#this idea hit me at the back of the head yesterday unprompted but i was nowhere in a place where i could just draw it

[crystallizsch]

and at last I see the light..... it's like the sky is new

it's warm and real and bright and the world has somehow shifted

all at once, everything is different... now that i see 𝔂𝓾𝓾

(credits to @/fell-e for the brush i used for the flowers 👁️👁️)

[starryytales]

More Manipulative Ragatha.

ACK-

This was meant to be ~500 words and one part of a short story that went into detail of Ragatha doing different things on different days to push Pomni's boundaries, get her closer, etc. And was inspired by yesterday's ask about Ragatha intentionally throwing herself into harm's way to get hurt and get Pomni's attention.

Instead it ballooned up into a little over 2000 words and will be something of a standalone.

I would like to give my thanks and dedicate this to @miguxadraws whose enthusiasm helped push me to hit the ground running with this one!

With that said: small TW for needles (the sewing kind), and I hope you all enjoy..!

“I’m never sure how to start these things…”

I muse to myself as I tap the colorful pencil’s eraser against the empty, waiting page of my journal. Being the second longest lasting person in The Digital Circus changes how you think about information. Unlike Kinger, for example, I’m doing my best to not go insane by holding on to every piece of information until my mind snaps and I become amnesic. That means writing things down. Journal writing and compartmentalizing things. Separating the bad from the good and keeping the good close and the bad locked away.

“I suppose starting with this morning wouldn’t be a bad idea.” I flip the pencil around and begin jotting down what all happened…

Pomni woke up on me today. I didn’t bother with sleeping. Instead I just enjoyed watching her quietly snore throughout the night. God, she’s so cute when she’s asleep. She’s even more cute when she’s startled. She woke up, adorably mumbling about whatever dream she was having (I heard my name!!!), and stared up at me for a few moments. I didn’t say anything because she was clearly still out of it and wouldn’t have understood me anyway. When she realized she was using me as a full body pillow she let out wildest little yipe I’ve ever heard. She nearly hit the ceiling from jumping off of me so hard! It took a hot moment and a re-heated, leftover salmon cake to calm her down after that. I let her get dressed in peace (thank you again, God, for giving me a button eye to stealth watch with) and she left with a sweet little smile on her face.

I pause writing for a moment when I hear someone trying to stay quiet while working on something outside my door. Probably Jax. Probably with a bucket of insects and some kind of mechanical trap setup. I shake my head irritably but stay quiet. Jax would have been a lovely boy toy to keep if not for the fact he can’t stop being a punk for more than ten seconds. My single regret with him is that he only had one heart to break. The sound of his trap construction jolts me back to writing by jogging my memory.

The adventure!

How could I have nearly forgotten that when it was a huge amount of progress with Pomni?

Caine rounded us all up just like he does basically every other day.

“HELLO MY MUTANT MASHED POTATOES TODAY’S ADVENTURE BLAH BLAH BLAH-”

It was some kind of movie-like, ancient temple we had to find the treasure room of. The important part was Pomni and I took the ‘medium’ difficulty route, and we did it by ourselves. I was just about to see how well she dealt with an unprompted hand on her shoulder when I realized I had seen the hallway we were in before on a different adventure. Caine doesn’t just re-use NPCs, he re-uses chunks of levels sometimes. And I knew we were about 15 steps away from a circular saw trap that would shoot out from the wall and try to leave us with a nasty cut, to put it lightly.

My first instinct was to let Pomni walk into it. I thought it’d probably go right through her leg, maybe even both of them. I’d have to carry her all the way to the end and she’d have no choice BUT let me hold her. My better judgment got a hold of me, though. That was an awful plan. She’d hate being useless and dependent on me (at the moment, anyway). But I could still use the trap to my advantage to make her touch me…

I suddenly remembered why I nearly forgot the whole thing. Ever feel so much pain your body and brain try to factory reset?

“Hey, I think I’ve seen this hallway before.” I told her as I switched the side of her I was walking on. I picked up my pace slightly to make sure I triggered the saw without catching her as collateral. I braced myself as hard as I could without letting on something was up. A small part of me was begging to just not do this, but the opportunity was too good to pass up.

“Really?”

“Yeah! From a different adventure!”

And I think she was going to ask if I remembered anything helpful about it. That’s about when a single stone beneath my foot pressed down and I let out probably the longest running censor-bleep in Digital Circus history. The saw was as quick as lightning. My left arm, right above my elbow, was effortlessly sliced off, and the blade tore through my side like I was made of paper. I screamed and fell away from the blade. I landed against the wall opposite of it and started sliding down to the floor. Good God it hurt so bad I was seeing stars. Pomni shrieked and rushed over to me, hovering over me like she’d found a murdered body in an alleyway. I was in too much pain to get her to stop screaming for a moment so I could tell her what to do, and then she said that she would go get help.

That lit quite the fire under me, because:

1. I needed to get her used to touching me by getting her to patch me up, and, perhaps more importantly-

2. I’M TIRED OF HER RUNNING OFF WHEN I AM IN INCREDIBLE PAIN.

I have to say, despite the pain I was in, I was pretty slick with my next words.

Any person scared and hurt might say ‘don’t leave me,’ but if I left it at that, she might have just offered me a platitude about being back as soon as she could be. I had to twist the knife. She managed a single step away before I lunged at her foot and seized her ankle. I didn’t need to pretend to cry, as there were plenty of real, agonized tears.

“Please don’t leave me again!”

The ‘again’ sold it like beer at a college ball game. Oh, it hurt to see so much remorse in her eyes but it’ll make her think twice before running off again in the future. She dropped to her knees next to me and sputtered a dozen apologies before going quiet when I placed my hand on her upper leg to get her attention.

I remember gritting my teeth and having to hiss through the pain to direct her to my dress pocket (conveniently on the same side I was missing an arm on, and oh my how those little hands wander in a pocket) where I had my emergency sewing kit. Ugh. I could have died from cute-overload while watching her fumble so shakily while trying to thread that needle. When she finally managed it she looked at me with huge, worried eyes for guidance on what to do next.

I pause again to enjoy the memory of her looking at me that way. It’s almost dreamy to picture her like that. So nervously hanging off my every word… I could REALLY get used to that. Where was I? Oh, right, my little jester doing doll surgery on my side.

Feeling her touching me gently was so, so nice. And she listens so well. I bet if I told her that the stitching would only hold if she barked like a puppy, she might have actually done it. I’m so used to sewing myself up that the little pricks of the needle barely registered to me, so I up-sold the pain they caused. Clenching my teeth and (remaining) fist, and scrunching my eyes while hiccuping every few seconds as if I were holding back a breakdown. She paused once and held my cheek, and told me if I needed a break she would stop. AGH. I could have eaten her alive on the spot for being so sweet! Instead I sighed, enjoyed the touch, and thanked her but said I was okay...

I love Pomni to bits but she sews like a blind grandmother with arthritis. No cut like that is ever good or easy to work with, but even Gangle manages a cleaner stitch on a bad day. Still, that meant we got to spend the rest of the adventure like that. Her pressed up against my side, trying her best to hold as steady as possible, while keeping my stuffing from falling out as she stitches me back shut. Definitely worth every ounce of pain. When she was done she even crawled over to my arm and offered to try putting it back on. Absolutely precious.

I told her not to worry about the arm. Caine could fix it when we get back, and about when I said that our AI Overlord’s voice rang clear throughout the structure. Caine congratulated Gangle and Kinger for reaching the treasure room first, and declared the adventure over. Pomni and I fell through a portal that suddenly opened beneath us, and just like that we were back in the tent.

Caine looked me over and quipped I had gotten “too adventurous for my own good,” before snapping his fingers and fixing my arm. He then said something about seashells and vanished. The others were already heading their separate ways when I walked over to Pomni and hugged her. She jumped slightly, but didn’t pull away. I thanked her as warmly as I could for staying with me, and I saw on her face that same guilt from earlier being soothed slightly. It wasn’t enough to put her at peace, but enough so she knows I will happily praise her for doing something good.

I let her go and I offered her another meal tonight – if she was feeling up to it, that is. I could see her putting real thought into it-

My writing is once again interrupted by a dainty knock at the door.

“Ragatha? I’m here for dinner, but-” I quickly slam my journal shut and hide it away again. The last thing Pomni needs to see is the contents of that book. I hop up from my chair with a spring in my step and grab the doorknob, only for Pomni to suddenly shout.

“D-don’t open the door yet! There’s a bucket full of something on the door frame. It’s attached to some kind of trigger. Kinger’s getting it down now.”

I hear Kinger scraping something metallic away from the door before the man himself speaks up.

“Oh! That’s where you’ve all been. How do my centipedes keep winding up in buckets..?”

I had clean forgotten Jax trapped the door. The thought of being stuck with a bucket on my head as all of Kinger’s little hellspawns crawl over my face is almost enough to make me throw up, pass out, and start writing a manifesto. All at the same time. Did I say earlier I only have one regret about Jax? I have two. And the second is that I can’t drown him in the cellar.

“Okay! It’s safe now!”

Cautiously I crack open the door. My eyes are drawn to the movement of Kinger walking down the hallway with a bucket full of nightmares in his arms, but I quickly focus back on to Pomni. I let out a low, tired sigh and smile at her.

“You saved me twice in one day.” I try not to swoon, but it still kind of comes out that way. The little blush she starts sporting on her face doesn’t help.

“Ah- don’t worry about it.”

God she’s so cute when she’s bashful. I open the door and step aside to welcome her in with a playful flourish.

“Well, come on in! A hero deserves her heroic feast! I’ll get on it right away.”

“A heroic feast of spaghetti and meatballs?” She laughs, the sound as sweet as wine, as she enters and steps passed me. I laugh back with her as I start to shut the door so we can start another night off right.

“And garlic bread, that’s the really heroic part!”

[sofiadragon]

I am a mother and this... just all of this.

Wanda's children were a tool, a part of the illusion she was using like a drug to escape her pain. At best she is deeply mentally unwell and fixating on dreams of a life she never lived.

The memes are true. Motherhood is poop and vomit and doing so much for another person. No, it doesn't stop being full of the unpleasant body fluids when they are potty trained or in school. Yes, it is worth it, but it is nothing at all like what Wanda is doing in WandaVision. She throws the kids at Agnes or Monica when they are being difficult.

Now, I've been sick for years. I've got chronic problems and just last year my husband had the peanut gallery sent off to grandmas' houses (not a typo, my MIL lives on the same block as my mother) so I could rest and get tests done and all that. I understand that mental illness is an illness and that Wanda was Going Through It (tm) but she had those kids for a few days, tops. She didn't watch them grow slowly from a little loaf wrapped in a blanket to inquisitive little people with favorite colors. She never had that moment of cognitive dissonance when the helpless little baby does something like write some random misshapen letters unprompted and says they are "do work do work" or get their own snack for the first time. They can't get their own snack, that's a baby it's illegal... what do you mean they are almost three? Just yesterday they could just barely pick up their own head to watch the kitty walk by!

What is time?

Yes, you can get emotionally attached to kids really fast, but it takes time to really bond with them. Including time before they are born, where hormones are doing all sorts of things to mom's brain to try to make that happen. PPD is when that love bomb doesn't go off correctly or crashing from the high hits too hard. (To be extremely reductive.) That was one day for Wanda. One. Day.

Her magic really is cheating.

But really, it is like show in some ways. You put them down on a blanket on the floor and shake a little rattle and then you turn around one day to see them toddling about. You rush to stop them hitting their head on the coffee table and the kid in your arms is heavy and telling you a story about Paw Patrol and Tinkerbell working together. (Baby's first fanfic is always a crossover.) It takes forever and no time at all.

Wanda didn't do that. If she knows the kids she's after in MoM then it is only through voyeurism. She watched someone else being a mother and thought that was the same as doing it herself. She's in love with the idea but she hasn't done it. Dear god woman, just adopt!

I think that is the point that supposedly snaps her back to reality at the end, but holy horse crap does this movie go out with a wheeze. A gorgeously imagined wheeze with a zombie payoff to a decent setup I didn't see coming (though by that point there had been so much deus ex machina it isn't all that satisfying) and the best CGI set one can pay to have made in less than a month (because Marvel cannot make the big decisions until after half the movie is filmed anymore, I'm looking at you Endgame time travel suit designs) but in the end a limp and rather empty moment of teenaged girl self-actualization. Power Puff Girls did it better in a 13 minute cartoon.

A part of me wonders what it looked like before the reshoots. Could it really be worse? Did it break something they wanted to use later in the MCU or did it just go too far into the horror genera and they wanted to keep it more mainstream? Maybe the ending wasn't happy enough - many horror films don't have very happy endings. Hopeful, yes, but Crimson Peak ends fairly mournful even if Evelyn does have a blond guy to kiss because it respects that the trauma is still there when an abuser is gone. Everything about Thomas in the end is just sad, and they let it be sad. The MCU could never.

Sometimes, you shred the villain into confetti with magic or break their neck with a clay-stained shovel. We have a Multiverse, we can get another Wanda if they need her to be not-evil for a plot point later.

I still can't see why marvel wants me to sympathic for wanda being sad over losing her AI kids that she barely knew for upwards of a week....

[jbbarnesandnoble]

Smitten For You: One-Shot

Pairing: Modern!Sam Wilson x Tall!Reader

Summary: Morning runs, snowball fights, puns and coffee dates :)

Warning(s): FLUFF, play fighting (do either of those need to be a warning? idk) BAD PUNS, I edited it once, but it’s 12:53am and I’ve been exhaused all day so that means nothing.

Word Count: 1,204

Prompt: when my friend pushed me into the snow the other day. but it wasn’t romantic cause we don’t like each other like that

A/N: hey! I wrote a thing! I hope you all like it :) I really, really had to fight the urge to write some angst. I wanted to, but I thought that fluff would be much better. In this fic, Sam is roughly 5′11 (180.34cm. I’m not sure how correct that is) and the reader is about an inch or two (25.4mm or 50.8mm) taller than he is. This is my first ever tall!reader fic, I hope you enjoy, please, if you would like, let me know what you think! I also plan on writing more in the future! I have a request for it with buck and wanted to test it out first :)

(not my gif)

Purple clouds cover the morning sky, colors of light and dark blue mix together as they greet the rising sun. A pale pink and orange hue blankets the horizon. A cold winter’s breeze blows, snow falls from the trees surrounding the small park. Classical music blasts from your headphones, your legs begin to grow heavy with each passing stride; your lungs burn and the cold nips at your nose. 

Three more steps, you count, “One… Two... Three…” You continue to push one, three more, you think, lying to yourself again. Only this time your legs surrender to their exhaustion. The watch on your wrist beeps when you check how many miles you ran. It isn’t your personal best, but it’s close. Although, you find yourself disappointed considering you left a half-hour earlier than usual. You blame your unusually laggard pace on the cold. This early in the day it is still below freezing, it’s the kind of cold that reaches your bones and slows you down. 

When you check the time, you find you have an hour to get ready for work, rather than your usual forty-five minutes. Maybe going out an extra half-hour early isn’t as bad you thought it would be. Except for having to get up earlier than usual. You and mornings are still far from being friends. The only thing that gets you through is coffee and runs. While stretching out your now sore muscles, someone taps on your shoulder. You pull out your headphones and spin around to find your fiance standing behind you, hands on his hips.  

“You finally replaced me as your running partner, didn’t you?” Sam asks, an eyebrow raised and a crooked grin on his handsome face. You admire him for a moment, allowing yourself to bask in the fact that he’s your person and you’re his. You bite back a smile.

Keeping a stern look, you tell him “Yup,” with a curt nod,  

“I’m hurt,” He says, exaggerating placing a hand over his heart. Shrugging your shoulders, you begin the walk back to your apartment. He trails behind you like a lost puppy, his crooked grin remains on his lips. 

A few moments pass as the two of you walks in comfortable silence. Snow from yesterday’s snowstorm litters the grass and branches of trees. You have always loved how the world looks after it snows. Everything feels fresh and new, it brings you a sense of comfort and peace. Another breeze blows and snowfalls from a tree above you, landing atop your head, an unexpected squeak escapes your mouth. The sensation sends a chill down your spine, despite still being hot from your morning run. 

Sam stifles a snicker from behind you. Stopping in your track, you turn on your heels. Only to find him taking interest in the sky above. He stops too and steals a look at you from the corner of his eyes. He quickly returns his attention to the sky. 

An idea pops into your mind while he’s distracted, you quickly grab a handful of snow and throw it at him, accidentally hitting him square in the face. Your mouth falls open and your cold hands fly to it. He always jokes you have a bad aim, which you deny, but he might be right this time. His hands mirror your own by covering his face where you had hit him.

You rush over to where he stands in two short steps, apologies falling repeatedly from your lips. Once next to him you ask, “Are you ok? I’m starting to agree that I suck at aiming.” You attampt at making a joke to lighten the mood. Though it doesn’t seem to work when he doesn’t tease you as you expected him to. 

“Let me see,” You quietly request, placing your hand over his. His hand is much warmer in comparison to yours after touching snow with your bare hand. 

He remains silent and worry begins to flood your chest. You feel horrible. Sam is always so light hearted about things, it takes a lot for him to get to this point. As you are about to apologize again, his hands fly from his face and his arms snake around your waist. You might be an taller than he is, but that doesn’t stop him from picking you up and dropping you into a pile of fresh snow. You squeak again, the noise even surprises you.

Shock settles onto your face. When you find his warm brown eyes, his carefree smile takes its rightful place onto his face. He laughs, relaxing his body next to yours in the snow pile. The coldness of the snow starts to sneak past your clothes and reaches your skin, you ignore it. You’re happy you chose to wear black today. At least no one will notice the giant wet spot on your back from the snow. 

“You’re such a child, you had me worried I seriously hurt you!” You complain, sprinkling a little bit of snow onto his head. He returns the gesture by making a snowball and rubbing into your hair. You squint your eyes shut, allowing it to happen and knowing full well you deserved every bit of it. Relief replaces the worry you felt seconds before. You smile up at him.

“I’m the child? Is that’s how it is? ‘Cause you’re the one who started the fight, not me, you?” He teases you, while he flicks more snow onto your head. 

“That’s how it is, babe.” You shrug your shoulders in the snow and place a quick kiss onto his nose. He laughs before standing up. His hand reaches out, waiting there for you to take if you need to. You don’t, but accept it for an excuse to hold his hand. Not that you need one, considering that you have been together for nearly three years.

Once you’re back onto your feet, he reaches up, brushing some of the snow off of your head. His hand is still wrapped around yours when you continue walking down the walkway side by side. 

“Your hand’s cold.” He notes, rubbing the back of your hand with his thumb. Without a word, he reaches into his pocket and pulls out a pair of knit mittens your mom made him for his birthday. He is gentle to take your hand back into his, he slips the glove onto your hands as gently as he grabbed them. 

Unprompted he says, “I’m pretty smitten for you.” he laughs at his own pun, you smile.

“I’m snow in love with you.” You play along and you laugh with him this time. 

As if the prior pun exchange never happened, he asks, “Coffee?” gesturing his head in the direction of a small coffee shop across the street. 

Checking the time, you say, “Sure.” You lost a bit of time earlier, and if you stop now there is a chance you’ll be late for work. But you did tell your boss you might be late from the snow and being on time right now is less of a worry than is should be. Sam flashes you another grin before you cross the street. The scent of coffee already floods your lungs.

>>>>>>

A/N: this could easily be a crack fic, but it’s slightly off, it’s so close yet so far at the same time. This isn’t my best, but I’m honestly just impressed and happy I finished a fic in a day. I haven’t done that in ages. almost 2 years. also, the gif indicates summer, it's winter if the snow didn't give that away (yes i use sarcasim)

[kimabutch]

The One Who Will Remember Everything

The sun has set, risen, and set again by the time that Cicero stops, points to a fancy-looking house on a hill, and says something she can vaguely understand. Sasha barely nods back. Her legs have long since stopped hurting and are now simply numb, and her entire being is working to keep herself upright.

She doesn’t remember collapsing halfway up the hill, nor Cicero running for help to carry her the rest of the way.

--

Sasha’s gotten used to waking up with a start, ready to fight, but this time, she wakes slowly, becoming gradually conscious of the warm blankets wrapped around her and the sunlight behind her eyelids. It’s only when she starts vaguely listening for the familiar sounds of Hamid’s soft snores and hears birdsong instead that her eyes snap open. She’s lying on a colourful, soft bed in a large room, lit by several windows. Her clothes and shoes are still all on.

Instinctually, Sasha checks for all her daggers, counting them quickly. All there but the ice dagger, which — she looks down at her hand and the blue scars that jolt like lightning across her skin, and suddenly it all comes back like a punch to the stomach. Letting go of Azu. Grizzop’s limp body in her arms. Corpses, burned alive.

She closes her eyes and swallows dryly, unsure if she’s holding back puke or sobs, and unwilling to find out. She crawls out of the bed and feels every muscle in her body protest with soreness as she silently walks to the window. By the light of day, no longer wracked by exhaustion, Sasha sees clearly, for the first time, the endless green, rolling fields stretching into the horizon. There’s a weight on Sasha’s chest as she imagines herself standing in them, falling into their infinity, searching desperately for something to hold onto. She tears herself away from the window, her breath short, and leans against the wall, comforted somehow by its solidness.

Calming her breath and avoiding looking out the windows, Sasha makes her way along the wall to the doorway. Muffled voices come from the lower level, so she creeps down the stairs, instinctually stealthy, and wanders until she finds their source: a garden. From the doorway, she can see Cicero in a new toga, talking boisterously to an elderly man, who’s surprisingly calm in the face of Cicero’s forceful personality. Maybe it’s the effect of several successive potions of tongues that she took yesterday, or maybe it’s whatever allowed Bertie to speak French in Paris, but Sasha finds that she can understand their Latin near-perfectly.

“For now, you don’t need to worry,” the old man is saying. “The cow and chickens they left and my garden will be perfectly serviceable until Atticus returns.”

“But you’ve seen her — she’s all skin and bones! She carried me half the way here! She needs something substantial!” Cicero says.

“I assure you, I can take care of her. When she wakes up, I’ll make her a large dinner —”

“Cheers, mate,” Sasha says, coming up behind Cicero, “but I’ve lived on less before. I don’t need anything fancy.”

Cicero turns around in surprise. “Ah, excellent, you’re awake! Let me introduce you to Aulus, the delightful servant of my good friend, Atticus, in whose villa we are currently residing! Unfortunately, Atticus, his family, and his scribes were traveling in Rome when the destruction occurred, but Aulus will provide for us. I’m sure they will find their way back. They’re not as quick as us!”

“The news of Rome came to us a day before you arrived,” Aulus explains. “The rest of Atticus’s servants fled with most of the animals, but I chose to stay. We have large stores of food here, and many fields. We’ll be comfortable until Atticus returns, at which point we’ll make a decision about where to go.

“Yeah… when he returns… from Rome,” Sasha says, unsure whether it’s morally right to support their naive optimism. She doesn’t know that it’ll be four weeks until Aulus and Cicero give up hope. “How long was I asleep?”

“Two and a half days — you must be hungry,” Aulus says, heading towards the door. “What food do you prefer?”

“You, uh… you got any eels?”

Cicero beams. “A delicate palate — delightful!”

--

That evening, Aulus ushers her into the same second-floor bedroom, and Sasha finds herself lying awake on her back. Whenever she closes her eyes, she sees Hamid, Grizzop, and Azu, swears she can hear them calling her name — but whenever she opens them, she feels her gaze drawn to the window overlooking the fields. At the thought of the open space, her chest tightens. She sees herself walking through them, feels her vulnerability from all sides, knows that she’s being watched.

She slips out of bed and makes her way to Aulus’s bedroom, awkwardly knocking.

“Is there, like… a basement? A cellar? Just in case we, uh… if someone comes?”

--

On the fourth day, she wakes up to Cicero calling down to her from the top of the cellar.

“Aulus heard something in the stables! You’re very strong! I hope you can check!” His voice is as booming as always. Sasha unclenches her hand’s white-knuckled grip on her dagger and pulls herself up from the blankets that Aulus insisted she bring down to sleep on. She climbs up the ladder, Cicero chatting constantly.

The stables are a hundred metres or so away from the back entrance to the villa, and the path is thankfully shaded by a handful of trees. She sneaks from tree to tree towards the barn. It’s probably bandits, taking advantage of the chaos, like always. Barretts, the lot of them. She isn’t worried. Still, she stays quiet as she eases the door open and slips into a shadow. Listening for a moment, she can hear faint crying from… the ceiling? Fifteen years in Other London allow her eyes to adjust quickly to the dark, and it only takes a moment for her to spot, curled up with what looks to be riding equipment in the loft, a young boy.

He can’t be more than eight or nine years old. His dark black hair is grey with ash, and his tunic is torn and covered in dark patches — probably blood. Tears are leaving streaks down his dirty face.

Sasha freezes, stilling her breath. It’s the classic set up, which Barrett had occasionally used her for when he couldn’t find chubbier-faced kids. The crying child, poorly hidden, surrounded by a well-hidden gang, ready to take out their victim the moment they let their guard down. Works well on Upper London idiots, but not her.

Glancing around the room in the barn, Sasha takes stock of the places that the fuckers might hide, listening closely for any movement. In only a moment, she finds what she's been looking for: several large amphorae in a shadowy area of the room, behind which two or three small people might hide. She sneaks around to them, sure that she's kept herself well-hidden, and in one swift movement, launches an attack on — nothing. Air. Her knife, perfectly aimed to hit a bandit, loudly cracks an amphora, spilling grain out over the floor. Sasha braces for a second, waiting for the bandits that must be hidden somewhere else to start their attack, but all she hears is the sound of a young child who's trying his very best to stay quiet.

Maybe she was wrong.

Sasha climbs up the ladder to the loft, cringing with every creak of old wood. By the time that she peeks her head to the upper level, the boy is staring right at the ladder, holding with both hands a small knife, like you might use to cut tough meat. He points it towards her shakily, and suddenly she's sure that this isn't a set-up — you'd have to be a stupid gang leader to get someone like this as bait.

"Hey mate," she says in Latin. "Don't think you actually want to fight me. Nice knife, though." The boy tries to press even more of his body into the riding equipment, away from her. Without getting closer to him, Sasha swings on the end of the loft, pulling herself up to the ledge and sitting down, legs hanging off the edge. She sits in silence for a moment, suddenly very aware that she has no idea how to interact with small children, even those wielding weapons. What had she liked at that age?

"You wanna see some of mine? Sasha says. "Knives, I mean." Reaching into her studded leather coat, she pulls out a dagger. From the corner of her eye, she sees the boy flinch. "Hey, nah, it's okay, I won't hurt you, see?" she says, and offers it to him, holding it by the blade. He looks at her with confusion, but doesn't take the blade, so she lays it down carefully on the floor of the loft in front of him.

"Now this one," she says, pulling out her adamantine dagger and admiring its intricate patterns, "this one's my favourite. Well... one of my favourites." She lets him look at it from his place among the riding equipment and then, when she's sure he has his eyes on her, weaves it through her fingers so fast that it looks like water. She throws the dagger in the air, making an arch over her head, then a figure eight, then catching it on one finger, where it spins for a moment. When she looks back at the boy, he's transfixed. Sasha can't stop a small smile from coming to her face as she brings out a third and fourth dagger and continues on with her tricks.

Five minutes later, the boy has pulled up right to her side for a closer look at her fire dagger and the way its flames shift as she runs it over her arms, behind her back, through her fingers. He's holding his meat-knife in one hand and her old dagger in his other, but absent-mindedly, no longer on edge.

Putting out the dagger in one final flourish, she turns to the boy. "Do you wanna stay with me here? Just as long as you want, though," she says quickly. "I won't keep you here if you want to leave. But... we've got food, and a couple of... friends."

At "food," the boy perks up immediately. As if suddenly remembering that he's supposed to be cautious, he gives a shy nod.

"'Name's Sasha... Whosaskinus" Sasha says, and it occurs to her that this might be the first time she's given her name unprompted in her life.

The boy hesitates for a moment. "Maximus," he says. "Cause of my little brothers."

Fourteen years later, when Maximus helps a traveling pregnant woman give birth to a child, the boy will be called 'Little Maximus' in honour of him.

--

It’s Aulus who insists that Sasha take a bath and wash her clothes. They’ve been there ten days by that point, and Sasha’s yet to venture beyond the stables or the garden. She’s more help to Aulus inside, she says, trading her off-the-cuff Other London recipes for Aulus’s high-brow cooking, learning the names of the plants in the garden, and, at one point, climbing into the barn’s rafters to patch a leak. Aulus isn’t so bad: quick with a joke, less pompous than Cicero, and kind to her in a way that still feels a little foreign.

He lets her know, gently at first, that they do have heated baths that are quite pleasant, and wouldn’t she like to change from her leather coat into something more comfortable? And Sasha does like baths (despite her grumbling the first time Eldarion made her take one), and she doesn’t like picking bits of Rome dust in her belt or seeing the stain of black blood on her pants — but it feels so final, doesn’t it, taking her stuff off? As if she’s saying that she’s not leaving. And it’s not like Sasha actually has plans to leave or believes that she could really ever find her way back, but every time she takes off her studded leather jacket, she feels herself telling Hamid and Azu and Bi Ming that she’s not coming back for them.

Eventually, Aulus and Sasha come to complex negotiations, and Sasha agrees to let him wash her other clothes if she can keep the jacket nearby while she’s in the bath, and put it on again right after. She lays out her knives one by one right near the edge of the water, counting them before slipping in. The water is warm, as Aulus promised, and she feels all her muscles relaxing, despite herself. With an ache of nostalgia, she remembers Hamid’s apartment in London, and the bath she took there. It feels like years ago.

She’s dried off, dressed, and is figuring out how to arrange the daggers in her leather-over-tunic outfit when she sees Maximus’s head poking out from the doorway. He’s lightened up considerably in the past few days, and tends to stick around Sasha like glue.

“Oi, privacy!” she says, and Maximus’s face falls as he realizes she’s seen him.

“I’m sorry! I didn’t mean to look, I was just going past and —” Maximus comes running up to her and motions for her to lean down. “You’ve got a bird on your back!” he whispers excitedly in her ear.

“Oh. That’s a scar. This… guy fell on me once and he had lots of bird statues on him.”

“What? That’s awesome!”

“Yeah, I… guess so,” Sasha says, confused by his enthusiasm. Gesturing to the burn on her neck, she explains, “This one’s from when I set off a lot of bombs by accident. Bombs are like… they make big explosions. You’d like them.” Maximus looks impressed, so Sasha continues, showing him her cold hand, “This is from when my dagger exploded. It was an ice dagger, like my fire dagger but ice, and I was trying to stab a thing but it went wrong.” She pulls down the collar of her tunic slightly to reveal the autopsy scar on her chest. “And this is from when I died and this evil thing took all my bits out but Zolf put them back…”

“Who’s Zolf?” Maximus asks.

“Oh, he’s, uh… I guess he was a… friend, but he…” Sasha trails off, feeling suddenly untethered. When she sees Maximus staring at her in confusion, she rouses herself. “Go check if Cicero needs help with the cooking, okay? He’s learning, but he’s not good.”

As Maximus scampers off and Sasha finishes placing her daggers, she thinks about how she’s never been good at stories. She can’t make the words come out in the right order and the right time, not like Hamid can. She’s never needed to, not really, when she has her daggers. Can’t hide well if you’re talking all the time.

Now, though — she’s the only one who knows these stories, for the next thousands of years, maybe ever, Azu and Hamid don’t — no. But no one else can talk about the gargoyles in Paris and Cairo, or the time that they killed that snake-hair woman, or the time that Hamid made her eat at a million restaurants in Prague. It feels wrong for her to be the only one who knows about those things, as if they never happened.

But it feels wrong, too, for Sasha to talk about her friends. She doesn’t think she could ever find the words for how she felt that day in the pub that Zolf said he was leaving. Or when Azu had told Eldarion to back off, or the sound of Brock laughing wildly at a joke that she knew wasn’t funny, or Grizzop’s face when he saw her again in Rome, or how Bi Ming’s hands moved so expertly over the clocks he repaired, or the shake in Hamid’s voice whenever he was trying not to cry. They’re important, too, but they’re so important that she doesn’t think she could ever tell them right.

So she won’t, she thinks, as she buttons up her leather jacket.

--

“I’m sorry, you know. About what I said about your friend,” Cicero says as he and Sasha are weeding the garden one day about five weeks after they arrived at the villa. It’s taken almost this long for Cicero and Aulus to admit that Atticus won’t be coming back, and in the meantime, social classes have broken down and Cicero is trying his best to help out around the villa.

“What?” Sasha says.

Cicero continues, his voice unusually subdued. “Your goblin friend, in Rome. I said that it was his fault. It wasn’t. He was trying to do what’s right, and he protected both of us.”

Sasha pauses, fighting off the urge to run away from this awkward conversation. “It’s well, it’s… alright. He was… yeah, he was good. Yeah.”

“Still, I understand if you don’t want to stay because of me. I had always meant for us to stay here until Atticus came back and then reevaluate our options. But he hasn’t, and you’re under no obligation to remain.”

“Cheers, mate, glad to know that you’re okay with me being gone,” Sasha says. Cicero starts to protest, but she interrupts him. “Sorry, that was unfair. It means a lot that… it’s okay if I go. But I don’t really have anywhere to go, do I? And… I couldn’t do that to Maximus. I think… I want to be there for people… who need protection.”

“Oh. That’s good of you,” Cicero says.

“Yeah, I guess. ‘Swhat people did for me.” Sasha says, and continues pulling weeds.

--

Maximus is a smart kid, it turns out. Pretty observant.

Maximus knows that Sasha doesn’t much like being hugged. Knows that if you hug her from behind, she’ll reach for a knife but will stop when she realizes who it is, and if you hug her from the front, she’ll hug you back, but it’ll be all stiff, and sometimes she’ll look like she’s remembering something she won’t say.

But Vibia and Paulla, four- and seven-year-old sisters who arrived two months after Sasha and Cicero, don’t know that. When Paulla, mid-fight, shouts at Vibia about their parents’ deaths, Vibia runs to Sasha and clings to her tight before Sasha can realize what’s happening. Sasha finds herself awkwardly rubbing Vibia’s back, wondering what she’s supposed to do. She tries to remember a time in her life when it was okay to cry or when she might expect anyone to hold her if she did. She pulls the girl in closer as her eyes start to sting.

Maximus knows that Sasha doesn’t like going in the fields. She’ll go in the garden and she’ll teach him how to climb the biggest and best trees, swinging from their highest branches with a huge smile on her face, but she’ll never look out from the top at the rolling hills, which are now yellow with the winter. And she’ll almost never walk in the fields, except for that one time that Cicero accidentally let the cow go and Sasha was the quickest to go run after it. She came back from that looking annoyed and mildly sick, and locked herself in the cellar for hours.

But Vibia and Paulla don’t know about Sasha’s fear. Paulla loves playing in the fields and in the clearings, where she’s drawn the circles in the dirt for a game of ball. She explains that you need at least three people to play the game right, and Vibia is too small and Aulus is too old and Cicero is too stuffy, so she needs Sasha to play with her and Maximus. After weeks of Paulla’s begging and Maximus promising that they can go back inside after just one round, Sasha finally relents, trying to calm her breathing and not look around too much as she lets Paulla drag her by the hand to a clearing right beside a clump of trees. By the time that they’ve been playing for ten minutes, Sasha’s competitiveness has distracted her from the wide fields around them.

Maximus knows that Sasha will tell stories if he asks, but that she won’t talk much about the other people in the stories and goes quiet when he asks about them. He’s heard about the time that she crossed a great big sea in a little boat during a storm, but never about that guy who pulled her out of the water or why they were on the boat in the first place. He loves the one about the time she snuck into a bunch of buildings with giant monsters guarding them, but he always wants to know more about the person who blew up the main building with magic. Sasha always says she’ll tell him about that guy some other time. Eventually, he stops asking. 

But Vibia and Paulla don’t know about the people Sasha won’t mention. A month after they came to the villa, they’re sitting with Sasha on a couch. Paulla’s at her feet and Vibia’s running her fingers through Sasha’s hair, which she’d allowed Aulus to crop short using one of her knives. Vibia has always been fascinated by the shock of white in Sasha’s hair.

“You’re a girl, right?” Vibia says. Her sister shoots her a reproachful look, but says nothing.

“Uh… sure,” Sasha says. “Why?”

“‘Cause of your hair. And cause Max calls you Sasha Whosaskin-US. But if you’re a girl, it should be Whosaskin-A,” Vibia says proudly. From the room next door, Sasha hears Cicero laugh.

“I dunno what to tell you, mate,” Sasha says. “I just made it up one day.”

“You can make up your name?” Vibia says in shock, spinning herself down so she’s sitting on Sasha’s lap. “Did you have a different name before?”

“I had… yes. It was someone else’s name, but it wasn’t important. He wasn’t important. My other name is… I guess it’s important.”

“Who was the person who wasn’t —” Vibia starts, but Paulla cuts her off, recognizing the distance in Sasha’s voice.

“Who’s the most important person you know?” Paulla asks, in an attempt to redirect the conversation.

For a moment, Sasha considers talking about Apophis, but while she’s never asked the kids directly about how they ended up at the villa, she suspects dragons are a sore subject. “I knew this guy. He was a bit of a dick but he wasn’t a bad person, I guess. He sort of… paid me. And watched over me and my… friends. And this one time when I was… very sick, he went up to the most powerful person around and he told him to give over this thing to make me better and he said some… really nice things about me. And the powerful person did give us the thing and I got better. Though the guy, the important guy, he did say some awful things about me being sick, but I think he was mostly just really tired…”

Sasha looks up from her rambling and is surprised to see that Vibia and Paulla are wide-eyed, waiting on her every word. A flush of embarrassment runs through her — as does a feeling of deep relief, as if she’d be waiting for forever to talk about Wilde, to admit how much it meant that he’d cared about her, to bring his memory to this distant place. She hopes that wherever he is, he’s managed to get some rest.

“Also,” Sasha continues, “one time my friend punched him in the balls.”

--

One morning at breakfast, Aulus announces that they need to start preparing the fields for seeding. Sasha is surprised, because it’s as cold as it’s been for the past several months, but Tertia and Fausta nod sagely at Aulus’s decision. They’re a young couple who recently moved into the villa after their home was raided by some of the bandits. The robbers have increased in numbers in the area, but have left the villa alone since a couple of them met the end of Sasha’s knives. Aulus is relieved that Tertia and Fausta are here and can help with the farm, and even though he insists Sasha can stay in the villa, she knows that she should help, too. 

So that’s how Sasha finds herself surrounded on all sides by open fields, dizzied as she stares at the distance between her and the nearest clump of trees, leaning on the rake she’s been using to till. She doesn’t hear Maximus running up behind her and barely registers him asking if she’s okay, or his yells for someone to help. She’s trying to say that she’s alright by the time that Fausta has come to her side. 

“You need to get inside,” Fausta says over Sasha’s protests. “You’re no help like this.” 

“It’s the sun, I’m hot, I don’t need —” Sasha mutters, but Fausta cuts her off.

“Sasha Whosaskinus, it’s incredibly cold out here. You’re not overheating.” Fausta sees Sasha’s expression, and her voice softens, “It’s okay. There will be other days. You can do a bit every day.”

And that’s what she does, at first working to the fields closest to the villa and the trees and gradually going further and further into the farm. She suspects that Aulus is responsible for getting the kids to swarm around her, keeping her distracted, but she’ll never complain. 

A month later, when they’re watering the fields, Tertia nudges Sasha and directs her gaze towards Cicero, who’s working twenty feet away. He has, for some reason, decided to wear a nice toga even while doing manual labour, and it’s getting helplessly muddied. Cicero is now attempting to stealthily wash off his toga using the water intented for the plants, but, as he keeps dropping the toga, he's just making things much worse. As Sasha doubles over with laughter alongside Tertia, she barely notices the open space between them. 

--

It’s a warm day in late spring when Hostus goes missing. He’s a tall, skinny preteen boy whom Sasha found had been stealing their food and sleeping in an unused servant’s room for several days before anyone noticed. In the weeks since Sasha told him that he could stay without sneaking around everywhere, he’s still not quite learned to trust the other residents of the villa: he jumps at the smallest noise, and she once saw him pull a knife on Fausta when she got too close. Sasha feels like a bit of a hypocrite for chiding him.

After the boy misses both breakfast and lunch and it’s almost time for supper, Sasha searches for Hostus. He’s not in that clump of trees next to the clearing, where Hostus likes to climb and watch them play ball. He’s not in the old servant’s room, where he’d insisted on sleeping even after Aulus invited him to stay closer to everyone else. He’s not trying to scare the chickens in the barn. Sasha is almost ready to admit that Hostus has simply left in the way that she’s told all of the children they can when Sasha hears faint movement from the roof. She kicks herself for forgetting her old favourite place to hide from Eldarion.

Climbing through the window in the bedroom she’d stayed her first night, Sasha pulls herself up towards the roof a little less quickly than she might have six months ago: the manual labour has made her stronger and she still throws her knives every day, but she’s out of practice scaling buildings. When she reaches the top, it only takes a moment to spot Hostus curled up in a nook of the roof, knees tucked into his chest, looking down at the courtyard below. Neither Sasha nor Hostus speak as she approaches, but when he turns his head towards her, she can see his eyes are puffy and red, but his face is locked in an expression of anger. Sasha silently takes a seat a few feet away from him. Together, they watch the courtyard, where Cicero is unsuccessfully trying to repair a couch whose leg has fallen off.

A thought strikes Sasha as she remembers another rooftop in a far-away place and time, and she roots around on the roof for a pebble. She shows the stone to a confused Hostus before sending it flying at Cicero — it bounces off the top of the head with a satisfying sound. Cicero grabs his head, looking around wildly, not noticing the pair on the roof. Hostus smiles despite himself and accepts the next pebble that Sasha offers him. He’s not so good a shot as her, but together they manage to get five or six good hits in before Cicero starts carefully searching the skyline while making bombastic threats against his attackers, and Sasha and Hostus collapse with giggles on the other side of the roof.

For a while, they lie there, staring up at the sky. The late-afternoon skies are clear and the air is warm enough for Sasha to have her leather jacket open loosely over her toga.

“There was this one time I ran away,” Sasha says, surprising herself with the words coming out of her mouth, “and my friends came looking for me.”

“Must be nice, having friends like that,” Hostus says, and Sasha recognizes from herself the prickly tone, halfway between sarcasm and longing.

“Yeah, it was. Really was,” she says.

Hostus, thrown by her sincere response, falls quiet. After a moment, he sighs and sits up. “What were your friends like?” he asks. “Max says you’re good at stories.”

Sasha pulls herself up beside Hostus. From her position on the roof, she can see the endless rolling fields, budding with new growth under a slowly redenning sky. It strikes her that no part of her finds fear in this view anymore.

“There was Grizzop,” Sasha says, “and he was a goblin, but they weren’t bad like everyone says. He was brave and fast and funny, even when he was trying to be serious. He wanted to use every moment of his life to help people, and he did. I don’t think I got it back then, but… I think I do now.

“There was Azu. She was so big and she had this magical camel and one time, the time they came looking for me ‘cause I ran away, she got on the camel and put Grizzop on her shoulders and they went around town getting drunk and starting a fight.” Sasha laughs at the memory. “But she was kind. She didn’t always… understand things, she didn’t always know how to help, but she always tried so hard, even when you felt like you didn’t deserve it.

“There was Hamid. He was small, smaller than Grizzop even, and very posh, and he wanted so much to be a hero. He’d done things that hurt others and he wanted to make it better and… sometimes that meant that he was an idiot and hurt himself. He cared so much about things that he’d cry, but… it wasn’t a bad thing. He cared.”

Sasha pauses, trying to find the words. “And there was Zolf. He… he saved me for no reason, when I was running away from people who wanted to hurt me. He always just wanted to protect us. For us to… save ourselves while he died, but we never wanted to leave him. And he said he’d heal me when I got… sick, but then he left and he didn’t. And… I think I was mad at him for a while, ‘cause it hurt? But I reckon… I reckon he was hurting, too, and he needed to find something to heal him. Tell him he could protect himself, too.”

Hostus, who’s been staring at his feet, looks up at Sasha. “Did he ever find it?”

“The thing to heal him? I dunno. I never saw him again after he left. I hope he did.”

“Me too,” Hostus says quietly.

In the silence between them, Sasha can hear the sounds of the villa’s family below: Tertia and Fausta gently teasing Cicero about the mysterious pebbles on his head; Vibia helping Aulus prepare dinner; Paulla and Maximus playing knucklebones.

Sasha smiles and watches the sun set over her home.

[trash-the-tozier]

One Week Away (2/2)

Title: One Week Away

Length: ~13.7k words (6k for this part)

Summary: School is out for spring break, and the Losers are taking a week long trip to visit Beverly in Portland. Could there have been a worse time for Richie to realize that he was in love with his best friend?

Warnings: None? This fic is mostly just bill and richie being rowdy boys (explicit language, perverted insinuations, and general dumbassery), a bit of underage drinking

Pairings: Richie/Bill, established Mike/Stan, hints at Ben/Beverly

A/N: Part 2! The underage drinking warning applies to this chapter. This fic gave me the fluff fix I needed - the next thing will have an actual plot to it, I promise. Thank you for reading! Previous part: 1 also posted to ao3 here

After dinner they all squeezed onto the couch to watch a movie, making the collective decision to do nothing tomorrow. Any time they tried to make plans the conversation just devolved into talking, so it made more sense to not make a plan and simply hang out for a while; maybe that would get all of the chatting out of their system. Richie didn’t think it was too bad of an idea; catching up and spending time together was the main point of the trip, after all. If the group did have the wild hair the next day to go out and do something instead, they would.

They woke up in as much of a pile as they fell asleep in. Beverly and Ben made muffins for breakfast while they all slowly migrated to the kitchen and lazed around the kitchen table. The whole scene was entirely too domestic, Richie getting exhausted just watching the way Beverly and Ben danced around each other: compliments that were said a little too seriously to be played off as just friendly, glances that lingered a little too long, especially if the other person wasn’t looking. After watching the particularly excruciating game of hand-footsie during their walk yesterday though, Richie wasn’t sure what he was expecting. He just didn’t know what was taking the two of them so long.

Then they all just talked. And talked. The flow of conversation was natural, exciting, and fun; despite the lack of an activity, Richie didn’t find himself ever getting bored. There was the background noise of music, or the TV playing something that no one was really paying any attention to, but they weren’t needed. They talked about the gossip at school about people that they didn’t really know, but it didn’t matter because the drama of it all made it entertaining anyway. They talked about plans for college—an exciting idea, because Beverly would be going with them—and what their parents thought about those plans. Every once and awhile someone would get up for food or to shower or whatever else they needed, the group shifting around between the kitchen and the living room. Naturally, it wasn’t until late that the more serious topics were breached.

“Okay, Bill.” Mike said. He and Stan were taking up the entirety of the couch; Mike was simply sitting on it, but Stan had his head resting against his boyfriend with his body draped across the rest of the cushions. Stan looked so content and comfortable, holding Mike’s hand with one of his own and tracing patterns on it with the free fingers of the other, that Richie couldn’t even find it in himself to be annoyed at them.

“What?” Bill asked back. He was on the floor, sitting between Richie and Ben. The side of his sock-clad foot kept knocking against Richie’s own, and it was all Richie had not to smile like an idiot every time they touched.

“Your breakup. Seriously; how are you holding up?”

“You don’t have to answer.” Beverly was sitting in her uncle’s favorite chair, Eddie on one of the overstuffed arm rests with his legs draped across her lap. “If you don’t want to talk about it.”

“I…” Bill sounded hesitant, trailing off, and Richie couldn’t help himself. He caused a distraction, lifting his leg and replacing it down so that it was over Bill’s own, his foot on the ground between both of Bill’s. Bill looked at him questioningly, but Richie didn’t really have a plan, so he just poked Bill in the face again.

There was a bit of a scuffle after that. Bill got Richie in a headlock, Richie slumping against him in a dramatic display of choking that had his friends laughing. To his surprise though, Bill let Richie slide down his chest after releasing him, until Richie’s head was in his lap. Then he threaded his fingers through Richie’s hair like it was automatic.

“I’m o-okay, I think.” The words were completely unprompted, but they all knew that they were an answer to Mike’s question. Bill drew in a breath, slightly stuttering, and Richie didn’t dare look at him. “Better now that we’re spending some time out of town. I’m kinda worried about what she might say about me, but I think that’s a sign that our relationship should have e-ended way before it did.”

“Why did you date her in the first place?” Eddie asked. The question could have been condescending, and his tone made it almost seem that way, but they all knew Eddie, and Eddie’s pattern of speaking, and could tell that it came from a place of genuine confusion and care.

“Well, I did like her. And she was pretty.” Richie didn’t really want to hear this, but Bill’s hand was keeping his head in place, his fingers surprisingly gentle as they traced patterns across his scalp. “But… I think I was dating someone just to date someone, you know? Like I needed to be in a relationship. And then we just… Stayed together.”

“Needed to be in a relationship?” Stan asked. Bill’s fingers stopped moving. “Why?”

A long silence. Then Bill shrugged.

“I just did.”

Nobody pressed him, Mike instead launching into a funny story about something Stan did, much to the protest of his boyfriend. When the tale was half told and Bill’s fingers still hadn’t moved from their place next to Richie’s ear, Richie nudged at Bill’s thigh with his cheek.

Bill leaned close, his voice quiet. “What?”

“Feels good.” Richie murmured back, and Bill laughed a little, nothing more than an amused exhale, and went back to playing with his hair. Richie was asleep before Mike’s story was over.

The next day, they went to see Beverly’s new bedroom and meet her aunt. She was a kind enough woman, but as Beverly said, was overbearing and seemed rather stressed, like she was tightrope walking across her last nerve, her shoulders taught in an attempt not to fall. Part of that stress, Richie had to assume, came from the invasion of six teenage boys that she did not know into her home, but he felt the majority of it had to come from the scuffling tangle of limbs on the floor--with yells, and what looked like wild attempts to lick each other, because wrestling was fun and spit was gross--that were Beverly’s two young nephews.

The two boys, eight and ten years old, were loud and messy like all little kids are, but were behaved enough and nice enough to still introduce themselves with proper handshakes and do as they were asked. Beverly clearly had a fun relationship with them, taking one in the crook of each elbow and blowing raspberries on the tops of their heads while they shrieked and laughed and struggled to escape. But they more or less kept to themselves and stayed out of the way, returning for dinner hours later with dirt on their faces and knees but washed hands.

They were rowdy, but Richie didn’t realize that they were exactly his brand of rowdy until, seated next to the eight-year old at dinner, he noticed the boy trying to catapult food at his brother with his spoon and failing miserably, pea after pea rolling into his lap instead. What, was he not supposed to give the kid a couple of pointers?

Soon, they were all stealth snipers with their vegetables, trying to hit those across the table. At one point, all three of them hit Ben in the chest at the same time, with Beverly going on the defensive and managing to lob a whole piece of broccoli back at Richie. Eddie was an excellent shot, and Richie raised his spoon a little higher than necessary in an attempt to hit Stan in the face when a shout rang out.

“No throwing food!”

Beverly’s aunt had finally noticed them. Mike had been distracting her with a story--Mike was excellent at making other people’s parents love him--but that distraction couldn’t last forever. Everyone else quickly pretended to eat, but Richie was too far to back out and let the peas on his spoon fly. One of them hit Stan square in the forehead. Richie got chewed out rather thoroughly for being a bad influence on her boys, but the mischievous admiration now in the kids’ eyes when they looked at him felt more than worth it.

The meal was almost over when something hit Richie in the chest. He looked down quickly, seeing a pea roll across his lap and onto the floor. He looked to Beverly first, but she was telling some story about school, then to Stan--revenge, perhaps?--to see that all the peas on Stan’s plate were gone.

Bill was grinning at him, quickly putting his spoon back on the tabletop, as not to be caught. Richie gaped at him slightly, his cheeks going a hot red as Bill winked at him before returning to his food. Richie had half a mind to pick the pea back up and keep it forever.

The group decided that they would actually do something the next day, attempting to employ the ‘early to bed, early to rise’ method. ‘Early to bed’ was considered sometime before midnight, so when Richie launched himself onto the mattress in Beverly’s uncle’s spare bedroom at 11:58, he felt rather accomplished. Then Bill entered the room, looking achingly comfortable in sweatpants and a soft tank-top, and a streak of panic cut through Richie’s chest. Oh right. They were sharing a room. They were sharing a bed.

It wasn’t even a question. They’d been sleeping over in each other’s beds since elementary school--it would have been catastrophically strange for Richie to dive onto the floor like he so desperately wanted to do and insist that he would sleep there. So he simply had to sit, attempt to swallow his tongue, and act like everything was fine as Bill slid under the covers next to him.

It was a large mattress, so while they weren’t actually touching, it was a near thing. It would have been incredibly easy for Richie to just move his hand even a couple of inches and touch some part of Bill; he could feel the heat of Bill’s body across the sheets. Or, it would be easy to do in the physical sense, at least--he wasn’t sure he could handle something like that without combusting, at least on an emotional level.

Bill was still and quiet. So still and so quiet, in fact, that Richie would have thought him asleep aside for his breathing. It wasn’t the simple, deep and rhythmic breathing of someone off in dreamland. Or so Richie thought. Thirty minutes into Richie’s ongoing attempt not to have a heart attack, Bill made a slight and soft sort of moaning sound, shifting with his eyes closed and rolling, one arm snaking its way across Richie’s chest, shuffling over to him.

Bill was now very, very close, legs side by side and touching all the way up to the hip. The extension of Bill’s arm across his chest had Bill’s upper body so close that his forehead was pressed into Richie’s shoulder. Richie had never known Bill to be particularly clingy in sleep, not in the way Stan and Eddie were, but there wasn’t much Richie felt he could do about it now. He just relaxed into the embrace, into the extra warmth and the softness of Bill’s hair against his cheek. He wasn’t about to look a gift horse in the mouth, especially if that gift was a cuddly Bill Denbrough.

The bed was empty when Richie woke up. He was almost grateful for that, letting his body relax a little as he rolled onto his back. He’d been both dreading and anticipating sharing a bed with Bill, simultaneously worried for it and wanting it more than just about anything. Realistically, he’d expected nothing to happen. And, almost nothing had. Almost. Richie suddenly missed Bill, sitting up, when as if on cue, Bill walked into the room.

Richie fell back down, averting his eyes to the ceiling. Bill was next to naked with a towel around his waist, his hair still wet enough to drip a couple stray droplets of water onto his shoulders and down his chest.

“Everyone else is awake.” Bill told him, Richie using acknowledgement as an excuse to look over, trying not to be too obvious with the up-and-down that he couldn’t help but do. If Bill noticed he said nothing, walking over to his suitcase. “If you want to shower, go ahead and do it now. Eddie and Mike are making breakfast.”

“Okay.” Richie managed out, the word a momentous feat considering just how hard he was biting his tongue. He scrambled out of the room just in time to hear the towel hit the bedroom floor.

He ran into Ben on his way down the hall, quite literally, his friend making a small sound as the collision caused him to lose his balance. Ben pinwheeled his arms, leaning against the hallway wall, and Richie decided to flop onto his shoulder.

“You feeling alright?” Ben asked, nothing but concerned, and Richie let out an anguished groan.

“I’m dying, Benny Boy.” It was only a little bit of an exaggeration.

“You are?” Miraculously, Ben still sounded worried.

“What else am I supposed to be doing when I can’t lick the person that I really, really want to?”

Ben made a startled noise in response, a dry voice behind them.

“You shut up about it and jack off in the shower like an adult.” It was Stan, Richie turning on his heel to reach out and grip Stan by the shoulders.

“He was in a towel, Stan. Just. A towel.”

A smirk twisted Stan’s expression. “I know. He asked me to get him some clothes from your room, but I said he should just walk on in. Told him that you wouldn’t mind.”

“I’m going to kill you.”

“You’re welcome.”

“Are…” Ben’s eyes had gone wide, and Richie remembered something. The only people that don’t know might just be Ben. “Are you guys talking about Bill?” Those wide eyes fixed on Richie. “You want to lick Bill?”

Richie tried to think of something funny to say. He really did. But Stan was already cackling, so he just turned away and got in the shower. And what he thought about while he was in there was completely his business.

They had a proper day out on the town, Beverly showing them all of her favorite places in her area of Portland. It was fun, chattering and joking as they went, listening to Beverly tell stories about each of the locations as they walked. They ate out for lunch, got more ice cream at a different little shop, and terrorized the aisles of the local grocery store for dinner food. The seven of them had fun wherever they went, but there was something so lovely about being able to do the simple things together, things like walking around the neighborhood or shopping for groceries. By the time they’d all settled around the kitchen table at the end of the day, with their homemade meal on the table in front of them, Richie felt his heart so full of love for his friends that it might burst. He was just so… So content, with the six of them.

The mood seemed to be contagious, all of them squishing onto the couch together after dinner, and when Richie decided to go to bed Bill left with him, walking so close that their shoulders kept brushing together. Richie was careful to lay in the same place as he had the night before, infinitely surprised when Bill laid down closer to him, close enough to be touching him.

“I…” Bill’s voice was soft in the dark room, and at the sound of it, Richie could suddenly feel his heartbeat in his mouth. “I f-felt like a bit of a mess, when Erika broke up with me. Thanks for everything.”

“Thanks?” Richie turned. Bill’s face was close, that much Richie could see. His features weren’t very distinct through the darkness, but Richie knew them all by heart anyway. “I haven’t done anything, man.”

“Then thanks for, f-for…” Bill… He sounded nervous, nerves the only time his now-defeated stutter tripped up his tongue. “Thanks for being you then, I guess.”

Silence. And Richie… Richie had to act, unable to help himself.

“Hey, Bill?”

“Yeah?”

“I’m gonna hug you now, dude.”

Bill laughed a little, Richie reaching out and finding him under the sheets. Bill shifted forward accommodatingly, lifting his head to let Richie slide an arm under him. They were like that for a while, and while that slight and anxious thrum was still stirring in Richie’s chest at the opportunity to touch Bill, it wasn’t nearly enough to disrupt that feeling of contentment that had all but sunken into his bones throughout the day.

Then Bill leaned in close, closer, closer… And blew a raspberry against Richie’s bare collarbone. Richie squawked in alarm, Bill’s laughter ringing out, and then Richie had to retaliate, wetting his pinky finger with his tongue and trying to stick it into Bill’s ear. There was a grapple on the bed as Bill tried to keep his hand at bay, the sheets getting hopelessly twisted as they wrestled, Bill laughing the entire time. He had an iron grip on Richie’s wrist though, so eventually Richie had to concede defeat, breathing hard as he flopped back against his--now horribly crooked--pillow.

They were even more tangled up in each other than before, their legs a mess, Richie’s arm now resting across Bill’s chest, Bill more-or-less curled under his arm, the fingers of one hand still around Richie’s wrist, their grip slack.

“Richie?”

“Yeah?” Too quickly to realize it as it happened, Richie now noticed that Bill’s entire body was tense. He was fully expecting Bill to tell him to move, to get off of him, to move to the opposite side of the bed, for him to sleep on the floor, on the couch in the living room, outside of the house on the porch--

“I love you.”

Richie was glad that the answer was automatic, because he felt his heart wasn’t moving in his chest anymore.

“I love you too, man.”

“Yeah?”

“‘Course I do, Big Bill.”

Bill made a small noise, somewhere between an exhale and a laugh, relaxing completely under Richie’s arm. He was asleep in a matter of minutes.

The group had saved up a decent amount of money, wanting to be ready for any and all shenanigans they could get up to in Portland. Maybe they’d gotten old and boring over their high school career, because they found themselves on the last day of their stay with a rather large amount of spending money left, and nothing much else that they wanted to spend it on. Then Eddie brought up the rule that Beverly’s uncle had set about having to replace any of the liquor they drank in cash, and they collectively decided to spend their final night with Beverly getting completely smashed.  

Due to a lack of fake IDs, cool parents, or a collective ability to lie, Richie had only been drunk a handful of times, and only at some random kid from school’s party that ended up having an open invite. They all drank pretty slowly--probably because all Beverly’s uncle had was actual, hard liquor, nothing fun and fruity--but they were all awful lightweights, and it didn’t take too long to get the party going.

Eddie got drunk first, partially because of his size and partially because he decided to slam a couple of shots of rum from glasses way too big to be shot glasses. He cranked up the music and started dancing, Beverly quickly getting up to join him. Ben got up next, and when Ben started dancing, they all started dancing.

They danced, ate, talked about nothing, and played ten hopelessly fast games of Jenga, only stopping because they couldn’t quite figure out how to put the tower back together for the eleventh time and just decided to leave the blocks on the floor. Eddie and Bill got into a pillow fight on the couch, Mike next to them, half dozing off and half hitting them both in the face when the opportunity arose. Ben found himself with a lapful of Stan, who was now so drunk that he’d gotten to the stage where he began a very emotional monologue to each of his friends about how much he loved them. It was something that he only half believed that he actually did, and would vehemently deny in the morning.

Richie himself had been rather slow to drink, but was also the only one still drinking, everyone else either sufficiently drunk or done for the night anyway. Beverly and Bill seemed the most put together, Beverly with a large glass of water in her hand, Bill saving Eddie from falling face-first off the couch.

The party was declared over when Stan, after falling into Beverly’s lap and calling her pretty, was called pretty in return and began to cry. She kissed him on the forehead and dumped him on Mike, the two of them tottering to bed, Stan babbling about how big and strong and handsome and lovely Mike was as they went.

“Bill!” Richie exclaimed, dragging himself over to Bill, sitting in the spot that Mike had left and getting very, very close. God, Richie loved the freckles that had littered themselves across the bridge of Bill’s nose. “Do you think I’m big and strong and handsome and lovely?”

Bill laughed a little. “I think you need to go to bed.”

Richie made a bit of a noncommittal noise at that. He was tired; he could feel his eyelids drooping.

“Am I pretty?”

“Pretty fucking annoying, yeah.” Bill got to his feet. “Come on, let’s go. I’ll help you.”

“I’m not that drunk.” Richie protested. Then he actually got to his feet, swayed so heavily that he had to grab onto Eddie’s head for balance--Eddie didn’t seem to notice--and yeah, maybe he was that drunk.  “Okay.”

Richie wrapped an arm around Bill’s shoulders as they went, Bill holding onto his waist.

“I’m not that drunk.” Richie protested again. “My feet are just like… Fucking huge? I have clown feet? Shit, be careful. I might trip you on accident. Be careful.”

“I will.” Bill’s voice was amused. “I’ll be careful.”

“You can’t get hurt.” Richie continued. This was important; Bill needed to know this. “Not like… Ever, okay?”

“Okay.”

“Good. You can’t get hurt. I love you too much.”

“That’s nice.”

“Bill.” They were in the bedroom now, in front of the bed, but Richie didn’t want to let Bill go, wrapping his other arm around Bill’s neck as well. Bill had planted his legs in an attempt to half hold up Richie’s weight, his feet on both sides of Richie’s own. Bill was so handsome up close.

“Thanks.” Bill was avoiding Richie’s eyes now, the nonsensical statement making Richie realize something. Was he thinking out loud? That was really dangerous. “C’mon, you need to lie down.”

But Richie didn’t want to let go of him, Bill leaning over the bed in an attempt to drop his body on the mattress. But maybe Richie was too heavy, or too long, or his big clown feet got in the way, and then Bill was on top of him.

Oh. Oh. This was nice. Richie liked this very much. Bill was warm, and heavy enough for Richie to feel comfortably pinned in place—not that he wanted to move. At all. Possibly ever.

Richie slid one hand up, running it through the hair at the base of Bill’s neck. He couldn’t be entirely sure if the shiver he felt through Bill’s body was real, or just something he wanted to be real.

“Richie.” Bill said softly. Bill’s voice could be so, so incredibly soft. “You’re drunk.”

“Yeah.” Richie murmured back. All he wanted to do was pull Bill just that little bit closer and kiss him. But god, he was so drunk.

The rest of the night went unremembered.

The first thing Richie was aware of the next morning was a horrible, cottony taste in his mouth. The second was the soft angles of Bill’s still-sleeping body next to him on the bed. The third was that if he didn’t get out of this bedroom and to a toilet in the next thirty seconds, he was going to get hangover barf all over himself.

He managed to make it to a bathroom, re-emerging to the kitchen to find that Beverly, bless her heart and soul, had called her uncle to bring them all burgers for breakfast, the man watching in amusement as he handed out ibuprofen.

“I’d think you all owed me an entire liquor cabinet, with the way you all are groaning!” He exclaimed, met with a chorus of complaints at the loud noise. Something bumped into Richie’s shoulder rather hard, Richie turning to see what it was, wondering if it was intentional.

It was Bill, and it wasn’t intentional. Bill had finally surfaced from their room, looking rather put together, his suitcase by his feet. He had put his hands over his ears at Beverly’s uncle, and had hit Richie with his stray elbow. Richie grinned at him, a greeting on his lips, but when their eyes met Bill just backed up and turned completely away from him. The movement seemed anxious and clearly avoidant, and Richie felt the smile slip off his lips.

They packed up the car with a lot of help from Beverly’s uncle, who accepted their gratitude for the week readily, saying he was glad that they had a good time. Then they had to say goodbye to Beverly, getting tight hugs and cheek kisses and promising that they would see each other again soon, that they were only a couple hours away if she needed them, and to call for any and every reason. She said the same things back, though they all knew that the offers went both ways.

Ben, the strongest of them when it came to recovering quickly, took up the driver’s seat. His sense of direction was startlingly atrocious though, so Eddie was placed in the passenger seat to help him. Fiercely hungover Stan and equally hungover Mike collapsed together in the backseat, leaving Bill and Richie again in the middle. They weren’t squeezed in next to each other this time, and as a result the middle seat was between them, somehow feeling more like a concrete wall than empty air. Bill hadn’t spoken a word in Richie’s direction, or even looked at him, and Richie couldn’t for the life of him figure out why.

Eddie pulled one of Mike’s caps down over his eyes, Ben started up the van, and with waves and blown kisses from Beverly, they were off. Richie wasn’t completely sure how Eddie was going to help navigate without being able to see, but he supposed it would be better than nothing. They would get home eventually. Or wouldn’t, and they would be driven into the Atlantic Ocean. Which was fine by Richie too, if Bill decided he wasn’t ever going to speak to him again.

Richie tried to think back to the night before, to figure out what it was that he’d done, but all of the memories he had of the evening were hazy with hard liquor. They’d had fun; he remembered that. Nothing had seemed bad, or mortifying. Had he said something that he shouldn’t have? Done something he shouldn’t have? He didn’t think he had, but fucking something up was very much his speed. It wasn’t entirely out of character.  

After the longest, quietest, most torturous forty-five minutes of Richie’s life, Stan shot upright from the back.

“We gotta stop.” He said. “I’m gonna throw up in Richie’s suitcase if we don’t.”

“Hey!” Richie shouted back at him. Stan looked really and truly green, so Eddie helped direct Ben to the nearest bathroom. They ended up parking at some sort of rest stop, a big area that was mostly a park with dog trails. Stan ran inside immediately, Mike following after him, and Richie grabbed Eddie and pulled him aside.

“Question for you, my love.”

Eddie didn’t even lift the hat. “What?”

“Did I… Did I do anything dumb last night?”

Eddie fell silent for a long moment. So long, actually, that Richie thought that maybe he was being ignored. Then he let out a long breath.

“Gonna be honest, Rich. I don’t remember. Probably?”

That was helpful. Richie tried Ben next.

“Not that I can think of. I remember thinking that you were actually acting a little tame. Just… Watching, sort of.”

“Watching?”

“Yeah. You did a lot of staring at Bill, but I don’t think he noticed.”

Richie glanced around for Bill now. He’d gone and sat down at one of the many picnic tables at the rest stop, his chin in one hand. Knowing that he wasn’t going to get much better of an answer from Mike or Stan, Richie decided to just bite the bullet, walking up to Bill.

“What the fuck?” He asked, sitting down across from Bill at the table. Or rather, he flung himself into the seat; if he was going to have a tantrum, he might as well commit to it. “You’re avoiding me.”

The last three words were what got Bill’s attention. His eyes snapped to Richie’s own, and it felt like releasing a breath that had been building up pressure in Richie’s lungs.

“Well?” Richie asked. “Why?”

Bill glanced away again. “It’s nothing.”

“Bullshit.”

“Really--”

“Did I do something?” Richie cut off his dismissal. “When I was drunk, or something?” He tried to play this off, fixing Bill with a pseudo-serious look and lowering his voice. “Did I pinch your butt?”

Thankfully, Bill laughed. “No.” He said. “You didn’t do anything to my butt.”

“That’s a relief. Butt scenarios were like, concerns one through twelve on my list.” Now that Bill had loosened up slightly, Richie tried again. “What happened, then?”

Bill let out a breath. He looked down at the table, but this time he began to speak.

“I helped you back to our room last night, and you were really drunk, so you were kinda… Hanging on me, a lot. And when I was trying to put you on our-- t-the bed--” The slip-up stutter had Bill’s cheeks flushing-- “I kinda fell on top of you. And then you put your hands in my hair, and… And said you didn’t want me to get off of you.”

Bill’s face was incredibly red, and Richie could feel that his cheeks were burning too. Still, with Bill's reaction he'd been expecting worse, and he told Bill so.

“It’s not like I haven’t dragged you around before.” He said, trying to sound nonchalant, as though wrestling and hopelessly enamored and drunken clinging were roughly the same thing. He tried to pull another joke. “What, did I have a boner or something?”

“Yeah, a little.” Bill admitted, and while Richie was reeling from that, he continued. “I mean, I did too, a little bit.”

Oh. Well.

“I… Sorry.” Richie finally decided to say.

“It’s fine.”

“Well, it seems like it wasn’t fine, Billy Goat.”

“No, the...T-the problem was that I didn’t mind.”

“You…” Richie felt as though he’d been hit upside the head. “You gotta help me out here, dude. What the hell are you trying to say?”

“You know how Erika never liked you?” Bill asked, and Richie figured he should probably just give up on trying to predict where this conversation was going or he would actually give himself whiplash. “I never told you why.”

“You said she thought I was annoying.”

“Okay yeah, that was part of it. But I was dating her because I was trying to get over someone else, a guy I liked, and I think that seeing us together was what helped her figure out that I wasn’t entirely straight.”

Richie couldn’t help but snort out a laugh.

“She didn’t like me because what, she thought hanging out with me turned you gay?”

“She didn’t like you because you were the guy I was trying to get over, and she realized that the entire time we were dating, I never did.”

Richie couldn’t do more than sit there, dumbfounded, the sentence replaying itself relentlessly in his head. It was Bill breaking eye contact and glancing away that snapped Richie out of it.

“I, but… Never—you never said—”

“I never came out to you because I was worried that you’d see it.” Bill’s eyes were on his hands, on the rough wooden tabletop. “That you would notice how I felt.”

The guy I was trying to get over.

I never did.

“Hey, Bill?” Richie tried incredibly hard for casual. His tone missed by a mile. “Do you still like me?”

Bill looked up again. “Yeah.”

“Thank fucking god.” Richie said, then he surged forward and caught Bill’s face in a kiss.

It was clumsy, leaning all the way across the table, and yeah, ouch, Richie definitely had a splinter in one of his palms, but it was more than worth it to be kissing Bill Denbrough.

Bill pulled back, but not to speak or stop him; Bill tugged him forward until Richie was sitting up on the table then stood up too, wrapping his arms around Richie’s neck and pulling him in. He kissed Richie firmly, soundly, like he’d never done anything more important in his life, and it was all Richie had just to wrap his arms around Bill’s waist and revel in it.

After what felt like a concerningly long amount of time for Stan, but entirety not long enough for Richie, Stan and Mike resurfaced from the rest stop, and it was time to all pile back into the car. But, like when he first realized his crush, Richie felt again that he couldn’t stop touching Bill, didn’t want to, and now Bill completely indulged him.

“Richie and I are sitting in the back.” Bill said to Mike and Stan. “You guys stretch out in the middle seat, okay?”

“Oh god, don’t do anything gross back there.” Eddie whined, pulling his hat back down. “I’m not going to look, but remember that we can hear you.”

“How do you know that we’re going to be gross?” Richie asked innocently, Eddie just offering back a death glare. Though truly, Richie knew Eddie was right, what with the way Bill was already tugging at him, his lips already touching Richie’s neck.

“I like you.” Bill told him, blunt, honest, his voice completely free of nerves, and it made Richie so happy to hear.

“Yeah?”

“And you like me?”

“God, so much, dude.”

“Good. Took you fucking long enough.”

“Hey!” Richie protested, Bill beginning to laugh at him, and the delight on his face was an expression, a look, a feeling that Richie could already tell he would be trying to make Bill feel for the rest of his life. It wasn’t a task he minded; it was all he wanted to do, something he felt he'd been doing since he and Bill first met. He pressed a messy kiss to Bill’s cheek, getting a squirm and protesting laugh in response. So he did it to Bill’s other cheek, then his forehead, then his nose. He kept going, kissing Bill everywhere except his lips, until Bill was grappling with him in the seat, half trying to kiss him back and half trying to get away.

“Fuck off, Rich.” He finally said through laughs, and Richie leaned away.

“Oh? Oh really?”

“Really.”

“Bite me, Denbrough.”

So Bill did, leaning close and nipping at Richie’s bottom lip, and oh. That was new. That was good. There wasn’t much talking after that for the whole drive home.

[dearmrsawyer]

I like new years. i mean, it’s a bit stressy because it’s like ~omg~ another year is done and time is terrifying but i like the feeling of refreshment it brings. its kind of like waking up in the morning and starting a new day with fresh intentions, regardless of what happened yesterday. it’s just a concrete opportunity to sort yourself or hit reset on things and i like that clarity

my holiday hasn’t been as productive this year for a couple of reasons. a) most of the days were so hot that if you move you’ll die. b) i had an infection in one of my toes that hurt when i walked (it’s cleared up now tho!). c) i think i was more burnt out than i was during my last christmas holidays.

2018 was a heavy year work-wise. My normal schedule is Monday-Thursday. This was originally due to study, then it was in part so i had days to help my grand parents with stuff. Then it became more of a selfish thing where i just wanted the time to be mine, and i could afford to have it. But last year i worked a lot of 5-day weeks, simply because we had a lot more students and if i’m not there, they don’t have access to the library. I’d say at least 50% of the year i worked 5 days, probably more like 60-65%. I had a very productive year at work, but my time away from work was considerably less productive, mentally. I’d really come home and switch off. I ignored a lot of engaging content on tumblr because i just didn’t want to expend more energy when i was free. (there was other stuff going on in my life that was also taking up a tremendous amount of mental energy too, so there was even less time to build back up.)

when i saw the 2019 class schedule just before the Christmas break, i emailed upper management to say that there was no way i’d be able to work all the days i’d need to to make sure the library was open every day there was a class. a week later they told me they’d be adding another library staff member to work all the days that go beyond my usual Mon-Thurs schedule, which means! i will be able to regain balance in my life! i will have time to use brain cells again!

i don’t have an intention of revamping things in my life with 2019, but i am intent on engaging more critically and actively on here. over the last month i’ve reorganised my dash a bit. unfollowed content i found myself scrolling past every day, even though that has reduced my dash a lot. tried to pick up some blogs i’ve loved for a long time but not followed, to replace that stuff with content that will help me engage. i’m still seeking, but i am making progress. I don’t know if i’ll write more or less than i did last year, but i want to have my head in the game more. one thing i’ve been trying to teach myself for a long time now is that an idea doesn’t need to become a fully-fledged fic for it to be worth having. just a little tumblr drabble is enough of a thing. i didn’t do any of those last year because they require unprompted free thought, of which i had very little. 

i also want to lean even more into the community i’ve nestled into more and more as time goes by. i made a post a while ago thanking my fellow fandom writers for being part of this community i perceive and i sometimes think about just thanking all those people again because i really do sit regularly and just think how grateful i am to be in it, after years without it. writing really doesn’t mean anything to me if its not part of a community. inspiration doesn’t take root without it. i learnt that in my years between graduating uni, where i wrote within a class environment that fed you well, and finding 1d, where i felt like an observer of fandom for years before actually finding friends in it. this last 1 or 2 years has been an enormous gift and i just want to appreciate that and be part of it even more this year. 

i also want to just be more of a person on here. because of all that mental exhaustion i didn’t really make a lot of personal posts or little text posts. no time! no energy! i did all my expressing in tags which is somewhere i will continue to offer great effort lol, but i just want to be a bit more me as well. or, not be too tired to do so. 

[hifry]

Khel Arnhart: Origin

Sharing a first run chapter I wrote yesterday for my book The Rogue and the Renegade, please let me know what you think!

Khel propped his legs up on his desk and teetered back and forth on the legs of his chair as a long sigh escaped his lips. He let his eyelids fall as he circled his temples between his thumb and middle finger. Just as he found a moment of respite it was ripped away as the chair tipped back suddenly. He struggled to regain balance to no avail, smacking his head on a shelf of the bookcase behind him, and then falling the rest of the way to the hard, stone floor. His vision grew spotty and black for a moment when he heard footsteps approach from the open doorway.

“Ouch, that looked worse than I imagined,” came a smoothe, confident voice.

“Karine,” Khel hissed, “what’s your problem?”

“Just trying to have a little fun, brother.”

“Well I’m trying to focus and I can’t see how I will now with a lump the size of Elushia on my head.”

Karine’s lips pursed and slid to one side of her face, “Sorry, you’re just always so busy now. I guess I was feeling a little nostalgic.”

“Well next time you’re feeling nostalgic, I’d appreciate a warning.”

Karine giggled as Khel peaked at her with one eye and rubbed the growing swell on his skull. “I’ll go get some ice,” she said with a twirl out of the room.

She returned moments later with a large chunk of ice wrapped up in an embroidered handkerchief that was already dripping through. Khel had uprighted his chair and was sitting in it properly when she came in. He winced as she pulled up his chin-length hair with her icy fingers and applied the sopping cold remedy.

“Really, Karine,” He sighed as he adjusted to the temperature shock, “that was pretty rough, even for you.”

“I know, I know, I’m sorry. I wasn’t thinking.”

“Shall we fetch Gray later? We could go down to the creek like we used to.”

Karine’s furrowed brow relaxed in an instant and a toothy smile broke over her face as she nodded ‘yes.’

Karine left Khel to return to his studies, and before he knew it he looked up to find the sun low on the horizon, casting a golden glow on the white stone fireplace.

He stood, closing his books and stowing his writing utensils. “Kariiiine,” he called as he slid on a red-dyed leather jacket.

Her head popped out from her bedroom door just down and across the hallway, a wide grin painted from ear to ear. She stepped out wearing her horse-riding clothes, a favorite of Karine’s when they went adventuring outside the estate grounds. The two slipped out of the house easily, as being the second and third born meant their father’s attention lay just about anywhere but them, and they had never known the love of their mother. The mother that had died on the birthing bed the day they both arrived.

They found Gray sitting by the small pond outside the apartment where he lived with his father, the head of the estate guard. 

“We’re going down to the creek, want to come?” Karine announced unprompted.

The small, sandy-haired boy perked up at the invitation, “wouldn’t miss it.”

The three followed the tall stone wall that encompassed the grounds until they came upon a spot that had been relatively recently patched with new stone and mortar.

“I guess they finally noticed it,” Khel thought aloud.

“What do we do now?” Karine asked.

“Climb I guess.” 

They looked at each other, silently agreeing to the plan. Gray went over first with a helpful hoist from Karine and Khel. Karine went next, assisted by each on the way up and down. Khel scanned the immediate area until he had an idea. He used the back side of a small stable to leverage his way up where he found Karine’s hand waiting to grab him at the top. He gripped her palm tightly and pushed off the stable, throwing his left leg over the edge of the wall; however, the momentum didn’t stop. Khel slid forward, tumbling off the high wall and collapsing the tower of Karine and Gray. Khel lost his breath as his back hit the hard ground. They all laid there a minute as they regained their wits. 

“Getting back in is gonna suck,” Gray croaked as he rubbed a knot on his forehead where Karine’s boot struck him.

“We’ll worry about it later,” Khel answered.

The three stood up slowly, aching in various spots but resilient nonetheless.

The sun was setting now, pulling shadows over the landscape as it dropped below the plain. Grivon was a flat place, surrounded in all directions by tall golden grasses and limitless sky. Everywhere except the banks of the low-lying riverbed where various creeks and waterways that traveled the expansive continent merged into one to empty into the Bay of Elushia. Sprawling trees tangled into a canopy above the slow-flowing water. It felt to them like a different world altogether. The twilight filtered through the quivering leaves, making the water shimmer between the dancing shadows.

The three adolescents removed their shoes and stomped in the cold water, laughing and splashing each other as they had done so many times as children. But their fun halted when the echo of a twig snap bounced through the thicket. They all stood at attention, silently scanning the dense trees.

“Probably a fox or something,” Gray said softly, trying to ease the twins' minds.

“Yeah,” Khel agreed reluctantly, “probably.”

The mood was lost, but they weren’t yet ready to venture home, so they sat along the bank tossing rocks into the stream as they reminisced about the times they had no studies to attend to, no grand plans for their futures, just the freedom to play and prank and cry over scraped knees.

“We can’t hold a candle to Euen, but our father would still see us hold positions we care nothing for,” Karine lamented. “Embroidery and a marriage of influence, that’s all I’m good for.”

“Fuck him, Karine, you can do whatever you want,” Khel projected. “You’re a fantastic rider, you should pursue that.”

“He’ll never allow it, it’s only good for getting me out of his hair.”

“That can’t be true,” Gray interjected.

“You don’t get it, Gray, at least you want to walk in your father’s shoes, at least he wants you,” Khel bit back.

Gray lowered his head and wrapped his arms around his knees. Karine shot a look at her brother.

“I—Sorry,” Khel started. “It’s just—.” He was cut off as another sound alerted them. A single twig snap, then another, and then many all at once. Khel strained his eyes to see through the dark thicket when a firm hand grabbed him by the hair and pulled his head back roughly.

“Run!” Khel called out, watching as Gray pulled Karine up from the ground and took off.

Khel felt the cold bite of a blade on his neck, he felt warm blood pooling up as it pressed and slid inward.

“Not that one! The girl.” A deep voice hissed from a few feet away.

Khel’s head was forced up to meet the eye of a rough-looking man inspecting him. He grunted, pulling the knife away and letting it slide back through the gash on Khel’s neck. He tossed the boy down hard, concussing him on the river rocks before following after the others now tailing his sister and best friend. Khel coughed and grasped his neck, not a lethal wound, but a deep one nonetheless. His head spun and his vision blurred, but he forced himself up onto two feet and stumbled after them.

“Kariiine,” he called hoarsely, blood trickling down his fingers and soaking his shirt.

He could barely make out a tree from a man, images of his surroundings fractured and blurred together. He staggered forward, stepping through brambles and cutting his face on stray branches as he went when he heard a cry up ahead.

“No!,” the voice broke as it screamed.

“Gray,” Khel whispered, his pace quickening.

A thud reverberated through the trees, as Karine’s body fell face-first into the brook. The men retreated as quickly as they had come and Gray pushed Karine by the shoulder so her face was toward the sky. Her eyes were empty, and her neck cut from edge to edge. 

Khel stumbled into the clearing and fell to his knees beside Karine. His eyes welled up with tears and he howled like never before.

“K-Karine, Karine no,” He cupped her face, smearing the blood from his neck onto her cheek.

“Khel, you’re hurt,” Gray moved in to check him but was slapped back.

“Why did they do this?” He asked through sobs, “What was the reason?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know,” Gray repeated.

“You had a head start, why didn’t you get away?”

“A root.” Gray choked, “w-we tripped and they grabbed her. I-I couldn’t get to her in time. I’m sorry.”

Khel went silent and stared back at Karine. He closed her eyelids and shut his own in a silent vow.

“You’re really hurt, Khel, let me help.”

Khel didn’t respond, but he didn’t refuse it when Gray ripped the sleeve off his tunic and fashioned it like a bandage around his neck, now caked with layers of dark red. 

“Why didn’t they kill me too?” Khel whispered under his breath.

This time Gray was silent, neither of them had the answer. Khel hoisted Karine’s body into his arms and started back toward the estate as Gray followed obediently behind. The boys entered through the main gate where two guards scrambled to find their superior, one Lucen Gray.

“Go home, Gray,” Khel said as they walked toward the main house.

“But I—,”

“It’s a family matter now, don’t get involved.”

“As you say,” Gray stopped and redirected himself toward the small cottage on the northeast side.

Khel reached the main house before the guardsmen, carrying Karine through the threshold. He set her body down gently on the long table in the middle of the room when the sound of conversation carried from the drawing room. 

“The formal appointment will happen tomorrow before the council and a public announcement will follow at the top of the week.”

“You’ve done well for yourself, and for your family, Euen.”

“I would not be here if not for you, father.”

“Perhaps, but you’ve gone far beyond what your mother or I had ever hoped. We’ll gather the estate to celebrate tomorrow evening, go on and get some rest for now.”

Khel heard his elder brother stand and inferred the deep bow before the door opened and a brawny, uniformed Euen entered the hall.  “Brother,” his eyes widened at the sight of Khel stained red, but narrowed again in rather short succession. “What’s happened?” He extended a hand toward Khel’s neck. 

Khel jerked back on one foot, relatively covering his neck with his own hand, “I’m fine, it’s Karine.”

Euen looked over at the body on the table when the boys’ father joined them at the edge of the hall.

“What is going on?” He asked coldly, seemingly uninterested in the answer. 

Khel pointed toward the table, “Karine was murdered.”

Khel’s father glanced at the table and then back at him, adjusting his coat before he spoke, “But you were spared?”

“They were targeting her specifically, they let me go when they realized.”

“I see,” the large, stoic man paused.

“Who would do such a thing?” Khel continued, “they were definitely following someone’s order”

“Likely roving bandits, looking for easy loot from a noble girl,” Euen interjected.

“But they didn’t steal anything, they were looking for her and when they found her they slit her throat.”

Euen winced at the mental image.

“Something about this is all wrong,” Khel shot a look up at Euen who was standing tall, not panicked, not distraught. “If word ever got out about her propensity for magework your position in the Magisterial Court would be threatened.”

“Do not dare make such accusations, Boy,” his father’s voice boomed. Khel recoiled, his body teetering on fight or flight.

“We will make funeral preparations in the morning. Move her to the cold cellar.” Their father motioned at Euen to do the task with a swing of his finger.

“Yes, Father.” Euen avoided his gaze, out of fear or respect Khel did not know.

“And you,” the older man spoke again, pointing at Khel. “You will continue with your studies after the memorial services conclude.”

“What about mourning?” Khel argued.

The vein in his father’s temple pulsed so hard it seemed it might explode, “you would do well to watch your tongue. Your studies will continue the day after next or you will serve as a stable boy on these grounds for the rest of your days.”

Khel kept silent, but glared daggers into his Father’s eyes. The man stormed off down the hall, leaving Khel to watch Euen carry Karine downstairs.

“Euen,” he said quietly. “Tell me honestly, who killed Karine?”

Euen tucked his chin as he looked back, his face was flushed and sick-looking. “I don’t know,” he choked, “I’m glad you’re alright.”

In his bedroom, Khel cleaned off the dry blood from his neck and chest with a wet sponge and threw his blood-soaked tunic into the fire. It flung sparks into the room and almost smothered the fire until the flames regained strength and consumed the fabric in an instant. Khel sat on the floor in front of the fireplace and leaned back on one arm. He took a deep breath in and exhaled long and controlled. He closed his eyes and rolled his head, exposing the gash on his neck.  He reached up, grazing his fingertips lightly over the split skin. The wound was clotted now, but still sensitive. When he opened his eyes his arm gave out and he fell awkwardly onto the floor. A pale white figure stood at the window, staring emotionlessly at him.

“Gray,” Khel said exasperated. He stood and unlatched the tall pane, opening it outward as Gray started. “What are you doing here, Gray?”

“I…came to check on you,” he said hollowly, “but once I got here I didn’t know what to say.”

“So you just stared at me through my window?” 

“Sorry,” Gray said softly.

“Wanna come in?”

Gray looked up and a small smile crept up the corner of his mouth. He crawled in through the open window and sat beside Khel as they watched the flames lick the chimney.

“Listen Gray, can I trust you?” Khel started.

Gray looked over at the boy, a warm light cast on half his face, the other half shrouded in shadows. He nodded, “I am duty bound to serve your family, of course you can.” 

“No I mean, can I trust you. Not my family, me.”

Gray straightened up, showing Khel he was serious, “yes,” was all he replied.

Khel paused to gather his thoughts, “I am led to believe it was my father who ordered Karine’s murder.”

Gray’s mouth fell open, “why would he do such a thing?”

“To keep her abilities quiet, ensuring Euen a seat on the council as High Commander.”

Gray was silent as he processed the accusation. Khel continues over his thoughts, “I need you by my side, Gray. For what is to come will be the most difficult times I’ve ever faced.”

“I’ll always be here,” Gray said, staring at the flames reflected in the other boy’s dark eyes.

Khel’s face relaxed, “thanks,” he said softly, resting his head on Gray’s shoulder. “Let’s not go back to the creek for a while.”

[thedarklordmegatron]

Cor/Regis pretty please

I’ve never really considered this ship before but now I have I’m in love! They work so well!!!! @kay-mika I’m sorry this didn’t go up yesterday, but I hope this is okay!

Send me a ship and I’ll tell you

who hogs the duvet

It’s all out war between them every evening. After accidentally tearing one duvet and spending an hour laughing over it, they both agreed on buying two separate duvets. That being said, despite having one each, someone still ends up shivering at 3 o’clock in the morning because the other decided he needs two duvets to sleep!

who texts/rings to check how their day is going

Whenever he has a spare moment Regis likes to drop Cor a text, trying to find out how his day is going and more importantly if he’s insulted and/or maimed any Councillors/Nobles since he saw him last. 

who’s the most creative when it comes to gifts

Regis comes up with the best gifts. Cor’s never really been one for material goods, though he won’t say no to some fluffy socks and warm jumpers (He can’t stand being cold, for reasons he’s never told Regis). So naturally Regis takes this as a challenge. It started during their roadtrip and has carried on ever since, some years he’s successful and others are complete failures - not that Cor ever tells him, but Regis knows. 

One of his most creative and emotional gifts came in the form of a single brown envelope. From a very young age Cor has wondered about his parents, unable to remember them beyond the colour of their hair. It had taken years of research and far too much money, but he’d tracked them down - or at least, his staff had. He’d accompanied Cor to the graveyard the same afternoon and held him that evening as he cried.

who gets up first in the morning

Cor is always the first one up. He doesn’t even need an alarm, years of conditioning mean he can’t physically sleep in past 7am at the very latest. While Regis sleeps, he’ll stroll around the apartments, cleaning up any remaining messes from the evening before and preparing breakfast. Three mugs of coffee, one for himself and two for Regis, alongside various fresh fruits and yogurts. The smell of the coffee is usually enough to draw the King out of his bed, even if he does look half-dead. 

who suggests new things in bed

Surprisingly enough, or perhaps not, Cor is anything but vanilla in bed. The first time Regis discovered this side of him, he nearly had a heart attack from the shock rather than anything else. Not that he’s complaining. Most of the time Cor will suggest things when their either eating dinner or reading before going to sleep - either way, he always does it with a straight face as though they were discussing reports. 

who cries at movies

It depends on the film! Regis is most likely to blubber when something emotional happens, especially if it concerns children, but Cor has been known to cry at certain films. Most of the time it’s war films that get to him, most hitting far too close to home, however if it involves an animal dying or going missing you can bet there’ll be tears in his eyes.

who gives unprompted massages

Cor is the King of unprompted massages. Regis will be relaxing on the couch, his legs stretched out in front of him while he reads or watches the TV, when Cor will appear out of nowhere. He carefully shifts Regis’ legs out of the way before sliding onto the couch, pulling his legs into his lap and carefully massaging his right leg. He’s well aware of how much pain Regis is in daily and takes pleasure in helping him however he can, even if it’s something as simple as a leg massage.

who fusses over the other when they’re sick

It’s not often that Cor gets ill, he has a pretty impressive immune system, but when he does get ill it’s usually something very serious. Most of the time ending up with him in the infirmary for a week or so. When this happens Regis will send as many hours as possible by his bedside, waving away Clarus and the doctors when they try to get him to go back to his apartments - if only for a shower. Even once Cor is deemed healthy enough to go home, Regis is constantly hovering around him, watching for any signs of a potential relapse. Cor was once forced to climb out of the kitchen window and scale the side of the Citadel to escape Regis’ watchful gaze. 

who gets jealous easiest

He’ll deny it if anyone ever points it out, but Cor gets insanely jealous, not that many people actively flirt with the King of Lucis. However, occasionally a noblewoman or man, will try their luck and if Clarus isn’t trying to usher them away, Cor will be there in a heartbeat. Hovering behind Regis and glaring at the offending party until they slink away.

who has the most embarrassing taste in music

Regis has the absolute worst taste in music. Anyone who has ever had the pleasure of going through his CD collection or his music library will tell you that. Cor absolutely refuses to let him be the DJ when they’re driving, the last time he did he came away from the trip with ‘Spice Up Your Life’ stuck in his head for days.

who collects something unusual

Cor collects bottlecaps. He has a small chest full of them that’s he’s picked up in his travels. Whenever he returns from covert missions, Regis knows that there’ll be a small bag full of them tucked away somewhere. He isn’t one for proudly showing off his spoils, but he also won’t complain when Regis sits beside him while he sorts them out and checks for any doubles. 

who takes the longest to get ready

Since becoming King Regis usually takes over an hour to get ready in the morning, even with Cor’s help. In the beginning it would take them forty minutes to get his regalia on, what with the frankly ridiculous number of layers. However as the years go on and the Ring takes its toll on his body, it takes him longer. There are times when they have to stop halfway through so he can catch his breathe and let his muscles rest for a moment, and when this happens Cor will kneel in front of him and massage the sore limbs until Regis feels strong enough again.

who is the most tidy and organised

Cor is an absolute clean freak, he cannot stand things being out of place and don’t get him started on dirty surfaces. Having spent most of his childhood living on the streets in permanent filth, desperately bundling up his meagre possessions in the corner of whatever alley he’d made his home that night, he refuses to allow himself to go back to that. Six knows how many things he’d lost by accidentally leaving them behind or losing them amongst the rubbish. As a result he loves having everything organised and in it’s place, knowing that if he needs it, it’ll still be there.

who gets most excited about the holidays

Regis is like a child when it comes to the holidays. It’s like he saves up his energy specifically for those few days. He goes all out on the decorations. The Citadel might have a light dusting of festive cheer, but their apartments is another thing entirely. It’s like Regis bought an entire store’s worth of decorations and was determined to use absolutely everything, including the confetti on the table. Birthdays? Confetti. Shiva’s Day? Confetti. Astrals Eve? So. much. damn. confetti. It gets everywhere and he honestly hates it but he’ll accept it if it makes Regis happy.

who is the big spoon/little spoon

They switch on a regular basis. It depends on who wants what that night. Most of the time however, Regis enjoys being the little spoon.

who gets most competitive when playing games and/or sports

Cor hates losing. No, he detests it. Even when playing a simple child’s game with the Prince and his friends, he refuses to go easy on them. Regis gave up on attempting to get him to loosen up years ago. 

who starts the most arguments

It’s not often that they argue, but when they do it gets nasty. Regis is the one to start the majority of the arguments, primarily because he’s so concerned over how willingly Cor puts himself in danger. He loves his partner and couldn’t imagine his life without him, but sometimes he wants nothing more than to slap some sense into him. Cor, of course, takes offence at being told he’s reckless and defends himself which just continues to get nastier until Clarus or whatever Guard is on duty is forced to physically separate them.

who suggests that they buy a pet

Regis mentions it every now and then, hinting that a cat or dog might be good company for him when Cor’s away on missions, but nothing ever comes from it. They’re just suggestions because while both would like a pet, Cor having had a pet rat when he was younger (his only friend), they know it’s not a feasible idea. They work too much and would hardly have the time to give an animal the attention and love it would need.

what couple traditions they have

Every Thursday without fail, so long as Cor is actually in Insomnia, they’ll finish work by 5pm at the very latest - claiming important meetings - and meet back at home. Most of the time Cor will already be there, dressed in his comfiest sweatpants and baggiest t-shirt, preparing dinner. Regis will shuffle into the bedroom and slip on his pyjamas before joining Cor. They’ll finish up cooking and retreat to the couch with their plates and glasses of wine. While Regis settles himself on the couch, Cor will close up the curtains. Once all that’s out of the way, they’ll pick a TV series to binge and spend the rest of the evening there. 

what tv shows they watch together

The Secret Lives of Glaives - A parody show about what the Kingsglaive get up to in their spare time. Though if Cor’s face is anything to go by, not all of the stories are made up.

Chocobos, Green and Chicks Oh My! - A documentary on every day life at Wiz’s Chocobo Ranch. They’d been there once in their youth and ever since then Regis has loved the birds, and if Cor’s completely honest with himself he does love watching the Chicks grow up. 

There’s a tonne of other tv shows they binge regularly, but those are their favourite two.

what other couple they hang out with

There literally are no other couples they can ‘hang out’ with. The closest they ever get to it is formal dinners with other nobles, though Cor will often wriggle his way out of those. 

how they spend time together as a couple

Outside of their official duties, they love just lazing around together. There’s always so much pressure on their shoulders that it’s nice to just do nothing, be it cuddling or attempting the 5000 piece puzzle Noctis bought Regis two birthday’s ago. (Cor swears that the thing is evil and the pieces are cursed)

who made the first move

It was actually Cor who made the first move. It took him a while to realise that Regis was subtly flirting with him, and that the platonic hugs lasted a little longer than those shared between friends. Finally, with a promise for Clarus to give them an hour alone during the New Years Celebrations, Cor makes his move. He and Regis were quietly talking on the Royal Balcony attached to the Ballroom when Clarus shut the doors. Regis had been confused by the action until Cor had grabbed hold of his face and said ‘You can fire me afterwards if you don’t feel the same’ before kissing him. Needless to say no one was fired and neither man spent the evening alone.

who brings flowers home

Regis brings all sorts of flowers to Cor. Sometimes he’ll collect bouquets from the Citadel’s gardens, the gardeners helping him select one that conveys love and affection while also looking visual appealing. Other times he’ll convince Clarus or his guard for the day to sneak him out to the nearest Florist. 

The owner has long since gotten used to the King showing up out of the blue and makes sure to take him into the back room to keep him hidden from any passing customers. Regis loves his trips there because of the various smells and the general pleasant feeling he gets being surrounded by so many flowers. These bouquets are always larger than those from the gardens, and are filled with bright colours with a Lily or two hidden amongst the others - they’re Cor’s favourites. Each bouquet brings a smile to Cor’s face and takes pride of place in the centre of their living room until the last bloom dies.

who is the best cook

Cor is by far the best cook! He loves experimenting with different food combinations and coming up with some recipes of his own. Regis is always happy to try his creations, often perching himself on one of the stools in the kitchen in order to watch him work. (And if he gets to nom on the extras while Cor is cooking then that’s just a bonus!)

[glitchinthesystemspiderbyte]

[52] Glitch in the System - The Beat Goes On (Pt. 2)

Sorry for the delay. E legitimately forgot what day it was because it’s snowmageddon and yesterday she got a very substantial and painful tattoo. Here’s Part 1 if you missed it!

We’ll also be streaming tonight around 7pm EST if you’re bored and want to hear us eat popcorn. We also take fic requests in real time so hit us up!

The dog park happens.

“Hey hey!” Lúcio announced as Sombra and Widowmaker emerged from their room, Sombra rubbing the sleep from her eyes in pyjamas, Widowmaker already dressed for the day and as alert as ever. “You lot like pancakes?”

“Yes,” Sombra replied immediately, leaving Widow’s side in a mad dash for the kitchen.

“You made us breakfast?” Widowmaker said, looking suspicious.

“Well yeah,” Lúcio laughed, peering out from the kitchen. He was wearing a dark green apron with his signature frog logo on it, and the scent of warm cinnamon wafted behind him. “That’s what a good host does.”

“Oh,” Widow replied, and Sombra could see her struggling to reconcile his unprompted kindness. The hesitation was obvious enough that Lúcio began to look a bit nervous until Widow unfurrowed her brows and looked up. “Pancakes are fine.” Then, to herself. “Why is it always pancakes?”

“Breakfast is ready, then!” he said, smile resuming its usual spot across his face. “Maple or hot fudge?”

“Hot fudge?” Sombra asked incredulously. “Excuse me?”

“Yeah, right?” he grinned, handing Sombra a plate. “I was a maple boy myself until Hana turned me onto the idea of hot fudge over banana pancakes. Wanna give it a shot?”

“Sí absolutamente,” Sombra said without missing a beat, taking the banana he offered her next.

“I am not that adventurous,” Widow said as Lúcio passed her a plate. “I will be fine with maple.”

“Nothing wrong with the old standby,” he nodded. “Y’all sit, I’ll bring out the accoutrements.” He added a French accent to the last word, vanishing before Widow could judge him appropriately for it.

Breakfast was an easy affair - pancakes, some fresh local fruits, and a mix of tea and coffee offerings. Conversation was even easier - a feat Sombra missed from her time in Dorado - and they idled for a bit after finishing until Danu made it readily apparent that she needed to be let out.

“Anyone want to go on a walk?” Lúcio asked. Danu was the first to reply, with an exuberant bark and a wagging tail, and Sombra nodded as well.

“I could use some sun,” she said, glancing outside. It looked beautiful, if warm, and she missed the reliable muggy heat of home.

“I will finalize the plans for our departure?” Widowmaker suggested, raising an eyebrow.

“Good plan, araña,” Sombra agreed. Lúcio snapped a leash onto Danu’s dollar and they were off.

It was late enough that the sun was shining, and early enough that the full weight of the oppressive midday Brazilian heat had yet to settle on the mountainside community. Danu walked nicely on her leash, sticking close to Lúcio’s side as they strolled down the smooth walkway that looped around the neighborhood. She didn’t tug at the leash once, and Sombra marveled yet again at how well Lúcio had managed to train her despite his impressively full calendar. The guy was booked solid for the next month - they’d just managed to catch him in time. She’d checked before asking to stay with him, of course.

“Where we headed?” Sombra asked, hands at her sides as they strolled along the walking path beside the road.

“Dog park down the way,” he said as a hovercar ambled by them. “Danu loves it so long as Bella isn’t there.”

“Bella?” Sombra asked, looking around. The neighborhood was a far cry from the favelas she knew Lúcio had grown up in, but a general feeling of camaraderie seemed to exist even within these spaced out structures. Folks outside tending their gardens or walking their dogs waved and called out to him by name, and he had a smile and personal greeting for each person they passed.

“One of the local dogs. Young boxer. Good pup, but a little rambunctious for Danu.” He chuckled and patted her head. “She might be big, but she’s a giant baby.”

“Poor girl.”

“Eh, she puts up with a lot,” he grinned. They turned a corner into what appeared to be a community park, and a few minutes later reached a large fenced in plot of land with several dogs playing as their accompanying humans chatted along the sides.

Lúcio unsnapped Danu’s leash and, after looking back for his nod of approval, she dashed off to join the others by the agility course and robotic fetch machines. One of the smaller dogs was yapping angrily at a robot as it held a ball out of reach, slowly winding back in preparation to pitch it into the distance. As the bot’s arm snapped and the ball flew, Danu trampled the small, eager pup and nabbed the ball before it even hit the ground.

“Oops,” Sombra said, grinning as she and Lúcio found a bench to sit on. “And you said she was a baby.”

“Even babies can be bullies,” he replied, amused. “She’s a gentle giant though.”

“Tell that to the terrier she just stepped on.”

Lúcio chuckled to himself as a large wolfhound raced by them, barking at another dog escaping with its toy. “That’s Breno,” he said as the hound passed. “He’s got a good spirit, even though he usually ends up being the punching bag of the park. Something about his size just makes him a target for attention it seems.”

“And Danielle thought Danu was a horse,” Sombra said, watching Breno lope hopefully over to the dachshund worrying his stuffed banana.

“His human’s over there,” Lúcio said, pointing as a diminutive woman sitting at a table eating a sandwich. “The irony thickens.”

“This is neat. I’ve never been to a dog park,” Sombra mused, leaning forward on her hands. “Weird, considering how much traveling I’ve done.”

“You don’t have a dog, do you?”

“Nope, just a very personable cat.”

“No occasion to visit the local dog parks then, I’d wager.” The conversation stalled slightly, and they turned their attention to the variety of happy canines and their companions. “Where have you traveled, anyway?” Lúcio asked casually after a few moments, following her eyes as she watched the dogs run.

“Just, you know,” she shrugged, suddenly uncomfortable and acutely aware that her open-ended comment had left her open to questions. “Around.” She’d let their easy camaraderie put her off guard, and she wasn’t ready with a compelling lie. A part of her, she noticed with a slow rising horror, didn’t even feel like trying.

“For any reason?” he pressed, and she noticed he was pointedly not making eye contact.

“Fun, I guess,” she replied slowly, racking her brain to come up with something believable. Traveling artist? Too flowery. Mobile consultant? Too dry. International IT? Ew.

“Fun?” Lúcio looked over at her with a curious expression on his face as she spoke, and she felt warning bells go off in her head. Familiar, gut-wrenching warning bells.

“And work,” she continued awkwardly, settling on a nondescript mixture of her vague train of thought. “I benefit from continuous business trips.”

Lúcio raised an eyebrow at her, draping an arm over the back of the bench. She saw him cast a glance around before he leaned slightly closer with a slow-dawning smirk on his face.

“Business trips, huh?” he said conspiratorially. “Is that just what you named them or are they called that in your dossiers from Talon, too?”

She sat up straight, an icy fear crawling up her spine like a spider. “What do you mean?” she asked, feeling any effort at denying the claim slipping through her teeth.

“Oh come on, Sombra,” he rolled his eyes. “I’ve known for a while.”

“How?” she asked in such a manner that Lúcio’s smile faltered ever so slightly.

“You weren’t exactly discreet,” he said, shrugging off his concern. “Hyper-cybridized former Los Muertos hacker involved in the LumériCo break-in? An uncanny knowledge of technology and networking? Mysteriously always surrounded by bright purple hard light screens with no CPU in sight?”

“Oops,” Sombra replied, remembering their several video chats wherein she took almost no precautions against what Lúcio had seen, only what he might find should he attempt to tap her connection. Programming error, she sighed to herself.

“I mean, I’ve read the Overwatch briefs.” He shrugged, seeming far too lackadaisical for a guy who just casually accused her of being involved in international terrorism.

“How -” she asked, her curiosity momentarily surpassing her worry. “How did you get classified briefings?”

“Hana,” he replied, offering her a rueful half smile. “She likes to make fun of how much they resemble StarCraft strategies. They might be full of propaganda and hyperbole, but some details stick out.”

“Like the brainwashed blue assassin?”

“Yeah, like that.”

Sombra’s brain raced, not an uncommon occurrence in itself, but this time it was tinged with an unfamiliar panic. Lúcio was a friend - a valued friend as it turned out, and no one in their right mind would keep her around once they knew who she really was.

Would she have to kill him? Somehow, the idea of sending Widowmaker after Lúcio made her more sick than her decision to remove Miguel as a security threat, even though - all things considered - Lúcio was a far greater concern than the low-status errand boy she once knew as a child.

In all honesty, she didn’t think she could do it, no matter what the consequences. Not now. She had a friend, and the importance of that had settled into her bones.

“I don’t have a great answer to this,” she said morosely, her weak response more palatable than the growing silence between them. Danu barked in the distance, the dog oblivious to what was happening a few feet away. “I did what I had to.”

“You had to work for Talon?” he asked, hands in his pockets as he looked off where Danu was jumping around happily. His tone was mildly accusatory, and while she bristled against it, she also had trouble finding fault in his distaste. She wasn’t a big fan of it herself.

“I didn’t have to,” she shrugged, upset at the turn the conversation had made. “And I only kind of work for them. It’s more an arrangement of convenience.”

“But Danielle…” he said. “She works for them.”

Sombra’s expression turned bitter. “She was created by them; she had no choice.”

“She’s still a murderer.”

“So am I.”

“But she likes to kill.”

“Well I love her anyway.”

Lúcio stopped and looked at her finally, smiling softly. “You what?”

“Shut up.”

“Sorry, I didn’t hear you.”

Sombra looked over at Lúcio to see his typical impish grin in place replacing the uncertainty that had lived there moments before. Offering a smaller one in return, she smacked him on the shoulder. “Jerk.”

“You know I only drop the truth.”

They laughed, but Sombra could feel the looming elephant in the room threaten to smother them again. She decided to beat it to the punch. “Listen, I know I’ve done some questionable - ok, shitty things, and that maybe my methods aren’t always the most...ethical. I enjoy manipulating those in power, because I can, and because I’m tired of watching the world be run by a handful of corrupt individuals with egoes to feed. But I swear on my mother’s grave,” she insisted, holding up a hand, “I am doing it for a greater good. I just…” she sighed. “Might not know exactly what that is yet. Not completely.”

Lúcio put a hand on her shoulder and squeezed it comfortingly. “We never do, do we? I didn’t know stealing my sound barrier would work; I just knew something had to be done, because things were bad and that was the only truth I knew for certain. Chances were just as good the Vishkar would have leveled the favela and everyone in it as punishment for my actions. There’s precedent for that, after all.”

“You’d certainly have made a convenient scapegoat,” Sombra agreed.

“Sure would have. As luck had it, the people had my back and were willing to put their bodies on the line for their freedom. Without that?” he shrugged. “I would have just been another corpse thrown against the cold metal shell of the Vishkar machine.”

“Survival’s a hell of a motivator, isn’t she?”

“Sure is.” He scratched the back of his head. “Listen, we all make choices for a reason, and I might not agree with all of yours, but I am the last person going to tell you that you shouldn’t have made them. Besides,” he chuckled. “I like having a friend to talk about this stuff with.”

“Yeah,” Sombra said, feeling uncharacteristically chagrined. “It’s been a while since I had a friend.”

“Me too, man,” Lúcio nodded in agreement.

Sombra scoffed. “You’re a fuckin’ liar. You’re man of the hour here - everyone knows you and loves you.” A part of her couldn’t help but feel hurt whenever she thought of how easily her role in LumériCo’s downfall was dismissed as an act of terrorism by those outside her country. At least Brazil loved Lúcio for what he did.

To her surprise, Lúcio’s response was laughter. “Yeah, I get how you might think that. Everyone does.” He whistled for Danu and the tall animal stopped worrying the stick she had pinned to the ground, ears perked up as he called her over. “I don’t want to sound like some ungrateful guy with too much fame, but sometimes it can get a bit lonely in the spotlight.” He shrugged, snapping Danu’s leash back onto her red collar as she loped to his side. “Folks forget where the music came from. I still got scars from where I dragged myself up out of the dirt, and I could have been killed stealing that Vishkar tech.” He looked at Sombra, his expression intent, and a little bit sad. “Sometimes you gotta break some rules to do what’s right, but the folks buying and promoting my music don’t always want to hear that, you dig?”

Sombra looked away and smiled. “Yeah,” she said. “I dig.” She let her mind wander back to her time in Dorado, after she’d left Los Muertos and vanished into anonymity. “Some fucking old American soldier comes in and says Los Muertos is a criminal gang to be purged, and then Overwatch labels me a terrorist for trying to take down a greedy corporate monster bleeding my people dry. But who stopped them in the end?” Her subsequent laugh grew bitter. “Those same criminals and terrorists.”

Lúcio laughed softly. “The Vishkar gave me a similar label.”

“Guess the only difference between us were sweet beats,” Sombra replied, smiling.

“Well I mean you also do work for a terrorist organization.” Sombra glared at him, but it didn’t hold up against his wide smile. “What?”

“Okay, that’s fair.”

“Hey,” Lúcio said, sobering a bit. “Listen, I understand why you do what you do, and why you’ve done what you’ve done. I might not entirely get all your methods,” he smirked, “but I certainly understand your motivations.”

“Thank you,” she replied, swallowing. She felt an uneasy relief wash over her. “I suppose it goes without saying that if you tell anyone I’ll have to kill you?” She meant it as a joke, but considering recent events, it was difficult to commit entirely to the bit.

Luckily, Lúcio took it in stride. “Are you kidding me?” He shook his head. “You know way too many of my personal secrets at this point. I ain’t telling no one who you are.”

Standing up from the bench, he offered Sombra his hand. “I got your back, ok? You’re just going to have to trust me on that.”

Sombra looked up at the face smiling knowingly down at her. It was unlike her to take people at their word; against her very nature to engage in the roulette game of trust. She’d survived by accepting no compromise on the matter, protecting her anonymity with a ruthless cunning that left no room for exploitation.

Except that she’d let Widowmaker in - a genetically engineered assassin with limited emotional savvy who all things considered should have turned her in a dozen times. She’d let Gabriel in, too, if to a lesser extent, and the man could have ruined her life with the stroke of a pen if so inclined.

So what was one more open door if the person on the other side was willing to keep it safe?

Taking his hand, she let him pull her up into a hug. It felt nice, being close to someone that wasn’t Widow.

“All right,” she said, stepping back. Danu barked at them, and she interpreted it as approval, and the words came out easier than she ever would have thought. “I trust you.”

*Read from the beginning or check out our intro post! All stories tagged under #glitchfic. Table of contents located here.

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You Lied Your Way Into A Job As A Surgeon! Can You Avoid Killing Anyone Long Enough To Collect Your First Paycheck?

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Surgeons. The masters of the flesh. The gatekeepers of the organs. The doctors who get to shave patients.

These are the green-wearing gods who know that the human body is but a chessboard, and that the nipples are the king and queen, and the belly button is the opposing king or queen.

Today, finally, you are beginning your journey as one of them.

Sounds sweet.

You have already gone through the arduous process of becoming a surgeon. After calling the hospital over and over every day for three weeks straight and praising Tylenol in the deepest voice you could muster to whoever picked up, being hung up on by countless doctors and nurses, you finally hit the big time.

Yesterday, you managed to get the chief of medicine on the line, who offered you a job after a mere 50 minutes of you bellowing to her about the white-and-red pill. Congratulations!

Thank you. I am a surgeon.

If you eat eight Tylenol fast, that’s one rabies shot.

Eating any more than three Tylenols in church is a SIN unless you brought enough for EVERYONE.

Okay. Being a surgeon is sweet as hell. You get to wear patients’ clothes around a hospital once the chemicals put them to sleep, you can eat as many tortilla chips as you want, and you can hide all of your favorite DVDs and family heirlooms inside toxic waste bins, the one place thieving pricks are too grossed out by to steal from.

That all sounds great.

Skittles are to math what Tylenol is to alchemy.

Tossing Tylenol into an above-ground pool is basically the same idea as tossing Tylenol into an in-ground pool.

George Harrison wrote three songs about Tylenol in the days just before his passing that his estate will not release.

Cool. But the best part of being a surgeon, bar none, is that incredible surgeon paycheck.

It’s no secret that surgeons are paid well, as every single day at 8 p.m., hardworking surgeons all over the world reap the fruits of their labor: a plastic bag filled with $600, given to them by their chief of medicine on their way out the door, in addition to a goodnight kiss on the forehead.

Hell yeah.

Exactly. So now that you’re a surgeon, you better do everything in your power to make it your $600 payday, because there is one universal stipulation that could jam you up: If a surgeon kills someone, everything completely goes to shit.

1) For starters, once a surgeon kills someone, they are NEVER allowed back in a hospital, ever. Even if you just want to go to hang out or to meet new lovers.

2) Your professional reference completely goes out the window. If a new job calls to ask about you, instead of a recommendation, the HR department hands the phone off to the absolute sickest pervert patient they have, and lets them air out whatever they’ve got kickin’ around up in their minds.

3) Lastly—and this one is the worst of all—you don’t get paid a dime, which would mean all of your efforts to become a surgeon were for NOTHING.

So, if you want to get to that sweet paycheck, you’re going to have to make it through one entire day as a surgeon without killing someone.

I’m excited to be a surgeon who kills no one.

The hospital. The place where people come when they are bored to take off their pants and scream. This will be your new surgeon home, and today is your first day of work. As far as anyone inside is concerned, you are now a fully qualified surgeon, so if you want those 600 clams, you’re going to have to hold your own and stay off everyone’s radar.

Enter the hospital.

“Please give me a surgery.”

Ah, shit. A sick kid is waiting for you right inside the lobby, and he looks all kinds of fucked up.

“I need a surgery pronto. I am dying, and it feels like none of my bones are connected to my other bones. I also have a rash that comes and goes. Please do surgery to me with your other doctor friends.”

Quietly tell the kid that he’d be doing you a huge favor by asking another doctor for help on this one, and hope that he’ll be cool.

Piss your pants and bail to the bathroom.

“If you don’t give me a surgery right now, I will scream. I will scream so loud and for so long, and I will point at you the whole time. It will go on for so long that the rest of the doctors here will have no choice but to send you to jail.”

Piss your pants and bail to the bathroom.

That was close. You’ve pissed your pants real good, and now you’re in the bathroom splashing your pants with water, the best way to clean pants that you’ve urinated in.

I know that. My pants are now much wetter, but not as much with piss as with water, so they’re practically good as new.

“You sure know your way around cleaning a pair of pissed pants, sport. Not bad at all.”

You look over and see that it’s the hospital’s janitor talking to you. He somehow opened the door in perfect silence while you were inside splashing your pants, and has been watching you for upwards of 90 full seconds.

“I’ve been watching you for upwards of 90 full seconds, and I can tell just by looking at you, you’re no surgeon.”

Yes I am. I am a surgeon, you jackass.

Remove your shoelaces and begin choking the janitor until he dies so no one finds out about the bullshit he just said, or about your method of splashing water onto your pants.

“Easy, easy. I’m not gonna rat you out. I’m gonna help you.

I take it that you’re in here lying to be a surgeon, hoping to get ‘The $600 Bag Treatment,’ huh? Well, you’ve got a friend in me. I’ve seen it before, and I’ll see it again. All you gotta do is make it until 8 p.m. without killing a soul and you’re in the clear. So whadya say you come lay low with me for the rest of the day, spend some time hanging with a new bud so you don’t end up killin’ no one before you get that money?”

Why are you being so nice to me?

“I, uh, how do you mean?” he says, visibly becoming self-conscious about the entire interaction so far. “I’m just tired today, so if I’m acting weird, that’s what that’s about, probably. Allergies are being weird, too.”

Okay. Let’s hang out.

“Follow me!” the janitor says before sprinting down the hallway. You do your best to keep up with him as he weaves in and out of patients and doctors before you finally arrive at a huge metal door. He slides open the rusty door to reveal a set of long, winding stairs that lead to a dark, desolate basement, and turns to you with a half smile.

“It’s not delivery, it’s DiGiorno,” he says before letting out a quick, uncertain laugh, looking over his shoulder at you to kind of check in and see if you’re laughing or anything at what must have been some sort of joke.

Smile and nod politely.

Pretend you didn’t hear what he said.

What are you talking about? What?

“That was dumb, never mind,” the janitor says, shaking his head as his shoulders slump, trying to explain his joke before slowly progressing into full-blown self-deprecation. “I was thinking, like, how in the old commercials, I’d be the delivery guy and you’re the pizza—I don’t know, forget it. It was dumb. Sorry.”

Okay.

You follow the janitor down the stairs and into the basement of the hospital, and lo and behold, it’s a full-blown bachelor’s pad! The janitor has stocked the place with some of the best things: a ping-pong table, a “Forever 27” poster, an old-timey popcorn machine, and a bunch of orange pill bottles filled with Frosted Cheerios.

“This is my chill zone. I’m down here almost all the time, which is why the hospital is filthy and patients always seem to get sick immediately after they get better.”

“We got all day, brother, so we could either sit down and talk about that important-looking guitar I have mounted on the wall over there, or we could stand near the stairs and wonder if Slash has ever signed a guitar and sold it for $20,000 online before, or maybe we could lay down on the ground and trade stories about the most expensive thing we’ve ever mounted on a wall. Your call.”

Challenge the janitor to ping-pong.

“I can’t lift my arms above my waist because of a power-washer accident.”

Give in and ask the janitor about the guitar on his wall, since it seems like he really wants you to.

“You got a good eye, kid,” he says as though you brought it up completely unprompted, proudly looking up at the guitar he somehow mounted unnecessarily high on his wall.

“Believe it or not, Slash signed that guitar, and I was lucky enough to spend all of the money I have on it. I usually don’t do this for anyone, but for you, I’ll climb all the way up there and get it if you want to hold it.”

Seems dangerous to climb up there if you can’t lift your hands above your waist.

“I’d climb anywhere for one of my boys.”

And what about those wires? You’d have to step all over those wires to get over there?

“I’ll put a very wet towel over them. I’m sure that will be fine.”

This looks way too dangerous. Say you don’t need to see the guitar, bail on the weird janitor, and head back toward the lobby to kill time solo.

Ask the janitor to get the guitar for you.

You’ve killed! You’ve killed!

You put the janitor in grave danger by selfishly asking him to grab his Slash guitar off the wall. After the janitor put a soaking-wet towel on top of his countless basement wires in order to walk over to the wall and begin his climb, he was immediately electrocuted and fell crashing to the ground without the ability to raise his arms and break his fall. It’s unclear if it was the electricity surging through his body that did him in, or if it was the way his neck snapped on a nearby stool because of the horrible, unnatural way he fell. But either way, he is definitely dead, and it is your fault.

You’re no longer a surgeon, and you can kiss that bag of $600 goodbye.

Restart at checkpoint.

Start Over

As you go back up the stairs and start heading toward the lobby, you can hear that he starts to follow you, but then locks himself in the bathroom you were in earlier and begins screaming at himself in the mirror for messing up what could’ve been a nice day. His screaming gets louder and louder before it comes to a halt after you hear the sound of him snapping his mop over his knee in fury.

Run away from the janitor as fast as you can.

“I need you to give me a surgery right now.”

Ah, damn. It’s the sick kid from earlier.

“I feel like I’m on a boat at all hours of the day, and my elbows are dry. I need you to cut me open and drain me out, if that’s what it takes, and to please get me home by later today.”

Give the kid a surgery.

You pick the kid up, throw him over your shoulder, and walk through the hospital looking for a good room to cut him open in. After 20 minutes, you finally find the room with all of the surgeons in it, and you slam the kid down on the empty table they’re all staring at.

Now all eyes are on you. You’re going to have to step up and say something pretty incredible to get all of these surgeons on your side.

Found a kid I think would be perfect for surgery.

This is the only patient I’ve seen twice so far, so I think he should be next.

It’s not delivery. It’s DiGiorno.

You’ve killed! You’ve killed!

After you said that ridiculous, dumbass comment, every surgeon in the room became furious at you and began hammering you with questions about your qualifications. You tried mumbling through more Tylenol facts, which went much worse in person than it did on the phone, and somewhere during your 25-minute verbal beatdown from the other surgeons, the kid died on the table.

You are no longer a surgeon, and you will never get a plastic bag filled with $600.

Restart at checkpoint.

Start Over

Share Your Results

Everyone starts nodding and smiling and patting each other on the back. Good shit.

“Ha, nice,” a woman says, whose voice you recognize from the phone as the chief of medicine at the hospital. She quickly anesthetizes the patient to finally stop him from grabbing and clawing at everyone’s surgical masks, and within seconds the little spaz is sleeping.

At that moment, the tallest doctor you’ve ever seen walks into the door wearing a backwards hat and confidently drinking Barq’s Root Beer out of a 2-liter bottle.

“I’ve never seen you around here,” he says after putting the root beer down firmly into the lap of the unconscious kid and eyeing you up and down suspiciously. “Enlighten us, fresh meat. Now, what surgery are we performing on this little man, exactly?”

Ah, this guy is onto you. Need something big here to throw everyone off your tracks.

Fuck you, pal.

Sorry, rookie, but surgeries don’t have names.

Wink at him.

“Doctors, you two can be mean to each other in the parking lot all day long if you want to, but that’ll be enough fighting in my hospital,” says the chief of medicine after banging her fist down onto the kid’s chest like a gavel to get everyone’s attention.

“This little boy is in dire need of a heart transplant. We need to start immediately.”

Let’s get started.

Piss yourself and try to bail to the bathroom.

“Doctors, that’ll be enough talk about whether or not there are actually types of surgeries or not, because there simply is not a correct answer,” says the chief of medicine after banging her fist down onto the kid’s chest like a gavel to get everyone’s attention.

“This little boy is in dire need of a heart transplant. We need to start immediately.”

Let’s get started.

Piss yourself and try to bail to the bathroom.

“Doctors, please stop winking at each other,” says the chief of medicine after banging her fist down onto the kid’s chest like a gavel to get everyone’s attention.

“This little boy is in dire need of a heart transplant. We need to start immediately.”

Begin surgery.

Piss yourself and try to bail to the bathroom.

After noticing that no one is reacting to you pissing yourself, you look around and realize that every surgeon in the room has also already pissed themselves. Then you remember that surgeons are constantly pissing themselves during surgery, like bicyclists during races, for reasons completely unknown.

Ah, right. Now start the surgery.

The chief of medicine takes out a toolbox from underneath the surgery-room sink and hands each surgeon a tool. She takes each tool out one by one and starts passing them down the line. One doctor gets a small shovel, one gets a large knife, another gets a pickax, and on and on it goes, until you finally end up with the flashlight!

“Um, yeah, that’s my flashlight, pal. I’m always the flashlight man around here,” says the root-beer doctor.

“No,” interjects the chief. “New guy can hold the flashlight today. I have a good feeling about this.”

Your new rival is stunned. He shoots you a dirty look, threateningly crosses his thumb over his neck, and then does it again with his other thumb, but slower. Then he quietly mouths something that you didn’t really get a good read on, but from what you did see, your best guess is that he was saying something like “Fracking mountains,” or “Simply delicious.” Then he is handed the worst tool: the blood napkin, the tool that wipes up all the loose goo and pus.

Turn the flashlight on and shine it at the kid’s organs.

Shine the flashlight in your rival’s eyes to make him squint.

“Ah, c’mon, man. Quit it. What the hell.”

Nice. Shine the flashlight at the kid’s organs now.

The surgery is now well under way. The chief is slicing and dicing and moving parts around left and right. It’s pretty much a one-woman show.

Most of the other doctors are using their tools just to kind of scrape some bones and stuff when they feel like they should get in the mix, usually after not doing anything for a couple minutes straight and getting nervous that someone will notice how they’re not really that crucial to the operation.

You’re getting bored by the whole thing at this point, but at least you’re holding your own with these docs and, most importantly, haven’t killed anyone yet.

Keep shining the light in the organs.

Surgery still going. Getting kind of repetitive. A couple doctors shuffled out for a minute and came back with crackers, but the crackers are all gone now. You didn’t even notice they had crackers until there were only, like, four left in the sleeve, so at that point, asking for some really wouldn’t have been cool.

Surgery is getting boring.

Keep shining the flashlight.

Surgery is boring as hell.Your arms got tired from holding the flashlight up, so you put it down for a minute and no one seemed to notice. You’re back up now.

Keep shining the flashlight.

Kid woke up and started screaming LOUD, but now he’s sleeping again.

“You were scared!” “No, you were scared!” “I wasn’t scared, you were scared!” The surgeons are all ragging on each other and having fun again. Finally got some juice in the room. Whole crew got a good laugh out of that one.

Keep shining the flashlight.

Woah, wait a minute. Oh, man. You see something inside the kid’s body. Wedged deep in between his rib cage and his liver, there looks to be something shining and throbbing, and you’re pretty sure you’re the only one who sees it.

Two doctors broke away from the surgery about 15 minutes ago to arm wrestle on a nearby stool, and the rest of the surgeons have all one-by-one walked over to form a circle around them so they can gamble. Meanwhile, the chief is still hacking away at this kid’s organs with all of her might, and seems way too dialed-in to notice the game changer you’ve found.

Become a hero in front of your new boss by immediately and dramatically yanking out whatever the hell is sticking out of this kid’s guts.

Play it safe by simply alerting the chief of the mystery object and seeing what she thinks you should do.

Lean your flashlight up against the kid’s chin and go gamble with your new work friends.

You’ve killed! You’ve killed!

You thought you were being a hero by yanking out what you thought were some sort of wet, shining metals, but were actually the poor kid’s veins. You are no longer a surgeon, and can go ahead and kiss that sweet paycheck goodbye.

Restart at checkpoint.

Start Over

“Those are veins. They are not ‘evil copper and metals sticking out of this poor bastard’s guts.’ Do not call them that.”

Damn. Misread that one. The chief is totally onto you now.

“But I appreciate you speaking your mind when you think something is amiss,” she continues, looking up and making eye contact with you for the first time. “That takes a commitment to the job that some of my other doctors lack at times,” she says, motioning to the doctors across the room who are now attempting to disguise their arm-wrestling gambling ring by draping a hospital gown over the two meaty, dueling arms.

Hold eye contact without blinking, slowly nod your head, and say “good.”

The chief reciprocates your unblinking eye contact and begins nodding in perfect unison with your nodding. This goes on for a good 20 seconds or so, the grunts of the two arm wrestlers and the slaps of cold, hard cash hitting the tile becoming the only sounds in the room.

At that moment, you and the chief simultaneously feel a romantic charge between you, and it feels beautiful and right. But that romantic feeling is immediately followed by a simultaneous paternal feeling, but it’s unclear who is the parent and who is the child. Then the two feelings of physical attraction and familial protectiveness fuse together into one singular emotion, and it feels disgusting to both of you.

Pretend you hear one of the gambling surgeons call you over to ask you a quick question, and then walk over to them.

“Yeah, yeah, go catch up with them. I’ll hold it down over here, cool,” the chief kind of half-mutters to herself and to you while shaking her head and getting back to surgery.

Look back over your shoulder and smile and nod.

Pretend you didn’t hear her and walk faster toward the arm-wrestling scene.

You walk over to the gambling circle and see the two exhausted surgeons pulling and pushing as hard as they can to win. The two doctors are so evenly matched that their arms aren’t moving or shaking in the slightest. If it weren’t for the veins about to explode out of their temples and the tears streaming down their faces, you’d have no idea how intense the duel was.

All of the other surgeons are quietly going apeshit. Almost all of them are either gently pounding their chests, gingerly slapping the ground, or shaking their fists in the air, all the while whispering bad arm-wrestling advice like “Win the skin!” or “Make him smooth!”

It’s definitely a pretty sweet scene, and you decide that you want to get in the mix.

Ask the doctor on your left to borrow a couple bucks to gamble.

Ask the doctor on your right to borrow a couple bucks to gamble.

As you go to ask the doctor next to you, your rival doctor steps in front and interrupts:

“Looking to get in on the action but lacking the funds, newbie? Don’t worry, fresh meat. I got you covered. Also, we’re rival doctors, just in case that wasn’t clear.”

Whoa, pretty cool to get a rival doctor on your first day on the job. That probably usually takes years.

“That’s my coat over there,” he says, pointing to a white lab coat being worn by one of the arm-wrestling surgeons. “Go ahead and take my wallet out of the pocket and take out as much money as you want.”

He then lets out a weird little laugh and looks around to see if anyone else is laughing. One other doctor did laugh, but he’s in the middle of a conversation with another surgeon, so you’re pretty sure the laugh had nothing to do with your rival.

That’s weird. Seems like that coat belongs to the doctor wearing it. You lying, asshole?

“I have coats all over this hospital that you wouldn’t know a thing about,” he says, raising his fist up to your chin real quick, trying to get you to flinch. You stand your ground and don’t flinch at all, though, and he sheepishly brings his fist back down to his side.

Tell your rival that you would never borrow money from his shitty coat, and that he’s acting like a real weirdo.

Trust your rival’s suspicious story, reach into the coat being worn by the arm-wrestling doctor, and take out some money to gamble with.

You’ve killed! You’ve killed!

In a brilliantly executed scheme, your rival tricked you into reaching into the coat of one of the doctors who is arm wrestling. When the arm wrestler saw you trying to steal his wallet, his mix of adrenaline and dangerously high blood pressure caused his heart to explode.

Your misconduct has resulted in a death, meaning you can no longer be a surgeon, and you will never see that sweet, sweet bag o’ cash.

Restart at checkpoint.

Start Over

“I, uh, good then,” he stutters as h

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You Lied Your Way Into A Job As A Surgeon! Can You Avoid Killing Anyone Long Enough To Collect Your First Paycheck?

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Surgeons. The masters of the flesh. The gatekeepers of the organs. The doctors who get to shave patients.

These are the green-wearing gods who know that the human body is but a chessboard, and that the nipples are the king and queen, and the belly button is the opposing king or queen.

Today, finally, you are beginning your journey as one of them.

Sounds sweet.

You have already gone through the arduous process of becoming a surgeon. After calling the hospital over and over every day for three weeks straight and praising Tylenol in the deepest voice you could muster to whoever picked up, being hung up on by countless doctors and nurses, you finally hit the big time.

Yesterday, you managed to get the chief of medicine on the line, who offered you a job after a mere 50 minutes of you bellowing to her about the white-and-red pill. Congratulations!

Thank you. I am a surgeon.

If you eat eight Tylenol fast, that’s one rabies shot.

Eating any more than three Tylenols in church is a SIN unless you brought enough for EVERYONE.

Okay. Being a surgeon is sweet as hell. You get to wear patients’ clothes around a hospital once the chemicals put them to sleep, you can eat as many tortilla chips as you want, and you can hide all of your favorite DVDs and family heirlooms inside toxic waste bins, the one place thieving pricks are too grossed out by to steal from.

That all sounds great.

Skittles are to math what Tylenol is to alchemy.

Tossing Tylenol into an above-ground pool is basically the same idea as tossing Tylenol into an in-ground pool.

George Harrison wrote three songs about Tylenol in the days just before his passing that his estate will not release.

Cool. But the best part of being a surgeon, bar none, is that incredible surgeon paycheck.

It’s no secret that surgeons are paid well, as every single day at 8 p.m., hardworking surgeons all over the world reap the fruits of their labor: a plastic bag filled with $600, given to them by their chief of medicine on their way out the door, in addition to a goodnight kiss on the forehead.

Hell yeah.

Exactly. So now that you’re a surgeon, you better do everything in your power to make it your $600 payday, because there is one universal stipulation that could jam you up: If a surgeon kills someone, everything completely goes to shit.

1) For starters, once a surgeon kills someone, they are NEVER allowed back in a hospital, ever. Even if you just want to go to hang out or to meet new lovers.

2) Your professional reference completely goes out the window. If a new job calls to ask about you, instead of a recommendation, the HR department hands the phone off to the absolute sickest pervert patient they have, and lets them air out whatever they’ve got kickin’ around up in their minds.

3) Lastly—and this one is the worst of all—you don’t get paid a dime, which would mean all of your efforts to become a surgeon were for NOTHING.

So, if you want to get to that sweet paycheck, you’re going to have to make it through one entire day as a surgeon without killing someone.

I’m excited to be a surgeon who kills no one.

The hospital. The place where people come when they are bored to take off their pants and scream. This will be your new surgeon home, and today is your first day of work. As far as anyone inside is concerned, you are now a fully qualified surgeon, so if you want those 600 clams, you’re going to have to hold your own and stay off everyone’s radar.

Enter the hospital.

“Please give me a surgery.”

Ah, shit. A sick kid is waiting for you right inside the lobby, and he looks all kinds of fucked up.

“I need a surgery pronto. I am dying, and it feels like none of my bones are connected to my other bones. I also have a rash that comes and goes. Please do surgery to me with your other doctor friends.”

Quietly tell the kid that he’d be doing you a huge favor by asking another doctor for help on this one, and hope that he’ll be cool.

Piss your pants and bail to the bathroom.

“If you don’t give me a surgery right now, I will scream. I will scream so loud and for so long, and I will point at you the whole time. It will go on for so long that the rest of the doctors here will have no choice but to send you to jail.”

Piss your pants and bail to the bathroom.

That was close. You’ve pissed your pants real good, and now you’re in the bathroom splashing your pants with water, the best way to clean pants that you’ve urinated in.

I know that. My pants are now much wetter, but not as much with piss as with water, so they’re practically good as new.

“You sure know your way around cleaning a pair of pissed pants, sport. Not bad at all.”

You look over and see that it’s the hospital’s janitor talking to you. He somehow opened the door in perfect silence while you were inside splashing your pants, and has been watching you for upwards of 90 full seconds.

“I’ve been watching you for upwards of 90 full seconds, and I can tell just by looking at you, you’re no surgeon.”

Yes I am. I am a surgeon, you jackass.

Remove your shoelaces and begin choking the janitor until he dies so no one finds out about the bullshit he just said, or about your method of splashing water onto your pants.

“Easy, easy. I’m not gonna rat you out. I’m gonna help you.

I take it that you’re in here lying to be a surgeon, hoping to get ‘The $600 Bag Treatment,’ huh? Well, you’ve got a friend in me. I’ve seen it before, and I’ll see it again. All you gotta do is make it until 8 p.m. without killing a soul and you’re in the clear. So whadya say you come lay low with me for the rest of the day, spend some time hanging with a new bud so you don’t end up killin’ no one before you get that money?”

Why are you being so nice to me?

“I, uh, how do you mean?” he says, visibly becoming self-conscious about the entire interaction so far. “I’m just tired today, so if I’m acting weird, that’s what that’s about, probably. Allergies are being weird, too.”

Okay. Let’s hang out.

“Follow me!” the janitor says before sprinting down the hallway. You do your best to keep up with him as he weaves in and out of patients and doctors before you finally arrive at a huge metal door. He slides open the rusty door to reveal a set of long, winding stairs that lead to a dark, desolate basement, and turns to you with a half smile.

“It’s not delivery, it’s DiGiorno,” he says before letting out a quick, uncertain laugh, looking over his shoulder at you to kind of check in and see if you’re laughing or anything at what must have been some sort of joke.

Smile and nod politely.

Pretend you didn’t hear what he said.

What are you talking about? What?

“That was dumb, never mind,” the janitor says, shaking his head as his shoulders slump, trying to explain his joke before slowly progressing into full-blown self-deprecation. “I was thinking, like, how in the old commercials, I’d be the delivery guy and you’re the pizza—I don’t know, forget it. It was dumb. Sorry.”

Okay.

You follow the janitor down the stairs and into the basement of the hospital, and lo and behold, it’s a full-blown bachelor’s pad! The janitor has stocked the place with some of the best things: a ping-pong table, a “Forever 27” poster, an old-timey popcorn machine, and a bunch of orange pill bottles filled with Frosted Cheerios.

“This is my chill zone. I’m down here almost all the time, which is why the hospital is filthy and patients always seem to get sick immediately after they get better.”

“We got all day, brother, so we could either sit down and talk about that important-looking guitar I have mounted on the wall over there, or we could stand near the stairs and wonder if Slash has ever signed a guitar and sold it for $20,000 online before, or maybe we could lay down on the ground and trade stories about the most expensive thing we’ve ever mounted on a wall. Your call.”

Challenge the janitor to ping-pong.

“I can’t lift my arms above my waist because of a power-washer accident.”

Give in and ask the janitor about the guitar on his wall, since it seems like he really wants you to.

“You got a good eye, kid,” he says as though you brought it up completely unprompted, proudly looking up at the guitar he somehow mounted unnecessarily high on his wall.

“Believe it or not, Slash signed that guitar, and I was lucky enough to spend all of the money I have on it. I usually don’t do this for anyone, but for you, I’ll climb all the way up there and get it if you want to hold it.”

Seems dangerous to climb up there if you can’t lift your hands above your waist.

“I’d climb anywhere for one of my boys.”

And what about those wires? You’d have to step all over those wires to get over there?

“I’ll put a very wet towel over them. I’m sure that will be fine.”

This looks way too dangerous. Say you don’t need to see the guitar, bail on the weird janitor, and head back toward the lobby to kill time solo.

Ask the janitor to get the guitar for you.

You’ve killed! You’ve killed!

You put the janitor in grave danger by selfishly asking him to grab his Slash guitar off the wall. After the janitor put a soaking-wet towel on top of his countless basement wires in order to walk over to the wall and begin his climb, he was immediately electrocuted and fell crashing to the ground without the ability to raise his arms and break his fall. It’s unclear if it was the electricity surging through his body that did him in, or if it was the way his neck snapped on a nearby stool because of the horrible, unnatural way he fell. But either way, he is definitely dead, and it is your fault.

You’re no longer a surgeon, and you can kiss that bag of $600 goodbye.

Restart at checkpoint.

Start Over

As you go back up the stairs and start heading toward the lobby, you can hear that he starts to follow you, but then locks himself in the bathroom you were in earlier and begins screaming at himself in the mirror for messing up what could’ve been a nice day. His screaming gets louder and louder before it comes to a halt after you hear the sound of him snapping his mop over his knee in fury.

Run away from the janitor as fast as you can.

“I need you to give me a surgery right now.”

Ah, damn. It’s the sick kid from earlier.

“I feel like I’m on a boat at all hours of the day, and my elbows are dry. I need you to cut me open and drain me out, if that’s what it takes, and to please get me home by later today.”

Give the kid a surgery.

You pick the kid up, throw him over your shoulder, and walk through the hospital looking for a good room to cut him open in. After 20 minutes, you finally find the room with all of the surgeons in it, and you slam the kid down on the empty table they’re all staring at.

Now all eyes are on you. You’re going to have to step up and say something pretty incredible to get all of these surgeons on your side.

Found a kid I think would be perfect for surgery.

This is the only patient I’ve seen twice so far, so I think he should be next.

It’s not delivery. It’s DiGiorno.

You’ve killed! You’ve killed!

After you said that ridiculous, dumbass comment, every surgeon in the room became furious at you and began hammering you with questions about your qualifications. You tried mumbling through more Tylenol facts, which went much worse in person than it did on the phone, and somewhere during your 25-minute verbal beatdown from the other surgeons, the kid died on the table.

You are no longer a surgeon, and you will never get a plastic bag filled with $600.

Restart at checkpoint.

Start Over

Share Your Results

Everyone starts nodding and smiling and patting each other on the back. Good shit.

“Ha, nice,” a woman says, whose voice you recognize from the phone as the chief of medicine at the hospital. She quickly anesthetizes the patient to finally stop him from grabbing and clawing at everyone’s surgical masks, and within seconds the little spaz is sleeping.

At that moment, the tallest doctor you’ve ever seen walks into the door wearing a backwards hat and confidently drinking Barq’s Root Beer out of a 2-liter bottle.

“I’ve never seen you around here,” he says after putting the root beer down firmly into the lap of the unconscious kid and eyeing you up and down suspiciously. “Enlighten us, fresh meat. Now, what surgery are we performing on this little man, exactly?”

Ah, this guy is onto you. Need something big here to throw everyone off your tracks.

Fuck you, pal.

Sorry, rookie, but surgeries don’t have names.

Wink at him.

“Doctors, you two can be mean to each other in the parking lot all day long if you want to, but that’ll be enough fighting in my hospital,” says the chief of medicine after banging her fist down onto the kid’s chest like a gavel to get everyone’s attention.

“This little boy is in dire need of a heart transplant. We need to start immediately.”

Let’s get started.

Piss yourself and try to bail to the bathroom.

“Doctors, that’ll be enough talk about whether or not there are actually types of surgeries or not, because there simply is not a correct answer,” says the chief of medicine after banging her fist down onto the kid’s chest like a gavel to get everyone’s attention.

“This little boy is in dire need of a heart transplant. We need to start immediately.”

Let’s get started.

Piss yourself and try to bail to the bathroom.

“Doctors, please stop winking at each other,” says the chief of medicine after banging her fist down onto the kid’s chest like a gavel to get everyone’s attention.

“This little boy is in dire need of a heart transplant. We need to start immediately.”

Begin surgery.

Piss yourself and try to bail to the bathroom.

After noticing that no one is reacting to you pissing yourself, you look around and realize that every surgeon in the room has also already pissed themselves. Then you remember that surgeons are constantly pissing themselves during surgery, like bicyclists during races, for reasons completely unknown.

Ah, right. Now start the surgery.

The chief of medicine takes out a toolbox from underneath the surgery-room sink and hands each surgeon a tool. She takes each tool out one by one and starts passing them down the line. One doctor gets a small shovel, one gets a large knife, another gets a pickax, and on and on it goes, until you finally end up with the flashlight!

“Um, yeah, that’s my flashlight, pal. I’m always the flashlight man around here,” says the root-beer doctor.

“No,” interjects the chief. “New guy can hold the flashlight today. I have a good feeling about this.”

Your new rival is stunned. He shoots you a dirty look, threateningly crosses his thumb over his neck, and then does it again with his other thumb, but slower. Then he quietly mouths something that you didn’t really get a good read on, but from what you did see, your best guess is that he was saying something like “Fracking mountains,” or “Simply delicious.” Then he is handed the worst tool: the blood napkin, the tool that wipes up all the loose goo and pus.

Turn the flashlight on and shine it at the kid’s organs.

Shine the flashlight in your rival’s eyes to make him squint.

“Ah, c’mon, man. Quit it. What the hell.”

Nice. Shine the flashlight at the kid’s organs now.

The surgery is now well under way. The chief is slicing and dicing and moving parts around left and right. It’s pretty much a one-woman show.

Most of the other doctors are using their tools just to kind of scrape some bones and stuff when they feel like they should get in the mix, usually after not doing anything for a couple minutes straight and getting nervous that someone will notice how they’re not really that crucial to the operation.

You’re getting bored by the whole thing at this point, but at least you’re holding your own with these docs and, most importantly, haven’t killed anyone yet.

Keep shining the light in the organs.

Surgery still going. Getting kind of repetitive. A couple doctors shuffled out for a minute and came back with crackers, but the crackers are all gone now. You didn’t even notice they had crackers until there were only, like, four left in the sleeve, so at that point, asking for some really wouldn’t have been cool.

Surgery is getting boring.

Keep shining the flashlight.

Surgery is boring as hell.Your arms got tired from holding the flashlight up, so you put it down for a minute and no one seemed to notice. You’re back up now.

Keep shining the flashlight.

Kid woke up and started screaming LOUD, but now he’s sleeping again.

“You were scared!” “No, you were scared!” “I wasn’t scared, you were scared!” The surgeons are all ragging on each other and having fun again. Finally got some juice in the room. Whole crew got a good laugh out of that one.

Keep shining the flashlight.

Woah, wait a minute. Oh, man. You see something inside the kid’s body. Wedged deep in between his rib cage and his liver, there looks to be something shining and throbbing, and you’re pretty sure you’re the only one who sees it.

Two doctors broke away from the surgery about 15 minutes ago to arm wrestle on a nearby stool, and the rest of the surgeons have all one-by-one walked over to form a circle around them so they can gamble. Meanwhile, the chief is still hacking away at this kid’s organs with all of her might, and seems way too dialed-in to notice the game changer you’ve found.

Become a hero in front of your new boss by immediately and dramatically yanking out whatever the hell is sticking out of this kid’s guts.

Play it safe by simply alerting the chief of the mystery object and seeing what she thinks you should do.

Lean your flashlight up against the kid’s chin and go gamble with your new work friends.

You’ve killed! You’ve killed!

You thought you were being a hero by yanking out what you thought were some sort of wet, shining metals, but were actually the poor kid’s veins. You are no longer a surgeon, and can go ahead and kiss that sweet paycheck goodbye.

Restart at checkpoint.

Start Over

“Those are veins. They are not ‘evil copper and metals sticking out of this poor bastard’s guts.’ Do not call them that.”

Damn. Misread that one. The chief is totally onto you now.

“But I appreciate you speaking your mind when you think something is amiss,” she continues, looking up and making eye contact with you for the first time. “That takes a commitment to the job that some of my other doctors lack at times,” she says, motioning to the doctors across the room who are now attempting to disguise their arm-wrestling gambling ring by draping a hospital gown over the two meaty, dueling arms.

Hold eye contact without blinking, slowly nod your head, and say “good.”

The chief reciprocates your unblinking eye contact and begins nodding in perfect unison with your nodding. This goes on for a good 20 seconds or so, the grunts of the two arm wrestlers and the slaps of cold, hard cash hitting the tile becoming the only sounds in the room.

At that moment, you and the chief simultaneously feel a romantic charge between you, and it feels beautiful and right. But that romantic feeling is immediately followed by a simultaneous paternal feeling, but it’s unclear who is the parent and who is the child. Then the two feelings of physical attraction and familial protectiveness fuse together into one singular emotion, and it feels disgusting to both of you.

Pretend you hear one of the gambling surgeons call you over to ask you a quick question, and then walk over to them.

“Yeah, yeah, go catch up with them. I’ll hold it down over here, cool,” the chief kind of half-mutters to herself and to you while shaking her head and getting back to surgery.

Look back over your shoulder and smile and nod.

Pretend you didn’t hear her and walk faster toward the arm-wrestling scene.

You walk over to the gambling circle and see the two exhausted surgeons pulling and pushing as hard as they can to win. The two doctors are so evenly matched that their arms aren’t moving or shaking in the slightest. If it weren’t for the veins about to explode out of their temples and the tears streaming down their faces, you’d have no idea how intense the duel was.

All of the other surgeons are quietly going apeshit. Almost all of them are either gently pounding their chests, gingerly slapping the ground, or shaking their fists in the air, all the while whispering bad arm-wrestling advice like “Win the skin!” or “Make him smooth!”

It’s definitely a pretty sweet scene, and you decide that you want to get in the mix.

Ask the doctor on your left to borrow a couple bucks to gamble.

Ask the doctor on your right to borrow a couple bucks to gamble.

As you go to ask the doctor next to you, your rival doctor steps in front and interrupts:

“Looking to get in on the action but lacking the funds, newbie? Don’t worry, fresh meat. I got you covered. Also, we’re rival doctors, just in case that wasn’t clear.”

Whoa, pretty cool to get a rival doctor on your first day on the job. That probably usually takes years.

“That’s my coat over there,” he says, pointing to a white lab coat being worn by one of the arm-wrestling surgeons. “Go ahead and take my wallet out of the pocket and take out as much money as you want.”

He then lets out a weird little laugh and looks around to see if anyone else is laughing. One other doctor did laugh, but he’s in the middle of a conversation with another surgeon, so you’re pretty sure the laugh had nothing to do with your rival.

That’s weird. Seems like that coat belongs to the doctor wearing it. You lying, asshole?

“I have coats all over this hospital that you wouldn’t know a thing about,” he says, raising his fist up to your chin real quick, trying to get you to flinch. You stand your ground and don’t flinch at all, though, and he sheepishly brings his fist back down to his side.

Tell your rival that you would never borrow money from his shitty coat, and that he’s acting like a real weirdo.

Trust your rival’s suspicious story, reach into the coat being worn by the arm-wrestling doctor, and take out some money to gamble with.

You’ve killed! You’ve killed!

In a brilliantly executed scheme, your rival tricked you into reaching into the coat of one of the doctors who is arm wrestling. When the arm wrestler saw you trying to steal his wallet, his mix of adrenaline and dangerously high blood pressure caused his heart to explode.

Your misconduct has resulted in a death, meaning you can no longer be a surgeon, and you will never see that sweet, sweet bag o’ cash.

Restart at checkpoint.

Start Over

“I, uh, good then,” he stutters as h

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