#thinking about them knowing each other in a time when jonah was less stuck in his ways. and leigh hadn't found their way yet

[zephyr-draws]

leigh and jonah college au doodles because i am delusional

[bellysoupset]

Hi Soup! Hoping you can spill your secrets about how you write your characters fighting with each other and making it both realistic and still loving? I'm always so scared about writing arguments even though I know they are a natural and healthy part of a relationship. For some reason I hate admitting my characters have flaws, but I know it makes them less interesting to always be so nice to each other. You have such a knack for balancing their personalities and the reasons they get upset with each other and then their apologies later.

Hi Lis!! Its so nice answering your asks off anon 😝

Alright so I've been thinking on how to better answer this, since I was literally writing a conflict when you sent it.

I think my tips to writing arguments/conflict are these:

Start small: anything can be a source of conflict, if you're inflexible enough. You don't need to give your characters these huge flaws, you can literally write fights out of one character thinking taking the main avenue is the best way to avoid traffic, while the other think they should do a shortcut and then when they get stuck they're both frustrated. None of these things make them evil or bad, it just gives them different perspectives and that's more than enough to start a conflict.

Everyone has flaws and everyone has bad behavior. Even your most precious OC. Being very harsh: Luke is too much, Jonah is selfish, Wendy is vain, Bella is proud, Leo is possessive, Vince is spineless, Max is judgmental. These don't make them terrible people, in fact, most of these traits have their own happy flip side.

Luke is too much, so he loves with his whole heart and with absolute no sense of consequence. Luke is the type of guy who brings everyone together and that people want to impress and be liked by, but this also the type of person who's highly susceptible to criticism (in his case, his father's), who takes reckless decisions, who is scared of being alone and who clings to people too tightly.

I often think a character's flaw and biggest quality can be quite similar. Vince avoids conflicts and that's what makes him this huge, likable teddy bear, but also why he's the type of person who omits information (cough, the whole deal with moving to Doveport), who'll avoid making up his mind for as long as possible and hurt those around him because of it.

So I do recommend looking into your OCs and thinking what makes them tick. Is Rory stubborn? Proud? He did go fishing into the deep sea and didn't want to own up to it to his friends, what does that say to you about him? Which situations would cause his worst side to jump out? And how would those around him react to that?

It's okay if not all characters are understanding to your character's flaws.

Jonah gets tired of Luke's intense personality easily. He's too secure in himself to want to be liked by Luke, like most people tend to, and he's too sullen of a person to tolerate his high energy. This doesn't mean he hates Luke, but it does mean that if Lucas' starts to lean into the worst of his personality, the first to lash out at him will always be Jonah.

Noa and Rory have been together for years, but how long did it take for them to get used to each other? Did they learn to avoid fights or did they compromise in certain aspects and keep fighting in others?

Another thing to keep in mind is to keep your fights clean. Unless you want to have a huge argument that will take you time to navigate and have your OCs changing their behaviors and personality, avoid fighting below the belt. If Nora brought up Rory's dead sibling in a fight, this would be below the belt. It's the type of hit you can't come back from, that requires not only an apology, but a change in behavior.

When Leo tells Jonah to not use his mental health against him, it's the type of fight that's drawing an invisible line and one that if I had Jonah repeatedly crossing, I'd be making his character toxic. That would be totally OKAY, by the way, if I meant to do that! Writing toxic characters is fun! But its not the story I'm telling, so I don't have Jon doing that, I have his character changing.

Uhhhh this is already so so long, so I'll quit the rambling. But I just wanted to say, don't be scared to make certain parts of your characters ugly and annoying and gross, we all are these things, and having someone who loves us despite our flaws and maybe even because of our flaws is much deeper than pretending to be perfect.

[jonahh]

i loveeee jonah and i can’t rly think of a good question for u?? maybe like how did u feel abt the amy jonah breakup proposal scene in s6? i know it was sorta unpopular in the fandom as forced but i thought it was very sympathetic and understandable on both sides tbh

narratively speaking superstore actually hit the jackpot by getting canceled when it did, because if that had been the last we see of amy i don't think they could have salvaged it—or it would have been very difficult to, at least. i definitely had my doubts on a larger scale about superstore without america, and i still don't know that amy moving to california was the smartest plot move, but they weren't expecting to lose a lead and you work with what you have i guess

that being said! given that this was the in-universe route they chose, i do think that they pulled it off in a way that felt true to the characters. it's definitely brutal to watch, but it makes sense. of course amy is hesitant to make such a big, official step. even though it's jonah, and he's been around for a long time, and their relationship is great, she's been through this before and it completely derailed her from what she originally wanted in life. and so in her mind, there's always room for things to go wrong—whether that's in an immediate and catastrophic way or a slower, boiling-frog stagnation way. because of her circumstances, it's important to her that she have an easy escape route if that were to happen.

there's also the issue of the timing. i think that, if the circumstances were different and this didn't come up at the time of the move, it would feel less claustrophobic for her. but it's sort of an insane and tumultuous period, and adding yet another life-altering decision to the mix was definitely. not great.

jonah's view is completely different here. he pretty much sees them as already-married at this point, so it doesn't feel as daunting for him. this is where i do start to feel a little conflicted, so bear with me. on the one hand i do think he should have known better than to think this wouldn't be an added stressor for amy. like, obviously he's aware of her past, and the baggage/trauma she has regarding marriage. he's not adam, of course he's not adam, but who's to say he wouldn't fall into the same rut? he has a string of abandoned jobs behind him, and frankly not a whole lot of prospects. adam has a string of abandoned hobbies. amy's always been the one to take on the role of "adult" and frankly, as much as she (and i) love jonah, the relationship doesn't...look all that different. yes, true love, etc but she has kids and so she has to look at it from a practical as well as a romantic perspective.

the thing is, while he went about it in a way that was a little thoughtless and insane, jonah's also not in the wrong for wanting something more. i mean, the dude is moving across the country for her. they HAVE been together for several years, and they've known each other for several years before that. they are, functionally, a family, so it makes sense that he would want to make that official. and as solid as the relationship is, he just needs to know that she won't pull the rug out from under him suddenly—marriage seems like the most natural way to prove the stability of the relationship and soothe his neuroses. plus, in his mind, there's absolutely no chance he's going to be the one to leave. she's the reason he's stuck around for so many years, after all. but she has no way of fully understanding that without literally being in his head.

seeing him stand up for himself and set that boundary is cathartic. watching amy have to deal with the ultimatum is heartbreaking. marriage means two different things to these characters, and that's what makes the breakup so potent.

[imaginewarehouse]

Marcus White x Jonah’sSister!Reader || Oneshot

Plot: 

You find out that you are pregnant... with Marcus' miracle baby.

Warnings: Pregnancy, panic attack

🔆  🔆  🔆

Carefully, I pick out one of the pregnancy tests from the shelf. Then grab another... 2 more... and another. Just to be sure.

As I go up to the pharmacy desk, I thank god that Tate isn't working here anymore; I never would've gotten away with this. He would've snitched to Jonah or something, for his own sociopathic enjoyment. Instead, the new guy thankfully rings up and bags my items casually, not really caring what he flings into the white plastic bag- then hands it to me with a soulless customer service smile. If I had to describe it, I'd say its if the man had been working here for years before finally letting the job kill him on the inside- just in time for the wind to change and stick his face like that. Honestly, I never see the guy without this smile. Not even in the breakroom. Its unnerving.

Still, I take the bag and smile back even though I know he for sure doesn't really mean it and turn around so I can walk (The long way around the store, so I don't pass the doors to the warehouse) towards the employee bathrooms... but stop short, jolting into panic mode immediately. Freeze, freeze, freeze!

There's Isaac, standing as tall as a bear in my path behind the aisles, with a scanner in his hand and a surprised look on his face. Or at least as surprised as he would ever convey.

Clearly, though, he saw the tests. And I'm screwed. He is absolutely the well, second last person I wanted to catch me doing this; Buying these.

A nervous smile flickers onto my face and I walk the short ways over to him, hugging the bag to my front. He's still just staring; Mouth half open and eyes a little less dead, then usual. "Oh, hey Isaac! How's is going? You got sent to pharmacy today? That s-sucks... " Honestly I didn't think he was allowed to be assigned pharmacy...

Completely by-passing the option to forget what he just saw and exchange polite chit-chat with me, he instead closes his mouth and his eyes, shakes his head and then opens his eyes again. Then inhales. "Are those what I think those are?"

"Wh-what?"

"Pregnancy tes-"

Shit- Giving him a desperate expression, revealing my true feelings today - being complete and utter panic, - I cut him off. "SHHH! Isaac! No- uh. Yes. Um... Would you believe these aren't for me?"

"Mmm... " His face twists slightly into one of thought, tightening his lips together and sizing me up. "No, I don't think so."

"Well!- " I'm totally ready to make up an excuse... but peter out as soon I try. I could do it. I could string together some kind of half-believable bullshit like 'They're for Amy', but he would still go and tell Marcus and he would find me and... I would still have to have the conversation earlier then I want to. So instead I drop the façade, and my shoulders, and show just how tired I am. "I want to find out myself before breaking the news to Marcus. Okay? He might be unhappy about the idea and then we do the test and it turns out I'm not pregnant and then I just stressed us both out, for no reason! And, on the other hand, what if he wants it and it turns out I'm wrong about this? Please, Isaac, just don't tell him yet. Please, please." I feel like no matter how many pleases I use they may still not change anything. But I'm desperate.

He stands still for a few minutes... so long in fact I think he may be in shock himself, or having some kind of drug induced anxiety attack, and am about to wave my hand up in his face or say his name again, when he finally breathes a little more obviously and I relax back down to earth. "... Well, lets go find out then, right?"

"What- You- you want to come?" Something in me relaxes at the thought- I don't really want to do this alone. I want someone there, like in the movies, to hold the box and just read me the instructions. But I imagined it would be someone I'm actually close friends with, who can hold my hand and wouldn't care that it recently touched a pee-stick. I did not expect that person to be Isaac - Isaac, who likes to watch homeless people kill each other with shopping trollies and sticks and trash can shields like in a horrible, pitiful, modern-day coliseum, - in a million years.

But he nods.

"Yeah, sure." He puts his scanner on the shelf, and we set off the way I was going. He seems to silently understand why we have to go the long way around- to avoid passing the doors to the warehouse. Or he just doesn't care. Either way, I'm thankful he doesn't try to re-rout my course. Or even mention it. "Good excuse to slack off work... besides I should probably get out of this section, anyway. Hey, it is Marcus- right?"

I sigh- I suppose the companionable silence was too much to ask for. "Yes Isaac. If its a thing, in the first place."

"Yeah, right."

___TIME SKIP___

"You're having a miracle baby, you know? He's not supposed to be able to do that- isn't that kinda... good?"

I only whimper in response from |my new home| the cubicle I've been taking the tests in, holding my head. How am I going to do this? I have college, I have this job, I have my studio apartment to continue paying rent for! Marcus and I don't even... there isn't even... we haven't labelled it yet, and... Oh god, I'm shaking.

Isaac heaves a sigh outside, his chair creaking as he shifts. "Well, that's... three positives, so far." Isaac's memorable, slow drawl seeps through the cracks in my cubicle and takes away my thoughts for a moment. And my breath.

3 positives.

3 positives.

Not one, not two... three.

... Then he goes on, a whiny tone in his voice. "Do we really need to do another one?"

I breathe in deep. I don't know what else to do. The next logical step would be telling Marcus or Jonah, but I'm ready for neither of those. So procrastination through pregnancy test, it has to be. "Uh, yes. We do. Um... can you, please?- "

"Ughhh. Yeah, yeah. I'll get you more water. Stay here." Then Isaac, who has surprisingly been very helpful, even getting me tape so I can stick the finished tests up to the door in front of me so that I can compare them easier, disappears out of the women's bathroom, leaving me with my thoughts.

I peak back up at the tests, feeling panic fill up my chest cavity like its anxiety gas and my rib cage is the gas chamber- and my heart's the poor organ at deaths row. I'm... pregnant.

Oh my god. I'm pregnant. There is a human being growing inside me, right now. A human being who will require time that I definitely don't have, money that its parents certainly could not scavenge if we scavenged for used soda cans like Myrtle and sold them in our spare time, effort that I'm terrified might not even be in me at this point... A baby that needs some semblance of a comfortable, stable home, which I do not have for it.

I'm just burrowing my face into my arms and knees atop the toilet seat when the bathroom door opens again. Looking up, I immediately ask for Isaac- because that was really freaken quick, for him.

And get a familiar, confused sounding voice call back "... No, its Amy... Sorry, I just need to pee. Are you going to be long?".

"Oh!" Oops. Immediately, head going empty with panic, I unlock the door and and jump out to let her in. "No! I just finished. Um- go ahead. I'll just wash- wash my hands."

Now seeing each other, I see Amy's forehead crease and her eyebrows furrow in confusion and concern at my pink cheeked/pale faced appearance and the panicky way I'm talking. She reaches out toward me. "... Y/N, are you okay?"

"Yeah, I'm fine!" I laugh, the most nervous sounding laugh ever. "Don't worry."

Amy's nose screws up. "... why were you waiting for Isaac?"

"We-we're just having an affair."

... what??

Her eyebrows furrow even deeper. "Okay... I'm just gonna go... pee... now... " She says slowly, gradually disappearing into the cubicle; Not quite sure what to say back to that.

I sigh in relief when her eyes aren't on me anymore and the door locks, thinking flushing some water onto my face might calm me down, when a loud GASP comes from Amy and I i m m e d i a t e l y remember the tests stuck to the wall. Fuck! Fuck, fuck, fuck!!

Amy comes right out of there, looking at me with completely new eyes now- understanding truly why I'm pale, I'm sure, and definitely why I was acting the way I was. "Y/N! You're... pregnant??!" I open my mouth to respond. Maybe say 'yes' seeing as that's the truth and the only proper answer, but I choke on my words and instead say, "Isaacs getting more water so I can take another test."

"I think 3 is a pretty conclusive number!"

"I-" She is not wrong, but I don't want to do anything else but take another easy test, and get defensive instead. "I bought four, I'm doing four!"

"Wh- Is Isaac the father!?"

"God, no." Isaac and I both spit back in offense.

I whip my head around when i realise he wasn't supposed to be there yet at all, and- there he is in the doorway.

... Jonah right behind him looking sicker then me. My jaw drops. "You brought Jonah??!"

"Uh, no, I was just waiting outside for, um," He gestures to Amy and my stomach drops. So he heard the whole thing. Could this get any worse??! Well I mean of course it could, Marcus could be here. Stupid question. Don't ask questions like that; It always summons the worst, in movies. "You're pregnant!? Who- you know what, unimportant right now. Do you wanna sit down??"

I shake my head, taking a deep breath and holding my hand out to Isaac. "No, I'm fine. I have a test to do. Water, Isaac?"

"Here." He hands me the bottle, and I go to disappear back into the cubicle before jumping back away again, remembering that Amy still needs to go and gesturing for her to go, ridiculously enough. She shakes her head and gestures back, like I'm crazy, to take it instead.

I do so and lock myself in, starting to chug the whole bottle.

A blessed silent moment passes... before Jonah speaks. "Is the 4th test really necessary?- "

"For the love of god- Let me take the fourth goddamn test for fucks sake!"

___TIME SKIP___

"... so what is it?" Amy asks 10 minutes later, breaking the deafening silence, as I sit back down on the toilet seat and hold my face in my hands again.

"... Positive... "

Isaac sighs. "Who would have guessed, really?"

No one tells him to shut up. He's right. But also no one agrees, because I'm a fucking 23 year old pregnant girl and I will kill them.

"So... what now?" Amy asks, speaking to the room, but expecting me to answer.

"Well, I'd like less people to be here, honestly." I pipe up, removing my hands from my mouth to speak clearer.

"Done. Isaac, Jonah, get out."

"What? I was here before you... lady." Isaac exclaims, offended, but a moment later I hear the door close, anyway. I assume it had something to do with Amy's signature resting bitch face- cranked up to eleven. "We'll just wait out here, then! Yell if you need us."

"Yep... " Amy responds to him, sounding exhausted and I can totally imagine her rolling her eyes right now. She takes a deep breath, and sighs it out. I hear her rest carefully down into the chair Isaac vacated. For a moment she thankfully says nothing, and I do wonder whether I should... but I don't know what to so say. So I just stay hidden in the cubicle, silent until Amy takes another deep breath and asks the question. "Who is it?"

I take a deep breath, knowing that once I say it I cant take it back, while on the other hand... its done, anyway. He's already the father and I cant change that (Would I if I could, though?) but telling Amy may either make or break my confidence in having him as the dad of my kid. Not that I have a choice... I just know that Amy's going to be worried about it and I don't know if I can handle the criticism right this moment.

Finally I spit it out though. Marcus.

...

"Oh- wow."

Uncomfortable, I shift on the closed toilet seat. "Yeah."

Her voice gets higher, clearly fake and trying to sound like this is better then she really feels it is. My heart plummets into my stomach like a terrible roller coaster. "Well, that's... " She pauses, searching for a safe word to use, assumedly. "Great!"

"... 'great?" For some reason that word, and Amy's tone... hits something wrong, in me. Panic flickers deep in my chest and my stare on the wall gets colder, harder. "... you think this is 'great'? Really? You? No, you don't. Do you hear yourself? 'Great'. Puh! This is Marcus. 'Been to jail' Marcus. 'Ex Con' Marcus. 'Creator and CEO of BOOB CHEESE', Marcus. Marcus who shits in the shower and thinks breastfeeding is akin to whipping your dick out in public, Marcus who has a tattoo of his mother on his back for Valentines day- "

Okay so maybe I'm just picking on him because I'm inadequate, because I don't have the time for a baby, because if I'm trusted with this perfect thing then I will ruin it... I'll pick work, instead of love, and they'll grow up with less of it then they should have and I'll be to blame...

But I don't want to address that yet. I cant.

"Y/N."

"Neither of us even have the money for this." I'm panicking again. "He lives with his mother! And- what if he gets mad... " I suddenly get worried, my eyes go round and I cover my mouth. "I really like him Amy. I cant have him mad at me. Not for this. Not him. Please don't let him hate m- "

"Y/N! Calm the fuck down, okay, right now. Don't speak. Just... take some deep breathes okay? First of all, Marcus is not going to be 'mad' at you. He's sure as hell is not going to hate you. You're spiralling, just take some long breaths." Amy makes it sound like a ridiculous idea with her tone, that he might be mad or he might hate me. I do as she says as she talks; take deeeeeep breaths. Slowly, I start to clam down. "He might be shocked, yeah, but he's- he's not like that. He's an idiot, not a total asshole. Take it from me, I know what I'm talking about here. I promise you. Whether he'll be good at being a parent, is... debatable." Everything she says makes sense. And she would know- you've met Adam. "But he'll be there, at the very least.

And... and you'll be a great mum, anyway."

I feel my heartbeat start to slow down again as I breath. I close my eyes, crossing my arms over my chest and rest back against the wall, carefully.

I really hope she's right on that second part.

"... thank you."

___OUTSIDE THE BATHROOM___

Jonah rubs his neck in nervousness at his sister in the bathroom dealing with something like this, pacing around the small hallway area before turning to Isaac. He raises his dark eyebrows. "So, do you know... wh-who?? I mean... the guy, that- I mean, does he work here, or... ???"

"Its Marcus." Isaac pulls out a bag of trail mix from his vest pocket and starts picking through, standing by the bathroom calmly. The brother to whom he just broke such detrimental news - that his sister, has Marcus White of BOOB CHEESEs baby inside her, - widens his eyes until they're more like dinner plates. "Yeah, they've been talking for a while, man. You didn't know?"

"I- I just thought she wasn't interested in... guys... " All her time must be busy with balancing both school and work, plus her friends... how can she possible have had time to... But on the other hand, he realises that its a bit naïve to think that his younger sister still isn't interested in 'boys'. Part of it might have been wishful thinking.

Isaac barks out a laugh. Its a stale, dry sound that makes Jonah really uncomfortable. "She also went out with Tate. Had a bit of a thing for Sayid for a while, too... "

"What!?- "

"Jonah!" At Amy's exit from the bathroom, he calms down immediately and straightens up. She raises her brows at him. She nods into the bathroom. "She wants you."

Yep- it takes him about 2 seconds to fly into the bathroom... to find his sister still hidden in the cubicle. He sighs, pressing his hand against the door. "Y/N? Amy said you wanted me. Do you want me to get you something to eat? Its just, I'm the only one who knows your snack preferences... and maybe we shouldn't eat in here, cuz its kinda gross... but if you want to, that's cool too!"

She doesn't respond for a minute, silent apart from the careful peeling of tape from the cubicle door.

Then the peeling sounds stop. A moment later her voice, sounding small and tentative as if just saying this would open Pandora's box, slips out. "... how're mum and dad gonna react?"

Its a rhetorical question. They both know it'll be bad - and they'll like Marcus even less, - , but its said so he knows what she's worried about. He sighs and leans back on the door. "Well very, very badly. But that doesn't matter right now. I'll take care of them."

"How valiant." Her voice is still small, quiet. But she sounds less scared; She always believes her big brother. Even when she knows logically that he cant protect her from them. Not their parents.

"Well, I try."

"... hm."

___TIME SKIP, BACK OUTSIDE OF THE BATHROOM___

"She is not leaving that bathroom," Isaac shakes his head. Its been an hour, and they've all been in there with her a couple times but she has not left the cubicle. Not even peaked her head out. She hasn't even e a t e n anything while she's been in there. Its starting to worry them. "Maybe we should go get Marcus."

Immediately Jonah looks up from his phone - having been reading up on pregnancy. What is going to start happening to his sister, now?? - and shakes his head, firmly. "No, she'll tell him when she feels comfortable with it. We aren't doing that."

"Yeah, it isn't up to us." Amy agrees, while still looking like on a deep, unsympathetic level that is tired of standing here... she definitely wants to drag Marcus here. But she also knows that Jonah is, unfortunately, a n n o y i n g l y, right.

Isaac heaves a deep, frustrated huff and gets comfortable on the floor.

___TIME SKIP: 3 HOURS LATER___

Finally, Jonah breathes in a deep, exhausted breath and puts his phone away. That's enough of that. He's sufficiently disgusted. He looks down the hallway, out to the store. Then to Amy playing solitaire on her phone and Isaac drawing slowly on the ground. "... Well, I mean, it's Marcus's baby too, right? He should know... right?"

"Mhm,"

"Yep, that's right."

"And... besides, Y/N might need him, right? Maybe he could get her out."

"You make some good points."

"I just wish they weren't points we already mentioned." Amy looks up from her phone and turns it off, flashing an sarcastic, displeased kind of smile. "Earlier."

"Yeah well... " He rolls his shoulders, looking away from Amy's piercing gaze- god, her face is like a loaded gun with no safety. And he's totally into it. He coughs, then whispers. "So, who wants to go get him??"

"Not it."

"I would, but ah... nah. I'm down for the count, down here."

"So... me."

Amy nods, making a 'shoo'-ing gesture with her hand. "Yep, you, Jiminy Cricket. You made us stay here for hours- you go get Marcus."

Looking to Isaac for help, Jonah is just met with the deadest eye's he has ever come upon, so he eventually sighs deeply, wiping sweaty hands on his jeans. "Fff-fine. Wait here."

___IN THE WAREHOUSE___

"Uh, hello? Hi- have you seen Marcus anywhere? Wh- No? Well if you see him can you tell him I'm looking for him? Its about Y/N."

The warehouse worker with the nametag reading 'Nigel' that Jonah's never spoken to before in his life and who prior to his words, had the new deadest eyes that Jonah has ever seen, suddenly beams- a twinkle of evil mischief in his eyes. "Oooooh, cats outta the bag, huh?"

Jonah blinks. "What?"

"You found out about Marcus and your sister, and now you're gonna beat him up? I was waiting for this moment." Nigel clarifies, actively looking around the room for Marcus now as Jonah rushes to explain that no, that is not what he's here for. Please don't say that so loudly- "HEY RICO! You seen Marcus around?? Y/N's brother's here to deliver an ass beating." Half a second passes while Jonah's ears ring from Nigel's screeching before something new apparently occurs to the warehouse worker as his eyes widen and he turns again to who must be Rico. "And you owe me 20 bucks!! Told ya he'd come!"

How often is Y/N in this place? Just seems weird, these guy's saying her name so casually... Jonah's forehead crinkles in thought as Rico rolls his eyes and groans, walking off to assumedly find Marcus. I'm learning a lot about my sister, today... Not sure how I feel about it...

Jesus Christ, has she eaten the cheese, too??!

Jonah doesn't get a moment to panic about that particular bit of nightmare material before he realises Nigel is still standing, awkwardly now, arms straight at his sides and eyebrows raised expectantly, right by him. Watching him, instead of returning to his job. Jonah raises his own eyebrows back; Shrugging. Like, what?? What do you want?

Nigel just just shrugs and shakes his head back passive aggressively, crossing his arms. Like, he doesn't know. Fine, we'll just stand in silence, then...

"Jonah! What's up, buddy? Visiting me in the warehouse- this is so nice! Want me to take my break now, cuz we totally can. Just let me wrap one last thing up and then we'll be back in my car, together. Listening to tunes; Ya know. Guy buddy stuff." T h a n k f u l l y, Marcus seems to rush from wherever he was in the depths of shelf-land when Rico apparently found him and cuts off the awkward stand off between the two men, dropping a hand on Jonah's shoulder and beaming. "What up, man?"

Quick to turn away from Nigel and get to what his mission really is at the moment, Jonah graciously ignores the touchy greeting... despite the awkwardness on his end and the fact that Nigel is still there, watching.  "Actually, I wanted to talk about, uh, Y/N."

Marcus' eyes immediately widen and his eyebrows raise, taking his hand off Jonah in favour of ringing his hands and stepping back nervously himself. "Oh, man... you found out, didn't you? Did she tell you? Cuz like, I know the bro code says its not cool to bone your friend's sister but- "

"Ah, ah, ah!" No, no, no, Jonah does not want to hear those words. No. "No, um. That's fine, whatever. Y/N's sexuality is her own. But- "

"Its a ruse, Marcus. He's here to kick your ass." Nigel insists, still very much there despite everything about this situation having nothing to do with him and instead just freaks Marcus out more as the warehouse head's eyes go even wider and he takes another step back- raising his hands in surrender.

"No, no! Nigel!- That's... no. I'm not here to kick anyone's ass! The asses here are all perfectly safe, I promise. Okay?" When Nigel's expression doesn't change a lick, Jonah gives up and just gestures off in a random direction. "Nigel, could you give us a minute, here?"

"What, so you can jump my boy here alone?"

"Alone?? Who's alone?" Jonah is getting increasingly irritated. "We're literally surrounded by other warehouse workers!! Ones who are actually doing their jobs, by the way. Maybe you should- "

Marcus finally intercepts and pats Nigel's shoulder, getting his attention from looking confrontationally at Jonah and smiles relatively softly at him. "Its okay, Nigel. If Jonah wants to kick me in my junk once- he's kinda entitled to it. Bro code and everything. Why don't you get back to work? I got this. Thanks, though." Nigel leaves, with that, but certainly not without giving Jonah one last greasy look over his shoulder and an 'Okay, Marcus. But call me, if... you know... '. Along with an extra evil squinty look at Jonah. "Yeah, yeah. Thanks bud. I know I can count on you." When Nigel is finally out of the picture, Jonah feels fatigued and just wants to get back to Y/N. At least its just him and Marcus now, though, so they should be doing that very soon. "So! What'd you want? If you really do wanna hurt me, then, can we go outside? By my car ideally, so I can drive the emergency room right after? Or you, cuz I mean... you're small, man. And I'll have to defend myself. Even if its fair. Its instinct, you know? You get it."

"I'm not gonna hurt you?? Why does everyone think- " What is wrong with people here? Do I give off a confrontational aura right now, or something??? "Ugh, whatever. Y/N needs you- she's been in the bathroom for 4 hours. We did try to get her out ourselves, but our attempts have been... l-lacklustre." Lacklustre? Okay, even he is surprised to hear that one come out of him.

"She needs... me? Like, she said that?" All of a sudden Marcus' expression changes. Worry wells in his eyes and his forehead creases, and he glances at the door out to the floor before returning to Jonah, looking restless now as his body fights with him to go, immediately. "Oh, what's wrong with her? Is she sick??"

"Uhh... in a manner of speaking... Look, I just think she needs to see you right now."

That makes the taller man move towards the door, clipboard dropped on a box on his way. "Of course; Right away man. Come on, lets go see her. So you really don't know what's wrong?? Should we pick up some root beer on the way?" Jonah follows behind, hand on his chin as he answers Marcus' questions. Wow... He did not expect such a response from him... He... kinda respects it, in a way. Its a pleasant surprise, at least.

___BACK TO YOU AND YOUR POV. God I hate third person. Its so hard, I want to cry___

"Y/N? You in here??" As soon as that voice registers in my mind, my heart beat skips in the worst way and I almost start to full on panic all over again, but thankfully instead just freeze and only widen my eyes. What the hell? The door to the employee bathroom closes as Marcus shuts himself in and you watch his boots appear under the door to your stall. "What's going on? Jonah couldn't tell me what's wrong with you," Jonah. I glare at the stall door. I'm going to kill him. "But I brought you some root beer for you- a total cure all. I promise. And some (Enter your favourite snack) cuz I know you like them. Here," He stretches up and holds the items over the stall door, and, feeling genuinely touched that Marcus was sweet enough to bring these, I get up off the toilet seat and accept them from him.

"Thank you, that's really nice. I'm... not sure, that the root beer will fix this, though." I speak carefully, sitting down and holding the items in my lap close to my stomach.  

"Course it will! I poured some in Mateo's ear once when he had an infection... I think it worked?"

Probably not. "This is a lot bigger then an ear infection... Kinda permanent, too?"

"Oh god, is it cancer?" He pauses for a moment but before I can put that particular worry at rest... or remind him that cancer is not always permanent... he makes it worse, and I fight not to facepalm. "The plague??! Its still a thing, you know. Jesus, its not that is it? Please tell me its not that! That would be the worst!" I mean... yeah, it would.

"Oh- no no! No, nothing like that!! I'm just pregnant!"

... wait.

Immediately I want to take back my words and say them differently- because is that really the way I just broke it to him?? Oh my god. My hand slaps over my mouth- then pulls back an inch to speak again, but is definitely on guard to slap again and prohibit anymore stupid to come out. "I mean! ... N-no big deal?" My voice gets tiny. "At least its not the plague, right?" I'm just making this worse, so I cover my mouth again.

Marcus does not respond, and I can imagine his face crystal clear, without having to look. He would have his mouth hanging open like a cartoon character, his shoulders have dropped, eyes are blank, and he's pale as hell. Oh god... oh god oh go oh god... I cover my whole face now and just try to breath evenly, and not talk anymore. I was right! He's not going to even like me anymore, this is going to ruin how he looks at me- I cant have Marcus look at me coldly. I really cant.

Finally, a few minutes later the door to the bathroom creaks open again and I know it's not Marcus escaping because I can still see his boots under the door and they haven't shifted in a while. Amy's voice rings out, too loudly in the stock silent bathroom. "... everything okay in here? We haven't heard anything in a while- Marcus?"

He doesn't respond.

I hear Amy walk in now, her heels click-click-clicking on the tiled floor. "Marcus? Marcus, are you okay?" She snaps her fingers, assumedly near his unresponsive face. I slip my fingers down to just cover my mouth, straining my ears to hear any movement from him. "Wake up!" Another snap. "Marcus wake up."

All of a sudden I hear shifting and his boots shift slightly and I squeeze my eyes slowly shut- now he speaks. Now's the part where he speaks. Now's the worst part! He either leaves, or stays. "Uhh... I'm awake, okay?"

...

Amy and I are both startled by the seriousness in Marcus' voice- Amy evidently in the way she responds, backing out of the room. "... Okay! Um, well talk. To Y/N. I'm... just gonna... wait outside... "

Marcus just grunts in response, turning back to my stall door. Then he wraps his knuckles against the surface and I flinch- unsure whether to unlock it and be a grown up or stay hidden away like I really, really want to. Its not like I'm afraid he'll hurt me or anything, not at all! Its just... I don't like to disappoint people and I'm terrified at seeing his face. "Y/N? Can you come out, now?"

"Ummm... no... " I wince, keeping my eyes closed to the world. As if that'll hide me from it.

"No???" He asks, bewildered.

"No... "

Marcus' voice isn't at all as cold-serious as it was when he spoke to Amy, but still. There is still definitely an unfamiliar focused quality about it, and its making me nervous. "What? Come on. What do you think's gonna happen? I'll yell at you? Come on, that's not gonna happen; Come out. "

"I'd really rather stay in here... " I fire back.

"Don't be scared of me." He really does sound trustworthy... but that fear, man; She's one unrelenting bitch.

My voice goes high pitched when I answer, too vehement to be the truth. "I-I'm not! Silly! Why would I be scared of you??" My eyes open up again and I just wince. Such a liar.

"Aghh... " I just listen to him shifting around out there looking for something for a bit, or thinking of what to say next, while I myself sit and think comfortable that there is nothing that will make this worse, seeing as I'm safe and sound in this toilet stall... before his boots disappear from my vision under the door and I hear him disappear out of the bathroom then return again almost immediately, going into the stall beside me and putting something down on the toilet seat in there.

Oh my god- he wouldn't dare! He would not-

Then all of a sudden he's climbing over the wall and I have to jump off the toilet seat and press closely to the stall door, root beer and snack still hugged in my arms like teddy bears. Marcus eases himself over the wall and onto the toilet seat before my eyes, then jumps off it to the tiles again in front of me, while I gape wide at him. "I- what- Marcus!"

"Well you weren't coming out! It was my only option!" He exclaims, and now that I see him I do relax a bit. There's no coldness in his face now, and there is certainly no unfamiliar, unfriendly seriousness, either, seeing as the man just climbed into a toilet stall to get to me. Very Marcus-y. I slowly let out a relieved breath, which is still also a 'calm down' breath as the pressure is certainly still on. I can see him, but he can also see me.

Eager to avoid the issue at hand, I snap. "You might've kicked me!"

"No, I wouldn't have." He makes a defensive 'pshhh' sound immaturely, waving me off with a hand before resting them both on his hips and looking right at me. I give him my own dubious look right back- What makes him so sure??? He rolls his eyes. "Whatever, anyway." Suddenly, a beautiful big smile spreads across his face; the kind that still makes me a little bit weak and almost forces me to smile back. Even now, in this situation. "This is great."

And then I'm speechless, mouth closed and eyebrows furrowed together. ... Great? What? Quickly he moves to clarify, before grinning that goofy grin of his. "The pregnancy! Man, I've seen enough girlfriends get pregnant over the years... its nice to see one having my baby." A moment passes and my system is just registering this reaction - not even relieved, yet. Just in shock and a little less anxiety, - before he drops his smile, raises an eyebrow, and adds: "It is mine, right?"

Still shocked, I answer as if the question was more on the lines of 'That was my cupcake that I just ate, right?'. Meaning, probably too casually. "Oh- oh, yeah! Abs- absolutely." He doesn't seem to mind.

He beams again. "Great! We'll be awesome parents- that is assuming you wanna keep the baby, right?"

"Uh... " All I want to say is yes, right now. Even as the complications of raising a baby right now linger in the forefront of my mind. But at the same time I'm looking at Marcus and I just want to. I want to have the baby, and I want to do it with him... in the moment, he's the absolute perfect person to do it with. I choke out, "Yeah."

He fist pumps the air at that response, and finally the relief starts to settle in my stomach and my heart... a smile grows on my own face. My eyes even get a little watery with the powerful relief. "YES! That's right, I'm gonna be a Dad. Whoo! We gotta tell everyone. But how, do you think? Should we get a cake or something that says it in icing?? Or should we just go out there and announce it over the speakers? Or should we just not tell anyone? Cuz on the one hand, I wanna tell everyone- but on the other... I don't really want Carol to know you're pregnant. That could be bad."

"Um... " I don't even know what to say. I just want to hug him, so I do. I step forward and wrap my arms around his middle, burying my face in his coveralls and the body I've become so familiar with over the past months that smells so uniquely - and not always so pleasantly, but definitely comforting,  - like Marcus and squeeze tight, closing my eyes. He smells like that 'new furniture' smell that's really just 'warehouse', and an unfamiliar home, and a little bit of B.O.

Thank god.

Amy was right. Of course she was. Even when I was stressing, I knew the image I had of Marcus getting mad about this didn't feel quite right, but... you have to prepare yourself for the worst, you know? I'm just so glad he's the way he is though, as he wraps his arms around my shoulders in return and bends his neck to press his cheek to my head. "I'm really happy about this. And I know we haven't figure anything out. With us, with money, with anything actually, but... we will, okay? I'll do my best, I promise."

"... Thank fuck." I chuckle, although its muffled and get a similar sound from him in return. "I'm really happy, too." He rubs my back in that rough, comforting way that guys do and I might as well melt; He's too wonderful. I bite my bottom lip, thinking my next move through before taking a deep breath and deciding to take the plunge and ask. "... hey... um... b-boyfriend?"

Marcus immediately pulls me back and holds me at arms length, a crazy-big grin splitting his face. "Oh, yes! This day just keeps getting better and better; Come on, we definitely have to tell everyone this, lets go." Excitedly, he slips past me and unlocks the stall door finally, but pauses and turns back to me before its pushed open at all. I tilt my head in curiosity- what's up? "Unless... congrats sex?"

...

Oh my god- a snort, transforming into a laugh slips out of me before I can stop it. I pull him closer by the front of his coveralls, grinning at both the idea and how silly he is and gently tug him down closer to my level. I close my lips and knit my eyebrows together understandingly. "... How about you come over after work? First we should probably deal with the others? You know, the ones hanging outside right now?"

"Oh, yeah, probably. Oh man- I'll be basically related to Jonah now!" Oh- well- not exactly but... okay fine. If it makes the guy happy. "Ha ha, look forward to seeing this face every Christmas, bro." Oh boy.

I just grin at that - Goodluck Jonah, - before leaning up the rest of the way and pressing a careful kiss to Marcus' lips which he immediately returns with enthusiasm, hands abandoning the stall lock and collecting my waist instead.

This is going to be okay.

It will work out. I hope.

BONUS:

Later in the breakroom while Marcus is busy with talking to some of the other Cloud 9 employees about the news, Jonah takes the seat next to me and I raise my eyebrows at him- he's obviously dying to say something. I know my brother at least that much. He sighs.

"So... you... haven't eaten the cheese, right? I mean, I have but I'm hoping you haven't been put through such, uh, cruel and unusual torture... "

"Oh, no. Absolutely not. I managed to convince him it was cannibalism for women." I grin, returning immediately to my Cloud 9 Caesar salad as Jonah sighs long and hard in relief, relaxing back into his chair.

[obsidiancreates]

The Wrong Realization (But A Welcome One)

4,012 words long

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

Jonah wakes up with a headache like he’s got a hangover. He groans, putting his arm over his eyes as the dim light of his bedroom tries to burn out his retinas. Even with all of his thickest curtains closed and fastened together, the sunlight is still too harsh. Must be the way it’s reflecting off the snow.

He falls out of bed more so than gets out of bed, and lays on the floor for a moment. He reaches up to his nightstand and manages to pull down his phone, which bonks him on the temple on it’s way down. That gets him to wake up, with a shout and a dash of fight-or-flight response.

He sighs, rubbing his eyes. He doesn’t even feel very rested! Granted, he did stay up most of the night listening to a new podcast he discovered... fascinating stuff, wonderful deep-dives into mythologies and legends from all over the world. Something a little lighter to relax to than his usual political commentary go-tos.

He stands up, and scrolls through his playlist until he finds a good morning podcast. He heads into the bathroom, ready to grapple with his hair to get it nice and presentable-

He looks into the mirror and freezes up. His hair is perfect. Exactly how he always strives to get it to look, and always falls just one stray strand short of. But now? Not a flyaway in sight.

“I could have sworn I took a shower,” he mumbles to himself. Maybe he just forgot to use shampoo? No, he would never. Maybe too much conditioner, then. But he’s always so careful not to overuse...

“I guess it saves time,” he says aloud. “No looking a gift horse in the mouth.” He picks up his toothbrush and gets to scrubbing, but pauses when he feels something stringy in his mouth.

He spits out the toothpaste foam, expecting a hair.

Instead, it’s a scraping of plastic from his toothbrush, and several bristles.

He stares for a moment, and then opens his mouth. Does he have something completely alarming stuck in his teeth? Did he somehow eat something metal?

... No, not as far as he can see. Nothing is out of the ordinary. Absolutely nothing. Completely fine.

On an unrelated note, the two little cuts in his lower lip that are perfectly aligned with his canines are starting to sting from the mint, so he hurries up and finishes brushing his teeth.

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The sun blinds him as he drives to work, and he has to manage mostly by listening to the traffic around him (which is absurdly loud today, he can hear it with his windows rolled up).

And the sunlight is harsh on his skin, too. Does he need to invest in better sunscreen? Maybe he should revisit that article he read about SPF effectiveness and how to choose the best one...

He gets into the parking lot and parks his car. He opens the door, and promptly slams it shut again with a yelp. His hands didn’t just feel burnt, it did burn!

Definitely needs to up his SPF! And research sudden sunlight sensitivity... his hand is bright pink.

He sits in the car for a moment, trying to figure out what to do. And then there’s a knock on his window. He startles, but relaxes when he sees it’s just Glenn. He rolls his window down just a bit. “Um, hi. Good-good morning, I mean.”

“Heyyyy, Jonah,” Glenn says with a smile. “So, um, I noticed you’re stuck in your car?”

“Hmm? Oh, yeah, no, I just um. Well you see I-I, um-”

“Need a hand?” Glenn’s smile is a bit strained, for some reason. “Because of the sun?”

“... Well I mean if-if you’re offering then it would be... rude to say no...”

Glenn opens up an umbrella, making Jonah shout in surprise. “Where did that-”

“Come on in under the shade!”

Jonah hesitates a moment, put off by Glenn’s... odd, energy. But he can’t stay in his car forever, so he gets out and walks in with Glenn under the safety of the umbrella.

“Thanks,” he says when they get inside. “I just um, I need to update my sunscreen, you know? And I just didn’t want to risk... my skin...”

“No, no, I completely get it,” Glenn assures. “The warm, life-giving rays of the sun can be very harsh sometimes!”

“... Y-yeah. Yeah.”

“Hey, um, Jerusha and I got you a gift, actually. She was so upset by the whole attack thing yesterday-”

“Oh, you guys didn't have to get me something-”

“Well, we wanted to, so um, here!”

Glenn hands Jonah a very, very wide-brimmed hat. There’s a little bat needle-pointed onto the sides. 

“Oh! Wow! Um, it’s... so big!”

“Maybe it’ll help until you update your sunscreen?” Glenn sounds hopeful. Too hopeful for Jonah to turn down. And... it would be functional, at least...

“Yes! Yes, I think this’ll be great for that, um, thank you! Thank you both, send Jerusha my-my thanks. For this. I can um, see she put some effort into customizing it! Just-just out of curiosity... why a bat?”

“Oh, well um, because of your situation.”

“... Situation, I don’t-”

“You know. The reason you burned?”

“... I still don’t understand-”

“HEYYYY, GUYS!” Amy butts in quite enthusiastically. “How’s it going this morning?”

“Oh, good!” Glenn says with a smile and a nod. “I was just giving Jonah this hat Jerusha made for him, because of his whole condition about being a vam-”

“OH HEY, Glenn, I actually really need your help with something!”

“Really?”

“Yes! Come over here, with me, to... softlines!”

“Oh, okay. I’ll talk with you later, Jonah!”

“Okay! Buh-”

Amy drags Glenn away, leaving Jonah with his hand up in an unfinished wave.

“... Bye. I-I was saying... bye.”

Jonah looks at the hat, and heads off to the breakroom.

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“So does Jonah have them?” Cheyenne is saying when Jonah enters the room.

“I mean, he looked like he did when he was chasing that lady-”

“Do I have what?”

Mateo and Cheyenne startle. “Oh, Jonah! We didn’t see you there! You were like... really, quiet,” Cheyenne says with a slightly strained smile.

“Yeah. So... sneaky.” Mateo looks similarly stressed.

“Well I, I did just get new ultra-soft shoes, very comfortable but I’m not sure about the long-term arch support... but um, what do I have?”

“Um... standards, for your fashion. Sometimes you have them, sometimes you don’t... usually only when you’re chasing, after... someone to flirt with.”

“Oh. ... You-you thought I was trying to flirt with that woman, last night?”

Cheyenne shrugs. “You did literally chase her into the parking lot.”

“I-I guess I did. But I wasn’t attracted to her I mean, I wasn’t attracted to any customers yesterday, even though there were a few good looking ones, that made me laugh... but-but I’m not- I mean, I wasn’t flirting with anyone-”

Jonah babbles on for a good five minutes before Glenn finally comes in and starts the meeting.

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Jonah sighs and rubs his eyes as he mops up a puddle of... it’s either slushie vomit or watered-down blood (though he’s leaning towards slushie vomit, something in him just says it definitely isn’t blood).

He leans against the mop and closes his eyes for a moment. So tired... he felt okay this morning, but as the day creeps on he feels less and less awake...

“Excuse me?”

Jonah startles, yelping and dropping the mop. The customer jumps back as the mop drops.

“I am so sorry!” Jonah exclaims. “I um, I-I think I feel asleep, um, how can I-”

Jonah pauses, at a loss for words.

The customer, a man around Jonah’s age, looks concerned. “You alright, man?”

“Huh?” Jonah’s face feels hot (the first bit of warmth he’s felt in two days). “Oh, um, I-I just, that was very unprofessional of me.”

The customer shrugs. “It’s a Cloud 9, professional isn’t really expected.”

Jonah chuckles. He clears his throat. “So, um, how can-can I help you?”

“I was looking for the recycled paper towels?”

“Oh, yeah, um... let me help you find those. They’re only half recycled, though.”

“I know. But you do what you can on a budget, right?”

“Right, yeah,” Jonah laughs. He can’t stop looking at the guy’s face... why does he feel all jittery?

“Um, here we are. The closest Cloud 9 gets to activism.” Jonah sticks his hands in his pockets and rocks on his heels. His mouth feels dry. Why is his mouth so dry? He licks his lips quickly while the customer isn’t looking.

“Better than I’ve been doing lately. Haven’t done a protest in months.”

“What kind of protests do you go to?” Why did he say that? He’s going to embarrass himself, oh no-

“Mostly wage labor ones, workers rights kind of things. Trying to get a union going at my job.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, well, I know unions don’t have a great reputation in a lot of places but-”

“No! I mean uh, I love unions! I-I’ve been wanting one here since I started working! Just uh, don’t tell my boss that, hah.”

The customer smiles at Jonah, and Jonah wonders if the floor actually fell out from under him or if that’s all in his head.

“Well, thanks for helping me find this. Maybe we can talk about helping each other’s unions efforts if I see you again.”

“Yeah!” Jonah flashes a bright smile. “Sure! Sounds-sounds great! Um was really nice to meet you!”

The customer smiles again and walks away, and Jonah needs to lean against the isle.

He lets out a heavy breath, wondering what the hell is going on and what he is feeling. He looks down the isle to see if anyone is watching him.

Mateo, Cheyenne, Marcus, and Dina are all staring.

Jonah quickly walks away, shame burning his cheeks. So they noticed something, too.

“-looked like he was about to eat him alive-”

He’s too busy being completely embarrassed by hearing them whisper that to wonder how he just heard it from three isles away.

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

Jonah wakes up with a start as a cart rolls right over his leg. He shouts in pain and surprise, and then sighs at himself.

He peels the glue trap off of his face with a grimace. Cleaning the rat traps is a terrible time for his sudden and new case of what seems to be narcolepsy to strike. He sits up and rolls up his pant leg, expecting something nasty to greet him based on the crack he heard.

... Nothing. He frowns, and touches his leg. It doesn’t even sting.

“How did-”

“Jonah?”

Jonah looks up at Amy’s voice. She’s standing over him with a clipboard. “Oh, um... hi.”

“Hey. ... Why are you on the floor?”

“I was uh, cleaning the rat traps. And I... maybe fell asleep.”

“In the middle of the day?”

“... Yes...”

“Okay then. ... So um, I just... wanted to check in, for a minute. How’s it been going with customers?”

“What do you mean?”

“I just mean, have there been any... notable interactions, maybe, to throw an idea out there,” Amy says in her ‘I’m-hiding-the-real-reason-for-asking-this’ voice.

Jonah’s cheeks burn, and he’s sure he’s blushing. “They told you about that?”

“I... might’ve heard some gossip.”

“It-it was nothing, Amy. Really.”

“Are you sure? They said you keep looking at his neck-”

"Well I mean, he had a nice neck I-I guess but I was more looking at his face-”

“And that you licked your lips at him?”

“That-! My mouth was dry, and-and you know I hate chapped lips!”

“... And the hovering over him?”

“Well, I wouldn’t say hovering, more like just watching and... admiring... but that-that’s normal! I’ve been doing that since high school! A good ally normalizes these things, and-and when straight men, yeah, can admire other men in a-a completely! Normal way! Then it um, it helps... break down! The stereotypes!”

Amy looks... perplexed. She shakes her head. “Wait, what are we-”

“I mean, everyone does it, too! Like-like you! I’m sure you’ve looked at-at other woman, and admired their appearance, without feeling feelings for them, right?”

“Well, I guess, but- wait, Jonah, did you-”

“I mean we all wonder in college, right? But I don’t like, I mean there’s nothing wrong with liking both I just- I don’t, I wondered but I never-”

“Okay, um, this isn’t what I came over here to talk to you about-”

“Maybe there was a moment or two where I thought it might’ve been a thing but I-I never acted and if I did like both I would have acted on that, I think-”

“Okay! Um, you’re working through something right now, that is, not what I thought you were working through, so um, I’ll just check up on you later...”

Amy backs away as Jonah keeps recounting half-baked thoughts and unfinished sentences about his time in college and his roommates one friend who maybe had the best hair Jonah’s ever seen but their friendly hair-war was not flirting he swears...

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Jonah doesn’t chew the carrot, just rolls it in his teeth as he stares at the wall, lost in thought.

“... Not hungry for you lunch?” Sandra asks tentatively.

Jonah shakes his head, only half-hearing her.

“... Are you hungry for something else? Like... a customer?”

Jonah stops, and pulls the carrot out of his mouth. “You heard about that too?”

Sandra’s eyes widen, and she shakes her head.

“You did! Did- does everyone know about that?”

“Well, it-it’s been sort of, floating around-”

Jonah groans, putting his head in his hands.

“... So um... are you?”

“What? No! No, I am not hungry for him, that’s objectifying. Not that I- I mean, I’m a straight man, I can’t, objectify another man, because that implies attraction. ... Unless I’m playing into toxic masculinity stereotypes by believing that...”

“I don’t think you have to worry about falling into masculinity stereotypes,” Carol pipes up from another table.

Jonah looks at her, annoyed. Her eyes widen and she looks away. 

Jonah puts his head back into his hands. “This is a nightmare...”

“For all of us,” Sandra whispers.

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Jonah sighs, slumping over onto the customer service counter. Garrett just looks at him, waiting for whatever Jonah has in store.

“... It normal for straight guys to admire other straight guys appearances, right?”

Garrett blinks. “Wow, just some casual conversation, huh?”

“Just- I mean, I know people are talking about-”

“You eyeing up that dude earlier like he was a steak?”

“... Yeah. That.”

“Dude, I don’t think this is the issue you should be focused on right now.”

“I know, I know! I’m in my thirties, I should have this figured out and be focusing on more important things-”

“Not what I meant, actually, I meant the superpowers-”

“-but I don’t know, I’ve never really had anyone point it out before! And-and now I can’t stop thinking like, am I? Attracted?”

“You know there’s nothing wrong if you are, right?”

“Yes, I do, I’ve been to a bunch of rallies and stuff.”

“Did you oogle dudes at those rallies?”

“NO! ... I mean I guess I observed and-and appreciated-”

“Yeah, you might just be on the gay spectrum, dude. I don’t know what else to tell you. Except that, uh, you just accidentally slapped my shoulder and you’re as cold as a bag of ice, so maybe that should be your crisis of the day.”

Jonah is staring off into space, rubbing his arm. It doesn’t seem like he heard Garrett at all. Garrett just sighs, and rolls away.

Jonah stays there, contemplating, for quite a while.

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“Okay, no more dancing around it.”

Jonah jerks awake. Again. God, why can’t he stay awake? ... Probably because he stayed up all night.

“No, Cheyenne.”

Jonah looks around. He peeks into the next isle, and then the next. 

... Where the hell are Cheyenne and Amy? He can hear them so clearly...

“He’s like, totally oblivious to it!”

“He’ll realize it eventually, okay? It’s not some truth bomb we can just drop on him.”

“My friends drop truth bombs on me all the time, and it just brings us closer. Best bitches don’t lie to their best bitches.”

“... Right. But, it’s kind of something for him to take the time to process.”

“What if he doesn’t? He’s just gonna like, wander around forever making excuses and being all nervous and confused.”

“Well... then we’ll give him a push. But for now let’s just... give him some space. Let him come to terms with it on his own.”

Jonah is startled out of his accidental eavesdropping by hearing himself sniffle. He quickly wipes his eyes, sticks his hands in his pockets, and hurries away. He still doesn’t know how he heard them, maybe some kind of really weird echo or sound tunnel. So he goes to the other side of the store entirely and finds the chattiest customer he can.

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

He can feel Dina and Mateo staring at him as he restocks softlines. They whisper to each other, and he sighs and hangs his head. “You know, it makes it worse when you talk behind my back.”

Mateo yelps a little. He clears his throat and quickly composes himself. “Sorry. Uh, we were just talking about-”

“Yeah, no, I know. I’m... aware, okay? And I just would like to stop hearing about it for now, please.”

Mateo looks taken aback by the tiredness in Jonah’s voice, the... weary tone. Dina, however...

“Yeah, well, not exactly something to brush under the rug.”

“Why do you even care? It’s a me problem, okay?”

“Really? You think this doesn’t impact everyone?”

“How! Would it even do that?!”

“Well, let’s see! It made Mateo afraid, it made Amy all somber and worried about you, it made Glenn cry even more than usual-”

“It did?”

“He started a trust fund for your soul.”

“... Oh.”

Dina stops, her frown slowly becoming more confused. “You... didn’t realize that would happen?”

“... I don’t know, I guess I thought... thought he’d be more open-minded.”

“Glenn?”

Jonah takes a deep breath. Ugh, why’d it make his chest hurt? Why do his lungs feel like they don’t want the air? 

The next thing he knows he’s done with softlines (it felt like he got done in the blink of an eye) and walking away. He swallows down the lump in his throat, and the urge to comfort eat. God, he’s craving a snack now. Well, he has all day, but he’s been... a little distracted.

“Excuse me? Hello? Hey!”

Jonah looks up at the customer, still feeling drained and empty.

“Finally, god. How useless do they let you people be around here? I’m looking for the shock collars, my dog keeps licking me when I tell him not to.”

“... That’s a really, really shitty thing to do to your dog.” Jonah doesn’t really mean to say it, but he’s just sort of on autopilot now.

For some reason, the customer doesn’t reply. Just stiffens.

“Follow me. I’ll sort you right out.” Jonah thinks he smiles at them. But he can’t be sure, because at that moment he blacks out.

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

Jonah shrugs his coat on, not looking anyone else in the eye as they all file out to clock out.

He waits until the very end, and clocks out last. Maybe he can avoid them all by waiting long enough?

Ugh, he can’t. He feels restless. Looking like another sleepless night already. Two in a row, great. Maybe that’s why he had that blackout. He still isn’t sure where the customer went, nor how he ended up in the No-Go zone of the Gardening Section...

Whatever. They were a jerk, anyway. Maybe he talked some sense into them? He did that during a blackout yesterday. Maybe it’s stress, then?

He keeps his head down as he thinks about it (trying to avoid some other, more introspective thoughts) and walks out.

He lifts his head as he exits the breakroom to find everyone standing in a group, smiling softly.

“Um... what’s going on?” He claps his hands behind his back. Please don’t let this be more teas-

“We know we’ve made you uncomfortable today,” Mateo pipes up. “And after talking to Garrett about your guys’s conversation, we realized we had the totally wrong idea about everything.”

Glenn steps forward and hugs Jonah. “I accept you no matter what,” he says firmly. “I would never start a fund to save your soul for being gay, that was a complete misunderstanding! You like whoever you like, Jonah!”

“And I didn’t mean to badger you,” Dina admits with her shoulder a little sunk. “I didn’t quite understand what you were going through in your head, and I made some assumptions. Wrong ones.”

“We all care about you, Jonah,” Amy says, prying Glenn off of the poor man. “Okay? We just want you to know that. Today we were being really, really shitty. But it won’t happen again.”

For the second time today, Jonah isn’t aware he’s crying until he hears himself sniffle.

“I just- I feel really, really stupid,” he admits, wiping his eyes with his palms. He laughs, not quite bitterly, but not happy. “I mean, I’m in my thirties. I-I had... so many obvious moments where I should have realized! How... oblivious, am I?”

There’s a bit of an awkward air to the group after that comment. But Amy hugs Jonah, and he feels a little... spark, in his chest. It’s nice. 

His chest has felt pretty heavy and empty all day.

“Everyone comes to terms with stuff at their own pace,” Amy says. “I lived in an unhappy marriage for years because I couldn’t accept the obvious. What matters is that you got to this point of realization, okay?”

Jonah hugs back. He thinks he feels Amy shiver, but he brushes past it. They pull apart, and Jonah sniffs and wipes his eyes again.

“And I um. I-I don’t think I’m... fully, gay,” he says slowly. He hesitates, mouth open, the words stuck. “I think... I think I’m Bi.”

There’s a moment of silence. He smiles a little, and stands a bit straighter. That feels... really right. “I think I’m Bi,” he repeats.

Sandra claps for a second, but no-one joins in. She lowers her hands slowly.

“Wow! Hah! That feels- wow! God, that feels good! Um,, what-what now, though?”

Garrett shrugs. “Flirt with some dudes? Some people in-between dudes and chicks? I don’t know, man, it’s your life.”

“Your long, long life,” Dina mutters to herself.

“Right! Oh, yeah, uh... that guy! From earlier! I-I think I want to see him again. Okay, uh, I’m going to go home, and-and maybe research some local protests he might be at-”

Everyone groans a little.

“Protester Jonah is the preachiest Jonah,” Garrett says, shaking his head.

“Can he still be preachy? Wouldn’t that hurt?” Cheyenne whispers to Glenn. 

Glenn shrugs. “I’ll ask Pastor Craig,” he whispers back.

Jonah doesn’t even notice. “Okay! I’m going to head home! I kinda feel like, I don’t know, like this is a whole new chapter in my life! Um, how do we- I mean how do- do we do a group hug, or-or maybe a high-five-”

“Or we just head home.”

“Yeah, no, Garrett’s right, head home. Let’s all head home!”

They all head out to their cars. Jonah gets into his, plops down into the drivers seat, and grins.

What a freeing realization! He doesn’t know how he missed it, it was all so obvious! 

Well, as far as he knows, there’s no other huge life-revelations waiting for him. He’s figured it all out, finally.

He starts driving home, humming along with the radio as the car next to him keeps pace, despite being in the faster lane. He never understands why people do that when the roads are empty. He chuckles to himself. Maybe he’ll realize that Life Mystery tomorrow.

What he doesn’t realize, neither when he gets home nor when he wakes the next morning, is that he never turned his own radio on. 

[firefly464]

Hey look at that I wrote a Bear SMP oneshot :D

Basically I was bored the other day so i asked the discord for writing prompts and the prompt I got was:

“Jonah visiting R for the first time, to welcome them, and to also inform them of the walls. R questions the safety and friendly nature of the smp, but jonah defends it”

~~~

Jonah took a deep breath, staring up at the dark, imposing castle that sat above his house. His task was simple. Go inside, talk to the new person, and inform them of the rules that Bear had set in place for the smp, as well as the new towers that had sprouted from the ground. 

It was supposed to be easy, something that he could have done in his sleep. Hell, Jonah was about 99% sure that Bear had already told her all of the rules and expectations, so it really shouldn’t have been that big of a deal. All he needed to do was reiterate what she already knew, and perhaps introduce himself in the process. 

He just needed to make sure that this new person was actually safe. After all, that was his job, wasn’t it? Keeping everyone else safe. He had sworn to it when he had decided to become a knight. 

What he couldn't understand was why this was so damn difficult. He had done this several times before, and he’d never had trouble with new people. Hell, he rather enjoyed learning about others and hearing stories of their adventures. 

So why was this time so much harder?

It’s because you’re scared, a small voice in the back of his mind muttered gleefully. You don’t know if this person is dangerous or not, and you’re scared that you’re not going to be able to protect everyone, just like what happened with Bill and Neptune. 

“That’s not true,” he said aloud, trying to silent the thoughts that wouldn’t leave him alone. “I can protect everyone just fine. I’m just… worried, that’s all. I can do this.”

Jonah closed his eyes briefly, taking a final deep breath, before stepping towards the castle. 

Each step forward felt like a step towards his demise, his boots growing heavier and heavier with each passing moment. Perhaps it was just his anxiety and fears getting the better of him, but he could have sworn that the air got colder and colder with each step, biting into his skin naturally.

Jonah shook his head, trying to clear his thoughts away. He was on a mission. Make sure that the new person didn’t try to do anything stupid, and make sure that Bear wasn’t making a mistake by letting them stay. That was it. Nothing more, nothing less. 

The dark, wooden door towered above him, almost taunting him in a way, calling him weak, pathetic. A large, golden knocker rested in the middle.

With a trembling hand, Jonah raised the knocker, and let it fall. 

Three thundurus crashes echoed across the valley as he repeated the action, letting the knocker fall twice more. The only response he got was a deafening silence. Nothing moved, the entire world holding its breath, waiting to see what would happen to the foolish mortal who dared to intrude on the newcomers' peace and quiet. 

A minute passed. Then two, then three. Jonah let out a small sigh of simultaneous relief and despair. On one hand, this meant that he didn’t have to actually talk with the new person, but on the other, he was supposed to be checking on them, to make sure that no one would get hurt because of them. 

He was about to turn around, to determine that his journey had been a waste, when the silence was broken by the hissing of gears and pistons all firing at once. It was a subtle sound, one that easily blended into the background sounds of wind and nature, but it stuck out to Jonah like a sore thumb. 

The hissing was quickly followed by the sound of wood creaking and groaning, along with the squeaks of hinges that weren’t quite strong enough to support the weight they were given. It was enough to send a shiver of apprehension down his spine.

Jonah wasn’t sure what he was expecting. An imposing warlock, perhaps? Or a terrifying creature of the night, that preyed on anyone unlucky enough to cross their path. He didn’t know.

Regardless, he hadn’t been expecting this. 

Standing in the now open door way, was a woman. Her skin was pale white, creating a stark contrast with the dark hair that framed her face. A dark dress swept across the floor, hiding what Jonah assumed to be a pair of heeled boots underneath, just based on the sound that they created when hitting the floor. 

What stood out the most, however, were her eyes. Piercing red, they seemed to stare into Jonah's soul, picking apart every possible weakness and secret that he hid. It made him squirm, uncomfortable under the sudden scrutiny. 

Still, despite her terrifying appearance, there was something… strange about her. Perhaps it was the curiosity that sparkled in her eyes, or the glowing fire that crackled behind her, at odds with the coldness of the rest of the castle. 

It was odd. Jonah hadn’t been expecting this. 

“Hello? May I help you?” The woman asked, her voice deep and rich. 

“Ah! Yes, um, hello! My name is Jonah, I just came to introduce myself and to welcome you to the Bear SMP.”

The woman gave him a small smile, though it didn’t quite reach her eyes. “Oh, hello. It’s a pleasure to meet you. You may call me R.” 

Jonah couldn’t help but let out a small huff of laughter at the exchange. Everything felt so… formal. It was almost like he was suddenly a knight again, introducing himself to the lords of neighboring kingdoms, trying not to make a fool of himself. 

But that wasn’t the case here, was it. This wasn’t some court gathering, it was just him going to meet his neighbors. He tried to smile, to show that he meant no harm. 

He wasn’t sure if it worked. 

“It’s wonderful to meet you R. How are you settling in? Is everything going alright?” 

“Hm? Oh, yes, I’ve been settling in just fine. It’s been a rather nice change of pace from what I’m used to.”

“Ah, well that’s good. It’s always nice to break away from the norm once and a while.” Jonah tugged at the sleeve of his coat, unsure how he was supposed to breach the next topic. So far, R seemed to be rather lovely. 

But so had Bill and Neptune…

“I-” he started, trying to figure out the right words to say. 

However, he was quickly cut off. “Excuse me, Jonah?” R started, staring at him with a strange mixture of curiosity and apprehension in her eyes. “I apologize if this sounds rude, but may I ask a question?” 

Jonah shook his head, trying to catch up with what was going on around him. “Wh— I— Sure?” 

“Why do you carry your sword and shield on you at all times? Why is it that you always seem to be wearing your armor? Is there something that I need to be aware of concerning my safety?” She asked, gesturing to the metal plates that always seemed to be present. 

Well shit. At least Jonah didn’t have to worry about gently breaching the subject now, right? R had taken care of that problem rather quickly. 

He was silent for a minute, trying to figure out the right words to say. 

“I’m a knight, it is my job to protect people.” There. That was good, right? Simple, straight to the point. 

His words seemed to have the opposite effect of what he wanted. Instead of calming her down, the woman’s eyes narrowed, the red glinting dangerously. 

“You’re a knight?” 

“Yes, I am.” 

“And who exactly are you a knight for? Who is it that you are protecting? I was not aware that there were any lords in this place,” she drawled, her voice now holding a threatening edge. 

Jonahs hand drifted towards his sword, preparing to pull it out at a moments notice if anything happened. “There are no lords here. I simply protect the people, that is all. It is my job to make sure that no one gets hurt, whether it be from an outside threat, or an internal one. That is why we have the towers in place.” 

“The towers? What towers?” 

“The ones that border our lands. They are to help ensure that no one comes in with the intention of hurting our community.”

R took a small step backwards, her tall heels clicking against the floor. “You have towers, ones that are designed to keep people out?” 

“Yes, that is our intent.” Jonah couldn’t help but shudder at how formal he had gotten. It was so… unlike him. It didn’t feel right, not anymore. But it was his default state of being whenever he felt like he was being interrogated. 

“So it isn’t safe here, is it?”

“No, I never said that. There are simply things that Bear would like us to keep an eye on, and this is the best way to do that. The SMP is perfectly safe, I promise.” 

She took another step back, the sound echoing throughout the great hall. “Sir Jonah, I think it’s time you left. I need some time to myself.”

“I-” Shit. He really fucked this up, didn’t he? Still, he gave a deep bow to R and stepped back into the cold air. “Of course. I will leave you to it. Have a wonderful day, R.” 

She didn’t answer him, only turned her back and walked away. 

The final thing that Jonah saw was a pair of dark, heavy doors slamming closed, sealing the woman inside. 

[haberdashing]

Wherefore Art Thou...?

Jon and Martin learn that in this universe, their counterparts have unsettlingly familiar names.

on AO3

Jon and Martin had traveled to a few different universes by now, all through more or less the same process as their first foray into the multiverse. Martin was still doing his best to believe that one of these worlds could be saved, that they weren’t doomed to spread fear and doom across the multiverse everywhere they went. Jon... wasn’t quite so optimistic.

It wasn’t a huge surprise to come across a pair that looked to be themselves, not this time, not when it’d happened before. (Jon was privately glad that his argument that the two of them would have grown together regardless of being united by supernatural trauma was being borne out by the evidence, though he tried not to rub it in Martin’s face too much.)

They were in a café this time, Martin’s double munching on a scone while Jon’s double nursed a drink in a white mug, the two of them facing each other in an outside table. Jon and Martin were just passing through, or meant to be anyway, but the two locked eyes and nodded to one another before approaching their counterparts.

“Can we speak to the two of you for a moment?”

The two looked up, Jon’s counterpart glowering at them before Martin’s said, “I don’t see why not, though if you’re selling something, I’m afraid we’re both flat broke.”

Martin let out a small laugh at that, though it was hard to tell whether it was a lie, exactly, though their eating in a café probably showed that they had at least a little money to spend, more than Jon and Martin could really say for themselves. (Really, if they were going to be spending their lives trying to save the world, would getting subsidized along the way really be too much to ask?)

“No, we’re not selling anything, we just want to have a friendly conversation.”

Jon’s counterpart snorted at that, but Jon pushed ahead as if he hadn’t heard it.

“You’ve probably noticed that the two of us look an awful lot like the two of you, and that’s not just some strange coincidence. Our names are Jonathan Sims and Martin Blackwood, and while you may have chosen different ones, they’re likely similar enough that you can at least recognize the connections to be made there.”

Jon and Martin’s counterparts exchanged a meaningful glance, and while Jon couldn’t quite decipher the meaning behind it, he recognized the gesture just the same.

“What are you saying?” Jon’s double finally asked. “Is this- time travel, or, or some sort of multiverse thing, or-”

Martin spoke up before Jon could. “’Some sort of multiverse thing’ about sums it up, I think.”

“More specifically, we’re you from another dimension, here to help prevent what happened to our world from happening to yours.” Glossing over, of course, that it’d been their own actions that put this world in peril in the first place; Jon and Martin had discussed that matter enough already, and they really didn’t need to bring strangers into that argument, even strangers who were versions of themselves. “And we’ve learned that some of our best allies along the way tend to be, well, ourselves.”

“I see.” Jon’s counterpart looked him over for a long moment before adding, “Well, you’re certainly right about one thing. We didn’t choose the same names you two did, if your story is to be believed.”

“Oh?” Jon couldn’t help his curiosity; it was always interesting to find out what he might have been called if things had gone differently, what logic his other selves used to pick the names they did. “What name did you go with, then?”

“My first name is Timothy, Timothy Sims. Tim to my friends, though I don’t think you count, certainly not this quickly...”

For a moment Jon saw another face, another man speaking in a voice that was not his own but that he knew well enough just the same.

...I don’t forgive you. But thank you for this.

“I, er, I... never considered that one myself.”

“Fair enough. It’s got some things in common with Jonathan, though, doesn’t it? Not too uncommon or faddish, has the nickname built right in--I’m guessing you go by Jon sometimes, just like I go by Tim?”

“...r-right. Yes. Yes, I do.”

Martin’s counterpart looked at Jon for a moment before speaking up. “The name means something to you, doesn’t it? Somebody you know, perhaps?” Jon’s expression must have given something away, because Martin’s double hastily added, “Or, or knew, past tense?”

“...past tense, yes.”

Jon looked over at Martin, but Martin just shook his head and said under his breath, “You knew him better than I did, I think.”

“He was... was a friend of mine, for a while. My best friend, really, at the time. But then there were some... difficult circumstances, we both made some mistakes along the way, I think he hated me by the end... and then he sacrificed himself. For the greater good, but also... I think he knew it would happen. But, well, it wasn’t my decision to make, at any rate.”

“I’m so sorry.”

Jon tried to force himself into a smile, with little success. “Don’t be. You couldn’t have known, and it’s... it’s an old wound at this point, I suppose.”

“This friend of yours...” Timothy drummed his fingers against his leg as he spoke. “Did he go by Timothy, or Tim, or both?”

“Tim. He was... he always went by Tim.”

Timothy nodded. “Just call me Timothy then. That might help distinguish us. Just so long as you’re not calling me Timmy, it’s not a problem.”

“Yeah, only I have Timmy privileges.” Martin’s counterpart had a goofy grin on his face, clearly referencing some sort of inside joke that Jon and Martin weren’t privy to.

“Not if you keep abusing them like that, you don’t. Seriously, Jonah, we’ve discussed this-”

The two kept speaking, but Jon couldn’t hear it, his mind filling with other words, words that both were and were not his own, words that had doomed one reality and led to the downfall of so many others.

Jon’s hand flew to cover his mouth reflexively, and Jon gritted his teeth, keeping his mouth closed as tight as he could as the words washed over him once more-

“Jon?”

Martin’s hand was on Jon’s shoulder now, and Jon focused on that point of contact for a moment, how Martin’s skin was cool and soft, how his hand was circling the area slowly.

“Jon, it’s alright. It’s just a name. It’s not him.”

Jon breathed in and out slowly and let the world around him seep back in; Timothy was staring at him quizzically, while... Martin’s counterpart’s brows were furrowed.

“My name rings a bell too, huh?” Martin nodded, and his counterpart continued with a laugh, “And here I thought the worst reaction I’d get from it was when somebody said my name sounded like a Victorian orphan...”

“...I don’t believe he was an orphan.” Jon’s voice sounded shaky and distant even to himself.

“Who was he, then?” Timothy asked.

“He was the reason our world got thrown into an apocalypse where everybody was stuck living out their worst fears over and over again.” The words came quickly, and without hesitation; though Jon still blamed himself for some things, still stayed up some nights wondering how things could have been different if only he had known better at the time, Martin’s reassurances had helped him place the blame for that particular outcome where it properly belonged.

“And he put Jon through hell several times over leading up to that.” Martin added.

“Jesus.” Jonah said. (Jon tried not to wince as he thought of the name, tried not to be pained by the connection between the man he loved more than everything and the man he hated just as strongly.)

“We could, uh-” Martin bit his lip as he concentrated on his next words. “Did you change your last name, perhaps? Because we could call you that-”

He shook his head. “Thought about it, but I wasn’t sure how Mum’d react to me swapping out surnames. It took long enough for her to call me Jonah, after all. Though I suppose the surname Blackwood doesn’t exactly help with the whole Victorian orphan theme there, heh...”

“Right, sure, I went through the same dilemma myself. So, er...”

Jon butted in. “Mister Blackwood, do you by any chance have a middle name?”

Jon could see Jonah’s face darken with color, could imagine the gears turning in his head as he figured out the best way to phrase his response, and despite everything, Jon let out a soft, shaky laugh at the sight.

[overdramatic-queer-antagonist]

Stop The Apocalypse Out Of Spite

I kept seeing these Martin gets raised by Lonelyeyes fics and thinking ‘this is way to healthy’ so here’s Lonelyeyes son Martin being an uncooperative bastard like he deserves.

~~~

Ao3    Next

~~~

fic under cut

Martin is a nice man. Really, he is. He helps old ladies cross the street, volunteers at the local animal shelter, and all that jazz. People expect his parents to be equally polite, retired probably, with a home with a beautiful garden somewhere in the suburbs. This was not the case. Let's just say finding out that his parents were two billionaires who argued for sport was a top tier relationship ender. And yet, Martin's failed relationships didn't come even close to why he resented Elias and Peter.

To start with, they were plain evil. Not abusive. Like, supervillain, "eat this poison apple" type people. Also, there was the arguing thing. They had this weird game. They would fight, divorce, Peter would fuck off on the Tundra, and then remarry, rinse and repeat. He, honest to God, didn't care about their weird kink if they didn't so clearly want him to participate. When he had first moved in, he tried to stay in his room as much as possible. Not seen, not heard, that's what had worked with his mum. But they weren't having any of that, and pretty soon, he was a part of their little game. Then there was the whole thinking money equates to love, although he felt kind of guilty about that one. At least he had money. But the worst thing by far was Elias's insistence that Martin work for The Institute.

He had only really done it to shut Elias up, of course. He was planning on quitting the next week. Saying, "he tried, but he doesn't think it's for him. Plus, he feels so bad knowing that he has a leg up on all his coworkers." And all that bullshit that Martin and Elias both know was posturing. But he went up to Elias's office to resign only to find that he couldn't. Not like Martin discovered that he really loved the job, he was hired as Elias's assistant and did absolutely nothing all day, but he literally couldn't. Elias, of course, was smirking triumphantly at Martin when he found himself tongue-tied. That was the one time he called Elias Jonah. Never again. The pride on his face was immeasurable.

There were some alright things about them, though. Martin never had to worry about money, and they would usually leave him alone, probably The Lonley's doing, but whether it was Peter or himself doing it was a mystery to Martin. His job at the institute wasn't the worst. The pay was ridiculously high (another thing Martin hated: nepotism), and it was clear that Elias had only hired him to gloat. He didn't actually care what Martin did during his day.

Well, that's not entirely true. There was one thing Elias truly despised him doing. Elias couldn't stand him hanging around the Archives. Ergo, that became Martin's new favorite spot. He didn't like the first Archivist, Gertrude. She always seemed like she couldn't decide if he was an idiot or a spy. She never once seemed to consider that he might actually be able to help stop Elias. She was doing a great job pissing of Elias, though, so he stuck around. And then she disappeared. Elias was the culprit, no doubt, and he had a pretty good idea of where her body was. He didn't care about that rude old lady nearly enough to even consider going down there to look, though.

He liked her replacement. Jonathan Sims. He was ignorant, for one, which was refreshing. The less Jon knew the less his glares stung. He knew nothing about what was actually going on, so there was no actual malice in them. It was cute. Jon also had a very entertaining habit of forgetting that Martin was Elias's son. Whenever he was relaxed enough or drunk enough (thanks, Tim), Jon would rant about how much he hated Elias. Martin found this cute too. Maybe he just thought Jon was cute. Usually, Jon would pause suddenly, realizing who he was talking to, no doubt, and prepare an apology of some sort before being interrupted by Martin complaining about Elias more than he had. Martin would bring tea to Jon and his assistants, Tim and Sasha, and pretend for a second that they were safe. He liked it.

Then Prentiss attacked. He was worried all day, hilariously enough, not about Prentiss. That would be pretty simple to stop, and even Elias would be sure to try and prevent it from actually killing anyone. No, it was that fucking table. He wasn't stupid. He listened to every tape. He knew (not Knew he took a lot of pride in that) that the NotThem was connected to it. Jon and Tim had each other, but Sasha was all alone or worse, with Elias. So he managed to 'get separated' from Tim and Jon and hurried to Artifact Storage.

Just as he'd expected, there was Sasha, face to face with the NotThem, paralyzed. He may have panicked a little bit, but he liked Sasha. So he did what he had to. He grabbed her and dragged her into the Lonely.

Which brings him to now. In the Lonely, praying he can anchor Sasha enough, with Sasha standing in front of him, snapping out of her daze.

"Oh my God, Martin!" she said, rushing to hug him and sounding relieved, "Thank you! Thank-" She stiffened. Here it comes. Martin thought. "Martin?"

"Yes, Sasha?" He heard himself respond shakily.

"What are you?" Sasha asked calmly and, to Martin's relief, not letting go.

Martin laughed nervously, "Well, I'm Polish on my mother's side."

Sasha smacked his arm, "You know what I meant."

"... I'm gay? You already know that, Sash-"

"Oh, my God! Stop deflecting. I'm literally begging you!" She laughed, pushing off of him.

"If I had an answer, I'd tell you, Sash." He answered, honestly, "But if you're asking if I'm still human? Yes, I guess."

"Great. Can you get us out?"

"Oh, sure. Any suggestions?"

"Can you get us to Tim and Jon?"

Martin paused, "Maybe? I don't really know where they are. I don't serve the Beholding. They're in the tunnels, though. So I'll try, but I can't make any promises."

Sasha blinked, "I understood half of that."

Martin laughed and held out his hand for Sasha to take, "Yeah. We have lots to talk about."

Sasha took it, and Martin took a deep breath. Focusing on the sense of belonging he felt in the Archives (cliche, he knows, not his fault his patron is a sucker for the power of love), and pulled himself and Sasha out. They did not find themselves with Tim and Jon. They did, however, find themselves in the tunnels, staring at the year-old corpse of Gertrude Robinson with three bullets in her chest and a sickening lack of eyes. They both screamed and ran out of the room as fast as possible. They ran fast, not bothering to look behind them and not even noticing the lack of worms, only stopping to breathe when they flew out of the trapdoor into the Archives.

Sasha was the first to speak, panting with both fear and exhaustion, "Was that?"

"Yes," Martin responded, trembling quite a bit himself.

"Do you know who?"

"Who else? Elias."

[writingonesdreams]

#100daysofwriting

Event by @the-wip-project

What ideas came to you recently from daydreaming?

A whole story totally made of hurt/comfort scenes but with emotional arcs

It isn't related to Stormkeeper's newest plot version, but it has the core trio plus an old-new character getting a focus (Jonah)

heavily inspired by the current Megalo Box 2. Though Joe has been a major inspo for years

Maybe I should treat it as it's own project. People jumpy from wip to wip here all the time, instead of re-imagining and re-plotting the whole other idea and destroying it in the process

Maybe I should start training to write these scenes in snippets and sew them into a whole later. Like not forcing them into a story and leave it a free flow

Something of a plot around a tournament. And the magic types worming their way in

Magic just hurts a lot. The ideas keep coming

No villians. Ahh if I could just pull of the characters being mean, hurtful, human, redeemable and no one really being bad, just real clumsy in doing the right thing for others and themselves. Did anyone notice how much every writing advice and plot structure centres around bad guys/villains? No wonder a plot without it looks like a revolution

Watched Wish dragon movie yesterday with my brother and gotta say, it's a great example of main character with a flat arc. No less interesting for it, because the MC knows money isn't everything (the story's central truth) but he struggles against the world and all the characters that pressure him against it. He stumbles, occasionally hesitates, doubts himself and the lowest point comes when he succumbs to the lie ridden world and gets a pep talk from the change arc character he was influencing the whole time.

The story plays with themes like pride, machismo, vulnerability and self-worth

Kyler and Wes being full on estranged brothers this time, with Kyler hiding from things he needs even when at a breaking point, Wes stuck in a rebellious ignorant wounded circle and Jonah being the spark to set them both on the right track again.

Playing with these trio's dynamics is really fun. Wes seeing Jonah will show him what growing up and being a partner instead or the younger pampered protected one means and he really needs that

Kyler just wants to take care of people. He might have developed that tendency while caring for Wes, but it's not limited to him anymore.

Jonah never had anybody care or believe in him. I'm still working out his arc, but his inner insecurity engraved quite deep.

Just want these three to save each other in various ways.

Acacia is probably the only sane person, there to say out loud what nobody wants to hear

This picrew is so true to my daydreamed images I can't stop looking at it

Wes - Jonah - Kyler

I have been thinking of changing their names for the story, something like

Lukas/Julian/Kayden or

Andrew/Jacob/Kieran or even

Andrej/Jakub/Roman

But what's the point when their personalities and emotional arcs are so similar?

This would be so much easier if it was fanfiction. No wonder about AUs and playing with the same characters there. When an author uses the same original characters, it just looks like she has no imagination to make up new ones

On the other hand lots of authors just write the same story over and over with different characters and settings, it just isn't as obvious

[bibliocratic]

Jonmartin prompt: Jon wants to cuddle Martin very badly and is also super awkward about it, like "how do I touch you without my elbows crushing something"

(post 160, jonmartin)(this is… well, it’s sort of what you were after? hope it’s ok!)

It’s not easy, the slapdash and imprecise art of communication. Martin’s never been particularly adept. His words trip over footholds of his own making on their way out of his mouth. He has a stammer he’s never quite rid himself of, his words too earnest or too anxious to showcase any finesse at the skill.

And Jon…

Well. Jon.

It wasn’t simple before, twisting the tape back to the start of all this, Jon talking like a car trying to jump start when things felt too personal, his indelicate sincerity that struck with all the tenderness of an anvil. And Martin likes to think they were both getting better, before. They had three weeks of stumbling, artless practise, their amateur declarations witnessed by no-one but the wind and evening-dappled fields that stretched like lazy days for miles around.

And now.

Martin wouldn’t say Jon’s up to managing much talking now.

Oh, he’s not silent. Chatty in his own way, and the conversations they have are tug-of-wars, teasing, testing to find the edges their pieces slot into.

Easy isn’t the word for it though. Martin supposes, it was never going to be.

They’ve stopped for a few days to gather themselves. They’ve made it as far south as Melrose on the borders, and it would have been a pretty market town, antique fairs and village fetes and a eye-catching ruin of a fourteenth century monastery, if the Hunt hadn’t passed this way, maybe the Spiral too. There isn’t much left here in the way of civilisation, and little to nothing in the way of humanity. There are shadows like the imprints on wall after the outpouring shock of a bomb, but their limbs do not concede to the shape of limbs. They sway as leaves on a branch, like they’re hanging from where their feet are stuck to the ground, and Martin tugs them clear of their gathering places.

They’ve managed to let themselves into the half-unhinged door of a little high street shop that used to sell fancy card and stationary. They had tried an art gallery further up the road, but the Dark had started to take root there like black mould, and it’d eaten away the ground floor to yawning inky nothing.

Martin asks Jon if they’ll be safe here, and Jon rallies himself  wearily, Looks. He replies that nothing will come for them, and that’s as much as they can ask for these days.

Above the shop, accessed via a back-room still plugged up and packed with unopened boxes, up carpeted stairs on which bundles of unopened notebooks and special occasion cards balance committedly against the will of gravity, there’s a small flat.  The decoration in the flat is… interesting. It’s more something one of Tim’s friends would have had, the few times Tim got Martin to go out with him for one of his ‘de-stress Friday’ sessions.  Martin would laugh at the wall-hangings like indoor curtains, the posters of the zodiac and some tie-dye hippy representation of chakras, the bong even still on the coffee table in the poky living room, except his attention is slightly more taken up by Jon at the moment. Leant against him like a downed tree, his eyes drooping closed and his legs fast failing him, shuddering from the effort of taking the stairs.

The way here was treacherous. There’s a town further north about forty miles swallowed by the Vast.  Jon tries to avoid Seeing as much as possible, of course he does, and Martin will never ask that of him outright, never, but they’ve had to check if the way is safe a number of times. And each time he opens the door or whatever metaphor Jon uses to understand it, it drains something from him it takes a long time to claw back.

Martin drops his backpack by the entrance. Divests Jon of his. Jon sways and blinks with lidded eyes, and his gestures are sloppy, poorly formed. Martin ends up carrying him to single bed off to the right of the staircase, the room still wreathed in the old stale smell of tobacco and weed.

Once Jon’s out for the count, Martin checks the doors, the windows, their rations and supplies with the religious militancy of a man who knows what happens when they don’t. He counts out rations, makes careful notations in his notebook with a stubby pencil sharpened by his pen-knife. The cupboards of the flat are mostly a bust, but there’s a few cans of baked beans, tinned peaches, and the delight of finding a single can of tinned custard, which Martin stashes to surprise Jon with later.

There’s a billy bookcase next to the non-functioning TV, crowded full of precarious piles of console game boxes and disordered books and back issues of the Fortean Times. Martin peruses through a number of books on mysticism, the paranormal and how one can access their inner self before he finds a glossy hardback on origami to entertain himself.

The sky outside is dark and scratched with an ugly bruising colour,  but it’s likely to be only mid afternoon. Martin ventures back down the staircase and grabs some coloured card before he settles back into the spring-less corner of a battered settee draped with a brightly adorned throw blanket. There’s another, equally obnoxiously shaded blanket of clashing colours, and he places it over himself and gets comfortable.

It’s a few hours later when he hears the bed squeak.  A clearing of a throat, the unsteady padded steps of someone who hasn’t found their equilibrium just yet.

Jon pushes the door open with a sighing squeak and peers blearily around.

The nap hasn’t helped at all by the look of it. Martin turns mid-fold and gets to see a crime scene of disturbed sleep evidenced on Jon’s body. One of Martin’s long-sleeve t-shirts rucked up, the under arms and ring around his neck patched damp. His skin rippled with a thick sweat, hair coming wildly and carelessly from the band he’d tied it back in. He’s rocking on the balls of his feet like he’s still following the motion of running, and his eyes as he stares at Martin are unnaturally dilated, unnervingly steady even as he scrubs his face with his hand.  

“Hey,” Martin says carefully. Knowing to keep his voice pitched low, calmer than Jon feels right now. “Are you… everything ok?”

Jon pauses, blinks just too slowly to seem natural, and shakes his head.

“What’s wrong?” Martin asks. “If you can… if you want to say, that it.”

Jon pauses. It’s habit now. A nervous tic. Mulling over what he wants to say and how he’ll say it.

He has to be so careful with how he says things.

Martin’s expecting a truncated gesture or two. A stumbling sign that Martin will have to parse, backed up by a thousand other signifiers of meaning in their home-spun language. But unusually, Jon clears his throat, bites his top lip anxiously before he opens his mouth.

Like tuning in a radio station mid-programme, someone else’s words ring out.

“I allowed myself some brief hope,” Jon’s voice sloshes out of his mouth with a South American cadence. “that maybe he’d just left me, maybe he’d escaped with just a divorce. But no. One call to the housing association confirmed that, as far as they were concerned, I’d always lived alone.”

Most of the statements Martin doesn’t recognise. He’s not been cursed with an encyclopaedic knowledge of them after all, a forced and unwilling archive now capable of speaking in every voice but his own. They’re all the same anyway. The recycling of other people’s tragedies and miseries, their worst days committed for posterity and recited dutifully by the archive Jonah Magnus created to house them.

Jon usually doesn’t share the content of his dreams.

“Nightmare?” Martin says, deliberately lightly. He puts down his truly butchered attempt to make a swan and watches as Jon swallows, brings a hand to his mouth to gnaw at a nail.

He wonders if that’s the right word, knows in his heart it isn’t, not really. Because nightmares are a twisting of things that both are and aren’t, a plaited deceitful recollection of an unkind brain. Jon’s dreams are a hideous witnessing, with no hope of challenge of change.

Jon jerkily nods, before he says in that awful ventriloquism:

“… regarding a series of misplaced objects lost over the course of three months.”

Jon’s started to rub his arms. His lips firmly closed again, as though embarrassed he’s shared the history he’s been watching in his dreams. But he did share it. And that’s notable.

Martin holds up a corner of the blanket on the settee, and chides “Get in here, or you’ll catch your death”, and Jon’s crossing the distance as though he was waiting for the signal.

They don’t say anything for the while. Jon folds himself up against Martin’s side like a gangly greetings card, like one of his obviously failed origami projects. Martin puts an arm around his shoulder and consigns himself to the rather shocking robbery of body heat that’s rapidly occurring. Jon accepts the arm, but the tension is still wound through his marrow, and he doesn’t calm like he usually does.

“This one really bothered you, didn’t it?” Martin says.

A twitchy up-down motion.

“How come?” Martin asks, before:  “If you want to talk about it. If not, well, I can tell you all about my grand adventures in paper folding. A wild ride, I can promise.”

Jon raises an eyebrow at the truly dazzling menagerie of wobbly animals, and huffs a stale laugh.

He brings out his hands from where he’d buried them in the furnace of Martin’s space, and makes a sign, a twisting hooked hand motion  - Spiral. And then, shakier, flatter, his fingers closed like shutters – Lonely.

“As far as they were concerned,” he repeats with a mournful and stolen tongue, “I’d always lived alone.”

He makes a sign again, and meets Martin’s eye like he’s been trying not to – Lonely.

Jon reaches out, and like setting fingers to the board of a violin, delicately fits his hand against Martin’s. Like he’s memorised exactly the places where they go, the coves and shorelines where their islands can align.

Martin’s grip has never been as careful. His fingers engulf Jon’s smaller size, cushioning them in a sturdy grip.

“You’ve not lost me,” Martin says, reading in between the lines of Jon’s gestures. “I’m here, yeah? Alright. And we’re together. I’m not lost.”

Jon makes a grunt of acknowledgement, inclining his head in agreement, impatiently, as though he knows all this, like he begrudges being reminded. But clearly this knowledge hasn’t stained every part of his waking yet, because there are tears slipping unwanted from his eyes and his hand grips Martin harder.

His gaze flickers like a camera shutter from the floor and its foot-scuffed rug to Martin, back and forth. Martin wishes, not for the first time, that Jon could just ask for what he wants. Could stop feeling like he needs to justify every out-reaching motion to himself, approaching physical affection like he’s trying to do the cryptic bloody crossword.

He’s learning. They both are.

“What do you want me to do?” Martin asks instead.

Jon’s eyes finally linger on him. Cheeks damp, eyes red. He removes his hand from Martin’s grip like he’s unmooring a ship from port. His next movements being planned behind his eyes. A methodical consideration of angle, of intent, of reciprocation that’s as much caution as it is overthinking. Martin wonders sometimes whether this is the Jon he always was, or the Jon that’s been made by this world and all that’s been laid against him. Maybe it’s one or the other or both, or maybe it doesn’t matter much any more. This is Martin’s Jon, the Jon that is, the one that is thinking about how he’s going to place his limbs as though there’s a wrong way to it, who will steady himself before he’ll reach out. But who always does, eventually, in his own time.

His arms encircle Martin’s neck now. A pause, a release of air, before he’s pulling back, fretting like something hasn’t worked. But he clearly wants something, enough to push through his dissatisfaction, face folded in on itself unhappily before it sets in determination and then he goes for around Martin’s chest, fingers steadying, finding their own bony handholds in the material of Martin’s jumper. The right angles of his elbows, the washboard of his ribs felt under his shirt, they don’t have any give and Martin shifts a little to ease the hard sensation of it, try and reorient them better. Jon picks up on this, already trying to shift again or perhaps even move away, and if his tongue could still form apologies, he’d be making them.

Martin’s arms come round decisively, closing the circuit of them.

“Stop fussing,” he murmurs, and Jon quietens. Face against the round of Martin’s chest, the hand that’s not still gripped vice-like carefully combining through his damp hair.

“This ok?” Martin says finally, wanting to know, wanting Jon to feel like he can tell him.

Jon lifts his head. Nods, brings their lips together for a skimming kiss, like he’s sealing the sentiment.

He shuffles his body so he’s wedged next to Martin, taking up any crevice he finds. After a moment, pulling and positioning Martin’s arm back over his shoulder, so it drapes heavy and solid and present. A lightness on his face that sleep couldn’t achieve but a victory Martin likes to claim as his own every time.

It is no hardship for Martin to understand every one of these expressions just fine.

[antichristsxbox]

Knight in Shining Armor

Summary: You’re a princess— locked away in a tower, under a sleeping spell, waiting for a brave suitor to come rouse you from your slumber. Luckily, Sir Michael Langdon has come to the rescue. 

From the writer: Hey guys, I’m so excited about this! I think there’s going to be a few more parts to this, so stay tuned and let me know if you’d like to be added to my tag list. Big shoutout to @jocelynscloset​​ for proofreading this for me! Also, if you like this, be sure to check out my masterlist here! <3 Update— here’s part two, here’s part three, and here’s part four + here’s my masterlist with more fics!

Word count: 2,404

Background knowledge in italics:

A princess blessed with the gift of the Light, as it is known. To be able to conjure up power from the good, almost like a wizard of the time. A scary gift, sure, but a gift nonetheless. It must be a recessive trait, as nobody else in the family has been touched by the Light thus far. As your powers grew with you, you turned from a whimsical girl to a seemingly omnipotent woman. Whispers became less hushed around the castle as doors would open with no servants, candles would light with no match, and books would become loose from top shelves with no ladder. The King and Queen, your parents, have decided it is best for you to wait for one of your own power to suit you. ‘Only the best, or better, for our princess,’ their words replayed in your mind. A tower was built with barriers only a skilled knight could make it through alive. It seems irrelevant, though, that you would have liked to stay awake. As you were lead to the tower, you were apprehensive, but excited for when you would soon be roused, if ever. 

Soft rays cascade through thin curtains to fall on bedsheets. A faint chirp! chirp! chirp! of the birds from outside can be heard. As you lift your head to see who has come, nobody more perfect could be thought of. This is not a figment of your imagination. Bright, blue eyes that energize you more the longer you look— soft, long, blonde hair that hangs a little past his shoulders, right above his silver, gleaming armor. 

How long it has been, you cannot tell. Your parents had you put up and locked away for your own safety. Your conjuring abilities had been far too much for them to handle. As powers grew, so did the desire to use them. Such a convenience to have, and a waste to not use, you thought. Now, that urge has subsided, all due to the happiness you were feeling that somebody had finally come to save you. A loving kiss was all it took to break the spell. Although it was a one-sided love for now, a warm feeling began again in your chest. The suitor must have made it through the traps and misleadings that lead up to your room— the highest room in the tallest tower. The tallest tower guarded by a moat full of fish, bigger than the great, big whale that swallowed Jonah, your father said. Top floors of the tower protected by a dog-beast of three heads and enormous size, and misleading staircases that would send the adventurer falling down thousands of feet if one wrong step was taken. 

“Are you here to save me?” you ask, sitting up and glancing at the mirror in your bedside table. A repressed memory tells you that you never looked like this before, not even entering the castle. A gold crown sits atop your head, three rubies, each in the middle of their own peak, the biggest gem sitting in the center. Red fabric falling from your arms as you reach up to touch the cold metal. 

“Yes, Princess,” he says, guiding your fingers from your crown into his warm grasp to place a soft kiss on the back of your hand. As you fully sit up, you swing your legs to the edge of your bed and stand. 

“Who is my suitor?” you ask, reaching for a gold pitcher and a crystal glass. Flowing from the top with ease is your first drink since probably five years. Clear liquid passes your lips and beads on your top lip, and you rub your lips together to rid them of the excess, then turn to the man behind you. 

He is now standing, at least six feet tall it seems. A very impressive, strong knight. A long sword hangs down from his belt, leading your eye to his gleaming, black boots. His hand makes its way to your shoulder, glistening in the sunlight. Wrist so reflective, it’s aggressive for a little clock. Diamonds glisten, light shining in through your arched window. 

“Sir Michael Langdon,” he says, kneeling before you and releasing his sword from its sheath, cling! The long strip of metal lies in his two hands as his head is bowed towards you. As you place your glass down, a finger of yours makes its way to the bottom of his chin, tipping his head up. Azure is all you can see, eyes almost as beaming as his armor in this sunlight. The warmth of his body being a now-familiar feeling, and a welcome reminder that you are, in fact, awake now. 

Sir Langdon stands again as you release your touch from his face. 

As you know, Michael is likely here to rescue, then marry you. He seems like a fine man, although you had only just met him. If he leaves without you, you are stuck here, now awake and with little water and food to sustain yourself with. The spell had been broken, and it seems nearly impossible for you to replicate it yourself. Stuck between a rock and a hard place, you toy with the idea or running off with Michael and never returning. How would your family know that you’ve been saved? Do they come to check up on you often? The barriers set seem near impossible to sneak past and still leave intact. 

“Come with me, Princess, your kingdom is so eager to meet you,” he says, offering an arm for you to grasp. 

“Do you not wish to know who it is you are leading?” you say, taking a small step back and offering a small smile.

“My apologies, Princess, what is your name?” he says, now holding his hands clasped behind his back, posture straightening up in anticipation of an answer. 

“Lady Abigail of Minnesott,” you say, softly reminiscing of your home before the tower. A river ran down behind your castle, and an open field before it. Wild deer, turkey, and mustangs all present in the temperate, deciduous forest around your home. Oh, how the leaves would turn in autumn. How sharks teeth and pottery fragments were readily available as the tide drew in, when you pursued the river bank searching for lost treasures. You could only hope for a place as beautiful, wherever Michael would take you. 

“A beautiful woman of a beautiful land,” he says, offering his arm again. Warm metal is a refreshing sensation across your fingertips, and Michael leads you down the staircase. With horror, you witness the scattered bones of at least ten men, splayed across the floor beneath you, piled up near where the dog-beast once resided. Dried-up blood stains and gore were on display across the walls, the only other artwork here besides the oil on panel of your family, safely tucked away in your room. 

Past the slain dog-beast, for it was not just a creature of your father’s dreams. Across the long bridge of the moat, above the murky waters. Shadows of large fish and glimmering of large scales suggest that one of those creatures may still hold Jonah captive.

Out on a post was a dark horse, secured with a rope skillfully tied. One pull, and the rope is free of its tangles. A firm hand grasps your waist as you mount the horse, but hands are careful to travel no further south. A true gentleman, you must remark in your mind. As Michael mounts the horse in the seat in front of you, one swift kick is all it takes before the four feet under you are trotting, then running. A small jingling noise is coming from the seams of your dress, and a quick investigation is needed before you determine that a compass is in the pocket of your dress. One small glance down, and you realize that the horse is taking you south rather than North.

“Should we not be headed toward Vandemere?” you ask, a somewhat urgent tone in your voice.

“My kingdom is south, Princess, near Havelock and towards the Croatan Forest,” he says, a stern look in his face as he scans the path ahead. As Michael seems to know where he is going, your worries are washed away. Your sense of direction may have been put on hold during your deep slumber, but it is back now, and perhaps stronger than it was before. 

The forgotten feeling of tiredness washes over you, and before long, your grasp on Michael loosens enough so you could relax, but you’re still steady while he’s riding horseback— you lean in to drift off on his shoulder, warm metal and all. When you wake, it is now dark outside, and the horse has stopped running, but it now simply slow-trotting through a forest. A few more minutes through the dark forest, and Michael beckons the horse to stop. He is now dismounting his ride and tying up on a tree branch.

“Stay here, Princess, I must go search for a landmark on our way,” he says, walking off. You pull out your compass once more, only to realize that the arrow will not point anywhere besides south, no matter where you turn. 

“Are we more towards Trent, or Pollocksville?” you ask, but Michael is already into the woods before you even began to speak.

Ears alert and ready to pick up on any cues as to where Michael is. Not a chirp! from a bird, not a crackle! from skimming the side of a bush, not a swoosh! as his feed passed over the ground. Only visual cues left to guide you towards him— if you choose to go and venture— even the stars being hard to see through the thick foliage. 

“Princess!”

Your heart skips a beat as Michael shouts. Your leg swings over the saddle so you’re sitting atop the horse, then you carefully slide down, using the stirrup as a guide as to where to place your feet. It is only then you realize how fatigued you are, running on barely any water and no food since years ago, probably. 

“Sir Langdon, I’m following your voice!” you shout, heading the direction his initial call came from. Step by step, you make your way on the dusty ground. There is no path, no landmark presenting itself yet. Only the memory of which way his voice had come from. It is now colder than you remember it being at night, although this could just be due to being farther inland— no body of water acting as a heat sink during the day, then releasing heat through the night. 

Leaves crunch! under your feet as you begin walking faster. The darkness tends to disorient you. Faint outlines of trees begin to grow and shrink as you walk further. Turn around and you’ll see nothing, only the night’s dark blanket, engulfing the sky and almost everything around you. 

“Are you alright?” a faint voice causes you to turn around, and you find Michael waiting for you by a strange stump, it seems like. As you walk closer, you realize it is a ring of mushrooms, leading down to what seems to be a small cavern, only there is no other demarcation other than the ring of mushrooms to warn any passerby of this dip in the road. Walking closer, you see it is actually a well, as the inside is even darker than the ground surrounding it, and the edges are a perfectly symmetrical circle. Very strange, you thought, but perhaps Michael would like to stop for the night and continue the long journey tomorrow. 

“Could we draw up some water?” you ask, looking towards the well, but not daring to step any closer than four feet. The last thing you would like is to be a victim in another situation where you would be in need of rescuing. 

“Of course, Princess,” Michael says, stepping closer towards you and taking your cold hand in his warm one. As his fingers travel up your arm and toward your jawline, you shudder at the sensation and move back. He begins to lean closer, with his still-warm armor grazing your front. He takes another step forward to move into you closer and brings his arms around you protectively. A small shuffle in your direction from him has his warm face nuzzled between your shoulder and neck. 

“I would never do anything to hurt you,” he says, voice muffled from his face being buried in your dress. You step back to look at his face, although you can barely see a thing in the overwhelming darkness of the night. It is very hard to trust a man you had only met earlier today, and you would only have to see with time if Michael could hold up to this. 

Creeping in from the back of your mind, a very fatiguing sensation begins to wash over you once more. You feel wobbly almost, and contemplate just falling asleep then and there, your dress is thick enough to keep you warm through the night, and it seems as if Michael wouldn’t let you lie down alone. Michael then removes his face from your shoulder, and the cold air is again exposed due to your low neckline. His thumb rests on your top lip before his hand is entirely pulled away, moving towards your chest. It doesn’t take much to move you, and you almost melt at his lively touch.

“Forgive me, Princess,” he says. Without any time for you to question what he is asking forgiveness for, your fatigue has gotten the better of you. In perfect timing for Michael, a small jostle is all it takes for him to send you down the well. Unbeknownst to you, Michael had you exactly where he wanted you, luring you towards the secret Hellmouth. 

Information on ring of mushrooms mentioned:

Fairy rings are acknowledged to have otherworldly powers or be connected with dark forces, according to various folklore tales. They have a mythical reputation of fairies or supernatural creatures being present around the rings— there are many warnings of the dangers of entering a fairy ring throughout different stories. Many sources warn of fairy rings being created by shooting stars, lightning strikes, or the work of witches. Some even say entering a fairy ring can lead to certain doom. 

///

Tag list: @langdonsoceaneyes​ @ms-mead​ @daydreamingofcody​ @psychobitchtess​ @swampwitchh13​

[typicalmidnightsoul]

𝓣𝓱𝓮 𝓒𝓻𝓸𝔀𝓷 𝓟𝓻𝓲𝓷𝓬𝓮𝓼𝓼- Chapter 9

𝔸𝕝𝕝 𝕪𝕠𝕦 𝕠𝕨𝕟 𝕚𝕤 𝕪𝕠𝕦𝕣𝕤𝕖𝕝𝕗

Let it go, let it leave, let it happen. Nothing in this world was promised or belonged to you anyway. ― Rupi Kaur.

Chapter  1, 2, 3, 4 5, 6 7 8 <- here 

(Adelaide Archeron’s ‘painting’ up above)

With Randolph being gone for extended periods of time Romella had descended upon Prythian much to her sister’s delight.

Nesta had taken an instant liking to her aunt. Her aunt told her stories from all over the world, stories from the other side of Prythian. Nesta was told her family history and she was so excited to be a part of a family with Fae blood.

Nesta was perfect. She was moulded to be like that.

Sent to Etiquette school at 8. She was taught how to play instruments, she was taught ballet, waltz. She was taught etiquette rules from different kingdoms, she knew 5 different languages by the time she was 10. 9 languages by the time she was 11.

But then one day as she was skimming through the library she felt a surge of power burst from…her. She was scared, crying, screaming.

“Its fine Nesta,” Adelaide said bursting through the library doors. Romella clinging to her sister’s side.

She slipped on an iron bangle on Nesta’s wrist. Nesta’s golden skin paled. Suddenly weak.

She gathered the skirts of her blue gown and strode through the halls.

That night, Adelaide and Romella stepped out of the mansion in their hooded cloaks and saddled their horses. Romella carrying Elain as she mounted her horse, Adelaide carrying Feyre, Nesta at front. Their midnight cloaks flowed behind them. They went to the people of the Hill.

Algeron came to them.

“My Lady, what’s wrong?”

“Nesta,” She pushed Nesta in front, “Had her first powers this morning, I need to know-Elain and Feyre will they have their Settling when they’re older too?”

He took each sleeping child in his hands brushing a hand over his brows. “No, they will one day possess powers but not because of their Fae heritage.”

Nesta looked up to the ethereal, towering man.

“Is our fae heritage something to be ashamed of?”

He beckoned her closer, “My dear, your power is an entity of great beauty,” he made a mist figure of a female with beautiful powers helping humans, “But also an entity of great danger and fear, which will incite people to harm and hurt you.” The mist female was smothered by the same people she helped when her power got out of control, Nesta gasped. “The human race is very narrow-minded. Therefore we must try to smother your fae powers.”

“I was proud of my powers.”

“I am afraid my love, there will come a day where you will have to learn to master a power much greater than this, and that power will make you one of the most powerful females of your time.”

She nodded, “My people will show you to conceal your power. There are not many rules. Don’t let it consume you; your coldness will shove it down. The less people there are, the less people getting hurt.”

She left to the females in emerald gowns beckoning to her.

Romella turned to Algeron, “I’m training her.”

Algeron said to her, “There is a great danger coming to her. She must remain defenceless. The Lord above demands it.”

“I don’t care. I am not letting her be defenceless.”

“Ella-” but Romella had left to go to Nesta.

“Leave her Adelaide; she will not stop the inevitable. Let her try to soothe her tormented heart.”

 The green mist changed the scene to Nesta in the bottom floor of her father’s ship checking the new goods. She twirled a diamond chain around her fingers. A thud came from behind she picked up a dagger in a crate next to her.

“Come out, Ruffian” She shouted, “I am the heiress to the Archeron Mantle and I will not be afraid of a vagabond.”

A young boy stood up from the inside of a crate.

“Come into the light.”

He stepped through his hands up in his defence; he had blue eyes with emerald flecks. And pointed ears.

She dropped the dagger, gasping.

She crossed the distance and pushed his hair behind his ears.

“Mr Stowaway you are fae,” she breathed.

His eyes were pleading, “Please my family- they, I have nowhere to go- please just let me walk off this ship safely and you will never hear from me again.”

“Oh no no, you must come with me to my mother, she will help you.” He was confused.

“Help?”

“Oh yes, she’ll know what to do, she’s half fae herself, don’t worry…”

“Oliver…Oliver Bondavich.”

She smiled.

 The green mist changed the scene again

 Christiana had brought her child to meet her sister. Audrey Astor. Audrey, Nesta, Clare and Oliver became as thick as thieves fast. Romella had now met Adelaide every day to strengthen the glamour being put on her whole body to hide the baby bump. Randolph came home for a fortnight at the best, and Adelaide would feign sickness and stay in her room. Then Jonah was born and he was beautiful and Adelaide had begged Drian take him to Rask which he did, but Drian didn’t want to announce him as the heir to the throne, instead he made the first child love his heir. He made Nesta his heir. He had taken Nesta to Rask to meet his mother Vera. Vera’s heart broke at the sight of the small child shackled with an iron bangle.

Then came The Dark Fae. In her last attempt to change her daughters’ fate she called upon some really ethereal people. People who had stuck to their God’s scriptures and called upon different sources of power, the fae people called them witches and warlocks. The parties she threw were now a cover up. King Peirce of the Dark Fae came with his two sons Torin and Tyrus. Nesta took an instant liking to both of them but the bond of a childhood sweetheart formed between her and the boy who kept himself hidden between the worn pages of old books. The boy she stayed with next to that oak tree in front of her father’s house.

 Nesta with her dimples and fringe stepped onto the balcony. She eyed the young boy reading a worn out book. His dark hair fell over his face, his knees curled to his chest.

“Hi” No answer.

She cleared her throat, “Hello.”

He slowly looked up trying to drink in the last few words on the page. He looked at her with curious grey eyes.

“Is my brother causing any issues?”

She chuckled, “No, no not at all. On the contrary he is proving to be quite the…life of the party.” He went back to his book but she wasn’t quite finished, “Has Stephen found out about his cousin’s weird obsession yet.”

He looked up in shock, “It’s not an obsession!”

“Yes it is! Which man would spend his life wanting to be immortal instead of living it to the fullest?!”

“Some people die young and get buried at an older age.”

“Good point. But he killed children.”

“Which is what makes this story so compelling…?” He paused, “What was your name again?” He dropped his legs of the bench. She sat next to him.

“Nesta.” He held out his hand.

“Tyrus.” She shook it.

 The green mist changed the scene. Their clasped hands being the last image to change.

 The day before everything changed. Tyrus and Torin had become frequent visitors. But something in Tyrus had started changing. He had realised that he was getting to close to Nesta, the feelings were not able to be controlled, and he hated that. The voices in his head made him think twice, they told him to leave her. And he, not possessing the courage to deny them came one day to her house under the cover of night.

 “Ty!!” Nesta ran into his arms. He memorised the feel of her under his fingertips. If he didn’t push her away now he wouldn’t be able to do what he had to.

“Nesta, we need to talk.”

Her face scrunched in confusion.

“I am letting you go. I am setting you free.”

Her face scrunched up again but this time tears were forming, “What do you mean?”

“Friendship was ok, but love…is impossible.”

“What-what why? Did I-I” her face fell and she took a shuddering breath.

“You don’t mean that.”

He had to be cruel now. “Really? You’re sure I don’t? Please Nesta a relationship between us would never work out! Loving you would mean destroying me. You would die in the next 70 years anyway what would I do then wallow in grief? No, that’s not me.”

She held a hand at her throat, trying and failing to keep her sobs in. Audrey came out.

“Nes-Tyrus?

She took a look at Nesta’s face.

Tyrus kept his eyes on Nesta, “Goodbye Nesta.”

He turned leaving.

Nesta sank to the floor; her hand outstretched trying to form the words to stop his leaving figure.

Audrey wrapped her hands around Nesta’s shoulders.

“Nesta. He is not coming back.”

“He has too,” she sobbed.

 After that Nesta had asked Romella to start her training. It went on for months and Nesta had developed muscle memory but it was all about to die out.

Ollie’s power was getting vicious he was having sudden outbursts and since iron would permanently harm him, Adelaide was helpless. Nesta, Audrey, Clare and Ollie were in the old clock tower looking down on the village when Ollie had his second outburst. All three of the girls were flung back rendering them unconscious. The surge of power did not go unnoticed by the villagers.

In his last attempt Oliver hid the girls in the corner. Upon seeing his pointed ears the villagers, in their fear had locked him in a cage of ash.

When Adelaide found out she went mad. She sent her sisters away, she sent away Jonah, and she sent away any trace of magic from their lives. But when Nesta woke up there was no force alive stopping her from saving her best friend and ensuring her family got away safely.

 Nesta ran, her hooded cloak trailing behind her in the mud. She hid an axe under her cloak. Getting in was the harder part but she had managed with Clare’s help to create a diversion.

“Ollie!” She held up the axe.

“Nesta! You should not be here!!!”

“Don’t tell me what to do!!” She swung the axe on the ash bars.

“You are rubbish at yielding that!”

“Don’t make me swing it on your face!”

She managed to make a permissible hole which he wsa bale to climb through.

As they were running out a village boy had seen the hole.

“The Fae monster’s gone!”

They ran.

As they ran into the woods, where Feyre would one day hunt to provide for her family Nesta said,

“Go! There’s a ship waiting for you, Aunt Christie is taking you all to Rask for safety, Go!”

He hugged her tightly, “On one condition, you promise me you’ll go straight home, no looking back understood?”

She softened, kissing his cheek, “Yes, now go.”

He nodded and kissed her cheek running off into the dense forest to the sound of the trees.

As his figure disappeared, Nesta whispered,

“I’m sorry Ollie.” The only promise she would ever break.

She ran into the opposite direction, making as much noise as possible, rustling leaves making yelps.

The squires’ men saw her hooded figure and made a run for her, she let herself get caught. They had fallen into her trap.

“She’s a Randolph Archeron’s girl be soft with her men,” The squire himself had arrived he knelt down, “Listen sweetie, you tell me where that fae boy is and I’ll let you hurry on home, how about that?”

She spat in his face.

He took out his hankie, wiped his face and addressed his men.

“Old boy Randolph isn’t home for weeks; he doesn’t need to know anything.” He chuckled at the coldness on her face, “A few weeks in the mental asylum ought to fix her.”

Her face drained of colour but she didn’t yield.

 The scene changed to Nesta being dragged by her hair to the mental asylum. As she went in and the bars clanged shut.

Everything went silent.

And then the void filled with a whip slapping against skin and bone-shattering shrieks. They had taken a child and they were torturing her.

 The squire in fear of Nesta’s father returning had let her out. Nesta had come out physically and mentally broken. Hostile and cold. She came out to find her mother dying.

Feyre and Elain thought that Nesta had been travelling with their father. A weak lie fed by their mother.

Her mother’s last words to her,

“Nesta, warriors are not meant to be coddled, take your shadow off Feyre let her live however she wants to, Do. Not. Stop. Her. Feyre knows what she needs to do.” Her eyes softened, “I will weep in my grave because my gender stopped me from being able to protect my daughter. I am so sorry Nesta, I love you.”

Nesta wept, “I love you too, please.”

Her mother’s eyes drooped, she let out a last shuddering breath and her hand caressed her daughter’s cheek once more.

 The scene changed.

“THE FAE PEOPLE CAN SAVE HER!” Nesta screamed.

“I AM NOT RISIKING THAT!” Randolph roared back.

Nesta sobbed leaving to see her mother one more time, she had tried for the past hour to deal with her father, but he didn’t budge.

 Once more the memory in front of them changed.

It was a pregnant Adelaide with playing with two-yaer-old Nesta on the grass. They were on the floor, their heads next to each other. Cloud watching.  

“Momma?”

“Yes darling?”

“What if you’re gone and I’m still here?”

Adelaide stilled, “Well then…You’ll be all big and you won’t need me anymore.”

She considered, “I don’t think I’ll ever stop needing you.”

 The green mist blew once like a roaring fire.

Clare came to her, next to the oak tree, “Feyre’s gone. You’ve tried to bring her back. What are you gonna do now?”

Nesta brushed her hand over the tree, “I wait.”

Clare nodded wrapping her hand around Nesta’s waist, “Quick question, Nes are you waiting for him?”

“No, I’m done with that other life. I need to focus.”

The mist roared again.

A few years after Nesta had left the night court she had gone back to their old mansion in the continent. She coughed as she pushed the heavy doors. She trailed down the ghost like hallways. After her mother died her father had taken all these paintings and had put them in her mother’s childhood room. She pushed the door of the childhood room and let out a gasp. She sat in front of the paintings.

She stroked the painting,

“Hey momma.”

 The green mist flared and died out.

Tags:

@mis-lil-red

@wannawriteyouabook

@absolute-dissapointment

@skychild29

[ckret2]

Rodorah (Rodan/Ghidorah) and related MonsterVerse fic masterpost

Formerly “Rodorah and Ghidorah-centric fic masterpost” but at this point I’ve added a lot of fics that are part of the same continuity but not about Rodorah or Ghidorah, so.

Right now, only the Rodorah fics are a single connected storyline; but the other fics are, in my mind, in the same continuity/running on the same headcanons as the Rodorah fics, and so contribute to them.

Newly-added fics are marked in bold. This post was updated June 25, 2020. (Check the original post for more fics if it’s been a while!)

Rodorah fics, in chronological order, separated by lot arc:

How Cute (AO3) (Ghidorah’s perspective; Ghidorah & Rodan’s first fight/meeting)

The Things He Knew But Hadn’t Been Taught (AO3) (Rodan’s perspective; Ghidorah & Rodan’s first fight/meeting)

But Tomorrow, The World Will End (AO3) (Ghidorah’s perspective(s); only one of the heads has developed a crush on Rodan; one is neutral; and one is furious about this. Set during the flight to Boston.)

Nausea & Numbness (and the Slim Possibility of Happiness) (AO3)(Ghidorah’s perspective(s); during their final showdown, Ghidorah sacrifices a certain victory and yields to Godzilla in order to protect the injured Rodan.)

Translating Titans (AO3) (Madison, Ilene, & Mothra’s perspectives; when the battle ends with Ghidorah’s surrender, Monarch & titans alike struggle to figure out what just happened—and what’s going to happen next.)

Now What? (AO3) (Ghidorah’s perspective(s); While flying “home” with Rodan, Ghidorah realizes they’ve got absolutely no idea what to do with their lives now.)

Three Eggs in a Cold Volcano (AO3) (Rodan’s perspective; Rodan tries to figure out why he and Ghidorah are so different from each other. He still hasn’t been told that Ghidorah is a different species, much less an alien.)

Once upon a time, they met an alien (AO3) (Ghidorah, Ni’s perspective; the reason why Ni is so furious that Ichi’s decided to pursue his crush)

Conversational Pteranodon 101 (AO3) (Ghidorah’s perspective(s); to get Ghidorah into his nest, Rodan teaches Ghidorah his language. By throwing rocks at them.)

Gold Gilt on Molten Basalt (AO3) (Ghidorah’s perspective(s); Ghidorah takes a flight to burn off their excess crush-on-Rodan energy, fails, goes home, and finally cuddles with Rodan.)

Weird (AO3) (Rodan’s perspective; being cuddled freaked Rodan out. He goes to Mothra for help sorting out what the hell just happened.)

Machine Maker Music (AO3) (Ghidorah’s perspective(s); while Rodan’s visiting Mothra, Ghidorah goes to Boston to scavenge a speaker and give humans the stink eye.)

Antarctica (AO3) (Ghidorah & Rodan’s perspectives; Ghidorah decides to leave Earth after figuring out Rodan isn’t nearly as into them as they are into him; but Rodan is into Ghidorah enough to try to kick their ass into staying.)

Godzilla Recycles (AO3) (human perspective; a look at what the hell humanity is making of the soap opera going down on Isla de Mara; and Godzilla & Mothra discuss how to deal with the temporarily-pacified three-headed alien menace.)

Conversational Pteranodon: Intermediate Level (AO3) (Rodan perspective; while stuck in Antarctica together due to Ghidorah’s injured wing, Rodan decides this is a fine time to have another language lesson. He still thinks throwing rocks is a fine instructive tool.)

The Toughest Lizard On Earth (AO3) (Ghidorah, Rodan, & Godzilla perspective; Ghidorah’s mildly drunk, chilling on a boat that’s gonna take way too long to get back to Isla de Mara, and bothered more than anything else by the fact that he’s got no idea how to insult Godzilla.)

The Glorious Resurrection of Bouvet Island (AO3) (Rodan perspective; instead of going home, they stopped on what was supposed to be a tiny volcanic island but is actually a glacier on a dead caldera. Rodan wakes the volcano up, passes out from the cold, and is rewarded with the tenderest of cuddles.)

A Bird in the Hand (AO3) (Ghidorah, San’s perspective; San’s slowly starting to catch up with Ichi in developing a crush on Rodan. Unfortunately, it’s because Rodan reminds him of Gigan.)

Mafic (AO3) (Ghidorah & Rodan’s perspectives; during the flight home to Isla de Mara, Rodan decides it’s absolutely crucial he teach Ghidorah about which lava tastes best.)

No Tongue, No Teeth (AO3) (human & Rodan perspectives; Rodan decides that if he and Ghidorah are courting, then he needs to explain how courting works in his species—and meanwhile nearby Monarch employees are desperate to know what they’re talking about.)

You Made That? (AO3) (Rodan & Ghidorah perspectives; Rodan makes a globe to help teach his alien guests about Earth’s landmarks; Ghidorah makes a radio to find out what the hell humans are up to. They’re very impressed by each other’s works. Also Ghidorah thinks the globe is a courting gift and absconds with it.)

The weight of the world on your shoulders (AO3) (Ghidorah’s perspective(s); after a long delay, they finally take an official vote to see if all three of them agree that they want to stay on earth with Rodan.)

Volcán [Scene 1] (Rodan’s perspective; how Rodan finally falls in love with Ghidorah: in song and dance. Note: all the scenes are in one post so it’s only linked once, but each scene is listed separately on this list based on where they fall in the chronology.)

Day Tripping on the Ring of Fire (AO3) (Rodan & Mothra’s perspectives; Rodan teaches Ghidorah to navigate the Ring of Fire, and decides they need more friends. Mothra would be a great buddy for them. Right? Right.)

Volcán [Scene 2] (Rodan’s perspective; how Rodan finally falls in love with Ghidorah: in song and dance.)

Just a Flesh Wound (Rodan’s perspective: Rodan comes home after a fight. Ghidorah’s prepared to murder whatever injured him.)

Gold Skin, Black Blood, and Stone Bones (Rodan, Ghidorah, & Xilien perspectives: 60% Rodan helping a hungry Ghidorah find some edible gold, 40% flashbacks to why the Xiliens made him need gold in the first place.)

Home Is Where Your Shackles Are Anchored (Ghidorah perspective: Rodan asks Ghidorah about alien planets but only really wants to know about the volcanoes; somehow he ends up declaring Ghidorah an honorary earthling.)

Volcán [Scene 3] (Rodan’s perspective; how Rodan finally falls in love with Ghidorah: in song and dance.)

Related fics, in chronological order:

Specimen 1, Specimen 2, Specimen 3, Monster 0 (AO3) (unnamed Xilien dorat breeder; backstory, the “birth” of Ghidorah and the moment they gained the strength they’d need to escape)

STAND UP AND TRY AGAIN (AO3) (Ghidorah’s perspective; backstory, shortly after being “born”/made by very cruel aliens—set during the timeskip in the previous fic)

Gold Skin, Black Blood, and Stone Bones (Rodan, Ghidorah, & Xilien perspectives: 60% Rodan helping a hungry Ghidorah find some edible gold, 40% flashbacks to why the Xiliens made him need gold in the first place.)

Ghidorah & Gigan Crash the Opera (Gigan’s perspective: Gigan takes Ghidorah to the opera. Things go awry, multiple times, mainly because they’re jerks.)

The Fissures Between Flesh and Metal (AO3) (Gigan’s perspective; he rambles to a bartender about his relationship with Ghidorah while he waits for a hacker to dig out the info he needs to let him follow Ghidorah across the galaxy.)

Cuckoo (AO3) (Mothra’s perspective; Godzilla’s species leaves its eggs in other species’ nests to prevent them from being predated by MUTOs. One day Mothra hatches from an egg to find a second one sitting next to her and a dead Godzilla outside her nest—and that’s how she got a brother.)

Armor & Fuzz (Battra’s perspective; what happens when one of Mothra’s eggs hatches, remembering all her past reincarnations... but he isn’t Mothra himself. Connected to Cuckoo.)

Heartbeat Heartbeat Heartbeat (AO3) (Ghidorah’s perspective; a random fight with Godzilla sometime before getting trapped in Antarctica)

Like Lover and Owner and Worshiper (AO3) (Ghidorah & unnamed Monarch employee; set from the time Monarch finds Ghidorah until he escapes; sleeping Ghidorah telepathically latches on to a human’s admiration. May or may not be canon to the other fics, but the description of Ghidorah’s empathic abilities IS canon across fics)

Hazard Pay (AO3) (Human perspectives; while Ghidorah is in Boston, a bunch of demolition workers find themselves on an unexpected break. ... And persuade Ghidorah to do their job for them. Set during Machine Maker Music.)

Isla de Rotten Fish (AO3) (unnamed Isla de Mara islander; the islanders coming home struggle to clean up their island. Rodan helps them out. No mention is made of Ghidorah in the fic, but otherwise can be canon to the rest of the series.)

Hybrid Cultivar (AO3) (scientist working for Jonah; while trying to cultivate Godzilla cells found in Ghidorah’s decapitated head, Dr. Shiragami instead creates an odd human/rose/Godzilla hybrid. Surely this won’t end badly.)

Monarch Flips Out (AO3) (human perspective; Monarch Outpost 56-B reacts to Rodan making a globe and Ghidorah making a radio. They didn’t know titans could do that. Set during You Made That?)

A Hundred Eggs & One Survivor (AO3) (Mothra’s perspective; Mothra wants to know why Rodan visits so often. Turns out he’s wildly projecting his personal issues onto her. Set during Day Tripping on the Ring of Fire.)

Her (Word A) and His (Word B) (AO3) (human, Ghidorah, & Rodan; Ghidorah asks a simple question and Rodan gives a baffling answer—which mainly serves to demonstrate how poorly humans, aliens, & titans can understand each other.)

The Butterfly [Dream/Effect] (Mothra & Chen family perspectives; Mothra meets with one of her shobijin lineages and discovers they’ve been searching for her for centuries.)

Violet/Violent (Dr. Shiragami perspective; Biollante’s hit plant puberty and Jonah thinks it’s time to change her from lab mascot into weapon. Sequel to Hybrid Cultivar.)

Heal Our Wounds (Serizawa perspective; Mark & Maddie visit Serizawa in the hospital; Serizawa and Mark talk about Ghidorah’s potential new place on Earth.)

I’ve started writing daily drabbles. Ones that fit in this continuity will be listed—although I’m gonna play faster and looser with precise facts & details in drabbles than I do in full fics. Listed in posting order.

Six Volcanoes (AO3) (Godzilla’s perspective; Godzilla finds his route home blocked by an island that didn’t exist a few weeks ago and a bunch of Rodans.)

Reincarnation (AO3) (Mothra’s perspective; Mothra discusses reincarnation with a Hindu woman. She’s relieved to learn humans can reincarnate.)

How to Worship Moths (AO3) (Mothra’s perspective; after coming home to Infant Island after several centuries, a local asks her about how they used to worship her.)

[N S F W] How to Have a Threesome (When You Don’t Have Any Friends) (AO3) (Ghidorah’s perspective(s); it’s a three-headed dragon getting himself off, idk what to tell you.)

On Second Thought, You Can Keep That Nest (AO3) (Tiamat’s perspective; another titan tries to steal Rodan’s turf. She wasn’t expecting Rodan to be a badass. Or backed up by a space dragon.)

Suffocation (AO3) (Ghidorah, San’s perspective; he used to have nightmares after being stitched together, but now being awake feels the same.)

Discount Apocalypses (AO3) (Ghidorah’s perspective(s); the bar fight where they met Gigan.)

Subaquatic Shortcuts (AO3) (Godzilla’s perspective; Manda is very distressed he can’t win a race against Godzilla.)

Sooner or later these will all be cross-posted to my AO3. I take writing requests and tips on Ko-fi.

[haberdashing]

Unraveling All The Mystery

TMA mental time travel AU; Jon gives the rest of the original archives crew an explanation for his erratic behavior. Inspired by this post and this fic of it.

on AO3

“Jon...”

“...this is an intervention.”

Jon couldn’t help but burst into laughter when he heard those words.

He’d known something was up when all three archival assistants had joined him at once in his office early that morning, had half-suspected that they were going to ask in unison about how he had been acting different ever since he had the memories of his future self (well, of his no-longer-future self, hopefully) dumped into his head, but that phrasing...

It reminded Jon of an entirely different “intervention” directed his way, and while he knew he needed to take this situation seriously, it was still a far sight for being confronted for stalking his coworkers and accusing them of murder.

(To be fair, two of the four people he’d seen as murder suspects at the time had in fact killed someone, but Jon knew well enough that that didn’t entirely excuse his actions.)

Martin’s brows furled together in that way Jon had always secretly found adorable as he asked, “What’s so funny?”

Jon tried his best to school his expression back into something approximating neutral before he replied. “It’s... it’s a long story.” Technically true, that, though he knew it wouldn’t get him far to say that alone, knew he wasn’t the only one here hungry for answers (at least metaphorically speaking). “Never mind that. What is this... ‘intervention’ regarding?”

Sasha, Martin, and Tim all exchanged a look that Jon couldn’t quite decipher for a silent moment before Sasha spoke up.

“All three of us have noticed that you haven’t been acting like yourself lately.”

And of course it was Sasha telling him this. Sasha who he had two sets of memories of now, one of the real her and one of a being that had taken her place, the two already starting to blur together in his mind when he wasn’t face to face with the real thing.

Jon knew that her point was a fair one, but he still wanted to know more, wanted to know what exactly had changed, what had revealed to the rest of the world his internal change, wanted to know if it was something Jonah Magnus might have already noticed, so he raised an eyebrow and asked, “How so?”

Tim blurted out “weird” right as Martin blurted out “nice,” with Sasha waiting a beat before adding, “Weirdly nice.”

“...fair enough.” Jon could feel a smile sneaking back onto his face as he spoke. “I do know what you’re referring to there, and I, I do want to explain it all to you, but... do you mind if we take this conversation- er, this ‘intervention’ elsewhere?”

“...this is your office.”

“Exactly. Hardly neutral ground, is it?” Especially with Jonah Magnus doubtlessly watching their every move from his office, but Jon wasn’t very well going to mention that bit... “How about we go to that ice cream parlor we went to for Martin’s birthday? My treat.”

Sasha eyed Jon warily. “I had breakfast two hours ago.”

“Are you really going to turn down an offer of free ice cream and answers because of that?”

The three assistants exchanged a few pointed glances and slight shrugs before Tim said with a wide grin that may or may not have been entirely genuine, “You had me at ‘free ice cream.’��

“Glad to hear it.”

Jon got up and grabbed his bag, but before he could finish leading the way out of the Archives, a thought occurred to him. “Somebody bring a digital recording device with--laptop, phone, whatever, just so long as it’s digital. This won’t be a statement per se, but talking about it all will probably mess up the recordings as badly as the real statements do, and maybe that’ll help prove that this truly is the supernatural at work.”

There was a brief silence for a moment before Martin asked, “Jon, what d’you mean by real statements?”

“You know what I mean.” Jon sighed softly. “The ones with something solid to them, the ones you can’t easily rationalize away... not that I haven’t tried. They never record digitally.”

“I’ll go get a camera then.” Sasha darted away, and as she did, Jon could practically feel Martin and Tim’s gazes boring into him.

“So you do know there’s a difference.” Tim said.

“I didn’t think you believed any of them!” Martin added.

Jon sighed again. “I’ve... I’ve always believed in the supernatural. Well, perhaps not always, but for decades now, long before I got hired by the Institute. That’s why I wanted to work here in the first place. The skeptic act was always just that. An act, because it felt safer than the alternative.”

The awkward silence that followed was broken only by Sasha returning triumphantly, camera in hand. “Got it!”

“Great, let’s go.”

For a moment or two, as Jon’s feet obediently traced their way towards the ice cream parlor despite part of his brain insisting that it’d been years since he’d been to the place, Jon thought that was that.

Then Martin spoke up, his voice tentative but clear. “Care to share why you started believing in the supernatural, then?”

“Not particularly.” Jon paused, considered his options a bit more. He needed to be open with them, to trust them, he knew that, but... but that didn’t make talking about supernatural childhood trauma any easier. “Let’s just say it has to do with my distaste for both Leitners and spiders and leave it at that.”

Martin scrunched up his nose, and Jon’s heart ached at the sight of it. “Fair enough.”

The ice cream parlor wasn’t terribly busy this time of day, which was probably for the best, as Jon figured the less chance of being overheard, the better. After a bit of teasing and decision-making, Jon paid for the order as he’d promised, with both him and his assistants getting one scoop of ice cream each (though Tim had jokingly threatened to buy a scoop of every flavor the place had to offer just because Jon would have to foot the bill).

“What’s with you and rum and raisin ice cream, anyway?”

Jon glared at Tim. Tim glared back.

“What do you mean? It’s good.”

“If you’re eighty years old and have no taste buds left, maybe. Seriously, if you made an objective ranking of ice cream flavors-”

“That’s literally impossible, Tim, everybody has different preferences-”

Tim raised his voice a bit as he spoke over Jon. “Then you know that in dead last would be-”

“Anything with marshmallows in it?”

Martin looked up from his scoop of rocky road, pointing his spoon at Jon accusingly. “Excuse me?”

“You heard me.” Jon couldn’t quite look Martin in the eye as he continued, so he focused his gaze on Tim instead. “The texture is all wrong for mixing with ice cream, they’re disgustingly sweet, and do you know what marshmallows are made out of? Because I don’t consider that appetizing, especially in a dessert context.”

Martin scrunched up his face again. “...I try not to think about it.”

“So we’ve established that Jon’s taste in ice cream is just wrong in general, I see.” Sasha chimed in.

“Exactly! We weren’t discussing Martin’s taste in ice cream here-” Tim started to gesture wildly with his own spoon, flecks of moose tracks coming perilously close to falling off as he flailed it around. “We’re discussing Jon’s, and specifically how horrible it is.”

“Technically, we didn’t come here to discuss anybody’s taste in ice cream.”

“Said like a man who still hasn’t explained what the deal is with him and rum and raisin.”

Jon weighed the pros and cons of trying to change the subject more forcefully versus just flat-out telling the truth before settling on the latter.

“My grandmother used to buy it for me as a treat. We’d sit side by side on the couch and share a pint as we watched nature documentaries on the telly. It was as close to a family tradition as we had, I suppose.”

“Oh.” Tim’s gaze softened a bit. “Alright, I’ll give you that one.”

“So it’s not because you’re eighty and have no taste buds, it’s because your grandmother was?” Sasha added.

“Hey!”

Sasha stuck out her tongue, turned bright pink from the strawberry ice cream she was eating, her expression clearly unapologetic.

“Can we talk about what we’re actually here to talk about now?”

Jon’s voice came out a little louder than he had intended, and his near-shouting seemed to shut down the friendly banter that had been surrounding him in one fell swoop. Sasha closed her mouth, a few awkward glances were exchanged (none of which were directed at Jon himself), and silence fell.

“...sure thing, Jon. Go right ahead.” Martin eventually replied.

“Start the camera, please?”

Sasha futzed with the camera for a few seconds before nodding and shooting Jon a thumbs-up. Before Jon could speak up, though, Tim beat him to the punch.

“Statement of Joe Spooky, regarding-”

Jon pressed one hand against his temple, though he was struggling to hold back a laugh as he did so. “I told you, Tim, this isn’t a statement. Not a proper one, anyway. We’re damn well not going to be filing it away in the archives, at least.”

Even with his hand half-covering his eyes, Jon could see Tim’s raised eyebrow and amused expression clearly enough. “Not even going to mention the Joe Spooky bit?”

“Wasn’t planning on it, no.” Though Jon couldn’t help but think of the other time Tim had grabbed a recording device and made a joke about the statement of Joe Spooky... but that was why he had to explain all of this, so that they could work together, so that they could prevent Prentiss’ attack on the Archives and all the horrible things that had followed it the first time around.

“Smart man, knows better than to quibble with some quality wordplay.”

“That’s not wordplay, Tim.” Sasha interjected. “That’s not even a pun, just a first name and the word ‘spooky.’”

“Like I said, quality wordplay right there.”

“Please let me actually talk about this?”

Once again, as Jon spoke up, the others went eerily silent. Jon set his hands on the table as he weighed his next words.

“So, do you want to hear my explanation first, or the proof I have to back it up?”

Tim spoke up first. “Proof first. Given how much you’re building this up, I doubt I’ll believe any of it before you’ve given me a reason to believe this isn’t just some elaborate prank.”

“Usually you’d be the one pranking me, not the other way around. I’m not exactly the pranking type.”

Tim shrugged slightly. “Well, maybe you’ve finally snapped, decided to get your revenge by launching a prank for the ages.”

Jon thought about disputing the idea that he would ever prank one of his assistants, let alone Tim--Tim who he knew from back in Research, Tim who was his friend, Tim who probably knew him better than anyone in the Institute (Jonah Magnus notwithstanding)--but decided against it. “Fine, so that’s one vote for proof first. Anyone else?”

Martin raised his hand before speaking, as if he were still back in primary school, and Jon knew that there had been a time not that long ago when he would have made that very comparison in an attempt to dismiss Martin, in an attempt to prove that at least he was more mature and competent than one of his coworkers. But that time had come and gone now, and Jon was just grateful that Martin was willing to take turns rather than everybody trying to speak over everybody else all at once. “Er, I’d rather have the story first, personally. Hard to establish proof if we don’t know what’s being proven to begin with.”

“Alright, well, that leaves you with the deciding vote, Sasha.” Jon pointed at Sasha, using his finger rather than his spoon for the gesture.

Sasha shoved a spoonful of ice cream into her mouth right as Jon pointed her way, dramatically drawing out her consumption of it before finally swallowing and saying with a mouth still tinged bright pink, “I say proof first. Between working in Artefact Storage and in the Archives, I’ve heard more than my fair share of horror stories; I’d like to know we can trust you, trust that you’re not some creepy doppelganger or something, before we get to the meat of whatever this is.”

Jon nodded. “Very well. Proof first it is.” Jon drummed his fingers on the table for a moment as he thought. “I can’t directly prove what’s happened since there’s no physical evidence, but I can prove that I know things about each of you that you haven’t told me, things that I have no way of knowing unless something supernatural is going on.”

“Go for it, boss.”

“Tim, I... god, there’s no easy way to say this, is there... I know what happened to Danny.”

Tim’s whole body tensed up at the mention of Danny’s name, and he glanced over at Sasha briefly, the two evidently having a silent conversation through facial expressions and minute gestures. Once, Jon would have been able to Know what it was they were saying, Know the meaning of each wink of the eye or tilt of the head, but now he could only make a few educated guesses.

“I know the whole story about your trip to Covent Garden Theatre, and your run-in with Joseph Grimaldi there. I know you want revenge on the circus more than anything in the world, even your own life. I’ll make sure you get that revenge, that the circus is destroyed, though hopefully this time you won’t be lost in the process. And I’m... I’m sorry for your loss.”

Tim blinked rapidly a few times, shifting his gaze from Sasha to Jon. His spoon fell from his hand into his cup of ice cream, though he didn’t seem to notice it, even when a few flecks of mostly-melted ice cream fell onto his shirt. “...shit.”

“Wait, you know about that?” Sasha said, tilting her head slightly to one side.

“I do now. Due to... well, I’ll tell you the story, but I don’t think I’m quite finished with the proof bit yet.”

“Right. Well, keep at it, I suppose.”

“Of course. Sasha...” Jon reached out to grab his own hair, but ended up with more empty air than actual strands of hair in his grasp. How had his hair ever been this short? “I wish I knew more about you, the, the real you. Besides arguing about how to pronounce calliope-”

“Cal-ee-OH-pee.” Sasha corrected, a weak grin on her face.

“Ca-LIE-oh-pee-” Jon returned Sasha’s grin with one of his own, one that he wasn’t sure he could stifle even if he tried. “And your distaste for Artefact Storage, though that apparently won’t stop you from going there in an emergency... Terrible idea, by the way. Don’t go in Artefact Storage, and especially don’t go check out that web table alone.”

“Wasn’t planning on it.” Sasha shivered exaggeratedly at the thought.

“But I, I do know, actually, that you and Tim have talked about how you’re more qualified to be head archivist than I am, that you should’ve been the one to get the position instead of me.”

This time, Sasha was the one to start the silent conversation between her and Tim.

“And honestly? You’re absolutely right. I came across a tape Gertrude left for her successor--far too late for it to help me directly--and she made it very clear that she expected that successor to be you, Sasha.”

Sasha stopped her silent conversation with Tim to stare at Jon. “Seriously?”

“Seriously. And based on what I now know, it’s entirely possible Elias chose me in part because you really would have been better at this job than I am.” Jon punctuated the statement with a sharp, bitter laugh.

“Why would Elias do that, though?” Martin asked.

“That ties in to the bigger picture stuff a fair bit, but suffice it to say that when Elias was looking for an Archivist, he had a lot more in mind for the position than actually taking care of the files in the Archives. There’s a reason Gertrude left it in such disarray, and there’s a reason he has so many inane rules about how to go about organizing what remains.”

“So he’s sabotaging the place?” Tim looked a little less shaken than he had been a moment ago, though he still hadn’t cleaned up the ice cream staining his shirt and was now fiddling absentmindedly with his spoon, half-eaten ice cream forgotten.

“Essentially, yes.”

Tim snorted. “Explains a few things, actually.”

Martin raised his hand again. “D’you have any spooky impossible knowledge about me, then?”

Jon laughed, loud and long. “Martin... the question isn’t whether I know anything about you, the question is where to start.” Jon shook his head, rapping his spoon against his cup as he considered what to say next.

“I know... I know you lied on your CV to get in here, that you don’t even have a degree, let alone the Master’s in parapsychology that you claimed to have. I know that you don’t have a middle name, middle initial notwithstanding. I know you’ve got a second tape recorder stashed away in document storage, that you use it to record poetry you wrote, because you think it gives a, a certain lo-fi charm to the recordings...”

“H-hang on a minute!” Martin’s face was red, but Jon didn’t think it was entirely out of embarrassment this time, and Tim and Sasha had their shoulders raised, as if they felt they were being attacked somehow...

“...oh, that sounds bad, doesn’t it? I promise this- this isn’t me calling you out, or, or attacking you, you don’t need to get defensive about all this-”

“Really?” Martin sounded skeptical; Jon couldn’t really blame him.

“For one thing, I couldn’t fire you even if I wanted to. And for another, I absolutely, positively don’t want to. Martin Blackwood, you’re stuck here with us for the long haul.”

“Great.” There was a sharp sarcasm to Martin’s tone, but Jon elected to ignore it.

“I also know that... that you notice a lot more than people think, that you do a lot more than people give you credit for. Including me. Especially me. I’ve taken you for granted... all of you, really, but especially you, Martin. And I’m sorry about that, I really am. I know better now, I swear.”

“...thanks?”

“Don’t mention it. Literally, don’t mention any of this when we’re in the Institute. I don’t want to risk Elias overhearing what I’m going to tell all of you.”

“Elias doesn’t come down to the Archives that much...”

Jon shook his head. “Doesn’t matter. Still don’t talk about it.”

“Fine. Won’t mention it.”

“Good.” Jon took a deep breath and let it out before saying, “Proof?”

A few more glances were exchanged between the three assistants before all three nodded in agreement. “Proof.”

Sasha adjusted her glasses slightly before asking, “So what exactly is it you’re proving to us, then?”

“I, uh.” Well. No use beating around the bush. It was going to sound ridiculous no matter what, but hopefully he’d done enough to establish beforehand that he wasn’t just imagining things or making things up. Hopefully he’d done enough that they wouldn’t dismiss his experience the way he’d dismissed so many others.

“I have memories of the future.”

“You’re talking about time travel?” Sasha says, the bright gleam of her eyes visible even though her glasses.

“Not exactly--I didn’t physically go back in time, just, just mentally, just the memories I shouldn’t have yet.” Jon stared down at his hand, the same hand which he clearly remembered being covered in scars from worms and flames and stabbing, but was now utterly unblemished. “And they’re not... not memories of this future. I mean, I didn’t have this conversation before, it doesn’t work quite like that. I remember a future where I didn’t have these memories to work with--so it’d be some sort of changing or branching timeline, not, not a stable time loop...”

“I see.” Tim’s expression suggested otherwise, suggested that despite what his words might suggest he was caught somewhere between confusion and disbelief.

“I suddenly got these memories overnight not long after Martin...” Jon hesitated, unsure how to delicately phrase the next bit of what he had to say, how to refer to Prentiss’ siege on Martin’s flat without risking upsetting Martin in the process.  “...started living in the Archives. So I imagine that’s when I started acting weird, or, or nice, or weirdly nice, or however you want to put it. I don’t know why it happened then, exactly, but maybe it has something to do with me growing into my role as Archivist--late enough that I’m already getting comfortable in the position, but hopefully early enough that I can prevent the worst of it from happening all over again.”

Martin held up his hand, though less in a way reminiscent of a primary schooler and more in a way reminiscent of such a child’s crossing guard telling an oncoming car to stop. “I’m sorry, I was trapped in my flat for almost a fortnight, under siege by, by some sort of flesh worm hive thing--are you honestly saying that’s not ‘the worst of it’?”

Jon laughed and shook his head brusquely. “I wish it were, Martin, but unfortunately that’s just the tip of the iceberg here.”

Sasha tilted her head to one side, some strands of hair falling into her face as she did so. “What’s the iceberg then?”

“Well, there’s a lot of it, as the metaphor rather implies, but I’ll try to keep it short... Prentiss attacks the Institute-”

Martin’s face visibly paled at the mention of Prentiss’ name, and Jon scrambled to reassure him.

“Even in the future I remember she didn’t directly kill anyone, and I’ll make damn sure she doesn’t get a chance to do so this time around, but, well, that is what happened. And when Prentiss attacks, Sasha runs over to Artefact Storage, messes with the web table when nobody else is around, and gets killed and replaced by the monster bound to it.”

Jon started to put one finger out for each major event he lists off, as if keeping a tally, though he has no idea what the final count should be.

“Martin finds Gertrude’s body in the tunnels. I accidentally release the thing that replaced Sasha when I meant to kill it, and it almost kills me in turn. I get framed for murder, get kidnapped three separate times within a few months. Tim stops the circus from completing their ritual, but blows himself up in the process. Martin almost gets lost to the Lonely. I accidentally end the world, try to make it better, can’t make it better, send my memories back right as everything’s entirely going to shit. There’s more to it, but those are the most important events, at any rate.”

At least, they’re the most important events relating to Martin, Sasha, and Tim. No need to tell them about things like Melanie getting shot by ghosts in India, or Daisy getting stuck in the Buried. The big picture is complicated enough as it is.

“...I know you’ve made a few cock-ups in your time, boss, but ending the world is a new one even for you.”

Jon couldn’t bring himself to laugh, or even to meet Tim’s eyes, instead staring down at the sad dregs of his ice cream, long since melted. “It’s really not funny. Billions of people--just about everybody in the world--were suffering, stuck in a seemingly-endless torment, and it was all my fault.”

Martin bit his lip anxiously for a moment before speaking up. “I’m sure it wasn’t all your fault.”

Martin’s words brought a slight smile to Jon’s face, but he still shook his head in response. “It was. Trust me, Martin, it really was my doing. We had this argument enough after it actually happened... rather than discuss that further, I’d rather focus on preventing it this time around.”

“Do you have an actual plan for making sure the world doesn’t end for us, then?”

Jon looked up, looking into Sasha’s dark eyes, before breaking into laughter and grinning.

“What exactly do you think I’ve been doing all this time?”

[panicatthebeck]

in sisters, we seek strength

Summary: TJ finally talks to his sister.

Words: 2,193

ao3

A/N: I wrote most of this back in July/August right after the last episode but it’s just been sitting in my drafts and I finally decided to finish it. I hope you enjoy!

TJ’s breath caught in his throat and he felt like he couldn’t move his chest at all- not to move his torso and definitely not to breathe. He stared at the door in front of him and stood waiting. For what? It’s not like there was anything scary behind the door. It was just his sister’s room. A room he had been in a thousand times before and would continue to go into even after today, but what he wanted to say; TJ’s rational mind didn’t win over his emotions, but the strength would come to him and he would knock on his sister’s door- hopefully.

A few times in the past few weeks TJ would pause in the hallway on the way to his own room. He would hear Amber’s music through the door and stand there for a second. He thought about knocking on the door- going in her room and talking to her. Actually talk to her without mean jabs or smart aleck quips, talk like they used to all the time. The only time they seem to do anything together anymore is when they talk about their parents, like when they both decided to get jobs to help out around the house. He wished they could talk about their lives again, or random things like the funny vines they saw that day or what their teacher did in class. TJ thought they had so much to catch up on, but what he wanted to say wasn’t something they had in common- it was something that he barely figured out himself.

One strained breath and he’s trying to calm himself down. TJ knows that his chest constricting was just his body reacting to the stress, Cyrus told him that when talking about anxiety and panic attacks. Of course Cyrus had all the information about anxiety and panic. Now maybe all the information was useful. The thought of having this conversation made TJ feel awful. It’s not even like Amber would do anything or say anything bad. This feeling though- TJ hated it. The last time he felt this much nervousness go through his body was after Reed, the watermelons, and the gun. Approaching Cyrus after all that happened made him feel like this- but the swings made it better. The swings and Cyrus made it better. Cyrus’s smile made it better.

Amber changed the song she was playing on her speaker and it brought TJ back to the hallway away from the park and the swingset. The tightness in his chest wasn’t going to get any better and TJ knew that the time was now.

He knocked on the door. The bubbly music came to an abrupt stop and TJ could hear Amber shuffling in her room. The door opened sharply and Amber was at the door. 

“Hey Teej. What’s up?” 

TJ wrung his hands. “Can I come in? I kinda wanna talk.”

Amber paused. TJ thought that maybe she wasn’t expecting a serious TJ at her door. A yell from Mom, maybe, or a peace offering from Dad. Amber stepped out of the door to let TJ walk in with a strange look. 

"What is it this time? Fail another math test? Or did you get another call from the school about your 'behavior'?" TJ sat down on the edge of her bed and Amber closed the door behind him. TJ rolled his eyes when he heard the comments. He hadn’t gotten in trouble at school in who knows how long, the only thing he did wrong in a while was fail his math class, but he managed to get that back up with one good test grade. TJ actually turned himself around, believe it or not, with the help of Cyrus, of course.

"No, actually. My last math test I got a C+.” Amber didn’t try to hide her surprise. It was a little mean maybe, but TJ didn’t expect less from his sister. She was so much smarter than him, obviously. She’s the one who skipped a grade, nonetheless. “I'm trying to be serious, Amber. I want to talk to you."

Amber's sly smirk dropped on her face. "Oh, crap. Is it Mom and Dad?"

 TJ breathed a laugh. "No, I actually think I saw them smile at each other today,” he paused and wiped the palm of his hands on his knees, feeling the denim on his hands. “It’s about me.”

Amber stopped. She sits down across from TJ also on the bed. She puts her hands open palm in front of her. It was an open invitation TJ understood: you can hold my hand if you want to or if you need to. Growing up together, especially as twins, they always had their own gestures, and their own meanings. TJ didn’t take the hand, he didn’t need it for now. “What’s up?”

“I, um, I wanted to tell you something about me.” Something I found out a while ago, something that I’m scared of. TJ took a deep breath, then let it sit in silence for a little bit. The words would come to his tongue then drift off again. He didn’t know if he could manage to say it.

Amber was waiting patiently. He honestly hadn’t said the words to himself yet. God, why did he have to knock on the door if he wasn’t ready. He wasn’t ready and now he’s sitting on Amber’s bed and she’s looking at him expectantly and- another breath. A deep breath that he tried to use to push back all the other thoughts. Rip it off like a band-aid.

“I, I’m gay. I think.”

Silence. The words hung in the air. There was a lump stuck in TJ’s throat. He wanted a hug, he wanted to cry, and he wanted to leave. He tried to take a deep breath through his nose, but it didn’t go all the way through and it came out as a sniffle.

“Oh TJ.” TJ felt Amber’s arms go around his neck in an embrace. TJ wrapped his arms around her waist and his face dug deep in her shoulder. She knows. Just a hug and TJ felt relief wash over his body in a great wave. She knows and she cares about me. He squeezed her waist to keep himself grounded- and she returned the pressure just as hard.

Without moving his head, TJ spoke into her hair. “I didn’t know how to tell you. I wanted to tell you so bad.”

Amber pulled away from TJ and stared at him in the eye. “TJ, you’re allowed to tell me anything. I don’t care if we haven’t talked in a while okay?” She cupped his face and used her thumb to wipe under his eye and over his cheekbone. “I’m your sister, that means more to me than anything you might think. Especially with how mom and dad have been lately.”

TJ took a deep and shaky breath, and let it exhale completely before he spoke. His anxiety was trying to settle in his bones, or dissipate from his body completely. Rationally, TJ knew he still had a lot to think about, but his sister was on his side, and that’s all that mattered right now.  “Thanks. It feels really good to tell you.”

Amber smiled at him and moved her hand from his neck to his hands. She squeezed them. “We need to catch up. What’s happening in your life? You passed a math class. I don’t remember that happening- ever.”

TJ laughed. That, that hasn’t happened ever. He’s been skating on high Ds in every math class in his life; that was until Cyrus told him that Mr. Coleman couldn’t fail him for dyscalculia and he actually got some extra tutoring help on the days he didn’t have basketball practice. “Yeah, my friend, Cyrus, knocked some sense into me and helped me set up tutoring sessions with Mr. Coleman, and we do our math homework together in the park. He explains everything pretty well.”

Amber scrunched her nose at the name drop, but it went into a smile easy enough. “I know Cyrus. He’s like that. He helps people. He’s helped me even when I didn’t deserve it.” Amber tossed her hair behind her. 

Yeah, Cyrus helped people, even when they didn’t deserve it. TJ knew that fact very well. When TJ was mean, pushing Cyrus away so that no one found out about his learning disability, Cyrus helped him. When TJ messed up and brought Cyrus to a dirt bike pit with an unhealthy side of firearms, Cyrus’s voice in TJ’s head was the one to tell him to call the police. Cyrus’s smile when TJ told him, you’re the only person I can talk to like this. All of it helped him- and TJ thought he was a better person because of Cyrus Goodman. “When did you start hanging out with Cyrus?”

“I met him when Buffy Driscoll, joined the boys basketball team. Buffy, Cyrus, and their friend Andi are all attached at the hip.”

Amber laughed. “Yeah, I know. They hang out with Jonah too, remember? My ex-boyfriend?” 

TJ’s face went slack. “I totally forgot you dated him.”

“Thanks for slacking, bro. Aren’t you supposed to protect me from all the boys that come my way?”

TJ was slacking. He hadn’t really talked with his sister in a long time, and the last time it wasn’t about themselves and their lives. It was what was happening around them and what they were going to do about it (last time they both decided to get jobs, Amber at the Spoon and TJ at the gym). He guessed when Amber moved up in grades they just sort of… dropped the ball. “I guess I have.”

“I won’t have any of that.” Amber told him. She let go of his hands and laid down on her bed, on her stomach. She put her head in her hands and waited. TJ waited for what she was going to do, but she just stared up at him with her blue eyes. 

After a moment, she patted her palm on the bed. TJ rolled his eyes. Understanding, TJ laid down on the bed too, but rather on his back with him facing the ceiling. 

“So tell me more, about your new friends- what’s going on with your life.”

“Um,” TJ thought about it. “I'm gonna ask Cyrus to do a costume together on costume day. I thought of a good one last night and I think he’s gonna like it.” TJ told her. Costume day was a big deal, at least at the middle school. People usually planned their costumes at least two weeks in advance. TJ hoped that Cyrus didn’t already have one because doing a costume with Cyrus- and inside joke only the two of them (and maybe Andi or Buffy) would understand. The thought made TJ smile.

“I remember costume day at was always really fun to be together with the people… you care about." Amber paused before she finished her thought. She could have said friend, but she didn't. that was something that TJ himself wasn't ready to unpack yet- Cyrus being not only a friend but one of 'the people he cares about'. "When do you plan on asking him?"

“I’m meeting him tomorrow in the park and I’m gonna ask. My idea is this inside joke we have- so I think he’s gonna like it.”

Amber rolled over so she was also on her back- but her head was resting on his rib cage. “I’m sure he’s gonna like it.”

TJ scoffed and raised his head to meet her gaze. “I didn’t even tell you what it was.”

“But, just from what you said I think Cyrus will say yes.”

TJ hoped he would, and he hoped it was a good idea. He didn’t want to make it a deal or anything, but TJ having a real friend was a deal, a big deal and he didn’t want to accidentally do the wrong thing and start them back from square one. Again.

“I hope so.”

A comfortable silence fell upon them. It was nice, not uneasy or mean, just them being comfortable in their presence with one another. TJ felt the comforter under his head and just thought one thing, I did it. One easy thing I could do, and I did. Any other people and that was a no go, even Cyrus, because even telling Amber he felt the weight of the world on his back, if there were any more he would have to see all of Cyrus parents- biological and step- just to put him back at ease. Just the thought of telling anyone else… TJ didn’t want to think about it.

“Amber?”

“Yeah?”

“I know it probably goes without saying but, you’re the first person I told- and no one else knows-”

“I get it, don’t worry. Zipped lips.” 

“Thanks.” TJ took a deep breath. 

“No problem.”

TJ waited a beat. He wanted to make sure Amber understood him. “Thank you.”

Amber patted a part of his leg she could reach, “Always.”

[advernia]

around june of last year, i decided to revive my writing blog as one of the many potential stress-relief methods i could think of.... i didn’t think i’d be able to keep it active for long since work + family duties keep me preoccupied most of the time, but eyyy!!! so far i haven’t lost the motivation to keep going back to this blog, and i even managed to keep it afloat for half a year!!! amazing!!! (•̀o•́)ง

and now here we are halfway through 2020!!! it’s waaaay overdue but here’s a big T H A N K  Y O U  V E R Y  M U C H ! ! ! to everyone and anyone who dropped by this blog last year + all them likes, comments, reblogs...... please know that i’m still i n c r e d i b l y grateful for the support & interest in the content i’ve posted up!!!! tbh my activity’s still hella sporadic so it’s really amazing for me that i even gained new followers.... i’m very honored to have all of you stick around my blog despite my irregularity!!!!!!!! (༎ຶ ෴ ༎ຶ)

it’s also overdue, but i slowly managed and finally cleaned up the blog like i’ve been meaning to do + changed the blog name to match my ao3 handle for consistency!!! i make no promises to be super active... but i’m sure that i still want to continue writing & keep this blog alive!!!! 

again, thank you all for your time + reading my works!!!!!!  ∩( ´∀` )∩ work commentary on the rest of my works last year follows under the cut!

oct 1 // hero’s journey

a drabble on blanc + oliver about the alices... now that i think of it, calling the first alice first alice is kinda funny considering that alice is really her name... or is it? 

i do hope blanc’s route talks about her a bit, haha! i mean, i wish cybird remembers that they’ve been dropping the occasional background tidbits about her... like for example, her pocketwatch (that she gave to blanc eventually) having a magic crystal engraved into it.... her potentially leaving a fucking globe in the black army’s possession (like... wow... u fell with that thing????????)....

plus, i just find it interesting that she was remembered by cradle as a heck of a troublemaker lol! it also makes you wonder who among the main cast met her, blanc aside... though it’s not stated when exactly she fell into cradle, so maybe only blanc had the opportunity of meeting her...

so does blanc speak of her fondly bc she’s a woman, or is there something else??? has he been frequently visiting the land of reason pre-game??? has he found the first alice’s antique shop / met her again??? does he still try to figure out the reason why there’s a magic crystal engraved into the first alice’s pocketwatch????? hmmmmm......

on another note, it would be hilarious if cybird pulls a peter pan 2......... since we can’t pull off a mother-daughter relationship like wendy & jane’s, what if alice the second is somehow actually related to the first alice?? and while she’s completely different from her predecessor, blanc finds himself falling for alice the second........ just like he fell for the first alice? drama!

that’s just a random thought but kidding aside, i do hope blanc’s route is hella interesting bc i think he’s our mr. exposition for knowing more about cradle itself lol

oct 1 // fair (?) ladies & phony (?) enchanters

a result of going manic a few days after seeing harr’s trailer + route release.... ahaHAHA I’M STILL WILLING TO PLAY UR ROUTE IN JP HARR (if i actually had time to sit down and translate gET REKT)

i liked writing these drabbles and i think they’re cute but tbh they did nothing to ease my curiosity about harr’s route.... if anything else, it became even w o r s e  haha........................

if i think of blanc to have a cradle-centric route, i do hope harr’s route is magic tower-centric! naturally it will be since he’s got history there, but i hope a lot of my questions about the magic tower will be answered.....

will harr’s perspective of the magic tower be in the eyes of a test subject or a disciple???? he was scouted by the magic tower, but it wasn’t stated what he was doing exactly..... going by hints + loki’s & zero’s routes, it’s more of him being a disciple, so there’s bound to be guilt.......

hopefully alice’s characterization in his route is good + we get a fun group dynamic with loki!!! their potential.... the most(?) notorious criminal of cradle, a sought after test subject, and that one girl who nullifies all magic; a renegade trio lurking around the forbidden forest.... what an odd bunch!

oct 4 // god is a five minute hymn

a religious themed fic with lancelot & alice - tbh i don’t even know why religion was the first thing that came into mind when liz and i were talking about cultural differences, lol.

on that note though! i personally like thinking that if ever cradle had a semblance of a religion, it would be polytheistic & nature-centric, and not strictly practiced - the stratocracy of both territories i’d like to think makes it harder for religion to have a voice, much less have one that is practiced by the general population. the only thing general about it is that the religion centers or has magic crystals as an important factor... or something. yeah.

that aside, i think i specifically chose lancelot in this piece for the sole reason that his canonically stated lack of common sense, in my opinion, gives him the curiosity of a child sometimes - there’s no sense of malice or doubt, just the pure innocence of wanting to know something....... religion does that to kids, especially when introduced to it at first.

rereading the fic makes me think of the instances where when faced with dire or unsettling situations, people turn to faith as a life line.... well, i’m not sure if i had that subconsciously in mind when writing alice, but that does give a spin to it....

oct 6 // flow like the river nile

a spontaneous red army-centric fic! it certainly turned out better than i expected... i liked the formatting i used for this one!

if cybird can give us more about the pre-game suitors it would be great, tbh! and while the stuff about them in school is interesting, i’d like to see more about when they assumed their positions + combat scenes! the neutrals are special cases, but knowing more about their living conditions + daily lives is also a treat...

i was thinking of adding one last snippet about lancelot in the eyes of the reds, but i scrapped it out and switched it to alice & lancelot’s conversation about duty - it could’ve worked better if i stuck to using the what is your duty? question, but i scrapped it eventually too. ah well. it does look good enough as it is. 

oct 7 // seeking out phantoms

a mandatory(???) odd one out aka content that’s not ikerev, haha! i missed fe:a all of a sudden...

i never got around to writing properly for this fandom tho, what a shame - i’ve got some bits of pieces in my drafts that looked interesting and easy enough to pick up, and this was one of them.

robin investigating more of their plegian heritage could’ve been a good subplot tbh... i still wish there was something like a paralogue or dlc about it, bc honestly the valm arc goes a bit slow until you get to the future past revelations. ah well.

and gaius bc first husband for the win.... not like i actually had the guts to marry anyone else in my other save files lololol

nov 7 // push me off a bridge (to catch me as i fall)

my longest project of 2019, holy shit! i didn’t know i still had it in me to write something past 10k... i need more of that motivation + energy....

there’s nothing much to say about this since i blabbed about everything in the post-reading notes, but as much as i fought myself to get this done, i really enjoyed writing a long fic again! hopefully i can get myself to write another one this year...

nov 18 // beloved, beloved, let me be clear

18 sentences on zero & alice + macross frontier references! man, when i really got to the point about the earrings i was thinking of sheryl a lot....

kept it in sentences cause i didn’t have enough time to put up a decent ficlet! but i really wanted to get my screaming out of my system....... i used to do sentences + three word sentences challenges before, and doing one again was pretty fun!

but really.... zero’s route kept me happy for days???? their buildup + dynamic was something i was totally w e a k for, no joke..... thank gods the collection event was going on, bc i really made good use of my stocked chapter tickets lolol!

i was especially excited come the ball scene, and that cg..... a h a h a.... i need more of those pretty cgs where i can see alice’s face + costume change....... 

nov 20 // coloring inside the lines

jonah + alice + makeup!!!! tbh this was really fun, i enjoyed writing this one - if i remember, this was a fic that i managed to continuously work on the day i thought it up!

jonah may not be my best boy but tbh i find writing him very easy - i guess it’s because i’m very fond of characters like him!!! those uptight nobles who are as prideful as hell but can definitely live up to their name + are more capable than their bragging suggests... idk if there’s a general trope name for these doods, but i especially like analyzing their motivations + convictions!!!

i liked how i ended it, but i apparently i made an actual ending that’s now a snippet in my drafts - jonah & alice head to the ball, and somewhere along some bystanders’ flow of conversation someone drops a comment about jonah’s lips looking... quite more luscious than usual, lolol. so t h i r s t y. upon hearing this, alice can’t seem to stop smiling for some reason..... 

nov 27 // blue fields, verdant skies

a practice drabble set centric on a ray/alice development that i liked so much i made it into a series - plus, it’s black army content and honestly i need to write more of them! my red army bias is showing whoooooops

it’s a feudal + arranged marriage au, with the latter... being quite spontaneous. it’s those types of marriages where neither have even met - not even once - only to face each other come the wedding... so it’s a given that audiences from both parties are rather curious how this will turn out.

since i had the theme of fate in mind, ray was the automatic pick for the male lead. the rest of the black army is a given and for kicks, i added dean and dalim! i actually want to write about them + mousse, but since i’m still unsure on their characterizations i’ve been holding them off.... but i gave in anyway.....

alice is again named for word count convenience purposes since it’s in actual 100 words aka drabble form! i have planned scenes + an ending already in mind, but going there is pretty hard bc.... i still have to write the scenes in between + resist temptation to expand further on other scenes, haha....

initially i was planning to keep it updated here as well, but any more updates of this are on ao3 instead! the formatting looks better there instead of my blog tbh, and it also gives it a sort of muted tone to the story that works with me!

this is also the 31st fic in this blog, marking an end of the challenge liz bestowed to me lolol - since i brought this blog back to life around june, i was dared that by the end of the year, i should’ve posted more than 15 fics to add up to the initial 15 i had already posted before, thus the numbers on my fics back then.... now that i actually succeeded, i can stop counting lololol!!!! tho hopefully i can still be pretty active this year....

dec 22 // duck, duck, bullet

oliver & fenrir on guns... this probably wins as the most spontaneous idea i had on my head - tbh, i wasn’t even sure where i was going with it at first! but i’m sure i was suddenly thinking about that one detective conan movie.... then it became kid!oliver with a gun.....

i wonder if he tests the bullets at night, when he’s in adult form.... then again, kid!oliver with a gun still works.... say that because he’s a genius inventor, he made some models to serve as his shooting targets.... but another thought that amuses me more is.... blanc does the bullet testing for him!?

lololol i already thought about blanc being oliver’s live target, but i also find blanc with a gun very interesting.......... i mean, blanc certainly doesn’t look like he can fight, but who knows??? i mean, mousse is the former ace of hearts, but i still can’t imagine him fighting..... appearances can be deceiving....

the two aside, i wonder how fenrir even met oliver and got him working on his bullets........ was it through blanc or other connections???? how long have they been seller and buyer???? does anyone else commission anything from oliver?????? hmmmm.....

dec 23 // terms of surrender

i’ve been told by liz + luci + other friends that i needed to practice writing more.... cheesy fluff. i’m not sure if this sirius/alice piece counts, lol. in fact, i think it’s my definition of fluff i see here - and it translates to not exactly fluffy at all!

tho if you want me to be honest about it - when i write suitor/alice stuff, how alice was characterized in the suitor’s route is still my basis for how i’ll write her, and sirius’ alice................ haha......... i think she’s the alice that’s honestly easy to write but i choose to avoid.......... 

i don’t dislike the sirius/alice dynamic per se, tho. i do find it cute, especially if cybird stops emphasizing the issue of maturity in the relationship on alice’s side. i understand - i really do - that it’s a potential issue in the relationship, but...... that’s not the only problem you can possibly have as time passes, right?????

on another note, it’s funny that only sirius gets to be harped about the maturity due to age difference issue - setting aside blanc, who heavens know how old he is, lancelot’s 29 and since alice is presumed to be around ray + fenrir’s age, you could say that she’s 24 or even 23 to be safe.... so that makes a 5 / 6 years difference but it’s never brought up, lol. but i guess it’s because unlike lancelot, the black army’s been making sirius’ age a running gag....

anyway, this piece is pretty decent! i was thinking of something along the lines of mornings between a “married couple”.... there were two scenarios i had in mind, and i opted to write this one out first.... maybe i’ll have the second one posted up here another day.

dec 28 // a chain of black thrones

pre-game!sirius & ray and bc i was thinking a lot about the previous chosen, the former jack of spades!!! i wonder if the armies have a set age for retirement lolol... it would be awesome if there was still a chosen who’s already past his 50s or something, haha!

since sirius was constantly badgered to take on the role of king, i was also wondering about how long the black army was ‘king-less’... i mean, if the tension between both armies was really as great as they say, having no king puts the black army at a precarious position... i also thought that ‘nah, maybe there was a king or something but maybe the black army didn’t like him or something so they insisted that sirius take it instead’ but sirius’ 1st anniv. epilogue says otherwise - there really was a period that the black army had no king, wow. how the heck did they deal with that???? surely the red army saw this as a display of vulnerability....

can the black army’s chosen choose to leave their posts when they feel like it??? when they’re defeated by a challenger, what happens to them - a demotion, or do they serve under the ‘new’ chosen??? does the black army’s chosen change constantly because of their meritocracy + challenger system??? like, how do they deal with that, and do they announce their changes in chosen each council meeting??? each new question just snowballed my curiosity, whoops...

there were so many angles i thought of but i decided to settle for addressing the king-less state of the black army... through the eyes of a veteran who’s probably served many kings throughout his time of service as part of the black army’s chosen.

i gave this jack of spades character a name, actually - garret folner. maybe someday i’ll write him again, bc i actually enjoyed thinking about the present + past chosen interactions - maybe i’d think about that for the red army, but this time i find the black army’s side more interesting for this situation.

dec 29 // steadfast tin soldier

a zero/alice piece for zeroweek - i was about to post pt. 1 as a standalone, but then i just thought about how.... zero bought alice a gown.... but never got to dance with her at the day of the ball..... so i rushed to add pt. 2 haha!

with the addition of pt. 2 it looks cut short tho - i did think of putting a scene in between, but no good ideas came into mind bc i was too fascinated with the dancing scene... i swear at some point i will find myself writing a fic or a part of a fic that’s a dance scene for the rest of the ikerev suitors + alice....

this is the kind of fluff i live for, actually... i’m totally fine with the steamy content cybird throws during events + bonus stories, but if i were to be honest i say.... where’s my non-sexual intimacy????? the simple, wholesome stuff?????????????????

man, i feel hilarious for typing that out..... but well, i guess it’s a matter of different strokes for different folks, lol!