 

I run my tongue over my teeth. “Sometimes,” I reply truthfully. “Not right now.”

He searches my face. 

“I can give you a ride home,” he offers. 

Fuck, and what will that be like? Ten times worse than this. I’ll come away the husk of a woman, worn down by his disapproval. My own fault for wanting anything from him in the first place, really. 

Teeth gritted together, I shake my head, ready to pull a muscle in my damn neck. “Didn’t mean anythin’ by it. Sorry.” 

No, I’m not. I ought to slap him, and then run away, back home, or back to my house, or to a brand new city. Or he could finally cuss me out, save me the wondering. Then, I could lick my wounds and they would finally stop reopening. 

I scratch at my scalp. 

Rust eyes my hand like he’d like to rip the bad habit away from my body. For a moment, I think he will—the tendons in his hand flex and writhe under the skin—but, no, he only brushes a thumb against the valley between his nose and cheek, and he holds his tongue for once. 

“Wasn’t offended,” he corrects firmly. “I’ll take you home.”  

Flashing with annoyance, my eyes dart up viciously to penalise him. “And what?” I hiss. 

He sits back, doesn’t answer the question.  

Jaw clenched, I wait to see if he’ll look away, but he doesn’t. 

My irritation soon fizzles through, condenses to a low, simmering understanding, steadily tended to by the intensity of his steadfast gaze. 

Oh. 

My eyes soften. 

Oh – I have him, don’t I?

He shows no signs of the tentativeness he had displayed last time—if Rust could ever be tentative. His eyes do not shift and scuttle around me; they meet mine, challenging my comfort. He does not tuck himself into a corner; he remains leaned over the table, just like that. How could I have known? 

I stare back, brow pinched in confusion. 

In the heat of last August, I’d peeled away from him knowing exactly how I’d convinced him he wanted me. Maybe I was evil for it – a good person wouldn’t use somebody’s faults against them, would they? And maybe that’s what it was: selfish. If he hates me, he’d be right to. 

Which is why I’m so puzzled that he doesn’t. Or rather, indifference was the baseline. Hell. And this? I don’t know. 

Swelling dangerously with the well-loved memory of his delirious mouthings over my skin, I grow rigid.

My temples throb and ache, the threat of tears still very real.

“Mind?” he asks – I watch, wide-eyed, as he pulls a pack of Camels from his pocket. 

Trembling slightly, I shake my head, though saliva is already pooling over the pit of my tongue, warm and soft, just like my desire. Luckily, he’s too preoccupied with his lighter to see it: how my body ripples at the scrape of his voice. 

The promise of nicotine dances like a phantom in the mouth, just from watching him place a cigarette between his lips. When he flicks open his Zippo, the sharp, shuddering candle of it taunts me, and I finally understand what they say about moths and flames.

I watch him take a long drag.

That all-consuming hunger lurches up in me again, and I swallow the warm spit that’s steadily been filling my mouth. 

Oh, Christ. This can’t be real. Desire shouldn’t be this bloody. Desire shouldn’t be the thing with teeth and claws, the ugly thing that tips into violence. Or obsession. With how often my thoughts return to us in the summer, I’ve wondered obsession as a possibility. The difference between myself and those who commit crimes of passion is control. Rust is dangerous for me. What is he thinking? What’s in his head? I ache to pry it open and explore, to swim close to him, for my skin to melt into his, to consume and be consumed. Not a moment’s peace, and that’s what I’m chasing, isn’t it? Peace and quiet?

I don’t have to say anything – he can read it all, mulling over the fine changes in my expression, the softening of my body, some pre-emptive instinct. Will he touch me tonight? 

With a cautious hand, ready to jolt back if met with teeth, I reach out to him and remove the cigarette from his pinched fingers—which he allows—then bringing it to my mouth, taking a drag myself, nice and slow, good and deep, a sigh, like home.

He watches me.  

“Don’t say anything.”  

And he doesn’t. He just watches, watches, watches as I take another drag. He shivers, and I feel it reverberate through my bones.

“What are you thinkin’ about?” I ask him softly, pressing down a quivering breath, smoking his cigarette. I’ve never mustered the courage to ask before.  

For once, though, I really don’t have to: I know exactly where his head is. Where else? He’s back in that room, infected by the drowse and drunken fever of August, with me, living it again. Where I’d coaxed him into the temptation, wicked as the snake in the garden. He should’ve pushed me to leave with Johansson and Marty – of course, I would’ve stayed. I’m a rotten thing, and my heart is a bloodhound. He’s the better of the two of us. I’ll take whatever of him I can get – anything. 

He meets my eyes directly, so hopeless, so raw. Is he asking? He shouldn’t be. 

But what will he have me do? I’m at his disposal, really.

“And?” I ask, throat dry. 

When he moves to speak, the words that leave him are low and slow: “You did something to me,” he manages. 

I scoff. 

“S’that a good or bad thing?” I ask.

Rust huffs like what I said was funny. More likely, though, it’s the way my eyes are so wide, the way my hand is pressed between my thighs, that amuses him. “Can’t decide.”

My mouth trembles as my eyes scrape over his neck, which I know, I remember, to be hot and alive, thick with it over the pulse. I was so high off of it: his warmth, his weight, his press. 

I indulge in one last drag, using the last scraps of my energy to conjure the pungent stench of rotting flesh in the cruel sunshine, the pick of eager flies and their cacophonous buzzing, the churn of vomit in the stomach. I look at Rust and try to do the same: the months of silence, his back decidedly turned to me, him accepting my case, and his arrogance and his apathy and his severity. He is a harrowing connection that I should rather not have made.

The technique doesn’t work. I don’t know why I thought, even for a minute, that this time would be different from the last. 

With him staring calmly at me, like I deserve it—the trap, the squirming sensation over my spine, the hopeless, unavoidable heat that claims my face—it’s just another arrow pointing to the same conclusion. Maybe we should just let August have its way with us again. Twin plagues.

Trembling ever so slightly, blood so warm, so thick, I flick ashes out into the tray between us. 

“I should put this out,” I mumble, though my hand yearns to return it to my mouth. 

“’s my cigarette,” Rust mutters.

“Sorry.” I offer my hand to him. “Want it back?”

I know what I must look like to him, pupils dark, the size of the moon, like a plate. Here, in the darkest part of the dark bar, I open myself to him, warm, molten, inviting. And God, this must be a dream—because I know what he wants, and I know that he’ll accept me. How we got here doesn’t matter anymore. Maybe he’s thought about it for some time, and only now, in a moment of stillness with him, have I even noticed. Too caught up in the fine details of a painting to think of the artist’s intention, which is always more important.

Silent, stare inexorable, he accepts the cigarette, only touching my fingers quick, like I’d burn him. Maybe I will. Serves him right: he was always going to haunt me either way. I ought to get mine while I still can.

The hunger laps at me.

I want to coax him open-wide. I want to peel away his demeanour and wrap myself close to him. Body heat is the best way to keep warm, isn’t it? I’m sure I read about that somewhere. It’s still fresh in my mind, like a cut. I can’t manage a day without playing it over at least once. I want it again: I want to breathe him in and let him sit in my chest and seep into every cell and let him be part of me that way, at least until the next breath.

He can see it in my eyes: the freneticism of my thoughts, racing like a storm, desires like bullets like rain.

“You ever think about what you want?” I try asking him, voice strained tight over my heart in my throat. 

“People only ever think about what they want,” he parries, batting away any trace of diffidence. He secures his cigarette between his lips, shifting. “Let’s leave.”

At his first movement, I slide out of the booth. 

Sometime during our conversation, the place emptied out. It must have been around when I finished Marty’s leftover beer that the weight of the locals’ beady stares—which had already faded to the back of my mind, in the same way that a dark alleyway can still make you uneasy though you know nothing would ever happen to you there—finally left me. There are no witnesses left to see me following after Rust like a dog, my body thrumming like the lone bug zapper out on the porch, which cracks! just as we exit. 

The broken clock reads three o’clock when we leave, but I know that, really, it’s only midnight.

Fortunately, the heat has cracked for once, like old, beat-up, splitting leather. Stepping out onto that night path, the breeze is warm and fragrant, dancing over my cheeks, playing gently with the loose threads of my hair. It’s a clear, blue, never-ending night – the dirt road which accompanies us is a long, winding, indigo river that spills unseen over the far, far horizon. The neighbouring fields—one a rolling stretch of grass; the other of wheat—are alive in the wind, flung one way on exhale, drawn the other upon inhale. 

Thank God for the noise of it: their rustling whispers, in a language we can’t understand; the soft whistle of a passing gust of air; the firm, crisp crunch of dry mud and dust under my boots. Thank God for the sway of things: the cradle of humidity; the press of my arm to Rust’s, which he permits only for a second, with his face angled away. Then, he slows, coming to walk just behind me, still parallel.

Flickering strands of long-grass brush my knuckles – I grab onto one, pull the seeds off it in an easy swipe, and scatter them as we go, one by one. 

Briefly, I glance over my shoulder. Sure enough, his eyes are fixed on me, on my every movement, like he’s making sure I’m actually real. The corner of my mouth twitches up into a smile. 

Rust’s cigarette flares between his lips. 

I scratch gently at my wrist, reminded of the flowing of my blood just beneath the skin, hot and thick.

You get nowhere in life just hoping things will fall into your lap like this—and, anyway, what good is getting something that you didn’t work for? Where’s the gratification? It’s artificial, feeble as plastic. Christ, it was even a struggle to get my head around Johansson and his propensity to dole out favours. I understood a write-up – won’t pretend I’m above ass-kissing – but tidying up the office kitchen and keeping quiet about it? I thought it was stupid: letting people reap the rewards of your own effort, and for what?

So, the buzz of earning Rust’s touch that first time?—shit, nothing compared. No drug, no high; nothing. I really thought I did something. Satisfied some secret ambition I didn’t know I held. To have him like that. To be able to replay that night, swallow it like a pill. To look at him and know what was underneath his clothes and his skin, and perhaps further inside, too. Shit, I took so much from him, but the mental gymnastics of the effort justified it, right? And, now, he’s going to give it all up again. Wants it, even.

Haven’t I played this out a thousand times in my head? I’ve seen the future—a number of futures—where I’m able to argue for his affection. Fight for your love – that’s what my daddy used to tell me whenever he was feeling sentimental after yelling.

I’ve had endless conversations with him in my head, edited accordingly as time passed, as he changed, as I changed, as the air between us changed. Possible flirtation seemed silly, futile, after a week. Sex appeal would go unnoticed by him – wasn’t like he looked, anyway. Not the type to chase tail. I found myself longing for him to please linger uncomfortably in doorways to rooms I was in, to leave things near me and come and collect them just after I was gone so that, maybe, he’d still feel the warmth of my presence and understand it was only ever warm that way for him. The idea of genuine confession always sprung up during the quiet nights alone together in the bullpen, but I was always able to talk myself out of it when he wouldn’t so much as glance at me after two, three hours.

It must be a million threads of conversation up in my head, which is why I guess it’s so hard to untangle the great knot and retrieve just one, because, now, there are no words that come to mind when it matters. Or maybe it doesn’t matter: I don’t think he needs convincing at all.

“What you so quiet for?” he asks faintly. 

When I look back, he’s stark against the brooding sky like some shadow-man. His outline hums like he’s pulling away into his own silhouette. 

I can’t seem to smile. “Nothin’.” 

He won’t push—at least, not on this—and I’m glad for it. 

Rust’s beat-up semi is all lonely sat in a dip up in the road, waiting for us. Same semi he’d driven me home in from work this one week I was getting my car fixed up, in which a series of slow, mutual interrogations would take place along the light-streaked highway. In the office, you were lucky to drag a full sentence out of Rust, but, alone, it wasn’t so hard to get him to talk at all.

Maybe I had just wanted to be better than him, to learn how he worked, how he was such a good interrogator, and bleed him dry. That was why I couldn’t look away: every choice in his demeanour could help me surpass him.

Even then, I learned to be careful with my looks. I had the feeling he’d morph into something else if I stared long enough, the way the shadow in the corner of your bedroom changes shape when you’re bone-tired. Sometimes, he would. And on the Thursday night of that week, when he had pulled over and thrown up, shaking, into the dark thrush, I hadn’t uttered a word as he climbed back into the driver’s seat. But, as he wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, I’d stared at him with the filmy eyes of a hungry nocturnal animal.

Then, at least, the curiosity wasn’t a burden. Not like it became when I drove myself home come that morning after.

I could tell it was different the moment I shifted awake, feigning a sleep for just a couple more minutes.

Dressed again and putting on a pot of coffee, his back was to me. I had shuffled up, pulled on my clothes, and I knew the stupor of the night had faded. So, really, when I stepped past him and he closed the door behind me without a word, I shouldn’t have been upset. 

When I reach the pick-up first, I twist to look at him. 

Rust has slowed to finish his cigarette at a safe distance, eyeing me warily.

He crushes the stub into the dirt, then glancing out into the long night. 

“Straight home?” he asks. 

I shake my head, and the rigid line of him gives just a little. It’s so dangerous to be seduced by your own influence, but the realisation that I’ve had any at all is fuel enough to the plea in my wide eyes.

Rust advances haltingly. If I move, I’m sure he’ll flinch and bolt. So, I test the theory: better to weed out what’s already decayed.

I angle myself towards him, open like a door. He tosses his jacket into the bed of his pickup, stepping through.

The heat seeps back between us, slow and thick like a flood of molasses, and it becomes very clear, suddenly, that we never should’ve tried to barricade ourselves. Pretty sure Rust’s known this a while, anyways: he’s the one who leans in for me, kisses me slow.

This time, his hands are quick to curl around my body, where the tension in that tight cord all down his spine has snapped. Or just eased up on him—but that’s unlikely. And unimportant. With his firm touch petting up my spine, climbing each rung, it’s all unimportant.

A pulse of arousal strikes me like an electric current as Rust pulls the blouse out of my skirt, his face close to me.

His tongue pushes into my mouth again, and I hum over the husk of nicotine. It’s a haze in the brain, one I’ve missed. My skin tingles and my thoughts warp in this leer, like a nic rush, only I haven’t had one of those in years and years.

I can’t exactly call what I’m feeling satisfaction. There’s no win to this. My teeth sunk into him so sweet last time, and the thrill of getting him, of tripping him up with his own desire, was almost as good as the actual feeling of him inside me. But it’s different now: so obvious, it’s funny. Though my first instinct is to doubt and pry apart, maybe want is the most trustworthy thing a person can feel. It’s animal and instinctive, and it’s inevitable, so it’s always true. Ugly, sometimes, but always there. There’s no room to question his want, because I can taste it on his tongue, I can feel it pressing over my stomach, I can hear it in the way he hums at the sear of my skin. 

It must be a favour to me: the blatancy of it all. For however direct he may be, I’ve always felt that Rust has these plans within plans. Nothing is as it is on the surface: you have to dig to get to the good stuff. It’s disorienting, having it all laid out for me. And I’ll take anything he gives me.

I don’t want to leave any room for doubt in his mind either. 

So, I clutch at him hungrily, so drunk on his warmth, and thump my back against the door he opens for me to close it again.

I don’t ask, and I’m glad that he doesn’t make me, only presses my body flush against the cool surface of his side-door, until the only part of me free to move are the fingers that curl over his arms, as if they could sink through the fabric and then the flesh underneath. There’s only dogs and ghosts out at this hour, anyway; eyes in the long-grass. No-one but them and him to see my hips jerk against the precise hand under my skirt. 

He hadn’t looked at me this much before. Even when my eyes go glassy and I have to blink hard to try and regain my smarts, to not finish too quickly, I know he’s staring at me like a scientist.

When the next needy noise is drawn from me, I bury my face into his neck to save myself the embarrassment of being seen like this, even though it’s pointless. His fingers are dragging aside the damp fabric of my underwear anyway, sliding through my silky desire. When his knee shoves between my legs to keep apart, he changes the pressure of his hand, circles tightly over where shame does not apply. Restraint is a man-made practice that never prevails over biology. I should know this. Still, though, my face is hot as I whine into his shoulder. 

Rust doesn’t ask me to look at him, not yet, and I’m so grateful for it. I bite into the meat of him at the push of one finger, then keen all the way to my toes at the hook of two, rocking against his palm thoughtlessly as he fucks the both of them in deep.

The clink of his belt buckle barely processes through the smoke of sticky eyes and open mouths and the press of his body. But the absence of his hand from my hip, of it working between us?—that’s what ushers normal sensation back into me. I recover from the limp slump against him, but not quickly enough to understand or resist him guiding my hand to wrap around his swollen cock, coated with spit. 

He grunts as he tightens my grip around him, coaxes my hand how he wants it. In the back of my mind, though, of course I remember. Only, his fingers are so far inside that my head is spinning, teetering on the precipice of another thought I know I’ll lose, one that dissolves at the slight scrape of nail, one that would never matter as much as the soft then firm press of him against my cervix. My eyes water, and there licking at me is only a faint, abstract impression of embarrassment when Rust grips over my jaw, calloused heel of his palm heavy on my neck, and hauls me away from the hiding spaces of his body’s crevices.

“What, you fuckin’ shy now? You wanted it, so look,” he mumbles, digging his fingers into the soft parts of my face a little more, like there’s some hidden button beneath the surface that can make my droopy eyes fly back open. There must be because, somehow, it works. He angles my face by the scruff of my neck.

I can only stand to look between us for a few jumpy heartbeats before my eyes settle on the comfort of his even face, which he seems to accept readily, breath hitching. He does not blink. The intensity of his observations hounds me, lights me up like points on a star, even when my vision smears and melts at the dizzying curl of his fingers. Lucky for my weak knees he’s got his hand over the nape of my neck, his thighs pinning my own. I shake against him, some pathetic thing, and tremble when he keeps massaging there deep inside.

“Don’t go dumb on me, girl,” Rust scolds quietly when my hand loosens around him, his own having to leave the heat of my neck and come down to correct the pressure, the pull. My head lolls without the support of his hand. “Ain’t gon’ say nothin’?” 

Words spill uselessly into a pool before me, slipping through my fingers. My pulse slams in my throat, lower, too, against his touch, each beat meeting him as he works me over again. 

What I manage is a choked noise, all clogged up inside. I have little to do with it: just a body, a heartbeat and a compulsion to be near, nearer, nearest to him. Half a mind that’s lagging worse than the computers at work, that realises far too late that the body is curling into itself again, so tight, so wet, and fuck, fuck. 

He removes his fingers, that slow drag, and tells me to turn. When I don’t—completely without, dull and aching—Rust twists and shoves me against the window, which goes cloudy at the breathy moan pushed up from my slack stomach. 

Slow-like, a cold hand snakes under my shirt, smooths up my burning spine, all the way up, all the way down, hooking in the waistband of my skirt, knuckles burrowing into the soft dimples in my back. My whole body shivers as he slides his palm over the back of my neck—a comfort for which I’m desperate to become familiar—and squeezes gently. If I keep my eyes open, all I can see of him is that black silhouette in the window, a reflection. A homogenous mass, humming at the edges, devoid of the detail of things: can’t see the way he drags his thumb up along the line of my spine, traces where it meets the skull; nor the way he steps forward, teases the air out of my lungs, enjoys it, tugs my hips closer to him by the gusset of the underwear webbed between my thighs; nor the way the cool metal buckle presses red lines into flesh. 

The sight of Rust doesn’t matter so much as the understanding that it’s him behind me, that it’s his truck my cheek is being pressed into, that it’s his—fuck—that it’s him sliding through the heat of me, so close. The tip notches and makes it all the easier for my eyes to flutter shut. It helps with the vertigo that follows the rough push of him inside. 

My fingers grasp for the little ridges in the door. Best place for them ends up to be under my mouth, though, to keep my head on my shoulders, to muffle the noises I was sure only animals made. My knee jerks sharply against the truck at the first white-hot pulse of pleasure – I hiss, smearing the drool at the edge of my mouth with the back of my hand, so glad he isn’t in clear enough line of sight to chastise me with his tendency to notice and never forget. 

But he knows—he must fucking know by now—because the heavy hand clasped over my scruff curls around my face, and Rust forces two fingers into my parted mouth, presses over my soft tongue. 

He pulls himself out just to feel the total length of me taking him again, so painfully slow. Feel the initial resistance, the spongy give, the sweet slip, the drag, all of it. So full, I feel sick with it. Overindulgence. Knocks me weak, doesn’t mind it when I bite down on his fingers to take most of the weight out of my sob. What I take from him, he takes from me—we’re even that way—so Rust, already with his nose flirting with the crook of my sweaty neck, nips over my erratic pulse, pushes his tongue over where I’m sure he can see the skin throbbing with the violence of it. Vampire. He could draw blood and I wouldn’t mind: he knows I need bloodletting. 

So fucking dumb to think for a second it could be sated by just one time. I needed it again before it even ended – I knew it in the split second he touched me. The grief of closure was as adamant as a shadow. Stupid. He must think it, too, because, shit, the snap of his hips is mean. Punishment: you should’ve known. 

“We ought’a be in your bed. I should be fuckin’ you through your bed,” he complains gruffly, his mouth dragging over hinge of my jaw.

I moan around the fingers in my mouth, which hook together with his thumb to pinch the fleshy inside of my cheek, challenging my lost focus. No matter. There’s nothing we can do now. 

The seize of my body doesn’t take him by surprise at all, not that I expected it to, and the words that follow are easy, like he’s been thinkin’ of them as loud and clear as day as it would be to speak ‘em: “Shit, that feels good, sweet girl, huh? Tha’s it, just take it. That’s good.” And he lets the warmth gush out before stuffing it back in. “You’ll take one more.”

I stare at the endless field to the side of us, melted over the curve of his door, shivering despite the humidity that always finds you around here. I choke more on my own tongue than his fingers as Rust fucks me slow, like I deserve it.

“Need it s’bad, huh?” he drawls into the shell of my ear. “Why you gone all quiet on me, baby?—thought y’wanted it.” 

He drags his fingers out of my mouth, daring me to speak. He slides his hand between my stomach and the side-door, gliding down between the thighs, smearing my dripping arousal over the skin. 

My toes curl tight again as he pushes deeper than before, sits there like he knows my mind will do the rest of the work. The grate of his zipper as he shifts draws a mangled sound from the pit of me, not hidden by the brace of my trembling arm. 

He zeros in on my clit, all sticky, and circles tight. I shudder. 

“Give in,” he says to me in a voice so low and soft that it barely reaches me above the high frequency splitting through my skull. He rolls that bright pearl between his finger and thumb. “You feel it?” 

Mindless and eyes all milky, I still manage a nod, grateful for the mean pin of his knees against my shaking thighs. 

He hums. “So give in.” 

Fuck, this is absurd. The mind can just about string two and two together when Rust lends a forearm beside my head for me to rest on, to grip over: so he’s pictured this, wanted this, for how long? I knew the stagnancy was a front, swallowed something else, but—my mouth goes wet and slack over his forearm at the languid roll of his hips—but it wasn’t realistic to imagine it was this. Rust struck me as someone incapable of reconciling himself with his wants. Shame over acceptance because he thinks it’s atonement. Should’ve known better than to think Rust believed in redemption. 

The silhouette in the window is looking over the empty road, scanning for cars that won’t ever come—but his hand is warm under the tent of my shirt, easing over my waist, slow, as everything clamps up, trembling, again. Body and a heartbeat, he tugs my hips back to him, again and again, until he’s a hot, shuddering line all through me, face in my neck, crushing the fight out of my lungs. 

His nose presses over my cheek, and his breath is coarse there, too, panting, when he lifts his heavy head. My throat goes so loose and open, greedily drinking in the sweet-sticky scent of him. 

“C’mon, now,” he says to me once he’s pulled my underwear back up, dragging the cool, damp gusset against the mess of me for good measure. He pinches my hip, then over my thigh, like that might get me to quit shuddering. “Time to go.” 

When I don’t move, he smooths a hand gently over my hair. Tucks a loose chunk of it back into the mess of my braid before deciding it’s best if he lets it loose completely. 

Rust winds down the window as he holds open the door for me to clamber onto the bench.

“Y’can sleep ‘f you want,” he mumbles once he’s got me curled up on the seat, leaning through the frame. He tilts his head – the shadows have always hidden his eyes, but I like how the pinch in his brow has melted away at least.

If I had half a mind, I’d use it to shove his face out my goddamn way. Instead, I settle for the narrowing of my eyes and a decided huff. “Won’t.”

Lie. I fall asleep like anything, mellowed by the sweet rush of wind over marshland, the spirit of it weaving inside, and the weight of Rust’s hand tucked in the tight bend of my knee.

[angel-eyes05]

to leave the warmest bed i've ever known (part 2)

PREVIOUS CHAPTER

pairing: spider-woman!reader x miguel o’hara 

summary: life on the run is not for the weak. you're reminded of this once you run into someone you haven't seen in a while

warnings: a lot of angst (there'll be fluff and smut soon i swear i just feel like writing angst right now lmao), HUGE ATSV SPOILERS DO NOT READ THIS IF YOU HAVEN'T SEEN THIS MOVIE, mentions and descriptions of blood and injuries, this is so against canon its insane

word count: 2.2k

notes: ok so i changed my mind, miguel and the reader arent gonna make up just yet🤭. trust me when they do it'll be worth it lmao. im gonna need everyone to suspend their belief for the next chapters cause im kind of just making up the plot to beyond the spider-verse at this point for this silly little fic so just go with it

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God, this was very quickly turning out to be a very bad decision. The movies made being on the run seem a lot easier than this. What they had failed to include was how easily it was to get ambushed by Spider-Society members while hopping between the dimensions looking for Miles. Your little group basically had to hop through a bunch of different dimensions within a week and look for him there, then leave before HQ managed to track you guys down. You’re not sure how much time has passed since you left. Maybe a few weeks. Maybe a few months. The passage of time was pretty weird when you were constantly hopping through the fabric of space and time. All you knew is that your eyes had naturally dulled out the neon orange light that shined from the portals you were constantly jumping through. Luckily, none of your team had been caught yet. There had been a few close calls, but only two of those led to severe injuries, one of them being Gwen, and the other time being you.

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You and your team had been ambushed due to a malfunction with the portal opening. Each of you were put with your own variant to fight. Just to your luck, you were confronted by Jess. She looked awful to be honest. Stressed. She was probably put on finding you and your team while Miguel endlessly searched for Miles. This little wild goose chase had tired her out. Part of you felt bad. But that was very quickly overcome by the feeling of betrayal growing in your chest. You had a feeling she felt a similar way. “Please don’t make me do this. Just let me take you home,” she said weakly. Home. That’s right. That's basically what HQ had been to you before. You hadn’t been back to your Earth in five years, ever since Miguel caught you on the top of that building. Jessica was your first friend there. She had shown you the ropes to everything, been there for you during your lowest moments, and guided you to your highest ones. And now you had to repay her by sending her back to Miguel in a bloody pulp. You hated that this is how things had to go. But such was life for someone like you. “I have no home anymore,” you said at her monotonically before charging at her with your fists first. She’s quick to react, using one of her webs to swing away. It’s clear she doesn’t want to hurt you, each of her movements swift to defend herself, but never going on the offensive side. She could easily take you down if she wanted to. She had been doing this longer than you had and was more skilled than you too. She was going easy on you, desperately trying to show you she didn’t want to fight. But you didn’t care. You had put too much on the line to start to give up now.

The others had taken down their foes long before you had finished with Jess. You could see Gwen running up to you out of the corner of your eye, Ben tied up in a web behind her. You webbed her to the floor before she could get closer to the struggle you and Jess were currently in. You gave Gwen a quick, reassuring nod that she returned before running off to find the others. Once Gwen was out of sight, you quickly attached a web to Jess’ face, and pulled it down into your knee, knocking her glasses off her face and shattering on the floor. With her off her balance, you took the opportunity to try to knock her out. You slammed your fists into her face, one after the other, releasing all of the stress that had accumulated in your body over the past couple of months into her cheeks. You couldn’t see the damage you were doing, blinded by rage and betrayal and your fists blocking out her face. The only thing you could see was the blood splattering off of her face onto yours. You felt a voice in the back of your head begging you to stop. You desperately wanted to, but you had lost control of your body. Jess wasn’t the real person you wanted to hurt here, you already knew who that was. But she was the closest thing you could get to him right now. And if you were being honest with yourself, she wasn’t completely innocent to you either.

In her last desperate attempt to save herself, Jess shoved her forearm in the way of your balled up knuckles, grabbed a piece of shattered glass from her broken frames, and shoved it deep into your chest. Your reign of fury on her face suddenly stopped as pain quickly snapped through your body. You quickly fell to your knees, partially out of shock, and looked down to see the blood spilling out of your chest. As Jess dropped to her knees as well, you could finally get a gauge of the damage you’ve done. You couldn’t tell if the blood loss was making you see things, but her nose looked almost crooked, a dark cut slicing through the middle of it and blood pouring out of both nostrils. Both of her eyes were swollen, not entirely shut but on their way there. You looked down at your hands, the skin on your knuckles broken off and bleeding through the fabric of your suit, blending in with its natural red. They were trembling with a mixture of faded anger and new guilt. I never wanted to hurt her, you kept repeating to yourself in your head, as if it was going to make any difference. Maybe if you thought it hard enough, it would erase your actions. You suddenly flinched when you felt Jessica’s hand cupping your face. You looked up at her, mouth agape. Her soft thumb brushed your face as she stared lovingly at your face. So she did know. That made you feel a little less stupid when you broke down in front of her then and there. You just felt awful. Jess was your friend. Your best friend probably. And look at what you’ve done to her. You couldn’t understand how she managed to still be so soft with you, despite how much you’ve just mutilated her face. 

It was ever harder for you to understand how quickly she enveloped you as soon as she saw the tears begin to streak her face. You didn’t deserve this. You should run away. You need to run away. You’re currently bleeding out, and you’re just sitting here, sobbing into the crook of her neck. She’s probably just stalling for time and holding you here until help comes for her. But the longer you sat here the longer you realized…this was just her. It was only Jess here. No help was coming. Jess just wanted to hold you again one last time before letting you run away again. Once you pulled away from her, she wiped away your tears. “Don’t let me catch you,” she whispered into your ear. It was a reminder to you that while she was still holding onto her beliefs, that didn’t mean she ever stopped caring for you. She helped to push you up off of the ground, her hands now covered in your blood. You began to walk away out of  the dark alley to look for the others. Before leaving entirely, you turned around to look at Jess, still laying there. “I’ll find you once this is all over. So don’t you dare die on me, okay?” you shouted at her. She gave a simple nod in return, watching as you stumbled out of alley way. While you made the ultimate decision to let her live that day, you still had anger boiling up in your body. Somebody had to pay for all of this. All of this chaos that was about to unleash itself onto the multiverse. And you know exactly who did. And you didn’t intend to show him the same mercy you showed Jess. No. This was a job you intended to finish. 

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Thankfully, your chest laceration healed up quicker than expected, allowing you and your teammates to get back on track. Images of your encounter with Jess replayed through your mind for the next couple of weeks. The only other person you told about the details of your brutalization of Jess was Peter B., knowing he would understand with all the hard decisions he’s had to make himself. Gwen and Hobie had also noticed that you were acting a little bit off, but you avoided the subject every time they would bring it up. 

Suddenly though, it was happening. The moment you and your team had anticipated for the past couple of weeks. You were awoken by the bright glow of three orange portals opening up, three Spider-Men in each. Your team sprang awake and began to make a run for it. It was no use though, as one by one, each member of your team was separated by a different group of variants, until it was just you, Gwen, and Peter running. While you were running, you felt a hand yank at the hair on the back of your head. You quickly turned around and found Ben Reilly as the culprit. You didn’t hesitate to jump into the air and kick his face, pushing him off of you and onto the floor. As the three of you kept running, your attention was suddenly caught by something else. “Keep your hands off her! That one’s mine!” you heard the familiar voice call out to Ben. A chill went down your spine, as the three of you stopped dead in your tracks. You did it. You finally managed to lure the bat out of his cave. Before you could turn around and find the face that belonged to that deep, alluring voice, you were caught off guard as you felt a body dive into your stomach at full speed, knocking all of the air out of you lungs. The pure force of the dive pushed you and the figure into the brick wall of an abandoned building, crashing into the structure. 

Vision and hearing fuzzy from the impact, you heard Gwen scream out your name and begin to start running to you, before her and Peter B. get swept up by their own variants to take care of. Your head throbs in pain as you look around the building, feeling a huge weight on your chest. You look down at the rest of your body to find what’s weighing you down so much. And it’s him. Miguel’s massive body laying on top of you, his head dug into your stomach and arms wrapped around your waist from the dive. You were partially in shock. First of all, from the fact that your first interaction with him in months is him attempting to kill you (although it’d be a lie to say you weren’t thinking similar things). Second, you were still reeling from the blow. And third, the most shocking of all, was that this was arousing you in some way. Despite how much anger you were feeling towards him right now, you still managed to get butterflies in your stomach from how much of him was on top of you right now. He basically enveloped all of the lower half of your body. 

Shame and anger filled your body fast as you tried to push him off of you, any attempts in vain though due to how massive he was. He helped you though when he began to stand up, allowing you to get yourself up and dive through his legs as an escape. Just as you made your attempt to run out of the hole in the wall, away from a fight you know you couldn’t win, Miguel’s giant hand wrapped around your forearm. He pulled your body back to face him and slammed his massive fist into your face. Blood spurted out of your nose purely from the impact and you were nearly knocked onto the floor. You grabbed your nose in reaction and looked up at him towering over you, unable to make out his expression from his mask. “You must’ve been thinking about this encounter for a while. Have you been thinking about me, Miggy?” you quipped at him. Usually you spoke playfully with him whenever you were in a good mood with him, but this time it was your one desperate attempt to push down any feelings that would get in the way of you doing what needed to be done. “Don’t feel so flattered cariño. Whatever happens here isn’t personal,” he said in that deep, flirty tone you always found so sexy. But right now all it did was piss you off even more. “Keep telling yourself that if it makes you feel better,” you said, dropping the slight smirk you had on your face. Taking action right away, you charged right at him, ready to do it right this time. You just wished he had his mask off so you could look him dead straight in his crimson eyes as you killed him.

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NEXT CHAPTER

a/n: i had night shift by lucy dacus on loop while writing the fight with jessica....thats all ill say on the matter. also sorry miguel's barely in this chapter i need to set up plot and shit. ALSO I JUST WANNA PREFACE, MY FIC TAKES PLACE A COUPLE OF MONTHS AFTER ACROSS THE SPIDERVERSE SO JESS HAD ALREADY GIVEN BIRTH. I SWEAR Y/N DID NOT JUST BEAT THE SHIT OUT OF A PREGNANT LADY💀💀💀

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[no-droids]

Another Rough Day

gif credit @chrishemsworht

Part Twenty of the Rough Day Series

Rating: Explicit

Word Count: 13.7K

Warnings: Angst, violence, canon-typical blood and gore, language, hurt/comfort

A/N: i wanna thank yall for sticking around during my hermit era, in the time ive been gone i am now officially a junior at a university majoring in aerospace and it’s a fuckin nightmare and i hate everything and god help us all literally kill me and I will be posting INCREDIBLY slowly because of that (I’m talkin weeks or months in between updates yall, im sorry I can’t dedicate more time to this but I am going to finish this fic within the next handful of chapters idk maybe 5 or 6 so you shouldn’t have to wait too too long).  As a heads up there will be hard angst as we enter the final arc, there will be hurt and it’ll get dark but everything is gonna turn out alright so thanks for sticking with me and continuing to stick with me. im sorry if you dont like it or your expectations were subverted or if this isn’t what you’d hoped it would be after following and waiting around for so long but this was planned a long time ago and it took me a good year or two to recognize that I started writing this fic for me and now I’m going to end it writing for me and I hope yall can respect that

ALSO I asked my best BEST FRIEND in the entire world @cptnbvcks to collaborate with me for this after we both took a very long break from creating and she drew some GORGEOUS artwork for this chapter so it will be posted at the end, everyone please go follow her and say hello

ps brittany girl you’re a fuckin menace i had to use my own two ears and listen to ethan literally say the words “the mandalorian cums, hard” what the fuck was that im actually suing

anyways chapter below the cut lets get serious yall

---

You take two of them down before they even realize they’re being attacked.

Your aim is as swift and steady as if Din were behind your shoulder right now, calmly pointing out which stationary tree to hit next in rapid succession.  You’re positioned perfectly at the bottom of the ramp to take full advantage of the ambush, the only thing running through your mind is strategy and the constant calculating of angles and ricochets.  The other three troopers are trapped inside the open Crest and you’re right next to a large boulder that you can step behind for cover, but it proves unnecessary as the rumors were apparently true.

They’re… awful.

Not a single blaster is even fired in your direction—you think you see maybe one panicked red shot bounce around in the hull, but that’s it.  The troopers fumble for their guns and trip over each other at the unexpected attack—a few scream like children through the modulators, but you’re temporarily deaf to anything besides the screech of your weapon hitting its target and the crumpling of armored bodies.

Later on, if someone were to ask you to describe exactly what happened—who died first, who ran for cover, who cried out for help—you don’t think you’d be able to.  You don’t even really feel like a person right now.  The entire thing is cold, robotic survival instinct, pure ruthlessness rising in your soul for the first time in your life.  It feels sick.  Wrong in your bones.  Born from preemptive defense in fear of your life, but that doesn’t mean you stop.  Not until all of them stop moving.

You empty the entire fucking canister for a handful of stormtroopers, firing plasma and char marks across every square inch of the pristine hull even after the last one drops.  Your heart is beating too fast, your finger keeps pulling the trigger multiple times even after the blaster clicks uselessly, completely empty and beeping a warning that it must’ve begun emitting ages ago.  Being out of ammo scares you—you suddenly feel vulnerable, even though the very far away logical part of your mind reminds you that they have to all be dead at this point and no physical threat was ever able to graze you.

Regardless, you quickly spin behind the boulder and grab another canister from your belt, giving it a spare check for leaks while the empty one slides and drops to the rocky ground.  It’s the first time you’ve ever had to reload this weapon instead of just pointing and shooting, but the mechanics are relatively simple and your brain makes up for your lack of coherent thoughts with lightning fast perception.  What's difficult is that your hands are starting to shake now that you’re not aiming, you’re not breathing correctly because you’re not really breathing at all.  You can’t tell the difference between the adrenaline-fueled dissociative silence that muffles everything around you or if it really is just that quiet now.  No more clatter of armor, no modulated voices or terrified screams.  No blasters, no footsteps along the ramp, no birds singing.

You quickly pause to lift your elbow and check the enormous eyes blinking up at you, tiny claws still holding tight to the fabric of your tunic and completely unharmed, and then you force yourself to move.  The blaster is held out in front of you while you walk forward and your finger rests on the trigger, begging to be pulled again.  It’s suspenseful and terrifying in a different way than before—now it’s less about psyching yourself up for confrontation and more about the fact that any sudden movement could mean your very swift end.

Silence.  Silence.  You’re numb and raw at the same time, walking up the ramp as your eyes fly everywhere, not even registering the blood or gore, just searching for movement.  You don’t know if you feel like a predator or prey, you’re that much more brutal and inhuman because of how fucking terrified you are.  You count four stormtroopers in the hull laying crumpled and still on the metal floor, but the one in the far corner only has blood on his shoulder.  You quickly swing the blaster around to remedy that, but then—

“P-Please don’t kill me!”

His words remind you of something.  Reality, maybe.  A world outside yourself and the kid’s survival, the living beings behind the bloody armor your enemies wear.

It’s a miracle your finger stays hovering over the trigger, and you watch him throw the blaster at your feet with a clang and scramble to show you his empty hands.  “Please don’t kill me, please don’t kill me—I’m not loyal to the Empire, I don’t want to be here, please, I don’t want to die, I don’t want to die—”

Behind the mask, your expression furrows.  Stormtroopers are loyal to the bitter end, what is he saying?  They embrace their expendiality, it’s the only thing that makes them any sort of a real threat.  Kuiil told you horror stories about them during your childhood, the cloning facilities and the propaganda they’re force fed since infancy.  It’s nearly impossible to find one who hasn’t been raised from birth to serve the Empire, no matter how crumbled and trace its remaining authority may be.

No, this is a trap, it has to be.  Your expression twists with dread after hearing him speak, readjusting your aim with the blaster and preparing yourself for the years of nightmares that’ll follow—but then he cries out, “Wait!” and then removes his helmet with trembling hands.

You pause, staring down at him in shock.

It’s him, you recognize him immediately.  It’s the same face from a hologram puck you bore into your memory, spent multiple days staring at so you’d be able to spot him under any disguise or circumstances.  Oshua Ryler.  Your quarry, the fifth puck, the one Din was out Maker knows where searching for before this entire mess happened.  A stormtrooper?  His puck said nothing about the Empire, this doesn’t make any sense.  What is he doing here?  Stormtroopers don’t have pucks, they don’t have bounties or relatives or loved ones searching for them.  They’re brainwashed, replaceable, faceless soldiers in suits of armor and they don’t even have names.

“Please don’t kill me,” he begs again, staring at you with wide eyes even as he cowers.  “I have a family, I-I just want to go home, please—”

“Shut up.”  You can’t think straight with him crying like that and you’re wasting so much time just standing here trying to process when your brain had to literally shut itself down to even do the things you’ve already done.  You have to kill him and escape, you have to—you can’t trust this complication, not with the tiny claws currently digging into your back and reminding you of your purpose, but it was so much easier when he had on a helmet.  You hate looking at his face.  It’s going to haunt your dreams now, just like the man you stabbed on Corellia.

“Please don’t kill me—please don’t kill me,” he screws his eyes up and breathes over and over instead, and your stomach wrenches with disgust.  His posture and expression are so fucking pitiful, you can barely keep your eyes on him through the overwhelming nausea and aversion that climbs up your throat.  He’s with the Empire, and they’re looking for the baby.  You know what needs to be done.  Pull the trigger, just one small movement from you and it’ll be all over.  It would be the easiest thing in the world, it would be so easy.

But then instead, you ask, “Why are you a stormtrooper?”

“I’m n-not—I hate the Empire—”

“The Empire is ashes.”  You don’t know if you’re yelling or whispering with how much blood is roaring through your ears.  “They hold no power anymore.  Why are you with them?”

“Because the one thing they have left is money!”  The quarry shrills the words at you, ghostly pale to the point of turning green.  “Th-They buy troopers now—they opened up a whole new market for the smugglers, there’s a base nearby that’s used for training and…”  He stares wide eyed at you and gulps.  “C-Conditioning.”

Your brain is already going a trillion lightyears an hour and it doesn’t have the capacity to empathize or understand anything beyond the child’s survival and the relevant details right now.  “Were they expecting the baby?”

“W-What?”  He squeaks up at you.

“Was the bounty put out on you a trap set by the Empire?”  You ask him, lifting your free arm just enough to flash him the tiny child clinging to your side.  “He said they’re coming after the baby, so tell me if this was planned from the beginning.”

“Who is ‘he’?”  The stormtrooper asks, furrowing his eyebrows and looking around.  “What are you talki—”

“Tell me if the bounty on you was a trap to take this baby!”  You roar, your blaster shaking as you aim it down at him.  Your mind is acutely focused on the tiny claws hanging onto your tunic, the continued safety of the kid and the life or death situation facing him that you were given absolutely no information about.  “Now—”

“If it was I didn’t know!”  He quickly cries out, pleading with you and clamping his eyes shut in terror under the barrel sight.  “I don’t know anything about a b-baby, or a bounty!  They just put blasters in our hands and told us to search for a ship and to bring back anyone we find alive, I swear!”

You’re silent for a moment, biting your lip under the mask and caught halfway between discerning and stalling.  You could still kill him.  You should still kill him, time is ticking down and more troopers could be heading this way any second.

Shit.  “Who put the bounty out on you?”  You ask sharply.  It might not be a completely fair question, but he can’t exactly blame you for not feeling completely fair right now.

“I—I don’t know,” he gasps, clutching his bleeding shoulder.  “Could’ve been anyone—my mother, Cyra, o-or my dad, Obediah, or Thia, or Benja, or S—”

“Thia,” you interrupt his rambling, catching the slurred word and repeating it back to him.

“Yes!”  Oshua jerks his head up, tears and hope immediately filling his eyes at the sound of her name, “Yes, Thiadura Celi Ryler, that’s my sister!”

Maker, if he’s lying, then he’s fucking brilliant at it.  You look towards the cockpit of the ship, biting your lip under the mask.  Get to Nevarro, tell Karga and he’ll… something.  Din was cut off before he finished.  Help?  Know what to do?  You’re lost, but you have a clear directive and the precious seconds are sliding by.  The controls are right up there, two steps to the ladder and less than a minute until you’re rising into the atmosphere.

But then you think back to the terror in Din’s voice.  The blistering panic that made him speak faster and with more urgency than you’ve ever heard from him.  Get to Nevarro.  Tell Karga.  Get to Nevarro.  Tell Karga.

You look back at the quarry.  “How many of you are there?”

“At the base?  Around three hundred,” he immediately spills.  “Half of us are in the hole right now getting brainwashed, they do it in shifts, but they can be mobilized in a few hours.  There were a lot of bodies outside when we were ordered to split off, maybe a third of our squadron, but the rest were still shooting at whatever was—”

“So around a hundred left,”  You finish breathlessly, almost wanting him to speak faster and cut to the chase so you can calculate quicker.  “How many were dispatched on the search?”

“Uh, there were eight groups of five sent in each major direction,” he informs you, still trembling on the ground.  “Told us not to come back until we covered the entire sector.”

Of which, four you’ve already taken care of.  In other circumstances, you’d be nauseated at the thought, but right now, it’s just another number to subtract, just more panicked math in Din’s frightening absence.  That leaves at least sixty troopers left wherever the base is, minimum, and likely a couple more hours before they’ve combed the sector.  If this wasn’t a preconceived trap purposefully set for the kid, then that means reinforcements haven’t arrived yet but likely will soon.  And if this is a base meant for training and conditioning, then that also means there’s a chance not all of them will be loyal yet.

You make the decision immediately.

“Okay,” you announce, clicking the blaster’s safety switch and holstering it, sounding lightyears more certain than you feel.  “Then you’re going to help me carry out a rescue mission, and I’ll take you back to your sister.”

“You…”  He looks uncertain, blinking at your blaster and slowly lowering his hands.  “You want to rescue the men?”

Ideally?  Sure.  Realistically?  You don’t say anything in response.  Instead, you kick his regulation firearm at your feet further away from the quarry just in case your judgment is flawed, and then turn around and grab one of the bodies behind you.

Your adrenaline is still blaring so fast that you only just barely note the severity of what you’ve just done and what you’re continuing to do.  The corpses aren’t real to you right now, they’re inanimate things that you need out of your ship before you can close the doors to it.  They are, however, heavy as fuck, but the only other adult here has a wound in his arm from the gun on your hip.  Regardless, you have experience with lifting dead weight without a big, strong, capable man to do it for you.

“Help me out here, kid,” you mutter over your shoulder, and in response, you feel his claws dig in and climb up just a little bit until he can peek out in front of you.  Thankfully, the burden is suddenly lifted and you can quickly slide the dead troopers down the ramp with ease.  It takes hardly any time at all—you just yank and haul and release and all four of them tumble the rest of the way all by themselves.

When you stand back up, Oshua hasn’t moved and he’s looking at you with a pale, queasy expression.  Glancing down, you see that your white robe is now stained with streaks and patches of rusty blood.  Instead of swallowing back bile at the sight and bolting to the shower to scrub off every last remaining trace, you breeze past it, noting nothing more than a change of color.  Dirtying your white, pristine clothing with the consequences of protecting this baby—you’d rather have blood-soaked fabric with an unharmed kid clinging to you than any other combination of those things.

“Can you make it up to the cockpit?”  You ask the quarry, kicking his rifle off the ship before closing the ramp and then gesturing up the ladder.  Your voice is calm and steady but your hands are beginning to shake again.  “I need as much information as possible about the base.”  You know that’s where Din is, judging from the wall of blaster screeches that drowned him out through the comm.  Logically, you know you could be headed right into a trap, and every instinct inside you wants to find safety, but… you just cannot imagine flying the ship away from this planet without Din onboard.  It isn’t fucking happening, you’ve made your choice.

Without waiting for a response, you climb the ladder and plop down in the pilot’s seat of the Crest.  While Oshua finds some way to clamber up the steps behind you in bulky stormtrooper armor with one good arm, you hold the kid closer on your lap and begin flight checking.  Din will be fucking furious, but the scolding you’ll be sure to get is the least of your worries right now.  Following his instructions and going back to Nevarro is just making shit infinitely more dangerous for him, turning what could be a potential rescue mission into an undeniable suicide mission.  Even if Karga somehow decides to send a few guild members along to infiltrate the base, it’ll be a war you want to avoid.

Besides.  What did you always tell him about running away from him, even when he instructs you to?

It’s just… not really your thing.

---

They’re everywhere.

They crawl like flies out of the base, and for every single body that falls, three more spill from the open doors.  Rapid fire plasma beams launch from the end of Din’s blaster, melting white armor with every twitch of his gloved finger.  Their aim is terrible, as is to be expected, but the sheer number of them more than makes up for it, as is by design.

Din’s heart pounds with exertion, his breath comes in ragged huffs through the modulator as his helmet identifies and isolates which body is closest to him, which body he needs to bring down next.  His blaster is so hot it nearly burns his hand, even through the thick gloves he wears.  When he runs out of ammo, he holsters the pistol and swings his rifle from around his shoulder, spinning to catch a handful of troopers behind him in the obliterating blast.

He’s not thinking much.  He can’t think, even though your safety and that of his son is currently dangling by a thread.  If he focuses on that, he’ll be dead before he can even picture your faces.  He just reacts, he maims and kills without a single thought in his mind.  Blood splatters, screams and sirens blare as he becomes surrounded by more and more troopers.  Din can hear the sound of plasma colliding and ricocheting off his armor; every single one of them is a potential injury he could currently have but might not even be able to feel right now.

His helmet starts beeping rapidly and he turns just enough to see, highlighted in bright red on the screen, two enormous artillery turrets slowly rising up out of the roof of the imperial base.  He feels a fierce flash of anger burn in his chest, it’s like a lightning strike to his veins.

Din needs to go.

And yet… if he was another man.  If he wasn’t a father, or a husband, if he had no family and no attachments like the creed declared he should, he would go.  With just a twitch of his fingers, he could be launching into the sky and retreating as far away from this battlefield as he could reasonably get.  He’s never been the type to run from a threat, but this isn’t just a threat.  Dozens of troopers are gaining on him, they’re trampling their own dead to get within range.  Plasma pings off his shoulder, another one hits his back as they flank from behind.  He can feel the heat through the sizzling beskar, he can see them surrounding him on all sides, and the propulsion trigger for his jetpack is right there under his wrist.

Din holds his ground and continues firing, he plants his feet firmly to the dirt with only one thought in his mind.

Run, sweet girl.  Run.

---

You type in commands to scan for Din’s signal, quickly locating it through the Crest’s computer onboard.  Not far from here, three minutes or less.  The ship rumbles to life beneath you, slowly lifting off the rocky ground and rotating in place as it hovers.  It’s not on autopilot but you feel like you are, you can barely feel your hands as they move the yoke forward and the Crest takes off in the direction of Din’s blinking frequency.

“Tell me about defenses,” you instruct Oshua, restlessly bouncing your leg while the baby coos.

“Two plasma turrets on top of the base,” the quarry quickly answers.  “There’s usually guards stationed around the perimeter, but everyone who’s capable will be outside right now.”

Your mouth twists downwards under the mask.  Blasters don’t scare you much from this high up, but Din’s armor doesn’t cover every inch of his body, he’s not completely invincible.  Doubt churns in your stomach, but you have to stay focused on one task at a time so you don’t get overwhelmed.  The turrets, then.  “Are they automatic?”

“Manual,” he corrects with a shake of his head.

“Radar?”

“Old.  Only engages above fifty meters.”

You eye your altitude and dip the Crest considerably, beginning to weave through the rocky canyons and dodging crumbling cliffs while you travel.  “What about ships?”

“None,” Oshua says, “except for a passenger shuttle used for transport.  TIEs are flown in the Vesta sector, this base is remote and used for basic training only.”

“Anything else?”  You ask, stomach twisting with the knowledge that barely four questions is all you’ve got.  You’re planning to drop into an imperial base to save the man you love and you can’t think of a single other question?  

The quarry shrugs, and your heart slams, does somersaults in your chest at the mere notion that you could fucking die here.  Today, in two minutes or less, you could die here.  The child in your lap looking over the ship’s front panel with a quiet determination in his eyes could die here.  Din could already be dead—that signal broadcasts his location to this computer regardless of whether he’s still breathing or not.  He could already be gone and you’d be flying the baby right into a trap without knowing any differently.

Whelp, you think while taking a deep breath, some strangely calm existential acceptance beginning to flood your soul.  If he isn’t dead, he will be soon if you don’t make it to him on time.

You immediately lift your wrist and speak into the communicator.  “Mando?”  You have no idea if he can hear you, but you need to try anyway.  Your voice is still firm, there’s a strength to it you don’t feel in your chest, but it certainly sounds convincing.  “I’m coming to get you.  Less than a minute to your location, do everything you can to get outside.  If you can’t, I’ll just… uh.  Try to figure something else out.”

That’s it.  That’s it, improvise until you don’t have to.  Even if you’re lacking confidence, you can at least scrounge up some conviction.  Your arms gain feeling again while you veer the Crest through the stony terrain, the familiar reverberations under your feet begin to fill your body with a powerful sense of purpose.  Your breaths begin to come steady, every falling rock you see through the transparisteel feels like it drops in slow motion, allowing you to evade them easily.  It would normally be stupidly dangerous to fly this low with so many unexpected obstacles and hazards narrowly missing the ship, but considering what you’re flying into, a few boulders seems comical.

“Where’s your helmet?”  Oshua asks out of nowhere, and for a second, you don’t think you heard him correctly.

But then it strikes you all at once what he’s attempting to imply, and the sheer lunacy of the thought is enough to make you laugh while you clutch the controls.  “I’m not a Mandalorian.”

“You wear the armor of one,” he points out… rather fairly, you have to admit.  “You cover your face like one.  You have a blaster that fires Philithiorium, a rare and expensive gas native to Mandalore’s stratosphere, and you’re a bounty hunter—”

“I’m not a Mandalorian.”  Your words are short and cutting, you have a daunting task to focus on and don’t feel like having small talk right now.  “I’m not a bounty hunter, either.”

But then again, Karga made you a member of the Guild, didn’t he?  He handed you Oshua’s puck and said this one is for you to find, and you are technically part of a Mandalorian clan.  All of this seems like it happened without your knowledge.  You may be marrying a Mandalorian, you may wear his armor and mother his child and shoot a blaster with his signet branded into it, but war isn’t in your blood.  This robe was a costume when you first made it, this armor was a relic that was restored as a hobby.  In a sense, it still feels that way.  The mask covering your face lended itself to a temporary surge of bravery earlier, but beyond that, the only thing that’s keeping you moving forward now is your family.  The man you love that may or may not be alive right now, the baby holding tight to your leg while the ship sways and weaves through the stony landscape.

Your eyes quickly flick down to the child in your lap, both of his three fingered hands clutching onto the stained fabric of your knee without moving a single inch.  He’d know, you tell yourself.  If his father is gone, he’d already know somehow.  Din is still alive, and he’s counting on you.

---

There’s too many for Din to handle.

They swarmed him, overpowered his endless artillery with massive numbers and there’s nothing he can do anymore.  The backs of his knees are kicked from behind and he slams down to the ground with a clatter, his sizzling hot blasters are ripped from him, and Din folds his hands calmly behind his back even as one of the stormtroopers barks out, “Binders,” to another one, who disappears quickly in response.  In the meantime, a few of them apparently decide to just attempt holding his arms in place, and their measly combined grip is almost enough to make him roll his eyes under the helmet.  These imperial soldiers are even more pitiful than they usually are, but his silent resolve to stall to ensure your escape is enough to keep him stationary and compliant for the time being.

Eventually, a few voices call out from beyond the crowd and there’s some movement from the back.  Dozens of troopers with their blasters all pointed at him begin to shuffle to make way, careful to keep their barrels aimed at him while a path slowly forms.  The crowd of white parts and a stormtrooper with a singular red pauldron on his right shoulder saunters confidently towards Din as he kneels on the ground.

An officer, he assumes.  Conveniently missing from the firefight, the scanner inside his helmet would’ve caught the change in color and Din would’ve made sure to kill him first.

“Well now, what do we have here?”  Comes his thin metallic voice through the tinny filter.  The officer studies him curiously for a few moments, before slowly looking down by his feet, reaching out one cheap, plastic covered foot to gently nudge the body of a dead trooper on the ground with a sigh.  “What a shame.”

Coward, he thinks, his lip curling with disgust under the helmet.

“This is an imperial training base,” he turns his attention back to Din to inform him when he doesn’t immediately respond, rather stupidly he might add.  “How were you able to find us?”

Silence.  The grip on hands held behind his back is even looser now.  He just tilts his chin up slightly in defiance, the scanner inside his helmet locating each weapon strapped to the man’s body and highlighting it red.  Small text boxes blink into existence under each one with a manufacturer and classification—a BlasTech E-11 rifle, a Merr-Sonn thermal detonator, a Kolvo vibroblade—and Din is severely unimpressed with the quality.  The detonator is the only weapon that even catches his eye, and that’s only because the chamber inside that houses the explosive baradium has a release mechanism that’s completely dead.  Useless, then.  Good to know.

After a long moment of quiet tension where Din refuses to speak and the officer continues to confidently scrutinize him, in some strange sort of silent battle of egos that only one seems to have a genuine interest in, another stormtrooper makes his way to the front, shoving past his fellow soldiers to address the superior in charge.

“Commander, we’ve sent out an alert for an intruder,” he tells him, slightly out of breath from running through the crowd in the lightweight armor.  Din wants to roll his eyes, but what he says next makes him snap to immediate attention.  “The fleet informed us that Moff Gideon is currently on route.”

Gideon.  The last time someone spoke that name, it was a quarry on Coruscant and you just barely managed to stop Din from suffocating the bastard for even saying it aloud before freezing him in carbonite.  It would’ve meant half the return on a hunt that lasted nearly a month but he saw red and his hand was crushing his windpipe before he realized what happened.  But he’s dead, Din thinks with a clenched jaw and fists tightening behind his back, he watched that TIE fighter explode and slam into the ground, crushing the man inside it.  The wreck was unsurvivable, he can’t be alive.

“For what?  This Mandalorian?”  The trooper in charge scoffs in response, and Din remains completely mute.

“Yes, sir,” the other one confirms.  “Orders were to capture him, alive.”

“Hm.”  The officer turns his attention back to him, less analyzing and more musing while he tilts his head.  “I see,” he eventually says, and he sounds like he’s grinning, before strolling slightly closer as Din stays completely still on his knees.  “He must want the beskar.  I’m sure it’s worth more than this entire battalion combined.”

All of a sudden, a gloved hand carelessly catches the rim of his helmet and tugs, and Din’s movement is explosive.  He launches off the ground, arms easily slipping from the pathetic grip they were being held in and his fist colliding with the side of the officer’s flimsy white helmet, the plastic making a deafening crack against his face.

Multiple hands immediately rush forward to grab him and yank him back down again while the commanding trooper stumbles backwards in shock, and Din amicably drops to his knees and folds his hands behind his back once more like nothing happened at all.

“Binders!”  A trooper behind him roars loudly once more, and a few men surrounding him begin trotting away this time.

The officer in red stands a few feet away from him now, grabbing his helmet and twisting it back to its proper position on his head where it was skewed.  There’s a shattered hole near his jaw where the material splintered and busted like the cheap piece of banthashit it is, and while he might normally feel pleased with himself for being able to see his skin peeking through, it just fills him with more righteous fury.  It’s such a punchable jaw.

After a few awkward moments of silence, the other one clears his throat and continues.  “He… has inquired about the location and status of a child that should be accompanying him.”

Din inhales deeply through his nose and grinds his teeth.  He wants to snap their necks one by one for even just mentioning his son, but there are just too many, more than even his whistling birds can neutralize.  Still, he gave you as much of a head start as physically possible.  You should be rising into the atmosphere right now, making the jump into hyperspace towards safety.  Karga will know what to do—he’ll protect his family, separate you and the boy so the threat is evenly dispersed instead of collected all in one place, and arm dozens of trained hunters to keep watch over you both individually.  It’s the best Din can do, and it’s the only thing keeping his knees planted on the ground and his body completely motionless while they continue speaking.

“We are combing the sector for a ship with as many men as we can afford to lose,” the trooper in red says, but his voice filter is shattered and now sounds like a puny little droid with a broken voice box, “but our numbers are unimpressive.  Assistance may be required.”

It’s too late, Din thinks, mouth twitching under the beskar with a satisfied smirk.  They’re wasting their time, looking for a ghost.  You’re both long gone by now.  They’ve got no idea you even exist—

“He also spoke of a girl.”

And then he feels his heart stop in his chest.  Every single cell in his body turns to fire, it’s a fucking miracle he doesn’t move a muscle in response.  His sweet girl, the one so far removed from the nightmare of the Empire that she made best friends with the orphans of it.  How the fuck did he know?  He shouldn’t even be breathing, let alone gathering information about you, how did he know?

But then Din thinks back, remembering your makeshift bed on the floor, your panicked eyes and heaving chest as the quarry taunted him with a sick little smile.  Who’s this, Mando?  She’s just darling, isn’t she?  Does Gideon know your crew has a lovely new addition?

“A girl?”

The trooper nods.  “Moff Gideon insisted that if the Mandalorian did not have a child with him, then a girl would likely be protecting him instead.”

He’s going to kill them, Din decides.  Every single one of these imperial pigs, every single soldier standing right now is a dead fucking man.  The blood pumping through his body suddenly turns to acid, deadly black hate poisoning his soul.  His heartbeat morphs into a war drum, the armor strapped to his limbs is the barrel of a gun.  He’s going to fucking kill them and leave an imperial base full of bodies to greet his old nemesis upon his return, and he’s going to enjoy every single second of it.

Except, then—

“Mando?”  The sweetest voice in existence suddenly crackles through the earpiece under his helmet.  “I’m coming to get you.  Less than a minute to your location, do everything you can to get outside.  If you can’t, I’ll just… uh.  Figure something else out.”

And, as Din kneels there in surrender, surrounded by a crowd of enemies he thought he destroyed long ago, all the anger—all the fury and defiance and murder surging through his veins—suddenly morphs to fear.

The emotion is so foreign and old to him, it feels like a face he barely recognizes and a name he can’t remember.  He’s panicked before.  He’s been in situations where a threat has made him blind with rage, he knows what it’s like to look death straight in the eyes and say that he’s busy and to come back another time.  This is different.  This is ice cold that freezes over beskar.

He can’t speak out loud to warn you—he can’t move his hands to press the button on the back of his helmet and allow him to talk without detection.  There’s plasma turrets on the roof of the base, he can see them right now.  The helmet’s scanners say they’re manned and engaged, and though he is outside and this is how you retrieved him before whenever he needed a quick escape, he has fifty fucking imperial blasters trained on him and you know absolutely nothing about this threat.  You’re flying right into a war zone and if either you or his son dies, he won’t ever be able to forgive himself.

Behind the helmet, his eyes fly to each and every trooper, wondering which blaster will be the one to do it.  Which weapon is going to be the one he can’t block in time when you descend, the one that’ll kill him right in front of you.  Which turret will be the one to obliterate the Crest with you and his son inside of it.

“Maker, where are those fucking binders—” he hears someone behind him snarl, but the white noise of pure terror roaring through his ears drowns them out.  His chest starts heaving against his will, sheer panic begins to blur his vision.  For the first time in his life, his armor feels too heavy, his lungs feel like one of these boulders are sitting on them instead of beskar.

All too soon, his helmet starts making a familiar sound that signals quietly in his ear, alerting him of an incoming ship, and the only thing he can physically do is count down the seconds to prepare himself for what is to come.

Ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two…

Like lightning, Din breaks the grip of multiple troopers and surges up, tackling the officer in red to the ground.  There’s a clatter as they both slam into the rocky floor, but in the ensuing scuffle, he easily snatches the thermal detonator from his side holster and holds it up for everyone to see, before pressing the red button on the front and hearing it begin to beep rapidly.

---

You’re right on time.

The Crest rises up through the rocky cliffs surrounding the base and you spot the turrets you were warned about.  Weapons controls are already engaged and you’re too low to be detected by radar—you fire once, twice, and blast both of them to smithereens from behind before they can even rotate around to target you.

Alarms start wailing but the guns are destroyed.  It’s not comforting, though; blasters won’t touch you up here, but that doesn’t mean they can’t fire at Din on the ground.  Your eyes dart across the sea of white, looking for a flash of silver anywhere, and then you spot him instantly in the chaos.

For some reason, the troopers in his vicinity all seem to be bolting away from him.  Their rifles are down, clutched in their hands while they nearly fall over each other to run away as fast as possible, and your heart soars when you spot his jetpack firing up.  Din launches into the sky while another trooper is revealed underneath him, seeming to juggle something in his hands and then throw it into the crowd of retreating soldiers, but the sight of the man you love rising into the air while a flurry of blaster shots from the far edges of the imperial structure follow him gives you the confidence to immediately turn the guns down towards the horde of troopers.

“Which ones are in charge?”  You ask Oshua breathlessly, who leans forward and points out the transparisteel.

“Red pauldrons—” he barely has time to say it before you aim and fire at one of the troopers wearing red that was closest to Din, the plasma beam launching from the Crest so powerful and devastating that it outright obliterates the surface he’s laying on.  Pieces of shattered armor fly and a smoking crater of rubble is all that’s left behind, but your mind is whirling and you’re already onto someone else wearing red at the edges of the complex, and then two more near the doors, and then another—

To their credit, you think the sixty or so soldiers in training seem to figure out that you’re not aiming into the enormous collection of them.  If you were, the damage would be catastrophic and spraying everywhere, but you’re precise and meticulous with your shots, and the only ones who are loyal enough to the cause to hold still and raise their blasters at the incoming threat tend to be the ones you need to mow down anyways.  The rest of them scatter in all directions, scrambling over each other to escape and then disappearing into the distant boulders surrounding the base—but you notice that not a single one of them runs back inside the safety of its open doors.

The hull dips with the weight of Din dropping in, and relief floods your soul even as you continue raining hell down on the superiors in charge.  Any flash of color you see is a target, your eyes lose focus of everything, your vision blurs and turns monochrome as you just search for red.

“Lift up!”  You hear Din’s voice roar from the hull.  You can hear his rifle unloading through the open door.  “Now!  We have to go now!”

You press the button to shut the hull door with Din inside and punch it, rising so fast that the shove of gravity makes it difficult to keep your head up.  Through the sudden surge of downward force, you just barely manage to raise your incredibly heavy arm to push the button that pressurizes the Crest and ignites the launch boosters, preparing the vessel for space travel.  Outside the transparisteel, the gray sky begins darkening as the atmosphere eventually disappears.  The ship’s engines roar, burning so much fuel at once that you’re actually accelerating through the climb, you’re boosting through the gradual ease of gravity as the planet’s curvature and glow becomes softer and softer below you.

As soon as the blackness of space begins to fill the windows, the slight subsiding of force allows you to plug in the coordinates for Nevarro with less difficulty, but you’re still moving, still rising, still escaping.  You can’t find it within yourself to slow down, but then something catches your attention.

Claws suddenly dig sharp into your thigh, sharp enough to sting and cause you to wince, and you look down to see that the kid has gone incredibly tense.  Deadly tense.  Your heart is still pounding even though you’re away from danger, you’ve got Din in the hull, everyone is safe, and yet—

It flickers into existence all at once.  One second it’s just space, just the endless depths of nothingness spread out for light years in front of you, and within the blink of an eye it’s suddenly there.

A star destroyer.

Your body freezes in horrified awe, having never seen a ship so fucking big in your entire life.  It looks like a massive satellite, the size of an enormous asteroid instantly appearing in your vision and dwarfing the vastness of space around it.  All the stars you used to dream about are suddenly blotted out within a fraction of a second, terror so immense seizes your soul that you stop thinking.  You stop calculating, you stop being yourself for a split second that lasts an entire lifetime.

Before you can move a single muscle, the computer beeps quickly and lurches the Crest into hyperspace.

---

The stars streak across the transparisteel like so many times before.  Utter silence nearly deafens you with how abrupt it is after so much noise, but the peace it used to bring does nothing to quell your fear.  Everything is the same as it always was, same bursts of light as you hurdle faster than it towards Nevarro, same quiet, same rumbling hum of the ship.  But now, everything has changed.

You hear the quarry next to you suddenly inhale and exhale loudly, and it shocks you a little bit, reminds you that there’s a person next to you and another is on your lap.  Other people exist outside of the vision of death that just flickered out of existence just as quickly as it appeared.  They’re breathing, Oshua is shakily unbuckling his seatbelt, life is continuing on in the quiet cockpit but you can’t seem to move like he is.  You can’t seem to breathe like he is.  It’s only when the baby slowly maneuvers himself around on your thigh and blinks up at you, placing a tiny hand on your stomach that you finally feel air enter your lungs.

After a moment, you reach down and click open your seatbelt with trembling fingers, scooping the kid up in your arms and slowly attempting to stand.  Everything feels wobbly and dreamlike, you have to brace yourself on the headrest to prevent yourself from falling back into the chair again.

“That was…” Ryler mutters, his voice sounding foggy and distant, “uh.  A close one.”

You look over at him, recognizing that he’s speaking but not quite able to understand the words right now.  Red catches in your vision, and you blink down at the way he’s clutching his left shoulder, the smear of blood darkening the white armor he’s wearing.  You blink a few more times at the sight of it, and though it feels like you normally would be sickened at the wound, somehow shocked out of your state of shock, it does nothing to you.  When you look back up at his face, his expression seems strangely grateful, even when it’s screwed up in what you know must be excruciating pain.    You did that, a quiet voice whispers in your mind, even though the rest of it seems incredibly blank.

Instead of responding, you stumble a few steps over to the ladder, spinning around and hesitating for a moment.  You’re severely lacking in coherent thought, but one thing seems to break through.  You’re not sure if you have enough coordination to do this safely right now.  However, when there’s movement in your peripheral and you look to see Oshua gently offering his right arm to you, seeming to understand you’d like to use both hands for this, you snap back to your senses just the slightest bit and hug the baby tighter to your chest.  Carefully, you begin making the slow climb down the ladder with the kid, still trembling with the aftershocks of adrenaline.  Your limbs feel extra heavy, but eventually the floor meets your feet.

Din is standing there when you slowly turn around, armor gleaming and still as a statue, but he has his back to you.  His helmet is tilted down at the ground, and when you follow his gaze, you’re met with the sight of the bloodstains of dragged bodies that leave dark red streaks all the way up the ramp.

You feel something this time.  It’s… cold.  A burning, searing cold that creeps into your skin.  Like your heart decides to pump nitrogen through your chest instead of warm blood.  You did that.

There’s a sudden urge inside of you to speak, to address him and inform him of your presence, tell him everything is okay, everything worked out, but you can’t find it in yourself to say a single word.  You can’t find a single word to say.  The kid twists as best he can in your clutch, his ears drag against your chest to greet his father, but for some reason, there’s still a strange sense of fear in your bones.  It’s enough to wake you up slightly, it’s enough to tell you it’s not over yet.  There’s a terror in your heart that hasn’t left since he first called over the comm and begged you to run, a crippling dread that you thought climaxed after seeing that star destroyer appear, but it’s somehow only increased after laying eyes on him like this.

You watch as his helmet turns, slowly meeting the pauldron on his shoulder, and for some reason, you feel yourself harden.  Your feet brace against the metal floor like this is another threat you have to face, you let its unyielding metallic strength transfer up through the souls of your boots to your heart in your chest.

But the second you hear cheap white armor clatter as the quarry steps down the ladder behind you, Din bursts into movement.  He suddenly spins and storms up to you in one single step while catching your holstered blaster on your hip.  It’s out and aimed in the blink of an eye, and it’s a miracle you remember how to speak before he remembers how to kill.

“Mando—” you warn, just in time for the quarry to land on the floor of the hull and turn around to reveal his face.

Din holds there for a second, his helmet locked on Oshua’s features.  His gloved fingers twitch wildly on the trigger of your gun held over your shoulder, like he has to remind himself multiple times not to.  You hear Oshua’s armor clack while he likely raises one good arm in surrender, but then Din’s helmet moves a fraction of a millimeter to your face and holds there.  He just stares down at you, and the air feels heavy, your body feels heavy, the feather light child in your arms feels heavy.

Slowly, he lowers his arm, lets it fall while he continues looking at you from behind the visor.  You look back at him, unblinking, unfeeling, and there’s a few seconds that last an utter eternity where nobody moves.  Nobody speaks, nothing happens, but then a soft coo comes from your arms before you can finally break eye contact, knowing there are still some things that need to be done.

You eventually turn around and lift your chin to address Oshua.

“You have to go into carbonite,” you inform him quietly.  Your voice sounds strange, like it’s coming from outside of yourself.  “We’re taking you to Nevarro, and then you’ll be transported to your home planet. When they unfreeze you, your sister will be there to collect you.”

He looks uncertain, one hand still raised while the other hangs uselessly at his side, and you don’t blame him.

But you also don’t feel like saying anymore, not unless he decides he doesn’t want to go in willingly.  Normally you might’ve tried to empathize, offer him further reassurance beyond just a couple short sentences, but you don’t.  Speaking feels difficult, thinking feels difficult.  You’re still in survival mode, not active but reactive.  There’s also no reason for you to lie to him about this, and you can see him glance at Din standing silently behind you, who hasn’t moved a muscle.

He eventually nods and you walk him over to the chamber without another word, watch him turn to face you as he backs into the opening while you reach up towards the control panel.

But then there’s a moment.  One where you hesitate slightly, one where your vision flashes back to the sight of those bloodstains on the floor, and that burning cold fills you again, so cold it feels completely numb.

“I’m… sorry,” you whisper quietly to him, though your voice sounds so empty.  There’s so much emotion that should be there but isn’t, so much regret and pain that should break through but can’t.  “I’m sorry I… killed your friends.”

Later, you’ll think about how you felt absolutely nothing saying it.  Your heart doesn’t constrict with remorse at the mere words leaving your mouth, guilt doesn’t flood into your soul, pain doesn’t wrack through your bones.  You could’ve been saying anything at all and nobody would be able to tell the difference.

He blinks at you, flicking his eyes between yours for a second or two, but then you press the proper button and watch the gas quickly freeze him where he stands.  He’ll be conscious the entire time, but Karga will send him to the correct location and you have no doubt that this elemental purgatory is leagues better than where he just escaped from.  It’s a benefit being the last quarry to be retrieved—he’ll only have to spend a few days trapped in here before being reunited with his family.

When that’s done and Oshua is a complete statue in front of you, bulky white armor now colored a dull metallic gray and frozen in time, you will yourself to finally turn around to face the enormous mountain of a presence behind you.  The baby gently reaches out for him, but Din doesn’t move from where he’s stood.  Your blaster is still clutched tightly in his hand, and he isn’t looking at you.

Slowly, you walk over and stop directly in front of him in the middle of the hull, blinking at him while the helmet subtly moves to lock onto your face.  The kid begins wiggling in your arms, making soft impatient noises while you both stand in complete silence across from each other.

After a few moments, you hear him flick your blaster’s safety on by his side and then toss it carelessly to the ground.  It skids along the floor, light enough to be mostly quiet.  Gloves reach out as he carefully takes the kid from you and settles him in the crook of one arm, and then he looks you up and down, still not saying anything.

Your eyes follow his movement, watching his arm slowly reaching out to you, and you think he’s going to cup your jaw, or brush your hair back.  Give you some sort of physical reassurance since he hasn’t spoken a single word of it.

Instead, Din suddenly grabs the armor clinging to your chest and starts ripping it off you with one hand.  It clangs to the floor so loudly in the silence of hyperspace, the kid’s ears twitch and flutter with each shattering bang.  You hold still while he does it, you barely respond except the unavoidable movement your body experiences as the pauldron is yanked from your shoulder and thrown against the ground.  The ammo belt is tugged over your head and hurled away, the thigh braces are snatched from your legs and they clang to the floor, and the pearly, opalescent fabric revealed underneath is stained in dead man’s blood, rusty and in such great quantities that it shows up as brown instead of red.

“Are you hurt?”

He sounds… dead.  So monotonic that you can’t possibly gauge his emotional state.  He doesn’t move.   His fists don’t clench, he says every single word like it means the same exact thing as the last.  If nothing at all was a person who could speak, they’d use his tone of voice.

“No,” you eventually whisper.

The helmet nods once, and then he spins around and walks away without anything else.  Without saying anything, without touching you, or double checking you for injuries in case you were lying.  You stand utterly still while Din climbs the ladder with the kid cradled in one arm, and you don’t even flinch when the door to the cockpit slides shut behind him.  You have no idea how long you stand there in the splitting silence afterwards, numb and unmoving.

You feel… nothing.  Absolutely nothing.

The hard defenses you strapped to yourself today to reconcile the things you had to do are still high and strong, guarding your soul even if he stripped away your physical armor.  Self preservation is still animating your body, and your facial expression barely changes.  Your first thought, as soon as you remember that you can have one, is that there are things that still need to be done.  Tasks to complete.

Alone, you shower the lingering traces of blood off your body, the normally clear and refreshing water running a sickly, toxic brown.  Alone, your stomach rolls and suddenly decides to empty itself of the very little that was in it as the scalding drops rain down over you—mostly liquid and bile that easily rinses down the drain.  The water is too warm, it beats down on you like blazing hot sand pelting your skin in the desert.  You feel like you did those first few months with Din, where the silence was suffocating, where you’d only interact with the baby if he was on a hunt or if you could tell he didn’t know how to calm him when he was fussy.  If you were in hyperspace, you usually spent time by yourself in the hull while he lived in the cockpit, and if he decided he needed to be in the hull for whatever reason, then you’d trade places with him.  It was… isolating.  Lonely by yourself.  The quiet used to haunt you before it became your cherished friend, but now it’s a betrayer, a ghost that whispers memories and nightmares in your ears.

When you finally finish rinsing the blood from your skin and get dressed, you see the sheets that used to make up your bed now have fried holes in them from your charred plasma marks, the inside of the hull is covered in them and the trails of dried blood where you dragged the bodies down the ramp.  Your armor is still strewn about the hull, the kid’s hovering shield lays dead in the corner.  Everything you meticulously cleaned and organized and collected and created, now the scene of a bloodbath.  One committed by your hand, your blaster still laying uselessly on the floor forever linked to this atrocity.

You spare a glance towards the ladder, but you don’t want to come face to face with Din yet.  You already knew he’d be furious, but… you had hoped that he’d at least…

What?  At least what?  Comfort you?  Coddle you after you deliberately ignored his instructions?  What exactly, in the past year or so of learning Din’s inner workings and intricacies, would ever give you the impression that he’d come give you a big hug after you purposefully defied him?  You flew the kid directly into an imperial base after being told to protect him, you ignored every order he gave to you in the moments he thought would be his last, and though you did it to save his life, you have a feeling that Din has never valued his life even a fraction of what you do.

The misery stabs at your soul, but your mind is finally beginning to process things logically.  He’s alive, the kid is alive, the quarry is secure, and you’re all onboard the safety of this ship hurtling through hyperspace where nobody, not even the Empire, can touch you.  You weighed the consequences before making your decision, you did what you had to do.  If he wants to be mad, then he can fucking well be mad and you’ll find some way to comfort yourself.  At least he’s here being mad, at least he’s alive and safe and breathing and mad, and your rare act of disobedience is to thank for that.

Somewhere in the back of your mind, you realize it’s probably easier than it should be to reconcile the punishment.  Right now, you welcome the exclusion, the negativity and sorrow beating itself into your soul.  Four innocent people died today on this ship, gunned down under your blaster while they panicked and ran for cover.  You keep hearing their screams.

So you start to clean up the hull, needing another task to focus your thoughts on.  You work to erase every inch of the evidence of your deeds, make it disappear like the pool of blood Din once cleaned up while you were sleeping and never acknowledged again.  You only allow the bloodstains to fuck with your head for a single moment, and then you swallow back the nausea until you’re a blank slate again and sink to your knees with a rag in your hand.  After that, your vision stops focusing and it just becomes red contrasting against gunmetal gray, and you work tirelessly to get rid of all remaining traces of it.

Then you start on the blaster marks, you need them gone.  After a few informed attempts at mixing cleaning chemicals, you find one concoction that allows you to wipe them away like they’re nothing more than dirt that got tracked in.  The Crest’s oxygen recycling system works overdrive to constantly purify the air so you don’t get high or pass out, but your nose still stings.  It’s fine, it’s sterile, it burns a bit but it smells sharp and metallic and keeps you hyper focused on the task at hand.

After that’s done, you pick up the charred blankets and ball them up to throw into the trash vent.  You don’t feel anything as you do it.  You don’t think about how long it took you to collect these over months and months of being stuck on this ship, how comfortable they were when everything else was industrial and rigid, how many nights you spent with Din curled up in their softness while he breathed easy and warm.  Sheets are just luxuries, they can afford to be lost.

Next, you gather your armor and wipe it down with the rag, put it away along with your blaster.  The stained robe goes in the trash, along with the sheets and the blood soaked cloth you used to clean everything.  They’re all ruined, you’ll never be able to make them right again.

The hull is sparkling clean when you decide to take another shower.  Nothing on you is dirty except your hands, but you feel filthy.  Wrong, cold, numb, cold, stained, cold.

After scrubbing your skin raw under the water and changing clothes again, since you don’t really know what to do with yourself anymore, you slowly climb the ladder to the cockpit, keeping perfectly silent.  When you reach the upper platform and come face to face with the closed door, you can just barely hear Din’s whispered voice speaking quietly to the baby beyond it.

You raise your hand for a moment, hovering your knuckles over the metal, but then it eventually falls.  Instead, you look over and spot the corner, the same corner Din bunched himself into when he snapped at you for even suggesting going on a hunt with him, blew up at you for the mere notion of something happening like what happened today.  You back yourself into it in defeat and slowly sink down on the floor, resting your head against the metal and hugging your knees to your chest since you don’t have a tiny baby to take their place.

You can’t sleep.  You don’t even try, it’s pointless.  The concept feels foreign the longer you sit here by yourself.  You don’t hear Din or the baby anymore, but you feel… so fucking awful that it’s fitting that you don’t knock or go looking.  You don’t want to hold that sweet child with hands that were covered in blood just a few hours ago.  You killed more people than you can count on your fingers today, and of the ones who had done nothing wrong…  They screamed like younglings, ducked for cover and were able to fire off one single useless shot in the mayhem before you closed their eyes forever and left their bodies to rot in armor that wasn’t ever their choice to wear.

You didn’t know they were kidnapped and smuggled and forced into that situation.  You couldn’t have known, but that isn’t the point.  In this case, knowing doesn’t make one bit of difference.

You also can’t face Din yet, not like this.  You don’t want him to see you cowering, shattered with guilt over the decisions you made under pressure.  How will you ever get him to forgive you for not listening to him when you can’t even forgive yourself for the result of your choices?  Din is a hardened man who grew up in blasterfire and bloodshed, just because you love him doesn’t mean he’s going to magically become someone he isn’t.  You’re here letting guilt sink sharp claws into your chest over four dead men when he had a good fifty or more corpses scattered on the battlefield around him.  You decided to wear that armor, you decided to fly into an imperial base with the kid on your lap, and this is now your penance.  You’ll accept it with your back straight and your chin held high.

Figuratively, of course.  Physically, you’re smaller than you’ve ever been.  Crumpled up into a ball, taking up as little space as possible, curling up as tight as you can like an animal protecting all your vulnerable parts during a brutal attack.

So, since he isn’t here to comfort you himself, you just try to think about what he would tell you.  A long time ago, what would he tell you?

Din would tell you… that you killed someone.  Multiple people, this time.  He’d also tell you that it doesn’t matter what he tells you, what you could have reasonably foreseen or what you should have done.  The end result won’t change.  You own this now.  You’ll carry their deaths with you.

You take a few deep breaths, self-soothing with the undeniable truth that would be murmured matter of factly from his quiet voice.  He wouldn’t argue with you.  He wouldn’t deny the decisions you made or the consequences of them.  It happened, and at the end of the day, you either learn how to handle that, or you don’t.

And, for the four you did shoot, you were responsible for freeing ten times that amount.  You’re responsible for reuniting Oshua Ryler with his family, even if your place in yours is momentarily shunned.  You’d rather be out here alone than in there with the kid, wondering where his dad is or if he’s even still alive.  You rescued Din and now he gets to be here to shut this door on you, hold his son, and whisper calm reassurances to him.  If you listen really hard and imagine, you can pretend they’re for you, too.

That’s it.  Focus on them both, alive and well together.  Focus on the bodies wearing white armor that were moving, the ones that were bolting away from the imperial training base as fast as they could, free from the torture of imprisonment and conditioning.

Finally, you close your eyes and slip into unconsciousness.  It’s not a testament to your exhaustion, but rather just how long you’ve been left to sit here by yourself.  Hours, maybe.  Time is strange in hyperspace.

You dream of a faceless man ringing bells.

---

When you wake up, a small baby has been placed in your arms, and you’re being dragged into a strong, secure beskar hold on the floor.

“Din,” you suddenly lift your head as soon as you’re conscious and nearly bonk it into solid metal, apologies rising in your throat before you even remember where you are.  You did what needed to be done to keep your family alive and together and you’d do it a thousand times again if necessary, but that doesn’t mean you won’t apologize anyways.  After the deeds you’ve committed today, regret feels as natural on your lips as speaking your own name.  “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, I know you’re mad at me but I—”

“Shh,” he whispers, running his gloves through your hair.  He’s still wearing his helmet, he hasn’t taken anything off yet.  “Don’t say anything.  Just… stay here, stay right here with me.”

“I tried to save you,” you croak, tears instantly flooding your eyes.  You did save him.  You saved him and the baby and yourself but you’re so physically and emotionally exhausted that all you can recall is your intent.  “I tried.  Wasn’t gonna leave you there by yourself.  I tried to be brave, like you—y-you wouldn’t have left without me.”

His arms tighten around you, cradling you in such a strong embrace that you burrow into him, you find a place for your head on the hard metal strapped to him and bury yourself there, wishing that you had shovels of dirt being piled on you to justify the death you still feel staining your soul.  Your heart is starting to pound now that you’re remembering, your body is starting to shake with tremors of shock now that you’re aware of your own skin again.

“I was so sc-scared, Din, I didn’t—didn’t know what was happening,” you lament through watery eyes, gasping it out in hopes that it’ll relieve the slightest bit of the gut wrenching guilt just mercilessly crushing you.  It caught you before you could protect yourself against it, that armor you built around yourself isn’t on when you first wake up.  “I-I didn’t want to kill them, but they were already on the ship and y-you said—you said they were coming after the kid s-so I had to, I had to—”

“Stop,” Din whispers, voice so quiet that you can barely hear him.

“I-I cleaned up the blood,” you turn your face against the cold beskar to let all the positives you listed for yourself before scrape across your throat.  They don’t sound comforting anymore, they just sound like excuses.  “It’s gone, it’s like it never happened, everything is okay now, I got the quarry, I protected the baby, I saved a bunch of people, you’re both safe—”

“Stop,” he chokes out.  The modulator cuts off before you can hear his next breath, but you feel it shudder under your body.  “St-Stop it, please.”

Your eyes clench shut so tightly you feel like the streaking stars outside are behind them, tears drop down against his pauldron and you press your face tighter to it like it’s a wound, like the pressure will somehow ease the bleeding.

“Listen to me,” he says very quietly, and you instantly brace yourself.  The walls you just let down shoot right back up, your body physically tightens in preparation for another pain, another trauma, another scar you’ll carry, and you stop shaking.  You stop breathing, even when his hand comes up to ease your face away from his armor.

“You,” he whispers, holding your chin so you’re staring right at him, and your eyes flick fearfully in between his behind the visor, “are a sweet girl.”  Din’s leather thumb brushes along your skin, dragging over the tears below your puffy eyes.  “Not,” his voice catches, “a Mandalorian.”

Your heart goes cold.  Again, everything turns numb.  It doesn’t matter that you already said this yourself out loud earlier today.  It doesn’t matter that you acknowledged this fact, verbally insisted it more than once to hammer home the truth and felt some sense of comfort in it.  For some reason, hearing the words from his mouth is a fucking knife to your chest.

“I taught you how to fight, how to shoot a blaster,” he murmurs, thumb catching every single tear that continues to fall as he speaks.  “I taught you everything I know, everything that’s been taught to me.  I taught you how to defend yourself, how to protect yourself when you’re in danger.  I gave you your blaster, I gave you my armor, I gave you everything I could give you to keep you safe.  And when I thought you were ready, I let you loose on Sanctuary II.  Do you know why I did that?”  The helmet tips forward the slightest bit at the question, probing deep into the most shattered part of your heart.  “After all those months of fighting, and shooting, and training, do you know why I told you to run?”

You blink silently at him, a shaky breath quaking through you, and your expression wants to crumple under the reprimand.  You’re so fragile right now, taking hit after hit after hit to the softest parts inside you, and you want to just give up.  Let the guilt and remorse take you, let it wash you away.  But then, instead…

There’s a flicker of something inside you.  Something strong, endlessly strong, and it makes you want to revolt against what he’s saying.  It replaces the hurt and fear and desperation for comfort with a strange sense of insurgence, like it did earlier when you were hiding behind a boulder, cowering and trembling and not wanting to die.  You’re filled with a quiet urge to defend yourself in the face of this, stand up for yourself and refuse to be beaten down any longer.

“Because you needed to know how to escape danger,” he answers himself when you don’t.  “You needed to know how to disappear, how to outsmart any pursuer and find safety, even the trained ones.  Especially the trained ones.  Anything else was meant to be your last resort.  Not your choice.  Not something you chose.”

“I couldn’t leave you,” you admit to him quietly, voice shaky and tears still coming even as you try to speak up for yourself.  The regret you carry has nothing to do with this, and you decide right now that you won’t feel bad for saving him.  Your hurt comes from the meaningless things, the ones without any need whatsoever, not the necessary ones, and you tried.  You repeated his words to yourself over and over again, told yourself to run, told yourself to get to Nevarro, and it wasn’t going to happen.  “I couldn’t do it.  It wasn’t a choice.”

“It was,” he tells you.  He says it softly, whispers it like it’s the gentlest thing in the world, but the power and inherent distance of the armor strapped to his body finds its way into the words.  “And it was the wrong one.”

“What was I supposed to do?”  You ask, just a hint of that rebellion swimming to the surface now, rising out of the waves of self doubt, the one that feels like a spine growing in your back, an energy coursing through your veins that makes your heart start to beat faster.  Din’s hand slowly drops from your cheek but you don’t care.  “Was I supposed to run away and just let you die?”

“Yes.”  It’s quick and blunt and completely emotionless.  Delivered like a punch to the vulnerable parts of yourself he taught you how to protect, and the utter silence following this single word is comparable to the physical pain you learned to defend against.  It jabs hard against everything good and sweet and tender inside of you, and you’re left speechless even as he continues impassively.  “That’s exactly what you were supposed to do.”

It takes a second, but then that unfamiliar feeling suddenly surges up, breaches with the power of an entire ocean.  Your voices may be nothing more than whispers in the dark, you may be clinging to each other, holding each other with the softest, gentlest love in your hearts, but the strength of your conviction on this would rip metal apart.

“No.”  The word holds the might of your entire being, and it stands alone and defiant in the face of everything you fear, everything that threatens you, him, and this child.  Never.  You’ll die before that happens.  “I love you, and there’s nothing in this galaxy that would ever make me do that.  Not fear, not danger, not the Empire, nothing.  Not even you.”

Din stares at you.  His visor reflects your hardened expression back to you, the force in your soul and the purpose in your eyes, and you don’t even realize the gravity of what you just said because like your love for him, gravity is a constant.  It’s a fundamental truth cemented into the rules that govern your actions and it stays true no matter where you are, no matter what terror you face, or how scared you become.  You have him, you have this little boy in your arms, and if that’s all you have, then you have everything.

After an eternity of this, of feeling his eyes pierce deep into you from behind the helmet while you refuse to wither under his stare, you watch him slowly turn and look down, landing on the sleepy child tucked between you both.  He holds there for a long time, before finally whispering, so quiet that the modulator barely picks it up, “It was the wrong choice.”

You stay quiet.  It happened.  What’s done is done, you can’t change the past.  He can scold and reprimand you about this as much as he wants, but you did the right thing and that decision is the only reason he’s even here to be able to do so.  This exhausted child was reunited with his father because of your choices, and this exhausted father was reunited with his child.  You won’t argue anymore, but it’s a certitude that lives deep in your heart now, builds a home there right alongside the both of them.  Din eventually looks up, his eyes find yours again behind the visor, and his hand rises once more to gently cup your jaw.

“I… thought I’d enjoy seeing you in my armor,” Din finally whispers.  It’s not what you expected, but his voice sounds… weak.  Broken.  “You wore mine once before, and it was…”  He brushes his thumb along your cheek, and then his head shakes slightly, pushing the thought away.  “It wasn’t real.  It didn’t fit.  It dwarfed you, it made you look out of place, it made everything soft and innocent about you stand out.  I liked it because it wasn’t real.”

“Was it… really that bad?”  You whisper back, partially to ease the tension just slightly but quickly breaking eye contact with him when you realize it doesn’t land correctly, it just sounds self conscious and sad.  You try to find that conviction again, that strength and assurance that propped you up so sturdily before, but…  Not a Mandalorian, he’d said.  Of course not.  Of course not.

“It wasn’t the armor.”  Din gently tugs up on your face so that you look at him again.  “It was you covered in blood.  It was you purposefully putting yourself in danger.  You killed multiple armed soldiers of the Empire, you dragged their bodies off the ship.  And then you flew into an imperial base, where you killed the officers, too.  You…”  He shakes his head slowly at you while speaking, and although you can’t see his face, you don’t need to in order to hear the horror in his voice.   “You… collected a quarry… in the middle of a massacre, sweet girl.”

Not a Mandalorian.

“You don’t chase down bounties,” he tells you.  “You don’t fly into war zones.  You don’t kill imperials, you don’t collect quarries, you don’t sacrifice yourself, or our son, to save me.  You said you tried to be brave… like me.”  His fingers tighten against your cheek, he dips his helmet to make sure you understand.  “I’ll never ask you to be brave.  I’ll ask you to survive.”

“I’m… sorry,” you finally whisper, and his arm drops from your cheek to join the other in wrapping around you and holding tight.  They hug you and squeeze, encasing you and the baby in a beskar shield and staying there for a long time.  Long enough for you to tuck your head back into its proper place under his helmet, long enough to start to feel okay with the silence again.  It brutalized you the last time you were surrounded by it, it made you feel alone and desolate and barren inside.  You greet it warily now, settling into it for an unknown amount of time until it’s forgiven once more.

After a while, Din quietly breaks it.

“How many?”  He murmurs to you.  You already know exactly what he’s asking, there's no more clarification necessary on his behalf.

You slowly close your eyes and think back to the smoldering craters, the blood soaked ramp, the fear in Oshua Ryler’s eyes as he begged you not to kill him.

“That didn’t deserve it?”  You ask, clenching your eyes tighter at the memory.  “Four.”

And maybe, maybe six or eight months ago, you would’ve begged for some guidance on how to reconcile that.  Hell, maybe a few hours ago, you could’ve used his arms around you exactly like this, his low voice repeating the same things he’s already told you before, over and over again, if only for some semblance of stability when everything feels turbulent and uncertain.  You’ll never be able to change it, though.  This belongs to you now.

This time, all Din says is, “I’m sorry, too.”

And that covers everything.

The silence envelops you both again, but… there’s something else.  Something that still sits deep in your worries, an image that isn’t a scar of what’s happened but a dread of what’s to come.  You need to tell him.  You don’t feel like saying it, you don’t want to speak it aloud for fear of bringing it into existence, but you need to tell him.

“Din?”  You breathe out, and he makes a soft noise in his throat while cuddling you on the floor.  “I saw…,” you whisper, every word sitting tight and reluctant in your throat.  “Right when we made the jump, I was looking through the window and I-I saw…”

“A star destroyer.”  He says it like… like it’s the worst thing in the world and also completely expected at the same time.  He says it like he already knew, yet can’t even imagine.  You lean every bit of your weight against him since you can’t hold him in return, squish him as best you can against the small corner and curl up even tighter in his arms for comfort.

He takes a deep breath, a shuddery sound you don’t think you’ve ever heard him make before.  It holds untold anxiety, unsaid conflict, uncertain action, an unknown path forward.

“I don’t know what to do,” Din eventually whispers to himself, to you, to the baby in your arms.  His voice is barely a breath through the modulator, his fingers digging into your skin with how many emotions he’s repressing.  “What do I do?”

He sounds so distressed that you automatically feel your soul find the floor—instantly, you become steady and calm and you locate all that rationality that kept you going today.  All your worries still twist deep down, all the guilt and the turmoil wrestles with your soft, easy nature until you can only find bits and pieces of it in the most vulnerable places inside you, but if he’s struggling this terribly, then the least you can do is offer some good, true, unwavering faith in times of uncertainty.  You’re in hyperspace, everything worked out, and it’s going to stay that way for right now.  If he doesn’t know how to talk about it yet, then you trust him enough to wait for him.

“It’ll be okay,” you tell him with a newfound confidence and purpose, carefully easing the baby into one arm so that the other can find its way to the other side of his helmet and pull him closer.  Din tucks his head and allows you to brush your lips against the metal, whisper the words soft and steady to him.  “We’ll figure it out together.”

---

@cptnbvcks thank you so much for the incredible art!

[hijackalx]

GALE SFW HEADCANONS:

finally we got our lover boy here. its not a secret that he like gets super easily attached. i kind of hate that they patched that out bcz it fit his character so much. but yeah in my mind its canon he gets attached suppperrr easily also kind of the type of guy to love bomb tav. not in the manipulative way tho like he genuinely thinks hes in love.

he gives everything he has in relationships too like tav IS his everything. he can be pretty clingy but thats just cuz he loves them so much ❤️ ok yandere vibes hold on. not really but imagine.

the type of dude to draw pictures of him and tav holding hands in his diary (they are not drawn good) also definitely talks to himself a lot, or maybe to his cat (sometimes abt tav)

hands down the funniest mf at camp like hes the type thats just naturally funny he doesnt even try to be. its hard to take him serious sometimes bcz of it😭😭 he gets mad af about it too. like his funnyness is a blight on his existence he just wants to be taken seriously. also feel like he has the worst luck too like fucked up things always happen to him and thats also hilarious LMAO constantly has the camp in stitches

he has bad spatial awareness so hes always triggering traps and tav gets so mad 😹😹😹

love language:

giving= words of affirmation and quality time

always wants to be with tav. also loves to compliment them but he does it in his corny ass wizard way lol like in the most extra way possible. he cant just say "ur eyes look beautiful today" hes got to say some shit like "ur viewing orbs are looking most ravishing this eventide". i bet he would write poetry abt tav but he wouldnt give it to them bcz hes lowkey embarrassed 😔 like insecure in his ability not embarrassed by the action itself. he just wants to do tav justice and he doesnt think he can.

receiving= quality time

as long as tav wants to be with him too hes happy. he worries abt being too clingy so sometimes he'll distance himself and if tav closes that distance on their own itll make him so happy. like thats the best thing ever to him. to have somebody that wants to be in his presence and listen to him ramble.

i feel like gale is similar in height to astarion so like 5'11/6' hes probably closer to 5'11. like that is the most gale height to me. also hes a little thicker with some muscle. hes def got a lil belly 🤭❤️ his pecs are rlly smthng too like thats where most of his muscle goes. those look heavy let me carry them for u king 🤲🏻😼

GALE NSFW HEADCANONS:

A FREAKKKKKK !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! THIS MAN IS A FREAK. WHAT was that shit in the sky ?????? THE FUCK ??? like he is THE MOST kinky mf here he will do almost anything. ONLY with ppl hes comfortable with tho. otherwise hes vanilla af. i honestly feel like hes mostly submissive tho just cuz hes chill like that. equally gives and receives. like straight up tav is his BABY he will do ANYTHING for them. probably introduced to most of his kinks thru tav (and mystra....... unfortunately.....)

loves to give head. like dear god. will beg tav to let him for real. hes very good at it too

incorporates sooo much magic. will make fake!gale fuck tav so he can watch. will use hot and cold magic and all that. electricity. the thunder stuff or whatever its called. literally anything u can think of to spice it up. he has thought of it. will also do freaky shit like using magic to mess with tav in public if u know what i mean

doesnt have a high body count i lowkey feel like mystra was his first. and he hasnt smashed anybody since. until tav.

exhibitionist AND humiliation kink. so these work hand in hand bcz like i said he doesnt do kinky shit with ppl hes not comfortable with so doing it where strangers might see is ultimate humiliation for him. but also likes to humiliate tav with it too.

will say a lot of nasty shit. this i feel he doesnt go super overboard with but its nasty compared to how he usually is. mostly when hes begging.

im gonna say gale has a solid 5 on him. and hes got hair i feel like most of the companions do but it works rlly good on gale lol. like hes got a happy trail and everything 🤤 nice hairy armpits too so u know hes got that manly ass MUSKK 💦💦💦 anyway i think his pp is pretty straight. like a wand lol. its a pretty normal pp.

aftercare with gale is the best yo like he makes sure tav is taken care of first and then cleans up on his own unless tav offers which he usually tells them to rest lol. hes just so sweet.

[fictionfixations]

Book 7 JP spoilers (recent-est i think)

(recently found out how to do keep reading bits.)

i. have been told what happened

you know this groovy with him crying

i know context now

and

oh my god

my. heart. ughUISHfdi rOOOOK.

(m gonna be honest rook was never my favorite and i honestly didnt know how to feel about him. [to be fair i hated sebek at one point but now im like a huge sebek fan so.] but i think when this gets onto EN and i play through it im just gonna be a huge rook fan man.)

like

okay

so i know what happens in the story

(also i love this so much this is now in my mind, rook's actual room pre-nrc [except vil's not in an RSA uniform LMFAO. actually if it was PRE-NRC i dont think either of them would have enrolled at a school yet, unless neige is older than vil, or unless RSA doesnt do the same enrollment ages or whatever like NRC)

ACTUALLY SCRATCH THAT NEIGE IS IN HIS 2ND YEAR???

??????? people notice so much oh my god..

wait....

actually do you think neige joined a school because he saw vil join one?? cause. i think he really idolizes vil. (actually kind of makes me think of cheka idolizing leona)

huh. random thought.

i mean i only know a summary of it (im fine with spoilers ngl and i dont care even if you shove like a fully translated post of the entire chapters and stuff.. i just like seeing story that i dont mind rereading)

but like man. its gonna break me when we're there for that moment. (in EN)

i

dont want to say anything in case there's an EN person here. and i mean if they're spoiling themselves all the more power to them but i also feel like its one of those things that are a LOT more impactful when you encounter it for the first time so im just. not gonna try to learn more about it and wait. (although its like. JP is in Part 8 i think, we're in Part 4??? that seems so far away sob. but also we gotta finish lilia's dream first so...)

im just. sadge. (also idk what vil's dream is but i think we end up seeing it. unless it was actually a render of him from rook's dream, which i wouldnt think is too far off. but also--)

THIS IS APPARENTLY CANON?

I SAW IT AND I THOUGHT IT WAS A JOKE BUT THEN I RAN INTO IT AGAIN??? and its like. LISTEN. he looks so goofy i cant... epel. i love you. but oh my god (i cant take you seriously im SORRY im DEAD)

also he's still in pomefiore which is cool (he accepted his cuteness! although i dont know how much of a weapon his cuteness would have now..?. you think he snaps out of it cause ppl might laugh at him [and then he beats them up] but he still gets irritated cause what the heck im not cute anymore--- [..wait. i was never cute. what am i on about.] ...i keep overusing the word cute and i know he wouldnt use it himself but i have a very small vocabulary.)

im just.

i dont know how to feel about this ??? (it feels more cursed than hatless rook. i can at least pretend he isnt hatless. but like. epel..)

also vil in rsa /neg /hj (the rsa uniform looks so bland and i like him in darker colors)

okay im gonna be honest i have a dislike against RSA. and thats honestly because im petty and hold grudges.

also i like my villain boys and i just want them to win (..yknow. i really dont think GloMas counts when the RSA boys were actually nice enough to like. ..take hits for them??? and then we were planning on leaving them like LMFAO 'not my problem')

so yeah.

actually wait if rooks dream takes place in VDC how the fuck

WHO IS NRC TRIBE????

CAUSE VIL'S IN RSA WITH NEIGE?? HELLO??? WHAT.

WE'RE NOT WINNING WHAT THE HELL

(unless our role in the dream is to drop a jawdropping performance [idfk do we have diasomnia boys minus lilia(? i honestly dont know how lilia's dream ends and if he joins us) and malleus???)

but listen. if vils the best. and neige is the best.

we're so. not winning..? (i was going to ask if it was gonna be like rook this time voting for NRC and thats how we win. but like. HELL no are we gonna have it be split 50/50 again like that)

anyway i am still very excited and so pumped and oh my god fhsuihe

i find it so funny that at the start of the post i was so crushed like 'oh my god...' cause angst and then here i am doing a complete 180

EDIT: hold on. i didnt think to think about it but now that we know what his room looks like

thats his bed. you can see the neige part. and that thing he's holding onto is like the movie poster (or i assume its a movie poster) with vil and neige

ngl i saw some people linking it up to like the hunter crying on snow white's dress

which. i never saw this movie so like (i dont even want to know what happened but also these movies are OLD. also in like sleeping beauty?? i saw the animated of once upon a dream or something like that and mans just comes up to her out of nowhere. no warning and holds her and sings and im just like brUH if you did that id fucking hit you like WHAT???)

also i just noticed his muscles goddamn.

[vypridae]

9!!! 10!!! 11!! 12!! 13!!! or pick and choose <3

IDK WHICH FANDOMS U MEAN BUT IM GONNA DO EACH ONE AND ILL JUST PUT MY HAZBIN/HELLUVA ANSWERS UNDER A CUT SO U DONT HAVE TO SEE THEM

9. worst part of canon

ok the worst part of dgrp canon has to be the way they handle characterization, like especially with trauma. specifically in mind i have korekiyo rn, like they mega rushed his entire Thing and wrote it in a way that paints HIM in a terrible awful light when it very likely (or definitely) wasnt that at all, but the way it was written just fucks up so, so much. also the Danganronpa Repitition TM (flashbacks to

bsd uuuh oh my god i have to think about this one cuz i love bsd with a passion BAHAHA its hard to find flaws with that one (in part i havent consumed the media in forever), ik it might be just bc the series is still being written but its irritating that some things from like the first seasons are just not touched upon again? and maybe its because ihavent read the manga but like. did atsushi join the ada and suddenly the bounty on his head is just Gone? am i misremembering if they went back to that or not its been like a year since ive watched bsd i need to rewatch it but thats about all i can think of. im not even mad about the not killing any characters because fyodor is alive still

10. worst part of fanon

dgrp has a TERRIBLEEEE shipping fandom. i hated oumasai for the longest fucking time because i encountered this one rper way back when that like was a mega red flag SBGJKFDHGKA i hated them for a while after that (then they grew on me). you get shit on for liking, like, the more toxic ships in the fandom no matter your reasonings or whatever, and i feel like its just a really negative place to be a shipper that likes to explore bad dynamics (such as i)

i think the worst part of bsd fanon is similar. shipping sides of fandoms are ALWAYS bad i feel like, and there are a lot of people that will be like "skk is real fuck you for shipping anything else" or like "if u ship nikolai with anyone but fyodor i dont trust u" or something like??? its a fucking ship chill out its fictional it doesnt hurt anyone irl CALM DOWN

11. number of fandom-related words you've filtered

for bsd uh . only two surprisingly, and its two ships that i cannot physically make myself like?? thats all apparently

for dgrp i have uuh two and its literally also only two ships that i dont like BHASFKAHSK

12. the unpopular character that you actually like and why more people should like them

for bsd am i allowed to say fyodor? idk if he necessarily counts as "unpopular" but i see way more hate of him than i see people liking him, but god fucking dammit i love him with my whole heart. hes so evil and those kinds of characters litearlly just make me gravitate towards them, hes so smart and cunning and you can do so much with his character, especially learning his ability oh my god? jhes so complex and i love him

for dgrp, i feel like every character is "unpopular" BAHSAJKAHk but for this i think i wanna go with chiaki. people hate chiaki because shes "boring" or at least they Did back when i first got into the series but shes so different in the game compared to the anime because the game shes based on her classmates' memories of her! shes only this "perfect" individual because thats how her entire class saw her, like she was made the class rep for a reason

13. worst blorboficiation

ok this one im trying to figure out what the fuck the definition is BAHAJSHFAJK from what im SEEING its like, the character that doesnt deserve to be liked as much as they are. (i dont think i answered this one correctly but shh its fine)

for bsd thats really hard for me to think of because i like literally every character but uuh if i had to say one ig i'd say uuh . maybe dazai? i feel like this is in part because people typically take away from dazai's entire complex everything because he's too complex for a lot of people (including me) to truly understand, like im not saying i understand him but i feel like a lot of people will take the wrong parts of him/exclude anything they dont like about him and go with that? if that counts but idk i still like dazai so i cant say that too much

for dgrp its the exact same situation with kokichi. they take his character, of which is incredibly complex, and dumb it down into the typical fandom woobification of "uwu baby who cant do anything wrong" LIKE!!! STOP!!! NO HE IS NOT!!! HE IS SO COMPLEX AND YOU'RE LIKING HIS CHARACTER FOR ALL THE WRONG REASONS!!! people that dont understand the complexity behind certain characters and are incapable of taking that as their blorbo and instead creating this silly incorrect version in their mind and making THAT their blorbo i just. thats not ur blorbo atp thats ur oc my guy

hazbin/helluva answers

9. worst part of canon

both of these shows are kinda not the best when it comes to being serious???? like there are some topics that shouldnt be joked about i feel like, and there are points in the shows that joke in relation to these topics. also theres not enough voxval but thats a criticism for another time

10. worst part of fanon

not even just the ships tbh, its liking any character thats either painted in a negative light or is just generally unpopular. the ships too but i could get to that another time. for EXAMPLE, me, i like valentino. a lot. he's one of my favorite characters. i feel like i cannot express the fact i love val because i will get called an ACTUAL rapist for saying it because "if you like val you condone his actions and thus are a rapist/terrible person/etc" when thats absolutely not at all how it works. i acknowledge that val is terrible, i understand that its bad, but i can still enjoy him as a character otherwise. his actions are what i dont like, ive never liked him (i actually hated him at first because of it but then i saw him being more silly in the series with vox and he grew on me), but you will actively get told to kys if you say that you even REMOTELY enjoy vals character

11. number of fandom-related words you've filtered

i have none for helluva but for hazbin i have four. three of which are for the sAME SHIP and one is another ship i dont like

12. the unpopular character that you actually like and why more people should like them

MIMZYYYY dude she gets so much unnecessary hate. like, everyone sees her as annoying and terrible and i GUESS i can see where they're coming from but a. theyre in hell, everyone's terrible, b. people just see her as annoying because she interrupted hells greatest dad and they dont like that because they want their radioapple song or wtvr. i love her and no one can convince me otherwise

13. worst blorboficiation

ok THIS one i might actually be able to answer with the correct definition of blorboification. i feel like alastor gets way too much unnecessary love, and maybe thats just because i think hes too popular for being what he is but hes just not all that to me. like, hes a good character, yes, but some people like him to an extent that i feel like doesnt do him justice?? its like i said with uuuuuh the dgrp side of this question, they dumb down his character a lot and are just generally bad at making him ACCURATE to the point its irritating. (hey so yk how i said i could answer with the right definition of this i lied)

[jeysbvck]

i've been sleeping so long in a twenty-year dark night (but now i see daylight).

a/n: hello im back on my adrian bullshit. its crazy how almost a year ago i got back into posting my fanfic thanks to adrian, and now almost a year later, adrian has pulled me (albeit maybe temporarily) out of my writers block! PLEASE REBLOG

summary: 4 times you & Adrian almost kiss, & the 1 time you do.

warnings: tooth-rotting fluff, teenage angst, best friends to lovers, new years kiss, mention of threesomes, vague mention of canon? any mistakes are all mine, ive tried to proof-read three times!

word count: 8.4k

14.

"Seriously? You haven't had your first kiss yet?!"

You rolled your eyes and threw a pillow at Adrian, who occupied the bean bag opposite you. "Shut up, it's not like you've had your first kiss either!"

Adrian threw the pillow back at you and smirked. "Actually, I have had my first kiss." He replied, smugly. You scoffed and raised your eyebrow.

"You do know that your pillow with Princess Leias face taped to it doesn't count, right?"

"Ha, ha. I know you're trying to embarrass me, and it won't work." Adrian said, then he mumbled, "I know it doesn't count."

"So who was this kiss with then, loverboy?" You asked, with a smirk. You were confident he was lying, but you weren't sure why he'd be lying. Adrian had been your best friend since you were seven, he had no reason to feel embarrassed around you, and there wasn't anything you didn't know about each other. Until now, apparently.

"Ashley Carter." Adrian shrugged.

"Seriously? Ashley Carter? Obsessed with horses, always wears those weird t-shirts with the horse puns on them?"

"So what! She's pretty, and she thinks I'm cool."

Your body began to burn, your cheeks especially, and you turned away, crossing your arms over your chest. "I think you're cool." You said, huffing slightly. You saw Adrian grin smugly out the corner of your eye and you sighed. "What?"

"Kinda sounds like you're jealous. Did you want to kiss me? Oh my God, did you want to kiss Ashley?!"

Your whole body felt like it was on fire as the embarrassment overwhelmed you. You certainly didn't want to kiss Ashley Carter, so were you jealous that everyone seemed to be having their first kisses, or were you jealous that you weren't Adrian's? You frowned at the thought and shook it off, you definitely weren't feeling that.

"Are you alright? When you're quiet like this, and have that look in your eyes, it usually means you're not alright." Adrian observed, and you nodded. "I didn't mean to upset you, if I even have. I was just teasing you."

You smiled slightly, you always forgot just how much Adrian picked up on. He may not read social cues and situations all too well, but he always knew when something was wrong; you still hadn't figured out how to hide it from him, no matter how much you'd tried over the years. "I'm fine, Adrian. Why didn't you tell me about your first kiss? We tell each other everything."

It was Adrian's turn to sigh, and he shrugged as he tried to sink deeper into the bean bag. "I don't know, you hadn't told me about yours, so I didn't think this was something we were gonna talk about."

"Of course it is, Adrian! This is prime best friend talk! Who else are you gonna talk about it with, parents?!" You replied, earning a chuckle from Adrian, which made you smile. "Besides, I didn't tell you because I haven't had it yet."

"Duh! I know that now, stupid." Adrian retorted, earning another pillow to the face from you. "I just assumed you'd had your first kiss; I'm very surprised by it."

"Wow, you're surprised that the girl whose only friend is the kid who ate glue hasn't been kissed yet?" You raised your eyebrow and Adrian sat up straighter.

"Hey, it was one time, and I was young and stupid back then."

"You were eleven!" You exclaimed.

"That's younger than fourteen!" Adrian exclaimed back, and you fell into a fit of laughter.

"You're an idiot." You laughed, and Adrian grinned triumphantly. "Yeah, but you love me anyway." He replied.

You rolled your eyes affectionately as a comfortable silence fell between you both, with only the sounds of the radio softly filling the air in the treehouse.

"You know...if you wanted...I could be your first kiss." Adrian said. Your eyebrows knitted together, it almost sounded like he said-

"I'm just saying, we're best friends, who else better to have a first kiss with?"

You let out a nervous chuckle, before raising your eyebrow. "Adrian Chase, do you want to kiss me?" You laughed.

"Why is that funny? Like I just said, who else is better for your first kiss? At least you know I'm not gonna run off and laugh about it afterwards behind your back!"

"Oh my God, does that happen?" You squeaked and Adrian nodded, his eyes wide.

"It happened to Matthew Barton. He kissed Millie Sawyer under the bleachers during PE, and by lunchtime, everyone knew he was a terrible kisser and they were all laughing at him."

You sunk further into your bean bag, hoping it would somehow swallow you up, but to no avail. "God, maybe you're right. Maybe this is the best way to just...get it over with."

"That's the spirit!" Adrian encouraged.

"But aren't you supposed to do it with someone you like?"

Adrian's expression fell into his sad, puppy dog face- that he perfected two weeks before his eighth birthday- and pouted at you.

"I like you, don't you like me?"

"For God's sake Adrian, like like!"

"Well, we love each other, right? We say it all the time. So...technically, that's stronger than like like!"

Adrian was making a lot of good points, and honestly, it wasn't like you hadn't thought about what it would be like to kiss Adrian before, but you never thought it would actually happen. You didn't even know if you wanted it to happen. You'd heard all your cousins stories about how awful their first kisses were, even your mom and dad had their horror stories; so wouldn't it be a cute story to have, that your best friend was your first kiss?

"Alright fine, let's do this." You said, and Adrian made a gleeful sound. He scrambled up off the blue bag bag and grabbed your hands, pulling you off your purple one with all his strength. You were suddenly very aware of how sweaty your palms were, and you hoped Adrian didn't notice, or at least didn't mention it. Thankfully, he didn't, he was too busy rambling on about something that you couldn't hear over the sound of your heart pounding in your ears as it begged to be released from its cage.

Adrian pulled his hands from yours, only to put them on your cheeks, like your face was in a vice. Your eyes widened as Adrian leaned in slowly, oh this was really about to happen, you were about to kiss Adrian, and were you feeling...butterflies? As you closed your eyes, anticipating his lips on yours, your heart got faster, it was happening, you were about to have your first kiss...

"GUYS? ARE YOU UP HERE?"

You shrieked and pulled out of Adrian's grip, sending yourself colliding into the small table behind you, sending soda and chips flying everywhere, which ended up on you, who ended up in a heap on the floor.

Your moms head peered up through the hatch on the floor. "Dinners read- oh hon, what happened this time? Are you okay?"

"I'm fine, Mom. We'll be right down." You replied. Your mom looked at you, then at Adrian, who was trying his hardest to keep his laughter at bay. She shook her head, then disappeared back through the hatch.

Adrian took two large steps towards you and offered you his hand, but you rejected it, and pushed yourself off the floor, brushing the chips off your clothes. Adrian picked some out of your hair, before he grinned. He opened his mouth, but you clamped your hand over it before he could speak.

"We will never talk about this again." You warned, and he nodded, his eyes sparkled with amusement. You removed your hand and headed down the hatch.

"I mean it, Adrian, not a word."

16.

"Honey, I'm home!!" You heard Adrian shout as he climbed up the ladder. You wiped the tears from your eyes, but stayed curled up on the pull out couch that had replaced the bean bags last year. "Hey, I got your text, oh, you're crying. What's wrong?"

"Aaron broke up with me." You told him. "He was using me to make Megan jealous, and it worked, so they got back together."

Adrian sat down on the floor next to the couch and stroked the back of your hair. "Well, at least Megan was jealous of you, right?" You turned your head and glared at Adrian, who blinked behind his glasses. "What?"

"My boyfriend used me and then dumped me, and you think I should be happy because Megan was jealous, which means his horrible plan worked?!"

"Whoa, okay, no, that's not what I meant!" Adrian protested, bringing his hands up in mock surrender. "But, come on, you and Aaron were never gonna last."

"Wow, please, keep going, you're doing an amazing job." You said.

"Really?"

"Yeah, if your goal is to make me want to throw myself from this treehouse."

"Oh, you're being sarcastic." Adrian realised, and groaned as you covered your face with a pillow. "Again, I just meant that Aaron is a fucking dim-witted meathead who doesn't understand anything that doesn't include throwing or kicking a ball."

"But he's so handsome!" You groaned, before you started laughing. "You're right, why didn't I realise it wasn't real? Why would Aaron want me?"

Adrian pulled the pillow from your face and frowned at you. "Aaron Tully doesn't deserve you. You're smart, and funny, and pretty, sometimes a little mean, but in a fun way, and you took me under your wing, even after I cut your hair."

You laughed at the memory. Seven year old Adrian was sat behind you during reading hour. You don't remember feeling him cut your hair, but you do remember him tapping on your shoulder and handing you a fistful of your ponytail. You started crying, wailing even, and Adrian was sent to the naughty corner. The teacher calmed you down with some extra milk and cookies, and when you were feeling better, you took the cookie you had stuffed in your pocket to Adrian. "You're an idiot." You told him, and he grinned as he took the cookie from you.

"Who just cuts someone's hair instead of talking to them like a normal person?" You asked and Adrian shrugged.

"It worked didn't it?"

"So far." You replied, with a teasing smile.

"Okay, move up. We're watching a film." Adrian said, as he turned to grab the laptop from the table behind him. You sat up and swung your legs round so Adrian could sit next to you.

Half an hour into the movie, and you were pretty sure you were going to die of boredom. Adrian had chosen some action film, and your eyelids were heavy, drooping every so often before you jerked yourself awake, or Adrian made a noise at the film. You couldn't help yourself though, and soon your head was on Adrian's shoulder. He felt stiff, like he wouldn't, or couldn't, move, but his eyes stayed glued to the film. Were you pushing a boundary? You had both slept in the same bed hundreds of times, even shared the same sleeping bag on camping trips, was this different somehow? You lifted your head up slightly, to ease Adrian up, ignoring the rejected feeling in your chest.

"You, uh, don't have to move." Adrian told you, his voice a little louder than a whisper and you looked up at him through your eyelashes. He looked nervous, his eyes still fixed on the laptop screen, but you could tell he wasn't paying attention to the film.

"I don't want to make you uncomfortable." You replied, matching his tone. You weren't sure what was happening, but something in the air had shifted, as had Adrian. He was now staring at you, with a look in his eyes that you couldn't quite place. It was then you started to notice just how handsome Adrian was getting. He had always been cute, but he was now handsome, and you pouted; how long until other people realize too, or even worse, Adrian himself realizes he doesn't need you anymore?

"You are the only person who you could never, ever make me feel uncomfortable." Adrian replied. "I don't know what I'd do without you, I think I'd last less than a day!"

You giggled and shook your head, "You're an idiot." You said, and Adrian grinned. Neither of you had realized how close you had gotten, so close that you could feel Adrian's breath on your cheek. "Adrian, what are we doing?" You asked.

"I don't know, should we stop?"

"I don't know." You said. The truth was, you didn't want to stop. After you almost kissed when you were fourteen, you had both stayed true to not talking about it, but you hadn't been able to stop thinking about it. For two years, you had been confused about your feelings for Adrian, you didn't know if you had a crush on him, or if it was just a weird teenage feeling. You'd been feeling a lot of things recently.

"I think I'm going to kiss you now." Adrian whispered, and your stomach exploded with the bubbly, butterfly feeling.

"Okay." You whispered. You closed your eyes and held your breath, and Adrian leaned forward ever so slightly...

You both jumped as your phone vibrated loudly against the wood floor. Adrian toppled off the couch as you reached over and grabbed the phone to answer it.

"Hello?" You answered, completely out of breath, your heart racing.

"Are you home? I forgot my keys." Your dad asked.

"I'm coming dad." You replied, practically throwing yourself down the treehouse hatch without looking at Adrian.

"Thanks, love. Did I interrupt you?" Your dad asked, once you opened the door and let him in.

"No, don't worry." You replied, before muttering under your breath " I think you stopped me from making a mistake."

18.

You had no idea how this party got out of hand. You had only invited a handful of people, yet you had a house full of people, most who you didn't know. Everyone seemed to be having a good time, apart from you; being the hostess wasn't like you were thought it would be, instead of drinking and having fun with your friends, you were running round making sure nothing was broken, or being stolen. Not to mention, you hadn't seen Adrian all night, which was completely bumming you out.

After the hundredth time of shouting at a random joke for almost breaking your mom's favorite vase, you had hit your breaking point. You grabbed a plastic bag from under the sink, filled it with snacks, then snatched a bottle of vodka from the island -one that you definitely didn't supply for the party- and headed to your sanctuary; the treehouse.

You hadn't been up there in a while, you'd been busy with your part time job at the library and figuring out what to do with your life. Your parents weren't exactly thrilled that you'd chosen not to attend college just yet, but at least they were being supportive. They'd even heavily suggested that you throw a party, that it would make you feel better, give you a chance to let your hair down. You didn't know why you thought it was a good idea, maybe it was because you were sick of missing Adrian, and it seemed like an easy way to get drunk.

You opened the treehouse hatch, rolled the bottle of vodka across the wooden floor, threw the bag of snacks in the same direction and hauled yourself up. When you turned around, you were surprised to see Adrian, sitting on the couch. It had been a while since you'd seen each other, and when you did, it was awkward. You couldn't speak for why Adrian was being distant, but you had been confused about your feelings for Adrian for a few years, and since the situation with Aaron, it had only become more so. Every time you saw him, your chest tightened and nausea hit. You were eighteen, how were you still dealing with these stupid schoolgirl crush feelings?

"Hey stranger." You finally said. "I didn't expect to see you here."

"Yeah, sorry, it got a little crowded down there." Adrian replied, and you nodded as you pursed your lips. "Okay, what's wrong?" Adrian asked.

"Nothing, nothing." You insisted. "I just, didnt think you came, you know, I looked everywhere for you."

"Well, you found me." Adrian said. He was acting weird, he was averting his eyes, looking everywhere but at you. Everything felt like it was going wrong; you didnt know what you were going to do with your life, you couldn't throw a party right, and now your best friend of eleven years wouldn't even look at you.

You rolled your eyes and made your way across the treehouse, kicking the vodka over to the mattress on the floor. You threw yourself down and cracked open the bottle, welcoming the burning the vodka left in your throat. You offered Adrian the bottle silently, which he accepted, making a face after taking a large sip.

"Did you hear about Rebecca Marsh?" Adrian asked, passing the bottle back to you. You shook your head as you took another drink. Adrian got a glint in his eyes and he crawled off the couch and over to you on the mattress. "She got kicked out of Harvard!"

"Fuck off, no!" You squealed, and Adrian nodded furiously as he took the bottle from you. "What the hell happened?"

"I don't know, something about a party that got out of control, drugs and the police were involved!"

"Oh, wow." You shook your head. "You know, you're supposed to dress up for a Halloween party."

"Who says?" Adrian asked, passing the half empty bottle of vodka back to you.

"Come on, you used to love dressing up for Halloween!"

"Yeah, when it was just you and me, and not a bunch of people I don't know who will judge me! Besides, your costume isn't exactly a game-changer is it?" Adrian laughed. "You look real good as a witch though."

You smiled slyly as you tucked your hair behind your ear. You weren't sure if it was the vodka, or your confusing feelings, but you were pretty sure Adrian was flirting with you. You took another drink from the bottle instead of replying, mainly because you weren't sure what you should say. Adrian didn't notice though, he just kept talking.

"You look real good in anything though. Maybe if I had told you more we'd still be close." Adrian mused, and you frowned. You put the bottle down and grabbed Adrians face, smushing his cheeks together as you stared into his wide drunk eyes with your own.

"Adrian, you are not the reason we haven't been spending time together. I've just been stressed, and confused and I thought-"

"Confused about what?" Adrian asked, his speech muffled slightly. You let go of his face and stood up as you took another sip of the drink, avoiding his gaze, and his question. "Hey, talk to me!" Adrian insisted. He grabbed your arm and pulled you back to face him.

You groaned loudly and rolled your head, cracking your neck as you did so. "It's nothing, okay! I just missed you, and I was beginning to think, after everything these past few years that-" You stopped and looked at Adrian, worry etched across his face as he waited for you to finish. "-I thought I was losing my best friend." At least you told him half the truth.

Adrian's eyebrows knitted together and he took your hands in his. "What? You think it's gonna be that easy to get rid of me? These past few years have been...weird, but that's just stupid teenager stuff, right? We'll always be okay." Adrian promised.

"Wow, when did you get so wise?" You chuckled.

"I guess all those years being around you rubbed off on me." Adrian said, and you rolled your eyes. "Oh, wait, hold still."

You did as you were told, and when Adrian lifted his finger to your cheek, your breath hitched in your throat and your eyes fluttered closed. He gently grazed his finger just under your eye, & when you opened them, he had an eyelash on his fingertip.

"Make a wish." He whispered. You blew the eyelash away, and Adrian placed his hand on your cheek

"Adrian...we're drunk." You warned.

"So? You don't wanna do this?" He whispered.

"I just don't think we should. It's not the right time." You replied.

"It never is, so why not now?" Adrian's finger traced your cheekbone, and you inhaled through your nose. Fuck it, you were both drunk, but it was clear you both wanted this.

Suddenly, the hatch door opened. "Are you fucking kidding me?!" You shouted, turning to the hatch, eyes wide as Melissa waved from the hatch.

"Hi, sorry to interrupt but....the police are kicking everyone out. You better come down." Melissa informed you, before waving and disappearing. You smiled apologetically at Adrian, before following Melissa. You felt deflated, like the world was against you and Adrian, that you were cursed.

21.

"Call Adrian. Call Adrian! Ugh, stupid phone!" You said to yourself. You had been on one your first -and last for a while- night out for your twenty-first, and of course you'd left your keys at home. Which would've been fine, if your parents hadn't locked the front door before going to bed. It was three am, and there was no way in hell you were waking them up by banging on the front door, demanding to be let in. You sat under the tree, and opened up Adrian's texts, before deciding to send him a voice note.

"Heyyyy, Adrian, bestie. So, I just got home, and I'm locked out of my house. I think I'm going to have to sleep in the treehouse, but there's a....thirty...no, eighty percent chance that I'm going to fall off the ladder and die. On my twenty-first birthday. Figures, right. I don't know why you didn't come tonight, but I wish you had, I wanted to spend my birthday with you, especially since I'm...you know, that thing we're not discussing for some reason. Anyway, hope this does wake you."

You hit send, then stood up, kicked off your heels, and climbed up the ladder, slowly. It took you ten minutes to get up the ladder, and once you were in the treehouse, you flung yourself onto the floor. "Oh my God, I didn't die!" You said gleefully to yourself. You crawled across the floor to the mattress, and got under the very fluffy blanket on top of it.

You couldn't believe Adrian hadn't turned up tonight. You wanted to be mad at him, to shout at him and make him feel guilty for missing your big milestone, but you just couldn't. It was hard to be mad at your best friend, when you knew you were leaving town. It wasn't for long, a few months, at least, but it was a good worming opportunity, and those didn't come round often when you weren't in college. You and Adrian hadn't spoken about it, apart from when you initially told him. He'd acted supportive, he'd told you to go for it, that he was proud of you, and he gave you a hug; a hug that felt like he didn't want to let go. But then, nothing. He didn't bring it up, and neither did you, although you really wanted to. You wanted to tell him that nothing was going to change, that he'd always be your best friend, but you couldn't bring yourself to bring it up.

"Okay, I'm guessing your up here, because your shoes and bag are on the grass down there."

You pulled the blanket from over your head and grinned as Adrian peered over the hatch. "What are you doing here? It's three am!" You asked, and Adrian held his phone up.

"You sent me this very drunk voice note about how you were about to possibly die while climbing into here."

"I did? Huh, I don't remember that. Weird." You shrugged and lay back down on the mattress. "Hey, come join me. We won't be able to do this for much longer."

"Don't remind me." Adrian muttered as he joined you under the blanket. You lay on your side and stared at Adrian as he settled under the blanket. "Why are you looking at me like that?"

"I'm just looking at you Adrian."

"No, you're looking at me like you looked at Orlando Bloom when we watched Pirates of the Caribbean." Adrian replied. "Why?"

"I'm not meaning to!" You said, a little too loudly. "I'm just- when did you get so pretty?"

Adrian just stared ahead, and you in your drunk state weren't sure if you'd actually said that out loud. You hadn't meant to, but you also didn't regret it, and you would absolutely repeat it if he asked you to. Besides, you were drunk and leaving in three days, if Adrian didnt want to see you again, he didn’t have to. Even if it would break you.

"You're drunk." Adrian finally said, and you scoffed.

"Two things can be true, Adrian. You're my best friend, if I can't tell you that you're pretty, who can?"

"You're right. I've never been called pretty before." Adrian said, a hint of red spreading across his cheeks. You beamed, and you pinched his cheek softly.

"Well, you're the prettiest." You told him. "Can I ask you something?"

Adrian turned his body to match your position, "Shoot."

"Why didn't you come tonight?" You didn't want to ruin the mood, but it had been eating at you all night, it was a reason you got as drunk as you had. Adrian took a deep breath, staring intensely at you.

"I had to work." He said. You let out one single laugh, and rolled your eyes. "What? I did!"

"That's such a weak excuse Adrian. You've been avoiding me for ages now, I just thought it would be different tonight, considering it's a pretty big birthday!"

"I'm not, I mean- I just- ugh!" Adrian turned to face the ceiling and put his hands over his head. "I'm trying to get used to not being with you!"

"Oh." Your heart sank and a lump started to form in your throat. "We're still gonna talk everyday!"

"You say that now, but will we? Everything's changing too fast, and I don't like it."

You pulled Adrian's hands from his face and turned his head to you. With your hand on his cheek, you shook your head. "If you think I can go a single day without talking to you, you're an idiot. I need you, Adrian. I've only ever needed you."

Adrian's breath hitched in his throat, and he ran his tongue over his lips nervously. I'm gonna do it, you thought, it's now or never.

You leaned forward ever so slightly, your hand still on Adrian's face. He watched with huge, wide eyes as you came closer, his eyes frantically darting to your lips and back up. At the last second though, he turned away. "Don't."

You pulled your hand from his cheek and stood up, embarrassment and rejection had sobered you up completely. "I'm sorry, I thought you-"

"No, I do!" Adrian exclaimed, scrambling off the mattress.

"Yeah, it seems like it." You scoffed. "Look it's fine, let's just forget about it, okay? I've been drinking, it brought some stuff up, I misread, well, everything. It's whatever."

"It's not whatever!" Adrian groaned, throwing his arms up. "Of course I've thought about it, I have for years! But you're drunk, and I'm not, and it's just not the right time!"

"So when is then? Because it wasn't tonight, and it wasn't three years ago, so when is?!"

"Then maybe there isn't a right time. Maybe we missed it."

You had always thought that Aaron Tully had broken your heart at aged 16, but that was nothing compared to how you felt right now. "What are you saying?"

"That maybe we missed our chance." Adrian confirmed. "Maybe we were doomed from the start."

"Right, yeah." You tried to swallow lump in your throat, but it just got bigger, and you turned away Adrian, refusing to let him see your eyes filling up. "I should go." Adrian said softly, and you nodded your head.

Adrian threw himself against your back and wrapped his arms around you. "I'll come see you before you leave, okay?" You nodded again, not able to trust your voice. Only when you heard the hatch close did you let the tears escape as you crumbled to the floor.

25.

You were talking with your aunts when you saw him from across the room, and your heart almost exploded. After three years of not seeing him, he was a sight to behold. He hadn't changed, not really, he was still the Adrian you grew up with, but there was something different about him; you just couldn't put your finger on it. Your aunts pulled you back into the conversation, but you weren't paying much attention. You interjected with little mumbles and murmurs of acknowledgement here and there, but you couldn't take your eyes off Adrian as you watched him greet your parents. Then your eyes met, and you waved slightly. Adrian grinned, and you swear it brightened up the room. You reciprocated the smile, and got back to the conversation just in time, as one of your aunts began to ask about your job.

You made it to eleven before you could no longer deal with your relatives. You loved them very much- and when your parents told you they were throwing a New Years party, you jumped at the chance to come home and see everyone- but if one more person asked you about your relationship status, you'd drink yourself to death. So after another depressing conversation about how scarily close to 30 you were and how scarily single you were, you slipped out into the back garden and climbed up the ladder to your old favourite space.

It had been years since you'd been up here, even when you were spending weekends at home, you avoided the treehouse like the plague, you wouldn't even look at it. It reminded you of Adrian, and although you called each other and texted all the time, it hadn't felt the same since your twenty-first birthday. You pushed at the hatch and hauled yourself up, and as you turned around, you almost fell back down the hole in fright.

"Fuck! Adrian, you scared me!" You yelled, and Adrian jumped up.

"I'm so sorry! You know how I am with parties, and I thought I'd see how this place was holding up without me." Adrian said. He ran his finger over the coffee table and held up his dusty finger. "Looks great."

"It has been a while since it's been used." You said. "Dad had the idea to tear it down, but I wouldn't let him." You replied. "That's not the only thing that's been a while."

"What are you- Ohhhh, us! I mean- just that it's been a while since we've been face to face."

"Yeah," You chuckled. It was awkward, and you absolutely hated it. How had it come to this? You were once inseperable, a package deal, and now you could barely be in the same room together. It didn't help that he looked so good. His glasses now framed his face, and they didn't hide his stupidly beautiful eyes. "Hey, you want a drink?" Adrian asked, and when you wavered, he tilted his head and frowned. "Oh come on, it's New Year, have a drink!"

You smiled and took the bottle of beer from Adrian, and you noticed that his once stick-thin arms were now huge. You gulped and licked your lips and turned away from Adrian before heading to the window. Was it hot in here? Adrian followed and sat next to you, tilting the bottle towards you. You clinked the two bottles together before taking a drink, and you sighed. "So, how have you been?"

"Good, yeah. I'm still working at Fennel Fields, and I've even got a side job too."

"A side job? Doing what?"

"Oh, just stuff. Remember Christopher Smith?"

"Guts friend? The racist guy who calls himself Peacemaker? Isn't he locked up?"

"He is. But we became friends before he left. We used to hang out and everything." Adrian said, and you frowned.

"Why are you hanging out with him? Adrian, he was such a dick to you, and to everyone else in school! What could you possibly be doing with him?"

"He's changed, mostly." Adrian insisted, and he ignored when you rolled your eyes and scoffed. "Well, anything else new?" You asked.

"Not really. I've had some threesomes here and there, but-"

You chose the wrong time to take a drink, and you spluttered as you choked. Adrian began to slap your back, and you batted his hand away. "You've had threesomes?! With who?!"

"Me, Chris and who-"

"Nope, no, stop! I don't wanna know!" You shouted, covering your ears with your hands. "Oh God, I need something stronger than beer right now."

You could feel the jealousy bubbling up inside you, and you needed to push it down, quick. The thought of Adrian...you didn't want to think about it anymore, but it was all you could think about. Between that revelation, the way he looked and the feelings you were battling to keep at bay, your mind was melting with inappropriate thoughts.

"You alright?" Adrian asked, and you nodded.

"I'm just, uh- I'm just thinking about my ex." You replied, quickly. When Adrian groaned, you scoffed. "What's your problem?"

"I just don't want to hear about your sexual conquests." Adrian said, and you turned to him, your mouth agape.

"Oh, so you get to drop that you've had multiple threesomes since we last saw each other, but I mention one date and you cringe?!"

"I didn't cringe! I just-"

"You just what, Adrian? What could possibly-"

"I don't wanna think about you with other people!" Adrian yelled over you.

You opened your mouth to respond, but closed it instead. You smirked slightly and shook your head, before you looked around the grimy treehouse. Nothing had changed in here, apart from a few bits of furniture that had been changed, yet you and Adrian were different people now; in some ways at least. "Remember when we had a sleepover for Halloween, and stole all the candy for the trick-or-treaters?" You asked Adrian, who laughed loudly.

"Of course! Your mom was so mad at us!"

"Yeah, so were our stomachs!"

"The floor was never the same either." Adrian added.

"Okay, what's your favourite treehouse memory?" You asked. Adrian hummed as he pondered your question, and you took a sip of beer as you watched him. You couldn't stop the corner of your lip from turning up when you noticed he still scrunched his nose when he spoke; the way the corner of his eyes crinkled; the way he bit his lip when he was concentrating.

"Oh I know!" Adrian exclaimed, a sparkle in his eye, and you leaned forward with anticipation, your elbows rested on your knees. "When I was almost your first kiss, but your mom interrupted us, and you fell over!"

"Well, mines about to be when I throw you out this window!" You gasped and laughed. As Adrian smirked at you, you attempted to geab his arm, but he grabbed your wrist and pulled you towards him, resulting in you being on top of Adrian as he lay on the floor.

The atmosphere in the treehouse went from being light-hearted and fun, to serious and heart-racing. You bit your lip as Adrian looked up at you. You couldn't remember the last time you'd been this close, if you'd ever been, but you were afraid of moving, of saying or doing the wrong thing and ruining whatever this moment was.

"My real favourite memory," Adrian said, softly, almost like he was choosing his words carefully, "was when you made us watch that Heath Ledger rom-com."

"Wait a minute, your favourite memory, out of every single memory we've made in this place, is when I forced you to watch Ten Things I Hate About You?!"

Adrian shrugged and smiled shyly, a small blush forming on his cheeks as he stared up at you, with those adorable, wide eyes of his. "We were sharing a blanket and a bowl of popcorn on the mattress, and just as I realized you hadn't slapped my arm or tell me a fact about the scene in about seven minutes, I felt your head drop to my shoulder. I turned to look at you and you were asleep, it was adorable," Adrian paused, then added, "and the first time I realized I might be in love with you."

You sat up, forgetting you were on top of Adrian, and you stared at him, your arms crossed. "That…that was when we were seventeen. What- you- what? Why didn't you say anything?"

You sat up, forgetting you were on top of Adrian, and you stared at him, your arms crossed. "That…that was when we were seventeen. What- you- what? Why didn't you say anything?"

"Because you were my best friend! I didn't know if I was just confusing my feelings, or if I was what I was feeling was real, and our friendship was more important than whatever I was feeling."

"So, why now?" You questioned, dropping your arms and posture from the defensive position you'd found yourself in, and as Adrian sat up, you found yourself completely on his lap.

"When I saw you tonight, I realized we'd spent too much time apart. I was up here thinking about you, building up the courage to come and speak to you. God, do you know how much I miss you? The phone calls and texts just aren't enough for me. I didn't tell you what was going on before because I was scared, and I didn't wanna lose you, and I told you I didn't think it was the right time. Turns out, I lost you anyway. I know too much has changed, but my feelings never did."

You didn't want to say anything, there were no words that could ever convey how you were feeling right now. Adrian's eyes were full of fear, he could barely look at you. There was only one thing you wanted to do, and you were going to do it. There was only one thing, one person who could stop you; you just hoped he wouldn't. You put your hand on his cheek and guided him to look at you.

"Adrian," you whispered, "this is the right time."

Adrian didn't waste a single second. He grabbed you by the hips and pulled you closer to him, and you held his face in your hands. As your lips finally touched, fireworks began to go off outside, illuminating you both as you melted into one another. Everything finally felt right, after eleven years and five attempts, the universe finally allowing you both the one thing you'd wanted for as long as you could remember.

"We finally found the right time." Adrian mumbled into your lips, and you grinned as he pulled away and rested his forehead against yours. "Happy New Year, babe."

You pouted for another kiss which Adrian happily granted. "Happy New Year, Adrian."

[aroacesigma]

do you have any sigzai hcs (or just hcs about sigma or dazai separately)

you're going to regret asking this . headcanons under the cut cause im gonna feel annoying otherwise . most of them are what i headcanon as happening like post canon in a nice world where everyone is alive and happy lol

sigzais <3

ok so to me they are THE transmasc qpps ever . i might be projecting a little but both dazai and sigma are both so transmasc to me. on one hand you have sigma who wears 10 billion shirt layers and a long ass coat and goes on and on about being an ordinary man, and then on the other hand you have dazai who also wears clothes like that and bandages over his chest

hc sigma as oriented aroace with ???? orientation . hes just very confused . theyre so confused . and dazai as bi aroacespec and not particularly averse to any stuff just doesnt feel the attraction most of the time

poor sigma has spent all this time around fyolai like 'god why the fuck are people like this' and then he meets dazai and is like ohhhhhhh. oh .

when sigma joins the ada (and they will u mark my words) him and dazai end up sharing an apartment

at first dazais excited because maybe he wont be living off horrible cooking

unfortunately sigma also cannot cook for shit . he fucking sucks . legitimately the only thing he can cook is cookies in a packet mix .

sigma is unfortunately going through the same phase that kids of controlling parents go through when they finally get freedom, which is making a bunch of stupid decisions . dazai , being the wonderful boyfriend he is, is encouraging all the dumb decisions because he thinks its funny

most of their dates is just going to cafes because sigma has the worlds most horrendous sweet tooth and sigma has no moral objections to guilt tripping him into it

despite being pretty bad at it themself, sigma has a tendency to hit dazai with a pillow until he takes care of himself

vice versa dazai will be a distracting little bitch and wont stop if he thinks sigma is overworking himself

sigma

he/they sigma is so real to me btw just need everyone to know this . they like messing around with neos as well sometimes i think

even though he's pretty much always tired , isnt really a huge fan of coffee , definitely prefers really fancy tea and energy drinks

decided to run with the whole purple thing cause of his hair , abolutely loves the colour. anything he owns is purple if they can get it .

smiles all happy while listening to music in a way that makes you think its something nice . its not . his only musical requirements are loud and screaming to drown out the Anxiety™

not my headcanon but i saw someone say once that they headcanon that occasionally people get an uncanny valley kinda vibe from looking at him cause of his weird origins and honestly i think thats pretty interesting

very happy to join the ada . not quite as impressed by the paycheck .

like , really not impressed by the paycheck . theyre struggling with the dwindling clothes budget . i can totally see him trying to decide whether he wants dinner or new earrings . and probably picking the earrings .

they get along with everyone at the agency really well . a few people dont really trust him straight up but atsushi and dazai vouching for him shuts that down relatively quickly

he gets along the best with atsushi

they have a friendly rivalry with kunikida . agency productivity going straight up just because those two keep trying to outdo each other

dazai

100% has multiple troll accounts online . he enjoys being a menace . not in the mean way , in the absolutely fucking infuriating kind of way

remained in denial (or more oblivious really) about being trans until he was 16 because he asked chuuya if everyone felt like that one time and chuuya was like well yeah (also trans and stupid)

on a related note (this one is kind of about dazai and chuuya but it still counts) mori was kind of like ohhh teenage boys are so much easier to deal with right ? kouyou decided it was best not to inform him that hrt gives you mood swings .

adhd. adhd. adhd.

hes a candy crush mum . its a problem .

eats everyone at the ada's food . but he doesnt eat the whole thing he'll just take a bite . its high up on kunikidas 'things that make me want to string dazai up by his legs and attach him to a ceiling fan' list

has been known to send 12 yr olds graphic violent death threats after losing to them in video games

he has the music taste of a 14 yr old cishet girl . i will let you decide what that entails .

my deepest apologies for making you read all this but i love them both dearly and i have lots of Thoughts

[mikomikono]

hi miko! im here with a fic writing question… i was thinking about how to make smut good bc recently i feel like whenever i get to the smut part of the fic im writing i get super bored, like im just rehashing whatever ive been writing in every smut scene ive done for years. you and endles came to mind bc i always find your guys nsfw scenes really compelling, and great, and unique. while also being hot and fun (very important w smut!!) so i wanted to ask if you had any tips for keeping things exciting or fresh when you are tackling those scenes! especially because you guys have experience writing the same characters many times over and manage to be so creative and distinct with every scene ive read from you. so, i guess, penny for your thoughts, if you feel like it! (sorry for sending this only to you and asking for both your opinions, it was the simplest 😭. if u want to answer yourself only thats fine haha)

❤️

Heyyyy oh my god I never expected to become someone ppl would come to for writing advice, what an honour 💖 also, I hope you don't mind me answering publicly, bc I feel like this is something a lit of writers struggle with! I will put it under a cut tho, bc I ended up writing quite a bit oops

So. Smut. It's kinda funny you should ask me about that, bc the first proper sex scene I ever wrote was last year for Steamship Sexcapades (bc I am not counting that one feeble attempt at 19 that was so cringe that I hid it away and didn't even think about trying again for like 8 yrs) but I suppose after writing *checks The Canon word count* a lot since then means something :DD

Here's the thing: I also feel like I'm rehashing things. Constantly. There's only so many ways you can say "cock in hole ➡️ thrust" before you're gonna have to repeat some phrases. And honestly, I feel like I repeat phrases remarkably often! But in a way that's all writing! (or that's how I stop myself from getting too depressed about it lol) The readers don't notice! Usually. And as long as you don't use the exact same wording every single time.

Ok, so here's a few tips on what I, personally, think you need to make a good sex scene:

Don't be afraid of the words. Y'know, the first time I wrote "half-hard cock" I (allegedly) had to take a 10min break and texted a friend that I was not going to be able to do this. But after a while you sort of get used to it and the words that seemed embarrassing stop being that, and become just... Words. And you also shouldn't shy away from more "cringe" words! Sometimes its fun to be a little cringe!

Related, you should try to love the words. But that's just good general writing advice, I feel.

Describe the emotions. Most people feel... something towards those they are intimate with, and that should be true in erotica too. It should be especially true in erotica, I think! Even if it's a one night stand, strangers who met in the club 5mins ago, whatever... You want the characters to feel.

Don't forget the physical. This is a thing that might seem a bit... weird. Like, you're writing sex, how could it not be physical? But what I mean is that you shouldn't forget to describe how it feels to the people involved, most notably your POV character. It's very easy to get lost in describing what they're doing and completely forget to get into the actual feeling. You're not writing a sex manual! And I have read fics where half way through I realise that's what it sounds like.

It's never just about the sex. Even if you think it is, it's not. It's about the connection, the narrative, the characterisation... It's about showing something that you can only show through the kind of vulnerable intimacy that sex scenes provide. Even if it's a oneshot pwp, it still has something to say. Maybe that something is wanting to get your rocks off, but also we're talking about fanfiction... We don't read and write that just to get off. It's always about the characters.

Rehashing is fine, actually. As I said, there's only so many ways to describe certain things, and so many ways you can have sex. Except that's not really true, because the secret to keeping it fresh is mixing it up! You can change positions, you can change who's the top/bottom, you can add foreplay (you should) and then change what kind of foreplay you wanna have! You can look into kinks! You can change locations! (I know we've done that a lot) You can add or remove any number of things to make each individual encounter different! And that's the key: repetition is fine, so long as you don't use the exact same everything every time. Case in point, there is a tumblr post which I would link except I'm on mobile, that is titled sth like "list of vocal sounds for smut", which has a list of, well, sounds/verbs (moan, groan, hiss, whimper, whisper etc) and adjectives that could be paired with them (hoarse, needy, quiet, throaty, desperate, wanton etc). The point is, that the best way to keep from sounding repetitive is to mix and match the words so that even if you say "groan" five times in 5k words, it's a different kind of groan every time. The same applies to sex acts! Do you have any idea how much cock Ryunosuke has sucked during The Canon? A lot. But it doesn't feel repetitive (hopefully) because everything else around it is switched up.

And perhaps most importantly: you gotta be at least a little horny for it yourself. I get it, man, writing smut is weird. You sit in front of your computer, staring at the monitor like "hmm is it better to use the word cock or dick or member?" And like... That's not very sexy. But! But!!! At the end of the day you gotta write something that makes you excited! Otherwise what's the point? Why are you writing if it doesn't fulfill you on some level??

Anyway, that's just my thoughts on the matter. If you want more specific help with writing, you can always DM me, I don't mind~

Also, endles says she is too mentally exhausted to properly answer, but she seconds everything I said, especially the point about loving the words. Actually she really wants to say sth about that, so I'm paraphrasing her for the rest of this:

You, as a writer, should love language. You should love the neat little things that language can do and seek out new things to try every time. It's a journey of discovery! Just like sex is always a new journey, even if it's the same characters and the same sex acts, every individual time is a chance to find something new. Let yourself have fun! Write something really stupid and work from that. The way I create scenes by writing jokes, even for serious scenes, because sex at the core is kinda funny. You're standing naked (at least partially) in front of this other naked person and it makes you feel a bit funny.

Also concrete advice: pick a list of 5-10 words you want to use. They can be anything, verbs, nouns, adjectives, as long as you really, really vibe with them, because they make you happy, as long as they're not words you already use a lot. They can also all relate to the same theme if you want! And then find a way to put all those words in.

[sixofsol]

@johaerys-writes tagged my main (@heypax) for this, but since ive talked about my fics more on this blog i decided to do it here instead !

1. How many works do you have on AO3?

26!

2. What is your AO3 word count?

151,778

3. What fandoms do you write for?

I mean, I haven’t written anything for anything but six of crows since like year back… But! I do miss writing patrochilles, and tsoa is the fandom i’ve written the absolute most for! If we’re looking back, I’ve written hadestown, steven universe, haikyuu!! and a bunch more years ago.

4. What are your top five fics by kudos?

we were shotgun lovers // I’m a shotgun running away - six of crows, wesper, 772 kudos

like moss climbs a tree - song of achilles, patrochilles, 446

i want someone to try, and let me down easy — six of crows, wesper, 405 kudos

from the outside looking in - the song of achilles, patrochilles, 371 kudos

twisted roots and sunny days, the song of achilles, patrochilles, 363 kudos

5. Do you respond to comments? Why or why not?

YES if i dont miss when i get them (i dont have the email motifs on) i always do ! it means so much someone commented and i always love having a lil conversation about this thing that i wrote.

6. What's the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending?

as much of an lover i am of hurt no comfort i very rarely write it lmao but a lot of my tsoa fics had sad endings. autumn’s coming around is the first one that popped into mind, but that’s at least slightly open ? i’ll hold your hand while you drown, less so.

7. What's the fic you wrote with the happiest ending?

I feel like a lot of my fics have equally happy endings haha, the one that came to mind was our hair tangled in the breeze, simply because its a happy ending canon complaint tsoa fic which is a feat lmao

8. Do you get hate on fics?

nope the closets ive ever come was when i was 12 and people were like nice story but god your grammar and spelling is terrible! which was fair!

9. Do you write smut? If so, what kind?

nah I’m a fade to black kinda girlie

10. Do you write crossovers? What's the craziest one you've written?

I never anymore but well,, Once upon a time i was 14 and obsessed with glee and sherlock and well….

11. Have you ever had a fic stolen?

not as far as ik

12. Have you ever had a fic translated?

nope !

13. Have you ever cowritten a fic before?

nope, but I would enjoy trying!

14. What's your all-time favourite ship?

…this is hard because wesper has been running around in my head for a year but simply cause ive been obsessed with patrochilles longer im still gonna say them

15. What's a WIP you'd like to finish but doubt you ever will?

I’d love to continue for everyone im about to prove wrong, and I think I even have a mostly finished chapter lying around somewhere, but I’ve just not had the inspiration rip.

16. What are your writing strengths?

I think I’m good at writing characters in general, especially when it’s from their pov. first person pov my beloved.

17. What are your writing weaknesses?

I’m not really a person who uses a lot of metaphors of writes flowery language, but i wish i was!! i love very beautiful language and poetic writing but i just don’t do that that much im pretty straight forward, which isn’t a bad thing but I wish i could expand a bit more.

18. Thoughts on writing dialogue in another language for a fic?

takes me out the story way too much, it’s fine if it’s like one word every now and then but nah. ive read a couple of young royals fics, and as a swedish speaker its a bit jarring to suddenly have swedish words there lmao

19. First fandom you wrote for?

If non published count, harry potter. if only published, glee!

20. Favourite fic you've ever written?

i’m gonna be fair to myself and choose one for soc and one for tsoa.

autumn’s coming around for tsoa and a fire died last winter for soc, which ironically are my least popular fics in the respective fandoms!

thank you !! and im tagging @leglesslouie @jackwolfes @wesperbrekkered @deathless--aphrodite

[yuukei-yikes]

That post str Harutaka angst hurts my heart a little but I do want it

HEH. CONFLICT IS SO FUN OKAY. haruka and takane get along too well i need a little something to have fun with.... also thank u for sending this im totally using it as an excuse to talk about it. i went crazy in this ask sorry

ok. i KNOW forward by winterhats exists...... and thank god it does 🙏in case u havent read it erm read it. thats like harutaka content 101... not to spoil stuff but something about haruka not telling takane abt his condition Does take place in that fic. but the thing with that fic is haruka has no memories.... (post str no memory haruka is a concept i was never a fan of bc it doesnt rly make sense to me?? Still love forward though🙏🙏🙏🙏🙏🙏🙏) SO IM THINKING OF a canon situation with haruka remembering fine yknow...

logically i think takane would be sad rather than angry once finding out. also she'd hear it from shintaro who is the only one who knew, aside from kenjirou but he's x_x post str💔 so shintaro it is. also it's such a shintaro thing to do isnt it?? accidentally mention it to takane or assume she knew and realise he messed up like, way too late. like he already said it like 5 times before he realised takane is asking him to repeat it so many times precisely because SHE DIDN'T KNOW

like i said i think its kinda a fragile thing because God its so sad. how could u even get mad at someone for choosing not to say they're dying. so yeah logically takane Would be mostly sad about both the sad reality haruka was living AND how she wasn't told, because to her it means haruka didnt trust her or maybe felt he couldnt count on her.

im abt to overanalyse: personally from a writing point of view i think the reason haruka doesnt tell takane is because headphone actor was already written and the narrative where takane doesnt know was already there. haruka's 1 year to live thing was written a lot after, with over the dimension. but besides that: from a character standpoint, of course haruka wouldn't tell takane. she is the last person he wants to worry and the one he wants the most happy memories with. and something important about haruka and takane's relationship is the fact neither knows much about each others conditions. in both their povs upon introducing each other to the audience, they both explain their illnesses briefly. they both say "i havent asked much". to me its always been about haruka and takane deeply relating to each other about people feeling sorry for them. so they dont owe each other the explanations theyre so used to giving to others! so to me, haruka doesnt tell takane because 1.he doesnt want her to worry more than she already does 2.he wants to have happy memories of her 3. related to that, doesnt want her to look at him differently. she is the one person who gets it. if he were to come clean abt it, he'd lose it. besides, haruka tells shintaro by the time he's like. LOSING HIS MIND and really deeply depressed abt the situation. kenjirou also knows... but haruka's father could've told him since its mentioned they used to be colleagues. personally i think haruka told him himself, since he also mentions kenjirou is the only adult he's ok sharing stuff with, so in a way its implied if ur delusional like me.

erm. anyways. i got a little sidetrack IM GONNA GET TO IT OKAY its just, haruka's dying words for takane man. don't cry anymore, you're gonna meet so many new people, etc. he basically tells her he is just 1 person in the long long life he assumes she will have. theyre best friends, he knew takane would mourn him terribly and thats why he thinks all that stuff he cant actually tell her.. augh haruka's goodbye to takane always gets me so so badly. bc he KNEW... like, ene lives in so much regret for not telling haruka how she felt but haruka died knowing she loved him. even if he didnt know it was romantic, he still knew she loved him :( i was going somewhere with this. (pacing around my room) oh yeah. his dying words. haruka doesn't convey all this to takane while he has the chance because of the stuff i said before but the most important was number 3. he doesnt want takane to look at him differently. plus everything he says while he is dying... god id post the whole screenshot. but he says "dont get mad at anyone but me" "please dont cry anymore" "im so sorry youve given me so much and i couldnt give back" he... doesn't Want to see takane upset. he knows she will be upset anyway but its like. at least he wont be around to see it, in a way. we could see this as kind of selfish but like The guy's dying come ON. i think he has the right to do that. lol.

WELLLL COMING BACK TO THE ORIGINAL APPROACH LMAO.. takane finding out post str....... i went on that tangent to defend haruka precisely cuz i dont think takane would be genuinely mad. its a tricky situation and its not like she can be like WELL BUT U KNEW AND U DIDNT WARN ME!?!?!?!? Like THAT IS a pretty lame position to take. HOWEVER. CONFLICT (PUTS HANDS DOWN) i think takane just needs to be mad

WHILE TAKANE WOULD BE MORE UPSET THAN MAD she IS also super impulsive. like insanely impulsive <- finds out she loves haruka and immediately runs for it even if it terrified her. so in the spur of the moment she blows up on haruka about it LOL like as SOON as she finds out. like i imagine she probably hears it from shintaro and like immediately leaves mid conversation to go find haruka and yell at him. that kind of thing.

and haruka's all like 😨😨😨 and he's stuttering cuz HE HAS AN ANSWER ABT WHY HE DIDNT TELL HER IT JUST SOUNDS RLY BAD LIKE "ERM I DIDNT WANT TO SEE U UPSET❤️" like in over the dimension haruka does get pretty nervous when takane starts pressing even if its as a joke. so especially with something so sensitive he has no idea what to do. i think he'd try to be all composed though bc its Post Str and idk str haruka is so. ethereal he is so calm isn't he. i think he would get nervous initially and then get himself together but ends up coming off as dismissive. so hes like i didnt tell you.....because i didnt want to❤️ and takane probably just needed to be mad for a little bit and was gonna get over it and be sad but hearing that just makes her so damn upset for realsies and haruka notices how she changed from😡 to 😐 and hes immediately like oh takane.... no... i didnt mean it like that...i just mean...OH DONT MAKE THAT FACE I DIDNT MEAN IT... and takane's like NOO DONT TOUCH ME WHATEVER IM LEAVINGGG unnecessary conflict in a romcom vibes

conflict probably lasts like. a day or something. a week tops. its harder for haruka than for takane. takane finds it a little refreshing i think its also cool to link it to all the other headcanons abt haruka being super desperate to be in company because erm Daze confinement gang🙏💥 while takane's a little like. i havent had a minute to myself in 11 days. so this distance actually helps her a little while haruka is like Hour 5 without my girlfriend I've cried so much i cant see anymore

they both feel like shit and do spend the time trying to see the situation from each other's perspectives though so takane realises she's being self centered and stupid and admits she just wanted to be angry and took it out on the first thing she could grasp at. but it was unfair. takane will apologize first and probably tells him she doesn't need or want him to "protect" her feelings and wants him to count on her from now onward. haruka's like *nod nod nod nod nod nod* and thanks her for apologizing. hed try to also apologize but takane doesnt accept it bc he wasnt wrong it was her who was unfair. hehe. i think he'd be crying so hard too bc to him its all these feelings coming back abt how he felt when he died and all the things he thought of telling her then. maybe he would tell her abt it, like i was thinking about all the people you'd meet and how u should be happy and not cry for me. and how in disbelief he still is that theyre together. sorry im. auauggagaggsgsggqgggg

all this just for me 2 enjoy the mental image of the little time in between where theyre awkward around each other and takane wants a little distance for a bit. i think itd be funny to see haruka being totally pathetic abt takane not paying attention to him. anyways. yeah. something like that i guess

[chilipepperconverse]

Ao3 Author tag game!

tagged by my bestie @plushie-sentai <3

1. How many works do you have on Ao3?

19!

2. What is your Ao3 word count?

74,854 holy shit. i hadn't checked it in awhile lmao

3. What fandoms do you write for?

oh all kinds of shit, but rn i'm up to my eyeballs in tokusatsu. i tend to jump from fandom to fandom depending on my current hyperfixations HSKDJGS

4. What are your top five fics by kudos?

in the fall we sleep all day (the magnus archives, jonmartin)

the end was soon (the magnus archives, jonmartin)

feeling so alive, feeling something (my hero academia, tododeku)

we both need it to forget this fear (the magnus archives, jonmartin)

if that's what it takes (my hero academia, tododeku)

all of these are like. at least 4 years old LMAO

5. Do you respond to comments?

i always do!!

6. Which of your fics has the angstiest ending?

mmmm depends on your definition i think. if you include canon compliant events its def one of my danganronpa fics (a foreign still or light of the moon) but that feels boring to me SO i might say my most recent fic for kamen rider ex-aid (or just mine tonight) since it ends on kindof a sour note for the characters? im not sure tbh, as much as i love angst in a fic i tend to like happier or ambiguous endings.

7. Which of your fics has the happiest ending?

that's an easy one! my dimension 20: mentopolis fic (whale fall) was written before the finale and was my guess as to what would happen w one of the pairs of characters, and its very sweet and wholesome i think :3

8. Do you get hate on fics?

thankfully no!

9. Do you write smut? If so, which kind?

i do! i used to be terrified of it, but i think i've gotten better the more i write! i don't hold any bars on what kind of smut i'll write, either-- whatever the characters are workin with, i'll do it!! lmao

10. Do you write crossovers? If so, what's the craziest crossover you've written?

i used to! back when i wrote for achievement hunter i wrote an au where the fake AH crew were killjoys, like from gerard way's comics and the MCR album danger days :p i got uncomfy with RPF as i got older tho so those fics are all lost media now HSJGHJD

11. Have you ever had a fic stolen?

nope! not that i'm aware of anyways lol

12. Have you ever had a fic translated?

nope but if anyone wants to... pleading emoji

13. Have you ever co-written a fic before?

not unless roleplay counts... i used to rp a certain anime with friends mostly as a joke in high school but we did try and write story-format roleplay a few times

14. What's your all-time favorite ship?

i don't much care for it or the property anymore bc i've got some bad experiences tied to it, but i think the ship i've gone the most batshit over is probably jonmartin from the magnus archives. right now tho? definitely best match from kamen rider build <3

15. What's a WIP you want to finish but doubt you ever will?

my magnus archives dnd au (write an anthem worth repeating), for aforementioned reasons of not feeling good about the source material anymore :( a shame bc i thought my writing in that fic was nice

16. What are your writing strengths?

i think i'm pretty good at characterization! i get a lot of comments saying i give good insight into how characters feel which is lovely to hear, bc thats what i like most about writing fanfic!

17. What are your writing weaknesses?

PACING... AND PLOTS IN GENERAL... why do you think i only write one-shots!! 😭

18. Thoughts on writing dialogue in another language in fic?

i don't trust myself enough to do it right... i write a lot of fic for japanese media so the most i'll do is use the japanese word for something that can't be translated (names of foods for example)

19. First fandom you wrote for?

god probably warrior cats in like 3rd grade... on Ao3 tho it was achievement hunter, but those are gone like i said earlier </3

20. Favorite fic you've written?

is it cheating if i say my wip?? ;3

i'm gonna tag @meganechan05 bc i cant remember who else im moots with who writes fic but if you see this and wanna do it go ahead n say i tagged you!! :D

[angel-eyes05]

i remember his hands - chapter 3

PAIRING: kang the conqueror x fem!reader

SUMMARY: after a scientific experiment goes horribly wrong, you've been transported to the quantum realm and have been stuck there for the past decade. with no company, aside from janet van dyne, your life changes forever when a mysterious man in a golden ship crash lands next to your settlement. startled with his initial presence, you two have a rocky start. but as time goes on, you two find each other slowly drawn to one another. you have secrets though, and he has a past he refuses to bring up. can you two make it through navigating an unknown world together, discovering any ulterior motives, and stand the test of time in a place where time has no meaning at all?

INFO: slow romantic burn, pretty fast sexual burn, kinda enemies to lovers????, takes place during that little flashback janet has during quantumania, idk how accurate this is gonna be to canon stuff cause i get very confused about the quantum realm lol, reader is in mid to late 20s while kang is in his “early 30s” (ik he like technically doesn't age or whatever idk the lore but i just made it accurate to jonathan majors age and wanted to give an accurate age range/gap/count), y/n will be very fleshed out like im gonna give her everything lol

WARNING: explicit language, smut (minors dni), masturbation (f), oral sex (fem receiving), cum play, not a very happy ending (guys aftercare is important)

CHAPTER WORD COUNT: 2.5k

NOTES: i just wanna say thank you for all the love recently! idk if ill set a specific schedule for when ill release the chapters or not cause honestly i just work better whenever i write when i want without a time constraint so thats probably what i’ll end up doing. if you want me to write a specific one shot for kang or even another character (i feel most comfortable writing for mcu, star wars, the last of us, and stranger things, but if i know the piece of media youre talking about and feel comfortable writing about the character, im down) just lmk! also i decided at the last second this was gonna be a smuty chapter so..yeah!

PREVIOUS PART

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It had been about two weeks since you found Kang at the crash site. Despite the moment you two had when you first fixed him up, you two had very little interactions since then. It made sense though. Both of you were taking your own separate times to heal, you in your room, bedridden from your horrible headaches, him on the couch, still unable to walk due to his foot and abdomen. According to Janet, he hasn’t been very talkative. He would occasionally respond to her comments about how he was feeling, but wouldn’t say anything about where he came from or why he was here. So she just stopped asking. It took a while for you to open up to Janet about how you got here at first as well though, so you understood why he would be all shut up about it. It got you thinking about how you ended up here. How much you left behind. God you wish you got the chance to leave a note or something. At the very least, for them…

You quickly dragged yourself out of that thought, knowing the path it would lead you down led to nothing but wasted tears. It was late at night, and you laid sleepless in your bed, so it was easy to let your mind wander. To distract yourself, you replayed the moment with him in your mind. You were a little touch starved, in that way at least, so feeling Kang’s hand in that sensitive of an area drove you mad. Thinking about it would always give you the same reaction. Butterflies slowly fluttering into your stomach, roses blooming onto your cheeks, and the near uncontrollable urge to touch yourself. You know your relationship was non existent right now and had a horrible start, but sometimes you wondered what would happen if you walked over to the couch right now and started to kiss him. The only thing you ended up doing though was changing your now soaked underwear.

You always felt bad when you let yourself think like that. Poor guy was probably just looking for something to hold while he was in pain. And you were taking advantage of it. Then again, you remembered how he slowly pulled his fingers away from your thigh once you were finished stitching him up, an act that did seem very purposeful. Again though, he might have done that unconsciously. You always sent yourself into this back and forth inner dialogue with yourself about his intentions in that moment. Whether you liked it or not, during the past two weeks, you’ve only had two things on your mind: your pain, and him.

With the mix of your restless mind, the ache between your legs, and your now grumbling stomach, you decide to get out of bed and go to the kitchen to find something to eat. Also partially because you would get to see him, awake or not. To be honest, you preferred him asleep. You could just admire him from a far, without the complexities of a conversation to mess anything up. You crept into the hallway, adjusting your eyes from the dim light in your room to the rest of the house, enveloped in the darkness. Thankfully, you knew the layout of the house well, so you doubted you would trip over anything. You wandered throughout the cabin until you got past Janet’s room and into the kitchen. You didn’t realize how flawed your plan was, it just now clicking that you wouldn’t be able to see Kang in the darkness. You didn’t entirely mind though. Just knowing he’s in the same room as you put your thoughts slightly at ease. 

You finally make it to the counter and put your arms out to find something. They land on a round, spiked fruit. Too scared of accidentally cutting yourself if you use a knife to peel it, you decide just to bite into it. Juice drips down from your mouth as your teeth sink into the fruit. Although the food here was no where near as good as back home, you managed to find a few gems here. The fruits were definitely one of them. Once you finish with the fruit, you use the sleeve of your loose shirt to wipe your mouth. You paced the room a bit, still kind of restless. Your eyes still haven’t entirely adjusted to the dark, but you think you have a pretty good standing of your ground. That is until you trip over the back of the couch. You brace yourself for the impact of flying over the couch and waking up everyone in the process, until you’re suddenly stopped.

It’s a hand. No, not just a hand. The hand. His hand.

Again, it stays there longer than it should have. Placed just below where your sternum meets your breasts. You could feel your heart beating faster the longer his hand stayed there. “You’re a loud chewer” Kang finally said. It was more of a deep whisper though. God you loved the sound of his voice, despite the few times you heard it. “You must be a light sleeper then” you replied in a similar tone. Despite still not being able to see his face, you could tell he was smirking. He slowly push you back up to your normal position. The trick was that he didn’t move his hand. He actually tightened his grip on your shirt. That’s when it clicked for you. He wanted it just as bad as you did. 

You then placed your hand over Kang’s, rubbing deep circles just below his knuckles with your thumb. Then, he began to pull you by your shirt to the front side of the couch. You followed his hand until he stopped pulling, leaving you in the same place you were when you stitched up his shoulder. You stood there as he began to move his hand down from your sternum. The feeling of him dragging his fingers down your body at an agonizingly slow pace was enough to get your starved pussy wet. Then he got to your hips, where your loose pants rested. He then took his other hand and used both hands to drag your pants off. Once you kicked them off, he went back up to your panties, hooking his pointer finger around the sides of them and dragged those off even slower than the pants. 

He then placed his hands on your bare hips, digging his thumbs into them. A slight moan escaped your lips. In response, he placed his finger over your mouth in a shushing action. “She can’t hear you.’’ You were overcome with embarrassment at the fact you were so enveloped in the thought of having sex with Kang that you forgot that Janet was only a room away. You decided now you had to be silent, however hard that would prove to be later. He put that hand back on your hip and helped you onto his chest. You placed your hands over his shirtless shoulders, being mindful of his left one. You pressed your hands deeply into them and began to massage them. Thank god your eyes had finally adjusted to the dark, because now you could see every emotion playing across his face as you sunk your hands deeper into his shoulder muscles. You moved the massage down his arms, making your way to his biceps. They were massive and tough. All you could think about was how much you wanted them around your neck. Ironic. Once you moved on from those and finally made it to his hands, you took hold of them.

You used them to help you take off your shirt and bra. After tossing your bra to the floor, you placed his hands on your breasts and began to grope them with his hands. His eyes rolled back into his head, and as soon as you could tell he was about to moan, you smashed your lips into his to capture it. You took your hands off of his to cup his jaw to fully envelop yourself in the kiss. He kept one hand on your breast while he moved the other one down and began to run circles around your clit. You softly moaned into his mouth with each rotation he made. As each second went by, the kiss became more intense. More desperate. You had no idea how long it had been since he had touched someone like this, and you knew it had been forever since you were touched like this. You two both had some desperation to your actions. Like this would be the last time either of you would experience something like this ever again. Both of you so starved of touch. You needed this so badly, and part of you knew he needed it too.

As he began to circle your clit with more ferocity, you felt the heat in your chest growing stronger. God he had just started and you were already about to come. You didn’t to yet. If you did, that meant it would be over. Lucky for you, you felt his hand pull away from your clit. He pulled away from the kiss ass well, panting. “I need you to help me up for a second” he said. You reluctantly got up, wondering if he was just going to leave you here like this. It was just now that you realized how naked you were. Sure, he didn’t have a shirt on, but you still felt much more exposed than him for some reason. You helped him up onto his feet, also now realizing exactly how much taller he was than you. Seeing him staring down at you like that. Like you had suddenly become the most important thing in the world to him. Suddenly, he turned you around and shoved you onto the couch. You sat there as he kneeled down and began too kiss your inner thighs.

He moved those strong, dry hands of his to the top of your thighs and sprayed them out against them. He dug his fingers into them as he moved his mouth from your inner thigh to your lips. Feeling his warm breath against them in the cold room sent shivers down your spine. You grabbed the top of his head for leverage as you thrust your hips into his mouth.  “Look at you” he said in between kisses. “Being such a good girl and getting so wet for me. Seems like you completely forgot about the fact we were trying to kill each other two weeks ago.” It was strange to you a little. You had convinced yourself you wouldn’t be safe in the same house as Kang, and now here you were, completely naked on the couch with him eating you out. 

He wasn’t doing enough though. You weren’t nearly as satisfied as you were when he was circling your clit. He had yet to stick his tongue in you, all he was doing was kissing your folds. He was just teasing you again. “P-please” you said desperately. “I-I need y-you d-deeper.” He removed his mouth from your area and moved his hand to your clit again as he talked to you to keep you stimulated. “Oh thats what you want now? Am I not doing enough for you? Because I could stop if that’s what you prefer.” “N-n-no!” you nearly shouted out. “P-please, I-I j-just wanna f-feel you.” He sat there for a moment thinking, fingers still on your clit. “P-please Kang-g.” You asked again, looking deep into his eyes. “Well, since you asked so nicely. And plus, how could I say no to someone as pretty as you. Sitting there so neat and ready for me.” 

Next thing you know, he dives back in, his tongue licking all over your folds and into your pussy. Your strangled moan makes one strange noise, but he must have liked it because he moved his hands up to grab deep into your hips in response. God you could stay here for hours. Layed here sprawled out on the couch with him eating you out. You just wish you could moan and whine for you. You wanted so desperately to scream his name out into the world and let it know how much he had you under his grasp. And you knew he wanted it also. But that was part of the appeal of everything. Knowing you had to stay quite. It made it more enticing. But man you couldn’t wait until you had the cabin to yourself. When he could fuck you through your bed properly, where you could scream his name at the top of your lungs, and him with yours. For now though, you would take this. It was enough for what you needed right now.

As he moved his tongue from your folds to your swollen clit, he begins to suck on it. You felt the heat return back to your core as you itched with pleasure, a roaring tide begging to wash from your pelvis into his mouth. The heat of his breath on you, the tightening grip of his hands on your hips, his tongue fluttering over your folds and clit, the soft hums he would make after tasting you. “F-fuck K-kang. I-I-I’m gonna c-cum” you said, the words barely making it out of your mouth without being mixed with a moan. He nods slightly in approval, gliding his tongue over your folds like silk and moving on of his hands to circle your clit to help pull it out of you. Finally, you feel the wave escape your pussy. You grab a pillow near you and release all your moans and screams into as the ecstasy exits you and enters his mouth. You arch your back as he tries to swallow as much of your cum as he can. You’re blinded by the intensity of your orgasm as your thighs tense up and you can hardly move anything, except to move the noises out of your mouth.

Once you finish, Kang stays there, licking off the last of your essence off your folds and feeling your throbbing clit under his tongue. He backs away from your pussy and moves up to your mouth as he kisses you, sharing with you some of your cum. He uses your shirt to clean up his mouth and the remaining bits of cum from your folds. To your surprise though, after that, he tosses the shirt on the floor, stands up, and walks away to your room. In shock, you convince yourself he went to your room to grab you a new change of clothes. Once you hear the door close though, you snap yourself back into reality. Looking down at yourself, naked and trembling (part from the cold and part from the orgasm), embarrassment floods your body. You couldn’t believe how easy you gave yourself up for him. God you knew you were desperate, but you didn’t know you were that desperate. And there he was in the other room, sleeping in your bed. Leaving you there on the couch, laying out naked, waiting for someone to take you away like some fantasy. But there you were. Alone. And really fucking cold.

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NEXT PART

A/N: yeaaaaaaaah, i needed drama so i did that. sucks but i didnt have any other ideas sorry lol. hope you liked the chapter though! this was actually my first time writing smut so i hope i didnt do that bad. looking forward to chapter 4!!! also sorry i didnt really proofread this one either cause it was super late when i posted it so sorry

[alloutofgoddesses]

PJO TV Thoughts

S1,E6

(There will be book mentions/spoilers)

Can’t lie to y’all im on my second week of this semester and already just so eepy

Okay the first line does tell you exactly what’s happening in this dream but I was so confused by it being Percy’s headmaster from Yancy

Anyway omg I swear you can see Luke in the reflection like it’s gonna be so obvious it’s not Clarisse on rewatches

WE GOT “Little Hero”

Cracker Barrel! What o would give to eat at a Restaurant rn

A SECOND SEAWEED BRAIN HAS HIT THE PERCABETH TOWERS

(I am aware others have made that joke)

Omg hi Luke

Good not being sus Luke

ARREST HER?!?! Percy wtf

Luke I’m positive you would know what Ares is like

OOP if Luke picks up on it IMMEDIATELY…

The episode is titled “A Zebra Takes Us To Vegas” AND WE INLY GET A SECOND OF A ZEBRA ON SCREEN?!?!

Anybody else see the Geia fashion billboard or just me

Way to be obvious about it

“I had a premonition that we fell into a rhythm/where the music don’t stop for life” I think that Levitating was chosen WITH INTENTION for these lyrics only

ODYSSEY MENTION

Graphic novels do count

ODYSSEUS MENTION

Oh besties… the lotus eaters have upgraded darlings

WISE GIRL WISE GIRL WEE WOO WEE WOO IT’S HAPPENING EVERYONE STAY CALM

The fact that they haven’t shown Grover eating garbage yet… cowards. COWARDS.

I do think that them knowing takes tension out of it but they think that it’s okay unless they eat something

CASTELLAN LORE ALREADY

A Saytr?? I’m saying that TV screen image is a sun so APOLLO MENTION

A gay satyr?!!! The subtext

Oh? I’m compelled certainly what kind of magic does the Lotus have to convince satyrs Pan is there

DREAM TALK

Like you can see extras wearing dated clothes but it’s just not the same

Also I’m waiting for others to find the di Angelos, I know I’m not gonna be able to find anything

(If they cut it out I will lose it)

Are the employees also under the spell? I would have to assume so

Uh oh Grover is forgetting

HE’S HERE

The way his face fell… I’m afraid LMM is eating as Hermes

BTW I saw someone say LMM was a bad choice as Hermes because canonically Hermes has the most children and they don’t think LMM is sexy enough for that… girlie do you not remember what happened when Hamilton came out be SO FOR REAL

At first I thought I wouldn’t be able to seperate actor from character but he’s doing such a good job that’s Hermes I’m sorry (no I’m not)

ORPHEUS MENTION (I’ve helped others [get into the Underworld] before)

Are the fields Italy? Once again folks I’m not gonna be able to find it so I’m reaching out to

Someone looks back I’m guessing

Oh babey the lore the tension

HEY WHAT WAS THAT

My guess is something to do with Gabe or as one brilliant Twitter user said, Percy’s first time at boarding school

YEAH ANNABETH MOVE BABY YOU DON’T DESERVE THAT

(Also how the fuck can Hermes do that)

Sure buddy see you next season

“This was all just a waste of time. We don’t have time to waste.” Oh Annabeth I’m so sorry for what you’re about to learn

I love all the helmets and stuff really lets you know what’s going on

Oh noooooo oh boy oh buddy oh wow that hurt

Sorry he’s making Hermes feel so empathetic which is exactly how he is in the books. He’s good!

OOP

Were those the di Angelos? They were brunette and small (still reaching)

Oh so that’s why they mentioned days earlier I see

HIS KEYS?

Are George and Martha on there are they wondering what’s happening

CENTRAL AIR BABEY

Oh no Percy’s forgetting too

Just rip him out and leave besties

Oh geez they’re never leaving at this rate

Damn there’s that fatal flaw again Percy

RIP Grover playing a human hunter game I will never forget you

Annabeth it was good it really was but you’re right. He is the god of thieves.

Oh boy now we know why they let him drive though

Me when I first started learning how to drive standard

Just in case you forgot Percy is a New Yorker

Oh NO bestie got distracted looking at the princess (his words not mine though I agree) next to him

NO DON’T TURN OFF THE LIGHT I WON’T BE ABLE TO SEE ANYTHING

What did I just say. What is happening on screen

Oh boyyyyyy

He’s just three apples tall

Oh it’s so much worse underwater

SEAWEED HAIR

Wait… were AFTER the summer solstice? WHY

Exactly Percy you gotta finish it

YEEAHHHHHHH

Four?!?! What about ‘you will fail to save what matters most in the end?’ He better lose one I stg

Next ep trailer

Okay so who’s eye is in the credits what do we think

Crusty’s!

Desert and terrible forest?

Okay yeah he definitely loses one or uses one to trick someone or something he said said “you guys leave with my mom”

Oh wait what if he uses it on Crusty… Disney let Percy actually be violent

SWORD FIGHT NEXT EP? At least the beginning

HOLD FAST MOM OHHHHHHHHH OUCH

BONUS: Hermes in cat form

[emeraldiis]

Cross Country Love Affair // South Dakota (9)

A/N: ive returned from the dead like jesus to finish this fic. im so sorry for the year long hiatus i hope yall still gof about this fic omg

CCLA Masterlist

AO3 Link

Word Count: 2.1k

Summary:  Bucky makes your blood boil like no other man can. In a twisted turn of events, the two of you are stuck on a road trip from hell. This fic follows Bucky and the reader from Florida all the way to Washington state. Nothing like being trapped in a car for fifty hours to break the ice. Distance makes the heart grow fonder. Or something like that.

Warnings:  canon typical violence, enemies to lovers, eventual smut

If you weren’t so rattled from the late night ambush, you would’ve laughed at Bucky’s baffled look as you hot wired the first car you saw in the parking lot. Well, not exactly a car. It was another van, but this one had less “mom” vibes and more…high school dropout. Pastel pink flowers were painted along the sides, along with a few psychedelic swirls. Not exactly great for looking inconspicuous, but it had other benefits. 

“Less likely to call the cops,” you’d explained, tongue poking out as you touched the wires together carefully. “A van like this definitely belongs to some stoner, no way he’s gonna want the police involved. He’ll probably just cut his losses.”

Bucky nodded in disbelief, throwing the bags into the bag and hopping into the passenger seat. He scrunched just face up in distaste. “It reeks in here.”

You snickered as the van roared to life and got yourself settled in the seat. “Judging from the little love nest in the back,” you said, eyeing the pile of blankets and string of fairy lights adorning the walls. “I’d say it’s a mix of drugs, sex, and rock and roll.” As you threw the car into drive and high tailed it out of the parking lot, you instructed Bucky to look for another AUX cord in the center console.

He grunted in response and stuck his hand in, then immediately yanked it back out and gagged. “Oh, god. I just touched something wet. What the fuck.”

A peal of laughter bubbled up from your throat. You were still riding high on the adrenaline of the fight, and you felt a little crazed, a little manic. “Don’t be a baby.” As much as you wanted to bicker, to mess around a bit as you pulled onto the highway, there was still a pressing issue at hand. “How the fuck did they find us?” 

With a ragged sigh, Bucky wiped his hand on his pants and slumped down into his seat. “No clue. I’m gonna call Sam, see what the hell that was.” He pulled his phone out and quickly typed Sam’s number.

“Let me talk to him,” you said, holding your hand out for the phone. Bucky grunted and ignored you, and you huffed out a breath of frustration.

The rumble of the tires on the highway did little to soothe you, especially as you heard the voice of Sam over Bucky’s phone. Nerves alight with the lingering panic, you reached over and snatched the phone from Bucky’s hand before he could protest.

“We almost died!” You yelled into the speaker as Bucky gave you an exasperated look. “What the fuck, Sam?”

Sam scoffed and your blood boiled, but you settled for quietly seething as you waited to hear what he had to say. “Don’t you ‘what the fuck,’ me, I should be saying the same thing to you.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Oh, it’s just, I saw a very interesting video on youtube the other day. Wanna tell me about that?”

Your face paled. He didn’t have to explain, you already knew what he was talking about. The bar. If your memory served you correctly, not just one, but several people had filmed Bucky’s altercation with the drunk asshole. Shit. 

“Don’t worry,” Sam said when he heard your frustrated groan. “We scrubbed it from the web as soon as we saw it, but it looks like Hydra caught wind of it before we did. You gotta let us know when shit like this happens, dude.” 

You dragged a hand down your face. “Fuck, they’ve probably been following us since Tennessee. It was only a matter of time before they caught up.” Truth be told, you weren’t really sure why you hadn’t notified the team of the potential video. Your mind had been on Bucky, on how irritated you were with him. It pained you to admit it, but he was more of a distraction than you’d thought. Fuck him and those pretty blue eyes and his thin waist, this was his fault.

“Yep, so now you two are on double time. No more hotels, no more bars, and tell your boyfriend not to assault civilians anymore.”

“He’s not my boyfriend,” you hissed. Even so, he had certainly acted like your boyfriend at the bar. You’d never seen him so angry at anyone except you. He had almost looked…possessive. Feeling rattled, you went on the defensive. “I don’t date annoying assholes.” Bucky shot you a look, then rolled his eyes.

“Give me the phone back,” he grunted, already reaching for it.

“No way, I’m still talking to Sam.” You leaned away and held the phone out of reach, pulling the wheel slightly. The van jerked, and you cursed, correcting course. Bucky used your brief distraction to easily pluck the phone from your hand.

You grit your teeth, but kept your eyes on the road as Bucky mumbled a few hushed words to Sam, before hanging up. You wanted to say something, to scream at him for nearly getting the two of you killed, but you held your tongue. No use dragging up past arguments. However, speaking of old arguments…

“Can we talk about the other day?” You wanted to cringe as you spoke, dreading the conversation already. But it needed to happen, you had to know if he felt any guilt at all. If he cared that he’d legitimately humiliated you.

“Which part?” Bucky looked out the window, mouth set in a thin line. If anything, he looked almost ashamed, hands balled into fists on his lap.

You took a deep breath before continuing. “Look, I know you apologized, but,” you chewed on your lip anxiously. Fuck, things had been so much easier when the only tension between the two of you was the bickering. “That can’t happen again, Buck. It was pretty fucked up. I mean, sure, I pushed you too far. But pinning me against the van? That was way too far.”

He grunted and hung his head, and for a moment he looked small, like a child being chewed out by a parent. “I know. I really am sorry, I just sort of,” he trailed off, sighing and turning those big blue eyes on you. If you hadn’t been so strung out, you would’ve melted at the soft expression. “I got carried away, you didn’t deserve that.” He spoke softly, still avoiding your eyes.

He sounded genuine. You hummed and nodded, your stomach twisting as you watched the trees whiz by the highway. The South Dakota state line came into view, and you took it as an opportunity to change the subject. “Have you ever been?” You pointed at the sign. As angry as you were, it was hard to stay mad at him when he still held that kicked puppy demeanor.

Bucky relaxed slightly, his shoulders falling as he saw the tension fading from your face. “Yeah, a few times.” 

“You’ve been everywhere, I’m jealous.” Since you were a child, you’d dreamed of seeing the world. You’d fantasized about hiking through Yellowstone, maybe even seeing the Grand Canyon one day. None of your fantasies had ever gone like this, though. 

With a small shrug, he scoffed. “It isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. Most of the places I’ve been to were when I, when Hydra,” he cut himself off with a ragged sigh. “I haven’t really traveled anywhere just to travel. It’s always for work.”

You understood. He didn’t have to say it, you knew the awful things he’d been through. And you weren’t going to push the subject. Things were tense enough as they were.

The silence stretched on and on as you drove, Bucky still looking out the window. He seemed far more tired than you’d ever seen him, and it tugged at something in your heart. A pit formed in your stomach as you realized that you missed his smile, his teasing smirk when he said something to rile you up. He hid it well, but you had an inkling that he actually enjoyed the banter. You did, too. 

Hesitantly, you spoke up. “Don’t look so sullen over there, I’m starting to think you don’t enjoy my company.”

Bucky side-eyed you, expression guarded. When he detected no malice in your tone, he shook his head. “Sorry.”

You frowned. It wasn’t the response you were hoping for. But it was an exact mirror of the way you’d been acting earlier. An almost hysteric giggle burst forth from you as you realized that less than twenty four hours ago, he’d been the one trying and failing at making conversation, and now the situation was reversed. The two of you were ridiculous.

“What’s so funny?”

Still chuckling to yourself, you tapped the wheel restlessly. “It’s like we’re taking turns being grumpy.” When he furrowed his brows in confusion, you elaborated. “Yesterday was my turn to act all upset and dramatic, now it’s yours.”

To your delight, he broke out into a small smile, huffing slightly. “Yeah, I guess you’re right.” He peered at the rear view mirror, taking in the rising sun at your backs. “What a shitty way to start the day.”

You couldn’t help it. Laughter poured from you, tears springing to your eyes as you struggled to catch your breath. “T-this fucking sucks, doesn’t it?” More giggles.

The mood in the van brightened considerably as Bucky matched your laughter, nearly doubling over to grab at his sides “It-it really does.” The laughter from the both of you was exactly what you needed to break the tension, to set things right. Or, as right as they could be.

You gasped for breath, wiping at your eyes. “I have a proposition for you.”

“Oh, boy,” Bucky replied, eyebrows raising.

“When we get back, let’s call a truce.” You pressed your lips together, forcing down a smile at what you had in mind.

“Okay…?” He continued to stare at you, almost as if he was trying to read your mind. You honestly wouldn’t be surprised if he could.

“Yep,” you nodded. “At least for a little bit. I think we need to team up to torture Sam for sending us on this wild goose chase.”

At that, Bucky grinned. “Absolutely, he has it coming.” Technically, he didn’t. It wasn’t entirely his fault, but you couldn’t deny that the thought of messing with him motivated you to keep going, no matter how sick of this mission you were. “Salt in his coffee?”

You shook your head. “We gotta think bigger than that. Cling wrap over the toilet seat?”

“Itching powder in his boxers?”

“Air horns under his pillows.”

Nearly wheezing at the image of Sam jerking out of bed, scared shitless by some loud noise, Bucky hid his face in his hands. His shoulders shook with laughter. “You’re evil, I fucking love you.”

You froze, eyes going wide. Despite yourself, your heart began to race and your hands grew clammy on the wheel. You’d had a growing suspicion for a few days now that Bucky didn’t actually hate you, but love? That was way outside of anything you’d expected. You laughed nervously, trying to play it off. “Of course you do, everyone loves me.” 

A quick glance at Bucky told you that he had definitely not meant to say that. He was staring at you, cheeks blazing and lip caught between his teeth. It was a good look on him, and you had to look away before your gaze turned into something more lecherous. 

Bucky opened his mouth to say something, maybe back track, but you shushed him. “Nope, don’t ruin it. You love me because I’m the coolest Avenger, no take backs.” Your voice felt a bit shaky, but you tried not to take it too seriously. It wasn’t a big deal, it probably didn’t even mean much. But it still made you giddy from excitement. And that was a whole can of worms that you didn’t want to open. You and Bucky were rivals, you shouldn’t have been feeling all fluttery from his admission. But you were and it confused the hell out of you.

Rubbing the back of his neck, Bucky’s tense expression eased when he realized you weren’t going to mock him. “Don’t flatter yourself, I’m still cooler than you.” He flexed his metal arm, an obvious attempt at one upping you.

You scoffed “Yeah, yeah. You’ll be cooler than me when you take down a Hydra agent in your underwear.”

You barely heard him as he shot back some remark about you not ever letting that go, too lost in your own mind. Why the hell were you floating on air right now? You didn’t actually want him to love you, right? Your heart skipped several beats as you let yourself mull the idea over. 

Fuck.

[acaciapines]

20 Questions for Fic Writers

i was tagged by @snarky-wallflower and i love talking, lets go!

1. How many works do you have on AO3?

70 total, but 5 of those are chara's! so under my name its 65.

2. What’s your total word count?

1,427,738.....

cannot wait to break 2 million w the owl house daemon au. lets go!! never stop!!!

3. What fandoms do you write for?

whatever i'm into, but for fandoms i see myself continuing to write for in the near-ish future: deltarune and the owl house!

4. Top 5 fics by kudos

you're something special: my first kris-identity fic! i have mixed feelings on this one lol. you can tell its the first i wrote and i hadnt yet solidified my version of kris, tho i think this one probably fits better with canon. overall i like it though!

but then a bigger heart grew back: ooooooh i REALLY love this one. its postcanon owl house fic centering on hunter's grief over flapjack's death and his friendship with waffles!!! i wrote and posted it the DAY after the finale came out which is still really wild to me. its also the only fic ive seen that uses my favorite headcanon of 'hunter didnt carve waffles, she found him' which im so so fond of.

i hope your organs fail you (before i do): this was the first deltarune fic i wrote after chapter 2 came out!! the beginning of my deltarune spiral....its sort of a messy non-chronological look at deltarune's various routes and how kris might experiencing the game's multiple save files. also it has such a banger title. salt lake city by motherfolk is just banger after banger lyrics-wise

non-imaginary friends: god i hate that this is up here dkgjdfg i wrote it back when deltarune first came out and it SHOWS. i refuse to reread it but i think it's kris trying and failing to introduce the dark worlds to asriel. c'mon guys ive written so many better deltarune fics. blease. let this one rest in the past <3

we don't belong (but we're together): oooh, a warrior cats one! im....i mean, this one is like, fine, i guess. it follows hollyleaf and jayfeather in an au where the two of them flee through the tunnels. it has fun lore and i do like my oc pine but. man. its also the fic where i gave hollyleaf a power and if theres one thing i would change about my warriors au its that holly would NOT get a power. this is why i pre-write all my fics before posting now!

5. Do you respond to comments?

yes!! or at least i try my best to. i love and appreciate all my comments sometimes im just Bad at responding to them....i never know what to say beyond 'wow thank you' so sometimes i try to focus more on comments where i can actually say something of substance, yknow?

6. What’s the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending?

oh thats hard hmmmmmmm. i think i'd have to say it's and i want to tell you something-- which is a fic about kris & ralsei & the player/soul, where susie and noelle try to save kris from the soul, but both kris and ralsei know they cant survive without it. so in the end kris shatters the soul and is implied to die rather than keep being trapped.

its!!! certainly a time!

7. What’s the fic you wrote with the happiest ending?

hmmmm. i think most of my ending are pretty bittersweet so in terms of pure happy ending...gonna go for a deep cut here and say its my naddpod fic +1 dad in which moonshine meets lucanus when shes a kid and they hit it off and they get to have that father-daughter relationship from the start. bc lucanus is the BEST naddpod npc and oh my god he loves his daughter so so much you guys--

8. Do you get hate on fics?

i have a few times but its never been like, super major. the funniest time is. i deleted the comment so i dont have the exact wording but im pretty sure someone called me a fandom-deserting cur for. not writing more warrior cat fanfiction?

like what were they expecting. truly.

9. Do you write smut?

no im very aroace lol. i barely write romance.

10. Do you write crossovers?

i used to!!! i did the adventure zone crossed with both how to train your dragon and pokemon mystery dungeon: explorers of sky. i was a different person back then. i dont think i'd do it now, but. who knows.

11. Have you ever had a fic stolen?

not to my knowledge!

12. Have you ever had a fic translated?

no, but i HAVE had a fic pod-ficced which is still so amazing. like......woag. someone liked my fic enough to read the words out loud?????? huh????

13. Have you ever co-written a fic before?

not exactly co-written but both sometimes i think i left you just to see if i'd be missed and a buy one, get one free sort of friend were inspired by conversations i had with my friend @hyperfixations-go-brr! they would not have existed without those long discord chats. halloween festival will live on forever. synth my love.

14. What’s your all-time favorite ship?

im not super into ships beyond like. basic 'oh thats fun' when reading but i WILL actually give the two im the most excited to write in my dess raises kris au someday:

noelle/susie/ralsei: YOU HAVE TO TRUST ME. like. this is an au where noelle basically replaces kris in the fun gang but not in the prophecy and dkjgdfg its about. this budding relationship. and ralsei clinging to the prophecy that doesnt want noelle here and susie who bucks against anything that acts like it knows what shes supposed to do and noelle struggling with the return of her sister and a world that wants to write her out of the story and all of them wanting to be there for their friends but ralsei is dealing with so so much and in the end she gets to throw off her chains and be free <3 noelle/susie/ralsei is so real in my heart.

dess/chara: literally the funniest queerplatonic relationship ever. theyre reluctant coparents. dess trusts chara with kris's life. chara would never ever let dess watch either frisk OR kris unsupervised. chara is 'i can fix you' to dess's 'im literally the most perfect wife in the world.' dess doesn't believe romantic love is a real thing people feel. chara puts xir kids above everything else. dess never asked to be a mother even though she literally kidnapped her best friends baby sibling. they get married for the tax benefits. they should absolutely get a divorce.

15. What’s a WIP you want to finish but doubt you will?

oh god theres so many i would love to finish but its been so long i doubt i'll go back to them lol. the sequel to +1 dad that involves baby moonshine going to gladeholm. wall-e daemon au. gravity falls transcedence au daemon au. percy jackson daemon au. deltarune daemon au fangame.

as you can see its mostly various daemon aus. they were fun while they lasted! but ive moved on </3

16. What are your writing strengths?

pov you are me suddenly forgetting every single thing i have ever written.

i think im very good at writing otherkin or otherwise nonhuman characters. the comments that always bring me the most joy are those on my otherkin fics, by people who were able to see themselves in what i wrote--i think this is a thing that took me a lot of failed attempts to get just right and im really really proud of what i have.

im very good at writing daemon aus <3 there is sort of. an art to figuring out if one a work even needs daemons and two how daemons enhance or add to some aspect of the original work. theres a lot of things i like that i dont think really work with daemons but i always really enjoy figuring out how to add daemons and how to make my daemons like, characters in their own right, you know?

i like to think im good at dialogue and characterization! theres a few characters--kris and the collector, firefly to an extent--that im really proud of the voices i've made for them.

17. What are your writing weaknesses?

fight scenes. fight scenes. oh my god i hate them so much they are SO HARD. stop making me put!! visual things!! in my text based medium!!!

really any scene that relies on having a strong idea of like, physical descriptions and sense of a place--i have aphantasia so having to describe scenery and landscape and just, anything really is always a struggle for me.

i also struggle with pacing, to an extent, especially across longer works (im looking at you, owl house daemon au)--knowing how long a plot arc needs to last and how to make it interesting still even when its going to be around for 600k+ words is a challenge and if the owl house daemon au was my first massive fic undertaking i dont think i'd be able to do it.

18. Thoughts on writing dialogue in another language?

god im so bad at it but i really really am trying to be better--one big thing im going to focus on in my owl house daemon au edit is based on this because i want luz's identity to stick with her throughout the fic rather than it taking a backseat, but i am not a spanish speaker!! i know like, a LITTLE, but nowhere near enough to feel confident writing it.

so. its a time!

19. First fandom you wrote for?

warrior cats. and beyond just 'oh its the first fandom i posted fic for' no i was writing warrior cat fanfiction from the START. i was out there on the playground coming up with warrior cat ocs. i was printing this stuff out in the school library. i would hand-write fanfiction about my childhood cats becoming warrior cats and starting their own clan. i would roleplay warrior cats on my bedroom floor with pictures of cats i cut out of printer paper and bits of plastic folders i folded into triangles and write down the stories i came up with.

i was the most warrior cat kid to warrior cat kid. I Have Always Been This Way.

20. Favorite fic you’ve ever written?

ohhhhhh this is SUCH a tough question i have so many im so fond of, but i think i'm going to have to go with alterhuman. it's an animorphs fic about tobias post-canon and its an exploration of species identity and being a hawk and as a red-tailed hawk myself, a lot of it is deeply personal, a lot of it is my love letter to animorphs, and a lot of it is neffit, who is the best oc i have ever created, hands down.

as for tags, uh....anybody who wants to talk about their fics! even if we dont know each other!! go forth! ramble on about your own stuff for an hour!! truly so so fun.

also @wynterwulf7 and @mackerelgray and @hyperfixations-go-brr. obviously. <3 even if its about fic that isnt on ao3.