#the weird little crab that walks sideways

[piratefishmama]

ALL HAIL THE CRAB LORDS

🦀🦀🦀

thank you so much whoever you are dhfbajhsgdvfghasvdf i love it

[eteru-roses]

Incorrect quotes!!

idea courtesy of @nrcbookclub

ocs featured: @castaway-achlys @rubysandviper @inotonline @the-possum-of-rsa

Incorrect quotes

1.Rida: What are you drinking? 

Atamai: Vodka. 

Rida: Straight? 

Atamai: No, gay. Why?

❀

2. Rida: A mosquito tried to bite me and I slapped it and killed it. 

Rida: And I started thinking. 

Rida: Like, it was just trying to get food. 

Rida: What if I went to the fridge and it just slammed the door shut and snapped my neck? 

Atamai: Are you ok?

❀

3.Castor: The stars are so beautiful... 

Atamai : They're just giant balls of gas. 

Castor: You know what, if you're just going to ruin this, then- 

Atamai : And yet none of them are as huge as my love for you. 

Castor: Oh...

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4.Castor: I fell— 

Atamai : From heaven? 

Castor: No, I literally fell— 

Atamai : In love with me the moment you saw me? 

Castor: MY ARM IS BROKEN! 

Atamai : Okay, but do you think I'm pretty? Be honest.

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5.Atamai : I’d kill someone if you asked me to. 

Castor: I’m pretty sure you’d kill someone even if I didn’t ask you to.

❀

6.Atamai : I want to kiss you. 

Castor, not paying attention: What? 

Atamai : I said if you die, I wont miss you.

❀

7.Castor: Look, I know we don’t always see eye to eye but— 

Atamai : Thats because your too short to do so. 

Castor: ...Listen here you fucking—

❀

8.Castor: You use humor to deflect your trauma. 

Atamai : Awww, thanks- 

Castor: That’s not a good thing. 

Atamai : All I’m hearing is that you think I’m funny.

❀

9'.Atamai , holding a box of Lunchables: Ah, I loved these when I was your age… fine dining. 

Rida : Fix yourself.

❀

10.Atamai : Do crabs think people walk sideways? 

Rida : ...Atamai , what the hell.

❀

11.Rida : I'm gonna nickname my child "Lil Bitch". 

Atamai : I see you're passing on your name.

❀

12.Rida: You call it "really bad at darts", I call it "freestyle acupuncture." 

Bartender: ...I'm going to have to ask you to leave the bar.

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13.Atamai : Wow, they really hate us. 

Castor: Yes, perhaps they’re homophobic. 

Atamai : But we’re not gay, Castor. 

Castor: 

Atamai : 

Castor: We’re not?

❀

14.Rida: You've been given a new job to do, but I'm worried it might make you angry. 

Atamai :  Just say it quick, like ripping off a band-aid. 

Rida: You have to teach Ck how to drive. 

Atamai : ...put the band-aid back on.

❀

15.Ck: I think we should have glow stick juice injected in our bones when we're born, so if we break our bones, we get a fun little surprise. 

Atamai : What's the surprise? 

Rida: Blood poisoning.

❀

16.Store Worker: Would a “Atamai ” please come to the front desk? 

Atamai , arriving at the desk: Hello, is there a problem? 

Store Worker, pointing to Rida and Ck: I believe they belong to you? 

Rida and Ck, simultaneously: We got lost. 

Atamai : I didn’t even bring you guys here with me—

❀

17.castor walking into the kitchen and seeing all their limes peeled: atamai , I love you but, what the h-e-double FUCK. 

atamai , sipping coffee happily: I love you too :)

❀

18.Jamil: I want to be like a caterpillar. 

Chiyo: Explain. 

Jamil: Eat a lot, sleep for a while, wake up beautiful. 

C.K.: You know they have a lifespan of a week, right? 

Jamil: 

Jamil: That's just another highlight!

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19.C.K.: *very seriously* You need to stop doing weird things to cope with the stress. Going outside might help. 

Atamai : I went to the park today. 

C.K.: There you go! I hope you got something from that. 

Atamai : *opening their coat* This duck.

❀

20.Jamil: The path to inner peace begins with four words… not my fucking problem.

❀

21.Jamil: Thought I was meowing back at my cat for the past hour, but it was just me and Chiyo meowing at each other from different rooms in the house.

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22.Jamil: Why is there blood everywhere? 

Rida: I may have aggressively poked someone with a knife. 

Jamil: You stabbed someone?! 

Rida: No, no. I aggressively poked someone with a knife.

❀

23.Rida: Want to hear a hard riddle? 

C.K.: Sure. 

Rida: A rooster laid an egg on a roof. Which way did it roll? 

C.K.: ...down? 

Rida: N- 

Jamil: Who cares about which way it rolled, it would be scrambled eggs by then. 

Rida: 

Rida: No, it's that roosters don't lay eggs... Jesus Christ...

❀

24.Chiyo: How do you know how to kiss? Like who teaches you? 

Jamil: Well it’s actually a class, but unfortunately it’s full right now. 

Jamil: Would you like me to tutor you? 

Rida: That was smooth.

❀

25.Chiyo: Hey, Rida? 

Rida, playing a video game with the squad: What? 

Chiyo: Can I share something with you from earlier today? 

Rida: Wh- what is it, Chiyo? 

Chiyo: Well, I sent you a text early in the morning. 

Rida: Mhm. 

Chiyo: Because I have to go out of town for a weekend this month. And, so I was like- I won't give specific dates, but I was like, do you have any preference whether I go this weekend or the next weekend? 

Rida: Yeah? 

Chiyo: Your response. 

Rida: *trying not to crack up* 

Chiyo: At 9:30 in the morning. 

Chiyo: "motherfucking Jesse Eisenberg jesus Christ motherfucking Facebook movie jesus can you believe this shit" 

Rida: *laughing* 

Chiyo: No- no- no punctuation. Random capitalization. 

Rida: You just made me dieeee... 

Chiyo: So I respond, "I have no idea what we're talking about right now." 

Chiyo: 45 minutes pass. I get a text from you. 

Chiyo: "goddamn created Facebook and fucking lawyers and shit right fucking winklevoss twins goddamn rowing the boat fuck yo shit i cant even fucking believe this shit have you seen this shit fuck I just watched this shit fuck Jesse eisenberg man" 

Rida: *wheezing with laughter* 

Chiyo: I respond "Rida, you're scaring me." An hour passes- 

Chiyo: You respond, "motherfucking spiderman Spiderman you put in the time fuck put in the time motherfucking built shit with his bare hands fucking best friend shit jesse eisenberg" 

Chiyo: "im very tired" 

Rida: *struggling to breathe* 

Chiyo: And- and I'm just like, "No- no worries, Rida, I'll- I'll do most of the talking at the hangout today-" 

Chiyo: IMMEDIATE, like, response, like I'm talking 5 seconds later, 

Chiyo: "no man ill just talk all day shit man you have to be so interested in the shit I have to say about the Facebook movie fuck dude I just watched it a year and a half ago fuck Jesse Eisenberg man he fucked over Spider-man crazy Winklevoss twins rowing Trent Resin or did the soundtrack fuck this guy who invented Facebook I don't like dying I can't think of who the fuck invented Facebook All I can think is who played the guy who invented Facebook who the fuck invented Facebook" 

Chiyo: And then, in all capital letters, two hours later, 

Rida: *falling over with laughter* 

Chiyo: "MARK ZUCKERBERG."

❀

26.Atamai : Time sensitive question how flirt boy. 

Jamil: Throw rocks at he. 

Rida: Hot Dogs. 

Chiyo: Kill him. 

Atamai : Thanks guys.

(^when he was trying to confess to castor)

❀

27.Atamai : When you work at lush and a customer comes in and bites the soap because they think it’s cheese... this happens way more frequently than you think. 

Jamil: If you stopped literally presenting soap as deli food this wouldn't happen. 

Atamai : Who goes into a bath store and thinks something covered in glitter is cheese? 

Chiyo: Who goes to the store and just takes a bite from the cheese?

❀

Have fun giggling. i numbered them so you can talk about which are the funniest :3

rida is very chaotic and in fact has criminal records(arson)

[brutal-nemesis]

Arthropod Day 2021: 🦀Time For Crab 🦀

Malacostraca Moment 😳🦀

So fun story I wanted this to be on a Saturday because SIDEWAYS SATURDAY but when I was deciding on the date I looked at the calendar for July without realizing it. Happy Sideways Stuesday I guess? 

Castys Masterlist

Ingredients: drowning mention, animal attack (kinda chill tho it’s not really violent), dehydration, autocannibalism mention, parasitic insects, partial nudity, heckin surgery (but it’s CONSENSUAL (⊙ˍ⊙) who am I), suicide for convenience (immortal)

“This looks like a lovely spot for a vacation; thank you guys so much for finding it for me.” The small dingy had just landed on a sandy beach enclosed by dark rocks on either side, a lush forest leading deeper into the island. Casyts’s captor glared at him before harshly tugging the rope tied to his wrists, trying to get him to stand and step onto the beach with her.

“Shut your trap, Ragnarok, or I might change my mind about gagging you. Now get up or I’ll have my men drag you.” 

Castys sighed and rolled his eyes, getting up and following her so his rope burn didn’t get any worse. “Aye aye, Yvonne.” 

“That’s Captain Veldna to you,” she growled, jerking him forward. He stumbled a bit, but he was able to catch himself before he got sand up his nose. He debated trying to yank the rope out of her hands and running away or stealing the boat, but her very strong men were right behind him and that would probably just end in him having extra bruises. So he just followed her like a stupid little goat as she led him towards the rocks, hoping she wouldn’t leave him tied up so he could at least enjoy his time being stranded. But no, this was about sending a message to his crew or making him suffer or something. He didn’t really remember, he’d been dazed as hell when he’d initially gotten captured during a fight between their two ships. Blood loss was a bitch sometimes.

They forced him to sit with his back against a large rock, yanking his bound hands above his head and worming a large nail through the knotted rope before hammering it into the rock. “Not gonna lie, this seems a little extra. I’m not going to go anywhere, so, like, just let me-” Yvonne slapped him harshly across the face.

“You’re not here to have fun, you annoying little parrot.” She looked over at her men, who had just finished tying his ankles together and nailing them down in a similar fashion to his wrists. “If you lot are done, let’s leave.” She turned back to Castys, a wicked grin on her face. “I wonder how many times you’ll die before your crew finds you?”

“My money’s on eight. Do you want me to keep track and tell you next time we see each other? If only I could write in a diary what horrors I suffer sitting on this warm rock that you tied me to during high tide so I won’t even drown later. Now that-agh!” Yvonne stabbed him in the stomach, and Castys bit back a scream as she twisted her blade. 

“The sound of your silence is something I could get used to.”

“Well, the real question is, is silence actually a sound-” Castys’s very valid observation was cut off by the bitch yanking out her sword and promptly kicking him in the stomach. He couldn’t help but cry out, doubling over as far as he could. Yeah, yeah he should probably just shut the fuck up and let them get on their merry way before he got more unnecessary injuries. 

“Enjoy your vacation, Ragnarok,” Yvonne spat. As one last gesture of maturity, she kicked sand at him before walking off, and some of it definitely got in his stab hole, so that was nice. He watched them row away, sighing. Now it was just boredom city, but hey, at least he had a nice beach view. The sun was a few hours away from setting, not that it mattered that much since his skin was dark enough that he probably wasn’t going to get sunburned. 

Being tied to a rock on the beach was...just about as boring as he expected. His arms got all tingly after a while from being stuck above his head, so he couldn’t even properly relax, and a man could only watch little waves roll for so long. He had a nice view of the setting sun, and hey, that means the light of dawn wouldn’t be shining in his face. While the sun was still a little ways above the horizon, he heard an odd rustling noise over in the vegetation, different from the background sounds he had gotten used to. He looked over, hoping it was a friendly man with a knife.

It was not a friendly man with a knife. But it wasn’t something bad, either. “Oh shit hello crabs!” Castys watched as they scuttled out of the treeline onto the beach, glad to have something fun to watch. One of them was slowly making its way towards him, and Castys wondered if he would be able to convince it to snip his bindings. “Hey there mister crab man, come on down, and please for the love of god untie me.” Yes, yes he was talking to a crab, because why not go full send on the insanity right away? It would be so much more fun, and it’s not like anyone else was here to judge him. “Yeah crab get in my zone-wow you’re kinda big.” He’d thought the crab was closer to him, but nope, it had been farther away but giant. Not like giant giant but not, like, normal crab size. It was almost as big as his torso maybe, but he was never great at estimating the relative sizes of things. 

“You’re large but you’re a gentleman, ain’t ya? I don’t know why, but you just seem like a polite fellow.” The crab stopped not too far from Castys and just looked at him blankly. Or maybe it was making a face at him, but he couldn’t read crab body language. Could anyone read crab body language? Crabs, he would hope. “Could you bring me some tea, good sir? Or just...water. Water that’s not salty. I don’t actually like tea it literally tastes like nothing but you know what I would drink it now because I am thirsty.” There was a moment of silence. “Not like thirsty in the weird way some people are. I have no idea what that’s about. But like, I want water. Or...oh my god, Mr. Crab, bring me a coconut!” Castys closed his eyes and leaned his head back. “Yeah… that would be nice. Food and water and it’s prepackaged and I don’t know how I would eat it because my hands are tied but I’ll figure it out.”

A sudden sharp pinch against his wound jolted Castys out of his daydream. He looked down in horror to see that the crab was holding something in its claws. Something pinkish-red that was dripping blood down onto the sand. The bastard. The crab brought the piece of his flesh to its mouth and just ate it while staring right at Castys. “That,” he blinked in surprise a few times, “was incredibly rude.” The crab stayed still, watching him as it did its weird mouth movements that were maybe chewing. “You are absolutely not a gentleman. I rescind everything. You little garbage boy. Rapscallion. I bet you never get invited to the crab raves.”

And the crab. Had the audacity. To reach out its stupid pincher. And do it again. “Little bitch!” Castys yelled, squirming against the ropes in an attempt to scare the thing off. Shockingly, it did not work, because wounded, dying prey squirmed all the time, and...that’s pretty much what Castys was in this scenario, wasn’t he? He was just stuck sitting here while that stupid crab ripped off little pieces of him with its stupid crab pincher and put them in its stupid crab mouth. If he was lucky, this would make him bleed out and die faster and then he wouldn’t have an open wound anymore, which would be a bonus. Though, it had sand in it, and then if it healed…

A problem for another day.

Not the next day, though, or the one after, because, hooray, he was still tied to a rock, so even though he did die a few hours later, he couldn’t do anything about the Sand In His Insides. He made up a song about it, but singing it loudly did absolutely nothing to scare away the crab, whom he had named Crabstard (Crab Bastard). Crabstard seemed to think Castys was his new best friend, coming back regularly for meals. Castys liked to imagine killing and eating Crabstard as a show of dominance, but that made him wonder...would eating Crabstard be a form of autocannibalism? Because Crabstard had eaten him...

He wasn’t sure what was worse, Crabstard and his stupid giant pinchers, or the mosquitoes. There weren’t a ton of them, but their bites were just awful, littering his arms and legs with swollen, white boils, which were unusual and also very concerning but what the fuck could he do about it. Because of course he couldn’t scratch them, and they itched so much it hurt and he just had to endure it. Just like he had to endure fucking everything. The heat of the sun, the awful tingling in his arms, the soreness of his wrists, Crabstard pinching off bits of his flesh, the maddening pain and itch of all his bug bites, the hunger and thirst, the boredom, and the...the loneliness.

No, he was fine, he was fine with just himself, it was always just him anyway. He wasn’t imagining his crew rowing to shore and untying him and tending to him in his cold, dark cabin, because he couldn’t get his hopes up, because they probably weren’t even coming for him. They were just going to leave him behind like everyone else and fuck he was wasting water like a useless idiot and he couldn’t stop or even wipe them away and he probably deserved this for everything he’d done so what did it matter?

And, great, the next day he started hallucinating a passing ship and a rowboat coming for him. Thank you, dehydrated whore brain! Let’s get our stupid little hopes up! Dang, the people on the boat kind of even looked like some of his crewmates, which was rude of his brain to make this so realistic looking.

It wasn’t until his first mate, Kaveri, was untying him that Castys realized that this was real, that they’d really...really come for him. “I’m so glad we found you, Captain.” She pulled him into a hug as soon as he was free, and he hugged her back as best he could with his sore arms. 

“I’m glad y’all did, too.” He leaned back when she let go and looked down at himself, wincing. “Well, before we get back to the ship, I am going to deliver a much needed death upon mys-“

“Captain, Captain, wait,” the ship’s medic, Sixtus, called as he ran over. He knelt beside Castys, taking his arm and examining the bug bites closely. “I knew it. These bites all over you are...they contain fly larvae. We’re going to need to dig them out before you heal yourself.”

“...what if I’ve died since I’ve gotten bitten. Like, earlier.”

“Well.” Sixtus breathed in sharply. “We will just have to wait for them to, uh, let us know where they are.” He sighed. “For now, let’s get you back to the ship and I’ll get out the ones I can. I don’t have the tools for it with me.”

“Can I kill Crabstard first?”

“Crab...stard?” Kaveri gave him a concerned look, and Sixtus felt his forehead.

“He’s a very impolite giant crab. He is my rival. I wish to vanquish him.” The other two shared a look.

“Do you know where this...this crab is?” Sixtus tried.

Castys held up a finger and opened his mouth, pausing for a second before shutting it and blinking a few times. “I. I do not. He just scuttles out of the trees to commit crimes every now and then. He has no friends.”

“Alright, in that case, no. You’re in no condition to wander around the island looking for a crab.” Sixtus held out his hand. “So, come on.”

“Fiiiine,” Castys groaned, letting the taller man help him to his feet. He was a little unsteady, but he was able to make it to the boat with Kaveri’s help. As they rowed away, he turned back to the island one last time, cupping his hands around his mouth as he yelled, “Fuck you Crabstard I hope you starve and die in a pit and the other crabs eat you!” 

Once they made it back to the ship, Sixtus ushered Castys into his office, instructing him to sit up on the examination table and take his shirt and pants off. Kaveri helped him, opting to stay in case Sixtus needed a hand. He examined Castys thoroughly, using a lightstone to get a good look at the swollen bug bites littering his body as well as the number of small wounds in his side.

“These from the, uh, crab?” Sixtus asked as he gestured to them.

“Yup. Him and his stupid pinchers.”

“Alright, I know you don’t really get infections, but I’m going to clean these out just to be safe.” He paused. “Also it just feels. Really wrong not to. It’ll bother me if I don’t.”

“Do whatever, doctor man.” Castys did his best not to let his pain show as Sixtus dabbed at his wounds with a stingy liquid. It really didn’t hurt that much, but when Kaveri placed her hand on top of his as he gripped the edge of the table, he didn’t wave her off. He’d let it be Fuss Over The Captain Day. For their sake. Because they seem to have been worried about him. 

“Alright, I’m all done with that, so if you could lay down, Captain, I’ll get started with removing those larvae. Kaveri, get him some rum and then hold him down.” She nodded, leaving and returning soon after with a small cup.

“You know, I haven’t had water in days,” Castys mused before winking at her and downing its contents. Kaveri shook her head.

“You literally emptied my waterskin while we were rowing back.”

“Oh dang, I forgot. Nevermind I’m actually not funny and am just stupid.” He scooted a bit and laid down with his hands behind his head. “Get rid of my worms.”

“They’re not-they’re not worms, Captain, they’re insects, since-” Sixtus stopped himself, folding his hands in front of his mouth. “Nevermind.” He cleared his throat. “Arms at your sides, please. Kaveri, if you would.” She nodded, holding down his shoulders as Sixtus turned Castys’s arm, locating the first larva he was going to remove. Castys breathed in sharply as the knife sliced into his arm, doing his best to keep still as Sixtus slid a pair of tweezers into the wound. The rum dulled his senses enough that it didn’t hurt as much as it could, but it certainly wasn’t painless, and he couldn’t help but gasp as Sixtus slowly pulled a small, wriggling grub out of the incision. He dropped it in a metal tray, cleaned the wound, and picked up his knife.

Then the process started all over again.

Castys didn’t bother counting how many times those tweezers probed around inside him, how many wet little plops he heard as another larva dropped into the tray. He focused on staying still, on the prickle of the rough wood table against his bare back, on the feeling of Kaveri’s hands on his shoulders, more comforting than restraining. They reminded him that he wasn’t alone in his suffering, for once. But he wasn’t supposed to need comfort, he was their immortal captain, the one who’d been through everything before and was strong enough to go through it again, the one his crew could always depend on to be strong. And here he was, teeth gritted against the pain, his forehead resting against Kaveri’s arm, fists clenched to mask their shaking, all over a few cuts and some little maggots.

“Alright,” Sixtus wiped his brow with the back of his hand, “I think that’s all of ‘em. That I can see, at least.” He looked down at Castys. “You had seventeen of those things in you, Captain.” He grimaced. “And possibly more, so please let me know if you feel anything, uh, wiggling. But for now, you’re free to...die.”

“Can’t believe I got a new world record for worm friends.” Castys grabbed the small leather pouch that usually hung around his neck from his pile of clothes, pulling it open.

“They’re not worms-”

“Thank you, Sixtus.” With that, Castys stuck his finger in the pouch and touched his death stone. He came back to life feeling infinitely better, but Kaveri and Sixtus still insisted he rest after he cleaned himself up. He grumbled, but he let Kaveri force him into his bed and bring him something to eat. Once he was finished, she collected his plate and stood awkwardly by his bedside.

“Do...do you want me to come back, Castys? Will you be alright?”

“Look, I’m honestly fine, you’re good. I’ve been through a lot worse, and I’m all healed up now so it doesn’t really matter.” 

She pursed her lips. “I suppose, but that doesn’t mean that that didn’t still take a mental toll on you, and…” she sighed. “Just...call me if you need anything, alright?”

“Will do.” She nodded, but as she started to walk away, Castys realized there was something he’d rather not leave unsaid. “Wait, Kaveri?”

“Yes?”

“Th...thank you. For, uh, finding me.”

“Of course, Castys. We’ll always be there for you.” Castys opened his mouth to reply, but he stopped himself and just smiled and nodded, his shoulders only falling once she’d left.

He wished that were true.

Castys Cult: @as-a-matter-of-whump​ @blackrosesandwhump​ @fanmanga1357-blog​​ @thehopelessopus​ @just-a-whumping-racoon-with-wifi​ @hearse-song​ @muddy-swamp-bitch @whumpasaurus101 @yet-another-heathen​​ @galaxywhump​ @starnight-whump​ @his-unspoken-words​ @misspelledwitch

[riotwritesthings]

Deep as the Ocean

WinterIron, E | AO3

Me? Writing more monsterfucking for Halloween? More likely than you think!

Title: Deep as the Ocean Collaborator(s): Riot @buckybarnesbingo Square Filled: Y5, Occupational Hazard @tonystarkbingo (card 4052) Square Filled: K3, WTF Ship/Main Pairing: WinterIron Rating: E Major Tags/Warnings: established relationship, hand wavey comic book magic, banter, humor, octo!Bucky, consentacles, Confirmed monsterfucker Tony Stark Summary: Another day, another magical mishap. At least most of the team gets hit this time, and Tony is really trying to focus on that rather than one person in particular. It’s not his fault! He grew up with the internet! Word Count: 6.6k

~~~

It starts with a magical, and very angry, environmentalist.

Because of course it does, that’s just the way their lives go.

And look, Tony gets it, he also agrees that the oceans are important and should be protected, he’s completely on board with that. What he can’t get behind is turning random beach vacationers into horrible fish-monsters in an effort to get the point across.

The fight itself goes pretty well. No one gets mauled by horrible enslaved half-human monsters, because it turns out all it took was one look at the Hulk and all the fishpeople apparently deemed the giant green man their new leader or something. They’ve mostly just been following him in large circles up and down the beach, leaving the rest of the team free to focus on the magic man.

Tony actually feels a little bad about how easy things get once the villain of the week loses his army to a laughing Hulk, so naturally it’s right at the end when everything goes sideways.

Because it turns out their angry environmentalist is the ‘go out with a bang’ type, and Tony is just glad he’s up in the safety of the air when the magical smoke cloud engulfs most of the team. Based on the look of smug-yet-guilty relief on Sam’s face when Tony glances over, he’s having the same thought.

“I don’t think that went the way our evil wizard was intending,” Tony says as he and Sam come in for a landing near the rest of the team, who are still looking mostly human and blinking at each other in confusion.

“Is everyone okay?” Sam asks, then wrinkles his nose as he glances over at Steve and adds “You know, relatively speaking?”

“Man, what the fuck,” Clint whines, hands clapped over either side of his neck, “This is why I like to fight from a distance. This kind of shit is way funnier when it’s only happening to other people.”

“I’m doing just peachy,” Natasha says dryly, looking remarkably calm considering she currently has a fish tail instead of legs.

“You make a wonderful mermaid,” Tony tells her brightly, “Now someone please scoop up the magic bastard before he scuttles away.”

“I feel weird about arresting a crab, even if he was just a human wizard trying to kill us all,” Sam says, but manages to scoop up the averaged-sized, if neon blue, crab without getting himself pinched and Steve flashes him a thumbs up.

Well, Steve flashes a thumbs up at the general area three feet to the left of Sam, but they all know what he’s going for. Considering that Steve’s eyes are currently big and glassy and bulging out of his skull, they should probably just be impressed he’s pointed anywhere near Sam.

“Hey, hey Tony,” Bucky says and Tony can hear his smirk even though he’s refusing to look over.

Tony had gotten a glimpse of Bucky’s fish monster transformation when he first landed and he just... cannot deal with that right now.

“Tony,” Bucky says again, and then something slaps wetly against the leg of Tony’s armor and he’s looking down before he can stop himself.

There’s a tentacle on his shin, slowly wrapping it’s way around his leg, shimmering deep red and black in the bright sunlight.

Tony maybe squeaks embarrassingly before jerking his eyes up again, which leads to him accidentally meeting Bucky’s gaze, and the smug, heated smirk on Bucky’s face has Tony’s breath catching in his throat.

Then Bucky has the gall to actually wave at him with the thin, tapered tip of one of his eight tentacles, while the one still wrapped around Tony’s leg tap-tap-taps against his armor and Tony is lucky he stays standing as his stomach gives a hot, vicious twist.

“Goddamnit Bucky, I was joking!” Tony says, throwing his hands in the air and quickly looking away again. He really shouldn’t have opened the faceplate when he landed, because he’s sure that his flushed face must be giving him away.

“Do I want to know? I don’t think I want to know.” Clint says, most of his attention on poking at his newly acquired gills, and then slapping at Sam when he tries to poke the other side of Clint’s neck.

“You very much don’t,” Tony says, and can’t help taking just a little bit of glee in Clint’s expression.

He then very carefully keeps his gaze fixed on Clint, doing his best to ignore the fact that out of the corner of his eye he can absolutely see Bucky slowly wobbling his way closer, unsteady on his eight writhing tentacles.

“My eyes hurt,” Steve says conversationally, “I don’t think I have eyelids.”

“You don’t look like you have eyelids,” Sam says, and Tony quickly drags his gaze over to Steve because yes, Steve and his hilarious fish eyes, that’s a safe distraction.

It’s almost enough to fight down the heat trying to build in Tony’s gut, the way his blood is rushing undeniably and inescapably south.

Tony wants to point out that the look is not working for Steve, but then another dark, nimble limb tap tap taps against his shoulder and before he can stop himself he’s glancing over at Bucky again.

Bucky smiles at him brightly, taps the very tip of the tentacle against Tony’s jaw, and Tony’s cock throbs almost painfully, blood rushing south so quickly that it leaves him a little lightheaded.

“Why can’t you just be a normal floppy mermaid like Nat?!” Tony demands in a voice that cracks uncomfortably, because seriously, he can’t even look at Bucky for too long.

The way Bucky crosses his thick arms and smirks wider is not helping.

“I am not floppy,” Natasha says, narrowing her eyes and it kind of looks like she’s considering how best to smack him with her tail.

Tony shuffles a couple steps away, honestly grateful for the distraction. And the excuse to escape Bucky’s clutches.

“If you slap me, I’m not going to carry you to the wizard doctor,” he tells Natasha, “you’ll have to ride with fish eyes over there.”

“Hey!” Steve says with a pout, but he’s not facing any of them anymore.

The Hulk makes a questioning sound as he stomps past them again, the poor cursed fishpeople lumbering along happily behind him, and yeah they should probably do something about that too.

“Strange is going to be so pissed,” Tony says and he can’t quite hide his glee, even as Natasha shifts her weight onto her arms and swings her tail up to smack him in the chest.

~~~

Strange is in fact pissed when they come stomping and/or lurching into his ‘sanctum’ with their evil crab in tow, but Tony absolutely catches him laughing when Steve walks into a door frame and drops Natasha.

“You are getting sand... everywhere,” he says, like he’s physically pained, and he would no doubt kick them out if there was anywhere else to send them.

That’ll teach him to be the only trustworthy wizard in the city.

“Hey man, you’re not the one with sand in your shorts,” Clint says, because he can always be counted on to be classy.

“Do you have any idea how many nooks and crannies I have for sand to get into?” Tony asks, and then bends his arm to show the way half the beach falls out of the shifting, moving parts of the armor.

“Do you want to take off the armor at least?” Sam asks, already shrugging out of his wings and shaking himself off.

“I do not,” Tony says flatly, because if he takes off the suit everyone is absolutely going to know that Tony is so hard it would be painful even if he weren’t trapped in unforgiving metal.

It’s not his fault, okay?! He stumbled upon a website or two in his formative years and the idea just kind of... stuck. Way down deep in the back of his mind, because it was never supposed to matter.

Tentacles, what the fuck.

The point is, Tony is staying firmly and safely in the armor, where no one can judge him.

“Please don’t take the suit off,” Strange says with a pained expression and for a terrifying second Tony thinks that he knows. But no, Strange is just eyeing the sandy mess of his foyer as he adds “Just... hold still and keep all your sand to yourselves, please. I’m going to run a few tests.”

‘A few tests’ mostly means waving his hands at them, putting on a light show and muttering to himself.

Tony does his best to just focus on watching closely, hoping everyone will chalk it up to his usual mistrust of magic and not that he’s doing everything he can to avoid having to so much as glance at his boyfriend.

Chiming in to help Clint mock Steve is a pretty good distraction at least, and it’s even better when Sam gets distracted trying to poke at Clint’s gills again and gets himself pinched by the wizard crab.

The flaw, of course, is that eventually Strange gets to Bucky and suddenly Tony can’t focus on anything else.

He's not sure if it's because the environmentalist asshole wizard was running out of steam by that last blast of magic or what, but compared to the scaly abominations he'd originally been creating Bucky actually looks... good.

And sure, Tony is biased, he always thinks Bucky looks good, but even objectively the man is really rocking the half-octopus look.

Tony's eyes get stuck for a long minute on the cut of Bucky’s hips below his tacvest, the barest sliver of pale skin before it smoothly shifts to a deep black, shimmering slightly red in the stupid lighting of the sanctum. The color lightens near the tapered tips of the long limbs and yep, Tony is absolutely staring now and wow, is it hot and bothered in here or is that just him?

He is a little curious what happened to Bucky and Natasha’s pants, but that’s probably the type of question that’s best left unasked, because the answer is ‘magic’, and Tony hates that answer.

“How does this keep happening to you?” Strange asks as he continues waving his hands around Bucky in a presumably useful way.

“Risk of the job?” Bucky says with an easy shrug and the flare of tentacles sprouting from his hips don’t make his shoulders look extra wide, they don’t, except that oh god they absolutely do.

Just like it doesn’t make Tony’s stomach flip all over itself when Bucky looks up, catches him staring, and winks.

“I’m calling OSHA,” Sam grumbles, still pouting over the blister forming on his thumb from where he was crab-pinched.

“You didn’t even get magic whammied!” Clint protests, both hands clapped over his neck protectively because Steve has taken up trying to poke his gills too.

“And I’m not waiting until it happens to me!” Sam says, throwing his hands in the air.

“My eyes still hurt,” Steve says, and he’s definitely pouting about it now.

There are several half-shouted responses to that, including Tony’s suggestion that Steve go stick his head in the birdbath out front, Natasha saying something about fishbowls, and Clint’s gleeful suggestion of consensual swirlies.

“I’ll look into it,” Strange declares loudly, speaking over them all and pointedly not inviting them to stay while he does. “Call me if it wears off first this time, please,” he adds, shooting Clint a flat look.

“Yeah yeah—“

“Because last time, you just let me keep looking until I had to learn that you were no longer a chipmunk from TV.”

“In my defense,” Clint says, “I had chipmunk brain.”

“You still have chipmunk brain, Alvin,” Tony says.

“Excuse you, I’m totally a Theodore.”

“You’re an Alvin and we all know it,” Natasha says, patting Clint gently on the leg with the end of her tail and it really is amazing how quickly they all seem to have gotten used to their new fish parts.

Which leads to Tony almost thinking about the all-too graceful way Bucky has been moving slowly closer, all muscle and careful, stalking control.

But no, Tony shuts that down and doesn’t let himself think about it, not even a little bit. Not even when he feels one of those tentacles wrap around his shin again.

"Who was the smart chipmunk again?" Sam asks thoughtfully "I want to be that one. I'm the real brains of the operation."

"Does that make Steve Theodore?" Natasha wonders.

"Please, I'm Theodore," Tony says, "'Cause I'm cuddly and sweet. Steve is the mean human who's always yelling at us."

"Hey," Steve protests, glaring at a spot somewhere over Tony’s head.

“Get out,” Strange says, and that’s about all the warning they get.

~~~

Strange portals them back to the compound at least, which is nice of him, though Tony is pretty sure it’s just to keep them from leaving behind more sand on their way out. And he doesn’t even know about all the fish monsters the Hulk is undoubtedly going to start herding in soon.

It’s less nice that Strange dumps them out of the portal directly above the pool in the gym, and Tony barely kicks on the repulsors before he hits the water.

Which is fun, because it means he aggressively splashes everyone else, and also handy because he really doesn’t want to add ‘dry and de-sand the armor’ to his to-do list today.

As it is, all he really wants is to get to his room where he can hide his shame and furiously jerk off in peace.

It’s not so much to ask, really.

“Okay, well, I think you’re all good here,” Tony says as he thumps down onto the tile beside the pool, even though no one seems to be paying him a damn bit of attention though.

Sam is already pulling himself out of the water and stomping off, Steve seems happily distracted splashing water into his own eyes, and Natasha is laughing as she swims literal circles around a flailing Clint.

“I’m just gonna... go,” Tony says weakly, already backing towards the door, “Clean out my suit. Yep.”

With that he turns and bails, bails as quickly as his sand-encrusted metal joints will allow, and he’s in such a hurry to get to the workshop that he barely even registers that Bucky is following him.

It’s basically routine anyways, Bucky follows him back to the lab after a mission more often than not these days because he insists on looking Tony over himself.

Honestly, you hide a major injury or seven and suddenly no one trusts you.

It doesn’t even occur to Tony why this might be a problem until he’s stepping into the lab and halfway through saying ”Bet they’re never going to complain about the pool being salt water again, do—“ Then he squeaks, face heating within the safety of the helmet, and demands “Why aren’t you swimming with everyone else?!”

“I want to make sure you’re not injured,” Bucky says, but he has his ‘innocent and trustworthy’ face on, not his ‘I think Tony is hiding injuries again’ face, and Tony is instantly suspicious.

“I'm fine, and I think you know it,” Tony says, narrowing his eyes to hopefully hide the fact that his stomach is giving a dangerous little twist.

Damnit he never should have told that stupid joke about hoping Bucky sprouts tentacles next time, because now it is next time, and now Bucky knows, and there’s no way he’s going to let this go.

Tony is as flustered as he is excited.

“Then why haven’t you taken off the suit yet?” Bucky asks and his tone is still innocent, but the look in his eyes says he knows exactly why, and all Tony is doing is delaying the inevitable.

He’s also slowly tugging open the straps and catches of his tacvest, which kind of gives him and his dastardly intentions away. It’s also wildly unfair, because he knows what that sight does to Tony, and what was Tony even embarrassed about again?!

So he gives up with a heavy sigh that is entirely for show, lets the armor start to unfold around him and directs his pout at the far wall.

The cool air of the lab is a relief on his flushed skin, and no longer being trapped in the unforgiving metal of the armor is definitely a relief on his aching cock. Even if that relief is immediately followed by the long-ignored burn of arousal in his gut flaring to life, demanding attention and leaving him breathless.

“Don’t judge me, okay, I grew up with the internet,” Tony grumbles as he finishes stepping out of the suit, wiggling his bare toes against the cold ground and wishing he’d thought to pull on more clothes before he’d run off to jump in the armor this morning.

His threadbare pajama pants and shrunken sleep shirt are definitely not hiding how flustered he is, and he has the uncomfortable feeling that his thin pants are already tellingly wet where they’re stretched tight over the head of his cock.

He’s refusing to look down to confirm though, instead keeping his gaze fixed firmly on the far wall to hopefully preserve even a tiny shred of his dignity. Assuming he still has any, Tony honestly isn’t sure anymore, he’s having a hard time even thinking at this point and he’s pretty sure there is zero blood left in his brain.

Bucky doesn’t say anything at all though, and after a second Tony glances over at him only to find that Bucky has apparently moved and how, how is he so stealthy even with octopus legs?!

Before Tony can spin to look for him Bucky is plastered against his back, human arms wrapped around his middle and oh god long, nimble octopus arms wrapping around the rest of him, winding around his thighs and down his legs, one of them draped up over his shoulder with the thin tip sliding so lightly along the line of his throat.

“Oh- fuck—“ Tony gasps as his legs nearly collapse out from under him, his entire body flushing molten hot.

It’s only Bucky’s many, many limbs tightening around him that keeps him standing, stealing what little brain power Tony had left in the process.

“You’ve barely even been able t’ look at me,” Bucky says, lips dragging up the back of Tony’s neck and his voice as smug as anything, “So hot for this, ain’t ya?”

“I’m always hot for you,” Tony tries to argue, because he is, but his voice comes out breathless and he’s shaking in Bucky’s hold and his argument really doesn’t hold much weight.

“Yeah, but I think you’re extra hot for this,” Bucky says, low and teasing and knowing as he tightens his hold on Tony everywhere.

The very tip of one tentacle brushes over Tony's lower lip and his mouth falls open with a sharp gasp, tongue flicking out to chase it without thought. He groans at the feel of it, slick and just a little salty from being dumped in the pool and so smooth. Just like the ones shifting over his arms, sliding up the leg of his pants, and Tony lets out a shaking moan as the suckers drag teasingly over his skin.

“Yeah,” Bucky says smugly, easily sliding his palms up Tony's chest amid the mess of writhing limbs, “Knew you weren’t jokin’ about the tentacles.”

"That, that's n-not, ah—" Tony's weak protest breaks off in a ragged gasp at the scrape of Bucky's teeth over the back of his neck. He struggles weakly against Bucky's hold, mostly just to feel the way Bucky tightens around him and rumbles with soft laughter.

“Are you sure?” Bucky asks, low and teasing, and Tony gasps as one of the limbs wrapped around his middle slides under the waistband of his pants and straight into his boxers, swiping over the head of his aching cock. “‘Cause you’re already wet, sweetheart, leakin’ like this an’ I barely even touched you yet.”

“You are touching me,” Tony points out with a huff, but he’s much more concerned with trying to arch his hips forward into Bucky’s touch and then whining pitifully when he can’t move at all.

“Nah, sweet thing, I’ve just gotten started,” Bucky breathes out hot against the shell of his ear as another limb slides up Tony’s pant leg, wrapping around his calf.

It’s almost pathetic how easily he collapses when Bucky gives even the slightest push, but Tony is mostly just excited to give up the ruse of actually supporting himself on his shaking legs.

The only thing that keeps him from face planting straight into the ground is Bucky wrapped around him, lowering him gently until Tony can catch himself on his hands and knees with Bucky’s broad chest against his back, thick human arms bracketing him in and other, distinctly less-human arms winding all around him.

“O-oh, god,” Tony gasps out, shuddering hard as the tentacle down the front of sweats twines around his cock, rubbing and stroking and fuck that is so unfair. Tony’s brain is already melting out of his ears and Bucky just keeps touching him more, firm and strong and perfect.

More tentacles slide beneath the hem of his pants, looping against his skin and then tugging his sweats down over his hips even though they don’t fall far, not with the way his thighs are wrapped up several times over. They’re everywhere, suckers dragging against his inner thighs, sliding under his shirt and trailing teasingly light up his chest.

“Bucky, just- ah,” Tony breaks off with an embarrassing whimper when the grip around his cock tightens a little, tip of the tentacle dragging firmly over the head and smearing precum over his skin. Another one slides down the small of his back, pressing into his crack and then dragging up and down against the skin with slow, deliberate motions, until Tony is trying desperately to rock back into it and gasping out “Please.”

It’s so much, Bucky wrapped all around him, completely surrounding him, skin still slick with water as it slides against Tony’s own. The stroking along his cock is tight and smooth, the tentacles curling around his chest drag over his nipples with a firm pressure, and Tony tosses his head back with a loud cry.

He shakes and writhes in place, trying to arch his chest forward into the sensation, trying to rock his hips down into the grip of the tentacle wrapped tight around his cock and then back into the pressure of the one dragging over his hole.

“You looks so good like this, so overwhelmed, just fuckin’ lost in it,” Bucky says in a low growl, crowding in impossibly closer until Tony's wet shirt clings to the damp skin of Budays chest, rucking it up higher and leaving more skin exposed for wandering limbs to rub against.

The thin tip of one tentacle presses against Tony’s hole, curling and twisting against the ring of muscle. It pulls a ragged cry out of his chest that only gets louder as the limb wrapped around him twists in place and the line of suckers finally press into his skin, covering his nipples and down his stomach, up his throat, applying the lightest suction.

It’s just enough to have blood rushing hot beneath Tony’s skin, every inch of him tingling with it as bolts of heated pleasure burn down his spine, until the fire in his gut spreads through his whole body, burning him alive.

“You’re not even listenin’ to me, are ya sugar?” Bucky asks with a low chuckle, lips and teeth trailing along Tony's jaw while the suction over his nipples increases.

“Please,” Tony gasps out mindlessly, rocking his hips back into the too-light pressure, “please, I- ah!” Tony cuts off with a ragged sound as the tentacle curling against his hole just barely presses inside him, twisting and rubbing and lighting up all his nerves from the inside out.

It doesn't press any deeper though, just barely working inside him until Tony drops his head down again with a shaking wail, hips twitching in Bucky's hold.

“Please, please, Bucky-“ Tony whines out and he’s so wound up it almost hurts, his stomach pulled tight in burning knots and his cock aching as the limb wrapped around it continues to stroke him so slowly.

He’s barely aware of the broken pleas continuing to spill out of him, all he knows is that his entire body is molten with it and fuck it already feels like he’s right on the edge, like he could fall apart at any moment.

When the tentacle finally presses in deeper Tony’s breath catches in his chest entirely, jolting in place and Bucky is the only thing holding him up, the grip around his cock tightening the only thing stopping him from coming right then and there. And then it pressed deeper, slowly spreading him open, curling and twisting inside him until Tony is wailing out a ragged sound, still straining impossibly against Bucky’s grip on him in an effort to rock himself back into it.

“So greedy," Bucky groans, low and fond, dragging the tip of one tentacle over the head of Tony's cock, barest hint of suction along the base, "I’m already touchin’ you everywhere and you just want more, don’t ya?”

“More,” Tony repeats instantly, his entire body shaking, arms weak and chest heaving in Bucky’s hold, burning, “Please-“

The limb buried inside him withdraws slowly, twisting and seemingly rubbing up against his every nerve in the process, and Tony barely has time to whine about it before another one is pressing against his hole, thicker, throbbing as it sinks into him.

Tony’s ragged cry is cut short by another tentacle sliding between his lips, curling around his tongue and then curling around itself, filling his mouth and stretching his jaw wide.

“You feel so good like this baby, I can feel you everywhere,” Bucky’s voice is low and rough as his lips drag up the line of Tony’s neck, “I can taste you.”

The thick tentacle twists inside him, spreading him wide, and Tony lets out a long, low moan that comes out muffled, mouth still stuffed so perfectly full and spit running freely down his chin.

Fuck he feels full everywhere, the tentacle pressing deeper inside him, rubbing against his prostate as the one in his mouth teases over his tongue, another thin tip dragging over his wet lips.

Tony whines pitifully, reduced to shaking in place as the tip of yet another tentacles slips in alongside the one that’s already buried deep inside him, tugging at his rim and drawing a weak groan out of him.

Bucky’s teeth press briefly against his throat, scrape over the shell of Tony’s ear, and he sounds a little breathless himself as he grows “Fuck I can feel the way you’re shakin’ for it, you ready babydoll?”

The suckers are still dragging over his skin, plucking at his nipples and the head of his cock until Tony is nearly sobbing. Then he forgets about breathing entirely as the tentacle finally starts actually thrusting into him, fucking him open wide and so deep, so thick, feeling like it’s still impossibly swelling inside him and Tony tosses his head back again, keening with it.

Tony’s head is spinning, pleasure spreading through his entire body with every deep press of the Bucky inside him, every shift and drag of the other tentacles against his skin sending bright bursts of pleasure down his spine. Until it feels like his building orgasm might just burn him alive when it finally breaks and still Tony can’t stop the desperate, muffled noises from spilling out of him, trying to beg for more.

“You wanna come baby?” Bucky asks in a low growl, speeding up his thrusts, taking Tony completely apart. He laughs roughly when Tony lets out a high whine, tentacle tightening its grip on Tony’s cock and stroking him harder.

The sound that bursts out of Tony is more of a pathetic whine than anything, bright bolts of pleasure shooting through him with every hard thrust, every deep press of the tentacle inside him and drag over his prostate. He’s close, he’s so close, and Tony keens again as his entire body tightens with it, clenching around the limb still fucking into him and his cock throbbing in the hold of the tentacle wrapped around it.

“C’mon doll, come for me,” Bucky demands, practically a snarl, and the tentacle stuffed into his mouth pulls away just in time to let Tony’s shouted cry echo loudly around the workshop.

Tony would swear he whites out completely, blinding pleasure burning through him so ferociously that for several long seconds all he can feel is the almost painful throb of his cock as he finally comes, the increasingly slick slide of Bucky’s tentacle still wrapped around it, still stroking him quickly.

Bucky is still wrapped around him everywhere, not lightening his grip at all, keeping Tony held firm and he can’t even thrash in place, can’t do anything but take it as Bucky fucks him right through the orgasm, completely breaks him apart.

Everything goes a little fuzzy, just an overwhelming onslaught of sensation as heat continues spiraling through Tony in an endless loop. He can feel Bucky’s rough groan rumbling against his arched back, the tightening of Bucky’s tentacles all around him and Bucky’s teeth diging into the curve of his shoulder. The tentacles inside him twist and press deeper before Bucky finally comes with a loud growl, tentacle swelling even further and then flooding Tony with cum.

Full, god he’s so full, it ends up spilling out of him even around the wide limb holding him open, thick and viscous as it runs down his thighs.

Tony pants brokenly, gasping for air as Bucky’s hold on him finally goes a little slack, just enough so that Tony can suck in giant lungfuls of air without letting him collapse face down into the ground. His inner muscles are still clenching sporadically around the tentacle buried inside him, and when it shifts Tony moans weakly at the feeling of more cum spilling out of him.

His shirt is rucked up around his chest and clinging to him with sweat and water from Bucky’s skin, cum running down his skin and soaking into his sweats where they’re still trapped around his thighs.

Tony’s brain comes back online slowly, entirely too slowly, mostly because it tries to fuzz out all over again every time Bucky drags in a deep, steadying breath and his chest presses into Tony’s back, so much skin on skin.

Eventually though Tony’s head clears enough for something to occur to him, and he lets out a drawn out groan of complaint.

“I really hope everyone is still in the pool,” Tony whines, letting his head hang low again as he realizes he’s going to have to somehow get to his room like this. And he’s still a little breathless.

He really doesn’t want the ‘stop mentally scarring your teammates’ speech from Steve again. Or worse, Bruce.

Bucky hums, sounding wildly unconcerned with their possible upcoming lecture, and his limbs continue twitching and shifting against Tony’s skin like he’s not even aware that he’s doing it.

“My room isn’t far,” Bucky finally says, voice low and rough and lazy.

“My bathtub is bigger,” Tony argues, because his bathtub is practically a jacuzzi and it seems like a great way to both get clean and keep his dumb octopus-boyfriend from drying out.

If that even is a thing they need to worry about, who knows. None of his formulative years of internet scrolling had prepared him for that question, and Tony is still too orgasm-stupid to remember a damn thing about real, non-magical sea life right now.

“Yeah, but my room is closer,” Bucky points out, lips dragging along the curve of Tony’s shoulder again.

Tony considers that, along with the fact that his legs are still shaking uselessly and the fact that Bucky is still the only thing holding him up.

“We can make it work,” Tony says decisively.

He has to lean on Bucky pretty heavily on the shuffling walk to Bucky’s room, pretending to swat at Bucky’s tentacles when they inevitably wind around him again. At least the entire thing is free from pesky teammate witnesses.

Bucky’s bathtub is nowhere near as big at Tony’s, but it is still a pretty decent size. Because it’s not like Tony was going to cheap out on any of the rooms in the compound, after all.

It’s a bit of a squeeze, getting both of them and all of Bucky’s extra limbs into the water, but they make it work.

~~~

Tony wakes up the next morning completely wrapped in tentacles, nearly head to toe, and he can barely move a muscle. It’s kind of ridiculous how safe he feels.

A second later he wrinkles his nose and squints one eye open as he asks “What- is it humid in here?”

Because seriously, the air is thick with it, heavy and warm. The blankets are shoved down to the end of the bed and there’s already a thin sheen of sweat collecting on Tony’s skin, making it so easy for the tentacles to slide and stroke over his skin.

“So I don’t dry out,” Bucky says, fingers sliding through Tony’s hair and for a second Tony is tempted to forget all about his questions in favor of falling right back to sleep and maybe purring happily for good measure.

But he can’t resist asking “Wouldn’t it have been easier to just go hang out in the pool with everyone else? If they’re still there and equally fishy, of course.”

“Didn’t want to leave,” Bucky says and clings to him a little tighter, as if that’s a reasonable explanation for probably causing water damage to the inside of his room.

“I can’t believe this is even an option, FRIDAY has too much power,” Tony grumbles without an ounce of actual heat, his heart feeling as warm as the rest of him, like he’s melting in the heat of the room. Still, he can’t help pointing out “I hope you don’t have anything in here that’s going to be ruined.”

“Worth it,” Bucky says, happy and warm and completely unconcerned.

Tony hums thoughtfully, and finally makes a decision on that idea he’s been turning over in his head for a couple weeks now.

“Well,” he says slowly, “When this room inevitably grows black mold, I suppose you’ll just have to move in with me.”

For a second Bucky doesn’t respond, all of his tentacles freezing in the act of tracing over Tony’s skin and Tony desperately tries to tell himself that it’s fine. It’s fine, even if Bucky doesn’t want to share a room, they still basically live together already anyways, Bucky still loves him, probably—

“You mean it?” Bucky asks, sounding a little breathless, and when he props himself up on one elbow to look down at Tony the smile on his face is almost blindingly bright.

“Only because black mold is bad,” Tony says but the smile spreading across his own face is almost painfully wide.

Bucky nods with a thoughtful expression, like he’s giving Tony’s reasoning serious thought, and then says “FRIDAY, please crank the humidity.”

“FRI, don’t you dare,” Tony protests, although his attempts at a horrified tone are kind of ruined by his wide grin, “I already can’t breathe in here!”

“Humidity increased 3%,” FRIDAY says dryly and Bucky laughs while Tony gasps loudly in outrage. “Also, Agent Barton has asked me to inform you that you’re not invited to the pool party unless you, in his words, act like normal people.”

Bucky laughs harder while Tony groans loudly and slaps his hands over his eyes, face burning because yeah it’s probably pretty telling that they came home and then immediately disappeared for... twelve hours.

“I’m not going to be able to look any of them in the face for another month,” Tony whines, kicking his legs a little until Bucky’s many limbs shift and tighten around him, making his breath catch in his throat.

"Confirmed monster fucker," Bucky says and pats his hips with one tentacle, voice full of sympathy even though Tony can absolutely feel the way he’s still shaking with laughter.

"I hate you so much,” Tony says without moving his hand, although he can admit (to himself) that this one is entirely on him.

"Nah,” Bucky says, completely and endearingly unconcerned with Tony’s threats, “You love me, you want me to move in.”

"Offer rescinded,” Tony declares, peeking at Bucky from between his fingers before letting his hands fall back to the bed and instead fixing Bucky with a flat look as he adds, “You can just stay here in your moldy swamp room for all I care.”

"Too late for that darlin', you're stuck with me," Bucky says, smirking as he pops one of his suckers loudly against Tony’s skin and then grinning wider when Tony responds with a full-body shudder.

“Only because you’re so clingy,” Tony tries to complain, but it’s pretty unconvincing when his voice comes out a little breathy and he can’t help wrapping his own arms around Bucky in return.

“You love it,” Bucky says again, and Tony can only shrug sheepishly because yeah, he really kind of does.

“Fine,” Tony says with a heavy sigh as he pushes his fingers into Bucky’s hair and uses that grip to pull Bucky’s dumb smiling face up into kissing range, “You and your many limbs can move into my room. But the humidity isn’t invited.”

“Yay,” Bucky cheers quietly and then laughs when Tony huffs and bites at the curve of his jaw.

“Yeah yeah, stop being smug and kiss me already,” Tony grumbles even though he can’t stop himself from smiling either, heart jumping at the open joy on Bucky’s face, the way it practically makes his eyes shine.

“I can do both,” Bucky says, impossibly more smug, and then finally kisses Tony before he can say anything else.

Tony is all too happy to let himself sink into it, sighing softly as Bucky wraps around him tighter, kisses him deeper. The heat and humidity of the room means the drag of skin on skin is slick and easy as Bucky shifts against him, making him shiver at the drag and press of all that muscle, all those limbs.

“So, how long do you think this’ll actually last?” Tony asks between dizzying kisses, arching up into it as one of the tentacles slides over his hip, tantalizingly close to his cock.

“Hopefully long enough,” Bucky says with a smirk, and the tentacle wrapped around Tony’s thigh sides a little higher.

“Long enough for what?” Tony demands, faking horror even as a hard shudder runs through him, even though Bucky can no doubt feel it. Hell, Bucky can probably feel the way Tony’s breath catches and his heart starts beating double time in his chest.

Bucky smirks and makes a thoughtful noise, even though Tony is pretty sure he’s been up for at least an hour now thinking about it, and drags one tentacle along the crease of Tony’s thigh while another finally wraps around his cock.

“Long enough to get you spread out for me in this bed,” Bucky says, pressing a soft kiss to his forehead while Tony gasps and rocks his hips up into the touch, “All bare and stretched out and pinned down, long enough to see you lose yourself for me again, how does that sound babydoll?”

Tony can only whimper in response, try to clench his thighs shut just so he can feel the way the tentacles pull them open again. “Good, sounds good,” he pants out because fuck it, why lie, and Bucky is laughing as he leans in to kiss him again.

[none-of-your-biscuits]

Biscuits watching high guardian spice aka little witch wannabes ep 3: I literally fell asleep watching this at one point bc I was that fuckin bored

-I FUCKIN KNEW TALL WOULD HAVE A BOW IT'S THE STEREOTYPES

-their outfits are so fuckin dumb

-this intro reminds me of Christian music for some reason

-why tf is she swinging a sword around and eating at the same time

-also isn't this like a two handed sword why are you like this

-book go bye bye

-it broke?? Bitch you use that to fight and it breaks bc you dropped it on a rock??

-I like Tall she actually thinks

-woah okay was pepto actually like, about to add fantasy racism? Not the twist I was expecting but I'll remember that

-again with the being a little bitch thing, you have MAGIC cast a fuckin SPELL and fix it, it can't be that hard

-or take it to the blacksmith god DAMN

-what was that flashback, the diologue was exceptionally trash as always but what's with the teleporting again

-also why would you leave a weapon laying around when you have kids? That's like leaving a loaded gun on the floor

-oh the creepy teacher is back, yay

-why he walkin so fast damn

-getting creepy vibes again

-yknow, if I inherited a sword from my probably dead mom I'd be more careful with it, but like who let u into this school

-hmm maybe use a weapon that actually fits baby pepto, that's not how swords work, they aren't one size fits all dummy

-flowering thorn? That's a dumb name, none of you are named after actual roses

-you guys wanna be rwby so bad

-why do they have uniforms? Like why would you wear a uniform for like smithing or potions or fighting where it's very likely to get destroyed

-ugh the smith teacher's VA is so annoying SPEAK UP

-woo, talking to urself exposition

-the magic system is gonna be just as garbage as the rest of the show so I don't even care

-got a Spanish ad and thought I was going crazy

-"UR MOM LOL"

-ugh we're gonna have to see more of creepy teacher bc he knows pepto's mom huh

-oh either that's a dead twin or creepy teacher is trans

-"what was she like" u were literally having flashbacks about her you know what she's like u dumb

-guess blondie's gonna die, oh well

-"no swears" please tell me the mature warning isn't for swearing if I have to hear cursing in this horrible diologue I'll cry

-PURPLE!!!

-suddenly I care about this episode

-wait hold up her name is Amaryllis? Is that a spice? Do we finally get a spice named character?

-I'll google it just a sec

-IT'S A FUCKING FLOWER

-IT'S NOT EVEN A PURPLE FLOWER IT'S RED

-Ryll and Snap, the only funny characters so far

-ah i love when she causes problems on purpose

-ooh a non visually impressive cave, move on already

-I hope the glow-crabs kill blondie, we could use less main characters

-tall continues to do nothing

-ew

-I'd be cowering too

-a fuckin furry

-nebbi cat?

-"I am transgender " :D he actually said the word that's nice

-"*gives textbook definition and explains what trans is instead of just moving on*" >:(

-but really isn't this supposed to be a mature audience thing, like adults know what a trans person is you fucks you don't need to explain

-ugh moving on

-oh she's just trigger happy good for her

-"why am I even here" you can leave, nobody is keeping you here my dude

-blood? Is that what the fuckin mature warning is for? You don't goddamn need that for some blood

-pepto's mom broke the sword in battle and pepto broke it by fuckin around while eating subway

-the sideways angle when she was talking was weird

-bored again

-this is dumb I'd rather go back to anyone else

-why are they walking, why aren't they running? They don't have something better to do, do they?

-ew anime romance bubbles

-ugh it's gonna be a thing isn't it

-Tall finally doing something

-pepto continues to be fuckin annoying

-the outro still makes me want to die

-overview I guess

-boring episode about pepto being fucking stupid

-amaryllis continues to be the only entertaining character

-I don't like the trans scene it was so weirdly out of place but also drawn out for an unnecessary long time

-like I don't think pepto actually cares, we know ur just pandering to the audience who, again, if the target audience is supposed to be mature audience they're gonna already know what transgender is

-ugh I zoned out for like half the episode bc it was boring and bad

-also why has it been 3 eps and Tall still hasn't had like more than 5 minutes of screen time, that's weird

-I'm still mad about the spice thing

[chasseurdeloup-retired]

Gimme Gimme Gimme || Otto, Nadia, Dot, Nic, Alain, and Kaden

TIMING: Current LOCATION: The docks SUMMARY: A deal gone wrong

Otto glanced at his unfamiliar reflection in a broken pane of glass double-checking the glamour runes carved into his collar bones were still functioning correctly. Sunken eyes, a thicker jaw and plain brown eyes looked back at him. Different enough from his day to day appearance that he could pass without someone recognising and the spell would hold for a few hours now that it was in place. Hand-offs were always tricky businesses even more so when you didn’t know the other parties you were involving yourself with so precautions had been taken. Namely in bringing Nadia along as back-up along with a trusty shot-gun. Spells were useful in a pinch but if things went sideways little beat the pure destruction the end of a shotgun could bring about. Unfortunately, tricky business was simply the life of a newfound criminal trying to find their footing in a small town full of strife.

He glanced over at Nadia who carried the delivery in a nondescript brown box padded and covered in protective runes as an extra layer of precaution as they made their way into the boating house on the docks where the arranged trade-off had been arranged. Boats bobbed silently, crusted sea-salt clung to several surfaces and the splosh of water was broken by the occasional bay of a seagull outside. They’d scouted the perimeter already, checking their entrances and exits before heading inside and even then Otto kept to the pillars as cover. He checked his watch and when he spoke his voice was an octave lower, “they should be here soon. Not met this person before…” in other words, he didn’t trust them at all. But then again, you didn’t live in this job if you truly trusted anyone

Adjusting the box to one hand and pulling her hood up a little more, Nadia grinned. This was what she really needed. A good job, the potential for a bit of action, a shotgun on her back, and a revolver at her side. And she was back to being more connected with her body again. She’d been hungry that morning. Hungry. It might’ve been because she’d forgotten that she even had to eat, but it had gnawed at her stomach in the most pleasantly painful way. Even better was that she’d been able to go somewhere and grab herself something without worrying about someone looking for her. Plus, Nadia wasn’t fighting, and she was back to being the one in charge. So she was ready for whatever Otto’s job managed to throw her way. Part of her wanted something easy, a quick drop off, nothing major, maybe a bit of smooth talking if need be. But another part of her wanted some action. She’d be thrilled either way.

As Otto caught her eyes, Nadia gave him a wink. He was a fun guy, from the jobs they’d run together before. Almost as good with his words as she was for a guy who didn’t have a built in lie detector and emotional radar. Plus, his magic was wicked cool. Following him in, she leaned against a pillar and waited. “Cool, cool. Well, don’t worry, as long as they’ve got a pulse, I think I can figure them out.” She could read his distrust like a magazine at the dentist’s office, so she wasn’t feeling quite as blase as she might have seemed. If Otto was worried, she should probably be a bit worried, too. But being a little worried was always healthy. She took out her revolver and opened the chamber, making sure it was loaded. The shotgun was double-barrel, two bullets in. Everything looked good to go.

Everyone had a secret talent. Some people could juggle or burp the alphabet backward. Dot’s secret talent was getting involved in the shadier shit a town had going on. Her other secret talent was being able to do a really fast crab walk. She didn’t like that one as much as she liked getting involved in crime though. She loved that. People would ask her to do jobs and most of the time she didn’t care if she was getting paid or not, though she didn’t tell people that part. She liked the thrill of it. Breaking rules was fun and she liked when she made things inconvenient for other people. She wasn’t a career criminal, not even close, but she never said no to a job. It hadn’t taken long after she moved to White Crest for someone to approach her doing something for them. After doing a couple of jobs, she proved that she wasn’t a complete imbecile and then this job was given to her. It was simple, a hand-off, nothing she hadn’t done before.

Walking to the meeting spot, she was glad that she actually took her gun and knife with her this time. She relied on being a siren far more than she really should. As she saw the two in front of her, she popped her lollipop out of her mouth. Grinning at them, she spoke in a cheerful voice,“Hello, lovelies. Are you here waiting for me?” She might not have been an idiot, but she was never professional. “It’s like we’re all having a little secret party,” She shook her shoulders at them. She considered asking them if they wanted a lollipop, but she only had green apple left and those were her favorite.

At the sound of approaching footsteps, Otto lifted his head to eye the newcomer. He didn’t recognise them, but then again he didn’t recognise most people in town on first meetings considering most of them weren’t really memorable enough to truly warrant him paying them all that much attention. But this sort of situation demanded a new sort of attentiveness for a lack of it could cost you so much more if you made the slightest misstep. Yet, that wasn’t the vibe he got from the woman he saw approaching; lollipop and all. It was… intriguing to say the least, her grin was infectious and brought one of Otto’s own about. Cocking his head his eyes sparkled with newfound mischief.

“Seems so darling,” he greeted pushing off the pillar “and it does, doesn’t it? Little rave is just what everyone needs… Let off some steam, have some fun. Shame we don’t have music to set the mood.” He knew Nadia had his back in this, it was one of the few constants he actually trusted in this situation which was saying something, “now as much of a sweet-tooth as I happen to be, I’m curious to see the sweetener to this little party hm?”

Looking at the girl walking towards them, Nadia grinned. Good, a pulse. The other woman’s emotions weren’t nearly as easy to read as Otto’s, but that wasn’t a problem. Nadia only needed a sense of what she was feeling to make sure nothing the wrong sort of shady happened here. Not that there really was a wrong sort of shady. Shady was always fun, even if it went to shit. But, taking in the girl’s appearance, her laid back nature as she had a lollipop of all things in her mouth, Nadia couldn’t help but feel that this was going to be nothing but the good kinds of fun.

“I’m all up for parties,” Nadia said. She jerked her head towards Otto. “This guy throws some of the best, I swear. He might not look like it now, but he’s a fun guy. Isn’t that right, Kelly?” She gave him a wink. She was glad that he trusted her still, even after all that she’d told him. Maybe not completely, maybe not the same way that he had before, but the trust was still there. She could feel it, after all. She hefted the box with their delivery into her arms. “Maybe when all this is said and done, we can actually have a party, to celebrate. Music and everything. And booze. So much booze.”

Maybe she would offer these two her lollipops… They seemed like fun and Dot loved some good fun. She had expected a bunch of people with sticks up their asses who would tell her that she’s too immature to be in this business. The type that took themselves way too seriously. Those people were exhausting at the best of times and she wasn’t doing this to be exhausted. Based on the grins these two had, she liked them so far, but she wasn’t naive enough to forget that this was still a job.

It took quite a bit of self-control to stop herself from beatboxing right there and tell them to dance to the music. Slipping the strap of her bag off her shoulder, she waved it slightly at them. “I think this is the sweetener you’re looking for and that’s what I’m looking for,” She nodded to the box. She liked this part a lot, the anticipation right before a handover. “I know a guy who can get us more than booze,” Dot told the woman, a sparkle in her eyes. Sighing, very dramatically, she continued, “But I guess the job comes first. What was agreed to is in the bag.”

Kaden didn’t know much about the situation at hand, but he knew Nic asked him to be here. That was enough. No matter how weird his relationship was with hunting right now, he wasn’t about to drop his loyalties. If a hunter was in need, one he trusted, he was there. The place by the docks looked sketchy enough, seemed appropriate. “You know what it is we’re looking for, Nic?” he asked, making sure for the fifth time tonight that his gun was loaded properly and ready to go. “Probably a little late to ask for details but if you need all of us here, I’m guessing it’s something big and bad.” He wondered if this was some big monster take down, something like the bounty Montgomery had made a call for a while back. Shit, hadn’t thought about that fucker in a while. The thought of the trophy room sent a shiver down his spine. But he trusted Nic and Alain, despite any differences of ideals they had, would never chop off someone's head and keep it. Which was good enough for him. His brow furrowed as he picked up a sound off in the distance, closer to the boathouses on the docks. Looking in that direction, he saw a small flash of movement and a figure headed into one of them. “Hey,” he whispered, nodding over towards the boathouse. A quick glance back and it was clear where the hunters were headed. Whatever shady shit they were looking for, pretty sure they found it.

While Nicodemus still couldn’t quite wrap his head around what a turn it had been with the Bossman, now known as Roy Chambers, he didn’t question Erin when she told him she might have found a way to figure out what the fuck he was. All he did was agree, make a few calls, then pack up what was necessary before making his way to the agreed upon meeting place. It was gonna be a long night. Shit, it had been awhile since he had worked with one hunter. Let alone a whole gaggle of them. That was just the bounty way. He worked his jaw as he double-checked the edges of the knife he carried. “Reckon it ain’t somethin’ that’s gonna be easy-breezy,” he muttered as he slid it back into its sheath. “But hell, it ain’t ever is.” His fingertips lightly tapped against each other as he cocked his head. Looked toward the same place Kaden had heard the noise. A short nod and a quiet grunt of agreement followed. The calm that settled over him before most hunts began to run its course. “Ain’t no time like the fuckin’ present,” he whispered as he started to move, boots quiet. “We goin’ in quiet or goin’ in loud?”

While Alain was still unsure of why it was that Nic had asked all of them to come here, he was relieved to see that he was not the only clueless one here. It was reassuring to be with familiar faces, and with people he knew he could trust, but some details would have been great. On the one hand, he doubted that she would put them all in mortal danger without warnings, but on the other hand, if the hunter needed back up, this could not be good. “Going in loudly when we have no idea what’s in there, that sounds like a really shitty idea, Nic,” walking beside him, the hunter repressed a yawn. He had managed to get a bit of sleep lately, but he was still having too many nightmares to get rather proper rest. Tired or not, he still would help, because while he never signed up for anything, he had always acted like it was the case. With no idea of what to expect, he had left his sword home and gone for shorter blades, and probably for the best, all things considered.

“Stop yawning, slayer,” Kaden said, giving Alain a small nudge. “Isn’t this your normal hours, anyway? When all the creatures of the night come out and shit?” He was giving the other hunter some grief, sure, but he did kind of hope he wasn’t too exhausted to be here. One mistake on a hunt, especially one like this where the details were sparse and the threat seemingly high, well, that could be deadly. Kaden nodded at the suggestion to keep it quiet as they headed in. There were a few entrances and it was best they split up if they were trying to go for a surprise attack. A few gestures and nods and it was figured out. Kaden creeped up to the side door, listened a moment, and heard voices inside. They seemed occupied. For now. Good enough for him. He did his best to slowly and silently open the door, sneaking through and hiding behind a crate near the entrance. With his pistol in hand, he leaned around the corner to get a better look at what was going on. Three people as far as he could tell. None of them werewolves as far as he knew, either. One guy, didn’t recognize him, two women. The one was also unfamiliar, but the other... Was that… “Nadia?” he found himself saying out loud. Or rather, whoever was in her body. Shit, he didn’t mean to do that. He also didn’t mean to keep walking forward. But he had and he fucking tripped and stumbled over a rope on the ground. Putain. So much for his stealth approach.

They were in the middle of the transaction, the briefcase being opened and the requested black-steel music box embossed with silver images of graeco-figures deifying some strange entity revealed, nestled within a bed of foam to protect it from any harm. “As discussed, acquired and undamaged.” Though not tested, Otto didn’t know what this thing was meant to do but the less he knew the more deniability he had regarding it. Closing the lid once more and clicking it shut the runes engraved across its surface glowed a bright purple before fading from sight once more to prevent anyone untoward tampering with it. “Wonderful, in that case let’s exchange and maybe after this we can all go cele-” but any further remark was cut off, by the sudden intrusion of another voice from a stack of crates nearby. Shit. His eyes cut to the man he didn’t recognise who tripped over the rope in judgemental frustration.

But this stranger’s focus seemed to be on Nadia, recognising her - or recognised the old her most likely. But there were perks to this being the Nadia he’d worked with for so long and on so many occasions. A silent language that a subtle look or expression could convey a thousand messages. So the curious look between Nadia and this stranger and the thin smile that followed spoke volumes. Play him, buy us some time. In the interim, Otto subtly scanned the nearby vicinity for options they could run, but who knew how many more people this dude might’ve brought along. The warehouse might be surrounded.... They had their guns but a firefight was never ideal if it could be avoided.

His eyes passed a few of the boats moored nearby. Maybe if they could rig one up it’d be a decent means of escape… Otto glanced at the other woman unsure if he could trust her or if she’d staged this whole thing. What he did know was he wasn’t going to die because of some fucked over job.

Things were going good. Easy, even. And then Kaden fucking Langley literally tripped his way into the meeting. Nadia pinched the bridge of her nose, trying to maintain her control. But, hey, things were still going well. Just not easy. Well, she didn’t care for easy, anyway. She made sure the box was with the others, and she gave Otto a wink. She knew what to do here. “Heya, Kadie!” she said with a sweet smile, letting it reach her eyes. Nadia Diaz had a great smile. Very charming. Easily disarming. Perfect for getting people to let their guard down, even if they knew they were locking eyes with a rattlesnake. The problem with Kaden was that he knew. He knew what she was, had looked at her and really seen her. He wouldn’t be fooled again. Not for long, at least. But she still had the advantage. He didn’t want to hurt her. Well, actually, he probably wanted to hurt her really, really badly. But he didn’t want to hurt Nadia Diaz. She gave him a wave. “Been a minute, yeah? How’s it going? What are you and your friends doing skulking around the docks at such late hours?” She walked a little closer to him, attempting to block Otto and the other woman to give her partner time to think. She knew the bastard would still be quick on his feet. She just had to play distraction. In a stage whisper, she said, “You know that dangerous people hang around the docks, right?”

For all the things Dot had done, she had never been caught before. Sure, she had gotten in trouble with the cops before, gotten a slap on the wrist for trespassing or some community service for fighting, but this was different. Had he been alone, she would have just gone for her gun, but as Nadia pointed out, he had friends. Her lips pressed as she looked over at Otto, trying to hide the rising panic she felt. She was no professional at this and she knew it. She began to inch towards the door she had come through, bag on her shoulder. The deal wasn’t happening with company. Kaden being here was no good sign. Blanche had liked him, but Dot had never really been around him enough to form an opinion other than ‘fun to make fun of on the internet’. “This is a closed, invite only party,” She chirped, popping her lollipop back in her mouth. “Very exclusive rave you just wandered into and partycrashers are no fun. Unless they’re me, but you’re not me, so no fun,” She rambled around the candy. “So. Shoo.”

Alain had a point and Nicodemus nodded in agreement. “Yup, you got a pretty good fuckin’ point there.” He muttered to Alain as he crouched himself and followed behind Kaden through the door, his own gun drawn and a hand over the knife on his belt. Better to survey the area, get the lay of the land, and--Goddamn it, Kaden. Nicodemus pursed his lips and breathed in sharply. That’s alright, he thought. The rest of them could go around, surprise. And then that was also shot to shit at the word friends. He nodded to himself, resigned. “That’s fine,” he grunted quietly. “Knees gettin’ tired anyway.” The hunter stood and worked his jaw as he walked beside Kaden, pistol resting against his shoulder. He glanced at the briefcase between the three of them. The way it looked, the three of them were all talkers. Time wasters. He sucked at his teeth. “Could save us all some time and fuck off,” he said with a tilt of his head as he took a small step forward. Mediation wasn’t a skill he spent time or money on. “Chattin’ ain’t what we’re here for.”

Alain’s eyebrows raised as he gave Kaden an Italian salute. Of course it was ideal to him for things to be happening at this time of the day, but lately he had had to skip a few cemetery trips in order to rest a little. It would be fine, it had to be fine. Besides, even if he was not at the top of his form, he had to be here for these two hunters. Although that did not mean he would agree with everything they did. Are you fucking kidding me? Breathing out loudly, his eyebrows furrowed as he recognized Nadia. What in the goddamn hell was she doing here? He did not suppose that now would be the time to question her life choices, but from the look on his face, you could get an idea of how disappointed he was. The other two, he did not know, but he was not impressed. “Cute,” he said with a sucking sound of disapproval. Now that their plans of being quiet had gone down the drain, he supposed that the least they could do was not to waste their time trying to have a conversation with these people. “Yeah, let’s get this over with,” he agreed.

Shit. There went the stealth approach once and for all. And it was painfully clear which Nadia he was dealing with. At least he didn’t have to worry about this being some weird hostage situation “Hello Janet,” Kaden replied, using Blanche’s nickname for the ghost with disdain as he stepped out from the shadows, properly this time. He kept his fingers ready on the trigger of his pistol just in case. Nadia was no danger to him, but the ghost, Janet or Cordelia or whoever she was, would kill him without a single remorse. He knew that much. “Funny I could say the same to you. Dangerous and all that. Good thing none of us are out here wandering all alone.” The other hunters had seemingly given up the pretense of stealth as well. He peered around Nadia’s body to get a better look at her cohorts here. “Hey. No one move,” he said, holding his gun up, aimed at the woman trying to make a break for the door in the back. “My invitation is right here so how about you show us what you’ve got there.” Kaden wasn’t sure if these were the calls to be making or what exactly they were here for but if it was to break up something or extract something, it was going to be a lot harder to do if anyone fled. “You wouldn’t want to ditch the party early. We’re just getting started.”

Otto had hoped he could slink away to at least get on board one of the boats, having made it several steps backwards though mindful not to blindly signal his intent or direction with his body language. But as another burlier man stood up behind Kaden holding a pistol he knew this evening was likely very soon going to go to hell in a handbasket. What was it with people and guns? They were so… primitive. But it didn’t change the danger they posed either way. His magic ebbed near to the surface, practically urging him to throw the first shot at these intruders and yet he bided his time. No need to give away his game just yet. He’d purposefully not tapped his reserve at all just in case, always just in case. His leather clad grip tightened on the briefcase handle, shifting it out of the line of sight of these assholes while running through the list of options that were fast running short. Think Nova. One thing they did have in their favour was positioning. These guys were too closely spaced and that tipped the balance in their favour. Maybe if they could carall them some density spells would be enough to immobilise them where they stood. Give them enough time to get the hell out of dodge. The guns were trained on the others for now, that counted for something at least. He took a few more steps, nearing some crates stacked up. Just in case things went sideways, cover never hurt. “Sorry, I was taught better than to hang around and talk to creepy men following me at night. Avidazen.”

“It’s cuter when the kid calls me that,” Nadia said conversationally, one hand on the strap of her shotgun, the other resting near her pistol holster. “Speaking of, let her know I said hey, and I want my gun back.” She pretended to think a bit before she perked back up. “Oh! And tell her next time I won’t fucking miss, ‘kay?” She checked on Otto and the chick that was with them, hoping that the two of them would get out before she had to do anything serious. She took a step towards Kaden as soon as he pulled a gun out. Like second nature, she smoothly pulled her own revolver out and leveled it at him. “Sorry, babe. Put the gun down. I think we both know which of the two of us is more likely to shoot someone, yeah?” Could they not just fucking leave? “Party’s over, folks!” she called out to the people with Kaden. “If you could let us be on our way, that’d be so fucking nice.” She tried to avoid the look of disappointment on… Alain’s (she thought that was Alain’s) face. She needed to stay calm. She needed to keep her cool. She… really fucking wanted to kill Kaden, still. She’d take the shot as soon as they all lowered their guards, and then she was making a break for it.

Bro, Dot was not fucking into this. She was so not into this. “Listen, Kandy, Blanche wouldn’t be happy if you went around shooting her ex girlfriend so like what if you put down the gun and I head out.” Dot loved fights, she really did, but she liked them when guns weren’t drawn. She was pretty out of her fucking depth here. “I don’t want to fight, ‘cause we all who’s gonna win and it ain’t these two,” She nodded toward Otto and Nadia with a shrug. “I mean unless you want me to fight with you guys, would that get me off the hook? I might not be too much help, I’m literally a TA, but I got a gun.That wasn’t a threat to clarify. What do you say Mr. Thickness? Kandy? Tall Napoleon?

Nicodemus wasn’t in the mood. These people talked too fucking much. He sure as shit wasn’t Kandy. Tall Napoleon? Nope. That only left one option. Jesus fucking Christ. He glowered but didn’t move his eyes from the one near the briefcase. He shook his head. “This ain’t a conversation.” His stance shifted and the dirt under his boot crunched. They weren’t going the easy route of just handing off the briefcase, were they? Fine enough. The three hunters had a job to do and they would sure as shit see it through. One way or the other. He spat to the side. His hand tightened around his gun, finger under the trigger guard. A second passed before he took off into a dead sprint. Straight toward the briefcase.

“Blanche? What the fuck does pipsqueak have to do with this? Leave her out of--” Before Kaden could finish, it looked like Nic had the briefcase covered, for now. And he was getting shit started. Great. Fighting was better than talking anyway. “No one leaves til we get what we came here for.” Kaden took a shot at the door, hoping to scare the obnoxious TA lady. Catching Alain’s glance, he gave him a quick nod to her. If he had the TA covered, then that left him free to deal with Janet. He knew Nadia had a gun trained on him and while he had a feeling Nadia would do what she could to save him, bullets fired real fast. He ducked behind a box briefly before taking off towards her. Maybe if he could get there fast enough, disarm her, he could help Nic. If he needed it.

Well shit. Those were the initial thoughts that went through Otto’s mind as Popeye McGee took off in a sprint straight at him. Shoving his hand into his pocket and drawing out a pile of iron filings these were dusted over the briefcase, there was a moment of concentration before an aura of purple seemed to circle the briefcase and seep into its essence with it suddenly becoming heavier in his grip. Backing up towards the dock he extended his arm back fighting against the significantly increased weight “hey now, back the fuck up or I drop it and then nobody gets their due!” With the weight of it now and the water finding it again would be a job for anyone. Not impossible, but more work than whatever this job was worth.

Well those were some crappy nicknames coming from Iago - yes, he had read Othello a while ago - Alain deadpanned as she approached them, probably hoping that she could switch sides like that with no consequences. Considering that she was a skinny woman, and that it didn't take too much to knock someone out (much to most people's surprise), it didn't take much for Alain to get rid of the betrayer and leave her down. Glancing over at the drama queen with the suitcase, the hunter tilted his head to the side and looked over at Kaden to communicate his fed-up-ness with someone, then back at the magician. "You do realize that even if you drop that suitcase, you still have to deal with us next? This doesn't change much for you. Or... Well, it does. It gets things a lot worse."

This was all going to shit. Nadia could see that clearly. Fuck the briefcase, fuck the payment, and fuck that bastard charging at her. It wasn’t particularly smart to run at the woman with a gun trained on you, but Nadia had to give Kaden credit. The guy had balls. Too bad that wasn’t going to save his life. Finger on the trigger, she smiled as he got close and, as she pressed down, gave up control for a brief moment.

Nadia always seemed to be around for the inevitable unhappy ending, and her eyes widened as she watch the bullet from her own gun connect with Kaden’s chest. It was like the cabin all over again. She tried to drop the gun, tried to step forward, but she couldn’t move. She wasn’t really in control at all.

Even though Nadia wanted to gloat, there wasn’t anytime. “Too fucking slow,” she told Kaden before she turned on her heels and started running. “It’s not worth it!” She yelled at Otto, hoping he’d take the hint. They needed to fucking leave.

Kaden was running full out, eyes on Nadia. The gun was drawn, she looked ready to shoot, and Nadia might, but Nadia would never let her. He had to count on that. He had to. He kept running at her. He was sprinting, he almost reached her. Until he didn’t. Something hit him. No. Worse. Something shot him. Putain. Kaden dropped down and screamed out in pain, hand clutching to his chest. Fuck, fuck. Where did it hit? Upper. Near the collarbone. Not heart. Fine. He’d be fine. He hoped. But fuck it hurt. “Fuck off, Janet! I’ll make sure your soul is banished to fucking hell!” He curled up by one of the boxes, hand pressed against the wound, blood spilling out. Aw shit, he saw black at the corners of his vision. He tried to fight it off but he was slipping. He looked around for something to press to the wound, hold it together, so he could hold himself together, too.

The tides were turning fast, one person choked out and a gunshot that echoed across the warehouse with two individuals advancing on his space. Apparently not deterred by the notion of losing the thing they came for. Otto’s eyes slid across to Nadia and then to the pile of cash in the backpack the woman had brought along, with her out cold it was there for the taking. So Otto abruptly dropped the case which hit the ground with a dull thud, shoved his hand out in the direction of the bag and curled his fingers muttering the simple summoning incantation. The bag jerked as if tethered by some unseen force before it arrived in his hand leaving him standing there with the two men making ground fast. His hand shoved once more into his pocket and a scattering of iron filings were tossed out in an arc through which Otto pushed an open palm. The magic radiated in a sudden conical shockwave, reverberating around normal air suddenly growing denser and slowing those that moved through it. Giving him enough time to turn and hightail it after Nadia towards one of the boats. “Unhook the rope! I’ll get the engine!”

Nicodemus breathed in sharply through his nose. If the case went into the water, then the fucker holding it wouldn’t be far behind. He moved with an intensity he hadn’t carried with him before. An intensity that if they didn’t get this fucking job over and done with, there was a lot more to lose. A hell of a lot more. Langley was shot, Alain had knocked someone out, and the two left behind were scrambling. Something slowed his progress and he strained against it, sweat gathering at his temples and the back of his neck. It didn’t matter, he thought, as he continued to brute force through it, muscles and tendons bunched as he worked to push through it. The case had been dropped and as far as he was concerned, he didn’t care if any justice or whatever other asinine bullshit happened. The case was what they came for and it’s what they would leave with. He pushed further, stepped closer. Fuck, he hated magic. Vurals withstanding. Blood gathered between his teeth but it didn’t taste like copper when he managed to get closer to the case. Just a few more steps and his hand would be able to wrap around its handle.

With quick fingers, Nadia untied the rope from the dock, more than anxious to get the hell out of Dodge. But the anxiety, the stress, it wasn’t really hers. She wished she could get rid of it, for good. But at least she had control for the time being. She gave a smirk and waved at the men still left on the docks. Win or lose, it didn’t fucking matter today. She turned around and sank down into one of the boat seats as they drove away, running a hand through her hair and laughing breathlessly. “What a fucking shitshow, huh?” She closed her eyes, not even paying attention to an answer. What a fucking shitshow. She never seemed to get paid enough for these things.

[blackroseraven]

We got there quite early, so I was able to feed horses, which was nice. And then after that, I installed a salt block holder in a post and put a salt block in it, which Q immediately attempted to eat.

We put horses out, with... well, actually little fanfare, apart from the fact horses kept trying to bite me this morning. I don’t even know why, I didn’t even have any treats on me.

We mucked. I was kind of slow. My side was very wet because some of my buckets had been removed but. I was also just kind of a slow ass today so partner ended up having to help my slow ass out more than usual.

So uh. Yesterday, one thing I didn’t mention, is that Other Teacherlady told me to take a saddle that had been donated to the barn. A replica of a cavalry saddle used in reenactments. It was covered in bird poop and dirt and gross and had one stirrup strap and a gross girth and yes.

I removed the stirrup strap, cleaned off the bird poop, and got a good bit of the dust off, and it actually looks kind of decent. I decided to try it out, especially after I noticed it had rings on it that you could definitely attach something to drag from.

Quattro touched it of his own volition, which was really good. But he wasn’t happy to put it on. We also ran into a problem, in that this saddle was clearly meant for like, a pony, and even though he’s almost pony height, he’s got a horse body. So I had to get the biggest girth I could find, like, a Jaeger-sized girth, and that finally fit around his barrel and let me get the saddle on him.

So we started off, and he was doing his crab walk sideways-walking thing at first, very anxious and apprehensive. He let me get on him no problem, though, and our first lap or two was fine. We actually didn’t hit any major snags until we went in the other direction, and I think something also spooked him because he kind of blasted off all at once and when I tried to do a hard stop he nearly went up the wall.

So like. The saddle is designed so it pushes my legs really forwards so it makes me sore, on top of the fact I never use saddles, right? Which is a negative. But on the flip side, even without stirrups, the way the saddle is designed meant that my leg actually caught against the like, weird blockers it has and it actually stopped me completely from being thrown off.

That was neat.

We kept going, and of course the anxiety switch flipped off and the grump switch flipped on shortly after. And it is just, like, an instantaneous switch. He goes from scared to mad the moment he realizes it’s not going to hurt him and starts huffing and grousing and yes. But I was glad to see it. It meant I was able to nudge him a little more, so I got him to do some really nice laps around the arena and circles and stuff before I got off him.

I got Q afterwards. We did a short little ride after I wrestled him in the crossties, because my gods are his manners terrible. I really have to spend more time with him just. With him, reminding him not to be a jerkass.

He was pretty good for the little ride we did, though. Very excited, but. Overall pretty cooperative. Back to being a jerk the moment we went back down to the crossties, though.

Definitely gotta find more time for him, too. 

Always need more time for all these horses.

[inspirationdivine]

The Best First Impressions || Morgan & Lydia

Lydia and Morgan finally meet. It’s a time. 

(drug manipulation tw)

It was a warm spring day. There was no breeze, and the sun shone brightly overhead. Lydia wasn’t the only one headed to the beach, but she’d recently stumbled across a little alcove that was tricky to reach, so few people did. The jagged, uneven boulders that blocked the way in would challenge even those with the best balance. Fortunately, Lydia had a winged advantage that helped her balance, and with no one watching, she was over in no time. Only a small handful of people were here, most lazying in the sun. Setting down her beach towel, Lydia slid off her dress to reveal a yellow bikini, and promptly waded into the water, shivering in delight at the liquid chill. 

Morgan had grown guilty over sinking down in the pool so often and found that a steady walk to the beach offered a different brand of nothing to fill the day with. The ocean had its own movement, it’s own pressure, so fierce it seemed like chaos. She let out the air in her lungs slowly and sank, eyes open, deep into the current as the waters churned and her body was carried back and forth in the saddest lullaby rock. But dead girls didn’t sleep. And sometimes, Morgan thought, they didn’t think much of a little mischief. A woman’s leg passed her as she drifted. She reached up and found she could just graze her skin. With the weight of the ocean pressing around her, the pressure was so faint it was more akin to grazing the idea of skin, the concept of a body. When it passed again. Morgan grabbed her ankle and pulled, just long enough to submerge her hair and bring her face to face with Morgan’s dead eyed stare. She was pretty, she thought distantly. She almost felt bad for ruining her perfect hair. Morgan let go and watched her. 

Of course, at such low tide it wasn’t surprising that the seaweed was thick in the water as she swam along. It brushed along her calf, but Lydia was no spring chicken and knew better than to startle at such a minor thing. The water was so cold it was soothing, refreshing her mind and pulling her away from nicotine stained painting and surly humans. It stopped being soothing, naturally, the moment a claw wrapped around her ankle and dragged her underwater. Her wings plunged underwater as Lydia tried to get her bearings, blinking a few times before seeing the face in the water in front of her, pale and dead in appearance. Lydia shrieked soundlessly, bubbles erupting  in front of her as Lydia writhed to be released. It - whatever the hell it was - let her go and Lydia gasped as she broke the surface, coughing and hacking up water as she struggled straight for the shore, looking frantically behind her at the dangerous depths. Wasn’t anywhere in this town pleasant?

Morgan stayed where she was a moment, watching the woman retreat before the waves pushed her ashore enough to make breaking the surface easy. Somewhere faraway, she imagined she was falling too easily into these petty crimes against social norms and decency. But the look on people’s faces, the wrongness of it all, struck something familiar inside Morgan that she couldn’t get to on her own. It brought her almost up to a real feeling. She lifted her head above the waves and spouted an arc of water from her mouth. “Careful out here, the beach can be a weird place,” she said. She crawled up the sandy floor and lay where the water could leave the faintest of scratches on her skin as it washed over and back, not noticing the clams scuttling up behind her. 

It had followed her up. The woman had followed her up - Lydia realised, not a mindless beast at all but a prankster. Coughing, Lydia rolled her shoulders to dry her elytra and wings, glamoured as they were. “Oh, you’ve had your fun, haven’t you?” As her heart slowed, Lydia became less afraid, and more impressed. It was at the very core of who fae were, after all. Tricksters and mischief. Lydia coughed again, the salt water burning the back of her throat. Perhaps not too impressed. Her eyes slid past Morgan as the sands began to shift. “You should take your own advice. Behind you!”

Morgan shrugged in reply to the woman’s question. She was taking this all very well for someone who had been frightened enough to scream. She wondered if something had happened to her to make her used to this sort of thing. She certainly didn’t look very dead, so it couldn’t be that. “I have a lot of time on my hands,” she deadpanned. And try as she might, no walk or scare was going to change that. There was no running out, no sleep, only another hour to fill and another one after that. So there was no alarm when she turned and saw the giant clams toddling up on strange spindly legs. She inched back on the sand. They looked like some nightmare version of a children’s cartoon. Too big for their feet and too strange and real to be cute. She continued to stare as one of them opened its strange clam mouth and chomped eagerly on her toes. “Shit,” she said. More mystified than anything else. She inched farther away and held up her foot, toe bones already sprouting back, for the woman to see. “Did you know it was gonna do that?” She asked. 

"I can tell, accosting strangers like that," Lydia replied haughtily. "Perhaps you should consider a hobby." She wrung out her hair, watching the other warily. And then watching as the large clans arose, on squishy tendrils that didn't look like any creature she'd ever seen. Lydia didn't feel as alarmed as perhaps she should have. She watched distantly as it descended on the other woman's toes. In fact, Lydia surprised herself with a giggle. Blood oozed out of Morgan's foot, followed by bones. In the background, people were screaming. "Nope! Oh look - it might do it again!" Lydia chuckled as the clam wandered closer, looking to take another bite.

Morgan looked quizzically at her foot, which was already red with muscle and tapering with raw skin. The woman seemed to be okay, to think it was even funny and well, as Morgan lowered her foot to the giant clam and pulled away again, teasing it as she would her cat Anya. The clam snapped and scuttled, agitated, and maybe it was the breath Morgan drew to ask (because, seriously, this had freaked Erin out into logging off on her and she saw dead parts all the time), but it became kind of funny to her too. Elsewhere on the beach, people were falling over as the clams munched on their lively flesh. At least one foot of a sunbeather was not growing back anytime soon. Morgan snorted and continued her tug of war. “Shit you’re right!” She said, as the bone broke clean off and she crab walked back a few feet to show off again. “Come and see!”

Lydia watched with a wide grin on her face as Morgan teased the clam with her foot, swinging it too and fro. It bit her and Lydia gasped “Oh! You’re a zombie! That explains so much! I do not think my limbs would-” Morgan’s leg snapped off. “Oh you naughty little thing. Darling, does that hurt? No- no, don’t bite me!” Lydia giggled as she hopped back, out of the beast’s reach. This was so bizarre. The most bizarre thing was that Lydia aborred gore.. She had absolutely no stomach for it whatsoever. Yet here she was, laughing as veins and flesh stitched themselves together. Something was entirely wrong and Lydia could not find it in herself to care a single iota. 

Morgan gasped with delight. “Oh my god! You know what I am!” She kicked the clam back with her other leg and got to her feet, giggling, beside herself as it bowled into another one and flailed like a turtle on its back. She staggered up to the woman, clumsy on her still-growing feet. “No one in town knows what I am unless I tell them! They’re so dumb!” She stumbled into her, laughing still. When was the last time she’d actually laughed like this? She didn’t even remember anything being this funny when she was alive. “It doesn't hurt like you’d think. I can’t feel anything like you’d think. Not my feet, or my girlfriend, or the ocean. You know it’s just kinda heavy, like melted jello! What are you? You’re too smart to be norma--oh look!” Another beachcomber bit the dust, arms flailing like they were going down a waterslide and not into a fat clammy mouth.

“Your leg is regrowing as we speak! It is completely obvious! However, I bet you don’t grow legs every time you meet someone. Oh!” Lydia gasped, giggling so much she was finding it hard to breath. “Those humans dying bloodily over there don’t bother you too much, do they? Good grief, now that is a sight!” She disgracefully snorted in between her laughter as a human was pulled apart by two clams playing the most darling game of tug of war. “Oh, I feel so many things. All the time! It’s just so much sometimes.” She put her hands on Morgans shoulder as more laughter bubbled out of her belly. “You know I think-  I think-” She booped Morgan on the nose and giggled some more, “I think we’ve been drugged- Oh no!” As the clam surged forward, snapping at Morgan’s ankle, Lydia tried to pull the other woman out of the way, and instead stumbled so that they fell backwards, Morgan landing on top of her. Lydia’s burst out laughing again, like a teenage school girl with far too much soda in her belly. 

They went crashing down together and Morgan barely stopped her nose from cracking against the woman’s, hands bracing herself on either side of her damp head. She burst out laughing in her face and rolled off splashing sand in her hair. “Drugged! That’s--that’s the word! Mmhm, too smart to be normal--oh!” There went another set of toes. Morgan staggered up drunkenly and pulled her new friend with her. “We have to get you out of here before you’re dead like me. I did that, you know? And now look at me!” She bent her head sideways as if she might dislocate her head, then pushed them further up the shore, towards the road, squealing. “Ooh, we names, otherwise, imma call you Sandy, Sandy.” 

Lydia giggled, grabbing her purse as Morgan staggered upright and pulled her with her. “Yes yes I agree! I’m not human so I would just be dead dead which would suck there is so much I still want to do!” She followed Morgan up the shore, shaking sand out of her hair. “This is your fault! First you got me wet -”Lydia giggle snorted at that, clutching at her belly- “Then you threw sand in my hair. Hey!” A car honked them as it buzzed passed, and she pulled Morgan onto the other side of the road. “I’m Lydia. And who are you, trickster drowner zombie… person!” Lydia clearly thought this was the height of wit, snickering again.

Morgan blew a raspberry at the passing car as she flashed it the finger. She turned back to Lydia, grinning, and got up on her toes to help brush out more of the sand. “Morgan,” she replied. “I mean you could call me trickster zombie, but Morgan comes off way easier to say. And I didn’t reeeally drown you. I let you go on purpose, you know. Do I get your other card, Lydia, or is that a secret? I’ll give you a whole finger if you tell me,” she said, waggling her brows with amusement. Just don’t set it on anything pretty, it turns to goop after a while.” She laughed again, but it was more effortful to draw air to make her laughter float float as it had before.

“Morgan! That’s fun.” Lydia rolled her eyes and snorted. “You drowned me a little! Did I mention the hair getting wet?” Tragically, the more she spoke, the more she began to cringe at herself, especially the giggling and childish speaking. “Please, no fingers. I already have a dear friend who gives me bones and dead gifts. Keep your finger. Or donate it to the clams. Up to you. Let’s just say I’m much more upset about getting my wings wet than my hair.” Lydia shivered, still in a bikini, still covered in sand and still completely wet. Looking at the pair of them, Lydia couldn’t help but laugh at the situation, sitting down on a grassy embankment. “Do you think that’s a common occurence?”

“Well my humblest apologies for the fright. I didn’t know you were gonna be so nice,”Morgan said, frothing up with one more giggle as she joined Lydia on the grass. She hadn’t cared about how Lydia had felt at all was the thing. It was one of the strange twists of not being able to feel right. Everything was far away, especially strangers. She worked on squeezing out the water from her own hair and clearing off the sand from her one piece bathing suit and shorts. She had to concentrate, eyes on each gesture so she could tell when she was actually done. “You have a friend like that?” She asked. It sounded like Deirdre’s language, but she was sobering up enough to want to hold her tongue. “Your--oh. I see. Um...yeah, that’s...a good idea. They didn’t get hurt, did they? Or the rest of you? I can’t tell, you know. I try, but it’s only been a little while since I became...this.” She looked over at the bloody beach and back to the road. “I don’t know,” she admitted. “This whole place seems kind of cursed if you ask me. Hopefully not too common. It’d be nice to be able to come back.”

“Indeed. I don’t much share her fondness of death, but she’s one of my favourite people in town,” Lydia mused, settling back to look at the blue sky over had, as goosebumps ran up her body. “No. Although I suspect if we’d stayed giggling much longer I would have ended up like those humans over there. What do you think? Six deaths? It might even make it into the paper.” Sighing, Lydia shook her head, because human death was no longer as amusing as it had been a few minutes ago, and now it was starting to make her feel a little nauseous. At least she had company to distract herself. “So you can pretend to drown more people?” Lydia asked with a wry tongue in cheek smile as she looked the young zombie over. “New to being a zombie, but not new to the supernatural. No wonder you’re filling your time with underwater trickery. The clams weren’t there last time I went to that specific alcove, which is all the more pity. Perhaps now they’ve eaten they’ll return to nests… or whatever it is that clams do.”

“She is, huh?” Morgan said softly, her smile turning lopsided. In the fae world in town, as far as she knew, that could only be Deirdre. She turned her attention back to the sand on her shorts to avoid any telling attention from Lydia. To be with a human was, apparently, unspeakably wrong, but was a zombie much better? She could live as long as they could, and she could...do other things, she supposed, not that she could think of any. “I guess if she’s like you, she’d be pretty tough to beat,” she shrugged. “And I don’t…” she hesitated, trying to be as truthful as possible without embarrassing herself. “It was just kind of an impulse,” she said. “I don’t make it a habit...underwater, at least. I did grab an ankle in a graveyard yesterday, though. They ran away before I could say anything else. Um...I didn’t used to be like this.” Well, she had sold rocks to lonely old ladies in Arizona and hockey moms and desperate teenagers. And she had helped Vera land a monkey’s paw. And Kaden that bowl. But it had seemed different then. No one, at least, had screamed. Or run for the hills. She looked over her shoulder at the carnage, which appeared to be dying down at last. She winced. Those poor people. And those body fragments, split and bleeding into the sand, the muscle still red and-- Morgan looked back to the street, hands over her stomach. “However many it is, it’s not pretty. But maybe the rest of the world will catch a break, yeah. Do you, um, need help getting to your car or anything?” She offered. She didn’t feel any hunger pull from here, not while she was looking away, but she felt better getting on the move sooner.

Lydia’s eyes flicked sideways to Morgan, at that small sweet smile, but didn’t say anything at all about it. Recently dead zombie with a girlfriend? There were probably not that many in town, after all. “You don’t have to defend yourself to me. I’m fae, we’re fans of trickery, however temporarily frightening it may be. I have no doubt you’ve changed plenty, recently, there is not shame in that” She turned her gaze to the beach, the bloodied sand as cars began to slow and take out their phones to document the carnage. She wondered if anyone had called animal control, or an ambulance. It didn’t seem likely. Lydia shrugged, looking back at Morgan as she rose to her feet. “No, I don’t need any help, but if you’d like to walk with me, then I’d certainly like the company.” Lydia replied. “At the very least, I’d like to get to know the woman Deirdre is so fond of a little better in person.”

Morgan’s confidence lasted only until Lydia dropped her girlfriend’s name. She went still, a deer in a trap, and opened her mouth stupidly, saying nothing. “How--how do you--” She was doing a terrible job of discretion. If it had been a gamble before, it was confirmed now. She hadn’t even needed the ability to blush. “You said...she’s one of your favorite people. A-are you..are you the one she told about me?” She was careful online, though she no longer flirted with other women. They had only been out a few times, and Deirdre, in an unwitting twist of luck, had a way of going on things that looked like dates, but that she insisted were nothing of the kind. Maybe it was safe. How else could anyone know? “You should know I’m bound not to say what she is. She offered to release me, but I said no. I want her to be as safe as possible.” She searched Lydia’s face, but her coyness was inscrutable. “Um...anyway...a walk is good.” She looked guiltily back at the beach and lamented not having her new phone with her. Someone else would surely call for help though. “You can lead the way I guess.”

“She told me when you died, although she certainly hadn’t planned to.” No human was worth a rift between them, but that didn’t make Lydia curious. Perhaps it was folly to hope that there would be something special in this one, that continued to shine through now she was a zombie. She had to have been extraordinary. It was the only way Lydia could reconcile it in her mind. “As you should. Promises should be kept regardless of the magical intent holding them. Darling, I have no plans to trick you into revealing something you would rather not.” Not that Lydia would need to plan it, if it came to that. Lydia smiled, holding her handbag close as she began walking to her car, careful not to expose her bare feet to anything dirty in the grass. Ugh, driving would be quite the nightmare. 

“Thank you, for being there for her,” Morgan said. “I mean I know you--it’s nothing to do with me, I know that, but still. Thank you.” She offered a tentative smile. It was too late to wipe the ‘please like me’ look from her face, so Morgan shifted her attention ahead of them and hoped that when the clam juice had altogether worn off, Lydia thought the whole ocean incident was still a harmless, fae-tastic time. “And I agree, about promises. I mean, I’m dead so magic isn’t really…” She couldn’t finish the thought and shrugged it off like a bad chill. “But I never needed the magic before, so it feels the same, so I just pretend that it’s still...yeah. So,” she tried to imitate her brighter, livelier self, “How long have you two known each other? This place is good for making fast friends, I’ve found.”

“Just don’t die again. That would be rather unfortunate,” Lydia replied, looking at Morgan with a raised eyebrow. “Deirdre has kept your confidence, I know very little about you, nor the circumstances of your death. All I know is that Deirdre was so upset that she could barely keep herself standing with the weight of it. I don’t want to see her like that again.” Just as quickly as her sterness had appeared, she smiled again. “I have no doubt she appreciates it. We’ve known each other four months, I think? We met at Al’s diner of all places, but we have a lot in common. Like you say, we clicked fast. So how did you meet her?”

“I don’t want to do that to her either,” Morgan replied firmly. It was true, and all the more difficult for how her presence seemed to carry that kind of grief in her wake no matter what she did. “I didn’t plan on dying. But, I was cursed, and I was looking for a cure, and some ghost--jerk,” Now that they were both more themselves, Lydia seemed too proper to swear in front of. “Wrecked my spell to get answers and loosed the poltergeist I was interrogating on me, and then I died. And then someone tried to help me, and...here we are today.” Not the whole, detailed truth, but the gist. She sighed, helping her to drop the anger hiding below her over her mortal life. Had to work on her first impression. “That’s really nice,” she said, in a way she hoped sounded light and friendly. “We started talking on the social network, every day, without really meaning to. And then I met her at karaoke night, just out of the blue. She has the most incredible--” Everything. “The most beautiful voice, if you haven’t heard her before. And Al’s really does have the best pie. We’ve had some good memories there too.” And some less great. Morgan remembered coloring them fondly because everything had worked out alright in the end, but had it? Had it been worth it to lose her to this? Would it still be worth it if Morgan didn’t know how to come back?

So she’d beat the curse, Lydia thought, but heard enough frustration on Morgan’s voice not to say it. No wonder the woman was angry, though, for someone else to change her life so much, so cruelly. Even if it had turned out for the better. Morgan would at least come close to deserving Deirdre now. But like with Regan, understanding that would take time. “I’ve not heard her sing before, no. It sounds like you’ve had a lovely time together.” Smitten. As she should be, for a woman like Deirdre. Lydia pulled her key from her purse and clicked open her car. “Do you want a ride?”

“We did. Lots of them, really. She’s amazing,” Morgan murmured wistfully. Realizing she was no longer sharing anything useful but staring off into space, remembering shared slices of pie at Al’s, weekends up late with Grey’s, and mornings with lazy breakfasts and braiding her soft hair. The cemetery dates, the dinners, nights talking with nothing but wine sustaining them. They’d been happy, so happy Morgan had gotten reckless with her life. And now they were...here. Like this. She looked back at Lydia. “I’d really appreciate that, actually. I walked, and it is far, even if I don’t get normally tired. If you’re really sure it’s okay?”

“Of course she is.” Lydia replied, eyeing Morgan as the Zombie gazed into the middle distance. Deirdre was wonderful, charming, and at time a little unusual, but it added to her charm. She wasn’t yet convinced by this newly-unhuman person. She certainly couldn’t imagine what Deirdre could have seen in her before. Of course, Lydia had been wrong before. She smiled amicably. “I wouldn’t offer if I didn’t mean it, my dear. You’ll have to tell me your address, though. Or wherever it is you want to go.”

“O-oh. Right.” Morgan sputtered under Lydia’s strange matter-of-course grace and airs. She wanted to know what she really thought about--anything, really. She couldn’t tell if she liked her or was just humoring her, and whether or not this was some kind of weird fae best friend test. She gave Lydia a small, sheepish smile that didn’t sit right with her. She gave it up quickly and said, “Just...home. I mean, Deirdre’s.” She gave the address and folded her hands over themselves as if she might break something. “Thank you, Lydia. Really. We should...I don’t know. Meet properly. Less trickery, maybe some drinks. I was good at cooking, before I died. And I know a lot of fae-friendly recipes now.”

Deirdre liked her secrets, it appeared. As Lydia quickly realised when Morgan gave the address, she actually had no idea where the fae lived. As Lydia settled in to drive, she looked over at Morgan one last time, and offered a genuine smile. “Drinks sometime would be wonderful, darling.” In so many ways, the zombie still behaved so very human. That was okay, though; it was entirely fixable. 

[twitchesandstitches]

Tiny Friends in the Dark

“Why is there even a sewer here!?” Sussy cried out, stamping a quarter of her blobby lower section against a catwalk.

The sound echoed against the long corridor; ancient netal seemed to creak faintly, as if in response. Liquid flowed beneath them; fortunately, it was only industrial waste of some kind, produced by the mysterious processes of the hab. It had to be doing something, with all its machinery clicking away to at times unknowable purpose, and after eons without any maintenance, it couldn’t be a terribly efficient process.

Tia looked around, light spreading out from her as if the various glowing patches on her body were mounted flashlights; she’d turned up the bioluminesce of her body to extremely high levels, enough to shed light. It displayed long tunnels, and other ones twisting away upwards and downwards, and walkways over the whole thing. “I’m not sure it is a sewer, y’know?”

Sussy gave her a look from somewhere around Tia’s chubby belly. “It’s way below the other chambers, there’s weird stuff flowing underneath us. It’s a sewer.”

“I don’t think most sewers are designed for people to walk around in ‘em. Like, there’s those walkways EVERYWHERE. I know sewers have maintenance access ways for people to fix junk, but they ain’t designed for people to, you know. Move around in them. This place super looks like it was!”

Sussy gave her a sideways look again, but her bubbling hair eased into a low-grade carbonation. Like a volcano that might erupt in the future, but not right now. “...How do you know about sewer stuff anyway.”

“Oh, I used to live in places like this,” Tia said indifferently as she took the lead, her massive tail rising upwards and beaming a particularly huge light from the tip of her tail to light the way forwards. “I um. You know, what’s the word? Picked up some stuff here and there.”

Sussy stopped. Her whole body became extremely blobby; her embarrassment and mortification so heavy that she lost cohesion. “OH. Um.” She took a long moment to figure out what she could possibly say to that. “Sorry, buddy.”

“It’s alright.” Tia’s tone was mildly reproachful, but she seemed sincere enough. Her hair glistened a brighter shade of pink, and began to glow a bright neon color; her hair tentacles rose up, masses of latex-like jelly swelling up with a solidified form of raw magical power, rapidly converting into a semi-solid substance that looked like liquid light. It shone vibrant colors distinct from her usual fuchsia hair, the blues and purples flickering steadily, but Sussy had seen that before. She had no doubt that if hostiles revealed themselves, those tentacles would be fully capable of firing potent neon beam attacks; independently, at every angle, whether in burst fire or sustained beams.

They also made good flashlights. The glare of them swept the floors, right over a tiny crab-like robot. Unexpectedly, it turned towards them, tiny forelimbs clattering in something like alarm. Tia stopped where she was, surprised. “Uh, hey there?”

Sussy put a hand on Tia’s massive hip. “What is that?”

“I don’t know. Kind of looks like some kind of service bot.” It looked old, or at least like an extremely old design. It was a squat thing, roughly the size of the smallest of the cats that had colonized Tia’s migrating living quarters, and it’s forelimbs only resembled crustacean-type claws, splitting apart into small and very dexterous fingers. It was hard to appreciate this detail; the creature was covered in complex burn marks, careful cuts that closely resembled ancient hieroglyphs, and discolorations of it’s paint job.

It all looked very deliberate, suggestive of a cultural mentality and practices unknown to either of them. And its small optics were blinking up at them with something like awareness.

Tia waved at it.

Sussy hesitated; it looked small, sure. But they had been under constant attack ever since they’d been marooned up here, and pretty much everything they’d met here had been hostile, actively opposed to the continued existence of mortal life as it presently existed, or outright malevolent on an existential level. Most often, all three at once.

Still, there were heroic things you just had to do, and she prided herself on being an ideal heroine. She waved too, doing her best not to look frightening.

After a long moment, tensioned growing thick like a string about to snap, the robot cautiously brought up a little forelimb and waved back.

And then, under the lights, it retreated into the dark.

“Where’d that little guy come from?” Sussy wondered, after the moment passed.

“It looked like it had been here a really long time,” Tia said, mostly to herself. “...Sussy. Do you think it’s been living here all this time?”

“Define ‘all this time’.”

“Since this place was built.”

Sussy glanced up at her, and realized what Tia was getting at. “Honey, you know this hab was commissioned way over a few thousand years, right?”

“Best as we can tell, I know. But think about it. Didn’t that little guy look like a maintenance robot?”

“I guess so. Are you suggesting that they made maintenance bots for this place, and they’re still here?”

“Maybe. Locked up in these lower levels, until we opened it up by messing with stuff? And it's been so long that they might have… woke up. Gotten smart.”

“To achieve their own culture and sapience? It’s not unheard of.” Sussy mused. “Still, the demons and other things have been here for a really long time; they’d be a threat even to the robots. I don’t know how they would have defended themselves.”

Tia moved on. Best to leave them to their own devices. “Well, I’m guessing, long as we don’t antagonize them, we won’t have to find out first hand!”

And in the dark, many small, mechanical forms watch them go.

Ten thousand pairs of optics studied them, curiously.

Strangers, but not mean strangers.

That was new, they reckoned in their fashion. Newness demanded… investigation.

They scurried away, into the secret paths only they knew. An attentive mind might notice that a lot of them had fae teeth, demon bones, and other trophies mounted directly onto their frames.

[sciencespies]

Elusive, Ultra-Black Fish Are Cloaked to Survive in the Deep Ocean

https://sciencespies.com/nature/elusive-ultra-black-fish-are-cloaked-to-survive-in-the-deep-ocean/

Elusive, Ultra-Black Fish Are Cloaked to Survive in the Deep Ocean

Fish have essentially three options to survive in the deep-sea where there are few places to hide: be big, be fast or be invisible. Being big and fast takes a lot of energy, which requires a lot of food. Being invisible, on the other hand, may be a better strategy for escaping predators and moving through the water undetected by prey. In a new study published last week in Current Biology, researchers have discovered an evolutionary tactic that gives some fishes an invisibility cloak. For the first time, an ultra-black skin color or pigmentation that protects 16 varieties of deep-sea fishes has been documented and studying the efficient survival tactic could provide insight into developing new synthetic camouflage materials as well as have implications for the understanding and treatment of skin cancers.

Ninety-nine percent of habitable space on the planet is in the ocean, and we have only begun to understand the diversity of animals that call the sea home and how they have adapted to unique underwater environments. The “mid-ocean,” which is not at the bottom nor at the surface, is an especially challenging habitat to survive in.

“You have no place to rest, you have no place to hide, you have very little food available, and it’s really dark,” says Karen Osborn, a marine biologist at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History, and one of the authors of the study. “There are all these weird things that are quite different than most of the other habitats that we think about, even the deep-sea floor. And subsequently, most of the animals that live out there look really weird.”

Enter the ultra-black fishes, several species that can move with stealth in this challenging environment. Osborn and her colleagues had been studying how the skin and surfaces of fishes and other animals help the animals to survive. Some crustaceans, for example, are transparent, but if light shines on them, they can be easily detected. These creatures have developed anti-reflective coatings on their shells to help reduce glare that would give them away to predators. While netting crabs, Osborn and her team happened to pull up a fangtooth fish, which, try as they might, the researchers just couldn’t get a good photograph of the creature. Why, wondered Osborn? It turns out, the skin of the fish was simply unphotogenic—the tissue was absorbing a whooping 99.5 percent of the camera’s light.

Other ultra-black animals, like birds-of-paradise, some butterflies, beetles and snakes carry the light-absorbing pigment along with bright, vibrant colors that combine to create an eye-catching display. Against the ultra-black, colors just pop. And the effect works to signal danger warnings to would-be predators and come-hither messages to potential mates. But rather than using the strategy to draw attention to themselves, the ultra-black fish in the middle ocean simply disappear.

Using microscopy to examine tissue samples from non-black fishes, black fishes and the ultra-black fishes, they found that the ultra-black fishes had unique patterns and organizing principles in the pigment cells of their skin.

(Karen Osborn / Smithsonian NMNH )

The fangtooth fish was one of 16 species of ultra-black fishes that the researchers have since identified. To be classified as ultra-black, the bar was high. Like the fangtooth, the researchers were looking for fish skin that reflected less than .5 percent of light across the visible spectrum. They collected deep-sea fish specimens from 18 different species and used a special black-reflectance light probe to measure the angles and the amount of light that were absorbed. They found that 16 of the species qualified. By comparison, man-made black materials reflect ten percent of light, and other black fish reflect two to three percent, giving ultra-black species a six-fold advantage when it comes to hiding.

“It’s a splendid exercise in quantifying blackness,” says Peter Herring, marine biologist and author of The Biology of the Deep Ocean, who wasn’t part of the study team. “Deep-sea fishes are routinely described as inky black or velvet black, so it’s nice to have some numerical basis. On an intuitive level one might think that just two percent reflectance would be good enough, but if you get a six-times improvement then no doubt an evolutionary [advantage] could have occurred.”

After seeing the results of the reflectivity measurements, the researchers dug deeper to find out how the fishes were capable of such expert-level camouflage. Using microscopy to examine tissue samples from non-black fishes, black fishes and the ultra-black fishes, they found that the ultra-black fishes had unique patterns and organizing principles in the pigment cells of their skin.

Every fish produces melanin; it is the same chemical found in human skin that protects from UV light. Melanin is produced in much the same way across species. But when researchers examined the tissue of ultra-black fish skin, the researchers found that their melanosomes, or the cells that hold the pigmenting chemical, were different in three important ways. The cells were more densely packed, larger, and capsule-shaped rather than rounded. Because of this structure, photons of light that hit the surface of the fishes’ skin are absorbed not only by the cell they hit, but the light also gets sucked sideways into the cells next to it.

“So basically, by changing the shape and the size of those granules,” says Osborne, instead of letting light that’s not immediately absorbed escape and signal their presence, “they control it so that the light goes into the layer and side-scatters into the granules next to it.”

To be classified as ultra-black, the bar was high. Like the fangtooth (above), the researchers were looking for fish skin that reflected less than .5 percent of light across the visible spectrum.

(Karen Osborn / Smithsonian NMNH)

But given the vastness and darkness of the deep ocean, how much of a difference does it actually make if a fish absorbs three percent of light or .5 percent of light, and where is that light coming from anyway? Because very little sunlight reaches these regions, any light that is produced is typically coming from another organism—like those that use bioluminescence—and there is a good chance that that organism is looking for a meal.

“There is a ton of animals down there, but their density is relatively low, which means you probably very rarely meet your lunch. So, when you do meet your lunch, you want to make sure that you catch it,” says Ron Douglas, a marine biologist at the City University of London who studies visual systems and who was also not part of the study team.

Water molecules scatter what little light there is and so the sight distance for most underwater organisms is not very far, says Douglas. “We’re talking probably inches. But let’s say if you can be seen from six feet or one foot, that makes a hell of a difference in terms of [escaping]. Reflective percentages of a couple of percent doesn’t seem like a lot, but it’s very significant.”

The researchers investigating this evolutionary survival tool say that the tissue structure has wide applications. Melanin, a type of chemical that can release or absorb free radicals of oxygen that can damage cells, is packaged inside melanosomes, to keep it contained as it travels to the outer layers of the skin. Typically, these cells are loosely spaced out around the skin. In ultra-black fish skin, melanosomes somehow protect the skin without damaging the rest of the creature’s cells or organs even as they form a dense, continuous layer that might otherwise be indicative of disease. “Basically, these fish look like they have melanoma all over their body,” says Osborn. Oncology and dermatology researchers want to learn more about how the chemical is managed or controlled in fish skin.

In addition to creating a layer of camouflage, melanin can also absorb X-rays, radiation and heavy metals, which is why ultra-black skin in fishes has piqued the interest of material scientists. According to Osborn, Naval researchers, for example, are interested in how this discovery might aid them in developing coatings for submarines and other vessels. “If you were to make, let’s say, armor that had melanin on the outside, you would be great for night ops, or able to walk through Chernobyl and be safe,” she says.

“Everybody wants to be stealthy,” Osborn adds. And ultra-black fish have stealthy down to a science.

#Nature

[huntikjunktik]

What are the Huntik team’s biggest fears? (Including Cherit if that’s okay?) Thanks.

Okay, I’m gonna do one serious to canon (since we sort of see the main team’s biggest fears in their visions in the second season), and then one silly/not super relevant to canon one. And of course I’ll do my boy Cherit!

Dante

• His biggest fear is failing the team as their leader. This means leaving them to do things on their own when they aren’t capable whether it is because he is dead or incapacitated. He is also equally afraid of betraying the faith Zhalia has finally put in him.

• He’s afraid of hooking himself when he’s fishing. He has never once hooked himself with a barbed hook and, while he knows it would be very mild, the thought of it does scare him. Mostly because it would hurt his pride when he had to go to the hospital to get it removed.

Zhalia

• Zhalia’s biggest fear is her past coming back for her and hurting the people she has come to care about. She’s terrified of her old connections harming the team.

• Small dogs make her anxious. They’re less predictable than large dogs and statistically more likely to bite and attack. She also thinks they’re annoyingly.

Lok

• Is afraid of failing to help his father, and being betrayed by those who have helped him thus far.

• This one also sticks to canon, but like Indiana Jones Lok is afraid of snakes. They give him the willies and he does not like that.

Sophie

• Sophie is afraid of losing the control she had over aspects of the Casterwill family, but she is also afraid of being alienated from her heritage. She already remembers so little of Lucas and her parents, and there is so much about the family that she never got to learn.

• Oddly enough, she is afraid of crabs. She thinks their claws would hurt far too much to be worth being anywhere near them. The way they walk sideways also weirds her out.

Cherit

• He is afraid of once again forgetting the humans and titans he has come to know. He cannot remember his bond with Casterwill, but he knows it had been a strong one. He is afraid some day he will not remember the good times he has shared with the team.

• Cats scare him because they often mistake his tail for a toy and pull him down.

[writingillness]

Walking my dog

- Yes, I know, you want to bark at everyone. You're such a cutie. - I coo at my dog, kissing her and placing her on the ground.

She stands still for a little bit, then walks crouched down and sideways, protesting because I put a jacket on her. I laugh. She looks funny. Like a crab-dog.

Walking her relaxes me, mostly.

-<I wanna die> <Hug me> <What's the point>-

When I go for walks, my intrusive thoughts make it out of my lips, they jump out like frogs, before I get to stop them.

I breathe in the cold air. I look at the clouds, imagining the knots my intrusive thoughts create in my chest, and letting them evaporate into the sky.

I let my princess lead me to wherever she wants. She stops to smell something, another dog's pee. I wait. She starts running to find the best place to take a shit. I run with her. I pick up after her.

My neighbour who has a Husky walks by, I can see he is wondering if our dogs can say hi, they are friends.

- She has heat - I say.

- Oh, so that's why my dog has been acting so weird. He's been crying and howling at home and refuses to eat.

- haha... - I fake my laugh as well as I can, I really don't know what to say. I feel like I'm in fight or flight mode. I have to get away. I wave good bye and go home with my little lady.

"She has heat?? What is wrong with my brain? She IS in heat. Why am I like this? What's wrong with my brain?

<I want to kill myself>

< I cut my wrists at length with a razor blade, moving it back and forth several times >

"No! I don't! Who cares if I made a fool of myself?" My stomach feels like I was dropped from a height, like on rollercoaster, only not fun. I feel as if I've done the worst thing I could have ever done.

"It was just a conversation. Keep up with me. We did okay. Stop feeling like this."

<I wanna die> <Why can't I do anything right> <I should just kill myself and put me out of my misery>

"Stop it. Who cares! We are okay. We are happy. We have a family who cares, and a dog who loves us and we have plans for next year. We have a future. Stop caring so much about small things" I can still feel the pit in my stomach, and a stone in my brain. I don't know how to explain it other than as a psychological pain. The same you get the day after a party when you remember all the stupid things you did.

[minyoukyung]

BTS Imagine #13: BTS Summer Package 2020 (Part 3)

Word count: 1,875

Members featured: All

Description: Jin takes advantage of Yoongi’s temporary preoccupied state to misbehave. This causes some tension within the group as everyone tries to find their own way to deal with it and we all realize that things can’t stay the same.

The next morning, I woke up to find that Yoongi was already gone. I reached blindly for my phone and squinted at the screen.

"Went to go eat breakfast with Jimin. I'll see you later."

I smiled, glad that he was spending time with his younger brother. I stretched my arms over my head, thinking about what I should do with my free time.

"Yoongi left already? Great!"

"What the--"

Jin had gotten into bed next to me, pulling the blankets up to his chin as he closed his eyes.

"Jinnie, what are you doing?" I asked him flatly.

"Going back to sleep," he murmured.

"You can't do that in your own bed?"

"It's lonely."

I sighed.

"I was going to get up and look for something to do," I said, frowning. "Don't you have to be at the beach to start filming?"

"We all already went," Jin told me, his eyes still closed. "You slept in really late."

I double checked the time on my phone, realizing that he was right.

"Well, all the more reason I should get up," I said, starting to shove the covers off of me.

"No, you can stay a little longer," Jin muttered sleepily, moving so that his head was resting on my shoulder.

I tried not to tense up. All I could think about was the possibility of one of the other members walking in and teasing us or Yoongi walking in and being furious. I tried to set boundaries with Jin again and again, if only to keep the peace and avoid making things weird. I couldn't get involved with him. It could ruin everything.

"You're all stiff," Jin complained.

"Then why don't you let go?" I snapped, my voice coming out a little more harshly than I had wanted it to.

Jin didn't seem fazed.

"Yoongi's not here, you can relax," he told me.

"That's not--"

"Besides, he already told me that he would back off a little."

"You're taking advantage of the situation," I said.

"Of course. I have to take what I can get."

I rolled my eyes, resigned to the fact that I couldn't move and was stuck until Jin decided to get up. Before long, I heard the sounds of soft snoring. I looked at him, his handsome features more childlike in his relaxed state. He looked so peaceful but I couldn't let Yoongi find us like this so I picked up my phone and texted the only person I knew I could count on.

Five minutes later, Namjoon tiptoed into the room, his brow furrowed in confusion.

Help me, I mouthed at him, pointing furiously at the sleeping Jin next to me.

Namjoon sighed then walked over to the bed before grabbing Jin by the shoulders and shaking him.

"What's going on?" Jin murmured, his voice thick with sleep.

"There's lunch in the maknaes' house," Namjoon told him. "Let's go."

Finally free, I leaped out of bed and made a bee line for the bathroom so that I could make myself presentable for lunch with the boys.

When I returned to my room, teeth brushed, face washed, and freshly showered, I noticed that Namjoon and Jin were still in my room. Jin was sitting up in my bed while Namjoon stood in front of it, arms crossed over his chest.

"You know that you have to give up," Namjoon was saying quietly. "I know Yoongi said that he would back off but that doesn't mean he's happy about it. And knowing Noona, she wouldn't want to do anything that would cause fighting between members."

"I know," Jin replied, "but I can't just... turn it off..."

Namjoon didn't have anything to say to this. I figured now was as good a time as any to make an entrance, so I walked in, whistling "DNA" cheerfully as I nonchalantly rummaged through my suitcase for something to wear.

"I thought you guys would've gone to eat by now," I said, pulling out a loosely fitting top and a pair of shorts.

"We were waiting for you," Namjoon said.

"What is taking you all so long?" Yoongi demanded, storming in impatiently.

I looked up at him and he froze. He looked at me, still in my bathrobe with wet hair and at Jin sitting on my bed, his legs still under the covers, then looked at Namjoon, his eyebrows raised.

"What's... going on here?" he asked slowly, as if he didn't really want to know the answer.

"Youkyung was taking too long to get ready," Jin answered casually, "so I decided to take a nap."

"And I came to get them for lunch," Namjoon added.

Yoongi glanced at me sideways, checking my expression to see if what they were saying was true. I shrugged then gathered my clothes and went back to the bathroom to change.

When I came back, Jin, Yoongi, and Namjoon were all standing up, their heads very close together as they whispered furiously about something.

"Aren't you guys hungry?" I said loudly. "Let's go eat!"

Yoongi was the first to detach himself from the huddle. He grabbed my hand and pulled me out of the room.

"Did you already eat?" I asked him.

"No, I was waiting for you," he said, sounding agitated.

I tugged on his arm, forcing him to come to a stop a few feet away from the maknaes' house. I took his other hand so that I was holding both of them, squeezing tightly. He locked eyes with me and soon the tension left his features. I would never say it out loud but no matter what, if it came down between choosing Yoongi or someone else, I would always pick him. I was on his side and he was on mine and nothing was worth jeopardizing the connection that we shared.

"Let's go eat," I said.

Yoongi nodded and I released his hands. We walked into the house, heading for the kitchen where the other members had left food for us. Jimin, Taehyung, and Jungkook were sitting on the couch, having already eaten. I went to go sit with them and they all immediately threw their arms around me for a big group hug. I patted all their hands affectionately.

"I always wanted adorable younger brothers," I told them. "Now I have the most adorable younger brothers in the world."

"But we're manly too, right?" Jungkook asked me, flexing his bicep jokingly.

"Of course," I agreed. "The manliest."

"Okay, okay," Yoongi grumbled, walking over with two plates of food in his hands. "She needs to eat."

The three boys reluctantly let go of me and I moved over to the other couch so that I could eat comfortably. Yoongi sat down next to me.

"How was breakfast with your hyung this morning, Jimin-ah?" I asked.

"Oh, it was so much fun!" he replied excitedly. "Hyung cooked all of my favorite foods!"

Yoongi looked down at his plate and kept eating as if he hadn't heard what Jimin had said, although his cheeks were slightly pink. I smiled, pleased to know that they had enjoyed their time together. I patted his knee gently then started eating. Soon Namjoon and Jin walked in, heading straight for the kitchen to get their own food.

"What are you guys doing after this?" I posed the question to the group.

"I think the staff said we're getting free time?" Hoseok said, strolling into the room as he towel dried his hair. "I really want to go check out the marketplace."

"You should go do something with Taehyung or Jungkook," I whispered to Yoongi.

He nodded in agreement, chewing thoughtfully.

"Hobi, would you like someone to go with you?" I asked Hoseok now that I knew Yoongi would have plans of his own.

"I'm always down to spend time with my girl!" Hoseok said in English, putting on what we called his swaggy voice.

"Your girl?" Jungkook repeated, raising an eyebrow.

"Officially my girl," Hoseok added, winking at me.

I giggled, just knowing without looking at him that Yoongi was fuming on the inside.

"I thought Halsey was officially our girl," Taehyung said, confused.

"Never mind, Taehyungie," Jimin told him, patting his shoulder.

"Jin-hyung! Namjoon-hyung!" Jungkook called out. "What are you doing after lunch?"

The two of them emerged from the kitchen with their plates of food and sat down on the floor.

"I was thinking of going back to the beach," Namjoon replied, tilting his head to one side. "I want to see if I can find some crabs."

Jin looked at me as if to ask me what I was doing and I shook my head slightly. There was no way I was letting him tag along, regardless of what I had planned. I needed to put some distance between us--for the sake of the group.

"Jin-hyung, let's go on the jet ski!" Jungkook suggested.

"Okay," he agreed easily.

I locked eyes with Jungkook and nodded. Whether he had picked up on the exchange between Jin and I or not, I was grateful that he was taking the initiative to occupy his eldest brother's time.

"Taehyungie, do you want to go take pictures with me?" Yoongi asked.

Taehyung's entire face lit up. He loved taking pictures but he also really loved Yoongi and he was absolutely delighted to be doing one of his favorite activities with one of his favorite people.

"Jimin-ssi, why don't you come with Hobi and I?" I offered, knowing that Hoseok wouldn't mind.

"Yay!" Jimin cheered. "Does this mean you're my girl too, Noona?"

"No!" Hoseok interrupted at once. "I said it first!"

"That's not fair!"

"Well, too bad!"

The two of them started bickering and I couldn't help but grin. This group of boys in their twenties were no more than overgrown children, even at the best of times, but I loved them so much. There was nothing in the world that I wouldn't do for them.

"Alright, children, that's enough," Namjoon said, crumpling up a napkin into a ball and throwing it at them.

As I strolled through the marketplace later, arm-in-arm with Hoseok and Jimin on either side of me, I let them steer me in whichever direction they fancied. I wasn't really thinking about the things on sale or even the fact that I was in Bora Bora of all places.

I was thinking about Namjoon sifting through the sand looking for tiny crabs.

I was thinking about Taehyung posing elegantly while Yoongi took his picture.

I was thinking about Jimin telling Hoseok that a floral printed shirt at a nearby stall would look great on him.

I was thinking about Jin expertly riding the waves on the jet ski and Jungkook being so impressed with his hyung.

Most of all, I was thinking about how I never wanted this to change. I wanted us to all stay like this forever, the friendship between the eight of us strong and enduring. As we all gathered back in the rap line's house to spend some time together before bed, I glanced at one of them out of the corner of my eye and knew that even as I desperately wished nothing would change, change was right on the horizon.

[scarletttext]

Every night you dream that you talk to a genie, when you wake up you can't remember what you wished for. One morning you wake up with a giant crab pincer replacing your right arm. What do you do?

* alright, this prompt arrived in my inbox completely out of the blue, but I'll run with it! Just a little drabble!*

I wake up, slighty disoriented, with the remnants of a deranged smile on my mind. Like always, since I started to have these dreams years ago, I dreamt of a genie. Tall, long white beard, eyes who crinkled when he smiles. He was a major pain in the ass most of the time.

Ever since he appeared, I tried to make wishes, none ever came to fruition, so I started to treat it as a joke, thinking it would never come true. We even laughed together, he became sort of a friend, even if he drove me crazy sometimes, time passed and I begun to forget the wishes once I woke up. Which is why I am very baffled right now, looking at where my right arm should be and seeing a giant black crab pincer in its place.

I try to move it and, sure enough, it is true, it moves just as my arm should. I squint my eyes, cursing that blasted genie in all the languages I know.

*a few days later*

The damned genie didn't appear in my dreams for the past 3 nights, and by now, I'm becoming increasingly pissed off. Seriously, of all the wishes I made, he picked this one to make true? And again, where the hell did he come from? I have no lamps in my house, I've never even believed in magic!

Although I must admit, the crab pincer does look cool, and it is, impressively, as sensitive as my real hand and arm were, although much sturdier. It is sharp too, which made me unwittingly cut through some stuff before realizing.

I still don't understand why this was the wish I was granted, especially since the limb I always complained about is my left leg, and I had previously wished for a mechanical one.

The pressing issue, though, is that, since I woke up with this weird limb, I've been feeling a pressing need to go into the woods, and I fear that that blasted genie is gonna turn me into a real crab next.

"At least I'm not walking sideways", I mutter to the empty room before laying in my bed to sleep.

BANG

I wake up with a start and jump from the bed, faceplanting in the hardwood floor. I hear an all too familiar laugh, and my blood boils. I get up faster than I knew I could move, and have my pincer arm locking the damned genie to the wall.

"You motherfucking asshole! What did you do to me? You have the courage to finally show yourself out of my dreams after what you did?", I yell in his face. Watching the crinkles by his eyes with his mischievous smile.

"Oh C'mon, you wouldn't have believed me otherwise"

I squint and use my pincer to make more pressure on his neck -cool thing about this pincer: it is stronger than I am. Now the genie looks sort of nervous.

"Hey buddy, don't need to become so pressed, I just came to tell you you're the new genie"

I look at him, unimpressed, but, in the blink of an eye, I hear a crackle and he is on the other side of the room, by the window.

"Now if you just follow the light into the woods, you'll find the lamp" he says and disappears.

.

.

. okay I'm only writing 'till here, I'm out *kisses*

[syubits]

you’re the RA and you’re trying to bust me for having hermit crabs & x ∞ college!namjoon

“Joonie?”

The boy in question and Taehyung look up from their conversation, towards the door at the sound of your soft voice. The shit-eating grin smeared across Taehyung’s face is something Namjoon wants to gladly wipe out with a punch, but Namjoon can't bear to stand to disappoint his girlfriend, nor the withering look that will be on your face when you walk in to such a scene after 2 weeks of not seeing each other. 

That, and you’re the RA. 

Namjoon barely has the time to blink before Taehyung has bounded off to open the door. He reaches out to try and catch the younger boy, but long arms don't compare to Taehyung’s agility and he inwardly swears when he misses Taehyung’s grey cardigan by a hair’s breadth. 

“______!! Hi!!!” 

“Tae,” you can’t help but chuckle at his boisterous greeting. “Is Namjoon around?”

The square smile never falters as he nods more times than necessary. “Yep! I was just leaving, actually. See you!” He lifts a hand in a wave, then seems to realise something and raises the other one before making pinching gestures. “Bye!” 

You’re about to contemplate questioning what the hell just happened when an arm winds around your waist, drawing you into the threshold. The door clicks to a close behind your back and you’re immediately wrapped in the warmth and the soft material of Namjoon’s sweatshirt. He smelled homey and clean, like fresh laundry, subdued tones of something violet and a hint of spring. 

“Tae was acting a lil weird,” you speak into his chest, that rumbles with a deep chuckle in response. 

“He’s always like that,” you hear his voice somewhere above and in your hair. You break away from his embrace a little to reach up and kiss his cheek, the same time Namjoon leans down to accommodate to your height, twin spots of warm pink blooming on his cheeks as he tries to hide his smile (and failing miserably), marked at the end by two little dimples.

“How was the trip with the boys?” you toe off your shoes and make your way to the couch. He tugs at your hand before you get the chance to sit down, and when you pause in a silent question he plops down onto the couch and nudges you down to sit between his legs. For Namjoon, it’s completely innocent and just one of the things he likes to do to feel closer to you but it doesn't mean your heart stops skipping beats.

“It was good. We went to the beach and the sea was absolutely breathtaking,” he says, capturing your hand in his to trace along the lines on your palm. “I saw pretty seashells and they reminded me of you. I’ll show you later.”

“You brought them back home?”

“Some,” you feel him perch his chin over your shoulder, his hand intertwining with yours before he smooths a thumb over your knuckles. Sometimes the things he does is so unbearably soft you want to cry, but you quickly deviate from that thought before you can get unnecessarily emotional. 

“But did you find crabs?”

You don't notice Namjoon stiffening against your back, and Namjoon quickly recovers by wrapping both arms around your middle and pulling you closer. 

“Mhm,” he smiles into your shoulder and you know he's squeezing his eyes shut in excitement like he always does. “They were so tiny. I could put four on my palm and they'd look like little dots.” He flips your palm over, drawing little dots to show how tiny the crabs were. He shifts closer, lips grazing against your neck that he presses into a kiss. Namjoon thinks it’s cute that you to ignore it like it doesn't affect you, though he can clearly see goosebumps rise under his lips. 

He wonders where else you’re sensitive. 

“Hey. What’s that?” Namjoon follows your line of gaze, to a small glass container, about the size of a typical shoe box sitting next to the potted plants Jin got him for his birthday. It very much looked like a fish tank, except it was missing the fish. And most of the water. From what you can see, there was only sand, some seashells and rust-coloured pebbles. 

“Uh... Just a thing for my project,” he thinks up the blandest of words he can combine to make the vaguest sentence. 

“What thing?” Curious, you get to your feet to take a closer look. RA duties don't even flit through your mind; you are genuinely interested in what it could be. Namjoon’s stuck between wanting to tug you back and possibly making you even more suspicious or just giving it up. 

“That’s so pretty,” you press your face to the glass and see the little shells scattered in the sand. There were mini conches, those that looked like one-toothed ornaments, and the typical scallop-shaped ones that looked like a pendant to your necklace from when you were 14 and still obsessed with Little Mermaid. It looked like Namjoon took a physical picture of the beach where he went and brought it back in a box.

“It’s the unicorn horn shell,” you point out, and you look so sincerely delighted he feels bad for lying about them. Although he’s not really lying, yet. Just.. keeping the truth from you. Also known as lying, in his books. 

“That’s the turritella terebra,” Namjoon tells you, patiently, confident but not proud in a typical Namjoon-esque way, his tongue rolling off the r’s perfectly. With Namjoon, he doesn't show you the wonders of the world but he points out the  little things that make it wonderful. Although his eyes always seem to sparkle the most, crescent-shaped dimples carved into his smile the deepest when he ends up talking about how you are by far one of the best things that has ever happened to him.  

“Turrit...ella ter..?” you trip on the letters, but Namjoon just laughs and plants a kiss on the top of your head, enveloping you in a backhug. You are the prettiest, smartest, most adorable thing and he will never ever let you go. 

“Wh-why is the shell moving?” 

Maybe he could, should let go just this once. “Um.”

“Are those... crabs? Namjoon, you brought the crabs home?!” Suddenly Taehyung’s odd behaviour comes to mind, the pinching actions and even the walking sideways to the elevator was more than just Tae being Tae. 

“They were too small and cute I couldn't resist...?” he raises his brows hesitantly, inching away slowly, but surely from you. “Just like you?” 

“Did you just compare me a hermit...?!” 

::::::

“You know pets aren't not allowed here, except ‘toothless fish’,” you say, exasperation heavy in your tone.  

“Technically. They didn’t say anything about crabs. And hermit crabs don't have teeth,” Namjoon points out. 

“They don’t?” you tilt your head at him, and Namjoon replies with a hum. Quite honestly, you don't see it as much of a problem. Namjoon was right, and with the fact that it didn’t pose any danger, the thing didn’t even have teeth— but if the other RA Jihyo found out and she loved making a big fuss out of nothing—

Already knowing you’re lost in a cloud of Unnecessary Overthinking, Namjoon hears you slump back into the couch with a groan. “But still. I can't believe you brought them back home. What am I gonna do if they find out... maybe I’d have to write a report. Or something,” you throw him a scathing look. 

“______?” 

“What.”

He presents you with his hand, the single, tiny problem crawling languidly across the flat surface of Namjoon’s open palm. "Stop being so crabby.” 

[owl-librarian]

1. Hermit Crab

They are just so cute. (and look, as my wikipediaing has shown me there are many *types* of hermit crabs, but most people think of these adorable little guys and so do I.)

2. Coconut Crab

NAH BRO LOOK AT THIS! It’s a land-crab (not a water crab):

These are a relatively endangered crab species, but they can weigh up to 9 POUNDS. I did not know about this crab, but I am all about it!

3. Dungeness Crab

This purple guy is native to the pacific northwest where I grew up, so Dungeness crab is honestly what I think of first when I think “crab” - they are very tasty, but also very threatened by climate change (friendly reminder to consume seafood ethically and pressure your governmental reps to pass climate change laws and controls).

They turn the more traditional crab reddy-pink when cooked, but I love the color of the live ones!

4. Porcelain Crab

One of those “not technically a crab” crabs! Which is the COOLEST THING.

Here is a picture of one variant of the porcelain crab:

They tend to be very small, and are really quite pretty!

If you are like... what do you mean “not technically a crab” crab?? Please go read this very cool wikipedia page about Carcinisation; which is basically nature being like, fuck-it I’m making another crab. That page will also lead you to this page, which has an amazing title: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cretaceous_crab_revolution (the CRAB REVOLUTION, I LOVE IT. The Cretaceous was wild man.)

5. Which, that Cretaceous Crab Revolution page led me to this, my final crab:

Callichimaera perplexa; also known as the “platypus of crabs” (translation: what the fuck is this thing and how is it a thing)

IT”S SO WEIRD I LOVE HIM

Wikipedia says this guy lived 95 Million Years Ago, and was part of The Revolution (the Cretaceous Revolution) (yes I am having too much fun with this), and basically is like a larval-stage crab from a developmental/visual standpoint, but were actually fully grown and sexually active.

Here is the actual fossil if that’s your jam too:

So. My top 5 crabs. And thank you wikipedia and Nonny because this was 100% a great way to spend part of my Sunday holy crap.

(an aside to note: “Walking Sideways: The remarkable world of crabs“ by Judith Weis has been on my list for years, but it just got bumped higher up the list!)

hmmmm. do you have a top 5 of crabs?

Huh. You know what nonny I’m not sure I do. But for you? I’m gonna go do some research. Stay tuned!