#they figure if they can come to terms with the other thems; they might be allowed back into themself so they can continue their life :D

[stollengoods]

Chapter 7

It’s Not Me, It’s You

Myung-gi x Fem! Reader

Warnings: Cursing, deaths, & mentions of drugs.

Summary: Myung-gi is acting strange, You get into it with Se-mi, and Nam-gyu suggests something to you to calm your nerves.

————

Before you guys left the bathroom, he told you to pee so you don’t get an infection. You agreed, walking into the stall by yourself. You sat down on the toilet and that’s when the thought first crossed your mind, ‘Was he backing out again ?’ You wondered but quickly shrugged it off, you didn’t need anymore negative thoughts in this hell hole.

You quickly finished up, wiping and flushing the toilet. And when you came out, Myung-gi had a huge smile on his face, to the point it seemed like someone was holding him at gunpoint. You would’ve been off-put by it, if your body hadn’t felt so relaxed from your orgasm moments prior.

But Myung-gi could only put up the charade for so long. His facade began cracking not too long after you two came back from the bathroom together.

He’s been distant, avoiding eye contact with you when you guys talk and making it a point to only say a few words when speaking to you.

It’s been only a few hours and you would think the man that just came in you would be all over you right now, but it almost seemed like he was trying to avoid you.

In the back of your mind you knew what was going on but you couldn’t bring yourself to think it yet, let alone ask Myung-gi about it. So you just let him be, telling yourself he’s probably just freaking out. That he needs time to come to terms with the fact that he might be a father… again.

————

The next game they had you guys play was a bunch of mini games. It was a team event and they gave you guys ten minutes to find a group of five. You had no idea in hell where Myung-gi was, feeling your heart sink as your fear grew more and more.

‘You can’t think about that now.’ You thought, ‘I gotta focus on surviving.’

You decided to block Myung-gi from your mind until after the game was done to not distract you. The only other person you knew here was Nam-gyu, so you searched the crowd for him. You found Thanos and your eyes lit up knowing Nam-gyu wouldn’t be far behind.

Walking over to Thanos and Nam-guy, you noticed they were talking to two other people already. You quickly interrupted them to solidify your spot as the last member of their team, “Hey you guys ! Can I join your group ?”

Thanos and Nam-gyu turned around to face you. Nam-gyu had a smirk on his face while his eyes raked you up and down. You felt yourself blushing, somehow thinking Nam-gyu knows what you and Myung-gi did. And then it dawns on you that Nam-gyu could’ve saw you guys go with the guard.

“Of course.” Thanos said with a smile on his face, “Any friend of Nam-gyu’s is a friend of mine.”

“Plus,” Nam-gyu chimmed in, “you came just in time, we needed one more player.”

You smiled, “Great, who are the others ?”

Nam-gyu moved to the other side of Thanos to reveal a man and- ‘Ah shit.’ You thought, ‘Not the psycho stalker.’

The woman stepped forward, “We met earlier. I don’t think I introduce myself though. I’m Se-mi.” She held out her hand and you shook it.

“Y/n.” You responded, trying your best to smile.

The other unknown team member stood next to her, “And I’m Min-su.” He bowed and you did as well, recognizing his name as the man Se-mi told you Nam-gyu bullied.

You all sat down in the middle of the gaming circle. It wasn’t hard to figure out who was going to do what as the timer finally buzzed. You guys were in the middle row, which you were thankful for; so your team could pick up on tips of what to do and what not to do.

Nam-gyu and Thanos gave you their rings to practice Gong-gi with as they spoke among themselves. You concentrated while also tuning in and out of their conversations.

You heard Nam-gyu talking to Min-su and you paid extra close attention. He sounded nice, he asked his name and even brought up a quote to not only encourage him but the whole team. A small smile formed on your lips until Se-mi put in her two sense.

“Yah, don’t tell us what to do.” She retorted.

Your eyebrows furried, surely she wasn’t talking to Nam-gyu.

“Me ?” Nam-gyu said, also confused.

“Yeah you, nice shaky hands, asshole.”

You stopped what you were doing and looked over at her, “What the fuck is your problem ?”

She laughed, “I don’t have a problem, but it seems you do. Why so feisty ?” She asked, scrunching her nose at the word ‘feisty’.

“Because that was uncalled for. You may not like Nam-gyu but he was actually being positive just now.”

“You’re so naïve.” She chuckled.

That made your blood boil, “You hate when he’s an asshole and you hate when he’s trying to be nice. What the fuck do you want from him ?” You snapped, clenching your fists.

Thanos put his hands out each one facing one of us, “Hey Señoritas.” Thanos deep voice boomed, “Stop it.”

Then he turned his attention to Se-mi, “Se-mi apologize to Nam-gyu.”

Se-mi looked over at Thanos and sighed, rolling her eyes, “I’m sorry.”

Nam-gyu had a satisfying smile on his face as he used his jacket sleeve to cover up his mouth to keep from laughing.

Thanos smiled, “Good.” He turned his attention to Nam-gyu, pointing at Se-mi, “Now Nam-gyu you do the same.”

Nam-gyu’s expression fell as his hand dropped into his lap, “Wha- I didn’t even-“

Thanos just starred at him, “Ugh, fine. I’m sorry.” He mumbled.

Gunshots rang out as the first team lost, the sound seemed to echo against the walls as you began to practice Gong-gi again. Your hand trembled as you picked one up, you starred at it trying your best to make your hand be still but it wasn’t working.

“Fuck.” You cursed under your breath.

“Oh look at that.” Se-mi began, “There’s Mr. & Ms. shaky hands.”

“If you don’t shut the fuck up, I’ll strangle you with these shaky hands bitch !” You stood up, “And trust me my grip will be firm.”

Nam-gyu yanked you back down beside him, “Hey hey, chill okay ?” He whispered, but all you could focus on was Se-mi gloating in the back ground. You attempted to stand up again, but he just as quickly pulled you back down.

“I don’t like that bitch either, but we need her for our team. If you kick her ass, that could result in her not being able to finish her task and then we’re all fucked.”

Your eyes shot daggers at her while he explained your dilemma, ‘He’s right.’ You thought.

“Shit.” You whispered, biting your lip and looking away from her.

“Can I ask you a question ?”

“Sure.” You said, still trying to calm down your racing heart.

“Have you ever tried drugs before ?”

You made eye contact with him, “What ? Why are you asking me this ?”

He cleared his throat, answering you in a low voice, “I just tried one of Thanos’ pills and they work amazing. See-“ He held out his hands in front of you, “Their not shaking anymore and I don’t have that sense of impending doom currently.”

You sucked in a shaky breathe, pursing your lips together as you starred down at your trembling hands, ‘Fuck it.’ You thought.

“I’ll try one.”

[sunshine-and-her-ikevil-stuff]

*thinking about the villains' tragic fates*

You know, their routes never really talk too much about their fates and how it effects them mentally. Or how the MC feels about it, and dealing with the fear and angst of it with the slight exception of William's route

*eyes widen*

... I think I know what the sequels are gonna be about

[raddest-laddest]

so i’m either gonna go die in a car crash or get skin cancer, but either way, i can’t go without sharing the sona playlist

the organization is cursed, but strangely fitting for what it’s about

[duckapus]

Had an interesting idea. You may have noticed that in this post I implied that there may be at least one non-game-based living Character-Level server somewhere out in the digital multiverse that nobody knows about yet because they think it's impossible for one to form without outside influence. Well, I figured out which one it is: A universe made from a pirated collection of every official episode, movie, short, music video, and even scans of the dubiously canon IDW comics run of My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, along with any other official media I can't think of at the moment. Because I can. Whoever owns the collection doesn't know that they have a real live Equestria at their fingertips because the actual media storage is a layer above the living universe (or universes, what with Starswirl's Mirror Portals), so watching/reading the stuff doesn't affect what's happening down there or vice-versa, and the characters also don't know that they're digital beings brought to life by the love of a fan.

If anyone, be they Program, Virus, Anomaly, or Character, were to go there they'd be changed into a form that fits the universe (so a pony/dragon/griffon/etc. choose whatever fits best in the main world, a human with the same color scheme as their Equestria form in the Canterlot High world) Because Mirror Portal Magic, though Code-Level entities can change back to their usual form if they prefer. When they leave they go back to normal. If any locals ever managed to go to other digital universes they'd stay in their usual forms because Most Universes Don't Do That. It's similar to the Enforced Art Styles of the Cats are Liquid and Fairly Oddparents universes, though FiM and CaL are obviously more drastic than FOP.

The first major characters to find out about this are Ozymandias and Garyboy, who stumble upon it at some point post-release and decide to use it as a base of operations, on the grounds that 1) Nobody else knows this world exists, 2) if anyone else did find it they'd never expect those two to be living there, and 3) the whole transformation thing means they can hide in plain sight. When they're there Garyboy is a purple-and-green pegasus with a black-cupped plunger for a cutie mark, while Ozzy is a vaguely serpentine dragon and his maneuver form is a Kirin. They later find out that prolonged exposure to Equestria's magic has had side-effects, namely that they can now use their Equestrian Form abilities (weather magic for Gary, fire breath, flaming rage form and unicorn magic for Ozzy) in their normal forms. That'll be fun to show off to their enemies.

[crystaltoa]

And now for something completely different.

This is the ADHD Teapot. I made it in a ceramics class a few years ago. I use it to explain executive dysfunction to people who haven’t come across the term before (and those who think of ADHD mostly as Hyperactive Eight Year Old Boy Syndrome).

So, most people’s brains are like a regular shaped teapot with a single spout. Let’s say that your time, energy, focus etc is the liquid you have in the teapot. Your executive function is the spout, that directs the tea into the specific cup you want to fill-aka the task that you’re meant to be doing. Spills happen occasionally, but generally most of the tea goes in the right cup.

If you have executive dysfunction, (a symptom of ADHD, trauma, autism, schizophrenia etc.) you have multiple spouts going in different directions. You can try pointing one of them at your chosen cup and you will probably get some liquid in there, perhaps you will even fill it right up (finish the task). But meanwhile, tea is also pouring out of several other places and not going where you want it. If you have another container nearby, perhaps some of it will end up in there. But quite a lot of it is going to end up on the floor and accomplish nothing.

And at the end of the day you’ll have filled one or two cups ( or sometimes not even one) compared to the five or six that somebody with the same sized teapot (but only one spout) has filled, and everyone wonders why you’re so bad at getting tea poured, and why you make such a mess in the process.

One day I’d like to spend more time learning pottery and create a really technically good fucked up little adhd teapot. But that’s a long way off since i currently live in the outback and the nearest pottery workshop is some 400km away. But I figure that for now, it might be a useful or interesting metaphor to somebody even in its rough draft form.

This post is the cup I filled instead of cleaning my house btw.

[ame-to-ame]

Rereading ayaka is in love with Hiroko senpai!!! Last time I read it I don't think it was finished/I didn't finish it but ack. Now I also want to be in love 😭😭😭

[exopelagic]

okay I got some thoughts just putting these here

[yeah-thats-probably-it]

Hot take maybe but I think Bertie would be FAR more likely to survive the first two months of Dracula than Jeeves would be. Bertie has a healthy sense of self-preservation. Jeeves consistently underestimates how dangerous a situation might get (Steeple Bumpleigh, the club book) because he’s overconfident about his level of control over any given situation. He'd handle Dracula masterfully if they faced off in England, but on Dracula's home turf? Much more doubtful.

I realize this might be a tough sell, so I will explain further (or it's not a tough sell, and I'm going to explain further because I want to). (criteria taken from @canyourfavesurvivecastledracula) Without further ado.

Would Jeeves and Wooster survive Castle Dracula?

Jeeves

Jeeves' survival will depend on how long Dracula finds him more entertaining than irritating. On that basis, I don't think he's long for this world. On the one hand, he has a huge wealth of knowledge about English society and culture that he can recite perfectly from memory. That should buy him at least a little time with noted teaboo Dracula.

On the other hand, he would be absolutely no fun as a vampire plaything. Jeeves cannot be got. Sneaking up on him while he's shaving will yield zero reaction (though that's at least good for his short-term survival--given that, although he DID take the crucifix from the old woman out of politeness, he certainly isn't going to wear it. The rules of fashion don't go out the window just because you're in a spooky castle). Then, although managing the whims of rich jerks is not an insignificant part of a valet's job, Jeeves usually does this by bending his employers to his will. Dracula is not the sort of employer this will work on. It'll just add insult to injury when on top of being impossible to scare, NOW Jeeves is telling Dracula that his favorite cloak is several centuries out of fashion and he's not allowed to wear it anymore.

Jeeves will 100% go exploring in the areas he was told not to go-- though to be fair, he MIGHT actually get away with this, what with his superpower of appearing in rooms without being seen or heard. Said superpower might save him from the brides as well (though this is by no means guaranteed). Since I find it doubtful that Dracula would come to rescue his annoying ass, not being noticed is his best defense.

There are a couple other things working in Jeeves's favor; the question is just whether they'll be enough to save him.

He DOES know shorthand, and could try to send coded letters. He might even have the foresight to squirrel away some extra stationary where Dracula can't find it. But could he get them posted? Would it even do him any good?

He certainly has enough cultural literacy to figure out what his new boss is pretty quickly. If he didn't chuck the crucifix out the carriage window, he might start carrying it around in his pocket.

Psychology of the individual, sure, but the individual in question is a 400-year-old vampire who lives in an isolated castle in a foreign country and is regarded as a terrifying mythological figure in the surrounding villages. Jeeves has never come up against anything this alien before, he's cut off from his normal resources, and opportunities to play people against each other are limited.

He probably has enough upper body strength from all that shrimping and fishing to climb the wall, so he COULD escape if he wanted to, if he survived long enough. It's just, again, that overconfidence, and also Dracula has a vast library full of rare old books that are entirely at his disposal. He's keeping his eyes and ears alert for potential escape strategies, of course, but I don't see him being as desperate to get out as Jonathan was.

There are just a lot of "depends on"s here, and I'm not convinced that luck would shake out in Jeeves's favor, all things considered.

Bertie

Bertie is so perfect for the job of Castle Dracula Prisoner it's like it was made for him. Think about it. Being held against his will in big manor houses comes more naturally to him than breathing. He's afraid of things that are scary. A lifetime of dealing with Aunt Agatha has made him the world's preeminent expert in "curl[ing] up in a ball in the hope that a meek subservience [will] enable [him] to get off lightly." He will NEVER go exploring in places he's been warned away from if nobody is forcing him to (Rev. Aubrey Upjohn's office notwithstanding. There were biscuits in there). He's both fun to talk to and easy to toy with (and extremely English). A+ prisoner. Dracula adores him.

In my opinion, Bertie is at Castle Dracula either because Aunt Agatha got some wires seriously crossed and thinks he’s going to meet an eligible potential bride (I mean, there are certainly brides there), or because Dracula has something Aunt Dahlia wants him to steal (far less likely, given that one of Dracula’s THINGS is famously not owning anything silver). Either way, he's shown himself entirely willing and able to escape down drainpipes if a sitch gets too scaly.

He DOES take the crucifix, and DOES wear it (which is what will save him during the shaving scene, because you KNOW he's going to jump a foot and cut himself like the dickens). He's read enough supernatural goosefleshers to be genre savvy about terrified old women cryptically pushing crucifixes into one's hands. I also think his sunny disposish endeared him to the villagers, and they were particularly vehement about urging him not to go. He doesn't speak German or Romanian, but he's empathetic enough to recognize Pure Terror. So by the time he actually gets to the castle, his imagination is already running wild and he's plenty aware that he is in imminent danger.

I think the biggest risk to Bertie will be the brides; whether or not he's susceptible to trances, if he thinks they're trying to marry him, it's against the code of the Woosters to turn them down. But that only becomes an issue if he comes face to face with them, which, luckily, I think is unlikely on account of the aforementioned "won't go exploring" (and if he did, Dracula would definitely rescue him).

I'm inclined to say due to his drainpipe-escape habits that he WOULD be able to climb the wall and MAY attempt to sneak into Dracula's room to look for the keys if his desperation grows to outweigh his fear. Whether he does or not, though, he does NOT have the stomach to attempt shovel murder, and therefore won't get magic brain fever, and may very well simply walk out the front doors when the people come to take the boxes away. OR he climbs his way out like Jonathan did. Either way.

When Bertie tells this story at the Drones later, Tuppy will say that no doubt it's been greatly exaggerated and all that probably happened was that he spent a couple months in an oldish house entertaining a weird loner.

[not-neverland06]

the newlyweds

Pairing ˏˋ°•*⁀➷ Logan Howlett x fem!reader (Flux)

a/n: I wrote this at 3 AM and I'm also pretty sure I'm sick, so bare with me. Based on this: ask

You know Logan can't stand you, but it doesn't stop the way you feel about him. Your mind recognizes the hate in his eyes whenever you're in the same room, but your heart can't. Finally, you come to terms with the truth: it's never gonna happen. However, your newfound resolve is flipped on its head when you're forced to go undercover with him as newlyweds. Your new wedding ring is a noose and you don't know how you'll survive it or him.

You stumble forward as someone knocks into you from behind. Their shoulder jams painfully into your ribcage and you trip into the wall in front of you. “Shit,” you hiss, rubbing your back and turning around to glare at whoever it was. You figure it's a kid skipping class, imagine your surprise when it’s a fully grown man practically growling at you. 

“Where the hell am I?” He darts forward, grabbing you by the arms and jerking you towards him. “Who are you people?” You’re stunned into silence, eyes wide with shock as he pushes your spine into the wall behind you. 

You recognize him now. This is the man who was with Rogue in the truck you, Ororo, and Summers rescued. The only reason you don’t toss him across the room and rip his spine out through his throat is because you know how disoriented he is. Though, with the way his claws threaten to pierce your skin, you are tempted to. 

“Ah,” a familiar and welcomed voice sounds out from beside you both. “I see you’ve met Flux.” Charles rarely ever uses your actual name, mainly introducing you through your X-Men persona. It’s a preference of yours. 

The man’s eyes dart between you and Charles, and your own turn into slits the longer he keeps his tight grip on you. “Wanna let me go now?” You demand voice practically a growl. Your patience has never been wonderful, but he’s really working on your last nerve. 

He blinks, seemingly coming back to himself. With an almost regretful look, he lets you go. You sigh in irritation, straightening your shirt out and shoving past the corner he’s pushed you into. “Who the hell is this?” You snap, moving to stand behind Charles. 

He gives you an apologetic look, “I’m not sure. He hasn’t introduced himself yet.” He gives the man an expectant look. Instead of answering he glances around, and scoffs. 

“What is this, summer camp? You people don’t need to know me, I don’t need to know you. Just show me how to get the fuck out, alright?” Finding Charles’ school had been heaven on earth. He’d provided you with a home and a haven you never thought you would have the privilege of. You’d never shown anger in the face of his guidance or generosity. But many have. 

You can tell, as much as the man in front of you might believe otherwise, he’s going to be enjoying the comfort of Charles’ protection soon. You move to the side, leaving them to their conversation. Instead, you focus on keeping the kids away from the newest form of entertainment. You usher them towards their classes, despite their reluctance. 

The other members of the team soon join you all, introducing themselves. “Storm, Cyclops,” he scoffs a little at Scott’s name and you feel a reluctant smile tugging at your lips. He turns towards you, brows furrowed inquisitively, “Flux?”

“Matter manipulation,” you explain bluntly. He shrugs his shoulders giving you a blank look. Sighing you hold out your hand and gesture to Charles’ desk. With a flick of your wrist, it melts into an unnatural form of liquid wood. Logan’s eyes widen and you can’t help but finally let the full smile form on your lips. “Flux was just what fourteen-year-old me thought fit best.”

He nods, turning back towards Charles with a smarmy grin. “And what do they call you, wheels?” Your eyes widen with shock and an unbidden laugh surges forth. Charles sends you a playful glare and you have to turn around to keep from laughing more. 

You’d thought you wouldn’t like this one. It’s always bad when there’s a member on the team you don’t get along with. It’s not common, but it has happened. They simply keep you separated if they can. The school is wonderful, but it’s not perfect. Not everyone will like each other. You think you and Logan will get along just fine, though.

It started slow, barely noticeable at first. You didn’t know him well enough to understand that the way he treats you is completely different from how he treats everyone else. Where your greetings are brushed off with cold shoulders or the occasional glare, others at the very least get a brief mumble of hello. When you speak, you can practically feel the irritation wafting off of him in waves. You taste his hatred in every interaction. 

There’s no exact moment you can pinpoint where you went wrong. Sure, your introduction to one another was rocky at best. But he’d nearly thrown Jean across the room when they first met and they got along just fine. 

You’ve thought about it, for far too long, about what makes you different than the others. Is it your smile? The pitch of your voice? Of course, you understand that sometimes there are just people that you meet and something inside you hates them. There’s never a true explanation behind the feeling, just instinct. 

But you can’t place what about you would make someone so guarded, so mean. It feels like such a childish word, like too simple of a way to explain Logan. The very least you know about him is that he can never be summed up with the word simple. There are secrets buried deep within him, some he knows, others he doesn’t. You can’t just slap a label on him and walk away. 

More often than not, though, you feel like you’re talking to one of your childhood bullies and not a team member. Because, despite your own feelings towards him, at the end of the day you are team members. There’s no getting around it. From that connection comes, what should be, a base level of respect. 

You’re both in charge of protecting one another and looking out for each other on the field. That means when you put on the suit, you’re putting aside petty grievances. But he seems incapable of that as well. 

You’ve spent mornings practicing your greetings, trying to tone down your cheeriness or inflect your voice with a more welcoming timbre. You’ve changed how you dress, how you do your hair, even your makeup. And at the end of it all, you still got the same miserable look and distinct feeling of worthlessness. All of the change has been temporary, you are a creature of habit. Inevitably, you slide back into the same habits and styles that make you, you. 

You feel stupid, trying to change yourself to better fit someone else's tastes. Especially when it’s someone who so clearly despises you. It’s not how you carry yourself, how you look, it’s the mere fact you exist that bothers him. At least, that’s the conclusion you’ve come to in all your months of experimenting. 

It truly shouldn’t bother you so much. There’s always going to be people who don’t like you. There’s nothing you can do about it. And you’ve never had that desire to change other's opinions on you. But something about Logan has dug its claws under your skin and has refused to let go. You can’t get him out of your head, even when you feel like you hate him, he’s all you think about. You’ve considered asking Jean to use her abilities to somehow dig him out of your brain and keep him out. But you don’t think that would work either. 

You step into the kitchen and nearly freeze in the doorway. Logan sits at the island, back to you as he reads the newspaper. You find yourself lightening your steps, quieting your breath. You make yourself as inconspicuous and convenient as possible. Every time you catch yourself doing something like this, you hate yourself just a little bit more. 

You shouldn’t have to alter parts of yourself to better fit someone else’s needs. You slip along the tiles, your socked feet slamming into the corner of the counter as you pass it. “Shit!” You shout, doubling over as you clutch your throbbing toes. 

So much for being inconspicuous. 

Logan’s head shoots up in shock as he glares over his paper at you. You let out a strained whimper, reluctantly releasing your foot and hobbling towards the coffee pot. You’ve taken more bullets than you count, and somehow that still hurt worse. 

You can’t just ignore him, you feel his stare burning into your back, and it feels too dickish-too much like him, to not say anything. “Morning,” you mutter over your shoulder, barely looking at him. You pour your coffee, trying to ignore how daunting the silence seems. You might as well be alone in the room for all the attention he’ll grant you. 

You feel like a beggar, on hands and knees just for a simple hello. Ever since his first night here, he’s been so aloof with you. It’s only devolved since then. You sigh, slamming the mug onto the counter. Something in you has snapped this morning and it’s not just the bones in your foot. You’re sick of this. 

You shouldn’t have to walk on eggshells around him. He’s not a toddler, he doesn’t deserve to be coddled and catered to. He’s a grown man, an X-Men for fuck’s sake. What he needs, is to learn a little emotional regulation. 

You turn, mouth open and sucking in a deep breath as you prepare your speech. The island is empty as you face it, his stool in the same place it had been while he was on it. The paper lies abandoned, even his nearly full mug is still on the granite. 

You scoff, snapping your jaw shut and rolling your eyes. “Jesus,” you mutter to yourself. Wonderful, even the same room is too much for him now. Something bitter has been forming in your mind. A rage building from weeks of unprompted cruel behavior. 

Yet, somehow, the thing that pushes you over the edge from interest to resentment is the fact that he didn’t say good morning back. 

You teach history at the school, but the majority of your role at the mansion is to train children with powers similar to yours. You’ve never met a mutant who had such a broad scope with their abilities as you do. Some can turn water to ice, control the blood running through someone’s veins, or make the air around them a solid block. But you’ve yet to meet one who manipulates anything with matter the way you do. 

Still, for training, you deal with the unreliable, untameable, and generally more dangerous abilities. And sometimes for training, you work with other teachers and let your kids practice on each other. It’s a rotating schedule, and unfortunately, the week you’ve decided you hate him, you’re partnered with Logan for training. 

You’ve got the entirety of Charles’ backyard, which is essentially the size of a football field. It’s a lot of room for accidents and accidental misfires. You stand in front of the pond, admittedly a risky choice with these kids, and direct them all to their partners. 

“Remember, the goal of this isn’t to maim each other,” you give a particularly pointed glare towards Billy. He’s caused a lot of problems lately with his fires. “It’s just to learn how to wield your abilities to your advantage, to protect yourself and your team.”

You look to Logan, seeing if he wants to add anything or contribute to the class in some way. He just keeps his arms crossed, glowering at all the children like he’s imagining skewering them on his claws. Rolling your eyes, you turn back to the kids. “Let's start with the hand-to-hand maneuvers we went over yesterday before we practice with our abilities.”

“Why don’t you show us?” Your head whips towards Billy and you can’t help the sneer on your lips. He’s sat on the ground, legs crossed leisurely over each other. He doesn’t have a care in the world as he taunts you. 

“What?” You grit out, glaring at him.

“Show us what a balanced fight should look like between mutants. You and Logan,” he nods to the aforementioned man. Logan just quirks a brow, glancing at you before turning back to Billy. 

“I don’t think-”

“Fine.” You gape at Logan as he tugs his jacket off. He shrugs as he looks at you, moving towards the middle of the field. Of course, he wouldn’t pass up the opportunity to try and pummel you. You’re sure that he’s just been waiting for an excuse to fight you. 

“If that’s what you want,” you mutter bitterly. You pull off your sweatshirt and start walking towards him. 

“Your cuffs,” Billy calls out from behind you. The other students all watch the interaction with rapt attention. They’re practically salivating at the chance to see you two fight each other. Meanwhile, Billy just seems like he wants to see someone bleed. 

The metal cuffs around your wrists are the only thing that stops you from leveling the entire school. Your abilities are so tightly entwined with your emotions that one unlucky bout of anger can lead you to vaporizing everyone around you. They dull your abilities just enough to still be useful but not deadly. You haven’t taken them off in years. And perhaps it’s wrong to lean so heavily on them for protection, but you have. That’s your cross to bear. You don’t even want to picture what will happen if you open that dam. 

“What?” Billy shrugs, sending you a sharp smirk. “How are we supposed to trust you, if you can’t even use your own damn abilities?” He snorts and narrows his eyes at you, “How the hell did you even become an X-Men, Flux?” His name rolls off your tongue with a sharpened venom. 

He oozes hatred and a burning resentment that catches you off guard. It’s too much to process the insults he’s hurling at you and the sudden one-eighty in his personality. You don’t even hear Logan coming until his fist is wrapped in Billy’s collar and he’s yanking him off his feet. 

He dangles him, just a couple of inches, off the ground, teeth practically bared at the kid. “Wanna keep talking, mouth?” 

“Log-” You’re cut off as a fireball shoots out of Billy’s palm and explodes against Logan’s gut. You gasp, throwing up a wall in front of the other kids so it can’t hurt them. “All right,” you call out sternly. “Everyone inside,” you demand, pointing the other kids back towards the manor. 

You linger with Logan, who still has Billy dangling from his fist, only he looks even more pissed off now. Anyone else, and they’d be dust at Billy’s feet. But Logan isn’t anyone else and the only collateral seems to be his shirt. 

Not that you mind the view. 

Billy hasn’t been here long enough to know what Logan’s abilities are, though. You don’t think he actually knew he could heal. The thought alone is worrying enough that you don’t force Logan to let him go. “We need to get him to Charles,” when Logan doesn’t move you put more force behind your voice, “now.”

Logan lets out a low huff before placing Billy back on his own two feet. He doesn’t let him go far, though, keeping his hand around the back of his neck and dragging him forward. You follow behind them, making sure he doesn’t rip him to pieces before Charles can speak with him. 

You sit outside Charles’ office, fingers tapping restlessly against your thigh as you stare at the mahogany walls in front of you. The red velvet of the seat is too soft and you find yourself slipping to the edge every few seconds. It’s too soft, too luxurious, your back aches the longer you wait. 

Charles had instructed both you and Logan to wait for him to finish up with Billy. It’s been nearly an hour, though, and you’re growing restless. You can tell Logan feels the same way. He’s pacing the hall like a caged lion about to rip the arm off its keeper. 

“How are you?” You blurt out, desperate for something to fill the silence. He stops abruptly, whipping around to face you. You flinch back slightly at the intense glare he’s sporting. “Your stomach, I mean,” you gesture towards the scorch marks on his shirt, the soot on his abs. 

It’s been a practice in self-control to not just be staring at his wonderfully sculpted muscles flexing this whole time. You’re pleasantly surprised with how well you’ve been doing so far. Though, now with him facing you, you’re finding it incredibly hard to meet his eye. He’s such an imposing figure, especially when he’s standing over you like this. 

“Fine,” he barks out, turning back around and effectively ending the conversation. Your eyes narrow and you scoff, god, why do you try?

The door swings open and you expect Billy to come running out crying with his tail tucked between his legs. Instead, you hear the familiar whirl of Charles wheels as he rolls into the hall. He faces you and Logan, a strained smile on his face. 

“Where’s Billy?” You slowly get to your feet, peering into his office. Your confusion only grows when you find it empty. 

“He’s away from the other children for now. He’ll need private lessons before we allow him near them again. And if that doesn’t work, we have no choice but to expel him.” You can tell it hurts Charles to say that. 

He does genuinely want the best for these kids. He wants mutants to have a home, a place where they can be themselves without fear of retaliation. Sometimes, though, it doesn’t work out. There’s nothing wrong with that, you all try your best to help the kids. But some of them have been so twisted by the world around them that there’s no undoing the damage. When they pose a risk the way Billy does, the other kids come first. 

Logan scoffs with distaste, stalking closer to Charles. “He tried to kill me, fucking tried to get Flux to take her cuffs off.” He gestures towards you, for once, though, you don’t feel like you’re being attacked. Even he can understand the dangers of that demand is idiotic. It’s clear Billy only wanted to watch everyone around him get hurt, he didn’t care about the consequences. 

Charles holds up a pacifying hand, nodding his head and dismissing Logan’s concerns. “I’m quite aware of what happened, Logan. But Billy is my responsibility and he’s not the reason I needed to talk to you both.”

He rolls back into his office, expecting you both to follow him. You fall in line behind him, taking a seat at his desk. Logan takes another minute to join you both, a reluctant scowl on his face as he sits beside you. Charles waves his hand, the door closing and providing you all with a little bit more privacy. 

He reaches into a drawer on his desk, pulling out a thin manilla folder. He pushes it towards both you and Logan. You share a confused look with Logan before flipping the file open. There are a few pictures of a stereotypical suburban neighborhood. Bright green laws, uniform driveways, each house looks the same as the last. 

There are a few more pictures, all of them taken from an awkward distance that makes it hard to determine what you’re looking at. You pass the pictures to Logan and shake your head at Charles. “I don’t understand, what is all this?”

“Your next mission,” he informs you both with a strained smile. 

Logan’s head shoots up, eyes narrowing in on Charles. “Excuse me?” He demands, his voice a growl more than anything. 

“There have been some disturbing rumors about this neighborhood. Mentions of a possible mutant trafficking ring being conducted behind closed doors. Normally, I would dismiss such claims. Oftentimes these are just ways to bait and snatch mutants. However, my own attempts at telepathic investigation have been thwarted. Even with Cerebro, I can’t seem to breach the neighborhood.”

“Something’s blocking you?” You ask, snatching the pictures back from Logan to get a better look. He tosses the folder back on the desk, muttering something you can’t hear. 

“Or someone. I’m worried there might be some truth to these rumors. And since I can’t find a safe way in, I need your help. You only need to do some reconnaissance. The only problem is how gated the community is. They’re not going to let anyone in unless they live there.”

Charles gives you both a cheekily expectant look. The truth is so hard to swallow that you almost can’t process it. “No,” you mutter, shaking your head and smiling, waiting for the punchline. When one doesn’t come you get up from your seat and give him a disbelieving look. “You want us undercover?”

Charles pulls out a key and smiles widely, “Congratulations on your new home, newlyweds.”

Logan shoots up from his seat, it wobbles precariously, nearly toppling to the ground.  “You want me to move into a house with her?” He spits out the sentence like it pains him to even have it in his mouth. A disbelieving smile spread across your cheeks, sardonic laughter slipping through parted lips. “Why can’t I do it with Jean? Or better yet you just get some other asshole to play her husband?”

Your heart stutters to a stop and you quickly rip your eyes off the pair. The stung worse than you think it should. Your heart aches, each beat painful. You feel like someone’s punched through your chest and ripped at all the tender bits. 

“I have chosen you,” Charles loses all humor from his voice. He is stern, like a father scolding his child, as he speaks to Logan. “And that’s the end of it. Besides, I don’t suppose that Jean’s fiance would appreciate her playing house with another man.” He places heavy emphasis on fiance, enough to get Logan to purse his lips and look away from him.

You speak up, your voice a surprise to them both. You claw through the lump in your throat, ignoring the hot burn behind your eyes. “I’m not doing this. Especially not with him,” you force the words out, wiping roughly at your cheeks. “Shit,” you hiss, looking down and trying to hide the tears that have slowly trickled down. 

You don’t allow either of them to argue, running out of the door and ignoring the calls of your name behind you. You can’t do this. Can’t pretend to be in love with Logan, not when he hates you. Not when it’s so close to the truth. 

Evidently, Charles didn't feel like giving either of you a choice.

You drum your fingers along the door handle. The cab of the truck rattles as the trailer drags along behind you. The trees have begun to thin out on the road, and more shopping centers pop up than you’ve seen this whole trip. It’s the how you know you’re getting closer, that and the map on Logan’s thigh. You steal glances at it because he refused to let you help him navigate. 

Besides the occasional ask for a bathroom break and refuted offer of switching drivers, the four-hour road trip has been quiet. You tried to turn the radio on earlier but he’d shut it off nearly immediately. He claimed that the pop shit they play makes his ears ring. 

You were almost tempted to turn it up to full volume if only to torture him a little bit. 

Logan’s rough voice jars you out of your head, “I’m going to need to know your real name.”

You frown, brows furrowed in confusion. Had you still not given him your actual name? He’s always referred to you as Flux, but you just assumed that’s because he didn’t want you to be an actual person in his eyes. It’s easier to hate someone if you can distance yourself from the idea of them having actual feelings. Still, you can’t believe he never asked someone for it. 

It just shows you how little he cares for you. Reluctantly, you give it to him. He hums, something pensive pinching at his face. “What?” You snap, waiting for him to insult you. 

He just shrugs, “It’s pretty,” he mutters, so quiet you almost don’t hear him. You don’t even know how to respond to that, so caught off guard by a genuine compliment that you just choose to ignore it. You doubt he meant it, anyway. He might think the name is pretty, but he doesn’t hold the same opinion of the person connected to it. 

You sink back into the silence, finding it more comforting than jarring now. You’d prefer the familiar feeling of him ignoring you than the abrupt turn in character. He glances over at you, something like regret on his face as he sighs. 

Thankfully, he doesn’t say anything else. Instead, in what feels like an extension of an olive branch, he turns the radio back on. He keeps the volume low, so it doesn’t bother him so much. But at least there’s something to listen to besides your breathing. 

You turn back towards the window, a white sign surrounded by daises coming up as Logan slows the truck down. He flicks on his turn signal, pulling up to Storybrook Walk. He stops in front of a large wrought iron gate and jumps out of the truck. He runs up to a black metal box, flipping the lid open and typing in the code Charles gave you both. As he gets back in the truck, the gate swings open widely. 

You pull your rings out of your pocket and slip yours on. “Here,” you urge, holding Logan’s ring out to him. He huffs, glaring down at it before snatching it out of your hand. He balances his hands atop the wheel, slipping the ring on his left hand. 

The neighborhood is picture-perfect suburbia. The lawns are bright green and manicured to perfection. You can hear children laughing as they play in their backyards and draw out a hopscotch grid on the sidewalk. Women and men who look like they’re straight from the fifties stop on the sidewalk and wave as you drive through the gated community. 

You mouth the numbers on the mailboxes to yourself, sitting up straighter when you’re one house away from your new home for the next few weeks. “Hey,” you frown, noticing a large congregation of people in the driveway of 1220. “This is our house isn’t it?”

Logan frowns, stopping the truck just before pulling in so he doesn’t hit anyway. “Supposed to be.” He glares at the people suspiciously, “Stay here, alright?”

You nod, watching him as he jumps out and rounds the front of the truck. You roll your window down, fingers dancing along the metal of your cuffs. There’s no way you’ve been found out before you’ve even gotten a chance to investigate. 

“Hey!” Logan’s voice is scary on a good day, but when he feels threatened, it’s enough to frighten a grown man. You can see the people flinch slightly away from him. That’s when you spot the wrapped cookies in a blonde woman’s hand and see children hiding with balloons on the porch. 

“Oh, fuck,” you mutter. You throw the door open, racing after Logan before he does something stupid. “Howdy neighbors!” You shout, speaking over him before he gets a chance to say anything else. You rush up to Logan’s side, nearly out of breath in your haste to get to him. “Is this our welcoming committee?”

You glare up at him and his eyes narrow as he sees the same thing you did. “Shit,” he mutters under his breath. 

“Smile and wave,” you whisper through gritted teeth. His lips peel up into something terrifying and it takes everything in you not to flinch back. “What the fuck is that?” You mutter.

“A smile,” he hisses, glaring down at you in irritation. 

A blonde woman steps forward before you can continue your hushed argument. “Welcome!” She calls out in a heavy southern accent, throwing her arms open with a bright smile. She walks as fast as she can in her tight skirt and kitten heels, coming over to embrace you, the casserole in her hand balancing precariously behind you. 

She tugs Logan down into a hug, pressing a kiss to his cheek and staining the skin red. “Surprise!” The kids on the porch jump out with balloons and flowers and she winces. 

“A bit late on the delivery,” she waves it off with a faux chuckle. “But we don’t mind ‘cause they’re so darn cute.” She is very… loud. There’s something about her that is meant to be charming but puts you on edge. She’s got all the familiar characteristics of a woman you’d love to be around, but she’s executing it like someone playing a character. “Shiela,” she holds out her hand, perfectly manicured nails shining bright red. 

You take her hand introducing yourself, “And this is my husband, Logan. Forgive him for his tone, we had an accident on the highway earlier. We’re still a little on edge.”

“Oh no,” she gasps, pressing her nails to her chest and even that seems plastic. “What happened?”

Years of bullshitting your way through school presentations are finally coming in handy.  You think quickly on your feet, something these people would despise. You need something that endears you to them, “Tire blew out and someone tried to raid the trailer while we were fixing it.”

She lets out a disapproving hum and the throng of people behind her echoes it with disturbing harmony.  You find yourself leaning closer towards Logan, feeling like you need to defend yourself against them. You know they’re only an overzealous HOA committee, but there is something uncanny about them. 

Sensing your discomfort, Logan wraps his arm around your shoulder, tugging you into his side. You have to school your features into one of neutrality. You’re supposed to be newlyweds, this is normal behavior for you. His touch feels like ice water being tossed over you, though. His willing embrace makes your head swim with distaste and skepticism. 

“Well,” a man steps forward. He’s conventionally handsome, with brown hair cropped short, slight stubble on his cheeks, slacks, and a button-up that he fills out nicely. His smile, however, stretches too wide and shows too many teeth. A shiver crawls up your spine as he places his hand on Shiela’s shoulder. “You won’t have to worry about people like that here, that’s for sure. John,” he offers his hand to Logan, bypassing you completely. “Head of the HOA here at Storybrook.”

“Nice to meet you, John” Logan falls just short of sincere. He towers slightly over John and you can see that he’s squeezing his hand just a bit too tight by the wince of Jouhn’s face. You dig your elbow into his side and he drops his hand immediately. 

Your gaze drifts over their shoulders and your stomach drops. The people behind them all hold dishes full of food and gift baskets. Their smiles are pinned to their faces, never once flinching out of place. There’s no joy in their eyes, though. They’re glazed over like they’re a million miles away. You would think they were mannequins before you even considered them human. 

“Long drive?” Shiela asks, your eyes dart back to hers only to find her intense stare already wholly focused on you. 

“Yeah,” you answer, clearing your throat of the panic rising in it. “We’re gonna have a fun time unloading this,” you laugh humorlessly, motioning towards the trailer.

She waves her hands in dismissal. “Don’t you worry about that, hun. That’s what neighbors are for after all.” She looks behind her, snapping her fingers a few times. The other’s start going towards the trailer and you feel Logan tense under your touch. 

A kid reaches it first, they manage to unlock it before you shout, “No!” It’s too loud, echoing through the street and making you clench your eyes shut in embarrassment. You turn back towards Shiela and John, both of them wearing shocked expressions. You chuckle awkwardly, “There’s just a lot of family heirlooms. I don’t want to risk them being damaged.” There are no heirlooms, just empty boxes and surveillance equipment that you'll have no chance of explaining away.

Shiela purses her lips into a tight smile, eyes turned to slits as she nods. “Of course,” you know she doesn’t believe you for a second. “Well then, we’ll just take all this inside.” She snaps and the others take their casseroles and gifts and begin flooding towards your front door. Shiela and John walk behind them, herding them all into a straight line. 

You let go of Logan immediately, glaring at the door of your home. Shiela holds a key in her hand, unlocking it and letting everyone inside. You scoff and shake your head in disbelief. “What the actual fuck?” You hiss. 

Logan just shakes his head. “Fucking bizarre, what the hell is wrong with these people?” He starts back towards the truck and you follow him. “I almost prefer the welcoming committee at the manor.”

You roll your eyes, “I was your welcoming committee,” you grouse. 

He shrugs, “I know.” You swat lightly at his shoulder and relatch the trailer’s lock. You linger by the mailbox as Logan pulls the truck into the driveway. He’s getting out just as the others finally leave your house. 

Shiela walks back towards you and you gesture towards the keyring in her hand. “Got a key to my house?” You play it off as a joke but it’s incredibly disturbing to know she could walk in at any minute. 

“Of course,” she smiles and shrugs it off like it’s the simplest thing in the world. “For the safety of everyone here.” Her smile drops and she takes an imposing step towards you, “Inspections are every Wednesday at noon.” Your jaw drops in astonishment and you choke on your words. She cackles loudly, face breaking out into a smile once more. “I’m just kidding, honey! God, your face, you’re too gullible, sweetheart.”

You force out a chuckle, smiling as much as you can force. “Of course, silly me,” you barely make it sound believable. This is going to be much harder than you thought. 

“Well,” John comes up behind her, guiding her away from you. “We’ll get out of your hair now. Welcome, neighbors!” The others around them all call out a Welcome as they drift across your lawn and head back to their own homes. 

Logan walks up to your side, the both of you keeping stilted smiles on your faces, waiting for them to just go away. But they pause at their doors, in almost perfect synchronization they turn and wave at you both. You back further into Logan’s chest and his grip on you tightens. 

“What. The. Fuck.” They step through their homes at the same moment and you feel sick to your stomach. There is something seriously wrong here, you’re not sure you want to find out the truth of it. 

You leave Logan to unload the trailer while you unpack the boxes. You’re forced to do it all by hand while the front door is open. You can’t risk someone stopping by for a visit and seeing you float the couch through the middle of the living room. You’re stumped on how to set up the surveillance equipment. Shiela doesn’t seem like the type to understand boundaries when it comes to popping by for a visit. 

You’re just going to have to keep most of it upstairs and set up some cameras on the porch. You don’t doubt that she’ll abuse that key of hers as she sees fit. You can’t imagine how anyone could stand living in this neighborhood. Having no privacy seems like a nightmare. Especially when the commander of the HOA is John and Shiela. They seem like the type to fine you over a rosebush. 

Logan grunts, dragging in the couch. He pushes it through the doorway and kicks the door closed behind him. The second it’s closed he drops the act and picks the couch up with one hand. “Where do you want it?” 

You point towards the back wall of the living room and he drops it with a small groan. “We’re going to need to put cameras out on the porch,” you inform him, still digging through the box. He walks behind you, heading for the fridge and digging around in it. 

“Fuck,” he mutters. You look up, watching as he tosses aside casserole after casserole. “They didn’t bring any beer?”

You laugh a little and get up, heading towards the cooler you’d packed. “They don’t seem the type.” You lean over, digging around through the melted ice until your fingers brush against cool glass. You straighten up, sending him a coquettish smile. “Want a beer after all that hard work, darling?” You taunt, playing the perfect housewife. 

He scoffs and holds his hand out, snatching it from the air as you toss it at him. He pulls the cap off with his teeth, spitting it out into the sink. “And a sandwich while you’re at it,” he demands roughly. 

If you weren’t a connoisseur of dry humor, you wouldn’t have recognized the joke for what it was. Still, you’re almost too shocked he even bothered to play along with you to laugh. Almost, you can’t help the slight chuckle that slips out.  

He throws himself on the couch, taking a deep swig from the bottle, and the moment feels remarkably domestic. You suppose that it should. That is the whole reason you’re here after all. But you hadn’t expected even a singular pleasant moment with Logan. 

This, playful banter and a shared joke, that’s all you could ever want from him. You would settle for this if it was all he was willing to give you. But he can’t even grant you that. This is one outlier in a long list of rude remarks and dismissive behavior. You can’t let yourself be so easily swayed. 

“I might try and get some cameras on the other houses,” Logan remarks from the couch. He kicks his feet on the coffee table and you click your tongue at him, motioning towards his shoes. With an aggrieved sigh, he undoes the laces of his boots and kicks them off. You glare at the dirt that flings across the carpet but a quick wave of your hand makes it disappear. 

“Don’t bother with the cameras. They’ve all got security.” You turn away from the box you’re unpacking with a pensive frown. “They’re all covered by the same company, too. All of them. Isn’t that weird?”

He scoffs and shrugs. “Anywhere else, yeah. But I’m pretty sure they piss at the same time here.” Your nose wrinkles at his crude words and you roll your eyes. 

“Take this seriously.”

He huffs out a laugh, “I am. Didn’t you see them earlier? They only breathe because Shiela lets them.” You take a seat at the kitchen table, uncomfortable attempting to take a spot on the couch. He sighs when he sees the expression on your face, finally dropping the dismissive attitude. “I’ll just be smart about how I set up our cameras, alright?”

You just nod, reaching for the box of your essentials on the table. It’s strange to be sitting beside him, talking to him. You’ve never gotten more than two words out of him. This is so far out of your normal comfort zone that you feel like you’re crawling out of your skin trying to escape. 

“I’m going to go to bed,” you announce awkwardly, shooting up from your seat at the table. 

The beer pauses halfway to his lips and he gives you an odd look. “Okay?” He responds slowly, not sure why you’re telling him this. You open your mouth, and almost tell him to have a good night, but change your mind at the last second. 

You move towards the bedroom near the front door, “Flux,” you turn slightly and he shakes his head. “Take the one upstairs.”

Your brows furrow, “Why?” You demand, an attitude edging its way into your voice. 

“So if Shiela busts down our door I can protect us,” you know he’s teasing, but the sentiment is nice. “And so I don’t have to set up the surveillance shit upstairs,” your face drops and you roll your eyes. There it is. 

“Dick,” you mutter, storming towards the stairs, your boxes hovering along behind you. His laughter follows you up the stairs, even when you slam the door shut. Although, when you take in the room, you can’t find it in yourself to complain for a second about it. 

While Logan is screwed with the teeny guest room downstairs, you get the largest bedroom you’ve ever been in all to yourself. The closet could practically be another bedroom. The bath is more like a jacuzzi than it is a tub.

A four-poster bed sits against the wall, the fluffiest comforter ever becoming you forth like a siren. There’s even a table in the middle of the room, with a chair, perfect for setting up as your desk. 

You scoff in astonishment, “Oh, I could get used to this.” You place your boxes on the table and start pulling out your clothes. You toss yourself on the bed, bouncing against the sheets, and throw pillows go flying everywhere. You flick your wrist, all your essentials flying out of the boxes and sorting themselves out. 

After a luxurious soak in the tub, you’re spread out along the bed, the limited information from Charles's file spread out before you. There are only a few blurry pictures of the neighborhood and a typed-up page of everything he’s heard about Sotrybrook. There’s nothing even remotely useful here. 

You sigh, tossing the file to the floor and looking out the large window of your room. You’ve got a camera placed on the sill, programmed to take a picture anytime there’s movement. You doubt you’re going to get much from that. The secrets of this place seem to be buried deep. You’re gonna have to get real friendly with your neighbors if you want to get out of here fast. 

Logan is on the computer, trying to sync all of the cameras up. You clean up the dishes from breakfast and tidy up the kitchen. You’re trying to decide how you should start investigating when there’s a dainty knock on the door. 

Your brows furrow and you peer around the cupboards to look at the door. Logan’s head lifts and he shares an odd look with you. He gets up from the couch and glances through the peephole. 

You drop the towel on the counter and frown as his shoulders slump forward. Something pinched appears on his face and he sighs. “What?” You hiss at him.

He turns and glares at you, “You’ll see.” You shake your head in confusion as he throws the door open. 

His attitude makes a lot more sense when you hear a very happy, “Howdy!” Shiela stands in your doorframe, three women hovering behind her. At least they look awake, unlike the people from last night. A redhead with the most gorgeous waves you’ve ever seen holds beach towels in her arms. A brunette with flawless brown skin carries a jug of lemonade. And a woman with black hair and a perfect figure is carrying a plate of cookies. 

All of these women are wearing bathing suits that look like they’ve been snatched out of a fashion magazine from the sixties. Each of them is gorgeous, alarmingly so. They’re beautiful to the point of being flawless. As you walk out of the kitchen and take a step closer, Shiela welcomes herself into your home. 

You don’t even think you see pores on their faces. Each of them offers you the same practiced smile that you force yourself to return. “How are you settling in?” Shiela demands, not asks. 

“Um,” you look to Logan for help but he’s just as perplexed as you are. “Just fine, Shiela, thanks. What are you all doing?”

The redhead rolls her eyes playfully, “Tanning, sweetheart.” She glances at Logan expectantly and he grabs his duffel from by the couch. 

“I think that’s my cue,” he falls easily into the role of a playful husband. But you don’t need him to play along right now. You need him to stay where the fuck he is so you’re not alone with the barbies. 

“Ha ha, don’t go,” you whisper, trying to grab at his sleeve. “Logan,” you hiss, making sure the others can’t hear you as they look around your home. “Don’t do this.”

He dips his head down, and for one stupid moment, you think he might kiss you. “Good luck,” he whispers in your ear, backing off with a smug smirk and letting himself out of the house. 

Oh, you’re going to fucking kill him. 

“Finally,” the brunette breathes out a relieved breath, “I thought he’d never leave.”

Shiela chuckles, “You’re lucky honey. It took us a long while to have ours so well trained.” She motions to the other girls, “This is Madge,” the redhead smiles and gives a cute wave. She introduces the rest quickly and you file the information away for later when you’re writing your report. 

Madge- husband is the vendor consultant for the HOA. 

Sierra - brunette - husband is secretary of the HOA. 

Kimiko - black hair - no husband. 

Your brows furrow in confusion as Kimiko nods in greeting. You return it, suspicions running thick in your blood. It’s odd, that their husbands are in charge of the HOA, you figured they would be. Beyond that, the emphasis they put on it is astonishing. You really didn’t think the HOA was so important but it’s practically the government here. And the women only seem to hold importance if their husbands do. Shiela is essentially their leader, she’s the one you need to impress.

This whole thing seems incredibly backward and like a blast from the past. The way they style their hair, do their makeup, dress- it's all fashioned after the fifties and sixties. You feel incredibly out of place in your worn-down pajamas and frizzy braids. 

“We’re not really tanning,” Madge tells you. “This is just a way for us ladies to get to know the new kid in the neighborhood and tell you everything you need to know,” she leans in, smiling like she’s sharing a conspiratorial secret with you. 

“Don’t let Madge scare you,” Sierra shoots her a glare. “It’s not that big of a deal, it’s just a way for us to escape our husbands for an hour.”

“Well,” you chuckle awkwardly, crossing your arms over your chest as you grow uncomfortable under their tense stares. It feels like their eyes are peeling back your skin, exposing everything underneath as they judge every nook and cranny of your soul. “I haven’t reached that stage yet.”

Shiela’s smile loses some of its humor and she scoffs. “You will,” she assures you, acrid bitterness coating her words. “Give it a few years,” she gives you a bitchy and all-knowing smirk. Your hackles raise, the urge to defend your sham of a marriage rising quickly in you. You bite your tongue, swallowing down your smart retort before you say something you regret. 

You’re not even married to Logan, but you don’t like her butting her nose so far into your business. “Sadly, I don’t have a bathing suit.”

“Oh,” Kimiko gives you a blank smile, “We brought you one.” Madge moves the towels aside to reveal a two-piece that matches their own. In your size. 

Your cheeks ache with a forced smile as you take the bathing suit from them. “We’ll just set up out back,” Shiela lets you know. She turns to the others with a beaming smile, “Come on ladies.” They follow after her like ducklings, and when you look down you see each of their steps are in sync. 

You wait until the back door closes to rush to the front. You throw the door open and Logan jumps from where he’s drilling the camera into the side of the house. “I’m gonna fucking kill you,” you warn.

He chuckles and smirks, “Don’t keep ‘em waiting too long, sweetheart,” he mocks and you slam the door closed with a loud scoff. He was enjoying your suffering far too much, but you shouldn’t be surprised. You’re sure he’s just been waiting for a moment like this. 

You change into the bathing suit and take a deep calming breath. You can do this. You can play pretend for a few hours. 

You wished you’d known being an actor was a part of the job description before you joined the X-Men.

You lay on your stomach along the soft beach towel that Madge brought. The sun isn’t too hot on you, but you also bent the tree behind you to provide a bit more shade when the others weren’t looking. So far, you’ve collected nothing but mindless gossip. 

Sam never takes in his trash cans on time. Alicia has been getting a little too cozy with the gardener. Some couple you didn’t pay attention to is expecting a kid. You’re struggling to pay attention to all the mindless drivel. 

Usually, you wouldn’t mind a little gossip, but none of this feels real. Their words are hollow, smiles empty. Everything they say sounds like they’re reading it from a script. The only person you actually believe cares about any of this bullshit is Shiela. The rest of them seem to just play along, not meaning a word they say. 

You’re gaining nothing useful from this. There’s no information you’ve gotten during this conversation that could remotely help you. All you want to do is go out front and strangle Logan for abandoning you. 

The only good thing about all this is the lemonade and cookies. Which, you admit, you may have indulged yourself a little too much. But at this point, you’re just eating to stay awake. You reach for another cookie and Shiela lets out a dainty huff. 

“I wish I could eat like you,” she laughs and you prepare yourself for the most backhanded insult you’ve ever heard. “But I have to be so careful about watching my figure. Wouldn’t want to lose my waist,” she titters and the other women giggle. 

You toss the cookie back on the plate, rolling your eyes. It feels like you’re right back in high school. You love this, this is great. At this point, you’re just trying to stop yourself from tossing them all out. 

The backdoor slides open and Logan peeks his head out. The women wave and Shiela calls out a sultry, “Hey, Lo.”

Your jaw drops and you can’t help but scoff as you tilt your head to give her an astonished stare. This woman has absolutely zero shame. She’s not even hiding the way she’s ogling him. She’s literally biting her lip. 

You clench your eyes shut, taking a deep breath. There it is, the end of your rope. “Sweetheart, you gonna be done soon?” Logan calls out and you can’t help but smile at the immense satisfaction you feel when Shiela’s face falls. You shouldn’t take so much joy in Logan ignoring her, you know that’s just how he is. But she doesn’t. 

“I think so, hon.” You sit up on your knees, clapping your hands and pretending to be upset. “Sorry, girls, I think I’m needed back in the house.” You get to your feet and pick your towel up. As you do, you flick your fingers, and the lemonade tumbles over, spilling all over Shiela’s pristine white bathing suit. 

She jumps up with a shrill scream, shaking her arms off at the ice-cold liquid and desperately trying to wipe off her bathing suit. Madge and Sierra flock to her and you roll your eyes at how dramatic she’s being. 

Out of the side of your eye, you see someone watching you. You turn slightly, startling when you see the intense glare Kimiko’s sporting. It’s the first genuine emotion you’ve seen from her, but even this seems cold. Her dark eyes are bottomless pits of frigid rage. You find that you can’t look away from her, swaying slightly as her eyes beckon you forward. 

You need to go to her, speak with her, be with her. You need-

Your mind falls short of what you need. But you know Kimko will give it to you. Sierra and Madge both straighten up, both blank-faced as you take a step forward. 

Logan hollers your name again and you jump, shaking your head and breaking whatever trance you’d fallen in. When you look back, all three of them are still fussing over Shiela. You glance to Logan, to see if he saw what had happened. 

His brows are furrowed, face pinched in concern as he looks at you. You think you might have just found Charles’ interference. 

“I think we should look into Kimiko,” you scroll through the list of residents you’d managed to hack into. You’ve been on the computer for hours, trying to find any information bout her at all. Even when you ran a background check, nothing came up. If that doesn’t scream mutant, you don’t know what does. 

Logan walks over to the table with a steaming pan in his hand. You tug your computer glasses off and slide the laptop to the side. He pours some pasta onto your plate and hands you a glass of water. “Thank you,” he gives you a tense almost-smile and nods. 

“Figure out where she lives?” He asks, bringing his own plate to the table. You shake your head and rub your temples, trying to fend off the headache you can already feel forming. You should have taken a break from the research. You can’t stand staring at screens for as long as you did. 

“She’s not even a registered resident.”

“Well,” he sighs and shrugs, “at least we know this wasn’t a waste of time.” You nod in acquiesce and take a bite of your food. Your eyes widen in shock and he laughs at the look on your face. “Didn’t think I could cook?”

You shake your head and smile. “I took you as the type to pour beer in your cereal. But this is,” you stumble over your word. You’re afraid of being too nice to him. You’ve reached a sort of impasse, where you’re not openly hostile, but you’re not exactly friendly. You feel like if you do too much, too fast, he’s gonna be closed off again. “It’s really good.”

He purses his lips and nods, dragging his fork along the porcelain plate. The noise grates on you and only further aggravates the growing headache but you don’t snap at him. You swallow down the frustration and just shovel more pasta into your mouth. 

“This, uh,” Logan takes in a deep breath and lets all out in one gravely exhale. You give him an expectant look and he shrugs. “It hasn’t been as bad as I thought.” He tells you flippantly. 

You narrow your eyes at him, “Is that supposed to be a compliment?” You demand with a firm tone, placing your fork down and leaning back in your chair. 

He lets out an annoyed sigh, “It was just an observation.”

You scoff and roll your eyes. He’s fucking ridiculous. “You know, maybe if you ever tried to get to know me, you wouldn’t have had such a horrible opinion about me.” You try and eat more but the food just tastes like ash in your mouth. You grow antsy, not wanting to sit near him anymore. 

You’re surprised that he’s the one who fucked up the peace. You really thought it would be you. But something about what he said is rubbing you the wrong way. Of course, it hasn’t been bad, you’re not a bad person. He just decided he hated you one day and he’s so goddamned stubborn he never considered anything else being the truth. 

“I didn’t mean anything by it,” he defends, watching with a confused expression as you get up and drop your plate loudly in the sink. 

“You know,” you ignore his weak defense, leaning on the sink. You grip the rim of it tightly, sucking in a deep breath to try and keep yourself calm. “You didn’t even know my fucking name,” you mutter under your breath, shaking your head to yourself. Why are you even bothering with him? You’ll never win and you don’t even know if you want him to change his opinion about you. 

He’s been a dick for so long that you’re not sure you’re even interested in being friends, let alone anything beyond that. 

“Well,” he takes an angered tone as you continue to deflect his attempts at restoring the peace. “It’s not like you told me. You just go by your X-Men name, how was I supposed to know better?”

“By fucking asking!” You shout, whirling around on him, nearly ramming into his chest. You hadn’t realized how close he’d gotten while you’d had your back to him. “If you had, ever, at any fucking point tried to get to know me, you wouldn’t be so surprised that I’m nice. I’m a nice person to be around, Logan. And for some reason I tried to change myself, to make you happy. And it never even worked!” You scoff, a hysterical laugh bubbling up in your throat that you quickly swallow down. You shove past him, escaping the corner he’s backed you into. “Your head is so far up your ass that you didn’t even try to know me before you decided you hated me.”

“What?” He scoffs and glares at you. “I don’t fucking hate you. When have I ever said that? And I never wanted you to change.” He keeps focusing on the wrong things. How he feels about you doesn’t matter, it’s how he treated you. 

“Never, you’ve never said that because you’ve never said more than two words to me. This,” you motion between the two of you, “is the longest conversation we’ve ever had.” A sudden exhaustion settles over you, it weighs heavy on your bones and drapes across you like a blanket. 

You don’t have the energy for this. For him. You don’t want to keep defending yourself to someone who couldn’t care less. There’s no winning with him. He will never listen to you, he’ll just offer half-assed excuses that he thinks absolve him of how horribly he’s treated you. 

He calls your name as you slump into the dining room chair. Your real name, not your X-Men name. “I never hated you,” he tells you, voice soft, but the conviction is strong. 

You stand up, unable to make eye contact with him. “Goodnight, Logan.” You walk up the stairs quietly, never once looking at him. You can’t stand to face him. As much as you’ve tried to bury how you feel about him, it’s still there. 

Being with him like this, having his ring on your finger, it’s a stab in the gut over and over and over. Someone’s taken your most ridiculous and romantic fantasies and turned them into a waking nightmare. You wake up to him every day, eat at the same table, share the same house, and you two couldn’t be further apart. 

You have to keep up appearances, Logan is sure that’s the only reason you’ve joined him this morning. He’s working on the truck while you kneel on a foam pad, planting a rose bush by the mailbox. But the way you’re stabbing the shovel into the ground it looks more like murder than it does gardening. You slam the little trowel into the dirt, lips pulled back like a wild animal as dirt flies up around your hair. 

Logan turns back to the truck, letting out a low whistle under his breath. Besides the insane display of shrubbery abuse, you blend into the neighborhood better than he ever could. You fit that perfect suburban aesthetic, sun hat, cat-eye sunglasses, and a pretty dress. 

You’re good at blending in, better than he ever was. He’s heard you joking about it before. Telling Jean your hidden mutant ability is learning to be a chameleon, fitting yourself wherever you are. He thinks it’s a cute idea, and not too far from the truth. 

He only wishes he were a little more like that. He sticks out like a sore thumb with his wifebeater, fraying jeans, and general countenance of misery. He can’t force a smile when John walks by with a shitty joke. He’s not like you. You stomach all of the women’s vapid nonsense with a smile and manage to seem so unaffected by it all. 

The only time he’s seen you break was last night. And that, of course, had been his fault. He wishes he was better with his words. He’s always been an action man, but clearly, he’s fucked that up with you too. He really did mean it as a compliment. 

He’s just incapable of talking without his foot in his mouth when it comes to you. It’s why he tends to just avoid you and stay quiet. He knows he’ll mess up with you eventually. In the rare chance you ever actually give him a second look, he’d be a shitty boyfriend. And even if you were just friends, he’d still fuck up somehow. He always does. 

He’s learned it’s better to just keep a distance between himself and others. Especially you. He’s always just wanted to keep you away from his bullshit. The haunted past he still knows so little about, all the mental baggage he carries, he never wanted to burden you with it. Even though it seems like he still managed to screw up somehow. 

Even when he’s trying to be good he’s still the bad guy. 

You let out a heavy sigh and his gaze drifts back towards you. The way it always seems to do. You’re his sun, bright, beaming, a golden beacon of hope. But he’s always just too far, eclipsing the light you might bring him with his own stupidity. 

You toss the trowel to the ground and stand up. You frown, brushing off all the dirt you’re absolutely caked in. When he peers around you and glances at the spot where the rose bush is supposed to be all he sees is a crater of earth and ripped up grass. He figures it's better not to mention it. 

You walk over to him, the same scowl you’ve had for the past few days ever-present on your face. “I’m going to take a shower,” you look at him expectantly and he shrugs. You let out a loud sigh and he can’t possibly imagine how he’s messed up now. “You need one too, the barbecues in an hour.”

He’d forgotten about the fucking barbecue. Some annual thing Shiela and John threw that the whole neighborhood went to. “It doesn’t take me an hour to get ready,” he tells you, intending a little bit of playfulness. 

Instead, you just let out an exasperated breath and storm back into the house. How did he keep fucking up with you so badly?

He’s gotten a taste of your personality, your company. He’s tried for so long to avoid getting to know you. He knows that if he truly did, he’d never get over you. He was right. Just one taste of you and he wants more, he wants to consume everything about you that he can. He’s screwed up in so many ways but he can’t just go back to normal after this and act like strangers. 

You smooth the wrinkles out of your cotton dress and let out a low breath. “You need another minute?” Logan grumps from beside you, his stare boring into the door. He didn’t want to come to this. Frankly, neither did you, but he needs to suck it up and be a big boy. You two are here for a purpose greater than yourselves. 

Maybe if you repeat that enough times you’ll start to believe it. 

Kimiko was everywhere that Shiela was. She was her shadow, her loyalist servant. And the only person in this neighborhood who’s shown a sliver of consciousness. You don’t know where she lives, or if she even owns a house here. But you do know she’ll be at this barbecue tonight. 

The only reason you’re bothering to bring Logan along is because you need him to distract Shiela. She drools every time she sees him, practically licking her maw at the sight of him in a tight t-shirt. You can’t really blame her, but she’s a married woman and he’s technically a married man. The lack of shame and compassion is genuinely astonishing to you. 

“No. Let’s just get this over with.” He needs no further prompting as he knocks heavily on the door. Each pound of his fist sounds like a bell tolling your doom. The intense feeling of nausea and eyes on the back of your head has developed and grown increasingly worse the longer you’re here. 

You feel like someone’s pressing against your mind, wiggling their fingers in and squeezing until mush slips through their knuckles. You keep a tight grip on Logan so you don’t tip over. Playing it off as the love-sick newlyweds you’re meant to be. 

Even though the feeling of his skin against yours makes you angrier than you can even begin to fathom. You’ve held onto built-up resentment and anger ever since your little tiff. You’ve heard that tumultuous times are common in the beginnings of marriages. Luckily, you’re getting a divorce the second this fucking mission is over. 

You resent Charles for ever sending you here. Any minuscule hopes you’ve had of finally building a relationship with Logan have been dashed across your front yard. There’s no hope for him. He’ll never change, and how he treats you will never change. 

The door swings open and the music from the backyard drifts through to the front. Shiela smiles widely, greeting you both with a drawn-out Hi! She reaches forward and grabs Logan, tugging him away from you and dragging him into a hug. 

You stumble forward as your support is ripped out from under you. She briefly glances over his shoulder at you and you offer her a sardonic smile. Every bit of you wants to dig your nails into her and rip until chunks of her start flying off. The post beside you warps slightly, bending like it’s melting. 

You dig your nails into your palm, swallowing down your anger, and force the post upright once more. Logan grabs Shiela by the waist, practically yanking her off of him. He steps back towards you, wrapping his arm around your waist. 

You can’t help the smug smile that lifts your lips as you face her. You almost want to rub her face in it. He chose you and he can’t stand you, that says a lot about how he feels about her. You stop yourself, though, it’d be beyond idiotic to let that be the reason your cover is blown. 

“Thanks for inviting us,” you tell Shiela, playing oblivious instead of walking into her trap. You pass her the casserole you half-assed and baked in her dish. “We’re so excited to finally have a home to call our own, and with such wonderful neighbors,” you gasp dreamily. “Oh, it’s just a dream come true.”

Shiela runs a manicured nail along the side of her lip, looking wholly unimpressed. “Mhm,” she hums, “I’m sure.” You share a look with Logan, both of you caught off guard by her sudden dip in personality. Her face is blank, devoid of the usual overwrought happiness and charm. It’s like something’s taken control and drained the life from her. 

Either Kimiko’s here and you’re right about her, or, Shiela is just a depressed housewife who can’t always control when she smiles. You’re hoping it’s Kimiko and you can just end this once and for all. 

“Alright,” she’s back in a second like nothing ever happened. The boom of her voice echoing through the foyer makes you jump. “Let’s get you two outside. And thank you so much for this,” she gestures to the casserole. “You’re just such a sweet little thing aren’t you?”

Everything she says to you feels just a tad patronizing. She’s incapable of complimenting you without minimizing you in some way. You dismiss it, shaking off the funk she always seems to put you in. 

Shiela leads you to the backdoor of her porch where the rest of the neighborhood is. She certainly got the best square footage, that’s for sure. She doesn’t just have the biggest house, she’s also got the biggest yard you’ve ever stepped foot on. 

People are milling about, John’s flipping hamburgers on the grill, and children are playing happily with one another. It feels like an advert for the Fourth of July.

You scan the yard for the only person you’re looking for. You spot her, pushed back towards the shadow of Shiela’s oak tree. Shiela follows your gaze with a frown and scoffs. “I know, hideous isn’t it?”

You jump, startled out of your stupor. “Sorry?”

She points towards the tree. “I wanted to get rid of it, but apparently it’s historic,” she throws up air quotes, inflecting her voice lazily, “or something stupid.”

“Oh, right,” you nod dismissively and she shrugs, hands slapping against her thighs as she nods to her yard. 

“Well, go on, socialize, make yourself at home y’all.” She walks back into the house and you glance back at the yard. 

“Shit,” you hiss, “Kimiko’s gone.” You move away from Logan and take a step down the stairs, he begins to follow you but you stop him with a firm hand to his chest. He frowns down at you and you nod towards Shiela. “I need you playing interception. Those two are attached at the hip. The only thing that’s going to distract her is the hunk of meat she’s been drooling over.” 

Logan frowns and takes a step back. He sets his face and crosses his arms and you sigh, knowing exactly what he’s about to say. “No.” He tells you firmly, not even bothering to hear you out. 

“Well,” you shrug. “Too bad, I need you to do this or we’re never getting out of here.”

He mocks your shrug and nods, “Alright. Fine.” He leans into your space and you feel like you’re being scolded, “I’m not leaving you on your own, okay? And I’m not letting you go after Kimiko alone.”

“I’m not going after her,” you glance around, making sure no one is listening to you talk about their neighbor like she’s on a hit list. “I just need one interrupted conversation with her. Just one,” you’re practically pleading with him at this point. 

You feel pathetic. You’re a grown woman and an X-Men. You shouldn’t have to be bartering with Logan. He should just have some faith in your abilities to not only protect yourself but conduct yourself appropriately on a mission. 

His face screws up in irritation and you know he’s about to really cause a scene. He’ll start arguing with you, and blow your spot up just to get you out of here. You give him a placating smile, a real one because he’s somehow learned to tell the difference. “Logan, it’s only for an hour. I’m sure you can fend Shiela off,” you joke to try and lighten the mood.

He sucks in a deep breath and you know you’ve got him when his shoulders sink in defeat. “Fine. I’m only agreeing to this because you’re practically a chameleon with this shit,” he gestures vaguely to the barbecue and your face pinches with confusion. 

“What?” 

“I heard you talking about it with Jean one day. How you’re a chameleon when it comes to blending in with people.”

“Well, that wasn’t exactly a brag. It’s a method of survival, a way to make people like me. It gives me a fighting chance when they find out I’m a mutant.” God, why are you even talking about this? Why had he even been listening to your conversation with Jean?

He opens his mouth like he wants to say something but you don’t have time for that. “Look, Logan, just go find Shiela.” You walk away from him before he can drudge up more uncomfortable memories of high school. 

You manage to slip through the party relatively unnoticed. You didn’t see where Kimiko had disappeared to. You’re hoping there might be some sort of hint left where she had been. You rush towards the oak tree, using it as a way to scan the party for her again. From here you can’t see anything except the kitchen.  

You’ve got a perfect view of Logan trudging towards Shiela. You can’t help but laugh when she wraps her hand around his bicep, eagerly telling him something. You smile and shake your head, the audacity of this woman is amazing. 

Something catches your eye, right by your foot. Glancing down you see something silver glinting through the grass. Frowning, you kneel and scoop it up. It’s an oblong device, small, and fits in the palm of your hand. It’s curved oddly, and the lights on it start flashing bright red as you hold it.

“What the hell?” You flip it over, a warped mirrored reflection on the back of it. You just barely spot Kimiko’s twisted face in the reflection before the world goes black. 

You groan, slowly blinking the fog of a forced sleep out of your eyes. You reach to swipe at your face, but something is holding your wrists down. You jerk your arms a few times, struggling against whatever restraints are wrapped around you. When nothing happens, you instead focus on the feeling of it against your wrist, trying to get it to dissolve. 

“Don’t bother,” a cool voice calls out from the shadows. There’s one bright light shining down on you, like the type you might see above an operating table. The entire room feels sterile. And it’s cold, you can barely feel the tips of your toes or fingers. 

“What’d you do?” You demand, trying to sound intimidating but your words come out as a slur. The back of your head radiates pain and it takes everything in you just to keep your eyes open. 

“I developed a gas,” the voice circles the room, echoing across the curved walls. You hear footsteps but you can’t tell where they’re coming from. “It halts the neurons in a mutant’s brain that fire when they use their abilities. Temporary, but quite handy when I’m dealing with a mentalist like you.”

Kimiko steps out of the shadows like a bad comic book villain. Her face is blank, no expression on it, somehow, it’s the realest she’s ever looked before. Here, you can see her humanity. Pores across her nose, frizz and oil along her hair, her nose just a little bit crooked. Whatever she’d been doing to herself has been wiped away. And the human woman lurking beneath is finally revealed. 

“There you are,” you mutter, your speech slowly coming back to you. “I knew that plastic face wasn’t real.”

“Everything was going just fine until you and Wolverine got here,” she gives you a sharp look, “Flux.”

You sarcastically gasp, “Wow, you know my X-Men name. It’s not like I haven’t been interviewed before. What’s the plan here, Kimiko? Where are the others?”

Her brows pinch, “Others?”

“The mutants you’re trafficking.”

“Oh,” she laughs and it’s so jarring you nearly jump. “Is that what people think?” Hesitantly, you nod, but you’re beginning to feel like you might have gotten something very wrong. “No, that’s not what we’re doing here.”

“We?”

“Shiela and I. We have much simpler plans, much more peaceful. You see, Shiela’s the only person to ever stand beside me after she found out I was a mutant. She gave me a home, a friend, and a sense of belonging.” There’s something devout in her words, like a humble follower kneeling at the feet of their god. “Everything I have, everything I am, I owe to her.”

You’ve seen Shiela’s manipulation firsthand. You have no doubt that she’s never actually done anything for Kimiko. She’s just made her think she had and instilled in her this sense of owing her something. 

Then again, Kimiko’s getting this look on her face. She’s like a rabid dog staring down the barrel of their owner’s shotgun. Perhaps she hadn’t needed much prompting to develop such an unhealthy attachment. “Shiela’s parents never loved her the way they should have. They never gave her the perfect life she deserved. So I created one for her.”

She rolls a tray of surgical tools over and a sense of panic finally starts to rouse within you. Yet, for the first time in years, your powers aren’t here to help you. You have nothing to rely on but yourself. But you’ve been trained so intensively in using your abilities as a protector rather than an inhibitor that you’re practically useless without them. 

“All these people,” you rush the words out as she picks up a syringe. You don’t know what the yellow liquid inside is, but from the look on her face, you don’t want to. “You’re controlling them?”

Kimiko nods and you’d be staggering if you weren’t strapped down. Not even Charles could control this many people at once. Not without Cerebro. “Kimiko, that’s,” you gasp, flinching away as she brings the needle towards your arms. “It’s incredible!” Your quick rise in volume makes her jolt and the syringe tumbles out of her hands. 

She grumbles to herself, leaning over to pick it up. “Does Shiela know?” She pauses at the mention of Shiela’s name, brushing her hair over her shoulder and glaring at you. 

“Yes. Of course she does, this is my greatest gift to her.”

“Really?” Your voice drips with contrived empathy. “Then I’m sure she’s done something incredible for you back.” You were hoping a simple manipulation tactic might work, that you could turn Kimiko against an ungrateful Shiela. But this type of obsession isn’t one that can’t be destabilized with a few jumbled words. 

No, you only make her angrier. “Back? Back?” she practically screams, her voice raw and feral as she leaps into your face. You flinch as far back as you can as her face hovers over yours, screaming right at you. “I owe her everything! I should thank her for letting me breathe the same air as hers!”

Your jaw drops, a silent scream tripping out of your mouth as you gasp for air. Something squeezes against your brain, the pulsing from before returns with a vengeance. You can feel your mind pulsing and swelling, pushing against your skull. 

“Don’t fucking say her name again,” Kimiko glares down at you, her eyes devoid of any remorse or compassion as she makes your brain swell until blood leaks down your ears. Whatever plan she had before has been abandoned, she’s going to just kill you now. 

You’re going to die in her basement, no one will ever see you again. Your eyes throb and you feel your brain push to its fullest limits. The pressure builds, builds, and builds until it explodes. 

“Then you just pour a little sugar in.” Logan watches as Shiela tips nearly an entire bag of cane sugar into her jug of sweet tea. His stomach shrivels at the sight and he fights down bile. A little bit of sugar drops over the edge. She catches it on her finger and looks over her shoulder, licking the sugar off and practically deepthroating her own finger. All while maintaining a disturbing amount of eye contact with Logan. 

“Well,” he knows that he promised you a while with Kimiko, but he can’t handle much more of this. “Thank you so much for this,” he struggles with the word, landing weakly on, “lesson.” He’s not even sure what the point of watching her prepare all this food was. 

He’s pretty sure she just wanted him to see her leave a rim of red lipstick at the bottom of her finger as many times as possible. The entire time he’s just wanted to go back to you. There’s a nasty feeling gnawing at him and he knows he needs to get back to you soon. 

“Oh,” she seems genuinely disappointed and Logan sighs awkwardly. “Leaving already, huh?”

He points to his ring pointedly reminding her of the reality of their situation. “Gotta get back to the wife.”

She doesn’t even try to hide her sneer as he mentions you. “Of course, just the perfect husband aren’t you?”

Logan doesn’t dignify that with a response, too distracted by what’s happening outside the window. People have begun to wander around aimlessly, some of them stumbling into the fencing. They just keep walking forward, knocking into the wood repeatedly, not once stopping. John’s got a stuck smile on his face as he leans against the grill, Logan can see smoke rising from where the flesh of his palm is melting onto the metal. A few people all run into each other, collapsing on the ground and just lying there. 

They’re like robots, suddenly without command and unsure what to do. They’re following their programming without anyone putting a stop to it. Shiela follows his gaze and gasps. “Excuse me,” she mutters, practically running out of the room. 

Logan tries to find you amongst all the mess but you’re nowhere to be seen. “Fuck,” he growls out, looking back to where Shiela had run. He should have fucking known not to leave you on your own. 

He stalks after Shiela, listening to her racing heart and the slam of a downstairs door. He follows her down the steps leading to her basement. It looks the same as every other one he’s ever been in. Except, for the metal door hidden behind a few shelving units. The only reason he spots it is because Shiela knocked over a can of paint in her rush toward it. 

Anger brews hot and putrid in his gut. The claws come out unbidden, and the thought of you being locked away in that room pushes him forward. If you’re not in there, he’ll get an answer from Shiela one way or another. But he’s not going to let you get hurt because he didn’t have your back. 

“What the hell are you doing?” A shrill voice interrupts. Your head sinks back against the cool material of the table, brain surging back into place. Your teeth ache, white-hot pain rushing through your bones as Kimiko finally releases her grasp on you. 

Kimiko gives Shiela the look of a dog who just got in trouble. “She found my amplifying device. I have to get rid of her.” She holds the device you found earlier out to Shiela. 

So, she wasn’t as powerful as she pretended. She did need help. It explains why the entire neighborhood is always in the same area, she needs them close to keep control. “Whatever you’re doing is making my toys malfunction.”

Shiela hisses at Kimiko, she darts forward and slaps her hard across the back of the head. If you weren’t in excruciating and paralyzing pain, you’d flinch at the sound. Being as if your brain was just about to explode, though, you could give less of a shit if she beats her rabid dog up. 

These two crazy bitches deserve each other. You just want a Tylenol and a nap at this point. “Well, aren’t you two twisted sisters?” Logan slips through the door, his claws glinting under the light of the room. “Toys?” He demands, eyes roaming the room desperately. 

The second he sees you, strapped down and with blood pouring from your orifices, something slips over his face. It’s like a mask being ripped off. The man he pretends to be is ripped apart by the animal truly lurking within him. Neither women have time to even defend themselves. He goes for Kimiko first and all you see his claws plunging down before arterial blood sprays across your face. 

You groan, tilting your chin the other way and spitting the metallic liquid out of your mouth. There are a long few minutes of screaming, clothes shredding, and blood splashing against every surface of the room. By the time he’s completely calmed down, you’re drenched in it. 

You suck on your teeth, rolling your head limply and finally getting a good look at him. He’s panting, standing over their mutilated corpses with blood dripping down his claws. There’s a wrath on his face you’re happy to have never been on the other end of. But the second he looks at you, you see nothing but stark relief. 

He breathes out your name, your real one, and surges towards you. “Claws!” You shout, hurting your head again. But he was a second away from accidentally skewering you. They’re put away in an instant as he undoes the straps holding you down. 

You groan in relief as the pressure around your head and limbs is released. He perches himself on the edge of the table and scoops you into his chest.

You’re still loopy from Kimiko messing around in the grooves of your brain. The best you can manage is weakly draping your arms along his sides. He pulls you back and brushes the hair out of your face, laughing a little at the blood covering you. “They do anything to you?”

You shrug, “Besides turn my brain into a pressure cooker? No.”

The smile drops from his face and he glares down at the remains of the women. If you weren’t so tired, you’d think he wants to kill them again. “I should have been here.”

“Logan-” You want to tell him not to be ridiculous. You had insisted you could take care of yourself. Told him it would only be a conversation when you knew that was never going to be true. You’d gotten yourself into this, you were lucky he was there to get you out. But you don’t say anything because he interrupts you as he so often does. 

“I can’t keep acting like this is all okay. Like I’m happy with how we treat each other. I thought I was going to lose you, I’m not going to keep pretending I don’t care about you.”

Your face screws up in confusion and you’re not sure you want to hear where he’s going with this. You’ve been used to this dynamic between the two of you for so long. You’re used to him treating you like he can't stand to breathe the same air as you. If this is going where you think it is, you’re not sure you can handle it. 

“Logan,” you’re regaining some feeling in your limbs now. You use the returning strength to push away from him, shaking your head in disbelief. “No, you can’t do this. You can’t just change your-”

He’s incapable of letting you finish a single sentence. His hands wrap around your cheeks tugging you forward until your lips are brushing together. It’s enough of a shock to get you to stop talking. You don’t reciprocate, too stunned to even think about moving. 

He brushes his lips against yours again, firmer this time. Under the layers of blood coating you both, you’re wholly enveloped by him. His scent, his arms, everything about him drapes over you like a warm blanket. Against your better judgment, you find yourself returning the kiss. 

You move further into his lap, one hand holding his face and the other clutching at his hair, needing something to hold to keep you steady in this moment. Logan smiles against your lips, deepening the kiss without wasting another beat. His tongue moves gently across yours at first. A curious caress to see how well you two fit together. He groans when he gets a taste of you, pushing further in and kissing you like he wants to devour you.  

There’s warmth blooming in your stomach and spreading all along your body. You’re buzzing with adrenaline and pain and this unidentifiable feeling that Logan is evoking from you. It’s not the sweet mushy, romantic kiss you always imagined with him. 

This is desperate. Like a dying man’s last attempt at redemption. He’s tasting you like you’re rare, something to be savored. You feel like you’re the only thing left in existence. The only person left for him to admire. You forget the gore behind you, the tumultuous experiences you’ve had with him. 

You let yourself fall into the moment, a blind leap of faith into a pool of all your hopes and desires. He’s better than you ever could have imagined. More desperate than your wildest fantasies. He makes no move to stop, even as the air becomes scarce and you both have to part longer. He just grips you tighter, hands wrapped around you like he’s worried if he lets go he’ll lose you. 

He could, he could lose you. This kiss of his is putting you into a trance, distracting you from all he’s trying to make up for. Perhaps if he stops kissing you, you’ll remember it all and want nothing to do with him. But you don’t see that happening, you just see yourself craving more and more for him., You feel the addiction forming already. A deep-seated need in your bones is finally being sated, it will always need more from him. 

When you can no longer survive on the shared oxygen between you both, you’re forced to part. Your cheeks tingle from the stubble of his beard and you know your lips are pink and swollen because his are too. You’re both still coated in blood and you share a familiar glean in your eyes. 

“I never hated you,” he sounds breathless and you love that you’re the cause of it. “I just didn’t want to lose you.”

You scoff, but there are no cruel intentions behind it. “So you push me away before you ever get a chance to have me?”

He gives you a crooked smile, “I never said I was smart.” You can’t help but laugh at that. Slowly, he helps you to your feet, ignoring the puddles of blood and bits. “We'll have to call Charles. He needs to help the people out there.”

“We also need to let him know there’s no trafficking ring. Just one fucked psyche.” You shoot another glare at the pile that was Kimiko, still bitter about her experiment with your brain. As Logan helps you up the stairs of the basement, you stop him just before you reach the door. 

He gives you a concerned look, like he thinks you’ve hurt something somehow. “I want to talk to you. Really talk to you about everything.” Concern gives way to dread and you can’t help but smile at the regretful look on his face. “But first,” his head perks in interest at your tone, “maybe we can finally enjoy that master bed together?”

“You know,” he leans down, swiping his arms under your knees and lifting you. You gasp, through your arms around his neck and squeezing until you worry you might suffocate him. “You really are the smart one of us, aren’t you?”

“Clearly.”

You’re not sure how well this transition to married couple to tentatively something else is going to go. But you have hope and it's kept you going for all these years. What's wrong with letting it linger a little longer?

a/n: Guess who's back, back again? Hint, it's Flux. I missed writing for them, so I hope you enjoyed this as much as I did. Although, I worry the ending was too cheesy.

Reblogs, comments, likes, and requests are always appreciated !!

end. — I do not own the characters or the comics/movies X-Men, but this writing is my own all rights reserved © not-neverland06 2024. do not copy, repost, translate & recommend elsewhere.

General Taglist: @evasmlp ♡ 

Logan Taglist:  @nonamevenus @smexy-bucky-waifu @wh1sp @peony-always @corvusmorte

@mrs-ephemeral  @wolviesgirl @insomniachox @izbelross @spktrlvr ♡

[unboundprompts]

Hello! Can you help me and/or give me examples of how to write a pre-teen? Specifically a slightly mature for their age but still socially-awkward, selfless, empathetic, extroverted 10-year-old

How to Write a Pre-Teen

Voice and Language

Simple but specific vocabulary: Pre-teens might not use very complex words, but they often know and throw in some “big words” they’ve recently learned or mimic words they hear adults use. Don’t overdo it, though—they’ll often misapply or half-understand these terms, which can create natural, humorous moments.

“It’s totally, like, a catastrophe that I forgot my project.”

Expressive dialogue: Pre-teens are enthusiastic and often exaggerate. They can also shift quickly between emotions, from excitement to frustration.

“That was the best movie ever!” might turn into “Actually, I mean, it was kinda boring in some parts, but, you know, overall…”

Thoughtful yet blunt: Kids this age often haven’t fully learned the “filters” adults use. They can be direct and say things that are surprisingly insightful or unexpectedly honest.

Thoughts and Perspective

Developing identity and opinions: They’re beginning to form their own beliefs but still echo the views of family, teachers, or friends.

“Mom says people should never lie, but I wonder if little lies are okay if they help people feel better…”

Questioning and introspective moments: Pre-teens are curious about life, relationships, and “big ideas.” They may ask questions, but sometimes keep their deep thoughts to themselves, exploring them internally.

“If friends are supposed to be there for each other, why do I feel alone even when they’re around?”

Struggle with abstract concepts: At this age, they’re just beginning to understand abstract ideas like justice or friendship but often approach them in straightforward, literal ways.

Behavior and Actions

Impulsivity and energy: They might shift quickly between activities and emotions, getting distracted or excited without much control over it. They may also blurt out ideas or act before thinking, especially if they’re extroverted.

For instance, a character might immediately jump up to help someone even if they aren’t sure what to do, or they might “borrow” something without fully considering the consequences.

Physical awkwardness: Pre-teens can be a bit clumsy as they’re still growing into their bodies. This can lead to endearing, awkward moments.

They might knock something over, trip over their own feet, or feel self-conscious in ways that show they’re still figuring themselves out physically as well as socially.

Friendships and Social Dynamics

Navigating social rules: Pre-teens are very aware of social “rules” but may not fully understand them. This is an age when they care a lot about what their friends think, but they’re also just beginning to question these dynamics.

A pre-teen might want to befriend the “cool” kids but feel conflicted when they realize their values don’t align. Or they may try too hard to impress friends and feel self-conscious afterward.

Conflicted loyalties: Friendships are often intense at this age, and they might struggle with conflicting feelings if friends argue or if they feel left out.

“I really like hanging out with Sarah, but I know Emma doesn’t. Maybe if I can make them both laugh, we could all just… get along?”

Small gestures: Pre-teens often show they care in understated ways, like sharing snacks, giving a small gift, or cheering someone up when they’re down. For a socially-awkward pre-teen, these gestures may come out clumsy but sweet.

Insecurity and Self-Awareness

Self-consciousness mixed with bravery: Pre-teens often fluctuate between trying to fit in and wanting to stand out. They might do something brave but then doubt themselves or quickly retreat if things don’t go as planned.

For instance, a character might volunteer to speak in front of the class only to feel panicked once they’re in the spotlight.

Hyper-awareness of themselves and others: They’re beginning to notice how others perceive them and may get flustered easily or worry about little things, like if their clothes look okay or if they sounded silly.

“I shouldn’t have laughed like that… I bet everyone thought I sounded so weird.”

Joking as a defense: Pre-teens often use humor to cope, covering up their awkwardness or discomfort by making jokes.

Reactions to Conflict and Emotion

Quick emotional shifts: They might go from laughing to frustrated to embarrassed in just a few minutes. They feel emotions intensely and may have outbursts or react strongly to things adults might dismiss as minor.

Heroic ideals vs. real-world disappointments: Many pre-teens have an idealized view of right and wrong, fairness, and heroism, and they may be disappointed when things don’t align with these ideals. They’re just starting to understand that people aren’t all good or all bad.

“I don’t get it… why would she lie about something like that? Friends are supposed to be honest!”

[incorrectbatfam]

One thing I rarely see in injury and chronic pain fics is the grief that comes with missing out on stuff you love because you can no longer do them without hurting yourself. Writers who have been disabled their whole lives (or at least a long time) tend to forget that not all disabled people are used to being disabled. For able-bodied characters, especially athletic ones like vigilantes, a serious injury could mean a jarring change that includes giving up the things that mean the most to them.

I was physically fine until I was 18. Back then, my sense of self was entwined with interests that required a lot of movement and dexterity. I started doing MMA in middle school for self-defense. I loved parkour and even had a few hundred subscribers on my old YouTube channel. I learned to shoot and was gifted my first gun when I was 16. I took up multiple instruments. You get the idea.

My motorcycle accident fucked up the joints on my left side—my knee and shoulder especially, but also wrist to an extent. When it first happened, I thought I'd be on crutches for a bit but things would eventually get back to normal. The pain didn't go away even after I got rid of the crutches but I figured it was just residual and I should do what I'd been doing before. It's why I turned to substances—to block the pain and do what I love, but that's another topic. I didn't recognize my injury as a disabling thing until the end of the pandemic, when I put my parkour channel on an indefinite hiatus because it was seriously wearing my body down. It might sound silly to you but I was devastated. It's like if Spider-Man wasn't allowed to swing from buildings. It took me a long time to make peace with losing that part of me.

Another piece of that grief is even when you can do stuff, it's not the same because you have to exclude certain aspects of it for your own health. It's like the Robin that died and came back wrong. I can't use certain gym equipment and I have to tell my sparring partners what to avoid. I don't go to the shooting range much now because I can't extend my arm and hold a rifle for the amount of time it takes to aim without it starting to hurt. I'm a drummer, but I need breaks throughout the setlist and I can't do anything too fast or complex with the pedals, which means I can't play some of my favorite songs and my band is limited in what we write and perform. I can't take my motorcycle on road trips without frequent rest stops. Making accommodations helps physically, but emotionally, they're not always easy to accept because that means accepting the pain as a long-term disability rather than a temporary setback.

This got super long because I think it's unexplored in fics so some tips for creators:

First, learn how the body works and how stupidly fast and easy it is to get hurt. Mine was on a residential road because I didn't pay attention for 0.2 seconds

Learn the difference between internalized ableism and being upset over becoming disabled. I think a lot of writers skip over the feelings someone would naturally experience because it can be construed as ableism. Let them be in denial, sad, angry, etc. upon finding out because acceptance almost never happens right away. That's different from being a dick to themselves or others based on disability

Also, not everyone uses the same labels or has the same vocabulary to describe themselves. Different characters will have different ways of describing depending on their personality, level of knowledge, where they come from, and their relationship with their disability. I still don't really call myself disabled since I don't have it as bad as others so I tell people what happened instead (anyone who says "differently abled" will receive a different ability from me in the Denny's parking lot)

Think about how they cope with their new disability. Do they realize it's a disability right away? Do they talk to someone? Search desperately for a cure? Numb the pain? Turn to alternative methods? Do they worry about something else first, like money? Do they develop something else because of it, like a mental illness? Again, coping poorly is not ableism

What stays the same and what changes? I think about the difference between Forrest Gump and Lieutenant Dan after they were both wounded in battle

If they have a passion they can no longer pursue, it doesn't make much sense for them drop it so readily. Maybe they find a way to continue with accommodations (a good place to get creative!). Maybe they try and push through anyway. If they do ultimately resign, include the thought process and internal conflict behind it

[morlock-holmes]

The Conspiratorial Mindset

So, I've always had a bit of an interest in scams and hokum, and what people call "Cults".

One of the common refrains when you talk about religious Cults is, "If you think about it all religions have beliefs that seem odd to outsiders" and this is true, but as I read more about cults I started to think,

"Wait, a lot of these groups aren't united just by having unusual religious or supernatural views; a lot of them also seem to have matching patterns of behaviors that have nothing to do with belief in psychic space aliens"

I'm talking about things like,

Having a leadership structure which is absolute, where the top leaders cannot be disciplined or even openly criticized by lower members;

Exerting tremendous control over the dress and behavior of adherents;

Telling adherents that outsiders are untrustworthy and that contact with outsiders should be strictly limited and heavily monitored by organizational leadership;

The extensive and common use of shunning and reprogramming in response to violation of any of the above rules.

In some groups, failing to adhere to the dress code and spending a lot of time with outsiders is, at worst, the subject of a few little jabs at family gatherings. In other groups, those same behaviors are treated as Defcon one crises and become the central issue of the adherent's relationship with everybody else in the organization until they can be bullied back into doing the organization's bidding.

It was gratifying to learn that other people have noticed these patterns (Some people prefer the term "High Control Group" to "Cult" because it highlights what the actual problem is)

I am starting to notice similar dynamics in what are commonly called "Conspiracy theories".

The thing about conspiracy theories is... Well, conspiracies exist, and sometimes groups of powerful people get together to do something in secret which would get them in big trouble if they were to do it openly.

But I am starting to notice a particular, I don't know, a particular way of conceptualizing the organization and purpose of conspiracies which is unique to some people and which characterizes the kind of conspiracy theorist who takes Alex Jones seriously.

I kind of think of it as a "Witch-Hunting mentality".

For certain people in more primitive times and places, if they, say, slipped off a ladder and hurt themselves, their first thought would be, "That must have happened because a witch cursed me. We need to find and punish the witch who cursed me."

And this isn't just the attribution of malice that characterizes this idea:

One malicious conspiracy that might make you fall off a ladder is a manufacturer who doesn't care about safety ratings. Imagine that the manufacturer is really deliberately malicious here. A subordinate comes to him and says, "Our ladders can't reliably hold the weight of a person and a lot of them will probably break and cause people to fall and hurt themselves." and he says, "I know that but who cares, by the time people figure it out it'll be too late to get their money back."

That's a malicious conspiracy, but, importantly, if Bob buys a faulty ladder and falls off, the conspiracy wasn't trying to hurt Bob; it merely didn't care whether Bob got hurt.

Now, this distinction doesn't take away the malice and hostility towards Bob, but if you go to the ladder manufacturer and say, "Hey boss, Bob bought one of our faulty ladders, but he's really skinny so the ladder didn't break" the manufacturer will go, "Who the fuck is Bob? And good, that's one less angry person."

Whereas imagine Bob's ladder has been cursed to break by a witch. The witch did it because she hates Bob, and wants him to fall, and if she finds out he didn't fall, she'll go, "Curses, I'll have to find some other way to hurt Bob."

Conspiracy theorists, it seems to me, are far more inclined to conceptualize conspiracies as acts of deliberate malice aimed at them rather than acts of negligent malice.

@loving-n0t-heyting posted this article from the New York Post which contains a good example of what I mean:

“I thought I was on the cutting edge of promoting rights for gay people,” Yang said. “But then I started looking deeper into where this was coming from and who was paying for it, and I started to get very disillusioned...

I assume the people paying for it are LGBT advocacy groups? Did you, uh, not know that the people you were working for were paying you to work for them?

“When you really dig down you can see how much of this comes from documents and plans at the United Nations,” Yang said, referring in part to the UN’s “Gender Equality” initiative. “It’s part of a global agenda to restructure society, re-structure our social norms and the economy,” Yang claimed. “They are undermining the sexually dimorphic nature of reality and breaking down the differences between the sexes to break down our identity. They are constructing identities for us and they want us to adopt them.”

Oh, I see.

This is exactly what I mean. LGBT rights efforts make Yang and others feel disoriented, like society is being restructured and that they are being left behind, like they aren't quite in control of social norms and that stable identity categories can't be relied on anymore.

Now, one kind of conservative might look at that and say, "These are bad second order effects of LGBT people trying to assert their lifestyle in public and that's why we should oppose them."

But another kind says, "These changes make me feel unstable. Therefore, the main purpose of the changes is to make me feel unstable. In order to understand these changes, I need to figure out who wants me to feel unstable and what they would gain from making me feel unstable."

The idea that Yang's feeling of instability is simply a side effect of a series of efforts mainly focused on LGBT rights is incomprehensible. Instead, she believes that there is a series of efforts focused mainly on making her feel unstable, with LGBT rights as a kind of side effect to the main goal of making her feel unstable.

This kind of thing is, to me, a big red flag that indicates that we are starting to float away from reasonable conspiracy thinking into crazy town.

I am particularly curious if folks can recommend any writers or researchers who have noticed this dynamic.

[cripplecharacters]

Writing Profoundly Intellectually Disabled Characters

[Plain Text: Writing Profoundly Intellectually Disabled Characters]

While there is a glaring lack of intellectually disabled characters - except maybe big, physically strong, white men who can’t “tell right from wrong” or have a personality - in all sorts of media, specifically profoundly intellectually disabled characters are next to non-existent, with the existing ones being used more often as plot devices rather than portrayed as human beings.

This does make a degree (and not more) of sense considering that 85% of ID people have it mild, 10% moderate, 3.5% severe and only 1.5% has profound ID, the larger group inevitably gets more representation (which doesn’t make it good, but it does exist). However, it hopefully doesn’t need explaining that minorities deserve to be represented too (...and represented well), so this is what this post will be about.

Please don’t treat this as your only source on writing a character like this (even though I’m willing to bet it’s the only one like this, at least on tumblr), do your research and always check other sources.

Also, for clarity: intellectual disability isn't an umberalla term for "mental/brain disability". It's a specific, singular diagnosis that used to be known as "mental [r slur]". It's not the same as brain damage, autism, dementia, dyslexia, and anything else that's not specifically "intellectual disability". It's something that you are either born with or acquire early in life.

How do I Include Them in the Story?

[Plain Text: How do I include them in the story?]

A profoundly ID person will spend the majority of their time either at home or in some sort of care facility since they will require 24/7 help. The easiest role to put them in is probably a family member of another character. I've mentioned on this blog before that the "ID characters always end up as the annoying younger sibling" thing is overdone, but none of these necessarily have to be true for this suggestion to work (especially not the "annoying" part).

A non-ID character could have an intellectually disabled older sibling, twin, cousin, uncle/aunt, the sibling of a grandparent, etc. Seriously - a severely disabled person can be an adult, or even an elder. Just not as a parent, since a profoundly disabled person can't consent (a lot of ID people very much can, but this is the one disability where your level of functioning is baked into the exact diagnosis - profound ID comes with the inability to consent/understand the consequences enough to consent).

"They're a family member" is basically the easiest "excuse" to include a profoundly intellectually disabled in a story (and, as a bonus, you don't have to figure out how the other character would react to meeting them for the first time, since they probably knew each other for a long time already).

If your story isn't about the profoundly disabled character and instead just features them as a character, it would be much easier to not make the other character their primary caregiver. It's simply a ton of work and the character wouldn't have time for fighting dragons and whatnot - it'd be easier to have the abled character spend time with the disabled character at home (or care facility; you can very much visit someone in one) hanging out rather than actually doing the caregiving part.

Outside of a home and a care facility, there are also day care programs that some people might attend. This is the rarest solution out of the three mainly because of financial reasons, but also these resources aren’t as common for people who can’t walk, learn self-care, etc. Going to one takes time (the profoundly disabled person isn’t gonna walk there by themselves) and probably requires a specialized van (that you can bring a wheelchair in, which is incredibly expensive). Most day care programs are focused on people who are moderately or severely ID at most. One made for profoundly ID people would require 1:1 aides, which generally means the programs are much smaller for logistical reasons, but also even more expensive. For most people, too expensive without funding. Basically, this is an option, but you have to consider your character’s financial situation and/or what kind of financial support do disabled people get where they live.

Another way is having the disabled character in some sort of high position - in real life there were quite a few cases of profoundly and severely intellectually disabled royalty. Depending on the place and time there might have been pressure to not let the public see them, but this wasn't always the case. The biggest example of the latter was probably Emperor An of Jin (the first Jin, Eastern one) who was, as his title suggests, crowned at some point. He didn’t actually rule (his uncle did) but yes, you can have a severely disabled person as the head of a monarchy, it’s not without precedent.

In fiction you can do whatever you want anyway when it comes to ableism, you can have it be there, or you can have it not be there - and if it does exist then there are still different kinds of ableism you can portray that aren't the "literally killing-the-disabled-baby/hiding-them-in-some-dungeon level of eugenics" kind. Maybe a rich family who cares about their image would actually be unable to shut up about their kid to show how "saint-like" they are for caring for the disabled - it is unfortunately realistic, and can be a potential way to have the character exist in public, not ignore ableism, and also not go the aforementioned literally-just-murder route that writers usually do to show an ableist family.

Characterization

[Plain Text: Characterization]

Warning; the bar here is somewhere in the Earth's inner core. If your character has a single characteristic beyond aggressive/loud/unmanageable*, they're automatically at the top of most complex fictional representation of severely/profoundly ID characters. Congrats.

* - Some people are those things but, unsurprisingly, they're other things too. A lot of profoundly ID people can actually be completely quiet - you notice people who are loud because they're loud.

As with literally every character, you need to figure out what they like and not like. This can be quite literally anything, but try to think of the basic stuff. Do they have something they really enjoy eating (and conversely - something they refuse to eat)? Do they have some sort of comfort toy or object they don't want anyone touching (and maybe showing them playing with it with a different character could be a way to show how much they trust them)? In more modern settings, do they have a favorite show they always bug everyone to put on? Are they really clingy or do they hate physical contact (again, maybe they only enjoy it from a specific character)?

Another characterization could be comfort objects. A lot of profoundly ID people are autistic (which I'll touch on later) and will have an object that they bring everywhere the same way that non-ID autistic people might. There's nothing really specific here, just another layer of "this character is a Person". Maybe they have a blanket they really enjoy chewing because the texture feels good or some sort of plushie they like to throw around because it makes a sound they find funny. Lots of options. Maybe they have a personal “tell” to let others know they want their comfort object brought to them.

Keep in mind, you have to show this all in non-verbal manner. A profoundly ID person is probably not using any sort of AAC device (the most robust one I remember seeing right now was a low-tech one with "yes" and "no", but there are probably ones who operate on a larger amount of singular words). This is basically another opportunity for characterization - what do they do when they're happy - laugh, flap their arms, make sounds? - and when they're upset - scream, hit themselves, make different sounds? Obviously, you'd have to take other disabilities into account (e.g. many profoundly ID people won't move much, some might not be able to make much audible sound, etc.) but almost anything helps.

This brings us to…

Communication

[Plain Text: Communication]

An important thing (concept?) I'll throw here is "total communication", which can mean different things in different contexts, but here I'll use it to mean "using everything you can to communicate with someone who cannot do so in a ‘traditional’ way".

Communication can be categorized as having two sides; expressive and receptive. For most intellectually disabled people in general, receptive skills tend to be significantly higher than expressive ones, though there are specific disorders where it’s reversed or equal. As mentioned before, most profoundly ID people won’t speak orally, won’t use sign language, and won’t use AAC (though out of all three, AAC is the most likely one). Some might say single words, but that’s about it. It’s not a “physically mute but can write perfectly grammatically correct sentences” situation, it’s more of a “[single noun]” one, if anything. Receptive skills however are pretty decent (in comparison) and they would probably understand their name, the name/title of their carer(s), names of things they see every day, events they have some frame of reference to (e.g. if they grew up Christian, they would probably know what Christmas is), etc. Your other characters could (and should) talk to them like they can understand, even if they don’t catch everything or even most of it. I say a lot of “probably” there, but the people who can’t do so usually have other comorbidities, which I’ll mention later.

To go back to expressive communication, eye pointing can be used to figure out what the character wants. A change in breathing can be used to tell that a character got stressed. Throwing an object can be used as a hint that the character wants to play. Maybe them reaching towards person A means they want to eat, but reaching towards person B means they want them to sing a song for them. Maybe them making a particular face means they just had a seizure and need to be comforted. Whatever their "tells" like this might be, other characters who know them would probably be able to tell more-or-less what's going on - you don't have to go really in-depth, especially if it's a minor character, but figuring out the ways your character communicates with others will make it feel more like a person and not a Disabled Lamp (“if you can replace a disabled character with a lamp or a sick dog, they’re not a character”).

If you read some of these and go "that's a thing that a child would do" then you're not necessarily wrong. A profoundly ID adult might enjoy activities that primarily kids partake in. This is, I can't stress this enough, not the same as "mentally being a child". Otherwise, a whole bunch of adults on this very website would be "mental middle schoolers" based on the shows that they watch - but they're obviously not. A profoundly ID adult doesn't have the "mind of a baby" if their favorite game is throwing a toy, they have the mind of a profoundly intellectually disabled adult. Sometimes people assume that since ID people aren't mentally [incorrect age], they always "act their [actual] age" and essentially end up downplaying how much some people's ID affects them, when the point is that no matter what you do, you are your age. An ID character who is 26 years, incontinent, constantly puts their hand in their mouth, can't speak, whatever, is mentally 26 years old the same way that they would be if they had a wife and a mortgage.

For the last thing from this section I'll circle back to the assumption that all severely/profoundly ID people are loud, aggressive, etc. - as I said, some of them are (just like abled people). The thing is, this is not always an unreasonable response to being unable to communicate with the people who are caring for you. If you had a pressure sore but couldn't explain it to anyone you'd be pissed off and screaming too. That's an extreme example, but still applies. If someone is severely stressed out (for an abled person, this might be inheriting a ton of debt, for a profoundly ID person it can be a change in daily routine), they can lash out. It's an unpleasant but very much human reaction to have, even if what's behind the ID person's behavior is significantly different from what an average abled person might consider "a good reason".

So I guess my advice is, try to show some empathy to the character, even if they genuinely are loud and/or aggressive. Intellectually disabled people - including the profoundly disabled ones - aren't some alien species that is just mean and hates their caregivers for no reason, some just can't process their feelings the way an abled person might because of their disability. That's not to say that caregivers aren't allowed to feel frustrated - because they are - but that very severely disabled people aren't purposefully evil. As mentioned in the earlier parts, all behavior has a cause, just like for literally everyone. So if the character is being "unmanageable": maybe they aren't some cursed burden, maybe they're just stressed out of their mind and now someone they don't know that well is trying to do *something* to them, which they can't figure out because of their disability affecting their receptive language skills.

Resources and What to Keep in Mind

[Plain Text: Resources and What to Keep in Mind]

Some resources you might read about ID can be potentially misleading. Even if you specifically look for causes of the profound severity of intellectual disability, you will get results for mild ID. That's mainly because people with mild ID make up >85% of intellectually disabled people and those with profound ID make like 1%, so they're a minority in a minority.

Basically:

Down syndrome is a very unlikely cause. It's always listed as the main genetic cause of ID, but that's only true for mild and moderate severities. If you choose any of the common causes of ID make sure it actually has the symptoms you're looking for.

Most profoundly ID people will have either severe brain damage early in life (and this can come with cerebral palsy), cephalic disorders (e.g. microcephaly), genetic conditions that you've never heard of (e.g. Pallister-Killian or Emanuel syndromes, 3p deletion), genetic conditions that you've never heard of for a very understandable reason (e.g. X-linked intellectual disability-limb spasticity-retinal dystrophy-arginine vasopressin deficiency… there are hundreds named in this way), or just have it without a known cause. The last one happens much more often than people tend to assume.

For a reason I'll probably discover at some point, most disorders and syndromes that come with ID are said to have "autistic-like features" rather than being "comorbid with autism". In practice, it's the same thing. Your character is probably autistic.

In the same way, a lot of practical resources will assume that ID = moderate ID (since most mildly affected need no or minimal support, and severely/profoundly disabled ones are a small minority) so pay attention if you're looking at the right things. If it's talking about having a job, travelling alone, etc., then you got clickbaited.

Another subsection here will be comorbidities because there are a lot of them. I’ll mention the biggest ones.

Brain damage is the most common one (except autism) and can vary a lot. There is barely anything I can say about this one, it’s an enormous spectrum that for some people causes disability and for others barely affects their symptoms. Cerebral palsy, especially quadriplegic, is seen a lot and might affect the character’s mobility a lot. Some people might be unable to breathe or swallow and need a breathing or feeding tube.

Deafness and blindness are comorbid with a surprising amount of causes of ID. The thing is, you could take advice for deaf/blind characters as-in for a character that has both (e.g.) glaucoma and mild ID and not change much, but this doesn’t really work for a character who’s profoundly disabled like this. The situation that can happen here is that it’s not actually known if the person is or isn’t deaf or blind because they can’t tell you. As mentioned earlier, some people will have absent receptive communication skills. How do you verify if they’re deaf or just not reactive to language? Some people won’t react to even extremely loud sounds, even if they can hear them perfectly well (besides, a lot of deaf people can still hear some). Same for verifying if they are blind - obviously, sometimes there’s something visual going on, but often there isn’t. Especially since the main causes of both blindness and deafness will be brain-based, not ear- or eye-based. Another character not being sure if the disabled character is blind or just very uninterested in visual stimuli is a possibility, especially with less advanced medicine.  This is also why you might see those weird statistics of "between 5-90% of people with [condition] are deaf" kind.

Mobility is almost always severely affected. Some are fully mobile, but that’s simply not common. The average person will be unable to walk independently. It’s not always a muscle or nerve problem (though it absolutely can be), it’s mostly an issue of coordination. Because of this (and understanding physical space), operating a wheelchair (...successfully) might be impossible. This doesn’t mean you should just drop your character in a hospital wheelchair for them to get wheeled around because they will probably need a wheelchair that will actually support them - a headrest, ability to tilt, a harness, all that. This could be done with a powerchair (they can have controls on the back for a second person to operate), a manual wheelchair, or an adaptive stroller.

Now for resources;

One good resource I can recommend is SBSK (which I shared before), to my knowledge this is the only place that interviews severely and profoundly ID people (+their families) and the interviewer is great at actually interacting with many of them. 

Most resources on the practical things only ever talk about caregivers (who are very important) but completely ignore the actual person being cared for which IMO kinda defeats the point.

Good luck writing!

mod Sasza

[rebeccathenaturalist]

Welcome to my Tuesday morning PSA about plastics!

So--I was walking along the Bolstadt beach approach sidewalk here in Long Beach, WA yesterday afternoon, and I started seeing these little orange pellets on the ground that looked a little bit like salmon roe (but probably weren't). So I picked one up, and it was most definitely rubber. I went around picking up every one I could find, and while I didn't keep exact count I probably amassed 50-60 of them. I took this picture before depositing them in the nearest trash can.

These are airsoft gun pellets, and you can buy them in big jars containing thousands of them. That means that someone who decided that the beach was a great place to shoot their airsoft guns could easily litter the place with countless little bits of plastic rubber in less than an hour. We already have a huge problem here with people leaving trash, including tiny bits of plastic, all over the beach (you should see the gigantic mess after 4th of July fireworks when thousands of people come in from out of town, blow things up, and then leave again without picking up after themselves.)

But these airsoft pellets have a particularly nasty side effect. You know how my first thought was "wow, those look kind of like salmon roe?" Well, we have a number of opportunistic omnivore birds like crows, ravens, and several species of gull that commonly scavenge on the beach, especially along the approaches because people often feed them there. If I can catch the resemblance of an orange airsoft pellet to a fish egg, then chances are there are wildlife that will assume they're edible.

Since birds don't chew their food, they probably won't notice that the taste or texture is wrong--it'll just go down the hatch. And since they can't digest the pellets, there's a good chance they might just build up in the bird's digestive system, especially if the bird eats a large number of them--say, fifty or sixty of them dropped on the ground along the same fifty foot stretch of sidewalk. The bird might die of starvation if there's not enough capacity for food in their stomach--or they might just die painfully of an impacted gut, and no way to get help for it. If the pellets end up washed into the ocean, you get the same issue with fish and other marine wildlife eating them, and then of course the pellets eventually breaking up into microplastic particles.

You can get biodegradable airsoft pellets; they appear to mainly be gray or white in color rather than bright screaming orange and green. But "biodegradable" doesn't mean "instantly dissolves the next time it rains." An Amazon listing for Aim Green biodegradable airsoft pellets advertise them as "Our biodegradable BBs are engineered to degrade only with long-term exposure to water and sun and will degrade 180 days after being used." That's half a year for them to be eaten by wildlife.

I don't know, y'all. That handful of carelessly dropped rubber pellets just encapsulates how much people don't factor in the rest of nature when making decisions, even on something that is purely for entertainment like an airsoft gun. We could have had a lot of the same technological advances we have today, but with much less environmental impact, if we had considered the long-term effects on both other people and other living beings, as well as our habitats. We could have found ways from the beginning to make these things in ways that benefited us but also mitigated any harm as much as possible. Instead we're now having to reverse-engineer things we've been using for decades, and sometimes--like the "biodegradable" airsoft pellets--they still have a significant negative impact.

But--at least there are people trying to do things better, thinking ahead instead of just on immediate profit. We're stuck in a heck of a mess here, figuratively and literally, and changing an entire system can't be done in a day. Maybe we can at least keep pushing for a cultural shift that emphasizes planning far into the future--if not the often-cited "seven generations ahead", then at least throughout the potential lifespan of a given product.

[xiatarot]

pick a pile: your next relationship

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take what resonates, leave what doesn’t.

for entertainment purposes only.

♡

I.

significant signs: big trees, snoopy, rabbits, spider webs, pictures of your grandparents, angel wings, 777, 8, 16, 1717.

zodiac signs: sagittarius, libra, virgo, cancer, aquarius, leo, gemini.

dear pile 1, it seems like the universe here has a different message for you but it's definitely one that you'll need to hear. your next relationship is essentially with yourself. spirit is urging you to look within, and find the love you seek in yourself. love and affection don't necessarily always have to come from a romantic partner; look around you and you'll find many different sources. you have a strong support system, wether in the 3D or spiritually, or both. there's a need for you to retreat and keep yourself in that hermit energy. there's some things you'll need to let go of in order to close a particularly difficult chapter of your life, and as the end of the year approaches, now it's the perfect time to let go of all those negative energies pulling you back from being who you dream of being, so that 2025 can feel like a fresh new beginning. some of you might struggle with addictions or, generically speaking, things that distract you on a daily basis and take you away from spending time doing other more fulfilling things that could benefit you long-term. now it's the time to reconsider your priorities and make amends with the past. what's behind you shouldn't keep you from moving forward. it would be beneficial to open up to one of multiple friends, don't be afraid to ask for help. to-do lists and physical self-care could also help a lot. remember that whatever you're going through it's temporary and it will pass. don't go back to unhealthy situations and toxic behaviors for temporary comfort, act out of love for your future self. take care.

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II.

significant signs: singing, white candles, rainstorms, black guitar picks, silver scissors, anxiety meds, journaling, 12, 444, 1010, 6,333.

zodiac signs: leo, aquarius, capricorn, gemini, libra, virgo, aries.

you will meet your next partner at work or this person will offer you a job opportunity. i'm seeing someone receiving bouquets of flowers at their office. this person could be very conventionally attractive, so much that you wouldn't believe they'd be into you, but they will. this will boost your confidence on the long run. you will meet this person at a time in your life where you feel lost or trapped in some kind of situation that might have to do with finances or unemployment. this person will take it in their interests to do the best they can to help you and take you out of your misery. i think they'll be very financially abundant. beware of jealousy that could arise around you, they could have many eyes on them, for some of you they could even be a public figure or someone that's just relatively known on social media. your person will spend a lot of time observing you and trying to read you from afar, they could've been hurt in the past so they'll take a slow and careful approach for fear that you might turn out to be another lesson for them. this relationship will force you to face insecurities and you might have a hard time in terms of self-esteem and confidence initially. communication and honesty are essential here, as lots of misunderstandments could arise out of it. they will definitely be the one to make the first move. this relationship will be filled with passion and could even lead to marriage if that's something you both want. finances won't be a problem for either of you. brace yourself cause it seems like your person is right around the corner! very happy for you :)

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III.

significant signs: the beatles, monkeys, palm trees, fur boots, cocktails, germany, hummingbirds, golden necklace, december, 1212, 222, 888, 555.

zodiac signs: leo, libra, cancer, sagittarius, capricorn, taurus.

your next relationship will be all about healing. whoever this person is, they will almost surprise you with how much love they'll hold for you. it's like finally feeling warmth after spending a whole life out in the cold. i'm seeing someone deeply stuck in their insecurities and self sabotaging tendencies, your mind might tell you you're not deserving of love and this person will take it as their mission to make you believe you are. it's a gentle and caring type of love, one that speaks through actions rather than words. this person will be your anchor and just overall someone you can count on at all times. they're very caring and sweet, they'll treat you as if you were glass. there'll be a lot of deep conversations and opening up to each other. this relationship will be based on trust. it could be someone you already know or already know of. you might have mutual friends and meet at a party or a special occasion that will require you to dress a bit fancier than usual. this person will immediately want to strike a conversation with you and they'll be endeared by your shyness and modesty. it's a relationship that will heal your relationship with yourself and help you see you're much more deserving and worthy than you were raised to believe. you'll definitely have a family together in the future :).

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[bertoyana]

i'm so sorry i don't want to be the "the party ended 5 years ago and he's still here" person but dark phoenix's final scene is still SO funny to me. especially to see how erik plays charles like a fiddle

like: he shows up with NO helmet AND a chess set. (he did this last time in days of the future past, and it worked, right? so it should work again, right? right???)

so, he sits, completely uninvited mind you, and he tries (and fails terribly bless his heart) at starting a normal conversation, he asks charles about his retirement, probably trying to get charles to like, talk about it or whatever

(rip erik's hairline)

charles is not having any of it, which... valid. the last time he and erik had a full conversation, erik told him to shut the fuck up 

anyways, erik realizes his failed attempt at being casual did NOT work like he wanted, so he pulls out plan b - he calls charles his old friend (which, if you pay attention, in the prequels they use 'old friend' as a term to de-escalate the situation)

which WORKS, for some reason, and charles immediately deflates and gives erik the tiniest smile in existence, because erik showing he cares always seems to do it for charles lmao

(he's so embarrassing . god bless. @ x men: is this your leader)

anyhow, erik pulls out the second part of his plan b - he asks charles if he wants to play a game. still playing casual. just two buddies. just two guys. some guys. just some friends having a toootal normal n casual conversation.

and you can immediately see charles close himself up, he crosses his arms and avoids looking erik in the eye. erik managed to soften him up with the 'old friend' and having his helmet off, but it's not enough YET so erik pulls out his plan c. luckily his last one, christ, charles really does like to keep them waiting doesn't he

keep an eye on erik's entire demeanor in this scene, his position is not closed off like charles', he's open, he leans on the table, and maintains eye contact with charles. his head is tilted to one side and everything, completely harmless

i'm so obsessed with charles' microexpressions here james mcavoy you are so insane

anwyays, charles uncrosses his arms and his position does come off a little more open, but if you watch the scene you can see him shake his head. this obviously touches him - but he's probably intending to say still no. probably because he has the biggest martyr complex i've ever seen in a fictional character 

so, erik pulls up his fucking plan d (lol) and hopefully this time IT WILL be the last. he pulls the pawn out of his jacket pocket.

(why the fuck is this played like a fucking romantic scene i'm so serious, why is he smiling to himself like that)

mind you, erik had the pawn in his pocket the entire time, which could mean either of two things:

charles looks surprised/confused the entire scene, but in THIS part he doesn't look confused, he just looks like he's still trying to figure out what erik is trying to do. so it either means erik makes charles play this 'guess where it's hiding' game all the time (????) which doesn't really sound likely for him to do, but erik is always begging charles to get into his head so it wouldn't surprise me if he actually did this every time. god knows he's desperate enough or

erik was expecting charles to reject his offer right away, and had multiple other plans shoved up his ass if this was the case. this also seems likely, he's obsessive enough to have thought multiple ways through. 

anyways, he puts his two fists up and pulls up the most mortal sentence in existence. one he knows charles won't be able to deny him

"just ONE game 🥺 for old time's sake???? 🥺🥺🥺" man stfu you are 62 years old GET UPPPP 

anyways - pay attention to his wording. 

"just one game" because erik came ALLLL this way for charles, so charles might as well play ONE game with him, and then erik could be gone - if charles wanted it that way. 

"for old's time sake" when things were easier and when they were more at peace - when they were on each other's side. when they were together and the mansion, just after charles had saved him and gave him a hom- oh wait 

(also, there's 100% a hidden meaning here. and there’s also a 100% chance i’m reaching but idc. the pawn could be in his left hand or his right. the possibility is 50/50. the only way charles could know with 100% certainty was if he entered erik's mind - if he took up erik's offer. but he could also not get into erik's mind and just... guess and fail - by thus, not taking erik's offer. erik is giving him an out, a choice to make the first move)

(and the chess piece he offers charles a WHITE pawn. the white pieces are the first ones to move. 

also also if you have paid attention to the previous movies, erik is always the one to use the white pieces, this is the first movie where we see charles play with white)

anyways, charles does struggle a bit with the choice, but ultimately he decides to accept erik's proposal and """guesses""" right.  

and going from erik's... entire face and smirk lmao i'm guessing charles went into his head to get it right. mind you, this is like sex for them

charles accepts - erik is very relieved to know he's not the only one who's down horrendously. and after the worst guessing game in history (seriously, the pawn was in erik's right pocket and then he had it hidden in his right hand... man i guessed that shit and i'm not even a telepath) they start rearranging the board

so anyway, erik gives charles this look like he wants to climb him like a tree, which means that playing edward 'down embarrassingly bad' rochester in jane eyre (2011) finally fucking paid off

erik doesn't even blink mind you, and charles doesn't take his eyes off erik either way, which means they are just STARING at each other without blinking for god knows how long LMAOOO 😭😭😭

once everything is said and done, erik makes a silly little joke and charles rebuts. then erik gives him the biggest smile i've ever seen him give to someone since magda, and then he follows it up with a smaller, softer smile with no teeth

seeing this for the first time in the theater was like getting shot in the chest, no joke

mind you erik stopped trying like three minutes ago but for some reason, the first time we finally see charles soften up in the ENTIRE movie is after he sees erik smiling at him. which could mean nothing.

and the thing is: charles does have a big heart, and he means well, most of the time, but he also doesn’t necessarily has… the best way of showing it with his actions lol. erik knows this, and he knows charles has a thing for lost causes, for people the society has given up on. charles threw himself into the freezing water to save erik - even when he didn't KNOW him. 

AND he also knows charles has the biggest soft spot for him, he KNOWS - because all those years ago, charles' biggest accussation wasn't "you paralyzed me" it was "you left me". because after erik lost his wife and daughter, charles rushed to find him, to make sure he was okay. because nine years ago, charles looked at apocalypse and said "fuck you you are twisting erik's grief, and you are hurting him" to A GOD BTW. TO HIS FUCKING FACE NO FUCKS GIVEN AT ALL

tldr: call erik the fucking violinist because boy he sure knows how to play charles like a fucking instrument and how to press all the right keys to get him to say yes to him. he gave charles an out if he didn't want to come with him, but he also came PREPARED for it, mind you, he came PREPARED to take charles with him to genosha. he didn't get to take charles with him 30 years ago, and he was going to be dammed if he didn't take charles with him NOW (this time with no bullet wound and no helmet lol)

and the most insane thing to me is, that he knows charles has a soft spot for him, he's known this for 30 years, and yet, the only time he uses it in his favor is to get charles to say yes to him on this. the only time he uses it is when he thinks he can do something to help charles - to give him back all the kindness charles gave to him 30 years ago. 

anways i'm insane. i'll be back here eating glass if you need me. i'm so normal about them. simon kinberg broke something in me 5 years ago